The Question of God and the Doctrine of the Trinity

This paper begins with an explanation of the five strata of mental life that Ignacio Matte Blanco described. In the first stratum common sense (Aristotelian) logic is employed, whereas the fifth stratum is dominated by symmetric logic, the logic of the unconscious which, when taken to the extreme, identifies everything with everything else. The intermediate strata use a mix of the two logics in different proportions. The discourse generated by each stratum has certain typical features: factual assertions in the first, simile in the second, metaphor and symbol in the third, paradox and contradiction in the fourth, and the silence of mystical contemplation in the fifth.

The author argues that these five strata are illuminating in the study of theology. Factual discourse can say little or nothing about God, whereas the fifth stratum is about nothing else. In the middle stratum is found the metaphoric and symbolic Christian narrative, from creation to the Incarnation in Jesus, his life, death, resurrection and, finally, to the End of the world. Reflection on this third stratum narrative led theologians to the doctrinal paradoxes of the Trinity and Incarnation, apparently rational but actually self-contradictory. Finally, a comparison is drawn between the thought of Nicholas of Cusa, the last great mediaeval theologian and expositor of the composition of opposites, and Matte Blanco's theory of symmetric logic.