Letter #264: 2+2=5
Could God microwave a burrito so hot, he couldn't eat it?
Dad,
There’s this one episode of the Simpsons where Homer tries to stump his obnoxiously pious neighbor Ned Flanders. “Hey, I got a question for you,” he says: “could Jesus microwave a burrito so hot, that he himself could not eat it?” I remember as kids we used to find this kind of puzzle exceptionally profound. So does Ned (“that’s a honeydoodle!”).
If we lived in a different time, we would have been taught to take this question both more and less seriously than we did. If we had been Medieval schoolboys, for instance, our teachers might have acknowledged the burrito problem as a legitimate question in need of address, the so-called “omnipotence paradox.” (Actually, there weren’t burritos back then because nobody had yet invented Mexicans. Or microwaves. More’s the pity. But they got the point across in other ways.)
That said, however, our Medieval teachers would probably have taken the time to demonstrate to us that the omnipotence paradox is only superficially interesting. It’s the kind of intellectual parlor trick that used to preoccupy Greek thinkers before Socrates. Aquinas pretty well resolved it. It comes to this: “a burrito so hot God couldn’t eat it” is itself a nonsense phrase, containing a logical contradiction. It’s like a triangle with four sides: you can put those words together, but they don’t actually describe anything. As C.S. Lewis put it, “meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words, ‘God can.’”
I’ve been remembering this in our conversation about people who will do anything to avert disaster except stop doing the thing that leads inexorably to disaster. Dostoevsky’s Underground Man, with whom we began, actually says as much: “‘two times two equals four’—that’s an excellent thing,” he says, “but if we’re going to start handing out praise, ‘two times two equals five’ is also quite charming.” He’s free to add up any numbers he likes, but that’s not enough. He wants to rewrite the rules of math.
You wonder whether our country can still beat back its demise, or whether we’re locked into our fate. It’s probably the question I’ve been asked—or asked myself—more often than any other. Are we playing out the same script as ancient Rome did? Is our republic doomed to fall like theirs?
The answer I’ve come to over the years is this: we’re not doomed to anything. But if we do the things Rome did, we’ll get the results Rome got. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes: if we spend recklessly, degrade the value of citizenship, misuse and discredit our finest institutions, entangle ourselves thoughtlessly abroad, and eat each other alive in factional, economic, or demographic warfare, well...two plus two equals four. We could still pick different numbers to add up. It’s possible—advisable, even! But God himself can’t help us make two and two equal five.
Love,
Spencer
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If history is a pattern, Rome will do what Rome will do… becoming more decadent with each decade.
Those of us who claim to know Him, both Scribe ( words, words, words, sophistry and learning), and Pharisee (law, law, law - only tradition), can ask better questions. Instead of, “ if I do enough intellectual gymnastics, can I tie myself in enough knots that God will see MY ideas as a big juicy pretzel and want to partake?”
Maybe we could ask: “What do I really want?”, “What lack I yet?”, “What is He offering?”, “Why seek ye the living among the dead?”, “What am I waiting for?”, “What time is it?”, “What is my part to play?”
There were only a few who recognized Him when He came. The wise and those who fed the sheep were among the first. Discernment comes from taking time to be Holy.
I grew up in Catholic schools on the east coast, in Queens and the DC suburbs. So, back then, we didn’t have burritos, but we did have a few Mexicans. Mostly ones who would set up on a corner to sell you onyx chess sets, set upon a small table, around which you’d sit on tiny stools. The table is long gone, but I still have the set and stools.
Anyway, in school, we naturally didn’t ask about burritos, but rocks instead. Could God make a rock so big that even he couldn’t lift it? Of course not, because weight is irrelevant to Him. He is outside space, time, AND matter.