Consider the following proposition as a key to understanding the proper Christian approach to theology, especially but not only for Catholics:

The best Christian answer to any theological question is always "both/and," rather than "either/or."

At first glance, this proposal might seem ridiculous or contradictory. Isn't God absolute? Isn't there just one truth, as opposed to error?  Indeed, this proposal does not imply that a statement and its direct negation are both true ("A is B" and "A is not B").  It would obviously be false to claim, for example, that "God is Love" and "God is not Love," or "Jesus is divine" and "Jesus is not divine." Moreover, this proposal does not apply to questions that are merely historical or factual: In what year was Paul born? What was the name of Peter's wife? How many people lived in Jerusalem?

However, consider these analogies from nature: every coin has both a heads and a tails side; every battery has both a positive and a negative terminal; the earth has both a North Pole and a South Pole; every 24 hours has both day and night.
Similarly, consider these realities of human life: everyone experiences both joys and sorrows, both successes and failures; every person has both strengths and weaknesses; every proposal has both advantages and drawbacks.
So also there are always (at least) two "sides" or "poles" to the best Christian answer to any theological question. These opposite poles may seem far apart and difficult to hold together. It is often difficult to understand and balance both sides of a complex issue, just as we can't easily see both sides of a coin at the same time (without a mirror, at least!). Yet the "opposite" sides are seldom really "contradictions," even if there may be some strong "tensions" between them.

For example, Christians believe that Jesus is both God and human. To a non-Christian, this might seem ridiculous. Even for a Christian, it is hard to understand or explain. How can anything or anyone be both divine and human? Or how can God be both transcendent and immanent? Or how can the Bible be both the Word of God and human literature? Can both creation and evolution be true somehow? Can both science and religion be reconciled? The Catholic answer to all these questions is YES, both the one side and its opposite not only can, but must be held together in tension, even if they seem to be contradictory, in order to understand the whole truth, the whole of the complex reality.

As early Christians were trying to understand the nature of Jesus and define other theological issues, they usually rejected the opinions (later called "heresies") of those who went too far to one side or the other: for example, those who said Jesus was human, but not fully divine (adoptionists), as well as those who believed he was fully divine, but only appeared to be human (docetists).

On some of these issues, all Christians (Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox) today agree: God is transcendent/immanent, Jesus is divine/human, etc. On other important issues, however, some Christians maintain that only one side is true, but not the other. The 16th-century Protestant Reformers emphasized five "solas" (Latin word for "only"): sola scriptura (authority in "Scripture Alone," not also tradition); sola gratia (salvation by "Grace Alone," not also good works); sola fide (justification by "Faith Alone," not also merit); solus Christus (redemption by the saving death of "Christ Alone," not also human action); and solo Dei gloria (live for the "Glory of God Alone," not also ourselves or the world). Catholicism of the 16th century certainly neglected some of these important truths (not always in theory, but at least in practice) and focused too much on their opposite poles (e.g., too much emphasis on tradition, to the neglect of scripture; too much reliance on external works, to the neglect of interior faith, etc.). Yet the Protestants' efforts at reform sometimes moved them too far in the other direction.

Rather than overemphasizing one pole and neglecting the other, the challenge in Christian theology is always to hold the two poles together, to maintain a proper balance between both seemingly opposite sides of the truth. Another way of phrasing the "catholic" ("all-encompassing" or "universal") position would be to say, "Not Only..., But Also..." Here is a list of only some theological issues and the best Christian answers, which include both poles:

The list could go on and on, but I hope you get the point. Just as every coin has two sides, so the Catholic response to any theological question is not satisfied with either/or choices, with answers that consider only one side. An authentic Catholic-Christian theology always attempts to understand both sides of a reality in all its complexity, and tries to avoid overemphasizing one side while neglecting the other, which leads not only to distortions of the truth but also to unfortunate consequences in practice.

Of course, not everything is best described in complementary pairs, but may also involve triads or more complex combinations. Here is a short list of some triads or "threes" that are important in the Christian religion:

Just as groups of four occur frequently in ancient and popular culture (four seasons: spring, summer, fall, winter; four directions: N, S, E, W; four elements: earth, wind, water, fire), some of the most important aspects of biblical and post-biblical Christianity come in groups of four:

Finally, since the reality of life is often much more complex, one could easily compile much longer lists of attributes, qualities, parts, or other items that describe a certain reality. One need only think of the periodic table of elements in chemistry, or the types of sports competed at the olympics, or the names of all states or provinces within a particular country, and so forth. The Bible contains some significant lists illustrating the greater complexity of certain aspects of divine truth and human life:

• Seven Abominations to the Lord: "haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that hurry to run to evil, a lying witness who testifies falsely, and one who sows discord in a family.” (Prov 6:16-19)
• Seven Gifts of the Spirit: "wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord" (Isaiah 11:1-3a, in ancient Greek & Latin versions)
• Seven Marks of Christian Unity: one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all (Eph 4:4-6)
• Seven Seals, Seven Trumpets, Seven Bowls, Seven Plagues, etc.: see the webpage on Sevens in the Book of Revelation
• Seven "Deadly Sins": pride, avarice/greed, envy, wrath/anger, lust, gluttony, sloth (post-biblical; cf. Rom 1:29-31)
• Seven "Cardinal Virtues": humility, generosity, love, kindness, self-control, temperance, zeal (post-biblical; cf. Col 3:12-17)
• Eight Beatitudes: see Matt 5:1-12
• Eight Offices in the early Church: "And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers; then deeds of power, then gifts of healing, forms of assistance, forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues." (1 Cor 12:28; cf. Eph 4:11)
• Nine Fruits of the Spirit: "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control" (Gal 5:22-23)
• Ten Commandments: see Exodus 20:1-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21; click here for a detailed webpage
• Twelve Tribes of Israel: click here for a detailed webpage
• Twelve Apostles of Jesus: click here for a detailed webpage

If you have suggestions for additions to any of the above,
please email me at fjust--at--jesuits.org  (replacing --at-- with the @ symbol).

Pope Francis Applies the BOTH/AND Approach to "Contrapositions"

In his book, Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future (Simon & Schuster, 2020), Pope Francis talks in his own words about the same concepts that I have tried to explain above.
Although Pope Francis is primarily discussing inter-personal tensions, his ideas can easily be applied to many other situations involving differences of opinion (including theological differences).
The following section is from pages 78-81 of Let Us Dream (with some emphases added).

• [Romano] Guardini gave me a startling insight to deal with conflicts, analyzing their complexity while avoiding any simplifying reductionism: there exist differences in tension, pulling apart, but all coexist within a larger unity.
• Understanding how apparent contradictions could be resolved metaphysically, through discernment, was the topic of my thesis on Guardini, which I went to Germany to research. I worked on it for some years but never finished writing it up. But the thesis has helped me a lot, especially in managing tensions and conflicts. (Twenty years later, in 2012, after I turned sevnty-five, when I thought Pope Benedict might accept my resignation as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, it occurred to me [pg. 79] for a time that I might, after all, finish the thesis. But in March 2013 I was transferred to another diocese. In the end I gave what I had written to a priest who was studying Guardini.)17
• One of the effects of conflict is to see as contradictions what are in fact contrapositions, as I like to call them. A contraposition involves two poles in tension, pulling away from each other: horizon/limit, local/global, whole/part, and so on. These are contrapositions because they are opposites that nonetheless interact in a fruitful, creative tension. As Guardini taught me, creation is full of these living polarities, or Gegensatze; they are what make us alive and dynamic. Contradictions (Widerspruche) on the other hand demand that we choose, between right and wrong. (Good and evil can never be a contraposition, because evil is not the counterpart of good but its negation.)
• To see contrapositions as contradictions is the result of mediocre thinking that takes us away from reality. The bad spirit—the spirit of conflict, which undermines dialogue and fraternity—turns contrapositions into contradictions, demanding we choose, and reducing reality to simple binaries. This is what ideologies and unscrupulous politicians do. So when we run up against a contradiction that does not allow us to advance to a real solution, we know we are faced with a reductive, partial mental scheme that we must try to move beyond.
• But the bad spirit can also deny the tension between two poles in a contraposition, opting instead for a kind of static coexistence. This is the danger of relativism or false irenicism, an attitude of "peace at any price" in which the goal is to avoid conflict altogether. In this case, there can be no solution, because the tension has been denied, and abandoned. This is also a refusal to accept reality.
• [pg. 80] So we have two temptations: on the one hand, to wrap ourselves in the banner of one side or the other, exacerbating the conflict; on the other, to avoid engaging in conflict altogether, denying the tension involved and washing our hands of it.
• The task of the reconciler is instead to "endure" the conflict, facing it head-on, and by discerning see beyond the surface reasons for disagreement, opening those involved to the possibility of a new synthesis, one that does not destroy either pole, but preserves what is good and valid in both in a new perspective.
• This breakthrough comes about as a gift in dialogue, when people trust each other and humbly seek the good together, and are willing to learn from each other in a mutual exchange of gifts. At such moments, the solution to an intractable problem comes in ways that are unexpected and unforeseen, the result of a new and greater creativity released, as it were, from the outside. This is what I mean by "overflow" because it breaks the banks that confined our thinking, and causes to pour forth, as if from an overflowing fountain, the answers that formerly the contraposition didn't let us see. We recognize this process as a gift from God because it is the same action of the Spirit described in Scripture and evident in history.
• "Overflow" is one possible translation of the Greek perisseuo, which is the word used by the psalmist whose cup overflows with God's grace in Psalm 23. Perisseuo was what Jesus promises (Luke 6:38) will be poured into our laps when we forgive. It is the noun deployed in John's Gospel (John 10:10) to describe the life that Jesus came to bring, and the adjective Saint Paul uses (2 Corinthians 1:5) to describe God's generosity. It is the very heart of God that overflows in those famous passages of the father rushing out to hug his prodigal son, the [pg. 81] wedding host who gathers guests from the roads and the fields for his banquet, the net-breaking catch of fish at dawn after a night of fruitless trawling, or Jesus washing the feet of his disciples on the night before he died.
• Such overflows of love happen, above all, at the crossroads of life, at moments of openness, fragility, and humility, when the ocean of His love bursts the dams of our self-sufficiency, and so allows for a new imagination of the possible.

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