Zeno's Paradox

In the 1994 movie “I.Q.,” there is a scene where the character played by Tim Robbins, Ed, tries to get Meg Ryan’s character, Catherine, to dance. Catherine tells Ed that he can never get to where she is from where he is. She flirtatiously uses Zeno’s Paradox to explain the impossibility of making it across the distance. Zeno’s Paradox, at least according to Catherine, states that if the distance between two points is halved and subsequently halved again, there would be an infinite number of halves remaining. Something similar is true when we talk about God. All assertions about the divine are approximations at best, never quite approaching the whole truth. In the gospels, when Jesus asks Peter, “Who do you say that I am?” His answer, “You are the Christ,” is fully divine revelation, but it is not complete divine revelation. Peter speaks of that which he does not fully understand. When we do the work of theology, ideally, our approximations get us closer and closer to answering Jesus’s question for ourselves.

Ed finds himself in this situation with Catherine because he pretends to be an up-and-coming physicist. Ed is, in fact, an auto mechanic. In the movie, Catherine is the niece of renowned physicist Albert Einstein, played by Walter Matthau. Ed feels he must pretend to be something he is not to impress Catherine, a genius in her own right. We are constantly answering Jesus’s question from a place of not being truly ourselves in the moments the questions come. Peter made a bold claim rooted in not only who he understood Jesus to be but also in how he understood himself. My assertions about who Jesus is, like Peter’s, come in the context of my background and social location and how I understand those things. My response is tangled up with my hopes, desires, disappointments, and current understanding of the world and scriptures. I have often mistakenly believed I have come to my final answer to Jesus’s question. Yet, there is always more than what I currently see. Peter understood Jesus as ‘The Christ.’ Yet, Peter could not even have imagined how that truth would come to mean what it meant.

For me, the question’s significance lies not in the answer but in the answering. After explaining Zeno’s Paradox, Catherine demonstrates the paradox by halving the distance to Ed and halving it again as the music from the Jukebox plays. Eventually, the two of them are dancing, having never fully crossed the distance between them. To me, Jesus’s question to Peter is an invitation into what Fr. Richard Rohr calls the divine dance. This is the dance of relationality that the Father, Son, and Spirit have been caught up in for all eternity. I can only answer the question from where I am now, but the question leads me into the dance, every step a step closer for eternity.

Viewing the answering of the question this way requires an open hand and a willingness to backtrack and deconstruct our previous answers. Yet, when I answer Jesus’s question this way, I move ever closer to the one who is “The Christ” rather than becoming more entrenched in my understanding of what “The Christ” means to me. This way of approaching the question invites me into not only a trinitarian sort of relationality with the divine but also into relationship with and provides grace for others on the journey of answering Jesus’s question. The work of theology is never really finished answering the questions about who God is and the nature of the divine. I must continually allow my current answers to the questions to evolve and move closer to the truth. In the answering, we are transformed. This is the way to dance.