Poetry of paradoxes paradoxes in poetry

"Paradoxes," wrote Carl Gustav Jung in his book Psychology and Religion, "are strangely among the greatest spiritual treasures [...], and all religious statements contain logical contradictions and fundamentally impossible statements." This observation, undoubtedly true, is confirmed by a cursory analysis of the language used in the Bible. In both the Old and New Testaments, including the teachings of Jesus Christ himself, we find many structures based on contradictions. Statements such as: "unless the seed dies, it bears no fruit" (Jn 12:24), "so the last shall be first, and the first last" (Mt 20:16), or "whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it" (Mt 10:38-39), have shaped the landscape of Christian culture for over two thousand years and to this day constitute the recognizable character of religious discourse. Therefore, the Church's teachings and dogmas—undeniable religious statements—are inevitably based on paradox. Suffice it to recall the most important truths of faith: three persons are one God, Mary is both virgin and mother, God is merciful and just, the dead will rise from the dead, and Christ revealed himself in the form of God-Man, born at a specific time and place—eternity met mortality. Christianity is thus characterized by a significant saturation of contradictions and paradoxes that are not always comprehensible. Priests are particularly confronted with such constructions as they ponder the difficult, sometimes hidden, meanings of the language of the Gospel. Awareness of contradictions significantly shapes their thought paradigm, determines their reflection on language and words, which translates into the poetics of their expression and sometimes constitutes its subject matter. (Excerpt from the Introduction)