Both/And vs. Either/Or

Ravi Zacharias told the story of speaking to a Hindu professor.

Ravi said that the pantheistic worldview is systemically contradictory. Anything can basically mean anything; terms are meaningless.

Afterward, the professor said that Ravi did not understand the two kinds of logic—the law of non-contradiction, an either/or way of thinking, which is Western thought, and then there is the law of both/and way of thinking, the dialectical system, which is Eastern.

The professor said that the dialectical system applied to Hinduism, not the either/or system.

Ravi said, “You’re telling me that when I discuss the Hindu religion, I either use the both/and system of logic or nothing else, is that right?”

He said, “The either/or way of thinking does seem to emerge, doesn’t it?”

Ravi said, “Even in India you look both ways when you cross the street, it’s either you or the bus.” He was using the either/or system to prove the both/and.

Gene Robinson, the first openly homosexual Episcopal Bishop (of N.H.), said the following during a speech at Planned Parenthood’s 2005 Leadership Conference Prayer Breakfast, in Washington, D.C., on Friday.

We need to teach that the world is not black and white. This current administration notwithstanding, the world is not black and white. We need to teach people about nuance, about holding things in tension, that this can be true, and that can be true, and somewhere between is the right answer. It's a very adult way of living you know, and people don't like it. They're not entirely comfortable, and it is way more comfortable to know black and white, and to believe one is right and the other is wrong.

What an unimaginative God it would be if God only put one meaning in any verse of Scripture...

So Mr. Robinson, are you saying we see the world either with nuance or with nothing else? A nuanced view would suggest that it's okay to see the world, and sex and morality, with both a black and white view and a nuanced view. Which makes it, in your own words, perfectly fine for me to have a black and white view.