Divine Consistency Within Ecclesial Contradiction: A Paraconsistent-Theological Interpretation of Doctrinal Dissonance and Church Retention in African Christianity

Abstract

Notwithstanding the impressive scholarship on African Christianity, particularly in subjects such as contextualization, inculturation, and syncretism, there is a remarkable lacuna in understanding the logico-epistemological grounding that makes it possible for contradictory beliefs to coexist within African ecclesial life. Interpreted through this grid, such inconsistencies are understood as evidence of theological weakness and incomplete cultural compromise. Not much consideration has been given to the fact that such contradictions might signal the presence of a particular mode of theological reasoning that keeps coherence in apparent diversity. This paper tried to fill that gap by applying paraconsistent and glut-theoretic logic to the existent theology of the Lagos East Baptist Conference in Nigeria. The central problem it attempted to solve was how theological coherence could endure through conflicting beliefs, practices, and cultural logics. It argued that such tension did not illustrate failure or disunity but an example of a paraconsistent form of divine rationality that allows the church to live a non-explosive faith system that holds together mercy and judgment, transcendence and immanence, unity and plurality without dissolution. The findings showed that Nigerian Baptist theological reasoning works via relational balance rather than linear consistency, the unity of negotiated paradox. In the area of African theology, the study contributes by introducing logical pluralism as one framework in which faith can coherently be represented within different ecclesial contexts.