The Paradoxical Nature of Human Beings

I have been reading a classic by Georgia Harkness called PRAYER AND THE COMMON LIFE. In the first chapter, she presents some foundations for prayer that include definitions of prayer, of the Christian view of humans, and of the Christian view of God. Of her several definitions of prayer, I particularly resonated with the phrase "opening of the soul" to God, because it presupposes the existence of a God who cares and the possibility of relationship with God. She points to Buber's "I-Thou" and Brunner's "divine-human encounter" as ways of thinking about a relationship with God in prayer.

The most intriguing thought in the first chapter, however, was her presentation of the Christian view of human nature as five paradoxes. Humans are nature and spirit, free and bound, sinner and created in the divine image, individual and a member of society, and made for this world and for another. A statement that is a paradox seems contradictory. If one part is true, how can the contradiction be true? Yet, the sense of a paradox is that it may well point to a larger truth that embraces the contradictions. In these five statements, we have "both-and" rather than "either-or" descriptions. I like the potential for human wholeness in her views.