If there is, then it is something irrational, illogical, and yet supersedes the universal.

This is scary to me, but at the same time I must acknowledge it to be accurate. My desire to be 100% consistent and rational reconciles this by declaring that what supersedes the universal ethic may not be illogical or irrational, but simply beyond what is now summed up as rational or logical. This obviously gets into tricky “hidden” or “mystery” logic and opens up faith to go off into quite a few places that contradict this. At the same time, I simply cannot think of a better way to reconcile faith with rationality.

But what I really don’t understand is why Kierkegaard insists the Knight of Faith be unable to talk to others about his calling. Surely if one accepts that there is a calling greater than the universal ethic, one should be able to articulate that belief. At some point, doesn’t the Knight of Faith need to explain his actions, illogical as they are–as Kirk does?

Abraham cannot speak, for he cannot utter the word which explains all (that is, not so that it is intelligible), he cannot say that it is a test, and a test of such a sort, be it noted, that the ethical is the temptation. He who is so situated is an emigrant from the sphere of the universal. But the next word he is still less able to utter. For, as was sufficiently set forth earlier, Abraham makes two movements: he makes the infinite movement of resignation and gives up Isaac (this no one can understand because it is a private venture); but in the next place, he makes the movement of faith every instant. This is his comfort, for he says: “But yet this will not come to pass, or, if it does come to pass, then the Lord will give me a new Isaac, by virtue viz. of the absurd.” The tragic hero does at last get to the end of the story. Iphigenia [Agamemnon’s daughter] bows to her father’s resolution, she herself makes the infinite movement of resignation, and now they are on good terms with one another. She can understand Agamemnon because his undertaking expresses the universal. If on the other hand Agamemnon were to say to her, “In spite of the fact that the deity demands thee as a sacrifice, it might yet be possible that he did not demand it - by virtue viz. of the absurd,” he would that very instant become unintelligible to Iphigenia. If he could say this by virtue of human calculation, Iphigenia would surely understand him, but from that it would follow that Agamemnon had not made the infinite movement of resignation, and so he is not a hero, and so the utterance of the seer is a sea-captain’s tale and the whole occurrence a vaudeville.

(And don’t tell me to go read Kierkegaard. I am fully capable of judging the quality of his complete works based on the few quotations posted on this website.)

A person cannot give their faith to another, and it is therefore difficult to imagine a person understanding another’s faith. Kierkegaard makes the point as follows; “When a man enters upon the way, in a certain sense the hard way of the tragic hero, many will be able to give him counsel; to him who follows the narrow way of faith no one can give counsel, him no one can understand.” (Fear and Trembling, 65). Although we are part of each other’s existence, we each live our own existence. When we enter into faith Kierkegaard here seems to suggest that we embrace our own existence to an extent that only we ourselves know what to do with it, and therefore because he who has moved beyond the universal can no longer look for advice from within the universal, but only from what is outside of the universal in the particular. Therefore the knight of faith can only look to himself because only he understands (we may assume, although Kierkegaard does not explicitly state it, that God could also provide counsel as He is all knowing) his existence.