Zeal For Truth

It seems that the word “faith” is used in many ways today. Some use it to refer to religious tradition in general. Others use it to refer to some kind of mystic spirituality. Neither of those really explain what it is. Kierkegaard thinks of faith as “infinitely and personally and passionately interested on behalf of his own eternal happiness for his relationship to this truth” (Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 23). For Kierkegaard, it is faith and only faith that allows inspiration to arise. What can we define as this kind of faith? I believe we, like Kierkegaard, can find this answer in the character of Abraham.

The story of Abraham can be lengthy, but Kierkegaard hones in on one in particular: God’s test at Mount Moriah. God tells Abraham to take his son (Isaac for Jews and Christians, Ishmael for Muslims), go to a mountain, and sacrifice him. In his Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard looks at some of the different aspects of the story: could this be a suspension of human ethics? Kierkegaard defines the ethical as the universal law of conduct. If this is the case, then faith is the paradox “that the particular is higher than the universal” (Fear and Trembling, 46). Because of this, one cannot see Abraham as a tragic hero because in the end, the ethical wins. The tragic hero remains in the ethical. Tragic heroes may perform the actions like Abraham had to (e.g. Agamemnon, Brutus), but they remain situated in their duty to the universal. The tragic hero does not perform from a duty to something higher than the universal. We are left with two choices before the end of Abraham’s story: “either Abraham was every minute a murderer, or we are confronted by a paradox which is higher than all mediation” (F&T, 56).

Abraham was a knight of faith, not a tragic hero. One can become the latter by one’s own power and many can give that one counsel. No one can understand the knight of faith because faith is, ultimately, a miracle. Faith is not a tragedy.