Exordium By Søren Kierkegaard

In this chapter, it is clear that Abraham trusted God completely. Abraham did not know why God was testing him. But Abraham could recognise God’s voice. The Bible clearly teaches that murder is wicked (Deuteronomy 5:17). The answer is that God never wanted Abraham to kill Isaac. God stopped Abraham before Abraham could hurt Isaac. So God had a different plan. God was not really asking Abraham to kill Isaac. In fact, God was asking Abraham to prove that he (Abraham) would always trust God. Abraham did not know about God’s plan to save Isaac. But Abraham realised that God had such a plan. He told his servants that he would bring Isaac back to them (verse 5). He told Isaac that God would provide the *lamb for the *sacrifice (verse 8). Hebrews

When the Nuremberg Laws were issued the Jewish people were stripped of their citizenship and their rights (“11 Facts About the Holocaust”). Elie Wiesel is a survivor from the Holocaust, and was sent to Auschwitz, where over 6 million Jews were killed. For a 10 year period Elie stayed quiet about what had happened during the Holocaust until everyone started to forget what had happened. He wrote Night to help people remember what a horrible period of time it was so people would remember and hope for anything like the Holocaust to never happen again. Ethos is the ethical point of view in the writing. Pathos draws us to having emotion to what it says. Logos is facts that are stated. Elie Wiesel wrote the novella Night from his experience of surviving

Critics who suggest that the relationship between God and Abraham was caustic are incorrect and miss the whole dynamic of the relationship. The relationship between God and Abraham is one of teacher and student. God is attempting to teach Abraham how to raise himself out of savagery and into civilization. The Binding of Isaac is just another test, although a mentally agonizing one for Abraham. The entity of the story of Abraham is God trying to impress upon Abraham how important goodness is to the survival of a people.

When they got on the top of the mountain, God saw that Abraham truly had faith in him, thus he sent a ram instead so that Abraham did not have to sacrifice his son. Abraham never had a doubt in God’s will and was offering even to sacrifice his own flesh and blood to prove his undoubting faith. Moses on the other hand, questioned God. When he first encounters God in the form of a fiery bush, Moses questions God’s will by asking, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11). Although he meets God in a physical form, he still questioned him with doubts of his own abilities. Unlike Abraham who had unquestioning faith, Moses started out his relationship with God with a lack of faith. Eventually, Moses does develop the same undoubting faith that Abraham processed. Only initially did he have doubts about his relationship with God.

In Wendell Berry’s chapter, The Body and the Earth, he discusses the connection between all earthly inhabitants, and its descent into misguided chaos by impact of time, evolution, and industry. He uses evidence from historical literature, religious mindset, the development of gender roles and consumerism of the 1950s, and how one defines love, marriage, and interconnectedness between what Berry calls “members of Creation.” His opinions of sexual monogamy and the importance of self-discovery via entrance into the “wilderness” are expressed clearly, but as the essay moves through each sub-chapter, his explanations become scattered and difficult to follow. For example, Berry’s ideas on religion and the relationship between body and soul as

Within The Torah are many different stories that support this theme, one of the most well-known being the story of God telling Abraham to sacrifice his son. God said to Abraham, “Take your son, your favored one, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the heights that I will point out to you” (The Torah 54). This was a huge sacrifice God was asking Abraham to make; he was asking for the life of his child, whom he treasured immensely. One might think that such a request would warrant careful

Abraham’s response to God’s promises were obedience (4-6) and confirmation (v. 7). In Genesis 15 the writer states that the Lord took upon Himself alone the responsibility for fulfilling the covenant. Genesis 17 adds the revelation that the covenant would be everlasting. One cannot research the Covenant and not about the narrative of Abram’s life.

In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, shares the tragic occurrences that he has lived through in the various concentration camps during the Holocaust. Judy Cohen, Holocaust survivor, spoke about the horrors of the Holocaust by using rhetoric to persuade her audience. Therefore, these two sources both give accurate descriptions of a historical documentation of the life of a prisoner during the Holocaust and use rhetoric to help visualize the events of the prisoners struggles. In Night, Elie Wiesel uses rhetoric to persuade his audience about the true actions of the German Nazis by using pathos, ethos, and logos.

For example, it is worth noting that extra silence during the hanging of the young boy who was caught stealing I believe and was tortured for it. Consequently, God decides to test the faith people had him by making Abraham assassinate his own son which his name was Isaac. This affected Abraham because he has to kill his own son. As a result he raises a knife to kill the boy, but at the last minute God sends an angel to rescue Isaac. The angel explains that God wanted to test Abraham’s faith to him and that’s why he made him almost kill his little boy. Imagine almost killing your son for an error he made that now made him regret what he had

Abraham was instructed by God to take his son Isaac to the land of Moriah (New American Version, Gen. 22.2). As Søren Kierkegaard states Fear and Trembling, Abraham is a Knight of Faith because embraces his absurd condition, i.e. God asking him to sacrifice the son that He just gave Abraham, and is rewarded with Isaac being spared, save the traumatic experience of his father trying to sacrifice him. Since Abraham is a Knight of Faith and transcends earthly query, one cannot judge his character or claim to understand him as by doing such would make them pitiful or arrogant in the eyes of Kierkegaard (Kierkegaard 91). Abraham, in his moment of infinite resignation and probable uncertainty, decided to accept his absurd condition and live at ease with a paradox because he believed that God would not steer him

For, the point of the beginning lies in the result (Kierkegaard, 91). This means that no point or choice exists at the beginning of any obstacle. In the eyes of Kierkegaard, one should judge according to the result. Abraham relies on and trusts in God's love and his love for God (Kierkegaard, 88). This is not absurd. It is only absurd from the point of view that it might be calculated (Kierkegaard, 65). But, faith is beyond calculation, for Abraham "believed on the strength of the absurd, for there could be no question of human calculation… (Kierkegaard, 65)"

In his famous work Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard declares that “no person has a right to delude others into the belief that faith is something of no great significance, or that it is an easy matter, whereas it is the greatest and most difficult of all things.” The difficulty of faith lies in the requirement of sacrifice. The story of Abraham’s near sacrifice of his beloved son, Isaac, is what Kierkegaard utilizes to demonstrate how costly faith in God is. Here is a man, who after seventy years of waiting for God’s promise of offspring finally received his son, is commanded by God to slay his promised son with no stated reason for doing so. Kierkegaard, in attempting to experience what Abraham might have experienced in those moments, cries, “Now all is lost, God demands Isaac, I shall sacrifice him, and with him all my joy – but for all that, God is love and will remain so for me.” What bold words! The cost

Abraham sojourned in faith as God led him on his journey through the land of Canaan. He demonstrated a pattern of reliance on and fellowship with God during his trek by building altars at stops along the way. Genesis 12:7 points out that God spoke to Abraham in Shechem, promising the land to his descendants and Abraham constructed an altar. Genesis 12:8 shows that Abraham communed with God after moving from Shechem to Bethel by erecting an altar. Abraham’s movements through Canaan appear to be at God’s leading and as a result of their communion, but God does not yet give him possession of the land. The land through which he and his family are traveling is occupied by other inhabitants. A key point here is that while Abraham and his family are traveling as

The Existential questions which are important to ask are, Why do we suffer? What happens after we die? and does god exist? Many religions will have answers for these questions, however the comparison between the Catholic viewpoint and the Secular Humanist viewpoint will be argued in this report.

Abram leaves his home and family, and departs into the "strange land" of Canaan, showing an extreme obedience to God and understanding of his duty to father this great race. Throughout Genesis, Abraham builds altars to God and sacrifices animals. In Genesis 22:2, God tells Abraham, "Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains". The next day, Abraham sets off for Moriah "and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son." After God stops the sacrifice, he tells Abraham, "Now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me."