Kierkegaard and Abraham: A Literary Tool and Belief in the Ideal Christian-Existentialist

The life of Abraham is one of varied geographical places as Abraham moves from place to place as well as an expedition through life's ups and downs with its challenges and disappointment. Abraham's spiritual life is also a journey, as he moves from periods of great faith to those moments of weakness and sin. Ultimately we find that Abraham, this man of faith, learned to trust in God as he traveled, not only from his home in Ur but as he journeyed towards faith.

Defined as a complete trust in people, faith prevails as an essential quality for the development of interpersonal and personal connections. Accordingly, John Brehm, author of “Sea of Faith,” illustrates a scholar experience in a freshman class. A teacher, which the reader implies as Brehm himself, becomes irritated at the lack of knowledge in his students at such a simple topic: figurative language. Disgruntled at the question he begins to examine the significance behind it. Ultimately, after self-examination, he comes to understand the young lady who posed the question that annoyed him (1000). Through the use of literary devices such as personification, tone, and comparison: the author illustrates the changing perspective and ultimate connection the teacher makes with the students as he realizes the positivity that arises from faith.

The ethical lifestyle is one of selflessness and commitment to the betterment of society. The universal is the enactment of the ethical. Man should strive to do the common good or that which benefits the most people. The ethical encompasses the laws that govern society (e.g. do not murder an innocent person). Although, Kierkegaard recognizes the inherent good in an ethical way of living, he still maintains that the religious should always take precedence. For example, people admire Abraham's story because very few people would have had enough faith to sacrifice their own son in terms of a religious outlook; with the ethical outlook it would be considered murder. With that in mind, God could ask one to contradict the ethical at anytime. Hence, men of faith, according to Kierkegaard, live a life of fear and trembling. Abraham represents perfectly how human beings should relate to God. The relationship between human beings and God is characterized by blind faith (sola fide). Abraham effaced his worldly understanding to adopt faith. Whether Abraham suffered or not is irrelevant because he did it for God. If God had asked one of us to do what Abraham had done, we would have runaway but he always said, "Here I am." He was a "knight of faith;" he had completed the stage of infinite resignation and had made the leap of faith into the absurd. What gives him

James Fowler’s theory of faith development includes six stages: primal faith, intuitive-projective faith, mythic-literal faith, synthetic-conventional faith, individuative-reflective faith, conjunctive faith, and universalizing faith (Hutchison,

It is psychologically natural for humans to question faith and spirituality after experiencing tragedy and loss. People may doubt or even reject their faith with God whom is depicted in scripture as a source of peace and security in our lives. In Elie Wiesel’s Dawn, Elisha faces a similar spiritual contradiction after barely surviving the holocaust. After all of his family and friends are murdered by the egregious acts of the Nazi’s, Elisha seems to immediately question the logic behind his faith in Judaism and God. Stemming from his upbringing as an Orthodox Jew, his faith does not merely go away, rather, his understanding of God is reinterpreted into a more extreme outlook that acts as his catalyst for change as he

Faith, defined as a strong belief in something which cannot be proven, has been argued over countless generations. Still, even without proof, individuals worldwide hold true to their faith each day. After studying faith and religion in texts written by scholars with varying backgrounds, it is easy to see faith is something which is widely disputed. Comparison of Sigmund Freud’s The Future of an Illusion and Paul Tillich’s Dynamics of Faith, fully displays the discrepancies in points of view on the function of faith, as well as the necessity of faith, in society; while the comparison of Viktor E. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning and Karl Marx’s “on the Future of Religion,” demonstrate both similarities and differences

In Night, Wiesel shows that while faith may not solve everyone’s problems, it does however have the power to reduce conflict and act to protect a person’s humanity, when it’s being challenged by impossible circumstances.

A truly authentic faith is not one that is established upon the root of reason and scientific facts, but rather transcends those human accomplishments and challenges to understand God and the world as we know it, through an existentialist view. Belief should be purely a matter of the will. To have ultimate and unwavering faith in God, and Christian belief, is impossible to comprehend and that is exactly how the great theological philosopher Soren Kierkegaard saw the Christian faith. He stated that Christianity is unfeasible and is ridiculous in its claims of God becoming man. Blaise Pascal was another philosopher who had a somewhat different view of God, and faith. He explained that reason and faith were not enough to believe in God. According to Pascal, it was somewhat easier to have the choice to believe.

Kierkegaard claims that, "Infinite resignation is the last stage before faith, so anyone who has not made this movement does not have faith, for only in infinite resignation does an individual become conscious of his eternal validity, and only then can one speak of grasping existence by virtue of faith," (page 52). This idea is demonstrated when Abraham surrenders himself to his fate and surrenders the life of his son to God. This infinite resignation is the reason God grants Abraham his son’s life because he proves his eternal love and faith in God, by his willingness to sacrifice Isaac. Faith is put to the test when Abraham must sacrifice what he loves most to prove his love to God, while Antonius Block suffers from a similar problem of giving faith to God, which seems hopeless and invisible. Faith is put to the test when one must pursue infinite resignation in order to have faith.

Johannes argues that the knight of faith acts in total isolation from everyone else. His relation to God is a private one, and cannot be justified by an appeal to the universal. Though it is noble for the single individual to aspire to the universal, God may call for actions that cannot be justified in the

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)"

Kierkegaard believes that true faith can only be attained through a double movement of giving up rationality or logic, while at the same time believing one can understand logically. In “Fear and Trembling” Kierkegaard relates true faith to the Knight of infinite resignation and the Knight of faith; in this paper, I will examine this claim and show why Kierkegaard’s analogy is an excellent metaphor for the double movement which is required in one’s quest to attain faith and why.

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

To briefly summarize, a young lad is deeply in love with a princess but can never be with her due to various reasons. A slave of misery (particular representative) immediately lets go of his affections for the princess and move on. A knight of infinite resignation (universal representative) does not renounce his love for the princess, but understands that he cannot be with her. This knight lets go of the princess in the finite sense, but eternally keeps the memory of his love for her. According to Kierkegaard, the third representative, the knight of faith, recognizes that he cannot be with the princess but believes that he will be with her, “namely on the strength of the absurd, on the strength of the fact that for God all things are possible”. This knight chooses to reject reason and the universal to pursue the

In this essay, I will try to summarize, analyze and discuss several pages of Søren Kierkegaard’s Training in Christianity. I will try to focus on his approach to sacred history, a general Christian history and Christianity, which he discusses in this work in relation to faith in God. In other parts of this essay I will attempt also to relate these pages of his work to some key ideas of Kierkegaard’s theology and philosophy and support this with some concrete quotations from the text. In the end I will very briefly compare different philosophies of Hegel and Kierkegaard and try to relate Kierkegaard’s work to a few topics, which