In Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, the concept of the Knight of Faith is an exalted one, a unique title awarded to those whose devotion to God goes far beyond what is even comprehensible or expected for the average man, who has an aesthetic or ethical life. We are told by Kierkegaard that this Knight of Faith, when in a situation where resignation appears to be the only solution to a problem, puts his faith in what appears to be the absurd, and believes that the solution that he desires lies in God. This fuels his faith, and makes him better than the aesthetic man, who simply abandons or ignores the problem, or the ethical man, the Knight of Infinite Resignation, who accepts the problem and resigns himself to a life of despair. The…show more content… In that act of faith, Abraham does not try to avoid what God has mandated, nor does he resign himself to what appears to be an inevitable fate for his son. Instead, he places absolute faith in the idea that God will save his son, that his son will not die. He maintains this faith even as he brings the knife to his son’s throat, which is a faith so powerful that there exists only one other known example of it: the faith of Mary when God tells her he is the father of her son. These acts of faith are profound and beautiful, and they serve as examples of absolute faith: it seems as though Mary and Abraham existed in order for these examples of absolute faith to exist. They served a very specific purpose in God’s kingdom, and their stories are retold in order to inspire people: not to a life of absolute faith, but instead to worship God for his infinite love for his creation. Faith, for a person not chosen by God for such a specific purpose, can only be an approximation of the absolute, and there exists an immaturity in a person who allows for absolute faith in their life towards God. In the Bible, The Gospel of Mark recounts the crucifixion of Jesus, and at the ninth hour of his crucifixion, Jesus cries “ My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34). An interpretation of this statement is that Jesus is quoting Psalm 22. Psalm 22 reflects upon an incredible journey from a moment of utter
