theology of faith according to kierkagaard

[Thomas_Goodwin]

Nothing can be interpreted within a vacuum, for the historical context in which an idea is set forth supplies the meaning and connotation without which no understanding can be gained. In the time before Kierkagard, rationalist epistemologies and worldviews flourished. As the renaissance spread out of Italy, technological progress and humanism gave fuel to the fire to a perspective that placed man and his empirical faculties at the center of all things. Man’s empirical sensibilities and deductions became the basis of what is real in the eyes of many European philosophers. Most seminal, at least to Kierkegaard, was Hegel, who viewed what is universally intelligible as that which is most real. Making sense of things to Hegel is to step into reality, to come to an awareness of objective truth. Obviously, these philosophies generally lost their luster and eminence after the first world war in which technology that was hoped to save humanity was used to spread unparalleled destruction and death, giving credence to a new post modern and irrational way of thinking. However, shortly before these landmark historical events, the gears had already begun to spin and shift into said postmodern gear, with the writings of Kierkagaard who would later influence a generation of existential thought. But Kierkegaard's ideas, most notably and that which will be discussed at length -the individual, do not exist isolated from said enlightened mode of thinking. The knight of infinite resignation to Kierkegaard, or the universal and ethical, is epitomized in Hegel. Likewise, the knight of faith requires, necessarily, a grounding in the ethical to derive its meaning and efficacy. All of this will be looked at through the biblical story of Abraham, and his undertaking with God in which he was asked to kill Isaac (and therefore giving us a story to see the absurd at play in all its paradoxical and transcendent connotations).

To begin first, we must understand the psychological positioning of Abraham. The moment in which God bestowed upon Abraham a covenant can be taken symbolically to be the first metamorphosis, in which the particular becomes the universal. Humanity is born governed by primordial necessity and impulse, and he must learn what he ought to do, what he ought to value. These things are of universal validity and apply regardless of the individual. We must not murder, and that is universally true, nobody can be justified in any instance of murdering (I feel like a rational proof of this principle would be overwrought, especially when one can fall back on the work Kant did with the categorical moral imperative). This is the knight of infinite resignation, the aesthetic life in which principles to live by can be rationally produced. And this is the life Abraham lived in. God had promised to Abraham a land and people, immediately supplying aesthetic content, and we had learned previously with the Genesis chapter of Noah and the flood, God seeks obedience and punishes wickedness. The aesthetic and ethical values within the promise will drive the rest of the discussion, these values being an offspring as well as to act righteous and in line with God’s character. True to His promise, Abraham goes on to have a child (unfortunately for us this gave Kierkegaard rounds of ammunition to spend a lifetime rambling) and this is where the story begins to leave the universal and enter into a moment of the individual.

“After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 2 He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”
We can see the absurd start to form around God’s test of Abraham, a realm that goes beyond rational understanding, producing paradox and challenge. How can Abraham maintain his uprightness before God after committing filicide, arguably the most irrational and wicked act a person can do? But if Abraham doesn’t obey, surely he is wicked for disregarding a direct command of his God. Secondly, killing Isaac, who is the child of the promise (Gen 21:12), would leave Abraham without an heir, which would make God a liar and the promise null, but we know God is ontologically truth (Jesus would go on to say as much, saying He is truth). The principles which had guided in the ethical and universal are of no use here, for they only leave us in a mess of confusion, forcing us to move to a hypothetical (which will later become realized and defined) third state. This third state arises from a foundation in the ethical, but must necessarily transcend it. This third state is faith, which suspends the rational and ethical. Abraham has no qualification or reason to base a decision off of, but the only propelling and motivating factor possible is to rely on qualities he cannot see or prove. This state of faith can be marked as the state of the individual, for it cannot be related universally, but is an intensely personal and relational state between the individual and God. Another quality exhibited is the necessary self sacrifice and sorrow tied and conjoined with the life of faith. Abraham was tasked to kill his son, with no assurances or consolidations to speak of. The hope he has is not tangible and cannot be confirmed until a future resolution (paralleling Christianity and the concept of a heaven or end times), therefore leaving him with angst and indefinition. If it wasn’t already apparent, this is the knight of faith, who operates outside the ethical and rational and whose activities are not universally intelligible.

But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 12 He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for know I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.”
The discussion feels empty without the introduction of the necessity of the knight of faith. Without faith, there would have been no glory in Abraham’s prosperity and heir. However it is in the moment of interaction of God through faith that Abraham experiences the fullest glory and blessing of the Lord. It is from this that Kierkegaard means to say we must interact with God through faith, that we must suspend our rationality, to truly experience God.

 

[Thomas_Goodwin]

i know i misspelled kierkegaard here i have dslxia

 

[jwright82]

Nothing can be interpreted within a vacuum, for the historical context in which an idea is set forth supplies the meaning and connotation without which no understanding can be gained. In the time before Kierkagard, rationalist epistemologies and worldviews flourished. As the renaissance spread out of Italy, technological progress and humanism gave fuel to the fire to a perspective that placed man and his empirical faculties at the center of all things. Man’s empirical sensibilities and deductions became the basis of what is real in the eyes of many European philosophers. Most seminal, at least to Kierkegaard, was Hegel, who viewed what is universally intelligible as that which is most real. Making sense of things to Hegel is to step into reality, to come to an awareness of objective truth. Obviously, these philosophies generally lost their luster and eminence after the first world war in which technology that was hoped to save humanity was used to spread unparalleled destruction and death, giving credence to a new post modern and irrational way of thinking. However, shortly before these landmark historical events, the gears had already begun to spin and shift into said postmodern gear, with the writings of Kierkagaard who would later influence a generation of existential thought. But Kierkegaard's ideas, most notably and that which will be discussed at length -the individual, do not exist isolated from said enlightened mode of thinking. The knight of infinite resignation to Kierkegaard, or the universal and ethical, is epitomized in Hegel. Likewise, the knight of faith requires, necessarily, a grounding in the ethical to derive its meaning and efficacy. All of this will be looked at through the biblical story of Abraham, and his undertaking with God in which he was asked to kill Isaac (and therefore giving us a story to see the absurd at play in all its paradoxical and transcendent connotations).

To begin first, we must understand the psychological positioning of Abraham. The moment in which God bestowed upon Abraham a covenant can be taken symbolically to be the first metamorphosis, in which the particular becomes the universal. Humanity is born governed by primordial necessity and impulse, and he must learn what he ought to do, what he ought to value. These things are of universal validity and apply regardless of the individual. We must not murder, and that is universally true, nobody can be justified in any instance of murdering (I feel like a rational proof of this principle would be overwrought, especially when one can fall back on the work Kant did with the categorical moral imperative). This is the knight of infinite resignation, the aesthetic life in which principles to live by can be rationally produced. And this is the life Abraham lived in. God had promised to Abraham a land and people, immediately supplying aesthetic content, and we had learned previously with the Genesis chapter of Noah and the flood, God seeks obedience and punishes wickedness. The aesthetic and ethical values within the promise will drive the rest of the discussion, these values being an offspring as well as to act righteous and in line with God’s character. True to His promise, Abraham goes on to have a child (unfortunately for us this gave Kierkegaard rounds of ammunition to spend a lifetime rambling) and this is where the story begins to leave the universal and enter into a moment of the individual.

“After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 2 He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”
We can see the absurd start to form around God’s test of Abraham, a realm that goes beyond rational understanding, producing paradox and challenge. How can Abraham maintain his uprightness before God after committing filicide, arguably the most irrational and wicked act a person can do? But if Abraham doesn’t obey, surely he is wicked for disregarding a direct command of his God. Secondly, killing Isaac, who is the child of the promise (Gen 21:12), would leave Abraham without an heir, which would make God a liar and the promise null, but we know God is ontologically truth (Jesus would go on to say as much, saying He is truth). The principles which had guided in the ethical and universal are of no use here, for they only leave us in a mess of confusion, forcing us to move to a hypothetical (which will later become realized and defined) third state. This third state arises from a foundation in the ethical, but must necessarily transcend it. This third state is faith, which suspends the rational and ethical. Abraham has no qualification or reason to base a decision off of, but the only propelling and motivating factor possible is to rely on qualities he cannot see or prove. This state of faith can be marked as the state of the individual, for it cannot be related universally, but is an intensely personal and relational state between the individual and God. Another quality exhibited is the necessary self sacrifice and sorrow tied and conjoined with the life of faith. Abraham was tasked to kill his son, with no assurances or consolidations to speak of. The hope he has is not tangible and cannot be confirmed until a future resolution (paralleling Christianity and the concept of a heaven or end times), therefore leaving him with angst and indefinition. If it wasn’t already apparent, this is the knight of faith, who operates outside the ethical and rational and whose activities are not universally intelligible.

But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 12 He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for know I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.”
The discussion feels empty without the introduction of the necessity of the knight of faith. Without faith, there would have been no glory in Abraham’s prosperity and heir. However it is in the moment of interaction of God through faith that Abraham experiences the fullest glory and blessing of the Lord. It is from this that Kierkegaard means to say we must interact with God through faith, that we must suspend our rationality, to truly experience God.

Don't worry I think his name will always be hard to spell. Kierkegaard (we'll just use his first name Soren because I had to pick out a book to get the spelling right) was reacting to Hegel in the sense that in his (Hegel's) philosophy the individual was swallowed up so that it never reached me as an individual.
What does the "phenomenology of the world historical spirit" have to do with my individual life, my day to day experience? But ironically he's still operating within a Hegelian philosophy, its only brought down in his philosophy to the individual. His three "historical" stages of life are influenced by Hegel, after all that was the philosophy he was taught at University. Instead of a world history you get an individual's history.
Another interesting philosophy nerd thing is the same is true for most of Existentialism, they too used Soren and Hegel in their thinking. Nietzsche was reacting to, and critical of Soren for not going far enough, the same philosophy but influenced by it. His famous genealogies are historical as well.
Now I haven't read Soren in years so I'm open to correction here but as I understand it the aesthetic lifestyle was a sinful and liscentous one. That seems to be missing from your post, if I'm incorrect please correct me.
Essentially life moves in three stages. The aesthetic lifestyle of sin and self gratification is ultimately empty. So you move to a moral or legalistic lifestyle that seems to give you a better purpose than sheer enjoyment. After all it is more healthy and will keep you out of trouble and that's part of Soren's historical context as well, the Danish state church. To be a Christian was simply to be born Danish. That made being Christians empty of any spiritual value. Nietzsche felt the same way. After all most of the Danish people were good moral people, what's the problem?
So in the narrative of Abraham that you discussed Soren notices that true faith is deeper than the mere ethical. Ethics has limits, we all know that, like "it's a sin to lie but if you're hiding Jews in WW2 and the Gestapo comes looking for them lying will save lives". Its those moments of ethical crisis that I think he's getting after, what do you do in those moments?
You take a "leap of faith", like Abraham (if one completely trusts Soren's exegesis), and trust that it is "more ethical" (I could say more about the relationship of that being Hegelian but I won't). Then you have true existence, a real faith to live by in your moment of decision in life.
All in all a nice post! Thank you. I love that you took his historical context into account, too many people read historically situated works outside their context (look at the contemporary woke movement, blah). So that is a breath of fresh air, nice post. As far as the relationship to postmodernism that is probably a more nuanced discussion but essentially I think you're correct. As far as Hegel's importance on all philosophical development that is also a more nuanced discussion. Some philosopher (Fukyama I believe) said something like "at the end of history we'll find Hegel patiently waiting for us".

 

[jwright82]

One more thing, as far as "suspending the rational" which means essentially irrational, I've read that there has been a new movement of reevaluating Soren's philosophy that may call that into question. I know nothing about it, or if what I read is true, but it might be fruitful to look into for anyone curious.