Here’s something I wrote on Kierkegaard from a forthcoming book of mine called “Greatest Philosophers” (Quercus 2008)<\/p>\n
ABRAHAM: THE KNIGHT OF FAITH<\/span><\/p>\n An authentic Christian faith<\/span><\/p>\n Kierkegaard\u2019s book Fear and Trembling is a fascinating, and to my mind rather disturbing, account of what Kierkegaard considers to be authentic Christian faith, as opposed to the watered down \u201cSunday Christianity\u201d that he thought most of his contemporaries had.<\/p>\n Kierkegaard points out that most people who describe themselves as Christians are born into their faith, and that their involvement doesn\u2019t extent much beyond attending church on a Sunday. Danish Christians, thought Kierkegaard, were churned out by the Danish State Church \u201cwith the greatest possible uniformity of a factory product\u201d. This, according to Kierkegaard, is not true faith.<\/p>\n Nor is the true Christian one who rationally recognizes the truth of religious claims, in the way that many Christian philosophers, including, for example, Aquinas, have thought possible. Faith is certainly not a sort of second-rate form of belief for those not sufficiently clever and well-educated to recognise the proofs of God\u2019s existence (as Aquinas (chpt XX) supposed). True faith is not inferior to, but higher than, reason.<\/p>\n An authentic Christian faith, thinks Kierkegaard, involves making a deeply passionate and personal commitment to accept divine authority above all else. It involves making a fearful, life-transforming leap beyond what is reasonable and rational to accept what is profoundly paradoxical. It is a leap that must be made, not once, but repeatedly.<\/p>\n Abraham and Isaac<\/span><\/p>\n In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard writes under the pseudonym Johannes de Silentio (John of Silence) about God\u2019s commandment to Abraham to sacrifice his own son. God says, \u201cTake your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.\u201d Abraham obeys. An angel appears only at the very last moment \u2013 when the knife is in Abraham\u2019s hand \u2013 to revoke God\u2019s instruction.<\/p>\n Kant thought Abraham wrong to follow the instruction of a voice in his head that commanded him to do something profoundly immoral \u2013 to kill an innocent child. Kierkegaard, on the other hand, considers Abraham\u2019s faith a rare example of authentic Christian faith. The true Christian is one who realizes that our duty is ultimately not to the moral law, but to obey a higher authority still \u2013 God himself, who is, after all, the source of the moral law.<\/p>\n Kierkegaard contrasts Abraham, whom he considers a true \u201cknight of faith\u201d with the tragic hero or \u201cknight of infinite resignation\u201d: someone who recognizes that a sacrifice must be made on principle. A general who, standing on principle, knowingly sends an entire regiment to its death, knowing his own son is among the soldiers, makes such a sacrifice.<\/p>\n Abraham\u2019s sacrifice is different. He has faith in something higher than the moral law. And, unlike our tragic hero who simply expects his son to die, Abraham has faith that his son will be restored to him by God.<\/p>\n Being a true Christian, involves placing your trust in something higher than the moral principles that govern society. There is a sense, then, in which it makes you an outsider \u2013 someone who stand apart from conventional, rule-based morality, who looks to something higher.<\/p>\n Criticism of Kierkegaard<\/span><\/p>\n Assuming Kierkegaard is sincere (remember, he writes as Johannes de Silentio, and some have questioned whether de Silentio\u2019s views are really Kierkegaard\u2019s), a critic might suggest that Kierkegaard is, in effect, giving people licence to slaughter the innocent in the name of whatever they believe their God wants. Kierkegaard anticipates this criticism, pointing out that Abraham acts out of love for his son. He is not motivated by hatred. That is a crucial difference between Abraham and, say, a hate-filled religious crusader or suicide bomber.<\/p>\n But of course, it seems Kierkegaard must, then, still admire the faith of the religious crank that lovingly smothers his own children because he trusts the \u201cvoice of God\u201d in his head. The only difference between the admirable Abraham and this murderous crank is that, in the story, God does indeed save Abraham\u2019s child while the crank\u2019s children die. But of course, precisely because Abraham\u2019s faith is supposedly beyond reason, Abraham was no more justified in trusting in such a happy outcome than was the religious crank.<\/p>\n It seems, then, that either Kierkegaard must also admire the faith of our murderous religious crank, or else he must say that the reason Abraham\u2019s faith is admirable while the crank\u2019s is not is that Abraham happened to get lucky.<\/p>\n But that, surely, hardly makes Abraham worthy of our admiration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here’s something I wrote on Kierkegaard from a forthcoming book of mine called “Greatest Philosophers” (Quercus 2008) ABRAHAM: THE KNIGHT OF FAITH An authentic Christian faith Kierkegaard\u2019s book Fear and Trembling is a fascinating, and to my mind rather disturbing, account of what Kierkegaard considers to be authentic Christian faith, as opposed to the watered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[131,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kierkegaard","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}