Summary: Fear and Trembling (page 3)

Nevertheless, as we have seen, a contradiction complicates the story of Abraham and plunges the mind into the deepest perplexity. Kierkegaard illustrates this by imagining a preacher who fires up his congregation by praising Abraham's conduct—only to learn that one of the faithful has sacrificed his son the very next evening. Wretched man, scum of society! What demon possesses you and drives you to kill your son?¹ he cries, cursing the one who has imitated the model so lavishly celebrated in his sermon.

The question therefore arises: How is one to explain a contradiction like that of our preacher?

Kierkegaard shows that this is a conflict between two radically distinct authorities—morality and religion—each with its own legitimacy; and that is precisely what makes it a tragic paradox:

From the moral point of view, Abraham's conduct is expressed by saying that he wanted to kill Isaac; from the religious point of view, that he wanted to sacrifice him. It is in this contradiction that there lies the anxiety capable of robbing one of sleep.

It is as though faith were coming to sanctify an act that morality condemns. Performed in the name of faith, the act is sublime; without faith, it is horrible: For when faith is removed—reduced to zero—there remains only the brutal fact that Abraham wanted to kill his son, a course of action difficult enough for anyone to imitate who does not have faith—by which I mean the faith that makes the sacrifice difficult for him. Or again: If everyone were to set about repeating the terrible act which love [of God, and therefore faith] has sanctified as an immortal exploit, then everything is lost—both the deed, and its misguided imitator.

But how is this possible? How are we to make sense of a 'model not to be followed'?

Kierkegaard bears witness to the vertigo into which this paradox plunges him: faith can make 'holy' what is most terrible.

When I reflect on Abraham, I am as if annihilated. At every moment my eyes fall upon the unheard-of paradox that is the substance of his life; at every moment I am thrown back, and despite my passionate perseverance, my thought cannot penetrate this paradox by so much as a hair's breadth. I strain every muscle to discover a way out: in the same instant, I am paralysed.

He sets the figure of Abraham against another model—that of the Greek hero, who performs great deeds admired by the whole world: They find an echo in my soul. I enter into the thought of the hero, but not into that of Abraham: having reached the summit, I fall back down again, for what is offered to me is a paradox.

Or finally: I cannot understand Abraham; in one sense, I cannot learn anything from him without remaining astonished.

A significant result emerges from this first examination: the dimension of faith comes into view. Either there really is something beyond morality—namely faith—and Abraham's attitude can be justified; or else faith is an empty notion, without any real substance or meaning, and Abraham is simply a murderer.

We must therefore turn our attention to faith and ask whether it can indeed play such a role. The question, properly posed, is this: can faith truly legitimate certain actions—and if so, where does this power come from?

The difficulty is this: how are we to understand what faith is, if we do not have it? For Kierkegaard—or at least the fictive author Johannes de Silentio who speaks here—does not have faith: I have seen terrible things with my own eyes, and I did not recoil in fear; but I know perfectly well that if I faced them without trembling, my courage was not the courage of faith and bears no resemblance to it. I cannot make the movement of faith; I cannot close my eyes and throw myself headlong, in full confidence, into the absurd; the thing is impossible for me—but I do not boast of it.

Or again: I am certain that God is love […] but I do not have faith; I do not have that courage.

Johannes de Silentio does not present his lack of faith as a mark of wisdom or freedom, but as a defect—an absence, a lack, an incapacity. He would like to have faith: It does not at all follow that faith is, in my eyes, something mediocre; on the contrary, it is the most sublime thing.

We must therefore try to describe the phenomenon of faith from the outside, without having experienced it firsthand. And yet the story of Abraham offers us a way in, for nowhere do we feel more strongly the dialectical struggles of faith and its gigantic passion.

¹ Our translation. The references for the quotations are available in the book Kierkegaard: A Close Reading