The title of this entry suggests something profound. Really this is just a flash connection I had while I was in the shower this morning. It may be profound or it may be complete nonsense.

For my existentialism class we’ve been reading some Kierkegaard. He is obsessed, rightfully so, with the story of Abraham. Mostly it is because of this simple fact: Abraham was going to kill his son. Regardless of the outcome, he was going to do it. Because God commanded him to. We call people who kill kids because “God told them to” crazy. Insane. How, asks Kierkegaard, can Abraham be the ultimate example of faith and not simply a crazy guy? After all, its easy to understand when God asks us to do something that we believe to be right…but what about when he asks us to do something we believe to be wrong?

Kierkegaard, as far as my limited knowledge goes, spends most of his writing career exploring this one question. His basic conclusion is this: Abraham is the expression of faith.  But for him to be so it almost negates out popular view of what it means to have faith. For instance, the classic LDS definition of faith is “Faith is belief in that which cannot be seen, but which is true.”  Not the case so much with Abraham–because Abraham talked with God. He knew God.  What is the faith, according to such a definition, that Abraham expresses by going to sacrifice Isaac? Its not believe in something he can’t see. It is something else.

Faith, says Kierkegaard, is a belief in the absurd, in the impossible. In the case of the story, Abraham believes in the absurd and the impossible by believing that he will sacrifice Isaac but still be the father of many nations. What is more: he does this with fear and trembling, because he is an ethical person and finds in this the ultimate trial: God is forcing him to chose between him and the ethical.  In this way, faith transcends the ethical, exalting the ethical individual (he must already be ethical, otherwise it doesn’t work) into a new status as and individual closer to God, in which God is the absolute duty, even above all ethical imperatives.

It must be this way, otherwise faith is a cheap thing and we all have it–and Abraham is crazy. Indeed, the traditional view of faith suggests that you merely have to believe something: there is no challenge in it and it is all comfort. Everyone else believes with you. You fit in, great.  Faith, by definition, must be a challenge. That is how it is always spoken of in the Bible.  It makes much more sense to suggest that faith is the belief in the absurd, the impossible, towards the seeking of God as one’s absolute duty, discarding all concern for ethics (even though you are a good individual) and simply doing what God wants.

Ok so there is a really rough summary of Kierkegaard in like 4 paragraphs…

Now, I’m sure I’m not the first person to think this but here is what I want to point out:

This whole thing requires one thing: a belief in God.  The knight of faith (as Abraham is–this is K.’s term) must already presuppose this belief.  I’m not sure if K. even thinks its necessary to even address this. But how does one come to believe in God?  If one doesn’t naturally (as many people seem to) then how does one begin to have Faith of the sort Abraham has–this belief in the absurd?  If you have no God to command the absurd (no God is commanding you to believe in God–because if there was, you already believe in him), then you have no starting point for faith. You’d have to find some reason to start believing in God, opening you up to the opportunity to express this sort of faith.  (For those LDS who read this, it’s like Alma’s mustard seed without any seed. There is no starting point.)

What could be the only starting point for this? Miracles. Some proof.  God can’t really test our faith unless we first know him to be God. Otherwise, how can we trust him and expend the ethical, moving forward by his bidding in true faith?  You can’t. Not unless you just already know. So why then would this God hide himself from us? Does he seek to test our ability to believe in the absurd without any direct understanding of what absurdity we’re supposed to believe–ie, what God we ought to believe in and how? I could believe in the God of the Muslims as my belief in the absurd–for the belief in God does seem absurd to me–or I could believe in the Gods of Shintoism. Both are comparatively absurd–am I expressing faith in this? What test is there in this? Why would I even do this? For the sake of the absurd–for faith?

Why is faith such a virtue? What is the greatness in being able to believe in the absurd?  But now I get into much more classic arguments against Kierkegaard–which turn into arguments against religion altogether (including how do we tell Abraham apart from some crazy lady who kills her children because God told her to?) Yeah, so I think I hit everything I connected this morning. Turns some stuff around. But like I said, I’m probably not the first to say this.