Søren Kierkegaard’s Faith, Reason,

and Paradox

Kevin O. Funk
BTS-2000-2
Mailbox 267
April 9, 2010
Word count: 2,551
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Table of Contents
Prologue:....................................................................................................................2

Part I- Grasping the paradox: Is Faith in contrast with the ethical?............................3

Problem I: What is exactly meant when Johannes de Silentio poses this question

concerning the teleological suspension of the ethical in relation to Abraham?....3

Problem II: Is there such a thing as absolute duty toward God?..........................4

Problem III: Was Abraham ethically defensible in keeping silent about his

purpose?..............................................................................................................4

Making sense of this: is this paradox cancerous to moral reason?.......................5

Part II: Faith of a mustard seed..................................................................................7

Left without an answer............................................................................................7

Bibliography.............................................................................................................10

Left without an answerBibliography........................Error: Reference source not found

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Prologue:
Having waited in faithful patience for what would seem an eternity, Isaac is
born to Sarah and Abraham in their old age. It seems as though God has fulfilled his
promise to Abraham as a result of his faith in God to realize the covenant made.
Imagine for a moment the complexities that arise when an impossibly difficult thing
is asked of Abraham in Genesis 22:1-18. God requires that Abraham sacrifice Isaac,
the son that he loves upon an altar on mount Moriah.

“Who then is he that plucks away the old man’s staff, who
is it that requires that he himself shall break
it?”(Kierkegaard, 1968)

What sort of test is this that steps beyond the ethical and aesthetic, yea the
universal duty toward God and his commands all the while remaining silent? This
essay will address the conflict surround faith, ethics, reason, and the paradox that
Søren Kierkegaard addresses in his main work FEAR AND TREMBLING.

In typical Kierkegaardian dialectical fashion, FEAR AND TREMBLING represents

the paradox between faith and reason, in relation to God. Kierkegaard takes us
through the same motions he himself struggled through and thus proves
challenging toward the reader. We are therefore ultimately left not with an answer
to the paradox, but a new perspective from which to view the ethical and aesthetic
faith against the absolute nature of God. What does faith consist of in relation to the
ethical and the aesthetic; doxa1 opposed to paradox?

1 Doxa is the common opinion; the universal understanding (and in this case the ethical and
aesthetic sense of morality).

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Part I- Grasping the paradox: Is Faith in contrast with the

ethical?
Faith is commonly defined as “Confident belief in the truth, value, or
trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing;- belief that does not rest on logical proof
or material evidence.”2 In churches today we tend to rely on the understanding of
faith as “the assurance3 of things hoped for, the conviction4 of things not
seen.”(International Bible Society, 1999)5 Yet this understanding tends to remain
within the given ethical and aesthetic framework, and does not require what
appears to be a teleological suspension of the ethical6. Three questions arise; is a
teleological suspension of the ethical reasonable, is there such a thing as absolute
duty toward God, and Is Abraham ethically defensible in remaining silent concerning
his intent?

Problem I: What is exactly meant when Johannes de Silentio7 poses this

question concerning the teleological suspension of the ethical in relation
to Abraham?
In answering this question, one must recognize that the definition of the term
“ethical” in Kierkegaardian usage is that which constitutes the individual as striving
for the morals of society, ‘the good’ that Platonists believe is the ultimate form of
wisdom. This form of ethics that presumes itself as complete and autonomous will
necessarily come into conflict with the form of religious faith Johannes de Silentio is
contemplating. Through this tension Kierkegaard resists giving us a new moral
framework in which teleological suspension of the ethical and absolute, exclusive
duty to God hold subjective sovereignty over ethics, but rather a new perspective
on ethics and reason itself.

“From the perspective of faith, the relativity and historical

character of reason and the ethical become clear, and new
ways of thinking and acting open up, which may be judged
by society as “irrational” and “unethical”.”(Evans, 2006)

2 Dictionary.com

3 The man of faith believes ultimate assurance comes from God.

4 A strong persuasion or belief.

5 Hebrews 11:1- All subsequent biblical references will be from the NIV translation.

6 That is, an absolute relationship to the absolute which subjugates ethics.

7 Kierkegaard’s pseudonym in Fear and Trembling

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Thus the new conception of the ethical through the transforming perspective
of faith is one that underlies prevailing social ethics. It differs from the old concept
of ethics in two respects; primarily because the basis for the ethic is no longer
dependent upon the collective judgments of society, but rather on the transcendent
message of God. And secondarily the ethic does not merely prescribe ideals but
concerns itself with the underlying conditions that make it possible to realize these
ideals.

The paradox lies in that “the individual puts himself in an absolute relation to
the absolute”(Kierkegaard, 1968) and insofar as one does this, no teleological
suspension is necessary; only a resetting of relational perspective is required.

Problem II: Is there such a thing as absolute duty toward God?

In dealing with the absolute and the universal, one is suggesting that in
Abraham’s deemed “unethical” act he is subjecting God’s command for him to
sacrifice his son over the will of society and even over God’s own laws concerning
murder. Kierkegaard suggests that the paradox of faith as an absolute relation to
the absolute causes the individual in that instant to be higher than the universal.
This means that the individual determines their relation to the universal by their
relation to the absolute, not vice versa. Thus “the ethical relation is reduced to a
relative position in contrast with the absolute relation to God”.(Kierkegaard,
1968)Unfortunately this means that faith cannot be mediated into the universal
ethical conception for in doing so it would be destroyed.

"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and
mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—
yes, even his own life—he cannot be my
disciple.”(International Bible Society, 1999)8

Abraham, in absolute faithfulness to God was not hateful toward Isaac; on the
contrary it is repeated throughout the story how dearly he loved his son. What
Abraham necessarily had to come to hate was his own life in relation to the ethical
standards, and consequently submit himself fully to God’s will. To exist as an
individual in the light of this requirement is the most difficult thing of all; he who
realizes this will not fail to make known the fear and terror that accompany it. The
faithful have no support from the universal nor are they dependent upon it, for the
singular, absolute dependence upon God removes the comfort of the universal, and
it is this tension between God and the universal that holds faith in being.

Problem III: Was Abraham ethically defensible in keeping silent about his
purpose?
Abraham was fully aware of this tension between the universal and the
absolute, and this is precisely what required of him to remain silent. Aesthetics

8 Luke 14:26

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would require of him to conceal his intent9, whereas ethics would have required of
him to speak10- though neither apply to this case. Abraham’s silence is condemned
by ethics in that the act of speaking would be acknowledging the universal. Nor
does he appease to aesthetics for his silence has not the intention of saving Isaac.
The silence Abraham kept is thus rightfully regarded by Johannes de Silentio as both
the divine and the demoniac11.

In community we assure ourselves of having reached the pinnacle of ethical

standards; of understanding what is morally and ethically required of us. Where the
Aesthetic silence can be attributed to either having no reasons12, or having no
words to portray them, Abraham as the man of faith evades being placed under
these categories. This is the tension that the paradox produces, and can either be
defined as divine or demoniac due to the impossibility factor13 for their absolute
relationship with God. The additional fact that he cannot speak of his silence further
increases the recognition that it is a test from God. Therefore this recognition
motivates Abraham to recognize the importance of his absolute relation to the
absolute despite, and perhaps because of the paradoxical nature that we have
defined as “faith”.

Making sense of this: is this paradox cancerous to moral reason?

In sorting through these issues, we are led to the conclusion that faith is not
contrary to rationality, but rather that the encounter of reason with the paradox are
two millstones that separate the wheat from the chaff; faith from offense14. The
paradox leaves us with either of these two passions, but neither can claim to be a
product of wholly rational, straightforward, logical procedures, nor can we claim a
position of indifference. The ‘knight of resignation’15 renounces the temporal to
transform the object of their love toward the eternal being, and in doing so cannot
henceforth engage and take pleasure in the temporal. Similarly, the knight of faith

9 For to kill one’s offspring for the greater good of society as did Agamemnon’s example
portray is something which would be aesthetically intelligible.- though a tragedy,
Agamemnon’s silent purposes must be regarded as aesthetically virtuous. (Kierkegaard,
1968)

10 The ethical is the revealed, and the approved actions and reasons of the individual in
relation to the universal opinion.

11 For society would be unable to say which of these possessed him at the time.

12 Which betrays a lack of developed character. (Wren, 1981)

13 According to the doxa-based ethic

14 C. Stephen Evans asserts that “offense is not grounded by pure logic, but pride and self-
assertiveness, a confidence in the unlimited powers of human reason.”(p.131)

15 Unlike the stoics, who renounce all claim to the finite to guard themselves from
disappointment, anger, and guilt.

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renounces all claim to the temporal, however additionally he can make his way back
into the finite, and enjoy the taste of the finite; renouncing all claim, but not all
care.

“Unlike the man of resignation, he would be ready to accept the beloved’s

return.”(Mooney, 1981)

The knight of faith can, therefore get back the finite because he has the
belief that “with God all things are possible by virtue of the absurd”(Kierkegaard,
1968). This absurdity however by no means poses an antithesis between intellect
and will. The paradoxical lies rooted in the antithesis between God’s understanding
of what human life ought to be, and what man thinks life ought to be. In this sense,
faith requires a matured will, intellect, and feeling; one that is in absolute relation to
God and in doing so “a shadow of concern remains as a sorrowful glance at the
finite”(Mooney, 1981). The sorrow of this glance lies in the new lens through which
the ethical and rational is viewed by the faithful.

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Part II: Faith of a mustard seed

“The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!" He
replied, "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you
can say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in
the sea,' and it will obey you.”16

In considering the prior conception of faith as not fully other than ethics but
rather as a new framing of what ethics and reason come to name, one is left with a
faith that is essentially broken. This paradoxically is where faith ought to be in
relation to ethics and reason. Like a mustard seed, it must be crushed to release its
potency.

“The greatest benefits come to us through madness when

it is bestowed on us as a gift of the gods.”(Plato, 1956)

This idea of divine madness has been around for quite a while, but
Kierkegaard’s new framing of it is one that helps us to grasp that “the fundamental
relation between faith and reason consists in understanding that it is impossible to
understand.”(Fabro, 1962) This is what the paradox requires of us; that we should
choose to side with faith as opposed to offense. We are not to depend on finding a
complete, rational, and even coherent argument for the subject at hand. Naturally
this is where we begin in life; with faith of a child that allows us to see heaven
clearly, not through eyes that are watering from the pungency of the ethical and
aesthetic life we are taught to strive for. Such a view is not how God has intended to
make his love known; as an exclamation of human ethics and aesthetics; reducible
to our meager understandings and concepts. On the contrary,

“The actuality to which the religious believer is committed

by his faith is that of God and not of the finite self or a
separate ideal.”(Collins, 1962)

Left without an answer

As is typical of Kierkegaard we are not given an answer, but rather a set of

tasks that cannot be simply adopted. One is directed through the issues
Kierkegaard himself ventured in thinking about faith in the context of what he
critiqued as the deteriorated Danish National Church in the 1840’s. But is this
applicable today, in such circumstances where faith has become the norm as

16 Luke 17:5-6

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opposed to paradoxical in nature? Or to rephrase that, how might one live in

relation to this portrayal of faith?

“Paradox is opposed to doxa, in both aspects of doxa,

namely good sense and common sense.”(Deleuze, 1990)

Faith is not a matter of stable entities; but the instability that rests in, and
constitutes the paradox; an arrow that points in two directions at once. It points in
the direction of the proposition in which it remains immanent and in the direction of
the world, of which it is an expression thereof. Paradox thus “involves the bringing
together of disparate elements into a convergence that neither reduces one to the
other nor keeps them apart.”(May, 2008) The divine command God has on the man
of faith, and the human rational deduction of what constitutes the ethical are
constantly in flux and produce the paradox we name faith.

In parallel to the faith Abraham demonstrated in the act of sacrifice, Jesus

tells us to die to our own life, that we may live in him. To take up our crosses daily
and follow him is to reframe our lives in not necessarily absolute relation to the
absolute in the way Abraham was, but in a new frame of freedom under the grace
offered through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. Kierkegaard portrays Abraham’s belief
by virtue of the absurd, while the Christian in contrast believes the absurd.
(Kierkegaard, 1967) This grace is understandably incomprehensible and
immeasurable, this being in complete consistency with God’s love shown to
Abraham; however our reward is not Isaac, but eternal life.

This aspect of faith thus leaves the Christian a difficulty that Abraham didn’t
need to face; though absurd, it’s understood by Abraham as a test- this is
reasonable. The Christian however is condemned to silence not only through the
reasons he has for his/her belief but also by what those beliefs entail.

“Christianity as a thought project is not difficult to

understand, the difficulty, the paradox is that it is
real.”(Kierkegaard, 1944)

If we live from the perspective that what Christianity teaches is real (often in
contrast to the doxa of the world) then we must begin to live out the radical
commands Jesus leaves us. Commands such as loving one’s enemies, when put into
real practice stand out as baffling and completely counter-cultural. They make the
love of God manifest in a human expression; in living in the recognition that we are
saved by grace alone. The fact that Christians are to live gracefully toward one
another upon the basis of a belief which the world has been denying tirelessly is a
good representation of how the paradox between Abraham’s faith and reason is not
eliminated with Jesus’ teachings and ultimate sacrifice; but rather that the doxa has
taken a new voice; stumbling over the same words.

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The heralds of Science, Atheism and Secularism continually return with the
same message, but on different feet. It helps not to kill the messenger, for there
would be no message to send in return, and to confront reason with reason is a
rigged battle which is (under the new perspective Kierkegaard has oriented us
toward) counterintuitive to what faith is. Namely that it is a reframing of what God
must be in relation to our understanding and in that recognition putting ourselves in
absolute relation to the omnipotent God and believe (against the doxa) that it is
under God’s control. It is not simply a belief, but could not in a sense be simpler; for
when we realize that God is Awesome beyond our comprehension, and that God is
love- the two inevitably lead one to the conclusion that anything God requires of us
is to remain in this paradoxical balance that relates our faith to God’s reason. The
faith of a child is a perfect demonstration of this character of God’s love in relation
to our faith. For the child, a parental figure seems limitless in their capacity for love
and in such a faith one see’s a glimpse of God’s character. When one surpasses
one’s limited understanding and puts oneself in relation to God in what are often
conceived of as foolish or incomprehensible situations we can expect to act in
unexpected ways that work to further God’s kingdom.

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Bibliography
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edited by Howard A. Johnson and Niels Thulstrup, 141-155. New York: Harper
& Brothers publishers, 1962.

Deleuze, Gilles. The Logic of Sense. Translated by Mark Lester and Charles Stivale.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1990.

Evans, C. Stephen. "Is the Concept of an Absolute Duty toward God Morally
Unintelligible?" In Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling: Critical Appraisals,
edited by Robert L. Perkins, 141-151. Alabama: The University of Alabama
Press, 1981.

—. Kierkegaard on Faith and the Self. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2006.

Fabro, Cornelio. "Faith and Reason in Kierkegaard's Dialectic." In A Kierkegaard

Critique, edited by Howard A. Johnson and Niels Thulstrup, translated by J.B.
Mondin, 156-206. New York: Harper & Brothers publishers, 1962.

Gill, Jerry H. "Faith Is as Faith Does." In Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling: Critical
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International Bible Society. The Holy Bible. New International Version. Miami:
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Kierkegaard, Søren. Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Translated by David F.

Swenson. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1944.

—. Fear and Trembling. Translated by Walter Lowrie. New Jersey: Princeton

University Press, 1968.

—. Journals and Papers. Translated by Howard Hong and Edna Hong. Vol. I.
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May, Todd. Gilles Deleuze: An introductuion. New York: Cambridge University Press,
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Mooney, Edward F. "Understanding Abraham: Care, Faith, and the Absurd." In

Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling: Critical Appraisals, edited by Robert L.
Perkins, 100-114. Alabama: The University of Alabama Press, 1981.

Plato. Phaedrus. Translated by W. C. Helmbold and W. G. Rabinowitz. Indianapolis:

The Bobbs-Merril Comnpany inc., 1956.

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Taylor, Mark C. "Sounds of Silence." In Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling: Critical

Appraisals, edited by Robert L. Perkins, 165-188. Alabama: The University of
Alabama Press, 1981.

Wren, David J. "Abraham's Silence and the Logic of Faith." In Kierkegaard's Fear and
Trembling: Critical Appraisals, edited by Robert L. Perkins, 152-164. Alabama:
The University of Alabama Press, 1981.

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