FEAR AND TREMBLING

Before I knew Kierkegaard as an existentialist, I knew him as a religious philosopher. One remarkable line in particular had stuck in my head since early on: I would rather pray with a pagan who worships a chunk of wood with sincerity than with a fellow Christian who has none. I also knew about the great rationale for the Russian Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 being in tune with Kierkegaard’s religious philosophy: power is incompatible with, and destructive to, religion. It was, thus, the religious rationale of the Russian Orthodox Christians to support the Bolshevik takeover in Russia, with its initial persecution of religion, which was to purify Russia’s faith, to force the nation to measure up to her Third Rome Destiny. Not surprisingly, it was after the Bolshevik Revolution that the Russians began to identify themselves and the whole Russian nation with Jesus Christ the Sufferer-God, a tremendously powerful validation of the Russian doctrine of exceptionality, made possible exclusively by the rampant campaign of anti-religious persecution and iconoclastic violence characterizing the early Soviet epoch.

Kierkegaard’s religious views are fascinating and instructive beyond compare. It is impossible to give him enough credit in the span of a single entry of a fairly modest size, and at this time I shall not even try. The task to expand it and to improve its content belongs to the next stage of this project. In the meantime, I am merely laying down the groundwork, and with this important understanding we shall now move forward.

Fear and Trembling is the title of Kierkegaard’s major work on the Christian religion, and it can easily be extended to all religion as-such.. The title itself is taken from Philippians 2:12: Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. Kierkegaard’s passionate attack on Christian hypocrisy and deficiency of faith can already be gleaned from his choice of the Biblical passage, where Apostle Paul’s admonition to the Philippians cannot be in any way missed or misinterpreted.

The book offers a highly unconventional and supremely provocative treatment of the Binding of Isaac, told in Genesis 22, and unfolds from there into a remarkable discussion of religious and ethical issues. It begins with a meditation on the faith of Abraham, as he is commanded by God to sacrifice Isaac.

Johannes de Silentio (the book’s fictional author) gives four alternative retellings, in which Abraham fails the test of his faith and contrasts them with his own interpretation of the story of Abraham and of the faith therein demonstrated. Silentio professes to admire Abraham’s faith, but he cannot comprehend it.

Following the Preface and Prelude, there is a Panegyric Upon Abraham, and a series of three Problemata, which address three specific philosophical questions raised by the story of Abraham's sacrifice.---

Is there a teleological suspension of the ethical? In other words, can Abraham’s intent to sacrifice Isaac be considered good, even though ethically human sacrifice is unacceptable?

Is there an absolute duty to God? In other words, beyond that which is ethical?

Was it ethically defensible for Abraham to have concealed his purpose from Sarah, Eliezer, and Isaac?

In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard introduces the Knight of Faith, and he contrasts him with the Knight of Infinite Resignation. The latter gives up everything in return for the Infinite, which he may receive after this life, and he continuously dwells with the pain of his loss. The former not only relinquishes everything, but also trusts that he will receive it all back, his trust based on the strength of the absurd.

Infinite resignation is easy, according to Kierkegaard, but faith is founded in the belief in the absurd. The absurd is that which is contradictory to reason itself. For Abraham, this faith in the absurd manifests itself in his belief that, although he is about to kill his only son, he would nevertheless receive him back again in his lifetime. Silentio’s opinion is that what separates Abraham from being a killer is his faith.

An important theme is the conflict between theology and philosophy. According to Kierkegaard, mid-19^th-century secular philosophers laughed at faith, seeing no mystery in the story of Abraham, while professing to find Hegel’s philosophy exceedingly difficult. Kierkegaard, however, thought that understanding Hegel was possible (if difficult), but trying to comprehend why Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son caused him to be “virtually annihilated.”

This discussion of Abraham’s attempted sacrifice of his son Isaac leads Kierkegaard into the admission of incomprehensibility not just of Abraham’s action, but of the fundamental tenets of Christianity, such as, for instance, the doctrine of the two hypostases of Christ. Thus, religion is a belief in the incomprehensible and the absurd, which once again is incredibly close to my own understanding (remember my dictum “If proof were available, who would need the faith?”)

But the most dramatic reflection on religion comes to Kierkegaard later in life, and it virtually overwhelms him, probably causing his death at forty-two of over-exhaustion. Why do the Christians feel comfortable in the secular world, whereas the teachings of Christ are supposed to make them uncomfortable? Why do the leaders of the Church (in his native Denmark) accept the roles of civil servants in the Danish State, when they have been called to be the followers of Christ?

As I said before, these ideas of Kierkegaard found a perfect resonance among the Russian religious mystics and were interpreted in the most logical way that unless the Church finds itself under persecution like in the old blessed days of the early pre-establishment Christianity, the decay of the Church, and with it of religion as such, was inevitable and irreversible. And now, if the reader has not yet comprehended why Kierkegaard is in the Russian mind one of the ten greatest philosophers who ever lived, a careful rereading of these three Kierkegaardian entries is strongly recommended.