Kierkegaard's View on Faith

Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher in the mid 1800s. He is known to be the father of existentialism and was at least 70 years ahead of his time. Kierkegaard set out to attack Kant's rational ethics and make attacks on the Christianity of our day. He poses the question, how do we understand faith? He states that faith equals the absurd. In "Fear and Trembling", he uses the story of Abraham and his son Isaac to show an example of faith as the absurd. The story of God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac signifies a break in the theory that ethics and religion go hand in hand. He shows how the ethical and the religious can be completely different. "I by no means conclude that faith is something inferior but rather that it is the highest, also that it is dishonest of philosophy to give something else in its place and to disparage faith" (Fear and Trembling, 12). To Kierkegaard, the whole biblical story is a paradox. "Thinking about Abraham is another matter, however; then I am shattered. I am constantly aware of the prodigious paradox that is the content of Abraham's life, I am constantly repelled, and, despite all its passion, my thought cannot penetrate it, cannot get ahead by a hairsbreadth" (Fear and Trembling, 12). Faith to Kierkegaard is even paradoxical. "Precisely because resignation is antecedent, faith is no esthetic emotion but something far higher; it is not the spontaneous inclination of the heart but the paradox of existence" (Fear and Trembling, 19). Under the ethical, Abraham was going to commit murder. Kierkegaard uses an example of a preacher going to him after the murder and screaming, "You despicable man, you scum of society, what devil has so possessed you that you want to murder your son" (Fear and Trembling, 10). He knows that murder cannot be ethically disclosed and wonders how that can be faith. Under the absurdity of faith, Abraham's crime of murder becomes a merited duty to his Creator. "The ethical expression for