Fear And Trembling Summary

The Teaching Theology and Religion Journal published a peer-reviewed article in April 2014 entitled “Teaching Soren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling.” The author of the article is Jonathan Malesic (2014), an associate professor of theology at King’s College in Pennsylvania. The article discusses Professor Malesic’s attempt to teach his students about Kierkegaard’s very influential work, Fear and Trembling (Malesic, 2012).
Kierkegaard’s original work was published in 1843 and attempts to understand the anxiety present in Abraham when God called him to sacrifice his son, Isaac. There are said to be two main ideas or levels in Fear and Trembling. The first idea is that sometimes the things we see as moral or right (e.g. do not murder) have to
The goal of the course is for his students to “use philosophical and theological terms to answer a framing question-“Does it make sense to believe in God?” There are six sequential classes in which students learn about Kierkegaard’s book and in each class Malesic attempts to teach critical reading skills and how to understand language where the meaning and intent are often unknown. He wants his students to be comfortable reading highly theological works of literature and to garner the appreciation he has for such. The idea of a paradox is very important in Kierkegaard’s work and Malesic spends multiple classes eliciting responses from students as to the meaning of a paradox as well as the questions that arise from the paradoxes contained in Fear and Trembling. Kierkegaard asks if it is possible for a person, in this case Abraham or the Knight of Faith, to grasp both the finite and infinite at the same time? Therein lies the central question of the text-“Does it make sense to believe in God?” In order to answer this question Malesic asks his students to dig deeper and analyze what each word (make sense, believe, and God) means to Kierkegaard at that point in his life. By understanding the meaning of these words to the author we can begin to understand the meaning of the book as a whole
When comparing such authors students can gain an in depth knowledge of that time as well as the overall state of Christianity and psychology in history. To end the class on Fear and Trembling a modern day comparison is drawn between the Knight of Faith in Kierkegaard’s book and the Knight of Faith in the 9/11 tragedy. The question is posed as to whether these terrorists were trying to grasp the finite and infinite at the same time during their suicide missions. If Abraham was willing to make a permanent sacrifice for his faith, were the terrorists doing the same for their faith? Making sense of a historical book in light of modern society is always a goal that should be emphasized in teaching and learning (Malesic,