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Posted: 30 Jun 2013

Taken: 05 Jun 2011

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Abraham & Isaac

Abraham & Isaac
art-for-a-change.com/blog/2007/05/right-here-get-set-poin...


boundandunbound.blogspot.com/
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 Dinesh
Dinesh club
. . . . why is secular faith -- devoted to this world and invested in finite lives -- necessarily at odds with religious faith in eternity? A defender of religious faith may object that the latter can make one more engaged in this life, rather than make one turn away from it. I take on this argument through the thinker who pursues it most profoundly, Soren Kierkegaard, in his classic work ‘Fear and Trembling’ . for Kierkegaard, religious faith should not lead us out of this world but rather enable a more profound commitment to the life we live. Yet he is well aware of the conflict between the commitment to a temporal, finite being and the commitment to an eternal, infinite being. In ‘Fear and Trembling’ this conflict is staged most dramatically as the meaning of God’s command that Abraham sacrifice his son Isaac. Abraham’s love for Isaac expresses a commitment to living on: he wants Isaac’s life to flourish for its own sake and he also prizes Isaac as the only one who can let his own legacy survive. It is precisely this commitment to a unique life -- the life of Isaac -- that has to be renounced for the sake of eternity. To love Isaac is to be susceptible to an irreversible loss, since Isaac is a finite being, and therefore he has to be given up in advance, sacrificed for God. Nevertheless, Kierkegaard holds that the higher form of faith is one that can retain all the love for Isaac -- all the love for the finite -- while at the same time giving him up, trusting that God will restore everything that is lost. Such faith would allow one to be fully committed to the finite world, while at the same time being invulnerable to loss, since one would believe that everything is possible for God.

The effect of Abraham’s religious faith, however, turns out to be an actual indifference to what happens. Abraham is able to kill Isaac because he believes that God will bring him back, so in the end it makes no difference (from the standpoint of his faith) whether Isaac is sacrificed. Likewise, the modern version of Abraham -- the knight of faith is presented as someone who is utterly committed to finite life, but when his hopes in the life are shattered, “curiously enough, he is just the same.” Precisely because his faith makes him immune to the experience of loss, he cannot care about the outcome of what actually happens. ~ Page 30/31

This Life ~ Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom
4 years ago. Edited 13 months ago.

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