Passionate Inwardness

Passionate Inwardness

March 26, 2016

Outside Reading: Soren Kierkegaard/Fear and Trembling

Soren Kierkegaard inquires why Abraham is considered the father of faith rather than a murderer, concluding that “either Abraham was every minute a murderer, or we are confronted by a paradox which is higher than all mediation.”(128) By an act of faith, Abraham leaped over the wall of rationality and into the absurd. It is this leap of faith, which Abraham took when he sacrificed Isaac, that draws the individual out of the ethical submergence into the universal and into a religious mode of existence. To Kierkegaard, “faith begins precisely where thinking leaves off.”(106) The consequence of this leap is that it undermined reason, placing complete emphasis on faith in the Christian life. This divorce between faith and reason is what makes the leap of faith a leap into the absurd. However, Kierkegaard failed to understand that the true Biblical view of faith is not a oblivious leap into darkness but a rational step into the light. In subjecting the role of reason, as the brother of faith, Kierkegaard transforms faith into an irrational leap in the unknown. 

Kierkegaard’s lamentations over the superficiality of Christianity in his day may be sympathized with. The church in Denmark had reduced faith to mere intellectual and doctrinal assent. As religious history scholar, Belden Lane, observes, “Christianity in his day had been safely reduced to an idea stored in the dusty pages of Scripture.”(80) Kierkegaard called on people to set their Bibles aside and beginning living out their faith. Life was not meant to be factually observed and footnoted in pages but lived out and experienced. To Kierkegaard, the Christian life is the highest life and faith is the highest passion a person can attain. Each individual must work out their own salvation with fear and trembling. The religious life is inherently paradoxical, demanding a rejection of passivity and passionate inwardness. Only when separated from the crowd can the individual’s faith be proved genuine.