Faith

I have been reading Kierkegaard's "Fear and Trembling" again. This was one of those books which I read through and reached then end of having only actually understood about ten percent of. Unfortunately, this seems to happen to me rather frequently.

At any rate this book is all about Faith. What is Faith? Who has Faith? Where does it come from? The more I read the less I seem to understand. This is not the first book that I have read on the subject, and it is perhaps not the definitive one. However, it seems to me that Kierkegaard has latched onto something which most talks about Religion pass over. Namely, that Faith is very hard. Hard to understand, hard to have.

Most people hear the word faith and what comes to mind as a definition is something like blind acceptance. At least half of the work I have put into the blog has been in an effort to show that Faith is not just blind acceptance, but is rather both reasonable and ultimately rational. I still believe this, but I am not quite as certain anymore that this is the whole story.

C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity that there are certain difficulties, certain forks in the path of understanding which one cannot really begin to understand until you have walked a distance down the path. I thought I understood that quite well and unlike my reading of Kierkegaard I was quite sure that after putting down Lewis' book I understood most of what he was getting at. I see now that the question of Faith is one of those forks in the road to which I had not yet come. Lewis warns his readers that to try to get ahead of yourself and to tackle a problem before you have yet come to that particular fork in the road will likely do more harm than good and that we should often leave well enough alone. Perhaps, this is what I should encourage you to do here.

Most of the issues which have been raised until now have been basic. These are questions which are typically raised and discussed in a first year philosophy or theology course. The question of Faith is much harder. A lot of what I have been working to do is to demonstrate how our duty to ethics is tied inherently to God. Yet Kierkegaard keeps making me stare straight at Abraham and Isaac. That Abraham, the Father of Faith, could have marched his son three days into the desert and up the mountain in Moriah, with the intention of murdering him there is mind-bendingly difficult.

If, as I have been trying to prove, ethics is ethics for the simple reason that "the source" says so that we can get around the difficulty quite simply. After all, if "the source" says that killing your son is just what he wants you to do, than doesn't that make murdering this kid ethical, in fact does it not make any other action unethical? Well, no, it just doesn't work that way. What is ethical is by its very nature universally applicable to all people in all times. If it is not, that we live in an irrational world and everything that I have been trying to say is moot. Now, the only loophole which we actually have is that Abraham did NOT kill Isaac. However, if he marched his son for three long days through the desert and up the mountain with the intent of killing him, is he not still a murderer, at least in his own mind? A murder happens at two times. Once in the actual act and once in the decision to act.

Is it possible that Abraham did all of this and yet still believed that his son would not be killed? Could he possibly believe that the God which demanded his son's life was a good God and would not allow Abraham to kill his own son? Could he believe this in the face of God's own request? If he could not believe this than he did not have Faith, yet how could he be so mad as to believe it? Faith. Faith which I do not understand.

I hope that I am not confusing anyone with all of this. It is important that people never forget that the path of Faith is not easier than the path of disbelief. People have the very mistaken opinion that people of religion are taking the easy way out and that those atheists who stare bravely into oblivion somehow are brave. I must humbly disagree.