The Sacrifice of Silence: Fear and Trembling and the Secret of Faith

This article examines the important hermeneutical and theological relation between silence and sacrifice in Søren Kierkegaard's (1813–55) divisively enigmatic Fear and Trembling. I contend that this relation becomes clearest when the silence of Abraham is explicated in relation to his esoteric proclamation that ‘God himself will provide a lamb for the burnt offering’. In Abraham's reply to Isaac, the secret of Abraham's faith is concomitantly revealed (as a trust in the notion that ‘with God all things are possible’) and concealed (as a paradoxically ‘impossible’ possibility which cannot be adequately conveyed to ‘the other’). This thereby proposes a qualitative distinction between Abraham's reverent silence before God and his aporetic silence before the other.     

Kierkegaard on the (un)happiness of faith

Hegel famously accuses Christianity of ‘unhappy consciousness’: it has a normative goal – union with the divine – that it cannot, in principle, satisfy. Kierkegaard was intimately aware of this criticism and, unlike some of Hegel’s other accusations, takes it seriously. In this paper my co-author and I investigate the way in which Kierkegaard addresses this issue in two texts published in 1843: Fear and Trembling and ‘The Expectancy of Faith’. We are especially interested in how the two texts describe faith’s relationship to finitude: for instance, whether the person of faith is permitted to expect that God will bless her in particular and concrete ways. My co-author and I offer competing interpretations. I argue that there is a deep tension in the way faith is described in the two texts; my co-author argues that there is consonance.     

Faith and the practising analyst

Abstract: In this brief essay, I reflect on three questions: What is ‘faith’ in a modern and post‐modern cultural context? Do I, a Jungian analyst, have ‘faith’ or do I not? Does having ‘faith’ or not make a difference in the practice of analysis? I make reference to Jung's understanding of ‘faith’ and his frequent disclaimers about making metaphysical claims. I conclude that a post‐credal ‘faith’ is possible for contemporary Jungian analysts, that I do have such a faith personally, and that in my experience this makes a significant difference in analytic practice at least with some patients. Traditional faith statements must be translated into depth psychological terms, however, in order for them to be applicable in post‐modern, multicultural contexts.     

ABSOLUTE ACTION: DIVINE HIDDENNESS IN KIERKEGAARD'S FEAR AND TREMBLING

This article reads Fear and Trembling constructively as a theological work. Abraham's faith is a lived movement irreducible to either ontology or epistemology. Faith is an action that waits upon what it alone could never accomplish. This is absolute action. In Abraham's case, he offers up Isaac to death with the absurd expectancy that Isaac will be returned. This double movement is a doxological abandonment of oneself and one's world to God that waits expectantly to receive them back as gifts. It is these dynamics of faith that show God to be hidden, precisely within the intimate drawing near of God. The article concludes with a constructive gesture toward an “apophaticism of action.”     

THE SERMON ON MOUNT MORIAH: FAITH AND THE SECRET IN THE GIFT OF DEATH

This essay is an investigation of three attempts to think faith. I find my starting place in Jacques Derrida's The Gift of Death, 1 one of the most important treatments of Christianity in Derrida's later thought, which was increasingly insistent in its engagement with religious questions up until his death in 2004. This reading of The Gift of Death will focus particularly on the question of secrecy and its relationship with faith, leading necessarily to an account of Derrida's reading of two of his primary references in this text: the second essay of Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals 1 and Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling. 1 Rather than simply rendering a judgment on Derrida's reading, I will endeavor to read these texts together, extending (or expanding upon) Derrida's reading while questioning some of the positive formulations he makes in his own name – all the while remaining attentive to the gambles involved in thinking faith.     

Kierkegaard and the ‘teleological suspension of the ethical’

This article discusses the claim made by Kierkegaard in Fear and Trembling that the story of Abraham involves a ‘teleological suspension of the ethical’. It tries to show that this claim is intelligible and plausible when considered within the context of a philosophical position which views morality as a system of duties.     

Heidegger’s Destruktion of Theology: ‘Primordial Faith’ and ‘Recognition’ of the Messiah

Heidegger’s phenomenology of religious life offers important insights by engaging Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, where he distinguishes ‘Paul the Pharisee’ from ‘Paul the Christian’ in order to explicate the nature of faith in contrast to systematic theology. Neither certitude in God’s existence is primordial to Christian faith, according to Heidegger, nor is rabbinic nor theological disputation concerning God’s existence or God’s nature. Instead, what is essential to Heidegger’s phenomenology of religious life are: (1) faith as lived experience and (2) recognition of ‘the Christ’ (ho christos/ha ma?ía?). This ‘recognition’, however, requires phenomenological clarification and not philosophy of religion as traditionally construed.     

The aesthetic as mirror of faith in Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling

One of the most intractable issues in Kierkegaard scholarship continues to be the question of what one is to make of the relation between infinite resignation and faith in Fear and Trembling. Most commentators follow Kierkegaard's pseudonymous author in claiming that progression to faith is a “linear” process that requires infinite resignation as a first step. The problem with such a reading is that it leads to paradox: It seems to require attributing to the “knight of faith” two inconsistent belief‐attitudes simultaneously—on the one hand, the willingness to resign one's heart's desires (infinite resignation) and, on the other, the conviction that one will somehow receive back what one has resigned. But this is a confused way of thinking about faith. I will show that faith's alleged paradoxicality is only apparent and that the element of resignation that constitutes an aspect of it actually bears some striking similarities to what the aesthete has in mind when he speaks, in Either/Or, of throwing hope overboard in order to make possible a truly artistic way of life. Hence, on my interpretation, the knight of faith does not need to adopt two contradictory attitudes at the same time (or constantly to “annul” one of them), but must rather practice a form of spiritual discipline in many ways analogous to the aesthete's endeavour to become a “poet of possibility.”     

WHAT ABOUT ISAAC?: Rereading Fear and Trembling and Rethinking Kierkegaardian Ethics

In this essay I offer a reading of Fear and Trembling that responds to critiques of Kierkegaardian ethics as being, as Brand Blanshard claims, “morally nihilistic,” as Emmanuel Levinas contends, ethically violent, and, as Alasdair MacIntyre charges, simply irrational. I argue that by focusing on Isaac's singularity as the very condition for Abraham's “ordeal,” the book presents a story about responsible subjectivity. Rather than standing in competition with the relation to God, the relation to other people is, thus, inscribed into this very relation. Fear and Trembling, I contend, advocates a bidirectional responsibility that is constitutive of subjectivity itself and, as such, actually resonates with certain aspects of Levinasian ethics. I conclude by suggesting that Abraham's ordeal is not due to the conflict between a nonreligious duty and the duty to God, but instead reflects a tension that is internal to the life of faith itself.     

Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany: Prisoners during the Communist Era ∗

Abstract

Commentators on religious freedom disagree on the rationale for its protection. This question of why we protect religious freedom is important because it influences the manner and scope of the protection of religious freedom by the state. The legal philosopher Timothy Macklem argues, in line with some fideistic approaches to the study of religion, that the value of ‘faith’– of belief without reason to believe – justifies the protection of religious freedom. This paper offers a critique of Macklem's account. It argues that this account is inconsistent with a correct view of the nature of reasons, that it overestimates the circumstances in which faith is valuable, that it fails adequately to consider the connections between faith and false beliefs, and that its conclusions imply a much weaker protection of religious freedom than is common in liberal states. This paper also indicates aspects of faith that are valuable, beyond those discussed by Macklem. It is hoped that it will contribute to the debate on the value of faith as well as the broader debate on the justification of religious freedom.     

A strange half‐absence: reflections on a faithful presence

‘Not being with it’ is a reproach levelled these days against those who do not easily assume that the most recent is the most authentic. By contrast, ‘being with it’ is a quality to be coveted in the field of ‘inter‐faith’ relations. Thus, to the recipient it seemed a possible exaggeration to entitle a Festschrift in that area A Faithful Presence. Perhaps response is permitted, adopting the more modest A Strange Half‐absence as more apt to tell how far the academic mind may be from the realities of faith; how vested interests of ‘fund and find’ may distort inter‐cultural assessments; how far religious leaderships may be from gentle cognisance of human tribulation; how dubiously we resolve the tension between assessing and possessing faith. Or is Faithful Presence an elusive dream?     

Locke and Leibniz on Religious Faith

In the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke maintains that ‘Reason must be our last Judge and Guide in every Thing,’ including matters of religious faith, and this commitment to the primacy of reason is not abandoned in his later religious writings. This essay argues that with regard to the relation between reason and religious faith, Locke is primarily concerned not with evidence, but with consistency, meaning, and how human beings ought to respond to their inclinations, including their inclinations to believe. Leibniz, on the other hand, stakes out an alternative conception of the relationship between faith and reason that assigns to faith the role of a primary truth. For Leibniz, some religious propositions can be believed immediately and without an additional examination and evaluation by reason. The essay maintains that the differences between the two regarding faith and reason are tied to a broader disagreement about how much of the human understanding is due, in Locke's words, to ‘Labour, Attention and Industry’.     

‘Fides mater virtutum est’

Abstract

Peter Martyr Vermigli’s elevation of faith over charity displays similarities and differences with Thomas Aquinas and other medieval authors. For Thomas, faith does not perceive its object and thus denotes an uncertain assent to imperfectly revealed truths. Aquinas posits a reordering of will and intellect in order to explain how faith is more certain than ‘scientia.’ Vermigli on the other hand attempts to maintain the natural order between intellect and will in virtuous action (that is, natural law) even for the theological virtues. He likens faith to vision and practical wisdom arguing that God illuminates the mind to make the object of faith apprehensible to the judgment of reason. This perspective presents a more optimistic account of temporal, intellectual perfection via grace.     

Freedom and Respect in a Multicultural Society

ABSTRACT Martin Hollis, in Market Equality and Social Freedom [1], used the Dewsbury case to illustrate the tension between individual freedom and the public good. Like others engaged in the public debate on multicultural education in general, and Dewsbury in particular, Hollis avoided the main issue: “What should be the curriculum in a school attended by pupils from different cultural backgrounds?’’Rational debate in this highly controversial area requires an analysis of two fundamental concepts—multicultural education and respect. The former can take three forms, each corresponding with a distinctive curriculum model. One—the Equality option—is inimical to parental rights as guaranteed under the European Convention, but it attracts support because of a widespread failure to recognise that one can respect someone's right to hold and propagate a particular faith (or opinion) without necessarily respecting that faith (or opinion). It is shown that this failure has come about through very lax usage of ‘respect’. It is argued that by respecting persons whatever their values the potential conflict between liberty and equality can be resolved in a free society.     

Recycling Religion: Lance Armstrong’s Postmodern Spirituality of Suffering and Survivorship

For much of his triple career as heroic cancer survivor, sports champion, and, latterly, fallen idol, Lance Armstrong, a professed atheist, has worn a silver necklace with a cross pendant. Why does he wear this Ur-symbol of Christian religious faith? Speculative answers range from ‘residual superstition’ to ‘fashion jewellery’ and ‘tactical deception’. Here, Armstrong’s own declared beliefs as refracted through his autobiographical accounts are analysed within a mono-mythic framework, with particular emphasis on ‘survivorship’, his implicit spirituality of suffering. The Armstrong case of a personalised construction of faith praxis sheds light on the eclectic ‘liquid’ religio-spiritual style of postmodernism. It helps portray the negotiation of the religious-in-the-secular, the sacred-in-the-profane (and vice versa), and illuminates the problematic nature of dualistic accounts of religion and spirituality in contemporary culture. Armstrong’s ‘recycling’ of traditional religious iconography out of context of origin demonstrates the persistence, durability, and elasticity of religio-spiritual symbolic culture.     

Do You Have the Heart to Come to Faith? A Look at Anti‐Climacus' Reading of Matthew 11.6

In Practice in Christianity, Søren Kierkegaard's pseudonym, Anti‐Climacus enters into an extended engagement with Matthew 11.6, ‘Blessed is he who takes no offense at me’. In so doing, he comes to an understanding that ‘the possibility of offense’ characterises the ‘crossroad’ at which one either comes to faith in Christ's revelation or rejects it. Such a choice, as he is well aware, cannot be made from a neutral standpoint, and so he is led to propose that it is ‘the thoughts of the heart’ (i.e. a person's disposition) that constitute the pivotal factor in determining whether or not God will reconcile a person into the Christian faith. In this paper, I discuss Anti‐Climacus' interpretation of Mt. 11.6 and consider his reasons for interpreting a person's predisposition as being so decisive for faith.     

‘Joining into God's breath’: travail of the negative as a connection between mysticism and political activism

This essay argues that a negative hermeneutics, i.e., a hermeneutics that takes its starting point from the experience of gaps, failures, and limits, is a suitable lens for the study of mysticism. It uses the concept of travail of the negative, which focuses on the dynamics of a continuous ‘unsaying’ and ‘subverting’ of traditional expressions of faith and religious practice, to explore the connection between aspects of practical and theoretical negativity in mystical expressions. It suggests that this approach to mystical theology makes an important contribution to the wider theological discourse and encourages theology to take the fundamental character of negation seriously.     

Hidden feelings 1945-95

Abstract

It was a fact learnt early in life: wherever I travelled in Europe as a teenager, it paid me to explain that I was Dutch, not German. And when I left home at 18, in search of the elusive key to good faith and freedom, and came to Britain, crossing the Channel to reach the sole part of Europe untouched by enemy invasion, I felt I was welcomed like a lost daughter; many people told me of the part they played in the liberation of Holland in 1945. And now, fifty years after the historic events of the Second World War have passed, I still like to invoke the ‘magic’ if I can. While staying in a bed and breakfast in Coventry recently, I pointed out to the landlady that a morning call, as written down by the German guest, was requested at 7.15, instead of, as she had read, at 9.15. ‘Oh’, she said, annoyed, realizing the mistake: ‘Do they cross their number seven? We never do’. I was instantly eager to clear my name: ‘The Dutch never do so either’     

EYES WIDE SHUT: A RESPONSE TO JEAN-LUC MARION's ACCOUNT OF THE JOURNEY TO EMMAUS

In “ ‘They Recognised Him; and He Became Invisible to Them’ ” (Modern Theology, Vol. 18 no. 2 April 2002, pp. 145–152), Marion uses the gospel account of the journey to Emmaus to argue that faith provides a conceptual interpretation of revelation after it has occurred. This response to Marion argues that what he describes is only a derivative sense of faith. In its primary sense, faith is hermeneutic; faith is an existential commitment that makes it possible for revelation to be made manifest. Contra Marion, revelation does not simply impose itself on us; rather, it must be actively received and recognised in the meaning‐filled world of a recipient's faith.