Genesis 22:1-14 (Abraham Sacrifices His Son)

Eulogies by Kierkegaard, as published in his 1843 book ’Fear and Trembling’. How do you deal with the conviction that you are being called by God to go and kill your own son? How do you deal with that conviction, and how do you deal with the God whom you perceive to be behind that conviction? These were the questions that so fascinated Kierkegaard in his reflections, and have indeed absorbed a great many great minds before and since.

I had a conversation with a friend in the pub on Friday. "You love other people", he said, "because when you show love to them, you feel good in yourself." He wasn’t just saying this about me, of course, but was offering a comprehensive theory of human motivation - that people love other people because it makes them feel good about themselves.

"But" I countered "don’t we generally think of genuine love as something which actually begins after the good feelings come to an end? It’s easy to look after your aging mother when you’re enjoying her company and feeling good about what you’re doing. But it’s when you’re sick to death of looking after her, when you want your own life back and can’t handle her whinging any more, but you push on and you give her your time and your energy anyway - isn’t that what genuine love is: not feeling good about what you’re doing, but doing what you know is right despite how you feel about what you’re doing?"

Surely this is what love is - doing what we are called to do by God, despite what we might feel like doing, because we know that it is the right thing to do. That’s what love is.

But what do we call it when we feel called by God to do something which we don’t just not feel like doing, but something that seems furthermore ridiculous, and something which we feel is actually morally wrong - something that we don’t just emotionally recoil from, but something that also strikes us as being irrational and even wicked?

If love is ’doing what you’re called to do, despite how you might feel’, what label do you apply to the act of ’doing what you’re called to do, despite how you think and feel and despite your own God-given moral convictions which are urging you to do the opposite?’ What do we call that? ’Faith’ Kierkegaard would say.

"Faith ... is not the immediate inclination of the heart but the paradox of existence" says Kierkegaard. "While Abraham arouses my admiration," he says, "he also appalls me. The person who ... sacrifices himself for duty gives up the finite in order to grasp on to the infinite... The tragic hero gives up what is certain for what is still more certain... But the person who gives up the universal (i.e. his universal moral principles) to grasp something still higher that is not the universal, what does he do?" How do you understand him?

Oh, to live by principle! Oh, to live according to straightforward rules of duty and commandment. Oh, to simply deal with God the divine lawgiver, who can be grasped and dealt with as straightforwardly as any human magistrate! But to be a ’knight of faith’ (to use Kierkegaard’s term), to venture out into the darkness - not only the darkness of an unknown future but also the darkness of morally and spiritually ambiguous terrain - holding only the hand of this God...! Who would have the courage to take up that calling? Who indeed?