Abraham- A Knight of Faith
Abraham and Sarah had a baby boy, just as the Lord promised. They named him Isaac. They loved Isaac. They taught him to choose the right and to trust the Lord. The Lord promised Abraham and Sarah that through Isaac their family would grow to bless the whole earth. But one day the Lord told Abraham to take Isaac to Mount Moriah and offer Isaac as a sacrifice.
Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love — Isaac — and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.”
Abraham puts his entire faith in God and gets ready to sacrifice his son as asked by God.
Now in the bible, we don’t really get much help because it doesn’t try to explain how Abraham feels at any moment in the story. The bible only tells us that he was so faithful to God that he was ready to sacrifice his son. But why would any father do such a cruel act to his own son?
This is where Kierkegaard comes in. He fills the void and tries to tell us what must be going on in Abraham’s mind.
According to Kierkegaard, faith requires doubt in order to be true faith rather than blind faith. Faith is something you choose to believe in spite of being doubtful about it. And this is what Abraham did.
Abraham is pinned between two commands from god. He was promised that his descendants would come through Isaac; so when God called Abraham to sacrifice Isaac it created a bit of a problem. His limited understanding of the finite world could not allow for these two things to be true at the same time. How could God promise that Isaac would be the means of his descendants if god also wants Isaac to be sacrificed?
We try to find some moral reasoning behind god’s plan that is bound by human standards. We try to understand the motif of an infinite being within the confines of finite laws. So we couldn’t find any. According to us, there is no reason for god to ask for the sacrifice of Issac at the hands of his own father. In other words, the story of Abraham is completely void of any human reasoning.
Now let’s go back to Kierkegaard.
Kierkegaard talks about three characters that define the human population at large.
- The aesthetic hedonist character
- The ethical character
- The religious character
Kierkegaard claims that the vast majority of people are stuck in the aesthetic hedonist mode of life. These people don’t have any strong moral code. Aesthetic hedonists consume on the first level of existence. They only seek the pleasure of the body and not of the spirit. For them, good and bad come from within. Whatever they feel to be good is the absolute good and whatever they feel to be bad is the absolute bad according to their morals.
Next comes the ethical. They are the select few who have escaped the hedonist life. The ethical life is presented as a higher mode of existence where the person understands that good actually isn’t dependent on how you feel right and wrong but is actually based on something higher than oneself.
Here Kierkegaard calls an ethical person “the knight of infinite resignation”. He says that a knight of infinite resignation is a dancer who is able to leap from the finite world into the infinite world; the infinite world being the ultimate truth that transcends human thought, spiritual truths, and things above us. While the hedonist gets their truth from within themselves, the ethical gets their truths from outside and above themselves. The truth shines forth from a higher place.
Kierkegaard adds that anyone who is a true knight of infinite resignation never loses who he really is. He doesn’t lose himself in anything and nothing consumes him or his soul. The aesthetic person may very well lose himself in alcohol or womanizing or making money but the knight of infinite resignation doesn’t do that. Although he may have interests in some things, he doesn’t let that interest consume him. He protects his soul from losing into the desires of his interests. He doesn’t give away his soul for anything, since by giving away his soul, he would lose himself.
Since he doesn’t lose himself in his own desires like that of the aesthetic hedonists, he is above them. But we will see that this also isn’t the ideal state to be in. Here you are stuck in limbo. You neither belong to heaven, nor to earth.
The knight of infinite resignation knows that the true value of things will not be realized in this finite world. They aren’t blinded by the fantasy of a perfect world but rather they see the impossibility of a perfect world in this finite dimension and instead of moping around and depressed at the problems in the world, they are merely aware of the good there could be and continue to live in the imperfect world.
In other words, a knight of infinite resignation denies the occurrence of an impossibility. He is aware of the logical and rational state of the world and accepts it wholeheartedly. For him, it is childish to dream of any impossibility from occurring. The knight of infinite resignation does not think all things are possible in the finite world.
The knight of infinite resignation is able to leap into the infinite but is not able to fully grasp what he sees. He may learn spiritual truths and higher morality but he cannot fully understand what to do with what he sees. As I mentioned earlier, he is trapped in limbo. He belongs neither fully to earth, nor to heaven. He has risen higher than normal human beings no doubt, but still, he clings to the reasons and morals that his finite being can comprehend.
So if Abraham were to merely be a knight of infinite resignation he would have never been able to follow god’s command. He would be a fool for thinking that God would raise his son from the dead because it is seemingly impossible so. But since Abraham went forth and did what God commanded him to do, he moved beyond the values and morals of a knight of infinite resignation.
He is what Kierkegaard calls “A knight of faith”. Now we enter the religious mode of existence. A knight of faith is the ideal religious character according to Kierkegaard.
The knight of faith takes everything we just said about the knight of infinite resignation and goes one step farther. So in Kierkegaard's eyes, in order to become a knight of faith, it is essential to first become a knight of infinite resignation.
In Kierkegaard’s words:
you must understand your eternal validity through the ethical mode of life before you can even begin to grasp your own existence by the means of faith.
Whereas the knight of infinite resignation gets trapped between heaven and earth, leaping into the infinite for a mere moment and returning to the finite world; the knight of faith can truly and seamlessly leap into the infinite and back to the finite with no difficulty at all.
In other words, we can say that the knight of infinite resignation neither belongs to heaven nor earth, but the knight of faith belongs both to heaven and earth. His faith is so strong that he can embrace infinity itself. For him, everything is possible- even in the finite world.
Kierkegaard puts it like this:
to have faith is to lose your mind and win god. We are to become fools for the sake of god. We are to believe just as Abraham did that god could even do the impossible. We must take the leap of faith in order to become a knight of faith.
The knight of faith blends seamlessly into the material world and is able to enjoy every aspect of the world. They know that God works all things together for the good of those who love him and who are called according to his purpose if they get stuck.
They do not worry when they are mocked for their faith because they know that they’ll be blessed. They have no fear when the news tells them of some impending danger because they understand that whether they live or die their soul will go on to live in eternity because that is what God has promised through his son. They know that there is nothing to fear when God is with them and no one can stand against them. This is what a knight of faith looks like.
This is the highest mode of existence according to Kierkegaard, and Abraham portrayed it perfectly.
