Risking Proclamation, Respecting Difference. Chris Boesel

extent to which the ethical-universal, as opposed to the paradox of faith, is constituted by the ability to be understood. As Hannay notes, Hegel’s conception of the ethical is marked by the possibility of being understood through “sharable thoughts” of “common language” that “suffice for people to describe and justify their actions and attitudes to one another” (Hannay, “Introduction,” 10–11). This is the persistent thorn in Johannes’s side in relation to Abraham; he cannot understand him. The way in which Abraham constitutes an un-subsumable surd calling into question the adequacy of a “common language” by which faith can be understood foreshadows the “postmodern” nature of the argument.

9. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 86.

10. Ibid., 88

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid., 90. At issue here, in the relation of Kierkegaard to Hegel, are diametrically opposed understandings of God and God’s relation to the universal (conceived of as the ethical life of the societal whole, the world-historical). Whereas Hegel understands God to be in continuity with—indeed, within—the world-historical, Abraham stands in a relation to a God independent of and over against the societal whole and the world-historical. It is Hegel’s understanding of God and the God-relation, i.e., of faith, that is the ultimate target of Kierkegaard’s critique: “Where Hegel goes wrong . . . is in talking about faith.” (84) However, Hegel’s misconception of faith, from Kierkegaard’s point of view, is clearly related to distortions in Hegel’s assumptions regarding the ethical. A “new category” (88) for genuine faith, then, would have transformative consequences for a conception of the ethical.

13. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 73. The brackets are mine.

14. Hannay, “Introduction,” 14, 19.

15. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 77.

16. Ibid., 52.

17. Ibid., 67.

18. Ibid., 68. My emphasis.

19. Ibid., 69.

20. Ibid., 69–70. The brackets are mine.

21. Crites, Twilight, 75. Similarly, Hannay suggests that what the sacrifice in this story symbolizes is the extent to which Abraham was willing and able to “accept that human life, Isaac’s, Abraham’s, everyone’s, acquires its meaning and value from the source of creation itself, not from the . . . forces of creation that confront a person and bear him along in the world” (Hannay, “Introduction,” 14). My own suggestion is that it may be interesting, and perhaps even edifying, to reflect on the figure and meaning of Christian baptism here, as symbolic of precisely this Abrahamic double-movement of faith—giving one’s life away (dying) to receive it back from the hand of God (rising to new life).

22. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 98.

23. Pertinent here is the relation in Kierkegaard’s thinking between the incognito of Abraham and the happy burgher as both knights of faith (indistinguishable to the neutral observer from a murderer and a bourgeois philistine, respectively) and that of the career of Jesus of Nazareth as God incarnate in time (for example, in Philosophical Fragments). Also pertinent for our central problem is the extent to which, given a certain incognito, faith leaves any discernible marks or traces in the concrete world by which it might be recognized and distinguished from unjustifiable violences. Kierkegaard may allow for such marks and traces, despite the incognito. For instance: 1. Faith is based on the determinate content of the promise of God. 2. A knight of faith never takes disciples. 3. A knight of faith is a witness and never a teacher. On Kierkegaard’s terms, then, it would be perfectly appropriate, indeed, mandatory, to make an unambiguous and adamant distinction between a knight of faith and, say, a Jim Jones, or, closer to our concerns, a Nazi clergyperson of the German Evangelical Church.

24. I am following Kendall Soulen in this particular phrasing. See, Soulen, God of Israel.

25. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 98.

26. Ibid., 96.

27. Kierkegaard not only suggests that Hegelian Christianity is unable to do justice to the reality of Abraham’s faith (and, for Kierkegaard, true Christian faith), but sarcastically chides its lack of consistency in continuing to praise Abraham as the hero and father of faith when in fact it can only conclude, if it is consistent, that he is a murderer to be abhorred.

28. Said, Orientalism, 27.

29. Hegel, On Christianity, 182, 185.

30. Ibid., 187.

31. Ibid., 186.

32. Ibid., 187–88.

33. Ibid., 187.

34. Ibid., 188. The brackets are mine.

35. Ibid. The brackets are mine.

36. Ibid., 145.

37. Alistair Hannay unpacks this distinction nicely in his introduction to Fear and Trembling. See especially 15.

38. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 54–55.

39. Crites, Twilight of Christendom, 104.

40. Hannay, “Introduction,” 30–31. My emphasis.

      part ii

      The Problem: A Theological Exemplar

      “Salvation is from the Jews.”

      —John