The Arational Leap of Faith

It seems that there's been some confusion in dealing with Kierkegaard's articulation of faith as an embrace of paradox. Let's keep in mind that a paradox is a statement that is logically impossible. This could be something as simple as A=~A (for those of you who haven't taken Logic yet, that's to be read as "A equals not-A") or the much more complex example that Kierkegaard gives us, which he takes to be the very model of Judeo-Christian faith. Let's try to explicate this paradox a bit.

Before all this binding and murder business happened, Abraham asked God for a son, which was a tall order because he and his wife were both very old (though, let's not forget, Abraham did have a son, Ishmael, with Hagar, a slave woman. This is a rather dramatic story, kind of like an Old Testament-themed episode of Dynasty). God tells Abraham that he will be the father of many nations and gives him Isaac. There was much rejoicing. A few years down the line, God says to Abraham, "Kill me a son." Rather than replying (as the prophet Bob Dylan would have it) "Man, you must be putting me on," Abraham dutifully takes his son up the mountain and gets ready to slaughter him.

Okay, we all know this story, right? Kierkegaard tells it five different times, for christ's sake (religion joke!). The key to understanding the paradox, though, comes with that first part of the story, where God tells Abraham that Isaac will have lots of babies. Now, we're dealing with the Old Testament God here, which means that he's not messing around; this God is omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, omnibenevolent (yeah, I know), and others. He's also without sin, which means he's not lying when he says anything. So when he tells Abraham that Isaac will have lots of babies, he absolutely means business. The same goes for when he tells Abraham to offer up Isaac as a sacrifice.

This is the paradox, then; God, an infallible deity, guarantees two things: first, that Isaac will have many children; second, that God wants Abraham to kill him. In the end, God changes his mind, but that doesn't mean that his intention for Isaac to die was untrue. The point, then, is not that God is asking Abe to believe a lie, but rather to believe in two incommensurable truths, which is to say that God is saying, "A=~A. Have fun." Abe has faith because he believes in both incommensurable truths. His faith, then, is not a belief in one true thing and one false thing that he thought was true, but a belief in something that is completely impossible given the laws of logic or reason.

Abraham, then, did not "rationalize" the situation. To do that would have been impossible. God's command doesn't "make sense," not even to Abraham. It is absolutely senseless. This means that faith has absolutely nothing to do with reason. He calls this the "leap of faith": it doesn't make sense, it won't make sense, and when you do it everyone else is probably going to think that you're insane. Faith is the philosophical equivalent of a trust-fall off of the Burj Dubai. But it isn't irrational; irrationality implies having the knowledge that taking the leap is, in fact, a bad idea, and doing it anyway. The leap of faith, then, is arational, meaning that the decision makes no appeal to reason whatsoever. Does it make sense? Of course not. But that's the point.