When reading the story of Abraham, I was struck by a thought: who would align their will with that of a God whose morality you did not share? While I'm not arguing that this is what Abraham did, it turned me on to a simpler point about faith. Faith is not analogous with belief. To simply believe in God is not faith. Faith implies trust, submission, and an ultimate devotion to God's will. Does the God of Abraham deserve such?
Abraham's faith is in a God who is good. From this springs the paradox. How can God's will be anything but good? Yet how can this same God will Abraham to kill his son? This suggests to me one of two things: either...
God is not good,
or
God asked Abraham to believe him to be something he wasn't.
The first case is indeed an alarming one. Should there be a being far more powerful than man with a morality that clashes with that of humanity, what hope has human morality? I am unsure as to how to begin such a consideration. To this point in my life, any appeal to God or suggested evidence for such a being has presumed God's goodness. In this I cannot help but remember Descartes, who saw God's goodness as unquestionable, something inherent to the very idea of God. While I do not take it a proof of God, I find myself grossly lacking in abilities to consider God without goodness.
Since God is good, it would seem then that God tried (and managed) to deceive Abraham. Yet, continuing my examination of Abraham’s God in light of Descartes, let us quote the philosopher himself. God "cannot be a deceiver, for it is manifest by the light of nature that all fraud and deception depend on some defect." By the faculties available to me, it seems God is either entirely beyond my grasp, non-existent, or a deceiver who shares not in my morality. An incomprehensible God certainly lends itself to a reading of the story. Does anyone really understand why an omniscient God would subject his most faithful servant to such trauma under the guise of a test? Here we find perhaps the greatest theological meat. Faith is not even the alignment of one’s will with God. Rather than a purely internal process, faith is action. While God knew how Abraham would act, it is only in such action that faith resides. This is the incredibly powerful message of Abraham’s story.
Will, I like this post a lot because you bring out the seemingly paradoxical reality of God in the story of Abraham. In one instance we're led to believe in a God who is both benevolent and providential, but this is clearly not the case in the story of Abraham, as God's command to Abraham to kill his son appears more malevolent than anything else. Good point. Moreover, the irony also exists when comparing God's morality to Abraham's. Evidently Abraham was torn inwardly when God commanded him to murder his son. Yet his submission to God seemed to overpower his moral doubt. Thus by bending the knee to the will of God, he replaced his own conception of morality with that of God's, whom most would think ironic seeing as that Abraham's morality, founded in that of Jewish law, came from God himself. Indeed this is a powerful message because it explores inexplicable boundaries of faith.
ReplyDeleteThe appeal to Descartes is reasonable, but I am not sure any rationalists actually still exist, as no one tends to take the Meditations as an accurate way to affirm his faith or the intelligible world (as you note it is not sufficient justification for you). Plus, Kierkegaard is highly critical of Decartes' project in general, as anyone can simply doubt, it is much more valuable to comprehend something than to doubt it. This seems in line with another paradox, why does God allow evil to exist if he is good, and so forth. Also, I agree that action plays a large role in faith, as it cannot be speculative for Kierkegaard.
ReplyDeletei see the point that you are trying to make, but i think you lost sight of the story of Abraham. In Abraham, the story bears no morality while im sure that that might very well have been a complication for Abraham, i think the more important point lies in Isaac. In that God made a covenant with Abraham to make Isaac that father of nations, but later asks Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. In this way, ether God lied to Abraham or he is making a test of faith for him. As Dr.J rightly pointed out in class on Tue, Abraham must believe two separate things that together are impossible: that Isaac will live and Isaac will die. Also a note on descartes in the 5th meditation where he lays out more of God's character, i don't believe he every actually uses the exact word "good" just might want to double check for the exact word.
ReplyDeleteI think that you're demonstrating Kierkegaard's point: it is very, very hard to accept paradox. It seems to me that the point Kierkegaard is trying to make is not that God asked Abraham to believe something that wasn't true, but rather to believe two things that are true but incommensurable—i.e. a logical contradiction. Abraham's faith did not consist of a belief in the untrue because an untruth is the belief (perhaps even a rational one) in a possibility which does not exist; for Kierkegaard, faith is the belief in the impossible, which means that, rationally speaking, the object of belief cannot exist.
ReplyDeleteThis is a subtle difference, but a vital one. Abraham had faith because he believed—simultaneously—that Isaac would give him many grandchildren and great-grandchildren AND that Isaac would die.
I think you draw out a very important tension in Kierkegaard’s work. I do have a question concerning the part about God not being a deceiver. From Descartes point of view would it be ok if God deceived someone in the short run so that they might experience a greater truth in the long run? I think it is also important to question whether God is deceiving Abraham in this story. Doesn’t God only ask Abraham to kill his son and then let him off the hook, no deception? If it is indeed just a change in divine orders wouldn’t anything Abraham interpreted about God be an inaccurate conclusion and not a deception on God’s part?
ReplyDeleteI agree that it is very difficult to conceive of a god that is not absolutely good. Even if the acts that god commits are not good, they always seem to be justified with a greater end. Something like a greater good can only be achieved through an act that is not good, or something like that. I wonder if this is another option other than what you proposed, or rather an activity of faith. What I mean by that is believing that god has a "plan" or design for a greater good is an activity of faith.
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