Fear and Trembling (Essay Sample)

Fear and Trembling Introduction In life, we have to have faith in something, for without faith then life would be an endless void. In his book, Fear and Trembling, Johannes de Silentio (1843), analyzes the paradox of faith through the story of Abraham and Isaac. Here is a man whom the Lord commands to leave his ancestral land and start off to a strange land. Abraham does not reason but leaves immediately heeding to the Lord's command. Such strong was his faith that when the Lord asked him to count the stars, Abraham believed that he would father a nation greater than the count of the stars, yet he did not have a son. The Lord appears to him again and promises him a son through his wife, Sarah. At this moment, both Abraham and Sarah are ripe with age and past the childbearing age, as cited by the physical realm. Sarah finds such a promise absurd. Still, Abraham believed, and Sarah bore him a son, Isaac. Journey with Abraham to this stage and consider his last temptation to measure his faith in God. If you endured all those years of impotence, received God's promise of a great nation through your son, then the Lord asks you to sacrifice the only link to the great nation, it would require every potion of your being to heed to the command. Examining the command from a human understanding, probably many people would not sacrifice the son. Such an activity requires a wrestle with the moral and ethical that requires a father to love his son. Every father has a moral duty to protect his family against any harm. However, to have faith is to forego the moral and the ethical and act under the absurd. Abraham is ready to sacrifice his son because his faith surpasses the ethical. Even when Isaac is the only link to his greatness, he proceeds to prepare an altar, bind his son, and raise the knife, ready to heed to the command of the Lord. That consistent wrestling with God saw Abraham and Sarah wait on the promises. Through the story, Johannes provides a broader understanding of the concepts of faith, the absurd, the leap of faith, and the three spheres of existence. According to Johannes, "If there were no eternal consciousness in a man… if a bottomless void never satiated lay hidden beneath all–what then would life be but despair." A random life is meaningless according to the text. To give life meaning, God created human beings and the poet and the hero. The hero can only bask in the glory of the hero, yet they cannot do like the hero did. The poet can only praise the hero and in so doing, unite with him. For a man, greatness is as high as whatever he loves. Loving oneself constrains one within the self, loving others helps one grow by his selfless devotion. However, the greatest of them all is he who loves the Lord. All these men become great according to their expectations. Nevertheless, the one who has faith in God surpasses all in greatness because he believes in a power that is beyond everything. Abraham rises above all for believing in God. His power came from his impotence, which would appear foolishness in human understanding. There is no joy in a family without a child. Still, Abraham held on to his belief that God would provide a foundation for his ancestry. Abraham was great through his wisdom, which can only be regarded to reside in foolishness. His hope for a child, even at such an old age, was madness. However, Abraham held on to his relationship with God. Sarah laughed because the waiting was overdue, according to human thinking, to welcome a child at an old age. Thus, Abraham's love and believe for the Lord was beyond human reasoning. It was the faith that drove Abraham from his ancestral land, and it was the faith, too, that led to the promise God gave him. Through faith, Abraham had a son when it was deemed impossible. According to Johannes (1843), three spheres of existence contradict the final temptation presented by God to Abraham, including the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. After the promise of an heir is fulfilled through the birth of Isaac, God commands Abraham to sacrifice the only son on Mount Moriah. To understand the agony that overcame Abraham during this journey does not require a mere consumption of religious texts but to unite with Abraham and experience the fear and trembling. A person who lives according to the ethical bases their existence on rational principles. While the ethical provides a sense of meaning, a person is bound by the moral duty, which leads to guilt where the moral principles are not met. Johannes, for this case, provides the examples of heroes who sacrificed their children to fulfill moral obligations. One of them is Jephthah sacrificed his daughter as a moral obligation to the victory against the Ammonites. Since the ethical is universal, it is exposed without a secret for anything private becomes unethical. The ethical is an end by itself, but it is not the highest good of human existence. The only thing that goes beneath the ethical is a sin. However, faith is a private matter. Faith exalts the individual above morals and virtues. As Johannes (1843) states, "faith is this paradox, that the particular is higher than the universal." Thus, one who moves beyond the ethical does not abandon it but instead accepts to gain elevation becomes superior to the universal. Abraham's actions can only exist in a higher religion sphere, where thought and reason do not have access. Unlike Jephthah, who acted within the ethical, Abraham, by sacrificing his son, transcends above the ethical and moves beyond it to achieve a higher end. Abraham's actions can only be considered in terms of faith because they do not relate to the general and the common. A person of faith has a moral duty to God that is beyond anything in the universe. Therefore, fulfilling that moral duty to the Lord transcends above the morals and virtues of the physical realm. Thus, for a person of faith, consuming the text on Abraham should not draw one into tears or awe of his greatness. Instead, the text presents the challenges expected to test a believer in the quest to strengthen their faith in God. One has to prove their belief in God, even in the most extra-ethical situations. The justification of...