Walking in Faith: Fear and Trembling

We come now to the end of my undergraduate years. If you've been with me since the beginning of this series you know that this is book number 10, which also makes it the end of year number 5 (or my fourth year of studies, since I started at the end of high school). 

One of my last classes was a required 400-level limited enrollment seminar class. In this class 10 students, along with the professor, did close readings of key texts in religious studies. The first two weeks were lectures. In each of the remaining 10 classes one student gave a presentation on one of the 10 textbooks and then we discussed it. Our grades were determined by in class participation in discussions and that one presentation. No finals. No multiple sets of assignments. Just the teachers opinion of your engagement and familiarity with the material as well as one big assignment.

The Prof. of this particular class was wise, a great teacher, and a skilled facilitator of discussion. I enjoyed the class a great deal. 

Book selection was interesting. The book we were assigned determined the topic and timing of our presentation. Strategically, this led to an interesting question. Do you prioritize trying to get the book(s) you most want to present on or do you prioritize your preferred timing?

Me? I wanted to be gracious to my fellow students and therefore choose last.When the dust settled there was one reading no one wanted to do: Ch. 3 of The Gift of Death by Jacques Derrida. 

This was one of the shorter readings; there were only a few that didn't involve a whole book. But it did come earlier in the course. Week 2 or 3? I'm not sure now. What I didn't know was that Derrida is notoriously difficult reading, the shorter reading section meant there was less material to present on, and this author was a particular favorite of our Prof. I suppose it helps to be naive. 

I got to work. It didn't take long to realize both that Derrida was very difficult reading and that starting the book in Chapter 3 wasn't going to get me anywhere. After reading chapter 1 several times it dawned on me that Derrida, in this book anyway, was writing in dialogue. In each of the three chapter Derrida has one main conversation partner in the form of one other major book. I got three more books. 

By the time I had read each chapter alongside of its dialogue partner, including reading chapter 3 more times than any of them and making notes in the margins (which I rarely do!) I felt like I understood Derrida and was ready for my class presentation. So I came to class with my annotated copy of The Gift of Death and did my presentation, explaining chapter 3 as best I could and offering both my thoughts and where I felt we could have fruitful discussion. It was only as I finished and the prof commented that I had done a great job, especially without notes, that I realized what I had done. It definitely helps to be naive. 

The prof had done such a good job leading us in discussion, and I had enjoyed it so much, that I assumed my goal was to present Derrida as clearly as I could so as to enable good discussion afterwards. I was naive, and I got away with it. I did very well in the class. 

I didn't agree with Derrida at all, but found reading him interesting. What I found much more interesting was Derrida's conversation partner for chapter 3: Fear and Trembling by Soren Kierkegaard. Yes, we are finally arriving at the book for this post. 

In this book Kierkegaard seeks to understand Abraham in his time of testing as God asks him to sacrifice his only son. Kierkegaard finds this moment nearly unimaginable and so circles around it from various perspectives, drawing ever closer, but never landing in a place of clear understanding. And this, he asserts, is part of the nature of faith. The portions of this book wherein Kierkegaard wrestles with the nature of faith are the best and most important parts of the book. 

I was in the habit of viewing faith largely as mental assent to a correct list of doctrine. One believes certain things about God and one does not doubt them, but holds fast to the truth. Faith, in this model, quickly comes to be about getting everything right, making sure your system is in place, your theology is clear, because then you will know what you are holding fast to and be firm in the knowledge of your salvation. But this model is deeply flawed and unbiblical. 

Kierkegaard notes this very early in his book: "Even if one were able to render the whole of the content of faith into conceptual form, it would not follow that one had grasped faith, grasped how one came to it, or how it came to one." And why? Because faith is relational as much as it is anything and, as such, it is also difficult. 

Kierkegaard recognizes that God is not always an easy partner in life. Reflecting on Mary's encounter with the angel and the blessing he brought into her life, Kierkegaard points out that "No doubt the angel was a ministering spirit, but he was not an obliging one who went round to all the other young girls in Israel and said: 'Do not despise Mary, something out of the ordinary is happening to her.' The angel came only to Mary, and no one could understand her."

Faith is no easy journey and so Kierkegaard holds up a different picture. A wrestling that we never finish and never grow beyond, which is how it was once looked at: "In those old days it was different. For then faith was a task for a whole lifetime, not a skill thought to be acquired in either days or weeks. When the old campaigner approached the end, had fought the good fight, and kept his faith, his heart was still young enough not to have forgotten the fear and trembling that disciplined his youth and which, although the grown man mastered it, no man altogether outgrows..."

This was a picture of faith that sprung to life for me. It still does. Faith is indeed the task of a lifetime and learning this freed me from the tyranny of faith as intellectual assent to correct ideas. It freed me to pursue God with all of my heart, mind, soul, and strength. It freed me to get things wrong. It freed me to wrestle, as I had been doing already, but now openly, face to face with God as it were, rather than in hiding as if the need to wrestle were shameful. 

Ever since reading Fear and Trembling I have looked to Abraham as an important role model of what it means to walk in faith. Of course I am far from the first to do this; read Galatians. This letter too came to new life for me after reading Fear and Trembling. So, I think, it is obvious why this book makes this list of top forty. Naturally it also introduced me to the works of Soren Kierkegaard. I've read several since, but none with the impact of this first one. 

Note: This post is part of a series which I began here. To see all the posts in the series click the label at the bottom of this post "20yrs40bks".