strategy for winning over the grudging elder brother
has the three parts of: (1) loving him as more important so that
with the like for like he will love the prodigal as more important,
(2) praising love so that he too will come to praise love, and
(3) recollecting the dead so that he will do likewise.
Praising the God who is Love praises all love that truly loves
and praises all of Love’s lovely beings so that the elder brother
knows that he is always being loved and praised by the prodigal.
If they both pray for the dead and trust the dead to pray for them
then in the community of Saints which is Jesus’ Mystical Body
no matter what happens they can trust in eventual reconciliation.
In his heart and authorship Søren understood Socrates by
reconciling him with Jesus and Christ with Socrates.
II.2 Reconciling the God-Man and Abraham
II.2.1 The Absurd Contingency of the Single Individual
S.K. writes his pseudonymical literature as indirect communication
to let himself and his reader be deceived out of self-deceit into truth.
Thus, Johannes de Silentio or John of Silence, is writing about many
secret affairs with this story about Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac.
It is a story about Kierkegaard and his estranged father and it is
a story about Søren sacrificing Regina with the broken engagement.
It is a story about Abraham, the father of faith, who believed in
God’s promise of land, nation and name which could be fulfilled
through Isaac, but, if Isaac is to be sacrificed then God and
his promise are absurd for the promise depends totally on Isaac.
So the story is about how faith reconciles Abraham and God.
All the stories in the Abraham cycle are about threats to
either land, or nation or name, but Abraham endures and
the threats and challenges become opportunities that show that
Abraham is truly called by God to be the father of his people.
But this threat is the worst of all because it is not a threat
from other people against the promise, but from God himself.
If God is making the promise and then breaking it he is absurd.
But, by virtue of the absurd Abraham believes and gets Isaac back.
However, Kierkegaard does not get Regina back even though he
thinks that he might be given faith that will let him marry.
This lets Kierkegaard see that for Jesus things are much worse than
for Abraham, for in this case the Father does sacrifice his Son.
What kind of reconciliation can there be when child sacrifice
which ended for the Jews with Abraham is reinitiated with Jesus?
What counted for Abraham was his family and the promise.
But now Søren begins to see that love is a matter for each single
individual’s conscience and things are much more absurd.
He is absurdly called to be a sacrifice as a witness for his generation.
He is not even a part of the whole so that his witnessing can
be logically understood by his generation for he is an exception.
II.2.2 The Absurd Contingency of Postmodern Doubting
Johannes de Silentio’s Fear and Trembling builds up through
eight parts beginning with a Preface about modern doubting.
Descartes, the father of modern philosophy, begins by doubting
and in his very doubting gets his Archimedean point which is
certainty that ends the doubting and lets him get his system.
St. Augustine actually began this modern move when he
hit upon the notion: “Si fallor, sum.” “If I fail, I am.”
Descartes who copies St. Augustine at several key points
argued that the “Cogito ergo sum,” “I think therefore I am”
is logically sound and that to contradict it is self-contradictory.
Kierkegaard began as a good modernist with Augustine and Luther.
When he fell in love with Regina he was certain that he should marry.
But in being called to break the engagement he discovered Socrates
and his ongoing skepticism and he was in doubt and his
life and writing became a constant experimenting in doubt.
After writing his thesis about the irony of Socratic doubting
he then wrote Either/Or which is about either various forms
of aesthetic non-married immediacy or ethical reflective
married commitment and as a good Lutheran he felt he should marry.
But, just as he began to write Fear and Trembling he learned that
Regina was engaged to another and that shook him with doubt.
For Abraham and Luther there was no doubt about the universal
value of marriage for Luther had tried an Augustinian monastery
and he found that celibacy was not for him and he married.
Good Lutherans are certain that if they want direction
in their marriage and family life they should go to a pastor
who knows about marital problems from his own real experience.
How could an old celibate be a good pastor
