Kierkegaard saw that he was an individual exception
to the general rule and so were Jesus, Paul, and Augustine
and he doubted that they would be foolish about married life.
II.2.3 The Absurd Contingency of Unlimited Voices
Søren was a troubled young man with many relation problems.
He fell in love with Regina, the love of his life, and they got engaged
and that was a serious promise for him, but he broke the engagement.
Søren was in fear and trembling about breaking his commitment.
How much would it hurt her? What consequences would it have for him?
Fear and anxiety are two distinct passions for fear is a being
threatened by something definite such as a bear growling at me
as we come face to face unexpectedly out in the woods unarmed.
Anxiety is being threatened by the indefinite or something that
may or may not be which is the meaning of contingency.
Formal logicians work with abstract ideas such as “the necessary,”
“the possible” and “impossible;” but once you think about
the actual with all its concrete possibilities you are outside of
the realm of formal logic and fear becomes anxiety as the definite
becomes indefinite in the blurring boundaries of relating contingency.
As Søren thought about making his promise then breaking it he
saw many actual possibilities or contingencies for himself and Regina.
In The Exordium, or the out of order, of Fear and Trembling he
experimented with some of the real concrete existential contingencies.
Johannes de Silentio saw that Isaac could be devastated as he
saw that he was to be the sacrificial victim and he could have
taken offence at God, so to prevent that, Abraham could tell
him that it was not God’s command but his own demonic will.
That way Isaac could have kept faith in the God of Abraham.
In contingency two Abraham could have become dejected
and abject by wondering how God could be so monstrous to do this.
In contingency three Abraham could have concluded that even
to believe in God’s command was the sin of child murder.
In contingency four Isaac could have lost his faith.
Søren had these and many more unlimited voices speaking
within himself and such complexity made logic absurd.
II.2.4 The Absurd Contingency of Abraham’s Faith in the Promise
In part three of Fear and Trembling, Eulogy on Abraham, Silentio
laments that life’s unlimited absurd contingencies could bring
us poor humans to the defiant defeat of doubt, dread and despair.
Søren was so tempted when he felt called upon to break his promise
as was Abraham when God seemed to be breaking His promise.
But the challenges of complexities’ contingencies can become
opportunities for heroes, poets and orators to become great.
“One became great by expecting the possible, another by
expecting the eternal; but he who experienced the impossible became
the greatest of all” and, of course, that is exactly what Abraham did.
God looked like an impossible contradiction of opposites as
Abraham went forth in faith to do His will because Isaac
was the means by which God could keep His promise and by
demanding Isaac as a sacrificial victim God would be taking
away the means by which the promise could be kept with honor.
The promise was for this finite, temporal life in that it
had to do with a very large family and a very prosperous land
and somehow becoming a blessing for all of humankind.
So Abraham believed that God was only tempting him and
that if he went forth in good faith to do God’s will in sacrificing
Isaac God would somehow give him back Isaac a second time.
In his faith Abraham so believed and trusted in God that
he reconciled the absurd opposites of God: God who
promises good and wonderful things with God, the monster,
who demands the sacrifice of Isaac and thus the end of the promise.
But Kierkegaard had just as much to reconcile for he did
identify with his father’s melancholia and he did feel like
a hunched back, little creep whom all of a sudden Regina redeemed.
But he felt called to leave her and never get her back in
this life a second time, but that had to do with the new
complexity of Christian faith in the sacrifice of God’s Son.
II.2.5 The Absurd Contingency of Double Movement Leaping
In his Eulogy Silentio writes that Abraham was the greatest of all
“great by that power whose strength is powerlessness,
great by that wisdom whose secret is foolishness
great by that hope whose form is madness
great by that love that is hatred to oneself.”
This is the language or the logos of the Cross as Paul sees it.
It is as if Silentio is quoting Paul here and this is the core
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