Where Oprah Ends...and We Begin...Again

Nearly seven years ago, a group of five (or so) undergraduates attempted to compensate for the thousands of dollars they were compelled to spend yearly on remedial composition, mathematics, and even physical education courses. The idea was to offset "Rhetoric and Research," "Health and Fitness," and "Why I Kissed Dating Goodbye" with Herodotus, Plato, Kierkegaard, Marx, and Dostoevsky. The project began with marked enthusiasm, but proved abortive as priorities shifted in that golden autumn of 2000. The seeds were planted, however, for friendships and shared interests that continue to thrive, and an elementary appreciation for the work of the great writers and thinkers mentioned above. But the work of that Cleveland salon was never finished. (Come to think of it, if you've ever had the pleasure of standing in line---or before the bench---at the Bradley County courthouse, you'll find that no Cleveland salon has finished its work.) Big hair aside, I propose the reassembly of that reading group. If no actual reading gets done, the world wide web---a blog in particular---is still a perfect forum for pronouncing half-baked opinions. But we must begin ad fontes. A review of the study is perhaps in order before it can proceed, and so I take the opportunity to open the dialogue with a few thoughts on Fear and Trembling (a book claimed as a favorite by my esteemed colleagues herodotus/e e cummings and Dr. Zeius):

I leave room for others to comment or post on the problemata of the teleological suspension of the ethical and one's absolute duty to God. Though the latter of these was, and is, for myself the most pertinent of Kierkegaard's points, the issue I had the most difficulty understanding upon first read (on a plane from Amsterdam to Amman) was that of the "double movement" of the Knight of Faith. After contrasting the hero, who performs great deeds, with the poet, who tells us of these feats, Kierkegaard explores more fully the "active" life of the hero. It is the double movement---the movement of infinity---that separates the Knight of Faith from the suffering, Romantic Knight of Infinite Resignation. This latter has a modicum of belief, in that he believes his longing will be fulfilled (in Kierkegaard's example, that he will be united to his love, an unattainable princess), but through human impossibility, that fulfillment will have to come in the next life and perhaps be consummated merely metaphorically, rather than literally. Fear and Trembling is, of course, a meditation on the Biblical account of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac, and for Kierkegaard, Abraham is a Knight of Faith. Like the Knight of Infinite Resignation, Abraham has a longing, has been given a promise of its fulfillment: that he would, in his old age, be given an heir and that that heir would in turn father an entire nation. Despite the absurdity of the promise, Abraham believed, and his belief was rewarded when, at ninety and one hundred, respectively, his wife and he were given a son. This belief was transformed into faith, or at least, proof of his already-existent faith was given, by Abraham's obedience to God's command to sacrifice his son, the apparent fulfillment of the original promise. If Abraham had proven himself merely a Knight of Infinite Resignation, he still would have believed God could somehow have made good on their covenant, but he would have abandoned all hope of Isaac being the realization of that promise, and Kierkegaard imagines varying scenarios of Abraham's consequent bitterness and anguish. Infinite Resignation differs from Faith because it still depends on, still dwells in, the world of human possibility, or rather human IMpossibility, instead of divine possibility. Abraham, like his counterpart knight, relinquishes everything for his belief, but unlike the other, Abraham somehow TRUSTS that it will all be given back to him, not in the next world, but in this one! That somehow, some way, what is impossible for man---even to the resurrection of Isaac---is not only possible for God, but desired by Him. I think the traditional Christian, Protestant or Catholic, will blanch at this. Wasn't Abraham's faith, his righteousness, in fact his willingness to obey God's command, however irrational? His absolute duty to God? Wouldn't it be selfish, unrighteousness even, to murder his son only CONDITIONALLY? The writer of Hebrews doesn't seem to think so. Likewise, Kierkegaard credits Abraham with faith based on this reliance on "the strength of the absurd." It was absurd for Abraham to believe that God was good and would yet command him to kill his only son. But Kierkegaard's Knight of Faith somehow reconciled the two, and acted upon that faith. The faith that even should he succeed in killing his son---and Abraham would most certainly have murdered Isaac had God not intervened; there is no circumventing his obedience and commitment---that God could, even at that juncture, raise Isaac from the dead to fulfill His promise to Abraham. I was once told that redemption is how God "through some mechanism I can't understand, but somehow, some way restores to you, in equivalent value, everything you forfeited by making a wrong choice or choices." It seems to me that most people of so-called faith resign themselves to suffering the consequences of disobedience, or suffering the consequences of obedience, whatever that may entail. Any reward will have to wait for the next life. I am not suggesting that Abraham did not suffer---and he most certainly DID suffer---and his pain came through the right choices! But I feel I must chain myself to a promise of "equivalent value," if only because my life will be unbearably dolorous otherwise. (Forgive me for straying momentarily from the path of objectivity, but I do so only truthfully in the spirit of Kierkegaard himself.) The "double movement" of the Knight of Faith I referenced earlier is the true difficulty in all of this. The movement, as it were, from contemplation to action. Not only the movement FROM contemplation TO action, but the gulf that exists between the two modes of life. For Kierkegaard and myself, the difficulty is the double movement.

"But to be able to fall down in such a way that the same second it looks as if one were standing and walking, to transform the leap of life into a walk, absolutely to express the sublime in the pedestrian---that only the knight of faith can do–--and this is the one and only prodigy."

The relative EASE with which the Knight performs the "dance" of the double movement is its difficulty. He at the same time falls and walks boldly forward. For one stuck in the contemplative way of life, moving into that kind of easiness seems impossible. But I will leave discussion of Kierkegaard's "leap" of faith to another. I will conclude with the observation that Abraham's condition to his obedience of God's command is, counterintuitively, the source of his righteousness, the proof of his faith. He had entered into a covenant with God, an agreement that made demands on both of them, and God had made a promise to him. While obeying God absolutely, Abraham still clung desperately to this promise. He held it up before God. None of this is to say that he somehow removed God from the realm of omnipotence or omniscience (it was in fact God's omnipotence that he relied upon). He did not reduce God. He did not make himself equal to God. He merely(!) refused to relinquish a promise made to him, despite his reason and his senses. And he became a Knight of Faith.

Once we have exhausted Kierkegaard, I would like to touch on the other difficulties we encountered and perhaps never moved forward from all those years ago. If others are willing, a medium now exists for us to continue our exploration and conversation. "Redemption" still awaits the one-time sacrifice of a classical education to "Gateway: Freshman Seminar" and "Computer Literacy and Applications." The introduction to this post has in fact inspired another---"If I Were Secretary of Education"---but I'm afraid I can't continue posting just yet. It will have to suffice for the time being that I am in passionate opposition (and I am never in passionate ANYTHING) to the way that we educate ourselves and others, from Kindergarten to postgraduate study. (Dr. Hoffman, if you are reading this, any penalization I ever endured for late papers I blame entirely upon the literary impoverishment of our Pentecostal Resource Center. (Is it a Center for Pentecostal Resources or a Resource Center that happens to be Pentecostal?) My only fault is in consistently failing to take this impoverishment into account until it was too late. Brilliant hypotheses had to be abandoned last-minute for whatever seminary-friendly topic I could whip up. Oh well.) Anyways, I'm getting ahead of myself, and perhaps diminishing any responses to Fear and Trembling. I hope not.

Facies Superior