The Way Fayer

Throughout the centuries there have been various approaches to understanding the divine nature of the world. In some real sense, human beings know that transience is wrong. Of course, this contention quickly comes into conflict with belief systems such as materialistic atheism or strict naturalism that do deny the potential for mortal beings to come into infinity. Nevertheless, my experience tells me that those who deny the possibility of life after death remain so out of spite rather than giving it due consideration. The same argument could be made about atheism more broadly and its rejection of God. Simply put, human beings are not capable of knowing such things because they are not capable of knowing anything at all … unless knowledge means something more than conceptual understanding.

Now, it is theoretically possible for an atheist—so long as they are not a materialistic atheist or strict naturalist—to bear certainty about God’s nonexistence if it comes from some other source of divine knowledge (e.g., if there were some kind of cosmic force that granted them certainty about God’s nonexistence and did not happen to be God Himself—or any kind of god for that matter). Atheists do not, however, conventionally run around parading cosmic non-Gods granting them absolute certainty. This is because atheists tend to operate within the parameters of the material world alone, leaving no room for any kind of divine reality whatsoever. The problem is that if the material world is all that is, human beings cannot have certainty about anything save their own constructions (e.g., 2+2=4, arithmetically speaking, or “the sky is blue,” with “blue” simply being the word we use to describe the color we all agree is in the sky) since the material world undermines the nature of objective truth. What I mean to say here is that if our minds have merely evolved to believe the things we do for the purposes of survival, how can we be sure that anything is true or false in any real sense?

Thus, we go about imposing our systems, structures, and symbols on patterns that we, in truth, do not entirely understand. It goes without saying that there is much to observe in the world, and yet material observation remains quite distinct from objective understanding. Because we can only see our half of the equation, the “secrets of the world” revealed to us through scientific inquiry remain little more than practical symbols helping us navigate the world by reflecting back to us its intricate patterns.

Furthermore, psychology tells us much about the significance of consciousness but very little about consciousness itself. If all of the human experience exists within consciousness, is it reasonable to suppose that anything exists outside of it? Additionally, psychology consistently exposes faults in our conceptual frameworks, including rationality and memory: we are absurdly imperfect beings.

So where does this leave us? Faith. Practically speaking, everyone puts their faith in something given the fundamental uncertainty about the world around us. We cannot expose its origins, nature, or teleology (“the study of the end” or “ultimate purpose”) through conventional knowledge alone. It would not make sense to stress our own devices in an attempt to explain that which is outside our purview of understanding, and the precise nature of the world is certainly outside of that purview because we did not create the world. It would be like Harry Potter (assuming he became a sentient person and his universe real) trying to explain who J.K. Rowling is or, better yet, a group of people held in captivity with no former knowledge of anything—including language—trying to understand a copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Sure, they might begin to recognize sentence structure and patterns within the English language at some point, but could they derive meaning from it? Without anything to reference, there would be no way for them to understand what any of it actually means—that is, unless there was some kind of intervention from someone in our world who has read Harry Potter and can explain it to them.

The question then becomes: what do we put our faith in? Atheists posit their faith in the absence of God or gods. At its furthest extremities, atheism is intellectually dishonest because it claims to bear knowledge that no person can have. At its lowest, namely through the claim that there is sufficient evidence rather than all encompassing knowledge of God’s or gods’ nonexistence, I would wager that it’s unwise given the possibility of making an error of eternal consequence. Therefore, people should at the very least remain agnostic (or just say, “I don’t know”). Unlike Blaise Pascal’s wager, however, which claims that everyone should believe in God since the possibility of eternal reward far outweighs the costs of a finite loss (i.e., you believed in God and were wrong) or an infinite loss (i.e., you didn’t believe in God and were wrong), I am merely suggesting that precluding the possibility of God’s existence is the most arrogant mistake of all. Everyone is entitled to their own pursuit of truth, but they must remain open to potential truths if they wish to find it.

Now to take this a step further—and given the inexplicability of the material world (as well as the fact that it exists all the same)—would faith not be best placed in something beyond it? Or even better, faith in something that bridges the gap between the two (i.e., the gap between the material world and whatever caused it)? Of course, this argument relies on a causal explanation for the existence of the universe. It assumes that the universe cannot exist in any self-causing or self-sustaining way or, for that matter, that anything has the capacity to cause itself ad infinitum. We struggle to imagine how we (us, humans … you and me) could have resulted from a series of cause and effect stretching all the way back forever and forever into the past. What follows logically from this presupposition is that something outside of the universe must have created it.

Regardless, we have no way of knowing this for sure, and certainly the prophets, “sorcerers,” witch doctors, and medicine-men of antiquity were regarded in such high esteem prior to the Western Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution because they answered the mystery of cause—by which I mean the ultimate question, “How the hell did we all get here?”—through mystical and divine explanations. Unfortunately, people in the modern world rely so heavily on their science that they no longer feel the need to question such things, dismissing the wisdom of ancient prophets and primitive man as nothing more than a compensation for a non-scientific world, replacing one form of knowledge with another that actually offers less explanation for the mystery of existence, even if it is much much much more practical.

Without the use of reason and science to guide us, the world remains far too complex, unsanitary, and arbitrary for us to do anything of real pragmatic value, leaving us with a kind of anarchic relativism that says, “Do whatever makes you happy!” and “We don’t need regulation!” and “We prefer chaos; give us our freedom!” forgetting to incorporate any necessary responsibility through system of mind, religion, or government. In addition, we risk never finding the limitations of our own reasoning if we fail to reason at all, promoting an unjustified confidence in our own abilities with faith only in ourselves.

Knowledge only becomes a problem when it is pursued for the sake of itself (much like power; read George Orwell’s 1984 and you’ll know what I mean). This is crucial. Someone seeking knowledge for the sake of itself might as well be a cat chasing its own tail. Meanwhile, someone seeking knowledge for the sake of truth attacks the world similar to a cat after its prey, leaving behind their contemporary who, despite extensive effort, moves nowhere. When attacking the world one discovers the limitations of knowledge (which is not best tested in isolation) and, as Kierkegaard puts it, “ … faith begins precisely where thinking [or knowledge] leaves off.”

An extension of this idea reveals that philosophy, which is derived from knowledge, will always remain subject to faith, which is derived from wisdom. That is Søren Kierkegaard’s point in his book Fear and Trembling, encouraging one to submit their ignorance to God. Otherwise, they will never “need” faith and, because everyone has faith in something (even if that something is technically “nothing”), they run the risk of ending up with an unchecked faith. I cannot imagine anything more dangerous or volatile.

Kierkegaard wrote Fear and Trembling in response to Hegelian philosophy, which posited that philosophy could surmount faith. He wrote this polemic (argumentative piece) with the intention of demonstrating the weaknesses of Hegel’s position on this subject. To accomplish this, Kierkegaard closely examines the Old Testament story of Abraham offering his son Isaac as a sacrifice to God, a story that haunted him. In this story, God calls upon Abraham saying, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you” (Genesis 22:2). Without hesitation, Abraham follows through with the command, rising early in the morning, journeying to the land Moriah, binding Isaac on the mountain, and preparing to slaughter his son. But as soon as Abraham takes the knife, the angel of the Lord stops him, and a ram is provided for Abraham to offer instead of his son. In return for this act of faith, God says, “I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice” (Genesis 22:17).

How could God call upon a man to murder his own child? And how could a man willing to go through with it be considered the “father of faith”? The word abhorrent comes to mind, a sentiment expressed strongly by Charles Brockden Brown in his 1798 novel, Wieland.

Kierkegaard was also deeply disturbed by the emergence of Hegelian philosophy in its insistence that faith could be overcome and systematized into a lower part of one’s perspective. Hegel believed that in overcoming faith (or religion)—which he thought of as an intersection between the senses and the intellect—one could graduate into the purely rational or “Absolute Mind.”

Except faith is not rational, according to Kierkegaard. Nor is it understandable. Rather, faith is a paradox.

In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard talks about the “teleological suspension of the ethical.” To risk repeating myself, teleology essentially means “the study of the end” with one root, telos, meaning “end” and the other, logos, meaning “the study of.” It serves as a method of investigating something’s ultimate purpose. Next, “the ethical.” In this context, it refers to the universal standards or norms that we use to operate within society. In other words, it helps us distinguish right from wrong, especially in relation to justice. Without these, societies would not be able to function properly, and, thanks to them, there are all sorts of things we know are wrong without much need for explanation. Therefore, to summarize, the “teleological suspension of the ethical” simply means: to suspend carrying out universally accepted rights and wrongs in service of some alternative purpose or ending.

In Abraham’s case, hardly any deliberation is necessary to understand that what he does in Genesis 22 seems unjustifiable and wrong … unless, somehow, the purpose he serves somehow goes beyond the betrayal of the action. But how? This remains far from a rational endeavor, and no amount of explanation could possibly cover the guilt of someone holding a knife to their child’s throat—especially in the modern world.

This is Kierkegaard’s point.

From Hegel’s perspective, Abraham must be considered a lunatic or murderer who sinned against reason and society rather than the “father of faith.” Kierkegaard uses this contradiction to illustrate the complexity and inexplicability of faith as something incapable of surmounting and, indeed, something only capable of understanding in part. As a result, “faith begins precisely where thinking leaves off,” and it remains attainable only to those who relinquish ultimate control to the infinite. An overestimation of the control we have in our lives is sure to undervalue them, leaving us self-concerned and short of purpose.

Promptly, and as a reward for all of the meandering I have subjected you to, dear reader—however prudent it may or may not have been—I will now introduce you to the “main characters” of this essay from which the mysterious and seductive (?) title that inevitably drew you to it was born: the knight of infinite resignation and the knight of faith. 

Contrary to the wishes of my vanity, and to make clear only after giving you a chance to believe I came up with these awesome-sounding characters myself, I will inform you that these knights do not belong to my imagination but Kierkegaard’s, for he was the one who put them on paper and exploited their differences for the first time in Fear and Trembling. These differences are designed to reveal the nature of true faith as opposed to its inferior, albeit virtuous, subsidiary—resigning to the infinite alone.

We have concluded up to this point that faith begins with infinite resignation, or “relinquishing control” to the infinite. Kierkegaard, meanwhile, believes that for faith to be fully embraced, one must not only relinquish control to the infinite, but also take it back from the infinite, through what he calls: “the power of the absurd.” For Abraham, this was believing in God to spare Isaac … despite preparing to kill him. For Christians, it is believing that a man literally (not just symbolically) rose from the dead and that, in the end, we will too.

Preposterous? Maybe. Terrifying? It certainly should be. Rewarding? Absolutely. Everyone needs a miracle. As Abraham Van Helsing says in Dracula, “Faith is that which enables us to believe things which we know to be untrue.” Therein lies the paradox of faith: believing in the unbelievable.

Failing to take this leap of faith—that is, to embrace the absurd fully—results in a position similar to that of Dr. Jordan B. Peterson. To make myself clear, I do not wish to condemn Dr. Peterson. His writing, lectures, and social media platforms have rendered a profound and transformative impact on my life that I can only begin to express in words—even if I do disagree with him in some respects. Regardless, his inability to confirm whether or not he believes in the reality of Christ’s resurrection (and undermining the question by suggesting that the “truth of literal reality” remains indistinguishable from the “truth of symbolic reality”) creates a bizarre middle ground that, unfortunately, cannot be disputed and, as a result, is done at the expense of reason: it blurs the lines between two distinct propositions, making productive deliberation impossible.

This happens because nobody can actually prove the reality of Christ’s resurrection in any objective fashion, unless (maybe) through some kind of miracle. For the majority of Christians, however—if not all—the only justification for belief emerges as a byproduct of faith, or mystical experience, which is entirely subjective. Faith itself is not falsifiable. As a result, the leap of faith seems intellectually dishonest for someone like Dr. Peterson who cannot bring himself make a truth claim about Christ’s resurrection in the literal sense (i.e., taking back the infinite through the absurd), and far too easy for Christians (who fail to recognize the absurdity of their belief). And yet, merely playing the part of the faithful servant can have profound consequences, and for that I applaud Dr. Peterson: the knight of infinite resignation.

Quickly, I want to look at what I believe to be the most important representation of this conflict between the knights, exemplified by Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. Immediately before his arrest and hours before facing one of the most horrific of deaths imaginable, Jesus left his disciples to pray. Falling to the ground, he said: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.” This sentence alone contains more depth than a thousand words. In it, Christ expresses both his humanity and his divinity. In it, he represents both the knight of faith and the knight of infinite resignation—except not in the order that you might expect.

He begins as the knight of faith, knowing the cross awaits him and, in spite of that, asking for deliverance. Then, he seemingly resigns to the infinite as the other knight. What can we make of this? Clearly, his wish is not granted, as he goes on to face the cross in accordance with God’s will. I hardly know if my answer is adequate, but it appears to me that in trying to resolve the paradox of faith, Kierkegaard managed to create another one. Maybe the relationship between the knights is just not so simple.

Here’s my conclusion: the knight of infinite resignation cannot become a knight of faith without taking back the infinite through the absurd, but the knight of faith can become the knight of infinite resignation without forsaking the infinite, which they took through the power of the absurd.

Paradoxically, the knight of faith can exist as both knights simultaneously. On the other hand, the knight of infinite resignation cannot become anything more until first becoming the knight of faith, sacrificing uncertainty to its absurd antithesis: claiming certainty anyway through allegiance to a higher power. But it is equally important for the knight of faith to move in the opposite direction, admitting a lack of certainty in the name of faith—what we call intellectual honesty. I believe that the knight of faith must be willing to step down as Jesus does in the garden, for it goes without saying that human beings cannot know the totality of God’s will and, as previously established, certainty is only possible through faith, not conventional knowledge alone. In the end, we must be willing to give ourselves over to particular uncertainties, trusting God more than we do ourselves. 

In the garden, Christ signals his humanity through infinite resignation. Following the resurrection, his divinity reveals itself in fullness, and the absurd is accomplished even more fully than if the cup had passed from him in the garden. This happened in the form of a man, entering the fullness of death, and emerging from whatever awaits in post-mortem darkness after three days. The way I see it, Christ makes possible not only hope for all those who seek him, but also the potential for life’s uncertainties to be resolved in this absurd notion: that suffering serves purposes beyond our understanding, even as we struggle against it, only to be answered completely in the end.

Because of that, we may approach the complexities of this world and the next with confidence in him, capable of remaining faithful in our daily resignations as we stagger in the pursuit of truth (as elusive as it may be), without a doubt, between two knights ;).