What is Faith?

Anything that is almost probable, or probable, or extremely and emphatically probable, is something one can almost know, or as good as know, or extremely and emphatically almost know-but it is impossible to believe. For the absurd is the object of faith, and the only object; that can be believed.
- Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846)

Is true faith rational?

In his book, Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard retells the Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac. God has promised Abraham that his progeny will live on, the chosen of God, in a wonderful promised land. And as proof of this promise, as an embodiment of this covenant, God gives Abraham and his wife Sarah a son, Isaac, in their old age. So Isaac means the world to Abraham. It is this boy who makes the old man's life worthwhile and his faith in God meaningful.

Then God commands Abraham to take Isaac out into the desert and sacrifice him! Dutifully, Abraham takes the boy to a distant, lonely place and prepares to kill him. But God intervenes at the last moment and the boy is spared. The point is, Kierkegaard says, that Abraham was really going to do it-even though, without Isaac, there would be no progeny, no promised land, no covenant, no reason for Abraham to continue to believe in God. Abraham was prepared to give up the one thing that made his life and belief worthwhile. How many of us would have such completely irrational faith? How many of us would be willing to give up everything we loved? Most of us would sooner give up our belief in God. Kierkegaard knew, of course, that all of us must, sometime, give up all the people and things we love, and finally even life itself. So faith is necessary, for mere belief will let us down. Paying lip service to religion will not save us.

Is life really as hopelessly absurd as Kierkegaard believed? Is faith really different from belief?

Bibliography

Kierkegaard, Soren, Fear and Trembling and the Sickness Unto Death, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, 1954. Translated by Walter Lowrie.

MacIntyre, Alasdair. "Soren Kierkegaard," Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 4, p. 336-340.