In the Book of Genesis (22:1-14), God tests Abraham by telling him to take his son Isaac to the land of Moriah, and to sacrifice him there as a burnt offering. So Abraham saddles his donkey and takes Isaac, along with two young men, to Moriah. On the third day, when he sees the place in the distance that God has shown him, he leaves the two young men behind with the donkey. He lays the wood that he has cut for the offering on Isaac, and as they are walking along, Isaac asks him where the lamb is that they will sacrifice for the offering. Abraham tells him, "God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son."
When they come to the place that God has shown him, Abraham builds an altar, and then places the wood on it. He binds his son Isaac, and then lays him on top of the wood. He takes out a knife to kill him, but the angel of the Lord calls to him from heaven and tells him not to lay his hand on Isaac or do anything to him. Abraham's faith in God has been proven, and he suddenly sees a ram caught in a thicket by its horns, which he takes and offers as a burnt offering instead of his son.
Søren Kierkegaard, in his book Fear and Trembling (1843), describes four ways in which the story of Abraham and Isaac could have have been told differently.
(1) Abraham could have seized Isaac and thrown him to the ground, and he could have told him that it wasn't actually God's command, but only his own idolatrous desire, that he be sacrificed, so that Isaac wouldn't lose faith in God.
(2) Abraham could have been ready to sacrifice Isaac, but after God instead provided a ram to be sacrificed, he could have remembered what God had commanded him to do, and thus he could have lost his faith.
(3) He could have asked God to forgive him for his failure to protect his son, and he could have been troubled by the question of whether it had been a sin to be willing to sacrifice Isaac.
(4) He could have been ready to sacrifice Isaac, but at the last moment he could have revealed his own anguish and despair to his son, and thereafter his son, though having been spared, could have lost his faith.
However, some other ways in which the story could have been told differently include:
(1) Instead of beginning with "God tested Abraham," the story could have begun, "Abraham heard a voice, and he thought it was the voice of God, but the voice told him to take his son to the land of Moriah, and to offer him there as a burnt offering. Abraham truly believed he was hearing the voice of God, but he couldn't understand why God would command him to do such a thing."
(2) Instead of binding Isaac and laying him on the altar, Abraham could have asked God to forgive him for not being able to sacrifice his son, because he could have so truly believed in God's mercy that he was certain that God would forgive him.
(3) Instead of binding Isaac and laying him on the altar, Abraham could have offered his own life as a sacrifice, so that Isaac's life would be spared.
Since it's difficult to understand why a loving and merciful God would order Abraham to sacrifice his son, the story might be interpreted as signifying that we live in an absurd and meaningless world, and that the only way we can find meaning is through faith. Or the absurdity might consist in Abraham's believing that God actually wanted him to sacrifice Isaac, and in Abraham's being ready to carry this out.
If God actually ordered Abraham to kill Isaac in order to test his faith, but God already planned to spare Isaac before Abraham could put him to death, then the story would seem to make God rather capricious, and we wouldn't really have a plausible explanation for why God acted as he did. But if we believe that a loving and merciful God wouldn't tell Abraham to kill his son, then we might not have any plausible explanation either for why the story says this is what God did.
Perhaps God's command for Abraham to sacrifice "his only son" ("only" in the sense that Isaac was Abraham's sole heir, and that Abraham, in accordance with his wife Sarah's wishes, had cast out his first-born son, Ishmael, along with Ishmael's mother, Hagar) can only be understood if we remember that in the gospels of the New Testament, God sacrifices his only Son, so that the world might be saved through him. The story of Abraham and Isaac foretells the story of Jesus, who is sacrificed to redeem the world from its sins, and who rises on the third day.
Kierkegaard explores three problems: (1) Is there a teleological suspension of the ethical? (2) Is there an absolute duty toward God? and (3) Was it ethically defensible for Abraham not to have told Sarah (his wife), Eliezer (his servant), and Isaac (his son) about his undertaking?
Regarding the first problem, Kierkegaard argues that the story of Abraham is an example of a teleological suspension of the ethical. As an act of faith, Abraham suspends his ethical obligation to his son. He is not a tragic hero, because a tragic hero is admirable for his ethical virtue and his capacity to remain within the ethical, allowing an expression of the ethical to have its telos in an even higher expression of the ethical. Abraham himself has a higher telos than the ethical, which he temporarily suspends.
Regarding the second problem, Kierkegaard argues that ethical duty is a relative duty, while duty to God is an absolute duty. The ethical is the universal, and it has nothing outside of itself that is its telos (goal, end, or purpose). But the paradox of faith is that faith is found in the individual, rather than the universal. The paradox of faith is also that the individual is higher than the universal. Thus, in the religious stage of existence, there is a teleological suspension of the ethical. The religious stage is higher than the ethical stage, and the ethical stage is higher than the aesthetic stage.
Regarding the third problem, Kierkegaard argues that Abraham was justified in concealing his intentions from Sarah, Eliezer, and Isaac, insofar as faith is an inwardness, while ethics is an outwardness. The paradox of faith is that inwardness is higher than outwardness. An individual determines his relation to the universal by his relation to the absolute, not his relation to the absolute by his relation to the universal.1 While the tragic hero renounces himself for the universal, the knight of faith renounces the universal for the individual.2
FOOTNOTES
1Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, translated by Bruce H. Kirmmse (New York: W.W. Norton, 2022), p. 84.
2Ibid., p. 91.
