10/29/06 9:51 AM Casting aside my fears of the last couple of days, I dive into the thinking of Great Abraham. I may even conceive of him as though he were a madman and who considered himself called to demonstrate faith in God and in his purposes and intentions. Perhaps he is innocent by virtue of insanity.

Abraham now speaks: I am called to be faithful to whatever God tells me to do. This is my purpose in life, the purpose of my existence, to show to all the world that God wants our good and will show us the good if we will believe in the impossible. I must believe in the impossible. I must do this for mankind. I must be the one who shows what faith is and what faith can do.

I am told to sacrifice my son even though his death would mean that the promises of God are not valid, and subsequentaly that faith is meaningless, that it does not count. I can refuse to comply for it is my right, nay my duty, to hold all humans sacred, and it is wrong to slay an innocent child. I have every right simply to deny that this is the voice of God. This would have nothing to do with my faith. For a demon could have impersonated this voice, and I could not tell the difference. I can’t tell when some one is real or is acting real. And so I can really disregard this voice. It is suspect and it is commanding me to do what is wrong.

But the important thing is for me to show the faith. I have to find the extreme limit of faith, for it is only in going to the extreme that humans can be impressed, and so that they can come to have the faith that I have, that I must show, in order to show that by believing and complying (à al “Allah knows best!”) the world will have its requisite extreme.

And so here I am to make a decision, between the suspect and immoral on the one hand, and faith on the other, i.e., faith in the morality of God and in the love that he has for all people. And so I must perforce choose what I know to be immoral in order to show that faith in God leads to the moral. I must jump beyond morality for the sake of morality.

My son must join me, and he must do it willingly, and so I must tell him what I am having to do, and to console him only in this way: after this ordeal you shall return with me down the mountain as I told the servants. This you must never doubt, my blessed of all sons, my true son, my son of sacrifice, so that your father may give to the world this act of love for the sake of the world. You shall live. No matter what happens, you shall live. And we shall rejoice and laugh together at the ways of God.

I shall tell it to him only at the very last minutes (to avoid him thinking about all this, to minimize his thinking about what might happen). He will agree with me for he trusts me with the same trust that I have for God. He will not doubt me. He knows that no matter what the details may be, that we shall return together. He will know at the last minute that I am going to raise a knife over his head and bring it down on him to strike him as cleanly and powerfully as I can, in my devotion to God and in utter and absolute trust in a marvelous goodness that pervades God and constitutes God.

He (the son) will go along because he knows that I do not lie to him any more than the voice of God lies to me.

I shall tell him in the last minute, so that he will not have time to dwell on the possible pain. I shall try my best to slay you, and you are not ever for one moment to be afraid, for you shall then afterwards praise God with me and return and tell the good news to the servants, that the sacrifice is acceptable to God.

And so all I really have to do is not to falter, not knowing how God shall produce his masterpiece in and through my faith, either I kill him and he then come back to life, or else the knife crumbles into dust as it strikes him, and we both then laugh together as father and son at the great joke that God has played upon us, acting like a boogie man. We shall laugh in any case in joy that father was obedient to God and son was obedient to father, for in that way happiness shall truly descend to the sons of Adam and we can finally be at peace. Crumbling knife or resurrection, it doesn’t matter, my son shall continue to live and no harm shall be done him, for he is to sire my grandchildren, just as God has promised me.


Now we turn to Kant, for Abraham must finally face him. Abraham is wrong for he has been willing to commit an immoral act.

But why? here now is the defense of Abraham in a nut shell (basically a plea for mercy). He is to be excused on account of insanity and one which can strike other people, namely to do a wrongful act because it is known that the outcome is good. He was willing to break the moral law, knowing that the result would be no victim and great goodness. It is a wrongful act where no harm was intended and no harm was done.

The question we must seek an answer for is this: can we put Abraham in a unique position, at least, whereby he cannot serve as a model for committing an immoral act?

A possible answer: in order to accomplish his will it is necessary for the human race to recognize that God’s command is the highest of all. This Abraham has done. And he was willing to risk condemnation of man in order to comply. Now it is generally known, also of course to Abraham, that it is wrong for any man to think that God could command the immoral. Abraham was wrong to have done this, but he did this wrong for the sake of the world, to show that it had been done, this abject acceptance of God, in a frame work of an expectation of good (which is insufficient in itself) and a willingness to serve as the proof and to reap the condemnation so that no man would have ever to do it again. And so to the question: can the immoral be commanded by God, we answer: only once, and merely in order to show that the faith in God has been perfected and made known and that (later through David and Jesus) immorality is excluded entirely.


Abraham willing incurs Kant’s condemnation in order that no one ever have to do that again, for such a faith has been demonstrated and does not need to be repeated.

And so what Jesus adds to the faith is the literal fact of going all the way into the death that Isaac escaped, in order to prove the second part of Abraham’s guess, namely not the crumble of the knife into dust, but the death and resurrection. And so indeed the Christian perspective is fruitful in our understanding of what is going on with Abraham.

What’s the extreme of faith in God? This can only be given in the extreme according to the perspective of man. And this extreme is compliance with the immoral command. God commands the immoral of Abraham without the taint of immorality on God because God knows that there is no immorality in the fact (and not even in spirit [for Abraham is conscious that his son will live]) because he is going to stop Abraham and not let him commit an immoral act in God’s name. So God commands this once for the sake of the humans.

What is the extreme of faith? is it in doing great deeds for the sake of God, giving of one’s own life? Or is it in the immoral act? That is the extreme of extremes and the humans will have an answer only in the extreme and that calls for the commanded immoral act.

And so our reply to Kant is this: We admit that Abraham is guilty of an immoral act, and we add to that the fact that this was necessary for the salvation of the human race, i.e., this one single event to convince a stiff-necked people.

So Abraham is guilty as charged, at least from the Christian perspective, and he was kept from actual sin by the act of God and he was motivated by the fact that no harm would come to his child, the father of not-yet conceived grandchildren.

He is guilty, but has committed no sin. But any other man would now be guilty of sin, for he would be doing it as merely a repetition and so which is unnecessary to convince people, and so he would have sin. It is from henceforth wrong to beleive that God would command the immoral.

He is guilty in the moral court of pure reason, and he is exonerated in the court of God, for what he did he did out of love for others and he always knew that his boy would live to laugh with him in joy at the completion of the great “immoral” act for the sake of a sinful and disbelieving world.