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ABSOLUTE ACTION: DIVINE HIDDENNESS IN KIERKEGAARD'S FEAR AND TREMBLING
Author(s) -
KLINE PETER
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
modern theology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.144
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1468-0025
pISSN - 0266-7177
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0025.2012.01762.x
Subject(s) - faith , action (physics) , philosophy , absolute (philosophy) , expectancy theory , constructive , theology , epistemology , abandonment (legal) , psychoanalysis , psychology , social psychology , law , process (computing) , physics , computer science , quantum mechanics , operating system , political science
This article reads Fear and Trembling constructively as a theological work. Abraham's faith is a lived movement irreducible to either ontology or epistemology. Faith is an action that waits upon what it alone could never accomplish. This is absolute action. In Abraham's case, he offers up Isaac to death with the absurd expectancy that Isaac will be returned. This double movement is a doxological abandonment of oneself and one's world to God that waits expectantly to receive them back as gifts. It is these dynamics of faith that show God to be hidden, precisely within the intimate drawing near of God. The article concludes with a constructive gesture toward an “apophaticism of action.”