Fear and Trembling: A February Series with Søren Kierkegaard
- Feb 4
- 4 min read
I was 20 when I first read this and was studying at Rutgers.
The faith my parents had given me was challenged daily by agnostic professors and worldly friends.
I had thought faith was simply identifying myself as a Christian.
Kierkegaard showed me faith was more; I began to fear and tremble.
God used this to wake me up and get serious with Him.
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Why Abraham Still Disturbs Us
Some passages of Scripture grow familiar with time. Others never do.
Genesis 22—the binding of Isaac—is one of those texts that resists comfort.
No matter how often we read it, it remains unsettling. A father is told to offer his promised son. The son carries the wood. God is silent. The knife is raised.
Most readers instinctively try to soften the story. We hurry to the end. We reassure ourselves that God never really intended the sacrifice. And of course, that is true. But Søren Kierkegaard insists that if we rush past the fear, we miss the faith.
In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard does not explain Abraham away. He does not reduce him to a moral lesson or a symbolic figure. He forces us to stay with the story—and to feel its weight.
Why Fear Belongs with Faith
Kierkegaard’s opening claim is simple and severe: faith is not calm, obvious, or socially admirable. If it were, Abraham would not disturb us. We would praise him easily, perhaps even imitate him casually. But we cannot.
Abraham walks up the mountain in silence.
He cannot explain himself:
not to Sarah
not to Isaac
not to anyone watching
From the outside, Abraham looks dangerous, even monstrous. From the inside, he trusts God absolutely.
This is where Kierkegaard presses us hardest. We admire Abraham from a distance, but we recoil from the cost of his obedience. We want faith without anguish, obedience without loss, trust without trembling.
But Scripture does not give us that version of faith.
The Single Individual Before God
Kierkegaard returns again and again to this truth: God deals with persons, not crowds. Abraham does not act as part of a movement or tradition. He stands alone before God.
This echoes what we explored last week in The Crowd Is Untruth. The crowd can cheer, condemn, or justify—but it cannot obey God on your behalf. Faith, if it exists at all, exists in the life of a single individual who must decide whether God is to be trusted.
Abraham does not know how the story will end. He does not possess a theory. He has only a promise—and a God who gave it.
Kierkegaard Shows Why This Story Still Confronts Us
Genesis 22 refuses to let us reduce faith to sincerity or good intentions. It asks a harder question:
Do you trust God when obedience makes no sense to anyone else?
This is why Kierkegaard insists that Abraham cannot be explained in purely ethical terms. Ethics depends on what can be justified publicly. Faith sometimes requires obedience that cannot yet be explained at all.
That does not make faith irrational. It makes it costly.
A Word of Care
Kierkegaard is not inviting us to reckless behavior or private revelations that contradict Scripture. He is not asking us to become Abrahams. He is asking us to see what faith truly is before Christ fulfills it.
And that distinction matters.
Where We Are Going This Month
Over the next three Wednesdays, we will move slowly and carefully through Fear and Trembling:
Week 1 (today):
Why Abraham Still Disturbs Us — entering the fear honestly
Week 2:
Abraham and the Knight of Faith — obedience without explanation, standing alone before God
Week 3:
God Will Provide the Lamb — how Christ fulfills what Abraham prefigured
This is not a philosophical exercise. It is a Lenten journey. As we approach Ash Wednesday and the season of repentance, Kierkegaard helps us strip away sentimental faith and face the cost—and the glory—of trusting God.
Closing Reflection
Abraham does not speak much in Genesis 22. He walks. He listens. He obeys.
Faith begins there—not with answers, but with trust.
“By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac…”
— Hebrews 11:17 (KJV)
Dear Lord Jesus, Thank You for men of faith like Kierkegaard and Abraham. Help me stand with them in a deep integrity and acknowledgement of Your goodness and grace. Strengthen me with the Holy Spirit as I meditate with fear and trembling. I ask for Your Name's sake. Amen
Keep Me True Lord Jesus, Keep Me True,
Keep Me True Lord Jesus, Keep Me True.
There’s A Race That I Must Run,
There Are Victories To Be Won.
Give Me Power Every Hour To Be True.
Author: Nell E. Mays (1927)
Next week, we will look more closely at Abraham himself—and at Kierkegaard’s haunting image of the knight of faith, who walks alone, unseen, and yet wholly before God.
Keep Me True Lord Jesus, Keep Me True,
Keep Me True Lord Jesus, Keep Me True.
There’s A Race That I Must Run,
There Are Victories To Be Won.
Give Me Power Every Hour To Be True.
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