Faith, which lies at the heart of Christianity, has forever been tough to define and harder again to practice. It seems that in order to try and pinpoint its true meaning many have tried to reduce faith to systems and formulas which would allow it to be grasped with little personal investment. Søren Kierkegaard believed that people were never content with faith, that they thought they could simply begin with faith and go further. His dialectic Fear and Trembling was one of his most widely read works, and was meant to entice readers to examine the nature of faith for themselves. In it he criticizes the Hegelian views of faith, ones which try to rationalise faith and reduce it to a systematic philosophy. Kierkegaard, through the alias Johannes…show more content… Hegel in his book The Phenomenology of the Spirit. Hegel believes that the 'Absolute Mind' has absolute, clear, and complete vision of meaning and existence. It is through religion and art that this Absolute Mind expresses itself in the human consciousness, but only through philosophy can the incomplete manifestations of the Absolute Mind find their true, rational expression. According to Hegel, the ascent to an Absolute Mind is made through rational philosophy,which he calls the 'System'. Through the use of this System Hegel talks about faith rationally, believing that when one goes further than faith, one arrives at the true nature of…show more content… He was both shocked and captivated at Abrahams indisputable and undying faith in God, which held strong even in the face of sacrificing the son he prayed to God to receive. In the first section of the book, titled “Exordium”, De Silentio tells the story of a man who admires the story of Abraham more and more the older the man gets. The man contemplates four different outcomes to the story, each ending differently. These were all ways in which the ending of the biblical story could have been written, though in none of these retellings would Abraham have showed the phenomenal level of faith in God which makes him the father of faith. In the actual story from the Old Testament, Abraham does not refuse God's request, nor does he hesitate even while raising the knife. However, in the end he does not kill Isaac, for God offers Abraham a ram to sacrifice in place of his son at the last minute. It is for this extraordinary faith in God that Abraham is known as the father of faith, for even though all logical and rational thought would lead him to believe that his son would die, his faith in God remained strong. De silentio's retellings of the story provide a contrast to the original story that show the ethical anxieties faced by Abraham, whilst highlighting the paradox of
