Reading Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling has confronted me with uncomfortable questions about the nature of faith. His portrait of Abraham —the knight of faith who cannot speak, cannot explain, cannot be understood feels almost alien to how I've approached my own Christian belief. And yet, wrestling with his ideas has helped me articulate something important about the relationship between faith and reason, between the leap and the landing.
The Question of Reasonable Faith
Kierkegaard insists that faith is inexplicable, paradoxical, absurd. Abraham's faith cannot be communicated or justified in universal terms. It exists outside the realm of reason and ethics, a direct and incommunicable relation between the individual and God.
But here's what I keep coming back to: faith being inexplicable doesn't mean we simply put our trust randomly. There has to be a reasonable basis for belief, even if that basis doesn't eliminate the need for a leap.
Think about how we navigate everyday life. We believe the sun will rise tomorrow because that's the established pattern. We make plans for the next day even though we're not guaranteed we'll wake up. We trust in regularities, in histories, in patterns that have proven reliable. We take leaps of faith constantly but they're not blind leaps into nothing. They're grounded in experience, in accumulated evidence, in reasonable expectation.
Why I Believe
So why do I trust in a God who doesn't communicate to me explicitly like Abraham? Why believe in Jesus, whom I've never met?
I believe because of established history. I believe because of the life and ministry of Jesus — his teachings, his character, his claims. He said he would die and rise again, and his followers testified that he did exactly that. To believe that someone rose from death is, by any standard, absurd. It defies natural law. It cannot be replicated or scientifically verified.
But I trust this absurd claim because of the weight of testimony; the numerous witnesses, the transformed lives, the disciples who went from hiding in fear to boldly proclaiming the resurrection, willing to die for what they claimed to have seen. People don't generally die for what they know to be a lie. Something happened that changed everything for them.
This is my response to the skeptic: I have reasons. Not proofs in the mathematical sense, but reasonable grounds for trust. Historical evidence. Testimony that has echoed across two millennia. Lives transformed in ways that beg for explanation.
The Inexplicable Interior
But here's where Kierkegaard's insight becomes uncomfortably true: there's something about faith that cannot be fully communicated, even with all the historical evidence laid out.
How do I explain to a skeptic the psychological reality of believing in God? The peace of mind, the strange sense of calm that persists even when life in the real world isn't working out? How do I convey what it feels like to be lifted by grace, that gentle hand that raises me up when I falter and stumble?
I try to be good not because I'm earning my way to God, but because Jesus has already done the work for me on the Cross. Yet this doesn't mean I stop trying to be better. Instead, I pursue goodness with a different spirit —not striving anxiously to prove myself, but responding gratefully to grace already given. When I fail, I'm not crushed by condemnation but lifted by love. I guess digression is my art!
Back to what we were conversing about. Yeah, how do I make a skeptic understand this? I can't. I can describe it, but I cannot transfer the experience. This is what Kierkegaard means by the incommunicable nature of faith—not that it's irrational, but that its deepest reality is lived and known subjectively, in direct relation to God.
The Double Movement in Christian Life
This experience of grace actually embodies what Kierkegaard calls the "double movement" of faith - and recognizing this has helped me understand my own spiritual life more clearly.
The first movement: Infinite Resignation—This is acknowledging that I cannot achieve righteousness on my own. It's letting go of self-justification, releasing the illusion that I can earn God's favor through my efforts. It's the death of self-sufficiency, the recognition of my complete dependence on grace. This movement is painful—it requires genuine humility, the surrender of pride.
The second movement: Faith— But then comes the paradox. Having let go of everything, having resigned myself to my inability to save myself, I receive everything back as gift. The ability to try again, to pursue goodness, to be better —but now it's empowered by grace rather than driven by anxiety. I'm no longer crushed by the weight of law but lifted by love.
This is the Christian life in miniature: I die to self-effort, and in that death, I'm raised to new life in Christ. I give up trying to justify myself, and I receive justification as a gift. I stop striving anxiously to earn God's approval, and I discover I already have it, not because of what I've done, but because of what Christ has done.
The ethical life doesn't disappear in this double movement. If anything, it becomes more real, more possible. But it's transformed from a crushing burden into a joyful response. I pursue goodness now not to become worthy, but because I've been made worthy. Not to earn grace, but because grace has already found me.
The Gap Between Reasons and the Leap
Here's the tension I'm learning to hold: faith is not unreasonable, but it is also not reducible to reason alone.
I can accumulate historical evidence for the resurrection. I can study the testimonies, examine the spread of early Christianity, trace the transformation of the disciples. These things make faith reasonable in the sense of "not foolish" or "not arbitrary."
But at the end of the day, to believe that a man died and rose again —to stake my entire life on this claim, to reorder my existence around it; requires a leap beyond what the evidence strictly proves. The evidence makes the leap possible, perhaps even plausible, but it doesn't eliminate the leap itself.
There remains a gap. A space where reason reaches its limit and trust must step forward. This is the paradox Kierkegaard circles around: faith requires both the reasonable foundation and the leap beyond reason.
Abraham and Me
Abraham's situation was different from mine. He received a direct command from God; an explicit, personal communication. Yet even Abraham couldn't prove to anyone else that God had spoken. His faith was still incommunicable, still a private relation to the Absolute. Sarah didn't hear the voice. Isaac didn't hear it.
I haven't received that kind of direct, audible command. My faith is mediated through history, through Scripture, through the testimony of believers across centuries, through the quiet movements of conscience and prayer. It's still faith—still a leap, but it's a different kind of faith than Abraham's solitary encounter on Mount Moriah.
And yet, perhaps there's more similarity than I first thought. Like Abraham, I cannot ultimately prove to the skeptic that what I experience is real. I cannot demonstrate that the peace I feel is divine grace rather than psychological comfort, that the transformation I've experienced is the work of the Holy Spirit rather than self-improvement.
From the outside, I might look like someone with good coping mechanisms. From the inside, I'm experiencing something I can only call grace; a Presence, a reality, a love that meets me in my weakness and failure.
The Beauty of Trust
Kierkegaard would likely remind me of something unsettling: even with all my good reasons, even with the historical evidence and the peace I experience —I could still be wrong. The possibility of error, of self-deception, never fully disappears. This is part of what makes faith “faith” rather than knowledge.
But perhaps that's precisely where trust becomes most beautiful —not when we have absolute certainty, but when we choose to trust despite the remaining uncertainty, because we've encountered Someone we believe is trustworthy.
I have reasons to believe. I have grounds for trust. But at the end of the day, I'm trusting in something, in Someone I cannot fully prove or explain. And that trust has transformed my life in ways that are real to me, even if they're not demonstrable to everyone else.
Living the Paradox
So where does this leave me?
I don't claim to have irrefutable proofs. I don't pretend faith is just another kind of scientific knowledge. But I'm also not saying it's blind or arbitrary. I have grounds, I have reasons and have experience —together, these give me confidence to make the leap.
The skeptic may not be convinced. That's okay. Faith cannot be forced or argued into existence. But I can give an account of the hope within me with gentleness and respect. I can point to history, to testimony, to transformed lives. And I can speak honestly about what I've experienced, even knowing that experience alone won't convince those who haven't shared it.
This is the paradox I'm learning to live: faith that is both reasonable and beyond reason, grounded yet leaping, communicable yet ultimately personal and incommunicable.
Like Kierkegaard's knight of faith, I walk through the ordinary world, looking like everyone else. But internally, I dwell in a relation to the Absolute that transforms everything —not because I've achieved some mystical state, but because I've been grasped by grace.
And that grace —that gentle hand that lifts me when I stumble is both the most real thing I know and the thing I can least prove to anyone else.
Perhaps that's exactly what faith is meant to be.
These reflections emerged from reading Søren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, a challenging and beautiful meditation on faith, Abraham, and the paradox of religious existence. The book continues to unsettle and inspire in equal measure.
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