Faith and ethical judgment › Reading the paradox without making it ordinary

It is tempting to make Abraham a symbol for any difficult personal decision. Choosing a vocation, keeping a promise, or departing from social expectations can involve uncertainty and loneliness. These similarities do not make such decisions suspensions of the ethical. Often their justification depends precisely on ethical reasons that can be shared.

A hypothetical person who refuses a dishonest request, for example, can explain the refusal by appealing to honesty and obligations to those affected. The person might stand alone while remaining within an ethical justification. Isolation is therefore insufficient to establish Johannes's paradox. The proposed relation to God, and its conflict with the universal, are doing indispensable work.

Likewise, the knight of faith should not be reduced to someone who takes bold risks and eventually succeeds. An agreeable outcome does not demonstrate the two movements. Johannes's insistence on the inward relation makes the category harder to recognize than a biography of someone who persevered.

Read the preliminary variations on Abraham with that difficulty in mind, then compare the resignation discussion with Problem I. Ask what changes when Isaac is loved, relinquished, and expected again. Continue to Problem III and ask what Abraham could communicate without changing the kind of justification claimed for him.

The book asks whether praising faith can be reconciled with the ethical judgment its central story provokes. Its power depends on allowing both claims to remain demanding. The reader can admire Johannes's seriousness, question his alternatives, or reject the suspension altogether. What the argument resists is the comfortable thought that Abraham's faith is easy to understand because we already know the story ends well.