Faith and ethical judgment › Silence makes the problem harder

Problem III asks whether Abraham was ethically defensible in concealing his undertaking from Sarah, Eliezer, and Isaac. Silence matters because ethical life includes accountability to other people. Someone's intentions can affect those who have a claim to hear and question them.

Johannes distinguishes Abraham's position from merely keeping a useful secret. The difficulty is that Abraham cannot explain the religious trial in the universal language that would make an ethical justification available. Telling someone that the action is a private trial does not supply the shared reason for which they are asking.

The book explores different forms of concealment through other stories. Their presence prevents us from assuming that silence is automatically holy. Concealment can have several meanings, including forms of refusal or entanglement that deserve criticism. Abraham's silence needs to be understood through the claimed paradox rather than praised just because it is silence.

This is also why difficulty explaining a commitment cannot establish its religious authority. People may struggle to communicate for many reasons. The inability to justify an action does not itself prove that the action belongs to a higher order. That inference would let an absence of justification become evidence of superiority without any further ground.