Faith and ethical judgment › The objection that cannot be brushed aside

The most serious objection is practical and philosophical: how does a claimed relation to God differ from mistaken certainty or fanaticism? Someone may be utterly sincere and still be wrong about what they ought to do. If shared ethical reasons cannot test the exceptional claim, the risk of self-deception becomes central.

Johannes does not supply a publicly usable test that certifies a person as Abraham. His account of difficulty and anguish prevents faith from being reduced to casual self-assertion. But anguish alone cannot establish that a command is divine. A painful conviction can also be mistaken.

For the reader, this leaves an unresolved cost in the proposal. The book can show why an alleged suspension would be unlike an ordinary ethical justification. It does not thereby show that the suspension has occurred in a given case. Naming a paradox identifies the problem without deciding which private claims deserve acceptance.

The distinction is especially important when discussing harm. Admiration for a literary and religious account of Abraham does not establish that a contemporary person's claim of divine command licenses violence. The book's difficulty gives us a reason to scrutinize that move, rather than treat it as a lesson that sincerity defeats ethical judgment.

A critic may go further and insist that a purported revelation requiring such harm should be rejected. Another reader may think the religious possibility cannot be excluded in principle. Their disagreement should be stated openly. A summary that announces that faith and ethics simply occupy separate harmless spheres evades the conflict the book was written to expose.