Eschatological Faith? Or Faith in Fatherly Providence? Fear and Trembling and the Fatherhood of God

Abstract

Comprehending Fear and Trembling is no small task: the best that can be done is to pull at one thread at a time to slowly illuminate the whole. One such thread is the Fatherhood of God. Kierkegaard gave the pseudonymous Fear and Trembling with his left hand and the Upbuilding Discourses with his right hand. What can we conclude about the interplay between Fear and Trembling and these discourses? One outcome is a movement toward the Fatherhood of God. The anxiety of walking with Abraham to Moriah is supposed to lead the reader to maturely consider what it might mean to live in the world confident of the presence and purpose of God the Father. I propose we see Abraham holding not an “eschatological faith”, but a faith in Fatherly providence. Kierkegaard understood his own complex life as held together by the Fatherly kindness of God or God’s Governance.