I wonder if there is room in the LDS Church for those who are inspired to thoughtful Christian living by treating the scriptures as a library of questions and dilemma stories, as well as those who are inspired by treating them as books of answers (even though the answers found seem to be found by unacknowledged, selective literalism).

He has several different views on Abraham – something that often gets lost when people say “Kiekegaard and Abraham.” You’re right that he struggles with Abraham. While I think some of the things he raises are pretty interesting, ultimately to me I confess I buy more into the traditional LDS reading of the narrative. I like thinking through these other ways of reading the story. I’m actually rather partially to Derrida’s thinking through the issue (and through Kierkegaard) in The Gift of Death. It’s been years since I read it last though. I need to give it an other go as it’s one of those books I learn a lot from. (I should also mention that I’m in the minority camp that reads Derrida as a realist rather than a nihilist or a relativist)

Yes, Stephen, according to at least the Jewish interpretation Isaac would have been in his thirties, fully capable of resisting an attempt on his life by an aged father. For many of the Jewish commentaries – far more numerous than in Christianity – the focus is on Isaac, and the Aqedah story is one of surrender by Isaac, even more than obedience of Abraham. As has been remarked, in the Christian interpretation which sees the story as a model story for Christ, that would fit Isaac better than Abraham of course. But Isaac is more or less ignored in the later bible books that mention the sacrifice, the reference is mostly on Abraham. The comparison with Christ is informative but rather limited and does not really fit well.

Clark, Kierkegaard has been wrestling with the Aqedah story, and with Christianity in any organized form all of his life, and I have always trouble getting straight what he meant, and at what time. But I need to read him better.

Does the idea that Isaac was a willing adult participant, and not a weak and helpless child change the story?

Abrahamic sacrifice has had Christian purchase as a “type of Christ”. We understand that Chris was a willing “victim”. Perhaps Isaac was also?

If we are to be exalted on high and believe God when he promises we will be made like him and everything the Father has given to us, won’t we be in a similar situation with our spiritual children?

God can prevent all death and suffering, but doesn’t do so, essentially so we can learn something. I’m not sure that’s really any better than Abraham almost sacrificing one person, from a modern humanist perspective.

So the modern view which rejects Abraham also inadvertantly is laying the groundwork to severing faith in God.

While it’s undeniable we are part of the modern world and that society is fundamentally at odds with the mindset of the ancient world, I think there’s more going on here. As you say, this conflict between mess and God is one of the central questions of modernism that is largely unasked in the medieval era. (The ancient era is more complex I think) You are completely correct that the modern mind is more than willing to judge God. I think though the results parallel moves made in the ancient world where thinkers typically abstracted deities away. Zeus and his pantheon (who are morally much more troublesome than the Jehovah compiled in the post-exilic period) become more an more de-mythologized until Zeus becomes the One of Plato, the universe as organism of the Stoics, or the less bothersome first cause of Aristotle. The move is always to push gods back until they become irrelevant in terms of the narratives.

This shift from God to abstract morality repeats itself starting in the Renaissance through modernism until God is pushed away from most discussions of right and wrong in more thoughtful circles. If on the one hand there’s the danger of a cult of obedience. I think the other side has the danger of the inverse. Since God has been divorced from morality and justice, it’s a kind of anti-cult against obedience. You have the occasional retrenchment or pushback. It’s precisely because of that pushback against an ethics divorced of God that Kierkegaard and others invoke the Abraham narrative.

If the ethical is the modern view of obedience divorced from obedience to God, then it’s no surprise many say that Kierkegaard is about the “teleological suspension of the ethical.”

If we read the dilemma of Abraham in these terms – again a deconstruction to these roots behind the narrative – the story again becomes about faith versus reason. (As it has so often been in the history of modern thought) The dilemma is now the dilemma of which to serve: faith or reason.

Now I tend to reject this reading of Kierkegaard, although it’s hard to underestimate how important it has been in the years since Kierkegaard. (Largely opposed to the religion of Hegel and Kant although perhaps not yet the madman entering the church to announce God is dead and that they killed him) It’s worth noting though that in one of Kierkegaard’s treatments in Either/Or that Abraham begs God to forgive him for even contemplating sacrificing Isaac. That is he begs forgiveness for considering obeying instead of doing his ethical duty. Even in Kierkegaard the dilemma version remains.

Whenever I come across one of these thought exercises, my instinct is to find a way to break the game. I’d try to derail the train with people on both tracks. I’d find another person to give an eye to, or have only one myself. I’d ask a third party (my wife) to also pray and see if what I heard was truly from God. I’d wait to ask God if the fruit is truly the only way.

The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?

Don’t get me wrong, I rather like Walter’s take of dilemma. It gets me thinking. However even if it is a dilemma it still rests on the two choices being hard to decide between. That in turn says something about the importance of obedience to God even in this deconstructed reading.