Faith, being an intangible concept, is almost indefinable. But there are theologians, like Soren Kierkegaard and Paul Tillich, who dared to define faith and its role in everyday life. There are similarities and differences between the interpretation of Kierkegaard and Tillich of faith, and some critics are not contented with or opposed to their ideas, particularly as regards the subject-object division. This paper argues that a thorough, critical analysis of the ideas of Kierkegaard and Tillich regarding faith will demonstrate both theologians remaining devoted to the conflict between the finite world and the infinite, unbounded realm. Kierkegaard often emphasizes that faith is a miracle, an endowment of divine grace. Faith, according to him, is not an innate human capability. More particularly, he argues that Christian faith demands a free, special choice to abandon reason in the relationship between man and God.
Kierkegaard explains that to have faith in such a grand way requires a 'leap'. These ideas suggest that the move toward faith cannot correctly be understood outside of the concerted, interdependent human free will. The issue has been to understand the connection between this free, chosen human response and divine grace. Fundamentally, Kierkegaard believes that faith is not an act of reasoning or a choice to believe in the love, mercy, and goodness of God. Rather, it is a trust and confidence in the power of the 'absurd', which Kierkegaard defines as something that conflicts with reason.
Kierkegaard explains that faith is the antithesis of sin. This is considered as one of the most definitive and influential interpretations for the entire Christian faith. Hence, one may ask, what is the connection between sin and faith? How are they related? If faith is trusting in the revelation or revealed truths, sin is not the antithesis of faith, but choosing not to believe. Likewise, if sin is disrespecting and violating the laws of God, faith is not the contradiction of sin but respect for and submission to the laws of God. Nevertheless, in Kierkegaard's interpretation, “faith is that the self in being itself and in willing to be itself is ground transparently in God”. The ideas about sin reveal that the fundamental body of the religious phase is faith.
It is faith that drives individuals to make sense of the absurd, unfathomable, and perplexing. Kierkegaard argues that eternal happiness is the magnificent achieved through facing all things unquestionably and without doubts: “Faith involves us in risking everything, like a man far out at sea, alone in a frail skiff with seventy thousand fathoms beneath him, miles and miles away from all human help.” He said that numerous Christians carry genuine faith that is firmly rooted in obedience, submission, and the scripture. He attempted to challenge this and argued that the act of faith depends on every person and his/her intimate relationship with the divine. Kierkegaard said that, basically, faith for numerous people was indeed 'hope', 'expectation', or 'optimism' because with such there is a possibility for a belief to be factual, while genuine faith is trusting in the truth of something although it seems implausible and irrational.
Kierkegaard argues that faith, and not hope, has meaning and significance in the domain of impossibility, absurdity, and uncertainty. One has to surrender reason if s/he decides to pursue true faith. He argues that faith is greater than or superior to reason. This implies that reason is limited and finite and faith sets into motion where such limitations of reason are present. Kierkegaard advises that the choice to pursue faith is a repeated act and one has to continually decide to give up reason and trust in the absurd. Such repeated choice is a cycle and no progressive outcome is achieved, one merely pursues over and over again that special something. A perfect expression of faith is the story of Abraham. He agreed to and took part in the domain of impossibility by sacrificing his son Isaac. Abraham's submission represents an abandonment of the universal and moral. For then, he believed that God would return Isaac to him. He crossed the threshold toward the absolute and sealed an unbounded relationship with the impossible. He moved into the realm of perfect existence, and such is the fundamental nature of faith.
Having faith also implies suffering. Kierkegaard explains that to make an effort to connect oneself fully to the 'absolute telos' is to enter into the realm of suffering. Suffering is the inability to disentangle or move away from an infinite connection to 'relative ends'. The person finds out that despite his/her desire and efforts to connect fully to his/her telos, s/he is completely tied to relative ends. The person who tries to connect fully to his/her telos, according to Kierkegaard, eventually finds out “that there is not only no reward to accept, but suffering to bear”. In essence, suffering implies overcoming reason and its inherent clarity and precision. Suffering, in other words, is clashing with the world. Still, as explained by Kierkegaard, suffering does not have to automatically be an element of the religious. As regards ethical or worldly existence, suffering is unintended and unforeseen; while for the faithful suffering is crucial and absolute.
Paul Tillich shares some of Kierkegaard's ideas about faith. Tillich, in his book Dynamics of Faith, asserts that “there is hardly a word in the religious language, both theological and popular, which is subject to more misunderstandings, distortions, and questionable definitions than the word 'faith'”. Tillich, just like Kierkegaard, redefines the concept of faith to mend or put to rights mistaken beliefs and to bring people face to face with the essential meaning and spirit of faith. Since he looks at faith within an existential and ontological point of view, Tillich's interpretation of faith relates to everything about daily life and human spirituality. His existentialist perspective involves psychological features of faith and distinguishes an immense variation in the essence of individual faith, including the disastrous and at times corrupt aspects of faith. The theological interpretation of faith and analysis of its contents and forms of both Kierkegaard and Tillich, although based on Christianity, goes beyond the Christian tradition to encompass other religious groups and even non-religious or worldly kinds of faith.
Tillich argues in his Dynamics of Faith that “faith is the state of being ultimately concerned”. This precise and expressive description of faith highlights an individual's experience of concern, his/her personal relationship with the absolute and his/her state of being. Tillich asserts that “faith as ultimate concern is an act of the total personality”, creating a knowledge far wider, more profound, and more existentially meaningful than the mere definition of faith as an act of believing in the impossible, just like how Kierkegaard puts it, particularly when such act of believing is perceived to have poor value in terms of certainty or evidence. Hence, basically, the expression 'ultimate concern', as interpreted by Tillich, espouses a precisely relevant uncertainty. It pertains both to the 'content' of faith and the 'act' of faith.
Basically, being ultimately concerned is an act that directly relates to the thing that creates that ultimate concern. This attribute of faith represents what meta-physicists have consistently been asserting, that is, faith transcends the division between subject and object. Tillich simply puts it this way: “The ultimate of the act of faith and the ultimate that is meant in the act of faith are one and the same.” He explains that people have numerous concerns, several of which are innately spiritual. Political, moral, aesthetic, and cognitive concerns are some of these concerns that become crucial and are uplifted to the level of absolute. Once a concern becomes absolute, it gains a fundamentally religious nature.
Tillich believes that Kierkegaard was inclined to relate the spiritual, religious, or transcendent to the encounter with God's eternal, otherworldly moral command. The subjectivity of Kierkegaard largely implied fully submitting to God's will and taking that 'leap of faith'. Tillich defined faith as the vague existence on the edge of commitment, whereas Kierkegaard defined faith as a clear, definite commitment. Furthermore, Tillich viewed the Supreme Being as being transcendent of the division that guided the ideas of Kierkegaard. Unlike Kierkegaard, Tillich believes that obedience to heavenly, mystical laws given from outside the person to be 'heteronomous', which, according to the Kantian moral philosophy, is doing or behaving according to one's motives or aspirations rather than ethical, moral, or rational obligation.
Unlike Kierkegaard, Tillich viewed God more naturally, perceiving God as the foundation of the vigorous, active dichotomies that embody the spirit's life. Kierkegaard adopted a personal, moral approach to reconciling the gap between human beings and God, whereas Tillich preferred to reunite the split by viewing the mortal or fixed as being able to embody the eternal or unbounded. In consequence, Tillich more sufficiently explained than Kierkegaard the doctrine stating that the created body is able to religiously or mystically contain God's grace. Kierkegaard brought together human beings and God, whereas Tillich considered the Supreme Being as being outside these dichotomies. The overall approach of Tillich to the interpretation of faith is largely guided by Kierkegaard, and strengthens Kierkegaard's argument that faith and religion are a state of affairs instead of a divided aspect of existence.
Critical Analysis of Kierkegaard's and Tillich's Treatise on Faith
A number of critics have placed divine grace as the core aspect of Kierkegaard's interpretation of faith. As expressively argued by one scholar: “Whether we like it or not, faith enters the world as a miracle and as such resists our attempt to explain it by an appeal to the will”; however, other scholars have placed emphasis on the comments of Kierkegaard regarding the integral value of the human free will in faith, and have challenged his arguments for supporting an illogical type of human desire and will. One of the difficulties is that Kierkegaard at times seems to assert that faith accepts the endowment of a grace-given situation, whereas at times he advocates the idea that faith and that grace-given situation is one and the same. It would appear, therefore, that faith is either a willful, voluntary deed enabled or supported by a grace-given situation, or that faith is the same as a grace-given situation, which suggests that it is not the outcome of human free will. In whatever way, it is this line of reasoning that dominates the existing disagreement regarding the relationship between volition and grace in Kierkegaard's explanation of faith.
However, one must bear in mind that Kierkegaard was very much distinct from the conventional Christian description of faith. A person should continuously pursue faith in the impossibility and that puts him/her at a cloistered, isolated existence in the domain of faith. Likewise, to accept and embody all things in the material, secular world because of faith in the absurd is not a conventional Christian belief. Being part of a Christian community, or fellowship, demands the exercise of reason, but faith is intangible and indefinable. Faith is an experience for every person and his/her relationship to the impossibility and absolute, not one that awards lenience and convenience.
Kierkegaard unconditionally argues that a real Christian cannot in any way be misled regarding the real God. He views Jesus Christ as a revelation in the Biblical scripture, particularly the Gospels. For Kierkegaard, the existence of faith is unquestionable. Truth can be found in the revelation, not in the subject. He stresses that genuine faith grounds the believer in a personal, intimate relationship with the Supreme Being. Indeed, the religious, spiritual life is the constant conflict between the subjective and the objective. For Kierkegaard, there is no compromise in the split between humanity and its world; suffering is not pacified within the common context of the eternal. The absurdity in Kierkegaardian faith is not repressed, but acted upon; not abandoned or avoided, but continuously dealt with.
Meanwhile, as regards Tillich, it may appear to some that absolute trust is merely another means of defining ultimate concern, yet a thorough analysis of Tillich's arguments does not substantiate that idea. There are no proofs that Tillich has associated trust with his final description of faith. He argued that trust is only pertinent to the content of faith. Nevertheless, the interesting remark that this definition given by Tillich is not warranted by his interpretation of faith encourages one to ask, why, in that case, did Tillich describe faith in relation to 'concern'? A possible, reasonable answer could be that he was predisposed to associate trust with the premises of hypothetical knowledge. He wanted to separate and protect faith from the hands of the empirical scholar, especially scientist. He wanted to prevent the formal association of religion with a body of knowledge, to the point that it would contradict such knowledge or submit in its confrontation against it, constantly shying away or worrying about the detrimental impact of scientific progress.
But Tillich misconstrued the concept of trust. It was misleading to associate it with belief, even though it constantly comprises an element of belief. Such truth is made decisive by these ideas: a person can have a belief in something that s/he does not trust, even though a person cannot trust in something which s/he does not believe in. Another case in point is the fact that devils believe in the Almighty and tremble, as narrated in the Gospels, yet they do not possess an active faith. It may be so that Tillich favored the word 'concern' because it provided space not just for skepticism or uncertainty, but also for the fervent rejection of long-established Christian beliefs. Although a person who does not believe in the content of the whole Christian belief could still, as explained by Tillich, have faith. Unfortunately, Tillich's effort to protect the truth of faith from the works and ambitions of the scientific discipline did not succeed. His ideas pointed to one thing-- that there is an interrelationship among all the truths in the world and beyond. It is impossible to regard the truth of faith without taking into account the truths from other realms of experience.
Conclusions
Faith is a concept that has long been debated in theology and philosophy. Great minds have tried to fathom the very essence of faith, and two of them were Kierkegaard and Tillich. Both these theologians believe that faith is a belief in the absolute, absurd, and the impossible. However, they differ in how they place the concept of faith within the perspective of the subjectivity and objectivity. For Kierkegaard, faith is a willful, volitional choice to believe in the impossible, whereas Tillich sees faith as a dichotomy between the 'act' and the 'content'. For Tillich, it is not possible to bring together humanity and God because the latter is outside the worldly realm, but that humanity can embody or contain God's grace.
