Virgil's Root Beer helped me get through this. I have almost nothing to say about Fear and Trembling except to say that I have almost nothing to say. He is the most opaque writer I've ever encountered. But I must try to say SOMETHING. I gathered at least that he was trying to explicate something of the nature of faith, and he used Abraham, the "Father of Faith," to do it, specifically his sacrifice of Isaac. It seemed to me as if Kierkegaard was reacting against the Modernist tendency to subsume everything under rationality. The problems, it seems, are twofold. 1. If all that is contained in the Bible can be discovered by reason alone, apart from revelation, then why do we have revelation at all? Reason will have rendered revelation unnecessary. 2. To think that rationality can call Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac a virtue is to tame the story. Kierkegaard seems to say that Abraham's sacrifice is not justifiable by any merely rational or ethical means. If we were to examine him, apart from faith, by purely rational means, the best we could say of him is that he is a murderer. But revelation does not label him so. Instead he is the paragon of faith. So, faith cannot be understood from the outside, that is, if Abraham is to be our picture of faith. Again, this makes revelation necessary. The movements of faith are only possible as a response to God, and they cannot be understood apart from that response. God creates a people who do not make sense. Yet, they DO exist. His saints are living paradoxes.
It is this break with Modernism that earns Kierkegaard a place in the Post-Modern movement (though some debate this). Again, I slogged through this work most often not knowing what I was reading. But, perhaps that is because he was attempting to discuss that which goes beyond the bounds of understanding. Let the reader decide. I cannot say I am a fan of Kierkegaard, but he has undoubtedly wrought an influence on thinkers such as Karl Barth, Wittgenstein, Stanley Hauerwas, and others. As such, he is a part of our intellectual heritage. He who desires to grapple with Kierkegaard must be brave. Or have lots of Root Beer. But mostly be brave