Chapter 12 - ‘He speaks in tongues’: hearing the truth of Abraham’s words of faith

Summary

This chapter examines the exact manner in which Abraham expresses his faith in the words he utters in Genesis chapter 22, verse 8, words that occupy Johannes de Silentio’s attention in the closing pages of Fear and Trembling: “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering.” I will argue that these words both in form and in content encapsulate one of the key features of Abraham’s faith. They give voice to a trust that God will provide while remaining completely indeterminate with respect to how God will provide. I read the final utterance of Abraham therefore as a model of all communication about faith, including the text of Fear and Trembling itself. Insofar as Abraham speaks words about faith that are both true and beautiful, and insofar as he himself does not fully grasp the meaning of his own words, or his own words gesture toward a truth that eludes his grasp and the grasp of any traditional discourse, philosophical or poetic, he provides the paradigm not just for faith itself but also for all intelligible talk about faith. I have two aims that once achieved will secure this overall thesis: first, to clarify the mode in which the text is to be read – both literally and figuratively and neither at once – and second, to demonstrate that the apparent factual error contained in Abraham’s utterance – that a lamb is not provided for the sacrifice but a ram instead – is a marker for the way in which flexibility about the vindication of faith is inherent to all speech about faith.

The jumping-off point for the case I will make is furnished by Stephen Mulhall, who raises key problems I wish to address, and an intriguing essay from David Kangas, which is not on Fear and Trembling but that I wish to apply to that text in order to deepen the analysis and craft a reading of Abraham’s final utterance that will address some of the difficulties raised by Mulhall, who puts forward two objections relevant to this study: first, that Johannes ultimately directs his readers toward an allegorical reading, contra his apparent advocacy for literal interpretation, and second, that in any event Abraham’s utterance includes a factual mistake about the outcome of God’s provision.