WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.660 So, what if the most profound acts of faith, 00:00:02.859 --> 00:00:05.740 the ones that truly define belief, are the very 00:00:05.740 --> 00:00:08.439 ones that can never, ever be explained? Today, 00:00:08.619 --> 00:00:10.439 we're going to jump into the mind of philosopher 00:00:10.439 --> 00:00:13.019 Soren Kierkegaard and take a fresh look at one 00:00:13.019 --> 00:00:15.640 of history's most troubling stories. And in doing 00:00:15.640 --> 00:00:18.420 so, we might just uncover a powerful truth about 00:00:18.420 --> 00:00:21.519 the limits of our own words. Okay, let's just 00:00:21.519 --> 00:00:23.179 get right to the heart of it, the question that 00:00:23.179 --> 00:00:25.719 kicks this whole thing off. So you've got the 00:00:25.719 --> 00:00:28.059 story of Abraham, commanded by God to sacrifice 00:00:28.059 --> 00:00:31.760 his son Isaac. And on that long three -day journey 00:00:31.760 --> 00:00:34.939 to the mountain, he says nothing. Not a word 00:00:34.939 --> 00:00:37.200 to his wife, not a word to his son walking right 00:00:37.200 --> 00:00:40.380 beside him. I mean, why? That's silence. That's 00:00:40.380 --> 00:00:43.359 the real puzzle here. For ages, right, the debate 00:00:43.359 --> 00:00:45.740 among scholars has always been about what Abraham 00:00:45.740 --> 00:00:48.500 must have been thinking. The general idea was 00:00:48.500 --> 00:00:51.020 that the real problem, the big paradox of faith, 00:00:51.219 --> 00:00:53.259 had to be some kind of massive contradiction 00:00:53.259 --> 00:00:56.159 happening inside his head. Yeah, the traditional 00:00:56.159 --> 00:00:58.939 view is that this is a paradox of knowledge, 00:00:59.179 --> 00:01:01.539 of belief. I mean, think about it. How could 00:01:01.539 --> 00:01:04.379 Abraham possibly believe two completely opposite 00:01:04.379 --> 00:01:07.959 things at the exact same time? Number one, God 00:01:07.959 --> 00:01:11.120 told me to kill my son. And number two, God promised 00:01:11.120 --> 00:01:13.840 that this same son would make me the father of 00:01:13.840 --> 00:01:16.560 nations. It just doesn't compute, right? It feels 00:01:16.560 --> 00:01:19.519 like a logical impossibility. But what if that 00:01:19.519 --> 00:01:22.280 whole debate is just a distraction? What if we've 00:01:22.280 --> 00:01:24.340 been focusing on the wrong thing this entire 00:01:24.340 --> 00:01:27.370 time? While a really fascinating new analysis 00:01:27.370 --> 00:01:30.430 by philosopher Alexei Proshashin suggests that's 00:01:30.430 --> 00:01:33.250 exactly what's been happening. And here's the 00:01:33.250 --> 00:01:36.689 big shift. The real defining feature of Abraham's 00:01:36.689 --> 00:01:39.750 faith isn't what he believes. It's what he can't 00:01:39.750 --> 00:01:42.569 communicate. The paradox isn't happening in his 00:01:42.569 --> 00:01:45.269 mind. It's happening in his silence. And this 00:01:45.269 --> 00:01:47.510 is the crucial part. He doesn't just choose to 00:01:47.510 --> 00:01:50.150 be quiet. He fundamentally, literally cannot 00:01:50.150 --> 00:01:53.409 explain himself. To really get our heads around 00:01:53.409 --> 00:01:56.010 this, we need to look at Kierkegaard's big idea 00:01:56.010 --> 00:01:59.010 about human experience. He called them the three 00:01:59.010 --> 00:02:02.189 spheres of existence. And, as it turns out, each 00:02:02.189 --> 00:02:05.109 sphere has its own unique kind of silence. So, 00:02:05.150 --> 00:02:07.290 you can see here how it all breaks down. We've 00:02:07.290 --> 00:02:09.349 got the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious 00:02:09.349 --> 00:02:11.389 spheres. And just look at how silence evolves. 00:02:11.789 --> 00:02:14.110 In the aesthetic sphere, silence is a choice. 00:02:14.229 --> 00:02:16.389 It's a secret you could tell if you wanted to. 00:02:16.719 --> 00:02:19.139 Move up to the ethical, and silence is a temporary 00:02:19.139 --> 00:02:21.680 problem that you must eventually explain. But 00:02:21.680 --> 00:02:23.639 when you hit the religious sphere, the silence 00:02:23.639 --> 00:02:25.960 becomes absolute. It's something that is fundamentally 00:02:25.960 --> 00:02:29.280 incommunicable. Let's start with aesthetic silence. 00:02:29.699 --> 00:02:31.360 The best way to think about this is like holding 00:02:31.360 --> 00:02:33.659 a winning hand in poker. You're keeping it a 00:02:33.659 --> 00:02:36.340 secret to create mystery, maybe a little intrigue. 00:02:36.340 --> 00:02:38.740 You could show your cards at any moment. The 00:02:38.740 --> 00:02:41.719 power is in the choice to stay silent. Now, when 00:02:41.719 --> 00:02:43.879 we get to the ethical sphere, the rules totally 00:02:43.879 --> 00:02:47.099 change. Silence here isn't a strategy. It's more 00:02:47.099 --> 00:02:49.300 like being a witness on the stand. It's a temporary 00:02:49.300 --> 00:02:51.460 state because eventually you are required to 00:02:51.460 --> 00:02:54.219 speak up and justify yourself. Think of a tragic 00:02:54.219 --> 00:02:56.639 hero like Agamemnon who sacrifices his daughter. 00:02:56.860 --> 00:02:59.639 It's a horrible choice, but he can and he must 00:02:59.639 --> 00:03:01.780 explain his reasoning to the community using 00:03:01.780 --> 00:03:05.340 shared ethical principles. But for Abraham, who 00:03:05.340 --> 00:03:08.240 Kierkegaard calls the knight of faith, the silence 00:03:08.240 --> 00:03:10.500 is something else entirely. It's not a choice, 00:03:10.659 --> 00:03:14.099 and it's not temporary. It's more like a radio 00:03:14.099 --> 00:03:16.479 that's definitely picking up a signal from a 00:03:16.479 --> 00:03:19.360 faraway station, but all we can hear on our end 00:03:19.360 --> 00:03:22.419 is static. The message is real for him, but for 00:03:22.419 --> 00:03:25.099 the rest of us, it's completely untranslatable. 00:03:25.479 --> 00:03:28.539 This whole idea of an experience that just can't 00:03:28.539 --> 00:03:31.740 be translated, well, it has some massive consequences 00:03:31.740 --> 00:03:35.539 for how we understand what faith even is. I mean, 00:03:35.599 --> 00:03:37.479 Kierkegaard really drives this home. He says 00:03:37.479 --> 00:03:39.659 that even if Abraham knew every single language 00:03:39.659 --> 00:03:42.000 in the world, he still couldn't talk about this. 00:03:42.219 --> 00:03:45.060 It's not about not having the right words. He's 00:03:45.060 --> 00:03:47.000 operating in a totally different communicative 00:03:47.000 --> 00:03:49.300 reality. He's speaking, as Kierkegaard says, 00:03:49.560 --> 00:03:52.719 in tongues. And here's where that contrast just 00:03:52.719 --> 00:03:56.439 becomes crystal clear. The tragic hero, Agamemnon, 00:03:56.620 --> 00:03:59.780 is great because we can understand him. We can 00:03:59.780 --> 00:04:01.780 debate his choice, sympathize with his dilemma. 00:04:02.099 --> 00:04:05.159 But the knight of faith, Abraham? He is great 00:04:05.159 --> 00:04:07.960 for the exact opposite reason. He is great because 00:04:07.960 --> 00:04:10.819 he is beyond our ethical system. His greatness 00:04:10.819 --> 00:04:13.460 is found in that singular, private, and totally 00:04:13.460 --> 00:04:16.259 silent relationship with the divine. So let's 00:04:16.259 --> 00:04:18.740 be really clear. This inability to communicate 00:04:18.740 --> 00:04:21.980 isn't a bug, it's a feature. The fact that Abraham's 00:04:21.980 --> 00:04:24.420 experience can't be put into words is the very 00:04:24.420 --> 00:04:26.699 sign that it's a genuine, profound religious 00:04:26.699 --> 00:04:29.040 experience, one that has stepped outside the 00:04:29.040 --> 00:04:31.819 boundaries of our normal, everyday world. Okay, 00:04:31.879 --> 00:04:34.259 so this is all some pretty heavy 19th century 00:04:34.259 --> 00:04:37.060 philosophy. But why does it matter for us today? 00:04:37.399 --> 00:04:40.160 Well, it might just completely reframe how we 00:04:40.160 --> 00:04:42.339 think about something as modern as interfaith 00:04:42.339 --> 00:04:44.899 dialogue. And you know, this isn't just a Kierkegaard 00:04:44.899 --> 00:04:47.379 thing. You see this idea pop up across so many 00:04:47.379 --> 00:04:49.680 of the world's religions. In Sufism, you have 00:04:49.680 --> 00:04:51.959 the concept of fauna, the annihilation of the 00:04:51.959 --> 00:04:54.600 self and God. In Kabbalah, there's Devakut, this 00:04:54.600 --> 00:04:56.980 intense cleaving to the divine. In Christianity, 00:04:57.180 --> 00:04:58.980 there's a whole tradition of prayer that focuses 00:04:58.980 --> 00:05:01.540 on what can't be said about God. All of these 00:05:01.540 --> 00:05:03.699 point to core experiences that people insist 00:05:03.699 --> 00:05:07.100 are ultimately beyond words. This kind of blows 00:05:07.100 --> 00:05:09.180 up a key assumption in a lot of interfaith work, 00:05:09.339 --> 00:05:11.480 doesn't it? The idea that if we just talk enough, 00:05:11.600 --> 00:05:13.759 if we just find the right words, we can explain 00:05:13.759 --> 00:05:16.040 everything to each other. But what if the most 00:05:16.040 --> 00:05:18.300 essential, the most vital parts of a person's 00:05:18.300 --> 00:05:20.100 faith are precisely the parts that can never 00:05:20.100 --> 00:05:23.300 be explained in a dialogue? So maybe this points 00:05:23.300 --> 00:05:25.680 to a new kind of approach, you know, one that 00:05:25.680 --> 00:05:27.980 starts with humility, just acknowledging that 00:05:27.980 --> 00:05:30.639 our explanations have real limits, one that values 00:05:30.639 --> 00:05:33.160 shared contemplative silence instead of always 00:05:33.160 --> 00:05:35.680 needing to talk, and maybe one that focuses more 00:05:35.680 --> 00:05:38.459 on action, on witnessing how a faith is lived, 00:05:38.579 --> 00:05:41.680 not just how it's described. And all of this 00:05:41.680 --> 00:05:44.379 brings us to one final and pretty provocative 00:05:44.379 --> 00:05:47.560 distinction that this analysis raises. It's a 00:05:47.560 --> 00:05:50.000 potential clash between two ideals that we all 00:05:50.000 --> 00:05:53.149 hold in really high regard. Take a look at this 00:05:53.149 --> 00:05:56.089 difference between how wisdom and faith get passed 00:05:56.089 --> 00:05:58.910 on. Wisdom, you know, it's like a craft. Think 00:05:58.910 --> 00:06:00.910 of the ancient Taoist wheelwright. It's hard 00:06:00.910 --> 00:06:02.829 to explain in words, but an apprentice can learn 00:06:02.829 --> 00:06:05.449 by doing, by watching, by feeling it out. It 00:06:05.449 --> 00:06:08.129 can be taught. But Abraham's faith, there's no 00:06:08.129 --> 00:06:10.329 apprenticeship program for that. It's a path 00:06:10.329 --> 00:06:12.589 that can't be taught or followed. It's one you 00:06:12.589 --> 00:06:15.870 have to walk utterly alone. And if we needed 00:06:15.870 --> 00:06:18.600 one final clue. Kierkegaard himself published 00:06:18.600 --> 00:06:21.600 this book under a pseudonym, Johannes de Silencio, 00:06:21.819 --> 00:06:25.220 which literally means John of Silence. It's almost 00:06:25.220 --> 00:06:27.720 like he was leaving us a little wink, a hint 00:06:27.720 --> 00:06:29.800 that the most important lesson in the book is 00:06:29.800 --> 00:06:32.040 the one that could never be written down. And 00:06:32.040 --> 00:06:34.639 so this leaves us with a really tough final question 00:06:34.639 --> 00:06:36.720 to think about. If wisdom is something that can 00:06:36.720 --> 00:06:38.879 be shared and learned by others, but this kind 00:06:38.879 --> 00:06:41.319 of faith is absolutely singular and cannot be 00:06:41.319 --> 00:06:43.740 communicated, do we ultimately have to choose 00:06:43.740 --> 00:06:46.939 one over the other? This whole analysis is based 00:06:46.939 --> 00:06:49.839 on a really fantastic article by Alexei Prozheshin 00:06:49.839 --> 00:06:52.579 in the journal Sophia. If you want to go deeper 00:06:52.579 --> 00:06:54.680 down this rabbit hole, we absolutely recommend 00:06:54.680 --> 00:06:56.720 you check it out. Thanks for joining us.