Insight Spring 2020

Is Colin Kaepernick a Knight of Faith?: An Application of Kierkegaardian Criteria Dami Kim ’20 Who is a Knight of Faith? Abraham, according to Søren Kierkegaard. In the Biblical story, God promises Abraham that he will father generations of a great nation. And despite the couple’s doubts about conceiving a child at their old age, Sarah finally conceives Isaac. Soon thereafter, however, God commands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on Moriah. In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard explicates Abraham’s dilemma, claiming that the patriarch’s method of obedience to God’s will qualifies him as a “Knight of Infinite Resignation” and subsequently a “Knight of Faith.” In his other works that criticize institutionalized Christianity, Kierkegaard makes clear that not all churchgoers qualify for either knighthood. The question arises, then, who does? Must he be of Christian faith? Follow a typical “religion?” Although Kierkegaard has an unmitigated personal commitment to Christ, he prioritizes the virtues that stem from the individual’s relationship with the absurd over institutionalized Christianity, revealing that one can achieve the Kierkegaardian absolute without a faith in Jesus.

Kierkegaard intentionally distances himself from Christendom, criticizing the system for leading Churchgoers astray from true Christian virtues.

In The Attack Upon “Christendom,” Kierkegaard criticizes institutionalized Christanity. He claims that Christian values are “fundamentally falsified in what he calls Christendom (the rationalization of Christian values in pagan terms)” (Polka 53). First, he finds fault in the fact that the system attempts to “rationalize” eternal values that are absurd––by its very nature, the absurd escapes comprehension by human faculties. Moreover, much like Kant, who believes that enlightenment cannot occur by systematically educating the public, Kierkegaard “most respectfully [refuses] all theocentric helpers and the assistance of helper’s helpers to help [him] into Christianity” in his Concluding Unscientific Postscript (Kierkegaard 16). He claims that the generalized title of “Christendom” misleads the public to believe that it has achieved the Knight of Faith status merely by attending weekly services. The Church cannot simply indoctrinate the public with values; the individual must actively pursue them. Furthermore, in The Attack, he commands his readers to “shun the priests [...] those abominable men whose livelihood it is to prevent thee from so much as becoming aware what Christianity is, and who thereby would transform thee, befuddled 10