Kierkegaard once stated that "the ethical dimension of existence has to do with the universal, of doing what is unconditionally right. The ethical applies to everyone and at every moment. It possesses its own validity. That is, it has nothing outside itself as its end or purpose." It has no further to go.
By contrast, each of us finds our purposes in the universal. Our task is always to express ourselves within the confines of our duties and thus limit our personal interests so as to fulfill our universal duties. As soon as we try to assert our individuality, in direct opposition to the universal, we sin. And only by recognizing this can we again reconcile ourselves with the universal ... we can free ourselves only by surrendering to the universal in repentance.
But if this is the highest that can be said of our existence, then what is ethical and what provides us ultimate happiness are identical. And the philosopher is proven right. The ethical is the universal, and thus, is divine. Thus the entirety of human existence is ultimately entirely self-enclosed, and the ethical [the virtuous] becomes the limit and completion of our lives. Us doing our duties becomes sufficient and as a result God becomes an invisible, vanishing point ... an impotent thought unrelated to our lives. His being becomes no more than the ethical itself, which fills all existence.
So where does the question of faith fit in here? Is the ethical, the virtuous, the final reality? I think we realize that it is not. This is where the philosopher goes wrong ... he should protest much more loudly and clearly against the honor and glory given to Abraham as the father of faith. If the ethical really is final ... if it is the ultimate determination of the meaning of life, then Abraham should be stripped of his honor and remanded for trial on charges of attempted murder and aggravated child abuse.
Now faith is just this paradox, that each of us as single individuals, though under the demands of the universal, are higher than the universal. If that is not faith, then Abraham is done for and faith has never existed in the world. If the ethical/virtuous life is the highest and nothing incommensurable is left over, except in the sense of what is evil, then we need no other categories than those of the philosophers. Goodbye Abraham! But faith is just this paradox, that the each individual, though bound by the universal, is higher than the universal. As a single individual we stand in an absolute relation to the Absolute! The ethical/virtue is suspended. This is the paradox of faith!
Abraham's story is the greatest example of such a suspension. That Abraham would even consider slaying his son is absurd. But as a single individual before God he found himself to be above the universal. This paradox cannot otherwise be mediated -- there is no middle ground to explain it. In fact, if Abraham had tried to explain it, he would have been in a state of temptation, and in that case he would have never attempted to sacrifice Isaac. Or if he had done so, he would have had to return as a murderer repentant before the universal.
Nevertheless, in his action Abraham completely overstepped the ethical altogether. He had a higher goal outside of it. What other explanation could ever justify Abraham's action? Who of us would have counseled him to proceed with what he felt God had demanded of him? Would we not say "God would never ask such a thing?" Certainly it was most unethical. It was not to save a nation that Abraham went to sacrifice Isaac, nor to appease angry gods. His whole action stands above and beyond the universal. Ultimately it was a private act, an act purely of personal conscience. Thus, to judge his action according to what was ethical or right -- in the sense of a moral life -- is totally out of the question. So far as the universal was there at all, it was latent in Isaac and it would have cried out, "Don't do it, you are destroying everything, not the least of which is God's plan to create out of you a great nation."
So why does Abraham do it then? For God's sake, and what is exactly the same, for his own. He does it for the sake of God because God demands this proof of his faith. And he does it for his own sake in order to produce the proof.
Abraham's situation is a kind of trial ... a temptation. But what does that really mean? What we typically call a temptation is something that keeps a person from carrying out his duty, but here the temptation is the ethical itself ["Thou shall not kill"] which would keep him from doing God's will. But what then is duty? In Abraham's case, duty is found in doing God's will, which is itself higher than the universal. Abraham's duty transcended the ethical.
If this is the case, how then did Abraham exist? He had faith. He lived by and in faith. That was the paradox that kept him at the summit and which he could not explain or justify to himself or anyone else. His faith was grounded on the paradox that as an individual he was above the universal. He had an absolute relation to the Absolute. Was he justified? Yes, but he was not justified by being virtuous, but by being an individual submitted to God in faith.
Note that this does not mean that the ethical is to be done away with. But it can result in an entirely different expression than what is typically demanded by the ethical ... for example, love of God can cause us to treat our neighbors in a way that could be quite opposite from what ethics would permit. And if this is not how it is, then faith has no place in our existence. In fact, faith can become a temptation.
But faith's paradox is precisely this, that the individual is higher than the universal, that the individual determines his relationship to the universal through his relation to God, not his relationship to God through his relationship to the universal. That is, to live by faith means that one has an absolute duty to God and to God alone.
For this reason, the ethical, for the person of faith, is relegated to the realm of the relative. In fear and trembling, this is faith's paradox -- the suspension of virtue and ethics. Anyway we look at it, Abraham's story contains a suspension of the ethical. He who walks the narrow path of faith no one can ultimately advise as no one can fully understand. Faith is always a miracle ... yet none of us are excluded from it.
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