Kierkegaard The Virgin Mary Analysis

Towards the end of Problema I, Kierkegaard discusses the Virgin Mary to compare the greatness of Abraham to that of Mary, and to further emphasize the distinction between tragic hero and knight of faith. He writes, “for she was no heroine and he no hero, but both of them became greater than that, not by any means by being relieved of the distress, the agony, and the paradox, but because of these (Kierkegaard 94).” Mary, like Abraham, is tested by God through her virgin birth. The indignity put upon Mary resembles Abraham’s ethical dilemma, and yet through the paradox of faith and infinite resignation, she becomes the mother of God, as Isaac is returned to Abraham. The same “strength of the absurd,” a virgin birth in Mary’s case, grants Abraham the strength
This act of consciousness, Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, is an act of individual virtue and suspends the ethical, showing us that Abraham’s faith is proven through his trust in the “strength of the absurd”, and that it is that faith that makes him a great man, not the ethical. Kierkegaard points out that Abraham’s trial of faith is between Abraham and God. He explains that, “He does it for the sake of God because God demands this proof of his faith; he does it for his own sake in order to be able to produce the proof” (Kierkegaard 88). Abraham encounters temptation of the ethical, as his ethical duty to his son would lead him to defy the will of God. The sacrifice of Isaac requires him to suspend the ethical in order to fulfill his duty, relinquishing the universal so that he may transcend it through his faith. As Abraham forsakes the ethical to heed the will of God, he exists in faith rather than the ethical, and therefore is able to rise above the universal as an