The Knight of Faith: What the story of Abraham and Isaac has to do with Christian Existentialism (CFM HB 2/20/22)
God the Absurd Then we come to the Akedah–the story of the binding of Isaac by his father, Abraham, in which God commands Abraham to “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering” (Genesis 22:2). At this point, the LORD has told Abraham so many times he’ll have innumerable posterity through Isaac so many time it’s almost annoying to a reader. Like, WE KNOW. Abraham is going to have posterity outnumbering the sand of the seashore and the stars of the sky. We know they’ll possess the land of Canaan. We know they’ll bless the earth. And we’ve been through quite a bit of fuss over the right bloodline generating this ever-expanding family tree. We also know that shedding human blood is strictly and universally forbidden (Genesis 9:6). In fact the prohibition of human sacrifice is one of the things that the Pentateuch writers seem to claim sets God’s chosen people apart from other ancient near-east civilization...