By IHE Graduate Scholar Charles Carman
Was it right for Abraham to sacrifice his son? Genesis 22 tells the well-known story of God testing Abraham by telling him to take his beloved son Isaac and offer him up as a sacrifice to the Lord, culminating in the moment when Abraham lifts the knife to slay Isaac. This passage might make readers squirm as they scramble to solve the crisis of this seemingly horrific act by careful exegesis, philosophical reflection, or assertion of moral certitude about God’s inscrutable will. As we prepare to celebrate Christ’s Incarnation, the Binding of Isaac is worth revisiting for its clear Christological overtones and profound spiritual lessons.
It seems to me that there are two basic ways of interpreting Genesis 22. The first holds that it was obviously immoral for Abraham to raise his knife to kill his son. For instance, German philosopher Immanuel Kant asserted that it must not have been God speaking but a devil because the command to kill was morally outrageous. The second way to analyze the chapter is to argue that God was bending or suspending morality in such a way as to allow for an otherwise scandalous act. Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard reads the story along these lines. In any case, it’s an unsettling moment. How can the reader countenance Abraham’s decision to slay his son?
Contemporary Catholic philosopher Eleonore Stump begins her interpretation by noticing that God is testing Abraham to see if the Patriarch trusts Him. So far, God has shown himself to be completely trustworthy, but Abraham isn’t ready to put his full trust in God. For instance, Abraham and Sarah decide to fulfill God’s promise of a child in their own way by Abraham fathering a child, Ishmael, with Sarah’s slave Hagar. Abraham hesitates time and again fully to trust God. As Stump reminds us, profound trust in someone cannot depend on shaky ethics; a father does not produce deep trust with his son by endorsing immorality or bending the rules. Trust comes through a relationship where integrity and reliability are the norm. Only when Abraham gives up everything, his trust completely grounded in God, can God give it all back to him.
God’s covenant with Abraham heightens the tension of the story: How can God fulfill his promise when the very proof of that promise lies prone under Abraham’s knife? It’s no wonder that readers through the centuries have felt the urge to explain this moment away. The story’s discomfort is testing us, too. Do we believe in God’s promises?
So at that pivotal moment, knife in hand and belief on edge, Abraham places his complete trust in God. But how? What must he have believed would happen? Two things: first, that God will indeed fulfill his promise through Isaac and, therefore, that in sacrificing Isaac, he would not be harming his son. Of course, this is a seeming contradiction in the hands of anyone but God. Absolute trust in God requires from Abraham a radical reconsideration of what is possible. As Saint Ephrem, whom other Church Fathers would follow on this point, puts it: There is only one conclusion left, that should the knife fall, Isaac would rise again. Through death comes resurrection.
