‘By Faith You Will Get Her by Virtue of the Absurd’

The paradox of faith

By undertaking the movement of resignation, as we saw in the last chapter, the young lover comes to participate in a twofold relationship. On the one hand, this movement ‘binds’ him to his renounced princess in knots of pain; on the other, it gains him a relationship of love with God. And despite the profound nature of the first, it is the latter relationship – the relationship with God – that constitutes the core of resignation. This is the focus of the young man's interest, this is the new content of his resigned life.

But important and meaningful as it is, resignation does not amount to faith. ‘The act of resignation does not require faith’, says Johannes, ‘but to get the least little bit more than my eternal consciousness requires faith, for this is the paradox’ (FT, 48). Indeed, renouncing finitude is an extremely difficult act, but nothing more than the human power of will and determination is required for performing it. There is a correspondence between the act of resignation and the reality it generates (a reality of being apart from the princess, of not sharing a life with her) – the consequences of this act correlate with the knight's expectations, with his beliefs regarding the way the world operates.