Abstract

Kierkegaard's "absolute paradox" was born in his critique of Hegel's absolute reconciliation between faith and knowledge and bears the scars of his desperate struggle between atheism and the belief in the God of Abraham. In Kierkegaard's critique of Hegel's reconciliation it became evident that there are two basic possibilities in interpreting religious experience: gnosticism and pisticism. Paul, Augustine, Luther, Kant, Kierkegaard and Karl Barth represent the pistic interpretation of religion. They are "pistics" who protest against man's gnostic hubris and try to expose his illusion about a cognitive way of archetypal knowledge. The paradox of faith implies a sola fide which can never be turned into a general and universal method. But theology is stronger than faith! It turns even the paradox of faith into a method relating the way of paradox to the classical ways of theology, the method of negation and analogy. The paradox of faith is thereby taken out of its context, its energy diffused and its motif turned into a general argument for apologetic theology.