Agape and Personhood. David L. Goicoechea

is to be found with it.

      The repetition that renews is a transition from one state

      (such as religiousness A) to another (such as religiousness B)

      and the states are as different from one another as the creatures

      of the ocean are from those of land and air for repetition

      takes place not through an immanent continuity with the

      former existence which is a contradiction, but through a transcendence.

      Any person as a single individual is as unpredictable as the posthorn.

      Kierkegaard came to see that clearly as he grieved over Regina’s

      grieving at his breaking of the engagement and then discovered

      that she was not grieving at all but was about to marry another.

      He was totally surprised and the idea crossed his mind that

      she must not have cared so much for him if she could so

      quickly seemingly forget him and become engaged to another.

      This news of her new engagement brought him to identify with

      Job at the moment of the Storm when God asked him how

      he could question God when God and his creation were so great

      and Job did not know all that God was up to with his universe.

      However, he came to see that she gave him to himself a second time.

      First she inspired him to a full life of witnessing faith

      and now she relieved him that he was not hurting her.

      That is true repetition for what has been can be again.

      However, the second time is like and yet unlike the first.

      What has been does not determine what will be and

      in his surprise that she went with an other so quickly

      he could see how his second experience of erotic inspiration

      was different from the first for she loved him and then freed him.

      II.3.7 Loving Job as More Important

      Satan made a bet with God that if Job should experience

      the problem of evil and suffer he would lose his faith in God.

      Job lost the prosperity of his flocks and he continued to pray:

      “The Lord had given. The Lord has taken. Blessed be the Lord.”

      Then Satan upped the ante and God took away Job’s children.

      Just as Kierkegaard’s father began to lose his children so Job

      lost his and there was the dramatic story of Job’s friends

      who claimed that Job must have done evil to be so punished.

      That is the Deuteronomic vision that those who are good will be

      blessed and those who are evil will be cursed and destroyed.

      But that logic did not hold and the unpredictable happened.

      At first Job did begin to doubt and despair and to think that

      it would have been better if he would had never have been born.

      He even thought in the back of his mind that he would like

      to take God to a court of law and show God’s injustice.

      But then when it looked like Satan was winning the wager

      there was the storm and God spoke to Job out of the thunder

      and asked him where he was when God created the stars and

      the seas and the Leviathan of the deep and Job recognized

      his pride and he repented in sack cloth and ashes for doubting.

      So with the posthorn we see that doubt about the next note

      at first seems to make repetition impossible but then it can

      help one to see the non-mechanical true repetition and its doubt.

      In Works of Love Kierkegaard explains the role of doubt in the

      life of a loving and trusting faith when he writes:

      If someone can demonstrate on the basis of the possibility

       of deception that one should not believe anything at all,

      I can demonstrate that one should believe in everything

      on the basis of the possibility of deception. (228)

      In his own experience Søren knew that the younger brother, Jesus,

      could truly love the elder brother, Job, especially in his ambivalence.

      II.3.8 Job’s Faithful Love That Justifies the Exception

      At the end of the book in a Concluding Letter by Constantine Constantius

      the logic of repetition is explained in terms of a battle between

      the universal order and the exception such as Abraham, Job, or Søren

      Constantine mentions that the 1, 2, 3 of the ordinary syllogisms

      that draw conclusions from the universal and particular do not work

      in the case of the individual exception and:

      It is asking too much of an ordinary reviewer

      to be interested in the dialectical battle in which

      the exception arises in the midst of the universal,

      the protracted and very complicated procedure

      in which the exception battles his way through

      and affirms himself as justified,

      for the unjustified exception is recognized precisely

      by his wanting to bypass the universal. (226)

      Job began like Abraham with a vision of land, nation and name

      and he was promised he would attain his aesthetic dream if he

      would be ethically good and follow the laws of God and he did that

      and he did gain prosperity, posterity and rich blessings for all.

      Then at step three of the dialectic he was challenged by the universal

      and losing prosperity, posterity and blessing he stood face

      to face with the problem of evil and wondered how a good God

      could be so unjust as to punish him so when he was good.

      Then in step four the universal order of God appeared in the great

      storm and Job repented in infinite resignation and absolutely

      loved the absolute so that he now in step five saw God anew.

      In step six according to the epilogue of the miracle he got

      his children back a second time and in step seven he was

      prosperous once again having recovered the aesthetic.

      This battle is the same one that the prodigal must go through

      when he wants to win over the elder brother in reconciliation

      for the elder brother represents the universal order of the law.

      II.3.9 Loving the God-Man as More Important

      So Job like Abraham is a type of the God-man who gives up all

      for the other in a spirit of praising love that recollects the