Abstract
Christian revelation involves two realms of truth: the historical and the religious. The problem of the relationship between faith and history arises from the incommensurability of these two realms. While God revealed Himself in history this cannot be directly known nor proved by historical evidence. How can then an historical event be the basis of a religious truth that belongs to the realm of eternity? This paper examines Kierkegaard's answer to this fundamental problem of Christian thought. According to Kierkegaard the appearance of God in time is not a simple historical fact. Since it contains two qualitative opposites, the eternal and the historical, Kierkegaard classifies it as an absolute fact. Historical investigation can provide evidence for the fact that there was a man called Jesus who was born, lived and died. This evidence, however, cannot provide the basis for the conclusion that Jesus is God. Only through faith can the individual be aware of the divine hidden in the temporal and overcome the intrinsic objective uncertainty of this historical event. Faith, however, does not make the historical event objectively certain, for this is a matter of cognition. What it does is provide the individual with the subjective certainty that removes doubt and allows him to come to a decision with regard to this particular historical event. In the act of belief the individual always runs the risk of being wrong in his judgments, but nevertheless he wills to believe. For Kierkegaard faith lies precisely in this risk: of claiming subjective certainty with regard to an historical event that by its very nature is objectively uncertain.
