SOURCE: "Surrender and Paradox: Imagination in the Leap," in Transforming Vision: Imagination and Will in Kierkegaardian Faith, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1991, pp. 85-113.

In the following essay, Ferreira explores the relationship between faith and imagination in the writing Kierkegaard produced under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus, arguing that the imagination allows for the suspension of standard ethical judgment, a suspension necessary for one to make the "leap" to faith.

'Faith', Climacus tells us, 'has in fact two tasks: to take care in every moment to discover the improbable, the paradox; and then to hold it fast with the passion of inwardness.'¹ Kierkegaard reinforces and extends this understanding when in his journals he connects faith, passion, and possibility: 'Faith is essentially this—to hold fast to possibility'.² These descriptions not only point to the active and passionate character of the act of faith; they also imply the importance...