Imagine standing completely alone before God.
No church to guide you. No institution to reassure you. No crowd to confirm that you are right. Just you, your conscience, and a truth that nobody else can fully understand.
It is a frightening thought. Yet for two writers separated by centuries, cultures, and literary traditions, this lonely encounter becomes the very heart of faith.
One is the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, whose famous work Fear and Trembling explores the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac. The other is the Russian novelist Mikhail Bulgakov, whose masterpiece The Master and Margarita emerged from the shadows of Stalinist Russia. At first glance, they seem to have little in common. One writes philosophy; the other writes magical realism filled with devils, witches, and talking cats.
But beneath their wildly different styles lies a shared question:
What happens when faith becomes deeply personal and refuses to obey institutions, systems, or social expectations?
Abraham’s Impossible Choice
Kierkegaard begins with one of the most troubling stories in religious history.
God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac—the very child through whom God’s promise was meant to be fulfilled. From an ethical standpoint, Abraham’s actions appear indefensible. No moral code, no social law, and no rational argument can justify what he is about to do.
Yet Kierkegaard refuses to dismiss Abraham as either a criminal or a madman.
Instead, he sees him as the “knight of faith.”
This is where the story becomes unsettling. Abraham cannot explain himself to anyone. He cannot prove that he is right. He cannot translate his experience into a language that others will understand. He stands alone, guided by a conviction that exists beyond ordinary ethics and public reason.
For Kierkegaard, faith is not comfortable certainty. It is risk. It is isolation. It is the terrifying possibility that true belief may place an individual at odds with the entire world.
A Novel Written Against Silence
Nearly a century later, Mikhail Bulgakov found himself living in a society where religious belief was increasingly pushed to the margins.
Soviet Russia promoted state-sponsored atheism. Religious institutions were weakened, mocked, or controlled. Public faith became politically suspect.
Against this backdrop, Bulgakov wrote The Master and Margarita.
The novel opens with a startling debate about the existence of Jesus. Soon afterward, the Devil himself arrives in Moscow and begins exposing the absurdities of a society convinced that it has outgrown spiritual questions.
Yet the most fascinating part of the novel is not its supernatural chaos.
It is Bulgakov’s unusual portrayal of Jesus.
Rather than presenting the traditional Christ of the Gospels, Bulgakov introduces Yeshua—a wandering philosopher whose humanity is emphasized far more than his divinity. The story shifts attention away from miracles and toward the psychological struggle of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor haunted by his decision to condemn an innocent man.
The result is a Christ figure who feels strangely familiar and radically new at the same time.
Rescuing Faith from Both Sides
What makes Bulgakov’s vision remarkable is that he seems to resist two opposing forces simultaneously.
On one side stood militant Soviet atheism, which often portrayed Jesus as a fraud or historical fabrication. On the other stood rigid religious orthodoxy, with its established doctrines and institutional authority.
Bulgakov appears dissatisfied with both.
Instead of choosing between them, he creates a space where readers must confront Christ anew. He neither simply repeats tradition nor entirely abandons it. He invites readers into uncertainty, ambiguity, and personal reflection.
In many ways, this mirrors Kierkegaard’s project.
Just as Abraham’s faith cannot be reduced to social morality, Bulgakov’s spirituality cannot be reduced to either official religion or official atheism. Both writers insist that genuine faith begins where inherited formulas end.
The Courage to Believe Personally
What connects Abraham and Yeshua is not doctrine but individuality.
Abraham acts according to a relationship with God that nobody else can verify.
Yeshua speaks truths that remain meaningful even when stripped of institutional power.
Both figures embody a faith that refuses to depend entirely on external validation.
This idea feels surprisingly modern.
Today, many people describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” Others remain within religious traditions while questioning established structures. Across cultures, there is a growing search for personal meaning that does not automatically submit to institutions.
Kierkegaard and Bulgakov anticipated this struggle long before it became a contemporary conversation.
They understood that faith is not merely a set of beliefs inherited from a community. It is also an inward journey—one that demands courage, uncertainty, and personal responsibility.
Why These Works Still Matter
The enduring power of Fear and Trembling and The Master and Margarita lies in their refusal to offer easy answers.
Neither writer provides a clear formula for belief.
Instead, they challenge readers to confront a difficult possibility: perhaps faith becomes most authentic when it can no longer rely on institutions, social approval, or universal explanations.
Perhaps belief begins at the moment when certainty ends.
In Abraham’s lonely ascent up Mount Moriah and in Bulgakov’s haunting vision of Yeshua wandering through Jerusalem, we encounter the same unsettling truth.
Faith, they suggest, is not something we inherit ready-made.
It is something we must discover for ourselves.
S Chandra, 2026.
References
Givens, John, ‘“Keep in Mind That Jesus did Exist”: Mikhail Bulgakov’s Image of Christ’, The Image of Christ in Russian Literature: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Bulgakov, Pasternak (Ithaca, NY, 2021; online edn, Cornell Scholarship Online, 19 May 2022), https://doi.org/10.7591/cornell/9780875807799.003.0008.
Green, Ronald M. “Enough Is Enough! ‘Fear and Trembling’ Is Not about Ethics.” The Journal of Religious Ethics, vol. 21, no. 2, 1993, pp. 191–209. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40015166.
Kierkegaard, Søren, 1813-1855. Fear and Trembling. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England : New York, N.Y., U.S.A. :Penguin Books ; Viking Penguin, 1985.
