This chapter talks about important roles of two historical figures, Socrates and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, in Johannes Climacus' Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Crumbs. The clues about the roles of Lessing and Socrates in Postscript are furnished by the nature and structure of the book as a whole. Climacus' discussion of Lessing helps one to see that it is neither possible nor desirable for another to know the religious life of a subjective existing thinker. Climacus' characterization of Socrates' passionate faithfulness in existence that sets the stage for his transition to what it means to exist in Christian faith. Climacus arguably evinces the full extent of his kinship with Lessing and Socrates in employing a mode of communication that arouses and intensifies the passion of thought. The great question with which Postscript leaves us is whether this intellectual passion is transferable to the tasks of existence.

This chapter addresses issues concerning the stance of faith toward reason in Søren Kierkegaard's philosophical work Concluding Unscientific Postscript. It discusses that these common textbook characterizations of Kierkegaard are misleading. Although Kierkegaard holds that the relationship between faith and reason is often one of tension, the conflict is not a necessary or essential conflict. The chapter deals with two preliminary questions: first concerns the pseudonymity of Postscript and the second is whether "reason" must be distinguished from "the understanding" in Kierkegaard's thought. The major interpretive problem that faces the reader of the relevant section of Postscript is that Johannes Climacus, author of Postscript, appears to waffle on the question as to whether faith and reason are essentially opposed. For Climacus the relationship between human reason and Christian faith centers on the incarnation, which lies at the heart of Christianity and which Climacus consistently describes as "the absolute paradox".

The history of medieval thought could be written in terms of limitations demanded from reason to make room for faith. The church would be depicted as an inherently thought-curbing institute that constantly and efficiently exerted pressure on intellectuals for the defence of orthodoxy. The study of the relationship between faith and reason has been overshadowed by the censorial act of the condemnation of 219 propositions in philosophy and theology by Bishop Stephen Tempier. The condemnation was portrayed as a response to the unbearable challenges to faith posed by the absorption of non-Christian philosophical learning. Jean Buridan alternated his metaphysics to accommodate the separability of accidents dictated by the doctrine of faith. The case of Albert the Great discussion of sodomy is another example of self-censorship that demonstrates the inability or unwillingness of intellectuals to disengage their thought from the constraints of orthodox religion. There were several strategies adopted by different intellectuals to legitimise physiognomy.

The Bible provided the narrative framework in which Christians of late antiquity interpreted their world, and was the script by which they carried forward their own performance, or continuation, of the salvation story. A history of early scholarly commentary on scripture simply cannot give a full account, since this interpretive performance played out in diverse contexts in which Christians enacted their faith. Mapping the correspondences between prophetic events or figures (typoi) in the Old Testament and their fulfilments or antitypes under the Christian dispensation had long served to confute Jewish and pagan criticism of the novelty of Christianity, establishing a sacred past and credible identity for the Christian movement. Theôria, contemplation, an embracing spiritual vision of divine revelation, is the principal key to understanding scriptural interpretation in late antiquity. Theôria was the cultivated intuition of the church, at once shaping and shaped by exegesis, developing in constant tandem with the lived performance of the scriptures.