Abstract
In 1940, Merton's journals show that he was taken by his reading of Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling. In Fear and Trembling, Merton finds the God that is only encountered in silence and solitude and whose encounter is inexplicable. This paper explores Merton's reading of Kierkegaard as an early manifestation of his draw to a life of solitude and silence. Seeing the distinction between the life of resignation (that life that is still grounded in the merely ethical state of life) and the life of the knight of faith (that life that seeks a radical and free encounter with God) sets Merton on a path that goes beyond a traditional religious experience to a life of love and union with God.