The Freedom to Become a Christian: A Kierkegaardian Account of Human Transformation in Relationship with God 9780567661210, 9780567667236, 9780567661203

Table of contents :
Cover
Half-title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
I. Listening to Kierkegaard Alongside His Pseudonyms
a. Kierkegaard and Climacus
b. Kierkegaard and Anti-Climacus
Chapter 1. The Communication of the Christian Truth
I. Can the Truth be Learned?
II. The Relationship Between Subjectivity and Objectivity
III. The Revelation of Sin
a. Despair
b. The Infinite Qualitative Difference and Sin-consciousness
IV. Being in the Truth
V. Passion in Kierkegaard’s Thought
a. The Passion of Thought
b. Passionate Responsibility
c. The Passion of Faith
VI. Conclusion
Chapter 2. The Possibility of Reconciliation
I. The Tale of the King and the Maiden
II. Drawing Another to Oneself
III. The Possibility of Reciprocity
IV. The Possibility of Offence
V. Encountering God in Time
VI. Conclusion
Chapter 3. The Orientation of a Life Lived in Relationship With God
I. The Religious Category of Existence
II. Søren Kierkegaard’s Christian Realism
III. Immanent Religiousness and Christianity
IV. Sin-consciousness and Guilt-consciousness
V. Repentance
VI. Conclusion
Chapter 4. Christian Practice in Relationship With God
I. Following Scripture Faithfully
a. Reading a Letter from a Beloved
b. The Perspicuity of Scripture
c. The Uncertainty of Scripture
II. The Single Individual
III. Christ is the Way
a. Following Christ
b. Following Christ Voluntarily
c. Christ as Prototype and Redeemer
IV. Becoming a Christian in the World
V. Conclusion
Chapter 5. The Freedom to Become a Christian in Relationship With God
I. Approaching Christianity
II. The Passionate Transition
a. Venturing the Leap
b. Preparing to Become a Christian?
c. Relationship with ‘the Paradox’
III. Faith in the Presence of God
IV. The Choice to Become a Christian
a. The Freedom of the Individual to Relate to God
b. Willing Beliefs
c. Human Responsibility for Sin
d. Transforming the Will
V. The Freedom to Love
VI. Conclusion
Conclusion
I. Kierkegaard’s Low Pneumatology
II. Communion with the One Who Establishes Kinship with Us in Time
III. What Does it Mean to Become a Christian?
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

THE FREEDOM TO BECOME A CHRISTIAN

THE FREEDOM TO BECOME A CHRISTIAN

A Kierkegaardian Account of Human Transformation in Relationship with God

Andrew B. Torrance

T&T CLARK Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, T&T CLARK and the T&T Clark logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2016 Paperback edition first published 2018 Copyright © Andrew B. Torrance, 2016 Andrew B. Torrance has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. vii constitute an extension of this copyright page. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-0-56766-121-0 PB: 978-0-56768-354-0 ePDF: 978-0-56766-120-3 ePub: 978-0-56766-119-7 Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

CONTENTS Acknowledgementsvii Abbreviationsix INTRODUCTION1 I. Listening to Kierkegaard Alongside His Pseudonyms 5 a.  Kierkegaard and Climacus 6 b.  Kierkegaard and Anti-Climacus 8 Chapter 1 THE COMMUNICATION OF THE CHRISTIAN TRUTH13 I. Can the Truth be Learned? 14 II. The Relationship Between Subjectivity and Objectivity 18 III. The Revelation of Sin 26 a. Despair 28 b.  The Infinite Qualitative Difference and Sin-consciousness 32 IV. Being in the Truth 36 V. Passion in Kierkegaard’s Thought 39 a.  The Passion of Thought 39 b.  Passionate Responsibility 44 c.  The Passion of Faith 52 VI. Conclusion 54 Chapter 2 THE POSSIBILITY OF RECONCILIATION57 I. The Tale of the King and the Maiden 58 II. Drawing Another to Oneself 60 III. The Possibility of Reciprocity 63 IV. The Possibility of Offence 67 V. Encountering God in Time 77 VI. Conclusion 83 Chapter 3 THE ORIENTATION OF A LIFE LIVED IN RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD85 I. The Religious Category of Existence 86 II. Søren Kierkegaard’s Christian Realism 95 III. Immanent Religiousness and Christianity 98 IV. Sin-consciousness and Guilt-consciousness 110 V. Repentance 112 VI. Conclusion 115

vi Contents

Chapter 4 CHRISTIAN PRACTICE IN RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD117 I. Following Scripture Faithfully 118 a.  Reading a Letter from a Beloved 119 b.  The Perspicuity of Scripture 121 c.  The Uncertainty of Scripture 123 II. The Single Individual 125 III. Christ is the Way 129 a.  Following Christ 130 b.  Following Christ Voluntarily 137 c.  Christ as Prototype and Redeemer 139 IV. Becoming a Christian in the World 141 V. Conclusion 146 Chapter 5 THE FREEDOM TO BECOME A CHRISTIAN IN RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD147 I. Approaching Christianity 148 II. The Passionate Transition 158 a.  Venturing the Leap 158 b.  Preparing to Become a Christian? 160 c.  Relationship with ‘the Paradox’ 163 III. Faith in the Presence of God 165 IV. The Choice to Become a Christian 170 a.  The Freedom of the Individual to Relate to God 170 b.  Willing Beliefs 175 c.  Human Responsibility for Sin 177 d.  Transforming the Will 179 V. The Freedom to Love 183 VI. Conclusion 186 CONCLUSION189 I. Kierkegaard’s Low Pneumatology 193 II. Communion with the One Who Establishes Kinship with Us in Time 197 III. What Does it Mean to Become a Christian? 198 Bibliography201 Index211

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I am indebted to my family. The affection of my children, James and Anna Jane, sustained me with ongoing joy throughout my writing. My father, Alan, provided me with constant encouragement and insight that was indispensable to my studies. I want to thank my uncle and aunt, Charles and Elspeth Jaine, not only for their generous financial support but also for the warmth and care they showed us during our time in New Zealand. Also, thanks go to my grandfather, Robbie Bartholomew, for his financial support and ongoing interest in my work. Lastly, there is no one to whom I am more indebted than Julie, my best friend, for her patience and insight, for her willingness to put her faith in me for the long haul, for letting me do what I love, and believing that I could do it. It is to her that I dedicate this book. Alongside the support of family, my work on this book was also aided financially by the University of Otago, Knox Centre for Ministry and Leadership, and the New Zealand government. To these, I am very grateful. My family and I had the privilege of being surrounded and upheld by the most amazing group of friends throughout our time in Dunedin. Among these, I wish to thank Kerry and Barry Kelk, Charissa and Andrew Nicol, Judy and Jason Goroncy, Jane Davis, Steph and Dan Pettigrew, Jono Ryan, Jenny Beck, Graham Redding, John Stenhouse, Andre Muller, Selwyn Yeoman, Andrea McDougall, Tom Duncan-Noakes and Ivor Davidson. I would like to add a special note of thanks to Josh Hurd, David Torrance, Jonathan Lett and Aaron Edwards for reading through earlier versions of this book and offering some immensely helpful feedback. I am also indebted to my PhD examiners, Lee Barrett, Bruce McCormack and Martin Sutherland, for their helpful advice on my initial project. Further, I greatly benefited from conversations with C. Stephen Evans, who helped me to rethink a couple of key issues in this project. My deepest thanks go to my PhD supervisor, Murray Rae, who was the reason we went to the other side of the world. It was an enormous privilege to work under him, and I am sincerely grateful for his ongoing wisdom, perseverance, patience and friendship. Furthermore, I was fortunate to have the supervision of Christopher Holmes, whose guidance, encouragement and friendship also proved invaluable. Lastly, portions of this book have been published in essay form. I am grateful to the publishers for permission to reproduce material from the following essays: ‘Climacus and Kierkegaard on the Outward Relationship with God’, Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook 19 (2014); ‘Do You Have the Heart to Come to Faith? A Look at Anti-Climacus’ Reading of Matthew 11.6’, The Heythrop Journal 55:5 (2014);

viii Acknowledgements

‘Beyond Existentialism: Kierkegaard on the Human Relationship with the God Who is Wholly Other’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 16:3 (2014); and ‘Kierkegaard on the Christian Response to the God Who Establishes Kinship with Us in Time’, Modern Theology 32:1 (2016).

ABBREVIATIONS BA

The Book on Adler, eds and trans Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998). CA The Concept of Anxiety, ed. and tran. Reidar Thomte (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980). CUP Concluding Unscientific Postscript vol. 1, eds and trans Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). CUP2 Concluding Unscientific Postscript vol. 2, eds and trans Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). CD Christian Discourses, in Christian Discourses and The Crisis and the Crisis in the Life of an Actress, eds and trans Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). EO1 Either/Or, Part I, eds and trans Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987). EO2 Either/Or, Part 2, eds and trans Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987). EUD Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, eds and trans Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). FSE For Self-Examination, in For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourself!, eds and trans Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). FT Fear and Trembling, in Fear and Trembling and Repetition, eds and trans Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983). JC Johannes Climacus, in Philosophical Fragments and Johannes Climacus, eds and trans Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985). JFY Judge for Yourself!, in For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourself!, eds and trans Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). JP Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, 7 vols, eds and trans Howard V. and Edna H. Hong, assisted by Gregor Malantschuk (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967–1978). KJN Kierkegaard’s Journals an Notebooks, vols 1–11, eds Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Vanessa Rumble and K. Brian Söderquist (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007–). M The Moment and Late Writings, eds and trans Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998). P Prefaces and ‘Writing Sampler’, ed. and tran. Todd W. Nichol (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998).

x Abbreviations PAP

Søren Kierkegaard Papirer, vols I–XI–3, eds Peter Andreas Heiberg, Victor Kuhr and Einer Torsting (Copenhagen: Gylendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag, 1909–1948); 2nd edn I–XI–3 and supplementary vols XII–XIII, ed. Niels Thulstrup (Copenhagen: Gylendal, 1968–1970). PC Practice in Christianity, eds and trans Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991). PF Philosophical Fragments in Philosophical Fragments and Johannes Climacus, eds and trans Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985). PV The Point of View, eds and trans Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998). R Repetition, in Fear and Trembling and Repetition, eds and trans Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983). SKS Søren Kierkegaard Skrifter, 28 vols, eds Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Joakim Garff, Jette Knudsen, Johnny Kondrup, Alastair McKinnon and Finn Hauberg Mortensen (Copenhagen: Gads Forlag, 1997–). SLW Stages on Life’s Way eds and trans Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). SUD The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening, eds and trans Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980). TDIO Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, eds and trans Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). UDVS Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, eds and trans Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). WA Without Authority, eds and trans Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). WL Works of Love, eds and trans Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).

I N T R O DU C T IO N

Kierkegaard reflects: my whole authorship pertains to Christianity,1 to the issue: becoming a Christian, with direct and indirect polemical aim at that enormous illusion, Christendom, or the illusion that in such a country all are Christians of sorts.2

In Kierkegaard, we have a scholar who was committed to understanding the nature of human existence. It is no surprise, therefore, that he is often described 1. While this book accepts Kierkegaard’s self-assessment, it should be noted that there is much debate over his claim that his ‘whole authorship pertains to Christianity’. Some scholars, including Joakim Garff and Henning Fenger, argue that Kierkegaard’s later retrospective outlook on his authorship misremembers (or dishonestly remembers) some of his earlier aesthetic works as serving a much more explicitly Christian purpose than they actually did at the time. See Fenger, ‘Kierkegaard as a Falsifier of History’, in Kierkegaard, the Myths and Their Origins (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), pp.  1–31; Garff, Søren Kierkegaard: A Biography, tran. Bruce H. Kirmmse (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), pp.  550–4; Garff, ‘The Eyes of Argus: The Point of View and Points of View with Respect to Kierkegaard’s “Activity as an Author”’, tran. Bruce H. Kirmmse, in Kierkegaard: A Critical Reader, eds Jonathan Rée and Jane Chamberlain (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998). Moreover, Alastair Hannay claims that Kierkegaard ‘nurture[d] a lifelong ambivalence towards Christianity which allowed him to hold it at a distance’: Hannay, Kierkegaard: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 39. While this book will not directly engage with the positions of Garff and Fenger, it will hopefully serve to offer a challenge to Hannay’s claim. For a critique of Garff ’s position, see Sylvia Walsh, ‘Reading Kierkegaard with Kierkegaard against Garff ’, Søren Kierkegaard Newsletter 38 (1999): 4–8; and Garff ’s response to Walsh in ‘Rereading Oneself ’, Søren Kierkegaard Newsletter 38 (1999): 9–14. For a superb analysis of this issue, and a helpful critique of deconstructionist readings of Kierkegaard, see Mark Tietjen’s Kierkegaard, Communication, and Virtue (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), pp. 61–85. 2.  PV, p. 23 / SKS 16, p. 11. Merold Westphal helpfully points out that ‘[t]his does not mean that he [Kierkegaard] had the whole authorship planned out in advance. Rather, he places great emphasis on the role of “Governance” in his authorship. He senses that he has been guided by God in ways of which he was not aware at the time.’ Westphal, Kierkegaard’s Concept of Faith (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), p.  4; see also PV, pp.  76–7 / SKS 16, p. 56; KJN 5, p. 48 / SKS 21, p. 49 [NB6:66].

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The Freedom to Become a Christian

as, or, more accurately, caricatured as, the father of existentialism. Yet, in stark contrast to this portrayal, he saw himself as a thinker who was devoted to a basic theological question, namely, What does it mean to become a Christian? His ‘strategy’ in this was quite simple – ‘with the help of God [med Guds Bistand] to utilize everything to make clear what in truth Christianity’s requirement is’.3 As he took up his work as an author before God (for Gud) and with God (med Gud),4 he was led to provide a vision of Christianity that was far more theocentric and Christocentric than anthropocentric. This book explores Kierkegaard’s response to two questions: (1) How does one become a Christian? and (2) How are we to conceive of God’s relationship to a person in and through this process? As we shall see, the account of conversion that emerges does not concern a single event in which a person suddenly becomes a Christian, either by a miracle of God’s grace or a Promethean act of will. Rather, it concerns a formative process of becoming.5 What Kierkegaard has in view here is not, however, a progressive journey of spiritual self-discovery, self-understanding or self-denial, a journey whereby a new life evolves out of the old. Rather, it is conceived as a transformative journey that is grounded in an active relationship with the God who is present with us and encounters us in and through the person of Jesus Christ.6 Furthermore, it involves a growing in relationship with God that does not simply result from God’s encountering us from the eternal beyond but takes place concretely within the history of this world. Accordingly, becoming a Christian requires responding to God’s historical engagement with us within the limitations of time. What should also become clear in this study are the ways in which Kierkegaard confronts some of the key errors that arise in overly systematic and reductive accounts of Christian conversion: (1) The inherent weakness of approaches that assume we can dichotomise, and then quantify, the respective contributions of divine and human agency; (2) The inclination to objectify human beings in ways that neglect their subjective existence as living persons who require to be conceived diachronically – persons who are called to take up a life-long vocation of becoming Christian; (3) The tendency to reduce God to an amorphous concept, postulate or figment of the human imagination, thereby neglecting God’s active 3.  PV, p. 16 / SKS 13, p. 23. 4.  PV, p. 24 / SKS 16, p. 12. 5. In a journal entry from 1838, Kierkegaard writes: ‘it takes a long time before one truly comes to terms with, finds one’s place (knows where everything has its place) in the divine economy. One gropes around among a multiplicity of moods, not even knowing how one ought to pray. [Christ] does not take on any definite form within us – one does not know the meaning of the assistance of the Spirit, etc.’ KJN 2, p.  96 / SKS 18, p.  104 [FF:153]. 6. For further discussion of Kierkegaard’s understanding of the Christian faith as a journey, see Lee C. Barrett, Eros and Self-Emptying: The Intersections of Augustine and Kierkegaard (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), pp. 126–58, and Christopher Ben Simpson, The Truth is the Way: Kierkegaard’s Theology Viatorum (Eugene: Cascade, 2011).

Introduction

3

involvement in the process of becoming a Christian; (4) The attendant impulse to allow a body of Christian teaching or dogma to displace the actuality of God’s personal agency; (5) The overemphasis on conversion as a solipsistic event of individual transformation rather than a process of becoming reconciled with God; (6) The tendency to prioritise epistemology over ontology (that is, over our relationship with God) in discussions of what is involved in becoming a Christian – to focus on the question of ‘What I come to know as a Christian’ rather than ‘Who I come to be as a Christian’; and (7) The propensity to lose sight of God’s loving purpose to draw all human beings into the one true form of existence for which they were created. Underlying these errors is a failure to appreciate that becoming a Christian involves becoming who we are created to be in and through a personal and, indeed, dynamic relationship with God, whom the Gospel narrative presents as loving in his inmost being. The possibility of becoming a Christian in this way, for Kierkegaard, is grounded in God’s assuming human existence in Jesus Christ. In and through the Incarnation, the truth of God is mediated to human beings in a way that makes it possible for persons to participate in right relationship with God. As we shall see, this mediatorial activity does not merely concern the historical life of Jesus Christ, as it occurred 2,000 years ago. It concerns God’s continuing relationship with persons in history; it concerns God’s gracious activity for us today. But how can a person really know whether she really is participating in a relationship with the living God? The challenges here, combined with a fear of fideism, generates the inclination to reduce any reference to a relationship with God to something conceivable within natural modes of discourse. This is particularly the case, for Kierkegaard, in the academic setting, where ‘Christianity’ is repeatedly degraded into something more tolerable for the intellectual palate: something more (immediately) apprehensible, believable, imaginable and appropriable. Under the pressure of certain forms of intellectualism, Christians are urged to play down or sidestep the personal nature of God, and thus to forget that it is a personal God who is at the very foundation of reality. In a testimony to the governance (Styrelse) of God in his authorship, Kierkegaard states: ‘it was religiously my duty that my existing as an author express the truth, which I had daily perceived and ascertained – that there is a God’.7 This duty led Kierkegaard to proclaim that God is not someone who can be commandeered or tamed by natural human reason, imagination or rhetoric, by the professor, poet, or preacher. God cannot be reduced to the subject matter of a human aesthetic, and nor can Christianity be reduced to a mere cultural phenomenon. Rather, both God and providence are to be believed with a faith, love and hope that humbly look to God as the external object of faith: as a divine subject who transcends the world–historical system.8 7.  PV, p. 72n. / SKS 16, p. 51n. 8. With this orientation, as Christopher Barnett writes, the person of faith finds that ‘Her self-knowledge, as well as the knowledge through which she understands the world,

4

The Freedom to Become a Christian

For Kierkegaard, the existence of God makes all the difference for the Christian life. It is a living God who inspires passionate commitment, humility and ‘fear and trembling’. Furthermore, God does so in a way that human conceptions of God cannot. When Christian conceptions or propositions become the object of the Christian faith (for example, in the form of Christian doctrine), ‘Christianity’ becomes a plaything for intellectual pursuits, cultural sensibilities and political agendas. This is not, of course, to deny that Christian concepts and propositions serve a purpose. Their primary purpose, however, is to serve as a witness to God: to provide us with teaching that helps us to talk about, understand and know both who God is and who we are before God. But, for Kierkegaard, they are not to take centre stage. So, how does a Kierkegaardian emphasis on the existence of a personal reality of God relate to our title: The Freedom to Become a Christian? The concept of ‘freedom’ is notoriously ambiguous. Generally, however, this term points to two things on which this book will focus: (1) The role of human agency in the process of becoming a Christian; (2) The circumstances and dynamics that are required for it to become possible for a person to become a Christian. For Kierkegaard, I shall argue, a person’s freedom to become a Christian depends on him or her participating in an interrelationship with God in which human transformation can take place. The freedom that relates to this process, however, does not only concern a freedom that precedes our existential development. For Kierkegaard, a person can also look forward to a freedom that is received upon becoming a Christian: the freedom to exist in the way that he was created to exist before God. By becoming a Christian, a person is liberated from self-perpetuating bondage, from his sinful will and erroneous perception of reality. In fellowship with God, he finds himself participating in a new life. In this life, he is caught up in a struggle of ‘dying to the world’ and ‘dying to the self ’. As we shall see, this is the result of his will being united in correspondence with God’s will, leading him to become conscious that ‘God is the one and only’.9 The conclusion that this work seeks to draw is that, for Kierkegaard, Christian belief and understanding are subordinate to a person’s relationship with God. They do not constitute the relationship itself. They are nothing more than a witness to and expression of the fact that God actively relates to us in history. As I shall argue, while Kierkegaard recognises that reflection, decision and action are all fundamental requirements for the process of becoming a Christian, he does not think that they can themselves draw a person into relationship with God. Only God draws individuals to himself, in and through Jesus Christ. So, for Kierkegaard, a person’s freedom to become a Christian needs to be understood in terms of a transformation that occurs both with God and in response to God. It is not the freedom to deliver oneself into the Christian life but a decision to embrace “rests” in the very foundation of her being.’ Christopher Barnett, From Despair to Faith: The Spirituality of Søren Kierkegaard (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014), p. 58. 9.  JP 4, 5038 / SKS 26, p. 405 [NB35:50].

Introduction

5

the Christian life into which God delivers a person. With his deep appreciation for this fact, we shall also find that Kierkegaard does not try to offer a systematic answer to the question of how or why a person becomes a Christian. Any attempt to spell out the mechanics of this process is always an attempt to explain a reality that is beyond the limits of human understanding: the mystery of God’s wisdom and grace. Ultimately, therefore, the question of a person’s becoming a Christian is a matter that must be entrusted to God.

I. Listening to Kierkegaard Alongside His Pseudonyms One of the major challenges that a person faces when reading through Kierkegaard’s writings is that so many of his works were written under a series of pseudonyms. These pseudonyms are ‘poeticised personalities, poetically maintained so that everything they say is in character with their poeticized individualities’.10 Also, they are created to offer a perspective that is very different from Kierkegaard’s own. Kierkegaard, therefore, insists that his pseudonymous works must not be confused with his own signed works: ‘Anyone with just a fragment of common sense will perceive that it would be ludicrously confusing to attribute to me everything the poeticized personalities say.’11 This does not mean, however, that he completely disagrees with the accounts of Christianity, for example, put forward by his pseudonyms; indeed, we find extensive continuity between the descriptions of Christianity put forward by Kierkegaard and those put forward by his pseudonyms. The major difference concerns how they perceive their own relationship to the account of Christianity that they are considering, which, consequently, has a critical impact on the way they present their respective accounts. In this study, we shall be guided by a diverse range of insights from a variety of Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms, including Judge William, Vigilius Haufniensis, Johannes de Silentio and Petrus Minor. The two pseudonyms, however, whom we shall consider most closely, alongside Kierkegaard, are Johannes Climacus and Anti-Climacus – the non-Christian and the extraordinary Christian.12 Of these two pseudonyms, it will be Johannes Climacus who will receive the most attention. 10.  JP 6, 6786 / Pap X-6 B 145. 11.  JP 6, 6786 / Pap X-6 B 145. Kierkegaard also notes in this journal entry that he has ‘expressly urged once and for all that anyone who wants to quote something from the pseudonyms will not attribute that quotation to me’. See also CUP, pp.  625–30 / SKS 7, pp. 569–73. 12. See PV, p. 43n. / SKS 16, p. 25n.; CUP, p. 617 / SKS 7, p. 560; KJN 6, pp. 124–5 / SKS 22, pp. 127–8 [NB11:204]; KJN 6, p. 127 / SKS 22, p. 130 [NB11:209]; KJN 6, pp. 132–3 / SKS 22, pp. 135–36 [NB11:222]; KJN 7, p. 185 / SKS 23, pp. 182–3 [NB17:28]; JP 6, 6349 / Pap X-6 B 48. Notably, as the Hongs point out, the ‘prefix “Anti” … does not mean “against”. It is an old form of “ante” (before) as in “anticipate,” and “before” also denotes a relation of rank, as in “before me” in the First commandment.’ SUD, p. xxii; PC, p. xii.

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The Freedom to Become a Christian

a. Kierkegaard and Climacus Climacus saw himself as an outsider to the Christian faith. As such, he was someone who did not yet recognise the truth of Christianity for himself. However, he also saw himself as someone who was interested in the question ‘How can I, Johannes Climacus, share in the happiness that Christianity promises?’13 By exploring this question, he was able to develop an outsider’s account of what Christianity is. However, he was more than merely an outsider. He was an observer who thought about Christianity as a dialectician, a humourist and a psychologist. As such, he was the kind of thinker who could easily have settled into the kind of ivory tower conversations that were taking place among the rationalistic and bourgeois Christians in Denmark. Yet, unlike many of the rationalists, Climacus was not stubbornly committed to developing a detached account of Christianity. Rather, he was genuinely interested in the happiness (or ‘happy passion’) that Christianity promises.14 This enabled him to provide a more attentive account of what Christianity is, evident in his superb understanding for the passionate nature of Christianity. Nonetheless, as we shall see, his deep appreciation for the passionate nature of Christianity could not itself stop him from remaining an outsider. Kierkegaard’s relation to Christianity was quite different. Through having come to faith, he knew, to some extent, what it meant to be a Christian. In accordance with his particular Christian commitment, his own signed writings did not seek to keep up appearances with Denmark’s highbrow Christianity. Rather, they were primarily devoted to ‘upbuilding’ (Opbyggelse) his readers in lives of Christian discipleship. At the same time, Kierkegaard also sought to challenge the ways in which the cultural and intellectual elite in Denmark were distorting ‘Christianity’ to fit their own particular interests and agendas. According to their brand of ‘Christianity’, the truth of the Christian faith was something to be discovered by way of a scholarly devotion to Christian doctrine and teaching. In order to challenge this perception, Kierkegaard created a character who was able to speak to the rationalists on their own terms: Johannes Climacus. What the non-Christian Climacus was able to do (and which Kierkegaard could not) was stand back as an observer of Christianity and thereby offer a more detached analysis of what Christianity is. Nonetheless, as someone who could grasp what Kierkegaard was seeking to achieve, and as someone who was sensitive to the passionate nature of Christianity, Climacus was also able to question the implications of interpreting the truth of Christianity in purely intellectual terms, or, more specifically, from a Socratic or idealist perspective. As we shall see, Climacus does this by pointing to the coherence of an alternative way of understanding the truth of Christianity – one that contrasted with a Socratic or idealist approach. What becomes apparent 13.  CUP, p. 17 / SKS 7, p. 26. 14. As we shall see, Climacus describes faith as a ‘happy passion’. PF, pp. 54, 59 / SKS 4, pp. 257, 261.

Introduction

7

is that this alternative bears a much more striking resemblance to orthodox Christianity than its ‘Socratic’ alternative. By using Climacus to point this out, Kierkegaard was able to challenge his readers and help them to recognise the problematic nature of their approach. It is important, however, to be clear that Kierkegaard was not under the impression that he could use Climacus to translate the truth of Christianity into the language of the rationalists. Nor did he believe that the grace of God somehow depended upon his particular communication skills. By speaking to the rationalists in their own terms, through the voice of Climacus, Kierkegaard was able to question them in ways that penetrated their speculative strategies and challenged them to rethink how they were relating to Christianity. He was, in effect, playing them at their own game – by exposing the limits of their position via their own methods. In this way, he questioned their unyielding confidence in the powers of immanent reason and opened the doors to the suggestion that, for Christian faith, the truth is to be found through a relationship with the God who is beyond the scope of unredeemed human reason – the God who cannot be conjured up from within the mind’s own resources, that is, by philosophical argumentation or analysis. By presenting them with this alternative, Kierkegaard and Climacus were to draw attention to the essential supposition of the Gospel, namely, that, as Emil Brunner would later insist under Kierkegaard’s influence, ‘through God alone can God be known’.15 For Kierkegaard, God is known in and through the reconciliation of our minds, which takes place in Jesus Christ, who is the way, the truth and the life, and who thus constitutes, in himself, the condition whereby we are brought into relationship with the truth. This involves the reorientation of our focus back to the one who alone can draw persons into the Christian life. By using Climacus to converse with the intellectuals of his day, Kierkegaard translated the ‘what’ of Christianity into a message that related (albeit challengingly) to the subjective mindset of a particular people. Again, however, he did so with an acute awareness that his ‘translation’ of the Gospel could only go so far. He did not for a moment believe that he could employ his intellectual powers of persuasion to bring people closer to God and enable them to become Christian. He could not translate the presence of God to people, and, therefore, could not draw persons into the spiritual relationship with God that is decisive for coming to faith. He sought instead to undercut the intellectual foundations that were strengthening resistance to the possibility that the truth is to be found through a relationship with the God who is external to us. In so doing, he created an opportunity to focus again on the revelation that alone defines what Christianity is. Kierkegaard’s concern to shift the focus to God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ is central to what Climacus is doing in Concluding Unscientific Postscript, which, Kierkegaard describes, ‘constitutes the turning point in my entire work as an

15. Emil Brunner, The Mediator (London: Lutterworth Press, 1934), p. 21.

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The Freedom to Become a Christian

author, inasmuch as it poses the issue: becoming a Christian’.16 When posing this issue, as we shall see, Climacus does not attempt to offer a methodical ‘how to’ guide to becoming a Christian, hence the ‘Unscientific’ [uvidenskabelig]17 in the Postscript’s title.18 He does make some clear assertions about what is required to become a Christian, and, at times, these assertions can come across as quite systematic. But he is also clear that the Christian life is dependent upon a divine activity that cannot be incorporated into a human system of understanding. As Kierkegaard seeks to show through the writings of Climacus, there is an absolute difference between human ideas of Jesus Christ and the divine–human reality of Jesus Christ: the latter is united with God himself; the former is not. Furthermore, Kierkegaard is clear that a person cannot know what it means to become a Christian without experiencing this in his or her own existence. For these two reasons, he does not think that it is possible for him to communicate directly (either to his non-Christian self or anyone else) what it means to become a Christian. So what is it about Postscript that makes it a turning point for Kierkegaard? The fundamental answer lies in the fact that it poses question as to what is involved in becoming a Christian. At the same time, however, there is much more to what is going on. One thing that makes the turn in Postscript so decisive – something anticipated in Philosophical Fragments19 – is the extent to which Climacus grounds his account of becoming a Christian in God’s active engagement with particular persons in history. At the centre of this account stands the one whom he calls the ‘god in human form’ or the ‘god in time’: the one who redeems the sinner from the sin that she cannot overcome. In the wake of Postscript, Kierkegaard goes on to devote himself to developing a much more Christological account of becoming a Christian, culminating in For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourself! b. Kierkegaard and Anti-Climacus To derive a robust theological account of becoming a Christian from Kierkegaard’s writings, we need to go beyond the relatively skeletal and abstract account provided by the non-Christian Climacus. It is crucial for us to turn to his later writings. That is, we must venture into Kierkegaard’s ‘religious’ writings, where 16.  PV, p. 63 / SKS 16, p. 44 (emphasis original); see also PV, pp. 29n., 31, 55, 94 / SKS 16, pp. 15n., 17, 36, 73. 17. As Paul Holmer helpfully points out, ‘the Danish word “uvidenskabelig” suggests “not-cognitive-like”’. Holmer, On Kierkegaard and the Truth (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 2012), p. 53. 18. See KJN 2, pp. 255–6 / SKS 18, pp. 276–7 [JJ:411]; see also CUP, pp. 617–23 / SKS 7, pp. 560–66. Kierkegaard notes that ‘Christianly understood, there is no Christian scientific scholarship, and in any case the Christian scholar should apply to faith for the indulgence to dare to occupy himself with scholarship, since scholarship is not superior but inferior.’ CUP2, p. 155 / Pap. X-6 B 114 144. 19.  PF, p. 109 / SKS 4, p. 305; see also CUP, pp. 9–17 / SKS 7, pp. 19–26.

Introduction

9

he fleshes out what it means to become a Christian in more explicitly Christian terms. In this later authorship, it is perhaps Anti-Climacus who does this most comprehensively.20 In Sickness unto Death, Anti-Climacus provides us with an account of what it means to be in sin and despair before God. Then, in Practice in Christianity, he considers what it means for a person to decide to become a Christian: to decide to distance oneself from the sinful ways of the world and turn to God’s grace for strength. At the centre of this decision is, once again, the God–human: ‘Jesus Christ, the infinitely highest one, true God and true man’, who, ‘from on high’, ‘will draw all to himself ’.21 If we were only to turn to Climacus and Anti-Climacus, however, we would end up with an account of becoming a Christian that, in certain respects, is oversimplified. As a non-Christian, Climacus cannot get inside the process of becoming a Christian in a way that would enable him to witness to the complexities that a subject will experience when becoming a Christian. While Anti-Climacus can offer a first-hand account of the complexities, the fact that he is ‘more than a human being’ holds him back from witnessing to the torment and uncertainty, the confusion and caprice, the anxiety and restlessness that will burden the ordinary person’s journey to become a Christian.22 It is at this point that we benefit from turning to the unextraordinary Christian life of Kierkegaard. He writes: Never have I fought in such a way that I have said: I am the true Christian; the others are not Christians, or probably even hypocrites and the like. No, I have fought in this way: I know what Christianity is; I myself acknowledge my defects as a Christian – but I do know what Christianity is. And to know this thoroughly seems in the interest of every human being, whether one is now a Christian or a non-Christian, whether one’s intention to accept Christianity or abandon it. But I have attacked not one, saying that he is not a Christian; I have passed judgement on no one.23

Kierkegaard was very careful to play down his own Christian existence. By 20.  Kierkegaard describes the year of 1848 (in which he worked on Sickness unto Death and Practice in Christianity) as ‘the richest and most fruitful year, without any comparison, I have experienced as an author’ (CUP2, p.  167; see also KJN 5, pp.  300–1 / SKS 21, pp.  289–90 [NB10:60]). In a journal entry from 1849, he describes these two works of Anti-Climacus as ‘extremely valuable’, noting that in Sickness unto Death ‘it was granted to me to illuminate Christian[ity] on a scale greater than I had ever dreamed possible; crucial categories were directly discovered there’. KJN 5, p. 305 / SKS 21, p. 294 [NB10:69]. Also in 1849 he notes that Practice in Christianity ‘is quite certainly the most perfect and true thing I have written’. KJN 6, p. 267n. / SKS 22, p. 265 [NB12:196]. 21.  PC, p. 160 / SKS 12, p. 165. 22.  KJN 6, p. 268 / SKS 22, p. 265 [NB12:196]. 23.  PV, p. 15 / SKS 13, p. 23. Kierkegaard also denies that he has ever attempted to be pietistically rigorous in his description of Christianity. PV, p. 17 / SKS 13, p. 24.

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reading through any number of the excellent biographies on Kierkegaard, or by delving into his own journal entries, it becomes clear how much more restless and complicated the process of becoming a Christian actually is for him.24 Like so many other Christians, Kierkegaard cannot look back over his life and see a clearly defined progression in his journey of faith. There is no precise moment when he took a leap or made a decisive choice to become a Christian. There is no particular moment when he felt decisively transformed by grace.25 And there is no clear line of existential progression that culminates in his becoming decisively Christian. What Kierkegaard describes as the ‘love story’ of his life of relationship with God is fragmentary, vacillating and unpredictable, much more so than the accounts of becoming a Christian that we find in Climacus’ and Anti-Climacus’ writings.26 The inconsistent nature of Kierkegaard’s love story is a consequence of the troubled way in which he, or anyone, relates to God in the midst of this world. Reflecting on his own experience of his relationship to God, Kierkegaard notes that there is no ‘immediate God–relationship to appeal to’.27 This meant, for example, that he would not ‘dare to say that it is God who directly contributes the thoughts to me’.28 Tied to his own subjective perspective, Kierkegaard ends up describing his relationship to God as ‘a relationship of reflection, inwardness in reflection, since reflection is the predominant quality of my individuality’.29 Not 24. For an account of Kierkegaard as a Christian thinker, I would recommend Julia Watkin’s Kierkegaard (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1997). However, I would also strongly encourage reading through the collection of Kierkegaard’s essays in The Point of View. Alastair Hannay’s and Joakim Garff ’s biographies of Kierkegaard are much more sceptical about Kierkegaard’s Christian faith. This scepticism, however, I would argue, provides further testimony to the complex nature of Kierkegaard’s Christian life. 25. That said, in his well-known Journal entry, written while studying in Gilleleie, he writes: ‘What I really need is to be clear about what I am to do, not what I must know, except in the way knowledge must precede all action. It is a question of understanding my own destiny, of seeing what the Deity really wants me to do; the thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die … what use would it be in this respect if I were to discover a so-called objective truth, or if I worked my way through philosophers’ systems and were able to call them to account on request, point out inconsistencies in every single circle? … What use would it be to be able to propound the meaning of Christianity, to explain many separate facts, if it had no deeper meaning for myself and my life?’ KJN 1, p.  19 / SKS 17, p.  74 [AA:12], written 1 August 1835. We can see further evidence of decisive changes in Kierkegaard’s life in the following journal entries from 1838: KJN 1, pp. 9–11 / SKS 17, pp. 13–16 [AA:6]; KJN 1, pp. 245–6 / SKS 17, pp. 254–5 [DD:113]; KJN 1, p. 246 / SKS 17, p. 255 [DD:117]; JP 5, 5430 / SKS 27, pp. 291–2 [Papir305]; see also Murray Rae, Kierkegaard and Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2010), pp. 16–22. 26.  PV, p. 71 / SKS 16, p. 51. 27.  PV, p. 74 / SKS 16, p. 53. 28.  PV, p. 74 / SKS 16, p. 53. 29.  PV, p. 74 / SKS 16, pp. 53–4.

Introduction

11

for a moment did he think he could assess what was involved in his becoming a Christian from some Archimedean point – not least the dynamics of God’s grace. Instead, he accepts that he can only experience the process of becoming a Christian from within his own life of reflection. And it was from the perspective of his life of reflection that he ‘served the cause of Christianity’.30 That having been said, we must be careful not to misunderstand Kierkegaard here. While he openly acknowledges his inability to relate himself to God from outwith his own life of reflection, this does not mean that he collapses his relationship with God into his own spiritual life. He saw his life of reflection as inspired by God’s governance and was adamant that God was with him in his life, loving him and sustaining him in ways that only he could know – in ways that would be incommunicable to anyone outside of his relationship with God.31 For Kierkegaard, however, this was never something that he could immediately understand, and he became much more open about God’s presence in his life in retrospect, especially towards the end of his life. Nonetheless, he also insists that he was conscious of God’s presence ‘from the very beginning’.32 What Kierkegaard’s analysis establishes is that the process of becoming a Christian is much more complex than is often conveyed. The main reason for this is that the Christian life requires participation in a relationship with someone who is neither directly perceivable nor subject to human control. But it is not only the nature of God that makes this process complex. It is also complicated by the fact that persons are unable to take complete control over their own lives before God. Still further, it is then made all the more challenging by the fact that the task of becoming a Christian takes a person right against the stream of this world. For these reasons, Kierkegaard sees the process of becoming a Christian as fraught with turbulence. It is simply confused, therefore, to try to reduce this process to a momentary transformation, a sudden decision or, indeed, a particular series of ordered decisions and transformations. This is not to deny that this process will require momentary transformations and on-the-spot decisions – and, indeed, such events (e.g. when a person first responds to the Gospel and begins the task of faith) can be interpreted, not unjustifiably, as events of conversion.33 Also, none of 30.  PV, p. 93 / SKS 16, p. 72. 31.  PV, pp.  71, 76 / SKS 16, pp.  51, 55. While Kierkegaard insists that ‘Governance has supported me indescribably much’, he is also careful to qualify that he did not experience governance ‘in any extraordinary fashion, as if I had a special relationship to God’. KJN 5, p. 243 / SKS 21, p. 233 [NB9:56]. See also Lee Barrett’s extremely helpful chapter ‘Kierkegaard’s Authorship and the Paradox of Divine and Human Agencies’ in International Kierkegaard Commentary on The Point of View, ed. Robert L. Perkins (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2010), pp. 65–75. 32.  PV, pp. 74–5, 90 / SKS 16, pp. 54, 69. 33. In Acts, Luke quite clearly provides accounts of conversion that are much more immediate, for example the first converts (Acts 2.37–42), the conversion of Saul (Acts 9.1-19), the conversion of Lydia (Acts 16.11–15) and the conversion of the Philippian jailer (Acts 16.27–40).

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this is to deny that there may be certain things that should be said about the order of this process. What Kierkegaard makes remarkably clear, however, is that there is no room for overly reductive accounts of becoming a Christian. For him, we cannot know exactly how and when God will draw us into a life of faith. We cannot even know with certainty whether we have decisively entered into a life of faith. But we can believe that we have become caught up in the process of becoming a Christian because the love of God is at work in our lives, relating to us in ways that inspire moments of both qualitative transition and personal decision. For Kierkegaard, this belief in the grace and love of God lies at the very heart of the Christian life.

Chapter 1 T H E C OM M U N IC AT IO N O F T H E C H R I ST IA N T RU T H

Kierkegaard notes in a journal entry from 1851: There is a truth which remains even if the world disappears … This truth is not subordinate to the human spirit (if it were, the human spirit then could not judge according to it but must exercise judgement over it), not coordinate (for then it would be inconstant like the human spirit), but the human spirit is subordinate to it – and this is to be truly free, when a person is the subordinate one.1

One of the first things that needs to be considered when assessing Kierkegaard’s account of becoming a Christian is how the Christian truth is communicated to a person. As this chapter will show, the Christian truth both affirms and challenges human existence. While the communication of this truth seeks to elevate human beings (by delivering them into the truth), it does so by exposing the fact that the human beings do not possess the truth within themselves. That is, it reveals that the truth is grounded in the objective reality of the God who gives human existence its true meaning.2 Thus, for Kierkegaard, a person becomes a Christian by becoming the human she was created to be before God. And she does this by becoming transformed in her own being and existence. This chapter will investigate Kierkegaard’s understanding of the communication of the Christian truth by exploring five key areas: (1) Johannes Climacus’ engagement with the question ‘Can the truth be learned?’; (2) Climacus’ basic understanding of the relationship between subjectivity and objectivity in Concluding Unscientific Postscript; (3) Anti-Climacus’ understanding of sin in Sickness Unto Death; (4) the role of a person’s initial encounter with the notion of Christianity; (5) the nature of passion in thought development and, briefly, in a 1.  JP 4, 4877 / SKS 24, pp. 282–3 [NB23:157] (referencing Augustine). 2. As such, I think it is unhelpful for Clare Carlisle to suggest that Kierkegaard ‘seems unconcerned with the objective truth of God’, even though she does go on to qualify that ‘Kierkegaard’s emphasis on transcendence distinguishes him from a non-realist interpretation of religious faith, since a transcendent God has to have power, has to be the source of actuality’. Clare Carlisle, Kierkegaard’s Philosophy of Becoming: Movements and Positions (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005), p. 135.

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person’s coming to faith. By exploring these five areas, we shall develop a preliminary understanding of some of the major themes that Kierkegaard has in mind when wrestling with the question of becoming a Christian. As we do so, we shall think not only about what (or who) enables a person to exist in right relationship with God, but also about what prevents a person from doing so. I might add that much of this chapter will attend to Kierkegaard’s more general account of human thought and existence, alongside his appreciation of the human need for God’s grace. It is vital to take the time to do this groundwork because Kierkegaard’s account of Christian conversion is deeply informed by his insight into human existence – the existence into which God not only speaks but also enters.

I. Can the Truth be Learned? When asked the question ‘Can the truth be learned?’ Socrates was well aware that the answer was not as simple as it seemed. If one has no awareness of the truth, how can one know what one is looking for, and how will one be able to recognise the truth when one discovers it? The answer to this question was, for Socrates, that knowledge can only be discovered by recollection or anamnesis. Human beings have the ability to recognise all truths because they are inherent, yet dormant, in the mind. These universal truths, which the mind has been conditioned to discover, transcend the particular, that is, they transcend the particular moment when an individual recollects the eternal truth and the particular teacher who prompts an individual to recollect the truth. Such particularities, for Socrates, are therefore of no ultimate consequence for a person’s ability to recollect the truth: ‘[v]iewed socratically, any point of departure in time is eo ipso something accidental, a vanishing, an occasion. Nor is the teacher anything more.’3 For Socrates, the truth resides in the mind; it cannot enter into the mind, and no condition can be gained that leads the mind to discover something new or outside the mind. All that the learner needs in order to recognise the truth is a Socratic midwife – a teacher who can jog the mind or ‘bring to birth’ what is immanently there.4 Again, the particular identity of the midwife is necessarily irrelevant to the learner’s relation to the truth. In Philosophical Fragments, Kierkegaard set out to expose the implications of interpreting Christian experience from an idealist perspective through his non-Christian pseudonym, Johannes Climacus.5 After briefly setting out some 3.  PF, p. 11 / SKS 4, p. 220. 4.  PF, pp. 9–13 / SKS 4, pp. 218–22. 5. As noted in the introduction, Climacus describes himself as an ‘outsider’ to the Christian faith who is interested in asking the question ‘How can I, Johannes Climacus, become a Christian?’ CUP, p.  16 / SKS 7, p.  25; see also CUP p.  617 / SKS 7, p.  560. It should also be noted that the name Johannes Climacus comes from the figure of Saint John Climacus, a sixth-century monk of St Catherine’s Monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai.



The Communication of the Christian Truth

15

of the key features of the Socratic approach, as noted above, Climacus goes on to consider the possibility of an alternative way of attaining the truth, by way of a ‘thought experiment’.6 If the situation is to be different, then the moment in time must have such decisive significance that for no moment will I be able to forget it, neither in time nor in eternity, because the eternal, previously non-existent, came into existence [blev til] in that moment. With this presupposition, let us now examine the relations involved in the question: Can the truth be learned?7

If a moment (Øieblik) in history is to be decisive for a learner’s capacity to access the truth, Climacus supposes, ‘the seeker up until that moment must not have possessed the truth … Consequently, he has to be defined as being outside the truth.’8 Therefore, the learner would be in a state of untruth. This condition would enslave the mind in untruth, keeping it captive until a new condition could be achieved that would liberate the mind from the alienated forms of thought that conditioned its thinking. For the mind to be set free to learn the truth, he proposes, the learner would require much more than a mere midwife to prompt the learner into recollecting the truth. He would need someone who could ‘provide him with the condition [Betingelsen] for understanding it’. This person, then, must have the ability to transform the learner, an ability that far surpasses the powers of a mere human teacher: ‘no human being is capable of doing this; if it is to take place, it must be done by the god [Guden] himself ’.9 If God is brought into the picture, then the learner is to be understood as a created human being. For Climacus, this entails that, in creation, ‘God must have given him the condition for understanding’:10 a good God would not have created persons initially in a state of untruth. However, he goes on, if we are to continue to muse that the moment is of decisive significance, then the learner must now be understood to ‘lack the condition, consequently be deprived of it’.11 This loss of the condition, he suggests, ‘must’ be the fault of the learner, and he proposes Climacus is known for having written the work Ladder of Paradise, which referred to the thirty steps that one could ascend to achieve perfection with God. See PF, p. iv n.2. 6.  PF, p. 6 / SKS 4, p. 216. As the Hongs point out: ‘No distinction is made here between Socrates and Plato. Nor is a distinction made in Fragments between Socrates–Plato and philosophical idealism nor between them and naturalism and scientific humanism, inasmuch as all of them presuppose an immanental possession of genuine knowledge or of the condition for acquiring it.’ PF, p. 277 n. 8; see also CUP, pp. 206–7 n. / SKS 7, pp. 188–9). 7.  PF, p. 13 / SKS 4, p. 222. 8.  PF, p. 13 / SKS 4, p. 222. 9.  PF, pp. 14–15 / SKS 4, p. 223. To qualify, a mere human teacher would only be able to reform relatively – rather than transform qualitatively – a learner. 10.  PF, p. 15 / SKS 4, p. 223. 11.  PF, p. 15 / SKS 4, p. 224.

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that we refer to this state of untruth as a state of sin.12 Under these circumstances, Climacus considers what we should call ‘the god who gives the condition [Betingelsen] and gives the truth’.13 Let us call him a saviour [Frelser], for he does indeed save the learner from unfreedom, save him from himself. Let us call him a deliverer [Forløser], for he does indeed deliver the person who had imprisoned himself, and no one is so dreadfully imprisoned, and no captivity so impossible to break out of as that in which the individual holds himself captive! And yet even this does not say enough, for by his unfreedom he had indeed become guilty of something, and if the teacher gives him the condition and the truth, then he is, of course, a reconciler [Forsoner] who takes away the wrath that lay over the incurred guilt.14

In the moment that the condition is received, the learner will become a ‘new person’ in a change that Climacus calls conversion (Omvendelse).15 In order to experience this conversion, however, the learner must become conscious of his culpability for being in a state of untruth. Such consciousness takes the form of a feeling of sorrow, which he calls repentance (Anger): ‘[F]or what else is repentance, which does indeed look back, but nevertheless in such a way that precisely thereby

12.  PF, p.  15 / SKS 4, p.  224. Climacus contends that it would be a contradiction to suggest that the loss of the condition was due to an act of god. As C. Stephen Evans explains: ‘Presumably Climacus is here simply assuming that whatever else God may be, God must be seen as good, as the source of our true humanness, and it would thus be contradictory to think of God as the destroyer of that humanness.’ Evans, Passionate Reason: Making Sense of Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992), p. 35. Climacus also thinks it would be a contradiction to suggest that the condition was lost by way of an accident on the part of the learner. 13.  PF, p. 15 / SKS 4, p. 224. 14.  PF, p.  17 / SKS 4, p.  226 (emphasis original). As Merold Westphal points out, Protestant theology tends to view the Holy Spirit as being the one who gives a person to understand the truth. However, ‘[f]or Climacus’s purposes, the difference between making Jesus Christ the non-Socratic teacher and giving this task to the Holy Spirit is not important. In either case, the recollection model is replaced by one in which the ability to recognise the truth as such depends on the active assistance of God.’ Westphal, Kierkegaard’s Concept of Faith, p. 131. That said, in Judge for Yourself! Kierkegaard himself observes that ‘[t]he Spirit brings faith, the faith – that is, faith in the strictest sense of the word, this gift of the Holy Spirit.’ FSE, p. 81 / SKS 13, p. 103. In addition, he maintains that the Spirit must help us to know the Son, the Mediator, who directs us to the Father: God ‘becomes my Father in the Mediator by means of the Spirit’. JP 2, 1432 / SKS 25, pp. 140–1 [NB27:23]. 15. For an insightful comparison between Kierkegaard’s use of the term ‘Omvendelse’ and the New Testament Greek concept of metanoia, see Murray Rae, Kierkegaard’s Vision of the Incarnation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 162–3.



The Communication of the Christian Truth

17

it quickens its pace towards what lies ahead!’16 In repentance, a person develops a willingness to participate in the event of conversion, which means that he can freely experience a rebirth into new life. Climacus later describes the new condition that awaits human beings on the other side of rebirth as faith (Tro).17 By coming to faith, the learner is not only given the capacity to know the truth, but is also reconciled into a relationship with the truth such that the truth becomes constitutive of his existence. In this ‘thought project’, Climacus’ offers an alternative answer to the question of whether the truth can be learned. By so doing, he provides an account that, due to its analogous relation to the Gospel message, can present Christianity as a coherent possibility.18 However, because Climacus himself is a self-proclaimed outsider to the Christian faith – because he has not received the ‘condition of understanding’, and has not become subject to a decisive moment – he is not able to endorse this alternative approach. All that he can do is imagine it as a possibility, according to his thought experiment. Therefore, Climacus cannot know what it means to be a Christian, but, again, can only exist as someone in pursuit of the question ‘How can I, Johannes Climacus, share in the happiness that Christianity promises?’19 For the Christian Kierkegaard, however, the situation is entirely different. By coming to faith, Kierkegaard has, to some extent, experienced reconciliation with God and thereby come to an understanding of what it means to be a Christian. According to the Climacean account of Christianity, this is because Kierkegaard (as a Christian) has become subject to a decisive moment in history, in which the eternal God has reconciled him from an existence in untruth into an existence in truth. Under these circumstances, Kierkegaard’s Christian faith is wholly dependent upon God, the external focus of that belief, actively justifying this belief, i.e. providing the conditions for it that warrant requires. To the extent that he occupies this new standpoint, he perceives, in retrospect, any immanent capacity to comprehend the truth to have been erroneous.

16.  PF, p. 19 / SKS 4, p. 227. 17.  PF, p. 59 / SKS 4, p. 261. 18.  CUP, pp. 231–3 / SKS 7, pp. 211–13; see also CUP, pp. 16, 130 / SKS 7, p. 25, 122; PF, p. 14 / SKS 4, p. 222. In Postscript, Climacus describes Philosophical Fragments as an ‘imaginary construction’: ‘It took its point of departure in paganism in order by imaginatively constructing to discover an understanding of existence that truly could be said to go beyond paganism.’ CUP, p. 362 / SKS 7, p. 322; see also PF, p. xviii. Also, in response to a review of Fragments, he notes in brackets that this imaginary construction ‘even invents Christianity’ (CUP, p. 275 n. / SKS 7, p. 250). It should be noted here, however, as I consider further in Chapter 3, that such an imaginary construction cannot be considered to offer a true account of Christianity. 19.  CUP, p. 17 / SKS 7, p. 26.

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II. The Relationship Between Subjectivity and Objectivity One of the dominant questions that we find in Kierkegaard’s writings is How do we understand the relationship between subjectivity and objectivity? This question is particularly relevant to his account of becoming a Christian. For him, if a person is to become more than a mere objective observer of Christianity, and actively become a Christian, she must involve herself subjectively with the possibility of its truth. She must become personally (personligt) interested in the gospel message, with an interest that is not, for example, merely concerned about coming to terms with its historical or philosophical accuracy. This is because the truth of Christianity does not relate directly to a person’s immediate understanding but calls for and inspires the transformation of a person’s existence. The truth of Christianity is not available as an objective truth to be commandeered by a person’s natural understanding. Rather, the truth of Christianity commandeers a person’s existence to itself, transforming that person from within. It is by inspiring an active Christian life that the Christian truth relates to a person. The question arises here, however, as to what it means, precisely, for a person to become personally interested in the gospel message. As we shall see, a personal interest, for Kierkegaard, is an interest that seeks to engage with the object of a subject’s interest as an object that communicates a truth that is not only meaningful to a person’s intellect but also to his or her subjective way of life. It communicates a truth that is to be appropriated by a person’s existence. To take a closer look at the relationship between the ‘objective’ and the ‘subjective’ in Kierkegaard’s thought, I shall turn to Climacus’ Concluding Unscientific Postscript, the major work in which he deals with this issue. Throughout our discussion of Kierkegaard, this work, alongside Philosophical Fragments, will prove critical to our analysis of what it means to become a Christian. In these two works, Kierkegaard, through Climacus, gives an account of what he sees to be some of the decisive features of the ‘essentially’ Christian worldview. According to Climacus, the task of the ‘objective thinker’ is to try to distance himself personally from his pursuit of the truth by assuming the role of an outside observer. By approaching the truth in this way, the truth can signify a ‘historical truth’ or a ‘philosophical truth’. Viewed as historical truth, the truth must be established by a critical consideration of the various reports etc., in short, in the same way as historical truth is ordinarily established. In the case of philosophical truth, the inquiry turns on the relation of a doctrine, historically given and verified, to the eternal truth.20

In these two approaches, the objective thinker’s goal is to examine and process observations dispassionately and churn out what he perceives to be the correct or, at least, the most reliable results and answers.21 By attempting to remain 20.  CUP, p. 21 / SKS 7, p. 29. 21.  CUP, p. 73 / SKS 7, pp. 73–4.



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indifferent to the object of knowledge, he aims to achieve a level of stability that could not be achieved if he openly allowed his perception of the truth to be influenced by his capricious subjectivity. Under these circumstances, ‘[t]he inquiring, speculating, knowing subject accordingly asks about the truth but not about the subjective truth, the truth of appropriation. Accordingly, the inquiring subject is indeed interested but is not infinitely, personally, impassionedly interested in his relation to this truth.’22 Before going any further, it will be helpful to be clear about the particular ‘objective’ approach that Climacus sets out to critique. Climacus is primarily engaged in a polemic against the self-proclaimed objective approach of Hegel and, in particular, the Danish Hegelians, such as Hans Lassen Martensen, Professor of Theology at the University of Copenhagen.23 According to Climacus’ interpretation of Hegel, ‘the truth is the continuous world-historical process’.24 The truth is confined to what the single, existing individual can understand immediately and/or systematically through ‘scientific’ or speculative perception of the objective world: that is, without recourse to some divine being who transcends the natural order. The reason that the truth can be accessed in this way, for Hegel, as for Socrates, is because the ‘eternal’ or ‘divine’ truth is not located in a transcendent other but is directly accessible to the human mind or spirit (Geist). As such, there is no eternal God who transcends the realm of our ‘scientific’, ‘rational’ and ‘speculative thinking. Indeed, for Hegel, there is an ultimate unity between the divine and human: a unity that is made evident in Jesus Christ, the incarnate God.25 Accordingly, no credence is given to the possibility that an individual’s immanent faculties are in a state of falsehood from which they need to be reconciled. Furthermore, any relationship with God (with the divine or the eternal) is understood in terms of a self-relationship with one’s own reason.26 By interpreting Christianity in these terms, Hegel sought to provide an account of Christianity’s actual truth: its truth aside from superstitious beliefs in the miraculous activity of a transcendent other put forward by orthodox Christianity, and, furthermore, aside from the belief that there is a truth that can only be accessed through a historical event of reconciliation. In the person of Jesus Christ, for Hegel, God demonstrates the eternal nature of his reconciliation with the world.27 22.  CUP, p. 21/ SKS 7, p. 29. 23.  CUP2, p. xix. 24.  CUP, p. 33 SKS 7, p. 39. 25.  Hegel writes: ‘The divine nature is the same as the human, and it is this unity that is beheld in Jesus.’ G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, tran. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 460; see also pp. 461–63; The Phenomenology of the Mind, tran. J. B. Beillies (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1949), pp. 758–85; see also James Yerkes, The Christology of Hegel (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1978), pp. 164–73. 26.  KJN 4, p. 206 / SKS 20, p. 207 [NB2:166]; see also PC, pp. 87–8 / SKS 12, pp. 96–7. 27. This position is described derogatorily by Climacus when he notes that if ‘the coming into existence of the eternal in time is supposed to be an eternal coming into existence, then Religiousness B [a term Climacus later uses to describe what he presents as

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The well-established problem with such objectivist approaches, however, is that, while a person remains tied to the limits of her own subjective existence, she cannot know with absolute certainty that her immediate beliefs about the natural world are entirely accurate. Such certainty would require a ‘fictive objective subject’, who could transcend her existence and view the world sub specie aeternitatis.28 The impossibility of objective certainty means that it is mistaken for a person to view any of her beliefs as having the ultimate status of ‘conclusion’. As Climacus insists, ‘conclusion of belief is not conclusion [Slutning] but a resolution [Belutning]’.29 Why is this? Because any ‘conclusion’ that a person arrives at will always need to be maintained, to a certain degree, with a passionate commitment; for Climacus, this means that it is a resolution rather than a conclusion. For a belief to be placed on a pedestal as a ‘conclusion’, that belief would need to be upheld with an ultimate certainty that was beyond reproach. Again, however, such certainty cannot be achieved by a person whose beliefs are maintained by a subjective conviction that is unable to achieve objective certainty. A person’s subjective perception of the truth, therefore, can only ever be regarded as approximate. What does this mean for a person who consistently strives to consign himself to the strict standards of dispassionate objectivity? Such a person will never be able to embrace particular truth claims because he will have set aside the subjective conviction that makes it possible for him to hold to beliefs in the face of an inescapable objective uncertainty. Consequently, he will never be able to commit herself to making decisions about the uncertain options that are faced the true account of Christianity] is abolished, “all theology is anthropology”, Christianity is changed from an existence-communication into an ingenious metaphysical doctrine addressed to professors’. CUP, p. 579 / SKS 7, p. 526. 28.  CUP, p. 81 / SKS 7, p. 81. 29.  PF, p. 84 / SKS 4, p. 283. For a discussion of the relationship between conclusiveness and existence, see CUP, pp.  118–25 / SKS 7, pp.  114–20. Here Climacus criticises those ‘absentminded’ thinkers, such as Hegel, who attempt to develop a system of existence in reference to which they can make conclusive statements about the nature of existence, while still confined to their ongoing existence. Climacus earlier draws a close relation between System and conclusiveness and writes: ‘System and conclusiveness are just about one and the same, so that if the system is not finished, there is not any system. Elsewhere I have already pointed out that a system that is not entirely finished is a hypothesis, whereas a half-finished system is nonsense.’ CUP, p.  107 / SKS 7, p.  104. The purely scientific approach that is sought by such thinkers can only be achieved, for Climacus, if a person can observe existence from outside existence, sub specie aeterni. He writes: ‘Existence is itself a system – for God, but it cannot be a system for any existing spirit’ (CUP, p. 118 / SKS 7, p. 114). See also Merold Westphal’s helpful essays on this issue: ‘Kierkegaard and Hegel’, in The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, eds Alastair Hannay and Gordon D. Marino (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) pp. 101–24; and ‘Climacus on Subjectivity and the System’, in Concluding Unscientific Postscript: A Critical Guide, ed. Rick Furtak (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 132–48.



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in everyday life, but will merely be able to take note of the wide range of possible truths that are observed. Furthermore, he will be incapable of deciding whether his perception is trustworthy enough to be a guide through existence and point him towards those truths that are essential to his wellbeing.30 What makes this approach even more problematic is that it is committed to being uncommitted, making it self-referentially incoherent. The whole project rests on the uncertain a priori assumption that one should resist objective uncertainty. If a person still seeks to engage in this kind of speculative thought, despite its inconsistency, her project will require her to strive against all other passionate interest; she will need to advance objectivity to the point where subjectivity vanishes.31 This means venturing as far as possible to resist those passions that incline her subjectively, including the passion that is required for religious faith to come into existence.32 Speaking about the general notion of faith, Climacus argues that faith can only arise if a subject is passionately interested in an uncertain idea and becomes willing to embrace (what she resolves to be) the truth surrounding that idea. By so doing, she embraces that truth faithfully, not in spite of, but in its objective uncertainty. She holds on to its truth, not because it has been directly demonstrated to speculative reason, but because she has become passionately drawn to accept it. Consequently, if a faithful believer, having embraced the truth, later feels an urge to demonstrate the truth of her faithful belief, this urge will indicate that she is ‘on the verge of abandoning the faith’.33 When faith, however, begins to feel ashamed of itself, when, like a young woman in love who is not satisfied with loving but feels subtly ashamed of the beloved and consequently must have it substantiated that he is something exceptional, that is, when faith begins to lose passion, that is, when faith begins to cease to be faith, the demonstration is made necessary in order to enjoy general esteem from unbelief. 34

Climacus affirms that, generically, faith is the attitude that enables a person to believe in an objective uncertainty. Thus, the more uncertain a belief, the more that faith is required to accept that belief. Consequently, in ‘an absolutely perfect 30.  CUP, pp. 23, 31, 190, 199 / SKS 7, pp. 30, 38, 175, 182. 31. Of course, a person’s subjectivity can never completely vanish (unless the subject were to vanish). Therefore, the speculative thinker will always be faced with the obstacle of existing as a subject who cannot abstract him or herself from existence so as to view the world sub specie aeterni: the subject–object (I–I) point of existence is ‘fantastical’ and so pure objectivity is illusory. CUP, p. 196 / SKS 7, p. 180. Therefore, a person’s subjectivity will always affect his or her perception of the truth. 32.  CUP, p. 29 / SKS 7, p. 36. 33.  CUP, p.  30 / SKS 7, p.37. Climacus later writes: ‘The believer cares so little for probability that he fears it most of all, since he knows very well that with it he is beginning to lose his faith.’ CUP, p. 233 / SKS 7, p. 213. 34.  CUP, pp. 30–1 / SKS 7, p. 37.

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world’, in which we possess absolute certainty, ‘faith is indeed inconceivable’ (1 Cor. 9–13).35 However, in an imperfect world, the passion of faith is required to embrace uncertain truth claims. It is only with faith that persons can relate uncertain ideas to their imperfect lives; it is only with faith that persons can believe passionately in what they personally think is the truth. As such, if a person seeks faithless detachment from his personal existence, and resists the temptation to embrace uncertain ideas, he will find himself seeking forms of thought that are irrelevant to the way of life in this world. Inconsistently, he will preclude himself from being able to make judgements about the way he should exist in this world. All he will be able to do is observe and examine (other) possible ways of life.36 Given these limitations of speculative thought, Climacus contends that we need to show a much deeper concern for how a person relates subjectively to an idea, ‘on how it is said’, rather than always being drawn towards the more objective concern for ‘what is said’.37 To be clear, Climacus’ emphasis on the ‘how’ is not concerned with the ‘manner, modulation of voice, oral delivery, etc.’, but with ‘the relation of the existing person, in his very existence, to what is said’.38 Climacus stresses that the particular way that a person relates to an idea has an existential significance that is disregarded if we focus the objective reality of that idea. With this in mind, he contends that it is essential for a person to approach truths in a way that is true to (her perception of) the object of her pursuit. So, for example, if a thinker is to pursue an existential or ethical truth, then she must be willing to relate that truth to her existence and make decisions about matters that are characteristically uncertain. What is crucial, for Climacus, is that the thinker never becomes so lost in abstract speculation as to forget that he is an existing subject. The thinker must always remember that his engagement with the objective world can only be from within the sphere of finite human existence. Accordingly, Climacus insists that the ‘essential truth’ for an existing subject does not primarily concern an objective reality but a subject’s uncertain belief in that objective reality.39 ‘An objective uncertainty, held fast through appropriation with the most passionate inwardness, is the truth, the highest truth there is for an existing person.’40 At the same time, Climacus does not affirm an ‘anything goes’ relativism or subjectivism, which, among other things, paves the way to religious pluralism. Also, he does not deny 35.  CUP, pp. 29–30 / SKS 7, pp. 36–7. Climacus continues: ‘Therefore it is also taught that faith is abolished in eternity.’ CUP, p. 30 / SKS 7, p. 37; 1 Cor. 13.8–13. 36. Furthermore, by striving to abstract herself from concrete existence in this way, he ‘can never become contemporary with existence’. He ‘cannot comprehend existence as existence’ but can only ever observe the existence that she has already experienced. For this reason, ‘speculation wisely abstains from ethics and why it becomes ludicrous when it sets about it.’ CUP, p. 571 / SKS 7, p. 519; see also pp. 33–4 / SKS 7, pp. 40–1. 37.  CUP, p. 202 / SKS 7, p. 219 (emphasis introduced by the Hongs). 38.  CUP, pp. 202–203 / SKS 7, pp. 219–20. 39.  CUP, pp. 199–201 / SKS 7, pp. 182–4. 40.  CUP, p. 203 / SKS 7, p. 186.



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the reality or importance of an objective truth, at risk of antirealism.41 Rather, he simply wants to make it clear that a person’s subjective perception of the truth is all that he has to live by and, therefore, is what he is obliged to live by. In short, existence requires a person to be willing to embrace what he personally believes. This existential requirement is particularly essential for becoming a Christian. Christianity, for Climacus, ‘is not a doctrine but the fact that the god has existed’.42 With respect to this fact, becoming a Christian does not concern an individual’s intellectual understanding of Christianity, but devotion to God and, consequently, devotion to what God has to teach about what it means to exist before God. For a person to devote herself to the Christian faith in this way, she must passionately relate the Christian message to her existence through what Climacus describes as a double-reflection. That is, she must first become conscious of the Christian message. Then, through a process of self-reflection and inward deepening (Inderliggjørelse),43 she must appropriate this teaching to her life and commit herself both to God and his revelation, and allow this commitment to shape her life.44 Importantly, however, the subjective process of double-reflection 41. The view that Kierkegaard was inclined towards antirealism is repudiated in more detail by C. Stephen Evans ‘Realism and Antirealism in Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript’, in Kierkegaard on Faith and the Self: Collected Essays (Baylor: Baylor University Press, 2006), pp.  29–46; ‘Kant and Kierkegaard on the Possibility of Metaphysics’, in Kierkegaard on Faith and the Self, pp.  54–9; and Steven Shakespeare, Kierkegaard, Language and the Reality of God (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), pp. 13–17. Both argue their case against Don Cupitt, who contends that Kierkegaard was not concerned with the objective facts of Christianity. See Cupitt, The Sea of Faith (London: BBC, 1984), pp. 153–4). 42.  CUP, p. 326 / SKS 7, p. 297. In Fragments, Climacus distinguishes between the way that faith operates in the everyday (‘faith in the ordinary sense [belief]) and faith in God (‘faith in the eminent sense’). PF, p. 87 / SKS 4, p. 285. With regard to their translation in Philosophical Fragments, the Hongs note that the Danish word for ‘faith’ is the same as the Danish word for ‘belief ’: Tro. Therefore, at some points in Kierkegaard’s authorship (i.e. PF, pp. 81–4 / SKS 4, pp. 280–2), the Hongs chose to translate Tro as ‘belief ’ when it is ‘faith … in its direct and ordinary meaning’, i.e. with regard to everyday convictions, and as ‘faith’ when it is faith ‘in the wholly eminent sense’, i.e. religious faith in god (PF, p. 87 / SKS 4, p. 285). For the majority of Postscript, Climacus appears to discuss faith in a way that is relevant both to ‘faith in the ordinary sense’ and ‘faith in the eminent sense’; that is, as I argue in Chapter 3, until page 555. PF, p. 311. 43. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn helpfully describes Inderliggjørelse (defined by the Hongs as ‘inward deepening’) as the bringing of ‘one’s inner life into accord with the absolute’ – appropriating the demands of the absolute to one’s life – and, second, as the ‘refashioning’ of ‘one’s personal existence according to the demands of ethics’. Cappelørn, ‘The Movements of Offense Toward, Away From, and Within Faith’, pp. 97–8. 44.  CUP, p.  73 / SKS 7, p.  73; PF, p.  87 / SKS 4, p.  285. Climacus is an example of someone who has not moved past the first stage of this double-reflection. He can imagine the possibility that he exists in untruth and can imagine the possibility that the truth lies

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does not, in and of itself, enable a person to become decisively Christian; it only motivates a person to devote herself to the teachings of Christianity. To become decisively Christian, a person requires the grace of God, reconciling her into a new existence. Nevertheless, both Climacus and Kierkegaard remain adamant that Christian discipleship requires us to relate ourselves subjectively to the Christian message, and actively follow its teachings. One of the things that makes the initial process of double-reflection so decisive for becoming a Christian is that Christianity calls for belief in the incarnation: ‘that the eternal truth has come into existence in time, the God has come into existence, has been born, has grown up, etc.’45 Ordinarily, when a person is faced with such a(n apparent) paradox or absurdity, he will respond by taking offence, because such a message will not accord with his prior understanding of the world. However, through double-reflection, a person can devote himself to the Gospel message in such a way that his immediate worldview becomes challenged. Then, through a process of inward deepening and active response, he can come to commit himself to this message. That is, he can come to develop a new set of cognitive criteria with which to embrace the incarnate one. Through this process, the Christian message does not become less absurd or more directly accessible to a person’s inherent worldview. Rather, the person becomes transformed by the truth of Christianity such that he comes to embrace this truth in its own terms. That is, as we shall consider further in the final chapter, he comes to embrace Jesus Christ as the one who makes sense of his existence despite the fact that he cannot unravel the mystery of incarnation. As this happens, the reality of Jesus Christ calls into question any brazen concern for intellectual mastery. And, with the passion of faith, the absurd ceases to be absurd for him.46 For Climacus, Christianity proclaims itself as an absurdity to the wisdom of the world (1 Cor. 1.23) without concern for winning favour with worldly reason. Reflecting on this, he writes: ‘[I]t seems strange that Christianity should have come into the world in order to be explained, alas, as if it were itself puzzled about itself and therefore came into the world to seek out a wise man, the speculative thinker, who can aid with the explanation.’47 He continues:

in the Christian faith, but he has not appropriated the idea of Christianity to his existence. Furthermore, the grace of God has not delivered him into a faithful relationship with the truth of Christianity. 45.  CUP, p. 209 / SKS 7, p. 192; see also CUP, pp. 353–4 / SKS 7, pp. 322–3. C. Stephen Evans makes it plain that, for Kierkegaard, the paradox is not a formal or logical contradiction, but just appears to be so to human reason. See Evans, Passionate Reason, pp.  97–104; Kierkegaard’s Fragments and Postscript: The Religious Philosophy of Johannes Climacus (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1983), pp. 212–22. 46.  JP 1, 10 / Pap X-6 B 79; see also KJN 7, pp. 20–1 / SKS 23, p. 23 [NB15:25]; JP 6, 6598 / Pap X-6 B 68; and C. Stephen Evans, ‘Faith and reason in Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript’, pp. 215–18. 47.  CUP, p. 213 / SKS 7, p. 195; see also pp. 604–5 / SKS 7, pp. 548–9.



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Suppose that Christianity does not at all want to be understood; suppose that, in order to express this and to prevent anyone, misguided, from taking the road of objectivity, it has proclaimed itself to be the paradox. Suppose that it wants to be only for existing persons and essentially for persons existing in inwardness, in the inwardness of faith, which cannot be expressed more definitely than this: it is the absurd, adhered to firmly with the passion of the infinite. Suppose that it does not want to be understood and that the maximum of any eventual understanding is to understand that it cannot be understood … Suppose that the speculative thinker is the restless resident who, although it is obvious that he is a renter, yet in view of the abstract truth that, eternally and divinely perceived, all property is in common, wants to be the owner …48

In this reflection, Climacus begins by proposing that Christianity does not give itself over to the human intellect’s pursuit of mastery over the world. He then satirises the hopelessness of the speculative thinker’s aspiration to abstract him or herself from existence and assume ‘the point of view of the eternal, the divine’.49 By attempting to approach Christianity in this way, the speculative thinker seeks to master Christianity in her own Procrustean terms. Consequently, she ends up committing himself to nothing more than her own form of paganism – worshipping her own finite vision of god. In Fragments, Climacus affirms that any attempt to relate to one’s own idea of god can only ever pertain to ‘the sublimity that it thinks by itself ’; it will be a ‘capricious arbitrariness’, a ‘fantastical fabrication’.50 For Kierkegaard, the God of the Christian faith does not subject himself to the speculation of domineering human enquiry. Immanent human reason, therefore, simply does not have the sanctity to take hold of God in this way.51 If a thinker genuinely wants to develop a deeper knowledge of Christianity, Climacus affirms, then ‘presumably’ this must be ‘through Christianity’, which means personally becoming a Christian.52 A person must come to know the truth of the Christian faith by giving his life over to the God who reveals himself in Jesus Christ: to the good shepherd (Hyrde) who guides a believer in God’s truth and teaches him about God’s ways. It is thus completely misguided to try to comprehend the mystery and wonder of Christianity according to one’s own 48.  CUP, pp. 213–14 / SKS 7, pp. 195–6; see also Karen Carr, ‘The Offense of Reason and the Passion of Faith’, in Faith and Philosophy 13:2 (1996), pp. 248–9. 49.  CUP, p. 212 / SKS 7, p. 194; see also PC, p. 62 / SKS 12, p. 70. 50.  PF, p. 45 / SKS 4, p. 250. 51. In an appreciative journal entry on Anselm, Kierkegaard writes: ‘We human beings have now ventured almost egotistically to take over Christianity. We do not bear in mind (what Anselm and the ancients remembered) that Christianity is God’s invention and, in a good sense, God’s interest. We forget that egotism [Egoisme] is one thing and I-ness or subjectivity [Egoitet] is another, and that although God is infinitely far from being an egotist, he nevertheless is the infinite subjectivity (he cannot be otherwise).’ JP 1, 532 / SKS 24, pp. 302–3 [NB23:205]. 52.  CUP, p. 215 / SKS 7, p. 197.

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criteria when Christianity proclaims a truth that can only be known with a faith that is miraculously realised in response to the living God. It is therefore utterly inappropriate to speculate about Christianity in this way and then try to draw conclusions about Christianity that conflict with what we are told in revelation. Noting the irony of such an approach, Climacus writes: ‘So this is how Christianity is rewarded. One learns something from Christianity, misunderstands it, and in new misunderstanding uses it against Christianity.’53 If a person is actually going to relate to the Christian message about God, she must humbly acknowledge the limits of her understanding before God. ‘God is a supreme conception that cannot be explained by anything else but is explainable only by immersing oneself in the conception itself.’54 By reflecting on the concept of the eternal God, a person will realise the total ineptitude of her attempts to come to terms with God’s existence through her own devices. However, as we started to see in the first section of this chapter, and as I shall continue to substantiate, Climacus understands that a person cannot become decisively Christian by a merely reflecting on a supreme conception of God. Rather, the Christian faith depends upon a person standing before and entering into communion with the real God. In this way, it is the specific object of Christianity (God as subject), and not just a person’s own thoughts about this object, that decisively determine whether or not one becomes a Christian.55 Yet, as I shall also show, becoming a Christian depends upon the unique way that God graciously appropriates the objective content of Christianity to a person’s subjective existence.56 In order to clarify the way that God relates to persons subjectively, for Kierkegaard, it is critical that we become conscious of what is holding us back from a personal relationship with God: that we become conscious of our sin. Kierkegaard contends that a personal relationship with God requires us to recognise that, before God, we fall infinitely short and, apart from God, we fail to function in the way we were created to exist. However, due to the absolute extent to which we are alienated from God, Kierkegaard also recognises that we cannot become conscious of this by ourselves. Sin, therefore, requires a revelation (Aabenbaring) from God.

III. The Revelation of Sin Sin, Climacus describes, is the state of imprisonment in which the sinner ‘holds himself captive’.57 It is a state for which the individual is culpable and yet, because 53.  CUP, p. 215 / SKS 7, p. 197. 54.  CUP, p. 220 / SKS 7, p. 200. 55. See JP 5, 5761 / Pap VI B 222. 56. See BA, 117–18 / SKS 15, p.  273; KJN 4, p.  73 / SKS 20, p.  74 [NB:88]; CUP, pp. 608–12 / SKS 7, pp. 552–5. 57.  PF, p. 17 / SKS 4, p. 226; see also CUP, p. 208 / SKS 7, p. 191; CA, p. 22 / SKS 4, p. 330; PC, p. 151 / SKS 12, p. 155. Interestingly, however, in a journal entry from 1850,



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it is totally self-perpetuating, it is a state from which a person cannot escape unless he is reconciled by the grace of God. As such, he requires God, as judge, to give him a consciousness of sin, an awareness of his total inability to relate to God through his inherent understanding.58 By receiving this revelation, a person can become inspired to repent and become reborn into new life by accepting the hand that God offers him.59 As we shall see, this does not mean that God seeks to shame individuals into reconciliation and rebirth. Such an approach, as I consider in Chapter 3, only encourages individuals to turn inward to try to deal with their sin, and thereby turns them despairingly away from God. Instead, for Kierkegaard, God seeks to reveal sin to individuals so that they can know the reality of God’s forgiveness – clearly, individuals cannot know God’s forgiveness unless they knows their need for forgiveness. For Kierkegaard, God must first expose to individuals the nightmare of the situation that they have brought upon themselves so that they can willingly be awakened into the true lives for which they were created. With this in mind, Climacus describes sin-consciousness as ‘the condition of understanding’ and the first step in becoming a Christian.60 By becoming conscious of one’s sinful unfreedom, a person can know and long to become bound to the one who grants freedom: Jesus Christ. In Christ, she can come to understand her sin in the context of forgiveness. It is through Christ that God ‘takes away the consciousness of sin and gives the consciousness of forgiveness instead – he indeed takes away the heavy burden and gives the light one in its place’.61 The primary work in which Kierkegaard attends to the issue of what it means to be a sinful human being is The Sickness Unto Death, written pseudonymously by the ‘extraordinary Christian’ Anti-Climacus.62 By turning to Anti-Climacus, we turn from an outsider’s perspective of Christianity, in Climacus, to an insider’s perspective. As a result, we move from a more abstract account of sin to a more concrete one. In Sickness Unto Death, Anti-Climacus identifies two features of sinfulness that give insight into both the nature of the sinful self and the revelation

Kierkegaard writes, drawing on Romans 7, ‘Take courage, it is not you who wills the evil, it is the power of sin in you; console yourself in Christ.’ KJN 7, p. 92 / SKS 23, p. 93 [NB15:129]. 58.  PF, p. 18 / SKS 4, p. 226. 59.  CUP, p. 584 / SKS 7, p. 531; see also SUD, p. 95 / SKS 11, p. 207; PF, p. 47 / SKS 4, p. 251. This slightly obscure use of language is again characteristic of Climacus’ analysis of Christianity from his standpoint as an ‘outsider’ to the Christian faith. CUP, p. 16 / SKS 7, p. 25. 60.  PF, p.  93 / SKS 4, p.  291; JP 4, 4486 / SKS 26, p.  159 [NB32:60]; see also CUP, pp. 583–5 / SKS 7, pp. 530–2. 61.  UDVS, p.  246 / SKS 8, p.  345; see also CD, pp.  264–5 / SKS 10, p.  281–2; KJN 3, pp. 181–2 / SKS 19, pp. 185–6 [Not5:23]. 62. See JP 6, 6349 / Pap. X-6 B 48; KJN 6, pp. 124–5 / SKS 22, p. 127 [NB11:204]; SUD, pp. XX–XXII.

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of sin: first, sin as despair, and, second, the sinner’s infinite qualitative separation from God. a. Despair One of Anti-Climacus’ primary concerns in Sickness Unto Death is to develop an account of the self. He introduces this in the following well-known extract: A human being is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation that relates itself to itself in the relation; the self is not the relation but is the relation relating itself to itself. 63

Although this may not seem to relate immediately to despair as such, we cannot properly understand Anti-Climacus’ account of despair without first becoming acquainted with his account of the human self as ‘spirit’ or a self ‘that relates itself to itself ’ – or, a self-conscious self.64 As a self that relates itself to itself, the ‘self is freedom’.65 The self has the freedom to reflect on herself (her actual self) in relation to the concept of another self. For example, she can reflect on herself as a good self in relation to her concept of a bad self. But, for the Christian Anti-Climacus, the human self does not just stand before her own conceptions of self. Because she has been ‘established by another’, she stands before that other’s conception of what it means to be a self.66 Under these circumstances, it is possible that, although I might see myself as good, I am, in fact, bad in relation to the other’s standard of what it means to be good. For instance, as a utilitarian, a person might subjectively see herself as good because she told a lie to keep a room full of people happy. However, with respect to some fixed divine law (established by her creator) that forbids lying, she might in fact be deemed ‘bad’. According to this understanding of the human self, Anti-Climacus considers two forms of despair: the self ’s rejection of oneself, and the misrelation of selfhood. The first form of despair is the attitude of an individual who self-consciously does not have the selfhood for which she hopes and, consequently, wants to be rid of this selfhood. Take, for example, the instance of a young girl who despairs because she has lost her beloved. Anti-Climacus proposes that she does not despair because she has lost her beloved per se. Rather, she despairs because she is no longer the self-with-beloved, and, consequently, wants to be rid of (or ‘die to’ [afdøe]) her existence without her beloved (self-without-beloved). This latter self

63.  SUD, p. 13 / SKS 11, p. 129. 64.  SUD, p. 13 / SKS 11, p. 129. 65.  SUD, p. 29 / SKS 11, p. 145. Merold Westphal correctly observes that Anti-Climacus identifies ‘the self ’s relation to itself with freedom’ rather than self-consciousness. Westphal, Kierkegaard’s Concept of Faith, p.  238. However, I think it fair to suggest that the self is freedom as a self-conscious self. 66.  SUD, p. 13 / SKS 11, p. 129.



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is consumed by an ‘abominable void’ and ‘becomes a torment to her if it has to be a self without “him”’.67 The second form of despair is presented as a ‘misrelation’. In this form, an individual willingly (though consciously or unconsciously) embraces a selfhood that is not ‘the self that he is in truth’: when a ‘person in despair despairingly wills to be himself ’ and thereby ‘despairingly wants to be a self that he is not’.68 Under these circumstances, Anti-Climacus suggests, a person attempts to define himself apart ‘from the power that established it’.69 Such an attempt, however, ultimately turns out to be futile. This is because, no matter how hard a person tries to recreate himself (tries to define himself by his own hopes and dreams), and no matter how much a person might believe that he has successfully done so, his true self will always be defined ‘by that directly before which it is a self ’, which will always be ‘the power that established it’.70 For Anti-Climacus, this fundamental nature of the self always holds true; it cannot be lost, even if a person embraces a life that is seemingly ignorant of this establishing power.71 This criterion (Maalestok) for selfhood is particularly evident in Anti-Climacus’ theological account of the self as ‘a self directly before God’: a self that is measured with respect to its God-given purpose. For Anti-Climacus, if God exists, then God’s criteria are definitive for what it means to be a ‘healthy’ and ‘vital’ self, irrespective of whether or not a person is conscious of them.72 Existentially, however, this true selfhood is only actualised for a particular person when he comes to faith; the faith with which ‘the self in being itself and in willing to be itself rests [grunder] transparently in God’.73 By becoming this true self (the self he was created to be), a person no longer bears the despair of the sinful self: the ‘sickness unto death’. He no longer defines himself primarily with recourse to the finite material world in a way that is ‘dead’ to God, and which is thus in ‘the state of deepest spiritual wretchedness’.74 In faith, he is cured from the despair of sin by 67.  SUD, pp. 19–20 / SKS 11, p. 135. 68.  SUD, p. 20 / SKS 11, p. 136. This is based on his earlier statement ‘The formula that describes the state of the self when despair is completely rooted out is this: in relating itself to itself and in willing to be itself, the self rests transparently in the power that established it.’ SUD, p. 14 / SKS 11, p. 130. 69.  SUD, p. 20 / SKS 11, p. 136. 70.  SUD, pp. 20–1, 79–80 / SKS 11, pp. 136–7, 193–4. 71.  SUD, pp. 20–1 / SKS 11, pp. 136–37. 72.  SUD, pp. 7–8 / SKS 11, p. 123; see also PV, pp. 88–9n. / SKS 16, p. 66–67n. As Rowan Williams puts it: ‘To discover who I am I need to discover the relation in which I stand to an active, prior Other, to a transcendent creator: I don’t first sort out who I am and then seek for resources to sustain that identity.’ Williams, Faith in the Public Square (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), p. 91. 73.  SUD, p. 82 / SKS 11, p. 196. Anti-Climacus ends Sickness unto Death by noting that ‘the definition of faith’ is ‘in relating itself to itself and in willing to be itself, the self rests transparently in the power that established it’. SUD, p. 131 / SKS 11, p. 242. 74.  SUD, p. 6 / SKS 11, p. 118.

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dying to his untrue self (the self that embraces sin) and becoming a true self who is made alive in relationship with God.75 In these Christian terms, Anti-Climacus maintains that ‘there is infinitely much more hope in death [to the sinful self/to the world] than there is in life’.76 Indeed, he declares that ‘death itself is a passing into life’.77 Notably, however, although Anti-Climacus describes despair as a sickness, he also affirms that it is not ‘something that happens to man … like a disease to which he succumbs’.78 Rather, ‘despairing lies in man himself ’.79 It arises by way of the individual’s own volition, which God allows the human when he ‘releases it from his hand’.80 It arises when the individual willingly embraces a self that is not the true self but the sinful self. Sin is: before God, or with the conception of God, in despair not to will to be oneself, or in despair to will to be oneself. Thus sin is intensified weakness or intensified defiance: sin is the intensification of despair.81

Here, Anti-Climacus presents sin as the state of the self who, ‘before God’, is in despair. In sin, a person consents to a life that is not the life for which he was created – a life of loving fellowship with God. Despair is the state of the individual who ‘before God’ chooses himself in sin.82 According to Anti-Climacus, there are two ways in which a person, conscious before God, uses God-given volition to choose sin: ‘in despair not to will to be oneself ’, and ‘in despair to will to be oneself’. First, sin is ‘in despair not to will to be oneself ’. In this case, the sinner chooses to continue in sin because she does not have the inner strength or passion to embrace what she knows to be her true selfhood before God. This either takes the form of ‘despair over the earthly’/‘despair in weakness’, in which a person is distracted from devotion to God by commitment to worldly affairs, such as the question of what the immediate future might hold.83 Or, it takes the form of ‘despair of the 75.  SUD, p. 6 / SKS 11, p. 118. 76.  SUD, p. 8 / SKS 11, p. 124. 77.  SUD, pp. 8, 17 / SKS 11, pp. 124, 133. With this view, Anti-Climacus aligns himself with the Reformed understanding of repentance/ conversion in terms of mortification and vivification. 78.  SUD, p. 16 / SKS 11, p. 132. 79.  SUD, p. 16 / SKS 11, p. 132. 80.  SUD, p. 16 / SKS 11, p. 132. 81.  SUD, p. 77 / SKS 11, p. 191. 82. Anti-Climacus goes on to equate sin with despair when he writes: ‘sin is despair (for sin is not the turbulence of flesh and blood but is the spirit’s consent to it)’. SUD, p. 82 / SKS 11, p. 196. 83.  SUD, pp. 50–60 / SKS 11, pp. 165–75; see also PC, pp. 152–3 / SKS 12, pp. 156–7; Kierkegaard’s devotional discourse ‘“Look at the Birds of the Air; They Sow Not and Reap Not and Gather Not into Barns” – without Worries about Tomorrow. “Look at the Grass in the Field, Which Today Is.”’ WA, pp. 36–46 / SKS 11, pp. 36–45.



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eternal and over oneself ’/‘despair over weakness’. In this case, the person recognises that it is a weakness to despair over the earthly, but then proceeds to despair over this weakness, bringing about a sense of self-hatred, which closely resembles guilt. That is, instead of faithfully humbling himself before God and seeking forgiveness, he dwells legalistically on sin and despairs that nothing can be done for him, thereby becoming further entrenched in despair and further intensifying his sin.84 In so doing, a person resists his actual selfhood and true selfhood before God. With this despair in mind, Kierkegaard writes, This is … the eternal consolation in the doctrine of the forgiveness of sins: you shall believe it. For when the anguished conscience starts having burdensome thoughts, and it seems to one that in eternity it is impossible to forget: then it says, you shall forget, you shall stop thinking of your sin; not only are you permitted to stop, not only do you dare ask God for permission to dare forget – no, you shall forget, for you shall believe that your sin is forgiven.85

Second, sin is ‘in despair to will to be oneself’.86 In this case, the individual chooses to cling to his own autonomy in active defiance of his true freedom before God. In this instance, ‘the self in despair wants to be master of itself or to create itself, to make his self into the self he wants to be’.87 With this despair, the individual is too proud to see his need for repentance and reconciliation, in unbelief seeing himself as his own god who sets the standard for what it means to be a self.88 Hence, the individual has no desire to die to himself or to the world, and feels no need to be forgiven for the life that he has made for himself. As a result, the individual embraces himself as a self that is dead to the true God. Although Anti-Climacus distinguishes between these two forms of despair, he also acknowledges that this distinction is only relative insofar as ‘[n]o despair is entirely free of defiance; indeed, the very phrase which defines the state of despair (“not to will to be [one’s true self]”) implies defiance.89 On the other hand, even despair’s most extreme defiance is not really devoid of weakness.’90 In both forms of despair, the individual, in weakness and defiance, misuses her freedom to choose her own way of life over against the possibility of being reconciled into the life for which she was created, reposing in the grace of God. 84.  SUD, pp. 60–67 / SKS 11, pp. 175–81. 85.  KJN 5, p. 22 / SKS 21, p. 23 [NB6:26]; see also SUD, pp. 116–17 / SKS 11, pp. 227–8. 86.  SUD, p. 67 / SKS 11, pp. 181. 87.  SUD, p. 68 / SKS 11, pp. 182. 88. On this point, Anti-Climacus aligns with Luther’s understanding that unbelief is a kind of theft of God’s divinity and that human nature is the first and greatest idol of human nature. In unbelief, the human being epitomises his existence as homo incurvatus in se. 89.  The ‘not to will to be’ refers to the free choice of the individual who refuses her true identity before God and thereby brings despair upon herself. This is a choice that is at the base of every moment of despair. (See SUD, pp. 15–17 / SKS 11, pp. 131–3). 90.  SUD, p. 49 / SKS 11, p. 164.

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b. The Infinite Qualitative Difference and Sin-consciousness The only way for a sinner to relate to God in truth, for Kierkegaard, is by being delivered into a life of faith. This becomes possible in and through the God– human, in whom there is mediation between God and humanity.91 That is, in a God–humanward movement, God becomes incarnate in order to encounter human beings personally with the intention of reconciling them to himself. To illustrate the significance of this, Climacus writes: When an oak nut is planted in a clay pot, the pot breaks; when new wine is poured into old leather bottles, they burst. What happens, then, when the god plants himself in the frailty of a human being if he does not become a new person and a new vessel!92

For the eternal God to relate to us in the fullness of our finite human situation, and thereby enable us to relate personally to God, something new must be created. 91. To be clear, by recognising the mediatorial role of Jesus Christ, Kierkegaard does not affirm a Hegelian form of mediation (Mediering) or synthesis that blurs the creator– creature distinction into a higher unity. For Kierkegaard, the mediation of Jesus Christ does not in any way involve compromising God and/or elevating humanity in a way that makes a God–human relationship simply possible because the divine and human natures have been collapsed into one new system. For this reason, Kierkegaard remarks: ‘Philosophy’s idea is mediation – [Christianity]’s is the paradox.’ KJN 3, p. 207 / SKS 19, p. 211 [Not7:22]. For Kierkegaard, the mediation of Christ is absolutely paradoxical. Accordingly, he conforms to a Chalcedonian Christology in which two infinitely qualitatively different natures find union in one person such that, on the one hand, there is no blurring of the creatorcreature distinction, and yet, on the other, mediation is established between the creator and creature. In Christianity, mediation is grounded in the paradoxical person of Jesus Christ, and, therefore, mediation is grounded in a God–humanward movement. Kierkegaard is clear that it is not primarily us who approach God. Rather, drawing on John 6.45, ‘God directs us to the Son, to the Mediator’ and pronounces: ‘In the Mediator I can be a father to you.’ JP 2, 1432 / SKS 25, pp. 140–42 [NB27:23]. To qualify, I do not deny that Hegel seeks to conform to a Chalcedonian Christology. However, as David Law notes, Hegel and Kierkegaard ‘do so in fundamentally different ways. While Hegel sees the affirmation that Christ is both truly divine and truly human to be an affirmation of the underlying unity between God and humankind, Kierkegaard and his pseudonyms view it as the paradoxical entry of the holy God into a sinful world as an individual human being.’ Law, Kierkegaard’s Kenotic Christology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p.  132. For an excellent discussion of the way in which ‘Hegel thinks in a distinctly “Chalcedonian” fashion’, I would highly recommend Nicholas Adams, The Eclipse of Grace: Divine and Human Action in Hegel (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), p. 6. See also Martin Wendte, Gottmenschliche Einheit bei Hegel: Eine logische und theologische Untersuchung (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007), pp. 2–9. 92.  PF, p. 34 / SKS 4, p. 240.



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In the event of the incarnation, God does precisely this. By assuming human form in Jesus Christ, God creates a union between God and humanity that has no reality until the event of the incarnation and continues to have no reality outside the person of Jesus Christ. The lack of this union outside of Christ is due to the ‘infinite qualitative difference’ that distinguishes the eternal God from the created humanity.93 Because of this yawning chasm – this chorismos between the eternal and historical realms – there is ‘nothing whatever’ that human beings can do, in and of themselves, to relate themselves directly or positively to God.94 Therefore, it must be ‘God who gives everything; it is he who makes a [human being] able to have faith, etc. This is grace, and this is the major premise of [Christianity].’95 It is important to be clear here, as I argue elsewhere, that the infinite qualitative difference is not merely a difference that is vanquished when God graciously reconciles a person into a life of faith.96 It is not simply the case, as Jacob Howland suggests, that when a person repents and is reborn into the Christian life, he ‘is no longer absolutely different from God, because the absolute difference is the consequence of the condition of untruth that sin produces’.97 It is also not straightforwardly the case that, as Westphal puts it, ‘apart from sin God is not Wholly Other’.98 That said, it is not difficult to see why Kierkegaard might be read in this way. Climacus writes, But if the god is to be absolutely different from a human being, this can have its basis not in that which man owes to the god (for to that extent they are akin [beslægtet]) but in that which he owes to himself or in that which he himself has committed. What, then, is the difference? Indeed, what else but sin.99

In this passage, Climacus suggests that there is an underlying connection between God and human beings insofar as human beings arise out of God’s being in action (God’s acts of creation and preservation). That is, the God who is truth creates human beings according to the truth that he is in himself. However, when human 93. See SUD, pp. 126–8 / SKS 11, 237–39; see also SUD, pp. 99, 117 / SKS 11, pp. 212, 229; WA, p. 100 / SKS 11, p. 104 (where it is described as an ‘essential qualitative difference’); WA, p. 102 / SKS 11, p. 105 (where it is described as an ‘eternal qualitative difference’). 94.  KJN 5, p. 244 / SKS 21, p. 236 [NB9:59]. 95.  KJN 5, p. 244 / SKS 21, p. 236 [NB9:59]; see also JP 3, 2910 / SKS 26, p. 45 [NB31:61]. 96. See my article ‘Beyond Existentialism: Kierkegaard on the Human Relationship with the God Who is Wholly Other’, International Journal of Systematic Theology, 16(3) (2014), pp. 299–301. 97.  Jacob Howland, Kierkegaard and Socrates (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 203. 98.  Merold Westphal, Overcoming Onto-Theology: Toward a Postmodern Christian Faith (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998), p. 246; Simon Podmore, ‘The Holy and the Wholly Other: Kierkegaard on the Alterity of God’, The Heythrop Journal LIII (2012), p. 14. 99.  PF, pp. 46–7 / SKS 4, p. 251.

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beings fall into untruth or sin, they end up being absolutely different from the truth (of God) to which they originally corresponded. Nonetheless, as we saw at the beginning of this chapter, by coming to faith, it becomes possible for persons once again to relate to God in truth. However, to be clear, we must remember that it is not primarily human faith that unites or reconciles a person to God.100 For Kierkegaard, there is an ‘infinite qualitative difference’ between the eternal God and contingent human beings that ‘always remains’.101 It is only in and through the incarnate person of Jesus Christ that God reconciles sinful persons into a faithful relationship with him, in which the infinite qualitative difference does not function as an alienating difference.102 Human beings relate to God in faith by sharing in a loving relationship with the person of Jesus Christ: the God–human in whom there is both mediation between God and humanity and reconciliation from the sin that totally alienates human beings from God. Given that kinship with God is enabled by the grace of God while also disabled by the sinfulness of creatures, there is a sense in which there is also an infinite qualitative difference between the sinful and faithful self, insofar as the faithful self can only be actualised by a divine activity that is infinitely qualitatively different from the pagan human activity that actualises the sinful self.103 Notably, however, just because two selfhoods are qualitatively different from one another does not, in and of itself, imply that they are in opposition. It is only when these two selfhoods are understood in terms of their position ‘directly before God’ that 100. So, for example, it is slightly misleading for Westphal to suggest that, for Kierkegaard, ‘union with God can only have the form of reconciliation, and that reconciliation means the courage to meet the one who has become a stranger’. Westphal, Overcoming Onto-Theology, p. 249. It is also unclear for Podmore to suggest that, for Kierkegaard, it is ‘faith which reconciles humanity with God’. Podmore, ‘The Holy and the Wholly Other’, p. 14 (emphasis original). 101.  KJN 4, p. 73 / SKS 20, p. 74 [NB:88]; JP 3, 3087 / Pap. VII–2 B235; KJN 5, p. 298 / SKS 21, p. 286 [NB10:57]. 102. Jamie Turnbull notes that, for Kierkegaard, ‘the figure of Christ … unite[s] absolutely particular human beings with the ultimate nature of theological reality – God’. This point is almost right, although it would be more accurate to suggest that, in Christ, there is union between a particular human being and God (or between divine and human nature). However, it is strange for Turnbull to suggest that ‘the figure of Christ … serve[s] to separate absolutely human beings from divinity’. Turnbull, ‘Kierkegaard on Emotion: a Critique of Furtak’s Wisdom in Love’, in Religious Studies (2010), p. 496. While the incarnation does not collapse divinity and humanity, it also does not absolutely separate them. The absolute distinction between God and human beings is established in the event of creation: the divine–human distinction arises with the creation of humanity. 103. I should clarify here that, for Kierkegaard, ‘Christianly, every human being (the single individual), unconditionally every human being, once again, unconditionally every human being, is equally close to God – how close and equally close? – is loved by him.’ WA, p. 165 / SKS 12, p. 165.



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they take on ‘a new quality and qualification’, which exposes the fact that they are indeed pitted against one another in total opposition.104 That is, ‘before God’, and, thus, before humanity’s created purpose, the sinful self is qualified negatively in terms of ‘disrelationship’ (Misforholdet) with God, as the untrue self,105 in contrast to the faithful self, which is defined positively in terms of right relationship with God, as the true self.106 For Anti-Climacus, it is only ‘before God’ that these two selfhoods can be understood for what they actually are.107 This raises a difficulty. While an individual operates on the sinful plane of existence, she can only know God in a way that is in total opposition to the knowledge of God that is grounded on the faithful plane of existence. Without the grace of God enabling a person to know God in truth, a person can only relate to her own independent (infinitely qualitatively different) ideas of God, which will only ever be pagan. This also means that any God-related concepts such as “sin” or “Christ”, which the sinner might develop for herself, apart from the grace of God, will be incommensurate with the truth and will inevitably be blasphemous.108 Thus, in and of herself, the sinner cannot become truly conscious of her sin before God, but can only absolutely misconceive of her standing. As Anti-Climacus affirms in accordance with Romans 14.23, ‘whatever does not proceed from faith is sin’.109 Furthermore, because her misconceptions are developed on a plane of existence that negates relationship with God (unbeknownst to the sinner who, as a sinner, cannot truly know that she is a sinner), they will be conceived as being in opposition to the truth.110 As Anti-Climacus writes, no man of himself and by himself can declare what sin is, precisely because he is in sin; all his talk about sin is basically a glossing over of sin, an excuse, a sinful watering down. That is why Christianity begins in another way: man has to learn what sin is by revelation from God; sin is not a matter of a person’s not

104. Climacus writes: ‘The untruth, then, is not merely outside the truth but is polemical against the truth.’ PF, p. 15 / SKS 4, p. 224. 105. Christianly, Anti-Climacus affirms, ‘the idea that makes sin so terrible is that it is before God … because sin is against God it is infinitely magnified.’ SUD, p. 80 / SKS 11, p. 194. Anti-Climacus makes this point in acknowledgement of ‘an older dogmatics’, which the Hongs, in a footnote, associate with the Augsburg Confession, Articles II and IV. SUD, p. 178. 106.  SUD, pp. 79, 116n., 121–2 / SKS 11, pp. 193, 228n., 233. 107.  SUD, pp. 81, 117 / SKS 11, pp. 195, 229. 108.  SUD, p. 126 / SKS 11, p. 237. 109.  SUD, p. 82 / SKS 11, p. 196. In light of this, Anti-Climacus affirms here that ‘that the opposite of sin is not virtue but faith’. SUD, p. 82 / SKS 11, p. 196. As he understands, the quest for virtue is an ethical quest for a human value to the extent that virtue is something that humans can achieve in and of themselves and is something that they can be proud of achieving. 110. See KJN 7, p. 240 / SKS 23, pp. 236–7 [NB17:92]; see also PC, p. 68 / SKS 12, p. 80.

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The Freedom to Become a Christian having understood what is right but of his being unwilling to understand it, of his not willing what is right.111

So, for Anti-Climacus, and, indeed, for Kierkegaard, a true consciousness of sin before God is not at all ‘an arbitrary [human] act’.112 It requires God to deliver a person into a qualitatively new way of life in which he can truly know of his standing before God – in which he can receive revelation for what it is. It is only in this way that he can become conscious of himself as a sinful self who wilfully opposes kinship with God. And it is only in this way that he can embrace God’s forgiveness for what it is.113 That is, unless he takes offence at the possibility of forgiveness and once again chooses despair.114

IV. Being in the Truth While human beings live in sinful alienation from God, and do so in ignorance, Kierkegaard writes ‘God does not let himself be heard directly.’115 In many respects, this is obvious. Generally speaking, God does not speak to persons ‘face to face’ in a way that is directly apparent – ‘God is not an external, palpable power who bangs the table in front of me.’116 Instead, God speaks to persons spiritually. The problem with this mode of communication is that it too easily allows sinners to confuse the living God with their own sinful notions of God. Also, such spiritual communication too easily allow sinners to confuse God’s will with their own sinful wills, swayed by the ‘flesh and blood [that] are diametrically opposed to his [God’s] will’.117 The only way to guard against this, for Kierkegaard, is for a person to immerse herself in Scripture and actively follow its guidance. At the same time, one must not confuse the truths of Scripture with the truth that God is in himself. Moreover, one must also not confuse the truths of Jesus’ teaching with the truth that Jesus Christ is in himself. Instead, she must look to Scripture with the faith and hope that God is communicating to her spiritually – both through Scripture and through active response to Scripture – in such a way as to draw her to himself. Anti-Climacus addresses the potential for confusion between the truths (paa Sandheder) and the truth (paa Sandhed) when he considers ‘the fundamental confusion in Pilate’s question’ to Jesus, ‘What is truth?’118 For Anti-Climacus, the basic confusion lies in the fact that Pilate is asking the one who is the Truth ‘What is truth?’ as though this were something that could be directly taught to Pilate in 111.  SUD, p. 95 / SKS 11, p. 207; see also SUD, pp. 89, 120 / SKS 11, pp. 202, 231. 112.  KJN 3, p. 182 / SKS 19, p. 186 [Not5:23]. 113. See SUD, p. 122 / SKS 11, p. 233. 114. See SUD, pp. 113–31 / SKS 11, pp. 225–42. 115.  JP 2, 1273 / SKS 25, pp. 128–9 [NB27:13]. 116.  JP 2, 1273 / SKS 25, pp. 128–9 [NB27:13]. 117.  JP 2, 1273 / SKS 25, pp. 128–9 [NB27:13]. 118.  PC, p. 203 / SKS 12, p. 200.



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abstraction from who Jesus Christ is. For Anti-Climacus, as for Kierkegaard, the essential truth of Christianity is not something that can be directly explained to a person. Rather, the truth is something that a person comes to know by encountering Christ: the one ‘whose life is expressly the truth and who therefore at every moment by his life demonstrates more powerfully what truth is than all the most prolix lectures of the sharpest thinkers’.119 Pilate, however, misses the connection between Jesus Christ and the truth. As such, he does not deem it confused to ask Jesus to communicate the truth directly to him, to his ‘inquiring mind’.120 For Anti-Climacus, ‘[n]o human being, with the exception of Christ, is the truth’.121 This means that if someone were to ask a Christian, ‘What is truth?’, the ‘Christian will point to Christ and say: Look at him, learn from him, he was the truth.’122 In this sense, ‘the truth is not a sum of statements, not a definition etc., but a life’.123 What does this mean for the Christian? First, it means that Jesus Christ is the foundation of the Christian life. As Kierkegaard writes, ‘Since he is the Truth, you do not find out from him what Truth is and now are left to yourself, but you remain in the Truth only by remaining in him.’124 But, second, it means that, for the Christian, acquiring the truth of Christianity does not primarily concern the cognitive appropriation of Christian teaching. Rather, it involves the appropriation of this truth within one’s life. And a person expresses his relation to this truth by striving to ‘be’ the truth, in a Christian sense: ‘And therefore, Christianly understood, truth is obviously not to know the truth but to be the truth.’125 It is only once a person is the truth (insofar as he is transformed by the one who is the truth) that he can know the truth; the latter accompanies the former. In the process of becoming a Christian, ontology takes priority over epistemology. But even if a person becomes the truth, for Anti-Climacus, there will always remain a sense in which that person ‘cannot really know the truth’ because the truth is never something that can be known objectively in a way that is abstracted from one’s being the truth. Also, in Christian terms, the truth is not a teaching that a person can hold or possess within her mind, in abstraction from God who encounters us in history. The truth never graduates from the sphere of being to the sphere of abstract knowing. It should be made clear here that, for Anti-Climacus, the way in which Jesus Christ – the God–human – is the truth is infinitely qualitatively different from the way in which the Christian may be described as the truth. The latter becomes 119.  PC, p. 204 / SKS 12, p. 201 120.  PC, p. 203 / SKS 12, p. 200. 121.  PC, p. 204 / SKS 12, p. 201. 122.  PC, p.  205 / SKS 12, p.  202. Although Anti-Climacus says that Christ was the truth (han var Sandheden), he is also clear that Christ is the truth, as the resurrected and ascended one who, today, encounters persons contemporaneously. (PC, p.  9 / SKS 12, p. 17.) 123.  PC, p. 205 / SKS 12, p. 202. 124.  WA, p. 188 / SKS 12, p. 301. 125.  PC, p. 205 / SKS 12, p. 202.

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the truth by being drawn into a personal relationship with the truth that God is in himself, by the grace of God. The Christian does not become the truth that Jesus Christ is in himself. This means that a person must be in right relationship to God before she can know the truth (of God) in her life. She must first be given to relate to the truth in truth before she can come to know the truth truthfully. For Kierkegaard, the way that a person comes to relate to the truth that God is in himself is in and through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. If, alternatively, a person primarily seeks an abstract (philosophical or historical) knowledge of Christianity, rather than communion with God, she will end up with an account of Christianity that flounders about in her own untruth. Kierkegaard is quite clear that any account of ‘Christianity’ that is accommodated to fit one’s own ‘pagan’ criteria is untrue.126 Furthermore, he also argues that even the theologian who seeks a knowledge of Christianity solely through recourse to orthodox Christian doctrine will fall infinitely short because, again, without being in a relationship with God, she will be unable to relate to the truth of Christianity.127 Be that as it may, Kierkegaard does not go so far as to suggest that individuals will experience the reconciliation of their existence irrespective of any direct knowledge. ‘That there is an element of knowledge is particularly true for Christianity; a knowledge about Christianity must certainly be communicated in advance. But it is only preliminary.’128 Kierkegaard posits that when the work of God is communicated ‘in advance’, for example, through a direct reading of Scripture, it is received as a form of historical knowledge.129 Initially, therefore, it can only be interpreted in the same way that a person interprets all other observations, according to his immediate and sinful way of knowing.130 This means that even if an individual can imagine “Christianity” as a true possibility, he will not be able to become a Christian by simply attempting to commit himself to this concept. Again, unless a person is 126. See CUP, pp. 201, 293–4, 606 / SKS 7, pp. 184, 267, 551. 127. See CUP, pp. 325–6, 377–80, 579 / SKS 7, pp. 296–7, 343–6, 526; PC, pp. 94–102 / SKS 12, pp. 103–11. 128.  JP 1, 651 / Pap. VIII–2 B 83. 129.  JP 1, 653 / SKS 27, p. 411 [Papir 368:10]; see also PF, pp. 87–8 / SKS 4, pp. 285–6. With regard to this initial objective knowledge, Climacus notes: ‘it is not at all more difficult to find out what Christianity is than to find out what Mohammedanism and anything else historical are, except insofar as Christianity is not something merely historical; but the difficulty is to become a Christian, because every Christian is Christian only by being nailed to the paradox of having based his eternal happiness on the relation to something historical’. CUP, p. 578n. / SKS 7, p. 526n. 130.  CUP, pp. 25–28 / SKS 7, pp. 32–5. Initially, a person encounters the work of God in revelation in the same way that she encounters all God’s work in the natural world. As Climacus affirms, individuals can always look directly to the world to see the objects of God’s creation. However, in so doing, they cannot find God directly. God remains elusive until a person relates faithfully to Christianity, in truth. CUP, pp. 243–4 / SKS 7, pp. 221–2).



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delivered into the truth, any idea of ‘Christianity’ that he might develop will be qualitatively opposed to the truth of Christianity. Significantly, this also means that there is no point from which a person can observe the truth of what it means to be a Christian as a mere possibility: a person is either in the truth or outside the truth.

V. Passion in Kierkegaard’s Thought Throughout Kierkegaard’s authorship, ‘passion’ (Lidenskab) appears as a pivotal term in his understanding of human existence. It is imperative, then, that we understand precisely how he utilises this concept. Given the wide range of ways in which he employs the term, this is no easy task.131 To maintain a tighter focus, then, I shall concentrate on two key forms of passion in his authorship: the passion of thought and the passion of faith. In the context of discussing these two passions, I shall also consider how Kierkegaard understands the relationship between human passion and individual responsibility. a. The Passion of Thought Kierkegaard uses the word ‘passion’ to denote whatever it is that brings a person to be affected by those things that she encounters in her day-to-day existence. It is that which means she is not impervious to the objective world but is constantly and perceptively engaged with it. That is, it motivates her to be an interested thinker with the conviction that is required for the progression of her understanding and the development of her character. For passion to operate in this way, however, a thinker needs to have some form of epistemic access to the object of his perception: a thinker cannot become interested in something of which he has no conception. For example, when a person is confronted by a paradox, he cannot immediately exhibit a passionate interest in the rationale for the paradox, because the very nature of the paradox is such that its rationale eludes him. Nevertheless, when a person comes across a paradox, it will often incite a desire to try to apprehend the paradox, to try to discover the rationale that appears to be alluding him. This will become clearer if we consider a couple of examples. Take, for instance, the paradox of enrichment in biology, which maintains that increasing the amount of food available in an 131. As Robert C. Roberts notes, Kierkegaard uses the term ‘passion’ ‘sometimes for emotion, sometimes for concern’. Roberts, ‘Existence, emotion, and virtue: Classical themes in Kierkegaard’, in The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, eds Alastair Hannay and Gordon D. Marino (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 185. Generally speaking, however, Kierkegaard uses the term ‘passion’ to refer to the existential quality whereby a person is subjectively engaged – emotionally and interestedly – with objectivity. For a more detailed account of the different ways in which Kierkegaard employs the term ‘passion’, I would highly recommend Roberts’ essay.

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ecosystem may lead to instability, and even to extinction. Another example, found in medicine, is evident in that French people suffer a relatively low incidence of coronary heart disease despite having a diet that is relatively high in saturated fats. It is often the case, perhaps even normally the case, that when a person comes across paradoxes such as these, a certain level of curiosity is awakened in her to try to grasp how these statements can be true: a passion to discover the rationale that appears to be eluding her. It is this provocative aspect of the paradoxes that led Climacus to describe the paradox as ‘the passion of thought’.132 In the instant that a person becomes interested in the paradox, however, that interest can only be sustained so long as an individual thinker perceives the paradox to be at least partially understandable; that is, so long as the individual does not discover that it is beyond the limits of human understanding. For Climacus, the discovery that there is ‘something that thought itself cannot think’ can only destroy the ‘passion of thought’ because it annihilates the very possibility of pursuing understanding.133 With this in mind, Climacus considers what he calls ‘the ultimate paradox of thought’.134 As we have seen, the ‘passion of thought’ drives us understand what is not immediately understood. This suggests that the ‘ultimate potentiation of every passion’ is to want to discover ‘something that thought itself cannot think’.135 That is, human thought is passionately driven to keep advancing until it collides with the frontier of what it is thinkable – that is, until it arrives at the boundary that constitutes the downfall of the thinker’s advance. In this way, human thought advances in a way that, ultimately, ‘will[s] its own downfall’.136 Analogously, a climber passionately desires to press beyond the limits of her capacities until she meets an uncrossable chasm. At the point where her ambition ceases to be achievable, her desire to progress evaporates. In a similar vein, an interested thinker will only continue to be passionate about comprehending an object so long as she does not believe that such comprehension transcends the limits of her finite understanding (for example, the absolute paradox of the eternal God becoming human). In short, human thought is driven by a passion to discover the unknown: a passion that, as in the analogous situation of the climber, evaporates if a thinker arrives at a point beyond which she cannot advance – what Climacus refers to as the ‘downfall’ of her venture. This ‘passion of thought’ that drives the human thinker, Climacus observes, ‘is fundamentally everywhere in thought … But because of habit we do not discover this.’137 Although some of the assertions that Climacus makes can seem fairly ambiguous and often confusing, C. Stephen Evans suggests that ‘they make some

132.  PF, p. 37 / SKS 4, p. 243. 133.  PF, p. 37 / SKS 4, p. 243. 134.  PF, p. 37 / SKS 4, p. 243. 135.  PF, p. 37 / SKS 4, p. 243. 136.  PF, p. 37 / SKS 4, p. 243. 137.  PF, p. 37 / SKS 4, p. 243.



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sense if we take a particular view of reason, a view which I see as implicit [in Climacus] though by no means developed’.138 He continues, The view is one which could aptly use the title ‘imperialistic reason.’ Reason, on this view, far from being a neutral dispassionate faculty, is more like an instrument of control or even domination. A paradox engenders passion in human reason because it is a challenge, a reality that I do not yet know how to control and dominate. The realm of paradox is the realm in which I do not know my way around, and my response reveals a desire to make this realm my own. The response of reason to the paradoxical, and indeed to the unknown generally, reveals a desire for mastery.139

This character of human reason is evident, to take Evans’ example, in natural science’s quest to push ‘back the frontier of knowledge’ and ‘understand what is not yet understood’.140 Evans also notes, however, with regard to this example, This seems not so much a passion for discovering something that thought cannot think as a passion for understanding everything. However, on close inspection, the latter passion can be interpreted as a disguised form of the first. In seeking to understand what it does not understand, in restlessly seeking to conquer all unknown territory, is not reason seeking to discover if there are any limits to human understanding?141

By providing the passion of thought with an unreachable goal, ‘the unknown’ serves as a frontier to human reason. It is a frontier that the human understanding ‘cannot stop reaching … and being engaged with’.142 As such, the unknown ‘is expressly the passion’s torment, even though it is also its incentive’.143 Metaphorically speaking, the unknown assumes the role of the elusive carrot dangled in front of the unwitting donkey: an interested person will constantly seek to understand the unknown but because the unknown essentially transcends 138. Evans, Passionate Reason, p. 60. 139. Evans, Passionate Reason, p. 61. 140. Evans, Passionate Reason, p.  62. As Evans also points out here, however, ‘The discovery [of something that thought itself cannot think] that Climacus envisions as playing such a[n inciting] role for reason does not of course come from natural science, but from the human quest for self-understanding.’ 141. Evans, Passionate Reason, p. 62. 142.  PF, p. 44 / SKS 4, p. 249. 143.  PF, p. 44 / SKS 4, p. 249. Climacus also asks what we should call ‘the unknown [Ubekjendte] against which the understanding in its paradoxical passion collides and which even disturbs man in his self-knowledge’. He proposes that we call this unknown ‘the god’, a term that finds suitability alongside his description of the unknown as ‘the absolutely different’. However, he also takes care to stress that his use of the term ‘the god’ ‘is only a name we give to’ the unknown. PF, pp. 39–40 / SKS 4, p. 245.

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the limits of her understanding – it is ‘the frontier that is continually arrived at … the absolutely different [det Absolut-Forskjellige]’ – it will ceaselessly inspire her to keep ‘passionately’ developing in her thought.144 We find a similar dynamic of thought development in the way that a person engages with the external world. When I first encounter a pine tree, for example, I encounter something that lies beyond my immediate understanding – something that is characterised by an ‘unknownness’. As I do so, I form an idea of this tree, meaning that this tree has an impact upon me: my encounter with this tree informs and shapes my understanding, and, to some (albeit minor) degree, it will have an impact on my existence and identity. When this happens, I do not have complete control over the way in which this tree shapes me. That is, I cannot completely control the beliefs that I form about this tree, nor can I have complete control over the particular image that I form of this tree. In short, my passionate engagement with this tree changes a part of who I am in a way that I am unable to regulate fully. When we consider the way that passion operates in this kind of example, it becomes apparent that it is by means of the passion of thought that the external world continually changes us. As we engage with it, we are continually both adopting and departing from forms of understanding. For Climacus, the passion to engage with and discover the unknown is so habitual to human thought that it goes unnoticed. Without it, however, a person would lead a life that was motionless and stagnant.145 He would be defined by a self-enclosed passivity to the external world, with an understanding that could never be anything more than a blank slate.146 An activity that Climacus considers to be analogous to this process of thought is ‘the human act of walking’, which the ‘natural scientists’ have described as ‘a continuous falling’: both the walker and the thinker proceed by willing their own downfalls.147 However, drawing on this analogy, he also asserts that ‘a good steady citizen who walks to his office mornings and home at midday probably considers this an exaggeration, because his progress, after all, is a matter of mediation – how could it occur to him that he is continuously falling, he who unswervingly follows his nose’.148 Similarly, when it comes to thought development, if a person is to 144.  PF, p. 44 / SKS 4, p. 249. 145. Kierkegaard writes: ‘If the essential passion [væsentlige Lidenskab] is taken away, the one motivation, and everything becomes meaningless externality, devoid of character, then the spring of ideality stops flowing and life together becomes stagnant water.’ TA, p. 62 / SKS 8, p. 61. He wrote this just after the publication of Postscript. Two Ages: A Literary Review was written by Kierkegaard as a critique of ‘our age’, which he saw as ‘essentially devoid of passion’. TA, p. 53 / SKS 8, p. 53. 146.  For Climacus, ‘[e]xisting, if this is not to be understood as just any sort of existing, cannot be done without passion’. CUP, p. 311 / SKS 7, p. 283. Also, for him, ‘[e]xistence without motion is unthinkable’. CUP, p. 408 / SKS 7, p. 371. Moreover, ‘existence is motion’. CUP, p. 312 / SKS 7, p. 284. 147.  PF, p. 37 / SKS 4, p. 243. 148.  PF, p. 37 / SKS 4, p. 243.



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exist purposefully, he tells us, she must proceed through life with direction, with a life-view (Livsanskuelse), which is achieved by mediating (Mediering) between thought and existence: by thinking about how she should exist and then existing accordingly.149 As Climacus asserts in Postscript, there is much more to existence than idly falling through life, arbitrarily and capriciously allowing the impact of the external world to shape one’s existence. One can either let animal passions carry one away, like ‘a drunken peasant who lies in the wagon and sleeps and lets the horses shift for themselves’, or can thoughtfully grab hold of her existence and become the driver, making decisions over what direction one’s life will take.150 So how does a person grab hold of his existence? For Climacus, a person can achieve a certain level of self-control over life by embracing particular life goals: goals that orient his life and give it meaning. When a person is committed to a particular way of life, he will find himself in a state of becoming that has direction. To put this in ethical terms, suppose Mary seeks, in response to some ethical guidance, to become a ‘more virtuous self ’ and thus views virtue as her goal in life. If she is true to this conviction, Mary will direct her life by passionately seeking to become a ‘more virtuous self ’, consequently leading her to ‘fall away’ from her ‘less virtuous self ’. On this journey, she will move between different selfhoods in a process of becoming, and will do so with a passion for virtue that will enable her to take hold of her existence and orientate it in a particular direction. By existing in such a process of becoming, a person will exist in a process of transition, moving progressively between different subjective standpoints. There is a sense, therefore, that the ‘becomer’ will never be the person she was. But if so, how can a becomer’s existence be said to have continuity? Earlier in Postscript, Climacus comments: ‘the existing of the person essentially prevents continuity, whereas passion is the momentary continuity that simultaneously has a constraining effect and is the impetus of motion’.151 His suggestion that existing ‘essentially prevents continuity’ alludes to his understanding that an existing person continually transitions between different selfhoods that are mutually exclusive: if we were to consider each of these selfhoods separately, we would be confronted by a line of mutually exclusive points given that a subject can only stand at one point at a time. This suggests radical discontinuity between the life points between which a person moves – between the selfhood that comes to a ‘halt’ and the standpoint to which one ‘leaps’. Such discontinuity is only apparent, however, when we attempt to analyse existence too abstractly or reductively from a third-person perspective. If, instead, we take the first-person perspective of a subject seriously, it makes sense to say that a person maintains self-continuity by being the agent who drives himself through existence, moving forward in his own process of becoming.152 As an agent is consciously involved in his process of 149. Climacus understands the interested (inter-esse – being-between) person to exist by constantly moving ‘between thinking and being’. CUP, p. 314 / SKS 7, p. 286. 150.  CUP, pp. 311–12 / SKS 7, p. 283. 151.  CUP, p. 312 / SKS 7, p. 284. 152. To clarify, for Kierkegaard, passion is not an abstract quality that determines a

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becoming, he is conscious of being someone who passionately moves between the different points in his existence.153 By noting that ‘passion is the momentary continuity’, Climacus recognises passion as the existential quality that provides ‘a continuity that holds the motion together’154 as a person moves between different selfhoods and transitions from possibility to actuality in what Aristotle terms kinesis.155 This continuity is further accounted for when Climacus stresses that a person’s passionate transitioning occurs in ‘momentary continuity’. What is so critical about the concept of the ‘moment’ here is that a moment is a point in time in which no period of time passes.156 Consequently, the anatomy of a person’s existence is characterised by a constant continuity in which a person passionately progresses between mutually exclusive selfhoods by way of momentary transitions. b. Passionate Responsibility Clearly, such an account of passion raises a number of questions. If a person is driven through existence by passions that correspond to her particular selfhood, then the question arises as to how free a person is to direct her life? How widely can she steer her passion if her immediate selfhood is always regulating the direction in which her passion will take her? Does passion in some way compromise human freedom and responsibility? The first thing to make clear is that, for Kierkegaard, passion is not foreign to a person’s subjectivity, but an integral part of her existence and character. Passion is not, therefore, some external power that may person’s direction but a quality that is a part of a person’s subjective existence. Therefore, it is the person himself who passionately chooses to make the transitions that he does. As Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Judge William writes, concerning existential transitions: ‘This self that he chooses in this way is infinitely concrete, for it is he himself, and yet it is absolutely different from his former self, for he has chosen it absolutely. This self has not existed before, because it came into existence through the choice, and yet it has existed, for it was indeed “himself.”’ EO2, p. 215 / SKS 3, p. 207. 153. This is what Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Petrus Minor has in mind when he describes subjective human development as an ‘overlapping’ (übergreifende). BA, p. 120 / SKS, 15, p. 275. 154.  CUP, p. 312 / SKS 7, p. 284. 155.  Wilhelm Tennemann defines kinesis as motion or ‘change’. However, as Kierkegaard notes, ‘kίnhsiς is difficult to determine; for it belongs neither to possibility nor to actuality; [it] is more than possibility and less than actuality.’ As such, it cannot be understood in abstract Hegelian terms. KJN 3, p. 393 / SKS 19, pp. 394–5 [Not13:27]; CUP, pp. 342–3 / SKS 7, pp. 313–14; see also Clare Carlisle, ‘Climacus on the Task of Becoming a Christian’, in Concluding Unscientific Postscript: A Critical Guide, ed. Rick Furtak (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 182–3. 156. See CA, pp.  87–8 / SKS 4, pp.  390–1; see also Stephen Dunning, Kierkegaard’s Dialectic of Inwardness: A Structural Analysis of the Theory of Stages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 151–4.



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compromise a person’s freedom by forcing her to choose to act in a particular way; it is not a force that pushes a person ‘from behind’. Rather, passion is the quality with which a person is motivated and, indeed, motivates herself to choose to act in particular ways. It is the quality that enables the human will to make meaningful decisions and initiate expressive action. Without passion inclining a person to act in a particular way, the human will (if one could call it that) would function randomly, disinterested in the specific decisions that a person should make and the specific actions she should perform. That is, there would be no sense in which a particular person – who that person is – would be determinative of the choices she makes. For Kierkegaard, passion provides the continuity between who a person is and the particular choices that she makes. Passion is the key, therefore, to individual self-determination, which, as such, can be interpreted as a form of self-expression. In short, passion is what characterises a person’s authentic response to the world – it explains why she responds to the world in specific ways. If, for example, a person has a (stronger) passion to choose evil, she will be disposed to respond in evil ways.157 If, however, a person has a (stronger) passion to choose good, she will be disposed to respond in good ways. Alternatively, if a person has a (stronger) passion to try to act contrary to herself (to try to show that she can act contrary to herself), she will be disposed to try to respond in a way that he believes is contrary to the way in which he would normally respond. What is plain is that he will inevitably fail to act contrary to herself because she would be operating as a self who is passionate about responding in a way that she believes is contrary to the way that she would normally respond. Whatever a person’s passionate disposition might be, it will always characterise the particular form of her response to the world.158 Passion is the key to interpreting our conscious response to situations – the intentional nature of our engagement with the world. What are implications of this connection between subjective passion and subjective response? Although a person can be said to be free in his subjective existence (he is free to be true to himself), he cannot be said to reign over his subjectivity. By preventing a person from being outside himself, Climacus affirms, ‘[e]xistence exercises its constraint’.159 The existing person cannot transcend his subjective existence and make conscious decisions that go against his intentionality and are indifferent to his immediate disposition. Also, because a person’s subjectivity is unitary (because a person is a single existing individual), it belongs 157. I add the term ‘stronger’ here because it is possible for a person to be divided by a mix of passions for both good and evil. If, for example, a virtuous person were hungry and without money, she might be inclined to perform an unvirtuous action to fulfil her desire for food, such as stealing some bread. Under such circumstances, it will ultimately be a person’s stronger passion that will incline a person’s will to make its specific decision. 158. Kierkegaard writes in his journals: ‘Every human being can experience the same thing, and the difference between men lies not so much in the different thing which they experience as in the modes in which they experience.’ JP 1, 1073 / Pap. V B 213:2. 159.  CUP, p. 197 / SKS 7, p. 181.

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to the very nature of the case that a person will ultimately be resolute about the specific passionate transitions he chooses to make. This does not mean, however, that a person’s passionate disposition will be the sole determining factor in the direction of his life-direction. There will also be arbitrary stimuli, such as biological, environmental and hereditary factors that will contribute to the formation of a person’s passionate disposition, and thereby impact on what kind of person he becomes.160 However, if a person consciously encounters and experiences such stimuli (which he may or may not have brought himself to encounter), he will respond to them in the way that he or she is passionately disposed to respond, that is, according to the immediate resolution with which he experiences them. That said, we need to be extremely careful here not to disregard Kierkegaard and Anti-Climacus’ understanding of the human being as spirit, as a self-conscious self. As spirit, there is a sense in which a person can, on the one hand, make choices about her future that are not necessarily determined by her past,161 and thus not inevitable162 – for Climacus, a person is a ‘relatively freely acting cause’.163 Yet, on the other hand, a person does not have the freedom to make decisions that are free from the persuasions of her subjective existence. It is extremely difficult to hold these two points together. To the extent that they can be held together, there is something essentially mysterious about how exactly this can be done. As C. Stephen Evans notes, Kierkegaard recognises ‘that a commitment to freedom entails that there will be an enigmatic, inexplicable dimension to human action’.164 It would seem that this mystery has something to do with the way that a self-conscious agent operates as spirit: in a way that cannot be understood or explained by a third-person observer. As with many other concepts in 160. See EO2, p.  251 / SKS 3, p.  239; see also C. Stephen Evans’ discussion of the pre-self in Søren Kierkegaard’s Christian Psychology: Insight for Counselling and Pastoral Care (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990), pp. 48, 84–5. I might add that an individual can affect the formation of his or her passions by choosing to enter into situations where his or her passions are more likely to assume a form that align with the particular life-direction that a person seeks. For example, by choosing to attend a research seminar, a person might encounter stimuli that will lead him or her to become more passionate about study. 161.  According to Anti-Climacus, ‘if there is nothing but necessity, man is essentially as inarticulate as the animals’. SUD, pp. 40–1 / SKS 11, p. 156. 162. This also means, as George Pattison helpfully explains, ‘even though what has [come] into existence in the past cannot be undone or be made otherwise that it was, it will never have been necessary. Historical action, the subject of genuine historical enquiry, is what has been done in and through freedom, and this freedom preserves its character of freedom even when past.’ Pattison, Eternal God/Saving Time (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 262. 163.  PF, p. 76 / SKS 4, p. 276. 164. C. Stephen Evans, ‘Kierkegaard on Anxiety and Original Sin’, in The Theologically Formed Heart: Essays in Honor of David Gouwens, eds Warner M. Bailey, Lee C. Barrett and James O. Duke (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2014), p. 235.



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Kierkegaard’s writings, there is something about the first-persons’ perspective whereby they exist as spirit that can only be known by the person who experiences it in his or her existence.165 This means that, for Kierkegaard, we must hesitate to be too scientific, reductive or clinical in any ‘objective’ analysis of subjective human existence and first-person consciousness. By recognising the limits of an objective analysis of subjective human existence, we can maintain that a person can make decisions that are not the necessary consequence of his or her past. Human beings have the freedom to act in a free and responsible way that, as C. Stephen Evans puts it, ‘cannot finally be explained as the necessary outcome of pre-existing conditions’.166 Importantly, however, this does not imply that a person’s self-conscious determination is neutral with respect to her past. Kierkegaard does not advocate, as Alasdair MacIntyre suggests, an ethic of radical choice.167 Alongside Augustine, Kierkegaard insists that ‘abstract freedom of choice (liberum arbitrium) is a phantasy’, and with Leibniz he asserts that ‘a perfectly disinterested will (equilibrium) is a nothing, a chimera’.168 Concrete human freedom, therefore, does not simply involve a state of being equally disposed to go one way or another. One’s will is biased by the subjective content of her world existence (Verdenexistenten), as it has been informed by her life history.169 What does this mean for human existence and responsibility? It means that, in a particular moment, a passionate subject will never simultaneously exist as ‘the person who consciously chooses yes’ and ‘the person who consciously chooses no’ in response to a given situation. For this to be otherwise, a person would need to be able to make choices that were removed from her concrete human existence. By denying such existential neutrality, Kierkegaard accentuates personal responsibility by stressing that an existing person is passionately and 165. C. Stephen Evans makes precisely this point in his essay ‘Kierkegaard on Anxiety and Original Sin’, p. 235. 166. Evans, ‘Where There’s a Will There’s a Way: Kierkegaard’s Theory of Action’, in his Kierkegaard on Faith and the Self: Collected Essays (Baylor: Baylor University Press, 2006), p. 323. For Kierkegaard, freedom ‘presupposes itself ’; it ‘cannot be explained by anything antecedent to it’, and it ‘arises out of nothing’. CA, p. 112 / SKS 4, pp. 414–15. 167. See Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), p. 47. For further critical engagement with MacIntyre’s claim, see C. Stephen Evans, ‘Where There’s a Will There’s a Way’; also Evans, Kierkegaard’s Ethic of Love: Divine Commands and Moral Obligations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 34–60. 168.  JP 2, 1268 / SKS 24, p. 287 [NB23:170]. Kierkegaard also writes: ‘What Augustine says of true freedom (distinguished from freedom of choice) is very true and very much a part of experience – namely, that a person has the most lively freedom when with completely decisive determination he impresses upon his action the inner necessity which excludes the thought of another possibility. Then freedom of choice or the “agony” of choice comes to an end.’ JP 2, 1269 / SKS 24, 289 [NB23:172]. See also Evans’ discussion of the ‘no neutrality’ thesis in Faith Beyond Reason: A Kierkegaardian Account (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), pp. 18–19, 33–4n. 169.  KJN 3, p. 183 / SKS 19, p. 187 [Not5:32].

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intentionally involved in a decision-making process. Without the commitment of human subjectivity, the process of decision-making would be as meaningful as flipping a coin. Yet, importantly, Kierkegaard is not of the view that a person is committed to whatever ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response he might immediately make. Why not? The process of self-conscious decision-making does not involve a person’s making immediate responses, generated by an immediate disposition. When a person makes a conscious choice, he takes a certain amount of time to think about how he will respond to a given situation. When he does so, his choice is not presupposed by a static disposition that automatically yields certain responses. Rather, it is made with a living disposition that has ‘movement as its presupposition’.170 As a person exists in motion, he possesses a continual freedom to choose the way in which he will respond to a given situation and become ‘the person who consciously choose “yes”’ or ‘the person who consciously chooses “no”’. And he exercises the freedom to take hold of his existence by using his imagination and reason to deliberate over how to act and respond. By taking time to reflect (for example, about how a choice might correspond to life goals), he or she also exercises the freedom to shape his or her passions. For example, by passionately denying a passion for dishonesty, a person can build up a habitual inclination to be honest. By so doing, he or she can make self-conscious decisions that will determine the kind of person he becomes, and, in this way, exercise his freedom responsibly.171 This is a major part of what it means for a person to struggle to exist as ‘spirit’.172 170.  CUP, p.  198 / SKS 7, p.  181 (emphasis original). This ‘movement’ is critical for understanding Kierkegaard’s account of the choice that is involved in becoming a Christian. For Kierkegaard, as William Davis notes, the ‘phrase “becoming and being a Christian” is central to Kierkegaard’s understanding of the transformation involved, because at no time in an individual’s life is it possible to say that she simply is a Christian. “Being a Christian” is simply “becoming a Christian” (believing instead of taking offence and embracing Christ as the pattern) in every situation in which a choice is involved.’ Davis, ‘Kierkegaard on the Transformation of the Individual in Conversion’, in Religious Studies 28:2 (1992): 159. 171. See SUD, pp.  30–1 / SKS 11, pp.  146–7. Also, as Rick Furtak elucidates, ‘To someone who asks rhetorically how anyone could be responsible for having appropriate emotions, the plain answer is: by developing trustworthy evaluative dispositions over time. Ideally, just as a skilled musician is pleased by a good tune and offended by a bad one, the virtuous person will have an embodied sense of what is better or worse … Passions arise out of states of character for which we are responsible, even though we are not in control of how we respond at every moment … Such a person takes responsibility for himself as a distinct individual with specific passions, habits and influences; a self, in other words, that is aware of its place in a greater network of influences. When we identify with our concrete particularity, we become more than momentarily and randomly passionate, aligning ourselves with an entire history of evaluative perception.’ Furtak, Wisdom in Love (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), pp. 73–4. 172. Kierkegaard writes in a journal entry: ‘[t]hat a bare and naked liberum arbitrium is a chimera can best be seen from the difficulty, the long, long, continuing struggle that is



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At the same time, there is an extent to which a person’s conscious decision to take time to reflect will be a consequence of her being passionate about taking her time. Some persons are much more passionate about being contemplative than others – about taking their time to shape and form their passions. Yet, because a person exists in motion, it is also the case that a person will naturally take her time to make conscious decisions, and, in this motion, will have the freedom to alter the choices she will make. Within a period of reflection, a person will continue to make a series of resolute thought transitions, which, depending upon how much time she takes to think about a matter, will lead her to make specific decisions in accordance with the specific form that her passions take during this period of responsible reflection. Within this process, a person is the subject of her passions rather than subject to her passions. It is this that defines responsibility. Yet, as we have seen, a person never has the freedom to make abstract choices about what passions she will form and, consequently, does not have the freedom to make neutral either–or decisions about what she will choose. She will always make choices that align with her immediate passionate resolve or character (Charakteer).173 For this reason, Rick Furtak writes: It is more accurate to say that the self ‘accepts’ or ‘receives’ itself than that it ‘chooses’ itself: to speak only in terms of voluntary decision would imply too much self-fabrication, when in fact individuality crystallizes amid conditions that are largely beyond one’s self-control.174

One implication of this is that an individual cannot directly will to commit herself to any belief. A person can only come to believe certain things, depending upon the specific way that she passionately relates herself to the world. Therefore, when Climacus says, regarding human cognition, that ‘belief [Tro] is not a knowledge but an act of freedom, an expression of will’,175 he is not consigning belief formation to some form of volitionalism. Any volitionalist suggestion that a believer can directly will beliefs is, as C. Stephen Evans makes clear, simply untenable for Climacus. Rather, as I consider in more detail in Chapter 5, he is merely using the concept of ‘will’ to refer to the ‘subjective factor in belief formation’, that is, to an individual’s subjective or passionate hold on a belief. required merely to break a habit, even if one has quite earnestly made a resolution to so do. Or it is seen when one considers spiritual trials in which a [person] fights things beyond his control, fights them with moral anxiety, and at first, precisely because of this anxiety [Angsten], the struggle summons them up rather than removes them, until finally, after a long, long, continuing struggle, he gradually wins.’ KJN 6, p. 391 / SKS 22, p. 386 [NB14:69]. 173.  On Kierkegaard’s use of the term ‘character’, in Two Ages, Robert Roberts notes that ‘“character” means something like “sustained dispositional ethical enthusiasm or interest”’ and ‘is in large part constituted of dispositions to emotion’. (Roberts, ‘Classical themes in Kierkegaard’, pp. 180, 201; TA, p. 68 / SKS 8, p. 65). 174. Furtak, Wisdom in Love, p. 86. 175.  PF, p. 83 / SKS 4, p. 282.

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In sum, the continuous nature of a person’s subjective existence is maintained by a passion that enables each conscious step of human becoming to be intentional – yet, obviously, with varying degrees of thoughtfulness. Passion enables the process of becoming to be a process in which each existential development is grounded in a particular person’s subjectivity. As I have already noted, there may be chemical and biological factors that can disrupt the self-conscious flow of a person’s existence. Other than these, however, the only non-‘spiritual’ factors that can realign the continuous course of an individual’s passionate existence are external stimuli.176 This point is critical for understanding the essentially relational nature of human existence. As we have seen, there is an extent to which a person is limited in how responsible he can be over the immediate content and passion that motivates him as a responsible self: this is because, put simply, a self can never escape himself. What he can do, however, is take some level of responsibility for the content and passion that motivates the lives of others. That is, he can become an external stimulus in the lives of others, setting others down new tracks and influencing the choices that others thereby find themselves inclined to make on their life-journeys. For example, given the content and passion of Tom’s immediate selfhood, his life might be on a trajectory that will never come to believe in the God revealed in Jesus Christ (even if he hears the gospel proclaimed and is told to make a decision for God), that is, until his friend Mary proclaims the gospel to him in a way that directs his life-trajectory on to a path that will encourage him to give attention to the message of Jesus Christ. This understanding of the way human existence progresses, in what Furtak describes as ‘a network of intersubjective relationships’, is profoundly important for understanding what it means to be human.177 It suggests that there is an essential component to human development that can only be found in and through fellowship with others. Moreover, it suggests that human existence is essentially constituted by relationships with others. As M. Jamie Ferreira writes: ‘There is no instant at which we are only the abstract determinant “human being”; we are always in some kind of special relation, even if it is only the relation of being someone’s child.’178 Does this mean that Kierkegaard might be favourably disposed towards a ‘relational ontology’ (to use a non-Kierkegaardian expression)? Kierkegaard is famous for insisting that the crowd is untruth.179 Ultimately, it is only the single individual (den Enkelte) who takes up God’s calling in his or her life: echoing 1 176. Clearly, the life-course to which a person is committed could be one in which he will, in light of past interactions, become passionately disposed to change his course of life. However, if this happens, it will only be because he is passionate enough about reflecting over his life to change this way of life – or, at least, is passionately disposed to becoming the kind of person who will change her life. If, under these circumstances, a person does change her life, she will do so from within the continuous course of her life. 177. Furtak, Wisdom in Love, p. 74; see also pp. 99, 129. 178. Ferreira, Love’s Grateful Striving (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) p. 92. 179. See PV, pp. 105–26 / SKS 16, pp. 85–106.



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Corinthians 9.24 and Philippians 3.14, he points out that ‘only one reaches the goal’.180 He then adds ‘that everyone should be careful about becoming involved with “the others”’.181 While a person can become a good influence on the lives of others, and vice-versa, the lives of others can also have a highly detrimental influence. For Kierkegaard, this is particularly the case in a society that is oriented towards worldly goals. Reflecting on his own context in Danish Christendom, he felt that it was highly irresponsible for a Christian to allow him or herself to be subject to the sway of the crowd. For him, the crowd dilutes, misappropriates and disregards the Gospel message. And, when a person finds him or herself caught up in the crowd, it is all too easy for that person to confuse the ‘vox dei [voice of God]’ with ‘the vox populi [voice of the people]’.182 Consequently, he asserts that the Christian is called to live responsibly as a single individual who makes conscious decisions about what it means for him or her to take up her cross and follow Christ, untempered by the pull of the crowd. So, for Kierkegaard, the fact that passion enables relationships to be formative of a person’s subjective existence is not necessarily a good thing. If passion is to function purposefully as the driving force of a person’s existence, a person must self-consciously seek to give her life direction, for example, by following Jesus Christ. Without directing her life in this way, the single individual operates as nothing more than a mere product or feature of the world – a creature blown around by the prevailing wind of society. With self-direction, however, a person can mediate between her thought and existence in a way that enables her to stand out in the world and can inspire herself to maintain some level of control over her life’s passions, rather than be driven by them in arbitrary directions. However, there are also limitations as to what individuals can do by devoting themselves to their own processes of self-mediation. The process of self-mediation cannot directly bring people into communion with God because God transcends the natural world and the immanent processes of thought development that occur within it. For Kierkegaard, ‘[t]he truth can neither be communicated nor be received without being, as it were, under the eyes of God, without the help of God, without God’s being a participant, the middle term, since God is the truth’.183 Individuals, therefore, need to be able to relate to God in a way that enables the transformation of their existence. For this to take place, passion is required. By passionately encountering God, a new passion is awakened that enables people to lead lives of faith, and thereby relate to God in truth. This passion is engendered by a relationship with God, who encounters us, governs us and communicates the truth to us personally.

180.  PV, p. 106 / SKS 16, p. 86. 181.  PV, p. 106 / SKS 16, p. 86. 182.  PV, p. 123 / SKS 16, p. 103. 183.  PV, p. 111 / SKS 16, p. 91.

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c. The Passion of Faith Climacus observes that, ordinarily, individuals travel ‘along the easy road of speculative thought’, passionately set in the ways that they have always known.184 They find security in holding to things that appear immediately trustworthy and, accordingly, ascribe truth to them. If, therefore, a person is confronted by an absurdity, it is unlikely that he will be open to the possibility of its truth, that is, unless it is demonstrated to him in terms that are directly communicable to her immediate understanding. As such, a person’s immediate inclination will be to question its validity. This will probably lead her then either to reject it outright or attempt to work out its feasibility, in accordance with the criteria of her finite understanding.185 When it comes to the absolute paradox of Christianity, the incarnate Jesus Christ, there is no possibility of making sense of the absolute paradox in this way. Rather, as the one who is the truth, Jesus Christ makes sense of a person’s existence despite the fact that she cannot master the mystery of the incarnation. And Jesus Christ does this by reconciling her into a relationship with God and thus the truth.186 To become a Christian, therefore, the individual needs to develop an entirely new passion with which she can relate to and embrace the absolute paradox of Christianity – that is, that which is absolutely paradoxical according to a person’s preconceived notions of what God must be like. As Climacus describes in Fragments, and as I shall discuss further, this new passion is faith.187 To receive faith, the learner ‘must constantly cling firmly to the teacher’, who, paradoxically, must be both God and human: divine ‘in order for the teacher to be able to give the condition’, and human ‘in order to put the learner in possession of it’.188 It is by encountering and interacting with the God–human (Gud–Mennesket) that a person comes to participate in a relationship with God.189 This interaction 184.  CUP, p. 208 / SKS 7, p. 190. 185. This occurs, for example, in the way in which ‘the quest for the historical Jesus’ dealt with the apparent absurdity of the incarnate God. This quest sought to discover the historical Jesus – that is, the Jesus that can be discovered by historical research – by distinguishing him from the Jesus of faith by filtering out all the miraculous (or ‘mythical’) stories that surrounded him. Kierkegaard sought to challenge the first wave of this quest as it began to take shape with David Friedrich Strauss’ work, published in 1835 (The Life of Jesus). He takes up this task, in particular, in Fragments, Postscript and Practice in Christianity. See Murray Rae, Kierkegaard and Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2010), pp. 68–78. 186. As Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Petrus Minor writes in The Book on Adler: ‘That the eternal once came into existence in time is not a truth that must stand up to the test of time, is not something that must be tested by human beings but is the paradox by which human beings must be tested.’ BA, pp. 37–8 / SKS 15, p. 157 (emphasis original). 187.  PF, p. 59 / SKS 4, p. 261. 188.  PF, p. 62 / SKS 4, p. 264; see also CUP, pp. 325–6 / SKS 7, pp. 296–7. 189.  The transformation that a person experiences by interacting with the God–human,



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provides ‘the condition’ for a faithful relationship with God.190 With this ‘condition’ in mind, Climacus insists ‘that faith is not an act of will, for it is always the case that all human willing is efficacious [for attaining the truth] only within the condition’.191 While Climacus and also Kierkegaard do not believe that a person can wilfully propel himself into a faithful relationship with God by means of his own immediate passions, he also does not believe that faith arises irrespective of a person’s autonomous existence. For a person to become a Christian, he must become personally interested in a relationship with God and humbly recognise that it is only by the grace of God that such a relationship is possible. So, while a person cannot be considered the agent of his conversion, Kierkegaard does recognise a role for human agency within the process of conversion. Commenting further on the relationship between faith and human agency, he writes, [Christianity] can say to a person: [‘]You shall choose one thing needful, but in such a way that there is no talk of any choice – that is, if you spend a long time talking nonsense, you are not [actually] choosing the one thing needful; it must be chosen first, as with the kingdom of God.[’] So therefore there is something with respect to which there may not be – and in principle cannot be – any choice, and yet there is a choice. Thus, precisely the fact that there is no choice is the expression of the enormous passion or intensity with which one chooses. Can any more accurate expression be given for the fact that freedom of choice is only a formal category of freedom, and that emphasizing freedom of choice as such is simply the loss of freedom? The content of freedom is so decisive for

for Climacus, would not be possible by directly merely interacting with objects in the natural order. The God–human delivers a person on to a life-trajectory that cannot be generated in the natural progression of his existence – even if, for example, he were to commit wholeheartedly to the message of Scripture. 190. Richard Otte writes: ‘Since conversion is radical according to Climacus, the basis of conversion is not reason, but passion.’ Otte, ‘Passionate Reason: Kierkegaard and Plantinga on Radical Conversion’, Faith and Philosophy 31:2 (2014): 172. In many respects, I am sympathetic with Otte’s point, particularly when it is taken in context. However, I think it is more helpful to describe the basis of conversion as a person’s interrelationship with God in time. This is particularly the case when we take into account Climacus’ suggestion, which I shall consider further in Chapter 5, that a person’s relationship with God in time inspires an entirely new pathos – a pathos he describes as ‘a pathos of separation’. CUP, pp.  582, 556–9 / SKS 7, pp.  530, 505–8. For a helpful discussion of Kierkegaard’s understanding of the absolute difference between Christian pathos and general pathos in Postscript, see Jamie Turnbull, ‘Kierkegaard on Emotion’, pp. 497–500. That said, as I argue in Chapter 2, I would also agree with Otte that a person’s having ‘the proper heart’ would seem to be critical to Kierkegaard’s account of becoming a Christian. Otte, ‘Passionate Reason’, p. 172. 191.  PF, p. 62 / SKS 4, p. 264; see also PF, pp. 62–93 / SKS 4, pp. 264–91.

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In this passage, Kierkegaard alerts us to the demand that Christianity gives to individuals: ‘You shall choose one thing needful, but in such a way that there must be no question of any choice.’ He asserts that although it is the subject herself who chooses the ‘one thing needful’, this choice does not follow from an abstract freedom of choice (Valgfriheden) but from the tremendous passion that Christianity’s call inspires in her. If, instead, a person hesitantly or indolently ponders her options, if she tries to master her decision by personal powers of introspection (for example, by weighing up the positives and negatives), she will lose any freedom for God, even if she were somehow able to deliberate that there is a higher probability that God exists.193 To avoid losing sight of God, a person must decide for God in the moment that God impassions her to do so and must allow God to draw her to himself before any scepticism has time to deflate her passion. If one does choose to embrace a relationship with God, this does not mean that one will be safe from the scepticism that would undermine this relationship. The kind of deliberation with which a person seeks to know God in her own terms will remain a constant trouble for that person. In their confusion, believers continually remain ‘suspended in freedom of choice’, in which they are continually faced with the danger of reverting into offence.194 If, however, they continue to allow themselves to be moved by God, a relationship with God can continue to be sustained in the face of such danger.195

VI. Conclusion Like most Christian thinkers, Kierkegaard wrestles with the question of becoming a Christian with a deep concern to acknowledge both the centrality of grace in God’s self-communication to the world while also recognising humanity’s active involvement in the reception of this communication. In this chapter, we have seen that, for Kierkegaard, the truth of human existence is established by God and is realised by our being transformed into right relationship with God, and thereby delivered from the sin that prevents this. On the one hand, therefore, Kierkegaard 192.  KJN 7, pp. 62–3 / SKS 23, pp. 64–5 [NB15:93] (emphasis original); see also EO2, pp. 163–4 / SKS 3, pp. 160–1. 193. Kierkegaard also contends elsewhere that if a person were to hesitate in an attempt to remain neutral or passive to the decision for or against God (to the extent that she can be neutral or passive), whether or not she realises it, he would have chosen offence. Anti-Climacus writes: ‘to be neutral about Christ, is offense. That Christianity is proclaimed to you means that you shall have an opinion about Christ’ (SUD, p. 129 / SKS 11, p. 239; see also CUP, p. 243 / SKS 7, p. 221; WL, pp. 26–7 / SKS 9, pp. 34–5). 194.  KJN 7, p. 63 / SKS 23, pp. 65 [NB15:93]. 195. See CUP, p. 615 / SKS 7, p. 559; JP 2, 1921 / SKS 25, p. 201 [NB 27:86].



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rejects any interpretation of Christian truth as a truth that a person can discover or possess in and of herself, by virtue of her own immanent understanding or according to her direct perception of the world. On the other hand, he firmly maintains that God relates to persons in the becoming of their human existences. As we shall see further in the following chapters, it was by allowing this latter appreciation to help inform and enrich his account of becoming a Christian that Kierkegaard sought to challenge the dispassionate forms of Christianity that disregard the importance of venturing to live an active Christian life.

Chapter 2 T H E P O S SI B I L I T Y O F R E C O N C I L IAT IO N

Kierkegaard writes: It is indeed God in heaven who through the apostle says, ‘Be reconciled’ [‘lader Eder forlige’]; it is not human beings who say to God, ‘Forgive us.’ No, God loved us first; and again the second time, when it was a matter of the Atonement [Forsoningen], God was the one who came first – although in the sense of justice he was the one who had the furthest to come.1

Becoming a Christian, for Kierkegaard, does not just involve the formation of Christian beliefs that give rise to a Christian activity. First and foremost, it involves entering into a personal relationship with the God who reveals himself in Jesus Christ, and thereby becoming a faithful Christian. As such, a person does not learn to become a Christian simply by studying the Bible, attending church on Sunday and learning the creeds by rote. A person becomes a Christian by encountering Jesus Christ and being personally drawn into a life of fellowship with God. The difficulty, however, as Kierkegaard recognises, is that the Jesus of history is revealed in the form of a lowly human servant who does not directly appear to be God. Consequently, the suggestion that the person of Jesus Christ draws persons into a relationship with God is offensive to natural human reason. Also, even if a person can get over this offence, he will still be left with the difficulty that Jesus does not seem to be around anymore in the way that he was two millennia ago. Does this not suggest that it is no longer possible for a person to encounter Jesus Christ? Does this not mean that the best a person can do now is study Scripture and learn the creeds? For Kierkegaard, the answer is ‘no’. For him, Jesus Christ is still with us today, personally drawing persons to himself. 1.  WL, p.  336 / SKS 9, p.  332; Lk. 10.42, 22.61. It should be acknowledged at the outset that the concept of ‘reconciliation’ – Forsoning(en) or forlige – is not prevalent in Kierkegaard’s writings. This is not helped by the fact that the Hongs tend to opt for the alternative translation of Forsoning(en), ‘atonement’. However, I would argue that the theme of reconciliation is a critical part of Kierkegaard’s understanding of becoming a Christian: that is, becoming someone who is delivered from sin to participate in a loving relationship with God.

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In this chapter, I consider Kierkegaard’s understanding of what it means for God to draw persons to himself in a way that respects their individual autonomy. This will lead us to consider both the possibility of a person either reciprocating God’s love or taking offence at it. Lastly, I turn to consider Climacus’ and Anti-Climacus’ understanding of what it means for to be contemporary with the person of Jesus Christ. Before doing so, however, I shall begin by turning to Climacus’ well-known parable of the king who loved the lowly maiden. In this ‘poetical venture’ Climacus presents the reader with a familiar tale of how someone of high standing might seek a relationship with someone of lowly status in a way that affirms the integrity of the lowly person.

I. The Tale of the King and the Maiden Climacus starts this tale by asking the reader to ‘suppose there was a king who loved a maiden of lowly station in life’.2 This king, he considers, grapples sorrowfully with the problem of whether he would ever be able to make the lowly maiden happy by approaching her in all his power and wisdom. He struggles with the prospect that his majesty would overwhelm the maiden and thereby undermine her freedom and personhood. If this happened, ‘she would indeed have been happier if she had remained in obscurity, loved by one in a position of equality … boldly confident in her love’.3 He continues: the king could have appeared before the lowly maiden in all his splendor, could have let the sun of his glory rise over her hut, shine on the spot where he appeared to her, and let her forget herself in adoring admiration. This perhaps would have satisfied the girl, but it could not satisfy the king, for he did not want his own glorification but the girl’s, and his sorrow would be very grievous because she would not understand him; but for him it would still be more grievous to deceive her. In his own eyes just to express his love incompletely would be a deception, even if no one understood him, even if reproach sought to vex his soul.4

Climacus relates this tale to his account of the god and the learner, which we discussed in the previous chapter.5 Building on his thought experiment, he ponders what it would mean for the god to relate to the human learner as an object of the god’s love (Kjærlighed), in a way that would not overwhelm the learner. To do this, he posits that the god seeks to ‘bring about equality’.6 Without 2.  PF, p. 26 / SKS 4, p. 233. 3.  PF, p. 27 / SKS 4, p. 234. 4.  PF, p. 29 / SKS 4, p. 236. 5.  PF, pp. 35–6 / SKS 4, pp. 241–2. 6.  PF, p. 28 / SKS 4, p. 235.



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bringing about this equality, ‘the love becomes unhappy and the instruction meaningless, for they are unable to understand each other’.7 At first, Climacus considers the possibility of the god establishing unity with the learner by way of an ascent – by exalting the learner into a state of blissful happiness. This act of ascension, however, would ultimately deceive the learner because it would lead him to become spellbound and forget himself. Thus, he argues, the god must establish unity in some other way. The god, he proposes, must attempt to bring about unity by a descent. That is, he must appear equal to the lowliest of persons, to the servant. To achieve this, the god cannot merely deceive the learner by disguising himself as the servant. Rather, the god must become the servant: ‘the god must suffer all things, endure all things, be tried in all things, hunger in the desert, thirst in his agonies, be forsaken in death, absolutely the equal of the lowliest of human beings’.8 He writes: For love, any other revelation would be a deception, because either it would first have to accomplish a change in the learner (love, however, does not change the beloved but changes itself) and conceal from him that this was needed, or in a superficiality it would have had to remain ignorant that the whole understanding between them was a delusion.9

Climacus’s suggestion of the servile humanity of the god is given an explicitly Christian voice by Kierkegaard in his discourse on the ‘High Priest’ (Heb. 4.15): ‘We have not a high priest who is unable to have sympathy with our weaknesses, but one who has been tested in all things in the same way, yet without sin.’10 Reflecting on this passage, Kierkegaard asks what it means for God to put himself completely in the place of the sufferer (Lidende) by becoming human in Jesus Christ. He asserts that it is by entering into the fullness of our situation that God can have true sympathy (Medlidenhed) with us in the trials of our human experience. But not only that: when God ‘became a human being, he became the human being who of all, unconditionally all, has suffered the most’.11 By so doing, God ‘opens his arms to all sufferers’ with an empathy that enables God ‘to be able really to comfort’.12 At the same time, Kierkegaard also acknowledges that there is a sense in which God does not put himself in our place. Jesus Christ is without sin and so remains ‘the Holy One’ who is infinitely different than the sinner.13 Yet, even on this front, there is a sense in which God puts himself completely in our place. Kierkegaard asks: ‘If he, if the Redeemer’s suffering and death is the

7.  PF, p. 28 / SKS 4, p. 235. 8.  PF, pp. 32–3 / SKS 4, p. 239. 9.  PF, p. 33 / SKS 4, p. 239. 10.  WA, pp. 113–24 / SKS 11, pp. 251–9. 11.  WA, p. 117 / SKS 11, p. 253. 12.  WA, pp. 117, 116 / SKS 11, p. 253. 13.  WA, pp. 123 / SKS 11, p. 258.

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satisfaction for your sin and guilt … did he not and does he not then put himself completely in your place?’14 He answers: My listener, this is the kind of high priest of sympathy we have. Whoever you are and however you are suffering, he can put himself completely in your place … Whoever you are, O sinner, as we all are, he puts himself completely in your place. Now you go to the Communion table; the bread is handed to you and then the wine, his holy body an blood, once again as an eternal pledge that by his suffering and death he did put himself also in you places, so that you, behind him saved, the judgment past, may enter into life, where once again he has prepare a place for you.15

II. Drawing Another to Oneself Concerned truth is sufficiently certain of being truth, but is concerned about imparting it because it knows others are in need of truth. This is Christianity.16

Although Climacus affirms that ‘love does not change the beloved but changes itself ’,17 there are clear instances in Kierkegaard’s writings where God does seek to change his beloved human beings in order to redeem them from sin. Furthermore, he maintains that such divine activity is contingent upon God approaching human beings from a state of inequality.18 As we have just seen, Kierkegaard does not believe that God should become a sinner in order to establish loving unity with humanity in sin. If God were to do so, he would become imprisoned alongside the sinner and thereby become incapable of redeeming human individuals. As such, God must become a sinless human being who ‘through a contrast’ can expose a person’s sinfulness, her sickness, danger and corruption, and thereby bring her to repentance and draw her into a new way of life.19 To adopt an analogy, a good teacher will not try to forget all that she has learned in order to relate to her student. This is because her contrasting situation is ‘higher’ than that of the student, and necessarily so, so that she can use her 14.  WA, pp. 123 / SKS 11, p. 258. 15.  WA, pp. 123–4 / SKS 11, pp. 258–9. 16.  KJN 6, pp.  58–59 / SKS 22, pp.  62–3 [NB11:111] (translation altered). At the beginning of this journal entry, Kierkegaard writes: ‘“Concerned Truth” is the truth that, eternally certain of being truth, is essentially occupied with imparting it to others, concerned that they accept it for their own benefit, though the truth does not, in fact, need them.’ 17.  PF, p. 33 / SKS 4, p. 239; see also WL, p. 269 / SKS 9, p. 268. 18. As Anti-Climacus writes, God ‘will not be transformed by human beings into a cosy human god; he wills to transform human beings and he wills it out of love’ (PC, p. 62 / SKS 12, p. 74). 19.  PC, p. 161 / SKS 12, p. 165.



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situation to elevate those who are inferior in knowledge, drawing them into a superior understanding. In Practice in Christianity, Anti-Climacus enters into an extended engagement with this process of drawing (drager), with recourse to John 12.32: ‘And I [Jesus Christ], when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all to myself.’20 He writes: if a human life is not to be lived altogether unworthily like that of an animal, which never lifts up its head; if it is not to be trifled away, emptily occupied with what, as long as it lasts, is vanity and when it is over is nothing, or busily occupied with what does indeed make a noise at the moment but has no echo in eternity; if a human life is not to be loafed away in inactivity or wasted away in busy activity – then there must be something higher that draws it … Therefore a Christian’s life is properly structured, is oriented towards what is above, toward loftiness, toward him who on high draws the Christian to himself …21

Anti-Climacus affirms that the high life of the Christian is antithetical to the worldly high life. Whereas the worldly high life is characterised by wealth and extravagance, the Christian high life expresses itself as lowliness in this world: it is a loftiness characterised by poverty and suffering, as is evident in the servant Christ. Consequently, he contends that when Christ draws all to himself ‘from on high’, he does so in a way that ‘thrusts away’ those who embrace life with worldly criteria.22 Jesus Christ enters the world to deliver persons from the false principles that govern human nature, and which thus serve as a stumbling stone for those who seek to follow Christ. Further attention will be given to the challenge of Christianity in Chapter 4. For now, however, I wish to consider Anti-Climacus’ use of the terms ‘low’ and ‘high’. He writes ‘What truly can be said to draw to itself must be something higher, more noble’, whereas, ‘[w]hen the lower draws [drager] the higher to itself, it does not draw, it draws downward, it deceives [bedrager]’.23 For Anti-Climacus, the use of the terms ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ will depend ‘upon the nature of what is to be drawn’.24 If that which is to be drawn is a ‘self ’, then: To draw to itself cannot truly mean merely to draw it from being itself, to draw it to itself in such a way that it has now lost all its own existence [Bestaaen] by being drawn into that which drew it to itself. No, with regard to what is truly a self, to be drawn in this manner would again be to be deceived … [W]hen that which is to be drawn to itself is a self, then truly to draw it to itself means first to help it truly become itself in order then to draw it to itself, or it means in and through drawing it to itself to help it become itself – Therefore, truly to draw to

20.  PC, pp. 145–262 / SKS 12, pp. 149–253. 21.  PC, pp. 151–2 / SKS 12, p. 156. 22.  PC, p. 153 / SKS 12, p. 157. 23.  PC, p. 159 / SKS 12, p. 163. 24.  PC, p. 159 / SKS 12, p. 163.

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The Freedom to Become a Christian itself means something twofold – first to make the self, which is to be drawn to itself, to be itself, in order then to draw it to itself.25

In this passage, Anti-Climacus asserts that the person who truly wants to draw another to himself must respect those features that are essential to the particular nature and identity of the other. The drawing of the other, therefore, must allow for continuity in the other’s development, which means that the ‘drawer’ must give due regard to the freedom of the other.26 So although Anti-Climacus acknowledges that a ‘higher’ person can affirm the selfhood of a ‘lower’ person by bringing about a change in his life, he also argues that this does not justify the ‘higher’ person forcing, enticing or deceiving the ‘lower’ person into a ‘higher’ state. Such an approach would only affirm an aspect of the other’s selfhood by subverting the freedom that he sees to be essential to human selfhood. He writes: ‘a self is a redoubling, is freedom; therefore in this relation truly to draw to itself means to posit a choice’.27 In Anti-Climacus’ mind, the value of respecting human freedom 25.  PC, p. 159 / SKS 12, p. 163; see also JP 2, 1835 / Pap. V B 237. 26. As Arnold Come puts it, I can only experience freedom as ‘“my” freedom … if I choose future possibilities that are capable of being integrated with my “past,” that is, with my whole, accumulated, specific, finite, existent self.’ Come, Kierkegaard as Humanist: Discovering My Self (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995), p. 135. That said, it is important to be clear here that it is possible for a person to become totally transformed in a relationship with God in a way that, on the one hand, cannot be anticipated by a person’s sinful existence, and, on the other hand, allows for self-continuity through this transformation. For Kierkegaard, as this book seeks to demonstrate, this is what it means to become transformed in a relationship with God. 27.  PC, p. 159 / SKS 12, p. 163 (emphasis mine). It is not at all easy to attain a clear grasp of the concept of ‘redoubling’ [Fordoblelse] in Kierkegaard’s writings. However, further insight can be found by looking to some of his other works. In Philosophical Fragments, Climacus observes: ‘All coming into existence occurs in freedom.’ The fact that something has come into existence suggests that it is not eternal and, therefore, has come into existence over against the possibility of it not coming into existence. As such, it is a possibility that needs to be understood as having been freely chosen by ‘a freely acting cause’. Following the actualisation of this possibility, Climacus considers, the ‘something’ that has come into existence could then be faced with the possibility of redoubling: that is, ‘a possibility of coming into existence within its own coming into existence’. This possibility is evident in human beings who not only come into existence alongside the rest of the natural world (through a freely acting cause), but also have the ability to become freely acting causes themselves: beings with the capacity to actualise other possibilities (that is, bring them into existence) through the exercise of their self-conscious freedom (PF, pp. 75–6 / SKS 4, pp. 275–6). This ability arises from the human being’s constitution as much more than a mere physical object, but a ‘self ’ with the capacity to think, giving him a ‘composite’ or ‘duplex’ existence (PC, p.  159; see also SUD, p.  13). With the self-conscious capacity to perceive and actualise possibilities, the human self possesses the freedom to affect the course of the natural world, the history of creation. It is for this reason that Anti-Climacus



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and selfhood is demonstrated when we look at the way in which Christ draws others to himself. Christ, the infinitely highest one, true God and true man, from on high will draw all to himself. But the human being of whom this discourse speaks is in himself a self. Therefore Christ also first and foremost wants to help every human being to become a self, requires this of him first and foremost, requires that he, by repenting, become a self, in order then to draw him to himself. He wants to draw the human being to himself, but in order truly to draw him to himself he wants to draw him only as a free being to himself, that is, through a choice.28

When Christ draws a person to himself, Anti-Climacus contends that Christ gives that person the freedom to choose to participate in a new existence by repenting of his past existence. This requires the person to acknowledge the dysfunctionality of his ‘lower’ state, in contrast to the virtue of the prospective ‘higher’ state, so that the ‘higher’ being can deliver him freely into a ‘higher’ state. For both Anti-Climacus and Kierkegaard, this is not a calculated performance: it is not an abstract declaration of the error of one’s ways. Rather, it involves a passionate turning: an earnest recognition that Christ is the way to the ‘higher’ life.29 By responding to Christ in this way, a person expresses a willingness to let Christ transform her: a willingness to let the spirit of Christ draw the human spirit to himself.30

III. The Possibility of Reciprocity The enormous value of God granting human beings their own freedom is given further attention in Christian Discourses. Commentating on God’s respect for human autonomy, Kierkegaard writes: ‘God, who creates from nothing, omnipotently takes from nothing and says, “Become”; he lovingly adds, “Become something even in relation to me.”’31 As a loving creator, God neither overwhelms writes: ‘a self is a redoubling, is freedom; therefore in this relation truly to draw to itself means to posit a choice’. This is given further clarification through his contrast of the self, which is drawn by another, with the iron, which is drawn by a magnet: ‘the iron is no self; in this relation, therefore, to draw to itself is a singleness … With regard to the iron when it is drawn, there is no question and can be none of any choice’ (PC, p. 159 / SKS 12, p 163). 28.  PC, p. 160 / SKS 12, pp. 163–4. 29. As Anti-Climacus goes on to write: ‘Christ was the truth, was the way, or was the way in the sense that the truth is the way. That he has travelled the way certainly changes nothing at all in the relation for the successor, who, if he is of the truth and wants to be of the truth, can be that only by walking along the way’ (PC, p. 209 / SKS 12, p. 206). 30.  PC, p. 160 / SKS 12, p. 164. 31.  CD, p. 127 / SKS 10, p. 138. Climacus shows a similar understanding in Postscript

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nor controls his creatures, but constrains his activity to allow them a relative independence and a level of ontological freedom to become something other than God.32 By so doing, God allows for the possibility of an interpersonal relationship characterised by genuine reciprocity. All that is required is that individuals use their autonomy to respond to God with an openness to his grace.33 However, by allowing individuals the freedom to go their own way, God leaves open the possibility that individuals will use their freedom ‘selfishly’ to become (and then remain) captivated by the pleasures of the world, rather than reciprocating God’s love.34 When confronted by the message of God’s love, for Kierkegaard, an individual will find herself at a crossroads, faced with the possibility of reciprocity. This possibility, however, is not as straightforward as choosing one road over another. The difficulty is that the individual who is faced with this choice will have a very limited conception (insofar as she can be said to have a conception) of what it means to be in fellowship with God, or, indeed, what it means to reject God. In and of herself, an individual does not have the freedom to enter directly into a life of faith. As we saw in Chapter 1, a person can only become a Christian by encountering God and becoming transformed in and through an active relationship with him. Only in this way can a person truly come to know the significance of this choice.35 What a person can do, however, is, like the disciples, make the decision to leave her worldly life and seek a personal relationship with God, even if she does not know what exactly this will entail.36 If a person does this, she can trust that God is with her, governing her on this new journey. In The Concept of Anxiety, another of Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms, Vigilius Haufniensis,37 considers a comparable scenario with respect to the possibility that confronted Adam in the Garden of Eden. when he writes: ‘[N]ot even God relates himself directly to a derived spirit (and this is the wondrousness of creation: not to produce something that is nothing in relation to the Creator, but to produce something that is something and in the true worship of God can use this something to become by itself nothing before God); even less can one human being relate himself in this way to another in truth. Nature, the totality of creation, is God’s work, and yet God is not there, but within the individual human being there is a possibility (he is spirit according to his possibility) that in inwardness is awakened to a God-relationship, and then it is possible to see God everywhere’ (CD, pp. 246–7 / SKS 10, pp. 252–3). He then later writes: ‘[N]o one is resigned to God, because he communicates creatively in such a way that in creating he gives independence vis-à-vis himself ’ (CD, p. 260 / SKS 10, p. 273). 32. See WL, pp. 271–2 / SKS 9, pp. 270–1. 33.  CDI, p. 128 / SKS 10, p. 139. 34.  CD, p. 129 / SKS 10, p. 140. 35.  If we do not give human agency a pivotal role in the process of ‘becoming a believer’, Kierkegaard remarks with dissent, ‘we have a fatalistic understanding of election by grace’ (KJN 6, pp. 420–1/ SKS 22, p. 415 [NB14:123]). 36. See JFY, pp. 111, 165. 37. In the preface to The Concept of Anxiety, Haufniensis writes, concerning his



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When it stated in Genesis that God said to Adam, ‘Only from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you must not eat,’ it follows as a matter of course that Adam has not really understood a word, for how could he understand the difference between good and evil when this distinction would follow as a consequence of the enjoyment of the fruit?38

When Adam is prohibited from eating of the tree of knowledge, he ‘has no conception of what he was able to do’, because a knowledge of the difference between good and evil only arises after his decision. As such, he can only know what it means to be fallen after the fall.39 Consequently, Haufniensis rejects the idea that the fall is directly chosen by Adam: that it is the result of ‘an act of abstract liberum arbitrium’.40 What he is willing to say is that the prohibition gave Adam some notion of his freedom before God: it awakened in him ‘freedom’s possibility’ to choose either to obey God or to disobey God by eating from the tree, which then indirectly led to the fall.41 Aware of this possibility, Adam became captivated ‘with the anxious possibility of being able’.42 He became captivated with a freedom that put him in a state of anxiety, torn and dizzy over the possibility of ‘being able’ to obey God or go his own way.43 The anxiety that grips Adam when faced with freedom’s possibility is, in many respects, comparable to the anxiety that grips the person who is uncertain about whether to reciprocate God’s love, that is, who is uncertain about how to use ‘the freedom to go his own way that love gave him’.44 Like Adam, all individuals have been created with an agency that is distinct from God’s agency and is pivotal for their relationship with God.45 That said, despite Kierkegaard’s ongoing emphasis authorship, ‘Nothing could please me more than to be regarded as a layman who indeed speculates but is still far removed from speculation’ (CA, p. 8 / SKS 4, p. 314). 38.  CA, p. 44 / SKS 4, p. 350. 39.  CA, p. 44 / SKS 4, p. 350. 40.  CA, p. 49 / SKS 4, p. 355. 41. Within the context of finitude, freedom is described by Haufniensis as an actuality that arises when a person is confronted by a possibility: ‘freedom is never possible; as soon as it is, it is actual’ (CA, p. 22 / SKS 4, p. 330). In other words, as soon as a person is faced with a possibility that person develops a freedom with regard to that possibility. 42.  CA, p. 44 / SKS 4, p. 350. 43.  CA, pp.  44, 61 / SKS 4, pp.  350, 365. However, as Haufniensis also writes earlier, anxiety is ‘neither a category of necessity nor a category of freedom; it is entangled freedom, where freedom is not free in itself but entangled, not by necessity, but in itself ’ (CA, p. 49 / SKS 4, p. 355). 44.  CD, p.  129 / SKS 10, p.  139. Further describing the state of anxiety, Kierkegaard writes: ‘anxiety is in fact a desire for what one fears, a sympathetic antipathy; anxiety is an alien power which seizes the individual, and yet one cannot tear oneself free of it and one does not want to, for one fears, but what one fears is what one desires’ (KJN 2, p. 286 / SKS 18, p. 311 [JJ:511]). 45.  By granting humans this will, Kierkegaard contends, God gives them the freedom to

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on the importance of individual volition, Kierkegaard keeps returning to the individual’s fundamental need for God’s grace.46 The fact that Jesus died for my sins certainly expresses how great grace is, but the fact that it is only on this condition that God will involve himself with me also expresses how great my sins are, how infinitely distant I am from God … And what is remarkable is that it is precisely when God wants to express his condescension that he also indirectly expresses his infinite sublimity. I am willing to let myself be reconciled with [human] beings, he says (what condescension!) on the condition that my son lets himself be sacrificed for you – if this is the only condition, what an infinite distance of sublimity!47

Although this passage stresses the importance of grace, it also draws attention to one condition that a person does need to fulfil in order to participate in reconciliation: ‘that my son lets himself be sacrificed for you’.48 For Kierkegaard, this means that a person must deny the self for which Christ was sacrificed. A person cannot ‘sneak out of self-denial’.49 It is only by denying herself and following Jesus Christ that a person can reciprocate the love that God has shown her. Kierkegaard also makes this point in a journal entry on the parable of the lost sheep. At the beginning of this entry he notes that this parable ‘surely expresses in the strongest terms that the [human] being has nothing at all to contribute toward his own salvation: the shepherd takes the sheep, lays it across his shoulder, carries it, etc. – the sheep has only to lie perfectly still’.50 However, he then notes: ‘this is of course only one moment. If the sheep does not die in the same instant then it shall indeed have to strive again. And is it not then infinitely difficult to be able to lie so perfectly still that no new guilt arises, or that anxiety over the old guilt does not once again get the upper hand, etc.’51 For Kierkegaard, it is not at all easy for be voluntarily obedient, meaning that their obedience is much greater than the bird of the air that ‘has no other will than God’s will’ (CD, p. 84 / SKS 10, p. 92). Notably, however, in his devotional discourse ‘No One Can Serve Two Masters’, he also affirms that the silence of the lily in the field and the bird of the air ‘is the first condition for truly being able to obey’ (WA, p. 24 / SKS 11, p. 29). Furthermore, he notes that we learn unconditional obedience by turning to the lily in the field and the bird of the air (WA, pp. 26–35 / SKS 11, pp. 31–9). 46. On this point, I would argue that it is an overstatement for Arnold Come to contend that ‘Kierkegaard’s entire anthropology, and the entire theology which is reflected in it, centres around the assumption and the conviction that every human being … does become dizzy in contemplation of the contradiction and conflict … between freedom-for and freedom-from (i.e. from the eternal, from God).’ Come, Kierkegaard as Theologian— Recovering My Self (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997), p. 113. 47.  KJN 6, pp. 361–2 / SKS 22, p. 357 [NB14:24]. 48.  KJN 6, p. 362 / SKS 22, p. 357 [NB14:24]. 49.  JP 2, 1490 / SKS 25, p. 165 [NB27:53]. 50.  KJN 7, p. 340 / SKS 23, p. 334 [NB19:8]. 51.  KJN 7, p. 340 / SKS 23, p. 334 [NB19:8].



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a person to deny himself, and so he needs to look prayerfully to God to become a new person whose new existence denies the old.

IV. The Possibility of Offence Concomitant with the possibility of reciprocity, of responding to God in faith and love, lies the possibility of offence: the possibility that a person will not embrace the Gospel message but will instead stand firm in her worldly life. For Kierkegaard, this possibility faces all persons before they become Christians, and is one that will continue to taunt them as they venture on the Christian life. The reason for this is that no one is born a Christian or automatically remains a Christian. Rather, a person only becomes a Christian by way of her own conscious decision, and she only remains a Christian by continuing to commit herself to that decision. As already mentioned, the possibility of becoming a Christian is made all the more difficult by the fact that the incarnate Jesus Christ is seemingly absurd to natural human reason: ‘The God–man is … absolutely the paradox.’52 When God assumes human form, he reveals himself to the world in a way that neither finds accord with nor can be accessed by natural human reason. As a result, human beings require God to draw them into a life of faith in which they can relate to the truth of Christianity in its own terms. For this to happen, a person’s immediate understanding must be brought to a halt, a standstill, because the truth of Christianity will be offensive to her worldly understanding.53 Indeed, for Anti-Climacus, if it is not offensive, then it is not truly Christian.54 Describing this possibility, he writes: Christian doctrine is the teaching about the God–man, about the kinship between God and man, but of such a nature, please note that the possibility of offence is, if I may say it this way, the guarantee whereby God protects himself from man’s coming too close. The possibility of offense is the dialectical element in everything essentially Christian.55

While Anti-Climacus stresses the importance of God establishing kinship (Slægtskab) with human beings, in and through the incarnation, the person of Christ maintains a uniqueness that means that there will always remain an ‘infinite qualitative difference between him and one who comes close to him’.56 This does not call into question his humanity; as the absolute paradox, Jesus Christ is both fully human and fully God. What distinguishes him from all other human beings is that his humanity is united with God in his one person. In light 52.  PC, p. 82 / SKS 12, p. 92. 53.  PC, pp. 82, 105 / SKS 12, pp. 92, 114. 54. See PC, p. 81 / SKS 12, p. 92. 55.  SUD, p. 125 / SKS 11, p. 236 56.  KJN 5, p. 298 / SKS 21, p. 286 [NB10:57].

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of this unparalleled uniqueness, the Gospel message calls persons to believe in one who is incomprehensible. Kierkegaard writes: To believe is to believe the divine and human together in Christ. To comprehend him [God] is to comprehend his life humanly. But to comprehend his life humanly is so far from being more than believing that it means to lose him if there is not believing in addition, since his life is what it is for faith, the divine-human. I can understand myself in believing … but comprehend faith or comprehend Christ, I cannot. On the contrary, I can understand that to be able to comprehend his life in every respect is the most absolute and also the most blasphemous misunderstanding.57

Also, Anti-Climacus writes: [Christ] knows that no human being can comprehend him, that the gnat that flies into the candlelight is not more certain of destruction than the person who wants to try to comprehend him or what is united in him: God and man. And yet he is the Saviour, and for no human being is there salvation except through him.58

For Kierkegaard and Anti-Climacus, the Christian faith is characterised by a believing that humbly recognises the human inability to comprehend (1) the reality of God, (2) the divine–human reality of Jesus Christ and (3) the faith that is enabled by the grace of God. The Christian must be willing to believe without cognitive access to (1) the being of God, (2) God’s union with humanity in the person of Jesus Christ and (3) God’s spiritual activity within the world. He must be willing to believe in and follow the person of Jesus Christ who, as he is communicated to his world directly, does not appear to be anything more than a lowly human being. Yet he must also believe that, as the incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ is infinitely and qualitatively unique from all other human beings. Kierkegaard’s and Anti-Climacus’ emphasis on the distinction between Jesus Christ and the rest of humanity is essential for maintaining the theocentricity of Christian thought and for ensuring that Christians recognise that the heart of Christianity concerns the fulfilment of the God’s eternal purposes, rather than God’s total accommodation to the sinful ways of the world. For Anti-Climacus, reconciliation involves God remaining who God is in truth and reconciling human beings into relationship with this same truth. Again, however, by remaining absolutely distinct from the sinful world, God’s direct engagement with human beings transcends the scope of their immediate perception,59 meaning that a true 57.  WA, p. 65 / SKS 11, p. 71 (emphasis original). 58.  PC, p. 77 / SKS 12, p. 89. 59. Anti-Climacus notes: ‘[T]he real reason that men are offended by Christianity is that it is too high, because its goal is not man’s goal, because it wants to make man into something so extraordinary that he cannot grasp the thought’ (SUD, p. 83 / SKS 11, p. 197).



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reception of God’s revelation first requires human transformation. There is also, however, a further stipulation that Anti-Climacus adds to his account of human reception. He affirms that human beings must humbly accept the revelation of their sin and untruth, and, in accepting this, must choose Christ.60 This proviso raises a difficulty. By making human choice an imperative, the variable of human caprice is brought into the equation. This becomes even more problematic when it is considered that human beings have a pharisaic pride in their basic instincts and have made a home for themselves in untruth. Consequently, any suggestion that they actually exist in untruth and need to repent will both repulse and offend. To remove the possibility of offence, God would need to eliminate those elements that alienate human beings from God and thereby leave open the door to offence. By so doing, God would be able to communicate directly with human beings without offence, with a message that was immediately attractive rather than repulsive, tenable rather than absurd, enticing rather than challenging. To do so, one of two things would need to take place. Either, again, God would need to descend into sinfulness, thereby meeting human beings directly without the truth that is so offensive to humanity.61 Or, God would need to terminate the adverse passions of the sinful human heart by giving persons a new faithful content that would immediately bring their wills into passionate harmony with God’s purposes of reconciliation. The problem with this latter move is that it overcomes the possibility of offence by undermining a particular person’s self-conscious development. Such a move is comparable to casting a spell on a person – a spell that takes away a person’s freedom to make her own personal decision to devote her life to God. Neither of these options are viable for Anti-Climacus, who, on the one hand, holds that God, out of love and mercy, is intent on redeeming human persons from sin, and, on the other, holds too great a respect for the self-conscious or ‘spiritual’ nature of human existence to wish to jeopardise it.62 Therefore, individuals cannot avoid the possibility of offence, but must first go through it in order to enter into a relationship with God: ‘the possibility of offence is the stumbling block for all’.63 He writes: In paganism, man made god a man (the man–god); in Christianity God makes himself man (the God–man). But in this infinite love of his merciful grace he 60. See PC, p. 160 / SKS 12, p. 164. 61.  Kierkegaard himself writes in a journal entry, God ‘had no need of [human] beings, but they infinitely needed him; he loves [human] beings, but with his own conception of what love is. Therefore he does not change by moving towards their conception, not even slightly; to eliminate the possibility of offense, which is what his existence in the guise of a servant is, he also does not speak directly’ (KJN 7, p. 480 / SKS 23, pp. 471–2 [NB20:152]). 62.  Anti-Climacus writes: ‘[T]ake away the possibility of offence … and then Christianity is abolished, has become something easy, a superficial something that neither wounds nor heals deeply enough; it has become the false invention of purely human compassion that forgets the infinite qualitative difference between God and man’ (PC, p.  140 / SKS 12. p. 144). 63.  PC, p. 139 / SKS 12, p. 142.

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The Freedom to Become a Christian nevertheless makes one condition: he cannot do otherwise. Precisely this is Christ’s grief, that ‘he cannot do otherwise’; he can debase himself, take a servant’s form, suffer, die for men, invite all to come to him, offer up every day of his life – but he cannot remove the possibility of offence. What a rare act of love, what unfathomable grief of love, that even God cannot remove the possibility that this act of love reverses itself for a person and becomes the most extreme misery – something that in another sense God does not want to do, cannot want to do. The greatest possible human misery, greater even than sin, is to take offence at Christ and to continue in the offence; and Christ cannot, ‘love’ cannot, make this impossible. This, you see, is why: ‘Blessed is he who takes no offense at me.’64

The verse that Anti-Climacus takes from Matthew 11.6, ‘Blessed is he who takes no offence at me’, is drawn upon throughout Kierkegaard’s authorship, particularly in Practice in Christianity, where Anti-Climacus devotes the second section to its exposition and definition.65 Drawing on this verse, Anti-Climacus affirms that Jesus’ life and message constitute a serious challenge to a person’s immediate perception and expectation. And he considers that how a person responds to this challenge will express whether or not he is blessed. Anti-Climacus asserts that a person decides for God because he is blessed rather than becoming blessed because she has decided for God. And whether a person has the blessedness to believe will depend upon the nature of a person’s heart. ‘Only in the choice is the heart disclosed (and this, indeed, was why Christ came to the world – to disclose the thoughts of the heart) whether a person will believe or be offended.’66 When this passage is understood in its context of Anti-Climacus’ exposition of Matthew 11.6, it becomes evident that Anti-Climacus sees the state of a person’s heart, her passionate disposition,67 as pivotal for deciding whether or not a person will come to believe.68 For him, a person does not become blessed as a consequence of making some abstract choice: all a choice does is disclose the nature of the heart. Also, Anti-Climacus does not think that a person is blessed because God has determinatively moved him into a blessed position: ‘Christ came to the world – to disclose the thoughts of the heart.’69 Again, a person is blessed because he has, to 64.  SUD, p. 126 / SKS 11, p. 237. 65.  PC, pp. 69–144 / SKS 12, pp. 81–154. 66.  PC, p. 96 / SKS 12, p. 105. 67. In alignment with Kierkegaard, Anthony Thiselton notes (in his reading of 1 Cor. 4.5) that the term ‘heart’ in the biblical writings refers to the ‘hidden motives, desires, and interests’ of persons as well as their ‘mind, emotion, attitude, stance, and wishes that become will or action … every aspect of human agency, and only its feeling, theoretical thought, or capacity for decision and action.’ Thiselton, The New International Greek Testament Commentary: The First Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), pp. 343–4. 68. See PC, p. 140 / SKS 12, p. 144. 69.  PC, p. 96 / SKS 12, p. 105 (emphasis mine). This form of blessedness is also evident in an earlier passage in which he writes: ‘blessed is the one who is not offended but believes



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some extent, adventitiously assumed a subjective standpoint that will occasion him coming to faith. In holding to this view, however, it is important to note that Anti-Climacus does not suggest that God’s reconciliation of a person’s mind is in some way accidental, nor does he suggest that God’s love for a person is conditional upon the nature of that person’s heart. Rather, he merely suggests that the subjective standpoint from which a person will become a Christian is influenced pivotally by the accidental experiences that have shaped a person’s identity and character, and, thereby, have shaped how a person will respond to the grace of God.70 The important point here, in short, is that God is the constant, and human individuals are the variable:71 God seeks to draw everyone into the Christian life, but not everyone decides to become a Christian.72 Kierkegaard writes in a journal entry: What does it Mean to Be Christian? It means walking hand in hand with one’s saviour under the eye of the heavenly Father, that is under the eye of a truly loving father, strengthened by the testimony of the spirit. in the forgiveness of sins even though not helped by faith’ (PC, p. 75 / SKS 12, p. 89). Also in Kierkegaard’s discussion of Jn 10.27 in Christian Discourses he writes: ‘So it was not your duty to come here [church] today; it was a need within you. It was no external summons that determined you; you yourself must have inwardly made the decision; no one could reproach you if you did not come. It is your own free choice to come; you did not do it because the others were doing it, because the others, after all, on this very day went each to his fields, to his business, to his work – but you came to God’s house, to the Lord’s table’ (CD, p.  270 / SKS 10 p.  289). He writes further: ‘In so doing, you have very specifically expressed that you count yourselves among those who want to belong to Christ, those described in the sacred text just read, which was taken from the Gospel in which Christ compares himself to the good shepherd and the true believers to his sheep. Three statements are made about them: They hear his (Christ’s) voice; he (Christ) knows them; they follow him’ (CD, p. 270 / SKS 10 p. 289). 70.  For my use of the term ‘accidental’ here, see EO1, pp. 48, 233–4, 300 / SKS 2, pp. 57, 228, 289. 71. For a further discussion of ‘the changelessness of God’, in relation to ‘the changefulness of human beings’, see Kierkegaard’s discourse ‘The Changelessness of God’, which he dedicated to his late father, Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard (M, pp.  263–81 / SKS 13, pp. 325–39). See also Paul Martens and Tom Millay’s insightful article ‘“The Changelessness of God” as Kierkegaard’s Final Theodicy: God and the Gift of Suffering’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 13:2 (2011): 170–89. 72. For Kierkegaard, there is ‘infinite equality’ in the fact that, ‘Christianly, unconditionally every human being … is equally close to God – how close and equally close? – is loved by him.’ So, for him, the difference between persons is the fact that ‘one person bear in mind that he is loved’, and ‘[a]nother person perhaps … does not think about his being loved by God’ (WA, p. 165 / SKS 12, p. 281).

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The Freedom to Become a Christian Oh blessed company! If this is not the case, then the blame lies with us – for this is God’s intention. The blame lies with us – ah, comforting thought, for then it can be changed.73

Another verse that gives further insight into Anti-Climacus’ reading of Matthew 11.6 is 1 Corinthians 4.5: ‘Therefore do not pronounce judgement before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring light to the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive commendation from God.’ Although Anti-Climacus does not explicitly mention this verse, there are clear allusions to it throughout his discussion of the possibility of offence. These are evident, for example, in the seven references he makes to the disclosure of the heart, and the seven times he notes that a person’s choice between offence and belief rests upon the disclosure of a person’s heart in response to the God–human.74 What is particularly relevant about this verse, as Gerd Theissen shows, is its suggestion that when Christ comes to disclose the secrets of the heart, he not only brings light to those things that are kept secret from others, but also disclose those things that are hidden from individuals themselves – things of which a person is unconscious and are only accessible to God. And, as Theissen affirms, it is on this basis that God will give out commendation.75 Likewise, for Anti-Climacus, a person cannot know the thoughts of the heart that will make way for the grace of God to deliver into a life of faith. As such, a person cannot consciously prepare himself to make a direct transition to become a Christian. All that a person can do is become aware of and engage with the Gospel message of the God–human, the absolute paradox, and in this situation be challenged not to take offence. Under these circumstances, a person will find himself at the crossroads of the possibility of offence ‘to the point where faith can come into existence’.76 At this crossroad, a person is confronted by the choice either to believe or take offence. Again, the person who finds herself at this crossroads is not faced with two options that she can objectively pick out by way of her own powers of contemplation. If this were possible, Christianity would not be the eminently offensive conception that Anti-Climacus considers it to be; it would merely be relatively offensive.77 For Anti-Climacus, the truth of God is mediated to person in and through Jesus Christ, in an act of grace, and a person relates to this truth in a life of faith. This means that any concept of Christianity that is pondered without faith will be incommensurate with the true God; it will be fantastic and idolatrous. It is

73.  KJN 7, p. 471 / SKS 23, p. 463 [NB20:133]. 74. See PC, pp. 97, 126, 127, 132, 136, 140 / SKS 12, pp. 106, 131, 132, 136, 140, 144 (in some of these passages the God–human is referred to as the ‘sign of contradiction’). 75. Gerd Theissen, Psychological Aspects of Pauline Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983), pp. 103–13. 76.  PC, p. 96 / SKS 12, p. 105. 77.  PC, p. 116 / SKS 12, p. 124.



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only when a person has made the choice to believe and been delivered into faith that he can then relate to the truth of God. At this point, it is crucial again to acknowledge the relational dynamic in which a person comes to believe – a dynamic that tends to be disregarded in the overly systematic accounts of conversion of which Kierkegaard was so critical. Faith is not, for Anti-Climacus, an impersonal power that God gives a person to enable him to access the truth. Rather, it is the passionate character and understanding of a person whose life is being transformed in the context of a relationship with Jesus Christ.78 Faith arises as and when a person encounters God in the presence of Jesus Christ and finds that his choices are becoming caught up with the love of God, and thereby drawn away from the possibility of offence. Again, however, to be drawn into faith in this way, a person must have the blessedness to embrace the person of Christ in all his offensiveness.79 To reiterate, although Anti-Climacus holds that the nature of a person’s heart is decisive for coming to faith, he does not suggest that a person’s heart possesses (or can possess) a natural quality that will directly contribute to her reconciliation. For example, he does not believe that the person who is blessed (not to take offence) has accidentally stumbled upon some eternal quality – some absolute passion that can bring her into a direct relationship with God. He merely affirms that the person who is blessed (not to take offence) has come to be characterised by a willingness to encounter God and allow God to draw her into a faithful relationship.80 At the same time, Anti-Climacus also does not suggest that the possibility of developing a ‘blessed’ resolve is left completely up to chance. While he recognises that offence is a genuine possibility, he does not believe that God allows it to have free rein over the sinner. Instead, he asserts that God actively intervenes to draw individuals to himself and diminish the possibility of offence.

78. By this, it is important to understand that faith arises through an interpersonal encounter between God and humanity rather than some systematic process of exchange. A relationship with God does not arise by way of a step-by-step routine of encountering Jesus Christ, making a choice about him, and then experiencing God’s reconciling activity. Such a formulaic account erroneously disregards the dynamics that are essential to personal encounters. When a person comes to faith, that person is drawn into a relationship with God in and through the respective ‘moments’ of encountering God. 79. Again, whether a person is blessed can only be seen if and when she embraces the possibility of faith (rather than taking offence): ‘only in the choice is the heart disclosed’. See PC, pp. 94–6, 134 / SKS 12 pp. 103–5, 138–9. 80. As Anti-Climacus comments in Sickness Unto Death: ‘[T]he more passion a person has … the closer he is in a certain sense (in possibility) to being able to believe … to humbling himself in adoration under the extraordinary.’ He writes this in the context of affirming: ‘The degree of offense depends on how passionate a man’s admiration is.’ And he also remarks here that ‘the more passion and imagination a person has … the more passionate is his offense’ (SUD, p. 86 / SKS 11, p. 199 [emphasis mine]).

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The Freedom to Become a Christian When it is a question of a sinner, he does not merely stand still, open his arms and say, ‘come here’; no, he stands – and waits, as the prodigal son’s father waited, or he does not stand and wait, he goes to seek the sinner as the shepherd sought the strayed sheep, as the woman sought the lost penny. He walks – but no, he has walked, but infinitely farther than any shepherd and any woman. – Indeed, he walked the infinitely long way from being God to becoming man; he walked that way in order to seek sinners!81

It is only because ‘God makes himself man (the God–man)’ that offence is merely a possibility for the sinner and not an inevitability82 By becoming incarnate, Jesus Christ makes reconciliation possible in and through his very existence, as the one who is both God and human, in hypostatic union. For Anti-Climacus, however, this union does not imply, in and of itself, the reconciliation of human beings with God. No one is born or automatically remains a Christian simply by virtue of the objective fact of the Incarnation. To become a Christian, a person must come to faith through the possibility of offence. He must make a self-conscious decision for God, and his subjective existence must become transformed by grace. For Anti-Climacus, it is only with a subjective faith that a person actively becomes a Christian and can thereby truly relate to God.83 He writes, with respect to a person’s subjective perspective: ‘if [Jesus] does not become the object of faith, he is not true God; and if he is not true God, then he does not save people either’.84 Nevertheless, it is still only by the steadfast grace of God – drawing persons to himself and upholding them in their faith – that a person can become reconciled into faithful communion with God. In response to Anti-Climacus’ recognition of God’s devotion to humanity, one could raise the question as to why God did not attempt to diminish further the possibility of offence? Although the Incarnation might enable a person to arrive at a crossroad where faith is a genuine possibility, it only does so through a revelation in which God takes on ‘absolute unrecognizability’ as ‘the most profound incognito’.85 Also, it involves God revealing himself in a ‘paradox’, a ‘sign of contradiction’, which is immediately offensive to human understanding.86 He writes: 81.  PC, p. 20 / SKS 12 pp. 30–1. 82.  SUD, p. 126 / SKS 11, p. 237. 83.  PC, pp. 121–4, 142–3 / SKS 12, pp. 128–30, 136. 84.  PC, pp. 137–8 / SKS 12, p. 141. 85.  PC, pp.  127–8 / SKS 12, p.  133. Anti-Climacus argues in Practice in Christianity that a direct communication of Jesus Christ’s existence as the God–human is impossible because the incarnate Christ exists incognito. He writes: ‘In relation to unrecognizability or for someone in unrecognizability, direct communication is an impossibility, because the direct communication does indeed directly state what one essentially is – but unrecognizability means not to be in the character of what one essentially is’ (PC, p.  132 / SKS 12 p. 136). 86.  PC, pp. 124–7 / SKS 12, p. 129–32.



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Essentially offense is related to the composite of God and man, or to the God– man … This God–man is the unity of God and an individual human being … Humanly speaking, there is no possibility of a crazier composite than this either in heaven or on earth or in the abyss or in the most fantastic aberrations of thought.87

With the high likelihood of Jesus Christ provoking offence, the question arises as to why God could not have made the possibility of opening oneself up to God a much more obvious decision, to adopt Climacus’ example, by appearing as an extraordinary human being and making his glory much more directly perceptible?88 To this, Anti-Climacus responds, Christ ‘will not entice anyone to himself … To entice to oneself is falsely to draw to oneself.’89 Any attempt to draw persons to himself underhandedly, he contends, would be a deception on God’s part because it would appeal to persons directly, to their sinful perception of glory. It would thus require Christianity to take on a much more anthropocentric pagan form – to manifest itself in such a way as to conform to the confused passions of the world.90 As Climacus writes: All paganism consists in this, that God is related directly to a human being, as the remarkably striking to the amazed. But the spiritual relationship with God in truth, that is, inwardness, is first conditioned by the actual breakthrough of inward deepening that corresponds to the divine cunning that God has nothing remarkable, nothing at all remarkable, about him – indeed, he is so far from being remarkable that he is invisible, and thus one does not suspect that he is there …91

Another problem with such an approach is that it would undermine God’s concern to establish a genuinely loving relationship with human beings because it would seek to draw persons into a superficial relationship with God’s magnificence, rather than a personal relationship with God himself. He writes: If someone can love him only in his loftiness, what does that mean? It means that he can love the truth – only when it has conquered, when it is in possession of and is surrounded by power and honour and glory. But when it was struggling, when it was foolishness, to the Jews an offence, to the Greeks foolishness; when it was insulted, mocked, and, as Scripture says, spat upon – then of course such a person could not love it; then he wished to stay far away from it. That is, he wanted the truth far away from him, but this is actually to be in untruth. It is just as essentially a part of ‘the truth’ to suffer in this world as to be triumphant 87.  PC, pp. 81–2 / SKS 12, p. 92. 88.  CUP, p. 246 / SKS 7, p. 224. 89.  PC, p. 153 / SKS 12, p. 157. 90.  PC, p. 36 / SKS 12, p. 49. 91.  CUP, p. 245 / SKS 7, p. 223.

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The Freedom to Become a Christian in another world, in the world of truth – and Jesus Christ is the same in his abasement as in his loftiness.92

As I have shown, there are several points in Kierkegaard’s writings where he draws attention to the importance of God seeking to reconcile persons to himself by becoming the lowliest and most unremarkable of all human beings: the servant. In response to this observation, however, one could retort that Jesus Christ did present himself as a special human being and a more enticing choice when he lived as a miracle worker, as someone who attracted the attention of the whole country and became an enormous sensation. One could also point out that the risen and ascended Christ revealed himself in a remarkable way in his encounter with Saul on the road to Damascus93 For Anti-Climacus, however, miracles do not represent acts of direct communication because they remain ‘the object of faith’.94 Just because a person sees someone performing relatively amazing acts, or experiences an amazing vision of a person, does not mean that she will immediately presume that that person is god; moreover, it cannot lead a person to deduce that this performer is the true God.95 When a person is confronted by the miraculous, Anti-Climacus contends: ‘You see something inexplicable, miraculous (but no more); he himself says that it is a miracle – and you see before your eyes an individual human being.’96 The most that can come from a direct encounter with Christ the miracle worker is that a person will find herself in the tension from which her heart’s decision will be disclosed: whether she will believe or take offence at the claim that the miracle-worker is anything more than the ‘lowly man’.97 He writes: ‘[T]he single direct statement, like the miracle, can serve only to make aware in order that the person who has been made aware, facing the offense of the contradiction, can choose whether he will believe or not.’98 The reason for this is that: ‘The miracle can demonstrate nothing, for if you do not 92.  PC, p. 154 / SKS 12, p. 157–8. On the other hand, Anti-Climacus also argues that it is ‘not Christian but rather perverse, confused and worldly to “feel drawn to Christ and love him only in his abasement”’. He continues, if a ‘person wanted to hear nothing about his loftiness, when power and honour and glory are his … if he longed for scenes of horror, to be with him when he was being insulted and persecuted then the vision of such a person is also confused; he does not recognize Christ and therefore does not love him either. Christianity is not at all closer to heavy-mindedness [Tungsind] than to light-mindedness; they are both equally worldliness, equally far away, and both have just as much need of conversion’ (PC, p. 154 / SKS 12, p. 158). 93. For Kierkegaard, this event of revelation was decisive for Saul becoming an apostle: ‘a man who is called and appointed by God and sent on a mission’ (BA, p. 176 / SKS 11, p. 100). 94.  PC, p. 126 / SKS 12, p. 131. 95. See Mt. 24.23-4. 96.  PC, p. 97 / SKS 12, p. 106. 97.  PC, pp. 41–53, 96–7 / SKS 12, pp. 54–65, 105. 98.  PC, p. 136 / SKS 12, p. 140.



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believe him [Christ] to be who he says he is then you deny the miracle.’99 We see this, Anti-Climacus observes, in the way that Jesus responds to John’s disciples in Matthew 11.4–6. Christ does not first refer to the miracles and then in some way proclaim ‘Ergo I am the expected one.’100 No – it is only after having referred to the miracles that he proclaims separately ‘blessed is he who is not offended at me’. In so doing, Jesus Christ ‘refers to the demonstrations in such a way that he denies that they are the way to him’.101 That is, after having referred to the miracles, he stipulates that it is a person’s blessedness that is imperative for coming to belief. And this blessedness does not rest on a person’s understanding of Jesus’ miracles, nor, for that matter, does it directly concern any other aspect of his teaching. Rather, it concerns a person’s passionate willingness to enter into a relationship with the God–human, as he exists offensively in this world. In Anti-Climacus’ reading of Matthew 11.6, the possibility of taking offence at Jesus Christ comes down to whether a person has the heart to listen to Jesus Christ and take him seriously as healer and judge, lowly servant and miracle worker, human being and God. That is, it comes down to whether a person has the heart to take Jesus Christ seriously for who he is – the one who does not conform to human expectation but challenges our very basic assumptions about reality. It is in this way that Jesus Christ comes to reconcile human beings into personal a relationship with God.102 For Anti-Climacus, it is with this heart that a person becomes open to encountering God, and it is with this heart that a person is drawn to participate in a faithful relationship with God.

V. Encountering God in Time If it is the case that, for Kierkegaard, an encounter with Jesus Christ serves as the occasion for a person’s reconciliation into faith, then it could be contended that it would be far easier for the contemporary eyewitness of Jesus to become a Christian than the person who comes across an account of Jesus second hand (or third, fourth, fifth hand, etc.). This contention could appear to find further weight when considered alongside Climacus’ affirmation that the object of faith is ‘not the teaching but the teacher’.103 Is it not easier for an individual to interact with the teacher if he encounters the teacher directly, in the flesh? While Kierkegaard and Climacus insist that becoming a Christian is contingent upon a person encountering the God who becomes one with us in history, they also contend that it is not just any encounter with the historical Jesus that communicates the essential truth 99.  PC, p. 97 / SKS 12, p. 106; see also Jolita Pons, ‘Jesus’ Miracles: Kierkegaard on the Miracle of Faith’, in Kierkegaard and the Bible: Tome II: The New Testament, eds Lee C. Barrett and Jon Stewart (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 25–9. 100.  PC, p. 96 / SKS 12, p. 104. 101.  PC, p. 98 / SKS 12, p. 107. 102. See PC, pp. 143–4 / SKS 12, p. 147. 103.  PF, p. 62 / SKS 4, p. 264.

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of Christianity. When they emphasise the decisiveness of the encounter between God and the single individual, in a particular moment, they have a specific kind of encounter in mind. At the same time, however, they hesitate to say too much about the miraculous nature of this encounter and the contemporaneity in which it is grounded. Since it is miraculous, many of the details lie beyond the scope of our human understanding and are only known by the mind of God. So what are they willing to say? When an immediate contemporary of Jesus would have first met him, she would have noticed nothing more than a mere human being.104 In his physical appearance, in the lowly form of a servant, Jesus only served to communicate a ‘teaching’: information that a person could directly apprehend for herself. Such teaching, however, as we saw in Chapter 1, can only relatively inform a person’s immanent understanding. The life of faith, by contrast, requires a person to become totally transformed through a relationship with the eternal–historical teacher, the God in time, the one who is the truth for humanity. For this reason, the object of faith is ‘not the teaching but the teacher’.105 Or, as Anti-Climacus puts it, ‘The helper is the help.’106 The Christian is primarily called to follow a person, not a standard or a principle. So, by merely observing Jesus Christ and contemplating his message, there is no direct communication of the essential truth of Christianity.107 For the truth to be revealed, Jesus’ appearance must serve as an occasion for God to give a person the condition for understanding the truth. God must encounter a person and draw that person into a relationship with the eternal truth that God is in himself. In Climacus’ account, it is only through the eternal–historical events of God’s self-mediation that a person is delivered into a life of faith.108 As such, the only purpose that the direct teaching serves is to provide an occasion, ‘an historical point of departure’, by which a person can relate consciously to the eternal truth and develop ‘the passion of faith’. 109 This occasion, he argues, is no more accessible to the physical contemporary of the god in human form than it is to the one who comes later. Climacus writes: Just as the historical becomes the occasion for the contemporary to become a disciple [Discipel] – by receiving the condition, please note, from the god 104. See PC, pp. 40–1, 65–6 / SKS 12, p. 53–4, 77. 105.  PF, p. 62 / SKS 4, p. 264. 106.  PC, p. 15 / SKS 12, p. 26. As Jason Mahn writes: ‘The identity of the Helper/Lover seems infinitely more important than the help or love that we get out of him.’ Mahn, Fortunate Fallibility: Kierkegaard and the Power of Sin (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 154. 107. See PF, p. 55 / SKS 4, p. 258. Therefore, he later writes: ‘Immediate contemporaneity is so far from being an advantage that the immediate contemporary must expressly wish its termination lest he be tempted to run around to see with his physical eyes and to hear with his mortal ears – all of which is wasted effort’ (PF, p. 106 / SKS 4, p. 302). 108. See PF, pp. 55–6 / SKS 4, pp. 258–9. 109.  PF, pp. 58–9 / SKS 4, pp. 260–1.



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himself (for otherwise we speak socratically) – so the report of the contemporaries becomes the occasion for everyone coming later to become a disciple – by receiving the condition, please note, from the god himself.110

So, for Climacus, the person who becomes aware of the servant god through a physical encounter holds no advantage for faith over the person who comes across him via a second-hand account.111 Furthermore, he also argues that the particular form that a person’s awareness takes does not directly increase her chances of coming to faith. ‘Awareness is by no means partial to faith, as if faith proceeded as a simple consequence of awareness.’112 This leads him to ask rhetorically: Would he [the god] bring about a reconciliation with some human beings such that their reconciliation with him would make their difference from all others blatantly flagrant? That would indeed bring conflict. Would the god allow the power of time to decide whom he would grant his favour, or would it not be worthy of the god to make the reconciliation equally difficult for every human being at every time and place, equally difficult because no human being is capable of giving himself the condition …113

Accordingly, almost any awareness of the teacher can provide an occasion for a person to be brought to faith. ‘Even if the contemporary had not left anything behind except these words, “We have believed that in such and such a year the god appeared in the humble form of a servant, lived and taught among us, and then died” – this is more than enough.’114 The reason for this is that it is ultimately 110.  PF, p.  100 / SKS 4, p.  297 (translation altered). The Hongs originally translate ‘Discipel’ as ‘follower’. As many have argued, this is actually better translated ‘disciple’, which has clearer Christian connotations and, therefore, finds much more alignment with some of the other ‘Christian’ terms that Climacus uses allusively in Fragments (PF, p. 281). This alternative is used in the most recent translation of Philosophical Fragments (or Philosophical Crumbs) translated by M. G. Piety ((Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 164. 111.  This point is made in contrast with Lessing who contended that had he lived at the time of Christ, had he seen ‘true miracles’ and ‘prophecies fulfilled’, then he ‘would have gained so much confidence that [he] would willingly have submitted [his] intellect to his, and [he] would have believed him in all things in which indisputable experiences did not tell against him’. The problem for Lessing, however, is that prophecies and miracles, which are reported through a medium, are not immediately self-evident and, consequently, lose ‘all their force’. Lessing, ‘On the Proof of Spirit and of Power’, Lessing’s Theological Writings (London: A&C Black, 1956), pp. 51–2. 112.  PF, p. 93 / SKS 4, p. 291. 113.  PF, pp. 106–7 / SKS 4, p. 303. 114.  PF, p.  104 / SKS 4, p.  300. Timothy Polk refers this statement as Climacus’ ‘notorious reduction of the significance of the historical material in the Gospels’ in The Biblical Kierkegaard: Reading Kierkegaard by the Rule of Faith (Macon: Mercer University

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the god who awakens a person into faith; the believer ‘is indebted to the god for everything’.115 That said, Climacus does acknowledge that the communication of faith does await a particular form of teaching, namely, ‘a believer’s report’ (den Troendes Efterretning).116 Unlike the report of the historian or philosopher, the testimony of the believer is focused on Jesus Christ as the object of faith. The believer’s testimony generates an ‘ambiguity of awareness’ (Opmærksomhedens Tvetydighed) that is an essential feature of the mindset of the person who is reconciled into faith: a mindset that does not look to its own powers of reasoning for assurance but humbly looks to the wonder (vidunderet) of the god who is beyond human reason.117 While Climacus contends that a physical encounter with the god in human form might not be directly advantageous for conversion, he does suggest that there is a particular form of contemporaneity that is essential for coming to faith. Both a person’s faith and ongoing faithfulness depend upon a person becoming a ‘nonimmediate contemporary’ of the servant god – becoming personally contemporary with the presence of the risen and ascended god–human.118 Unlike the ‘immediate contemporary’, the ‘nonimmediate contemporary’ does not merely observe and reflect on the physical–historical presence of the god–human.119 Rather, in a particular moment(s) in time, the nonimmediate contemporary is miraculously given to relate to and interact with the god in time. As he stands in his eternal–historical presence, the god gives him the ‘eyes of faith’ to see his glory and the ears of faith to receive his truth.120 As such, he becomes ‘a contemporary in the autopsy [(the personal act of seeing)]’: he is given to behold the reality of Press, 1997), p.  17. It is important to remember here that it is Climacus who is making this point in his consideration of an alternative to the Socratic. This is not Kierkegaard making a statement that calls into question the importance of the canon of Scripture, with all its detail. At the same time, as Joel Rasmussen rightly points out, Kierkegaard is here articulating ‘one of his key hermeneutical positions through Climacus. This “notorious reduction” serves as a caveat to remind the reader that no matter how significant any historical material in the Gospels might be, it can never be so significant as to warrant on “objective” grounds … the paradoxical conclusion that Jesus was the eternal God temporally incarnate.’ Joel Rasmussen, ‘Kierkegaard’s Biblical Hermeneutics: Imitation, Imaginative Freedom, and Paradoxical Fixation’, in Kierkegaard and the Bible – Tome II: The New Testament, eds Lee C. Barrett and Jon Stewart (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), p. 263. For further discussion on this issue see Murray Rae’s section, ‘How Much Historical Testimony is Enough?’ in Kierkegaard’s Vision of the Incarnation, pp. 97–101. 115.  PF, p. 102 / SKS 4, p. 298. 116.  PF, p. 104 / SKS 4, p. 301. 117.  PF, pp. 93, 104 / SKS 4, pp. 291, 301. 118.  PF, pp. 67–8 / SKS 4, p. 268–9. 119. I have bracketed out ‘god–’ because, for Climacus, the god is not directly apparent to the person without faith – to the person who does not participate in a relationship with the god–human as the god–human. 120.  PF, p. 70 / SKS 4, p. 270.



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the god.121 By participating in such an encounter, he will not only find himself contemporary with the god at that moment; he will find himself open to a life of continual contemporaneity with the god– a Christian life of walking with God.122 In this way, he comes to share in a two-sided relationship with God, rather than being left to contemplate his own conception of ‘god’, thereby conforming to Feuerbach’s diagnosis of religion as a human construction.123 This life of relationship with God, through which a person becomes a Christian, is beyond human control. While Kierkegaard is clear that a person can choose to take offence at God, he does not think that the single individual is in the driver’s seat with respect to her relationship with God. Such a view would call into question God’s freedom to transform individuals in a way that is beyond the scope of what they can anticipate. A person can neither know nor anticipate what it means to be a contemporary with God in faith until God lovingly and graciously reconciles into the truth. Faithful contemporaneity, therefore, rests upon a divine activity (grace) that enters into history from beyond history, from eternity. As such, a person’s encounter with God is not constrained by the accidental circumstances of history, nor is it subject to the caprice of human determination. So, in Climacus’ account, the first generation of believers holds no advantage over the latest generation of believers for coming to faith.124 Climacus’ emphasis on this point is taken up further by Anti-Climacus in Practice in Christianity, but this time with an explicitly Christological focus: It is indeed eighteen hundred years since Jesus Christ walked here on earth, but this is certainly not an event just like any other events, which once they are over pass into history and then, as the distant past, pass into oblivion. No, his presence here on earth never becomes a thing of the past, thus does not become more and more distant … as long as there is a believer, this person, in order to have become that, must have been and as a believer must be just as

121.  PF, p.  70 / SKS 4, p.  270. As the Hongs helpfully note, autopsy is literally the personal act of seeing (in the Greek: autos [self] + optos [seen]) (PF, p. 296 n. 39). 122. Anti-Climacus contends: ‘If you cannot prevail upon yourself to become a Christian in the situation of contemporaneity with him, or if he cannot move you and draw you to himself in the situation of contemporaneity, then you will never become a Christian’ (PC, p. 64 / SKS 12, p. 76). 123. See Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, tran. George Eliot (Buffalo: Prometheus, 1989). 124.  PF, 104–5 / SKS 4, pp.  300–1. This account of ‘nonimmediate contemporaneity’, as well as a few other aspects in Kierkegaard’s account of contemporaneity, would have benefited from some reference to the work of the Holy Spirit. This gap is not evident throughout his works, however, as I consider in Chapters 3 and 4. Elsewhere he suggests that it is the ‘life-giving Spirit’ who personally gives individuals the gift of faith and raises them into a relationship with God (see FSE, pp. 76–7, 81–2 / SKS 13, pp. 98, 102–3).

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Jesus Christ, Anti-Climacus describes, is ‘the object of faith’ who ‘exists only for faith’ (with respect to a person’s subjective perspective).126 Therefore, ‘one can come to know nothing about Christ from history … History makes Christ into someone else than he is in truth.’127 Despite first appearances, Anti-Climacus’ distinction between a faithful relation to the person of Christ and a historical knowledge of Jesus definitely does not seek to diminish the role of Jesus’ historicity. Rather, he is merely dismissing the direct interpretation of him wherein he appears to be just another finite ‘object’ of history: an object who can be interpreted with the same speculative glasses and criteria that examine the historical events and changes in the natural world.128 Neither is he proposing some kind of division or separation within Christ himself. He is certainly not advocating some form of Nestorianism, for example, which distinguishes between an historical Jesus who communicates directly with the world and an ‘absolute Christ’ (or divine logos) who communicates indirectly with the world and who is only contemporary with the faithful.129 For Anti-Climacus, Christ ‘is in lowliness and loftiness one and the same’.130 He is the one whose ‘life upon earth, the sacred history, stands alone by itself, outside history’.131 Therefore, the only separation or division that Anti-Climacus and Climacus affirm is between the faithful and unfaithful receptions of Jesus Christ, the God–human. That said, it should also be made clear that Anti-Climacus does not collapse the divine and human natures of Jesus Christ as Hegel does. Anti-Climacus’ Christology finds itself firmly in alignment with Chalcedon in asserting that we

125.  PC, pp. 9–10 / SKS 12, pp. 17–18. 126.  PC, p. 25 / SKS 12, p. 40. Anti-Climacus later writes: ‘Christ is a person and is the teacher and is more important than the teaching. Just as Christ’s life, the fact that he has lived, is vastly more important than all the results of his life … so also is Christ infinitely more important than his teaching. It is true only of a human being that his teaching is more important than he himself; to apply this to Christ is blasphemy, inasmuch as it makes him into only a human being’ (PC, p. 124 / SKS 12, p. 130). 127.  PC, pp. 25–6 / SKS 12, p. 40. 128. As Anti-Climacus clarifies: ‘Here and throughout this book, “history” is to be understood as profane history, world history, history directly understood in contradistinction to sacred history’ (PC, p. 25n. / SKS 12, p. 30n.). With regard to Anti-Climacus’ concept of ‘sacred history’ Douglas Farrow explains: ‘sacred history stands alone not because it negates time, or is somehow a-historical, but because here and only here time is linked with eternity, the life of man with the life of God’. Farrow, Ascension and Ecclesia (Edinburgh: T&T Clark/Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999) p. 224 n. 269. 129.  PC, p. 63 / SKS 12, p. 75. 130.  PC, p. 160 / SKS 12, p. 164. 131.  PC, p. 64 / SKS 12, p. 76.



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must not confuse the two natures of Jesus Christ. 132 He maintains this by asserting, in alignment with Cyril of Alexandria, that the ‘God–man is … absolutely the paradox’.133 To trust that Jesus Christ is fully God and fully human involves the affirmation of what appears to be an ‘absolute paradox’. From our immediate historical perspective, our eyes can only see as far as Jesus’ humanity. We cannot directly see that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, nor can we understand how exactly he is both divine and human. In Christ, therefore, God reveals himself as ‘the most profound incognito’.134 So, again, ‘the [divine] and the [human] must be believed together, something only faith is capable of doing’.135 What we see in Anti-Climacus’ and Climacus’ account of human contemporaneity with God is an emphasis that God’s active engagement with a human subject is decisive for him becoming a Christian. In this interaction, human conversion occurs as the subjective human response to the objective reality of God’s continuing self-revelation in Jesus Christ. In the person of Jesus Christ, for Kierkegaard, God is a living and present reality with and for human beings, irrespective of whether or not persons believe it. That said, both Kierkegaard and his pseudonyms recognise a close connection between human contemporaneity with God and human faith. This recognition acknowledges that there is a sense in which the unbeliever is subjectively absent from relationship with God, by operating on a subjective plane of existence that is deluded into living as if God were absent. For both Kierkegaard and his pseudonyms, a person’s subjective participation in the truth is essential for experiencing and relating oneself to the fullness of contemporaneity with Christ both objectively and subjectively.136 To put it in Climacus’ terms, when the how (of the Christian faith) is given in truth so is the what (of Christianity).137

VI. Conclusion At the heart of the process of becoming a Christian is a personal encounter with Jesus Christ, our High Priest. For Kierkegaard, becoming a Christian is not identified with the formation of a worldview, but is the result of a dynamic whereby 132.  ‘Symbolum Chalcedonense’, in Philip Schaff, ed., The Creeds of Christendom, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), p. 62. 133.  PC, p.  82 / SKS 12, p.  92. Cyril writes: ‘We see in Christ the strange and rare paradox (παρ´αδοξον) of Lordship in servant’s form and divine glory in human abasement’. Cyril of Alexandria, On the Unity of Christ, tran. John Anthony McGuckin (Crestwood: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995), p. 101. 134.  PC, pp. 124-33 / SKS 12, pp. 130–7. 135.  KJN 4, p. 333 / SKS 20, p. 332 [NB4:95]. 136. See PC, p.  64 / SKS 12, p.  76; CD, p.  260 / SKS 12, pp.  273–4. This is an area where Kierkegaard’s theological vision would have greatly benefited from a more robust pneumatology. 137. See CUP, pp. 202, 610 / SKS 7, pp. 185, 554.

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we are drawn into an interpersonal relationship with God. Integral to this is an event of reconciliation, which is grounded in the reality of God becoming one with us as the person of Jesus Christ. Yet this reconciliation is not solely realised in Jesus Christ. God also seeks a genuine reciprocity with individual human beings and grants them freedom to choose to share in God’s purposes of reconciliation. In short, human beings become Christian in and through being drawn by God into a covenantal relationship.138 Throughout this chapter we have seen that a dynamic of reconciliation is critical to Kierkegaard’s account of Christian conversion as he set out to present the truth of Christianity as a truth that is not merely objective, but one that includes personal relationship with God.

138. Although Kierkegaard does not use the term ‘covenant’ explicitly, the covenantal nature of the relationship is clear from Climacus’ account of the King and maiden.

Chapter 3 T H E O R I E N TAT IO N O F A L I F E L I V E D I N R E L AT IO N SH I P W I T H G O D

According to a Climacean account of Christianity, [t]here is no immanental underlying kinship [Slægtskab] between the temporal and the eternal, because the eternal itself has entered into time and wants to establish kinship [Slægtskabet] there.1

For Kierkegaard, there is a sense in which the person who professes to be a Christian in this world professes an ideal to which she will most likely fail to conform.2 She professes to be ‘something so infinitely high that there are always only a few that attain it’.3 As we shall see, therefore, there will tend to be an inconsistency between the existence that the Christian professes and the existence that she leads, the former exhibiting loving obedience to God and the latter exhibiting sinful conformity to the ways of the world. For Kierkegaard, however, this is not only the case with respect to Christian existence. It also applies to the religious sphere of existence in general. This chapter will consider how Kierkegaard understands the foundation and orientation of a life lived in relationship with God. To approach this issue, I shall offer a close reading of Concluding Unscientific Postscript. The reason for turning to Climacus’ Postscript to better understand Kierkegaard’s own theological position 1.  CUP, p. 573 / SKS 7, p. 520. 2. Indeed, Kierkegaard goes so far as to suggest he would not call himself a Christian (according to the New Testament) (M, pp. 340–7 / SKS 13, pp. 404–11). However, I would agree with Edward Mooney that it is reasonable ‘to assume that Kierkegaard is a Christian, always a Christian’. When Kierkegaard asserts that he is not a Christian, he does so with an unrealistic view of what it means to be a Christians. As Mooney suggests, he sets the ‘bar for being Christian … so high that no one clears it’. Mooney, On Søren Kierkegaard: Dialogue, Polemics, Lost Intimacy, and Time (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 27–8. That said, Kierkegaard does affirm that being a Christian ‘is possible for all’, and does seem to suggest that there are some who become Christian in the highest sense of the term (M, p. 347 / SKS 13, p. 410). 3.  M, p. 346 / SKS 13, p. 410.

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is because of a point that he makes in his spiritual autobiography, The Point of View for My Work as an Author. Here Kierkegaard asserts that Postscript ‘constitutes the turning point in my entire work as an author, inasmuch as it poses the issue: becoming a Christian’.4 At the heart of Postscript, we find Climacus turning to focus on what it means to exist Christianly before the (mind-independent) reality of God – a focus that went on to characterise Kierkegaard’s later authorship. Following my analysis of Climacus’ argument, I shall consider the manner in which Kierkegaard adopted this position in his own authorship, looking specifically at his understanding of sin-consciousness and repentance. However, before focusing on their understanding of the decisively Christian form of religiousness, it is important to take the time to come to terms with their more general account of religiousness, or immanent religiousness, as put forward by Climacus.

I. The Religious Category of Existence In Postscript, Climacus distinguishes between two types of telos: the relative and the absolute. The former, he tells us, refers to all the finite telé towards which a person can be oriented within the boundaries of this world, and includes all telé that are willed for the sake of (or to a lesser extent than) the absolute telos. The latter, however, refers to a single telos that can only ever be willed for its own sake: there is no higher telos for the sake of which the absolute telos can be willed.5 This telos transcends the limits of finitude and can only be willed absolutely; it has no finite end and must ‘be capable of being willed at every moment’.6 Speaking generally, Climacus asserts that the ideal task for the religious person in this world is to ‘become absolutely oriented toward the absolute τέλος’; it is to express ‘that he continually has the absolute orientation toward the absolute τέλος, the absolute respect’.7 Such respect is expressed in resignation. That is, it is expressed in a person’s willingness to give up everything finite for the sake of the absolute – to be committed first and foremost to his absolute telos over and above all relative telé.8 In holding to this view, however, Climacus does not suggest that the religious person is called to relate to her absolute telos over against all relative telé. The religious believer is not expected to transcend or leave behind her concrete existence. He makes this clear when he qualifies that the religious believer’s task is to relate ‘himself simultaneously to his absolute τέλος and to the 4.  PV, p. 63 / SKS 16, p. 44. 5.  CUP, p.  394 / SKS 7, pp.  358–9; see also Kierkegaard’s devotional discourse ‘No One Can Serve Two Masters, for He Must Either Hate the One and Love the Other or Be Devoted to the One and Despise the Other’, in WA, pp. 21–35 / SKS 11, pp. 26–38. 6.  CUP, p. 394 / SKS 7, p. 359. 7.  CUP, p. 406 / SKS 7, p. 369. 8. Importantly, Climacus holds that a telos cannot be understood abstractly, that is, apart from the person who is oriented towards it: a telos is essentially only a telos when a person owns it.



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relative … by relating himself absolutely to his absolute τέλος and relatively to the relative’.9 Nevertheless, he also maintains that if the religious believer’s relative telos should come into conflict with his absolute telos, then he must be willing to surrender this relative telos. Otherwise, he would demonstrate a stronger attachment to his relative telos and thereby express that he was only relating to his absolute telos relatively. This would mean that his so-called absolute telos was actually only a relative telos because the relative/absolute status of a telos is determined by how it is related to by a subject: if it is related to relatively it is a relative telos and if it is related to absolutely it is an absolute telos.10 The problem with this description of the religious task, however, is that the relativising of one’s absolute telos is unavoidable for the person who ‘goes out into the confusion of the world’.11 In finitude, persons are hopelessly susceptible to the allure of immediacy: the allure of satisfying one’s natural and worldly desires. It is far too easy to become sidetracked by such things as wealth and social standing, resulting in a person devoting attention to her absolute telos merely ‘once in a while’.12 Essentially, however, a person’s absolute orientation cannot be this volatile. Although it might be commonplace for a person to mediate between multiple relative telé, such as work and family, there is no place for the absolute telos in such mediation. The absolute telos ‘is not an element among all other elements’ of existence.13 Rather, to quote another of Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms, Johannes de Silentio, it is a single telos towards which a person must have ‘the power to concentrate the whole substance of his life’.14 The religious believer, therefore, must relate to his relative telé while upholding his absolute orientation.15 He cannot balance his time and energy between work, family, and his absolute telos, but must devote himself to his work and family with his absolute orientation. That is, he must interpret his devotion to work and family as a part of his religious calling – to the extent that his devotion to them should be understood primarily as a religious concern, rather than a concern of immediacy.16 Ideally, Climacus affirms, the religious believer should die to immediacy. That is, he should renounce those immediate passions that fixate him on relative ends and hold him back from his absolute orientation.17 This does not mean merely 9.  CUP, p. 407 / SKS 7, p. 370. 10.  CUP, p. 408 / SKS 7, p. 371. 11.  CUP, p. 415 / SKS 7, p. 377. 12.  CUP, p.  408 / SKS 7, p.  371. For Climacus, an ‘absolute orientation’ implies an ‘absolute orientation to one’s absolute telos’ (CUP, p. 408 / SKS 7, p. 371). 13.  CUP, p. 400 / SKS 7, p. 364. 14.  FT, pp.  42–3 / SKS 4, pp.  137–8. In this quote, Johannes de Silentio is referring specifically to the ‘one single desire’ of the ‘knight of infinite resignation’. However, de Silentio’s account of the knight of infinite resignation appears to be synonymous with Climacus’ account of the person with an absolute orientation. 15.  CUP, p. 394 / SKS 7, p. 358. 16.  CUP, pp. 400–3 / SKS 7, pp. 364–7. 17.  CUP, pp. 410, 483–4 / SKS 7, pp. 373, 437–9; see also Sylvia Walsh, ‘Dying to the

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putting aside his concern for such things as wealth and social standing, but also entails being willing to put aside basic concerns such as health and family; in Christian terms, it means being willing to leave one’s nets ‘at once’ and follow Christ (Mt. 4.20; Mk 1.18). Moreover, it entails living in this world with a radical passivity to his relative telé: a willingness to say ‘Oh well’ when the finite world offers an individual everything or takes away everything.18 With such absolute orientation, He lives in the finite, but he does not have his life in it. His life, like the life of another, has the diverse predicates of a human existence, but he is within them like the person who walks in a stranger’s borrowed clothes. He is a stranger in this world of finitude, but he does not define his difference from worldliness by foreign dress (this is a contradiction, since with that he defines himself in a worldly way); he is incognito, but his incognito consists in looking just like everyone else.19

This level of absolute respect and resignation is again, however, unrealistic within the natural course of human existence. While a person remains grounded in immediacy, any attempt to gain an absolute respect (for an absolute telos) will be totally skewed by worldly distractions. As such, all that the religious believer can do is strive to transform herself into a person who relates to his idea of an absolute truth as best he can. As Climacus qualifies more specifically, this means striving to live according to an absolute truth that he believes is rooted in the actuality (virkelighed) of another: an eternal god, who has been proclaimed to him in a religious address. What is important to mention here, however, is that, in Climacus’ more general discussion of religiousness, it is not the actuality of a god per se that is fundamental for the religious believer, but his infinite interest in the idea of this god and commitment to a life of striving in relationship to her idea of this god. To articulate this slightly differently, what is important is that he relates passionately to his god in such a way that he interprets his relationship with this god as his ‘eternal happiness’ or ‘eternal blessedness’ (evig Salighed) – the source of her ultimate fulfilment.20 The concept of ‘eternal happiness’ is closely tied up with Climacus’ discussion of absolute orientation, so much so that there are several instances in which he World and Self-Denial in Kierkegaard’s Religious Thought’, in International Kierkegaard Commentary on For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourself!, ed. Robert L. Perkins (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2002), pp. 171–81. 18.  CUP, p. 411 / SKS 7, p. 373. 19.  CUP, p.  410 / SKS 7, p.  373. As Merold Westphal helpfully points out: ‘Climacus uses the language of contradiction in a Hegelian sense, which signifies tension, incongruity, and opposition rather than formal, propositional contradiction.’ Westphal, Becoming a Self: A Reading of Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1996), p. 180. 20.  CUP, pp. 323–6 / SKS 7, pp. 294–7.



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equates it with an absolute telos.21 The problem with this concept, however, is that it is not one that he can describe directly. It is a concept that ‘relates itself essentially to existing’, which means that it can only ever be comprehended by the person who experiences it in her existence.22 An eternal happiness ‘has the remarkable quality that it can be defined only by the mode in which it is acquired’.23 Consequently, any attempt to describe it to the person who has not experienced it will inevitably involve employing concepts that are qualitatively distinct from the concepts that are required (in non-Kierkegaardian terms, there is an explanatory gap between the communication and the reception). For example, Climacus considers that the person who attempts to describe an eternal ‘happiness’ will end up employing aesthetic categories that relate to the happy passions of a person’s natural imagination, that is, to a person’s sensuous enchantment with the marvel of an absolute 21.  CUP, pp. 394, 397, 400, 402 / SKS 7, pp. 358, 361, 364, 366. When Climacus equates the religious person’s eternal happiness with an absolute telos, he is not suggesting that the absolute telos for the religious person is some sensuous form of eternal happiness but that it holds a distinct religious form. For example, he is not suggesting that the absolute telos for the religious person is an eternal life of heavenly luxury – a paradisiacal reward for the person who struggles to live out a religious existence. To avoid this interpretation of him, some have translated ‘En evig Salighed’ as an eternal blessedness rather than an eternal happiness: see David Law, Kierkegaard as Negative Theologian (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), p. 100; Hannay, Kierkegaard; Evans, Fragments and Postscript, pp. 141–2. Although such a translation might prove useful, it does not seem necessary if there is adequate qualification of how Climacus is using this term. Generally speaking, ‘happiness’ for a person is not uniform but will vary according to the particular passions of a person. For example, whereas one person might be most content when helping the poor in the developing world, another person might be most content when driving around in a sports car. Similarly, what constitutes the eternal happiness for the religiously minded person – i.e. a spiritual relationship with God – will normally look very different from the happiness of the aesthetically minded person. For Climacus, it is what a person associates with an eternal happiness that will existentially constitute the absolute telos for that person. This is because, existentially, a person is passionately driven to lead a life that corresponds to where she locates her ultimate fulfilment, her eternal happiness. This means that, if a person is going to lead a religious life, she will need to associate her absolute telos – her relationship with God – with her eternal happiness. With a religious worldview, she will not be concerned about what she might gain or lose within her finite sphere. Nor will she have a double-minded concern about what sensuous rewards she might receive if she strives to lead a religious life. Climacus writes: ‘In temporality, the expectancy of an eternal happiness is the highest reward, because an eternal happiness is the absolute τέλος, and the specific sign that one relates oneself to the absolute is that not only is there no reward to expect but suffering to endure’ (CUP, p. 402 / SKS 7, p. 366). For a helpful, in-depth study of the concept of Salighed in Postscript, see Abrahim Khan’s Salighed as Happiness? Kierkegaard on the Concept of Salighed (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1985), pp. 40–54. 22.  CUP, pp. 387–8 / SKS 7, pp. 352–3. 23.  CUP, p. 427 / SKS 7, p. 388.

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good.24 This is evident, for example, when a Christian tries to proclaim the Gospel by referring to the euphoric joy that it has given her. It is also evident in Climacus’ description of the orthodox poet who seeks to proclaim Christianity by appealing (directly) to the imagination. The reason a religious poet is a dubious category in relation to the paradoxical– religious [Christianity] is that, esthetically, possibility is higher than actuality, and the poetic consists in the ideality of imaginative intuition. This is why we not infrequently see hymns that, although stirring and childlike and poetic through a tinge of imagination verging on the fantastic, are not, viewed categorically, Christian. These hymns, through what is so lovely viewed poetically – sky blue, the ding-dong sound of bells – promote the mythical far better than any atheist, because the atheist declares that Christianity is a myth; the naïve orthodox poet loathes this and affirms the historical actuality of Christianity – in fanciful verse.25

This kind of naïveté is also evident in the understanding of the areligious person who considers the religious believer to be driven primarily by a misguided hope for eternal life. While joy and hope might arise from an orientation towards an eternal happiness, Climacus denies that they are the essential characteristics of such an orientation.26 All that can be said (directly) of the religious believer is that she holds a passionate commitment to an eternal happiness that is qualitatively particular to her as a religious believer. As such, the religious believer’s infinite interest in an eternal happiness can only ever be held with the silence of Abraham, who could not communicate in human words his willingness to sacrifice Isaac in response to God (a willingness that was motivated by his respect for his eternal happiness). What Abraham set out to do could only ever be ‘a private venture’, the venture of the single individual in isolation – that is, in isolation from the external world, but not from God.27 24. See CUP, pp. 392–3 / SKS 7, p. 357. 25.  CUP, p. 580 / SKS 7, p. 527–8. 26.  CUP, pp. 387–8 / SKS 7, p. 353; see also KJN 5, pp. 295–6 / SKS 21, p. 285 [NB10:55]. 27.  FT, pp. 60–1, 113–15 / SKS 4, pp. 153–4, 201–2. This point is expressed further in the naming of Kierkegaard’s pseudonym, Johannes de Silentio (‘John of Silence’), author of Fear and Trembling. Colin Gunton takes note of this point when he writes ‘for Kierkegaard the light of the faith did not necessarily show outwardly. Christians could appear like anyone else’ in The Barth Lectures, ed. Paul H. Brazier (London/New York: T&T Clark, 2007), p. 233. However, this interpretation of Kierkegaard needs qualification. On the one hand, Kierkegaard does affirm that a person’s faith is not directly observable by others because it is, to an extent, a subjective reality. On the other hand, however, as we shall see in the following chapter, he also believed that if the Christian did not act in a way that distinguished him from the ways of the world, as a witness to the Christian faith, then his love for God would be in question.



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What can be said, however, is that, if the religious believer is absolutely oriented towards his absolute telos, such that he relates to it as his eternal happiness, then his finite activity will be ‘once and for all reduced to what must be surrendered in relation to the eternal happiness’.28 Her existence will unflinchingly express this relation and be a constant testimony to her eternal happiness.29 This does not mean, however, that his expression of this relation will directly distinguish him from anyone else. Again, the religious believer’s absolute orientation cannot be expressed in finite/relative ways, and, therefore, cannot be expressed by a discernible outward change, such as entering the monastery.30 As we see in de Silentio’s interpretation of the solitude of Abraham, the only (finite) one who can ever know whether a person is relating himself to an eternal happiness is the ‘individual himself in his own consciousness’.31 For this individual, it is evident to him inwardly in his ‘pathos-filled’ drive, with which only he can interpret ‘the absolute τέλος’ as ‘the absolute τέλος’.32 With this understanding of religious commitment, Climacus rejects the notion of a religious believer holding a legal concern for what might be done to merit an eternal happiness – as if an eternal happiness were some relatively pleasing destination. For Climacus, the genuine religious believer already relates herself to an eternal happiness, and consequently expresses this relationship outwardly.33 The religious believer does not act out of a concern for what else might be gained by struggling to lead a religious life. Rather, she is primarily motivated by her absolute orientation towards an eternal happiness, meaning that she finds fulfilment simply in leading a religious life.34 So, for example, if the absolute telos of the religious believer is God, then, as a consequence, she will be motivated to love, hallow and obey God with all her heart and soul and mind, as the one who is the primary object of her worship. In this respect, her obedience is a joyful 28.  CUP, p. 391 / SKS 7, p. 356. 29. See CUP, p. 394 / SKS 7, p. 358 30. See CUP, pp. 405–7, 413, 484 / SKS 7, pp. 368, 375, 439. This is not to suggest that a person will not outwardly change by becoming religious. Climacus contends that if a person’s absolute telos should request a particular relative action from her, then, existentially, it will be essential for her to live out her absolute orientation in accordance with this guidance (which may indeed involve entering a monastery). Doing so, however, will not visibly distinguish her from the non-religious person. Indeed, it is possible for both a religious and a non-religious person to enter a monastery, frequent a place of worship, become baptised, partake in the Eucharist, help out the poor, and even proclaim to be a religious believer. For Climacus, it is only a person’s subjective orientation that decisively distinguishes the religious from the non-religious. 31.  CUP, p. 393 / SKS 7, p. 358. 32.  CUP, p. 409 / SKS 7, p. 372. 33. See CUP, p. 414 / SKS 7, p. 376. 34.  For Climacus, a person cannot directly relate to the absolute by relative means – the absolute distinction that separates the relative from the absolute ‘will at every moment safeguard the absolute τέλος against all fraternizing’ (CUP, p. 400 / SKS 7, p. 364).

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expression of the fact that she is relating herself to her eternal happiness. The genuine religious believer, therefore, does not need to be motivated by other factors, such as fear of hell and hope of heaven. If she did, her obedience to God would function as a relative means for avoiding hell and getting into heaven. Under these circumstances, her so-called ‘devotion’ to God would be relativised by her deeper devotion to avoiding hell or getting into in heaven.35 Another example of a situation in which a person’s devotion to God could have been relativised by other commitments is again found in the case of Abraham. Had Abraham been unwilling to obey God’s command and sacrifice Isaac, this would have expressed a lack in his faith, a distortion in his absolute relation to God, that is, it would have exposed the fact that Abraham did not faithfully interpret a relationship with God as his eternal happiness but was instead more devoted to his ethical obligation to his son. Consequently, his orientation towards God would have been relativised by his respect for (his limited perception of) universal ethical norms.36 By being willing to obey God, however, in a ‘spiritual trial’ (Anfœgtelse), Abraham participates in ‘the infinite movement of resignation’.37 He makes the teleological decision to suspend the ethical: he resigned from his own ethical commitments out of respect for his absolute telos.38 It was Abraham’s absolute respect for God – how he related himself passionately to God – that was essential in his willingness to sacrifice Isaac. According to Climacus, true religious practice is always motivated by a person’s passionate orientation towards an eternal happiness, such as her love for God. 35. Heaven and a loving relationship with God are not, of course, mutually exclusive, especially if we interpret hell as total separation from God and heaven as the fullness of loving fellowship with God. If this is the case, however, the religious believer will not primarily be motivated by the future possibility of participating in the eschatological expression of this fellowship. Rather, he will be primarily motivated by his love for God in the present. 36.  FT, pp. 54–6 / SKS 4, pp. 148–50. 37.  FT, pp. 37, 42, 46–7 / SKS 4, pp. 132, 137, 141. 38.  FT, pp. 54–67 / SKS 4, pp. 148–59. For de Silentio, the person who participates in a teleological suspension of the ethical transgresses ‘the ethical altogether’ for ‘a higher telos outside it, in relation to which he suspended it’. Abraham does this ‘[f]or God’s sake and – the two are wholly identical – for his own sake. He does it for God’s sake because God demands this proof of his faith; he does it for his own sake so that he can prove it. The unity of the two is altogether correctly expressed in the word already used to describe this relationship’ (FT, pp. 59–60 / SKS 4, pp. 153–4). Here, we see the ‘paradox of faith’: ‘that the single individual is higher than the universal, that the single individual … determines his relation to the universal by his relation to the absolute, not his relation to the absolute by his relation to the universal. The paradox may be expressed in this way: that there is an absolute duty to God, for in this relationship of duty the individual relates himself as the single individual absolutely to the absolute.’ In this connection, he continues, if it is understood as an absolute duty to love God ‘then the ethical is reduced to the relative’ (FT, p. 70 / SKS 4, p. 162).



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Again, however, in the limits of this finite world, persons will always be held back in their religious convictions: ‘The actual individual is, after all, in immediacy and to that extent is actually in the relative ends absolutely.’39 Consequently, every positive attempt, every striving to relate oneself more completely to one’s absolute telos – including those attempts to renounce one’s relative telē – will be characteristically relative and, therefore, detrimental to the prospect of a full religious life. Such attempts will only immerse a person further in the relative ends that are absolutely distinct from the absolute.40 As such, a human individual cannot start out in a religious existence by ‘simultaneously relating himself absolutely to the absolute τέλος and relatively to the relative ends’. Rather, ‘he begins by practicing the absolute relation through renunciation’,41 that is, he begins by renouncing the possibility of himself, in immediacy, being able to grow in relation to his eternal happiness.42 This brings us to Climacus’ understanding of the ‘essential expression of religiousness’: suffering. In this context, religious suffering is the experience of a believer who strives to lead a life that corresponds to her absolute orientation – strives to die to immediacy – but is resigned to the fact that, no matter how hard she strives, she ‘is nothing at all before God’.43 By becoming conscious of her total unworthiness, she realises that she is totally dependent upon God to become something. The problem for her is that, while she remains in finitude, she is continually held back from becoming a God-enabled something: a something who positively participates in the fullness of the God-relationship and relates absolutely to her eternal happiness. As such, like a bird in a cage or a fish out of water, she finds herself suffering as a person who is outside her element, caught up in an existence that is not only discordant with the existence she most passionately desires but is also discordant with the existence that she somewhat (in her God-consciousness) now leads.44 But, as Climacus adds, the religious believer cannot even suffer properly. Unable to live a life in which he continually acknowledges his dependence upon 39.  CUP, p. 431 / SKS 7, p. 392. 40. See JP 2, 1792 / SKS 24, pp. 82–3 [NB21:132]. 41.  CUP, p. 431 / SKS 7, p. 392. 42.  CUP, p. 463 / SKS 7, p. 419. In this way, Climacus’ understanding of the religious category of existence is distinct from the ethical category. That is, whereas the ethical life is characterised by one’s capacity for action and victory with relation to her moral duty, the religious life is grounded in the realisation that one is unable to achieve anything positive with relation to her calling (CUP, pp. 288, 294 / SKS 7, pp. 263, 268). (For a clear understanding of the differences between the ethical and religious categories of existence, see Evans, Fragments and Postscript, pp. 42–6, 139–41.) 43.  CUP, p. 461 / SKS 7, p. 419. 44.  CUP, pp. 483–4 / SKS 7, pp. 438–89. However, as Climacus adds, the bird in the cage and the fish out of water ‘are not captive as the person who is captive in his conception of God, because, just as God is, the captivating conception is everywhere present and at every moment’ (CUP, p. 484 / SKS 7, p. 439).

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God (to be something), he yet again finds himself doomed to failure: he will always fail to become ‘absolutely captive in the absolute conception of God’.45 Aware of this failure, he withdraws to the ‘decisive expression of religiousness’: guilt-consciousness. As the decisive expression of religiousness, Climacus draws our attention to a positive side of guilt (Skyld). With guilt-consciousness, a person construes her failure to live out the religious life in terms of a ‘disrelationship’ (Misforholdet) to her eternal happiness, which can inspire a life of continual repentance.46 By judging herself as guilty in her failure to relate to God, the religious believer expresses that he is relating himself to an eternal happiness (albeit negatively),47 and recognises himself as a person who stands before God (albeit absolutely distantly).48 This does not mean that her guilt-consciousness brings her any closer to God – only God can bring her closer to God. But it does mean that the religious believer holds an attitude that is proper to his life of failure before God. The religiousness that has just been considered in the first section of this chapter is described by Climacus as immanent religiousness. Much of Kierkegaard’s writings, especially his earlier works, focus on a more immanent account of Christian religiousness, which recognised two things: (1) that the eternal God transcends the finite order, and (2) that a person is incapable of transcending her finite subjective existence, and thereby relating herself to God. Together these two emphases provided the basis for a firm challenge to the Hegelianism that had been permeating Danish theology. Yet, for Kierkegaard and Climacus, these two keystones do not themselves point us towards a decisively Christian theology. When it comes to a decisively Christian account of religiousness, there is a further qualification that needs to be taken with the utmost seriousness, as Kierkegaard does in his later writings. Christianity, or ‘paradoxical religiousness’, is distinguished decisively by the fact that the eternal God establishes kinship with us in 45.  CUP, p. 483 / SKS 7, p. 438. 46.  CUP, p.  531 / SKS 7, p.  483 (emphasis mine). Along with C. Stephen Evans and David Law, I am using the Swenson and Lowrie translation here of Misforholdet as ‘disrelationship’ rather than the Hongs’ translation, ‘misrelation’. The reason for this is that ‘disrelationship’ stresses the negativity that Climacus wants to stress, in contrast to ‘misrelation’, which places more emphasis on the faultiness of the relationship. See Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, eds and trans David Swenson and Walter Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941), p. 473. 47. For Climacus, ‘the sign of the religious sphere is … that the positive is distinguished by the negative … that to act religiously is marked by suffering’ (CUP, p.  432 / SKS 7, p.  393). Also relevant here is Sylvia Walsh’s discussion of the inverse dialectic (omvendt dialektik) in Kierkegaard’s thought: Walsh, ‘Forming the Heart: The Role of Love in Kierkegaard’s Thought’, in The Grammar of the Heart: Thinking with Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein, ed. Richard Bell (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988), pp.  34–54; Living Christianly: Kierkegaard’s Dialectic of Christian Existence (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania University Press, 2005), pp. 7–8. 48.  CUP, pp. 531–2 / SKS 7, p. 483.



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time, and thereby enables persons to become transformed in his eternal–historical presence.

II. Søren Kierkegaard’s Christian Realism When reading through certain sections of Kierkegaard’s writings, there is room to misinterpret his vision of Christianity in terms that fail to distinguish it decisively from immanent accounts of Christianity: Christianity that is grounded solely in a person’s subjective commitment to her own understanding of what Christianity is, an understanding that is possessed within the mind of the believer and which can be held in abstraction from the gracious activity of God. On this view, Christianity, above all else, concerns a person’s belief in her own perception of god, informed, for example, by contemplating scriptural data or listening to church teaching. As such, the Christian is not primarily oriented towards an eternal truth that always transcends her existence, and which can only be received derivatively from the God–human mediator of that truth. Instead, the ‘essence’ of the Christian task, as Clare Carlisle contends, primarily concerns a passionate and active relationship with one’s own idea of its absolute telos: a relationship in which the Christian actively repeats in her existence that which she professes in her relationship with God.49 In these terms, the decisive becoming of the Christian life involves a process of self-transformation, which takes place in response to the truth that is given in revelation – a truth which, as George Pattison writes, ‘is essentially and ontologically conformable to the structures of thinking, selfconscious human life’.50 When readers fail to appreciate the qualitative nature of the distinction between Christianity and immanent religiousness, Climacus and Kierkegaard become tied to a religiosity that primarily sees the incarnate God as a means for human beings to receive the truth rather than the one who is the truth-for-human-beings. On this view, it is a person’s inward transformation into faith that is the ground of his relationship with God rather than a person’s interrelationship with God that is the ground of his faith. As a result, the message that Christ embodies is seen to be more fundamental than the living person of Christ. How might Jesus Christ be interpreted in this way? Steven Emmanuel describes Jesus Christ as the one who ‘represents the ideal embodiment of the doctrine (the 49. Clare Carlisle, ‘Climacus on the Task of Becoming a Christian’, in Concluding Unscientific Postscript: A Critical Guide, ed. Rick Furtak (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 185. Here, Carlisle also contends: ‘Kierkegaard’s analysis of the Christian task in the Postscript is characterized by an absolute refusal … to think beyond existence.’ 50. George Pattison, Kierkegaard and the Theology of the Nineteenth Century: The Paradox and the Point of Contact (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 89. For further critical engagement with this point, see my article ‘Beyond Existentialism: Kierkegaard on the Human Relationship with the God Who is Wholly Other’, in International Journal of Systematic Theology, 16(3) (2014), pp. 303–5.

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Word revealed in the flesh)’.51 Also, M. Jamie Ferreira interprets Jesus Christ (or ‘the teacher’) as the one who ‘exemplifies or embodies a paradoxical message (the message of unlikeness and likeness, of “absolute difference” and “absolute equality”)’.52 In both of these examples, the emphasis is placed on the ‘doctrine’ or ‘message’ that Christ embodies. Consequently, both statements risk echoing Hegel’s emphasis on the Incarnation as the event which exhibits and communicates the higher unity, or absolute reconciliation, of divine and human nature. For Kierkegaard, however, there is something much more radical and decisive that takes place in the event of the Incarnation. The Incarnation creates a union between God and an individual human being that possesses no reality until God becomes human in Christ and continues to have no reality apart from the person of Jesus Christ.53 This means that the essential truth of the Incarnation cannot be abstracted from Jesus Christ and appropriated into a human message about the unity of God and humanity. It also means that while the Incarnation was logically possible, to the extent that God could create it, the union that Jesus Christ establishes was not actual until the event of its happening.54 What does this imply? Kierkegaard is emphatic that individuals cannot mediate the truth of Christianity to themselves by way of their own autonomous understanding – their own absolutely different understanding. Individuals cannot relate to the essential truth of Christianity by simply reflecting on some (scripturally, doctrinally or otherwise-informed) notion of Christianity. The essential truth of Christianity is not simply ‘a truth’ that needs to be recollected (i.e. a comprehensible idea of God or the God–human). Furthermore, the Christian truth is not simply a paradoxical idea of unity between eternality and temporality (i.e. an incomprehensible idea that needs to be embraced against the understanding). The essential truth of Christianity is the personal reality of God who enters into time as a particular human being and thereby establishes a totally unique kinship (Slægtskab) between God and an individual human being: that is, a relationship in which God relates to human beings by sharing with them in their flesh and blood (Heb. 2.14). It is only in and through the eternal–historical person of Jesus Christ that God positively mediates the eternal truth of who God is to human beings. Kierkegaard writes:

51. Steven Emmanuel, Kierkegaard and the Concept of Revelation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), p. 105. 52. M. Jamie Ferreira, Transforming Vision (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 97. 53. Indeed, there is a sense in which the God–human union (Eenhed), which is created in the incarnation, is ‘something new for God’. Paul Sponheim, ‘Relational Transcendence in Divine Agency’, in International Kierkegaard Commentary: Practice in Christianity, ed. Robert L. Perkins (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2004), p. 53. 54. The ‘absolute paradox’, for Kierkegaard, ‘would that the Son of God became a human being, came into the world, went around quite unrecognized’ (KJN 2, p. 163 / SKS 18, p. 176 [JJ:111]).



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A Mediator is necessary for me, among other reasons, simply to make me aware that it is God with whom, as we say, I have the honor of speaking; otherwise a man can easily live on in the indolent conceit that he is talking with God, whereas he is only talking with himself.55

In and through Jesus Christ, the living God reveals himself to the world in such a way as to make it possible for human beings to share in a relationship with God. It is within this relationship that a person is nurtured and maintained in her faithfulness by the grace of God, That is, a person relates to God because God actively involves himself in her life, governing her and transforming her into a person who can live according to God’s (incarnate) truth. What we find in Kierkegaard’s Christian thought is a twofold account of how God relates to persons in time. First, God creates an eternal–historical union with human beings in and through the person of Jesus Christ. By assuming our humanity, God relates to persons in the temporality of their human situation. Second, following the crucifixion, the risen and ascended Christ continues to relate to persons spiritually – that is, by way of a gracious activity and presence that comes to us from beyond our physical existence but yet maintains the kinship that was created in the Incarnation. Using the terminology of Fragments, Jesus Christ continues to encounter persons in particular moments in time in a way that enables a form of contemporaneity with persons who did not have the opportunity to encounter Jesus Christ during his earthly life. Kierkegaard hesitates to say too much more about precisely how God encounters persons in history. Since it is miraculous, the details lie beyond the scope of human understanding and can only be known by the mind of God. Nonetheless, what is clear for him is that the Christian life rests on the fact that God actively relates to persons in the midst of this historical world. In short, he presents this active relationship as: (1) grounded in the kinship that God establishes with the world in and through the Incarnation, and (2) maintained by the ascended God–human’s spiritual activity. By participating in an interactive relationship with God, a person receives the faith to make sense of his life in such a way that any apparent absurdity surrounding the Incarnation ceases to be perceived as such.56 When the believer has faith, the absurd is not the absurd – faith transforms it, but in every weak moment it is again more or less absurd to him. The passion of faith is the only thing which masters the absurd – if not, then faith is not faith in the strictest sense, but a kind of knowledge.57

55.  JP 2, 1424 / SKS 24, p. 237 [NB24:13] (emphasis and emboldening original). 56. Describing the absurd, Climacus writes: ‘The absurd is that the eternal truth has come into existence in time, that God has come into existence, has been born, has grown up, etc., has come into existence exactly as an individual human being, indistinguishable from any other human being’ (CUP, p. 210 / SKS 7, p. 193). 57.  JP 1, 10 / Pap X-6 B 79.

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This passage is easily misunderstood, so it is important to be clear about what precisely Kierkegaard is saying here. When the absurd ceases to be the absurd, this is not because a person suddenly receives an intellectual capacity to work out the rationale of the Incarnation. Nor is it because a person humbly and fideistically resolves, in and of herself, to embrace the absolute paradox as a paradox that she cannot comprehend. Rather, it is because God draws her into a ‘friendship’ in which she finds the ‘courage’ and ‘enthusiasm’ to embrace that which she would otherwise have perceived to be an absurdity, given her preconceived notion of what God can and cannot do.58 In this friendship, a person becomes so consumed by a love for God that she becomes ‘blind’ to any apparent intellectual difficulties that are involved in recognising the possibility of a relationship between ‘two qualities so unlike as God and man’ – a relationship, moreover, that is mediated by the God–man.59 This does not mean that she becomes blind to the truth. Rather, she is awakened by the truth to the truth. As the one who is the truth, the God– human makes sense of her existence despite the fact that she cannot unravel the mystery of the Incarnation. As this happens, the reality of Jesus Christ calls into question any brazen concern for intellectual mastery In sum, Jesus Christ does not encounter persons as a puzzle to be solved. But neither does he encounter persons as an abstract reality to be blindly embraced. Rather, he confronts persons as the one who calls them to discipleship. Jesus offers an invitation for persons to come to love and follow him. And he does this as the light of the world who bestows truth upon human knowing. When a person stands before God, awakened by his truth, he subordinates himself not simply to a paradox that immediately seems unfathomable but to the living God who, by establishing kinship with humanity in time, lovingly draws him to himself and into the truth that he is in himself. In view of this interpretation of Kierkegaard’s Christian vision, I contend that Kierkegaard’s Christian thought needs to be associated with a Christian realism: a realism that prioritises the reality of the living God who personally involves himself with creation, in history, and does so over against any independent human ideas of God. In the rest of this chapter, I shall show that what decisively distinguishes Christianity from immanent forms of religiousness, for Climacus and Kierkegaard, is the fact that it is grounded in a person’s relationship with the reality of the eternal God who personally relates to us within history.

III. Immanent Religiousness and Christianity Throughout the vast majority of Postscript, we are given an account of religiousness that concerns an individual’s pathos-filled relation to an eternal happiness.60 This 58.  JP 1, 10 / Pap X-6 B 79. 59.  JP 1, 10 / Pap X-6 B 79. 60. In an appendix entitled ‘A Glance at a Contemporary Effort in Danish Literature’, Climacus associates this general or immanent religiousness with the categories found



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religiousness revolves around an individual’s infinite interest in god and the eternal. Towards the end of Postscript, Climacus identifies this category of religiousness as immanent religiousness, immediate religiousness or Religiousness A. As we saw in the first section of this chapter, while this account stresses humanity’s absolute alienation from God and the eternal, it also recognises the possibility of a person being able to relate to God by virtue of his own immanent capacities, for example, through a consciousness of guilt. In this respect, Climacus contends, immanent religiousness is qualitatively distinct from the religiousness of Christianity, which denies the possibility of a person being able to relate to God positively on the basis of his own immanent capacities. This, however, is a bold contention that needs careful qualification. It is imperative, therefore, that we closely examine the nature of this distinction, given, not least, Kierkegaard’s description of Postscript as the turning point in his whole authorship.61 Climacus writes: ‘The religiousness that has been discussed up until now and that for the sake of brevity will from now on be termed Religiousness A is not the specifically Christian religiousness.’62 Before turning to consider the precise nature of this distinction, it should be noted that Climacus and Kierkegaard are very happy to acknowledge similarities between immanent and Christian religiousness. Prior to the above statement there

in (the discourses gathered in) Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses (CUP, pp.  256–7 / SKS 7, pp.  232–3). He notes on Two Upbuilding Discourses (EUD, pp.  1–48 / SKS 5, pp.  9–56) and Three Upbuilding Discourses (EUD, 49–102 / SKS 5, pp. 59–106), ‘the preface repeated that they were not sermons, which I, if no one else, would indeed have unconditionally protested against, since they use only ethical categories of immanence, not the doubly reflected religious categories of paradox. If a confusion of language is to be averted, the sermon must be reserved for religious-Christian existence’ (CUP, 256 / SKS 7, pp. 232–3). He comments further that the categories used in the discourses were ‘philosophical and did not use Christian categories at all’ (CUP, 257n. / SKS 7, pp.  233n.). The extent to which he actually does this, however, is contended by Thomas Anderson who argues that it is ‘incorrect simply to classify the discourses with Religiousness A’. Anderson, ‘Is the Religion of Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses Religiousness A?’, in International Kierkegaard Commentary on Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, ed. Robert Perkins (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2003), p. 75; see also CUP, pp. 256–7, 272–3; David Gouwens, Kierkegaard as Religious Thinker, p. 117. 61.  PV, pp. 29n., 31, 55, 63, 94. / SKS 16, p. 15n., 17, 36, 44, 73. 62.  CUP, p.  555 (emphasis mine) / SKS 7, p.  505. Although it is not entirely clear, the ‘religiousness discussed up until now’ could just be the religiousness discussed in subdivision A (CUP, pp. 387–554 / SKS 7, pp. 352–504). However, given that Kierkegaard describes Postscript as the ‘turning point’ in his authorship, I do not think that we can rule out the possibility that the ‘religiousness discussed up until now’ refers to the religiousness discussed in all of Climacus’ (if not Kierkegaard’s) writing up to this point. This becomes even more likely when we see that Kierkegaard describes his writings prior to Postscript, ‘the first division’ (EO I and II, FT, R, CA, P, PF, SLW and EUD), as his ‘esthetic writing’ (PV, pp. 29, 31, 55 / SKS 16, pp. 15, 17, 44).

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are a number of passages in which Climacus quite plainly refers to Christianity.63 This is not because he is inconsistent. Rather, it is because, up until this point, his references to Christianity have focused on a person’s existential commitment to her own idea of what Christianity is.64 There is no question that both Kierkegaard and Climacus recognise that the Christian life will involve a person’s subjective existence: her passionate commitments, her self-understanding and her own conception of God.65 Indeed, both of them devote serious attention to the way in which a person’s subjective existence is involved in the process of becoming a Christian, which will be discussed further in Chapter 5.66 However, as we have 63. In these references Climacus goes so far as to refer to Christianity in terms of faith in the ‘paradox’ (CUP, pp. 105, 209–10, 213–14, 220, 230, 233, 293–4, 323–4, 353–4, 364, 532 / SKS 7, pp. 104, 193, 195, 200, 209, 212, 267, 295, 323, 332–3, 483–4); he talks about the untruth in terms of ‘sin’ (CUP, pp. 208, 353–4 / SKS 7, 191–2, 323), and, even more specifically, he mentions the ‘god’ or ‘eternal truth’ coming to existence ‘in time’ (CUP, pp. 209, 213, 353–4 / SKS 7, pp. 192–3, 195, 323). Although these Christian facts can be taken as references to Christianity, as we shall see, they can only be taken as decisively Christian if they inhere in and are derived from the ‘something historical’ upon which the Christian’s eternal happiness is based in truth (CUP, p. 369 / SKS 7, pp. 336–7). The reason for this is that they also constitute ideas that can be imaginatively constructed and related to in untruth. For Climacus, Christian concepts are not, in and of themselves, essentially Christian (which is why he did not describe his imaginative construction in Fragments as ‘Christianity’). See CUP, pp. 361–2 / SKS 7, p. 330). As such, when Climacus puts forward an idea about what is essentially Christian (‘that an eternal happiness is decided in time in relation to something historical’), this idea is not in itself essentially Christian because, quite simply, the idea itself cannot be the ‘something historical’ that is decisive for the Christian faith. In short, the decisively Christian cannot be derived from universal ideas about its substance. The Christian faith does not primarily concern a particular individual’s infinite interest in God, but concerns God himself reconciling particular individuals into faith. 64. Accordingly, I would argue that it is an overstatement for Ingolf Dalferth to affirm that ‘the argument in the Postscript depends from the first to the last page on the priority of God’s creative grace over our ways of receiving it’. Dalferth, ‘Becoming a Christian According to the Postscript: Kierkegaard’s Christian Hermeneutics of existence’, in Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook 2005, eds N. J. Cappelørn and H. Deuser (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2005), p. 280. 65. Both Climacus and Kierkegaard recognise that the Christian existence may be characterised by such immanent expressions as resignation (a willingness to give up everything for the sake of one’s God-relationship) and suffering (a consciousness of the total unworthiness of one’s independent activity before God). For example, Climacus writes: ‘Every Christian has pathos as in Religiousness A’ (CUP, p. 583 / SKS 7, p. 531). 66. In particular, this chapter will devote time to consider one of Climacus’ statements that would seem to provide a direct challenge to the argument that I shall be making here: ‘Religiousness A must first be present in the individual before there can be any consideration of becoming aware of the dialectical B’ (CUP, pp. 556–7 / SKS 7, pp. 505–6).



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also seen, and as we shall continue to see, they are also clear that becoming a Christian involves much more than immanent transformation. A person cannot become a Christian without such transformation. However, this transformation cannot occur (in a decisively Christian way) without a person participating in the relationship with God that makes it possible. The problem, however, is that they do not always emphasise this point clearly enough. For example, it is only towards the end of Postscript that Climacus clarifies the significance of this distinction. This means that he makes it very easy for his readers to interpret his vision of Christian religiousness (B) in terms that do not decisively distinguish it from immanent forms of religiousness (A). What interpretation of Climacus am I concerned about? Roe Fremstedal succinctly describes the ‘transition from immanent religiousness to transcendent religiousness’ in Postscript as ‘a transition from presuppositions we possess to presuppositions that have to be revealed [sic]’.67 There is much to be said for this statement. It is entirely appropriate to suggest that becoming a Christian requires a person to embrace a new set of presuppositions. However, as I have argued and will continue to argue, Climacus and Kierkegaard do not think that it is primarily a new set of beliefs in revealed propositions that decisively distinguishes immanent from transcendent religiousness. For Climacus, the Christian (who embraces transcendent religiousness) does not merely relate to God by committing herself to a divine teaching that was revealed in or by Jesus Christ: a teaching that has been bestowed upon creation history by the grace of God. Rather, she participates in an intersubjective relationship with the living God. So, no matter how much a person might know about revelation (as it is recorded in the Gospels, for example), and no matter how much a person might be committed to this message, if she is not subject to the witness of an entirely new spiritual activity,68 and is not upheld by the intervening power of the god in time, then she cannot become decisively Christian. ‘[T]he appearance of the god in time’, Climacus writes, ‘prevents the individual from relating himself backward to the eternal, since he now moves forward in order to become eternal in time through the relation to the god in time.’69 As such, the god in time does not merely pass on new information about a person’s immanent relation to the eternal but enters into the world as the ‘by-nature eternal’ one in and through a person can relate to God.70 Again, therefore, it is not merely a new set of beliefs that distinguishes transcendent religiousness from immanent religiousness, but the qualitatively new way in which a person relates to God. The Christian relates to the eternal truth by participating in an ongoing relationship with God in time – a relationship that is facilitated through God’s sustained and gracious self-giving. In this account, it is not a person’s infinite interest in God’s 67. Fremstedal, ‘Kierkegaard’s Double Movement of Faith and Kant’s Moral Faith’, Religious Studies, 48 (2012), p. 212. 68.  CUP, p. 610 / SKS 7, p. 553. 69.  CUP, pp. 583–4 / SKS 7, p. 532. 70.  CUP, pp. 578–9 / SKS 7, p. 526.

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historical revelation that is decisive, but God’s relationship with that person in history, which actively enables her to relate both to God and to the truth of revelation. What is disregarded in Fremstedal’s statement is a recognition that conversion involves a person becoming ‘a new creation [ny Skabning]’ by sharing in ‘a relationship not between man and man but between God and man’.71 In Christian conversion, a person is reborn from above in response to the ‘witness of the spirit within him’ (Rom. 8.16).72 If the process of becoming a Christian simply involved the formation of a new set of presuppositions, then the only thing that would distinguish the Christian from the non-Christian would be a relatively different understanding.73 For Climacus, however, a person’s commitment to his own notion of Christianity does not, in and of itself, enable a person to become eminently or decisively Christian.74 Any understanding of Christianity that a person comes up with in and of himself (for example, by reading the New Testament) does nothing more than bring that person into a relationship with his own (sinful and finite) thoughts about Christianity. For a person to become decisively Christian, a further or ‘second’ ‘qualification’ is required. That person needs to be given a faith that is sui generis: that is qualitatively distinct from the more generic religious faith of the self-transformed religious believer (A).75 As 71.  JP 1, 649:19 / SKS 27, p. 396 [Papir 365:12]. 72.  CUP, p. 610 / SKS 7, p. 553; see also KJN 7, p. 454 / SKS 23, p. 446 [NB20:99]; PF, p. 21 / SKS, 4, pp. 230–2. 73. With regard to this point, Climacus remarks: ‘The difference between the religious person and the person who does not religiously transform his existence becomes a humorous difference: that whereas the religious person utilizes his entire life in becoming aware of the relation to an eternal happiness and the other does not concern himself with it (but note that the religious person has the satisfaction within himself and, turned inward, is not busily engaged in meaningless complaints that others easily attain what he seeks with difficulty and with most extreme effort), they both, viewed eternally, go equally far’ (CUP, pp. 581–2 / SKS 7, p. 530). 74.  I would argue that it is unhelpful for Cornelio Fabro to write ‘Kierkegaard expressly admits a true form of religiousness independent of revelation, proper to man in the state of nature, which he calls Religiousness A.’ Fabro, ‘Faith and Reason in Kierkegaard’s Dialectic’, tran. J. B. Mondin in A Kierkegaard Critique: An International Selection of Essays Interpreting Kierkegaard, eds Howard A. Johnson and Niels Thulstrup (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1962), pp.  190–1. While there might be some kind of existential truth to this form of religiousness from the non-Christian Climacus’ perspective, it is inaccurate to tie the Christian Kierkegaard, who would disagree that there is a true form of religiousness independent of Jesus Christ, to such a position. 75. Climacus writes: ‘the eternal happiness to which the individual is assumed to relate himself with proper pathos is itself made dialectical’ (CUP, p. 385 / SKS 7, p. 351). Under these circumstances, the dialectical mocks ‘the gestures and big words’ of Religiousness A and critiques the religious address that inspired Religiousness A. The religious address, he remarks, ‘can very well be heard, but it cannot be done’; that is, it can proclaim what



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Ingolf Dalferth notes: ‘What has to occur is not merely a change in which a subject lives his or her life, but a change of subject.’76 For Climacus, a person becomes decisively Christian by way of an existencecommunication (Existents-Meddelelse).77 As Fremstedal recognises, this involves the communication of a new passionate set of beliefs that are inextricably tied to human existence.78 For Climacus, these beliefs cannot be comprehended in advance (of their being appropriated to a person’s existence) because, quite simply, if they have not transformed a person’s existence then they have not been grasped for what they are. But what is unique to the Christian existence is that it rests upon an actual historical ‘something’ – an objective ‘something’ that transcends immanent human understanding79 – encountering a person in time and, in and through the moments of encounter, communicating an entirely new existence to her.80 Again, however, although we can find this kind of description of Christianity throughout Postscript, it is not until near the end, when Climacus clearly demarcates immanent religiousness (A) from paradoxical religiousness (B), that Christianity is unequivocally distinguished from all merely immanent forms of religiousness. Religiousness A is the dialectic of inward deepening [Inderliggjørelsens Dialektik]; it is the relation to an eternal happiness that is not conditioned by a something but is the dialectical inward deepening of the relation, consequently conditioned only by the inward deepening, which is dialectical. On the other hand, Religiousness B, as it will be called from now on, or paradoxical religiousness, as it has been called, or the religiousness that has the dialectical in second place, makes conditions in such a way that the conditions are not dialectical concentrations of inward deepening but a definite something [bestemt noget] that qualifies the eternal happiness more specifically …81 Christianity is but cannot actually bring a person to Christianity (CUP, p.  556 / SKS 7, p. 505). 76. Dalferth, ‘Becoming a Christian According to the Postscript’, 271. 77.  CUP, p. 383 / SKS 7, p. 349. 78.  CUP, pp. 379–80 / SKS 7, p. 346. 79. See BA, pp. 117–18 / SKS 15, p. 273. 80.  SKS 7, p.  346 / CUP, p.  380; see also BA, 113 / SKS 15, p.  269. I think that H.R. Mackintosh is incorrect when, in his reading of Kierkegaard on the ‘Christian Religion’, he suggests that Kierkegaard (whom he equates with Climacus) ‘persists in declaring that the inwardness of our own personal relationship to God positively depends on our blind acceptance of a Christological paradox, which is insoluble because intrinsically it is paradox and nothing else.’ Mackintosh, Types of Modern Theology – Schleiermacher to Barth (London: Nisbet & Co., 1937), p.  246. For a further helpful discussion of Mackintosh’s reading of Kierkegaard, see David Gouwens, ‘Hugh Ross Mackintosh: Kierkegaard as “a precursor of Karl Barth”’, in Kierkegaard’s Influence on Theology – Tome II: Anglophone and Scandinavian Protestant Theology, ed. Jon Stewart (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 85–104. 81.  SKS 7, p. 505–6 / CUP, p. 556; Petrus Minor refers to this section in The Book on

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By rereading Postscript with this passage in mind, it becomes clear that Climacus’ portrayal of religious belief in terms of an infinite interest in an eternal happiness does not decisively articulate what Christianity truly is. A decisively Christian faith centres around ‘a definite something that qualifies the eternal happiness more specifically’.82 Expressly, it hinges on the being and activity of God in time. Again, this is not to deny that Christianity is characterised by an infinite interest in one’s eternal happiness, which Climacus does indeed affirm,83 but, rather, to affirm that Christianity does not find its centre in immanent human existence. An area in which this qualification is particularly relevant is in Climacus’ earlier discussion of the believer’s faith in ‘the actuality [Virkelighed] of another’ – ‘that the god [Guden] actually has existed [været til]’.84 When Climacus affirms here that it is the believer’s infinite interest in the existence of the other that is decisive for faith, rather than the actual existence of the other (‘a definite something’), he provides an account of religious belief that, without further qualification, cannot be regarded as decisively Christian.85 Unlike Religiousness A, the Religiousness B of Christianity requires an external other, God, to enter into time to upbuild a person in the Christian life.86 Adler (see BA, p. 113n. / SKS 15, p. 269n.). The fact that Climacus describes both forms of religiousness as involving a relationship to the eternal is possible because he (apparently) operates as an outside observer. 82.  SKS 7, p. 506 / CUP, p. 556. 83. Such a description is evident throughout Postscript. See, for example, CUP, pp. 33, 53, 130–1, 224, 231–2, 327 / SKS 7, pp. 38, 58, 123, 205–6, 210, 298). Both Religiousness A and Christianity involve a person passionately relating to another who he faithfully believes to be God, and both involve a person faithfully interpreting his relationship with God as his ‘absolute telos’ and her ‘eternal happiness’. 84.  CUP, p. 324 / SKS 7, p. 295. 85.  CUP, pp. 324–6 / SKS 7, pp. 295–7. Earlier, Climacus notes: ‘With regard to every actuality outside myself, it holds true that I can grasp it only in thinking. If I were actually to grasp it, I would have to be able to make myself into the other person, the one acting, to make the actuality alien to me into my own personal actuality, which is an impossibility’ (CUP, p. 321 / SKS 7, p. 293). 86. This point is also relevant when looking at the relationship with God in Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses. In these discourses, Kierkegaard employs specifically ‘Christian’ terminology. However, in these discourses the emphasis is generally put on humanity’s immanent experience and beliefs rather than the actuality of an external God. For example, he states that the condition for knowing God is experiencing one’s total need for God (EUD, pp. 321–6 / SKS 5, pp. 213–18), and states that one comes to know God through ‘deeper and more inward self-knowledge’ (EUD p. 276 / SKS 5, p. 270). It is for this reason that Climacus did not consider these discourses to be specifically Christian in character (CUP, pp. 256–7 / SKS 7, pp. 232–3). That said, as is the case in Postscript, there are many references to God and the relationship with God in these discourses that can prove difficult to reconcile with Religiousness A, such as those that draw on the importance of God’s gracious activity, his mercy and love for human beings (for example, EUD, pp.  38, 133,



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The upbuilding element in the sphere of Religiousness A is that of immanence, is the annihilation in which the individual sets himself aside in order to find God, since it is the individual himself who is the hindrance. Here the upbuilding is quite properly distinguishable by the negative, by the self-annihilation that finds the relationship with God within itself, that suffering-through sinks into the relationship with God … In Religiousness B, the upbuilding is something outside the individual; the individual does not find the upbuilding by finding the relationship with God within himself but relates himself to something outside himself in order to find the upbuilding … That is why I have never called Religiousness A Christian or Christianity.87

Here, Climacus takes a sweeping blow at those who wish to see him as holding to a Romantic or even ‘existentialist’ vision of Christianity. For Climacus, there is no Christian faith without the eternal God entering into time in Christ to reconcile persons into communion with God precisely there in history.88 The Christian relationship with God rests wholly upon the actual God in time (who cannot be reduced to or subsumed within the sphere of immanent human thought) personally encountering individuals and thereby delivering them into a new life that is constituted by a two-sided relationship, mediated by the one who, precisely by being the eternal truth, constitutes the only way to that truth.89 It is as a consequence of this that the Christian is miraculously delivered from her natural, self-enclosed existence into a radically new form of existence. ‘The existing person must have lost continuity with himself, must have become something else (not different from himself within himself), and now, by receiving the condition from the god, becomes a new creation.’90 With this condition, which Climacus associates with faith, persons go beyond their own imaginations and relate to an eternal happiness that is grounded irremovably in a transcendent reality, in a way that is qualitatively different from all self-involved relationships. It is precisely because the Christian truth is grounded in the reality of the God in time (Gud I Tiden) that Climacus refers to Christian existence as 271, 324–6 / SKS 5, pp. 42, 136, 266, 315–17; see also Anderson, ‘Is the Religion of Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses Religiousness A?’, pp. 51–66). Nevertheless, even in these passages, the emphasis is still placed on humanity’s immanent perception of God’s activity. 87.  CUP, pp. 560–1n. / SKS 7, p. 510n. 88.  CUP, 561n / SKS 7, p. 510n. In light of the dynamic relationship between the person and God in Religiousness B, it is misleading for Michael Oleson to describe Religiousness B as a ‘static state’. Michael Oleson, ‘The Climacean Alphabet: Reflection on Religiousness A and B from the Perspective of the Edifying’, eds N.J. Cappelørn and H. Deuser, Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook 2005 (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2005), p. 293. 89.  CUP, pp.  556, 564, 570–1, 578n. / SKS 7, pp.  505, 513, 518, 526n. Climacus describes this radical newness as a paradoxical newness, given that it involves a break with immanence and, therefore, a move that takes place against a person’s immediate understanding (CUP, pp. 580–1 / SKS 7, p. 529). 90.  CUP, p. 576 / SKS 7, p. 524.

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‘paradoxical-religiousness’: it is a category of existence that is grounded in a relationship with that which ‘cannot be thought’.91 The ‘something outside himself ’ to which the Christian relates himself is not merely relatively difficult to comprehend, like ‘a relative paradox, which höchstens [at best] can be thought with difficulty’.92 Rather, it is an absolute contradiction for human understanding precisely because it transcends the boundaries of immanent human thought. To clarify, the reality of the eternal God stands in radical (or ‘absolute’) contradiction to any perception of God or Christ that autonomous human reason can come up with through its own process of self-reflection. Whereas the former reality is the true God, the latter concept is one that can be found in any form of paganism.93 How is this paradoxicality to be understood? For Climacus, it concerns the dialectic between the internal and the external. The Christian faith involves a person’s internal existence becoming transformed by a relationship with the external God who is beyond human existence. Accordingly, the Christian is called to a critically realist way of thinking that, to the natural apperception, is inherently paradoxical. That is, she is given to recognise (and thus to believe) that her faith in God is not simply a product of her own (belief-forming) perception and imagination but is actually grounded in an encounter with the external God who encounters her in time; she is called to believe that she cannot believe without the one in whom she believes. Without Jesus Christ actively working in her life, she can only generate unchristian beliefs.94 What is crucial to appreciate here is that Climacus’ emphasis on the objective reality of the god in time does not undermine the importance of the Christian struggling subjectively to live an active Christian life. For both Climacus and Kierkegaard, the Christian must struggle to obey God while recognising that his obedience is only decisively Christian if it is enacted responsively in relationship with God: in relationship with the God whom he cannot apprehend but who (he must believe) actively inspires and sustains his Christian existence. In short, Christianity relates itself to existing because God engages a person in a way that transforms that person’s existence. 91.  CUP, p. 561 / SKS 7, p. 510. 92.  CUP, p. 561 / SKS 7, p. 510. 93.  CUP, p. 559 / SKS 7, p. 508. Climacus writes: ‘The basis of the misunderstanding is that, despite the use of Christ’s name etc., Christianity has been shoved back into the esthetic … where the incomprehensible is the relatively incomprehensible (relative either with regard to its not yet having been understood or to the need for a seer with an eagle eye to understand it), which in time has its explanation in something higher behind itself, rather than in Christianity’s being an existence-communication that makes existing paradoxical, which is why it remains the paradox as long as there is existing and only eternity has the explanation’ (CUP, p. 562 / SKS 7, pp. 511–12). 94.  In this way, Christians are confined to the same way of life as every other subjective human being. But what distinguishes them, as Ingolf Dalferth points out, ‘is due not to what they do but to how they relate to what is done to them.’ Dalferth, ‘Becoming a Christian According to the Postscript’, p. 274.



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How, then, can a person relate to God? For Climacus and Kierkegaard, God interacts with a person spiritually: that is, with an entirely new spiritual activity that cannot be reduced to a person’s own immanent spirituality. Through God’s incarnate and spiritual presence, human subjects can come to relate positively to God. Under these circumstances, the person who becomes a Christian cannot look backward to try to work out speculatively how she came to relate herself to the eternal – for example, by reflecting on her upbringing in a Christian home. Such a move would involve a person trying to reduce her conversion to an immanent progression, thereby setting aside her transformative encounter(s) with the god in time. Instead, she must look forward in her journey with God in time, embracing the fact that, as a Christian, she now consciously participates in fellowship with God. Again, she ‘now moves forward in order to become eternal in time through the relation to the god in time’.95 On this journey, the God who becomes one with us in history interacts with a person as the ‘by-nature eternal’ one in and through whom it is possible for a person to devote her life to the eternal God.96 In this interrelationship, a person becomes distinguished by what Climacus describes as a ‘pathos of separation’: a pathos that distinguishes her from the universally human, and which she could never have achieved by her own inward contemplation of the eternal reality that transcends her finite thought processes – what Climacus calls ‘dialectical concentrations of inward deepening’.97 What becomes unambiguously clear is that it is not a person’s infinite interest in God’s historical revelation that is central, but the passionate relationship into which God draws that person. This again means that any attempt to pursue the Christian truth by way of her own reflection and imagination – for example, through the introspection of Religiousness A – ‘will mistakenly revoke the paradox’.98 As soon as a person turns inward, into her own independent understanding, she diverts herself away from God and becomes entangled in her own pagan delusions. This person will, misunderstanding, understand Christianity as a possibility and forget that what is possible in the fantasy medium of possibility, possible in illusion, or what is possible in the fantastic medium of pure thinking … must, in the medium of actuality, become the absolute paradox …This is the paradoxical-religious, the sphere of faith. All of it can be believed – against the understanding. If anyone fancies that he understands this, he can be sure that he misunderstands it. The person who understands it directly (in contrast to understanding that it cannot be understood) will confuse Christianity with one or another analogy of paganism (delusion’s analogy to factual actuality), or he will confuse it with the underlying possibility of all illusory analogies of paganism … Or he will confuse Christianity with something that has arisen in man’s, that is, humanity’s heart, 95.  CUP, pp. 583–4 / SKS 7, p. 532. 96.  CUP, pp. 578–9 / SKS 7, p. 526. 97.  CUP, pp. 582, 556–9 / SKS 7, pp. 530, 505–8. 98.  CUP, p. 580 / SKS 7, p. 529.

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confuse it with the idea of human nature and forget the qualitative difference that accentuates the absolutely different point of departure: what comes from God and what comes from man.99

In this passage, Climacus is not suggesting that Christianity dismisses human understanding altogether. He is happy to acknowledge that the Christian should maintain a respect for universal human reasoning: a person ‘can use it in all other circumstances, use it in his association with others’.100 Furthermore, as we discussed in previous chapters, he does not think that a person can become a Christian without having at least some understanding of what Christianity is about: such as ‘a believer’s report’ of Jesus Christ as the object of faith.101 Also, he does not think that a person can live the Christian life without some understanding of what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ. Indeed, Kierkegaard’s writings are devoted to articulating what it means to exist as a Christian. In what sense, then, does Christianity go ‘against the understanding’?102 For Climacus, the truth of Christianity cannot be properly recognised in advance of becoming a Christian – and, as such, he cannot recognise the truth of Christianity for himself. What this means is that becoming a Christian is not a possibility, therefore, for which a person can prepare herself mentally. Any empirical, imaginative and/or speculative attempts to come to terms with Christianity for oneself can only ever come up with a false imitation – a ‘Christianity’ that has been chopped and changed according to the Procrustean bed of a particular person’s finite understanding. Christianity stands in radical contradiction to any supposition that the understanding could potentially come up with for itself, for example, by examining Scripture and trying to construct or imagine the God to whom it testifies. Why can human thought not come up with Christianity for itself? Why can a person not prepare himself to become a Christian by simply reading his Bible? What is it about Christianity that makes it so absolutely different from any other life-view? The answer to these questions is that the Christian life is an enacted response to an unanticipatable event of actual encounter103 with God, an 99.  CUP, pp. 579–80 / SKS 7, pp. 527–8. 100.  CUP, pp.  567–8 / SKS 7, p.  516. It is thus a severe overstatement for Cornelio Fabro to suggest that, for Kierkegaard, ‘the God–Man is the “absolute paradox” which destroys reason’. Fabro, ‘Faith and Reason in Kierkegaard’s Dialectic’, tran. J. B. Mondin in A Kierkegaard Critique: An International Selection of Essays Interpreting Kierkegaard, eds Howard A. Johnson and Niels Thulstrup (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1962), pp. 171–2. 101.  PF, pp. 93, 104 / SKS 4, pp. 291, 301. 102.  CUP, pp. 579–80 / SKS 7, p. 528. 103. This raises the question as to how the Christian can know that she has actually encountered God and not simply a figment of her imagination. For Kierkegaard, a person cannot know this with immediate certainty. She, therefore, needs to believe and trust with faith that God is actively at work in her life, enabling her to be a Christian. See PV, pp. 135–6



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encounter that is transformative and, moreover, reconstitutive of who one is. As such, Christian conversion rests, as we have seen, upon dynamics that radically transcend the workings of a person’s immanent cognitive faculties – indeed, it rests upon dynamics that transcend the inner workings of the created order per se. Christian existence rests upon divine acts of grace: free acts of God (‘what comes from God’) that cannot be foreseen, predicted, summoned, earned or emulated by the human understanding (‘what comes from man’).104 The faith of the Christian arises in response to an encounter with God who, for Kierkegaard, ‘can only show himself to a human being in a miracle; that is, as soon as he sees God, he sees a miracle’.105 Therefore, there is no do-it-yourself Christianity. Indeed, for Climacus, the do-it-yourself attitude of the creature’s understanding itself needs to be ‘crucified’ in order to make way for a faith that sees God as awakening any Christian understanding within us.106 That being said, this does not mean that the miracle of God encountering persons goes against human understanding per se. Rather, it deepens, transforms and thereby satisfies the desire for understanding in ways that are more profound than we could ever envisage in advance. When God draws a person to himself, he reconciles her mind such that it corresponds to the truth that God is in himself. In and through this, the Christian relates to God with a faith that does not repose in her immediate grasp of things but, counterintuitively, finds understanding in the ‘absolute paradox’ of God’s being with us in time.107 In this way, her immediate understanding is displaced in order to make way for Jesus Christ who alone makes Christianity a possibility. Accordingly, her understanding does not default to its more natural responses. It does not, for example, (1) try to explain away the absolute paradox, (2) try to go around the absolute paradox to know God behind the absolute paradox or (3) take offence and deny the absolute paradox. Instead, a person’s understanding humbly recognises the priority of the eternal God and his self-revelation in time: the priority that the absolute paradox has over a person’s immediate understanding. By so doing, the human understanding conforms to the reality of God rather than the other way round. The Christian confesses that it is not her own categories of thought that are responsible for delivering her or / SKS 16, pp. 117–18; WL, pp. 24–5 / SKS 9, pp. 32–3; Keith Lane, ‘The Uncertainty of the Confessing Christian’, in Kierkegaard and the Concept of Religious Authorship (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), pp. 139–45. 104.  CUP, p. 580 / SKS 7, p. 528. 105.  KJN 2, p. 207 / SKS 18, p. 226 [JJ:270]. 106.  CUP, pp. 513–15 / SKS 7, pp. 465–6. 107. To clarify, the Christian faith should not be understood as a way of knowing in which God grants persons the ability to understand and master Christianity for themselves, that is, by giving them some cognitive condition to know the truth of Christianity selfevidently. Rather, Christian existence is maintained by an ongoing relationship with God, that is, by participating in a relationship that is itself maintained through the momentary interactions between divine and human agency through a tapestry of divine communication and human reception, divine enabling and human awakening.

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sustaining her in her new relationship to the truth, but, rather, it is the particular object of her faith, God in time.108 With this confession, the Christian stands and embraces the ‘absolute wonder’ that ‘answers to the truly divine, which understanding has not come upon’.109 Kierkegaard himself later emphasises this point with his more distinctively Christian voice. Drawing on Galatians 2.20, he affirms that when the Christian shares in fellowship with the incarnate God, he does not relate to Jesus Christ as ‘one who is dead and departed but one who is living’.110 In fellowship with Jesus Christ, the Christian ‘really lives in and together with him’.111 Jesus Christ ‘is to be and become your life, so that you do not live to yourself, no longer live yourself, but Christ lives in you’.112 In the process of this awakening, a person becomes conscious of her selfunderstanding’s alienation from God. In response to a divine act of revelation, she becomes conscious of her sin. As we shall now consider, this is very different from becoming conscious of her guilt. It requires her to turn away from her inward dwelling by being drawn into a new life in relationship with God.

IV. Sin-consciousness and Guilt-consciousness It is not possible to grasp the full implications of Kierkegaard’s Christian realism without appreciating a further key element in Climacus’ argument, one which we touched upon in Chapter 1. If a person is to become a Christian, he must become conscious of his alienation from God, that is, of his sin. For Kierkegaard, ‘[t]he consciousness of sin is and remains conditio sine qua non for all [Christianity], and if there were any exemption there would be no becoming [Christians] either’.113 What Climacus and Kierkegaard see with such clarity is that sin-consciousness is profoundly different from guilt-consciousness. The former leads a person to turn away from her proud autonomous existence by being drawn into a new life in relationship with God: a life that does not find fulfilment in individual selfperfection before God but rather in a humble life of relationship with God, in which a person becomes perfect. The latter, by contrast, only serves to alienate a person from God. Whereas guilt-consciousness turns a person inward to dwell on her error, sin-consciousness turns a person outward to God such that her error is dealt with. Unlike guilt-consciousness, sin-consciousness does not serve to compound an individual’s sense of existential failure, and the attendant anxiety 108.  JP 2, 1908 / SKS 24, pp. 459–60 [NB25:35]. 109.  KJN 2, p. 193 / SKS 18, pp. 210–11 [JJ:218] (emphasis original). 110.  CD, p. 261 / SKS 10, p. 274 (emphasis mine). 111.  CD, p. 261 / SKS 10, p. 274. 112.  CD, p. 261 / SKS 10, p. 274; Gal. 2.20. 113.  KJN 2, p. 189 / SKS 18, p. 205 [JJ:205].



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and despair. Rather, it alerts a person to the fact that she exists in a manner that is incommensurate with the way in which God created her to exist. How does a person become conscious of his sin if not by way of an inward self-contemplation?114 What is required is an external ‘power’ to awaken him. ‘This power is the god in time.’115 It is only by becoming conscious of God in the power of his historical presence that a person can receive a consciousness of sin.116 Sin-consciousness and Christ-consciousness are, therefore, interdependent states that can only be constitutive of the Christian’s faith when they are held together.117 On the one hand, a person cannot truly know what it means to be a sinner unless he knows what it means to be a sinner before the God revealed in Jesus Christ. On the other hand, he cannot truly know Christ unless he has the sin-conscious faith to access this truth – the consciousness that, apart from Christ, he is in untruth. Although the pseudonymous Climacus alludes to this interconnection, it is in Kierkegaard’s own writing that we find a much more substantive account of this relationship. For Kierkegaard, sin-consciousness is essentially Christ-centred: ‘The Consciousness of Sin Binds to [Christ].’118 With Luther, he believes that there is something wrong with the Christian who attempts to deal with her sin by drawing inward (becoming homo incurvatus in se), burdening herself with a sense of guilt and despair. This move, he believes, is how the (Christ-less) pagan responds to sin – ‘he descends into melancholia, broods ruminatively on his guilt, and sin perhaps gains more and more power over him, so that in desperation he sinks ever more deeply’.119 The Christian, however, is called to deal with his sin-consciousness by sinking deeper into a humble respect for the eternal God, thereby developing a deeper awareness that it is only God, in Christ, who is his redeemer. That is, the 114.  For Climacus, the individual is ‘unable to gain the consciousness of sin by himself, which is the case with guilt-consciousness, because in guilt-consciousness the subject’s selfidentity is preserved, and guilt-consciousness is a change of the subject within the subject himself. The consciousness of sin, however, is a change of the subject himself, which shows that outside the individual there must be the power that makes clear to him that he has become a person other than he was by coming into existence, that he has become a sinner’ (CUP, p. 584 / SKS 7, p. 532). 115.  CUP, p. 584 / SKS 7, p. 532. 116.  It is because sin-consciousness arises by way of a power that comes from beyond a person’s universal understanding – making him ‘aware of himself in the difference from the universally human’ – that Climacus describes sin-consciousness as ‘the expression for the paradoxical transformation of existence’ (CUP, pp. 583–4 / SKS 7, pp. 531–2). 117. Kierkegaard also views sin-consciousness and love for God as interdependent states. He notes that ‘when a person does not comprehend what a great sinner he is, he cannot love God; and when he does not love God (through the proclamation to him of how much God loves him), he cannot comprehend how great a sinner he is’ (JP 2, 1216 / SKS 27, p. 489 [Papir 410]). 118.  KJN 7, p. 350 / SKS 23, pp. 344 [NB19:22]; KJN 7, p. 447 / SKS 23, p. 439 [NB20:81]. 119.  KJN 7, p. 81 / SKS 23, p. 83 [NB15:118].

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Christian deals with his sin by turning to God and taking refuge in his grace, with a consciousness of his sin as forgiven sin. ‘A [person] reposes in the forgiveness of sins when the thought of God no longer reminds him of the sin, but of the fact that it is forgiven, so that what is past is not a recollection of how much he offended, but of how much he has been forgiven.’120 At the centre of Kierkegaard’s doctrine of sin, we find, yet again, the reality of the God of grace who personally encounters us in history. in faith we receive something that is not given and can never be deduced from the preceding consciousness, for this was the consciousness of sin and the other is assurance of the forgiveness of sins, but this assurance does not result in the same way that knowledge arises with internal consistency out of doubt … [and] someone who conceived it in this way does not have the preceding position (consciousness of sin), but it is a free act.121 Nor is the consciousness of sin an arbitrary [human] act, like doubt is; it is an objective act, because the consciousness of God is immanent within the consciousness of sin. In addition, the consciousness of the forgiveness of sins is linked to an external event, [Christ]’s whole appearance, which is indeed not [external] in the sense of foreign to us, of no concern to us, but [external] as historical.122

With these words, Kierkegaard again dismisses the notion that sin-consciousness is a legal move that a person needs to make in advance in order to participate in a relationship with God. So although he views sin-consciousness as a subjective requirement for the Christian faith, he sees it as one that can only arise through God’s relating to us in Christ. Apart from God, a person can neither know nor love God, and, therefore, cannot become conscious of the sin that opposes God’s love.123

V. Repentance The reason that it is so easy to make the mistake of thinking that individuals are independently responsible for becoming conscious of sin is because it involves a transformation of the individual in response to a reality that cannot be directly observed. Another essential aspect of the Christian faith that is easily 120.  KJN 4, p.  185 / SKS 20, p.  187 [NB2:116]; see also KJN 5, p.  22 / SKS 21, p.  23 [NB6:26]. 121. It is not entirely clear what Kierkegaard is suggesting here. This sentence does, however, seem to make some sense if he is describing the ‘assurance of forgiveness’ as ‘a free act’ because its emergence is not constrained by the limits of one’s immanent reason, but is free for anyone to develop in response to an encounter with Christ. 122.  KJN 3, pp. 181–2 / SKS 19, pp. 185–6 [Not5:23]. 123.  JP 2, 1216 / SKS 27, p. 489 [Papir 410].



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misconstrued in this way is repentance. In accordance with the Western ordo salutis,124 the church has continuously reduced repentance to an orderly step that a person needs to make (in advance) in order to participate in a loving relationship with God, as opposed to a response that a person makes as she is given to become aware of God’s love and thus participate in it. This vision of repentance has arisen by deconstructing the interpersonal dynamic between God and human individuals – by examining the activity of the two sides of this relationship separately – in order to develop a step-by-step guide on how to become a Christian. Contrary to this kind of systematic approach, grounded in what Calvin referred to as legal repentance, Kierkegaard views repentance as a possibility that can only come about when a person encounters God and, in his presence, humbly acknowledges her need for forgiveness – what Calvin referred to as evangelical repentance.125 This is not a routine that a person contemplates in advance, like the repentant speech that the prodigal son prepares for his father in advance of the father’s embrace. Rather, it is the silent sorrow that overcomes a person when she stands face to face with God and realises that she has nothing to contribute, not even an act of repentance.126 It is thus in silent repentance that a person humbly turns to God with a longing for relationship. And when she does so, repentance is ‘the easiest and most natural relation to God’.127 As Kierkegaard’s pseudonym, Judge William writes:128 124. This position, advanced by medieval scholasticism, affirmed a contract between God and the sinner, in which the sinner must repent and have faith if he is to be forgiven and saved. 125. See Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John McNeil, tran. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 1960, 3.3.1–3.3.4. For further discussion of the notion of ‘evangelical repentance’, see my article ‘John Calvin and James Torrance’s Evangelical Vision of Repentance’, in Participatio, Supp. Vol. 3 (2014):  126–47. Arnold Come is an example of someone who associates Kierkegaard’s approach with the ordo salutis. That said, he does not tie Kierkegaard to the traditional Western ordo salutis and rejects an understanding of Kierkegaard’s ordo salutis as sequential on the one hand, or immediately simultaneous on the other. Rather, he describes the order as a ‘circular’ or ‘spiral’ order in which ‘repentance, forgiveness, and new life’ are gone through repeatedly, ‘in such a way that each of the three elements feed upon and enrich the other two’. Nevertheless, by associating Kierkegaard’s account of Christian conversion with a systematic or formulaic order, Come still undermines the interpersonal dynamic between God and humanity, which I regard as fundamental to Kierkegaard’s account of conversion. Come, Kierkegaard as Theologian: Recovering My Self (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997), pp. 261–4. 126. Kierkegaard writes in a journal entry, ‘We ordinary human beings do not have a direct or spontaneous God-relationship … we always need grace beforehand, because even the most sincere beginning is always imperfect compared to the demand of the ideal – consequently it is like a new sin’ (JP 2, 1493 / SKS 25, 223 [NB28:12]). 127.  JP 2, 1419 / SKS 24, p. 180 [NB22:147]. 128. It might seem odd to turn to Judge William for a Christian account of repentance,

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But there is a love with which I love God, and this love has only one expression in language – it is ‘repentance’ [Anger]. If I do not love him in this way, then I do not love him absolutely, for I love out of necessity. As soon as I love freely and love God, then I repent. And if there were no other basis for repentance as the expression of my love of God, it is this – that he has loved me first.129

Although Kierkegaard does not locate the heart of Christian repentance in individual speech or action, he does acknowledge that genuine repentance will entail sorrow over one’s sin – sorrow for a life lived, and to some extent still lived, in offence against God. Furthermore, because he holds human beings personally responsible for sin, he affirms that Christian repentance demands not only the ‘agony of sin-consciousness’ but also the ‘anguish of a contrite conscience’, which, to an extent, means a consciousness of guilt.130 He further describes repentance as the burdening concern that is required by the Gospel’s invitation to ‘Come here to me, all who labour and are burdened, and I will give you rest’ (Mt. 11.28).131 He does not suggest, however, that the individual is to dwell despairingly on her guilt. As a Lutheran, he merely affirms that honest repentance will be characterised by a heartfelt sorrow – by an attitude with which a person turns to God for rest. The penitent who experiences anguish and sorrow, he says, properly understands what it is to pray for rest for the soul, rest in the one and only thought in which there is rest for a penitent, that there is forgiveness; rest in the one and only declaration that can reassure a penitent, that he is forgiven; rest on the one and only ground that can support a penitent.132

Again, however, there is no extent to which the penitent’s sorrow can be seen to counteract his sin. The penitent Christian cannot, for Kierkegaard, be perceived given that one of the points that this chapter is making is that Kierkegaard’s earlier pseudonymous writings do not offer a decisively Christian account of religious existence. This is particularly the case for Judge William who advocates what Joel Rasmussen describes as a ‘bourgeois Christianity of culture’. Rasmussen, Between Irony and Witness: Kierkegaard’s Poetics of Faith, Hope, and Love (New York: T&T Clark, 2005), p. 42. Nonetheless, this does not mean that such earlier writings were not able to advance statements or propositions that were true to Kierkegaard’s understanding of what Christianity is. They were simply missing a decisive appreciation for the unique way in which God relates to us in history, thereby enabling a Christian life. It is for this reason, in particular, that these works fail to recognise what it means to be decisively Christian. 129.  EO II, p. 216 / SKS 3, p. 208. Following this passage, Judge William goes on to stress the importance of a person freely acknowledging his guilt, but sees this choice as one that arises through participation in a loving relationship with God, rather than a prerequisite for this relationship. 130.  SKS 10, p. 269 / CD, p. 264. 131.  SKS 10, p. 269 / CD, pp. 264–5. 132.  CD, p. 265 / SKS 10, p. 270.



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to be paying for his sin with the anguish of a contrite conscience. One could even go so far as to say that any repentant activity on the individual’s part will be so inadequate (as a human act) that it will itself require repentance.133 This is again because, apart from Christ, all human activity falls infinitely short of the glory of God. Objectively speaking, Christian repentance depends wholly upon Christ and what he has achieved for the world in the atonement. Subjectively speaking, repentance transpires by becoming conscious of one’s need for grace in the presence of God.134 Accordingly, ‘the person who believes in the atonement is greater than the most profoundly repentant person’.135 However, as we will now consider in the following chapter, although the penitent Christian can only find redemption in Christ, and although she depends wholly upon the grace of God to become reconciled, this does not mean that her life-practice is irrelevant. For Kierkegaard, the truly repentant Christian does not view God’s saving grace ‘as the new patch on the old garment’. Rather, she appropriates this grace into a life of Christian practice.136

VI. Conclusion For Kierkegaard, the Christian can never be certain that she is decisively Christian because her understanding cannot capture the reality of the divine subject who determines the actuality of her Christian faith.137 This is because, while Christian belief and understanding are crucial for the active Christian existence, they do not constitute the Christian relationship with God. For the Christian, it is the intersubjective relationship with God that decisively distinguishes the Christian’s faith from all immanent forms of religiousness. For Kierkegaard: So it is with the relation to [Christ that a person] tests himself as to whether [Christ] is everything to him, and he says, I am betting everything on it. But I cannot get an immediate certainty about my relation to Christ. Whether I have faith is something I can’t get immediate certainty about – for to believe is precisely this dialectical hovering, which is constantly in fear and trembling yet never despairs; faith is precisely this infinite self-concern that keeps one alert in

133. See KJN 2, p. 166 / SKS, 18, p. 179 [JJ:119]. 134. See CD, p. 64 / SKS 10, p. 73; KJN 4, pp. 67–8 / SKS 20, p. 69 [NB:79]. I would argue that it is slightly misleading for Louis Dupré to describe a person’s need for God as his ‘intervention in the process of redemption’. As he elaborates, ‘Christ will provide the rest, but this one element man must supply in full sincerity: the constantly renewed need for God. The only means for achieving this is an increasingly interiorized consciousness of sin.’ Dupré, Kierkegaard as Theologian (London: Sheed and Ward, 1964), p. 91 (emphasis mine). 135.  KJN 2, p. 168 / SKS 18, p. 181 [JJ:123]. 136.  KJN 7, pp. 74–5 / SKS 23, p. 76 [NB15:109]. 137. See KJN 6, pp. 124–5 / SKS, 22, pp. 127–8 [NB11:204].

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risking everything, this self-concern about whether one really has faith – and behold, this very self-concern is faith.138

For Climacus, the Christian is called to believe that he has faith. He is called to believe that God – who transcends what he is naturally able to work out for himself – is miraculously transforming her existence. If it turns out that there never was a God who was present to him, working in his life, then the Christian’s existence was never anything more than an immanent form of religiousness. However, the Christian does not believe this. He believes that his faith is an expression of his relationship with God in time, with Jesus Christ, who governs him and shapes him in ways that transcend what he can ascertain. And, for Kierkegaard, he believes this because God is with him, enabling him to hold fast to this truth. To the outside observer, defined by his own feeling of independence, this existence makes no sense. The Christian’s faith looks to be a product of her imagination running wild, of parental indoctrination, of misplaced hope; it cannot be recognised as more than a self-perpetuating delusion. However, for the Christian, who consciously shares in a relationship with God, his faith makes sense of his life. It does so because he has encountered God and been awakened to the fact that he lives before the reality of God, who, inconceivably, has established kinship with us in time.

138.  KJN 4, p. 382 / SKS 20, p. 382 [NB5:30]. The emphasis on ‘infinite self-concern’ in this passage could be seen to undermine Kierkegaard’s emphasis on the loving nature of the relationship with God. However, as we shall consider in Chapter 5, Climacus notes that ‘self-love lies at the basis of love’ (PF, p. 48 / SKS 4, p. 253). That is, when a person falls in love with another, she initially does so out of self-love or self-concern. However, as a person becomes passionately interested in the other, she becomes shaped by the other. And, in instances of genuine love, she becomes a self who is overcome by an orientation towards the other.

Chapter 4 C H R I ST IA N P R AC T IC E I N R E L AT IO N SH I P W I T H G O D

Citing Matthew 7.16, Kierkegaard states: By the fruits we know the tree. ‘Grapes are not gathered from thorns or figs from thistles.’1

For Kierkegaard, the question of what it means to become a Christian cannot be separated from the question of what it means to live out a Christian life. Why is a discussion of Christian practice so critical? Kierkegaard understands that a person does not suddenly become a Christian, in a complete sense, either by a miraculous event or a heroic act of human freedom. Rather, Christian conversion involves a formative process of becoming that requires an ongoing commitment to following Christ. Faith is ‘a task for a whole lifetime’, which will never be complete.2 What Kierkegaard has in view, however, is not a progressive journey of spiritual selfdiscovery, self-understanding or self-denial – a journey on which an individual’s new life is built from or develops out of the old. Rather, it is conceived as a transformative journey which is grounded in loving relationship with the God who is not only present with us but also encounters us in Jesus Christ. It involves a growing in one’s love for God that is the antithesis of any self-initiated reflection on the mystery of the eternal beyond. It takes place, quite simply, in and through encountering Jesus Christ within the history of this world. And, in this history, particular human subjects are required to respond decisively and actively to the love of God. ‘Christian love is sheer action.’3 1.  WL, p.  7 / SKS 9, p.  15. Kierkegaard writes: ‘Christian love is the work of love. [Christ]’s love was not an inner feeling, a full heart, etc., but it was the work of love that is his life’ (KJN 6, p. 110 / SKS 22, p. 113 [NB11:187]). 2.  FT, p. 7 / SKS 4, p. 107. 3.  WL, p. 99 / SKS 9, p. 103. For Kierkegaard, as Murray Rae notes, ‘we are saved by grace alone, but salvation means new life, and new life is characterised by discipleship, faithfulness, obedience, works!’ Rae, ‘Kierkegaard, Barth, and Bonhoeffer: Conceptions of the Relation between Grace and Works’, in International Kierkegaard Commentary on For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourself!, ed. Robert L. Perkins (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2002), p. 157.

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This chapter will focus on Kierkegaard’s account of the active Christian life by asking what kind of existence can be expected from a person who is becoming a Christian in this world, taking into account the obstacles and boundaries that will confront her on this journey. The first question that this raises is: how can a person develop a concrete understanding of what it means to live a Christian life? Accordingly, I begin by looking to Kierkegaard’s understanding of what it means for a person to follow Scripture faithfully. Then, after a brief consideration of his emphasis on ‘the single individual’, I shall turn to ask what it means for him to view Jesus Christ as the way – the way to whom Scripture points. Finally, I conclude by looking briefly at some of the dynamics that characterise the Christian life in this world. What we shall find in this chapter is that, for Kierkegaard, it is not easy to become a Christian. If a person genuinely loves God, she will be called to volunteer herself for a life of suffering and restlessness. And even if she struggles to become a Christian, she will find that her Christian profession is fraught with hypocrisy, as she fails to live a life that adequately testifies to her relationship with God. This shortcoming, however, does not cause her to give up hope. Rather, it simply pushes her to turn to the grace of God. Her awareness of her shortcoming helps her to realise that it is only in the light of what God has done and continues to do for us that she can participate in a loving relationship with God. As we saw in the previous chapter, this is what it means to hold sin-consciousness and Christ-consciousness together. With this dual consciousness, a person trusts in God’s love and responds to God with a life lived in gratitude and worship.

I. Following Scripture Faithfully To become a Christian, a person needs to know what is expected of the Christian in this world. For Kierkegaard, this requires a person to turn to the word of God as it is revealed in Scripture, particularly in the New Testament. A person must come to know both God and God’s will from Scripture, and he must strive to conform to Scripture’s message, as it addresses him in his life before God. By so doing, she will find herself being discipled in the process of becoming a Christian. Accordingly, Kierkegaard immersed himself in Scripture – as a thinker devoted to proclaiming what Christianity is and what Christianity requires of us. This gave him enormous clarity on some issues, but also left him with a radical uncertainty on others, prompting him to turn prayerfully to God for guidance. While Kierkegaard did not devote extensive time to considering the more complex questions of exegesis and hermeneutics, he does offer some clear guidance as to how the Christian should approach and relate herself to Scripture. For him, as we shall now see, Scripture is to be read as a letter from a beloved. This letter is, in many respects, easy to understand, providing clear ethical guidance. Yet it is also highly challenging, prompting the reader, on the one hand, to stand in awe of the holiness of the beloved, and, on the other, to turn to the beloved for guidance in the face of uncertainty.



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a. Reading a Letter from a Beloved In the wake of Hegel, Christian scholarship in Denmark had welcomed and, indeed, embraced a detached and critical reading of the Bible. Against this, Kierkegaard insisted that Scripture should be read ‘in the same way’ that one would read a letter from a beloved.4 He prescribed that the Christian should give herself time to be ‘alone with God’s Word’ and should occupy herself with her relation to God.5 She must ‘not concern [her]self objectively with the letter from the beloved’.6 That is, she must not primarily concern herself with a speculative analysis of the biblical texts (the letter), but with hearing the personal message that God (the beloved) speaks to her through Scripture. As David Cain rightly notes, ‘how one reads is decisive in determining what one reads’.7 And, for Kierkegaard, what the Christian is supposed to be reading is the word of God, something that historical–scientific scholarship is not in a position to discover.8 The ‘historical-critical method’, as Murray Rae notes, ‘harbours prejudicial assumptions which are critically determinative of the results it achieves’.9 For Kierkegaard, these prejudicial assumptions critically determine that a person does not read the Bible as God’s word. To read God’s Word, a person must view Scripture as the object of faith (Troens Gjenstand) and must read it with the eyes of faith (Troens Øie).10 By so doing, she can come to read Scripture as an ‘individual who has received this letter by God or from God’.11 That is, she can come to read Scripture earnestly, as a love letter through which God speaks to her.12 To read Scripture in this way, Kierkegaard proposes, a person must read it ‘without a commentary’; indeed, he describes this as the ‘Principal Rule’.13 Like so many of Kierkegaard’s vehement statements, this comment needs to be taken cum grano salis, keeping in mind his particular concern. Richard Bauckham puts 4.  FSE, p. 26 / SKS 13, p. 54. 5.  FSE, p. 32 / SKS 13, pp. 58–9. Scripture is to be read, as Paul Martens aptly notes, like ‘a letter that – much like the way that Jesus taught the disciples to pray (Matt 6.7) – is read in private, behind locked doors’. Martens, ‘Kierkegaard and the Bible’, in The Oxford Handbook to Kierkegaard, eds George Pattison and John Lippitt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 158. 6.  KJN 7, pp. 153–4 n. a / SKS 23, p. 151 [NB16:84a]. 7. David Cain, ‘“Death Comes in Between”: Reflections on Kierkegaard’s For Self-Examination’, Kierkegaardiana 15 (1991): 71. 8.  FSE, p. 33 / SKS 13, p. 60. 9. Rae, Kierkegaard’s Vision of the Incarnation, p. 185. 10.  JP 4, 3916 / SKS 27, p. 303 [Papir 306]. 11.  KJN 7, pp. 450–1 / SKS 23, p. 442 [NB20:88]. 12.  FSE, p. 36 / SKS 13, pp. 62–3. 13.  KJN 7, p. 153 / SKS 23, p. 151 [NB16:84] (emphasis original). Kierkegaard says this with regard to the New Testament. However, it is fair to assume that he would also see this rule to apply to a person’s reading of the Old Testament.

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it well when he notes: ‘Kierkegaard’s attitude to biblical scholarship is a necessary over-reaction, necessary as a corrective but an overreaction all the same.’14 Kierkegaard’s concern here is that commentaries were encouraging an objective reading of the Bible that focused on the intellectual question ‘What precisely is the meaning and context of this biblical passage?’ in such a way as to disregard the personal and existential question ‘What is God saying to and asking of me through and by means of the scriptural passage?’15 Kierkegaard observes that, under the pressure of scholarly doubt, orthodox Christians were continually studying God’s message without appropriating this message to their daily lives. For him, this pointed to the fact that ‘they seem completely to forget that God still exists [er til]’.16 That is, orthodox Christians had become so caught up with examining the letter that they had forgotten about the one who sent the letter. In particular, they were acting as though there was no God addressing them through the words of Scripture, calling them to faith and action. The scholarship that so-called orthodoxy was pursuing, Kierkegaard observes, ‘makes God’s Word into something impersonal, objective, a doctrine – instead of its being the voice of God that you shall hear’.17 As such, he describes ‘Christian scholarship’ as ‘the human race’s enormous invention in order to protect itself against the N.T., in order to ensure that a person can continue to be a Christian without the N.T. getting altogether too close to him’.18 By keeping themselves removed from Scripture, scholars were undermining the possibility of their being affected, challenged or provoked by its message. Such detachment stops readers from allowing God’s word to speak into their lives, to inspire repentance and discipleship. To know the true meaning of Scripture, for Kierkegaard, a person must be given to relate to Scripture faithfully. This requires a person to devote herself passionately to Scripture in response to the love of God. By so doing, a person will come to engage with Scripture with a new mind: she will come to relate to Scripture by way of ‘a μετάβασις εἰς ἄλλο γένος [shifting from one genus to another], a leap, whereby I break the chain of reasoning and define a qualitative newness’.19 In this respect, Kierkegaard’s hermeneutic very much finds itself in alignment with the Anselmian principle of faith seeking understanding, although it is perhaps better associated with a love seeking understanding. Accordingly, the task of Christian scholarship should always be to facilitate and complement a faithful reception of Scripture. At this point, it should be made clear that Kierkegaard does not altogether neglect the fact that scholarship is needed to assist a faithful reading of Scripture. 14. Bauckham, James: Wisdom of James, Disciple of Jesus the Sage (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), p. 8. 15. See KJN 7, pp. 153–4 / SKS 23, p. 151 [NB16:84] 16.  JP 1, 214 / SKS 24, p. 445 [NB25:11]. 17.  FSE, p. 39 / SKS 13, p. 65. 18.  KJN 7, p. 245 / SKS 23, p. 241 [NB17:102]. 19.  KJN 6, P. 36 / SKS 22. p. 40 [NB11:63].



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The Bible needs to be translated and, at times, carefully interpreted – as is evident in Kierkegaard’s own careful engagement with Scripture.20 However, drawing on the metaphor of Scripture as a love letter that needs to be translated, Kierkegaard notes that once a person ‘is finished with the translation’ ‘he reads his beloved’s letter’.21 Indeed, he goes so far as to describe the ‘scholarly preliminaries’ as a ‘necessary evil’ that are required as a means of bringing a person to the point where he can read ‘the letter from his beloved’.22 The problem with the scholarly preliminaries is that they stall the process of Christian becoming by taking time – time that could be spent hearing and actively responding to the message. As such, for Kierkegaard, when the Christian spends time on the scholarly preliminaries, he should feel an urgency to get through this process quickly so that he can get on to responding to Scripture. The Christian should feel the kind of urgency that a lover would feel if he were to receive a love letter from a beloved that was in need of translation. As soon as he has heard the message, the Christian should be off at once to fulfil his beloved’s wish.23 One more point that the Christian needs to bear in mind when reading Scripture as a letter from a beloved is that Scripture is not merely a letter that has been left behind 2,000 years ago. Kierkegaard describes it as an ‘unfortunate confusion’ when, on a scholarly reading of the New Testament, people are given to ‘think that God is far away, that it is 1800 years since [Christ] died’.24 Scripture is to be read as a letter from the living God who continues to speak to its faithful readers. Accordingly, the Christian can read Scripture with the knowledge that God is with her in her faithful reading, and is there to help guide her in her reading. Scripture should not merely be read as a record of God’s love but as a living testimony to the loving God who continues to be present alongside us. b. The Perspicuity of Scripture Kierkegaard’s stance on hermeneutics begs the question: Does this not allow the subjective reader of Scripture too much freedom to interpret the Bible? Commenting on Kierkegaard’s critique of historical–critical scholarship, Joel Rasmussen points out that ‘surely one is justified in asking whether it is not possible to appropriate the Bible in just about any fashion one likes’.25 This is a 20. Kierkegaard makes sure to mention that he does not set out to ‘disparage scholarship’ per se – ‘no, far from it’. Rather, he sought to challenge scholars to remember that ‘when you are reading God’s Word in a scholarly way, with a dictionary etc., then you are not reading God’s Word’ (FSE, pp. 28–9 / SKS 13, p. 56). 21.  FSE, p. 27 / SKS 13, p. 55. 22.  FSE, p. 27 / SKS 13, p. 55. 23.  FSE, pp. 27–8 / SKS 13, pp. 55–6. 24.  KJN 5, pp. 338–9 / SKS 21, p. 328 [NB10:140]. 25.  Joel Rasmussen, ‘Kierkegaard’s Biblical Hermeneutics’, p. 262. Rasmussen continues: ‘then we might also wonder whether there is any point to talking hermeneutics at all (where the goal is to arrive at the most fitting interpretation – one where it makes sense to say

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fair comment, and there is no shortage of passages in Kierkegaard’s writings that beg this response. Again, however, such passages need to be taken cum grano salis – with an awareness of what precisely Kierkegaard is critiquing. They need to be read with a hesitancy to take ‘Kierkegaard’s polemical extravagance’ at face value.26 Is Kierkegaard able to avoid this criticism? The first thing to mention is that, for Kierkegaard, the major problem facing Christianity in Denmark was not that too many people were misinterpreting the Bible. The problem was not that the Bible was too difficult to understand. Rather, the problem was that ‘Christians’ were not responding to the straightforward messages of Scripture. Instead, they were wasting their time studying and contemplating the (less essential) complexities of Scripture. What made this situation worse was that biblical scholars and theologians – who were supposed to be taking God’s word seriously – were perpetuating the problem. They were devoting themselves to pondering the obscurities of Scripture and failing to be shaped by the passages that were so easy to understand. Caricaturing such scholars, Kierkegaard notes that they show their admiration for the New Testament by attempting to ‘flatter’ it; they describe it as ‘so wonderfully delightful, so unfathomably sublime, etc.’.27 For Kierkegaard, this constituted a form of procrastination. Scholarship was distracting people from taking the decisive steps forward in discipleship – steps that were necessary for the process of becoming Christian. Under these circumstances, ‘we human beings, we are really rather cunning rogues’: ‘we pretend that we cannot understand it [the New Testament] because we understand very well that if it could be understood immediately, we would immediately have to act in conformity with it’.28 In response to this dynamic, Kierkegaard saw it as a part of his task (in making people aware of what Christianity essentially is) to help people recognise and admit the extent to which the New Testament is easy to understand.29 The complexity of the New Testament does not provide an adequate excuse for Christians to fail to respond to its call. As Richard Bauckham notes, there ‘are enough perfectly clear ones [biblical texts] to keep one busy without having to wait for the conclusions of biblical research before one can live as a Christian’.30 Kierkegaard asks with rhetorical bite,

interpretation X is better than Y), and say instead that “interpretation” is nothing but free and imaginative play and deferral’ (p. 262). 26. John Elrod, Kierkegaard and Christendom (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), p. 97. Kierkegaard frequently makes overstatements that are meant to provoke the reader to ask more about the point he is trying to make. As such, the reader of Kierkegaard should be careful to read too much into such statements as they immediately appear. 27.  KJN 7, p. 245 / SKS 23, p. 242 [NB17:102]. 28.  KJN 7, p. 245 / SKS 23, p. 242 [NB17:102]. 29.  KJN 7, p. 245 / SKS 23, p. 242 [NB17:102]. 30. Bauckham, James, p. 7. Bauckham’s commentary on James is one of the few pieces of biblical scholarship to take Kierkegaard seriously. In this work, he includes quotations from Kierkegaard in the opening to each of his chapters. Also, he starts his study with an entire



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Put the New Testament in front of you. Read it. Can you deny, dare you deny, that what you read in it about renouncing everything, giving up the world and being mocked and spat upon like your Lord and Master, can you deny, dare you deny, that it is so easy to understand, indescribably easy, that you do not need a lexicon or handbooks or anybody else’s help in order to understand it?31

For Kierkegaard, the general perspicuity of the New Testament should be sufficient to stop faithful readers of Scripture from having too much poetic license. As such, he did not think it was too risky to insist upon a subjective and personal reading of Scripture. For the Christian in Denmark, equipped with a Danish translation of the Bible, there was so much that was easy to understand. Again, the problem was that Scripture was not inspiring faithful action. So, for him, the question that Danish Christians needed to start asking themselves was not ‘What can I learn from a systematic reading of Scripture?’ but rather ‘How can I follow God’s word?’ Kierkegaard was concerned about waking Christians up to leave their nets, to take up their crosses and follow Jesus. Kierkegaard wanted the selfproclaiming ‘Christian’ readers of Scripture to feel a sense of urgency to ‘Go and do likewise’ (Lk. 10.37).32 c. The Uncertainty of Scripture While Kierkegaard asserts that Scripture gives the faithful reader clear guidance on matters of Christian discipleship, he was also very aware that there are crucial elements to Scripture’s message that are profoundly complex and scandalous to human reason. Aside from the scandal of the Incarnation, Kierkegaard also acknowledges that there are inconsistencies and discrepancies in the Bible. Indeed, at one point Kierkegaard notes in a journal entry entitled ‘A New Proof of Bible’s Divinity’ that ‘Precisely because God wants Holy Scripture to be the object of faith and an offense to any other way of looking at it, it is precisely for that reason that these discrepancies have been carefully contrived (which will in any case be resolved into agreements in eternity): that is why it is in bad Greek, etc., etc.’33 So, despite Kierkegaard’s insistence on the perspicuity of Scripture, he was also clear that Scripture will leave even the most faithful of readers with a radical sense of uncertainty. prologue acknowledging Kierkegaard’s critique of biblical scholarship – a critique that he sees as being just as relevant today. 31.  KJN 5, p. 338 / SKS 21, p. 327 [NB10:140]. 32.  FSE, p. 41 / SKS 13, p. 61. 33.  KJN 7, p. 440 / SKS 23, p. 432 [NB20:70]; see also JP 4, 3860 / SKS 24, pp. 148–9 [NB22:86]. Kyle Roberts helpfully clarifies Kierkegaard’s point here, writing: ‘It seems odd to speak of God “intending” imperfections in Scripture; Kierkegaard’s point is that God’s provision of revelation did not necessitate the circumvention of the ambiguities of finitude.’ Roberts, Emerging Prophet, p. 24 n. 46.

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Such uncertainty, however, does not, in and of itself, call the reader into further study. While this might be beneficial eventually, Kierkegaard thinks that such uncertainty should first prompt the faithful reader to turn to God for counsel. And this may well lead her to decide that such uncertainty is not in need of explanation. Why? Because the goal of the Christian faith is not a systematic understanding of the Bible – indeed, such pursuits can end up being unfaithful to God. Rather, the goal of the Christian life is right relationship with God, and the Christian should be well aware that life in this relationship will require her to embrace radical uncertainty. It is within this uncertain relationship that she becomes impassioned to hear God’s word and respond with an active life of obedience. As such, the faithful reader will not find her faith in God called into question when she comes across (apparent) discrepancies or contradictions in the Bible. Why not? Because the Christian’s direct relationship to the Bible is incommensurate with and secondary to her love of God. The problem, however, is that so often when the uncertainty of the Bible is seen to be an obstacle for the Christian, she will turn first to the powers of systematic investigation to help her uncover the truth of Christianity in Scripture. Under these circumstances, it becomes the speculative dogmatician, with the most systematic reading of Scripture, who can claim to have best accessed the truth of Christianity. In reaction to this modernist hermeneutic, as Hugh Pyper rightly notes, Kierkegaard continually sought ‘to recover the sense of the Bible as scandal’.34 Pyper continues: ‘The very fact that its contents are disputed and disrupted is to him [Kierkegaard] paradoxically part of its power.’35 Reading Scripture faithfully, for Kierkegaard, calls into question the minds, the beliefs, and the pride of its readers. It exposes the inadequacy of their possessive pursuit of understanding. And, by so doing, it generates ‘the scandal of uncertainty which’, Pyper notes, ‘is the condition of faith’.36 Why is it the condition of faith? Because this uncertainty calls readers to turn away from themselves – away from their own reason – and turn prayerfully towards God to enable them to know God in truth. So, for Kierkegaard, the Bible should be read with humility – a willingness ‘to comprehend that one cannot comprehend it’.37 This does not mean that one should read Scripture with a fideism that is blind to its discrepancies. Rather, Scripture is to be embraced in all its offensiveness, as something that does not bend to the wiles of modern systematic reading. The faithful interpreter of Scripture is called to engage with the Bible in a way that is true to its nature. She is called to read Scripture as a witness to the living God, as a letter through which God speaks to her, transforms her and draws her to himself. Accordingly, Scripture is to be read prayerfully, with a readiness to turn to God for understanding. O God, you give your Word as a gift – that you do, Infinitely Sublime One, and we human beings have nothing to give in return. And if you find only some 34. Pyper, The Joy of Kierkegaard, p. 22. 35. Pyper, The Joy of Kierkegaard, p. 22. 36. Pyper, The Joy of Kierkegaard, p. 50. 37.  KJN 5, p. 70 / SKS 21, p. 68 [NB6:93].



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willingness in the single individual, you are promptly at hand and are, first of all, the one who with more than human – indeed, with divine, patience sits and spells out the Word with the single individual so that he may understand it aright; and then you are the one who, again with more than human – indeed, with divine – patience takes him by the hand, as it were, and helps him when he strives to act according to it – you, our Father in heaven.38

II. The Single Individual Perhaps the most common criticism of Kierkegaard is that he is too individualistic. Such a criticism becomes particularly pointed in Christian circles, where it is understood that human beings were created for loving fellowship with God and neighbour. In reaction to this critique, it is all too tempting for the defender of Kierkegaard to shy away from or play down his emphasis on the role of the single individual. However, to do so would be to neglect a central element in his thought, particularly when considering his account of becoming a Christian. There is a certain sense in which Kierkegaard, quite simply, is an individualist: ‘[F]rom the Christian point of view’, he writes, ‘the single individual … is the decisive category, and it will also become decisive for the future of Christianity.’39 This point, however, needs very careful qualification lest we encourage an easy dismissal of Kierkegaard here. We should also acknowledge that Kierkegaard was well aware that his emphasis on the single individual would attract criticism. But, for him, living in the midst of Christendom, fear of individualism had itself become the problem. It was enabling persons to escape the pressure and strenuousness of individual responsibility before God. He remarks rhetorically: we are clever, we have discovered – just imagine how clever, how inscrutable! – we have discovered that to want to be the single individual (who appeals only to God) is selfishness, detestable and heartless selfishness. Should I then be such an egotist? Pfui! – especially since by wanting to be the single individual I would lose all earthly benefits, too; whereas by being hearty, hearty in the company of others, I gain all the earthly benefits and also am loved as a lovable, hearty person.40

38.  FSE, p. 14 / SKS 13, p. 44. 39.  PV, p.  121 / SKS 16, p.  101. Elsewhere, Kierkegaard describes the category of the single individual as ‘precisely the principle of [Christianity]’ (KJN 4, p.  87 / SKS 20, p.  88 [NB:123]). He also writes: ‘“The single individual”: with this category the cause of [Christianity] stands or falls’ (KJN 4, p. 281 / SKS 20, p. 281 [NB3:77]). 40.  JP 2, 2044 / SKS 24, p.  449 [NB25:18]. He also remarks: ‘we have fabricated the notion that to think about oneself is – just imagine how sly! – vanity, morbid vanity (which it may indeed be in many cases, but not when it is a matter of letting God’s Word have power over oneself)’ (FSE, p. 36 / SKS 13, p. 63).

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Kierkegaard saw himself as someone who was committed to the ‘single individual, with polemical aim at the numerical, the crowd, etc.’.41 As he saw it, it is much easier to fade into the crowd than it is to stand out as the single individual before God. When this happens, the dynamic of the crowd dilutes any sense of individual responsibility before God and allows the prevailing ways of the world to distort a person’s becoming a Christian.42 The crowd deceives the individual into thinking that becoming a Christian is a part of the world-historical process. Danish Hegelianism was fuelling this deception. Figures such as J. P. Mynster and H. L. Martensen were seeking to wed Christianity to national culture, in order to further establish Christendom. By so doing, they were promoting the ‘confusion that whole states, countries, nations, kingdoms are Christian’.43 On Kierkegaard’s analysis of Christendom, becoming a Christian involved merging ‘into God through a pantheistic fading away’: merging ‘into the divine ocean through the blotting out of all individual characteristics’.44 Against this backdrop 41.  PV, p. 18 / SKS 13, p. 25. 42.  Kierkegaard contrasts the category of the single individual with the ‘animal category’, which is grounded in the collective. To be able to hide within the crowd, as a sheep within a flock, ‘make[s] life easier’ by providing a ‘comparative criterion’ which encourages a person to ‘[procure] earthly benefits’ (JP 2, 2044 / SKS 24, p.  449 [NB25:18]). For example, if a person watches her fellow Christians embracing earthly benefits, it will be much easier for her to justify embracing earthly benefits for herself. In response to this observation, one could easily argue that this goes both ways. To witness a fellow Christian resisting worldly temptation, can help others to resist such temptation. In Kierkegaard’s particular situation, however, he felt that the former was much more common than the latter. Yet, I think we need to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater (as some of Kierkegaard’s overstatements would have us do). It is quite clear from Scripture that the witness of the Christian community – of the body of Christ – is critical for the future of Christianity. At some points, Kierkegaard does acknowledge this. For example, he is happy to embrace the Augsburg Confession’s definition of the church as ‘the communion [Samfund] of saints where the word is rightly taught and the sacraments rightly administered’ (JP 1, 600 / SKS 24, p.  324 [NB24:7]). The problem with his context, however, is that congregations neglected the fact that the church is a communion of saints who must follow the Christian message. For a helpful account of Kierkegaard’s more positive appreciation of the Christian church, see Michael Plekon, ‘Before the Storm: Kierkegaard’s Theological preparation for the Attack on the Church’, Faith and Philosophy 21:1 (2004), pp. 45–64, written in response to Bruce Kirmmse’s account of Kierkegaard’s resistance to the church, ‘The Thunderstorm: Kierkegaard’s Ecclesiology’, Faith and Philosophy 17:1 (2000), pp. 87–102. 43.  JP 2, 2056 / SKS 25, p.  398 [NB30:19]. In response to Kierkegaard, Martensen contended Kierkegaard’s Christianity was in no way a social faith, ‘but a private religion pure and simple, a Christianity in which the Christian Church and the activity of the Holy Spirit has been left out’. H. L. Martensen, Berlingske Tidende, December 28, 1854; cited and translated by Bruce Kirmmse in ‘The Thunderstorm: Kierkegaard’s Ecclesiology’, p. 89. 44.  KJN 1, p. 250 / SKS 17, p. 259 [DD:131]. According to Kierkegaard, ‘Hegel basically makes [human] beings pagans, makes them into an animal race endowed with reason. For



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of Christendom, Stephen Backhouse remarks: ‘Kierkegaard’s individualism offers a route to healthy inter-personal relationship and an alternative to the idolatrous deification of the nation or of the group that any Christian account of human society needs to take seriously.’45 As we can see, Kierkegaard arrives at his position not by armchair theological speculation but by observing what was going on in the Danish Church. He observes that ‘being a Christian [has] almost become synonymous with being a human being. We are not far from assuming that Christians breed Christians.’46 To address this confusion, Kierkegaard set out to introduce Christianity into Christendom. For him, this required stating what, for him, was obvious: no one is born into the Christian faith, and no one is born possessing an inherent union with God. A person must become a Christian through a process of individual transformation. As we have seen, this transformation is unique and thus qualitatively distinct from any other process of natural–historical human becoming precisely because it takes place in a personal relationship with God.47 Becoming a Christian distinguishes a person from the human race; it means that he ‘has become something in the world’.48 And he will experience this uniqueness by noticing that his response to the Gospel will isolate him from the crowd and set him apart from the progression of the natural–historical world.49 As a Christian, the single individual ‘is alone, alone in the whole world, alone face to face with God’.50 In isolation from the world, the single individual must strive to take responsibility for her life ‘in obedience to God, fearing and loving him, to take the side of God against men’.51 Without the ‘true primitivity’ that defines the single individual, Kierkegaard asserts, ‘it is impossible to become Christian’.52 Indeed, Kierkegaard describes ‘the formula for being a Christian’ as being a single individual who turns personally to God to relate herself to God.53 What precisely is it that makes this solitude so critical for becoming a Christian? The moments in which God encounters a person in history, thereby transforming in an animal race “the single individual” is always lower than the “race”. The [human] race has the peculiarity that, precisely because every individual is created in the image of God, “the single individual” is higher than the “race”’ (KJN 7, p. 61 / SKS 23, p. 63 [NB15:91]). 45. Backhouse, Kierkegaard’s Critique of Christian Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 162. 46.  JP 2, 2054 / SKS 25, p. 378 [NB29:117]. 47.  JP 2, 2080 / SKS 25, pp. 289–94 [NB33:50]. 48.  CD, p. 41 / SKS 10, p. 52. 49. For Kierkegaard, ‘[t]he world, as is natural, speaks about this world, simply and solely about this world, does not know and does not wish to know that there is another world – another world would indeed be a perilous discovery for “this world”. The Gospel speaks eternally about this other world, about eternity’ (JFY, p. 150 / SKS 16, p. 200). 50.  KJN 4, p. 281 / SKS 20, p. 281 [NB3:77]. 51.  JP 3, 2649 / Pap IX B 63:13. 52.  JP 2, 2080 / SKS 25, pp. 289–94 [NB33:50]. 53.  JP 2, 2081 / SKS 26, p. 305 [NB33:57].

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her, are interpersonal: they are between God and the single individual. In this interrelating, a person is given to receive the truth from God who is both ‘the truth and its middle term [Mellembestemmelse]’.54 That is, God is both the truth and also the only one who personally mediates the truth (namely, God himself) to the single individual. When this happens, God encounters a person Spirit to spirit, awakening him spiritually. In the event(s) of this mediatory encounter, the particularity of the single individual is distinct from her surrounding environment or community.55 The new consciousness that is given to an individual, when becoming a Christian, cannot be shared by the community but is particular to the single individual within the sphere of her own subjective existence. It is only the single individual who experiences fear and trembling before God. It is only the single individual who becomes conscious of her sin. And it is only the individual who becomes conscious of her salvation in Jesus Christ and becomes drawn to accept Christ’s invitation to follow him.56 It is the single individual ‘by himself before God’ who ‘make[s] up his mind about his conviction’.57 Again, therefore, Christianity is not something that one person can directly communicate to another without that other actually encountering God and becoming a Christian for herself. All this, of course, does not mean that the single individual cannot participate in a Christian community. What it does mean is that an individual must not be tricked into thinking that it is the nominally ‘Christian’ community or nation – with its established cultures and traditions – that is determinative of his Christian life. When these latter influences are allowed to shape the individual Christian, they not only dilute and water down the process of becoming a Christian, but falsify its principles. ‘Christianly understood’, he says, such influences are ‘the most dangerous poison’, establishing a form of Christianity that ‘not only does not save but kills’.58 The Christian life, therefore, must be grounded in an individual devotion to the God who reveals himself through Scripture and in Christ. That said, when a collective of individuals become devoted to God and become shaped by God’s love, God creates a loving Christian community. Indeed, Kierkegaard challenges the suggestion that there can be a truly loving relationship between two individuals that is not first grounded in each individual’s loving relationship to God.59 For Kierkegaard, ‘[e]ach one individually, before he relates in love to the beloved must first relate to God and God’s requirement.’60 In this community of individuals, ‘[t]o love God is to love oneself truly; to help another person to love God truly is to love another person; to be helped by another person

54.  PV, p. 111 / SKS 16, p. 91. 55.  PV, p. 121 / SKS 16, p. 101. 56.  SUD, p. 120 / SKS 11, p. 231. 57.  JP 2, 1996 / Pap VII–1 B 158:3. 58.  JP 3, 2920 / SKS 27, p. 656 [Papir 553]. 59.  WL, pp. 108–12 / SKS 9, pp. 114–16. 60.  WL, p. 112 / SKS 9, p. 116.



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to love God is to be loved.’61 For Kierkegaard, God is the ‘source of all love in heaven and on earth … so that one who loves is what he is by being in you!’62 And when individuals are given to love by the God who is love, they become a part of a loving Christian community. God unites individuals as he ‘creates saints (the communion of saints) out of sinners’.63 Those who become Christian, as single individuals, will find themselves united with one another in their individual lives of discipleship. This is not because they are all a part of the same cultural phenomenon but because they are each given to correspond to the one truth and the one love of God.64

III. Christ is the Way The Holy Scriptures are the wayside sign [Veiviseren], Christ is the way.65

The absolute telos for the Christian, her eternal happiness, is right relationship with God. Therefore, there is nothing she would rather do than participate in and live out this relationship. The question at the forefront of her mind is ‘How can I live my life in obedience to God?’ For Kierkegaard, this question not only concerns what it means to be Christian but what it means to be human. Human beings have been created for fellowship with God. So, when a person finds herself torn between the call of the Gospel and the call of nature, this does not point to a conflict between her faith and her humanity but between her faith and her sin; it points to ‘the battle of the spirit with flesh and blood’.66 The problem that confronts the Christian is that the choice between following the Gospel and following her sinful nature is not obvious. The tyranny of flesh and blood is such that it distorts and confuses human perception. As a result, the human subject needs a more direct guidance as to how she should live before God. For Kierkegaard, she needs Scripture. As the above quote indicates, Scripture is also pointing to someone who is much more fundamental for revealing what it is to be human: Jesus Christ who is the way.67 61.  WL, p. 107 / SKS 9, p. 111 (emphasis in original). 62.  WL, p. 3 / SKS 9, p. 12. 63.  KJN 2, p. 96 / SKS 18, p. 104 [FF:154]. 64. Thinking about the way in which one idea can unite individuals, Kierkegaard writes: ‘[w]hen individuals (each one individually) are essentially and passionately related to an idea and together are essentially related to the same idea, the relation is optimal and normative. Individually the relation separates them (each one has himself for himself), and ideally it unites them’ (TA, p. 62 / SKS 8, p. 60). 65.  KJN 2, p. 105 / SKS 20, p. 105 [NB:161]. 66.  JP 1, 565 / SKS 23, p.  32 [Papir 491] (emphasis original). To put this quote in context, Kierkegaard is here describing ‘Christianity in the New Testament [a]s the battle of the spirit with flesh and blood.’ 67. For Kierkegaard, ‘[t]he words of Scripture, even according to the concepts of the

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What does it mean to suggest that Jesus Christ is the way? Two things. First, it means that, as the one who establishes union between God and an individual human being, Jesus Christ is the sui generis mediator of right relationship with God. As the God–human, he is the way to this relationship. Moreover, he is not only a teacher who only points to a truth, like a Socratic midwife, but the teacher who is the eternal truth (God) in his very being. Second, Jesus Christ is the one who calls persons to correspond to the truth that he is himself. He is the only one to have lived sinlessly in the fullness of relationship with God. As such, he has passed the ‘examination in obedience’.68 He, therefore, lives as the prototype [Forbilledet] for Christian existence. As the God–human, he blesses the world with the foremost revelation of what it looks like for the love of God to be present in this world. And, by walking with us in the lowliness of this world, Jesus ‘leav[es] footprints for the person who want[s] to join him, who then might become an imitator’.69 In these two respects, Christ is the one in whom ‘God is man’s goal and criterion’.70 But what distinguishes him from most other human goals – be they happiness, virtue or resignation – is that he encounters individuals personally and calls them to follow him. This divine truth cannot be possessed by the human mind. Rather, the truth, as also our epistemic access to it, is identified with the person of Christ. He is both the truth and the way to the truth. For Kierkegaard, ‘we human beings, even if we are of the truth, are still alongside the truth; when we walk side by side with the man who is the Truth, when the Truth is the criterion, we are still like children alongside a giant; in the moment of decision we still remain – accomplices’.71 a. Following Christ The demonstration of Christianity really lies in imitation.72

Kierkegaard was continually questioning whether Christianity actually existed in Denmark. He struggled to see its existence being demonstrated in lives of imitation. For him, an individual cannot become decisively Christian without strictest orthodoxy, are at their maximum Jesus’ own words’ (BA, p. 64 / SKS 15, p. 188). With these words, Paul Martens points out: ‘Kierkegaard overtly clarifies his “canon within the canon”.’ Martens, ‘Authority, Apostleship, and the Difference between Kierkegaard’s Old and New Testaments’, in International Kierkegaard Commentary on The Book on Adler, ed. Robert L. Perkins (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2008), p. 130. 68.  PC, p. 183 / SKS 12, p. 183. Anti-Climacus writes: ‘he passed it at every moment until his death upon the cross … he has passed his test, has developed the prototype, is now on high; it is just the same as when someone has passed his test and now as one who finished is occupied in guiding others’ (PC, pp. 183–84 / SKS 12, p. 183). 69.  PC, p. 238 / SKS 12, p. 232. 70.  SUD, p. 114 / SKS 11, p. 226. 71.  CD, p. 278 / SKS 10, p. 298 (Jn. 18.37). 72.  FSE, p. 68 / SKS 13, p. 90 (emphasis original).



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visibly struggling to follow Jesus Christ; an individual cannot become a Christian without experiencing sacrifice and persecution, which will visibly set him apart from the rest of the world, as it did for Jesus and his disciples. To be clear, Kierkegaard did not think that a life of imitation could directly demonstrate Christianity to the world. But he did think that a person could not become a Christian without showing evidence of being Christ-like. This raises the question as to how Kierkegaard understood the order of the relationship between faith and imitation. Kierkegaard does not provide a straightforward, systematic response to this question. Indeed, he answers this question in a number of different ways throughout his corpus. Generally speaking, however, he seems to view faith and imitation as reciprocal. He writes: We can put faith first and imitation second, inasmuch as it is necessary for me to have in faith that which I am to imitate. We can put imitation first and faith second, inasmuch as it is necessary that I, by some action which is marked in some measure by conformity to the Christian ethic (the unconditioned), collide with the world in such a way that I am brought into the situation and the situational tension in which there can first be any real question of becoming a believer.73

If, however, we press Kierkegaard to give precedence to one over the other, he appears to give priority to faith. Following Luther, he acknowledges the following order: ‘Christ is the gift to which faith corresponds. Then he is the prototype – to which imitation corresponds.’74 Yet Kierkegaard does not suggest that becoming a Christian involves an initial period of a non-imitating faith. Rather, the faith of the Christian is an active and living faith; a person does not become a Christian without, to some extent, becoming an imitator. Irrespective of how exactly we interpret the order of faith and imitation, Kierkegaard is clear about one thing: both imitation and faith follow after grace and, therefore, follow ‘as a fruit of gratitude’.75 Faith and imitation are a response to Jesus Christ’s gracious call to repentance. Jesus encounters persons as one who ‘stands at the goal, turns toward the believers, and stretches out his arms’ calling the believer to walk towards his loving embrace, as a mother does when teaching her child to walk.76 In this inter73.  JP 2, 1880 / SKS 24, p. 20 [NB21:16]. 74.  JP 2, 1908 / SKS 24, p. 460 [NB25:35] (emphasis added). He then adds: ‘Still more accurately one may say: (1) imitation in the direction of decisive action whereby the situation for becoming a Christian comes into existence; (2) Christ as gift – faith; (3) imitation as the fruit of faith.’ 75.  JP 2, 1886 / SKS 24, p. 131 [NB22:52]. 76.  JP 2, 1835 / Pap. V B 237 (this quote comes from a journal entry titled, ‘An Ascension Discourse’). In Kierkegaard’s unpublished journals and papers, we find a much more multi-faceted and detailed account of his understanding of imitation than we do in his published writings. The two are not inconsistent, although we definitely find more

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action, Jesus ‘admonishes and encourages’, ‘bids and enjoins one to be like him’.77 But we need to be careful about how precisely we interpret this directing. For Kierkegaard, there is no tyranny to the governance of Jesus Christ.78 The imitator learns from the prototype as someone who has come to love and respect God, and she learns within the embrace of God’s infinite love. Also, God’s love of the imitator is in no way conditioned by human acts of imitation. A failure to walk in the footsteps of the prototype will not, therefore, compromise God’s loving commitment to a person in Jesus Christ – as if God’s infinite love were somehow conditioned by a person performing in a particular way. Jesus Christ lives as the prototype out of love and grace so that persons might come to know what it means to respond to God as individual human beings. Accordingly, Kierkegaard is happy to acknowledge Johann Tauler’s understanding: ‘love would rather obey advice than a command … [It is Christ’s] wish that you do so, but he doesn’t command it, nor does he say that those who don’t do so are non-Christian.’79 So when Kierkegaard describes Jesus as the prototype who commands and admonishes, this should be taken as a description of the counselling that occurs within a loving relationship. At the same time, he does not for a moment think that learning to walk in the footsteps of Jesus Christ is a gentle or mild process. The love that provides counsel is not a ‘sentimental’, ‘soft’, ‘sickly-sweet’ ‘form of love’.80 Rather, ‘Christianity is mildness in severity.’81 When the love of God confronts a person who has succumbed to the ways of this world, it will make that person, ‘humanly speaking, unhappy in this life’.82 For Kierkegaard, the ‘transformation’ or ‘rebirth’ that responds to God’s infinite love ‘is an immensely painful operation’.83 In a particularly gruelling passage, he writes, At the point where [human] compassion cries to a person, either from within or from without, [‘]Spare yourself,[’] [Christianity] of course responds: [‘]The Exemplar [Forbilledet] did not spare himself.[’] Which means that he submitted everything to God. And thus also when in [human] terms the strain comes to exceed one’s powers, one must not spare oneself but leave everything to God exaggeration and, at times, exasperation in his journals. What the journals help us to see, both on this and on other issues, is what is going on in Kierkegaard’s mind behind his more formally published writings. 77.  KJN 4, p. 269 / SKS 20, p. 269 [NB3:46] 78. For Kierkegaard, God gives the one whom he calls to renounce all things ‘the spatium [space] of freedom’. ‘God says: it is dear to me that you are willing to forsake everything for the sake of [Christ], but it is not required absolutely of you’ (KJN 4, pp. 331–2 / SKS 20, p. 330 [NB4:88]. 79.  KJN 4, p. 336 / SKS 20, p. 335 [NB4:102]; Tauler, Nachfolgung des armen Lebens Jesu Christi, ed. N. Casseder (Frankfurt am Main: 1821). 80.  WL, p. 376 / SKS 9, p. 369. 81.  KJN 7, p. 340 / SKS 23, p. 334 [NB19:8]. 82.  KJN 7, p. 454 / SKS 23, p. 446 [NB20:99]. 83.  KJN 7, p. 454 / SKS 23, p. 446 [NB20:99].



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concerning whether or not he will spare a person. In any case one must in no way spare oneself, but pray to God for permission to spare oneself, so that this admission of weakness will still keep you in the God-relationship, to begin again where one left off.84

When we come across passages such as this, it is not surprising that Kierkegaard’s emphasis on imitation came under heavy scrutiny from the voices of Danish Christendom. Well aware of such scrutiny, he writes: ‘there will surely be yet another howl that I preach only the law, that I insist too strongly on imitation, etc., etc. … And it will go: we cannot stop here, we must go further – to grace, in which there is stillness and rest.’85 For him, such criticism was nonsense. The ‘parodic edition of the doctrine of grace’ perceives God as graciously allowing persons to get on with their worldly lives.86 For Kierkegaard, it was precisely this that had allowed Christianity to ‘[shrink] into triviality’ for ‘the average [human] being’.87 The problem was that this was the edition of grace that the Danish people wanted to hear and the preaching (or ‘pastoral nonsense’ [PræsteSludder])88 in Denmark was making sure to satisfy this desire. As a result, imitation was being ignored, and grace was being taken in vain. The Lutheran fear of works righteousness had become a ‘human technique of getting rid of everything called discipleship or imitation [Efterfølgelse]’.89 This did not mean that Kierkegaard felt that he should diverge from Luther on this issue. He merely felt that his particular generation needed to hear quite a different emphasis from the pulpit: imagine Luther in our own generation, aware of our condition – do you not think he would say as he says in a sermon, ‘The world is like a drunken peasant; 84.  KJN 5, p.  113 / SKS 21, p.  108 [NB7:66]. As a counterbalance to this quote, Anti-Climacus offers some explanation as to why suffering characterises the Christian life in this world: ‘neither Christianity nor Christ is cruel. No, Christ is in himself leniency and love, is love and leniency itself; the cruelty comes from the Christian having to live in this world and having to express in the environment of this world what it is to be a Christian – for Christ is not so lenient, that is, so weak, that he wants to take the Christian out of this world’ (PC, p. 196 / SKS 12, p. 194). 85.  KJN 7, p. 479 / SKS 23, p. 471 [NB20:150]. 86.  KJN 7, p.  479 / SKS 23, p.  471 [NB20:150]. Accompanying the burlesque edition of grace came ‘a fabulous and childish conception’ of God’s love. This love proclaims to the Christian to ‘spare yourself and your flesh and blood; have good days or happy days without self-concern, because God is Love and Love – nothing at all about rigorousness must be heard; it must all be the free language and nature of love’ (WL, p.  376 / SKS 9. p. 369). 87.  KJN 7, p. 479 / SKS 23, p. 471 [NB20:150]. 88. Kierkegaard often uses the term ‘Præste-Sludder’ to describe the preaching in Denmark. See, for example, KJN 4, p. 96 / SKS 20, p. 96 [NB:140]. 89.  JP 2, 1891 / SKS 24, p. 170 [NB22:128].

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if you help him up on one side of the horse, he falls off on the other side.’ Do you not think he would say: The Apostle James must be drawn forward a little, not for works against faith – no, no, that was not the apostle’s meaning either – but for faith, in order, if possible, to cause the need for grace to be felt deeply in genuine humble inwardness and, if possible, to prevent grace, faith and grace as the only redemption and salvation, from being taken totally in vain, from becoming a camouflage even for a refined worldliness[?]90

How was grace ‘becoming a camouflage for a refined worldliness’? Here Kierkegaard again has in mind the preaching of Mynster and Martensen, who had devoted themselves to educating the church and society about the ‘Christianity’ that had refined and was continuing to refine Danish culture (or, perhaps more accurately, ‘Christianity as “refined” by Danish culture’). For Kierkegaard, both Bishops taught ‘a refined worldliness’ that masqueraded around as Christianity by loosely associating itself with the tradition of Jesus Christ. Kierkegaard diagnosed this vision of Christianity as ‘a refined epicureanism’:91 a Christianity that lives by the maxim, nil beatum nisi quietum (nothing is blessed unless it is peaceful).92 This vision of Christianity was based on the idea(s) of Christ, as an idea(s) that helped give peace and convention to society. Jesus, however, ‘does not come to bring peace, but discord’ (Lk. 12.52).93 For Kierkegaard, the way of Jesus Christ clashes with the world; Christ radically disrupts a person’s daily life. Yet the Danish clergy had not missed this point altogether. The clergy were well aware that Jesus was extraordinary, so much so, however, that the radical way of Jesus was presented as being too extraordinary for the ‘humble and modest’ citizens of Protestant Denmark.94 In this respect, Jesus was looked upon with admiration. But the problem with admiration, as David Law points out, is that it ‘is a hindrance to imitation, for admiration places the admired person at a distance: I admire him because he has achieved what I cannot achieve’.95 At a distance, Christ becomes a ‘general excuse and escape for the whole human race and every individual in the human race’; he is too lofty a figure for the lowly person to try to follow.96 So, instead of calling persons to follow Jesus Christ, the clergy preached observations: ‘Let us in this hour consider; I invite my listener to observations on; the subject for our consideration is, etc.’97 Such preaching made sure to keep Jesus ‘very distant, infinitely distant, that is, personally [distant]’.98 90.  FSE, p. 24 / SKS 13, p. 52. 91.  JP 2, 1619 / SKS 25, p. 272 [NB28:69]. 92.  M, p. 18 / SKS 14, p. 138. 93.  M, p. 18 / SKS 14, p. 138. 94.  JP 2, 1913 / SKS 24, pp. 508–9 [NB25:92]. 95. David Law, Kierkegaard’s Kenotic Christology, p. 226. 96.  PC, p. 240 / SKS 12. p. 233. 97.  PC, p. 233 / SKS 12, p. 227. 98.  PC, p. 233 / SKS 12, p. 227.



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Kierkegaard was unrelenting in his resistance to those who preached the Gospel by way of observations. He did not deny that becoming a Christian would require a person to hear and make observations about Jesus Christ. But such observations can only do so much. In and of themselves, they cannot enable a person to become a Christian. As we have seen, becoming a Christian requires considerably more than a mere objective understanding of Jesus. It involves an interpersonal relationship with the God who is with us and for us in history: the ‘God–man [who] is the truth’.99 By encountering Jesus Christ, a person is invited to follow him with a life of imitation. And, by being given to relate faithfully to God who is the truth, through Jesus Christ, a person can start out on a life of Christian discipleship. The proclamation of the Gospel, therefore, should primarily serve as a witness to the living person of Jesus Christ who is both the-truth-for-humanity and the-wayto-the-truth-who-is-God. Preaching should not prompt listeners simply to reflect on the Gospel message but to recognise and respond to it as a message from the living God who speaks to persons in history, through the Gospel, calling them to follow Jesus Christ. Upon experiencing God’s call in her life and finding herself moved to follow Jesus Christ, a person will find her whole existence being questioned. This questioning is entirely unique. It is very different from the way that a person might find herself being questioned by an ideal summoned up within her ethical imagination. This is not to deny, of course, that the ethical imagination has an important role to play. David Gouwens explains: Christ presents himself to the ethical imagination not as a glorious internally generated ideal, but as the suffering God-man who atones for sin – an offense to the self-reliance of the imagination as well as reason. The imagination cannot, any more than reason, grasp the Divine. [Yet] the imagination may be redeemed, for if the response to the paradox is faith, then the believer finds in Christ the ideal which answers the striving for the internal testimony of repetition. Christ as the ideal, the ‘Pattern,’ quickens the imagination and directs the will to imitation and obedience in renewed ethical passion.100

Jesus Christ confronts a person as the truth, and thus as a personal reality that her flesh and blood, her natural mind, cannot comprehend out of its own alienated abilities. He comes, therefore, to redeem that person’s mind – her reason and imagination – and invites her to participate in a pursuit of the truth that is wholly unique from all other pursuits of truth. That is, he invites her to pursue the truth not by simply pursuing an ideal or virtue but by following him and loving him. That the essential pursuit of the truth involves following and loving another 99.  JP 4, 4315 / SKS 25, p. 150 [NB27:35]. 100. David Gouwens, ‘Kierkegaard on the Ethical Imagination’, The Journal of Religious Ethics 10:2 (1982), p. 217.

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person is a cross that natural philosophy cannot bear;101 it ‘is an offense to the Jews, foolishness to the Greeks – and an apparent absurdity to the understanding’.102 The Gospel message stops natural modes of philosophical discourse in its tracks. It then still further challenges natural philosophy by stipulating ‘the defectiveness of human cognition due to sin’ and the human’s need for redemption – or, more precisely, the human’s need for a redeemer.103 The Gospel, therefore, does not await the evolution of immanent human reason but awaits the faith and love with which a person passionately responds to Jesus Christ who ‘is grace and the giver of grace’.104 In this respect, ‘faith is higher than all the religiousness of immanence’, and, as the Hongs note, ‘faith is higher than philosophy’.105 Furthermore, insofar as the truth – the God revealed in Jesus Christ – does not first call persons to think about or make sense of him but to leave everything to follow him, imitation is also higher than philosophy; indeed, under these circumstances, particular action is higher than human reason. This way of relating to the truth is, for Kierkegaard, an essential part of what it means to sacrifice oneself out of a love for God. God understands self-sacrificing love in the divine sense, the self-sacrificing love that sacrifices everything in order to make room for God, even if the heavy sacrifice became even heavier because no one understood it, something that in another sense belongs to true sacrifice, inasmuch as the sacrifice that people understand has its reward …106

101.  That is, as natural philosophy is limited to a ‘purely human view of the world – the humanistic standpoint’ (KJN 1, p. 208 / SKS 17, p. 216 [DD:5]). Kierkegaard does not rule out philosophy per se. He acknowledges that ‘I can conceive of such a philosophy after Christianity, or after a person has become Christian, but then it would be a Christian philosophy. The relationship would not be one of philosophy to Christianity but of Christianity to Christian knowledge, or, if you absolutely must, Christian philosophy.’ This point is explained more fully in the rest of this journal entry. But Kierkegaard’s main point here is that philosophy, as with the imagination, can operate within the redeemed sphere of Christianity (KJN 1, p. 25 / SKS 17, pp. 30–1 [AA:13]). 102.  CUP, p. 213 / SKS 7, p. 195; see also PC, p. 154 / SKS 12, p. 158. 103.  KJN 1, p.  26 / SKS 17, pp.  30–1 [AA:13]. In the opening to this journal entry, Kierkegaard insists that ‘Philosophy and Christianity can never be united’: ‘if I’m to hold fast to what is one of the most essential feature of Christianity, redemption, then of course for it really to amount to anything it must extend to the whole man [including human reason]’ (KJN 1, p. 25 / SKS 17, pp. 30–1 [AA:13] [emphasis original]). 104.  WA, p. 143 / SKS 11, p. 279. 105.  CUP, p. 585 / SKS 7, p. 532. 106.  WL, pp. 119–20 / SKS 9, p. 124.



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b. Following Christ Voluntarily Christianity is indeed the religion of freedom, and precisely the voluntary is essentially Christian.107

One of the things that makes the Christian life particularly challenging, for Kierkegaard, is that it requires an individual to make a voluntary commitment to following Christ. ‘What Christ required as a condition for coming into the situation [Bestedelse] in which there can be any question of becoming a Christian [is] a decisive action.’108 We have already noted that Kierkegaard viewed the natural world as being radically hostile to a loving relationship with God: ‘there is nothing the natural man shrinks from more than he shrinks from that which the New Testament calls Christianity’.109 But the suffering of the Christian life is made ‘a whole scale deeper’ by its voluntary nature – as a suffering that could easily be avoided.110 It is one thing to endure a life of suffering into which one is forced; it is quite another to volunteer for such a life. For Kierkegaard, Christian conversion involves, as Rowan Williams puts it, ‘choosing to be different; it is a step out of the culture you once belonged in’.111 Emphasising the voluntary nature of Christian becoming was a key part of Kierkegaard’s ministry to the established church in Denmark. While he trusted that God was actively involved in animating persons in the Christian life, he also recognised that the Christian life requires persons to make hard choices to obey God and follow Jesus Christ. And, for him, Christians in Denmark were not making these choices. A part of the reason for this is that persons are generally less passionate about making difficult choices about things of which they are uncertain. If it is not immediately obvious to a person that she should live a life of sacrifice, she will be less passionate about doing so. For this reason, the choice to suffer out of a love for God is not as immediately obvious, and therefore not as inciting, as, say, a mother’s choice to suffer out of a love for her child. A lack of passion to suffer for God is inextricably related to a lack of faith. It is with faith that a person voluntarily commits herself to following an uncertainty. As with so many of the dynamics in Kierkegaard’s account of becoming a Christian, there is, however, a reciprocal relationship between faith and the voluntary. A person will not grow in her faith without voluntarily responding to the uncertain object of her faith. It is only by responding to God – for example, by voluntarily choosing to pray, read Scripture, follow Jesus Christ, etc. – that a person will grow beyond her initial transformative encounter with God. As with any relationship, a person’s relationship with God requires participatory interaction in order for her to grow within it. 107.  CD, p. 179 / SKS 10, pp. 189–90. 108.  JFY, p. 194 / SKS. 109.  JP 3, 2902 / SKS 25, p. 313 [NB29:24]. 110.  PC, p. 109 / SKS 12, p. 117. 111. Williams, Faith in the Public Square, p. 66 (emphasis original).

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A very different consequence of the uncertainty surrounding the Christian faith is that it becomes all too easy for persons to live under the delusion that they are Christian simply because, for example, they have ‘a baptismal certificate’ from when they were baptised as an infant, or, indeed, because they are living under the banner of Christendom.112 Caricaturing the Danish Lutheran account of becoming a Christian, Kierkegaard writes: ‘one perhaps hears a little, thinks a little about Christianity, experiences a mood once in a while – and then one is a believer and a Christian. Indeed, one is already that in advance; one is born a Christian.’113 This is why Kierkegaard saw it as such a major part of his ministry to try to offer a clear description of what faith and Christianity are, according to Scripture and, in particular, according to the revelation of Jesus Christ. By taking the revelation of Jesus Christ seriously, certain matters become much less uncertain. It becomes clear that the Christian life requires a person to struggle to follow Jesus Christ. And by following Jesus Christ, the importance of the voluntary becomes all the more obvious: Jesus Christ lived as someone who struggled in this world not out of necessity but out of voluntary choice. That which distinguishes the Christian narrow way from the common human narrow way is the voluntary. Christ was not someone who coveted earthly things but had to be satisfied with poverty – no, he chose poverty. He was not someone who craved human honor and reputation but had to be satisfied with living in lowliness or perhaps unappreciated and slandered – no, he chose abasement. This is the narrow way in the strictest sense.114

By turning to Jesus Christ, and voluntarily striving to follow him, a person will grow in his faith. As he does so, he will grow in his commitment to the Christian life in all its uncertainty. It should be made clear here, however, that despite Kierkegaard’s recognition of the uncertainty of Christianity, he does not think that the voluntary steps of the Christian life are either blind or arbitrary. They are steps that are taken with eyes that are being opened to the truth of Christianity, to the truth of Jesus Christ – eyes that are consequently being opened to the true misery of the worldly life. ‘Voluntarily to give up everything to follow Christ means to be convinced of the gloriousness of the good that Christianity promises.’115 Also, this voluntary behaviour is not just a response to Jesus Christ. It is a response to the ‘life-giving Spirit’ who works with Jesus Christ to inspire persons in the Christian life.116 112.  CUP, p. 363 / SKS 7, p. 330. 113.  JFY, p. 194 / SKS 16, p. 240. 114.  FSE, p. 67 / SKS 13, p. 89. 115.  CD, p. 179 / SKS 10, p. 190. 116.  FSE, pp. 73–87 / SKS 13, pp. 95–108. To receive a new life in Christ, Kierkegaard asserts here, she must die to the world; the Spirit must ‘slay’ her, bringing her natural worldly existence to a ‘halt’. Then, ‘after death has come in between’, the ‘life-giving Spirit’ will bring her to faith (see also KJN 7, p. 78 / SKS 23, pp. 80–1 [NB15:114]).



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c. Christ as Prototype and Redeemer As I have already indicated, there is more to Christ’s role as divine prototype. Jesus Christ not only provides the foremost example of what it means to be human. As the one who is fully God and fully human, he also lives as the promise of loving relationship with God: he is the one in whom the relationship between God and the single individual finds fulfilment.117 As such, he invites persons to participate in a relationship with God that is mediated in and through him. However, because he is a prototype whom not even the most inspired of individuals can follow or imitate adequately, Christ’s life has another aspect, ‘lest the prototype disquiet us to the point of despair’.118 Jesus ‘is the Exemplar [Forbilledet] – then he dies; and now he transforms himself, he becomes “grace” eternally, also in our imperfect efforts to resemble “the Exemplar”’.119 Christ, therefore, is both prototype and redeemer. So, ‘when the striving one droops under the prototype, crushed, almost despairing, the Redeemer raises him up again; but at the same moment [Christ is] again the prototype so that we might be kept in the striving’.120 He continues, O Redeemer, by your holy suffering and death you have made satisfaction for everyone and everything; no eternal salvation either can or shall be earned – it has been earned. Yet you left your footprints, you, the holy prototype for the human race and for every individual, so that by your Atonement [Forsoning] the saved might at every moment find the confidence and boldness to want to strive to follow you.121

The continual striving and becoming that characterises the Christian life are the most that a Christian can do to express herself within the limits of this finite world, and even this depends upon the grace of God.122 This relative striving, however, cannot in and itself bring a person any closer to God, no matter how much it might be inspired by a relationship with God. Why is this? Because the finite motion that characterises the Christian life can only be perceived as motion, or becoming, with respect to finite telé, which, by their very nature, are incommensurate with the being of the absolute and eternal God: ‘motion is unthinkable sub specie aeterni [from the standpoint of eternity]’.123 This means that a person cannot become a Christian by merely copying Christ: as prototype, Christ is the one who by his ‘infinite distance crushes the imitator [Efterligneren], as it were,

117.  CD, p. 42 / SKS 10, p. 53; see also KJN 5, pp. 240–1 / SKS 21, pp. 284–5 [NB10:54]. 118.  JFY, p. 156 / SKS 16, p. 205. 119.  KJN 7, p. 78 / SKS 23, p. 81 [NB15:114]. 120.  JFY, p. 147 / SKS 16, p. 199. 121.  JFY, p. 147 / SKS 16, p. 199. 122. See, for example, KJN 4, pp. 392–3 / SKS 20, p. 392 [NB5:48]; KJN 7, p. 424 / SKS 23, p. 416 [NB20:44]; CD, 64 / SKS 10, p. 68. 123.  CUP, pp. 308, 412–13 / SKS 7, pp. 281, 375.

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or casts him down into the most yawning gulf ’.124 And yet, as prototype, Christ is also ‘the merciful one who helps him [the human being] to resemble him’.125 It is thus by the grace of God, mediated in and through Jesus Christ, that a person can be drawn into loving fellowship with the eternal God. What, then, does this mean for how we understand the nature of a person’s relationship with God prior to the Incarnation? ‘Prior to [Christ], God was certainly included in creation, but as an invisible mark, like the watermark in paper.’126 Thus, prior to ‘God having included himself in [creation]’, the relationship to God was very different – much more apophatic.127 However, in and through the Incarnation, God brings fulfilment to creation by providing a way for creation to relate positively to God. God makes ‘known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ’ (Eph. 1.9). Nevertheless, an individual’s existential response to Jesus Christ still cannot be understood as bringing a person closer to God, in and of itself. The Christian, therefore, must humbly acknowledge that her striving is nothing before God. In order to worship God properly and to have the proper joy from worshiping, a person must conduct himself in this way: he must strive with all his might, spare himself neither night nor day; he must accumulate, and the more the better, what people of integrity, speaking humanly, would call good deeds. And when he then takes them and deeply humbled before God sees them transformed into something miserable and base – this is what it is to worship God – and this is a lifting up [Opløftelse].128

Christian practice, therefore, is not a contribution but the grateful outworking of the Christian whose faith in God is inseparable from his existence.129 In Kierkegaard’s terms, the Christian life is defined by ‘repetition’ (Gjentagelse) – the Christian repeating in his existence that which he professes in his relationship with God.130 As such, the Christian life is never just a ‘Christian-looking’ existence, 124.  KJN 6, p. 252 / SKS 22, pp. 249–50 [NB12:177]. 125.  KJN 6, p. 252 / SKS 22, p. 250 [NB12:177]. 126.  KJN 6, p. 176 / SKS 22, p. 177 [NB12:63]. 127.  KJN 6, p. 176 / SKS 22, p. 177 [NB12:63]. 128.  JFY, p. 154 / SKS 16, p. 203. 129. See JP 2, 1884 / SKS 24, p. 67 [NB21:10]; JP 2, 1892 / SKS 24, pp. 177–8 [NB22:144]. 130. Clare Carlisle helpfully describes repetition more generally as ‘a transition from ideality (conceived as possibility) to actuality – a movement of “coming into existence” – that “goes in the opposite direction” to Platonic recollection, which moves from the individual’s situated existence to the eternal Ideas, or Forms’. Carlisle, ‘Climacus on the Task of Becoming a Christian’, in Concluding Unscientific Postscript: A Critical Guide, ed. Rick Furtak (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 183; see also R, p. 131 / SKS 4, p. 9. This description is indicated by the name of the pseudonymous author of Repetition, ‘Constantin Constantius’. As Edward Mooney writes, ‘[t]he name, take note, is itself a repetition. It recreates eponymously the tension between something constant (an element



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but always an expression of faith.131 So when the Christian is struggling to follow Christ, he does not simply turn himself inward to try to find self-motivation. Rather, he turns humbly and prayerfully towards God for upbuilding. This does not mean that he is called to wait idly by for God to give him the strength and passion to live out the Christian life. Listening and responding to God will rarely be immediately appealing in the hostility of this world. Repetition, therefore, will be a constant struggle for the Christian, and as we discuss in the next section, will require self-motivation. Nonetheless, it is a struggle that the Christian will not hesitate to take on and endure out of her love for God. If the ‘Christian’ turns away from this struggle, this will express a lack in his loving commitment to God; it will show him to be a hypocrite who wants to continue in his own life while merely paying lip service to God.132 By living in this way, the so-called Christian embraces a resistance and ignorance to God in a way that will be detrimental to his faith. For Kierkegaard, to sum up, there are two sides to the Christian life. ‘Christianity’s requirement is this: your life should express works as strenuously as possible; then one thing more is required – that you humble yourself and confess: But my being saved is nevertheless grace.’133 In the midst of Danish Lutheranism, Kierkegaard felt compelled to emphasise both sides of the Christian life as he ministered to those who had mistaken God’s grace and lost sight of the need to live an active Christian life. For Kierkegaard, these two sides should not be seen to be in competition with one another. It is out of love that God wants persons to become Christian and, indeed, become truly human in ways that would inevitably clash with the ways of the world. And, for Kierkegaard, it is with an understanding of the existential burden of Christianity that a person can genuinely come to know what it means to turn to God with his heavy burdens to find rest in his embrace.

IV. Becoming a Christian in the World To become a Christian according to the New Testament, Kierkegaard insists that a person must deny herself and die to the world.134 She must become willing to to be repeated) and motion (something repeated).’ Mooney, ‘Repetition: Getting the World Back’, in The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, eds Alastair Hannay and Gordon D. Marino (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 285. 131. See KJN 5, p. 9 / SKS 21, p. 13 [NB6:3]. Accordingly, I would argue that it is way off the mark for Brad Frazier to suggest it is possible that Kierkegaard ‘believes that persons can live Christianly without consciously being Christians by exemplifying many virtues that Christianity endorses’. Frazier, Rorty and Kierkegaard on Irony and Moral Commitment (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), p. 129. 132. See JP 4, 5042 / SKS 24, p. 472 [NB25:51]. 133.  FSE, p. 17 / SKS 13, p. 46. 134.  FSE, pp. 82–4 / SKS 13, pp. 103–4. Here, Kierkegaard emphasis the importance of the Christian dying to the world alongside an emphasis on the Holy Spirit giving life and bringing love into this unloving world.

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obey God at all costs, otherwise she is a hypocrite.135 Like Abraham, she must put God’s command before her own immediate concerns.136 And, indeed, if she feels even the slightest distrustful urge to question what God asks of her, this will serve to express a deficiency in her love for God. He writes: ‘[T]he Christian, free from care, is never indecisive – he has faith; never vacillating – he is eternally resolved; never disconsolate – he is always joyous, always giving thanks.’137 The reason for this is that she finds fulfilment in her relationship with God that, for her, surpasses the immediate pleasures of this world. For example, ‘when [the apostles] were flogged [they] went away joyful, thanking God that it was granted them to suffer something for the sake of Christ [Acts 5.41]’.138 For the Christian, ‘an actual relationship to God is of such infinite worth that even if it were only for a moment and in the next moment one were kicked, struck, tossed, hurled far away, and forgotten it is still worth infinitely more than everything the world and man have to offer’.139 As we have already seen, although Kierkegaard describes the Christian as ‘always joyous, always giving thanks’, he is not so naïve as to think that the Christian life is straightforward. ‘If one is to become a Christian’, he writes, ‘there must be restlessness, and if one has become a Christian, restlessness continues.’140 Even the ideal Christian will experience existential torment in times of spiritual trial (Anfœgtelser); even Jesus Christ, our high priest, struggled with temptation.141 This is because, for the moment, the Christian exists in immediacy as a sensate human being who (as a synthesis) is divided between two entirely different forms of joy: a spiritual joy and a sensuous joy.142 Instinctually, she is drawn towards 135. See JP 2, 1500 / SKS 12, p.  268 [NB33:26]. For example, the Christian must be willing to obey God by giving away his possession to the poor (CD, pp. 114–23 / SKS 10, pp. 125–34), by hating his father and mother (CUP, pp. 585–6 / SKS 7, pp. 532–3; Lk. 14.26) and, indeed, by being willing to sacrifice his son. 136. As de Silentio writes: ‘[the knight of faith] knows very well where he is and how he relates to men. Humanly speaking, he is mad and cannot make himself understandable to anyone. And yet “to be mad” is the mildest expression. If he is not viewed in this way, then he is a hypocrite, and the higher he ascends this path, the more appalling a hypocrite he is’ (FT, p. 76 / SKS 4, p. 167). 137.  CD, p. 85 / SKS 10, p. 93. 138.  CUP, pp. 452–3 / SKS 7, pp. 411–12. Climacus adds here: ‘I do not doubt that the apostles had the power of faith to be joyful even in physical pain and to thank God.’ 139.  JP 2, 1442 / SKS 26, p. 152 [NB32:49] 140.  JP 4, 4489 / SKS 26, p. 198 [NB32:110] 141. For Kierkegaard, ‘Christianity is the greatest, the most intense, the most powerful restlessness imaginable; it disturbs human existence at its deepest level (such, in fact, was the effect of Christ’s life), it explodes everything, bursts everything’ (JP 4, 4489 / SKS 26, p. 198 [NB32:110]; see also WA, pp. 120–4 / SKS 11, pp. 256–9; JP 1, 634 / Pap. VI B 60:2). 142.  JP 1, 80 / SKS 25, pp.  86–7 [NB26:85]; see also CA, pp.  73–4, 83–84n. / SKS 4, pp. 377–8, 385n.



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immediate prosperity. But, as a Christian, she is drawn to a life that will result in suffering. In this world, God’s Spirit does not sensuously entice persons into the Christian life by appealing directly to the flesh and blood that finds comfort in this world. Nor does the Spirit help persons to become Christian by neutralising the immediate passions that draw humans towards worldly possibilities.143 Rather, for Kierkegaard, God relates to the human spirit, which is at variance to the flesh and blood (or sensate). This means that God builds persons up in times of spiritual trial by giving them the spiritual strength to resist worldly temptation.144 Consequently, Kierkegaard contends that it is hypocritical for the Christian to give the impression that his personal relationship with God can be expressed in the form of sensuous joy. If a Christian does so, he contributes to ‘the delusion that the esthetic is the essentially Christian’, and, consequently, he becomes a cause in the stumbling of Christendom.145 Kierkegaard, therefore, is very critical of the type of people-pleasing ministries that attempt to sell the Gospel by appealing to worldly sensibilities. Christian ministry does not use the categories of the world to try to tempt persons into a relationship with God but always submits to God and his communication of the truth – and this truth, again, does not appeal to natural instincts. Rather, one proceeds with the confidence that God can bring anyone to faith, even in the face of adversity.146 If a preacher is really placing her trust in God, she should not be afraid to call a congregant to ‘strive with all his might, spare himself neither night nor day’ to commit himself to a life lived in worship of God.147 For Kierkegaard, true discipleship is grounded in a commitment to God that means a person might be led to grow in her suffering for the Gospel.148 Yet Kierkegaard was also critical of the notion that Christians should put suffering at the forefront of their ministry. The Christian, for him, should not interpret suffering as a goal in itself but an experience that will need to be endured when a person lives in relationship with God in the hostility of this world.149 143. See JP 2, 1273 / SKS pp. 128–9 [NB27:13]; JP 4, 4352 / SKS 26, p. 134 [NB32:23]. 144.  JP 4, 4379 / SKS 24, pp.  242–5 [NB24:158]. It is important to clarify here that Kierkegaard is not consigning him to some form of Gnosticism – a position that he believes must be dismissed when we take the Incarnation seriously (see KJN 1, p.  214 / SKS 17, p. 222 [DD:11]; KJN 1, p. 248 / SKS 17, p. 257 [DD:122]; KJN 6, p. 176 / SKS 22, p. 177 [NB12:63]). When Kierkegaard is negative about the sensate, he is negative about the kind of existence in which a person is driven primarily by sensate worldly concerns, independent of a spiritual relationship with God. 145.  PV, p.  54 / SKS 16, p.  36. Climacus notes, ‘the direct relationship with God is esthetics and is actually no relationship with God … The esthetic always consists in the individual’s fancying that he has been busy reaching God and taking hold of him’ (CUP, 560 n. / SKS 7, p. 509 n.). 146. See JFY, pp. 122–3 / SKS 16, p. 177. 147.  JFY, p. 154 / SKS 16, p. 203. 148.  CD, p. 127 / SKS 10, p. 138. 149. See CUP, pp. 597–8 / SKS 7, p. 543.

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In view of this, he was particularly critical of monasticism, which made ‘asceticism and the like the absolute τέλος’.150 He continues: ‘The middle ages copied [copierede] Christ rather than imitated [efterfulgte] him. Christ did not teach poverty in and for itself; he taught poverty to enable witnessing to the truth.’151 The problem with monasticism, for Kierkegaard, is that it was too concerned with looking Christian rather than being Christian, and thus was too wrapped up in the meritorious appearances of its practice.152 A further problem with monasticism, for Kierkegaard, was that it invited Christians to deal with their anxiety over sin by trying to escape the secular world, by binding themselves to a uniform Christian environment in which it is much easier to copy Christ’s ascetic life and avoid worldly temptation. The problem with this approach is that it avoids what he saw as the highest Christian calling: to imitate Christ by remaining in the world, as a witness.153 For him, the Christian is not called to hide herself away like a hermit, avoiding the world’s opposition and persecution, but to stand out as a Christian before God and the world – ‘in the middle of actuality before the eyes of all’ – and suffer the consequences that follow.154 Nonetheless, he was happy to acknowledge that the Christian should try to avoid temptation (Fristelse), so long as it did not entail hiding away from the spiritual trials that he felt were so essential to the Christian life. The Christian is called to ‘go straight toward’ spiritual trial, ‘trusting in God and [Christ]’.155 This means voluntarily choosing to enter into situations where temptation will be a real factor: situations in which overcoming temptation will itself be a spiritual trial

150.  JP 2, 1893 / SKS 24, p.  186 [NB22:151]. That said, while Kierkegaard saw a ‘monastic-ascetic Christianity’ as being a major problem in the Middle Ages, he felt that a much bigger problem in his own age was the ‘professorial–scholarly Christianity’ (JFY, pp. 195–7 / SKS 16, pp. 242–4). 151.  JP 2, 1893 / SKS 24, p. 186 [NB22:151] ; see also JP 2, 1914 / SKS 24, pp. 18–19 [NB26:10]. 152. See CUP, pp. 409–14 / SKS 7, pp. 372–6. 153.  ‘Bearing Witness’ (Vidnesbyrdet), for Kierkegaard, is ‘the form of communication that most truly finds the midpoint between direct and indirect communication. Bearing witness is direct communication, but it does not make those among whom one lives into the sole authority. For when the witness’s “communication” turns to those now living, the “witness” turns to God and takes him as the sole authority’ (KJN 5, p. 345 / SKS 21, p. 334 [NB10:154] [emboldening and emphasis original]). 154.  JFY, p.  169 / SKS 16, p.  218. Alongside Luther, Kierkegaard describes Christian piety as ‘renouncing everything in order to serve God alone – and then to have to suffer for it – to imitate Christ and then to have to suffer for it’ (JFY, p. 169 / SKS 16, p. 218). See also Craig Hinkson, ‘Luther and Kierkegaard: Theologians of the Cross’, in International Journal of Systematic Theology 3:1 (2001), pp. 38–45; and Hinkson, Kierkegaard’s Theology: Cross and Grace: The Lutheran and Idealist Traditions in His Thought (Chicago: Unpublished PhD thesis from the University of Chicago, 1993), pp. 52–94. 155.  KJN 12, p. 193 / SKS 22, pp. 193–4 [NB12:94].



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that needs to be faced: ‘one of the most painful forms of spiritual trial’.156 In these situations, the Christian must turn to Christ to find the strength and courage to endure temptation and be delivered from evil.157 If, however, he anxiously looks to other means, such as the safety of a monastery, there will be an extent to which he is avoiding Christ. He will be attempting to deal with his sin-anxiety through a worldly retreat from temptation. Under these circumstances, Even if he prays, calling upon [Christ]’s name fervently, [Christ] is still no savior to him. He fights on his own as well as he can, uses all of his rational powers uprightly, if I can put it like that, to avoid temptation and thus really does avoid temptation and perhaps brings it all gratefully to [Christ]. But he doesn’t have the faith that [Christ] will help him triumph over temptation.158

For Kierkegaard, it is the Christian’s loving relationship with God that animates her in her faithful struggle to follow Christ. It is in fellowship with God that the Christian comes to will ‘as God wills’ and thereby develops the passion to follow Christ in the face of tribulation.159 This does not mean that God will sway her mindlessly, like the bird that ‘has no other will than God’s will’.160 Rather, when the Christian identifies with God’s will, she retains the self-determination to sacrifice herself before God, to turn to God and acknowledge her need for him.161 With this intentionality, the Christian relates to God in a way that surpasses the relationship between God and the ‘innocently ignorant bird’.162 Awakened by God, the Christian desires God’s grace without ‘even the slightest, expression of presumptuousness’.163 In stark contrast to this, the bird and, indeed, the ‘spiritlessly ignorant human being’ exist without an awareness of God and thus in a state of passive presumptuousness before God: ‘[L]lost in the worldly and the sensate’,

156.  KJN 6, p. 102 / SKS 20, pp. 119–20 [NB11:175]; KJN 6, pp. 81–2 / SKS 22, pp. 85–6 [NB11:147]. 157.  KJN 5, pp. 118–19 / SKS 21, pp. 113–14 [NB7:74]. 158.  KJN 6, p. 102 / SKS 22, p. 105 [NB11:175]. 159.  JFY, p. 156 / SKS ; see JP 4, 5038 / SKS 26, p. 405 [NB35:50]. 160.  CD, p. 84 / SKS 10, p. 92. 161. Kierkegaard affirms, ‘God has allowed human beings to be able to work in order to give them an enjoyment, a feeling of independence’ (JFY, p. 185 / SKS 16, p. 232). After making this point, he famously describes a situation in which a mother wants to give her child, little Ludvig, the delightful perception of pushing the stroller for himself. Such a feat, however, is not one that is possible for Ludvig, and so while the mother allows Ludvig to struggle to push the stroller for himself, it is actually her who is doing the pushing. Such a situation, he considers is comparable to the person who struggles to live out the Christian life, while all the while it is God that is enabling her to live out the Christian life. 162.  CD, p. 64 / SKS 10, p. 73. 163.  CD, p. 66 / SKS 10, p. 74.

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they expect the world to keep turning in the way that it does, ignorant of the one who does the turning.164 By consciously identifying oneself with God’s unchanging will, the self finds internal cohesion and integration. By willing one thing (above all else), she finds purity of heart.165 When this happens, the Christian is not driven by motives that are ulterior to her commitment to God. No incentive is required to show a loving devotion God, such as escaping the terror of God’s punishment and receiving the bliss of heavenly reward. For Kierkegaard, the person who requires this kind of motive to become a Christian is like the man who ‘loves a girl for the sake of the money’ and this man ‘does not love the girl but the money’ – he is therefore ‘a fortune hunter, not a lover’.166 Consequently, the Christian who attempts to incentivise the Gospel does not promote a love for God but a love for reward/ non-punishment. She encourages the kind of ‘double-mindedness’ (Jas. 4.8) with which a person strives to live a ‘Christian-looking’ life while actually living for the sake of something else. To worship God under this pretence is to fail to view a relationship with God as one’s eternal happiness – and this is to have lost one’s way.

V. Conclusion No one can see the inner workings of a person’s venture to become a Christian; no one can see a person’s faith in or love for God. However, for Kierkegaard, the subjective dimension of the Christian life cannot fail to overflow with works of faith and love. The faith of the Christian is always expressing itself with works of faith, and his love is always expressing itself with works of love. Moreover, in the process of becoming, a person’s inward faith and outward activity have a reciprocal relationship. If a person voluntarily decides to be active in what is meant to be an interactive relationship with God, he will learn what it means to become a Christian and will grow in his passionate and faithful commitment to God. Nonetheless, for Kierkegaard, the Christian life remains contingent upon the prior reality of God’s loving and gracious activity towards the world. It is only because of grace that it is possible for a person to follow Jesus Christ. And it is only by the grace of the God who is love that a person can be reconciled into the fullness of loving fellowship with God.

164.  CD, p. 64 / SKS 10, p. 72. 165. Kierkegaard makes this point in ‘An Occasional Discourse – On the Occasion of a Confession Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing’, in which he meditates on James 4.8: ‘Keep near to God, then he will keep near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double minded’ (UDVS, pp. 3–154 / SKS 8, pp. 115–250). 166.  UDVS, p. 38 / SKS 8, p. 150.

Chapter 5 T H E F R E E D OM T O B E C OM E A C H R I ST IA N I N R E L AT IO N SH I P W I T H G O D

For Kierkegaard, [t]he essentially Christian exists before any Christian exists; it must exist in order for one to become a Christian. It contains that qualification by which a test is made of whether someone has become a Christian; it maintains its objective continuance outside all believers, while it is also in the inwardness of the believer.1

Kierkegaard does not provide a systematic explanation of how exactly divine and human agency relate to one another in the process of becoming a Christian. On the one hand, as we have seen, he asserts that individuals depend upon God delivering them into the Christian life, ‘from on high’. 2 On the other hand, he also believes that God lovingly grants individuals the freedom to go their own way – the freedom to be other in the lowliness of their present situation.3 This latter conviction led him to recognise that human decision has a pivotal role to play in the process of becoming a Christian in and through our relationship with God. Yet this did not lead him to suggest that a loving relationship with God is the result of some blind choice. Just as human beings do not come to love other human beings ‘by an act of self on self ’,4 neither do they come to love God in this way. For Kierkegaard, it is only by God graciously encountering a person through

1.  BA, pp. 117–18 / SKS 15, p. 273. 2.  PC, p. 153 / SKS 12, p. 157. 3. Kierkegaard writes: ‘It is inconceivable: the miracle of almighty love that God can actually grant a [human] being so much that, with respect to Himself, He could wish to say, almost like a suitor (here there is a fine play on words: to make free, to propose [at gjøre fri, at frie]): [“]Will you have me, or will you not[”] – and then wait one single second for the answer’ (KJN 7, p. 63 / SKS 23, p. 65 [NB15:93]). 4.  Alan Torrance, ‘Where and How does God Speak? Faith, Reason and the Question of Criteria’, in Reason, Faith and History: Philosophical Essays for Paul Helm, ed. Martin Stone (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), p. 110.

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Jesus Christ, and by means of the life-giving Spirit, that a person can come to know God and thereby be drawn into a life of loving fellowship with God. In this chapter, I conclude that, for Kierkegaard, a person becomes a Christian in and through a particular and concrete mutual interaction between the single individual and the God who encounters us in Jesus Christ. It is by this means that a person is given to participate in loving fellowship with God. While there are some areas in Kierkegaard’s works that seem to place more emphasis on divine agency and others that seem to attach more weight to human agency, when we look at his writings as a whole it becomes clear that there is no straightforward either/or, no clear quantification of divine and human agency and no clear-cut order. Out of his deep respect for the mystery of God, and, indeed, the mystery of subjective human existence, Kierkegaard does not attempt to offer his reader a systematic account of the ‘mechanics’ of becoming a Christian. What he does offer, however, is a profession that a person becomes a Christian in response to the all-transforming love of God, which invites persons to become a Christian in his presence, under his governance and by his grace.

I. Approaching Christianity Climacus denies that a philosophical, historical or rhetorical introduction to ‘Christianity’ can directly introduce a person to what it means to be or to become a Christian.5 As we have seen, he is adamant that ‘there is no direct transition to becoming a Christian’: there is no direct way to make the ‘absolute decision’ or ‘qualitative leap’ that becoming a Christian requires.6 This is not to say that scholarly presentations of ‘Christianity’ cannot meaningfully contribute to the possibility of a person becoming a Christian. They just cannot do so directly and, indeed, in Climacus’ own particular context, such presentations were undermining the possibility of becoming Christian by promoting a nominal Christianity, which, for him, looked a lot more like paganism.7 That is, they were contributing to a Christendom culture in which knowledge of Christianity was given prominence over a life of loving response to God. How, then, does Climacus attempt to introduce Christianity into this situation? One of the first things to consider when offering an introduction is the particular standpoint of one’s audience. Climacus does this. He sees his target audience 5.  Such introductions, for Climacus, offer an introduction to Christian doctrine, which, ‘at best’, can only show that Christianity is a superior world-historical view ‘to paganism, Judaism, etc.’, and this does not make a person a Christian. CUP, pp.  382–3 / SKS 7, pp. 348–49. 6.  CUP, p. 381 / SKS 7, p. 347. 7.  CUP, p.  362 / SKS 7, p.  330. For a helpful discussion of this point, see Merold Westphal’s ‘Paganism in Christendom: On Kierkegaard’s Critique of Religion’, in Robert Perkins, International Kierkegaard Commentary on Christian Discourses and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2007), pp. 13–34.



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as the cultural and intellectual elite as well the bourgeois of Danish society – groups that had enculturated and distorted ‘Christianity’ according to their own particular interests and agendas. As ‘Christianity’ had become a brand for the culture and knowledge of these groups, it had become ‘so very easy to be a Christian’ (in the nominal sense); indeed, it had become ‘a convenience to be a Christian de nomine’.8 As Kierkegaard puts it, it had become ‘a familiar, goodnatured, decent chap’ who comforts the life of the bourgeois.9 All that a person needed to do to become a ‘Christian’, on Climacus’ analysis, was be baptised as an infant.10 To remain a ‘Christian’, a person simply needed to include herself within the culture of the established church.11 And one of the major ways to be admired in this context was to be able to demonstrate a highbrow knowledge of Christian teaching and doctrine. Under these circumstances, Climacus observes that there was very little sense in which the citizens of Danish Christendom were becoming Christian.12 There was almost no evidence of any need to struggle against the ways of the world out of a loving devotion to God. To introduce Christianity to this audience, Climacus felt that he needed to awaken the nominal ‘Christians’ to the delusional nature of their ‘Christian’ lives. He needed to stop the intellectualists from merely thinking about Christianity, and he needed to stop the Bourgeois from confusing Christianity with the conventionality of their worldly lives. By attempting to do so, he would have a chance to give them the freedom to become Christian according to the New Testament.13 This task impelled him to offer an introduction that he describes as ‘a repelling one’ (frastødet).14 By showing the Christian life to be repulsive to the secular mindset, 8.  CUP, pp. 383, 364 / SKS 7, pp. 349, 332. 9.  JP 2, 1816 / SKS 26, p. 248 [NB33:4]; see also M, p. 28 / SKS 14, p. 151. 10. Parodying the ‘wohlfeil [cheap] edition of a Christian’, Climacus writes: ‘after all, he is baptized, has received a copy of the Bible and a hymnbook as a gift; is he not, then, a Christian, an Evangelical Lutheran Christian?’ (CUP, p. 557 / SKS 7, p. 506). 11. For Kierkegaard, ‘state churches, people’s churches [Folkekirker], and Christian countries’ are ‘nonsense’ (JP 2, 2056 / SKS 25, p. 398 [NB30:19]). 12. While Kierkegaard is primarily concerned with challenging the ‘Christian state’ in Denmark, he also sees his attack on Danish Christendom as a starting point for ‘blow[ing] apart’ the Christendom dynamics that are ‘evident throughout Europe’ (KJN 6, p. 138 / SKS 22, p. 141 [NB11:233]). 13. According to Climacus, it is far easier for a non-Christian to make a decision to become decisively Christian than it is for the purely nominal (non-decisive) Christian to make a decision to become decisively Christian. The reason for this is that the nominal Christian first needs to be exposed to her non-Christianity, such that she will confess her non-Christian existence. For this reason, it is all too easy for the nominal Christian to forget to become a Christian. The non-Christian, however, is already aware of her non-Christianity (CUP, pp. 365–6 / SKS 7, p. 332–3). 14.  CUP, 384 / SKS 7, p. 350. From a different perspective, Anti-Climacus notes that ‘Everything essentially Christian must have in its presentation a resemblance to the way a physician speaks at the sickbed’ (SUD, p. 5 / SKS 11, p. 117). In the cosy sickbed of the

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the nominal Christians of Denmark would be made aware that Christianity is not the easy life that they had fooled themselves into thinking it was. They could then feel a need to live out the Christian life of sacrifice that they were confessing with their lips. Or they could at least be challenged to stop deceiving themselves and others into thinking that their dispassionate worldly lives are ‘Christian’. Accordingly, Climacus ‘take[s] on the responsibility of making it difficult [to become a Christian], as difficult as possible, yet without making it more difficult than it is’.15 At this particular stage of the Postscript, Climacus fixates on the subjective side of becoming a Christian. He focuses on introducing Christianity ‘psychologically’ ‘by evoking an awareness of how much must be lived and how difficult it is to become really aware of the difficulty of the decision [to become a Christian]’.16 At the same time, again, his intention was not to ‘make it … more difficult than it is’.17 He merely sought to remove the embellishments that had dressed Christianity up with worldly appeal and made God, as Merold Westphal notes, ‘tame enough to fit without remainder into the horizons of the finite world of human speech and thought, the logos in terms of which reason defines itself ’.18 The two points to acknowledge here for our current purposes are: (1) becoming a Christian requires a person to commit himself to making the sacrifices that God calls him to make; and (2) becoming a Christian requires a person to become passionately committed to struggling to respond to God. These points might seem to be almost identical, but there is an important difference between them. The first point emphasises the need for conscious decision-making. The second point emphasises the need for a passion that will motivate a person to make intentional decisions. While these two requirements are different, they are also very much an interconnected part of becoming a Christian. On the one hand, a person does not decide to struggle to lead a Christian life without the passion to do so. On the other, a person does not develop the passion to struggle to become a Christian without making conscious decisions that will direct his life in this process of becoming. Neither Kierkegaard nor Climacus provide a systematic explanation of the relationship between these elements of existence. They simply assert that they are both essential requirements for becoming a Christian. At the same time, these requirements need to be recognised as secondary expressions of a person’s being in a relationship with God. A person’s being in relationship with God is prior to the subjective impact that this relationship has on a person. As such, becoming a Christian cannot just be conceived in existential or epistemological terms. The primary goal of the Christian life is not becoming established Lutheranism, Anti-Climacus believed that those who lay in their sickbeds needed to be told that they were sick. Also, they needed to be told that those with whom they lay were not the standard of good health but patients in an epidemic. 15.  CUP, p. 381 / SKS 7, p. 347. 16.  CUP, p. 383 / SKS 7, p. 348. 17.  CUP, p. 557 / SKS 7, p. 506. 18.  Merold Westphal, ‘Kierkegaard on Faith, Reason, and Passion’, Faith and Philosophy 28.1 (2011): 84.



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a ‘Christian’ per se. Still less is it about bringing one’s life into conformity with the ‘Christian’ brand or worldview. When a person becomes authentically Christian – a Christian ‘Christian’ – it is, for Kierkegaard, a consequence of her loving devotion to the God of love. She learns what love is from the God who first loved us: ‘our first teacher, who by loving us has himself taught us love so that we could love him.’19 It is the love of God that motivates a person to surrender her life to God. Here, a further benefit to Climacus’ ‘repelling’ manifests itself. By presenting Christianity as a repulsive option, relative to the worldly mindset, Climacus is able to undermine the incentivising of Christianity that distracted persons from the true inspiration that lies behind the Christian faith: the love of God. In short, passionate motivation and decisive action only contribute to the process of becoming a Christian if they correspond, to some extent, to the love that God is in himself. Becoming a Christian, therefore, is not a haphazard mix of decisions and passionate motivation, informed by a ‘Christianity’ that is imagined either by an individual human subject or, indeed, by a national culture. The cornerstone for becoming a Christian is a spiritual activity that encounters and transforms a person from beyond herself: the loving activity of God. Therefore, becoming a Christian requires that a person turns to God free from the noise of society, with a ‘silence’ that allows her to hear God. If, in observing the present state of the world and life in general, from a Christian point of view one had to say (and from a Christian point of view with complete justification): It is a disease. And if I were a physician and someone asked me ‘What do you think should be done?’ I would answer, ‘The first thing, the unconditional condition for anything to be done, consequently the very first thing that must be done is: create silence, bring about silence; God’s Word cannot be heard, and if in order to be heard in the hullabaloo it must be shouted deafeningly with noisy instruments, then it is not God’s Word; create silence!20

Does this call for silence before God’s Word suggest the advocacy an inward turn to silent contemplation of one’s own ideas of God or love? It does not. For Kierkegaard, it is not only the noise of society that needs to be silenced. To become a Christian involves a process of self-denial wherein the self itself needs to be silenced and, indeed, forgotten. 19.  KJN 4, p. 118 / SKS 20, p. 118 [NB:199]. 20.  FSE, p. 47 / SKS 13, p. 75; see also CD, p. 264 / SKS 10, p. 281; and Kierkegaard’s devotional discourse ‘Look at the Birds of the Air; Look at the Lily in the Field’ in WA, pp. 10–20 / SKS 11, pp. 16–25. Making insightful use of Kierkegaard, Dietrich Bonhoeffer opens his Christology by writing, ‘[t]eaching about Christ begins in silence. “Be silent, for that is the absolute” (Kierkegaard). This has nothing to do with mystical silence which, in its absence of words, is, nevertheless, the soul secretly chattering away to itself. The church’s silence is silence before the Word. In proclaiming the Word, the church must fall silent before the inexpressible.’ Bonhoeffer, Christ the Center, tran. Edwin Robertson (New York: Harper & Row, 1978), p. 27.

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We see this in Kierkegaard’s Eucharistic Discourse ‘The Woman Who Was a Sinner’, based on Luke 7.36–50. In this passage from Luke, the sinful woman comes to sit at Jesus’s feet and, as she weeps, she bathes his feet with her tears and dries them with her hair (Lk. 7.38). In this encounter, she expresses: ‘I am capable of literally nothing; he is capable of unconditionally everything.’21 When she weeps at the feet of Jesus, ‘she has forgotten herself completely’.22 And she forgets herself, not by looking to herself to try to silence her sinfulness, but by losing herself in the presence of her saviour. In this encounter, she ‘is calmed like the sick baby that is calmed at its mother’s breast, where it cries out and forgets itself ’.23 When she weeps, she weeps with ‘blessed tears of self-forgetfulness’ that do ‘not remind her anymore of what she is weeping over’ but express the fact that ‘she has forgotten herself completely’.24 For Kierkegaard, to ‘forget oneself completely’ is ‘the true expression of loving much’.25 The reason for this is that when a person loves much, she loses herself in her loving devotion to another; the self that a person brings to a relationship becomes irrelevant when a person is lovingly preoccupied with the other. When the woman who was a sinner forgets herself at the feet of Jesus; she becomes ‘lost in her Savior’ and, in Jesus Christ, finds forgiveness of sins.26 In her encounter with Jesus Christ, she becomes a new person. As Carl Hughes puts it, drawing on the text: ‘She becomes the picture that Christ makes of her.’27 Obviously, it is not possible for a person to encounter Jesus Christ today in the same way as the woman who was a sinner.28 Yet, as I have shown in previous chapters, Kierkegaard does recognise that it is possible to encounter the risen and ascended Jesus Christ.29 Today, it is just as much the case that the sinful self becomes silenced and forgotten when a person devotes herself to the living Jesus Christ. And it is by encountering Jesus Christ, through the life-giving Spirit, that a person’s silenced and forgotten self comes to be replaced by a new self that corresponds to the love of God. This is what is required for a person to come to love God and become a Christian. This process will involve rational, emotional and existential becoming. However, if this becoming is to be truly Christian, it will be a consequence of a person being transformed by the presence of God’s love in Jesus Christ: the love that uniquely draws persons to live lives of love. 21.  WA, pp. 139–40 / SKS 11, p. 276. 22.  WA, p. 140 / SKS 11, p. 276. 23.  WA, p. 140 / SKS 11, p. 276. 24.  WA, p. 140 / SKS 11, p. 276. 25.  WA, p. 140 / SKS 11, p. 277. 26.  WA, p. 141 / SKS 11, p. 277. 27. Carl Hughes, Kierkegaard and the Staging of Desire: Rhetoric and Performance in a Theology of Eros (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014), p. 127. 28. That said, Kierkegaard later remarks that ‘we have one comfort that she did not have’: that Christ has died to save us, to bring about atonement ‘that makes doubting of the forgiveness of sins impossible’ for the person of faith. (WA, pp. 158–59 / SKS 11, pp. 271–2). 29.  CD, p. 261 / SKS 10, p. 274.



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As I have mentioned, this conception of becoming a Christian is not always explicit in all of Kierkegaard’s writings, particularly those that focus on the subjective side of Christianity. Nonetheless, as I have been arguing, Kierkegaard ultimately ends up being very clear that any human move that proceeds independently of God’s grace, or seeks to circumvent God’s grace, cannot deliver a person into a relationship with God who establishes kinship with us in time. We ‘always need grace beforehand’, so much so that Kierkegaard describes any independent attempt to move oneself into a relationship with God ‘is like a new sin’.30 In Christian terms, a relationship with God depends wholly upon a person becoming subject to a decisive moment(s) in which God encounters and reveals himself to a person and enables the person to relate to him in the truth. In this event, ‘every remnant of original immanence is annihilated, and all connection cut away’; the person ‘becomes a new creation’.31 This would suggest that any direct historical knowledge of Christianity is only ever preliminary. That having been said, Climacus also writes: Religiousness A must first be present in the individual before there can be any consideration of becoming aware of the dialectical B. When the individual in the most decisive expression of existential pathos relates himself to an eternal happiness, then there can be consideration of becoming aware of how the dialectical in second place [secundo loco] thrusts him down into the pathos of the absurd. Thus it is evident how foolish it is if a person without pathos wants to relate himself to the essentially Christian, because before there can be any question at all of simply being in the situation of becoming aware of it one must first of all exist in Religiousness A.32

How are we to interpret this passage? Again, we need to keep in mind the audience that Climacus is addressing. To enter into a relationship with the God revealed in Jesus Christ, it is not the case, for Climacus, that a person can merely study him as an objective observer. Also, a person cannot simply wait around for a ‘road to Damascus experience’ – a sudden and dramatic awakening by grace. Based on his analysis of Christianity, Climacus seems convinced that the suffering, guilt and resignation that characterise immanent forms of religiousness have a key role to play in the process of becoming a Christian. To become a Christian, a person must become personally interested in God. He must give God the kind of attention that we find in the pathos-filled subjectivity of Religiousness A: he must humbly approach God as one before whom he has nothing to offer except his need of him. Going through these motions will not itself bring a person any closer to God, although, for Climacus, such motions can provide the ‘impetus’ for God then, in ‘second place’, to deliver that person into the Christian faith.33 ‘[T]he god 30.  JP 2, 1493 / SKS 25, p. 223 [NB28:12] 31.  CUP, pp. 572, 576 / SKS 7, pp. 520, 523. 32.  CUP, pp. 556–7 / SKS 7, pp. 505–6. 33.  CUP, pp. 559–60 / SKS 7, pp. 508–9; see also JFY, p. 191 / SKS 16, p. 237–8.

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[Guden] rescues from delusion the person who in quiet inwardness and honest before God is concerned for himself; even though he is ever so simple, the god leads him in the suffering of inwardness to the truth.’34 Note, however, even here, when Climacus is stressing the subjective side of Christianity, he is adamant that it is the grace of God that draws a person into relationship with the truth. In this interaction, a person’s knowing becomes totally transformed, to the extent that there needs to be a ‘break with immanence’.35 In her analysis of the Socratic elements in Climacus’ works, M. Jamie Ferreira contends: ‘a break with immanence does not mean that Religiousness A is left behind, superseded by something entirely new’.36 Religiousness A, she suggests, is not merely a leaping off point, but a stage of existence that continues to play an active role in a person’s Christian faith.37 She supports her argument with Climacus’ affirmation that ‘every Christian has pathos as in Religiousness A’.38 Furthermore, she also takes Climacus’ description of Christian pathos as a ‘sharpened pathos’ (skærpet Pathos) to imply that, in conversion, ‘the original pathos is not annihilated’.39 In light of these and a few other references, she argues that the Christian faith does not require ‘a break with human existing, but an accentuation of human existing’.40 Human existence is transformed, heightened and deepened rather than displaced.41 Concluding her analysis, she remarks, ‘Climacus’ whole motivation was to reawaken people who had forgotten “what it is to live as a human being” – surely, we are not asked to forget that when we become Christian.’42 Ferreira makes her case alongside her main contention that, in Postscript, the Socratic is not presented as an alternative to the Christian faith (as it was in Fragments), but a form of subjectivity that continues to operate in harmony with a person’s Christian faith.43 There are many respects in which she appears to be right. As we saw have seen, Climacus offers a more existential account of Christianity in Postscript than he does in Fragments. In Postscript, Climacus remarks: ‘the issue is not about the truth of Christianity but about individual’s 34.  CUP, p. 615 / SKS 7, p. 559. 35.  CUP, p. 571 / SKS 7, p. 519. 36. Ferreira, ‘The “Socratic Secret”’, p. 21. 37. Ferreira, ‘The “Socratic Secret”’, p. 18. 38.  CUP, p. 582 / SKS 7, p. 529. 39.  CUP, p. 581 / SKS 7, p. 529; Ferreira, ‘The “Socratic Secret”’, pp. 21–2. 40.  Ferreira, ‘The “Socratic Secret”, p. 21. With a similar understanding, Cornelio Fabro is moved to suggest that ‘in Kierkegaard’s opinion, religiousness [including Christian religiousness] must constitute a more serious self-sufficient task’. Fabro, ‘Faith and Reason in Kierkegaard’s Dialectic’, p. 191. 41. Ferreira, ‘The “Socratic Secret”’, pp. 1921. She also notes ‘The claim that “existence is paradoxically accentuated” in Christianity fits perfectly with the idea that sharpened pathos is an operation on Socratic pathos’ (p. 19). 42. Ferreira, ‘The “Socratic Secret”’, pp. 22–3. 43. See Ferreira, ‘The “Socratic Secret”’, p. 15; CUP, 206–7n. / SKS 7, p. 188n.



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relation to Christianity’.44 He then adds that his focus on the subjective dimension of Christianity offers ‘a new approach to the issue of Fragments’.45 With this focus, he sought to challenge the lacklustre ‘Christianity’ of Christendom and stress that ‘Being a Christian is defined not by the “what” of Christianity but by the “how” of the Christian.’46 This meant not only emphasising the grace of God in the Christian life but also stressing that the Christian must strive to live in a way that takes her relationship with God seriously. The Christian must approach God with the existential pathos of Religiousness A: she must interpret her relationship with God as her eternal happiness, she must commit her life to worshipping God and she must do so with an understanding that she is nothing before God, like the woman who was a sinner. To become a Christian, a person must think about what it means to become a Christian and struggle to act accordingly. When he does so, his reflection is not simply the grace of God operating within him. For Climacus, becoming a Christian involves grappling with the call of Christianity, and this seems to involve a reciprocal relationship between the grace of God and a person’s immanent existence. It is ‘foolish’, he writes, if a person without pathos wants to relate himself to the essentially Christian, because before there can be any question at all of simply being in the situation of becoming aware of it one must first of all exist in Religiousness A. But often enough the mistake has been made of making capital, as a matter of course, of Christ and Christianity and the paradoxical and the absurd, that is, all the essentially Christian, is esthetic gibberish.47

Despite the fact that Climacus draws on the importance of a Christian taking her relationship with God seriously (with the pathos of Religiousness A), Climacus does not set aside the irreconcilable differences between Religiousness A and Christianity. He continues to affirm that whereas Religiousness A is conditioned by a person’s own inward deepening in relation to an eternal happiness, Christianity is based upon the ‘God in time as an individual human being’ who, as ‘something outside himself ’, qualifies a person’s eternal happiness ‘more specifically’.48 This particular historical relation to the god in time inspires a new Christian pathos – ‘a pathos of separation’ – with which God upbuilds a person in her faith:49 a pathos that, given its absolutely different source of inspiration, must 44.  CUP, p. 15 / SKS 7, p. 24. 45.  CUP, p. 17 / SKS 7, p. 26. 46.  CUP, p. 610 / SKS 7, p. 554. 47.  CUP, p.  557 / SKS 7, p.  506. Ingolf Dalferth seems to be reading too much into Climacus’ position here when he affirms that, for Climacus, to become a Christian and find the way to heaven one needs ‘first to reach’ the ‘ethic-religious climax in a life of growing despair, guilt and failure’. Dalferth, ‘Becoming a Christian According to the Postscript’, p. 281. 48.  CUP, pp. 561n., 556 / SKS 7, p. 510n., 506. 49.  CUP, pp. 582, 556–9 / SKS 7, pp. 530, 505–8.

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be recognised as qualitatively different from the universally accessible pathos of Religiousness A.50 Ferreira does not disregard a qualitative discontinuity between A and B in Postscript.51 My concern, however, is that she underplays the decisiveness of God’s historical actuality for becoming a Christian – that the point of departure for becoming a Christian is a living relationship with God in history.52 On her reading, it appears that a person’s transition into Religiousness B primarily involves the transforming and deepening of a person’s original existence. This transformation, she writes, ‘is a function of absolute engagement with history’.53 God provides the world with a qualitatively specific revelation of sin and forgiveness that is then able to inform a person’s immanent relation to an eternal happiness, giving it a qualitatively new content.54 However, in a quote that Ferreira acknowledges, Climacus writes: ‘Christianity 50. Climacus asserts that the blessedness of the Christian life is characterised by isolation, separation and polemic; it is exclusive of everyone who does not have faith. The problem with this, however, is that it can come across that the Christian is being given ‘preferential treatment’ and, he goes on, ‘if a Christian selfishly perceives it as this, we have the desperate arrogation of predestination’. Under these circumstances, the Christian can be perceived as being unable to relate ‘with others who do not have or are unable to have preferential treatment’, which includes ‘the countless ones who are excluded through no fault of their own but by the accidental circumstance that Christianity has not yet been proclaimed to them’. Climacus does not devote much attention to this issue, but merely states it as a reality with which the Christian is faced. However, this preferential treatment will not immediately come across as preferential treatment to the world, because being blessed as a Christian will mean being reconciled into a life ‘distinguished by suffering’. As a mark of the Christian’s will to lead a life that goes against the ways of this world, Kierkegaard sees the Christian’s suffering as a mark of a person’s transformation; a mark that a person’s life is driven by more than a worldly egotism (CUP, pp.  582–3 / SKS 7, pp. 529–30). 51. Ferreira notes that the difficulty with imagining the ‘maintenance of Religiousness A with Religiousness B’ is that it is difficult to think of ‘a qualitative transition without the annihilation of what precedes it’ (‘The “Socratic Secret”’, p.  23). It is a tension, she describes, that corresponds ‘to the age-old controversy about whether grace perfects nature or whether grace destroys nature and replaces it with something else’ (‘The “Socratic Secret”’, pp. 18–19). But, as Kierkegaard himself notes, there is a sense in which becoming a Christian involved an annihilation of that which precedes it. He writes: ‘The [Christian] consciousness presupposes an entire preceding stage of [human] consciousness (it does this both world-historically and in an individual respect in the individual person), and while the [Christians] therefore stick with the consciousness of a Flood that annihilated what existed previously, philosophy believes that the beginning of existence takes place here’ (KJN 2, pp. 27–8 / SKS 18, p. 32 [EE:83]). 52.  CUP, pp. 579, 583–4 / SKS 7, pp. 526, 530–1. 53. Ferreira, ‘The “Socratic Secret”, pp. 21–2. 54. Ferreira, ‘The “Socratic Secret”, p. 22.



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will not be content to be an evolution within the total category of human nature; an engagement such as this is too little to offer to the god.’55 Ferreira does not suggest that Christianity is merely an evolution within human nature. She acknowledges that Christianity requires the revelation of sin and forgiveness to give a person’s subjectivity a qualitative newness, which cannot merely be recollected. The problem, however, is that she takes this to imply that the qualitatively new elements in Christianity merely inform a person’s immanent orientation towards an eternal happiness in a qualitative deepening. Such a position suggests that God becomes incarnate simply as a teacher to help better inform a person’s religiousness with a qualitatively new truth. On this account, the centrality of the continuing interactive relationship – and thus paradoxical relationship – between God and individual human beings is neglected. The Christian does not merely relate to God by learning about revelation from her Bible and then struggling to correspond to it. Becoming a Christian clearly presupposes that this will happen. However, as I argued in Chapter 3, for Climacus, becoming a Christian requires an outward relationship with God – with the God who ‘cannot be an object for [human] beings, because God is subject’.56 It requires a person to become transformed by a spiritual activity that comes to her from beyond her immanent existence, from beyond a preacher’s Sunday sermon, and, indeed, from beyond the pages of her Bible. Jesus Christ is not merely a historical figure who leaves behind some information that can help to fill in the blanks in a person’s immanent relation to God. Rather, he is the ‘by-nature eternal’ one in and through whom persons can be given to relate to God.57 Therefore, it is not merely qualitatively new data that makes Christianity qualitatively unique, but also the way in which the power of God in time actively enables a person to relate to God. It is not as though the Christian, having learned about the revelation of Jesus Christ, can now mediate the truth of Christianity to herself in isolation from the grace of God. The only way for the Christian to continue to relate to the eternal truth is through a living relationship with God.58 In this account, it is not a person’s passionate interest in Christian teaching that is central, but God’s sustaining that person in her faith, thereby enabling her to relate both to God and to the truth that God is in himself. Grace, for Kierkegaard, does not simply perfect a person’s natural existence; it redefines it. The grace of God confronts a person miraculously in a way that

55.  CUP, p. 559 / SKS 7, p. 508. 56.  KJN 4, p. 73 / SKS 20, p. 74 [NB:88]; see also JP 2, 1449 / SKS 26, p. 281 [NB33:38]. 57.  CUP, pp. 578–9 / SKS 7, p. 526. 58.  As such, I would argue that it is an overstatement for Daniel Price to suggest, under the influence of Barth, that ‘Kierkegaard’s anthropology espoused a type of individualism that allowed the person to exist in cheerless isolation. Kierkegaard’s heavy emphasis on the individual indicates that perhaps he had not separated from the acculturating influences of the Enlightenment and Schleiermacher as much as he had supposed.’ Price, Karl Barth’s Anthropology in Light of Modern Thought (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), p. 95.

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causes a person to ‘lose continuity with himself ’ and become ‘a new creation’.59 There is no prospective continuity and no possibility of any predetermination of the condition of God’s engagement with a person. Any continuity can only be discerned retrospectively and in such a way that God’s mediatory, transformative and redemptive activity is understood to be both foundational and also unanticipatable. When a person is transformed by grace, she no longer relates naturally to God as a conceptual postulate, existential goal or object of her imagination. This does not mean that the Christian is required to forget what it is to exist as a human being. Rather, by entering into a relationship with God and participating in a relationship with the eternal truth, the Christian is given to know in truth what it means to be human before the God who creates and sustains her. As we shall now consider, Climacus describes this conversion as a leap (Spring) or metἁbasiV eἰV ἄllo gέnoV (shifting from one genus to another).60

II. The Passionate Transition a. Venturing the Leap It is impossible to phase continuously into a qualitatively different sphere of existence. Such a transition may involve elements of continuity. However, the very fact that two spheres are qualitatively different means that, in some respect, there will be total discontinuity between them. Consequently, one cannot assume that she can think herself into a qualitatively different sphere of existence, nor that she can directly transition (Overgang) into it through sheer willpower, because, in advance of her existing in it, there will be a sense in which it is totally alien to her. To transition into such a sphere, a person needs to set out on a ‘pathos-filled’ venture into the unknown. And to make the transition, she must take a leap: a leap that requires her to risk allowing herself to become transformed into a new way of existing. This leap, however, is not random. A person will need to have some idea of ‘what’ she is venturing into. But she will not properly be able to know this ‘what’ until she participates in the sphere of existence to which this ‘what’ corresponds. For example, to transition into the religious life, a person must have a conception of god. By using her imagination and will, she can then bring herself to believe and trust in this god-concept, and can transform herself by appropriating this god-concept to her existence. By so doing, she can, in some inconceivable way, enable herself to make a transition into a qualitatively new existence, characterised by a relationship with this god-concept.61 59.  CUP, p. 576 / SKS 7, p. 524. 60.  CUP, p. 98 / SKS 7, pp. 96–7. Climacus owes his use of the category of the leap to Lessing (see CUP, pp. 93–106 / SKS 7, pp. 92–103). 61. As I discuss below, with respect to the qualitative leap that takes place in the fall, Vigilius Haufniensis contends that the nature of this leap is, in many respects, beyond the scope of psychological investigation (CA, pp. 38–9, 47–51 / SKS 4, pp. 344–5, 352–6).



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To become a Christian, however, something more is required. A person needs to come to know God through an encounter with God’s gracious activity. What would it mean if God were not present and a person were left to find God with her own imagination? For Climacus, the human attempt to demonstrate the existence of something, apart from the reality of that something, does little more that draw attention to the human idea of that something; it only ever serves to ‘develop the ideality I have presupposed’.62 Accordingly, he understands that the human endeavour to prove the existence of God can only convince one of the validity of a human concept of God, and this ‘proves something else instead’.63 For him, if a person is ‘truly to know something about the unknown (the god)’ she must actually ‘come to know this from the god’.64 However, to encounter God, she will need to loosen her grip on her desire to see God demonstrated to her directly; she needs to let go of the priority she gives to her own immediate understanding and imagination. In Climacus’ words, she needs to ‘let go of the demonstration’ in a ‘leap’ that he describes as meine Zuthat (my contribution).65 By ‘letting go’, a person resists the temptation to try to work God out in her own terms before turning to God for relationship. With this move, she submits herself to God and humbly places her trust in God for everything. As Kierkegaard illustrates in a journal entry: when the swimming instructor himself leaps into the deep water and then says to the beginner that he will help him, that there is nothing to be afraid of – the teacher expects one thing – that the beginner will leap out into the deep water. If the beginner gets the notion of walking out in the shallows and playing at swimming – that makes a fool out of the swimming instructor, who is ready and waiting out in the deep water.66

Importantly, however, the venturing or willingness that characterises the leap cannot in itself bring a person to know God. The leap that a person contributes, Murray Rae suggests, ‘is more aptly defined as the removal of an obstacle to conversion. That obstacle is human pretence – the pretence that reason or the understanding enables us to attain the Truth on our own.’67 It also needs to be understood that a person’s leap does not systematically cause God to bring a person to faith.68 Unlike immanent forms of religiousness, it is not 62.  PF, p. 42 / SKS 4, p. 248. Climacus affirms: ‘I never reason in conclusion to existence, but I reason in conclusion from existence. For example, I do not demonstrate that a stone exists but that something which exists is a stone’ (PF, p. 40 / SKS 4, p. 245). 63.  PF, p. 43 / SKS 4, p. 248. 64.  PF, p. 46 / SKS 4, p. 252. 65.  PF, pp. 42–3 / SKS 4, p. 248. 66.  JP 3, 2359 / SKS 26, p. 270 [NB33:29]. 67. Rae, Kierkegaard’s Vision of the Incarnation, p.  166. Also, as Kierkegaard himself writes: ‘Man’s highest achievement is to let God be able to help him’ (JP 1, 54 / SKS 27, pp. 569–70 [Papir 457] ; see also JP 2, 1492 / SKS 25, p. 177 [NB27:63]). 68. See Kierkegaard’s allusion to Jn. 3.8 in CD, p. 253 / SKS 10, p. 267.

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simply the case in Christianity that ‘[w]hen a person rubs it [the wonderful lamp of freedom] with ethical passion, God comes into existence for him’.69 Becoming a Christian involves a free subject to free subject relationship that may require a person to be patient in her passion to know God.70 For Kierkegaard, ‘[c]onversion goes slowly’.71 Becoming a Christian requires a person to live a life of prayer and obedience that is not restless for an immediate return. Yet, by turning to God, a person can trust that God is present with her, hearing her prayers, drawing her to himself and upbuilding her in her faith. b. Preparing to Become a Christian? When trying to come to terms with Kierkegaard’s account of the leap, it can be tempting to try to force his position into an overly systematic account of Christian conversion. But it is imperative to resist this urge. Although, in certain respects, Kierkegaard engages in systematic argument, he does so with a concern to critique overly systematic accounts of Christianity.72 For Kierkegaard, a methodical account of exactly how or why a person becomes a Christian is beyond the scope of systematic investigation. ‘Faith is always related to what is not seen; in the setting of nature (in opposition to the senses) to what is invisible [Usynlige]; in the setting of spirit (spiritually) to what is improbable [Usandsynlige].’73 As I have pointed out, Kierkegaard does not try to offer a precise explanation of how divine and human action relate to one another in the process of becoming a Christian. ‘A providence [Forsyn] is no easier to understand (to grasp) than redemption [Forløsningen] – both can only be believed.’74 So, for example, when Kierkegaard affirms the importance of taking a leap, or when Climacus suggests

69.  CUP, p. 138 / SKS 7, p. 129. Commenting on passages such as this, C. Stephen Evans notes that Climacus ‘is here speaking phenomenologically. When a human being is not spiritually attuned, God is not experienced as real, and in a sense God is not real for that person.’ Evans, ‘Can God be Hidden and Evident at the Same Time? Some Kierkegaardian Reflections’, Faith and Philosophy 23:3 (2006): 244. I think this is right. However, I would want to qualify that, if this is to be understood Christianly, we need to be clear that God is actively involved in the spiritual attuning. 70. See KJN 5, pp. 124–5 / SKS 21, p. 119 [NB7:83]. 71.  JP 1, 420 / SKS 27, p. 207 [Papir 255]. 72. Accordingly, I would strongly agree with Lee Barrett that ‘Climacus’s persistent and vehement objections to philosophic systems apply with equal force to theological systems. The pervasive antisystematic thrust of Climacus’ work cannot be exaggerated.’ Barrett, ‘The Paradox of Faith in Philosophical Fragments: Gift or Task?’ in International Kierkegaard Commentary: ‘Philosophical Fragments’ and ‘Johannes Climacus’, ed. Robert Perkins (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1994), p. 266. 73.  KJN 4, p. 74 / SKS 20, p. 75 [NB:90]. 74.  JP 3, 3628 / SKS 27, p. 349 [Papir 340] (emphasis original).



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‘Religiousness A must first be present in the individual’,75 he does not present these as preparatory parts of a method for summoning grace into one’s life. He does not assert that once a person has gotten herself to a particular stage, the grace of God will then, like clockwork, come to grant her the condition of faith. It is therefore an overstatement for Ingolf Dalferth to accuse ‘Kierkegaard’ of suggesting that we ‘have to prepare ourselves for, or at least become prepared for the workings of grace or we shall miss it’.76 This misrepresentation arises from an attempt to push Kierkegaard further than he is willing to go in his understanding of how God relates to individual conversion.77 When becoming a Christian, for Kierkegaard, a person trusts and hopes that God is at work in his life; he must ‘believe in a providentia specialissima [special providence]’78. But he cannot know this with certainty, nor can he have any command over God’s activity. Indeed, for Kierkegaard, there is a sense in which a person cannot even know for certain whether he is actually a Christian. When considering whether he himself is a Christian, Kierkegaard notes that ‘I aspire to it, fight for it, pray about it, and trust to God I am a Christian.’79 Out of his deep respect for Christianity, he is often trepidatious about asserting his status as a Christian.80 He explains: ‘To say about oneself that one is a Christian means to speak with God, and that therefore a human being must speak with fear and trembling’.81 The problem with certainty, for Kierkegaard, is that it intimates that a subject has a command over her relationship with the object of her knowing; 75.  CUP, pp. 556–7 / SKS 7, pp. 505–6. 76. Ingolf Dalferth, ‘Becoming a Christian According to the Postscript’, p. 279. Dalferth then argues that ‘Kierkegaard’ is ‘putting the cart before the horse’. He suggests that, for ‘Kierkegaard’, ‘[i]t is not grace that defines how it is received, but our human receiving that defines how grace is received, when it can be received and what is received as grace’ (p. 279). 77. For Dalferth, ‘[t]here is a deep ambiguity and unresolved tension in Climacus’ way of arguing here. Although the argument in Postscript depends from the first to the last page on the priority of God’s creative grace over our ways of receiving it, it nonetheless presents the spheres of existence as defining what we can see and grasp and understand as God’s presence and grace’ (‘Becoming a Christian According to the Postscript’, p. 279). I would agree that there is an ambiguity here, but this seems somewhat intentional given that we are dealing with the paradoxical and mysterious notion of God relating to human persons in time. However, it is unfair for Dalferth to claim that Climacus ‘presents the spheres of existence as defining what we can see and grasp and understand as God’s presence and grace’ (Dalferth, ‘Becoming a Christian According to the Postscript’, pp. 279–80). 78.  JP 2, 2083 / SKS 26, p. 241 [NB36:20]. 79.  PV, p. 129 / SKS 16, p. 111. 80. Although Kierkegaard does qualify: ‘If my relation were to pagans … then in opposition to them I would have to say that I am a Christian. But I am living in Christendom, among Christians, or among people who say they are Christians’ (PV, pp. 138–9 / SKS 16, p. 120). 81.  PV, p. 140 / SKS 16, p. 122.

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it suggests a form of command that is not proper to a faithful relationship with God. Genuine faith in God is characterised by a humble recognition of the incompleteness and provisionality of one’s beliefs: a recognition that keeps a person turning to God for upbuilding in the struggle to become a Christian. We can, see therefore, why Kierkegaard would be resistant to the accusation that a person can prepare herself for grace. His appreciation for the uncertainty of faith does not concur with the suggestion that grace can be anticipated in the mind of a person who is thinking about becoming a Christian. Again, while Kierkegaard is happy to acknowledge that there are human practices and mindsets that seem to be pivotal for becoming a Christian, he does not present them in any straightforward way as preparation for the miracle and mystery of grace.82 Not for a moment does he think that a person is privy to (let alone able to prepare herself for) the way that God works in the world. What Kierkegaard does affirm, albeit unsystematically, is that a humble and passionate interest in a personal relationship with the living God is conducive to becoming a Christian in a way that a speculative or inward-looking analysis of Christianity is not.83 What is important for Kierkegaard is not a theory of conversion but the reality to which conversion corresponds. This reality, the reality of grace, is not something to be passively observed, systematised, naturalised or domesticated. Grace is not to be introduced ‘as a matter of course’ – a mere step in the process of coming to faith, ‘which, after all, means that it [grace] is taken in vain’.84 It is present as an activity that comes from beyond human existence to draw persons to embrace God wholeheartedly with a humble and loving adoration. And whether grace draws a person into a personal relationship with the God, ‘depends on whether it so pleases God’.85

82. Lee Barrett helpfully explains: ‘any preparation for grace could jeopardise the decisiveness of the moment. The individual would be grateful to God for the gift of grace, but grateful to oneself for becoming eligible to receive the gift. But if the moment is to have decisive significance, the recipient can take no credit for being in a position to receive grace. The logic of absolute gratitude, trust, and dependence requires the denigration of the previous life situation. Gratitude is maximised if salvation is not only a gift, but also a gift which was neither expected nor sought’ (Barrett, ‘The Paradox of Faith in Philosophical Fragments: Gift or Task?’, p. 270). 83.  Kierkegaard would suggest that there is more to God’s grace than Climacus suggests in his account of Christian subjectivity. The distinction between the two authors seems important here – a distinction that is missed by Ingolf Dalferth when he concludes his article on Postscript by noting that there ‘must be more to God’s grace than Kierkegaard suggests … However much we may cherish the Kierkegaardian vision of true subjectivity, it cannot be the whole story or the only right way of telling it.’ Dalferth, ‘Becoming a Christian According to the Postscript’, p. 281. 84.  PV, p. 16 / SKS 13, p. 24. 85.  JP 2, 1452 / SKS 26, p. 345 [NB34:34].



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c. Relationship with ‘the Paradox’ Becoming a Christian, for Climacus, requires a person both to release her grip on her established understanding and personally encounter the God who establishes kinship with us in time.86 Yet, again, while Climacus stresses the centrality of God’s active engagement, he does not neglect the intersubjective and reciprocal nature of this relationship. He proposes that conversion will involve an initial selfish move on the part of the human individual – one that ends up being its downfall. To illustrate this point, he turns to the ‘imperfect metaphor’ of erotic love (Elskov),87 which he then relates to his understanding of the paradox (and which he comes to associate with the ‘god in human form’). Self-love lies at the basis of love [Kjœrlighed], but at its peak its paradoxical passion wills its own downfall. Erotic love also wills this, and therefore these two forces are in mutual understanding in the moment of passion, and this passion is precisely erotic love.88

In this passage, Climacus seems to affirm that when a person falls in love with another she initially does so out of self-love. He suggests that love requires there to be an initial passionate drive for self-fulfilment that draws a person towards the other – a drive he terms erotic love. However, in the moment that a person becomes passionately drawn to engage with the other, she becomes a self who is shaped by the other. And, in instances of genuine love, she becomes a self who is overcome by her orientation towards the other: a self who is concerned about putting the other before herself. In the process of this becoming, the moments of passion that enable a person to fall in love are characterised by both a selforientation and an other-orientation. As such, in the passion of erotic love (with which a person finds self-fulfilment in her love for the other), we find there to be a mutual understanding between (other-)love and self-love. What we see here is definitive of Climacus’ understanding of passion: it is an internal quality that 86.  CUP, p.  573 / SKS 7, p.  520. In view of this, Murray Rae quite rightly notes, in amendment of C. Stephen Evans, ‘that the decision to become a Christian involves a choice rather than is a choice’ (Kierkegaard’s Vision of the Incarnation, p. 166; referring to Evans, Fragments and Postscript, p. 274). To be fair to Evans, however, it is not clear how much he sought to affirm that becoming a Christian is a choice rather than involves a choice. He goes on to reject the notion that, for Climacus, the choice to become a Christian is arbitrary and notes that ‘this decision is not one the individual can will apart from an encounter with the God’ (Fragments and Postscript, pp. 275–6). He also makes it clear in some of his other works that a person cannot directly choose beliefs but must, rather, come to belief through a process of reflection. For example, he notes in Passionate Reason: ‘Faith is not an act of will; it is a gift of the god. However, an act of will is necessary if the gift is to be received’ (p. 140). 87.  PF, p. 47 / SKS 4, p. 253. 88.  PF, pp. 47–8 / SKS 4, p. 253.

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enables a self to become drawn towards and shaped by the external world (as it is perceived) – or, in this instance, drawn to love and become shaped by another subject. Climacus then goes on to suggest that a similar thing happens when a person encounters ‘the paradox’, which he initially considers as a proposition that (seemingly) goes against the understanding. When a person initially approaches the paradox, he does so with his own self-understanding and his own self-willingness. However, if he actively encounters the paradox and becomes personally attached to it, he will find that his understanding is paradoxically drawn towards that which goes against his understanding. In this instance, he will find that his understanding comes to a mutual understanding with the paradox, ‘when the understanding and the paradox happily encounter each other in the moment’. This occurs when ‘the understanding surrender[s] itself and the paradox [gives] itself ’ in what Climacus terms the ‘happy passion’ (lykkelige Lidenskab) of ‘faith’.89 When Climacus first considers the concept of ‘faith’ in Fragments, he does not explicitly consider it in terms of a person’s relationship to God but in the more abstract terms of ‘the understanding’s’ relationship to ‘the paradox’. In the first instance he is principally interested in thinking about faith as the passion in which the paradox and the understanding interact with one another in happy mutuality (should the understanding not take offense at the paradox). However, it is quite clear and becomes clearer that he associates ‘the paradox’ with the ‘god in human form’ and he associates ‘the understanding’ with the ‘learner’.90 He notes that the paradox provides the passion of faith, and he intimates that this passion is the condition for understanding the truth that the god provides.91 Also, if we turn to the beginning of the chapter or, indeed, turn back further in the text, it is plain that the god who provides the condition is the servant god: god’s presence is not incidental to his teaching but is essential. The presence of the god in human form – indeed, in the lowly form of a servant – is precisely the

89.  PF, pp. 54, 59 / SKS 4, pp. 257, 261. (It is here that Climacus introduces the concept of faith in the Fragments.) 90. When Climacus introduces faith as the happy passion between the paradox and the understanding, he opens with the question: ‘How, then, does the learner come to an understanding with this paradox?’ (PF, p.  59 / SKS 4, p.  261). As we read through the previous pages, it is hard to see how ‘this paradox’ could be anything other than the god in human form. 91.  PF, p.  59 / SKS 4, p.  261. Here Climacus writes ‘This passion, then, must be the abovementioned condition that the paradox provides.’ The ‘abovementioned condition’ is quite clearly the condition that the god provides (described on the previous page) (PF, p. 58 / SKS 4, p. 261). He also writes more explicitly in a paper entry: ‘The teacher must also give the condition – (faith is the condition)’ (PF, p. 197 / Pap. V B 6:2).



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teaching, and the god himself must provide the condition; otherwise the learner is unable to understand anything. 92

When we take this into account, we see that Climacus is of the view that faith arises in the moments in which the human learner (the understanding) passionately encounters and actively relates to the god in human form (the paradox). And when we consider that the object of faith is not merely an abstract paradox but the god–human, it becomes evident that a person’s relationship to the truth is essentially a personal relationship – a relationship established in the presence of the god in human form. In this relationship, a person’s self-understanding steps aside and the servant god gives himself. And in this relationship, faith arises as the ‘third something’ that is constituted by the passionate relationship between the person and the god in human form.93 Given that we exist as persons who are tied to our own subjectivity, it is easy to see the temptation to interpret the Christian faith in primarily subjective terms, and, to a point, Climacus plays into this fact with his understanding of truth as subjectivity. Also, there is no doubt that some immanent understanding of the Gospel message is critical for becoming and being a Christian. Climacus would agree with C. Stephen Evans ‘that faith includes or presupposes propositional belief ’ and that ‘[b]iblical faith shows itself primarily in believing what God has said’.94 Yet the Christian faith primarily concerns the communication of a truth that cannot be summoned up by a person’s own immanent activity. ‘Revelation’, as Kyle Roberts notes, ‘is not primarily the accessing and understanding of propositional or cognitive information; rather it is a relational knowledge that effects a personal, spiritual transformation of the self.’95 To become Christian, an existing person must encounter the paradoxical person of Jesus Christ, with a passionate interest in the possibility of a faithful relationship. It is in the presence of Christ that a person becomes transformed by the truth of God and comes to know what it means to become a Christian.

III. Faith in the Presence of God As noted above, when a person becomes a Christian, she does not suddenly find herself free from uncertainty. Furthermore, her continuing uncertainty is compounded by the fact that her faith is grounded in one who is absolutely paradoxical to a person’s natural understanding. So, with the passion of faith, 92.  PF, p. 55 / SKS 4, p. 258. 93.  Climacus describes this as a third something because ‘it does not occur through the understanding, which is discharged, or through the paradox, which gives itself ’ (PF, p. 59 / SKS 4, p. 261). 94. Evans, Faith Beyond Reason, p. 5. 95. Kyle Roberts, Emerging Prophet: Kierkegaard and the Postmodern People of God (Eugene: Cascade, 2013), p. 20.

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she will continually need to hold to the truth of the paradox, ‘against the understanding’.96 Christianity, for Climacus, does not ‘want to be the paradox for the believer, and then surreptitiously, little by little, provide him with understanding’.97 The reason for this is that ‘the martyrdom of faith (to crucify one’s understanding) is not a martyrdom of the moment, but the martyrdom of continuance’.98 Faith self-actively ‘relates itself to the improbable and the paradox, is self-active in discovering it and in holding fast at every moment – in order to be able to believe’.99 Faith thrives when the ‘understanding despairs’ and suffers when the understanding takes charge.100 For Kierkegaard, the faith of the Christian is not simply a commitment to a seeming improbability or an apparent paradox (although this is involved). It is a commitment to the person of Jesus Christ, who is beyond a person’s belief, hope and trust.101 As we have already considered, there is, for him, an infinite qualitative difference between human ideas of Jesus Christ and the divine–human reality of Jesus Christ: the latter is united with God in himself; the former is not. For this reason, the Christian faith cannot be maintained without a relationship with Jesus Christ. If a person forgets this, she will lose sight of her need for grace and will start (consciously or unconsciously) looking to herself for upbuilding. Unfaithfully, she will turn inward to her own Christology rather than to the reality of Jesus Christ. And she will become lost, because it is not theology that leads a person to God but ‘the Mediator’: it is ‘Christ who leads us to God … by the means of the Spirit’.102 It is an outward relationship with God that qualitatively distinguishes the faith of the Christian from the beliefs of a purely academic theologian. Analogously, just as the blind person can have no perception of colour, the deaf person can have no understanding of sound, so the person without a personal relationship with Jesus Christ can have no awareness of what it means to be a Christian. In this way, the Christian faith is incommensurate with the kind of faithful beliefs that can be developed within the sphere of immanent human thought, such as the belief that one’s spouse will be faithful, that water will continue to boil at 100°C (at sea level), let alone the faithful belief in the actuality of a pagan god. 96.  CUP, p. 559, 564 / SKS 7, pp. 508, 513. 97.  CUP, p. 559 / SKS 7, p. 508. 98.  CUP, p. 559 / SKS 7, p. 508. 99.  CUP, p. 233 / SKS 7, p. 212. 100.  CUP, p. 233 / SKS 7, p. 213. 101. Faith, Climacus says, ‘is a totally unique sphere, which paradoxically, from the esthetic and metaphysical points of view, accentuates the actuality of another person, not one’s own’ (CUP, p. 580n. / SKS 7, p. 527n.). 102.  JP 2, 1432 / SKS 25, pp.  140–1 [NB27:23]. Notably, Kierkegaard affirms in this journal entry that a relationship with God begins with the Father who draws us to himself. He writes: ‘It is not the Spirit who leads to the Son and the Son who leads to the Father; no, it is the Father who directs to the Son, the Son who directs to the Spirit, and not until then is it the Spirit who leads to the Son and the Son who leads to the Father.’



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Having said that, the faith of the Christian will seem to bear a striking resemblance to these natural forms of faith and will not always feel as radically new as Kierkegaard and Climacus sometimes make it out to be. This is because the Christian’s perception is overshadowed and obscured by the ongoing operation of his autonomous reason which, with its sense of independence, has a tendency to lose sight of the reality of God. The Christian, therefore, will continually find himself turning to God with what will feel like and may indeed be his own ordinary pathos (as in Religiousness A): his own immanent faith, hope, trust and love. However, although ordinary belief is a requirement of the Christian faith,103 the Christian must resist the temptation to reduce his faith to an attitude that is generated by his own powers of introspection. He must resist the temptation to view his faithfulness in ‘the terrible language of the law’, as ‘his own power … to hold to Christ’.104 For Kierkegaard, the Christian must trust that his faith is upheld by the grace of God and is not simply a product of his imagination: ‘as in relation to everything Christian, you will humbly confess with the wonder of faith that such a thing did not arise in any human being’s heart’.105 To the outsider, this way of believing in the reality of God will appear to be self-perpetuating and appear to be no more than self-deluding. But to the Christian, this struggle is just another aspect of risking relationship with God in the confusion of this fallen world, a world that, drunk on autonomy, has become blinded by its own feeling of independence. Aware of the failings of his sinful life apart from God, and faced with the daunting task of following Jesus Christ, the Christian will turn to God. By so doing, he will come to interpret his faith ‘in the language of love’, recognising that ‘it is Christ who holds onto him’.106 One of the central places where a person becomes aware of this is, for Kierkegaard, in ‘the Lord’s Supper’, which he describes as ‘the originally true center in the Church’.107 At the Lord’s Table, Christ’s followers come to hear his voice, to encounter his presence, and thereby derive a longing for

103. See PF, pp. 87–8 / SKS 4, p. 286. 104.  PC, p. 67 / SKS 12, p. 79. 105.  WL, pp. 24 / SKS 9, p. 32. 106.  PC, p.  67 / SKS, p.  79. Therefore, when Anti-Climacus affirms here ‘that each individual in quiet inwardness is to humble himself under what it means to in the strictest sense to be a Christian, is to confess honestly before God where he is so that he still might worthily accept the grace that is offered to every imperfect person – that is, to everyone’, he is not laying down the law per se but merely stating the fact that persons need to turn to God for renewal. A person cannot enter into a relationship with God without (in some inconceivable way) being willing to encounter God, without being willing to let God speak to him and help him on his Christian journey. 107.  JP 5, 5089 / SKS 27, p. 104. [Papir 69].

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God.108 They come to ‘take part in the meal of reconciliation’.109 And, ‘at the foot of the altar’, they find ‘a decisive place of rest’.110 However, even here the human being is fragile and can easily resist the longing that God gives him – he ‘can prevent its deeper generation within him; he can let it die unused as a barren mood’.111 Therefore, he adds that a person must respond to God by using ‘the occasion of longing when it is offered’.112 The Christian must embrace the inspiration God gives him to live a life of response to God. When longing grasps hold of us, oh, that we may also grasp hold of the longing; when it wants to carry us away, that we may also surrender ourselves; when you are close to us in the call, that we might also keep close to you in our calling to you; when in the longing you offer us the highest, that we may purchase its opportune moment, hold it fast, sanctify it in the quiet hours by earnest thoughts, by devout resolves, so that it might become the strong but also the well-tested, heart-felt longing that is required of those who worthily want to partake of the holy meal of Communion! Father in heaven, longing is your 108.  CD, pp.  269–74 / SKS 10, pp.  289–92 (in his ‘Discourses at the Communion on Fridays’, this discourse being on Jn. 10.27); see also, Niels Jørgen Cappelørn’s incisive discussion of this in ‘Longing for Reconciliation with God: A Fundamental Theme in “Friday Communion Discourses”, Fourth Part of Christian Discourses’, tran. K. Brian Søderquist in Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook 2007, ed. N. J. Cappelørn, K. Brian Søderquist and H. Deuser (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2007), pp. 318–36. Carl Hughes also offers a superb account of Kierkegaard’s account of communion with Christ in the ‘Eucharistic Discourses’, Kierkegaard and the Staging of Desire: Rhetoric and Performance in a Theology of Eros (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014), pp. 93–114. 109.  CD, p.  281 / SKS 10, p.  300 (in his ‘Discourses at the Communion on Fridays’, this discourse being on Jn. 10.27 and 1 Cor. 11.23); for further helpful discussion on ‘The Purpose of the Eucharist’ in Christian Discourses, see David Law, ‘Kierkegaard’s Understanding of the Eucharist in Christian Discourses’, in International Kierkegaard Commentary on Christian Discourses and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress, ed. Robert L. Perkins (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2007), pp. 279–85. 110. Reflecting on the development of his authorship, Kierkegaard writes, in the opening to his ‘Two Discourses at the Communion on Fridays’: ‘An Authorship that began with Either/Or and advanced step by step seeks here it decisive place of rest, at the foot of the altar, where the author, personally most aware of his own imperfection and guilt, certainly does not call himself a truth-witness but only a singular kind of poet and thinker who, without authority, has had nothing new to bring’ (WA, p. 165 / SKS 12, p. 281). 111.  CD, p. 254 / SKS 10, p. 268 (in his ‘Discourses at the Communion on Fridays’, on Lk. 22.15). 112.  CD, p.  253 / SKS 10, p.  267; see also CD, pp.  254–61 / SKS 10, pp.  268–74; and Lee Barrett, ‘Christ’s Efficacious Love and Human Responsibility: The Lutheran Dialectic of “Discourses at the Communion on Fridays”’, in International Kierkegaard Commentary on Christian Discourses and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress, ed. Robert L. Perkins (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2007), pp. 256–62.



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gift; no one can give it to himself; if it is not given, no one can purchase it. We pray that those who are gathered here today may come to the Lord’s table with heartfelt longing, and that when they leave it they may go with intensified longing for him, our Saviour and Redeemer.113

Another sacrament where we see this kind of interaction between God’s presence and human response is Baptism.114 For Climacus, ‘[b]ecoming and being a Christian are defined by what has taken place with the individual: that the individual is baptized’.115 However, he qualifies that it is not the act of baptism per se that makes a person a Christian. [If] someone says that he did indeed receive the spirit in Baptism and by its witness with his spirit knows that he has been baptized, the conclusion is directly reversed – from the witness of the spirit within him he draws the conclusion that he must have been baptized; he does not draw the conclusion that he has spirit from being baptized. But if the conclusion is drawn in this way, the mark of being a Christian is quite rightly not baptism but inwardness and appropriation, whereby the witness of the spirit in a Christian is different from all other spiritual activity (more generally defined) in a human being.116

As a merely human act, Climacus affirms that both the decision to be baptised and the Baptism itself – or confirmation if one has been baptised as an infant – do not make a person an eminent Christian but a Christian in a more nominal sense: ‘By Baptism, Christianity gives him a name, and he is a Christian de nomine; but in the decision he becomes a Christian and gives Christianity his name (nomen dare alicui [to give a name to someone]).’117 By taking on this name, a person commits himself to a ‘venturesome undertaking’, characterised by spiritual trial.118 In light of this, Climacus rejects the branding of a child as a Christian in infant Baptism – or, indeed, in confirmation119 – because the child cannot yet take on such a decisive task.120 ‘Christianity cannot be poured into a child, because it always 113.  CD, p. 251 / SKS 10, p. 265. 114. Although Kierkegaard argues over against N. F. S. Grundtvig that baptism has a less central place in the Church than the Eucharist (JP, 5089 / SKS 27, pp. 101–5 [Papir 69]). 115.  CUP, p. 610 / SKS 7, p. 554. 116.  CUP, p. 610 / SKS 7, p. 554. Although it is not directly evident, it is fair to assume that Climacus is alluding to the work of the Holy Spirit here, or, at the very least, the spiritual activity of God in a more unitarian sense. 117.  CUP, p. 373 / SKS 7, p. 339. 118.  CUP, p. 591 / SKS 7, p. 537. 119. See JP 3, 3101 / SKS 26, pp.  250–1 [NB33:8]. Kierkegaard proposes that ‘confirmation must be postponed to the 25th year’ (KJN 5, p. 189 / SKS 21, p. 181 [NB8:86]). 120.  However, in concession to the Augsburg Confession, Sylvia Walsh notes, Climacus does give infant baptism ‘his rather lukewarm endorsement’ Walsh, Kierkegaard: Thinking Christianly in an Existential Mode (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p.  191.

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holds true that every human being grasps only what he has use for, and the child has no decisive use for Christianity.’121

IV. The Choice to Become a Christian a. The Freedom of the Individual to Relate to God As we have already pointed out, Kierkegaard does not believe that a person can become a Christian without being willing to enter into a relationship with God.122 However, as we have seen, in leaving room for individual will, he is determined not to diminish the centrality of God’s grace; it is still God alone who enables a person to relate to God. He recognises, however, that God allows human autonomy to be decisive for becoming a Christian. Indeed, he affirms that it is God who gives human beings this freedom. The absolutely greatest thing that can be done for a being, greater than anything one could make it into, is to make it free. It is precisely here that omnipotence is required. This seems odd, as it is precisely omnipotence that has the capacity to make something dependent. But if one reflects on omnipotence, one will indeed see that it must precisely also contain the ability, in an expression of omnipotence, to retreat into itself again in such a way as to allow that which owes its existence to omnipotence to be independent … Only omnipotence can take itself back while it gives away, and this relationship is indeed the independence of the recipient. God’s omnipotence is therefore his goodness. For it is goodness to give away entirely, though in such a way that, by omnipotently retreating into oneself, one makes the recipient independent.123

Climacus acknowledges that ‘infant Baptism is in every way defensible as the anticipation of possibility’ (CUP, p.  601 / SKS 7, p.  546; see also CUP, pp.  363–8, 381–2 / SKS 7, pp. 331–5, 347–8). 121.  CUP, p. 591 / SKS 7, p. 537. A part of the reason that Kierkegaard did not feel so anxious to brand everyone a Christian was because he did not see external branding as pivotal to one’s eternal destiny, and he appeared happy to put the fate of the unresolved person in the loving hands of God (see CUP, 530; JP 2, 1940 / SKS 27 pp. 684–8 [Papir 586]; JP 4, 4922 / SKS 25, pp. 474–5 [NB30:111]). This is not to imply that Kierkegaard presumed an apokatastasis; he certainly recognised Hell as a reality and damnation as a possibility. That said, he did write in a journal entry from 1854: ‘If the others are going to hell, then I am going along with them. But I do not believe that; on the contrary, I believe that we will all be saved, I, too, and this awakens my deepest wonder’ (JP 6, 6947 / Pap XI-3 B 57). 122.  SUD, pp. 83–4 / SKS 11, p. 197. 123.  KJN 4, pp. 56–7 / SKS 20, pp. 57–8 [NB:69]; see also CUP, p. 260 / SKS 7, p. 236; WL, p. 274 / SKS 9, p. 272.



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In Kierkegaard’s thought, we find that there are two goals or telē for which God has created human beings and over which God has authority. On the one hand, God creates human beings to be their own subjects who can determine what paths they will take – determine whether or not they will ‘enter by the narrow gate’.124 On the other hand, God creates human beings to become Christian, to lead a life of truth that is grounded in a loving relationship with God. With this understanding, he holds that, although God has authority over creation, the grace of God is not the sole factor in deciding whether a person will become a Christian. As we have already seen, he quite clearly acknowledges that God allows personal development to play a decisive role. Lord Jesus Christ, you who loved us first, you who until the last, loved those whom you had loved from the beginning, you who until the end of time continue to love everyone who wants to belong to you – your faithfulness cannot deny itself. Alas, only when a person denies you can he force you, so to speak, you the loving one, also to deny him.125 Faith certainly requires an expression of will, and yet in another sense than when, for example, I must say that all cognition requires an expression of the will; how else can I explain the passage in the New Testament which says that he who does not have faith shall be punished.126

In response to these passages, one could contend that Kierkegaard elevates the importance of ‘the power of contrary choice’ over and above a relationship with God. This, however, is not the case for Kierkegaard, who views a relationship with God as the absolute telos for human beings. What he does understand is that the particular form of loving relationship that God seeks with human beings is contingent upon persons having their own freedom to participate in this relationship. As such, he holds these two telē together as the one absolute telos of human existence: to be drawn into a relationship with God that is, to some extent, characterised by the free human decision to embrace the love of God. With this understanding of human purpose, Kierkegaard can safeguard a higher level of personal continuity. That is, by acknowledging that becoming a Christian involves acts of self-determination, he recognises that a person passionately involves herself in this process of becoming. A person becomes a Christian because God encounters her and, in the presence of God’s grace, is freely drawn to love God. Thus, she does not become a Christian because God abruptly implants faith in her mind. Nor does she become a Christian because God commands that this should happen. To understand this point more fully, let us return to consider the passions that drive human choice. 124.  JP 2, 1275 / SKS 25, p. 277 [NB28:78a]; Mt. 7.13. 125.  CD, p. 282 / SKS 10, p. 103. 126.  JP 2, 1094 / SKS 27, p. 97 [Papir 58].

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Like Hume, Kierkegaard recognises that personal choices are never completely random but are always informed in and through the ‘passionate’ nature of our existence.127 On the one hand, a person (as spirit) has the freedom to reflect over and choose from a range of possibilities. On the other hand, she will intentionally determine her choices according to her immediate resolve. In this way, Judge William affirms, a person produces herself.128 In the process of becoming, who a person becomes will be the product of the person who passionately chooses to become. However, as we considered in Chapter 1, who a person chooses to become will also be influenced by a number of other factors: external factors that are outside her self-control. Nevertheless, because of a person’s self-consciousness, such factors (in their externality) will never have a direct control over who a person becomes (internally) but will only be able to inform her in her self-development. As Timothy Jackson affirms: Kierkegaard clearly holds that, between human beings, there can be neither decisive help nor decisive harm, in the spiritual sense, and no form of help or harm can be decisively given. There are no demonic persons or dilemmatic circumstances that can compel vice, for example, from without; faith, hope, and love are always viable options, however difficult. Good Arminian that he is, however, Kierkegaard holds a similar position with respect to divine–human relations. Freedom is internal to all virtue and vice, and cannot be shortcircuited, even by God, if responsible ethico-religious agency is to be retained.129

Jackson then writes: ‘No external power (neither Adam’s sin nor God’s grace) can compel a moral choice, decisively harm or help a human being, for both senses of freedom [liberum arbitrium and libertas] are irreducibly present in finite moral agency.’130 Branding of Kierkegaard a good Arminian, Jackson concludes: ‘True freedom is, for Kierkegaard, a highly individualised libertas in which voluntary consent to grace takes the form of a passionate leap, a “Yes” to a Gifted Reality.’131 127. See David Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter Millican (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) pp. 4–9, 30–7, 50, 71–4. 128.  EO2, p. 251 / SKS 3, p. 239. 129. Timothy Jackson, ‘Arminian Edification: Kierkegaard on Grace and Free Will’ in The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, eds Alastair Hannay and Gordon D. Marino (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 244. 130. Jackson, ‘Arminian Edification’, p.  251. Jackson’s use of ‘libertas’ is taken from Augustine’s term for true freedom, which he describes as ‘the moral concreteness one acquires in and through choosing a specific alternative and subsequently binding oneself to it. True freedom is a potency, “to be able” (CA 49): a dynamic commitment to a virtuous end, rather than formal indifference as an essential means to that end’ (p. 247). 131. Jackson, ‘Arminian Edification’, pp. 244, 250. It should be noted that Jackson does not go so far as to interpret Kierkegaard’s understanding of true freedom as a liberum arbitrium. In addition, he makes the fair point that ‘Kierkegaard does not reject liberum arbitrium as such, any more than he rejects truth as “identity of thought and being”; rather,



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It is not entirely clear how helpful it is for Jackson to caricature Kierkegaard as an Arminian in this context.132 What is clear is that his sketch of Kierkegaard’s account of true freedom as ‘highly individualised’ is an unhelpful oversimplification. In the previous chapter, we acknowledged Kierkegaard’s individualism and put it in context. However, as we focus on the relational side of Kierkegaard’s conversion, it will be helpful to recognise the extent to which Kierkegaard goes beyond his more individualistic emphases. For Kierkegaard, human beings were not merely created to be self-conscious beings caught up in their own vacuums. Rather, they were created to be selfconscious beings before the God who created them. As Anti-Climacus puts it more generically, the ‘human self … is a derived established relation, a relation that relates itself to itself and in relating itself to itself relates itself to another’.133 Furthermore, although the human self has essentially been created as a single self, it was not created to be this in isolation or abstraction from the surrounding world. To understand Kierkegaard’s position more clearly, it will be helpful to consider his understanding of a human choice. On the one hand, Kierkegaard understands that in the moment that an individual makes a choice, ‘he is in complete isolation’, free from external determination.134 In this instance, a person functions as a responsible agent with the power to affect change in one way or another; there is nothing external that will directly determine his choice.135 Yet, on the other hand, this person does not have, nor was he created to have, the freedom to make choices that are contrary to or isolated from the particular self that he is in the moment of making a choice.136 Also, because his particular selfhood does not come into existence ex nihilo but is ‘the specific product of a specific environment’, ‘a complex specific concretion’, he cannot make choices that are untouched by his interactions with his surroundings.137 This is particularly relevant when it comes to understanding the process of becoming a Christian. The choice to become a Christian is never simply a highly individualised ‘yes’ to an objective reality. Becoming a Christian will, of course, involve more individualistic choices – for example, when choosing to he notes its abstractness when taken in isolation or out of context’ (‘Arminian Edification’, p. 249). 132. Here I agree with Lee Barrett that while some passages in Kierkegaard’s work might come across as Arminian, this is not generally the case. As Barrett quite rightly notes further: ‘The adoption of a single theological theory or system would be contrary to the basic thrust of Kierkegaard’s authorship’ (Barrett, ‘Kierkegaard’s Authorship and the Paradox of Divine and Human Agencies’, p. 67 n. 26; see also Barrett, ‘Christ’s Efficacious Love and Human Responsibility’, pp. 269–70). 133.  SUD, pp. 13–14 / SKS 11, pp. 129–30. 134.  EO2, p. 251 / SKS 3, p. 239. 135. See EO2, pp. 250–2 / SKS 3, pp. 239–41. 136. See EO2, p. 163 / SKS 3, p. 160. 137.  EO2, pp. 250–2 / SKS 3, pp. 239–41.

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be baptised.138 However, a person’s decision(s) to become a Christian is better understood in terms of a person’s willingness to accept spiritual gifts (faith, hope and love) through personal interaction with the divine giver, whose governance transforms that person into the kind of person whose life exhibits these gifts.139 A person becomes a Christian because, standing before God, she is drawn into loving fellowship with God. Indeed, when a person becomes the kind of self who will decide to become a Christian, he will find himself so overwhelmed with ‘tremendous passion or intensity’, with ‘fear and trembling’, that, in a certain sense, ‘there is no choice’. 140 Nevertheless, it is also the case, as Jackson rightly insists, that ‘“True freedom” quickly takes on a normative connotation for Kierkegaard such that it would seem odd to call a vicious disposition “true freedom,” even if it were self-consciously cultivated.’141 For Kierkegaard, a person is not truly free if she becomes so disposed to acting in a certain way that she does so instinctually: that is, without self-consciously choosing to do so.142 This is particularly the case for the Christian whose faith is never a thing of habit.143 The person who embraces the Christian life will live out her relationship with God by continually and consciously choosing to turn to God for upbuilding. Yet it is also important to remember here that, when the Christian turns to God, she does not, nor can she, choose God independently of him.144 It is not as though God remains detached from an individual until that individual gives God consent to draw her into the Christian faith. Again, if a person becomes a Christian, it is because God encounters her and draws her to himself.145 God does not elevate her into the Christian faith simply in response to an endeavour of her own self-determination. She becomes a Christian by consciously surrendering herself to the God who comes to her in Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit. It is only 138. This decision, however, as noted above, does not make a person a Christian in essence; it is only through a person’s interaction with the witness of the Spirit that a person truly makes this transition. 139. Kierkegaard contemplates: ‘what would better be called God’s gifts than every prompting of the Spirit, every pull of the soul, every fervent stirring of the heart, which are indeed God’s gifts in a far deeper sense than food and clothing, not only because it is God who gives them but because God gives himself in these gifts’ (CD, p. 253 / SKS 10, p. 267 [emphasis mine]; see also FSE, pp. 71–87 / SKS 13, pp. 93–108). 140.  KJN 7, pp. 62–3 / SKS 23, pp. 64–5 [NB15:93] (emphasis original). 141.  Jackson, ‘Arminian Edification’, p. 249. By this, I presume that Jackson understands ‘a vicious disposition’ as one that is so overbearing that it undermines a person’s conscious freedom of choice. 142. See EO2, p. 127 / SKS 3, p. 127. 143. See KJN 4, p. 313 / SKS 20, pp. 312–13 [NB4:56]. 144. To be fair to Jackson, he does acknowledge that ‘Coming to faith is not a matter of Promethean self-creation (since grace is required), but neither is it mainly a matter of accurate cognition or preordained experience’ (‘Arminian Edification’, pp. 251–2). 145. See SUD, p. 85 / SKS 11, p. 198–9.



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in this relational way that a person can enter into fellowship with God and only in this way that she can freely participate in the truth for which she was created.146 b. Willing Beliefs Another problematic representation of Kierkegaard, one which has already been subject to extensive criticism, is that of Louis Pojman in his works The Logic of Subjectivity and Religious Belief and the Will.147 In these works, Pojman criticises Kierkegaard for being a direct volitionalist – for holding that a believer has ‘direct control’ over his beliefs.148 He develops this interpretation primarily in response to a couple of comments that Climacus makes in the ‘Interlude’ of Fragments: that ‘belief is not a piece of knowledge but an act of freedom, an expression of will’, and that the ‘conclusion of belief is no conclusion [Slutning] but a resolution [Beslutning]’.149 Contrary to Pojman’s reading, C. Stephen Evans writes: to say that belief is grounded in the will by no means implies that belief is always or even usually the result of a conscious act of willing … Climacus nowhere says that beliefs can be controlled by the will directly. Pojman’s reading implies that beliefs can be produced or annihilated willy-nilly, but this is not present in Kierkegaard’s text.150

Taking into account Climacus’ description of belief and doubt as passions, Evans continues:151 Kierkegaard certainly did not think that passions could simply be created by an immediate act of will. Rather, he thinks of passions as things that must be slowly cultivated and constantly renewed. Acts of willing play a role in this cultivation, and Kierkegaard regards the higher ethical and religious passions as 146. See CD, pp. 64, 90–1 / SKS 10, pp. 73, 98. 147. See also Pojman’s article, ‘Kierkegaard on Faith and Freedom’, pp. 41–61, and, for another critique of Climacus on this point, see Terence Penelhum, God and Skepticism: A Study in Skepticism and Fideism (Dordrecht, Netherlands: D Reidel, 1983), pp.  81–2, 114. For a more detailed critical engagement with Pojman, see C. Stephen Evans, ‘Does Kierkegaard Think Beliefs can be Directly Willed?’, pp. 301–12; David Wisdo, ‘Kierkegaard on Belief, Faith and Explanation’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 21:2 (1987):  95–114; and Wisdo, ‘Kierkegaard on the Limits of Christian Epistemology’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 29 (1991): 97–112; Michelle Kosch, Freedom and Reason in Kant, Schelling and Kierkegaard (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 187–99. 148. Pojman, The Logic of Subjectivity: Kierkegaard’s Philosophy of Religion (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1984), p. 48. 149.  PF, pp. 83, 84 / SKS 4, pp. 282, 283; Pojman, The Logic of Subjectivity, pp. 98–9. 150. Evans, ‘Does Kierkegaard Think Beliefs can be Directly Willed?’, p. 304. 151.  PF, p. 84 / / SKS 4, pp. 283.

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things we are responsible to achieve. However, by and large, passions are formed on a long-term basis, and they are not simply willed into existence, but formed indirectly through a process of willing to do other things.152

It is right to affirm that willing plays a role in the cultivation of passions, but it is also important to recognise that passions have a role to play in acts of willing. For Climacus, when a person becomes committed to a new belief (or passion) it is because she willingly and passionately comes to embrace that belief (or passion). The fact that passion is involved in the formation of beliefs means that, in some instances, there are certain passionate ways in which human beings will operate without complete control. For example, as Pojman points out, there are some beliefs that persons will be compelled to believe. To take his examples: I cannot help but believe that I hear what I hear and see what I see; I will remember what I remember whether I like it or not; and my reason might compel me to believe that 2+2=4.153 There are also some things that a person will not be able to believe. To take one of Climacus’ own examples, a person ‘cannot believe nonsense against the understanding … because the understanding will penetratingly perceive that it is nonsense and hinder him in believing it’.154 In each of these instances, it appears that a person does not have the freedom to control her beliefs: she is unable to control the basic passions that spontaneously attach her (or won’t attach her) to particular beliefs. Accordingly, Evans acknowledges, Climacus’ use of the term ‘will’ as the ‘“subjective” factor in belief formation … may be in many ways a poor choice’.155 Be that as it may, it is also true that in each of the above cases there is nothing external forcing the person to form her particular beliefs. Although a person might not be fully responsible for being the kind of self that will form these beliefs (for example, she does not choose her given human nature), she is nevertheless the self who trusts her cognitive faculties enough to allow them to inform her beliefs. There must, therefore, be some level of willingness that leads her to form these beliefs, otherwise the objects that awaken her beliefs would have been unable to engage her and convict her; they would have gone past unnoticed. After all, what else is there to make a person decisively interested enough to form a belief than her own subjective will? What can be said here is that some beliefs have a more spontaneous (or even organic) formation due to a natural impulse in human beings to become attached to them: a given impulse that even the most ‘spiritual’ of persons will be unable to shrug off. For example, a person will probably experience an overwhelming impulse to trust those beliefs that accord with his natural reason and perception. To that extent it would seem unfair to charge him with responsibility for them. 152. Evans, ‘Does Kierkegaard Think Beliefs can be Directly Willed?’, pp. 304–5. 153. Pojman, The Logic of Subjectivity, p. 107. 154.  CUP, p. 568 / SKS 7, p. 516. 155. Evans, Passionate Reason, pp. 137–8. As Evans also notes here, Climacus’ use of the term ‘will’ enables him to maintain an account of personal responsibility that is essential to his understanding of what it means to be human.



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This is particularly evident in the case of the person who naturally becomes attached to a belief that he does not want to believe. To take Pojman’s example, suppose a person with an aversion to white paper comes across some white paper and forms the belief that he sees this paper.156 Then suppose that he forms this belief against his will, leading him to despair over herself.157 With this disturbing vision, he becomes a self he does not want to be – a self who is tormented by the belief that he encounters the white paper. The first thing to mention here is that the vision itself is neutral, and it is only because of a person’s passionate constitution – as a self who both trusts his vision and is averse to paper – that this vision is turned into belief and despair. While the person might not be responsible for being the kind of self who trusts that he sees the paper, he is, for Kierkegaard, responsible for her despair: for willing not to be the self who encounters the paper. As Anti-Climacus notes, ‘despairing lies in man in himself ’ – it is not ‘like a disease to which he succumbs … however much the despairing person speaks of his despair as a misfortune’.158 So, although he might not have wanted to become this self, and although numerous other factors might have contributed to him becoming this self, he is nonetheless the one who is responsible for becoming the self with this aversion: it is he (who she is as a spiritual person) who is ultimately responsible for becoming (for actualising the possibility of becoming) the self with the aversion.159 Furthermore, it is he who is responsible for being the self who is in despair over this aversion. c. Human Responsibility for Sin The situation in which a person is bound to a belief that she does not want to believe is comparable to the struggle that a Christian experiences with the sin to which she is both bound and responsible. In many respects, it is hard to see how a person is responsible for her sin when sin would seem to be a somewhat inevitable product of living in this fallen world. However, the only reason that sin occurs is because there exists a person who chooses to sin – and does so against her created nature. It must, therefore, be that person who is responsible for sinning; the sinner is the subject of her choices rather than subject to her choices. Under these

156. Pojman, The Logic of Subjectivity, p. 107. 157. As Pojman himself acknowledges, Kierkegaard was not so concerned about the kind of ordinary beliefs that human beings assent to ‘automatically as a function of the world representing itself to us’, but more concerned about the kind of existential beliefs that are not so decisively determined by human nature. Pojman, The Logic of Subjectivity, p. 114. 158.  SUD, pp. 15–16 / SKS 11, p. 131–2. 159. As Anti-Climacus explains further: ‘Every actual moment of despair is traceable to possibility; every moment he is in despair he is bringing it upon himself. It is always the present tense; in relation to the actuality there is not pastness of the past: in every actual moment of despair the person in despair bears all the past as a present in possibility. The reason for this is that to despair is a qualification of spirit’ (SUD, p. 17 / SKS 11, p. 132).

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circumstances, as noted in Chapter 1, the sinner ‘holds himself captive’:160 the sinner cannot help but choose to keep sinning and, consequently, cannot help but keep herself imprisoned in this way. As such, it is the sinner who is responsible for her sin. Another reason for believing that it is the human being who is responsible for her sin, as also noted in Chapter 1, is because, for Climacus, it would be a contradiction for the good God to create human beings to be (or cause them to become) contrary to the kind of being he creates them to be – to do so would be for God to act contrary to himself.161 This leaves him to conclude that it must be human beings who are responsible for their perverse development. Accordingly, he concludes that a person ‘is not born a sinner in the sense that he is presupposed to be a sinner before he is born, but he is born in sin and as a sinner’.162 This position is given further consideration by Haufniensis, who proposes that human beings were not created sinful but were created with the freedom to sin: a freedom he associates with anxiety. At the same time, he also acknowledges that ‘creation sank into corruption through Adam’s sin’.163 He suggests that, following the sin of Adam, persons came to be born into a situation that had become distorted by ‘sinfulness’.164 This did not mean that sin had become irresistible to the human will. The fall of each human being – which he views as a person’s first actual sin – is still contingent upon her own choice. It is only through each person’s own fall that a person becomes ‘in Adam’:165 that a person becomes a 160.  PF, p. 17 / SKS 4, p. 226; see also CA, p. 22 / SKS 4, 329–30. 161.  PF, p. 15 / SKS 4, p. 223. 162.  CUP, p. 208 / SKS 7, p. 191; see also CA, pp. 57–8 / SKS 4, p. 362; SUD, pp. 101–2 / SKS 11, pp.  213–14. Just prior to this statement he writes: ‘Viewed eternally, he [the individual] cannot be in sin or be presupposed to have been eternally in sin. Therefore, by coming into existence … he becomes a sinner’ (CUP, p. 208 / SKS 7, p. 191). 163.  CA, pp. 52, 58 / SKS 4, pp. 357, 362. 164. See Haufniensis’ discussion of hereditary sin (arvesynd) and concupiscentia [inordinate desire], in which he writes, quoting the Augsburg Confession, II:1, ‘The strongest, indeed, the most positive expression the Protestant Church uses for the presence of hereditary sin in man is precisely that he is born with concupiscentia (Omnes homines secundum naturam propagati nascuntur cum pecato h.e. sinu metu dei, sine fiducia erga deum et cum concupiscentia [all men begotten in a natural way are born with sin, i.e. without the fear of God, without trust in God, and with concupiscence])’ (CA, pp. 40–1 / SKS 4, p. 346; see also JP 2, 1268 / SKS 24, p. 287 [NB23:170]). 165. Accordingly, it is unclear to me why Claudia Welz would suggest (ambiguously) that ‘Kierkegaard instrumentalises the consciousness of sin in declaring human beings as answerable for more than they do and as guilty before God even if they have made no moral mistake’. I would also disagree with her subsequent unclear suggestion that this could be associated with a felix culpa theodicy in Kierkegaard’s works, in which ‘sin becomes indispensible’. Welz, Love’s Transcendence and the Problem of Theodicy (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), p. 181. For a fascinating discussion of the relationship between Kierkegaard’s later religious writings and the theme of felix culpa, I would highly recommend Jason Mahn’s



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complicit member of the sinful human race, represented in Adam, which has fallen into sin.166 For Haufniensis, this fall is both a possible leap, which each person chooses to make for herself, and also a qualitative leap.167 A person does not make this leap because she is necessarily caused to do so by some antecedent quality. Prior to this leap, all antecedent qualities are created and thus non-sinful God-given qualities. This means that the reason that each person makes this leap is inexplicable. Sin cannot be explained as being the result of some pre-existing cause or condition. Just like human freedom, sin ‘presupposes itself ’.168 The inception of sin, therefore, lies beyond the scope of scientific inquiry.169 Sin, as C. Stephen Evans puts it, ‘is simply a special instance of the enigmatic character of human agency’.170 d. Transforming the Will Once a person has fallen (or leapt) into sin, she will find herself consumed by a sinful inclination. Unable to shrug off this inclination, the person who is becoming a Christian will find that her will is torn between a sinful life and a Christian life. For this reason, Kierkegaard observes, Christianity is not simply concerned about changing a person’s choices per se, but about changing the will of the person who is making the choices. Christianity as it is in the New Testament is concerned with man’s will, changing the will; everything touches this, all the phrases (renouncing the world, denying one’s self, dying to the world, etc., also, to hate oneself, to love God, etc.) are connected with this fundamental idea in Christianity, that which makes it what it is; transformation of the will.171

Fortunate Fallibility: Kierkegaard and the Power of Sin (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 166.  CA, pp. 25–9 / SKS 4, pp. 332–6; Rom. 5.12–14. Haufniensis clarifies this further: ‘By Adam’s first sin, sin came into the world. This statement, which is the common one, nevertheless contains an altogether outward reflection that doubtless has contributed greatly to the rise of a vague misunderstanding. That sin came into the world is quite true. But this does not really concern Adam. To express this precisely and accurately, one must say that by the first sin, sinfulness came into Adam. It could not occur to anyone to say about any subsequent man that by his first sin sinfulness came into the world; and yet it comes into the world by him in a similar way (i.e., in a way not essentially different), because, expressed precisely and accurately, sinfulness is in the world insofar as it comes into the world by sin’ (CA, pp. 32–3 / SKS 4, p. 339). 167.  CA, p. 49 / SKS 4, p. 354. 168.  CA, p. 112 / SKS 4, p. 414. 169.  CA, pp. 16, 38–9, 47–51 / SKS 4, pp. 323, 345, 352–6. 170. C. Stephen Evans, ‘Kierkegaard on Anxiety and Original Sin’, p. 236. 171.  JP 4, 4953 / SKS 26, p. 254 [NB33:13].

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Kierkegaard shows a much greater concern for the inward way in which a person exists than he does for the outward way in which a person appears to exist. He believes that it is much more important that a person seek to become the kind of self who inwardly wills the absolute good than a self who merely does what is relatively good to keep up appearances. By seeking to become the former, a person takes responsibility for herself. She seeks to define herself as the single individual rather than a creature that is simply pulled along by the drag of the human race: a mere product of immediacy.172 To become the single individual, he understands, a person needs to choose to take charge of her life. By so doing, Rick Furtak notes: Such a person takes responsibility for himself as a distinct individual with specific passions, habits and influences; a self, in other words, that is aware of its place in a greater network of influences. When we identify with our concrete particularity, we become more than momentarily and randomly passionate, aligning ourselves with an entire history of evaluative perception.173

When a person takes responsibility for herself, she chooses herself in freedom. She embraces herself as a spiritual self, and thereby distances herself from the forces of immediacy.174 In ethical and religious terms, she distinguishes herself by relating herself to an ideal self that she seeks to become, and thereby chooses for herself a specific task that transcends the whimsicality of her natural course of life.175 That is, she seeks to distinguish herself by choosing a higher purpose and calling.176 By choosing herself in this way, she makes an ‘absolute choice’: she makes an earnest choice that is qualitatively different from the superficial choices that she would make on the basis of her natural instincts.177 While this move will not enable her 172. Aristotle describes this category of existence as the ‘animal category’ (SUD, p. 118 / SKS 11, p. 229). 173. Rick Furtak, Wisdom in Love, p. 74; see also EO2, p. 251 / SKS 3, p. 239. 174.  As Alastair Hannay notes: ‘In Hegelian terms “spirit” is synonymous with “freedom”, and the freedom of spirit is that spirit exists “in and with itself ”.’ Hannay, ‘Philosophy of Mind’ in idem, Kierkegaard and Philosophy: Selected Essays (New York: Routledge, 2003), p.  29; Hegel, The Philosophy of History, tran. J. Sibree, Amherst (New York: Prometheus Books, 1990), p. 17. 175. In this instance, Judge William writes: ‘Through the individual’s intercourse with himself that individual is made pregnant by himself and gives birth to himself. The self the individual knows is simultaneously that actual self and the ideal self, which the individual has outside himself as the image in whose likeness he is to form himself, and which on the other hand he has within himself, since it is he himself. Only within himself does the individual have the objective toward which he is to strive, and yet he has this outside himself as he strives towards it’ (EO2, p. 259 / SKS 3, p. 247). 176.  EO2, p. 178 / SKS 3, pp. 173–4. 177.  EO2, pp.  213–16 / SKS 3, pp.  205–7. In the moment that a person makes this absolute choice, Judge William describes, ‘the personality seemingly emerges as naked as the infant from the mother’s womb; at the next moment it is concrete in itself, and a person



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to take complete control of herself (she cannot become so spiritual as to become impervious to reality), it will enable her to start down a road on which she has a far greater self-control. On this road, she can use her freedom earnestly, with a firmer grasp on her (more immediate) passions and desires. For example, in ethical terms, she can start to become a self who engages with reality in more virtuous ways. As we have seen, however, a person cannot become a Christian simply by way of self-transformation. While Kierkegaard clearly recognises the importance of individual self-awareness, he does not see human beings as created to create themselves in some open-ended manner. Rather, they were created to surrender themselves to God. They were created to love God with all their heart and soul and mind: to ‘love God unconditionally in obedience and love him in adoration’.178 Consequently, the person who lives primarily before himself and his own ideals, rather than before God, will find himself consumed with anxiety and despair (consciously or unconsciously). It is only within the embrace of God’s grace that a person finds the freedom to obey God and follow Jesus Christ. As Kierkegaard proclaims: ‘I will no longer believe in myself; I will not let myself be deceived … Only when saved by him [Jesus Christ] and with him, only when he holds me fast, do I know that I will not betray him.’179 Nevertheless, Kierkegaard also recognises that the Christian will also need to take control of her life. He understands that even the best of Christians are not yet so complete, so in harmony with God’s will, that they will be able to trust themselves to live out a relationship with God with total consistency, in full obedience to God.180 Therefore, as we saw in the previous chapter, the Christian will constantly need to struggle (voluntarily) to compose herself accordingly. However, when the Christian does this, she believes that it is not her own self-control that is governing her in her Christian life, but the grace of God. Accordingly, the Christian turns to God to choose herself in freedom. Kierkegaard writes: The enormous thing granted a [human] being is – choice, freedom. If you want to save it and preserve it, there is only one way to do so: At that very second unconditionally and in utter submission to give it back to God, and yourself along with it. If this sight of what has been granted to you tempts you, if you yield to the temptation and gaze with selfish desire upon freedom of choice can remain at this point only through an arbitrary abstraction. He remains himself, exactly the same that he was before, down to the most insignificant feature, and yet he becomes another, for the choice penetrates everything and changes it.’ EO2, p. 223 / SKS 3, p. 213; see also David Roberts, Kierkegaard’s Analysis of Radical Evil (London: Continuum, 2006), pp. 74–8. 178.  WL, p. 19 / SKS 9, p. 27. 179.  CD, p. 280 / SKS 10, p. 299 (in his ‘Discourses at the Communion on Fridays’, on 1 Cor. 11.23); see also PC, p. 151 / SKS 12, p. 155. 180. See CD, p. 64 / SKS 10, p. 73.

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– you lose freedom. And then your punishment is to walk about in a sort of confusion, swaggering over having freedom of choice. [‘]Woe to you, this is the sentence pronounced upon you: You have freedom of choice, you say, and you have not yet chosen God.[’]181

It is only because God creates persons to live as free subjects that they can allow themselves to become defined by things that are infinitely lesser than God. So although God’s decision to create humans as free beings is a good thing, it opens the door for them to be lured down avenues that generate despair. That is, if humans are not transformed by the grace of God, they will find themselves being distorted not only by their own sinful and rebellious desires but also by other temptations that are antithetical to their true nature. As a result, they will find themselves enslaved to idols that are not only infinitely lesser than God but also in opposition to God.182 For Kierkegaard, it is only when a person participates in a transformative relationship with God that she receives a properly balanced relationship with reality – with God, herself and the world. In this way, she not only becomes Christian but also becomes human in the highest sense. This is how my development, or anybody’s development, proceeds[:] Perhaps we begin with some reasons, but these are in the background. Then we choose. With the weight of responsibility, before God, a conviction is formed within us, with God[’s help]. Now we have the positive element. Our convictions can’t be defended or proven with arguments, which would be self-contradictory because reasons remain in the background … There is only one proof for the truth of [Christianity]: the inward proof, argumentum spiritus sancti.183

Under these circumstances, Evans writes: The person of faith is not someone who tries to make herself believe something she knows is not true, or something she has no reason to think is true. Rather, she is someone who now has good reason to mistrust her earlier ideas about what is true, as a result of an encounter with reality that has fundamentally altered the dominant passions that form the core of her being and shape her thinking.184

I would want to add here that the ‘good reason’ is in actuality a ‘good relationship’. For Kierkegaard, faith is not merely a new capacity to perceive reality that God 181.  KJN 7, p. 64 / SKS 23, p. 66 [NB15:93]. 182. For example, as Haufniensis considers, human sensuousness and sexuality are not in themselves sinful but a part of our given human nature. However, as a result of human sin, they become distorted into human sinfulness (CA, pp.  48–9, 57–8 / SKS 4, pp.  354, 362). 183.  KJN 6, p. 105 / SKS 22, p. 108 [NB11:179]. 184. Evans, Passionate Reason, p. 116.



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enables in a one-off event, nor is it a capacity that enables a person to know the truth about reality in and of herself. Rather, faith is a passionate quality that requires to be continually nurtured in the presence of God.185 Practically speaking, this is why the Eucharist and prayer are so central to Kierkegaard’s vision of the Christian life.186 Becoming a Christian is not, therefore, as Ferreira remarks in her misrepresentative critique of Evans, ‘something that simply happens (or may happen) to us willy-nilly once we have willed to be open’.187 Also, human activity is not ‘exercised only as a prolegomenon to God’s gift’.188 At the other end of the spectrum, however, this does not mean that we are left to interpret the transition to faith, with Ferreira, as ‘our active, imaginative reconceptualization and reorientation’.189 For Kierkegaard, a person cannot become a Christian without the grace of God, and (the reality of) God’s grace is ‘absolutely different’ from (the reality of) human activity.190 The dichotomy between God’s grace and human activity is not, therefore, as Ferreira suggests, a ‘false and unnecessary dichotomy’.191 As I have hopefully been able to demonstrate, Kierkegaard believes that individuals cannot become Christian in and of themselves. Without the grace of God, there is no possibility of individuals mediating the truth of God or the love of God to themselves. For Kierkegaard, it is in and through the incarnate person of Jesus Christ that the distant God, his love, and his truth, are made known and made present to the world. In Christ, God mediates himself to the world, and, in Christ, God reconciles the world to himself. For us today, it is by being drawn to Christ, by the Holy Spirit, that a person is given to be transformed by the love and truth of God.

V. The Freedom to Love Lord Jesus Christ, in order to be able to pray aright to you about everything, we pray to you first about one thing: help us so that we might love you much, 185. See JP 3, 2854 / SKS 27, pp.  95–6 [Papir 54]; KJN 6, p.  283 / SKS 22, p.  281 [NB13:15]. 186. For examples of Kierkegaard’s emphasis on the importance of a prayerful relationship with God, see CD, 64, 74 / SKS ; WA, 11–12 / SKS ; KJN 4, pp. 329–30 / SKS 20, p. 308 [NB4:81]; JP 1, 419 / SKS 27, p. 138 [Papir 150]; KJN 5, p. 113 / SKS 21, p. 108 [NB7:66]; KJN 1, p.  261 / SKS 17, pp.  270-71 [DD:176]; KJN 6, p.  190 / SKS 22, p.  191 [NB12:87]; KJN 1, p. 47 / SKS 17, p. 54 [AA:55]; KJN 2, pp. 50–1 / SKS 18, p. 55 [EE:160]; KJN 2, p. 272 / SKS 18, p. 295 [JJ:464]. His concern for a prayerful approach to Christian thought is also made clear in the fact that so many of his discourses and expositions of Scripture begin in prayer. 187. Ferreira, Transforming Vision, p. 149. 188. Ferreira, Transforming Vision, p. 149. 189. Ferreira, Transforming Vision, p. 149 (emphasis original). 190.  CUP, p. 580 / SKS 7, p. 528. 191. Ferreira, Transforming Vision, 149.

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increase our love, inflame it, purify it … you are love of such a kind that you yourself love forth the love that loves you, encourages it to you love you much.192

In Works of Love, Kierkegaard contends that the divine authority with which the command ‘You shall love’ is given (Mt. 22.37–39), turns ‘the natural man’s conceptions and ideas upside down’. That is, it commands a love that transcends the boundaries of human language: a love ‘which did not arise in any human being’s heart [Hjerte]’.193 However, although he proposes that God commands an infinitely different conception of love,194 he does not suggest that God makes this command to go over our heads. Rather, it is a providential command that, in the presence of the God who is love, confronts us in our existence and draws us into a relationship that reconciles us into a new way of loving.195 For the Christian, it is only through this outward relationship that humans can participate in a true form of loving, so much so that Kierkegaard describes a ‘love’ that is apart from God as nothing more than ‘a mutually enchanting defraudation of love’.196 To make this point he looks at how Christ’s conception of love was received by the world: Out of love he [Christ] did not dare to give up this [divine] conception [of love], because that would mean to deceive the human race. For this reason his whole life was a horrible collision with the merely human conception of what love is. It was the ungodly world that crucified him; but even the disciples did not understand him and continually seemed to be trying to win him over to their conception of what love is, so that he even had to say to Peter, ‘Get behind me Satan!’ The unfathomable suffering of this terrible collision: that the most honest and the most faithful disciple, when he, not only well-intentioned, no, but burning with love, wishes to give the best advice, wishes only to express how deeply he loves the master, that the disciple, because his conception of love is false, speaks in such a way that the master must say to him: You do not know it, but to me your words sound as if it were Satan who was speaking!197

192.  WA, p. 137 / SKS 11, p. 273 193.  WL, pp. 24–5 / SKS 9, p. 32. Petrus Minor writes: ‘If the essentially Christian enters into the hearts of ever so many believers, every believer realizes that it did not arise in his heart, realizes that the objective qualification of the essentially Christian is not a reminiscence as erotic love is of falling in love’ (BA, p. 118 / SKS 15, p. 273). 194.  WL, pp. 107–10 / SKS 9, pp. 111–16. If there is a collision between a merely human conception of love and the Christian conception, Kierkegaard asserts, ‘then, in the divine sense, it is indeed love to hold fast to the true conception, eternity’s conception, to love by virtue of it, whereas the person or persons loved must regard this as hate if they have the merely human conception. Let us speak quite humanly about the highest’ (WL, p.  110 / SKS 9, p. 116). 195.  WL, p. 25 / SKS 9, p. 33. 196.  WL, p. 107 / SKS 9, p. 111. 197.  WL, p. 110 / SKS 9, p. 116.



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When Christianity entered the world, Kierkegaard contends, it came with its own ‘divine explanation of what love is’:198 an explanation that reveals the very essence of what it means to be human.199 In Christian terms, human beings were created out of nothing to be a humanity that could only find true meaning, find purity of heart, in and through a relationship with God. On this basis, humanity is irrevocably bound to God and God’s purposes of love, to what Kierkegaard describes as the ‘eternal love-history’.200 Therefore, to know what true love is, we are called to deny our own worldly conceptions of love and learn through the God-relationship what love is. ‘God, the Creator … must implant love in each human being, he who himself is Love.’201 Or, as he puts it in another way, the ‘love-relationship requires threeness: the lover, the beloved, the love – but the love is God’.202 Here we find one of the central points in Works of Love. ‘Christianity teaches that love is a relationship between: a person – God – a person, that is, that God is the middle term.’203 God is the ‘middle term’ (Mellembestemmelsen) in the true loverelationship because, quite simply, ‘the love is God’.204 Without God as the middle term, a person cannot move beyond her own conception of love, cannot move beyond her own worldly love, which, confined to her own self-existence, can never be anything more than a ‘self-love’, or ‘an alliance in self-love’.205 This does not mean that true love requires a person to merge into God.206 Rather, true love is achieved in and through fellowship with God. It is found through God enabling

198.  WL, p. 110 / SKS 9, p. 116. 199.  WL, p.  148 / SKS 9, p.  151. As Kierkegaard describes here, human beings have fallen into the ‘interlude’ of worldly love. 200.  WL, p. 149 / SKS 9, p. 151. 201.  WL, p. 216 / SKS 9, p. 219. By this, Kierkegaard does not seek to affirm that love – as also faith – is a gift that God abstractly implants in a person. Rather he merely affirms that the true love of God is so absent from the sinful human being that, in a sense, it needs to be given. This giving, however, is not the detached passing on of an object, but the drawing of persons into an interactive fellowship in which persons will be shaped anew by the love of God. He writes: ‘As soon as love dwells on itself, it is out of its element. What does dwelling on itself mean? It means that love itself becomes an object. But an object is always a dangerous matter when one is supposed to move forward; an object (Gjenstand)* is like a fixed point, like a boundary and a halting, a dangerous matter for infinitude. That is to say, love itself cannot infinitely become an object; nor is there danger in that’ (WL, p. 182 / SKS 9, p. 181). *As the Hongs point out here: ‘The English and Danish terms have semantically similar roots: object – ob (against) + ject (something that is thrown); Gjenstand – gjen (against) + stand (something that stands)’ (WL, p. 509 n. 219). 202.  WL, pp. 120–1 / SKS 9, p. 124. 203.  WL, p. 107 (emphasis original). 204.  WL, p. 121 / SKS 9, 123. 205.  WL, p. 119 / SKS 9, 275. 206. See, KJN 1, p. 250 / SKS 17, p. 259 [DD:131].

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a person to stand as an ‘other’, who, as that ‘other’, can participate in and become transformed by the love that is God.207

VI. Conclusion It is not difficult to look to some areas in Kierkegaard’s works and align him with a wide range of accounts that view Christian conversion as a kind of ordered interchange between God’s grace and human agency. Kierkegaard, however, was highly disparaging of overly methodical accounts of the Christian faith, and so it is incongruous to tie him to such accounts. His main criticism of such approaches is that they tend to disregard some of the essential dynamics that we find in actual existence – dynamics that are essentially ambiguous and enigmatic, and so elude systematic explanation.208 For him, becoming a Christian is not a step-by-step routine of encountering (a concept of) Jesus Christ, making a choice for him, and then having God reconcile her into a truly loving relationship. When the interaction between human choice and God’s grace is portrayed in such an algebraic way, not only do we end up with an account that is abstract but also an account that is highly individualistic. That is, we end up with an account that focuses on the activity of the two individual sides of the relationship, rather than one that gives adequate attention to the dynamic that arises when the two sides come together in an interaction, albeit one that is initiated by God. Although there are various points in Kierkegaard’s authorship where he focuses on the importance of the single individual, readers tend to misrepresent him when they caricature him as being ‘too individualistic’, particularly when considering his account of becoming a Christian. Again, he does not believe that a loving relationship with God arises through a progressive to and fro between individual choice and God’s grace. It is not as though a person simply chooses to ‘knock on the door’ and then finds it immediately being opened to the true way of love. It is also not as though God simply passes faith and love onto a person as objective gifts. As we have seen, such an understanding is alien to Kierkegaard’s understanding of faith and love as subjective qualities that are received in the presence of God. For Kierkegaard, a person is drawn into a relationship with God in and through the respective ‘moments’ of encountering God. That is, by standing before God and experiencing God’s presence in Jesus Christ, a person’s choices become caught up with the grace of God and, in those very moments, her passions find new direction and her existence finds new substance. The key point here is that, in the moment that a person encounters God in Jesus Christ, God – and who God is – transforms that person. The reason for this 207.  WL, p.  278; see also Sylvia Walsh, ‘Forming the Heart: The Role of Love in Kierkegaard’s Thought’ in The Grammar of the Heart: Thinking with Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein, ed. Richard Bell (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988), pp. 236–8. 208.  For Climacus, ‘(a) a logical system can be given; (b) but a system of existence cannot be given’ (CUP, p. 109 / SKS 7, p. 105).



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is that, for Kierkegaard, as I have endeavoured to show, humans are not dispassionate beings who can remain neutral in their encounters with others. Rather, they are beings whose existence and choices are constantly shaped by the others they encounter. So, when it comes to forming relationships with others, humans cannot be interpreted as beings who control the nature of their relationships solely by way of their own abstract choices. They require to be interpreted as beings whose relationships are informed by the particularity of the other with whom they interact. This does not mean that the other undermines a person’s freedom in such an encounter, unless we want to hold to an overly neutral or detached concept of freedom. Rather, it simply points to the fact that human individuals were created to exist and define themselves before God, as members of a community, albeit without becoming lost in the sway of the crowd. That said, Kierkegaard recognises that the way we encounter God is profoundly different from the way in which we encounter other persons. First, humans depend upon God to open their eyes and ears to encounter the reality of God. Second, when a person encounters God, God will have an impact on that person that is qualitatively unique. So, when a person is awakened in an encounter with God, he will not merely experience a relative change – he will experience an absolute transformation; he will become reborn. This does not take place by God underhandedly altering a person’s mind so that, against his will, he ‘chooses’ God; for Kierkegaard, this is not how grace operates. Rather, a person becomes transformed in the moment in which God enables that person to encounter and relate to God in Jesus Christ. In this moment, the presence of God draws that person, that relational being, into a reconciling embrace. And, as she stands before the God who is love, she becomes transformed by this love, and thereby receives the freedom to love, which, up until that point, was an impossibility.

C O N C LU SIO N

Kierkegaard observes: this is how people behave with respect to God – people forget that God exists and they consider whether it is the best thing, the most satisfactory thing, to have a God.1

Christian thought is constantly faced with the danger and temptation of reducing God to a mere human concept and a relationship with God to a human worldview. This perpetuates a perception that human beings possess a certain authority over both ‘God’ and the Christian faith. Accordingly, Christians become preoccupied with such activities as demonstrating the truth of Christianity, for example, by engaging in rationalistic attempts to prove the existence of ‘God’. Or, alternatively, they devote themselves to speculating over the doctrine of ‘God’ in a way that makes little or no difference to their becoming followers of Jesus Christ. Under these circumstances, ‘God’ all too easily becomes a postulate to keep systematic theologians in business rather than the Lord who personally calls individuals to active lives of discipleship.2 Reflecting on this dynamic, Lee Barrett writes, in a passage that takes us to the very heart of Kierkegaard’s theological vision: Even if God is said to transcend the categories of space and time, God is still treated as something whose mode of being can be an object for speculation and metaphysical description. According to such a practice, God would have to exhibit recognizable differentiating features and possess attributes that could be compared with the attributes of other beings. But for Kierkegaard, ‘God’ is not the name of any item locatable within the domain of finite beings, or of an entity 1.  KJN 2, p. 251 / SKS 18, pp. 271–2 [JJ:393]. 2. For Kierkegaard, ‘[t]he whole basic confusion of modern times (which reaches into logic, metaphysics, dogmatics, and the age’s whole way of life) [really] consists in this: that the qualitative yawning chasm has been removed from the difference between God and hum[an beings]. Hence a depth of blasphemy in dogmatics (from logic and metaphysics) that paganism did not know (for it knew what blasphemy is, but it is exactly this that has been forgotten in our time, in the theocentric [age])… [W]hat we have in our age and in modern times, is not [really] doubt but insubordination’ (KJN 4, p. 250 / SKS 20, p. 250 [NB3:15]).

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cognizable by way of contrast to finite beings … Diverging from a certain kind of academic approach to theology, Kierkegaard resisted the tendency to specify the meaning of ‘God’ by compiling an inventory of identifying characteristics, no matter how lofty such characteristics might sound. Kierkegaard does not define God in terms of such daunting metaphysical properties as omnipotence, omniscience, and so forth. Rather, Kierkegaard seeks to give ‘God’ meaning by exhibiting the concept’s role in the life of devotion to God.3

For Kierkegaard, as I have sought to show, the Christian faith is not primarily grounded in the human imagination or understanding but in God’s personal and dynamic engagement with the world in and through Jesus Christ. It is grounded in the living God who encounters persons in history and draws them to participate in a life of devotion to God. In its truest form, therefore, the Christian faith exists as a living witness and active expression of God’s relationship to us in and through Jesus Christ. It is out of a passionate devotion to the personal reality of God that an individual takes up the task of becoming a Christian. So, for Kierkegaard, the process of becoming a Christian is grounded in the communication of the truth who not only lies beyond the relativity of human systems but also beyond the relativity of the established order. As such, every facet of creation, including human reason and imagination, is absolutely subordinate to this truth: to the reality of the personal God. This truth, therefore, is not something that human beings can master for themselves but is someone to whom human beings can, at best, correspond in faith and love. The problem that faces human beings, however, is that the possibility of such correspondence is totally undermined by the sin to which human beings have bound themselves. Consequently, human beings are not only absolutely different from God, they are also absolutely alienated from God. It is important to recognise here that Kierkegaard’s emphasis on the creator– creation distinction does not tie him to the dawn of a new orthodoxy any more than it ties him to his own Lutheran understanding of God’s transcendence and freedom. Indeed, from what we have seen, Kierkegaard’s Christian thought takes him in quite a different direction from the ‘neo-orthodoxy’ of such thinkers as Karl Barth, with whom Kierkegaard is so often associated.4 For example, in 3. Barrett, Eros and Self-Emptying, p. 180. Barrett goes on to qualify: ‘this recognition is not a denial of the existence of God as a reality beyond the passions of the believer; it is not a denial of God’s transcendence or otherness. Kierkegaard was simply assuming that a necessary condition for meaningful discourse about God is the ability to imagine the kinds of hopes, fears, and loves that constitute the natural home for any talk about God’ (p. 181). 4. The main reason for this is because of Barth’s famous statement in the preface to the second edition of Romans: ‘if I have a system, it is limited to a recognition of what Kierkegaard called the “infinite qualitative distinction” between time and eternity, and to my regarding this as possessing negative as well as positive significance: “God is in heaven, and thou art on earth.” The relation between such a God and such a man, and the relation between such a man and such a God, is for me the theme of the Bible and the essence of

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distinction from Barth, Kierkegaard’s appreciation of the infinite qualitative difference between God and humanity does not hold him back from asserting that passionate human existence has a critical role to play in the human relationship with God. As Lee Barrett points out: ‘Kierkegaard’s emphasis on God’s qualitative difference does not preclude desire for God. Kierkegaard uses the rhetoric of difference in order to promote certain pastoral purposes, mainly to encourage his readers toward humility, thankfulness, and dependence.’5 As we have seen, Kierkegaard understands that it is with a passionate interest that a person is drawn into a loving and faithful relationship with God. And it is with passion that a person finds joy and fulfilment in corresponding to the love of God. For Kierkegaard, this passion, which is natural to human existence, enables a person to become engaged with and affected by God in ways that draw her into a reciprocal relationship with God. In turn, however, by passionately relating to God, a person’s passionate existence becomes transformed in ways that could not be anticipated by her natural existence. So, while a person’s passionate existence might enable her to participate in the process of becoming a Christian, it is not an innate passion that draws her into the Christian life, which would imply that the Christian life was the consequence of an evolutionary process. The ‘happy passion’ that characterises the Christian life is awakened when a person is given to participate in a loving and all-transforming relationship with God. With this transformation, a person’s self-love becomes a love for God and, thereby, a love for others. When it comes to Kierkegaard’s account of becoming a Christian, it is his deep appreciation for the reciprocal nature of the relationship with God that decisively distinguishes his thought from that of Barth’s, as well as so much of the Reformed tradition.6 From what we have seen, the possibility of a two-sided relationship with God is central to Kierkegaard’s understanding of the journey of faith. The faith and love that characterise the Christian life cannot be separated from the grace of God, and yet they do not find human expression without persons passionately responding to the grace of God, from within their own existences. As M. Jamie Ferreira points out: ‘Whereas God’s love is radically a gift, it is not only a gift.’7 The ‘thesis of Christianity’, for Kierkegaard, is that ‘God is love’ and philosophy.’ Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, 6th edn, tran. Edwyn C. Hoskyns (London: Oxford University Press, 1933), p. 10. 5. Barrett, Eros and Self-Emptying, p. 87. 6. Barth takes a firm stance against the notion of a reciprocal relationship between God and humanity. For him, ‘[t]here can be no thought of any reciprocity or mutual efficacy [Wechselwirkung] [between humanity and Jesus Christ] even with the most careful precautions. Faith in particular is not an act of reciprocity, but the act of renouncing all reciprocity, the act of acknowledging the one Mediator, beside whom there is no other.’ Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/2, eds Geoffrey W. Bromiley and Thomas F. Torrance, trans G. T. Thompson and H. Knight (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1956), p. 146 / Die Kirchliche Dogmatik I/2 (Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1938), p. 162. 7. Ferreira, Love’s Grateful Striving (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 257.

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this involves a ‘twofoldedness’ (Dobbelt): ‘God loves– and God wants to be loved. These two in equilibrium [Ligevægt] make true Christianity.’8 At the same time, it is important to be clear that Kierkegaard does not for a moment suggest that the contributions of the two sides of this interrelationship are equal. As we have seen, the process of becoming a Christian rests, for him, upon the priority of grace. Again, the Christian faith is not something that can arise ‘naturally’ in the midst of this sinful world: in a world that totally fails to conform to the truth and love of God. Human beings cannot establish or acquire a Christian faith for themselves, even if they are equipped with the teachings of scripture or the best books on Christian doctrine. To become a Christian, a person depends upon God to reveal the untruth of his sinful state so that he can be delivered into the truth of the Christian life. The Christian faith requires God to deliver human reason into correspondence with the love and truth that God is in himself.9 And this gracious activity of God is not conditioned by human agency. In and of itself, human existence is incapable of making positive strides towards a faithful and loving relationship with God. Human existence can only respond lovingly to God as it is inspired and animated by the love of God. Nonetheless, for Kierkegaard, the grace of God invites a new possibility of a reciprocal relationship with God: a relationship in which human beings are not so overwhelmed by the glory of God that they forget themselves. By revealing himself in the form of a human servant, God creates the possibility of a mutual love between God and human beings that would not otherwise be possible. What is more, the incarnation expresses how much human existence matters for God. It reveals that God freely wills to relate to human beings, across the gulf that is the infinite qualitative difference between them, in the lowliness of their human situation. The downside of God’s will for a reciprocal relationship with human beings, however, as we have also seen, is that it makes the task of becoming a Christian all the more difficult. As Kierkegaard makes plain, becoming a Christian in the context of this secular and sinful world requires persons to commit themselves voluntarily to a life of continual struggle. On the positive side, by participating in a reciprocal relationship with God, the Christian is not called to endure this struggle alone. She is called to take up this struggle with the help of God, who not only enables her to perceive the world with the eyes of faith but also gives her the strength to follow God with the eyes of faith. By participating in an interactive relationship with God, a person not only receives the freedom to become a Christian – she is also given the passion to do so. Committed to the belief that an interpersonal relationship with God undergirds the Christian life, Kierkegaard’s account of becoming a Christian provides a direct challenge to the overly rationalistic conceptions of this process: accounts that associate the process of becoming a Christian with the progression of autonomous 8.  JP 2, 1336 / SKS 26, p. 267 [NB33:25]; see also JP 3, 2448 / SKS 26, p. 59 [NB31:79]; JP 6, 6947 / Pap XI-3 B 57. 9. See footnote 101 in Chapter 4.

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human thinking. As this study has also shown, however, the reciprocity of the Christian faith means that Kierkegaard does not totally disregard the role of human understanding. He recognises that it is with an understanding of what Christianity is, informed by Scripture, that individuals can consciously and actively take up the task of becoming Christians in this world. Yet he also recognises that it is with this understanding that individuals can humbly realise that they have nothing to give – that becoming a Christian rests wholly upon the good will of God. Furthermore, he insists that any faithful understanding that God grants a person is a gift that should be used to live out her own particular calling in this world; it is certainly not a badge to be worn in conceited self-distinction from those who are yet to receive this gift. Glory is not to be given to the Christian who comes to believe in God, but to the God who draws all to himself. So, for Kierkegaard, autonomous human thought cannot draw a person into a relationship with God. All a person’s thinking can do is help him to understand himself and his own beliefs about God – a self and set of beliefs that are absolutely not God. By coming to a faith that is awakened by the grace of God, however, a person can consciously participate in a relationship with God, and do so with beliefs that correspond to her active involvement in this relationship.10 What this study has argued is that, for Kierkegaard, it is only by participating in this relationship that a person can become decisively Christian and, indeed, remain decisively Christian. When a person does so, he does not do so as a self-enclosed monadic entity who is either free or determined: a subject whose Christian faith is either a product of human agency or divine agency. Rather, he does so as a person who has been given to participate in a reciprocal relationship with God.

I. Kierkegaard’s Low Pneumatology There is only one proof for the truth of [Christianity] – the inner proof, argumentum spiritus sancti.11

From what we have seen, while Kierkegaard insists that becoming a Christian rests upon the grace of God, he also insists that the reciprocal nature of the relationship requires human existence to become transformed from within. In order to hold these two points together, one might have expected Kierkegaard to turn to the work of the Spirit. However, he rarely made this move. This scarcity is arguably one of the greatest weaknesses in his account of becoming a Christian. With a more confident appreciation for the work of the promised Spirit, his approach might have been more focused on inspiring rather than critiquing, on confessing rather than exhorting. That is, he might have experienced a greater freedom to proclaim the Gospel with a trust that it is not his own exhortations 10. Accordingly, Kierkegaard writes: ‘My Soul rests entirely in faith, understands itself entirely in believing’ (WA, p. 58 / SKS 11, p. 64). 11.  KJN 6, p. 105 / SKS 22, p. 108 [NB11:179].

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that makes disciples, but the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church. Also, with a greater confidence in the Holy Spirit, he might have been able to articulate more clearly the relationship between human subjectivity and the grace of God. For example, a higher profile pneumatology might have enabled him to explain with greater lucidity the way in which Christians relate subjectively to the objective presence of Jesus Christ and thereby to the objective reality of God, yet in a manner which (contra Hegel’s pantheism) succeeds in maintaining the two-sidedness of the relationship between God and humanity. While Kierkegaard does not provide an extended discussion of the Spirit, he was not unaware of the importance of the work of the Spirit, as is particularly evident in his later works.12 Speaking of conversion in Judge for Yourself!, he observes that ‘[t]he Spirit brings faith, the faith – that is, faith in the strictest sense of the word, this gift of the Holy Spirit’.13 In addition, he maintains that the Spirit must help us to know the Son, the Mediator, who directs us to the Father: God ‘becomes my Father in the Mediator by means of the Spirit’.14 Such references to the Spirit hardly constitute a robust pneumatology. However, they do suggest that his theological convictions are compatible with, and may well be enhanced by, a more extensive treatment of the role of the Spirit. Importantly, however, Kierkegaard was not without reason for referring to the Holy Spirit infrequently. The Hegelianism to which he was so resistant revolved around the concept of the divine spirit (Geist), and this conception of the divine spirit served to endorse a unity between God and human immanence. What made this worse is that Hegel was happy to use the language of ‘the witness of the

12. See JFY, pp. 71–87 / SKS 13, pp. 93–108; FSE, pp. 95–8 / SKS 13, pp. 153–5 and a string of later journal entries from 1850: KJN 7, pp. 18–20 / SKS 23, pp. 22–23 [NB15:24]; KJN 7, pp. 78–9 / SKS 23, pp. 80–1 [NB15:114]; KJN 7, p. 422 / SKS 23, p. 414 [NB20:40]; KJN 7, p. 455 / SKS 23, p. 447 [NB20:100]; KJN 7, pp. 456–7 / SKS 23, pp. 448–9 [NB20:105]; KJN 7, p.  471 / SKS 23, p.  463 [NB20:133]) and 1852 (JP 2, 1661 / SKS 25, pp.  46–7 [NB26:40]; JP 2, 1662 / SKS 25, p. 161 [NB27:49]; JP 2, 1916 / SKS 25, pp. 96–7 [NB26:97]; JP 2, 1919 / SKS 25, pp. 157–8 [NB27:44]; JP 4, 4346 / SKS 25, pp. 150–1 [NB27:37]; JP 4, 4688 / SKS 25, pp. 49–50 [NB26:44]; JP 4, 4692 / SKS 25, pp. 79–81 [NB26:77]; JP 4, 4694 / SKS 25, p.103 [NB26:107]; JP 4, 4939 / SKS 24, 519–20 [NB25:107]; JP 6, 6792 / SKS 24, pp. 468–9 [NB25:48]; JP 6, 6832 / SKS 25, pp. 156–7 [NB27:43]). Also, Paul Martens’ chapter, ‘The Emergence of the Holy Spirit in Kierkegaard’s Thought’, offers an insightful analysis of Kierkegaard’s thought on this topic in International Kierkegaard Commentary on For Self Examination and Judge for Yourself!, ed. Robert Perkins (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2002), pp. 199–222. 13.  FSE, p. 81 / SKS, 13, p. 103. (Kierkegaard also talks about the Spirit bringing hope and love in this discourse.) 14.  JP 2, 1432 / SKS 25, pp. 140–1 [NB27:23]. Importantly, Kierkegaard asserts here that ‘it is not the Spirit who leads to the Son and the Son who leads to the Father; no, it is the Father who directs to the Son, the Son who directs to the Spirit, and not until then is it the Spirit who leads to the Son and the Son who leads to the Father’.

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spirit’ (Das Zeugnis des Geistes).15 Kierkegaard was also, and for related reasons, nervous about Christians in Denmark confusing the (mysterious) work of the Holy Spirit with their own worldly existences.16 Such confusion allows churchgoing ‘Christians’ to misinterpret the Spirit’s work as enabling their self-contented lives. For him, those who kept turning to the Spirit in this way were ‘escapists’ who expressed ‘a pure and simple secular mentality’ – an expression that is not inspired by the Holy Spirit.17 For this reason, he felt a need to provide a Christian message that was much more clearly directed at human existence. By so doing, he was fully aware of how this might come across: When I underscore the existential in the essentially Christian (alas, not nearly as strongly as the N.T.!) the cry goes up: This is exaggeration, this is law, not gospel. They say: You forget to talk about the Holy Spirit and his aid, for thereby what is heavy becomes light.18

Aware of how cheap references to the Holy Spirit had become, Kierkegaard responds to such criticism by saying: ‘I have so much respect for the Holy Spirit that I have not dared speak of him because I understand that as soon as I begin doing so I must present the existential even more strongly.’19 As he saw it, the children of Christendom had become so spoiled by talk of grace and the Holy Spirit that they had ceased to recognise that when God works in our lives we are drawn to a life of struggle in this secular world.20 The situation was such that people were praising God for their comfortable worldly lives – lives they believed were made easier by the help of the Spirit. Consequently, Kierkegaard felt compelled to speak of the need for Christians to make a voluntary effort to follow Christ. For Kierkegaard, God works in our lives not by making difficult choices easy but by giving us the strength to make the difficult choices, the sacrifices, that we are called to make. He does this by sending the Holy Spirit to give us the ‘sobriety’ to see the ‘drunkenness’ of the secular mentality, and thereby to become inspired to adjust our lives according to Scripture’s proclamation of what Christianity is.21 15.  See, for example, Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, vol. 3: The Consummate Religion, ed. P. Hodgson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 255–7. For a helpful discussion of Kierkegaard’s relationship to the Hegelian conception of divine spirit (as Trinity), see Walsh, Kierkegaard: Thinking Christianly in an Existential Mode, pp. 52–4. 16.  Another contributing factor to the deficient pneumatology in Kierkegaard’s thought is that Kierkegaard was influenced by some orthodox strands of Lutheranism in Denmark, which tended towards a more Christocentric theology. 17.  JP 6, 6792 / SKS 24, p. 469 [NB25:48]. 18.  JP 6, 6792 / SKS 24, p. 469 [NB25:48]. 19.  JP 6, 6792 / SKS 24, p.  469 [NB25:48]; see also JP 6, 6862 / SKS 25, pp.  312–13 [NB29:23]. 20.  JP 6, 6832 / SKS 25, pp. 156–7 [NB27:43]. 21.  JFY, pp. 95–8 / SKS 16, pp. 153–5.

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It is important to clarify here that Kierkegaard was not intent on making the prospect of becoming a Christian more difficult for everyone. In particular, he did not want to make the ‘common’ people more anxious.22 He did not want the struggling workers in society to perceive Christianity as yet another burden for their difficult lives. For those who were struggling, Kierkegaard (primarily) spoke a message of grace: Jesus Christ’s ‘reconciliation [Forsoning] expels, if possible, all anxiety from a person’s soul’.23 Becoming a Christian brings relief to those who are struggling with the ways of the world. But for those church-going ‘Christians’ who are overly comfortable with the ways of the world, Kierkegaard (primarily) spoke a message of existential struggle – a message that, he believed, was strongly supported by the New Testament. For this group, it is much harder to become a Christian: harder than it is for the camel to go through the eye of a needle. Such people need to recognise their need to be reborn from above and to look to God and revelation in order to discover in truth what is involved in becoming a Christian – in consciously participating in God’s kingdom in this world. Why is it so difficult to become a Christian in this world? Because, for Kierkegaard, the faith and love that characterise the Christian life clash with the ways of this world, and we find this epitomised in this world’s crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the God–human. In fact, the Christian life is so radically at odds with the worldly life that, in a certain sense, it is almost impossible to become a Christian in this world – as is made evident when Kierkegaard goes so far as to claim: ‘I am not a Christian.’24 For Kierkegaard, almost no one can claim to have become the ‘infinitely high’ Christian – the Christian according to the New Testament – given the constraints of existence in this fallen world.25 However, when we realise the hopelessness of our individual pursuits, Kierkegaard asserts that we must not become overwhelmed with guilt, anxiety and despair. Instead, with Luther, we turn with our anguished consciences to trust that it is only by grace that we are saved.26 For Kierkegaard, as Jørgen Bukdahl notes, ‘[t]he only salvation is, first of all, honesty and the admission that one is humbled, crushed under the weight of this high ideal. Thereafter, the only things remaining are grace and God’s mercy.’27 It is with a hope that looks to God’s grace and mercy (and, thus, away from ourselves) that we become Christian; and, for Kierkegaard, this hope is brought

22.  KJN 6, p. 364 / SKS 22, p. 360 [NB14:28]; see also KJN 5, p. 298 / SKS 21, p. 286 [NB10:57]; JP 1, 991 / SKS 25, p.  154 [NB22:92]; KJN 7, p.  234 / SKS 23, pp.  230–31 [NB17:82]; KJN 7, p. 323 / SKS 23, p. 316 [NB18:90]. 23.  JFY, p. 209 / SKS 16, p. 254 (emphasis original); see also KJN 7, p. 81 / SKS 23, p. 83 [NB15:118]. 24.  M, pp. 340–3 / SKS 13, pp. 403–7. 25.  M, pp. 346–7 / SKS 13, p. 411. 26.  KJN 4, pp. 67–8 / SKS 20, p. 69 [NB:79]. 27. Jørgen Bukdahl, Søren Kierkegaard and the Common Man, tran. Bruce H. Kirmmse (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), p. 126.

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to us by the Holy Spirit – a hope that is not ‘natural hope’ but ‘hope in the strictest Christian sense’.28 It is by trusting in this hope that we can call ourselves Christian. With a sword hanging over my head, I am ordered to say whether or not I am a Christian. My answer would be: I trust to God that I am a Christian; I believe that out of grace he will accept me as a Christian … The question of whether I am a Christian (and thus for every individual, whether he is a Christian) is entirely a God-relationship.29

II. Communion with the One Who Establishes Kinship with Us in Time God simply wants – O infinite love! – a person to be in kinship with him in Christ.30

It is hard to conceive of a thinker who has thought more profoundly about the question of becoming a Christian than Søren Kierkegaard. It is no surprise therefore that such extensive work has been done on this question in Kierkegaard studies. This work, however, has been beset by a tendency to disregard Kierkegaard’s deep appreciation for God’s personal involvement in this process, focusing instead on the existential progression of human individuals. When human existence takes prominence, there is a danger that God becomes a transcendent bystander who merely watches on as human beings try to appropriate the teachings that God left behind two millennia ago. Or, again, there is a danger that ‘God’ is reduced to a human concept – an idea within Christian teaching. Under these circumstances, becoming a Christian, at best, concerns about the life-journey that ensues when an individual devotes herself to the teachings of scripture. When the reality and actuality of God is left out of the picture, or collapsed into immanent, ‘Christianity’ is fed to the creativity of the human imagination, leaving it to become a form of mythology or paganism.31 But, for Kierkegaard, as this book has sought to demonstrate, the process of becoming a Christian does not merely concern an evolution with human existence – an evolution that can take place if a person commits himself to a set of revealed propositions. It involves reconciliation into a loving relationship with the eternal God who becomes present with us in history. Becoming a Christian is categorically not, therefore, grounded in any immanent relationship with God on the part of humanity: ‘That the human race is supposed to be in kinship with God is ancient paganism.’32 Rather, it is grounded in God’s interactive relationship with 28.  FSE, pp. 82–3 / SKS 13, p. 104. For an excellent discussion of the role of hope for becoming a Christian, see David Gouwens, Kierkegaard as Religious Thinker, pp. 166–85. 29.  PV, p. 135 / SKS 16, p. 111. 30.  JP 4, 4524 / SKS 25, p. 89 [NB26:86]. 31. See KJN 7, pp. 138–9 / SKS 23, p. 137 [NB16:60]. 32.  PC, p. 82 / SKS 12, p. 92.

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particular persons, mediated in and through the God–human: ‘that an individual human being is God is Christianity, and this particular human being is the God– man’.33 It is only because God enters into the world in Jesus Christ that it becomes possible for persons to relate positively to God within this world.34 Apart from Jesus Christ, the only ‘God’ to whom human beings can relate positively, within this world, is a myth or idol summoned up by their own imaginations: a sinful idea that is separated from the reality of God by the same ‘qualitative yawning chasm’ that separates God from humanity.35 Accordingly, at the foundation of Kierkegaard’s account of becoming a Christian is ‘the Christian contention that the actuality of Jesus Christ is the decisive condition of any salvific relation to the Truth’.36 Becoming a Christian is grounded in the miracle of God breaking into history. So, when faith corresponds to this miracle, ‘faith is “the point outside the world”’.37 By relating faithfully to Jesus Christ, a person can make the decisions that are required for becoming decisively Christian. These decisions, therefore, are not primarily indicative of a person’s epistemic standing but, more widely, of a mutual relationship with God – a relationship that transcends the epistemic by being a relationship not only with a person’s own idea of God but with the real God who encounters us in Jesus Christ ‘as a historical, actual person’.38

III. What Does it Mean to Become a Christian? In this book, I have sought to offer an assessment of the strengths of Kierkegaard, an assessment that takes seriously his appreciation of the way in which both God and human beings are actively involved in the process of a person’s becoming a Christian. In particular, I have sought to show the significance of the unique way in which Kierkegaard emphasised the interrelationship between God and human beings that grounds this process – one that confesses the Christian faith’s grounding in the God who is for us and with us in Jesus Christ. Today, 33.  PC, p. 82 / SKS 12, p. 92. 34. As Philip Ziegler puts it: ‘It is precisely because of the utterly unique manner in which God is for us in Christ as God, that human beings can only know the truth of God when they appropriate it subjectively as the truth of God for them.’ Ziegler, ‘Christ For Us Today: Promeity in the Christologies of Bonhoeffer and Kierkegaard’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 15:1 (2013): 37. 35.  KJN 4, p. 250 / SKS 20, p. 250 [NB3:15]. Accordingly, I think that David Law is quite right to interpret another of Kierkegaard’s journal entries as indicating that ‘Kierkegaard’s development of the notion of the God–man as the lowly servant is the result – at least in part – of his opposition to what he regards as the mythical representations of Christ in contemporary thought.’ Law, Kierkegaard’s Kenotic Christology, p. 140. 36. Murray Rae, Kierkegaard’s Vision of the Incarnation, p. 36. 37.  KJN 7, p. 138 / SKS 23, p. 136 [NB16:60]. 38.  JP 1, 693 / SKS 25, p. 344 [NB29:83].

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perhaps more than any other period in the history of the church, the church needs to be reminded of this grounding, as Christian thought increasingly allows itself to be dictated to by atheistic suppositions, such as those that characterise Enlightenment humanism, which places the subjective human thinker at the centre of the universe, or philosophical naturalism, which, as Alvin Plantinga puts it, reduces human beings to ‘insignificant parts of a giant cosmic machine that proceeds in majestic indifference to us’.39 In Kierkegaard, we find a thinker with the bold and faithful confidence to proclaim that becoming a Christian is first and foremost about being brought to live out of God’s concrete love for humanity and fellowship with us made actual in time.40 Confronted by the mystery of God’s grace, it is no surprise that Kierkegaard’s theology ended up being profoundly informed by his particular context, as he struggled to teach both church and society what is involved in becoming a Christian. However, as he sought to expound what Christianity is, he recognised with unrelenting clarity that the Christian faith does not rest, ultimately, on the power and adequacy of his own (or anyone else’s) teaching, but on the God who works through him. He also recognised that the immediate success of his teaching is always secondary to the fact that we live before the God who loves us and gave himself for us. From his own particular perspective, he proclaims, as a Christian, that we are called to repose in the joy that stems from this reality. What does it mean to be Christian in light of this reality? For Kierkegaard, a person is never more Christian than when she is given to surrender to the one ‘Truth’ who lies beyond the exclusivity of her own belief systems. This means that she does not discover what it means to be Christian through her own individual pursuits but in her reconciliation into the kingdom of God’s love – a kingdom that is truer to her humanity and more liberative of it than she could conceivably anticipate in advance. In this kingdom, the chains of human egotism are broken, and she is united in a community of persons who live according to God’s eternal purposes of joy and peace. How does one become a Christian in light of this reality? To become a Christian in this world, in both name and existence, a person 39. Alvin Plantinga, The Twin Pillars of Christian Scholarship (Grand Rapids: Calvin College and Seminary, 1990), pp.  9–10. In these Stob Lectures, Plantinga provides an extremely helpful discussion of the mutually incompatible methodologies of ‘naturalism’ and ‘Enlightenment humanism’/‘creative anti-realism’. See also Alan Torrance, ‘Is There a Distinctive Human Nature? Approaching the Question from a Christian Epistemic Base?’, Zygon 47:4 (2012): 903–17. 40. Kierkegaard writes in a journal entry from 1853: ‘to be loved by God and to love God is to suffer. In any case, in order to trust in God (for I cannot combine trust in God and worldly wisdom in such a way that, trust in God, I could use worldly wisdom), I must have the bold confidence not to use worldly wisdom, so that if I do gain a temporal victory I dare to say confidently: It was God’s will, I placed it all in his hands by renouncing the use of finite prudence’ (JP 6, 6837 / SKS 25, pp. 183–4 [NB27:71]). He also remarks in an earlier journal entry from 1850 that the ‘cheerful courage’ of the Christian is due to his ‘confidence in grace’ (KJN 7, p. 81 / SKS 23, p. 83 [NB15:118]).

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is called to do many things: she is called to pray, to read Scripture, to be baptised, to partake of the Lord’s Supper, to hear and obey God, to follow Christ, to love her neighbour, etc. Ultimately, however, it is not a person’s beliefs and practices that make her Christian. If a person finds that she has become a Christian it is because she is conscious of having been encountered by the God–human, Jesus Christ and, by the Spirit, has been drawn into communion with the one who, inconceivably, has established kinship with us in time.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Søren Kierkegaard Full references for the majority of Kierkegaard’s works cited in this book can be found in the Abbreviations section on pages ix–x.

II. Other Cited Translations of Kierkegaard Kierkegaard, Søren, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, eds and trans David Swenson and Walter Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941). Kierkegaard, Søren, The Concept of Anxiety, ed. and tran. Reidar Thomte (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980). Kierkegaard, Søren, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Crumbs, ed. and tran. Alastair Hannay (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Kierkegaard, Søren, Repetition and Philosophical Crumbs, tran. M. G. Piety (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

III. Secondary Literature and Other Works Adams, Nicholas, The Eclipse of Grace: Divine and Human Action in Hegel (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013). Adams, Robert Merrihew, ‘Truth and Subjectivity’, in Reasoned Faith: Essays in Philosophical Theology in Honor of Norman Kretzmann, ed. Eleonore Stump (Ithaca: Cornell University Press), pp. 15–41. Anderson, Thomas C., ‘Is the Religion of Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses Religiousness A?’, in International Kierkegaard Commentary on Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, ed. Robert Perkins (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2003), pp. 51–66. Backhouse, Stephen, Kierkegaard’s Critique of Christian Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Barnett, Christopher B., Kierkegaard, Pietism and Holiness (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011). Barnett, Christopher B., From Despair to Faith: The Spirituality of Søren Kierkegaard (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014). Barrett, C. K., The First Epistle to the Corinthians: Black’s New Testament Commentaries (London: A&C Black, 1971). Barrett, Lee C., ‘The Paradox of Faith in Philosophical Fragments: Gift or Task?’, in

202 Bibliography International Kierkegaard Commentary: ‘Philosophical Fragments’ and ‘Johannes Climacus’, ed. Robert Perkins (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1994), pp. 261–84. Barrett, Lee C., ‘Christ’s Efficacious Love and Human Responsibility: The Lutheran Dialectic of “Discourses at the Communion on Fridays”’, in International Kierkegaard Commentary on Christian Discourses and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress, ed. Robert L. Perkins (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2007), 251–72. Barrett, Lee C., ‘Kierkegaard’s Authorship and the Paradox of Divine and Human Agencies’, in International Kierkegaard Commentary on The Point of View, ed. Robert L. Perkins (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2010), pp. 48–77. Barrett, Lee C., Eros and Self-Emptying: The Intersections of Augustine and Kierkegaard (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013). Barth, Karl, The Epistle to the Romans, 6th edition, tran. Edwyn C. Hoskyns (London: Oxford University Press, 1933). Barth, Karl, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik I/2 (Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1938). Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics I/2, eds Geoffrey W. Bromiley and Thomas F. Torrance, trans G. T. Thompson and Harold Knight (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956). The Bible with Apocrypha: NRSV Anglicized edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, Christ the Center, tran. Edwin Robertson (New York: Harper & Row, 1978). Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works Volume 12: Berlin 1932–1933, ed. Larry Rasmussen, trans Isabel Best and David Higgins (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009). Brunner, Emil, The Mediator (London: Lutterworth Press, 1934). Bukdahl, Jørgen, Søren Kierkegaard and the Common Man, tran. Bruce H. Kirmmse (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001). Cain, David, ‘“Death Comes in Between”: Reflections on Kierkegaard’s For Self-Examination’, Kierkegaardiana 15 (1991): 69–81. Calvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 vols, ed. John T. McNeill, tran. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960). Cappelørn, Niels Jørgen, ‘The Movements of Offense Toward, Away From, and Within Faith: Blessed is He Who is Not Offended at Me’, tran. K. Brian Söderquist in International Kierkegaard Commentary on Practice In Christianity, ed. Robert L. Perkins (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2004), pp. 95–124. Cappelørn, Niels Jørgen, ‘Longing for Reconciliation with God: A Fundamental Theme in “Friday Communion Discourses,” Fourth Part of Christian Discourses’, tran. K. Brian Søderquist in Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook 2007, eds N. J. Cappelørn, K. Brian Søderquist and H. Deuser (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2007), pp. 318–36. Carlisle, Clare, Kierkegaard’s Philosophy of Becoming: Movements and Positions (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005). Carlisle, Clare, ‘Climacus On the Task of Becoming a Christian’, in Concluding Unscientific Postscript: A Critical Guide, ed. Rick Furtak (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 170–89. Carr, Karen L., ‘The Offense of Reason and the Passion of Faith: Kierkegaard and Anti-Rationalism’, Faith and Philosophy 13:2 (1996): 236–51. Come, Arnold B., Kierkegaard as Humanist: Discovering My Self (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995). Come, Arnold B., Kierkegaard as Theologian: Recovering My Self (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997).

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INDEX Abraham 90–2, 142 Absurd, absurdity 24–5, 52, 67, 69, 97–8, 136, 153, 155 actuality 13 n.2, 44, 65, 88, 90, 104, 107, 140, 144, 166, 177 n.159 of Christian faith 115 of God 3, 156, 197 of Jesus Christ 198 Adam 64–5, 172, 178–9 Adams, Nicholas, 32 n.91 aesthetic 3, 89 works of Kierkegaard 1 n.1 anamnesis 14 Anderson, Thomas C. 99 n.60, 105 n.86 Anselm 25 n.51, 121 anti-realism 23, 199 n.39 anxiety 9, 49 n.172, 65–6, 110, 144–5, 178, 181, 196 Apostle 57, 76 n.93, 134, 142 Archimedean point 11 Aristotle 44 Arminian, Kierkegaard as 172–3 Atheism 90, 199 atonement 57, 115, 139, 152 n.28 Augsburg Confession 35 n.105, 126 n.42, 169 n.120, 178 n.164 Augustine 13, 47, 172 n.130 authority 144 n.153, 168 n.110, 171, 184, 189 autonomy 31, 58, 63–4, 96, 106, 110, 167, 170, 192–3 Backhouse, Stephen 127 Baptism 138, 169–70 Barnett, Christopher B. 3–4 n.8 Barrett, Lee C. 2 n.6, 11 n.31, 160 n.72, 162 n.82, 168 n.112, 173 n.132, 189–91 Barth, Karl 190–1 becoming, human 43–4, 50, 54, 177 religious 91 n.30 a true self 28–30 being 1, 43, 63, 170, 172 n.131, 178, 182, 187 able 65–6, 73 n.80, 99 of God 68, 104–5, 139, 189–90 in the truth 36–9, 60 belief(s) 19–24, 42, 49, 72, 124, 162–3, 165–7, 193, 199, 200

Christian 4, 12, 17, 23–4, 57, 77, 95, 101–4, 115, 192 formation of 49, 57, 106 willing 49, 175–7 beloved 21, 28, 59–60, 118–21, 128, 185 Bible 57, 77, 108, 119–25, 149 n.10, 157, 190 n.4 Blessedness 70–7, 134, 152, 156 n.50 eternal (evig Salighed) 88–9 and Matt. 11.6 70–7 bondage 4 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich 151 n.20 Brunner, Emil 7 Bukdahl, Jørgen 196 Cain, David 119 Calvin, John 113 Cappelørn, Niels Jørgen 23 n.43, 168 n.108 Caprice 9, 69, 81 Carlisle, Clare 13 n.2, 44 n.155, 95 n.49, 140 n.130 Carr, Karen L. 25 n.48 Chalcedon 32, 82–3 changelessness of God 71 choice 31 n.89, 44–54, 62–4, 69–73, 76, 114 n.129, 129, 137–8, 147, 163 n.86, 170–82, 186–7, 195 to become a Christian 10, 170–82, 186–7 Christendom 1, 51, 125–7, 133, 138, 143, 148–9, 155, 161 n.80, 195 Christian assurance 80, 112 being a 48 n.170, 71–2, 85 n.2, 127, 131, 141 n.131, 144, 155, 165, 169 belief 4, 57, 106, 115 community 126 n.42, 128–9 decisively 10, 24, 26, 86, 94, 100 n.63, 101–6, 114 n.128, 115, 130, 149 n.13, 193, 198 doctrine 3–4, 6, 23, 38, 67, 148 n.5, 149, 192 essentially 18, 67, 100 n.63, 137, 143, 147, 149 n.14, 153, 155, 184 n.193, 195 experience 14, 177 knowledge 3–4, 25–6, 38, 72, 95, 136 n.101, 148–9, 153 Kierkegaard’s point of view 1, 5–12, 17, 27, 86, 98, 125, 151

212 Index ministry 137–38, 143 philosophy 136 n.101, 136 n.103 scholarship 3, 8 n.18, 23–6, 37, 119–23, 126–27, 134, 144 n.150, 166 Christianity according to the New Testament 85, 141, 149, 196 approaching 25, 148–58 bourgeois 6, 114 n.128, 148–9 Christocentric 2, 8–9, 25, 32 n.91, 37–8, 74, 77–83, 195 n.16 198–200 concept of 72, 95–6, 100, 102 ‘how’ of 83, 155 nominal 128, 148–50, 169 proof of 92 n.38, 182, 193 rationalistic 6 requirement of 2, 4, 8, 23, 101, 112, 128, 141, 150, 167 theocentric 2, 26, 68, 189 n.2 ‘what’ of 7, 83, 155 Church 57, 71 n.69, 95, 113, 126–7, 134, 151 n.20, 167, 169 n.114, 178 n.164, 194–6, 199 as communion of saints 126 n.42 established 137, 149 Come, Arnold B. 62 n.26, 66 n.46, 113 n.125 communication 7, 13, 36, 54, 80, 89, 144 direct 74 n.85, 76, 78, 144 divine 54, 109 n.107 existence- 103, 106 n.93, 20 n.27 indirect 144 of the truth 13, 143, 165, 190 conclusion(s) 20, 26, 122, 159 n.62, 169, 175 condition, the 14–17, 27, 33, 52–3, 66, 78–9, 82, 104–5, 109 n.107, 124, 158, 161, 164–5 conscience 31, 114–15, 196 contemporaneity 37 n.122, 58, 77–83, 97 immediate 78, 80–1 non-immediate 80–1 Copenhagen 19 Covenant 84 creation 15, 33–4, 38, 62 n.27, 64 n.31, 98, 101–2, 105, 140, 153, 158, 171, 178, 190 crowd, the 51, 126–7, 187 as untruth 50–1 culture 6, 114 n.128, 126, 128, 134, 137, 148–49, 151 Cupitt, Don 23 n.41 Cyril of Alexandria 83 Dalferth, Ingolf U. 100 n.64, 103, 106 n.94, 155 n.47, 161–2 Davis, William C. 48 n.170 deception 58–9, 61, 75, 126, 181, 184

deliverer 16 Denmark, Danish culture 6, 19, 51, 94, 122–3, 126–7, 133–4, 138, 141, 148–50 despair 9, 27–36, 111, 114–15, 139, 155 n.47, 166, 177, 181–82, 196 disciple(s), discipleship 6, 24, 64, 77–9, 98, 117–23, 129, 131, 133, 135, 143, 184, 189, 194 double-mindedness 89 n.21, 146 double-reflection 23–4 doubt 112, 120, 142 n.138, 152 n.28, 175, 189 n.2 drawn, to be 12, 36, 38, 54, 57–8, 60–3, 67, 71, 73–8, 81 n.122, 84, 98, 107, 109–10, 124, 134, 140, 142–3, 148, 152, 154, 160, 185 n.201 Dunning, Stephen 44 n.156 Dupre, Louis 115 n.134 Elrod, John 122 Emmanuel, Steven 95–6 encountering 39, 42, 46, 103 another 187 Christianity 13 god/God 2, 32, 37–8, 51–2, 64, 73, 77–83, 105–9, 112, 117, 127–8, 130, 137, 147, 151, 153, 159, 163–5, 167 n 106, 171, 174, 186–7, 198, 200 Holy Spirit Jesus Christ 2, 37, 57, 73, 7–83, 97–8, 112–13, 116–17, 131, 135, 147–8, 152, 164–5, 167, 186–87, 198, 200 the paradox 164–5 reality 103, 182, 198 Enlightenment 157 n.58 humanism 199 empiricism 108 error 63, 110 eternal, eternity 2, 15, 19, 25, 31, 33, 60, 62 n.27, 66 n.46, 73, 85, 96, 99, 101, 104, 107, 117, 127 n.49, 139–40, 157, 178 n.162, 185 blessedness 88 destiny 170 n.121 God 17, 19, 26, 32–4, 40, 80 n.114, 88, 94, 98, 105–11, 139–40, 197 happiness 38 n.129, 88–94, 98, 100–5, 129, 146, 153, 155–7 historical 78, 80, 95–7 life 89–90 purpose 68, 199 qualitative difference 33 n.93 salvation 139 in time 19 n.27, 24, 52 n.186, 80 n.114, 85, 96, 101, 107

Index

213

truth 14, 18–19, 24, 60, 78, 95–7, 100–1, 105, 130, 157–8 ethical 35 n.109, 43, 49 n.173, 92–3, 99, 175, 180–1 guidance 43, 118 imagination 135 life 93 n.42 obligation 92 passion 135, 160 religious 155 n.47, 172 teleological suspension of 92 n.38 truth 22 ethic(s) 22 n.36, 23 n.43, 47 Christian 131 Eucharist 91 n.30, 168 n.109, 169 n.114, 183 see also Lord’s Supper Evans, C. Stephen 16 n.12, 23 n.41, 24 n.45–6, 40–1, 46–9, 89 n.21, 93 n.42, 94 n.46, 160 n.69, 163 n.86, 165, 175–6, 179, 182–3 exemplar 96, 132, 139 existence ‘animal category’ 180 before God 3 Christian 9, 85, 95–110, 114–16, 118, 130, 140, 149 n.13, 199 of Christianity 130 reconciliation of, transformation of 18, 24, 38, 63, 67, 105–6, 110–11, 154–8, 184, 191–3 religious category of 86–110, 114 n.128, 154 subjective 2, 20, 22, 26, 45–7, 50–4, 74, 83, 94, 100, 128, 148, 185 existentialism 2, 105

Ferreira, M. Jamie 50, 96, 154–7, 183, 191 Feuerbach, Ludwig 81 Fideism 3, 98, 124 forgiveness 27, 31, 36, 57, 71 n.69, 112–14, 152, 156–7 Frazier, Brad 141 n.131 freedom 4, 27–8, 31, 44–9, 53–4, 58, 62–9, 81, 84, 117, 132 n.78, 137, 147, 149, 160, 170–82, 187, 190, 192–3 Fremstedal, Roe 101–3 Furtak, Rick 48–50, 180

Fabro, Cornelio 102 n.74, 108 n.100, 154 n.40 faith autopsy of 80 condition of 82, 124, 161, 164 n.91 eminent 23 n.42 eyes and ears of 80, 119, 192 as gift 16 n.14, 81 n.124, 131 n.74, 194 as ‘happy passion’ 6 n.14, 164 inwardness of 25 object of 3, 76–82, 108, 110, 119, 123, 137, 165 ordinary 23 n.42 paradox of 92 n.38 passion of 22–4, 39, 52–4, 78, 97, 164–5, 183 religious 13 n.2, 21, 102 seeking understanding 120 as task 11, 117 Farrow, Douglas 82 n.128 felix culpa 178 n.165 Fenger, Henning 1 n.1

Hannay, Alastair 1 n.1, 10 n.24, 89 n.21, 180 n.174 heart 53 n.190, 69–73, 76–7, 107, 117 n.1, 146, 167, 174 n.139, 181, 184–5 Hegel, Georg W. F. 19–20, 32 n.91, 44 n.155, 82, 87 n.19, 96, 119, 126 n.44, 180 n.174, 194–5 Hegelianism 19, 94, 126, 194 Hell 170 n.21 High Priest 59–60, 83, 142 Hinkson, Craig 144 n.154 historical knowledge 38, 82, 153 point of departure 78 scholarship 52 n.185, 119, 121 truth 18 Holmer, Paul 8 n.17 Hong, Howard and Edna 5 n.12, 15 n.6, 23 n.42, 35 n.105, 57 n.1, 79 n.110, 81 n.121, 94 n.46, 136, 185 n.201 Holy Spirit, life-giving Spirit 2 n.5, 16 n.14, 71,

Garff, Joakim 1 n.1, 10 n.24 Gnosticism 143 n.144 God concept/idea of 2, 25–6, 35–6, 96, 159, 198 existence of 3–4, 26, 104, 159–60, 189, 190 n.3 word of 118–19 God-man, God-human 9, 32, 34, 37, 52–3, 67, 69, 72, 74–5, 83, 98, 108 n.100, 130, 135, 165, 196, 198, 200 Gospels 79–80 n.114, 101, 114, 127 n.49 Gouwens, David J. 99 n.60, 103 n.80, 135, 197 n.28 grace 5–12, 14, 24, 27, 31–5, 38, 53–4, 64–74, 81, 97, 100–1, 115–18, 131–6, 139–41, 145–6, 148, 153–8, 161–2, 166–7, 170–4, 181–3, 186–7, 191–9 guilt 16, 31, 60, 66, 94, 99, 110–11, 114, 153, 155 n.47, 168 n.110, 178 n.165, 196 Gunton, Colin 90 n.27

214 Index 81 n.124, 102, 126 n.43, 128, 138, 141 n.134, 143, 148, 152, 166, 169, 174, 183, 193–97, 200 hope 3, 28–30, 36, 90, 92, 116, 118, 161, 166–7, 172, 174, 190 n.3, 194 n.13, 196–7 Howland, Jacob 33 hypocrisy 9, 118, 141–3 Hughes, Carl S. 152, 168 n.108 humanism 15 n.6, 199 Hume, David 172 idealism 6, 14–15 idol, idolatry 31 n.88, 72, 127, 182, 198 imagination 2–3, 17, 23 n.44, 38, 48, 73 n.80, 89–90, 100 n.63, 105–8, 116, 122 n.25, 135–6, 151, 156 n.51, 158–9, 167, 183, 190, 197–8 imitation 108, 130–6, 139, 144 incarnation, the 3, 19, 24, 32–4, 52, 67–8, 74, 80 n.114, 95–8, 107, 110, 123, 140, 143 n.144, 157, 183, 192 individual, the single 34 n.103, 50–1, 78, 81, 90, 92 n.38, 118, 125–9, 139, 148, 180, 186 individualism 125, 127, 157 n.58, 173, 186 infinite qualitative difference/distinction 28, 32–4, 67, 69 n.62, 166, 190–2 inward deepening 23–4, 75, 103, 107, 155 Jackson, Timothy 172–4 James, Apostle 122 n.30, 134 Jesus Christ, 2–4, 7–9, 16 n.14, 19, 24–7, 32–8, 50, 57–61, 66–84, 95–8, 101–2, 106–11, 116–23, 128–42, 146–8, 152–3, 157, 165–6, 171, 174, 181, 183, 186–7, 189–200 contemporaneity with 37 n.122, 58, 77–83, 97 following 51, 66, 108, 117, 130–8, 167 historical 3, 52 n.185, 57, 77, 82 resurrection of 37 n.122 as servant 57, 59, 61, 69 n.61, 70, 76–80, 83 n.133, 164–5, 192, 198 n.35 as the way 7, 63, 118, 129–30 see also High Priest; mediator; prototype; redeemer; saviour Khan, Abrahim H. 89 n.21 kinesis, 44 kinship 34, 36, 67, 85, 94–8, 116, 153, 163, 197, 200 Kirmmse, Bruce H. 126 n.42–3 Kosch, Michelle 175 n.147 Lane, Keith 109 n.103

Law, David 32, 89 n.21, 94 n.46, 134, 168 n.109, 198 n.35 leap 10, 43, 120, 148, 154, 158–60, 172, 179 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 79 n.111, 158 n.60 Liberum arbitrium 47, 48 n.172, 65, 172 life-view 43, 108 loftiness 61, 75–6, 82 Logos, 82, 150 Lord’s Supper 167–8, 200 see also Eucharist Lord’s Table 71, 169 love 3, 10, 21, 28, 58–60, 67, 75–6, 78 n.106, 116–20, 125, 128–9, 132, 146–7, 152, 163–4, 167, 172, 174, 184–6, 190–2, 196 for God 90–2, 111–12, 114, 117–18, 125, 128–9, 132, 137, 141–2, 146, 151–2, 171,179, 181, 184–7, 190–2, 199–200 of God 12, 34 n.103, 57–60, 64–6, 69–71, 73, 104 n.86, 111–14, 117–21, 129–33, 136, 141, 146–8, 151–2, 171, 183–7, 191–2, 197–200 of Holy Spirit 141 n.134, 194 n.13 for Jesus Christ 98, 136, 183–4 of Jesus Christ 117 n.1, 132–3, 152, 171, 183 letter 119–21 self- 116 n.138, 163, 191 work(s) of 117 n.1, 146 lowliness 61, 71, 82, 130, 138, 147, 192 Lowrie, Walter 94 n.46 Luther, Martin 31 n.88, 111, 131, 133, 144 n.154, 149 n.10, 196 Lutheranism 114, 133, 138, 141, 150 n.14, 190, 195 n.16 MacIntyre, Alasdair 47 Mackintosh, Hugh Ross 103 n.80 Mahn, Jason A. 78 n.106, 178 n.165 Martens, Paul 71 n.71, 119 n.5, 130 n.67, 194 n.12 Martenson, H. L. 19, 126, 134 martyrdom 166 mediation 32, 42, 87 God’s 32, 34, 78, 82, 96, 128, 183 Hegelian 32 self- 51 mediator 3, 16 n.14, 32 n.91, 97, 128, 130, 166, 191 n.6, 194 metanoia 16 n.15 Millay, Tom 71 n.71 miracle(s) 2, 76–9, 109, 147 n.3, 162, 198 moment(s) 10–12, 14–17, 43–4, 47–8, 54, 66, 73 n.78, 78, 80–1, 97, 103, 109 n.107, 127, 130, 153, 162 n.82, 163–8, 173, 180, 186–7

Index monasticism 91, 144–5 Mooney, Edward F. 85 n.2, 140–1 n.130 Mynster, J. P. 126, 134 mystery 5, 24–5, 46, 52, 98, 117, 140, 148, 162, 199 myth 52 n.185, 90, 197–98 naturalism 15 n.6, 199 Nestorianism 82 New Testament 16 n.15, 85 n.2, 102, 118–23, 129 n.66, 137, 141, 149, 171, 179, 196 Acts 2.37-43 11 n.33 7.36-50 152 9.1-19 11 n.33 16.11-15 11 n.33 16.27-40 11 n.33 Ephesians 1.9 140 Hebrews 2.14 96 4.15 59 James 8 146 n.165 John 18.37 130 Luke 7.38 152 10.37 123 12.52 134 Matthew 4.20 88 7.16 117 11.4-6 77 11.6 70-72, 77 11.28 114 22.37-30 184 Mark 1.18 88 Romans 8.16 102 nominalism 128, 148–50, 169 obedience 66 n.45, 85, 91–2, 106, 117 n.3, 124, 127, 129–30, 135, 160, 181 objective, objectivity 10 n.25, 18–26, 37–9, 47, 72, 74, 80 n.114, 83–4, 103, 112, 115, 119–20, 135, 147, 153, 180 n.175, 184 n.193, 186 reality 13, 22, 83, 106, 173, 194 offence 24, 36, 48 n.170, 54 n.193, 57–8, 67–77, 81, 109, 114, 123–4, 135–6, 164 Old Testament 119 n.13 Olesen, Michael 105 n.8 ordo salutis 113 Otte, Richard 53 n.190 paganism 17 n.18, 25, 34–5, 38, 69, 75, 106–7, 111, 126, 148, 161 n.80, 166, 189 n.2, 197

215

paradox 24–5, 32 n.91, 38–41, 74, 80 n.114, 90, 92 n.38, 96, 98, 100 n.63, 105–9, 111 n.116, 124, 135, 154–7, 161 n.77, 163–7 absolute 40, 52, 67, 72, 83, 96 n.54, 98, 107–9 religiousness 90, 94, 103, 106–7 passion, passionate 4, 6, 19–25, 30, 39–54, 63, 69–70, 73, 75–8, 87–93, 95, 97, 100, 103–4, 107, 116 n.138, 120, 124, 129 n.64, 135–7, 141, 143, 145–6, 150–1, 157–65, 171–7, 180–3, 186, 190–2 see also faith, as ‘happy passion’; faith, passion of pathos 53 n.190, 91, 98, 100 n.65, 102 n.75, 107, 153–6, 158, 167 Pattison, George 46 n.162, 95 Penelhum, Terence 175 n.147 Philosophy 32 n.91, 136, 156 n.51, 191 n.4 Piety, Marilyn G. 79 n.110 Pilate, Pontius 36–7 Plantinga, Alvin 199 Plato 15 n.6, 140 n.130 Plekon, Michael 126 n.42 pneumatology 83 n.136, 193–7 Podmore, Simon 33 n.98, 34 n.100 poet, poetic 3, 5, 58, 90, 123, 168 n.110 Pojman, Louis 175–7 Polk, Timothy H. 79 n.114 Pons, Jolita 77 n.99 prayer 2 n.5, 67, 114, 118–19, 124, 133, 137, 141, 145, 160–1, 169, 183, 200 predestination 156 n.50 preparing to become a Christian 72, 108, 160–2 Price, Daniel J. 157 n.58 process of becoming 42–3, 48–51, 172, 176 of becoming a Christian 2–5, 9–12, 23–4, 37, 53, 64 n.35, 83, 95, 100, 102, 110, 117–18, 121–2, 127–8, 146–7, 150–3, 160–3, 171, 173, 190–92, 197–8 prodigal son 74, 113 prototype 130–2, 139–40 pseudonymity 5–9, 14, 27 Rae, Murray A. 10 n.25, 16 n.15, 52 n.185, 80 n.114, 117 n.3, 119, 159, 163 n.86, 198 n.36 Rasmussen, Joel 80 n.114, 114 n.128, 121 rationalism, rationalist 6–7, 189, 192 realism 95–8, 106, 110 reality 3–5, 22, 41, 77, 112, 159, 172–3, 181–3 of God 4, 8, 27, 34 n.102, 68, 80–1, 83–6, 98, 105–9, 112, 115–16, 146, 162, 167, 183, 187, 190, 194, 197–9

216 Index of Jesus Christ 13, 24, 33, 68, 96, 98, 135, 166 subjective 90 n.27 reason 7, 19, 21, 24–5, 41, 48, 53 n.190, 80, 106, 108, 112 n.121, 120, 123–4, 126 n.44, 135–6, 150, 159, 167, 176, 182, 187, 190, 192, 196 natural 3, 57, 67, 176 worldly 24 rebirth, reborn 17, 27, 33, 102, 132 reciprocity 58, 63–7, 84, 131, 137, 146, 155, 163, 191–3 recollection 14–16, 96, 112, 140 n.130, 157 reconciler 16 reconciliation 3, 7, 17, 19, 24, 27, 31–4, 38, 52, 57, 66–84, 96, 100 n.63, 104–5, 109, 115, 146, 156 n.50, 168, 183–7, 196–9 redeemer 59, 111, 115, 136, 139–41, 169 redemption 115, 134, 136, 160 redoubling 62–3 religiousness A 99–107, 153–6, 161, 167 B 19 n.27, 103–6 immanent 86, 94–5, 98–110 paradoxical 94, 103, 106 repelling 149, 151 repentance 16–17, 30 n.77, 31, 60, 86, 94, 112–15, 120, 131 resignation 64 n.31, 86–8, 92–3, 100 n.65, 130, 153 resolution 20, 46, 49, 175 respect 63, 69, 90, 99, 108, 111, 132, 139, 148, 156 n.51, 161, 195 absolute 86, 88, 92 response to God 4, 26, 83, 90, 95, 102, 120, 148, 168 to Jesus Christ 72, 127, 131, 135, 138, 140 responsibility 39, 44–51, 109, 112, 114, 125–7, 150, 172–3, 176–82 restlessness 9–10, 25, 41, 118, 142, 160 retrospective 1 n.1, 11, 17, 158 revelation 7, 13, 23, 25–7, 35–6, 38 n.130, 41, 50, 57, 59, 67, 69, 74, 76, 78, 83, 95–7, 101–2, 107–11, 118, 123 n.33, 128–30, 136, 138, 153, 156–7, 165, 185, 192, 196–7 Roberts, David 181 n.177 Roberts, Kyle 123 n.33, 165 Roberts, Robert C. 39 n.131, 49 n.173 romantic 105 Salvation 66, 68, 117 n.3, 128, 134, 139, 162 n.82, 196

Saviour 16, 68, 71, 152, 169 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 157 n.58 science, scientific 8 n.18, 15 n.6, 19, 20 n.29, 41–2, 47, 119, 179 Scholarship 1, 6, 8 n.18, 119–23, 144 n.150, 148 Scripture 36–8, 53 n.189, 57, 75, 80 n.114, 95–6, 108, 118–29, 137–8, 183 n.186, 192–7, 200 self 2–31, 43, 49, 62–3, 66, 146, 151–2, 165, 176–7, 180 n.175 before God 31, 128, 145 before the power that established it 28 denial 2, 66, 117, 151 determination 45, 145, 171, 174 knowledge 3 n.8, 41 n.143, 104 n.86 Shakespeare, Steven 23 n.41 silence 66 n.45, 90, 113, 151–2 Simpson, Christopher Ben 2 n.6 sin 4, 8–9, 13, 16, 26–36, 38, 54, 57 n.1, 59–62, 66–75, 85–6, 100 n.63, 102, 110–15, 129, 135–6, 144–5, 152–3, 156–7, 167, 172, 177–9, 182, 185 n.201, 190, 192, 198 consciousness of 26–7, 32, 36, 86, 110–15, 118, 178 n.165 sobriety and drunkenness 43, 133, 195 Socrates 14–15, 19 Socratic 6–7, 14–16, 79–80, 130, 154 midwife 14–15, 130 Son of God 68, 83, 96 n.54 soul 58, 91, 114, 151 n.20, 174 n.139, 181, 193 n.10, 196 speculation 7, 19, 21–6, 52, 65 n.37, 82, 107–8, 119, 124, 127, 162, 189 spirit, spiritual 2, 7, 11, 13, 19–20, 28–30, 36, 46–50, 63–4, 68–9, 75, 97, 117, 128–9, 142–3, 151, 157, 160, 165, 172, 176–7, 180–2 relationship with God 7, 75, 89 n.21, 101, 107, 143 n.144 trial 49 n.172, 92, 142–5, 169 Sponheim, Paul R. 96 n.53 Strauss, D. F. 52, n.185 subjective, subjectivity 2, 7, 10, 13, 18–26, 28, 39 n.131, 43–51, 71, 74, 82–3, 90–9, 94–5, 100–1, 106, 112, 115, 121, 123, 128, 146, 148, 150, 153–7, 162–5, 175–6, 186, 194, 198–9 sub specie aeterni/aeternitatis 20–1, 139 suffering 59–61, 89 n.21, 93–4, 100 n.65, 105, 118, 133 n.84, 135, 137, 139, 143, 153–6, 184 Swenson, David 94 n.46

Index Tauler, Johann, 132 teacher 14–16, 52, 60, 77–9, 82 n.126, 96, 130, 151, 157, 159, 164 n.91 teaching 3–4, 23–6, 37, 67, 77–82, 95, 149, 157, 185, 197 telos, telé 86–9, 139, 171 absolute 86–95, 104 n.83, 129, 171 relative 86–7 temptation 22, 78 n.107, 126 n.42, 142–5, 159, 165, 167, 181–2, 189 Tenneman, Wilhelm 44 n.155 Theissen, Gerd 72 theology 16 n.14, 19–20, 66 n.46, 94, 166, 190, 195 n.16, 199 Thiselton, Anthony C. 70 n.67 Tietjen, Mark 1 n.1 Torrance, Alan 147 n.4, 199 n.39 Torrance, Andrew 33 n.96, 95 n.50, 113 n.125 transformation 3–4, 11, 18, 37, 48 n.170, 51–2, 54, 60 n.18, 62–4, 69, 73–4, 78, 81, 88, 95, 97, 101–3, 106–12, 116–17, 124, 127, 132, 137, 139–40, 148, 151–8, 165, 174, 179, 181–7, 191–93 Trinity 16 n.14, 195 n.15 trust 5, 21, 48 n.171, 52, 64, 83, 108 n.103, 118, 137, 143–4, 158–62, 166–7, 176–8, 181, 193, 196–7, 199 n.40 truth, the 3, 6–7, 10 n.25, 13–26, 29, 32–9, 51–4, 60, 63–4, 67–9, 72–84, 88–102, 105–11, 116, 124, 128–30, 135–8, 143–4, 153–4, 157–9, 164–6, 171–2, 175, 182–3, 189–93, 196–9 Turnbull, Jamie 34 n.102, 53 n.190 unbelief 21, 31 understanding, the 4, 18, 40–2, 52, 61, 67–8, 74, 78, 90, 96–7, 102–3, 106–9, 124, 136, 159, 164–5, 176, 193

217

against 41 n.143, 96, 107–8, 164, 166, 176 self– 2, 41 n.140, 100, 117, 164–5 unfreedom 16, 27 universalism (apokatastasis) 170 n.21 untruth 15–17, 23 n.44, 33–5, 38, 50, 69, 75, 100 n.63, 111, 192 upbuilding 6, 104–5, 141, 155, 160, 162, 166, 174 volitionalism 49, 175 voluntary 49, 66 n.45, 137–8, 144, 146, 172, 181, 192, 195 Walsh, Sylvia 1 n.1, 87 n.17, 94 n.47, 169 n.120, 186 n.207, 196 n.15 Welz, Claudia 178 n.165 Wendte, Martin 32 n.91 Westphal, Merold 33–4, 88 n.19, 148 n.7, 150 will, the 4, 36, 45, 53, 66 n.45, 135, 145, 171, 175, 177–83, 187 Williams, Rowan 29 n.72, 137 Wisdo, David 175 n.147 wisdom 5, 24, 58, 199 n.40 witness 4, 9, 77, 90 n.27, 101–2, 124, 126 n.42, 135, 144, 168–9, 174 n.138, 190, 194 woman who was a sinner, the 152, 155 wonder 25, 80, 110, 167, 170 n.121 world-historical 3, 19, 126, 148 n.5, 156 n.51 worldview 18, 24, 83, 89 n.21, 151, 189 worship 25, 64 n.31, 91, 118, 140, 143, 146, 155 Yerkes, James 19 n.25 Ziegler, Philip 198 n.34