Volume 10, Tome I: Kierkegaard's Influence on Theology: German Protestant Theology (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources) [1 ed.] 9781409444787, 9781409444794, 9781409444800, 1409444783

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of Contributors
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Karl Barth: The Dialectic of Attraction and Repulsion
Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Standing "in the Tradition of Paul, Luther, Kierkegaard, in the Tradition of Genuine Christian Thinking"
Emil Brunner: Polemically Promoting Kierkegaard's Christian Philosophy of Encounter
Rudolf Bultmann: Faith, Love, and Self-Understanding
Gerhard Ebeling: Appreciation and Critical Appropriation of Kierkegaard
Emanuel Hirsch: A German Dialogue with "Saint Soren"
Jürgen Moltmann: Taking a Moment for Trinitarian Eschatology
Franz Overbeck: Kierkegaard and the Decay of Christianity
Wolfhart Pannenberg: Kierkegaard's Anthropology Tantalizing Public Theology's Reasoning Hope
Christoph Schrempf: The "Swabian Socrates" as Translator of Kierkegaard
Helmut Thielicke: Kierkegaard's Subjectivity for a Theology of Being
Paul Tillich: An Ambivalent Appropriation
Ernst Troeltsch: Kierkegaard, Compromise, and Dialectical Theology
Index of Persons
Index of Subjects

Citation preview

Kierkegaard’s Influence on Theology Tome I: German Protestant Theology

Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources Volume 10, Tome I

Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources is a publication of the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre

General Editor Jon Stewart Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre, University of Copenhagen, Denmark Editorial Board FINN GREDAL JENSEN Katalin Nun peter Šajda Advisory Board Lee c. barrett maría j. binetti IstvÁn CzakÓ Heiko Schulz curtis l. thompson

Kierkegaard’s Influence on Theology

Tome I: German Protestant Theology

Edited by JOn Stewart

First published 2012 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright © 2012 Jon Stewart and the contributors Jon Stewart has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editor of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Kierkegaard’s influence on theology. Tome I, German Protestant theology. – (Kierkegaard research ; v. 10) 1. Kierkegaard, Søren, 1813–1855 – Influence. 2. Theology, Doctrinal – Germany. 3. Protestant churches – Germany – Doctrines. I. Series II. Stewart, Jon (Jon Bartley) 198.9-dc23 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kierkegaard’s influence on theology / [edited by] Jon Stewart. p. cm. — (Kierkegaard research v. 10) Includes indexes. ISBN 978-1-4094-4478-7 (tome 1 : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4094-4479-4 (tome 2 : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-1-4094-4480-0 (tome 3 : alk. paper) 1. Kierkegaard, Søren, 1813–1855—Influence. 2. Theology. I. Stewart, Jon (Jon Bartley) BX4827.K5K55 2011 198’.9—dc23

ISBN 9781409444787 (hbk) Cover design by Katalin Nun

2011041730

Contents List of Contributors   Preface   Acknowledgements   List of Abbreviations   Karl Barth:   The Dialectic of Attraction and Repulsion Lee C. Barrett

vii ix xv xvii

1

Dietrich Bonhoeffer:   Standing “in the Tradition of Paul, Luther, Kierkegaard, in the Tradition of Genuine Christian Thinking”  Christiane Tietz

43

Emil Brunner:   Polemically Promoting Kierkegaard’s Christian Philosophy of Encounter Curtis L. Thompson

65

Rudolf Bultmann:   Faith, Love, and Self-Understanding Heiko Schulz

105

Gerhard Ebeling:   Appreciation and Critical Appropriation of Kierkegaard Derek R. Nelson

145

Emanuel Hirsch:   A German Dialogue with “Saint Søren” Matthias Wilke

155

Jürgen Moltmann:   Taking a Moment for Trinitarian Eschatology Curtis L. Thompson

185

Franz Overbeck:   Kierkegaard and the Decay of Christianity David R. Law

223

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Kierkegaard’s Influence on Theology

Wolfhart Pannenberg:   Kierkegaard’s Anthropology Tantalizing Public Theology’s Reasoning Hope Curtis L. Thompson

241

Christoph Schrempf:   The “Swabian Socrates” as Translator of Kierkegaard Gerhard Schreiber

275

Helmut Thielicke:   Kierkegaard’s Subjectivity for a Theology of Being Kyle A. Roberts

321

Paul Tillich:   An Ambivalent Appropriation Lee C. Barrett

335

Ernst Troeltsch:   Kierkegaard, Compromise, and Dialectical Theology Mark Chapman

377

Index of Persons Index of Subjects

393 401

List of Contributors Lee C. Barrett, Lancaster Theological Seminary, 555 W. James St., Lancaster, PA 17603, USA. Mark Chapman, Ripon College Cuddesdon, Oxford OX44 9EX, UK. David R. Law, Department of Religions and Theology, School of Arts, Histories and Cultures, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK. Derek R. Nelson, Thiel College, 75 College Avenue, Greenville, PA 16125, USA. Kyle A. Roberts, Bethel Seminary, 3949 Bethel Drive, St. Paul, MN 55112, USA. Gerhard Schreiber, Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität, Fachbereich Ev. Theologie, Systematische Theologie, Grüneburgplatz 1, D-60323 Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Heiko Schulz, Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität, Fachbereich Ev. Theologie, Systematische Theologie, Grüneburgplatz 1, D-60323 Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Curtis L. Thompson, Thiel College, 75 College Avenue, Greenville, PA 16125– 2181, USA. Christiane Tietz, Evangelisch-theologische Fakultät, Saarstraße 21, D-55099 Mainz, Germany. Matthias Wilke, Platz der Göttinger Sieben 2, D-37073 Göttingen, Germany.

Preface Kierkegaard has always enjoyed a rich reception in the fields of theology and religious studies. This reception might seem to many to be obvious given the fact that he is one of the most important Christian writers of the nineteenth century. However, upon closer examination, the matter is not so obvious as it may seem since Kierkegaard was by no means a straightforward theologian in any traditional sense. He had no enduring interest in some of the main fields of theology such as church history or biblical studies, and he is strikingly silent on many key Christian dogmas. Moreover, he harbored a degree of animosity towards the university theologians and churchmen of his own day. Despite this, he has been a source of inspiration for numerous religious writers from different denominations and traditions. The first tome of the present volume is dedicated to the reception of Kierkegaard among German Protestant theologians and religious thinkers. The writings of some of these figures also turned out to be instrumental for Kierkegaard’s major breakthrough internationally shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. Prior to that there had been a number of German translations, mostly from the pen of Albert Bärthold, plus a few articles and dissertations. At roughly the same period a certain interest in Kierkegaard’s thought was awakened among conservative theologians like Johann Tobias Beck (1804–78), an interest which soon afterwards expanded to liberal thinkers like Albrecht Ritschl (1822–89), Wilhelm Herrmann (1846–1922) and, later, Karl Holl (1866–1926). Due to a number of reasons things changed dramatically after the turn of the century. First and foremost, the pastor, liberal theologian, and later free-thinker Christoph Schrempf (1860–1944) began to publish in 1909 what was to become the first and for many years most widely read edition of Kierkegaard’s collected works in German. Secondly, the outbreak of World War I overshadowed the cultural optimism of Protestantism at the time and radically called into question basic liberal convictions among Catholic and Protestant theologians alike. Leading figures of what, after the end of the war, became the movement of “dialectical theology” included, among others, Karl Barth (1886–1968), Emil Brunner (1889–1966), Paul Tillich (1886–1965), and Rudolf Bultmann (1884– 1976). Apart from their general impact on the development of Protestant theology over the next couple of decades, these thinkers also spawned a steadily growing awareness of, and interest in, Kierkegaard’s thought among generations of German theology students. Emanuel Hirsch (1888–1972) is another name to be mentioned in this context. He came from a somewhat different theological background and, in contrast to the aforementioned authors, was infected by anti-Semitism and Nazism; nevertheless, he, too, was greatly influenced by Kierkegaard and proved instrumental in disseminating the latter’s thought, not least of all by producing the first complete German edition of Kierkegaard’s published works (as well as parts of the Nachlass). Both Barth and Hirsch (and also Tillich and Bultmann, though to a lesser degree)

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established unique ways, in fact genuine schools or traditions, of reading and appropriating Kierkegaard—schools which to a certain degree determined the direction and course of Kierkegaard studies, the subterranean consequences of which can still be witnessed today. Kierkegaard was also important in the world of Anglophone theology, albeit at a somewhat later period from that of German theology. The second tome is dedicated to tracing his influence in Anglophone and Scandinavian Protestant religious thought. Kierkegaard has been a provocative force in the English-speaking world since the early twentieth century, inspiring almost contradictory receptions. In Britain, before World War I the few literati who were even cursorily familiar with his work tended to assimilate Kierkegaard to the heroic individualism of Ibsen and Nietzsche. In the United States knowledge of Kierkegaard was introduced by Scandinavian immigrants who brought with them a picture of Kierkegaard as being much more sympathetic to traditional Christianity. David F. Swenson (1876–1940), a philosophy professor at the University of Minnesota who began lecturing on Kierkegaard in 1914, established a trajectory of interpreting Kierkegaard as a Christian apologist. The first stirrings of existentialism in the English-speaking world further fuelled both of these ways of reading Kierkegaard. By the 1930s Kierkegaard’s works had attracted the attention of Charles Williams at Oxford University Press, who, through a collaboration with Princeton University Press, commissioned Walter Lowrie (1868–1959) to prepare English translations of Kierkegaard’s major writings. These translations spawned an even more variegated array of appropriations. The interpretation of Kierkegaard in Britain and America during the early and mid-twentieth century generally reflected the sensibilities of the particular theological interpreter. The Anglican theologians who read Kierkegaard during the 1930s, rooted in the tradition of the via media, generally found him to be too one-sided in his critique of reason and culture. Theologians hailing from the Reformed tradition often saw Kierkegaard as an insightful harbinger of neo-orthodoxy. Accordingly, Hugh Ross Mackintosh (1870–1936) tried to situate Kierkegaard in the spectrum defined by the controversy between Emil Brunner and Karl Barth concerning the existence of a “contact point” in human nature. Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) found in Kierkegaard a precursor to his own critique of modernity’s optimism and his own rediscovery of the limitations of human nature caused by sin and finitude. More dramatically, John Macquarrie (1919–2007) would amalgamate Kierkegaard’s fragmentary writings with a variety of loosely neo-orthodox or existential theologies and incorporate his reflections into a comprehensive system. The response of evangelicals to Kierkegaard was also strong and exceedingly diverse. The Reformed scholastic Francis Schaeffer (1912–84) caricatured Kierkegaard as a virulent irrationalist who undermined the objectivity of faith. On the other hand, John Edward Carnell (1919–67) cautiously applauded Kierkegaard’s focus on subjective appropriation but continued to critique his lack of interest in the rational justification of religious belief. More recently, Stanley Grenz (1950–2005) who likewise appreciated Kierkegaard’s theme of personal appropriation, seeing it as an antidote to fundamentalism, nonetheless critiqued Kierkegaard’s alleged neglect of the relationality of human nature.

Preface

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Other Anglophone theologians have extended the contrasting trajectories of regarding Kierkegaard as a theological radical or as a faithful expositor of the Christian tradition. On the one hand, Harvey Cox (b. 1929) has construed Kierkegaard as an advocate of the absurdity of God and of the infinite restlessness of faith. Dozens of younger British, American, and Canadian Kierkegaard scholars in a parallel fashion read Kierkegaard through the lenses of postmodern theory and the indeterminacy of meaning. On the other hand, John Alexander Mackay (1889–1983) interpreted Kierkegaard as a genuine witness to Christian truth and a prophet of the historic theme that the Christian faith is a call to loving action in the world. In the late twentieth century the ethicist Gene Outka (b. 1937) described Kierkegaard as a person of faith who sincerely wrestled with the radically egalitarian and nonpreferential nature of the love commandment. In general, the Anglophone world is no closer to a consensus view of Kierkegaard now than it was in the early twentieth century. The second part of Tome II is dedicated to the Kierkegaard reception in Scandinavian theology. This part features an article on one of the earliest defenders of Kierkegaard, the Norwegian thinker Gisle Christian Johnson (1822–93), who, although little known internationally, was the most influential theologian in Norway in the second half of the nineteenth century. Kierkegaard reception in Sweden is represented by the theologian Anders Nygren (1890–1978), who was important in shaping the interpretation of Kierkegaard’s conception of love, although the degree of his own dependence on Kierkegaard remains difficult to determine. Tome III is an important addendum to the first two tomes, exploring the reception of Kierkegaard’s thought in the Catholic and Jewish theological traditions. Although this reception is generally less known than the Protestant one, the articles collected in this tome provide abundant evidence that Kierkegaard was a vital source of inspiration for some of the central figures of modern Catholicism and Judaism. Although the first Catholic reactions to Kierkegaard appeared shortly after his death, it is especially in the early decades of the twentieth century that Kierkegaard’s thought became an important topic in European Catholic circles. Following the predominantly literary and philosophical reception in Rudolf Kassner (1873– 1959) and Theodor Haecker (1879–1945), Catholic theologians began to discover Kierkegaard mainly in the inter-war period. However, before a larger-scale Kierkegaard debate originated in the Weimar Republic, the Austrian theologian Friedrich von Hügel (1852–1925) drew attention to Kierkegaard in his works published in Great Britain. Upon Theodor Haecker’s conversion to Catholicism in 1921, Kierkegaard’s intellectual and spiritual legacy became widely discussed in the Catholic Hochland Circle, whose members included among others Romano Guardini (1885–1968), Alois Dempf (1891–1982), and Peter Wust (1884–1940). Guardini’s long-term confrontation with Kierkegaard contributed significantly to the popularity of the Danish thinker in the Catholic milieu, and his works inspired some of the later reactions to Kierkegaard, such as that of Eugen Biser (b. 1918). Another key figure in the Catholic Kierkegaard reception of the inter-war years is the Jesuit thinker Erich Przywara (1889–1973), who together with Guardini played a crucial role in promoting Kierkegaard in Catholic periodicals. During and especially after World War II Kierkegaard’s ideas found an echo in the works of several trend-

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setting Catholic theologians of the day. Perhaps the most famous of these are Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–88) and Henri de Lubac (1896–1991) (both cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church), as well as the widely read American spiritual author Thomas Merton (1915–68). Kierkegaard inspired Catholic theologians in a variety of ways. His writings were often referenced when Catholic thinkers tackled the hot issues of the day, such as the rise of modern atheism, the progress of secularization, or even the challenge of the Modernist revival within the Catholic Church. It was only natural that they paid close attention to Kierkegaard’s theory of selfhood, his doctrine of love, the relation of religion to aesthetics and ethics, or the issue of authentic Christian witness in modern largely secular society. Frequently examined Kierkegaardian concepts include those of anxiety, despair, contemporaneity, the absolute paradox, the infinite qualitative difference, and the single individual. Kierkegaard also represented an important source of inspiration for the Catholic critique of certain aspects of modernity, idealism, historicism and rationalism. Alongside the positive reception of Kierkegaard’s theological heritage, the Catholic thinkers were critical of a number of features of Kierkegaard’s thought and proposed their own correctives to what they saw as excessive subjectivism, purism or transcendentalism. The second part of Tome III focuses on the reception of Kierkegaard’s thought in the Jewish theological tradition, introducing the reader to authors who significantly shaped Jewish religious thought both in the United States and in Israel. These theologians and spiritual writers come from and represent a variety of religious and political backgrounds: the spiritual world of Hasidism, Modern Orthodox Judaism of Mithnaggedic origin, and Modern Religious Zionism. The examination of Kierkegaard reception in Jewish theology is undoubtedly an important contribution to the completion of the broader picture of Kierkegaard reception in Jewish thought, whose philosophical dimension is generally better known (in the works of, for example, Martin Buber (1878–1965), Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929), or Emmanuel Levinas (1906–95)). Traditionally, one of the theological themes attractive for Jewish thinkers is Kierkegaard’s exposition of the biblical story of the akedah (the “binding” of Isaac by Abraham) in Fear and Trembling. Reflection of this theologically rich motif figures prominently in the examined authors. However, Kierkegaard provided inspiration to Jewish theologians in a number of other ways, too. They availed themselves of his ideas when analyzing the interplay of faith and action, exploring the dynamic of the relation to the Absolute or defining the characteristics of the homo religiosus. For these purposes they critically examined and to some extent appropriated Kierkegaard’s concepts of the single individual, the leap, or repetition. Kierkegaard’s thought was referenced also in some of the important polemics of the day, for instance in Rabbi Soloveitchik’s (1903–93) confrontation with NeoKantianism. In fact, Kierkegaard even proved to be a source of inspiration for the considerations on the nature of “the halakhic personality.” The present volume attempts to cover the broad spectrum of the theological reception of Kierkegaard’s thought. In pursuit of this goal it treats many familiar figures but also explores a number of thinkers who are less well known to the general reader. Although Kierkegaard was a Protestant thinker living in a Protestant society,

Preface

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his works nonetheless had a broad influence on religious thinkers and writers with very different interests and commitments. This volume hopes to make a small contribution to understanding this complex dimension of Kierkegaard’s reception.

Acknowledgements This volume represents the collective efforts of a group of selfless individuals, whom I would like to acknowledge here. I would first like to thank the following people for their help in locating and photocopying rare texts that the authors needed to complete their articles: Joseph Ballan, Lee C. Barrett, Elisabetta Basso, István Czakó, Markus Kleinert, Peter Šajda, Jeanette Schindler-Wirth, Heiko Schulz, Françoise Surdez, Curtis Thompson, Margherita Tonon, and Karl Verstrynge. The outstanding bibliographies were made primarily by Peter Šajda, who provided the authors with a solid basis upon which to build. Katalin Nun has been an invaluable help in editing and formatting the files received from the authors. I would like to thank Lee C. Barrett, Heiko Schulz, and Peter Šajda for their generous help with the Preface of this volume. As usual, I am extremely grateful to Finn Gredal Jensen and Philip Hillyer for their meticulous proof-reading and to Nicholas Wain for his patient typesetting. Finally, I would like to express my unqualified gratitude to the individual authors whose articles appear in this volume. Their efforts and sacrifices to make this volume as useful and informative as possible are much appreciated.

List of Abbreviations Danish Abbreviations B&A

Breve og Aktstykker vedrørende Søren Kierkegaard, vols. 1–2, ed. by Niels Thulstrup, Copenhagen: Munksgaard 1953–54.

Bl.art. S. Kierkegaard’s Bladartikler, med Bilag samlede efter Forfatterens Død, udgivne som Supplement til hans øvrige Skrifter, ed. by Rasmus Nielsen, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 1857. EP

Af Søren Kierkegaards Efterladte Papirer, vols. 1–9, ed. by H.P. Barfod and Hermann Gottsched, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 1869–81.

Pap.

Søren Kierkegaards Papirer, vols. I to XI–3, ed. by Peter Andreas Heiberg, Victor Kuhr and Einer Torsting, Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag, 1909–48; second, expanded ed., vols. I to XI–3, by Niels Thulstrup, vols. XII to XIII supplementary volumes, ed. by Niels Thulstrup, vols. XIV to XVI index by Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1968–78.

SKS

Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter, vols. 1–28, vols. K1–K28, ed. by Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Joakim Garff, Jette Knudsen, Johnny Kondrup, Alastair McKinnon and Finn Hauberg Mortensen, Copenhagen: Gads Forlag 1997ff.

SV1

Samlede Værker, ed. by A.B. Drachmann, Johan Ludvig Heiberg and H.O. Lange, vols. I–XIV, Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandels Forlag 1901– 06. English Abbreviations

AN

Armed Neutrality, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1998.

AR

On Authority and Revelation, The Book on Adler, trans. by Walter Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1955.

ASKB The Auctioneer’s Sales Record of the Library of Søren Kierkegaard, ed. by H.P. Rohde, Copenhagen: The Royal Library 1967.

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BA

The Book on Adler, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1998.

C

The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1997.

CA

The Concept of Anxiety, trans. by Reidar Thomte in collaboration with Albert B. Anderson, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1980.

CD

Christian Discourses, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1997.

CI

The Concept of Irony, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1989.

CIC

The Concept of Irony, trans. with an Introduction and Notes by Lee M. Capel, London: Collins 1966.

COR

The Corsair Affair; Articles Related to the Writings, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1982.

CUP1 Concluding Unscientific Postscript, vol. 1, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1982. CUP2 Concluding Unscientific Postscript, vol. 2, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1982. CUPH Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. by Alastair Hannay, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press 2009. EO1

Either/Or, Part I, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1987.

EO2

Either/Or, Part II, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1987.

EOP

Either/Or, trans. by Alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books 1992.

EPW Early Polemical Writings, among others: From the Papers of One Still Living; Articles from Student Days; The Battle Between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars, trans. by Julia Watkin, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1990. EUD Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1990.

List of Abbreviations

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FSE

For Self-Examination, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1990.

FT

Fear and Trembling, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1983.

FTP

Fear and Trembling, trans. by Alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books 1985.

JC

Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1985.

JFY

Judge for Yourself!, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1990.

JP

Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, vols. 1–6, ed. and trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, assisted by Gregor Malantschuk (vol. 7, Index and Composite Collation), Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press 1967–78.

KAC

Kierkegaard’s Attack upon “Christendom,” 1854–1855, trans. by Walter Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1944.

KJN

Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, vols. 1–11, ed. by Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Vanessa Rumble, and K. Brian Söderquist, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press 2007ff.

LD

Letters and Documents, trans. by Henrik Rosenmeier, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1978.

LR

A Literary Review, trans. by Alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books 2001.

M

The Moment and Late Writings, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1998.

P

Prefaces / Writing Sampler, trans. by Todd W. Nichol, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1997.

PC

Practice in Christianity, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1991.

PF

Philosophical Fragments, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1985.

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PJ

Papers and Journals: A Selection, trans. by Alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books 1996.

PLR

Prefaces: Light Reading for Certain Classes as the Occasion May Require, trans. by William McDonald, Tallahassee: Florida State University Press 1989.

PLS

Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. by David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1941.

PV

The Point of View including On My Work as an Author, The Point of View for My Work as an Author, and Armed Neutrality, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1998.

PVL

The Point of View for My Work as an Author including On My Work as an Author, trans. by Walter Lowrie, New York and London: Oxford University Press 1939.

R

Repetition, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1983.

SBL

Notes of Schelling’s Berlin Lectures, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1989.

SLW

Stages on Life’s Way, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1988.

SUD

The Sickness unto Death, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1980.

SUDP The Sickness unto Death, trans. by Alastair Hannay, London and New York: Penguin Books 1989. TA

Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age. A Literary Review, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1978.

TD

Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1993.

UD

Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1993.

WA

Without Authority including The Lily in the Field and the Bird of the Air, Two Ethical-Religious Essays, Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays, An Upbuilding Discourse, Two Discourses at the Communion on

List of Abbreviations

xxi

Fridays, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1997. WL

Works of Love, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1995.

WS

Writing Sampler, trans. by Todd W. Nichol, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1997.

Karl Barth: The Dialectic of Attraction and Repulsion Lee C. Barrett

The work of Karl Barth, generally acknowledged to be one of the most significant theologians of the twentieth century, is sufficiently complex to have inspired a plethora of differing interpretations. One of the more contentious issues in this interpretive debate is the exact nature of Barth’s appropriation of the writings of Søren Kierkegaard. Any interpreter’s assessment of Barth’s use of Kierkegaard has usually reflected that particular interpreter’s attitude toward Barth’s theology as a whole. For example, when liberal theologians have dismissed Barth as a reactionary Biblicist or a purveyor of a woefully traditionalist doctrinalism, Kierkegaard has often been cited as one of the baneful influences that inspired his conservatism. When other expositors have credited Barth with being the premier exemplar of neo-orthodoxy, defined as the suspicion of autonomous reason and human moral capacities, Kierkegaard has been applauded as one of the sources of Barth’s utter reliance upon revelation and grace. When a “postmodern” Barth has been valorized for practicing strategies of ironic indirection, Kierkegaard has been hailed as his rhetorical precursor. Other scholars, convinced of the uniqueness of Barth’s theological project, have emphasized the dissimilarities between Barth and Kierkegaard, construing Barth as an expositor of the objective patterns in the Gospel narratives, and Kierkegaard as an analyst of human subjectivity. This article will explore the factors in Barth’s use of Kierkegaard that make these divergent interpretations possible, and will attempt to evaluate the plausibility of each account of Barth’s complex relation to his Danish predecessor. I. The Life and Works of Karl Barth Karl Barth (1886–1968), the son of a Swiss Reformed pastor, was shaped by Reformed piety and the scholarly ethos of his family. Barth studied theology at Berlin, Tübingen, and Marburg, where his mentors included Wilhelm Herrmann (1846–1922) and Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930). These influential exponents of the “liberal” theology that was indebted to the thought of Albrecht Ritschl (1822–89) regarded religion as the experiential foundation of moral and spiritual action and valuation. In their writings Jesus, as reconstructed by historical-critical research, functioned as the epitome of the possibilities of the human spirit and as a paradigm of the proper God–human relationship. Hermann taught that only spiritual

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interaction with the personality of Jesus can enable individuals to make proper value judgments. The young Barth agreed with his mentors’ neo-Kantian turn to practical reason and their critique of the viability and theological significance of metaphysics. Pure theoretic reason cannot comprehend the nature of the infinite God. Scientific rationality certainly cannot provide the basis for an all-encompassing understanding of human existence or a foundation for the religious life. By 1911 Barth was serving as a pastor in Safenwil, a small village in Switzerland. There he became sensitive to the exploitation of his working-class congregants and was attracted to Christian Socialism. However, he soon began to be disenchanted with all undialectical identifications of Christianity with any particular cultural ethos or political program, although he continued to emphasize the gospel’s revolutionary implications for all aspects of human life. He grew suspicious of his liberal mentors’ amalgamation of Christianity with humanity’s spiritual quest for the divine. In these syntheses Barth feared that the Christian faith had been distorted into an ideology to legitimate bourgeois culture and the individual’s subjective aspirations. From the pastor-theologian Hermann Kutter (1863–1931) of Zurich Barth came to appreciate the difference between Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom of God and “religion,” a difference that had been explored by the biblical scholar Johann Tobias Beck (1804– 78). Barth was also influenced by Franz Overbeck (1837–1905) who, although not a traditional Christian, taught that the new world envisioned by the original Christian proclamation of the resurrected Christ was discontinuous with the old sinful world of human culture. For Overbeck this eschatological expectation involved a hope for a new world that had nothing to do with the unfolding of the putative spiritual dynamics implicit in human history. Similarly, according to Christoph Blumhardt (1842–1919), the kingdom of God as described in the New Testament must be seen as a divine act that breaks into time from beyond time, transforming the present. Barth appreciated Blumhardt’s portrayal of God as the unpredictable renewer of the world, whose activity is not identifiable with the evolution of the human spirit in general or with Western culture in particular. Barth came to agree with his view that the description of theology as a purported science betrays the faith by capitulating to the thought forms and values of the prevailing culture. Abstract definitions of religion as human spiritual aspiration perniciously accommodate Christian faith to worldly conceptualities. By 1919, Barth was associating Kierkegaard with this new appreciation of the need to disentangle Christianity from its cultural assimilation. These influences bore fruit in 1922 in the second edition of Barth’s commentary on Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, a book that signaled a decisive rupture with many central themes of the Ritchlian theology in which he had been trained.1 During this period Barth rejected any theological method based on the mediation of Christian faith and ideological certitudes, hoping to highlight the distinctiveness of a faith that for him was utterly different from general religious experience. In The Epistle to the Romans Barth juxtaposed the themes of God, Christ, and revelation to all human spiritual aspiration and religious experience. At their core human religions are futile efforts to secure divine sanction for cultural mores and projects that are fundamentally Karl Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., Munich: Kaiser 1922. (English translation: The Epistle to the Romans, trans. by Edwyn C. Hoskyns, London: Oxford University Press 1933.)

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self-aggrandizing. According to Barth, God shouts “No!” to all such human efforts to domesticate God, but “Yes” to humanity as the recipient of God’s grace. Ironically, the divine negation of worldly religiosity is also the divine invitation to humanity to encounter God’s genuine otherness. This paradoxical confluence of negation and affirmation gave birth to the epithet “dialectical” that was applied to Barth’s style of theology, for it seemed to echo Socrates’ undermining of religio-cultural certainties in order to stimulate a new openness to that which is other. The book’s idiosyncratic form and destabilizing rhetorical strategies were intended to subvert the reader’s confidence in the reader’s own culturally-determined religious experience.2 On the positive side, Barth did affirm that human time is indeed touched by God’s eternity, but only as a circle is by a tangent line.3 Although the New Testament is not in itself the Word of God, it can become a witness to the Word when empowered by the Holy Spirit. Human language cannot in itself adequately express the truth of God, but it can indirectly point to that truth when God chooses to enable it to do so. Only God can reveal God’s own self, reaching across the boundary of the infinite and the finite, catalyzing a faith that would be an impossibility without God’s initiative. Apart from God’s self-revelation, any human potential for relation with God can only be experienced as frustration and despair. A group of like-minded theologians including Emil Brunner (1889–1966) and Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1966) cooperated with Barth in articulating these themes in the journal Zwischen den Zeiten, but growing internal disagreements undermined their joint efforts which ended in 1933. Barth, although Swiss by birth, was called to teach theology at Göttingen in 1921, then at Münster in 1925, and then at Bonn in 1930. He became a leader of the “confessing” movement that opposed the synthesis of National Socialist ideology and the Protestant churches, and was the chief author of the Barmen Declaration of 1933, a document that affirmed the lordship of Jesus Christ rather than the ultimate authority of any secular ruler. Forced to leave Germany in 1935 because of his opposition to National Socialism and his refusal to take an oath of loyalty to Hitler, Barth continued his career at the University of Basel. During this period he moved away from his earlier view articulated in The Epistle to the Romans that the experience of a spiritual lack and the recognition of religious incapacity are the obverse side of receptivity to God’s self-revelation. Consequently, his enthusiasm for Kierkegaard began to wane. A shift is evident in 1931 in Barth’s book on Anselm, Fides quaerens intellectum,4 and in the first and only volume of his aborted project Christliche Dogmatik.5 Barth rejected natural theology and the venerable scholastic theme of the “analogy of being,” which he defined as the supposition that the human condition contains some potential for accepting the gospel. The “analogy of being” assumed that the similarities of humanity’s being to God’s being are so clear that See Bruce McCormack, Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development 1909–1936, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1995, pp. 241–90. 3 Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., p. 8. (The Epistle to the Romans, p. 30.) 4 Karl Barth, Fides quaerens intellectum. Anselms Beweis der Existenz Gottes im Zusammenhang seines theologischen Programms, Munich: Kaiser 1931. (English translation: Anselm: Fides quaerens intellectum, trans. by Ian W. Robertson, London: SCM Press 1960.) 5 Karl Barth, Die christliche Dogmatik im Entwurf, Munich: Kaiser 1927. 2

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an analysis of the structures and dynamics of human existence can provide clues concerning the nature of God. Barth now regretted that in the 1920s he had implicitly based his claims about God upon an analysis of human experience and culture, even though the experience that he had relied upon was the experience of divine absence. By the early 1930s Barth had come to believe that even humanity’s openness to knowledge of God must be provided solely by God. His earlier writings from the 1920s had been more forceful in their polemical negations than in their positive affirmations. In the 1930s Barth began to focus more on God’s “Yes” to humanity and the divine self-giving that generates a faithful response. As his career developed Barth increasingly emphasized God’s free act to be in fellowship with humanity. Barth described this as the unconditioned God’s decision to also be conditioned, a theme that he discovered in Isaak Dorner (1809– 84),6 who was indebted to Friedrich Schelling’s (1775–1854) concept of “absolute act.”7 Throughout his entire magnum opus, the multi-volume Church Dogmatics upon which Barth worked from 1932 to 1968, Barth proclaimed that God’s personal action is not based on anything prior to itself, not even on some allegedly antecedent abstract divine nature.8 God freely commits to being defined as the God whose love for humanity is enacted through creation, reconciliation, and redemption (Barth’s term for the eschatological work of God).9 Through this divine commitment the God who is wholly other becomes intimately near. In establishing this loving covenant, the ineffable God’s very being is revealed, for in God’s own self God is a loving relationship in which the Father eternally loves the Son and the Son loves the Father through the Holy Spirit.10 In traditional doctrinal language, the “economic” Trinity (God’s loving acts ad extra) are analogous to the “immanent” Trinity (God’s triune being in se). God in God’s own self is nothing other than what God is revealed to be in the history of Jesus of Nazareth. Throughout the Church Dogmatics Barth elaborated the methodological implications of his claim that God’s very being is enacted and revealed in Jesus of Nazareth. Hermeneutically, this conviction required reading the Old Testament as pointing forward to the story of Jesus in the Gospels, and the epistles of the New Testament as pointing back to it.11 By focusing in this way on the narrative of Karl Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, vols. I–IV, Zürich: Zollikon-Zürich 1932–70, vol. II, part 1, p. 554. (English translation: Church Dogmatics, vols. I–IV, trans. and ed. by G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark 1957–75, vol. II, part 1, p. 493. See Isaak Dorner, Gesammelte Schriften, Berlin: W. Hertz 1883, pp. 188–317. (English translation: Divine Immutability, trans. by Robert R. Williams, Minneapolis: Fortress Press 1994, pp. 1–201.) 7 See Friedrich Schelling, Philosophie der Offenbarung, in his Sämmtliche Werke, Abteilung 1, vols. 1–10, Abteilung 2, vols. 1–4, 1856–61, ed. by K.F. Schelling, Stuttgart and Augsburg: Cotta, see Abteilung 2, vol. 4 (1856), pp. 25–35. 8 See Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik. (Church Dogmatics.) 9 Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, II/1, p. 579. (Church Dogmatics, II/1, p. 515.) 10 Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, II/1, pp. 288–361. (Church Dogmatics, II/1, pp. 275–321.) 11 Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, I/2, pp. 505–830. (Church Dogmatics, I/2, pp. 457–740.) 6

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Jesus, Barth was implicitly practicing a form of methodological Christocentricism, basing all theological assertions directly or indirectly on features of the story of Jesus. In Jesus’ story human phenomena (such as the relationship of fatherhood) and human language become the analogies that reveal God.12 The meaning of these analogies is evident not in the natural phenomena considered in themselves, but in their specific uses in the narratives about Jesus. What it means to call God “father” cannot be extrapolated from an analysis of human paternal relationships, but only in the way the concept is used by Jesus and functions in Jesus’ life. Barth referred to this methodological strategy as the “analogy of faith” to differentiate it from the “analogy of being” practiced by the scholastic theologians. When the story of Christ is read with the eyes of faith, creaturely phenomena can become analogies to God’s covenantal actions. This understanding of Christian language led Barth to reconceive the nature of theology. Theology should be construed as human language that seeks to describe the narrative patterns implicit in the story of God’s incarnation in Jesus Christ and to explore their implications. Of course, the language of theologians, because it is human language, cannot directly express the content of revelation; theological discourse functions according to the analogy of faith. Nevertheless, God can use these fallible, finite human words to trigger or enhance an encounter with the God revealed in Christ. Sometimes God can even chose to use the language of philosophy to communicate God’s revelation to humanity, as theologians use philosophical conceptualities to explore the connections among the various Christian convictions that are based on the story of Jesus Christ. However, it must be remembered that such language only relatively corresponds to God’s truth, a truth that cannot be identified with the conceptuality through which human beings express it. The Christian faith has its own internal coherence, and theology attempts to trace the connections among its convictions without being governed by any norms of rationality external to the faith. Theology is not a deductive system, but an interconnected web of themes, all Christologically governed.13 The narrative pattern of Jesus’ life had monumental consequences for Barth’s reconstruction of particular doctrinal themes. Given this approach, Barth insisted that God should not be defined in terms of metaphysical perfections like eternity, omniscience, and omnipotence conceptualized apart from the life of Jesus.14 Because God’s very self is actualized in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, knowledge of God’s perfections can be acquired only through the contemplation of the pattern of that life. Jesus’ career has a plot, a history, which means that God has a history and is not to be imagined as the timeless eternity of abstract being. In the Church Dogmatics the life history of Jesus Christ, God’s enacted intention for the

Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, II/1, pp. 1–287. (Church Dogmatics, II/1, pp. 3–254.) Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, I/1, pp. 1–10. (Church Dogmatics, I/1, pp. 3–11.) See also Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, II/1, pp. 3–287. (Church Dogmatics, II/1, pp. 3–254.) 14 Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, II/1, pp. 288–305. (Church Dogmatics, II/1, pp. 257–72.) 12 13

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entire cosmos, functions as the indispensable lens through which God’s very being must be viewed.15 Most significantly for Barth, God is revealed in Jesus Christ as speaking a resounding “Yes” to God’s creation. In the history of Jesus Christ, God enacts God’s absolutely primal decision to be one with sinful and finite human beings. The good news is that all of humanity has been elected in Christ to be God’s covenant partner.16 With his focus on God’s decision to be the covenantal partner of Jesus of Nazareth, Barth could even describe the Incarnation as an event that happened in God before all time.17 Consequently, at this stage in his career Barth regarded God’s “otherness” not as God’s transcendence of all human concepts and cultural values, but as the ultimately unfathomable depth of God’s love. God’s love enacted in Christ is the foundation and purpose of everything that exists; it is the motivation for and purpose of all of God’s acts, including the creation of the universe.18 God created and continues to create the cosmos in order that there can be Jesus Christ. Creation should be regarded as the outer basis of God’s covenant with Jesus Christ and with all humanity, and the covenant should be regarded as the inner basis of creation. All of reality is an expression of the one great mystery, God’s gift of Jesus Christ as the enactment of God’s solidarity with humanity. The many volumes of Church Dogmatics reinterpret all Christian doctrines in the light of the Incarnation as God’s self-defining act. The topics of revelation, creation, election, sin, ethics, and reconciliation were all redescribed from the perspective of Barth’s methodological Christocentrism. The persistence with which Barth practiced his distinctive Christocentric method drew the attention of the theological world. During the 1930s his influence steadily increased in Europe, and after World War II his popularity in the United States skyrocketed, particularly among moderate Protestants who sought to avoid the extremes of modernism and fundamentalism. Often the rise in the interest in Barth paralleled a rise in interest in Kierkegaard, who was frequently lumped together with Barth in the ill-defined category of “neoorthodoxy.” Of course, Barth’s celebrity inspired critics and detractors, even among some of his former colleagues like Emil Brunner. Sometimes the detractors used Kierkegaard’s analysis of subjectivity as a basis for their critique of Barth, thereby confusing those who regarded Barth and Kierkegaard as theological fellow-travelers. As more volumes of his magnum opus issued from his pen, Barth’s increasingly evident focus on revelation earned him the reputation of being an authoritarian fideist, and his obvious concentration on Christ earned him the reputation of being a unitarian of the Second Person of the Trinity. In response, Barth protested that Christ was the medium but not the exclusive content of all theological assertions. Barth died in 1968, with his magisterial Church Dogmatics still unfinished. Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, II/1, pp. 522–7. (Church Dogmatics, II/1, pp. 464–8.) Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, II/2, pp. 101–57. (Church Dogmatics, II/2, pp. 94–145.) 17 Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, II/2, pp. 157–214. (Church Dogmatics, II/2, pp. 145–94.) 18 Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, III/1, pp. 418–76. (Church Dogmatics, III/1, pp. 366–414.) 15 16

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II. Barth’s Familiarity with Kierkegaard Kierkegaard certainly did influence Barth’s theological development, particularly during Barth’s early period, informing the way that he conceptualized pivotal issues and articulated major themes. However, the extent and exact nature of that influence is a matter of some debate. The basic types of evidence relevant to this issue fall into three categories: Barth’s own reports of his reading of Kierkegaard’s works, Barth’s direct citations of Kierkegaard in his literature, and Barth’s own explicit retrospective reflections about Kierkegaard’s influence upon him. The first two types of evidence help determine which parts of his corpus were familiar to Barth, a critical matter for understanding Barth’s construal of Kierkegaard. Before trying to grasp the significance of Barth’s appropriations and criticisms of Kierkegaard, we must first determine what Barth actually knew about his writings, and therefore what impression of Kierkegaard Barth was able to formulate. Absolute certainty concerning which of Kierkegaard’s works Barth read and when he read them cannot be attained. Barth did not leave behind detailed journals exhaustively chronicling his engagement with specific authors. Nevertheless, some evidence does exist, particularly Barth’s direct attestations of reading particular Kierkegaardian texts and his explicit quotations of Kierkegaard. We do know that Barth owned a German translation of an abridged version of the journals,19 and also German translations of Practice in Christianity20 and The Moment21 from the Jena edition of Kierkegaard’s Gesammelte Werke.22 In a reminiscence published in 1963, Barth recalled that he had purchased The Moment in 1909, but had not been deeply impressed by it, for at that time he was more concerned with the theology of Harnack and Herrmann and with Christian Socialism.23 He confessed that he had become seriously interested in Kierkegaard some time around 1919, between the composition of the first and second editions of The Epistle to the Romans, but did not mention which texts had inspired his fascination.24 In June 1919 Barth wrote approvingly to his theological ally Eduard Thurneysen (1888–1977) about Kierkegaard’s insightful protest against Weltkirchlichkeit, which could well indicate a new reading of The

Søren Kierkegaard, Buch des Richters. Seine Tagebücher 1833–1855 in Auswahl, trans. by Hermann Gottsched, Jena: Diederichs 1905. 20 Søren Kierkegaard, Einübung in Christentum, trans. by Hermann Gottsched, Jena: Diederichs 1912 (vol. 9 in Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–12, trans. and ed. by Hermann Gottsched, Jena: Diederichs 1909–22). 21 Søren Kierkegaard, Der Augenblick, trans. by Christoph Schrempf, 2nd ed., Jena: Diederichs 1909 (vol. 12 in Gesammelte Werke). 22 See Bruce McCormack, Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1995, p. 235. 23 Karl Barth, “Dank und Reverenz,” Evangelische Theologie, vol. 23, no. 7, 1963, p. 339. (English translation: “A Thank You and a Bow—Kierkegaard’s Reveille,” in Fragments Grave and Gay, ed. by Martin Rumscheidt, trans. by Eric Mosbacher, London: Collins 1971, p. 97.) 24 Barth, “Dank und Reverenz,” p. 339. (“A Thank You and a Bow—Kierkegaard’s Reveille,” p. 97.) 19

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Moment.25 In another letter to Thurneysen from June 7, 1920, Barth claimed that he was reading Kierkegaard in a regular fashion, as part of his morning devotions, but did not specify which texts.26 On June 24 he remarked to Thurneysen that he had spent an entire evening reading The Moment.27 In a lecture from April, 1920, Barth referred to Kierkegaard’s remark in his journals that persons who are sacrifices to God are the bass part among the sopranos who praise God’s love.28 During this period Barth publicly testified to the importance of Kierkegaard in his theological development, for in a lecture from October 1922 Barth listed Kierkegaard as his spiritual ancestor, along with such exalted company as Jeremiah, Paul, Luther, and Calvin.29 Kierkegaard’s influence is most evident in the second edition of Barth’s The Epistle to the Romans, both in the texts quoted and the themes articulated. In this text Barth echoes Kierkegaard’s phrase “the qualitative distinction,”30 applying it to the difference between the world’s sensibilities and the categories of faith. Again echoing Kierkegaard, Barth describes the relationship of God and humanity as an “absolute paradox,”31 God’s righteousness as a “paradox,”32 and faith as being “paradoxical.”33 Like Kierkegaard, Barth argues that faith cannot be directly communicated.34 The influence of Kierkegaard is likewise evident in Barth’s assertion that the encounter with Christ happens in the “moment” that cannot be explained in terms of historical antecedents and natural processes, and in his claim that it is in the moment that God breaks into history.35 Using Kierkegaard’s terminology, Barth claims that in

Karl Barth and Eduard Thurneysen, Karl Barth—Eduard Thurneysen: Briefwechsel, vols. 1–2, ed. by Eduard Thurneysen, Zurich: Theologischer Verlag 1973, vol. 1 (1913–1921), p. 336. 26 Karl Barth and Eduard Thurneysen, Ein Briefwechsel aus der Frühzeit der dialektischen Theologie, Munich and Hamburg: Seibenstern Taschenbuch Verlag 1966, p. 54. (English translation: Revolutionary Theology in the Making: Barth-Thurneysen Correspondence 1914–1925, trans. by James D. Smart, Richmond, Virginia: John Knox Press 1964, p. 51.) 27 Barth and Thurneysen, Karl Barth—Eduard Thurneysen: Briefwechsel, vol. 1 (1913– 1921), p. 400. 28 Karl Barth, Das Wort Gottes und die Theologie, Munich: Kaiser 1924, p. 91. (English translation: The Word of God and the Word of Man, trans. by Douglas Horton, New York: Harper Brothers 1957, p. 84.) For the cited material, see Søren Kierkegaard, Buch des Richters. Seine Tagebücher 1833–1855 in Auswahl, p. 100 (which corresponds to SKS 25, 52, NB26:47 / JP 1, 709). 29 Barth, Das Wort Gottes und die Theologie, p. 164. (The Word of God and the Word of Man, p. 195.) 30 Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., p. 75. (The Epistle to the Romans, p. 99.) 31 Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., p. 71. (The Epistle to the Romans, p. 94.) 32 Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., p. 77; p. 400. (The Epistle to the Romans, p. 100; p. 412.) 33 Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., p. 16. (The Epistle to the Romans, p. 38.) 34 Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., p. 85; p. 96; p. 99. (The Epistle to the Romans, p. 108; p. 118; p. 121.) 35 Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., pp. 85–9; p. 93; p. 145; pp. 483–4. (The Epistle to the Romans, pp. 109–12; p. 116; p. 166; pp. 497–8.) 25

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Jesus Christ God is revealed only through the “divine incognito.”36 Again reflecting Kierkegaard, Barth asserts that the eternal worth of “the single one” is established by God’s word of dissolution and salvation.37 Borrowing more language from Kierkegaard, Barth insists that this message can cause “scandal” or “offense.”38 Kierkegaard’s voice may also be heard in Barth’s talk of the “absolute and not merely relative ‘otherness’ of God.”39 Barth’s theme that the gospel itself creates the possibility of the perception of God’s relation to humanity may also be indebted to Kierkegaard.40 Barth’s use of this specific cluster of Kierkegaard-sounding concepts in the second edition of The Epistle to the Romans has implications for the issue of the extent of his familiarity with Kierkegaard’s corpus. Barth could have become acquainted with the concepts “paradox,” “the divine incognito,” “the moment,” “the infinite qualitative distinction,” “offense,” and “indirect communication” from Practice in Christianity alone, for all these themes are elaborated in that volume. For example, the source of the celebrated phrase “the infinite qualitative difference between God and man” could be those passages in Practice in Christianity in which Anti-Climacus ascribes Christendom’s attempt to remove the offense to “the false invention of purely human compassion that forgets the infinite qualitative difference between God and man.”41 Moreover, in the same volume Anti-Climacus associates the “impenetrable unrecognizability”42 of the God-man with the “infinitely qualitative contradiction”43 between being God and being an individual human being. Moreover, Barth’s references to the theme of the “single individual” could also reflect Kierkegaard’s language in Practice in Christianity.44 Of course, Barth could have become familiar with these concepts from other sources in addition to Practice in Christianity. For example, the crucial statement “But between God and a human being there is an eternal essential qualitative difference” appears prominently in “The Difference between a Genius and an Apostle,” an essay in Two Ethical-Religious Essays.45 The same phrase “qualitative difference between

Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., p. 16; p. 319. (The Epistle to the Romans, p. 39; p. 333.) 37 Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., p. 93. (The Epistle to the Romans, p. 116.) 38 Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd edition, p. 16; p. 325; p. 427. (The Epistle to the Romans, p. 39; p. 338; p. 440.) 39 Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd edition, p. 141. (The Epistle to the Romans, p. 162.) 40 Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd edition, p. 15. (The Epistle to the Romans, p. 37.) 41 Kierkegaard, Einübung in Christentum, p. 124 (which corresponds to SKS 12, 144 / PC, 140). 42 Kierkegaard, Einübung in Christentum, p. 116 (which corresponds to SKS 12, 135 / PC, 131). 43 Kierkegaard, Einübung in Christentum, p. 116 (which corresponds to SKS 12, 135 / PC, 131). 44 Kierkegaard, Einübung in Christentum, p. 9 (which corresponds to SKS 12, 25 / PC, 15). 45 SKS 11, 104 / WA, 100. 36

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God and man” recurs in The Sickness unto Death in several different contexts.46 Barth could also have picked up the phrase “qualitative difference” from The Moment, which we know he did read during this period.47 In spite of these possibilities, the importance of Practice in Christianity for the composition of the second edition of The Epistle to the Romans is supported by the fact that it is this Kierkegaardian text that Barth quotes directly with the most frequency. Often when Barth explicitly cited Kierkegaard he simply put a word or brief phrase in quotation marks with Kierkegaard’s name following it in brackets, but did not identify the exact textual source. However, the length of several quotations makes it possible to identify the precise passage. Most of Barth’s lengthy quotations of Kierkegaard are drawn from the same section of Practice in Christianity, a subdivision entitled “The Categories of Offense.” In one of his longest quotations Barth uses Kierkegaard’s words to exclaim: Remove from the Christian Religion, as Christendom has done, its ability to shock, and Christianity, by becoming a direct communication, is altogether destroyed. It then becomes a tiny superficial thing, capable neither of inflicting deep wounds nor of healing them; by discovering an unreal and merely human compassion, it forgets the qualitative distinction between man and God.48

In a second extended quotation taken from this section, Barth prays that Christians be preserved from the blasphemy of those who without being terrified and afraid in the presence of God, without the agony of death that is the birth-pang of faith, without the trembling which is the first requirement of adoration, without the panic of the possibility of scandal, hope to have direct knowledge of that which cannot be directly known…and do not rather say that He was truly and verily God, because He was beyond our comprehension.49

The language of this portion of Practice in Christianity also appears in Barth’s briefer quotations of Kierkegaard. Again citing this section Barth warns about the “fibrous, undialectical, blatant, clerical appeal that Christ was God, since he was so SKS 11, 212 / SUD, 99. SKS 11, 229 / SUD, 117. SKS 11, 233 / SUD, 121. SKS 11, 237 / SUD, 126; SKS 11, 239 / SUD, 127. 47 SKS 13, 237 / M, 188. 48 Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., p. 75. (The Epistle to the Romans, pp. 98–9.) See Kierkegaard, Einübung in Christentum, p. 124. The English edition translation is: “But take away the possibility of offense, as has been done in Christendom. And all Christianity becomes direct communication, 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.” (SKS 12, 143 / PC, 140.) 49 Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., p. 264. (The Epistle to the Romans, p. 279.) See Kierkegaard, Einübung in Christentum, pp. 119–20. The English edition translation is: “…then without any fear and trembling before the Deity, without the death throes that are the birth pangs of faith, without the shudder that is the beginning of worship, without the horror of the possibility of offense, one immediately and directly comes to know what cannot be known directly.” (SKS 12, 139 / PC, 135.) 46

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visibly and directly.”50 Barth also endorses Anti-Climacus’ protest that Jesus should not be imagined as “a very serious-minded man, almost as earnest as a parson,”51 as bourgeois Christians were fond of portraying him. Barth’s attribution of the phrase “the eternal worth of each single one” to Kierkegaard is probably also a reference to Practice in Christianity.52 In spite of his heavy reliance upon Practice in Christianity, that is not the only book by Kierkegaard that Barth alludes to in the second edition of The Epistle to the Romans. Most importantly, Barth’s direct quotations of Kierkegaard reveal a familiarity with a volume of selections from Kierkegaard’s journals.53 In the quoted material Kierkegaard describes God as a love that wills to be loved in return, and describes humanity as being restless until it has been refashioned in the image of God’s love. Barth’s commentary on Romans also shows traces of other Kierkegaardian texts that we have no record of him owning. Barth remarks that Kierkegaard must be tempered with Kant, in that definitions of human fulfillment should be universalizable, should not refer to merely private definitions of happiness or unhappiness, and should be coordinated with the true good of society.54 Here Barth’s critical qualification of Kierkegaard is probably an allusion to themes articulated in Fear and Trembling.55 Barth’s association of Kierkegaard’s name with the observation that love is a “spiritual relationship” with the neighbor and is a type of “eternal, leveling righteousness” may indicate a familiarity with Works of Love.56 Barth’s analysis of the command “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” in a manner that parallels Kierkegaard’s exposition makes this connection with Works of Love more likely, as does Barth’s contention that any individual who is genuinely in fellowship with God must also be in fellowship with the neighbor.57 The phrase “love’s living regimen” is also a reference to the title of the German translation of Works of Love.58

Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., p. 264. (The Epistle to the Romans, p. 279.) See Kierkegaard, Einübung in Christentum, p. 113. The English edition translation is: “the nonsensical-dialectical climax of clerical roaring: to such a degree was Christ God that one could immediately and directly perceive it.” (SKS 12, 133 / PC, 128.) 51 Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., p. 264. (The Epistle to the Romans, p. 279.) See Kierkegaard, Einübung in Christentum, p. 119. The English edition translation is: “a kind of earnest public figure, almost as earnest as the pastor.” (SKS 12, 139 / PC, 135.) 52 Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., p. 93. (The Epistle to the Romans, p. 116.) See Kierkegaard, Einübung in Christentum, pp. 71–9 (which corresponds to SKS 12, 94–102 / PC, 85–94). 53 Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., p. 426. (The Epistle to the Romans, pp. 438–9.) See Kierkegaard, Buch des Richters. Seine Tagebücher 1833–1855 in Auswahl, p. 104. 54 Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., p. 455. (The Epistle to the Romans, p. 468.) 55 SKS 4, 148–60 / FT, 54–67. 56 Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., p. 481. (The Epistle to the Romans, pp. 495–6.) See SKS 9, 51–95 / WL, 44–90. 57 Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., p. 481. (The Epistle to the Romans, pp. 495–6.) See SKS 9, 51–95 / WL, 44–90. 58 Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., p. 483. (The Epistle to the Romans, p. 498.) 50

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In Barth’s writings after The Epistle to the Romans references to Kierkegaard became fewer and fewer and became less tied to specific texts. However, some evidence of Barth’s continuing engagement with particular books by Kierkegaard can be found. In his lectures on dogmatics delivered at Göttingen in 1924–25 Barth mentioned Kierkegaard, observing that Kierkegaard was right in affirming that “the subjective is the objective.”59 This remark probably indicates some familiarity with the Concluding Unscientific Postscript which Barth must have read by then.60 In the same lecture series Barth applauded Kierkegaard’s emphasis of “existentiality” against the impersonality of Hegelian dialectic, which according to Barth was as unreal as Leporello’s participation in Don Juan’s seductions.61 The mention of Don Juan and Leporello demonstrated a continuing familiarity with Kierkegaard’s journals.62 In these lectures Barth continued to employ the Kierkegaardian vocabulary of “the incognito”63 and “direct/indirect communication,”64 and began to speak of “the knight of faith.”65 In 1927 Barth mentioned Kierkegaard appreciatively in his transitional Christliche Dogmatik66 and again approvingly referred to Kierkegaard’s rejection of Hegelian dialectics, alluding to the same journal entry.67 Significantly, Kierkegaard’s works received no sustained attention in Barth’s lectures in 1932–33 on nineteenth-century theology.68 In the magisterial Church Dogmatics Barth’s references to Kierkegaard’s volumes became even more infrequent. Usually Barth referred to Kierkegaard in a general manner, portraying him as a transitional figure on the trajectory from Pietism Karl Barth, Unterricht in der christlichen Religion, vols. 1–3, Zurich: Theologischer Verlag 1985–2003 (vol. 5 in Karl Barth, Gesamtwerke II: Akademische Werke, Zurich: Theologischer Verlag 1973ff.), vol. 1, Prolegomena 1924, ed. by Hannelotte Reiffen, p. 168. (English translation: The Göttingen Dogmatics: Instruction in the Christian Religion, vol. 1, trans. by Geoffrey Bromiley, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans 1991, p. 137.) 60 This would have been available to Barth in this German edition: Søren Kierkegaard, Philosophische Brocken / Abschliessende unwissenschaftliche Nachschrift, ed. and trans. by Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Eugen Diederichs 1910 (vols. 6–7 in Gesammelte Werke). 61 Barth, Unterricht in der christlichen Religion, vol. 1, Prolegomena 1924, p. 92. (The Göttingen Dogmatics: Instruction in the Christian Religion, vol. 1, p. 77.) 62 See Søren Kierkegaard, Die Tagebücher, vols. 1–2, ed. by Theodor Haecker, Innsbruck: Brenner 1923, vol. 1, p. 97. 63 Barth, Unterricht in der christlichen Religion, vol. 1, Prolegomena 1924, p. 219. (The Göttingen Dogmatics: Instruction in the Christian Religion, vol. 1, p. 178.) See Kierkegaard, Die Tagebücher, vol. 1, p. 97. 64 Barth, Unterricht in der christlichen Religion, vol. 1, Prolegomena 1924, p. 175. (The Göttingen Dogmatics: Instruction in the Christian Religion, vol. 1, p. 143.) 65 Barth, Unterricht in der christlichen Religion, vol. 1, Prolegomena 1924, p. 60. (The Göttingen Dogmatics: Instruction in the Christian Religion, vol. 1, p. 50.) 66 Barth, Die christliche Dogmatik im Entwurf, p. vi. 67 Ibid., pp. 70–72; p. 404. 68 See Karl Barth, Die protestantische Theologie im 19. Jahrhundert, 5th ed., Zurich: Theologischer Verlag 1985. (English translation: Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century, trans. by Brian Cozens and John Bowden, Valley Forge, Pennsylvania: Judson Press 1973.) 59

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to existentialism, a portrayal that remained fairly consistent for him.69 Consequently, these allusions provide very little information about Barth’s reading of specific Kierkegaardian texts. However, a reference from 1955 to “the contemporaneity of Kierkegaard” as a response to “the yawning chasm of Lessing” does further corroborate his familiarity with the Concluding Unscientific Postscript.70 A brief discussion of Job in a volume of the Church Dogmatics from 1959 does mention Kierkegaard’s Repetition.71 The one major exception to Barth’s lack of attention to Kierkegaard’s texts is his critical account of Kierkegaard’s description of Christian love. In a volume of Church Dogmatics from 1955 Barth argues that Christian agape should not be defined in contrast to eros, as Kierkegaard had done.72 Barth’s critical response to Kierkegaard reveals a thorough familiarity with Works of Love, and its exposition of what Barth calls “the life and rule of love” (which was the title of the German translation of Works of Love), particularly the section entitled “You Shall Love.”73 Barth alludes to a passage in which the revelation of love as a duty is the “eternal change” that astonishes and provokes humanity.74 He quotes: Where that which is only human seeks to press forward; where that which is only human loses heart; the commandment strengthens; where that which is purely human becomes lifeless and prudent, the commandment gives fire and wisdom. The commandment consumes and burns up that which is unhealthy in thy love. By the commandment thou canst inflame it again when it bids fair to die down. Where thou thinkest thou canst easily counsel thyself, the commandment intrudes upon thy counsels. Where thou turnest to thine own counsel in despair, thou shouldest turn to it for counsel. Where thou canst think of no counsel, it will create it for thee and all will be well.75 Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, I/1, p. 19; II/2, p. 338; III/2, p. 22; IV/I, p. 165; IV/I, p. 769; IV/I, p. 828; IV/3, 2nd half, p. 572. (Church Dogmatics, I/1, p. 20; II/ 2, p. 308; III/ 2, p.21; IV/1, p. 150; IV/1, p. 689; IV/1, p. 741; IV/3, 2nd half, p. 498.) 70 See Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, IV/2, p. 125. (Church Dogmatics, IV/2, p. 113. See SKS 7, 65–120 / CUP1, 63–125.) 71 See Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, IV/3, 1st half, p. 467. (Church Dogmatics, IV/3, 1st half, p. 405.) 72 See Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, IV/2, pp. 825–88. (Church Dogmatics, IV/2, pp. 727–83.) 73 See Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, IV/2, pp. 848–9. (Church Dogmatics, IV/2, p. 747.) See Søren Kierkegaard, Leben und Walten der Liebe, 2nd ed., trans. and ed. by Albert Dorner and Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1924 (Erbauliche Reden, vol. 3), pp. 19– 47. Danish and English editions: SKS 9, 25–50 / WL, 17–43. 74 See Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, IV/2, p. 886. (Church Dogmatics, IV/2, pp. 781–2.) See Leben und Walten der Liebe, p. 27 (which corresponds to SKS 9, 44 / WL, 37). 75 See Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, IV/2, p. 886. (Church Dogmatics, IV/2, p. 782.) See Leben und Walten der Liebe, pp. 31–2. In the English edition the passage is rendered: “Wherever the purely human wants to storm forth, the commandment constrains; wherever the purely human loses courage, the commandment strengthens; wherever the purely human becomes tired and sagacious; the commandment inflames and gives wisdom. The commandment consumes and burns out the unhealthiness in your love, but through the commandment you will be able to rekindle it when it, humanly speaking, would cease. Where you think you can easily go your own way, there take the commandment as counsel; where 69

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As we have seen, Barth had been conversant with Works of Love during his earlier period, so this much later quotation is evidence of a continuing interest in that text. To summarize Barth’s familiarity with Kierkegaard’s works, the range of texts that Barth definitely cited is rather narrow. Practice in Christianity received the most attention from Barth, followed by The Moment and Works of Love. Traces of the volumes by Climacus and de Silentio can also be detected. Interestingly, Barth’s first exposure to Kierkegaard was to some of the most lofty and daunting portrayals of the ideal Christian life and the most virulent attacks on Christendom. This initial impression of Kierkegaard the polemical rigorist was then supplemented with readings that suggested an author who championed radical subjectivity and paradox. In addition to alluding to Kierkegaard’s works and quoting from them, Barth sometimes explicitly ruminated about the significance that Kierkegaard had for him. In the preface to the second edition of The Epistle to the Romans Barth reflected, “If I have a ‘system,’ it consists in that which Kierkegaard calls the ‘infinite qualitative difference’ between time and eternity; in keeping that difference constantly in view in both its negative and positive significance.”76 In the same preface Barth listed Paul, Plato, Kant, Franz Overbeck, Kierkegaard, and Dostoevsky as influences that sparked his further theological development.77 Elsewhere in The Epistle to the Romans Barth offered further evaluative comments about what Barth took to be Kierkegaard’s perspective, often enthusiastically endorsing it. For example, Barth lauded Kierkegaard’s dialectical audacity, his willingness to be heavily burdened with the questionable nature of human existence, and his acceptance of the reality that human life is most completely cut off from union with God.78 Barth also maintained that Kierkegaard’s criticism of the church must be upheld, and linked this with Barth’s own critique of the church’s failure to be devoted to God alone, adulterating true fidelity to God with cultural loyalties.79 However, even in The Epistle to the Romans Barth was not entirely uncritical of Kierkegaard. He did sometimes portray Kierkegaard as a one-dimensional champion of anti-religious negation, a thorough-going destroyer of the temple. According to Barth, this iconoclastic posture stands just as much under the judgment of God as does the undialectical affirmation of human religiosity. Ironically, the opposing positions of both Kierkegaard and Martensen stand equally under the wrath of God.80 Barth intimated that Kierkegaard may have been guilty of a subtle type of self-justification, a self-justification by acts of negation. In Kierkegaard this peculiar negative form of spirituality produced “the poison of a too intense pietism.”81 Similarly, Barth denigrated the Kierkegaardian “preaching of a scandal” as being just another vain form of human spirituality; it is merely another futile program to you despairingly want to go your own way, there take the commandment as counsel; but where you do not know what to do, there the commandment will counsel so that all turns out well nevertheless.” (SKS 9, 50 / WL, 43.) 76 See Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., p. xii. (The Epistle to the Romans, p. 10.) 77 See Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., pp. v–vi. (The Epistle to the Romans, pp. 3–4.) 78 See Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., p. 236. (The Epistle to the Romans, p. 252.) 79 See Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., p. 381. (The Epistle to the Romans, pp. 394–5.) 80 See Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., p. 114. (The Epistle to the Romans, p. 136.) 81 Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., p. 261. (The Epistle to the Romans, p. 276.)

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revitalize Christianity that has been attempted before and failed, just as reform of the liturgy has been attempted before and failed.82 As such it is simply one more exercise in human self-assertion and is not to be confused with God’s own recreative and gracious action. After moving to Göttingen Barth had frequent, lengthy, and heated conversations with his colleague Emanuel Hirsch (1888–1972), the historian of Christian thought who wrote extensively on Kierkegaard and later supported National Socialism. Differing responses to Kierkegaard lay behind their often polemical exchanges in 1922.83 Barth carefully differentiated himself from Hirsch’s position that the Christian life can be characterized as the task of appropriating a mode of existence, namely, a mode of existence based on self-surrender to God. By developing a set of antitheses to Hirsch’s theological theses, Barth was implicitly differentiating himself from what he took to be aspects of Kierkegaard’s theological sensibility.84 By the time Barth had made his methodologically Christocentric turn and had begun to write the Church Dogmatics, his remarks about Kierkegaard became more consistently critical. In the first volume of Church Dogmatics that appeared in 1932 Barth asserted that Kierkegaard was partly responsible for the evolution of Christian subjectivism from Pietism to existentialism, a movement that was too fascinated with the inner life of the self.85 Similarly, Barth’s increasingly strident rejection of Karl Heim’s (1874–1958) strategy of leading a person into despair in order to prepare for the gospel was an implicit critique of Kierkegaard.86 In a celebrated polemical exchange in 1933–34 with his former theological ally Emil Brunner, Barth linked Kierkegaard with Brunner’s effort to find a “point of contact” between grace and human nature. For Brunner in his early period the predisposition to receive the gospel was to be found in the experience of despair.87 Barth confessed that around 1920 he had been attracted by the same prospect of identifying a negative point of contact between nature and grace, but that he now found this identification of despair with the preparation for grace to be a diabolical form of hybris.88 Barth coupled Kierkegaard’s negative dialectic with that of Martin Heidegger, and excoriated it for being a self-congratulatory delight in unmasking humanity’s idols. Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., p. 325. (The Epistle to the Romans, p. 338.) Barth and Thurneysen, Ein Briefwechsel aus der Frühzeit der dialektischen Theologie, pp. 70–5. (Revolutionary Theology in the Making: Barth–Thurneysen Correspondence 1914– 1925, pp. 82–8.) See also von Wolfdietrich Kloeden, “Das Kierkegaard-Bild Karl Barths in seinen Briefen der ‘Zwanziger Jahre’ Streifichter aus der Karl Barth-Gesamtausgabe,” Kierkegaardiana, vol. 12, 1982, pp. 95–8. 84 See Barth, and Thurneysen, Ein Briefwechsel aus der Frühzeit der dialektischen Theologie, pp. 70–5. (Revolutionary Theology in the Making: Barth–Thurneysen Correspondence 1914–1925, pp. 82–8.) 85 Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, I/1, p. 19. (Church Dogmatics, I/1, p. 21.) 86 Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, I/2, p. 206. (Church Dogmatics, I/2, p. 225.) 87 Barth, “Nein! Antwort am Emil Brunner,” Theologische Existenz heute, no. 14, 1934, pp. 55–6. (English translation: “No!,” in Karl Barth and Emil Brunner, Natural Theology, trans. by Peter Fraenkel, London: Centenary Press 1946, pp. 120–1.) 88 Barth, “Nein! Antwort am Emil Brunner,” pp. 50–2; p. 55. (“No!,” pp. 114–16; p. 120.) 82 83

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As Barth aged, his assessment of Kierkegaard became more balanced. By 1948, in a calmer mood, Barth was identifying Kierkegaard as a precursor of Karl Jaspers’ existentialist rediscovery of the historical dimension of human life in which unforeseen “frontier situations” trigger an encounter with a transcendent reality, a rediscovery that Barth regarded as a valuable but inadequate attempt to grasp the meaning of human life.89 Of course, the criticism of Kierkegaard did continue, although in a muted form. In a much later volume Barth continued to refer to the “broad way that leads from the older Pietism to the present-day theological existentialism inspired by Kierkegaard”90 and complained that Kierkegaard encouraged a focus on the individual and “his puny faith.”91 This consistent pattern of describing Kierkegaard makes it clear that Barth had come to see Kierkegaard through the eyes of the theologians inclined toward existentialism, and to accept the portrait of Kierkegaard as a father of existentialism.92 According to Barth, Kierkegaard had perpetuated the Pietistic preoccupation with the individual experience of salvation and thereby had contributed to theology’s introspective psychological focus, a methodological aberration that was a cul de sac.93 Such an orientation encouraged a recurrent return to the experience of desolation and a cyclical oscillation between God’s “Yes” and God’s “No.”94 As with Pietism, Kierkegaard promoted a private relationship with Christ that denigrated participation in the church, Christ’s body on earth.95 Most dangerously in Barth’s view, Kierkegaard’s negative dialectic suggested that a person is justified through the individual’s own efforts to achieve a more passionate inwardness, an endeavor which is a subtle form of works righteousness.96 The existential theology believed to have been inspired by Kierkegaard seemed to be guilty of the anthropocentricism that Barth so dramatically disparaged.97 However, Barth did admit that Kierkegaard’s focus on the individual was not entirely without value, for it did capture the reality that Christ’s salvation is pro me; sadly, Kierkegaard failed to adequately appreciate the fact that the pro me theme must be situated in the context of the pro nobis motif.98 Toward the end of his career Barth returned to the issue of his relation to Kierkegaard in an address entitled “A Thank-You and a Bow—Kierkegaard’s Reveille.” Ironically, the talk was delivered in Copenhagen in 1963 upon the Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, III/2, pp. 133–4. (Church Dogmatics, III/2, pp. 112–13.) 90 See Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, IV/I, p. 828. (Church Dogmatics, IV/1, p. 741.) 91 Ibid. 92 Karl Barth, Rudolf Bultmann. Ein Versuch, ihm zu verstehen, Stuttgart: Evangelischer Verlag 1952, pp. 47–8. (English translation: “Rudolf Bultmann—An Attempt to Understand Him,” in Kerygma and Myth II, ed. by H. W. Bartsch, trans. by Reginald Fuller, London: SPCK 1962, pp. 121–3.) 93 Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, IV/1, p. 165. (Church Dogmatics, IV/1, p. 150.) 94 Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, IV/1, p. 381. (Church Dogmatics, IV/1, p. 345.) 95 Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, IV/I, p. 769. (Church Dogmatics, IV/1, p. 689.) 96 Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, IV/I, p. 828. (Church Dogmatics, IV/1, p. 741.) 97 Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, IV/3, 2nd half, p. 572. (Church Dogmatics, IV/3, 2nd half, p. 498.) 98 Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, IV/I, p. 844. (Church Dogmatics, IV/1, p. 755.) 89

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occasion of Barth’s acceptance of the Sonning Prize awarded by the University of Copenhagen.99 In the speech Barth invited the audience to imagine Kierkegaard’s specter rebuking him with the reminder that anyone awarded prizes by the state could not possibly qualify as an apostle.100 Reiterating the self-report articulated in The Epistle to the Romans, Barth recalled that Kierkegaard had become important to him in 1919, and that Kierkegaard had remained a significant conversation partner during the period of the composition of the first and second editions of The Epistle to the Romans.101 That had been a time when Barth was seeking to emphasize God’s judgment of all human religiosity, including ecclesial piety. Barth recollected that he and his colleagues had appreciated Kierkegaard’s incisive criticism of “all the speculation that blurred the infinite qualitative difference between God and man, all the aesthetic playing down of the absolute claims of the gospel and of the necessity to do it justice by personal decision,” and had benefited from Kierkegaard’s exposure of “all the excessively pretentious and at the same time excessively cheap Christianism and churchiness of prevalent theology from which we ourselves were not quite yet free.”102 In fact, according to Barth, the second edition of The Epistle to the Romans was part of a more general “Kierkegaard renaissance.”103 Appeciatively, Barth admitted that this critique of Christendom became a basic and permanent presupposition of his entire theological career. In a more critical vein, Barth asked of Kierkegaard, “Was it permissible to formulate more strictly still the conditions for thinking and living in faith, in love, and in hope?”104 He intimated that if the Christian message is the good news of God’s free grace, it was not appropriate for Kierkegaard to portray the conditions for Christian living so stringently as to make an individual who aspires to be Christian “sour, gloomy, and sad.”105 He suggested that Kierkegaard portrayed anguished striving for authenticity as if it were a necessary preparation for grace and a necessary consequence of grace, even though Kierkegaard seemed to espouse the standard Lutheran conviction that humans are saved by grace alone. Existential striving therefore seemed to be a necessary condition for having faith. By so doing Kierkegaard had reintroduced “the wheels of the law.”106 Barth then proceeded to speak critically of Kierkegaard’s lack of appreciation for the corporate nature of the church and its social mission in the

99 Barth, “Dank und Reverenz,” pp. 337–42. (“A Thank You and a Bow—Kierkegaard’s Reveille,” pp. 95–101.) 100 Barth, “Dank und Reverenz,” p. 338. (“A Thank You and a Bow—Kierkegaard’s Reveille,” pp. 95–6.) 101 Barth, “Dank und Reverenz,” p. 339. (“A Thank You and a Bow—Kierkegaard’s Reveille,” p. 97.) 102 Barth, “Dank und Reverenz,” pp. 339–40. (“A Thank You and a Bow—Kierkegaard’s Reveille,” p. 98.) 103 Barth, “Dank und Reverenz,” p. 340. (“A Thank You and a Bow—Kierkegaard’s Reveille,” p. 98.) 104 Barth, “Dank und Reverenz,” p. 340. (“A Thank You and a Bow—Kierkegaard’s Reveille,” p. 99.) 105 Ibid. 106 Ibid.

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world, disparaging Kierkegaard’s “pronounced holy individualism.”107 Finally, in Barth’s view Kierkegaard had developed an anthropocentric system that provided the fundamental theoretic groundwork for his theology. In effect, Kierkegaard had extended in an existential direction Schleiermacher’s project of basing theology on an analysis of human subjectivity. As such, Kierkegaard was also “the most thoroughly reflective completion of pietism,” a movement which, according to Barth, made the subjectivity of faith rather than God’s saving activity the center of attention.108 In Kierkegaard’s case authenticity, decision, and leaps of faith were the hallmarks of the proper subjectivity rather than Schleiermacher’s feeling of absolute dependence. According to Barth’s critique, Kierkegaard was proposing that faith is grounded in itself, and has itself as its object. In short, Barth was accusing Kierkegaard of having introduced a seductive form of works righteousness into theology, an odd works righteousness in which the cultivation of anxiety, despair, and guilt had saving value. Barth concludes: “I consider him to be a teacher whose school every theologian must enter once. Woe to him who misses it—provided only he does not remain in or return to it.”109 Barth also addressed the issue of his relation to Kierkegaard in the essay “Kierkegaard and the Theologians” written for the 150th anniversary of Kierkegaard’s birth.110 As in “A Thank You and a Bow,” here Barth similarly encouraged aspiring theologians to pass through Kierkegaard’s school. By so doing, the individual would learn to distinguish Christianity from all the structures and functions of society that can be generally endorsed by decent human beings. As in the Copenhagen address, Barth then proceeded to warn about the unfortunate fates of “other theologians who have worked themselves deeper and deeper into Kierkegaard, so much so that they could not work themselves out of him again.”111 Such men have “failed to graduate from the senior year of his school” and have turned Kierkegaard’s writings into a system.112 This tribe of Kierkegaard devotees engages in nothing but negations of Christendom and strives to sustain an ironic detachment from human existence, living in a state of perpetual suspension. But a third type of theologian, presumably resembling Barth himself, passes through Kierkegaard’s school, and comes to a new realization that God’s negation of “merely aesthetic piety” is simply the divine “no” contained in the more basic divine “yes.”113 The “no” is just the purging power of 107 Barth, “Dank und Reverenz,” p. 341. (“A Thank You and a Bow—Kierkegaard’s Reveille,” p. 99.) 108 Barth, “Dank und Reverenz,” p. 341. (“A Thank You and a Bow—Kierkegaard’s Reveille,” p. 100.) 109 Barth, “Dank und Reverenz,” pp. 341–2. (“A Thank You and a Bow—Kierkegaard’s Reveille,” pp. 100–1.) 110 Karl Barth, “Kierkegaard und die Theologen,” in Kirchenblatt für die reformierte Schweiz, vol. 119, no. 10, 1963, pp. 150–1. (English translation: “Kierkegaard and the Theologians,” in Fragments Grave and Gay, pp. 102–4.) 111 Barth, “Kierkegaard und die Theologen,” p. 150. (“Kierkegaard and the Theologians,” p. 102.) 112 Ibid. 113 Barth, “Kierkegaard und die Theologen,” p. 151. (“Kierkegaard and the Theologians,” p. 103.)

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God’s love. Consequently, the foundational theme in Christianity is not the demand for existential authenticity but rather the comforting word of God’s gracious activity with and for humanity. To conclude, the evidence from Barth’s references to Kierkegaard, quotations of Kierkegaard, and statement’s about Kierkegaard’s significance suggest that Kierkegaard began to be important to him around 1919 and gradually became less so. During the period of the composition of the second edition of The Epistle to the Romans Barth seems to have been most influenced by Practice in Christianity, and to a lesser extent by The Moment. In these texts he thought that he had found support for his own emphasis of the otherness of God and the radical difference between Christian faith and all forms of human religiosity. However, even during this early enthusiasm for Kierkegaard Barth was already expressing some reservations about Kierkegaard’s ostensible failure to adequately delight in God’s grace. During the mid-1920s Barth continued to applaud Kierkegaard’s “existential” critique of theological systems that domesticate God, and may have become more familiar with the literature ascribed to Johannes Climacus. By the period of Church Dogmatics Barth was referring to Kierkegaard less and less, and in his later writings gave evidence of no deep engagement with Kierkegaard’s works, except for a critical response to Works of Love. During his mature period Barth tended to associate Kierkegaard with Pietism and the subjective turn in theology, and to suspect that Kierkegaard was advocating a covert form of self-salvation. However, Barth continued to applaud Kierkegaard’s differentiation of genuine Christian faith from culturally accommodated bourgeois values. III. Interpretations of Barth’s Use of Kierkegaard The shifts and ambiguities in Barth’s appropriation of Kierkegaard have made possible a variety of interpretive explanations of Barth’s relation to his Danish predecessor. Looked at in one way, it seems that Barth evolved from a Kierkegaardlike diremption of worldly concerns and the rigors of the Christian life to a very nonKierkegaardian focus on the actuality of salvation apart from the transformation of the individual. Looked at in another way, Barth had always exhibited an ambivalence toward Kierkegaard, and the negative pole of that ambivalence simply became more pronounced as Barth matured. Looked at in yet another way, Barth’s familiarity with Kierkegaard may have been so inadequate that he failed to appreciate many of the basic dynamics of Kierkegaard’s authorial project, and he may have been more in agreement with Kierkegaard than he realized. The arguments of each of these interpretive tendencies must be examined and evaluated. One strategy used by many interpreters has been to take Barth’s mature retrospective reflections about his evolving relation to Kierkegaard as an essentially accurate self-analysis. Consequently, this approach typically discerns a strong influence of Kierkegaard upon Barth’s early work, an influence that dramatically wanes after the mid-1920s. For example, Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–88), the exceedingly influential Catholic interpreter of Barth, argued that Barth was correct in claiming that a more consistent methodological Christocentrism differentiated his

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later writings from his early work.114 According to Balthasar, Barth’s revolutionary shift from a dialectical method of theology to an analogical method (albeit a method based on the “analogy of faith” rather than the “analogy of being”) motivated a transition from a reliance upon Kierkegaard to a suspicion of Kierkegaard. In a more nuanced way, Eberhard Jüngel (b. 1934) echoed this analysis, maintaining that the early Barth based his theology upon an analysis of the human predicament and its dialectical structure, while the later Barth did not.115 According to Jüngel, Barth’s early identification of the dialectic of the infinite and the finite as the basic structure of human existence was indebted to Kierkegaard.116 Barth’s revision of this anthropological starting point signaled a devaluation of Kierkegaard’s theological approach. Similarly, Thomas F. Torrance (1913–2007) emphasized the movement in Barth’s career toward an intensified theological objectivism.117 Consequently, Barth came to downplay the theme of the “qualitative difference” that he had borrowed from Kierkegaard, for that emphasis tended to make descriptive language about God impossible. Niels Hansen Søe (1895–1978) intensified this interpretive theme, arguing that the early Barth was so influenced by Kierkegaard’s analysis of the experience of despair and nothingness that he pushed Kierkegaard’s critique of Christendom into a critique of the created order.118 However, according to Søe, the later Barth rejected this diastatic vision, coming to emphasize God’s covenantal relationship with humanity in Jesus Christ. Sharing this basic interpretive perspective, Robert Jenson claimed that Barth’s dialectical period was indebted to his study of Kierkegaard, from whom he acquired an appreciation of Socratic dialectic and its subversion of complacent certitude.119 Although the early Barth’s dichotomization of human values and divine values was indebted to Kierkegaard, his later emphasis of God’s solidarity with humanity was drawn from other sources. While revising the standard view that Barth broke sharply with his allegedly “dialectical” past, George Hunsinger agreed that the mature Barth’s critique of the “existential moment” was an attempt to distance himself from his earlier borrowing from Kierkegaard.120 All of these authors, often very different from one another in other regards, are united in their detection of a significant impact of Kierkegaard upon the early Barth followed by an equally significant repulsion from Kierkegaard. Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Theology of Karl Barth, trans. by John Drury, Garden City, New York: Doubleday 1972, p. 24; pp. 53–57; pp. 189–92. 115 Eberhard Jüngel, “Von der Dialektik zur Analogie. Die Schule Kierkegaards und der Einspruch Petersons,” in Barth-Studien, Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn 1982, pp. 127–79. 116 Ibid. 117 Thomas F. Torrance, Karl Barth: An Introduction to His Early Theology, 1910–1931, London: SCM Press 1962, p. 30; p. 39; pp. 42–63; p. 65; p. 83; p. 85; p.107; p. 139; p. 143. 118 Niels Hansen Søe, “Karl Barth,” in The Legacy and Interpretation of Kierkegaard, ed. by Niels Thulstrup and Marie Mikulová Thulstrup, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 1981 (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 8), p. 226. 119 Robert W. Jenson, “Karl Barth,” in The Modern Theologians, ed. by David Ford, Oxford: Blackwell 1989, p. 31. 120 George Hunsinger, How To Read Karl Barth: The Shape of His Theology, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1991, pp. 259–60. 114

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Stephen Webb gives this interpretive trajectory that emphasizes the positive influence of Kierkegaard upon the early Barth a new twist by focusing on Barth’s literary style rather than on Barth’s alleged early reliance upon Kierkegaard’s dialectical method. According to Webb, Barth’s provocative rhetorical strategies during his early period were profoundly indebted to Kierkegaard’s literary practice.121 Like Kierkegaard’s works, The Epistle to the Romans was saturated with irony, dialectical tension, disruptions, and the oscillation of affirmations and retractions. As with Kierkegaard, the rhetoric itself in Barth’s early text subverts any attempt to restate its significance in a propositional form. For Webb, Barth was not elaborating a theological position that could be called Barthianism, but was using destabilizing language to trigger a sense of impending crisis and to sabotage all comfortable conceptions of God. Barth most resembled Kierkegaard in his adoption of the exaggerated polemical style of Kierkegaard’s late writings and in his deliberate use of mystifying hyperbole.122 However, Barth pushed the irony beyond anything imagined by Kierkegaard, for in Barth’s pages the irony became so vigorously self-reflexive that he could not even unambiguously endorse his own critique of the church and Christendom.123 Webb, reflecting Barth’s self-assessment, then notes that the rhetorical influence of Kierkegaard waned as Barth theologically matured. Barth’s generous use of irony and indirection gave way to a more realistic, declarative style in his later work in which theological language does attempt to represent an objectively existing sacred reality, even if it can do so only inadequately and analogously. Some interpreters who detect a sharp divergence between Kierkegaard and Barth’s later writings seek to understand the ultimate roots of that parting of the ways. Arnold Come observes that the mature Barth emphasized the joy of reconciliation while Kierkegaard focused more on the responsible appropriation of God’s reconciling act.124 Come proposes that the essential divergence of the two thinkers concerns their understandings of divine and human personhood. According to Barth, God’s personhood is identical with God’s inner Trinitarian life, which is a life of pure relationality; consequently, perfect love is constitutive of God’s very being.125 The disanalogy between divine and human personhood is rooted in the fact that humans are not essentially loving. For Barth, genuine freedom is not the power to love or not love; rather, it is only the positive freedom to reflect God’s love, a freedom engendered by the encounter with God’s love.126 According to Come, it is this purely negative view of human freedom that is the root of Barth’s disagreement with Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard, unlike Barth, emphasizes the task of becoming a self, a task that necessarily involves the responsible use of freedom.127 Kierkegaard in 121 Stephen Webb, Refiguring Theology: The Rhetoric of Karl Barth, Albany, New York: State University of New York Press 1991, pp. 65–6. 122 Ibid., p. 125. 123 Ibid., p. 140. 124 Arnold Come, Kierkegaard as Theologian: Recovering Myself, Montreal: McGillQueen’s University Press 1997, pp. 98–130. 125 Ibid., pp. 98–106. 126 Ibid., p. 103. 127 Ibid., pp. 106–13.

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a very un-Barthian manner identifies the possibility of choosing with the presence of “spirit” in human being. Therefore, Kierkegaard, unlike Barth, valorizes individual decision. Kierkegaard also seeks to understand the psychological motivation for the negative choice of sin, for he, unlike Barth, must alert the reader to the challenges and temptations encountered in the struggle against sin. Barth, on the other hand, has no interest in exploring why individuals use freedom negatively, no interest in exploring the psychic conditions of the negative use of freedom.128 According to Come, this different evaluation of freedom also motivates Barth and Kierkegaard to treat the life of faith differently. For Barth, the human spirit is actualized not as individuals assume responsibility for their own lives, but as they participate in the personhood of Jesus Christ in whom human being has been perfected.129 Through the life of Jesus an ontological change has taken place in humanity, so that an individual’s own ostensible growth in faith, hope, and love is really an echo or reflection of Jesus’ life.130 Therefore, for Barth there is no point in analyzing the struggle to be hopeful, faithful, and loving, as Kierkegaard did so zealously throughout his literature. Other commentators have tended to minimize Kierkegaard’s influence upon Barth, even claiming that during the period of The Epistle to the Romans Barth’s theological sensibilities were fundamentally different from those of Kierkegaard. For example, Michael Beintker argues that Kierkegaard’s influence upon Barth had never been as significant as that of Overbeck.131 Similarly, Bruce McCormack maintains that even in his “dialectical” period Barth had not based his theological project upon an analysis of the individual’s appropriation of revelation, whereas that personal internalization had been a central concern informing all of Kierkegaard’s work.132 According to McCormack, even as Barth wrote The Epistle to the Romans he was not essentially interested in the ordo salutis, the process by which salvation is appropriated by human beings, because excessive attention to the ordo, treating it as a structuring principle for theological reflection, would transmute theology into anthropology. For Barth, an analysis of the dialectical tensions of existence is not a precondition for understanding the divine dialectic of judgment and grace. McCormack concludes that even in this early period Barth was focused on the joyful reality that “Yes” is the dominant note in the dialectic of God’s “No” and God’s “Yes”; divine grace is already triumphant for the early Barth. McCormack restricts the influence of Kierkegaard upon Barth to Barth’s growing criticism of Christianity as a religion.133 Only Kierkegaard’s attack upon Christendom had any lasting significance for Barth. Similarly, Gary Dorrien argues that Barth’s mature work was not a sharp break with his Kierkegaard-influenced early writings, for he never had been a genuine Ibid., pp. 112–30. Ibid., p. 118. 130 Ibid., p. 120. 131 Michael Beintker, Die Dialektik in der “dialektischen Theologie” Karl Barths, Munich: Kaiser 1987, pp. 230–8. 132 McCormack, Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development, pp. 235–40. 133 Ibid., p. 240. 128 129

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Kierkegaardian.134 Dorrien admits that in the early 1920s Barth did borrow the vocabulary of “the moment” from Kierkegaard in order to describe the eruption of the eternal into time, for Barth sought to avoid all talk of the eternal unfolding itself organically in time. Kierkegaard’s language of “paradox” was useful for accentuating the theme that the new humanity, the New Adam in Jesus Christ, is not a natural dynamic inherent in the historical process. But Barth, unlike Kierkegaard, never posited an anthropological starting point for his theology; Barth never began his reflections with an existential analysis of human experience and its dialectical structure.135 Barth’s work, even his early writings, had always been based on the theme of the self-revelation of God, a motif whose implications Barth came to progressively accentuate. Yet other interpreters claim that the similarities between Barth and Kierkegaard are more significant than Barth himself admitted, and that the similarities are evident even in Barth’s mature period. This approach argues that Barth, particularly in Church Dogmatics, misinterpreted Kierkegaard and thereby failed to realize how similar his own theological convictions were to Kierkegaard’s. In this vein Alastair McKinnon argued that the later Barth was responding to a “phantom Kierkegaard” who had been fabricated by the existentialist theologians and whose contours were suggested by the misleading German translations of Kierkegaard’s works. In those unfortunate pages the translators made Kierkegaard sound suspiciously like Nietzsche.136 Moreover, Barth mistakenly ascribed the opinions of the pseudonyms, particularly those of Climacus concerning the incomprehensibility of the paradox, to Kierkegaard and was insensitive to the indirection of Kierkegaard’s rhetorical strategies.137 This imaginary Kierkegaard was a fideist and an irrationalist who based Christianity on a logical contradiction. For McKinnon, Kierkegaard himself did not posit a logically absurd Christianity, but only ascribed such views to Climacus because this was the way that Christianity appeared to someone who was not yet a person of faith, as Climacus himself was clearly not.138 According to McKinnon, Kierkegaard’s veronymous authorship portrays faith as being intelligible to believers. Faith exhibits a kind of rationality to those who accept it. Consequently, the real Kierkegaard could have applauded Barth’s turn to Anselm and the theme of faith seeking understanding. The paradoxical Kierkegaard whom Barth valorized in the second edition of The Epistle to the Romans and then proceeded to condemn in Church Dogmatics was nothing but a chimera. In a similar way Murray Rae argues that the mature Barth was wrong to conclude that Kierkegaard’s highlighting of works of love was symptomatic of a failure to sufficiently emphasize the objectivity of reconciliation, leaving the reader

Gary Dorrien, The Barthian Revolt in Modern Theology, Louisville: Westminster/ John Knox 2000, pp. 61–71. 135 Ibid., pp. 69–71. 136 Alastair McKinnon, “Barth’s Relation to Kierkegaard: Some Further Light,” Canadian Journal of Theology, vol. 13, 1967, pp. 31–41. 137 Ibid., p. 32. 138 Ibid., pp. 37–41. 134

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overwhelmed by the burden of imitating Christ the Prototype.139 Rather, Kierkegaard was merely assuming that anyone who does not appreciate the stringency of God’s expectations will not value the atonement. Rae points out that Kierkegaard’s writings move from the presentation of the stringency of God’s requirement to the reassurance of being uplifted by grace. Barth agreed with Kierkegaard that anything less than unconditional obedience to God is an implicit denial of who God is, and therefore Barth should have realized that, for Kierkegaard, the recognition of human failure motivates the embrace of Christ’s atoning work.140 For Kierkegaard, the recognition of human incapacity is not gloomy or sad, but rather uplifting. In fact, the works of love that Kierkegaard lionizes are motivated by gratitude for grace and are a joy rather than an heteronomous imposition. According to Kierkegaard, love is not the grim judicial duty owed to God, as Barth feared that Kierkegaard was suggesting, but rather is the enactment of the new life inspired by grace. Rae concludes that Barth should have recognized that Kierkegaard based the imperative to love on the indicative of God’s grace, just as Barth himself did.141 Kierkegaard actually agrees with Barth that works are not meritorious and are not motivated by constraint. Rae has not been alone in arguing that Barth underestimated the priority of grace in Kierkegaard, for Timothy Polk has contended that the love commandment in Kierkegaard’s writings is really God’s promise articulated in the future indicative tense that the individual shall love.142 In a similar way Paul Martens agrees that grace is primary in Kierkegaard’s account of Christian love, as it is in Barth’s.143 Along these same lines Philip Ziegler has argued that Barth’s accusation that Kierkegaard reduces Christianity to subjectivity is erroneous. Barth’s error here obscures the similarity between the two thinkers. Ziegler points out that in Kierkegaard’s ruminations on the issue of Adler’s alleged revelatory experience Kierkegaard made it clear that Christian revelation has an irreducibly objective dimension. Christian revelation requires a source other than the individual’s subjectivity and has as its object something existing beyond the individual.144 Ziegler adds that Barth’s apprehensions that Kierkegaard encouraged a gloomy legalism were misplaced, for Kierkegaard did repeatedly affirm the priority of grace in the Christian life. However, Ziegler concedes that Barth correctly sensed that Kierkegaard did not fully appreciate the good news that God’s grace has triumphed over sin. By insisting that penitence must be cultivated before grace can be appropriated, Kierkegaard 139 Murray Rae, “Kierkegaard, Barth, and Bonhoeffer: Conceptions of the Relations between Grace and Works,” in For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourself!, ed. by Robert L. Perkins, Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press 2002 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 21) pp. 143–67. 140 Ibid., p. 152. 141 Ibid., p. 166. 142 Timothy H. Polk, The Biblical Kierkegaard: Reading by the Rule of Faith, Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press 1997, pp. 46–7. 143 Paul Martens, “ ‘You Shall Love’: Kierkegaard, Kant, and the Interpretation of Matthew 22:39,” in Works of Love, ed. by Robert Perkins, Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press 1999 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 16), pp. 57–78. 144 Philip Ziegler, “Barth’s Criticism of Kierkegaard: A Striking Out at Phantasms?” International Journal of Systematic Theology, vol. 9, no. 4, 2007, pp. 434–51.

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placed God’s “No” before God’s “Yes,” while Barth did the reverse. Concerning the criticism that Kierkegaard was excessively individualistic, Ziegler objects that a form of sociability is outlined in Works of Love, for Kierkegaard did entertain a vision of the church as a gathered community of committed disciples. Nevertheless, Ziegler agrees with Barth that this ecclesiology fails to do adequate justice to the church’s constitutive role in nurturing of faith. Other interpreters, also detecting a similarity between Kierkegaard and the later Barth, argue that Barth’s critique of Kierkegaard’s exposition of love was based on a misunderstanding that obscured a deeper similarity. According to Sylvia Walsh, Kierkegaard did not juxtapose eros and agape as sharply as Barth claimed he did.145 Kierkegaard, like Barth, did envision a form of agape that is capable of transforming eros, as the individual learns to love the beloved as a neighbor. David Gouwens adds that in Kierkegaard’s pages love is not an abstract demand but is the fruit of the appreciation of the divine love enacted in the life of Jesus.146 According to Kierkegaard, all human love arises from God’s love; consequently Barth was wrong in suggesting that love has salvific power for Kierkegaard. Some interpreters take a more complex mediating position, discerning many discontinuities between Kierkegaard and Barth, but detecting some continuities of which Barth himself was unaware. According to David Gouwens, both Kierkegaard and Barth can be construed as theologians who sought to describe the underlying grammar of authoritative Christian teachings, although Barth did not appreciate their similarity in this regard.147 Barth was mistaken in supposing that Kierkegaard’s understanding of the Christian faith was governed by a logically prior analysis of human experience and in assuming that Kierkegaard’s focus on the “how” of becoming Christian aligned him with Schleiermacher’s methodological turn to subjectivity. Gouwens concludes that Kierkegaard did articulate a strong sense of the objective saving work of Christ and did not reduce salvation to an inner experience. However, a more subtle difference between Kierkegaard and Barth can be discerned.148 For Kierkegaard, soteriology does include a human response to God’s gracious action; he assumes that salvation does not become efficacious for an individual until a transformation occurs in the life of the believer. This conviction does conflict with Barth’s soteriological objectivism that ascribes salvation entirely to God’s gracious action in and through Christ.149 This attention to the human role in salvation accounts for Kierkegaard’s greater interest in natural knowledge of God and in the doctrine of creation than Barth would ever entertain. This also accounts for Kierkegaard’s insistence that sin-consciousness is a prerequisite for faith, as over against Barth’s refusal to stipulate how persons come to faith or to formulate an Sylvia Walsh, “Forming the Heart: The Role of Love in Kierkegaard,” in The Grammar of the Heart: Thinking with Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein, ed. by Richard R. Bell, San Francisco: Harper and Row 1988, pp. 234–56. 146 David J. Gouwens, Kierkegaard as Religious Thinker, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996, pp. 181–91. 147 Ibid., p. 20. 148 Ibid., p. 149. 149 Ibid., p. 70. 145

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ordo salutis. Anti-Climacus’ claim that only a person in despair can hear the gospel is indeed a far cry from Barth’s conviction that the operations of grace are free and unpredictable. For Gouwens, Kierkegaard neither reduces theology to a description of human subjectivity as did Schleiermacher, nor embraces a theological objectivism that downplays the experiential dimension of faith, as did Barth. IV. Barth’s Appropriation of Kierkegaard Reconsidered A closer examination of the contexts and rhetorical purposes of Barth’s citations of Kierkegaard may clarify the nature of his relationship to Kierkegaard, a relationship which, as we have seen, is the subject of divergent interpretations. Attention will be given to which works of Kierkegaard Barth was considering at any given time. This will enable us tentatively to reconstruct the impression of Kierkegaard that Barth was likely to have had. Then the force of Kierkegaard’s cited words in their original literary contexts will be compared to Barth’s use of them in order to determine the unique features of Barth’s construals of their meaning and to detect Barth’s possible divergences from their plausible range of implications. As we have seen, Barth’s familiarity with Kierkegaard’s corpus may not have been all that extensive. We know that early in his career he became familiar with works like Practice in Christianity and The Moment, texts that presented the Christian life in its ideality and exposed the short-comings of Christendom. These themes formed his basic impression of Kierkegaard. Some time later he became at least moderately acquainted with the literature of Climacus, as well as Fear and Trembling and Works of Love. The later reinforced his construal of Kierkegaard as a religious rigorist, and the pseudonymous works contributed to his interpretation of Kierkegaard as a Pietistic champion of subjectivity. This selection did not give him a well-rounded overview of Kierkegaard’s theological thought. Because of its centrality in Barth’s early positive appropriation of Kierkegaard, the citations of Kierkegaard in The Epistle to the Romans must be explored with some care. In this text one of Barth’s longest direct quotations from Kierkegaard is taken from Practice in Christianity, the book that Barth cited most frequently at that time. Barth quotes: Remove from the Christian Religion, as Christendom has done, its ability to shock, and Christianity, by becoming a direct communication, is altogether destroyed. It then becomes a tiny superficial thing, capable neither of inflicting deep wounds nor of healing them; by discovering an unreal and merely human compassion, it forgets the qualitative distinction between man and God.150 Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., p. 75. (The Epistle to the Romans, pp. 98–9.) See Søren Kierkegaard, Einübung in Christentum, p. 124. The English edition reads: “But take away the possibility of offense, as has been done in Christendom. And all Christianity becomes direct communication, 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.” (SKS 12, 143 / PC, 140.)

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In Practice in Christianity these words occur in the section entitled “The Categories of Offense,” in which the “offense” in question is the impossibility of recognizing God directly in the Incarnation. According to Anti-Climacus, the opacity of the Incarnation is profoundly troubling because human beings desperately crave the finality and closure of a direct revelation. However, God must withhold such certainty in order to allow room for the self-commitment that faith requires. The direct recognizability of the divine presence would eliminate the freedom to respond that is constitutive of faith. The free giving of oneself to God in love is such a blessed experience that God, out of love, makes this freedom possible. Consequently, God veils God’s own self out of love, for the absence of a veil would make freedom impossible. Humanity, of course, may resent the impediment of the veil, may fail to see through it, or may misunderstand God’s motive for the veiling. To make the revelation of God in the Incarnation even more ambiguous, God suffers inwardly and outwardly because this ambiguous demonstration of love can be misunderstood so easily and may actually repel those whom God is trying to reach. The unrecognizability of God’s love is exacerbated precisely because it involves the prospect of divine suffering; humanity is further offended by the thought that divine love could be susceptible to suffering. For Anti-Climacus in this context the most profound offensiveness of the Incarnation is due to the spectacle of the suffering involved in God’s free decision, motivated by love, to become human. More particularly, the most intense suffering is due to the necessity of communicating this love indirectly through the ambiguity of the Incarnation, and therefore generating the possibility that the love will be misunderstood and rejected. Here the “qualitative difference” points to the difference between merely human notions of compassion and God’s self-emptying, suffering compassion. What individuals may well fail to comprehend is the connection between God’s love and God’s enabling of human freedom, a freedom necessary for the bliss of self-giving. Barth, reading this section of Practice in Christianity, appropriated the theme of the dialectic of revelation in and through concealment. But in Barth’s elaboration the elusive truth that is indirectly revealed is the fact that the promises of God have been fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Jesus paradoxically reveals divine forgiveness, the establishment of a new order, and the perfecting of human being. For Barth, it is the incredible nature of God’s gift of salvation and the fact that it has nothing to do with the human religious quest that potentially offends humanity. This does differ from Kierkegaard’s emphasis. For Kierkegaard the paradoxical and offensive quality of the revelation was concentrated in the hidden truth that God’s love must encourage freedom, must risk misunderstanding, and must suffer. As Anti-Climacus develops this theme, it becomes clear that the love that the individual should imitate is a love that similarly suffers in order to stimulate transformation in the beloved. Barth shifts the focus from freedom, provocation, and suffering to the gratuity of salvation that undercuts human projects of self-salvation. Barth’s other lengthy cluster of quotations of Kierkegaard in The Epistle to the Romans is also drawn from this same section of Practice in Christianity, “The Categories of Offense.” Quoting Kierkegaard, Barth warns about the “fibrous, undialectical, blatant, clerical appeal that Christ was God, since he was so visibly

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and directly.”151 Barth, again quoting Kierkegaard, prays that Christians be preserved from the blasphemy of those who without being terrified and afraid in the presence of God, without the agony of death that is the birth-pang of faith, without the trembling which is the first requirement of adoration, without the panic of the possibility of scandal, hope to have direct knowledge of that which cannot be directly known…and do not rather say that He was truly and verily God, because He was beyond our comprehension.152

Barth further borrows Kierkegaard’s words, ironically proposing that Jesus was “a very serious-minded man, almost as earnest as a parson,” a depiction which a respectable denizen of Christendom would approve.153 In the context of all these passages ascribed to Anti-Climacus the unrecognizability, the incognito, is due to the fact that God assumed the form of a servant, appearing in abject lowliness. In contradiction to all expectations concerning the proper behavior of divinity, God suffers as a consequence of God’s shocking decision to become a human being. As we have seen, Anti-Climacus explains that the incognito must be maintained in order for a free response to God to be possible. The most grievous aspect of Christ’s suffering is that out of love he must conceal himself, making rejection possible. It is significant that Anti-Climacus opens this section with a discussion of reduplication, asserting that in the case of Christ’s pedagogy the teaching is reduplicated in the life of the teacher and is therefore also to be reduplicated in the life of the learner.154 The teaching in this instance is intended to make the recipient of the communication “self-active” and “earnest.”155 Anti-Climacus elaborates this theme further, stating that the recipient of a communication that contains a “sign of contradiction” does not immediately know how to interpret it, as in the case of a statement that is an ambiguous unity of jest or earnestness. The interpretation of such a paradoxical communication is an expression of the subjectivity of the recipient. Through the act of interpretation, the recipient defines the recipient’s own self. The individual’s choice of a particular interpretation is crucial for the individual’s identity. In this Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., p. 264. (The Epistle to the Romans, p. 279.) See Søren Kierkegaard, Einübung in Christentum, p. 113. The English edition reads: “the nonsensicaldialectical climax of clerical roaring: to such a degree was Christ God that one could immediately and directly perceive it.” (SKS 12, 133 / PC, 128.) 152 Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., p. 264. (The Epistle to the Romans, p. 279.) See Søren Kierkegaard, Einübung in Christentum, pp. 119–20. The English edition reads: “…then without any fear and trembling before the Deity, without the death throes that are the birth pangs of faith, without the shudder that is the beginning of worship, without the horror of the possibility of offense, one immediately and directly comes to know what cannot be known directly.” (SKS 12, 139 / PC, 135.) 153 Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., p. 264. (The Epistle to the Romans, p. 279.) See Kierkegaard, Einübung in Christentum, p. 119. The English edition reads: “a kind of earnest public figure, almost as earnest as the pastor.” (SKS 12, 139 / PC, 135.) 154 See Kierkegaard, Einübung in Christentum, p. 108 (which corresponds to SKS 12, 128 / PC, 123). 155 See Kierkegaard, Einübung in Christentum, p. 110 (which corresponds to SKS 12, 130 / PC, 125). 151

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way the “sign of contradiction,” the paradoxical message, functions as a “mirror,” revealing the character of the individual’s heart, for the heart is disclosed by the way the individual interprets the riddle.156 The riddle is that God becomes lowly out of love, risking being misunderstood and rejected, and therefore suffers the most extreme anguish in order to stimulate the growth of the beloved. This pattern of suffering love should be reduplicated in the life of the beloved. In this section AntiClimacus reiterates the point that this reduplication of suffering love is what it means to exist in the profound sense, and equates such love with the type of self-denial in regard to the learner that Socrates exhibited.157 Barth, however, does not emphasize these themes when he quotes Practice in Christianity. Rather, he associates the indirection mentioned in the passage from Kierkegaard with the “otherness” of God that undermines and dissolves all human categories and values. The offensiveness of the indirect revelation is due to humanity’s confrontation with a reality unlike any other, a reality that transforms everything. The hidden revelation lays bear the corruption of the present order and offers the hope of redemption. The “incognito” is the hiddenness of the fact that in the life of Christ human culture, including humanity’s allegedly highest values, is being judged, condemned, and negated. In Jesus, who is a sign of human being in general, “sin-controlled flesh” is revealed to be on the path to perdition and dissolution.158 The incomprehension and the possibility of offense is rooted in the counter-intuitive nature of God’s rejection of the seemingly noblest achievements of human culture. Barth interprets the incognito of the Incarnation not as the self-abasement of a suffering God, but as God’s unanticipated exposure of humanity’s sinfulness. Barth remarks that “we recognize ourselves in the Son of God and see in Him our flesh dissolved and our sin condemned.”159 For Barth, this word of judgment is also a word of redemption. We should also see in Jesus Christ the creation of a new humanity, a righteous humanity. The incongruous revelation announces the availability of a new possibility for human existence not resident in natural human capacities. This pattern of putting Kierkegaard’s words to a use somewhat different from their original employment is typical of Barth during this early period. In Epistle to the Romans Barth also quoted from a volume of selections from Kierkegaard’s journals.160 In the quoted passage, Kierkegaard describes God as a love that wills to be loved in return, and further claims that humans are restless until they have been refashioned in the image of God’s love. Barth, however, uses Kierkegaard’s words to point to the “terrible disturbance” that the genuine revelation of God has for complacent human ethics. In Barth’s appropriation of the passage, it functions to expose the idolatrous nature of human conceptions of righteousness and to humble See Kierkegaard, Einübung in Christentum, p. 121 (which corresponds to SKS 12, 140 / PC, 136). 157 See Kierkegaard, Einübung in Christentum, p. 114 (which corresponds to SKS 12, 134 / PC, 129). 158 Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., pp. 260–8. (The Epistle to the Romans, pp. 275–83.) 159 Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., p. 267. (The Epistle to the Romans, p. 282.) 160 Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., p. 426. (The Epistle to the Romans, pp. 438–9.) See Kierkegaard, Buch des Richters. Seine Tagebücher 1833–1855 in Auswahl, p. 104. 156

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humanity through the exposure of its folly. Here as elsewhere Barth exhibits a tendency to treat the paradoxical nature of God’s revelation as the manifestation of the divine law that exposes sin. The revelation functions first as a word of judgment and then as a promise of reconciliation. Kierkegaard, on the other hand, had suggested in this passage that the love of God should be reduplicated in the life of the faithful individual. In The Epistle to the Romans Barth’s mention of Kierkegaard as a witness to the theme of “the eternal worth of each single one” echoes another theme in Practice in Christianity.161 Barth links this worth with God’s constant judgment and justification of the individual. The individual’s quest for self-salvation is negated, but nevertheless the individual is graciously affirmed by God. In the pages of Anti-Climacus, however, the motif of the worth of “the single individual” plays a rather different role. Anti-Climacus identifies this worth as the superior value of the individual’s relationship to God and the individual’s concern for eternal happiness in contrast to the worth of the established order.162 In Practice in Christianity the individual’s worth is associated with the theme of the spiritual struggle to live a faithful life and the metaphor of life as a trial; Anti-Climacus reminds the reader that everyone will go before God as a single individual on Judgment Day.163 Here, too, there is a difference in nuance between Kierkegaard’s original text and Barth’s appropriation of it. For Kierkegaard, the value of a life resides in the quality of the individual’s passionate struggle to be faithful, while for Barth the value of a life is conferred by God’s negation followed by God’s affirmation. Barth’s celebrated use of the phrase “the infinite qualitative difference” between time and eternity also began to differ from Kierkegaard’s original employment.164 Although this phrase was used in many different ways by Kierkegaard, it generally indicated some aspect of the dichotomy between worldly values and godly values. Similarly, in the pages of Barth, this “qualitative difference” does not suggest a metaphysical dualism of eternal and temporal spheres. Rather, it points to the difference between God’s soteriological dialectic of judgment and grace on the one hand and all human values and concepts on the other. For both Kierkegaard and Barth, the “qualitative difference” was not an ontological category but rather a rhetorical trope used to communicate a sense of the destabilizing impact of God’s self-revelation upon human existence. The mature Barth did not reject this theme, but rather developed its nuances in a particular direction, progressively emphasizing the fact that the “infinite qualitative difference” between God and humanity is really God’s paradoxical solidarity with humanity in Jesus Christ. The gratuity of the Incarnation becomes the principle locus of “the qualitative difference,” whereas Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., p. 93. (The Epistle to the Romans, p. 116.) See Kierkegaard, Einübung in Christentum, pp. 72–7 (which corresponds to SKS 12, 95–100 / PC, 86–91). 162 See Kierkegaard, Einübung in Christentum, pp. 72–7 (which corresponds to SKS 12, 95–100 / PC, 86–91). 163 See Kierkegaard, Einübung in Christentum, p. 194 (which corresponds to SKS 12, 217–18 / PC, 223). 164 See Karl Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., p. xii. (The Epistle to the Romans, p. 10.) 161

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for Kierkegaard it more typically suggested the disparity between suffering selfsacrificial Christian love and the more prosaic virtues of bourgeois civilization. Barth’s claim that “the subjective is the objective” also did not exactly correspond to the significance of the “subjectivity” motif in Kierkegaard.165 When he ascribed this concept to Kierkegaard, Barth was arguing that in the Incarnation God revealed God’s own self through the assumption of the veil of human flesh, thereby becoming “objective” in human history in order to manifest God’s “subjectivity” (intentions, dispositions, etc.). Barth added that this becoming objective continuously depended upon the divine will, for in the Incarnation the Second Person of the Trinity continuously willed to be self-revealed through the flesh of Jesus. Consequently, even in becoming objective in the Incarnation, God remained the supremely free subject, and still retains that freedom now in revealing God’s own self to contemporary believers through the story of the Incarnation. For Kierkegaard, however, the tensive relation of subjectivity and objectivity in the Climacean literature was intended to suggest that certain appropriate forms of pathos are constitutive of the very meaning of religious concepts. Barth applied the theme to the Incarnation, while Kierkegaard had applied it to the individual’s religious life. Barth’s final major citation of a Kierkegaardian text, Works of Love, may betray a failure to do justice to the entire book. Barth writes: “If only the final impression left by this book were not that of the detective skill with which non-Christian love is tracked down to its last hiding-place, examined, shown to be worthless and hailed before the judge.”166 Barth goes on to critique the “unlovely, inquisitorial and terribly judicial character that is so distinctive of Kierkegaard in general.”167 According to Barth, Kierkegaard delighted in ferreting out deficiencies in the natural varieties of human love. Over against what he took to be Kierkegaard’s position, Barth proposed that God’s grace is the source of both human eros and agape; God’s grace can transform and perfect creaturely loves. Moreover, Barth adds that Kierkegaard was wrong to emphasize the command to love, thereby treating it as a law imposed upon human beings rather than as a fruit of the gospel of grace. Rejecting Kierkegaard’s talk of love as commanded by God, Barth maintains that the gospel precedes law; the good news is not that we are ordered to love but that we will love in response to God’s love. In these criticisms of Kierkegaard Barth failed to notice that in Works of Love the “inquisitorial” promptings to rigorous self-examination occur in the broader context of praising Christian love’s intrinsic joys and blessings. Moreover, he failed to attend to the myriad ways in which Kierkegaard sought to portray the attractions of the life of love so that the reader would not experience the law as an

Barth, Unterricht in der christlichen Religion, p. 168. (The Göttingen Dogmatics: Instruction in the Christian Religion, p. 137.) See Kierkegaard, Philosophische Brocken / Abschliessende unwissenschaftliche Nachschrift, ed. and trans. by Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Eugen Diederichs 1910 (vol. 2 in Gesammelte Werke), pp. 265– 323. 166 See Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, IV/2, pp. 848–9. (Church Dogmatics, IV/2, p. 747.) 167 See Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, IV/2, p. 886. (Church Dogmatics, IV/2, p. 782.) 165

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extrinsic and onerous imposition. Barth’s reading of Kierkegaard on this score was indeed superficial and unnuanced, as Walsh, Rae, and Martens have argued.168 Barth’s general remarks about Kierkegaard during the period of Church Dogmatics do accurately identify some areas of real divergence, although Barth’s interpretation of Kierkegaard is one-dimensional. Barth’s recurrent accusation that Kierkegaard was much closer to Pietism than Barth could approve was well founded. Kierkegaard insisted on clarifying theological themes that had been obscured by Christendom by situating them in the context of the various forms of pathos that constitute the Christian life. The meaning of the doctrines is a function of their use in building up the individual’s religious life. Consequently, he did make the elucidation of the passional dynamics of faith a central purpose of his theological writing. In this Kierkegaard was indeed the heir of one aspect of the Pietist movement. However, Barth was wrong to conclude that this move reduced theology to anthropology. Kierkegaard did not stealthily attempt to translate language about God into talk about the affective states of pious individuals. Kierkegaard’s point was merely that the doctrinal language referring to God, Christ, and every other topic of theological interest requires a context of appropriate passions in order to have significance. For Kierkegaard, the descriptions of those appropriate Christian passions are not deduced from an analysis of generic human existence, but rather are authoritatively given by revelation. Barth was also correct in discerning a difference between himself and Kierkegaard concerning the proper relationship of law and gospel in the Christian life. Kierkegaard’s pattern of presenting the Christian life reflected the Lutheran law–gospel sequence, for Kierkegaard did see gratitude for forgiveness as requiring a prior experience of profound guilt, a pervasive moral and religious dissatisfaction with one’s own self. In fact, Kierkegaard was generally intent upon encouraging his readers to develop all the discontents and yearnings that would motivate them to appreciate the attractions of the Christian life (as well as its offensiveness). The bad news about human life must precede the good news, so that people will welcome the good news. The mature Barth reversed this pattern and came to advocate a radically different gospel–law pattern. For Barth, joy over the Incarnation should be the primary note in Christian proclamation, which then makes possible the admission of sin. Sin-consciousness need not precede faith; it is not a necessary precondition for coming to have faith. Faith, for Barth, is a free gift of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit operates in unpredictable ways. Therefore no standard motivational pattern for embracing Christianity can be identified. Barth’s retrospective remarks show that he realized that his inversion of the law–gospel pattern caused him to lose interest in any Kierkegaardian exploration of anxiety, despair, or guilt. Barth’s fear that Kierkegaard was covertly presenting a very subtle form of works righteousness in which earnestness had redemptive value was not entirely warranted. Kierkegaard was careful to present the Christian life as both a task and a gift. In Kierkegaard’s works faith is indeed often described as an act, a risky See Walsh, “Forming the Heart: The Role of Love in Kierkegaard”; Rae, “Kierkegaard, Barth, and Bonhoeffer: Conceptions of the Relations between Grace and Works”; and Martens, “ ‘You Shall Love’: Kierkegaard, Kant, and the Interpretation of Matthew 22:39.” 168

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venture. However, he also describes faith as a sheer gift, and generally refuses to stipulate how the “gift” and “task” portrayals can be synthesized. Kierkegaard both exhorts the reader to work out her own salvation in fear and trembling and to realize that without God we can do nothing. Nevertheless, Barth was correct in realizing that Kierkegaard devoted much more attention to the earnestness and the self-assumption of responsibility dimensions of faith than Barth himself did. For Barth, a concentration on the quality of the individual’s own faith was theologically inappropriate and spiritually deleterious. Barth’s mature reservations about Kierkegaard share a common theme. Kierkegaard remained soteriocentric while Barth became radically Christocentric. For Kierkegaard, Christianity is the drama of the individual’s transition from a worldly, prudential, and self-gratifying way of life to a life of extravagant love for God and neighbor. Of course the whole existential drama is sustained by God upon whom the individual must rely. Of course the individual will fail to adequately instantiate that love and must have recourse to God’s forgiveness. But the whole saga is governed by the drama of the individual’s struggle to instantiate an ideal. For Barth, on the other hand, the essence of the Christian message is the triumph of God’s reconciling grace in Jesus Christ, a triumph that eclipses the significance of the individual’s struggle to respond appropriately to God’s love. V. Conclusion Most of the interpreters of the Barth–Kierkegaard relation have discovered some important aspect of Barth’s response to Kierkegaard, but have often failed to do justice to other aspects. Even if Barth did draw from many sources, Kierkegaard did significantly influence Barth during his early period, as von Balthasar and many others have recognized. Dissenting authors like McCormack and Dorrien, who tend to disagree with this assessment, may exaggerate the early Barth’s lack of interest in the subjective conditions for the appropriation of revelation, for in The Epistle to the Romans Barth certainly was intent on encouraging the experience of God’s absence. Moreover, from Kierkegaard Barth also found encouragement to distinguish the ways of God from the mores of Christendom. That sense of the utter distinctiveness of Christianity never left Barth, as McCormack has aptly noted. As Barth matured, he increasingly identified Kierkegaard with the subjective orientation of Pietism and existentialism, and therefore his interest in Kierkegaard lessened, a phenomenon noted by almost all interpreters. Gouwens and Rae correctly argue that Barth’s assessment of Kierkegaard during his later period failed to appreciate the dialectical nature of Kierkegaard’s corpus, in which the motif of God’s objective gracious action was held in tension with the theme of earnestness and responsibility. As McKinnon and others have alleged, this may have been partly due to Barth’s lack of familiarity with the entire Kierkegaardian corpus and his tendency to take the statements of Climacus and the other pseudonyms at face value. In short, Barth failed adequately to appreciate the literary quality of Kierkegaard’s work, and missed the aspects of joyful, trusting self-abandonment. As Gouwens has argued, Barth therefore was not able to discern the deep note of absolute dependence

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on God’s grace that sounds in Kierkegaard’s writings, qualifying Kierkegaard’s emphasis of responsibility. Barth also failed to recognize the ways in which the many interwoven and sometimes contrapuntal themes in Kierkegaard’s corpus as a whole were suggested by the morphology of the Christian faith, and not by an independent analysis of human subjectivity. In that sense, Kierkegaard was not the subjective reductionist that Barth imagined him to be; the two Christian thinkers were closer than Barth realized. Nevertheless, the mature Barth was right to emphasize his divergence from Kierkegaard in one crucial regard, a theme that both Come and Gouwens stress. Barth was correct in sensing that his own Christocentric orientation and its concomitant cosmic optimism was significantly different from Kierkegaard’s focus on the drama of the individual’s salvation. In the passages that Barth quoted, Kierkegaard was encouraging the individual to lead a life of self-sacrificial, suffering, Christ-like love. For Kierkegaard, even talk of God’s grace and dependence on God’s grace requires this passional context of responding appropriately to the shocking prospect of a God who suffers out of love. The mature Barth, however, was not as impressed by the offensiveness of divine (and human) self-sacrificial love, but was more enamored of the sheer attractiveness of God’s loving fellowship with humanity. At root, Kierkegaard and the mature Barth had different responses to God’s love, Kierkegaard feeling the attraction and continuing repulsion of an extravagant love that shatters human self-interest, and Barth wanting to know nothing but the joy of a divine love that gives itself unstintingly.

Bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Barth’s Corpus Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., Munich: Kaiser 1922, pp. v–vi; p. xii; pp. 15–16; p. 71; p. 75; p. 77; pp. 85–9; p. 93; p. 96; pp. 98–9; p. 114; p. 141; p. 145; p. 236; p. 261; p. 264; p. 267; p. 319; p. 325; p. 381; p. 400; pp. 426–7; p. 455; p. 481; pp. 483–4. (English translation: The Epistle to the Romans, trans. by Edwyn C. Hoskyns, London: Oxford University Press 1933, pp. 3–4; p. 10; p. 37; pp. 38–9; p. 94; pp. 98–9; p. 100; pp. 108–12; p. 116; p. 118; p. 121; p. 136; p. 162; p. 166; p. 252; p. 276; p. 279; p. 282; p. 333; p. 338; pp. 394–5; p. 400; pp. 438–40; p. 468; p. 495; pp. 497–8.) Das Wort Gottes und die Theologie, Munich: Kaiser 1924, p. 91; p. 164. (English translation: The Word of God and the Word of Man, trans. by Douglas Horton, New York: Harper Brothers 1957, p. 84; p. 195.) Die christliche Dogmatik im Entwurf, Munich: Christian Kaiser Verlag 1927, vol. 1; pp. 70–2; p. 404. Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, vols. I–IV, Zollikon-Zürich: Zürich 1932–70, I/1, p. 19; II/2, p. 338; III/2, p. 22; pp. 133–4; III/3, p. 428; IV/I, p. 165; p. 381; p. 769; p. 828; p. 844; IV/2, p. 125; pp. 848–9; p. 886; IV/3, 1st half, p. 467; IV/3, 2nd half, p. 572. (English translation: Church Dogmatics, trans. and ed. by G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark 1957–75, I/1, pp. 20–1; II/2, p. 308; III/2, p. 21; pp. 112–13; III/3, p. 371; IV/1, p. 150; p. 345; p. 689; p. 741; p. 755; IV/2, p. 113; p. 747; pp. 781–2; IV/3; 1st half, p. 405; IV/3, 2nd half, p. 498.) “Nein! Antwort am Emil Brunner,” Theologische Existenz heute, no. 14, 1934, pp. 50–2; pp. 55–6. (English translation: “No!,” in Karl Barth and Emil Brunner, Natural Theology, trans. by Peter Fraenkel, London: Centenary Press 1946, pp. 114–16; pp. 120–1.) Rudolf Bultmann. Ein Versuch, ihm zu verstehen, Stuttgart: Evangelischer Verlag 1952, pp. 47–8. (English translation: “Rudolf Bultmann—An Attempt to Understand Him,” in Kerygma and Myth II, ed. by H.W. Bartsch, trans. by Reginald Fuller, London: SPCK 1962, pp. 121–3.) “Dank und Reverenz,” Evangelische Theologie, vol. 23, no. 7, 1963, pp. 337–42. (English translation: “A Thank You and a Bow—Kierkegaard’s Reveille,” in Fragments Grave and Gay, ed. by Martin Rumscheidt, trans. by Eric Mosbacher, London: Collins 1971, pp. 95–101.) “Kierkegaard und die Theologen,” in Kirchenblatt für die reformierte Schweiz, vol. 119, no. 10, 1963, pp. 150–1. (English translation: “Kierkegaard and the Theologians,” in Fragments Grave and Gay, ed. by Martin Rumscheidt, trans. by Eric Mosbacher, London: Collins 1971, pp. 102–4.)

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Unterricht in der christlichen Religion, vols. 1–3, Zurich: Theologischer Verlag 1985–2003 (vol. 5 in Karl Barth, Gesamtwerke II: Akademische Werke, Zurich: Theologischer Verlag 1973ff.), vol. 1, Prolegomena 1924, ed. by Hannelotte Reiffen, p. 60; p. 92; p. 168; p. 175; p. 219. (English translation: The Göttingen Dogmatics: Instruction in the Christian Religion, vol. 1, trans. by Geoffrey Bromiley, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans 1991, p. 50; p. 77; p. 137; p. 143; p. 178.) Barth, Karl and Eduard Thurneysen, Ein Briefwechsel aus der Frühzeit der dialektischen Theologie, Munich and Hamburg: Seibenstern Taschenbuch Verlag 1966, p. 54; pp. 70–5. (English translation: Karl Barth, Revolutionary Theology in the Making: Barth–Thurneysen Correspondence 1914–1925, trans. by J.D. Smart, Richmond, Virginia: John Knox Press 1964, p. 51; pp. 82–8.) Barth, Karl and Eduard Thurneysen, Karl Barth—Eduard Thurneysen: Briefwechsel, vols. 1–2, ed. by Eduard Thurneysen, Zurich: Theologischer Verlag 1973–74, vol. 1 (1913–1921), p. 336; p. 400.) II. Sources of Barth’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Brunner, Emil, Philosophie und Offenbarung, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1925, pp. 1–52. — “Das Einmalige und der Existenzcharakter,” Blätter für deutsche Philosophie, vol. 3, no. 3, 1929, pp. 265–82. — Gott und Mensch, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1930, pp. 1–100. — Der Mensch im Widerspruch: die christliche Lehre vom wahren und vom wirklichen Menschen, Berlin: Furche-Verlag 1937, p. 9; pp. 34–5; p. 51; p. 109; p. 123; p. 137; p. 159; p. 187; p. 190; p. 194; p. 200; p. 221; p. 231; p. 254; p. 265; p. 271; pp. 289–90; p. 316; pp. 322–3; p. 350; p. 368; pp. 414–15; p. 454; p. 460; p. 474; p. 508; p. 511; p. 529; p. 534; pp. 554–7. — Offenbarung und Vernunft: die Lehre von der christlichen Glaubenserkenntnis, Zurich: Zwingli-Verlag 1961, p. 143; p. 190; p. 202; pp. 206–7; p. 237; p. 281; p. 295; p. 311; p. 335; p. 339; p. 359; p. 370; p. 386; p. 397; p. 399; pp. 409–10; p. 427; p. 434; p. 452; p. 460; p. 463. Buber, Martin, Die Frage an den Einzelnen, Berlin: Schocken 1936, p. 14; p. 18; pp. 23–6; p. 40; pp. 48–56; p. 75. Bultmann, Rudolf, Der Begriff der Offenbarung im Neuen Testament, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1929, pp. 42–3. Diem, Hermann, “Die Kirche und Kierkegaard,” Zwischen den Zeiten, vol. 9, 1931, p. 401. — Philosophie und Christentum bei Sören Kierkegaard, Munich: Kaiser 1929. Geismar, Eduard, Sören Kierkegaard, Gütersloh: Bertelsmann 1925. — Sören Kierkegaard. Seine Lebensentwicklung und seine Wirksamkeit als Schriftsteller, vols. 1–2, trans. by E. Krüger and L. Geismar, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1927–29. Haecker, Theodor, Sören Kierkegaard und die Philosophie der Innerlichkeit, Munich: Schreiber 1913.

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— Christentum und Kultur, Munich: Kösel 1927. Hirsch, Emanuel, Kierkegaard Studien, vols. 1–3, Gütersloh: Bertelsmann 1930–33. Jaspers, Karl, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, Berlin: Springer 1919, p. 12; p. 61; p. 90; pp. 94–6; p. 99; pp. 217–18; pp. 238–9; pp. 245–7; pp. 255–6; pp. 238–9; p. 329; pp. 332–5; p. 339; p. 341; pp. 348–9; p. 351; pp. 354–5; p. 357; p. 359; pp. 370–81. Kierkegaard, Søren, Buch des Richters. Seine Tagebücher 1833–1855 in Auswahl, trans. by Hermann Gottsched, Jena: Diederichs 1905. — Leben und Walten der Liebe, trans. and ed. by Albert Dorner, Leipzig: F. Richter 1890 (2nd ed., trans. and ed. by Albert Dorner and Christoph Schrempf, introduced by Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1924 (vol. 3 in Søren Kierkegaard, Erbauliche Reden)). — Furcht und Zittern trans. by Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1909 (vol. 3 in Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–12, trans. and ed. by Hermann Gottsched, Jena: Diederichs 1909–22). — Der Augenblick, trans. by Christoph Schrempf, 2nd ed., Jena: Diederichs 1909 (vol. 12 in Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–12, trans. and ed. by Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1909–22). — Philosophische Brocken / Abschliessende unwissenschaftliche Nachschrift, ed. and trans. by Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1910 (vols. 6–7 in Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–12, trans. and ed. by Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1909–22). — Die Krankheit zum Tode. Eine christliche psychologische Entwicklung zur Erbauung und Erweckung, trans. by Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1911 (vol. 8 in Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–12, trans. and ed. by Hermann Gottsched, Jena: Diederichs 1909–22). — Einübung in Christentum, trans. by Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1912 (vol. 9 in Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–12, trans. and ed. by Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1909–22). — Die Tagebücher, vols. 1–2, ed. by Theodor Haecker, Innsbruck: Brenner 1923. Löwith, Karl, Kierkegaard und Nietzsche oder philosophische und theologische Überwindung des Nihilismus, Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann 1933. Przywara, Erich, Das Geheimnis Kierkegaards, Munich: Oldenberg 1929. Schrempf, Christoph, Sören Kierkegaard. Ein unfreier Pionier der Freiheit, Frankfurt am Main: Neuer Frankfurter Verlag 1907. Thielicke, Helmut, Das Verhältnis zwischen dem Ethischen und dem Ästhetischen. Eine systematische Untersuchung, Leipzig: Meiner 1932, pp. 161–3; pp. 255–6. Tillich, Paul, “Die Theologie des Kairos und die gegenwärtige geistige Lage: Offener Brief an Emanuel Hirsch,” Theologische Blätter, vol. 11, no. 13, 1934, pp. 309–10; pp. 314–17. III. Secondary Literature on Barth’s Relation to Kierkegaard Anz, Wilhelm, “Die Wirkungsgeschichte Kierkegaards in der dialektischen Theologie und der gleichzeitigen deutschen Philosophie,” in Die Rezeption

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Søren Kierkegaards in der deutschen und dänischen Philosophie und Theologie, ed. by Wilhelm Anz et al., Copenhagen and Munich: Fink 1983, pp. 13–16. Balthasar, Hans Urs von, The Theology of Karl Barth, trans. by John Drury, Garden City, New York: Doubleday 1972, p. 24; pp. 53–7; pp. 189–92. Beintker, Michael, Die Dialektik in der “dialektischen Theologie” Karl Barths, Munich: Kaiser 1987, pp. 230–8. Bohlin, Torsten, “Luther, Kierkegaard und die dialektische Theologie,” trans. by Anne Marie Sundwall-Honer, Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, vol. 7, 1926, pp. 163–98; pp. 269–79. — Glaube und Offenbarung. Eine kritische Studie zur dialektischen Theologie, Berlin: Furche-Verlag 1928, p. 98. Bouillard, Henri, Karl Barth: Genèse et évolution de la théologie dialectique, Aubier: Éditions Montaigne 1957, p. 107; pp. 112–13. Brazier, Paul Henry, Barth and Dostoevsky: A Study of the Influence of the Russian Writer Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky on the Development of the Swiss Theologian Karl Barth, 1915–1922, Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock 2007, p. 23; pp. 27–8; pp. 71–7; pp. 87–8; pp. 154–77; pp. 202–7. Brinkschmidt, Egon, Sören Kierkegaard und Karl Barth, Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag 1971, pp. 1–169. Busch, Eberhard, Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts, trans. by John Bowden, Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1976, pp. 115–16; p. 161; p. 173; p. 193; p. 417; pp. 467–8. — Karl Barth and the Pietists, trans. by Daniel Bloesch, Downers Grove, Illinois: Intervarsity Press 2004, pp. 70–3; p. 80; pp. 92–4; pp. 101–2; p. 115; p. 125; p. 152; p. 243; p. 259; p. 275. Cochrane, Arthur C., The Existentialists and God: Being and the Being of God, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1956, pp. 42–7; pp. 113–14. — “On the Anniversaries of Mozart, Kierkegaard and Barth,” Scottish Journal of Theology, vol. 9, 1956, p. 263. Come, Arnold, Kierkegaard as Theologian: Recovering Myself, Montreal: McGillQueen’s University Press 1997, p. 23; p. 80; pp. 98–130; pp. 371–2; p. 374. Diem, Hermann, “Die Kirche und Kierkegaard,” Zwischen den Zeiten, vol. 9, 1931, p. 401. — “Zur Psychologie der Kierkegaard-Renaissance,” Zwischen den Zeiten, vol. 10, 1932, pp. 216–48. Dorrien, Gary, The Word as True Myth: Interpreting Modern Theology, Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox 1997, pp. 75–86. — The Barthian Revolt in Modern Theology, Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/ John Knox Press 2000, pp. 61–71. Engelbrecht, Barend, Die tijdsstruktuur in die gedagtekompleks: Hegel— Kierkegaard—Barth, Th.D. Thesis, Proefschrift Rijksuniversiteit, Groningen 1949, pp. 1–83. Fabro, Cornelio, “Kierkegaard e K. Barth,” Studi francescani, vol. 55, 1955, pp. 155–8. Fairley, James, Method in Theology: Possibilities in the Light of Barth, Kierkegaard, and Wittgenstein, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen 1991.

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Gemmer, Anders, and August Messer, Sören Kierkegaard und Karl Barth, Stuttgart: Strecker und Schröder 1925, pp. 1–306. Gorringe, Timothy J., Karl Barth: Against Hegemony, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1999, pp. 109–10. Gouwens, David J., Kierkegaard as Religious Thinker, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996, p. 20; p. 41; p. 67; p. 70; p. 149; pp. 181–91. Gunton, Collin, “A Systematic Triangle: Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Barth on the Question of Ethics,” in his Intellect and Action: Elucidations on Christian Theology and the Life of Faith, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark 2000, p. 73. Hall, Douglas John, Remembered Voices: Reclaiming the Legacy of “NeoOrthodoxy,” Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press 1998, pp. 11–26; pp. 147–56. Hart, John W., Karl Barth vs. Emil Brunner, New York: Peter Lang 2001, pp. 3–4; pp. 16–17; pp. 28–33; p. 35; p. 39; p. 40; p. 43; p. 45; pp. 50–62; pp. 69–72; p. 85; p. 90; p. 98; p. 105; p. 131; p. 140; p. 168; p. 182; p. 204; p. 207; pp. 216–20; pp. 225–7. Hunsinger, George, How To Read Karl Barth: The Shape of his Theology, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1991, pp. 259–60. Jensen, Robert W., “Karl Barth,” in The Modern Theologians, ed. by David Ford, Oxford: Blackwell 1989, p. 31. Jüngel, Eberhard, “Von der Dialektik zur Analogie: Die Schule Kierkegaards und der Einspruch Petersons,” in Barth-Studien, Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn 1982, pp. 127–79. Kingo, Anders, Analogiens teologi. En dogmatisk studie over dialektikken in Søren Kierkegaards opbyggelige og pseudonyme forfatterskab, Copenhagen: Gad 1995, pp. 111–42. Kloeden, Wolfdietrich von, “Das Kierkegaard-Bild Karl Barths in seinen Briefen der ‘Zwanziger Jahre.’ Streiflichter aus der Karl-Barth-Gesamtausgabe,” Kierkegaardiana, vol. 12, 1982, pp. 93–105. Koepp, Wilhelm, Die gegenwärtige Geisteslage und die “dialektische” Theologie, Tübingen: Mohr 1930, pp. 1–104. Kooi, Cornelis van der, Anfängliche Theologie: Der Denkweg des jungen Karl Barth (109 bis 1927), Munich: Kaiser 1987, p. 121; p. 125; pp. 129–30; p. 160; p. 170; p. 181; p. 184; p. 197; p. 206; p. 242. Lee, Seung-Goo, Barth and Kierkegaard: Karl Barth’s Understanding of Revelation Compared to that of Sören Kierkegaard, Seoul: Westminster Theological Press 1996. Martens, Paul, “ ‘You Shall Love’: Kierkegaard, Kant, and the Interpretation of Matthew 22:39,” in Works of Love, ed. by Robert Perkins, Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press 1999 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 16), pp. 57–78. McCormack, Bruce, Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development 1909–1936, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1995, pp. 235– 40. McKinnon, Alastair, “Barth’s Relation to Kierkegaard: Some Further Light,” Canadian Journal of Theology, vol. 13, 1967, pp. 31–41.

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Moltmann, Jürgen, Anfänge der dialektischen Theologie, Munich: Kaiser 1933, p. 113; p. 180; p. 205. Navarria, Salvatore, Soren Kierkegaard e l’irrazionalismo di Karl Barth, Palermo: Palumbo 1943. Pizzuti, Mario, Tra Kierkegaard e Barth: l’ombre di Nietzsche, Venosa: Osanna 1986. Polk, Timothy H., The Biblical Kierkegaard: Reading by the Rule of Faith, Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press 1997, pp. 46–7. Rae, Murray, “Kierkegaard, Barth, and Bonhoeffer: Conceptions of the Relations between Grace and Works,” in For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourself!, ed. by Robert L. Perkins, Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press 2002 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 21) pp. 143–67. Ruttenbeck, Walter, Sören Kierkegaard. Der christliche Denker und sein Werk, Berlin und Frankfurt an der Oder: Trowitzsch & Sohn 1929, pp. 304–11. Sauter, Gerhard, “Die ‘dialektische Theologie’ und das Problem der Dialektik in der Theologie,” in his Erwartung und Erfahrung. Predigten, Vorträge und Aufsätze, Munich: Kaiser 1972, p. 126. Schröer, Henning, Die Denkform der Paradoxalität als theologisches Problem, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1960, p. 22; p. 142. Schulz, Heiko, “Die theologische Rezeption Kierkegaards in Deutschland und Dänemark: Notizen zu einer historischen Typologie,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 1999, pp. 229–30. — “Rezeptionsgeschichtliche Brocken oder die Brocken in der deutschen Rezeption. Umrisse einer vorläufigen Bestandsaufnahme,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2004, pp. 404–6. — “Rezeptionsgeschichtkliche Nachschrift oder die ‘Nachschrift’ in der deutschen Rezeption. Eine forschungsgeschichtliche Skizze,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2005, p. 353. — “A Modest Head Start: The German Reception of Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard’s International Reception, Tome I, Northern and Western Europe, ed. by Jon Stewart, Aldershot: Ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception, and Resources, vol. 8), pp. 334–9; p. 342; p. 373; p. 374; p. 376; p. 386. Søe, Niels Hansen, “Karl Barth og Søren Kierkegaard,” Kierkegaardiana, vol. 1, 1955, pp. 55–64. — “Karl Barth,” in The Legacy and Interpretation of Kierkegaard, ed. by Niels Thulstrup and Maria Mikulová Thulstrup, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 1981 (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 8), pp. 224–36. Spieckermann, Ingrid, Gotteserkenntnis: Ein Beitrag zur Grundfrage der neuen Theologie Karl Barths, Munich: Kaiser 1985, pp. 108–9. Stadtland, Tjarko, Eschatologie und Geschichte in der Theologie des jungen Karl Barth, Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag 1966, p. 61; p. 69; p.72. Torrance, Thomas F., Karl Barth: An Introduction to his Early Theology, 1910–1931, London: SCM Press 1962, p. 30; p. 39; pp. 42–63; p. 65; p. 83; p. 85; p.107; p. 139; p. 143.

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Walsh, Sylvia, “Forming the Heart: The Role of Love in Kierkegaard,” in The Grammar of the Heart: Thinking with Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein, ed. by Richard R. Bell, San Francisco: Harper and Row 1988, pp. 234–56. Webb, Stephen H., Refiguring Theology: The Rhetoric of Karl Barth, Albany, New York: State University of New York Press 1991, pp. 64–6; p. 72; p. 98; pp. 124– 32; p. 134; p. 139; p. 145. Wells, William Walter, The Influence of Kierkegaard on the Theology of Karl Barth, Ph.D. Thesis, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York 1970. — “The Reveille that Awakened Karl Barth,” The Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, vol. 22, no. 3, 1979. pp. 223–33. Werner, Martin, Der religiöse Gehalt der Existenzphilosophie, Bern: P. Haupt 1943, pp. 21ff. Ziegler, Philip, “Barth’s Criticism of Kierkegaard: A Striking Out at Phantasms?” International Journal of Systematic Theology, vol. 9, no. 4, 2007, pp. 434–51.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Standing “in the Tradition of Paul, Luther, Kierkegaard, in the Tradition of Genuine Christian Thinking” Christiane Tietz

I. Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–45) was one of the leading figures of the Confessing Church, the opposition movement in the Protestant church in the Third Reich. He also took part in the famous July 20 assassination attempt to kill Adolf Hitler and to end the Nazi regime. Born in Breslau, Bonhoeffer grew up in Berlin where his father was professor of psychiatry. Bonhoeffer studied Protestant theology first in Tübingen and then in Berlin, where he met important representatives of liberal theology and of the Luther Renaissance. Yet the contemporary theologian who influenced him most was Karl Barth (1886–1968). Bonhoeffer shared Barth’s critique of religion and his emphasis on revelation. In 1927, Bonhoeffer finished his dissertation under the tutelage of Reinhold Seeberg (1859–1935). The publication, entitled Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church, describes the structure of the church in sociological terms, as a historical community which is at the same time set up by God. The work claims that “genuinely theological concepts can only be recognized as established and fulfilled in a special social context.”1 The church community is Christ’s presence in the world today, “Christ existing as church community.”2 After a curacy in a German parish 1928–29 in Barcelona, Spain, Bonhoeffer completed his postdoctoral thesis in 1930, which dealt with the problem about 1 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio. Eine dogmatische Untersuchung zur Soziologie der Kirche, Berlin and Frankfurt an der Oder: Trowitzsch 1930, p. III (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vols. 1–17, ed. by Eberhard Bethge et al., Munich and Gütersloh: Kaiser 1986–99, vol. 1, p. 13; English translation: Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vols. 1–16, ed. by Victoria J. Barnett and Barbara Wojhoski, Minneapolis: Fortress Press 1996ff., vol. 1, p. 21). 2 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio. Eine dogmatische Untersuchung zur Soziologie der Kirche, p. 110 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 1, p. 126; Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church, pp. 189ff.).

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how philosophical terms such as revelation, the self of the sinner, and the self of the believer should be interpreted. This book, Act and Being: Transcendental Philosophy and Ontology in Systematic Theology, is an original examination of different philosophical traditions (for example transcendental philosophy, idealism, phenomenology, existential philosophy) and more recent theological trends (dialectical theology, Seeberg, Przywara). Bonhoeffer makes the point that philosophy provides useful thought structures for describing theological realities but that finally only a revelation-based new combination of those traditions describes human existence adequately. Before his habilitation was published, Bonhoeffer went to the USA and studied from 1930–31 at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, the North American center of liberal theology. There he came into contact with the theology of the Social Gospel, became aware of the racism against black people, and began to look at pacifism as an essential Christian virtue. After his return to Germany, Bonhoeffer began working in the ecumenical movement, because he already felt the danger of nationalist thinking and saw that the church was the only realm in which international affairs could be discussed in an unemotional manner. In several addresses at ecumenical meetings he called for international freedom. At the same time he worked as a lecturer at the University in Berlin and as a student pastor. In winter 1932–33 he gave a lecture on the first three chapters of Genesis, later published as Creation and Fall,3 in which he developed a Christ-oriented understanding of creation. His scriptural interpretation does not use historico-critical methods, but asks his audience to really listen to the Bible, convinced that “[y]ou can’t just read the Bible like any other book. You have to be ready to really ask…. This is because in the Bible God is talking to us. And you can’t just think about God by yourself, you have to ask.”4 In January 1933 Hitler became chancellor of the German Reich. From the very beginning, Bonhoeffer was aware of the danger of this man and his ideology. When the discussion arose about establishing an Arian Paragraph in the church, Bonhoeffer was one of the first opponents and reminded the church of its duty to resist the state when the state is acting unjustly. But on September 5, the Paragraph which prohibited all pastors of Jewish decent to work in the church was introduced. Bonhoeffer soon felt alone in the German church because of his rigorous position. This is at least one reason why he left Germany in the fall of 1933 for a pastorate in London. Even from there he tried to support Christian opposition to the Nazis. In April 1934, this opposition had constituted itself as the “Confessing Church.” Since most parts of the official church agreed with the Nazi ideology, this situation of opposition required that the Confessing Church establish its own pastoral training. It founded five preachers’ seminaries and asked Bonhoeffer to become the director of one. Bonhoeffer Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Schöpfung und Fall. Theologische Auslegung von Genesis 1–3, Munich: Kaiser 1933 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 3; English translation: Creation and Fall, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 3). 4 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Illegale Theologenausbildung: Finkenwalde 1935–1937, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 14, p. 145 (my translation). 3

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agreed and, starting in 1935, taught five courses for young pastors, first in Zingst by the Baltic Sea, then in Finkenwalde in Pomerania. After they had finished the seminary, the young pastors were not employed in the official National Socialist church, but hoped to become curates in parishes in which pastors of the Confessing Church were already working. Bonhoeffer expected the candidate to practice an intense spiritual life with regular prayer and study of Scripture, with meditation and individual confession. The aim of this religious practice was to gain strength for the life afterwards, in confrontation with the State Church and the state. When the seminar was closed by the Gestapo in 1937, Bonhoeffer decided to write down what they did in Finkenwalde. His book Life Together is an impressive example of Protestant spirituality.5 Bonhoeffer finished another publication in Finkenwalde as well, Discipleship, on which he had lectured in Berlin and in Finkenwalde. In this text Bonhoeffer interprets verses in the Synoptics in which Jesus calls people to follow him, the Sermon on the Mount, and some Pauline texts to explain how costly it is to be a disciple of Christ. The gospel speaks not of a cheap grace which justifies sin, but of costly grace which justifies the sinner and which “is costly, because it costs people their lives.”6 After the end of Finkenwalde, Bonhoeffer continued pastoral training in socalled collective pastorates. In March 1940 the Gestapo brought these illegal pastorates to an end as well. Bonhoeffer had already left Germany. In June 1939 he had traveled to the United States again. He was afraid of being drafted and felt he should object to this but did not want to endanger the Confessing Church by doing this. He had offers to stay in the States as an academic teacher and as pastor. But very soon he felt he should go back to Germany. He would have considered himself a coward and irresponsible if he had stayed abroad and was not with his country in these dark hours. Only a few weeks before the beginning of the war he returned to Germany. After his return, he started to participate in political conspiracy. Like his brotherin-law Hans von Dohnanyi, Bonhoeffer started to work for the “Abwehr,” the secret service of the military. Leading members of the “Abwehr” were secretly planning to end the National Socialist terror regime. Bonhoeffer’s task was to inform foreign countries about the resistance in Germany and to ask them to not destroy Germany after the planned assassination of Hitler. During these years, Bonhoeffer worked on his Ethics, a book which he did not finish but which documents Bonhoeffer’s ethical ideas in a time of political resistance. He grounds ethics in the reality of Jesus Christ in whom the reality of God and the reality of the world became reconciled, and develops an ethic of responsibility and of taking on guilt for others. On April 5, 1943 Bonhoeffer was arrested because of foreign currency irregularities and was put in Berlin-Tegel prison. Bonhoeffer had to undergo numerous interrogations in which he tried not to betray his co-conspirators. While sitting in 5 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Gemeinsames Leben, Munich: Kaiser 1939 (Theologische Existenz heute, vol. 61) (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 5; English translation: Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 5). 6 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Nachfolge, Munich: Kaiser 1937, p. 2 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 4, p. 31; English translation: Discipleship, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 4, p. 45).

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jail, Bonhoeffer continued doing theology, wrote literature and countless letters to his family, his fiancée Maria von Wedemeyer, to whom he had become engaged only a few weeks before, and to his friend Eberhard Bethge. In the letters to his friend he starts to develop a new way of theological thinking which accepts that the modern world has come of age and is able to exist without God. In Bonhoeffer’s judgment, this is not the end of Christianity, but the beginning of a new, “religionless” form of Christianity. The cross tells us that God lets himself be removed from the world: God would have us know that we must live as men who manage our lives without him. The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us (Mark 15:34). The God who lets us live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the God before whom we stand continually. Before God and with God we live without God. God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross. He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us.7

Bonhoeffer was not able to unfold this idea of a religionless, non-religious Christianity in greater detail. Yet when Bethge published Bonhoeffer’s letters in 1951 as Letters and Papers from Prison the world-wide resonance was overwhelming. After the failure of the assassination attempt on July 20, 1944, the Gestapo found documents which showed that Bonhoeffer had been involved in the planning of this. Bonhoeffer was brought to the Gestapo prison and on February 7, 1945, they took him to Buchenwald concentration camp. Some weeks later, a transport with Bonhoeffer left for Flossenbürg were he was hanged in the early morning hours of April 9, 1945. II. Søren Kierkegaard was of utmost importance for Bonhoeffer. As the following will show, Bonhoeffer shares many of Kierkegaard’s key concepts. This is why Bonhoeffer already in 1930–31 names Kierkegaard as one representative of a “genuine Christian thinking,” like Paul, Augustine, Luther, and Barth,8 a thinking Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Widerstand und Ergebung. Briefe und Aufzeichnungen aus der Haft, ed. by Eberhard Bethge, Munich: Kaiser 1951, pp. 241–2 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 8, pp. 533–4; English translation: Letters and Papers from Prison, enlarged edition by Eberhard Bethge, New York: Touchstone 1997, p. 360). 8 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Barcelona, Berlin, Amerika 1928–1931, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 10, p. 432. (English translation: Barcelona, Berlin, New York: 1928–1931, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 10, p. 460.) Cf. Bonhoeffer, Barcelona, Berlin, Amerika 1928–1931, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 10, p. 435 (Barcelona, Berlin, New York: 1928–1931, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 10, p. 463), where again Kierkegaard is named as “genuine” Christian thinker, like Paul and Luther and Barth. A similar appreciation of Kierkegaard can be found in a letter to his fiancée. Here Bonhoeffer recommends her to take “a strong dose of Kierkegaard (‘Fear and Trembling,’ ‘Practice in Christianity,’ ‘Sickness unto Death’) as an antidote” to her previous reading of Paul Schütz, cf. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Brautbriefe Zelle 92. Dietrich Bonhoeffer—Maria von Wedemeyer 1943–1945, ed. by RuthAlice von Bismarck and Ulrich Kabitz, Munich: C.H. Beck 1992, p. 139. (English translation: Love Letters from Cell 92: The Correspondence between Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Maria von 7

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which understands the particularity and foolishness of the Christian idea of God: “God is where death and sin are, not where righteousness is.”9 In his 1931–32 lecture on The History of Systematic Theology in the 20th Century, Bonhoeffer draws a similar line: “Barth opposes religion in the name of God. (Line: Old Testament—Luther— Kierkegaard).”10 And he continues: “…true theology starts with: come spirit creator (Anselm, Kierkegaard).”11 All these examples show that for Bonhoeffer “genuine Christian thinking,” which Kierkegaard represents, starts with “the premise of the revelation of God in Christ,” or, as Kierkegaard could have put it: the Christian theologian must start with “faith in this revelation.”12 This insight is reflected in Bonhoeffer’s 1933 lecture on Christology.13 According to student notes, Bonhoeffer started his lecture with the sentence: “Teaching about Christ begins in silence. ‘Be still, for that is the absolute’ (Kierkegaard).”14 By starting like this, Bonhoeffer again emphasizes that theology has to start with admitting the right of God’s revelation. The same silence is necessary for the preacher. In Finkenwalde Bonhoeffer told his students in a lecture on homiletics that preparation for a sermon starts with praying for the Holy Spirit. The next step is listening to the text on which you have to preach. Personal acquisition of the text should take place here like thinking about the words of someone you love. Bonhoeffer quotes Kierkegaard to illustrate this: one should read the Bible like a love letter,15 that is, with the premise that here something important and valuable takes place. That Christian theology has to start with the premise of revelation is reflected in Bonhoeffer’s concept of sin. If revelation is the only path to God, then everything human beings undertake to reach God is unsuccessful, for it is always shaped by Wedemeyer, ed. by Ruth-Alice von Bismarck, Eberhard Bethge, and Ulrich Kabitz, Nashville: Abingdon Press 1992, pp. 185–6.) 9 Bonhoeffer, Barcelona, Berlin, Amerika 1928–1931, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 10, p. 432. (Barcelona, Berlin, New York: 1928–1931, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 10, p. 460.) 10 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ökumene, Universität, Pfarramt 1931–1932, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 11, pp. 197–8 (my translation). 11 Ibid., p. 201 (my translation). 12 Bonhoeffer, Barcelona, Berlin, Amerika 1928–1931, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 10, p. 435. (Barcelona, Berlin, New York: 1928–1931, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 10, p. 463.) Cf. SKS 12, 41 / PC, 26. 13 On Kierkegaard’s influence on this text see Kelly, “Kierkegaard as ‘Antidote’ and the Impact on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Concept of Christian Discipleship,” in Bonhoeffer’s Intellectual Formation: Theology and Philosophy in His Thought, ed. by Peter Frick, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2008 (Religion in Philosophy and Theology, vol. 29), pp. 156–7. 14 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Christologievorlesung,” in Gesammelte Schriften, vols. 1–6, ed. by Eberhard Bethge, Munich: Kaiser 1958–74, vol. 3 (Theologie, Gemeinde, Vorlesungen, Briefe, Gespräche, 1927 bis 1944), p. 167. The new edition of the lecture in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 12, pp. 279ff. does not have this any more, because this new edition follows only one student’s notes instead of being a compilation of several like the earlier edition was. 15 Bonhoeffer, Illegale Theologenausbildung: Finkenwalde 1935–1937, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 14, p. 486. Cf. SKS 13, 54 / FSE, 26.

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their sinfulness.16 In a seminar on theological psychology in 1932–33 Bonhoeffer uses the motif of despair to analyze this sinfulness.17 While Luther conceives despair as something that human beings experience now and again, Kierkegaard in The Sickness unto Death applies despair also to people who know nothing about their despair. Kierkegaard’s despair is the “existential of human beings.”18 Bonhoeffer’s own conceptualization of sin is very close to this: for him sin is not only an act of transgression, but a being. Recognizing sin, of course, starts with a concrete transgression. But for really comprehending what sin is, I have to recognize that my whole existence is a breaking away from God;19 or, put differently, one has to recognize that sin is something existential in human beings. Like Kierkegaard, Bonhoeffer argues that one can never explain how sin came into the world.20 It is a misleading interpretation of the story of the fall to simply say that it was human freedom to do good or evil which here was used in the wrong way.21 The situation before the fall is ambiguous.22 From the premise of revelation and the corresponding concept of sin as something existential follows a certain view of philosophy. As God’s “contingent revelation…in Christ denies in principle the possibility of the self-understanding of the I apart from the reference to revelation,”23 every philosophical concept of self-understanding must be fundamentally mistaken. As a consequence, Bonhoeffer criticizes many philosophical concepts, in Act and Being as well as in Sanctorum Communio. In his critique of idealism, Kierkegaard of course backs him up. Bonhoeffer explicitly refers to Kierkegaard when summarizing his main argument in Act and Being against the idealist type of philosophy. Bonhoeffer argues that in idealism the I is taken as the point of departure of philosophy. The I is constructing Cf., for example, Bonhoeffer, Barcelona, Berlin, Amerika 1928–1931, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 10, pp. 314–15. (Barcelona, Berlin, New York: 1928–1931, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 10, pp. 352–3.) 17 Cf. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Berlin 1932–1933, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 12, pp. 194–5. 18 Ibid., p. 195 (my translation). 19 Cf. ibid., p. 196. 20 Cf. Bonhoeffer, Schöpfung und Fall, p. 59 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 3, p. 97; Creation and Fall, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 3, p. 104) with SKS 4, 348–9 / CA, 41–2, where Kierkegaard emphasizes that sin cannot be explained through something else. Cf. also Schöpfung und Fall, pp. 7ff. (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 3, pp. 25ff.; Creation and Fall, vol. 3, pp. 25ff.) on the nature of the beginning with SKS 11, 182 / SUD, 67–8. 21 Cf. Bonhoeffer, Schöpfung und Fall, p. 58 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 3, p. 96; Creation and Fall, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 3, p. 104) with SKS 4, 415 / CA, 112–13. 22 Cf. Bonhoeffer, Schöpfung und Fall, p. 58 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 3, p. 97; Creation and Fall, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 3, p. 104) with, for example, SKS 4, 348–9 / CA, 41–2. 23 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Akt und Sein. Transzendentalphilosophie und Ontologie in der systematischen Theologie, Gütersloh: Bertelsmann 1931 (Beiträge zur Förderung christlicher Theologie, vol. 34), p. 11 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 2, p. 25–6; English translation: Act and Being: Transcendental Philosophy and Ontology in Systematic Theology, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 2, p. 31). 16

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its world—thus losing any objective reality. Bonhoeffer calls upon Kierkegaard as witness that “such philosophizing obviously forgets that we ourselves exist.”24 Already in Sanctorum Communio Bonhoeffer had mentioned Kierkegaard as a thinker who also criticizes idealism, especially the idealist concept of reality and time. Why is Bonhoeffer critical of idealism’s understanding of reality and time? Because idealism’s25 concept of reality is characterized by “the self-knowing and self-active spirit,”26 it thus remains in the epistemological sphere. In this sphere, one I is like the other in this capacity of the spirit. In correspondence to this epistemological concept of reality, idealism understands time as a pure form of the mind. Yet in Bonhoeffer’s judgment the epistemological sphere represents only a reduced reality. Bonhoeffer argues, like Kierkegaard, that reality instead takes place in the ethical decision in concrete existence. Bonhoeffer acknowledges: “Kierkegaard’s ethical person, too, exists only in the concrete situation.”27 Correspondingly to this ethical concept of reality, time has to be understood as the moment of ethical decision. Like Kierkegaard,28 Bonhoeffer stresses the importance of the moment (Augenblick29) as a historical category. “The moment is the time of responsibility,” of relatedness to God.30 Therefore Bonhoeffer appreciates that Kierkegaard tried “to grasp reality concretely.”31 Bonhoeffer, Akt und Sein, p. 19 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 2, pp. 32–3; Act and Being, p. 39), summarizing Kierkegaard’s critique of idealism, cf. SKS 7, 114–20 / CUP1, 118–25. SKS 7, 173–89 / CUP1, 189–208. SKS 7, 274–89 / CUP1, 301–18. 25 For Bonhoeffer idealism includes Fichte and Hegel as well as Kant. 26 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio. Eine dogmatische Untersuchung zur Soziologie der Kirche, p. 12 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 1, p. 26; Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church, p. 46): “Essential reality for idealism is the self-knowing and self-active spirit, engaging truth and reality in the process.” 27 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio. Eine dogmatische Untersuchung zur Soziologie der Kirche, p. 20, note 1 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 1, p. 34, note 12; Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church, p. 57, note 12). 28 Cf., for example, SKS 4, 384ff. / CA, 81ff. 29 Cf. Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio. Eine dogmatische Untersuchung zur Soziologie der Kirche, pp. 13–14 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 1, p. 28; Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church, p. 48.) Cf. also Bonhoeffer, Barcelona, Berlin, Amerika 1928–1931, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 10, p. p. 330; p. 333. (Barcelona, Berlin, New York: 1928–1931, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 10, p. 365; p. 368.) 30 Cf. Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio. Eine dogmatische Untersuchung zur Soziologie der Kirche, p. 14 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 1, p. 28; Sanctorum Communio:. A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church, p. 48). As a student Bonhoeffer had already mentioned with approbation the Kierkegaardian concept of Gleichzeitigkeit (contemporaneity) (see Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Jugend und Studium 1918–1927, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 9, p. 308) in a seminar paper on scriptural hermeneutics in which Bonhoeffer discusses the hermeneutics of dialectic theology which referred to Kierkegaard’s concept of contemporaneity. Cf. as well his use of the term in his Christology lecture; Bonhoeffer, Christologie, p. 180 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 12, p. 294). 31 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio. Eine dogmatische Untersuchung zur Soziologie der Kirche, p. 20, note 1 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 1, p. 34, note 12; Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church, p. 57, note 12). 24

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Because of his existential perspective, Kierkegaard is skeptical of any systemoriented thinking in philosophy.32 Bonhoeffer is inspired by Kierkegaard in his critique of any “will to have a system”33 which he presents in Act and Being. In Bonhoeffer’s view, every philosophy aims at establishing a system and for this aim constructs an immanent idea of God—and thus loses God.34 “The concept of revelation must, therefore, yield an epistemology of its own.”35 For Bonhoeffer, as for Kierkegaard, this epistemology has to be shaped by the reality of the ethical decision. Yet Bonhoeffer in Sanctorum Communio departs from Kierkegaard in how the ethical decision is caused. Bonhoeffer reports that, for Kierkegaard, “becoming a person is an act of the self-establishing I” and being an I “is not in any necessary relation to a concrete You.”36 Bonhoeffer himself conceives personhood differently: “The individual becomes a person ever and again through the other.”37 Reality takes place in the encounter with a concrete You who is a real barrier. Only by being addressed through the other, “the person enters a state of responsibility or, in other words, of decision.”38 Yes, time is the concrete moment, but the concrete moment of the encounter with the other. Since Kierkegaard’s person, in Bonhoeffer’s view, “is self-established rather than being established by the You,” Kierkegaard in that respect remains “bound to the idealist position.”39 Kierkegaard overlooked that “for existing as an individual ‘others’ must necessarily be there.”40 Because of overlooking

Cf., for example, SKS 7, 115–20 / CUP1, 117–22. Bonhoeffer, Akt und Sein, p. 49 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 2, p. 61; Act and Being, p. 67). 34 Cf. Ibid. 35 Bonhoeffer, Akt und Sein, p. 11 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 2, p. 26; Act and Being, p. 31). 36 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio. Eine dogmatische Untersuchung zur Soziologie der Kirche, p. 20, note 1 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 1, p. 34, note 12; Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church, p. 57, note 12). 37 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio. Eine dogmatische Untersuchung zur Soziologie der Kirche, p. 19 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 1, p. 34; Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church, pp. 55–6). 38 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio. Eine dogmatische Untersuchung zur Soziologie der Kirche, p. 13 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 1, p. 28; Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church, p. 48). 39 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio. Eine dogmatische Untersuchung zur Soziologie der Kirche, p. 20, note 1 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 1, p. 34, note 12; Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church, p. 57, note 12). Bonhoeffer picks up his view on Kierkegaard’s individualism again in his lecture on “The History of Systematic Theology” in 1931–32: Kierkegaard understood the Hegelian idea that truth is a relation of the spirit to itself in a subjectivistic manner and therefore represents the same “idealistic approach” as Schleiermacher. Cf. Bonhoeffer, Ökumene, Universität, Pfarramt 1931–1932, p. 149. 40 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio. Eine dogmatische Untersuchung zur Soziologie der Kirche, p. 16 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 1, p. 30; Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church, p. 51, translation altered). 32 33

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the role of the other in the setting of the self, he, in Bonhoeffer’s judgment, developed “an extreme sort of individualism.”41 In spite of this critique of Kierkegaard’s individualism, Bonhoeffer invites one to compare Kierkegaard’s Works of Love to his own thoughts on Christian love.42 Bonhoeffer argues that it is not God who is loved in the neighbor, but the concrete You. It is through the concrete other that the I encounters God’s claim. Yet, this does not mean that the other is only an analogy of the wholly other; the other is “infinitely important as such, precisely because God takes the other person seriously. Should I after all ultimately be alone with God in the world?”43 To explain the character of Christian love further, Bonhoeffer uses Kierkegaard’s differentiation between eros and agape, arguing that agape has nothing to do with sympathy or the erotic but is a gift of the Holy Spirit.44 This special character of Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio. Eine dogmatische Untersuchung zur Soziologie der Kirche, p. 20, note 1 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 1, p. 34, note 12; Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church, p. 57, note 12). Yet at the same time Kierkegaard receives high praise from Bonhoeffer, for he understood the burden of solitude; cf. Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio. Eine dogmatische Untersuchung zur Soziologie der Kirche, p. 95, note 2 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 1, p. 104, note 20; Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church, p. 162, note 20). For the importance of solitude see also Bonhoeffer, Gemeinsames Leben, pp. 50ff. (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 5, pp. 65ff.; Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible, pp. 81ff.), where Bonhoeffer speaks about the necessity of solitude in Christian existence. 42 Cf. Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio. Eine dogmatische Untersuchung zur Soziologie der Kirche, p. 95, note 2 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 1, p. 111, note 28; Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church, p. 170, note 28). 43 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio. Eine dogmatische Untersuchung zur Soziologie der Kirche, p. 95, note 2 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 1, p. 110, note 28; Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church, p. 170, note 28). 44 Later, in a letter to Eberhard and Renate Bethge from prison, Bonhoeffer considers the nature of friendship, well aware that friendship is not a category of church life, nor is contained in the four mandates of church, state, work, and marriage. Cf. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethik, ed. by Eberhard Bethge, Munich: Kaiser 1949, pp. 70ff. (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 6, pp. 54ff.; English translation: Ethics, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 6, pp. 68ff.). He argues for an “area of freedom” in which friendship has its place and which should be cultivated in the church. This would be an area which is oriented not only at following God’s command, but at humanity in the full sense of the word, an area within which Kierkegaard’s “aesthetic existence” could be re-established. Bonhoeffer, Widerstand und Ergebung, p. 136 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 8, p. 291; Letters and Papers from Prison, p. 193). Bonhoeffer herewith refers to Kierkegaard’s distinction between three stages of existence: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious (cf., for example, SKS 6, 439 / SLW, 476–7). Bonhoeffer also criticizes Kierkegaard’s concept of the “ethical existence” (cf., for example, SKS 2, 246–7 / EO1, 253–4, where Kierkegaard says that, quite contrary to the aesthetic individual, the ethic individual does not live without planning or thinking) when noting that “in our times,” that is, in times of dictatorship and war, the “ethical” man is unable to “devote himself with an easy mind to music, friendship, games, or happiness”; only the Christian is (cf. Bonhoeffer, Widerstand und Ergebung, p. 136 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 8, p. 291; Letters and Papers from Prison, p. 193). Christian existence thus is more than ethical existence. Cf. Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio. Eine dogmatische Untersuchung 41

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Christian love as agape, different from eros, is repeated in Life Together, with Bonhoeffer now using both the distinction between spiritual love (geistliche Liebe) and emotional love of the soul (seelische Liebe).45 Even if he criticizes Kierkegaard’s individualism, Bonhoeffer also acknowledges Kierkegaard’s awareness of the historical context of human existence. While it is true that everybody in the moment of standing before God must decide for himself or herself alone, human beings are at the same time existing in the context of “role models, whom we ought to use, not by handing over to them the responsibility for our own actions, but by having them ‘give us the facts’ on the basis of which we then make our own free decision.”46 Bonhoeffer acknowledges that Kierkegaard, while speaking “like no other about the individuality of human beings,”47 at the same time, like Martin Luther, “remained mindful of the concrete social-historical context within which a human being is placed.”48 Human beings have to decide by and for themselves, yet they should “use all opportunities that can help them make the right decision,” and here “the fact that we live in sociality, is of the most momentous significance.”49 The significance of the other in this regard, of course, is only a relative one, following from the historicity of human beings, and not identical with the necessity of the church in which the other has absolute significance for me because through him I encounter Christ’s claim and love.50 That Bonhoeffer acknowledges Kierkegaard here is not in contradiction with his comment that

zur Soziologie der Kirche, p. 93 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 1, p. 108; Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church, p. 167) with SKS 9, 51 / WL, 44 where Kierkegaard claims that Christianity has “thrust erotic love and friendship from the throne, the love based on drives and inclination, preferential love in order to place the spirit’s love in its stead, love for the neighbor, a love that in earnestness and truth is more tender in inwardness than erotic love in the union and more faithful in sincerity than the most celebrated friendship in the alliance.” 45 Cf. Bonhoeffer, Gemeinsames Leben, 16ff. (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 5, pp. 27ff.; Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible, pp. 38ff.) 46 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio. Eine dogmatische Untersuchung zur Soziologie der Kirche, p. 153 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 1, p. 171; Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church, p. 249). 47 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio. Eine dogmatische Untersuchung zur Soziologie der Kirche, p. 153 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 1, p. 171; Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church, p. 249). Cf. also students’ notes on his lecture on Creation and Fall: “[The] individual is specifically Christian (discovered by Kierkegaard).” Bonhoeffer, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 3, p. 91, editor’s note (Creation and Fall, vol. 3, p. 98, editor’s note 11). 48 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio. Eine dogmatische Untersuchung zur Soziologie der Kirche, p. 153 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 1, p. 171; Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church, p. 249). 49 Ibid. 50 Cf. Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio. Eine dogmatische Untersuchung zur Soziologie der Kirche, p. 153 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 1, p. 171; Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church, pp. 249–50).

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Kierkegaard rejected the idea of church,51 since for Bonhoeffer church is not only a historical community.52 Of particular importance is Kierkegaard’s thinking for Bonhoeffer’s book Discipleship.53 Many aspects of his reception of Kierkegaard which have already been mentioned above reappear here in a condensed manner. First of all, Bonhoeffer very probably found inspiration for his literary style in Practice in Christianity.54 Discipleship is, in a similar manner, both devotional and dogmatic. And, like Kierkegaard, Bonhoeffer gives Matthew 11:28 a decisive place in the whole book.55 Secondly, Bonhoeffer frequently refers to a selection of Kierkegaard’s late journals in an edition entitled, Der Einzelne und die Kirche.56 Bonhoeffer obviously felt he was living in a similar situation to Kierkegaard: surrounded by people who did not live as Christians any more and who should be called to true Christianity and discipleship. He frequently uses Kierkegaard’s critique against the Lutheran State Church in Denmark to criticize the Lutheran tradition of his time.57

Cf. Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio. Eine dogmatische Untersuchung zur Soziologie der Kirche, p. 95, note 2 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 1, p. 104, note 20; Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church, p. 162, note 20). 52 See above and Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio. Eine dogmatische Untersuchung zur Soziologie der Kirche, p. 64 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 1, p. 79; Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church, p. 126): “…the church…is simultaneously a historical community and one established by God.” 53 The following relies strongly on Friederike Barth, “Dietrich Bonhoeffers Nachfolge in der Nachfolge Kierkegaards,” in Lebendige Ethik. Beiträge aus dem Institut für Ethik und angrenzende Sozialwissenschaften. Hans-Richard Reuter zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. by Thorsten Meireis, Berlin: LIT-Verlag 2007, pp. 9–37. 54 Bonhoeffer had earlier imitated Kierkegaard’s literary style in a little piece from 1932; cf. Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Theologe—Christ—Zeitgenosse. Eine Biographie, 9th ed., Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus 2005, pp. 63–4. In this piece he writes about a man (himself) who is fascinated by the idea of dying and being dead and who fantasized about having the only incurable disease; cf. Bonhoeffer, Ökumene, Universität, Pfarramt 1931–1932, pp. 373–4). 55 Cf. Bonhoeffer, Nachfolge, p. VI (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 4, p. 25; Discipleship, p. 40) at the end of the preface with SKS 12, 21ff. / PC, 11ff. 56 Søren Kierkegaard, Der Einzelne und die Kirche. Über Luther und den Protestantismus, ed. by Wilhelm Kütemeyer, Berlin: Wolff 1934. This dependency was discovered by Traugott Vogel, Christus als Vorbild und Versöhner. Eine kritische Studie zum Problem des Verhältnisses von Gesetz und Evangelium im Werk Sören Kierkegaards, Ph.D. Thesis, Humboldt University, Berlin 1968. The Kütemeyer selection with Bonhoeffer’s remarks can be consulted in Bonhoeffer’s archive in the Staatsbibliothek Berlin. 57 Cf. also Bonhoeffer’s lecture in Finkenwalde on church community building and discipline in the New Testament (Illegale Theologenausbildung: Finkenwalde 1935–1937, p. 822), where Bonhoeffer discusses the question of wages for pastors and what this means for their credibility. Bonhoeffer here mentions Kierkegaard who attacks pastors because they receive a regular salary (SV1 14, 105–14 (which corresponds to SKS 13, 127–38 / M, 91–100) contained in Bonhoeffer’s selection of Kierkegaard’s diary). 51

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When Bonhoeffer formed his famous distinction between cheap and costly grace,58 he might have been thinking of the preface of Practice in Christianity where Kierkegaard speaks of not only resorting to grace but using it in the right manner.59 Bonhoeffer shares Kierkegaard’s criticism of a Lutheranism which isolates the Lutheran sola fide and ignores the necessity of deeds.60 Christianity for Bonhoeffer is not a certain doctrine, a general thought or idea.61 Christianity is discipleship. It consists in the relation to Christ the mediator: Discipleship is commitment to Christ. Because Christ exists, he must be followed. An idea about Christ, a doctrinal system, a general religious recognition of grace or forgiveness of sins does not require discipleship. In truth, it even excludes discipleship; it is inimical to it. One enters into a relationship with an idea by way of knowledge, enthusiasm, perhaps even by carrying it out, but never by personal obedient discipleship. Christianity without the living Jesus Christ remains necessarily a Christianity without discipleship; and a Christianity without discipleship is always a Christianity without Jesus Christ. It is an idea, a myth. A Christianity in which there is only God the Father, but not Christ as a living Son actually cancels discipleship.62 Cf. Bonhoeffer, Nachfolge, pp. 1ff. (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 4, pp. 29ff.; Discipleship, pp. 43ff.), especially Bonhoeffer, Nachfolge, pp. 1–2 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 4, p. 29–30; Discipleship, pp. 43–5): “Cheap grace means justification of sin but not of the sinner. Because grace alone does everything, everything can stay in its old ways.… Cheap grace is grace without discipleship….Costly grace is the hidden treasure in the field, for the sake of which people go and sell with joy everything they have”; and Bonhoeffer, Nachfolge, p. 9 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 4, p. 38; Discipleship, p. 51): “…those who want to use this grace to excuse themselves from discipleship are deceiving themselves.” Cf. Bonhoeffer, Berlin 1932–1933, p. 234. 59 Cf. SKS 12, 15 / PC, 7 and SKS 12, 114–15 / PC, 105–7. The motive of cheapness and costliness also appears in Kierkegaard’s ironic description of the difference between the Pope and Luther: while the Pope’s concept of holiness, because of the money the Pope asked for, had become “too costly,” people thought Luther’s concept of holiness is making holiness far cheaper. Lutheranism has always been in the danger of cheap sanctification; cf. SKS 24, 396, NB24:120 / JP 3, 2539 (contained in Bonhoeffer’s selection of Kierkegaard’s diaries). Cf. SKS 25, 69, NB26:66 / JP 2, 1486: “…as soon as ‘imitation’ is taken away ‘grace’ is essentially indulgence” with Bonhoeffer, Illegale Theologenausbildung: Finkenwalde 1935– 1937, p. 751: “Gospel = cheap indulgence” (my translation). 60 Cf. The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1834–1854, ed. and trans. by Alexander Dru, London and New York: Oxford University Press 1938, p. 300: “The misfortune of Christianity is clearly that it has become a hiding place for sheer paganism and Epicureanism. People forget entirely that Luther was urging the claims of faith against a fantastically exaggerated asceticism.” 61 Cf. Bonhoeffer, Nachfolge, p. 1 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 4, p. 29; Discipleship, p. 43) with SKS 12, 202–3 / PC, 205. 62 Bonhoeffer, Nachfolge, p. 15 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 4, p. 47; Discipleship, p. 59). In his selection of Kierkegaard’s diaries Bonhoeffer underlined the following and put “!!” at the margin: “ ‘Imitation’…really provides the guarantee that Christianity does not become poetry, mythology, and abstract idea” (SKS 24, 384, NB24:105 / JP 2, 1904). Cf. also SKS 24, 383, NB24:103 / JP 2, 1903: “…it is ‘the mediator’ himself who makes things difficult. For if I have only God to deal with, no ‘imitation’ [Efterfølgelse] is required.” Cf. also Bonhoeffer, 58

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Discipleship means the necessity of following Christ in how he lived; this includes the necessity of deeds as a consequence of faith. Like Kierkegaard, Bonhoeffer is of the opinion that the current problems of Lutheranism arose from a misinterpretation of Luther which disconnected faith and good works. Because of this misinterpretation, Bonhoeffer later said that Kierkegaard was right when stating “that today Luther would say the opposite of what he said then.”63 Bonhoeffer in Discipleship uses Kierkegaard’s insight that Christian truth can only be represented through existence when he argues “that knowledge cannot be separated from the existence in which it was acquired.”64 Grace is not something which you can use as the presupposition or principle of your whole life; if you already calculate with Christ’s forgiveness then you do not need to be obedient, you “can now sin on the basis of this grace.”65 Grace is something which can only be the “result” of an obedient life,66 result not in the sense that God’s grace would be caused by human obedient life, but in the sense that it stands at the end of life, as a gift of Christ.67 In Discipleship, Bonhoeffer, like Kierkegaard in his writings,68 stresses the need for decision and that because of this need every Christian is an individual (Einzelner):69 “Jesus’ call to discipleship makes the disciple into a single individual. Whether disciples want to or not, they have to make a decision; each has to decide alone.”70 Nachfolge, pp. 223–4 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 4, p. 303; Discipleship, p. 287), where Bonhoeffer talks about following the example of Christ, with SKS 24, 395, NB24:118 / JP 2, 1906 (marked in Bonhoeffer’s selection): Christ is “the example (toward which single individuals are to orient themselves, all the while admitting honestly where they really are).” 63 Bonhoeffer, Widerstand und Ergebung. Briefe und Aufzeichnungen aus der Haft, p. 70 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 8, p. 179; Letters and Papers from Prison, p. 123). 64 Bonhoeffer, Nachfolge, p. 8 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 4, p. 38; Discipleship, p. 51). 65 Bonhoeffer, Nachfolge, p. 8 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 4, p. 37; Discipleship, p. 50). 66 Cf. Bonhoeffer, Nachfolge, pp. 7–8 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 4, pp. 37–8; Discipleship, pp. 50–1). Cf. the reference to Kierkegaard in ibid.: “When Faust says at the end of his life of seeking knowledge, ‘I see that we can know nothing,’ then that is a conclusion, a result. It is something entirely different than when a student repeats this statement in the first semester to justify his laziness (Kierkegaard).” Cf. Pap. XI–2 A 301 / JP 3, 2543 (in his German selection of Kierkegaard’s journals Bonhoeffer marked “as a conclusion” emphatically). 67 Cf. Bonhoeffer, Nachfolge, pp. 7–8 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 4, p. 37; Discipleship, p. 50). 68 Cf., for example, SKS 7, 30ff. / CUP1, 21ff. 69 Cf. SKS 20, 88, NB:123 / JP 2, 1997 (contained in Bonhoeffer’s selection): “…Christianity is accessible to all…, but…this occurs through and only through each one’s becoming an individual, the single individual.” 70 Bonhoeffer, Nachfolge, p. 47 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 4, p. 87; Discipleship, p. 92). Cf. Bonhoeffer, Nachfolge, p. 25, p. 150 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 4, p. 59, p. 216; Discipleship, p. 69, p. 202). Cf. a sermon in London in which Bonhoeffer uses the picture of fear and trembling: “…once in every man’s life—and it may be only in the hour of his death—God crosses man’s way so that man cannot go any further, that he must stop and

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Christ’s call to discipleship asks the person to make the first step; for example, Peter left his nets. This new situation is the precondition for discipleship.71 After this first step, the disciple has to live in “simple obedience” (einfältiger Gehorsam).72 Bonhoeffer here again is inspired by Kierkegaard, namely by his point that “[i]f the gospel demands that we renounce this world…then the simple thing to do is: do it,”73 and argues in a similar fashion when explaining the necessity of simple obedience. But what are we doing instead? When Jesus would call us and ask us to leave everything,74 we would argue that this is a legalistic understanding of obedience and that Jesus wants us to stay in our old lives because faith is not recognize in fear and trembling God’s power and his own weakness and misery, —that he must surrender his life to him who is the victor, that he must ask for mercy; for nothing but mercy can help him.” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, London 1933–1935, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 13, p. 408 (English translation: London: 1933–1935, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 13, p. 400). Accordingly, an individual relation to Jesus is important for Bonhoeffer; cf. another sermon in London in 1934, where Bonhoeffer asks his parish to call for Christ, to ask and to beg him to get to know that he is alive. When experiencing this, one will long for the final rest in him. To illustrate this longing, Bonhoeffer quotes the inscription on Kierkegaard’s gravestone at the end of his sermon in his London 1933–1935, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 13, p. 378 (London: 1933–1935, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 13, p. 375): “A short while yet, and it is won. / Of painful strife there will be none. / Refreshed by lifestreams, thirsting never, / I’ll talk with Jesus, forever and ever.” While travelling to the United States by ship in 1939, Bonhoeffer records this inscription again in his diary (cf. Bonhoeffer, Illegale Theologenausbildung: Sammelvikariate 1937–1940, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 15, p. 219), in an entry which shows his doubt about leaving Germany. When describing these doubts Bonhoeffer uses one motive central for Kierkegaard’s description of faith in The Sickness unto Death (SKS 11, 146 / SUD, 30: sig selv gjennemsigtigt grunder i Gud): “When the chaos of accusations and excuses, of desires and fears obscures everything in us, then He sees the ground in perfect clarity.” Bonhoeffer, Illegale Theologenausbildung: Sammelvikariate 1937–1940, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 15, p. 219; my translation. 71 Cf. Bonhoeffer, Nachfolge, pp. 17–18 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 4, p. 50; Discipleship, p. 62) with SKS 24, 460, NB25:35 / JP 2, 1908 (contained in Bonhoeffer’s selection): “imitation in the direction of decisive action whereby the situation for becoming a Christian comes into existence.” Bonhoeffer uses this as an example to explain the first step of the rich young man (cf. Bonhoeffer, Nachfolge, pp. 25ff. (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 4, pp. 59ff.; Discipleship, pp. 69ff.) which is also found in the selection of Kierkegaard’s diaries which Bonhoeffer used (cf. SKS 24, 260–1, NB23:111 JP 2, 1142); Bonhoeffer marked this in his copy. Both emphasize that this first step out of the life before, generates the situation of decision. 72 Cf. Bonhoeffer, Nachfolge, pp. 33ff. (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 4, pp. 69ff.; Discipleship, pp. 77ff.). Cf. as well Ethik, pp. 142ff. (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 6, pp. 320ff.; Ethics, pp. 317ff.). 73 Pap. XI–2 A 301 / JP 3, 2543. Cf. SKS 12, 245 / PC, 251–2. 74 In his selection of Kierkegaard’s diaries Bonhoeffer marked the following: “Once the objection against Christianity (and this was right at the time when it was most evident what Christianity is) was that it was unpatriotic, a danger to the state, revolutionary” (SKS 24, 265, NB23:122 / JP 4, 4209) because this is how the students in Finkenwalde were considered by the state at his time (cf. also the reference to this motive in Nachfolge, p. 89 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 4, p. 140; Discipleship, p. 137)).

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dependent on circumstances. Bonhoeffer exposes this argument as flight; we should simply obey. Simple does not mean simplistic, but, as Bonhoeffer had explained in an earlier writing, “clear, genuine, natural, straightforward, pure.”75 Bonhoeffer repeats in Ethics: “A person is simple who in the confusion, the distortion, and the inversion of all concepts keeps in sight only the single truth of God.”76 In his book from Frinkenwalde, Bonhoeffer reminds his readers that Christian discipleship is “the extraordinary” (das Außerordentliche).77 The disciple has to step beyond the naturally given conditions. Put concretely, loving Christ is not wrapped up in loving one’s country, but demands love for one’s enemy.78 Therefore Bonhoeffer, like Kierkegaard, is convinced of the necessity of suffering for those who follow Christ.79 Both stress that this suffering does not consist in the problems of our daily life, but in suffering because of belonging to Christ.80 Like Kierkegaard, Bonhoeffer employs the picture of the yoke for depicting this.81 An interesting shift of Bonhoeffer’s understanding of suffering took place while he was in prison. Maybe because he had only very few joys he became more and more open to the friendly and positive elements in life. He focuses much less on suffering and argues that in God’s blessing “the whole of the earthly life is claimed for God, and it includes all his promises.”82 In this context Bonhoeffer mentions Kierkegaard as an example for setting the Old Testament blessings against the cross, Bonhoeffer, Barcelona, Berlin, Amerika 1928–1931, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 10, p. 497 (Barcelona, Berlin, New York: 1928–1931, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 10, p. 514). 76 Bonhoeffer, Ethik, p. 14 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 6, p. 67; Ethics, p. 81). 77 Cf. Bonhoeffer, Nachfolge, pp. 55ff. (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 4, pp. 99ff.; pp. 147–9; Discipleship, pp. 100ff.; pp. 144–5) with the use of the term in Kierkegaard, for example, SKS 25, 18–19, NB26:10 / JP 2, 1914 (contained in Bonhoeffer’s selection). 78 Cf. Bonhoeffer, Nachfolge, p. 95 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 4, pp. 147–8; Discipleship, p. 144). 79 Cf. Bonhoeffer, Nachfolge, p. 43 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 4, p. 82; Discipleship, p. 89): “…suffering becomes the identifying mark of a follower of Christ. The disciple is not above the teacher. Discipleship is passio passiva [passive suffering], having to suffer” with SKS 12, 233–4 / PC, 239–41. 80 Cf. Bonhoeffer, Nachfolge, p. 41 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 4, pp. 79–80; Discipleship, pp. 86–7) with SKS 12, 212–13 / PC, 215–17. This could even include being considered as a hater of the human race. Cf. Bonhoeffer, Nachfolge, p. 51 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 4, p. 92; Discipleship, p. 96) with SKS 24, 265, NB23:122 / JP 4, 4209 contained in Bonhoeffer’s selection and marked by Bonhoeffer. 81 Cf. Bonhoeffer, Nachfolge, p. V (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 4, p. 23; Discipleship, p. 39) with SKS 24, 381–2, NB24:100 / JP 2, 1902: “And just why must ‘imitation’ be emphasized? Could it be in order to lay a yoke upon men’s consciences, or could it mean ascetic self-torturing and that we have learned nothing from the past?…No. Discipleship should be emphasized in order to maintain a little justice in Christianity and where possible to bring back a little meaning into Christendom, in order to humiliate with the help of the ideal and to learn how to take refuge in grace” (contained in Bonhoeffer’s selection). 82 Bonhoeffer, Widerstand und Ergebung. Briefe und Aufzeichnungen aus der Haft, p. 253 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 8, p. 548; Letters and Papers from Prison, p. 374). 75

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making suffering an abstract principle while it is contingently sent by God. For the imprisoned Bonhoeffer the cross of the New Testament still includes the blessing.83 Back to Discipleship: like Kierkegaard, he sees the danger of making discipleship a meritorious deed of extremely pious individuals instead of a commandment to all Christians. “Luther saw the monk’s escape from the world as really a subtle love for the world.”84 If the monk’s escape is a subtle love for the world, then Luther’s way out of the monastery could only end in a “frontal assault. Following Jesus now had to be lived out in the midst of the world.”85 Bonhoeffer’s lecture on “Jesus Christ and the Essence of Christianity,” held during his time in Barcelona, is a real collection of Kierkegaardian motifs, which shows how deeply Bonhoeffer was influenced by Kierkegaard. Bonhoeffer argues that the “infinite qualitative distinction”86 between God and humanity is unbridgeable from the human perspective; Christ is the only path to God.87 To be a Christian means to take Christ in whom “God’s word once became a present reality”88 seriously.89 83 Cf. Bonhoeffer, Widerstand und Ergebung. Briefe und Aufzeichnungen aus der Haft, pp. 253–4 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 8, pp. 548–9; Letters and Papers from Prison, p. 374). Kierkegaard might not have set the blessing against the cross (cf. Bonhoeffer, Widerstand und Ergebung. Briefe und Aufzeichnungen aus der Haft, pp. 253–4 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 8, p. 548, editor’s note 5) but he said that all worldly good as such is selfish for the more I have, the less somebody else can have, cf. SKS 10, 126 / CD, 114–15. 84 Bonhoeffer, Nachfolge, p. 5 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 4, p. 34; Discipleship, p. 48); cf. SKS 25, 18–19, NB26:10 / JP 2, 1914: “And ‘the extraordinary’ found pleasure in this recognition—again the secular mentality” (contained in Bonhoeffer’s selection). 85 Bonhoeffer, Nachfolge, pp. 5–6 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 4, pp. 34–5; Discipleship, p. 48); cf. SKS 24, 47–8, NB21:68 / JP 3, 2528 (contained in Bonhoeffer’s selection). Cf. as well Bonhoeffer, Nachfolge, p. 186 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 4, p. 260; Discipleship, p. 244). 86 Cf. Bonhoeffer, Barcelona, Berlin, Amerika 1928–1931, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 10, p. 314 (Barcelona, Berlin, New York: 1928–1931, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 10, p. 352) with, for example, SKS 12, 43 / PC, 28–9. 87 Cf. Bonhoeffer, Barcelona, Berlin, Amerika 1928–1931, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 10, pp. 314–15 (Barcelona, Berlin, New York: 1928–1931, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 10, p. 353). 88 Cf. Bonhoeffer, Barcelona, Berlin, Amerika 1928–1931, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 10, p. 303 (Barcelona, Berlin, New York: 1928–1931, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 10, p. 343). 89 Cf. Bonhoeffer, Barcelona, Berlin, Amerika 1928–1931, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 10, p. 303; pp. 318–19. (Barcelona, Berlin, New York: 1928–1931, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 10, pp. 342–3; pp. 355–6). Cf. also Bonhoeffer, Barcelona, Berlin, Amerika 1928–1931, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 10, p. 285; pp. 501–2. (Barcelona, Berlin, New York: 1928–1931, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 10, p. 325; pp. 518–19). Cf., for example, SKS 4, 446ff. / CA, 146ff. In his copy of the book, Bonheffer had marked several passages on earnestness. Cf. also Bonhoeffer’s reference to the term “seriousness” / “earnestness,” in his, for example, Akt und Sein. Transzendentalphilosophie und Ontologie in der systematischen Theologie, p. 142 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 2, p. 147; Act and Being: Transcendental Philosophy and Ontology in Systematic Theology, p. 148); Nachfolge, pp. V–VI; pp. 28–9; p. 54 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 4, pp. 23–4; pp. 62– 3; p. 95; Discipleship, pp. 39–40; p. 72; p. 99 (references from Barth, “Dietrich Bonhoeffers

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Instead of viewing Christ from aesthetic or ethical perspectives, one should take seriously Christ’s claim to be the revelation of God which puts human beings into the situation of decision. Christ is the “offense” (Ärgernis),90 not because of his personality, but because of his claim for decision. The situation of decision is the situation of “contemporaneity”91 in which we perceive the claim of history. To understand history as putting that claim on us is contrary to an idealist concept of history in which “history itself can offer nothing essentially new; everything fits into the system one already possesses.”92 Bonhoeffer sums up, the “religion of Christ is not the tidbit after the bread; it is the bread itself, or it is nothing.”93 How did Bonhoeffer come to know Kierkegaard? Bonhoeffer owned Emanuel Hirsch’s Kierkegaard-Studies. Beside this, it was Kierkegaard’s influence on Karl Barth’s dialectical theology which made Bonhoeffer interested in this thinker. Bonhoeffer owned several books by Kierkegaard which can now be consulted in the archives of the Staatsbibliothek Berlin.94 Bonhoeffer’s remarks and markings in these books lead to the conclusion that he carefully studied the following: Concluding Unscientific Postscript, The Concept of Anxiety, Practice in Christianity, The Sickness unto Death,95 as well as several collections: one of Kierkegaard’s writings

Nachfolge,” p. 35, note 72)); Ethik, p. 81, p. 91; p. 137 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 6, p. 146; p. 160; p. 311; Ethics, p. 155; p. 168; p. 310). Cf. also Bonhoeffer’s notes for Ethics: “Christentum ist keine Idee, sd Christentum = Christus. Christus ist nicht ‘radikal,’ sd. wirklich; milde und radikal zugleich. D. ‘Ernst’machen und doch ‘alles für Scherz halten’ (Kierkegaard).” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Zettelnotizen für eine “Ethik,” in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 6, supplementary volume, p. 54; cf. also ibid., p. 63. 90 Bonhoeffer, Barcelona, Berlin, Amerika 1928–1931, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 10, p. 310 (Barcelona, Berlin, New York: 1928–1931, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 10, p. 348. Cf. the use of the term in Bonhoeffer’s Christology lecture Christologie, p. 181; p. 189; p. 194; p. 213; pp. 238–41 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 12, p. 295; p. 302; p. 306; p. 322; pp. 345–7); and in his Berlin 1932–1933, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 12, p. 453. For the term “offense” cf., for example, SKS 12, 91ff. PC, 81ff. In Christologie, p. 236 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 12, p. 345), Bonhoeffer also uses Kierkegaard’s term “Incognito,” cf. SKS 12, 138ff. / PC, 134ff. 91 Bonhoeffer, Barcelona, Berlin, Amerika 1928–1931, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 10, p. 307 (Barcelona, Berlin, New York: 1928–1931, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 10, p. 346). Cf., for example, SKS 12, 17 / PC, 9. 92 Bonhoeffer, Barcelona, Berlin, Amerika 1928–1931, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 10, p. 306 (Barcelona, Berlin, New York: 1928–1931, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 10, p. 345). 93 Bonhoeffer, Barcelona, Berlin, Amerika 1928–1931, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 10, p. 303 (Barcelona, Berlin, New York: 1928–1931, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 10, p. 342). 94 Cf. Nachlaß Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Ein Verzeichnis. Archiv—Sammlung—Bibliothek, ed. by Dietrich Meyer in cooperation with Eberhard Bethge, Munich: Kaiser 1987, p. 219. 95 Cf. with this text the memoirs of Hans Christoph von Hase in Bonhoeffer, Barcelona, Berlin, Amerika 1928–1931, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 10, p. 593 (Barcelona, Berlin, New York: 1928–1931, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 10, p. 596).

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from 1851–55,96 one of the Christian speeches,97 and Der Einzelne und die Kirche.98 He used Der Einzelne und die Kirche for the first time for preparing the lectures on discipleship in Finkenwalde, and used it again when revising the manuscript of the lectures for publication.99 III. In his early writings, influenced by Barth’s dialectical theology in which of course Kierkegaard is reflected, Bonhoeffer strongly emphasizes the difference between God and human beings. Bonhoeffer agreed with Kierkegaard’s insight that, since God is absolutely different from humankind, human thinking itself cannot grasp God. If theology really wants to talk about God, then it has to start with the premise of faith that in Christ God is present. Yet faith is not so much an intellectual endeavor but an existential answer to the concrete encounter with Christ. Bonhoeffer was convinced that Kierkegaard’s existential theology is more adequate for Christian theology than any form of abstract or idealist theology. It is the concrete existence of the concrete individual in which the reality of Christ comes to a decision. To illustrate this, Bonhoeffer frequently uses core terms of Kierkegaard: individual (der Einzelne), seriousness (Ernst), moment (Augenblick), contemporaneity (Gleichzeitigkeit), offense (Ärgernis), decision (Entscheidung), discipleship (Jüngerschaft/Nachfolge), imitation (Nachfolge), simplicity (Einfalt), and the extraordinary (Das Außerordentliche). Bonhoeffer agrees with Kierkegaard’s existential perspective but misses a strong concept of sociality. Kierkegaard has some helpful insight here, but does not develop a relational concept of personhood and church. Bonhoeffer objects that in Kierkegaard’s approach the encounter with Christ only takes place in the inner world of a human being, not in a situation of real encounter with somebody else. Yet in Bonhoeffer’s view only from here can a responsible existence be conceived. This existential character of faith for Bonhoeffer became most concrete in his historical circumstances. Faith has to lead to a different existence, to different deeds. But most Christians in his day did not draw consequences for their faith, but lived in conformity with the National Socialist state. Kierkegaard’s critique of Lutheranism then was helpful for Bonhoeffer’s own critique of Lutheranism. Here Bonhoeffer saw Kierkegaard as his companion and comrade.

Sören Kierkegaards agitatorische Schriften und Aufsätze: 1851 bis 1855, trans. by August Dorner and Christoph Schrempf, Stuttgart: Frommann 1896. 97 Sören Kierkegaard, Das Evangelium der Leiden. Christliche Reden, trans. by Wilhelm Kütemeyer, Calw: Brücke-Verlag 1933. 98 See note 56. 99 Cf. Editors’ Afterword to the German Edition in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 4, p. 319 (Discipleship, p. 301). 96

Bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Bonhoeffer’s Corpus Sanctorum Communio. Eine dogmatische Untersuchung zur Soziologie der Kirche, Berlin and Frankfurt an der Oder: Trowitzsch 1930, p. III; p. 9 note 2; pp. 12ff.; p. 20, note 1; pp. 88–9, note 2; pp. 92–3; p. 95, note 2; p. 153; p. 161, note 1 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vols. 1–17, ed. by Eberhard Bethge et al., Munich and Gütersloh: Kaiser 1986–99, vol. 1, p. 13; p. 23, note 6; pp. 28ff.; p. 34, note 12; p. 104, note 20; pp. 108–9; p. 111, note 28; p. 171; p. 179, note 130; p. 260 note 41; English translation: Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vols. 1–16, ed. by Victoria J. Barnett et al., Minneapolis: Fortress Press 1996ff., vol. 1, p. 21, p. 42, note 6; pp. 48ff.; p. 57, note 12; p. 143, note 40; p. 162, note 20; pp. 167–8; p. 170, note 28; p. 249; p. 259, note 130). Akt und Sein. Transzendentalphilosophie und Ontologie in der systematischen Theologie, Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann 1931 (Beiträge zur Förderung christlicher Theologie, vol. 34), p. 19, p. 49, p. 133, p. 142 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vols. 1–17, ed. by Eberhard Bethge et al., Munich and Gütersloh: Kaiser 1986– 99, vol. 2, pp. 32–3; p. 61; p. 137; p. 147; English translation: Act and Being: Transcendental Philosophy and Ontology in Systematic Theology, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vols. 1–16, ed. by Victoria J. Barnett et al., Minneapolis: Fortress Press 1996ff., vol. 2, p. 39; p. 67; p. 138; p. 148). Schöpfung und Fall. Theologische Auslegung von Genesis 1–3, Munich: Kaiser 1933, pp. 7ff.; pp. 58–9 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vols. 1–17, ed. by Eberhard Bethge et al., Munich and Gütersloh: Kaiser 1986–99, vol. 3, pp. 25ff.; p. 91, editor’s note 8; pp. 96–7; English translation: Creation and Fall, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vols. 1–16, ed. by Victoria J. Barnett et al., Minneapolis: Fortress Press 1996ff., vol. 3, pp. 25ff.; p. 98, editor’s note 11; p. 104). Nachfolge, Munich: Kaiser 1937, pp. Vff.; pp. 1–54; pp. 55–96; p. 150; p. 186; p. 224 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vols. 1–17, ed. by Eberhard Bethge et al., Munich and Gütersloh: Kaiser 1986–99, vol. 4, pp. 23ff.; pp. 29–95; pp. 99–149; p. 216; p. 260; p. 303; English translation: Discipleship, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vols. 1–16, ed. by Victoria J. Barnett et al., Minneapolis: Fortress Press 1996ff., Minneapolis: Fortress Press 1996ff., vol. 4, pp. 39–40; pp. 43–99; pp. 100–45; p. 202; p. 244; p. 287). Gemeinsames Leben, Munich: Kaiser 1939 (Theologische Existenz heute, vol. 61), pp. 16ff.; pp. 50ff. (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vols. 1–17, ed. by Eberhard Bethge et al., Munich and Gütersloh: Kaiser 1986–99, vol. 5, pp. 27ff.; pp. 65ff.; English translation: Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible, in Dietrich

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Bonhoeffer Works, vols. 1–16, ed. by Victoria J. Barnett et al., Minneapolis: Fortress Press 1996ff., vol. 5, pp. 38ff.; pp. 81ff.). Ethik, ed. by Eberhard Bethge, Munich: Chr. Kaiser 1949, p. 14; p. 81; p. 91; p. 137; pp. 142ff. (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vols. 1–17, ed. by Eberhard Bethge et al., Munich and Gütersloh: Kaiser 1986–99, vol. 6, p. 67; p. 146; p. 160; p. 311; pp. 320ff.; English translation: Ethics, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vols. 1–16, ed. by Victoria J. Barnett et al., Minneapolis: Fortress Press 1996ff., vol. 6, p. 81; p. 155; p. 168; p. 310; pp. 317ff.). Zettelnotizen für eine “Ethik,” in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vols. 1–17, ed. by Eberhard Bethge et al., Munich and Gütersloh: Kaiser 1986–99, vol. 6, supplementary volume, p. 54; p. 63; p. 115. Widerstand und Ergebung. Briefe und Aufzeichnungen aus der Haft, ed. by Eberhard Bethge, Munich: Kaiser 1951, p. 70; p. 136; p. 156; pp. 253–4 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vols. 1–17, ed. by Eberhard Bethge et al., Munich and Gütersloh: Kaiser 1986–99, vol. 8, p. 179; p. 291; p. 352; p. 548; English translation: Letters and Papers from Prison, enlarged ed. by Eberhard Bethge, New York: Touchstone 1997, p. 123; p. 193; p. 229; p. 374). Jugend und Studium 1918–1927, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vols. 1–17, ed. by Eberhard Bethge et al., Munich and Gütersloh: Kaiser 1986–99, vol. 9, p. 308. Barcelona, Berlin, Amerika 1928–1931, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vols. 1–17, ed. by Eberhard Bethge et al., Munich and Gütersloh: Kaiser 1986–99, vol. 10, p. 285; pp. 302–22; p. 330; p. 333; p. 432; p. 435; pp. 501–2. (English translation: Barcelona, Berlin, New York: 1928–1931, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vols. 1–16, ed. by Victoria J. Barnett et al., Minneapolis: Fortress Press 1996ff., vol. 10, p. 325; pp. 342–59; p. 365; p. 368; p. 460; p. 463; pp. 518–19.) Ökumene, Universität, Pfarramt 1931–1932, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vols. 1–17, ed. by Eberhard Bethge et al., Munich and Gütersloh: Kaiser 1986–99, vol. 11, p. 149; pp. 197–8; p. 201; p. 205; p. 282; pp. 373–4. Berlin 1932–1933, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vols. 1–17, ed. by Eberhard Bethge et al., Munich and Gütersloh: Kaiser 1986–99, vol. 12, p. 179; pp. 194–5; 294–5; p. 302; p. 306; p. 322; pp. 343–7; p. 453. London 1933–1935, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vols. 1–17, ed. by Eberhard Bethge et al., Munich and Gütersloh: Kaiser 1986–99, vol. 13, p. 378; p. 408. (English translation: London: 1933–1935, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vols. 1–16, ed. by Victoria J. Barnett et al., Minneapolis: Fortress Press 1996ff., vol. 13, p. 375; p. 400.) Illegale Theologenausbildung: Finkenwalde 1935–1937, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vols. 1–17, ed. by Eberhard Bethge et al., Munich and Gütersloh: Kaiser 1986–99, vol. 14, p. 486; p. 544; p. 822. Illegale Theologenausbildung: Sammelvikariate 1937–1940, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vols. 1–17, ed. by Eberhard Bethge et al., Munich and Gütersloh: Kaiser 1986–99, vol. 15, p. 219; p. 456. Register und Ergänzungen, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vols. 1–17, ed. by Eberhard Bethge et al., Munich and Gütersloh: Kaiser 1986–99, vol. 17, p. 102. Christologievorlesung Gesammelte Schriften, vols. 1–6, ed. by Eberhard Bethge, Munich: Kaiser 1958–74, vol. 3 (Theologie, Gemeinde, Vorlesungen, Briefe,

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Gespräche, 1927 bis 1944), p. 167; pp. 180–1; p. 189; p. 194; p. 213; p. 236; pp. 238–41 (in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vols. 1–17, ed. by Eberhard Bethge et al., Munich and Gütersloh: Kaiser 1986–99, vol. 12, pp. 294–5; p. 302; p. 306; p. 322; pp. 345–7). Brautbriefe Zelle 92. Dietrich Bonhoeffer—Maria von Wedemeyer 1943–1945, ed. by Ruth-Alice von Bismarck and Ulrich Kabitz, Munich: C.H. Beck 1992, p. 139. (English translation: Love Letters from Cell 92: The Correspondence between Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Maria von Wedemeyer, Nashville: Abingdon Press 1992, pp. 185–6.) II. Sources of Bonhoeffer’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Barth, Heinrich, “Kierkegaard, der Denker,” Zwischen den Zeiten, vol. 4, no. 3, 1926, pp. 194–234. Barth, Karl, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., Munich: Kaiser 1922, pp. v–vi; p. xii; pp. 15–16; p. 71; p. 75; p. 77; pp. 85–9; p. 93; p. 96; pp. 98–9; p. 114; p. 141; p. 145; p. 236; p. 261; p. 264; p. 267; p. 319; p. 325; p. 381; p. 400; pp. 426–7; p. 455; p. 481; pp. 483–4. — Das Wort Gottes und die Theologie, Munich: Kaiser 1924, p. 91; p. 164. Haecker, Theodor, Der Begriff der Wahrheit bei Sören Kierkegaard, Innsbruck: Brenner 1932. Hirsch, Emanuel, Kierkegaard-Studien, vols. 1–3, Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlag 1930–33. III. Secondary Literature on Bonhoeffer’s Relation to Kierkegaard Barth, Friederike, “Dietrich Bonhoeffers Nachfolge in der Nachfolge Kierkegaards,” in Lebendige Ethik. Beiträge aus dem Institut für Ethik und angrenzende Sozialwissenschaften. Hans-Richard Reuter zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. by Thorsten Meireis, Berlin: LIT-Verlag 2007, pp. 9–37. Gregor, Brian, “Following-After and Becoming Human: A Study of Bonhoeffer and Kierkegaard,” in Being Human, Becoming Human—Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Social Thought, ed. by Jens Zimmermann and Brian Gregor, Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick 2010 (Princeton Theological Monograph Series, vol. 146), chapter 8. Hopper, David H., “Bonhoeffer’s ‘Love of the World,’ ‘The Dangers of that Book,’ and the Kierkegaard Question.” (Paper presented to the Bonhoeffer Society Section, American Academy of Religion, 1989.) Bonhoeffer Archive, Union Theological Seminary, New York. — “Metanoia: Bonhoeffer on Kierkegaard,” Metanoia, vol. 2, no. 3, 1991, pp. 70–5. Kelly, Geffrey, “The Influence of Kierkegaard on Bonhoeffer’s Concept of Discipleship,” Irish Theological Quarterly, vol. 41, 1974, pp. 148–54. — “Kierkegaard as ‘Antidote’ and as Impact on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Concept of Christian Discipleship,” in Bonhoeffer’s Intellectual Formation: Theology and Philosophy in His Thought, ed. by Peter Frick, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2008 (Religion in Philosophy and Theology, vol. 29), pp. 145–66.

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Law, David R., “Cheap Grace and the Cost of Discipleship in Kierkegaard’s For Self-Examination,” in For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourself!, ed. by Robert L. Perkins, Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press 2002 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 21), pp. 111–42. — “Christian Discipleship in Kierkegaard, Hirsch and Bonhoeffer,” Downside Review: A Quarterly of Catholic Thought and of Monastic History, vol. 120, 2002, pp. 293–306. Rae, Murray A., Kierkegaard, “Barth and Bonhoeffer: Conceptions of the Relation between Grace and Works,” in For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourself!, ed. by Robert L. Perkins, Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press 2002 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 21), pp. 143–67. Vogel, Traugott, Christus als Vorbild und Versöhner. Eine kritische Studie zum Problem des Verhältnisses von Gesetz und Evangelium im Werk Sören Kierkegaards, Ph.D. Thesis, Humboldt University, Berlin 1968. Wray, J. Thomas, “Towards a Theology of Aesthetic Arrest: Integritas in Kierkegaard and Bonhoeffer,” Church Divinity, ed. by John H. Morgan, Notre Dame, Indiana J.H. Morgan 1988 (Church Divinity Monograph Series, vol. 8), pp. 1–18.

Emil Brunner: Polemically Promoting Kierkegaard’s Christian Philosophy of Encounter Curtis L. Thompson

The theology of Emil Brunner (1889–1966) is nourished by the vitality of the human’s relationship with God, and central theologically for him is his claim that the human’s true God-dependence constitutes the human’s true self-dependence. Brunner is convinced that Protestant theology’s recovery of the Reformers in the early part of the twentieth century was due in no small measure to the recovering of the great Danish writer Søren Kierkegaard.1 He identifies Kierkegaard as one of “the great men who are exceptions in the realm of theology” because he has taken up “the true task of the Christian thinker.”2 Brunner is convinced that it is anthropology, the doctrine of the human, which is the appropriate place for the discussion between the Christian faith and non-Christian thought, and Kierkegaard with his existential philosophy “has placed his intellectual genius at the disposal of this discussion.”3 Brunner does not simply receive from Kierkegaard; he receives his existential message, appropriates it deeply, and then with the feisty vigor of Kierkegaard himself promotes that message by critiquing prevailing antithetical perspectives of the time. This polemical promoting of all that Kierkegaard was about sets Brunner apart from other theologians of his time. Even though Emil Brunner was Swiss, he is appropriately included in a volume on Kierkegaard’s influence on German theology because he participated in German culture and wrote most of his theological works in German. 1 Emil Brunner, Die christliche Lehre von der Kirche vom Glauben, und von der Vollendung, Zurich et al.: Zwingli-Verlag 1960 (vol. 3 in Emil Brunner, Dogmatik, vols. 1–3, Zurich: Zwingli-Verlag 1946–60), p. 9. (English translation: The Christian Doctrine of the Church, Faith, and the Consummation, trans. by David Cairns and T.H.L. Parker, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1962 (vol. 3 in Emil Brunner, Dogmatics, trans. by Olyve Wyon, David Cairns, and T.H.L. Parker, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1949–62), p. ix.) 2 Emil Brunner, Die christliche Lehre von Gott, Zurich: Zwingli-Verlag 1950 (vol. 1 in Brunner, Dogmatik), p. 10. (The Christian Doctrine of God, trans. by Olive Wyon, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1950 (vol. 1 in Brunner, Dogmatics), p. 8). 3 Emil Brunner, Die christliche Lehre von Schöpfung und Erlösung, Zurich: ZwingliVerlag 1950 (vol. 2 in Brunner, Dogmatik), p. 87. (The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, trans. by Olive Wyon, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1952 (vol. 2 in Brunner, Dogmatics), p. 72.)

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I. Brunner as Relational Theologian Five themes can help to introduce Brunner as a theologian. The first theme is the centrality of relationships. In Heinrich Emil Brunner we encounter a person who insisted from first to last that the human’s relationship with God is unequaled in importance.4 Relationships were central to his theology, which we could appropriately designate as a relational theology. He did his theology in relation to the social and intellectual crisis of his time and in relation to his personal commitments.5 He was, like his contemporary countryman Karl Barth (1886–1968), raised in Switzerland, and this country’s maintenance of four different cultures and languages (German, French, Italian, and Roman) provided a European microcosm as the setting for his theological reflection.6 Distinctive to his theological method was a consistently existential mode of biblical interpretation inspired by Kierkegaard.7 Throughout his career a primary polemical target was the various systems of immanence. In his 1929 Theology of Crisis, which consisted of lectures he had given in America the year before, Brunner states four reasons, all having to do with the inhibiting of relationships, for his grave religious objections to modernity’s idea of immanence.8 4 For an overview of Brunner’s life and thought, see Emil Brunner, “A Spiritual Autobiography,” Japan Christian Quarterly, July 1955, pp. 238–44; Emil Brunner, “Intellectual Autobiography,” trans. by Keith Chamberlain, The Theology of Emil Brunner, ed. by Charles W. Kegley, New York: Macmillan 1962, pp. 3–20; Mark G. McKim, Emil Brunner: A Bibliography, Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press 1996, see “An Introduction to the Life and Thought of Emil Brunner,” pp. 7–28; Douglas John Hall, Remembered Voices: Reclaiming the Legacy of “New-Orthodoxy,” Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press 1998, see Chapter 5, “Emil Brunner: Truth as Meeting,” pp. 75–91; I. John Hesselink, “Emil Brunner: A Centennial Perspective,” Christian Century, December 13, 1989, see pp. 1171–2; J. Edward Humphrey, Emil Brunner, Waco, Texas: Word Books 1976. 5 Robin W. Lovin, Christian Faith and Public Choices: The Social Ethics of Barth, Brunner, and Bonhoeffer, Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1984, p. vii. 6 Brunner, “Intellectual Autobiography,” pp. 3–4. Brunner states, Der Mittler. Zur Besinnung über den Christusglauben, 2nd photomechanically reprinted ed., Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1930 [1927], p. 195, note 1 (English translation: The Mediator: A Study of the Central Doctrine of the Christian Faith, London: Lutterworth Press 1934, p. 222, note 1) that he would be inclined to accept the description of his work as “theology of the type of Irenaeus,” but he points out “that between Irenaeus and the present day there have been Augustine, the Reformation, and Kierkegaard,” and all of these have been important influences on him. 7 Emil Brunner, Faith, Hope, and Love, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1956, p. 7. In the Foreword to these three addresses on faith, hope, and love delivered as the Earl Lectures at Berkeley, California, in the spring of 1955, Brunner noted that the theological method of the lectures that appeared novel to listeners was a method “marked by a consistently existential exposition of the Biblical Word, in which indeed the Word is to be understood not so much in the Bultmann-Heidegger connotation as in that of Kierkegaard.” 8 Emil Brunner, The Theology of Crisis, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons 1929, pp. 29–31. These points are also discussed in Holmes Rolston, A Conservative Looks to Barth and Brunner: An Interpretation of Barthian Theology, Nashville: Cokesbury Press 1933, pp. 61–5. The first reason is that when the human finds God by deifying that which is highest

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Concern for relationality translates into concern for the personal. Brunner is convinced that one of the major errors of modern times is thinking “that a just and free order of society somehow comes closer to the message of the Kingdom of God than the decisions in the individual, personal realm”; he then declares this insight into the value of personal life as decisive for and standing above all others in his whole thinking.9 In his Gifford Lectures of 1947–48 on “Christianity and Civilisation,” Brunner presents Kierkegaard as reinstituting many of the Protestant Reformers’ best insights, but, unlike them, he has capably combined “the necessary Socratic element of active appropriation with the Christian conception of divine revelation; in this regard he, along with the great Swiss educator Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746– 1827), has “made most valuable contributions toward a Christian idea of education,” even though Kierkegaard was not much interested in the problem of education.10 Relationships of marriage and vocation were also important to Brunner.11 He seems to have been a rather natural networker of relationships.12 Global connections gave him a cosmopolitan awareness and the opportunity to work with the world church in the Ecumenical Movement. The second theme characterizing Brunner’s theology is commandment and contradiction. The human’s relational structure means that the human’s existence as lived before God continually faces the call and command of God. Becoming human takes place as the human responds to the creative divine address. Our Swiss theologian experienced the call and command to be engaged in the historical moment. Brunner writes that especially influential on him and on Barth were the biblically within the human, the result is that one does not really find God. The second is that such a God as one finds is not really personal. The third is that a religion of immanence is not really based on faith. And the fourth is that, as a result, the human foregoes the crisis of having to make a decision between life and death and thereby never becomes a real personality. 9 Brunner, “Intellectual Autobiography,” p. 4. 10 Emil Brunner, Christianity and Civilisation: Second Part: Specific Problems, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons 1948, p. 50; pp. 52–6. Brunner bemoans the fact that Kierkegaard’s doctrine of appropriation has not had the same impact as has his doctrine of the paradox. A contemporary theory of education needs to place the notion of personality at the center of its concern. The personal is the fully relational, and appropriation is allowed to happen when relationships are vibrant. 11 In 1917, Emil married Margrit Lauterburg, the niece of Hermann Kutter—minister of the cathedral in Zurich (where Brunner had served as a vicar for six months) and revolutionary advocate of religious socialism. Brunner was engaged in pastoral work with congregations off and on from 1916 to 1924, when he was appointed to the Chair of Systematic and Practical Theology at the University of Zurich, a position he held until 1955. 12 We learn from Brunner, “Intellectual Autobiography,” pp. 6–8 and pp. 18–19, that he established relationships with people around the world, and this helped to facilitate the dissemination of his theology. He was always attracted to spending time in places outside his country, and wherever he went he connected with people. He studied a semester at the University of Berlin in 1911, learned much about the Christian Labor Movement while spending 1913–14 in England, enjoyed a fellowship at Union Theological Seminary in New York from 1919 to 1920, which was the first of many trips to the United States, lectured routinely around Europe, traveled to the Far East in 1949, and then worked in Tokyo at the new International Christian University from 1953 to 1955.

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serious “ ‘Swabian Fathers,’ especially the two Blumhardts, Johann Christoph the father and Christoph the son,” along with the Christian existentialism of Kierkegaard in its opposition to the idealism of Hegel.13 The battle-cry of the elder Blumhardt was Jesus is Conqueror!14 At the heart of the younger Blumhardt’s “life and thought was the simple but all-powerful belief in the possibility of God’s acting in the midst of life today to transform the human situation.”15 God’s command is the starting point of Christian ethics, and to be in God’s love is the commandment; but this divine command Brunner understands as meeting us in the “orders” of creation.16 The command of God is only heard in faith. Faith

Emil Brunner, Wahrheit als Begegnung, 2nd edition enlarged through a first part of Das christliche Wahrheitsverständnis im Verhältnis zum philosophisch-wissenschaftlichen, Zurich and Stuttgart: Zwingli-Verlag 1963 [1938], p. 45. (English translation: Truth as Encounter, A New Edition, Much Enlarged, of The Divine Human Encounter, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1964, p. 42.) We read in James D. Smart, The Divided Mind of Modern Theology: Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann, 1908–1933, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1967, p. 59, that in the early 1840s a revival broke out as the result of the elder Blumhardt’s ministry of healing that called on the power of Christ to liberate individuals from evil spirits and to restore them to health and soundness of mind. 14 Emil Brunner, Die Kirchen, die Gruppenbewegung und die Kirche Jesu Christi, Berlin: Furche Verlag 1936, p. 28. (English translation: The Church and the Oxford Group, trans. by David Cairns, London: Hodder and Stoughton 1937, p. 57.) Bequeathed to theology from the Blumhardts was a radical emphasis on God always taking the initiative in relation to the human as opposed to any sort of accomplishment of human effort on its own, together with a lifting up of faith in Jesus Christ as central. This spiritual movement took on social dimensions as Blumhardt progressed from a pietism emphasizing the conversion of the soul to a liberationism emphasizing how human beings can be delivered “from all the forces of evil through the inbreaking of God’s Kingdom,” as the new age begins to dawn with the Holy Spirit’s reception and expectation of Christ’s return leads to “a passionate protest against everything in the world’s present life” that brings suffering to the human. Smart, The Divided Mind of Modern Theology, p. 59. 15 Smart, The Divided Mind of Modern Theology, p. 60. Christians are politically responsible. Disciples of the Blumhardts were founders of the “Religious Socialism” movement in Switzerland and Germany, and Brunner’s father and then Brunner himself participated in this movement. 16 Brunner, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen. Entwurf einer protestantisch-theologischen Ethik, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (1932, pp. 68–70; p. 80; p. 275. (The Divine Imperative: A Study in Christian Ethics, trans. by Olive Wyon, London: Lutterworth Press 1937, pp. 82–3; p. 93; p. 291.) Brunner thinks the English title, The Divine Imperative, unfortunately fails to capture the double aspect of “command” and “orders” of the German Das Gebot und die Ordnungen. These two dimensions were so important for him because he understands God’s command as coming to us in relation to the various orders of reality. Care needs to be taken not to regard any particular existing “order” as “willed by God”; at the same time we are summoned to respond to God “in the spirit of service, within the actual social environment in which our life is placed,” recognizing that, while there is no such thing as a “Christian social program,” we are called to seek for one constantly, and to work diligently to protest against the lovelessness of the prevailing system and to do what we can to improve it. See Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, pp. 322–3. (The Divine Imperative, p. 339.) 13

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allows law to be transformed into the command of love as it accesses the Spirit’s Word of grace.17 If commandment is a key concept for Brunner, so is contradiction. Brunner’s book Man in Revolt18 is a Christian anthropology which contends that through sin the human lives in revolt against God and against the human’s true essence that has been created in the image of God, with this contradiction manifesting itself in anxiety, a bad conscience, longing, and doubt.19 The spiritual evolution of the modern era has been consistently following the road of objective materialism, so that one could parody Kierkegaard’s phrase and give it the designation—“The object is the truth.”20 Some of Kierkegaard’s earlier works drive home the insight that sin blinds the human to the truth.21 Even with the overcoming of contradiction, sin’s power lingers. Therefore, contradiction enters into consideration of worldly matters. Important for Brunner is what he called the “law of the closeness of relation” or the Principle of Contiguity that became his guiding principle for all problems concerning the relation between the Christian and the world.22 We are called, then, to “critical cooperation” with the orders of creations: “cooperation” because these orders are conditionally affirmed by God because through them God preserves the world so that it might be moved towards perfection; “critical” because these orders participate in sin and in their brokenness must be criticized so that they can be transformed into something new and contribute to the new order that God wills to create. Brunner, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, pp. 198–9. (The Divine Imperative, pp. 214–15.) On this concept of “critical cooperation,” see also Lovin, Christian Faith and Public Choices, p. 51; p. 59; p. 77; p. 119; and p. 168. According to Lovin, Brunner “says that actions taken out of respect for the orders of creation are at the same time actions in the Kingdom of God.” See ibid., p. 126. 18 Emil Brunner, Der Mensch im Widerspruch. Die christliche Lehre vom wahren und vom wirklichen Menschen, Berlin: Furche-Verlag 1937. (English translation: Man in Revolt: A Christian Anthropology, trans. by Olive Wyon, London: Lutterworth Press 1939.) 19 Emil Brunner, Offenbarung und Vernunft. Die Lehre von der christlichen Glaubenserkenntnis, Zurich and Stuttgart: Zwingli-Verlag 1961, p. 237. (English translation: Revelation and Reason: The Christian Doctrine of Faith and Knowledge, trans. by Olive Wyon, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1946, p. 214.) 20 Emil Brunner, Christianity and Civilisation: Gifford Lectures Delivered at the University of St. Andrews 1947, vols. 1–2, New York: Scribner 1948–49, vol. 1, p. 31. 21 Brunner, Die christliche Lehre von Schöpfung und Erlösung, p. 54 and note 3. (The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, p. 47 and note 1.) Anthropologically, the human revolts against God’s command and is a living contradiction because God’s will being rebelled against provides precisely the direction needed for the human to move towards its appointed destination. Faith in the Christian gospel brings with it knowledge of this human contradiction as sin. Contradiction is removed by justification by grace, forgiveness, reconciliation, at-one-ment—through which the human no longer lives towards God but from God; however, this overcoming of contradiction is a real event in history and cannot take place apart from faith’s hearing of the word of embrace, by which God can take hold of the human, winning her heart and making her a new creation. Brunner, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, pp. 63–4. (The Divine Imperative, pp. 76–7.) 22 Brunner, Offenbarung und Vernunft, p. 417 and note 1. (Revelation and Reason, p. 383 and note 20.) This law, dealing with that eternal justice which stands behind all positive law, states basically that the closer an issue lies to the center of existence where we are concerned with the whole and the relation of the human to God, the greater the disturbance of rational 17

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The real root of the world’s contemporary social disorder, as Brunner analyzed the situation in an address given at the Amsterdam Assembly of Churches on August 30, 1948, was the massing-together or depersonalization of people in the present-day world of economics, that is, the fact that the human is increasingly becoming merely a dependent and meaningless cog in a huge impersonal machine: what is needed is to acknowledge that true personality and true community are one and the same thing.23 A third Brunnerian theological theme is that of point of contact. How are blind, sinful, faithless human beings to respond to God’s revelation that can be known only in faith if there is not posited in the human being a connecting point, a vestige of the divine image, a fragmentary capacity for God that sin has not effaced?24 Brunner never wavered in his affirming of such a point of contact (Anknüpfungspunkt), which placed him—contra Barth—in the camp of those who accorded some place to natural theology in the doing of Christian theology. The human possesses wordpower (Wortmächtigkeit), a power to receive God’s Word, the rational capacity to use and understand words.25 This endorsement of a point of contact does not mean, of course, that he was uncritical of liberal theology. In his 1924 Die Mystik und das Wort Brunner provides a polemic against the theology of Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834). Brunner understands mysticism as an alternative to revelation conceived as rational and intelligible speech, an alternative that mistakenly places the emphasis on the human seeking and finding God rather than God seeking and finding the human.26 He links mysticism to the philosophy of immanence and articulates with great zest why the Reformers were so outraged and moved to prophetic wrath over against the hubris and impiety of many of the mystics.27 This mystical tendency to psychologize the spiritual reality knowledge by contradiction or sin, and the farther an issue lies from that center, the less the disturbance. 23 Emil Brunner, Communism, Capitalism and Christianity, trans. by Norman P. Goldhawk, London: Lutterworth Press 1949, pp. 7–8. Depersonalizing has taken the two forms of individualistic liberalism, which we know in the economic sphere of capitalism, and collective determinism, which we know as totalitarian communism; the former strives after personal freedom detached from community, and the latter strives after community apart from personal freedom, and both are destructive of true personality and true community. Brunner, Communism, Capitalism and Christianity, pp. 10–11. Christians, Brunner boldly proclaims, have been “entrusted with the revelation of true personality in its unity with true community” and their fundamental duty is to live according to the Christian message and not allow themselves to be corrupted by the false alternatives—capitalism and communism—that are godlessly confronting the world. This critique, especially of capitalism, remains most relevant for our time as the omnivorous economic forces of globalization engulf most aspects of our life in the world and threaten our relationship with the planetary ecosystem. 24 See Smart, The Divided Mind of Modern Theology, p. 150. 25 See Lovin, Christian Faith and Public Choices, p. 64. 26 Walter Lowrie, Our Concern with the Theology of Crisis, Boston: Meador Publishing Company 1932, p. 118. 27 Brunner writes, Die Mystik und das Wort. Der Gegensatz zwischen moderner Religionsauffassung und christlichem Glauben dargestellt an der Theologie Schleiermachers, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1924, p. 187, cited in Lowrie, Our Concern with the Theology of Crisis, p. 128: “The delusion, prompted by irreverence and presumption, that at least in our

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of religion, to the point of claiming that God is in us as a given fact, is manifested in Schleiermacher’s writings, setting him apart even from other philosophers of immanence; it necessitates identifying his views as proclaiming false doctrine worthy of receiving the same sort of polemic as the Reformers leveled against the mystics. Faith in God must be set in opposition to experience of God. This harsh polemic against Schleiermacher’s theology utilizes Kierkegaard’s category of contemporaneousness as the basis for criticizing the great Berlin theologian’s category of cause and effect for understanding the Christ as an historical force, an impulse, an élan vital, an historical current, a field of force, which Schleiermacher names “the collective life.”28 Only Jesus the Christ as the Word of truth has the power to leap over every boundary of time and make possible a direct, living, spiritual relationship with the person of faith, as opposed to Schleiermacher’s lessthan-satisfying, indirect, causally mediated relationship with the first-cause of a quasi-physical process.29 The movement of German dialectical theology emerged as a group of young theologians responded to the time of crisis. While they were not clones of one another, they did share a common view of the general problem and the distinctively Christian response to it. Over time differences among these thinkers became apparent, none of which has been more celebrated than the difference between Barth and Brunner on natural theology. In Brunner’s 1934 essay, “Nature and Grace,” he insists that there is indeed “such a thing as a point of contact for the divine grace of redemption. This point of contact is the formal imago Dei.”30 Brunner includes in his understanding of reason, “which is identical with the essence of our being,” every faculty belonging to

inmost part we are not depraved, that somewhere within us God dwells, that there is still a point—no, far more than a point!—a psychical area, an experience, a process, where God is man and man God, where the Creator is creature and the creature Creator, where our being coalesces with divine Being; that there is at least some fragment of human life which is not in need of forgiveness and salvation but simply is.” 28 Lowrie, Our Concern with the Theology of Crisis, pp. 174–5. Brunner, Die Mystik und das Wort, pp. 220–1. 29 Brunner, Die Kirchen, die Gruppenbewegung und die Kirche Jesu Christi, p. 27 (The Church and the Oxford Group, p. 55) maintains that the problem with Schleiermacher’s “Theology of Experience” “is not that it holds experience in high esteem but that it grounds faith on experience” rather than recognizing that it is faith which creates this new reality that is perceived in experience. 30 Emil Brunner, Natur und Gnade. Zum Gespräch mit Karl Barth, Zurich: ZwingliVerlag 1935, p. 18. (English translation: Natural Theology: Comprising “Nature and Grace” by Professor Dr. Emil Brunner and the Reply “No!” by Dr. Karl Barth, trans. by Peter Fraenkel, London: Centenary Press 1946, p. 31.) This point of contact he understands as the formal imago Dei, which is the humanitas with its two meanings of a capacity for words and responsibility. This image of God can be considered from its formal side and its material side: formally the image of God is in place for all humans, untouched and not lost even for the sinner who as a human being still is a subject and is responsible; materially the image is completely lost and there is no aspect of the human not defiled by sin. See Brunner, Natur und Gnade, p. 11. (Natural Theology, p. 24.)

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the human as humanus,31 and he links reason to creative freedom and the imaginative ability to envision what might be and to see unrealized possibilities.32 The human’s “undestroyed formal likeness to God is the objective possibility of the revelation of God” in God’s Word.33 The human has to have some capacity for words in order to receive the Word, some capacity for knowledge of God in order to be a sinner before God; the Word does not have to create this human capacity.34 Brunner regards his views as in keeping with those of John Calvin who attributed theological importance to the concept of nature as shown by the fact that on his view God could be known from nature.35 This affirmation of a natural point of contact between the human and the divine has implications for theology: “For all missionary and pastoral work the discovery of the right point of contact is absolutely decisive.”36 Brunner thinks that the church rejects natural theology at its peril and sees it as “the task of our theological generation to find the way back to a true theologia naturalis.”37 Barth’s “No!” to Brunner was grounded in his conviction that no formal image of God was needed for bridging the human to the divine via a point of contact since God creates that bridge. In affirming some place for natural theology in theological work, reason is not totally disparaged. Brunner is full of evangelical zeal, but he is also not without an appreciation of the critical functioning of reason. He emphasizes: “We may be grateful to historical science that it has eliminated the historical element from the story of the Creation and of the Fall, and in so doing has forced us to seek once more for the Divine Word concerning the Creation and the Fall of man.”38 This follows Kierkegaard’s insistence in The Concept of Anxiety that “the first man not be singled out in a fantastic way from the series of all the humans who follow him.”39 Creation and Fall are happenings that cannot be incorporated into an empirical, historical picture, so they are in no sense opposed to the fact of evolution.40 Theology need not oppose science.41 The virgin birth, too, he finds dispensable, insisting that “this myth Brunner, The Theology of Crisis, p. 44. Lovin, Christian Faith and Public Choices, p. 84. 33 Brunner, Natur und Gnade, p. 41. (Natural Theology, p. 56.) 34 Brunner, Natur und Gnade, p. 19. (Natural Theology, p. 32.) 35 Brunner, Natur und Gnade, pp. 24–5. (Natural Theology, p. 38.) 36 Brunner, Die Kirchen, die Gruppenbewegung und die Kirche Jesu Christi, p. 14. (The Church and the Oxford Group, p. 28.) One must start at that point where there is some interest and then move from that interest to the Word of God. Brunner believes that there should be an eristic or apologetic theology based upon the natural knowledge of God, and every theology, whether Christian or pagan, is based upon the analogia entis or analogy of being, with the only issue being not whether the method of analogy is to be used but how this is to be done and what analogies are to be employed. See Brunner, Natur und Gnade, p. 22 and p. 41. (Natural Theology, p. 35 and p. 55.) 37 Brunner, Natur und Gnade, p. 44. (Natural Theology, p. 59.) 38 Brunner, Der Mensch im Widerspruch, p. 137. (Man in Revolt, pp. 143–4.) 39 Brunner, Der Mensch im Widerspruch, p. 417. (Man in Revolt, p. 402.) 40 Ibid. 41 Emil Brunner, Das Wort Gottes und der moderne Mensch, Zurich: Zwingli-Verlag 1947, pp. 50–1 (English translation: The Word of God and Modern Man, trans. by David 31 32

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plays an insignificant part in the New Testament witness to Christ,” because in this so-called “miracle” we do not “apprehend the thing of decisive importance for faith in Jesus Christ”; “the truth of God” encountering “us in Jesus Christ has no relation” to this doctrine.42 The fourth theme that characterizes Brunner’s theology is truth as encounter. The heart of Brunner’s theological position is situated in his writing Wahrheit als Begegnung, which consisted of revised lectures given in the fall semester of 1937 at the University of Uppsala and first published in English as The Divine–Human Encounter in 1943 and then reworked as “A New Edition, Much Enlarged” and published as Truth as Encounter in 1964. In the earlier publication Brunner refers to Søren Kierkegaard as “the greatest Christian thinker of modern times.”43 He credits Kierkegaard with being the source of the newest form of philosophy, the existential, which questioned the validity of the antithesis between the objective and the subjective that has dominated modern thinking.44 In fact, the task of this writing is to remove the object–subject antithesis from the understanding of the Word of God and faith.45 The difference in the second edition of this writing on truth is the addition of a lengthy introduction on “The Christian Understanding of Truth in Relation to the Philosophico-Scientific Understanding.”46 Here the author expounds the Christian understanding of truth over against the naturalistic-positivistic and idealisticspeculative concepts of the day, and provides a concrete example of what he had postulated in Revelation and Reason as Christian philosophy. In this introduction Kierkegaard plays a leading role. Kierkegaard with his existentialism is depicted as “the original creator of the concept of existence, transcending thereby the object– Cairns, Richmond, Virginia: John Knox Press 1964, p. 34): “belief in the historicity of Adam and the Garden is just as much a thing of the past as the conception of the three-decker universe….[T]he knowledge which we now have of the evolution of man from more primitive beginnings leaves no room for the story of the Garden which could have happened so many thousand years ago in this place or that….This story about the origin and primitive times of man belongs, like the six-days work of creation, to the transitory and outdated world-picture of the Bible. What then remains? We answer, ‘Everything in which faith has an interest!’ It is evident here, too, that the conflict between faith and science, wherever it may arise, is a sham problem that rests on a misunderstanding.” 42 Brunner, Wahrheit als Begegnung, 2nd ed., p. 45. (Truth as Encounter, p. 42.) 43 Emil Brunner, Wahrheit als Begegnung, 1st ed., Zurich: Zwingli-Verlag 1938, p. 60. (English translation: The Divine–Human Encounter, trans. by Amandus W. Loos, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1943, p. 82.) 44 The central problem of our time has been occasioned by the reigning presupposition that truth is to be obtained by means of one or the other of these methods of reasoning— the objective or the subjective. On this issue the great systematic trends have divided, with Realism placing the primary emphasis upon the object and Idealism stressing primarily the subject. Brunner believes it is “particularly suggestive for us theologians to attach ourselves to this philosophy [of Kierkegaard], the entire bent of which seems to correspond with ours.” 45 Brunner, Wahrheit als Begegnung, 1st ed., p. 31. (The Divine–Human Encounter, p. 41.) 46 Emil Brunner, Wahrheit als Begegnung, 2nd ed., pp. 13–64. (English translation: Truth as Encounter, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1964, pp. 7–61.)

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subject antithesis, and apprehending man as a totality.”47 Ferdinand Ebner (1882– 1931) and Martin Buber (1878–1965) are acknowledged as having independently developed their I–Thou philosophies, but both are depicted as having been dependent on Kierkegaard.48 Truth as encounter “is that truth which comes from the Thou, which is the origin of our personal being as ‘responsive actuality,’ as true re-sponsibility.”49 Early on in his address before the Kantian Society of Utrecht, Brunner had contended that the I first realizes itself in being addressed by the Thou of the categorical imperative. As a Neo-Kantian, Brunner always had an interest in the personal, and he did not regard that interest or his attraction to Ebner—who was first appreciated by Friedrich Gogarten (1887–1967) among the dialectical theologians—as in any way conflicting with the basic Kierkegaardian structure of his thought in terms of the dialectic of time and eternity.50 Key in the overcoming of the subject–object split is the dialectical principle of the Reformation. By “dialectical” is meant that not one concept is used but two logically contradictory ones, and these are experienced as a unity: “the paradoxical unity of Word and Spirit, of historical revelation and God’s contemporary presence, of ‘Christ for us’ and ‘Christ in us’— this is the secret of the Reformation.”51 The structure, though, is Kierkegaardian: “The mediation of time and eternity in the individual in the passionate decision of the moment (Kierkegaard) likewise furnishes the fundamental structure for Brunner’s divine–human encounter.”52

Brunner, Wahrheit als Begegnung, 2nd ed., pp. 21–2 (Truth as Encounter, pp. 16– 17), where the quotation continues: “But while Kierkegaard was able to do this only by philosophizing as a Christian because he recognized this totality not in man but beyond man,” Heidegger, Jaspers, and Sartre—who proffer different forms of existentialism—“in different ways and in varying degrees have repudiated this Christian ancestor of theirs, and so have surrendered the perspective from which this total view of man was achieved and was possible.” Brunner claims in Der Mensch im Widerspruch, p. 34, note 1 (Man in Revolt, p. 47, note 1), “The really important element in Heidegger is his respect for ‘simple’ human existence, which he has learned from Kierkegaard.” 48 Brunner, Wahrheit als Begegnung, 2nd ed., p. 63 (Truth as Encounter, p. 60). Brunner points out, p. 63, note 1 (p. 60, note 41), that Ebner published his The Word and the Spiritual Realities in 1921, the year before Buber published his Ich und Du. He also indicates in Wahrheit als Begegnung, 2nd ed., p. 61 and p. 63 (Truth as Encounter, p. 58; p. 60), how Kierkegaard can be described as a pupil of Johann Georg Hamann, as was Ebner. On the “thou” as the theme of anthropology and philosophy dating from Kierkegaard’s philosophy of existence, see also Brunner’s Der Mensch im Widerspruch, p. 9, note 1; p. 529; p. 557 (Man in Revolt, p. 23, note 1; p. 512; p. 546. See also his Christianity and Civilisation, pp. 34–5 and p. 160, note 20. 49 Brunner, Wahrheit als Begegnung, p. 35. (Truth as Encounter, p. 31.) 50 See Emil Brunner, “Das Grundproblem der Philosophie bei Kant und Kierkegaard,” Zwischen den Zeiten, vol. 2, no. 6, 1924, pp. 31–46 (published also in Sören Kierkegaard, ed. by Heinz-Horst Schrey, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1971, pp. 1–18). See also Paul K. Jewett, “Ebnerian Personalism and Its Influence upon Brunner’s Theology,” Westminster Theological Journal, vol. 14, 1952, pp.113–47, and on this point especially pp. 118–19. 51 Brunner, Wahrheit als Begegnung, 2nd ed., pp. 77–8. (Truth as Encounter, pp. 75–6.) 52 Jewett, “Ebnerian Personalism and Its Influence upon Brunner’s Theology,” p. 120. 47

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God’s self-communication is the fifth and final mark that characterizes Brunner’s theology. His work on truth as encounter led him to the self-communication of God as the basis for overcoming the subject–object split. Knowledge must be connected to communion or relationship, and that genuine relating in community which transcends the self–world divide is grounded in revelation as God’s selfcommunication. Brunner’s Dogmatics in four parts addresses systematically the divine self-communication. The first volume entitled The Christian Doctrine of God covers issues of “Prolegomena” and the first part of the system on “The Eternal Foundation of the Divine Self-Communication.” Here the nature of God is articulated on the basis of a discussion of God’s attributes and a treatment of the will of God in relation to the doctrine of election. Divine love is identified as “the movement which goes-out-of-oneself, which stoops down to that which is below: it is the self-giving, the self-communication of God—and it is this which is His revelation.”53 In discussing election, Brunner sets forth a powerful case against the notion of double predestination.54 The second volume of the Dogmatics, entitled The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, is devoted to the system’s second part on “The Historical Realization of the Divine Self-Communication.” Brunner extends Kierkegaard’s thought on the nature of the human, that each of us is both “the individual” and humanity, “to the divine destiny in Creation, which is the same for all men, in spite of the fact that God creates each individual as a distinct person.”55 Creation, on Brunner’s view, “is the coming forth of the temporal out of eternity, from the will and thought of Brunner, Die christliche Lehre von Gott, pp. 194–5. (The Christian Doctrine of God, p. 187.) 54 Brunner, Die christliche Lehre von Gott, pp. 323–63. (The Christian Doctrine of God, pp. 303–34.) 55 See Brunner, Die christliche Lehre von Schöpfung und Erlösung, pp. 112–13. (The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, p. 97.) Brunner writes in Die christliche Lehre von Schöpfung und Erlösung, pp. 112–13 (The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, pp. 97–8): “Our true humanitas is based on the Word of God—the same for all. Hence we can say that whatever concerns one human being, concerns all, that in one human being the whole of humanity is disgraced. We can go further, and say that the destiny for which each of us was created includes as its τέλος the fellowship of all—each of us is destined for the Kingdom of God, not only for an individual divine Telos—and, therefore, the fact that I am a sinner concerns everyone else. Hence it is true of man not only in the positive sense, but also in the negative, that unum noris omnes [if you know one, you know all], so that our knowledge of the fact that all men are sinners is not primarily the result of a comprehensive enquiry, but is an a priori truth. All this, however, does not constitute a complete explanation of the statement of faith about the unity of ‘Adam’ in sin.” Brunner acknowledges that his “extension” had been carried out by Kierkegaard himself, and this is made clear in a quotation from The Concept of Anxiety (SKS 4, 334–5 / CA, 28) that Brunner includes in Der Mensch im Widerspruch, p. 133, note 2 (Man in Revolt, p. 140, note 1): “The most profound reason for this [that Adam’s sin and hereditary sin must be explained together] is what is essential to human existence: that man is individuum and as such simultaneously himself and the whole race, and in such a way that the whole race participates in the individual and the individual in the whole race. (Note: If a particular individual could fall away entirely from the race, his falling away would require a different qualification of the race. Whereas if an animal should

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God.”56 Redemption centers on the action, teaching, suffering, and death of Jesus, in whom is perceived “the God who seeks the lost, who restores communion between Himself and sinners who were alienated from Him, and through this makes them new creatures who know for themselves what it is to be children of God.”57 Volume three of the Dogmatics, The Christian Doctrine of the Church, Faith, and the Consummation,” covers the theological system’s last two parts, Part 3 on “God’s Self-Communication as His Self-Representation through the Holy Spirit” and Part 4 on “The Consummation in Eternity of the Divine Self-Communication.” For Brunner, God’s being and substance is love, actus purus or pure actuality; God is for us, as love grounded in God’s own being rather than first awakened by the beloved object; God is self-giving love, agape; “God’s eternal present is not the silence of sheer self-existence, but the conversation between Father and Son which has no beginning and no ending, self-communication which does not arise only through the creation of a world but which is before the foundation of the world,…the dialogue of love in eternity.”58 Faith “is the act of stepping into the divine love”: “Through faith man receives his original position over against God, the one which was destined for him at the Creation, and in so doing he gains his own genuinely human life. Through this, then, responsibility is realized as life in community, life in service.”59 The church in the sense of ecclesia is not “something” such as a building or a form of polity, but rather the fellowship of the Lord Jesus Christ: the church is nothing but persons who have joined together through the person of Jesus the Christ and are the body of Christ, the communion of saints, that is, people who have been seized by God and placed in God’s service.60 Critical is the difference between an institution and a communion of persons. The ecclesia is that new reality that faith creates, by which God breaks through the wall of separation which stands between God and the human and between human and human, breaks down the self-interest around which individual life is centered, and breaks open the possibility of authentic

fall away from the species, the species would remain entirely unaffected.)….Perfection in oneself is therefore the perfect participation in the whole.” 56 Brunner, Das Wort Gottes und der moderne Mensch, p. 54. (The Word of God and Modern Man, p. 36.) 57 Brunner, Die christliche Lehre von Schöpfung und Erlösung, p. 395. (The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, p. 336.) 58 Emil Brunner, Das Ewige als Zukunft und Gegenwart, Zurich: Zwingli Verlag 1953, pp. 61–2. (English translation: Eternal Hope, trans. by Harold Knight, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1954, pp. 55–6.) 59 Brunner, Der Mensch im Widerspruch, pp. 509–10. (Man in Revolt, pp. 487–8.) 60 Emil Brunner, Ich glaube an den lebendigen Gott, Zurich: Zwingli Verlag 1945, p. 124. (English translation: I Believe in the Living God: Sermons on the Apostles’ Creed, trans. and ed. by John Holden, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1961, p. 127.) The New Testament meaning of ecclesia is communion with God through Jesus Christ and, as grounded in and originating from this, communion with one another: where Jesus Christ is present among humans, there the ecclesia exists dynamically. Emil Brunner, Das Missverständnis der Kirche, Zurich: Zwingli Verlag 1951, p. 123. (English translation: The Misunderstanding of the Church, trans. by Harold Knight. Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1953, pp. 107–8.)

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communal existence.61 The Christian Church preaches the gospel of Jesus Christ, the kingdom of God which transcends all social orders and relativizes the status of any given social order. In considering the problem of God’s answering of prayer, Brunner lifts up Kierkegaard as one witness who makes it almost impossible “to assert that the conception of the answering of prayer is the expression of a naïvely anthropomorphic conception of God.”62 Brunner proceeds to develop a view of God answering prayer based on God’s self-limitation, which is the utmost expression of God’s selfcommunication.63 Furthermore, he notes that Kierkegaard has established that “faith is the most inward form of existence that we know.”64 II. Brunner’s Promotion of Kierkegaard’s Religious Existentialism This second section of this article gives a relatively complete overview of the places in Brunner’s writings where Kierkegaard is mentioned or used. McKim’s bibliography of Brunner’s writings lists some 691 items—671 works written by Brunner, 2 works edited by him, and 16 works written by Brunner jointly with others—so given this volume of material it goes without saying that my accounting of his use of Kierkegaard is not going to be exhaustive. I do, however, provide an overview of the places in Brunner’s most important writings where Kierkegaard is mentioned or used. I have chosen basically to progress through Kierkegaard’s books and then to cite all the places in Brunner’s writings that he mentions or refers to the particular book under consideration.

Emil Brunner, The Church in the New Social Order: An Address Delivered to the National Congress of the Free Church, Federal Council, Cardiff, on 26th March, 1952, London: SCM Press 1952, p. 21. 62 Brunner, Die christliche Lehre von der Kirche, vom Glauben, und von der Vollendung, p. 372. (The Christian Doctrine of the Church, Faith, and the Consummation, p. 331.) 63 Brunner writes, Die christliche Lehre von der Kirche, vom Glauben, und von der Vollendung, p. 372 (The Christian Doctrine of the Church, Faith, and the Consummation, p. 331): “The God who communicates Himself in Jesus Christ is a God who hears and answers prayer. The thought of the divine self-limitation is the only thought which necessitates a decisive renunciation of the impersonal conception of the Absolute. This thought is simply the conceptual reflection of the kerygma that Jesus is the Christ. That we should pray in the confidence that our prayer will be answered is an expression of our faith in Jesus the Christ.” 64 Brunner, Die christliche Lehre von der Kirche, vom Glauben, und von der Vollendung, p. 384. (The Christian Doctrine of the Church, Faith, and the Consummation, p. 343.) He explains, p. 384 (pp. 342–3) that this faith is not life’s highest goal. God comes to us to create faith, but when this happens the highest has not yet been reached, even when faith is active in love, because the highest is reached only when the forms of this world with their contradictions are transcended and the world is set free and transformed in a life without dissension and conflict. Human existence that is certain of this future liberation from contradiction is what Brunner labels “eschatological existence.” Faith establishes such existence, but it hopes for that which is not yet, when faith becomes sight and is united in love with its other, participating in the divine life in its form of glory. 61

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In three writings in the beginning years of his career, Brunner gave a more extended treatment to Kierkegaard. In a published talk he gave to the Kant Society in Utrecht, Netherlands, in December, 1923, on “The Fundamental Problem of Philosophy in Kant and Kierkegaard,” he depicts Kierkegaard as following in the tradition of Kant and as addressing along with him the same fundamental problem of the quality of earnestness or the fear of God, that incorruptible sense for what Kierkegaard called the qualitative difference between God and the human. These two great philosophers share a commitment to do justice to the limit separating divine and human. The single but decisive difference between the two thinkers lies in Kant’s predominating optimism as a philosopher of the Enlightenment which left him unable to appreciate guilt as the essential characteristic of human existence or to confess the resultant inability of human autonomy to regain its integrity apart from the divine aid. In this piece Brunner does not refer to specific works of Kierkegaard but rather draws on central Kierkegaardian motifs.65 A second treatment of Kierkegaard was given in 1930 in an article entitled “Encounter with Kierkegaard.” The third overview was given in a lecture presented to a book club in the Hottingen section of Zurich.66 65 See Brunner’s “Das Grundproblem der Philosophie bei Kant und Kierkegaard.” See also Heiko Schulz, “Germany and Austria: A Modest Head Start: The German Reception of Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard’s International Reception, Tome I, Northern and Western Europe, ed. by Jon Stewart, Aldershot: Ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 8), p. 337. Here we see Brunner as polemical promoter. Motifs referred to in this talk are how Kierkegaard 1) applies his completely valuable analytical genius to the disclosure of speculative sophism, the illusion of absolute idealism, and in particular the misleading ideas of Hegel’s idealism of the speculative Absolute; 2) brings the ethical problem to the foreground as over against aesthetics and world historical thinking and introduces that existential thinking which is ethically oriented and involves one in a living relationship to the Absolute rather than merely thinking the Absolute; 3) establishes the limit of immanental, human possibilities and reflection by acknowledging the determination of the human personality by the divine command and lifting up Pauline and Reformation insights into the resulting situation of despair as one lives in the face of that divine command; 4) recognizes that faith finds its highest reality not in the divine Logos as Idea but in the Word, the Logos as paradox, which is the divine Logos as the actually incarnated Word in time; and 5) stresses that, just as the true meaning of time is to be found in the eternal, so too is the true meaning of human freedom to be found in divine freedom. 66 Emil Brunner, “Begegnung mit Kierkegaard,” Der Lesezirkel, vol. 17, no. 3, 1930, pp. 21–2. In this short article Brunner writes of his personal encounter with Kierkegaard that began around 1910 with the reading of “Attack on Christendom” at the suggestion of a teacher. That the Dane was unknown outside of his homeland Brunner attributes in part to Kierkegaard’s decision to write in Danish rather than German. Brunner testifies that he has known, loved, revered, and feared Kierkegaard from the beginning as that one who appealed to his conscience as no other. With the appearance of the complete German edition Brunner immersed himself in Kierkegaard’s world of thought, which displayed familiarity with most writing styles and the choir of pseudonyms that at once were and were not Kierkegaard himself. Eventually he came to grasp why this man of the world had more to say than any other of the nineteenth or twentieth century. Through the encounter Brunner was shaped practically by this one self-same man who operated with the passionate soul and language of Nietzsche,

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Elsewhere in his writings we find Brunner simply mentioning Kierkegaard. For instance, we read in his little pamphlet on Christian Existentialism that Søren Kierkegaard “must be designated as the father of existential philosophy.”67 Elsewhere, we read that, along with other “great teachers of the Church,” Kierkegaard recognized “that the Christian doctrine of freedom is far nearer to the view of idealism than it is to that of materialistic determinism.”68 Brunner mentions the striving of Hans Lassen Martensen (1808–84) against Kierkegaard as an individualist who destroyed community and obviously regards this criticism as inappropriate because Kierkegaard, like Luther before him, was “concerned with the struggle for true authority and community against false authority and bondage to collective forces.”69 Brunner acknowledges that Kierkegaard does not give the idea of community its fair place, but he notes that the Dane does in principle include it in his category of “the individual.”70 Over against Kant, who minimizes the difficulty of overcoming guilt, Brunner invokes Kierkegaard whose deeper grasping of guilt brings “with it the gaping world of human existence.”71 In Vom Werk des Heiligen Geistes, Brunner mentions Kierkegaard in relation to the paradox, giving no particular reference.72 Furthermore, Kierkegaard is mentioned many times as a philosopher of existence of great import and therefore worthy of promoting. Brunner mentions Kierkegaard: as a modern times thinker of individualism;73 as one who developed “a philosophy of the precise thinking of Kant, and the faith-energy of a Reformer. Dialectical theology cannot be understood apart from Kierkegaard, and he has the word, suggests Brunner, which needs to be proclaimed in the modern world. Emil Brunner, “Die Botschaft Sören Kierkegaards. Rede vor dem Lesezirkel Hottingen, Zürich,” Neue Schweizer Rundschau, vol. 23, no. 2, 1930, pp. 84–99. See also “Sören Kierkegaards Budskap,” Janus, 1939, pp. 225–44. The German version of this article is also included in Emil Brunner, Ein offenes Wort, vols. 1–2, ed. by the Emil Brunner Foundation, Zurich: Theologischer Verlag 1981 [1934], vol. 1, pp. 209–26. This lecture provides an overview of the pseudonymous writings, underscoring how Kierkegaard’s philosophy of existence culminates in the proposition that “Subjectivity is the truth,” by which he affirms that truth is identical with personal existence. Subjectivity is the truth as concerns the two moments of passion and decision. Interest is the origin of passion, but interest is an inter esse, standing in the middle, as participant both in temporal finiteness as well as in eternity and infinity. Passion is the proper human quality. The second moment of subjectivity’s truth is that actual existence is decision, which is the specifically human capacity that is never merely a matter of thinking but always a matter of executing. Deciding brings one beyond the realm of the aesthetic to the ethical, through which existence becomes earnest and responsible. Out of this responsibility comes religion, insofar as responsibility concerns not only the relation between the I and you, because the personal relation to the you is bound and obliged by a holy power or will that commands decision: it is this command which make one responsible. 67 Emil Brunner, Christlicher Existenzialismus, Zurich: Zwingli-Verlag 1956, p. 5. 68 Brunner, Der Mensch im Widerspruch, p. 265. (Man in Revolt, p. 261.) 69 Brunner, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, p. 610, note 1 to p. 278 (The Divine Imperative, p. 635 note 1 to p. 294.) 70 Brunner, Der Mensch im Widerspruch, p. 290, note 1. (Man in Revolt, p. 285, note 3.) 71 Brunner, Der Mittler, p. 106. (The Mediator, p. 130.) 72 Emil Brunner, Vom Werk des Heiligen Geistes, Zürich: Zwingli-Verlag 1935, p. 45. 73 Brunner, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, p. 277. (The Divine Imperative, p. 293.)

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religion on a really noble scale, that thinks our modern problems in all seriousness” and attempts “an understanding between the Christian belief in revelation and the mind of our time”;74 as one whose “great philosophical achievement” is “to have stressed the idea of contingency (of that which cannot be thought) and of the contradiction as a contradiction of existence as against Hegel”;75 as one who teaches that faith is an existence;76 as one who “in conflict against a false Objectivism, ventured the daring sentence: Subjectivity is truth”;77 as one who as “the greatest of all Christian psychologists” holds that faith is a passion that undergoes radical change in conversion and regeneration;78 as one who taught the stumbling-block for the intellect, namely, that revelation “has to be connected with a fact which took place once for all” or “that we can never approach God directly but only through the Mediator;79 as one who asserts that in receiving the Word a human being becomes “this particular individual” who is not isolated but a person or self-in-community;80 as one who grasps the individual in the deep sense because he accounts for the human’s responsibility and guilt;81 as one who along with Luther and Kant realized the import of God wanting all of me rather than merely wanting me to have right external conduct;82 as one whose “dialectic of the understanding of existence outside the sphere of Christianity” was offered by the whole of his work from Either/ Or to The Sickness unto Death;83 and one who has achieved the great merit of incorporating idealistic truth into Christian truth concerning the human.84 On this Emil Brunner, Religionsphilosophie evangelischer Theologie, Munich and Berlin: Verlag R. Oldenbourg 1927, p. 23. (English translation: The Philosophy of Religion: From the Standpoint of Protestant Theology, trans. by A.J.D. Farrer and Bertram Lee Woolf, London: James Clarke 1937, p. 51.) 75 Brunner, Der Mensch im Widerspruch, p. 190, note 1. (Man in Revolt, p. 191, note 2.) 76 Brunner, Wahrheit als Begegnung, 2nd ed., pp. 45–6. (Truth as Encounter, p. 44.) 77 Brunner, Wahrheit als Begegnung, 1st ed., p. 30. (The Divine–Human Encounter, p. 40.) 78 Emil Brunner, The Word and the World, New York: Scribner 1931, pp. 70–4. Brunner also notes in Der Mensch im Widerspruch, p. 254, note 3 (Man in Revolt, p. 252, note 2): “That faith is also ‘passion’ has been taught us once more by Kierkegaard above all. Cf. Fear and Trembling and Unscientific Postscript. Faith is ‘the objective uncertainty, held fast through appropriation with the most passionate inwardness.’ ” SKS 7, 186 / CUP1, 203. Actually Johannes Climacus gives this as the definition of “truth” rather than “faith,” but then on the next page he states that “the definition of truth stated above is a paraphrasing of faith,” so Brunner’s misquoting on this matter can be overlooked. 79 Brunner, Der Mittler, p. 22. (The Mediator, p. 42.) 80 Brunner, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, p. 285; pp. 481–2; p. 619, note 1 to p. 315. (The Divine Imperative, p. 300; p. 495; p. 645, note 1 to p. 331.) 81 Brunner, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, pp. 667–8, note 1 to p. 482. (The Divine Imperative, p. 702, note 4 to p. 495.) Brunner also acknowledges Kierkegaard, in The Word and the World, p. 137, as a Christian theologian “to whom we owe the disclosure of hitherto unplumbed depths of the soul.” 82 Brunner, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, p. 129 and p. 585, note 4 to p. 129. (The Divine Imperative, p. 145 and p. 605, note 4 to p. 145.) 83 Brunner, Der Mensch im Widerspruch, pp. 186–7. (Man in Revolt, p. 188, note 1.) 84 Brunner, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, p. 495; p. 671, note 11 to p. 495. (The Divine Imperative, p. 509; p. 707, note 11 to p. 509.) 74

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last point, Brunner observes that, even though the Augustinian synthesis of biblical faith and speculative idealism dimmed the purity of the biblical idea of God to a dangerous extent and permeated faith with alien mystical ideas, “this does not alter the fact that in the Platonic theory of ideas there is a truth which, even in Christian thinking, should not be allowed to disappear,” and Augustine saw this clearly, but so did Calvin, Pascal and Kierkegaard, who in this respect were all Augustinians.85 In fact, it can also be said that Brunner makes extremely few references to Kierkegaard’s religious or edifying discourses that he published under his own name. One instance of such use is a quotation from Purity of Heart in discussing how we will good and evil only halfheartedly rather than with whole hearts: “ ‘He who wills one thing which is not the Good does not really will one thing; it is a deception, an illusion, a self-deception that he wills one thing; for in his innermost soul he is and must be divided.’ ”86 In this category we can also place his references to the 1847 unpublished The Book on Adler. Brunner discusses the vocation of the prophet and in pointing out how this one has no authority, for this one is merely primus inter pares, he refers to Kierkegaard’s book entitled in the German translation by Theodor Haecker Der Begriff des Auserwählten or what is better known as The Book on Adler. Brunner reminds his reader of the importance of making a distinction between that which is remarkable about a person due to faith and love, and that which is due to the fact that the person is a genius, and here he refers to Kierkegaard’s Book on Adler and “On the Difference between a Genius and an Apostle,”87 and he elsewhere notes the distinctive understanding of the apostle dealt with in this work.88 Another instance of Brunner drawing on a signed publication is in his reference to Kierkegaard’s 1848 writing, The Point of View for My Work as an Author, published posthumously in 1859 by Kierkegaard’s brother Peter. Brunner makes mention of this writing in stating that Kierkegaard, looking backward, saw “that his whole ‘activity as a writer’ from the beginning” had served the purpose of elucidating the event of the Incarnation of the divine Word in Jesus Christ, which can only be perceived in the act of faith.89 A few references are made to the book Either/Or of 1843. Brunner states that the theme of Kierkegaard’s Either/Or is that the ethical places limits on the aesthetic, that the unrestricted possibilities of eros are going to be delimited by the claim that the neighbor, the personal, the Thou makes on one’s freedom and creative activity, so that “the aesthetic person always considers the ethical element ‘narrow-minded’ ”; actually, Brunner, Offenbarung und Vernunft, p. 386. (Revelation and Reason, p. 355.) Brunner, Der Mensch im Widerspruch, p. 316 and note 3. (Man in Revolt, p. 309 and note 4.) The reference to “Purity of Heart, an address for a Day of Penitence,” refers to “An Occasional Discourse,” Part One of Opbyggelige Taler i forskjellig Aand, SKS 8, 1–155 / UD, 3–154. 87 Brunner, Der Mensch im Widerspruch, p. 350 and note 1. (Man in Revolt, p. 340 and note 2.) “On the Difference between a Genius and an Apostle” is included in SV1 XV, 49–64 / BA, pp. 173–88. It was the piece of the unpublished The Book on Adler which Kierkegaard decided to publish. 88 Brunner, Offenbarung und Vernunft, p. 143 note 2. (Revelation and Reason, p. 124, note 13.) 89 Brunner, Wahrheit als Begegnung, 2nd ed., p. 23. (Truth as Encounter, p. 18.) See also Synspunktet for min Forfatter-Virksomhed, in SV1 XVIII, 79–169 / PV. 85 86

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of course, it is exactly such “limitation,” “by which alone the creature receives its relative independence” and “which gives his life its human meaning”—namely, as “freedom for love.”90 Brunner characterizes the aesthete as capable of knowing friendship and “enjoyment of the individuality of the other person—but not real unity”; for the aesthete dissolves the union “as soon as the possibilities of enjoyment have been exhausted.”91 In this context he also directs the reader to his discussion of aestheticism that can assume the form of intoxication with the infinite possibility which the “imagination brings before the mind’s eye in glamorous colours and of which” the aesthete becomes “conscious in the unrestricted independence of his own will.”92 Fear and Trembling of 1843 also is referred to by our Swiss theologian. Brunner refers to “the question Kierkegaard raises in his profoundly thoughtful exposition of the story of the sacrifice of Isaac”: “ ‘Does there exist a teleological suspension of ethics?’ ”93 Brunner’s answer is that obedience to the Divine Command or the love which God commands might take the form of service to the community that appears to be loveless in relation to a particular individual; however, “nothing can ever be commanded by God, for the service of God, unless it be at the same time and exclusively service to man, to the Kingdom of the God-Man,”…for “there is no teleological suspension of the ethical because the truly divine…is identical with the truly human, with humanity.” But then Brunner adds: “On the other hand, all that is ethical…is permanently suspended by the Divine Command. For the Christian is never called to act on general principles, but always in accordance with the concrete commandment of love.”94 Another reference to Fear and Trembling comes with Brunner’s interesting assertion that ideas, while being impersonal spiritual things that do draw people together for a common purpose and in that sense serve as a preparation for true community, in fact “are also the most dangerous opponents of true community.95 On Brunner’s view “every idealist must necessarily”…“be ‘a Knight of the Infinite’ in the sense in which Kierkegaard uses this expression; he

Brunner, Der Mensch im Widerspruch, pp. 270–1 and p. 271, note 1. (Man in Revolt, pp. 266–7 and p. 267, note 1.) 91 Brunner, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, p. 487. (The Divine Imperative, p. 501.) In the note he professes, p. 669, note 3 to p. 487 (p. 704, note 3 to p. 501), that “no one has given a more penetrating study of the problem of Aesthetics than Kierkegaard in his Entweder-Oder (Either-Or) and in the Stadien; he was particularly fitted for this, since he knew the whole problem from within, and he also possessed the equal capacity for artistic creation and the analysis of the thinker.” 92 Brunner, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, p. 9. (The Divine Imperative, p. 24.) 93 Brunner, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, pp. 181–2. (The Divine Imperative, pp. 196–7.) 94 So Brunner answers Johannes de silentio’s question with both “No” and “Yes,” depending on the perspective taken. “No,” if the ethical is understood in terms of that which brings human fulfillment, because the religious command of love should always be construed as pro human fulfillment. “Yes,” if the ethical is understood in terms of general laws or principles, because the religious command of love always necessitates taking account of the particular situation as well as general principles. 95 Brunner, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, p. 315. (The Divine Imperative, p. 331.) 90

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must be a person who is difficult to understand.”96 He notes as well in this context Kierkegaard’s description in Fear and Trembling “of the true Christian in the incognito of the ‘Philistine.’ ”97 Given Brunner’s interest in Christology, it should not surprise us to find him making quite a few references to the 1844 Philosophical Fragments. Brunner indicates how the whole of Western philosophy and the science issuing from it have been dominated by the object–subject antithesis, and in ancient Greece this was manifested in the antithesis of φύσις and ἰδέα.98 He points out that tentative speculations in natural philosophy gave way in the Greek philosophy of Socrates and Plato to the truth concerning the human as philosophy’s authentic theme. In this regard, Kierkegaard quotes the Platonic Socrates “that the study of nature is not man’s concern,” which is itself a quotation from Diogenes Laertius.99 He claims that Kierkegaard’s point of departure in Philosophical Fragments is “that we ourselves cannot find the truth about man, because it is not in us and we are not in it”: “This book, eccentric in its form, is, together with the two volumes of the Unscientific Postscript, the chief philosophical work of the great Dane. It purports to be an experiment in thought, which has set itself the task of asking what truth must be if we oppose the Socratic idea that truth is immanent, even if only latent, in man.”100 Over against this Socratic thought Kierkegaard posits “the contrary thought that the truth is not in man, but must come to him,” that the divine truth itself has come to humanity in the form of a man, from outside of man, and from outside of the world, in a unique event in time, “in the moment,” “im Augenblick.” This event is the incarnation of the divine Word in Jesus Christ, which can only be perceived in the act of faith.101

Elsewhere he asserts: “It is not that you are the starting-point, and God is the End, but that God is the starting-point, and you are the end of the movement.”102 Brunner suggests that the whole of Kierkegaard’s lifework was dedicated to elucidating this principal thesis in discussion with the idealism of his time. The upshot is, then, that this truth cannot be held or possessed, since its nature, rather, is to take possession of us: we do not “have it” but because of its existential character it calls for us “to be in” it. This insight gave “the point of departure of Kierkegaard’s Fragments—that we do not have the truth because we are not in the truth, and this is precisely what the

Brunner, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, p. 619, note 1 to p. 315. (The Divine Imperative, p. 645, note 1 to p. 331.) SKS 4, 133–6 / FT, 38–41. 97 Brunner, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, p. 619, note 1 to p. 315. (The Divine Imperative, p. 645, note 1 to p. 331.) SKS 4, 133 / FT, 38. 98 Brunner, Wahrheit als Begegnung, 2nd ed., p. 13. (Truth as Encounter, p. 7.) 99 Brunner, Wahrheit als Begegnung, 2nd ed., p. 13, note 1. (Truth as Encounter, p. 7. note 1.) SKS 4, 220 / PF, 11. 100 Brunner, Wahrheit als Begegnung, 2nd ed., p. 23. (Truth as Encounter, p. 18.) 101 Ibid. 102 Brunner, Die christliche Lehre von Gott, p. 131 and note 16. (The Christian Doctrine of God, p. 125 and note 2.) SKS 4, 222–4 / PF, 13–15. 96

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New Testament says about man.”103 Faith cannot be proven, and, furthermore, faith must not submit itself in any sense to autonomous reason’s insolent demand to find a place for God’s Lordship within the abstract impersonal world of logical proving.104 Brunner states “the fundamental idea in Kierkegaard’s book, the Brocken” (or Fragments) as being “the point at which sin is recognized as an entity for the theory of knowledge: If man is a sinner then he is not in the truth, then he cannot know the truth, he cannot even know that he is not in the truth.”105 The Fragments is mentioned by Brunner when he proclaims that the revelation of Jesus Christ makes all barriers of time and space fade away, so that the person of faith becomes “contemporary” with Christ.106 He stresses that the divine revelation is also a profound concealment, and in this sense “Kierkegaard was not wrong when he called this form of revelation an ‘incognito’ ”107: “The King in the garments of a beggar gives room for the venture of faith to decide for Him.”108 In the incognito of the Son of Man God comes to our level so that we can respond with the freedom of childlike trust, and venture to accept the relationship that God offers to us; but this incognito form of revelation, according to Brunner, is not the ultimate form, for eventually the King will set aside the beggar’s robes and show his royal glory.109 Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments are referred to in making the claim: “The second generation, and all the succeeding generations, receive faith, illumination through the Spirit, by means of the witness of the first generation, of the Apostles, the eye-witnesses.”110 And Brunner contends that it was “an exaggeration—which had an unfortunate influence at the beginning of the theological renewal derived from Kierkegaard—when the great Danish thinker maintained that in order to become a Christian, in order to establish the Christian Faith, there was no longer any need of ‘narrative’ or record; all that was required was to state that God became Man.”111 He is referring here to the passage in Fragments where Johannes Climacus writes: “Even if the contemporary generation 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 Brunner, Wahrheit als Begegnung, 2nd ed., p. 32. (Truth as Encounter, p. 28.) Brunner, Die christliche Lehre von der Kirche, vom Glauben, und von der Vollendung, pp. 297–8. (The Christian Doctrine of the Church, Faith, and the Consummation, pp. 263–4.) 105 Brunner, Der Mittler, p. 178, note 1. (The Mediator, p. 204, note 1.) 106 Brunner, Offenbarung und Vernunft, p. 190 and note 1. (Revelation and Reason, p. 179 and note 10), where the reader is urged to compare Kierkegaard’s idea of “contemporaneousness” in Chapter 3 of SKS 4, 258–71 / PF, 55–71. 107 Brunner, Offenbarung und Vernunft, pp. 205–6. (Revelation and Reason, pp. 185–6.) 108 Brunner, Offenbarung und Vernunft, pp. 205–6. (Revelation and Reason, p. 186.) Referred to is the analogy of the maiden and the king, SKS 4, 233–40 / PF, 26–35. 109 Brunner, Offenbarung und Vernunft, pp. 205–6. (Revelation and Reason, pp. 186–7.) Joseph J. Smith observes in his “Emil Brunner’s Theology of Revelation,” Heythrop Journal, vol. 6, 1965, p. 11, that in utilizing Kierkegaard’s “incognito” term to describe Jesus’ humanity, he often “left the impression that the historical humanity of Christ was only an incognito.” 110 Brunner, Die christliche Lehre von Gott, p, 39 and note. (The Christian Doctrine of God, p. 33 and note 1.) 111 Brunner, Die christliche Lehre von Gott, p. 41 and note. (The Christian Doctrine of God, p. 35 and note 1.) 103 104

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a servant, lived and taught among us, and then died’—this is more than enough.”112 Brunner also disagrees with Kierkegaard’s claim that there are no disciples at second hand. Brunner holds that as eyewitnesses of the Risen Christ as well as in the simple historical sense, the Apostles are given as specially situated, “in contrast to all who followed them, a share in the uniqueness of the event of revelation.”113 He explains in the note: “Kierkegaard does not see this difference, because his main concern is to assert ‘the autopsy’ of faith (Philosophical Fragments). Hence he maintains that ‘there is no disciple at second hand.’ ” The Concept of Anxiety of 1844 obviously was influential on Brunner. He cites Kierkegaard’s insight that we are both individual and community in both creation and in sin, and this is clearly a reference to The Concept of Anxiety although there is no mention of that work.114 In another writing, he indicates how Kierkegaard’s aim is “to bring the truth of the peccatum originale [original or hereditary sin] to the fore once more, without using the ‘historicizing’ form of the Augustinian doctrine of the Fall.”115 Elsewhere, though, he underscores some confusion in that thought in The Concept of Anxiety “Kierkegaard seems to wish to ascribe a very special significance to the first sin of the individual, as if this itself were the Fall of Man. This would be a psychological misunderstanding, which would be on a level with the historical misunderstanding against which he is contending.”116 According to Brunner, the origin of sin lies in decision, not in a psychological element of the human’s constitution or psychical causes but “in a spiritual act of self-determination”: “Sin, as Kierkegaard discusses it in his Concept of Dread, is something new; in contradistinction from all genetic psychological conditions it is a leap; it is that element in decision which cannot be explained.”117 One important element of history is decision, and the second is community: “History consists in the fact that my existence is interwoven with the existence of others,” and Kierkegaard expressed this truth in his writing on anxiety.118 “The meaning of being historical is: solidarity.”119 Brunner believes that Kierkegaard’s statement in The Concept of Anxiety that the human is always both the individual as well as the species suggests an important direction for solving the problem. Brunner professes that Christian anthropology regards the human as a being who has perverted human nature by misusing human freedom, thus losing human freedom.120 He then refers to The Concept of Anxiety, but he notes that Kierkegaard’s

SKS 4, 300 / PF, 104. Brunner, Offenbarung und Vernunft, p. 143 and note 2. (Revelation and Reason, p. 124.) 114 Brunner, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, pp. 139–40. (The Divine Imperative, p. 155.) 115 Brunner, Die christliche Lehre von Schöpfung und Erlösung, pp. 134–5. (The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, p. 117.) 116 Brunner, Der Mensch im Widerspruch, p. 414, note 1. (Man in Revolt, p. 400, note 1.) 117 Brunner, Der Mensch im Widerspruch, p. 415 and note 2. (Man in Revolt, p. 401 and note 1.) 118 Brunner, Der Mensch im Widerspruch, p. 460 and note 2. (Man in Revolt, p. 443 and note 2.) 119 Brunner, Der Mensch im Widerspruch, p. 461. (Man in Revolt, p. 444.) 120 Brunner, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, pp. 137–8. (The Divine Imperative, p. 153.) 112 113

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formulation of original sin is too individualistic to be satisfactory.121 He states that Kierkegaard failed to realize that the individual can only come into existence in the church, although he has not failed in this regard as deeply as has Hirsch.122 He also characterizes Kierkegaard’s treatment of fear as being more profound than the secular and neutral treatment of Heidegger in Being and Time.123 Having some impact on Brunner was the 1845 book Stages on Life’s Way. Brunner mentions Stages along with Either/Or as the books in which Kierkegaard gives most careful attention to the problem of aesthetics.124 In treating “The Phases of the Immanent Moral Understanding of the Self” Brunner claims that he is considering phenomena for the purposes of comparison, but his “phenomenology” is “not intended in the Hegelian sense, where the stages are always at the same time stages of development in the world process, but rather in the sense in which Kierkegaard speaks of “stages” (Stadien).125 Brunner explains that a Christian theological ethic needs to acknowledge such stages as important even though they are not absolute. He regards Kierkegaard as unsurpassed “in that with all his emphasis on the Absolute, and on the absolute contradiction, he yet took the relative, and the relative contradictions, seriously.”126 If we judge by the number of references made by Brunner to the work, Kierkegaard’s 1846 Concluding Unscientific Postscript stands as one of the most influential. Brunner often refers to Kierkegaard’s claim in the Postscript that truth is subjectivity, but in so doing he usually clarifies that for the Christian this subjectivity is known to be no longer the human’s own insofar as it is an event created by the Holy Spirit: “The doctrine of the Holy Spirit is the Christian answer to the truth in subjectivism, the doctrine of that inwardness which is not in the least degree our own.”127 Brunner is likely thinking of the Postscript when he refers to Kierkegaard’s expression that “faith is passion, a passionate interest, the strongest and most subjective appropriation of the Word which can possibly be imagined”; this “fully personal act” is an “integration of all functions” which take place “in the personality as a whole,” and “as ‘existential thinking,’ as decision, a new self-consciousness” overcomes “that deep fear of existence”…“through the joyful certainty of trust.”128 Brunner, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, pp. 585–56, note 4 to p. 137. (The Divine Imperative, p. 606, note 4 to p. 153.) 122 Brunner, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, p. 589, note 4 to p. 161. (The Divine Imperative, p. 610, note 4 to p. 177.) 123 Brunner, Der Mensch im Widerspruch, p. 200, note 1. (Man in Revolt, p. 195, note 3.) 124 Brunner, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, p. 495 and p. 671, note 11 to p. 495. (The Divine Imperative, p. 509 and p. 707, note 11 to p. 509.) 125 Brunner, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, p. 6 and p. 554, note 1 to p. 6. (The Divine Imperative, p. 21 and p. 570, note 1 to p. 21.) 126 Brunner, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, p. 554, note 1 to p. 6. (The Divine Imperative, p. 570, note 1 to p. 21.) 127 Brunner, Religionsphilosophie evangelischer Theologie, pp. 56–7. (The Philosophy of Religion, pp. 112–13.) 128 Brunner, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, pp. 144–5. (The Divine Imperative, p. 160.) See, for example, SKS 7, 124 / CUP1, 132. On this point he also refers the reader to his lecture, “Die Botschaft Sören Kierkegaards,” which we discussed above. 121

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He also refers to Kierkegaard in offering a word on progress, stating: “the Christian is very anxious ‘to progress,’ but he is very little concerned with ‘progress.’ ”129 He explains: “That which seems most insignificant may suddenly emerge in its original significance, and the ‘drama of world history’ (Kierkegaard) may prove to be merely blind confusion.”130 Brunner is likely thinking here of the Postscript’s discussion of the “world historical” in relation to ethics.131 It is pointed out that Kierkegaard’s entrance into the sphere of philosophy has brought with it the rise of “Existenzphilosophie.”132 In his 1921 book, Experience, Knowledge and Belief, Brunner quotes from Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript on the “subjective existing thinker.”133 The subjective existing thinker is “continuously negative” and “continuously in becoming.134 A last quotation in this context concerns the negativity of the infinite.135 Brunner mentions the “DialecticalPathetic” (Kierkegaard) in discussing the introspective irrationality of the spirit in Erlebnis, Erkenntnis und Glaube.136 He makes the case that Kierkegaard’s irrationalism transpires in the context of freedom, for it is within and not outside of the spirit of impending freedom’s deployment that a given personality, through

Brunner, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, p. 271. (The Divine Imperative, p. 287.) Ibid. 131 SKS 7, 125–48 / CUP1, 133–59. 132 Brunner, Der Mensch im Widerspruch, pp. 554–5. (Man in Revolt, p. 542 and p. 544). 133 Emil Brunner, Erlebnis, Erkenntnis und Glaube, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1921, p. 79. Quoting from SKS 7, 117–18 / CUP1, 122–3: “The systematic idea is subject-object, is the unity of thinking and being; existence, on the other hand, is precisely the separation. From this it by no means follows that existence is thoughtless, but existence has spaced and does space subject from object, thought from being.” “So-called pantheistic systems have frequently been cited and attacked by saying that they cancel freedom and the distinction between good and evil….But this should be said not only of pantheistic systems, for it would have been better to show that every system must be pantheistic simply because of the conclusiveness.” 134 Brunner, Erlebnis, Erkenntnis und Glaube, p. 80. He quotes from SKS 7, 85 / CUP1, 86: “One who is existing is continually in the process of becoming; the actually existing subjective thinker, thinking, continually reproduces this in his existence and invests all his thinking in becoming. This is similar to having style. Only he really has style who is never finished with something that ‘stirs the waters of language’ whenever he begins, so that to him the most ordinary expression comes into existence with newborn originality. To be continually in the process of becoming in this way is the illusiveness of the infinite in existence. It could bring a sensate person to despair, for one continually feels an urge to have something finished, but this urge is of evil and must be renounced.” 135 Ibid., p. 80. He quotes from SKS 7, 84 / CUP1, 85: “He [the genuine subjective existing thinker] is cognizant of the negativity of the infinite in existence [Tilværelse]; he always keeps open the wound of negativity, which at times is a saving factor (the others let the wound close and become positive—deceived); in his communication, he expresses the same thing. He is, therefore, never a teacher, but a learner, and if he is continually just as negative as positive, he is continually striving. In this way, such a subjective thinker does indeed miss something; he does not derive positive, cozy joy from life.” 136 Emil Brunner, Erlebnis, Erkenntnis und Glaube, p. 113. 129

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double reflection, is able to aim at its interest.137 In distinguishing double reflection from reflection, he also quotes from the Postscript.138 Kierkegaard was alone among the great thinkers of later times, asserts Brunner, who had a firm and vital hold on the truth “that every system, whatever its content may be, is, as such, pantheistic, and consequently irreconcilable with the Christian notion of God”; here he is likely thinking of the Postscript.139 In the Postscript Kierkegaard provides “powerful destructive criticism of the most impressive of all philosophies of history, the Hegelian,” which begins with reason and “transforms the real dialectic of historical reality into a merely logical sham dialectic of concepts,” operating in an ideal world removed from “the real movement of history, which passes through act and decision.”140 Brunner is sure to distinguish Christian revelation from that of German idealism, which sets forth a rational doctrine of religion to which it sometimes applies the term “revelation.” This latter is really merely rational religion, since its truth is finally entirely immanent.141 Brunner’s note states: “It is a form of religion which Kierkegaard as a ‘religion of immanence’ (Religion ‘A’) sets over against that of paradox or the religion of revelation (Religion ‘B’).”142 The modern interpretation of religion, avers Brunner, has confused two fundamentally different religions, “which Kierkegaard distinguishes as “immanental religion” (or Religion “A”) and the “paradoxically transcendental” religion (Religion “B”); and he has proved once for all that these two are irreconcilable.”143 He mentions again the Religion A form Ibid., p. 114. Ibid., p. 116. The quotation is from SKS 7, 129 / CUP1, 138–9: “In fables and fairy tales there is a lamp called the wonderful lamp; when it is rubbed, the spirit appears. Jest! But freedom, that is the wonderful lamp. When a person rubs it with ethical passion God comes into existence for him. And look, the spirit of the lamp is a servant (so wish for it, you whose spirit is a wish), but the person who rubs the wonderful lamp of freedom becomes a servant— the spirit is the Lord.” 139 Emil Brunner, Gott und Mensch. Vier Untersuchungen über das personhafte Sein, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1930, p. 22 (English translation: God and Man: Four Essays on the Nature of Personality, trans. by David Cairns, London: Student Christian Movement Press 1936, p. 40.) 140 Brunner, Der Mensch im Widerspruch, p. 454 and note 1. (Man in Revolt, p. 438 and note 1.) 141 Brunner, Offenbarung und Vernunft, p. 258. (Revelation and Reason, pp. 233– 4): “Nothing happens by way of disclosure; rather it is a process by which man becomes conscious of latent truth through the activity of the human mind itself, that is, of a truth which is immanent in the human mind as such, and therefore can be attained by its own mental processes.” In a similar way Brunner differentiates the line of spiritual heroes from Goethe to Hegel in the tradition of speculative idealism from Paul, Athanasius, Augustine, Luther, Pascal, and Kierkegaard in the tradition of church theology in his Philosophie und Offenbarung, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1925, pp. 16–17. 142 Brunner, Offenbarung und Vernunft, p. 259, note 1. (Revelation and Reason, p. 234, note 36.) 143 Brunner, Offenbarung und Vernunft, pp. 281–2 (Revelation and Reason, p. 256): “Religion ‘A’ is a reality just as much as Religion ‘B,’ it is true; it is the only religion that the average educated person of the present day knows. It appears in very different forms: as 137 138

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of religion in discussing the immanental nature of the rational knowledge of God, which is locked within the processes of human thought and therefore unable to experience “truth in the form of an event” or truth which has the power to change life”: “To use the language of Kierkegaard, it is an ‘immanent knowledge’ and in the nature of the case that nonparadoxical ‘Religion A,’ ” which is “thinking God from our own standpoint.”144 Brunner also has in mind the Postscript when he notes that, according to Kierkegaard, “the sense of ‘guilt’ belongs, in contradistinction to the knowledge of sin, to the sphere of immanence.”145 In discussing proofs for the existence of God, Brunner points out that Pascal and Kierkegaard, “precisely on grounds of faith, regard such proofs as arrogant or harmful to true faith.”146 In the note he quotes a passage from the Postscript.147 In another writing, he acknowledges as understandable Kierkegaard’s total rejection of ethical rationalism of the kind represented by the Deism of the Enlightenment, as speculative or emotional mysticism, as ‘natural religion’ of various kinds, as the mysticism of blood and soil, and as a deliberately anti-Christian ‘Gottgläubigkeit.’ ” Brunner clarifies in a note that this term refers to vague Deistic “belief in God” manifesting itself in the blood and soil ideology of the movement under the Hitler regime in Germany, led by Nazi extremists, or “German Christians.” “But all have one common feature, and indeed this is the only decisive one: they are timeless and non-historical; they are not related to the historical revelation. They pride themselves, indeed, upon their independence of the historical event; in this they feel superior to the Christian faith. The Christian faith, therefore, confronts them all as something strange, unintelligible, as the offense and the folly of the message of the Cross. Call the Christian faith folly, reject it as an offense, but do not say that it is that other kind of religion, not connected with history, not related to the event of revelation. In matters of faith, indeed, truth cannot be proved; but this one thing certainly can be proved: that this ‘Religion “A” ’ is not the Christian faith, and that the Christian faith cannot be understood as a variety of that form of religion.” On this basic distinction, Brunner cites the passage corresponding to SKS 7, 505–6 / CUP1, 556. He also refers to it in Der Mensch im Widerspruch, p. 534. (Man in Revolt, p. 519.) 144 Brunner, Offenbarung und Vernunft, p. 399, note 1. (Revelation and Reason, pp. 367– 8 and p. 368, note 8.) 145 Brunner, Der Mensch im Widerspruch, p. 51. (Man in Revolt, p. 63.) See SKS 7, 477–504 / CUP1, 525–5. 146 Brunner, Offenbarung und Vernunft, p. 336. (Revelation and Reason, p. 340.) 147 Brunner, Offenbarung und Vernunft, p. 336, note 4. (Revelation and Reason, p. 340, note 4.) SKS 7, 495–6 / CUP1 545–6: “Then instead let us mock God outright, as has been done before in the world; this is always preferable to the debilitating importance with which one wants to demonstrate the existence of God. To demonstrate the existence [Tilvær] of someone who exists [er til] is the most shameless assault, since it is an attempt to make him ludicrous, but the trouble is that one does not even suspect this, that in dead seriousness one regards it as a godly undertaking. How could it occur to anyone to demonstrate that he exists unless one has allowed oneself to ignore him; and now one does it in an even more lunatic way by demonstrating his existence right in from of his nose. A king’s existence [Tilværelse] or presence [Tilstedeværelse] ordinarily has its own expression of subjection and submissiveness. What if one in his most majestic presence wanted to demonstrate that he exists? Does one demonstrate it, then? No, one makes a fool of him, because one demonstrates his presence by the expression of submissiveness, which may differ widely according to the customs of the country. And thus one also demonstrates the existence of God by worship—not by demonstrations.”

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all theistic proofs as pointing to the refusal to face God’s claim because that would bring an end to autonomy and be “an affront to God,”148 but here Brunner counsels that the proofs should be taken seriously. Kierkegaard warns against a synthesis of religion and philosophy because it is injurious to faith, although this is in no sense “intended to discredit the use of reason, but is directed only against philosophical thought as such”; and in the very “work in which he develops the opposition between reason and faith in the strongest terms,” Kierkegaard writes about how Christianity must use the understanding.149 Christianity is not “a tidbit for dunces.”150 Brunner definitely appreciated the great Dane that he promoted.151 Brunner recognizes that the thinker must finally acknowledge that “the material of thought does not come from reason”: one must depend upon experience, upon a particular starting point, and the Christian philosopher’s starting point “is the encounter with the Living God through revelation and faith.”152 Brunner cites in this context Kierkegaard’s treatment of the “dialectic of the beginning.”153 If there is a book cited more frequently than the Postscript, it is Kierkegaard’s 1849 The Sickness unto Death. In Erlebnis, Erkenntnis und Glaube, the Privatdocent at the University of Zurich quotes a passage from The Sickness unto Death in discussing “dialectical psychology” as it relates to Augustine and to Dostoevsky’s character

Brunner, Die christliche Lehre von der Kirche, vom Glauben, und von der Vollendung, p. 173, note 1. (The Christian Doctrine of the Church, Faith, and the Consummation, p. 146, note 1.) 149 Brunner, Offenbarung und Vernunft, pp. 409–10 and note 1. (Revelation and Reason, pp. 376–7, note 10.) He quotes SKS 7, 516 / CUP1, 568: “It is easy enough to shift away from the laborious task of developing and sharpening one’s understanding and then gain for oneself a higher hop-dance [Hop-sasa] and defend oneself against every charge with the observation that it is a higher understanding. Consequently the believing Christian both has and uses his understanding, respects the universally human, does not explain someone’s not becoming a Christian as a lack of understanding, but believes Christianity against the understanding and here uses the understanding—in order to see to it that he believes against the understanding.” 150 Brunner, Offenbarung und Vernunft, p. 410 and note 1. (Revelation and Reason, p. 377, note 10.) He quotes SKS 7, 506; CUP1, 557: “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, in esthetic gibberish. This is just as if Christianity were a tidbit for dunces because it cannot be thought, and just as if the very qualification that it cannot be thought is not the most difficult of all to hold fast when one is to exist in it—the most difficult to hold fast, especially for brainy people.” 151 Brunner writes, Offenbarung und Vernunft, p. 410 (Revelation and Reason, p. 377): “Kierkegaard himself is an example of a truly great thinker who was a Christian, and, indeed, a very great Christian who was a thinker, and not only a theological but a philosophical thinker. In his own person he illustrates the problem and the task of Christian philosophy; he was a Lutheran Christian, genuinely loyal to the principles of the Reformation, who used his great philosophical powers in the service of his faith.” 152 Brunner, Offenbarung und Vernunft, pp. 387–8. (Revelation and Reason, p. 392.) 153 Brunner, Offenbarung und Vernunft, p. 389, note 31. (Revelation and Reason, p. 393, note 31.) See SKS 7, 108–13 / CUP1, 111–17. 148

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Dmitri Karamazov.154 In his book on mysticism Brunner quotes from The Sickness unto Death on the thought that sin is not a negation, but on the contrary a position.155 The Divine Imperative of 1932 finds Brunner referring to Sickness at a number of points. He states that The Sickness unto Death stands completely alone, as does Kierkegaard as a post-Reformation figure in the modern period when it comes to clarity on the degree to which self-interest enters into the human’s relating to God.156 He notes Anti-Climacus’ theme that the pagan is too spiritless to sin.157 In this regard he quotes two passages from Sickness.158 Brunner also refers to this writing in discussing how the person oscillating from one form of despair to another finally reaches the “diacritical point, the turning point,” which leads “either away from or towards God” and in the latter case to an encounter with “the God who gives and forgives.”159 He clarifies, though, that Kierkegaard never claims that despair itself, which is an immanental process on the natural plane, leads to transformation; rather, change toward recovery only becomes a reality through the act of God manifested as forgiveness in the event of the Cross of Christ.160 He also declares in reference to Sickness that the self consists of the aim of self-realization which it sets before

Brunner, Erlebnis, Erkenntnis und Glaube, pp. 46–7. The passage in SKS 11, 24 / SUD, 29, states that the forms of despair—which is the sickness unto death—“must be arrived at abstractly by reflecting upon the constituents of which the self as a synthesis is composed. The self is composed of infinitude and finitude.” 155 Brunner, Die Mystik und das Wort, p. 235: With the rejection of pantheism accepted, “orthodoxy has correctly perceived that when sin is defined negatively, all Christianity is flabby and spineless.” “But according to the definition of sin as set forth, the self infinitely intensified by the conception of God is part of sin and is likewise the greatest possible consciousness of sin as an act. —This signifies that sin is a position; that it is before God is the definitely positive element in it.” See SKS 11, 98–101 / SUD, 96–100. On knowledge of sin as possible only in the presence of God, see Brunner, Religionsphilosophie evangelischer Theologie, p. 37. (The Philosophy of Religion, p. 78 and note 1.) The theme that sin is not a negation but a position is also stressed in Der Mensch im Widerspruch, p. 123, note 3 (Man in Revolt, p. 131, note 1) and in the Die christliche Lehre von Schöpfung und Erlösung, p. 134 (The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, p. 117). 156 Brunner, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, p. 55 and p. 569, note 2 to p. 55. (The Divine Imperative, p. 69 and p. 588, note 2 to p. 69.) 157 Brunner, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, p. 51. (The Divine Imperative, p. 65.) The reference is to SKS 11, 81 / SUD, 81. 158 Brunner, Der Mensch im Widerspruch, p. 474, note 2. (Man in Revolt, p. 456, note 2.) The quotations refer to passages corresponding to SKS 11, 81 and 91 / SUD, 80–1 and 90: “The selfishness of paganism was not nearly so aggravated as is that of Christendom, inasmuch as there is selfishness here also, for the pagan did not have his self directly before God.” “The intellectuality of the Greeks was too happy, too naïve, too esthetic, too ironic, too witty—too sinful—to grasp that anyone could knowingly not do the good.” 159 Brunner, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, p. 130. (The Divine Imperative, p. 146.) No specific reference to The Sickness unto Death is given. 160 Brunner, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, p. 131. (The Divine Imperative, p. 147.) Again no particular page reference to The Sickness unto Death is given. 154

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itself.161 He points out that Kierkegaard claims that the Scriptures make a distinction between the two sexes concerning the ideal of our relation to God, and Brunner disagrees with Kierkegaard on this.162 In addition, he speaks of freedom meaning being “rooted and grounded” in God and then quotes the formula of the self from Sickness.163 Freedom finds its fulfillment in love, as Brunner explicates in Man in Revolt.164 The same goes with self-determination, which is understood properly in Kierkegaard’s fine formula of the self, which depicts the self, as beyond despair, resting transparently in the power which created it. Brunner clarifies: “But this ‘power’ is simply the love of the Creator, and to ‘base oneself transparently upon it’ must simply mean that we gratefully say ‘Yes’ to this love, which we call the love of God or faith in God.”165 When the self gets its life together, and its faculties are in order, it is dependent not on itself but on God; it rests in God, and thus it “knows the peace of God, which passes all understanding.”166 Kierkegaard tried “to represent the whole of human life—in so far as it is not in ‘faith’—as despairing, and its phenomena as countless variations on the one theme of despair; and the book in which he does so [The Sickness unto Death] has become one of the finest of his writings.”167 The Fall gives expression to the loss of unity that 161 Brunner, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, p. 153. (The Divine Imperative, p. 170.) The reference is simply to the beginning of The Sickness unto Death, which could mean any of a number of passages. 162 Brunner, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, p. 359. (The Divine Imperative, p. 374.) 163 Brunner, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, p. 65 and p. 572, note 21 to p. 65. (The Divine Imperative, p. 78 and p. 591, note 21 to p. 78.) SKS 11, 8–9 / SUD, 14: “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.” This formula of the self of Sickness is also referred to in Der Mensch im Widerspruch, p. 508 (Man in Revolt, p. 486). Relevant to Kierkegaard’s formula of the self is the quotation from Hamann that Brunner includes as an epigraph at the front of his book Man in Revolt: “From this we see how necessarily our Self is rooted and grounded in Him who created it, so that the knowledge of our Self does not lie within our own power, but that in order to measure the extent of the same, we must press forward into the very heart of God Himself, who alone can determine and resolve the whole mystery of our nature.” 164 Brunner, Der Mensch im Widerspruch, p. 221 (Man in Revolt, p. 220): “Love is the unity of willing, knowing and feeling, the sole total act of the person. Hence also the nature of the ‘I’ must not be defined from the point of view of knowing, nor from that of self-knowledge, but from that of God-given responsive love, of responsibility-in-love. The final ground of personality is not to be found in self-consciousness, nor even in the act of will; to begin there means to desire to understand man severed from God as person, and that means, to fall a prey to that primal misunderstanding about oneself. In contrast to all rational definitions of the Self the right religious self-consciousness of man is this: man becomes conscious of himself in the Word of God. The isolated self-consciousness, the cogito ergo sum, is the result of apostasy. The self-consciousness of man is ‘theological’ because man is a ‘theological’ being.” 165 Brunner, Der Mensch im Widerspruch, p. 221. (Man in Revolt, pp. 220–1.) 166 Brunner, Der Mensch im Widerspruch, p. 222. (Man in Revolt, p. 221.) The quotation is from the New Testament, Phil 4:7. 167 Brunner, Der Mensch im Widerspruch, p. 200 and note 1. (Man in Revolt, p. 201 and note 1.)

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occurred between the “I” and the “self.” This separation “is the central division of personality which characterizes the sinful man; it is that despair which Kierkegaard, in his Sickness unto Death, describes as the state of fallen man in theological ontology and psychology, as the decay of the original unity of the original elements of human existence.”168 Forms of despair can also be viewed as forms of character or, because of their flaws, as caricatures, so Sickness might then be regarded as Kierkegaard’s outlining of a characterology. His deepest probings are his inquiries into the “despair of not willing to be oneself,” that is, despair as weakness, and into “despair of willing to be oneself,” that is, despair as defiance,” or the “despairing misuse of the eternal in the Self.”169 Kierkegaard’s whole characterology is based upon a Christian understanding of the human, with these characters, or caricatures, being “measured by that self-existence which rests transparently in the power that established it.”170 The obvious conclusion, although Kierkegaard does not draw it, is that character is always and necessarily ambiguous, strained, and “posing” so long as the element of “character” has not been overcome and replaced by the purely human, namely, that man instead of giving himself a Self, receives it from the hands of the Creation, and thus is a believer. We are “characters” only so long as, and in so far as, we are not in faith, in the Word of God, in Christ.171

The human condition is such, reports Brunner, that humans experience grandeur as well as misery. Human behavior discloses traces of both Creation and the Fall. This leads humans often to misinterpret these traces, at times overstressing the grandeur and regarding human nature as too idealistic and optimistic and at other times overemphasizing the misery and regarding human nature as too pessimistic and cynical.172 This conflict of interpretation manifests itself “in the sphere of subjective psychological phenomena”: “In his masterly work Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard has examined the psychological signs of the conflict, and has created a Christian psychology of incomparable depth and wonderful richness.”173 The human’s new nature struggles against the old nature and “faith alone creates the crisis in the

Brunner, Der Mensch im Widerspruch, p. 231. (Man in Revolt, p. 229.) Brunner, Der Mensch im Widerspruch, pp. 322–3 and p. 323, note 1. (Man in Revolt, p. 315 and note 2.) SKS 11, 46–7 and 67–8 / SUD, 49–50 and 67–8. He elucidates this latter form of despair by quoting in his text from SKS 11, 66 / SUD, 67–8: “But just because it is despair through the aid of the eternal, in a certain sense it is very close to the truth; and just because it lies very close to the truth, it is infinitely far away….In order in despair to will to be oneself, there must be consciousness of an infinite self….With the help of this infinite form, 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, to determine what he will have or not have in his concrete self….he does not want to put on his own self, does not want to see his given self as his task—he himself wants to compose his self by means of being the infinite form.” 170 Brunner, Der Mensch im Widerspruch, p. 323. (Man in Revolt, p. 316.) 171 Ibid. 172 Brunner, Die christliche Lehre von Schöpfung und Erlösung, p. 146. (The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, p. 126.) 173 Ibid. 168 169

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‘sickness unto death’; only through it indeed does the sickness break out fully; but this total outbreak is already the beginning of the process of healing.”174 A good summary of The Sickness unto Death is provided in Brunner’s third volume of his Dogmatics.175 “The sickness unto death” bears testimony to the source of the disease as being a contradiction, not simply “something contradictory” within the human, but a contradiction of the whole human against the whole human, a division within the human herself. And this division consists in the fact that the human, “who was originally created to decide in accordance with the divine determination, so that, just as the original determination gave him his true life, this hostility to it robs him of his true life, and allows him to fall prey to an unreal life.”176 The human being contradicts its true origin and this “becomes a kind of fate” which the human has brought upon itself by its own fault.177 And in discussing faith in revelation and the problem of doubt, Brunner contends that doubt is akin to “despair,” to “the ‘divided mind,’ which is peculiar to human consciousness as a whole.”178 In speaking of “the titanic revolt against the very existence of God” as “one form of sin,” and “the effort to escape from God, which extends to complete forgetfulness” of God, as another, Brunner in a note refers the reader to “the degrees of unspirituality in Kierkegaard’s The Sickness unto Death.”179 In Christological passages Brunner utilizes Kierkegaard’s 1850 Practice in Christianity. He quotes Kierkegaard from this book at length,180 where what is at Brunner, Der Mensch im Widerspruch, p. 511 and note 1. (Man in Revolt, p. 489 and note 1.) Here Brunner quotes from SKS 11, 21–2 / SUD, 26–7: “Precisely because the sickness of despair is totally dialectical, it is the worst misfortune never to have had that sickness; it is a true godsend to get it, even if it is the most dangerous of illnesses.” There is “an infinite benefaction that is never gained except through despair.” 175 Brunner, Die christliche Lehre von der Kirche, vom Glauben, und von der Vollendung, p. 146. (The Christian Doctrine of the Church, Faith, and the Consummation, pp. 271–2). Brunner here explains how for Kierkegaard despair is the actual condition of all humans since being a sinner and being in despair are one and the same thing. This sin-despair is the human in revolt and only God the Creator through reconciling action in Christ can restore the self to health as it comes to identify its self with the self of Jesus the Christ. 176 Brunner, Der Mensch im Widerspruch, pp. 109–10. (Man in Revolt, p. 118.) 177 Brunner, Der Mensch im Widerspruch, p. 110. (Man in Revolt, p. 118.) 178 Brunner, Offenbarung und Vernunft, p. 237 (Revelation and Reason, p. 214), and in the note he cites Kierkegaard’s The Sickness unto Death. 179 Brunner, Offenbarung und Vernunft, pp. 294–5 and p. 295, note 1. (Revelation and Reason, p. 268 and note 25.) 180 Brunner, Der Mittler, pp. 296–7. (The Mediator, pp. 331–2.) He quotes the passage corresponding to SKS 12, 142 / PC, 131–2: “He is God but chooses to become the individual human being. This, as said before, is the most profound incognito or the most impenetrable unrecognizability that is possible, because the contradiction between being God and being an individual human being is the greatest possible, the infinitely qualitative contradiction. But it is his will, his free decision, and therefore it is an omnipotently maintained incognito…. He is not, therefore, at any moment beyond suffering but is actually in suffering, and this purely human experience befalls him, that the actuality proves to be even more terrible than the possibility, that he who freely assumed unrecognizability yet actually suffers as if he were trapped or had trapped himself in unrecognizability.” 174

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issue is the incognito of God in Christ. Key is the concept of “unrecognizability.”181 Part and parcel of the incarnate one is the notion of offense. “The object of faith is the God-man precisely because the God-man is the possibility of offense.”182 Without this offense there is not Christianity.183 The word of the church is at first an “offense” to the hearer; in fact, the “making present” of the Bible message by the preacher will make the folly and offense of the Cross even more evident.”184 Brunner criticizes the orthodox Christian thinkers who want to establish the Gospels as photographs rather than as portraits, as biographies rather than as proclamation. Kierkegaard’s distinction between direct and indirect communication is introduced in this regard: the orthodox make the witness of faith into a direct communication and in the process ignore the distinction between what others have called the empirical historical and the existential historical, the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. Brunner declares: the Christ of faith, or an historical personality, is such that in Him the mere historian can see nothing more than a human being, unless history were to become for him the means by which he would enter into the realm of faith….The question whether Jesus is the Christ is not a scientific question at all, it is a question which concerns faith alone.185

In another passage Brunner maintains that the speech of Jesus was always an indirect communication and that Kierkegaard’s statement on “Blessed is he who is not offended in Me,” in Practice, is of decisive significance for Brunner.186 Brunner 181 Brunner, Der Mittler, p. 297. (The Mediator, p. 332.) He quotes the passage corresponding to SKS 12, 143 / PC, 132: “But the God-man’s unrecognizability is an omnipotently maintained incognito, and the divine earnestness is precisely this—that it was maintained to such an extent that he himself suffered purely humanly under the unrecognizability.” 182 Ibid. See SKS 12, 154 / PC, 143. 183 Ibid. He quotes SKS 12, 154 / PC, 144: “But whether faith is abolished or whether the possibility of offense is abolished, something else is also abolished: the God-man. And if the God-man is abolished, Christianity is abolished.” 184 Brunner, Offenbarung und Vernunft, p. 202 and note 1 (Revelation and Reason, p. 182 and note 36), where Brunner refers to SKS 12, 133–4 / PC, 123–4, the section on the “Essential Offense.” 185 Brunner, Der Mittler, pp. 159–60. (The Mediator, p. 186.) Kierkegaard considers this distinction between direct and indirect communication at many points in Practice in Christianity. 186 Brunner, Der Mittler, pp. 387–8 and note 1 (The Mediator, p. 430 and note 1): “The points of view are all exposed and worked out in a masterly manner. But the application is often far less useful than the view of principle—this is due to the paucity of information then available on historico-critical questions. The fact that Kierkegaard makes full use of the Gospel of John as an historical ‘source,’ forces him (in reference to the indirectness and the directness of the communication) now and again to use some very arbitrary arguments. But his principles provide the key we need for our present situation: How can we combine the historical picture which emerges from the Synoptic Gospels, the “photograph,” with the Christian witness of the Church which shows the truly historical Jesus Christ—of whom the historical picture is only an abstract image? All we need to do is to apply the idea of the

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refers to Kierkegaard’s idea of “contemporaneousness” in relation to this book.187 Brunner does not make use of Kierkegaard’s attack on the church, but he does refer to Kierkegaard when making the claim that the church is called to proclaim the “absolute ideal” and not to be concerned about whether it is “practicable” at the present time.188 To his credit, Brunner includes Kierkegaard, along with Schopenhauer, Strindberg, and Nietzsche, among those participating in “an explicitly misogynous tradition in philosophy” that sets forth a “theory of the metaphysical, essentially inferior value of the woman.”189 III. Interpreting Brunner’s Polemical Promotion of Kierkegaard We have seen that Brunner believes Kierkegaard’s message gives the right emphasis for the day, and he is ready at every turn to promote this existential philosophy of encounter. In fact, in Kierkegaard’s person and thought was one who went against the currents of modernity and empowered Brunner himself courageously to attack the insidious world-views and movements of the time. Undergirding Brunner’s polemic was a Kierkegaardian commitment to the human’s encounter with God as the constitutive relation that needs to be engaged in as a living relationship at the level of existence if the individual is to progress towards its appointed destination of becoming fully human. It is precisely this divine–human relationship that provides the resources for overcoming the subject–object split that characterizes life in the modern world. The thinking of Ferdinand Ebner and Martin Buber were especially helpful for applying Kierkegaard’s insights into the principle of personality to the contemporary age. Also critical in Brunner’s polemical promoting of the Danish philosopher was the fact that his spunky personality found resonance in Kierkegaard’s tempestuous spirit. From the overview of our theologian’s use of Kierkegaard it has become apparent that Brunner was no dilettante in his study of the complex religious thinker. On the contrary, he probed far into Kierkegaard’s authorship and acquired quite a profound understanding of his thought. While our Zurich zealot manifests a rather intimate acquaintance with the pseudonymous writings, we have seen that he unfortunately paid no respect whatsoever to Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms. In just about every instance he referred to “Kierkegaard” rather than to the designated pseudonym such as Johannes de silentio, Constantin Constantius, Johannes Climacus, and AntiClimacus. Therefore, if in the above accounting of Brunner’s use of Kierkegaard the reader encountered the mention of a pseudonym, it was likely because I inserted it and not because Brunner had done so. We have also indicated Brunner’s apparent avoidance for whatever reason of the sermon-like upbuilding discourses or the

indirectness of the communication, and thus of the ‘incognito,’ in a more logical and decided way than does Kierkegaard himself.” 187 Brunner, Offenbarung und Vernunft, p. 190, note 1 (Revelation and Reason, p. 170, note 10), where he refers to SKS 12, 70–4 / PC, 62–4, Chapter 4. 188 Brunner, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, p. 425. (The Divine Imperative, p. 439.) 189 Brunner, Der Mensch im Widerspruch, pp. 367–8 and p. 368, note 1. (Man in Revolt, p. 356 and note 1.)

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non-pseudonymous “works of his right hand,” as George Pattison calls them.190 In identifying shortcomings in Brunner’s Kierkegaard interpretation, it should be stated additionally that conspicuous by its absence is any reference to Kierkegaard’s Works of Love. This lacuna becomes especially strange when one learns that at the heart of Brunner’s theology is a God of love and that in his The Divine Imperative, Brunner includes a section under the title “Works of Love.”191 Two more passages can be cited as disclosing the view Brunner had of Kierkegaard as a contributor to theology. The first passage gives a glowing tribute to Kierkegaard, pronouncing how in the first half of the nineteenth century he was “one of the most powerful champions of the Christian faith,” standing forth “as a witness,” presenting his writings as “a single, skillfully constructed attack upon the ideologies of his own day” opposed to the Christian faith, especially Hegel’s Romantic idealism, aestheticism, self-complacent bourgeois morality, and the “mass” mentality. No thinker has contrasted Christian faith to “all the ‘immanental’ possibilities of thought with such clarity and intensity” as has Kierkegaard. This makes him “incomparably the greatest apologist or ‘eristic’ thinker” of the Christian faith’s Protestant form. “The pioneer task which he began still waits to be carried further; indeed, this work has scarcely been begun.”192 The second passage celebrates Kierkegaard’s “missionary theology.” Brunner believes that “the missionary theology of a man like Kierkegaard in the nineteenth century has done more than any dogmatic theologian, perhaps more than all of them put together.”193 However, the task has become ten times more urgent since Kierkegaard’s time, and while the Catholic Church has recognized this and responded accordingly, Protestant theology ignores it and even dismisses the idea with contempt, which may prove its own destruction.194 One of the ways Emil Brunner can be differentiated from Karl Barth is in their allegiance to Kierkegaard. Contrary to the popular view which saw Barth as following in the footsteps of Kierkegaard, Brunner clarifies that “he very soon turned away from Kierkegaard and expressly repudiated Kierkegaard’s main thesis, ‘subjectivity

190 George Pattison, Kierkegaard’s Upbuilding Discourses: Philosophy, Theology, Literature, London and New York: Routledge 2002, pp. 12–13. 191 See Brunner, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen, pp. 218–72. (The Divine Imperative, pp. 234–88.) 192 Brunner, Die christliche Lehre von Gott, p. 108. (The Christian Doctrine of God, p. 100.) 193 Brunner, Die christliche Lehre von Gott, p. 111. (The Christian Doctrine of God, p. 103.) 194 Ibid. Jürgen Moltmann has placed this controversy in a larger perspective. He writes in Religion and Political Society, New York: Harper & Row 1974, p. 28: “The controversy between Karl Barth and Emil Brunner in the dark years around 1933 over ‘nature and grace’ was misleading. They never posed questions of ‘natural theology’ or ‘revelation theology,’ but considered only Deutsche Christen theology, which was merely a religious rationalization for the Third Reich.”

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is truth.’ ”195 Barth simply was not convinced that it was necessary to spend time inquiring into the nature of faith.196 This, for Brunner, is theology’s essential task: If theology does not succeed in so shaping the statement of faith that faith is apprehended as a new understanding of life and a transformation of life, then it has neglected its most essential task. It was this which, at the commencement of the theological revolt in the twenties, by the renewal of Kierkegaard’s questionings, gave such momentum to the new movement in theology.197

Barth criticized Brunner’s affirmation of a point of contact between the human and God but also his inclination to transform theology into apologetic assaults against the various “-isms” that seemed to threaten Christianity.198 Barth evidently recognized Brunner’s polemical promoting of Kierkegaard but judged it to be inappropriate at one or more levels. But what of Brunner’s place and thus Kierkegaard’s legacy in relation to the large scheme of theological work carried out over the past century? Where, in particular, does he stand in relation to the line of liberal theologians extending from Schleiermacher through Albrecht Ritschl (1822–99) to Ernst Troeltsch (1865–1923)? In Emil Brunner we have a dialectical or neo-orthodox theologian who, quick to engage in controversy, includes theological liberalism among his targets of criticism, but who also consistently renders judgment against orthodox Christianity. Early on Brunner recognized that one of Kierkegaard’s targets was Christian orthodoxy, smug in its overly confident and comfortable self-satisfaction because these true believers had stored up a life insurance policy of sorts for time and eternity which undercut the tension and suffering of faith that ought to prevail: “The copy has replaced the original….And a copy is infinitely cheaper than an original and can therefore be distributed in an unlimited degree. In other words:

Brunner, Die christliche Lehre von der Kirche, vom Glauben, und von der Vollendung, p. 245. (The Christian Doctrine of the Church, Faith, and the Consummation, p. 213.) 196 He writes in his Das Ewige als Zukunft und Gegenwart, p. 233 (Eternal Hope, p. 215): “The insight of Sőren Kierkegaard, attained through his struggle with the Hegelianism and church orthodoxy of his time, that truth is subjective, was overlooked by Barth because his vision was focused exclusively on the overcoming of Schleiermacher’s subjectivism, of a false theology of experience. The warnings which some of us have for long been issuing just in this respect were lost in the wind, or suspected as so much synergistic semi-pelagian heresy; for, in the stress of the crisis in which the church was then involved, it was felt that successful endurance could only come from the utmost possible massive objectivity of faith. But once again, as so often before, the extreme swing of the pendulum of reaction has only served to call forth a reaction from the other side—and this has taken the form of Bultmann’s subjective existentialist interpretation.” 197 Brunner, Das Ewige als Zukunft und Gegenwart, p. 233. (Eternal Hope, p. 215.) 198 Smart, The Divine Mind of Modern Theology, p. 17. Smart suggests that Brunner was more popular than Barth among Americans “basically because he disturbs us less and fits more comfortably into our theological world, encouraging us as he does in our confidence in Western civilization and leaving us at least a vestige of natural theology as a theological support for that confidence.” 195

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faith as a mass phenomenon instead of the decision of the individual.”199 Besides regularly criticizing Christian orthodoxy, Brunner also engages in his own form of demythologizing, causing one interpreter to raise questions about the seriousness of Bruner’s anti-liberal posture: “If he can delete the virgin birth, the empty tomb, the forty-day post-resurrection ministry, and the bodily ascension, where does one draw the line?”200 In many ways Brunner’s thought manifests signs that his Kierkegaardinspired form of neo-orthodox theology ought to be understood, as various scholars have argued in interpreting this movement in relation to the past, as a self-critical corrective moment within the liberal theological tradition rather than as a radically new departure from it. Reading Brunner today is an ambiguous affair. One experiences, as Rudolf Otto had characterized the dialectical nature of religious experience, at once a fascination (fascinans) that draws one further into the subject-matter and a tremendous mystery (mysterium tremendum) that repels. One is struck by a freshness to Brunner’s sentences due to the personalism of his thought and his commitment to finding a middle way between extremes. On the other hand, one must only agree with a recent interpreter’s critique of passages from this “remembered voice” as most embarrassing “on account of their blatantly exclusivistic Christian claims, their dismissal of other religions, their naïve unawareness of the pluralistic character of our global village.”201 Brunner, like Kierkegaard before him, gave expression in life and thought to that contradiction they both held dear. Brunner was a leader among those giving Kierkegaard a serious reception. He was a very popular Christian author who was read far beyond the confines of his Swiss-German social location. His polemical promoting of Kierkegaard surely made a significant contribution to the reception of Kierkegaard in many different quarters. He complained as late as 1941 about the lack of full utilization of the writings of this one who stands “head and shoulders above” the other Christian philosophers: “In Søren Kierkegaard the Protestant Church possesses a philosopher of the first rank, whose thought is not yet adequately known in spite of some fifty years of the study of his works; far less is it fully utilized.”202 The same can be said today. However, Emil Brunner, in his own way, did much to make known the Christian philosophy of encounter of this fascinating figure of Copenhagen’s Golden Age. His writings now lie half a century behind us, but we can still benefit from revisiting them, not least for the light they still shed on Søren Kierkegaard.

Brunner, “Die Botschaft Sören Kierkegaards,” p. 98. (“Sören Kierkegaards Budskap,” p. 242.) The Brunner quotation is included in Paul R. Sponheim, Kierkegaard on Christ and Christian Coherence, New York: Harper & Row 1968, p. 71. 200 Paul K. Jewett, Emil Brunner: An Introduction to the Man and His Thought, Chicago: Inter-Varsity Press 1961, p. 36. 201 Hall, Remembered Voices, p. 87. 202 Brunner, Offenbarung und Vernunft, p. 321. (Revelation and Reason, p. 293.) 199

Bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Brunner’s Corpus Erlebnis, Erkenntnis und Glaube, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1921, pp. 46–7; pp. 79– 80; pp. 113–14; p. 116. Die Grenzen der Humanität. Habilitationsvorlesung an der Universität Zürich, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1922, p. 19. “Das Grundproblem der Kantgesellschaft in Utrecht, 1923,” Zwischen den Zeiten, vol. 2, 1924, pp. 31–46. Die Mystik und das Wort. Der Gegensatz zwischen moderner Religionsauffassung und christlichem Glauben dargestellt an der Theologie Schleiermachers, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1924, pp. 100–1; p. 166; pp. 235–6; p. 282; p. 312; p. 330; p. 376. Der Mittler. Zur Besinnung über den Christusglauben, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1927, p. 22; p. 106; p. 159; p. 178, note 1; p. 192, note 1; p. 195, note 1; p. 297; pp. 387– 8, note 1. (English translation: The Mediator: A Study of the Central Doctrine of the Christian Faith, trans. by Olive Wyon, London: Lutterworth Press 1934, p. 42; p. 130; p. 185; p. 204, note; p. 219, note; p. 222, note; p. 332; p. 430, note.) “Begegnung mit Kierkegaard,” Der Lesezirkel, vol. 17, no. 3, 1930, pp. 21–2. “Die Botschaft Sören Kierkegaards. Rede vor dem Lesezirkel Hottingen, Zurich,” Neue Schweizer Rundschau, vol. 23, no. 2, 1930, pp. 84–99. Das Gebot und die Ordnungen. Entwurf einer protestantisch-theologischen Ethik, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1932, p. 51; pp. 130–1; p. 140; p. 144; p. 153; p. 167; p. 181; p. 271; pp. 277–8; p. 285; p. 359; p. 425; p. 554; p. 569; p. 572; p. 585; p. 589; p. 610; p. 619; pp. 668–9; p. 671. (English translation: The Divine Imperative: A Study in Christian Ethics, trans. by Olive Wyon, London: Lutterworth Press 1937, p. 65; pp. 146ff.; p. 155; p. 160; p. 170; p. 196; p. 287; pp. 293ff.; p. 309; p. 374; p. 439; p. 570; p. 588; p. 591; p. 605; p. 606; p. 610; p. 635; p. 645; p. 702; p. 704; p. 707.) Der Mensch im Widerspruch. Die christliche Lehre vom wahren und vom wirklichen Menschen, Berlin: Furche-Verlag 1937, p. 9; pp. 34–5; p. 51; p. 109; p. 123; p. 137; p. 159; p. 187; p. 190; p. 194; p. 200; p. 221; p. 231; p. 254; p. 265; p. 271; pp. 289–90; p. 316; pp. 322–3; p. 350; p. 368; pp. 414–15; p. 454; p. 460; p. 474; p. 508; p. 511; p. 529; p. 534; pp. 554–7. (English translation: Man in Revolt: A Christian Anthropology, trans. by Olive Wyon, London: Lutterworth Press 1939, p. 23, note 1; p. 47; p. 63; p. 118; p. 131, note 1; p. 140; p. 143; p. 188, note 1; p. 191, note 2; p. 195, note 3; p. 201; p. 220; p. 221, note 1; p. 229; p. 252, note 2; p. 261; p. 267, note 1; p. 285, note 3; p. 309, note 4; p. 315; p. 316; p. 340;

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p. 356, note 1; pp. 400ff., p. 438, note 1; p. 443, note 2; p. 456, note 2; p. 486; p. 489, note 1; p. 512; p. 519; p. 540; p. 544; p. 546.) Wahrheit als Begegnung. Sechs Vorlesungen über das christliche Wahrheitsverständnis, Zurich: Zwingli-Verlag 1938, p. 30; p. 60. (English translation: The Divine–Human Encounter, trans. by Amandus W. Loos, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1943, p. 40; p. 82.) Die christliche Lehre von Gott, Zurich: Zwingli-Verlag 1946 (vol. 1 in Emil Brunner, Dogmatik, vols. 1–3, Zurich: Zwingli-Verlag 1946–60), p. 10; p. 39; p. 41; p. 108; p. 111; p. 131. (English translation: The Christian Doctrine of God, trans. by Olive Wyon, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1950, p. 8; p. 33; p. 35, note 1; p. 100; p. 103; p. 125, note 1.) Christianity and Civilisation, vols. 1–2, New York: Scribner 1948–49, vol. 1, p. 31; pp. 34–5; p. 160, vol. 2, p. 50; p. 52; p. 56; p. 134. Die christliche Lehre von Schöpfung und Erlösung, Zurich: Zwingli-Verlag 1950 (vol. 2 in Emil Brunner, Dogmatik, vols. 1–3, Zurich: Zwingli-Verlag 1946–60), p. 54; p. 87; p. 112; p. 134; p. 146. (English translation: The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, trans. by Olive Wyon, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1952, p. 47, note 1; p. 72; p. 97; p. 117; p. 126.) Christlicher Existenzialismus, Zurich: Zwingli-Verlag 1956, p. 5. Die christliche Lehre von der Kirche, vom Glauben, und von der Vollendung, Zurich: Zwingli-Verlag 1960 (vol. 3 in Emil Brunner, Dogmatik, vols. 1–3, Zurich: Zwingli-Verlag 1946–60), p. 9; p. 20; p. 173; pp. 245–7; pp. 308–9; p. 372; p. 383. (English translation: The Christian Doctrine of the Church, Faith, and the Consummation, trans. by David Cairns and T.H.L. Parker, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1962, p. ix; p. 146; pp. 212ff.; p. 264; pp. 271–2; p. 331; p. 343.) Offenbarung und Vernunft. Die Lehre von der christlichen Glaubenserkenntnis, Zurich et al.: Zwingli-Verlag 1961, p. 143; p. 190; p. 202; pp. 206–7; p. 237; p. 281; p. 295; p. 311; p. 335; p. 339; p. 359; p. 370; p. 386; p. 397; p. 399; pp. 409–10; p. 427; p. 434; p. 452; p. 460; p. 463. (English translation: Revelation and Reason: The Christian Doctrine of Faith and Knowledge, trans. by Olive Wyon, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1946, p. 124, note 13; p. 170, note 10; p. 182, note 36; p. 186, note 6; p. 214, note 12; p. 234, note 36; p. 256; p. 268, note 25; p. 283; p. 306, note 29; p. 310; p. 329, note 23; p. 340, note 4; p. 355; p. 368, note 8; p. 376; p. 377, note 10; p. 393, note 31; p. 394; p. 399; p. 415, note 7; p. 423, note 17; p. 426, note 27.) Wahrheit als Begegnung, 2nd edition enlarged through a first part of Das christliche Wahrheitsverständnis im Verhältnis zum philosophisch-wissenschaftlichen, Zurich and Stuttgart: Zwingli-Verlag 1963 [1938], p. 13, note 1; pp. 21–2; p. 32; pp. 45–7; pp. 61–3; p. 85; p. 112. (English translation: Truth as Encounter, A New Edition, Much Enlarged, of The Divine Human Encounter, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1964, p. 7, note 1; pp. 16–18; p. 28; pp. 42–4; pp. 58–60; p. 84; p. 112.) Ein offenes Wort, vols. 1–2, ed. by the Emil Brunner Foundation, Zurich: Theologischer Verlag 1981 [1934], vol. 1, pp. 209–26.

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II. Sources of Brunner’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Barth, Karl, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., Munich: Kaiser 1922, pp. v–vi; p. xii; pp. 15–16; p. 71; p. 75; p. 77; pp. 85–9; p. 93; p. 96; pp. 98–9; p. 114; p. 141; p. 145; p. 236; p. 261; p. 264; p. 267; p. 319; p. 325; p. 381; p. 400; pp. 426–7; p. 455; p. 481; pp. 483–4. Brock, Werner, An Introduction to Contemporary German Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1936, pp. 88ff. Buber, Martin, Ich und Du, Leipzig: Insel 1923, pp. 92–3; p. 115; pp. 123–6. Cullberg, John, Das Du und Wirklichkeit. Zum ontologischen Hintergrund der Gemeinschaftskategorie, Uppsala: Lundequist 1933, p. 13, note 1; p. 34, note 1; p. 47. Ebner, Ferdinand, Das Wort und die geistigen Realitäten. Pneumatologische Fragmente, Vienna: Herder Verlag 1921. Heidegger, Martin, Sein und Zeit, Halle: Niemeyer 1927, pp. 175–96, see also p. 190, note 1; p. 235, note 1; and p. 338, note 1. Hirsch, Emanuel, Schöpfung und Sünde in der natürlich-geschichtlichen Wirklichkeit des einzelnen Menschen. Versuch einer Grundlegung christlicher Lebensweisung, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1931 (Beiträge zur systematischen Theologie, vol. 1), p. VI, p. 13; p. 44; p. 50; p. 55; pp. 90–1, endnote 8; p. 93, endnote 31; pp. 94–5, endnote 36a; p. 95, endnote 37; p. 57, endnote 39; p. 96, endnote 43; p. 97, endnote 54; p. 99, endnote 62. Thielicke, Helmut, Geschichte und Existenz. Grundlegung einer evangelischen Gesichtstheologie, Gütersloh: Bertelsmann 1935, pp. 32–3, note 3; p. 94, note 1. III. Secondary Literature on Brunner’s Relation to Kierkegaard Bertram, Robert, “Brunner on Revelation,” Concordia Theological Monthly, vol. 22, 1951, pp. 625–43. Cairns, David, “The Theology of Emil Brunner,” Scottish Journal of Theology, vol. 1, 1948, pp. 294–308. Grant, M. Colin, “The Power of the Unrecognized ‘Blik’: Adam and Humanity according to Søren Kierkegaard and Emil Brunner,” Studies in Religion, vol. 7, 1978, pp. 47–52. Hall, Douglas John, Remembered Voices: Reclaiming the Legacy of “NewOrthodoxy,” Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press 1998, pp. 77–8; p. 154, note 14. Humphrey, J. Edward, Emil Brunner, Waco, Texas: Word Books 1976, p. 20; p. 25. Jewett, Paul K., “Ebnerian Personalism and Its Influence Upon Brunner’s Theology,” Westminster Theological Journal, vol. 14, 1952, pp. 113–47. — Emil Brunner’s Concept of Revelation, London: James Clarke 1954, p. 12; p. 34. — Emil Brunner: An Introduction to the Man and His Thought, Chicago: InterVarsity Press 1961, p. 21; p. 24; p. 26.

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Kegley, Charles W. (ed.), The Theology of Emil Brunner, New York: Macmillan 1962, p. 6; p. 11; p. 29; p. 88; pp. 111–12; p. 114; p. 120; p. 146; p. 227; p. 248; p. 252; p. 253; p. 257; p. 260; p. 261; p. 278; p. 292; p. 293; p. 329; p. 331. Leipold, Heinrich, Missionarische Theologie. Emil Brunners Weg zur theologischen Anthropologie, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1974, p. 50; p. 63; pp. 73– 4; p. 86; p. 89; pp. 130–1; p. 137; p. 160; p. 162. Lovin, Robin W., Christian Faith and Public Choices: The Social Ethics of Barth, Brunner, and Bonhoeffer, Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1984, p. 126. Lowrie, Walter, Our Concern with the Theology of Crisis, Boston: Meador Publishing Company 1932, p. 118; pp. 127–9; p. 151; pp. 170–6. McKim, Mark G., Emil Brunner: A Bibliography, Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press 1996, p. 11. Pöhl, Ivar H., Das Problem des Naturrechtes bei Emil Brunner, Zurich and Stuttgart: Zwingli Verlag 1963, p. 23; p. 27, note 5; p. 29, note 10; p. 30; p. 31, note 18; p. 33, note 27; p. 77, note 62; p. 140; p. 140, note 36. Ramm, Bernhard, Types of Apologetic Systems: An Introductory Study to the Christian Philosophy of Religion, Wheaton, Illionois: Van Kampen Press 1953, pp. 62–3. Reymond, Robert L., Brunner’s Dialectical Encounter, Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company 1967, pp. 5–9. Roessler, Roman, Person und Glaube. Der Personalismus der Gottesbeziehung bei Emil Brunner, Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag 1965, p. 26. Ruttenbeck, Walter, Sören Kierkegaard. Der christliche Denker und sein Werk, Berlin and Frankfurt an der Oder: Trowitzsch & Sohn 1929, pp. 314–17. Schrotenboer, P.G., A New Apologetics: An Analysis and Appraisal of the Eristic Theology of Emil Brunner, Kampen, Netherlands: J.H. Kok N.V. 1955, p. 13; p. 18; pp. 47–8; p. 53; pp. 89–92; p. 94; p. 126; p. 146. Smart, James D., The Divided Mind of Modern Theology: Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann, 1908–1933, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1967, p. 57; p. 64; p. 90; p. 100; pp. 104–7. Smith, Joseph J., “Emil Brunner’s Theology of Revelation,” Heythrop Journal, vol. 6, 1965, pp. 5–26, see p. 11. Volk, Hermann, Emil Brunners Lehre von der ursprünglichen Gottebenbildlichkeit des Menschen, Emsdettern: Verlagsanstalt Heinr. & J. Lechte 1939, p. 13; p. 133; p. 152.

Rudolf Bultmann: Faith, Love, and Self-Understanding Heiko Schulz

Rudolf Bultmann was born on August 20, 1884, in Wiefelstede, a small town in the former German state of Oldenburg, as the eldest son of a Lutheran pastor. He attended a humanistic secondary school and in 1903 began to study Protestant theology at Tübingen university. Further theological studies were carried out at the universities of Marburg and Berlin, where Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930), Wilhelm Herrmann (1826–56), Hermann Gunkel (1862–1932), and Johannes Weiss (1863–1914) rank high among the academic teachers who influenced Bultmann. His dissertation degree was awarded in 1910, followed by a habilitation in 1912. Soon afterwards he was admitted at Marburg as a lecturer on the New Testament (1912–16). After a lectureship at Breslau, today Wrocław (1916–20) and a brief stint as a full professor at Giessen (1920–21), he returned to Marburg in 1921 as a full professor for New Testament studies, a position he retained until his retirement in 1951. Throughout his long and successful career as a scholar, teacher and actively participating member of the church, Bultmann left a lasting impression on several generations (not only) of theology students, many of whom became friends, later colleagues and prominent scholars in their own right—for example, Hannah Arendt, Hans Jonas, Ernst Käsemann, Günther Bornkamm, to name but a few. Before and during World War II Bultmann belonged to the most outspoken members of the “Confessing Church” in Germany, which refused to follow the “German Christian” clergy in supporting Hitler’s non-Aryan exclusion policies. Consequently he criticized his former colleague at Marburg and lifelong friend Martin Heidegger for the latter’s involvement with the Nazis in 1933. From autumn 1944 until the end of the war he took into his family (the later church-critical theologian) Uta RankeHeinemann (b. 1927) who had fled the bombs and destruction in her hometown Essen. Before and after his retirement Bultmann was frequently invited to lecture and teach in other countries: the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Switzerland, England, Scotland and the U.S. In 1955 he delivered the Gifford Lectures in Edinburgh. Bultmann died on July 30, 1976, four years after his wife Helene Feldmann (1892– 1972), whom he had married in 1917; they were survived by three daughters.

I am greatly indebted to Gerhard Schreiber and Anne Rachut for their indefatigable input and support in preparing the final version of this article for publication.

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Bultmann’s numerous writings1 are marked by their overall intention to reclaim the relevance and authority of the Christian gospel for human existence under the conditions of secular post-Enlightenment thought. Strongly influenced not only by systematic theologians (like Wilhelm Herrmann) but also by philosophers (Martin Heidegger, in particular), Bultmann sought to bring systematic and exegetical perspectives into a closer, mutually fruitful relationship—and this in the service of authentic human personhood, as it is, in his opinion, made possible by Christianity, in particular. The many books and articles he wrote were widely recognized, yet also often vehemently opposed, especially in conservative Christian circles. It is obvious that Bultmann belonged to that remarkably small number of theologians in the twentieth century who possessed both the instinct and erudition and also the courage to pose the right questions at the right time—and in the right (that is, controversial) way. I. A. In 1914 the German theologian Erich Schaeder (1861–1936) matter of factly stated: “Kierkegaard erlebt einen neuen Tag.”2 Up until then, the reception-historical situation concerning the Danish thinker had appeared rather simple and straightforward: a couple of catalysts or key figures, often known for and because of their translations (Albert Bärthold (1804–1892), Christoph Schrempf (1860–1944), Rudolf Kassner (1873–1959), Theodor Haecker (1879–1945)); in addition, there were some more or less prominent appropriations on a purely personal level, without any considerable amount of implicit, much less explicit output (Rainer Maria Rilke, Georg Lukács et al.), plus, finally, a rather unimpressive number of secondary sources of highly uneven quality. All of a sudden and almost overnight things changed dramatically: An explosion took place, as it were, both in terms of a productive reception and a receptive production of Kierkegaard’s thought, at least in Germany.3 This development— accompanied, supplemented and fostered by a steadily growing number of German translations—intensified over the next couple of years and reached its preliminary climax in the years immediately after 1918, that is, following the end of World War I. Bultmann was right in the middle of these exciting events, due in particular to His main works include Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition (1921); Jesus (1926); Glauben und Verstehen, vols. 1–4 (1933–65); Das Evangelium des Johannes (1941); Neues Testament und Mythologie (1941); Theologie des Neuen Testaments (1948); Das Urchristentum im Rahmen der antiken Religionen (1949); Geschichte und Eschatologie (1958). 2 Erich Schaeder, Theozentrische Theologie. Eine Untersuchung zur dogmatischen Prinzipienlehre, vols. 1–2, Leipzig: Andreas Deichert 1914, vol. 2, p. 142. 3 I have tried to describe major strands of the reception-historical development in my article “Germany and Austria: A Modest Head Start: The German Reception of Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard’s International Reception, Tome I, Northern and Western Europe, ed. by Jon Stewart, Aldershot: Ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 8), pp. 307–419, especially pp. 321–69. 1

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the fact that he (next to Karl Barth (1886–1968) and Friedrich Gogarten (1887– 1967)) quickly became one of the key figures in a new theological movement in Germany called—for lack of a more appropriate term—“dialectical theology.” It is obvious, however, that Bultmann was and remained much more steeped in the liberal tradition that he grew up with (especially the theology of his former teacher Wilhelm Herrmann) than, say, Barth. And to a certain extent this is true also of his original and highly productive appropriation of Kierkegaard—an appropriation, which Barth, for this very reason, could just as little approve of as certain strands in Bultmann’s theology in general. In any case, it can hardly be denied that in comparison to the rest of his fellow “dialectical theologians,” Bultmann integrated the Kierkegaardian resources that he found himself drawn to into his own exegetical and systematical thinking in a much more substantial and overall consistent way. Now, precisely because of the literal omnipresence of Kierkegaard within German culture after, say, the first 15 years of the twentieth century, it is hard to determine exactly, when, under which circumstances and under whose guidance Bultmann took notice of the Danish thinker for the first time. Three points of reference stand out as undisputable, though. First, the years 1916–20, Bultmann’s Wrocław-period: Here he made friends with, among others, Ernst Moering, a pastor (and former student of Ernst Troeltsch), “der sein Predigtamt mit einem dem Christentumsverständnis Søren Kierkegaards verpflichteten Ernst und mit großem homiletischen Geschick auszuüben verstand.”4 In fact, two published volumes of sermons5 reveal that Moering was heavily indebted to Kierkegaard, and it seems highly unlikely that he should not have shared his enthusiasm for the Danish thinker with his friend Rudolf.6 Secondly, 1919, the year when Bultmann’s father died: Bultmann reports in retrospect, in a letter from 1973, that before his first encounter with Heidegger in 1923 he had read nothing from Kierkegaard’s pen except Fear and Trembling and The Concept of Anxiety— and that these were in fact the two volumes he took from his father’s library after the latter’s death.7 Finally, 1922: this year marks the terminus a quo for determining Konrad Hammann, Rudolf Bultmann. Eine Biografie, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 2009, p. 92. 5 Ernst Moering, In ungemessene Weiten. Kanzelreden, vols. 1–2, Wrocław: Trewendt 1922. 6 As to Moering’s reading of Kierkegaard, see Cora Bartels, Kierkegaard receptus I. Die theologiegeschichtliche Bedeutung der Kierkegaard-Rezeption Rudolf Bultmanns, Göttingen: V&R Unipress 2008, pp. 221–5. 7 See Letter to Rainer Schumann, June 27, 1973; cf. Martin Evang, Rudolf Bultmann in seiner Frühzeit, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1988, p. 339; Bartels, Kierkegaard receptus, pp. 188 and 221. In the following, Bultmann’s writings will be quoted by either using abbreviated titles (in the footnotes) or abbreviations (in the tables): BBB: Karl Barth—Rudolf Bultmann. Briefwechsel 1911–1966, ed. by Bernd Jaspert, Zurich: Theologischer Verlag 1971; BGB: Rudolf Bultmann/Friedrich Gogarten. Briefwechsel 1921–1967, ed. by Hermann G. Göckeritz, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2002; BHB: Rudolf Bultmann/Martin Heidegger. Briefwechsel 1925–1975, ed. by Andreas Großmann and Christof Landmesser, Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann and Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 2009; E: Exegetica, ed. by Erich Dinkler, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1967; EJ: Das Evangelium des Johannes, 10th ed. [Bultmann’s first], Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1941; FDT: “Die Frage der ‘dialektischen’ Theologie. 4

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Kierkegaard’s initial appearance in Bultmann’s writings.8 Summing up, we may say that Bultmann’s first-hand acquaintance with Kierkegaard’s writings dates back to some point in time between 1919 and 1922,9 whereas he, in all probability, had come to know the latter from hearsay a couple of years earlier.10 B. It is safe to assume also that in, or shortly after, 1923 Bultmann extended and intensified his Kierkegaard studies.11 In addition to other motivating factors observable at roughly the same time,12 the main reason is probably that he became Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Erik Peterson,” Zwischen den Zeiten, vol. 4, 1926, pp. 40–59; reprinted in Anfänge der dialektischen Theologie, vol. 2, ed. by Jürgen Moltmann, Munich: Chr. Kaiser 1963, pp. 72–92; GE: Geschichte und Eschatologie, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1958; GV1–4: Glauben und Verstehen; vol. 1, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1933; vol. 2, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1952; vol. 3, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1960; vol. 4, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1965; HM: Article “Heidegger, Martin,” in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, vol. 2, 2nd ed., Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1928, pp. 1687–8; reprinted in Rudolf Bultmann/Martin Heidegger. Briefwechsel 1925–1975, ed. by Andreas Großmann and Christof Landmesser, Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann and Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 2009, p. 272; J: Jesus, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1926; LEF: Letter to Erich Foerster (1928), reprinted in Rudolf Bultmanns Werk und Wirkung, ed. by Bernd Jaspert, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1984, pp. 70–80; LHS: Letter to Hans von Soden, August 24, 1926, in Universitätsbibliothek Tübingen, Nachlass Rudolf Bultmann, Mn 2–2385; LRS: Letter to Rainer Schumann, June 27, 1973 (in possession of the addressee); LWB: Letter to Werner de Boor (1926), reprinted in Theologische Rundschau, vol. 53, 1989, pp. 212–14; R: “Reflexionen zum Denkweg Martin Heideggers nach der Darstellung von Otto Pöggeler (1963),” in Rudolf Bultmann/Martin Heidegger. Briefwechsel 1925–1975, ed. by Andreas Großmann and Christof Landmesser, Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann and Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 2009, pp. 305–17; TE: Theologische Enzyklopädie, ed. by Eberhard Jüngel and Klaus W. Müller, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1984; TNT: Theologie des Neuen Testaments, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1948. 8 See Karl Barth—Rudolf Bultmann. Briefwechsel 1911–1966, p. 12. 9 Note that Bultmann’s Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition, which was published in 1921 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht), bears no traces of Kierkegaard, much less of any influence of the latter. 10 In light of a late conversation between Bultmann and Walter Schmithals it does not at all seem improbable that the former had studied the two volumes from his father’s library as a pupil already; see Bartels, Kierkegaard receptus, p. 221 (note 638). If he did, he must have made use of the first (complete) German translations of the books, since Bultmann (to the best of my knowledge) did not speak Danish: Furcht und Zittern. Dialektische Lyrik von Johannes de Silentio (Søren Kierkegaard), trans. by Heinrich Cornelius Ketels, Erlangen: Andreas Deichert 1882; Zur Psychologie der Sünde, der Bekehrung und des Glaubens. Zwei Schriften Søren Kierkegaards, trans. by Christoph Schrempf, Leipzig: F. Richter 1890. 11 Between 1923 and (the summer of) 1926, when he started reading the Fragments he studied, in all probability, Works of Love, Sickness unto Death, and Practice in Christianity; see Cora Bartels, Kierkegaard receptus, p. 219. 12 For example: the steady conversation with Gogarten and Barth, both of whom were continuously involved with Kierkegaard. Note also that in 1922 Bultmann published a lengthy review of the second edition of Barth’s (in)famous Der Römerbrief (2nd ed., Munich: Kaiser

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acquainted with a new colleague in Marburg’s philosophy department, Martin Heidegger, who turned out to be an expert in and an ardent admirer of the Danish thinker.13 The two scholars, both soon to be famous, established a firm and close collaboration—a collaboration, which also and frequently touched upon Kierkegaard issues. Now, once we examine more closely Bultmann’s writings and letters, both from this period and later, with respect to possible and actual traces of an (explicit, implicit, direct, indirect) Kierkegaard reception contained therein, the following five hypotheses will probably suggest themselves as prima facie plausible; accordingly, the remaining parts of this article will be devoted to justifying these hypotheses as actually correct and well-founded: (1) Bultmann generates and consolidates his own view of Kierkegaard rather early on, probably in the early 1920s; as such it remains pretty much unchanged from then on over the next decades. (2) Equally fixed and somehow restricted is the spectrum of themes and ideas that he finds himself drawn to in the writings of the Danish thinker: they are, roughly, christological, eschatological, and ethical in nature. (3) No less stable, yet also rather eclectic appears the selection of Kierkegaard’s writings that Bultmann returns to time and again: He has an obvious preference for (parts of) the pseudonymous authorship— here, the Philosophical Fragments plus Practice in Christianity, in particular— and for (part of) the edifying corpus, in particular Works of Love; by contrast, the journals are left completely out of the picture. (4) The extent of Bultmann’s implicit Kierkegaard reception exceeds that of his explicit Kierkegaard reception by far. (5) Typologically speaking this reception deserves to be called productive.14 C. Now, prior to validating these claims in detail, let me start by providing some statistical bits and pieces of information; these will help us achieve a richer, more nuanced and vivid picture of the extent and nature of Bultmann’s Kierkegaard reception. On the explicit side this reception comprises roughly 60 references. Inasmuch as these are of the specific kind (that is, they not only mention Kierkegaard’s name, but quote or allude to one or more of his writings also), they are based—with one exception— on the second edition of Søren Kierkegaard. Gesammelte Werke, edited and (partly)

1922), in which Kierkegaard is omnipresent: “Karl Barth’s Römerbrief in zweiter Auflage,” in Christliche Welt, no. 36, 1922, pp. 320–3; pp. 330–4; pp. 358–61; pp. 369–73. 13 One piece of evidence may suffice at this point: Asked by Bultmann to provide some basic information about his philosophical roots and influences, for an article in the second edition of Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Heidegger writes, in a letter to Bultmann, dated December 31, 1927: “Augustin, Luther, Kierkegaard sind philosophisch wesentlich für die Ausbildung eines radikaleren Daseinsverständnisses” (Rudolf Bultmann/ Martin Heidegger. Briefwechsel 1925–1975, p. 48); see also ibid., p. 272, where Bultmann repeats the formulation almost literally in the final version of his article. 14 As to an explanation of the classificatory terms used here (explicit/implicit, productive/ non-productive, also direct/indirect, intentional/material) see my “Germany and Austria,” pp. 308–9.

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translated by Christoph Schrempf.15 Complemented by a few, more or less arbitrary instances of implicit and indirect reflections, the following schematic picture emerges: Direct Reception

Indirect Reception

Explicit Reception Published Works: J, pp. 106–8; TE, p. 8; pp. 74–5; FDT, pp. 80–2; p. 87; GV1, p. 68; p. 85; p. 91; p. 95; p. 142; p. 159; p. 228; p. 237; pp. 239–40; pp. 242–3; p. 308; GV2, p. 76; p. 200; p. 209; p. 271; GV3, pp. 32–3; p. 63; p. 189; p. 194; p. 204; GV4, p. 105; p. 170; EJ, pp. 46–7 note; p. 94, note; p. 148; p. 161; p. 233; p. 275; p. 331; p. 339; p. 405; p. 431; pp. 449–50, note; p. 469; GE, p. 87; E, p. 219; p. 359. Letters and/or Posthumous Works: LHS; LWB, pp. 212–14; LEF, 72–4; LRS; BBB, p. 12 (no. 6); pp. 64–5 (no. 37); p. 103 (no. 59); p. 163 (no. 89); p. 186 (no. 94); R, p. 308; BGB, p. 107 (no. 52); p. 144 (no. 73); p. 239 (no. 136); p. 294 (appendix, no. 8); BHB, p. 46 (no. 15); p. 59 (no. 21); p. 116 (no. 36); p. 194 (no. 70). Published Works: HM, p. 1688; GV1, pp. 68, 85, 91, 95; E, p. 359; FDT, p. 80. Letters and/or Posthumous Works: BHB, p. 59.

Implicit Reception Published Works: E.g., J, pp. 105–8; GV1, pp. 6–8; pp. 104–6; GV4, p. 197; BBB, pp. 187–8.

Letters and/or Posthumous Works: n.a.

Published Works: n.a. Letters and/or Posthumous Works: n.a.

Strictly speaking, this edition consists of two parts, the second of which (namely the edifying corpus, originally supposed to comprise four volumes) remained a torso: (1) Søren Kierkegaard, Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–12, ed. and trans. by Christoph Schrempf et al., 2nd ed., Jena: Eugen Diederichs 1922–25 (first ed., 1909–22). (2) Søren Kierkegaard, Erbauliche Reden, vols. 3 and 4 (1and 2 missing), ed. and trans. by Christoph Schrempf et al., Jena: Eugen Diederichs 1924 and 1929. For references to the particular volumes of these editions (a) the following (here, alphabetically ordered) abbreviations will be used in the tables, whereas (b) full titles will be given both in the text and in the footnotes: A: Der Augenblick, vol. 12 in SGW2; AUN1–2: Abschließende unwissenschaftliche Nachschrift, vols. 6 (second part) and 7 in SGW2; BA: Der Begriff Angst, vol. 5 in SGW2; CR: Christliche Reden, vol. 4 in SER; EC: Einübung im Christentum, vol. 9 in SGW2; EO1–2: Entweder / Oder, 1. Teil und 2. Teil, vols. 1–2 in SGW2; FZ: Furcht und Zittern, vol. 3 in SGW2; GWS: Der Gesichtspunkt für meine Wirksamkeit als Schriftsteller, vol. 10 in SGW2; KT: Die Krankheit zum Tode, vol. 8 in SGW2; LWL: Leben und Walten der Liebe, vol. 3 in SER; PB: Philosophische Brocken, vol. 6 in SGW2; SLW: Stadien auf des Lebens Weg, vol. 4 in SGW2; W: Wiederholung, vol. 3 in SGW2; WS: Über meine Wirksamkeit als Schriftsteller, vol. 10 in SGW2; ZKA: Zwei kleine ethischreligiöse Abhandlungen, vol. 10 in SGW2; ZS: Zur Selbstprüfung der Gegenwart anbefohlen, vol. 11 in SGW2. Example: SGW2 BA, p. 25 = Schrempf Gesammelte Werke, 2nd ed., Der Begriff Angst, p. 25. 15

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The five instances of an indirect reception, which I have referred to above are, without exception, rather insignificant cases of pointing—sometimes in a neutral, sometimes in a critical tone, but in any case en passant—to other scholars’ judgments about Kierkegaard (in this case, Martin Dibelius, Emanuel Hirsch, Oscar Cullmann, Erik Peterson, and Hermann Diem).16 As a hermeneutical tool for illuminating the nature and scope of Bultmann’s own reception they prove more or less irrelevant. The few references to an implicit reception that I have mentioned are rather randomly selected examples; they can and will be supplemented by others in due course.17 This is not meant to suggest, of course, that I am prepared to jeopardize, in fact to torpedo my own project of demonstrating that on an intentional, but implicit (and/or a purely material) level Kierkegaard is almost omnipresent in Bultmann’s writings. My “referential diet” is merely based on three hermeneutical observations: (a) If—e concessis—Bultmann’s whole corpus is soaked, as it were, with Kierkegaardian ideas, then any single passage can hardly function as an appropriate means for verifying such a claim. Moreover, (b) all cases of a genuinely implicit reception are in principle, if not by definition, highly speculative. (c) In the present case, we are in the lucky position that a considerable number of Bultmann’s explicit references to Kierkegaard and his work(s) can serve as a reliable guide and heuristic tool for understanding how the latter shapes the scope and overall profile of Bultmann’s receptional approach on the implicit level also. As will become evident in due course, major themes and preferences of his involvement with the Danish thinker are tackled here (that is, on the explicit level) in more or less detail already. So let us first turn to a complete, chronologically ordered matrix of the references in question: Number Year and Text

1. BBB, p. 12

1922

2. J, pp. 106–8

1926

3. TE, p. 8

1926

Specific Reference

Unspecific Theme Reference

SK

Schleiermacher belongs, according to Bultmann (= B), “in die Ahnenreihe Jeremia—Kierkegaard” (p. 12). Self-love as a genetic presupposition, epistemic source and (negative) standard of neighbor love (cf. GV1, pp. 239–40).

SK

SK and Nietzsche as, according to B, two reception-historically decisive influences for current shifts within both theology and philosophy.

SER LWL

The remark on Diem (see Rudolf Bultmann/Martin Heidegger. Briefwechsel 1925– 1975, p. 59) clearly belongs in the first, the ones about Hirsch (see Bultmann, Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 1, p. 85, p. 91, p. 95) in the second category. 17 Occasionally, there are also mixed forms to be found in Bultmann: Kierkegaard quotations (or quasi-quotations) without any source-reference; examples are provided by Bartels, Kierkegaard receptus, pp. 421–3. 16

Heiko Schulz

112 1926 4. TE, pp. 74–5

5. GV1, 1926 p. 68 6. FDT, 1926 pp. 80–2

7. FDT, p. 87

SGW2 EC, pp. 179ff.; pp. 20–26

SK SGW2 FZ, p. 28; p. 33; p. 48; SGW2 EC, pp. 119–20; p. 124; p. 164; p. 199; SGW2 KT, p. 3; p. 63; pp.113–14,; p. 123; SER LWL, p. 199; p. 329; p. 349; p.361 SK

1926

8. LWB, March 22, pp. 212– 1926 14 9. LHS

August 24, 1926

10. BBB, December 10, pp. 64–5 1926

SK

Unspecified reference to SK’s Fragments SGW2 PB, pp. 94–5

11. GV1, 1927 p. 85

12. GV1, 1927 p. 91

SK

SGW2 AUN1, p. 321

13. GV1, 1927 p. 95

SK

14. BGB, April 10, 1927 Unspecified reference to SK’s Works of Love p. 107 15. BHB, December 29, 1927 p. 46 16. HM, 1928 p. 1688

SK SK

B affirming SK’s idea that every generation (and every individual within that generation) has the same original relation to divine revelation (cf. EJ, p. 469; GV1, p. 142; GV3, pp. 32–3). B referring to a remark about SK made by Martin Dibelius. SK as a witness against Erik Peterson’s claim that dialectics (as a method of the so-called “dialectical theology”) and earnestness are mutually incompatible.

SK as supporting B’s claim that speaking of God, in order to be possible and theologically meaningful, requires and entails speaking of oneself. B criticizes his former teacher Wilhelm Herrmann by drawing on certain (anthropological and eschatological) ideas in SK. B telling Hans von Soden that he and Heidegger worked on the Fragments in Todtnauberg. According to B, SK’s notion of Jesus as the “Christ incognito” does not do justice to the synoptic tradition. B, just like Emanuel Hirsch, wants to overcome the shortcomings of idealism and mysticism by using Kierkegaardian resources. According to B, Hirsch’s polemic against SK is unjustified; he has also failed to recognize and appreciate the Hegel parody in the style of the Fragments. According to B, Hirsch has misunderstood SK’s notion of “contemporaneity.” According to B, a “positive account” of a New Testament ethics is only to be found in SK’s Works of Love. SK, according to B, as a source for Heidegger’s thought. SK as a source for Heidegger’s understanding of “Dasein.”

Rudolf Bultmann: Faith, Love, and Self-Understanding 17. GV1, 1928 p. 142

SGW2 EC, pp. 178ff.

18. BHB, April 11, 1928 p. 59 19. BGB, November 4, 1928 p. 144

SK

20. LEF, 1928 p. 72

SK

21. LEF, 1928 p. 74

SK

22. GV1, 1929 p. 159

SK

23. GV1, unpublished, written 1929? p. 228

SK

24. GV3, 1929 pp. 32–3

SK

SGW2 EC, pp. 179ff.; pp. 20–6

25. BGB, 1929 p. 294

26. BHB, November 4, 1929 p. 116

27. GV1, 1930 p. 237 28. GV1, 1930 pp. 239– 40

SK

“Kierkegaards Dissertation über den Begriff der Ironie” (p. 116)18 SER LWL, pp. 229–30

SER LWL, pp. 19–20; pp. 183–214 (esp. pp. 189–90)

113

According to the eschatology in the Gospel of John, God is only accessible by virtue of his own revelation; there is no “abbreviation,” as SK has rightly pointed out in B’s opinion. B mentioning an article on SK by Hermann Diem. B refers to and praises “den ganz vortrefflichen Theologen und Kierkegaard-Forscher” (p. 144) Kristoffer Olesen Larsen. B on SK’s influence (especially of the latter’s anthropology) on both Barth and himself. B claims that decisive motifs of his theology were formed not only before World War I (and uninfluenced by it), but also before Kierkegaard’s influence set in. According to B, there are facts not aimed at an increase of knowledge, but at a disclosure of a new possibility of being; as an example he points to SK’s father revealing to his son the burden of his own guilt. Whoever pretends to be able to perceive Jesus as the Christ without, via faith, having to overcome offense, rightly falls prey to SK’s ridicule in B’s opinion. B affirming SK’s idea that every generation (and every individual within that generation) has the same original relation to divine revelation (cf. EJ, 469; GV1, p142). According to B, SK’s impact on both Gogarten and (among others) Jaspers is symptomatic for a common trend in theology and philosophy. B tells Heidegger about his current reading of SK’s Concept of Irony.

B agrees with SK that love is something that one cannot have for oneself. B: SK is right—(a) self-love is a genetic presupposition, epistemic source and (negative) standard of neighbor love (cf. J, pp. 106–8); (b) the demand to love is infinite.

Heiko Schulz

114 29. GV1, 1930 pp. 242– 3 30. BBB, February 16, 1930 p. 103

SER LWL, pp. 48–65; pp. 97–141 (esp. pp. 113, 118) SK

31. GV1, 1931 p. 308

SK

32. BHB, June 18, 1933 p. 194

SK

33. BBB, December 10, 1935 p. 163 34. E, p. 1936 219

SK

35. GV2, 1940 p. 76

SK

SK

1941 36. EJ, pp. 46–7

SGW2 PB, pp. 51–65 (especially pp. 59 and 64); SGW2 PB, pp. 81–100

37. EJ, p. 94

1941

SGW2 EC, pp. 217ff.

38. EJ, p. 148

1941

SGW2 PB

39. EJ, p. 161

1941

SGW2 EC, pp. 35–6

40. EJ, p. 233

1941

SGW2 BA, p. 93

41. EJ, p. 275

1941

SGW2 EC, pp. 119ff.

B agrees with SK: Neighbor love is non-preferential and coextensive with the love of God. B: Gogarten’s notion of “status” is an equivalent to SK’s concept of the “moment.” B: Theological propositions can be understood by philosophy—just as SK’s “auf dem Grunde des Glaubens vollzogene Daseinsanalysen” (p. 308) are made philosophically fruitful by Jaspers and Heidegger. SK (plus Nietzsche) as sources of B’s courage to “risk everything” for “die positiven Möglichkeiten der Gegenwart” (p. 194). B: SK is a missing element in Barth’s exegetical endeavors. B: SK rightly holds that only he who is free of presumptuousness can be free of anxiety. B: SK’s comparison of Socrates and Christ or Nietzsche’s juxtaposition of Christ and Dionysus confirm that the relation between Greek and Christian thinking is a major problem in nineteenth-century thought. B: The physical presence of Jesus is for the eyewitness what the proclamation of the gospel is for every later individual: a possible offense (as to John 1:14). B: SK’s view of Nicodemus as a mere “admirer” (in contrast to a “follower”) of Jesus is exegetically incorrect (as to John 3:1–2). B: SK’s idea of a “listener/follower at second hand” can serve as a hermeneutical tool for interpreting John 4:39, 41–2. B: The miracles of Jesus are (according to John 6:26) ambiguous “signs” and as such open to both offense and faith—a view also held by SK. B: Kierkegaard’s “anxiety of spiritlessness” is a hermeneutical means for interpreting John 7:34. B: SK is right—Christ can reveal himself as such only indirectly (as to John 10:24).

Rudolf Bultmann: Faith, Love, and Self-Understanding 42. EJ, p. 331

1941

SGW2 EC, pp. 129–231, esp. p. 132

43. EJ, p. 339

1941

SGW2 BA, pp. 117ff.; pp. 133ff.

44. EJ, p. 405

1941

SER LWL, pp. 113ff.

45. EJ, p. 431

1941

SGW2 PB, pp. 95–6

1941 46. EJ, pp. 449– 50

SER CR, 322ff.

47. EJ, p. 469

1941

SGW2 EC, pp. 20ff., pp. 179ff.

48. E, p. 359

1948

SK

49. GV2, 1949 p. 200

SK

50. GV2, 1949 p. 209 51. GV2, unpublished, written 1948? p. 271

52. BGB, September 8, 1949 p. 239

SGW2 AUN1, pp. 334–5 SK

SK

115

B on the ambiguity of Christ’s promise: “Das ‘zu sich ziehen’ ist… zugleich ein ‘von sich stoßen’” (p. 331; as to John 10:33). B: The Jews’ intention to kill Jesus reveals their “anxiety of the good” (as to John 8:40). B: Mutual love requires a retreat from the world (“Entweltlichung”); for “Gott ist bei allem Lieben die ‘Zwischen-Bestimmung’ ” (p. 405; as to John 13:35). B: Regarding the conditions of relating to Jesus as Christ there is no principal difference between a “disciple at first hand” and a “disciple at second hand” (as to John 16:7). B: The lilies in the field can be “teachers of joy,” because for them the world bears no traces of ambiguity and no fear of the future— and so it is with faith (as to John 16:23–4). B: SK’s claim that every generation (and every individual within that generation) has the same original relation to divine revelation can serve as a means for understanding John 14:6 (cf. TE, 74–5). B: According to Oscar Cullmann, SK’s notion of contemporaneity fails to appreciate the “heilsgeschichtlichen Charakter der Gegenwart” (p. 359). B: The secularization of Christian eschatology resurfaces in, among other thinkers, SK’s “existential interpretation of history.” B’s drawing on SK’s notion of humor as the “terminus a quo for religion.” B: Even philosophers like Jaspers who (invoking either SK or Nietzsche) praise nihilism “als den ‘Weg zum Ursprung’” (p. 271), have to admit that such nihilism entails a retreat from the world (Entweltlichung). B praises the Tidehverv circle, “in dem die Kierkegaard-Tradition fruchtbar weitergeführt wird” (p. 239).

Heiko Schulz

116 53. BBB, November 11–15, 1952 p. 186

SK

54. GV3, 1953 p. 63

SK

55. GV3, 1957 p. 189

SK

56. GV3, 1958 p. 194

SK

57. GV3, 1958 p. 204

SK

58. GV4, 1958 p. 170

SK

59. GE, p. 87

1958

SK

60. GV4, 1962 p. 105

SK

61. R, p. 308

SK

1963

62. LRS 1973

18

Unspecific reference to Fear and Trembling and The Concept of Anxiety

B on the impact of theologians like Augustine, Luther and SK on the discovery of (the concept of) human existence in philosophers like Heidegger and Jaspers. B: After World War I SK’s thoughts were used as a weapon against humanism within theology exclusively—that is, against the so-called “culture Protestantism” (Kulturprotestantismus). B criticizes René Marlé’s project of a “theology of mystery” as a misleading attempt to unveil the Kierkegaardian “incognito of Jesus.” According to B, modern philosophy of existence is a secularization of the Christian understanding of being and thus (unwittingly) reveals motives of the Christian tradition from St. Paul to SK. B: The paradox of “the word made flesh” corresponds to what SK called the “incognito of Jesus.” According to B, SK has introduced the term “existence” as a terminus technicus denoting the being of humans alone (cf. GV4, p. 105). B on SK as (besides Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy) a critic of modern culture and civilization. According to B, the term “existence” refers to the being of humans alone (cf. GV4, p. 170); thus, speaking of God’s existence implies illegitimately (if inadvertently) to return to a usage of the term in a pre-Kierkegaardian sense. SK’s connotation of existence as “subjectivity” is, according to B, a possible reason for Heidegger’s aversion to the concept of existence. B reports that before meeting Heidegger he had only read SK’s Fear and Trembling and The Concept of Anxiety.

According to the editors of Rudolf Bultmann/Martin Heidegger. Briefwechsel 1925– 1975 (see ibid., p. 116), Bultmann possessed Über den Begriff der Ironie mit ständiger Rücksicht auf Sokrates, trans. by Hans Heinrich Schaeder, Munich and Berlin: R. Oldenbourg 1929. 18

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II. A. Now, as an initial step in the direction of substantiating my reception-historical claim(s), let me simply gather and assess some bits and pieces of information to be derived from the matrix above on a hermeneutical surface level. (1) First, as to the sum total of 62 explicit references: this is a relatively small number, given Bultmann’s overall enthusiasm for Kierkegaard, on the one hand, and a life’s work that spans almost fifty years and comprises more than a dozen volumes, on the other hand. It is also striking that Bultmann hardly ever provides larger, much less comprehensive accounts or interpretations of Kierkegaardian texts, but rather rests content with occasionally (if at times repeatedly or cumulatively) quoting from the latter’s works or alluding to them.19 This appears to be a more or less clear indication that he receives and appropriates Kierkegaard in a genuinely productive manner. (2) It hardly comes as a surprise that relatively speaking the number of references in Bultmann’s texts published between 1926 (= J) and 1941 (= EJ) exceeds the corresponding number to be found in all of his later works by far20—although in terms of the sheer number of published pages we would probably arrive at a somewhat different conclusion.21 As to a comparison of the single works, it seems worthwhile to check the respective number of references also: The commentary on the Gospel of John (EJ) and the first volume of Glauben und Verstehen (GV1) are clearly up front (12 references each), followed by the latter’s third (GV3: 5 references),22 second (GV2: 4 references) and fourth volume (GV4: 3 references), whereas the Exegetica (E) contain no more than two references. (3) With the exception of one single mention of The Concept of Irony,23 Bultmann’s explicit Kierkegaard references are exclusively to the (second edition of the) Schrempf translation. Hence, it seems safe to infer that he possessed or, at least exclusively relied on, this edition, instead of, at least in later years, switching to other translations/editions.24 Three quasi-exceptions to the rule: Bultmann, Jesus, pp. 106–10; “Die Frage der ‘dialektischen’ Theologie. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Erik Peterson,” pp. 80–1; Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 1, pp. 237–43. Interestingly enough, two of these passages (the ones in Jesus and Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 1) are devoted to ethical issues—here: the Christian concept of love. 20 47 as opposed to 15 references. 21 Compare the later Theologie des Neuen Testaments (1948), Das Urchristentum im Rahmen der antiken Religionen (1949) or Geschichte und Eschatologie (1958). 22 Note also that one of these properly belongs to the Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 1 references, since the corresponding text (see no. 24) was already published in 1929. 23 See no. 26. 24 Many years ago I had a chance to sift through parts of Bultmann’s personal book collection, which at that time was stored in the library of the theological institute at Ruhr Universität Bochum. Among other things Bultmann possessed a complete set of Kierkegaard’s Gesammelte Werke in the Schrempf edition. The Fragments (= vol. 5) are marked (in handwriting) by “Rudolf Bultmann Marburg 1926” in the upper right corner of the end paper, so perhaps Bultmann bought the whole set in 1926 also. 19

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(4) Bultmann obviously had an overall preference for Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous works, and here, in particular, for Practice in Christianity25 and the Fragments;26 the discourses are almost exclusively represented by Works of Love,27 followed by the Christian Discourses.28 (5) It is also evident that Bultmann favored certain texts or passages in Kierkegaard’s works—passages that he quotes from time and again.29 (6) Completely absent are references to other writings available in the Schrempf edition: Entweder/Oder (vols. 1–2); Wiederholung (vol. 3, second part); Stadien auf des Lebens Weg (vol. 4); Der Gesichtspunkt für meine Wirksamkeit als Schriftsteller etc. (vol. 10); Zur Selbstprüfung der Gegenwart anbefohlen (vol. 11); Der Augenblick (vol. 12). Absent also are references to writings not accessible in Schrempf’s edition, but in other contemporary German editions: in particular, references to the edifying discourses (1843, 1844, 1845, 1847), the journals, The Book on Adler or to Kierkegaard’s letters.30 Taken altogether, observations (2)—(6) seem to undergird my assumption that Bultmann established and consolidated his view of Kierkegaard in the 1920s and kept it pretty much unmodified over the next couple of decades. B. The statistical details and observations presented so far provide bits and pieces of evidence for a verification of at least some of my initial assumptions.31 In order to account for the remaining hypotheses as well,32 we need to take a closer look at the content of the explicit Kierkegaard references in Bultmann’s texts, first of all, and then to assess their significance for the latter’s Kierkegaard reception in general and/or his own thought as a whole. Now, it goes without saying that 9 references: see nos. 4, 6, 17, 24, 37, 39, 41, 42, 47. 6 references: see nos. 9, 10, 36 [2 references], 38, 45. In comparison, Fear and Trembling is mentioned four times (no. 6 [3 references], 62), The Concept of Anxiety three times (nos. 40, 43, 62), the Postscript twice (nos. 12, 50), The Sickness unto Death just once (no. 6); see also The Concept of Irony (one reference: no. 26). 27 7 references: nos. 2, 6, 14, 27, 28, 29, 44. 28 1 reference: no. 46. 29 See, for instance, Kierkegaard, Einübung im Christentum, pp. 20–6 and pp. 178ff. (nos. 4, 17, 24, 47); Philosophische Brocken, pp. 81–100 (nos. 36, 38, 45); Leben und Walten der Liebe, pp. 19ff. and pp. 183–214 (nos. 2, 28). 30 Even if we ignore later editions (like Hirsch’s), we find that, for instance, between 1920 and 1930 (the period of Bultmann’s most intensive Kierkegaard reception) he would have had ample opportunity to make himself familiar with at least some of the sources in question: see, for instance, Religiöse Reden, trans. by Theodor Haecker, Munich: Wiechmann 1922; Die Tagebücher, vols. 1–2, selected and trans. by Theodor Haecker, Innsbruck: Brenner 1923; Søren Kierkegaard. Werke in Auswahl. Erster Teil: Die Werke. Zweiter Teil: Die Tagebücher 1832–1839, trans. and ed. by Hermann Ulrich, Berlin: Hochweg 1925 and 1930. I am quick to admit that maybe Bultmann did make himself familiar with these (or other pertinent) sources; my point is simply that even if he did, his efforts have left no visible traces in his own works—neither at the time in question nor later. 31 See above, nos. 1, 3 and 5, in particular. 32 Cf. nos. 2 and 4. 25 26

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these references are of very uneven relevance for the assessment I am aiming at. Thus, to begin with, it suffices simply to mention in passing Bultmann’s casual references to some other authors and their relation to or remarks about Kierkegaard, for example, Martin Dibelius,33 Hermann Diem,34 Kristoffer Olesen Larsen,35 and Oscar Cullmann.36 Next in line are a number of more or less anecdotal references; they are, at least to some extent, of historical interest after all, since they inform us about the development of Bultmann’s Kierkegaard reception and/or his own evaluation of it. For instance, Bultmann reports about reading or having read certain Kierkegaard texts37 or assesses the genesis and motives of his own thinking38— also in connection to events like World War I, or the discovery of Kierkegaard.39 Of greater interest is a considerable number of references providing hints as to Bultmann’s view of Kierkegaard’s overall impact on, and significance for, the development of Western philosophy and/or theology. Thus, similar to Jaspers, Bultmann considers Kierkegaard next to Nietzsche as the second decisive factor in the process of shaping contemporary theology and philosophy;40 moreover, he contends that certain key ideas and concepts of modern philosophy—philosophy of existence, in particular—can, and have to be, traced back to Kierkegaard’s thought, for example, the concept of existence and its modern, strictly anthropological connotation.41 Invoking and extending Karl Löwith’s famous thesis, Bultmann even goes so far as to maintain that modern philosophy of existence as a whole is but a secularization of the Christian understanding of being and thus (unwittingly) reveals central motifs of the Christian tradition from St. Paul to Kierkegaard.42 Finally, Bultmann identifies Kierkegaard’s catalytic function within current or recent theological trends and movements like, for instance, the fight against “culture Protestantism”43 or the critique of modern culture and civilization in general.44 In Bultmann, Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 1, p. 68. Rudolf Bultmann/Martin Heidegger. Briefwechsel 1925–1975, p. 59. 35 Rudolf Bultmann/Friedrich Gogarten. Briefwechsel 1921–1967, p. 144. 36 Bultmann, Exegetica, p. 359. 37 Letter to Hans von Soden, August 24, 1926; Rudolf Bultmann/Martin Heidegger. Briefwechsel 1925–1975, p. 116; Letter to Rainer Schumann, June 27, 1973. 38 Letter to Erich Foerster (1928), reprinted in Rudolf Bultmanns Werk und Wirkung, p. 72. 39 Ibid., p. 74. 40 Bultmann, Theologische Enzyklopädie, p. 8; see also Rudolf Bultmann/Friedrich Gogarten. Briefwechsel 1921–1967, p. 294; Rudolf Bultmann/Martin Heidegger. Briefwechsel 1925–1975, p. 46, p. 194; Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 2, p. 76, p. 271; Geschichte und Eschatologie, p. 87. 41 Bultmann, Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 1, p. 308; vol. 4, p. 105, p. 170; “Reflexionen zum Denkweg Martin Heideggers nach der Darstellung von Otto Pöggeler (1963),” in Rudolf Bultmann/Martin Heidegger. Briefwechsel 1925–1975, p. 308; “Heidegger, Martin,” in Rudolf Bultmann/Martin Heidegger. Briefwechsel 1925–1975, p. 272; Rudolf Bultmann/Friedrich Gogarten. Briefwechsel 1921–1967, p. 294; Karl Barth—Rudolf Bultmann. Briefwechsel 1911–1966, p. 186. 42 Bultmann, Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 3, p. 194; see also ibid., vol. 2, p. 200. 43 Bultmann, Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 3, p. 63. 44 Bultmann, Geschichte und Eschatologie, p. 87. 33 34

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this regard it is worth noticing also that Bultmann repeatedly invokes Kierkegaard in order either to praise45 or to criticize other theologians.46 III. A. Bultmann’s theology as a whole is based upon at least five fundamental assumptions: (1) Being human means to “exist,”47 in the sense of experiencing oneself as having to decide for and act out an idea of what it means to be human. (2) Christianity provides such an idea, namely, by promising a new life to a sinful world through the work of Jesus Christ. (3) Providing and communicating such an idea is not a contingent, but an essential feature of Christianity; thus, the latter is not to be confused with certain abstract, general and purportedly objective doctrines about God, man and the world; rather, it is to be identified pragmatically: namely, by virtue of the so-called kerygma, an eschatological act of communication, initiated and brought about by God, in which a new life is promised and made available to its recipient through the church’s proclamation of the gospel and its actual appropriation via faith on the part of its addressee. (4) Such faith is both possible and justified only if it can be held and sustained with intellectual honesty. (5) An intellectually honest Christian faith is possible. It is not easy to see how Kierkegaard comes into the picture with regard to these assumptions or convictions: Did Bultmann already hold (at least some of) them independently of the former’s impact, so that he simply happened to find a welcome ally in the Danish thinker? Or has the latter been instrumental for generating (at least some of) them? In some cases (like in 1, for instance) the answer seems particularly troublesome, since Bultmann may just as well have drawn on other sources and authors who—like Heidegger, for example—turn out themselves to be heavily influenced by Kierkegaard. But there is also a second reason why a clear-cut hermeneutical demarcation line is difficult to draw; for, terminological differences aside, Kierkegaard would in all probability subscribe to all or at least most of the above-mentioned assumptions. Therefore, it is not even unproblematic to start with a negative comparison by pointing to the obvious differences between both thinkers. In light of these and related difficulties we seem, for the time being, well advised to take a closer look at the more prominent themes and ways, in which Bultmann explicitly draws on Kierkegaard, while at the same time keeping our eyes open for the actual and/or possible deviations of the former from the latter’s thought. Hopefully under these provisos a clearer and more reliable picture of the actual Karl Barth—Rudolf Bultmann. Briefwechsel 1911–1966, p. 12: F.D.E. Schleiermacher. Bultmann, “Die Frage der ‘dialektischen’ Theologie. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Erik Peterson,” pp. 80–2: Erik Peterson; Letter to Werner de Boor (1926), reprinted in Theologische Rundschau, vol. 53, 1989, pp. 212–14: Wilhelm Herrmann; Karl Barth—Rudolf Bultmann. Briefwechsel 1911–1966, p. 163: Karl Barth; Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 3, p. 194: René Marlé. 47 See Bultmann, Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 4, p. 105 and p. 170. 45 46

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extent and nature of Kierkegaard’s impact on Bultmann will emerge, and this also on the level of implicit reception. B. The difficulties just mentioned notwithstanding, there is at least one difference between both thinkers, which can hardly be overlooked: their respective starting points. Kierkegaard sets out as a religious author who aims at reintroducing Christianity in its most ideal (viz. New Testament) form or type into a post-Hegelian culture, which largely, although falsely, considers itself Christian. Bultmann starts as an academic theologian, challenged by the task of accounting for and defending Christianity under the conditions of a self-consciously secular post-enlightenment (in particular, postWorld War I and post-liberal) culture. Now, although we might agree that both still have something in common here, namely, the primary goal of preserving true Christianity— rather than demonstrating Christianity to be true—there is, and remains throughout, a distinctive difference with regard at least to assumption number (5). In my opinion this difference is not only of crucial importance, when it comes to understanding Bultmann’s overall relation to Kierkegaard, but also in terms of reconstructing the formative powers and major motifs of Bultmann’s theology itself and as a whole. The latter finds himself confronted with an exegetical no less than dogmatic problem, in fact also an existential problem that Kierkegaard simply does not have to deal with. The solution of this problem seems indispensable to Bultmann, if and as long as assumption (5) is supposed to be preserved, in other words: if and as long as an intellectually honest, much less rationally justified Christian faith shall prove possible. The problem, which Bultmann calls “das Problem der neutest[amentlichen] Theologie überhaupt,”48 can be restated as a question, namely, “wie es zu verstehen…ist, daß aus dem Verkündiger Jesus der Verkündigte Jesus Christus wird.”49 Bultmann states the problem in a letter to Karl Barth dating from December 1926, which is shortly after having published his Jesus and just a few months after having studied the Fragments together with Heidegger in August.50 That Kierkegaard’s thought in general and the Fragments, in particular, are deeply involved, in fact inextricably bound up with Bultmann’s efforts to tackle and to come to terms with the problem, is plain to see: not only, because the former’s name and his book from 1844 are mentioned and referred to throughout the letter,51 but also, because Bultmann reformulates the problem as “das Problem des Inkognito Christi.”52 We will soon come to see that the way in which Bultmann spells out and tries to solve the problem is also and among other things highly significant for—in fact it shapes—the specific way in which he refers to and makes use of Kierkegaard later on, in fact for the rest of his life as a theologian and New Testament scholar. Thus, we may sense a certain hermeneutical circle at work here. One the one hand, Bultmann perceives and describes the problem in question Karl Barth—Rudolf Bultmann. Briefwechsel 1911–1966, p. 63. Ibid. 50 See Konrad Hammann, Rudolf Bultmann, p. 196. 51 See Karl Barth—Rudolf Bultmann. Briefwechsel 1911–1966, pp. 64–5. 52 Ibid., p. 63. 48 49

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by always already making use of Kierkegaardian resources; on the other hand, his perception of Kierkegaard is always already shaped and restricted by the specificities of the problem to be tackled and solved. Now, why is there any problem in the first place and what kind of problem are we talking about? As I mentioned already, Bultmann sets out to explain, “[wie] aus dem Verkündiger Jesus der Verkündigte Jesus Christus wird.”53 This is, first of all, a historical or genetic question, and as such it belongs to the domain of biblical exegesis. However, Bultmann’s proper interest is epistemic, or more exactly dogmatic in nature. He wants to know “wie ein geschichtliches Ereignis das eschatologische sein und als solches heute begegnen kann.”54 More specifically, he not only and primarily tries to understand how it was possible, historically and/or psychologically, that the early Christians (and subsequently: the Gospels) bestowed upon Jesus of Nazareth the attribute “Messiah” or “Christ” or “God’s Son”; rather, he wants to know, how it is possible in principle that these ascriptions be in fact true—or at least dogmatically authoritative—thanks to its rightly being considered an event of eschatological (eternal, unsurpassable, world-changing and, as such, God-dependent) significance. Now, to ask such questions makes sense only if we presuppose that a difference or discontinuity looms large between the historical Jesus and the kerygmatic Christ being proclaimed in the Synoptic Gospels, and even more so in the Gospel of John. And this is exactly what Bultmann thinks. As a sober exegete and honest historical scholar, he cannot help but call our attention to the fact that in all probability the historical Jesus neither possessed nor publicly claimed to possess any messianic self-consciousness.55 However, given this fundamental difference or discontinuity, it would have to remain a complete riddle—even on purely historical terms and this side of the normative or dogmatic question—how in the world early Christians could ever hit upon the idea of proclaiming Jesus as the promised Messiah, if there had not been and had not been perceived any striking similarities, a fundamental continuity or likeness between the person and the preaching of Jesus of Nazareth and the one who was to become and to be proclaimed as the savior of the world. These similarities prompted and at least historically56 made intelligible the genesis of the idea in question. Bultmann saw from early on the problem and the double explanatory task going along with it;57 however, it was not until 1960, when, challenged by objections from colleagues, he sought to set the record straight once and for all. Space does not permit me to go into full detail here, though; instead, let me simply present the conclusion of his account in schematic form:

Ibid. This is Hans Conzelmann’s formulation, affirmatively quoted by Bultmann in his famous article “Das Verhältnis der urchristlichen Christusbotschaft zum historischen Jesus.” The article was originally published in 1960; I quote from the reprinted version in Exegetica, pp. 445–69; the present quotation is from p. 466. 55 See already Bultmann, Jesus, pp. 12–13. 56 I will return to the dogmatic issue shortly. 57 See, for example, Karl Barth—Rudolf Bultmann. Briefwechsel 1911–1966, pp. 63–4. 53 54

Rudolf Bultmann: Faith, Love, and Self-Understanding Continuity / Identity between the historical Jesus and the kerygmatic Christ As to the person The presentation of the kerygmatic of the historical Christ claims and presupposes the actual existence of Jesus of Jesus and the Nazareth, hence the historical Jesus kerygmatic (see E, p. 448). Christ Both the historical Jesus and the As to the kerygmatic Christ urge a decision, preaching of on the side of their addressees, the historical claimed to be decisive for the Jesus and the latters’ eschatological destiny (see kerygmatic E, p. 457; p. 464). Christ

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Discontinuity / Difference between the historical Jesus and the kerygmatic Christ In the kerygmatic Christ the idea of God’s son has mythically transfigured the historical Jesus (see E, p. 446). Whereas the historical Jesus urges a decision, on the side of his addressees, for a “new selfunderstanding” in light of the imminent end of the world and the coming of God’s kingdom, the kerygmatic Christ is presented as urging a decision of faith for Jesus as the—already appeared— Messiah (see E, p. 467). The importance of ethics is diminished and restricted in the preaching of the kerygmatic Christ (see E, p. 447).

C. How does Kierkegaard stand in relation to Bultmann’s double-dimensioned question? As for its historical dimension discussed so far, there can be no doubt that the problem does not exist for him. For Kierkegaard there is no actual explanatory gap between the preaching of Jesus himself and the church’s later proclamation of Jesus as Christ. He simply takes it for granted that Jesus himself actually possessed— and openly claimed in word and deed, in order to make both faith and offense possible—a messianic self-consciousness.58 Whether or not Bultmann was actually aware of Kierkegaard’s bold claim is an open question to me; that he would have parted ways with the Danish thinker already at this point, can hardly be doubted. But what about the epistemic, or more exactly, the normative aspect of the problem—does Bultmann agree with Kierkegaard on this issue at least? Not completely or without reservation. To be sure, in some sense Bultmann’s dogmatic question is nothing but a free rendition of Climacus’ question from the motto to the Fragments: “Can a historical point of departure be given for an eternal consciousness?”59 And to a certain extent both answers also resemble each other: See, for instance, SKS 11, 69 / WA, 63: “[H]e declared himself to be God. That is enough.” Kierkegaard’s formulation is even stronger than the pertinent references in the Gospel of John: see, for instance, John 10:30; 14:28. His overall aversion against historical scrutiny in matters religious in general, the life of Jesus, in particular, is well known and confirmed here once again; see, for example: SKS 20, 328–9, NB4:81 / JP 1, 318; cf. also Mogens Müller, “Søren Kierkegaard og den historiske Jesus,” in At være sig selv nærværende. Festskrift til Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, ed. by Joakim Garff et al., Copenhagen: Kristeligt Dagblads Forlag 2010, pp. 448–61. 59 SKS 4, 213 / PF, 1. 58

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for, according to both Bultmann and Kierkegaard such a point of departure can indeed be given—if only by way of what the former calls an eschatological fact or event,60 the latter a paradoxical one, in which as such the eternal manifests itself within the temporal. However, it should not be overlooked that in addition to the different backgrounds of the question (see above) the respective answers move into different directions, too. According to Climacus, the immediate contemporaries’ act of confessing and preaching Jesus as Christ is at any rate sufficient for faith to be possible.61 Apart from referring to the actual existence of Jesus he leaves open the question as to its necessary conditions, however. This is where Bultmann steps in. He suggests that the kerygma, that is, the particular moment and event in which the act of preaching Jesus as Christ actually meets “the eyes and ears of faith” in the listener, is in fact the missing link. Given that Jesus actually did not conceive of himself as the promised Messiah, then the act of bestowing this title upon him by those who became Christians precisely by performing this act can always, yet also only be justified (and the respective attribution be true, at least dogmatically authoritative), if these Christians are trustworthy. Are they trustworthy? Bultmann’s answer is yes. And yet, he knows and is honest enough to admit that the plausibility of his suggestion depends on the possibility that (a) the kerygma is in itself part and parcel of the very eschatological event that it bears witness to; (b) there is no belief in Christ without belief in the church;62 (c) the belief in the existence of Jesus is a necessary condition, the belief in certain details of his biography and personality merely an accidental condition for faith in Christ to be possible. Thus, on the one hand Bultmann and Climacus are in full agreement: it is perfectly reasonable to assume that in the future, or at least in principle, we might “know” (within the limits of historical probability) a lot more about Jesus, his personality and the historical circumstances of his appearance, then we actually do right now; however, this additional “knowledge” is accidental at best, when it comes to determining the conditions of faith in Christ to be possible. This basic agreement notwithstanding, Bultmann’s additional suggestion, though obviously inspired by Climacus, goes much further than the one Climacus himself argued for: the preaching of the church is not only sufficient, it is also necessary for the realization of the possibility in question; as such, it participates in the very eschatological event that it continuously testifies to.

See, for instance, Bultmann, Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 1, p. 243; vol. 3, p. 204; Das Evangelium des Johannes, p. 149. 61 See SKS 4, 300 / PF, 104 (my emphasis): “Even if the contemporary generation 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.” 62 See, for instance, Bultmann, Exegetica, p. 468. 60

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D. Now, what we have to keep in mind here in order to avoid misunderstandings is that whenever Bultmann speaks of the historical Jesus, he is not primarily, much less exclusively speaking of the mere existence, the personality and/or particular biographical circumstances in the life of Jesus of Nazareth;63 rather, he is speaking of and, moreover, is mainly interested in the latter’s “doctrine” or, more exactly, the message that Jesus set out to convey, his major intentions, inasmuch as they are manifest in his preaching.64 As Bultmann explains in his letter to Barth from December 1926, “dieses Mehr”65 is opposed to, on the one hand, a sheer biographical account of Jesus, and, on the other hand, Kierkegaard’s “worldhistorical note bene,” which as such already contains the ex post-confession of Jesus as Christ. Thus conceived, it has its own theological importance and dignity since, in Bultmann’s words, “dieses Mehr überliefert ist, halte ich es für ein theolog[isches] Anliegen, sich für dieses Mehr zu interessieren u[nd] es einmal für sich darzustellen.”66 This separate account is exactly what he tried to deliver in his book on Jesus. Two questions arise at this point: (1) What does this “more” actually consist in? (2) Is it theologically important for Bultmann—important, namely, with regard to the conditions of faith and thus also in terms of a possibly indispensable addition to Kierkegaard’s nota bene? An answer to the first question is not hard to come by, although Bultmann himself keeps silent about it in his letter to Barth: In chapters two, three, and four of his book67 he spells out the details of the preaching of Jesus in terms of their eschatological, ethical and (in a stricter sense) theological implications, together with their (mostly Jewish) background. He does so, roughly, in the following way:68 World Man God

Eschatology Ethics Ch. II: The Kingdom of God Ch. III: The Will of God

Doctrine of God

Ch. IV: The God of Providence and Redemption

See Bultmann, Jesus, pp. 11–14. See ibid., pp. 13–15. 65 Karl Barth—Rudolf Bultmann. Briefwechsel 1911–1966, p. 65. 66 Ibid. 67 See Bultmann, Jesus, pp. 28–200. 68 Note that this threefold structure (almost) exactly repeats the one applied by Adolf von Harnack in the first part of his famous lectures on the essence of Christianity from 1899 to 1900 (which, by the way, were re-edited by Bultmann in 1950): see Adolf von Harnack, Das Wesen des Christentums, Gütersloh: Mohn 1977, pp. 40–53. However, whereas for Harnack the complete gospel message is already contained and accessible in the preaching of Jesus; the latter functions for Bultmann only as the former’s prolegomena (see footnote 70). 63 64

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These few keywords may suffice to give us a rough idea of how Bultmann accounts for the basic aspects and dimensions of the gospel message, inasmuch as it is spread by Jesus himself. In terms of its content this message obviously deviates not only from what a mere biographical account could ever hope to achieve, but also from the post-Easter kerygma of Jesus as Christ. Now, in my opinion, the rather cautious and tentative way in which Bultmann (in the passage of his letter to Barth, quoted above)69 argues for the exegetical usefulness and legitimacy of his account indicates that at this point he was not yet fully aware of its actual theological function and significance. This significance lies in the fact that Jesus’ own preaching provides the (or at least one necessary) missing link between the historical Jesus and the kerygmatic Christ. Such a link, allowing us first to see the fundamental continuity between both despite their undeniable differences, is indispensable, and this, as has been pointed out already, both on a descriptive-historical and a normativedogmatical level. If there were no such link, we could, according to Bultmann, neither understand how the ascription “Christ” (or Messiah) to Jesus of Nazareth originally came about, nor would it be possible to give good reasons why Christians should accept the ascription as true and/or authoritative.70 E. I emphasize this latter point for a special, reception-historical reason; for I would like to argue that Bultmann’s account of how Jesus became Christ (and in fact does become again and again, through the church’s kerygma and the believer appropriating it) not only reveals both a simultaneous conformity with and difference from Kierkegaard’s views; rather, the very same account (at least in fact, if perhaps unconsciously) shapes Bultmann’s overall attitude toward the Danish thinker and the various ways and contexts in which he both explicitly and implicitly invoked the latter’s thought. The underlying rule of this attitude—whether strategically or just instinctively applied—suggested to him a dismissal or downplaying of all those elements, themes and ideas in Kierkegaard’s authorship, which rule out (or at least do not require) a bridging of the gap just mentioned. Or vice versa, it seemed to suggest a (both explicit and implicit) Kierkegaard appropriation of possibly all, but in any case specifically those elements which appeared compatible with Bultmann’s diagnosis of and attempt at bridging the gap. In other words, all and only those parts of the authorship are supposed to be taken into account which leave room for and prove compatible with Bultmann’s reconstruction of the relation between Jesus of Nazareth and Jesus (as) Christ in general, and the crucial role of the church within this account, in particular. In order to substantiate my claim, let me briefly discuss two paradigmatic cases in point; they can also be considered the most prominent See Karl Barth—Rudolf Bultmann. Briefwechsel 1911–1966, p. 65. Bultmann later contends that the preaching of the historical Jesus is not a proper object of New Testament theology, but rather and exlusively of the latter’s prolegomena, which as such solely discusses the presuppositions of the former (see Theologie des Neuen Testaments, p. 1). In light of the previous discussion we may add that he contributed (the first version of) his own attempt at such prolegomena in his book on Jesus from 1926.

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examples of Bultmann’s explicit Kierkegaard reception and, moreover, go along with two of his favorite source references. The first is to be found in the famous commentary on the Gospel of John, Das Evangelium des Johannes. Here Bultmann time and again returns to the evangelist’s equally new and radical reformulation of the idea of divine revelation in Christ. Three connotations stick out as central tenets of the idea, and each of them elaborates on the fundamental assumption that revelation—understood as an, eo ipso salvific, act of divine self-communication—is (like “love”71) what might be called an “eventword.” The way, in which its addressee relates to its possibility, determines the reference of this relation. Revelation is and can only be what it is, if and to the extent that its potential recipient is able and willing, passionately to reckon with the possibility that it is, and if he is also able and willing to either appropriate (= faith) or refuse to appropriate its actuality or givenness (= offense). If, by contrast, a person “objectively” refers to its possibility; if he, in other words, conceives of the latter as an object of pure speculation or contemplation, thus failing to realize that he himself is personally involved with its possibility and challenged by the claim that it lays upon his whole existence, then what he is referring to cannot actually be (divine) revelation. Now, if I am not mistaken, three connotations or keywords are inextricably bound up with the idea, thus conceived: ambiguity, non-transferability and eschatological efficaciousness. First, revelation is, at least on Christian terms, to be conceived of as a paradox, since it always and inevitably manifests itself as hidden: God has revealed himself in Christ, the God-man; however, the God-man is as such not accessible except in the human being Jesus of Nazareth, thus in and as a “Christ incognito.” Now, it is, according to Bultmann’s reading of John, precisely the ineradicable ambiguity of such a hidden or incognito revelation which establishes and preserves the possibility of properly relating to it, since it both allows and calls for being appropriated by virtue of a decision for or against its truth and salvific promise. However, if revelation, in order to be so constituted, depends on an act of appropriation; and if such an act can only be carried out individually, then there is no “objective” way around it. Its actuality and efficaciousness are non-transferable, so that, strictly speaking, there is no “disciple at second hand” in relation to God. Finally, the efficaciousness just mentioned is, according to Bultmann’s reading of John, to be interpreted eschatologically, and this in terms of what has been coined “realized eschatology.” The individual act of appropriating the proclamation of Jesus as Christ (namely, either qua offense or faith) finds immediate expression, in fact it simultaneously participates in a corresponding eschatological state: either eternal salvation or its counterpart, eternal damnation (see, for example, John 3:18 and 3:36). Needless to say, these key terms and ideas find ample support in Kierkegaard; in fact, he can, at least to some extent, be considered their original spokesman. Accordingly, Bultmann makes deliberate and explicit use of this support, and this

See Bultmann, Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 1, p. 238. Or “God,” for that matter: see Bultmann’s famous essay on the “meaning of God-talk” from 1925: ibid., pp. 26–37.

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also outside of his reading of John. In addition to the incognito thesis72 and the pragmatically essential ambiguity claimed to go along with it,73 Bultmann refers no less than four times to, and affirms, Kierkegaard’s insistence on the nontransferability of revelation,74 and in each of the these cases he quotes or at least refers to one and the same passage in Kierkegaard.75 Hence, the conclusion seems all but certain that we are dealing with key ideas here, the importance of which can hardly be overestimated for both Bultmann’s overall thought and his receptionhistorical attitude. Having said that, it does not come as a surprise that the content of these ideas, plus the way Bultmann makes use of them, perfectly mesh with and in fact corroborate my thesis stated earlier, namely, that central tenets of Bultmann’s Christology and eschatology—inasmuch as they are prefigured in the Gospel of John, in particular—turn out, on the one hand, to be compatible with and in fact strongly supported by Kierkegaardian ideas. The ways, on the other hand, in which these ideas can and have to be used, according to Bultmann, render any confrontation with the former’s exegetical failure to account for the discontinuity between Jesus and Christ unnecessary and futile. Hence, there is for Bultmann no need to deny or downplay that the church’s potentially offending proclamation of Jesus as Christ might not only be sufficient (as Kierkegaard/Climacus has it), but also necessary for faith to be possible; for even under these conditions he is perfectly justified in invoking central components of the latter’s Christology or doctrine of revelation and still finding himself in full agreement with him. F. A second, presently important example of Bultmann’s explicit reception is to be found in the realm of Christian ethics, more specifically, New Testament ethics. Soon after having published his book on Jesus, Bultmann writes, in a letter to Friedrich Gogarten from April 1927: “Keiner...hat die Ethik des Neuen Testaments verstanden wie Kierkegaard”76—and he points to Works of Love as evidence for his claim. Apparently this book, which he probably read while being in the process of writing his Jesus,77 left a lasting impression on Bultmann. Whenever he (explicitly) draws on Kierkegaard in matters ethical, it is Works of Love, which is being quoted See, for example, Karl Barth—Rudolf Bultmann. Briefwechsel 1911–1966, p. 63; Bultmann, Das Evangelium des Johannes, p. 275; Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 3, p. 204. 73 See, for example, Bultmann, Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 1, p. 228; Das Evangelium des Johannes, pp. 46–7; p. 161; and p. 331. 74 See Bultmann, Theologische Enzyklopädie, pp. 74–5; Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 1, p. 142; vol. 3, pp. 32–3; Das Evangelium des Johannes, p. 469. 75 Interestingly enough, not to a passage from the Fragments, but from Practice in Christianity: Kierkegaard, Einübung im Christentum, pp. 179ff. (SKS 12, 198–200 / PC, 201–3). 76 Rudolf Bultmann/Friedrich Gogarten. Briefwechsel 1921–1967, p. 107. 77 Schrempf’s translation of the book (see Kierkegaard, Leben und Walten der Liebe) came out in 1924. Bultmann set out writing Jesus (in which one lengthy quotation of Kierkegaard’s book appears: see Jesus, pp. 99–100) at some point during the winter semester of 1924–25 (see Konrad Hammann, Rudolf Bultmann, pp. 180–1); thus, in all probability he bought the Schrempf translation soon after it was published—maybe under the impression 72

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or referred to.78 Now, within Kierkegaard’s “positive[r] Darstellung”79 of Christian ethics it is the former’s account of the so-called double commandment,80 which seems of primary interest to the German theologian. The topic is addressed in the book on Jesus81 already, and a few years later picked up again and given a more thorough treatment in an article from 1930 titled “Das christliche Gebot der Nächstenliebe.”82 Here the meaning and scope of the commandment are tackled by distinguishing four key aspects, most of which, as Bultmann is honest enough to admit, are heavily indebted to Works of Love. (1) As to the nature of neighbor love, by being a genuinely ethical property, such love should, according to Bultmann, neither be confused with properties that a person can have “for him- or herself” (like erudition83) nor with mere emotion or affection. Rather, the term denotes “eine Weise seines [sc. des Menschen] Seins zu anderen,”84 “ein Wie seines Miteinanderseins”85 or, as Bultmann had put it earlier, “eine bestimmte Haltung des Willens,”86 namely, “das Opfer des eigenen Willens für das Wohl des anderen im Gehorsam gegen Gott.”87 Thus defined, neighbor love must of his ongoing conversation with Heidegger who, among other things, had participated in Bultmann’s class on Pauline ethics in the previous winter semester. 78 See Bultmann, Jesus, pp. 106–8; “Die Frage der ‘dialektischen’ Theologie. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Erik Peterson,” p. 81; Rudolf Bultmann/Friedrich Gogarten. Briefwechsel 1921–1967, p. 107; Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 1, p. 237; pp. 239–40; pp. 242–3; Bultmann, Das Evangelium des Johannes, p. 405. Many years ago I had a chance to take a closer look at Bultmann’s own copy of the book (see above, note 22): It turned out that apart from the Fragments it is the only volume (within the complete set of Schrempf’s translations, which Bultmann possessed), in which an extensive handwritten index from his own pen is to be found in the back. 79 Rudolf Bultmann/Friedrich Gogarten. Briefwechsel 1921–1967, p. 107. 80 See Mark 12:29–31: “[Y]ou must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength…You must love your neighbor as yourself.” (The New Jerusalem Bible, ed. by Henry Wansbrough, 15th ed., New York: Doubleday 1990, p. 1678.) 81 See Bultmann, Jesus, pp. 103–10. 82 See Bultmann, Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 1, pp. 229–44. 83 Ibid., p. 237. 84 Ibid. 85 Ibid. Bultmann is referentially ambiguous here: In light of his weaker claim neighbor love cannot be a property that a person can have ‘for himself’; accordingly, he quotes Kierkegaard, Leben und Walten der Liebe, p. 230 (Bultmann, Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 1, pp. 229–30): “Die Eigenschaft der Liebe kannst du nicht für dich selbst haben, denn durch sie oder in ihr bist du nur für andere“ (SKS 9, 225 / WL, 223). Then, abruptly, he radicalizes the claim by urging that such love is “überhaupt keine Eigenschaft” (Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 1, p. 237; my emphasis). Moreover, the Kierkegaardian specification of this attitude or “property for others” (“you can only love your neighbor, if and as long as you are prepared to presuppose the capacity to love in him”) plays virtually no role in Bultmann’s account. 86 Bultmann, Jesus, p. 108. 87 Ibid. It can hardly go unnoticed that in comparison to the latter (1926) the first two formulations (1930) have a much stronger Heideggerian ring to them and as such witness to the impact of Sein und Zeit (1927).

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be distinguished from preferential love, in which as such “auch immer mein Ich sich durchsetzt.”88 (2) As to the content and applicability of the commandment, Bultmann considers it unnecessary to spell out a material Christian ethics and/or particular rules for how to apply the love commandment. The reason is that in his opinion there exists already one single, but nonetheless constitutive, rule or measure, which as such renders any further specification in terms of content or application superfluous. This fundamental rule or measure finds itself clearly expressed in the formula’s appendix “(love your neighbor) as yourself ” (cf. Mark 12:31). Again explicitly referring to and relying on Kierkegaard’s interpretation of the formula,89 Bultmann reads it as saying that we shall love our neighbor, regardless who and how he might be and behave, in the very same way and to the same extent that we love ourselves—nota bene: when we love ourselves preferentially. Hence, we may say that, according to both Kierkegaard and Bultmann, self-love functions as a genetic presupposition, epistemic source, and (negative) standard of neighbor love.90 (3) As to the identifiability of neighbor love, Bultmann contends that it is, strictly speaking, not only superfluous but also impossible to establish a material and objectively Christian ethics on the basis of the double commandment. This is because no act or conduct motivated by honest neighbor love can unambiguously be distinguished, as such, from one that is based upon non-Christian, perhaps at times even, non-moral motives. By contrast, both may—nota bene, from a third-person perspective—appear completely identical. Strictly speaking, the facticity of love can be known and/or rightly be claimed and identified only by the loving person himself or herself, thus exclusively from a first-person perspective. In that sense “muß man von der Verborgenheit der christlichen Liebe reden.”91 Consequently, there can be no such thing as Christian institutions, schools, governments, political parties, etc.92 (4) Finally, as to the relation between neighbor love and love of God: On Bultmann’s view, both are mutually dependent; this is at least, what the biblical source implies and insinuates: “[W]ie ich den Nächsten nur lieben kann, wenn ich meinen Willen ganz hingebe an Gottes Willen, so kann ich Gott nur lieben, indem ich will, was er will, indem ich den Nächsten wirklich liebe.”93 Loving one’s neighbor is the necessary and irreducible form or outward expression in which the (obedient) attitude towards God is made manifest as such and also confirmed or verified—at least for (God and) the loving person. On the other hand, the former “ist…nur echt

Bultmann, Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 1, p. 242. Here Bultmann draws on and refers to Kierkegaard, Leben und Walten der Liebe, pp. 48–65 (SKS 9, 51–67 / WL, 44–60). 89 See Bultmann, Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 1, pp. 238–9; Bultmann refers to and quotes from Kierkegaard, Leben und Walten der Liebe, p. 20 (Bultmann, Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 1, pp. 19–20) (SKS 9, 26 / WL, 18); a lengthier version of the same quotation is to be found (though without mentioning the exact source) in Jesus, p. 107. 90 Cf. Bultmann, Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 1, pp. 239–40; Jesus, pp. 99–100. 91 Bultmann, Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 1, p. 239. 92 See ibid., p. 240. 93 Bultmann, Jesus, p. 106. 88

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und wahr, wenn sie zugleich Liebe zu Gott ist; denn nur dann ist sie ja möglich.”94 Hence, according to Bultmann’s reading of the New Testament, the love of God must be deemed necessary and sufficient for neighbor love to be possible: the latter occurs, wherever and only where the former is instantiated—and vice versa. G. Summing up, we may say that the ethics of love must be considered a topic, which compared to the doctrine of revelation, appears to be equally important for an account of Bultmann’s own theology and for a characterization of his attitude towards Kierkegaard. In both respects it is also worth mentioning that by the time Bultmann wrote his Jesus he was apparently not yet aware of the Christology of the Fragments—a book, which soon afterwards prompted a certain, in fact significant, disagreement between him and Kierkegaard. However, although clearly realizing this disagreement, Bultmann never saw any reason to relativize or even revoke his earlier enthusiasm for Kierkegaard in general, and for the latter’s ethics in particular.95 And, if I am not mistaken, he was fully consistent in refusing to do so, since both this ethics and the use that Bultmann makes of it just as little collide with the latter’s key theory about the relation between the historical Jesus and the Christ of the kerygma as the doctrine of revelation and the central tenets of what might be called Bultmann’s “existential theology.” Rather, by incorporating Kierkegaard’s ethics of love into a genuinely eschatological account of Jesus’ view of the divine law—namely, in light of his preaching of the kingdom of God96—it turns out that such an account actually supports that key theory; for it, too, lends itself to being considered a missing link, both genetically and dogmatically, between Jesus’ own preaching and the post-Easter preaching of (Jesus as) Christ. Although, following Bultmann, it can hardly be denied that the role of ethics does not seem to be as important for the latter as for the former, we may, in his opinion, still rightly hold that both are presented as challenging the listener/hearer by offering a new selfunderstanding, in which the ethics of love are either taken for granted or explicitly spelled out as an integral and irreducible element.97 Thus, by drawing—for mere didactical purposes—on Das Evangelium des Johannes and Jesus exclusively, we can summarize the foregoing analysis in a comparative table, which, although (or because of its) being rather schematic, Bultmann, Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 1, p. 243. Once again, Bultmann points to Works of Love in order to undergird his view: Kierkegaard, Leben und Walten der Liebe, pp. 97–141, especially p. 113 and p. 118 (SKS 9, 96–136 / WL, 91–134; especially SKS 9, 111 and 116 / WL, 107 and 112). 95 As to post-1926 references to Kierkegaard’s ethics, see, in particular, Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 1, p. 237, pp. 239–40; pp. 242–3 (1930); Das Evangelium des Johannes, p. 405 (1941). 96 See, for example, Bultmann, Jesus, pp. 111–22. 97 Here one may also note a further subterranean, as it were, parallel between Bultmann and Climacus—in that the latter claims that within what he calls religiousness “B” the (in particular, ethical) implications of religiousness “A” are preserved, or more precisely, reestablished; see SKS 7, 521 / CUP1, 573.

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may serve the purpose of revealing remarkable parallels between the two thematic dimensions of Bultmann’s receptional approach: Das Evangelium des Johannes (1941)

Jesus (1926)

Kierkegaard is used as a resource for dogmatics and New Testament theology.

Kierkegaard is used as a resource for ethics and the prolegomena to New Testament theology.

Revelation and faith are the main themes of the reception.

The ethics of love is the main theme of the reception.

In focus is the relation of God and man.

In focus is the relation of man and world.

Ambiguity appears as a precondition of faith by virtue of offense.

Ambiguity appears as a precondition of neighbor love by virtue of self-love.

Knowledge about the actuality of revelation is seen to be possible only via faith.

Knowledge about the actuality of love is seen to be possible only via love.

Christ is the hidden revelation of God.

Jesus is the Christ incognito.

There is a discontinuity between the historical Jesus and the kerygmatic Christ.

There is a continuity between the historical Jesus and the kerygmatic Christ.

Faith corresponds to Kierkegaard’s religiousness “B.”

Love corresponds to Kierkegaard’s religiousness “A” (inside and outside of religiousness “B”).

IV. A. The two reception-historical paradigms that I focused on in the preceding paragraphs (faith and revelation, on the one hand, and love, on the other) bear witness to the fact that Bultmann’s attitude towards Kierkegaard is highly eclectic, and this already on the overt or explicit level. Bultmann’s interest in the Danish thinker appears to be centered around and dominated by one single exegetical and theological concern, a concern which may be restated in the form of a threefold thesis: (1) The New Testament presents and offers—both in the sayings of the historical Jesus and in the kerygmatic proclamation of Christ—a new way of being and self-understanding. (2) The fact that it does, and does so in a specific way, cannot be dismissed as merely accidental, but is rather part and parcel of its own nature and, as such, determines and restricts the ways of properly identifying and relating to what it is. (3) Offering and communicating this new way of being precisely expresses the eschatological and hence also the existential key significance of the Christian message; such significance is and always remains unchanged and incorruptible,98 despite the In this sense, Christianity is eternal and as such “has absolutely no history,” as Climacus puts it: SKS 4, 276 / PF, 76. And yet, according to Bultmann, it is only by way of confronting every new generation and every individual within that generation with its own eternal ideality that Christianity makes possible and establishes a genuinely human way of relating to history: historicity (Geschichtlichkeit), which as such allows a person not only 98

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mythical form in which it finds itself expressed throughout the New Testament and in later church history.99 Now, reception-historically speaking, it seems all but accidental that there is a certain Lutheran ring to this threefold claim, thanks to its being closely connected with the concepts of faith and love. For, just like in Luther, faith and love are conceived of in Bultmann as constitutive properties and irreducible expressions of that very self-understanding which is being offered and made possible by (the call to appropriate) the gospel message. Sure enough, it would seem somewhat far-fetched to maintain that this Lutheran component found its way into Bultmann’s corpus with the (either unconscious or deliberate) intermediary of the Danish Lutheran Kierkegaard. Nevertheless, a remarkable parallel can hardly be denied. For, what is, from Bultmann’s perspective, achieved by Kierkegaard’s dialectics of existence is, to use a felicitous phrase of Wilhelm Anz, precisely “die reflexive Verdeutlichung der bei Luther in der Entgegensetzung von Gott und Mensch enthaltenen Anthropologie.”100 And this is, at least in my opinion, the key not only for understanding Bultmann’s theology as a whole, but also and particularly the overall tendency in his reception of his Danish predecessor. Kierkegaard himself writes, in a journal entry from 1846: “What Luther says is excellent, the one thing needful and the sole explanation—that is the whole doctrine (of the Atonement and in the main all Christianity) must be traced back to the struggle of the anguished conscience.”101 A strikingly similar view is to be found in Bultmann, such that Kierkegaard’s Luther-inspired “struggle of the anguished conscience” in its longing for the certainty of faith finds its correlate in the idea of human existence as intrinsically driven by the search for authenticity in the face of nihilism and despair—and of Christianity as a promise and challenge of (any mundane attempt at reaching) such authenticity. This idea, informed and penetrated by Heideggerian insights as it may be, not only proves instrumental when it comes to understanding Bultmann’s own hermeneutics, dogmatics, and ethics, but it has apparently also shaped and determined the latter’s Kierkegaard reception. B. Now, since the genesis of Heidegger’s phenomenology of being and existence during the first half of the twentieth century can hardly be accounted for without doing full

to refer to the past as a sum of insignificant or arbitrary facts, but as a constant source for and challenge of self-understanding. Following Bultmann, it is Kierkegaard who first called attention to such historicity: see Bultmann, Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 2, p. 200; Karl Barth— Rudolf Bultmann. Briefwechsel 1911–1966, p. 186; also Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 1, p. 159. 99 This latter aspect is widely discussed in Bultmann’s later writings (roughly from 1940 onwards) and has prompted the infamous demythologizing debate; as to an overview see Konrad Hammann, Rudolf Bultmann, pp. 421–32. 100 Wilhelm Anz, “Die Wirkungsgeschichte Kierkegaards in der dialektischen Theologie und der gleichzeitigen deutschen Philosophie,” in Die Rezeption Søren Kierkegaards in der deutschen und dänischen Philosophie und Theologie, ed. by Heinrich Anz et al., Copenhagen and Munich: Wilhelm Fink 1983, pp. 11–29; the quotation is from p. 17. 101 SKS 20, 69, NB:79 / JP 3, 2461.

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justice to the extent of Kierkegaard’s impact on the former,102 it may very well be that Bultmann’s Kierkegaard is essentially Heideggerian, but also and vice versa that it is actually a Kierkegaardian Heidegger who exerted such a strong influence on his Marburg colleague. For the time being we can leave the details of this genetic issue aside;103 for one thing, at any rate, seems beyond reasonable doubt, and it is precisely the one and only thing that is of crucial importance in the present context: Bultmann’s primary systematic interest (as described above), plus his rather eclectic way of putting Kierkegaardian resources to use in favor of realizing the former, provide an excellent—albeit on the whole, as I am quick to admit, more or less speculative—guide for identifying the predominant fields and contexts of Bultmann’s implicit Kierkegaard reception and, furthermore, for locating some major material reflections of the latter in the former’s work. Under the present circumstances I take it to be sufficient and legitimate to restrict my survey to a mere collection of themes and keywords: not only because the pertinent references are indeed more or less speculative, but also because these references themselves confirm that Bultmann’s central reception-historical concerns and strategies are already present and clearly identifiable in his explicit use of the Kierkegaardian resources. Thus, as an appendix to the foregoing analysis, let me simply list a paradigmatic selection of concepts and ideas which in my view bear witness to the ever present, though frequently hidden, impact of the latter in Bultmann’s work:104 the idea of human existence as structurally inflicted by crisis and the inevitability of “eternal” decisions;105 the understanding of existence as a “concrete” task;106 the concept of historicity as implying the need to conceive of past events as eschatological possibilities of self-

102 See, in particular, John van Buren, The Young Heidegger: Rumor of the Hidden King, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1994, pp. 50–154; pp. 166–76; pp. 181–98; pp. 222ff.; pp. 326–9; and pp. 388–9. 103 As to Bultmann’s own assessment of Heidegger’s Kierkegaardian roots, see Rudolf Bultmann/Martin Heidegger. Briefwechsel 1925–1975, p. 46; “Heidegger, Martin,” in Rudolf Bultmann/Martin Heidegger. Briefwechsel 1925–1975, p. 272; Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 1, p. 308; “Reflexionen zum Denkweg Martin Heideggers nach der Darstellung von Otto Pöggeler (1963),” in Rudolf Bultmann/Martin Heidegger. Briefwechsel 1925–1975, p. 308. 104 Apart from Jørgen K. Bukdahl, “Bultmann,” in The Legacy and Interpretation of Kierkegaard, ed. by Niels Thulstrup, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 1981 (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 8), pp. 238–42, Cora Bartels’ book is a valuable support for carrying out any such task; ironically enough, large parts of it consist of and rest content with analyses supposed to demonstrate that there are far-reaching ‘parallels’ between Bultmann and Kierkegaard to be found in the former’s work, without ever reflecting on the principal significance of this—as such undeniable—fact: see Bartels, Kierkegaard receptus, p. 25; p. 191; pp. 231–2; p. 234; pp. 241–4; p. 307; p. 309; p. 339; p. 391; p. 400; pp. 402–3; pp. 405ff.; p. 411; p. 415; p. 417; p. 426. 105 See, for example, Bultmann, “Die Frage der ‘dialektischen’ Theologie. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Erik Peterson,” p. 75; Jesus, p. 74. 106 See, for example, Bultmann, “Die Frage der ‘dialektischen’ Theologie. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Erik Peterson,” p. 74; Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 1, p. 90.

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understanding;107 the notion of truth as event;108 the impossibility of a “neutral” standpoint between good and evil;109 the situation “before God” as a categorical prerequisite of sin in any stricter sense;110 revelation, incarnation, love, atonement, and resurrection as “eschatological facts’;111 the concept of faith as a paradoxical event;112 the idea of a particular temporality of the believer’s “eschatological existence” in his or her instantaneous transformation to a new self-understanding;113 the paradoxical nature of such transformation as a result of a divine revelation in “the moment,”114 the paradox of God as simultaneously distant and near;115 the ambiguity of Jesus’ miracles as “signs”;116 the approximate character of all historical knowledge;117 the critique of a mythically objectifying interpretation of self, God, and the world as indicating a state of offense;118 the restructuring of biblical exegesis and hermeneutics in terms of focusing on the opposition between Greek ontology and Christian “existentialism”;119 the existential relevance of Scripture as a hermeneutical criterion of its own canonical status and authority;120 the strict correlation between adequately speaking about God and speaking about oneself as a prerequisite and constant challenge for theology.121 V. In conclusion, let me return once more to the five hypotheses formulated at the beginning of my article: (1) Bultmann generates and consolidates his own view of Kierkegaard rather early on (probably in the early 1920s); it remains pretty much unchanged from then on over the next decades. (2) Equally fixed and somehow restricted is the spectrum of themes and ideas that he finds himself drawn to in the writings of the Danish thinker: they are, roughly, christological, eschatological, and See, for example, Bultmann, Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 3, pp. 102–3; vol. 4, p. 101. See, for example, Bultmann, “Die Frage der ‘dialektischen’ Theologie. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Erik Peterson,” pp. 76–7. 109 See, for example, Bultmann, Jesus, p. 74. 110 See, for example, Bultmann, Jesus, p. 143; p.180. 111 See, for example, Bultmann, Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 1, p. 243; vol. 3, p. 204. Both Bartels and Bukdahl misread Bultmann as claiming that the resurrection is “a historical event” (Bukdahl, “Kierkegaard” p. 239 [my emphasis]; see Bartels, Kierkegaard receptus, p. 406). This goes clearly against the author’s intention who speaks—nota bene, in the case of resurrection!—of an eschatological as opposed to an historical event: see Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 3, p. 204; cf. also vol. 2, p. 234. 112 See, for example, Bultmann, Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 1, pp. 22–5; Theologische Enzyklopädie, pp. 130–5. 113 See, for example, Bultmann, Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 3, pp. 105–6. 114 See, for example, Bultmann, Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 1, pp. 143ff. 115 See, for example, Bultmann, Jesus, p. 147; p. 179. 116 See, for example, Bultmann, Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 1, p. 220; p. 227. 117 See, for example, Bultmann, Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 1, pp. 2–13; p. 123. 118 See, for example, Bultmann, Das Evangelium des Johannes, pp. 39–40. 119 See, for example, Bultmann, Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 2, p. 76. 120 See, for example, Bultmann, Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 2, pp. 231ff.; vol. 4, p. 178. 121 See, for example, Bultmann, Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 1, pp. 26–37. 107 108

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ethical in nature. (3) No less stable, yet also rather eclectic, appears the selection of Kierkegaard’s writings that Bultmann returns to time and again. He has an obvious preference for (parts of) the pseudonymous authorship—here, the Fragments plus Practice in Christianity, in particular—and for (part of) the edifying corpus, in particular Works of Love; by contrast, the journals are left completely out of the picture. (4) The extent of Bultmann’s implicit Kierkegaard reception exceeds that of his explicit Kierkegaard reception by far. (5) Typologically speaking this reception deserves to be called productive. Drawing on a variety of data, mostly of a statistical kind, it quickly became clear at the outset already that hypotheses number (1), (3) and (5) are sound and well founded. Meanwhile we have come to see that pretty much the same goes for number (2). The basic themes that Bultmann, explicitly invoking Kierkegaard, returns to time and again are revelation and faith on the one hand, and the ethics of love on the other. In a certain, indeed fundamental sense, both themes are intimately related, theologically speaking, to the realms of Christology, eschatology, and ethics at the same time. This is because both of them are based upon, and functionally connected with, the very bedrock of Bultmann’s theological and/or exegetical convictions: the idea, namely, that the existential relevance, truth, and authority of the Christian gospel can and will never be done away with, thanks to its inexhaustible potential of providing for its recipient a new, both eschatologically and ethically decisive model of self-understanding. Moreover, it has turned out in the previous section that large parts of Bultmann’s reception of, and reckoning with, Kierkegaard go well beyond the number of explicit references both in terms of quantity and substance. These parts, although materially compatible with and functionally related to Bultmann’s key intentions (as regards his theology in general, and his reception of Kierkegaard in particular) actually span a much wider spectrum of themes and aspects than would be expected on a mere surface level. Hence, assumption number (4) seems justified, too, so that in Bultmann’s case we may speak, at least with some qualifications, of an “incognito reception.”122 We can only guess why (and regret that!) he refused to be more outspoken at times about the nature and real extent of his indebtedness to the Danish thinker. Maybe he simply did not want his reverence for the latter to interfere with what he took to be his own theological and/or exegetical insights or accomplishments; more likely, he did not want to be guilty of prompting any misunderstanding, on the part of his reader, as to any such interference. Whatever the reason, we must remain ignorant about it. One thing stands out as undisputed, though. Within the—admittedly restricted—realm of Western Christian theology and its genetically determinative factors during the first half of the twentieth century a double credit is due to Rudolf Bultmann. Not only do his writings testify to one of the most substantial and original appropriations of Kierkegaard’s thought to date; moreover, and precisely in doing so, they are an impressive document of the various ways in which Bultmann stimulated and in fact set the agenda for major debates within contemporary theology.

I borrow the term from Martin Kiefhaber, Christentum als Korrektiv. Untersuchungen zur Theologie Søren Kierkegaards, Mainz: Matthias Grünewald 1997, p. 18.

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Bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Bultmann’s Corpus Jesus, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1926, pp. 106–8. Theologische Enzyklopädie (1926), ed. by Eberhard Jüngel and Klaus W. Müller, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1984, p. 8; pp. 74–5. “Die Frage der ‘dialektischen’ Theologie. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Erik Peterson,” Zwischen den Zeiten, vol. 4, 1926, pp. 40–59, especially pp. 47–9; reprinted in Anfänge der dialektischen Theologie, vol. 2, ed. by Jürgen Moltmann, 4th ed., Munich: Chr. Kaiser 1987, pp. 72–92, especially pp. 80–2; p. 87. Letter to Hans von Soden, August 24, 1926, in Universitätsbibliothek Tübingen, Nachlass Rudolf Bultmann, Manuscript 2–2385. Letter to Werner de Boor, March 22, 1926, printed in Walter Schmithals, “Der junge Bultmann,” Theologische Rundschau, vol. 53, 1989, pp. 212–14. “Heidegger, Martin,” in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, vol. 2, 2nd ed., Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1928, pp. 1687–8; reprinted in Rudolf Bultmann/Martin Heidegger. Briefwechsel 1925–1975, ed. by Andreas Großmann and Christof Landmesser, Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann and Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 2009, p. 272. Letter to Erich Foerster (1928), printed in Walter Schmithals, “Ein Brief Rudolf Bultmanns an Erich Foerster,” in Rudolf Bultmanns Werk und Wirkung, ed. by Bernd Jaspert, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1984, pp. 70–80, especially p. 72; p. 74. Glauben und Verstehen, vol. 1, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1933, p. 68; p. 85; p. 91; p. 95; p. 142; p. 159; p. 228; p. 237; pp. 239–40; pp. 242–3; p. 308; vol. 2, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1952, p. 76; p. 200; p. 209; p. 271; vol. 3, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1960, pp. 32–3; p. 63; p. 189; p. 194; p. 204; vol. 4, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1965, p. 105; p. 170. Das Evangelium des Johannes, 10th ed. [Bultmann’s first], Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1941 (Kritisch-exegetischer Kommentar über das Neue Testament, vol. 2), pp. 46–7, note; p. 94, note; p. 148; p. 161; p. 233; p. 275; p. 331; p. 339; p. 405; p. 431; pp. 449–50, note; p. 469. Geschichte und Eschatologie, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1958, pp. 87–8. “Reflexionen zum Denkweg Martin Heideggers nach der Darstellung von Otto Pöggeler (1963),” in Rudolf Bultmann/Martin Heidegger. Briefwechsel 1925– 1975, ed. by Andreas Großmann and Christof Landmesser, Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann and Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 2009, pp. 305–17, especially p. 308. Exegetica, ed. by Erich Dinkler, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1967, p. 219; p. 359.

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Karl Barth–Rudolf Bultmann. Briefwechsel 1911–1966, ed. by Bernd Jaspert, Zurich: Theologischer Verlag 1971 (Karl Barth, Gesamtausgabe, V. Briefe, vol. 1), p. 12 (no. 6); pp. 64–5 (no. 37); p. 103 (no. 59); p. 163 (no. 89); p. 186 (no. 94). Rudolf Bultmann/Friedrich Gogarten. Briefwechsel 1921–1967, ed. by Hermann G. Göckeritz, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2002, p. 107 (no. 52); p. 144 (no. 73); p. 239 (no. 136); p. 294 (appendix, no. 8). Letter to Rainer Schumann, June 27, 1973 (in possession of the addressee). Rudolf Bultmann/Martin Heidegger. Briefwechsel 1925–1975, ed. by Andreas Großmann and Christoph Landmesser, Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann and Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 2009, p. 46 (no. 15); p. 59 (no. 21); p. 116 (no. 36); p. 194 (no. 70). II. Sources of Bultmann’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Bohlin, Torsten, “Luther, Kierkegaard und die dialektische Theologie,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, vols. 3–4, 1926, pp. 163–98; pp. 268–79. Diem, Hermann, “Methode der Kierkegaardforschung,” Zwischen den Zeiten, vol. 6, 1928, pp. 140–71. — “Zur Psychologie der Kierkegaard-Renaissance,” Zwischen den Zeiten, vol. 10, 1932, pp. 216–47. Haecker, Theodor, “Blei und Kierkegaard,” in his Satire und Polemik 1914–1920, Innsbruck: Brenner Verlag 1922, pp. 19–27. Hirsch, Emanuel, Jesus Christus der Herr. Theologische Vorlesungen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1926. Kierkegaard, Søren, Furcht und Zittern/Die Wiederholung, trans. by Heinrich Cornelius Ketels and Hermann Gottsched, 2nd revised ed., Jena: Diederichs 1909 (Gesammelte Werke, vol. 3) (3rd revised ed., trans. by Heinrich Cornelius Ketels, Hermann Gottsched, and Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1923) (Gesammelte Werke, 2nd ed., vol. 3). — Der Begriff der Angst, trans. by Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1923 [1912] (Gesammelte Werke, 2nd ed., vol. 5). — Die Krankheit zum Tode, trans. by Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1924 (Gesammelte Werke, 2nd ed., vol. 8). — Einübung im Christentum, trans. by Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf, 2nd revised ed., Jena: Diederichs 1924 (Gesammelte Werke, 2nd ed., vol. 9). — Leben und Walten der Liebe. Einige christliche Erwägungen in Form von Reden, trans. by Albert Dorner and Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1924 (Erbauliche Reden, vol. 3). — Philosophische Brocken/Abschließende unwissenschaftliche Nachschrift. Erster Teil, Jena: Diederichs 1925 (Gesammelte Werke, 2nd ed., vol. 6). — Abschließende unwissenschaftliche Nachschrift. Zweiter Teil, trans. by Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1925 (Gesammelte Werke, 2nd ed., vol. 7). — Christliche Reden, trans. by Wilhelm Kütemeyer and Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1929 (Erbauliche Reden, vol. 4).

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— Über den Begriff der Ironie mit ständiger Rücksicht auf Sokrates, trans. by Hans Heinrich Schaeder, Munich and Berlin: R. Oldenbourg 1929. Moering, Ernst, In ungemessene Weiten. Kanzelreden, vols. 1–2, Wrocław: Trewendt 1922. Thust, Martin, Sören Kierkegaard. Der Dichter des Religiösen. Grundlagen eines Systems der Subjektivität, Munich: C.H. Beck 1931. III. Secondary Literature on Bultmann’s Relation to Kierkegaard Anz, Wilhelm, “Zur Wirkungsgeschichte Kierkegaards in der deutschen Theologie und Philosophie,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, vol. 79, 1982, pp. 451– 82, especially pp. 460–6. — “Die Wirkungsgeschichte Kierkegaards in der dialektischen Theologie und der gleichzeitigen deutschen Philosophie,” in Die Rezeption Søren Kierkegaards in der deutschen und dänischen Philosophie und Theologie. Vorträge des Kolloquiums am 22. und 23. März 1982, ed. by Heinrich Anz, Poul Lübcke, and Friedrich Schmöe, Copenhagen and Munich: Fink 1983 (Kopenhagener Kolloquien zur deutschen Literatur, vol. 7; Text & Kontext. Sonderreihe, vol. 15), pp. 11–29. — “Bedeutung und Grenze der existentialen Interpretation,” in Rudolf Bultmanns Werk und Wirkung, ed. by Bernd Jaspert, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1984, pp. 348–58, especially pp. 348–9; p. 358. Arendt, Rudolph, “Der Begriff des Wunders, besonders im Hinblick auf Bultmann und Kierkegaard,” Neue Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie, vol. 12, 1970, pp. 146‑64. Aubrey, Edwin Ewart, “Kierkegaard, Father of Dialectical Theology,” in his Present Theological Tendencies, New York and London: Harper 1936, pp. 60–73. Bartels, Cora, Kierkegaard receptus I. Die theologiegeschichtliche Bedeutung der Kierkegaard-Rezeption Rudolf Bultmanns, Göttingen: V&R Unipress 2008 (Th.D. Thesis, University of Göttingen 2004), pp. 141–437. Barth, Karl, Rudolf Bultmann. Ein Versuch, ihn zu verstehen, Zollikon-Zurich: Evangelischer Verlag: 1952 (Theologische Studien, vol. 34), p. 47. Bartsch, Hans-Werner, Der gegenwärtige Stand der Entmythologisierungsdebatte. Ein kritischer Bericht, 2nd ed., Hamburg-Volksdorf: Reich 1955 (Kerygma und Mythos. Beiheft zu 1–2, Theologische Forschung, vol. 7). Bayer, Oswald, “Entmythologisierung? Christliche Theologie zwischen Metaphysik und Mythologie im Blick auf Rudolf Bultmann,” in Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie, vol. 34, 1992, pp. 109–24. Beyer, Gudrun, Rechtfertigungstheologisch denken: Rudolf Bultmanns Kerygmatheologie aus exegetischen, genetischen und systematischen Perspektiven, Frankfurt a.M.: Lang 1996 (Th.D. Thesis, University of Göttingen 1994; Europäische Hochschulschriften: Reihe 23, Theologie, vol. 560), p. 33; pp. 74– 8; p. 82. Biser, Eugen, “Hermeneutische Integration—Zur Frage der Herkunft von Rudolf Bultmanns hermeneutischer Interpretation,” in Rudolf Bultmanns Werk und

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Wirkung, ed. by Bernd Jaspert, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1984, pp. 211–33, especially pp. 212–14; pp. 217–19; pp. 224–6; pp. 231–3. Bornkamm, Günther, “Die Theologie Bultmanns in der neueren Diskussion. Literaturbericht zum Problem der Entmythologisierung und Hermeneutik,” Theologische Rundschau, vol. 29, 1963, pp. 33–141 (reprinted in his Geschichte und Glaube. Erster Teil. Gesammelte Aufsätze, vol. 3, Munich: Kaiser 1968 (Beiträge zur evangelischen Theologie, vol. 48), pp. 173–275, especially p. 249; p. 264; p. 268). Bousquet, François, “L’héritage morcelé: Kierkegaard chez les grands théologiens du XXe siècle,” in Retour de Kierkegaard / Retour à Kierkegaard. Colloque franco-danois, ed. by Henri-Bernard Vergote, Toulouse: Presses Univ. du Mirail 1997 (Kairos, vol. 10), pp. 231–47. Bukdahl, Jørgen K., “Bultmann,” in The Legacy and Interpretation of Kierkegaard, ed. by Niels Thulstrup and Marie Mikulová Thulstrup, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 1981 (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 8), pp. 238–42. Buren, John van, The Young Heidegger: Rumor of the Hidden King, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1994, pp. 50–154; pp. 166–76; pp. 181–98; pp. 222ff.; pp. 326–9; and pp. 388–9. Colette, Jacques, “Kierkegaard, Bultmann et Heidegger,” Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, vol. 49, 1965, pp. 597–608. Deuser, Hermann, “Bultmann und Heidegger: Freundschaft und Marburger Gemeinsamkeit in der Sache trotz allem,” Philosophische Rundschau, vol. 56, 2009, no. 3, pp. 258–66. Diem, Hermann, “Sören Kierkegaard,” in Festschrift Rudolf Bultmann. Zum 65. Geburtstag überreicht, ed. by Ernst Wolf, Stuttgart and Cologne: Kohlhammer 1949, pp. 36–47. — “Kierkegaards Hinterlassenschaft an die Theologie,” in Antwort. Karl Barth zum siebzigsten Geburtstag am 10. Mai 1956, ed. by Ernst Wolf et al., ZollikonZurich: Evangelischer Verlag 1956, pp. 472–89 (reprinted in his Sine vi sed verbo. Aufsätze, Vorträge, Voten. Aus Anlaß der Vollendung seines 65. Lebensjahres am 2. Februar 1965, ed. by Uvo Andreas Wolf, Munich: Kaiser 1965 (Theologische Bücherei. Neudrucke und Berichte aus dem 20. Jahrhundert. Systematische Theologie, vol. 25), pp. 216–37). Dinkler, Erich, “Die christliche Wahrheitsfrage und die Unabgeschlossenheit der Theologie als Wissenschaft. Bemerkungen zum wissenschaftlichen Werk R. Bultmanns,” in Gedenken an Rudolf Bultmann, ed. by Otto Kaiser, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1977, pp. 15–40, especially pp. 18–19 (reprinted in his Im Zeichen Des Kreuzes. Aufsätze von Erich Dinkler, ed. by Otto Merk and Michael Wolter, Berlin and New York: de Gruyter 1992 (Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche, vol. 61), pp. 433–58). Evang, Martin, Rudolf Bultmann in seiner Frühzeit, Tübingen: Mohr 1988 (Th.D. Thesis, University of Bonn 1986/87; Beiträge zur historischen Theologie, vol. 74), pp. 68–9; pp. 286–7; p. 339, note; p. 399, note.

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Peterson, Erik, “Kierkegaard und der Protestantismus,” Wort und Wahrheit, vol. 3, 1948, no. 8, pp. 579–84 (reprinted in his Marginalien zur Theologie, Munich: Kösel 1956, pp. 17–27). — “L’influsso di Kierkegaard sulla teologia protestante contemporanea,” Humanitas, vol. 2, 1947, pp. 681–6. Reilly, George David, Self-Understanding as the Hermeneutic Principle in the Theology of Rudolf Bultmann, with Reference to the Work of Martin Heidegger and Søren Kierkegaard, Ph.D. Thesis, King’s College, University of London 1982. Rocca, Ettore, “L’Antigone di Kierkegaard o della morte del tragico” [Kierkegaard’s Antigone or the Death of the Tragic], in Antigone e la filosofia. Hegel, Kierkegaard, Hölderlin, Heidegger, Bultmann [Antigone and Philosophy. Hegel, Kierkegaard, Hölderlin, Heidegger, Bultmann], ed. by Pietro Montani, Rome: Donzelli 2001, pp. 73–84. Rudolph, Enno, “Glauben und Wissen. Kierkegaard zwischen Kant und Bultmann,” in Die Rezeption Søren Kierkegaards in der deutschen und dänischen Philosophie und Theologie. Vorträge des Kolloquiums am 22. und 23. März 1982, ed. by Heinrich Anz, Poul Lübcke and Friedrich Schmöe, Copenhagen and Munich: Fink 1983 (Kopenhagener Kolloquien zur deutschen Literatur, vol. 7; Text & Kontext. Sonderreihe, vol. 15), pp. 152–70. Schmithals, Walter, “Der junge Bultmann,” Theologische Rundschau, no. 53, 1989, pp. 202–11, especially p. 205. Schröer, Henning, Die Denkform der Paradoxalität als theologisches Problem. Eine Untersuchung zu Kierkegaard und der neueren Theologie als Beitrag zur theologischen Logik, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1960 (Th.D. Thesis, University of Heidelberg 1959; Forschungen zur systematischen Theologie und Religionsphilosophie, vol. 5), pp. 182–91; p. 201. Schulz, Heiko, “Die theologische Rezeption Kierkegaards in Deutschland und Dänemark. Notizen zu einer historischen Typologie,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 1999, pp. 220–44, especially pp. 225–7; p. 234. —“Rezeptionsgeschichtliche Brocken oder die Brocken in der deutschen Rezeption. Umrisse einer vorläufigen Bestandsaufnahme,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2004, pp. 375–451, especially pp. 407–11. — “Rezeptionsgeschichtliche Nachschrift oder die Nachschrift in der deutschen Rezeption. Eine forschungsgeschichtliche Skizze,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2005, pp. 351–99, especially p. 353. — “Germany and Austria: A Modest Head Start: The German Reception of Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard’s International Reception, Tome I, Northern and Western Europe, ed. by Jon Stewart, Aldershot: Ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 8), pp. 307–419, especially pp. 338–41. Stegemann, Wolfgang, Der Denkweg Rudolf Bultmanns. Darstellung der Entwicklung und der Grundlagen seiner Theologie, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer 1978 (Th.D. Thesis, University of Heidelberg 1975), p. 136. Suttles, William Charles, Towards an Epistemology of Faith: A Critical Analysis of the Subjective Relation to the Object of Faith in the Thought of Søren Kierkegaard

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and Rudolf Bultmann, Ph.D. Thesis, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary 1999. Thomas, John Heywood, “The Relevance of Kierkegaard to the Demythologising Controversy,” Scottish Journal of Theology, vol. 10, 1957, pp. 239–52 (reprinted in Essays on Kierkegaard, ed. by Jerry H. Gill, Minneapolis: Burgess 1969, pp. 175–85). Thulstrup, Niels, “Presenza e funzione dei concetti kierkegaardiani nella teologia contemporanea scandinava e germanica,” in Liber Academiæ Kierkegaardiensis Annuarius, vol. 1, 1977–78, ed. by Alessandro Cortese, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel and Milan: Vita e Pensiero 1980, pp. 29–40. Wolf, Herbert C., Kierkegaard and Bultmann: The Quest of the Historical Jesus, Minneapolis: Augsburg 1965.

Gerhard Ebeling: Appreciation and Critical Appropriation of Kierkegaard Derek R. Nelson

I. An Overview of Ebeling’s Thought Gerhard Ebeling (1912–2001) was a prolific and highly esteemed Lutheran theologian. Born in Berlin to a family of teachers, Ebeling was educated at several universities throughout Germany and Switzerland during the tumultuous years of 1930–35. He was one of the most accomplished of the students of the “underground” seminary of the Confessing Church, headed by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–45) in Finkenwalde. In fact, it was Bonhoeffer who urged Ebeling’s advanced study in theology before beginning ministerial work, and Ebeling earned his doctorate in 1938 from Zürich with a dissertation on Luther’s interpretation of the Gospels.1 Thus already in the earliest years of his career as a theologian, we see three themes and commitments that would preoccupy and animate all of Ebeling’s later work: there is, first, an abiding concern to uncover the principles that guide churchly hermeneutics, second, an especially keen interest in Luther’s example thereof, and third, a commitment to showing how theological and hermeneutical reflection matter to the life of the church and its proclamation. In all of these areas, Ebeling saw Kierkegaard as a resource and kindred spirit in the effort to renew the church and its thinking. His reception of Kierkegaard’s writings is evident primarily in a relatively unspoken way, particularly in the tacit but pronounced existentialist orientation of much of Ebeling’s dogmatic theology. Overtones of Kierkegaard’s self-involving hermeneutic can also be found in Ebeling’s theological oeuvre, and numerous other sporadic references to Kierkegaard evidence an awareness of, short of a reliance on, Kierkegaard’s philosophical and theological thought. Before moving to a more technical look at the kinds of Kierkegaard texts and themes Ebeling used, cited, and echoed, it will be helpful to have a general orientation to Ebeling’s theological project.

The dissertation was later published as Evangelisches Evangeliensauslegung. Eine Untersuchung zu Luthers Hermeneutik, 3rd ed., Tübingen: Mohr 1991. For more on Bonhoeffer’s influence, see Mark Menacher, “Gerhard Ebeling in Retrospect,” Lutheran Quarterly, vol. 21, no. 2, 2007, pp. 165–7. 1

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A. Hermeneutics Ebeling is perhaps best known as one of the early advocates of what came to be called the “New Hermeneutic.” Along with his friend and colleague Ernst Fuchs (1903– 83), the Bultmannian New Testament scholar, Ebeling developed a “new” way of reading the Bible that in fact had much in common with the history of exegesis and philosophical hermeneutics. Most of what was new about the “New Hermeneutic” came from Ebeling’s demonstration that the ways that subject and object encounter each other in a text are actually rooted in something deeper than the text itself. Following the later Heidegger, Fuchs and Ebeling identified a close connection between being and language. Being has, so to speak, a certain linguisticality about it. Not just our coming to know and understand being-as-such, but also being-itself is linguistic. It is communicative, self-disclosing, and even dialogical. This does not mean that being-itself is talk. On the contrary, Fuchs writes: “Language is rather primarily a showing or a letting be seen, an indication in the active sense: I intimate to you or instruct you what you yourself ‘perceive.’ That can take place through a simple movement, even by turning away from another.”2 Ebeling scholar Robert Funk puts the matter this way: “Language, in the wider sense, is what gives being a presence, what brings it to stand. Man [sic] does not live in relation to being as such, but in relation to being as it is present to him, and that means in language.”3 Reality, then, is fundamentally communicative in Ebeling’s view. All of the foregoing can be put in non-theological terms, but Ebeling holds that the Word of God is in fact the basis for this communication. For each person, encountering reality involves opening a kind of conversation that has a history. Reality at the level of its apprehension has been thematized into concepts. For Ebeling, a Lutheran theologian, the process of transmission of core concepts follows the linguistic tradition of the writings of the Bible (in particular the apostle Paul), the church fathers, and the Reformers. Key here is Ebeling’s defense of both a demand-character (law) and gift-character (gospel) to all reality.4 The subject matter of theology, then, is the Word-event which comes to expression as the coming of the justifying God to sinful humans.5 Since reality is linguistic, it must also be relational. The most important relationship in Ebeling’s ontology is the God–human relationship. Its linguistic character emerges from both sides. It comes from God as Word, and from humans as faith. Ebeling understands faith along the same lines as did Luther: as fundamental trust in the promise of God to justify the sinner. Faith is, however, an event. It is always renewed and in need of renewal. Renewal comes from the always fresh Ernst Fuchs, Hermeneutik, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1970, p. 131. Robert Walter Funk, “Language as Event: Fuchs and Ebeling,” in his Language, Hermeneutic, and Word of God: The Problem of Language in the New Testament and Contemporary Theology, New York: Harper and Row 1966, p. 51. 4 Jack Edmund Brush, “Gerhard Ebeling,” in A New Handbook of Christian Theologians, ed. by Donald W. Musser and Joseph L. Price, Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon 1996, p. 146. 5 Gerhard Ebeling, Wort und Glaube, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1960, p. 417. (English translation: Word and Faith, trans. by James W. Leitch, Philadephia: Fortress Press 1963, p. 433.) 2 3

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“coming to speech” of the Word in proclamation. Consequently, Ebeling maintains an extremely close connection between theology and proclamation.6 Ebeling’s own sermons, many of which have been published, model the kind of preaching in which the word made fresh in the “language event” of proclamation actually makes present the God of the Word.7 B. Ebeling as Interpreter of Luther Ebeling was an unmatched editor. He served for nearly thirty years as the chief editor of the important journal Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche and was president of the Commission for the Publication of the Works of Luther (Weimar Edition). In these and other circles Ebeling contributed to a further renewal of interest in interpreting Luther’s theology, and his several volumes of writings in this area are regarded as a high point in Luther scholarship.8 Ebeling’s intellectual portrait of Luther seeks to show the uncollapsed tensions present in the Reformer’s writings. Ebeling held that those tensions related dialectically to each other, powering the engine of theological reflection forward. Tensed polarities include: theology and philosophy; letter and spirit; law and gospel; person and works; faith and love; the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of the world; man as a Christian and man in the world; freedom and bondage; God hidden and God revealed. Each of the contrasting poles are simultaneously affirmed, and the task of the believer, as Ebeling’s Luther would have it, is to appropriate what is needful from each at the appropriate time.9 Thus Ebeling paints Luther as a kind of proto-existentialist. Luther sought to lead his readers into the crisis that for him defined human existence—the crisis involved in choosing either self-reliance or trust in the promises of God. In highlighting the urgency of this decision for faith, Ebeling finds in Luther much of what Kierkegaard also found there a century earlier.10 Gerhard Ebeling, Theologie und Verkündigung. Ein Gespräch mit Rudolf Bultmann, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1962, pp. 11–17. (English translation: Theology and Proclamation: Dialogue with Bultmann, trans. by John Riches, Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1966, 13–21.) 7 Gerhard Ebeling, Predigten eines “Illegalen” aus den Jahren 1939–1945, Tübingen: Mohr 1995 and Vom Gebet. Predigten über das Unser-Vater, Munich: Siebenstern Taschenbuch Verlag 1967. 8 See, for example, Gerhard Ebeling, Lutherstudien, vols. 1–3, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1971–89; Gerhard Ebeling, Lehre und Leben in Luthers Theologie, Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag 1984; Gerhard Ebeling, Luthers Seelsorge. Theologie in der Vielfalt der Lebenssituationen an seinen Briefen dargestellt, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1997; and Gerhard Ebeling, Umgang mit Luther, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1983. 9 Gerhard Ebeling, Luther. Einführung in sein Denken, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1964. (English translation: Luther: An Introduction to his Thought, trans. by R.A. Wilson, Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1970.) 10 Kierkegaard attributed, for example, the pro me at the conclusion of Either/Or (“Only that truth which edifies is truth to you.”) to Luther. See SKS 20, 274, NB3:61 / JP 3, 2463. For more on this relationship, cf. Regin Prenter, “Luther and Lutheranism,” in Kierkegaard and Great Traditions, ed. by Niels Thulstrup and Marie Mikulová Thulstrup, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 1981 (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 6), pp. 121–72. 6

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II. Ebeling’s Direct Citations of Kierkegaard Ebeling’s life work reached its apex with his three-volume systematic theology.11 In it we find many citations of Kierkegaard’s writings, nearly all of them approving ones. We saw above that Ebeling conceived of all reality as communicative. It should come as no surprise, then, that Ebeling spends a great deal of time discussing prayer. In volume I of his Dogmatik, Ebeling calls prayer the key to the doctrine of God, and quotes Kierkegaard’s journal to the same effect.12 In the same paragraph in his dogmatics, Ebeling again cites Kierkegaard’s journals in relation to prayer. Ebeling notes that Kierkegaard once called the relation of the one who prays and the one to whom prayer is directed the “Archimedean point” outside the world.13 The nature of Ebeling’s usage of Kierkegaard is mostly proof-texting, rather than extended exegesis or dependence. Ebeling thinks Kierkegaard has come to the same position he himself has, and is glad to have him as an ally. The second volume of the Dogmatik is devoted exclusively to Christology, and here we find more thorough use of Kierkegaard. In a brief discussion of the history of modern Christology, Ebeling contrasts the Enlightenment understanding of Christ as moral exemplar with Schleiermacher’s pious self-consciousness of Christ, Hegel’s “life direction” of Christ, and Kierkegaard’s Christological “dialectic of existence.”14 Though he does not cite any particular work of Kierkegaard’s here, it is clear that Ebeling endorses Kierkegaard’s approach to Christology given the options of modernity, even as he seeks to go beyond it in postmodernity. Ebeling shared Kierkegaard’s concern that the startling and miraculous nature of the Incarnation had become domesticated and several times cites characteristic Kierkegaardian passages to highlight the remarkableness of the life of Jesus. Ebeling notes, with Kierkegaard, that Jewish piety can see a kind of continuity between humanity and divinity where Christianity rightly sees stark conflict.15 Ebeling also quotes the famous passage in the journals where Kierkegaard opines that if Christ were to come to the world today, he would not be crucified but, rather, laughed at.16 Ebeling, going further than Kierkegaard, suggests that the present world might See Gerhard Ebeling, Dogmatik des christlichen Glaubens, vols. 1–3, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1979–82. For a fascinating review of the first volume of the work by a thinker who went in a very different direction than Ebeling, but who was much impressed by him, see George Lindbeck, “Ebeling: Climax of a Great Tradition,” Journal of Religion, vol. 61, 1981, pp. 309–14. 12 Ebeling, Dogmatik des christlichen Glaubens, vol. 1, p. 193; The citation is to Søren Kierkegaard, Die Tagebücher, trans. and ed. by Hayo Gerdes, vols. 1–5, Düsseldorf and Cologne: Diederichs 1962–74, vol. 1, pp. 261–2 (which corresponds to SKS 18, 132–3, HH:13 / KJN 2, 124. 13 Ebeling, Dogmatik des christlichen Glaubens, vol. 1, p. 208; see Kierkegaard, Die Tagebücher, vol. 3, p. 25 (which corresponds to SKS 20, 416, NB5:111 / JP 3, 3426). 14 Ebeling, Dogmatik, vol. 2, p. 40. 15 Ibid., p. 461. The reference is to Kierkegaard, Die Tagebücher, vol. 3, p. 113 (which corresponds to SKS 21, 164, NB8:41 / JP 6, 6276). 16 Ibid., p. 180. The reference is to Kierkegaard, Die Tagebücher, vol. 3, p. 115 (which corresponds to SKS 21, 313, NB10:109 / JP 6, 6373). 11

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well do both. In another jab at the modern world Ebeling borrows Kierkegaard’s “pregnant brevity” in noting that “The guarantee of the difference between church and the theater is imitation.”17 In the third volume of his Dogmatik Ebeling attends to the typical “third article” loci such as the church, the Spirit, and the sacraments. But he also deals with the concept of hope. Hope, because of its future orientation, is often seen as a concept unfriendly to existentialist theological doctrine and its emphasis on the present. But Ebeling very effectively cites a lengthy passage from Kierkegaard to the contrary. Kierkegaard compares the believer to someone rowing a boat. The boat is rowed best when one has one’s back to the “goal” of the voyage. Then the goal of the voyage can actually illumine the field of vision of the present. So it is with the future. One orients oneself best to it when one puts one’s back to it. Then the eternal future is present to the believer in an enlightening, helpful way.18 This, of course, has echoes of Kierkegaard’s contention that the eternal is captured in the moment of the present. Ebeling seems to affirm this position. In his book Theology and Proclamation Ebeling discusses the existential certainty of faith in relation to time: “The man who is certain, on the other hand, is the man who is contemporaneous with himself (that is the true meaning of Kierkegaard’s concept of contemporaneousness).”19 Mikka Ruokanen actually argues that Ebeling’s understanding of eternity is in fact dependent on Kierkegaard. If eternity is the depth of time, then in the moment, eternity is present. In that moment, future and past coalesce “so that the continuity of history disappears.”20 Ebeling does not cite Kierkegaard in his numerous works on Luther. This is partly due to the diffident attitude Kierkegaard adapted toward Luther.21 But he does mention Kierkegaard in relation to Luther elsewhere. For example, Ebeling credits the reflective, self-aware theological tradition spanning from Augustine through See SKS 24, 386, NB24:105 / JP 2, 1904. Cited in Ebeling, Dogmatik, vol. 2, p. 525. (Ebeling quotes SKS 24, 384–6, NB24:105 / JP 2, 1904.) 18 Ebeling cites it as Christliche Reden, in Søren Kierkegaard, Gesammelte Werke, Abteilungen 1–36, trans. by Emanuel Hirsch, Düsseldorf and Cologne: Diederichs 1950–74, Abteilung 20, pp. 77–8 (which corresponds to SKS 10, 82 / CD, 73). 19 Ebeling, Theologie und Verkündigung, p. 88. The citation is from Christliche Reden, in Gesammelte Werke, Abteilung 20, p. 78 (which corresponds to SKS 10, 83 / CD, 84). Ebeling takes the same approach in his essay “Der Grund christlicher Theologie,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, vol. 58, 1961, pp. 241–58, and he implies that he owes these insights to Hayo Gerdes, Das Christusbild Sören Kierkegaards, verglichen mit der Christologie Hegels und Schleiermachers, Düsseldorf: Diederichs 1960, pp. 35ff. 20 Mikka Ruokanen, Hermeneutics as an Ecumenical Method in the Theology of Gerhard Ebeling, Helsinki: Luther-Agricola Society 1982, p. 97. 21 See, for example, David Yoon-Jung Kim and Joel D.S. Rasmussen, “Martin Luther: Reform, Secularization, and the Question of His ‘True Successor,’ ” in Kierkegaard and the Renaissance and Modern Traditions, Tome II, Theology, ed. by Jon Stewart, Aldershot: Ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 5), pp. 173– 217. It is debatable how much of Luther’s actual writings Kierkegaard had studied. Regin Prenter argues that Kierkegaard had extremely little exposure to Luther’s writings, and that much of his rejection of Luther was based on second-hand knowledge. Prenter, “Luther and Lutheranism,” p. 126. 17

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Luther to Kierkegaard as having an important role in practical theology and even in the development of the discipline of psychology.22 And in an essay on his former teacher Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ebeling worries about the last years of Bonhoeffer’s imprisonment and the controversial theological positions he was then developing. Ebeling notes Bonhoeffer’s growing sectarianism, the “biblicist” character of his exegesis, his conflation of all ethics into discipleship, and how “he sounded notes of Kierkegaardian criticism of Luther.”23 We can surmise that Ebeling had in mind not that Bonhoeffer had studied as little Luther as had Kierkegaard, but rather that Kierkegaard’s allegations about the comfortable, middle-class form of religious life he dubiously attributed to Luther were shared by Bonhoeffer. The work in which Ebeling perhaps shows most thoroughly his debt to Kierkegaard is the small masterpiece The Nature of Faith. This book, written for a very general audience and therefore without scholarly apparatus and direct engagement with other authors, contains hints of many major themes of Kierkegaard’s religious writings. We learn, for example, of Ebeling’s insistence that faith is an event, and therefore in constant need of re-affirmation,24 of the need of the individual to assert himself in the context of a nameless, faceless absolute,25 and the inherent subjectivity of Christian truth.26 Yet the debt to Kierkegaard is never really expressed. Roger Poole commented that reading Sartre’s Being and Nothingness is “an uncanny experience, in which Kierkegaard’s influence is everywhere though his name is unspoken.”27 Much the same could be said of Ebeling’s The Nature of Faith. III. Comments on Ebeling’s Usage of Kierkegaard Ebeling makes use of a fairly wide variety of Kierkegaard texts. He quotes the journals, philosophical writings, and theological writings. Selections are chosen judiciously and to good rhetorical effect. Reflecting upon a certain “debt” to Kierkegaard, however, leaves one with the impression that, for all their many similarities in approaching the Christian faith, more mention should be made of Kierkegaard in Ebeling’s writings. What uses Ebeling makes of Kierkegaard seem most often to come as corroboration for positions at which Ebeling arrived independently of the Gerhard Ebeling, Studium der Theologie. Eine enzyklopädische Orientierung, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1975, p. 108. (English translation: The Study of Theology, trans. by Duane Priebe, Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1978, p. 103.) 23 Ebeling, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer,” in Word and Faith, p. 283. 24 Gerhard Ebeling, Das Wesen des christlichen Glaubens, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1959, pp. 123–32. (English translation: The Nature of Faith, trans. by Ronald Gregor Smith. Philadelphia: Muhlenberg 1961, pp. 108–17.) 25 Ebeling, Das Wesen des christlichen Glaubens, pp. 164–6. (The Nature of Faith, pp. 146–9.) 26 Ebeling, Das Wesen des christlichen Glaubens, pp. 94–6. (The Nature of Faith, pp. 81–3.) 27 Roger Poole, “The Unknown Kierkegaard: Twentieth Century Receptions,” in The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, ed. by Alastair Hannay and Gordon D. Marino, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1997, p. 54. 22

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Dane’s writing. Certain family resemblances between Kierkegaard’s project and Ebeling’s are undoubtedly present. The foregoing has brought to mind several: the need of the individual constantly to reaffirm and reappropriate Christian faith, the coinherence of the eternal and the moment, and the subjectivity of hermeneutics. But to posit a relationship of dependence of Ebeling on Kierkegaard would be an overstatement. Ebeling’s relational ontology came basically from his interpretation of Luther, his hermeneutical commitments arose from his reading (along with Fuchs) of the later Heidegger, and whatever “existentialist” dimensions are present in his work are more likely to have been mediated by Bultmann, with whom Ebeling had both strong affinities and deep disagreements, than to have come directly from Kierkegaard.28 Ebeling, then, is neither dependent directly on Kierkegaard for many of his theological views nor disinterested in, or unaffected by, Kierkegaard’s writings. A middle course between these two extremes gets the relationship right. Ebeling was a product of theological education in continental Europe in the middle third of the twentieth century, a time when Kierkegaard’s influence was arguably at its apex. The major figures affecting Ebeling’s developing understanding of the theological enterprise were profoundly influenced by Kierkegaard. Though Ebeling’s usage of him is more likely derivative than primary, Ebeling very certainly saw Kierkegaard as a strong ally in his developing understanding of the gospel, its implications, and its presuppositions.

On Bultmann’s relation to Kierkegaard, see Heiko Schulz’ essay in this volume, as well as David J. Gouwens, Kierkegaard as a Religious Thinker, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1997, pp. 11–13.

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Bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Ebeling’s Corpus Das Wesen des christlichen Glaubens, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1959, pp. 9–13 (English translation: The Nature of Faith, trans. by Ronald Gregor Smith, Philadelphia: Muhlenberg 1961, pp. 10–14.) “Wort Gottes und Hermeneutik,” Zeitschrift der Theologie und Kirche, vol. 56, 1959, pp. 224–51. (English translation: “Word of God and Hermeneutic,” New Frontiers in Theology, vol. 1, pp. 78–110.) Wort und Glaube, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1960, p. 211; p. 297. (English translation: Word and Faith, trans. by James Leitch, Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1963, p. 202; p. 283.) Theologie und Verkündigung. Ein Gespräch mit Rudolf Bultmann, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1962, p. 37; p. 88. (English translation: Theology and Proclamation: Dialogue with Bultmann, trans. by John Riches, Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1966, p. 38; p. 88.) Studium der Theologie. Eine enzyklopädische Orientierung, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1975, p. 106; pp. 147–8. (English translation: The Study of Theology, trans. by Duane A. Priebe, Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1978, p. 103; pp. 140–11.) Dogmatik des Christlichen Glaubens, vols. 1–3, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1979–82, vol. 1, p. 193; p. 208; vol. 2, p. 40; p. 180; p. 461; p. 525, vol. 3, p. 435. II. Sources of Ebeling’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Gerdes, Hayo, Das Christusbild Sören Kierkegaards, vergliechen mit der Christologie Hegels und Schleiermachers, Düsseldorf: E. Diederichs 1960. Hirsch, Emanuel, Kierkegaard-Studien, Heft 1, Zur inneren Geschichte 1835–1841; Heft 2, Der Dichter; Heft 3, 1–3, Der Denker, Gütersloh: Bertelsmann 1930–33 (Studien des apologetischen Seminars, vol. 29; vol. 31; vol. 32; vol. 36). Jaspers, Karl, Vernunft und Existenz, Groningen: Wolters 1935, pp. 1–27. III. Secondary Literature on Ebeling’s Relation to Kierkegaard Ackley, John B., Church of the Word: A Comparative Study of Word, Church, and Office in the Thought of Karl Rahner and Gerhard Ebeling, New York: Lang 1983, pp. 286–91.

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Gmainer-Pranzl, Franz, Glaube und Geschichte bei Karl Rahner und Gerhard Ebeling. Ein Vergleich transzendentaler und hermeneutischer Theologie, Innsbruck: Tyrolia-Verlag 1996, 201–4. Jeanrond, Werner, Theological Hermeneutics, London: SCM Press 1994, pp. 153–7. Lienhard, Fritz. “La Crise du Langage de la Foi et la Parole: Ebeling et la Predication,” Études théologiques et religieuses, vol. 76, no. 2, 2001, pp. 229–45. Macquarrie, John, Existentialism: An Introduction, Guide and Assessment, Harmondsworth: Penguin 1972, pp. 270–2. — Twentieth Century Religious Thought, New Edition, Harrisburg: Trinity Press International 2001, pp. 391–3. Marleé, Reneé, Parler de Dieu aujourd’hui: la théologie herméneutique de Gerhard Ebeling, Paris: Editions du Cerf 1975, pp. 17–18; pp. 92–4; pp. 175–81. Petri, Heinrich, “Bedeutung und Grenzen anthropologisch-personalistischer Ansätze in der neueren Theologie,” in Wege theologischen Denkens, ed. by Josef Pfammater and Franz Furger, Zürich: Benziger Verlag 1979, pp. 105–34. Pilnei, Oliver, Wie entsteht christlicher Glaube? Untersuchungen zur Glaubenskonstitution in der hermeneutischen Theologie bei Rudolf Bultmann, Ernst Fuchs und Gerhard Ebeling, Tübingen: J.C.B. Moeck 2007, pp. 240–9. Ruokanen, Mikka, Hermeneutics as an Ecumenical Method in the Theology of Gerhard Ebeling, Helsinki: Luther-Agricola Society 1982, p. 97. Schlögel, Herbert, Nicht moralisch, sondern theologisch. Zum Gewissensverständnis von Gerhard Ebeling, Mainz: Matthias Grünewald 1992, pp. 79–94. Warth, Martim Caros, Fe existencial num Mundo Secular: Um Estudo Comparativo entre Franz Pieper e Gerhard Ebeling sobre a Natureza e a Funcao da Fe, Canoas, RS: Universidade Luterana do Brasil, Concordia 2003. Wendebourg, Ernst-Wilhelm, “Erwägungen zu Ebelings Interpretation der Lehre Luthers von den zwei Reichen,” Kerygma und Dogma, vol. 13, no. 2, 1967, pp. 99–131, see especially pp. 124–30. Werbick, Jürgen, Die Aporetik des Etischen und der christliche Glaube, Munich: Ferdinand Schöningh 1976, pp. 67–96.

Emanuel Hirsch: A German Dialogue with “Saint Søren” Matthias Wilke

I. Hirsch as Theologian Emanuel Hirsch (1888–1972) was one of the outstanding German Kierkegaard researchers of the twentieth century. In close interaction with Scandinavian research, he helped instill a deeper appreciation of Kierkegaard’s works in German theology and the German intellectual world in general. He accomplished this through his Kierkegaard-Studien, published during the period 1930–33, his portrayal of Kierkegaard in Geschichte der neuern evangelischen Theologie (1949–54), and last, but not least, through his translation of and commentary on the Samlede Værker.1 Hirsch’s work has won universal admiration even among its sharpest critics. However, the criticism is also multifaceted and in part devastating. Hirsch was not only one of the most prominent German Kierkegaard researchers, but was and remains one of the most controversial as well.

In 1963, Hirsch wrote in an article on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Kierkegaard’s birth: “One day in conversation with Eduard Geismar, I discovered that we both used a name for Kierkegaard which was intended to express the power the man exerts over our own minds in self-ironic defense. We called him ‘Saint Søren,’ fully conscious of how horrified, how mockingly he would have responded...to this playful name.” See Emanuel Hirsch, “Dank an Sören Kierkegaard,” in his Wege zu Kierkegaard, Berlin: Die Spur 1968, p. 129. (Reprinted in his Kierkegaard-Studien, vol. 3, Aufsätze und Vorträge 1926 bis 1967, ed. by Hans Martin Müller, vol. 13 in Emanuel Hirsch. Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–48, ed. by Hans Martin Müller et al., Waltrop: Spenner 1998–, p. 189.) 1 See Emanuel Hirsch, Kierkegaard-Studien, Heft 1, Zur inneren Geschichte 1835–1841; Heft 2, Der Dichter; Heft 3, 1–3, Der Denker, Gütersloh: Bertelsmann 1930–33 (Studien des apologetischen Seminars, vol. 29; vol. 31; vol. 32; vol. 36). (Republished in his Gesammelte Werke, vols. 11–12, ed. by Hans Martin Müller, Waltrop: Spenner 2006.) The citations in the following article follow the pagination of the first edition. Pagination for the Gesammelte Werke is given in parentheses. See Emanuel Hirsch, Geschichte der neuern evangelischen Theologie im Zusammenhang mit den allgemeinen Bewegungen des europäischen Denkens, vols. 1–5, Gütersloh: Bertelsmann 1949–54; Gesammelte Werke, vols. 5–9, ed. by Albrecht Beutel, Waltrop: Spenner 2000. See Sören Kierkegaard. Gesammelte Werke, 36 sections in 26 volumes with an index volume, trans. and ed. by Emanuel Hirsch, Hayo Gerdes and Hans Martin Junghans, Düsseldorf and Cologne: Diederichs 1950–69.

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Hirsch belonged to the generation of German theologians who came of age at the time of the German Empire, were scarred as young men by the experiences of World War I, strove during the years of the Weimar Republic to bring about a programmatic turnaround within German Protestant theology, made a conscious decision for or against the National Socialist regime in the 1930s and 1940s, and were called to account for the consequences of this decision after World War II. Hirsch threw his support behind the “German Christian Movement.” He made this decision expressly with reference to Kierkegaard’s courage to dare, and maintained a stony silence about it after 1945. So how can one more precisely characterize Hirsch’s theology? In the interest of gaining an initial overview, theological approaches in Germany between the world wars can be divided into four groups: dialectical theology, religious socialism, the Luther renaissance, and the group of those who were less concerned about a new beginning than they were about continuity with pre-war theology.2 In its nascent period, the first group included Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976), Emil Brunner (1889– 1966) and Friedrich Gogarten (1887–1967), as well as Karl Barth (1886–1968) and Eduard Thurneysen (1888–1974). In terms of systematics, religious socialism is decisively reflected by Hirsch’s friend from his university days, Paul Tillich (1886– 1965). Church historian Karl Holl (1866–1926) is regarded as the head of the third group. He was followed by Heinrich Bornkamm (1901–77) and Hanns Rückert (1901–74), who were some years his junior; however, Werner Elert (1885–1954) and Paul Althaus (1888–1966) can also be placed within the wider circle of the Luther renaissance. The Tübingen theologians Karl Heim (1874–1958) and Adolf Schlatter (1852–1938), as well as Carl Stange (1870–1959), a colleague of Hirsch in Göttingen, can be numbered among the theologians concerned about continuity. Hirsch regarded himself as belonging to this third group, which he characterized retrospectively in 1933 as “young national Lutheranism.”3 Within it, however, he struck out on a path that was uniquely his own during the 1930s.4 Hirsch won a name for himself by consciously addressing the problems of German Protestant theology at the turn of the century as posed by Friedrich Nietzsche (1844– 1900) and historicism, which he dealt with in terms of the theory of subjectivity through recourse to the philosophy of German idealism, above all that of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814). Furthermore, his thought is distinguished by his joining the ranks of the so-called “Luther renaissance” during his elaboration of his approach to a theist philosophy of history first presented in 1920 and through numerous works after that period, as well as his assertion, right from the start in his works, of not only 2 Regarding this classification, see Hermann Fischer, Systematische Theologie. Konzeptionen und Probleme im 20. Jahrhundert, Stuttgart, Berlin, and Cologne: Kohlhammer 1992 (Grundkurs Theologie, vol. 6), pp. 15–75. 3 Emanuel Hirsch, Die gegenwärtige geistige Lage im Spiegel philosophischer und theologischer Besinnung. Akademische Vorlesungen zum Verständnis des deutschen Jahrs 1933, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1934, p. 114 (emphasis in original). 4 See Heinrich Assel, Der andere Aufbruch. Die Lutherrenaissance–Ursprünge, Aporien und Wege: Karl Holl, Emanuel Hirsch, Rudolf Hermann (1910–1935), Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1994 (Forschungen zur systematischen und ökumenischen Theologie, vol. 72), pp. 164–5.

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a historical interest but also a distinct interest in the interpretation and shaping of the religious and political present. Hirsch did not resist an understanding of his theology (in the early 1930s) as a political theology. The Kierkegaard-Studien are an eloquent testament to the connection between historical analysis and contemporary political appropriation. Emanuel Hirsch was born on June 14, 1888 in the village of Bentwisch (in the Prussian province of Brandenburg, in the modern-day Prignitz Administrative District) as the son of the pastor Albrecht Hirsch and his wife Clara, née Neumann. Hirsch described his parents as simple, devout people who lived entirely for their service to their parish and their children. Their passion-centered piety and deliberate quest for a personal relationship with God made a lasting impression on him.5 Hirsch spent most of his childhood and youth in Berlin before enrolling as a theology student there in 1906. Despite the influence of his parents, he evidenced openness toward historio-critical thinking right from the start of his studies. He turned with conviction to the dogma-historical approach of Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930) and Holl as well as the historio-critical exegesis of Hermann Gunkel (1862–1932). Years later, while serving as head of the Theologisches Stift (that is, the seminary study house) in Göttingen, he also delved more deeply into the literary criticism of Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918) and the religio-historical approach of Wilhelm Bousset (1865–1920). In terms of literature, Hirsch’s decades of exegetical studies are reflected in a series of historio-critical works on the New Testament.6 Looking back on his university years in Berlin, Hirsch saw more than just a personal peculiarity in the dynamic tension between heartfelt piety and critical rationality. He views this attempt to harmonize living practice and thought in reflection on Christian existence under the conditions of the present consciousness of truth as being characteristic not only of his own personal situation, but of modern humanity in general.7 Hirsch’s theology is based on the programmatic connection between Christian and human consciousness of truth. To secure the necessary historio-philosophical basis in terms of epistemology, he drew already as a student on the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) and later, in addition, on the ethical idealism of J.G. Fichte. Among the members of the Theological Faculty in Berlin, Hirsch ascribes a prominent role to his encounter with Holl. It was also Holl who advised Hirsch to embark on an academic career. After earning his degree in 1911, Hirsch first took a job as a private tutor, then, during the period 1912–14, assumed the post of director 5 See Emanuel Hirsch, “Meine theologischen Anfänge,” Freies Christentum, vol. 3, no. 10, 1951, p. 3. 6 See Emanuel Hirsch, “Mein Weg in die Wissenschaft (1911–16),” Freies Christentum, vol. 3, no. 11, 1951, p. 4; Emanuel Hirsch, Studien zum vierten Evangelium: Text, Literarkritik, Entstehungsgeschichte, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1936 (Beiträge zur historischen Theologie, vol. 11); Emanuel Hirsch, Das vierte Evangelium in seiner ursprünglichen Gestalt verdeutscht und erklärt, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1936; Emanuel Hirsch, Die Auferstehungsgeschichten und der christliche Glaube, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1940; Emanuel Hirsch, Frühgeschichte des Evangeliums, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1941. 7 See Hirsch, “Meine theologischen Anfänge,” p. 3.

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of the seminary study house at the University of Göttingen. In 1914, he earned a doctorate with his dissertation on the religious philosophy of J.G. Fichte. Because it was impossible at the time to qualify for a full professorship while serving as director of the seminary study house in Göttingen, Hirsch moved to Bonn. Here he qualified for a professorship in church history with a habilitation thesis, again about Fichte, in 1915. During these years, Hirsch was recognized in academic circles above all as a Fichte scholar.8 It was Hirsch’s experiences during the war years which provided the “real-life” background for his subsequent philosophy of history and his reception of Kierkegaard. The collective spirit of optimism of the year 1914 constitutes the experience underlying Hirsch’s ideal concept of the nation as a unit of social identification.9 To his mind, this ideal was by no means rendered obsolete by the 1918 defeat; on the contrary, he strove in his political-theological writings to reunite the various intellectual currents in Germany behind precisely this ideal. Hirsch elaborates on the existential pathos in the ethical acceptance of one’s own existence as one of the determinative bases of his simultaneously national and Christian view of history. He had already found this pathos in J.G. Fichte, whose Addresses to the German Nation (1808) were brought to bear anew during the Fichte Renaissance in Germany. During the 1920s, Hirsch integrated this existential pathos in his philosophy of history by referring not only to J.G. Fichte, but also to Kierkegaard. However, it is not only Hirsch’s philosophy that brings him closer to Kierkegaard’s thought, but his personal experiences during the war years as well. Because he was found to be unsuitable for military service as a combatant, Hirsch took over as pastor in the town of Schopfheim in Baden from February until October 1917.10 During the final years of the war, the rigors of parish work were compounded by a severe eye disease that nearly caused him to go blind. In several places, Hirsch describes the

8 See Emanuel Hirsch, Fichtes Religionsphilosophie im Rahmen der philosophischen Gesamtentwicklung Fichtes, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1914; Emanuel Hirsch, “Fichtes Religionsphilosophie in der Frühzeit der Wissenschaftslehre,” Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik, vol. 163, 1917, pp. 17‑36; Emanuel Hirsch, Christentum und Geschichte in Fichtes Philosophie, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1920. Hirsch’s Fichte studies have been anthologized in Emanuel Hirsch. Gesammelte Werke, vol. 24, ed. by Ulrich Barth, Waltrop: Spenner 2008. 9 “The deep inner excitement that the beginning of the war aroused in us arose from the fact that, in the heart of an innumerable crowd of average persons who were quite selfish in everyday life, a love suddenly erupted which was prepared to make even the final and ultimate sacrifice. I think that all the unimaginable horrors of the war are nothing compared to what it stirred up in people’s hearts then.” (Emanuel Hirsch, Deutschlands Schicksal. Staat, Volk und Menschheit im Lichte einer ethischen Geschichtsansicht, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1920, p. 106.) 10 Regarding the dates of his parish service, see Arnulf von Scheliha, “Anmerkungen zur frühen Biographie Emanuel Hirschs. Stationen und Motive im Aufbau theologischer Identität zwischen Wissenschaft und Kirche,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, vol. 106, 1995, pp. 98–107, see p. 104.

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period between 1914 and 1933 as a time during which he personally and the whole German people experienced the power of the hidden God.11 In 1918, Hirsch married Rose Ecke, the daughter of the Bonn theologian Gustav Ecke (1855–1920). In 1921, he was appointed to a professorship of church history in Göttingen. From fall 1921 until 1930, he served as editor of the Theologische Literaturzeitung, one of the authoritative theological reviews, in which, from 1923 on, he periodically published collective reviews of previously available and new German translations of Kierkegaard.12 Hirsch arrived in Göttingen at the same time as Barth. Until Barth left for Münster in 1925, the two thinkers engaged in an occasionally very intense exchange of ideas strained now and again by considerable theological and political differences. Prompted among other things by Barth’s recourse to Kierkegaard as reflected in the preface to the second edition of his Epistle to the Romans, Hirsch would also delve into Kierkegaard more intensely. Hirsch sought out and made contact with Scandinavian Kierkegaard researchers. By late 1922, he had learned enough Danish so that, by his own account, he could read Danish fluently. In 1922, he began corresponding privately and academically with the Danish Kierkegaard scholar Eduard Geismar (1871–1939). With the guidance and support of Geismar (and to a limited extent also Torsten Bohlin (1889–1950)), Hirsch began to translate and do independent research on previously untranslated discourses by Kierkegaard. He held lectures and, in 1927, published his first essay on Kierkegaard, a revised version of which is included in the Kierkegaard-Studien.13 With his huge output of monographs, Hirsch intended to “lay the foundation of a total appreciation of the whole”14 of Kierkegaard’s life and work. In terms of methodology, he joins in Geismar’s psychological-systematic reconstruction, whereby he places even more emphasis than Geismar did on analyzing the genesis of Kierkegaard’s thought.15 His monographs are dedicated to Geismar.

11 See Hirsch, “Meine Wendejahre (1916–21),” p. 4: “That is why I internalized Kierkegaard’s metaphor that relating to God in faith is like floating in the darkness and sensing the hand that holds one up only in the astonishment that, oddly enough, one does not fall and sink. In its depth, the relationship to God is not only thought, but lived antinomy (contradiction).” 12 See the Bibliography. Above all, Hirsch repeatedly criticizes Schrempf’s translation sharply, and Haecker’s edition also does not meet with his approval. Therefore Hirsch constantly quotes Kierkegaard in his own translation. 13 See Emanuel Hirsch, “Zum Verständnis von Kierkegaards Verlobungszeit,” Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie, vol. 5, no. 1, 1928, pp. 55‑75; Hirsch, Kierkegaard-Studien, pp. 61–91. An unpublished lecture from the year 1926 has since been published: Emanuel Hirsch, Kierkegaards Christusglaube, in Gesammelte Werke, vol. 13, pp. 9–76. 14 Hirsch, Kierkegaard-Studien, p. 960. 15 See Hirsch, Kierkegaard-Studien, p. 453; p. 959. A detailed reconstruction of the history of origins of the Kierkegaard-Studien in dialogue with Geismar may be found in my monograph, see Matthias Wilke, Die Kierkegaard-Rezeption Emanuel Hirschs. Eine Studie über die Voraussetzungen der Kommunikation christlicher Wahrheit, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 2005 (Hermeneutische Untersuchungen zur Theologie, vol. 49), pp. 141–87.

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Hirsch never recognized the constitution of the Weimar Republic. For him, its parliamentarianism was an expression of what Kierkegaard referred to in A Literary Review as “leveling” (Nivellering). This criticism of a culture of reflection that flogs all values to death may be what then prompted Hirsch to reach an assessment in 1934 that at first seems absurd: “Kierkegaard taught me directly to accept the National Socialist idea that the state must extend the external discipline that it exercises to all areas in which, without order and bonding, the conflict of the human will with the good escalates into life-destroying demonry. He taught me to see the seductive power of unbound, unrestrained public opinion.”16 In 1933, and specifically in Hitler’s rise to power, Hirsch sees the chance to escape this “leveling.” For him, this is not only a political concern, but a Christian one as well. In his view, the events of 1933 imply the possibility, as he writes to Geismar, “to realize the church’s great task of missionizing the nation.”17 For Hirsch, the nation, in German Volk, is a “unit of life”18 ordained by God, the existence of which is protected only by the nation state. While Hirsch also sees the danger of demonical superelevation of the Volksgemeinschaft or “national community,” he thinks that it is possible to banish this danger. To prevent this national pathos from degenerating into self-idolizing nationalism, it must be religiously deepened and limited by the gospel. The idea that the National Socialist movement, as Hirsch was able to observe it from its formation, could be capable of being or willing to be connected to the gospel is one of Hirsch’s—from a present-day point of view incomprehensible—fatal errors in realpolitik.19 In addition, it must be said that, above all in his writings of the early 1930s, Hirsch also casts his theological analyses, as fascinating as they are in their wealth of knowledge and interpretative force, in alarmingly polemical forms that make use of a terminology of power that reframes violence and racist “blood and soil” terminology. Now Kierkegaard, too, is cited in one essay as an “intellectual Viking prepared to attack every foreign shore on which other thinkers had built house and home.”20

Emanuel Hirsch, Christliche Freiheit und politische Bindung. Ein Brief an Dr. Stapel und anderes, Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt 1935, p. 60 (emphasis in original). 17 Letter to Geismar of June 1, 1933 (in Rigsarkivet in Copenhagen, Eduard Osvald Geismars privatarkiv, No. 5451, vol. 1, Korrespondenter A–K). 18 Emanuel Hirsch, Christliche Rechenschaft, vols. 1–2, in his Werke, vols. III.1, 1–1, 2, ed. by Hayo Gerdes, Berlin, Schleswig-Holstein: Die Spur 1978, vol. 2, p. 248. 19 Geismar remarks already in 1934 that Hirsch must be a book-learnt idealist (see Eduard Geismar, Religiøse Brydninger i det nuværende Tyskland, Copenhagen: Gads 1934, pp. 98–9.). See also Martin Ohst, “Der I. Weltkrieg in der Perspektive Emanuel Hirschs,” in Evangelische Kirchenhistoriker im ‘Dritten Reich,’ ed. by Thomas Kaufmann and Harry Oelke, Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus 2002 (Veröffentlichungen der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft für Theologie, vol. 21), pp. 64–121, see p. 87. 20 Emanuel Hirsch, “Sören Kierkegaard,” Süddeutsche Monatshefte, vol. 32, no. 5, 1935, pp. 296‑305, see p. 116. (Gesammelte Werke, vol. 13, pp. 88–103, see p. 96.) A classification of the ideologization carried out by Hirsch in this essay in the contemporary historical context is offered by Wilfried Greve, “Kierkegaard im Dritten Reich,” Skandinavistik, vol. 15, no. 1, 1985, pp. 29–49. 16

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At no time was Hirsch an opportunist, but rather a convinced nationalistic and then, starting in 1933, National Socialist theologian. He would repeat his criticism of a utilitarianism that flogs all existential pathos to death even after 1945. As he wrote in Ethos und Evangelium, that is, Ethos and Gospel (1966), he viewed it as a permanent “task to deepen the present human ethos on Christian terms.”21 Hirsch again fundamentally appealed to Kierkegaard as an authority, but this time, his criticism was no longer voiced in the guise of political awakening, but that of criticism of progress instead. In the 24 years during which Hirsch was active at the University of Göttingen, he very consciously engaged in university politics. He served as dean of the theological faculty for the first time from October 1924 until October 1925, then assumed the office once again in October 1932 and held it—due in part to the setting up of the power structures of the National Socialist state in the university sector—until 1939. In 1936, Hirsch transferred within the Göttingen faculty to a chair of Systematic Theology, and published his main work of systematic theology, Leitfaden zur christlichen Lehre (1938), which was republished in 1978, supplemented by explanatory notes by Hirsch, under the title Christliche Rechenschaft.22 In a letter to Geismar in June 1937, he writes the following about working on his dogmatics: “I frequently get a glimpse of Saint Søren peering over my shoulder and checking whether I have gotten it right, also in my course of lectures in dogmatics, where it is very helpful.”23 The Leitfaden constituted the systematic-theological core of Hirsch’s work. It gave expression to the insights gained from his discussion with Luther, J.G. Fichte, Kierkegaard and contemporary theology. Additionally, it was the basis for all theological writings that Hirsch published after World War II. Hirsch’s systematic approach places him in the tradition of neo-Protestant theology. Unlike the theologians in the line extending from Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (1768–1834), however, he does not define theology functionally, as a task of church leadership, but rather in broader terms “as a vigilant form of an original [reflection] belonging to the Christian faith.”24 Its basis is a theory of the self-knowledge of the human and Christian consciousness of truth. The church as an institution is accorded only a marginal role in Hirsch’s concept; for that, however, he additionally incorporates ethics and history in his dogmatics.25 In 1945, Hirsch was sent into early retirement. His championing of National Socialism and his eye complaint, which reappeared during the final years of the war, made this step inevitable for him. In the 1950s, Hirsch held private advanced seminars and influenced many younger theologians through them. In seclusion, blind, Emanuel Hirsch, Ethos und Evangelium, Berlin: de Gruyter 1966, p. 103. Regarding Kierkegaard, see ibid., for example, pp. 62–3; pp. 70–80; p. 86; p. 106; pp. 109–14; p. 135. 22 Emanuel Hirsch, Leitfaden zur christlichen Lehre, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1938. Citations in the following are according to the edition already cited: Hirsch, Christliche Rechenschaft, vols. 1–2. 23 Letter to Geismar of June 9, 1937. 24 Hirsch, Christliche Rechenschaft, vol. 1, p. 15. 25 See Hirsch, Christliche Rechenschaft, vol. 2, p. 174. 21

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but with an unflagging creative urge, he produced an extensive body of late work up until his death on July 17, 1972. During the period beginning around 1950, with the assistance of his wife, he translated Kierkegaard’s Samlede Værker into German, adding an introduction and an extensive critical apparatus in each case.26 Out of a total of 26 volumes of the German edition produced by Hirsch in cooperation with Hayo Gerdes (1928–81) and Hans Martin Junghans, Hirsch turned out 19 himself. In addition, a volume of selected works with texts by Kierkegaard was published in 1961 and a volume of essays entitled Wege zu Kierkegaard was published in 1968.27 Hirsch was a theological polymath. With the exception of Old Testament exegesis, he was active in all theological disciplines and also made a name for himself even outside of academic circles as an expert on Luther, the philosophy of German idealism, and Søren Kierkegaard. He sought community with other thinkers time and again, but found hardly anyone who was able to share or accept his unique connection of theological, philosophical, and political positions. Hirsch’s public disputes with Gogarten, Althaus, Bultmann, Barth, and Tillich offer a revealing picture of his systematic independence and his self-will. Between the two World Wars, Hirsch was a central figure in the debate within German theology about a form of Protestant dogmatics and ethics befitting the time. II. Kierkegaard in Hirsch’s Works In several biographical documents, Hirsch describes the all-embracing importance that Kierkegaard took on for him.28 He impressively describes how formative the encounter with Kierkegaard was for him. In 1963, he characterized the relationship that arose between them over the arc of the more than fifty years up until then with the words: “Since my student years, he has been a companion to me in my life and work with whom I have had personal, heart-to-heart discussions about nearly all my questions as an author, teacher and preacher.”29 An exhaustive overview of the places in Hirsch’s body of work where Kierkegaard is mentioned or used would have to cite virtually all of Hirsch’s works. Apart from his doctoral and habilitation theses and the initial works about Luther

See footnote 1 above. See Emanuel Hirsch, Sören Kierkegaard. Auswahl aus dem Gesamtwerk des Dichters, Denkers und religiösen Redners, Düsseldorf and Cologne: Diederichs 1961. 28 The relevant documents are Emanuel Hirsch, “Wie ich zu Kierkegaard kam. Aus einem Brief von Emanuel Hirsch an den Verlag C. Bertelsmann in Gütersloh,” in Mitteilungen aus dem Verlag C. Bertelsmann in Gütersloh, Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, October 1930, pp. 3–5 (Gesammelte Werke, vol. 13, pp. 77–80); Hirsch, Die gegenwärtige geistige Lage, p. 85; pp. 102–15; Hirsch, Christliche Freiheit und politische Bindung, pp. 14–15; p. 19; Hirsch, “Meine theologischen Anfänge,” p. 4; Hirsch, “Mein Weg in die Wissenschaft (1911–16),” pp. 4–5; Emanuel Hirsch, “Meine Wendejahre (1916–21),” p. 4; Hirsch, “Was ich Kierkegaard verdanke,” in his Gesammelte Werke, vol. 13, pp. 168–85; Hirsch, “Dank an Sören Kierkegaard,” in his Gesammelte Werke, vol. 13, pp. 186–90. 29 Hirsch, “Dank an Sören Kierkegaard,” p. 189. 26 27

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and the history of the Reformation,30 nearly all of his treatises contain quotations, allusions, paraphrases, or terminological borrowings. If one divides Hirsch’s works into three categories in accordance with the last quotation above—namely, works in the field of homiletics, studies in theology and church politics, and literary works for a broader audience—and names the most important writings in each category in chronological order, thematic focuses become apparent. To begin with, let us consider Hirsch’s initial encounters with Kierkegaard. Although they are not yet directly reflected in Hirsch’s literary output, they do, however, inform the manner of his reception of Kierkegaard’s works. Hirsch remembers that he was a young student when he first took notice of Kierkegaard. By happenstance, he got his hands on a German translation of For SelfExamination, which aroused his interest in Kierkegaard. He took up and delved more deeply into this interest in 1908 in a lecture course in church history taught by Karl Holl. Even decades later, Hirsch regards Holl’s lectures as a “brilliant presentation of Kierkegaard, given the situation at that time.”31 Because Holl presumably exerted a strong influence on Hirsch up until he passed his first theological exam in 1911, it is noteworthy that he not only views Holl as the father of the Luther renaissance, but already perceives a decisive Kierkegaardian influence in Holl’s interpretation of Luther.32 In Hirsch’s own estimation, the analysis of Kierkegaard offered in his 1926 book Jesus Christus der Herr still reflects Holl’s influence.33 For himself, Hirsch goes on to remember that, during his academic work as director of the seminary study house, he had already taken note of all of Kierkegaard’s works that were accessible in German at that time—in addition to individual translations, a German complete edition produced by Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf (1860–1944) was published during the period 1909–22; a German selection of the papers and journals did not appear until 1923.34 Thus we have mentioned the most important sources that inform Hirsch’s preliminary understanding of Kierkegaard’s life and work up until the start of his own scholarly studies in 1922. It seems objectively justifiable to begin a survey of Hirsch’s works with his work in the field of homiletics (in the broader sense). Hirsch not only explicitly says that Kierkegaard formed him as a preacher. For Hirsch, Kierkegaard himself is These works by Hirsch about Luther are collected in his Lutherstudien, which have since been published in his Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–3, ed. by Hans-Martin Müller, Waltrop: Spenner 198–99. Hirsch includes Kierkegaard in his essays about Luther from 1921 onward. See Hirsch, Lutherstudien, vol. 1, p. 135; p. 144; p. 206; pp. 206–7; vol. 2, pp. 164–7; p. 198; p. 200; vol. 3, p. 119, note 16; p. 143; p. 158, note 5; p. 189. 31 Hirsch, Kierkegaard-Studien, p. 695, note 1. For an analysis of Holl’s unpublished lecture, see Wilke, Die Kierkegaard-Rezeption Emanuel Hirschs, pp. 40–54. 32 See Hirsch, Kierkegaard-Studien, pp. 836–8, note 4. 33 See ibid., p. 695, note 1. 34 See Hirsch, “Wie ich zu Kierkegaard kam,” pp. 3–4. (Gesammelte Werke, vol. 13, pp. 77–8.) Hirsch reviews the selection of journals by Theodor Haecker immediately upon its publication. See Emanuel Hirsch, Review of Sören Kierkegaard. Religiöse Reden, trans. by Theodor Haecker, Munich 1922, Die Tagebücher, vols. 1–2, selected and trans. by Theodor Haecker, Innsbruck: Brenner Verlag 1923, Theologische Literaturzeitung, vol. 48, nos. 16–17, 1923, columns 351–3. 30

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also essentially a preacher. Hirsch shares Geismar’s estimation that Kierkegaard’s own religious views can be read unbroken out of his discourses. In his analysis of Kierkegaard’s works, he consequently relates the pseudonymous writings to the respective discourses and locates the terms “existence,” “dialectic” and “paradox” in the upbuilding works according to their original content.35 Hirsch’s first translation of a Kierkegaardian text, in 1923, is the upbuilding discourse “To Need God Is a Human Being’s Highest Perfection.”36 An initial selection of Hirsch’s own sermons Der Wille des Herrn appears in 1925; a second volume Das Evangelium, in the foreword to which Kierkegaard’s influence on his language of prayer is addressed, follows in 1929.37 In 1936, Hirsch publishes a study on the topic of the Old Testament and the preaching of the gospel.38 With this, he engages in the discussion about the first part of the Christian Bible rekindled by the National Socialist ideology. Hirsch’s aim is neither to strip the Old Testament from the Christian canon nor to put it on the same level as the New Testament. The hermeneutical basis of his treatise is a differentiated synoptic view of law and gospel which he applies to the objective relation of Old and New Testaments. Hirsch offers an interpretation of Reformation theology, but also refers expressly to Kierkegaard. In his Kierkegaard-Studien, he grappled intensely with Kierkegaard’s works of 1843. In the course of that, according to Hirsch, his thoughts regarding the Old Testament took on a clear structure for him.39 He prefaces his treatise with a motto consisting of two quotations from Kierkegaard’s 1854 writings.40 In 1936, Hirsch attributes to Kierkegaard at least the same awareness of the problems of preaching as he does to Luther. This assessment is confirmed in the compendium on homiletic meditation, the Predigerfibel, published by Hirsch in 1964. Kierkegaard is mentioned with conspicuous frequency in this work, in that his thinking is often paraphrased

See Hirsch, Kierkegaard-Studien, pp. 625–6; pp. 650–3; p. 833. See Emanuel Hirsch, translation of “Gottes bedürfen ist des Menschen höchste Vollkommenheit. Von Sören Kierkegaard,” Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie, vol. 1, no. 1, 1923, pp. 168‑96. See SKS 5, 291–316 / EUD, 297–326. 37 “In the prayers of the latter piece, I may be dependent on Kierkegaard somehow, I no longer know for certain.” Emanuel Hirsch, Das Evangelium. Predigten, Gütersloh: Bertelsmann 1929. (Gesammelte Werke, vol. 38, ed. by Hans Martin Müller, Waltrop: Spenner 2001, foreword.) Hirsch’s early sermons have since been published in connection with the new edition of his works under the title: Emanuel Hirsch, Ihr aber seid Christi. Schopfheimer Predigten 1917, in his Gesammelte Werke, vol. 36, ed. by Hans Martin Müller, Waltrop: Spenner 2001. See also Emanuel Hirsch, Das Wagnis des Glaubens. Predigten und Andachten 1930–1964, in his Gesammelte Werke, vol. 39, ed. by Hans Martin Müller, Waltrop: Spenner 2004. 38 Emanuel Hirsch, Das Alte Testament und die Predigt des Evangeliums, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1936. 39 Ibid., pp. 12–13. (Gesammelte Werke, vol. 32, p. 33; p. 47); Emanuel Hirsch, Kierkegaard-Studien, pp. 255–71; p. 642. 40 See SKS 25, 364–5, NB29:102 / JP 2, 2225 and SKS 25, 391–2, NB30:14 / JP 2, 2227. 35 36

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or the reader is reminded of his work.41 The topics in connection with which reference is made to him are ones that Hirsch had already dealt with extensively in the Kierkegaard-Studien. These are, namely, the simultaneity with Jesus Christ in his guise as a servant, the issues of Christian ethics in light of the difference between ancient Christianity and Western Christianity, and the theory of truth of the Concluding Unscientific Postscript with the aspects of the subjectivity of truth, the relationship between human and Christian consciousness of truth, and indirect communication. Kierkegaard plays a major role in Hirsch’s understanding of preaching, yet Hirsch by no means has an uncritical view of Kierkegaard as a religious speaker. For example, his exegesis of the parable of the Good Samaritan in Judge for Yourself! is cited as an especially striking example of an unsuccessful type of homiletic meditation.42 Hirsch deals with indirect communication in several places in his KierkegaardStudien. In the second issue of the monograph series, the subject of which is Kierkegaard’s idea of a writer’s existence, Hirsch analyzes the “Diapsalmata,” the early papers and journals, and other literary works in Kierkegaard’s opus. The result of this analysis is a definition of indirect communication as a “reflectional-symbolic type of Kierkegaard’s lyrical self-expression.”43 In the third issue, which retraces Kierkegaard’s origins as a religious thinker, Hirsch separates the communication thus defined as an ultimately depraved form of indirect communication from indirect communication in the broader sense. He describes this broader sense with recourse to the statements about preaching and existential communication in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript.44 Indeed, Hirsch’s systematic survey of the aforementioned aspects of indirect communication remains vague.45 However, the detailed analysis of Kierkegaard’s concept(s) of indirect communication is relevant both for Hirsch’s definition of preaching as interpretation and also for the concept of “dialogue,” in German, Zwiesprache,46 which he uses, as it were, as a terminologically related concept in his late work, as well as for the structure of his novels. Furthermore, his See Emanuel Hirsch, Predigerfibel, Berlin: de Gruyter 1964, p. 16; p. 31; p. 43; p. 51; pp. 60–4; p. 67; p. 69; p. 85; p. 92; pp. 127–8; pp. 134–5; p. 187; p. 249; pp. 288–9; pp. 294–50; p. 318; p. 338; p. 343; pp. 346–7; p. 404. 42 See ibid., pp. 127–8, in regard to SV1 XII, 328–30 / JFY 40–2. 43 Hirsch, Kierkegaard-Studien, p. 168 (without emphasis in original); see also ibid., pp. 169–92. 44 See ibid., pp. 733–4. 45 See ibid., p. 738: “Thus one asks oneself whether this entanglement of two different concepts of indirect communication may be a folly of Johannes Climacus which Kierkegaard guilefully ridicules.” 46 See Emanuel Hirsch, “Verkündigung und Zwiesprache,” in Christentumsgeschichte und Wahrheitsbewußtsein. Studien zur Theologie Emanuel Hirschs, ed. by Joachim Ringleben, Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter 1991, pp. 247‑54, see pp. 249–50; see also Emanuel Hirsch, Zwiesprache auf dem Wege zu Gott. Ein stilles Buch, Düsseldorf and Cologne: Diederichs 1960, pp. 9–14; about Kierkegaard see ibid., for example, p. 127; p. 162. Already in Kierkegaard-Studien, Hirsch writes: “As a dialogue, the upbuilding already by virtue of its form makes the category of the individual the fundamental determinant of the Christian thinking conveyed to him” (Hirsch, Kierkegaard-Studien, pp. 833–4). 41

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grappling with Kierkegaard’s understanding of Socratic maieutics leads him to the definition of dogmatics as “Christian accountability.”47 In Hirsch’s writings in the field of systematic theology, Kierkegaard is mentioned for the first time in 1920, in the treatise Deutschlands Schicksal. Staat, Volk und Menschheit im Lichte einer ethischen Geschichtsansicht. This historicalphilosophical work brought Hirsch an appointment to the chair of church history at the University of Göttingen and also brought him into closer contact with the Danish Kierkegaard scholar Geismar. Hirsch and Geismar are interested in an antispeculative philosophy of history. This common ground turns out to be an idea that both thinkers received from Kierkegaard. Hirsch introduces it in Deutschlands Schicksal with recourse to the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, from which he paraphrases two thoughts without citing specific places.48 Also, in other works by Hirsch from the early 1920s, it becomes evident that he perceives Kierkegaard above all as an antipode to a speculative philosophy of history, but sees in his own philosophy the danger of subjectivism. Worthy of mention in this regard are the essay “Nietzsche und Luther” and the short study Die Reich-GottesBegriffe des neueren europäischen Denkens, both published in 1921, as well as the 1923 treatise Die idealistische Philosophie und das Christentum.49 In the first edition of Der Sinn des Gebets (1921) there are three passages in which Kierkegaard’s thought is paraphrased which introduce him as a guarantor for the ethical seriousness of Christian prayer.50 In the second, revised edition of 1928, Hirsch refers explicitly in one passage to the discourse “One Who Prays Aright Struggles in Prayer and Is Victorious—in That God Is Victorious”51 and comes to address not only ethical seriousness, but also Kierkegaard’s thoughts on subjectivity.52 It is clear that, in 1928, Hirsch had delved much deeper into Kierkegaard than he had heretofore. Even in the first edition, however, it is apparent that he finds a concept See Hirsch, “Verkündigung und Zwiesprache,” pp. 248–9; see also Arnulf von Scheliha, Emanuel Hirsch als Dogmatiker. Zum Programm der “Christlichen Rechenschaft” im “Leitfaden zur christlichen Lehre,” Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter 1991 (Theologische Bibliothek Töpelmann, vol. 53), pp. 304–6. 48 See Hirsch, Deutschlands Schicksal, p. 50; p. 155. Besides this work, in the bibliography he also recommends Fear and Trembling. 49 See Emanuel Hirsch, “Nietzsche und Luther,” Lutherjahrbuch, vol. 2, 1920– 21 (Gesammelte Werke, vol. 2, p. 198; p. 200); Emanuel Hirsch, Die Reich-GottesBegriffe des neueren europäischen Denkens. Ein Versuch zur Geschichte der Staats- und Gesellschaftsphilosophie, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1921, p. 26; Emanuel Hirsch, “Die idealistische Philosophie und das Christentum,” in his Die idealistische Philosophie und das Christentum. Gesammelte Aufsätze, Gütersloh: Der Rufer 1926 (Studien des apologetischen Seminars, vol. 14), p. 75, note 2; pp. 94–5; p. 108, note 1; also ibid., p. 65 (Kierkegaard’s “Paradox”). See also the reference to a statement by Kierkegaard regarding certainty of salvation in Emanuel Hirsch, “Das Gericht Gottes,” Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie, vol. 1, no. 2, 1923, p. 223, note 1. 50 See Emanuel Hirsch, Der Sinn des Gebets, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1921, p. 12; p. 15; p. 20. 51 See Hirsch, Der Sinn des Gebets. Fragen und Antworten, 2nd ed., Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1928, p. 45. 52 See ibid., p. 27. Other mentions of Kierkegaard are found in ibid., p. 26; pp. 44–5. 47

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of the conscience in Kierkegaard’s works which is already familiar to him from his study of Luther. The year 1926 saw the publication of Hirsch’s first Christological treatise under the title Jesus Christus der Herr, on the heels of which an intense debate with Bultmann ensues.53 In this treatise (as well as in Leitfaden and the 1969 publication Betrachtungen zu Wort und Geschichte Jesu54) Hirsch programmatically connects a meditative approach with a historio-critical approach to the New Testament. What is conspicuous about Jesus Christus der Herr is the ambivalent relationship to Kierkegaard in which Hirsch positions himself. According to Hirsch, Kierkegaard’s discovery of the simultaneity of the believer with Jesus Christ in the guise of a servant is his outstanding achievement.55 The interpretational motif of the guise of servanthood and incognito become the decisive impulses for his own understanding of Easter, as he himself acknowledges in retrospect.56 He ties both together with the results of historio-critical research and explicates the understanding thus gained once more in the Leitfaden and in the study Die Auferstehungsgeschichten und der christliche Glaube (1940).57 In Hirsch’s view, however, in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard advocates a “reversal of faith into submission to authority, a voluntary martyrdom of the authority of the paradox.”58 Geismar will second this criticism with reference to Jesus Christus der Herr.59 Hirsch, however, will go on to revise it in the Kierkegaard-Studien.60 The three volumes of the Kierkegaard-Studien appeared between 1930 and 1933. Hirsch carries out an initial critical appropriation of what he has worked out simultaneously in two of his treatises in systematic theology, in which he also refers to the third volume of the Kierkegaard-Studien.61 In doing so, Hirsch now takes up a position above all with regard to two central topics in Kierkegaard’s works: Kierkegaard’s attack on Christendom and the question of the relation of human consciousness of truth to Christian consciousness of truth. In the Kierkegaard-Studien, Hirsch reconstructs the systematic-theological basis that led Kierkegaard to his final attack on the existing Christendom, and sets this in

Regarding Kierkegaard’s role in this dispute, see Wilke, Die Kierkegaard-Studien Emanuel Hirschs, pp. 116–39. 54 See Emanuel Hirsch, Betrachtungen zu Wort und Geschichte Jesu, Berlin: de Gruyter 1969. 55 See Emanuel Hirsch, Jesus Christus der Herr. Theologische Vorlesungen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1926, pp. 59–60. 56 See Hirsch, Kierkegaard-Studien, p. 931, note 3. 57 See Emanuel Hirsch, Osterglaube. Die Auferstehungsgeschichten und der christliche Glaube. Mit anderen Arbeiten Emanuel Hirschs zu den Auferstehungsgeschichten des Neuen Testaments neu herausgegeben von Hans Martin Müller, in his Gesammelte Werke, vol. 31, Waltrop: Spenner 2006, see, for example, p. 117. 58 Hirsch, Jesus Christus der Herr, p. 51; see also ibid., pp. 52–3; pp. 45–6. 59 See Eduard Geismar, Sören Kierkegaard. Seine Lebensentwicklung und seine Wirksamkeit als Schriftsteller, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1929, p. 319. 60 See Hirsch, Kierkegaard-Studien, pp. 694–708. 61 See ibid., p. 711, note 3; p. 717, note, 2; p. 770, note 5; p. 906, note 3; p. 952, note 1. 53

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relation to the remarks in Practice in Christianity.62 Nevertheless, in laying down his own ethical foundations in Schöpfung und Sünde in der natürlich-geschichtlichen Wirklichkeit des einzelnen Menschen (1931), he does not follow Kierkegaard’s ideal of ancient Christianity. According to Hirsch, it is imperative to evoke a double difference.63 On the one hand, the human being remains substantially different from Jesus Christ even as a justified sinner. On the other hand—Hirsch elaborates on this point in the third volume of the Kierkegaard-Studien in a continuation of Schöpfung und Sünde64—ancient Christianity differs from today’s Christianity as a Christian lifestyle characterized by the ideological and social conditions of the present. The Christian faith implies the demand to find one’s own lifestyle of discipleship at any given time. The foundation of Hirsch’s ethics is a differentiated synoptic view of general grace (mediated by creation) and reconciling grace (mediated by Christ). For this, he already refers in Schöpfung und Sünde to the differentiation of religiosity A and B in Concluding Unscientific Postscript, an analysis of which constitutes the systematic center of the second study in the third volume of the KierkegaardStudien, which appeared in 1933.65 The second topic is the question of the relationship between human consciousness of truth and Christian consciousness of truth. For Hirsch, this question grows out of his analysis of the pseudonymous refraction of the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Hirsch, too, seeks a form of Christian apologetics that is appropriate for his present and thinks that he has found it in his treatise Der Glaube nach evangelischer und römisch-katholischer Anschauung (1931).66 In it, Kierkegaard is mentioned in no less than nine, mostly central, passages.67 From his grappling with Kierkegaard, Hirsch draws the conclusion that the task is not to make becoming a Christian difficult. He holds that Protestant apologetics should be fundamentally sympathetic to that which is human. Apologetics, however, is just one aspect of his efforts toward a proper understanding of the statements in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript about ethical-religious and Christian truth. Another aspect that is closely related to the first 62 Ibid., pp. 412–22, see p. 417, note 1; Emanuel Hirsch, Schöpfung und Sünde in der natürlich-geschichtlichen Wirklichkeit des einzelnen Menschen. Versuch einer Grundlegung christlicher Lebensweisung, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1931 (Beiträge zur systematischen Theologie, vol. 1), pp. 94–5, endnote 36a. 63 See ibid. 64 See Hirsch, Kierkegaard-Studien, pp. 944–56. 65 See Hirsch, Schöpfung und Sünde, p. 44; p. 50; as well as Hirsch, KierkegaardStudien, pp. 768–9; pp. 802–1. Furthermore, in the context of the dialectics of supplicatory prayer, Hirsch refers very generally to the late Papers and Journals and cites Kierkegaard in a footnote as an example of a person living on the indistinct boundary between sin and sickness (see Hirsch, Schöpfung und Sünde, p. 55; p. 99, endnote 62). 66 See Hirsch, Kierkegaard-Studien, p. 770, note 5. 67 See Emanuel Hirsch, “Der Glaube nach evangelischer und römisch-katholischer Anschauung,” in Der römische Katholizismus und das Evangelium. Reden gehalten auf der Tagung christlicher Akademiker, Freudenstadt 1930, ed. by Hermann W. Beyer et al., Stuttgart: Calwer Vereinsbuchhandlung 1931, pp. 61–141, see p. 66; p. 109; p. 113; pp. 116– 17; p. 119; p. 124; p. 132; p. 134.

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is existential dialectics. At the beginning of the 1930s, Hirsch underlays his theology with a theory of modern times and in this connection rethinks the relation of faith and conscience. Now it comes to an appropriation of the concept of faith from The Sickness unto Death, to which Hirsch refers in three places in “Der Glaube nach evangelischer und römisch-katholischer Anschauung.”68 However, the definition of the depth of self-knowledge as despair remains foreign to him. He will exclude it already in 1938 as a mere exceptional case.69 Putting the relationship of Christian to human consciousness of truth in concrete terms that are relevant to the present is the concern that informs his 1933 series of lectures in church politics, Die gegenwärtige geistige Lage im Spiegel philosophischer und theologischer Besinnung. Already in the motto, a quotation from the Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, Kierkegaard is appealed to as a guarantor for the courage to interpret the “current intellectual situation” theologically.70 In the Kierkegaard-Studien, Hirsch refers back to his dialogue with Kierkegaard for the origin of his concretion. It is first reflected in the 1932 essay “Das Ewige und das Zeitliche,” reprinted in Die gegenwärtige geistige Lage.71 The essay as a whole is an analysis of § 2 of the Concluding Unscientific Postscript.72 In Die gegenwärtige geistige Lage, Hirsch emphasizes the daring character that is unique to his clear avowal of National Socialism. He sees that such a daring venture can fail, and yet justifies it by appealing to the irrationality of immediate emotion.73 Hirsch interprets Kierkegaard’s concept of the contending church as used in his Practice in Christianity as an image of a band of individuals arguing about proper discipleship and turns it against the view of the representatives of dialectical (kerygmatic) theology.74 In Hirsch’s interpretation, Kierkegaard’s socio-critical polemic becomes a question put to the conscience of individuals who, together, constitute the society. See ibid., p. 113; p. 117; p. 119. Hirsch’s analysis of The Sickness unto Death is found in Hirsch, Kierkegaard-Studien, pp. 909–23. He also stands by this interpretation in his later writings, see Hirsch, Geschichte der neuern evangelischen Theologie, vol. 5, pp. 471–7. For Hirsch’s interpretation of Kierkegaard’s concept of faith see Wilke, Die KierkegaardRezeption Emanuel Hirschs, pp. 463–4. 69 See Hirsch, Christliche Rechenschaft, vol. 1, pp. 259–60; Hirsch, Geschichte der neuern evangelischen Theologie, vol. 5, p. 477. 70 See SKS 8, 190 / UD, 84; as well as the reference to Kierkegaard in Hirsch, Die gegenwärtige geistige Lage, motto; p. 13; p. 45; p. 47; p. 50; p. 85; p. 108; pp. 110–13; p. 115. Hirsch reaffirms the motto after World War II in one of his late novels; see Emanuel Hirsch, Der neungekerbte Wanderstab. Roman, Lahr: Kaufmann, 3rd ed., 1959 [1955], p. 229. 71 See Hirsch, Kierkegaard-Studien, p. 813, note 4; Hirsch, Die gegenwärtige geistige Lage, pp. 154–65. 72 See Hirsch, Die gegenwärtige geistige Lage, p. 158; p. 161. See also SKS 7, 364–478 / CUP1, 431–525, mainly SKS 7, 428–37 / CUP1, 471–83. 73 See Hirsch, Die gegenwärtige geistige Lage, p. 27. 74 See Hirsch, Kierkegaard-Studien, p. 939, note  1; p. 950, note  2. See also Hirsch, Christliche Rechenschaft, vol. 1, p. 87; Emanuel Hirsch, Das kirchliche Wollen der Deutschen Christen, Berlin: Grevemeyer 1933, p. 5; Emanuel Hirsch, Zweifel und Glaube, Frankfurt am Main: Diesterweg 1937, p. 62. 68

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The remarks about human consciousness of God are connected with the decisionistic interpretation of the Kierkegaardian moment.75 In 1934, Hirsch coins the term “German Socratics”76 (which, as far as I can tell, occurs only in this treatise) for his interpretation of faith in God’s concealed action in history. He writes that it is the venture, at the frontier of knowledge, to still make statements about the meaning of history and about the action necessary now.77 From the impulses which he received from Kierkegaard, Hirsch comes up with a form of existential analysis that is uniquely his own. In his presentation from 1934, the individual, on the one hand, becomes a representative of the group, while groups, on the other hand, such as the nation or the church, are addressed as subjects of action and existentialphilosophical categories are imposed on them.78 Immediately upon publication, Die gegenwärtige geistige Lage set off a storm of criticism with its interpretation of Kierkegaard. For very different reasons, both Tillich and Geismar felt compelled to point out to Hirsch the limits and obscurities of his presentation. Above all, Geismar criticizes the undifferentiated sympathy with which Hirsch dares to justify the violent dictatorship of the National Socialist regime. Appealing to Kierkegaard, he, for his part, among other things, recalls the memory of the polemic word of faith.79 The treatise Christliche Freiheit und politische Bindung. Ein Brief an Dr. Stapel und anderes (1935), is Hirsch’s response to Geismar (and Tillich).80 Despite the criticism from his Scandinavian colleague, Hirsch made no more decisive corrections in his interpretation of Kierkegaard or his continuing appropriation after 1933—not even after 1945. In 1936 Hirsch transferred to the chair of systematic theology in Göttingen. His principal work in dogmatics, Leitfaden zur christlichen Lehre, to which we have already referred many times, emerges from the lectures of these years.81 The method which informs the structure and reasoning of the Leitfaden is Hirsch’s interpretation of existential analysis, according to which the subjectively existing thinker is Hirsch, Die gegenwärtige geistige Lage, see, for example, p. 48; p. 108; p. 110. Ibid., p. 47; see also ibid., p. 27. 77 “The existence of the person philosophizing becomes the measure of the historical existentiality of the philosophy. It is known that Socrates’ philosophizing possesses an unheard of power in terms of such historical existentiality as a result of its originator’s emotional involvement in the historical upheaval of the Hellenistic nomos at that time” (ibid., p. 48). 78 See ibid., p. 97; p. 129. Kodalle deals at length, but very polemically in some passages, with the image of Kierkegaard presented in this treatise; see Klaus-Michael Kodalle, Die Eroberung des Nutzlosen. Kritik des Wunschdenkens und der Zweckrationalität im Anschluß an Kierkegaard, Paderborn: Schöningh 1988, pp. 276–80. 79 See Geismar, Religiøse Brydninger, pp. 100–10. 80 The references to Kierkegaard are found in Hirsch, Christliche Freiheit und politische Bindung, p. 14; p. 16; p. 19; p. 24; p. 30; p. 49; p. 54; pp. 59–60; p. 64; p. 66; p. 74. 81 That Hirsch spent many years studying Kierkegaard’s life and work is apparent from a reading of both the dogmatic and ethical as well as the historical-philosophical statements in this work. See also the places in which Kierkegaard is mentioned in Hirsch, Christliche Rechenschaft, vol. 1, p. 49; pp. 87–9; p. 152; p. 167; p. 169; p. 171; p. 193; p. 201; pp. 259–60; p. 266; p. 293; p. 304; p. 308; vol. 2, p. 14; p. 44; p. 70; p. 142; p. 170; p. 196; p. 310; p. 324; p. 330. 75 76

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constitutive for the thought to be explicated. In Dogmatics I, the Leitfaden lays out “The self-image of western man on the cusp to Christian truth,” while Dogmatics II approaches this boundary in the opposite direction, namely, by explication of the knowledge of Christian truth received in faith in the gospel.82 In the Leitfaden, too, Hirsch makes an effort to explicate both interpretations of truth separated by a boundary, but to nevertheless think of them as united in their foundation. With a global reference to Kierkegaard’s tenet of stages, Hirsch carries out a differentiated allocation of the revelation that deepens and transforms selfknowledge.83 The self-knowledge in the conscience, which always remains in the tension of antinomies, and the Christian faith as an “endured act of God’s becoming certain as love,”84 both bear the structure of “being made transparent to themselves in God.”85 The Christian truth does not provide any new knowledge about God to the subjectively existing thinker, but does indeed provide a new clarity about the thinker’s personal relationship to God.86 Already in Kierkegaard-Studien, Hirsch is anxious to show that Kierkegaard knows the categories of faith, the moment, paradox, and vexation in a general human and a Christian form in each case.87 Accordingly, the starting point for Hirsch’s criticism of Kierkegaard is the notion of simultaneity (in Danish Samtidighed), to which Kierkegaard does not assign any general human counterpart.88 Also in the paragraphs of the Leitfaden that bear the heading, “The Simultaneity of Faith with Jesus Christ,”89 he refers to the notion of simultaneity in Practice in Christianity, but sets a historical simultaneity alongside the meditative simultaneity borrowed from Kierkegaard. According to Hirsch, it is only through this historical simultaneity that a genuinely human encounter with Jesus becomes possible. Despite the drastic correction which Hirsch thus makes to Kierkegaard, he still describes its strengths in the following. They lie in an image of Christ which, in contrast to that conveyed by Luther, is more adequate for the modern age. Hirsch concludes that Kierkegaard thinks of the relationship in the (meditative) simultaneity in subjective-theoretical terms and he thinks of it in a manner that treats doubt in Jesus’ authority much more radically than Luther does.90 In the Leitfaden, Hirsch’s philosophy of history is based on the mature form of his theory of the modern age. It is connected with the theory of the consciousness See ibid., vol. 1, p. 147; ibid., vol. 2, p. 1. See ibid., vol. 2, p. 14. This difference in the concept of revelation already looms in analysis of The Sickness unto Death in the Kierkegaard-Studien; see Hirsch, KierkegaardStudien, pp. 919–21. 84 Hirsch, Christliche Rechenschaft, vol. 2, p. 65. 85 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 189. 86 See ibid., p. 260. 87 See Hirsch, Kierkegaard-Studien, pp. 683–4; pp. 685–6; pp. 693–4; pp. 928–30. 88 See ibid., pp. 702–3; pp. 799–802; pp. 880–1. See also Ulrich Barth, Die Christologie Emanuel Hirschs. Eine systematische und problemgeschichtliche Darstellung ihrer geschichtsmethodologischen, erkenntniskritischen und subjektivitätstheoretischen Grundlagen, Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter 1992, pp. 280–1. 89 Hirsch, Christliche Rechenschaft, vol. 1, p. 48 (emphasis mine). 90 See ibid., p. 49. 82 83

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of truth, the adaptation of indirect communication, simultaneity, and the notion of incognito. Hirsch interprets the latter, however, not only Christologically, but as the ethical unrecognizability of the subjectively existing believer who hides his attitude of faith behind the action dictated by purposively rational reason.91 In Hirsch’s theory of the modern age, Luther is an archetype of the modern self-image, who, however, remained grounded in the thinking of his age. It was only the sweeping social and intellectual-historical upheavals in Europe during the years after the Thirty Years’ War that brought about the Unformung des christlichen Denkens in der Neuzeit, which Hirsch documents in his 1938 sourcebook of the same name incorporating intellectual-historical texts from Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) to Kierkegaard.92 Thus the modern Western consciousness of truth that precludes a return to old Protestant tenets for the honest thinker gradually took shape. According to Hirsch, what is constitutive for the modern interpretation of the world is, on the one hand, doubt about every external authority and, on the other hand, the central position of autonomy and with it of subjectivity. In his opinion, Kierkegaard gave a great deal of consideration to both constitutive elements. Hirsch, however, also uses both as a standard that Kierkegaard’s thoughts must meet. His theory of the origin and form of the modern consciousness of truth stands behind Hirsch’s publications after the Leitfaden and then also after World War II. Besides the works already cited, other works published during this period that are worthy of mention here are Das Wesen des reformatorischen Christentums (1963), Hauptfragen christlicher Religionsphilosophie (1963), Ethos und Evangelium (1966), Weltbewusstsein und Glaubensgeheimnis (1967), and the Geschichte der neuern evangelischen Theologie im Zusammenhang mit den allgemeinen Bewegungen des europäischen Denkens. In Chapter 53 of Geschichte der neuern evangelischen Theologie, Hirsch characterizes the mid-nineteenth century as a time when writers supplant theologians as interpreters of the present.93 According to Hirsch, this happens precisely because the traditional form of religious teaching has lost its power to persuade. As previously in the Kierkegaard-Studien, Hirsch presents Kierkegaard as a poet of the religious, and just as he does there, Hirsch pays special attention to the connection of the human consciousness of truth with the Christian consciousness of truth. In terms of content, there are no important shifts in presentation or assessment in comparison with the elaborations of 1930–33. This is also true of the remaining late works named. The references to Kierkegaard are found in them in the context of the respectively stated topics, mostly paraphrased or as an outline of the respective train of thought.

See Hirsch, Christliche Rechenschaft, vol. 2, pp. 200–2. See Emanuel Hirsch, Die Umformung des christlichen Denkens in der Neuzeit. Ein Lesebuch, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1938. Hirsch uses excerpts from Philosophical Fragments, The Sickness unto Death. and Practice in Christianity as well the various upbuilding discourses, the late articles in connection with Kierkegaard’s attack on the Church Christendom and the papers and journals; see Hirsch, Die Umformung des christlichen Denkens in der Neuzeit. Ein Lesebuch, pp. 319–43. 93 See Hirsch, Die Geschichte der neuern evangelischen Theologie, vol. 5, pp. 609–10. 91 92

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With his works published in the 1960s, Hirsch aspires to appeal to a readership that is not limited to the world of professional theologians. His work as an author, which brings us to the third and final thematic area, however, goes further. A total of 12 novels and stories, which reflect Kierkegaard’s influence in their structure and in many details, were published during the years 1950–1964. The novel Der neungekerbte Wanderstab [i.e., “The Nine-Notched Walking Stick”], which is set partially in Copenhagen and in which Kierkegaard and some of his contemporaries appear, is especially worthy of mention.94 III. Hirsch’s Appropriation of Kierkegaard’s Thought The essential characteristic of Hirsch’s interpretation of Kierkegaard, which he also names as such, is that while he describes Kierkegaard as the diametrical opposite of Hegel, above and beyond this he sees a direct connection between Kierkegaard and the Pietism of the Herrnhuter, German Romanticism, Schleiermacher, and German idealism. Hirsch comes to the conclusion that religion left a strong impression on Kierkegaard from a very early age; from Romanticism, he received impulses that were essential for working out his anthropology.95 Schleiermacher left an indelible stamp on Kierkegaard’s understanding of dogmatics.96 It was idealism, however, above all the philosophy of J.G. Fichte, which formed the foundation upon which Kierkegaard developed his thought regarding religion and the theory of truth.97 In all of his works, Hirsch reads Kierkegaard as a Christian thinker who belongs to the “idealistic-romantic type in its superlative form.”98 Besides philosophy, it is Luther with whom Hirsch continuously sets Kierkegaard in relation. Already in 1923, he found the previous research lacking for not having sufficiently clarified Kierkegaard’s relationship to Luther’s theology.99 Hirsch’s

Kierkegaard is mentioned by name in the following places in the novel: Hirsch, Der neungekerbte Wanderstab, pp. 386–7; p. 393; pp. 419–21; pp. 430–1; p. 463; p. 472; p. 483; p. 504; pp. 507–8; p. 521; p. 525; p. 536; p. 539; p. 544; pp. 546–7; pp. 549–55; p. 606; p. 614. 95 See Hirsch, Kierkegaard-Studien, pp. 59–60. 96 See ibid., p. 691; as well as the note on the corresponding passage in Hirsch’s translation of The Concept of Anxiety, in Sören Kierkegaard. Gesammelte Werke, sections 11 and 12, pp. 242–3, endnote 35. See also Hirsch, Geschichte der neuern evangelischen Theologie, vol. 5, pp. 453–4. 97 In separate sections of the Kierkegaard-Studien, Hirsch analyzes the influence of J.G. Fichte, Karl Daub (1765–1836), Johann Eduard Erdmann (1805–92), Johann Georg Hamann (1730–88) and Immanuel Hermann Fichte (1796–1879). Additionally, Schleiermacher is used by way of comparison throughout. On the other hand, Hirsch considers it the job of Scandinavian researchers to uncover Kierkegaard’s roots in the Danish intellectual world; see Hirsch, Kierkegaard-Studien, pp. 454–6. 98 Hirsch, Geschichte der neuern evangelischen Theologie, vol. 5, p. 468. 99 See Hirsch, Review of Sören Kierkegaard. Religiöse Reden, trans. by Theodor Haecker, Theologische Literaturzeitung, vol. 48, nos. 16–17, 1923, column 353. 94

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aspiration to close this gap is apparent from a reading of his own Kierkegaard studies as well as his theological adaptation of Kierkegaard.100 For Hirsch, this intellectual-historical classification and typification also implies two additional tasks. On the one hand, he is of the opinion that Kierkegaard’s thought will be effective only if the translation orients itself to the style of language of the original text. When it comes to translation, the interpretation should offer no more and no less than a “reading aid.”101 Because Hirsch criticized the translations available to him precisely for not following this maxim, but mixing both in the translation, he had already rendered his own translations of the passages of Kierkegaard’s writings considered in his Kierkegaard-Studien.102 On the other hand, Hirsch points out that because Kierkegaard’s thought is tied to a specific intellectual-historical situation, it will need reshaping if it is to remain effective in the twentieth century.103 He took on both tasks. However, Hirsch was only partly able to live up to his own standard. His interpretation of Kierkegaard is more than simply a “reading aid.” It merges seamlessly in part with the productive appropriation. This seamless transition from interpretation via reception to appropriation forces today’s researchers to maintain a critical detachment with regard to Hirsch’s image of Kierkegaard. Viewed benevolently, however, it is also a sign of the great extent to which Hirsch’s own theology is a response to the questions which he put to himself in his analysis of Kierkegaard. In Hirsch’s appropriation, Kierkegaard’s existential-dialectic approach is expanded into a theory of communication that is intersubjective and positively integrates historio-critical knowledge while being extremely colored by politics in many phases. As has been shown, Hirsch by no means limits his appropriation to just a few aspects or selected writings. On the contrary, his interpretation and reception are subject to a “total appreciation of the whole.” However, it is precisely this requirement that points to the limitation inherent in his work. Hirsch’s systematic-genetic analyses of Kierkegaard’s intellectual and spiritual development can only partially acknowledge possible contradictions in Kierkegaard’s being and work and let them stand as such. Thus Hirsch’s interpretations provoke one to deconstruct the “total understanding of the whole.” Hirsch reads Kierkegaard as a Christian thinker, and he reads him as a romanticidealistic author. With his synoptic view of both aspects, Hirsch assumes, in his time, a position between the existential-philosophical and dialectical-theological reception of Kierkegaard. He was one of the first researchers in Germany to set the upbuilding discourses in a differentiated relation to the respective pseudonymous writings

Accurately observed by Scheliha, Emanuel Hirsch als Dogmatiker, pp. 165–6, footnote 76: “For Hirsch, the reciprocal integration of the categories of Reformation piety and Idealistic philosophy sums up Kierkegaard’s person and work in a nutshell. It is significant that Hirsch always refers to Kierkegaard when he wants to point out the insufficiencies of Luther or Idealism.” 101 Hirsch, Kierkegaard-Studien, p. 957. 102 See Hirsch, Kierkegaard-Studien, pp. 3–4. 103 See Hirsch, Geschichte der neuern evangelischen Theologie, vol. 5, p. 468. 100

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published at around the same time. This is the point where Hirsch’s approach to interpretation points to the future.104 Another starting point for future research has to do with the history of research and reception. Hirsch’s influence as a Kierkegaard researcher extends beyond the domain of German theology. Hirsch is in conversation with Geismar and Bohlin and sets himself with his own method in relation to Peter Andreas Heiberg (1864– 1926) in several places.105 However, scholarship has yet to come to terms with his relationship to contemporary Scandinavian Kierkegaard research, including, for example, his relationship to the research approach of Sweden’s Valter Lindström (1907–91).106 The same is true where the history of Hirsch’s influence in Germany is concerned. In my opinion, it is not justifiable to speak of a “ ‘Göttingen tradition of interpretation founded by Hirsch.’ ”107 The work of the corresponding researchers varies too widely in terms of method and research interest for this. Still, it can be said that Hirsch’s systematic-theological reception of Kierkegaard provided decisive impulses for the work of Hayo Gerdes (1928–81),108 Hermann Fischer (b. 1933), and Joachim Ringleben (b. 1945), just to name a few important examples. Hirsch’s methodical grasp and also the results of his research were, and still are, being taken note of internationally. A glance at the bibliography, however, shows that the history of his influence has only partially been addressed.

“I want readers who would like to let me show them what I have seen. However, I want them to then have the courage to be an eye themselves and to look this man (sc. Kierkegaard) in the face themselves.” See Hirsch, Kierkegaard-Studien, p. 958. 105 See Hirsch, Kierkegaard-Studien, see, for example, p. 249; pp. 959–60. 106 In the 1940s, Lindström also refers to works by Hirsch that, strictly speaking, do not belong to the area of Kierkegaard research. See the numerous references to Hirsch in Valter Lindström, Stadiernas teologi. En Kierkegaard-Studie, Lund and Copenhagen: Gleerup and Gads 1943; Valter Lindström, Efterföljelsens teologi hos Sören Kierkegaard, Stockholm: Svenska Kyrkans Diakonistyrelses Bokförlag 1956. A survey of Hirsch and Lindström is offered in Anders Gemmer’s 1946 review of “Ufordøjet Kierkegaard,” Gads danske Magasin, vol. 40, 1946, pp. 377–83. 107 Heiko Schulz, “Die theologische Rezeption Kierkegaards in Deutschland und Dänemark. Notizen zu einer historischen Typologie,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 1999, p. 231. 108 See Hayo Gerdes, “Was Kierkegaard für mich bedeutet,” Zum Beispiel, vol. 16, no. 3, 1981, pp. 22–4. 104

Bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Hirsch’s Corpus Deutschlands Schicksal. Staat, Volk und Menschheit im Lichte einer ethischen Geschichtsansicht, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1920, p. 50; p. 155. “Nietzsche und Luther,” Lutherjahrbuch, vol. 2, 1920–21, pp. 61–106. (Also in his Lutherstudien, vol. 2 in Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–48, ed. by Hans Martin Müller et al., Waltrop: Spenner 1998–, pp. 168–206, see p. 198; p. 200.) Die Reich-Gottes-Begriffe des neueren europäischen Denkens. Ein Versuch zur Geschichte der Staats- und Gesellschaftsphilosophie, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1921, p. 26. Der Sinn des Gebets, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1921, p. 12; p. 15; p. 20. Translation of “Gottes bedürfen ist des Menschen höchste Vollkommenheit. Von Sören Kierkegaard,” Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie, vol. 1, no. 1, 1923, pp. 168–96. “Das Gericht Gottes,” Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie, vol. 1, no. 2, 1923, pp. 199–226, see p. 223, note 1. “Die Rechtfertigungslehre Luthers” (1923), in his Lutherstudien, vol. 3 in Gesammelte Werke, vol. 3, ed. by Hans Martin Müller, Waltrop: Spenner 1999, pp. 109–29, see p. 119, note 16. Review of Sören Kierkegaard. Ausgewählte Christliche Reden, trans. by J. v. Reincke, 3rd ed., Gießen 1923; Am Fuße des Altars. Christliche Reden, trans. by Theodor Haecker, Munich; Der Pfahl im Fleisch, trans. by Theodor Haecker, 2nd ed., Innsbruck 1922; Die Krisis und eine Krisis im Leben einer Schauspielerin, trans. by Theodor Haecker, Innsbruck 1922, Theologische Literaturzeitung, vol. 48, no. 9, 1923, columns 206–7. Review of Sören Kierkegaard. Religiöse Reden, trans. by Theodor Haecker, Munich 1922; Die Tagebücher, trans. by Theodor Haecker, Innsbruck 1923, Theologische Literaturzeitung, vol. 48, nos. 16–17, 1923, columns 351–3. Review of Sören Kierkegaard. Die Tagebücher, vols. 1–2, trans. by Theodor Haecker, Innsbruck 1923, Theologische Literaturzeitung, vol. 49, no. 13, 1924, columns 278–9. Review of Sören Kierkegaard. Leben und Walten der Liebe, trans. by A. Dorner und Chr. Schrempf, Jena 1924, Theologische Literaturzeitung, vol. 49, no. 18, 1924, column 405. Review of Eduard Geismar’s Religionsfilosofi. En Undersøgelse af Religionens og Kristendommens Væsen, Copenhagen 1924, Theologische Literaturzeitung, vol. 49, nos. 23–4, 1924, columns 505–9, see column 507.

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Review of Sören Kierkegaard. Die Reinheit des Herzens, trans. by L. Geismar, Munich 1924, Theologische Literaturzeitung, vol. 50, no. 3, 1925, columns 62–3. “Ein religiöser Zeitroman” (I. Anker Larsen’s Stein der Weisen), Zeitwende, vol. 1, no. 3, 1925, pp. 249–63, see p. 250; pp. 254–5. Review of F.C. Karup’s Kampen om Kristendommen, Copenhagen 1922; Chr. Reventlow’s Breve fra Skærsilden, Copenhagen 1924; Helge Rode’s Pladsen med de grønne Træer, Copenhagen 1925, Theologische Literaturzeitung, vol. 50, no. 8, 1925, columns 169–73, see column 171. Jesus Christus der Herr. Theologische Vorlesungen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1926, p. 7; pp. 45–6; pp. 51–3; pp. 59–60. Die idealistische Philosophie und das Christentum. Gesammelte Aufsätze, Gütersloh: Der Rufer 1926 (Studien des apologetischen Seminars, vol. 14), p. 65; p. 75, note 2; pp. 94–5; p. 108, note 1; p. 217, note 1; p. 223. Review of Sören Kierkegaards Papirer, vols. X–1, 1924; X–2, 1926, Theologische Literaturzeitung, vol. 51, no. 12, 1926, columns 313–17. “Bultmanns Jesus,” Zeitwende, vol. 2, 1926, pp. 309–13, see p. 312. “Antwort an Rudolf Bultmann,” Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie, vol. 4, no. 4, 1927, pp. 631–61, see pp. 636–42; p. 646; p. 654; p. 659. Review of Eduard Geismar’s Søren Kierkegaard. Hans Livsudvikling og Forfattervirksomhed, parts 1–2, Copenhagen 1926, Theologische Literaturzeitung, vol. 52, no. 3, 1927, columns 60–2. Translation of “Der Hohepriester. Von Sören Kierkegaard,” Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie, vol. 4, no. 2, 1927, pp. 395–404. Review of Christoph Schrempf’s Sören Kierkegaard. Eine Biographie, vol. 1, Jena 1927, Theologische Literaturzeitung, vol. 52, no. 23, 1927, columns 548–9. “Zum Verständnis von Kierkegaards Verlobungszeit,” Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie, vol. 5, no. 1, 1928, pp. 55–75. Review of Sören Kierkegaards Papirer, vol. X–3, 1927, Theologische Literaturzeitung, vol. 53, no 6, 1928, columns 136–9. Der Sinn des Gebets. Fragen und Antworten, 2nd ed., Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1928, pp. 26–7; pp. 44–5. Das Evangelium. Predigten, Gütersloh: Bertelsmann 1929. (Gesammelte Werke, vol. 38, ed. by Hans Martin Müller, Waltrop: Spenner 2001, see foreword.) Review of Eduard Geismar’s Sören Kierkegaard. Hans Livsudvikling og Forfattervirksomhed, parts 3–6, Copenhagen 1927–28; Sören Kierkegaard. Seine Lebensentwicklung und seine Wirksamkeit als Schriftsteller, parts 1–5, Göttingen 1927–29, Theologische Literaturzeitung, vol. 54, no. 10, 1929, columns 224–30. Review of Christoph Schrempf’s Sören Kierkegaard. Eine Biographie, vol. 2, Jena 1928, and Friedr. Adolf Voigt’s Sören Kierkegaard im Kampfe mit der Romantik, der Theologie und der Kirche. Zur Selbstprüfung unserer Gegenwart empfohlen (!), Berlin 1928, Theologische Literaturzeitung, vol. 54, no. 11, 1929, columns 260–2. Review of Gustaf Ljunggren’s Synd och skyld i Luthers teologi, Stockholm 1928; and Niels Nøjgaard’s Om Begrebet Synd hos Luther, Copenhagen 1929, Theologische Literaturzeitung, vol. 54, nos. 15–16, 1929, columns 360–6, see column 366. Review of Sören Kierkegaard. Über den Begriff der Ironie. Mit ständiger Rücksicht auf Sokrates, trans. by H.H. Schaeder, Munich 1929; Der Begriff der Ironie

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mit ständiger Rücksicht auf Sokrates, trans. by W. Kütemeyer, Munich 1929, Theologische Literaturzeitung, vol. 54, no. 18, 1929, columns 424–5. Review of Frithjof Brandt’s Den unge Søren Kierkegaard. En Række nye Bidrag, Copenhagen 1929, Theologische Literaturzeitung, vol. 55, no. 7, 1930, columns 145–51. Review of Sören Kierkegaards Papirer, vol. X–4, 1929, Theologische Literaturzeitung, vol. 55, no. 8, 1930, columns 183–5. “Kierkegaards Erstlingsschrift. (Kierkegaard-Studien, zweites Stück),” Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie, vol. 8, no. 1, 1930, pp. 90–144. Fichtes, Schleiermachers und Hegels Verhältnis zur Reformation, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1930, pp. 46–9. (Also in his Lutherstudien, vol. 2 in Gesammelte Werke, pp. 121–68, see pp. 164–6.) Kierkegaard-Studien, Heft 1: Zur inneren Geschichte 1835–1841; Heft 2: Der Dichter; Heft 3, 1–3: Der Denker, Gütersloh: Bertelsmann 1930–33 (Studien des apologetischen Seminars, vols. 29; 31; 32; 36). (Gesammelte Werke, vols. 11–12.) “Wie ich zu Kierkegaard kam. Aus einem Brief von Emanuel Hirsch an den Verlag C. Bertelsmann in Gütersloh,” in Mitteilungen aus dem Verlag C. Bertelsmann in Gütersloh, Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, October 1930, pp. 3–5. (Gesammelte Werke, vol. 13, pp. 77–80.) Schöpfung und Sünde in der natürlich-geschichtlichen Wirklichkeit des einzelnen Menschen. Versuch einer Grundlegung christlicher Lebensweisung, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1931 (Beiträge zur systematischen Theologie, vol. 1), p. VI, p. 13; p. 44; p. 50; p. 55; pp. 90–1, endnote 8; p. 93, endnote 31; pp. 94–5, endnote 36a; p. 95, endnote 37; p. 57, endnote 39; p. 96, endnote 43; p. 97, endnote 54; p. 99, endnote 62. Der Glaube nach evangelischer und römisch-katholischer Anschauung, in Der römische Katholizismus und das Evangelium. Reden gehalten auf der Tagung christlicher Akademiker, Freudenstadt 1930, ed. by Hermann W. Beyer et al., Stuttgart: Calwer Vereinsbuchhandlung 1931, pp. 61–141, see p. 66; p. 109; p. 113; pp. 116–17; p. 119; p. 124; p. 132; p. 134. Review of Sören Kierkegaard. Christliche Reden, trans. by W. Kütemeyer and Chr. Schrempf, Jena 1929, Theologische Literaturzeitung, vol. 56, no. 19, 1931, columns 450–2. “Nogle Smaabidrag til Kierkegaard-Forskning,” Teologisk Tidsskrift, series 5, vol. 2, 1931, pp. 193–218. (German translation: “Kierkegaard als Mitglied des kgl. Pastoralseminars,” in his Gesammelte Werke, vol. 13, pp. 81–7.) Review of Theodor Häcker’s Der Begriff der Wahrheit bei Sören Kierkegaard, Innsbruck 1931, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, vol. 51, nos. 1–2, 1932, p. 357. Review of Sören Kierkegaards Papirer, vol. X–5, 1932, Theologische Literaturzeitung, vol. 57, no. 14, 1932, columns 334–5. Das kirchliche Wollen der Deutschen Christen, Berlin: Grevemeyer 1933, p. 5. “Das Ewige und das Zeitliche,” Glaube und Volk, vol. 1, no. 5, 1932, pp. 65–71. (Also in his Die gegenwärtige geistige Lage im Spiegel philosophischer und theologischer Besinnung, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1934, pp. 154– 65, see p. 158; p. 161.)

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“Das Ringen der idealistischen Denker um eine neue, die Aufklärung überwindende Gestalt der philosophischen Aussagen über Gott. Dargestellt nach seinem Verhältnis zur reformatorischen Gotteserkenntnis (Vorträge gehalten 1933),” in Christliche Wahrheit und neuzeitliches Denken. Zu Emanuel Hirschs Leben und Werk, ed. by Hans Martin Müller, Tübingen: Katzmann and Goslar: Thuhoff 1984, pp. 142–204, see p. 153; p. 190; pp. 193–5. Der Weg des Glaubens, Bordesholm in Holstein: Heliand 1934 (Hammer und Nagel, vol. 1), p. 32. Der Offenbarungsglaube, Bordesholm in Holstein: Heliand 1934 (Hammer und Nagel, vol. 2), p. 37. Die gegenwärtige geistige Lage im Spiegel philosophischer und theologischer Besinnung. Akademische Vorlesungen zum Verständnis des deutschen Jahrs 1933, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1934, motto; p. 13; p. 45; p. 47; p. 50; p. 85; p. 108; pp. 110–13; p. 115. “Eine Meditation Kierkegaards,” Deutsche Theologie, vol. 1, nos. 11–12, 1934, p. 373. Christliche Freiheit und politische Bindung. Ein Brief an Dr. Stapel und anderes, Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt 1935, p. 14; p. 16; p. 19; p. 24; p. 30; p. 49; p. 54; pp. 59–60; p. 64; p. 66; p. 74. Review of Sören Kierkegaards Papirer, vol. X–6, 1934, Theologische Literaturzeitung, vol. 60, no. 2, 1935, columns 33–4. “Sören Kierkegaard,” Süddeutsche Monatshefte, vol. 32, no. 5, 1935, pp. 296–305. (Reprinted in his Der Weg der Theologie, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer 1937, pp. 108– 24; and in Gesammelte Werke, vol. 13, pp. 88–103.) Das Alte Testament und die Predigt des Evangeliums, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1936, motto, pp. 12–13. (Gesammelte Werke, vol. 32, p. 33; p. 47.) Review of Frithjof Brandt’s und Else Rammel’s Sören Kierkegaard og Pengene, Copenhagen 1935, Deutsche Theologie, vol. 3, no. 9, 1936, pp. 287–9. Zweifel und Glaube, Frankfurt am Main: Diesterweg 1937, p. 62. Die Umformung des christlichen Denkens in der Neuzeit. Ein Lesebuch, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1938, pp. 319–43. Leitfaden zur christlichen Lehre, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1938, published in an arranged edition as Christliche Rechenschaft, vols. 1–2, in his Werke, vols. III.1, 1–1, 2, ed. by Hayo Gerdes, Berlin and Schleswig-Holstein: Die Spur 1978, vol. 1, p. 49; pp. 87–9; p. 152; p. 167; p. 169; p. 171; p. 193; p. 201; pp. 259–60; p. 266; p. 293; p. 304; p. 308; vol. 2, p. 14; p. 44; p. 70; p. 142; p. 170; p. 196; p. 310; p. 324; p. 330. Die Auferstehungsgeschichten und der christliche Glaube, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1940. (Also in Osterglaube. Die Auferstehungsgeschichten und der christliche Glaube. Mit anderen Arbeiten Emanuel Hirschs zu den Auferstehungsgeschichten des Neuen Testaments neu herausgegeben von Hans Martin Müller, in his Gesammelte Werke, vol. 31, see, for example, p. 117.) Geschichte der neuern evangelischen Theologie im Zusammenhang mit den allgemeinen Bewegungen des europäischen Denkens, vols. 1–5, Gütersloh: Bertelsmann 1949–54, vol. 5, 1954, pp. 433–91 et al. (Gesammelte Werke, vols. 5–9, see vol. 9, for example, pp. 433–91.)

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Sören Kierkegaard. Gesammelte Werke, 36 sections in 26 vols. with an index vol., trans. and ed. by Emanuel Hirsch, Hayo Gerdes, and Hans Martin Junghans, Düsseldorf and Cologne: Diederichs 1950–69. “Meine theologischen Anfänge,” Freies Christentum, vol. 3, no. 10, 1951, pp. 2–4. “Mein Weg in die Wissenschaft (1911–16),” Freies Christentum, vol. 3, no. 11, 1951, pp. 3–5. “Meine Wendejahre (1916–21),” Freies Christentum, vol. 3, no. 12, 1951, pp. 3–6. “Der Kirchensturm von Kopenhagen. Sören Kierkegaards Angriff auf Christenheit, Kirche und Orthodoxie,” Sonntagsblatt (Hamburg), vol. 6, no. 42, 1953, pp. 7–9. (Reprinted as “Kierkegaards letzter Streit,” in Gesammelte Werke, vol. 13, pp. 104–12.) “Luthers Predigtweise,” Luther, vol. 25, 1954, pp. 1–23, see p. 15. (Gesammelte Werke, vol. 3, pp. 130–50, see p. 143.) “Gesetz und Evangelium in Luthers Predigten,” Luther, vol. 25, 1954, pp. 49–60), see p. 57, footnote 2. (Gesammelte Werke, vol. 3, pp. 151–61, see p. 158, footnote 5.) Lutherstudien, vols. 1–2, Gütersloh: Bertelsmann 1954. (Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–2, see vol. 1, p. 135, footnote 5; p. 144, footnote 4; pp. 206–7; vol. 2, pp. 164–7; p. 198; p. 200.) “Unbekannte Briefe Kierkegaards,” Die Zeit, vol. 9, no. 13, 1954, p. 6. Der neungekerbte Wanderstab. Roman, Lahr: Kaufmann, 3rd ed. 1959 [1955], pp. 386–7; p. 393; pp. 419–21; pp. 430–1; p. 463; p. 472; p. 483; p. 504; pp. 507–8; p. 521; p. 525; p. 536; p. 539; p. 544; pp. 546–7; pp. 549–55; p. 606; p. 614. “Kierkegaards Sprache und Stil,” in Sören Kierkegaard 1855–1955. Zum Kierkegaard-Gedenkjahr vorgelegt, Düsseldorf and Cologne: Diederichs 1955, pp. 12–16. (Gesammelte Werke, vol. 13, pp. 113–20.) “Kierkegaard als Erzähler,” in 60 Jahre Eugen Diederichs Verlag. Ein Almanach, Düsseldorf and Cologne: Diederichs 1956, pp. 109–20. (Gesammelte Werke, vol. 13, pp. 140–9.) Zwiesprache auf dem Wege zu Gott. Ein stilles Buch, Düsseldorf and Cologne: Diederichs 1960, see, for example, p. 127; p. 162. Sören Kierkegaard. Auswahl aus dem Gesamtwerk des Dichters, Denkers und religiösen Redners, Düsseldorf and Cologne: Diederichs 1961. Das Wesen des reformatorischen Christentums, Berlin: de Gruyter 1963. (Gesammelte Werke, vol. 20, see, for example, p. 92; p. 129; p. 258.) Hauptfragen christlicher Religionsphilosophie, Berlin: de Gruyter 1963, see, for example, p. 65; p. 79; p. 161; p. 267; p. 362. Predigerfibel, Berlin: de Gruyter 1964, p. 16; p. 31; p. 43; p. 51; pp. 60–4; p. 67; p. 69; p. 85; p. 92; pp. 127–8; pp. 134–5; p. 187; p. 249; pp. 288–9; pp. 294–5; p. 318; p. 338; p. 343; pp. 346–7; p. 404. Ethos und Evangelium, Berlin: de Gruyter 1966, see, for example, pp. 62–3; pp. 77–80; p. 86; p. 106. pp. 109–14; p. 135. Weltbewußtsein und Glaubensgeheimnis, Berlin: de Gruyter 1967, see, for example, pp. 58–60; pp. 79–80; pp. 95–6; pp. 121–3. “Kierkegaards Antigone und Ibsens Frau Alving,” in Gestalt, Gedanke, Geheimnis. Festschrift für Johannes Pfeiffer zu seinem 65. Geburtstag, ed. by Rolf Bohnsack et al., Berlin: Die Spur 1967, pp. 167–81. (Gesammelte Werke, vol. 13, pp. 191–204.)

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Schleiermachers Christusglaube. Drei Studien, Gütersloh: J.C.B. Mohr 1968, p. 51; pp. 107–10. Wege zu Kierkegaard, Berlin: Die Spur 1968. “Zur Neuausgabe Sören Kierkegaards (Brief vom 22.11.1948),” in Autoren und Weggefährten gratulieren Peter Diederichs zum 75. Geburtstag am 16. November 1979, Privatdruck: Diederichs 1979, pp. 18–19. “Theologiegeschichte und die Aufgabe der evangelischen Theologie,” Zum Beispiel, vol. 15, nos. 3–4, 1980, pp. 31–44. (Reprinted in Christliche Wahrheit und neuzeitliches Denken. Zu Emanuel Hirschs Leben und Werk, ed. by Hans Martin Müller, Tübingen: Katzmann and Goslar: Thuhoff 1984, pp. 205–34, see p. 219.) “Verkündigung und Zwiesprache,” in Christentumsgeschichte und Wahrheitsbewußtsein. Studien zur Theologie Emanuel Hirschs, ed. by Joachim Ringleben, Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter 1991, pp. 247–54, see pp. 249–50. Kierkegaard-Studien, vol. 3: Aufsätze und Vorträge 1926 bis 1967, in his Gesammelte Werke, vol. 13. Letters Eduard Geismar–Emanuel Hirsch, in Eduard Osvald Geismars privatarkiv. Nr. 5451, vol. 1, Korrespondenter A–K, Rigsarkivet Copenhagen. II. Sources of Hirsch’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Ammundsen, Valdemar, Søren Kierkegaards Ungdom, hans Slægt og hans religiøse Udvikling, Copenhagen: J.H. Schultz 1912 (Festskrift udgivet af Københavns Universitet i Anledning af Universitetets Aarsfest November 1912). Bohlin, Torsten, Sören Kierkegaards etiska åskådning med särskild hänsyn till begreppet “den enskilde,” Stockholm: Svenska Kyrkans Diakonistyrelses Bokförlag 1918. — Kierkegaards dogmatiska åskådning i dess historiska sammanhang, Stockholm: Svenska Kyrkans Diakonistyrelses Bokförlag 1925. Brandt, Frithiof, Den unge Søren Kierkegaard. En Række nye Bidrag, Copenhagen: Levin & Munksgaard 1929. Brandt, Frithiof and Else Rammel, Søren Kierkegaard og Pengene, Copenhagen: Levin & Munsgaard 1935 (Søren Kierkegaard Forskning, vol. 1). Diem, Hermann, Philosophie und Christentum bei Sören Kierkegaard, Munich: Kaifer 1929. Geismar, Eduard, “Søren Kierkegaards Ungdomsliv,” Gads danske Magasin, vol. 17, 1923, pp. 115–26. — “Det etiske Stadium hos Søren Kierkegaard,” Teologisk Tidsskrift, series 4, vol. 4, 1923, pp. 1‑47. — Religionsfilosofi. En Undersøgelse af Religionens og Kristendommens Væsen, Copenhagen: Gads 1924. — “Omkring Kierkegaard,” Teologisk Tidsskrift, series 4, vol. 6, 1925, pp. 292–339. — “Sören Kierkegaard,” Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie, vol. 3, no. 1, 1925, pp. 3‑49. — Søren Kierkegaard. Hans Livsudvikling og Forfattervirksomhed, parts 1–6 in vols. 1–2, Copenhagen: G.E.C. Gad 1926–28.

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— Omkring Kierkegaard II,” Teologisk Tidsskrift, series 4, vol. 8, 1927, pp. 177–200. — Article “Kierkegaard, Sören Aabye,” Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 2nd ed., vol. 3, Tübingen 1929, columns 747–51. Haecker, Theodor, Der Begriff der Wahrheit bei Sören Kierkegaard, Innsbruck: Brenner 1931. Heiberg, P.A., Nogle Bidrag til Enten–Eller’s Tilblivelseshistorie, Copenhagen: Tillge 1910 (Studier fra Sprog- og Oldtidsforskning, vol. 20, no. 82). — En Episode i Søren Kierkegaards Ungdomsliv, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1912. — Søren Kierkegaards religiøse Udvikling. Psykologisk Mikroskopi, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1925. Ruttenbeck, Walter, Sören Kierkegaard. Der christliche Denker und sein Werk, Berlin: Trowitzsch 1929 (Neue Studien zur Geschichte der Theologie und der Kirche, vol. 25). Schrempf, Christoph, Søren Kierkegaard. Eine Biographie, Jena: Diederichs 1927–28. Thust, Martin, Sören Kierkegaard. Der Dichter des Religiösen: Grundlagen eines Systems der Subjektivität, Munich: Beck 1931. Voigt, Friedrich Adolf, Sören Kierkegaard im Kampfe mit der Romantik, der Theologie und der Kirche. Zur Selbstprüfung unserer Gegenwart anbefohlen, Berlin: Furche-Verlag 1928. III. Secondary Literature on Hirsch’s Relation to Kierkegaard Assel, Heinrich, Der andere Aufbruch. Die Lutherrenaissance–Ursprünge, Aporien und Wege: Karl Holl, Emanuel Hirsch, Rudolf Hermann (1910–1935), Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1994 (Forschungen zur systematischen und ökumenischen Theologie, vol. 72), pp. 298–304. Böbel, Friedrich, Menschliche und christliche Wahrheit bei Emanuel Hirsch, Ph.D. Thesis, Erlangen 1963, pp. 15–25. Boehlich, Walter, “Kierkegaard als Verführer,” Merkur, vol. 7, no. 11, 1953, pp. 1075–88. Bohlin, Torsten, “Kierkegaard-Studien,” Theologisches Literaturblatt, vol. 52, no. 20, 1931, columns 305–11. — Review of Emanuel Hirsch’s Kierkegaard-Studien. Drittes Heft/Erste Studie: Der werdende Denker, Gütersloh 1931, Theologisches Literaturblatt, vol. 54, no. 2, 1933, columns 26–7. Diem, Hermann, “Methode der Kierkegaardforschung,” Zwischen den Zeiten, vol. 6, 1928, pp. 140–71, see pp. 164–71. — “Zur Psychologie der Kierkegaard-Renaissance,” Zwischen den Zeiten, vol. 10, 1932, pp. 216–48, see pp. 236–45. Fahrenbach, Helmut, Die gegenwärtige Kierkegaard-Auslegung in der deutschsprachigen Literatur von 1948 bis 1962, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1962 (Philosophische Rundschau Beiheft, vol. 3), pp. 32–3. Fabro, Cornelio, “Un nuovo Kierkegaard tedesco,” Giornale critico della filosofia italiana, vol. 16, 1962, pp. 120–2.

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Geismar, Eduard, Review of Emanuel Hirsch’s Kierkegaard-Studien I–II, Gütersloh 1933, Teologisk Tidsskrift, series 5, vol. 6, 1935, pp. 39–76. — Review of Emanuel Hirsch’s Kierkegaard-Studien, vols. 1–2, Gütersloh 1933, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, vol. 55, 1936, pp. 424–9. — Religiøse Brydninger i det nuværende Tyskland, Copenhagen: Gads 1934, pp. 58–61; pp. 70–90; p. 99; p. 103. Gemmer, Anders, “Ufordøjet Kierkegaard,” Gads danske Magasin, vol. 40, 1946, pp. 377–83. Greve, Wilfried, “Kierkegaard im Dritten Reich,” Skandinavistik, vol. 15, no. 1, 1985, pp. 29–49. Haenchen, Ernst, “Das neue Bild Kierkegaards,” Deutsche Theologie, vol. 3, 1936, pp. 273–87; pp. 298–329; pp. 376–94. — “Kampf um Kierkegaard,” Deutsches Volkstum, vol. 18, no. 9, 1936, pp. 670–8, see pp. 672–8. Hentschel, Markus, Gewissenstheorie als Ethik und Dogmatik. Emanuel Hirschs “Christliche Rechenschaft,” Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag 1995 (Neukirchener Beiträge zur Systematischen Theologie, vol. 17), pp. 110–37. Herms, Eilert, “Die Umformungskrise der Neuzeit in der Sicht Emanuel Hirschs. Zugleich eine Studie zum Problem der theologischen Sozialethik in einer posttraditionalen Welt,” in Christliche Wahrheit und neuzeitliches Denken. Zu Emanuel Hirschs Leben und Werk, ed. by Hans Martin Müller, Tübingen: Katzmann and Goslar: Thuhoff 1984, pp. 87–141, see pp. 118–21 and pp. 124–9. Hose, Jochen, Die “Geschichte der neuern evangelischen Theologie” in der Sicht Emanuel Hirschs, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang 1999 (European University Studies. Series XXIII, vol. 654), pp. 266–73. Kiefhaber, Martin, Christentum als Korrektiv. Untersuchungen zur Theologie Søren Kierkegaards, Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald 1997, pp. 16–21; pp. 27–31. Kloeden, Wolfdietrich von, “Einfluß und Bedeutung im deutsch-sprachigen Denken,” in The Legacy and Interpretation of Kierkegaard, ed. by Niels Thulstrup and Marie Mikulová Thulstrup, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 1981 (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 8), pp. 54–101, see pp. 64–6. Kodalle, Klaus-Michael, Die Eroberung des Nutzlosen. Kritik des Wunschdenkens und der Zweckrationalität im Anschluß an Kierkegaard, Paderborn: Schöningh 1988, pp. 270–80. Lincoln, Ulrich, “Literaturbericht: Der Liebe Tun in der deutschsprachigen Kierkegaard-Forschung,” in Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 1998, pp. 213–31, see pp. 215–16. Malantschuk, Gregor, “Probleme der Abfassungszeit von S. Kierkegaards Schrift ‘Über den Begriff der Ironie’—Zur Übersetzung des Werkes durch Emanuel Hirsch,” Kierkegaardiana, vol. 5, 1964, pp. 132–5. Mulert, Hermann, “Hirschs Kierkegaard,” Christliche Welt, vol. 48, no. 17, 1934, columns 543–5. Müller, Hans Martin, “Pectus facit theologum. Ein Blick in das Alterswerk Emanuel Hirschs,” Pastoraltheologie, vol. 57, 1968, pp. 302–10. Przywara, Erich S.J., “Hirsch, Emanuel, Kierkegaard-Studien, vols. 1–2,” Theologische Revue, vol. 33, no. 5, 1934, columns 200–3.

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Richter, Liselotte, “Konstruktives und Destruktives in der neuesten KierkegaardForschung,” Theologische Literaturzeitung, vol. 77, no. 3, 1952, pp. 141–8, see pp. 144–8. Rodemann, W., Review of Emanuel Hirsch’s Kierkegaard-Studien, Gütersloh 1930– 33, Kirchliche Zeitschrift, vol. 55, 1931, pp. 359–62; vol. 57, 1933, pp. 107–10; vol. 58, 1934, pp. 625–7. Ruttenbeck, Walter, Sören Kierkegaard. Der christliche Denker und sein Werk, Berlin and Frankfurt an der Oder: Trowitzsch & Sohn 1929, p. 326. Scheliha, Arnulf von, Emanuel Hirsch als Dogmatiker. Zum Programm der “Christlichen Rechenschaft” im “Leitfaden zur christlichen Lehre,” Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter 1991 (Theologische Bibliothek Töpelmann, vol. 53), pp. 55–8; pp. 72–3; pp. 304–6; pp. 336–62; pp. 427–8. Schjørring, Jens Holger, Theologische Gewissensethik und politische Wirklichkeit. Das Beispiel Eduard Geismars und Emanuel Hirschs, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1979 (Arbeiten zur kirchlichen Zeitgeschichte. Series B: Darstellungen, vol. 7), pp. 122–3; pp. 156–64; pp. 226–30; pp. 233–4; pp. 264–5. Schnell, Jenny, “Kierkegaard. Zu den Kierkegaard-Studien von Emanuel Hirsch,” Monatsschrift für Pastoraltheologie, vol. 33, 1937, pp. 228–32. Schulz, Heiko, “Die theologische Rezeption Kierkegaards in Deutschland und Dänemark. Notizen zu einer historischen Typologie,” in Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 1999, pp. 220‑44, see pp. 228–32. Steffensen, Steffen, “Emanuel Hirsch als Kierkegaard—Übersetzer,” Meddelelser fra Søren Kierkegaard Selskabet, vol. 4, no. 4, 1953, pp. 6–7. — “Emanuel Hirsch: Wege zu Kierkegaard,” Kierkegaardiana, vol. 9, 1974, pp. 357–60. Theunissen, Michael, “Das Kierkegaardbild in der neueren Forschung und Deutung (1945–1957),” in Sören Kierkegaard, ed. by Heinz-Horst Schrey, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1971 (Wege der Forschung, vol. 179), pp. 324–84, see pp. 329–34. Vorwahl, Heinrich, Review of Emanuel Hirsch’s Kierkegaard Studien. Bd. 1: Zur inneren Geschichte, Der Dichter; Bd. II: Der Denker. Das Werk des Denkers, Gütersloh 1933, Protestantenblatt, vol. 67, no. 22, 1934, columns 351–2. Warmuth, Kurt, “Kierkegaard in der Gegenwart. Ein Überblick,” Theologische Blätter, vol. 20, nos. 8–9, 1941, columns 226–41, see columns 235–6. Wienhold, Review of Emanuel Hirsch’s Kierkegaard-Studien, Gütersloh 1930– 1933, Neues Sächsisches Kirchenblatt, vol. 41, 1934, columns 801–3. Wilke, Matthias, Die Kierkegaard-Rezeption Emanuel Hirschs. Eine Studie über die Voraussetzungen der Kommunikation christlicher Wahrheit, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 2005 (Hermeneutische Untersuchungen zur Theologie, vol. 49).

Jürgen Moltmann: Taking a Moment for Trinitarian Eschatology Curtis L. Thompson

Jürgen Moltmann (b. 1926) has developed over the past half century what might be designated as a trinitarian eschatology. In formulating this theology he has drawn on the thought of Søren Kierkegaard, but he has done so in quite circumscribed fashion. While he mentions Kierkegaard occasionally in his writings, most of his serious engagement with him is in relation to the concept of time. It is especially Kierkegaard’s notion of the “moment” as “an atom of eternity” that captured Moltmann’s imagination. Therefore, he took a moment from Kierkegaard and allowed the Dane’s perspective to influence his understanding of time, so central to his eschatology. In taking a moment from Kierkegaard he allows it to serve his own purposes which are determined by his communal interpretation of the triune God. This article’s three parts provide, first, an overview of Moltmann’s theological viewpoint that in its robust form is a trinitarian eschatology, second, an account of his use of Kierkegaard, and third, an interpretation of that use. I. Moltmann as Theologian of Trinitarian Eschatology Christian theology is for Moltmann an enduring conversation about God and the world, but it also for him bears the mark throughout of eschatology, which in turn over time assumes for him a distinctive trinitarian shape.1 While his doctrine of Moltmann’s various autobiographical statements on his life and thought are cited in James L. Wakefield, Jürgen Moltmann: A Research Bibliography, Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press 2002, pp. 1–2 (Jürgen Moltmann, “Persönlicher Rückblick auf die Letzten Zehn Jahre,” in his Umkehr zur Zukunft, Munich: Kaiser 1970, pp. 7–14; Jürgen Moltmann, “Theologie der Hoffnung. Eine kleine Autobiographie,” in Entwürfe der Theologie, ed. by Johannes B. Bauer, Graz: Styria 1985, pp. 235–58 (revised as “Mein theologischer Weg,” in In der Geschichte des dreieinigen Gottes. Beiträge zur Trinitarischen Theologie, Munich: Kaiser 1991, pp. 221–40; English translation: “My Theological Career,” trans. by John Bowden, in History and the Triune God: Contributions to Trinitarian Theology, London: SCM Press 1991, pp. 165–82); Jürgen Moltmann, “Der Gott, auf den ich hoffe,” in Warum ich bin Christ, ed. by W. Jens, Munich: Kindler 1979, pp. 264–80 (English translation: “Why am I a Christian?” trans. by Margaret Kohl, in Experiences of God, Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1980, pp. 1–18)). See also Jürgen Moltmann, “Gelebte Theologie: 35 Jahre in 35 Minuten,” unpublished manuscript distributed at his last course lecture in 1994; Jürgen Moltmann, “Jürgen Moltmann,” Wie ich

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the Trinity might be his “most enduring contribution to Christian theology,”2 this trinitarian form is inseparable from the dynamic of eschatology. Eschatology becomes concrete in “the idea of the Promise of God” since “Promise reveals the meaning of God, of history, and of the human person”: “God relates to the world through Promise, the willful decision of God to open the horizon of the human future. It is through the Promise that God binds Godself to the world, and subsequently theology must always include those poles in its discourse.”3 The eschatological or future-oriented nature of his thinking is likely one of the reasons that his books are so fresh and provocative and that at the onset of the twenty-first century many would have regarded him as the most significant living Christian theologian. In quoting from the Foreword he wrote to a bibliography of his writings, we can gain a sense of the perky spirit that informs his work: I have never pursued theology as a defense of old doctrine or church dogmas, but always as a journey of discovery in new theological ground. For that reason, my style of thinking is experimental and a way into the adventure of theological ideas. These thoughts, which I write down, are for that reason often tentative and—as some say—reckless and risky.4

mich geändert habe, ed. by Jürgen Moltmann, Gütersloh: Kaiser/Gütersloher Verlag 1997, pp. 22–30 (English translation: “Jürgen Moltmann,” How I Have Changed: Reflections on Thirty Years of Theology, trans. by John Bowden, London: SCM Press, 1997, pp. 13–21); Jürgen Moltmann, “Ein Ringen mit Gott,” in Die Quelle des Lebens. Der Heilige Geist und die Theologie des Lebens, Gütersloh: Kaiser/Gütersloher Verlag 1997, pp. 11–18. (English translation: “Wrestling with God,” in The Source of Life: The Holy Spirit and the Theology of Life, trans. by Margaret Kohl, Minneapolis: Fortress Press 1997, pp. 1–9); Jürgen Moltmann, “Lived Theology: An Intellectual Biography,” The Asbury Theological Journal, vol. 55, 2000, pp. 9–13; Jürgen Moltmann, “Politische Theologie und Theologie der Befreiung,” in Gott im Projekt der modernen Welt. Beiträge zur öffentlichen Relevanz der Theologie, Gütersloh: Kaiser/Gütersloher Verlag 1997, pp. 51–70 (English translation: “Political Theology and the Theology of Liberation,” in God for a Secular Society: The Public Relevance of Theology, trans. by Margaret Kohl, Minneapolis: Fortress Press 1999, pp. 46–70). Especially helpful on Moltmann’s thought are M. Douglas Meeks, Origins of the Theology of Hope, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974. For the early Moltmann see Geiko Müller-Fahrenholz, The Kingdom and the Power: The Theology of Jürgen Moltmann, trans. by John Bowden, Minneapolis, Fortress Press 2001 and Richard Bauckham, Moltmann: Messianic Theology in the Making, Basingstoke: Marshall Pickering 1987. There is the wonderful personal testimony of the expansive terrain in which his thought took shape in Jürgen Moltmann, Weiter Raum. Eine Lebensgeschichte, Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus 2006 (English translation: A Broad Place: An Autobiography, trans. by Margaret Kohl, Minneapolis: Fortress Press 2008). See finally God’s Life in Trinity, ed. by Miroslav Volf and Michael Welker, Minneapolis: Fortress Press 2006, which contains a number of fine essays on his view of the Trinity. 2 M. Douglas Meeks, “The Social Trinity and Property,” God’s Life in Trinity, p. 13, begins his essay with this claim. 3 Robert T. Cornelison, “The Development and Influence of Moltmann’s Theology,” The Asbury Theological Journal, vol. 55, 2000, pp. 15–28, see pp. 20–1. 4 Wakefield, Jürgen Moltmann, p. viii.

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We can be grateful that Moltmann’s journey in theology has incorporated his experiences and thus kept his writing in close touch with the dynamics of faith and life. Moltmannn recounts that in his youth he knew Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729– 81), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844– 1900) much better than he knew the Bible. It was the devastations of World War II that brought him into a more serious relation to Christianity. As a prisoner of war he experienced the collapse of life’s certainties “and in this collapse found a new hope in the Christian faith,” which he desired to study “in order to understand that power of hope” that had saved his life.5 Moltmann began his theological studies in Camp Norton, a Protestant theologians’ facility near Nottingham, England, supervised by the British Army, a prisoners’ camp in which “captive lecturers taught captive students.”6 Moltmann “was desperate and hopeful as he read Kierkegaard, studied dialectical theology, and ‘loved the theology of the cross of the young [Martin] Luther’ ”; furthermore, his new-found enthrallment over theology inspired the emergence of “his most prized and enduring theological virtue: curiosity.”7 As he later said, even today “my piety is my theological curiosity.”8 During his doctoral studies the young scholar “was transformed from a despairing but still confident Kierkegaardian to a Barman-Confessing Church Barthian.9 Early on Moltmann was a committed Barthian who thought that theology had found its consummation in Karl Barth (1886–1968) just as philosophy had done in Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), but then through the Dutch theologian Arnold van Ruler (1908–70) of Utrecht he was introduced to Reformed kingdom of God theology and the Dutch apostolate theology and also found inspiration in the approach of the earth-affirming kingdom of God theology of Johann Christoph Blumhardt (1805–80) and his son Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt (1842–1919) as well as Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–45).10 His marriage to Elisabeth Wendel, whom he first met in Kierkegaard’s Copenhagen in 1949, gave him a partner with whom to share his life and, on occasion, his theological publishing.11 During the first two decades of his career Moltmann wrote books in which he dealt with the whole enterprise of theology from the perspective of a single focal point. The three primary focal points were hope, cross, and church. He has Moltmann, “Mein theologischer Weg,” p. 222. (“My Theological Career,” History and the Triune God, p. 165.). 6 Moltmann, “Jürgen Moltmann,” in Wie ich mich geändert habe, p. 22. (“Jürgen Moltmann,” in How I Have Changed, p. 13.) 7 Wakefield, Jürgen Moltmann, p. 4. See also Moltmann, “Persönlicher Rückblick auf die letzten zehn Jahre,” p. 8. 8 Moltmann, “Lived Theology: An Intellectual Biography,” p. 9. 9 Ibid., p. 11. 10 Moltmann, “Jürgen Moltmann,” Wie ich mich geändert habe, pp. 24–5. (“Jürgen Moltmann,” How I Have Changed, p. 14); Moltmann, Weiter Raum, p. 103 (A Broad Place, p. 97). 11 See Elisabeth Moltmann-Wenel and Jürgen Moltmann, Als Frau und Mann von Gott reden, Munich: Kaiser Verlag. (English translation: God—His and Hers, trans. by John Bowden, New York: Crossroad 1991.) 5

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characterized this “trilogy” of Theology of Hope (1964), The Crucified God (1972), and The Church in the Power of the Spirit (1975) as a progression from Easter and hope to Good Friday and suffering to Pentecost and the Spirit. The book on hope began by concentrating on hope as an object; however, as Moltmann worked on this project he discovered hope becoming the subject, so that he no longer theologized about hope but rather from it. He came to learn that eschatology is not theology’s end; it is its beginning and that which animates it throughout.12 He appropriated into his work the insight to which his teacher, Otto Weber (1902–66), had earlier introduced him, namely, the Calvinist dialectic of faith and hope, which gives an eschatological edge to every doctrine and aspect of theology.13 Theology of Hope was the result of writing theology for victims who had experienced powerlessness and of his own lingering identification with the victims of injustice and abuse.14 Along with Eberhard Jüngel (b. 1934), Moltmann had struggled with atheism prior to the mid-1970s and in his writings frequently affirms what he calls “protest atheism” as a denial of “the existence of God because of the suffering of the innocent that cries out to high heaven.”15 A major event in Moltmann’s early development was reading The Principle of Hope by Ernst Bloch (1885–1977) in 1960. Meeting with Bloch for the first time at a pub after Bloch’s lecture on May 8, 1961, Moltmann asked him, in response to the positive comments he was making about religion, about his being an atheist, and Bloch responded, “with a twinkle in his eye, ‘I am an atheist for God’s sake,’ ” and this took Moltmann’s breath away and robbed him of much sleep over the next days.16 Four years later he published Theology of Hope, which he understood as an action within Christianity based upon its presuppositions in “the biblical history of God, exodus and resurrection” but as running parallel to Bloch’s major work which had regarded the modern atheism of Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–72) and Karl Marx (1818–83) as a ground for hope.17 In this work, written “with passion and pleasure” and opening for Moltmann “a door to freedom,” he linked eschatology to Christology. Christian eschatology is not utopia because its statements about the future are grounded in the person and history of Jesus the Christ.18 This book on hope originated in the promises of God testified to in the biblical narrative.19 Eschatology and Christology go hand-in-hand. Moltmann, “Mein theologischer Weg,” p. 226. (“My Theological Career,” p. 170.) Wakefield, Jürgen Moltmann, p. 9. See also Meeks, Origins of the Theology of Hope, pp. 23–4. 14 Wakefield, Jürgen Moltmann, p. 3. 15 Moltmann, “What Is a Theologian?” in Wakefield, Jûrgen Moltmann, p. xvi. 16 Moltmann, Weiter Raum, p. 84. (A Broad Place, pp. 78–9.) 17 Moltmann, “Jürgen Moltmann,” in Wie ich mich geändert habe, pp. 25–6. (“Jürgen Moltmann,” How I Have Changed, pp. 15–16.) 18 Jürgen Moltmann, Theologie der Hoffnung. Untersuchungen zur Begründung und zu den Konsequenzen einer christlichen Eschatologie, Munich: Kaiser 1965, p. 13. (English translation: Theology of Hope: On the Ground and the Implications of a Christian Eschatology, trans. by James W. Leitch, New York: Harper & Row 1967, p. 17.) 19 Jürgen Moltmann, Erfahrungen theologischen Denkens. Wege und Formen christlicher Theologie, Gütersloh: Kaiser/Gütersloher Verlaghaus 1999, pp. 85–90. (English 12 13

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Moltmann had declared that eschatology must be Christological, but it is equally the case that all Christological statements are eschatological in that they make claims of promise and hope. Writing on the “God of Hope“ in setting forth “Arguments for an Eschatological Theology,” our German theologian draws the intimate eschatological connection between God and history: “If we understand the immanent actuality of the world and of the historical human, as it is posited in advance, we understand the transcendent actuality of God eschatologically. Both emerged with each other: the understanding of the world as history and the understanding of God as the future of history.”20 Studying theology in Göttingen, Moltmann had been taught by the ecumenical Lutheran theologian Hans Joachim Iwand (1899–1960), whose theological passion which resembled that of Martin Luther himself convinced the young student of “the liberating truth of the Reformation doctrine of justification and the theology of the cross through a gripping series of lectures on Luther’s theology.”21 Moltmann became a “disciple” of Iwand, with whom he took all the courses he could and who led a small group of students in studying Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation of 1518, and it was in the spirit of Iwand that he wrote The Crucified God.22 It also was for Iwand that Moltmann wrote “a paper on Kierkegaard’s paradox and Luther’s Deus absconditus which was so obscurely profound that he [Iwand] probably never read it right through, but after a year gave me a good mark for it.”23 Moltmann explains that the existential dimension to the writing of his theology of the cross was his desire to develop from the deep suffering of God “a Christology after Auschwitz.”24 With many of the hope movements collapsing at that time, Moltmann wanted to give his readers “dialectical depth” by “grounding his political theology and his theology of hope in a theology of the cross of Christ.” He intended this book to help dissolve the church’s alliance with the status quo and to move it to join ranks instead with the oppressed and the lowly.25 Having grounded his Christian eschatology, Theology of Hope, in the resurrection of the crucified Christ, Moltmann now wrote The Crucified God to stress the cross of the risen Christ; however, he reversed the usual question of the saving significance of the crucified Christ for us and asked instead the question: “What does the cross translation: Experiences in Theology: Ways and Forms of Christian Theology, trans. by Margaret Kohl, Minneapolis: Fortress Press 2000, pp. 86–93). Moltmann writes, God Will Be All in All: The Eschatology of Jürgen Moltmann, ed. by Richard Bauckman, Minneapolis: Fortress Press 2001, p. 2: “Christian eschatology speaks of the future promised and entailed by the resurrection of the crucified Christ. It seeks the eschatological future projected by his future through remembrance of his history. Its central sources and principal criteria are found in Jesus Christ, his messianic mission, his cross and his resurrection.” 20 Moltmann, Umkehr zur Zukunft, p. 155. 21 Moltmann, “Jürgen Moltmann,” Wie ich mich geändert habe, p. 24. (“Jürgen Moltmann,” How I Have Changed, p. 14). 22 Moltmann, Weiter Raum, pp. 50–1. (A Broad Place, pp. 41–2.) 23 Moltmann, Weiter Raum, p. 51. (A Broad Place, p. 42.) 24 See Moltmann’s Foreword to Joy Ann McDougall, Pilgrimage of Love: Moltmann on the Trinity and Christian Life, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2005, p. xii. 25 Wakefield, Jürgen Moltmann, p. 16.

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of Christ mean for God? Does an impassible God keep silent in heaven untouched by the suffering and death of his child on Golgotha, or does God himself suffer these pains and this death?”26 Shifting his theological interest from the resurrection of the crucified Christ to the crucifixion of the risen Christ meant overcoming what Moltmann calls “the Aristotelian apathy axiom” that disallows divine suffering and embracing the biblical teaching of the living God who passionately loves God’s people and intensely desires righteousness and justice for God’s creation.27 For Moltmann, the theologia crucis is not a theory of Christianity nor of world history but a way of thinking with practical applications for criticizing not just the medieval institutional church but the world and history as well. In this work Moltmann was articulating “a thoroughgoing theology of the cross” that, as he put it, he needed to apprehend the crucified God in all three theological areas, namely, “in mythical theology, in the form of demythologization; in political theology, in the form of liberation; and in philosophical theology, in the form of understanding the universe as creation.”28 The Crucified God was, according to one Moltmann scholar, “one of the theological classics of the second half of the twentieth century,” and this is likely because it was part of the author’s wrestling with God, with his personal suffering from “the dark side of God,” that is, God’s hidden face, “the side shown in the godlessness of the perpetrators and the God-forsakenness of the victims of injustice and violence in human history.”29 The third book with a theological focal point was The Church in the Power of the Spirit. Moltmann had summed up in trinitarian terms his understanding of “what happened on Golgotha between Jesus and the God whom he had addressed as Abba, beloved Father”: “The cross is the material principle of the doctrine of the Trinity. The Trinity is the formal principle of the theology of the cross.”30 In the work on the church and the Spirit, Moltmann moved from what could be interpreted as a more binitarian theology of The Crucified God with its emphasis on God the Father and Jesus the Son of God to a trinitarian theology that included a role for the Spirit. Initial efforts in the area of pneumatology informed the writing of The Church in the Power of the Spirit, in which he attempted to address the crisis of irrelevance and marginalization facing the Protestant church in the post-1960s context. Moltmann endeavored to lay a theological foundation for the church’s transition from a status quo church to a “community church”—that is, a church that continually renews itself through forces emerging from below by way of new experiences of the Spirit and is ever becoming a communal reality of the people of God in the midst of the world’s people. This transition called for the church to undergo a radical reorientation in Moltmann, “Jürgen Moltmann,” in Wie ich mich geändert habe, p. 28. (“Jürgen Moltmann,” in How I Have Changed, pp. 17–18.) 27 Moltmann, Weiter Raum, pp. 188–90. (A Broad Place, pp. 192–4.) 28 Moltmann, Der gekreuzigte Gott. Das Kreuz Christi als Grund und Kritik christlicher Theologie, Munich: Kaiser 1972, p. 75. (English translation: The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology, trans. by R.A. Wilson and John Bowden, New York: Harper & Row 1974, pp. 72–3.) 29 Moltmann, Weiter Raum, p. 185. (A Broad Place, p. 189.) 30 Moltmann, “Mein theologischer Weg,” p. 231. (“My Theological Career,” p. 174.) 26

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gaining a self-understanding in relation to Israel and “in constant connection with the ‘people of Jesus,’ i.e., in connection with the poor and humiliated, the sick and the handicapped.”31 Moltmann’s participation in dialogues and movements shaped his theology, and here his thinking about church and Spirit benefitted from involvement in ecumenical dialogue with Roman Catholic and Orthodox theologians and in the Jewish–Christian dialogue as well as from contributing along with Johann Baptist Metz (b. 1928) to the political theology movement. It is critical that the church of Christ “find its social location in and among this people of Jesus [that is, the poor and the sick] if it claims to be the church of Christ.”32 The church lives out of the remembrance of Christ which directs it in hope towards the kingdom, and the living power of this remembrance and hope is what Moltmann calls “the power of the Holy Spirit.”33 The doctrine of the Holy Spirit “depicts the processes and experiences in which and through which the church becomes comprehensible to itself as the messianic fellowship in the world and for the world.”34 The pneumatology that he published 16 years later affirms a more comprehensive view of the Spirit as the “Spirit of life” that “is the love of life which delights us” and whose energies “are the living energies which this love of life awakens in us”: “The Spirit sets this life in the presence of the living God and in the great river of eternal love.”35 That later work is part of his “systematic contributions to theology” to which we now turn. In the mid-1970s Moltmann underwent a crisis of identity of sorts when he realized that he did not really have a place within the space occupied by the Latin American liberation theologians, the black theologians, the feminist theologians, or the oppressed on whose behalf these theologians were advocating; Moltmann discovered that he belonged nowhere, that he could no longer do “theology for the victims,” and must therefore turn to doing “theology for the oppressors.”36 This led him to the series of theological books which he understood as the part, the donation, that he could make to the whole, that is, the larger enterprise of theological

Moltmann, “Mein theologischer Weg,” pp. 231–3. (“My Theological Career,” pp. 174–6.) This theme of a community church or a church of liberation is struck at many points in the book. Compare, for example, Jürgen Moltmann, Kirche in der Kraft des Geistes. Ein Beitrag zur messianischen Ekklesiologie, Munich: Kaiser 1975, p. 123 (English translation: The Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology, trans. by Margaret Kohl, New York: Harper & Row 1977, p. 104), where he states in writing about “Liberated Church—a Church of Liberation”: “Participation in the liberating rule of Christ through a new way of life presupposes that men have experienced and believe in this liberation through the lordship of Christ in themselves.” 32 Moltmann, “Mein theologischer Weg,” p. 235. (“My Theological Career,” p. 178.) 33 Moltmann, Kirche in der Kraft des Geistes, p. 222. (The Church in the Power of the Spirit, p. 197.) 34 Moltmann, Kirche in der Kraft des Geistes, p. 223. (The Church in the Power of the Spirit, p. 198.) 35 Jürgen Moltmann, Der Geistes des Lebens. Ein ganzheitliche Pneumatologie, Munich: Kaiser 1991, p. 9. (English translation: The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation, trans. by Margaret Kohl, Minneapolis: Fortress Press 1992, p. x.) 36 Wakefield, Jürgen Moltmann, pp. 18–19. 31

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work carried out by the cast of hundreds or thousands around the world who are theologians. From 1967 to 1994 Moltmann served as Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of Tübingen, where he is currently Emeritus Professor of Theology. Moltmann’s thinking underwent significant transformation from the theology of The Crucified God of 1972 to the theology centered on the doctrine of the Trinity in The Trinity and the Kingdom of God of 1980, and Moltmann noted in 2005 that theologically speaking this period was the most interesting for him.37 When he wrote the Trinity book he already had the five, which became the six, volumes of the Messianic Theology in mind, even if not fully worked out. The social doctrine of the Trinity that he formulated “replaced the metaphysical axiom of the essential impassibility of the divine nature with the essential passion of the eternal love of God.”38 Between 1980 and 2000 he executed his plan and wrote the series of “systematic contributions to theology,” which constitutes Moltmann’s dogmatic or systematic theology. We have seen, though, that he recognizes the futility of any grand master narrative and thus the inevitable partiality and fragmentariness of any theological endeavor. The six books of the series are The Trinity and the Kingdom of God, “a social doctrine of the Trinity about the ‘God who is rich in relationships’ ”; God in Creation, “a sabbatical doctrine of creation in the face of the ecological crises which threaten”; The Way of Jesus Christ, “a Christology of the way and on the way”; The Spirit of Life, “a book about the spirit of life as ‘élan vital,’ ” which broadens the pneumatological focus from anthropology to a more holistic consideration of revelation and experience that deepens the concept of life by grounding it in Spirit as a revelational modality of our own human experience; The Coming of God, “a Christian eschatology about the new beginning in the end”; and Experiences of God, a book on method as a postscript to the earlier books dealing with theological content.39 While each of these six books covers new ground and develops new ideas, they are interrelated and share a common theological perspective. Our German theologian has done well in staying true to his principles of creating a theology which has a biblical foundation, operates out of an eschatological orientation, and is politically responsible.40 In his 2000 Experiences in Theology Moltmann declares that today the general framework for theology is “the theology of the earth.”41 A pronounced change in this series of works from the earlier trilogy is the expanded emphasis on nature. Moltmann’s Gifford Lectures of 1984–85 published as God in Creation developed “an ecological doctrine of creation” that matched “the trinitarian concept of mutual perichoresis”: “the triune God not only stands over against his Moltmann’s Foreword, McDougall, Pilgrimage of Love, pp. xi–xii. Moltmann, In der Geschichte des dreieinigen Gottes, p. 18. (History and the Triune God, p. xvi.) 39 Moltmann, “Jürgen Moltmann,” Wie ich mich geändert habe, pp. 29–30. (“Jürgen Moltmann,” How I Have Changed, p. 20.) 40 Moltmann, “Mein theologischer Weg,” p. 240. (“My Theological Career,” p. 182.) 41 Moltmann, Erfahrungen theologischen Denkens, p. 84. (Experiences in Theology, p. 83.) 37 38

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creation but also at the same time enters into it through his eternal spirit, permeates all things and through his indwelling brings about the community of creation.”42 That viewpoint sponsored a new, non-mechanistic perspective of the interconnection of all things. The principle of mutual interpenetration characterizing the dialectical movement found in the Godhead itself can be applied universally to the concept of life and thus determine the ecological doctrine of creation.43 Moltmann points out that science has done a good job in teaching us how to conceive of creation as nature, but now it is time for theology to teach how nature is to be conceived as God’s creation.44 Taking the “book of nature” seriously calls for a retrieval of “natural theology.” Since Moltmann sees theology as a function not merely of the church but of the kingdom of God, for which Christ came and for which the church exists, it needs to take shape as a public theology that functions within the broad spectrum of life’s different sectors and this calls for the broad framework of a natural theology along with its sister theological genre, political theology.45 Moltmann’s eschatological ecology regards the earth as holding the promise of new possibility and as calling us to ecological responsibility.46 In his theological articulation of eschatology, The Coming of God, Moltmann affirms a cosmic eschatology of the new heaven and the new earth, a socio-political and historical eschatology of the kingdom of God, and a personal eschatology of eternal life; and all of these horizons of hope are ensconced within the most comprehensive horizon of hope of the divine eschatology of God’s glory that will be all in all. In the creation book Moltmann views the world as being transformed in the eschatological new creation in such a way that it will be the home of God. This raises the issue of just how the relation between God and the world is to be conceived. Within the series of systematic contributions to theology there is a change in the understanding of God. Between the first book on God and the fifth book on eschatology, Moltmann undergoes a development on whether the ultimate eschatological good is the world in God or God in the world. In the God book, Trinity and the Kingdom, he contended that redemption is best pictured as the Moltmann, “Mein theologischer Weg,” p. 239. (“My Theological Career,” p. 181.) Jürgen Moltmann, Gott in der Schöpfung: Ökologische Schöpfungslehre, Munich: Kaiser 1985, pp. 30–1. (English translation: God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God, trans. by Margaret Kohl, San Francisco: Harper & Row 1985 (reprint, Minneapolis: Fortress Press 1993), pp. 16–17.) 44 Moltmann, Gott in der Schöpfung, p. 52. (God in Creation, p. 38.) 45 Moltmann, Erfahrungen theologischen Denkens, pp. 68–83. (Experiences in Theology, pp. 64–80.) 46 Moltmann, Das Kommen Gottes: Christliche Eschatologie, Gütersloh: Kaiser 1995, p. 307. (English translation: The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology, trans. by Margaret Kohl, Minneapolis: Fortress Press 1996, p. 279). He writes: “This earth, with its world of the living, is the real and sensorily experienceable promise of the new earth, as truly as this earthly, mortal life here is an experienceable promise of the life that is eternal, immortal. If the divine Redeemer is himself present in this earth in hidden form, then the earth becomes the bearer or vehicle of his and our future. But in that case there is no fellowship with Christ without fellowship with the earth. Love for Christ and hope for him embrace love and hope for the earth.” 42 43

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world being in the triune God. Redemption according to this vision is not simply “community with God; it is participation in the eternal inner-trinitarian life in God as well. The inner-trinitarian relations of the Father to the Son, of the Son to the Father, and of the Spirit to the Father and the Son are so ‘open’ that all created being can find its eternal home in them.”47 In his eschatology, The Coming of God, he identified the key promise for developing his eschatology as Isaiah’s vision of the whole earth as full of God’s glory, and he took this as the goal of creation from the beginning; here he maintained, then, that the center of redemption is best depicted as “the glorification of the triune God in the new heaven and the new earth” and this indwelling glory of God in the creation could be understood within the framework of Israelite Shekinah theology.48 Both of these viewpoints are panentheistic visions, with the former stressing how “all things are in God” and the latter emphasizing how “God is in all things.” While Moltmann presently affirms the second of these views, he sees no “entirely unbridgeable contradiction” between the two views: “the world will find space in God in a worldly way when God indwells the world in a divine way. That is a reciprocal perichoresis of the kind already experienced here in love; the person who abides in love abides in God, and God in him (I John 4:16). According to Paul, this presence of mutual indwellings is here called love, but then it will be called glory.”49 Moltmann’s theological perspective incorporates the theology of the cross but grasps that form of thinking within a more comprehensive theology of glory. II. Taking a Moment from Kierkegaard Moltmann’s prolific production as a theological writer—he has written over 900 books and articles and there are over 200 secondary works on his theology— leaves somewhat intimidated the serious surveyor of his use of Kierkegaard who is looking to deal with this use as exhaustively as possible. One needs to take more than a moment to scrutinize this rather remarkable authorship. Many of Moltmann’s writings make no mention of Kierkegaard. In what follows, those writings that do refer to Kierkegaard are treated in roughly chronological order. In doing that, however, we will find that the appropriation of Kierkegaard is quite circumscribed. There are casual references made to the Danish thinker, but conceptually the main focus of Moltmann’s interest in Kierkegaard falls on his understanding of time. In his 1959 study of Bonhoeffer’s theology, Moltmann identifies the high point of Bonhoeffer’s personalism as located in the community of Christ, the church.50 Jürgen Moltmann, “The World in God or God in the World?” in God Will Be All in All: The Eschatology of Jürgen Moltmann, pp. 37–9. 48 Moltmann, “The World in God or God in the World?” pp. 37–40. 49 Moltmann, “The World in God or God in the World?” p. 41. 50 Jürgen Moltmann, Herrschaft Christi und soziale Wirklichkeit nach Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Munich: Kaiser 1959 (Theologische Existenz Heute, Neue Folge, vol. 71), p. 14 (English translation: “The Lordship of Christ and Human Society,” in Jürgen Moltmann and Jürgen Weissbach, Two Studies in the Theology of Bonhoeffer, trans. by Reginald H. Fuller and Ilse Fuller, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons 1967, p. 33), where he writes: “Here is a 47

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Moltmann highlights Kierkegaard’s lifting up of the category of the individual by quoting Kierkegaard’s remark: “Everyone should exercise the greatest caution in dealing with the other. Essentially, he should talk only with God and with himself.”51 Moltmann identifies this as a “subtle misunderstanding of God”52 and prefers instead the view of Martin Buber (1878–1965). Buber stated that creatures are put in a person’s way so that through them and with them the person can find his or her way to God. Cited also is Buber’s comparison of Luther and Kierkegaard: In getting married, Luther wanted to emancipate the believer of his day from an outdated otherworldly religious viewpoint and to initiate a life with God in the world. In breaking off his engagement, Kierkegaard wanted to introduce the unbeliever of his day to a solitary life of faith, to becoming an individual and living life alone with God. Moltmann reports that “Buber detects in Kierkegaard a hidden Marcionism.”53 The very concept of the divine image as a created endowment of the human Thou makes Kierkegaard’s personalism an idea which misses the truth about God and man. How much more forcefully does Bonhoeffer’s distinctive conception of the Incarnation as the entry of God in human reality expose this weakness in Kierkegaard’s category of the individual. It is a category which inevitably misses the truth about the community of Christ in the church.54 Moltmann points out that Bonhoeffer criticizes Barth’s commentary on Romans for the same reason he criticized Kierkegaard.55 And a final mentioning of Kierkegaard in this work comes as Moltmann turns to address the topic of “The Sociology of Personal Community.” If Hegel’s idealism jeopardizes personal individuality, the young theologian contends, then modern existentialism as developed by Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) runs the danger of misunderstanding sociality and possibly even of preventing its achievement.56 Moltmann endorses Bonhoeffer’s thought that the notion of “collective personality” or what is called “objective spirit” shrewd criticism of the existential personalism of Kierkegaard. Bonhoeffer is aware of his own affinity to Kierkegaard in his opposition to idealism over the concrete reality of the person. ‘Kierkegaard’s ethical person exists only in the concrete situation, but it has no necessary connection with a concrete Thou. The I itself establishes the Thou; it is not established by it’ (Communion of Saints, p. 212). Thus in the last resort Kierkegaard remained faithful to the idealist position, and so he founded an extreme individualism which can attribute only a relative significance to the other. It is of interest that the same criticism is found in Martin Buber.” 51 Moltmann gives no reference for this quotation in which Kierkegaard presents the category of the individual, and I have not been able to locate it in Kierkegaard’s writings. 52 Moltmann, Herrschaft Christi und soziale Wirklichkeit nach Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 14. (”The Lordship of Christ and Human Society,” p. 33.) 53 Moltmann, Herrschaft Christi und soziale Wirklichkeit nach Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 15. (”The Lordship of Christ and Human Society,” p. 34.) 54 Ibid. 55 Moltmann, “The Lordship of Christ and Human Society,” p. 35. Moltmann has added a bit of material at this point to the later publication, because these comments are not in the 1959 German version of the text. 56 Moltmann, Herrschaft Christi und Soziale Wirklichkeit nach Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 17. (“The Lordship of Christ and Human Society,” p. 36.)

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in Hegel must be given its due, and Bonhoeffer’s recognition that an appropriately robust doctrine of the church “demands a doctrine of community in which the social being is not exhausted in the I-Thou relationships of individuals.”57 In 1961 Moltmann published “The ‘Rose in the Cross of the Present’: Towards an Understanding of the Church in Modern Society,” playing off of a reference Hegel makes in the Preface to the Philosophy of Right. Though not considered here by Moltmann in any depth, Kierkegaard is mentioned as contributing to the change in the social concept of religion. “The modern discovery of the category of subjectivity as man’s power to be himself, from Kierkegaard to existentialist philosophy, is based on and inescapably bound up with the development of modern society.”58 He is also cited in relation to the development of religion as a private cult: “Subjectivity is truth (S. Kierkegaard), a free-floating, spontaneous, creative subjectivity which, in the face of a ‘meaninglessness’ in the world of things and relationships, decides for God, the one who completely changes conditions, a subjectivity which would like to be understood in terms of God.”59 Moltmann’s contributions to his hermeneutics of the history of promise written during the period of the Theology of Hope include his 1962 long essay on “Exegesis and Eschatology of History.” There he affirms a universal truth which claims an “anticipatory universality” that dialectically protests and denies in relation to the objective realities of life but never liquidates de facto those “fact-related” realities, for that has been done “not even by Kierkegaard nor in the end, by [Rudolf] Bultmann [1884–1976].”60 Wilhelm Kamlah (1905–76) is quoted in support of this view of Kierkegaard on history.61 Near the end of this essay Kierkegaard is alluded to as one who reacted against Hegel and who can be joined with Bultmann as advocating “the meaninglessness of world history and the consequent restriction

Moltmann, Herrschaft Christi und Soziale Wirklichkeit nach Dietrich Bonhoeffer, pp. 17–18. (“The Lordship of Christ and Human Society,” pp. 37–8.) 58 Jürgen Moltmann, “Die ‘Rose im Kreuz der Gegenwart’: Zum Verständnis der Kirche in der modernen Gesellschaft,” in Perspektiven der Theologie: Gesammelte Aufsätze, Munich: Kaiser Verlag and Mainz: Matthias Grünewald-Verlag 1968, p. 214. (English translation: “The ‘Rose in the Cross of the Present’: Towards an Understanding of the Church in Modern Society,” in Hope and Planning, trans. by Margaret Clarkson, New York: Harper & Row 1971, p. 133.) 59 Moltmann, “Die ‘Rose im Kreuz der Gegenwart,” p. 216. (“The ‘Rose in the Cross of the Present,’ ” p. 134.) The same “subjectivity is truth” theme is introduced again by Moltmann in his essay “What Is a Theologian?” that is included in the bibliographical publication Jürgen Moltmann, ed. by Wakefield, p. xviii. 60 Jürgen Moltmann, “Exegese und Eschatologie der Geschichte,” in Perspektiven der Theologie, p. 78. (English Translation: “Exegesis and the Eschatology of History,” in Hope and Planning, p. 77.) 61 Moltmann, “Exegese und Eschatologie der Geschichte,” p. 79, note 59 (“Exegesis and the Eschatology of history,” p. 96, note 59), quotes W. Kamlah, Wissenschaft, Wahrheit, Existenz, 1960, p. 65: “No one, not even Kierkegaard, would be satisfied to lead a successful life by himself, privately, but here everyone thinks in anticipatory terms and once again, in an astonishing way, ‘universally,’ ” 57

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of meaningfulness exclusively to the history or historicity of the individual.”62 Moltmann also here identifies Kierkegaard’s thought as the background for the view of Gerhard Ebeling (1912–2001), over against that of Ernst Käsemann (1906–98), of the eschatological tension of God’s relation to history; in particular he mentions “the idea of Kierkegaard that in confrontation with the Absolute there is only one time, namely, the present. But with this concept one comes very close to the Greek way of thinking about the epiphany of the eternal present.”63 His 1965 essay on “History of Existence and History of the World” quotes Kierkegaard’s Postscript in his discussion of existentialist hermeneutics.64 The essay also mentions Kierkegaard’s existential theology as part of the theological turn to anthropology and the impact had on the question of human identity as it becomes linked to the God question; Moltmann believes the conflating of God and human by this existentialist interpretation calls for an ideology critique along the lines suggested by Theodor Adorno (1903–69), which at the same time keeps “in mind the concrete experiential content behind the outline of existence theology.”65 What Kierkegaard called the “passion of the possible” is also mentioned in an essay from 1965 on the category of the novum in Christian theology.66 Moltmann, “Exegese und Eschatologie der Geschichte,” p. 86, note 76. (“Exegesis and the Eschatology of History,” p. 97, note 76.) 63 Moltmann, “Exegese und Eschatologie der Geschichte,” pp. 86–7, note 78. (“Exegesis and the Eschatology of History,” p. 98, note 78.) 64 Moltmann, “Existenzgeschichte und Weltgeschichte: Auf dem Wege zu einer politischen Hermeneutik des Evangeliums,” in Perspektiven der Theologie, p. 132. (English translation: “Toward a Political Hermeneutic of the Gospel,” in Religion, Revolution, and the Future, trans. by M. Douglas Meeks, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons 1969, pp. 88–9): “For the existential thinker the actual meaning of an individual historical event cannot lie in the speculative coherence of the objectification or manifestation of history. That is why Kierkegaard had objected against Hegel: ‘Spoiled by constant association with world history, people want the momentous and only that, are concerned only with the accidental, the worldhistorical outcome, instead of being concerned with the essential, the innermost, freedom, the ethical.’ ” The quotation is from SKS 7, 126 / CUP1, 135. 65 Moltmann, “Existenzgeschichte und Weltgeschichte,” p. 141. (“Toward a Political Hermeneutic of the Gospel,” pp. 100–1.) 66 Jürgen Moltmann, “Die Kategorie Novum in der christlichen Theologie,” in Perspektiven der Theologie, p. 186. Relevant to the “passion of the possible” is the quotation from Kierkegaard’s Der Augenblick (The Moment) included in Ernst Bloch, Das Prinzip Hoffnung, vol. 5 in his Gesamtausgabe, vols. 1–16 in 17 volumes, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1959–71, p. 1243 (English translation: The Principle of Hope, vols. 1–3, trans. by Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice and Paul Knight, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press 1986, vol. 3, p. 1057): “If I could wish for something, I would wish for neither wealth nor power, but the passion of possibility; I would wish only for an eye which, eternally young, eternally burns with the longing to see possibility.” Bloch includes this quotation as an epigram to a section on “Venturing Beyond and Most Intense World of Man in Music” and mistakenly attributes it to Kierkegaard’s The Moment. Actually it is from Either/Or, SKS 2, 28 / EO1, 41. The Hongs’ English translation of the passage reads: “If I were to wish for something, I would wish not for wealth or power but for the passion of possibility, for the eye, eternally young, eternally ardent, that sees possibility everywhere.” 62

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Moltmann emerged as a major theologian on the contemporary scene in the mid1960s with the publication of his book Theology of Hope. The effort was to present a theology informed through and through by hope and eschatology. Kierkegaard is referred to six times in the book. He begins with a meditation on hope. Hope gives a basis for faith as a middle ground between the word of promise and the experience of suffering and death: “Where the bounds that mark the end of all human hopes are broken through in the raising of the crucified one, there faith can and must expand into hope….There its hope becomes a ‘passion for what is possible’ (Kierkegaard), because it can be a passion for what has been made possible.”67 Believing hope is not world-renouncing and world-escaping but world-affirming and world-transforming, seeing “in the resurrection of Christ not the eternity of heaven, but the future of the very earth on which his cross stands,” “the future of the very humanity for which he died”: Believing hope finds in the cross the hope of the earth.68 Addressed are those who insist that hope cheats humans of the happiness of the present and of the eternal present as well. Parmenides is lifted up as one whose god—the eternal, single fullness of being—is thinkable, and who regards all nonexistence, movement, and change as unthinkable because they are short on being. Moltmann holds that this Parmenidean viewpoint on God has made its way into Christian theology as thinkers have struggled to defend Christian hope from the charges of its deceptiveness, and Kierkegaard is cited as a case in point.69 The next reference to Kierkegaard comes in Moltmann’s explanation of the change in view that Karl Barth underwent as a result of being influenced by his brother Heinrich in gaining the appropriate orientation on the ideas of Plato and Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). As a result, the eschatology informing Barth’s 1919 commentary on Romans was exchanged for a dialectic of time and eternity and Moltmann, Theologie der Hoffnung, p. 15. (Theology of Hope, pp. 19–20.) Moltmann, Theologie der Hoffnung, p. 16. (Theology of Hope, p. 21.) 69 Moltmann, Theologie der Hoffnung, p. 24 (Theology of Hope, p. 29), describes Kierkegaard’s modification of the Greek view of time: “When in the celebrated chapter of Kierkegaard’s treatise on The Concept of Anxiety the promised ‘fulness of time’ is taken out of the realm of expectation that attaches to promise and history, and the ‘fullness of time’ is called the ‘moment’ in the sense of the eternal, then we find ourselves in the field of Greek thinking rather than of the Christian knowledge of God. It is true that Kierkegaard modified the Greek understanding of temporality in the light of the Christian insight into our radical sinfulness, and that he intensifies the Greek difference between logos and doxa into a paradox, but does that really imply any more than a modification of the ‘epiphany of the eternal present’? ‘The present is not a concept of time. The eternal conceived as the present is arrested temporal succession. The moment characterizes the present as a thing that has no past and no future. The moment is an atom of eternity. It is the first reflection of eternity in time, its first attempt as it were to halt time.’ It is understandable that then the believer, too, must be described in parallel terms to the Parmenidean and Platonic contemplator. The believer is the man who is entirely present. He is in the supreme sense contemporaneous with himself and one with himself. ‘And to be with the eternal’s help utterly and completely contemporaneous with oneself today, is to gain eternity. The believer turns his back on the eternal so to speak, precisely in order to have it by him in the one day that is today. The Christian believes, and thus he is quit of tomorrow.’ ” The quotations are from various places in chapter III of SKS 4, 384–5 / CA, 81–2. 67 68

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a perspective informed by Kant’s transcendental eschatology. This involved a departure from the earlier eschatological view that was more friendly “towards dynamic and cosmic perspectives.” Now “ ‘end’ came to be the equivalent of ‘origin,’ ” “the eschaton became the transcendental boundary of time and eternity,” and “the eternal Moment”—“being the transcendent meaning of all moments”— could “be compared with no moment in time.”70 Moltmann depicts this Barthian transcendental eschatology as combining “Ranke’s saying that ‘every epoch has an immediate relation to God’ and Kierkegaard’s dictum that ‘where the eternal is concerned there is only one time: the present.’ ”71 Consequently, Barth’s “theology of the transcendental subjectivity of God” in both its earlier formulation of the Christian Dogmatics and in its later development in the Church Dogmatics loses its eschatological power because “an eternal presence of God in time, a present without any future,” undercuts the promise and futurity of revelation.72 Similarly, Bultmann develops a “theology of the transcendental subjectivity of man,” which— unlike Barth’s separating of “the non-objectifiable subjectivity of God” “from the subjectivity of man”—“remains under the spell of the hidden correlation of God and self” and God’s self-revelation finds its measure not in the Trinity but in the disclosing of the authenticity of human selfhood.73 In Bultmann’s theology eschatology loses any sense of a transcendent goal of history, since this goal is confined to the realization of authentic human existence; while “the logos of eschaton becomes the power of liberation from history, the power of the desecularization of existence in the sense of liberating us from understanding ourselves on the basis of the world and of works,” it is finally a theology that leaves empty the future as God’s future.74 Bultmann’s existential proof of God— that is, “speaking and thinking of God as the factor that is enquired after in the question raised by man’s existence”75 and as one who, according to Kantian presuppositions, is nowhere working, even hiddenly, in the world, in nature, and in history—results finally in, “as for Kierkegaard, the alliance of a theoretic atheism and a believing heart.”76 The last two references to Kierkegaard in Theology of Hope occur in the chapter on “The Resurrection and Future of Jesus Christ.” Moltmann, of course, advocates an eschatology of promise in contrast to what he calls “a presentative eschatology or a theology of the eternal present.”77 Only the standpoint of an eschatology based on promise is able to support the Easter appearances of the risen Christ with a view of the resurrection as setting “in motion an eschatologically determined process of history, whose goal is the annihilation of death in the victory of the life of the resurrection, and which ends in that righteousness in which God receives in all things Moltmann, Theologie der Hoffnung, pp. 43–4. (Theology of Hope, pp. 50–1.) Moltmann, Theologie der Hoffnung, p. 44. (Theology of Hope, p. 51.) No citation is given for the Kierkegaardian dictum, although it is likely a freely rendered translation from SKS 4, 389 / CA, 86. 72 Moltmann, Theologie der Hoffnung, pp. 48–50. (Theology of Hope, pp. 56–8.) 73 Moltmann, Theologie der Hoffnung, pp. 51–3. (Theology of Hope, pp. 58–61.) 74 Moltmann, Theologie der Hoffnung, pp. 53–4. (Theology of Hope, pp. 61–2.) 75 Moltmann, Theologie der Hoffnung, p. 53. (Theology of Hope, p. 61.) 76 Moltmann, Theologie der Hoffnung, p. 56. (Theology of Hope, p. 64.) 77 Moltmann, Theologie der Hoffnung, p. 148. (Theology of Hope, p. 163.)

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his due and the creature thereby finds its salvation.”78 The future of the resurrection comes to faith as it takes to itself the cross; in this way “the eschatology of the future and the theology of the cross are interwoven,”79 and yet these two are not confused. Futuristic eschatology is not isolated from the world, as in late Jewish apocalyptic, nor is the cross taken to be “the mark of the paradoxical presence of eternity in every moment, as in Kierkegaard. The eschatological expectation of the all-embracing lordship of Christ for the corporeal, earthly world brings the clear perception and acceptance of the distinction of the cross and the resurrection.”80 The final reference to Kierkegaard appears in an extended discursus on the death of God. Moltmann notes that Hegel “described the ‘death of God’ as the basic feeling of the religion of modern times” and understood “that the resurrection and the future of God must manifest themselves not only in the case of the god-forsakenness of the crucified Jesus, but also in that of the god-forsakenness of the world.”81 He then depicts Kierkegaard in quite pejorative fashion as advocating “the paradoxical antithesis of a theoretical atheism and an existential inner life, of objective godlessness and subjective piety.”82 Moltmann characterizes Kierkegaard as radicalizing Kant’s dualism and tellingly places him between Hegel and the atheists Nietzsche and Feuerbach as a contributor to the death of God in Western culture. In his 1966 essay on “The Revelation of God and the Question of Truth,” Moltmann discusses the need for theology “to make what is Christian believable and to show that, against a generally binding background and within a unified horizon,

Ibid. Moltmann, Theologie der Hoffnung, p. 148. (Theology of Hope, p. 164). 80 Moltmann, Theologie der Hoffnung, p. 148. (Theology of Hope, pp. 163–4.) 81 Moltmann, Theologie der Hoffnung, pp. 152–3. (Theology of Hope, pp. 168–9.) 82 Moltmann, Theologie der Hoffnung, pp. 153–4 (Theology of Hope, pp. 169–70) writes: “This speculative dialectic even in the very matter of God or the highest idea had already eluded the grasp of Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard returned to the dualism of Kant and radicalized it. The age of infinite reflection no longer allows of any objective certainty in regard to the being or the self-motion of objects. Doubt and criticism do away with all mediation of the Absolute in the objective. Thus all that remains is, in irreconcilable dialectic, the paradoxical antithesis of a theoretical atheism and an existential inner life, of objective godlessness and subjective piety. The inner life of the immediate and unmediated relationship of existence and transcendence goes hand in hand with contempt for outward things as absurd, meaningless and godless. Kierkegaard’s ‘individual’ falls out of the dialectic of mediation and reconciliation and falls back upon pure immediacy. His ‘inner life’ is, even to the extent of verbal parallels, the ‘unhappy consciousness’ of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, only isolated from Hegel’s dialectic and abstracted from its movement. When the unhappy consciousness of the ‘beautiful soul’ fastens upon itself and seeks in its own inward immediacy all that is glorious along with all that is transcendent, then at the same time it fastens down the world of objects to rigid immutability and sanctions its inhuman and godless conditions. Since no reconciliation between the inward and the outward can be hoped for, it is also pointless to expend oneself on the pain of the negative, to take upon oneself the cross of reality. The god-forsakenness and absurdity of a world that has become a calculable world of wares and techniques can now serve only as a negative urge towards the attaining of pure inwardness. This dialectic that has frozen into an eternal paradox is the mark of romanticism and of all romanticist theology.” 78 79

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Christian talk of God is meaningful and necessary.”83 He identifies this horizon as an “eschatological ontology,” which affirms a world full of God’s possibilities for the future as the basis for radically open “eschatological existence” or human existence that lives out of promise. In making the case for Christian faith’s hopeful solidarity with the whole of creation that groans as it moves through transformation toward fulfillment, Moltmann acknowledges the provisional nature of any answers announced and the illusionary status of attempting a cosmological proof of God.84 Thinking simultaneously about both God and human existence in the name of the Christ of cross and resurrection does not yield “an ellipse” in which the unconditional is recognized in the conditional, the other-worldly in the this-worldly, the eternal in the temporal according to a “paradoxical identity,” but rather yields “a real dialectic” which brings together the contradictions in such a way that history’s contestations themselves are implicated in the emerging reconciliation, and history’s dialectic “is oriented towards an eschatological transcendence.”85 A footnote to the notion of “real dialectic” identifies an essay of Dorothee Sölle (1929–2003) as having brilliantly called for “the return of the Kierkegaard-oriented concept of paradox to the more comprehensive dialectic of Hegel and Marx.” He explains that “the paradox preserves its world-encompassing power in the ‘history of the world,’ the dialectic, on the other hand, its ‘world-illuminating power.’ ”86 In his 1966 essay “Hope and Planning” Moltmann anticipates postmodern deconstructionists of three decades later such as John Caputo (b. 1940) in proclaiming: “Hope is not only, as Kierkegaard thought, the ‘passion for the possible.’ Hope reaches out further over against historical possibilities and can even be characterized as a ‘passion for the impossible,’ the not yet possible.”87 Christian hope originates, Moltmann claims, in the event of the resurrection of the crucified Christ. If Christian hope is directed “not only towards the overcoming of this and that inconvenience but ultimately toward the overcoming of death, then Kierkegaard was correct when he called it a “hope against hope.”88

Jürgen Moltmann, “Gottesoffenbarung und Wahrheitsfrage,” in Perspektiven der Theologie, p. 14. (“The Revelation of God and the Question of Truth,” in Hope and Planning, p. 4.) 84 Moltmann, “Gottesoffenbarung und Wahrheitsfrage, p. 34. (“The Revelation of God and the Question of Truth,” p. 25.) 85 Moltmann, “Gottesoffenbarung und Wahrheitsfrage,” pp. 33–4. (“The Revelation of God and the Question of Truth,” p. 24.) 86 Moltmann, “Gottesoffenbarung und Wahrheitsfrage,” pp. 33–4, note 44. (“The Revelation of God and the Question of Truth,” p. 30, note 44.) The Sölle essay is “Paradoxe Identität,” in Monatsschrift für Pastoraltheologie, vol. 53, 1964, pp. 366ff. He quotes Sölle, p. 373: “The man who is not satisfied by a paradox searches the horizon of his life for possibilities which can be planned and anticipated because for him God is not the paradoxical ‘other’ but rather the one who is dialectically ‘changing all things.’ ” He says that this is the intention of his Theology of Hope. 87 Jürgen Moltmann, “Hoffnung und Planung,” in Perspektiven der Theologie, p. 265. (Moltmann, “Hope and Planning,” in Hope and Planning, p. 194.) 88 Moltmann, “Hoffnung und Planung,” p. 265. (“Hope and Planning,” p. 195.) 83

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In 1971 Moltmann recognized the need to balance his contribution to political theology by outlining an aesthetic theology, which he did in Theology and Joy. In that book he “described the freedom of a Christian in terms of justifying faith, but in such a way that there was no serious opposition between faith which owes itself to the Word and faith which is active in love.”89 Lifting up the theme of loving the neighbor as tied to faith was important for him to make good on the expectations of political theology. Love of neighbor without faith goes astray as much as faith that is not active in love. A unity of the two is needed.90 And in “The First Liberated Men in Creation,” published in English in a book entitled Theology of Play, he refers to Kierkegaard in identifying “primal childhood trust” and the aesthetic realm as sources of “the images for the coming new world.”91 In discussing whether God is beautiful, Moltmann notes that God’s beauty and dominion bear a relation comparable to that between aesthetics and ethics.92 In his 1972 The Crucified God Moltmann discusses “following the cross” and martyrdom, and in that context he invokes Kierkegaard’s “attack on Christianity” with its rejection of martyrdom as a sign that suffering and the cross had also been abandoned.93 Kierkegaard is mentioned only one other time in this work and that is in Moltmann’s considering the adoption by Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–88) of the formula “the death of God” for developing the “paschal mystery.” In gaining knowledge of God from the crucified Christ, understanding the church in relation to the cross, and construing God by way of a trinitarian theology of the cross, Balthasar

Moltmann, “Mein theologischer Weg,” p. 236. (“My Theological Career,” p. 179.) Ibid. 91 Cf. Moltmann’s Die Ersten Freigelassenen der Schöpfung, Munich: Kaiser 1971, pp. 40–1 (Theology of Play, trans. by Reinhard Ulrich, New York: Harper & Row 1972, p. 35), on Kierkegaard’s preservation of the aesthetic within the religious: “The images for the coming new world do not come from the world of struggle and victory, of work and achievement, of law and its enforcement, but from the world of primal childhood trust. In Kierkegaard too, on the level of ‘religious existence’ there is a return of patterns and relationships taken from ‘aesthetic existence’ and not from ‘ethical existence.’ They return here in transmoral fashion.” 92 Moltmann, Die Ersten Freigelassenen der Schöpfung, p. 48. (Theology of Play, p. 43.) 93 Cf. Moltmann, Der gekreuzigte Gott, pp. 59–60 (The Crucified God, p. 58): “The suffering and rejection of Christ on the cross is understood as eschatological suffering and rejection, and is brought by the martyrs into the eschatological public arena, where they are cast out, rejected and publicly executed. Kierkegaard’s ‘attack on Christianity,’ in the midst of the liberal bourgeois-Protestant world of the nineteenth century, made impressively clear that the rejection of the concept of martyrdom had brought with it the abandonment of the church’s understanding of suffering, and meant that the gospel of the cross had lost its meaning and ultimately that established Christianity was bound to lose its eschatological hope. The assimilation of Christianity to bourgeois society always means that the cross is forgotten and hope is lost.” In a note (p. 58, note 40 (p. 77, note 40)), Moltmann does not cite any of Kierkegaard’s writings, but he does direct the reader, “for Kierkegaard’s understanding of discipleship,” to Vernard Eller, Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship: A New Perspective, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1968. 89 90

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is led repeatedly “to Luther’s theologia crucis, to Hegel and Kierkegaard,” to the kenotic theologians of the nineteenth century, and to Karl Barth.94 In his book on the human from the early 1970s, Man, Moltmann makes a single reference to Kierkegaard. The human being has a sense of possibility and in relating to possibility the human in self-irony “can look out from the reality of his life and reflect, keep his negative independence from everything, and toy with the quite different possibilities that he has”: “The salient feature of irony is the subjective freedom that at all times has in its power the possibility of a beginning and is not handicapped by earlier situations,’ said Kierkegaard.”95 An essay from the mid-1970s on “Justification and New Creation” mentions Kierkegaard. In discussing the doctrine of justification in the contemporary situation, Moltmann asks about the background against which the event of justification becomes necessary, understandable, and convincing, and inquires whether it is the human’s “inner crisis of conscience, in his self-disintegration and his alienation from his true being, as Kierkegaard said: ‘The principle of Protestantism [has] a particular premise: a man who sits in mortal terror, in fear and trembling and much temptation.’ ”96 Kierkegaard is referred to in the little book Experiences of God in the chapter on “Anxiety.” The whole discussion will reappear in the 1994 work Jesus Christ in Today’s World. Moltmann quotes a passage from Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Anxiety in which he makes use of one of Grimm’s fairy tales as a means for declaring his own thesis.97 Moltmann juxtaposes Kierkegaard’s appropriation of the tale to that Moltmann, Der gekreuzigte Gott, p. 186. (The Crucified God, p. 202.) Jürgen Moltmann, Mensch. Christliche Anthropologie in den Konflikten der Gegenwart, Stuttgart: Kreuz-Verlag 1971, p. 135 (English translation: Man: Christian Anthro-pology in the Conflicts of the Present, trans. by John Sturdy, Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1974, p. 93); p. 174, note 67 (p. 123, note 67) indicates that the quotation is from the passage corresponding to SKS 1, 266 / CI, 253. 96 Jürgen Moltmann, “Rechtfertigung und neue Schöpfung,” in Zukunft der Schöpfung: Gesammelte Aufsätze, Kaiser 1977, p. 158. (English translation: “Justification and New Creation,” in The Future of Creation: Collected Essays, trans. by Margaret Kohl, Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1979, p. 150.) In Moltmann, Zukunft der Schöpfung, pp. 177–8, note 9 (The Future of Creation, pp. 192–3, note 9), he quotes the full passage from Kierkegaard’s Journals (Die Tagebücher, vols. 1–5, trans. and ed. by Hayo Gerdes, Düsseldorf and Cologne: Diederichs 1962–74, vol. 5, pp. 374–5, which corresponds to Pap. XI–2 A 305 / JP 3, 3617): “In the same way, it can happen in Protestantism that worldliness is honoured and valued as—piety. And this cannot happen in Catholicism—or so I would maintain. But why can’t it happen in Catholicism? Because Catholicism has as its premise the general proposition that we men and women are a society of rascals. And why can it happen in Protestantism? Because the basic principle of Protestantism is linked with a particular premise; a man who sits in mortal terror, in fear and trembling and much temptation—and there are not many people like this in any generation.” Moltmann quotes the short form of the passage again in Der Geist des Lebens, pp. 140–1 (The Spirit of Life, p. 127), in addressing the question concerning righteousness and its meaning, noting that “for Kierkegaard, in the nineteenth century, it meant the inward loss of identity.” 97 Moltmann, Gottes Erfahrungen: Hoffnung, Angst, Mystik, Munich: Christian Kaiser Verlag 1979, p. 27 (Experiences of God, p. 39). The passage runs: “In one of Grimm’s fairy 94 95

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of Ernst Bloch who at the outset of his Principle of Hope pronounces a seemingly contrary view that the important thing is to learn how to hope.98 These two emphases need not be at odds with one another, according to Moltmann, because anxiety and hope are finally complementary notions.99 He notes further that after commenting on the fairy tale Kierkegaard “goes on to talk of Christ ‘who was in dread even unto death.’ But this means that we are released from our anxieties through Christ’s, and we are freed from our suffering through his. Our wounds, paradoxically, are healed by other wounds, as Isaiah 53 promises of the Servant of God.”100 Interestingly, a paragraph and an explanatory footnote included here are deleted years later when this material is incorporated into Jesus Christ in Today’s World. That paragraph states how Kierkegaard and Bloch agree “that anxiety and hope can both be learnt,” and that “the story of the boy going out to learn how to be afraid is an exodus story.”101 “The exodus out of existing reality into the potentiality of the future is the road to freedom. It is on this road that we ‘learn’ how to be anxious and how to hope. Anxiety and hope seem to me to be the two sides of the experience of freedom.”102 To experience freedom is to be anxious and to hope. Moltmann’s explanatory note observes that both Kierkegaard and Bloch held to the principle that potentiality is higher than actuality. Both anxiety and hope are experiences of the possible. Comparing these two thinkers closely on the concept of possibility, though, reveals significant differences. Here Moltmann quotes Kierkegaard: “Whoever is educated by anxiety is educated by possibility, and only he who is educated by possibility is educated according to his infinitude. Therefore possibility is the weightiest of all categories.”103 Bloch, on the other hand, writes: “Expectation, hope, intention towards still unrealized potentiality: all this is not merely a fundamental characteristic of the human consciousness but, specifically corrected and understood, tales there is a story of a man who goes in search of adventure in order to learn what it is to be in anxiety. We will let the adventurer pursue his journey without concerning ourselves about whether he encountered the terrible on his way. However, I will say that this is an adventure that every human being must go through—to learn to be anxious in order that he may not perish either by never having been in anxiety or by succumbing in anxiety. Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate.” The reference corresponds to SKS 4, 454 / CA, 155. 98 Moltmann, Erfahrungen, p. 28 (Expriences of God, p. 40). The reference (p. 43, note 2 [p. 81, note 2]) is to Ernst Bloch, Das Prinzip Hoffnung, p. 1 (Principle of Hope, p. 3). 99 Moltmann, Erfahrungen, p. 29 (Experiences of God, p. 41) describes hope as giving rise to courage and anxiety foresight: “If a person has to learn how to be afraid, as Kierkegaard says, he needs an even greater hope, if he is not to be numbed by anxiety or totally engulfed by it. When we look towards the open future, obscure and undetermined as it is, it is hope that gives us courage; yet it is anxiety that makes us circumspect and cautious—which gives us foresight. So how can hope become wise without anxiety? Courage without caution is rash. But caution without courage makes people hesitant and leaden-footed. In this respect ‘the concept of dread’ and ‘the principle of hope’ are not opposites after all; they are complementary and mutually dependent.” 100 Moltmann, Erfahrungen, pp. 32–3. (Experiences of God, p. 44.). 101 Moltmann, Erfahrungen, p. 29. (Experiences of God, p. 41.) 102 Moltmann, Erfahrungen, p. 30. (Experiences of God, p. 42.) 103 Moltmann, Erfahrungen, pp. 43–4, note 3. (Experiences of God, p. 81, note 3.)

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a fundamental mood within objective reality as a whole.”104 Then Moltmann draws the difference: “Bloch is interested in ‘the realization of possibility’ in the sense of active hope, not, like Kierkegaard, in the sense of dread of its becoming possible.”105 Moltmann’s meaning in this last summary of Kierkegaard’s stance on possibility is unclear and possibly confused. We will show that there is not as much difference between Bloch and Kierkegaard as he here maintains. In fact, he might have later come to see more of a congruence between them and then decided to drop this paragraph and explanatory note where he makes the case for their differences. In the important 1980 theological statement, The Trinity and the Kingdom of God, the only Kierkegaard references come in relation to Miguel de Unamuno (1864– 1936) in the discussion of “The Sorrow of God,” when he mentions Kierkegaard as one who helped him formulate his insight into Golgotha as revealing the world’s pain and God’s sorrow.106 Unamuno’s “tragic sense of life” is a basic existential experience of that inescapable death which stands in contradiction over against life. Overcoming this contradiction involves a divine overcoming of Godself from the contradiction of God’s world. In experiencing death, the human participates in God’s pain in relation to God’s world, as Unamuno articulates it: “Sorrow (congoja) teaches us about God’s sorrow, his sorrow at being eternal and surviving his creatures. Sorrow teaches us to love God.”107 In the note Moltmann points out how Kierkegaard has written similarly in his journals: Christianity is: what God has to suffer with us human beings….Now there is, if one may so put it, in God the contradiction which is the source of all torment: he is love and yet he is unchangeable….When Christ cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me”—that was terrible for Christ, and this is the way it is commonly represented. But it seems to me that it was still most terrible for God to hear his cry…to be unchangeable and then to be love: infinite, profound, unfathomable grief!108

In God in Creation, which were The Gifford Lectures given in the mid-1980s, discussing the human as at once God’s image and sinner, Moltmann argues that sin

Ibid. The quotation is from Bloch’s Das Prinzip Hoffnung, p. 7 (The Principle of Hope, p. 5). 105 Moltmann, Erfahrungen, p. 44, note 3. (Experiences of God, p. 81, note 3.) 106 Jürgen Moltmann, Trinität und Reich Gottes, Munich: Kaiser 1980, p. 52 (English translation: The Trinity and the Kingdom of God: The Doctrine of God, trans. by Margaret Kohl, San Francisco: Harper & Row 1981, p. 36), writes: “In 1897, during a profound crisis in his life, Unamuno discovered Spanish passion mysticism. Through it he came to understand the mystery of the world and the mystery of God. Christ’s death struggle on Golgotha reveals the pain of the whole world and the sorrow of God. Hegel, Kierkegaard (‘the brother from the North’), Schopenhauer and Jakob Böhme helped him to formulate this insight of his.” 107 Miguel de Unamuno, The Tragic Sense of Life in Men and Nations, in Selected Works of Miguel de Unamuno, vols. 1–7, Princeton: Routledge & Kegan Paul and Princeton University Press 1967–84, vol. 4, p. 227. 108 Moltmann, Trinität und Reich Gottes, p. 55, note 60. (The Trinity and the Kingdom of God, p. 229, note 63.) The Kierkegaard entry is from SKS 26, 63, NB31:86 / JP 4, 4715. 104

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perverts but does not destroy the human being’s relationship to God and gives rise to what Kierkegaard calls the “sickness unto death.”109 Moltmann’s fascinating 1991 theological statement, The Spirit of Life, presents a vision of the Spirit as setting “this life in the presence of the living God and in the great river of eternal love” and attempting to honor “the unity between the experience of God and the experience of life.”110 Moltmann comments in introducing the notion of pneumatology that many people today express the personal experience of the Spirit in the words, “God loves me.” “They find themselves, and no longer have to try despairingly to be themselves—or despairingly not to be themselves.”111 On Moltmann’s view the Spirit liberates life through faith that liberates freedom as subjectivity, love that liberates freedom as sociality, and hope that liberates freedom as future. In discussing faith that liberates freedom as subjectivity, Moltmann mentions Kierkegaard’s “subjectivity is truth.”112 A theology of the Spirit must address the matter of sanctification as it is to be understood today. In so doing Moltmann maintains that one important feature of sanctification is that it throws “open a new spontaneity of faith,” as one encounters in Augustine’s maxim to “love, and do what you like.”113 “This means a new spontaneity of life beyond reflection, not a regression into a childish lack of conscience, as Kierkegaard showed. It is a self-confidence self-forgetfully embedded in confidence in God. In this sanctification of one’s own life, being is sanctified, not acts. The person begins to shine, though not of his own accord, and without being aware of it.”114 The Spirit also provides the energies that are experienced charismatically as life’s vitalizing powers. The gifts of life to which people are called involve a charismatic quickening of individual potentiality and power that puts them into “the service of the liberating kingdom of God.”115 In this awakening of charismatic experience trust in oneself is strengthened and self-love is required, and here he interprets Kierkegaard as teaching that we are to love our neighbor instead of ourselves.116 Moltmann refers to no particular book in mentioning Kierkegaard in this context. He is likely thinking of Works of Love where Kierkegaard treats this matter Moltmann, Gott in der Schöpfung, p. 239. (God in Creation, p. 234.) Moltmann, Der Geist des Lebens, p. 9. (The Spirit of Life, p. x.) 111 Moltmann, Der Geist des Lebens, p. 15. (The Spirit of Life, p. 3.) Moltmann indicates (p, 15, note 8 (p. 312, note 8)), that “this is how S. Kierkegaard characterizes sin in The Sickness unto Death.” Moltmann repeats this Kierkegaardian statement on p. 104 (p. 91.) 112 Moltmann, Der Geist des Lebens, p. 129. (The Spirit of Life, p. 116.) 113 Moltmann, Der Geist des Lebens, p. 187. (The Spirit of Life, p. 173.) 114 Ibid. 115 Moltmann, Der Geist des Lebens, p. 197. (The Spirit of Life, p. 183.) 116 Moltmann, Der Geist des Lebens, p. 201 (The Spirit of Life, p. 187) writes on the relation of love of neighbor to love of self: “‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’ we are told in the biblical command for humanity. It does not say: love your neighbor instead of yourself, though this is the way Kierkegaard interpreted it. Love of our neighbor presupposes love of ourselves. We cannot love other people if we do not love ourselves. But we cannot love ourselves if we do not want to be ourselves, but want to be someone else. ‘Self’-less love in the literal sense is no love at all, for it has no subject. Self-love is the strength to love our neighbor. Self-love is the foundation for a free life.” 109 110

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most completely. One wishes here, though, that Moltmann had introduced some of the nuance into this question such as Kierkegaard does; one then could hardly have made such a blanket claim as he does about Kierkegaard merely advocating love of neighbor instead of oneself. Kierkegaard’s point concerns much more the question of how does one appropriately love oneself. In his article on “Creation, Covenant and Glory” considered in “A Conversation on Karl Barth’s Doctrine of Creation,” Moltmann reports that, as a young student reading Barth’s Church Dogmatics, he was still under the influence of Kierkegaard and Luther, so that he “felt the stately, meditative and doxological style of the Church Dogmatics to be like a beautiful drama: too beautiful to be true on this earth, from the annihilation of which in the war we had just escaped.”117 Only the doctrine of predestination with its theology of the cross, he recollects, touched his heart.118 This is the only place Moltmann mentions Kierkegaard in the collected articles from the 1980s that comprise the book History and the Triune God. His 1995 The Coming of God was the fifth of the books delivering the content of his systematic theological contributions. In the context of discussing Franz Rosenzweig’s questioning of “the illusory nature of Hegel’s ‘reason in history’ ” and the blindness of the Hegelian system towards the individual, Moltmann claims that “for Rosenzweig, Kierkegaard became the important alternative to Hegel.”119 A second reference comes in dealing with “The Redemption of the Future from the Power of History.” The dialectical theology of the World War I era rediscovered “the present as a moment which towers out of the continuum of the times” and led to an understanding of redemption as “redemption from history and time, into the eternity of God.”120 “The historical ‘moment’ was for them, as it was for the anti-Hegelian Kierkegaard, ‘an atom of eternity’ and a standstill in the succession of the times.”121 Moltmann notes that this movement away from thinking about the completion of history to thinking about redemption from history left Jewish thinkers unsatisfied, because they found inconceivable the notion of “an ‘eternal present’ of redemption in this ‘unredeemed world.’ ”122 Developed then was the messianic interpretation of “the moment” that “throws open new perspectives, and discloses everything that is to be desired.”123 This interpretation “that ends and gathers up time is the redemption of the future from the power of history.”124 What Moltmann means is that “God’s messianic future wins power over the present,” opens up new perspectives, and makes possible theological eschatology since hope is “redeemed from the ruins of Jürgen Moltmann, “Schöpfung, Bund und Herrlichkeit: Zum Gesprüch über Karl Barths Schöpfungslehre,” In der Geschichte des dreieinigen Gottes, pp. 172–93, see p. 173. (English translation: “Creation, Covenant and Glory: A Conversation on Karl Barth’s Doctrine of Creation,” History and the Triune God, pp. 125–42, see p. 126.) 118 Jürgen Moltmann, “Schöpfung, Bund und Herrlichkeit,” pp. 173–4. (“Creation, Covenant and Glory,” History and the Triune God, p. 126.) 119 Moltmann, Das Kommen Gottes, p. 52. (The Coming of God, p. 34.) 120 Moltmann, Das Kommen Gottes, p. 63. (The Coming of God, p. 44.) 121 Ibid. 122 Ibid. 123 Moltmann, Das Kommen Gottes, p. 63. (The Coming of God, p. 45.) 124 Moltmann, Das Kommen Gottes, p. 64. (The Coming of God, p. 45.) 117

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historical reason.”125 And in this work Moltmann has a more positive assessment of anxiety than in earlier writings: “Anxiety makes hope wise. So the important thing is not just ‘to learn how to hope,’ as Ernst Bloch taught, but to learn how to hope in danger, and—as Kierkegaard thought—through anxiety to become wise.”126 In treating time and eternity Moltmann asserts that the “here and now” of the present, the constitutive category of time, is a category of eternity and as that which is, this present now needs to be distinguished ontologically from the not yet of the future and the no longer of the past: “Future and past are categories of non-Being. In the ontological sense, only what is present is.”127 Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Anxiety is then quoted: “Present is the category of eternity in time: the moment is ‘an atom of eternity.’ ”128 Kierkegaard is referred to yet again when Moltmann considers the modes of time in relation to the modalities of being. Georg Picht (1913–82) correlated the past, the present, and the future as modes of time to necessary Being, real or actual [wirklichen] Being, and future Being as modalities of being.129 Moltmann then quotes from The Concept of Anxiety: “The possible corresponds exactly to the future…and the future is for time the possible.”130 He notes that “the possible is what is future, the real is what is present, and the past is what has become unchangeable”; and this arrangement carries with it “the irreversible time-pointer.”131 He proceeds to make the critical distinction between the future as a mode of time and the future as the source of time, and this distinction, while not exclusively dependent on Kierkegaard, is surely most Kierkegaardian in its character.132 Moltmann, Das Kommen Gottes, pp. 63–4. (The Coming of God, pp. 44–6.) Moltmann, Das Kommen Gottes, p. 261. (The Coming of God, p. 234.) Moltmann cites, on p. 261, note 198 (p. 370, note 198), Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Anxiety. 127 Moltmann, Das Kommen Gottes, p. 313. (The Coming of God, p. 285.) 128 Moltmann, Das Kommen Gottes, p. 314. (The Coming of God, p. 285.) The reference corresponds to SKS 4, 391 / CA, 88. 129 Georg Picht, “Die Zeit und die Modalitäten,” Hier und Jetzt. Philosophieren nach Auschwitz und Hiroshima, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta 1980, pp. 362–74. 130 Moltmann, Das Kommen Gottes, p. 315. (The Coming of God, p. 286.) The reference on p. 315, note 71 (p. 378, note 71) indicates the quotation corresponds to SKS 4, 394 / CA, 91. 131 Moltmann, Das Kommen Gottes, p. 315. (The Coming of God, p. 286.) 132 Moltmann, Das Kommen Gottes, pp. 315–16 (The Coming of God, pp. 286–7), offers keen words on time, its modes, and its source: “Out of possibility reality develops, just as out of future there will be past. The modes of time are not isomorphous. All temporal happening is irreversible, unrepeatable and inexorable. The modes of time are a-symmetrical and assigned to qualities of being which are different in kind. Potentiality and reality are distinguishable modes of being, and our dealings with them differ. Correspondingly, we deal differently with past and future. Remembered past is something rather than expected future. If reality is realized potentiality, then potentiality must be higher ontologically than reality. If out of future there is past, but out of past never again future, then the future must have pre-eminence among the modes of time. If time is irreversible, then the source from which time springs must lie in the future. But it cannot be identical with future time, for every future time passes away. Here we can follow Picht in distinguishing between the future as a mode of time, and the future as the source of time. As a mode of time, future belongs to phenomenal time, as the source of time, future is the transcendental possibility of time in general. In the transcendental sense, future is present to every time—to future, present and past time. In this respect it is also the 125

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“Transcendental” refers in the Kantian sense that is intended here to the necessary conditions of possibility for something to be, so in designating the future as transcendental the difference is clearly established between that status of the future as the source of all time and the future as a mode of phenomenal or passing time. Furthermore, Moltmann analyzes different ways of viewing eternity in time. He distinguishes what he calls aeonic or a heavenly, cyclical, reversible, timeless form of time which has no end from transitory or an earthly, unrepeatable, irreversible, temporal form of time, with the former being “a time corresponding to the eternity of God” and the latter being a time in which all happenings are temporal happenings that are marked by death.133 While the earthly creation exists within the context of passing time, it “belongs within the context of the aeonic time of ‘the invisible world,’ continually touching it and being touched by it.”134 Human beings have the capacity, as Augustine of Hippo made clear, to remember the past in the present and to expect the future in the present, and the creative act of bringing past and future to life in the present and making them seem to be simultaneous with us in the present moment is what Moltmann labels a “relative eternity,” since simultaneity is one of the attributes of eternity, and the human mind’s creative act calls the non-being of past and future into being somewhat analogously to the God who calls into being the things that are not.135 This eternity in time as simultaneity is more significant than eternity in time as a mathematical point in time, but it is less significant than eternity in time as kairos. Kairos is earthly time filled with anticipation for the eternal. But Moltmann warns against identifying the kairotic moment with the eschatological moment. “As ‘an atom of eternity,’ the fulfilled moment drops out of the sequence of time, interrupts time’s flow, abolishes the distinction of the times in past and future, is an ecstasy that translates out of this temporal life into the life that is eternal.”136 In going on to address “The Fulfillment of Time,” Moltmann notes the need to differentiate between the present kairos and the eschatological moment.137 Barth and unity of time. The future in a certain sense ‘is the whole of which the past is a part.’ ” The quotation corresponds to SKS 4, 392 / CA, 89. 133 Moltmann, Das Kommen Gottes, p. 311. (The Coming of God, pp. 282–3.) 134 Moltmann, Das Kommen Gottes, p. 311. (The Coming of God, p. 283.) 135 Moltmann, Das Kommen Gottes, pp. 216–17. (The Coming of God, pp. 287–8.) 136 Moltmann, Das Kommen Gottes, p. 320 (The Coming of God, p. 291). The reference again is to SKS 4, 391–2 / CA, 88–9. 137 Moltmann, Das Kommen Gottes, p. 321 (The Coming of God, p. 292), once again takes a moment from Kierkegaard: “Kierkegaard was the first to move the eschatological moment into the present of eternity, to equate it with the present kairos. ‘The eternal is the present, and the present is the fullness.’ As present, eternity gathers into itself the ‘sequence of time’ which is in itself empty. For this Kierkegaard used the metaphorical expression ‘moment.’ ‘Nothing is so swift as the glance of the eyes and yet it is appropriate for the content of the eternal.’ The ‘moment’ means something present which no longer has any past and no longer any future, and is thus ‘the perfection of the eternal.’ Kierkegaard has in his mind’s eye the image of Ingeborg as she looks out over the sea, in ‘Frithiof’s Saga.’ But he also linked this with Plato’s idea of the ‘sudden’ (τὸ ἐξαίφνης). Not least, however, he found in Paul, in I Cor. 15:52, a poetic paraphrase of the moment in which the world is to end ‘in an atom and in a moment.’ He concluded from this that time and eternity ‘touch’ in the moment and that this

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Bultmann, like Kierkegaard, mistakenly interpret the moment of kairos as being the fulfillment of the eschaton rather than as being the anticipation of the coming fulfillment.138 God for a Secular Society was published in 1997. In this work on “God in the Project of the Modern World,” the name of Kierkegaard is invoked in Moltmann’s delineation of the principles of the Enlightenment and Protestantism as being the principles of liberty or freedom. Protestantism is claimed to be the religion of freedom, and Kierkegaard’s “Subjectivity is truth” is cited as an important element in the development of modern religion.139 Moltmann refers to the same “subjectivity is truth” theme in his discussion of “Christian modernism,” this time declaring its contribution to the independence of modern religion not only over against the state but over against the church as well.140 In the 2000 publication, Experiences in Theology, Moltmann portrays the way his biography has shaped his theology. In addressing the question “What is Theology?” he asserts that theology is not an objective science having to do with facts that can be nailed down but rather: “Its sphere is the knowledge that sustains existence, that gives us courage to live and comfort in dying….Theologians will bring the whole of their existence into their search for knowledge about God. ‘Subjectivity is truth.’ That postulate of Kierkegaard’s is true at least for theologians.”141 Theology is existential in that it grows out of personal experiences and seeks theological answers out of faith’s questions. The other reference to Kierkegaard in this work comes in the context of considering “hermeneutics,” by which term Moltmann means not merely the theory of understanding written utterances but rather “the comprehending experience and praxis of present history.”142 Kierkegaard is mentioned in the context of treating the existential interpretation of historical texts by Heidegger and Bultmann; their ontology of “the historicity of Dasein” detaches the meaning of history from the totality of history in which humans participate and compartmentalizes meaning

is ‘the fullness of time.’ With this he equated the historical and the eschatological moment, and did not pay sufficient regard to the completely different happening which takes place here in faith, and there in the raising of the dead.” 138 Moltmann, Das Kommen Gottes, pp. 321–5. (The Coming of God, pp. 292–5.) 139 Moltmann, Gott im Projekt der modernen Welt, p. 183 (God for a Secular Society, pp. 202–3), writes on the impact of subjectivism: “Protestant subjectivism has led religiously and culturally to all possible kinds of individualism, pluralism and egoism. But it has also brought into modern culture the dignity of every human person, and individual human rights, so that these can never again be forgotten. Without freedom of belief and personal responsibility, a humane society is not possible. All ‘post-modern’ attempts to surmount human subjectivity end up in nothing other than the abolition of the human being, whether it be through the bureaucratic conspiracy, or through the ‘gentle conspiracy’ of esotericism.” 140 Moltmann, Gott im Projekt der modernen Welt, p. 194. (God for a Secular Society, p. 215.) 141 Moltmann, Erfahrungen theologischen Denkens, p. 34. (Experiences in Theology, p. 23.) 142 Moltmann, Erfahrungen theologischen Denkens, p. 113. (Experiences in Theology, p. 118.)

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within the perspective of “one’s own history” and “one’s own present.”143 “The decision in one’s own particular existence is the end and beginning of history in the moment, and this moment is ‘an atom of eternity,’ as Kierkegaard said (in opposition to Hegel), and is therefore eschatologically qualified. There is, then, no eschatology of world history.”144 In radically detaching human existence from its “worldness,” this perspective leaves completely unanswered the questions of history’s victims concerning justice.145 In God Will Be All in All: The Eschatology of Jürgen Moltmann of 1999 there is only one reference to Kierkegaard by Moltmann himself and that is in his essay on “The Bible, the Exegete and the Theologian,” where Kierkegaard is mentioned in the discussion of various theories of time.146 This understanding of time is fleshed out more fully in the book Science and Wisdom published in 2002. In Science and Wisdom, which gathers published and unpublished essays from the years 1963 to 2000, God’s self-limitation, a theme central in Moltmann’s theology, receives expression.147 Moltmann also applies the notion of self-limitation to God’s omniscience, arguing that “God doesn’t know everything in advance because he doesn’t will to know everything in advance.”148 This means that in a certain sense “God becomes dependent on the response of his beloved creatures.”149

Moltmann, Erfahrungen theologischen Denkens, p. 115. (Experiences in Theology, p. 120.) 144 Ibid. 145 Moltmann, Erfahrungen theologischen Denkens, p. 116. (Experiences in Theology, pp. 121.) 146 Moltmann, God Will Be All in All, p. 228, declares: “It is justifiable to take ‘future’ as the transcendental condition for the possibility of time in general, and to distinguish between that and the phenomenal times of future, present and past time. If, as Kierkegaard and Heidegger have shown, possibility occupies a higher position ontologically than reality, then the future enjoys priority in the modes of time too.” 147 Jürgen Moltmann, Wissenschaft und Weisheit. Zum Gesprüch zwischen Naturwissenschaft und Theologie, Gütersloh: Kaiser/Gütersloher Verlagshaus 2002, pp. 78–9 (English translation: Science and Wisdom, trans. by Margaret Kohl, Minneapolis: Fortress Press 2003, pp. 63–4), writes: “Kierkegaard detected similar lines of thought in Hegel’s idea of world history as ‘God’s biography,’ and maintained in opposition that only almighty power can limit itself, can give itself and withdraw itself, in order to make the recipient independent; so that in the divine act of self-humiliation we also have to respect an act of God’s omnipotence. We might put it epigrammatically and say that God never appears mightier than in the act of his self-limitation, and never greater than in the act of his self-humiliation.” In a note Moltmann quotes from Kierkegaard’s journal: “Only omnipotence can take itself back while it gives away, and this relation is indeed precisely the independence of the recipient. God’s omnipotence is therefore God’s goodness. For goodness is to give away completely, but in such a way that by omnipotently taking itself back one makes the recipient independent. All finite power makes dependent, only omnipotence can make independent, from nothing bring forth that which receives continued existence in itself by the fact that omnipotence continuously takes itself back.” SKS 20, 58, NB:69 / JP 2, 1251. 148 Moltmann, Wissenschaft und Weisheit, p. 79. (Science and Wisdom, p. 64.) 149 Ibid. 143

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In considering a historical theory of time under seven aspects, Kierkegaard is included along with Hegel, Heidegger, Georg Picht, and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker (1912–2007) as key figures in tracing this development.150 He points out that understanding the here and now of the present “as constituting the times of future and past, we can also see the present as a category of eternity, for the present establishes the unity of the times, and their difference. From this perspective, the point in time is the ‘instant’ which Kierkegaard called ‘an atom of eternity.’ ”151 In considering “Modes of Time and Modalities of Being,” where past, present, and future are depicted as corresponding to necessary, actual, and potential being, Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Anxiety is quoted: “The possible corresponds exactly to the future, and the future is for time the possible.”152 We then encounter again the essential distinction between the two senses of “future,” as mode and source: “As a mode of time, future time belongs to phenomenal time. But the future of time is present to every time, future, present and past. This transcendental future of time offers in a sense ‘the whole of which the past is merely a part.’ The future of time is a reservoir of inexhaustible energy.”153 A final reference to Kierkegaard in this work concerns the “moment.” Moltmann explains that Karl Barth and Paul Althaus (1888–1966) after World War I had an “eternal eschatology” in which the eternity of God breaks in from above and “plunges every human history into its ultimate crisis.”154 The two direct sponsors of this “gathering up of history into eternity” that occurs in what at that time was called “the eschatological moment,” were “Kierkegaard, with his dictum that the instant or moment is ‘an atom of eternity,’ and [Leopold von] Ranke, with his thesis that ‘every epoch is immediate to God.”155 The eternal “Moment” is the transcendent meaning of all moments, and that is why, for the Barth of Epistle to the Romans, there is no moment in time with which it can be compared, because each moment in time is a parable of the eternal “Moment.”

Moltmann, Wissenschaft und Weisheit, p. 102. (Science and Wisdom, pp. 85–6.) Moltmann, Wissenschaft und Weisheit, p. 106. (Science and Wisdom, p. 89.) Referred to here, p. 106, note 8 (p. 205, note 8), is The Concept of Anxiety and Augenblick und Zeitpunkt: Studien zur Zeitstruktur und Zeitmetaphorik in Kunst und Wissenschaften, ed. by C.W. Thomsen and H. Hollander, Darmstadt: Wissenshcaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1984. 152 Moltmann, Wissenschaft und Weisheit, p. 108. (Science and Wisdom, p. 91). Referred to here, p. 108, note 10 (p. 205, note 11), is SKS 4, 394 / CA, 91. 153 Moltmann, Wissenschaft und Weisheit, p. 109. (Science and Wisdom, p. 91). Referred to again, p. 109, note 13, where Moltmann appears to have intended to refer to Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Anxiety (Der Begriff der Angst) but actually lists The Concept of Time (Der Begriff der Zeit), which was published by Heidegger rather than by Kierkegaard (p. 205, note 14), with the translation slightly altered, is SKS 4, 392 / CA, 89. 154 Moltmann, Wissenschaft und Weisheit, p. 118. (Science and Wisdom, p. 99.) 155 Moltmann, Wissenschaft und Weisheit, pp. 118–19. (Science and Wisdom, pp. 99– 100.)

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III. An Interpretation of Moltmann’s Momentary Appropriation As we made our way roughly chronologically through the treatments Moltmann has given of Kierkegaard, it became clear that his view of Kierkegaard undergoes some change over the years. A slight growth in appreciation for Kierkegaard seems to take place as Moltmann’s theological perspective has advanced. Rehearsing some of his comments on Kierkegaard might help us pull together the perceptual pieces that can be clustered and brought together into an interpretive perspective on Moltmann’s view of Kierkegaard’s moment that he has taken. In considering Bonhoeffer’s theology early on, Moltmann comments on Kierkegaard’s existential personalism, his advocacy of a solitary life of faith, his “hidden Marcionism” (à la Buber), and the weaknesses in his category of the individual, his missing the truth concerning the community of Christ in the church, and his misunderstanding of sociality. With his proposition that “subjectivity is the truth,” Kierkegaard has contributed to the social concept of religion, namely, as a private cult and has sponsored a form of subjectivity that wants to be understood in terms of God. Kierkegaard has advocated the meaninglessness of world history, and he has proclaimed his view that in relation to the Absolute there is only one time, that of the present. He has contributed to existential hermeneutics and has set forth a modification of the Greek view of temporality. Lifted up many times is Kierkegaard’s view of “the moment” as “an atom of eternity.” Dorothee Sölle is cited as giving a positive appraisal of Kierkegaard, and his notion of “passion for the possible” is mentioned. Noted is Kierkegaard’s distinction between aesthetic existence and ethical existence. Kierkegaard’s attack on Christianity demonstrated that the gospel of the cross had lost its meaning. He is linked for the first time with the death of God. His definition of irony is given as subjective freedom ever possessing the power of possibility for beginning anew. His dictum reducing time to the present is presented as contributing to the flattening of subjectivity. Kierkegaard affirms the paradoxical presence of eternity in every moment. And Kierkegaard again is regarded as contributing to the death of God by his radicalizing of Kant’s dualism and his emphasis on the inwardness of the individual who lives in pure immediacy. Kierkegaard is juxtaposed to Ernst Bloch, with Bloch endorsing hope and Kierkegaard endorsing dread. Kierkegaard is linked to Unamuno and acknowledged as having written on the suffering of God. Kierkegaard is presented as understanding the question of righteousness as leading to fear and trembling and the inward loss of identity; he also interprets Kierkegaard as saying that we should love our neighbors instead of loving ourselves. The importance of Kierkegaard for Rosenzweig as an alternative to Hegel is noted. Here a more positive stance toward anxiety is taken, for Kierkegaard taught, “through anxiety to become wise.”156 Kierkegaard links the possible to the future and contributes to thinking about the modes of time in relation to the modalities of time. Kierkegaard was the first to move the eschatological moment into the present. And he is invoked in relation to 156



Moltmann, Das Kommen Gottes, p. 261. (The Coming of God, p. 234.)

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the principles of the Enlightenment and Protestantism, especially the principle of freedom; Protestant subjectivism has fostered individualism and egoism but it has also nurtured human dignity and human rights. Kierkegaard’s postulate “subjectivity is truth” is true for theologians. Kierkegaard is linked to Heidegger and Bultmann whose ontology detaches history’s meaning from the totality of history, leaving completely unanswered the question of history’s victims suffering from injustice. Kierkegaard, with Heidegger, holds that possibility occupies a higher position ontologically than reality (or actuality), and the future enjoys priority in the modes of time. Kierkegaard’s view of omnipotence actually includes within it God’s self-limitation. From Kierkegaard’s perspective can be developed the understanding of the future of time as opposed to future time and the idea of this future of time as an inexhaustible resource for temporality. The Reformation principle of justification by grace through faith affirms that the eternal God who creates the three modes of time and holds them together is able to recreate time. Moltmann’s distinction between the future as a mode of time and the future as a source of time means that God as the future and source of time is not confined within the temporal flow and thereby is able to make possible the impossible. The forgiveness of sins could be envisioned as the loving God’s recreating of the past by reassessing its relation to the past, within the larger scheme of things. Justification could be understood as God’s making good on the divine promise to deal appropriately with the past. Guilt in relation to the past is wiped away as eternity touches temporality in the moment and an open future full of fresh possibilities is created in God’s actualizing of the divine promise to love.157 We can see that Jürgen Moltmann demonstrates great caution in appropriating from Søren Kierkegaard. Most of the ideas he considers can be understood as relating in one way or another to the moment. He takes the moment from Kierkegaard but wants to make use of it within what he takes to be a much fuller conceptuality of temporality. He ends up expanding the moment he takes. In Moltmann’s reading of Kierkegaard, the Danish religious thinker is interpreted as having lifted up the moment with this leading to personalism, individualism, Marcionism, subjectivism, privatism, dualism, presentism, indifferentism, and apoliticism. It should be underscored that a case could be made against each of these interpretations. This is not the place, however, for entering into a showdown with Moltmann over his interpretations of Kierkegaard. We merely emphasize that these are Moltmann’s views on these matters. Each of these “-isms” represents a bifurcating of reality. In taking a moment from Kierkegaard, Moltmann wants the moment as “an atom of eternity” to function, contra Kierkegaard, as an occasion for overcoming Kierkegaard’s bifurcations and for taking seriously and affirming both sides of the divide. The moment brings eternity into the now and thus secures the import of eschatology. The content of eternity, though, is supplied for Moltmann by his social or communal conception of the Trinity. It is the trinitarian nature of his eschatology that provides Moltmann For a fuller account of this thought, see Curtis L. Thompson, “Interpreting God’s Translucent World: Imagination, Possibility, and Eternity,” in Translucence: Religion, the Arts, and Imagination, ed. by Carol Gilbertson and Gregg Muilenburg, Minneapolis: Fortress Press 2004, pp. 3–37, see especially pp. 22–6. 157

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the basis for criticizing Kierkegaard’s view of the moment. God can arrive at eternal rest only when the work of new creation has brought the whole creation out of its alienation and gathered it into Godself.158 Driving Moltmann’s eschatology is the goal of history which coincides with this completing of God’s history, namely, the glorification of the Trinity, and “this will come to pass when the mission of the Son and the Spirit is accomplished and the kingdom is handed over to the Father. In this moment the seeking love of the Father which begot the replying love of the Son finds its completion in the replying love of the whole of creation through the Son and the Spirit.”159 This ultimate moment of consummation funding all other moments necessitates transforming Kierkegaard’s moment. Moltmann needs to recreate the moment he takes from Kierkegaard to be a moment of mediation, of mutuality, and of melioration or amelioration.160 All of these forms of the moment are but different dimensions of the moment as communally connecting as opposed to the individually separating quality he finds in Kierkegaard’s moment. First, Moltmann reinterprets the moment he takes from Kierkegaard as one of mediation. It is not adequate for the moment merely to support the solitariness of the human being with its God. Existential personalism, individualism, and Marcionism are owed to what Moltmann judges to be Kierkegaard’s anemic understanding of community which does not afford enough significance to the other (human creatures especially) as that which mediates one’s experience of God. Genuine personhood is displayed in the theological narrative of the persons of the triune God, whose identity is in their giving to and receiving from the other persons. Trinitarian personhood is what it is because of the mediating that takes place amidst the persons. Sociality contributes much to what we are as persons; we can even say that mediation makes possible the immediacy of encounter that Kierkegaard emphasizes so rigorously. Second, Kierkegaard’s moment as reinterpreted by Moltmann is one of mutuality. Neither can the moment be appropriately understood merely in terms of the subjective side of life as over against the objective or the private as over against the public. Subjectivism and privatism tell only half the truth. The moment needs to encompass the other side of truth as well. In so doing, it will also strive to overcome the dualism manifested in Kierkegaard’s construal of it. If Moltmann depicts Kierkegaard as radicalizing Kant’s dualism of nature and existence, knowledge and faith, fact and value, theory and praxis, causality and freedom, science and morality as expressed by the bifurcating treatment of reality given in the first and second critiques, the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Practical Reason, then he might understand his Müller-Fahrenholz, The Kingdom and the Power, p. 215. John J. O’Donnell, Trinity and Temporality: The Christian Doctrine of God in the Light of Process Theology and the Theology of Hope, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1983, p. 136. 160 Some might question my use of the word “melioration” as opposed to “amelioration.” My dictionary indicates that the verb “meliorate” dates back to the mid sixteenth century and is from the late Latin meliorate meaning “improved,” from the verb meliorare, based on melior meaning “better.” The verb “ameliorate,” meaning “make (something bad or unsatisfactory) better,” dates back to the mid-eighteenth century and is an alteration of meliorate, influenced by the French améliorer, from meilleur meaning “better.” From these verbs come respectively melioration and amelioration, and I am choosing to use the former of these in this discussion. 158 159

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own viewpoint as overcoming the dualism by radicalizing Kant’s sublating of the bifurcation by the rational power of the person rendering judgment as expressed in the Critique of Judgment. Again, the Spirit of the triune God, who is the source of life, is the empowering ground for this intensifying regeneration of the rational person. Genuine community is marked by mutuality. The perichoretic relations of the persons of the Trinity mean that mutuality is the order of the day, and as eternity touches the moment, that mutuality comes to characterize it.161 Mutuality qualifies subjectivity, so that it is brought into appropriate balance with objectivity. Similarly, the private is called out of its confines into the public arena where its content is shared and enhanced by what is received in the mutual sharing. Not insignificant in viewing the moment in terms of mutuality is the whole matter of envisioning anew the relation of human beings and God to nature.162 The mutuality of the moment brings Moltmann’s theology beyond subjectivism, privatism, and dualism. Third and finally, in Moltmann’s reinterpretation Kierkegaard’s moment becomes one of melioration. Moltmann is maybe most miffed by Kierkegaard’s moment because its disconnectedness from life’s larger spheres leads, on his view, to quiescent inactivity. Presentism, indifferentism, and apoliticism are charges brought by Moltmann against Kierkegaard. Presentism’s reducing of time to the present disconnects one from past and future, while reducing space to my personal little place for relating absolutely to the Absolute dismisses the world historical as unimportant and leaves one as indifferent and apolitical in being severed from history’s meaning and from political realities such as victims suffering from injustice because of lack of concern to transform social structures into more just forms. The political implications of Moltmann’s theological vision cannot be missed. The communion of trinitarian persons is a joyous participation in the goodness of freedom and love that is being shared: “The trinitarian doctrine of the kingdom is the theological doctrine of freedom. The theological concept of freedom is the concept of the trinitarian history of God: God unceasingly desires the freedom of his creation. God

Alasdair I.C. Heron, “The Time of God,” in Gottes Zukunft/Zukunft der Welt. Festschrift für Jürgen Moltmann zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. by Hermann Deuser et al., Munich: Kaiser 1986, pp. 231–9, see p. 238, offers interesting comments on the significance of the Trinity for time, as God is depicted as the ground of temporality itself, with temporality resting in God: “Within God’s triune being, the coinherence of the three personae offers a prime clue to the coinherence of the temporal dimensions of past, present and future. As a coinherence which is not merely static but dynamic, not simply circuminsessio but circumincessio, it offers a clue to the presence in God not only of the structure but also of the directed movement of time. In God lie origin, continuance and conclusion, the beginning beyond all other beginning, the duration that does not fleetingly pass away, the end beyond all endings. This is the character of the eternal “now”—and at the same time the ground of created temporality, the source, support and goal of earthly time. To this degree, time itself may perhaps be seen as a vestigium Trinitatis.” 162 See John Cobb, “Jürgen Moltmann’s Ecological Theology in Process Perspective,” The Asbury Theological Journal, vol. 55, 2000, pp, 115–28 and Steven Bouma-Prediger, The Greening of Theology: The Ecological Models of Rosemary Radford Ruether, Joseph Sittler, and Jürgen Moltmann, Atlanta: Scholars Press 1995, pp. 103–34 and pp. 217–63. 161

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is the inexhaustible freedom of those he has created.”163 Moltmann affirms in good Kierkegaardian fashion that “freedom in the light of hope is the creative passion for the possible.”164 “The truth of human freedom lies in the love that breaks down barriers.”165 This vision of the Trinity leads people of Christian faith to melioration. God is bringing the kingdom of freedom and love into being through the process of becoming, but with help from the philosophical thinking of Hegel, Marx, and especially Bloch, by which the system of world history has been broken open so that it is seen as a dialectical process open to the future, Moltmann’s messianic theology affirms contributions human beings are able to make to the coming of the kingdom. Melioration, therefore, as the making better of the world through human effort, has its rightful place alongside mediation and mutuality as Moltmann’s third communal qualifier of Kierkegaard’s moment in his trinitarian eschatology. One last point concerns Ernst Bloch and his influence on Moltmann, an influence mentioned numerous times in Moltmann’s writings. We have seen our theologian juxtapose Bloch and Kierkegaard, with Bloch representing hope and Kierkegaard anxiety. Both hope and anxiety are experienced on the road to freedom in relation to the possibility of the future. Moltmann appears to stumble in his interpretation of Kierkegaard when in comparing the two men he attributes to Bloch an interest in the “realization of possibility” in the sense of active hope and to Kierkegaard a dread of its becoming possible. Anxiety is depicted by Vigilius Haufniensis—Kierkegaard’s pseudonym that goes unacknowledged by Moltmann as is the case too with his other pseudonyms—as that which provides the occasion for the positing of sin, so it can be regarded as having its negative side. But it is also the means through which freedom must pass in engaging in self-actualization, and as such it is positive. Anxiety grows out of the experience of freedom, and without freedom the human would not be human. Anxiety is part of the structure of human finitude, but it can also assume forms of disrelation—thus the ambiguity of anxiety. As the source of ambiguity, anxiety is not purely a negative phenomenon. Bloch had read Kierkegaard and cites him several times in his book on The Principle of Hope. The concept of possibility is an important category for Kierkegaard. He deals with this notion in many of his works, but especially rich on this idea is his 1847 book, Works of Love. For Kierkegaard, the human gains access to possibility through the imagination as it attends to the future, which he sees as the incognito of the eternal. “When the eternal is the temporal, it is in the future… or in possibility.”166 In relating to the possibilities of the future, we are relating to the eternal. Furthermore, for Kierkegaard, possibility can be of good or of evil: “To hope relates to the future, to possibility, which in turn unlike actuality, is always a duality, the possibility of advance or of retrogress, of rising or falling, of good or of evil….The possible as such is always a duality, and in possibility the eternal always relates itself equally to its duality.”167 A person expects in relating to the possible; Moltmann, Trinität und Reich Gottes, p. 236. (The Trinity and the Kingdom, p. 218.) Moltmann, Trinität und Reich Gottes, p. 217. (The Trinity and the Kingdom, p. 234.) 165 Moltmann, Trinität und Reich Gottes, p. 216. (The Trinity and the Kingdom, p. 234.) 166 SKS 9, 50 / WL, 249. 167 Ibid.

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however, the character of a person’s expectation is shaped by the choice made in the expecting. Relating to the possibility of the good is hope; relating to the possibility of evil is fear. The choice is up to the person facing the possibilities on whether one hopes or fears. And yet, whether hoping or fearing, the person is expecting. Hoping can relate to possibility with the eternal’s help, and the result is love. Love engages in the work of hope for oneself and for others. Love that hopes creates a breathing space for the other, giving an open future. Engaging in acts that enlarge and enhance possibilities for the other is loving the other through possibilizing. In reading Ernst Bloch’s book on hope it seems that he might have learned from Kierkegaard on the notion of possibility. Important for him is human anticipation, because the human is essentially determined by the future. Human thinking must venture beyond the given, and this entails grasping the new yearning to burst forth in what exists but which cannot be realized apart from great toil of the will. Genuine venturing beyond discerns the historical dialectic running deep within the grain of reality and joins its activating force with that of the emergent actuality so that it can appear fully. In this viewpoint, life’s future dimension is all-important, for it contains, as Kierkegaard had said, either what is feared or what is hoped for, depending on human intention. The future is often twisted by culturally created false expectation, but when this is not the case then the future contains sheerly what is hoped for. It is in the field of hope that the anticipatory emerges. Religion often reduces what is hoped for to an inward or other-worldly reality, sponsoring habits that cling to a futureless world. For Bloch, life without the Not Yet is not worth living. At its best, religion proclaims a coming kingdom of God that fosters hope for this world becoming a better place. In appropriating thoughts from Ernst Bloch, Moltmann might have been receiving more of Kierkegaard implicitly from the creative Jewish philosopher than he realized. Explicitly, he took a moment from Kierkegaard and did what he could with it. His eschatological understanding of God took a moment and did much with this atom of eternity in which the eternal God kisses the world. But for Moltmann the God who kisses the world is the trinitarian God ushering in the kingdom of freedom and love, and the God who thus intends to make this moment one of mediation, mutuality, and mediation. There is so much more that Moltmann might have taken from Kierkegaard. But we can appreciate how much theological produce he has been able to generate out of just taking a moment from him.

Bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Moltmann’s Corpus “Herrschaft Christi und Soziale Wirklichkeit nach Dietrich Bonhoeffer,” in Theologische Existenz Heute. Eine Schriftenreihe, ed. by K. Steck und G. Eicholz, Munich: Kaiser 1959, pp. 14–18. (English translation: “The Lordship of Christ and Human Society, in Two Studies in the Theology of Bonhoeffer, trans. by Reginald H. Fuller and Ilse Fuller, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons 1967, pp. 33–6.) Theologie der Hoffnung. Untersuchungen zur Begründung und zu den Konsequenzen einer christlichen Eschatologie, Munich: Kaiser 1965, p. 15; p. 24; p. 44; p. 56; p. 148; pp. 153–4; p. 329; p. 332. (English translation: Theology of Hope: On the Ground and the Implications of a Christian Eschatology, trans. by James W. Leitch, New York: Harper & Row 1965, p. 20; p. 29; p. 51; p. 64; p. 164; p. 169.) Perspektiven der Theologie. Gesammelte Aufsätze, Munich: Kaiser and Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag 1968, p. 33; p. 78; pp. 86–7; p. 132; p. 141; p. 186; p. 214; p. 216; p. 265. (English translation: Hope and Planning, trans. by Margaret Clarkson, New York: Harper & Row 1971, pp. 133–4; pp. 194–5.) Die Ersten Freigelassenen der Schöpfung, Munich: Kaiser 1971, pp. 40–1; p. 48. (English translation: Theology of Play, trans. by Reinhard Ulrich, New York: Harper & Row 1972, p. 35; p. 43.) Mensch. Christliche Anthropologie in den Konflikten der Gegenwart, Stuttgart: Kreuz-Verlag 1971, p. 135; p. 174, note 67. (English translation: Man: Christian Anthropology in the Conflicts of the Present, trans. by John Sturdy, Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1974, p. 93; p. 123, note 67.) Der gekreuzigte Gott. Das Kreuz Christi als Grund und Kritik christlicher Theologie, Munich: Kaiser 1972, p. 58, note 40; pp. 59–60; p. 186. (English translation: The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology, trans. by R.A. Wilson and John Bowden, New York: Harper & Row 1974, p. 58; p. 77, note 40; p. 202.) Zukunft der Schöpfung. Gesammelte Aufsätze, Munich: Kaiser 1977, p. 158; pp. 177–8, note 9. (English translation: The Future of Creation, trans. by Margaret Kohl, Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1979, p. 150; pp. 192–3, note 9.) Gotteserfahrungen. Hoffnung, Angst, Mystik, Munich: Kaiser 1979, pp. 27–30; pp. 32–3; pp. 43–4, notes 3 and 4. (English translation: Experiences of God, trans. by Margaret Kohl, Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1980, pp. 39–42, p. 81, notes 1, 2, and 3.) Trinität und Reich Gottes. Zur Gotteslehre, Munich: Kaiser 1980, p. 52; p. 55, note 60. (English translation: The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God,

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trans. by Margaret Kohl, San Francisco: Harper & Row 1981, p. 36; p. 229, note 63.) Gott in der Schöpfung. Ökologische Schöpfungslehre, Munich: Kaiser 1985, p. 239. (English translation: God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God, trans. by Margaret Kohl, Minneapolis: Fortress Press 1991 [1985], p. 234.) In der Geschichte des dreieinigen Gottes. Beiträge zur trinitarischen Theologie, Munich: Kaiser 1991, p. 173. (English translation: History and the Triune God: Contributions to Trinitarian Theology, trans. by John Bowden, New York: Crossroad 1991, p. 126.) Der Geist des Lebens. Eine ganzheitliche Pneumatologie, Munich: Kaiser 1991, p. 15; 104; p. 129; p. 141; p. 201. (English translation: The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation, trans. by Margaret Kohl, Minneapolis: Fortress Press 1992, p. 116; p. 127; p. 173; p. 187; p. 312, note 8; p. 323, note 22.) Wer ist Christus für uns heute? Gütersloh: Gütersloh Kaiser 1994, pp. 46–9. (English translation: Jesus Christ for Today’s World, trans. by Margaret Kohl, Minneapolis: Fortress Press 1994, pp. 50–2; p. 54; p. 148, note 1.) Das Kommen Gottes. Christliche Eschatologie, Gütersloh: Kaiser 1995, p. 63; p. 261; pp. 314ff.; pp. 320–1. (English translation: The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology, trans. by Margaret Kohl, Minneapolis: Fortress Press 1996, p. 5; p. 34; p. 44; p. 234; p. 292; p. 370, note 198; p. 378, notes 66 and 71; p. 379, notes 80 and 84.) Gott im Projekt der modernen Welt. Beiträge zur öffentlichen Relevanz der Theologie, Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus 1997, p. 183; p. 194. (English translation: God for a Secular Society: The Public Relevance of Theology, trans. by Margaret Kohl, Minneapolis: Fortress Press 1999, p. 202; p. 215.) Erfahrungen theologischen Denkens. Wege und Formen christlicher Theologie, Gütersloh: Christian Kaiser Verlag/Gütersloher Verlaghaus 1999, p. 34; p. 115. (English translation: Experiences in Theology: Ways and Forms of Christian Theology, trans. by Margaret Kohl, Minneapolis: Fortress Press 2000, p. 23; p. 120.) Wissenschaft und Weisheit. Zum Gesprüch zwischen Naturwissenschaft und Theologie, Gütersloh: Kaiser/Gütersloher Verlagshaus 2002, p. 78; p. 81; p. 106; pp. 108–9; p. 118. (English translation: Science and Wisdom, trans. by Margaret Kohl 2003, pp. 63–4; p. 66; p. 86; p. 89; pp. 99–100; p. 203, note 19; p. 205, notes 8, 11, 14.) Weiter Raum. Eine Lebensgeschichte, Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus 2006, p. 51. (English translation: A Broad Place: An Autobiography, trans. by Margaret Kohl, Minneapolis: Fortress Press 2008, p. 42.) II. Sources of Moltmann’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Barth, Karl, Der Römerbrief (first version), ed. by Hermann Schmidt, Zurich: Theologischer Verlag 1985 [1918]. (English translation: The Epistle to the

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Romans, trans. from the sixth ed. by Edwyn C. Hoskyns, London: Oxford University Press 1933.) Bloch, Ernst, Das Prinzip Hoffnung, vol. 5 in his Gesamtausgabe, vols. 1–16 in 17 volumes, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1959–71, pp. 79–80; pp. 207ff.; p. 341; p. 1128; pp. 1162–3; p. 1187; pp. 1199–200; p. 1243; p. 1298; pp. 1579–80; p. 1582; p. 1605. Cornelison, Robert Thomas, The Christian Realism of Reinhold Niebuhr and the Political Theology of Jürgen Moltmann in Dialogue: The Realism of Hope, San Francisco: Mellen Research University Press 1992, p. ii; p. iii; p. 14. Eller, Vernard, Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1968. Kamlah, Wilhelm, Wissenschaft, Wahrheit, Existenz, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer 1960, p. 65. III. Secondary Literature on Moltmann’s Relation to Kierkegaard Bouma-Prediger, Steven, The Greening of Theology: The Ecological Models of Rosemary Radford Ruether, Joseph Sittler, and Jürgen Moltmann, Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press 1995. Chester, Tim, Mission and the Coming of God: Eschatology, the Trinity and Mission in the Theology of Jürgen Moltmann and Contemporary Evangelicalism, Milton Keynes: Paternoster Press 2006, p. 7; p. 69. Meeks, M. Douglas, Origins of the Theology of Hope, Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1974, p. 33. Mura, Gaspare, Angoscie ed egistenza: Da Kierkegaard a Moltmann: Giobbe e la “sofferenza di Dio.” Idee, St. Universale Saggistica, Rome: Citta Nuova 1982.

Franz Overbeck: Kierkegaard and the Decay of Christianity David R. Law

I. The Life and Work of Franz Overbeck Although best known as a friend of Nietzsche, Franz Overbeck (1837–1905) is a significant thinker in his own right. In Martin Henry’s opinion, “Overbeck dissected the theology of the past and that of his professional contemporaries in a way that to his day has remained unparalleled in its acuity and range,”1 while David Tracy comments that “Overbeck’s friend Nietzsche used a hammer against theology; Overbeck himself used a scalpel. And Overbeck is finally the deeper challenge for theology itself.”2 After a period as Privatdozent in Jena (1864–70), Overbeck was in 1870 appointed Professor of New Testament and Early Church History at the University of Basel. This chair had recently been established, according to Henry, “for the purpose of trying to make Christianity more relevant to modern considerations.”3 As Henry points out, however, “The ‘liberal’ reforming elements in Basel Protestantism were soon disappointed in Overbeck’s approach to the task envisaged for him,” for instead of attempting to show the continued relevance of Christianity, Overbeck “saw his task as attempting to shed light on the, in his view, difficult, if not intractable, questions surrounding Christianity’s origins, evolution, and above all, viability in the modern world.”4 The theme for Overbeck’s work is apparent as early as his inaugural professorial lecture “Ueber Entstehung und Recht einer rein historischen Betrachtung der Neutestamentliche Schriften in der Theologie” (1870).5 In this lecture Overbeck states his conviction that a historical treatment of the origins of Christianity necessitates reading the sources against the grain of the tradition, for the tradition of the church obscures the origins of Christianity. Of the almost two thousand years of 1 Martin Henry, “Review Article: Franz Overbeck: A Review of Recent Literature (Part 1),” Irish Theological Quarterly, vol. 72, 2007, pp. 391–404, see p. 392. 2 David Tracy, “Foreword” in Martin Henry, Franz Overbeck: Theologian? Religion and History in the Thought of Franz Overbeck, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang 1995, p. x. 3 Henry, “Review Article (Part 1),” p. 399. 4 Ibid. 5 Franz Overbeck, Ueber Entstehung und Recht einer rein historischen Betrachtung der Neutestamentlichen Schriften in der Theologie. Antritts-Vorlesung, gehalten in der Aula zu Basel am 7. Juni 1870, Basel: Schweighauser (Schwabe) 1871.

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Christian history approximately nineteen hundred of them prove absolutely nothing. Overbeck argues that because of the time that has elapsed since the origin of the church, “there is in any case the significant difference that those origins have become for us a scientific, historical problem or, which amounts to the same thing, that the most ancient history of Christianity…is now a thing of the past.”6 Christianity as it was when it first came into existence cannot be recovered by means of an allegedly authentic tradition going back to the first Christians. For Overbeck, the church’s tradition establishes merely a fictive contemporaneity. Those modern theologians who appeal to it are unaware of how different the modern age is from the world of the New Testament and how far alienated the modern age is from the demands of the gospel. Overbeck also rejects the modern approach of basing theology on experience, because in his opinion it is unable to dismantle the barriers that stand between modern human beings and the Christianity of the first Christians. Historical understanding can be achieved only “at the price of utterly dissociating ourselves” from the object of study and “at the price of acknowledging how distant we are from this object.”7 These concerns led Overbeck to publish a series of historical works on the origins of Christianity. It was, however, the publication of Ueber die Christlichkeit unserer heutigen Theologie. Streit- und Friedensschrift (1873),8 and Christentum und Kultur (1919) that had the greatest influence on subsequent theology.9 In these works Overbeck claims that historical investigation reveals that Christianity in its original form was fundamentally eschatological and apocalyptic in character. Early Christianity expected the imminent return of Christ and the breaking in of the kingdom of God. Overbeck’s emphasis on the apocalyptic character of early Christianity led him to ask questions of modern theology that have remained unanswered to this day. Jacob Taubes cites three such questions. Firstly, in view of the first Christians’ belief in the immediate parousia, there is the question of whether Christianity is possible as a historical reality and indeed whether it was originally intended to be a historical reality at all. Christianity’s continuance in history seems to be a denial of precisely Overbeck, Ueber Entstehung und Recht einer rein historischen Betrachtung der Neutestamentlichen Schriften in der Theologie,” pp. 30ff. Quoted in Jacob Taubes, “Entzauberung der Theologie: Zu einem Porträt Overbecks,” in Franz Overbeck, Selbstbekenntnisse, with an introduction by Jacob Taubes, Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag 1966, p. 11. 7 Franz Overbeck, Das Johannesevangelium. Studien zur Kritik seiner Erforschung, ed. by Carl Albrecht Bernoulli, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck) 1911, p. 391; quoted in Taubes, “Entzauberung der Theologie,” p. 11. 8 Franz Overbeck, Ueber die Christlichkeit unserer heutigen Theologie. Streit- und Friedensschrift, Leipzig: Fritzsch 1873. In the second edition of 1903 (Leipzig: Naumann), Overbeck removed the subtitle. (English translations: On the Christianity of Theology, trans. and ed. by John Elbert Wilson, San Jose, California: Pickwick 2002 and How Christian is our Present-Day Theology?, trans. and ed. by Martin Henry, with a foreword by David Tracy, London: T. & T. Clark/Continuum 2005.) 9 Franz Overbeck, Christentum und Kultur. Gedanken und Anmerkungen zur modernen Theologie, Basel: Schwabe 1919. 6

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the fundamental belief that brought it into existence, namely, the imminence of the parousia. This leads onto a second, related question, namely, what has Christianity now become if its primary presupposition has been suppressed or misappropriated? Thirdly, is a theology which mediates between Christianity and history not harmful to both parties? As Henry points out, “the appearance of theology was an infallible sign, in Overbeck’s judgment, that the vital impulse underlying a religion was already in decline. This was especially true of Christianity, which emerged proclaiming the imminent end of the world, and hence could not have expected any history at all to follow, let alone a history of theological reflection.”10 Overbeck regards Christian history as a betrayal of Christianity. Christianity is the renunciation of the world, not accommodation with it. Theology, however, is the means of this accommodation. Overbeck’s ultimate aim was to write a comprehensive secular history of the church. The purpose of such a secular history would have been to show that Christianity belongs to the past and must now be left behind. In pursuit of this aim Overbeck amassed a huge body of material. His death in 1905, however, prevented him from carrying out his project, but he bequeathed a “Kirchenlexicon,” or dictionary of the church, numbering several thousand entries on alphabetically ordered index cards. His friend Carl Albrecht Bernoulli (1868–1937) selected and ordered this material according to theme and in 1919 published the resulting collection under the title Christianity and Culture. Bernoulli’s compilation has come under considerable criticism.11 Despite its deficiencies, however, it was above all Bernoulli’s collection that brought Overbeck to the attention of the theological public. Barth wrote a review of the work,12 and drew on Overbeck in the development of his eschatological interpretation of Christendom. 13 Henry, “Review Article (Part 1),” p. 401. In an article in Die christliche Welt Eberhard Vischer, Overbeck’s successor at Basel, questions the importance of Bernoulli’s material. For details see Taubes, “Entzauberung der Theologie,” p. 7, p. 151. More recently Henry has written of Bernoulli’s “somewhat slapdash editorial method,” pointing out that, “There is no indication of where the material he drew on is located in Overbeck’s papers or of when it was written.” Furthermore, “sub-headings, like the main title, are Bernoulli’s, not Overbeck’s, and there are many straightforward errors of transcription, making Overbeck’s meaning in some cases impossible to unravel.” Martin Henry, “Review Article: Franz Overbeck: A Review of Recent Literature (Part 2),” Irish Theological Quarterly, vol. 73, 2008, pp. 174–91, see p. 176. 12 Karl Barth, “Unerledigte Anfragen an die heutige Theologie,” in Karl Barth und Eduard Thurneysen, Zur inneren Lage des Christentums, Munich: Kaiser 1920, pp. 3–24 (reprinted in Karl Barth, Die Theologie und die Kirche, in his Gesammelte Vorträge, vols. 1–3, Munich: Kaiser 1924–57, vol. 2, pp. 1–25; English translation: Theology and Church, trans. by Louise Pettibone Smith, London: SCM Press 1962, pp. 55–73). 13 In the preface to the second edition of his The Epistle to the Romans, London: Oxford University Press 1933, Barth claims that it was his encounter “with this eminent and pious man” that compelled him to give up his first attempt at an explanation of Romans. Barth states that the reason that “no single stone remains in its old place” (p. 2) in the second edition of his commentary is due in part to “the warning addressed by Overbeck to all theologians” (p. 3). For Barth, Overbeck was important for bringing to the fore the problem of the relation between Christianity and history. Overbeck’s significance resides in his realization that the fundamental presupposition of early Christianity, namely, the expectation of the parousia, 10 11

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A critical edition has now appeared of Overbeck’s works, published by J.B. Metzler Verlag, in nine volumes. Volumes 1–3 contain Overbeck’s published works, while volumes 4–6 contain a selection from the Kirchenlexicon,14 which Overbeck had intended to form the basis of his secular history of Christianity and from which Bernoulli drew the material he published as Christentum und Kultur. Volumes 7–8 of the Metzler edition contain autobiographical material and a selection of Overbeck’s letters, while volume 9 contains Overbeck’s lectures on the early church up until the Council of Nicaea in 325.15 II. Overbeck’s Thought To set the scene for our discussion of Overbeck’s reception of Kierkegaard, it is necessary to consider three aspects of Overbeck’s thought, namely, his understanding of the relationship between history and Christianity, his critique of theology, and his view of monasticism. A. Overbeck’s Understanding of the Relationship between Christianity and History Overbeck’s historical studies led him to the conclusion that primitive Christianity was eschatological and apocalyptic in character. Its first adherents lived their lives in the expectation of the imminent return of Christ and the ushering in of the kingdom of God. For Overbeck, Christianity—at least as originally conceived—is supposed to be something which transcends time. It is not part of history and can be represented only sub specie aeterni: “It is clear that the eternal existence of Christianity can be supported only sub specie aeterni, i.e., from the perspective of a standpoint that knows nothing of time and the opposition between young and old which is part of it.”16 To illustrate this point Overbeck discusses how the loan word historisch [historical] should be translated into German, and suggests that the term can be rendered as “der Zeit unterworfen,” that is, subject or subordinated to time. The term “historical,” then, refers to that which is subject to time. This translation, he claims,

raises significant problems for the history of Christianity, the existence of the church, and the status of modern theology. Barth regarded Overbeck’s critique of theology as a paradoxical “introduction into the study of theology, though one which could lead to the energetic exit of those who are not called.” See Taubes, “Entzauberung der Theologie,” p. 8. For studies of Overbeck’s influence on Barth, see Hermann Schindler, Barth und Overbeck, Gotha: Leopold Klotz 1936 (reprint, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1974); Eberhard Jüngel, Karl Barth: A Theological Legacy, trans. by Garrett E. Paul, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1986, pp. 54–70. 14 The sheer mass of material precludes the publication of the entire Kirchenlexicon, for which reason the editors have settled for the publication of selections. 15 Franz Overbeck, Werke und Nachlaß, vols. 1–9, Stuttgart and Weimar: Metzler 1994– 2002. 16 Overbeck, Christentum und Kultur, p. 70.

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“helps, for example, to make evident that historical Christianity, i.e., Christianity which has been made subject to time, is something absurd.”17 When it first came into the world Christianity thus understood itself not to be subject to the forces of history. Indeed, it conceived of itself as in opposition to history: “If Christianity has its way, history and Christianity will never come to an agreement with each other.”18 For that reason history is “a maw into which Christianity has allowed itself to plunge only against its will.”19 Christianity, in the original form in which it came into the world, was not historical precisely because it was predicated on the notion of the end of time, not on its continuation. Treating Christianity as an historical phenomenon and seeing its significance in terms of historical development spells for Overbeck the dawn of an age in which Christianity comes to an end and takes its leave.20 Overbeck illustrates this by pointing out the absurdity of attempting to construct a Christian chronology. “Every attempt which seriously strives to divide history up into Christian periods”21 must come to grief on the fact that history undermines Christianity. A Christian history and chronology would be justified only if Christianity had indeed brought about “a new age.”22 But precisely this is denied by Overbeck, for originally there was talk of a new age only on an assumption which was not realized, namely, that the existing world should perish and make way for a new one. For a moment this was a serious expectation. It is an expectation which has frequently recurred, but only fleetingly, and has never become a fact of historical permanence. This alone could have provided the real foundation for a chronology that corresponded to the facts of reality. It is the world which has prevailed, not the Christian expectation of what awaited the world.23

If, despite its fundamentally ahistorical character, we subordinate Christianity to the concept of the historical, then we have conceded that Christianity is indeed “of this world” and in doing so have surrendered it “irredeemably” to the law of decay. As Overbeck puts it: “Christianity’s advanced age is for serious historical reflection a fatal argument against its eternal nature. Christianity has always known this and, in so far as it is alive, still knows it today.”24 For Overbeck, Christian history is the history of the decay of Christianity as it falls further and further away from its original eschatological expectation and increasingly accommodates itself to the world. History, then, has proved Christianity wrong. The sheer fact that Christianity has not brought history to an end but has continued to exist in and be part of history

19 20 21 22 23 24 17 18

Ibid., p. 242. Ibid., p. 9. Ibid., p. 7. Ibid., p. 9. Ibid., p. 7. Ibid., p. 72. Ibid., p. 72. Ibid., p. 8.

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constitutes the utter refutation of Christianity. It should now be allowed to die in peace and disappear into the past. B. Overbeck’s Critique of Theology Overbeck’s critique of theology stems from his understanding of the eschatological character of Christianity. His criticism can be grouped together under three headings. Firstly, theology constitutes the attempt to apply reason to Christianity. Christianity, however, is inherently and irredeemably hostile to reason. Overbeck writes: “if Christianity is considered as a religion, then it is rather the case that, like every religion, it has the most unambiguous antipathy towards rational knowledge. I say ‘like every religion,’ because the antagonism between faith and knowledge is permanent and absolutely irreconcilable.”25 If faith and reason are in opposition, then all theology is a misunderstanding of Christianity, for it attempts to use reason to articulate the character of what is fundamentally non-rational. This means that theology is fundamentally untrue to the nature of Christianity. Overbeck writes: “For that reason too, in so far as theology brings faith into contact with rational knowledge, it is in itself and by its very nature always irreligious. And theology can only ever develop where concerns alien to religion’s own intrinsic interests emerge alongside the latter.”26 The development of theology stems not from Christianity itself, but from its encounter with pagan culture, which Christianity was unable to undermine and with which it therefore came to an accommodation. Overbeck comments: “With its theology Christianity wanted to commend itself also to the wise of this world, and to win their approval. Regarded in this way, however, theology is nothing other than an aspect of the secularization of Christianity. It is a luxury Christianity indulged in, but as with every luxury, it has to be paid for.”27 The price Christianity pays for theology is very high indeed, for it is nothing less than the dissolution of Christianity as a religion.28 Overbeck’s second criticism of theology is that it ignores the eschatological and apocalyptic character of Christianity. That is, theology attempts to accommodate Christianity to the world, but to achieve this it has to remove precisely those aspects of Christianity that brought it into existence, namely, the expectation of Christ’s imminent return and the dawning of the kingdom of God. The theologians seek to conquer the world for Christianity, but do so by adapting and accommodating Christianity to the values of the world. Consequently, in reality Christianity has not conquered the world at all, but has in fact itself been conquered by it. For Overbeck, Franz Overbeck, Ueber die Christlichkeit unserer heutigen Theologie, Leipzig: E.W. Fritsch 1873, p. 2 (Werke und Nachlaß, vol. 1, pp. 155–256, see p. 170; How Christian is our Present-Day Theology?, p. 30). 26 Overbeck, Ueber die Christlichkeit unserer heutigen Theologie, p. 4 (Werke und Nachlaß, vol. 1, p. 172; How Christian is our Present-Day Theology? p. 32). 27 Overbeck, Ueber die Christlichkeit unserer heutigen Theologie, p. 10 (Werke und Nachlaß, vol. 1, p. 178; How Christian is our Present-Day Theology? p. 39). 28 Overbeck, Ueber die Christlichkeit unserer heutigen Theologie, p. 11 (Werke und Nachlaß, vol. 1, p. 179; How Christian is our Present-Day Theology? p. 40). 25

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“What is most interesting about Christianity is its powerlessness, the fact that it is unable dominate the world.”29 According to Overbeck, theology has always been and continues to be an attempt to accommodate Christianity to the world. In this sense theology has always been modern, for it has always set itself the task of making Christianity acceptable to the present age. Overbeck reserves his particular ire, however, for contemporary nineteenth and early twentieth-century theologians. According to Henry, “Overbeck was convinced that the modern world was experiencing the end, or the death throes of Christianity as a truly living religion, but was reluctant to face up to the cultural crisis this impending loss inevitably engendered.”30 Overbeck believed contemporary liberal theologians, especially Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930), to be guilty of ignoring the demise of Christianity and the crisis into which it had plunged modern culture. Looking back on How Christian is Present-Day Theology? many years later he comments, “I wrote my tract How Christian is Present-Day Theology? in the conviction that our age is in the process of dismantling the church altogether and of seeking a completely new way of understanding Christianity, indeed a new way of understanding religion in general.”31 Overbeck’s issue is with theology, which attempts to keep Christianity alive, but in a way which removes what is distinctive to Christianity, namely, its expectation of the imminent end and dawning of the kingdom of God. Finally, Overbeck attacks contemporary theology for glossing over or ignoring the ascetic character of Christianity. In Christentum und Kultur he complains of “the nonsense of the modern theologians who think that they can improve Christianity’s prospects of permanently dominating the world by denying Christianity’s true character and by recognizing true Christianity as existing only in that denomination which frees its adherents from the spell of asceticism.”32 Modern Protestant theologians follow the Reformers in treating asceticism as a temporary phase in Christianity’s history that is now past. For Overbeck this approach “will lead inevitably to the absurd conclusion that roughly the first fifteen hundred years of Christianity’s history must have been a period in which its own specific view of life was apparently supplanted by a different one.”33 That is, modern Protestant theology makes the historically nonsensical claim that it took Christianity fifteen hundred years to arrive at its true form. In fact, the reverse is the case. The Reformation spells the beginning of the process of secularization that will lead to the end of Christianity. The affirmation by modern Protestant theologians of non-ascetic Christianity is not true Christianity but “is the Christianity of its rhetoricians, i.e., its theologians.”34

Overbeck, Christentum und Kultur, p. 279. Henry, “Review Article (Part 1),” p. 400. 31 See Martin Henry, “Franz Overbeck on Carl Albrecht Bernoulli,” Irish Theological Quarterly, vol. 68, 2003, p. 393. Quoted in Henry, “Review Article (Part 1),” p. 400. 32 Overbeck, Christentum und Kultur, p. 34, original emphasis. 33 Overbeck, Ueber die Christlichkeit unserer heutigen Theologie, p. 50 (Werke und Nachlaß, vol. 1, p. 215; How Christian is our Present-Day Theology?, p. 84). 34 Overbeck, Christentum und Kultur, p. 34. 29 30

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In the first edition of How Christian is our Present-Day Theology? Overbeck seems to have held that despite his critique of modern theology there was still room for a critical theology which aimed to “protect it against all those theologies that think they are defending it by adapting it to the world,” and worked “to prevent such theologies from dragging through the world, under the name of Christianity, an unreal entity that has been robbed of what is in fact the soul of Christianity, namely denial of the world.”35 Critical theology, then, can play a useful role in exposing the false notion of Christianity advanced by contemporary theologians. This seems to have been the aspect of Overbeck’s thought that attracted Barth. In the second edition of How Christian is our Present-Day Theology? (1903), however, which Overbeck published towards the end of his life, he had renounced even this possibility and come to reject all forms of theology, even “critical theology.” Indeed, his conviction that all theology was the “Satan of religion”36 led him to regard his earlier hope of a “better” theology as mistaken. While he once thought that “there are many liberating ideas that Christianity’s view of life can still offer the contemporary world,”37 by the turn of the century it had become clear to him that the religious development of the human race had been hopelessly confused,38 and that therefore “a completely new basis needed to be found for dealing with religious problems, possibly at the cost of what has previously been called religion.”39 The development of modern theology in the decades between the first and second editions of How Christian is our Present-Day Theology? provided Overbeck with further evidence for his view that where there is no consciousness among contemporary theologians of the contradiction of a Christianity which is reconciled with the world, “we are finally approaching a state of affairs where the Christian religion will have to be commended above all others as the religion with which one can do what one likes.”40 The careers made by the leading theologians of the day through their cozy relation to the state and their reduction of Christianity to a patriotic ideology of the newly united Germany particularly drew Overbeck’s ire. For Overbeck, modern theologians are cowardly worshippers of every power and influence, who praise temporal power.41 He singles Harnack out for particular attention, whom he mockingly described as the “high priest of modern theology.”42 According to Walter Nigg, “Overbeck saw in the church historian Harnack merely an historian who had been crippled by theology.”43 Overbeck seems to have Overbeck, Ueber die Christlichkeit unserer heutigen Theologie, p. 70 (Werke und Nachlaß, vol. 1, p. 232; How Christian is our Present-Day Theology?, pp. 105–6). 36 Overbeck, Christentum und Kultur, p. 13. 37 Overbeck, Ueber die Christlichkeit unserer heutigen Theologie, p. 77 (Werke und Nachlaß, vol. 1, p. 237; How Christian is our Present-Day Theology?, p. 113). 38 Overbeck, Christentum und Kultur p. 77. 39 Ibid., p. 270. 40 Overbeck, Ueber die Christlichkeit unserer heutigen Theologie, p. 47 (Werke und Nachlaß, vol. 1, p. 212; How Christian is our Present-Day Theology?, p. 81). 41 Overbeck, Christentum und Kultur, p. 242. 42 Quoted in Walter Nigg, Franz Overbeck. Versuch einer Würdigung, Munich: C.H. Beck 1931, p. 214. No reference provided. 43 Ibid., p. 215. 35

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considered writing a polemic against Harnack and to this end had amassed a dossier entitled “Getting even with Harnack” [Abrechnung mit Harnack], containing the material with which he intended to bring about Harnack’s downfall. One version of this polemic is entitled “Master Harnack. A Contribution to the Critique of Public Opinion.” A second version bears the title “Constantinus redivivus. A Contribution to the Philosophy of History of Modernus Simplex.” Although this reference to a “revived Constantine” was a jibe at Kaiser Wilhelm II, whom Overbeck regarded as a demagogue and a lout, according to Nigg, Overbeck’s polemic was directed not so much against the German emperor as it was against Harnack, whom Overbeck intended to portray as a modern Eusebius.44 Harnack’s close relationship with Kaiser Wilhelm II prompted Overbeck to remark that “Harnack was performing the function of a friseur of the Kaiser’s theological wig, just as Eusebius had done formerly with Constantine.”45 Overbeck lost no opportunity to hurl insults at Harnack. On hearing that Harnack would be making a lecture tour in the United States Overbeck mocked him as “a modern European prima donna.”46 Harnack, however, was by no means Overbeck’s only target, and he vented his ire on numerous other contemporary theologians.47 C. Monasticism For Overbeck, the failure of the eschaton to take place was an important factor in bringing about the development of monasticism. Belief in Christ’s return has been refuted by the passing of history. The reason that this did not result in the collapse of Christianity was that Christianity developed a more abstract form which enabled it to continue to exist despite its having been disproved by the non-event of Christ’s return.48 This more ideal form consisted in finding a way to retain the asceticism belonging to the other-worldly and world-negating character of Christianity despite Christianity’s having a continued existence in the world which refuted the eschatological expectation upon which this asceticism was originally based. The solution was provided by monasticism. Overbeck writes: This is in reality a metamorphosis of the primitive Christian belief in the return of Christ. For it rests on the constant expectation of this return, proceeds consequently to regard the world as already doomed, and urges the believer to withdraw from the world to prepare for the ever-imminent possibility of the appearance of Christ. The expectation of the second coming of Christ that had become untenable in its original guise….became transformed into the thought of death. It is this thought that, according to as early a writer as Irenaeus, should accompany the Christian. And in the Carthusian greeting, memento Ibid., p. 216. Quoted in Henry, “Review Article (Part 1),” p. 403. 46 Overbeck, “Tagebuchartiges,” in his Werke und Nachlass, vol. 7.1, p. 126; quoted in Henry, “Review Article (Part 1) 1,” p. 403. 47 Among Overbeck’s targets Nigg cites Wilhelm Herrmann, Arthur Bonus, Paul de Lagarde, Carl Hilty, Friedrich Naumann, and Hermann Kutter. See Nigg, Overbeck, p. 213. 48 Overbeck, Ueber die Christlichkeit unserer heutigen Theologie, p. 52 (Werke und Nachlaß, vol. 1, p. 216; How Christian is our Present-Day Theology?, p. 86). 44 45

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Monasticism was the means by which the church was able to withdraw from the hegemony of the pagan state into which it was being absorbed and retain the worldnegating character of early Christianity. The pagan state’s adoption of Christianity as its religion meant that martyrdom was no longer possible. The church compensated for this loss by introducing the notion of the martyrium quotidianum of monasticism. According to Overbeck, this replacement of physical martyrdom with the asceticism of monasticism “managed to ensure [for the church] nothing less than it own survival.”50 III. Overbeck’s Reception of Kierkegaard Any reader acquainted with Kierkegaard’s thought will be struck by the similarities between Kierkegaard and Overbeck. Kierkegaard’s emphasis on the worldrenouncing character of (New Testament) Christianity and its opposition to the world has a clear parallel with Overbeck’s emphasis on the eschatological character of early Christianity, its world-denying character, and its asceticism. Overbeck’s critique of modern theology and its capitulation to contemporary society resemble Kierkegaard’s condemnation of the Danish Church for accommodating itself to the world. Both thinkers can thus be seen as advancing critiques of culture Protestantism, that is, of the subordination of Christianity to the dominant (non- or pseudo-Christian values) of contemporary society. Even Overbeck’s relation to Harnack has a parallel with Kierkegaard, namely, in the latter’s fraught relationship with Martensen. Harnack is arguably to Overbeck what Martensen was to Kierkegaard. In view of such parallels it is thus not surprising that several commentators have drawn attention to points of contact between Overbeck’s attack on theology and theologians, and Kierkegaard’s attack on the established Church. The parallel was noted by Karl Barth, who, as mentioned above, cites his discovery of Kierkegaard and Overbeck as factors in the radical rewriting that led to the second edition of his Epistle to the Romans. Commentators on both Overbeck and Kierkegaard have also noted these parallels. The early Overbeck commentator Walter Nigg remarks: Overbeck’s struggle against the theologians inevitably reminds us of Blaise Pascal’s annihilating polemic against the Jesuit fathers in his Lettres provinciales and Kierkegaard’s devastating attack in The Moment against the Lutheran clergy. In both cases we are dealing with an unparalleled polemic, irony and satire that took up arms against a theology which had by means of its foul tricks turned Christianity into the most sanctimonious, bigoted, cunning worldly enjoyment. In both cases the glistening mask is torn from the hypocritical and mendacious Christianity of the theologians, and their Overbeck, Ueber die Christlichkeit unserer heutigen Theologie, p. 52 (Werke und Nachlaß, vol. 1, p. 216; How Christian is our Present-Day Theology?, p. 86). 50 Overbeck, Ueber die Christlichkeit unserer heutigen Theologie, p. 50 (Werke und Nachlaß, vol. 1, p. 214; How Christian is our Present-Day Theology?, p. 84). 49

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contemporaries are made conscious once again of what Christianity means according to the New Testament. In both cases judgment is passed on a rotten and hollow theology. The analogies are so evident that they even struck Overbeck himself.51

Karl Löwith also touches on points of contact between Overbeck and Kierkegaard in the final chapter of his From Hegel to Nietzsche, although he is also concerned to highlight their differences. For Löwith, Overbeck occupies a place between Christianity and culture, but lacked the hatred necessary both for a critique of theology and Christianity, and for “the absolute affirmation of the secular world which makes the atheism of Strauss, Feuerbach, and Bauer so superficial. This twofold lack is Overbeck’s human and scholarly advantage; it distinguishes him from all the other assailants and apologists, like Nietzsche and Kierkegaard.”52 In her brief discussion of Kierkegaard and Overbeck in Kierkegaard. Deuter unserer Existenz Anna Paulsen points out that instead of adopting Kierkegaard’s strategy of attempting to get human beings to return to the New Testament notion of Christianity, it is equally possible to hold that early Christianity is definitively past and is no longer comprehensible to us.53 Paulsen points out that this was precisely the conclusion which Overbeck drew. Like Kierkegaard, Overbeck concluded that the understanding of Christianity held by the church from the Apologists to the present day is a history of self-deception. His response to this insight, however, is the diametrical opposite to that of Kierkegaard. Rather than advocating a return to the “genuine” Christianity of the New Testament, Overbeck holds that the Christianity of the first century has been lost without a trace. Paulsen quotes unreferenced passages from Overbeck in which the latter states that “What we today call Christianity is an historical construction which bears no relation at all to the form of Jesus” and that “It’s best if we let Christianity gently pass away!” Even Kierkegaard himself seems to have recognized the possibility of an Overbeckian interpretation of the relation between Christianity and the world. In a journal entry he comments: If the demand to become contemporary with the dawn of Christianity in the world is correctly understood in the same way as the immediate contemporaries were contemporary with it, then it is a genuinely religious demand which is in Christianity’s interest. Mind you, this same demand can also be raised by enemies and skeptics in order to harm Christianity. It is quite astonishing that, as far as I know, this has not yet happened.54

In making this comment, Kierkegaard appears to be thinking of the sort of position that Overbeck would later adopt. Nigg, Franz Overbeck, pp. 219–20. Cf. Rudolf Wehrli, Alter und Tod des Christentums bei Franz Overbeck, Zurich: Theologischer Verlag 1977, p. 214. 52 Karl Löwith, From Hegel to Nietzsche: the Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Thought, trans. by David E. Green, London: Constable 1965, p. 387. 53 Anna Paulsen, Kierkegaard. Deuter unserer Existenz, Hamburg: Friedrich Wittig Verlag 1955, p. 363; p. 457, note. 54 Pap. VII–2 B 77. 51

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The most significant commentator to draw attention to the similarity between Overbeck and Kierkegaard, however, was Overbeck himself, who was conscious of the similarities between his critique of modern theology and the attacks launched by Pascal and Kierkegaard against the clergy and theologians of their day. Overbeck had only a limited knowledge of Kierkegaard’s thought, however. According to Nigg,55 Overbeck owned only three works on Kierkegaard, namely, the German translation of Høffding’s study of Kierkegaard,56 a review of two works on Kierkegaard by Alfred Heubaum in Preussische Jahrbücher (1897),57 and a review by Karl Jentsch of the German translation of Either/Or in the journal Die Zukunft (1904).58 Overbeck did not possess any of Kierkegaard’s works. On the basis of this relatively meager knowledge of Kierkegaard, however, Overbeck was struck by certain parallels between Kierkegaard’s attack on Christendom and his own attack on theology. At the same time, however, he was conscious of some important differences. His discussion of Kierkegaard is motivated by his desire to highlight these differences and distance himself from Kierkegaard’s position. Overbeck introduces Kierkegaard in the sixth and final chapter of Christentum und Kultur, entitled “Modern Culture and Human Life.”59 The first reference to Kierkegaard may be an allusion in section 4 of the chapter, in which Overbeck discusses “The Modern Problem of Religion.”60 Although Overbeck does not mention Kierkegaard by name, it is difficult to believe that he does not have Kierkegaard’s concept of contemporaneity in mind when he states that for anyone who thinks in historical categories “two thousand years cannot be erased from the world as if they were nothing. Christianity, which has had a long life, can no longer occupy the same place in the world as it had at the beginning, after all the experiences which then lay before it and which now lie behind it!”61 For Overbeck, the passing of history makes contemporaneity with early Christianity impossible. Overbeck’s first direct reference to Kierkegaard appears towards the end of section 4. In this passage Overbeck argues that an attack of the type Kierkegaard launched against the Danish Church can only be successfully deflected in one of two ways. Firstly, if the attacker sets himself up like Kierkegaard as a representative of Christianity, then he can be confronted with the presumptuousness of claiming the role of defender of Christianity. Secondly, the attacker can be asked to submit for Nigg, Franz Overbeck, p. 220, note. Harald Høffding, Sören Kierkegaard als Philosoph, with an afterword by Christoph Schrempf, Stuttgart: Frommann 1896 (Danish original: Søren Kierkegaard som Filosof, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1892). 57 Alfred Heubaum, “Sören Kierkegaard,” Preußische Jahrbücher, ed. by Hans Delbrück, vol. 90, 1897, pp. 50–86. The two works reviewed by Heubaum are Høffding’s Sören Kierkegaard als Philosoph and the German translation of Kierkegaard’s attack on Christendom: Sören Kierkegaards Angriff auf die Christenheit. Sören Kierkegaards agitatorische Schriften und Aufsätze 1851–1855, trans. by August Dorner and Christoph Schrempf, Stuttgart: Frommann 1896. 58 Karl Jentsch, “Sören Kierkegaard,” Die Zukunft, vol. 48, 1904, pp. 87–95. 59 Overbeck, Christentum und Kultur, pp. 241–300. 60 Ibid., pp. 263–79. 61 Ibid., pp. 268–9. 55 56

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the time being to the power he is attacking. In Kierkegaard’s case, Overbeck points out, those attacked responded with the first approach. In any event, those Christians who respond to an attack like Kierkegaard’s by merely defending themselves have in Overbeck’s opinion lost the argument, but he does not go on to elaborate on this point. For Overbeck a weakness in the way Kierkegaard goes about making his attack is what Overbeck regards as “the false, rhetorical, and paradoxical character of his attack on Christianity,” which Overbeck attributes to Kierkegaard’s “mere affectation of the guise of an attacker.”62 He goes on to claim: It appears as though Kierkegaard were relying solely on himself when launching his attack upon Christianity, but he does so only after he has established a firm foothold within Christianity. He has no justification for attacking Christianity, indeed in a certain sense he has even less justification than those he is attacking. A poor representative of Christianity always has more right to criticize it than someone who is irreproachable, even if only in his own eyes.63

What Overbeck seems to mean by this is that Kierkegaard’s attack on Christianity is not a genuine attack, but only an attack in appearance. In making his attack, it looks as if Kierkegaard were adopting an independent standpoint from which he then launched his attack on Christianity, but in reality he only does this after he himself has already established a firm position within Christianity. Overbeck’s point, then, is that Kierkegaard’s attack is not a critique of Christianity as such but only of a particular form of Christianity, namely, the Christianity of Kierkegaard’s contemporaries. Consequently, Kierkegaard does not attack Christianity itself and, in Overbeck’s opinion, his position is less warranted than that of those whom he is attacking. Overbeck’s point, then, is that Kierkegaard does not have a problem with Christianity as such, but only with the way Christianity is represented in contemporary society. The problem is the discrepancy between “real” Christianity, which for Kierkegaard is the Christianity of the New Testament, and the pseudo-Christianity practiced by the Danish Church. In Nigg’s opinion, “With his critique Overbeck has without doubt put his finger on a weak point in Kierkegaard’s attack, even if he has not done justice to Kierkegaard’s undertaking.”64 This assessment of Kierkegaard by both Overbeck and Nigg, however, seems to be influenced by an ambiguity in the German translation of Kierkegaard’s attack on the Danish Church. The use of the term Christentum to translate both “Christianity” and “Christendom” creates the impression that Kierkegaard is criticizing Christianity, whereas in fact he is criticizing only what passes for Christianity in his day. Kierkegaard is thus not appealing to his own authority as a “true” representative of Christianity in his attack on Christendom, but is appealing to what he understands to be genuine Christianity, namely the Christianity of the New Testament. Kierkegaard’s position may thus be closer to that of Overbeck than Overbeck himself recognized, Ibid., p. 279. Ibid. 64 Nigg, Franz Overbeck, p. 220, note. 62 63

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for, like Kierkegaard, Overbeck affirms the radical difference between the Christianity of the first Christians and that of their contemporaries. The fundamental difference between the two thinkers is not their understanding of Christianity, but the conclusions they draw from this understanding. For Kierkegaard, the task is to recover an understanding of the nature of New Testament Christianity and live one’s life accordingly. For Overbeck, the radical difference between early Christianity and the modern world means that Christianity is simply no longer an option for modern human beings. The task is therefore not to become Christians in the mold of the New Testament, as Kierkegaard would have us believe, but to expose the falsity and fraudulence of what the theologians now propagate as Christianity. Nigg also recognizes the problematic character of Overbeck’s critique of Kierkegaard, which he attributes to the fact there was only a meager knowledge of Kierkegaard’s works in contemporary German literature.65 Overbeck’s second reference to Kierkegaard appears in the sixth and final section of chapter 6, entitled “About me and about Death.”66 Overbeck introduces Kierkegaard while reflecting on his career as a theologian and on his resolve to distance himself from this profession. Overbeck claims that he abandoned practicing his profession as a theologian at first instinctively, but later voluntarily and on principle, since he felt himself to be utterly unsuited to act as a representative of Christianity, despite the fact that outwardly he had been called to this profession. Indeed, he claims that, “No one can sin more thoroughly than I did against Protestantism’s moral demand, namely the demand of modern philistine Protestantism to serve God in one’s profession.”67 Having arrived at this insight, Overbeck now feels himself called to liberate culture from modern theology, but despite all his preparation, “I am no longer in possession of the powers to deal with the fuss I would provoke. For my task would be nothing less that to prove the finis Christianismi on the basis of modern Christianity.”68 This is now a task that Overbeck feels is too much for him to undertake, “especially when reflecting on the fact that I lack the spur of the serious hatred of Christians or religion needed for such a task.”69 It is in the course of this discussion of his attitude to theology and Christianity that Overbeck feels the need to distance himself from the critique advanced by such thinkers as Kierkegaard, Paul Anton de Lagarde (1827– 1891), and Alexandre Rodolphe Vinet (1797–1847), all of whom turned against established Christianity in the name of a purported true Christianity. Overbeck wants to have nothing to do with such “apologists for Christianity.”70 He points out that it could appear from his How Christian is our Present-Day Theology?, particularly from the conclusion of the preface, as if he had renounced Christianity even more bluntly than he had rejected theology. The truth, however, is that his sole interest was to break free from theology. He was completely indifferent to the fact that this also meant parting company with Christianity, for, as far as he was concerned, this was Ibid. Overbeck, Christentum und Kultur, pp. 287–300. 67 Ibid., p. 288. 68 Ibid., p. 289. 69 Ibid. 70 Ibid., pp. 290–1. 65 66

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something that followed as a matter of course without the need for any additional effort on his part. These reflections lead Overbeck to contrast his attitude with that of Kierkegaard. Whereas Kierkegaard “attacks Christianity although he supports it,” Overbeck, on the other hand, “refrains from attacking Christianity while nevertheless distancing myself from it and in doing so speaking as a theologian, although this is precisely what I do not want to be.”71 Furthermore, whereas Kierkegaard wears the paradoxical badge of a reformer of Christianity, I’m not thinking in the slightest of claiming to do this, nor am I thinking of reforming theology. I simply confess theology’s utter worthlessness and am not challenging merely its present, complete dilapidation and its foundations. I have at present no reservations in leaving Christianity completely to its own devices.72

Overbeck, then, emphasizes that his position is fundamentally different from that of Kierkegaard. Although Kierkegaard attacks Christianity as understood and practiced by his contemporaries, he did so from a Christian standpoint. Overbeck, however, does not wish to attack Christianity, but to allow it to remain as it is and to expose its irrelevance for the present. Overbeck’s attack on Christianity, then, is not aimed at bringing about a more adequate understanding of Christianity, for he denies himself the right to speak on Christianity’s behalf. He is indifferent to Christianity and believes it should be left alone to die a natural death. He wishes only to show that theology is a dishonest accommodation with the world that is fundamentally untrue to the Christianity on whose behalf it claims to speak. For Nigg, it is in Overbeck’s difference from Kierkegaard that the actual criteria for understanding Overbeck become apparent.73 Overbeck’s struggle against theology proceeds from a different starting point than that of Pascal and Kierkegaard. According to Nigg, the cause of this difference is in part conditioned by the different places occupied by these three thinkers in Christianity’s historical process of degeneration. Pascal wrote his letters against the Jesuits as a simple Christian who was firmly rooted in his church. As a genuine son of the church he represented Christianity against the church’s degenerate representatives. He himself embodied in his being what he demanded from those he was attacking. The situation is different with Kierkegaard. Despite his attack on the Danish Church creating the appearance that he is a prophet proclaiming the downfall of a ruined church, closer examination reveals that Kierkegaard does not conceive of himself as the coming martyr-prophet. Nor does he pronounce his judgment over Christendom as a Christian in the name of Christianity. The basis of his critique is not his consciousness of himself as a Christian, a status which he denies, but an appeal to the purely ethical demand of honesty. According to Nigg, Overbeck’s attack on theology represents a further step away from Christianity which goes beyond that taken by Kierkegaard. Whereas Kierkegaard appeals in the name of honesty to New Testament Christianity, while emphasizing that he himself is not a Christian, Overbeck repeatedly emphasizes that Ibid., p. 291. Ibid. 73 Nigg, Franz Overbeck, p. 221. 71 72

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he himself does not stand in any kind of relation to Christianity. His contesting of the Christian character of theology does not proceed from love for Christianity, nor does he even assume to the slightest degree the role of the superior Christian. Overbeck’s critique is that of a complete outsider. Consequently, in contrast to Pascal and Kierkegaard, Overbeck had no intention of bringing about a reformation of theology. Whereas the former expected their attack on Christendom to bring about a period of soul-searching and reflection on the part of their contemporaries, Overbeck expected no success whatsoever. He was not counting on theology coming to its senses and undertaking to reform itself as a result of his polemics. In Nigg’s opinion, this means that it is thus unfeasible to make use of Overbeck as a kind of “call to repentance”74 to current theology or as a means of getting theology back on track. Overbeck was so strongly convinced of the permanent inability of theology to fulfill its task—the reconciliation of Christianity with culture—that he not only wanted to expose current theology’s complete decay, but to claim that theology as such is utterly worthless. With the rejection of all types of theology Overbeck had arrived at the view that his work should be concerned not with improving, but with exterminating theology. IV. Conclusion Both Kierkegaard and Overbeck understand Christian history as a process of the decay of “true” Christianity. In this respect they both take up a similar position against Hegel, who saw Christianity as part of a progressive development to higher expressions of Spirit. It seems to have been Kierkegaard’s emphasis on the eschatological character of New Testament Christianity and his critique of culture Protestantism that drew Overbeck’s attention to Kierkegaard and made him aware of the similarities of his position and that of his Danish predecessor. He was equally aware, however, of some important differences between himself and Kierkegaard. The decisive difference was that whereas Kierkegaard understood his attack on contemporary Christianity to be a contribution to recovering “true” Christianity, Overbeck held that no such recovery was possible. Christianity in its original form is no longer feasible in modern society. The task is indeed to recover the true character of Christianity, but this is for Overbeck exclusively a historical task which will reveal only that Christianity has had its day and should now be left to die in peace. It is precisely this fundamental difference in their conception of the future of Christianity that distinguishes the two men. It is also arguably the reason why Overbeck feels it necessary to distance himself from Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard still has a foothold in Christianity, but Overbeck has lost this foothold. Indeed, as Löwith points out, it was precisely “this loss of foothold [that] Overbeck took as his own position between culture and Christianity.”75 It is this different view of the future of Christianity that accounts for the differences between Kierkegaard and Overbeck.



74 75

Ibid., p. 222. Löwith, From Hegel to Nietzsche, p. 381.

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Kierkegaard’s concern with the real meaning of Christianity motivates his critique of the Danish Church. Overbeck’s concern with the real meaning of Christianity motivates his critique of modern theology. For Overbeck, the historical-critical method exposes the historical character of Christianity and in doing so shows that it has been proved wrong by history. For Kierkegaard the historical-critical method is a means of avoiding the demand of the gospel. For Overbeck, the expectation of the end-time belongs to the past. Kierkegaard, on the other hand, extends it into the present. In Kierkegaard’s thought, however, the focus shifts away from the imminent eschaton to the principle of constant warfare between Christianity and the world. These are in constant opposition. They were so in the earliest period of Christianity’s history and should continue to be so in the present. Otherwise Christianity has “changed” and is not what it was in the time of the New Testament. Kierkegaard, then, detaches the struggle between world and Christianity and its concomitant suffering from the eschatological expectations of the early church. It is not belief in the imminent eschaton that is essential to Christianity, but the struggle with the world and the suffering this inevitably entails. Overbeck claims that the world-renouncing, ascetical character of Christianity arises from its eschatological belief in the impending end-time. Kierkegaard, on the other hand, detaches the world-renouncing, ascetical character of Christianity from its eschatological origins and extends it into the present, demanding that contemporary Christians continue to live in the eschatological mind-set of the New Testament. For Overbeck, this is no longer possible or desirable. In contrast to Overbeck’s view, for Kierkegaard it is not so much the expectation of the end-time that characterizes early Christianity as the willingness to suffer as a result of Christianity’s opposition to the world. It is the disappearance of this opposition and the assimilation of Christianity to the world that is the issue for Kierkegaard. Both Kierkegaard and Overbeck affirm that Christianity is in essence world-renouncing and ascetical, but Kierkegaard detaches this from the first Christians’ expectation of the imminent parousia and makes the eschatological mind-set a requirement of every Christian regardless of where they are situated in time. Paradoxically, however, Kierkegaard and Overbeck may in their respective critiques of contemporary Christianity point to a new way of being church. In an increasingly secular world the recovery of the eschatological and ascetic dimension of Christianity may contribute to freeing Christianity from its fateful accommodation with the world. As Löwith puts it in the final sentence of From Hegel to Nietzsche, “For how should the Christian pilgrimage in hoc saeculo ever become homeless in the land where it has never been at home?”76



76

Ibid., p. 388.

Bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Overbeck’s Corpus Christentum und Kultur. Gedanken und Anmerkungen zur Modernen Theologie, Basel: Schwabe 1919, p. 279; p. 291. II. Sources of Overbeck’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Heubaum, Alfred, “Sören Kierkegaard,” Preußische Jahrbücher, vol. 90, 1897, pp. 50–86. Høffding, Harald, Sören Kierkegaard als Philosoph, with an afterword by Christoph Schrempf, Stuttgart: Frommann 1896. Jentsch, Karl, “Sören Kierkegaard,” Die Zukunft, vol. 48, 1904, pp. 87–95. III. Secondary Literature on Overbeck’s Relation to Kierkegaard Barth, Karl, The Epistle to the Romans, London: Oxford University Press 1933, pp. 3–4. — “Unerledigte Anfragen an die heutige Theologie,” in Karl Barth und Eduard Thurneysen, Zur inneren Lage des Christentums, Munich: Kaiser 1920, pp. 3–24 (reprinted in Karl Barth, Die Theologie und die Kirche, in his Gesammelte Vorträge, vols. 1–3, Munich: Kaiser 1924–57, vol. 2, pp. 1–25; English translation: Theology and Church, trans. by Louise Pettibone Smith, London: SCM Press 1962, pp. 55–73). Löwith, Karl, From Hegel to Nietzsche: The Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Thought, trans. by David E. Green, London: Constable 1965, p. 381; p. 387. Nigg, Walter, Franz Overbeck. Versuch einer Würdigung, Munich: C.H. Beck 1931, pp. 219–22. Paulsen, Anna, Kierkegaard. Deuter unserer Existenz, Hamburg: Friedrich Wittig Verlag 1955, p. 363; p. 457, note. Wehrli, Rudolf, Alter und Tod des Christentums bei Franz Overbeck, Zurich: Theologischer Verlag 1977, p. 214.

Wolfhart Pannenberg: Kierkegaard’s Anthropology Tantalizing Public Theology’s Reasoning Hope Curtis L. Thompson

Wolfhart Pannenberg (b. 1928) develops a theological position in which hope and reason function conjointly to give an account of the fullness of reality. Nothing less would be adequate for public theology. The theologian’s task includes counteracting the privatization of theology that has resulted from theologians operating with a subjective, irrational mentality. As a science, theology is subject to the same canons of intelligibility as are the other sciences, admitting assertions only to the extent that they are treated as problematic and requiring their claims to be tested.1 Søren Kierkegaard’s project, grounded as it was in lifting up subjectivity and individuality while downplaying the ability of reason to harness reality, has been met expectedly by Pannenberg with some suspicion. Because of his commitment to the public nature of theology, Pannenberg has restricted his engagement with Kierkegaard’s thinking essentially to one area. In particular, the Dane’s writings on anthropology have fascinated him. He has continued to go back to them as a source of insight into the human condition even as he time and again finds them wanting in explaining the human’s fall into sin. What follows in the first part of the article is an overview of Pannenberg as a public theologian whose deliberations are guided by reasoning hope.2 The article’s second and third parts respectively identify the relatively few Wolfhart Pannenberg, Wissenschaftstheorie und Theologie, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1973, p. 367. (English translation: Theology and the Philosophy of Science, trans. by Francis McDonagh, London: Darton, Longman & Todd 1976, p. 364.) 2 This overview has drawn especially on the following writings: Wolfhart Pannenberg, “An Intellectual Pilgrimage,” Dialog: A Journal of Theology, vol. 43, no. 2, 2006, pp. 184–90; Niels Henrik Gregersen, “Introduction: Wolfhart Pannenberg’s Contributions to Theology and Science,” in Wolfhart Pannenberg, The Historicity of Nature: Essays on Science and Theology, ed. by Niels Henrik Gregersen, West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania: Templeton Foundation Press 2008, pp. vii–xxiv; Carl E. Braaten, History and Hermeneutics, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1968 (New Directions in Theology Today, vol. 2); Wolfhart Pannenberg, “An Autobiographical Sketch,” in The Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg: Twelve American Critiques, with an Autobiographical Essay and Response, ed. by Carl E. Braaten and Philip Clayton, Minneapolis: Augsburg 1988, pp. 11–18; Richard John Neuhaus, “Wolfhart Pannenberg: Profile of a Theologian,” in Wolfhart Pannenberg, Theology and the Kingdom of God, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1969, pp. 9–50. 1

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places in his writing that Pannenberg makes use of Kierkegaard and sets forth an interpretation of this limited use. I. Pannenberg as Public Theologian of Reasoning Hope A formative experience for the young Pannenberg, who had been baptized but not raised in a Christian family, took place in January, 1945, while walking home from music lessons: I had a visionary experience of a great light not only surrounding me, but absorbing me for an indefinite time. I did not hear any words, but it was a metaphysical awakening that prompted me to search for its meaning regarding my life during the following years, while I experienced the end of the war as a German soldier, then during a summer as prisoner of war with the British.3

This memorable event, and soon thereafter a positive experience with an excellent teacher who was a professed Christian, led him to commit to studying Christian theology along with philosophy in order to find out for himself whether Christianity really had the ascetic attitude toward life that the Nietzsche he had been diligently reading claimed it did. Experience, or rather he would maybe prefer to say, experience as interpreted by reason’s desire to progress toward the truth, moved him to become a theologian. Studying in Berlin, Pannenberg read the early humanist writings of Karl Marx (1818–83) and the works of Nicolai Hartmann (1882–1950), whose lectures he attended in 1948 and 1949 in Göttingen. In his own writing he adopted Hartmann’s method of dealing with an issue by starting out discussing the entire range of proposed solutions from the entire history of thought before presenting one’s own stance. In 1948 at Göttingen Pannenberg had attended lectures of Hans Iwand (1899–1960) on The Bondage of the Will of Martin Luther (1483–1546). Researching Luther’s voluntarism brought him to its roots in John Duns Scotus (1265/66–1308), on whose doctrine of predestination he ended up writing his doctoral thesis that was published in 1954. Pannenberg had been reading the Church Dogmatics of Karl Barth (1886– 1968) at Göttingen, and in 1949 a scholarship allowed him to continue his studies at Basel where Barth was teaching. While sympathetic in many ways with Barth’s “theocentrism of God’s revelation through his word in Jesus Christ, developed in terms of a trinitarian doctrine,” because in his philosophical studies he had missed just this type of trinitarian approach to the doctrine of God, he soon became critical of “Barth’s habit of employing analogical reasoning” and grew frustrated with the lack of philosophical subtlety and precision in Barth’s talk of God and revelation.4 He also learned quickly that “Barth did not like criticism from his students.”5 At Basel Pannenberg studied as well with Karl Jaspers (1883–1969), finding his philosophy

5 3 4

Pannenberg, “An Intellectual Pilgrimage,” pp. 184–5. Ibid., pp. 186–7. Ibid., p. 186.

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as a whole unsatisfying but being impressed by his interpretation of human existence as related to a “transcendence” symbolized in the concept of the one God. At Heidelberg the young theologian heard Gerhard von Rad’s (1901–71) fascinating lectures on the Old Testament, and this prompted enthusiasm for biblical exegesis and theological thinking about history as the realm in which Israel’s God had revealed Godself in divine historical actions and in which those divine acts had been interpreted by means of the promise and fulfillment framework of meaning. Heidelberg also afforded the opportunity to hear philosophical lectures on history by Karl Löwith (1897–1973), and lectures on Paul and apocalypticism’s impact on early Christianity by Günther Bornkamm (1905–90), to learn new ideas on the historical issue of Jesus’ resurrection from Hans von Campenhausen (1903–89), and to benefit in many ways from his association with Edmund Schlink (1903–84). Under Schlink’s direction he presented to the Heidelberg faculty in 1955 a second dissertation (Habilitationsschrift) on the concept of analogy and its history from the presocratic philosophers to Thomas Aquinas (1225–74) and Duns Scotus. In 1958 Pannenberg went to teach systematic theology at the church seminary at Wuppertal, where he was be the colleague of Jürgen Moltmann (b. 1926) for three years. In 1961 he moved on to the University of Mainz and then in 1966 to the University of Munich, where he currently is Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology on the Protestant Faculty and has directed the Institute for Fundamental Theology and Ecumenics. Setting forth the truth about the universe is theology’s primary task. Such truth cannot be confined to the past and the present, for meaning unfolds with the unfolding of time. Called for, then, is the garnering of public evidence concerning the power of the future. Theology cannot be about its proper work of seeking truth apart from interpreting history. History is the comprehensive arena in which reason must make its case on behalf of God and religious discourse. The mind’s life and its interpretations are included within the continuity of events that comprise history. Thus it is that history became the all-important concept for Pannenberg. Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), following in the late Enlightenment intellectual traditions of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–81) and Johann Georg Hamann (1730–88), had begun a school of historical thinking that stressed the influence of historical circumstance on human development, recognized the need to harmonize experience and reason, and also appreciated the degree to which language shaped thought. In Herder’s thought we encounter the commencement of German historicism that would be refined by the German idealism of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854), the Erlangen School’s Heilsgeschichte theology, the philosophy of historical relativism of Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911), and the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule of Ernst Troeltsch (1865–1923) and company.6 Pannenberg, operating out of this rich tradition of historical study, has struggled to maintain a free, unfettered approach to historical realities and biblical research over against the reductionistic approach of naturalistic positivism that has prevailed in many quarters since the late nineteenth century. 6



Braaten, History and Hermeneutics, p. 19.

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A volume on Revelation as History was published in 1961 that presented the earlier results of lively discussions among a circle of Heidelberg students seeking links between biblical exegesis and dogmatic theology. Endeavoring merely to establish a solid biblical foundation for the theological concept of revelation, this book surprisingly assumed a revolutionary quality as it rankled the followers of Karl Barth (1886–1968) and Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976) alike in arguing that it is primarily in the actions of God in history rather than in the word of God that revelation is procured. But must not the kerygma or the proclamation of God’s Word finally be connected to what has taken place in history? Defending revelation by sequestering it in a disconnected word—concerning a prehistory (Urgeschichte) as in the early Barth, or an existential meaning of the individual’s historicity as in Bultmann—leaves most inquirers disenchanted over this “massive interiorization of the Biblical historical drama of salvation.”7 Historical claims with real teeth were thus registered, claims including that revelation occurs indirectly through historical acts; that revelation happens at the end of history; that revelation is universal in character and available to all; that this universal revelation was realized first in the destiny of Jesus of Nazareth in that in him the end of history takes place ahead of time; that the revelation of the Christ event is part of God’s history with Israel; that non-Jewish ideas of revelation were used to express in the Gentile context the universality of God’s eschatological self-disclosure in Jesus’ destiny; and that Word relates to revelation as prophecy, instruction, and report.8 The new approach to history being taken was substantial, and Pannenberg tried to show this in the 1964 Jesus—God and Man, which made the case that the church’s proclamation of Jesus as the Christ made explicit what was implicitly present already in the behavior and teaching of the earthly Jesus, and the event of Jesus’ resurrection in particular was the key precondition for this transition from implication to explication.9 In the development of these thoughts, the work of Campenhausen on the historicity of the Easter tradition provided the basis for his own audacious inclusion of the Easter event within his “Christology from below.” Resurrection stands at the heart of Pannenberg’s theology. Against the consensus view in contemporary theology, he defends the resurrection of Jesus as an event of history, and he contends that it both proved who Jesus was and made Jesus who he was. History interpreted according to Pannenberg’s biblical eschatology identifies Jesus of Nazareth as one in whom the end of history has taken place ahead of time, or proleptically, and it is in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead in particular that history’s end has occurred. It is the prolepsis of universal history’s fulfillment. Christology from below, as we encounter it here, begins with the historical Jesus and progresses to the notion of the Incarnation. This whole viewpoint presupposes the Ibid., pp. 21–2. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Rolf Rendtorff, Trutz Rendtorff, and Ulrich Wilkens, Offenbarung als Geschichte, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1961, pp. 91–114. (English translation: Revelation as History: A Proposal for a more Open, less Authoritarian View of an Important Theological Concept, ed. by Wolfhart Pannenberg, trans. by David Granskou, London: Macmillan 1968, pp. 125–55.) Braaten, History and Hermeneutics, pp. 28–9. 9 Pannenberg, “An Intellectual Pilgrimage,” p. 189. 7 8

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apocalypticism of the Old Testament, with its expectation of history’s end, and the need to free biblical interpretation from bondage to the naturalistic and positivistic worldview of historicism. We see that Pannenberg refuses to succumb to the restricted view of reality set forth by secular thinkers. He affirms a unified vision of God and the world and does not agree that we should expect reality to be unthinkable. The early phases of Pannenberg’s theological work, therefore, saw the development of a biblical theology of the broadest sort, which acknowledged the plural testimonies of the Old Testament but also identified a continuous history running through Israel’s life all the way to the New Testament’s event of Christ. The God of the Bible was depicted as being faithfully at work in these events, with later acts of God being illuminated by earlier acts and vice versa. The Israelites understood this continuously connected history of events by means of a schema of promise and fulfillment, a schema that functioned forcefully within the early Christian community so that it could regard the Christ-event and the raising of Jesus from the dead as fulfilling the old covenant promise. The emergence of Jewish apocalyptic thinking drew connections between the history of Israel and the history of the whole world. The scope now was universal history, extending over the whole course of time, from the beginnings in creation all the way to the fulfillment of time at the end. The early church inherited this apocalyptic vision, in which God figures decisively: “Our understanding of all reality—including nature—as history and as a constantly new event, the meaning of which can only be decided in the future, can in the long run only continue to exist within the framework of the biblical idea of God.”10 Already in his formative years Pannenberg found himself on a course of development that did not identify with the dialectical group of theologians of the 1920s. His was to be a theology of reason. Seriousness marks his thinking, as he relentlessly executes his passion to articulate whatever truth can be gained concerning the provisional perceptions of the world around him. Truth in its fullness resides in the future, although the past and the present contain signs that can serve our discovery of the truth about the future. Pannenberg is comfortable living with the uncertainties and risks of making judgments on the basis of reasonable probabilities. Reason functions through concepts; however, a concept is not an abstract skeleton of thin intellectual definition but rather a concrete embodiment of thick narrated description. He knows well from Hegel that, even though the viewpoints of previous thinkers are sublated by those of later thinkers, their distinctive insights should and can be preserved to contribute to the full rational grasping of the concept under consideration. One learns from the past and one learns from one’s contemporaries as well. Compartmentalization of religiosity from the rigors of rational scrutiny is not to be tolerated. Pannenberg is not a rationalist and neither is he a fideist: he is a person of faith who brings a full-bodied view of reason to play in interpreting what

Wolfhart Pannenberg, Glaube und Wirklichkeit, Munich: Kaiser 1975, p. 27. (English translation: Faith and Reality, trans. by John Maxwell, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1977, pp. 16–17.)

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Paul Ricoeur winsomely called “freedom in the light of hope.”11 Reason without hope is a mechanistic activity that falls short in recounting life’s dynamic becoming. The theologian is not to bypass the task of making arguments for the historical judgments one makes. For instance, he regards the virgin birth as legendary, and he is unwilling to characterize it as a historical event. As the years have gone on, Pannenberg’s claim to pure objectivity has softened a bit, but his commitment to the public arena for scrutinizing theological claims has continued. Pannenberg insists that subjectivity and objectivity ought not be set over against one another. Unlike Barth and Bultmann, who confine God’s revelation to the Word that receives biblical and proclamatory testimony, Pannenberg regards the public domains of history and nature alike as revelational arenas. Therefore, theologians cannot fall prey to a fortress mentality that continuously seeks shelter in biblical shibboleths, doctrinal codifications, and pious mystifications. Since the question of truth must remain open, Christian truth claims need to make their way into public discourse, and Protestants cannot yield to the temptation to treat the content of faith “as a subjective truth that is not open to public assessment and critique,” a move which has “contributed significantly to the marginalization of Christian theology in the course of modernity.”12 Interpretation is constitutive of the theological enterprise and reflecting on the nature of interpretation is an essential dimension of theological method. Pannenberg notes that “with respect to the difference between the biblical texts and the events to which they point, we have to do with the central problem of historical study,” and “with respect to the distance between primitive Christianity and our age, we have to do with the central problem of hermeneutics.”13 Just as biblical texts are to be interpreted by exegesis rather than eisegesis, so, too, is meaning to be read “out of” rather than “into” history. All have access to revelation, since it has a universal character; but revelation is historical and therefore does not come into being apart from the process of interpretation by which patterns of divine agency are discerned.14 The interpreter is situated within a tradition of historical effects. The act of interpretation is itself part of the process of history. The history of the transmission of traditions is to be included as a component in historical research. Discovery and constructivity both have their place in the interpretation process. Establishing a hermeneutic that can accommodate transcendence has been a key feature of Pannenberg’s theology. In attempting to identify a comprehensive Paul Ricoeur, “Freedom in the Light of Hope,” in Essays on Biblical Interpretation, ed. by Lewis S. Mudge, Philadelplhia: Fortress Press 1980, pp. 155–82. 12 Wolfhart Pannenberg, “A Response to My American Friends,” in The Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg, p. 316. 13 Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Hermeneutik und Universalgeschichte,” in Grundfragen systematischer Theologie. Gesammelte Aufsätze, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprect 1967, pp. 91–122, see p. 91. (English translation: “Hermeneutics and Universal History,” in Basic Questions in Theology, vols. 1–2, trans. by George H. Kehm, Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1970, vol. 1, pp. 96–136, see p. 96.) 14 Wolfhart Pannenberg, The Historicity of Nature: Essays on Science and Theology, ed. by Niels Henrik Gregersen, West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania: Templeton Foundation Press 2008, p. xii. 11

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outlook that accounts for what Hans Georg-Gadamer (1900–2002) called the “fusing of horizons” of past and present while not robbing either horizon of its peculiar features, hermeneutics has a complex task that calls for nuanced creativity. If history was central for Pannenberg’s view of revelation and resurrection, it is also for his hermeneutical theory, but again this is history viewed through the wide lens of the tradition of German idealism that is careful not to discount either reason or experience in giving its account of the past. Pannenberg has persistently insisted that theology must counter the tendency since Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) to adopt an irrational approach that “derives revelation from the experience of faith rather than from reason’s knowledge of history”: Kierkegaard, along with Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) and Wilhelm Herrmann (1846–1922), stand out as the towering influences in modern theology’s elevation of the category of faith.15 Pannenberg’s emphasis on the historicity of the saving events of divine action was forged amidst a flurry of new viewpoints on hermeneutics that were appearing. Following in the tradition of Schleiermacher, Dilthey, and Rudolf Bultmann, many entered the lively debate on just what goes on in the process of interpretation. Gerhard Ebeling (1912–2001) and Ernst Fuchs (1874–1971), concentrating on the Word of God and developing a theory of understanding the progression from biblical texts of the past to present proclamation, zeroed in on language itself and the understanding that emerges as an event taking place through words: this “rediscovery of the hermeneutical import of language” meant that “the gospel is a word event.”16 A seminal essay on “Theology and the Kingdom of God” published in America as the first essay in a book under that title in 1969 heralds “the God of the coming kingdom, the power of the future, that will bring about the completion of everything,” and that basic theological stance, Pannenberg informs us, “has remained the guiding idea of my theology.”17 One summary provided in the essay delves to the heart of the matter: God’s coming kingdom bespeaks of God as the power of the future.18 The statement “God exists” will prove to be definitively true only in the future of God’s kingdom; but because of what Pannenberg calls “the ontological priority of the future” evident in the idea of God as the one who is coming, it can be claimed that when the totality of history is complete it will be clear that the statement about God’s existence was true all along.19

Braaten, History and Hermeneutics, pp. 47–8. Ibid., pp. 137–9. 17 Pannenberg, “An Intellectual Pilgrimage, p. 189. 18 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Theology and the Kingdom of God, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1969, p. 61: “The message of the coming Kingdom of God implies that God in his very being is the future of the world. All experience of the future is, at least indirectly, related to God himself. In this case every event in which the future becomes finitely present must be understood as a contingent act of God, who places that finite reality into being by distinguishing it from his own powerful future. Our existential awareness of the future provides evidence that our life is related to an abundant future which transcends all finite happenings. This power of the future manifests itself as a single power confronting all creatures alike. Thus this power may be properly conceived as the power unifying the world.” 19 Pannenberg, Theology and the Kingdom of God, pp. 62–3. 15 16

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The truth about reality is that the kingdom of God is coming. The coming of God is the coming of God’s rule. The referent here is not a static actuality situated quiescently in the future awaiting for the present to finally arrive, but a dynamic activity ever breaking into the now to share its power for the creation of the new present. Jesus “knew that trust in the future of God—the deliberate turning towards the coming of his kingdom—is all that God demands of men.”20 Sin distrusts the coming future and gives expression to evil in the form of structures, which, in seeking for security by preserving the status quo, are hostile to the oncoming kingdom. The future promises fulfillment to past and present. Fulfillment is realized as possibilities latent in the present are cultivated, but its ultimate source is the power of the future in which humans can participate even as it ever transcends them. History’s continuity points to a purpose that pervades historical existence. Purpose language, however, typically is teleological in nature, with the purpose as telos indicating the push or causal efficacy that resides within the past and fuels movement into the future. For Pannenberg, this purpose language is instead eschatological in nature, with the purpose as eschaton indicating the pull or final causation that resides within the future and draws the present ahead to itself. Pannenberg’s eschatology includes his claim that there is an absolute end to history. What began in the 1950s as a theology of universal history eventually developed into a theology of nature. All events are part of a universal totality, a single whole. This seems to develop Hegel’s affirmation that the truth is the whole. Creation and eschatology, nature and history, are linked. God’s love as motive for creation is tied to eschatological fulfillment as well: “for the resurrection of the dead, to which Christian hope is directed, expresses that the eternal God holds steadfastly to his creation, will not let it go, will not abandon it to death.”21 If God is the encompassing reality in whom, according to Acts 17:28, “we live and move and have our being,” then all things find their true place in God. God as Creator is ever at work as “both the creative source of individuality and the faithful provider of the regularities that result in the universe at large.”22 Because theology must be public, Pannenberg wants to take seriously the issue of religion; replacing “religion” with “faith” marginalizes Christianity in relation to secular culture and “confirms the general image of religious people as clinging to subjective preferences rather than to objective truth.”23 A robust encounter of religion and theology with the academy was provided in his 1973 Theology and Philosophy of Science. He there develops his thinking about theology as a science of God. His position can be summarized in four claims. First, theology must be in relation to the whole of reality; second, the whole of reality is present only in subjective human Wolfhart Pannenberg, Das Glaubensbekenntnis: ausgelegt und verantwortet vor den Fragen der Gegenwart, Hamburg: Sibenstern Taschenbuch Verlag 1972, p. 172. (English translation: The Apostles’ Creed in the Light of Today’s Questions, trans. by Margaret Kohl, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1972, p. 165.) 21 Wolfhart Pannenberg, “A Modern Cosmology,” in The Historicity of Nature, p. 209. 22 Pannenberg, The Historicity of Nature, p. ix. 23 Pannenberg, “A Response to My American Friends,” in The Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg, p. 313. 20

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experience as an anticipated totality of meaning; third, religious experiences make this anticipation explicit as revelation; and fourth, theology as a science of God is possible only as a science of religion that focuses on the historic religions.24 The public character of Pannenberg’s theology is also apparent in the extent to which his thinking transpires in relation to philosophy. Pannenberg is his own philosopher. Unlike his teacher Karl Barth, he readily acknowledges that theology is dependent upon conversation with philosophers for gaining clarification in its discourse, and this is especially the case concerning God and God’s relation to created reality. Pannenberg’s philosophical views are markedly post-Kantian in the sense of affirming human autonomy and self-determining subjectivity while avoiding foundational categories that lead to various types of transcendent theism, supernaturalism, and religious metaphysics: “In a word, Pannenberg proposes a theological metaphysics of anticipation and thereby reintroduces the metaphysical discourse without retreating to pre-Kantian discourse.”25 Pannenberg argues for a new view of the structure of reality; his view of reality, though, is shaped significantly by the thought of Hegel. Pannenberg states that the notion of reality refers to something essential, “something that is really important and concerns our life as a whole”: “According to Hegel, reality is the unity of essential being and existence; it is real insofar as it is effective, can be experienced and is directly related to the whole.”26 Important for him is the philosopher of life Wilhelm Dilthey, whose Hegelian perspective on history led him to recognize that meaning unfolds over time and comes to completion only at the closure of the whole: the individual life must await its ending to ascertain its meaning, and the meaning of history as a whole also cannot be determined prior to history’s end. The meaning of the part is seen in relation to the broader context of the whole. Pannenberg’s philosophical commitments receive their clearest expression in his Metaphysics and the Idea of God. He there develops his view that “the anticipated future is already present in its anticipation.”27 Critical for Pannenberg is what the philosophers call “openness to the world”: human beings live their lives oriented to the future, open to everything new that comes to them from the future (that is, from God), and this orientation is a legacy of Christian thought.28 Meaning is found in anticipation of an end. Reality is interconnected: the future funds the present and the past. All reality derives from the imminence of God’s kingdom. All things cohere as a single reality because of the power of the future. Knowing, tied to anticipating, takes place in terms of “the concept,” and “the anticipatory form Pannenberg, Wissenschaftstheorie und Theologie, pp. 316–17. (Theology and the Philosophy of Science, p. 314.) 25 Anette Ejsing, Theology of Anticipation: A Constructive Study of C.S. Peirce, Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock 2007 (Princeton Theological Monograph Series, vol. 66), pp. 120–1. Ejsing draws interesting parallels between Pannenberg’s reflections on anticipation and those of C.S. Peirce. 26 Pannenberg, Glaube und Wirklichkeit, p. 18. (Faith and Reality, p. 8.) 27 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Metaphysik und Gottesgedanke, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1988, p. 70. (English translation: Metaphysics and the Idea of God, trans. by Philip Clayton, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans 1990, p. 96). 28 Pannenberg, Glaube und Wirklichkeit, p. 30. (Faith and Reality, p. 19.) 24

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of knowledge corresponds to an element of the ‘not yet’ within the very reality toward which knowing is directed.”29 This sounds much like Ernst Bloch, the neoMarxist thinker. Since metaphysical reflection assumes the form of a “conjectural reconstruction” of the object under consideration that distinguishes between its intended truth that is the fullness of its anticipation and the merely preliminary form of this truth that it is actually able to express, metaphysics functions not out of any “definitive foundation” but, instead, more out of intuitive anticipation than deductive conceptualizing. Pannenberg affirms an ontology in which “beings are to be conceived in general as the anticipation of their essences.”30 This means that what something is is determined only by the anticipation of its future, for it is in the future that the wholeness of meaning and thus the essence of a given being might be established. Philosophical knowing assumes the structure of anticipation. Temporality becomes part of epistemology as rationality progresses by means of this anticipatory theory of knowing, in which verification of knowledge necessarily avoids conflating a thing’s concept with the thing itself.31 Pannenberg’s earlier declarations on God as the power of the future are given a fuller articulation in classical theological formulation later when he presents his trinitarian theology in a three-volume Systematic Theology published between 1988 and 1993.32 He maintains that in theology, the concept of God is “the central issue, around which everything else is organized.”33 We have seen that his theological method functions out of a rich understanding of the history of theology, and his systematic formulations are always contextually couched with historical deliberations. Thus he affirms a relational view of the Trinity, and the trinitarian God is tied closely to human history. His theological conversation touches base with all academic disciplines. Having studied with Barth in Basel, Pannenberg under his influence became a theologian of the church. Contra Barth, however, he believes that the church’s revelation cannot stand alone over against the larger context of human beings and world. Despite Barth’s effort to differentiate his views from those of Bultmann, Pannenberg regards them both as locked in a pernicious subjectivism that exempts faith from the scrutiny of critical reason. His intent is to present God in intimate relation with the whole of reality, which intention is captured nicely in the sentence with which he brings his Systematic Theology to a close: “The distinction and unity of the immanent and economic Trinity constitute the heartbeat of the divine love, and with a single such heartbeat this love encompasses the whole world of creatures.”34 Pannenberg, Metaphysik und Gottesgedanke, p. 75. (Metaphysics and the Idea of God, p. 104.) 30 Pannenberg, Metaphysik und Gottesgedanke, p. 63. (Metaphysics and the Idea of God, p. 88.) 31 Pannenberg, Metaphysik und Gottesgedanke, p. 72. (Metaphysics and the Idea of God, p. 99.) 32 Pannenberg, “An Intellectual Pilgrimage,” p. 189. 33 Wolfhart Pannenberg, An Introduction to Systematic Theology, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans 1991, p. 21. 34 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie, vols. 1–3, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1988–93, vol. 3, p. 694. (English translation: Systematic Theology, vols. 1–3, trans. by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans 1991, vol. 3, p. 646.) 29

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II. Pannenberg’s Limited Use of Kierkegaard Because he generally does not regard Kierkegaard as an asset in carrying out his theological project of reasoning hope, Pannenberg does not often drop the name of Kierkegaard into his writings. Kierkegaard’s whole existential emphasis and, from Pannenberg’s viewpoint, shortchanging of the rational enterprise, exempts him from being a full-fledged conversation partner in public theology’s daily deliberations via reasoning hope. In an area where Kierkegaard’s profundity can hardly be denied, namely, in his heartiest reflections on the human condition, then engagement can occur. And this restricted engagement repeats itself, with every iteration of Pannenberg’s theological anthropology being yet another occasion for taking on, if not taking in, the thoughts of The Concept of Anxiety and The Sickness unto Death. It is as though Pannenberg is tantalized by these thoughts. And, while his understanding of these texts advances over time, he never seems to find them completely satisfying. So we should not expect Pannenberg simply to mention Kierkegaard very often, and he does not do that. He does, though, just mention Kierkegaard in his 1986 essay “The Human Being as Person,” in the context of considering the construction of human identity and the relationship between personhood and ego.35 Even here, though, we already encounter the theme of Kierkegaard’s anthropology which we are suggesting tantalizes Pannenberg. The neo-orthodox theologian Emil Brunner (1889–1966) before him had developed this distinction between the “I” and the “self” in somewhat similar fashion in his anthropological work Der Mensch im Widerspruch.36 Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Der Mensch als Person,” in Das Verhältnis der Psychiatrie zu ihren Nachbardisziplinen, ed. by Hans Heimann and Hans Jörg Gaertner, Berlin: Springer 1986, pp. 3–9, see p. 8 and in Wolfhart Pannenberg, Natur und Mensch—und die Zukunft der Schőpfung. Beiträge zur systematischen Theologie, vols. 1–2, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2000, vol. 2, pp. 162–9, see p. 168. (English translation: “The Human Being as Person,” trans. by Linda Maloney, in The Historicity of Nature, pp. 119–27, see p. 126.) Pannenberg here writes: “The ‘I’ [as a momentary or first-person singular reality that is not yet characterized by a givenness that ‘remains the same through the shifting moments of life’] owes its stability first of all to the identity of the self, which is achieved in the process of identity building….We experience ourselves as persons in that our destiny as human beings, our selfness, toward the fullness of which we are always moving, is yet always present and appears in our ‘I.’ What we really are, from God, appears to us, broken in the mirror of our earthly life history, in the moment of the ‘I,’ and even and also there where the ‘I’ knows itself to be painfully separated from its own self or where it suppresses the voice of its self and desperately, against that voice, wills to be or wills not to be itself, as Søren Kierkegaard so penetratingly described. All that, even in its perversion, is only the forms of the presence of the destiny beyond our ‘I,’ to be ourselves. That destiny is present to us in the moment of our ‘I.’ That the human being is a person is thus, in fact, not founded in the ego. Our egoconsciousness is only the place where our selfness appears to us, as it appears to us in our faces. It is not without some deeper sense that it is precisely the face that is the starting point for the history of the concept of the word person.” In a note to this passage Pannenberg makes reference to Kierkegaard’s The Sickness unto Death. 36 Emil Brunner, Der Mensch im Widerspruch. Die christliche Lehre vom wahren und vom wirklichen Menschen, Berlin: Furche 1937, p. 231. (English translation: Man in Revolt: A Christian Anthropology, trans. by Olive Wyon, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1939, p. 229.) 35

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The programmatic statement published in 1961 by the group of young German theologians desiring to bridge the gap between biblical exegesis and systematic theology, Revelation as History, included two references to Kierkegaard. The first is in relation to a statement made by David Friedrich Strauss (1808–74) against Hegel and Schleiermacher at the close of his 1835 Life of Jesus: “that it is not the character of an idea to exhaust itself in its fullness in one particular individual instead of being presented in the development of its form.”37 Strauss is referring to the unity of God and the human, which he believed ought to apply to the species rather than merely to the one human being, Jesus. Pannenberg points out that this thought of Strauss is “a fundamental misunderstanding of Hegel,”38 and then indicates that Kierkegaard and “the whole theology that followed, reacted with a division, following the supranaturalist tradition, between the saving event and universal history.”39 The second reference to Kierkegaard is much more enigmatic as questions emerge concerning how Jesus the Christ is to be interpreted in relation to the totality of revelation.40 The note to Pannenberg’s statement reads: “This shows itself in the ironic note on ‘to be continued’ in the foreword and at the end of ‘Fear and Trembling,’ 1843.”41 The “to be continued” reference is unclear. In both the Preface and the Epilogue of Fear and Trembling, we do read ironic statements about the need to “go further”; that could be what Pannenberg is intending by this statement. In his 1962 theological anthropology What is Man? Contemporary Anthropology in Theological Perspective, Pannenberg refers to Kierkegaard in discussing sin. Sin takes effect, first, over against God in unbelief that denies the reverence and grateful trust due God. It asserts itself, secondly, in the greed by which a person becomes a slave of those things sought in the world and in relation to others. Søren Kierkegaard saw, thirdly, that sin took effect in yet another direction, namely, “in man’s relation to himself.”42 In a note Pannenberg then cites on the concept of anxiety Kierkegaard’s Pannenberg, Offenbarung als Geschichte, p. 18. (Revelation as History, p. 17.) Ibid. 39 Pannenberg, Offenbarung als Geschichte, pp. 18–19. (Revelation as History, p. 17.) 40 Pannenberg writes in Offenbarung als Geschichte, pp. 18–19 (Revelation as History, pp. 17–18): “If history is to be the totality of revelation, then it appears that there is further progress that must be made beyond Jesus Christ—about God’s becoming manifest. In Hegel, this departure was understood only as one of comprehending the revelation that came about in Jesus. But it also appears necessary to reckon with a development in the facts themselves. The effect of this question (which was much discussed in the period after Hegel) on Kierkegaard is known.” 41 Pannenberg, Offenbarung als Geschichte, p. 19, note 24. (Revelation as History, p. 21, note 22.) 42 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Was ist der Mensch? Die Anthropologie der Gegenwart im Lichte der Theologie, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1962, p. 46. (English translation: What Is Man? Contemporary Anthropology in Theological Perspective, trans. by Duane A. Priebe, Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1970, pp. 63–4.) He writes (Offenbarung als Geschichte, p. 46. Revelation as History, p. 64): “Where man does not live by trust in God, anxiety appears, namely, anxiety about himself. If man should really swing beyond his actual finite situation in infinite trust, then he would be protected from the anxiety of becoming acclimatized to finitude. It is through anxiety that the sinner remains related to his infinite destiny. In despair, however, man separates himself from his destiny, whether it be that he gives up hope for it 37 38

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The Concept of Anxiety and on despair his The Sickness unto Death. In Pannenberg’s assessment of Kierkegaard on anxiety there seems to be some confusion. He appears to state that swinging beyond one’s actual finite situation in infinite trust would protect one “from the anxiety of becoming acclimatized to finitude.”43 Does this mean that one would be protected from all anxiety, or that one would now be fully comfortable with one’s finitude and would no longer suffer the anxiety of becoming comfortable with it? If Pannenberg intends the former meaning, then he has likely misunderstood Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Vigilius Haufniensis. In Pannenberg’s text, the sentence following this quoted material in note 42 of the present article continues the unclarity in stating, “It is not easy to understand how selfhood can be sin”; but then within the same paragraph he writes, “In and of itself, selfhood is not sin.”44 In his 1964 Jesus—God and Man, two references to Kierkegaard are made in the text and one mention of him in a note. The first textual reference comes in the context of typifying the “concept of the prolepsis of the eschaton” as itself “paradoxical.”45 This leads Pannenberg to clarify that it is not paradoxical in Kierkegaard’s sense.46 In a note Pannenberg clarifies that what has been characterized as “an absolutely ‘not synthesizable paradox’ in the sense of a logical contradiction that can be in no way resolved…must probably be judged…as meaningless.”47 All such insoluble paradoxes “contain a logical mediation of the contradiction by establishing why, in certain questions, theology arrives at contradictory statements that are at the same time true.”48 Pannenberg comments that he has treated the problem of Christ’s preexistence in this way. The establishment of a why or the reason for the contradiction “represents in itself a logical mediation of the logical contradiction residing in the paradoxical assertion.”49 He goes on to say that “it is another question whether such a legitimation for the unavoidability of a logically paradoxical theological assertion

or, on the contrary, that he wants to achieve it on his own and only wants to be indebted to himself. Both anxiety and despair reveal the emptiness of the ego that revolves about itself.” 43 Pannenberg, Was ist der Mensch? p. 46. (What Is Man? p. 64.) 44 Pannenberg, Was ist der Mensch? pp. 46–7. (What Is Man? p. 64.) 45 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Grundzüge der Christologie, Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlaghaus 1964, p. 157. (English translation: Jesus—God and Man, trans. by Lewis L. Wilkins and Duane A. Priebe, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1968, p. 157.) 46 Pannenberg, Grundzüge der Christologie, p. 157. (Jesus—God and Man, p. 157.) He declares: “The word ‘paradox’ does not mean here, as in Kierkegaard, a contradiction that thought cannot supersede. The assumption of such a contradiction misunderstands the nature of thought, which transcends a contradiction in the act of establishing that the contradiction exists. Paradox means something that is contrary to appearance (doxa), by exceeding its capacity. Thus to speak of the end of everything that happens as having already happened in Jesus is contrary to the apparent literal sense. Nevertheless, this way of speaking can be justified, and only then is it meaningful.” 47 Pannenberg, Grundzüge der Christologie, p. 157, note 96. (Jesus—God and Man, p. 157, note 97.) 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid.

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can be given in an exhaustive and conclusive way.”50 In articulating the significance of the history of Jesus that reveals God, the theologian is forced at points to make contradictory assertions which in turn give occasion for reflecting more deeply on the issue, struggling to settle on a more profound grasping of “why” these contradictions are nevertheless true. The questioning leading to the “why” already presupposes the anticipation that the contradiction is “interpreted,” that is, that it makes sense and is believed essentially because of the intuitive awareness that it belongs to a hidden unity. Pannenberg adds: Even if this hidden unity in and behind the contradiction can never be expressed exhaustively and conclusively, neither does it remain even logically a mere contradiction…to the extent that a justification is sought for the fact and the reason that in the matter under consideration a paradoxical assertion is unavoidable and meaningful.51

In this note Kierkegaard is not mentioned, but the stance Pannenberg is taking on paradox is clearly Hegelian as opposed to Kierkegaardian. Kierkegaard insisted that the contradiction cannot be mediated by reflection: it is by the leap of volitional resolution that contradictions are negotiated rather than by logical mediation. Pannenberg is claiming precisely the opposite, namely, that a contradiction that cannot be resolved or mediated is meaningless and that logical mediation is a natural result of the theological pursuit of truth. The second textual reference in Jesus—God and Man simply mentions Kierkegaard’s understanding of the Incarnation—as a paradoxical identity of the otherwise unbridgeable contradiction between the eternal God and sinful human— in discussing Heinrich Vogel’s Christology and his bold avoidance of the problem of kenosis by including it as a special aspect of substitution, which Pannenberg interprets as carrying Kierkegaard’s paradoxical understanding of the Incarnation to its furthest extreme.52 Basic Questions in Theology from 1967 contains a few scattered references to Kierkegaard. In his essay on “Redemptive Event and History,” Pannenberg discusses the complete withdrawal of theology from history in the early Gogarten, Brunner, and Barth. The “star witness” for “the thesis that, in the realm of the historically ascertainable, nothing of a divine revelation is to be encountered” was Kierkegaard, and noted is his lifting up of “Lessing’s maxim that accidental truths of history cannot provide a proof for eternal truths of reason.”53 Pannenberg Pannenberg, Grundzüge der Christologie, p. 158, note 96. (Jesus—God and Man, pp. 157–8, note 97.) 51 Pannenberg, Grundzüge der Christologie, p. 158, note 96. (Jesus—God and Man, p. 158, note 97.) 52 Pannenberg, Grundzüge der Christologie, pp. 326–7 and note 85. (Jesus—God and Man, p. 315, note 88.) The note in which Kierkegaard is mentioned is Grundzüge der Christologie, p. 312, note 54. (Jesus—God and Man, p. 303, note 56.) 53 Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Heilsgeschehen und Geschichte,” in Grundfragen systematischer Theologie, pp. 22–78, see pp. 60–1. (English translation: “Redemptive Event and History,” in Basic Questions in Theology, vol. 1, pp. 15–80, see pp. 57–8). The cited passages correspond to SKS 4, 278ff. / PF, 79ff. and SKS 7, 521ff. / CUP1, 574ff. 50

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comments that “Kierkegaard would not need to have found a contradiction between the approximative character of historical knowledge and the foundation of eternal blessedness in a historical fact if he had considered more closely the character of this (no matter in what ways, or with whatever reservation, nevertheless known) fact as promise.”54 On the reference to Lessing he notes: But is Lessing’s division between reason and history really so unshakably valid? Do not his “accidental truths of history” arise only when one abstracts what has happened out of its referential context and considers it as an isolated individual? And is it not an illusion to find in reason a source of truths which are removed from and superior to all historical conditioning?55

Both critical comments disclose a perspective that is quite different from that of Kierkegaard. A last reference to Kierkegaard in this essay comes in the consideration of the ease with which history’s contingencies can be lost in favor of its unity: “The justifiable fears of Kierkegaard about an obliteration of individual existence by the ‘universal,’ and of Gogarten about a threatened blanketing of the openness of man for the future by a philosophy of history that anticipates it, are aroused at this point.”56 In contending for the unity of history every effort must be made, he acknowledges, to establish that one has not forfeited the peculiar contingency of historical events. There is one other reference to Kierkegaard in Basic Questions in Theology, in the essay entitled “What is Truth?” In treating truth within the history of Western thought, Pannenberg underscores the fundamental change that took place when the experience of truth came to be understood as a creative act of the human being: “What is sought is my own truth, not the truth generally. Since Kierkegaard, the latter is readily devalued as the universal.”57 In a note Pannenberg remarks: “In this connection, the corresponding twists which Kierkegaard gave matters were, in any case, taken much more as matters of principle than Kierkegaard himself might have meant them to be.”58 Pannenberg observes that it is not easy to determine whether this subjectivization of truth is a predicament or a liberation, but the answer given by his whole authorship is clearly that it is a predicament. In The Apostles’ Creed in the Light of Today’s Questions of 1972, no reference is made to Kierkegaard. But he writes there approvingly about Hegel’s interpretation of the proofs for God in a way that Kierkegaard likely would not endorse.59 For Pannenberg, “Heilsgeschehen und Geschichte,” p. 61, note 39. (“Redemptive Event and History,” p. 58, note 107.) 55 Pannenberg, “Heilsgeschehen und Geschichte,” p. 61, note 40. (“Redemptive Event and History,” p. 58, note 108.) 56 Pannenberg, “Heilsgeschehen und Geschichte,” p. 72, note 64. (“Redemptive Event and History,” p. 72, note 140.) 57 Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Was ist Wahrheit?” in Grundfragen systematischer Theologie, pp. 210–12, note 20. (English translation: “What is Truth?” Basic Questions in Theology, vol. 2, p. 13, note 31.) 58 Pannenberg, “Was ist Wahrheit?” p. 212, note 20. (“What is Truth? p. 13, note 31.) 59 Pannenberg’s words make his point on the transition from the finite to the infinite, Das Glaubensbekenntnis, p. 31. (The Apostles’ Creed in the Light of Today’s Questions, pp. 22–3): “The thinkers of German idealism expanded this idea [that man cannot comprehend 54

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Kierkegaard, such logical movement of ideas within abstract reasoning does nothing for establishing God’s existence or for closing the gap between humans and God: rather, the existentially subjective human being experiences God in that truth which is “precisely the daring venture of choosing the objective uncertainty with the passion of the infinite.”60 An extended discussion of Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Anxiety is included in the 1977 essay “Aggression and the Theological Doctrine of Sin.” He mentions Søren Kierkegaard’s description of the relationship between sin and anxiety as one important preliminary contribution to clarifying problems the Augustinian theology of sin left unresolved with its concept of envy.61 He realizes that Kierkegaard made no explicit connection between anxiety and aggression, but Pannenberg sees Kierkegaard’s description of the anxiety–sin connection as relevant for the topic of aggression. Pannenberg identifies the guiding interest of Kierkegaard’s approach to the doctrine of sin as “his effort to defend the reliability of the biblical portrayal of the original perfection of the first human being against modern critics,” noting how this effort runs counter to Schleiermacher’s account in The Christian Faith.62 According to Pannenberg’s reading, Kierkegaard thought he had found this himself in his subjectivity without the presupposition of a divine reality] into the theory that the agreement of our subjectivity with the reality outside ourselves can only be understood in the light of the presupposition that subject and object have a common origin, different from, but including, both. Finally, Hegel showed how man is brought through his experience of the finite nature of all things—himself included—to form the idea of an infinite reality beyond himself and his world which absorbs and preserves all finite things within itself. To be more precise: the experience of finite data already contains within itself an elevation to the infinite; for we can only think of something as finite if we already have a conception of the infinite; for no limit, and nothing limited, can be conceived of without the idea of something beyond that limit. In this sense Hegel interpreted all the traditional proofs of the existence of God as being the expression of man’s elevation beyond the finite world to the idea of the infinite.” 60 SKS 7, 186 / CUP 1, 203. 61 Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Aggression und die theologische Lehre von der Sünde,” in Zeitschrift für Evangelische Ethik, vol. 21, 1977, pp. 161–73, see p. 167. (English translation: “Aggression and the Theological Doctrine of Sin,” trans. by Linda Maloney, in The Historicity of Nature, pp. 129–44, see p. 137.) 62 Pannenberg, “Aggression und die theologische Lehre von der Sünde,” pp. 168–9 (“Aggression and the Theological Doctrine of Sin,” pp. 138–9.) He writes on p. 169 (pp. 138–9): “[Schleiermacher] had objected to the notion that the sinful condition of present humanity could have followed a preceding condition of innocence, saying it was impossible to understand psychologically how the sin of Adam and Eve could have occurred, as portrayed in the biblical story of the Fall, ‘without sinfulness being already present.’ For if Eve lent her ear to the whispers of the serpent and if Adam ate of the apple given him, there must already have been an ‘inclination to sin’ there. Against this, Kierkegaard thought he could nonetheless suggest a psychological motive that was itself not yet sinful, not yet directed against God and his commandment, and yet provided the psychological ‘intermediate condition’ for the transition from innocence to sin.” Pannenberg cites at this point the passage corresponding to SKS 4, 354–5 / CA, 49–50. On Schleiermacher’s perspective he cites a passage corresponding to The Christian Faith, ed. and trans. by Hugh Ross Mackintosh and James Stuart Stewart, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark 1989, pp. 292–5.

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intermediate condition in anxiety, which he distinguished from fear, insofar as the latter is directed toward a particular object: “The indeterminacy of Angst shows that human beings fear primarily for themselves, namely, for their personal unity.”63 The discussion of this issue continues with Pannenberg explaining that to understand why human beings must be anxious concerning their personal unity or personal identity Kierkegaard’s The Sickness unto Death needs to be consulted. From it we learn of the dizziness of freedom, which leads to its collapse.64 Pannenberg then asks: “Did Kierkegaard, with this psychology of Angst, achieve his purpose of making a first incidence of sin psychologically comprehensible, thus rescuing the biblical depiction of the innocent original state and a Fall that followed after it from Schleiermacher’s criticism of its literal accuracy?”65 He surmises that such an achievement is doubtful, even while pointing out that Paul Tillich developed his doctrine of sin in dependence on Kierkegaard’s writings. Pannenberg then suggests that “anxiety about oneself, the dizzying experience of the freedom that our selfawareness shows to be self-referential,” presupposes “sin which, in fact, consists of the human’s being the center of his or her own world”: “anxiety about oneself from

Pannenberg, “Aggression und die theologische Lehre von der Sünde,” p. 169. (“Aggression and the Theological Doctrine of Sin,” p. 139.) Pannenberg cites on this point a passage corresponding to SKS 4, 348 / CA, 42. Pannenberg mentions again “Kierkegaard’s distinction between an unfocused general dread and a fear related to a concrete object” in his Anthropologie in theologischer Perspektive, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1983, p. 146, note 193 (English translation: Anthropology in Theological Perspective, trans. by Matthew J. O’Connell, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1985, p. 149, note 195). In that work, p. 147 (p. 150), he also states that “as a result of anxiety the ego may be thrown back upon itself in such a way that—to use Kierkegaard’s language—it clings to its own finiteness and thereby loses itself. This clinging and loss may find expression both in aggression and in depression. In both bases, there is a failure of self-conquest and therefore of access to the formation and preservation of an independent real ego.” 64 Pannenberg, “Aggression und die theologische Lehre von der Sünde,” p. 169 (“Aggression and the Theological Doctrine of Sin,” p. 139), articulates this dizziness: “According to this work, human beings are constituted by their relationship to the infinite, and they know themselves to be so related to the infinite. But although they are aware of themselves, they cannot be self-determining, self-realizing, because their existence, as a relationship to the infinite, can only be realized by the infinite God. Therefore, human beings lose themselves when they try to be self-grounding (as distinguished from being grounded in God). But since, in their self-awareness, human beings always have a relationship to themselves, they are anxious about that self. This anxiety is, according to Kierkegaard, ‘the dizziness of freedom, which emerges when the spirit wants to posit the synthesis, and freedom now looks down into its own possibility, laying hold of finiteness to support itself. In this dizziness, freedom collapses.’ ” Pannenberg clarifies, p. 139, note 23, that “the ‘concept of Angst’ is first of all about a synthesis of body and soul through the spirit…but this is only a special form of the ‘synthesis of the infinite and the finite’ that is the subject of the ‘sickness unto death,’ ” and then he cites the passage corresponding to SKS 4, 349–50 / CA, 43–4 and SKS 11, 7–8 / SUD, 13. 65 Pannenberg, “Aggression und die theologische Lehre von der Sünde,” p. 169. (“Aggression and the Theological Doctrine of Sin, p. 139.) 63

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the outset” runs counter to a believing trust in God, an opposition that characterizes this anxiety as unbelief and so as sin.”66 Then, in support of his position, he alludes to the interpretation of the phenomenon of Angst by Martin Heidegger “as paradigm for the fundamental structure of human existence as worry or concern (Sorge)”67: this anxiety discloses that in relating to the world human beings are fundamentally concerned about themselves, and this self-concern as human life’s basic structure gives expression to the dominating role of self-love in human lives. When we are worrying about ourselves in Heidegger’s sense of cautious circumspection, our living is concentrated on striving for assurance and security rather than being grounded in a trust that sustains our whole life. While this striving for security is not avoidable, it does imply the danger of falling short of what we can become and that the more we succumb to the need to control our lives the more we end up being ruled by self-love. In identifying Angst as that concern which is the basic structure of human existence, Heidegger’s analysis “implicitly confirmed that Angst is an expression of sin because it is an expression of human beings’ concern for themselves.”68 So the upshot is, regarding “the evaluation of Kierkegaard’s investigation of the concept of Angst, that it has its enduring significance not in the function intended by Kierkegaard—in a psychology of the origins of sin—but as a description of the effects of sin on human self-awareness.”69 The significance of this discussion for the theological evaluation of aggression is that forms of aggression “proceeding from anxiety and frustration are to be seen as expressions of that fundamental failure to attain the full form of human existence that is described by the theological term sin.” Further reflection on Kierkegaardian anthropological themes appears six years later in the 1983 writing Anthropology in Theological Perspective. This book, intended in part to contribute to the controversy between theists and atheists, gives fuller explication to Pannenberg’s theological anthropology. Here there is significant advancement in the interpreting of The Concept of Anxiety. Now Kierkegaard’s Pannenberg, “Aggression und die theologische Lehre von der Sünde,” pp. 169–70. (“Aggression and the Theological Doctrine of Sin,” p. 139.) 67 Pannenberg, “Aggression und die theologische Lehre von der Sünde,” p. 170. (“Aggression and the Theological Doctrine of Sin,” p. 139.) 68 Pannenberg, “Aggression und die theologische Lehre von der Sünde,” p. 170. (“Aggression and the Theological Doctrine of Sin, p. 140.) 69 Ibid. In his Anthropologie in theologischer Perspektive, pp. 247–8 (Anthropology in Theological Perspective, pp. 254–5), Pannenberg remarks that Heidegger’s discussion of the concept of mood in Being and Time “follows Kierkegaard in regarding the mood of anxiety as key” in considering the wholeness of human existence; however, while for both thinkers anxiety is the way spirit relates itself to itself, in Heidegger anxiety is related only to finitude and not to infinitude as it is in Kierkegaard; and “freedom, which at the onset of anxiety restricts itself to the finite, is interpreted by Heidegger in a positive way as a decision in favor of authenticity, whereas Kierkegaard saw in it the origin of sin.” In the same work he additionally notes, p. 301 (p. 310), that in Heidegger’s understanding of modern experience, the self’s isolation in its alienation consciousness is such that “the violence exercised in ‘choice’ does not bring consciousness out of its isolation, but at best leads it (with Kierkegaard) into despair.” 66

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understanding of the loss of the destiny of human beings is viewed as “a kind of original state, even if in the sense not of an initial historical state but rather of a suprahistorical and to some extent mythical point of departure which is presupposed, simply as a lost origin, in their existence.”70 Pannenberg has learned from Emil Brunner and Regin Prenter (1907–90) on interpreting this writing of Kierkegaard. He states now, with more nuance than his earlier interpretations, that Kierkegaard “agreed with Schleiermacher in rejecting the view that the biblical primeval history is to be taken as an account of the historical beginnings of the human race,”71 which interpretation Kierkegaard regards as simply “fantastic.”72 Pannenberg is not convinced that one can make good on the claim of a loss of an original state of union with God by sin; it leads to obfuscation in avoiding the logical implications of one’s weak claims.73 Good points are made by our German theologian, but one senses that at bottom the difficulty is that, on Pannenberg’s view, more clarity is demanded than Kierkegaard provides. In Judaism and carried forward by Christianity is the view that the human’s essence is understood “as a destiny that will be achieved only in the future”: “This destiny finds expression for the individual in the experience of an obligation to live Pannenberg, Anthropologie in theologischer Perspektive, pp. 52–3. (Anthropology in Theological Perspective, pp. 55–6.) 71 Pannenberg, Anthropologie in theologischer Perspektive, p. 52. (Anthropology in Theological Perspective, p. 56.) 72 Pannenberg, Anthropologie in theologischer Perspektive, p. 52 (Anthropology in Theological Perspective, p. 56) presents his current view of what Kierkegaard was doing: “Nonetheless, he [Kierkegaard] wanted to ‘adhere’ to the figure of Adam and not ‘leave him in the lurch,’ because ‘Adam is the first man; he is at once himself and the race,’ just as man as individual ‘is at once himself and the race.’ Regarded as a ‘state,’ this fact is the perfection of the human being; however, it is also a contradiction and, as such, ‘the expression for a task. In his The Sickness unto Death (1849), Kierkegaard then went on to show that this task cannot be accomplished and leads to despair. As a result, the conflict between human beings as individuals and their consciousness of themselves as one with the species takes the form of a consciousness of lost identity.’ ” In the quotations Pannenberg cites the passage corresponding to SKS 4, 21–3 / CA, 26–7. 73 Pannenberg, Anthropologie in theologischer Perspektive, pp. 53–4 (Anthropology in Theological Perspective, p. 57) characterizes the obfuscation: “There can be no loss of something that never existed. As a historical claim about the beginnings of human history, the idea that there was an original union of humankind with God which was lost through a fall into sin is incompatible with our currently available scientific knowledge about the historical beginnings of the race. This being the case, we should renounce artificial attempts to rescue traditional theological formulas; one such attempt is the idea of an origin that is supposedly nonhistorical. The point of departure for a return to the idea of an original state on the part of Kierkegaard and those who appeal to him is the experience of humanness as entailing an obligation. In the language of Kierkegaard: The individual is humanity as such, the species, and at the same time the individual is not the species, and this conflict is ‘the expression for a task’ at which human beings have always failed. But, for this very reason, union with the species is not a state that at one time actually existed in perfection but now exists no longer. Rather, the species itself is still in becoming through the course of human history, and to this extent it is a ‘task’ for the individual.” 70

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as a human being.”74 Failure and infidelity in relation to this task do not mean that there was a point in the irretrievable past when this destiny was fulfilled, but this experience of actual nonidentity (failure) in relation to one’s destiny does have the radical consequence of rendering incredible any “faith in human self-fulfillment by human powers alone.”75 Here the two thinkers are in agreement. Another line of interpretation of The Concept of Anxiety and The Sickness unto Death occurs in this text in the discussion of “Egoism and the Failure of Selfhood” under the consideration of “Centrality and Sin” as an aspect of “The Person in Nature.” Pannenberg sees Augustine as having defined the essence of sin as a distortion of the order of the universe that led consequently to the interior failure of the self, and he sees Kierkegaard as giving this viewpoint its most penetrating development in the notions of dread or anxiety and despair.76 In Sickness these thoughts are developed further, for Kierkegaard there describes the human “as a Pannenberg, Anthropologie in theologischer Perspektive, p. 58. (Anthropology in Theological Perspective, pp. 54–5.) 75 Pannenberg, Anthropologie in theologischer Perspektive, p. 55 (Anthropology in Theological Perspective, p. 58) comments on God’s influence: “Human beings who are not identical with themselves cannot generate their own identity; the attempt to achieve selfrealization on the basis of nonidentity can only produce new forms of the loss of self, as Kierkegaard has impressively shown in his The Sickness unto Death. The goal for which human beings are destined is one they cannot reach by themselves. If they are to reach it, they must be raised above themselves, lifted above what they already are. But they must also be participants in this process, and this in interaction with their world and their fellow human beings, who, like them, are on the way to their own human destiny. And the harmonious working of all these factors is guaranteed solely by the fact that in all of them God himself, the origin and goal of our destiny to communion with him, is influencing us.” 76 Pannenberg, Anthropologie in theologischer Perspektive, pp. 93–4 (Anthropology in Theological Perspective, pp. 96–7), writes of the human’s loss of infinity: “Kierkegaard distinguished dread [or anxiety] from fear, because dread has no definite external object. In dread the concern of human beings is with themselves, and specifically with their own unity. Kierkegaard describes this human unity first of all, in the traditional language of a trichotomist anthropology, as a ‘synthesis’ of soul and body that is effected by the spirit. As a synthesis of soul and body, human beings are spirit. On the other hand, only in making this synthesis a reality can they attain to self-realization, and this exercise of freedom brings dread in its train. ‘Thus dread is the dizziness of freedom which occurs when the spirit would posit the synthesis, and freedom then gazes down into its own possibility, grasping at finiteness to sustain itself. In this dizziness freedom succumbs.’ This grasping at their own finiteness entails for human beings the loss of the infinity for which they are destined. The loss takes place because the spirit seeks to accomplish by its own resources the synthesis between its finite body and the soul that clings to the infinite, but is able to accomplish it only on the basis of its own finiteness.” Pannenberg cites the passage corresponding to SKS 4, 349 / CA, 43. SKS 4, 399 / CA, 96. SKS 4, 400 / CA, 98. SKS 4, 365 / CA, 61. SKS 4, 393–4 / CA, 90–1. He explains in p. 94, note 41 (p. 97, note 41) that the individual’s succumbing can be described “as a consequence of the weakness caused by dread.” A journal entry (SKS 18, 311, JJ:511 / KJN 2, 286) is referred to in order to explain “the connection Kierkegaard saw between dread and sensuousness as well as his interpretation of the role of the female sex in the biblical story of the fall.” On p. 143 (p. 146) in this same work Pannenberg refers again to Kierkegaard as representing the high point in modernity’s development of sin as a distortion of human 74

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synthesis, but now as a ‘synthesis of the infinite and the finite,’ ” understanding by this what is today described as “human self-transcendence,” “openness to the world,” or “exocentricity.” While finite, human beings nevertheless stretch beyond the finite to the infinite or the eternal, this stretching would be impossible, were humans not conceived as a relation, or a third entity relating, to these two concepts. Pannenberg notes that in The Concept of Anxiety the spirit functions as the third element in the synthesis of soul and body, making that synthesis real, and the synthesis of time and eternity lacked such a third element; Sickness, on the other hand, finds Kierkegaard claiming that in the temporal–eternal synthesis the relation becomes the third element as a positive unit that is related to the relation between the two opposed members and this “relation which relates itself to its own self” is Kierkegaard’s classic definition of “the self,” so in this writing spirit is the self. Spirit is also “self-consciousness,” which is the self relating to itself as a synthesis of the finite and the infinite; this means that human beings are constituted by a relation to the infinite, to that power constituting the whole relation which is the power of God. However, in relating oneself to oneself, one is simultaneously constituting oneself insofar as self-consciousness is also freedom; the self’s synthesizing of finite and infinite, then, becomes the self’s task, namely, of becoming itself, a task that can only be successfully completed by means of a relationship to God, the undergirding power.77 Humans, of course, are not quick to ground the self in God rather than in themselves, and that means that humans fall short of their true selfhood and experience various forms of despair because they are attempting to be selves which they are not, attempting to tear the self away from the power constituting it.78 Pannenberg offers more comments on Kierkegaard’s dogmatic presupposition of “a perfect original state or origin of human beings,” which he believes does not easily harmonize with the analysis being undertaken by him. This is seen as being tied to Kierkegaard’s view, which differs from Schleiermacher’s, that sin is always actual sin.79 Troubling for him in particular is the question: “how are human beings to use their freedom to effect the synthesis of the finite and the infinite, when the synthesis has its ground not in themselves but in the finite and eternal?” Kierkegaard answers that “the synthesis can in fact be effected only in the form of faith,” which subjectivity with his analyses of anxiety and despair: “it is here that the Christian concept of sin crosses paths with the development of modern research into aggression.” 77 Pannenberg, Anthropologie in theologischer Perspektive, p. 95. (Anthropology in Theological Perspective, p. 98.) The references are to the passage corresponding to SKS 11, 39 / SUD, 43. SKS 11, 13 / SUD, 18–19. SKS 11, 40–1 / SUD, 44. 78 Pannenberg, Anthropologie in theologischer Perspektive, pp. 95–6. (Anthropology in Theological Perspective, pp. 98–9.) A little later in the text, p. 111 (p. 114), Pannenberg writes: “Responsibility to God can be meaningfully asserted only as a particular form of responsibility to the self, on the ground that the true selfhood, the destiny, of human beings is grounded in God and can be achieved only by his power.” He therefore objects, p. 111, note 87 (p. 114, note 88), to the view which sees Kierkegaard as bifurcating responsibility to self and responsibility to God, for clearly Kierkegaard sees responsibility to self as finally pointing beyond itself to the power that establishes it. 79 Pannenberg, Anthropologie in theologischer Perspektive, p. 96, note 50. (Anthropology in Theological Perspective, p. 99, note 50.)

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Sickness declares is the self being itself and willing to be itself while allowing itself to be grounded transparently in God.80 Pannenberg rightly indicates that faith, for Kierkegaard, transcends human freedom and is only made possible by God. But Pannenberg queries further into this matter, asking, “How, then, is it possible for human beings to avoid freedom when left to their own resources?”81 The issue is addressed by considering the theme of self-consciousness and self-preservation, which Dieter Henrich understands as providing the basic structure of modern philosophy. Pannenberg sees the modern theme of self-dependence, even in regards to that which grounds their selfhood while not being at their disposal, as providing the platform on which Kierkegaard’s argument is developed. Kierkegaard’s articulations, therefore, frequently exhibit the misunderstanding that the self “must be the act of an already existing subject and a creation of its freedom.”82 Kierkegaard thus travels far toward dissolving idealistic philosophy’s “transcendental concept of the subject,” because if this subject is in a state of becoming concerning its selfhood and freedom, it cannot function as a condition and primordial ground of all experience; however, he stops short of a complete dissolution by utilizing paradoxical claims about subjectivity’s untruth and truth.83 In this way his viewpoint can be interpreted as seeing “the person positing itself in the very act of choice,” and this viewpoint then receives confirmation in his notion of “Stages on Life’s Way,” but there is the proviso that this “movement by which subjectivity posits itself in this way is simply the existential form that despair takes.”84

Pannenberg, Anthropologie in theologischer Perspektive, p. 96 (Anthropology in Theological Perspective, p. 99), and he cites the passage corresponding to SKS 11, 83 / SUD, 82 for this definition of faith, and refers also to the comparable formulation in SKS 11, 9 / SUD, 14. 81 Pannenberg, Anthropologie in theologischer Perspektive, p. 96. (Anthropology in Theological Perspective, p. 99.) 82 Pannenberg, Anthropologie in theologischer Perspektive, p. 97. (Anthropology in Theological Perspective, pp. 100–1.) Pannenberg, Anthropologie in theologischer Perspektive, p. 98 (Anthropology in Theological Perspective, p. 101), tells of anxiety’s origin in possibility. In point of fact, “it is not freedom itself but only its possibility that precedes the event in which freedom is at the same time lost. Even when the ‘condition’ which is not at the disposal of human beings—namely, that they have a glimpse of their eternal destiny—is given to them or restored to the sinner, the ‘decision’ of which Kierkegaard so often speaks is not to be understood in the traditional sense as a manifestation of a faculty or power which by its nature is indifferent in regard to the choosing among them. For ‘the possibility of freedom does not consist in being able to choose the good or the evil’; it is therefore not an act of liberum arbitrium (‘free will’). Freedom is, rather, identical with the spirit, with the eternity that is present in the ‘instant.’ Prior to the reality of the instant, freedom is present only as a possibility, and it is from this possibility of freedom that dread or anxiety springs.” Pannenberg cites references here to the passages corresponding to SKS 4, 354 / CA, 49. SKS 4, 222–4 / PF, 14–16. SKS 19, 214, Not7:32 / JP 4, 4004. 83 Pannenberg, Anthropologie in theologischer Perspektive, p. 98. (Anthropology in Theological Perspective, p. 101.) 84 Pannenberg, Anthropologie in theologischer Perspektive, p. 98. (Anthropology in Theological Perspective, pp. 101–2.) In this discussion Pannenberg refers to the passages 80

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Pannenberg’s struggle with the Kierkegaardian view of The Concept of Anxiety continues. He observes how Vigilius Haufniensis substitutes the notion of anxiety for the role played by “free will’s” choosing in order to identify an intermediate psychological state between innocence and guilt, namely, the state of anxiety in which freedom’s dizziness occurs and “in which human beings fall back into their false subjectivity.”85 Again, though, Pannenberg sees this anxiety in which the falling back occurs as already presupposing sin.86 Near the end of this major book Pannenberg refers back to this long discussion of The Concept of Anxiety and The Sickness unto Death. He there concludes that the person is “the presence of the self in the instant of the ego” and personality is “a special instance of the working of the spirit, a special instance of the anticipatory presence of the final truth of things”;87 “the spirit is more intensely present in the ecstatic movement of love” and as ensouled body “the human being as person is a creation of the spirit,”88 and this human being finds its fulfillment, not when in personal independence with great capacity for action leading to self-preservation and self-expansion it deludes itself into relying completely on itself for a selfconstitution, but when it acknowledges that its true source is in the divine spirit.89 Again, it seems that the issue is not simply why Kierkegaard is not as clear as Pannenberg would like him to be but whether rational discourse is able rationally to explain the matter of freedom’s disrelation. We will return to this point in the article’s third part. The Systematic Theology that was published from 1988 to 1993 centers on the truth of Christian doctrine. It is thoroughly trinitarian in the sense that it is Pannenberg’s most complete statement of the trinitarian doctrine of God and in the sense that the Trinity informs all parts of the theological system.90 In his Christology, Pannenberg had declared: “The absolute, real unity of Jesus’ will with the Father’s, as corresponding to SKS 4, 348–9 / CA, 42–3. SKS 4, 332–3 / CA, 25–6. SKS 4, 365–6 / CA, 60–1. 85 Pannenberg, Anthropologie in theologischer Perspektive, p. 99. (Anthropology in Theological Perspective, p. 102.) 86 Pannenberg, Anthropologie in theologischer Perspektive, p. 99. (Anthropology in Theological Perspective, p. 102.) Pannenberg, p. 99, note 68 (pp. 102–3, note 68), refers to the passage corresponding to SKS 4, 366 / CA, 61. SKS 4, 381 / CA, 78. SKS 4, 382 / CA, 79, and in discussing the egoistic character of anxiety and its relation to concupiscence. The confusion that Pannenberg finds inherent in Kierkegaard’s position in The Concept of Anxiety is expressed once again in the context of discussing the view of Julius Müller and the relation of the individual to the race, pp. 130–1, with a reference given in note 137 to the passage corresponding to SKS 4, 335 / CA, 28. He also sees it, p. 133, being taken up by Emil Brunner, who gives it a curtailed version of Kierkegaard, inasmuch as Brunner “reduces everything to human decision, while ignoring the dread which precedes decision in Kierkegaard.” 87 Pannenberg, Anthropologie in theologischer Perspektive, p. 528. (Anthropology in Theological Perspective, p. 513. 88 Pannenberg, Anthropologie in theologischer Perspektive, p. 528. (Anthropology in Theological Perspective, pp. 513–14.) 89 Pannenberg, Anthropologie in theologischer Perspektive, pp. 528–9. (Anthropology in Theological Perspective, pp. 513–14.) 90 Iain Taylor, Pannenberg on the Triune God, New York: T. & T. Clark 2007, pp. 1–4.

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was confirmed in God’s raising him up from the dead, is the medium of his essential unity with God and the basis of all assertions about Jesus’ divine Sonship.”91 This insight informs his development of the trinitarian doctrine. The first volume considers Christian truth in relation to the plurality of religions and God’s revelation, Trinitarian nature, and essential unity underlying the various divine attributes. Volume two concerns itself with creation, anthropology, Christology, and initial thoughts on soteriology. The third volume concentrates on the church, the Spirit, and eschatology. The first volume of the Systematic Theology includes only one reference to Kierkegaard. Pannenberg identifies Kierkegaard’s idea of a constitutive relation of human self-consciousness to the infinite and the eternal as part of the group of expressly anthropological proofs of God that includes Augustine, Descartes, Kant, and Schleiermacher. He explains that “it is the function of anthropological proofs to show that the concept of God is an essential part of a proper human selfunderstanding, whether in relation to human reason or to other basic fulfillments of human existence.”92 He states in the note that the case Kierkegaard makes in The Sickness unto Death must be regarded as an anthropological proof even though Kierkegaard himself criticizes proofs in his Philosophical Fragments.93 The broad-ranging second volume includes conversations in which theology enters into quite intimate dialogue with the biological sciences. The creation of the world takes place, according to Pannenberg, through divine action. In discussing the divine Spirit’s role in dynamic natural occurrences, he sees “the constitutive significance of simultaneity for the concept of space” as giving “philosophical plausibility to the linking of space and time in an idea of space-time as a multidimensional continuum.”94 However, “from the standpoint of relativity theory,”95 “the concept of absolute simultaneity has run into difficulties”96 since there can be no strict simultaneity among observers in different systems insofar as time in each system is determined by the observer’s relation to the speed of light. Pannenberg argues, though, that this does not lead to the wholesale elimination of simultaneity but instead simply relativizes it to the standpoint of the observer. Spatial measurements are relativized along with our sense of time, but in the latter case simultaneity is “made possible by the phenomenon of the present that bridges

Pannenberg, Grundzüge der Christologie, p. 362. (Jesus—God and Man, p. 349.) Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie, vol. 1, p. 105. (Systematic Theology, vol. 1, pp. 92–3.) 93 Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie, vol. 1, p. 105. (Systematic Theology, vol. 1, p. 93.) Pannenberg refers generally to The Sickness unto Death for “the definition of the spirit as a relation to the infinite that relates one to oneself”; that definition is given in SKS 11, 7–9 / SUD, 13–14. On Kierkegaard’s comments against proofs or demonstrations he refers to the passage corresponding to SKS 4, 244–5 / PF, 39–40. 94 Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie, vol. 2, pp. 111–12. (Systematic Theology, vol. 2, pp. 90–1.) 95 Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie, vol. 2, p. 112. (Systematic Theology, vol. 2, p. 91.) 96 Ibid. 91

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time.”97 God’s eternity includes the present of creaturely events and thus bridges time: “On the level of its own creaturely reality, that which is present to God belongs to different times. But before God it is present. In this regard God’s eternity needs no recollection or expectation, for it is itself simultaneous with all events in the strict sense. God does not need light to know things. Being omnipresent, he is with every creature as its own place.”98 In a note Pannenberg then effectively relates this discussion to Kierkegaard: The time-bridging character of the divine knowledge as simultaneity with what is not simultaneous explains Kierkegaard’s use of simultaneity for faith in Jesus Christ. In distinction from mere historical recollection, simultaneity with Christ is mediated by the gift of the Spirit, i.e., by the presence of eternity. With and by the eternal God, the past of the salvation event is also present to believers.99

The other references to Kierkegaard in this volume come in considering yet again “Sin and Original Sin.” First, a comment is made about “Schleiermacher’s talk of a common guilt of the race”;100 he adds that this “found an echo in Kierkegaard’s concept of dread,” and refers in the note to his claim in The Concept of Anxiety “that individuals are both themselves and the whole race.”101 Second, later in the discussion of sin he states how “Kierkegaard developed and deepened Hegel’s description of sin,” noting how closely linked to Hegel is the view in The Sickness unto Death notwithstanding the criticism Kierkegaard gives of Hegel.102 Over the next two pages he offers a distilled version of the discussion of Kierkegaard on sin that he had presented in his Anthropology. The main points are that human subjectivity is a relation that relates itself to itself; that the human being relates the finite I to the Infinite and Eternal; that the appropriate unity of myself cannot be posited on my own because such positing is always based on finitude and true positing must be by the Eternal; that sin, à la Augustine, is a perversion of the structure of our nature as creatures insofar as it is our striving for self-fulfillment in opposition to our creaturely constitution; that sin leads to multiple forms of despair as different shapes assumed in the human’s attempts to gain selfhood, or avoid this task, on its own; that the way out of this situation is to recognize that one cannot achieve one’s own identity and must fall back instead upon God as the power that can appropriately Ibid. Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie, vol. 2, pp. 112–13. (Systematic Theology, vol. 2, pp. 90–1.) 99 Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie, vol. 2, p. 113, note 237. (Systematic Theology, vol. 2, pp. 91–2, note 237.) He then directs the reader to compare Kierkegaard’s observation at the beginning of SKS 12, 7 / PC, 9. 100 Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie, vol. 2, p. 269. (Systematic Theology, vol. 2, p. 234.) 101 Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie, vol. 2, p. 269, note 205 (Systematic Theology, vol. 2, p. 234 and note 205) where the reference is to the passage corresponding to SKS 4, 335 / CA, 28. 102 Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie, vol. 2, p. 284 and note 243. (Systematic Theology, vol. 2, p. 248 and note 243.) 97 98

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ground the self.103 At the conclusion of this discussion Pannenberg again brings up “the phenomenon of anxiety that Kierkegaard tried to describe as a psychological state midway between innocence and sin.”104 He states yet one more time his critical interpretation of Kierkegaard on anxiety: “The sin that goes with finitude does not derive from anxiety, as Kierkegaard thought, but constitutes the essence of anxiety, which is concerned about one’s own ability.”105 The problem with anxiety is that it “fixes on the self.” Third, a reference to Kierkegaard comes in considering whether unbelief is the root of sin or whether theology should understand sin more broadly as the failure to achieve our human destiny. Unbelief is front and center “only in encounter with the God of historical revelation,” and “uncovering sin in the light of the revelation in Christ relates to something that is more universal by nature and that precedes the revelation.”106 Pannenberg is here criticizing Barth’s charge against the theology of the Reformation and post-Reformation with failing to base the knowledge of sin exclusively on Christ. Kierkegaard’s viewpoint is referred to likely because he offered a broader perspective that was included among the targets of Barth’s criticism.107 Fourth, Kierkegaard is referred to in Pannenberg’s consideration of sin as leading to guilt. He inquires into “in what sense guilt and responsibility depend on the freedom of action or are grounded in it,” and he is also asking the further question of whether guilt and responsibility might refer to anything other than acts.108 Pannenberg agrees with Julius Müller that one needs to affirm in this situation that the individual possesses the power to choose between the alternative possibilities of good and evil. However, he goes beyond Müller in recognizing that a will that chooses other than the good possibility in such a situation is already complicit in evil and is not in fact a good will. In not being settled upon the good, it is more than weak and is sinful in the sense of being “emancipated from commitment to the good.”109 In this context human sin can be understood as “our human weakness relative to our destiny.”110 Pannenberg urges us not to confuse “responsibility for a disposition that comes to expression in acts with responsibility for an individual act.”111 This insight,

103 Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie, vol. 2, pp. 284–6. (Systematic Theology, vol. 2, pp. 248–9.) 104 Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie, vol. 2, p. 286. (Systematic Theology, vol. 2, p. 249.) 105 Ibid. 106 Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie, vol. 2, p. 289 and note 258. (Systematic Theology, vol. 2, p. 252 and note 258.) 107 Ibid. 108 Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie, vol. 2, p. 296. (Systematic Theology, vol. 2, p. 258.) 109 Ibid. 110 Ibid. 111 Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie, vol. 2, p. 297. (Systematic Theology, vol. 2, p. 259.)

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he believes, affects Müller and Kierkegaard as well as Augustine, and it rules out deriving responsibility for sin from a decision of the will.112 Pannenberg is not questioning the will’s ability to choose between alternatives. But he is suggesting that there are many ways in which we are shaped by external circumstances over which we do not exercise our freedom. As he states it: We can choose between acts and their objects but not so easily between the moods and feelings to which we are subject. Nor can we readily or directly influence our attitudes to the world by decisions. The same goes for our situation in the world. We can choose how to relate to it, but we cannot alter it in detail, or only to a more or less limited extent.113

Similarly, our relation to God “is not determined by any choice of ours”114: for God is that encircling and permeating mysterious reality that supports our lives in myriad ways, but God is not an object of our consciousness to which we can offer our attitudinal affirmation. Even as the divine reality is part of our religious consciousness, we are aware that this reality always transcends our conceptions of it. From this divine reality, which is always inwardly present to our lives, we are nevertheless able to turn away in sin, and we do this when we position ourselves in God’s place.115 In the hefty third volume of his Systematic Theology Pannenberg refers to Kierkegaard only once, and that is in discussing “faith.” The question under consideration here is whether faith’s ground or basis, which is the person and history of Jesus, needs to be grasped by thought. Wilhelm Herrmann had claimed that it did not, but Pannenberg holds that faith’s ground can only be grasped in the form of a specific exposition and therefore in the medium of thought. We are aware of the relative and provisional nature of our exposition and thinking, but this relativity and provisionality and our awareness of a plurality of theological constructions “need not injure the conviction that the truth claim of our own faith knowledge is justified to the degree that there are cogent reasons for the conviction,”116 nor lead us to think that each interpretation grasps equally well the meaning of the facts being interpreted. Development of the meaning under consideration can take place in the conflict of interpretations. In fact, Christianity’s final ground of faith developed out of controversy concerning the meaning of the person and history of Jesus into the fourth-century understanding of the trinitarian nature of God. This far-reaching probing into hermeneutics is the context in which Pannenberg asks: How can the basis of faith—Jesus himself in his historical reality, or the trinitarian God revealing himself therein—be an adequate basis for faith if we can grasp it only by Ibid. Ibid. 114 Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie, vol. 2, p. 298. (Systematic Theology, vol. 2, p. 259.) 115 Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie, vol. 2, p. 298. (Systematic Theology, vol. 2, p. 260.) 116 Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie, vol. 3, p. 180. (Systematic Theology, vol. 3, p. 158.) 112 113

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At this point Pannenberg refers in a note to Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript.118 He then proceeds to lift up the centrality of trust in grasping faith in its relation to promise.119 III. An Interpretation of Pannenberg’s Limited Use of Kierkegaard It seems that something important is being registered by Kierkegaard’s absence in a number of Pannenberg’s books. The list of his books in which Kierkegaard is not mentioned is significant. Among them are Theology and the Kingdom of God (1969), Spirit, Faith, and Church (1970), The Idea of God and Human Freedom (1971), Theology and the Philosophy of Science (1973), Faith and Reality (1975), Human Nature, Election, and History (1977), Ethics (1977), The Church (1977), Christian Spirituality (1983), and Metaphysics and the Idea of God (1988). Apart from a couple of exceptions, the books in which Kierkegaard does find entrance give him meager attention. The lack of attention to the figure that those of us writing articles for this volume find most important raises the interesting why question: why the relative paucity of references to Kierkegaard in Pannenberg’s writings? It is obviously not that Pannenberg has never read Kierkegaard, because he makes enough references to him to discount that possibility. Pannenberg has read Kierkegaard. The most likely answer, as we have already suggested throughout the article, is because Pannenberg wants to restore the claims of reason to universality when the cultural forces of modernity do not support that endeavor. With subjectivity reigning supreme, and with Kierkegaard’s emphasis on subjectivity, Pannenberg generally does not find much of a resource in the Dane’s writings for his theological project of restoring reasoning hope’s work of making good its claims in the public arena. Kierkegaard intensely disliked the category of the public. Along with “the press,” the crowd,” “the numerical,” and “the professor” goes “the public”; all of these represent for Kierkegaard those leveling forces of modernity that, in emphasizing Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie, vol. 3, p. 183. (Systematic Theology, vol. 3, pp. 160–1.) The discussion summarized leading up to the posing of this question is on pp. 178–84 (pp. 155–60). 118 Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie, vol. 3, p. 183. (Systematic Theology, vol. 3, p. 161, note 184.) 119 Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie, vol. 3, p. 183 (Systematic Theology, vol. 3, p. 161), writes this about trust: “In the act of trust we entrust the future well-being of our own existence to that on which we put our trust….Unlimited trust is religious faith, for only God is unrestrictedly trustworthy, only he who has power over all our existence and is its Creator. The anticipation of the future that lies in the expectation of such a comprehensive trust that transcends everything finite corresponds to the structure of the history of Jesus, for in this history the future of God, and with it the salvation of the world, is ‘proleptically’ present, i.e., in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, but also already in his preaching of the imminent basileia and his mighty works based thereon. Thus the history of Jesus has in its specific material structure the form of the promise to which faith corresponds.” 117

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objectivity over subjectivity, undercut the formation of personality and diminish the passion of human freedom.120 Pannenberg has an appreciation for the public and, as we have seen, thinks theology should be public theology. Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Johannes Climacus had claimed in the Postscript that “subjectivity is truth”;121 however, Pannenberg’s contextual analysis leads him to think that subjectivism must be countered with an emphasis on objectivity. The inadequacies of mid-twentiethcentury existentialist theologies were all too apparent to Pannenberg. Faith’s existential dimension, of course, is not unimportant, but theological claims require more than reporting on attitudinal and emotional experiences. Large, metaphysical claims are part of theological articulation and demand far-reaching thinking to lend them support. As Niels Henrik Gregersen writes, “At a time when existentialism reigned, he [Pannenberg] was a theologian with comprehensive intellectual ambitions that could best be described as metaphysical.”122 Pannenberg’s use of Kierkegaard is limited, but it is not non-existent. He did turn to Kierkegaard’s thoughts on the human in developing his views of original or hereditary sin, actual sin, anxiety, and despair. In fact, there seems to be a real fascination with this material on Pannenberg’s part. He is tantalized by the ideas of The Concept of Anxiety and The Sickness unto Death. Tantalized by these two books, his understanding of them evolved over time as he engaged other scholars for assistance in establishing their meaning. Especially important thinkers and writings for him were Friedrich Schleiermacher’s The Christian Faith,123 Emil Brunner’s

120 See Curtis L. Thompson, Following the Cultured Public’s Chosen One: Why Martensen Mattered to Kierkegaard, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press 2008 (Danish Golden Age Studies, vol. 4), pp. 131–2. 121 The subjective issue of the truth of Christianity is dealt with in the long second part of the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. (SKS 7, 41–475 / CUP1, 59–616) and is set over against the much shorter first part dealing with the objective issue of the truth of Christianity (SKS 7, 9–39 / CUP1, 19–58). The first section of the second part is entitled “Something about Lessing” and the second section dealing with “The Subjective Issue, Or How Subjectivity Must Be Constituted in Order that the Issue Can Be Manifest To It” includes Chapter II on “Subjective Truth, Inwardness; Truth Is Subjectivity” (SKS 7, 138–87 / CUP1, 189–251). 122 Pannenberg, The Historicity of Nature, p. xi. The full passage is worth quoting: “When neoorthodox theologians argued that the message of the Bible and the Church was different from all other religions and worldviews, Pannenberg resisted the isolation of the Christian tradition from other traditions. At a time when many said that Christianity at its core is not really a religion but a secularizing force, Pannenberg saw Christianity as one religion among others. In a climate when a high degree of minimalist cleanness was observed in theology (backed up by the then-existing hegemony of Protestantism in Northern Europe and North America), Pannenberg interpreted Christianity as the most syncretistic religion that had ever seen the day’s light. In an era, in which many theologians depicted Judaism and other religions as “religions of the law,” Pannenberg claimed that Christianity remains highly dependent upon its Jewish resources. Indeed, according to Pannenberg, the scope of Christianity can be evaluated only in the light of a comprehensive theology of all world religions.” 123 Friedrich Schleiermacher, Der christliche Glaube nach den Grundsätzen der evangelischen Kirche, vols. 1–2, Berlin: Reimer 1821–22. (The Christian Faith, ed. and trans. by Mackintosh and Stewart).

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Man in Revolt and The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption,124 Julius Müller’s Die christliche Lehre von der Sünde I,125 Helmut Thielicke’s Theological Ethic I,126 Rolf Denker’s, Angst und Aggression,127 Regin Prenter’s Creation and Redemption,128 Jann Holl’s Kierkegaards Konzeption des Selbst,129 Hermann Fischer’s Subjektivität und Sünde,130 and Dieter Henrich’s “Die Grundstruktur der modernen Philosophie” and “Über Selbstbewusstsein und Selbsterhaltung.”131 While Kierkegaard’s anthropology tantalized Pannenberg so that he kept coming back to it and growing in his understanding of it, a basic perduring difference between the two thinkers on the extent to which reason can capture reality left Pannenberg wanting more than Kierkegaard could deliver. The heart of Pannenberg’s difficulty with Kierkegaard’s anthropological views, which admittedly also evolved over the 1840s, is that, in being a thinker with grander expectations of reason than Kierkegaard, or a thinker who demands a more exhaustive sort of rational explanation, he holds out for an “explanation” of sin. This spells trouble, because Kierkegaard’s whole point is that sin is “posited” by an act of will which precisely cannot be explained, since the positing self-cause of sin cannot be made sense of in terms of pre-existing causes. A narrative of this act of disrelation such as we find in Genesis can communicate rather indirectly the nature of the act, but that is more an exploratory than explanatory linguistic expression. It solicits participation from the reader to make the leap through self-involvement to grasp what the Fall is about. But to explain is to give reasons for something, and this cannot be provided, says Kierkegaard, since freedom’s misuse is posited rather than caused by external forces, and Pannenberg must be left desiring more. Emil Brunner, Der Mensch im Widerspruch. Die christliche Lehre vom wahren und vom wirklichen Menschen, Berlin: Furche-Verlag 1937. (Man in Revolt: A Christian Anthropology, trans. by Olive Wyon, London: Lutterworth Press 1939.) Emil Brunner, Die christliche Lehre von Schöpfung und Erlösung, Zurich: Zwingli-Verlag 1950. (The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, trans. by Olive Wyon, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1952.) 125 Julius Müller, Die christliche Lehre von der Sünde, vols. 1–2, new revised ed., Breslau: Josef Max 1839–44. 126 Helmut Thielicke, Theologische Ethik, vols. 1–3 (in four volumes), Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1951–64. (Theological Ethics, ed. and trans. by William H. Lazareth, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans 1979; reprint Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1966–69.) 127 Rolf Denker, Angst und Agression, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer 1974. 128 Regin Prenter, Skabelse og genløsning. Dogmatik, Copenhagen: G.E.C. Gad 1955. (Creation and Redemption, Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1967.) 129 Jann Holl, Kierkegaards Konzeption des Selbst. Eine Untersuchung über die Voraussetzungen und Formen seines Denkens, Meisenheim am Glan: Hain 1972 (Monographien zur philosophischen Forschung, vol. 81). 130 Hermann Fischer, Subjektivität und Sünde. Kierkegaards Begriff der Sünde mit ständiger Rücksicht auf Schleiermachers Lehre von der Sünde, Itzehoe: Verlag “Die Spur” 1963. 131 Dieter Henrich, “Die Grundstruktur der modernen Philosophie. Mit einer Nachschrift: ‘Über Selbstbewußtsein und Selbsterhaltung,’ ” in Subjectivität und Selbsterhaltung. Beiträge zur Diagnose der Moderne, ed. by Hans Ebeling, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1976, pp. 97–143. 124

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We have encountered Pannenberg’s God who is the power of the future that determines all that is. Kierkegaard was a conversation partner in thinking through how the fundamental features of human existence should be formulated, and Pannenberg’s anthropological formulations allowed him to develop more fully his concept of God.132 However, he has insisted that “a general theological anthropology cannot be expected to do more than demonstrate the religious dimension of man’s being”; therefore, the question of the reality of God must be taken “beyond anthropology to the experience of the gift of freedom in the context of the experience of the world.”133 This does not reduce belief in God, though, to “an act of piety or a supernatural interpretation of life.” Pannenberg presupposes the natural religiousness of humanity. Critical to his viewpoint is the ontological priority of the future. We have recounted the complexity of his view that God does not yet exist. From the perspective of eternity God as the consummate totality of reality already exists; from the perspective of temporality God is yet coming and the totality of meaning is incomplete. It seems that this viewpoint on God is close to the di-polar God of Whitehead’s process philosophy, but Pannenberg has not wanted to grant a genuine development in God. Our individual identity is constituted by our entire lives; the same holds for the meaning of the world as a whole. Final meaning will be at hand when the totality of reality has found its consummation. The vision of God as the power of the future that Pannenberg presents in his writings likely has more parallels to Kierkegaard’s vision of God than he realized, but that thought cannot be fleshed out here. The one major factor that Pannenberg shared with Kierkegaard was a relationship with the philosopher Hegel. Merold Westphal has called Pannenberg “the most articulate anti-Hegelian since Kierkegaard.”134 That puts them on significant common ground. Carl Braaten expressed prescient thoughts over four decades ago, thoughts that likely rang true to Pannenberg’s perspective when they were written and continue to do so today: What will come of the attempt to put theology back on the rail by beginning again with Hegel’s universal historical outlook remains to be seen. But, in a way, that is beside the point. What counts is whether theology has its eyes opened to a Biblical interpretation to history. Hegel, who tried to be true to the Biblical tradition, might be a help in that regard.135

Braaten points out that this might sound odd “to a generation suckled on Kierkegaard’s anti-Hegelian pathos,” but Hegel—when taken together with Kierkegaard and his criticisms—has a contribution to make, which has not been lost on Pannenberg: Philip Clayton suggests that Pannenberg’s anthropology “appears to be a sort of theological retelling of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit.” See Clayton’s essay “Anticipation and Theological Method,” in The Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg, p. 133. 133 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Gottesgedanke und menschliche Freiheit, p. 24 and p. 27. (The Idea of God and Human Freedom, p. 94 and p. 97.) 134 Merold Westphal, “Hegel, Pannenberg, and Hermeneutics,” Man and World, vol. 4, 1971, pp. 276–93. 135 Braaten, History and Hermeneutics, pp. 30–1. 132

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Kierkegaard can be seen as a corrective of Hegelian hybris, not necessarily a systemic substitute. Pannenberg too puts great store by Kierkegaard’s corrections of Hegel, such as taking seriously the finitude of human existence, its limitations of knowledge, openness to a still unfinished and unpredictable future, and the irreplaceable uniqueness of the individual.136

This leads one to think that even though Kierkegaard has not been discussed or mentioned when areas other than anthropology were being considered by Pannenberg, he maybe has been having an effect on public theology’s reasoning hope all the same. Kierkegaard and Pannenberg together have recognized the salient failure of Hegel, and the one from which others were spawned, namely, his identification of “the end of history with his own system of philosophy”: This was not sheer stupidity on Hegel’s part. Rather, he saw that to understand history in its totality, to see its truth as a whole, one must view it from the perspective of the end of history. Hegel was right in seeing the need for an end-historical standpoint, but wrong in identifying his own philosophy with the absolute standpoint.137

Kierkegaard and Pannenberg were both human beings who knew firsthand the power of religious experience. They were both intellectuals immersed in the tradition of German idealism who recognized at once the value of Hegel and the need for critiquing him. They were both Lutheran Christians who appreciated, though not uncritically, that tradition of Protestant Christianity. They were both religious thinkers who believed it was important to think about the human and the human’s destiny as determined by the decisive constitutive element of its relation to God. They were both strong individuals interpreting their times, maybe both accurately, but arriving at assessments of their contemporary cultural configurations calling for very different strategies. This difference limited the extent to which Pannenberg could make use of Kierkegaard’s writings and ideas. But the anthropology tantalized him and merited numerous attempts at interpretation. In recounting how this interesting German theologian has appropriated Kierkegaard, it is hoped that some light has been shed on nuances of both thinkers. The intent has been that the reasoning hope informing the portrayal of Pannenberg’s reception of Kierkegaard might make a modest theological contribution to the broader public.

Ibid., p. 31. Ibid.

136 137

Bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Pannenberg’s Corpus Offenbarung als Geschichte: Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1961, pp. 18– 19; p. 19, note 24. (English translation: Revelation as History, trans. by David Granskou, London: Macmillan 1968, pp. 17–18; p. 21, note 22.) Grundzüge der Christologie, Gütersloh: G. Mohn 1964, p. 157; p. 312, note 54; pp. 326–7. (English translation: Jesus—God and Man, trans. by Lewis L. Wilkins and Duane A. Priebe, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1968, p. 157; p. 303, note 56; p. 315.) Was ist das Mensch? Die Anthropologie der Gegenwart im Lichte der Theologie, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1962, p. 46; p. 107, note 5. (English translation: What Is Man? Contemporary Anthropology in Theological Perspective, trans. by Duane A. Priebe, Philadephia: Fortress Press 1970, pp. 63–4. Grundfragen systematischer Theologie. Gesammelte Aufsätze, vols. 1–2, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1967, vol. 1, p. 61, notes 39 and 40; p. 72, note 64; pp. 210–12, note 20. (English translation: Basic Questions in Theology, Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1971, 1972, vol. 1, p. 58, notes 107 and 108; p. 72, note 140; vol. 2, p. 13, note 31.) Anthropologie in theologischer Perspektive, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1983, pp. 52–5; pp. 93–100; p. 101; p. 111, note; pp. 127–30; p. 143; p. 146, note; p. 147; p. 247; p. 514, note. (English translation: Anthropology in Theological Perspective, trans. by Matthew J. O’Connell, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1985, pp. 56–8; pp. 96–104; p. 114, note 88; pp. 130–1; p. 133; p. 146; p. 149, note 195; p. 150; pp. 254–5; p. 310; p. 528, note 138.) Systematische Theologie, vols. 1–3, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1988– 1993, vol. 1, p. 105; vol. 2, pp. 112–13; p. 269; p. 279; pp. 284ff.; p. 289, note; p. 297, note; vol. 3, p. 183, note. (English translation: Systematic Theology, vols. 1–3, trans. by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans 1991– 98, vol. 1, p. 93; vol. 2, pp. 91–2; p. 234; p. 248; p. 240; p. 252; p. 259; vol. 3, p. 161.) The Historicity of Nature: Essays on Science and Theology, Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press 2008, p. 126; pp. 137–40. II. Sources of Pannenberg’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Brunner, Emil, Der Mensch im Widerspruch. Die christliche Lehre vom wahren und vom wirklichen Menschen, Berlin: Furche-Verlag 1937, p. 9; pp. 34–5; p. 51; p.

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109; p. 123; p. 137; p. 159; p. 187; p. 190; p. 194; p. 200; p. 221; p. 231; p. 254; p. 265; p. 271; pp. 289–90; p. 316; pp. 322–3; p. 350; p. 368; pp. 414–15; p. 454; p. 460; p. 474; p. 508; p. 511; p. 529; p. 534; pp. 554–7. — Die christliche Lehre von Schöpfung und Erlösnung, Zurich: Zwingli-Verlag 1950, p. 54; p. 87; p. 112; p. 134; p. 146. Denker, Rolf, Angst und Aggression, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag 1974, p. 28. Fischer, Hermann, Subjektivität und Sünde. Kierkegaards Begriff der Sünde mit ständiger Rücksicht auf Schleiermachers Lehre von der Sünde, Itzehoe: Verlag “Die Spur” 1963. Holl, Jann, Kierkegaards Konzeption des Selbst. Eine Untersuchung über die Voraussetzungen und Formen seines Denkens, Meisenheim am Glan: Hain 1972 (Monographien zur philosophischen Forschung, vol. 81). Prenter, Regin, Skabelse og genløsning: Dogmatik, Copenhagen: G.E.C. Gad 1955, p. 171; p. 202, note 113; p. 213; p. 222, note 114; p. 233; p. 246; pp. 263–4, note 123; p. 273; p. 285; p. 435, note 256; p. 606, note 520. (English translation: Creation and Redemption, trans. by Theodor I. Jensen, Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1967, pp. 57–8; p. 153; p. 189; p. 207; pp. 233–5; p. 268; p. 282; p. 284; p. 353; p. 413; p. 576.) Thielicke, Helmut, Theologische Ethik, vols. 1–3 (in four volumes), Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1958–64, vol. 1, p. 69; p. 135; p. 152; p. 287; p. 288; p. 432; p. 442; pp. 512–13; p. 645; vol. 2, part 1, p. 70; p. 73; p. 98; p. 112; p. 115; p. 154; p. 169; p. 173; p. 197; p. 239; p. 289; pp. 308–9; p. 324; p. 334; p. 351; p. 554; vol. 2, part 2, p. 103; p. 141; p. 151; p. 188; p. 240; p. 276; p. 309; p. 656; vol. 3, p. 2; p. 8; p. 18; p. 56; p. 63; pp. 176–7; p. 354; p. 380; p. 469; p. 562; p. 575; p. 577; p. 812; p. 830; p. 831; p. 855; p. 862; pp. 864–5; p. 874; pp. 875–6; p. 887; p. 906. III. Secondary Literature on Pannenberg’s Relation to Kierkegaard Braaten, Carl E., History and Hermeneutics, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1968 (New Directions in Theology Today, vol. 2), pp. 30–1; p. 48; p. 59. Grenz, Stanley J., Reason for Hope: The Systematic Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg, New York: Oxford University Press 1990, pp. 95–6; p. 98. Müller, Denis, Parole et histoire: Dialogue avec W. Pannenberg, Geneva: Université de Neuchâtel for Labor et Fides 1983 (Labor et Fides Lieux théologiques, no. 5), p. 110; p. 133; p. 290; p. 334. Shults, F. LeRon, The Postfoundationalist Task of Theology: Wolfhart Pannenberg and the New Theological Rationality, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans 1999, p. 202; p. 208; pp. 229–30; p. 231, note 80. Tupper, E. Frank, The Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1973, p. 126.

Christoph Schrempf: The “Swabian Socrates” as Translator of Kierkegaard Gerhard Schreiber

[Schrempf’s] main life’s work came to be his engagement with Søren Kierkegaard. The great German edition of Kierkegaard’s works is his handiwork, as is his great Kierkegaard monograph….Several writings by that most deeply tragic and convoluted Antichrist [i.e., Kierkegaard] came to be important to me. I read them in Schrempf’s masterful translations, and then I read his introductions to them as well; and once again I was disturbed and entranced by this wondrous and grand translator [i.e., Schrempf], whose modes of thought and writing seemed so different from mine, but who nonetheless gripped me so unsettlingly.1

It is with these words that Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) fêted Christoph Schrempf (1860–1944) on the latter’s seventieth birthday.2 In this elegy to the “Swabian Socrates,”3 as he would later call his longtime friend, Hesse describes both Kierkegaard’s significance for Schrempf and Schrempf’s importance for Kierkegaard reception. This article will revisit both subjects critically. In Section I, I will offer an overview of Schrempf’s life, with special focus on the role that Schrempf’s engagement with Kierkegaard played in his dramatic break with the Evangelical Hermann Hesse, “Über Christoph Schrempf,” in Im Banne des Unbedingten. Christoph Schrempf zugeeignet, ed. by Hermann Hesse et al., Stuttgart: Frommann 1930, pp. 5–13, here p. 8. Other important statements about Schrempf by Hesse can be found in Hesse, “Neue Kierkegaard-Ausgaben,” Vivos voco. Zeitschrift für neues Deutschtum, vol. 1, no. 10 (July), 1920, pp. 658–9; “Beim Einpacken,” Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten, 1928, no. 182 (August 5); “Christoph Schrempf. Zu seinem 75. Geburtstage am 28. April 1935,” Die neue Rundschau, vol. 46, 1935, pp. 540–3; “Nachruf auf Christoph Schrempf,” Neue Schweizer Rundschau, vol. 11, 1944, pp. 717–26. 2 In citing Schrempf’s secondary writings, I always quote and refer to the original editions; I also supply additional references, in parentheses, to the corresponding loci in Christoph Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–16 [vols. 14–16 ed. by Otto Engel], Stuttgart: Frommann 1930–40. Schrempf’s Gesammelte Werke also contains previously unpublished material (especially in vols. 14–16); but it does not contain all of his published writings. It should be noted that Schrempf’s Gesammelte Werke contains slightly modified versions of the original texts. 3 Hesse, “Nachruf auf Christoph Schrempf,” p. 723. 1

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Lutheran Church in Württemberg—an event that came to be known as “the Schrempf affair” (der Fall Schrempf). In Section II, I will take stock of Schrempf’s importance for Kierkegaard reception. For more than three decades following World War I, Schrempf’s translations and editions of Kierkegaard’s works were “the authoritative voice”4 for many Kierkegaard scholars, both within and outside the Germanspeaking world, who were unable to read Kierkegaard in Danish. Section III will address the problematic consequences of this development—problematic because, by today’s philological standards, Schrempf’s translations can no longer be regarded as “masterful,” as Hesse put it. Rather, they are error-ridden—and in some cases deeply distorting. Section IV concludes with a final note on Schrempf’s influence as a Kierkegaard translator. I. The Life of Schrempf and Kierkegaard’s Importance for “the Schrempf Affair” A. Life It is no easy task to write a biography of Christoph Schrempf.5 While he did publish a comprehensively documented autobiographical account of his 1891–92 clash with the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Württemberg,6 Schrempf left scarcely any Heiko Schulz, “Germany and Austria: A Modest Head Start: The German Reception of Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard’s International Reception, Tome I,  Northern and Western Europe, ed. by Jon Stewart, Aldershot: Ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 8), pp. 307–419, here p. 316. 5 For a general introduction to Schrempf’s life and work, see Ernst Müller, “Christoph Schrempf (1871–1943 [sic!]). Der umgekehrte Pietist,” in his Schwäbische Profile, Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer 1950, pp. 167–99; Hans Hohlwein, “Schrempf, Christoph,” in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, vols. 1–6, ed. by Kurt Galling, 3rd ed., Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1957–62, vol. 5, 1961, columns 1511–3; Wolfdietrich von Kloeden, “Schrempf, Christoph,” in Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, vols. 1–32, ed. by Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz and Traugott Bautz, Nordhausen: Verlag Traugott Bautz 1975–2011, vol. 9, 1995, columns 974–6; Habib C. Malik, Receiving Søren Kierkegaard: The Early Impact and Transmission of His Thought, Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press 1997, pp. 311–15 and pp. 332–9; Wolfgang Tuffentsammer, “Leben und Werk von Christoph Schrempf,” in Christoph Schrempf 1860–1944—Ein Sohn unserer Stadt, ed. by Geschichtsverein Besigheim, Besigheim: Geschichtsverein Besigheim 2002 (Besigheimer Geschichtsblätter, vol. 21), pp. 35–46; Hans Martin Müller, “Schrempf, Christoph,” in Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, vols. 1–8, ed. by Hans Dieter Betz et al., 4th ed., Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1998–2005, vol. 7, 2004, columns 1003–4; and, above all, the first (and so far only) biography of Schrempf by Andreas Rössler, Christoph Schrempf (1860–1944). Württembergischer Theologe, Kirchenrebell und Religionsphilosoph. Ein Leben in unerbittlicher Wahrhaftigkeit, Stuttgart: Verein für württembergische Kirchengeschichte 2010 (Kleine Schriften des Vereins für württembergische Kirchengeschichte, vol. 7). I thank Dr. Rössler for his useful remarks! 6 See Christoph Schrempf, Akten zu meiner Entlassung aus dem Württembergischen Kirchendienst, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1892 (2nd ed. 1892) [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, pp. 99–169]; Eine Frage an die evangelische Landeskirche Württembergs, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1892 [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, 4

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personal information about his life behind. This was a deliberate move, as he made clear in his 1918 “Bequest” to posterity: “If it were well told, my life story would yield a novel more interesting than all the novels that I have ever read. Precisely for this reason, the novel that is my life should die with me, should die in me. No one else should tell it either! That is why I burned my diaries. What I have lived is no mere conversation piece for curious sensation seekers.”7 Christoph Schrempf was born in Besigheim, a small city to the north of Stuttgart, on April 28, 1860. His childhood was an unhappy one. His father Christian Schrempf (1831–89), a cobbler in Besigheim, was an incurable alcoholic who “made life difficult with all his might (and there was much might)” for his wife, Luise Margarethe Häusler (1829–98), and their five children.8 Starting at the age of ten, Christoph was dogged by the thought that it would have been better if he had never been born. As a young man, Schrempf seriously contemplated suicide; thoughts of that sort would trouble him for much of his adult life, until after his fiftieth birthday.9 In 1879, a 19-year-old Schrempf—strongly influenced by his mother’s Pietism10— matriculated in theology at the University of Tübingen. But he soon suffered a crisis of faith, brought on mainly by exposure to the Bible criticism of church historian Carl Heinrich Weizsäcker (1822–99), a student of Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792– 1860). “To me,” Schrempf wrote, “the Bible had changed from the Word of God into the word of man; dogma from a revealed truth into a debatable opinion.”11 This

vol. 1, pp. 171–228]; Zur Pfarrersfrage. Zwei offene Briefe an die Herren C. B. in... und Chr. R. in Tüb. Hochwürden, nebst einer Beilage, Stuttgart: Frommann 1893 [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, pp. 229–85]; Eine Nottaufe. Kirchliche Aktenstücke nebst einem Beibericht, Stuttgart: Frommann 1894 [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, pp. 319–83]. 7 Christoph Schrempf, “Was mir das Leben zu verarbeiten gab” (1918), in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 7, pp. 287–308, here p. 288 [also in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 16, pp. 1–28, here p. 4]. Important remarks of a personal nature are also found in “Eine Berichtigung,” in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 7, pp. 309–13; “Einleitung,” in Zur Theorie des Geisteskampfes, ed. by Christoph Schrempf, Stuttgart: Frommann 1922 (Frommanns philosophische Taschenbücher, vol. 4), pp. 5–26 [“Ein Nekrolog,” in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 7, pp. 314–30]; “Durch Christentum hindurch zu Gott” (1937), in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 13, pp. 241–73; “Das Vermächtnis von 1939,” in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 16, pp. 275–81; “Das Vermächtnis von 1940,” in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 16, pp. 283–304; as well as Schrempf’s introductions in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, pp. vii–lxxi; vol. 2, pp. vii–lvi; vol. 3, pp. vii–xxxi, and vol. 5, pp. vii–xxxvi. 8 Schrempf, “Einleitung,” in Zur Theorie des Geisteskampfes, p. 6 [“Ein Nekrolog,” in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 7, p. 315]. 9 Schrempf, “Was mir das Leben zu verarbeiten gab,” p. 289 [also in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 16, p. 6]. 10 See, for example, Schrempf, Akten zu meiner Entlassung aus dem Württembergischen Kirchendienst, p. [iii] [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, p. 101], in which Schrempf characterizes himself, in retrospect, as a “zealous Biblicist and Pietist.” 11 Schrempf, “Einleitung,” in Zur Theorie des Geisteskampfes, p. 11 [“Ein Nekrolog,” in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 7, p. 318]; cf. also the introductions in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, pp. xli–xlii, and vol. 2, pp. xvii–xviii.

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crisis of faith notwithstanding, Schrempf passed his first theological examination with honors in July 1883. A short time previous, Schrempf had read the 1881 German translation of For Self-Examination12 by Christian Hansen (dates unknown), a candidate in theology from the region of Schleswig on the Prussian–Danish border, and had thus discovered Kierkegaard.13 After passing his first theological examination, Schrempf began a period of intensive Kierkegaard study. Here he drew both on existing German translations of Kierkegaard’s writings14 and on the original Danish edition of Kierkegaard’s Posthumous Papers (1869–81).15 Not surprisingly, Schrempf’s first publication, Sören Kierkegaard und sein neuester Beurteiler (Søren Kierkegaard and His Most Recent Judge) (1887),16 grew out of this ongoing engagement with Kierkegaard. In these early years, Schrempf’s interest in Kierkegaard centered on his “individualist ethic”17 and his stance on the Bible and the church’s profession of faith. In 1890 Schrempf published a translation of two works by Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety and Philosophical Fragments, under the title Zur Psychologie der Sünde, der Bekehrung und des Glaubens (On the Psychology of Sin, Conversion, and Faith).18 For many years, this volume would remain the sole German translation of these two works (see Section II). In the meantime, and despite his initial misgivings, Schrempf had begun a career in the pastorate.19 After short tenures as vicar in Michelbach an der Bilz and parochial Søren Kierkegaard, Zur Selbstprüfung der Gegenwart empfohlen, trans. and ed. by Christian Hansen, 3rd ed., Erlangen: Deichert 1881 [1862]. For evidence that this was the edition that Schrempf read, see, for example, “Sören Kierkegaards Stellung zu Bibel und Dogma,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, vol. 1, 1891, no. 3, pp. 179–229, here p. 179 (note) [this footnote is omitted in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, p. 72]. 13 Christoph Schrempf, Sören Kierkegaard. Eine Biographie, vols. 1–2, Jena: Diederichs 1927–28, vol. 1, 1927, p. i [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, p. 436]. 14 For details on which texts Schrempf read during this period (approximately up to 1890), see Schrempf, “Literatur,” in Die Grundlage der Ethik (1884), Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 14, p. xv; Sören Kierkegaard und sein neuester Beurteiler in der Theologischen Literaturzeitung (Herr Wetzel in Dornreichenbach). Ein Pamphlet, Leipzig: Richter 1887, p. [3] [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, p. 3]; “Sören Kierkegaards Stellung zu Bibel und Dogma,” p. 179 (note) [this footnote is omitted in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, p. 72]. 15 Søren Kierkegaard, Af Søren Kierkegaards Efterladte Papirer, vols. 1–8, ed. by Hans Peter Barfod and Hermann Gottsched, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 1869–81. 16 Christoph Schrempf, Sören Kierkegaard und sein neuester Beurteiler in der Theologischen Literaturzeitung (Herr Wetzel in Dornreichenbach). Ein Pamphlet, Leipzig: Richter 1887 [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, pp. 3–26]. 17 Christoph Schrempf, “Mein erstes Bekenntnis zu Kierkegaard—und zu mir” (1935), in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, pp. 1–2, here p. 1 (in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, “1884” is incorrectly listed as the date of origin). 18 Christoph Schrempf, Zur Psychologie der Sünde, der Bekehrung und des Glaubens. Zwei Schriften Sören Kierkegaards, Leipzig: Richter 1890. 19 See Schrempf, Akten zu meiner Entlassung, p. [iii] [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, p. 101]. 12

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administrator in Untergröningen, both small communities in northeast Württemberg, Schrempf worked as lecturer at the Blaubeuren seminary and at the Tübinger Stift in 1885 and 1886. In the spring of 1886, Schrempf passed his second theological examination, again with honors. That fall he became pastor in Leuzendorf, a small village on the Württembergian–Bavarian border that belonged to the deaconate of Blaufelden. It was here, in 1891, that a consequential rift developed between Schrempf and his congregation, and which came to be known as “the Schrempf Affair” (see Section I.B). This controversy, which led to Schrempf’s summary dismissal from the pastorate in June 1892, plunged him and his family into deep financial straits, even though “all his life [he found] generous benefactors who protected him from outright poverty.”20 Schrempf’s public suffering was compounded by difficulties of a more private kind. Schrempf did not relate easily to women, as he acknowledged openly: “In every woman I spied the shrew, however subtly—and, indeed, with ‘antipathetic sympathy and sympathetic antipathy.’ In that wobbling, wavering mood, antipathy readily won out.”21 Schrempf’s unhappy first marriage to Elisabeth Grunsky (1864– 1907) yielded five children. In 1908, a year after Elisabeth’s death, Schrempf married Elise Staub (1860–1935); starting in 1910, however, she was forced to come to terms with a passionate and long-lasting affair by Schrempf with a woman thirty years younger. The woman in question, Elisabet Werner (1890–1948), became Schrempf’s third wife in 1936, shortly after Elise’s death. Twelve years later Elisabet committed suicide. Beyond his “clearly rather tense”22 relation to the women in his life, Schrempf suffered the early losses of his two youngest children, Edith und Gerhard, to suicide and war (World War I) respectively. Hilde, his eldest daughter, died young as well; and Erich, his eldest son, was killed in World War II in 1940. By this point Schrempf had outlived four of his five children as well as his first two wives. This tied him all the more closely to his sole surviving child, his daughter Gertrud, who was able to live nearby in his final years. After his dismissal from the pastorate in 1892, Schrempf worked as an instructor in mathematics, literature, and German language at Stuttgart’s Höhere Handelsschule, a private commercial college, from 1895 until 1906. In 1900, Schrempf also became an official court interpreter of Danish. At the same time, Schrempf was remarkably active as a public lecturer. From 1892 until mid-1914, for example, he gave a lecture or speech in Stuttgart every Sunday, in the late morning following church services.

Theodor Reber, Christoph Schrempf. Sein Kampf, sein Werk, seine Persönlichkeit. 1860–1944, Zurich 1968 (typescript), p. 20 (cited from Rössler, Christoph Schrempf (1860– 1944), p. 32). See also Schrempf, “Was mir das Leben zu verarbeiten gab,” p. 291 [also in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 16, p. 9]; “Eine Berichtigung,” in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 7, pp. 309–10; “Einleitung,” in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 2, p. xliii. 21 Schrempf, “Was mir das Leben zu verarbeiten gab,” p. 301 [also in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 16, p. 20]. 22 Rössler, Christoph Schrempf (1860–1944), p. 38. 20

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These talks served as the basis for numerous published volumes of his Religiöse Reden (Religious Discourses).23 Schrempf gave frequent public lectures in numerous contexts throughout the period from 1892 until 1939. These served both as important sources of income and as continual spurs to his intellectual productivity, which included the two major books Menschenloos (The Fate of Men) (1900) 24 and Martin Luther (1901).25 In February and March 1906, Schrempf received a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Tübingen.26 Only a few months later, he completed his habilitation in philosophy at Stuttgart’s Technische Hochschule (technical college),27 where he worked from 1906 to 1921 as an unsalaried lecturer (Privatdozent) in philosophy (and, from 1919 on, as a titular professor (Titularprofessor), albeit still unsalaried). It was only in 1909, almost 17 years after his dismissal from the pastorate, that Schrempf formally resigned his membership in the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Württemberg.28 The following year, Schrempf gave a well-received speech titled “Was unsereiner will, ein Bekenntnis, kein Programm” (“What We Want, a Confession, No Program”)29 at the fifth World Congress for Free Christianity and As, for example, Drei religiöse Reden, Stuttgart: Frommann 1893 (2nd and 3rd ed. 1893) [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 2, pp. 1–84]; Natürliches Christentum. Vier neue religiöse Reden, Stuttgart: Frommann 1893 [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 2, pp. 85– 202]; Neue religiöse Reden, vols. 1–3, Stuttgart: Frommann 1900–01 [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 15, pp. 253–351]. 24 Christoph Schrempf, Menschenloos. Hiob, Ödipus, Jesus, Homo sum, Stuttgart: Frommann 1900 (2nd ed. 1905; 3rd ed. 1921) [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 4, pp. 1–128]. 25 Christoph Schrempf, Martin Luther. Aus dem Christlichen ins Menschliche übersetzt. Ein Versuch, Stuttgart: Frommann 1901 (2nd ed. 1917) [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 4, pp. 129–299]. 26 For the doctorate, Schrempf’s previously published Goethes Lebensanschauung in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung, vol. 1, Der junge Goethe, Stuttgart: Frommann 1905 [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 6, pp. 7–161] functioned as his dissertation. Volume 2 of the two-volume work, Lehrjahre in Weimar (1775–86), was published in 1907 [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 6, pp. 163–416]. 27 The habilitation was granted for Schrempf’s previously published book Lessing als Philosoph, Stuttgart: Frommann 1906 (Frommanns Klassiker der Philosophie, vol. 19) (2nd ed. 1921) [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 5, pp. 117–296]. 28 See Schrempf, “Einleitung” (1931), in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 4, p. xxxii; “Der Ertrag meines Lebens—ein Vermächtnis” (1918), in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 16, p. 29; but compare “Ueber die Frage des Austritts aus der Kirche. (Nach einer Rede),” Die Christliche Welt, vol. 20, 1906 (no. 34, August 23), columns 793–802 [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 15, pp. 352–66], where Schrempf states: “Nor will I oblige [the Württemberg Church] by declaring my resignation from it” (columns 801–2 [p. 366]). 29 Christoph Schrempf, “Was unsereiner will, ein Bekenntnis, kein Programm,” in Fünfter Weltkongress für freies Christentum und religiösen Fortschritt, Berlin 5. bis 10. August 1910. Protokoll der Verhandlungen, vols. 1–2, ed. by Max Fischer and Friedrich Michael Schiele, Berlin-Schöneberg: Protestantischer Schriftenvertrieb 1910–11, vol. 2, pp. 615–26 [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 4, pp. 332–46]. See the English translation— the only translation of a work by Schrempf ever made in his lifetime: What We Want, a Confession, No Programme. An Address Delivered by Prof. Christof Schrempf, London: 23

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Religious Progress. This convention, held August 5–10, 1910 in Berlin, brought together freethinking theologians, philosophers, and others from across Germany and throughout the world. In 1920, Schrempf published Vom öffentlichen Geheimnis des Lebens (On Life’s Open Secret).30 This major work, which grew out of nine speeches that Schrempf delivered in 1919 and 1920, is his most comprehensive presentation of his fundamental views and methods in the philosophy of religion. Next, in 1922, Schrempf published a commissioned monograph on Nietzsche that had been 10 years in the making.31 During these years of academic employment, Schrempf also began work on his monumental Kierkegaard translation. The first edition of Kierkegaard’s Gesammelte Werke in German appeared between 1909 and 1922, with Schrempf and Hermann Gottsched (1848–1916)32 as co-editors. In the second edition, which was published between 1922 and 1925, Schrempf was sole editor (see Section II). For Schrempf, translating Kierkegaard’s writings was “an important side-pursuit until 1929…as it gave me occasion to wrestle with Kierkegaard’s thought. For I did not want to reduce myself to a mere translator.”33 If the first literary products of this wrestling were the thoroughly critical afterwords that Schrempf appended to each translated text, the final and undoubtedly most important such literary product was his much discussed two-volume Kierkegaard biography (1927–28).34 After 1929, Schrempf produced only one brief piece on Kierkegaard, titled “Der Fall Kierkegaard” (“The Kierkegaard Affair”] (1935).35 In January 1935, Schrempf declared his intention to produce a final, conclusive Kierkegaard monograph—a “theological interpretation

Williams & Norgate 1911 (reprinted from Fifth International Congress of Free Christianity and Religious Progress. Berlin, August 5–10, 1910. Proceedings and Papers, ed. by Charles W. Wendte, Berlin-Schöneberg: Protestantischer Schriftenvertrieb 1911, and London: Williams & Norgate 1911, pp. 437–47). 30 Christoph Schrempf, Vom öffentlichen Geheimnis des Lebens, Stuttgart: Frommann 1920 (2nd ed. 1925; 3rd ed. 1948). 31 Christoph Schrempf, Friedrich Nietzsche, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1922 (Die Religion der Klassiker, vol. 9) [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 9, 185–311]. 32 For more on Gottsched, see Section II.A. 33 Schrempf, “Einleitung” (1931), in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 4, p. xxxviii. 34 Christoph Schrempf, Sören Kierkegaard. Eine Biographie, vols. 1–2, Jena: Diederichs 1927–28 [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vols. 10–11]. For negative assessments of this biography, see, for example, Emanuel Hirsch, “Schrempf, Christoph: Sören Kierkegaard. Eine Biographie. Bd. I. 1. u. 2. Tsd. Jena: E. Diederichs 1927,” Theologische Literaturzeitung, vol. 52, 1927, columns 548–9; Franz Josef Brecht, “Die Kierkegaardforschung im letzten Jahrfünft,” Literarische Berichte aus dem Gebiete der Philosophie, no. 25, 1931, pp. 5–35, here pp. 18–20; Erich Przywara, Humanitas. Der Mensch gestern und morgen, Nürnberg: Glock und Lutz 1952, p. 428. For a largely positive assessment, see Hermann Diem, “Zur Psychologie der Kierkegaard-Renaissance,” Zwischen den Zeiten, vol. 10, 1932, pp. 216–48, here pp. 245–7. 35 Christoph Schrempf, “Der Fall Kierkegaard” (1935), in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, pp. 453–63.

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of the Kierkegaard story”—in relation to which everything that he had written so far would be “mere preparatory work.”36 This plan, however, went unrealized. Fourteen years earlier, in July 1921, Schrempf had resigned from his teaching position at the Technical College of Stuttgart, partly out of disappointment that he still remained an unsalaried lecturer.37 Schrempf did, however, continue his work as lecturer elsewhere, namely, at the adult education centers (Volkshochschulen) of Esslingen and Stuttgart. These lectures led to monographs on Paul (1926–27), Socrates (1927), Jesus (1929), and John (1933–34).38 Schrempf’s monographs on Paul and Jesus were not published in book form, but as printed manuscripts serialized as Mitteilungen für meine Freunde (Dispatches to My Friends),39 and available in bookstores as well. Next came, from April 1930 to the autumn of 1937, Schrempf’s 13-volume Gesammelte Werke. These were supplemented in 1936–40 with three additional volumes edited by Otto Engel (1888–1967), a longtime friend and colleague who proved indispensable for the distribution of Schrempf’s work.40 Here it is worth noting that Schrempf dedicated volumes 10, 11, and 12 of his Collected Works to Kierkegaard—a testament to his continuous engagement with Kierkegaard throughout his writings from 1884 to 1935.41 The ensuing years were quiet for Schrempf. Shortly before Christmas 1943, he suffered a sudden fainting spell. He died on February 13, 1944 in StuttgartDegerloch.

Schrempf, “Vorwort,” in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 10, p. viii. See Schrempf, “Eine Berichtigung,” in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 7, p. 309 and pp. 312–13. 38 Christoph Schrempf, Paulus, der Apostel Jesu Christi (1926/27) [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 9, pp. 313–449]; Sokrates. Seine Persönlichkeit und sein Glaube, Stuttgart: Frommann 1927 (2nd ed. 1934, 3rd ed. 1955) [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 9, pp. 5–184]; Jesus (1929) [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 13, pp. 1–118]; Johannes, in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 16, pp. 197–274 (as for why Schrempf decided not to publish this work, see his “Vorwort” (1934), in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 9, pp. 3–4, as well as Otto Engel, “Nachwort des Herausgebers,” in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 16, pp. 329–39, here pp. 330–2). 39 Christoph Schrempf, Mitteilungen für meine Freunde als Manuskript gedruckt, Series 1, nos. 1–7, Stuttgart: Frommann 1926–8; Series 2, nos. 1–5, Stuttgart: Frommann 1929– 30; on this form of publication see Schrempf’s remarks in Mitteilungen für meine Freunde als Manuskript gedruckt, Series 1, nos. 1–6 (in 1 vol.), Stuttgart: Frommann 1926, p. [ii] [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 8, p. 318]. 40 Christoph Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–16 [vols. 14–16 ed. by Otto Engel], Stuttgart: Frommann 1930–40. 41 Volume 12 of Schrempf’s Gesammelte Werke, which was published in 1935 (“Auseinandersetzung IV. Sören Kierkegaard. Dritter Teil”) contains a complete collection of Schrempf’s forewords and afterwords to each individual translation. 36 37

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B. Kierkegaard’s Importance for “the Schrempf Affair” At its root, “the Schrempf Affair”42 was a conflict between professional duty and the call of conscience.43 It began with a church service at Leuzendorf on July 5, 1891, during which Schrempf was supposed to deliver a sermon on Matthew 6:19–34 and was then supposed to preside over a baptism.44 Shortly before delivering the sermon, however, Schrempf began to doubt whether he could honestly profess the Apostles’ Creed in its traditional form. Appealing to Matthew 6:33 (“But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well”), Schrempf resolved to omit the Apostles’ Creed from the baptismal rite, even though it was included in the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Württemberg’s Baptismal Agenda (Taufagende). Schrempf then did as he had resolved—and was astonished to discover that none of the congregants had noticed his omission.45 That same day, Schrempf reported what he had done in a letter to the deaconate of Blaufelden and declared that he would repeat the omission in every future

On “the Schrempf Affair” and the Apostolikumstreit, see Heinrich Hermelink, Geschichte der evangelischen Kirche in Württemberg von der Reformation bis zur Gegenwart, Stuttgart and Tübingen: Wunderlich 1949, pp. 433–42; Agnes von Zahn-Harnack, Der Apostolikumstreit des Jahres 1892 und seine Bedeutung für die Gegenwart, Marburg: Elwert 1950; Heinrich Hermelink, Das Christentum in der Menschheitsgeschichte, vol. 3, Nationalismus und Sozialismus: 1870–1914, Stuttgart and Tübingen: Metzler & Wunderlich 1955, pp. 551–78; Hans-Martin Barth, “Apostolisches Glaubensbekenntnis II. Reformationsund Neuzeit,” in Theologische Realenzyklopädie, vols. 1–36, ed. by Gerhard Krause et al., Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter 1977–2004, vol. 3, 1978, pp. 554–66, especially pp. 560–2; Eginhard P. Meijering, “Apostolikumstreit,” in Evangelisches Kirchenlexikon, vols. 1–5, ed. by Erwin Fahlbusch et al., 3rd ed., Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1986–97, vol. 1, 1986, columns 230–1; Sun-Ryol Kim, Die Vorgeschichte der Trennung von Staat und Kirche in der Weimarer Verfassung von 1919, Hamburg: Lit 1996 (Hamburger Theologische Studien, vol. 13), pp. 98–104; Hans Martin Müller, “Persönliches Glaubenszeugnis und das Bekenntnis der Kirche. ‘Der Fall Schrempf,’ ” in Der deutsche Protestantismus um 1900, ed. by Friedrich Wilhelm Graf and Hans Martin Müller, Gütersloh: Kaiser 1996 (Veröffentlichungen der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft für Theologie, vol. 9), pp. 223–37; Rössler, Christoph Schrempf (1860–1944), pp. 14–31. See also the documents reprinted in Ernst Rudolf Huber and Wolfgang Huber, Staat und Kirche im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Dokumente zur Geschichte des deutschen Staatskirchenrechts, vol. 3, Staat und Kirche von der Beilegung des Kulturkampfes bis zum Ende des Ersten Weltkriegs, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot 1983, pp. 658–76 (nos. 282–96), as well as in Lehrfreiheit und Lehrbeanstandung, vol. 1, Theologische Texte, ed. by Wilfried Härle and Heinrich Leipold, Gütersloh: Mohn 1985, pp. 93–106 (nos. E12–15). Concerning the role of Adolf von Harnack in particular, see notes 55 and 56 below. 43 See, for example, Schrempf, Akten zu meiner Entlassung, pp. 40–1 (no. 16) [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, pp. 151–2], pp. 47–8, p. 51 and pp. 54–5 (no. 19) [p. 160, p. 163 and pp. 167–8], as well as “Einleitung,” in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, p. lxx. 44 See Schrempf, Akten zu meiner Entlassung, p. viii [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, p. 107]. 45 See Schrempf, “Einleitung,” in Zur Theorie des Geisteskampfes, p. 14 [“Ein Nekrolog,” in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 7, p. 321]. 42

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baptism.46 On August 6, 1891, Schrempf followed up with a letter to the Evangelical Consistory,47 setting forth his position in detail.48 Schrempf did not, however, wait for the Consistory’s response. During church services on August 9, Schrempf simply announced to his congregation that he would omit the Apostles’ Creed in all future baptisms as well. He could no longer believe, he told them, in the virgin birth, in Christ’s corporeal ascension, or in the bodily resurrection of the faithful. He then appealed to the principle that “obedience to Jesus most definitely overrides obedience to Church rules.”49 The next day, the Leuzendorf parish council and town council wrote jointly to the Evangelical Consistory. They requested that Schrempf be dismissed as pastor.50 Ultimately, however, it was Schrempf himself who provoked his dismissal, in a lively exchange of letters with the Consistory.51 On June 3, 1892, the Consistory fired Schrempf “for breach of his official duties.”52 “The Schrempf Affair” brought the Apostles’ Creed Controversy (Apostolikumstreit) of 1892 to its climax. Yet it is important to note that Schrempf was not (as has sometimes been loosely asserted53) the cause of the Controversy. There was no single Apostles’ Creed Controversy but rather numerous disagreements throughout Schrempf, Akten zu meiner Entlassung, p. [1] (no. 1) [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, p. 108]. 47 At the time, the Evangelical Consistory [Konsistorium] was the Supreme Church Authority [Oberkirchenbehörde] in the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Württemberg, which in 1924 merged with the Synod into the Supreme Church Council [Oberkirchenrat]. 48 See Schrempf, Akten zu meiner Entlassung, pp. 2–22 (no. 5) [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, pp. 109–32], here especially the summary on p. 4 [pp. 111–12], together with Rössler, Christoph Schrempf (1860–1944), pp. 16–18. 49 Schrempf, Akten zu meiner Entlassung, p. 23 (no. 6) [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, p. 133]; see ibid. pp. 22–3 (no. 6) and p. 25 (no. 10) [pp. 132–3 and pp. 134–5]. 50 Ibid., p. 25 (no. 10) [pp. 134–5]; see also ibid., p. 24 (no. 7) [p. 133]. 51 See ibid., pp. 27–30 (no. 13), p. 33 (no. 15), pp. 34–43 (no. 16), pp. 45–55 (no. 19) [pp. 136–40, pp. 143–4, pp. 144–54, pp. 156–68]. That Schrempf brought the matter to a head intentionally—and, indeed, regarded himself as the conflict’s initiator—is evident from, for example, his “Einleitung” to Zur Theorie des Geisteskampfes, p. 14 [“Ein Nekrolog,” in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 7, p. 321]; “Nachwort,” in Søren Kierkegaard, Der Augenblick, trans. by Christoph Schrempf, 2nd ed., Jena: Diederichs 1909 (Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12), pp. 155–71, here p. 170 [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, pp. 164–80, here p. 179]; “Der Ertrag meines Lebens—ein Vermächtnis” (1918), in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 16, p. 29. 52 Schrempf, Akten zu meiner Entlassung, p. 56 (no. 21) [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, p. 169]. See also Schrempf, “Einleitung,” in Zur Theorie des Geisteskampfes, p. 17 [“Ein Nekrolog,” in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 7, p. 323]. 53 See, for example, Heinrich M. Köster, “Die Jungfrauengeburt als theologisches Problem seit David Friedrich Strauss,” in Jungfrauengeburt gestern und heute, ed. by Hermann Joseph Brosch et al., Essen: Driewer 1969 (Mariologische Studien, vol. 4), pp. 35–87, here p. 44; Thomas Nipperdey, Deutsche Geschichte 1866–1918, vol. 1, Arbeitswelt und Bürgergeist, Munich: C.H. Beck 1992, p. 485; Cora Bartels, Kierkegaard receptus I. Die theologiegeschichtliche Bedeutung der Kierkegaard-Rezeption Rudolf Bultmanns, Göttingen: V&R Unipress 2008, p. 59. 46

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the history of the church regarding the validity and binding character of the Creed. While the particular controversy that involved Schrempf was especially grave and consequential, Schrempf cannot even be said to have been its sole instigator. Since the 1817 union of Lutheran and Reformed Churches in Prussia, there had been numerous cases of conflict surrounding pastors who refused to use the Creed in their church services.54 To be sure, “the Schrempf Affair” was the best-known conflict of this kind. It was discussed throughout Germany, and can be said to have led to a new phase in the Apostles’ Creed Controversy, namely, when Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930), church historian at the University of Berlin, was asked by his students whether “the Schrempf Affair” had not shown that the traditional Apostles’ Creed was outmoded and needed to be replaced. The answer that Harnack gave his students was published on August 18, 1892 under the title “On the Matter of the Apostles’ Creed.”55 It is a measured response. Harnack opposed complete abolition of the Apostles’ Creed, but called for it to be replaced with or complemented by a new, brief profession of faith. In the meantime, he recommended that the liturgical use of the existing Creed be made optional. Harnack’s position unleashed a storm of protest56 in whose wake “the Schrempf Affair” was quickly forgotten. Meantime, Schrempf’s battle of words had no measurable effect on the Württemberg church or its clergy. It was only after 20 years of discussions and controversy that the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Württemberg began loosening its liturgical requirements little by little.57 In the early 1870s the Berlin pastors Emil Gustav Lisco (1819–87) und Karl Leopold Adolf Sydow (1800–82) sparked a similar controversy when, in lectures delivered to the Berlin Unionsverein (1871 and 1872), they criticized certain formulations in the Apostles’ Creed. 55 Adolf von Harnack, “In Sachen des Apostolikums,” Die Christliche Welt, vol. 6, 1892, columns 768–70. Harnack then published an expanded, more thoroughly argued version in Harnack, Das apostolische Glaubensbekenntnis. Ein geschichtlicher Bericht nebst einem Nachwort, Berlin: Haack 1892 (26 [!] editions in 1892, 27th revised ed., 1896). 56 See Hermann Cremer, Zum Kampf um das Apostolikum. Eine Streitschrift wider D. Harnack, Berlin: Wiegandt & Grieben 1892 (7th ed. 1893) together with Harnack’s response, entitled Antwort auf die Streitschrift D. Cremers: “Zum Kampf um das Apostolikum,” Leipzig: Grunow 1892 (Hefte zur Christlichen Welt, vol. 3), and Cremer’s reply Warum können wir das apostolische Glaubensbekenntnis nicht aufgeben? Zweite Streitschrift zum Kampf um das Apostolikum, Berlin: Wiegandt & Grieben 1893 (2nd ed. 1893). On the dispute between Harnack and Cremer, see Friedrich Wilhelm Kantzenbach, “Der erste Apostolikumstreit,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, vol. 86, 1975, pp. 86–9; Gottfried Hornig, “A. Harnacks Dogmenkritik, der Apostolikumstreit und das Wesen des undogmatischen Christentums,” in Handbuch der Dogmen- und Theologiegeschichte, vol. 3, Die Lehrentwicklung im Rahmen der Ökumenizität, ed. by Gustav Adolf Benrath et al., 2nd ed., Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1998 (UTB für Wissenschaft, vol. 8160), pp. 210–4. 57 Compare Schrempf, “Noch ein Bekenntnisstreit” (1894), in Die Wahrheit, vol. 3, 1895, pp. 179–91 [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 2, 275–90]; Zur Reform des evangelischen Pfarramts. Aufsätze und Reden, Stuttgart: Frommann 1911 [not in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke], together with Hermelink, Geschichte der evangelischen Kirche, pp. 435–8, and his Nationalismus und Sozialismus: 1870–1914, p. 560; Rössler, Christoph Schrempf (1860– 1944), pp. 27–31. 54

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It should also be borne in mind that the key event in “the Schrempf Affair”— Schrempf’s decision to omit the Creed on July 5, 1891—was no isolated bolt from the blue. It emerged naturally from the slow evolution in Schrempf’s thinking that had begun as early as 1884, when he had first entered the pastorate. This evolution is best described as a process in which Schrempf’s reservations regarding his church duties, and his difficulties with the church Creed, gradually got the upper hand.58 The process was driven by Schrempf’s assumption that he faced an exclusive choice between two alternatives: to believe in the literal truth of certain claims in the Bible and the Creed, or to disbelieve them. That a third alternative might be possible for him—in which the religious images and utterances in question could be regarded as fundamentally symbolic, or representational, in character—appears not to have been a possibility that Schrempf took seriously, even though the liberal theologians of his day were busily defending it.59 There is no mention of Kierkegaard in the various position papers that Schrempf addressed to the deaconate of Blaufelden and to the Evangelical Consistory.60 Later in his life, however, Schrempf would insist repeatedly that his early immersion in Kierkegaard had played a crucial role in his decision to provoke the Church to dismiss him from his post.61 In the preface to his 1927–28 biography of Kierkegaard, Schrempf explained that Kierkegaard was the first to prick his conscience for living “in an unclear and untrue relationship”62 to the Church of which he was a member and servant. Kierkegaard, Schrempf wrote, demanded “that I purify my own relation to the Church for my own sake, as the only one, without regard for any other human beings.”63 What is more, Kierkegaard taught Schrempf that he could accomplish that purification only by means of a deed, namely, “that I break and resign my official bonds of duty. So I did—and the result was that I was relieved of my pastorate.”64 See Schrempf, Akten zu meiner Entlassung, pp. iii–viii [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, pp. 101–7]. As early as the summer of 1889, Schrempf had unsuccessfully sought a position as teacher of religion. See also ibid. p. 4 and pp. 17–22 (no. 5) [p. 112 and pp. 126–31], together with p. 30 (no. 14) [p. 140]. 59 See Schrempf, Akten zu meiner Entlassung, p. 27 and p. 29 (no. 13) [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, p. 137 and p. 139]. See also Rössler, Christoph Schrempf (1860– 1944), p. 19, p. 36 and p. 49. 60 See Schrempf, Akten zu meiner Entlassung. 61 See, for example, Schrempf, “Einleitung,” in Sören Kierkegaards agitatorische Schriften und Aufsätze. 1851–1855, trans. by Albert Dorner and Christoph Schrempf, Stuttgart: Frommann 1896 (Sören Kierkegaards Angriff auf die Christenheit, ed. by Albert Dorner and Christoph Schrempf, vol. 1, Die Akten), pp. xiii–xxiv, here p. xvi [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, pp. 139–44, here p. 142]; “Nachwort,” in Kierkegaard, Der Augenblick (2nd ed. 1909), pp. 170–1. [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, pp. 179–80]; “Einleitung,” in Schrempf, Zur Theorie des Geisteskampfes, p. 15 [“Ein Nekrolog,” in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 7, pp. 321–2]; Sören Kierkegaard. Eine Biographie, vol. 1, pp. ii–iii [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, pp. 437–8]. 62 Schrempf, Sören Kierkegaard. Eine Biographie, vol. 1, p. ii [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, p. 437]. 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid., p. ii [pp. 437–8]. 58

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Schrempf could not say, of course, whether he would have arrived at the same resolution without Kierkegaard’s help, or whether Kierkegaard had merely accelerated this development. Nevertheless, he stated, “I am and remain grateful to him for his contribution to my decision.”65 In the May 1909 afterword to his translation of The Moment, Schrempf went on to credit Kierkegaard with playing an important role in his decision, earlier that year, to resign his membership in the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Württemberg. That formal procedure, Schrempf wrote, brought to fruition his effort to loosen his every tie to official Christianity, a process that in all cost me over twenty years of deliberation. Now that I have finally finished disentangling myself from official Christianity both outwardly and inwardly, I am glad of it—and I thank Kierkegaard for having pressed me ever further in that direction. For I do not know whether I would have pursued my dispute with official Christianity all the way to the end without him.66

It should be noted, however, that long before Schrempf wrote these lines, he had distanced himself from Kierkegaard considerably. In the preface to his biography of Kierkegaard, Schrempf remarked that precisely because he took Kierkegaard and his critique of official Christianity seriously, he was inexorably led to alter his relationship to Kierkegaard as well: “I changed as a result [of this process], and so did my position in relation to him.”67 Schrempf here refers to his tendency to criticize Kierkegaard. This tendency strengthened all the more once Schrempf was forced to “think [Kierkegaard’s works] through sentence for sentence and word for word”68 as he prepared them for translation. In so doing, Schrempf found that his admiration for Kierkegaard as both literary artist and dialectician “had cooled off sharply.” He now could not restrain himself from accompanying his “translations of Kierkegaard’s works (in which I sought only to let him speak) with afterwords in which I took a position of my own in relation to his thoughts.”69 Nevertheless, despite Schrempf’s ever-growing reservations toward Kierkegaard, and despite his Ibid., p. iii [p. 438]. That Schrempf’s intensive engagement with Kierkegaard truly did play a role in this decision (and is not merely Schrempf’s retrospective view of the matter) is clear from his 1891 article “Sören Kierkegaards Stellung zu Bibel und Dogma,” which he had composed shortly before the pivotal Sunday morning on July 5, 1891. This article is found in Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, vol. 1, no. 3; that issue can have appeared no later than June 1891, as is evident from the advertisements and announcements on pp. 273–4. On this 1891 article, see Walter Ruttenbeck, Sören Kierkegaard. Der christliche Denker und sein Werk, Berlin: Trowitzsch & Sohn 1929 (Neue Studien zur Geschichte der Theologie und der Kirche, vol. 25), pp. 290–2; Bartels, Kierkegaard receptus I, pp. 30–2 and pp. 39–46. 66 Schrempf, “Nachwort,” in Kierkegaard, Der Augenblick (2nd ed. 1909), p. 170 [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, p. 179]. 67 Schrempf, Sören Kierkegaard. Eine Biographie, vol. 1, p. iii [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, p. 438]; compare p. v [p. 440], as well as “Vorwort,” in Kierkegaard, Der Augenblick (2nd ed. 1909), pp. [I]–[II] [not in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke], here p. [I] (note). 68 Schrempf, Sören Kierkegaard. Eine Biographie, vol. 1, p. vi [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, p. 441]. 69 Ibid. 65

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ongoing critique of Kierkegaard in the afterwords to his translations, Schrempf’s translations and editions of Kierkegaard’s work came to have decisive importance for the reception of Kierkegaard in and beyond the German-speaking world in the first half of the twentieth century. We will now consider this development in some detail. II. Schrempf’s Importance for the (German) Reception of Kierkegaard A. Schrempf’s Editions and Translations of Kierkegaard It is indisputable that, as Heiko Schulz has written, “Schrempf promoted German Kierkegaard scholarship tremendously through his translations and, though to a lesser degree, his secondary writings.”70 The truth of Schulz’s claim is already evident in the fact that, for over half a century, Schrempf’s translation of The Concept of Anxiety and Philosophical Fragments (which he had first published in 1890, and then revised for reissue in his edition of Kierkegaard’s Collected Works)71 remained the sole German edition of either work.72 In 1896, Schrempf and Albert Dorner (dates unknown) published a translated collection of nearly all of Kierkegaard’s late writings and newspaper articles, together with the posthumously published The Point of View for My Work as an Author (1859), all under the title Sören Kierkegaards agitatorische Schriften und Aufsätze (Søren Kierkegaard’s Polemical Writings and Essays).73 Still more consequential for Kierkegaard research was the first edition of Kierkegaard’s Collected Works in German (1909–22), which Schrempf inaugurated with Hermann Gottsched74 as co-editor and Eugen Diederichs (1867–1930)75 as publisher. In the preface to their joint “Structural Plan for an Schulz, “Germany and Austria,” pp. 316–17. See note 18 above. Schrempf undertook his 1890 translation of Philosophical Fragments with the help of Reinhold Böltzig (dates unknown). No reference to this fact is made in the original 1890 edition, nor in Schrempf’s Gesammelte Werke; it appears first in his 1935 “Erstes Nachwort zu ‘Philosophische Brocken’ nebst ‘Nachschrift,’ ” in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, pp. 181–218, here p. 181. 72 It was not until 1952 that new translations of these works appeared, both by Emanuel Hirsch. See Søren Kierkegaard, Philosophische Brocken. De omnibus dubitandum est, trans. by Emanuel Hirsch, Düsseldorf and Cologne: Diederichs 1952 (Gesammelte Werke, vol. 6), and Der Begriff Angst. Vorworte, trans. by Emanuel Hirsch, Düsseldorf and Cologne: Diederichs 1952 (Gesammelte Werke, vol. 7). 73 Sören Kierkegaards agitatorische Schriften und Aufsätze. 1851–1855, trans. by Albert Dorner and Christoph Schrempf, Stuttgart: Frommann 1896 (Sören Kierkegaards Angriff auf die Christenheit, ed. by Albert Dorner and Christoph Schrempf, vol. 1, Die Akten). This collection includes translations of all of Kierkegaard’s published writings from the period 1851–55 except for Two Discourses at the Communion on Fridays (1851). 74 On Gottsched as an editor and publisher of Kierkegaard’s works, see Malik, Receiving Søren Kierkegaard, pp. 271–2; p. 277; p. 297; p. 313; p. 342; and p. 365. 75 See Irmgard Heidler, Der Verleger Eugen Diederichs und seine Welt (1896–1930), Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 1998 (Mainzer Studien zur Buchwissenschaft, vol. 8), especially pp. 279–82. With regard to Schrempf’s relation to Diederichs, with whom he frequently 70 71

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Edition of Søren Kierkegaard’s Collected Works” (1909),76 Diederichs, Gottsched, and Schrempf described the new edition’s primary goal as follows. “Since 1856,”77 they wrote, the majority of Kierkegaard’s writings had already been translated into German. But those texts were published mainly as isolated pieces, and in such a way that their place and meaning within the totality of [Kierkegaard’s] authorial work never found proper expression. Several [writings] were abbreviated, indeed mangled, to a greater or lesser degree; and no translator or publisher has yet hazarded the attempt at one main work that contains the key to [Kierkegaard’s] thought as a whole (the Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments).78

As a result, the Germanophone reader is likely to “know” Kierkegaard only in terms of one of the numerous divergent sides of his total work—and this despite the fact that Kierkegaard, an “authorial individuality of the rarest opacity,” insists that he “be understood as a totality. Unless one understands Kierkegaard as a unitary whole, one does not know him at all.”79 While the planned 12-volume edition of Kierkegaard’s Collected Works could not presume to provide the reader with just such a completely comprehensive view, it could and did aim, as a “complete edition,” to “set forth all that is required for an understanding of Kierkegaard’s authorial activity.”80 Between 1909 and 1912, two volumes of the Collected Works appeared each year. One volume each appeared in 1913 and 1914. World War I then intervened; but by that point ten of the planned 12 volumes were already in print, and the remaining two volumes followed in 1922. Schrempf’s personal contribution to the edition was enormous. Beyond revising for inclusion his 1890 translations of The Concept of Anxiety and Philosophical Fragments,81 as well as his co-translations with Dorner of The Point of View for My Work as an Author, On My Work as an Author, For Self-Examination, Judge for Yourself!, and The Moment, all originally published in

corresponded, cf. ibid., p. 191 and pp. 280–1, particularly Diederichs’ remark about Schrempf in manuscript LA 196: “He always knew better than God himself, and quarreled too much with him, I thought” (quoted from ibid., p. 280 (note)). Cf. also the letters from Schrempf to Diedrichs reproduced in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 7, pp. viii–xxv; pp. 236–46; and pp. 309–13. 76 “Anlageplan einer Ausgabe von Sören Kierkegaards gesammelten Werken,” in Kierkegaard, Der Augenblick (2nd ed. 1909), pp. [173]–[177] [partially reproduced in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, pp. 161–3, but dated 1908]. 77 See Ryno Quehl, Aus Dänemark. Bornholm und die Bornholmer. Dr. Sören Kierkegaard: Wider die dänische Staatskirche; mit einem Hinblick auf Preussen, Berlin: Decker 1856, pp. 285–97. 78 “Anlageplan einer Ausgabe von Sören Kierkegaards gesammelten Werken,” p. [177]; [p. 162]. 79 Ibid., p. [177]; [p. 163]. 80 Ibid. 81 Søren Kierkegaard, Philosophische Brocken / Abschließende unwissenschaftliche Nachschrift / Erster Teil, trans. by Christoph Schrempf and Hermann Gottsched, Jena: Diederichs 1910 (Gesammelte Werke, vol. 6), pp. 1–100; Der Begriff der Angst, trans. by Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1912 (Gesammelte Werke, vol. 5).

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1896,82 Schrempf also contributed new translations of Two Ethical-Religious Essays and, with Wolfgang Pfleiderer (1877–1971), of Either/Or and Stages on Life’s Way.83 During the same period, Gottsched completed the first German translations of Repetition and the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, as well as new translations of The Sickness unto Death and Practice in Christianity.84 Fear and Trembling, finally, was translated by Hinrich Cornelius Ketels (1855–1940).85 Both Gottsched and Schrempf wrote afterwords to accompany each translation. But whereas Gottsched took a consistently positive stance toward Kierkegaard, Schrempf did the very opposite. Schrempf’s afterwords criticized the works that they were commenting on, and promoted his own approach to the topics dealt with in those works as truer than Kierkegaard’s own.86 This harshly critical approach brought Schrempf into conflict with Gottsched. At Gottsched’s request, for example, Schrempf withdrew a strikingly critical afterword that he had initially penned to cover both Philosophical Fragments, which Schrempf himself had translated, and the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, which Gottsched had translated. Schrempf replaced that essay with a piece that was less polemical, but ultimately just as

Kierkegaard, Der Augenblick (2nd ed. 1909); Søren Kierkegaard, Der Gesichtspunkt für meine Wirksamkeit als Schriftsteller. Zwei kleine ethisch-religiöse Abhandlungen. Über meine Wirksamkeit als Schriftsteller, trans. by Albert Dorner and Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1922 (Gesammelte Werke, vol. 10); Zur Selbstprüfung der Gegenwart anbefohlen, trans. by Albert Dorner and Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1922 (Gesammelte Werke, vol. 11). 83 Søren Kierkegaard, Entweder / Oder, vols. 1–2, trans. by Wolfgang Pfleiderer and Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1911–13 (Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–2); Stadien auf dem Lebensweg, trans. by Christoph Schrempf and Wolfgang Pfleiderer, Jena: Diederichs 1914 (Gesammelte Werke, vol. 4). 84 Søren Kierkegaard, Furcht und Zittern / Wiederholung, trans. by Hinrich Cornelius Ketels and Hermann Gottsched, 2nd revised ed., Jena: Diederichs 1909 (Gesammelte Werke, vol. 3), pp. 117–204; Philosophische Brocken / Abschließende unwissenschaftliche Nachschrift / Erster Teil, trans. by Christoph Schrempf and Hermann Gottsched, Jena: Diederichs 1910 (Gesammelte Werke, vol. 6), pp. 101–370; Abschließende unwissenschaftliche Nachschrift / Zweiter Teil, trans. by Hermann Gottsched, Jena: Diederichs 1910 (Gesammelte Werke, vol. 7); Die Krankheit zum Tode, trans. by Hermann Gottsched, Jena: Diederichs 1911 (Gesammelte Werke, vol. 8); Einübung im Christentum, trans. by Hermann Gottsched, Jena: Diederichs 1912 (Gesammelte Werke, vol. 9). 85 Søren Kierkegaard, Furcht und Zittern / Wiederholung, trans. by Hinrich Cornelius Ketels and Hermann Gottsched, 2nd revised ed., Jena: Diederichs 1909 (Gesammelte Werke, vol. 3), pp. 1–116. This translation of Fear and Trembling was Ketels’ revision of his own Furcht und Zittern. Dialektische Lyrik von Johannes de silentio (Sören Kierkegaard), Erlangen: Deichert 1882 (Sören Kierkegaards Hauptschriften in Verbindung mit Johannes Biernatzki und Hinrich Cornelius Ketels, ed. by Hugo Johannes Bestmann, vol. 1). 86 See, for example, Schrempf, “Nachwort,” in Kierkegaard, Der Begriff der Angst (1912), pp. 164–73, especially pp. 165–6. [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, pp. 228–37, here pp. 229–30]; “Nachwort,” in Kierkegaard, Abschließende unwissenschaftliche Nachschrift / Zweiter Teil (1910), pp. 305–14, especially pp. 313–14 [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, pp. 219–27, here p. 226]. 82

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critical.87 Gottsched soon withdrew from the translation project entirely. After Gottsched’s 1916 death, Schrempf revised his and Ketels’ translations according to his own principles for use in the second edition of the Collected Works, which he edited alone.88 Here Schrempf added new afterwords of his own devising,89 whose critical tone did not spare Gottsched’s achievements as a translator: “To the extent that Gottsched tried, wherever possible, to reproduce every word of the original, what emerged was Danish in German words, which was often quite challenging to read (far more challenging than the original text, which is exhausting enough), and which I could often understand only with the aid of the original text.”90 Alongside the Collected Works, Schrempf also undertook to publish a fourvolume edition of Kierkegaard’s Upbuilding Discourses.91 In this edition, the sequence of volumes was meant to reflect an ascent from ethical-religious writings toward decidedly Christian texts, in keeping with Kierkegaard’s method of leading the reader into Christianity. Thus the first volume was supposed to include “the general (ethical-religious, but not ‘Christian’) upbuilding discourses”92 of 1843– 1845 (Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses), the second volume would include a translation of Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, whose third section, “The Gospel of Sufferings,” Kierkegaard labeled “Christian Discourses.” Nevertheless,

See Schrempf, “Nachwort,” in Kierkegaard, Abschließende unwissenschaftliche Nachschrift / Zweiter Teil (1910); the original “Erstes Nachwort zu ‘Philosophische Brocken’ nebst ‘Nachschrift’” appears in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, pp. 181–218. 88 Søren Kierkegaard, Furcht und Zittern / Die Wiederholung, trans. by Hinrich Cornelius Ketels, Hermann Gottsched, and Christoph Schrempf, 3rd revised ed., Jena: Diederichs 1923 (Gesammelte Werke, 2nd ed., vol. 3); Die Krankheit zum Tode, trans. by Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf, 2nd revised ed., Jena: Diederichs 1924 (Gesammelte Werke, 2nd ed., vol. 8); Einübung im Christentum, trans. by Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf, 2nd revised ed., Jena: Diederichs  1924 (Gesammelte Werke, 2nd ed., vol. 9); Philosophische Brocken / Abschließende unwissenschaftliche Nachschrift, vols. 1–2, trans. by Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf, 2nd revised ed., Jena: Diederichs 1925 (Gesammelte Werke, 2nd ed., vols. 6–7). 89 See, for example, Christoph Schrempf, “Nachwort,” in Einübung im Christentum, trans. by Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf, 2nd revised ed., Jena: Diederichs 1924 (Gesammelte Werke, 2nd ed., vol. 9), pp. 232–46, especially p. 246 [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, pp. 397–410, here p. 410]. 90 Christoph Schrempf, “Nachwort,” in Abschließende unwissenschaftliche Nachschrift / Zweiter Teil (1925), pp. 279–93, here p. 280 [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, pp. 422–35, here p. 422], see pp. 279–82 [pp. 422–4]. 91 The “Anlageplan” (see note 76 above), p. [174] [not in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke], included plans, subject to fundraising constraints, for publication of a further volume of critical and satirical writings (From the Papers of One Still Living, Prefaces and Writing Sampler) as well as “a substantial excerpt of Kierkegaard’s posthumous papers” to accompany the Collected Works. But those plans were never realized. 92 This according to the publisher’s advertisement for the planned four-volume edition of Kierkegaard’s Upbuilding Discourses, in Søren Kierkegaard, Leben und Walten der Liebe, trans. by Albert Dorner and Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1924 (Erbauliche Reden, vol. 3), p. [412]. 87

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“for internal reasons,”93 Schrempf decided to publish the series’ last two volumes first, namely, Schrempf’s revision of Dorner’s 1890 translation of Works of Love,94 and Schrempf’s joint translation, with Wilhelm Kütemeyer (1904–72), of Christian Discourses (1929).95 Following Diederichs’ death in 1930, however, Schrempf ceased work on the edition, leaving only volumes 3 and 4 in circulation. B. The Importance of Schrempf’s Edition of Kierkegaard’s Collected Works for Kierkegaard Reception It is worth noting that only two of the texts included in the first edition of Kierkegaard’s Collected Works needed to be translated into German for the first time. (These were Repetition and the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, which Gottsched translated.) By 1909, all of Kierkegaard’s other main works had already been translated into German at least once.96 This is due above all to the work of Albert Bärthold (1804– 92), a Magdeburg-born pastor in Halberstadt, who published numerous Kierkegaard translations from 1872 to 1886, and thus was rightly characterized as “Kierkegaard’s original and authentic German importer.”97 This is certainly not to say that these earlier Kierkegaard translations were widely available to the reading public. They were not. On the other hand, the enormous significance on German-language Kierkegaard reception that Schrempf’s editions of Kierkegaard’s Collected Works had in the first half of the twentieth century cannot simply be attributed to the fact that those editions made all of Kierkegaard’s main works accessible to a broad audience for the first time. Far more significant was the peculiar context surrounding German-language Kierkegaard reception during the period just before and after World War I.98 Ibid. Søren Kierkegaard, Leben und Walten der Liebe, trans. by Albert Dorner and Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1924 (Erbauliche Reden, vol. 3); cf. Søren Kierkegaard, Leben und Walten der Liebe, trans. by Albert Dorner, Leipzig: Richter 1890. 95 Søren Kierkegaard, Christliche Reden, trans. by Wilhelm Kütemeyer and Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1929 (Erbauliche Reden, vol. 4). 96 See Søren Kierkegaard. International Bibliografi, ed. by Jens Himmelstrup, Copenhagen: Nyt Nordisk Forlag/Arnold Busck 1962, pp. 25–8 (nos. 765–891); Schulz, “Germany and Austria,” p. 321 (note 69), together with the bibliography on pp. 389–91. The first portion of Part Two of the Concluding Unscientific Postscript (see SKS 7, 65–120 / CUP1, 63–125) had already been translated by Bärthold in Lessing und die objective Wahrheit aus Sören Kierkegaards Schriften zusammengestellt, trans. and ed. by Albert Bärthold, Halle: Fricke 1877. Moreover, Dorner und Schrempf had included a translation of Kierkegaard’s “A First and Last Explanation,” appended to his Postscript (see SKS 7, 569–73 / CUP1, [625]– [630]), in their Sören Kierkegaards agitatorische Schriften und Aufsätze. 1851–1855, pp. 371–6. 97 Johannes Mumbauer, “Sören Kierkegaard,“ Hochland, 1913, vol. 10, issue 2, pp. 184–94, here p. 194; see also Ruttenbeck, Sören Kierkegaard, p. 3. On Bärthold as a translator of Kierkegaard, see Malik, Receiving Søren Kierkegaard, pp. 220–1; pp. 225–8; pp. 231–2;, pp. 267–79; pp. 309–12; p. 326; pp. 332–3; and p. 342. 98 On Kierkegaard reception in the first three decades of the twentieth century, see Ruttenbeck, Sören Kierkegaard, pp. 290–360; Brecht, “Die Kierkegaardforschung im letzten 93 94

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Schrempf’s editions of the Collected Works could hardly have reached a wide audience at all had it not been for the influence of Theodor Haecker (1879–1945), who published numerous Kierkegaard translations from 1914 to 1923. Most significant, in this context, were those of Haecker’s translations that appeared in Ludwig von Ficker’s (1880–1967) Der Brenner, an Austrian periodical named after the famous Alpine pass along the Austro-Italian border, which was read by a large segment of the culturally interested public in Germany and Austria.99 As Heiko Schulz states (following Walter Methlagl100 and Habib C. Malik101): “It was not Schrempf, but the Brenner circle (Haecker, in particular) which proved instrumental for spreading the Kierkegaardian gospel to a wider German-speaking audience.”102 Indeed, it was Schrempf himself “who [had] first introduced Haecker to Kierkegaard’s works.”103 When Haecker subsequently learned Danish in order to read Kierkegaard in the original, he quickly discovered that Schrempf’s translations bore only a loose relation to Kierkegaard’s actual phraseology. Haecker therefore resolved to produce translations of his own that would be as literal as possible.104 He concentrated on the works of Kierkegaard that Schrempf had either overlooked or deliberately ignored— namely, the discourses, the journals, Prefaces, A Literary Review, and the Book on Adler.105 Jahrfünft,” pp. 5–35; Malik, Receiving Søren Kierkegaard, pp. 339–92; Schulz, “Germany and Austria,” pp. 321–69. 99 On Haecker and the Brenner circle see Malik, Receiving Søren Kierkegaard, pp. 367– 92, Schulz, “Germany and Austria,” pp. 328–31, and especially Markus Kleinert, “Theodor Haecker: The Mobilization of a Total Author,” in Kierkegaard’s Influence on Literature, Criticism, and Art, Tome I, The Germanophone World, ed. by Jon Stewart, Aldershot: Ashgate 2013 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 12). 100 See Walter Methlagl, “Theodor Haecker und ‘Der Brenner,’” Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch, vol. 19, 1978, pp. 199–216, here pp. 207–8. 101 See Malik, Receiving Kierkegaard, p. 371. 102 Schulz, “Germany and Austria,” p. 330. 103 Malik, Receiving Søren Kierkegaard, p. 376. 104 Haecker translated according to the following principle: if Kierkegaard’s Danish was convoluted, he made his German equally convoluted. This method is, as Haecker put it, “a very superficial way to match an author’s style; but at least it is a way” (Søren Kierkegaard, Die Tagebücher. 1834–1855, trans. by Theodor Haecker, Munich: Kösel 1953, p. 11). 105 Between 1914 and 1923 Haecker published the following Kierkegaard translations: “Vorworte,” Der Brenner, 1914, vol. 4, issue 2, nos. 14–15, pp. 666–83; “Der Pfahl im Fleisch,” Der Brenner, 1914, vol. 4, issue 2, no. 16, pp. 691–712; nos. 17–18, pp. 797–814 (also as Der Pfahl im Fleisch, Innsbruck: Brenner-Verlag 1914 (2nd ed. 1922)); “Kritik der Gegenwart,” Der Brenner, 1914, vol. 4, issue 2, no. 19, pp. 815–49; no. 20, pp. 869–908 (also as Kritik der Gegenwart, Innsbruck: Brenner-Verlag 1914 (2nd ed. 1922)); “Sören Kierkegaard: Vom Tode,” Brenner-Jahrbuch 1915 [= Der Brenner, 1915, vol. 5], pp. 15–55; Der Begriff des Auserwählten, Hellerau: Hegner 1917 (2nd ed. Innsbruck: Brenner-Verlag 1926); “Eine Möglichkeit,” Der Brenner, 1919, vol. 6, issue 1, no. 1, pp. 47–59; “Die Sünderin,” Der Brenner, 1919, vol. 6, issue 1, no. 2, pp. 133–40; “Tagebücher,” Der Brenner, 1920, vol. 6, issue 1, no. 3, pp. 225–9; no. 4, pp. 259–72; no. 5, pp. 336–41; 1921, vol. 6, issue 2, no. 8, pp. 590–4; “Die Kraft Gottes in der Schwachheit des Menschen,” Der Brenner, 1921, vol. 6, issue 2, no. 10, pp. 735–44; “Gottes Unveränderlichkeit,” Der Brenner, 1922, vol. 7, issue 1,

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Many scholars have been initiated into the Kierkegaardian cosmos through Haecker’s translations. And paradoxically, despite the fact that Haecker dismissed Schrempf’s translations as full of flaws, it was Haecker’s own translations that made the intellectual ground fertile, so to speak, for the “Kierkegaard Renaissance”106 (primarily in theology) that followed World War I, in which Kierkegaard’s popularity grew rapidly107—and which in turn ensured the success of Schrempf’s editions of the German Collected Works. Thus it is that Schrempf’s translations and editions became the basis for the exposure to Kierkegaard of such leading twentieth-century theologians and philosophers as Karl Barth (1886–1968),108 Emil Brunner (1889– 1966),109 Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976),110 Paul Tillich (1886–1965),111 Martin

pp. 26–40; “Tagebuchaufzeichnungen (1837),” Der Brenner, 1922, vol. 7, issue 2, pp. 63–71; Die Krisis und eine Krisis im Leben einer Schauspielerin. Mit Tagebuchaufzeichnungen des Verfassers, Innsbruck: Brenner-Verlag 1922; Religiöse Reden, Munich: Wiechmann 1922; “Aufzeichnungen (1849–1855),” Der Brenner, 1923, vol. 8, pp. 48–69; Die Tagebücher, vols. 1–2, Innsbruck: Brenner-Verlag 1923; Am Fuße des Altars. Christliche Reden, Munich: Beck 1923. 106 Werner Elert, Der Kampf um das Christentum. Geschichte der Beziehungen zwischen dem evangelischen Christentum in Deutschland und dem allgemeinen Denken seit Schleiermacher und Hegel, Munich: Beck 1921, p. 430. When Elert spoke of a “Kierkegaard Renaissance,” he did not primarily mean (as others later would) the thinkers associated with “dialectical theology,” but rather such theologians as Bärthold, Haecker, and indeed Schrempf. 107 See Schulz, “Germany and Austria,” p. 311. 108 See, for example, Wolfdietrich von Kloeden, “Das Kierkegaard-Bild Karl Barths in seinen Briefen der ‘Zwanziger Jahre.’ Streiflichter aus der Karl Barth-Gesamtausgabe,” Kierkegaardiana, vol. 12, 1982, pp. 93–102; Alastair McKinnon, “Barths Verhältnis zu Kierkegaard,” Evangelische Theologie, vol. 30, 1970, pp. 57–69; Heiko Schulz, “Rezeptionsgeschichtliche Brocken oder die Brocken in der deutschen Rezeption. Umrisse einer vorläufigen Bestandsaufnahme,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2004, pp. 375–451, here pp. 404–6, as well as his “Germany and Austria,” pp. 335–6. 109 See, for example, Ruttenbeck, Sören Kierkegaard, pp. 314–18; Wolfdietrich von Kloeden, “Einfluß und Bedeutung im deutsch-sprachigen Denken,” in The Legacy and Interpretation of Kierkegaard, ed. by Niels Thulstrup and Marie Mikulová Thulstrup, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 1981 (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 8), pp. 54–101, here pp. 68–75; Schulz, “Rezeptionsgeschichtliche Brocken,” pp. 406–7, as well as his “Germany and Austria,” pp. 337–8. 110 See, for example, Bartels, Kierkegaard receptus I, pp. 29–63; p. 414; and p. 421; Heiko Schulz, “Faith, Love and Self-Understanding. The Kierkegaard-Reception of Rudolf Bultmann,” in his Aneignung und Reflexion, vol. 1, Studien zur Rezeption Søren Kierkegaards, Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter 2011 (Kierkegaard Studies Monograph Series, vol. 24), pp. 233–73. 111 See, for example, Hermann Fischer, Die Christologie des Paradoxes. Zur Herkunft und Bedeutung des Christusverständnisses Sören Kierkegaards, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1970, pp. 111–29; Kloeden, “Einfluß und Bedeutung,” pp. 76–83; Kjeld Holm, “Lidenskab og livsmod—Søren Kierkegaard og Paul Tillich,” Kierkegaardiana, vol. 14, 1988, pp. 29–37; Schulz, “Rezeptionsgeschichtliche Brocken,” pp. 411–13, as well as his “Germany and Austria,” pp. 341–4.

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Heidegger (1889–1976),112 Karl Jaspers (1883–1969),113 and Theodor W. Adorno (1903–69).114 Even such famous twentieth-century literary figures as Franz Kafka (1883–1924)115 worked with Schrempf’s translations and editions. Here, however, it should be emphasized that Kierkegaard’s influence on the German literary world before 1930 was relatively modest compared with his deep influence on German theology and philosophy.116 Until 1950, when the Diederichs publishing house replaced Schrempf’s edition of Kierkegaard’s Collected Works with an edition prepared by Emanuel Hirsch (1888–1972) and Hayo Gerdes (1928–81),117 Schrempf’s translations and editions remained the standard source of familiarity with Kierkegaard for many German and non-German Kierkegaard scholars, particularly those who lacked the language skills to draw on the original and thus had to rely on Schrempf.118 What is more, from the late 1920s to the early 1940s, many translations of Kierkegaard’s works into other languages were based on Schrempf’s German text, rather than the original 112 See, for example, Schulz, “Germany and Austria,” pp. 354–8; Gerhard Thonhauser, Das Konzept der Zeitlichkeit bei Søren Kierkegaard mit ständigem Hinblick auf Martin Heidegger, Diploma Thesis, Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna 2010 (see note 167 below). 113 See, for example, Kloeden, “Einfluß und Bedeutung,” pp. 87–90, and Schulz, “Germany and Austria,” pp. 351–4. 114 See, for example, Hermann Deuser, “Kierkegaard und die kritische Theorie (Korreferat),” in Die Rezeption Søren Kierkegaards in der deutschen und dänischen Philosophie und Theologie. Vorträge des Kolloquiums am 22. und 23. März 1982, ed. by Heinrich Anz, Munich: Fink 1983 (Text & Kontext, Sonderreihe, vol. 15) (Kopenhagener Kolloquien zur deutschen Literatur, vol. 7), pp. 101–13; Schulz, “Germany and Austria,” pp. 362–6. 115 See, for example, Wolfgang Lange, “Über Kafkas Kierkegaard-Lektüre und einige damit zusammenhängende Gegenstände,” Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, vol. 60, 1986, pp. 286–308; Schulz, “Germany and Austria,” pp. 331–3. 116 See Helen M. Mustard, “Sören Kierkegaard in German Literary Periodicals, 1860– 1930,” Germanic Review, vol. 26, 1951, pp. 83–101, where Mustard on the basis of her examination of reviews and articles published in German literary journals from the 1860s to 1930 states that only very few German literary writers before 1930 “seem to have known Kierkegaard’s works, and fewer still seem to have been really interested in them” (p. 83). This “indifference of the literary world is in sharp contrast to the keen interest of theological, philosophical, even of pedagogical circles, as shown by the number of articles in professional journals in those fields” (p. 95). To this compare Schulz, “Germany and Austria,” pp. 325–6 (note 94). 117 Søren Kierkegaard, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1–27, trans. and ed. by Emanuel Hirsch, Hayo Gerdes and Hans Martin Junghans, Düsseldorf and Cologne: Diederichs 1950–69. 118 As, for example, in France, see Jon Stewart, “France: Kierkegaard as a Forerunner of Existentialism and Poststructuralism,” in  Kierkegaard’s International Reception, Tome I, Northern and Western Europe, ed. by Jon Stewart, Aldershot: Ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 8), pp. 421–74, here p. 427, where Stewart states that Schrempf’s edition of Kierkegaard’s Collected Works “was the text that most French scholars were working with until they received translations in their own language, which began to appear in the 1930s.”

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languages. This was the case not only in Western Europe—as, for example, in Italy119—but also in the Far East, as in Korea120 and Japan,121 and elsewhere. Because of his frequent and sometimes arbitrary omissions, Schrempf thereby provided “a sure criterion of identifying translations of S. K. into various languages which are actually translations of Schrempf’s translation by writers who have no knowledge of Danish.”122 This was true even of the first Kierkegaard translation into English, by Lee Milton Hollander (1880–1972), Professor of Germanic Languages at the University of Texas, published in July 1923. Hollander’s Selections from the Writings of Kierkegaard, which contained excerpts from the “Diapsalmata” of Either/Or, Stages on Life’s Way, Fear and Trembling, Practice in Christianity, and The Moment,123 119 See, for example, the Italian translation of The Concept of Anxiety (on the basis of Schrempf’s translation in the second edition of Kierkegaard’s Collected Works) Il concetto dellangoscia, trans. by Michele Federico Sciacca, Milano: Bocca 1940; to this compare Ettore Rocca, “The Secondary Literature on The Concept of Anxiety: the Italian Contribution,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2001, pp. 330–4, here pp. 333–4. See also Bianca Magnino, “Il problema religioso di Søren Kierkegaard,” Giornale Critico della Filosofia Italiana, vol. 11, 1938, pp. 215–39, which contains several long quotations from works in the first and second edition of Schrempf’s edition of Kierkegaard’s Collected Works, see pp. 238–9); to this compare Ingrid Basso, “The Italian Reception of Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2005, pp. 400–17, here p. 404, as well as her “Italy: From a Literary Curiosity to a Philosophical Comprehension,” Kierkegaard’s International Reception, Tome II, Southern, Central and Eastern Europe, ed. by Jon Stewart, Aldershot: Ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 8), pp. 81–151, here p. 82; p. 85; and pp. 87–9. 120 See Pyo Jae-myeong, “Korea: The Korean Response to Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard’s International Reception, Tome III,  The Near East, Asia, Australia and the Americas, ed. by Jon Stewart, Aldershot: Ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 8), pp. 125–48, here p. 125; and p. 140. 121 See Finn Hauberg Mortensen, Kierkegaard Made in Japan, Odense: Odense University Press 1996 (Odense University Literary and Cultural Studies, vol. 5), especially p. 286 (note 23) on the second phase of the Japanese reception of Kierkegaard (see pp. 46–61) from 1920 until 1945: “Like all the others, Miki [Kiyoshi] translated from Schrempf’s German edition.” See also the statements of Masugata Kinya (pp. 99–103, here p. 102), Mutō Kazuo (pp. 142–9, here p. 148), Kawamura Eiko (pp. 158–76, here p. 161) and Ogawa Keiji (pp. 184–203, here p. 189). Compare also Shoshu Kawakami, “The History of Japanese Reception of Philosophical Fragments,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2004, pp. 370–4, here p. 371; Satoshi Nakazato, “Japan: Varied Images though Western Waves,” in Kierkegaard’s International Reception, Tome III, The Near East, Asia, Australia and the Americas, pp. 149–73, here p. 151; Andrew Burgess, Masaru Otani, Takahiro Hirabayashi, “Kierkegaard in Japan,” in Kierkegaard: East and West, ed. by Roman Králik et al., Šaľa: Kierkegaard Society of Slovakia, Toronto: Kierkegaard Circle, University of Toronto 2011 (Acta Kierkegaardiana, vol. 5), pp. 124–34, here pp. 125–6. 122 Walter Lowrie, “Translators and Interpreters of Søren Kierkegaard,” Theology Today, vol. 12, 1955, pp. 312–27, here p. 318; see also his “How Kierkegaard Got into English,” in Repetition, trans. and ed. by Walter Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1941, pp. 175–212, especially pp. 184–5 and p. 201. 123 Søren Kierkegard, Selections from the Writings of Kierkegaard, ed. and trans. by Lee M. Hollander, Austin: University of Texas 1923 (University of Texas Bulletin, no. 2326;

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was based not on the original texts but on the Schrempf translation. This situation in the English-speaking world, however, was soon altered by the influence of David Ferdinand Swenson (1876–1940), Professor of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota, who provided numerous rather literal translations from the Danish—first of Philosophical Fragments in 1936,124 and then through his subsequent translations, which were often prepared with the help of Lillian M. Swenson (died in 1961) and Walter Lowrie (1868–1959).125 In general, it is difficult to overstate the influence Schrempf’s translations and editions of the Collected Works had on the reception of Kierkegaard in the Germanspeaking world and beyond. And this very fact makes the question of the quality and reliability of Schrempf’s translations all the more urgent. The next section will offer a critical examination, complete with examples, of Schrempf’s praxis as translator. III. Schrempf as Translator of Kierkegaard In translating Kierkegaard, Schrempf sought above all to transform him into an actual German communicator: “Our goal, as far as possible, is to allow him to speak as he would have done if German had been his mother tongue.”126 To this end, Comparative Literature Series, no. 3). Compare Selections from the Writings of Kierkegaard, pp. 43–5, together with SKS 2, 27, 1–15 / EO1, 19; SKS 2, 29, 1–5 / EO1, 20; SKS 2, 33, 17–27 / EO1, 25; SKS 2, 36, 21–35 / EO1, 27–8; SKS 2, 43, 4–17 / EO1, 33–4; SKS 2, 51, 30–52, 9 / EO1, 42–3; Selections from the Writings of Kierkegaard, pp. 46–118, together with SKS 6, 27–84 / SLW, 21–86; Selections from the Writings of Kierkegaard, pp. 119–51, together with SKS 4, 101–47 / FT, 5–53; Selections from the Writings of Kierkegaard, pp. 152–213, together with SKS 12, 13–80 / PC, 11–68; Selections from the Writings of Kierkegaard, pp. 214–39, together with SKS 13, 129–30 / M, 91–2; SKS 13, 157–8 / M, 115–16; SKS 13, 163–4 / M, 121–2; SKS 13, 205–7 / M, 157–9; SKS 13, 235–6 / M, 185–6; SKS 13, 245–7 / M, 194–6; SKS 13, 271–4 / M, 217–20; SKS 13, 299–305 / M, 243–9; SKS 13, 353–6 / M, 296–7; SKS 13, 378–9 / M, 316–17. 124 Søren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments or A Fragment of Philosophy, trans. by David Ferdinand Swenson, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1936. 125 See Lee C. Barrett, “The USA: From Neo-Orthodoxy to Plurality,” in Kierkegaard’s International Reception, Tome III, The Near East, Asia, Australia and the Americas, pp. 229– 68, here p. 230, together with Søren Kierkegaard. International Bibliografi, pp. 38–42 (nos. 1289–1483). 126 From the publisher’s advertisment for Schrempf’s edition of Kierkegaard’s Erbauliche Reden (see note 92 above), p. [412]. Schrempf outlined his methodology as translator in (among other places) his afterwords to Entweder / Oder. Zweiter Teil (1913), pp. 309–12 [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, pp. 267–70] and Stadien auf dem Lebensweg (1914), pp. 459–60 [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, pp. 288–9]. That Schrempf had taken similar liberties in translations published previously is evident in his comments in, for example, “Vorrede des Uebersetzers,” in Zur Psychologie der Sünde, der Bekehrung und des Glaubens, p. ix [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, p. 29]; Richtet selbst! Zur Selbstprüfung der Gegenwart anbefohlen, trans. by Albert Dorner and Christoph Schrempf, Stuttgart: Frommann 1896, p. 3 [not in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke]; “Einleitung,” in Sören Kierkegaards agitatorische Schriften und Aufsätze. 1851–1855, p. xx [not in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke].

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Schrempf took considerable liberties with the original text, not only when translating Kierkegaard’s peculiarly Danish phrases and expressions, but also in altering (most frequently, in simplifying) the structure of Kierkegaard’s more complex sentences. Then there are the innumerable glosses—and, in some cases, the entirely new sentences—that he inserted “in order to establish the context, or to make it more transparent.”127 Finally, Schrempf deleted innumerable passages that he took to be superfluous repetitions on Kierkegaard’s part, or mere parodies of Kierkegaard’s contemporaries, or which struck him as inessential to the text (e.g., the dedication of The Concept of Anxiety128), or whose meaning remained opaque to him.129 Because Schrempf did not normally mark his alterations to the text as his own, his translation seems at certain points more of a paraphrase of Kierkegaard than a translation of him. There is thus a deep truth, if an unintentional one, to the claim made by Hermann Hesse, in his 1944 obituary of Schrempf, that when he read the latter’s translations of Kierkegaard with the accompanying afterwords, he “could hardly tell, at the time, how to distinguish between Schrempf and Kierkegaard.”130 There were those who lauded Schrempf’s achievement as a translator.131 One supporter, Eberhard Harbsmeier, went so far as to claim that precisely because of the many liberties that Schrempf allowed himself to take with the text—precisely 127 Schrempf, “Nachwort,” in Kierkegaard, Entweder / Oder. Zweiter Teil (1913), p. 310 [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, p. 268]. 128 See SKS 4, 311 / CA, [5]. 129 See, for example, Schrempf’s afterwords to Kierkegaard, Der Begriff der Angst (1912), p. 164 [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, p. 228]; Stadien auf dem Lebensweg (1914), p. 459 [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, p. 288]; Furcht und Zittern / Die Wiederholung (1923), p. 208 [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, p. 374]. As the example instar omnium for Schrempf’s often grotesque justifications for his deletions, see Schrempf, “Nachwort,” in Kierkegaard, Entweder / Oder. Zweiter Teil (1913), pp. 309–10 [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, pp. 267–8]. Schrempf’s often massive cuts made a mockery of his edition’s promise—at least as the publisher saw it—to reproduce Kierkegaard’s writings “in good, unabridged translations” (p. [174] [not in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke] (original italics)). When this promise was repeated in the promotional material on the last pages of each volume of the first edition, and was repeated to some extent in the second edition, the mockery grew into a complete farce (as will become clear below). 130 Hesse, “Nachruf auf Christoph Schrempf,” Neue Schweizer Rundschau, vol. 11, 1944, pp. 717–26, here p. 719. 131 Without a doubt, the most determined defender of Schrempf’s translations was his longtime friend Otto Engel. See, for example, Engel’s “Der Einzelne,” in Im Banne des Unbedingten. Christoph Schrempf zugeeignet, pp. 14–32, here p. 26, as well as “Kierkegaard und seine deutschen Übersetzer,” Stuttgarter Zeitung, Literaturblatt, 1954, no. 260 (November 6). More or less positive verdicts were delivered by, for example, Brecht, “Die Kierkegaardforschung im letzten Jahrfünft,” pp. 6–7; Friedrich Hansen-Löve, “Der deutsche Sören Kierkegaard,” Wort und Wahrheit, vol. 7, 1952, pp. 624–6, here pp. 624–5; Hermann Diem, “Christoph Schrempf und Sören Kierkegaard,” Die Zeichen der Zeit, vol. 14, 1960, pp. 148–9; “Zur Psychologie der Kierkegaard-Renaissance,” pp. 237–9; Wilhelm Anz, “Zur Wirkungsgeschichte Kierkegaards in der deutschen Theologie und Philosophie,” in Die Rezeption Søren Kierkegaards in der deutschen und dänischen Philosophie und Theologie, pp. 11–29, here p. 12; Eberhard Harbsmeier, “Von der ‘geheimen Freudigkeit des verborgnen

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because he “did not translate word for word, but sentence for sentence”132—his translation was at times more accurate and elegant than Bärthold’s, for example, which were often much too wordy, or the archaizing translations of Emanuel Hirsch. Despite Harbsmeier’s talk of “elegance,” however, others found Schrempf’s German far less enjoyable to read. This is not least because of Schrempf’s peculiar punctuation style, which mixed standard grammatical-syntactic punctuation with Schrempf’s own favored “rhetorical”133 punctuation. The reaction of Thomas Mann (1875–1955) following his exposure to Schrempf’s Kierkegaard is telling: “His style, at least in German, is not good.”134 The critical response to Schrempf’s work as translator was predominantly negative. The most prolific German detractor was Hirsch, who spared no opportunity to criticize his predecessor.135 The harshest attack, however, is undoubtedly that Wohlstandes’. Zum Problem deutscher Kierkegaardübersetzungen,” Kierkegaardiana, vol. 17, 1994, pp. 130–41, especially p. 137 and p. 139. 132 Harbsmeier, “Von der ‘geheimen Freudigkeit des verborgnen Wohlstandes,’ ” p. 137. 133 See Schrempf, “Vorbemerkung (meine Interpunktion betreffend),” in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 3, p. vi. Schrempf’s idiosyncratic punctuation goes hand in hand with other, related peculiarities, such as his use of slashes (/) rather than dashes (—). Cf., for example, the critique in Karl Bonhoff, “Die neue deutsche Kierkegaard-Ausgabe,” Protestantische Monatshefte, vol. 18, 1914, pp. 17–22, here p. 22. 134 Thomas Mann, “Die Entstehung des ‘Doktor Faustus’. Roman eines Romans,” Die neue Rundschau, vol. 60, 1949, pp. 18–74, here p. 66. Compare Walter Boehlich, “Kierkegaard als Verführer,” Merkur, vol. 7, 1953, pp. 1075–89, here p. 1077. 135 See Emanuel Hirsch, “Das ethische Stadium bei Sören Kierkegaard. Von Prof. Eduard Geismar. Aus dem Dänischen übersetzt und für deutsche Leser in den Anmerkungen ergänzt von E. Hirsch,” Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie, vol. 1, 1923, pp. 227–300, here p. 228; “Sören Kierkegaard, Leben und Walten der Liebe. Übersetzt von A. Dorner und Chr. Schrempf, 1924,” Theologische Literaturzeitung, vol. 49, 1924, column 405; “Zum Verständnis von Kierkegaards Verlobungszeit,” Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie, vol. 5, 1928, pp. 55–75, here p. 55 (note); “Christoph Schrempf, Sören Kierkegaard. Eine Biographie. 2. Bd., Jena 1928,” Theologische Literaturzeitung, vol. 54, 1929, columns 260–2; “Wie ich zu Kierkegaard kam. Aus einem Brief von E. Hirsch an den Verlag C. Bertelsmann in Gütersloh,” in Mitteilungen aus dem Verlag C. Bertelsmann in Gütersloh, Gütersloh: Bertelsmann 1930, pp. 3–5; “Sören Kierkegaard, Christliche Reden. Übersetzt von W. Kütemeyer und Chr. Schrempf, 1929,” Theologische Literaturzeitung, vol. 56, 1931, columns 450–2; Kierkegaard-Studien, vols. 1–2, Gütersloh: Bertelsmann 1930–33 (Studien des apologetischen Seminars, no. 29, 31, 32, 36), vol. 1, pp. 26–7 [154–5] (note 2), p. 30 [158] (note 1), p. 80 [208] (note 3); vol. 2, p. 95 [697] (note 1), p. 266 [868] (note 4), p. 357 [959]. According to Brecht, “Die Kierkegaardforschung im letzten Jahrfünft,” p. 6, Hirsch felt forced to learned Danish because of his conviction that Schrempf’s translations were insufficient. For a contrasting view, see Jens Holger Schjørring, Theologische Gewissensethik und politische Wirklichkeit. Das Beispiel Eduard Geismars und Emanuel Hirschs, trans. by Eberhard Harbsmeier, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht and Århus: Forlaget Aros 1979 (Arbeiten zur kirchlichen Zeitgeschichte, Reihe B, vol. 7), p. 145. Further critical remarks on Schrempf as translator are found in Heinrich Barth, “Kierkegaard, der Denker,” Zwischen den Zeiten, vol. 4, 1926, pp. 194–234, here p. 197 (note); Eduard Geismar, Sören Kierkegaard. Seine Lebensentwicklung und seine Wirksamkeit als Schriftsteller, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1929, pp. 544–5; Boehlich, “Kierkegaard als Verführer”; Peter Christian Baumann,

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leveled by the German literary critic and translator Walter Boehlich (1921–2006) in the following passage: Schrempf has a variety of characteristic traits. First of all, he didn’t know Danish; he only thought he did….Even if one ignores the uncountable horde of sheer translation mistakes—which for the most part also involved serious mistakes in meaning—an enormous number of other problems remain. Schrempf seems to have regarded a whole series of Kierkegaard’s works as ingenious concepts.136 He then sought to transform those concepts into readable books; for he aimed to conquer Kierkegaard for Germany,137 to make a German author out of him. Now, if “German” means “incomprehensible,” then Schrempf’s work was a rousing success. He purged Kierkegaard of practically all his peculiarities of style; he shifted and modified things, dropped some words and added others; he weeded out allusions, and replaced literary images with completely different ones; he distorted, distorted, distorted.138

With regard to pure mistakes in translation, Schrempf was himself the first to concede that “this or that expression may well be inaccurate, or even false.” Yet this concession did not stop him from indulging the hope that “the meaning of the whole will not be affected (I believe I can vouch for this).”139 I will now argue that this expression of hope on Schrempf’s part was almost recklessly Pollyannaish—and that for all its polemical stridency, Boehlich’s critique is by and large justified. I will illustrate this by citing two admittedly extreme examples from the second edition of the Collected Works, in which Schrempf, in the course of reworking earlier translations by Gottsched and Ketels, undertook massive textual interventions, to the point where Schrempf garbled and distorted the original and its meaning almost beyond recognition.140 I will begin with a passage from “Problema III” in Fear and Trembling (1843), just prior to where Johannes de “Das Genie auf der Schulbank. Kann Kierkegaard ins Deutsche übersetzt werden?,” Die Zeit, 1949, no. 23 (June 9); Wolfdietrich von Kloeden, “Die deutschsprachige Forschung,” in Kierkegaard Research, ed. by Niels Thulstrup and Marie Mikulová Thulstrup, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 1987 (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 15), pp. 37–108, especially pp. 41–3. 136 Compare Schrempf, “Nachwort,” in Kierkegaard, Entweder / Oder. Zweiter Teil (1913), p. 309 [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, p. 267]. 137 Compare Schrempf, “Nachwort des Herausgebers,” in Kierkegaard, Der Gesichtspunkt für meine Wirksamkeit als Schriftsteller (1922), pp. 171–82, here p. 171 [this page is omitted in Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, pp. 364–73]. 138 Boehlich, “Kierkegaard als Verführer,” pp. 1077–8. 139 Schrempf, “Nachwort,” in Kierkegaard, Zur Selbstprüfung der Gegenwart anbefohlen (1922), pp. 191–9, here p. 191 [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, pp. 355–63, here p. 355]. 140 In defending his textual interventions, Schrempf ascribed their necessity at least in part to Kierkegaard himself. Thus the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, for example, is written in such “an unbelievably careless way” that it would have been “not merely superfluous, but also inappropriate,” for Schrempf to have marked each of the departures from the original phrasing that he deemed necessary (Schrempf, “Nachwort,” in Abschließende unwissenschaftliche Nachschrift / Zweiter Teil (1925), p. 280 [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, p. 423]).

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silentio introduces the legend of Agnete and the Merman into his argument. In the English-language translation by Alastair Hannay, this passage reads as follows: One only wishes that aesthetics might try to start where for so many years it has ended, with the illusion of high-mindedness. As soon as it did so it would work hand in hand with religion, for that is the only power capable of rescuing the aesthetic from its conflict with the ethical. Queen Elizabeth sacrifices to the State her love for Essex by signing his death-warrant. That was a deed of heroism, even if some private resentment had a hand in it because he hadn’t sent her the ring. We know that he did send it, but it was held back through the malice of some lady-in-waiting. Elizabeth is said, ni fallor [if I am not mistaken], to have been informed of this, and sat for ten days with one finger in her mouth, biting it without saying a word, and then she died. That would be something for a poet who knew how to wrench open that mouth: otherwise it would be of use at best to a ballet master, with whom nowadays the poet no doubt too often confuses himself.141

In his 1923 reworking of Ketels’ translation, Schrempf simply deleted the reference to Queen Elizabeth. He made no note of this deletion in either the translation itself or the accompanying afterword. What is more, he converted the lines immediately preceding the reference into a footnote (!) with the following content: One only wishes that aesthetics might try to start where, for quite some time now, it has preferred to end: with illusory high-mindedness. This is, after all, only an illusory reconciliation of the aesthetic and the ethical. The aesthetic can only actually save itself from the ethical by means of the leap of faith. To that extent, the aesthetic is susceptible to the religious.142

Hirsch, who later translated Fear and Trembling himself,143 describes this portion of Schrempf’s translation as “self-fabricated nonsense” guilty of “adulterating” Kierkegaard’s meaning: “I conclude that only the first of these four sentences can qualify as an expression of Kierkegaard’s meaning. The three others belong under the category of adulteration. As to where Schrempf found the audacity to do such a thing—that is incomprehensible to me.”144 In my view, Hirsch’s charge of “adulteration” is entirely justified in the case. For even if we leave aside the changes Schrempf made to the content of Kierkegaard’s argumentation, there remains the fact that Schrempf attributes to Kierkegaard an expression that is quite problematic in relation to Kierkegaard’s understanding of faith, namely, “the leap of faith.” This expression is a familiar, widely used slogan commonly ascribed to Kierkegaard. Yet SKS 4, 183,14–28 / FTP, 119–20 (compare FT, 93). Kierkegaard, Furcht und Zittern / Die Wiederholung (1923), p. 88 (note): “Es wäre überhaupt zu wünschen, daß die Ästhetik einmal da zu beginnen versuchte, wo sie nicht erst seit heute aufzuhören liebt: bei dem illusorischen Edelmut. Der ist ja doch nur eine illusorische Versöhnung des Ästhetischen mit dem Ethischen. Wirklich retten kann sich das Ästhetische vor der Ethik nur durch den Sprung des Glaubens. Insofern prädisponiert das Ästhetische für das Religiöse.” Compare Ketels’ literal and unabridged translation in Kierkegaard, Furcht und Zittern / Wiederholung (1909), pp. 86–7. 143 Søren Kierkegaard, Furcht und Zittern, trans. by Emanuel Hirsch, Düsseldorf and Cologne: Diederichs 1950 (Gesammelte Werke, vol. 3), see pp. 105–6. 144 Hirsch, Kierkegaard-Studien, vol. 1, p. 80 [208] (note 3). 141 142

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as Alastair McKinnon rightly points out,145 “leap of faith” does not occur even once in Kierkegaard’s published writings—nor even, I dare to add, in Kierkegaard’s journals and notebooks.146 And this is a serious problem. For if “leap of faith” is understood as a leap which is itself an act of faith (not a leap into a state of faith, as the phrases “leap to faith” or “leap into faith” would suggest), then it is, as McKinnon puts it, “in and of itself, incoherent and meaningless,” since it “assumes that one can use faith before one has it or, put another way, in order to achieve it, both of which notions are patent nonsense.”147 The second example we will here consider is Schrempf’s drastic revision of Gottsched’s translation of the difficult opening section of The Sickness unto Death (1849),148 in which Kierkegaard provides the structural definition of the self that is foundational not only to that book as a whole, but his anthropology in general. In Schrempf’s 1924 translation, the beginning and end of this section read as follows: The human being is spirit. What is spirit? Spirit is the self. What is the self? The self is a relation which relates to itself, or is that in the relation which is its relating to itself; hence not the relation but the relation’s relating to itself. A relation which relates to itself, a self, must either have established itself or been established by something else. If the relation which relates to itself has been established by something else, then the relation stands qua relation to itself also in relation to the third term that has established Alastair McKinnon, “Kierkegaard and ‘The Leap of Faith,’ ” Kierkegaardiana, vol. 16, 1993, pp. 107–25. The only possible counterpart of “leap of faith” in the Danish language is Troens Spring (in German: Sprung des Glaubens, not Glaubens Sprung, as McKinnon, p. 116, assumes). 146 With regard to the “leap” as a “qualitative” or “pathos-laden transition” (to or into faith)—i.e., not in the sense of a continuous, gradual transition, but in the sense of a discontinuous transition—as opposed to an “immediate” or “dialectical transition”—see SKS 19, 375, Not12:4 / KJN 3, 373; SKS 19, 386, Not13:8.a.c / KJN 3, 384; SKS 27, 275–277, Papir 283:1–2 / JP 3, 2345–2351; SKS 18, 241, JJ:318 / KJN 2, 221; Pap. VI B 13 / JP 5, 5787; SKS 7, 21–24 / CUP1, 11–14; SKS 7, 92–103 / CUP1, 93–106; Pap. VIII 2 B 81, 34 / JP 1, 649:34; Pap. VIII 2 B 85, 5 / JP 1, 653:5; SKS 20, 73, NB:87 / JP 3, 2820; SKS 21, 326–7, NB10:138 / JP 1, 762. 147 McKinnon, “Kierkegaard and ‘The Leap of Faith,’ ” p. 115. In Schrempf’s defense— who had attributed this expression to Kierkegaard as early as 1896 (!) (see his “Vorwort,” in Harald Høffding, Sören Kierkegaard als Philosoph, trans. by August Dorner and Christoph Schrempf, Stuttgart: Frommann 1896, pp. III–X, here p. VI), and thus long before the 1945 Swenson/Lowrie translation of Concluding Unscientific Postscript into English (see Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. by David F. Swenson, completed by Walter Lowrie, London: Oxford University Press 1945, p. 15), which McKinnon described as the earliest example of this phrase’s ascription to Kierkegaard in any language (see, however, David Ferdinand Swenson, “Translator’s Introduction,” in Philosophical Fragments or A Fragment of Philosophy, trans. by David Ferdinand Swenson, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1936, pp. ix–xxx, here p. xxii)—it can be pointed out that Schrempf consistently used the phrase “leap of faith” in the sense of “leap to faith,” as, for example, in his Kierkegaard biography. See Schrempf, Sören Kierkegaard. Eine Biographie, vol. 1, p. ii [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, p. 437]. 148 See SKS 11, 129–30. / SUDP, 43–4 (compare SUD, 13–14). 145

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the whole relation.…This then is the formula which describes the state of the self when despair is completely eradicated: inasmuch as, in relating to itself, it wants to be itself, the self grounds itself transparently in the power that established it.149

Whereas Gottsched had translated this section more or less literally and without abbreviation,150 Schrempf made drastic and distorting cuts, once again without explicit indication in the translation.151 He also introduced a highly consequential translation mistake into the final sentence. To give a sense of the extent of Schrempf’s deletions, I here present, for purposes of comparison, the English translation of the relevant section by (once again) Alastair Hannay, with italics marking all of the passages that Schrempf omitted from his translation: The human being is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation which relates to itself, or that in the relation which is its relating to itself. The self is not the relation but the relation’s relating to itself. A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity. In short a synthesis. A synthesis is a relation between two terms. Looked at in this way a human being is not yet a self. In a relation between two things the relation is the third term in the form of a negative unity, and the two relate to the relation, and in the relation to that relation; this is what it is from the point of view of soul for soul and body to be in relation. If, on the other hand, the relation relates to itself, then this relation is the positive third, and this is the self. Such a relation which relates to itself, a self, must either have established itself or been established by something else. If the relation which relates to itself has been established by something else, then of course the relation is the third term, but then this relation, the third term, is a relation which relates in turn to that which has established the whole relation…This then is the formula which describes the state of the self when despair is completely eradicated: in relating to itself and in wanting to be itself, the self is grounded transparently in the power that established it.152

Kierkegaard, Die Krankheit zum Tode (1924), pp. 10–11: “Der Mensch ist Geist. Was ist Geist? Geist ist das Selbst. Was ist das Selbst? Das Selbst ist ein Verhältnis, das sich zu sich selbst verhält; oder ist das im Verhältnis, daß das Verhältnis sich zu sich selbst verhält; also nicht das Verhältnis, sondern daß das Verhältnis sich zu sich selbst verhält. Ein Verhältnis, das sich zu sich selbst verhält, ein Selbst, muß sich entweder selbst gesetzt haben oder durch ein anderes gesetzt sein. Ist das Verhältnis, das sich zu sich selbst verhält, durch ein anderes gesetzt, so steht es als Verhältnis zu sich selbst außerdem in einem Verhältnis zu dem Dritten, das das ganze Verhältnis gesetzt hat....Dies ist nämlich die Formel, die den Zustand des Selbst beschreibt, wenn die Verzweiflung ganz ausgerottet ist: indem es zu sich selbst sich verhaltend es selbst sein will, gründet sich das Selbst sich selbst durchsichtig in der Macht, die es setzte.” 150 Compare Kierkegaard, Die Krankheit zum Tode (1911), pp. 10–11. 151 Schrempf does, however, offer general remarks on these changes in his “Nachwort,” in Kierkegaard, Die Krankheit zum Tode (1924), pp. 125–38, here p. 126 [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, pp. 384–96, here p. 385]. 152 SKS 11, 129, 9–25 and 130, 26–28 / SUDP, 43–4 (compare SUD, 13–14). 149

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Schrempf’s translation ultimately defies comparison to Kierkegaard’s original. In the words of Walter Rest: “Seeking to obtain a formula for the philosophy of identity, [Schrempf] deletes everything that is existentially significant….What the human being is and who he is, that is expressed precisely in the sentences that Schrempf thought fit for deletion.”153 Aside from Schrempf’s distorting cuts, the most devastating problem with this excerpt is the appalling translation error in the final sentence. In the original text of The Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard offers the following formula for the state in which despair, the sickness unto death, is completely eradicated: the human being, as the self, in relating to itself and in wanting to be itself “is grounded transparently in [grunder...i] the power that established it”154—in God. This formula describes not only the cure for the sickness unto death, but also its precondition, since the very possibility of despair can be derived only from the original constitution of the self as established by God.155 The Danish verb at grunde, when it occurs together with the preposition i, means “to have its ground or origin in” the noun that follows the preposition.156 Hence Kierkegaard’s phrase in no way describes, as Schrempf would have it, a self that has the power to ground itself in God, and so to ground itself. Rather, the self’s proper relation to God as ground is to let itself be grounded. The self must receive from God, and adopt from God, its being as its own. Kierkegaard thus does not write, as Schrempf suggests (quite apart from his grammatically ungainly phrase gründet sich…sich selbst), that the human being can ground itself in God. Instead, he writes that the human being, inasmuch as he wants to be himself, is grounded transparently in God—in whom he is always already grounded as God’s creation. The various forms of sin—of despair that takes place before God—arise in deformations of that fundamental relation, that is, when the self’s relation to itself fails to coincide with its relation to the other that is its ground. These deformations can take two forms. Either the self, despairing of its ground, wants to be itself (alone); or the self, despairing of itself, does not want to be itself. In relating to itself and in wanting to be itself, however, the self “is grounded transparently in the power that established it.” Kierkegaard elsewhere calls this

Walter Rest, “Die kontroverstheologische Relevanz Sören Kierkegaards,” in Sören Kierkegaard, ed. by Heinz Horst Schrey, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1971, pp. 155–72, here p. 164. See also Rest’s doctoral dissertation, Indirekte Mitteilung als bildendes Verfahren dargestellt am Leben und Werk Sören Kierkegaard’s, Emsdetten in Westfalen: Lechte 1937, pp. 5–9. 154 SKS 11, 130, 27–8 / SUDP, 44 (see also Pap. VIII–2 B 170:2, where Kierkegaard adds at the end of this sentence: “(in God).”) Compare the parallel formulations in SKS 11, 146, 29–30 / SUDP, 60 (SUD, 30); SKS 11, 161, 5–6 / SUDP, 76 (SUD, 46); SKS 11, 164, 10–12 / SUDP, 79 (SUD, 49); SKS 11, 196, 16–17 / SUDP, 114 (SUD, 82); SKS 11, 242, 22–3 / SUDP, 165 (SUD, 131). With regard to the last of these passages, see note 157 below. 155 See Joachim Ringleben, Die Krankheit zum Tode von Sören Kierkegaard. Erklärung und Kommentar, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1995, pp. 88–95, here p. 89. 156 Compare “I. grunde,” in Ordbog over det danske Sprog, vols. 1–28, established by Verner Dahlerup, ed. by Det Danske Sprog- og Litteraturselskab, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1919–56, vol. 7, 1925, columns 166–9, here column 167 (5.1). 153

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formula “the definition of faith”: namely, in the crucial last sentence of The Sickness unto Death, which is simply omitted in Schrempf’s translation.157 To add insult to injury, Schrempf does not merely misconceive Kierkegaard’s position on this decisive matter; he goes so far as to criticize Kierkegaard for holding the position that he falsely attributes to him, and to defend, against Kierkegaard, the very position that Kierkegaard actually held—and this not only in the afterword to his translation of The Sickness unto Death,158 but also in his 1927–28 Kierkegaard biography.159 As Schrempf wrote in the afterword: “How am I supposed to execute this ‘grounding’ of myself in God?...I do not need to ground myself in God at all, for I am grounded in God.”160 The worst aspect of this is not the fact that Schrempf criticizes Kierkegaard’s supposed position on behalf of Kierkegaard’s (unrecognized) actual position. The worst aspect is the overall effect: the fact that, in the course of the “Kierkegaard Renaissance,” Schrempf’s extremely problematic translation of The Sickness unto Death came to influence numerous leading twentieth-century theologians and philosophers. Bultmann, for example, integrated Kierkegaardian ideas and resources into his own exegetical and systematical thinking in a “substantial and overall consistent way,”161 mainly in the period from 1923 to 1926.162 And apart from a single mention of The Concept of Irony, which was not included in Schrempf’s editions of Kierkegaard’s Collected Works, Bultmann’s explicit Kierkegaard references point

See SKS 11, 242, 22–3 / SUDP, 165 (SUD, 131). Schrempf’s translation of The Sickness unto Death ends abruptly with the sentence: “This form of offense [sc. which declares Christianity to be untruth and a lie] is sin against the Holy Ghost.” (SKS 11, 242, 14 / SUDP, 165; see Die Krankheit zum Tode (1924), p. 124). This entirely omits the conclusion crucial to an understanding of the work as a whole, the conclusion in which Kierkegaard closes the parenthesis that spans the entire book: “This way of being offended is the highest intensification of sin, which one usually overlooks because one does not make the opposition, Christianly, between sin and faith. On the other hand, that opposition has been effective throughout this work, which laid down straight away (Part One, A.A) the formula for that state in which there is no despair at all: in relating itself to itself and in wanting to be itself, the self is grounded transparently in the power which established it. Which formula in turn, as has frequently been remarked, is the definition of faith” (SKS 11, 242, 17–24 / SUDP, 165). On the other hand, Schrempf did include (erroneous) versions of SKS 11, 164, 10–2 / SUDP, 79 (SUD, 49) and SKS 11, 196, 16–17 / SUDP, 114 (SUD, 82)—in which Kierkegaard equates the formula for the state of freedom from despair with his formula for (or “definition of”) faith—in Die Krankheit zum Tode (1924), namely, at p. 46 and p. 77. 158 See Schrempf, “Nachwort,” in Kierkegaard, Die Krankheit zum Tode (1924), pp. 132–4 [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, pp. 390–2]. 159 See Schrempf, Sören Kierkegaard. Eine Biographie, vol. 2, pp. 47–59, especially pp. 47–50 [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 11, pp. 47–59, here pp. 47–50]. 160 Schrempf, “Nachwort,” in Kierkegaard, Die Krankheit zum Tode (1924), p. 132 [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, p. 390]. 161 Schulz, “Germany and Austria,” p. 339. 162 See Bartels, Kierkegaard receptus I, pp. 220–1, and Schulz, “Faith, Love and SelfUnderstanding,” p. 236. 157

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exclusively to the second edition of the Collected Works (1922–25),163 including The Sickness unto Death of 1924.164 Nor can it be ruled out that even Being and Time, Heidegger’s 1927 magnum opus, which is influenced by Kierkegaard’s The Sickness unto Death at numerous essential points165 (and even more broadly, as the book’s three explicit references to Kierkegaard make clear166), may have relied on Schrempf’s 1924 translation of that text.167 IV. A Concluding Note The two examples cited in Section III, drawn from Schrempf’s translations of Fear and Trembling and The Sickness unto Death, make amply clear the problematic consequences of Schrempf’s success—of the fact that, for more than three decades, Schrempf’s translations and editions were the standard sources from which numerous important theologians, philosophers, and writers obtained their knowledge of Kierkegaard. In Boehlich’s words, “whole systems have been built around a Compare the complete, chronologically ordered matrix of the Bultmann’s references to Kierkegaard in Schulz, “Faith, Love and Self-Understanding,” pp. 240–9. According to Schulz “it seems safe to infer that he [Bultmann] possessed, at least exclusively relied on, this edition, instead of, at least in later years, switching to other translations/editions” (p. 250). 164 See Bultmann’s article against Erik Peterson, “Die Frage der ‘dialektischen Theologie,’” Zwischen den Zeiten, vol. 4, 1926, pp. 40–59, in which Bultmann on pp. 47–9 cites Die Krankheit zum Tode (1924), p. 3 (SKS 11, 117–18 / SUD, 5–6), p. 63 (SKS 11, 182 / SUD, 67–8), pp. 113–14 (SKS 11, 231 / SUD, 119–20) and p. 123 (SKS 11, 241 / SUD, 130), albeit with marked alterations. 165 See Michael Theunissen and Wilfried Greve, “Einleitung: Kierkegaards Werk und Wirkung,” in Materialien zur Philosophie Søren Kierkegaards, ed. by Michael Theunissen and Wilfried Greve, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1979 (Suhrkamp-Taschenbücher Wissenschaft, vol. 241), pp. 9–104, here pp. 66–73, and Schulz, “Germany and Austria,” pp. 356–8. 166 Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 14th ed., Tübingen: Niemeyer 1977 [1927], p. 189; p. 235; p. 338. 167 In my view, the fact that Heidegger’s critical encounter with Kierkegaard began during his student years in Freiburg (1909–13), as Thonhauser emphasizes in Das Konzept der Zeitlichkeit, pp. 36–43, does not make it implausible that, starting in the mid-1920s (after initially making use of Haecker’s translations and the first edition of Schrempf’s Collected Works of Kierkegaard), Heidegger began drawing on the second edition of the Collected Works. For evidence that Heidegger was familiar with, and used, the second edition of the Collected Works, see, for example, his Freiburg lectures from the 1941 summer semester, reproduced in Martin Heidegger, Die Metaphysik des deutschen Idealismus. Zur erneuten Auslegung von Schelling: Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit und die damit zusammenhängenden Gegenstände (1809), ed. by Günter Seubold, 2nd revised ed., Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann 2006 [1991] (Heidegger Gesamtausgabe, vol. 49), here pp. 19–22, where he repeatedly refers to and cites the 1925 translation of the Concluding Unscientific Postscript in the second edition of the Collected Works; compare also ibid., pp. 22–30; pp. 45–8; p. 67; p. 73; p. 75; p. 102; p. 110; and pp. 151–3. Full clarification of the matter would require comparison and analysis of all the various manuscripts and drafts involved in the production of Sein und Zeit. 163

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Kierkegaard who, for long stretches, has barely anything to do with Kierkegaard at all.”168 This fact does not warrant simply dismissing Schrempf’s enormous achievements or his intellectual probity. In judging Schrempf, it is crucial to distinguish between his work as Kierkegaard interpreter and his work as Kierkegaard translator. With regard to his interpretive work, Schrempf certainly had every right to insist that “no one is master of the consequences that attach themselves to his work; nor can any thinker demand that his thoughts only be used in the manner that he intended.”169 Yet this insistence cannot justify Schrempf’s massive textual interventions, particularly those found in the second edition of Kierkegaard’s Collected Works. For a reader who knows no Danish, and so must rely on the aid of as accurate a translation as possible, it does little good when Schrempf declares, in the afterword to his revision of Gottsched’s translation of the Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1925), and with matchless condescension toward the Danish language: If one wishes to know exactly what Kierkegaard said and thought, then he ought to learn enough Danish (as I did) to be able to read his writings in the original. But if one is not able, or does not wish, to go to that (not especially arduous) trouble, then he must refrain from expecting an exact and independent knowledge of Kierkegaard. He must instead entrust himself to an interpreter who he trusts will communicate Kierkegaard’s thoughts to him as well as he understands them himself, and as well as they are capable of being expressed in another language.170

Schrempf’s own interpretive translation, however, is hardly trustworthy in this sense. He freely revised the contents of many passages, and sometimes entire paragraphs or sections, simply in order to bring them into harmony with his own views. With regard to this practice, Schrempf explained himself as follows (here from the 1924 afterword to his revision of Gottsched’s translation of Practice in Christianity): “Because I do not share Kierkegaard’s dogmatic presuppositions, I have here tried all the harder simply to let Kierkegaard say what he could have said, or should have.”171 Especially problematic here is Schrempf’s readiness to detach Kierkegaard from his

Boehlich, “Kierkegaard als Verführer,” p. 1078. Christoph Schrempf, Sören Kierkegaard. Ein unfreier Pionier der Freiheit, Frankfurt am Main: Neuer Frankfurter Verlag 1907, p. 5. 170 Schrempf, “Nachwort,” in Kierkegaard, Abschließende unwissenschaftliche Nachschrift / Zweiter Teil (1925), p. 280 [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, pp. 422–3]; see also “Nachwort,” in Kierkegaard, Entweder / Oder. Zweiter Teil (1913), p. 312 [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, p. 270]. 171 Schrempf, “Nachwort,” in Kierkegaard, Einübung im Christentum (1924), p. 232 [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, p. 397]; see also “Nachwort,” in Kierkegaard, Stadien auf dem Lebensweg (1914), p. 459 [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, p. 288]. This explicit declaration on Schrempf’s part decidedly contradicts Diem’s claim that “it [must] definitely be recognized that Schrempf labored, with the greatest conscientiousness, exclusively to transmit Kierkegaard’s meaning” (Diem, “Zur Psychologie der KierkegaardRenaissance,” p. 238 (note)). 168 169

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historical context,172 as for example by deleting his allusions to his contemporaries. For Kierkegaard’s position simply cannot be properly understood or interpreted without taking his historical context into account.173 This leaves us to ask to what extent, and precisely how, this error-ridden and distorting translation of Kierkegaard’s works affected the numerous theologians, philosophers, and writers who were influenced by Kierkegaard in the first half of the twentieth century. To what degree was it Kierkegaard whom these thinkers so productively received,174 and to what degree was it merely Schrempf’s Kierkegaard? To investigate this in detail would be an intriguing and important task—a task that deserves, but remains, to be undertaken. Translated by David D. Possen

See, for example, Schrempf, “Einleitung,” in Sören Kierkegaards agitatorische Schriften und Aufsätze. 1851–1855, p. xiv [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, p. 140]. Cf. also Schrempf, Sören Kierkegaard. Eine Biographie, vol. 1, p. x [Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, p. 445], where Schrempf freely concedes that Kierkegaard was “a man of his times far more limited by his time than he himself, it seems, was aware.” Schrempf nonetheless declined “to commemorate [Kierkegaard] historically,” as he was “indifferent” to “the extent to which Kierkegaard overcame Hegel, or remained dependent on him.” What is more, Schrempf personally found Hegel “unappealing,” and “simply had no desire” to undertake a detailed study with his philosophy merely for Kierkegaard’s sake. 173 Elsewhere I have tried to show this importance of understanding Kierkegaard’s immediate context for assessing his position with regard to his critique of characterizing faith as “the immediate”— a critique that is found in nearly all of Kierkegaard’s pseudonymously published works. See Gerhard Schreiber, “The Real Targets of Kierkegaard’s Critique of Characterizing Faith as ‘the Immediate,’ ” in Kierkegaard: East and West, pp. 137–67. 174 On the distinctions among productive reception, receptive production and their mixed types or borderline cases as different types of Kierkegaard reception, see Heiko Schulz, “Die Welt bleibt immer dieselbe. Typologisch orientierende Bemerkungen zur Rezeptionsgeschichte Søren Kierkegaards,” in his Aneignung und Reflexion, vol. 1, Studien zur Rezeption Søren Kierkegaards, pp. 3–26, here pp. 8–22. See also the schema of types of reflection in Schulz, “Germany and Austria,” pp. 308–9. 172

Bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Schrempf’s Corpus “Die Grundlage der Ethik” (1884) in Christoph Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–16 [vols. 14–16 ed. by Otto Engel], Stuttgart: Frommann 1930–40, vol. 14, p. 23; p. 109; pp. 164–5; pp. 168–9; p. 170, note; p. 180; p. 208; pp. 307–8. Sören Kierkegaard und sein neuester Beurteiler in der Theologischen Literaturzeitung (Herr Wetzel in Dornreichenbach). Ein Pamphlet, Leipzig: Richter 1887. Zur Psychologie der Sünde, der Bekehrung und des Glaubens. Zwei Schriften Sören Kierkegaards (includes The Concept of Anxiety and Philosophical Fragments), trans. and introduced by Christoph Schrempf, Leipzig: Richter 1890. “Sören Kierkegaards Stellung zu Bibel und Dogma,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, vol. 1, 1891, no. 3, pp. 179–229. “Die christliche Liebe nach Sören Kierkegaard,” Die christliche Welt, vol. 5, 1891, columns 611–15 (July 2), columns 635–7 (July 9), columns 663–5 (July 16), columns 684–7 (July 23). “Antwort,” Die christliche Welt, vol. 7, 1893, columns 297–8. Drei religiöse Reden, Stuttgart: Frommann 1893 (2nd and 3rd ed. 1893), pp. III–IV. Natürliches Christentum. Vier neue religiöse Reden, Stuttgart: Frommann 1893, pp. V–VIII. “Sancta sancte,” Die Wahrheit, vol. 2, 1894, pp. 152–9, especially p. 157. “Jesus Christus,” Die Wahrheit, vol. 3, 1895, pp. 1–12 (I), pp. 33–40 (II), pp. 71–82 (III), especially p. 33, note, p. 79, note. “Der Antichrist,” Die Wahrheit, vol. 4, 1895, pp. 18–31, especially pp. 27–31. “Mein Skeptizismus,” Die Wahrheit, vol. 4, 1895, pp. 207–15 (I), pp. 234–40 (II), especially p. 213. “Ein Kampf um Gott,” Die Wahrheit, vol. 4, 1895, pp. 257–70, especially p. 257. Søren Kierkegaard, Richtet selbst! Zur Selbstprüfung der Gegenwart anbefohlen. Zweite Reihe, trans. by Albert Dorner and Christoph Schrempf, Stuttgart: Frommann 1896. Sören Kierkegaards agitatorische Schriften und Aufsätze. 1851–1855, trans. by Albert Dorner and Christoph Schrempf, introduced by Christoph  Schrempf, Stuttgart: Frommann 1896 (Sören Kierkegaards Angriff auf die Christenheit, ed. by Albert Dorner and Christoph Schrempf, Stuttgart: Frommann 1896, vol. 1, Die Akten) (vol. 2 was never published). “Sören Kierkegaards Angriff auf die Christenheit,” Die Wahrheit, vol. 5, 1896, pp. 121–4. “Werde ein Schwätzer—und sieh: alle Schwierigkeiten verschwinden!,” trans. by Christoph Schrempf, Die Wahrheit, vol. 5, 1896, pp. 125–7.

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“Vorwort,” in Harald Høffding, Sören Kierkegaard als Philosoph, trans. by August Dorner and Christoph Schrempf, Stuttgart: Frommann 1896 (Frommanns Klassiker der Philosophie, vol. 3) (2nd ed. 1902; 3rd ed. 1922), pp. III–X. “ ‘Zuerst Gottes Reich.’ Eine Art Novelle. Von Sören Kierkegaard,” trans. by Albert Dorner and Christoph Schrempf, Protestantische Kirchenzeitung für das evangelische Deutschland, vol. 43, 1896, columns 1212–13. Sören Kierkegaard. Ein unfreier Pionier der Freiheit, introduced by Harald Høffding, Frankfurt am Main: Neuer Frankfurter Verlag 1907. Søren Kierkegaard, Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–12, trans. and ed. by Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1909–22 (2nd ed., trans. and ed. by Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1922–25). Søren Kierkegaard, Der Augenblick, trans. by Christoph Schrempf, foreword and afterword by Christoph Schrempf, 2nd ed., Jena: Diederichs 1909 (Gesammelte Werke, trans. and ed. by Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1909–22, vol. 12 (vol. 12 (1923) in 2nd ed., trans. and ed. by Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1922–25)). Søren Kierkegaard, Philosophische Brocken/Abschließende unwissenschaftliche Nachschrift, vols. 1–2, trans. by Christoph Schrempf (Philosophische Brocken) and Hermann Gottsched (Abschließende unwissenschaftliche Nachschrift), afterword by Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1910 (Gesammelte Werke, trans. and ed. by Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1909–22, vols. 6–7). Søren Kierkegaard, Entweder / Oder, vols. 1–2, trans. by Wolfgang Pfleiderer and Christoph Schrempf, afterword by Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1911– 13 (Gesammelte Werke, trans. and ed. by Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1909–22, vols. 1–2 (vols. 1–2 (1922) in 2nd ed., trans. and ed. by Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1922–25)). Review of Raoul Hoffmann, Kierkegaard und die religiöse Gewissheit. Biographischkritische Skizze, trans. from the French by Gustav Deggau, foreword by Hermann Gottsched, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1910, in Deutsche Literaturzeitung, vol. 32, 1911, pp. 1426–7. “Leo Tolstoi,” Staatsanzeiger für Württemberg, Besondere Beilage, 1911, no. 2. Søren Kierkegaard, Der Begriff der Angst, trans. by Christoph Schrempf, afterword by Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1912 (Gesammelte Werke, trans. and ed. by Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1909–22, vol. 5 (vol. 5 (1923) in 2nd ed., trans. and ed. by Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1922–25)). “Kierkegaard,” in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, vols. 1–5, ed. by Friedrich Michael Schiele, Tübingen: Mohr 1909–13, vol. 3, 1912, columns 1095–1103. “Sören Kierkegaard,” März, vol. 6, 1912, pp. 52–6 (January 13), pp. 90–7 (January 20). “Sören Kierkegaard,” Christliche Freiheit. Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt für Rheinland und Westfalen, vol. 29, 1913, pp. 309–11 (no. 19), pp. 323–9 (no. 20). Søren Kierkegaard, Stadien auf dem Lebensweg, trans. by Christoph Schrempf and Wolfgang Pfleiderer, afterword by Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs

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1914 (Gesammelte Werke, trans. and ed. by Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1909–22, vol. 4 (vol. 4 (1922) in 2nd ed., trans. and ed. by Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1922–25)). “Entwurf einer Abrechnung mit Kierkegaard” (1918), vol. 12 (1935, pp. 309–43) and vol. 16 (1940, pp. 55–91) in Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–16 [vols. 14–16 ed. by Otto Engel], Stuttgart: Frommann 1930–40. “Einleitung / Ein Nekrolog,” in Zur Theorie des Geisteskampfes, introduced and ed. by Christoph Schrempf, Stuttgart: Frommann 1922 (Frommanns philosophische Taschenbücher, vol. 4), pp. 5–26. Sören Kierkegaard. Im Kampf mit sich selbst, introduced and ed. by Christoph Schrempf, Stuttgart: Frommann 1922 (Frommanns philosophische Taschenbücher, vol. 3) (2nd ed. 1924). Søren Kierkegaard, Der Gesichtspunkt für meine Wirksamkeit als Schriftsteller. Zwei kleine ethisch-religiöse Abhandlungen. Über meine Wirksamkeit als Schriftsteller, trans. by Albert Dorner and Christoph Schrempf, afterword by Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1922 (Gesammelte Werke, trans. and ed. by Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1909–22, vol. 10 (vol. 10 (1922) in 2nd ed., trans. and ed. by Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1922–25)). Søren Kierkegaard, Zur Selbstprüfung der Gegenwart anbefohlen, trans. by Albert Dorner and Christoph Schrempf, afterword by Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1922 (Gesammelte Werke, trans. and ed. by Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1909–22, vol. 11 (vol. 11 (1922) in 2nd ed., trans. and ed. by Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1922–25)). Søren Kierkegaard, Furcht und Zittern/Die Wiederholung, trans. by Hinrich Cornelius Ketels, Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf, afterword by Christoph Schrempf, 3rd ed., Jena: Diederichs 1923 (Gesammelte Werke, trans. and ed. by Christoph Schrempf, 2nd ed., Jena: Diederichs 1922–25, vol. 3). Søren Kierkegaard, Die Krankheit zum Tode, trans. by Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf, afterword by Christoph Schrempf, 2nd ed., Jena: Diederichs 1924 (Gesammelte Werke, trans. and ed. by Christoph Schrempf, 2nd ed., Jena: Diederichs 1922–25, vol. 8). Søren Kierkegaard, Einübung im Christentum, trans. by Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf, afterword by Christoph Schrempf, 2nd ed., Jena: Diederichs 1924 (Gesammelte Werke, trans. and ed. by Christoph Schrempf, 2nd ed., Jena: Diederichs 1922–25, vol. 9) (3rd ed. 1933). Søren Kierkegaard, Erbauliche Reden, vols. 3–4 (vols. 1–2 were never published), ed. by Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1924–29. Søren Kierkegaard, Leben und Walten der Liebe, trans. by Albert Dorner and Christoph Schrempf, afterword by Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1924 (Erbauliche Reden, ed. by Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1924–29, vol. 3). Søren Kierkegaard, Philosophische Brocken/Abschließende unwissenschaftliche Nachschrift, vols. 1–2, trans. by Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf, afterword by Christoph Schrempf, 2nd ed., Jena: Diederichs 1925 (Gesammelte Werke, trans. and ed. by Christoph Schrempf, 2nd ed., Jena: Diederichs 1922–25, vols. 6–7).

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Sören Kierkegaard. Eine Biographie, vols. 1–2, Jena: Diederichs 1927–28. “Abschied von Sören Kierkegaard,” Der Diederichs-Löwe, vol. 3, 1929, pp. 138–41. “Unglück ist Glück,” trans. by Wilhelm Kütemeyer and Christoph Schrempf, Der Diederichs-Löwe, vol. 3, 1929, pp. 141–7. Søren Kierkegaard, Christliche Reden, trans. by Wilhelm Kütemeyer and Christoph Schrempf, afterword by Wilhelm Kütemeyer, Jena: Diederichs 1929 (Erbauliche Reden, ed. by Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1924–29, vol. 4). “Einleitung” (1930), vol. 1 (1930, p. LVI), in Christoph Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–16 [vols. 14–16, ed. by Otto Engel], Stuttgart: Frommann 1930– 40. “Vorwort” (1935), vol. 10 (1935, pp. VII–VIII), in Christoph Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–16 [vols. 14–16, ed. by Otto Engel], Stuttgart: Frommann 1930– 40. Auseinandersetzungen IV. Sören Kierkegaard, vols. 10–12 (1935), in Christoph Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–16 [vols. 14–16, ed. by Otto Engel], Stuttgart: Frommann 1930–40. “Mein erstes Bekenntnis zu Kierkegaard—und zu mir” (1935), vol. 10 (1935, pp. 1–2), in Christoph Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–16 [vols. 14–16, ed. by Otto Engel], Stuttgart: Frommann 1930–40. “Der Fall Kierkegaard” (1935), vol. 12 (1935, pp. 453–63), in Christoph Schrempf, Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–16 [vols. 14–16, ed. by Otto Engel], Stuttgart: Frommann 1930–40. Søren Kierkegaard, Entweder – Oder, trans. by Christoph Schrempf, ed. by Fritz Droop, introduced by Max Bense, Leipzig: Dieterich 1939 (Sammlung Dieterich, vol. 40). II. Sources of Schrempf’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Anonymous [Kübel, Robert], Christliche Bedenken über modern christliches Wesen. Von einem Sorgenvollen, 2nd ed., Gütersloh: Bertelsmann 1889. Bärthold, Albert, Noten zu Sören Kierkegaards Lebensgeschichte, ed. by Albert Bärthold, Halle: Fricke 1876. — Die Bedeutung der ästhetischen Schriften Sören Kierkegaards mit Bezug auf G. Brandes: “Sören Kierkegaard, ein literarisches Charakterbild,” Halle: Fricke 1879. — Zur theologischen Bedeutung Sören Kierkegaards, Halle: Fricke 1880. — S. Kierkegaards Persönlichkeit in ihrer Verwirklichung der Ideale, Gütersloh: Bertelsmann 1886. — Geleitbrief für Sören Kierkegaards: “Ein Bißchen Philosophie!,” Leipzig: Richter 1890. Bestmann, Hugo Johann, “Vorrede,” in Furcht und Zittern. Dialektische Lyrik von Johannes de silentio (Sören Kierkegaard), trans. and ed. by Hinrich Cornelius Ketels, Erlangen: Deichert 1882 (Sören Kierkegaards Hauptschriften

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in Verbindung mit Johannes Biernatzki und Hinrich Cornelius  Ketels, ed. by Hugo Johannes Bestmann, vol. 1), pp. VII–XVI. Brandes, Georg, Sören Kierkegaard. Ein literarisches Charakterbild, anonymously trans. by Adolf Strodtmann, Leipzig: Barth 1879. Heiberg, Peter Andreas, Kierkegaard-Studier I. En Episode i Søren Kierkegaards Ungdomsliv, Copenhagen and Kristiania 1912. Høffding, Harald, Søren Kierkegaard som Filosof, Copenhagen: Philipsen 1892. Kierkegaard, Søren, Begrebet Angest. En simpel psychologisk-paapegende Overveielse i Retning af det dogmatiske Problem om Arvesynden af Vigilius Haufniensis, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 1844 (2nd ed. 1855). — Philosophiske Smuler eller En Smule Philosophi. Af Johannes Climacus. Udgivet af S. Kierkegaard, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 1844 (2nd ed. 1865). — Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift til de philosophiske Smuler. Mimiskpathetisk-dialektisk Sammenskrift, Existentielt Indlæg, af Johannes Climacus. Udgiven af S. Kierkegaard, 2nd ed., Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 1874. — Om min Forfatter-Virksomhed, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 1851. — Til Selvprøvelse, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 1851 (2nd ed. 1852; 3rd ed. 1856). — Dette skal siges; saa være det da sagt, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 1855 (2nd ed. 1855). — Guds Uforanderlighed, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 1855 (2nd ed. 1882). — Øieblikket (nos. 1–9), 2nd ed., Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 1855. — S. Kierkegaard’s Bladartikler, med Bilag samlede efter Forfatterens Død, ed. by Rasmus Nielsen, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 1857. — Synspunktet for min Forfatter-Virksomhed. En ligefrem Meddelelse, Rapport til Historien, ed. by Peter Christian Kierkegaard, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 1859. — Dømmer selv! Til Selvprøvelse Samtiden anbefalet. Anden Række. Af S. Kierkegaard (1851–52), ed. by Peter Christian Kierkegaard, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 1876. — Af Søren Kierkegaards Efterladte Papirer, vols. 1–8, ed. by Hans Peter Barfod and Hermann Gottsched, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 1869–81. — Sören Kierkegaard. Eine Verfasser-Existenz eigner Art. Aus seinen Mittheilungen zusammengestellt, trans. and ed. by Albert Bärthold, Halberstadt: Frantz 1873. — Aus und über Sören Kierkegaard. Früchte und Blätter, trans. and ed. by Albert Bärthold, Halberstadt: Frantz 1874. — Zwölf Reden von Sören Kierkegaard, trans. and ed. by Albert Bärthold, Halle: Fricke 1875. — Von den Lilien auf dem Felde und den Vögeln unter dem Himmel. Drei Reden Sören Kierkegaards, trans. and ed. by A.B. [Albert Bärthold], Halberstadt: Meyer 1876. — Die Lilien auf dem Felde und die Vögel unter dem Himmel. Drei fromme Reden. Hoherpriester—Zöllner—Sünderin. Drei Beichtreden, trans. and ed. by Albert Bärthold, Halle: Fricke 1877. — Lessing und die objective Wahrheit aus Sören Kierkegaards Schriften zusammengestellt, trans. and ed. by Albert Bärthold, Halle: Fricke 1877. — Einübung im Christentum, trans. and ed. by Albert Bärthold, Halle: Fricke 1878.

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— Die Krankheit zum Tode. Eine christliche psychologische Entwicklung zur Erbauung und Erweckung, trans. and ed. by Albert Bärthold, Halle: Fricke 1881. — Zur Selbstprüfung der Gegenwart empfohlen, trans. and ed. by Christian Hansen, 3rd ed., Erlangen: Deichert 1881. — Furcht und Zittern. Dialektische Lyrik von Johannes de silentio (Sören Kierkegaard), trans. by Hinrich Cornelius  Ketels, Erlangen: Deichert 1882 (Sören Kierkegaards Hauptschriften in Verbindung mit Johannes Biernatzki und Hinrich Cornelius Ketels, ed. by Hugo Johannes Bestmann, vol. 1). — Entweder – Oder. Ein Lebens-Fragment, trans. and ed. by Alexander Michelsen and Otto Gleiß, Leipzig: Lehmann 1885. — Stadien auf dem Lebenswege, trans. and ed. by Albert Bärthold, Leipzig: Lehmann 1886. — Leben und Walten der Liebe, trans. and ed. by Albert Dorner, Leipzig: Richter 1890. — Samlede Værker, vols. I–XIV, ed. by Anders Bjørn Drachmann, Johan Ludvig Heiberg, and Hans Ostenfeldt Lange, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1901–06. — Buch des Richters. Seine Tagebücher 1833–1855 im Auszug, trans. and ed. by Hermann Gottsched, Jena and Leipzig: Diederichs 1905. — Søren Kierkegaards Papirer, vols. I–X.2, ed. by Peter Andreas Heiberg and Victor Kuhr, Copenhagen: Gyldendal, Nordisk Forlag 1909–26. — Kierkegaardske Papirer. Forlovelsen, ed. by Regine Schlegel and Raphael Meyer, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1904. Martensen, Hans Lassen, Aus meinem Leben. Mittheilungen, vols. 1–2, trans. by Alexander Michelsen, Karlsruhe and Leipzig: Reuther 1883–84. Michelsen, Alexander, “Kierkegaard, Sören Aaby,” in Real-Encyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche, vols. 1–18, ed. by Johann Jakob Herzog (vols. 1–11), Gustav Leopold Plitt (vols. 1–8) and Albert Hauck (vols. 9–18), 2nd ed., Leipzig: Hinrichs 1877–88, vol. 7, 1880, pp. 664–70. Monrad, Olaf Peder, Sören Kierkegaard. Sein Leben und seine Werke, Jena: Diederichs 1909. Strodtmann, Adolf, Das geistige Leben in Dänemark. Streifzüge auf den Gebieten der Kunst, Literatur, Politik und Journalistik des skandinavischen Nordens, Berlin: Paetel 1873. Wetzel, Paul, “Kierkegaard, S. [Viktor Eremita], Entweder – Oder. Ein Lebensfragment. Aus dem Dänischen von D. Al. Michelsen u. P. O. Gleiß. Leipzig, Lehmann, 1885,” Theologische Literaturzeitung, vol. 11, 1886, no. 12 (June 12), columns 279–82. — “Kierkegaard, Sören, Stadien auf dem Lebenswege. Studien von Verschiedenen. Zusammengebracht, zum Druck befördert und hrsg. von Hilarius Buchbinder. Uebersetzt von A. Bärthold. Leipzig, Lehmann Nachf., 1886,” Theologische Literaturzeitung, vol. 11, 1886, no. 22 (October 30), columns 522–4.

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III. Secondary Literature on Schrempf’s Relation to Kierkegaard Adorno, Theodor W., Kierkegaard. Konstruktion des Ästhetischen, (Habilitation Thesis, University of Frankfurt am Main 1931), Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck) 1933 (Beiträge zur Philosophie und ihrer Geschichte, vol. 2), pp. 8–9, p. 16, p. 54, p. 103. Anz, Wilhelm, “Zur Wirkungsgeschichte Kierkegaards in der deutschen Theologie und Philosophie,” in Die Rezeption Søren Kierkegaards in der deutschen und dänischen Philosophie und Theologie. Vorträge des Kolloquiums am 22. und 23. März 1982, ed. by Heinrich Anz et al., Copenhagen and Munich: Fink 1983 (Text & Kontext: Sonderreihe, vol. 15) (Kopenhagener Kolloquien zur deutschen Literatur, vol. 7), pp. 11–29, p. 12 and p. 21. Bartels, Cora, Kierkegaard receptus I. Die theologiegeschichtliche Bedeutung der Kierkegaard-Rezeption Rudolf Bultmanns, Göttingen: V&R Unipress 2008, especially pp. 29–63. Bärthold, Albert, “Aus Kierkegaard zur Sache Schrempfs,” Die christliche Welt, vol. 13, 1893, columns 293–5. Basso, Ingrid, “The Italian Reception of Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2005, pp. 400–17, especially p. 401 and p. 404. Baumann, Peter Christian, “Das Genie auf der Schulbank. Kann Kierkegaard ins Deutsche übersetzt werden?,” Die Zeit, 1949, no. 23 (June 9). Bergen, G.G. van, “Zelfonderzoek. S. Kierkegaard, Zur Selbstprüfung der Gegenwart anbefohlen (vert. A. Dorner en Chr. Schrempf; Diederichs Verlag, Jena, 1922),” Vlaamsche arbeid, vol. 18, 1923, pp. 24–6. Berthenau, Jochen, “Die historische Bedeutung Christoph Schrempfs,” in Christoph Schrempf 1860–1944—Ein Sohn unserer Stadt, ed. by Geschichtsverein Besigheim, Besigheim: Geschichtsverein Besigheim 2002 (Besigheimer Geschichtsblätter, vol. 21), pp. 24–34, especially pp. 28–32. Boehlich, Walter, “Kierkegaard als Verführer,” Merkur, vol. 7, 1953, pp. 1075–89, especially pp. 1077–80. Bonhoff, Karl, “Die neue deutsche Kierkegaard-Ausgabe,” Protestantische Monatshefte, vol. 18, 1914, pp. 17–22, especially pp. 19–21. Brecht, Franz Josef, “Die Kierkegaardforschung im letzten Jahrfünft,” Literarische Berichte aus dem Gebiete der Philosophie, no. 25, 1931, pp. 5–35, especially pp. 6–7 and pp. 18–20. Diem, Hermann, “Zur Psychologie der Kierkegaard-Renaissance,” Zwischen den Zeiten, vol. 10, 1932, pp. 216–48, especially pp. 237–9 and pp. 245–7. — “Christoph Schrempf und Sören Kierkegaard,” Die Zeichen der Zeit, vol. 14, 1960, pp. 148–9. Engel, Otto, “Der Weg ‘Kierkegaard’. Zu seinem 100sten Todestag (11. November 1855/1955),” Stuttgarter Zeitung, no. 260 (November 11, 1955) (reprinted in Otto Engel, Distanz und Hingabe. Philosophische und literarische Essays, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann 1971, pp. 111–20, especially pp. 118–19). — “Kierkegaard und seine deutschen Übersetzer,” Stuttgarter Zeitung, Literaturblatt, no. 260 (November 6, 1954) (reprinted in Otto Engel, Distanz und Hingabe.

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Philosophische und literarische Essays, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann 1971, pp. 120–4). Getzeny, Heinrich, “Kierkegaards Eindeutschung. Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Geistes geschichte der letzten hundert Jahre,” Historisches Jahrbuch, vol. 76, 1957, pp. 181–192, especially pp. 186–7. Glöckner, Dorothea, “Literaturbericht: Furcht und Zittern/Die Wiederholung in der deutschsprachigen Kierkegaard-Forschung,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2002, pp. 330–52, especially p. 330 and p. 346. Graue, Paul, “Sören Kierkegaards Angriff auf die Christenheit. Von A. Dorner und Chr. Schrempf, 2 Bände, Stuttgart: Fr. Frommann’s, 1896,” Die christliche Welt, vol. 12, 1898, columns 147–50 (February 17), columns 170–9 (February 24), columns 195–202 (March 3). Haecker, Theodor, “Nachwort,” in Søren Kierkegaard, Der Begriff des Auserwählten, trans. and ed. by Theodor Haecker, Hellerau: Hegner 1917, pp. 335–421, especially p. 369 and p. 379. Hansen-Löve, Friedrich, “Der deutsche Sören Kierkegaard,” Wort und Wahrheit, vol. 7, 1952, pp. 624–6, especially pp. 624–5. Harbsmeier, Eberhard, “Von der ‘geheimen Freudigkeit des verborgnen Wohlstandes’. Zum Problem deutscher Kierkegaardübersetzungen,” Kierkegaardiana, vol. 17, 1994, pp. 130–41. Havelaar, Just, “Kierkegaard (N.a.v. Kierkegaard im Kampf mit sich selbst (Chr. Schrempf), Fromanns [sic!] Verlag, Stuttgart),” De stem, vol. 3, 1923, pp. 177–81. Herzog, Johannes, “Sören  Kierkegaard  und Christoph Schrempf,” Die christliche Welt, vol. 43, 1929, columns 438–48. Hesse, Hermann, “Neue Kierkegaard-Ausgaben,” Vivos voco. Zeitschrift für neues Deutschtum, vol. 1, 1920 (no. 10, July), pp. 658–9 (reprinted in Hermann Hesse, Sämtliche Werke, vols. 1–21, ed. by Volker Michels, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 2001–07, vol. 18, 2003, p. 169). — “Beim Einpacken,” Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten, 1928, No. 182 (August 5) (reprinted in Hermann Hesse, Sämtliche Werke, vols. 1–21, ed. by Volker Michels, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 2001–07, vol. 19, 2003, p. 80). — “Über Christoph Schrempf,” Im Banne des Unbedingten. Christoph Schrempf zugeeignet, ed. by Hermann Hesse et al., Stuttgart: Frommann 1930, pp. 5–13 (also in Die neue Rundschau, vol. 41/I, 1930, pp. 552–8) (reprinted in Hermann Hesse, Sämtliche Werke, vols. 1–21, ed. by Volker Michels, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 2001–07, vol. 19, 2003, pp. 145–52). — “Christoph Schrempf. Zu seinem 75. Geburtstage am 28. April 1935,” Die neue Rundschau, vol. 46, 1935, pp. 540–3 (reprinted in Hermann Hesse, Sämtliche Werke, vols. 1–21, ed. by Volker Michels, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 2001– 07, vol. 21, 2007, pp. 923–7). — “Nachruf auf Christoph Schrempf,” Neue Schweizer Rundschau, vol. 11, 1944, pp. 717–26 (reprinted in Hermann Hesse, Sämtliche Werke, vols. 1–21, ed. by Volker Michels, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 2001–7, vol. 12, 2003, pp. 428– 37). Hirsch, Emanuel, “Das ethische Stadium bei Sören Kierkegaard. Von Prof. Eduard Geismar. Aus dem Dänischen übersetzt und für deutsche Leser in den

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Anmerkungen ergänzt von E. Hirsch,” Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie, vol. 1, 1923, pp. 227–300, especially p. 228. — “Sören Kierkegaard, Leben und Walten der Liebe. Übersetzt von A. Dorner und Chr. Schrempf, 1924,” Theologische Literaturzeitung, vol. 49, 1924, column 405. — “Schrempf, Christoph: Sören Kierkegaard. Eine Biographie. Bd. I. 1. u. 2. Tsd. Jena: E. Diederichs 1927,” Theologische Literaturzeitung, vol. 52, 1927, columns 548–9. — “Zum Verständnis von Kierkegaards Verlobungszeit,” Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie, vol. 5, 1928, pp. 55–75, especially p. 55 (note). — “Christoph Schrempf, Sören Kierkegaard. Eine Biographie. 2. Bd., Jena 1928,” Theologische Literaturzeitung, vol. 54, 1929, columns 260–2. — “Sören Kierkegaard, Christliche Reden. Übersetzt von W. Kütemeyer und Chr. Schrempf, 1929,” Theologische Literaturzeitung, vol. 56, 1931, columns 450–2. — “Wie ich zu Kierkegaard kam. Aus einem Brief von E. Hirsch an den Verlag C. Bertelsmann in Gütersloh,” in Mitteilungen aus dem Verlag C. Bertelsmann in Gütersloh, Gütersloh: Bertelsmann 1930, pp. 3–5. — Kierkegaard-Studien, vols. 1–2, Gütersloh: Bertelsmann 1930–33 (Studien des apologetischen Seminars, nos. 29, 31, 32, 36), vol. 1, pp. 26–7 [154–5] (note 2), p. 30 [158] (note 1), p. 80 [208] (note 3); vol. 2, p. 95 [697] (note 1), p. 266 [868] (note 4), p. 357 [959]. Kleinert, Markus, “Theodor Haecker: The Mobilization of a Total Author,” in Kierkegaard’s Influence on Literature, Criticism, and Art, Tome I, The Germanophone World, ed. by Jon Stewart, Aldershot: Ashgate 2013 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 12). Kloeden, Wolfdietrich von, “Schrempf, Christoph,” Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, vols. 1–32, ed. by Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz and Traugott Bautz, Nordhausen: Verlag Traugott Bautz 1975–2011, vol. 9, 1995, columns 974–6. — “Die deutschsprachige Forschung,” in Kierkegaard Research, ed. by Niels Thulstrup and Marie Mikulová Thulstrup, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 1987 (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 15), pp. 37–108, especially pp. 41–3. Lincoln, Ulrich, “Literaturbericht. ‘Der Liebe Tun’ in der deutschsprachigen Kierkegaard-Forschung,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 1998, pp. 213–31, especially pp. 214–15 and p. 217, note. — “Literaturbericht: Der Begriff Angst in der deutschsprachigen KierkegaardForschung,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2001, pp. 295–312, especially p. 296. Lowrie, Walter, “Introduction,” in Sören Kierkegaard, Stages on Life’s Way, trans. by Walter Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1940, p. 14, note. — “How Kierkegaard Got into English,” in Repetition, trans. and ed. by Walter Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1941, pp. 175–212, especially p. 190. — “Preface,” in Sören Kierkegaard, On Authority and Revelation, The Book on Adler, trans. by Walter Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1955, pp. VI–VII.

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— “Translators and Interpreters of Søren Kierkegaard,” Theology Today, vol. 12, 1955, pp. 312–27, especially p. 314, pp. 317–18, p. 323. Malik, Habib C., Receiving Søren Kierkegaard: The Early Impact and Transmission of His Thought, Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press 1997, pp. 311–15, pp. 332–8. Mumbauer, Johannes, “Sören Kierkegaard,” Hochland, vol. 10/II, 1913, pp. 184–94, especially pp. 193–4. Mustard, Helen M., “Sören Kierkegaard in German Literary Periodicals, 1860– 1930,” Germanic Review, vol. 26, 1951, pp. 83–101, especially, pp. 86–7, pp. 89–90, pp. 93–4, p. 101. Purkarthofer, Richard B., “Zur deutschsprachigen Rezeptionsgeschichte von Kierkegaards Nachlass,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2003, pp. 316–45, especially p. 329. Olesen, Tonny Aagaard, “On Annotating The Concept of Irony with Reference to the Editorial History,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2000, pp. 396–421, especially p. 402. Olesen Larsen, Kristoffer, Søren Kierkegaard Læst af K. Olesen Larsen, ed. by Vibeke  Olesen  Larsen and Tage Wilhjelm Copenhagen: Gad 1966 (Efterladte Arbejder, vol. 2), pp. 239–48; and pp. 259–60. Rest, Walter, “Die kontroverstheologische Relevanz Sören Kierkegaards,” Catholica, vol. 9, 1952–53, Part 2, pp. 81–94; reprinted in Sören Kierkegaard, ed. by Heinz Horst Schrey, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1971 (Wege der Forschung, vol. 179), pp. 155–72, especially pp. 163–4. Rössler, Andreas, “Menschliche Freiheit und göttliche Vorherbestimmung nach Christoph Schrempf,” in Tradition und Fortschritt. Württembergische Kirchengeschichte im Wandel. Festschrift für Hermann Ehmer zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. by Norbert Haag et al., Epfendorf: bibliotheca academica Verlag 2008 (Quellen und Forschungen zur württembergischen Kirchengeschichte, vol. 20), pp. 301–26, especially p. 302, p. 304, p. 306. — Christoph Schrempf (1860–1944). Württembergischer Theologe, Kirchenrebell und Religionsphilosoph. Ein Leben in unerbittlicher Wahrhaftigkeit, Stuttgart: Verein für württembergische Kirchengeschichte 2010 (Kleine Schriften des Vereins für württembergische Kirchengeschichte, vol. 7), p. 6; p. 11; p. 45; pp. 57–8. Ruttenbeck, Walter, Sören Kierkegaard. Der christliche Denker und sein Werk, Berlin: Trowitzsch & Sohn 1929 (Neue Studien zur Geschichte der Theologie und der Kirche, vol. 25), especially p. 4; p. 20, note; p. 103, note p. 122, note; p. 124, note; p. 161, note; pp. 234–5, note, pp. 281–2, note, pp. 290–2. Schröer, Henning, “Kierkegaard, Søren Aabye (1813–1855),” in Theologische Realenzyklopädie, vols. 1–36, ed. by Gerhard Müller et al., Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter 1976–2004, vol. 18, 1989, pp. 138–55, especially pp. 150–1. Schulz, Heiko, “Die theologische Rezeption Kierkegaards in Deutschland und Dänemark. Notizen zu einer historischen Typologie,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 1999, pp. 220–44, especially p. 223, p. 229.

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— “Rezeptionsgeschichtliche Brocken oder die Brocken in der deutschen Rezeption. Umrisse einer vorläufigen Bestandsaufnahme,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2004, pp. 375–451, especially pp. 378–81 and pp. 389–91. — “Rezeptionsgeschichtliche Nachschrift oder die Nachschrift in der deutschen Rezeption. Eine forschungsgeschichtliche Skizze,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2005, pp. 351–99, especially pp. 354–7 and pp. 364–9. — “Germany and Austria: A Modest Head Start: The German Reception of Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard’s International Reception, Tome I, Northern and Western Europe, ed. by Jon Stewart, Aldershot: Ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 8), pp. 307–419, especially pp. 314–18, pp. 321–2, pp. 328–32. — “Faith, Love and Self-Understanding. The Kierkegaard-Reception of Rudolf Bultmann,” in his Aneignung und Reflexion, vol. 1, Studien zur Rezeption Søren Kierkegaards, Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter 2011 (Kierkegaard Studies Monograph Series, vol. 24), pp. 233–73. Schwab, Philipp, “ ‘Ein altes, seltsames Buch kommt uns aus dem Dänischen zu…’ Grundlinien der deutschsprachigen Rezeptionsgeschichte von Entweder/Oder,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2008, pp. 365–427, especially pp. 391–8. Stewart, Jon, “France: Kierkegaard as a Forerunner of Existentialism and Poststructuralism,” in Kierkegaard’s International Reception, Tome I: Northern and Western Europe, ed. by Jon Stewart, Aldershot: Ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 8), pp. 421–74, especially pp. 426–7. Wilke, Matthias, Die Kierkegaard-Rezeption Emanuel Hirschs, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2005, pp. 33–5, pp. 40–3, pp. 64–5.

Helmut Thielicke: Kierkegaard’s Subjectivity for a Theology of Being Kyle A. Roberts

Helmut Thielicke’s (1908–86) theology developed in the traumatic intellectual and social context of twentieth-century Germany. Upon completion of his theological training, Thielicke taught theology and served as a pastor at Württemberg and subsequently at Heidelberg. He was banned from teaching by the National Socialists after his critique of their underlying ideology became known. After the war, Thielicke joined the faculty at Tübingen and later at Hamburg where he completed his most significant theological work. Both a theologian and a churchman, he sought to engage a third way beyond the polarities of conservatism and liberalism. He articulated, in his mature systematic theology, an Evangelical Faith for a modern context characterized by a crisis of faith in theology.1 The title he had originally conceived for this work, Being in Truth, illuminates his central thesis that theology is reflection upon the ontic relation between God and humanity. In this sense, theology is necessarily, but not irreducibly, anthropological. Theology reflects humanity’s response to the Word and the gospel. The theologian does not articulate “objective” knowledge of the relation between God and humanity so much as explore the implications of being constituted by that relation. True knowledge of God requires, then, for Thielicke, that the knower be in the truth. In developing this theme and in suggesting a way beyond the crisis of the modern world, Thielicke found a considerable dialogue partner in Kierkegaard. This article is structured along the lines of primary themes which Thielicke formulated in his most condensed, sustained and recent discussion of Kierkegaard in Modern Faith and Thought.2 Related themes and points of contact from his earlier three-volume Evangelical Faith will be considered along the way. The article will conclude with a summary of Thielicke’s assessment of Kierkegaard’s contribution to modern theology.

1 Helmut Thielicke, Der evangelische Glaube, vols. 1–3, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1968– 78. (English translation: Evangelical Faith, vols. 1–3, trans. by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans 1974–82.) 2 Helmut Thielicke, Glauben und Denken in der Neuzeit, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1983. (English translation: Modern Faith and Thought, trans. by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans 1990.)

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I. A Preliminary Note on Thielicke’s Treatment of Pseudonymity Before turning to the material content of Thielicke’s reception of Kierkegaard, it is necessary to discuss his approach to the authorship. In Modern Faith and Thought, his most thorough and sustained discussion of Kierkegaard’s influence on modern theology, Thielicke acknowledged the hermeneutical import of pseudonymity in the authorship.3 He was clearly indebted to Kierkegaard’s explanation of this literary strategy in The Point of View for My Work as an Author. Thielicke argued that while the pseudonyms represented multiple stages of existence, Kierkegaard himself adopts these perspectives as his own.4 Underneath his many masks, it was Kierkegaard speaking: “They are stages on his life’s way, or at least aesthetic, tragic, erotic and ethical possibilities within himself. Yet in them he speaks as one who has been brought into truth, as a religious author. Thus the disguise has an ironic tone. He is this, and yet he is not.”5 For Thielicke, Kierkegaard’s use of pseudonymity underscored the latter’s point that thought is necessarily in process, and truth and, as a relational concept, is always tied to the authenticity of being. As Thielicke put it, “Not what we think is essential, but how, the extent to which we are existentially involved, whether we are ‘existing thinkers.’ ”6 It is important to note, however, that Thielicke never does Kierkegaard the favor of citing his pseudonymous authors.7 His dependence on the notion that Kierkegaard spoke through them rendered them, for Thielicke, hermeneutically superfluous. It is therefore unclear how they impact his reading of the texts. Nonetheless, Thielicke’s acceptance of Kierkegaard’s self-description of his authorship served his project well. When read from a theological perspective as a coherent, strategic unity, Kierkegaard’s corpus had much to offer in the service of a prophetic theology for the modern world. II. The Existential Unconditionality of Christian Truth Thielicke gave “Die existenzielle Unbedingtheit” (or, as rendered in the English translation, “Existential Unconditionality”)8 as the title for his assessment of Kierkegaard’s contribution to modern theology. Though he did not concisely define Thielicke, Glauben und Denken in der Neuzeit, p. 595. (Modern Faith and Thought, p. 491.) 4 Ibid. 5 Thielicke, Glauben und Denken in der Neuzeit, p. 615. (Modern Faith and Thought, p. 511.) 6 Thielicke, Glauben und Denken in der Neuzeit, p. 595. (Modern Faith and Thought, p. 492.) 7 This is, of course, contrary to Kierkegaard’s own stated wishes: “Therefore, if it should occur to anyone to want to quote a particular passage from the books, it is my wish, my prayer, that he will do me the kindness of citing the respective pseudonymous author’s name, not mine—that is, of separating us in such a way that the passage femininely belongs to the pseudonymous author, the responsibility civilly to me.” SKS 7, 572 / CUP1, 627. 8 Thielicke, Glauben und Denken in der Neuzeit, pp. 595–649. (Modern Faith and Thought, pp. 490–545.) 3

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what he meant by Unbedingtheit or “unconditionality,” with respect to Kierkegaard’s own conceptual apparatus, the idea is nonetheless drawn out over the course of his discussion. He began with Kierkegaard’s critique of G.W.F. Hegel’s (1770–1831) speculative, dialectical method. The main point, for Thielicke, was Kierkegaard’s insistence that the existing individual not be subsumed underneath the system. As he put it, “the main theme of Kierkegaard is the problem of the existence of individuals and of the existential relationship of all the resultant reality. His concern is with existential unconditionality.”9 The modern world had turned to an anthropological understanding of truth, in which truth was defined by reference to the objective reason of the thinking subject. Kierkegaard rightly perceived that such a view of truth betrayed a reductive understanding of the human person as essentially rational. Kierkegaard had also rightly recognized that objective thought cannot achieve objective certainty regarding the existence of an infinite God. Objectivity emphasizes only one aspect of the human being (rationality) and assumes that thereby it can appropriate truth of the divine. This is tantamount, for Kierkegaard, to relating relatively to the Absolute; true knowledge of God requires an absolute relation. The only kind of certainty possible with respect to knowledge of the divine is subjective certainty. Christian truth is, therefore, the “unconditioned,” because at its center is the infinite God revealed in the paradox of the God-man. In the third volume of his Evangelical Faith, Thielicke suggested that human beings are “the conditioned,” but “God and Christ is the unconditioned.”10 Persons must then relate to God in Christ contemporaneously, subjectively, and passionately in order to be adequately disposed toward the unconditioned truth of Christianity. Kierkegaard became, for Thielicke, a resource for navigating a new course through the complex questions of truth and subjectivity in the modern world. Kierkegaard was a natural dialogue partner for articulating a theology that connected the ontic to the epistemic, or Being in Truth. III. Subjectivity, Truth, and the Existing Thinker Thielicke pinpointed Kierkegaard’s concept of the existing thinker as “the term which brings out Kierkegaard’s singularity.”11 While the existing thinker takes subjectivity into account, the abstract, disinterested thinker ignores the concreteness of history and tries to conceive of existence without movement. For Kierkegaard, subjectivity lies at the root of all true thought, and thus the location of the thinker and the interest of the thinker in the object of thought is of supreme importance. Thielicke cited Kierkegaard’s critique of Hegel: “All logical thinking employs the language of abstraction, and is sub specie aeterni.”12 For Kierkegaard, because Thielicke, Glauben und Denken in der Neuzeit, pp. 597–8. (Modern Faith and Thought, p. 494.) 10 Thielicke, Der evangelische Glaube, vol. 3, p. 7. (Evangelical Faith, vol. 3, p. xxviii.) 11 Thielicke, Glauben und Denken in der Neuzeit, p. 598. (Modern Faith and Thought, p. 495.) 12 Ibid. Thielicke cites Kierkegaard’s Abschließende unwissenschaftliche Nachschrift, vol. 2, in Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–16, ed. by Emanuel Hirsch and Hayo Gerdes, trans. by 9

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the thinker is a historically located being, the process of thought is never finished. Thielicke employed the phrase “true truth” to connote Kierkegaard’s insistence that truth always hinges on the relation of the knowing subject to the object.13 Truth is defined as a way, not a result. As such, it is only accessible through a process of appropriation. He quotes Anti-Climacus here: “Only then do I truly know the truth when it becomes a life in me.”14 In the Evangelical Faith, Thielicke discusses the problem of modern theology as being the “ambivalence of human subjectivity.”15 Modern theologians, such as Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) and Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), remained beholden to the “Cartesian I” as a starting place for theology. They addressed the problem of human subjectivity by limiting the reference of theology to human ideas. As Thielicke explained it, Kierkegaard broke from the Cartesian tradition by beginning with the subjectivity, not of rationality or feeling, but of the new creation of faith which participates (by passionate inwardness) in that which it knows. He emphasized the absolute paradox and the contradiction of the Christian message that God actually became a single, individual human being. Kierkegaard’s response to the ambivalence of subjectivity was to join the subjectivity of knowledge as the means of appropriation with the paradoxical but ontic reality of the eternal God in history. The answer to the ambivalence of subjectivity, for Kierkegaard, was the relinquishment of objective approaches to theology and a turn to the rigor of (subjective) commitment in the face of objective uncertainty.16 The turn to subjectivity, then, requires the “infinite passion of inwardness.”17 Subjective thinkers do not reflect dispassionately on the object of knowledge, but on the relation between themselves and the object. The truth or falsity of the object is less important than the authenticity of the thinker’s relation to it. The subject can then be “in the truth even if the relation is to untruth.”18 For Kierkegaard, the problem of thinking of God objectively is that God is a subject, “and thus exists only for subjectivity in inwardness.”19 Thielicke pointed to Kierkegaard’s concept H.-M. Junghans, Düsseldorf and Cologne: Eugen Diederichs 1957–58. The English version cites Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. by David Swenson and Walter Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1974, p. 273, which corresponds to SKS 7, 281 / CUP1, 307. 13 Thielicke, Glauben und Denken in der Neuzeit, p. 599. (Modern Faith and Thought, p. 496.) 14 Ibid. Thielicke cites Kierkegaard’s Einübung im Christentum, in Gesammelte Werke, vol. 26, ed. by Emanuel Hirsch and Hayo Gerdes, trans. by Emanuel Hirsch, Düsseldorf and Cologne: Eugen Diederichs 1951, p. 197. (Training in Christianity, trans. by Walter Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1972, p. 202, which corresponds to SKS 12, 203 / PC, 206) Thielicke does not note the pseudonym here. 15 Thielicke, Der evangelische Glaube, vol. 1, p. 154. (Evangelical Faith, vol. 1, p. 122.) 16 Thielicke, Der evangelische Glaube, vol. 1, pp. 444–6. (Evangelical Faith, vol. 1, pp. 304–6.) 17 Thielicke, Glauben und Denken in der Neuzeit, p. 600. (Modern Faith and Thought, p. 497.) 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid.

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of the “moment” as the phenomenon where eternity and time touch each other,20 noting that, for Kierkegaard, this experience is only possible for those who are “existentially involved,” or “passionately interested in their relation to the eternal.”21 In his discussion of Kierkegaard’s relation to Kant, Thielicke pointed out that Kierkegaard’s break with Cartesian epistemology was not “a declaration of theological bankruptcy,” but a deconstructive step toward recovering the uniqueness of the Christian message and its transformational efficacy.22 IV. Christology, Indirect Knowledge, and the Leap of Faith The concept of the moment is clearly connected to Christology in Kierkegaard’s thought. Thielicke noted that Kierkegaard put the problem of Christology very differently from Schleiermacher, Hegel, and Strauss. For these thinkers, Christ “represented an idea, e.g. that of humanity or that of reconciliation.” But ideas “are not tied to a temporal moment. On the contrary, they transcend time, and to objective thought they are thus like stars in an eternal firmament.”23 Locating the referent of theological language in ideas alone is to avoid the “collision.” Kierkegaard’s insistence on the fact that God became a particular human being, on the other hand, ensured the paradox and heightened the collision. In his discussion of the place of revelation in modern theology, Thielicke made use of Kierkegaard’s development of the God-man as the absolute paradox. The fact that God enters history as an individual human being means that his revelation to humanity is incognito.24 As Thielicke put it, the salvation event is based on historical facts; these facts have “ontic reality.”25 The facts of history can only be known by approximation, however; thus the experience of salvation cannot be mediated through direct appropriation of history. The Gospel records allow for Christ to be perceived either as a merely a historical phenomenon or as the Lord of history. Thielicke explains that, for Kierkegaard, Christ can be known both as a phenomenon Thielicke, Glauben und Denken in der Neuzeit, p. 602. (Modern Faith and Thought, p. 498.) The German edition cites Der Begriff der Angst, Abteilung 11 in Gesammelte Werke, ed. by Emanuel Hirsch and Hayo Gerdes, trans. by Emanuel Hirsch, Düsseldorf and Cologne: Eugen Diederichs 1951, p. 90. The English version cites The Concept of Dread, trans. by Walter Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1973, p. 80, which corresponds to SKS 4, 393 / CA, 89. 21 This is Thielicke’s summary of Kierkegaard’s point. Thielicke, Glauben und Denken in der Neuzeit, p. 602 (Modern Faith and Thought, p. 498.) 22 Thielicke, Der evangelische Glaube, vol. 1, p. 446. (Evangelical Faith, vol. 1, p. 307.) 23 Thielicke, Glauben und Denken in der Neuzeit, p. 602. (Modern Faith and Thought, p. 499.) 24 Ibid. Thielicke cites Training in Christianity, noting that the Incarnation is “the greatest possible, the infinitely qualitative remove from being God, and therefore the profoundest incognito.” The German edition cites Einübung im Christentum, p. 122, while the English cites Training in Christianity, trans. by Walter Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1944, p. 127, which corresponds to SKS 12, 132–3 / PC, 127–8. 25 Thielicke, Der evangelische Glaube, vol. 1, p. 291. (Evangelical Faith, vol. 1, p. 210.)

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in history and as “the irruption of eternity into time.”26 Thus the Incarnation was “the chief example of the difference between objective and existential certainty.”27 The paradox of the God-man, hidden from the view of unaided human reason, elicits the attention of subjective commitment. The difference in perception depends upon the state of the perceiver. In Thielicke’s view, Kierkegaard’s rejection of the possibility of direct recognizability that Christ is God implies also the rejection of a theology of glory in favor of a theology of the cross.28 Furthermore, as he suggested in his Theological Ethics, the renunciation of power God displayed in the Incarnation is an example of God choosing love and solidarity over self-preservation. The rejection of “direct recognizableness” made true solidarity (between people and God) possible and allowed for actual freedom of decision (rather than what Thielicke called “suggestive compulsion”).29 Kierkegaard rejected historical-critical investigation of Scripture because of the absurdity of establishing faith in Christ on the dubious results of history.30 Christ cannot be an object of normal historical study because he was a “special, anti-historical case.”31 In Thielicke’s assessment, however, he “threw out the baby with the bathwater,” because historical-critical methodologies play an important role in articulating the material content of Christology. As he put it, “To eliminate historical data altogether involves the danger of reducing the material definitions of Christology to the mere assertion that in Christ we have the presence of God in an individual.”32 Nonetheless, the hiddenness of God and the unrecognizability of Christ remained an important insight for Thielicke in articulating his ontic theology. He drew from Philosophical Fragments, suggesting that the necessity of the Incarnation for the revelation of divine truth lay in the dual condition of human finitude and sinfulness.33 Because of their condition, something more than Socratic recollection is required: people need a savior, not simply a teacher. Because of the finitude and sinfulness of humanity, God must reveal truth from the “outside.” Thielicke writes, Thielicke, Glauben und Denken in der Neuzeit, p. 602. (Modern Faith and Thought, p. 499.) 27 Ibid. 28 Thielicke, Glauben und Denken in der Neuzeit, p. 604. (Modern Faith and Thought, p. 501.) 29 Thielicke, Theologische Ethik, vols. 1–3, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1951–55, vol. 2, p. 294. (Theological Ethics, vols. 1–3, trans. by William H. Lazareth, Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1966–69, vol. 2, p. 240.) 30 Thielicke, Glauben und Denken in der Neuzeit, p. 605. (Modern Faith and Thought, p. 502.) 31 Thielicke, Glauben und Denken in der Neuzeit, p. 606. (Modern Faith and Thought, p. 504.) 32 Ibid. 33 Thielicke, Glauben und Denken in der Neuzeit, p. 608. (Modern Faith and Thought, p. 505.) The German cites Philosophische Brocken, Abteilung 10, in Gesammelte Werke, trans. by Emanuel Hirsch, pp. 12ff. The English cites Philosophical Fragments, trans. by Walter Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1936, pp. 19ff., which corresponds to SKS 4, 224ff. / PF, 14ff. 26

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This is the decisive reason why in our relation to Christ we get nowhere with Socratic methods. Socrates begins by assuming that the truth does not have to be brought to us but is already in us. As a teacher, then, he [Socrates] merely has the function of releasing what is already there.34

Thielicke found an ally in Climacus’ exploration of the idea that divine revelation must come to humanity as an external proclamation which must be appropriated through the passion of faith. The implication is that “what we know about God…is a matter of the state of our existence, our being in truth or untruth. Our thinking is merely a function of this state.”35 In expressing his theology of revelation, Thielicke found an analogue between the biblical concept of revelation and Climacus’ religiousness A and B. God who reveals himself to humanity does so from a position of transcendence and thus “lies beyond the continuity of the world and hence also the activity of human perception.”36 The Word, or the revelation of God to humanity, creates the possibility of faith. Faith emerges as a response to that which is already given or present in the gift of revelation.37 In Climacus’ explication of the difference between religiousness A and B, the former reflects the religion of immanence, which presupposes an inherent consciousness of God and of a human being’s guilt before God. Thielicke surmised that religiousness A comprises a “direct inwardness” which is reflective of what Luther would have termed a theology of glory.38 To the contrary, in religiousness B, “what edifies man is something outside the individual. The individual is edified, not by finding the relation to God inside himself, but by relating himself to something outside himself to find edification.”39 This dialectical relation between the individual and that which stands outside the individual as transcendent divine revelation is mediated, Thielicke points out, by the paradox of Christ, which gives rise to the leap to faith. The leap is the subjective response to God’s presence which takes place in the moment, when time and eternity meet. Whatever the dangers of Kierkegaard’s (or his pseudonymn’s) reduction of Christology to brute fact, Thielicke clearly appreciated Kierkegaard’s emphasis on the indirectness of Christ. As he put it, Whatever can be grasped easily and quickly by reason does not contain the risk of objective uncertainty without which faith cannot live, and there can be no leap, Thielicke, Glauben und Denken in der Neuzeit, p. 608. (Modern Faith and Thought, p. 505.) The German cites Philosophische Brocken, pp. 12ff.; the English cites Philosophical Fragments, pp. 19ff., which corresponds to SKS 4, 224ff. / PF, 14ff. 35 Thielicke, Glauben und Denken in der Neuzeit, p. 609. (Modern Faith and Thought, p. 506.) 36 Thielicke, Der evangelische Glaube, vol. 2, p. 11. (Evangelical Faith, vol. 2, p. 10.) 37 Thielicke, Der evangelische Glaube, vol. 2, p. 47. (Evangelical Faith, vol. 2, p. 40.) 38 Thielicke, Der evangelische Glaube, vol. 2, p. 48. (Evangelical Faith, vol. 2, p. 41.) 39 Thielicke, Der evangelische Glaube, vol. 2, p. 47 (Evangelical Faith, vol. 2, p. 40.) Thielicke cites Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. by David Swenson and Walter Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1941, pp. 498ff., which corresponds to SKS 7, 511 / CUP1, 561. 34

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In a section of Evangelical Faith titled “New Creation by the Spirit” (“Die Neuschöpfung durch den Geist”), Thielicke connected his use of Kierkegaard’s concept of subjectivity for the doctrine of revelation to pneumatology.41 The doctrine of the spirit, which expresses the immanent presence of the transcendent God, calls attention to the fact that God’s revelation in salvation history can only be truly known through revelation of the Spirit in the gift of faith, which is a new kind of vision. He pointed here to Kierkegaard’s concept of the “infinite qualitative distinction between time and eternity” of salvation as a reality defined totaliter-aliter.42 The doctrine of the Spirit suggests that the kerygma breaks through the historical process and makes itself available as divine self-disclosure. This event, however, is only accessible through faith which, Thielicke reminds the reader, has always been called “illumination by the Holy Spirit.”43 The implication of the doctrine of the Spirit and of revelation’s accessibility only to the person who has experienced the new creation of faith is that theology must be practiced as a discipline distinct from all others. The key point Thielicke developed here through Kierkegaard’s concept of the incognito of Christ is that the object of knowledge determines the way it must be approached. God reveals himself as the absolute paradox, rendering historical methodology suspect in terms of appropriating the fullness of truth related to his being. Christianity is the personal disclosure of the infinite God which demands subjective involvement. It calls forth the recognition that truth is not a kind of knowledge but an ontological reality—it is being.44 V. Thielicke’s Critical Evaluation of Kierkegaard Thielicke’s most concise and telling discussion of Kierkegaard occurs in his critical appraisal of the Dane in Modern Faith and Thought. There he asserts that Kierkegaard’s greatest contribution to the modern theology is that, by “showing the existential reference of every discovery of truth” he overcomes a one-sided emphasis in theology on the rationality of human nature.45 In so doing, Kierkegaard enriched the relationship between the knowing subject and the issue of truth.46 For Thielicke, Glauben und Denken in der Neuzeit, p. 614. (Modern Faith and Thought, p. 510.) 41 Thielicke, Der evangelische Glaube, vol. 1, pp. 232–93. (Evangelical Faith, vol. 1, pp. 174–211.) 42 Thielicke, Der evangelische Glaube, vol. 1, p. 286. (Evangelical Faith, vol. 1, p. 207.) 43 Thielicke, Der evangelische Glaube, vol. 1, p. 286. (Evangelical Faith, vol. 1, p. 207.) 44 Thielicke, Der evangelische Glaube, vol. 1, pp. 445–6. (Evangelical Faith, vol. 1, p. 306.) 45 Thielicke, Glauben und Denken in der Neuzeit, p. 618. (Modern Faith and Thought, p. 514.) 46 Thielicke, Glauben und Denken in der Neuzeit, p. 618. (Modern Faith and Thought, p. 515.) 40

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Thielicke, however, this recovery of the holistic nature of humanity and of the role of the subject in epistemology comes at a price. Thielicke identified several deficiencies in Kierkegaard’s philosophical theology, all of which were connected to what he perceived as a one-sided emphasis on subjectivity.47 First, Kierkegaard’s stress on the indirectness of revelation and the unrecognizability of God meant that the full Christological implications of the gospel were never developed.48 As Thielicke put it, “The content of Christ’s appearance and message retreats behind the fact of it.”49 Secondly, for Thielicke, Kierkegaard’s focus on the individual meant that Kierkegaard did not develop a role for the community in his theology, and thus he could establish no “theological ethics of politics.”50 For Thielicke, any theology which has to do with being and existence must be oriented by more than simply the criterion of the God-relationship; it must also consider relationality with others (including other animal species) and with the world.51 Thielicke did suggest, however, that this limitation in Kierkegaard applies to his “theoretical reflections on Christianity” and that his “meditations in the many words of edification have a broader horizon.”52 The discourses unfold the social implications of the gospel more broadly. One could point out in protest, however, that the Anti-Climacus literature, in particular The Sickness unto Death, disclose a deeply relational theology which bears great import for extending the implications of the individual God-relationship in horizontal directions, including not only other persons and animals but all of creation. Thielicke’s third critique has to do with the interdisciplinary limitations of Kierkegaard’s epistemology of subjectivity. Kierkegaard’s emphasis on subjective appropriation of truth in the religious sphere effectively rendered “the objective sphere of knowledge, especially natural science and history” irrelevant to discussion. The first critique Thielicke raises has less to do with his thought than with his biography. Thielicke took at face value Kierkegaard’s description of his melancholy, joyless childhood as described in The Point of View for My Work as An Author. As he put it, “Kierkegaard has a very sick constitution burdened with the melancholy derived from his father.” And then, after discussing his abnormal childhood in which Kierkegaard had no chance to “play and joke,” or to “love and dance,” Thielicke concludes that, “Kierkegaard knew no immediacy, and hence from the standpoint of genuine humanity he did not live.” Thielicke’s citation is from Modern Faith and Thought, p. 515. In the English edition, Thielicke summarizes Kierkegaard’s reflection and cites The Point of View, trans. by Walter Lowrie, New York and London: Oxford University Press 1939, pp. 76–7. In the original German edition, Thielicke cites Kierkegaard’s Der Gesichtspunkt für meine Wirksamkeit als Schriftsteller, Abteilung 33, in Gesammelte Werke, trans. by Emanuel Hirsch, Düsseldorf: Diederichs 1951 (Section 2, Chapter 3). Thielicke, Glauben und Denken in der Neuzeit, pp. 618–19. 48 Thielicke, Glauben und Denken in der Neuzeit, p. 619. (Modern Faith and Thought, p. 515.) 49 Ibid. 50 Thielicke, Glauben und Denken in der Neuzeit, pp. 619–20. (Modern Faith and Thought, p. 516.) 51 Thielicke, Glauben und Denken in der Neuzeit, p. 620. (Modern Faith and Thought, p. 516.) 52 Thielicke, Glauben und Denken in der Neuzeit, pp. 620–1 (Modern Faith and Thought, p. 517.) 47

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This critique reminds one of Thielicke’s earlier assessments regarding the reduction of Kierkegaard’s Christology to bare fact. In a similar way, the content of knowledge more broadly is made secondary to its existential reality.53 Thus Thielicke asserted, “The epistemological problem in its totality has a wider reach than finds expression in his thesis that subjectivity is truth.”54 It should be pointed out here, though, that Kierkegaard’s primary concern was with the problem of lack of authenticity and seriousness in religious belief and practice. The importance of objectivity in knowledge was not a point that needed to be made in the nineteenth century. Kierkegaard would have been prophetic had he gone the other direction in showing how even the most “objective” of intellectual disciplines (history, science, etc.) are shot through with subjectivity. In his final critique, Thielicke charged that Kierkegaard too often separated the religious dimension of life from the secular. His emphasis on radical unconditionality to God turned him in a negative relation to the “worldly” institutions of church, society, and the concrete cultural expressions in which forms of Christianity always reside.55 Thielicke named Bonhoeffer as a counterexample to Kierkegaard, suggesting that, contra the majority of Lutheran theology, the latter lacked a two kingdoms doctrine and an accompanying theological ethics: “Kierkegaard has two right hands and no left hand. If one may exaggerate, what he says about redemption applies only to abstract individuals and not to the self insofar as it is involved in political, social, and economic structures, although it cannot remove its individual existence from these structures.”56 This critique is similar to his earlier assessment that Kierkegaard lacked a communal, social ethic. A similar concession should apply here as well as there regarding the presence of social, political, and ethical implications in the discourses. Furthermore, Kierkegaard’s emphatic insistence on the subjective nature of the God-relationship simply precludes him at the outset from formulating a particular ethical philosophy which would apply generally. It simply runs against the grain of Kierkegaard to commend the rigorous, individual nature of the God-relationship and then to suggest to his readers particular forms which that should take. Thielicke’s concluding evaluation included the caution that a theologian cannot rely on Kierkegaard alone. He wondered aloud whether there can or should “ever be any Kierkegaardians?”57 That notwithstanding, his appreciation for Kierkegaard’s positive influence on modern theology can be summed up in his warning against the objectifying of either God or humanity and against the modern tendency to conflate

Thielicke, Glauben und Denken in der Neuzeit, pp. 620–1. (Modern Faith and Thought, p. 517.) 54 Thielicke, Glauben und Denken in der Neuzeit, p. 621. (Modern Faith and Thought, p. 517.) 55 Ibid. 56 Thielicke, Glauben und Denken in der Neuzeit, p. 621. (Modern Faith and Thought, p. 518.) 57 Thielicke, Glauben und Denken in der Neuzeit, p. 622. (Modern Faith and Thought, p. 518.) 53

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the two under a single, rational theological system.58 Kierkegaard’s gift to modern theology was in the first place his assertion that truth is a function of the knower’s being in relation to it. Secondly, modern theology was indebted to his emphatic reminder that God is a personal being who lies beyond the objective capacity of human rationality. In both of these respects, Kierkegaard served as a consistently useful resource for Thielicke’s prophetic theology of being in truth.

Thielicke, Glauben und Denken in der Neuzeit, p. 622. (Modern Faith and Thought, pp. 518–19.)

58

Bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Thielicke’s Corpus Das Verhältnis zwischen dem Ethischen und dem Ästhetischen. Eine systematische Untersuchung, Leipzig: Meiner 1932, pp. 161–3; pp. 255–6. Der evangelische Glaube, vols. 1–3, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1968–78, vol. 1, p. 15; pp. 91–2; p. 101; p. 105; p. 155; p. 251; p. 286; p. 292; p. 340; p. 391; p. 408; pp. 440–8; vol. 2, p. 11; pp. 47–8; p. 53; p. 84; p. 96; p. 206; p. 339; p. 343; p. 365; pp. 391–2; p. 416; pp. 428–9; p. 536; p. 561; vol. 3, p. 7; p. 88; p. 403; p. 434; pp. 474–5; p. 500; pp. 554–5; p. 557; p. 568; p. 594. (English translation: Evangelical Faith, vols. 1–3, trans. by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans 1974–82, vol. 1, p. 32; p. 59; pp. 81ff.; p. 88; p. 90; p. 122; p. 186; p. 207; p. 210; pp. 240–1; p. 272; p. 285; p. 305; p. 308; vol. 2, p. 10; p. 40; p. 41; p. 45; p. 70; p. 80; p. 119; p. 172; p. 276; p. 280; p. 281; p. 296; p. 304; p. 318; p. 348; p. 350; p. 434; p. 453; vol. 3: p. xvii; p. xxviii; p. 60; p. 303; p. 321; p. 326; p. 350; pp. 355–6; p. 374; p. 417; p. 426; p. 445. Glauben und Denken in der Neuzeit, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1983, p. 50; p. 122; p. 132; pp. 133–4; p. 150; p. 287; p. 289; pp. 464–5; p. 490; p. 542; p. 551; p. 553; pp. 594–621; p. 624; p. 672. (English translation: Modern Faith and Thought, trans. by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans 1990, p. 46; p. 110; p. 113; pp. 120ff.; p. 235; p. 262; pp. 195–6; p. 202; p. 206; p. 217; p. 283; pp. 363–4; pp. 376–7; p. 386; pp. 388–9; p. 440; p. 452; p. 487; pp. 490–518.) Mensch sein—Mensch werden. Entwurf einer christlichen Anthropologie, Munich and Zurich: R. Piper and Co. Verlag 1976, p. 51; pp. 56–7; pp. 61–2; p. 72; p. 131; pp. 151–2; p. 155; p. 159; p. 226; p. 287; p. 333; p. 370; p. 393; p. 442. (English translation: Being Human…Becoming Human: An Essay in Christian Anthropology, trans. by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Garden City, New York: Doubleday 1984, p. 36; p. 41; p. 45; p. 47; p. 54; p. 112; pp. 134–5; p. 142; p. 208; p. 266; p. 314; p. 351; p. 373; p. 419. Der Nihilismus. Entstehung, Wesen, Überwindung, Pfullingen: Verlag Günther Neske 1950, pp. 128–31; p. 133; p. 136; p. 146; p. 182; p. 193; pp. 201–2. (English translation: Nihilism: Its Origin and Nature, with a Christian Answer, trans. by John W. Doberstein, New York: Harper 1961, pp. 108–10; p. 113; p. 115; p. 123; p. 154; p. 164; pp. 169–70.) Theologische Ethik, vols. 1–3, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1951–55, vol. 1, p. 190; p. 396; p. 459; p. 461; p. 823; p. 825; p. 1281; p. 1318; pp. 1542–4; p. 1968; vol. 2.1, p. 202; p. 213; p. 294; p. 342; p. 351; p. 503; p. 559; p. 571; p. 671; p. 831; p. 1022; pp. 1088–9; p. 1151; p. 1183; p. 1251; p. 2069; vol. 2.2, p. 481; p. 672;

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p. 725; p. 951; p. 1248; pp. 1578ff.; p. 3502; vol. 3, p. 1; p. 23; pp. 55–6; pp. 171– 2; p. 195; p. 598; p. 1210; p. 1310; p. 1639; p. 1982; p. 2029; p. 2038; p. 2955; p. 3014; p. 3020; p. 3102; p. 3130; pp. 3141–2; p. 3147; p. 3182; pp. 3186–90; p. 3234; p. 3310. (English translation: Theological Ethics, vols. 1–3, ed. by William H. Lazareth, Philadephia: Fortress Press 1966–69, vol. 1, p. 3; p. 102; pp. 167–8; p. 168; p. 494; p. 552; p. 664; vol. 2, p. 80; p. 113; p. 153; p. 14; p. 193; p. 240; p. 241; p. 498; vol. 3, p. 68; p. 82; p. 84. II. Sources of Thielicke’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Bense, Max, Hegel und Kierkegaard. Eine prinzipielle Untersuchung, Cologne and Krefeld: Staufen-Verlag 1948. Brandt, Frithiof, Sören Kierkegaard: 1813–1855. Sein Leben, seine Werke, Copenhagen: Det Danske Selskab 1963. Diem, Hermann, Die Existenzdialektik von Sören Kierkegaard, Zollikon-Zurich: Evangelischer Verlag 1950. Geismar, Eduard, Sören Kierkegaard. Seine Lebensentwicklung und seine Wirksamkeit als Schriftsteller, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1929. Gerdes, Hayo, Sören Kierkegaard. Leben und Werk, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 1966. Hirsch, Emanuel, Geschichte der neueren evangelischen Theologie im Zusammenhang mit den allgemeinen Bewegungen des europäischen Denkens, vols. 1–5, Gütersloh: Bertelsmann 1949–54, vol. 5, pp. 433–91. Jaspers, Karl, Rechenschaft und Ausblick. Reden und Ausblicke, Munich: Piper 1951, pp. 115ff. Kierkegaard, Søren, Entweder / Oder, vols. 1–2, trans. by Wolfgang Pfleiderer and Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1911–13 (Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–12, trans. and ed. by Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1909-22, vols. 1–2). — Einübung im Christentum, trans. by Emanuel Hirsch, Düsseldorf and Cologne: Diederichs 1951 (Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–28, trans. and ed. by Emanuel Hirsch, Hayo Gerdes and Hans-Martin Junghans, Düsseldorf and Cologne: Diederichs 1950–69, vol. 18). — Der Gesichtspunkt für meine Wirksamkeit als Schriftsteller, trans. by Emanuel Hirsch, Düsseldorf and Cologne: Diederichs 1951 (Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1-28, trans. and ed. by Emanuel Hirsch, Hayo Gerdes and Hans-Martin Junghans, Düsseldorf and Cologne: Diederichs 1950–69, vol. 23). — Philosophische Brocken, trans. by Emanuel Hirsch, Düsseldorf and Cologne: Diederichs 1952 (Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–28, trans. and ed. by Emanuel Hirsch, Hayo Gerdes and Hans-Martin Junghans, Düsseldorf and Cologne: Diederichs 1950–69, vol. 6). — Der Begriff Angst, trans. by Emanuel Hirsch, Düsseldorf and Cologne: Diederichs 1952 (Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–28, trans. and ed. by Emanuel Hirsch, Hayo Gerdes and Hans-Martin Junghans, Düsseldorf and Cologne: Diederichs 1950– 69, vol. 7).

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—Abschließende unwissenschaftliche Nachschrift, vols. 1–2, trans. by Hans-Martin Junghans, Düsseldorf and Cologne: Diederichs 1957–58 (Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–28, trans. and ed. by Emanuel Hirsch, Hayo Gerdes and Hans-Martin Junghans, Düsseldorf and Cologne: Diederichs 1950–69, vols. 10–11). Krause, Gerhard, “Ein Sonderfall des sogennanten Ewigkeitsliedes. Zu einem Kapitel dänischer und deutscher Hymnologie,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, vol. 76, no. 3, 1979, pp. 360–80. Löwith, Karl, Von Hegel zu Nietzsche. Der revolutionäre Bruch im Denken des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts: Marx und Kierkegaard, 3rd printing, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer 1953. Lowrie, Walter, Kierkegaard, vols. 1–2, New York: Harper 1938. Rehm, Walter, Kierkegaard und der Verführer, Munich: H. Rinn 1949. Rohde, Peter P., Sören Kierkegaard in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten, Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt 1959. Ruttenbeck, Walter, Sören Kierkegaard, der christliche Denker und sein Werk, Berlin: Trowitzsch 1929. III. Secondary Literature on Thielicke’s Relation to Kierkegaard Bentum, Ad Van, Helmut Thielickes Theologie der Grenzsituationen, Pader-born: Verlag Bonifacius-Druckerei 1964 (Konfessionskundliche und kontroverstheologische Studien, vol. 12), p. 128; p. 144; pp. 189–90. Johnson, Thomas K., “Dialogue with Kierkegaard in Protestant Theology,” Communio Viatorum, vol. 46, no. 3, 2004, pp. 284–98. Nordlander, Agne, Die Gottebenbildlichkeit in der Theologie Helmut Thielickes: Untersuchung eines Beispiels der personalistisch-existentiellen Konzeption der theologischen Anthropologie, Uppsala 1973 (Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis: Studia Doctrinae Christiane Upsaliensia, vol. 11), p. 8; p. 17; p. 43; p. 66; p. 69; p. 95; p. 196; pp. 201–6; p. 215; p. 220.

Paul Tillich: An Ambivalent Appropriation Lee C. Barrett

In his autobiographical reflections Paul Tillich (1886–1965) frequently cited Kierkegaard as one of the chief inspirations for his own systematic theology. This claim is ostensibly puzzling, since by the time of Tillich’s youth Kierkegaard had acquired a reputation for being the implacable opponent of all philosophical and theological systems, while Tillich’s work was, from its very inception, intentionally and self-avowedly systematic. This seeming paradox has spawned divergent trajectories of Tillich interpretation. Some commentators have taken Tillich at his word, concluding that he accurately reported the deep similarities between Kierkegaard’s authorship and his own work. Others have questioned Tillich’s selfassessment, suggesting that Tillich’s approach to theology was essentially in conflict with Kierkegaard’s practice. This article will sort through the complexities of Tillich’s appropriation of Kierkegaard, hoping to see how Tillich could be construed both as an heir of Kierkegaard and as a saboteur of Kierkegaard’s basic project. I. Tillich’s Life and Work Paul Tillich was born in 1886 in Starzeddel, a rather rural village in Brandenburg (now a part of Poland), and moved when he was quite young to the equally small and medieval village of Schönfliess. According to his own self-analysis, it was from these bucolic roots that Tillich imbibed a “predominantly aesthetic-meditative attitude toward nature as distinguished from a scientific-analytic or technical-controlling relation.”1 A romantic and mystical sensibility in which nature was experienced as the finite manifestation of the infinite ground of all being would become a permanent dimension of his character. This would develop into a religious sensibility very different from that of Søren Kierkegaard. Tillich’s somewhat authoritarian father was a pastor in the Evangelical Church of Prussia, and inclined politically and culturally toward a conservative monarchist position. Following the vocational path of his father, Tillich entered the University of Berlin in 1904 to prepare for the pastorate. He also studied at Tübingen and Halle, where he became fascinated with the work of Friedrich Schelling (1775–1854). During his time at Halle from 1905 to 1907 1 Paul Tillich, “Autobiographical Reflections,” in The Theology of Paul Tillich, ed. by Charles Kegley and Robert Bretall, New York: Macmillan 1952, p. 4.

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Tillich was deeply influenced by his theology professor Martin Kähler (1835–1912), particularly by Kähler’s distinction between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. Like many of his generation, the young Tillich was perplexed about the relation of dubitable historical truth claims to any suprahistorical knowledge of salvation. Kähler’s insistence that historical evidence could never adequately ground faith and that the ultimate object of faith was not a tentative historically reconstructed Jesus resonated with the spiritually struggling Tillich. The foundation of faith is not the dubious and constantly revised portrait of Jesus generated by historical critics, but is the picture of Jesus expressed in Scripture, proclaimed by the church, and alive in the believer’s experience.2 From Kähler Tillich also learned to construe the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith quite broadly, so that it included not only the individual’s reconciliation with God in spite of sin but also the individual’s reconciliation with God in spite of doubt. Later Tillich would claim that both of these themes could be discerned in Kierkegaard’s pages. During these student years at Halle Tillich seems to have read Kierkegaard for the first time.3 Emanuel Hirsch (1888–1972) played a role in reinforcing Tillich’s interest in Kierkegaard’s work. At a Wingolf (a student fraternity committed to Christianity) rally in Berlin 1907 Tillich became friendly with Hirsch, who later would become a major German interpreter and proponent of Kierkegaard. Although Tillich and Hirsch would eventually quarrel over Hirsch’s pro-Nazi stance and conduct a heated debate in print in 1933–34, the depth and complexity of the bond between Tillich and Hirsch is evident in their co-authorship of a play in 1912,4 in Hirsch’s unreciprocated affection for Tillich’s sister Johanna, and in the resumption of their friendship after World War II. Hirsch’s increasing enthusiasm for Kierkegaard would stimulate Tillich’s continuing but less intense engagement with Kierkegaard’s thought. During his own student days at Berlin Hirsch had already learned of Kierkegaard, possibly from his theological mentor Karl Holl (1866–1926), who by 1908 was lecturing on Kierkegaard, even though he was critical of Kierkegaard’s allegedly asocial view of the individual.5 Hirsch latter claimed that he was attracted to Kierkegaard’s existential understanding of faith, which was reminiscent of that of Jesus, Paul, and Luther.6 Hirsch maintained that Kierkegaard helped him to appreciate a subjective knowledge of God that remains when objective knowledge is thrown into question. Hirsch retrospectively remarked that “truth in relation to God exists alone in and for subjectivity,” a theme that he attributed to Kierkegaard.7 Kierkegaard played a much more foundational role in Hirsch’s work than he did in Tillich’s, but the friendship See Martin Kähler, Der sogenannte historische Jesus und der geschichtliche, biblische Christus, 2nd ed., Leipzig: A. Deichert 1896, pp. 1–206. 3 Tillich, “Autobiographical Reflections,” p. 11. 4 Unpublished manuscript in the German Paul Tillich Archives, University Library, Marburg, Germany, 001 A: Original Manuscripts and Typescripts 004 (16.9.1912). 5 See Matthias Wilke, Die Kierkegaard Rezeption Emanuel Hirschs. Eine Studie über die Voraussetzungen der Kommunikation christlicher Wahrheit, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 2005, pp. 51–4. 6 Emanuel Hirsch, “Meine theologische Anfänge,” in Freies Christentum, vol. 3, no. 10, 1951, p. 4. 7 Ibid., p. 4. 2

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and later conflict of the two thinkers kept Kierkegaard very much in Tillich’s mind. Although the two began to diverge sharply on political, ethical, and epistemological matters, their interpretation of Kierkegaard was similar, at least initially. Much of Tillich’s assessment of Kierkegaard would echo Hirsch’s opinion. Tillich’s tendency to focus on the pseudonymous literature and ignore the more overtly Christian signed literature paralleled Hirsch’s practice. In 1910 Tillich received a doctorate from the University of Breslau for a thesis on Schelling’s interpretation of the history of religion. In 1912 he also received a licentiate of theology from Halle for a thesis on Schelling’s understanding of mysticism and guilt-consciousness, a thesis in which Kierkegaard figured prominently. He was ordained to the ministry of the Evangelical Church of the Prussian Union in 1912, but decided to pursue an academic career. His plans to do post-doctoral work at Halle were interrupted by the outbreak of World War I. Being a patriotic nationalist, in 1914 Tillich volunteered for military service and became a chaplain. He experienced horrific combat on the Western Front, including the brutal battle of Verdun. For his service under fire he was awarded the Iron Cross and later the Iron Cross First Class. However, the tragedy and destructiveness of the war took its toll on his psyche, and he experienced three emotional breakdowns. In the midst of this ordeal Tillich concluded that even his beloved Schelling did not take the tragic abyss in human experience with sufficient seriousness.8 The spectacle of devastation catalyzed what Tillich would later call his “existential” turn. His dissatisfaction with the older schools of idealism found corroboration in his admittedly limited knowledge of Kierkegaard.9 At the same time Tillich developed an appreciation for Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900),10 whom he cited more frequently than Kierkegaard. The joyful vitalism of Thus Spoke Zarathustra helped Tillich survive the ghastliness of the trenches. Nietzsche’s affirmation of life in the midst of mortality would always appeal to Tillich in a more personal way than Kierkegaard’s exposé of existence’s negativities. Tillich also began to appreciate Rudolf Otto’s (1869–1937) description of the experience of the numinous and the encounter with the divine as “the Other.” Visiting Berlin on furlough from the carnage, he viewed a painting of the Madonna and infant Christ by Botticelli, an event that triggered a transformative sense of being grasped by “the absolute.”11 For Tillich, that was an experience of the numinous that filled him with a Nietzschean will to live. Nietzsche and Otto were more helpful than Kierkegaard in enabling him to make sense out of such ecstatic experiences. Tillich returned to the war disillusioned in the older leadership of Germany that had produced the futile conflict, and was haunted by the fear that society was disintegrating. After the war Tillich abandoned the conservative monarchist and bourgeois values inherited from his father and enthusiastically embraced the new bohemian culture. As he resumed his academic career he became convinced that a socialist restructuring of society was absolutely necessary. In 1919 he began lecturing as a privatdozent at the Theological Faculty of the University of Berlin and 8 9





10 11

Paul Tillich, On the Boundary, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons 1966, p. 52. Ibid., p. 56. Ibid., pp. 53–4. Ibid., p. 28.

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joined the “Kairos Group” of religious socialists. However, Tillich the passionate nonconformist was a rather idiosyncratic socialist who resisted the identification of Christianity with any specific social program.12 According to Tillich, most socialist projects lacked spiritual depth. Although he rejected utopianism and any Marxist belief in historical inevitability, Tillich did regard the contemporary historical moment as being pregnant with possibilities for a more just social reconstruction. He spoke of the post-war period as a time of kairos when the power of the eternal was poised to break into the ambiguities of history to generate a political situation that was genuinely new and creative. In 1919 Tillich gave a lecture to the Kant Society in Berlin in which he argued that religion was not a discrete sphere of human life but was the depth dimension of all cultural phenomena.13 According to Tillich, religion is the substance of culture, and culture is the form of religion. This dismantling of any sharp sacred/secular distinction announced the theological agenda for most of his life’s work. Putting this theory into practice, during these post-war years Tillich developed a passionate appreciation of the implicit spirituality of avant garde art. Most particularly, he deeply valued Expressionist painting for its depiction of the human brokenness that he had experienced during the war. His marriage in 1924 to Hannah Werner, who was an art teacher, further solidified his attachment to experimental painting, music, and literature. His continued reading of Kierkegaard during this time was linked to his rejection of bourgeois values and the facile assimilation of Christianity to societal certitudes. In 1924 Tillich moved to Marburg as an associate professor in theology, an environment that he found to be oppressively provincial. At Marburg his encounter with a largely Barthian student body inspired him to clarify his differences with Karl Barth (1886–1968). Although he admired Barth’s critique of cultural idolatries, he feared that Barth was promoting an oppressive type of supernaturalism that sundered the finite and the infinite. His quarrel with Barth forced him to clarify his relation to the work of Kierkegaard, whom Barth was claiming as an antecedent. His colleagues at Marburg included two relatively new faculty members, Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976) and Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), both of whom were appropriating Kierkegaard at this time. Although he was not particularly intimate with either thinker, he was profoundly and lastingly influenced by Heidegger. Although Tillich persistently rejected any one-dimensional identification of his own thought with existentialism, always protesting that he was as much an essentialist as an existentialist, Heidegger did corroborate Tillich’s sense of human existence as being intrinsically finite, temporal, and estranged. Heidegger’s analysis of the anxiety into which the inauthentic self falls reinforced Tillich’s appreciation of Kierkegaard’s Concept of Anxiety, from which Heidegger generously borrowed,

Paul Tillich, “Christentum und Sozialismus (I),” Das neue Deutschland, no. 8, December, 1919, pp. 106–10. 13 Paul Tillich, “Über die Idee einer Theologie der Kultur,” in his Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–14, ed. by Renate Albrecht, Stuttgart: Evangelisches Verlagswerk 1959–75, vol. 9, pp. 13–31. 12

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often without acknowledging the debt.14 Tillich always maintained that his encounter with Schelling’s positive philosophy was the ultimate source of the existentialist dimension in his own thought, but admitted that this aspect was sharpened and deepened by Heidegger’s work. At Marburg Tillich befriended Rudolf Otto, whom he had replaced on the faculty, and adopted Otto’s tendency to talk about God as the “Unconditioned.”15 After Marburg, Tillich held teaching positions successively at Dresden, Leipzig, and Frankfurt. Appointed a professor of philosophy at the University of Frankfurt in 1929, Tillich worked closely with Max Horkheimer (1895–1973), helping him become director of the neo-Marxist Institute for Social Research, and Theodor W. Adorno (1903–69), who later also became a celebrated proponent of the critical social theory of the Frankfurt School. Tillich supervised Adorno’s dissertation on Kierkegaard’s aesthetics, and became acquainted with Adorno’s criticisms that Kierkegaard was an advocate of pure subjectivity without real objects.16 According to a widespread oral tradition, Tillich confessed that he did not understand a word of Adorno’s thesis.17 Having witnessed a vicious attack by Nazi students upon Jewish and leftist students, Tillich became more politically vocal and wrote the anti-fascist The Socialist Decision in 1932.18 In 1933 the volume was banned and Tillich was suspended from teaching. In April Tillich was placed on a list of professors to be dismissed and was declared to be an enemy of the state. Fortunately, in May Tillich was offered a teaching position at Union Theological Seminary, New York, by its president Henry Sloane Coffin, who wanted to provide a haven for theologians who were being persecuted by the Nazis. Regarding his politically necessitated American exodus as an exile, Tillich started teaching in 1934 in an unfamiliar language and culture. He felt no sympathy for the pragmatic and empiricist orientation of most American philosophy departments, and expressed antipathy toward the non-sacramental and moralistic piety of the dominant Puritan theological legacy. Unfamiliar with American politics, his interests shifted toward psychology, and therefore Kierkegaard’s analysis of anxiety and despair became more important to him. His participation in the “New York Psychology Group” that included Rollo May (1909–94) and Erich Fromm (1900–80) reinforced this reorientation toward existential concerns.

See Heiko Schulz, “Germany and Austria: A Modest Head Start: The German Reception of Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard’s International Reception: Tome I, Northern and Western Europe, ed. by Jon Stewart, Aldershot: Ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 8), pp. 354–8. 15 Wilhelm Pauck and Marion Pauck, Paul Tillich: His Life and Thought, vols. 1–2, New York: Harper and Row 1976, vol. 1, p. 98. 16 Theodor W. Adorno, Kierkegaard. Konstruktion des Ästhetischen, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1933, pp. 1–165. 17 Pauck and Pauck, Paul Tillich: His Life and Thought, vol. 1, p. 116. 18 Paul Tillich, Die sozialistische Entscheidung, Potsdam: Protte 1933. 14

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With the publication of his collection of essays The Protestant Era19 and a collection of sermons The Shaking of the Foundations20 in 1948, Tillich began to attract academic and popular attention. Both volumes contained significant references to Kierkegaard.21 His publications were aided by a cadre of theological colleagues, including James Luther Adams, who himself was influenced by Kierkegaard.22 Tillich’s fame and intellectual influence in the United States were furthered by the appearance of the first volume of his Systematic Theology in 1951,23 and the more accessible The Courage To Be a year later.24 In the latter volume Kierkegaard was presented as a paragon of the revolt against Hegel’s depersonalizing essentialist logic.25 This widely-read book’s analysis of anxiety betrays the influence of The Concept of Anxiety, even though Kierkegaard is not cited in that section.26 By selfconsciously situating himself on the boundary of faith and doubt, Tillich effectively addressed the sensibilities of a skeptical but residual religious generation. Tillich’s celebrity skyrocketed as non-academics and non-churchly spiritual seekers discovered his more popular writings. At the height of his popularity, Tillich retired from Union Seminary in 1955 and accepted an invitation from Harvard to be University Professor, free of any departmental ties. During this time he published another collection of sermons, The New Being,27 and another collection of essays, Biblical Religion and the Search for Ultimate Reality,28 both of which mention Kierkegaard in spite of the fact that they were intended for a broad audience. The second volume of Systematic Theology29 and the enormously successful The Dynamics of Faith30 were published in 1957. The second volume of his theological magnum opus relied

Paul Tillich, The Protestant Era, German essays trans. by James Luther Adams, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1957. This volume was a collection of essays written by Tillich, some originally in German and some in English, and some published here for the first time. 20 Paul Tillich, The Shaking of the Foundations, New York: Scribner 1948. 21 Ibid., p. 34, p. 96; Tillich, The Protestant Era, p. 88 (published originally as “Philosophy and Theology,” in Religion in Life, vol. 10, no. 1, 1941, p. 25); Tillich, The Protestant Era, p. 193 (German version: “Die Protestantische Verkündigung und der Mensch der Gegenwart,” in Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–14, ed. by Renate Albrecht, Stuttgart: Evangelisches Verlagswerk 1959–75, vol. 7, p. 71). 22 See, for example, James Luther Adams, An Examined Faith: Social Context and Religious Commitment, ed. by George Beach, Boston: Beacon Press 1991, pp. 146–7; p. 173; p. 180. 23 Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vols. 1–3, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1951–63, vol. 1. 24 Paul Tillich, The Courage To Be, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press 1952. 25 Ibid., p. 125; pp. 135–8; p. 142. 26 Ibid., pp. 32–85. 27 Paul Tillich, The New Being, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons 1955, pp. 102–3. 28 Paul Tillich, Biblical Religion and the Search for Ultimate Reality, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1955, p. 1, p. 47. 29 Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 2. 30 Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith, New York: Harper & Row 1957. 19

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extensively on Kierkegaard for its analysis of the Fall of humanity.31 Although Tillich was condemned by some influential theologians as being non-Christian, his cultural influence continued to soar.32 In 1959 he appeared on the cover of Time magazine and was hailed as America’s premier Protestant thinker. His invitations to attend the inauguration of President Kennedy and to be the primary speaker at the celebration of Time magazine’s fortieth anniversary confirmed his status as a leading public intellectual. Tillich accepted a second post-retirement position at the University of Chicago in 1962, where, influenced by his new colleague Mircea Eliade, his interests shifted to world religions. The third and final volume of Systematic Theology, which appeared in 1963, contained only one explicit reference to Kierkegaard.33 Still planning further writing projects, Tillich died of a heart attack in 1965. In order to provide a context for determining the nature and extent of Tillich’s appropriation of Kierkegaard, a more detailed investigation of the basic contours of Tillich’s work must be undertaken. Throughout his varied and voluminous authorship certain motifs recur in Tillich’s thought with surprising regularity. Most strikingly, from the very beginning his intentions were to make Christianity plausible and relevant to secular culture, to reinterpret Christianity in the light of secular culture, and to redescribe secular culture in such a way that its religious depth would be manifested. For almost 55 years he situated himself on the boundary between the Christian tradition and modern cultural and intellectual movements. Consistently he sought to mediate between cultural questions and religious answers, or between the cultural form of a phenomenon and its religious substance. This gave rise to the signature “method of correlation” that structured his life-long theological project.34 For example, from his student days at Halle until the end of his life Tillich sought to correlate the biblical picture of Jesus as the Christ with changing cultural sensibilities and questions.35 In this way Tillich’s career was a continuation of the strategies and goals of German nineteenth-century mediating theology. Like that theological trajectory, he was deeply indebted to idealism, but was also willing to draw on very eclectic sources, including neo-Kantianism and phenomenology.36 Kierkegaard was only one element in his complex and comprehensive system. Significantly, Tillich’s passion to identify contact points between Christianity and culture was very different from Kierkegaard’s desire to differentiate authentic Christianity from Christendom. According to Tillich, the problematic, precarious nature of the human condition raises certain fundamental, passion-laden questions that humankind perennially asks about itself. These questions are expressed differently in different cultures, and are given different nuances and weights in different historical epochs. Religion Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 2, p. 25; pp. 34–5; pp. 52–3; p. 75; p. 114; p. 133. See, for example, Nels F.S. Ferré, “Tillich and the Nature of Transcendence,” in Paul Tillich: Retrospect and Future, ed. by Nels F.S. Ferré, Charles Hartshorne, John Dillenberger, James C. Livingston, and Joseph Haroutunian, Nashville: Abingdon Press 1966, pp. 7–18. 33 Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 3, p. 160. 34 Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, p. 8. 35 See Tillich, The Protestant Era, p. ix (Tillich’s introduction in English). 36 See Christian Danz, “Tillich’s Philosophy,” in The Cambridge Companion to Paul Tillich, ed. by Russell Re Manning, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2009, pp. 173– 88. 31 32

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“answers” these fundamental questions by offering life-transforming symbols.37 In his magisterial Systematic Theology Tillich identifies five foundational questions: uncertainty about truth, the feeling of being threatened by the disintegrative forces implicit in finitude, the experience of estrangement from others and from life itself, moral ambiguity, and the difficulty of discerning meaning in history. In his system each of these issues is correlated with a different biblical symbol. A “symbol” for Tillich is a concrete object, person, narrative, or event that bears a surplus of meaning, pointing away from itself to the ultimate, disclosing a reality that cannot be articulated in literally referential discourse.38 Symbols make available levels of meaning and being that would otherwise be inaccessible, thereby unlocking potentialities in the self that correspond to the dimensions of reality expressed by the symbols. Unlike a mere sign that bears an arbitrary, conventional relation to its referent, symbols participate in the reality to which they point. Religious symbols, according to Tillich, disclose the ultimate power of being, which can also be described as the depth dimension of reality that is beyond conceptualization.39 Symbols become demonic if they are identified with their referents and taken to be ultimate in themselves. Tillich’s source for this crucial interpretation of the power of religious symbols was certainly not Kierkegaard but earlier German Romanticism.40 According to Tillich, all of the basic existential questions are motivated by the experienced split of essence and existence. The first question concerns reason’s yearning for knowledge, a yearning that is answered by revelation.41 The “depth of reason” suggests a potential grasp of truth-itself, beauty-itself, justice-itself, and loveitself. This depth of reason is cognition’s orientation toward that which is ultimately real. However, under the conditions of existence, finite reason is an inadequate expression of this depth of reason, for it is riddled with ambiguity. The existing individual experiences a tension between autonomy, the trust in one’s own opinions, and heteronomy, the trust in external authority. A tension between relativism and absolutism also afflicts finite reason, as well as a tension between formalism and emotionalism. Humans long for a manifestation of the ground of knowledge that can heal these polarities, yearning for the synthesis of critical detachment and union with the object. Revelation, for Tillich, answers this need. Revelation is the extraordinary lifting of the veil, the miraculous, mysterious, and ecstatic disclosure of the ultimate. In ecstasy the whole person is grasped by the mystery, elevated beyond the subject/ object dichotomy. In such moments reason become theonomous, reunited with its own depth and ground, and the various polarities are reconciled. Tillich did not pretend that his analysis of these rapturous moments of epiphany were in any way indebted to Kierkegaard. Rather, to describe revelatory experiences he consistently

Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, p. 60. Tillich, Dynamics of Faith, New York: Harper & Row 1957, pp. 41–54. 39 Paul Tillich, “The Nature of Religious Langauge,” in Theology of Culture, ed. by Robert Kimball, New York: Oxford University Press 1964, pp. 58–9. 40 Tillich, Perspectives on 19th and 20th Century Protestant Theology, ed. by Carl Braaten, New: York: Harper & Row 1967, pp. 82–3. 41 Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, pp. 71–159. 37 38

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drew upon language reminiscent of Jacob Böhme (1575–1624), Schelling, and Rudolf Otto.42 The second fundamental question involves wonder at the mystery of being.43 Here the related ontological queries “What is being itself?” and “Why is there something rather than nothing?” are provoked by the metaphysical shock of possible non-being. The situation of being threatened by non-being generates an anxiety that is answered by the symbol “God,” particularly God as living, creative, and related.44 When effective, this symbol makes available the power of being under the imperiled conditions of finitude. An individual’s ultimate concern is to encounter that power upon which that individual can unconditionally depend in the face of potential nonbeing. The symbol “God” points to “Being-itself,” the unconditioned ground of all finite beings. As such, it is experienced as the “holy” described by Otto.45 This power of being is not itself conditioned by anything but is present in everything. As the unity of subject and object, it is the source of all life and meaning. Because it is the source of both actuality and potentiality, it is beyond both. Moreover, because it is the source of essence and existence, it is not subject even to this most basic polarity. Rather than being circumscribed by any conceptual boundaries, Beingitself is the abyss in which all distinctions disappear. Being-itself even transcends the dichotomy of being and non-being, for non-being must belong to it as a negation to be overcome; only by including non-being could Being-itself be the ground of life. Consequently, the symbol “God” does not refer to a person, or to a being of any sort, not even to a supreme, infinite being. “God” points to that ground and abyss which includes all that exists and could exist. Because all creatures exist by participating in the power of being, humans possess an inherent awareness of God. No arguments for the existence of God are necessary or even possible, for all of them reduce God to a mere being. At this point Tillich’s hostility to proofs for the existence of God parallels Kierkegaard’s similar antipathy.46 However, the rest of his analysis of the symbol “God” owes little to Kierkegaard’s work. The third fundamental question concerns the distinction of essence and existence and the estrangement of human existence from its essence.47 Existence is not just the product of the power of being, but rather is bounded and threatened by non-being. Under the conditions of finitude the fullness of being is only imperfectly realized, resulting in universal estrangement from essential being. Humanity longs for an unbroken relation with Being-itself; it yearns for the power of New Being to overcome the estrangement that distorts its life. Estrangement generates an ultimate concern about the source of the power to keep living in the face of brokenness and isolation. According to Tillich, a longing for essential being is a universal phenomenon, for even a person who feels alienated from life has a sense of that from which he or she is alienated. A pervasive sense that we have lost something haunts our lives. For 44 45 46 47 42 43

Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 108–15. Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 163–210. Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 211–89. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 215. Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 204–10. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 19–96.

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Tillich, estrangement is only possible in the context of a more basic connectedness. Consequently, Tillich’s much-touted existentialism presupposes a more fundamental essentialism, the identity of nature and spirit, and God and humanity. While Tillich’s indebtedness to Kierkegaard is most obvious when he analyzes estrangement, his more basic reliance upon Schelling’s ontology is evident when he insists upon the continuing immanence of Being-itself in finite being.48 In this portion of his systematics Tillich utilizes the biblical story of the Fall of Adam and Eve to clarify the phenomenon of existential estrangement.49 The scriptural symbol of the prelapsarian harmony of Eden does not refer to an era in the prehistory of humanity, but points to the memory of transtemporal essential being. To explain this Tillich draws upon Kierkegaard’s description of “dreaming innocence.”50 The Fall, a ubiquitous and perduring dynamic in all human existence, is due to the conjunction of spatial and temporal limits with finite freedom. Borrowing from Kierkegaard, Tillich proposes that the estrangement from pure being, the recognition of life as finite, produces anxiety.51 Humans experience their lives as being overwhelmed by destructive forces like meaninglessness, guilt, and death. Under the conditions of existence the polarities of individuation and participation, dynamics and form, and destiny and freedom begin to pull apart, producing the disintegration of the self. Free, self-initiated attempts at reconciliation are constantly thwarted by the conditions of finitude. The answer to anxiety is the courage that comes from Being-itself as a gift.52 The symbol of Jesus as the Christ points to the source of this courage that we humans cannot give ourselves. The New Being, the power of life in the midst of estrangement, is revealed in Christ. The biblical picture of Christ portrays the actualization of the non-estranged life of reconciliation and love. In Christ the New Being has been achieved in history, under the conditions of estranged existence. Jesus experienced the power of being in its fullness in a concrete life without succumbing to the anxiety that plagues everyone. Jesus was fully embedded in the various forms of brokenness that afflict humanity, including poverty, injustice, betrayal, and death. Tillich borrows the category “paradox” from Kierkegaard to express the gratuity of this New Being and the incomprehensible nature of its appearance in the midst of estrangement.53 Of course the existence of Jesus as the New Being is not subject to historical verification, but the biblical story of Jesus has the power to communicate this New Being in the experience of Christians. As with his mentor Martin Kähler, the foundation for his claim is the biblical picture of Christ, not the historically reconstructed Jesus.54 Individuals can participate in this New Being and experience new life now, not after some future resurrection. The symbol communicates a saving power that enriches present life and heals earthly relationships. Interestingly, Tillich 50 51 52 53 54 48 49

Tillich, Perspectives on 19th and 20th Century Protestant Theology, pp. 141–52. Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 2, pp. 29–44. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 33–4. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 34–5. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 97–180. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 90–2. Tillich, Perspectives on 19th and 20th Century Protestant Theology, pp. 213–15.

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does not draw upon any of Kierkegaard’s many expositions of the life of Christ to substantiate his claims about Jesus’ non-estranged life. Tillich’s fourth question concerns the ambiguities of life, which persist even with the power of New Being.55 “Actuality” is the process of actualizing essential nature in the conditions of existence, an effort that requires the synthesis of vitalty with self-regulation and intentionality. Tillich, borrowing the terminology of German idealism, calls the desired ideal unity of vitality and meaning “spirit.” The difficulty of enacting any such integration gives rise to ambiguity. This dilemma is answered by the general symbol of “the Spiritual Presence,” which includes the more particular symbols of “the Holy Spirit,” “the kingdom of God,” and “eternal life.”56 Through the symbol of the “Spirit” the individual is grasped by the transcendent unity of an unambiguous life. In the ecstasy of self-transcendence the unity of power and meaning is experienced. When Tillich analyzes this phenomenon Kierkegaard is seldom mentioned. The fifth question concerns the ambiguity of human history, and is really a subset of the fourth question.57 History is ambiguous because ultimate aims are routinely sacrificed for penultimate aims. An examination of humanity’s history does not reveal any transparent meaning or suggest inevitable progress toward a discernible telos. Here Tillich breaks with any nineteenth-century naïve certitude that the saga of humanity clearly manifests the progressive self-unfolding of a spiritual potency. No evident dialectic propels history toward an inexorable goal. Rather, for Tillich the symbol “the kingdom of God” answers the ambiguity of history and addresses the fear that history may be a tale full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing. The symbol catalyzes the experience of a mysterious value resident in history, in spite of its lack of inherent directionality. The symbol of the kingdom does not just include individuals, but society and all of life. The symbol points to opaque and partial manifestations of the kingdom of God in history. According to Tillich, the meaning of history is revealed in defining events, or kairoi.58 The symbol of “eternal life” points to the reality that history is ultimately fulfilled beyond history. All things will be purged of ambiguity and taken into eternity. Eternal life embraces the positive content of history and exposes and excludes the negative, thereby revealing unambiguous life. In this process of essentialization everything new, healthy, and creative that is being actualized in existence by an individual being is synthesized with that being’s essential nature. Consequently, for Tillich eschatology is not about the future, but is about the present. “Eternal life” and its related constellation of symbols gesture toward the divine life eternally moving through estrangement to ultimate reconciliation. Except for the fact that Tillich thought that his concept of kairos resembled Kierkegaard’s “moment,” in these eschatological reflections the influence of Kierkegaard is largely absent.59 Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 3, pp. 11–110. Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 111–294. 57 Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 297–423. 58 Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 369–72. 59 Paul Tillich, “Die Theologie des Kairos und die gegenwärtige geistige Lage: Offener Brief an Emanuel Hirsch,” Theologische Blätter, vol. 11, no. 13, 1934, pp. 309–10. (English 55 56

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It is evident in this account that Tillich’s thought is so eclectic and betrays so many divergent influences that it is difficult to isolate and analyze his indebtedness or relation to any particular figure. He gleaned his ontology and philosophy of nature from Schelling’s “positive philosophy.” Traces of Neoplatonism and the theosophy of Jacob Böhme can be discerned in that ontology. Nietzsche’s vitalism and German Romanticism run throughout Tillich’s recurrent critiques of moralism. The influence of Edmund Husserl’s (1859–1938) phenomenology is evident in the method of his post-World War I descriptions of human consciousness. Echoes of Martin Heidegger can be heard in his analysis of estrangement. Eventually, Sigmund Freud (1856– 1939) and Carl Jung (1875–1961) influenced his later and more refined analyses of anxiety and despair. Neo-Marxism informs his exposé of the social dimensions of alienation and the hegemony of instrumental reason. The work of both Friedrich Schleiermacher and Rudolf Otto influenced his descriptions of the experience of the divine. In this swirling mix it is difficult to factor out Tillich’s appropriation of Søren Kierkegaard. II. Conflicting Interpretations of Tillich’s Appropriation of Kierkegaard Given the complexity and eclectic nature of Tillich’s thought, it is not surprising that interpreters of Tillich and Kierkegaard have sharply disagreed about the nature of Kierkegaard’s influence upon Tillich. Basically, the interpretations fall into three categories: those that emphasize the indebtedness of Tillich to Kierkegaard, those that highlight Tillich’s divergences from Kierkegaard, and those that stress the qualified and limited, but nonetheless legitimate, nature of Tillich’s borrowings from Kierkegaard. Interpreters of the first type detect a fundamental continuity of spirit and purpose between Tillich and Kierkegaard, in spite of admitted divergences. This understanding of the Tillich–Kierkegaard relation was popular during the heyday of enthusiasm for existentialism in the English-speaking world. Arthur Cochrane, although criticizing Tillich from a Barthian perspective, argued that Tillich simply made explicit the ontology implied by Kierkegaard’s analysis of human existence.60 Walter Horton, the influential early proponent of neo-orthodox theology, shared this interpretation, claiming that Tillich adopted Kierkegaard’s critique of idealism’s attempt to move from the intelligibility of the world to the intelligibility of God. 61 Tillich, according to Horton, shared Kierkegaard’s conviction that in relation to the Unconditioned all human concepts are broken and paradoxical, making any immediate relation to the Unconditioned impossible. Tillich also relied upon Kierkegaard’s analysis of translation: “Open Letter to Emanuel Hirsch,” in The Thought of Paul Tillich, ed. by James Luther Adams, Wilhelm Pauck, and Roger Shinn, San Francisco: Harper & Row 1985, pp. 358–9.) 60 Arthur Cochrane, The Existentialists and God, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1956, p. 77; p. 97. 61 Walter M. Horton, “Tillich’s Role in Contemporary Theology,” in The Theology of Paul Tillich, ed. by Charles Kegley and Robert Bretall, New York: Macmillan 1952, pp. 29– 31.

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human existence and the concept of the paradox. The difference between Tillich and Kierkegaard is that by correlating the analysis of human existence with the analysis of the paradoxical revelation Tillich attained a rational comprehensiveness unknown to Kierkegaard. At the beginning of the twenty-first century John Heywood Thomas continued this interpretive trajectory, claiming to discern genuine echoes of Kierkegaard in Tillich’s work. Although Tillich’s pronounced nature mysticism differentiated him from Kierkegaard, both Tillich and Kierkegaard were essentially phenomenologists of religious experience.62 Both based their work upon an analysis of ultimate human questions. Tillich’s interpretation of anxiety followed the contours of Kierkegaard’s analysis.63 For both, anxiety is rooted in the awareness of finitude and freedom and the possibility of choosing negatively. Moreover, both thinkers based their theological reflections upon the existential encounter with the holy. The concept of God is merely an expression of the lived awareness of the dimension of the holy, and is not the product of rational demonstrations of God’s existence.64 Like Kierkegaard, Tillich did not want to translate Christian experience into a philosophy that purported to be more conceptually adequate to its divine object. Tillich’s penchant for metaphysical speculation, which seemed totally divergent from Kierkegaard’s critique of philosophical systems, was simply the fruit of Tillich’s conviction that what is true of human existence must be true of all existence. Furthermore, even their Christologies converged, for both Tillich and Kierkegaard regarded Christ as the absolute paradox that conquers existence under the conditions of existence.65 Most recently, Peter Slater has argued for a fundamental similarity between Kierkegaard and Tillich on the grounds that both of them appropriated a particular understanding of dialectics from Schelling.66 Both discerned a developmental process in human life structurally determined by the interplay of positive and negative moments. Differing from Hegel, Kierkegaard and Tillich both appropriated Schelling’s recognition that a “surd” element introduces a dimension of paradox into any account of dialectical development, making the actualization of “Spirit” in human history only episodic. Tillich, however, differed from Kierkegaard in extending this analysis of dynamic potency to the communal context of faith.67 Tillich also discerned a dialectical process in the divine life itself, while Kierkegaard resisted such ontological speculations. However, these divergences do not negate the fundamental similarity of their dialectical expositions of human existence. Other interpreters have tended to minimize any ostensible parallels between Tillich and Kierkegaard and have even treated them as antipodes. Kenneth Hamilton, an early critic of Tillich’s theological system, has argued for this fundamental

John Heywood Thomas, Tillich, London: Continuum 2000, pp. 76–7. Ibid., pp. 91–2. 64 Ibid., p. 75; p. 77. 65 Ibid., p. 65. 66 Peter Slater, “Religion and Theological Dialectics: Kierkegaard and Tillich,” Toronto Journal of Theology, vol. 24, no. 1, 2008, pp. 21–42. 67 Ibid., p. 34. 62 63

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opposition most vehemently.68 According to Hamilton, Tillich’s protestations of indebtedness to Kierkegaard were misleading. Kierkegaard’s fierce opposition to metaphysical systems would have included Tillich’s entire project. Tillich did a gross injustice to Kierkegaard by borrowing certain concepts and putting them to very anti-Kierkegaardian purposes. Most basically, Tillich inappropriately mixed existential categories with essentialist categories in a manner that undercut Kierkegaard’s authorial purpose.69 Tillich used the existential concepts to analyze the tensions in the human condition, but then sought to resolve those tensions through the development of a speculative system.70 In spite of his effort to distance himself from Hegel, Tillich did employ speculative thought to reinterpret and critique faith, just as Hegel had done. Tillich, unlike Kierkegaard, did not accept the final authority of revelation, but reinterpreted revelation through reason, thereby making reason, which allegedly can grasp the whole of being, the ultimate arbiter of truth. More specifically, Kierkegaard’s concept “infinite interest” is not the same phenomenon as Tillich’s “ultimate concern.”71 For Kierkegaard interest in an eternal happiness has a specific content that is based on a particular revelation of God’s purposes, while for Tillich ultimate concern is a generic disquietude provoked by the universal separation of the finite from the infinite. Anxiety, for Tillich, is not intrinsically related to guilt feelings and sin, as it was for Kierkegaard, but with finitude. Because Being is a monistic category for Tillich, even finite, estranged beings continue to participate in it.72 Therefore, for Tillich, the truth of human existence is essentially recollected, a view that Kierkegaard explicitly argued against. Justification, for Tillich, is really nothing more than a recognition of the continuing unity behind differentiation.73 Tillich the pantheist takes the sting out of the need to commit to a way of life by interpreting Kierkegaard’s stages not as options but as aspects of life in structural interdependence. In general, Tillich cuts Kierkegaard’s concepts loose from Christian particularity and takes them out of the context of making an existential decision of eternal significance. Vernard Eller followed Hamilton’s lead, asserting that although Tillich drew heavily upon Kierkegaard, Kierkegaard would have condemned Tillich’s philosophical system.74 In the 1990s Arnold Come continued to develop this interpretive tradition, arguing that Tillich exalted a metaphysical conceptual system over personal subjectivity.75 As a result, according to Come, Tillich distorted the understanding of God as a personal agent that had been so important for Kierkegaard. In the writings of Tillich the theoretic element in the quest to understand being eclipses the existential element. Come claims that although Kierkegaard would approve of Kenneth Hamilton, The System and the Gospel, London: SCM Press 1963. Ibid., p. 38. 70 Ibid., p. 40. 71 Ibid., p. 92. 72 Ibid., pp. 174–96. 73 Ibid., pp. 208–9. 74 Vernard Eller, Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship: A New Perspective, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1968, p. 135. 75 Arnold Come, Kierkegaard as Theologian: Recovering Myself, Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press 1997, pp. 92–8. 68 69

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Tillich’s celebrated assertion that God bears the ontological power of personality but is not a “person,” Kierkegaard would resist Tillich’s substitution of the transpersonal presence of the divine for the person-to-person encounter with God.76 According to Come, Kierkegaard would deplore Tillich’s description of God as suprapersonal Ultimate Reality that sublates the biblical personal God. In Tillich’s pages God is related to humanity as the infinite ground is to its finite expressions, a theme utterly alien to Kierkegaard.77 Come insists that Kierkegaard always speaks of God as the subject who loves and requires love in response, an interaction that can only be construed personalistically. David Gouwens also criticizes the tendency to regard Kierkegaard as a progenitor of the type of “Christian existentialism” often associated with Tillich and Bultmann.78 According to Gouwens, Kierkegaard and Tillich were methodologically very different from one another. Tillich used an existential ontology to correlate biblical symbols with ontological questions, hoping to clarify the meaning of the biblical symbols. Consequently, in Tillich’s work an abstract philosophicaltheological conceptuality governs the meaning of Christian concepts. This effort to ground the meaning of Christian concepts in metaphysics is a variant of the tendency that Kierkegaard had criticized in Hegel.79 Rather than resorting to such a speculative strategy, Kierkegaard sought to illumine meaning by showing how theological concepts are appropriated in the Christian life. Gouwens concludes that Kierkegaard’s practice was more akin to that of Wittgenstein than to that of Tillich.80 Gouwens further claims that Tillich developed a functional Christology in which the experience of salvation provides the basis for ascribing unique status to Jesus as the Christ.81 Rather than treating Christological affirmations as expressions of subjective experiences, Kierkegaard described the saving work of Christ as an historic event to which faith is the appropriate response. For Kierkegaard, the objective moment is logically prior to the subjective moment, although grasping the meaning of the objective moment and experiencing its efficacy do require subjective appropriation. A. James Reimer also implicitly emphasizes the differences between Tillich and Kierkegaard, or at least between Tillich and Tillich’s reconstruction of Kierkegaard.82 Reimer points out that in many respects Tillich and Emanuel Hirsch shared a common interpretation of Kierkegaard and that Tillich associated Kierkegaard with certain elements of Hirsch’s theology (without, of course, ascribing Hirsch’s Nazi sentiments to Kierkegaard). In Tillich’s eyes Kierkegaard, like Hirsch, tended to identify the divine with the experience of God’s transcendent ethical demand.83 Ibid., pp. 92–3. Ibid., pp. 95–8. 78 David Gouwens, Kierkegaard as Religious Thinker, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996, pp. 10–12; p. 17; pp. 145–6. 79 Ibid., pp. 10–11. 80 Ibid., p. 17. 81 Ibid., p. 145. 82 A. James Reimer, The Emanuel Hirsch and Paul Tillich Debate: A Study in the Political Ramifications of Theology, Lewiston, New York: Edward Mellon Press 1989. 83 Ibid., p. 53. 76 77

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Kierkegaard’s subjectivity (at least as construed by Tillich and Hirsch) principally involved standing humbly and obediently before God and risking an unequivocal commitment. Hirsch and Kierkegaard identified faith with an either/or commitment, while Tillich described faith as the ambiguous life on the boundary of the both/and.84 Moreover, Tillich regarded God as being beyond the dichotomies that informed the thought of Kierkegaard and Hirsch.85 Tillich, unlike Kierkegaard and Hirsch, found submission to divine imperatives issued from beyond the individual to be heteronomous. Tillich regarded God more immanently than did Kierkegaard and Hirsch, seeing God as the ground of the dynamic polarities that characterize the life of spirit itself.86 Hirsch, following Kierkegaard, chose an ethical/personal way of bridging the abyss between God and humanity, while Tillich chose to bridge the gap by regarding the finite as being capable of containing the infinite. Consequently, Tillich more adequately expressed than did Kierkegaard the traditional “infra Lutheranum” theme (a doctrine dear to both Luther and Schelling) that the created order is capable of sacramentally bearing the grace of God. Kierkegaard and Hirsch juxtaposed God and humanity, while Tillich regarded the Absolute as being beyond such bifurcations.87 Some interpreters take a more dialectical approach to the relation of Tillich to Kierkegaard, equally stressing continuities and discontinuities between the two. James Luther Adams, a friend and colleague of Tillich, argues that Tillich did thoroughly appreciate and appropriate Kierkegaard’s contention that Hegel had concealed the difference between essence and existence, and had obscured the anxiety of personal decision by emphasizing the necessity of the historical dialectic.88 However, according to Adams, Tillich developed a vision of the ultimate synthesis of essence and existence beyond history, a theme that was utterly alien to Kierkegaard. David Hopper has proposed that both Kierkegaard and Tillich were, in some sense, existentialists. However, Tillich’s existentialism was corporate-historical while Kierkegaard’s was individualistic.89 Both shared a sense of the opposition of God and humanity in the experience of estrangement. However, for Tillich, this opposition was not absolute, but was a dialectical coincidence of opposites.90 In this secondary literature certain interpretive strategies recur with a high degree of regularity. Those who argue for Tillich’s continuity with Kierkegaard cite as evidence Tillich’s “existential” turn after World War I and his reliance upon Kierkegaard’s refusal to conflate existence with essential being. Tillich’s antiHegelianism figures prominently in these accounts, as does Tillich’s borrowings from Kierkegaard’s analysis of anxiety. Those who argue for a disjunction between Ibid., p. 343. Ibid., p. 36. 86 Ibid., p. 39. 87 Reimer, The Emanuel Hirsch and Paul Tillich Debate: A Study in the Political Ramifications of Theology, p. 46. 88 James Luther Adams, “Tillich’s Interpretation of History,” in The Theology of Paul Tillich, ed. by Charles Kegley and Robert Bretall, New York: Macmillan 1952, pp. 297–9. 89 David Hopper, Tillich: A Theological Portrait, Philadelphia and New York: Lippincott 1968, p. 89. 90 Ibid., p. 113. 84 85

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Tillich and Kierkegaard point to Tillich’s commitment to ontology and systematic reflection. Tillich’s metaphysical predilections are cited as violations of the engaged and contextual spirit of Kierkegaard’s writing. Often the difference between Tillich’s generalized ontological concepts, which often have panentheistic nuances, and Kierkegaard’s specifically Christian concepts is foregrounded. In this view Tillich sacrifices the particularity of Christianity to a theory of universal religious experience, and replaces Kierkegaard’s context-specific passions with abstract speculation. The third group of interpreters, interestingly, grants these last objections to Tillich’s reliance upon Kierkegaard, but then suggests that these objections do not invalidate the similarities discerned by the first group of interpreters. III. Tillich’s Assessments of His Relation to Kierkegaard To sort through these rival interpretations and better understand the nature of Tillich’s relation to Kierkegaard, one very relevant type of evidence is Tillich’s overt statements about his appropriation of the Danish thinker. At various times in his career Tillich publicly reflected on his intellectual development and the nature of his indebtedness to past philosophers and theologians. Each time he did this Kierkegaard received significant attention. These reflections provide evidence for the reconstruction of the history of Tillich’s familiarity with Kierkegaard and his evolving opinions about Kierkegaard. In his autobiographical sketch On the Boundary from 1936 (republished in a revised form in 1966), Tillich intimated that he had long appreciated Kierkegaard’s description of “border-situations,” but does not describe how or when that appreciation began.91 He reflects that Martin Kähler’s exposition of the doctrine of justification with its exposé of estrangement, guilt, and despair prepared him to be receptive to the analysis of human existence developed by Kierkegaard and Heidegger.92 He further elaborates that he was prepared for Heidegger by reading Kierkegaard, whom he lauds as “the real founder of the philosophy of existence,” although he admits that his knowledge of Kierkegaard was limited.93 He credits Kierkegaard with being the first thinker to break through the closed philosophy of essence.94 Although Schelling in his later philosophy had recognized that thought is bound to existence and shares its contradictions, Schelling still regarded his philosophy as the culmination of an historical process in which the contradictions of existence had been overcome. As an alternative to this, Kierkegaard’s interpretation of anxiety and despair made existentialism possible.95 Tillich asserts: “His importance for the German post-war theology and philosophy can hardly be overestimated,” and that he himself during his last days as a student in 1905–06 “could not resist the impression

Paul Tillich, The Interpretation of History, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons 1936, p. 15. See also Tillich, On the Boundary, p. 27. 92 Tillich, The Interpretation of History, p. 32. See also Tillich, On the Boundary, p. 48. 93 Tillich, The Interpretation of History, p. 39. See also Tillich, On the Boundary, p. 56. 94 Tillich, The Interpretation of History, p. 62. See also Tillich, On the Boundary, p. 84. 95 Ibid. 91

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which his aggressive dialects made upon me.”96 Kierkegaard convinced him that the philosophy of essence concealed the ambiguities of existence, and that truth is bound to the situation of the individual knower.97 Kierkegaard persuaded him that the recognition of the situation of despair and estrangement is needed in order to achieve non-ideological truth, just as Marx showed him that the awareness of the situation of class struggle is necessary for non-ideological thinking.98 The Kierkegaardian claim that “truth is subjectivity” appropriately draws attention to the individual’s despair and exclusion from the world of essence. Tillich maintains that Kierkegaard, along with Marx, taught him that the highest possibility of approaching truth is present at the point of the profoundest meaninglessness, in the recognition of the greatest estrangement from one’s own nature. This insight, he claims, is one of the sources of his concept of “the boundary situation.”99 In his “Autobiographical Reflections” of 1952, which were repeated as My Search for Absolutes, lectures given at Chicago University Law School shortly before his death, Tillich once again recalled the discovery of Kierkegaard and “the shaking impact of his dialectical psychology” during his two years at Halle.100 This, he recollects, was just a prelude to the 1920s when Kierkegaard would become the patron saint of theologians and philosophers.101 He credited Kierkegaard with reinforcing his own existential orientation which had been rooted in his interpretation of Schelling in his second doctoral dissertation of 1912. In Perspectives on 19th and 20th Century Protestant Theology, a posthumously published book based on tape-recorder lectures that Tillich gave at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago in 1962–1963, Tillich repeated that at Halle in 1905–1907 his generation had come into contact with Kierkegaard through the translations of an “isolated individual in Würtemberg,” an allusion to Christoph Schrempf (1860–1944).102 He notes that in those days he could neither accept a repristinated orthodoxy nor a Ritschlian moralism, and that Kierkegaard provided a more attractive option that took the depths of the consciousness of guilt seriously. Kierkegaard, who in his estimation combined “intense piety” with “philosophical greatness,” has deservingly become a fad because his religious writings remain valid, he inspired dialectical theology, and he inspired Heidegger, and through him all existentialism.103 Tillich declared Kierkegaard to be the only man who made a difference in the nineteenth century in the Scandinavian countries, and that his writings were the source of existentialist philosophy.104 Moreover, he asserted that Ibid. Tillich, The Interpretation of History, p. 63. See also Tillich, On the Boundary, p. 85. 98 Tillich, The Interpretation of History, pp. 63–4. See also Tillich, On the Boundary, p. 86. 99 Ibid. 100 Tillich, “Autobiographical Reflections,” pp. 10–11. Paul Tillich, My Search for Absolutes, New York: Simon and Schuster 1967, pp. 36–7. 101 Ibid. 102 Tillich, Perspectives on 19th and 20th Century Protestant Theology, p. 162. 103 Ibid., pp. 163–4. 104 Ibid., p. 6. 96 97

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The Concept of Anxiety and The Sickness unto Death were two books that every theologian should read.105 In another context Tillich carefully qualified Kierkegaard’s influence upon him. In an article contributed to the “How My Mind Has Changed” series of The Christian Century Tillich asserted: “I have never been an existentialist in the sense that Kierkegaard or Heidegger is an existentialist.”106 He proceeded to confess that his own inquiries are predominantly essentialist. Throughout these reminiscences from various periods of his career certain themes recur. Kierkegaard is identified as a major font of existentialism considered both as a philosophy and as a cultural mood. As such, Kierkegaard performed the invaluable service of breaking with the essentialist tradition in German thought. Essentialism’s twin vices were its tendency to postulate closed systems that obscured the ambiguities and tragedies of actual life and its habit of divorcing reflection from the passions of human beings embedded in time. More particularly, the allure of Kierkegaard for Tillich was the constitutive role that estrangement, guilt, and despair played in his writings. Kierkegaard’s genius was his deftness at developing a dialectical psychology that did not obfuscate the tensions in human existence. IV. Tillich’s Familiarity with Kierkegaard’s Works A second type of evidence relevant for understanding Tillich’s relation to Kierkegaard concerns the extent and nature of Tillich’s familiarity with particular books by Kierkegaard. Unfortunately, Tillich’s direct quotations from Kierkegaard’s writings and citations of specific volumes are very scant. Therefore, the few specific references that he does provide are significant for establishing his canon-within-the canon of Kierkegaard’s oeuvre. The fact that he claimed that it was Kierkegaard’s dialectical psychology that captured his imagination during his student days at Halle may suggest that during 1905–07 he became familiar with The Concept of Anxiety and The Sickness unto Death.107 By the time of his second dissertation on Schelling he did exhibit familiarity with The Sickness unto Death’s analysis of despair.108 He mentioned that his generation of German students became aware of Kierkegaard through the translations of Christoph Schempf, which means that the translations and commentary down-played Kierkegaard’s Christian orientation.109 In 1936 he cited Ibid., p. 166. Paul Tillich, “On the Boundary Line,” The Christian Century, vol. 77, no. 49, 1960, p. 1437. 107 Tillich, “Autobiographical Reflections,” pp. 10–11. See also Tillich, My Search for Absolutes, pp. 36–7. 108 Paul Tillich, Mystik und Schuldbewußtsein in Schellings philosophischer Entwicklung, Gütersloh: Bertelsmann 1912, p. 22. (English translation: Mysticism and Guilt-Consciousness in Schelling’s Philosophical Development, trans. by Victor Nuovo, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania: Bucknell University Press 1974, p. 32.) 109 Tillich, Perspectives on 19th and 20th Century Protestant Theology, p. 162. Tillich probably read The Concept of Anxiety and Philosophical Fragments in Schrempf’s translations 105 106

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the “truth is subjectivity” theme from Concluding Unscientific Postscript.110 By that time he seems to have been using English-language translations of Kierkegaard. In an essay of 1942 he thanked the recently deceased David Swenson (1876–1940) and Walter Lowrie (1869–1959) for their English translations of Kierkegaard, and appreciatively noted the volume of selections from Kierkegaard’s journals by Alexander Dru.111 In praising the translations, some of which were still in manuscript form, he alluded to Either/Or,112 Fear and Trembling,113 and Edifying Discourses,114 but singled out Philosophical Fragments and Concluding Unscientific Postscript as the quintessential elaborations of Kierkegaard’s philosophy.115 He even quoted Concluding Unscientific Postscript’s definition of truth.116 He also favorably mentioned Swenson’s Something about Kierkegaard,117 Lowrie’s Kierkegaard,118 and Eduard Geismar’s (1871–1939) Lectures on the Religious Thought of Søren Kierkegaard.119 Significantly for Tillich, Geismar had claimed that the core of Kierkegaard’s thought was the analysis of religious subjectivity and estranged existence depicted in religiousness “A.” During the heyday of his American period only occasionally did Tillich directly quote Kierkegaard or even allude to particular books by Kierkegaard. On the rare occasions that he did so he continued to use the English translations. In 1944 he again mentioned Philosophical Fragments120 and quoted Concluding Unscientific in his volume Zur Psychologie der Sünde, der Bekehrung und des Glaubens. Zwei Schriften Sören Kierkegaards, Leipzig: F. Richter 1890. Schrempf’s translation of The Sickness unto Death did not appear until 1911, being entitled Die Krankheit zum Tode, Jena: Diederichs 1911. Tillich could have read Albert Bärthold’s translation Die Krankheit zum Tode, Halle: J. Fricke 1881. 110 Tillich, The Interpretation of History, p. 63. See also Tillich, On the Boundary, p. 85. 111 Paul Tillich, “Kierkegaard in English,” American-Sandinavian Review, vol. 30, no. 3, 1942, pp. 254–7. See Søren Kierkegaard, Journals: A Selection, ed. and trans. by Alexander Dru, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1938. 112 See Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life, trans. by David F. Swenson and Lillian Marvin Swenson, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1944. 113 See Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling: A Dialectical Lyric, trans. by Walter Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1941. 114 See Søren Kierkegaard, Edifying Discourses, vols. 1–4, ed. and trans. by David F. Swenson and Lillian Marvin Swenson, Minneapolis: Augsburg 1943–46. 115 Tillich, “Kierkegaard in English,” p. 255. See Søren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, trans. by David Swenson, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1936. See also Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. by David Swenson and Walter Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1941. 116 Tillich, “Kierkegaard in English,” p. 256. See Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. by Swenson and Lowrie, p. 182. See also SKS 7, 186 / CUP1, 203. 117 David Swenson, Something about Kierkegaard, Minneapolis: Augsburg 1941. 118 Walter Lowrie, Kierkegaard, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1938. 119 Eduard Geismar, Lectures on the Religious Thought of Søren Kierkegaard, ed. by David F. Swenson, Minneapolis: Augsburg 1938. 120 Paul Tillich, “Existential Philosophy,” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 5, 1944, p. 46. See Søren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, trans. by David Swenson, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1936.

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Postscript at least four times.121 All of the quotations pertained to the theme that abstract, objective reflection cannot grasp actuality and that faith involves objective uncertainty. In a volume from 1957,122 and in lectures delivered towards the end of his life, Tillich again quoted from the same section of Concluding Unscientific Postscript concerning truth as an objective uncertainty held fast with passionate inwardness.123 In the second volume of his Systematic Theology Tillich developed themes from The Concept of Anxiety without directly quoting it.124 He explicitly pointed to particular sections of Either/Or in that same text,125 and also cited one of Kierkegaard’s minor ethico-religious treatises.126 In his later lectures Tillich also made use of Either/Or.127 A reference from 1962 shows that Tillich had also read The Moment.128 From these citations it is evident that Tillich’s use of Kierkegaard’s texts was restricted to a fairly narrow range. The Concept of Anxiety, The Sickness unto Death, Philosophical Fragments, and Concluding Unscientific Postscript formed the enduring core of his Kierkegaardian canon. He became familiar with these texts during his student days and continued to allude to them almost until his final years. Either/Or, Part I also received a significant amount of attention as an exposé of the life of pure aestheticism. Fear and Trembling and Upbuilding Discourses are mentioned in Tillich’s work, but little substantive use is made of them. Clearly the pseudonymous literature was much more important to Tillich than Kierkegaard’s explicitly edifying and Christian literature. Tillich seldom drew upon Kierkegaard’s descriptions of the Christian life of love or upon Kierkegaard’s more strident later 121 Tillich, “Existential Philosophy,” pp. 49–51; p. 59. See Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. by Swenson and Lowrie, p. 173; p. 182; pp. 278–9. See SKS 7, 177 / CUP1, 193. SKS 7, 186 / CUP1, 203. SKS 7, 285 / CUP1, 313. SKS 7, 286 / CUP1, 314. 122 Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, p. 119. See Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. by Swenson and Lowrie, p. 182. See SKS 7, 186 / CUP1, 203. 123 Tillich, Perspectives on 19th and 20th Century Protestant Theology, p. 173. See Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. by Swenson and Lowrie, p. 182. Tillich does not quote this English translation exactly. See SKS 7, 186 / CUP1, 203. 124 Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 2, pp. 34–5. See Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Dread, trans. by Walter Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1944, pp. 23–39. See SKS 4, 332–52 / CA, 25–46. 125 Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 2, pp. 52–3. See Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, vol. 1, trans. by David F. Swenson and Lillian Marvin Swenson, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1944, pp. 68–110; p. 169. See also SKS 2, 89–136 / EO1, 84–135. SKS 2, 201 / EO1, 205. Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, vol. 2, trans. by Walter Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1944, pp. 156–62. See also SKS, 3 179–86 / EO2, 184–92. 126 Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 2, p. 133. See Søren Kierkegaard, The Present Age and Two Minor Ethico-Religious Treatises, trans. by Alexander Dru and Walter Lowrie, London: Oxford University Press 1940, pp. 71–135. See also SKS 11, 53–93 / WA, 51–89. 127 Tillich, Perspectives on 19th and 20th Century Protestant Theology, pp. 169–70. See Kierkegaard, Either/Or, vol. 1, trans. by Swenson and Swenson, pp. 251–71. See SKS 2, 291–432 / EO1, 301–445. 128 Tillich, Perspectives on 19th and 20th Century Protestant Theology, p. 176. See Søren Kierkegaard, Attack upon “Christendom,” trans. by Walter Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1944.

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critique of the symbiosis of Christianity and culture. For Tillich, Kierkegaard was almost equated with Johannes Climacus, supplemented by Vigilius Haufniensis and Anti-Climacus. As a result, Tillich could construe Kierkegaard as an analyst of the structures and dynamics of human subjectivity and as a phenomenologist of generalized religious experience. V. Tillich’s Negative and Positive Appropriations of Kierkegaardian Themes A third and most telling type of evidence is Tillich’s explicit use of acknowledged Kierkegaardian motifs in his own works. As we shall see, in Tillich’s pages Kierkegaard plays a dual role. Kierkegaard is both an illustration of a one-dimensional conceptuality that unfavorably contrasts with Schelling’s more adequately dialectical thought, and also the admirable heir of Schelling’s ostensible existential turn. A. Tillich’s Critique of Kierkegaard A fairly consistent pattern of criticizing Kierkegaard’s dichotomistic thinking and his refusal of ontology becomes evident as early as Tillich’s second dissertation, Mysticism and Guilt-Consciousness in Schelling’s Philosophical Development of 1912.129 In this slender volume Tillich exposes the deficiencies of Kierkegaard’s thought by contrasting it with the more adequate philosophy of Schelling. Throughout his career Tillich would habitually interpret Kierkegaard in the light of Schelling. Tillich proposed that the issue motivating the evolution of Schelling’s thought was the tension between the feeling of fusion with the Absolute on the one hand and the experience of ethical imperatives on the other.130 One pole of this tension pulls toward monism while the second pole pulls toward individuation. According to Tillich, that tension accounts for the transition from Schelling’s early work to his second period of “positive philosophy” and his even later work. Put differently, Schelling wrestled with the antimony of mysticism and guilt-consciousness, the feeling of unity with the Absolute on the one hand and the contradiction between the Holy One and the sinful creature on the other.131 Mysticism posits both the identity of subject and object, the identity of the universal and the particular, and even the identity of the infinite and the finite.132 But over against this unitive impulse the experience of moral obligation and guilt suggests a more basic antithesis resistant to any mediation.

129 Tillich, Mystik und Schuldbewußtsein in Schellings philosophischer Entwicklung. (Mysticism and Guilt-Consciousness in Schelling’s Philosophical Development.) 130 Tillich, Mystik und Schuldbewußtsein in Schellings philosophischer Entwicklung, p. 9. (Mysticism and Guilt-Consciousness in Schelling’s Philosophical Development, p. 21.) 131 Tillich, Mystik und Schuldbewußtsein in Schellings philosophischer Entwicklung, p. 15. (Mysticism and Guilt-Consciousness in Schelling’s Philosophical Development, p. 27.) 132 Tillich, Mystik und Schuldbewußtsein in Schellings philosophischer Entwicklung, pp. 16–20. (Mysticism and Guilt-Consciousness in Schelling’s Philosophical Development, pp. 28–30.)

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Tillich presents Kierkegaard as the paradigmatic representative of the conviction that the contradiction of God and humanity is the underlying principle of morality. Kierkegaard functions as the archetypal antipode to mysticism. Although Tillich gives no citation, he identifies Kierkegaard’s position with the formula “Repentance is the normal relation of man to God.”133 Kierkegaard’s work implicitly critiques all philosophies of identity, for sin in Kierkegaard’s view cannot be construed as a mere deficiency or as a necessary moment on the path to a higher synthesis. For Kierkegaard, unity is disrupted because God cannot admit an unholy will into unity with God’s own self. Having outlined this opposition of mysticism and the anti-mysticism represented by Kierkegaard, Tillich proceeds to assert that this absolute opposition of mysticism and guilt-consciousness is untenable, because an internal antinomy destabilizes each of the poles. On the one hand, all unitive systems must reluctantly admit that ideality and actuality do not fully coincide. On the other hand, Kierkegaard’s sense of alienation from God cannot be total because opposition can only be experienced in a context of underlying relatedness.134 Even the disjunctive power of guilt cannot completely sever the foundational relation to the Absolute. Consequently, the essential relation of humanity to God cannot possibly be repentance, as Kierkegaard had wrongly supposed. According to Tillich, Kierkegaard himself sensed this when he portrayed despair as “the sickness unto death.”135 The despairing experience of utter alienation from God would either negate all joy or devolve into practical atheism, neither of which can be viably lived out. In the dissertation Tillich proceeds to present Schelling’s positive philosophy as the resolution of the antinomy of mysticism and the guilt-consciousness epitomized by Kierkegaard. For God to be the living God both rationality and irrationality must exist in God, so that the light can overcome the darkness. In the divine life itself a movement toward differentiation is answered by a movement toward reunion. Sin, which is made possible by the negative principle but is not to be identified with it, is a disruption of this process of reunion through the assertion of the isolated self. Tillich approvingly explained Schelling’s conclusion that through repentance (a sacrifice of the immediacy of the self) made possible by the self-giving of God, the contradiction of sin can be overcome. Throughout this exposition Tillich presented Kierkegaard as epitomizing the negative moment in Schelling’s dialectic, and did not develop the theme that Kierkegaard also developed Schelling’s critique of Hegel’s philosophy of identity (as Tillich later would). Without explicitly mentioning Kierkegaard, Tillich elsewhere articulated similar objections to an undialectical identification of God with the experience of moral obligation to a transcendent Other.136 In 1922, in a review of Emanuel Hirsch’s Tillich, Mystik und Schuldbewußtsein in Schellings philosophischer Entwicklung, p. 20. (Mysticism and Guilt-Consciousness in Schelling’s Philosophical Development, p. 30.) 134 Tillich, Mystik und Schuldbewußtsein in Schellings philosophischer Entwicklung, p. 22. (Mysticism and Guilt-Consciousness in Schelling’s Philosophical Development, p. 32.) 135 Ibid. 136 Paul Tillich, Emanuel Hirsch und Paul Tillich Briefwechsel 1917–1918, ed. by HansWalter Schütte, Berlin: Die Spur 1973, pp. 9–37. 133

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Der Sinn des Gebets, Tillich leveled against Hirsch the same criticism that he had directed toward Kierkegaard, that the juxtaposition of God and humanity violates the nature of the Unconditioned and leads to heteronomy.137 Given Tillich’s tendency to accept the basics of Hirsch’s “existential” reading of Kierkegaard, the parallelism of Tillich’s critique of Kierkegaard and his critique of Hirsch is not surprising. In a later exchange with Emanuel Hirsch conducted in journals in 1934–35, Tillich implicitly voiced another reservation about Kierkegaard, or at least a potential unfortunate use of Kierkegaard. Hirsch, reading Kierkegaard through the lens of Fichte, had extrapolated the theme that the individual needs an imperative to which the individual could be committed in the face of ambiguity. Hirsch, finishing a monograph on Kierkegaard in 1933, saw a connection between Kierkegaard’s theme of “risk” and the need for risking a decision in support of National Socialism. Tillich protested against Hirsch’s use of Kierkegaard’s understanding of Socrates as the sage who questioned rationality to justify Hirsch’s own conviction that ethical commitments are not based on rational criteria, but on an existential decision in ambiguous circumstances.138 Tillich partially exculpated Kierkegaard by proposing that Hirsch’s view was more indebted to Nietzsche’s antipathy to critical-dialectical thinking than to Kierkegaard. The problem for Tillich, of course, was that a voluntaristic leap, devoid of any critical “logos,” could aim in any direction, even toward Hitler, as Hirsch demonstrated in his own political commitments. In the first volume of Systematic Theology, which appeared in 1951, Tillich again articulated the fear that Kierkegaard was insufficiently attentive to the dimension of “rational form” that is a feature of any revelatory experience.139 A genuine revelation should overcome the conflict between formalism and emotionalism (the self-involving passionate element of a revelatory experience), but Kierkegaard unfortunately made the juxtaposition of the two permanent. Against what he thought was Kierkegaard’s position, Tillich maintained that that which is grasped in “infinite passion” is identical with that which appears as the criterion in every act of rational knowledge. Similarly, in Dynamics of Faith of 1957 Tillich may have had Kierkegaard in mind when he critiqued the “voluntaristic distortion of faith.”140 In this one-sided understanding of the religious life, faith is construed as the product of an arbitrary will to believe, rather than as the fruit of an ultimate concern that motivates commitment. In his lectures of 1962–63 Tillich openly criticized Kierkegaard’s contention that the individual should merely “leap” to the conviction that God sent Jesus for the individual’s salvation. In language that echoed his critique of Hirsch, Tillich expressed the apprehension that Kierkegaard provided no rationale for jumping in one direction rather than another.141 To Tillich the celebrated “leap” looked like a criterionless choice. Over against this, Tillich Paul Tillich, “Emanuel Hirsch: Der Sinn des Gebets,” Theologische Blätter, vol. 1, 1922, pp. 137–8. 138 Tillich, “Die Theologie des Kairos und die gegenwärtige geistige Lage: Offener Brief an Emanuel Hirsch,” pp. 316–17. (“Open Letter to Emanuel Hirsch,” pp. 368–9.) 139 Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, p. 154. 140 Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith, New York: Harper & Row 1957, p. 37. 141 Tillich, Perspectives on 19th and 20th Century Protestant Theology, p. 175. 137

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insisted that any leap in the direction of Christ must be supported by reasons and a justifiable purpose. Kierkegaard, he concluded, could not give the experience of faith any real content beyond the declaration that it is existentially passionate because he lacked an “essentialist vision of the structure of reality.”142 From his exchange with Hirsch in 1934 until his late lectures of the 1960s, Tillich continued to worry that Kierkegaard’s lack of an essentialist ontology could lead to irrational voluntarism. In an essay from 1924 republished in English in 1936, Tillich added another dimension to his critique of Kierkegaard for being insufficiently dialectical by overemphasizing the negative moment.143 According to Tillich, the so-called dialectical theology of Karl Barth and his colleagues, which depended on Kierkegaard, discerned only a negative relation of the holy to profane culture, and failed to consider the possibility of a more polar relation. In Tillich’s view, the theological heirs of Kierkegaard could only regard God as the abyss of meaning but not as the creative ground of meaning and life. Tillich further developed this theme of Kierkegaard’s excessive attachment to negation in his criticism of Kierkegaard’s critique of theology and the church. According to Tillich, in The Moment Kierkegaard legitimately pointed to a tension between the actual ecclesial office and the essence of Christianity, but failed to see that Christianity must have some institutional embodiment subject to the laws of sociology.144 Similarly, Tillich admits that Kierkegaard was right to protest against attempts to objectively describe the paradox of the Incarnation, but wrong to deny that Christian faith must be articulated in language drawn from this “horizontal” dimension of human culture.145 Moreover, Kierkegaard was also right that the church must not be undialectically identified with its environing culture, but wrong in suggesting that it should be completely detached from the surrounding society. In fact, the church can never be purely detached, for the rituals and symbols it uses to express the faith are drawn from the general culture. According to Tillich the vertical dimension of faith must be expressed in terms of the horizontal, for that pattern reflects the dynamics of the Incarnation. Tillich ironically points out that Kierkegaard himself could not remain purely detached from culture, for his thought was appropriated by the culture of existentialism. Tillich’s worry that Kierkegaard separated God and humanity too undialectically led to one further recurrent criticism of Kierkegaard. Tillich feared that Kierkegaard’s Christology focused too narrowly on the uniquely paradoxical nature of the union of the infinite and the finite in the Incarnation. The problem is that such an emphasis assumes the fundamental incompatibility of the finite and the infinite. In 1925 Tillich argued that the notion of “contemporaneity” cannot be based on the mere assertion that God entered history in the Incarnation; a fuller picture of the

Ibid. Tillich, The Interpretation of History, pp. 220–1. See also Paul Tillich, Kirche und Kultur, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1924 (Sammlung gemeinverständlicher Vorträge und Schriften aus dem Gebiet der Theologie und Religionsgeschichte, vol. 111), pp. 1–22. 144 Tillich, Perspectives on 19th and 20th Century Protestant Theology, pp. 176–7. 145 Ibid., pp. 177–8. 142 143

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type of life that Christ lived is necessary.146 Tillich later elaborated this concern in Systematic Theology, complaining that Kierkegaard exaggerated when he claimed that all that humanity needs is the information that God sent his Son into the world in the years 1–30. Rather, humanity needs a concrete picture of the New Being’s enactment under the conditions of estrangement.147 Although this enactment of New Being cannot be verified through historical research, some analogy must be assumed between the biblical picture and the actual personal life from which it arose. In his lectures of 1962–63 Tillich repeated this argument against Kierkegaard, claiming that “Christ” must have some content. That content is provided not by the leap to the purported immediacy of “contemporaneity” but rather by the historical traditions of the church.148 For Tillich, the paradox of the Incarnation is not primarily the union of the infinite and the finite (for the infinite is always present in the finite), but rather the appearance of a non-estranged life under the conditions of finite existence. The focus, for Tillich, falls not on the ontology of the person of Jesus, but rather on Jesus’ unique quality of life. Ironically, Kierkegaard does emphasize the uniqueness of Jesus’ life in Practice in Christianity and Christian Discourses, texts that were not part of Tillich’s Kierkegaardian canon. Tillich’s discomfort with what he took to be Kierkegaard’s purely negative dialectic even had implications for his response to Kierkegaard’s remarks about eternity. Tillich proposed that Kierkegaard’s critique of Hegel’s view of the relation of time and eternity was only partially warranted.149 According to Tillich, Kierkegaard, like Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg (1802–1872), objected to Hegel’s introduction of movement into the logical forms. This was justified insofar as Hegel understood human temporality to be the moving image of this dialectical dynamic within the Absolute. Kierkegaard aptly appreciated the fact that human temporality is so distorted that history cannot be interpreted as the manifestation of this ideal movement. However, Hegel, according to Tillich, was right that the genuine meaning of eternity is not timelessness; Hegel, like Schelling, realized that there is dialectical movement in the Absolute. Human temporality, although distorted, is rooted in the essential dynamics of Being-itself. Kierkegaard’s sharp bifurcation of time and eternity obscured this all-important reality. Tillich reiterated his foundational theme that the dynamics of essential being continue to support and inform the distorted dynamics of existential being. In an essay from 1956 Tillich summarized much of his criticism of Kierkegaard.150 After lauding Schelling’s existential turn, Tillich proceeded to praise Schelling for realizing that existentialism presupposes essentialism. That crucial fact is something that Kierkegaard failed to appreciate. As a result, Kierkegaard emphasized the negativities of existential estrangement so much that he could not discern the ways Paul Tillich, Dogmatik. Marburger Vorlesung von 1925, ed. by Werner Schüssler, Düsseldorf: Patmos 1986, p. 259. 147 Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 2, p.114. 148 Tillich, Perspectives on 19th and 20th Century Protestant Theology, pp. 175–6. 149 Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, pp. 274–5. 150 Paul Tillich, “The Nature and Significance of Existential Thought,” Journal of Philosophy, vol. 52, no. 23, 1956, pp. 741–2. 146

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in which the power of being still positively sustains all finite life. Kierkegaard, in Tillich’s view, ultimately succumbed to an ontological dualism that severed the tie of God and humanity. Such a sundering of the finite and the infinite can only lead to spiritually unhealthy heteronomy and supernaturalism. B. Tillich’s Positive Appropriation of Kierkegaard After his traumatic experiences in World War I, Tillich often expressed more appreciation for Kierkegaard than he had done in his dissertation of 1912. Often the approbations would eclipse the reservations. After the war Tillich more frequently praised Kierkegaard’s focus on existence and his initiation (along with Schelling) of the modern existential style of philosophy. In Tillich’s mind Kierkegaard was so identified with existentialism that his assessment of Kierkegaard was intimately tied to his assessment of that amorphous and variegated intellectual movement. Part of Tillich’s enthusiasm for Kierkegaard-the-existentialist was inspired by Kierkegaard’s insistence upon the passionate, self-involving character of philosophical and theological reflection. In “Philosophy and Theology,” delivered as a lecture in 1940, Tillich associated Kierkegaard with the existential theology that asks for the meaning of being in “as far as it is my being, and carries me as the abyss and ground of my existence.”151 In 1944 Tillich declared that the Concluding Unscientific Postscript was the classic of existential philosophy, a movement that, according to Tillich, analyzes concrete life rather than abstract thought.152 In 1951 Tillich cited Kierkegaard’s “infinite passion and interest” as a prerequisite for any attempt to describe the object of theology, which is that which concerns humans ultimately.153 As Kierkegaard knew, “the object of religion” cannot be treated as an objectively cognizable entity that could be analyzed without the passions that constitute the self’s deepest hopes and fears. According to Tillich, Kierkegaard was right that the absolute element in ultimate concern demands infinite passion, absolute intensity. To speak of “the gods” in a mood of detachment is to reduce the divine to a mere object in a world of objects.154 Toward the end of his life Tillich still approvingly described Kierkegaard’s contention that the religious life is infinite passion.155 He quotes Climacus’ statement “Truth is the objective uncertainty held fast in the most personal passionate experience. This is the truth, the highest truth, the highest truth attainable for the existing individual.”156 “Subjectivity” and the “leap” suggest that faith is not rooted in the dispassionate, calculative quest for objective certainty, but in ultimate concern about the meaning of life. Tillich approvingly notes 151 Tillich, The Protestant Era, p. 88. First published as “Philosophy and Theology,” Religion in Life, vol. 10, no. 1, 1941, p. 25. 152 Tillich, “Existential Philosophy,” p. 46. 153 Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, p. 12. 154 Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 214–15. 155 Tillich, Perspectives on 19th and 20th Century Protestant Theology, p. 170. 156 Ibid., p. 173. See Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. by Swenson and Lowrie, p. 182. Tillich does not quote this English translation exactly. See SKS 7, 186 / CUP1, 203.

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that Kierkegaard described both Socrates and Jesus as communicating indirectly and existentially through their passionate quality of life.157 As part of the celebration of existentialism, Tillich also lauded Kierkegaard for dramatically drawing attention to the estrangement of existence from essence. In an essay from 1930 Tillich explained that Kierkegaard’s work is not a world-view, but a confrontation with the problematic aspects of existence.158 In 1940, upon being installed in the chair of philosophical theology at Union Theological Seminary, Tillich proposed that Kierkegaard used the term “existential” to denote life in its concreteness, separated from essential being.159 In Systematic Theology Kierkegaard is mentioned, along with Heidegger and the later Schelling, as a thinker who distinguished essential and existential being by contrasting them.160 According to Tillich, Kierkegaard was right that the distorted temporality of existence undermines any Hegelian effort to provide a complete interpretation of history as the actualization of the dialectic of the essential forms within the life of the Absolute.161 In 1952, in the enormously popular The Courage To Be, Tillich asserted that Kierkegaard both initiated an “existential attitude” of infinite concern and also a philosophy of existence that analyzed the estrangement of humanity from its essence in terms of anxiety and despair.162 Tillich again pointed out that Schelling’s positive philosophy influenced Kierkegaard’s existentialist revolt against the objectification of human beings.163 In an essay of 1955 Schelling was similarly presented as both a precursor of Kierkegaard’s existentialism and as a more nuanced exponent of existentialism.164 In the second volume of Systematic Theology that appeared in 1957 Tillich repeated the theme that while Hegel the essentialist regarded existence as the expression of essential being in which estrangement is already reconciled, Kierkegaard regarded existence as fallen, as alienated from true being.165 According to Tillich, Kierkegaard explored this estrangement in regard to the individual, while Marx explored it in relation to society, and Schopenhauer explored it in relation to life. The central question for Kierkegaard was how humanity can overcome this estrangement and be reconciled with its true being. In his 1962–63 lectures Tillich again maintained that Kierkegaard, along with Schelling, recognized that reconciliation does not occur primarily in the mind of the philosopher; the finite and the infinite are not yet reconciled in existence.166 The dialectic of logic must not be confused with Tillich, Perspectives on 19th and 20th Century Protestant Theology, p. 171. Paul Tillich, “Die Protestantische Verkündigung und der Mensch der Gegenwart,” in Religiöse Verwirklichung, Berlin: Furche-Verlag 1930, pp. 70–1. (English translation: “The Protestant Message and the Man of Today,” in The Protestant Era, p. 193.) 159 Tillich, The Protestant Era, p. 88. First published as “Philosophy and Theology,” Religion in Life, vol. 10, no. 1, 1941, p. 25. 160 Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, p. 165. 161 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 275. 162 Tillich, The Courage To Be, pp. 125–6. 163 Ibid., pp. 135–8. 164 Paul Tillich, “Schelling und die Anfänge des Existentialistischen Protestes,” Zeitschrift für Philosophie, no. 9, 1955, pp. 197–208. 165 Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 2, p. 25. 166 Tillich, Perspectives on 19th and 20th Century Protestant Theology, pp. 164–5. 157

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the movement of history. In Tillich’s view, both Kierkegaard and Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg, who greatly influenced Kierkegaard, echoed Schelling’s criticism of Hegel’s confusion of dialectics and history.167 The existentialism associated with Kierkegaard is rooted in Schelling’s critique of the “negative philosophy” that abstracts from time and space and all concreteness. For Tillich, another beneficial aspect of Kierkegaard’s existentialism was its focus on individual responsibility. Tillich claimed that Hegel had no room for personal ethics in his system, for he understood ethics from the perspective of the essential structure of human society.168 Therefore Kierkegaard emphasized the personal responsibility of the free, deciding individual. Tillich observed: “Again and again he (Kierkegaard) said that the last reality is the deciding individual, the individual who in freedom must decide for good or evil.”169 For Tillich, this vision of the individual as a responsible moral agent was a crucial part of Kierkegaard’s valuable legacy. Tillich particularly appreciated the way in which Kierkegaard used anxiety to explain the transition from essence to existence, and borrowed significantly from The Concept of Anxiety.170 Kierkegaard, he claimed, popularized the concept of angst in existentialist philosophy.171 In Tillich’s reading, Kierkegaard’s “dreaming innocence” is the suprahistorical state of non-actualized possibility that always precedes the transition to existence. Anxiety, according to Tillich’s interpretation of Kierkegaard, is the awareness of finitude, of being a mixture of being and non-being, and therefore of being threatened by non-being. For all creatures finitude generates anxiety, but in humanity this anxiety is complicated by being united with finite freedom. In the symbolic Genesis story the divine prohibition awakens a consciousness of finite freedom, for it presupposes a split between actuality and possibility. When finite freedom becomes self-conscious, it tends to become actual. But dreaming innocence wants to preserve itself, generating a tension between dreaming innocence and the actualization of freedom. The individual experiences the anxiety of losing himself by not actualizing himself and the anxiety of losing himself by actualizing himself. Tillich repeated this account of Kierkegaard’s treatment of anxiety in his 1962– 63 lectures. Claiming that the Concept of Anxiety is a fundamental book on anxiety that every theologian should read, Tillich repeats that Kierkegaard suggests that we are anxious because we are finite.172 Adam and Eve epitomize the anxiety about the alternatives of actualizing freedom and becoming real, or failing to do so. We choose to actualize ourselves; this decision is a “leap” and is not the product of necessity. But by so doing we become guilty, and the decision to actualize the self can be seen as a fall.173 According to Tillich, Kierkegaard initiated an interest in the constitutive role of anxiety in the human psyche that bore fruit in the work of Freud and May. Ibid., p. 150. Ibid., pp. 126–7. 169 Ibid., p. 166. 170 Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 2, pp. 33–5. See Kierkegaard, The Concept of Dread, trans. by Lowrie, pp. 23–39 (which corresponds to SKS 4, 332–52 / CA, 25–46). 171 Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 2, p. 34. 172 Tillich, Perspectives on 19th and 20th Century Protestant Theology, pp. 166–7. 173 Ibid., pp. 167–8. 167 168

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Tillich’s enthusiasm for Kierkegaard’s existential psychology manifested itself in other ways. He attested that he relied upon Kierkegaard’s analysis of the phenomenon of despair. According to Tillich’s appropriation of Kierkegaard, the existing individual inevitably experiences a conflict between what potentially should be and what actually is, and feels unable to integrate the two. Despair is Kierkegaard’s “sickness,” the feeling of hopelessness with no prospect of healing. In such a situation the individual loses a sense of life’s meaning.174 In 1962–63 Tillich hailed The Sickness unto Death as a book that every theologian should read and repeated the theme that for Kierkegaard guilt becomes despair, the sense of being stuck in the separation from essential being.175 Along these same lines Tillich asserted that Kierkegaard’s talk about guilt was not really about the theological problem of sin and forgiveness, but rather about the possibility of personal existence in the light of guilt, for guilt gives rise to despair about life’s meaning.176 Tillich also applauded Kierkegaard’s analysis of the way in which estrangement leads to concupiscence.177 Separated from the whole, the individual desires reunion with the whole. The desire for reunion can assume the distorted form of the neverending effort to incorporate the world into oneself. Kierkegaard, according to Tillich, aptly uses the archetypal characters of Nero, Mozart’s Don Juan, and Faust to illustrate the unlimited and insatiable nature of the desires for power, sex, and knowledge.178 Such a world-consuming response to inner emptiness is both demonic and futile. In his 1962–63 lectures Tillich again approvingly drew attention to Kierkegaard’s illustration in “Diary of a Seducer” of the perils of concupiscence, noting that, according to Kierkegaard, such a demonic using of other persons is a form of self-seclusion and a resistance to the genuine self-giving that love involves.179 Tillich’s reading of Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous authorship as an exercise in existential psychology had further repercussions for his own work. Tillich occasionally relied on Kierkegaard’s psychology to analyze not only the tensions in human life in general but also the ambiguities in the more specifically Christian life. According to Tillich, Kierkegaard aptly recognized that the power of new life and the enduring potency of sin remain ambiguously intertwined even when the New Being has grasped an individual. Kierkegaard’s question “Should anyone let themselves be killed for the truth?” reveals the tragic character of guilt, for even Jesus’ commitment to truth tempted others to oppose him and thereby become guilty. Without becoming guilty himself, Jesus was tragically responsible for the guilt of those who killed him. Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 2, p. 75. Tillich, Perspectives on 19th and 20th Century Protestant Theology, p. 166. 176 Tillich, The Courage To Be, p. 142. 177 Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 2, pp. 52–3. 178 See Kierkegaard, Either/Or, vol. 1, trans. by Swenson and Swenson, pp. 68–110; pp. 168–76 (which corresponds to SKS 2, 89–136 / EO1, 84–135 and SKS 2, 200–9 / EO1, 204– 14). See also Kierkegaard, Either/Or, vol. 2, trans. by Lowrie, pp. 156–72 (which corresponds to SKS 3, 178–97 / EO2, 184–204). 179 Tillich, Perspectives on 19th and 20th Century Protestant Theology, pp. 169–70. See Kierkegaard, Either/Or, trans. by Swenson and Swenson, vol. 1, pp. 251–71 (which corresponds to SKS 2, 291–432 / EO1, 301–445). 174 175

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Jesus’ new, non-estranged life ambiguously contained the capacity to catalyze new forms of spiritual brokenness in his social environment.180 In Tillich’s view, Kierkegaard was also positively instructive in the way that he existentialized Hegel’s dialectical understanding of the development of “Spirit.” Tillich interpreted Kierkegaard as appropriating Hegelian dialectics, detaching that dialectical schema from the movement of Spirit in the history of the human race, and applying it to the spiritual development of individuals. Consequently, Kierkegaard developed a view of hierarchical stages in an individual’s life, dialectically related to one another.181 To qualify Kierkegaard’s indebtedness to Hegel, Tillich quickly pointed out that in spite of the dialectical pattern, a very non-Hegelian “leap,” a non-rational jump, separates one stage from another in Kierkegaard’s adaptation. Tillich’s own interpretation of Kierkegaard was that stages are not so much ways of living that succeed one another in time as they are “levels” of existence coexisting in an individual at the same time. Each individual lives in all three, but chooses to make one more predominant than the others. Tillich confesses that he finds Kierkegaard’s description of the aesthetic stage to be particularly brilliant.182 Back in 1936 Tillich had admitted that Keirkegaard’s “esthetic sphere” was attractive to him and even dangerous for him.183 Tillich clarified that Kierkegaard used “aestheticism” not to criticize the spirit of play present in all artistic production, but to critique the lack of seriousness and detachment toward cultural creativity.184 In general, Tillich continued to be suspicious of the moralism that he had detected in Kierkegaard as early as 1912, and found Kierkegaard to be insufficiently appreciative of the aesthetic aspects of life. Tillich’s positive valuation of Kierkegaard even included his adoption, with necessary modifications, of widely circulating Kierkegaardian concepts like “leap,” “paradox,” and “the moment.” Although Tillich had expressed reservations about the possibly voluntaristic and arbitrary implications of Kierkegaard’s use of the concept “leap,” he did esteem its capacity to highlight one feature of being grasped by a type of revelatory event. According to Tillich, Kierkegaard’s emphasis of the “leap” and his talk of being suspended like a swimmer over the ocean are classic expressions of the way in which the “extraordinarily irregular” aspects of life can be mediums of revelation, particularly the revelation of the divine abyss.185 Such a leap that leaves everything rational behind contrasts with Kant’s perception of the divine logos in the extraordinary regularity of the starry sky and the moral law. Both mediums of revelation are legitimate; they merely point to different aspects of the divine. Interestingly, Tillich describes the “leap” as an event that happens to an individual rather than as a voluntary act that the individual performs. Again, Tillich 180 Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 2, p. 133. See Søren Kierkegaard, The Present Age and Two Minor Ethico-Religious Treatises, trans. by Dru and Lowrie, pp. 71–135 (which corresponds to SKS 11, 53–93 / WA, 51–89). 181 Tillich, Perspectives on 19th and 20th Century Protestant Theology, p. 169. 182 Ibid., pp. 168–9. 183 Tillich, The Interpretation of History, p. 14. 184 Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 3, pp. 160–1. 185 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 119. See also Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. by Swenson and Lowrie, p. 182 (which corresponds to SKS 7, 186 / CUP1, 203).

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finds Kierkegaard’s writings to do justice to the otherness of God but not to the divine immanence. Tillich made more positive use of Kierkegaard’s concept of “paradox.” In his debate with Karl Barth and Friedrich Gogarten in 1923–24 about “paradox” Tillich appealed to Kierkegaard to support his contention that the Absolute can never be known or experienced undialectically, without an admixture of the conditioned. He feared that Barth and Gogarten were guilty of such an undialectical construal of revelation when they were describing the Incarnation as an empirical fact accessible through Scripture and creeds.186 Even the affirmation of the presence of the divine in Christ and the presence of Christ in the life of the believer must be dialectical, subverting our human concepts, as Kierkegaard realized, along with Luther, Pascal, Augustine, John, and Paul. While some theologians fail to appreciate the conceptual and experiential elusiveness of the paradox, others divorce the paradox too sharply from human rationality. Tillich asserted that Emil Brunner (1889–1966) in The Mediator did not correctly understand Kierkegaard’s account of the offensiveness of the paradox of the Incarnation. Kierkegaard, according to Tillich, did not treat the absolute paradox as if it were a logical contradiction. Rather, the paradox of the Incarnation points beyond the realm in which finite reason operates, transcending all human expectations and possibilities, indicating that which conquers existence under the conditions of existence.187 The paradox is not the conceptual impossibility of affirming contradictory propositions, but rather the utterly unanticipated appearance of the power of new, non-estranged life in the midst of alienation. More surprisingly, Tillich also claimed that another of Kierkegaard’s celebrated concepts, “the moment,” was one of the many inspirations for his own concept of kairos. Tillich seems to have thought that his kairos concept was similar to Kierkegaard’s “moment,” presumably as presented in Philosophical Fragments. Of course, Tillich realized that he was applying the concept to cultural movements, which Kierkegaard certainly had not done. This opinion inspired Tillich’s brief debate with Emanuel Hirsch in 1934–35 concerning the proper way to interpret and apply Kierkegaard’s “moment.” Tillich accused Hirsch of being unaware that Kierkegaard’s standpoint of the existing individual at the moment of decision, to which Hirsch had appealed in order to support his theory of “the present hour” of German history, bears a striking similarity to the existential-historical thinking of the young Marx.188 Therefore it is the kairos doctrine of Tillich’s own religious socialism, and not the “present hour” of Hirsch’s National Socialism, that can legitimately claim to be compatible with Kierkegaard. Moreover, Tillich continues, by sacralizing the present moment of resurgent German nationalism, Hirsch was undialectically collapsing an abstract idea into a concrete historical movement. That identification of essence with existence contradicted Kierkegaard’s sensitivity

Tillich, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 7, pp. 216–17. Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, p. 57. 188 Tillich, “Die Theologie des Kairos und die gegenwärtige geistige Lage: Offener Brief an Emanuel Hirsch,” pp. 309–10. (“Open Letter to Emanuel Hirsch,” pp. 358–9.) 186 187

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to the brokenness and ambiguity of all historical existence.189 According to Tillich, Kierkegaard’s “moment” was not an immediate experience of the total actualization of essential being. Finally, Kierkegaard also occasionally appropriated motifs from Kierkegaard’s critique of Christendom. In his exchange with Hirsch, Tillich invoked Kierkegaard to resist the one-dimensional identification of Christianity with any political movement.190 In 1942 Tillich announced that Kierkegaard provided a salubrious antidote to the United States’ fondness for positivism and bourgeois idealism.191 In 1962–63 Tillich approvingly observed that Kierkegaard had imbibed a dose of the Romantic irony typical of Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829), the sense that the infinite is superior to any finite concretion, including any particular social form.192 However, this use of Kierkegaard’s attempt to differentiate authentic Christianity from the corrupting influence of its environing culture played a predictably minor role in Tillich’s literature. Tillich’s passion to identify correlations between Christianity and culture made him leery of Kierkegaard’s perceived dichotomization of pure Christianity and the fallen world. VI. Conclusion Toward the end of his life Tillich delivered a series of lectures at the University of Chicago outlining the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century theology. These lectures from 1962–63 are, in part, the culmination of Tillich’s life-long ambivalent wrestling with Kierkegaard. Very few new interpretive themes were introduced. Rather, Tillich synthesized the central motifs of his almost 60-year appropriation of Kierkegaard. The relation of the positive and negative aspects of his assessment of Kierkegaard becomes clear as he contrasts Kierkegaard with Schelling. Tillich twice pointed out that Kierkegaard attended Schelling’s lectures in Berlin, even mentioning that Kierkegaard’s notes can be found in the Copenhagen library. He concluded that Kierkegaard used Schelling’s categories against Hegel, and used them effectively.193 By so doing Tillich was emphasizing the continuity of Kierkegaard and Schelling. As he did in his dissertation, Tillich described the history of Western religious reflection in terms of the tension between a conjunctive and a disjunctive dynamic, the themes of participation in God and distance from God. Here, however, he described the basic tension between mysticism and guiltconsciousness in terms of the polarity of Spinoza and Kant, not in terms of the polarity of mysticism and Kierkegaard.194 Tillich now associated both the later Schelling and Kierkegaard (and the second phase of Romanticism) with the discovery of “the darkness in man’s understanding and in the human situation” and Tillich, “Die Theologie des Kairos und die gegenwärtige geistige Lage: Offener Brief an Emanuel Hirsch,” pp. 313–34. (“Open Letter to Emanuel Hirsch,” pp. 368–87.) 190 Ibid. 191 Tillich, “Kierkegaard in English,” pp. 254–7. 192 Tillich, Perspectives on 19th and 20th Century Protestant Theology, p. 90. 193 Ibid., p. 141; p. 150. 194 Ibid., pp. 74–5. 189

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“the demonic depths of the human soul.”195 While Schelling’s earlier philosophy of identity had exhibited a strong sense of the underlying relatedness of God and humanity, in his philosophy of freedom Schelling insisted that in humanity the potential conflict between essence and existence is actualized. 196 Schelling’s late “positive” philosophy “expresses the same thing that we call existentialism today,”197 the actual situation of estrangement, anxiety, and guilt. This, of course, is the thread that connects Schelling and Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard was presented by Tillich as a passionate thinker who accentuated and deepened Schelling’s analysis of estrangement and shared Schelling’s conviction that reconciliation must occur in existence and not just in the mind. Tillich noted that Schelling, in spite of his sensitivity to estrangement, recognized that the powers rooted in the depths of being continue to issue forth from the unconscious and grasp the soul. These different powers of being by which human beings are grasped find expression in the symbolism of the world religions. Consequently, Schelling continued to realize that essentialism must precede existentialism, that the estrangement of humanity from its ground is not total. In this sense Schelling shared the sacramental sense of orthodox Lutheranism, that even in a fallen world the finite is still grounded in the infinite. However, Kierkegaard’s sense of estrangement was so complete that he, unlike Schelling, could no longer discern the powers of being within the individual. Rather, “For Kierkegaard God comes from outside or from above.”198 In this sense Kierkegaard’s theology resembled that of Karl Barth, while Tillich’s own theology is “un-Kierkegaardian.”199 Kierkegaard, like Barth, had no point of contact between God and humanity. Kierkegaard, Tillich implied, drew too sharp a distinction between religiousness “A” and religiousness “B,” associating the first with the sense of the identity of the infinite and the finite and with the figure of Socrates, and identifying the second with the sense of the distance between the infinite and the finite and with the figure of Jesus. In short, Kierkegaard failed to see that “existentialism is only possible as an element in a larger whole, as an element in a vision of the structure of being in its created goodness, and then as a description of man’s existence within that framework.”200 These observations by Tillich summarize the nature of his ambivalence toward Kierkegaard. On the positive side, Tillich appreciated the way in which Kierkegaard, like Schelling, articulated the pressing questions that humans must ask about the meaning of life in the situation of estrangement.201 What Tillich liked about Kierkegaard was his analysis of what it means to exist as a conscious, concrete individual in time and space, subject to all the limitations of finitude. Tillich resonated to Kierkegaard’s depiction of the structures and tensions of actual human existence. In fact, Tillich implied that Kierkegaard understood the psychological dynamics of Ibid., pp. 87–8. Ibid., p. 90. 197 Ibid., p. 150. 198 Ibid., p. 173. 199 Ibid. 200 Ibid., p. 245. 201 Ibid., p. 151. 195 196

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humanity’s alienation from essential being even better than Schelling had, for even in his later period Schelling had a tendency to downplay the severity of estrangement in the light of its eschatological resolution. Accordingly, Tillich affirmed Kierkegaard’s critique of closed, ideal systems, his insistence upon self-involving passion in theology, his antipathy to reifying language about God, his exploration of anxiety, despair, guilt, and concupiscence, his dialectical view of the stages of existence, and his insistence that the encounter with Christ is paradoxical. All these motifs added up in Tillich’s mind to a picture of Kierkegaard as the prototypical existential psychologist, a construction of Kierkegaard that was rather common in the early twentieth century. It was the power of Tillich’s enthusiastic portrait of Kierkegaard the existential psychologist that has repeatedly inspired many interpreters of Tillich to stress the continuities between Kierkegaard and Tillich’s own work. Many of the factors in Tillich’s life influenced his tendency to read Kierkegaard appreciatively as a psychologist of estrangement. Even before the war he was suspicious of the optimism of the idealist tradition and detected a nascent existential spirit in Schelling. The war exacerbated his sensitivity to the brokenness of finite life. His earliest exposure to Kierkegaard’s literature was to the pseudonymous authorship. Throughout his life he devoted much less attention to the Christian writings. His existentialist interpretation of Kierkegaard was reinforced by his association with Hirsch, Heidegger, and even Geismar. Tillich’s concentration on the theme of subjectivity in the works by Johannes Climacus meshed with his immersion in the phenomenology of Husserl and Otto’s analysis of religious experience. After moving to New York he gravitated to a circle of psychological theorists who encouraged his propensity to identify the core of Kierkegaard’s work with The Concept of Anxiety and The Sickness unto Death. But in Tillich’s view, Kierkegaard’s attempt to find answers to the existential questions that he analyzed so well was seriously flawed. From his second dissertation on, Tillich reacted negatively to what he took to be Kierkegaard’s ontological dualism and his obsession with the dialectic of guilt and forgiveness. In Tillich’s eyes, Kierkegaard’s work was marred by his attachment to the dichotomistic tradition of Lutheran Pietism.202 Kierkegaard, like a typical Pietist, undialectically emphasized the difference between God and sinful humanity. Tillich repeatedly claimed that, for Kierkegaard, God is positioned over-against humanity, judging it and forgiving it. In Tillich’s estimation, Kierkegaard had unwisely conflated Schelling’s categories with Pietism, thereby rejecting the depth structure of Lutheran orthodoxy that continued, in his view, to inform Schelling’s theology.203 According to Tillich, Schelling and Tillich himself remained committed to the Lutheran conviction that the finite can manifest the infinite, and continued to assume that finite existence, even in its distortion, remains rooted in the structures of essential being. The assumption of the underlying immanence of God in human life, however disrupted, provided the basis for Tillich’s entire theological vision. As a result, he could not accept what he took to be the more disjunctive spirit of Kierkegaard’s work.

202 203



Ibid., p. 162. Ibid., p. 151.

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The fear that Kierkegaard had succumbed to a basic ontological disjunction informed the various discomforts that Tillich expressed about the more specific dichotomies in Kierkegaard’s thought. Because of this apprehension he resisted what he thought was Kierkegaard’s concentration on the experience of moral obligation to a transcendent Other. The fear of dualism also motivated Tillich’s concern that Kierkegaard’s notion of “the leap” might lead to irrational voluntarism, for without a normative understanding of essential being no criteria would be available to govern commitments. Similarly, Tillich worried that Kierkegaard presented a purely negative portrayal of the relation of the sacred and the profane, and could not discern the religious depths of secular culture. Pervasive dualism also distorted Kierkegaard’s entirely critical dismissal of the church as a fallen institution. Even Tillich’s reservations about Kierkegaard’s account of the paradox of the Incarnation were also rooted in his suspicion that Kierkegaard could not see the more general presence of the infinite in the finite. It has been Tillich’s own plea for a unitive ontology to combat Kierkegaard’s disjunctions that has inspired a set of interpreters to emphasize the differences between Tillich the metaphysical systematician and Kierkegaard the champion of particularity and anti-speculative personal engagement. Tillich’s negative response to Kierkegaard had deep roots in his own life, just as his positive response did. As he frequently noted, his early religious experiences involved the perception of the sacred in nature. At the beginning of his scholarly career he was influenced by the unitive theosophy of mystics like Jacob Böhme. His enthusiasm for the later Schelling never really waned, and Schelling’s vision of the reconciliation of opposites continued to be the core of Schelling’s attractiveness. After World War I, Tillich’s zeal for bohemian culture made him uncomfortable with moral dichotomies. In the 1920s his exchanges with Barth reinforced his apprehensions about the dangers of supernaturalism and the denial of divine immanence. In the 1930s Tillich’s quarrel with Hirsch further alerted him to the dangers of imperatives that lacked groundings in some form of essentialism. Perhaps most significantly, Tillich did not find that Kierkegaard’s literature could help him make sense of the experiences of ecstasy and empowerment upon which his own systematic theology (and his life) was based. In Tillich’s view, Kierkegaard’s “either/ or” could not account for the power of religious symbols nor the movement of the Spirit in secular culture, both of which were crucial for Tillich. After the war, Tillich’s response to Kierkegaard remained fairly consistent throughout his life. In 1912 Kierkegaard had functioned for him as one pole in a necessary dialectic. Kierkegaard represented the moment of differentiation and negation. What changed after the war was that Tillich developed a deeper appreciation of how deep that negation ran in human life and how resistant it was to healing. Kierkegaard became an ally in exposing the naiveté of purely conceptual mediations and utopian expectations. But even so, for Tillich Kierkegaard remained the negative moment whose dichotomies could not be the final word. Schelling’s vision of the reconciliation of oppositions remained the foundation of Tillich’s thought.

Bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Tillich’s Corpus Mystik und Schuldbewußtsein in Schellings philosophischer Entwicklung, Gütersloh: Bertelsmann 1912, pp. 20–2. (English translation: Mysticism and Guilt-Consciousness in Schelling’s Philosophical Development, trans. by Victor Nuovo, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania: Bucknell University Press 1974, pp. 30–2.) “Die Theologie des Kairos und die gegenwärtige geistige Lage: Offener Brief an Emanuel Hirsch,” Theologische Blätter, vol. 11, no. 13, 1934, pp. 309–10; pp. 314–17. The Interpretation of History, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons 1936, pp. 14–15; p. 32; p. 39; pp. 62–4; pp. 220–1. “Kierkegaard in English,” American-Scandinavian Review, vol. 30, no. 3, 1942, pp. 254–7. “Existential Philosophy,” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 5, 1944, pp. 44–70. The Shaking of the Foundations, New York: Scribner 1948, p. 34; p. 96. Systematic Theology, vols. 1–3, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1951–63, vol. 1, p. 12; p. 154; p. 165; pp. 174–5; pp. 214–15; p. 275; vol. 2, p. 25; pp. 34–5; pp. 52–3; p. 75; p. 114; p. 133; vol. 3, pp. 160–1. “Autobiographical Reflections,” in The Theology of Paul Tillich, ed. by Charles Kegley and Robert Bretall, New York: Macmillan 1952, pp. 10–11. The Courage To Be, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press 1952, pp. 125– 6; pp. 135–8; p. 142. Biblical Religion and the Search for Ultimate Reality, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1955, p. 1; p. 47. “Schelling und die Anfänge des Existentialistischen Protestes,” Zeitschrift für Philosophie, vol. 9, 1955, pp. 197–208. The New Being, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons 1955, pp. 102–3. “Existential Thought in Contemporary Philosophy,” Journal of Philosophy, vol. 52, no. 23, 1956, pp. 740–2. “The Nature and Significance of Existentialist Thought,” Journal of Philosophy, vol. 53, no. 23, 1956, pp. 739–48. The Protestant Era, German essays trans. by James Luther Adams, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1957, p. 88 (first published as “Philosophy and Theology,” Religion in Life, vol. 10, no. 1, 1941, p. 25); p. 193 (German version “Die Protestantische Verkündigung und der Mensch der Gegenwart,” in Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–14, ed. by Renate Albrecht, Stuttgart: Evangelisches Verlagswerk 1959–75, vol. 7, p. 71).

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Theology of Culture, ed. by Robert Kimball, New York: Oxford University Press 1959, pp. 78–89. Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–14, ed. by Renate Albrecht, Stuttgart: Evangelisches Verlagswerk 1959–75, vol. 7, pp. 216–17. “On the Boundary Line,” The Christian Century, December 7, 1960, p. 1437. On the Boundary, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons 1966, pp. 26–7; p. 48; p. 56; pp. 84–6. My Search for Absolutes, New York, Simon and Schuster 1967, pp. 36–7. Perspectives on 19th and 20th Century Protestant Theology, ed. by Carl Braaten, New York: Harper & Row 1967, p. 6; pp. 87–8; p. 90; pp. 126–7; p. 141; p. 150; pp. 162–80. “Open Letter to Emanuel Hirsch,” in The Thought of Paul Tillich, ed. by James Luther Adams, Wilhelm Pauck, and Roger Shinn, San Francisco: Harper & Row 1985, pp. 358–9; pp. 368–9. Dogmatik. Marburger Vorlesung von 1925, ed. by Werner Schüssler, Düsseldorf: Patmos 1986, p. 259. II. Sources of Tillich’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Adorno, Theodor W., Kierkegaard. Konstruktion des Ästhetischen, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1933. Barth, Karl, Die christliche Dogmatik im Entwurf, Munich: Christian Kaiser Verlag 1927, p. vi; pp. 70–2; p. 404. — Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, Zürich Zollikon-Zürich: 1932–70, I/1, p. 19; II/2, p. 338; III/2, p. 22; III/2, pp. 133–4; III/3, p. 428; IV/I, p. 165; IV/1, p. 381; IV/I, p. 769; IV/I, p. 828; IV/1, p. 844; IV/2, p. 125; IV/2, pp. 848–9; IV/2, p. 886; IV/3, 1st half, p. 467; IV/3, 2nd half, p. 572. — Der Römerbrief, 2nd edition, Munich: Christian Kaiser 1922, pp. v–vi; p. xii; p. 15; p. 16; p. 71; p. 75; p. 77; pp. 85–9; p. 93; p. 96; pp. 98–9; p. 114; p. 141; p. 145; p. 236; p. 261; p. 264; p. 267; p. 319; p. 325; p. 381; p. 400; pp. 426–7; p. 455; p. 481; pp. 483–4. Brunner, Emil, Philosophie und Offenbarung, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1925, pp. 1–52. — “Das Einmalige und der Existenzcharakter,” in Blätter für Deutsche Philosophie, vol. 3, no. 3, 1929, pp. 265–82. — Gott und Mensch, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1930, pp. 1–100. — Der Mensch im Widerspruch. Die christliche Lehre vom wahren und vom wirklichen Menschen, Zurich: Zwingli-Verlag 1937, p. 18; p. 51; p. 190; p. 200; p. 221; p. 454; p. 554. Buber, Martin, Die Frage an den Einzelnen, Berlin: Schocken 1936, p. 14; p. 18; pp. 23–6; p. 40; pp. 48–56; p. 75. Bultmann, Rudolf, Der Begriff der Offenbarung in Neuen Testament, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1929, pp. 42–3. Collins, James, The Mind of Kierkegaard, Chicago: Regnery 1953.

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Deim, Hermann, Philosophie und Christentum bei Sören Kierkegaard, Munich: Kaiser 1929. Geismar, Eduard, Lectures on the Religious Thought of Søren Kierkegaard, ed. by David F. Swenson, Minneapolis: Augsburg 1938. Haecker, Theodor, Sören Kierkegaard und die Philosophie der Innerlichkeit, Munich: Schreiber 1913. Heidegger. Martin, Holzwege, Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann 1950, p. 230. — Sein und Zeit, Halle: Niemeyer 1927, pp. 175–96, see also p. 190, note 1, p. 235, note 1, and p. 338, note 1. Hirsch, Emanuel, Kierkegaard Studien, Gütersloh: Bertelsmann 1930–33. Jaspers, Karl, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Springer 1922, pp. 108–17; pp. 419–32. — Vernunft und Existenz. Fünf Vorlesungen, 4th ed., Munich and Zürich: Piper 1987 [1935], pp. 7–34; pp. 102–20. Lowrie, Walter, Kierkegaard, London and New York: Oxford University Press 1938. — A Short Life of Kierkegaard, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1942. May, Rollo, The Meaning of Anxiety, New York: Ronald Press 1950, pp. 27–40. Niebuhr, Reinold, The Nature and Destiny of Man, New York: Scribners 1941, vol. 1, p. 45; p. 75; p. 81; p. 163; pp. 170–1; p. 182; pp. 242–5; pp. 251–4; p. 263. — The Self and the Dramas of History, New York: Scribners 1955, p. 65. Pryzwara, Erich, Das Geheimnis Kierkegaards, Munich: Oldenburg 1929. Schrempf, Christoph, Sören Kierkegaard. Ein unfreier Pionier der Freiheit, Frankfurt am Main: Neuer Frankfurter Verlag 1907. Swenson, David, Something about Kierkegaard, Minneapolis: Augsburg 1941. III. Secondary Literature on Tillich’s Relation to Kierkegaard Adams, James Luther, “Tillich’s Interpretation of History,” in The Theology of Paul Tillich, ed. by Charles Kegley and Robert Bretall, New York: Macmillan 1952, pp. 297–99. — Paul Tillich’s Philosophy of Culture, Science, and Religion, New York: Harper & Row 1965, pp. 22–3; p. 127. — An Examined Faith: Social Context and Religious Commitment, ed. by George Beach, Boston: Beacon Press 1991, pp. 146–7; p. 173; p. 180. Anz, Wilhelm, Kierkegaard und der deutsche Idealismus, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1956, p. 80. Barrett, Lee, “The USA: From Neo-Orthodoxy to Plurality,” Kierkegaard’s International Reception, Tome III, The Near East, Asia, Australia, and the Americas, ed. by Jon Stewart, Aldershot: Ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 8), p. 234. Bonifazi, Conrad, Christendom Attacked: A Comparison of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, London: Rockliff 1953, p. 18. Brautsch, Michael Wagner, Trosbegrebet hos Søren Kierkegaard og Paul Tillich, M.A. Thesis, Copenhagen 2001, pp. 1–201.

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Cochrane, Arthur, The Existentialists and God, Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1956, p. 77; p. 97. Come, Arnold, Kierkegaard as Theologian: Recovering Myself, Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press 1997, pp. 92–8. Danz, Christian, Religion als Freiheitsbewusstsein. Eine Studie zur Theologie als Theorie der Konstitutionsbedingungen individueller Subjektivität bei Paul Tillich, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 2000, p. 197; p. 280. Dietz, Walter, Sören Kierkegaard. Existenz und Freiheit, Frankfurt am Main: A. Hain 1993, p. 149; p. 273; p. 274. Duncan, Elmer H. and Danny Floyd Walker, Søren Kierkegaard, Waco, Texas: Word Books 1976, pp. 128–30. Eller, Vernard, Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship: A New Perspective, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1968, p. 135; p. 149; p. 362; p. 370; p. 376; p. 431. Fischer, Hermann, Die Christologie des Paradoxes. Zur Herkunft und Bedeutung des Christus-Verständnisses Sören Kierkegaards, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1970, pp. 111–29. Gouwens, David, Kierkegaard as Religious Thinker, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996, pp. 10–12; p. 17; pp. 145–6. Hamilton, Kenneth, The System and the Gospel, London: SCM Press 1963, pp. 37–53; p. 60; p. 81; pp. 89–95; pp. 97–8; pp. 101–9; p. 121; pp. 136–7; p. 149; p. 173; p. 193; p. 230; p. 236. Hammond, Guyton B., Man in Estrangement: A Comparison of the Thought of Paul Tillich and Erich Fromm, Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press 1965, p. 12; pp.42–3 — The Power of Self-Transcendence: An Introduction to the Philosophical Theology of Paul Tillich, St. Louis: Bethany Press 1966, p. 27; p. 50. Herberg, Will, Four Existentialist Theologians, New York: Doubleday 1958, p. 3; pp. 222–6. Holm, Kjeld, “Lidenskab og livsmod—Søren Kierkegaard og Paul Tillich,” Kierkegaardiana, vol. 14, 1988, pp. 29–37. Holm, Søren, Paul Tillich: en fremstilling og vurdering af hans religionsfilosofi, Copenhagen: G.E.C. Gads Forlag 1932, pp. 1–117. Hopper, David, Tillich: A Theological Portrait, Philadelphia and New York: Lippincott 1968, p. 38; p. 75; p. 83; p. 98; p. 111; p. 113. Horton, Walter M., “Tillich’s Role in Contemporary Theology,” in The Theology of Paul Tillich, ed. by Charles Kegley and Robert Bretall, New York: Macmillan 1952, pp. 29–31. Khan, Abrahim H., “Canada: Kierkegaard and the Canadian Academic Landscape,” Kierkegaard’s International Reception, Tome III, The Near East, Asia, Australia, and the Americas, ed. by Jon Stewart, Aldershot: Ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 8), pp. 197–8; p. 205. Kloeden, Wolfdietrich von, “Einfluß und Bedeutung im deutschsprachigen Denken,” in The Legacy and Interpretation of Kierkegaard, ed. by Niels Thulstrup and Marie Mikulová Thulstrup, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 1981 (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 8), pp. 76–83.

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Králik, Roman, “Kierkegaard a Tillich—teologovia na hranici,” Cirkevne listy, vol. 115, no. 8, 2002, pp. 122–6. — “On the Boundary: Kierkegaard and Tillich,” in Kierkegaard and Great Philosophers, ed. by Roman Králik, et al., Šaľa and Mexico City: Sociedad Iberoamericana de Estudios Kierkegaardianos 2007 (Acta Kierkegaardiana, vol. 2), pp. 229–36. Leclure, Yves, “Nietzsche et Tillich: Vers une philosophie de l’existence,” in Tillich und Nietzsche, ed. by Christian Danz, Werner Schüssler, Erdmann Sturm, Berlin: Lit Verlag Dr. W. Hopf 2008, p. 27. Martin, Bernard, The Existentialist Theology of Paul Tillich, New York: Bookman Associates 1963, pp. 18–19; p. 21; p. 26; p. 68; p. 74; p. 110; p. 112. May, Rollo, The Meaning of Anxiety, New York: Ronald Press 1950, pp. 44–5. Newport, John, Paul Tillich, Waco, Texas: Word Books 1984, p. 81. O’Meara, Thomas F., Paul Tillich’s Theology of God, Dubuque, Iowa: Listening Press 1970, p. 11; p. 41; p. 55. Polish, Daniel, Talking about God: Exploring the Meaning of Religious Life with Kierkegaard, Buber, Tillich, and Heschel, Woodstock, Vermont: Sky Light Paths 2007, pp. 21–48; pp. 77–96. Reimer, James A., The Emanuel Hirsch and Paul Tillich Debate: A Study in the Political Ramifications of Theology, Lewiston, New York: Edward Mellon Press 1989, p. 8; p. 12; p. 16; p. 18; p. 32; p. 53; p. 118; p. 259; p. 267; p. 279; p. 289; p. 296; p. 299; p. 303; p. 308; pp. 330–1; pp. 355–6. Sagi, Abraham, Kierkegaard, Religion, and Existence: The Voyage of the Self, trans. by Batya Stein, Atlanta, Georgia: Rodopi 2000, pp. 87–9. Schrag, Calvin, The Self after Postmodernity, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press 1999, pp. 136–8. Schulz, Heiko, “Rezeptiongeschichtliche Brocken oder die “Brocken” in der deutschen Rezeption. Umrisse einer vorläufigen Bestandsaufnahme,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2004, pp. 375–451. — “Germany and Austria: A Modest Head Start: The German Reception of Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard’s International Reception, Tome I, Northern and Western Europe, ed. by Jon Stewart, Aldershot: Ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 8), pp. 341–4. Schüssler, Werner, Der philosophische Gottesgedanke im Frühwerk Paul Tillichs (1910–1933), Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann 1986, pp. 1–260. Slater, Peter, “Religion and Theological Dialectics: Kierkegaard and Tillich,” Toronto Journal of Theology, vol. 24, no. 1, 2008, pp. 21–42. Sponheim, Paul, “America,” in Kierkegaard Research, ed. by Niels Thulstrup and Marie Mikulová Thulstrup, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 1987 (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 15), p. 13; p.19. Thatcher, Adrian, The Ontology of Paul Tillich, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1978, p. 97; p. 129; p. 130. Thomas, J. Heywood, Paul Tillich: An Appraisal, London: SCM Press 1963, pp. 16–17; p. 64; p. 87; p. 89; pp. 125–6; pp. 174–5. — Subjectivity and Paradox, New York: Macmillan 1957, p. 160.

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— Tillich, London: Continuum 2000, p. 9; p. 18; p. 65; pp. 75–7; pp. 91–2; p. 96; p. 108; p. 114. Trillhaas, Wolfgang, Die Grenze und das Ganze. Zum Gedenken an Paul Tillich, Stuttgart: Evangelisches Verlagswerk 1966, pp. 561–8. Wilke, Matthias, Die Kierkegaard Rezeption Emanuel Hirschs. Eine Studie über die Voraussetzungen der Kommunikation christlicher Wahrheit, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 2005, pp. 35–6.

Ernst Troeltsch: Kierkegaard, Compromise, and Dialectical Theology Mark Chapman

Ernst Troeltsch (1865–1923) was one of the leading figures in German-language theology and philosophy in the Wilhelmine period until the beginning of the Weimar Republic. After studying initially at Erlangen, he grew increasingly dissatisfied with his conservative teachers, moving to Göttingen, where he came under the influence of Albrecht Ritschl (1822–89). Here he formed close friendships with a group of young scholars, who became known as the religionsgeschichtliche Schule. Troeltsch contributed many articles to the first edition of the encyclopedia Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, and, despite the often unsystematic nature of his writing, was referred to as the “systematic theologian” of the school. After a brief spell at Bonn, he was appointed Professor of Systematic Theology at Heidelberg in 1895. Feeling that he had “outgrown” the Theology Faculty he moved to the Philosophy Faculty at Berlin in 1915. Troeltsch engaged in many different areas of theology, as well as cultural criticism and philosophy of religion. He is also well known as a social theorist, and for a while shared a house with Max Weber, publishing Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen in 1912.1 He was keenly interested in the relationships between Christianity and history: many of his early writings raise questions that he continued to tackle throughout his life. After his move to Berlin he developed his investigations into values and history in a more philosophically refined way. A defender of the Weimar Republic, he entered liberal politics assuming responsibilities in the Prussian Ministry for Science, Art and Education after 1919. He died shortly before a planned trip to England in 1923, leaving his project of a “material philosophy of history” unfinished.2

1 Ernst Troeltsch, Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen, vol. 1 in Gesammelte Schriften, vols. 1–4, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1912–25. (English translation: The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, vols. 1–2, trans. by Olive Wyon, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press 1976 [1931].) 2 Ernst Troeltsch, Der Historismus und seine Probleme, vol. 3 in Gesammelte Schriften, pp. 694–772.

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I. Troeltsch’s Understanding of Kierkegaard In his examinations in 1891 for the Bavarian Landeskirche, Troeltsch claimed that the main influences on his thought were the moral theologian Richard Rothe (1799– 1867), the historian Adolf Harnack (1851–1930), the orientalist Paul de Lagarde (1827–91), and Søren Kierkegaard.3 What precisely he meant by this is unclear, although it is likely he was deliberately radicalizing his own position against both his conservative teachers and his more recent study with Ritschl. Although there are no direct citations from Kierkegaard’s writings in any of Troeltsch’s works, he nevertheless mentioned Kierkegaard, usually in a positive light, in a number of places scattered throughout his many works.4 Such discussions are hardly surprising since he wrote a number of accounts of the theological and religious situation of his own day, some of which were reproduced in the second volume of his collected works. These discuss the main intellectual movements of the past hundred years or so. The picture that emerges of Kierkegaard in Troeltsch’s writings is one of a passionate and melancholic author deeply disaffected with the theology and church of his own time. Although Troeltsch’s descriptions are usually little more than caricature and never developed at length or in historical detail, what is perhaps unexpected is the sympathy he shows for Kierkegaard: Troeltsch is, after all, often regarded as the culture Protestant par excellence.5 For Troeltsch, however, rather than as a philosopher or thinker, Kierkegaard functions in general as an example of a type of those who seek to follow an undogmatic and purer form of Christianity wherever it might lead them: there is an element of the heroic attached to him. In his lengthy discussion of the essence of Christianity (1903), for instance, Troeltsch claims that “It is immediately obvious, however, to any unprejudiced observer that St. Francis, Kierkegaard or Tolstoy certainly stand closer to the real preaching of Jesus than do ecclesiastical dogmatics.”6 Similarly, in an extensive treatment of ethics published in 1902, Troeltsch regards Kierkegaard as the radical who rejected the church, including him in the same category as Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910).7 3 Examensakten, Kirchliches Archiv Nuremberg, cited in Hans-Georg Drescher, “Entwicklungsdenken und Glaubensentscheidung. Troeltschs Kierkegaardverständnis und die Kontroverse Troeltsch-Gogarten,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, vol. 79, 1982, pp. 80–106, here p. 80. 4 See Friedrich-Wilhelm Graf and Hartmut Ruddies, Ernst Troeltsch Bibliographie, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1982. 5 Gangolf Hübinger, Kulturprotestantismus und Politik. Zum Verhältnis Liberalismus und Protestantismus im wilhelminischen Deutschland, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1994. (English translation: Ernst Troeltsch and Liberal Theology: Religion and Cultural Synthesis in Wilhelmine Germany, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2001.) 6 Ernst Troeltsch, “Was heißt ‘Wesen des Christentums’?” in Zur religiösen Lage, Religionsphilosophie und Ethik, in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 2, p. 406. (English translation: “What does ‘Essence of Christianity’ Mean?,” in Ernst Troeltsch: Writings on Theology and Religion, ed. by Robert Morgan and Michael Pye, Atlanta, Georgia: John Knox Press 1977, pp. 124–79, see pp. 140–1.) 7 Ernst Troeltsch, “Grundprobleme der Ethik,” in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 2, pp. 552–672, see p. 603. For the reference to Tolstoy see ibid., p. 627; cf. p. 643; p. 664. See also

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In his first published comment on Kierkegaard from an essay first published in 1893–94, Troeltsch sees him as a critic of idealism who upheld a “bold either/or” and who “took a position for the Christian ethos against the human and consequently admitted that he dare not maintain the fullness of Christianity.”8 Developing a theme which would be repeated throughout his career, Troeltsch goes on to ask whether this either/or inevitably leads to a series of dualisms which would make any attempt at reconciliation or compromise with culture impossible.9 A similar picture of Kierkegaard emerges in a number of book reviews of Kierkegaard secondary literature that Troeltsch contributed as part of his lengthy survey of publications in philosophy of religion in the Theologischer Jahresbericht in 1897 and 1899. In reviewing Harald Høffding’s (1843–1931) monograph on Kierkegaard in the Frommann series,10 Troeltsch noted that “among the most important thinkers in philosophy of religion in the present is Kierkegaard, who each year attracts more attention, whether through further translation of his works or through secondary works dedicated to him.”11 According to Troeltsch, Kierkegaard, “with an almost pathological melancholy,” lived within the idea of Christianity as opposition to the world, defending it with “bitter irony and passionate hatred against the compromised Christianity of modern culture, the state church and official morality.”12 Two years later in the same journal,13 Troeltsch reviewed an article by Paul Graue, on “Søren Kierkegaard’s Angriff auf die Christenheit” which had appeared in the liberal journal Die christliche Welt.14 In a mainly descriptive review Troeltsch noted nevertheless that Kierkegaard produced the “classic” formulation of the conflict between Christianity and the world.15 He continued to assert this in other comments on Kierkegaard through the next few years. In 1902, for instance, he claimed (about Kierkegaard and Tolstoy): “Even if one cannot share their views, one learns to understand the great problems of life which they have posed, about which the average contemporary ‘theological ethics’ is

“Logos und Mythos in Theologie und Religionsphilosophie,” Logos. Internationale Zeitschrift für Philosophie der Kultur, vol. 4, 1913, p. 16. (Reprinted in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 2, p. 815.) 8 Ernst Troeltsch, “Die christliche Weltanschauung und ihre Gegenströmungen,” in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 2, pp. 227–327, see p. 283. 9 Ibid. 10 Harald Höffding, Sören Kierkegaard als Philosoph, Stuttgart Frommann 1896. 11 Ernst Troeltsch, “Religionsphilosophie und theologische Principienlehre,” Theologischer Jahresbericht, vol. 16, 1897, pp. 498–557, see p. 539. 12 Ibid., p. 540. 13 Ernst Troeltsch, “Religionsphilosophie und principielle Theologie,” Theologischer Jahresbericht, vol. 18, 1899, pp. 485–536, see pp. 532–3. 14 Graue’s work appeared in Die christliche Welt: Evangelisch-lutherisches Gemeindeblatt für die gebildeten Glieder der Evangelischen Kirchen, vol. 12, 1898, pp. 147–50; pp. 170–9; pp. 195–202. In the same article he also reviewed J. Herzog, “Abwehr von Sören Kierkegaards Angriff auf die Christenheit,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, vol. 8, 1898, pp. 271–340. 15 Troeltsch, “Religionsphilosophie und principielle Theologie,” p. 532.

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completely insensitive and blind. From the other side Nietzsche is also enormously insightful.”16 Troeltsch’s first longer exposition of Kierkegaard was in a lecture given in 1902 on “Theology and the Science of Religion in the Nineteenth Century.” Kierkegaard is included among those who were critical of the “speculative science of religion based on developmental history.”17 Describing the mid-nineteenth century, Troeltsch spoke of a large number of men whose spiritual life was sustained and nurtured by Christianity, and whose moral purity and security was firmly wedded to a religious world-view. They pursued their labors in the hope of better times to come, and, even though, unlike their predecessors, they passed unnoticed by the public at large, they quietly achieved something great and important. One of the first who considered the weaknesses of idealist philosophy of religion in solitude and who, with a truly momentous religious strength and with great literary skill, moved in new directions, was the Dane, Kierkegaard. With great passion he directed his energies against classical romantic philosophy of religion with its spirit of immanence, its universal system of laws, and its merely aesthetic feeling of unity, and its conception of religion as the mere perception of the unity of the finite and the infinite which smoothed out all the contradictions and catastrophes of life. He saw all this as the sworn enemy of religion which held it captive in the confines of thisworldliness, preventing the human being from confronting the great either/or, of having to decide between the purely natural ends of the world as it was in itself, and the power of God which reached out into nature and which raised up and transformed the human being. He was familiar with aesthetic humanism and could recite its ethics by heart. But it was nothing more than an enjoyable game of the imagination which saw all conflicts and catastrophes, including the atonement as nothing more than immanent. The way of truth, however, was to follow the narrow path of the few and, with a great leap, to jump out into the superior world of freedom, and of creative divine power, in opposition to the mere harmonious course of world events.18

For Troeltsch, then, Kierkegaard is a religious critic of religion who was able to challenge the stultifying theology of Christendom in the name of an authentic either/ or. While he was sympathetic to Kierkegaard’s enunciation of the problem, Troeltsch could not accept his solution. Even though he maintained a strong critical streak throughout his life, Troeltsch nevertheless always sought for compromises. Thus in a revised edition of an essay first published in 1911, after discussing the importance of the reconciliation of church and world, Troeltsch sees Kierkegaard as moving in an inherently false direction, even if he can understand his motives: His example can show what a program can look like which is based on purely religious interests: an enemy of the church, an enemy of culture, extraordinarily one-sided and passionate, a complete denunciation of all non-religious aspects of life. In this way Troeltsch, “Grundprobleme der Ethik,” in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 2, p. 654, note. Ernst Troeltsch, “Theologie und Religionswissenschaft des 19. Jahrhunderts,” in Jahrbuch des Freien Deutschen Hochstifts, Frankfurt am Main: Knauer 1902, pp. 91–120, see p. 117. 18 Ibid., pp. 117–18. 16 17

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radical and determined individuals can take their stance towards life and take up a serious position which regards salvation of the soul as worth more than the whole world. But for these reasons an exclusively religious answer to our question is quite impossible. The answer has to take account of both religious and cultural interests, and this can happen through the concept of a flexible national church.19

For Troeltsch the compromise between religion and culture is crucial. This theme is repeated in an extensive, rather dense, and probably less than convincing footnote added to the early “Die christliche Weltanschauung und ihre Gegenströmungen” for the revised edition in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 2. Here Troeltsch is able to point to similarities and differences between his own solution and those of Kierkegaard to the paradoxes of the present: I knew very little about Kierkegaard at the time [1893–94]. After I got to know him much better, I came to see that he tackled precisely the problem which has been discussed in this section [the problem of church and culture]. Admittedly he comes to a different conclusion. On the basis of his pietist upbringing and his melancholy disposition which exaggerates Christian asceticism to the uttermost, he comes to the bold either/or, which makes Christianity into a matter for the unique individual and which leads to a root and branch condemnation of the institutional compromises of the church. He also warns against the sorts of solutions I have developed here—that is, the reconciliation of contradictions through the constant development towards a higher world, which in his view would not be far removed from the dialectical solutions of the Hegelian school. He wants in contrast the bold exclusiveness of Christian asceticism which can only ever be for the few. If one can see in this restriction to the few once again a capitulation to life, so he has passionately and broadly expanded his ethical-aesthetic nature and developed it dialectically out of itself. He then willingly says that he has “emptied himself” and freed himself. But such an emptying—and that is an emptying through practical living with all its consequences—he holds to be a task for the richer nature. But is the pre-eminence of the Christian demand to empty the aesthetic not ultimately a similar thought to what I have developed? If emptying is necessary, it becomes a positive and higher meaning for development and a necessity for the age of the first unfolding of the powers of ethical value and meaning. Admittedly Kierkegaard understood the aesthetic in a very egoistic and pungent way. (See Kierkegaard’s Angriff auf die Christenheit, German by Schrempf, 1896, pp. 433f., 442, 444, 536, esp. 405f.; less boldly stated in “Entweder-Oder” Vol. II.)20

As Troeltsch admitted, Kierkegaard would not have been convinced by this argument. Ernst Troeltsch, “Die Kirche im Leben der Gegenwart,” in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 2, pp. 91–108, see p. 104. 20 Troeltsch, “Die christliche Weltanschauung,” in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 2, pp. 293–4, note. This is the first reference in Troeltsch’s writings to a primary text by Kierkegaard. Angriff auf die Christenheit was published in a German translation (by August Dorner) in 1896 (Stuttgart: Frommann). Entweder/Oder was published (in a translation by Wolfgang Pfleiderer and Christoph Schrempf) in 1911 as vols. 1–2 of Kierkegaard’s Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–12, trans. and ed. by Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1909–22. See also Robert Morgan, “Troeltsch and the Dialectical Theology,” in Ernst Troeltsch and the Future of Theology, ed. by John Powell Clayton, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1976, pp. 33–77, see p. 61. 19

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Later in his career, after his move to Berlin, Troeltsch engaged with Kierkegaard in more detail, although again he fails to cite him directly. In his extensive work on the philosophy of history, which resulted in Der Historismus und seine Probleme, he refers to Kierkegaard on a number of occasions. What becomes important for Troeltsch is the concept of the “leap” (Sprung),21 “which occurs in every real decision.”22 This is compared with Nietzsche’s understanding of the sovereignty of the will.23 The leap was what allowed cultural values to make contact with history. It was based on a responsible decision that “led us out of the past into the future.” Troeltsch writes: If Kierkegaard understood this leap as leading to a very individualist, sectarian and ascetic form of Christianity, still it reveals the instinctive need for absolute authorities alongside everything else. But the leap remains decisive for everything else and even when its goal is a thorough and well thought-out free synthesis of all the vital forces of culture.24

While Troeltsch thought the leap was based on “a violent, excessive and absolutely individualistic pietism,”25 he nevertheless held that it was central for the solution of the problem of history.26 This is most clearly developed in a lengthy section devoted to Kierkegaard.27 After a brief biographical sketch, Troeltsch emphasizes the concept of “radical-personal interiority”28 in his thought, and the need for a leap as a completely free act of the will.29 Reacting against earlier Romantic thought, Kierkegaard stresses the paradoxical, irrational, and factual: “It is a new creation and positive composition, a decision of the moment.”30 Kierkegaard is used to bolster Troeltsch’s emphasis on the creativity of the interpreter in reaching a cultural synthesis. The Historismus book was originally conceived as a two-volume work, although Troeltsch died before he could complete the second part. However, his lectures intended for delivery in Britain reveal something of the direction his thought was taking: while he might have emphasized the need to make a leap into the unknown, this was far from completely irrational. Instead, his solution to the problem of values Drescher, “Entwicklungsdenken und Glaubensentscheidung,” p. 89. Troeltsch, Der Historismus und seine Probleme, p. 53. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid., pp. 178–9. 25 Ibid., p. 190. 26 Ibid., p. 214. 27 Ibid., pp. 311–13. 28 Ibid., p. 311. 29 Ibid., p. 312. 30 Troeltsch regards Philosophical Fragments as the key text. (German edition: Philosophische Brocken. Abschließende unwissenschaftliche Nachschrift, vol. 6 in Kierkegaard’s Gesammelte Werke, trans. and ed. by Gottsched and Schrempf.) Troeltsch also acknowledges Hans Reuter, S. Kierkegaards religionsphilosophische Gedanken im Verhältnis zu Hegels religionsphilosophischem System, Erfurt: Ohlenroth 1913; and O.P. Monrad, Sören Kierkegaard: sein Leben und seine Werke, Jena: Diederichs 1909. Cf. Troeltsch, Der Historismus und seine Probleme, p. 351. 21 22

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and history required a practical and provisional decision based on the need to act, which may explain why there is no reference to Kierkegaard in this final volume. Troeltsch’s practical engagement in politics, as well as his continuing belief in the constructive possibilities of history, led him in what he regarded as an “AngloSaxon” direction. In his posthumous lectures, he wrote: Many of us in Germany regard “compromise” as the lowest and most despicable means to which a thinker can resort. We are asked to recognize a radical disjunction here, and to chose either for or against….But twist and turn the matter as you will, all intransigence breaks down in practice, and can only end in disaster.31

For Troeltsch, the best possible solution had to be a compromise between naturalism and idealism, between the practical necessities of human life upon earth and the purposes and ideals of the life of the spirit….The history of Christianity itself is the most instructive in this connection. It is, in the long run, a tremendous, continuous compromise between the utopian demands of the Kingdom of God and the permanent conditions of our actual human life.32

The solution to the problems of historical relativism, which he admitted would fail to satisfy many, was based upon a rough-and-ready compromise which trusts in a better future but which is not afraid of the present. It was opposed to the solution proposed by the early dialectical theologians for whom there could be no compromises. As Troeltsch put it clearly: The task of damming and controlling is…essentially incapable of completion and essentially unending; and yet it is always soluble and practicable in each new case. A radical and absolute solution does not exist; there are only working, partial, synthetically uniting positions….In history itself there are only relative victories; and these relative victories themselves vary greatly in power and depth, according to time and circumstance.33

Troeltsch’s defense of both political and theological compromise provoked a number of young theologians in the aftermath of World War I. In the debates that followed, Kierkegaard played a vital if minor supporting role. However, as Drescher noted, “the recourse to Kierkegaard appeared to be characterized more by a kind of ‘thought atmosphere’ rather than a more direct application of Kierkegaard’s thought.”34

Ernst Troeltsch, Christian Thought: Its History and Application. Lectures Written for Delivery in England during March 1923, by the late Ernst Troeltsch, trans. into English by various hands, ed. by Baron F. von Hügel, London: London University Press 1923, p. 164. (Republished in Ernst Troeltsch, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. by Friedrich Wilhelm Graf et al., Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter 1998ff., vol. 17, ed. by Gangolf Hübinger and Andreas Terwey, p. 202.) 32 Troeltsch, Christian Thought, pp. 164–5. (Kritische Gesamtausgabe, vol. 17, pp. 202–3.) 33 Troeltsch, Christian Thought, pp. 128–9. (Kritische Gesamtausgabe, vol. 17, p. 187). 34 Drescher, “Entwicklungsdenken und Glaubensentscheidung,” p. 91. 31

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II. Troeltsch, Gogarten, and Kierkegaard 35 Theology was not immune from the revolution in Germany following World War I.36 Indeed it appeared to some, including Friedrich Gogarten (1887–1967), that theology was standing “between the times.” Gogarten had given this title to his 1920 manifesto which presented a direct challenge to those like Troeltsch who sought social, ethical, and political compromises.37 However, unlike the other socalled dialectical theologians, including Barth, Brunner, and Bultmann, Gogarten was closely associated with Troeltsch, having studied with him in Heidelberg and having written his licentiate in 1914 on Fichte als religiöser Denker under his supervision.38 Gogarten, who had been strongly influenced by liberal theology, but who had come vigorously to reject any attempt at what he regarded as its compromises, presented a spirited attack on Troeltsch’s style of thinking. Just as Troeltsch accepted the questions posed by Kierkegaard but formulated a different set of answers, so Gogarten claimed that Troeltsch had accurately formulated the question but moved in a completely false direction.39 Gogarten exemplified a radical strand in German theology that has close analogues in other areas: a theological revolt against historicism simultaneously attacked many assumptions of bourgeois society and liberal science.40 He shared a world-view with some of the revolutionary thinkers who published in the Eugen Diederichs press,41 which had produced the

On this dispute see Morgan, “Ernst Troeltsch and Dialectical Theology”; Drescher, “Entwicklungsdenken und Glaubensentscheidung”; Friedrich-Wilhelm Graf, “ ‘Kierkegaards junge Herren.’ Troeltschs Kritik der ‘geistigen Revolution’ im frühen zwanzigsten Jahrhundert,” in Umstrittene Moderne. Die Zukunft der Neuzeit im Urteil der Epoche Ernst Troeltschs, ed. by Horst Renz and Friedrich-Wilhelm Graf, Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn 1987 (Troeltsch-Studien, vol. 4), pp. 172–92, here pp. 187–92. 36 For a brief discussion, see Kurt Nowak, Geschichte des Christentums in Deutschland, Munich: Beck 1995, pp. 212–15; and “Die ‘antihistoristische Revolution’ Symptome und Folgen der Krise historischer Weltorientierung nach der Ersten Weltkrieg in Deutschland,” in Umstrittene Moderne, ed. by Renz and Graf, pp. 133–71. 37 Friedrich Gogarten, “Between the Times” (1920), in The Beginnings of Dialectical Theology, ed. by James Richmond, Richmond, Virginia: John Knox Press 1968, vol. 1, pp. 277–81. See Matthias Kroeger, Friedrich Gogarten. Leben und Werk in zeitgeschichtlicher Perspektive, Stuttgart: Kollhammer 1997, vol. 1, pp. 216–21. 38 Joachim Kahl, Philosophie und Christologie im Denkens Friedrich Gogartens, Ph.D. Thesis, Philipps-Universität, Marburg 1967, p. 98 cited in Graf, “ ‘Kierkegaards junge Herren,’” p. 185. On Gogarten and Troeltsch, see Kroeger, Friedrich Gogarten, vol. 1, chapter 3. While studying with Troeltsch, Gogarten was also reading Kierkegaard. 39 He made this claim explicitly in later responses to Troeltsch, see Gogarten, “Against Romantic Theology,” p. 318; and Friedrich Gogarten, “Historismus” (1924), in The Beginnings of Dialectical Theology, ed. by Robinson, p. 350. On this, see Graf, “ ‘Kierkegaards junge Herren,’ ” p. 187. 40 Graf, “ ‘Kierkegaards junge Herren,’ ” especially p. 174. 41 See Gangolf Hübinger, “Kulturkritik und Kulturpolitik des Eugen-Diederichs-Verlags im Wilhelminismus. Auswege aus der Krise der Moderne,” in Umstrittene Moderne, ed. by Renz and Graf, pp. 92–114; and Versammlungsort moderner Geister. Der Eugen Diederichs 35

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Schrempf edition of Kierkegaard,42 translations of Tolstoy and Bergson, as well as several of Gogarten’s own works, including his dissertation.43 For Gogarten, the chief question was this: how was Christianity to be asserted “in the face of the profound crisis provoked by the emergence of modern thought”?44 Gogarten’s perception of crisis had been shaped by a reading of Luther, Kierkegaard, and “various signs of the modern spirit.”45 Rather than searching for solutions in the past, Gogarten held that there was a need to look beyond the old world, exemplified by theologians such as Troeltsch and Harnack, which, particularly after the catastrophe of World War I, seemed to be at an end: “We were so far from this period that we had to look outside it; Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, Meister Eckard and Lao-Tzu, have been our teachers more than you to whom we are indebted for all our intellectual training.”46 Everything seemed to be disintegrating and all that was left for the theologian was to stand immediately before God.47 After the challenge presented in “Between the Times,” Gogarten was invited to lecture on “The Crisis of Our Culture”48 in October 1920 at the Wartburg meeting of the Freunde der christlichen Welt, which tackled Spengler’s theme of the decline of the West. His address presented a direct and unambiguous challenge to Troeltsch.49 As part of his preparation for the lecture Gogarten read Kierkegaard with “astonishment and joy,” writing to Martin Rade, editor of the journal: “One should read all his own writings and lectures, since they contain everything.”50 Gogarten’s lecture, which is strongly influenced by the dialectic of either/or,51 is a hard-hitting polemic: it speaks of the convulsion of the contemporary world, emphasizing not history but “really Verlag—Aufbruch ins Jahrhundert der Extreme, ed. by Gangolf Hübinger, Munich: Eugen Diederichs Verlag 1996. 42 On Kierkegaard, see Kurt Scier, “Die Literaturen des Nordens,” in Versammlungsort moderner Geister, ed. by Hübinger, pp. 411–49, especially pp. 413–16. On the relationship between Diederichs and the politics of publishing Kierkegaard, see Graf, “Das Laboratorium der religiösen Moderne: Zur ‘Verlagsreligion’ des Eugen Diederichs Verlags,” Versammlungsort moderner Geister, ed. by Hübinger, pp. 243–98, especially p. 279. 43 Troeltsch was critical of this circle, including Gogarten, whom he regarded as a disciple of Kierkegaard in “Die Revolution in der Wissenschaft: Eine Besprechung von Erich Kahlers Schrift gegen Max Weber,” Schmollers Jahrbuch für Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft im Deutschen Reiche, vol. 45, 1921, pp. 1001–30; see p. 1016. Reprinted in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 4, Aufsätze zur Geistesgeschichte und Religionssoziologie, ed. by Hans Baron, pp. 653–77; see p. 666. 44 Curriculum Vitae (1923) cited by Robert Morgan, “Troeltsch and the Dialectical Theology,” p. 44. 45 Morgan, “Troeltsch and the Dialectical Theology,” p. 44; Kroeger, Friedrich Gogarten, vol. 1, pp. 230–3. 46 Gogarten, “Between the Times,” p. 278. 47 Ibid., p. 282. 48 Friedrich Gogarten, “The Crisis of Our Culture,” in The Beginnings of Dialectical Theology, ed. by Robinson, pp. 283–300. 49 On the circumstances of the lecture, see Kroeger, Friedrich Gogarten, pp. 290–314. 50 Postcard to Martin Rade (May 20, 1920) cited in Kroeger, Friedrich Gogarten, p. 221. For details of Gogarten’s reading of Kierkegaard, see pp. 230–2. 51 Gogarten, “Crisis of Culture,” p. 292.

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living in the moment,” that is, “referring the contents of the moment—whatever they may be—to the Absolute.”52 He goes on: “The religious point of view has meaning only insofar as everything retains nothing but God, only insofar as everything human disappears from it, only when it crosses the border into a realm different in its very roots, and only when man’s busyness ceases and God’s activities begins.”53 Citing Luther, he stresses death to the world: there can be no space at all for compromises. He continues: a religion which has to reconcile itself to this world as it is (i.e., as it is determined by past and future, caught in the endless chain of so-called evolution), a religion which cannot announce with good conscience for its first and last message: “The Kingdom of God is at hand,” such a religion is itself drawn along into the contingencies from which it should be freeing us, and it will dance the insane dance of world-history and so-called evolution. Such a religion has fallen from its origin, and its distance from God is indicated by the fact that it regards a sense of longing as its finest feeling, and as the feeling most expressive of its nature.54

In short, he concludes: “God’s holiness annihilates both world and time.”55 In the same way Jesus Christ “is identical with the act of God and with the annihilation of the world.”56 Religion thereby passes judgment on the whole world: the human lot is to “remain exactly where we find ourselves—in the annihilating, creating act of God.”57 Given its extraordinarily powerful rhetoric and its obvious attacks on the grand old man of theology, it is hardly surprising that Gogarten’s lecture met with astonishment. Martin Rade found it so impenetrable that he thought the subsequent discussion required the interpretation of tongues.58 In an open letter to Emil Fuchs published the following year Gogarten explained himself, again stressing the “unconditional either-or,” and the impossibility of mediation.59 Troeltsch responded to Gogarten’s assault with his own polemic: “An Apple from the Tree of Kierkegaard,”60 where he likens the Eisenach lecture to the apples of discord offered by the Goddess Eris. Gogarten’s apple plucked from the tree of Kierkegaard was part of a broader cultural movement which attacked history and reason. Indeed, Troeltsch writes: “This aesthetic pleasure in paradox has for a long time been the effect produced by Kierkegaard, himself half-artist, half-aesthete, who has always stirred non-Christians more deeply than Christians.”61 Although he Ibid., p. 284. Ibid., p. 286. 54 Ibid., p. 291. 55 Ibid., p. 295. 56 Ibid., p. 297. 57 Ibid., p. 297; p. 299. 58 See the report in An die Freunde. Vertrauliche d.i. nicht für die Oeffentlichkeit bestimmte Mitteilungen, vol. 69, 1923, column 757 (reprinted, Berlin: de Gruyter 1993). 59 Gogarten, Beginnings, pp. 301–5, here pp. 303–4. See Drescher, “Entwicklungsdenken und Glaubensentscheidung,” p. 95; Kroeger, Friedrich Gogarten, vol. 1, pp. 280–5. 60 Ernst Troeltsch, “An Apple from the Tree of Kierkegaard,” in The Beginnings of Dialectical Theology, ed. by Robinson, pp. 311–16. 61 Ibid., p. 311. 52 53

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could not attend the meeting,62 Troeltsch remarked that he would have liked to have participated in the discussion, “because I had the feeling Gogarten was essentially attacking me.”63 Responding particularly to the open letter to Fuchs, Troeltsch claims that like Kierkegaard, Gogarten speaks of the “Christianity” which corresponds to no church or confession or historical form, but is wholly personal and private, deriving from a very sharp radicalism against the world, the nation, the State, culture, and church, but which, understood intuitively in terms of general radicalism, is seen, profoundly and accurately, to be the Christianity of Christ….The encounter with the Absolute, its radical contrast to the world, the self-condemnation of the human being in this absolute situation, and the low estimation of all mediation between God and the world (which according to Kierkegaard is the real interest and purpose of all churches)—this is the Christianity of absoluteness or of the either-or, of authenticity and of depth of soul, of historical reality and of the ideal. Nothing more can be brought into this context. While Kierkegaard mainly attacks the churches, Gogarten attacks culture, its social demands and scientific concepts, all of which are historical or intellectualistic….His position, like that of Kierkegaard’s, appears to be purely based on religion.64

Troeltsch’s main problem with this, however, is how this radical judgment on the world can be connected with the historical realm since all churches through all time had to make compromises with culture. Troeltsch puts this clearly, locating the beginnings of compromise in the very origins of Christianity. All other forms of Christianity are inherently sectarian: Apart from the necessities of life and the concessions expressed already in Scripture (especially in Paul), this was occasioned by something in the Christian concept itself— we think of the continued belief in creation, the world-encompassing unity of God embracing all exigencies, and the indefinable element of sympathy for everything human and natural in Jesus’ concept of love….The accommodations to the world, which are never absent, even under these conditions, and the secularization, which always sets in after such harsh beginnings, become all the more interesting. Kierkegaard himself, in his ancestry and training as well as in mentality and ultimate direction of life, belonged in this realm of sectarian religion and correspondingly fought for a purely individual and abstract, a purely personal and absolutely radical, Christianity. He was disposed to a particularly profound exposition of this contrast, especially in the aesthetic-artistic period of his life in which he often discovered the boundary of what was morally permissible and developed to the nth degree the penchant in modern psychology for all that is cunning and concealed. This rejection of the contrast which lay deep within his own being led Kierkegaard to those ingenious controversies with the Romantic and pantheistic philosophy of development, which actually brought out very grave problems and drove Kierkegaard himself to a harshly pietistic and fully psychologized dualism. He wrote later to the widow of his friend, Wilhelm Bousset: “I did not attend Eisenach. I have become very distant from these things, and have very little sympathy for these young men” (November 18, 1922). Cited in Drescher, “Entwicklungsdenken und Glaubensentscheidung,” p. 105. 63 Troeltsch, “An Apple from the tree of Kierkegaard,” p. 312. 64 Ibid. Translation revised. 62

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His total loneliness and eccentricity, which appear to be related to a psychopathic condi­ tion, and his early death exempted him from the necessity of working out that side of his religion which is positive, affirmative, and comes to terms in some way with the world. It was indeed the sensing of diffi­culties at this point which allowed Kierkegaard to become more and more reckless and bitter in his polemic against worldly, accommo­ dating, and ecclesiastical Christians, whereas he had once passionately opposed only the accommodation of the world and God in German speculative philosophy. In the end all he had was more polemic, nothing positive—it led only to self-judgment, arising from the “abso­lute situation” in relation to God.65

While Troeltsch can understand both Kierkegaard and Gogarten with their recognition of the radical dualism at the heart of Christianity, he sees its cause as in part pathological: I assume that Gogarten’s psychological conditions are somewhat similar to Kierkegaard’s. Social Christianity that accommodates itself to the economy and the wooing of the masses appears to have especially revolted Gogarten. Much like Kierkegaard, Gogarten severs the knot which centuries, with good reason, have tied….If such a position as Gogarten’s is rooted in inner, personal necessity, it is difficult to deal with. Logical and historical reasons, moreover, are of no use to the “youth” of today. Anti-historicism, irrationalism, intuitionism—things with which we older people have concerned our­ selves passionately and scrupulously—have already become comfortable and pleasant dogmas for many of the young.66

Gogarten, then, is an example of the wider anti-historical youth movement which has revolted against the compromises of the past. Kierkegaard is understood as the father of those who have escaped from history. In distinction, and directly attacking the Eisenach lecture, Troeltsch cannot regard God’s being and creative activity as completely opposed to the world, but rather “they are themselves the life of the world…for the whole world is God’s.”67 The implications of Gogarten’s thought were far-reaching. He would have to draw the same conclusions as did Kierkegaard in his complete rejection of the church and cultural accommodation, which go together so closely….In Gogarten’s theology of the absolute moment, there would be no pas­tors, no church administration, no mission, and no sermons on educa­tion and counseling. If anyone desires these results, he must necessarily attack “accommodation,” and the only question is how he can effect this within the narrow Protestant adherence to the Bible and the Creed.68

Gogarten would thus have to do away with Christianity in all its guises in his ascetic escape from the world. Shortly after Troeltsch’s response appeared, Gogarten wrote to his friend and fellow student of Troeltsch, Getrud von le Fort, that a “lengthy essay against Troeltsch is shortly to appear in Die christliche Welt. I have been clearer in this work than 67 68 65 66

Ibid., pp. 313–14. Ibid., p. 314. Ibid., p. 315. Ibid., p. 316.

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elsewhere and think that he will have to respond.”69 In the ensuing piece, “Against Romantic Theology,”70 which first appeared in Die christliche Welt, Gogarten took up his by now familiar dualistic themes, at the same time accusing Troeltsch of being a Romantic. Given that Troeltsch had attacked the neo-Romantics of the Stefan George (1868–1933) circle in his essay, “Die Revolution in der Wissenschaften,”71 this must have presented quite a challenge: “Since Troeltsch’s decisive insight that faith is fixed ‘solely on the supra-historical, on God himself’ is always conceived of solely as a historical judgment, it is not surprising that he has never gone beyond Romantic concepts in his theology.”72 As Gogarten was later to note, the real issues were those of history: history, he felt, simply could not supply the arsenal of values or the place of redemption. Instead, something else was required. In responding to Troeltsch’s Der Historismus he was later to note that Troeltsch’s achievement seems to me to be of the utmost significance and that no theology can hope to make a significant contribution unless it has thoroughly come to grips with it. Since Troeltsch, every theology which fails to tackle the problem of historicism in the full scope of his presentation, is doomed to failure. In this debate with Troeltsch it is necessary to bear in mind that we are not in the first place arguing with a theory of his, by which he tried to gain norms despite and within the historicising of our thinking. The debate is above all one about this general historicising of thinking itself. Again, this is not a theory of Troeltsch but a fact which he pointed out in all its ramifications and consequences. The debate is made more difficult by the fact that our own thinking is itself part of this historicising. Our entire education is a historical one. No reform of education, however radical, can avoid this basis. All that is possible is a thorough stock-taking. The clear thinking through the historicism and its presuppositions which Troeltsch has left us in his most recent work may help us in this.73

III. Conclusion Troeltsch’s sudden death meant that he was never able to respond to Gogarten’s challenge. And Gogarten soon left his teacher’s thought alone, moving in quite different directions.74 What these debates reveal, however, is a fundamental difference in the understanding of history, and with it, the place of the “the world” 69 June 24, 1922, cited in Drescher, “Entwicklungsdenken und Glaubensentscheidung,” p. 105. 70 English translation in The Beginnings of Dialectical Theology, ed. by Robinson, pp. 317–27; see also Kroeger, Friedrich Gogarten, vol. 1, pp. 296–7. 71 Ernst Troeltsch, “Die Revolution in der Wissenschaft: Eine Besprechung von Erich Kahlers Schrift gegen Max Weber,” Schmollers Jahrbuch für Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft im Deutschen Reiche, vol. 45, 1921, pp. 1001–30. Reprinted in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 4, pp. 653–77. 72 Friedrich Gogarten, “Against Romantic Theology,” in The Beginnings of Dialectical Theology, ed. by Robinson, pp. 317–27, here p. 329. 73 Gogarten, “Historismus,” in The Beginnings of Dialectical Theology, ed. by Robinson, p. 350. 74 Morgan, “Ernst Troeltsch and Dialectical Theology,” p. 47.

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as the arena for God’s activity. In this debate, Kierkegaard was simply a cipher for a radical dualism and sectarianism: while Gogarten had undoubtedly made a close study of his writings, and Troeltsch had more than a passing acquaintance, neither was interested in Kierkegaard as anything more than a long-dead ally or tragic opponent. Similarly, earlier in his career Troeltsch’s portrayal of Kierkegaard seldom if ever moves beyond that of the caricature. At the same time, however, there is a sense in which the presence of Kierkegaard and the other authors published by the Diederichs press exerted an influence by shaping a culture in which it was possible to do theology in opposition to the world. This meant that anything else—and that included all compromises—seemed irresponsible collusion with a disintegrated culture. Troeltsch’s pragmatic (and democratic) solutions seemed quite out of keeping with the times. Shortly after Troeltsch’s sudden death, Gogarten wrote to Gertrud von le Fort: Finally I am his only pupil. I am shocked with the superficial obituaries that I have read. What is important is the legacy of Troeltsch’s relationship to theology. It often seems to me that his whole output is without any influence on contemporary theology. He is in part responsible for this. His analytical works might have had the greatest and most alarming impact on theology, because no one else recognized the crisis situation in which we find ourselves. But because the solutions he offered were far too simplistic, he neutralized their effect. His mind is strangely neither acute nor penetrating. It is as if he has been unable to retain his cutting edge. It is as if he held back from giving his knowledge of the crisis as clearly and strongly as he might have done. So theologians always had the impression from his work that things were not quite so bad as all that. That is a great distress. But I fear that nothing can be changed.75

It might be suggested, however, that a crisis situation does not necessarily require a crisis theology, even if the alternatives might seem far less daring and far more boring.



75

April 21, 1923. Cited in Kroeger, Friedrich Gogarten, vol. 1, p. 296.

Bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Troeltsch’s Corpus “Die christliche Weltanschauung und ihre Gegenströmungen,” in Gesammelte Schriften, vols. 1–4, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1912–25, vol. 2, pp. 227–327, see p. 283; pp. 293–4, note. (Note that this piece was originally published in “Die christliche Weltanschauung und ihre wissenschaftlichen Gegenströmungen,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, vol. 6, 1893, pp. 493–528 and vol. 4, 1894, pp. 167–231. But the reference to Kierkegaard was only added later in the collected works edition.) “Religionsphilosophie und theologische Principienlehre,” Theologischer Jahresbericht, vol. 16, 1897, pp. 498–557, see p. 539. (Not in collected works.) “Religionsphilosophie und principielle Theologie” [Review of Paul Graue’s Søren Kierkegaards Angriff auf die Christenheit], Theologischer Jahresbericht, vol. 18, 1899, pp. 485–536, see pp. 532–3. “Theologie und Religionswissenschaft des 19. Jahrhunderts,” Jahrbuch des Freien Deutschen Hochstifts, Tübingen: Niemeyer 1902, pp. 91–120, see p. 117. “Grundprobleme der Ethik,” in Gesammelte Schriften, vols. 1–4, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1912–25, vol. 2, pp. 552–672, see p. 603; p. 627; p. 643; p. 654, note; p. 664. (Note that this piece was originally published in Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, vol. 12, 1902, pp. 44–94 and pp. 125–78. But the references to Kierkegaard were only added later in the collected works edition.) “Was heißt ‘Wesen des Christentums’?,” in Gesammelte Schriften, vols. 1–4, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1912–25, vol. 2, pp. 386–451; see p. 406; English translation: “What does ‘Essence of Christianity’ Mean?,” in Ernst Troeltsch: Writings on Theology and Religion, trans. and ed. by Robert Morgan and Michael Pye, Atlanta, Georgia: John Knox Press 1977, pp. 124–79, see pp. 140–1). (Note that this piece was originally published in Die christliche Welt, vol. 17, 1903, pp. 443–6; pp. 483–8; pp. 532–6; pp. 578–84; pp. 650–4; pp. 678–83. But the reference to Kierkegaard was only added later in the collected works edition.) “Die Kirche im Leben der Gegenwart,” in Gesammelte Schriften, vols. 1–4, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1912–25, vol. 2, pp. 91–108; see p. 104. (Note that this piece was originally published in Weltanschauung. Philosophie und Religion, ed. by Max Frischeisen-Köhler, Berlin: Reischl 1911, pp. 438–54. But the reference to Kierkegaard was only added later in the collected works edition.) “Logos und Mythos in Theologie und Religionsphilosophie,” Logos. Internationale Zeitschrift für Philosophie der Kultur, vol. 4, 1913, pp. 8–35; see p. 16. (Reprinted in Gesammelte Schriften, vols. 1–4, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1912–25, vol. 2, pp. 805–36; see p. 815; English translation: “Logos and Mythos in Theology and

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Philosophy of Religion,” in Religion in History. Essays, trans. by James Luther Adams and Walter F. Bense, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark 1991, pp. 46–72). “Die Revolution in der Wissenschaft. Eine Besprechung von Erich Kahlers Schrift gegen Max Weber,” Schmollers Jahrbuch für Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft im Deutschen Reiche, vol. 45, 1921, pp. 1001–30; see p. 1016. (Reprinted in Gesammelte Schriften, vols. 1–4, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1912– 25, vol. 4, Aufsätze zur Geistesgeschichte und Religionssoziologie, ed. by Hans Baron, pp. 653–77, see p. 666). “Ein Apfel vom Baume Kierkegaards,” Die christliche Welt, vol. 35, 1921, pp. 186– 90. (Reprinted in Anfänge der dialektischen Theologie, ed. by Jürgen Moltmann, Munich: Kaiser 1963 (Theologische Bücherei, vol. 17), vol. 1, pp. 134–40. (English translation: “An Apple from the Tree of Kierkegaard,” in The Beginnings of Dialectical Theology, vols. 1–2, ed. by James Richmond, Richmond, Virginia: John Knox Press 1968, vol. 1, pp. 311–16). Der Historismus und seine Probleme, first published as vol. 3 (1922) in Gesammelte Schriften, vols. 1–4, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1912–25, see p. 53; pp. 178–9; p. 190; p. 214; pp. 311–13. II. Sources of Troeltsch’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Graue, Paul, “Søren Kierkegaard’s Angriff auf die Christenheit,” Die christliche Welt: Evangelisch-lutherisches Gemeindeblatt für die gebildeten Glieder der Evangelischen Kirchen, vol. 12, 1898, pp. 147–50; pp. 170–9; pp. 195–202. Herzog, J., “Abwehr von Sören Kierkegaards Angriff auf die Christenheit,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, vol. 8, 1898, pp. 271–340. Høffding, Harald, Sören Kierkegaard als Philosoph, Stuttgart: Frommann 1896. Monrad, O.P., Sören Kierkegaard. Sein Leben und seine Werke, Jena: Diederichs 1909. Reuter, Hans, S. Kierkegaards religionsphilosophische Gedanken im Verhältnis zu Hegels religionsphilosophischem System, Erfurt: Ohlenroth 1913. III. Secondary Literature on Troeltsch’s Relationship to Kierkegaard Drescher, Hans-Georg, “Entwicklungsdenken und Glaubensentscheidung: Troeltschs Kierkegaardverständnis und die Kontroverse Troeltsch-Gogarten,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, vol. 79, 1982, pp. 80–106. Graf, Friedrich-Wilhelm, “ ‘Kierkegaards junge Herren.’ Troeltschs Kritik der ‘geistigen Revolution’ im frühen zwanzigsten Jahrhundert,” in Umstrittene Moderne. Die Zukunft der Neuzeit im Urteil der Epoche Ernst Troeltschs, ed. by Horst Renz and Friedrich-Wilhelm Graf, Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn 1987 (TroeltschStudien, vol. 4), pp. 172–92. Morgan, Robert, ‘Troeltsch and the Dialectical Theology,” in Ernst Troeltsch and the Future of Theology, ed. by John Powell Clayton, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1976, pp. 33–77.

Index of Persons

Adam, 344, 363. Adams, James Luther (1901–94), American Unitarian theologian, 340, 350. Adler, Adolph Peter (1812–69), Danish philosopher and theologian, 24. Adorno, Theodor W. (1903–1969), German philosopher, 197, 295, 339. Althaus, Paul (1888–1966), German Protestant theologian, 162, 212. Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109), Scholastic philosopher, 3, 23, 47. Anz, Wilhelm, 133. Aquinas, Thomas (ca. 1225–74), Scholastic philosopher and theologian, 243. Arendt, Hannah (1906–75), German American philosopher, 105. Augustine of Hippo (354–430), church father, 46, 81, 85, 90, 149, 206, 209, 256, 260, 264, 265, 267, 366. Balthasar, Hans Urs von (1905–88), Swiss Catholic theologian, xii, 20, 33, 202. Barth, Karl (1886–1968), Swiss Protestant theologian, ix, x, 1–41, 43, 46, 59, 66, 67, 71, 72, 97, 98, 107, 121, 125, 126, 156, 159, 162, 187, 195, 198, 199, 203, 207, 209, 212, 225, 230, 232, 242, 244, 246, 249, 250, 254, 266, 294, 338, 359, 366, 368, 370, 384. Bärthold, Albert (1804–92), German Protestant theologian, ix, 106, 292, 299. Bauer, Bruno (1809–82), German Protestant theologian, 233. Baur, Ferdinand Christian (1792–1860), German Protestant theologian, 277.

Beck, Johann Tobias (1804–78), German Protestant theologian, ix, 2. Beintker, Michael, 22. Bergson, Henri (1859–1941), French philosopher, 385. Bernoulli, Carl Albert (1868–1937), 225. Bethge, Eberhard (1909–2000), German Protestant theologian, 46. Biser, Eugen (b. 1918), German Catholic theologian, xi. Bloch, Ernst (1885–1977), German philosopher, 188, 204, 205, 208, 213, 217, 218, 250. Blumhardt, Christoph Friedrich (1842–1919), German Protestant theologian, 2, 68, 187. Blumhardt, Johann Christoph (1805–80), German Protestant philosopher, 68, 187. Boehlich, Walter (1921–2006), German literary critic and translator, 300, 306. Bohlin, Torsten (1889–1950), Swedish theologian, 159, 175. Böhme, Jacob (1575–1624), German mystic, 343, 346, 370. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich (1906–45), German Protestant theologian, 43–64, 145, 150, 187, 194–6, 213, 330. Bornkamm, Günther (1905–90), German Protestant theologian, 105, 156, 243. Botticelli, Sandro (1445–1510), Italian painter, 337. Bousset, Wilhelm (1865–1920), German Protestant theologian, 157. Braaten, Carl, 271.

394

Kierkegaard’s Influence on Theology

Brunner, Emil (1889–1966), Swiss Protestant theologian, ix, x, 3, 6, 15, 65–103, 156, 251, 254, 259, 269, 294, 366. Buber, Martin (1878–1965), Austrian-born Jewish philosopher, xii, 74, 96, 195, 213. Bultmann, Rudolf (1884–1976), German Protestant theologian, ix, 3, 105–44, 151, 156, 162, 167, 196, 199, 210, 214, 244, 246, 247, 250, 294, 305, 338, 349, 384. Calvin, John (1509–64), French Protestant theologian, 8, 72, 81. Campenhausen, Hans von (1903–89), German Protestant theologian, 243, 244. Caputo, John, 201. Carnell, John Edward (1919–67), American Christian theologian, x. Christ, 1–9 passim, 11, 16, 20–33 passim, 43, 45, 47, 52–60 passim, 71, 72, 76, 77, 81, 83–5, 91, 93, 95, 120–32 passim, 135, 148, 165, 168, 171, 188, 190–2, 198–202, 226, 231, 233, 243–5, 248, 252–4, 263–5, 267, 282, 284, 323, 326, 327, 329, 336, 341, 344, 345, 347, 349, 358, 359, 360, 362, 364–6, 368, 369, 378, 386, 387. Cochrane, Arthur, 346. Coffin, Henry Sloane (1877–1954), American Presbyterian theologian, 339. Come, Arnold, 21, 22, 34, 348, 349. Constantine the Great (ca. 285–337), 231, Cornelius, Hans (1863–1947), German philosopher, Cox, Harvey Gallagher. Jr. (b. 1929), American Protestant theologian, xi. Cullmann, Oscar (1902–99), German Protestant theologian, 111, 119. Dempf, Alois (1891–1982), German Catholic philosopher, xi.

Denker, Rolf, 270. Descartes, René (1596–1650), French philosopher, 264. Dibelius, Martin (1883–1947), German Protestant theologian, 111, 119. Diederich, Eugen (1867–1930), German publisher, 288, 289, 292, 384, 390. Diem, Hermann (1900–75), German Protestant theologian, 111, 119. Dilthey, Wilhelm (1833–1911), German philosopher, 243, 247, 249. Diogenes Laertius, 83. Dohnanyi, Hans von (1902–45), German jurist, 45. Don Juan, 12, 364. Dorner, Albert, 288, 289. Dorner, Isaak August (1809–84), German Protestant pastor, 4, 292. Dorrien, Gary, 23, 33. Dostoevsky, Fyodor Mikhailovich (1821– 81), Russian author, 14, 90. Drescher, Hans-Georg, 383. Dru, Alexander, 354. Duns Scotus, John (1265/66–1308), English Scholastic philosopher and theologian, 242. Ebeling, Gerhard (1912–2001), German Protestant theologian, 145–53, 197, 247. Ebner, Ferdinand (1882–1931), Austrian philosopher, 74, 96. Ecke, Gustav (1855–1920), German Protestant theologian, 159. Eckhart or Meister Eckhart (ca. 1260–ca. 1328), German mystic, 385. Elert, Werner (1885–1954), German Protestant theologian, 156. Eliade, Mircea (1907–86), Rumanian-born historian of religion, 341. Elizabeth I (1533–1603), Queen of England and Ireland 1558–1603, 301. Eller, Vernard, 348. Engel, Otto (1888–1967), 282.

Index of Persons Eusebius of Caesarea (ca. 260–339), bishop of Caesarea, 231. Eve, 344, 363. Feldmann, Helen (1892–1972), 105. Feuerbach, Ludwig (1804–72), German philosopher, 188, 200, 233. Fichte, Johann Gottlieb (1762–1814), German philosopher, 156–8, 161, 173, 358. Ficker, Ludwig von (1880–1967), German author and publisher, 293. Fischer, Hermann (b. 1933), German Protestant theologian, 175, 270. Fort, Gertrud von le (1876–1971), German writer, 388, 390. Freud, Sigmund (1856–1939), Austrian psychologist, 346, 363. Fromm, Erich (1900–80), Jewish GermanAmerican existential psychologist, 339. Fuchs, Ernst (1903–83), German Protestant theologian, 146, 247, 386, 387. Funk, Robert, 146. Gadamer, Hans-Georg (1900–2002), German philosopher, 247. Geismar, Eduard (1871–1939), Danish theologian, 159–61, 164, 166, 167, 170, 175, 354, 369. George, Stefan (1868–1933), German poet and author, 389. Gerdes, Hayo (1928–81), German Protestant theologian, 162, 175, 295. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749–1832), German poet, author, scientist and diplomat, 187. Gogarten, Friedrich (1887–1967), German Protestant theologian, 74, 107, 128, 156, 162, 254, 255, 366, 384–90. Gottsched, Hermann (1848–1916), German Protestant theologian, 163, 281, 288–92, 300, 302, 303, 307. Gouwens, David, 25, 33, 34, 349. Graue, Paul, 379.

395

Gregersen, Niels Henrik, 269. Grenz, Stanley J. (1950–2005), American Christian theologian, x. Guardini, Romano (1885–1968), Catholic theologian, xi. Gunkel, Hermann (1862–1932), German Protestant theologian, 105, 157. Haecker, Theodor (1879–1945), German author and critic, xi, 81, 106, 293, 294. Hamann, Johann Georg (1730–88), German philosopher, 243. Hamilton, Kenneth, 347, 348. Hannay, Alastair, 300, 303. Hansen, Christian, 278. Harbsmeier, Eberhard, 298, 299. Harnack, Adolf von (1851–1930), German Protestant theologian, 1, 7, 105, 157, 229–32, 285, 378, 385. Hartmann, Nicolai (1882–1950), German philosopher, 242. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1770– 1831), German philosopher, 12, 68, 80, 86, 97, 121, 148, 173, 187, 195, 196, 200, 201, 203, 207, 211–13, 217, 238, 243, 245, 248, 249, 252, 254, 255, 265, 271, 272, 323, 325, 340, 347–50, 357, 360, 362, 363, 365, 367, 381. Heiberg, Peter Andreas (1864–1926), Danish archivist, 175. Heidegger, Martin (1889–1976), German philosopher, 86, 105–7, 109, 120, 121, 133, 134, 146, 151, 195, 210, 212, 214, 258, 294, 306, 338, 339, 346, 351–3, 362, 369. Heim, Karl (1874–1958), German Protestant theologian, 15, 156. Henrich, Dieter, 262. Henry, Martin, 223, 225, 229. Herder, Johann Gottfried (1744–1803), German philosopher, 243.

396

Kierkegaard’s Influence on Theology

Herrmann, Wilhelm (1846–1922), German Protestant theologian, ix, 1, 7, 105–7, 247, 267. Hesse, Hermann (1877–1962), GermanSwiss author and poet, 275, 276, 298. Heubaum, Alfred (1863–1910), German author, 234. Hirsch, Emanuel (1888–1972), German Protestant theologian, ix, 15, 59, 86, 111, 155–84, 158, 295, 299, 301, 336, 337, 349, 350, 357–9, 366, 367, 369, 370. Hitler, Adolf (1889–1945), 3, 43–5, 105, 160, 358. Høffding, Harald (1843–1931), Danish philosopher, 234, 379. Holl, Jan, 270. Holl, Karl (1866–1926), German Protestant theologian, ix, 156, 157, 163, 336. Hollander, Lee Milton (1880–1972), American scholar of North Germanic languages, 296. Hopper, David, 350. Horkheimer, Max (1895–1973), GermanJewish philosopher, 339. Horton, Walter, 346. Hügel, Friedrich von (1852–1925), Austrian Catholic theologian, xi. Hunsinger, George, 20. Husserl, Edmund (1859–1938), German philosopher, 346, 369. Ibsen, Henrik (1828–1906), Norwegian playwright, x. Irenaeus (ca. 130–ca. 200), church father, 231. Isaiah, 194, 204. Iwand, Hans Joachim (1899–1960), German Protestant theologian, 189, 242. Jaspers, Karl (1883–1969), German philosopher, 16, 119, 242, 295. Jenson, Robert, 20.

Jentsch, Karl (1833–1917), German Protestant theologian and author, 234. Jeremiah, 8. Job, 13. John, 282, 366. Johnson, Gisle Christian (1822–94), Norwegian theologian, xi. Jonas, Hans (1903–93), German-American philosopher, 105. Jung, Carl (1875–1961), Swiss psychiatrist, 346. Jüngel, Eberhard (b. 1934), 20, 188. Junghans, Hans Martin, 162. Kafka, Franz (1883–1924), Czech-Austrian novelist, 295. Kähler, Martin (1835–1912), German Protestant theologian, 336, 344, 351. Kamlah, Wilhelm (1905–76), German philosopher, 196. Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804), German philosopher, 11, 14, 74, 78, 79, 80, 157, 198–200, 209, 213, 215, 216, 247, 249, 264, 324, 325, 365, 367. Käsemann, Ernst (1906–98), German Protestant theologian, 105, 197. Kassner, Rudolf (1873–1959), Austrian author, xi, 106. Kennedy, John Fitzgerald (1917–63), President of the United States, 341. Ketels, Hinrich Cornelius (1855–1940), 290, 291, 300, 301. Kierkegaard, Søren Aabye (1813–55) The Concept of Irony (1841), 117, 305. Either/Or (1843), 80, 81, 86, 118, 290, 296, 354, 355, 364, 381. Repetition (1843), 13, 118, 292. Fear and Trembling (1843), 11, 26, 82, 83, 107, 252, 290, 296, 300, 301, 306, 354, 355. Prefaces (1844), 293. Upbuilding Discourses (1843–44), 291, 354, 355.

Index of Persons Philosophical Fragments (1844), 83–5, 109, 118, 121, 123, 124, 131, 135, 264, 278, 288–90, 326, 354, 355, 366. The Concept of Anxiety (1844), 59, 72, 85, 107, 198, 203, 208, 212, 251, 253, 256, 258, 260, 261, 263, 265, 269, 278, 288, 289, 298, 339, 340, 353, 355, 363, 369, Stages on Life’s Way (1845), 86, 118, 290, 296. Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846), 12, 13, 59, 83, 86–90, 165–9, 197, 268, 269, 289, 290, 292, 307, 354, 355, 361. A Literary Review of Two Ages (1846), 160, 293. The Book on Adler (ca. 1846–47), 81, 118, 293. Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (1847), 81, 169, 291. Works of Love (1847), 11–14, 19, 25, 26, 31, 32, 51, 97, 109, 118, 128, 129, 135, 206, 217, 292. Christian Discourses (1848), 118, 292, 360. The Point of View for My Work as an Author (ca. 1848), 81, 118, 288, 289, 322. The Sickness unto Death (1849), 10, 48, 59, 80, 90–4, 169, 251, 253, 257, 260–5, 269, 290, 302, 304–6, 329, 353, 355, 364, 369. Two Ethical-Religious Essays (1849), 10, 81, 290. Practice in Christianity (1850), 7, 9, 10, 11, 14, 19, 26–30 passim, 53, 59, 94, 95, 109, 118, 135, 168, 169, 171, 290, 296, 307, 360. On My Work as an Author (1851), 289. For Self-Examination (1851), 118, 163, 278, 289. Judge for Yourself (1851–52, published posthumously in 1876), 165, 289.

397

The Moment (1855), 7, 8, 10, 14, 19, 26, 118, 287, 289, 296, 355, 359. Journals, Notebooks, Nachlaß, 7, 8, 11, 12, 30, 118, 148, 165, 205, 232, 233, 278, 293, 354. Kütemeyer, Wilhelm (1904–72), 292. Kutter, Hermann (1863–1931), Swiss Lutheran theologian, 2. Lagarde, Paul Anton de (1827–91), German polymath, 236, 378. Lao-Tzu, 385. Leibniz, Baron Gottfried Wilhelm von (1646–1716), German philosopher and mathematician, 172. Leporello, 12. Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim (1729–81), German writer and philosopher, 13, 187, 243, 254, 255. Levinas, Emmanuel (1906–95), French philosopher, xii. Lindström, Valter (1907–91), Swedish theologian, 175. Löwith, Karl (1897–1973), German Jewish philosopher, 119, 233, 238, 239, 243. Lowrie, Walter (1868–1959), American translator, 297, 354. Lubac, Henri de (1896–1991), French philosopher, xii. Lukács, Georg (1885–1971), Hungarian philosopher, novelist and literary critic, 106. Luther, Martin (1483–1546), German Protestant theologian, 8, 43, 46–8, 52, 55, 58, 79, 80, 132, 145–51 passim, 156, 161–7 passim, 171, 173, 187, 189, 195, 203, 207, 242, 336, 350, 366, 385, 386. Mackay, John Alexander (1889–1983), American Presbyterian theologian, xi. Mackintosh, Hugh Ross (1870–1936), Scottish theologian, x.

398

Kierkegaard’s Influence on Theology

Macquarrie, John (1919–2007), Scottish theologian and philosopher, x. Malik, Habib C., 293. Mann, Thomas (1875–1955), German author, 299. Martens, Paul, 24, 32. Martensen, Hans Lassen (1808–84), Danish theologian, 14, 79, 232. Marx, Karl (1818–83), German philosopher and economist, 188, 201, 217, 352, 362, 366. May, Rollo (1909–94), American existential psychologist, 339, 363. McCormack, Bruce, 22, 33. McKinnon, Alastair, 23, 34, 301, 302. Merton, Thomas (1915–68), American spiritual author, xii. Methlagl, Walter, 293. Metz, Johann Baptist (b. 1928), German Catholic theologian, 191. Moering, Ernst (1886–1973), German Protestant theologian, 107. Moltmann, Jürgen (b. 1926), German Protestant theologian, 185–221, 243. Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus (1756–91), Austrian composer, 364. Müller, Julius (1801–78), German Protestant theologian, 266, 267, 270. Nero, 364. Niebuhr, Reinhold (1892–1971), American theologian, x. Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844–1900), German philosopher, x, 23, 96, 119, 156, 166, 187, 200, 223, 233, 242, 281, 337, 346, 358, 380, 382, 385. Nigg, Walter, 230–8 passim. Nygren, Anders (1890–1978), Swedish Lutheran theologian, xi. Olesen Larsen, Kristoffer, (1899–1964), Danish theologian, 119. Otto, Rudolf (1869–1937), German Lutheran theologian, 337, 339, 343, 346, 369.

Outka, Gene (b. 1937), American theologian, xi. Overbeck, Franz (1837–1905), German Protestant theologian, 2, 14, 22, 223–40. Pannenberg, Wolfhart (b. 1928), German Protestant theologian, 241–74. Parmenides, 198. Pascal, Blaise (1623–1662), French mathematician, physicist and philosopher, 81, 232, 234, 237, 238, 366. Paul, 8, 14, 46, 119, 146, 194, 243, 282, 336, 366, 387. Paulsen, Anna, 233. Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich (1746–1827), Swiss educator, 67. Peter, 81. Peterson, Erik (1890–1970), German Protestant theologian, 111. Pfleiderer, Wolfgang (1877–1971), German philologist, 290. Picht, Georg (1913–82), German philosopher, 208, 212. Plato, 14, 81, 83. Polk, Timothy, 24. Poole, Roger, 150. Prenter, Regin (1907–90), Danish theologian, 259, 270. Przywara, Erich (1889–1972), German Catholic theologian, xi, 44. Rad, Gerhard von (1901–71), German Protestant theologian, 243. Rade, Martin, 385, 386. Rae, Murray, 24, 32, 33. Ranke, Leopold von (1795–1886), German historian, 199, 212. Ranke-Heinemann, Uta (b. 1927), German Protestant theologian, 105. Reimer, James A., 349. Rest, Walter, 303. Ricoeur, Paul (1913–2005), French philosopher, 246.

Index of Persons Rilke, Rainer Maria (1875–1926), German poet, 106. Ringleben, Joachim (b. 1945), German Protestant theologian, 175. Ritschl, Albrecht (1822–89), German Protestant theologian, ix, 1, 98, 352, 377, 378. Rosenzweig, Franz (1886–1929), German Jewish philosopher and theologian, xii, 207, 213. Rothe, Richard (1799–1867), German Protestant theologian, 378. Rückert, Hanns (1901–74), German Protestant theologian, 156. Ruler, Arnold van (1908–70), Dutch theologian, 187. Ruokanen, Mikka, 149. Saint Francis, 378. Sartre, Jean-Paul (1905–80), French philosopher, 150. Schaeder, Erich (1861–1936), German Protestant theologian, 106. Schaeffer, Francis (1912–84), American Evangelical theologian, x. Scheler, Max (1874–1928), German philosopher, 106. Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von (1775–1854), German philosopher, 4, 243, 335, 337, 339, 343, 344, 346, 347, 350–3, 356, 357, 360–3, 367–70. Schlatter, Adolf (1852–1938), German Protestant theologian, 156. Schlegel, Friedrich von (1772–1829), German Romantic writer, 367. Schleiermacher, Friedrich D.E. (1768– 1834), German Protestant theologian, 18, 25, 26, 70, 71, 98, 148, 161, 173, 247, 252, 256, 257, 259, 261, 264, 265, 269, 324, 325, 346. Schlink, Edmund (1903–84), German Protestant theologian, 243.

399

Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788–1860), German philosopher, 96, 362. Schrempf, Christoph (1860–1944), German Protestant theologian, ix, 106, 110, 118, 163, 275–319, 352, 353, 381, 385. Schulz, Heiko, 288, 293. Seeberg, Reinhold (1859–1935), German Protestant theologian, 43, 44. Slater, Peter, 347. Socrates, ix, 3, 29, 67, 83, 166, 275, 282, 327, 358, 362, 368. Søe, Niels Hansen (1895–1978), Danish theologian, 20. Soloveitchik, Joseph B. (1903–93), American Orthodox rabbi, xii. Sölle, Dorothee (1929–2003), German Protestant theologian, 201, 213. Spinoza, Baruch (1632–77), Dutch philosopher, 367. Stange, Carl (1870–1959), German Protestant theologian, 156. Strauss, David Friedrich (1808–74), German Protestant theologian, 233, 252, 325. Swenson, David F. (1876–1940), American translator, x, 297, 354. Swenson, Lillian M. (died in 1961), American translator, 297. Taubes, Jacob, 224. Thielicke, Helmut (1908–86), German Protestant theologian, 270, 321–34. Thomas, John Heywood (1902–69), English scholar of Romance philology, 347. Thurneysen, Eduard (1888–1977), Swiss Protestant theologian, 8, 156. Tillich, Paul (1886–1965), GermanAmerican Protestant theologian, ix, 156, 162, 170, 257, 294, 335–76. Tolstoy, Lev (1828–1910), Russian author, 378, 379, 385. Torrance, Thomas F. (1913–2007), Scottish Protestant theologian, 20. Tracy, David, 223.

400

Kierkegaard’s Influence on Theology

Trendelenburg, Friedrich Adolf (1802–72), German philosopher and philologist, 360, 363. Troeltsch, Ernst (1865–1923), German Protestant theologian, 98, 107, 243, 377–92. Unamuno, Miguel de (1864–1936), Spanish author, 205, 213. Vinet, Alexandre Rodolphe (1797–1847), Swiss literary scholar and theologian, 236. Vogel, Heinrich (1902–89), German Protestant theologian, 254. Walsh, Sylvia, 25, 32. Webb, Stephen, 21. Weber, Max (1864–1920), German sociologist, 377.

Weber, Otto (1902–66), German Protestant theologian, 188. Wedemeyer, Maria von (1924–77), 46. Weiss, Johannes (1863–1914), German Protestant theologian, 105. Weizsäcker, Carl Friedrich von (1912– 2007), German physicist and philosopher, 212, 277. Westphal, Merold, 271. Whitehead, Alfred North (1861–1947), English mathematician and philosopher, 271. Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) (Emperor from 1888–1918), 231. Williams, Charles (1886–1945), British author and theologian, x. Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1889–1951), Austrian philosopher, 349. Wust, Peter (1884–1940), German philosopher, xi. Ziegler, Philip, 24, 25.

Index of Subjects

Absolute, the, xii, 77, 78, 86, 197, 200, 213, 216, 323, 337, 350, 356, 357, 360, 362, 366, 386, 387. absolute dependence, feeling of, 18. abstraction, 323. actuality, 204, 345. and possibility, 363. aesthetics, the aesthetic, aestheticism, xii, 17, 19, 59, 81, 82, 86, 97, 202, 213, 301, 322, 339, 355, 365, 380, 381, 387. Agnete and the Merman, 300. alienation, 357, 366, 369. ambiguity, 127, 132, 135, 217, 342, 345, 353, 358, 367. anguish, see “anxiety.” anthropocentrism, 16, 18. anthropology, 20, 22, 23, 32, 65, 69, 85, 112, 113, 119, 133, 173, 192, 197, 241–74, 251, 302, 321, 323. anxiety, xii, 18, 33, 69, 85, 208, 213, 217, 252, 253, 256, 257, 258, 260, 263, 266, 269, 338–40, 343–51 passim, 362, 368, 369. apocalypticism, 200, 224, 226, 228, 243, 245. apologetics, 98, 168. Apostles’ Creed, 283, 285, 286, 388. appropriation, x, 21, 22, 67, 86, 127, 324, 329. approximation, 325. Archimedean point, 148. ascension, 284. atheism, xii, 199, 200, 233, 357. atonement, 24, 133, 135.

attack on the church, 14, 17, 20, 21, 23, 53, 96, 167, 202, 213, 232, 234, 235, 237, 238. authenticity, 17–19, 133, 199, 330, 387. authority, 79, 81, 167, 171, 172, 348. autonomy, 78, 172, 249, 342. autopsy, 85. baptism, 283, 284. becoming a self, 22. Bible, 3, 4, 44, 47, 58, 131–3, 146, 164, 167, 187, 224, 245, 271, 277, 278, 286, 326, 388. Genesis, 44, 270, 363. Matthew, 45, 53, 122, 283. Mark, 45, 122, 130. Luke, 45, 122. John, 122, 127, 128, 194. Acts, 248. Romans, 11, 195, 198. categorical imperative, 74. Catholicism, xi. choice, 218. Christendom, 9, 10, 14, 26, 28, 32, 33, 235, 237, 341, 367, 380. Christianity, New Testament, 232–8 passim. Christology, 83, 128, 135, 136, 148, 188, 189, 192, 244, 245, 263, 264, 325–30 passim, 347, 349, 359. communication, 174. direct, 8, 10, 12. indirect, 9, 12, 95, 165, 172, 362. community, 25, 43, 53, 70, 75, 76, 79, 80, 82, 85, 160, 162, 193–6, 213, 215, 216, 245, 329.

402

Kierkegaard’s Influence on Theology

Confessing Church, 43–5, 105, 145. conscience, 166, 169, 171, 206. contemporaneity, xii, 59, 60, 71, 84, 96, 149, 233, 234, 323, 359, 360. contingency, 80. contradiction, 29, 80, 94, 205, 253, 254, 324, 355, 356, 357. Creation, the, 4, 6, 26, 44, 72, 75, 76, 85, 93, 168, 192–4, 248. Creator, 92. crowd, 268. crucifixion, 190. culture Protestantism, 116, 120, 232, 238, 378. death, 10, 28, 47, 198, 201, 205, 248, 344. decision (see also “choice,”) 18, 22, 50, 52, 55, 59, 60, 85, 86, 88, 267, 326, 350, 366, 382. defiance, 93. demonic, the, 364, 368. demythologization, 98, 133, 190. despair, xii, 3, 15, 18, 20, 26, 33, 91–4, 133, 169, 253, 260, 262, 265, 269, 303, 304, 339, 346, 351–3, 357, 362, 364, 369. determinism, 79. dialectics, 3, 12, 14, 16, 20–3, 33, 74, 80, 88, 90, 98, 99, 112, 133, 148, 164, 169, 193, 198, 200, 201, 217, 218, 323, 327, 345, 347, 350, 352, 353, 356, 357, 360, 362, 363, 365, 366, 369, 370, 381, 385. dialogical method, 323. difference, infinite qualitative, xii, 9, 14, 17, 20, 27, 30, 31, 58, 78, 328. discipleship, 54–7, 60. dizziness, see “vertigo.” dogmatics, 6, 12, 13, 15, 75, 76, 132, 133, 148, 161, 162, 166, 170, 171, 173, 378. double reflection, 88. doubt, 69, 94, 336, 340. dualism, 30, 200, 213–16, 361, 369, 370, 379, 387–90.

earnestness, 34. education, 67. either/or, 379–81, 385–7. Enlightenment, 78, 148, 210, 214. Erlangen School, 243. eschatology, 125, 128, 134–6, 185, 224, 226, 228, 232, 238, 239, 244, 248, 264, 345, 369. estrangement, 344–6, 350–3, 360, 362, 368, 369. ethics, xii, 6, 30, 45, 49, 50, 59, 68, 81, 82, 86, 87, 123, 125, 128–36 passim, 150, 157, 161, 162, 165, 168, 202, 237, 278, 301, 322, 329, 330, 363, 378, 380, 381. Christian, 128–30, 165. evil, 48, 81, 134, 218, 248, 266, 363. exegesis, 122, 135, 146, 148, 150, 157, 162, 165, 196, 243, 244, 246, 252. existence, 2, 20, 80, 93, 134, 164, 323, 342, 346, 348, 350–2, 361–3, 366, 368. existentialism, x, 13, 15, 16, 33, 44, 65, 68, 72, 77–96, 135, 195, 269, 338, 344, 346, 349–53, 359–61, 363, 368. fairy tale, 204. faith, x, xi, 5, 8, 17–19, 23, 26, 27, 32, 33, 55, 68, 69, 71, 77, 80–6 passim, 90, 92, 95, 98, 123–5, 127, 132, 133, 135, 136, 146, 147, 149, 167, 171, 188, 202, 206, 214, 228, 246–8, 250, 262, 267, 268, 324, 327, 328, 336, 340, 347, 348, 350, 358, 359, 361, 389, knight of, 12. Fall, the, 48, 72, 85, 92, 93, 257, 270, 340, 344, 363. fear and trembling 33, 203, 213. fideism, 23. finitude, see “infinite and finite.” Frankfurt School, 339. freedom, 21, 22, 27, 28, 31, 48, 72, 79, 81, 85, 87, 92, 203, 204, 206, 210, 213, 214, 216, 217, 246, 257, 261–3, 267, 269, 271, 344, 347, 363, 368, 380.

Index of Subjects fundamentalism, x, 6. genius, 81. German Christian Movement, 156. God, 31. death of, 200, 202, 213. existence of, 343. kingdom of, 2, 67, 131, 193, 206, 218, 224, 226, 229, 247–9, 283, 345, 383, 386. God is dead, see “God, death of.” God-man, 9, 82, 95, 127, 323, 325, 326. grace, 1, 3, 15, 17–19, 22, 24–6, 30, 31, 33, 34, 45, 54, 55, 69, 71, 168, 214, 350. guilt, 18, 32, 33, 78, 79, 80, 89, 214, 263, 265, 266, 327, 337, 344, 348, 351–3, 356, 357, 363, 364, 368, 369. Hasidism, xii. hermeneutics, 135, 145, 146, 151, 197, 210, 213, 246, 247. historicism, xii, 111, 133, 135, 145, 146, 151, 156, 164, 196, 197, 210, 213, 243, 245–7, 267, 322, 384, 388, 389. history, 9, 59, 85, 87, 88, 149, 170, 171, 186, 189, 190, 196, 197, 199, 207, 210–16, 224–7, 229, 231, 234, 239, 243–50 passim, 252, 254, 255, 271, 323–6, 336, 342, 344, 345, 350, 360, 362, 363, 365, 377, 380, 382, 383, 386, 388, 389. end of, 244, 248, 249, 272. Hochland Circle, xi. Holy Spirit, 3, 4, 32, 47, 51, 69, 70, 76, 84, 86, 149, 188, 190, 191, 194, 206, 215, 216, 328, 264, 265, 328, 345, 347. homiletics, 47, 163, 165. hope, 17, 149, 188, 189, 193, 198, 201, 204, 205, 208, 217, 218, 241, 246, 251. idealism, xii, 44, 48, 49, 68, 79, 97, 195, 243, 341, 346, 379, 383.

403

German, 88, 156, 162, 173, 247, 272, 345. speculative, 81. imago Dei, 71. imitation, 24, 60, 149. immanence (see also “transcendence”), 66, 70, 71, 88, 89, 370, 380. Incarnation, 5, 6, 27, 29, 31, 32, 81, 83, 135, 148, 195, 244, 254, 326, 359, 360, 366, 370. incognito, 9, 12, 28, 29, 84, 95, 127, 132, 136, 167, 172, 217, 325, 328. indifferentism, 214, 216. indirect communication, see “communication.” individual, the (see also “single individual,”) 60, 79, 195. individualism, individuality, 51, 52, 215. infinite and finite, 3, 20, 256, 261, 265, 338, 344, 347, 348, 350, 356, 359–62, 367–9, 380. innocence, 363. inwardness, 16, 86, 213, 324, 327, 355. irony, 21, 203, 213, 232, 367, 379. irrationalism, irrationality, 23, 87, 247, 359, 370, 382, 388. Judaism, xi, xii, 259. justification, 30, 189, 203, 214, 336, 348, 351. kairos, 209, 210, 338, 345, 346. kenosis, 254. kerygma, 120, 124, 126, 131, 244, 328. language, 3, 5, 32, 146, 147, 174, 243, 247, 248, 325, 369. leap, xii, 85, 254, 270, 358–61, 363, 365, 370, 380, 382. of faith, 18, 301, 302, 325–8. leveling, 160, 268. love, xi, xii, 4, 6, 8, 11, 12, 17–34 passim, 52, 58, 68, 75, 76, 81, 82, 92, 97, 127, 131–6 passim, 147, 171, 194,

404

Kierkegaard’s Influence on Theology

202, 205, 206, 214–18, 248, 263, 326, 344, 349, 364, 387. agape, 13, 25, 31, 51, 52, 76. Christian, 13. eros, 25, 31, 51, 52, 81. of God, 33, 130. of neighbor, 11, 25, 33, 129–32, 206, 207, 213. preferential, 130. Marcionism, 195, 213–15. martyrdom, 167, 202, 232. Marxism, 250, 338. meaning, 364. meaninglessness, 344, 352. mediation, 215, 217, 253, 254, 356, 386, 387. melancholy, 379, 381. miracles, 72. mission, 97. modernism, modernity, xii, 6, 66, 96, 148, 268. moment, the, 8, 9, 23, 49, 60, 74, 83, 135, 149, 151, 171, 185, 199, 207–16 passim, 325, 327, 345, 365, 366, 367, 386. monasticism, 226, 231, 232. morality, 357. mysticism, mystics, 70, 71, 190, 337, 347, 356, 357, 367. National Socialism, ix, 3, 15, 44, 45, 60, 105, 160, 161, 169, 170, 321, 339, 358, 366. nationalism, 160. Nazism, see “National Socialism.” negativity, negation, 87, 370. Neo-Kantianism, xii, 2, 74, 341. Neo-Marxism, 346. neo-orthodoxy, x, 1, 6, 99. Neoplatonism, 346. New Hermeneutic, 146. nihilism, 133. nothingness, nothing, 20.

offense, 9, 10, 15, 27–9, 59, 60, 95, 123, 127, 132, 135, 366. pantheism, 87, 88, 91, 348, 387. paradox, 8, 9, 14, 23, 79, 88, 127, 135, 164, 167, 171, 189, 201, 253, 254, 323–8, 344, 347, 359, 360, 365, 366, 369, 370, 382, 386. the absolute, xii. parousia, 224, 225, 239. passion, 86, 256, 324, 327, 358, 361. personalism, 99, 194, 195, 213–15. phenomenology, 44, 86, 341, 346, 369. philosophy, transcendental, 44. Pietism, 13, 15, 16, 18, 19, 32, 33, 173, 369. pneumatology, 190–2, 206, 328. positivism, 367. possibility, 204, 205, 214, 217, 218. postmodernity, 1, 148. prayer, 77, 148, 164, 166. preaching, 165. predestination, 207, 242. press, the, 268. privatism, 216. progress, 87. proofs of God, 89, 90, 199, 201, 255, 264, 343. pseudonymity, pseudonyms, 96, 217, 322–3. psychology, 48, 80, 85, 90, 93, 150, 159, 256–8, 263, 266, 339, 352, 353, 364, 368, 369, 387. public, 268. rationalism, xii. rationality, 323, 324, 358, 366. reappropriation, 151. reason, 1, 90, 228, 241, 245–7, 250, 255, 268, 270, 342, 348, 386. reconciliation, 4, 6, 21, 24, 30, 325, 336, 344, 345. redemption, 4, 29, 71, 76, 194, 207, 330, 389. reduplication, 28, 29. Reformation, 74, 91, 163, 189, 214, 229, 266.

Index of Subjects relativism, 342, 383. religiousness A and B, 88, 132, 168, 327, 327, 354, 368. repentance, 357. repetition, xii. responsibility, 80, 363. resurrection, 135, 189, 190, 199, 200, 201, 243, 244, 247, 248, 284, 344. revelation, 1, 2, 6, 22–4, 27, 29, 30, 32, 33, 43, 44, 47, 48, 50, 59, 67, 70, 72, 74, 75, 80, 84, 85, 88, 90, 94, 127, 128, 131, 132, 135, 136, 171, 192, 199, 242–50 passim, 252, 266, 325, 327–9, 342, 347, 348, 358, 365, 366. rhetoric, 21. Romanticism, 367, 382, 387. German, 173, 342, 346. sacraments, 149. salvation, 16, 19, 22, 25, 28, 33, 34, 127, 127, 200, 244, 265, 328, 336, 349. scandal, see “offense.” secularization, xii, xiii, 115, 116, 119, 228, 229, 387. selfhood, xii. seriousness, 60. sickness unto death, 94, 206, 304, 357, 364. silence, 47. simplicity, 60. simultaneity, 167, 171, 172, 265. sin, x, 6, 22, 25, 26, 29, 30, 32, 47, 48, 69, 70, 85, 89, 91, 94, 135, 205, 214, 248, 252, 253, 256–61, 266, 267, 269, 270, 304, 326, 336, 348, 357, 364. original, 86, 265. single individual, the, xii, 9, 30, 55. socialism, Christian, 2, 7. religious, 156. soteriology, 25, 30, 264. speculative philosophy, 166, 388. spirit, 22, 49, 70, 87, 149, 192, 196, 206, 215, 216, 238, 260, 261, 263, 328, 344, 345, 350, 370, 383.

405

stages, 86, 171, 322, 365, 369. aesthetic, 365. subjectivism, xii, 15, 166, 214–16, 250. subjectivity, 14, 18, 25, 172, 196, 206, 213, 242, 249, 263, 265, 268, 323, 324, 328, 329, 348, 356, 361, 369. and objectivity, 31. suffering, 27–9, 57, 58, 76, 98, 190, 198, 202, 213, 239. supernaturalism, 249, 338, 361, 370. suspension, see “teleological suspension.” symbol, 342, 343, 345, 359, 368. synthesis, 261, 350, 357. system, systematic philosophy, 18, 50, 88, 323, 335, 347, 348, 380. teleological suspension, 82. temporality (see also “time”), 124. theology of the cross, 91, 95, 187–90, 194, 198, 200–2, 207, 213, 326. dialectical, ix, 3, 44, 59, 60, 71, 98, 107, 156, 169, 187, 207, 352, 359, 383. existential, x, 16, 60, 131, 197, 361. liberal, 1, 44, 99, 107, 191, 384. natural, 3, 70–2, 193. neo-orthodox, 98, 346. political, 193, 202, 157, 158, 189–91, 193, 202. Shekinah, 194. systematic, 148, 161, 166, 167, 170, 175, 191–3, 207, 243, 250, 252, 264, 267, 321, 335, 340, 341, 355, 358, 360, 362, 370, 377. time, 186, 194, 207, 212. and eternity, 14, 74, 185, 198, 199, 207–13 passim, 261, 325–8, 360. fullness of, 328. transcendence, 6, 243, 246. Trinity, 4, 31, 186, 190, 192, 199, 214–17, 250, 263. truth is subjectivity, 86, 97, 165, 196, 206, 210, 213, 214, 269, 330, 352, 354. vertigo, 257, 263.

406

Kierkegaard’s Influence on Theology

virgin birth, 72, 98, 246, 284. voluntarism, 359, 370. Weimar Republic, xi, 156, 160, 377. witness, xii, 84, 95.

word, the, 3, 69–74 passim, 78, 80, 81, 83, 86, 93, 146, 147, 202, 244, 246, 247, 277, 321, 327. works, good works, 16, 18, 24, 33, 55, 147.