Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship:
A New Perspective

by Vernard Eller

To my two sons, Sander Mack Eller and Enten Eller.

Preface

Part I: THE PERSPECTIVE

The Central Nerve
Where Is True Christianity to Be Found ?
Classic Protestant Sectarianism: In Which a Church Is Not a “Church”
A Sect Called The Dunkers

Part II: THE DUNKERS AND THE DANE

Part III: THE OPENING CONCLUSION

What Shall We Do with S.K.?

Preface

This book comes as the product of a rather long development. It all began, I guess, when, as a junior at La Verne College, I first discovered Kierkegaard–March 22, 1948, the check-out card in the library book says. The circumstances, I feel, were propitious for helping me become one whom S.K. hopefully might address as “my reader.” I was wandering through the stacks of the college library when a bright blue volume carrying on its spine the glittering gold letters KIERKEGAARD caught my eye; it was Bretall’s anthology from Princeton University Press. Curious as to who or what such a label could represent, I took down the book, flipped through its pages (starting at the back), immediately hit some of the short-and-sharp entries of the Attack upon “Christendom,”
and was captured.

I checked out the book six times in as many months and then began buying Kierkegaard on my own. Thus I had read a good deal of S.K. before reading any books about him; had read S.K. before I even heard of existentialism, dialectical theology, and such; had listened to S.K. speak before I listened to anyone tell me what he said; had read deeply in the religious works before going to the pseudonymous ones-and all this I consider providential. It was almost seven years later that, as a student at Bethany Biblical Seminary (Church of the Brethren) in Chicago, I was taking a course in the history of Christian doctrine concurrently with one in philosophical ethics. I got permission from the respective professors to submit in the two classes one double-length paper exploring the affinity between Kierkegaard and Pietism.

Each of the teachers decided to keep the copy I gave him (my only two copies). Floyd E. Mallott, the church history professor–to whom I owe much of my understanding of Brethren history–had me read part of the paper in class and encouraged me to pursue this line of investigation. Donovan Smucker, the ethics professor, wanted to submit the manuscript to The Mennonite Quarterly Review; but when it came time to do so, neither professor could find his copy. That primordial “J Document” was lost for several years, and only half of it has been located to this day–not that it is any great loss. But dating from that time was my determination to do a doctoral dissertation on Kierkegaard and sectarianism.

I chose my school, my field, and my department–all with an eye to making this study. At the Pacific School of Religion (Berkeley, California) I did my work in historical theology under John von Rohr, a man who became mentor, friend, and colleague in an exceedingly helpful way. I also had courses- and much more than just courses-from Robert E. Fitch and Hugh Vernon White. Although Dr. White retired before my dissertation was well underway, he continued to give me help and counsel on it.

By this time (1958) I was teaching at La Verne College, but my topic, outline, and prospectus were accepted without difficulty. A grant from the Swenson Kierkegaard Fellowship Committee helped finance some of my research, and appreciated assists from my college administration kept the project moving. Things went smoothly until it came to producing a draft that would satisfy my doctoral advisors. Then, at one point, just three brief months before deadline, I seriously proposed to Dr. von Rohr that I drop the Kierkegaard half of my study and write a brief and innocuous discourse on the Brethren. He responded with a direct command, which is all that kept me at the task. The finished dissertation was accepted without dissent.

My doctorate behind me (1964), I reworked the manuscript and started the search for a publisher. It was at this point that Franklin H. Littell, authority on Protestant sectarianism and then professor of church history at Chicago Theological Seminary, read the volume and for no reason other than the benevolence of his good heart took the initiative in contacting prospects. Nevertheless, the hook seemed doomed to remain forever a manuscript when the editors at Charles Scribner’s Sons for no reason other than the benevolence of their good hearts–took it upon themselves to recommend it to Princeton University Press. And at Princeton it has been the benevolent heart and kindly hands of managing editor Eve Hanle that have brought to completion this work of ten, thirteen, almost twenty years.

The greatest satisfaction to come out of this long-drawn process is the friends made along the way. To each of the persons named above I proffer heartfelt thanks-as I do to an even greater number who must go unnamed: my wife, parents, family, and friends; my colleagues of the faculty and ad- ministration here at La Verne College; my fellow scholars within the Church of the Brethren; and the librarians without whose help few books would get written and few, indeed, read. May the contribution of this book prove worthy the trust they all have put in me.

PART I: THE PERSPECTIVE

I. The Central Nerve

The central nerve of my work as an author
really lies in the fact that I was essentially religious
when I wrote Either/Or.1

Count it not presumption that this study sets itself to do for Søren Kierkegaard what Adolf Deissrnann did for the Apostle Paul. In the following excerpt from Deissmann’s classic work, read “Kierkegaard” for “Paul” and the words retain both their accuracy and relevancy:

[Scholarly research] has been most strongly influenced by interest in Paul, the theologian, and in the ‘theology’ of Paul…. But with this doctrinaire direction the study of Paul has gone further and further astray. It has placed one factor which is certainly not absent from Paul, but is in no way the historically characteristic, theological reflection, in the foreground, and has only too often undervalued the really characteristic traits of the man, the prophetic power of his religious experience, and the energy of his practical religious life…. Paul at his best belongs not to Theology, but to Religion…. The tent-maker of Tarsus ought not to be classed along with Origen, Thomas Aquinas and Schliermacher: his place is rather with the herdsman of Tekoa, and with Tersteegen, the ribbon-weaver of Mulsheim…. Paul is essentially first and foremost a hero of religion. The theological element in him is secondary. Naivete in him is stronger than reflection; mysticism stronger than dogmatism; Christ means more to him than Christology, God more than the doctrine of God. He is far more a man of prayer, a witness, a confessor and a prophet, than a learned exegete and close thinking scholastic. To show that this is so, is, I consider, the object of this sketch.2 And, concerning Kierkegaard, the object of this “sketch” is not far different.

Actually, although he nowhere stated the distinction quite as Deissmann did, S.K. wrote an entire book, plus a number of briefer essays,3 in the interest of subsuming his authorship under the religious category:

The contents of this little book affirm, then, what I truly am as an author, that I am and was a religious author, that the whole of my work as an author is related to Christianity, to the problem ‘of becoming a Christian.’ … I would beg of every one who has the cause of Christianity at heart-and I beg the more urgently the more seriously he takes it to heart that he make himself acquainted with this little book, not curiously, but devoutly, as one would read a religious work…. [The reader] will totally misunderstand me, [if] he does not understand the religious totality in my whole work as an author…. What I write here is for orientation. It is a public attestation; not a defense or an apology…. It goes without saying that I cannot explain my work as an author wholly, i.e, with the purely personal inwardness in which I possess the explanation of it. And this in part is because I cannot make public my God relationship.4 Clearly, S.K. was meaning to say that his writings cannot properly be understood, that he desired that they not be read, as the work of a philosopher, a psychologist, a social critic, an aesthete, or whatever. The criteria of these disciplines are not appropriate to his orientation.

Also, it is evident that he would have included theologian among the things he was not. “Theological” simply will not do as a synonym for “religious” in S.K.’s context. An authorship which centered on “becoming a Christian” (as against “defining the Christian faith”), which was to be read “devoutly,” and which integrally involved the author’s personal God-relationship–this is not “theology” in the usual sense of the term. Rather, S.K.’s opinion of theology was expressed in such statements as:

To me the theological world is like the road along the coast on a Sunday afternoon during the races-they storm past one another, shouting and yelling, laugh and make fools of each other, drive their horses to death, upset each other, and are run over, and when at last they arrive, covered with dust and out of breath-they look at each other-and go home.5

From a Christian point of view a dogmatic system is an article of luxury; in fair weather, when one can guarantee that at least an average of the population are Christians, there might be time for such a thing-but when was that ever the case? And in stormy weather the systematic is deprecated as an evil; at such times everything theological must be edifying. 6 As we shall discover, S.K.’s concern was over the intellectualistic bias he found in theologizing; he was convinced that Christianity must be life-centered and so resisted passionately any tendencies that might make it thought centered [see below].

However, Point of View notwithstanding, it must be confessed that Kierkegaard scholarship generally has proceeded to treat S.K. precisely contrary to his wishes and his own self-understanding, reading him as a philosopher, theologian, or whatever.

Recently, however, prominent scholars are showing interest in correcting the situation. For example, Perry LeFevre maintains that S.K. should be seen essentially “as a religious man struggling for his own soul” and “sympathetically understood in the context of his own pilgrim’s progress.” 8 Paul Holmer makes an extended plea “for a kind of understanding that fits the [Kierkegaardian] literature,” 9 and is extremely critical of a fellow scholar for expounding S.K. as though he were a theologian.10 And Niels Thulstrup becomes quite vocal against those thinkers and schools that attempt to analyze S.K.’s ideas from perspectives that are “totally incommensurable with them.”11 This growing trend has the effect of taking S.K. out of the mainstream of Christian philosophic-theological development but does not, to this point, suggest where he should be put. Does S.K. represent a “sport” in Christian thought, or is there a totally religious yet nontheological (antiintellectual) tradition to which he should be related? There have been forthcoming some scattered hints that may point toward an answer.

Niels Thulstrup (a Danish pastor and highly competent Kierkegaard scholar), as the alternative to his criticism noted above, proposes that “with respect to content there is in fact only one yardstick of values for Kierkegaard, namely, the authority he himself appealed to and quoted: the Bible, and in the Bible particularly the New Testament”12

William Barrett (a philosophy professor specializing in existentialism) anchors the line of traditional Christian philosophy-theology in what he calls “Hellenism” and the Kierkegaard-existential line in “Hebraism.” He sees the latter as predominant in New Testament Christianity, as being represented to some degree in Tertullian and even more so in Augustine. However, he specifies that Augustine only opened the door but did not go inside, in that he also retained a strong orientation toward the “rationalist” strain. Barrett denies that Thomas Aquinas and the other medieval philosophers showed any significant relation to existential thought. At this point he abandons the tracing of the historical development and moves directly to the nineteenth century and Kierkegaard.13

L. Harold DeWolf (a professor of theology who is not particularly sympathetic to existential irrationalism) notes the presence of this strain in such contemporary theologians as Barth, Brunner, and Reinhold Niebuhr and ascribes the influence to S.K. Then, in tracing the antecedents of S.K.’s irrationalism, he starts with the New Testament, mentions Tatian, stresses Tertullian, points to aspects of irrationalism within Luther and Calvin–and thus to S.K.14

Three philosophy professors–William Earl; James M. Edie, and John Wild–more recently have collaborated on a work, Christianity and Existentialism. Although the book is a symposium, the men coordinated their ideas and thus present an integrated viewpoint. The basic frame of reference is as follows:

What seems certain is that if we now observe the history of Christianity from the viewpoint of Kierkegaard’s conception of faith as action rather than knowledge, we find that it is not something new but that it has been one of the two constants in Christian life from the beginning. There has always been a strain of what can be called Christian ‘irrationalism’ (which is not always to be understood as an ‘anti-rationalism’) opposed to the strain of Christian ‘rationalism’ in the Christian experience of the world. There have always been ‘philosophers of the absurd’ to challenge the Church theologians in their conception of faith as knowledge and theology as science.15

The authors do not proceed to trace this strain of Christian “irrationalism” consistently in any detail, but by putting scattered references together it comes to this: The line is rooted in the Bible. It achieved its clearest expression in Tertullian and the Punic fathers in contrast to the other church fathers whose faith was becoming strongly Hellenized.16

Augustine stands in the train of these Punic fathers but also shows strong aspects of Christian rationalism as well. Thomism belongs wholly in the rationalist line, “but with Scotus, then Ockham and the Franciscan spiritualist movement, we find a gradual change of climate.” This change “prepared for Luther’s revolt and the new sense it gave, temporarily, to the Pauline ‘primacy of faith.’” But very soon Protestantism itself became “official Churches with their own orthodox and scientific theologies.” Thus, “movements of protest appear in the form of the pietist movement in Germany, the puritan revolt in England, Pascal and the Jansenist heresy in France.”17

It is not our intent to endorse or defend any of the above analyses, particularly in their details, but to show that within the Kierkegaard scholarship of our day there is developing at least some agreement about the antecedents of S.K.’s “irrationalism” (antiintellectualism). There is also becoming apparent a second tendency, this one seemingly not related to the first and not focusing particularly on S.K.’s irrational aspect. The suggestion, first made by Emil Brunner and now gaining considerable support, is that S.K. was molded by and should be understood within the context of continental Pietism [see below]. We shall relate these two developments to each other in due course. Thus far our examination has been of tendencies which but recently have showed themselves within Kierkegaard studies. Now, however, let us put S.K. to one side for the moment and consider a completely independent and long-established school of thought within church historiography. The basic idea perhaps has never been given a more succinct and colorful statement than in the words of Leonhard Ragaz:

[There is] one great antinomy, which runs right through the whole history of Christianity, and is indeed even older than Christianity itself. I would like to describe this contrast as that which exists between the quiescent and the progressive form of religion. In other words, it might be described as the difference between an aesthetic-ritualistic piety and an ethical-prophetic piety. Both streams may have taken their rise in the depths of the same mountain range, but they emerge from the mountains at different places, their waters are differently coloured, and they have a different taste. They arise … in the New Testament, but not at the same point; the one springs out of the thought of Paul and of John, the other out of the Synoptic Gospels.19

Our intention here, again, is not to commit ourselves to any of the particulars of the above analysis but only to the conception of two streams of differing color and taste. Although a great deal of ‘scholarship has recognized, or at least hinted at the presence of, these two streams, there never has been any consensus on how to describe or even name them. In the interests of keeping the subject as open as possible, we will use a very broad terminology, calling one the Established Tradition and the other the Radical Protest.

This bipartite analysis of Christian history seems first to have been proposed during the Reformation itself, by the leftwing spiritualist historian Sebastian Franck. His Chronica, Zeitbuch, und Geschichtbibel (1536), included a Ketzerchronik, i.e. a chronicle of the so-called heretics of Christian history (up to and including the Anabaptists of his own day), intended to demonstrate that there was at least as much if not more true Christianity represented in this stream as in the Established Tradition. Franck’s idea was picked up, developed, and introduced into modern historiography through the work of the Radical Pietist historian Gotifried Arnold.20 The stated theme of his Unparteiische Kirchen- und Ketzer-Historic was that “those who make heretics are the heretics proper, and those who are called heretics are the real God-fearing people.”21

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the treatment of this Established-Radical typology reached a climax. The crowning achievement was Troeltsch’s grand design of “church” and “sect,”22 although as the voluminous footnotes to his great book make clear, there were at the time a host of scholars engaged in this line of research–men such as Ragaz, Keller, Hegler, Ritschl, Göbel, and Weber.23 It is significant that although these scholars were agreed that there are two streams, they were not at all in accord as to their meaning and value. Opinion ranged from that of Ludwig Keller, who was zealous to maintain that the Radical Protest represented true Christianity and the Established Tradition a monstrous perversion, through Troeltsch himself, who endeavored to give an objective assessment of both, to Albrecht Ritschl, who was certain that the Radical strain was of the devil.

From more recent times have come two major treatments that deserve notice. Monsignor Ronald Knox, in his long and detailed study of the Radical line, is inevitably of Ritschl’s opinion, although obviously he does not follow him in denouncing the Protestant Radicals by use of the Ritschlian gambit that brands them as Catholics.24

But what may well be the most incisive analysis yet to appear is Emil Brunner’s The Christian Doctrine of the Church, Faith, and the Consummation.25 Brunner gives but little attention to the historical tracing of the streams, hut he discloses the basic ideology of the two with greater profundity than has been evident heretofore. During the Troeltschian period the focus had been preeminently sociological dealing with the outward aspects of church and sect in their relation to culture. Brunner includes this interest but goes on to show that the antinomy vitally affects almost every aspect of doctrine and experience. Indeed, as regards the understanding of “faith” in the two streams, he speaks to what is essentially the same distinction that the Kierkegaard scholars have made between “theology” and “religion,” “rationalism” and “irrationalism.”

At this point it will be instructive to note how Troeltsch, Knox, and Brunner, respectively, trace out the Radical line. First, Troeltsch and what he calls the “sects” (as against the “churches”): He specifically identifies primitive, New Testament Christianity as of the sect type.26 He mentions Montanism in connection with this line,27 but does not feel that the “church” development had progressed far enough to make the distinction clear until the time of the Donatist controversy or even the Gregorian reform.28 He recognizes that Augustine played a somewhat ambiguous role, displaying characteristics of both streams.29 The line then runs: Waldensians, Franciscans, Wyclif and the Lollards, the Hussites. Coming to the Reformation, he notes the ambiguity in Luther (not by that token in Lutheranism) and points out how many analysts, dating as far back as Luther’s Anabaptist contemporaries, had resolved this by identifying the beginnings of Luther’s reform with the Radical line and his later work with the Established.30 During the Protestant period, then, the line runs, roughly: Anabaptists, General Baptists, Pietism (which he somewhere calls “the second great expression of Protestant sectarianism”), Moravianism, Methodism.

Ronald Knox traces the line which he calls “enthusiasm” from the schismatics whom Paul disciplined in the church at Corinth, through Montanism (of which he says, “For us, Montanism means Tertullian”31 ), Donatism, Albigensianism, Catharism, Waldensianism, Anabaptism, Quakerism, Jansenism, Quietism, Moravianism, Methodism. His evaluation of the whole and the pans is negative. Brunner’s approach is somewhat different. He posits the New Testament Ekklesia as a norm, labels the growth of the “church” idea (the Established line) as “a disastrous misdevelopment,”32 and then traces what he calls “delaying factors in the development of the Ekklesia into the Church, and attempts to restore the Ekklesia.”33 This line runs: Montanism, Novatianism, Donatism. Brunner recognizes the ambiguity of Augustine and even compares it with that of Luther. 34 The line continues: Cluniac and Cistercian monastic reforms, Franciscanism, Waldensianism, the Anabaptist movement, and the modern Free Churches. Luther’s problem in trying to represent both streams at once is described explicitly.35

This review makes possible some general observations: There are many and reputable church historians who identify the parallel development of an Established Tradition and a Radical Protest running through Christian history. There is general agreement in identifying the course of the streams, even among those who differ greatly in defining and evaluating them. Also, rather clearly, the scholars who have been searching for the existential antecedents of Kierkegaard’s thought have hit upon one element (i.e. antiintellectualism) belonging to the Radical Protest described in church historiography. An obvious question follows: Does the totality of S.K.’s thought and witness fit the Radical-sectarian pattern in the way that his antiintellectualism seems to do? If this is a possibility, the logical point of contact and comparison, in view of the fact that S.K. was a Protestant, would be with the Protestant phase of the Radical line, or what we shall call Classic Protestant Sectarianism.

At the outset, then, to approach Kierkegaard from a religious orientation implies certain principles of interpretation:

To grant S.K.’s premise that he was a totally religious author and conscientiously to interpret him according to his own instructions in Point of View.
To understand that this move effectually takes him out of the churchly, Philosophic-theological perspective where he customarily has been considered and puts him into “a stream of a different color and taste”–a change of viewpoint which has fundamental implications regarding the understanding of S.K. And
to demonstrate that S.K.’s religious witness on around a view of radical discipleship that was essentially one with that of Classic Protestant Sectarianism.

At the outset, then, to approach Kierkegaard from a religious orientation implies certain principles of interpretation:

First, as the work of a totally religious author, his writings–when taken as a whole, as an integrated and connected authorship–display a certain structure or pattern. His individual works cannot be fully understood apart from the context of this overall organization, S.K. explained what he had in mind:

The movement described by the authorship is this: from the poet (from aesthetics), from philosophy (from speculation), to the indication of the most central definition of what Christianity is–FROM the pseudonymous “Either/Or,” THROUGH “The Concluding Postscript” with my name as editor, TO the “Discourses at Communion on Fridays,” two of which were delivered in the Church of Our Lady. This movement was accomplished or described uno tenore, in one breath, if I may use this expression, so that the authorship, integrally regarded, is religious from first to last–a thing which everyone can see if he is willing to see, and therefore ought to see.’36
In a Christian sense simplicity is not the point of departure from which one goes on to become interesting, witty, profound, poet, philosopher, etc. No, the very contrary. Here is where one begins (with the interesting, etc.) and becomes simpler and simpler, attaining simplicity…. But since the aim of the movement is to attain simplicity, the communication must, sooner or later, end in direct communication.37

“Progressive revelation” is the key to Kierkegaard. To a lesser extent his authorship is a tracing of the revelation that came to him. To a much greater extent it is S.K. progressively disclosing his thought to the reader; his journals make it obvious that throughout the pseudonymous works (up to and including Postscript) the “edifying author” was himself far in advance of the ideas he wrote in his hooks, that he was deliberately holding back some vital aspects of his thought. The disclosure, then, is progressive not so much in that the course of the authorship is marked by the introduction of new and explicitly religious themes as by the fact that early themes, first presented in aesthetic or philosophic guise, are gradually revealed in their truly religious depth, grounding, and “simplicity:’ It is amazing how many of S.K.’s major motifs appear in one form or another in his very earliest works; and yet with none of these do we have the full picture until the concept has been followed through to its religious fulfillment in the later writings.

As S.K. insisted so strongly, the end (both finis and telos) of the entire development was the religious: “[What] requires no explanation at all is the last section, the purely religious work which of course establishes the point of view.”38

It follows, then, that S.K.’s later works should be made normative for understanding his earlier ones. This is not to say that a statement of late date always must take precedence over all earlier statements; it does not mean that Attack upon “Christendom” is necessarily S.K.’s final word. It does mean that the early, pseudonymous writings are to be read in the light of the later, religious work; that one gets a better picture of Kierkegaard and his message by standing at the close of the authorship looking backward rather than at the beginning looking forward.

Secondly, from this follows the rather important consideration that to expound his books in chronological order is not the best way to expound S.K.39 They had to be written in the order they were, partly because S.K.’s own education was involved, partly because he was attempting a grand experiment in maieutic pedagogy. That experiment was not a complete success, as S.K. himself came to see. His laborious and repeated efforts to “explain” the authorship (as represented by the documents collected in Point of View) were an attempt to obviate the misunderstanding which even then he saw arising. But considering the fact that we have the entire authorship accessible to us, plus S.K.’5 own explanations and warnings, it does seem rather unwise to lead people to the essential Kierkegaard by wending the tortuous length of the chronological labyrinth.

Third, closely related to the foregoing is the caution that S.K.’s pseudonyms be given the weight and significance he intended for them. He was himself particularly concerned on this score:

o in the pseudonymous works there is not a single word which is mine, I have no opinion about these works except as a third person, no knowledge of their meaning except as a reader, not the remotest private relation to them…. My wish, my prayer, is that, if it might occur to anyone to quote a particular saying from the books, he would do me the favor to cite the name of the respective pseudonymous author.40

S.K. regularly followed his own precept; in the journals and elsewhere he ascribed references from the pseudonymous works to the pseudonyms themselves.

He was clear about the purpose of the pseudonyms and their relation to his nonpseudonymous works:

But from the point of view of my whole activity as an author, integrally conceived, the aesthetic work is a deception, and herein is to be found the deeper significance of the use of pseudonyms…. What then does it mean, “to deceive”? It means that one does not begin directly with the matter one wants to communicate, but begins by accepting the other man’s illusion as good money. … Let us talk about aesthetics. The deception consists in the fact that one talks thus merely to get to the religious theme. But, on our assumption, the other man is under the illusion that the aesthetic is Christianity; for, he thinks, I am a Christian, and yet he is in aesthetic categories.41

It does not follow that S.K. personally would have rejected out of hand everything the pseudonyms said; their ideas are not so much false as they are partial and incomplete; missing is the religious source and background, the only setting in which they become an expression of S.K.’s full intention.

Regarding our use of the pseudonyms, then, two principles would seem to be in order:

We should honor S.K.’s request that the pseudonymous works be cited under the names of their respective authors. This certainly can do no harm, and it will alert the reader to at least the possibility that, had S.K. been speaking under his own name, he might have put the thought within a different context or expressed it somewhat differently.

When expounding Kierkegaard by using pseudonymous materials, we would do well to keep one eye, as it were, on the direct, religious works as a norm against which to supplement and correct the pseudonymous statements themselves. Often, of course, no modification will be called for; in some cases it definitely will.

Fourth, much more than most authors, particularly in his journals, S.K. went back to discuss and comment upon his own earlier writings. Such helps, of course, should be used for all the assistance they can provide.

Fifth, the very nature of S.K.’s religious orientation required that his writings be unsystematic; this lack of system–which every analyst is quick to observe–was not just a personal idiosyncrasy of the author hut one of his principles of conscience. Thus every attempt to expound S.K.’s thought by forcing it into a systematic mold is bound seriously to distort it. As Louis Dupre so cogently remarked:

[S.K.’s theology] certainly is not a system, and systemization risks losing the specific character of his thought…. Kierkegaard would have thought it the supreme irony of his life that sooner or later his attack on the system would itself be reduced to a system. And yet, even the best known commentaries have not completely avoided this pitfall.42

We should be reminded that S.K.’s first readers, who read his books as he intended, did not even know the identity of the author of many of the works, let alone have footnotes pointing out that such and such a passage refers to such and such a heartbreak; and the journals actually were a private diary. Not to discount the help that the biographical viewpoint can afford, it is yet the case that S.K. was a thinker with a message and not simply an exhibitionist exposing his own psyche. At least once in a while he should be allowed to speak his piece without having to drag his own vita ante acta around after him.
Seventh, a final principle of interpretation would apply to the study of any writer, but the wide scope of S.K.’s subject matter makes it particularly crucial in his case. Because S.K. offers so much, almost anyone can find in him what he wants. Philosophy has found the wherewithal for several types of existentialism; theology for the array of dialectical theologies; psychology for logotherapy and other “existential” schools. Literature, art, and education have found material for their purposes; and there is no knowing who will yet find what. All this is legitimate, of course, but there is also the dangerous tendency for each variety of scholar to treat S.K. as though he were essentially of the scholar’s particular orientation. Distortion is the only possible result.

Yet, indeed, the present case is nowise different. In the pages that follow S.K. will be portrayed as a Protestant sectary–and that by a student who is himself a church historian, minister, and teacher in the Church of the Brethren, as typical a sect as came out of the tradition. However, I am aware of my bias and so intend to protect myself by following the principles above, as well as the usual canons of research. But biased or not, the view herein presented needs to he considered along with those already in circulation.

In Dru’s and in Rohde’s selections from Kierkegaard’s journals, the number identifies an entry rather than a page; the date following is that of the particular entry.
1. “The Journals of Kierkegaard, ed. and trans. Alexander Dru (NY: Oxford Un. Press, 1938), 795 (1848).
2. Adolf Deissmann, Paul, A Study in Social and Religious History
(first published, 1912), trans. Wm. E. Wilson (NY: Harper, 1957), 5-6.
3. In English, all of this material has been published under the title of the book itself, The Point of View for My Work as an Author,
trans. Walter Lowrie, newly edited Benjamin Nelson (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1962).
4. Point of View, 5-6, 9.
5. Dru Journals,
16 (1835).
6. Kierkegaard’s Diary,
ed. Peter P. Rohde, trans. Gerda M. Anderson (NY: Philosophical Library, 1960), 202 (1849). The first quotation comes from a point very early in S.K.’s Career, this one comparatively late.
8. Perry D. LeFebre, The Prayers of Kierkegaard
(Chicago: Un. Of Chicago Press, 1956), 128; cf. v-vi. LeFevre’s exposition of S.K. is an outstanding effort in becoming consistent with the perspective indicated.
9. Paul L. Holmer, “On Understanding Kierkegaard,” in A Kierkegaard Critique,
ed. Howard A. Johnson and Niels Thulstrup (NY: Harper, 1962), 52.
10. Paul L. Holmer, a review of Louis Dupre’s Kierkegaard as Theologian, The Journal of Religion,
63 (1963), 255-56.
11. Niels Thulstrup, “The Complex of Problems Called ‘Kierkegaard,’” in Critique, 295.”
12. Ibid., 295.
13. William Barrett, Irrational Man
(Garden City: Doubleday, 1958), 2:69ff.
14. L. Harold DeWolf, The Religious Revolt against Reason
(NY: Harper, 1949), 22-54.
15. James M. Edie, “Faith as existential Choice,” in Christianity and Existentialism (Evanston: Northwestern Un. Press, 1963), 37.
16. The central thrust of Edie’s essay is a comparison between S.K. and Tertullian, the previous Christian thinker who, according to Edie, is most like him.
17. Ibid., 38-39.
19. Ragaz, Das Evangelium und der soziale Kampf der Gegenwart
(1906), quoted in Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches (1912), trans. Olive Wyon (NY: Macmillan, 1931), 1:434.
20. For an account of this Franck-Arnold background, see Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches (1912), trans. Olive Wyon (NY: Macmillan, 1931), 1:334, and 2:946ff.
21. Quoted in “Arnold, Gottfried,” The Mennonite Encyclopedia
(Scottdale, Pa.: Mennonite Publishing House, 1955), 1:164-65.
22. One of Troeltsch’s major contentions is that, if the sectarian line is to be properly understood and appreciated, the basic typology must be made tripartite and “sectarianism” distinguished from “spiritualism.” His point is well taken, but it need not be taken into account at this point in our discussion.
23. See particularly, Ernst Troeltsch, op. cit., 1:435ff.
24. Ronald A. Knox, Enthusiasm: A Chapter in the History of Religion
(New York: Oxford Un. Press, 1950).
25. Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of the Church, Faith, and the Consummation; Dogmatics: Vol. III,
trans. David Cairns and T. H. L. Parker (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962).
26. Ernst Troeltsch, op. cit., 1:334.
27. Ibid., 1:329.
28. Ibid., 1:333.
29. Ibid., 1:158, 282.
30. Ibid., 2:947-48. Troeltsch himself admits the ambiguity within Luther but is not ready to accept the distinction between an earlier and a later reformer.
31. Knox, op. cit., 45.
32. Brunner, Dogmatics, 3:58.
33. Ibid., 73ff.
34. Ibid., 31; cf. 28, 131.
35. Ibid., 74-76.
36. “My Activity as a Writer” (1851) in Point of View, 142-43.
37. Ibid., 133; cf. 97.
38. Point of View, 42.
39. Howard Hong has made this point in his Foreword to Gregor Malantschuk’s Kierkegaard’s Way to the Truth, trans. Mary Michelsen (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1963), 6.
40. “S.K.’s Personal Declaration” in Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments, by Johannes Climacus (pseud.), trans. David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton Un. Press, 1941), 551-52. Cf. Dru Journals, 1238 (1841).
41. Point of View, 39-41.
42. Louis Dupre, Kierkegaard as Theologian (first pub. in Dutch, 1958), (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1963), xii.
43. Ibid., 31, 33. Howard Hong also makes this point in his Foreword to Malantschuk, op. cit., 7.

II. Where Is True Christianity to be Found?

Whatever of true Christianity is to be found in the course of the centuries must be found in the sects and their like.1

Into what particular church or tradition does S.K.’s religion best fit? Few questions in Kierkegaard scholarship provide quite as much employment as this; perhaps to no other has been proposed such a wide range of solutions. S.K. himself set the stage for the discussion by departing this earth at a moment when the matter of his religious affiliation was somewhat in abeyance. What follows is a survey of the options that are open and which have been argued by various scholars.

A. Atheistic, or at Least Secular, Existentialism

This is a conjecture made from time to time though always as pure conjecture. There are probably two different motives behind it: first, the too-easy assumption that S.K.’s attack on the church actually was (or would have become) an attack upon Christianity itself; and second, the subjective judgment of a thinker who finds S.K.’s “existentialism” appealing but his “Christianity” quite otherwise, who personally feels that the two elements are incompatible, and who thus assumes that eventually S.K. would have dropped his Christianity.2

We call this position “pure conjecture” because, in the first place, it must fly directly in the face of S.K.’s own radically Christian protestations. Second, the position is not (and indeed cannot be) supported with documentary evidence hut only by the “feel” of the critic. And third, modern scholarship generally shows no inclination at all to go this direction. Although no conjecture dare be ruled out as a possibility, this one has little to offer as a perspective from which to view S.K.’s avowedly Christian authorship.

B. Lutheranism, and the Other Reformation “Churches”

Although the question here necessarily devolves on the Danish Lutheran Church of which S.K. was a long-time communicant, this option actually represents the entire “churchly” tradition of Protestantism. No one ever has suggested that S.K. would have been any happier in another established church (i.e. Reformed or Anglican) than he was in Lutheranism. Clearly, S.K. belongs either in Lutheranism or else in an entirely different sort of tradition.

Some of the facts regarding S.K.’s relation to his church should be before us as we consider this alternative:

Alternative 1: S.K. was born, reared, and educated (up to the level of Master of Arts–the equivalent of our doctorate in theology) in the Danish Lutheran Church. Although not ordained, he preached from time to time and was well acquainted with many of the clergy, including the highest officials of the church. His attendance at services was very regular.

Alternative 2: Beginning far back in his authorship, however, first in his journals and then in his published works, there appeared a stream of criticism ever growing both in quantity and in virulence. This will be traced and analyzed in a later chapter, but suffice it to say that the critique centered on the constitution of the church (particularly as regards its relation to the state and the “world”), on the government of the church (particularly as regards the nature and character of the clerical office), and on the sort of preaching that was prevalent in the church.

Alternative 3: Parallel to and a part of this critique was a growing criticism of Martin Luther. Thus S.K. was concerned not only with a “fallen” Lutheranism but traced several of the church’s defects back to the Reformer himself.

Alternative 4: In 1854-1855 this critical development culminated in an open pamphleteering attack upon the church. The literature (which we read under one cover, Attack upon “Christendom”) was as acid as ink can get. The statement that S.K. used as his declaration of intent was published as a separate and independent document, was in formulation for over a year, and continually was quoted from and referred to in S.K.’s subsequent pamphlets. The core of it reads: “Whoever thou art, whatever in other respects thy life may be, my friend, by ceasing to take part (if ordinarily thou dost) in the public worship of God, as it now is (with the claim that it is the Christianity of the New Testament), thou has constantly one guilt the less, and that a great one: thou dost not take part in treating God as a fool by calling that the Christianity of the New Testament which is not the Christianity of the New Testament.3

Alternative 5: S.K. followed his own advice; Hans Brohner, a contemporary who was something of a friend, reported “At the time when Søren Kierkegaard began his polemic against the Establishment, and perhaps for some time before, he had ceased to participate in church services.”4

Alternative 6: Dupre indicates that during the final weeks of his life S.K. actually stopped churchgoers in the street in an attempt to dissuade them from the sin of worshiping in the state church.5 While in the hospital during his final illness S.K. refused a visit from his brother Peter–not because Peter was his brother but because he was a priest6 who had publicly taken the side of the church against S.K.7

Alternative 7: Also, in the hospital S.K. refused communion. The circumstances are instructive. The following conversation was recorded by Emil Boesen, S.K.’s friend from childhood, his closest confidant during the final illness, and a priest. Boesen speaks first:8

Do you wish to receive Holy Communion? “Yes, but not from a parson; from a layman.” That is difficult. “Then I shall die without it.” That is not right! “On that point there can be no argument, I have made my choice, have chosen. The parsons are the King’s officials, the King’s officials have nothing to do with Christianity.”9

Alternative 8: After S.K. died and was thus bereft of any means of defending himself, the church decided that decorum could best he served by “forgiving” him; that forgiveness was the last thing S.K. would have accepted from the church seems not to have come into consideration. He was buried with full ecclesiastical honors, the funeral held before a standing-room only crowd in the cathedral church following Sunday services. Brother Peter, the priest whom S.K. had refused to see a few days earlier, delivered the message.10 But even in the face of this history, considerable scholarship has had the effect of joining forces with S.K.’s ecclesiastical undertakers to put him to rest in the Lutheran Church. Some do it with silence; some do it with a word; some do it with extended argument; it can be questioned whether any do it convincingly.11

In this regard there are two alternative interpretations which should be considered. They both have the net effect of leaving S.K. in the Lutheran fold and thus are enumerated under the heading above:

The Attack as Aberration
This suggestion is that in the Attack of 1854-1855 S.K. had lost control of himself and thus fallen into an extremism which cannot be taken as indicative of the real Kierkegaard, i.e. the S.K. who became disaffected with the Lutheran Church was not one who seriously need concern us. It is interesting that one comes across the rebuttal to this argument much more often than the argument itself; the issue is as good as settled. David Swenson’s judgment is typical: “There are students of Kierkegaard who although otherwise sympathetic, feel that this attack was the expression of something pathological in his nature. Others interpret it as the beginning of a development which would inevitably have taken place, had he lived, in the direction of a modern non-Christian liberalism, perhaps humanism; still others think he would have become a Catholic. To anyone who has read his journals, all these guesses must seem fantastic.”12

The Attack is not like the peel of an orange that can be torn off and discarded in the process of getting at the Kierkegaardian fruit. Rather, S.K.’s authorship is constructed like a Spanish onion. It is obvious that the outside, yellow, 1855 layer is of a rather different hue than the innermost, white, 1843 layer. But as easy as it is to make the distinction, just that impossible is it to say where the white ends and the yellow begins. The Attack is an integral part of Kierkegaard and must be treated as such–although, on the other hand, the Attack is not the whole of Kierkegaard (not even the whole answer regarding his religious orientation) and must not be treated as such.
The Attack as Corrective
This proposal, as the foregoing one, solves the problem by eliminating it–but without recourse to as radical a diagnosis as “aberration.” It suggests that the Attack is to be understood as a “corrective.” Now the evidence that S.K. himself so interpreted the situation–and used the very term–is unimpeachable (for example, S.K.’s statement below). The question, then, is: What does “corrective” connote? Is our understanding of the term the same as S.K.’s? The matter has been made extremely elusive in that it has not been discussed as a question; each scholar has taken his own reading of “corrective” and proceeded to apply it to S.K.

The general interpretation–more often implied than spoken–is that to call the Attack a corrective means that S.K.’s words and actions had no specific relevance except for Søren Kierkegaard, in 1855, in the nation of Denmark. He had in mind only the staging of a “demonstration” and did not expect or intend that there should result any program of actual reform.13 Neither by directive nor by implication did S.K. mean to propose any sort of norm regarding how other people should live their Christian lives. All he said and did was so exaggerated for the sake of effect that it need not be taken too seriously–or only after having been toned down drastically. Whatever ideas in the Attack seem too radical can be dismissed as “corrective hyperbole.” Of course, no proponent of the view states the matter quite this baldly, but the point gets made one way or another.14 But it can be questioned whether S.K.’s understanding of “corrective” was this one. In introducing the pamphlet series that constituted the major thrust of his Attack, S.K. said, “Yet it is nothing ephemeral I have in mind, any more than it was anything ephemeral I had in mind before; no, it was and is something eternal: on the side of the ideal against illusions.”15

And the fact that he left the church and urged others to do so substantiates his claim to seriousness.

S.K. explained what he meant by “corrective”: “He who must apply a ‘corrective’ must study accurately and profoundly the weak side of the Establishment, and then vigorously and one-sidedly present the opposite…. If this is true, a presumably clever pate can reprove the corrective for being one-sided. Ye gods! Nothing is easier for him who applies the corrective than to supply the other side; but then it ceases to become the corrective and becomes the established order.”16

To call a corrective “one-sided” is quite different from calling it “exaggerated,” “transitory,” or “non-normative.” According to S.K.’s explanation, the statements and acts of the corrective still would stand as they are, for what they are. The most that might be done is to supplement them with some other statements, but there is no suggestion that they are to be diluted, deemphasized, or ignored.

Of course, the satire of S.K.’s Attack
is to be read as satire, and the humor is to be laughed at (not, laughed off), but the point behind it all is to be taken just as seriously as it was intended–intended by a man who was willing to cut himself off from the fellowship of the church and, on his deathbed, decline its sacraments for the sake of making that point. The Attack must not be allowed to dominate our study, but it must be given its proper weight–which is to suggest that S.K.’s relationship to Lutheranism was at least questionable.

C. Roman Catholicism

The suggestion that S.K. was essentially a Roman Catholic–at least to some degree and in some respects–is one that has had surprising persistence and strength.17 However, it seems evident that a very real factor in this view springs not so much from evidence within S.K. himself as from a dearth of categories on the part of the analysts. In his writings S.K. was highly critical of “Protestantism”; he often used this term in his critique, and his expositors have followed his lead. Of course, the term “Protestantism” immediately suggests the dichotomy Protestantism/Catholicism; and from this it is an easy step to the assumption that “anti-Protestant” is the equivalent of “pro-Catholic.” But this is an oversimplification; and the Catholic scholar Louis Dupre senses the non sequitur:

One might be inclined to think that, after this vigorous attack on Lutheranism and even on the principle of the Reformation itself, Kierkegaard was well on the way to becoming a Catholic…. Indeed, the principal points on which this view is based are untenable…. If Kierkegaard’s conception of the Church cannot be called the traditional Protestant one, it is even less Catholic. Karl Barth may be right in refusing Kierkegaard a place among the great Reformers of the nineteenth century, but this does not make him a Catholic.18

A close examination will show that in almost every case S.K.’s critique of Protestantism applies directly to the “churchly” tradition within Protestantism but not in the same degree, if at all, to the “sectarian” tradition. If the tertium quid of sectarianism is kept in the picture, and if one keeps alert to the narrower, “churchly” connotation S.K. gave to the word “Protestantism,” then his pro-Catholicism simply disappears. Specific instances will come to attention throughout our study.

But when all the evidence is in it is apparent that there are no solid grounds for calling S.K. a Roman Catholic in any sense of the term; and what is more important, to view him from the Catholic perspective contributes little if anything to understanding the core of his witness and work. Dupre’s conclusion–though stated in his Introduction–is: “[I have come] to the conclusion that [S.K.’s] Existenzdialektik is perhaps the most consistent application of the Reformation principle that has ever been made…. It is precisely Kierkegaard’s fidelity to his fundamentally Protestant convictions which constitutes his value for a dialogue between Catholicism and Reformation.”19

D. Spiritual Atomism–The Christian Life Lived Apart from Any Organized Church

To my knowledge no one ever has proposed this as the Kierkegaardian perspective. It should be given consideration, however, if for no other reason than that it actually was the situation in which S.K. stood at the time of his death–i.e., he was a committed, practicing Christian who, as a matter of principle, refused to participate in the life of any organized, institutional church. Nevertheless it is clear that the atomist position does not represent the culmination and trios of S.K.’s religious thought.20

To say this is not so much as even to imply a conjecture about what S.K. would have done regarding his church membership had he lived some years longer; that is a completely impossible and fruitless line of investigation. We are suggesting only that the tenor and weight of S.K.’5 entire witness make it plain that even his leaving of the church was motivated not by the search for a churchless Christianity but for a truly Christian church.

E. Classic Protestant Sectarianism (Radical Discipleship)

This, of course, is the alternative we intend to support. The present chapter is not the place to open the extensive and detailed motif comparison through which we hope to make our case, and so we now offer only a few preliminary, external, and secondary evidences to indicate that the proposal of S.K. as a sectary is not completely preposterous.

I have not found any scholar who deliberately has named sectarianism as the Kierkegaardian perspective; the best we have are oblique hints and pointers. There is, however, one notable exception to this generalization: sectarianism is mentioned explicitly by S.K. himself? The locus of the following quotation is perhaps as significant as its content. This is the next to the last thing S.K. ever wrote; it is a journal entry dated September 23, 1855; his very last entry is dated the next day; he collapsed on the street on October 2 and died November 4. Might this possibly mark S.K.’s culminating insight into the nature and orientation of his own witness?

In the New Testament is the formula for what it is to he a Christian: to fear God more than men. Herein are all the specifically Christian collisions. As soon as one can he a Christian out of fear of men, yea, when out of fear of men one will dare even to let himself be called a Christian, then is Christianity eo ipso come to naught.

One sees therefore what nonsense it is to believe that true Christianity is found in ‘the church’–in comparison to which the great number Zero is a more Christian spirit than this which is: human mediocrity, brute-man’s faith in … human numbers. No, whatever of true Christianity is to be found in the course of the centuries must be found in the sects and their like–unless the case is that thus to be a sect, or outside the church, is proof of its being true Christianity. But what is found there [i.e., in true Christianity] may be found in the sects and such, the only thing that resembles the Christianity of the New Testament, that is–a sect, which is what it is also called in the New Testament.21

And this was no sudden conclusion on S.K.’s part; he had expressed similar sentiments at least five years earlier, though not in quite such decisive and absolute terms:

The “Establishment” is on the whole a completely unchristian concept. Thus it is ridiculous to hear the Establishment brag itself up in comparison with the “sects”–because there is infinitely more Christian truth in sectarian delusion than in the Establishment’s indolence and drowsiness and inertia. And it is still more ridiculous that the Establishment appeals to the New Testament. Indeed, their Christianity itself was a “sect” (and called such at the time) which had (and here also is its “truth”) an Awakening: this is just how legitimate it is to warn people about the sectaries. But now a sect always has the advantage over the Establishment in that it has truth’s awakening, i.e., the truth that lies in an “Awakening” even if that which the sects consider to be the truth is error and delusion.22

Now, of course S.K. was neither a cenobite nor a Schwämergeist (as, likewise, the classic sectaries were not), but in the 1855 quotation he solidly aligned himself with sectarian non-conformity as against churchly friendship with the world and, in the 1849 statement, with sectarian “enthusiasm” as against churchly decorum. And even earlier he had made a very revealing judgment concerning one particular sect:

The reformation abolished the monastery. Very well; I am not going to say anything more about the reformation having brought secular politics into existence. But now look at Christendom; where is there any Christianity except among the Moravians. But the Moravians are not, in a decisive sense, Christians; their lives are not in double danger. They are simply a more worldly edition of the monastery; men who look after their business, beget children etc. and then, within themselves, also busy themselves with Christianity, briefly this is the religion of hidden spirituality. But the other danger, suffering for the sake of the faith they avoid entirely, they avoid being led into the really Christian situation. There is much that is beautiful in their lives, but their peace is not really Christianity, not in the profoundest sense; it resembles the view that makes Christianity into a mild doctrine of truth.23

Notice that S.K.’s criticism of the Moravians is not at all that of a man of the “church” but of a brother sectary who accuses them of having deserted the cause and made their peace with the world rather than being out getting themselves burned at the stake as their forefathers did. Taken all together, these statements constitute enough evidence to merit serious investigation.

But although Kierkegaard scholarship has not picked up these clues, there have been some partial and even some inadvertent insights. Walter Kaufmann, completely in passing, while giving a list to show the variety of religious orientations represented by the founding fathers of existentialism, calls S.K. “a Protestant’s Protestant.”24

He probably meant nothing more than that S.K. was strongly and staunchly Protestant, but the phrase makes an apt epitome of both S.K. and sectarianism. The sectaries, in many respects, do stand in precisely the same relation to mainline Protestantism as Protestantism does to Catholicism; sectarianism is the reformation of the Reformation, as it has been called.

However, it is Dupre who, via this route, has come closest to our view; all he needs is the word “sectarianism.” In a statement that shows more insight into both S.K. and Protestantism than most Protestant scholars demonstrate, he says:

[S.K.] is a person who kept protesting, who could never accept a Church which had become established, even if on the basis of protest itself. In most instances, the Protestant principle has been abandoned as soon as it has developed itself to the point of becoming a Church. Kierkegaard’s intransigent Protestantism continued to protest; he protested against everything, even against the protest itself…. It is true that Kierkegaard placed himself beyond the pale of the Protestant Church. But he never abandoned the Protestant principle.25

“Protest” may not be the best term to characterize the basic nature either of S.K.’s religious dialectic, “the Protestant principle,” or sectarianism, but given such modification, Dupre’s analysis points toward what we mean in calling S.K. “a Protestant’s Protestant” and also what is implied by Classic Protestant Sectarianism.

A somewhat different approach to S.K.’s sectarian perspective perhaps first was suggested by Emil Brunner, although it has been picked up since by others as well. Brunner–who also calls S.K. the “greatest Christian thinker of modern times”–identifies him as one of the “two great figures of Pietism” of the nineteenth century.26 A recent work which becomes more explicit than anything done earlier is Joachim Seyppel’s Schwenckfeld, Knight of Faith. The focus of Seyppel’s study is Schwenckfeld rather than S.K., but in the process of comparing the two men he proposes Pietism as the link between them: “Whereas Schwenckfeld prepared Pietism, Kierkegaard was raised under its influence.”27 Seyppel then traces the historical path by which German Pietism came into Denmark and into direct contact with S.K.;28 and he makes this very interesting reference to the thesis of E. Peterson:

It is understandable, then, to read in an article on Kierkegaard and Protestantism why some of the Dane’s favorite expressions, like, for example, ‘existence’ and ‘reality,’ should be inexplicable without a reference to the ideas of Pietism.29

Although any direct personal influence from Schwenckfeld to S.K. would have to have been tenuous indeed, the influence from Pietism was not. In fact, S.K. himself affirmed the connection when he said:

“Certainly Pietism (properly understood, not just in the sense that holds apart from dancing and externalities–no, in the sense of that which hears witness to the truth and suffers for it, that hears with understanding that a Christian is to suffer in this world and that the worldly shrewdness which conforms with the world is unchristian)–certainly it is the sole consequence of Christianity.”30

It is not accurate directly to equate Pietism and sectarianism, although clearly Pietism does represent a sectarian-type tendency. The broader category of sectarianism will do S.K. more justice than simply to call him a Pietist, but to have identified his Pietist affinities is a real gain.

But if S.K. was as typical and obvious a sectary as we have suggested and as the remainder of this volume will be devoted to demonstrate, how is it (the question must be asked) that so many competent scholars have been almost unanimously and totally blind to the fact? A number of explanations suggest themselves. In the first place, he lacked the correct external markings, he neither founded nor joined a sect–unless his call for others to join him in leaving the church be interpreted as a tentative step in this direction.

At the same time, S.K. can be quoted strongly to the effect that he had absolutely no desire to found a sect or new church organization. Several factors must be taken into account, however.

Sectarian leaders customarily express sincere reluctance and even resistance to the idea of leaving the church and founding a separate group. They would much prefer to reform the church rather than separate from it. Thus we find cases–such as the Quakers, the Wesleyans, and the early Puritans–in which the sectaries insisted vehemently that they were not separating from the church and in consequence of which the church itself was forced to take as much responsibility in cutting off the sect as the sect did in separating itself from the church.

Perhaps the strongest consideration is the fact that S.K.’s statements to the effect that he had no intention of founding a sect can as well be interpreted to mean that he had no such intention as that he was conscientiously opposed to sects as such. The truth is that any sect of which S.K. was the founder–or even a member (for one cannot conceive of S.K. as one of a group without his immediately becoming the center of the group)–would have had a very poor prognosis of success or even survival. To set up and run an actual institution requires, in addition to an ideology, some practical skills in the way of administration and organization. Of these S.K. had not a trace. Hans Brøchner, who knew him personally, said: “Kierkegaard had not a sense of actuality, if I may use the expression, which, in a given situation, could form a balance to his enormous reflective powers.”31

And S.K. was aware of the problem: “… I am melancholy to the point of madness, something I can conceal as long as I am independent but which makes me useless for any service where I do not determine everything myself.”32

If a sectary, S.K. clearly was one who was constitutionally unfitted to belong to a sect. But this anomaly in no way invalidates our contention or changes the orientation of S.K.’s work. If a sectary, S.K. must be seen not as an organizer but a theoretician (if that term properly can be applied to one so opposed to “theory”). He would well qualify as “the sectaries’ theologian” except for the fact that the sectaries’ theologian hardly qualifies as a theologian. Nevertheless, although this lack of external indicators does not affect the sectarian character of his thought, it has tended to block the discovery that it is sectarian–and thus the possibility has been overlooked.

Another, and perhaps more important, factor in this scholarly blindness is the fact that for most critics the very term “sectarianism” is a bad word, one they would not at all be happy to have associated with S.K. It carries connotations of divisiveness, narrowness, and fanaticism that do not fit well with “the greatest Christian thinker of modern times.” (In due course we shall see that these connotations are not properly a part of the basic concept “sect,” although neither is it entirely accidental that the derogation has adhered to the term.)

Yet it is interesting to note that of the Kierkegaard scholars who approach S.K. from a religious viewpoint at all, nearly every one comes from the “churchly” (and rather high-churchly) traditions. Some of them are Roman Catholics. The Danish and German scholars are, of course, for the most part Lutheran. But even in England and in this country Kierkegaardians have tended to come predominantly from the Catholic, Lutheran, and Anglican ranks. There is an interesting exception; one of the very earliest students and translators of S.K. in America was Douglas Steere, a Quaker sectary; his presence serves simply to prove the rule. But now it is proper that the scope of scholarship be broadened and that S.K.’s thought be examined by those who look from a rather different perspective.

There is a peripheral line of evidence regarding S.K.’s sectarianism which needs to be considered at some point, and better here than elsewhere. It is not sufficient to maintain that a thinker has been understood just because his antecedents have been traced or that he dare be allowed no ideas that cannot be accounted for in his antecedents. However, there are some external findings that may serve at least to make S.K.’s sectarianism historically plausible.

One of S.K.’s nieces reported that both Søren’s father and Emil Boesen’s were members of “the Moravian brotherhood.”33 Just what this “membership” amounted to is a little difficult to ascertain, because it is quite clear that the entire family were also staunch and loyal members of the state church; but the opportunity for Moravianism to influence S.K. was there in any case. Brøhner described the religion of S.K.’s father as “pretty much that of the old pietists.”34

A catalog of the library S.K. left behind him shows something of his interests and possible sources of influence. Both Dru and Croxall list one group of hooks as the “mystics,” but whatever the heading, here is clearly a sectarian style of thought. Dru names the authors: “Tauler, Ligouri, Sailer, Zacharias Werner, Arndt, Thomas a Kempis, Baader, Bernard of Clairveaux, Bonaventura, Ruysbrock, Boehme, Fenelon, Guyon, Swedenhorg, Tersteegen, Lamennais, 22 vol. of Abraham a St. Clara, etc.”35 Apart from duplications, Croxall also lists Suso, Angelus Silesius, and (as significant as any) Gottfried Arnold.36

Much more valuable than these library lists are S.K.’s references to his own reading. In Purity of Heart he quotes from Johann Arndt’s True Christianity37 (although earlier than the Pietist movement per se, this book became a popular handbook of Pietist and other sectarian groups). In one of the Edifying Discourses he calls it “an ancient, venerable, and trustworthy book of devotions.”38 And in a reference which the Danish editors are confident intends Arndt’s book and is a true autobiographical detail, the pseudonym Quidarn wrote in his diary: “The Bible is always lying on my table and is the book I read most; a severe hook of edification in the tradition of the older Lutheranism is my other guide….”39

In Either/Or, Judge William, a pseudonym, quotes Fenelon.40 S.K. himseff later said, “I have been reading Fenelon and Tersteegen. Both have made a powerful impression upon me.”41 And as the motto for a very personal little piece, “About My Work as an Author, “S.K. used a verse from Tersteegen’s Der Frommen Lottrie, another devotional of the sectaries.42

We have made this survey of S.K.’s religious options not so much to close some possibilities as to open one, namely, Classic Protestant Sectarianism. To that investigation we now proceed.

In Dru’s and in Rohde’s selections from Kierkegaard’s journals, the number identifies an entry rather than a page; the date following is that of the particular entry.

1. Søren Kierkegaards Papirer, hereafter referred to as Papirer, ed. P. A. Heiberg, V. Kuhr, and E. Torsting, 2d ed., (Copenhagen: Gyldenalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag, 1909-1948, 11:2:A:435 (1855) [my trans.-VE.].

2. Among the early Kierkegaardians who at least leaned in this direction, Walter Lowrie names Brandes, Brøchner, Höffding, and Schrempf; see Lowrie’s Kierkegaard (first published 1938) (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1962), 1: 3-6. More recently, Karl Jaspers has hinted at this view–as reported (and discounted) by Walter Kaufmann in his Introduction to S.K.’s The Present Age and The Difference between a Genius and an Apostle (hereafter referred to as The Present Age), revised trans. Alexander Dru (New York: Harper Torchhooks, 1962), 11-12. Colin Wilson also has made the hint; see his Religion and the Rebel (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957), 239.

3. Attack upon “Christendom,” trans. Walter Lowrie (Boston: Beacon Press Paperback, 1956), 57ff.

4. “Br’chner’s Recollections,” in Glimpses and impressions of Kierkegaard, ed. and trans. T.H. Croxall (Welwyn, Herts: J. Nesbjt, 1959), 38.

5. Dupre, op.cit., 165. He does not cite the source of this information.

6. “Priest” is the term commonly used in the Danish church for its clergymen, and thus it appears extensively in S.K.’s writings. It should not be taken as implying any sort of sacerdotal sarcasm either here or in S.K.

7. S.K. was willing to send Peter a brotherly greeting but did not feel up to receiving him in person. Croxall, op. cit., gives us a letter by the relative who carried the greeting (102, 4) and a statement by Peter (129) which together make it plain that both Soren and Peter realized how the matter stood.

8. Boesen’s account is found in Dru Journals, 551.

9. The primary sources describing the funeral and burial are collected in Croxall, op. cit., pp. 84ff.

10. Of course, any study of S.K.’s religion that fails to raise the question of his church affiliation as much as suggests that he remained a Lutheran. More explicit claims of varying sorts are represented by H. V. Martin, Kierkegaard, the Melancholy Dane (NY: Philosophical Library, 1950), 108; by Hermann Diem, Kierkegaard’s Dialectic of Existence, hereafter referred to as Dialectic, trans. Harold Knight (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1959), 157; and by Martin J. Heinecken, The Moment Before God (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1956), pp. 378-79. Our contention is simply that the burden of proof rests just as heavily upon those who would claim S.K. for Lutheranism as upon those who would claim him for Roman Catholicism, secularism, sectarianism, or any other tradition. S.K.’s natural connections with the Lutheran Church do not answer the problem; too many objections must be taken into account.

11. David Swenson, in the translator’s Introduction to S.K.’s Philosophical Fragments, trans. David Swenson, 2d ed., with an introduction and commentary by Niels Thulstrup translated by Howard Hong (Princeton: Princeton Un. Press, 1962), xli-xlii. Cf. Walter Lowrie, in the translator’s Introduction to Attack upon “Christendom,” xiii. Cf. Diem, Dialectic, 154.

13. See, for example, Diem, Dialectic, 157.

14. In addition to Diem, see, as another example, Theodor Haecker, Søren Kierkegaard, trans. Alexander Dru (London: Oxford Un. Press, 1937), 67.

15. Attack upon “Christendom,” p.91.

16. This journal entry has been inserted by the translator into Attack upon “Christendom,” 17. An admirable summary which cites many of the scholars and their claims is Heinrich Roos, S.J., Søren Kierkegaard and Catholicism, trans. Richard Bracken (Westminster, Md.: Newman Press, 1954). Cf. Cornelio Fabro, C.P.S., “Faith and Reason in Kierkegaard’s Dialectic,” in A Kierkegaard Critique, particularly 156-58, 190-94.

18. Dupre, op.cit., 216, 217, 219.

19. Ibid., x, xii.

20. Though not addressing himself specifically to our question, it is perhaps Hermann Diem (Dialectic, 98ff.) who has given most decisive demonstration to the fact that the existence of an organized church with its preaching, doctrine, and sacraments was an essential presupposition of S.K.’s whole dialectic.

21. Papirer, 11:2:A:435 [my trans.–V.E.]. Cf. the trans. Offered by Ronald Gregor Smith in his volume of journal selections, The Last Years, hereafter referred to as Smith Journals (New York: Harper & Row, 1965).

22. Papirer, 11: A:407 (1849) [my trans.–V.B.]. Cf. Smith Journals, 11:2:A:39 (1854) and 11:2:A:39 (1854).

23. Dru Journals, 831 (1848); cf. 1234 (1851).

24. Walter Kaufmann, in the editor’s Introduction to Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre (Cleveland: Meridian Books, 1956), 11.

25. Dupre, op.cit., 224-22. Another inadvertent description of S.K.’s sectarianism is found in Fabro, op.cit., in A Kierkegaard Critique, 156-57.

26. Emil Brunner, Truth as Encounter (Phihidelphia: Westminster Press, 1943 and 1964), 112, 84; cf. 42-43.

27. Joachim H. Seyppel, Schwenckfeld, Knight of Faith (Pennsburg, Pa.: The Schwenckfelder Library, 1961), p.427. Cf, Dupre, op.cit., xi, 171.

28. Ibid., 427-29.

29. Ibid., 129. Seyppel cites E. Peterscn, “Kierkegaard und der Protestantismus,” Wort and Wahrheit 3, 579 ff.

30. Papirer, (through an error in transcription, the locus of this entry has been lost) [my trans.-V.E.].

31. Brøchncr’s Recollections in Croxall Glimpses, 21.

32. Dru Journals, 970 (1849).

33. Henriette Lund’s Recollections in Croxall Glimpses, 50.

34. Hans Brøuchner’s Recollections in Croxall Glimpses, 36.

35. In the Introduction to Dru Journals, 1, note.

36. In the editorial materials of S.K.’s Johannes Climacus, or De Omnibus Dubitandum Est, hereafter referred to as Johannes Climacus, trans. and ed. T. H. Croxall (Stanford: Stanford Un. Press, 1958), 27-28.

37. Purity of Heart, trans. Douglas V. Steere (NY: Harper, 1948), 152.

38. Edifying Discourses, trans. David F. and Lillian Marvin Swenson (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1948), 4:70-71.

39. Stages on Life’s Way, ed. Hilarius Bookbinder (pseud.), trans. Walter Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton Un. Press, 1940), 218.

40. Either/Or, ed. Victor Eremita (pseud.), trans. David F. and Lillian Marvin Swenson and Walter Lowrie, revised by Howard Johnson (Garden City: Doubleday Anchor, 1959) 2:112.

41. Dru Journals, 1220, 443 (1851).

42. In Point of View, 140.

III. Classic Protestant Sectarianism:
In Which a Church Is Not a Church?

Precisely to the concept “Church” is to be traced the fundamental confusion both of Protestantism and of Catholicism–or is it to the concept “Christendom”?1

If S.K. is to be treated as a sectary, it behooves us to be very clear as to what we mean by “sectarianism.” It is not our task to present a full-scale study, but we must pursue the matter far enough to make plain just what we are saying about S.K. when we mount him under the label. This clarification is all the more crucial in light of the various ways the term “sect” is used and misused among us; our concern is as much to establish what we do not intend by the word as what we do.

The “church/sect” typology is the fruit of a half-century of scholarly labors culminating in the work of Ernst Troeltsch in the opening years of the present century.2 Although Troeltsch’s work needs to be modified, supplemented, and reoriented at points, yet in the way of establishing terminology, defining categories, and then analyzing the historical phenomena accordingly, it has not been surpassed. Troeltsch is still indispensable for sectarian studies. Some modern scholars have ignored or belittled him to their own hurt; we shall depend heavily upon him.

The most serious weakness of Troeltsch’s approach is his interpretation of ecclesiology as being essentially a sociological matter rather than an ideological or theological, one. However, as shall become apparent, he was not nearly as guilty in this regard as are some of his successors. He was conscious of the partialness of his perspective and practically invited someone to supplement it:

This theory [the church/sect typology] is connected with a whole series of further distinctions, which belong to the subtler realm of religious psychology and to theological thought…. All this, however, really belongs to the history of doctrine. For our present subject it is vital to remember that the idea of the Church as an objective institution, and as a voluntary society, contains a fundamental sociological distinction.3

Troeltsch was in no sense a socioeconomic determinist; his basic position seems to have been that ideology has sociological manifestations no less than that sociological conditions determine ideology. In fact he went out of his way to insist that the Reformation was essentially a religious phenomenon and not in the first place a sociological one.4 Nevertheless, Troeltsch’s work does show a sociological lopsidedness that requires supplementation if not correction.

The theological perspective which Troeltsch lacked perhaps has been supplied most adequately by Emil Brunner in Volume 3 of his Dogmatics. But if Troeltsch’s weakness was that he lacked the theological acumen of a Brunner, Brunner’s was that he dismissed Troeltsch too quickly:

Ernst Troeltsch, who was familiar with the sociological approach, but who, as an idealist theologian, had but little insight into the spiritual nature of the Ekklesia,

quite simply reckoned the New Testament Ekklesia as belonging to the “sect-type of Church”–a judgment in which there was doubtless some truth, but at the same time a great deal of error.5

Brunner’s work could have had enhanced precision and value had he adopted the made-to-order terminology and categories provided by Troeltsch, rounding them out with his own meanings and insights. In our presentation we shall attempt to do what Brunner failed to do; what follows is to a large extent Brunnerian content in a Troeltschian framework.

But before discussing what sectarianism is, it is of vital importance to refute a widespread misunderstanding. The Troeltschian typology was popularized and made the common background of American ecclesiological thought through the offices of a highly influential book by H. Richard Niebuhr, The Social Sources of Denominationalism (1929).6 Niebuhr’s thesis was then tested and proved through the brilliant sociological study made by his student and later colleague Liston Pope.7 And since that time this view has carried the field. 8 It should be noted that Niebuhr later connected, if not repudiated, his first position.9 But the damage had been done; his retraction has not begun to catch up with his original proposal.

This “hypersociological” view is founded upon several principles that must be seriously challenged:

Principle 1. A theory of socioeconomic determinism is certainly skirted, or implied, if not openly maintained:

The adoption of one or the other type of constitution is itself largely due to the social condition of those who form the sect or compose the church. In Protestant history the sect has ever been the child of an outcast minority, taking its rise in the religious revolts of the poor, of those who were without effective representation in church or state and who formed conventicles of dissent in the only way open to them, on the democratic, associational pattern.10 Niebuhr underlined this assertion by proceeding to use “the churches of the disinherited” as a synonym for “sects.” But if this be the truth, then to establish S.K. as a sectary signifies nothing more meaningful than to call attention to a freak situation in which one of the “inherited” (S.K. lived on his patrimony) talked like one of the “disinherited”–thus making S.K. “the poor man’s theologian.”

Principle 2. Closely related to the above is the further assertion that sects inevitably and in comparatively short time evolve back into the church type: “The sociological character of sectarianism, however, is almost always modified in the course of time by the natural processes of birth and death, and on this change in structure changes in doctrine and ethics inevitably follow. By its very nature the sectarian type of organization is valid only for one generation…. Compromise begins and the ethics of the sect approach the churchly type of morals. As with ethics, so with the doctrine, so also with the administration of religion…. So the sect becomes a church.”11 But this point, too, would have derogatory implications if allowed to stand as part of S.K.’s sectarianism. His witness, then, would be of no particular relevance or import, not a valid type but merely a primitive and transitory stage on the way to true churchism.

Principle 3. The basic error of the hypersociologists, the point at which they lost contact with Troeltsch, seems to be this: they committed the quid pro quo of assuming that what they identified as sectarianism on the twentieth century, industrial, religiously pluralistic American scene is the same phenomenon that Troeltsch identified as sectarianism on the classic, Reformation, established-religion scene of sixteenth to eighteenth century Europe It would he foolish to try to deny the accuracy of sociological case studies like those of Pope and others; they have established at least part of the truth about how modern “sects” arise and develop. But it does not follow that everything that has ever been known as a sect reflects the same pattern.

Troeltsch suggested that in the course of their history at least some sects do tend to change their nature and lose the purity of their primitive sectarianism.12 But he did not interpret this as a natural evolution from sect into church propelled by a socioeconomic dynamic. He made a countersuggestion–and a much more emphatic one–that the sociologists have overlooked:

The Church-type itself, just because of this element of tension between pure Christianity and adjustment to the world which exists within it, has had a very changeful history, and is today becoming entirely transformed…. Protestantism no longer represents the pure Church-type…. More and snore the central life of the Church- type is being permeated with the vital energies of the sect and mysticism; the whole history of Protestantism reveals this very clearly. title=”Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, 2:1007-09.”13

Pope’s statement that “movement on the scale between sect and church is, with minor exceptions, in one direction only,”14 is seen to hold true only within his own narrow orientation.

Troeltsch’s analysis seems eminently superior to that of the hypersociologists: the ecclesiological changes so readily apparent in Protestant history are not indicative of any dynamic principle within the typology itself but rather a breakdown and realignment of the whole typology in the face of a drastically changed world. This is not to say that churchly tendencies and sectarian tendencies are no longer operative or distinguishable; it is to say that the Troeltschian typology cannot be applied as clearly and cleanly to the contemporary scene as Troeltsch did it to the post-Reformation period.

Indeed, Troeltsch himself prohibited the transferal of his typology to the modern period. He concluded his long and masterful opus by saying:

Our inquiry is over. It was possible to treat it exhaustively as far as the eighteenth century…. With the nineteenth century Church History entered upon a new phase of existence. As a result of the dissolution of the unity of civilization controlled by a State Church, combined with the development of the independence of modern thought, it has since then no longer possessed a fixed and objective ideal of unity. The result has been that the social philosophy of the Christian community has also suffered an undeniable disintegration, through its dependence upon continually changing conditions…. Under these circumstances it is impossible to give a description of the present situation, and to deduce from it principles for the future.15
And recent studies in the Radical Reformation strongly support Troeltsch’s contention that uncritical shuffling between classic and modern sectarianism is out of order.16

Ours, then, is a plea for the right to use Troeltsch’s concept of “sect” free from all implications that the hypersociological school has read back into it, a plea to disassociate “sect” from the image of store-front, fundamentalist, shouting churches of the poor white trash; for if this be sectarianism then there is no need to say anything more about S.K. being part of it.

We have used the term “Classic Protestant Sectarianism.” The intention is specifically to distinguish “classic” (Troeltschian) sectarianism from “modern” (hypersociological) sectarianism. The word “Protestant,” in turn, serves two purposes. First, it distinguishes the sectarianism in which we are interested from that of the Roman Catholic tradition. Scholars are agreed in tracing a sectarian strain through medieval Catholicism, leading up to and apparently affecting rather directly the radical wing of the Reformation. Without denying any of the real relationships and affinities between the Protestant and Catholic strains, it is apparent that they are enough different in character and milieu that they can and should be differentiated. And if S.K. was a sectary at all, surely he was one of the Protestant sort.

But in the second place and perhaps more importantly, we use “Protestant” to mean “orthodox,” or more precisely, “not heterodox.” Of course in one sense the very fact that a sect is a sect indicates that it has slipped out of closely defined, churchly orthodoxy–ecclesiologically, if in no other way. We then are using orthodox in a rather broad sense, to include, say, any group that could have qualified according to the admission requirements of the present World and National Councils of Churches. Thus the word “Protestant” excludes the esoteric cults and the freethinking, peripherally Christian societies which so frequently are classed together with the sects. Troeltsch took considerable pains to set up his typology precisely so that the sects could and would be distinguished from these other groups. We propose, then, to compare S.K. with Classic Protestant Sectarianism and nothing else.

So much for what we do not mean by “sectarianism”; we proceed to our proper work of explaining what we do mean. In what follows the spectrum analogy is my own contribution; the terminology and categories are drawn from Troeltsch; the description and analysis of those categories depend heavily upon Brunner.

The analogy that accounts for the accompanying chart is taken from the field of physics. It is a spectrum analysis of visible light. The background of the diagram is a continuous field of color, i.e. white light separated into all its constituent, monochromatic wavelengths. A number of implications from this spectrum are crucial to the analogy. The chart bears the names of what physicists call the seven primary, or rainbow, colors. Actually, however, there is nothing primary about them; they happen merely to be hues that are conspicuous to the human eye; they are not even arranged symmetrically on the spectrum.

Any given point on the scale is simply and only a specific wavelength of light; it is in no way dependent upon any other wavelength for its existence or definition. There is here no theory of color mixing; green is no more a mixture of yellow and blue than blue is a mixture of indigo and green. Greenish-yellow is just greenish-yellow, not some of green and some of yellow; it is only the limitation of our terminology that forces us to use a hybrid term; but the greenish- yellow is no less “pure” a color than is bright yellow itself. Likewise on the ecclesiological spectrum, no one type is any more “primary,” any “truer,” any “purer” than any other; the fact that a given church happens to fall directly on a primary color implies no value judgment one way or another. Further, there is here absolutely no implication of movement or polar attraction. To move left from blue center is not to say that one must drift on into green (or vice versa); any point is as legitimate a stopping point as any other. Sooner or later, of course, value judgments will come into any discussion of ecclesiology, but the spectrum itself is purely descriptive; the chart has no way of defining what is a “good” spot for a church to fall.

Theoretically there is one wavelength that is yellower than those on either side of it are, but as a matter of fact this can be only an arbitrary decision of the human eye. Yellow, then, must be considered as a range of wavelengths–but a range, note well, the outer boundaries of which simply cannot be defined, located, or demarcated. This does not mean that yellow is in any way a vague concept or that no real distinctions can be made between yellow and green. It does mean that yellow can be defined, discussed, and understood only by looking at the bright center, not by trying to determine how far it extends in either direction. Ask not, therefore, whether Methodism (for example) is in the yellow or in the green; it is more yellow than Congregationalism but more green than the Baptists.

Against the colorful background of the continuous spectrum appear dark, absorption markings known as Fraunhofer lines. These come about when a given substance betrays its presence and identifies itself by “blotting-up” the particular wavelengths of light that come at its characteristic spot on the spectrum. We propose to do for ecclesiology what Fraunhofer first did for sunlight by analyzing the spectrum and identifying certain of the lines.

Note that this spectrum and these lines hold only for the classic period, Europe of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. We have heeded Troeltsch’s warning that in the modern period the pattern has been so broken up that it is problematical whether the same techniques of analysis will apply. To put modern churches onto this same graph sooner or later would result in distortion-although, obviously, many of the ecclesiological principles explained by the chart still are in operation on the present-day scene. By the same token the line that does appear refers to the group as it existed during its primitive, classic phase; whether each or any of these is still operating on the same wavelength we will not venture to judge. Also, we have not attempted to include every group that could be spotted here; the proliferation (particularly toward the red end of the spectrum) is endless. Fraunhofer originally identified 754 lines out of the now more than 25,000 that have been discovered; our proportion is equally modest.

This spectrum enables us to arrive at rather precise definitions of some terms that commonly appear in ecclesiological analysis. In a number of cases we still will need to allow one word to carry several different meanings (because human language simply does not conform to discrete laws), but communication can be vastly improved nonetheless. In each case the definitions are listed in order from the broadest to the narrowest.

A	Church
	i	The spectrum as a whole, i.e. the ecumenical body of Christ
	ii	Any given line on the spectrum, i.e. a church, or the churches.
	iii	Any line except those of the orange-red end of the spectrum, i.e., an organized, “orthodox” group as opposed to a “spiritual religion” or a “cult” (again, the admission requirements of the Councils of Churches might be taken as a rough measure).
	iv	A line of the violet-indigo-blue-to-green end of the spectrum, i.e. an example of the Troeltschian “church”-type. In most instances the context in which “church” is used will indicate the intended meaning; however, confusion is a real possibility when we realize that the first three definitions include the sects while the fourth specifically excludes them. Whenever, in the pages that follow, misunderstanding seems possible, we will use quotation marks to denote “church” in sense iv.
B	Protestantism
	i	Anything other than Roman Catholicism. Anglicans, Southern Baptists (despite their protests), and even the Eastern Orthodox churches tend to get pulled into this category.
	ii	The indigo-blue-green-yellow-to-orange sector of the spectrum, i.e. all those groups whose heritage and theology trace back to the Reformation.
	iii	The indigo-blue-to-green portion of the spectrum, i.e. the Reformation “churches” (Lutheran, Reformed, and Anglican). Kierkegaard very often assumed a iii usage, i.e. he spoke critically of “Protestantism,” but in a way which, although applying directly to the Reformation “churches,” could have little if any reference to the Reformation sects. It is here appropriate to consider a crucial question: Were the sects truly Protestant or were they not? The only accurate solution is to have it both ways. This Troeltsch did very explicitly: [Anabaptist sectarianism] attacked the new theological dogmatism, the compulsory State Church, and the tendency to secularization [of the Reformation “churches”]…. The Anabaptists deliberately opposed the results of this compromise, and in so doing they opposed the whole idea of the Church, and of an ecclesiastical civilization. This violent o~ position, however, proves that in reality it had been caused by the Reformation itself…. “In the Baptist [read Anabaptist movement we are dealing with a by-product of the Reformation, which is closely connected with the Scriptural purism and moral earnestness of the Reformation, but whose deep inward opposition to the ecclesiastical idea of the Reformers is also quite evident…. At bottom, therefore, the whole movement belonged to the Reformation. It was caused by the Reformation; it appealed to its principles and ideals, and it remained in closest touch with it. In the last resort, however, the sect is a phenomenon that differs equally from the ecclesiastical spirit of Protestantism and of Catholicism. It is an independent branch of Christian thought; it is the complement of the Church-type, and it is based upon certain elements in the New Testament ideal.17 Insofar as they sought to reform the Reformation by appealing to Reformation principles and ideology, the sectaries surely admit the nomenclature “Protestant” or even “Protestants’ Protestants.” But insofar as they drastically were opposed to the way the Protestant “churches” were taking, just as surely they must be differentiated from Protestantism. The only thing to do is to leave the word “Protestant” open so that the sects can be considered as both in and out.
C	Sect
	i	In an entirely neutral sense, synonymous with Church ii, i.e. referring to any line of the spectrum. This usage is somewhat antiquated though still found in legal documents.
	ii	In an anything but neutral sense, referring to any position on the spectrum other than one’s own, in short, a subtle way of impugning another church’s pedigree. In this regard it is interesting to find in the literature of the sects depreciating references to the “churches” as being “sects”; sects as well as churches found it in order to deplore the others’ “sectarianism.” It is in this sense that “sect” carries connotations of narrow-mindedness and fanaticism. But that the word connotes such derogation is no accident; “sect” was designed specifically as a swear word for bludgeoning one’s ecclesiological enemies. It is undoubtedly in the effort to avoid this stigma that there has been some tendency of late to substitute the word “free church” for “sect.” This, however, seems an unwise move, because, as we shall see, the term “free church” needs to be reserved for a slightly different concept. The better alternative is simply to live down, rise above, and transform the ugly word “sect”–just as has had to be done with “Yankee,” “Protestant,” and even “Christian.”
	iii	The green-yellow-orange-red end of the spectrum, i.e. anything other than a “church.” This usage groups together too wide a range of ecclesiology to be meaningful–although it did come in handy when, for instance, a Lutheran wanted to imply that a Mennonite is no different than a Münsterite. But we see here a tendency that seems to affect ecclesiologists generally: they are able to make and maintain the finest distinctions in that area of the spectrum where they happen to live; but once they get a few shades beyond, they start expanding their categories in fine style. Troeltsch fought valiantly to prevent this from happening to “sect” when he spelled out a very clear distinction between “yellow” and “red”;18 would that it had been kept as clear since.
	iv	The green-yellow-to-orange middle of the spectrum. This is a broad, generic usage of “sectarianism,” but, we maintain, a proper one
	v	The yellow range of the spectrum. This is the more specific and technical but equally proper use of the term. In the pages that follow we will not use “sect” in sense i; we expressly deny senses ii and iii; we may use iv at times; but for the most part we intend the closer distinction of iv For instance, as regards S.K., our thesis is not merely that he shows certain iv-type sectarian tendencies but that his own Fraunhofer line would fall in the bright yellow of v
D	Free Church
	i	Synonymous with Sect iv. As we have noted, there is some tendency to use this as a nice word–or at least a later terminology-for “sect.” Troeltsch used the term “free church,” but in another sense.
	ii	The green range of the spectrum. Troeltsch’s usage would indicate that “free church” is primarily of British origin, referring to those British churches which were different from “churches” in that they had adopted the principle of voluntary membership but which also were different from the sects in that they still retained such churchly marks as infant baptism, creeds and confessions, a strong clerical caste (or episcopacy), etc.19 We will follow Troeltsch and avoid usage I; thus is made possible a real and significant distinction which otherwise would be lost.
E	Spiritual religion
		The red-to-orange end of the spectrum. The word “spiritual” suggests that direct inspiration here begins to dominate over the objective biblical and historical controls that have given the church its form and structure up to this point. Troeltsch used the terms “mysticism” and “spiritual religion” interchangeably, although it can be questioned whether “mysticism” is an ecclesiologically useful term at all. In fact, the word means so many things to so many people that we would prefer to avoid it altogether. Frankly, our typology encounters difficulty at the red end, not because the pattern fails, but because spiritual religion can take either of two different lines of development. Both strains clearly classify as spiritual religion, but they are distinct enough to require separate terms in identifying them. Spiritual religion, then, shows itself either as “atomism” or as “cult.”
F	Atomism
		The phenomenon of the red end of the spectrum in which the concept “church” is dissolved into an ultra-individualistic, totally unstructured independency.
G	Cult
		The other phenomenon of the red end, in which the group is structured and organized-as opposed to atomism-but over an esoteric, directly revealed pattern, i.e. depending upon a special, private revelation (and we would include throwbacks to Old Testament modes) rather than upon the New Testament norm.

In all of the foregoing we have attempted to follow Troeltsch as closely as possible. He did not propose a spectrum, but the terminology is his, and our “colorful” definitions are intended to conform to his usage. The one exception regards the bipartite division of spiritual religion; Troeltsch simply left out of account those groups that we have denominated cults. It is important that they be included in the picture, if for no other reason than that they do not unconsciously get slipped in with the yellow sects, where they do not belong. Rather, they seem clearly to qualify under spiritual religion, as we have proposed.

There is one other basic term that can and should be related to the spectrum. We are still following Troeltsch in suggesting that Pietism cannot be located at a point or even on a range of the spectrum. It is a broad, unfocused movement of sectarian tendency and emphasizing many sectarian motifs, but ecclesiologically it has manifested itself in different ways at different points of the spectrum. For example, the main thrust of German Pietism under the aegis of Spener and Francke deeply influenced the life of the Lutheran Church but without changing its “blue” status. Even so, Pietist influences did loom large in accounting for the green of Methodism, the yellow of the Church of the Brethren, the orange of Moravianism, the atomist red of men like Tersteegen and Ernst Christoph Hochmann, and the cultic red of groups like the Ronsdorfers and Buttlarites.

When written with the small “p,” we intend pietism as referring to this sort of tendency whenever, wherever, and on whatever part of the scale it appears. Capital “P” Pietism refers to the identifiable historical movement originating within the Lutheran Church of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, organized around Spener and Francke. Radical Pietism refers to the left wing of this movement, which manifested itself in the red-to-orange end of the spectrum.

At this point we turn to Brunner for help in analyzing the ideological content of our spectrum. It is not easy to fit Brunncr’s discussion of ecclesiology into this Troeltschian framework, for Brunner chose to ignore his predecessor and operate within an entirely different scheme of thought. However, it is our assumption that the concepts of the two men are compatible, and the following represents a rigorous effort to correlate them.

What has been said heretofore would indicate that “sectarianism” is predominantly, if not exclusively, an ecclesiological concept, i.e. one referring to a doctrine of the nature and form of the church. This is a misimpression we shall be at some pains to correct; sectarianism is a religious perspective which includes a whole catena of beliefs. A particular value of Brunner’s presentation is its demonstration of how ecclesiology depends upon and immediately involves a wide range of interests. He quotes with approval the formula “ecclesiology is Christology and Christology ecclesiology”20 and it would be just as accurate, in addition to “Christology,” to read “pneumatology,” “pistology,” and even “sociology.”

However, many scholars seem to have a penchant for grasping one of these doctrinal strands, making it the key, and relegating the others to subsidiary status. But this is as futile an exercise as, say, trying to identify the central principle of Reformation thought: is it the sovereignty of God (theonomy), the authority of scripture, justification by faith alone, or a felt existential need for salvation? Obviously one can start with any of these and immediately proceed to any and all of the others; all were integrally involved in the Protestant development; and there is nothing to be gained by trying to give one preeminence over the rest. just so with sectarianism; we are dealing with a core of principles, not a core principle.

Thus we have chosen ecclesiology as the principle for the constructing of our spectrum, not by way of implying that a sectary chooses to become such on the basis of a conviction about the nature and form of the church (this may or may not be the case), but because, in ecclesiology, doctrine must manifest itself in concrete ways that can be plotted and dissected much more precisely than would be the case with Christology, pneumatology, or whatever. We will see, however, that the spectrum now can be interpreted according to these other principles as well as by the outward form of church organization. Henceforth, then, we intend “sectarianism” to imply a total religious perspective and not simply a doctrine of the church.

1. Eccelesiology:

Approached from this point of view, the spectrum represents something like the following. In the violet range the church is understood as: a (i) hierarchically authoritative (priestly dominated), (ii) formally constituted (the entire life and organization of the church is closely prescribed by church law), (iii) territorially comprehensive (the church is coincident with the community and the citizenry belongs to the church as a matter of course) (iv) institution (in contrast to a fellowship, or Gemeinde) transmitting (v) an objective deposit of grace through (vi) ex opere operato sacraments administered by (vii) a sacrosanct priesthood.

In the blue sector, (i) hierarchical control is greatly weakened but there is still a strong clergy/laity distinction. (ii) The life of the church is still rather highly prescribed though perhaps less so than in the violet. (iii) There is no change as to territorial comprehension. (iv) The church is still essentially an institution. (v) There has been a radical shift at this point, for the “objective deposit” is now understood as (vi) “the Word of God,” a much more personal and subjective entity than the sacraments. However, this “Word” is still highly objectivized through the emphasis upon its dogmatic definition in creed, confession, and symbol. It must therefore be administered by (vii) an academically, theologically qualified clergy.

In the green, there is a general “loosening-up” in all categories, but the drastic change comes in (iii) territorial comprehension, because the church now is disestablished and membership is voluntary. (v, vi) Religious experience, as opposed to dogmatic definition, is growing in prominence, but there is still (iv) a rather strong institutional bent seen in the retention of such churchly accouterments as infant baptism, creeds, clerical authority, vestments, etc.

In the yellow of sectarianism, (i) the government of the church is completely democratic and nonauthoritarian, strongly congregational in its orientation. The clergy/laity distinction has become a purely functional one, without any sacerdotal implications whatsoever, although the group is still highly enough structured as to require “offices.” (ii) Worship and church life have become quite free and informal; vestments, liturgy, the church year, orders of worship-all have been sloughed away The sacraments have been retained as acts of obedience to New Testament commands, but they are called “ordinances” expressly to avoid the churchly implications of “sacrament.” (iii) Membership is now emphatically voluntary, and infant baptism has been rejected in becoming consistent with that emphasis. Further, any sort of territorial consciousness has been completely transcended; wherever two or three members happen to be, there is their church; political boundaries are beneath their notice. (iv) The church is now essentially a Gemeinde rather than an institution. (v, vi) The Word of God still stands as a powerfully objective norm, but the dogmatic understanding of that Word has been radically de-emphasized; any sort of creedal definition has been expressly rejected, and systematic theology has lost its appeal. The Word of God now must involve the inner movings and leadings of the Spirit-in conjunction with the objective authority of its written letter.21 (vii) The written Word is interpreted and the living Word experienced directly~though by the Gemeinde rather than by individuals in isolation-so there is no need for the mediatorial role of a clergy.

In the orange sector the church begins to lose all structure. (i) There is now no clergy, even in the functional sense. (ii) Outward organization is at a minimum, and the sacraments are not observed even as ordinances. (v, vi) The Bible begins to lose its role as either a pattern of organization or a definition of faith. The subjective action of the Spirit is moving into domination.

In the red sector, under the alternative of Atomism, the concept of the church as a structured fellowship is gone, and there are left only individual Christians, each under the direct operation of the Spirit within him. Under the alternative of Cult, organization and even institutionalism again appear, but the New Testament revelation is no longer normative; that objective standard now has been replaced by another, namely esoteric, private, extrabiblical inspiration.

2. Enthusiasm:

This word customarily has been used in a highly prejudicial sense, but if understood etymologically as the immediate action of God within the heart, it becomes the accurate designation for one of the core principles of sectarianism (not as entirely different from or independent of ecclesiology but as a closely related aspect of the total religious perspective). Brunner makes the connection explicit when he gives over the first chapter of his ecclesiology to a discussion of the work of the Holy Spirit.

Our spectrum can be read as gradations of enthusiasm, though in such case it will not allow as many and as fine distinctions as when we read it ecclesiologically. Now the chart is essentially bipolar. At the violet end, the revelation of God is understood predominantly (if not exclusively) in objective terms by way of sacraments, the scriptural word, creeds, dogmatics, institutions. At the red end, God’s revelation is understood predominantly (if not exclusively) as subjective, as the immediate, inner working of the Spirit. Sectarianism falls midway between these two poles and is seen to be an attempt at retaining the authority of the normative, objective biblical revelation while yet giving due place to the enthusiastic role of the Holy Spirit.

In this regard we note the appearance of a pattern which will recur time and again and which thus becomes part of the basic dynamic of sectarianism. The sectary, in virtue of his place on the spectrum, is by nature a dialectician (though for the most part subconsciously so) striving to maintain a balance between two complementary principles. Thus it is perhaps not entirely by accident that S.K., the sharpest dialectician of all time, also should show up in the yellow center.

3. Faith:

As Brunner’s book moves from pneumatology into ecclesiology, so does it move from ecclesiology into pistology. Our spectrum can be interpreted according to the nature of faith. At the violet end, faith is correct beliefs:

Faith was misunderstood as affirmation of doctrine or facts. In this manner correct doctrine became the object of faith…. At the same time as the priestly sacramental institution there came into being ‘orthodoxy,’ the belief in true doctrine, and the guarantee of this belief by Church creed or dogma.22

At the red end’ which is only implied in Brunner, faith is life, the pious life of love: It doesn’t matter what you believe, your manner of living is what counts.” The middle way of dialectical balance is ascribed by Brunner to the New Testament church, but it is also a characteristic of sectarianism: “Thus the Ekklesia has to hear a double witness to Christ, through the Word that tells of what He has bestowed upon it, and through the witness of its life, through its being, which points to Him as its vital source. These two testimonies of the Ekklesia through Word and life corroborate each other, and neither is fully effective without the other…. True faith is indivisibly both, faith in Christ and existence in Christ.” 24

4. Individualism:

Here again the spectrum consists of gradations between two poles. The violet extreme understands the church to be a collective. Brunner puts the matter most succinctly:
The interpretation of communjo sanctorum in the neuter sense is the source of spiritual collectivism, which confuses the nature of fellowship with the nature of participation in a thing. The thought of a sanctum in which individuals participate has no place in the New Testament. For “that” in which the individuals participate is precisely not a thing, but a person–the Christ. Participation in something creates a collective; fellowship with the Christ creates fellowship with one another.”24

The red extreme of atomism (which, again, is not in Brunner’s picture) rejects sociality, sees the church-if church it may be called–as ultraindividualistic, every man for himself. Sectarianism is the dialectical attempt to recognize both the corporate and the individual aspects of Christianity through “fellowship” (Gemeinschaft).

5. The Work of Christ:

Although this principle may not operate on the spectrum quite as neatly as some of the others, it does seem to have a valid application. At the violet end, the work of Christ is seen predominantly (if not exclusively) as atonement and justification–thus the emphasis is on “the Christ of faith.” At the red end, particularly among some of the atomists (and admittedly it is here that the pattern might be a little difficult to demonstrate), the work of Christ is seen predominantly, if not exclusively, as that of teacher and model–thus the emphasis is on “the historical Jesus.” In the yellow center (and here the pattern is again very clear) there is once more the attempt to give dialectical recognition to both emphases; the sects give much more attention to discipleship (Nachfolge) than do the churches, while striving nonetheless to retain a strong concept of Christ as divine Savior.

6. Relation to the World:

This is a very real aspect of sectarianism which, unfortunately, has been emphasized out of all proportion. Even Troeltsch tended to make it central; the “hypersociological school” would make it all controlling. However, we can recognize the truth in the position without following the sociologists all the way. In particular, we maintain that for the most part (and especially so during the classic period) the sectarianism of a person’s faith determined his relationship to the world rather than his status in the world determining the sectarianism of his faith.

This reading of the spectrum has some resemblance to H. Richard Niebuhr’s famous “Christ … Culture” typology25 and perhaps can be correlated with it to a certain extent. However, our interest goes only far enough to cast some light on the nature of sectarianism; we will not attempt a detailed analysis of all the various options of Christian social ethics.

At the violet pole stands “the Church of (ideally, in control of) the World”; at the red pole stands “the Church outside of the World,” disdainful of and inimical toward all worldly values and influences. At the yellow center stands the sect, “the Church in tension with the World,” striving to he in the world in a real and influential sense while not being of the world. Again, the dialectical balance is a fine one; and in this case historical reality tended to confuse the matter, because the classical sects also were kicked out of the world. Thus it is not easy to discern to what extent the sectary’s actual relationship to the world manifested his ideology or his misfortune; to achieve a balance between in the world but not of the world is particularly difficult when one is not wanted in the world.

There probably are other doctrines and principles that could he read into–or explicated out of–the spectrum. The goal we have had in mind is not a definitive presentation but merely the clarification of what we intend by “sectarianism,” the sort of sectarianism with which we propose that Søren Kierkegaard be affiliated.

However, as we stand poised to begin in earnest the demonstration of S.K.’s sectarianism we are faced with a major procedural problem: What is the body of sectarian literature to which the Kierkegaardian. literature should be compared? From what writings are we to draw the motifs, markings, and clues of sectarianism for which we hope to find counterparts in the works of S.K.? We could let any and all writers of such bent speak for this view of radical discipleship. This at once would make our project easy-and valueless-for we could then compare S.K. with John Wesley at one point, with George Fox at another, with Menno Simons at another, roaming the field at will. And of course somewhere among such a host of writers one could find a quotation that would parallel almost anything ever written by S.K., or anyone else for that matter. Certainly our demonstration would be much more possible and convincing if we were to pick just one, typical sect as a “control” and then make the comparison straight across. If S.K.’s ideology shows any marked resemblance to that of one such sect, then surely it may he assumed that S.K.’s religious orientation is essentially akin to that of classic, Protestant sectarianism.

The group we have selected to serve as this “control” is the eighteenth century Brethren (forerunner of the modern Church of the Brethren and related bodies). In the first place, it is inconceivable that anyone might argue that this was not a typical sect; it has all the hallmarks. In the second place, this does make a direct comparison quite possible; the collection of eighteenth century Brethren writings actually is much smaller than the collected writings of S.K. There is no problem in ascertaining what the Brethren believed and stood for; their writings display little or no variation of opinion among themselves; they represent more of a fixed quantity than does the single author Kierkegaard. And furthermore, our case can be made by using the Brethren; there is no need to go beyond their writings in order to get a fully rounded picture either of sectarianism or of S.K.’s relationship to it.

It must be made emphatic at the outset that no claim is either intended or implied regarding any sort of special connection or affinity between S.K. and the Brethren per se. Indeed, we are not even suggesting that S.K. would have joined the Brethren (or any other sect) had the opportunity presented itself; there are a whole gamut of personal factors that make such a matter totally unpredictable. However, the Brethren can be used–and here are to be used–imply as an example of a broad religious perspective for which, we are convinced, S.K. does show a real and basic propensity.

n Dru’s and in Rohde’s selections from Kierkegaard’s journals, the number identifies an entry rather than a page; the date following is that of the particular entry.

1. Attack upon “Christendom,” p.34.

2. A brief account of this entire development is given by George Huntston Williams in his Introduction to Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers, in The Library of Christian Classics (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1957), 25:26-27.

3. Troeltsch, op.cit., 2:162-63.

4. Ibid., 2:465-67.

5. Brunner, Dogmatics, 3:31.

6. Richard Niebuhr, The Social Sources of Denominationalism (Meridian Books, 1957).

7. Liston Pope, Milihands and Preachers (New Haven: Yale Un. Press, 1942).

8. One need not go far to document this contention. See, for example, a book like J. Milton Yinger’s Religion, Society and the individual-An Introduction to the Sociology of Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1957), probably the most widely used textbook in its field. The Niebubrian view is written into the basic assumptions of the presentation (see 142ff.); and in the selection of readings, passages from Niebuhr and his followers dominate (see particularly 415ff).

This influence may be particularly strong among groups that come from a sectarian background. This certainly has been my experience both as a student and a functionary in the Church of the Brethren. The Niehubrian typology is regarded as the key by which we under-stand ourselves. In the ethics course at seminary (taught by an instructor of Mennonite background) Niebuhr and Pope were mandatory reading-plus a paper by Ernest Lefever, written as a student project for classes taught by Niehuhr and Pope, in which Brethren history is interpreted according to Niehuhrian categories.

It is standard procedure in scholarly and even popular circles among the Brethren to thank God that we have evolved out of our infantile sectarianism to the place that we now rank as a denomination, or church, along with the best of them. And the article by Val Clear, “Reflections of a Postsectarian,” The Christian Century, 80 (Jan. 16, 1963), 72-75, suggests that the same mentality holds in other groups as well.

9. H. Richard Niebuhr, The Kingdom of God in America (N.Y.: Harper Torchbooks, 1959), ix-x; cf. 1ff.

10. Niebuhr, The Social Sources of/ Denominationalism, 19.

11. Ibid., 19-20.

12. For example, the English Baptists (Troeltsch, op.cit., 2:707-708).

13. Ibid. 2:1007-09.

14. Pope, op.cit., p.120.

15. Troeltsch, op.cit., 2: 991-92.

16. See particularly Claus-Peter Clasen, “The Sociology of Swabian Anabaptista,” Church History 32 (1963), 150ff. Works such as Roland H. Bainton, The Age of the Reformation (Princeton: VanNostrand, 1956) and Franklin Hamlin Littell, The Origins of Sectarian Protestantism (New York: Macmillan [1952] 1964), and George Huntston Williams,op.eit. and The Radical Reformation (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962), are also to the point.

17. Troeltsch, op.cit., 2:698, 699, 701.

18. Trocltsch, op.cit.,2:742ff.

19. Troeltsch, op.cit., 2:656ff.

20. Brunner, Dogmatics, 3:40.

21. Notice in this regard that any sort of biblicism or moralistic legalism, although an error into which sects as well as churches often have fallen, is not an inherent aspect of sectarianism but actually an anti-sectarian trend in the direction of objectivization rather than greater freedom of the Spirit.

22. Brunner, Dogmatics, 3:135; cf. 134ff.

23. Ibid., 234-36.

24. Ibid., 27.

25. See Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture (NY: Harper, 1951).

IV. A Sect Called the Dunkers

Franklin … mentions a sect, he Dunkers, who would not compose a written creed….1

If we are to use the Brethren as the control of our comparison, it would he well to know something about the sect.2

What follows, then, is a brief account of Brethren beginnings and history through the eighteenth century, designed to establish the acquaintance and introduce the men whose writings will be quoted in the study proper. As a convenience to the reader, each author’s name is italicized as it appears for the first time.

The “pure” initial phase of Brethren sectarianism extended through two generations of leadership during most of the eighteenth century. It is with Brethren thought of this period–and only this period–that we propose to compare the thought of Kierkegaard. In one respect our control group does not conform to the standards of Classic Protestant Sectarianism upon which we insisted so strongly in the previous chapter; for the greater part of the century the sect was located in pluralistic America rather than state-church Europe. This forms no obstacle, however, for the group spent its formative years in the state-church environment and even in America lived in sufficient cultural and linguistic isolation to he constitutionally unaffected at least for the period of our study. The eighteenth century Brethren are as typically sectarian as any example that could be found.

The founding fathers did not choose to give the sect a name but let people refer to it as they would; thus, particularly in the earliest sources, quite a variety of nomenclature is found.3

In America, when a legal name became a necessity, German Baptist Brethren eventually was settled upon. The Church of the Brethren, the name of the main wing of the denomination today, is of twentieth century origin. However, the label by which the group was most widely known until quite recent times is “the Dunkers,” a fun poking Anglicizing of the German word “to dip,” referring, of course, to the practice of baptism by immersion. We customarily will use the “timeless” designation, the Brethren, although Dunkers also is an acceptable usage that no longer carries offensive connotations.

Alexander Mack (1679-1735) clearly was the leader of the original group of Brethren and thus, in a real sense, the founder of the church. In another sense, however, he lacked many of the marks that usually go with founders. At no time has there been any inclination for the church to bear his name either officially or popularly. His writings have never become symbolical or even authoritative. There is no evidence that his theological views dominated the group. And though he certainly was a respected and beloved leader, there is nothing to suggest that he “controlled” the church or that it felt particularly beholden to him.

Nevertheless, Mack’s personal history is of significance, simply because it is so representative of the religious development of the founding Brethren as a group.4 He was born July 27, 1679, in Schriesheim, a village of the Rhenish Palatinate, some five miles north of the university town of Heidelberg. He was reared in the German Reformed Church, as were most of the early Brethren. His father was a prosperous mill owner (whose mill Alexander later inherited) who had been at times mayor and a member of both the town and church councils Alexander had uncles connected with the city and university administrations in Heidelberg; his father-in-law operated the village guesthouse; and his wife’s grandfather had been a mayor of Heidelberg. Most of the early Brethren were of the propertied “burger” class rather than the peasantry; this sect was not “a church of the disinherited.”

Growing up in Germany contemporaneously with Alexander Mack was the Pietist movement, centering in the Lutheran church of Spener and Francke but actually sweeping the entire religious scene.5 Out of Pietism proper developed a left wing, Radical Pietism.6 Whereas Pietism proper remained within the context of the state churches, the Radical Pietists left the church. Many went the way of “atomism”;7 some formed “cults.”

Radical Pietism–which, of course, was illegal in the state-church situation–“infiltrated” the Palatinate during the opening years of the eighteenth century, and the young Alexander Mack was one of those it captured. The particular separatist leader who influenced Mack and became his tutor was Ernst Christoph Hochmann von Hochenau (1670-1721), one of the more sane and level-headed of the Radicals. href=”notes4.html#f8″>8 When Mack’s new affiliation became known it meant a break with his home, his church, his community–and the loss of his patrimony. In 1706 Mack and his young family fled Schriesheim as religious refugees, finally settling in Wittgenstein in the little village of Schwarzenau, a place where separatists were tolerated, where Hochmann had established something of a headquarters, and where others of his “disinherited” followers were tending to congregate. It was out of this group that the Brethren were to be organized.

At Schwarzenau, Mack and a handful of others soon became deeply dissatisfied with the lack of order and discipline that “spiritual religion” entailed, particularly the wild excesses of some of the cults in the area; they became convinced that the New Testament prescribed at least some rudiments of outward organization. It is clear that at least part of the influence pushing the Brethren-to-be in this direction was that of Reformation Anabaptism, mediated through the Mennonites who were active (or at least extant; their faith was much deteriorated from what it had been in the sixteenth century) within the realm of Mack’s contacts. This growing interest in order and outward obedience tended to focus upon baptism as the symbol of disciplined, corporate Christian life and witness within a Gemeinde.

Thus, in 1708, in the River Eder at Schwarzenau, eight persons (three couples and two single men) were baptized by trine immersion.9 This act marked the founding of the sect and a clean, decisive break with separatistic Radical Pietism. Thus in two deliberate and well-demarcated moves–the first, their earlier, individual leave-takings from the established church; the second, their act of baptism–the Brethren had distinguished themselves from churchism on the right and from spiritual religion on the left and had taken their stand in sectarianism.9

In the process of comparing S.K. and the Brethren we will, of course, be examining and documenting the entire gamut of Brethren belief and practice. However, it would seem helpful in this introduction to include at least a brief summary of Brethren thought as a background against which to understand the chapters that follow.

Clearly the two major streams of historical influence that molded original Brethrenism were

Radical Pietism, particularly of Hochrnann’s variety, and
Anabaptism, mediated by contemporary Mennonites and the literature they possessed.10

We must not overlook the very real though more in-direct influences of the Calvinism in which most of the early Brethren had been reared and of the “churchly” Pietism that formed the background of the more radical strain; but these are secondary.

Yet Radical Pietism and Anabaptism are not simply two ingredients of a blend (in which case the analytical problem would be to determine the proportions of each); rather, they are the two poles of the dialectical tension out of which Brethrenism was created and within which its existence had to be maintained.

This dialectic can be charted and made graphic with the aid of a drawing, namely the personal emblem, or seal, of Alexander Mack, Jr., which in recent years has been popularized as something of a symbol for the church as a whole. Around this emblem we have constructed the accompanying chart.11 It is divided into three columns: a Brethren column sandwiched between the Anabaptist column and the Radical Pietist.

Prominent in the Brethren column is the Mack seal, which is composed of three elements. The first, a cross, can represent the ecumenical Christian background which is held in common by the Brethren, Anabaptists, Radical Pietists, and indeed all the groups that make up the ecclesiological spectrum. In our effort to portray what is distinctive about Brethrenism (and sectarianism) it would be unfortunate were we to lose sight of its basic orientation toward the faith that is common to all Christians. Similarly, this cross could he taken as emblematic of the solid Protestant orthodoxy which the founding Brethren had inherited. All of the first generation were reared and educated in the state churches, and their defection from these did in no way mark a renunciation of all they had received there.11

The other two elements of the seal, the heart and the fruit, can be used to symbolize the distinctive emphases of Radical Pietism and Anabaptism respectively. The heart is most appropriate as a visual sign for the Radical Pietist ideology. Similarly, its motto could have been “Love Jesus”; its goal, the line from a hymn of English Pietism: “O, for a closer walk with God.” The focus of faith is inner experience. The quotation from Mack’s mentor, the Radical Pietist leader Hochmann, is an eloquent summary of the position which, above all, stressed the affective aspects of the Christian life.

On the opposite side of the chart, the fruit of the vine (Jn. 15:1-11) is a visual symbol of Anabaptism. The motto is: “Obey Jesus.” The goal is restitution of the primitive Christian life and church order, the Ekklesia. And the focus of the ideology is upon outward obedience, or fruit bearing. Notice how the quotation from Menno revolves around “commandments,” “a pious, penitent life as the scriptures teach,” “power and works,” and “fruit”–the effective aspects of the Christian life.

The Brethren symbol includes both the heart and the fruit. Take away either of these components and it is no longer Brethrenism that is symbolized. Let either gain the ascendancy and the picture of Brethrenism is correspondingly distorted.

ANABAPTISTS	BRETHREN	RADICAL PIETISTS
Motto: “Obey Jesus.” Restitution of the elarly Christian life and church order. (Outward obedience.)	That which the Holy Spirit ordained for the faithful was written outwardly. All believers are united in it, for the Holy Spirit teaches them inwardly just as the Scriptures teach them outwardly…. Therefore, when a believing person whose inner ears are opened reads the Holy Scriptures outwardly, he will hear as the Lord Jesus intends his teaching to be understood. he hears that which the apostles want to express in their writings. He will also be impelled, through his inner hearing, to true obedience which makes him obey even in outward matters. Outwardly, he reads the Scriptures in faith and hears the inner word of life which gives him strength and power to follow Jesus. (Alexander Mack)	Motto: “Love Jesus.””O, for a closer walk with God.” (inner experience.)
What does it profit to speak much of Christ and his word, if we do not believe in him, and refuse to obey his commandments? Again I say, awake and tear the accursed unbelief with its unrighteousness from your hearts, and commence a pious, penitent life as the Scriptures teach…. We are referring to a penitence posessed of power and works, such as John the Baptist taught saying: Bear fruit that befits repentance. (Menno Simons)		o sum up, my feeling is briefly aimed therein that one must seek Jesus in one’s heart as the only true foundation of salvation and the heart must be completely purified through the true living faith in Jesus. In case it is wished to perform in true singleness of heart also those outward actions which the first Christians did in addition ot these inner unmovable bases, I cannot consider this a mortal sin, if one only remains in impartial love toward those who cannot feel in their minds this necessity for thoese otuward acts. The freedom of Christ suffers neither force nor laws. (E. C. Hochmann)
Some felt powerfully drawn to seek again the footsteps of the first Christians. They passionately yearned to avail themselves in faith of the ordained testimonies of Jesus Christ according to their right value. At the same time, it was emphatically opened to them in their hearts how necessary is obedience in faith if a soul wishes to be saved (the origin of the Church of the Brethren as described by Alexander Mack, Jr.).

Notice in the quotation from Mack’s Rights and Ordinances how inner experience and outward obedience appear together. The two are not synthesized, nor is the combination an eclectic one; they are held in creative tension. And as shall appear subsequently, it is nothing short of amazing how often and in regard to how many different doctrines and practices eighteenth century Brethren writers followed this pattern, playing off inner experience against outward obedience and then outward obedience against inner experience.

Notice, also, the more subtle expression of the dialectic as it appears at the bottom of the chart in the younger Mack’s description of how the church was founded, the earliest such written account. “Felt powerfully drawn,” “passionately yearned,” and “opened to them in their hearts” are all Radical Pietist phrases describing inner experience. And yet without exception these phrases are coupled to an Anabaptist emphasis on outward obedience: “the footsteps of the first Christians,” “ordained testimonies of Jesus Christ,” “obedience in faith.”

When this dialectic operated as it should, the two emphases checked and balanced each other. When the Radical Pietist tendency would slide off into subjectivism, private inspiration, mysticism, enthusiasm, or vaporous spiritualism, it was pulled up short by the demand for concrete, outward obedience to an objective scriptural norm. Conversely, when the Anabaptist tendency would slide off into formalism, legalism, biblical literalism, or works-righteousness, it was checked by the reminder that faith is essentially a work of God in the heart of the individual believer, an intensely personal relationship rather than a legal one. Thus, within Brethrenism, Anabaptist influences disciplined Pietism at the same time that Pietist influences inspired Anabaptism.12

An understanding of this dialectic also makes it rather easy to explain what happened to the Brethren in the early nineteenth century when they exchanged their pure, primitive sectarianism for something less attractive. It is not easy to live in a dialectic relationship where nothing is fastened down once for all, not easy to keep one’s balance in a dynamic situation which means that one continually must be regaining one’s balance, and not easy to swim and keep swimming in seventy thousand fathoms of water (as S.K. would put it).

After a hundred years the Brethren got tired. Their recourse was not to abandon their previous beliefs and practices but to try to stabilize the situation which hitherto had been dialectical. Legalistic biblicism and microscopically detailed legislation by the Annual Meeting were used to guy into place the inherited ideology. But although this did have the effect of preserving the inheritance, it killed it in the process. Once the dialectic movement was halted, all the earlier dynamic of the faith was gone as well.

This phase could not last long among the Brethren, however; it was too contradictory to their original genius. By the middle of the century the tight, legalistic authoritarianism showed signs of collapse, and the next seventy-five years witnessed a great transformation in the direction of freedom and openness. But the modern Church of the Brethren that was born out of that reaction hardly was a resurgence of eighteenth century sectarianism. Although certain emphases and characteristics have persisted, today’s church has taken its place as a common and respected member of the American “denominational” milieu, i.e. neither church nor sect in the classic sense.

At this point we resume our survey of the eighteenth century history.

Following the Schwarzenau baptism of 1708 the church proceeded to expand and grow at several points in western Germany-invariably at places where Radical Pietism already had been active. By and large the Brethren recruited their membership out of separatist ranks rather than directly out of the churches. But as the sect grew, so grew opposition from the radicals to the left and persecution from both church and state on the right. In 1719, motivated by a desire both for religious freedom and economic betterment, a group of about twenty Brethren families, under the leadership of Peter Becker (1687-1758), migrated from Krefeld to Pennsylvania. They settled in and around Germantown, a suburb of Philadelphia which earlier had been settled by Mennonite emigrants from Krefeld.

The next year, 1720, the bulk of the Schwarzenau group, some forty families, under the leadership of Alexander Mack, emigrated to Surhuisterveen in Holland, another Mennonite settlement. They stayed until 1729 before moving once more to join their brethren in Pennsylvania. The emigration of a few individual families continued for several more years, and by the 1730’s the church was transplanted to the New World, the European remnant being left to die out very shortly.

The Brethren always have been better at doing than at writing, but the literature necessary for an ideological study is particularly scant for the European period. The writings of Alexander Mack consists of two brief but crucial apologetic tracts directed against the separatists (1713 and 1715), a few hymns, letters, and notes. Mack died in 1735, after only six years in the New World, and there is virtually no material from this part of his career. Otherwise from Europe there come only a few hymns and letters, and a lengthy history of the imprisonment of the so-called Solingen Brethren, six members from Solingen who were cruelly incarcerated for almost four years as a consequence of having submitted to rebaptism. These are the literary remains of the European phase of Brethren origins.13

In America, after the first party of Brethren arrived with Peter Becker in 1719, there was a quiescent period of some four years while the immigrants were getting themselves located and established. Then in 1723-1724 came an awakening that initiated the spread of the church from the mother congregation at Germantown through the hinterlands of the Pennsylvania-German country. By the end of the century there were congregations (almost exclusively rural) through much of Pennsylvania (one in New Jersey) and south into Maryland, Virginia, and what is now West Virginia.

When Mack arrived in 1729, he took over the leadership of the church from Peter Becker, although Becker remained active and succeeded Mack again upon his death in 1735. However, in the very spread of the church had been planted the seeds of trouble, namely the Ephrata movement. Conrad Beissel (1690-1768) was a vagrant soul who during his youth in Germany had dallied with several of the Radical Pietist groups and who, throughout his career, painted a very representative picture of the more esoteric type of “spiritual religion” both separatist and cultic. Upon arriving in America he spent a year in Germantown as an apprentice in Peter Becker’s weaving shop. He then went out into the Conestoga country to live as a hermit. It was there that Becker and the other Germantown Brethren met him while on their missionary journey of 1724. They made enough converts in the area to warrant the organization of a separate congregation. Beissel–who earlier had tried baptizing himself in private–surprisingly submitted himself to the Brethren for baptism and was chosen as minister of the group.

Within four short years Beissel had split his congregation, and in 1728 he underwent and performed upon his followers an “unbaptizing immersion” through which the Brethren were “given back” their baptism. Another four years saw the Beisselites founding the famous Ephrata community, a Protestant (or at least non-Catholic) monastery in which the seventh day was observed, celibacy enforced, habits worn, visions and ecstasy enjoyed, and Father Friedsam (he whom the Brethren had lately trusted as Brother Conrad) as much as worshiped.

During the late 1730’s (after Mack’s death) a “spiritual awakening” hit the Brethren full force, and Beissel reaped the harvest. A number of prominent Brethren went to Ephrata, and some leading families were split as wives or children went on their own. Two of Alexander Mack’s sons went; one, we shall see, returned.

Of course, the Ephrata community should not be understood as a branch of the Brethren, nor should the two groups be confused, as often has happened. The Beisselites must be considered as a defection, their true significance being as a symbol of the tension and attraction that Radical Pietism still held for the Brethren who had broken out of it a generation before. When, in the pages that follow, we are developing the Brethren ideology we will not cite the writings of Beisselites or of those who were on the way to becoming such.

The “first generation” authors, then, include: Alexander Mack, whose works we have already described; and Peter Becker, who has left us only a hymn or two.14 John Naas (1670-1741), a prominent leader in Germany who did not come to America until 1733 and then settled in New Jersey and organized the congregation there, has also given us a few hymns plus an interesting account of his transatlantic crossing.14

Michael Frantz (1687-1748) was of the first-generation age group and European-born although an American convert. After Beissel wrecked the Conestoga congregation, the care of the remnant reverted to the nonresident Peter Becker. On a visit in 1734 he baptized Frantz and put him in charge of the congregation on a trial basis. Becker had learned caution about giving the Conestogans into the hands of a new convert; Frantz was advanced to full authority the next year. Frantz’s first act in 1734 was to lay a fence rail on the floor of the barn in which the group met, invite those who accepted his leadership to stand on the right side of it with him and those who chose Beissel’s leadership to stand on the left. He had a very successful ministry until his death in 1748. In 1770, the Sauer Press published a collection of his works, both poetry and prose, which is one of the very valuable sources of eighteenth century Brethren thought.

One name that most Brethren histories would include among the first-generation authors is here conspicuous by its absence; this is Christopher Sauer (I695-1758),15 founder of the famous printing establishment of Germantown, at least for a time the largest in America. Sauer may well have been the most influential German-American of the colonial period. The periodicals, pamphlets, and books from his press were certainly the major information media and opinion molders of the entire Pennsylvania-German community. As a contemporary and competitor of Ben Franklin, Sauer was also in many respects his counterpart among the Germans. And although it has been recognized that there were problems, historians have assumed that Sauer was a Dunker. There is not the slightest doubt but that he was intimately connected with the Brethren. Himself a separatist, he knew them in Schwarzenau and in fact bought Mack’s house when the Brethren went to Holland. In this country Saner lived among the Brethren, attended their services, built his Germantown home so that it could be used as a Brethren meeting house, allowed, if not encouraged, his son to join the church when he was sixteen, the normal age for baptism. Nevertheless, recent scholarship has made it very problematical that Sauer himself ever submitted to baptism and thus attained full church membership; as much as can be said about him with certainty is that he was a Pietist separatist with some strong affinities (but also some separatistic criticisms) for the Brethren.16

Although no great risk would be run in using Sauer’s works as a source of eighteenth century Brethren thought, and although these comparatively voluminous materials could prove quite useful, we have chosen the path of scholarly caution; Christopher Sauer will not be cited in the pages that follow.

In 1742 was held the sect’s first Annual Meeting, a gathering that since has taken place virtually without interruption down to the present day. It was called to formulate the church’s response to the “ecumenical movement” of Count Zinzendorf; the Brethren had cooperated in Zinzendorf’s synods until they came to suspect that the Count’s intention was to capture all the Pennsylvania-German sectaries for Moravianism.

During the eighteenth century the Annual Meeting was not constituted by formal representation from the congregations but simply by whatever Brethren–particularly ministers–could be in attendance. The ministry itself was not a very formal office. In the earliest period the leaders would admit no title but “teacher” (Lehrer); they were at pains to avoid anything smacking of churchly ecclesiasticism. In time a three-degree ministry was developed:

deacons, who were hardly clerical figures at all, their responsibility being to care for the poor, visit the afflicted, etc.;
exhorters, i.e. preachers; and
elders (bishops), who carried the charge of a given congregation.

All of these were called by the congregation, out of the congregation, at the discretion of the congregation; none were salaried, none were formally educated, none were sacerdotally set apart.

And the Annual Meeting simply gave structure to the form of government that had been implicit from the beginning. Each congregation had great freedom in managing its own affairs, but the brotherhood-as a brotherhood, not as an overhead governing body-was the constituent entity of the church. Thus the congregations, as well as the individual members, were of a “family,” which family stood by to act when help was called for (and that either “asked for” or “obviously necessary”). The minutes of the Annual Meetings will prove very valuable for our purposes, the only difficulty being that they are rather incomplete through the eighteenth century and almost nonexistent before the Revolutionary War.

As much of the history of the latter half of the century as we need consider will be forthcoming as we introduce the men whose writings form our source material. The first of the “second generation” authors was John Price (c. 1702-c. 1724), himself a minister and the son of a minister who was a member of Peter Becker’s original immigrant party.17 A brief collection of Price’s hymns was published in 1753.

The two towering figures of the second generation are Alexander Mack, Jr. (1712-1803), and Christopher Saner, Jr. (1721-1784). Mack Junior was the older of the two and the Brethren writer of the eighteenth century. Born in Schwarzenau, baptized in Holland, “prodigalized” at Ephrata, shortly before 1748 he rejected Beissel and returned to Germantown. There in 1748 he and Sauer Junior were given joint oversight of the congregation, in which they proceeded to labor as “brothers” beyond the call of even Brethren duty. Mack’s steady and loving hand guided the church until his death in 1803, during which half-century it also produced several important tracts, a considerable amount of poetry,18 and an astonishing amount of correspondence–all of which will be used extensively in the pages that follow.18

One of Mack Junior’s letters constitutes an invitation for a second attempt at epitomizing the Brethren, this time not in terms of their historical genesis but in search of the core principles that establish Brethrenism as an identifiable ideology. We are suggesting that this core is epistemology, the manner in which the Brethren went about attaining religious truth. Mack’s letter is not a disquisition on epistemology–that would be the farthest thing from the Brethren mentality–but a concrete demonstration of the epistemology in action.

We present excerpts from the letter, interspersing within them a running commentary; our analysis and conclusions then follow. The document, an open letter to the brotherhood, first was printed as an appendix to the 1799 edition of his father’s Rights and Ordinances published by Samuel Sauer.19 Whether this was a way of preserving what actually was an earlier letter, we do not know.

Inasmuch as we have understood that some brethren have difficulties with regard to feetwashing [Since its inception the church had interpreted Jn. 13:1-17 as a positive command and had practiced feetwashing as a part of its agape meal and communion service.], which Jesus has commanded to his disciples as if it had been performed between the supper and the breaking of bread. And because they think it not rightly done if the feet are washed before the meal, we felt moved in sincere love to give the reasons why we wash feet before the meal. At the same time, we would say that it is our belief and view that if a brother or any other person can in love and moderation instruct us according to the word of the Lord more fully and otherwise than is here pointed out, we would be ready to accept it not only in this point of feetwashing but in other matters as well. And we would not at all rest upon long usage but would let the word of the Lord be our only rule and guide.

[There follows a detailed analysis of the pertinent biblical materials. Major attention is given to Jn. 13:2, the words to the effect that “during supper” Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. The conclusion is that in the original Greek the phrase translated “during supper” actually meant “after the supper was ready.”]

Now these other evangelists say nothing at all about feet-washing, and on the other hand, John writes nothing about the institution of breaking bread. Therefore, scripture must be understood and looked upon with a spiritual eye of love and….

Such [i.e. dogmatism and disputation] ought not to he the manner and mind of the true lovers of wisdom. But true wisdom and her lovers must be minded as James teaches and says, “But the wisdom from above is in the first place pure; and then peace-loving, considerate, and open to reason (Jas. 3:17).”

But commonly it is the case that when a person receives some knowledge in selfishness and maintains it in self-assertiveness, he is not willing to be instructed. He will dispute in his own wisdom about the shell and drop the kernel. Therefore, dear brethren, let us all be wise; and especially concerning the feetwashing let us be careful how we are to conduct ourselves, in love, peace, and humility submitting to one another.

For Christ indeed has given no particular command about the time at which it should he performed, whether before or after the meal. But he has commanded that it should be done–and also that we should love one another. Christ has not said that his disciples should be known by their washing of feet or their breaking of bread, but he did say, ‘Love one another; as I have loved you, so you are to love one another. If there is this love among you, then all will know that you are my disciples.”…

Therefore, it is of the utmost necessity to maintain love and peace and to determine to pray to our dear Lord for still more wisdom. For I can say in truth and from experience that in the church’s beginning we washed one another’s feet after the meal and after the breaking of bread–yet accompanied by a blessing and an awakening of love. Afterward, we came to a better understanding and washed feet after the meal but before the breaking of bread–also with a blessing. Then, when Reitz published an edition of the New Testament in the original Greek and a brother came among us who understood that language, he pointed out to us how Jesus properly washed feet before the meal, and we in single-heartedness have done it ever since and on each occasion before the meal…. [How many times have churches deliberately revised their “liturgical practice” on the basis of new light that has come through biblical scholarship?]

“Yet I say this, if I should come into a congregation that was holding a love feast, and if the leaders of that congregation did not yet understand it otherwise but that the feetwashing should come after the meal, I would participate with them in great simplicity and love. Even so, I would lay my views before them according to the scriptures and wait in love and have patience with them until they could see it so likewise. [A dialectic is in operation here: The preservation of Gemeinschaft is of supreme value; however, uniformity, or unanimity, in the truth is also of high value. The pressure toward unanimity dare not be allowed to destroy Gemeinschaft, but neither dare the joys of Gemeinschaft be allowed to stifle the search for concord. And it is Mack’s faith that if this dialectical balance be patiently maintained, eventually the Spirit can and will bring about unanimity–while in the process enhancing rather than destroying Gemeinschaft.]

Therefore, the scriptures call for spiritual eyes, mind, and understanding. Otherwise, through literalistic interpretation, if a person without true illumination were to try to hold fast to the letter in one place, he would have to disregard and act contrary to it in another place, and thus we would have nothing but trouble and division. [The very nature of the scriptures makes biblicism impractical; thus, literalism is as impossible as it is illegitimate, an obstruction to the Gemeinschaft–creating work of the Holy Spirit.]

Therefore, dear brethren, let us watch and be careful. And above all, preserve love, for then we will preserve light. [This sentence could well be taken as the motto of eighteenth century Brethrenism; the preservation of Gemeinschaft is the precondition for the reception and preservation of religious truth.] For the Spirit of Truth testifies in 1 Jn. 2:10, “Only the man who loves his brother dwells in light: there is nothing to make him stumble.” Then our good God, who is love purely and impartially, can and will add by degrees whatever may be lacking in this or that knowledge of truth. [Much more important than having the truth is being in position to receive the truth; thus the life of the church always must be open-ended toward God.]

I now conclude, again begging all my brethren to read and consider this in love and with a calm spirit. Thus I am your weak brother,

ALEXANDER MACK, JR.20

The epistemology derived from this letter can be described in eleven basic principles. Most of these are documented by the letter itself; any that are not will become documented in the course of succeeding chapters.

The ultimate source and standard of all Christian truth is the mind of Christ; he is the supreme revelation and indeed the very presence of God himself.
The mind of Christ is given its authoritative definition and proclamation through the pages of the New Testament.
The only reliable interpreter of the New Testament is the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit that inspired its writing in the first place.
The best qualified receptor for Spirit-revealed truth is the Christian Gemeinde.
Such a Gemeinde must receive truth as a gift of God’s grace rather than possess it in pride as something of its own achievement. The desire to push through to and grasp the truth too quickly destroys Gemeinschaft and thus cuts the group off from the source of truth.
Such a Gemeinde, convinced that truth is a growing, living, personal thing and that no group ever has the “last word,” must always be open and eager for new leading rather than complacent in knowledge already attained.
Such a Gemeinde must come to the scriptures having previously made the commitment to obey and follow as literally and completely as possible whatever leading may be discovered therein.
Such a Gemeinde, above all, must preserve the love for one another without which any religious insight, no matter how correct it may be technically, loses its truth.
Such a Gemeinde will respect and maintain brotherhood with all sincere seekers of the truth, although at the same time they will see it as their Christian duty to point out what they feel to be the errors in the other’s thinking.
Such a Gemeinde will welcome all the help that scholarship and research can bring to the study of scripture, even though scholarship alone will not be recognized as the final authority.
Such a Gemeinde will renounce all methods of literalistic, mechanical, dead-letter interpretation which overlook the dynamic, two-way aspect of revelation.

At this point we pick up and continue our historical survey with Mack Junior’s closest friend and colleague. Sauer Junior (whose mother spent fourteen years at Ephrata) followed his father in the printing trade, operating the bindery and overseeing the production of English publications21 until Sauer Senior’s death in 1758, at which time he took over the entire establishment. His proprietorship was just as outstanding and influential as his father’s had been. Although it is not easy to identify the materials Sauer wrote from within those he published, we do have some articles, poetry, and correspondence from his pen.21

Sauer’s experience during the Revolution is the most noteworthy instance of persecution against the Brethren but at the same time is representative of the pressures encountered by the church as a whole. The Brethren found themselves out of step with the Revolution on at least three counts. In the first place, and primarily, their nonresistant convictions prohibited them from joining the army or voluntarily participating in the war effort. In the second place, their objection to the swearing of oaths hampered them in declaring allegiance to the new government. In the third place, a condition for their having entered the country originally was a pledge of fealty to the British crown, and the Brethren were not ones easily to renounce their solemn word. Sauer labored under the additional handicap that his sons were active loyalists.

In 1778 Continental soldiers roused Sauer from his bed in the middle of the night, stripped him, mistreated him, and drove him on a forced march to a military prison where he spent almost a month before General Muhlenberg interceded with General Washington and obtained his release. Yet later the government, without granting him so much as a hearing, proceeded to confiscate and sell all of his property and effects and to defame him as a traitor. Sauer, a broken man, lived for a time on charity and died in 1784 poverty-stricken. It is understandable that in some respects the Revolutionary War marked the beginning of a Brethren “flight to the wilderness.”

We have yet to meet two authors whose work came just at the close of the century, Jacob Stoll (1731-1822) and Christian Longenecker (1731-1808). The two, both born the same year, both second-generation Brethren, grew up together in the Conestoga congregation, the church of Beissel and Frantz (though they proved to be heirs of Frantz rather than Beissel). Conestoga was the center from which the brotherhood grew; Germantown more a center of leadership Both Stoll and Longenecker were called to the ministry. In 1772 the old congregation was divided into three new ones; Stoll lived in what continued to be Conestoga territory and in time became elder of that congregation; Longenecker lived in the White Oak territory and became elder of that congregation.

In 1806 Stoll published a sizable volume of poetry–probably the best of the period. Longenecker became involved in an unfortunate church fight and was disciplined by Annual Meeting on several occasions. He retained his office, however; and the fact that the quarrel was not doctrinal in character means that the theological tract he published in 1806 still can be used as an accurate reflection of eighteenth century Brethren thought.

As a final attempt at epitomizing the Brethren we record the account made by one who observed them firsthand. The following is by Morgan Edwards, the great colonial Baptist historian. He begins the description by noting a difficulty that must plague all such efforts:

It is very hard to give a true account of the principles of these Tunkers as they have not published any system or creed….

They are general baptists in the sense which that phrase bears in Great Britain; but not Arians nor Socinians, as most of their brethren in Holland are. General redemption they certainly hold; and, withal, general salvation; which tenets though wrong are consistent.

They use great plainness of language and dress, like the Quakers; and like them will never swear nor fight. They will not go to law; nor take interest for the money they lend. They commonly wear their beards; and keep the first day Sabbath, except one congregation [Edwards, as so many others, did not distinguish Ephrata]. They have the Lord’s Supper with its ancient attendants of love feast, washing feet, kiss of charity, and right-hand of fellowship. They anoint the sick with oil for recovery, and use the trifle immersion, with laying on of hands and prayer, even while the person baptized is in the water; which may easily be done as the party kneels down to be baptized, and continues in that position till both prayer and imposition of hands be performed…. Every brother is allowed to stand up in the congregation to speak in a way of exhortation and expounding, and when by that means they find a man eminent for knowledge and aptness to teach, they choose him to be a minister, and ordain him with imposition of hands, attending with fasting and prayer, and giving the right hand of fellowship. They also have deacons; and ancient widows for deaconesses; and exhorters who are licensed to use their gifts statedly.

They pay not their ministers unless it be in the way of presents; though they admit their right to pay; neither do the ministers assert the right; esteeming it more blessed to give than to receive. Their acquaintance with the Bible is admirable. In a word they are meek and pious Christians; and have justly acquired the character of the Harmless Tunkers.22

This much background, we trust, has given the reader not only “a knowledge of the Brethren” but also something of “a feel for sectarianism as a whole.” But as we come now to compare the religious thought of Søren Kierkegaard with that of these Brethren sectaries the first impression must be that it simply cannot be done; they lived in different worlds. But a closer and more thoughtful analysis will indicate that their so very apparent differences are not really fundamental, that beneath these conspicuous but deceptive divergencies there is a hard core of essential agreement.

The least disturbing of the distances between them is the ocean of water that separates the Old World from the New and the century of time that separates the Dunkers from the Dane. This difference in space and time and the consequent difference of historical environment have their effects, to be sure, but they form no unbridgeable chasm. The greater gap comes in their qualities of mind and thought. By natural endowment S.K. was an authentic genius, one of the world’s truly great intellects; none of the Brethren could begin to approach him in this regard. The breadth of S.K.’s interests, the number of fields in which he could and did operate with sheer brilliance, is astounding. An entire century of Brethren thought covers but one small segment of that about which the one man S.K. wrote definitively during a ten-year career. S.K. was a scholar and student, eminently educated, with a world of knowledge at his fingertips. Not a single Dunker so much as attended college. S.K. was highly cultured, a connoisseur and one who could display immense sophistication in the arts, in philosophy, in “gracious living.” This was a world the Brethren knew not of–and what little they did know of it, they cared not for.

None of this is to imply that the Brethren were illiterate peasants; that suggestion is far from the truth. Although not strong in formal education, they were intelligent, interested laymen. If Christopher Sauer, Jr., read but a fraction of the material he published, he was very well read for his day and age. Alexander Mack, Jr., in wrestling with exegetical problems of biblical interpretation, mentioned that he had compared the translation in four different languages, talked with a person who could read Greek, and consulted various authorities23 [see above.] Most of the Brethren writings reflect at least some awareness of the broader world of learning and events. Nonetheless, the educational-cultural distance between the Brethren (and for that matter, most sectaries) and S.K. was immense. It might be pointed out that not all men of the “church” are of S.K.’s class either, but in any case it is true that the churches have put more of a premium on these qualities than the sectaries ever did.

But how little this immense distance actually amounts to becomes apparent once we discover the evaluation in which S.K. held his own gifts and advantages. We shall have occasion in a later chapter to give detailed attention to S.K.’s thought regarding the Christian and “the world”; here we need note only that in Christian history but few men of S.K.’s caliber have been able to match him in the degree to which he realized the Pauline precept of regarding “everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus as my Lord” (Phil. 3:8). S.K. knew and taught that the movement into Christianity is away from the interesting, the sophisticated, the multifarious, toward the attainment of greater and greater simplicity (see his words quoted above). S.K. was a scintillating aesthete, but his aesthetic powers were dedicated to the dethronement of aesthetics. S.K. was a brilliant philosopher, but his philosophic powers were dedicated to the dethronement of philosophy. S.K. was a great thinker, but his rational powers were dedicated to the dethronement of reason. S.K., in very truth, used his gifts against themselves in the interests of attaining Christian simplicity.

And S.K. knew and taught, early and late, that his endowments were worth nothing, that people like the meek, pious, harmless Dunkers might have the same simplicity he had had to attain and might have it without tracing the tortuous Kierkegaardian path through aesthetics or philosophy. Early, in his very first Edifying Discourse (1843), he said:

And yet every man can say it [i.e. “I went to God; He became my schoolmaster.”], dares to say it, can say it in truth, and if he does not say it in truth, then it is not because the thought is not true, but because he distorts it. Every man dares say it. Whether his forehead was flattened almost like a beast’s or arched more proudly than the heavens; [etc.]–it has nothing to do with the matter, my hearer, absolutely nothing. Every man dares say it when he has faith; for this is precisely the glory of faith. 24

And late, toward the close of his authorship, he said:

I cannot abandon the thought that every man, absolutely every man, however simple he is, however much he may suffer, can nevertheless grasp the highest, namely religion, I cannot forget that. If that is not so, then Christianity is really nonsense. To me it is frightful to see the thoughtlessness with which philosophers and the like make use of the difference-categories such as genius, talent, etc., in religion. They do not suspect that in that case religion is finished and done with. I have only one consolation, the blessed consolation of knowing something which can bring comfort, and blessedly comfort every man, absolutely every man. Take away this comfort and I can’t be bothered to live. 25

But he went even farther. Not only is this simplicity no handicap to the Christian life; it is a positive advantage.

Every man has a basic primitive disposition (for primitiveness is the possibility of “spirit”). God knows this best, for it is he who has created it. All earthly, temporal, worldly cleverness tends to destroy its own primitiveness. Christianity aims at following it. Destroy your own primitiveness, and in all probability you will get through the world well, perhaps even be a success–but eternity will denounce you. Follow your primitiveness, and you will fail in the temporal world; but eternity will accept you.”26

Some people may be offended to have S.K. compared to the Brethren sectaries; S.K. himself would not be.

There are other significant contrasts between S.K. and the Brethren that are of an entirely different character. If a sectary, S.K. appears at a different point on the “sectarian cycle” than do the Brethren. The main thrust of S.K.’s polemic is directed, of course, against the church; his role is that of critic, discovering and disclosing the flaws of Christendom. Surprisingly, there is but very little of comparable material in the Brethren literature–and obviously not because the Brethren were any happier with churchly ways than was S.K. But the Brethren had fought that battle long past, long even before they became Brethren and started to create a literature. By the time we locate them, they had, as it were, shaken the dust of the church from their feet-nothing was to be gained (or even hoped for) by fulminating against it.

Conversely, a major interest of the Brethren writers does not appear the same way in S.K. They, bearing responsibility for the operation and continuance of an actual organization, of necessity had to give attention to such practical matters as mode of baptism and communion, church organization and government, the ministry, discipline. But for S.K. these things were not central, nor should they have been; his approach was proper for his situation, that of the Brethren for theirs. But although the contrast is a real and noticeable one, it marks only a difference in phase of the same sectarian development and not a difference in basic religious orientation.

A similar point of contrast lies in the fact that S.K.’s polemic was directed against the church on the right, and thus its thrust was in the direction of less rigidity, less structure, less conformity, less overhead. The polemic of the Brethren, on the other hand, was directed primarily against the separatists on their left, thus pulling in the direction of greater form, greater order, and greater discipline. But again the contrast is not really basic; the same dialectic is operative in both cases, and although working in from opposite directions, S.K. and the Brethren meet at a common center.

So much for the divergencies that are more visible than real. We must say a word about the sort of affinities for which we are to look. S.K. and the Brethren had in common a great body of beliefs that represent nothing more or less than their mutual Protestant-Christian heritage; their churchly opponents as well would hold all these in common with them. Thus one could demonstrate, say, that both S.K. and the Brethren believed in the existence of God, the deity of Christ, the reality of the atonement, etc.–but there would be no point in doing so. We shall simply assume what is clearly the case, that both S.K. and the Brethren were, in their basic doctrinal orientation, orthodox, evangelical Protestants–unless there appears evidence to indicate otherwise.

Thus although this doctrinal orthodoxy is the necessary background against which our study takes place, we are interested primarily in those affinities in which the Dunkers and the Dane agreed against “churchly” thought, or where they emphasized points to which the churches customarily gave but passing attention. Affinities of this sort are the ones that will establish S.K.’s sectarian perspective. And we should be reminded again that the use of the Brethren in this comparison is not to demonstrate any sort of special relationship between them and S.K.; our interest, rather, is in relating S.K. to the sectarian tradition as a whole, of which the Brethren have been selected merely as an arbitrary representative.

But as we contemplate our motif comparison we face an insoluble problem; whatever we do will be wrong; will be, in effect, to say something false about the parties we are comparing. For we are forced to make a list of their beliefs, and for sheer convenience of treatment the list must follow at least some sort of logical order and organization. But to do this inevitably is to impose a pattern, a system, a “theological” perspective which is not true to the sources. Both S.K. and the Brethren deliberately refrained from compiling anything like a summary or prospectus of their faith, anything remotely resembling a dogmatic definition or creed. Any such would have been false to their sectarian understanding of faith as free, existential encounter between living men and a living God. Sectarian literature properly is written as “occasional literature, as specific insights into specific concerns in specific situations. But “the faith once delivered …”? Of course! But just as surely the faith which must be delivered anew to Søren Kierkegaard, to Alexander Mack, and to you And any attempt to give such faith a comprehensive definition, a completed form, is not a true work of faith.

This is not at all to suggest, however, that sectarian faith is without positive and enduring content, or that it is entirely random, lacking all consistency and structure. The thought of both S.K. and the Brethren does display quite distinctive and identifiable pattern, but it is free rather than fixed pattern. It can be likened to a Chinese-checker board (a geometrical network of points, each of which is connected to its neighbor through the interstices) or to a familiar style of octagonal tile flooring. Pattern enough is here, but the pattern can be read in any number of ways. One can take a particular point as a center and see a circumference of other points radiating from it, although he must realize that it would be just as accurate to take one of the circumferential points as the center with what had been the center now on the circumference. The possibilities are endless. This is free pattern, incorporating that which is regular and stable but defying fixed interpretation or description.

With a Chinese-checker board no problem exists; the whole is presented simultaneously, and the viewer is free to discover patterns to his heart’s content. But our comparison can be constructed only paragraph by successive paragraph; we necessarily must commit ourselves to one fixed pattern and thus inevitably suggest that this is the way it was with S.K. The only help is constantly to keep in mind that the thought of both the Dunkers and the Dane was much more spontaneous, adaptable, and alive than our dissection of it can indicate.

We stand, then, ready to begin the comparison of motifs–and in fact (all unbeknown to ourselves) already have made that beginning, for the lack of fixed system in S.K.’s thought properly can be understood as our first major correlation between the religious perspective of Kierkegaard and that of the Brethren sectaries.

We have made this survey of S.K.’s religious options not so much to close some possibilities as to open one, namely, Classic Protestant Sectarianism. To that investigation we now proceed.

In Dru’s and in Rohde’s selections from Kierkegaard’s journals, the number identifies an entry rather than a page; the date following is that of the particular entry.

1. Papirer, 10:4:A:73 (1851) [my trans.–V.E.].

2. The definitive history of the church’s origin and earliest, European phase (to c. 1730) is Donald F. Durnbaugh’s Brethren Beginnings: The Origins of the Church of the Brethren in Early Eighteenth-Century Europe, hereafter referred to as Beginnings (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Un. of Pennsylvania, 1960). Much of the same information, though in a quite different format, has been published by Durnbaugh in European Origins of the Brethren, hereafter referred to as Origins (Elgin, Ill. Brethren Press, 1958); this is a source book reproducing many of the primary documents from which Durnbaugh wrote his dissertation.

There is no such adequate source covering the American phase of Brethren history through the eighteenth century. The greatest amount of factual material is preserved in the first and thus “classic” Brethren history, namely, Martin Grove Brumbaugh’s A History of the German Baptist Brethren in Europe and America (Mt. Morris, Ill.: Brethren Publishing House, 1899). Brumbaugh had access to more primary source material than ever has been available since, and to this degree his work is irreplaceable–though Durnbaugh must take precedence in every respect as regards the European period. However, Brumbaugh’s book is not the best sort of history writing: it is not well organized; it is very inadequately documented; it abounds in factual errors and unwarranted conclusions. But although it must be used with caution, nothing has appeared to succeed it.

Floyd E. Mallott’s Studies in Brethren History (Elgin, Ill.: Brethren Publishing House, 1954) is a more recent and more scholarly treatment, but because it covers almost 250 years of history in comparatively brief compass, it cannot afford nearly as much information regarding the eighteenth century as does Brumbaugh.

A most valuable resource for the study of Brethren history is the bibliography compiled by Donald Durnbaugh and Lawrence Shultz, an attempt to construct an exhaustive listing of books and pamphlets written by Brethren authors from the origin of the church until 1963. It is found in Brethren Life and Thought 9, 1-2 (combined) and 11, 2.

3. See Durnbaugh, Origins, 14, and Durnbaugh, Beginnings, 1.

4. The best account of Mack’s background is the sketch by Hermann Brunn, “Alezander Mack, The Founder, 1679-I735,” in Schwaraenau, Yesterday and Today, ed. Lawrence W. Shultz (published by the editor, 1954), 37ff.

5. A brief account of the Pietist movement is given in Durnbaugh, Origins, 32-34, and Durnbaugh, Beginnings, 1-4, but the best full length treatment is Dale W. Brown’s The Problem of Subjectivism in Pietism (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern Un., 1962). Brown provides a thoroughgoing description of Pietism in the process of analyzing the problem of its subjectivism.

6. Durnbaugh, Origins, also includes a brief account of Radical Pietism, pp.35-36; Beginnings gives a longer sketch, pp. 4ff.; but the full-length treatment that establishes the concept and gives it definitive analysis is C. David Ensign’s Radical German Pietism (c. 1675-c. 1760) (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Boston Un., 1955).

7. In the German-Pietist-Brethren milieu, “separatism” is the term used for a personal Christianity practiced apart from any organized church. We avoided the term in previous chapters and coined the phrase “spiritual atomism” because, of course, in British usage “separatism” identifies an entirely different phenomenon. However, in discussing the Brethren we will revert to the term “separatism,” which is the proper one in this context.

8. A brief account of Hochmann appears in Durnbaugh’s, Beginnings, 10-12; the definitive biography is Heinz Renkewitz’s Hochmann von Hochenau (Breslau, 1935).

9. Lots were cast to determine who should baptize Mack, who then proceeded to baptize the other seven. But the name of that first baptizer and the exact date of the baptism purposely were suppressed in order to forestall any later inclinations toward “founder worship.”

10. Donald Durnbaugh has done a consummate job of tracing the historical role of these two factors, summarizing earlier discussion of their relationship and presenting his own analysis, in a two part article, “The Genius of the Brethren,” Brethren Life and Thought 4, 1-2 (1959), 4ff., in both issues. Though I have no quarrel with his evidence and its treatment, I do feel the need of modifying the entire frame-work in which the discussion has taken place. My position has been presented in detail in my article, “On Epitomizing the Brethren,” Brethren Life and Thought 6, 4 (1961), 47ff. Much of what follows from that piece.

11. The quotation from Menno Simons is found in his “Foundation of Christian Doctrine [1539],” in The Complete Writings of Menno Simons, trans. Leonard Verduin (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1956), 111. The quotation by Mack Senior comes from his “Rights and Ordinances [1715],” in Durnbaugh, Origins, 384-85. The quotation by Hochmann is from his “Letter to Count von Solms [1708],” in Durnbaugh, Origins, 126. The quotation by Mack Junior is from his “Foreword to ‘Rights and Ordinance? [1774],’ in Durnbaugh, Origins, 120.

12. Although the above analysis gets at the heart of Brethren ideology, it must be admitted that the historical process itself was not quite as symmetrical as the chart would indicate. Several factors served to complicate the picture. In the first place, Radical Pietism was much more extreme and unbalanced in its emphasis than Anabaptism was in its–although the zeal and evangelistic fervor that Pietism stressed were precisely what the Brethren found lacking in the Mennonites of their day. On this point we need to be aware of the distinction which Mack himself made, namely that between the idealism of the older Anabaptist writers whose works he consulted and the “deteriorated” faith of the Mennonites with whom he came in contact (see Mack’s “Basic Questions,” in Durnbaugh, Origins, 340, 342-43). The latter were as much in need of some Pietist “life” as the Radical Pietists were of some Anabaptist “backbone.”

Another factor ruining the symmetry is that because the Brethren came into being as a break-out from Radical Pietism rather than Anabaptism, they continually had to answer charges from their former colleagues of the Pietist quarter. Almost all of eighteenth century Brethren doctrinal writings arose out of this situation and represent the pull away from Radical Pietism toward Anabaptism. The pull in the other direction, away from Anabaptism toward Radical Pietism, does not find similar expression in Brethren writings, although historically it seems to have been very real in its operation (see Durnbaugh, “The Genius of the Brethren,” 1:20-24).

13. All these materials appear in English translation in Durnbaugh, Origins.

14. The eighteenth century Brethren had quite a penchant for hymn-and poem-writing (usually stanza upon stanza upon stanza). Almost without exception, the men who wrote anything also wrote poetry; and in several eases poetry is all they have left us. Undoubtedly this trend reflects the devotional tradition of Pietism.

15. The name was also spelled Saur and Sower.

16. See Donald Dumbaugh, “Christopher Sauer: Germantown Printer,” The Gospel Messenger (May 24, 1958), 10.

17. Young John was a sickly youth (he died at twenty-two years), and the story goes that his father urged him to marry early in an attempt to perpetuate the family. The advice was taken, and John married an Indian girl who had been left behind with the Prices when her people had been forced west. The plan was a success–I am a descendant of that union.

18. Mack’s poetry has been collected and translated by Samuel B. Heckman in The Religious Poetry of Alexander Mack, Jr. (Elgin, Ill.: Brethren Publishing House, 1912).

19. Here reproduced is the Kurtz-Quinter translation from a parallel-text edition of 1860, the English half of which was reprinted subsequently in Ashland, Ohio, 1939.

20. At points I have amended the translation and added italicts.

21. Though presumably most of the Brethren did learn at least some English in America, almost without exception the documents we shall use originally were in German. Particularly the outlying rural congregations maintained a virtually unmitigated German culture and milieu until well into the nineteenth century.

22. Morgan Edwards, Materials toward a History of the American Baptists (Philadelphia, 1770), Vol.1, Pt. 4, p.66. This passage is quoted in Brumbaugh, op.cit., 525-27.

23. Alexander Mack, Jr., Apology (Ephrata, Pa.: 1788) typescript trans. by N. P. Springer (Mennonite Historical Library, Goshen, Ind.), 31; and Mack’s “Open Letter on Feetwashing.”.

24. “Faith’s Expectation” (Discourse I) in Edifying Discourses, 1:23.

25. Dru Journals, 1031 (1850).

26. Smith Journals, 11:1 A 385 (1854).

Table of Contents

Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship:A New Perspective