Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship:
A New Perspective
by Vernard Eller
(continued)
PART II: THE DUNKERS AND THE DANE
III. The Problem of Sociality
Nobody wants to be this strenuous thing:
an individual; it demands an effort.
But everywhere services are readily offered through
the phony substitute: a few! Let us get together
and be a gathering, then we can probably manage.
Therein lies mankind’s deepest demoralization.1
Spiritual superiority only sees the individual.
But, alas, ordinarily we human beings
are sensual and, therefore,
as soon as it is a gathering, the impression changes–
we see something abstract, the crowd,
and we become diflerent.2
In giving to den Enkelte and its characteristics as dominant an emphasis as the foregoing chapters indicate he did, S.K. inevitably created a major problem, the problem of sociality. How is man to be understood and handled in his social relationships? If religion is essentially a matter of den Enkelte before God, at what point do “others” come into the picture? Can den Enkelte in any sense join with or be joined to them without jeopardizing his own status as den Enkelte?
Obviously, S.K. will give attention to one type of sociality that is inimical to den Enkelte, a sociality which acts precisely as an escape from or substitute for the strenuous thing of being den Enkelte. Such groupings S.K. named “the crowd”; and his polemic against the crowd and crowd mentality was loud, bitter, and abundant. In one respect he even made it his first task to attack the crowd, for only by dissolving it could he get to individuals with his concept of den Enkelte.3
Within S.K.’s frame of reference, “the crowd” was an absolutely negative concept; it is “the Evil,” as he called it,4 the sworn enemy of den Enkelte. And the same negativity was attributed to the corollaries of “the crowd,” which are:
- “the public”;
- “the press,” i.e. journalism, the instrument through which “the public” both expresses and creates itself;
- “the world,” in its technical, New Testament sense; and
- “the Establishment,” which, we shall see, is tantamount to “church” in that its established character is the hallmark of the churchly concept.
S.K. allowed no place at all for crowd sociality; and because of the emphatic and pervasive character of his invective, many students have read him as renouncing all sociality whatever. Martin Buber is the prime example of such an interpreter, and his stature as one of the ranking theologians who best understood S.K. makes his charge all the more serious. It behooves us to give the matter very careful consideration.
Buber opened his essay on S.K. with the following paragraph, which includes what we will contend is a gross misunderstanding:
Only by coming up against the category of the ‘Single One’ [den Enkelte], and by making it a concept of utmost clarity, did Søren Kierkegaard become the one who presented Christianity as a paradoxical problem for the single ‘Christian.’ He was able to do this owing to the radical nature of his solitariness. His ‘Single One’ cannot be understood without his solitariness, which differed in kind from the solitariness of one of the earlier Christian thinkers, such as Augustine or Pascal, whose name one would like to link with his. It is not irrelevant that beside Augustine stood a mother and beside Pascal a sister, who maintained the organic connexion with the world as only a woman as the envoy of elemental life can; whereas the central event of Kierkegaard’s life and the core of the crystallization of his thought was the renunciation of Regina Olsen as representing woman and the world.5
And as he continued, Buber pressed this point to the extreme:
This relation [between den Enkelte and God] is an exclusive one, the exclusive one, and this means, according to Kierkegaard, that it is the excluding relation, excluding all others; more precisely, that it is the relation which in virtue of its unique, essential life expels all other relations into the realm of the unessential.6
Kierkegaard does not marry … because he wants to lead the unbelieving man of his age, who is entangled in the crowd, to becoming single, to the solitary life of faith, to being alone before God.7
This is how Buber read S.K., and it is not extravagant to suggest that one of Buber’s motives in writing I and Thou was to correct the solitariness of S.K.’s den Enkelte. Buber himself, in contrast to S.K., would incorporate sociality as an integral aspect of den Enkelte:
God wants us to come to him by means of the Reginas he has created and not by renunciation of them….8
The Single One corresponds to God when he in his human way embraces the bit of the world offered to him as God embraces his creation in his divine way. He realizes the irnage when, as much as he can in a personal way, he says Thou with his being to the beings living around him.”9
And his summation reads:
‘The Single One’ is not the man who has to do with God essentially, and only unessentially with others, who is unconditionally concerned with God and conditionally with the body politic. The Single One is the man for whom the reality of relation with God as an exclusive relation includes and encompasses the possibility of relation with all otherness, and for whom the whole body politic, the reservoir of otherness, offers just enough otherness for him to pass his life with it.10
Quite clearly Buber has chosen the better part–if he has represented S.K.’s part fairly. We contend that he has not. We would not endeavor entirely to absolve S.K. of a certain deficiency of emphasis which at least makes possible the reading Buber gives him. However, we will maintain: first, that a positive doctrine of sociality is not lacking in S.K. Although perhaps insufficiently stressed, it is present as a real, integral, and even necessary part of his concept. Second, although not as well emphasized, the social aspect actually is better structured in S.K. than in Buber. Buber does little more than asseverate that all man-to-man relationships are encompassed in the man-to-God relationship. S.K. analyzed sociality in more detail and made it integral to his thought as one pole of a dialectic.
There is a further distinction in the ways that S.K. and Buber treat sociality; it is subtle and almost impossible to document, but it may be of profound significance nonetheless. Buber starts with man-to-man and man-to-nature relationships and builds them up toward the man-to-God relationship. The man-to-God relationship becomes the consummation and sum of human relationships. Of course, the sum is greater than the parts and ultimately is to be seen as the source of the parts; but basically it is through our experience with other thous that we come to know the Eternal Thou. “God wants us to come to him by means of the Regina: he has created….” And the book I and Thou is organized over precisely this pattern.
It will shortly become evident, however, that S.K.’s thought proceeded conversely. He began with the God relationship and derived all human relationships from it; it is only from God and with the help of God that one can discover his neighbor at all. And S.K.’s approach would seem the more accurate, at least for Christian thought. Actually, S.K. anticipated the possibility of criticism such as Buber’s and tried to forestall it:
In spite of everything men ought to have learned about my maieutic carefulness, in addition to proceeding slowly and continually letting it seem as if I knew nothing more, not the next thing–now on the occasion of my new Edifying Discourse they will presumably bawl out that I do not know what comes next, that I know nothing about sociality. The fools! Yet on the other hand I owe it to myself to confess before God that in a certain sense there is some truth in it, only not as men understand it, namely that always when I have first presented one aspect sharply and clearly, then I affirm the validity of the other even more strongly. Now I have the theme of the next book. It will be called Works of Love.”11
S.K.’s “confession before God” gets at both the truth and the falsehood of Buber’s reading. Kierkegaard’s life was not socially normal. As a genius in a provincial town he was bound to feel somewhat isolated; as a melancholy genius it was inevitable that he live as one apart. It is true that he never married, that he never (at least alter he broke with his father) had any truly intimate companions, that he never belonged to any group that afforded him first-hand experience of true Gemeinschaft. This personal deficiency undoubtedly is one reason why S.K. did not give more attention and emphasis to a doctrine of sociality, although an equally valid explanation could be that the need of his age was first for a concept of individuality before a social emphasis could be properly understood. Nevertheless, it is almost certainly this personal deficiency that S.K. meant as being confessed before God.
But even this deficiency ought not be exaggerated; there are some facts that stand on the other side. Particularly as a young man, S.K. was something of a social butterfly. He moved in the top circles of Copenhagen society; as a wit and bon vivant, his presence was valued on social occasions; he was a connoisseur of the theater, music hall, and dinner table. Throughout his life he maintained these connections to some extent and was an acquaintance of the leading social, civic, and religious figures of Denmark. Also, at least until the time that the Corsair incident drove people away from him, S.K. cultivated many speaking friendships with the common people on the street. He made it a point to converse with, counsel with, and offer help to servants, peasants, workingmen, people from any and all classes of society. And although S.K. was not a husband and father, he was an uncle par excellence; his nieces and nephews knew him as an especially loving and interesting friend of children. The people who actually rubbed shoulders with S.K. would be hard put to recognize Buber’s stark description of one who had renounced all bonds with the world. It is true that none of these relationships were of the deepest, most intimate sort, yet it is grossly unfair to make S.K. out as simply and obviously a “solitary.”
But such evidence quite aside, it is even more unwarranted to use S.K.’s personal life as the key for interpreting his thought, particularly when S.K. made it clear that he was well aware of his personal abnormalities and was striving continually to compensate for them. Above all, S.K.’s renunciation of Regina is in no sense to be understood as a symbol of what S.K. required of den Enkelte; whatever its meaning, that break was of purely personal significance, appertaining to Søren Kierkegaard and to Søren Kierkegaard alone. Certainly it was a renunciation of Søren Kierkegaard’s marriage but not by that token a renunciation of marriage per se. Fear and Trembling
was the book most directly molded by the Regina incident, in which S.K. meditated on his renunciation under the figure of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, but the sacrifice is there presented as the absolutely exceptional
demand, in deliberate contradistinction to universal obligation. Kierkegaard did not break with Regina as a representation “in concrete biography of the renunciation of an essential relation to the world as that which hinders being alone before God,” and most certainly he did not then “express it as an imperative: let everyone do so.”12
Because it was Buber who initiated a contrast between S.K. and Augustine, perhaps we are justified in tracing the comparison more closely. The parallel is actually much nearer than Buber guessed and the conclusion quite different from that at which he arrived. The counterpart of Monica (Augustine’s mother) is not Regina but S.K.’s father Michael. In both cases there was a deeply devout parent “praying” a prodigal son back to Christianity. In both cases there was a joyous reconciliation with God and with the parent in God-Augustine at the age of thirty-three years, S.K. twenty-five. In both cases the parent died but very shortly after the reconciliation took place. In both cases the sons entered their illustrious careers some three or four years after their “conversions” (Augustine did not have a mother standing beside him during his career as a Christian). In both cases the conversion was accompanied by the “renunciation” of women of intimate association. Before his conversion Augustine had sent away the mistress with whom he had lived for some years and by whom he had had a son–this in preparation for a respectable marriage. At the time of his Conversion Augustine sent away a second mistress–this in preparation for Christian celibacy. S.K. both made and broke his engagement to Regina within approximately a three year period following his conversion.
Both “renounced” women; the difference in the way they did this is instructive, although the instruction is not at all what Buber suggests. Augustine left his two mistresses in the interest of achieving his own sainthood, the first in order to become acceptable in the eyes of men, the second in the eyes of God. In his Confessions Augustine showed extreme concern over his own sinfulness and his desire for holiness, but he showed nothing of a comparable concern over his responsibility to these women with whom he had loved and lived, no particular concern over what happened to them, over what his renunciation did to them.
With S.K. the case was very different. Although it probably never will be made completely clear just why S.K. felt that it was God’s will for him to break his engagement, there is no evidence that he understood it as a way of enhancing his own saintliness; it is clear that he was as much or more concerned for Regina as for himself, that the break was as much for her sake as for his own. Consequently S.K. was quite willing to play the role of devil rather than saint in order to ease her suffering; and one gets the feeling that he actually would have been willing to have been lost in order to ensure her salvation.
There were, of course, differences of circumstance, social mores, et al., between the action of Augustine and S.K., and we have no intention of running down Augustine. But completely contrary to Buber, if with either man the event was the crystallization of a sweeping and doctrinaire renunciation of “women and the world,” patently it was more so with Augustine than with S.K.
However, the fundamental error of those who would interpret den Enkelte as being entirely solitary is the misimpression that S.K.’s fulminations against “the crowd” necessarily included all sociality. A more precise view of his terminology will enable us to correct this misunderstanding and will open to us new vistas of his thought.
The key–which is always the one to try with S.K.–is dialectic. And regarding this problem of sociality, we find precisely the same pattern as was described earlier in connection with “inwardness and obedience,” “faith and works.” In this instance the relationships are somewhat more complex, and a diagram may help clarify the discussion.
The first pole of the dialectic is represented at the left. Den Enkelte, of course, is the positive, religious concept of individualism as affirmed and promoted by S.K. The negative perversion, the contradictory–which is to be utterly rejected–is autonomous, self-asserting “individualism” (which S.K. identified and rejected as being of the Aesthetic Stage). The other pole of the dialectic is represented at the right; it includes all sociality, any and all human associations for whatever purpose, constituted in whatever mode, on whatever principle. S.K. saw, however, that these can and should he divided into two distinct types. One social type is The World, using that term in the broadest possible sense to cover all associations except those of the church. The other social type is The Church, using that term also in the broadest possible sense to cover all associations of a religious nature. It would be wholly accurate to term these as Secular Sociality and Religious Sociality–except for the implication that therefore “secular” relationships lie outside the purview of religion. S.K. contended that one’s life in the World must be lived before God just as certainly as his life in the Church; there is no distinction on this score. The distinction is, rather, that whereas the Church is constituted of man-to-man relationships for the sake of God, the World is constituted of man-to-man relationships for the sake of man; the primary orientation of the Church is vertical, that of the World, horizontal; a Christian’s relationships of the World are derived from his prior relationship to God, whereas his relationships of the Church exist for the sake of his relationship to God.
Religious and secular sociality are different enough to call for individual treatment, and each forms its own distinct dialectic with den Enkelte. Under The World, the positive which S.K. affirmed consists of “The Simple Life,” dealing with the world of nature and things, and “Neighbor Love,” dealing with the human world of other persons. Opposed to this is the negative, the perversion, which is “Worldliness,” or “Conformity to the World.” The concept “crowd” includes the negative socialities of both the secular and the religious sphere; “crowd mentality” is what S.K. found to be the distinctive feature both of the World and the Establishment.
Admittedly, we have encountered terminological difficulty at this point. The word “world” properly can he used with three mutually exclusive meanings. In the diagram, “the world” is an inclusive, nonevaluational term, although it is common usage thus to divide all of life between the Church and the World. But in the positive and the negative items subsumed under this “world” are two more “worlds” which complicate the situation no end. Here is found the contradiction between “the world” (positive) which God so loved that he gave his only Son (John 3:16) and “the world” (negative) which for us to love is proof that the love of the Father is not in us (1 John 2:15). These two “worlds” lie in even closer proximity in the sectarian shibboleth derived from John 17:16 and 18, i.e. “in the world but not of the world.” “In the world” cannot mean merely “physically extant”; that would be too obvious to be significant; a Christian is not called to live in the world in this sense–he cannot help himself. No, the world the Christian is to be “in” is the world of “other people.” The apostle who in one chapter of his epistle exhorted Christians not to love the world exhorted them in the succeeding chapter to love everyone in the world (1 John 2-3). And to love this world of people–an obligation which S.K. took very seriously–is, of course, to be related to them, to be a part of it.
On the other hand, the world which the Christian is not to be “of” is the world of goals and values as determined by the secular society which is not oriented toward the will of God. In short, one can love, accept, and identify with those who make up society without loving, accepting, or identifying with the standards of that society. The Christian can reject the evaluation men put upon things, thus rejecting both “the things of this world” and the possibility of being “a man of the world,” without rejecting either “the world of things” or “the world of men.” The distinction is a rather easy one to understand–a very difficult one to live. But because human language is not precise, S.K. explicitly could renounce and denounce the world, Martin Buber could come along later and accuse S.K. of renouncing the world, and yet what Buber says can be a grave misunderstanding. We intend to show that S.K.’s strictures against “the world” are an instance of condemning only crowd sociality and thus by no means should be taken to imply solitariness and the rejection of all sociality.
Likewise, under the heading The Church, the positive is “the Gemeinde” and the rejected negative is “the Establishment.” Also, as above, terminological confusion again shows itself. The “church” heading is a very broad and entirely neutral concept. The negative “church” is used in a “churchly” sense, as over against “sect.” But in another sense, the positive Gemeinde is just as validly a church as any of the “churches” are.
The arrows on the chart illustrate the point that we have made earlier, that the dialectic relationship holds only between complementary positives; the intention is that the negatives be cancelled and obliterated.
There is a further observation regarding the dialectic pattern that holds equally true with our earlier examples as well as with this one. A real source of the power and efficacy of a dialectic lies in the fact that the positive of one pole stands precisely as the preventative or corrective of the negative of the opposite pole. Thus in the present instance a concept of den Enkelte is the cure for crowd mentality; and simple living, neighbor love, and Gemeinschaft are the cures for autonomous pretension. And thus in the earlier case obedience is the cure for either hiddenness or superficial emotionalism; and inwardness is the cure for works-righteousness.
Finally, the chart plots the sequence for this portion of our study. The present chapter has set the problem; Chapter VIII will treat the positions of S.K. and the Brethren regarding “world-negative”; Chapter IX, “world-positive”; Chapter X, “church-negative”; and Chapter XI, “church-positive. ” Each chapter should be read in relation to the pattern as a whole.
1 Rohde Journals, 129 (1854).
2. Ibid., 127 (1850).
3. Purity of Heart, 143-44.
4. Point of View, 61.
5. Martin Buber, “The Question to the Single One,” in Between Man and Man, 40.
6. Ibid., 50.
7. Ibid., 59.
8. Ibid., 52.
9. Ibid., 56-57.
10. Ibid., 65.
11. Papirer, 8:1:A:4 (1847), quoted by the translators Howard and Edna Hong in their introduction to S.K.’s Works of Love, 15-16. The Hongs themselves cornment: “Those who say that Kierkegaard had no consciousness of anything but a purely private individualistic ethic cannot digest this work [Works of Love], nor, when properly understood, his other ethical works, but least of all this.”
12. Buber, Between Man and Man, op.cit., 58, 55, respectively
IV. The World Well Lost
a. Nonconformity to the World
To keep oneself pure and unspotted from the world
is the task and doctrine of Christianity–
would that we did it. 1
What was said in paganism and Judaism,
that to see God is to die,
or at least to become blind or dumb
and the like, is expressed ethically in Christianity as a task:
to die to the world
is the condition for seeing God. 2
Woe, woe to the Christian Church
if it would triumph in this world, for then it is not
the Church that triumphs, but the world has triumphed.
Then the heterogeneity of Christianity and the World
is done away with, the world has won, Christianity lost.
… And the day when Christianity
and the world become friends
Christianity is done away with. 3The actual phrase “nonconformity to the world” (based on Romans 12:2) is not Kierkegaardian nor is it found in eighteenth century Brethren literature. In the nineteenth century it became the technical term by which the Brethren identified their doctrine, although by this time the doctrine itself had deteriorated until its primary emphasis was a legalistic prescription of a standard mode of dress and its secondary emphasis the legalistic prohibition of such things as jewelry, dancing, and card-playing. However, eighteenth century writings do not display this narrow moralism and do not so much as mention the wearing of a peculiar garb. The nineteenth century had the term, but the eighteenth century had much the better understanding of its meaning.
The closest the eighteenth century Brethren came to using the phrase itself was in a “big meeting” (probably the regular Annual Meeting of 1791) reported in the diary of Mack Junior. The principal query brought to that gathering was: “How could one, here in Germantown, resist by a united effort the very injurious evil which by conformation to the world is wrought upon the minds of the young, as we are living so near to the capital of the country.”4 Yet it is plain that the doctrine itself was part of Brethrenism from the beginning. Mack Senior had written: “This body or church is separated from the world, from sin, from all error, yes, from the entire old house of Adam-that is, according to the inner part of faith…. However, this body or the church of Christ still walks outwardly in a state of humiliation in this wicked world.”5
A prominent corollary of nonconformity–mentioned here by Mack and to be closely paralleled by S.K.–is that in contrast to the life of the world the life of the Christian is a state of humiliation.” This point was made with more emphasis in a hymn by John Price:
Let us, with lot, flee "the Sodom of this world."...
Let us not act as does the world
But seek only to he despised.
Let us not question this;
Let us look to heaven
And despise the tumult of the world,
Accepting all the disgrace.6
Nonconformity was a particularly strong theme with Michael Frantz.7 But it was Sauer Junior who picked up a little different facet of the belief, this dealing with the Christian’s relationship to worldly government. The Sauers felt obliged to include in their almanacs the court calendar for the year; they also felt obliged to accompany that calendar with a little poem making it plain that the courts were no place for a Christian to be found. We presume that Sauer Junior himself was the author of the one for 1767:
[Christians] must, as [Christ's] servants,
Proceed here according to His example
And highly honor His practices
And claims, and stand within them.
Therefore they cannot become citizens
Here in this vale of misery,
Because they are ransomed from the earth
Through a great election of grace....
They let cloak and mantle go,
And rather do without clothing
Than in their years as pilgrims
Mingle in the quarrels of the citizenry....
They have never in anything opposed
The authorities who are appointed....
They will not readily sue anyone....
In poverty, shame, ridicule, and derision,
[The Christian] is known for his patience.
The citizens of this world and time
Can never he peaceful for long;
Their self-interest teaches them to fight and quarrel;
They will have their rights and splendor.8
There are here several ideas that merit comment. Nonconformity follows as a direct corollary of Nachfolge, the imitation of Christ; this connection will show up as clearly in S.K. as in the Brethren. The Christian’s life on earth customarily is typified in some such terms as “this vale of misery”; this is as true with S.K. as with the Brethren, although in neither case is it accurate to assume that this judgment leads to a “joyless” concept of the Christian faith. The note about the Christian not opposing appointed authorities is a very typical Brethren theme, actually an emphatic ingredient of the very doctrine of nonconformity. The Christian is to live above the law, and when the law would require him to do something contrary to the will of God he is to defy that particular law, but he has absolutely no intention of undermining the principle of law itself or questioning the right of secular authority to govern the world and to govern him to the extent that he is in the world. But the principle of the world is “self-interest,” the struggle for one’s own rights and privileges, and of this the Christian wants no part.
It was Mack Junior who picked up another basic point of contrast between the Christian and the world, the complete divergence as to what is valued as “treasure”:
Say, what is richer
Than the poverty
Which an the cross in Jesus' wound.
By the thief was found?
Christ's poverty
Makes us rich and free!
But whoever still tarries
With the treasure of the world,
He cannot find this treasure.9
And Jacob StoIl put the thought into stark and eloquent terms when he wrote:
Nothing is the lust of the world; nothing is the world;
Nothing is honor; nothing is gold;
Nothing are the dazzling things of this world--
Often they make the eyes dark.10
Kierkegaard, for his part, drove deep the cleavage in terms as intransigent as any used by the Brethren:
‘He must either hate the one and love the other, or he must hold to the one and despise the other.’ Consequently love to God is hatred to the world, and love for the world is hatred toward God; consequently this is the tremendous issue–either love or hate. Hence this is the place where the world’s most terrible conflict is to be fought. And where is this place? In a man’s heart.11 [Cf. Cf. S.K.’s words quoted above]
But, it immediately will be objected, there is a great difference. No matter how S.K. be quoted, it is quite obvious that, in sharp contrast to the simple Brethren, he was in many ways a prime example of worldly sophistication, as he said of himself, possessing “intellectual gifts (especially imagination and dialectic) and culture in superabundance.”12 There is no denying that S.K. was such a person. His everyday mode of life was what men of the world would call “gracious,” what the Brethren would have called “luxurious.” In matters of art, music, theater, philosophy, learning–culture, in short–he was a crowning achievement of Society, a “humanist,” a Christian humanist par excellence. This aspect of S.K. is conspicuous, and it is clearly the case that many students have been drawn to him precisely because of his urbanity and sophistication: here is a model of culture and Christianity united in an attractive combination where each complements and enhances the other.13 Walter Lowrie–who at this point definitely seems to be creating Kierkegaard in his own image–waxes eloquent about S.K.’s culture, concluding:
He remained a Humanist when he became a serious Christian, and for this reason, he was essentially a Catholic, as Father Przywara recognizes. And for this very reason Barth rejected him. It was owning to his Humanism that he disdained every sectarian movement however zealous.14
Whether Lowrie fully understood Przywara and Barth is a question that need not detain us, and for the high Anglican Lowrie to find both humanism and Catholicism attractive in S.K. is not particularly surprising, but the question as to whether S.K. actually was a “humanist” demands the most careful consideration.
The very concept “humanism” is an ambiguous one and needs to be defined. Humanism can imply simply a deep concern for human welfare. In this sense Christianity is itself “the true humanity,” as S.K. suggested; and he, along with every other Christian, was essentially a humanist. This, obviously, is not what Lowrie has in mind. In another sense, humanism is a faith, an alternative to Christianity that finds life’s ultimate values not in God but in human achievement. In this sense neither S.K. nor any other Christian could be a humanist. Finally, and this certainly is what Lowrie intends, Christian humanism is the position of those who value human culture along with their Christian faith, who see cultural values as integrally related to the faith, indeed as a vital part of the faith. It is in this sense that S.K. is identified as a humanist and in this sense that we are concerned to deny the attribution.
Part of the difficulty arises through an illegitimate identification of S.K. with his pseudonyms. The pseudonyms were humanists, openly and avowedly such, and for that matter not even Christian humanists. But S.K. was not his pseudonyms; in fact the pseudonyms were designed for the express purpose that S.K. might delineate a position qualitatively lower than that with which he personally would identify. The humanism of the pseudonyms is beside the point as to whether Søren Kierkegaard was a humanist or not.
More of the difficulty stems from a too-easy reading of the fact that S.K. was cultured–without inquiring about the attitude in which he held that culture. A careful study will show that S.K. had these things “as though not,” as though he had them not.15 And because S.K. had these things “as though not,” because he attributed no real value or significance to them, he stands ideologically much closer to those who have them not than to those who do have them. The fact that he had all these “advantages” was, in S.K.’s own eyes, entirely incidental, worth nothing. As he saw it, the only real value of these gifts was that they enabled him to capture the attention of actual humanists that he might lead them out of humanism into Christianity. S.K. called himself “a spy in a higher service,”16 and he meant it with the utmost seriousness. He was not what he appeared, a man of the world; and it is tragic that the disguise has been taken for the real man.
S.K.’s most revealing statements in this regard cannot he fully appreciated unless one senses what Socrates meant to him. For S.K., Socrates represented the highest achievement of the human spirit; he stood as a symbol of the world at its best, the finest and noblest the world could offer. Kierkegaard was too modest to claim the following statement as his own) so he put it into quotation marks with a “so might the individual speak.” However, the translator Lowrie (undoubtedly correctly) identifies it as a personal profession of faith–yet ultimately it militates against any identification of S.K. as a humanist:
I have admired that noble, simple wise man of ancient times [Socrates]; … but I have never believed on him, that never occurred to me. I count it also neither wise nor profound to institute a comparison between him, the simple wise man, and Him on whom I believe–that I count blasphemy.
Would S.K. appreciate being treated in a volume entitled The Hemlock and the Cross?
As soon as I reflect upon the matter of my salvation, then is he, the simple wise man, a person highly indifferent to me, an insignificance, a naught.17
And what of the hemlock, specifically?
Lo, to be executed, humanly speaking, innocently, and yet die with a witticism on his lips, that is a proud victory, that is the triumph of paganism; and it is also the highest victory in the relationship between man and man, that is, please note, if God is left out, if all of life and its greatest scenes are still at bottom a game, because God does not participate; for if He is present, then life is earnest.18
When he deeply and seriously calls Socrates “a naught,” calls his heroic death “at bottom a game,” it seems apparent that culture in general never could stand high enough with S.K. to justify his being called a “humanist,” whether Christian or otherwise. “… Among those born of women no one has arisen greater…; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he” (Mt. 11:11)–this is not the stance of humanist.
The real Kierkegaard was an antihumanist, staging the most effective critique of humanism ever made–and that directed particularly against so-called Christian humanism. He declared in so many words that his own aesthetic accomplishments were a feint19 and evaluated the greatest of these in terms of the light it threw upon Christianity by way of contrast.20 His considered judgment of Christian humanism was stated with utmost clarity: “It is not difficult to see that culture makes men insignificant, perfects them as copies, but abolishes individuality.”21 “[The] culture and civilization [which Christendom has produced through the centuries] has at the same time produced a development of rational understanding which is in the process of identifying being a Christian with culture, and with intelligence, desirous of a conceptual understanding of Christianity. This is where the struggle must come, and will be fought in the future.”22 “Fought in the future,” S.K. said. Could it be that his critique has relevance when, under the aegis of an avant-garde concept of “secular Christianity,” there is a theological movement which rather consciously is feeling after a new liaison with sophisticated culture? And if so, is it not ironic that one of the names often invoked in this movement is that of Søren Kierkegaard?
S.K.’s concern hegan to show itself as early as Either/Or, not too appropriately in the very mouth of “A,” the aesthete:
This is part of the confusion which in our age asserts itself in so many ways: we look for a thing where we ought not to look for it, and what is worse, we find it where we ought not to find it; we wish to he edified in the theater, aesthetically impressed in church, we would be converted by novels, get enjoyment out of books of devotion, we want philosophy in the pulpit, and the preacher in the professorial chair23
S.K.’s later analyses were even more powerful:
In established Christendom the natural man has managed to have his own way. There is no endless contrast between the Christian and the worldly. The relation of the Christian to the worldly is conceived, at the most, as a potentialization (or more exactly under the rubric, culture), always directly; it is simply a direct comparative, the positive being civic rectitude…. One starts with the worldly. Keeping an eye upon civic rectitude (good-better-best) one makes oneself as comfortable as possible with everything one can scrape together in the way of worldly goods–the Christian element being stirred in with all this as an ingredient, a seasoner, which sometimes serves merely to refine the relish…. Christianity is related directly to the world, it is a movement without budging from the spot–that is to say, feigned movement.24 Men have confused Christianity in many ways, but among them is this way of calling it the highest, the deepest, and thereby making it appear that the purely human was related to Christianity as the high or the higher to the highest or the supremely highest. 25
It is a little difficult to understand why the author of such lines should be classed as a Christian humanist.
S.K. was concerned to condemn not only the coarse, blatant, repulsive sort of worldliness, but concentrated upon it in its most attractive and elegant forms–which he was convinced actually were the more sinister. Indeed, his critique would seem to constitute a blanket indictment of the world. In a sense it becomes that, but only because Christian values are so preeminent that all other values–which precisely is to say worldly values–come to be of evil in their tendency to attract or distract the ultimate loyalty of men. As S.K. put it:
[The world] is not absolutely evil, as it is sometimes passionately represented, nor is it untainted, but to a certain degree is both good and evil. But Christianly understood, this ‘to a certain degree’ is of evil.26
S.K.’s was not a blind rage against the world; he saw clearly that the issue was one of ultimate loyalty, and he pointed his charges at specific evils. Interestingly enough, some of the qualities he attacked are the very ones that many readers value highly in the writings of Søren Kierkegaard.
For one thing, the entire tenor and mood of polite culture is opposed to that of Christianity:
Christianity should never be communicated in the medium of tranquillity (unless the person who does it would dare to affirm that now all and every one are Christians). That is why being busy with art, poetry, philosophy, science and lecturing constitutes a sin in the Christian sense–for how dare I indulge myself pottering about with such things in peace and quiet?27
For another, S.K. would not be among those who in our day are so eager to look to the artists and literati as being unconscious, or at least incipient, prophets and theologians:
If, therefore, one occasionally presumes to understand his life with the help of the poet and with the help of Christianity’s explanation, presumes the ability to understand these two explanations together–and then in such a way that meaning would come into his life–then he is under a delusion. The poet and Christianity explain things in opposite ways.28
And for still another, S.K. despised the quality which shows signs of becoming dominant in some sectors of contemporary theology:
What the world most highly and unanimously honors is cleverness or acting cleverly. But to act cleverly is precisely the most contemptuous of all… To act cleverly is basically compromise, whereby one undeniably gets farthest along in the world, wine the world’s goods and favor, the world’s honor, because the world and the world’s favor are, eternally understood, compromise. But neither the eternal nor the Holy Scriptures have ever taught any man to go far or farthest of all in the world.29
The forthrightness, deliberate naivete, and simple honesty prized by the early Brethren would have appealed to S.K.
A very important element in S.K.’s thought was his social criticism, his insight into the dangers of technological and urban depersonalization, mass man, the tyranny of mob culture, etc. This part of S.K.’s message generally has been well heard and appreciated, and we need here note only that these insights grew out of his nonconformist viewpoint. But his basic position was thoroughly religious and Christian in character, and it is this aspect that is particularly germane to our study.
At heart, nonconformity to the world is simply the obverse of the doctrine of den Enkelte, for it is a person’s incorporation into the world crowd that prevents him from existing singly before God.30 Even so, although it is the world that keeps him from becoming den Enkelte, this is only because the man himself would have it that way.31 And thus the choice of refusing to be conformed to the world and the free venture of faith in which den Enkelte chooses himself before God–these two are one and the same choice. S.K. put the matter in one of his most moving passages:
A choice between God and the world. Do you know anything greater to set together for a choice! Do you know any more overwhelming and humbling expression for God’s indulgence and pardon towards man, than that He sets Himself, in a certain sense, on an equal line of choice with the world, merely in order to allow the man to choose? … If God has condescended to he that which may be chosen, then man must also choose–God will not suffer Himself to be mocked…. No one is to be able to say: “God and mammon, since they are not so unconditionally different, one may in his choice combine both”–for this is to refrain from choosing…. If anyone does not understand this, then it is because he will not understand that God is present in the moment of the choice, not in order to look on, but in order to be chosen…. But the right beginning begins with seeking the kingdom of God first; it begins therefore precisely with letting the world be lost.32
No matter how harsh S.K.’s diatribes against the world, no matter how complete his indictment of it, these proceed not from any sort of sadism, not from his melancholy, not from any judgment about the inherent evilness of the created world as such, but from a positive valuation of what God has offered in offering himself to man, then from a realization of the sort of absolute commitment and loyalty such an offer demands in response, and thus, finally, from the passionate hatred of anything that would obstruct such response. S.K.’s doctrine of nonconformity, when seen for what it is, shows up as highly positive rather than negative in its total impress.
Also, this consideration explains why having something “as though not” can be as effective as actually having it not. In many cases the thing is not evil in itself but only in the allegiance it attracts; thus to hold it “as though not,” as a thing of no value, is effectually to depotentiate it as a threat to the God relationship. And for that matter one easily can love the world even while possessing few if any things of the world; “as though not” truly may he a more radical solution than “having them not.” Thus “nonconformity to the world” is a much more accurate designation for S.K.’s position than would be “renunciation of the world.”
Admittedly, nonconformity is a much more demanding and a much less stable position than renunciation; it requires a fine balance that is anything but easy to maintain, as is the case with every dialectic. But, for instance, what qualities and things can be retained “as though not” and what must be renounced as absolute evils? To what extent can one “have” and continue to “have” these things without coming to them? At what point does honesty compel one actually to take leave of the thing in order to avoid its snares? Nonconformity, as all dialectic, can deteriorate so easily–and without it immediately becoming apparent what has happened. Thus, in the one direction, as S.K. contended was the case with his own church, everyone could and did “have” to his heart’s content as long as he gave lip service to the principle of having “as though not.” In the other direction, as was the case with nineteenth century Brethrenism, the demands of nonconformity could be met by the outward renunciation of a certain well-defined list of “things.” S.K. and the eighteenth century Brethren, we suggest, represented the dialectic in its true character of tension and balance.
S.K. did not give a great deal of attention to following out his conception of nonconformity as it regards the Christian’s relationship to the state. However, what he did say was very much in line with the sectarian Brethren position. In the first place, “Christianity has not wanted to hurl governments from the throne in order to set itself on the throne; in an external sense it has never striven for a place in the world, for it is not of this world.”33 Second, nonconformity in regard to government necessarily involves the issue of freedom of conscience. This need not, however, imply a pleading before, or bringing pressure upon, government in an attempt to win the concession, as though this freedom were in the hands of the state to give rather than being the innate possession of the individual. Twentieth century Brethrenism has tended to misinterpret its sectarian heritage at this point. But S.K. delineated the posture precisely when he said:
Ideally speaking it may be perfectly true that every man should be given freedom of conscience and freedom of belief, etc…. [But] the truth is that anyone who is so subjective that he only deliberates with God and with his own conscience, and is able to persevere, does not care a fig whether there are laws or regulations or not; to him it is only so much cobweb…. If it is really conscience, conscience alone, then your regulations be blowed–I should only laugh at them…. Ultimately no force can compel the spiritual, at the most it can oblige them to buy freedom at a higher price.34
This is exactly what it means to live above the law, submitting to it as an ordinance of God and a work becoming us to fulfill all righteousness–until a matter of conscience arises, a command of God–then “regulations he blowed,” the Christian takes freedom of conscience whether the state sees fit to grant it or not.
In this connection one of the almost infallible hallmarks for distinguishing the sectarian view from the churchly is the interpretation of the Gospel incident in which the Pharisees asked Jesus about the tribute money. S.K. diverged radically from the Lutheran conception of the two realms and stated the sectarian understanding as well as it has ever been stated:
Then give to the Emperor what belongs to the Emperor, and to God what is God’s.’ Infinite indifference! Whether the Emperor be called Herod or Shalmanezer, whether he be Roman or Japanese, is to Him the most indifferent of all things. But, on the other hand–the infinite yawning difference which He posits between God and the Emperor: ‘Give unto God what is God’s!’ For they with worldly wisdom would make it a question of religion, of duty to God, whether it was lawful to pay tribute to the Emperor. Worldliness is so eager to embellish itself as godliness, and in this case God and the Emperor are blended together in the question, as if these two had obviously and directly something to do with each other, as if perhaps they were rivals one of the other, and as if God were a sort of emperor–that is to say, the question takes God in vain and secularizes Him. But Christ draws the distinction.35
Alongside the state, of course, stands the established church. S.K.’s position toward it forms the theme of a later chapter, but there is an interrelationship with his doctrine of nonconformity which can better be noted here. In the first place he was critical of the church for failing to promulgate nonconformity.36 But in the second place, and much more fundamental, the very constitution of an established church makes impossible any real concept of nonconformity to the world, for “if every baptized person is a Christian and baptized Christendom is pure Christianity, then the world does not exist at all in a Christian country.”37 The logic is unimpeachable; where the churchly ideology is followed consistendy there is simply no way to define “the world,” let alone produce an effective doctrine of nonconformity to it.
The interpretation of S.K. as a humanist, a man of the world, cannot be sustained; there is, however, a charge often leveled against him from the opposite quarter which also demands consideration–this the attribution to him of monastic asceticism. The problem is well posited in a statement by H. Richard Niebuhr, made in the course of his giving examples the “Christ against culture” ideology: “Monastic characteristics reappear in Protestant sectarians; and a Lutheran Kierkegaard attacks the Christendom of post-Reformation culture with the same intransigence that marks a Wiclif’s thrust against medieval social faith.38
We, of course, concur heartily in this alignment of S.K. With the Protestant sectaries; we object just as heartily to the identification of S.K. and the sectaries with monasticism. Niebuhr’s suggestion is much more adequate than calling S.K. a Christian humanist; and even his phrase “monastic characteristics” might be acceptable enough, if he would be quick to allow the very basic distinctions between monasticism and the Kierkegaard-sectarian position. That difference amounts to our earlier distinction between “renunciation of the world” and “nonconformity to the world”: renunciation implies a leave-taking from all possible uses of the world; nonconformity, rather, a change of attitude toward, or evaluation of, the world. The difference is a very important one.
In the first place, nonconformity is in no way conceived as an act of merit or a work of supererogation. This aspect of Catholic monasticism simply was not in the thought of S.K. or the Brethren. In the second place, nonconformity is not asceticism in the customary sense of the word. There are no implications of dualism, of an evil (or at least, lower) realm encompassing physical reality, the body with its earthly needs and desires, which is then set over against the higher realm of the spirit. There are no suggestions about chastising the body for the good of the soul, about valuing punishment and deprivation for their own sakes, about giving up the comforts of life as a sacrifice to God. Nonconformity is not conceived as a sacrifice at all–any more than it is a “sacrifice” for a swimmer to shed his clothing before going in the water. He is merely doing what he can to make possible and to enhance the enjoyment of what he wants to do.
Thus, in the third place, the most significant distinction is that the nonconformist, even while struggling to he “not of” the world, is equally determined to remain “in” the world. Although completely opposed to adopting the world’s standard of values, S.K. did not so much as imply any leaving of the world. Certainly he did not renounce the world of other people, advocating any lessening of the responsibility to love, serve, share, and live with them–and in a chapter to come we will see that he made this a positive duty. Neither did he renounce man’s life in the natural institutions of society: family, business, community, state, or church. He made it clear that none of these dare be organized or valued so as to compete with one’s unconditional allegiance to God, but he did not say that any and every participation in these institutions constitutes illegitimate evaluation.39
Kierkegaard, both through the pseudonyms and in his own name, was explicit in discounting monasticism for its tendency to desert the world.40 As we have noted he even brought this criticism against the Moravians, whom he otherwise credited with the purest Christianity he had seen. [See S.K.’s own words quoted above]. He was, however, adamantly against the way in which the church strove to justify its worldliness by making invidious comparisons with these:
And [Christ] remained in the world, He did not retire from the world, but He remained there to suffer. This is not quite the same thing as when in our age preachers inveigh against a certain sort of piety… which seeks a remote hiding-place, far from the world’s noise and its distractions and its dangers, in order if possible in profound quiet to serve God alone…. Nowadays we do differently and better, we pious people, we remain in the world–and make a career in the world, shine in society, make ostentation of worldliness just like the Pattern, who did not retire cravenly from the world! … No, it certainly is not the highest thing to seek a remote hiding-place where it might be possible to serve God alone; it is not the highest thing, as we can perceive in the Pattern; but even though it is not the highest (and really what business is it of ours that this other thing is not the highest?), it is nevertheless possible that not a single one of us in this coddled and secularized generation is capable of doing it.42
So S.K.’s position is equally distinguishable from churchly, humanistic world conformity on the one hand and monastic, ascetic world renunciation on the other; it would seem to be at one with the nonconformity of classic Protestant sectarianism.
The evidence is that the eighteenth century Brethren shared S.K.’s ideal and approximated it in practice. True, the nineteenth century Brethren did retreat to the “cloister” alternative, moving to the sequestered communities of the frontier to form what amounted to cultural and religious enclaves, although even this is not to imply that they thereby took up the total pattern of Catholic monasticism. But there is little indication that their eighteenth century predecessors had sought out seclusion. Admittedly they had fled Europe, although that was a case of persecution as much as forcing them out; and in America their rural situation and the language barrier did contrive to make them somewhat isolated. But if the examples of the Germantown leaders can be taken as a indication of their ideology, then the careers of men like Mack Junior and particularly the publisher Sauer Junior are evidence enough that these Dunkers had no intention of deserting the world.
“In the world but not of the world”–and the bond which most strongly ties the Christian into the world is the command to love. The positive explication of this theme will be the work of a succeeding chapter, but at one point S.K. stated the relationship so concisely that his words can be used both to sum up the discussion of nonconformity and to point ahead to its positive counterpart:
[The Apostles] had the frightful experience that love is not loved, that it is hated, that it is mocked, that it is spat upon, that it is crucified, in this world…. So surely, they swore eternal enmity to this unloving world? Ah, yes, in a certain sense, but in another aspect, no, no; in their love for God, in order that they might abide in love, they banded themselves, so to speak, together with God to love this unlovngg world…. And so the Apostles resolved, in likeness with the Pattern, to love, to suffer, to be sacrificed, for the sake of saving the unloving world. And this is love.”43
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. Works of Love, 84.
2. Smith Journals, 11:2:A:113 (1854).
3. “Lifted Up On High …” (Part III, Reflection 7) in Training in Christianity, 218.
4. Quoted in Brumbaugh, op.cit., 243-45.
5. Mack Senior, Rights and Ordinances, in Durnbaugh, Origins, 367-68.
6. John Price (d. ca.1722), Geistliche und Andachtige Lieder [bound as an appendix to Der Wunderbahre Bussfertige Beichvatte] (Germantown: Sauer Press, 1753), Hymn I, Stanzas 4, 6.
7. Michael Frantz, op.cit., Stanzas 170, 280-81, 315.
8. Sauer Junior (presumably), “Eines Pilgers Gedanken vom Rechten,” in Der Hoch-Deutsch Americanische Calendar for 1767 (German-town: Sauer Press, 1767), 19-20 [my trans.–V.E.].
9. Mack Junior, a poem “God Alone is Good,” in Heckman, op.cit., 52-53, stanzas 5-6 (trans. amended–V.E.]
10. Jacob Stoll, op.cit., 189 [my trans.–V.E.]; cf., 107.
11. Discourse III on “What Is To Be Learnt from the Lilies …” in The Gospel of Suffering, 227.
12. Point of View, 82.
13. Note, for example, the place given to S.K. in Geddes MacGregor’s plea for Christian humanism, The Hemlock and the Cross (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1963).
14. Walter Lowrie, in the translator’s Appendix to S.K.’s Repetition, 208-9.
15. This Pauline concept is found in 1 Cor. 7:29-31: “I mean, brothers and sisters, the appointed time has grown short; from now on, let even those who have wives be as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no possessions, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.”
16. Point of View, 87.
17. “He Is Believed On in the World” (Part III, Discourse 7) in Christian Discourses, 245-46.
18. “Courage Enables the Sufferer To Overcome the World …” (Discourse VII) in The Gospel of Suffering, 157. Cf. Discourse II on “What Is To Be Learnt from the Lilies” in The Gospel of Suffering, 212.
19. Point of View, 31ff., 39ff.
20. Ibid., 96.
21. Smith Journals, 11:1:A:55 (1854).
22. Dru Journals, 1288 1853).
23. Either/Or, 1:147.
24. Training in Christianity, 113-14.
25. Works of Love, 70.
26. 26 Ibid, 127.
27. Rohde Journals, 232 (1849).
28. Works of Love, 63.
29. Ibid., 243.
30. “To Win One’s Soul in Patience” (Discourse IV) in Edifying Discourses, 1:76. Cf. Smith Journals, 11:1:A:16 (1854).
31. Dru Journals, 614 (1846).
32. Discourse III on “What Is To Be Learnt from the Lilies … ” in The Gospel of Suffering, 228-33.
33. Works of Love, 137.
34. Dru Journals, 1155 (1850).
35. “Lifted Up On High …” (Part III, Discourse 3) in Training in Christianity, 169-70.
36. Works of Love, 62.
37. Ibid., 124.
38. H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture, 65.
39. We are compelled to recognize that at the very close of S.K.’s life, at scattered points in his private journals and in the periodicals that constitute the Attack, there appears a new note, or rather the hint of a new and frightening note. This material is not at all typical of, or even reconcilable with, the rest of his thought, but here appear signs of misanthropy, asceticism, and a masochistic desire for suffering. These notices appear so late and are so few that it is impossible to say what they signify, whether transitory lapses or the beginning of a tragic deterioration. In either case they hardly can be taken into account as part of the essential witness of Kierkegaard.
40. Stages of Life’s Way, 169-70; Postscript, 366; and “Christ as Example …” (Discourse II) in Judge For Yourselves!, 185.
42. “Christ as Example …” (Discourse II) in Judging for Yourselves!,. 179. Cf. Smith Journals, 11:1:A:263 (1854).
43. “It Is the Spirit that Giveth Life” (Discourse III) in For Self Examination, 103-4.
b. Oath-Swearing
We hold the Holy Scriptures in high honor.
When e.g. an oath is to be particularly solemn
we swear by laying the hand upon the Holy Scripture
which forbids swearing.1
S.K. and the Brethren were in agreement on some specific items of nonconformity which, although in one sense rather minor, or at least subsidiary, are striking enough in their coincidence to he worthy of notice. One such regards the swear-of legal oaths.
From the beginning the Brethren had understood the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:33-37) as forbidding oath-swearing, and Brethren nonconformity in this matter is attested as early as Mack Senior’s Rights and Ordinances.2
Further attestation is found in Michael Frantz3 and in Sauer Junior, whose persecution during the Revolutionary War was brought on, at least in part, by his refusal to swear the oath of allegiance required by the new government.4 The church’s position was stated officially in an Annual Meeting minute of 1785: “And as to the swearing of oaths, we believe the word of Christ, that in all things which we are to testify, we shall testify what is yea, or what is true with yea, and what is nay, or not true with nay; for whatever is more than these cometh of evil.”5
S.K. did not give major attention to the matter of oath-swearing–as he hardly would have had occasion to do–and it is impossible to say whether he would have gone as far as the Brethren in actually refusing to take an oath. However, his passing references indicate that he viewed the problem as did the Brethren, and in fact did his viewing from the same perspective, a literal application of the Sermon on the Mount. In addition to the aside quoted as our headnote, S.K. elsewhere made the same point in another aside, saying that it is a contradiction to make “a man swear by laying his hand upon the New Testament, where it is written, Thou shalt not swear.”6
These statements from S.K.’s religious phase align him with the Brethren in their reading of the New Testament, but just as significant, and even more interesting, are the earlier sentiments of the nonreligious pseudonym Climacus. Again merely in passing, as illustrative of another point (but for that very reason quite revealing), Climacus said: “But when a man has indulged in oaths for a long time, he returns at last to simple utterance, because all swearing is self-nugatory.”7 And one hundred pages later Climacus returned to give the theme a more extended, and now self-conscious, treatment:
Only over-precipitate people, clouds without water and storm-driven mists, are quick to take an oath; because the fact is that they are unable to keep it, and therefore must perpetually be taking it. I, for my part, am of the opinion that ‘never to forget this impression,’ is something quite different from saying once in a solemn moment: ‘I will never forget it.’ The first is inwardness, the second is perhaps only a momentary inwardness…. Flighty and easily excitable souls are more prone to nothing than to the taking of a sacred promise, because the inner weakness needs the strong stimulus of the moment. To administer a sacred pledge to such a person is a very dubious thing.8
As in the previous statements S.K. related oath-swearing to a sectarian view of scriptural obedience, he here relates it to a sectarian view of inwardness.
The evidence is not extensive, but the very fact that S.K. identified himself even this far with a specific belief that is almost uniquely that of classic Protestant sectarianism–this fact is of some significance.
1. “To Become Sober” (Discourse I) in Judge For Yourselves!, 128.
2. Mack Senior, Rights and Ordinances, in Durnbaugh, Origins, 376.
3. Michael Frantz, op.cit., stanzas 367ff.
4. Sauer Junior, the account of his persecution, quoted in Brumbaugh, op.cit., 415ff.
5. Minutes of the Annual Meetings of the Church of the Brethren, 1778-1909, hereafter referred to as Annual Meeting Minutes (Elgin, Ill.: Brethren Puhlishing House, 1909), minutes of 1785, art. I, p. 20.
6. Attack upon “Christendom,” 130. Cf. For Self Examination, 36-37.
7. Postscript, 113.
8. Ibid., 214-15.
c. Celibacy
That a woman [the woman who
was a sinner (Luke 7:36-50)]
is presented as a teacher, as a pattern of piety,
can astonish no one who knows
that piety or godliness
is in its very nature a womanly quality.1
Woman might be called “joie de vivre.”
There is certainly a joie de vivre in man;
but fundamentally he is formed
to be spiritual and if he were alone
and left to himself he would not… know how
to set about it, and would never really get as far as beginning.
But then the joie de vivre,which is indefinite and vague
within him, appears outside him in another form,
in the form of woman who is joie de vivre;
and so the joy of life awakens.2
It is not often that one can catch S.K. in an out-and-out contradiction, but here is a bad one. Woman is either a symbol of godliness that can lead a man into spirituality, or else she is a symbol of joie de vivre that can lead a man into worldliness-SIC. was not quite sure which. Eighteenth century Brethren thought displayed something of the same, or at least a related, ambiguity. Apparently S.K. and the Brethren finally came out at opposite conclusions, S.K. supporting Christian celibacy, the Brethren Christian marriage. But the significance of the comparison lies not in the divergence of their conclusions but in the agreement of their confusions. The Kierkegaardian-Brethren ambiguity must be seen in contrast to the Roman Catholic certainty that celibacy is required for the higher righteousness of “spiritual Christians” and the churchly-Protestant certainty that celibacy is as much as prohibited for normal Christian spirituality.
We will advocate the position that S.K. concluded his life as a supporter of universal Christian celibacy, but we also will strongly resist the interpretation that would make S.K. such from the outset and then draw implications regarding his solitariness and world renunciation. Any such reading of the Regina incident cannot be reconciled with certain plain and forthright statements by S.K. For example:
I do not maintain, and have never maintained that I did not marry because it was supposed to be contrary to Christianity, as though my being unmarried were a form of Christian perfection. Oh, far from it…. My greatest pleasure would have been to have married the girl to whom I was engaged…. [But] I remained unmarried, and so had the opportunity of thinking over what Christianity really meant by praising the unmarried state.3
There is nothing in S.K. to indicate anything but that this asseveration was entirely honest and was his honest understanding throughout his life. Even when, in 1854-1855, at the very end of his career, S.K. seemingly took a view that would make celibacy a Christian requirement, the situation was not changed: S.K. did not arrive at this position until thirteen years after he had broken with Regina; he never mentioned Regina in the process of presenting this final opinion; and if there was any real connection between the breaking of the engagement in 1841 and the advocating of Christian celibacy in 1854, it is by no means clear what the nature or significance of that connection might be. In short, the Regina incident, far from being the key to Kierkegaard’s witness, is of very questionable help in understanding S.K.’s religious views even of marriage, let alone the religious life as a whole. His relationship to Regina involved so many purely personal factors that it hardly can be used as a source from which to derive a clear picture of his ideology.
We have called S.K.’s thoughts on marriage “confused”; this term is somewhat misleading if not unjust. S.K.’s was certainly a changing view but not by that token a chaotic one; if his statements are traced period by period a quite consistent pattern appears.
Phase I: The Regina Incident and S.K.’s Cogitations Regarding It
This, as we have suggested, was predominantly a personal matter from which S.K. did not (and explicitly refused to) generalize concerning a Christian doctrine of celibacy per se. This phase is of little help to our study, although, as we shall see, it does lend some support to Phase IV.
Phase II: The Aesthetic Pseudonyms (In Particular, those of Either/Or I and of the Banquet in Stages on Life’s Way)
Here are both confused and inadequate views of marriage. Among these pseudonyms are “woman-lovers,” analysts who approve of love, “woman-haters,” and analysts who approve misogyny; and ultimately all of their views-those of the lovers as well as the haters-show up as inadequate and false. But this disorder ought not be laid to S.K.’s charge, for it was precisely his design to demonstrate that the aesthetic view is by nature confused and partial. Far from attempting to elucidate his own position, S.K. was deliberately using pseudonyms in order to assert that aesthetic analyses are futile.
Thus one cannot, as some would do, read, for example, the speeches of the banquet as an indication of S.K.’s own hatred of women-particularly when S.K. himself explicitly stated:
The five speeches, … which are all of them caricatures of the most holy, are written with the idea of bringing an essential, but nevertheless false, light to bear upon woman.4
It is a very uncertain procedure to try to divine S.K.’s true opinion of women out of these pseudonyms; they were never intended to incorporate his view, and they present no consistent picture within themselves. The only positive contribution this material can make to our quest is to say, “The answer is not with me,” the truth about women and marriage lies not in the aesthetic sphere.
Phase III: The Ethical Pseudonym (In Particular, Judge William, as He Appears Both in Either/Or II and Stages
We have rejected Phases I and II as being all but useless in leading us to S.K.’s true religious position regarding marriage; Phase III is much more helpful. Those commentators who tend to make Phases I and II normative and thus portray S.K. simply as a misogynist must overlook the fact that also within the writings of Søren Kierkegaard are to be found some of the most impressive pictures of conjugal happiness and some of the most profound analyses of the marriage relationship to occur anywhere. These commentators ignore the obvious fact that the banquet passage consciously is structured so that the mere appearance of the concrete and actual love relationship of Judge William and his wife immediately gives the lie to all the high-flown philosophizing of the banqueters.
Phase III presents as exalted a view of marriage as can be conceived, always from the mouth of Judge William, the ethicist, who makes such statements as these:
What I am through her, that she is through me, and we are neither of us anything by ourselves but only in union. To her I am a man, for only a married man is a genuine man.5
In paganism there was a god for love but none for marriage; in Christianity there is, if I may venture to say so, a God for marriage and none for love.6
Marriage I regard as the highest telos of the individual human existence, it is so much the highest that the man who goes without it cancels with one stroke the whole of earthly life and retains only eternity and spiritual interests.7
I do not say that marriage is the highest, I know a higher; but woe to him who would skip over marriage without justification…. [Any exception] must occur in the direction of the religious, in the direction of spirit, in such a way that being spirit makes one forget that one is also man, not spirit alone like God.8
A very obvious difference between Phase III and Phase II is that Phase III has arrived at one consistent viewpoint. Likewise, this viewpoint displays insights that are much more profound, positive, and religious than those of even the greatest “lovers” of Phase II. Judge William is still a pseudonym (and this dare not be forgotten); Phase III does not present us with S.K.’s direct and final word.
A consideration of the general relationship between S.K.’s “stages of existence” will help elucidate the relationship between the specific “phases” that concern us here. S.K. held that a decisive “either/or” falls between the aesthetic and the ethical stages but that the progression from the ethical to the religious is much more gradual and continuous. Thus one must choose between Phase II and Phase III, between the banqueters on the one hand, Judge William and wife on the other. S.K. made this dichotomy very clear. It does not follow, however, that the same sort of choice is to be posited between the ethicist Judge William on the one hand and the religious view of S.K. himself on the other. Here the relationship we would expect (and which will prove to be the case) is that Judge William represents a truth which is nevertheless a partial truth; religious-Christian considerations will not cancel or supersede Judge William’s position but definitely will supplement and modify it. It is highly significant to note that, in Judge William’s third and fourth statements quoted above, there are explicit hints of other considerations yet to come.
Phase IV: The Direct Religious Writings up until the Attack
In this phase are present two different conceptions which on first thought may seem contradictory but probably are not. In the first place there is the continuation of the Judge William line in which woman is praised as a spiritual helpmeet and example. The first of our two epigraphs is characteristic of the long passage of which it is a pan–this from a discourse of 1850. Another such passage occurs in For Self-Examination (1851).9 The comparative lateness of both these dates is significant.
But alongside this strain appears another, a specifically Christian note. One example will make S.K.’s thought plain:
It is quite certain and true that Christianity is suspicious of marriage, and desires that along with the many married servants it has, it might also have an unmarried person, a single man; for Christianity knows very well that with woman and love all this weakliness and love of coddling arises in a man, and that insofar as the husband himself does not bethink himself of it, the wife ordinarily pleads it with ingenuous candor whtch is exceedingly dangerous for the husband, especially for one who is required in the strictest to serve Christianity.”10
There would not seem to be any necessary opposition between the affirmation
- that woman has an instinct for genuine religiousness which can be of inspiration to a man, and
- that family life inevitably involves a man in worldly concerns that make it difficult for him to act completely and solely for God.
In fact the recognition of both truths might well lead to S.K.’s customary dialectical treatment except that it proves somewhat awkward to apply the method to marriage. One hardly can be both married and not married at the same time; neither does rapid oscillation between the two quite achieve the purpose; and even being married “as though not” is somewhat impractical, although this is precisely what Paul did advocate in 1 Cor. 7:29.
The position S.K. actually took would seem to be as near to dialectical as is feasible. His was a doctrine of “vocational celibacy.” Ethically understood, marriage is a moral imperative that applies universally (Phase III is not rejected). Christianly understood, marriage is proper and good, the “normal” mode. However, the cause of true religion also needs (not, “the law of the church requires”) the contribution that only a celibate can make. God calls a few Christians, the “exceptions,” to a specialized service that needs the specialized qualifications found only in a celibate.
Though there may be some points of contact, this view differs greatly from that of Roman Catholicism. With S.K. the call is entirely a private matter between den Enkelte and God and is so exceptional a case that no generalizations can be drawn at all. Den Enkelte must bear the full responsibility for having presumed “a teleological suspension of the ethical” (to use the language of Fear and Trembling), being willing to pay the price and risk the misunderstanding that such exceptions incur. This is a far different thing than a formal requirement of the church applied wholesale to an entire class of men as a prerequisite for achieving an elevated spiritual status. No merit accrues to the Kierkegaardian celibate; he has done no more than the married Christian has done, because each has sought simply to find the will of God for his particular life. But as God may call one man to sacrifice his fortune to the cause, another his social status, another perhaps his life, so may he call still another to sacrifice his marriage. And S.K. clearly, explicitly, and consistently interpreted his break with Regina precisely in this frame of reference; he always thought of himself as “the exception” and did his utmost to prevent his action from being generalized into a rule.
Up to this point, apart from the complicating factors of Phase I (i.e. his personal actions in regard to Regina), S.K.’s thought about Christian celibacy has followed the pattern that almost could be predicted; the development is of a piece with the rest of his religious thought. And Phase IV, which falls where we would expect to find the authentic Kierkegaardian witness, we take as being just that. This position is not typically churchly-Protestant; the fact that it so much as shows concern over the possibility of a Christian celibacy is a distinction, a distinction which, we intend to show, actually is sectarian in character.
Phase V: During the Attack (1854-1855)
Contrary to S.K.’s usual pattern, during the closing months of his life, coincident with his attack upon Christendom, he seems to have drifted past sectarianism and into a view of marriage that can be adjudged only as “cultic.” In several places in the periodicals that made up the Attack and more particularly in the unpublished journals of that period, S.K. condemned marriage and childbearing per se, making such statements as:
The lower man is in the degree of consciousness, the more natural the [sexual] relationship. But the more intellectually developed a man is the more conscious life penetrates it and the closer one gets to the point where lies Christianity and whatever resembles it in religious and philosophic outlook, where continence becomes the expression of spirit.11
“Christianly it is anything but the greatest benefaction to bestow life upon the child…. Christianly it is egoism in the highest degree that because a man and a woman cannot control their lust another being must therefore sigh, perhaps for seventy years in this prisonhouse and vale of tears, and perhaps be lost eternally.”12
I came into being through a crime against God’s will. The offense, which in one sense, is not mine, though it makes me a criminal in the sight of God, was to give life.”13
This is something new–new and shocking. Here is no natural development out of Phase IV; Phase IV suddenly and without warning has been turned upside down; what had been insisted upon as the exception now has become the rule. In addition, Phase V is not merely anti-marriage, nor even misogynist, but deeply and terribly misanthropic. There are here implications that stand in direct contradiction to both the letter and mood of what we have seen as S.K.’s primary emphases. For instance, the first quotation above denies everything S.K. had said about antiintellectualism and the equality of all men before God. And what does this bitter hatred of life and of self do to the concepts of den Enkelte, devotional immediacy, neighbor love?
This dark note was a real note, but we would not give the impression that it marked the whole tenor either of the Attack or of the journals for this period. Such definitely is not the case; the scene did not suddenly turn dark but, rather, on the horizon appeared momentarily, from time to time, this black cloud no larger than a man’s hand. What it presaged is impossible to say; it appeared too late and was too fleeting to provide grounds for accurate analysis. The existence of Phase V cannot be denied, but Phase IV is the only one that qualifies as the normative Kierkegaardian position on Christian celibacy, and it is far from representing the solitariness of a total renunciation of woman and the world.
If S.K.’s thought portrays a move from a churchlike assumption about marriage as a universal duty (Phase III), through sectarian dialecticism (Phase IV), into a cultic insistence on universal celibacy (Phase V), Brethren thought represents something of the same movement–in precisely the opposite direction.
Surprisingly enough, the original Brethren advocated and practiced a system of enforced celibacy (or continence in the case of couples that already were married). The chronicles of the Ephrata community included a brief description of Brethren beginnings at Schwarzenau which said: “[The Brethren] had their goods in common, and practiced continence, though it is said they did not persevere in this zeal longer than seven years, after which they turned to women again and to the ownership of property involved therein.”14 The Beisselites cited this information in the process of justifying their own practice of both communalism and continence; therefore, the entire notice would be highly suspect (as it is almost certainly mistaken regarding the seven year duration) except for the fact that it is supported by Mack Senior himself. One of the questions put to him by the Radical Pietists in 1713 asked whether the Brethren had not wavered by once rejecting the married state and then permitting it again. Mack answered:
It is true that we had to continue discussions on marriage, work, yes, and still other matters, after the [first] baptism. Before our baptism, when we were still among the [Radical] Pietists, we were not taught otherwise by those who were deemed great saints. Therefore, we had much contention until we abandoned the errors which we had absorbed.15
The fact that Mack Junior was born but four years after the church was founded and the statement above written five years after–this, plus the very tone of Mack’s reply, all suggests that the period of strict Brethren celibacy was very much briefer than seven years, actually representing only the time needed for the group to get itself established and move out of the cultism from which it had come. Indeed, this cultic phase probably involved about the same length of time and the same degree of fixedness in the Brethren as it did in S.K., the difference being, of course, that it lay at the beginning of the Brethren development and at the end of S.K.’s.
But the reinstitution of marriage did not terminate Brethren discussion of celibacy. In his Rights and Ordinances of 1715, Mack Senior said:
If the unmarried state is conducted in purity of the Spirit and of the flesh in true faith in Jesus, and is kept in true humility, it is better and higher. It is closer to the image of Christ to remain unmarried. Nevertheless, if an unmarried person marries, he commits no sin, provided it occurs in the Lord Jesus, and is performed in the true belief in Jesus Christ.16
Although there are differences in approach and emphasis, Mack’s is a dialectic-like solution quite similar in effect to S.K.’s Phase IV: both marriage and celibacy can be Christian; God purposes and calls some Christians for the one station and some for the other; no one can prescribe for the other person; neither should one vaunt himself over the other.
The most extended discussion of celibacy, following the same general line as Mack, is to be found in Michael Frantz (himself a married man, as Mack was). In his prolix poem he presented a discussion running for some forty-seven stanzas; what follows is a prose condensation and paraphrase:
A person does not sin by marrying; neither should one try to prevent the godly marriage of his daughter or maid. Worldlings have wives and children without number and thus increase their demands for land and wealth; this has been the pattern since Adam and Eve. As the world has debauched God’s other gifts, so marriage. Not all marriages are of God. However, marriage is clean and honorable for those who are called to it. Marriage, indeed, can even be a symbol of the inner relationship to the bridegroom Christ.
Marriage should be classed along with fasting and praying, i.e., they easily can be misused. Whoever desires to practice abstention within the marriage relationship should be very careful that his mate is of the same mind. Chastity is a good gift for those who have it and who practice it humbly and quietly. Whoever abstains in marriage should abstain in all things and not make a great deal of talk about it. Whoever despises marriage is following Satan; whoever abstains from marriage must take care not to abstain also from Christ’s Spirit and the light of grace.17
The dialectic attempt to approve complementary positions and hold both in harmony is particularly marked in Frantz. It should be recalled that just as Mack had had to hold his position in the face of celibacy-promoting Radical Pietists, Frantz was working in the very congregation from which the celibate Beisselites but recently had gone out. Undoubtedly these external pressures helped to keep Christian celibacy a live alternative among the Brethren for as long as was the case. Following Michael Frantz, the matter does not appear again in eighteenth century Brethren literature, except for one interesting note. History tells us that Jacob Stoll, the poet-preacher of the latter part of the century, was engaged to be married at the time the church called him to the ministry. Along with his decision to accept that call he broke off his engagement and served as a celibate18 –shades of (or rather, foreshadowings of) Søren Kierkegaard!
For the most part, however, the Brethren seem to have slipped back to the customary churchly way of simply assuming that anyone who can marry will, failing to give serious attention to as much as the possibility of a truly religious celibacy. Thus the Brethren path–just the reverse of S.K.’s–ran from cultism, through sectarianism, and into churchism.
The customary approach of Kierkegaard scholarship is to treat S.K.’s position on marriage solely as a matter of his personal psychology. However, if one were to take S.K.’s own statements (those of both Phase IV and Phase V) simply and plainly at their face value, it would become quite obvious what he considered as the primary motive. In his New Testament S.K. found a number of counsels, commands, and examples that compel a serious consideration of religious celibacy. He frequently used phrases like those found in his statements quoted above: “Christianity is suspicious of marriage,” and “what Christianity really meant by praising the unmarried state”; and these, for S.K, are the equivalent of saying, “The New Testament teaches …” In addition, he made specific reference both to the example of Jesus and the teachings of Paul.19 But to a modern scholar it is inconceivable that anyone might take the Bible seriously enough to be bothered by the fact that it promotes celibacy. So, to the couch! If S.K. did not marry, it was because he was sexually maladjusted.
But our comparison with sectarianism can be instructive at this point, for with the sectaries it is obvious that biblical injunctions were the source of their restlessness. They were too deeply committed to scriptural obedience to take the churchly-Protestant option of ignoring a sizable group of texts. But on the other hand, because of their commitment to the equality of all men before God, neither could they take the Roman Catholic option of applying marriage-approving texts to the laity and celibacy-approving texts to a superior class of Christians. They were impelled, then, into the dialectic, vocational view, for which a strong case could be made that this is an accurate interpretation of the New Testament position. And it is just possible that S.K. too was being entirely honest when he indicated that he found a justification for celibacy within the New Testament.
Ultimately, of course, neither S.K. nor the Brethren were able maintain the balance that would give marriage and celibacy equal rights, equal honor, equal emphasis; this is a very difficult dialectic to hold. And it very well may be that in the end it was personal, psychological factors that determined that S.K. should lose his balance in the direction of a cultic insistence on celibacy. It would he foolish to deny the evidence of psychological abnormalities at play within the development of Søren Kierkegaard; but it is even more foolish to overlook the role that true religious conviction played in that life–and that conviction, in its impact regarding marriage, had a quality of sectarianism just as it did in regard to so many other things.
.
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 Woman that Was a Sinner,” a discourse appended to Training in Christianity, 261.
2. Dru Journals, 1321 (1854).
3. Dru Journals, 970 (1849). Cf. Smith Journals, 11:1:A:226 (1854).
4. Dru Journals, 505 (1844).
5. Stages of Life’s Way, 101.
6. Ibid., 106.
7. Ibid., 107.
8. Ibid., 166.
9. “… The Mirror of the Word” (Discourse I) in For Self-Exanimation, 70ff. Cf. Smith Journals, 11:2:A:70 (1854); this late, right out of the midst of his misogynist phase, S.K. still can make complimentary statements about woman’s religious role.
10. Training in Christianity, Part II), 119. Cf. Dru Journals, 648, 768, 845, 920, 964.
11. Dru Journals, 1331 (1854).
12. Attack upon “Christendom,” 223; Cf. 163, 213-16, and 219-22.
13. Rohde Journals, 239 (1855); cf. 31, 35 (both 1854). Cf. also Dru Journals, 1337, 1385, 1399 (all 1854).
14. Brothers Lamech and Agrippa (pseud.), The Ephrata Chronicles, or Chronicon Ephratense (first published Ephrata, 1786), trans. J. Max Hark (Lancaster, PA, 1889), 2.
15. Mack Senior, Basic Questions, in Durnbaugh, Origins, 341, answer to Question 37.
16. Mack Senior, Rights and Ordinances, in Durnbaugh, Origins, 390.
17. Michael Frantz, op.cit., stanzas 194-240 [my trans. and paraphrase–V.E.]; cf. stanzas 46-47.
18. History of the Church of the Brethren of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (Lancastcr, Pa.: 1915), 362-63.
19. Attack upon “Christendom,” 213-16, 219-22.
V. The World Well Loved
The preceding chapter treated S.K.’s World Negative, those elements of secular sociality that the Christian is to renounce. We have seen, however, that even in regard to these conscious “negatives,” S.K.’s renunciation was anything but a sweeping, out-of-hand rejection. The present chapter is the direct counterpart of the preceding one, this the treatment of S.K.’s World Positive, those elements of secular sociality that the Christian is to affirm and promote. The material is classed under two main headings: “The Simple Life” comprises the positive Christian relationship to the world of things, “Neighbor Love” to the world of people.
A. The Simple Life
When the prosperous man on a dark but star-lit night drives comfortably in his carriage and has the lanterns lighted, aye, then he is safe, he fears no difficulty, he carries his light with him, and it is not dark close around him; but precisely because he has the lanterns lighted, and has a strong light close to him, precisely far this reason he cannot see the stars, for his lights obscure the stars, which the poor peasant driving without lights can see gloriously in the dark but starry night. So those deceived ones live in the temporal existence: either, occupied with the necessities of life, they are too busy to avail themselves of the view, or in their prosperity and good days they have, as it were, lanterns lighted, and close about them everything is so satisfactory, so pleasant, so comfortable–but the view is lacking, the prospect, the view of the stars.1
Our present topic can be introduced in the form of a question. Put in terms of the parable above, it is: If the lanterns of worldly interest obscure the view, what is the mode of existence that best reveals the stars? The Brethren answer was: the simple life. As in the case of “nonconformity to the world,” “the simple life” became a technical designation only in the nineteenth century, although the emphasis had been present from the sect’s beginning. The same emphasis is to be found in S.K., although, again, the phrase itself is not.
The simple life is a positive conception, its major focus being not so much upon what must be given up as upon what is gained when one deliberately suppresses material values in order to give preeminence to things of the spirit. The “constitutional precedent” for the Brethren teaching always has been the well-known passage from the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6:25-34, with its injunctions: “Take no thought for your life”; “Be not anxious”; “Behold the fowls of the air”; “Consider the lilies of the field”; “Seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness.” And a glance at the index Kierkegaard and the Bible makes it apparent that this same text is probably the one biblical passage most used by S.K.; he gave full-fledged exposition (not simply an allusion) to this selection, or to parts of it, at nineteen different points in his published works.2
The simple-life theme made its earliest appearance in Brethren literature in a hymn, “The Christian Pilgrim,” found in the sect’s first hymnal, compiled in Germany.3 The idea was a favorite of Michael Frantz. In his long poem is a series of stanzas on the theme “An idol I have made for myself…” The idols he lists are eating, drinking, splendid clothes, pride in the fact that one wears simple garb (note well!), crops, trees, houses, delight in natural creatures (livestock?).4 But his best statement, giving greater accent to the positive, is in a shorter poem (only fourteen stanzas long) entitled “A Hymn of Brotherly Love and Community”:
In the quietness of God's will
One indeed finds the most beautiful treasure--
A treasure greater than all treasures--
If the heart is a clean place.
This treasure is only
In hearts which are clean of the love of the world.
One must beforehand sell everything,
Then he car' buy this treasure.
He must indeed industriously pursue it,
Dig for it day and night.
If, then, one has sold everything,
He will find the treasure directly in the act....
Whoever has a bare, small house--in accordance with what is necessary--
His clothing and the bread of nourishment,
Who has a stronger faith with love's gifts,
Free from guilt, wholly without need,
With children and wife, sound in body--
He thereby is truly blessed by God.5
Sauer Junior also wrote effectively concerning the simple life, saying at one point in a poem that a Christian does not presume to spread himself any further than he can cover with his own blankets.6 But his most outstanding treatment of the subject was an article in one of his periodicals. In 1764 he established Geistliche Magazien, a little monthly of edification and exhortation which he distributed free of charge as a Christian service. In an issue of the first year appeared a brief essay on “The Usefulness of Poverty”; the fact that it was written as “an after-piece to fill up the remaining space” and refers to the lead article is evidence enough that Sauer Junior was himself the author. The following is a digest of its main themes:
Men rebel against being poor. They do not consider their poverty as a position in which God has placed them and so use it according to his will. But if one accepted his position, he would thereby become free from it. And if he has fallen into the vicious sort of poverty, he should seek to escape the sin, not the poverty. If he will, he can become free in however little it is God has given him, knowing that He who cares for the birds certainly will not forsake him. His position even carries spiritual advantages: Not having gold, he is not responsible for his use of it. He is better off for not eating dainty foods. He does not do as much calling and so is healthier. Not being honored, he is correspondingly less often insulted-particularly behind his back. He does not have to worry about fashions and keeping up with the neighbors.
The important thing is godliness, and the poor man has the easier road to it. Every man must at some time face suffering, and the poor man knows better how to do this because he has not trusted in temporal supports. One needs a sense of what are the true and what are the false values in life, and a poor man has fewer of the latter to renounce. The rich man, on the other hand, must give an account of his riches, how he obtained them, how he used them–as per the story of Dives and Lazarus. All men must become spiritually poor, and the poor man can do this more easily. In addition, rich men tend to use and exploit their neighbors.
But ultimately, poverty can prove a blessing only to one who has been converted. When converted, God will direct one what to give up and will give him the power to do so. All men do not come to God in the same way; poverty is not the means of conversion for all men.7
It is obvious that the ideal of the simple life was a comparative and a voluntary poverty, neither grinding destitution nor a condition one accepts as a grudging necessity. It also seems clear that this is not the equivalent of what customarily is known as “the ascetic life.” Material things are counted as good and not renounced as being evil; sacrifice is not valued in and for itself. The simple life is, rather, a life duly proportioned so that spiritual values are given the preeminence they deserve. Here, then, is a dialectic tension between the good of the gifts God has created and the good of God himself.
The heart of the Brethren position is strikingly illustrated by a little story told about Mack Junior.8 As an old man this saint and patriarch of the church somewhere had acquired a silken lounging robe which he wore around the house. Some of the Brethren became concerned that such adornment did not fit well with the church’s teaching regarding the simple life. Patriarch or not, a committee was delegated to wait upon Brother Mack. These visitors found him at work in his garden, clothed in the very symbol of luxury they had come to condemn. Brother Mack rose to greet them, wiping his dirty hands on the very fabric of his splendor. Spontaneously the committee decided that even silk, if treated with such careless disdain, so obviously regarded “as though not,” hardly posed a spiritual threat. An edifying conversation ensued; the point of the visit failed to get mentioned; and the committee reported back that Elder Mack still was well within the order of the church.
It quickly can be admitted that the Brethren would not have considered the comportment of Søren Kierkegaard as being within that order. He lived what we already have called a life of luxury, tending to pamper his rather extravagant whims in such matters as food, drink, clothing, housing, and personal regimen. However, neither was that mode of living ever advanced by S.K. as an example of what he intended by the simple life. S.K.’s words rather than his behavior must be the source for our study.
S.K.’s words on this theme were many; ten different discourses can be counted as dealing directly with the subject. And although it seems an unlikely combination, the emphasis shows up clearly in the pseudonyms. In fact, Climacus offers two very concise definitions of the doctrine, yet couched in anything but the language of devotion and edification:
Now if for any individual an eternal happiness is his highest good, this will mean that all finite satisfactions are volitionally relegated to the status of what may have to be renounced in favor of an eternal happiness.9
In order that the individual may sustain an absolute relationship to the absolute telos he must first have exercised him-self in the renunciation of relative ends, and only then can there be a question of the ideal task: the simultaneous maintenance of an absolute relationship to the absolute, and a relative relationship to the relative.10
These are reiterations of the Brethren view, although it is doubtful that any of the Brethren would have known what Climacus was talking about, and it is clear that the definitions themselves violate the first canon of the simple life, namely, that it be simple. However, S.K. (not Climacus) earlier had said the same thing in a much more appropriate way: “‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die,’ … is the cowardly joy of the life of sensuality, the despicable order of things where one lives in order to eat and drink, instead of eating and drinking in order to live.”11 This statement goes to the heart of the matter, and S.K.’s development of the idea displays it as very similar to that of the Brethren.
His most effective presentation–unless it be the parable of the carriage lanterns and the stars–is probably the parable of the stock dove. He told of a wild dove of the forest which always was able to find adequate sustenance (because God provides for the birds of the air) but which, of course, never was able to know for sure where the next meal was coming from, or whether there would be a next meal. Thus not out of any real deprivation but out of fear of future deprivation the wild dove became jealous of the farmer’s domesticated doves; they lived assured by the presence of the farmer’s abundant granary and by the fact that the farmer fed them regularly from it. In the end, anxiety over material security led the wild dove to trade its forest freedom for the farmer’s dovecot, and it promptly found itself on the farmer’s table.12
In his more formal explication S.K. saw that the first and most basic principle of the simple life is the attitude in which one holds his belongings:
In connection with abundance, thought can take from the rich man the thought of possession, the thought that he owns and possesses his wealth and abundance as his…. He has no anxiety in gathering abundance, for he does not care to gather abundance; he has no anxiety in retaining, for it is easy enough to retain what one has not, and he is as one who has not; he has no anxiety for the fact that others possess more, for he is as one who possesses nothing; he knows without anxiety that others possess less, for he is as one who possesses nothing; and he has no anxiety about what he shall leave his heirs.13
It should be recalled that these words are addressed to the wealthy Christian and are intended to affirm that the sheer possession of material goods is not an absolute bar to one’s being a Christian. At this point S.K.’s view is perhaps not completely incompatible with that often designated as “the Protestant ethic,” an interpretation which has been at least somewhat typical of churchly thought. However, even here S.K. has begun to move beyond it, in that there is no talk about earning money to the glory of God or being called by God to accumulate wealth.
But S.K., as the Brethren, was not content to leave the simple life only on the level of an “as though not” attitude; this easily could become an invitation to hypocrisy. Re went a step further:
Christianity has never taught that to be literally a lowly man is ynonymous with being a Christian, nor that from the literal condition of lowliness there is a direct transition as a matter of course to becoming a Christian; neither has it taught that if the man of worldly position were to give up all his power, he therefore would be a Christian. But from literal lowliness to the point of becoming a Christian there is however only one step. The position of being literally a lowly man is by no means an unfavorable preparation for becoming a Christian.14
S.K. here aligned It should be recalled that these words are addressed to the wealthy Christian and are intended to affirm that the sheer possession of material goods is not an absolute bar to one’s being a Christian. At this point S.K.’s view is perhaps not completely incompatible with that often designated as “the Protestant ethic,” an interpretation which has been at least somewhat typical of churchly thought. However, even here S.K. has begun to move beyond it, in that there is no talk about earning money to the glory of God or being called by God to accumulate wealth.
But S.K., as the Brethren, was not content to leave the simple life only on the level of an “as though not” attitude; this easily could become an invitation to hypocrisy. Re went a step further:himself with the concluding paragraph of Sauer Junior’s essay: poverty, in and of itself, is of no particular spiritual significance or value; neither is the way of poverty legalistically prescribed as the condition for becoming a Christian. Rather, the crux of the matter, S.K. saw, was in the voluntary quality of the discipline–voluntary in the radical sense that makes it an end in itself and not a “work” in the interests of a higher righteousness or an ascetic regimen, for “voluntarily to give up all is Christianity, … is to be convinced of the glory of the good which Christianity promises.”15
In at least one place in his writings S.K. seemed to take a position even more radical than that of the simple life; he branded worldly goods as “themselves invidious”:
All earthly and worldly goods are in themselves selfish, invidious; the possession of them, being invidious or envious, must of necessity made others poorer: what I have, another cannot have; the more I have, the less another has. The unrighteous mammon (and this term might well he applied to all earthly goods, including worldly honor, power, etc.) is itself unrighteous, does injustice (irrespective of whether it is unlawfully acquired or possessed), cannot in and for itself be acquired or possessed equally…. Even though a man may be willing to communicate in his earthly goods–yet every instant when he is employed in acquiring them or is dwelling upon the possession of them he is selfish, as that thing is which he possesses or acquires…. In a sense this selfishness does not inhere in him, it inheres in the essential nature of the earthly goods…. No, the way, the perfect way of making rich is to communicate the goods of the spirit, being oneself, moreover, solely employed in acquiring and possessing these goods.16
Even here, in the most radical statement of his position, it should be noted that S.K.’s critique still has to do ultimately with the question of religious allegiance; it is not the materiality of “things” but the inevitable spiritual concomitants of their “possession” that concerned him. Thus, although his view is a long way indeed from the so-called Protestant ethic, it does not by that token fall into the category of Catholic “monasticism,” as Lowrie would suggest.17 It does not presuppose a matter/spirit dualism, meritorious sacrifice, or anything of the sort. Not “Protestant” and not Catholic, it does rather clearly and cleanly fall into the tertium quid of Protestant sectarianism.
The persuasive logic and strong New Testament overtones of S.K.’s argument make it hard to rebut, yet it is difficult to say just how he would have seen it working out in practice. On the face of it his thought would seem to point toward one form or another of voluntary Christian communalism.18 And there is evidence that S.K. at least toyed with the idea. In dreaming about a truly Christian society he said: “The form of the world would be like–well, I know not with what I should liken it. It would resemble an enormous version of the town of Christenfeld [which was an experiment in Christian communalism].19 The same sources that cited the first, brief period of Brethren celibacy indicated that communalism was part of the same regimen. Now communalism certainly is not a necessary or normative aspect of sectarianism per se, yet clearly it is within sectarianism that communal experiments tend to appear. Essentially neither S.K. nor the Brethren are to be identified as exponents of communalism; however, the very fact that both even were willing to entertain the notion is a mark of
- the authority they attributed to scriptural commands and examples and
- the radicalness of their view of the simple life.
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. “…Even When Temporal Sufferings Press Heaviest, the Blessedness of Eternity Outweighs Them” (Discourse VI) in The Gospel of Suffering, 123.
2. Paul S. Minear and Paul S. Morimoto, Kierkegaard and the Bible: An Index (Princeton: Princeton Theological Seminary, 1953), 19.
3. “The Christian Pilgrim,” from Geistreiches Gesang-Buch, translated and reversified by Ralph W. Shlosser, in Durnbaugh, Origins, 412.
4. Michael Frantz, op.cit., the title poem, stanzas 35-41; cf. the prose piece, 46.
5. Ibid., 47, stanzas 8, 9, [my trans.–V.E.].
6. Sauer Junior, a poem accompanying the interest table in Der Hoch-Deutsch Americanische Caendar for 1761, 18.
7. Sauer Junior, “Die Nutzbarkeit der Armuth,” Geistliche Magazien, Ser. I, No.7 (c. 1764) 60ff. [my trans–VE.].
8. Freeman Ankrum, Alexander Mack the Tunker and Descendants (Masontown, PA: published by the author, 1943), 27-28.
9. Postscript, 350.
10. Ibid., 386.
11. “Beside a Grave” (Discourse III) in Thoughts on Crucial Situations in Human Life, 90. This saying may not have been original with S.K.; much the same thing had been said by Clement of Alexandria, c. A.D. 220.
12. Discourse I on “What Is to Be Learnt from the Lilies” in The Gospel of Suffering, 184ff.
13. “The Anxiety of Abundance” (Part I, Discourse 2) in Christian Discourses, 29-30.
14. “The Anxiety of High Place” (Part I, Discourse 4) in Christian Discourses, 57.
15. “Behold, We Have Left All …” (Part III, Discourse 2) in Christian Discourses, 186; cf. 195.
16. “… The Poorer You Become the More You Can Make Others Rich” (Part II, Discourse 3) in Christian Discourses, 120-21, 125.
17. Walter Lowrie in the translator’s footnote that accompanies the passage quoted above.
18. We have designed our terminology precisely to avoid implications of the contemporary word “communism.” The difference can be stated as diametrically as this: If “communism” is an economic system designed to give its adherents maximum acquisitions, Christian “communalism” is the rejection of economic system in an effort to minimize acquisition.
19. The Book on Adler, xxv-xxvi. S.K. went on to press the distinction which our terminology intends to convey. He said that Communism would approve Christenfeld as the correct worldly way, Pietism as the correct Christian way; and that these are entirely different affirmations. The context indicates that S.K. was thinking more of the radical equalitarianism of Christenfeld than of its radical view of ownership, although, obviously, the two aspects are so closely related as to be inseparable.
b. Neighbor Love
To love human beings is…
the only salutary consolation for both time
and eternity, and to love human beings is the only true
sign that you are a Christian.1
When it is a duty in loving
to love the men we see,
there is no limit to love. If the duty is to be fulfilled,
love must be limitless.
It is unchanged, no matter how the object becomes changed.2
It would be quite within the realm of plausible and defensible assertion to claim that, in Works of Love, Søren Kierkegaard has given us the greatest treatment of Christian love to have been produced since the New Testament. The great contemporary works by Nygren and de Rougemont (and Fromm) are so dependent upon S.K. and so anticipated by him that they hardly could be given priority.
The eighteenth century Brethren would have heartily endorsed the title of S.K.’s book and the reasoning which lay behind it, that true Christian love can be recognized and validated only when it shows itself in concrete acts, its very nature being to seek such expression. Thus the Brethren literature included little if anything in the way of abstract treatises, or even exhortations, about love in general but concerned itself immediately with the practical aspects of works of love.
Although not enlarged upon, clues are found within the Brethren writings that indicate that the concept of neighbor love was there derived in the same way as S.K. did. In a poem on 1 Jn 4:16, Jacob Stoll said:
[Those who would know the love of God]
They, in their whole lives,
Are at all times completely permeated
With this sort of pure love
Toward God, their highest Good,
And out of tender love are moved
Also to do good to their neighbors.
An attribute of pure love:
It is of such noble power
That it can cleave to nothing;
It seeks to live in God alone.3
To root neighbor love solely and completely in the God-relationship is, as we shall see, thoroughly Kierkegaardian; S.K. called God the middle term of the love relationship between den Enkelte and his neighbor.
And Michael Frantz carried the parallel even further when he specified that love is to do what God has commanded, help those in need, give to him who asks, loan without expecting return, feed enemies, etc.4 In the first place, that “love is to do” is consonant with S.K.’s emphasis on the Works of love. And in the second place, the suggestion that Christian love is motivated and moved primarily out of obedience to God’s directive catches up the major theme of S.K.’s great work, that thou shalt love.
Frantz’s listing of God’s commands points to the source of the Brethren love ethic, the teachings of Jesus and particularly the Sermon on the Mount. As with the simple life, S.K. also followed the pattern here. It is interesting to note that what is probably S.K.’s earliest description of Christian love (1843) is almost a paraphrase of the Matthean passage, with allusions to going the second mile, turning the other cheek, giving the cloak also, forgiving seventy times seven.5 Consultation of the Minear-Morimoto index supports the feeling that S.K. was attracted to these Sermon texts, although the attestation is not quite as spectacular nor S.K.’s expositions quite as extensive as was the case with the simple-life passage.6
As we examine the particular works of love that figured strongly in Brethrenism, the most dominant is the practice of charity. Michael Frantz signalized this in his “Hymn of Brotherly Love and Community”:
"Mine" and "thine" do not signify community [Gemeinschaft];
But a heart full of pure love does.
"Mine" and "thine" create great disunity;
A heart full of love has everything in common.
Love and warmheartedness
>Are prepared to give help readily.
Whoever would have fellowship [Gemeinschaft] with God
And eat of the bread of life
Must share his gifts
With the poor man when he comes in need....
To give alms out of a pure heart,
Which is a candle burning with love,
Is much better than treasures of gold.7
In 1760, when the Germantown congregation acquired a dwelling to use as a meetinghouse, several rooms were reserved as a home for the aged or poverty-stricken; later the house was used exclusively for that purpose.8 In the Annual Meetings of 1788 and 1793 the brotherhood as a whole set up procedures by which alms could be distributed in an organized and orderly fashion.9 It must be admitted that the instances cited above constitute charity directed more particularly to “the brethren” than to neighbors as such. But while it is clear that the Brethren saw their own members as being their first responsibility, it is also clear that they drew no hard and fast distinction in their charities. Indeed, the benevolences of Sauer Junior were of such repute that he came to be known as “the Bread Father of Germantown.”10 And this tradition has continued within Brethren life, as it has within other churches of sectarian descent. The Brethren, along with the Mennonites and Friends, have been leaders in the field of international relief and rehabilitation; and it is not by accident that these “historic peace churches” are also the churches with a particular reputation for service and outreach. Both emphases stem from the same radical love ethic of sectarianism.
A second work of love was the very early opposition of the Brethren to slavery. In his newspaper for February 15, 1761, Sauer Junior carried a strong editorial against the institution, quoting copiously from the antislavery tract by the Quaker Anthony Benezet (the Friends and the Brethren supported one another on this issue).11 And in 1782 the church came out in an unequivocal stand: “It has been unanimously considered that it cannot be permitted in any wise by the church, that a member should or could purchase negroes, or keep them as slaves.”12 If the usual economy was in operation here, the Annual Meeting was simply giving official standing to what already was established as the practice of the church; the likelihood is that the Brethren never had held slaves or approved the traffic.
A third work of love was the Brethren refusal to initiate or press lawsuits. We already have noticed this practice in connection with nonconformity, but some of the poems Sauer Junior ran in conjunction with the almanac court calendars make it plain that love for the neighbor was also a primary motive; love for the one who has wronged me must take precedence even over the desire to win justice from him.
My friend, do you now wish
To sue your friend?
Does a painful gnawing
Stir in your breast?
Your Jesus gives you counsel
That you should love your enemy
And through His grace
Practice self-denial....
Avenge yourself on the Enemy
Who harms all men;
Avoid his deep-seated evil
In all your deeds.
If you are now thus minded,
You immediately will find the justice you seek,
And you do not need to capture
Or bind any child of man.
Then Justice
Already has him in custody,
And Mercy itself
Gives the sentence power.
Do you seek the justice of time?
Seek it in the justice of eternity;
Then you will find as well
God and justice and the kingdom of heaven....
Whatever your neighbor has done,
Come unto Me; I will make it good<
And remove you out of yourself
Into the highest grace and favor. 13
A fourth and final work of love relates to the Brethren position on carnal warfare, so-called pacifism, more accurately called nonresistance or defenselessness. In some ways this matter becomes a particularly clear indicator of sectarian thought, not because every sect is invariably pacifist but because, traditionally, the teaching has had virtually no standing in churchly thought. There is, of course, nothing about conscientious objection to war that makes it more a true work of love than anything else we have listed, but here is a point at which it is rather easy to test just how radical one’s love ethic is. It here becomes both costly and conspicuous to love the neighbor, because both the world and the “churches” have taught and required participation in war, not as an act contrary to Christian love but as one permitted by (if not actually expressing) Christian love. Thus for one to adopt the non-resistant position (particularly in a state-church situation) constitutes clear evidence that his love ethic is sufficiently radical to distinguish it from traditional “churchism.” A crucial question for us, then, will be: Was Kierkegaud a “pacifist”?
The Brethren took such a stand from their beginning.14 We already have noted the price Sauer Junior paid for his convictions during the Revolutionary War. However, the most complete discussion from the first half of the century is to be found in Michael Frantz’s poem-treatise, where he introduced the topic with these lines:
It has never yet been heard
That a sheep defends itself against a wolf;
A sheep that heeds the mind of Christ--
It follows, loves, believes Him15
With this, Frantz began a twenty-stanza section entitled “Of Worldly Belligerence”; what follows is a free summary and paraphrase of some of that material:
A Christian does not resist evil with weapons or sword. Christ did not use war in order to establish a worldly kingdom, and his love prohibits his disciples from fighting. Both Isaiah and Christ teach against hurting one’s enemies…. God uses war as the rod of his anger with which to punish the nations that go to war. Thus warfare is not much of an adornment to so-called Christendom. One throws a rod into the fire after it has served its usefulness–and thus it is rather easy to judge whether ‘Christendom’ is of Christ or not…. When the government reqwres preparation for war, the Christian must obey God rather than man. 16
Undoubtedly the most significant document regarding eighteenth century Brethren nonresistance is a petition submitted jointly by the Mennonites and the Brethren to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives on November 7, 1775. At this time the war fever was rising to the point that conscientious objectors could begin to feel the hot breath of persecution. The plea read, in part:
We find ourselves indebted to be thankful to our late worthy Assembly, for … allowing those, who by the Doctrines of our Saviour Jesus Christ, are persuaded in their consciences to love their enemies, and not to resist evil, to enjoy the liberty of their consciences….
The advice to those who do not find Freedom of conscience to take up arms, that they ought to be helpful to those who are in need and distressed circumstances, we receive with cheerfulness towards all men of what station they may be–it being our principle to feed the Hungry and give the Thirsty drink;–we have dedicated ourselves to serve all men in everything that can be helpful to the preservation of Men’s lives, but we find no Freedom in giving, or doing, or assisting in any thing by which Men’s Lives are destroyed or hurt. We beg the Patience of all those who believe we err in this point.
We are always ready, according to Christ’s Command to Peter, to pay the Tribute, that we Offend no man, and so we are willing to pay Taxes, and to render unto Caesar those things that are Caesar’s, and to God those things that are God’s, although we think ourselves very weak to give God his due Favor, he being a Spirit and Life, and We only dust and ashes.
We are also willing to be subject to the higher powers, and to give in the Measures Paul directs us…. We are not at Liberty in Conscience to take up arms to conquer our Enemies, but rather to pray to God, who has Power in Heaven and Earth, for us and them.
We also crave the patience of all the inhabitants of this country,–what they think to see clearer in the Doctrine of the blessed Jesus Christ, we will leave to them and God, finding ourselves very poor; for Faith is to proceed out of the word of God, which is Life and Spirit, and a Power of God, and our consciences are to be instructed by the same, therefore we beg for patience.17
There are here several items of note. In as unecumenical an age as the eighteenth century, the fact that the Brethren and Mennonites could settle for a single statement says something about the character of the two groups. The strong biblical grounding of the nonresistant position is apparent throughout, but what is perhaps more impressive is the appeal to the rights of conscience. In the concluding sentence, indeed, scripture and conscience even are related to one another in the familiar pattern of the inner-outer dialectic. Also, something of S.K.’s understanding of how conscience says “Regulations be blowed!” is involved. Not that there is reflected any defiance of government, any disdain or even questioning of the state as a rightful authority; quite the reverse. And although in one sense the petitioners were requesting the rights of conscience, in a more profound sense this was not so at all. There is no suggestion that their action in any way would be contingent upon what the state decided; rather, “We are not at liberty in conscience … i.e. we are going to do what we have to do, we hope that you will not deem it necessary to persecute us for it.” This combination of deferential respect for governmental authority along with an absolute intransigence in matters of conscience–this is very typical of the classic sectarian position, as is the sectary’s disavowal of any desire to force his understanding onto others, any more than he wants their understanding forced onto him. And finally, the positive emphasis upon service and concrete works of love shows up as a true and essential concomitant of the doctrine of nonresistance.
One other important statement of the Brethren position is a minute of the Annual Meeting of 1785:
We do not understand at all … that we can give ourselves up to do violence, or that we should submit to the higher powers in such manner as to make ourselves their instruments to shed men’s blood, however it might be done…. For the love to God constrains to the obedience of his commandments, as John teaches, and as Christ requires and says, ‘If ye love me, keep my commandments’; and his commandments aim throughout at nonresistance.18
It should be noted that these Brethren apologies include no hint of any Social Gospel romanticism regarding “the infinite worth of a human personality” nor modern Gandhian sociodynamics regarding “positive nonviolent action” as a technique for achieving social gains. The early Brethren pointed only to the divine command of neighbor love, the teachings and example of Jesus, and their own responsibility to obey–and found these warrant enough. S.K. would have appreciated (and did himself affect) this same blunt, unsophisticated approach.
In due course, after the evidence is in, we hope to identify S.K. as a sectarian pacifist, but as we proceed our primary interest is to demonstrate the radicalness of his love ethic. The affinity with sectarianism can be established with certainty that far, whether or not there is then agreement that this love ethic did in fact eventuate in nonresistance.
The simplest way to present S.K.’s views would be to direct the reader to Works of Love, or at least attempt a condensation and summary of that volume. However, our purposes will be served by lifting up only those points which are salient in making the comparison with sectarianism.
In the first place, the love of neighbor was, for S.K., thoroughly, completely, and exclusively, a religious conception and not a humanistic or even humanitarian one:
Worldly wisdom thinks that love is a relationship between man and man. Christianity teaches that love is a relationship between man-God-man, that is, that God is the middle term.”19
Man shall begin by loving the unseen, God, for thereby he himself shall learn what it is to love. But the fact that he really loves the unseen shall be indicated precisely by this, that he loves the brother he sees…. If you want to show that your life is intended as service to God, then let it serve men, yet continually with the thought of God.20
Love of neighbor is not essentially a human action; it does not lie within the human powers of initiation or consummation. Neighbor love can appear only as a consequence of one’s relationship to God–and that not merely through learning the nature of neighbor love from God but only as God actually is present as the middle term in the love between den Enkelte and his neighbor. But notice also that this necessary connection between existing before God and loving one’s neighbor is specified as holding in the reverse direction as well; not only must one be before God in order truly to love his neighbor, but just as necessarily, if one is truly before God he must love his neighbor, for “to love God is to love human beings.”21 Contrary to a common understanding, the very definition of the Kierkegaardian den Enkelte, far from excluding other people, actually includes them–and active works of love toward them–as an essential part of the concept. S.K. did not speak of den Enkelte coming into relation with God by means of his relations with his neighbors; rather, he made it emphatic that it is only out of one’s prior relation to God that the concept “neighbor” emerges at all:
It is in fact Christian love which discovers and knows that one’s neighbor exists and that–it is one and the same thing–everyone is one’s neighbor. If it were not a duty to love [and this phrase presupposes God as the one whose command makes it a duty], then there would be no concept of neighbor at all.22
“Neighbor” is the key term in S.K.’s doctrine; to define “neighbor” is to define the object of Christian love, and to define that object is necessarily to define the quality of the love. This approach arrives at the same distinction achieved by Nygren’s analysis of eros and agape and does it, perhaps, in a more concrete and existential way. The neighbor is, first of all, the one who is next to hand, the man one sees. This “at-handedness” precludes Christian love from being a mere feeling, or sentiment, and compels it into the responsibility of demonstrating itself concretely as works of love. But the neighbor is also whoever happens to be next to hand, unconditionally, without discrimination as to who or what he is. “The neighbor”–this man, that man, whatever man-stands in direct antithesis to “the beloved”–this man instead of that man. The difference between agape and eros can be put no more pointedly:
Christian love teaches love of all men, unconditionally all. Just as decidedly as erotic love strains in the direction of the one and only beloved, just as decidedly and powerfully does Christian love press in the opposite direction. If in the context of Christian love one wishes to make an exception of a single person whom he does not want to love, such love is not ‘also Christian love’ but is decidedly not Christian love.23
The Brethren did not define what they meant by “neighbor, ” but their use of the term makes it plain that they would have welcomed S.K.’s definition.
Likewise, S.K. made it plain that he would have welcomed Michael Frants’s proposition that love is to do–and specifically, to do as in obedience to God’s commands, which obedience is, then, the norm and standard of Christian love:
Christianity says it is a duty to be in debt [the debt of loving one another] and thereby says it is an act–not an expression about, not a theoretical conception of love…. Although love in all its expressions turns itself out toward men, where it indeed has its object and its task, it nevertheless knows that here is not the place where it shall be judged…. It is God who, so to speak, brings up love in a man; but God does not do this in order that he might himself rejoice, as it were, in the sight; on the contrary, he does it in order to send love out into the world, continually occupied in the task. Yet earnestly reared love, Christian love, never for a moment forgets where it shall be judged.24
Because Christian love is not to be judged by the world on the basis of what it accomplishes in the world but by God on the basis of whether it was motivated by true obedience to him, it follows that S.K. would have had little patience with the modern sort of “prudential pacifism” which actually attempts to “sell” people on the way of love as the most effective method for achieving social goals. S.K. denounced in so many words any temptation to commend love as a “paying proposition”: The true lover is one “who loves without making any demand of reciprocity, who grounds love and its blessedness precisely in not requiring reciprocity…. The true lover regards the very requirement of reciprocity to be a contamination, a devaluation, and loving without the reward of reciprocated love to be the highest blessedness.”25 So radical was the motive of S.K’s love ethic that the neighbor is to he loved out of absolute obedience to a divine command, without any regard as to whether or how the loving “succeeds.” Just as radical was his ethic in the quality of its love:
In a certain sense [the true lover’s] life is completely squandered n existence, on the existence of others; without wishing to waste any ime or any power on elevating himself, on being somebody, in self-sacrifice he is willing to perish, that is, he is completely and wholly transformed into being simply an active power in the hands of God.26
And just as radical as in motive and quality, just so radical was S.K.’s ethic in its extent. That “the neighbor” included all men meant that it included one’s enemies; S.K. emphasized–indeed, was insistent–that this was so.
Our own inclination would be to consider S.K.’s teaching regarding enemies as bearing directly upon his views of nonresistance and at this point claim his affinity with the defenseless Brethren. Certainly the Brethren themselves founded their nonresistance upon Jesus’ teachings about the treatment of enemies. There is, however, a wide-spread school of thought that accepts a radical ethic of love, forgiveness, and defenselessness toward one’s personal enemies (claiming that this was all that Jesus had in mind) while rejecting this ethic in regard to one’s official enemies, those who threaten the state and social order rather than simply one’s own person. Although all we know about S.K. makes it probable that he would have branded such a distinction as sophistical, out of recognition of the possibility we will forego the drawing of conclusions at this point. However, the evidence now to be presented certainly must be kept in mind as the background and context for the identification that is to follow.
S.K. understood that:
He who in truth loves his neighbor loves also his enemy. The distinction friend or enemy is a distinction in the object of love, but the object of love to one’s neighbor is without distinction. One’s neighbor is the absolutely unrecognizable distinction between man and man; it is eternal equality before God–enemies, too, have this equality.27
It is, however, not simply that Christian love does include enemies but rather that it is the inclusion of enemies that establishes love as Christian:
One can only love one’s enemies for God’s sake or because one loves God. The sign that one loves God is therefore quite rightly dialectical, for “immediately” one hates one’s enemies. When a man loves his friends it is in no way clear that he therefore loves God; but when a man loves his enemies it is clear that he fears or loves God, and only thus can God be loved.28
Thus the command to love the enemy is an absolute one. Such love is not occasioned by the hidden good one can discover in that enemy, not by the potentialities for good one believes are there, not by the hope of reforming him for good, not even by the faith that there is “that of God in every man.” All of these occasions may be true to the facts, and certainly God does use human love as a means of changing men for the better. But it is not the responsibility of the Christian lover to prove that this can or will happen, thus justifying his decision to love. To love is his bounden duty; how or whether that love is to bear fruit is God’s concern.29
It is certain that S.K. shared with the sectarian Brethren a radical and absolutist love ethic. In the case of the Brethren this ethic eventuated in a nonresistant position regarding carnal warfare. Indeed, if modern Brethren wanted truly to understand their original heritage in this regard, the best source to which they might be directed would be: Kierkegaard’s Works of Love. But the question remains: Did S.K. himself see this ethic as implying nonresistance? It is difficult to know how he could have avoided the conclusion. When his position has been as thoroughly and consistently absolutist as it has been up to this point, it is hard to conceive of him relativizing it in regard to war–relativizing either the ethic itself to make it apply to individual but not to group action, or relativizing the concept “enemy” in order to distinguish between one’s “personal” and “official” enemies, or relativizing the concept “love” in order to bring the bombing of a man’s home, the killing of his wife and children, under the rubric of “a work of love.”
To my knowledge the question of S.K.’s “pacifism” never has been submitted to scholarly research, and indeed the only opinion I have found is that of Robert Bretall. In introducing the selection from Works of Love in his Kierkegaard Anthology, he states: “We know, for example, that [S.K.] was no pacifist; but his only escape from pacifism would seem to be via the dubious distinction between individual and social morality. Otherwise, must not the man who is really in earnest about The Works of Love go on extenuating and forgiving the actions of a Hitler indefinitely?”30 How Bretall “knows” that S.K. was not a pacifist he fails to specify. The only thing I have found that possibly could point to this conclusion is that for four days, as a seventeen-year-old undergraduate, S.K. belonged to the Royal Life Guards, the equivalent of our R.O.T.C. (He proved physically unqualified.) But this incident surely has no bearing on the question before us.
On the other hand I have found no statement which in and of itself would constitute unimpeachable proof that S.K. was a pacifist. But Bretall certainly is correct in suggesting that Works of Love inevitably points toward such a conclusion–and this can be used as the basis for a very strong case of circumstantial evidence. Some of that evidence is as follows:
The means we use, … the way one fights for his idea, … the least means one allows oneself for the sake of realizing them, are equally important, absolutely equally important, as the object for which one fights and labors.31
Under no circumstances would S.K. have defended war with an argument to the effect that the end justifies the means.
Neither would he have allowed the assumption that a decree of the state ipso facto carries Christian authority:
Above all, save Christianity from the State. By its protection it smothers Christianity to death, as a fat lady with her corpus overlies her baby. And it teaches Christianity the most disgusting bad habits, as for example, under the name of Christianity to employ the power of the police.32
The whole concept of a ‘Christian’ state is actually a self-contradiction, a humbug…. The state conducts itself according to the category: the race; Christianity according to the category: the individual–on this point alone one can see that they are heterogeneous…. But Christianity is infinitely exalted above the state.33
In one sense Christianity is doubtless the most tolerant of all religions, inasmuch as most of all it abhors the use of physical power.34
By unconditionally rejecting the concept of a Christian state, and doubly so by specifying that one point of divergence between Christianity and the state is the use of physical coercion, S.K. cut himself off from any theory that would justify war by granting the state authority in matters of Christian ethics. Thus prohibited are the traditional arguments of “just war,” “the two realms,” or whatever, all of which presuppose at least some form of a “Christian” state.
But the one argument S.K. would have been least likely to use is the very one Bretall puts forward, although Bretall’s timidity in suggesting it is evidence that he realizes that it is not very plausible. Actually, it is unthinkable that S.K. would deny his entire ethical theory, which is based precisely upon den Enkelte, in order to introduce a new, social (crowd) ethic different from what he has interpreted as being the New Testament norm. Although not specifically in connection with war, S.K. in fact explicitly did renounce any such “social” ethic:
If only there are many of us engaged in it, it is not wrong, what the many do is the will of God…. The thing to do is to become many, the whole lot of us, if we do that, then we are secured against the judgment of eternity. Yes, doubtless they are secured if it was only in eternity they became individuals. But they were and are before God constantly individuals.35
The falsehood first of all is the notion that the crowd does what in fact only the individual in the crowd does, though it be every individual. For ‘crowd’ is an abstraction and has no hands: but each individual has ordinarily two hands, and so when an individual lays his two hands upon Caius Marius they are the two hands of the individual, certainly not those of his neighbor, and still less those of the … crowd which has no hands.36
If S.K. was not a pacifist, there would seem to be only one way he could have avoided it, a way he would not have been ashamed to have taken, to admit frankly that the Christian requirement was higher than man could attempt.
But the evidence is, rather, that he was at one with the sectarian Brethren, not only in their ethic of radical love (which is unimpeachable) but also in their position on war. At one point in his Papirer S.K. quoted Tertullian’s comment to the effect that, in disarming Peter, Jesus took the sword from every Christian. The entry consists of the quotation and nothing more, although S.K.’s transcription of it must have signified approval rather than anything else.37 But the heart and core of S.K.’s “pacifism” is to be found in his development of the concept “martyr.” It never was given a full-fledged presentation in any of his published works or even in the journals. By piecing together statements from a variety of sources, however, we can reconstruct a consistent and integrated picture of S.K.’s truly remarkable position. The dating of these materials makes it plain that S.K. formed the concept during the years 1847-1848 and under the direct influence of the war with Germany and the general political unrest in which Denmark was then involved. The place to start is with a series of personal letters which S.K. wrote to J. L. A. Kolderup-Rosenvige during August 1848.38 There is one matter that it would be useful to note beforehand and keep under consideration as we examine the material itself. The category S.K. lifted up and explicated was “the martyr,” but this is not quite precise as a description of a role a Christian can set out to play, for one’s martyrdom is not of his own doing. The Christian can take a position that invites martyrdom, and that far his duty may extend, but whether he actually then becomes martyred is hardly within his power. Therefore, when S.K. spoke of the Christian duty to be a “martyr,” the only portion of that role incumbent upon the individual was to become “a nonresistor,” a “conscientious objector,” “a defenseless Christian,” one who refuses to fight and who, defenselessly, is willing to take the consequences of that refusal, even to the point of martyrdom.
S.K.’s correspondent was urging him to take an active voice and part in the politics of the war with Germany, the establishment of constitutional government in Denmark, and the turmoil that pervaded Europe at the time. S.K. declined, avowing that the situation was such as to make any contribution from him impossible (which in itself may be indicative of a sectarian disinclination against becoming too closely aligned with any particular political interest or party). At this point S.K. offered his analysis of the war and the general European situation. It should be remembered that in the following S.K. was speaking about a war in which his own homeland even then was being invaded. It is one thing, during times of peace, to be critical of wars in general or of other people’s wars; it is quite a different matter to speak thus of wars that affect and involve one personally.
S.K. proposed the analogy of a real-life drama which apparently he actually had witnessed in one of the crowded residential quarters of Copenhagen:
First act: Two dogs get into a fight. The event creates an enormous sensation; an incredible number of heads are stuck out of windows in order to see. Work can wait for a while; everyone leaves it in order to watch.
Second act: Out of the street doors of the two houses lying nearest the battle step two women, each from her own door. These two women appear to be the dogs’ owners. The one declares that it was the other’s dog that started the imbroglio. Thereupon the women become so excited that they join battle. More I did not see–but the story easily can be continued.
Therefore, the third act: Two men come up, the husbands of the respective women. The one declares that it was the other’s wife who started it. Thereupon the two men become so excited that they join battle.
Thus one can assume that more husbands and wives come until … now it is a European war. The cause is: Who started it? You see, this is the formula for war in the second degree. War in the first degree is war; in the second degree it is a war over who it was that started the first war.39
S.K. here identified the phenomenon which the nuclear age has forced into our vocabulary as escalation; and upon the basis of that observation he was suggesting that war neither is nor can be a valid instrument for achieving social justice, precisely because it cannot be controlled, cannot be confined to the real issue at question. We use the term “escalation”; S.K. coined one that is perhaps even more descriptive. He saw war and the events that lead to war as a “gyration,” a whirl that spins faster and faster and faster until it disintegrates into a fling of fragments.
He used this figure as the basis for a subsequent letter; what follows is a paraphrase of it: Given the gyrating character of conflict, what society (particularly 1848 Europe) needs is not movements but brakes. Events are whirling wildly; it requires a fixed point to break up the turbination and bring it to a stop. (S.K. specified that it is den Enkelte who must play the role of the fixed point; and thus are suggested many points of contact between the line of thought he was developing here and his religious perspective as a whole.) Revolution cannot do the job, for the first revolution calls for a counterrevolution to halt it; the counterrevolt is a revolution which itself must be stopped, et cetera ad infinitum. This, for instance, was the pattern of the French Revolution. And in light of the above it follows that the fixed point cannot be something out front toward which one is driving but must be something that lies behind.40
Thus far S.K.; we interrupt the paraphrase in order to comment on this most seminal suggestion. S.K. will categorize as “political” any movement that drives toward a point out ahead, that proposes to establish an order different from the one that presently obtains, that would save the situation by re-creating it. A “religious” movement, on the other hand, is oriented toward a point that lies behind; that is, its basic character is simply obedience to the commands of God, conformance to the mind of Christ, without obligation to accomplish anything. Of course, outward accomplishment may come as a result of religious movement, but in the final analysis this is God’s business; den Enkelte’s only concern is to be obedient, and that obedience is blessed quite apart from anything it may bring to pass.
S.K. here saw a distinction that makes it possible to define the sectarian doctrine of nonresistance with greater precision than has been possible before. According to the terms of the definition, “positive nonviolent action,” which uses lobbying, demonstrations, sit-ins, etc., is still essentially “political” in character, as is any “pacifist” movement that sets itself the goal of building a peaceful world. These movements certainly mark a real gain over those that depend upon violence and coercion as their instrumentalities, but they are not strictly religious movements for all that.
Even so, to identify a movement as “political” is not ipso facto to declare it illicit, although it is to deny that there is anything intrinsically “Christian” about it. A political movement, even “positive nonviolent action,” is basically a technique, an action directed toward the accomplishment of a specified goal. A religious movement is in no sense a technique, because it has its telos within itself. Being a technique, the validity of a political movement must be judged by what it accomplishes; a sit-in, for example, “succeeds” when the lunch counter is integrated. A religious movement, on the other hand, cannot be so judged, because it was never committed to succeed. God does not require den Enkelte to accomplish anything in a worldly sense (that involves so many factors that are beyond the man’s control); God requires only unconditional obedience (which is precisely what each man does control).
Being a political technique, “positive nonviolent action” can commend itself equally to and be used to equal effect by a non-Christian Mahatma Gandhi or by an atheist Bertrand Russell or by a Christian Martin Luther King. It neither needs a Christian to use the technique, nor does the using of it qualify one as a Christian. The religious movement, on the other hand, is specifically Christian in that the sort of obedience it requires is precisely what S.K. also intended by “Christian faith.” Being a technique, “positive nonviolent action,” or any other political movement, could as well be directed toward an unworthy goal as a worthy one; there is nothing about the technique itself that dictates for what it is to be used. A religious movement, however, risks no such discrepancy, because it is directed toward a fixed, Christian point behind rather than toward any goal out front.
None of S.K.’s statements suggest that it would be anything but proper and perhaps even obligatory for a Christian to support political movements which are dedicated to the attainment of worthy political and social goals. His point, however, was that the fundamental problems of human conflict and violence ultimately will have to be solved by religious and not merely political means:
Tis is the distinction between political and religious movement. very merely political movement, which thus is godless or lacking eligiousness, is a whirling that cannot stop and that only fools tself with the fancy that it wants a fixed point in front, that t wants to stop with the help of a brake–because the fixed point, he only fixed point, lies behind. And therefore this is my view of the whole European confusion, that it cannot be stopped except by religiousness.41
S.K. concluded this letter with the observation that the religious martyr is the prime example of the way to brake turbination; the martyr does not strive to move society toward a point out ahead but acts solely in relation to the fixed point behind.
These letters to Kolderup-Rosenvige add to our understandmg of another statement written about the same time, this in one of S.K.’s prefaces to The Book on Adler (which he never published). In this case as with the letters, the war with Germany stands as the immediate context:
To get eternity again requires blood, but blood of a different sort, not the blood of thousands of warriors, no, the precious blood of martyrs, of the individuals–the blood of martyrs, those mighty dead who are able to do what no living man can do who lets men be cut down by thousands, what these mighty dead themselves could not do while they lived but are able to do only as dead men: to constrain to obedience a furious mob, just because this furious mob in disobedience took the liberty of slaying the martyrs. For the proverb says ‘He laughs best who laughs last’; but truly he conquers best who conquers last–so not he who conquers by slaughter–oh, dubious conquest!–but he who conquers by being put to death–an eternally certain conquest! And this sacrifice is the sacrifice of obedience, wherefore God looks with delight upon him, the obedient man, who offers himself as a sacrifice, whereas he gathers his wrath against disobedience which slays the sacrifice–this sacrifice, the victor, is the martyr; for not everyone who is put to death is a martyr. For tyrants (in the form of emperors, kings, popes, Jesuits, generals, diplomats) have hitherto in a decisive moment been able to rule and direct the world; but from the time the fourth estate [presumably, that is to say, the Christian martyrs as opposed to the three traditional estates of lords temporal, lords spiritual, and commoners] has come into the picture–when it has had time to settle itself in such a way that it is rightly understood–it will be seen that in the decisive moment only martyrs are able to rule the world. That is, no man will be able to rule the human race in such a moment, only Deity can do it with the help of the absolutely obedient men who at the same time are willing to suffer–but such a man is the martyr.42
A final statement–written in 1847, a year earlier than the others, and although speaking of the apostles rather than the “martyr” per se–nevertheless climaxes S.K.’s insight into the dynamics of nonresistance:
But the Apostles were indeed also constantly suffering; they not only had sufferings, for there can also be suffering where there is acting, but their entire course of action was a suffering; their conduct was a yielding; they did not preach rebellion against authority; on the contrary, they recognized its power, but in suffering they obeyed God rather than men. They did not plead to be excused from any punishment. They did not grumble because they suffered punishment, but though punished they continued to preach Christ. They did not wish to coerce anyone, but let themselves be oppressed, they triumphed precisely through letting themselves be oppressed. If this is not the relationship, then neither can courage perform miracles; for the miracle consists precisely in the fact that it looks to everyone like defeat, while to the Apostle it is victory.43
Of course, “suffering” here is used not so much in the sense of “experiencing pain” as of “allowing oneself to be acted upon” rather than acting upon another, “absorbing” as against “effecting.” Thus “suffering” is the correlate of “the fixed point that lies behind,” which is, in turn, the correlate of “absolute obedience.” Thus, too, S.K.’s “suffering” becomes a rather precise equivalent of early Brethren “nonresistance” and “defenselessness.”
As regards his love ethic then, Søren Kierkegurd did not simply show “sectarian tendencies”; he offered the best presentation of the sectarian ethic that has been made—and that both in regard to its basic nature and motivation (this in Works of Love) and its political relevance and application (this in the concept “martyr”).
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. Works of Love, 347. In the text this quotation is put into the mouth of the Apostle John, but it is plain that the reason S.K. put it there is because he himself was so heartily in accord with it.
2. Ibid., 164.
3. Jacob Stoll, op.cit., 130 [my trans.–V.E].
4. Michael Frantz, op.cit., 41.
5. “Love Covereth a Multitude of Sins” (Discourse 3) in Edifying Discourses, 1:72.
6. Minear and Morimoto, op.cit., 19.
7. Michael Frantz, op.cit., 47, stanzas 1, 2, 5 [my trans.–V.E.].
9. Annual Meeting Minutes, 1788, art. I, p.11, and 1793, art. 1, pp. 15-16.
11. Sauer Junior (presumably), an editorial in the Pennsylvania Bericht for February 15, 1761, quoted in Brumbaugh, op.cit., 420.
12. Annual Meeting Minutes, 1782, p.7; cf. 1797, art. I, pp. 18-19.
13. Sauer Junior (presumably), poems accompanying the court calendars in the Hoch-Deutsch Americanische Calendar for 1766, pp. 19-20, and for 1770, pp. 19-20; respectively [my trans–V.E.].
14. A comprehensive study of this tradition within Brethrenism is Rufus Bowman’s The Church of the Brethren and War (Elgin, Ill.: Brethren Publishing House, 1944).
15. Michael Frantz, op.cit., stanza 327 [my trans–V.E.].
16. Ibid., stanzas 328-49.
17. Votes oj the House of Represent”tives of Pennsylvania, 1767-1776, Vol. VI, p. 645, quoted in Bowman, op.cit., 79-81.
18. Annual Meeting Minutes, 1785, art. 2, pp. 8-10.
19. Works of Love, 112. In the text these lines are italicized as part of a thematic statement.
20. Ibid., 158.
21. Ibid., 354.
22. Ibid., 58. These lines are part of an opening praise that introduces a major section of the book.
23. Ibid., 63.
24. Ibid., 262-84.
25. Ibid., 226, 227.
26. Ibid., 260; cf. 248-49, where S.K. as much as reiterates Michael Frantz’s lines to the effect that there is no “mine” or “thine” in Christian love.
27. Ibid., 79.
28. Dru Journals, 818 (1848).
29. Works of Love, 168, 309ff. Cf. “Love Covereth a Multitude of Sins” (Discourse III) in Edifying Discourses, 1:61ff. Cf. “But How Can the Burden Be Light …” (Discourse II) in The Gospel of Suffering, 40-41.
30. Robert Bretall, in the editor’s introduction to the selection from Works of Love, in A Kierkegaard Anthology (New York: Modern Library, 1946), 283.
31. The Book on Adler, 133-34. Cf. Purity of Heart, 201ff.
32. Attack upon “Christendom,” 140.
33. Papirer, 10:2:A:240 (1849) [my trans.–V.E.]. Notice the early date of this entry; it cannot be dismissed as an aberration of S.K.’s last year. But see Smith Journals, X:2:A:374 (1854-1855) for an even stronger statement.
34. Attack upon “Christendom,” 184.
35. The Sickness unto Death, 254.
36. The first of “Two Notes on ‘the Indivudal’” in Point of View, 113.
37. Papirer, [I have lost track of the specific locus and been unable to relocate it.–V.E.]
38. These are to be found in Breve og Aktstykker Vedrøende Søren Kieriegaard [Letters and Documents concerning S.K.], ed. Niels Thulstrup (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1953), 200ff. [The translation involved in the analysis of these letters is my own–V.E.]
39. Ibid., 201.
40. 40 Ibid., 205ff.
41. Ibid., 207. S.K.’s words in Purity of Heart, 99ff., are very relevant at this point.
42. The Book on Adler, xxiii-xxvi. Cf. Dru Journals, 856 (1848).
43. “… Courage Enables the Sufferer to Overcome the World …” (Discourse VII) in The Gospel of Suffering, 155 [the italics are mine-V.E.).
C. Universal Salvation
How far Christianity is from being a living reality may best be seen in me. For even with my clear knowledge of it I am still not a Christian. Yet I still cannot help feeling that despite the abyss of nonsense in which we are stuck, we shall all of us be saved.1
We are here to deal with a belief that is only peripheral both in S.K. and the Brethren, although the fact that it even appears makes it worthy of mention. A doctrine of universal restoration has at least some connection with a radical love ethic, which is why we bring in the matter at this point. Also, although universalism hardly can be taken as a necessary or even characteristic hallmark of sectarianism, such universalism as has appeared in Protestant history does tend to be associated with the sects.
Morgan Edwards, the ecclesiastical observer who was on the scene, explicitly identified the eighteenth century Brethren with a doctrine of “general redemption and, withal, general salvation”; (see above) and there is sufficient evidence to make that identification unimpeachable.3 However, the question as to how widely, how centrally, and how emphatically the doctrine was supported is still an open one. Particularly Michael Frantz4 but also John Naas5 and Jacob Stoll,6 can be quoted in apparent contradiction.7
Indeed, there seems to be only one Brethren document that witnesses to the belief, although this one is very instructive. It comes in the course of the imaginary father-son dialogue of Mack Senior’s Rights and Ordinances. The father has just presented a articularly vivid picture of the punishments of hell, at which point the son asks, “Do tell me, are these torments and tortures to last for eternity, without end?” And the father replies:
According to the testimony of the Holy Scriptures, “the smoke of their torment goes up for ever and ever” (Rev. 14:11). However, that it should last for eternity is not supported by Holy Scripture. It is not necessary to talk much about it or speculate about it…. Even if at some time the torment should end after long eternities, [the damned] will never attain that which the believers have achieved in the time of grace through Jesus Christ if they obey Him. Many who have heard about universal restoration commit the great folly not to deny themselves completely but rather hope for the restoration. This hope will most certainly come to naught when they enter the torment, and can see no end to it….
Therefore, it is much better to practice this simple truth that one should try to become worthy in the time of grace to escape the wrath of God and the torments of hell, rather than deliberate how or when it would be possible to escape from it again…. That is a much better and more blessed gospel which teaches how to escape the wrath of God than the gospel which teaches that eternal punishment has an end. Even though this is true, it should not be preached as a gospel to the godless. Unfortunately, in this day, everything is completely distorted by the great power of imagination of those people who teach and write books about restoration.8
Obviously it was not by accident that the eighteenth century Brethren were as much as “secret universalists”; to have allowed the doctrine to become central and conspicuous would have falsified it. The Brethren believed in universal restoration but were not “universalists” in the customary sense of the term.
And S.K.’s universalism, too, was precisely of this order. One journal entry has been quoted as the epigraph; another reads:
But I do not pretend to be better than others. What the old bishop said about me–that I talked as if everybody else was on the road to hell–is simply not true. No, if anyone wants to be able to say that I talk about going to hell, then I talk like this–‘If the rest are all going to hell, then I am going along.’ This is the way I speak if anyone is able to say in any sense that I talk about going to hell. But I do not believe it. On the contrary, I believe that we will all be saved–and I, too–something which arouses my deepest wonder.9
And there is a third that points in at least something of the same direction.10 Only this much and nothing more; but the interesting aspect of the case is that these journal entries come out of precisely the same period in which we discovered the dark cloud of morbidity and misanthropy. How this strange conjunction is to be explained we will not venture to guess.
With both S.K. and the Brethren it seems likely that their universalism was a corollary of their sense of the immediacy of God’s infinite love and of the equality of all men within that love. Thus whether or not their coincidence on this unemphasized detail is particularly significant in and of itself, it does tie in with the general pattern of sectarianism that we are developing.
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. Rohde Journals, 180 (1854).
3. It is gathered and analyzed in Durnbaugh, “The Genius of the Early Brethren,” Brethren Life and Thought, IV, 2 (Spring 1959), 13-14.
4. Michael Frantz, op.cit., stanzas 471-80, 498-500.
5. Naas, in a hymn quoted by Brumbaugh, op.cit., 127, stanza 10.
6. Jacob Stoll, op.cit., 54.
7. The word “apparent” is here used advisedly. The Brethren doctrine did not deny the reality (and a very live awareness) of a punishment following death. Ultimately, then, the matter comes down to the rather fine distinction as to whether that punishment is everlasting or only longlasting; and the terminology used by these three men is not in every case absolutely beyond dispute.
8. Mack Senior, Rights and Ordinances, in Durnbaugh, Origins, 399-400.
9. Papirer, 11:3:B:57 (1854), quoted in Malantschuk, op.cit., 95.
10. Smith Journals, 11:1:A:296 (1854).