Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship:
A New Perspective
by Vernard Eller
(continued)
PART II: THE DUNKERS AND THE DANE
VI. The Churh Well Lost
Thus far we have examined S.K.’s position regarding secular sociality, both the World Negative which his faith impelled him to reject and the World Positive which his faith equally impelled him to accept, to love, and to serve. We proceed now to examine his stance regarding religious sociality, i.e. those social groups designed with specific reference to the relationship between man and God, namely the church. We look first at the Church Negative; this is the form of the church which S.K. felt to be dominated by crowd-mentality and thus (to use Brunner’s phrase) “a disastrous misdevelopment” and mortal threat to the true Christian concept of den Enkelte. This church S.K. called “the Establishment,” and the term was always used by him in a negative sense.
Perhaps some knowledge of the Danish church situation would be helpful as we strive to understand S.K.’s attitude toward it. A very good source in this regard is Kenneth Scott Latourette’s The Nineteenth Century in Europe, Vol. 2.1
Denmark was institutionally conservative in religion as in politics (not until 1848–in the midst of S.K.’s career–was the monarchy de-absolutized and put under the control of a constitution). The nation presented a picture of religious monolithism as tight and persistent as any in Europe. Latourette describes it thus:
The Protestantism [of Scandinavia] was overwhelmingly Lutheran. At the outset of the nineteenth century it was almost exclusively so…. The Lutheran churches were the state churches, established by law, controlled by the civil government, and supported by public taxation. They were also national churches, the churches of the people, what the Germans would call Volkskirchen (folk churches). All the population were baptized and a very large proportion were confirmed as Lutherans. Religious instruction was given in the state schools…. Baptism and confirmation were compulsory [in Denmark], as was a church ceremony for marriage. Theoretically Communion was also obligatory.2
Particularly under the influences of the Enlightenment the formal legalism of this churchly structure had produced a marked decline in spiritual vitality; but interestingly enough, at the time of Kierkegaard, the church was experiencing something of a resurgence and renewal. The revival, however, was not of the sort that met S.K.’s approval. The two leading figures were Bishop Jakob Peter Mynster (1775-1854) and N. F. S. Grundtvig (1783-1872). Bishop Mynster, the ranking ecclesiastic of the Church of Denmark, was an urbane and sophisticated Christian humanist (in the anti-Kierkegaardian sense of the term) whose efforts served to popularize “religion” although–to S.K.’s mind–at the expense of New Testament Christianity. Grundtvig’s movement was perhaps less worldly and more deeply spiritual than that of Mynster, but it also had an aspect that was anathema to S.K. Grundtvig did not stress the need for an individual relationship to God but was interested in a sacramental church life that would be the focus for a rebirth of ancient Danish culture. His was a strongly enculturated (almost nationalized) concept of Christianity as a folk- or community-faith.
The presence of Mynster and Grundtvig–and S.K.’s focusing of his attack upon them–is significant in demonstrating that his basic concern was not so much with any current apathy in the church as with the fundamental wrongheadedness of its constitution.
S.K.’s critique of the church, of course, reached its culmination (although hardly its beginning) in the spectacular Attack of 1854-1855. And because this phase of S.K.’s career is so conspicuous and well known, there will be some tendency to equate S.K.’s “sectarianism” with his Attack. Certainly, something of that quality does show up strongly at this point, but it would be a misunderstanding to read either S.K.’s sectarianism or sectarianism in general as being in essence nothing more than a protest against the established church. Indeed, we find surprisingly little of such protest in Brethren literature–for the simple reason that even before becoming Brethren these people had so completely broken their ties with the state church that it no longer existed for them. Sectarianism is a self-sufficient religious type and does not have to be defined negatively in relation to an established church. This chapter of our study, then, represents one expression of S.K.’s sectarianism but by no means its core. Indeed, the basic character of the Kierkegaardian perspective could be established apart from any consideration of the Attack.
Likewise, it would be wrong to give the impression that S.K.’s critique of the church and thus his essential sectarianism were confined to the last year or so of his life. The Attack did become overt at that time, but the basic content of the criticism had been in S.K.’s thinking and writing for many years previous.
By its very nature–and designedly so–that final Attack was sensational in the extreme, and a very possible impression is that S.K. was seeking sensationalism for its own sake, that he was feeding his own ego as much as or more than he was serving God. Perhaps one value of our putting the Attack within the total context of S.K.’s sectarianism is to give an indication of how deep and honest his convictions were. In his own heart and mind S.K. was certain that to become den Enkelte is the one and only way to become a Christian. Of course, there is the crowd-world which wishes to block this development, which would entice, or if need be force, a man to accept its interpretation this of existence, its goals, its way of salvation. But this opposition comes as no particular surprise; the New Testament warned that the world was of this order. But to discover that the Christian church, the instrument designed and commissioned by Jesus Christ for the express purpose of helping a man to become den Enkeldt,–to discover that this church in actuality was a crowd-church in collusion with the crowd-world, seeking to entice, or if need be force, one to find his salvation by joining its crowd-institution–this struck S.K. as the most abominable sort of sacrilege:
Man is ‘a social animal,’ and what he believes in is the power of union. So man’s thought is, ‘Let us all unite’–if it were possible, all the kingdoms and countries of the earth, with this pyramid-shaped union always rising higher and higher supporting at its summit a super-king, whom one may suppose to be nearest to God, in fact so near to God that God cares about him and takes notice of him. In Christian terms the true state of affairs is exactly the reverse of this. Such a super-king would be farthest from God, just as the whole pyramid enterprise is utterly repugnant to God. What is despised and rejected by men, one poor rejected fellow, an outcast, this is what in Christian terms is chosen by God, is nearest to him. He hates the whole business of pyramids.3
Thus, the disappointment, the frustration, the shock, the horror, the rage that characterized S.K.’s Attack were real. Those not sympathetic with his position can hardly appreciate that fact–although to get S.K. into the sectarian perspective may help make his feelings more plausible. Granted that in the Attack S.K. used the weapons of satire and mockery with their accompaniments of exaggeration and hyperbole, nevertheless the intent behind the whole must be accepted as serious, dedicated, and utterly sincere.
A. The Attack upon Christendom
The triumphant Church and established Christendom are falsehood, are the greatest misfortune that can befall the Church; they are its destruction, and at the same time are a punishment, for such a calamity cannot come about undeserved.1
Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground, when thou standest in Christendom, where there are nothing but true Christians! Let God keep eternity for Himself, where taken all in all He hardly gets as many true Christians as there are at any one instant in Established Christendom where all are true Christians.2
Although dealing with S.K.’s Attack as a totality, the scope of this portion of our study is quite circumscribed. In an earlier chapter we gave some attention to the Attack in its historical aspects: how the concern developed in S.K., the strategy be followed, what he intended to accomplish, etc.; we will not reopen such matters here. Neither will we attempt to review all the criticisms S.K. directed against the Establishment; many of these were simply the obverse negatives of items we have treated and will treat independently (for example, the church fails to lift up Christ as Pattern, to teach non-conformity, etc.). Our present investigation will be confined to S.K.’s most basic contentions regarding the essential nature of the church. We will deal only with the ideological core of the Attack, with S.K.’s negative ecclesiological concern.
In this section there will appear no parallel quotations out of Brethren literature; it does not provide such. The explanation already has been suggested: by the time the Brethren began developing a literature the Establishment was for them a dead issue; there was nothing to be gained by continuing a dispute which they previously had settled once for all. Brethren writings do contain derogatory asides about the “churches” but nothing in the way of serious ecclesiological criticism. Nevertheless, given the entire sectarian context which we have been developing, it is obvious that when those who became Brethren made their break with the church it must have been for reasons very similar to those voiced by S.K. In other words, the parallel between S.K. and the Brethren holds even though we have not the materials for making it explicit.
One more prefatory comment is in place. In S.K.’s use of the term “the Establishment,” a major referent is to the fact of the church’s formal and constitutive relationship to the state. However, this was by no means the total, or even central, impress of what S.K. had in mind. A church is established primarily in reference to its “respectability,” its “fashionableness,” the fact that it is “built-in” as a normal and expected feature of the social order. Thus, the formal “disestablishment” of a state church would be a step in the right direction but, in and of itself, could not be taken as a total answer to S.K.’s concern. Indeed, just as negative as “the Establishment” is his term “Christendom,” which assumes that the community, the nation, i.e. society itself, has in some sense become Christian. Obviously, the church’s liaison with the state, its social respectability, and its presupposition of a “Christendom” are but three expressions of a common ideology. The three stand or fall together; S.K.’s interest was that they fall.
Ideally and essentially viewed, … the question [is] whether a so-called Christendom, or rather a fallen Christendom, openly or more hiddenly, now by attack now by defense, has abolished Christianity.3
Is Christianity, i.e. the faith once delivered, ultimately compatible with Christendom, i.e. a Christianized society? That is the decisive question which S.K. put as early as 1848. The question implied his answer, although he soon stated it so as to leave no doubt:
That which should be reformed in our time is not church government and the like–but the concept Christendom.4
In another 1848 writing S.K. made his contention against Christendom as pointed as possible; and even if he did not use the term, his accusation had “crowd-mentality” written all over it:
Yet all these people [i.e., even those who do not live in Christian categories], even those who assert that no God exists, are all of them Christians, call themselves Christians, are recognized as Christians by the State, are buried as Christians by the Church, are certified as Christians for eternity.5
Thus, in the Attack proper (which our quotations would indicate had been in the making for at least six years), S.K. could word the statement which we quoted earlier but which is as significant as anything he ever said:
In the last resort, precisely to the concept ‘Church’ is to be traced the fundamental confusion both of Protestantism and of Catholicism–or is it to the concept ‘Christendom’?6
S.K.’s question about “church” or “Christendom” was asked simply for effect, because it is clear that the two are at base identical. The very concept “church” assumes Christendom as its context, just as Christendom assumes a “church” as its religious expression. The basic assumption behind the entire church-Christendom idea is that the community, the geographically based social unit, is in some real sense Christian–and that without specific consideration as to how far and in what sense the individuals who make up that community are Christian. The “church,” then, represents the natural expression of the community in its religious aspect, just as the state represents the expression of its civil aspect. It makes sense, too, that the church and the state should be closely allied, because both are complementary expressions of the same Christian community. Almost as much a matter-of-course as a person’s citizenship (99 out of 100 people in the community are citizens thereof simply by virtue of being there), is his Christianity. Within Christendom it can be assumed that any person (simply by virtue of his being there) is a church member; and if a church member, then a Christian; and if a Christian, then “certified for eternity.” And infant baptism stands as the logical symbol of this view. With the infant, of course, there is no question about his intentions, desires, or commitments, but as a part of the community he also should be included within its religious expression, and through the rite of baptism his incorporation is so symbolized.
Although the above has been stated in such a way as to make plain the contrast we want to draw and hence may be overstated in some respects, yet assumptions of this general order are necessarily involved in the “church-in-Christendom” view. But just as the churchly position must make these assumptions either consciously or subconsciously, the sectarian position is that which explicitly denies them. “Christendom,” a natural community which is nevertheless by nature Christian, is an impossible concept. The church cannot simply be, by virtue of the natural religiousness of the community finding its expression, but must become, must be “gathered” as individuals who are Christian (not simply who are assumed to be so because they are part of the community) deliberately band themselves together.
According to the churchly view, the community is (as a natural, a priori, social entity); the community is Christian (by virtue of its having been so organized at some time long past); the community is the church (by virtue of the community’s giving formal expression to its Christianity); and the individual is a Christian (by virtue of the fact that he is a part of the Christian community and participates in the formal expression of its Christianity).
According to the sectarian view, Christianity is of such an order that it can be a criterion only of den Enkelte, not of the community. Therefore, a community of Christians, not a Christian community (which is an impossibility), constitutes the sectarian church. Necessarily, then, the community must come to be; the community of Christians must be created as those who are Christian (by virtue of a personal transaction with God in Christ) gather to form a community. And thus adult baptism–which involves personal attestation to the Christian-making transaction with God and a conscious affiliation with the community–is the only appropriate symbol of the sectarian church which ever and always must come to be. The “church”man participates in the church, in the Christian community that is; the sectary creates the church, creates community by joining with those of like precious faith.
The church is the communion of the saints; so be it. But the churchly view takes this to mean: the church is the corporate body of those who are saints by virtue of their affiliation with this holy institution. The sectarian view takes it to mean: the church is the Gemeinschaft of saints who have been made such through a personal transaction with Christ and who have handed together on the basis of this common experience. Or, at the risk of oversimplification, yet to put the distinction just as succinctly as possible: In the churchly view, “the church” as an institution is prior, the cause, and “the Christian” posterior, the consequence. In the sectarian view, “the Christian” (den Enkelte) is prior and the Gemeinde is posterior. Thus a Protestant “church” is defined as being where the Word is truly preached and the sacraments rightly administered (the primary emphasis being on the doctrinal “rightness” of the institution). But a Protestant sect would have to be defined as being where those are gathered who truly hear the Word and rightly receive the sacraments (the primary emphasis being on the religious “rightness” of den Enkelte).
That S.K. had in mind some such distinction is made apparent in the following, very significant statement:
In the definition of the Church which we find in the Augsburg Confession, namely that it is that communion of the saints where the Word is rightly taught and the sacraments correctly administered, it is simply the two latter clauses about doctrine and the sacraments which have been correctly understood (i.e. incorrectly), while the former clause has been overlooked: the communion of the saints, in which description the emphasis lies on the existential; in this way the Church has been turned into a communion where doctrine is correct and the sacraments correctly administered, but where the lives of the individual members are a matter of indifference (or where the existential element is neglected): this is nothing but heathenism.7
Earlier S.K. had written:
… [People] have conceived of the truth of Christianity as a result, as what might be called a surplus, a dividend, for in the case of truth as the way [i.e. where Christianity is a mode of existence which must be reduplicated in den Enkelte] the emphasis falls precisely upon the fact that there is no surplus, no dividend, which accrues to the successor from the predecessor, that there is no result.8
This statement points us back to one we quoted earlier (although it comes out of the same passage in S.K.), this the one on page 139, above, in which he specifies that “the truth, in the sense in which Christ was the truth, is not a sum of sentences, but a life.” Together, then, these suggest an analogy which we can use to epitomize the distinction between the churchly and the sectarian understanding of church.
“Church” men see the church as being a commissary; sectaries see it as being a caravan. The treasure, the truth, of a commissary is something it has, something it possesses, something then that, through proper transaction, it can dispense to the “customers.” Conversely, the treasure or truth of a caravan is not anything it has but something it is in, when it is proceeding toward its proper destination in proper fashion.
The existence of a commissary hinges upon its being established, its being licensed, authorized, stocked–thus the churchly emphasis on its divine commission, on proper orders and ordination, on the possession of orthodox doctrine and efficacious sacraments. And, to put it bluntly, once a commissary receives legitimization it “has it made”; how many customers may come (whether any at all), how they receive the commodities, and how they use and are affected by them–ultimately these considerations have no bearing on whether the institution is a “true” commissary.
But the existence of a caravan involves qualifications of an entirely different order. There is no sense in which a caravan can be “established”; indeed, it is a caravan only so long as it is on the way; as soon as it stops, gets lost, or is dispersed it is no longer a caravan. Here too the existence and condition of the constituency (not now “customers” but “fellow hikers”) is essential to the very concept: a caravan can travel (and thus be a “caravan”) only as each and every person in it does his own traveling; the number of people who can be “carried” is strictly limited. And whereas with a commissary it is largely incidental whether or not the different customers make common cause or even know one another, with a caravan it is only the “togetherness” of the going that makes going possible at all; thus the centrality of Gemeinschaft in the sectarian understanding of the church.
S.K. also came at the matter from a different angle. The “church” presupposes Christendom; but the very concept “Christendom” necessarily implies that the character of “the world” has changed drastically since New Testament times, that the world which then stood in diametric opposition to Christianity is now allied with it. And if this has happened, it follows that the church itself has changed character just as drastically in adapting to the changed situation:
[One] error is the specious notion which has arisen in the course of the ages, that in a way we are all Christians. For if this is posited, the Church militant seems an impossibility. Wherever there seems to be, or people assume that there is, an established Christendom, there is an attempt to construct a triumphant Church, even if this word is not used; for the Church militant is in process of becoming, established Christendom simply is, does not become…. What Christ said about His kingdom not being of this world was not said with special reference to those times when He uttered this saying; it is an eternally valid utterance about the relation of Christ’s kingdom to this world, and so it is valid for every age. As soon as Christ’s kingdom comes to terms with the world, Christianity is abolished…. To be a Christian in [the] militant Church means to express what it is to be a Christian within an environment which is the opposite to Christian. To be a Christian in a triumphant, an established Christendom, means to express what it is to be a Christian within an environment which is synonymous, homogeneous with Christianity…. At the precise place where suffering would have come if I had been living in a militant Church, now comes reward; there, where scorn and derision would overtake me if I had been living in a militant Church, now honor and esteem beckon to me; there, where death would be unavoidable, I now celebrate the highest triumph.9
In this regard S.K. saw the alliance between church and state as a particularly vicious thing, saying, “If [the Establishment] wishes the help of Government, it betrays the fact that it is not the Christianity of the New Testament.”10 And again:
Nothing, nothing, nothing, no error, no crime is so absolutely repugnant to God as everything which is official; and why? Because the official is impersonal and therefore the deepest insult which can be offered to a personality.11
A basic, thematic pattern is beginning to emerge here, a pattern which ties together a great deal of what S.K. had to say and which suggests sectarianism as clearly as anything in his thought. There are two fundamental worldviews that stand in complete opposition to each other. The one is the Christian view, and its basic categories are: (a) den Enkelte, (b) the personal, and (c) “becoming,” i.e. that which is in process, which is militant. The other is the worldly view, and its corresponding categories are: (a) the crowd, (b) the impersonal, and (c) “extant,” i.e. that which simply is, which is established. And clearly, the sort of church most concerned to press this distinction between itself and the world is the sect.
The state is by nature (and properly so) a worldly institution; the church is not of this world; therefore the two are hardly such as can be either combined or even closely allied:
The “Church” ought really to represent “becoming”; the “State,” on the other hand, “establishment.” That is why it is so dangerous when Church and State grow together and are identified…. “Becoming” is more spiritual than “existing”; the servants of the Church ought not therefore to be officials, probably not married, but those expediti12 who are fitted to serve “becoming.”13
The reason S.K.’s Attack did not include a multitude of suggestions about what the Danish Church should do, how it should go about reforming itself, now seems apparent. It was not, as Diem suggests,14 that S.K., without intending any radial changes, simply was staging a demonstration which might encourage the church to examine itself and deepen its spiritual life. Rather, S.K.’s concern and criticism ran so deep that any sort of “program of reform” would not even have touched the issue. Not reformation but reformulation was what was required. S.K. hardly would have settled for less, so his only alternative was to attack the church on as deep a level as possible and then, for his own part, divorce himself from it.
This pattern was precisely that of Brethren sectarianism: The Brethren-to-be left the church out of the conviction that it was not a Christian church. Later, and only later, did they proceed to the work of reformulation, to the organizing of a different kind of church. Whether or not S.K. ever would have proceeded to a similar step is, of course, impossible to say; he died too soon. But that his Attack pointed toward reformulation and a different kind of church seems evident.
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. “Lifted Up On High …”(Part III, Discourse 5) in Training in Christianity, 226.
2. Ibid., 212. For both a sober pronouncement and a highly satiric jibe to typify S.K.’s critique, we have made a point of going not to the Attack proper but to a work of some four years earlier.
3. S.K.’s 1848 Preface to The Book on Adler, xx.
4. Papirer, 10:2:A:537 (1849) [my trans.–V.E.].
5. Point of View, 22-23.
6. Attack upon “Christendom,” 34.
7. Papirer, 10:4:A:246 (1851), quoted in Diem, Dialectic, 178.
8. “Lifted Up on High …” (Part III, Reflection 5) in Training in Christianity, 205.
9. Ibid., 206-8. This entire discourse is germane to the topic–as is the passage on 69ff. Part 2 of the same volume. Cf. “It Is Blessed Indeed–To Suffer Derision …” (Pt III, Discourse 6) in Christian Discourses, 235.
10. Attack upon “Christendom,” 63.
11. Dru Journals, 1309 (1854). Cf. Smith Journals, 11:1:A:68 (1854).
12. The expediti were crack troops of the Roman army, highly trained and disciplined, carrying the very minimum of gear so that they could move into trouble spots quickly and decisively. They were the ancient counterpart of storm troopers, commandos, or the Green Berets of the U.S. Special Forces.
13. Dru Journals, 941 (1849).
B. Luther Criticism
When Luther introduced the idea of the Reformation, what happened? Even he, the great reformer, became impatient, he did not reduplicate strongly enough–he accepted the help of the princes, i.e., he really became a politician, to whom victory is more important than “how” one is victorious.1
That S.K. was not content to attack simply the Danish Lutheran Church of the nineteenth century but carried the battle back to Luther himself, that he thus took on churchly Protestantism at its pristine best, that he would criticize the Reformation itself–all this suggests rather strongly that S.K. was interested in something deeper than just reformation. And though the wording of his accusation does not make it immediately apparent, we shall discover that S.K.’s quarrel with Luther had to do precisely with the fact that Luther stopped with reformation of the church rather than proceeding to a Christian reformulation of it. S.K. spoke to Luther as a typical (though unusually competent) sectary to the founder of churchly Protestantism.
It will not be necessary to make anything like a comprehensive study of S.K. and Luther. Suffice it to say that S.K. had no basic differences with the reformer regarding Protestant doctrine per se. Indeed, he did at points express appreciation for the fact that Luther understood the faith in a way quite superior to that of contemporary theology.2 True, S.K. was critical about Luther’s lack of dialectical balance on such matters as faith and works, but these matters were not of ultimate significance. However, the fundamental criticism to which he returned again and again is the one stated in the epigraph, namely that Luther became a “politician.” Elsewhere S.K. accused him of having ruined his own Reformation, first by becoming “a political hero” and then “a jolly man of the world.”3 [Cf. S.K.’s statement quoted above.] And finally S.K. charged that by coming out as a success rather than a martyr Luther confused the basic concept of what a reformer should be.4
The terms “politician” and “martyr” lead us back to the Kierkegaardian distinction between religious and political movements, and we need now to apply that typology not simply to the problem of war but to the very nature of the church. [In the letter where S.K. established this concept (see above), he also specified the Reformation as a movement that appeared religious but proved to be political.] Rather than being the religious martyr who was oriented solely to the fixed point behind, interested only in becoming obedient, Luther acted as a politician striving to accomplish a new order within society, driving toward a point out front, namely the establishment of a Protestant church. Thus, as S.K. put it, Luther became more interested in the victory of his cause, i.e. the accomplishment of his end, than in the “how” of that victory, i.e. the “how” of strict obedience that leaves the result entirely in the hands of God.
In what follows, S.K.’s statements do not concern Luther per se, but the line of thought is relevant–and highly sectarian as well. Why did Luther become a politician? The answer is simple. As a “church”man, Luther saw the church as an institution, a commissary. Thus, whatever might be done in the way of reformation, it was, of course, absolutely essential that the institution itself be preserved. That is no feasible reformation that loses the church in the process of reforming it. Therefore, Luther’s program actually came to be to reform or change the church into conformance with the gospel ideal insofar as that could be done without endangering the very existence of the institution. It is the presence of this conditional (although essential) clause that gave the Reformation the pragmatic, political character to which S.K. objected. It was this consideration that led Luther to “accept the help of the princes,” to shrewdly exploit the political situation, to compromise some of his religious insights.6 None of this is to be read as dishonesty or hypocrisy on Luther’s part. If the church is essentially an institution, that institution must be preserved; and rather clearly, these things had to be done in order to preserve it.
S.K. put the matter this way:
Politics consists of never venturing more than is possible at any moment, never going beyond what is humanly probable. In Christianity, if there is no venturing out, beyond what is probable, God is absolutely not with us; without of course its following that he is with us whenever we venture farther out than what is probable.7
Now the sectary too is vitally concerned to preserve the church, but consider that by the very nature of its constitution a caravan can be preserved only by venturing; to stop, dig in, and establish fortifications might save something, but whatever was saved would be so only by ceasing to exist as a caravan. Thus the only way for a sectary to preserve his church is to become as radically obedient as possible and leave the preserving to God. He, in all conscience, must do the one thing that the “church”man, in all conscience, cannot do: risk the martyrdom of the church itself in the interests of unconditional obedience. S.K. saw what was at stake here:
Somewhere in a modern author (I think Böhringer) I have read something like the following observation. He is speaking of one of the critical points in the history of the church, and says that for the church only one of two things was to be done: either it had to admit plainly that the Christian church did not exist (but that would be suicide) or it had to put a bold face on it and claim that it was the true Christian church.
So it would be suicide? Yes, truly suicide, and yet an action well-pleasing to God. For that would mean that there is enough truth to kill oneself to make room for the truth, instead of stifling it with its beastly expansion which impudently claims to be Christianity. But the church had neither the courage nor the truth to do this, to accomplish his heroic suicide–it preferred to kill Christianity with its lies. But precisely what that author describes as preposterous, as something that the church could not think of doing, is what must be done.8
S.K. is here making explicit an aspect of the sectarian ideal which perhaps the classic sectaries themselves were not able to enunciate quite this clearly, namely that nonresistance, or defenselessness, is not simply a position regarding the Christian and war but marks the basic stance and orientation of the church’s entire existence. The following statement S.K. applied simply to den Enkelte but it would hold for the church as well:
That the Christian is sacrificed is also expressed in the image which Christ constantly uses, and which is repeated here: to be salt. For to be salt means not to be for oneself, but to be for others, that is, to be sacrificed. ‘Salt’ has no being for itself, but is purely teleological, and to be determined purely teleologically means to be sacrificed.9
Call it “salt” or call it a “caravan,” either figure points toward the sect as a church striving to be determined purely teleologically–and that teleology is to give itself unreservedly in radical obedience to God.
Both S.K.’s and Luther’s views on preserving the church are entirely consistent and sincere. If the church is what the “church”man sees at to be, then sectarian radicalism is a real and present threat to the very existence of the Christian church. But if the church is what the sectary sees it to be, then Luther-type “politics” are a real and present threat to the very existence of the Christian church. Which view is correct, it is not for us to say. However, his critique of Luther makes it quite plain that, regarding the nature of the church, S.K. was a sectary and not a Lutheran.
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. Dru Journals, 1166 (1850).
2. Thus he could say: “Thank God for Luther! He is still always a big help against the puffed up and almost demented dogmatic and objective conceit with which we go far in abolishing Christianity.” Papirer, 10:2:A:231 [1849] my trans.–V.E.)
3. Dru Journals, 1119 (1850).
4. Dru Journals, 1304 (1854).
6. For instance, in his The German Mass and Order of Worship (Holman, Works, 6:173), Luther describes “the kind of service which a truly Evangelical Church Order should have.” What follows is as accurate a description of a “gathered church,” a sectarian Gemeinde, as could be drawn. But in conclusion Luther as much as admits that he has not formed that sort of a church because it would not “work.”
7. Smith Journals, 11:1:A:502 (1854).
8. Smith Journals, 11:2:A:325 (1854).
9. Smith Journals, 1l:1:A:7 (1854).
c. Clericalismticism
[The modern parson] is a skillful, active, and quick man,
who finds it perfectly easy,
with the aid of attractive conversation and bearing,
to introduce a little Christianity-but as little as possible.1
[The priest’s] whole existence as a combination
of civil servant and disciple of Christ
is entirely inadmissible,
directly contrary to Christ’s ordinance.2
[The priest] walks in long robes,
which Christ, however, does not exactly recommend
when both in Mark and Luke He says, …
“Beware of those who go about in long robes.”3
A major aspect of S.K.’s criticism of the church was his anticlericalism. Again in this case there is no Brethren material that forms a direct counterpart. However, a correlation can be made by noting that the Brethren form of the ministry specifically (and without doubt deliberately) avoided just those usages of which S.K. was most critical.
S.K. questioned the very constitution of the state-church ministry, asking, “Can one be a teacher of Christianity by royal authorization?”4 He saw that the arrangement leads to a truly serious conflict of interests. The matter of financial support becomes a problem:
Only in one case can a teacher of Christianity, who is bound by an oath to the New Testament, defend himself for being maintained by the state–namely, when he has been arrested, and, let it be noted, arrested for the sake of Christianity.5
If one cannot impart to men so much of a picture of the importance of Christianity that they pay willingly, neither should anyone take their money. Christianity is too high-born to patronize the state.6
In contrast to the clergy of his own day, S.K. looked back to the situation of the early church:
But there was a time when Christianity was preached by witnesses for the truth–there were no livings in those days, inasmuch as Christianity (incredible as it is!) had come in without any help from livings…. O ye revered figures whom Christianity so touched and moved that it and ye conquered your hearts, and ye resolved, and kept the resolve to preach Christianity in poverty and lowliness, [this was] genuine preaching.7
The Brethren practiced the very thing that S.K. seems to have had in mind; they recognized the right of the minister to accept contributions toward his support and yet their leaders regularly served on a purely volunteer basis.
S.K. also took the clergy soundly to task for another aspect of their “professionalism,” their tendency to substitute theologizing and rhetoric for a demonstrated way of life. Such preaching completely misses the point:
The speaker who does not know how the task looks in daily life and in the living-room might just as well keep still, for Sunday glimpses into eternity lead to nothing but wind. To be sure, the religious orator is not to remain in the living room, he must know how to hold fast the total category of his sphere, but he must also be able to begin everywhere. And it is in the living-room that the battle must be fought, lest the religious conflict degenerate into a parade of the guard once a week; in the living room must the battle be fought, not fantastically in the church, so that the clergyman is fighting windmills and the spectators watch the show; in the living room the battle must be fought, for the victory consists precisely in the living-room becoming a sanctuary.8
Here is a “secular Christianity,” although definitely not one that threatens to become incognito in its worldliness or to become “of the world” in the process of being “in the world.”
“Living-room sermons” require a peculiarly qualified preacher. His basic qualification is one that churchly orthodoxy specifically disavowed but which was central in sectarianism. Not the credentials of his ordination, not his eloquence, not his theological skill or doctrinal correctness, but the quality of his experience and life, sectaries would say, is the primary requisite of the minister. Kierkegaard too took his stand clearly in this tradition:
Christianity not being a doctrine, it is not a matter of indifference, as in the case of a doctrine, who
expounds it if only (objectively) he says the right thing. No, Christ did not appoint professors, but followers. If Christianity (precisely because it is not a doctrine) is not reduplicated in the life of the person expounding it, then he does not expound Christianity, for Christianity is a message about living and can only be expounded by being realized in men’s lives.9
Obviously again, the Brethren minister would seem to have come close to the Kierkegaardian ideal. His church actually was a living room (if not a barn); he had neither the ability nor the inclination to indulge in speculative theology; and he had been chosen minister by the friends and neighbors who knew him best, and that precisely because of the quality of his Christian life.
Finally, as part of the same pattern, S.K. denounced clerical vestments. As surprisingly early as 1847, he wrote:
I am well aware that in the matter of canonicals some prelates use broadcloth, others silk, velvet, bombazine, etc. but I wonder if the true Christian canonicals are not these: Being derided in a good cause, being scorned and spat on, the degree thereof would indicate the clergyman’s order of rank…. But to preach about Christ decked out in finery and furbelows to a crowd of curious gapers! Disgusting!10
And in the Attack proper, the fusillade was made just that much more devastating:
The decisive point is that when the teacher acquires ‘canonicals,’ a peculiar dress, professional attire, you have official worship–and that is what Christ will not have. Long robes, splendid churches, etc., all this hangs together, and it is the human falsification of the Christianity of the New Testament…. It is not true of the clerical order as it is of other orders, that there is nothing evil about the order; no, the clerical order is, Christianly considered, in and for itself of the Evil, is a demoralization, a human egoism, which inverts Christianity to exactly the opposite of that which Christ had made it.11
It will suffice to note that the vestments of a Brethren cleric consisted of a clean pair of overalls (or the eighteenth century equivalent).
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. Smith Journals, 11:1:A:69 (1854).
2. Attack upon “Christendom,” 228.
3. Ibid., 27.
4. Ibid., 46.
5. Smith Journals, 11:2:A:352 (1854).
6. Papirer, 10:2:A:240 (1849) [my trans–VE.].
7. “To Become Sober” (Discourse I) in Judge For Yourselves!, 140, 142.
8. Postscript, 415-16. Climacus purportedly is the author, but there is no doubt that the words belong to the Christian Kierkegaard rather than to his non-Christian pseudonym.
9. Rohde Journals, 141 (1848); cf. 138 and 219. Cf. Smith Journals, 11:2:A:402 (1854). Cf. Johannes Climacus, 135-36, and “… The Mirror of the Word” (Discourse I) in For Self-Examinotion, 36-37.
10. Rohde Journals, 215 (1547).
11. Attack upon “Christendom,” 175.
d. Infant Baptism
[A young husband who normally feels no need at all for religion gets in a family way; the baby must be baptized.] So they notify the priest, the midwife arrives with the baby, a young lady holds the infant’s bonnet coquettishly, several young men who also have no religion render the presumptive father the service of having, as godfathers, the Evangelical Christian religion, and assume obligation for the Christian upbringing of the child, while a silken priest with a graceful gesture sprinkles water three times on the dear little baby and dries his hands gracefully with the towel–And this they dare to present to God under the name of Christian baptism. Baptism–it was with this sacred ceremony the Savior of the world was consecrated for His life’s work, and after him the disciples, men who had well reached the age of discretion and who then, dead to this life (therefore were immersed three times, signifying that they were baptized into communion with Christ’s death), promised to be willing to live as sacrificed men in this world of falsehood and evil.1
That, as he did here, S.K. affirmed “the age of discretion” as the proper time for baptism, and that (oh, favor beyond all meed!) he should specify triple immersion as the proper mode–this is sufficient to endear S.K. to Dunker hearts for all time. But of course, there is more that must be said–particularly in light of such a deflating comment as that of the non-Dunker Walter Lowrie: “The many Baptist sects will welcome [S.K.’s] criticism of infant baptism (although in fact S.K. was not disposed to discard it).”2 But neither the “Baptist sects” nor S.K.’s opinion of infant baptism really can be put off with so brief a parenthesis.
Lowrie is correct in suggesting that, at the point where S.K. made his most extended analysis of infant baptism, in Postscript, he was not disposed to demand that is be discarded (to make Lowrie’s wording a little more accurate). But Postscript is a rather early work (1845-1846), written before S.K. had faced up to the true extent of his alienation from the church. And given his reluctance to say anything which might suggest that the church could make everything right simply by introducing certain reforms (such as dropping infant baptism), it is little wonder that S.K., at that time, did not come out with a flat denunciation of infant baptism.
However, if due weight is attributed to the depth of his critique (even in 1846) and then to the statements he made after he had given up the church as a bad cause, the picture is somewhat different. One such later statement is that quoted as our epigraph. Another reads: “Infant baptism: it is easy to see that this is really connected with the knavish cunning with which mankind has tried to cheat God of Christianity by turning it into Epicureanism.”3 And again: “Now everything is turned into twaddle by passing off an infant as a Christian.”4 These are not the words of a proponent. Clearly, the burden of proof is not upon the Baptist sects but upon Lowrie to show that the later Kierkegaard did in fact (or even to show how he conscientiously could) favor the retention of infant baptism.
The point at issue goes far beyond determining the correct mode for the observance of a common Christian rite. The difference between infant and adult baptism is a radical one, involving opposed concepts of the church. It was a mark of insight that historically the matter was seen as decisive enough that certain sectarian groups–such as the Anabaptists, the Baptists, and the Dunkers–were labeled and identified on the basis of their baptismal practice. For the truth is that infant and adult baptism are two different rites, symbolizing two different actions, presupposing two different definitions of the parties involved. Either baptism is right and proper within the context of its own concept of the church; neither makes sense apart from that context.
From the churchly view, baptism is primarily an act of the church, the baptizer (rather than of the individual, the one being baptized). In this act the institution incorporates the person into itself in order that, during the course of his life, he may enjoy the blessings and graces which the institution (commissary) communicates. Because the church is the religious expression of the Christian community, because the child, clearly, is a member of that community, and because it is through his participation in this sacred institution that grace is mediated and he becomes a Christian–because this is the case, infancy obviously is the due and normal time for baptism. If the church is essentially an institution, infant baptism is manifestly correct.
However, according to the sectarian view, baptism is primarily an act of den Enkelte, the one being baptized (rather than an act of the church per se). In this act den Enkelte attests to the reality of his personal, immediate relationship to God, to the fact of what has already happened and is happening in his life, to the faith that is present in him. In this act, also, he covenants with God regarding the life of loyalty and obedience that he intends and desires to live, the road he intends to travel. And finally, he also covenants with his fellow Christians to be a constituent member of the caravan (not a subject of the institution). Because this is what is involved, it is clear that a person who has reached the age of discretion and responsibility is the only fit applicant for baptism. If the church is essentially a Gemeinde, only adult baptism is correct.
The sect baptizes Christians as a profession, attestation, and seal of their Christianity; and in that baptism the church is created. The church (the Gemeinde) originally came into being as Christians joined with one another, and it must ever continue to come into being as contemporary Christians join with one another anew. Even so, it is completely correct to call the church the body of Christ and to acclaim him as its creator, for it is, of course, his work that creates Christians in the first place, his call that brings them together, and his living lordship in their midst that imparts the quality of Gemeinschaft to their gathering.
The “church,” on the other hand, baptizes potential Christians (actually, potential persons, who by that token are potential Christians) in order to set up the conditions through which the church, as a divinely pre-established repository, can administer the graces of correct doctrine and true sacraments which will make them Christians.
Just this striking is the difference between the infant baptism of the classic churchly tradition and the adult baptism of the classic sectarian tradition. It will become quite apparent that S.K.’s uneasiness over infant baptism arose from the fact that he held a sectarian “theology of baptism” which he could not reconcile with the churchly “mode of baptism.”
The Brethren, of course, could be quoted at great length regarding baptism; this was the doctrine in which they were most conspicuously at odds both with the “church”men on their right and with the “spirituals” on their left and regarding which they therefore did the most writing and explaining. It will be sufficient here to note a few significant points. In the first place, baptism was essentially an act of obedience and an outward attestation of an inner process–no suggestion of baptismal regeneration was involved [see above].
In the second place, the delay of baptism until the age of discretion6 did not mean–as the sectaries were often accused–that their children were denied salvation. As an Annual Meeting minute put it) “The children of the faithful belong to the flock of Christ just as naturally as the lambs belong to the flock of sheep.”7 And Mack Senior explained in more detail, using the analogy of circumcision, although in a way quite different from its traditional use as an argument for infant baptism. He pointed out that:
The circumcision of the Old Testament was demanded only of male infants on the eighth day. If then, a child died before that time, he would not have violated God’s commandment. Doubtless many died before the eighth day, and they were certainly not rejected, as little as the female infants, who were not circumcised at all, and despite this were under the promise. Therefore, if a child dies without water baptism, that will not be disadvantageous for it, because this has not been commanded of the child. It has not yet experienced the “eighth day”–that is, the day on which it could have repented and believed in the Lord Jesus, and could have been baptized upon this, its faith…. The children are in a state of grace because of the merit of Jesus Christ, and they will be saved out of grace.8
Ultimately, then, there is no issue between the churchly and the sectarian views as to
- whether or not children can be saved;
- whether or not the church has a concern, responsibility, and ministry for children; or even>
- whether or not it is proper to have a ceremony symbolizing the church’s adoption of the child.
The question is whether this sort of ceremony is what the New Testament intended as baptism. Thus the very serious-sounding charge made by Ian Henderson would bother a sectary not at all, nor would it need have bothered S.K. Henderson says: “A view of Christianity like Kierkegaard’s which confessedly has little place for children seems hardly to be true to what we know of Jesus of Nazareth.”9 Indeed, it would be quite accurate to carry this further and say that Christianity has no place for children. However, this is not at all to say that Jesus Christ has no place for children; any sectary would be eager to affirm that Christ’s love and favor extends to them without condition. Nevertheless, it does seem true to what we know of Jesus of Nazareth to suggest that Christianity, i.e. the Christian faith, is accessible only to those who are capable of faith.
Thus the thing that the Brethren, and particularly S.K., resisted most was not so much the bare rite of infant baptism as the implication that the infant’s being baptized does, at least in some sense and to some degree, make him a Christian. In this light, S.K.’s original position (as presented in Postscript) is seen to be consistent–if not quite realistic. He was willing to retain the rite if the implication about the infant’s becoming a Christian were dropped. His later statements–made after he realized that his quarrel with the church was too deep to be resolved through compromises–would indicate that he then understood
- that the implication was an intrinsic and inevitable aspect of the rite itself, and
- that if the implication were dropped, the residual rite would bear little if any relationship to what the New Testament calls Christian baptism.
It is interesting to discover in an early, pseudonymous work such as Postscript an extensive and recurring discussion of infant baptism.10 Actually, the entire treatment is out of place, for it is hardly in character that a worldly philosopher Climacus should become so agitated concerning a churchly rite. But Obviously, S.K. had lost sight of his pseudonym, and at times it must he said that he lost sight of his readers as well. Thus we find a rare situation in Kierkegaardian literature. Right or wrong, S.K. almost always spoke with precision, forthrightness, and authority; he was perhaps the writer least inclined to hedge, to qualify, to muddle his ideas. And yet here, in his alternate denunciation and defense of infant baptism, the impression is given that he was as much feeling his own way as he was communicating solid convictions to his readers. Plainly, S.K. was deeply bothered about the doctrinal implications of infant baptism.
This very unrest fits perfectly the pattern through which sectarianism normally develops. Almost invariably it is in connection with infant baptism that the incipient sectary begins to feel acute dissatisfaction with the church–usually some considerable time before he realizes that it is actually a doctrine regarding the basic nature of the church itself that is at stake. It would not be amiss to date these passages as marking the onset of S.K.’s sectarian birth-pangs.
However, the position S.K. there developed at such length (and with a great deal of repetition) actually is very simple:
In times when people became Christians as adults, and were baptized in mature years, one might with some assurance speak as if Christianity had some significance for the baptized…. But when the rite of baptism is relegated to the second week after birth … it is impossible to deny that membership in the visible Church constitutes a very doubtful proof that this member is really a Christian.11
That time, or existence in time, should be sufficient to decide an eternal happiness is in general so paradoxical that paganism cannot conceive its possibility. But that the whole matter should be decided in the course of five minutes, two weeks after birth, seems almost a little too much of the paradoxical.12
These statements (plus much more of the same) certainly constitute a very harsh indictment of infant baptism as it was customarily interpreted. Nevertheless, in Postscript, S.K. did not call for the abolition of infant baptism–although he did have difficulty in justifying its retention. Yet to that end he presented three arguments:13
- Infant baptism is defensible as “an anticipation of the possibility” that the child someday will become a Christian. But S.K. would have had to admit that the anticipation is only of a “possibility”–sheer possibility. According to S.K.’s thought it would be just as “possible” for one who was not baptized as an infant to become a Christian as for one who was. Indeed, the rite of baptism itself (apart from the child’s later education) would not even affect the “probability”; it is just as probable that the unbaptized child of sectarian parents will become a Christian as that the baptized child of churchly parents will. S.K. made no attempt to relate his “anticipation of the possibility” to New Testament teachings regarding baptism; it would be a mistake to try.
- Infant baptism is defensible “as an attempt to prevent the dreadful laceration that the parents might have their blessedness attached to one thing, and the children not to the same.” But this is about the most unKierkegaardian thing S.K. ever wrote. S.K. knew and stressed that the salvation of the Christian is based solely upon his personal appropriation of the Christian faith. The salvation of the infant–which the sectary would insist is nevertheless real–cannot be upon this same basis, for babies are incapable of the personal appropriation which is faith. Therefore, what S.K.’s suggestion amounts to is that, for the sake of people’s feelings, the church should continue to live out and to symbolize something that is not quite true–and that is not like Søren Kierkegaard.
- Infant baptism is superior to adult baptism precisely because it is such an impossible symbol of becoming a Christian. S.K. did not word his argument quite this way, but it came to just this. When thoroughly analyzed, the position is seen to be strange indeed: that sacrament or symbol is best which is at the farthest remove from and bears the least possible connection to the inner experience it symbolizes. It must be recalled that Postscript comes from the period when S.K. still was promoting the idea of “hidden inwardness,” i.e. that true Christianity is an entirely inward process that carries no external indicators whatsoever. Therefore, if one gets his baptism out of the way before it can possibly represent his becoming a Christian, then when he actually does become such he can do so in complete inwardness without the temptation to “sectarian externality” that an outward baptism would present.
Considerable confusion is evident here–which needed to be rejected along with the whole doctrine of hidden inwardness. The observation that adult baptism can be “a sectarian externality” signifying an inward reality which may not actually be present–this certainly is no argument in favor of infant baptism, which S.K. himself insisted customarily signified an inward reality which could not possibly be present. Indeed, the only logical conclusion to this hidden-inwardness line of reasoning is not the retention of infant baptism but the elimination of all baptism, all sacraments, all public worship, all organized religion–any external that implies the presence of Christian faith.
Taken all in all, S.K.’s “defense” of infant baptism sounds very much like that of a thinker who was already far gone into sectarianism but fighting desperately to resist his fate. Yet even if this defense were accepted uncritically and as fully valid, still the major thrust of S.K.’s discussion was expressed in some very sectarian-sounding statements made years after the Postscript struggle:
The notion of being a Christian because one is born of Christian parents is the fundamental delusion from which a multitude of others stem.14
The truth is, one cannot become a Christian as a child; that is just as impossible as for a child to beget children. Becoming a Christian presupposes (according to the New Testament) being fully a man, what one might call in a physical sense maturity of manhood–in order then to become a Christian by breaking with everything to which one naturally clings. Becoming a Christian presupposes (according to the New Testament) a personal consciousness of sin and of oneself as a sinner.15
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. Attack upon “Christendom,” 205.
2. Walter Lowrie, the translator’s Introduction to Attack upon “Christendom,” xv.
3. Smith Journals, 11:1:A:546 (1854).
4. Smith Journals, 11:1:A:39 (1854); cf. 11:2:A:25 (1854).
6. The practice of the eighteenth century Brethren would indicate that they considered that age to be somewhere around sixteen to eighteen years. Modern Brethren have the age pushed down to little more than half that–to the place where the biting words of S.K. begin to apply: “Confirmation then is easily seen to be far deeper nonsense than infant baptism, precisely because confirmation claims to supply what was lacking in infant baptism: a real personality which can consciously assume responsibility for a vow which had to do with the decision of an eternal blessedness.” Attack upon “Christendom,” 218.)
7. Annual Meeting Minutes, 1789, art 2, p.12.
8. Mack Senior, Rights and Ordinances, in Durnbaugh, Origins, 352.
9. Ian Henderson, Myth in the New Testament (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1952), 24.
10. Passages dealing essentially with infant baptism are to be found on 42-44, 260, 325-29, 332-34, 340-41, and 520-39; thus six passages of significant length total some thirty pages. Yet only a few brief references to baptism are found outside of Postscript.
11. Postscript, 326.
12. Ibid., 328-29.
13. These are given in Postscript, 340-41 reiterated on 531-32.
14. The Book on Adler, 182, note.
15. Attack upon “Christendom,” 212. Cf. Smith Journals, 11:2:A:81 (1854).
E. Credalism
If a man is to be a Christian, it is doubtless requisite for him to believe something definite; but it is just as certainly requisite for him to be quite definite that “he” believes. In the same degree that thou dost direct attention exclusively to the definite things a man must believe, in that same degree dost thou get away from faith.1
Neither S.K. nor the eighteenth century Brethren spoke at any length concerning their opinions of creeds; yet at this point occurs the most impressive instance of correspondence to be found in our entire study.
It is well established that the Brethren absolutely refused to subscribe to any creed or to formulate anything like a formal confession of faith. The historian Morgan Edwards attested to this fact [see above], and another contemporary historian, Robert Proud, said “When [the Brethren] are asked about the articles of their faith, they say they know of no others but what are contained in this book [i.e. the New Testament]; and therefore can give none.”3
Brethren writings from the eighteenth century include no specific discussion of the matter, although from hints, from later teachings, and from a knowledge of the ideological context, it is easy to reconstruct what the original position must have been. It was not the content of the classical creeds that bothered the Brethren; their faith was orthodox (or better, sufficiently orthodox that the creedal content offered no difficulty). And in any case, heterodox inclinations would not have prevented them from formulating confessions of their own. Rather, their objections concerned the implications that follow from the very form and character of creeds per se.
In the first place, affirmation of a creed tends to become a substitute for true inwardness, tends to distort faith from existential venture into mere intellectual cognition, tends to undercut the importance of obedience and fruitbearing. As stated in an Annual Meeting minute of 1789:
[We] do not spare any labor and toil to convince [the children of the members] by our teaching and life, not after the manner which is almost too common nowadays, where the young are made to learn something by heart, and then to rehearse it in a light, thoughtless manner, and then are permitted to go on in life as thoughtless as before-but [we desire] that they may give themselves up to God in an earnest life.4
Most of what S.K. had to say about creeds relates at this point:
The objective faith, what does that mean? It means a sum of doctrinal propositions. But suppose Christianity were nothing of the kind; suppose on the contrary it were inwardness.5
And a few pages later he stated: “To know a confession of faith by rote is paganism, because Christianity is inwardness.”
It is interesting to note, too, that in all of his voluminous writings S.K. made very few references to any of the creeds, confessions, or symbols, and seems deliberately to have avoided the use of creedal language and terminology.6
In the second place, the Brethren also opposed creeds as being a threat to the primacy of scripture as the sole rule of faith and practice. They saw the creeds as later, purely human inventions, the work of a tradition which threatens to impinge upon the biblical revelation. Thus Mack Senior, although not discussing creeds as such, could say:
How wretched it is to appeal to testimonies of men and to look to men who are considered holy and wise, so that one is led to think or say: “Truly, if they taught in this way and believed according to the Scriptures, we shall believe it also.”7
S.K. said almost the same thing:
Yet, from a Christian standpoint, this talk about our fathers’ faith is a misunderstanding, at all times a misunderstanding: for this can never be described as something decisive. For the Christian, the only thing that matters is the New Testament, with which every generation has to begin. And the confusing factor, which has produced ‘Christendom’ and led Christianity back to Judaism, is that in the course of time each generation, instead of beginning with the New Testament, has begun with ‘our fathers’ faith,’ with holding fast to our fathers’ faith. Always this knavery of bringing in history and the category of the human race instead of ideality and the single person, which is the Christian category.8
A third, and very deep, objection of the Brethren was the fact that creeds and creedal definitions represent the attempt to stop theological and exegetical development at a given stage, to crystallize the faith into a fixed and unchanging system fastened into place with precise and formal statements. This, in Brethren eyes, was to betray the living character of revelation, to deny the teaching work of the Holy Spirit, to presume a finality of human understanding that is not and cannot be the case. The pages that follow will document the belief both of the Brethren and of S.K. in this regard.
But the accidental element that makes our Kierkegaard Brethren comparison so intriguing at this point is the fact that S.K. was aware of Brethren non-creedalism and approved it. Although it is highly improbable that S.K. would have so much as heard about the little Dunker sect on the Pennsylvania frontier, the improbable did happen. S.K. did not hear much, but on the strength of a very slight notice he gained a deep insight into the essential nature of Brethrenism. And what he did see, he highly approved.
The story is this. In 1851, S.K. read Benjamin Franklin’s Leben und Schriften, a German translation of Franklin’s works done by one Binzer. A whole series of S.K.’s journal entries are comments upon that book. But in Franklin’s Autobiography, S.K. came across this passage:
These embarrassments that the Quakers suffered from having established and published it as one of their principles, that no kind of war was lawful, and which, being once published, they could not, afterwards, however they might change their minds, easily get rid of, reminds me of what I think a more prudent conduct in another sect among us, that of the Dunkers. I was acquainted with one of its founders, Michael Welfare, soon after it appeared. He complained to me that they were viciously calumniated by the zealots of other persuasions, and charged with abominable principles and practices, to which they were utter strangers. I told him this had always been the case with new sects, and that to put a stop to such abuse, I imagined it might be well to publish the articles of their belief, and the rules of their discipline. He said it had been proposed among them, but not agreed to, for this reason:
“When we were first drawn together as a society,” says he, “it had pleased God to enlighten our minds so far as to see that some things, which we once esteemed truths, were errors; and others, which we had esteemed errors, were real truths. From time to time He has been pleased to afford us further light, and our principles have been improving, and our errors diminishing. Now we are not sure that we are arrived at the end of this progression, and at the perfection of spiritual or theological knowledge; and we fear that, if we should once print our confession of faith, we should feel ourselves as if bound and confined by it, and perhaps be unwilling to receive further improvement, and our successors still more so, as conceiving what we their elders and founders had done, to be something sacred, never to be departed from.”
This modesty in a sect is perhaps a singular instance in the history of mankind, every other sect supposing itself in possession of all truth, and that those who differ are so far in the wrong; like a man traveling in foggy weather, those at some distance before him on the road he sees wrapped up in the fog, as well as those behind him, and also the people in the fields on each side, but near him all appears clear, though in truth he is as much in the fog as any of them.9
Upon reading this passage, S.K. wrote the following entry in his journal:
Franklin (in his Leben und Schriften
v. Binzer, 2nd vol.) mentions a sect, the Dunkers, who would not compose a written creed–so as not to hinder themselves in free development. Franklin finds this very excellent, since otherwise sectaries distinguish themselves simply by matching their opponents. Now, “the latest” can be true enough; but nevertheless, these sectaries are by this token also again expediti.10
This is inexplicably the case-however they may have succeeded on that score in forming a sect.11
This statement is so compact as to be almost cryptic, but actually, S.K. saw much deeper into Brethrenism than did the reporter upon whom he depended for his information. In the first place, we already have seen that to be Christian expediti marks a very high ideal in S.K.’s thought, the same thing, really, as being a “caravan” church. His remark about sectaries simply matching their opponents is a report of Franklin’s opinion and not necessarily an expression of his own. The next clause-“Now, ‘the latest’ can be true enough”-is where S.K. rejected and went beyond Franklin’s interpretation. He had read enough of Franklin to identify him correctly as a free-thinking child of the Enlightenment who, although he might welcome Christian morality and ethics, would pride himself on his rational and “scientific” modernity and thus have little use for anything relating to dogma, tradition, and orthodoxy. Thus the aspect of non-creedalism that appealed to Franklin, S.K. saw, was the freedom to adopt current modes of thought to keep one’s religion in pace with the world. But of course this decidedly was not the orientation of either S.K. or the Brethren; and S.K. was able to recognize a kindred spirit–in spite of Franklin’s non-sectarian exegesis.
Thus S.K.’s phrase must be taken to mean, “Now I suppose it is possible–although not very probable–that Franklin’s implicit assumption about modern thinking being the truest could, at least occasionally, hit the mark. The possibility dare not be ruled out, although certainly the principle itself is a very unreliable one. But nevertheless, these Dunkers are not the modish friends of fashion, as Franklin would have it; they are expediti, freeing themselves from creeds not in order to follow the world but to follow in obedience the teachings of their Lord and Master and the leading of the Holy Spirit.” What little S.K. did know of Brethren sectarianism, he seems to have seen as reflecting his own faith.
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. “He Is Believed On in the World” (Pt III, Discourse 7) in Christian Discourses, 248. S.K. was not here addressing himself to the matter of creeds, but the anti-creedal implications are inescapable.
3. Robert Proud, History of Pennsylvania … [written 1776-80] (Philadelphia. 1798), Vol.II, Pt. IV, p. 345, quoted in Brumbaugh, op.cit., 524.
4. Annual Meeting Minutes, 1789, art. 2, p.13.
5. Postscript, 193. The fact that Climacus is the author presents no problem here.
6. Ibid., 201; cf. 41-42. Cf. Smith Journals, 11:2:A 172 (1854).
7. Mack Senior, Rights and Ordinances, in Durnbaugh, Origins, 396.
8. Smith Journals, 11:1:A:392 (1854).
9. Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, ed. Samuel Thurber (New York: Allyn and Bacon, 1929), 144-45.
Franklin was confused on one point. Michael Welfare (the German name was “Wohlfahrt”) was a monastic from the Ephrata Cloisters and not properly a Dunker. However, although on some points it would be highly misleading to identify the two groups, on the point of non-creedalism no damage is done; the Brethren and the Beisselites were of one mind. The outstanding example of Wohlfahrt’s principle in practice among the Brethren is Mack Junior’s open letter on feetwashing (above).
The above statement is probably the only kind thing Franklin ever said about the Brethren. As a printer, Sauer Senior was a competitor of Franklin’s–a serious enough competitor that Franklin tried to force him out of business by buying up all available ink supplies. Sauer circumvented him by making his own ink. Also, at a later time, Franklin published a tract demolishing the German sectaries for their nonresistant lack of cooperation in the Indian wars.
10. The expediti were crack troops of the Roman army, highly trained and disciplined, carrying the very minimum of gear so that they could move into trouble spots quickly and decisively. They were the ancient counterpart of storm troopers, commandos, or the Green Berets of the U.S. Special Forces.
11. Papirer, 10:4:A:73 (1851) [my trans.–V.E.]. A somewhat fuller account than is given here, describing how I came to make this find, etc., is my article “Kierkegaard Knew the Brethren!–Sort of,” Brethren Life and Thought, 8 (Winter 1963), 57-60.
f. Sacramentalism
It is because of the place we have assigned to the sacraments, and the use we have made of them, that Christianity has been reduced to Judaism. And it is very true–probably the truest statement about Christendom–that, as Pascal says, it is a union of people who, by means of the sacraments, excuse themselves from their duty to love God.1
Christendom’s Christianity takes Christianity merely as a gift. That is why it makes so much ado about the sacraments (in the superstitious sense), and pretends not to know that the sacrament carries an obligatzon.2
To demonstrate that S.K.’s sacramental theory was sectarian rather than churchly in viewpoint involves something of a problem in that the churchly tradition itself shows so much divergency on this point. Thus, although there is no difficulty whatever in distinguishing between the sacramental thought of sectarianism and Lutheranism, it is very difficult to establish any significant difference between that of sectarianism and Calvinism. However, because S.K. came out of a Lutheran background, it is of some value to our study to see just how far from his churchly tradition he had come.
Neither S.K. nor the Brethren gave any detailed attention to sacramental theory, yet some aspects of their thought are plain. Both treasured the sacraments as a vital and valuable part of the Christian faith. To a large degree, the very separation of the Brethren sect from out of the Radical Pietist milieu was motivated by the desire to regain and reestablish the sacraments that Radical Pietism had dropped. And the “filling out” of the Lord’s Supper, making it a reenactment of the upper room occasion by putting the eucharist into the context of a full evening’s service with a period of self-examination, the feetwashing, and the agape meal–this certainly points toward a high evaluation of the sacraments.
Likewise with S.K.: his works include fifteen separate discourses that are designated as meditations relating to the communion and/or the service of confession that accompanied it. Nowhere does S.K. say anything that could be interpreted as derogatory of the sacraments themselves, although–as in the epigraph above–he could be very harsh on the church for the way it used (i.e. misused) them.
Thus, although in both the Brethren and S.K. we find a high respect for the sacraments per se (which is not unsectarian), we also find a highly anti-sacramental interpretation (which is notably sectarian). Regarding baptism, we already have seen that the Brethren explicitly rejected anything suggestive of baptismal regeneration or the spiritual efficacy of the water. They understood baptism, rather, as being primarily a work of obedience, an external, human sign witnessing to an inner operation of the Spirit. And although eighteenth century writings do not treat the issue, all the evidence suggests that the Brethren interpretation of the eucharist must have followed the same pattern. The Brethren impulse to drop the term “sacrament” and refer to these signs as “ordinances” is an accurate reflection of the ideological shift involved.
As to S.K., the evidence is anything but voluminous, hut it points to the fact that he was anti-sacramental in the same sense that the Brethren were. Indeed, Louis Dupre says, “It should be obvious that sacraments in the Catholic, or even in the orthodox Lutheran, sense of the word are incompatible with Kierkegaard’s theory.”3 And S.K. did, in fact, explicitly renounce the orthodox Lutheran concept “People have put these words (Jn. 6:35ff.) in conjunction with the Lord’s Supper, they have developed a doctrine of the ubiquity of Christ’s body, and with that they have in Christendom a fantastic notion of Christ.”4
However, S.K.’s most significant statement was a positive one. It is nothing more than a hint, but a hint that gets to the heart of the matter:
Hence the Lord’s Supper is called Communion with Him; it is not merely in remembrance of Him, not merely a pledge that thou hast communion with Him, but it is the communion, the communion which thou shalt endeavour to maintain in thy daily life by more and more living thyself out of thyself and living thyself into Him.5
The sacraments involve (or are intended to involve) an absolutely real communion with God. In this sense the Kierkegaard sectarian view is truly a high one; and given the powerful sectarian stress on devotional immediacy, the oft-repeated churchly charge that the sectaries reduced the sacraments to mere memorials” is patently not the case.
But the sense in which S.K. was truly anti-sacramental shows up in his identification of the communion of the altar with “the communion which thou shalt endeavour to maintain in thy daily life.” In short, there is ultimately but one mode of man’s relationship to God den Enkelte existing before God in the venture of faith. The so-called sacraments are instruments divinely instituted and designed to intensify and focus this one relationship that must constantly constitute and control the Christian life. In the taking of the sacraments, then, the experience of the communicant may be different in degree but not in kind from what it is normally. And thus would seem to be excluded the special sacramental relationship of Christ’s corporeal body being received orally by anyone who partakes. This is the basic distinction between churchly “sacraments” and sectarian “ordinances”; S.K. stood on the sectarian side.
In Dru’s and in Rohde’s selections from Kierkegaard’s journals, the number identifies an entry rather than a page; the date following is that of the particular entry.
1. Papirer, 11:1:A:556 (1854), quoted in Dupre, op.cit., 106-7.
2. Smith Journals, 1:2:A:387 (1854).
4. Training in Christianity, (Pt. II), p. 101.
5. “Love Shall Hide the Multitude of Sins” in For Self Examination, 24-25.
g. Religionlessness
The law for God’s nearness and farness is … that the more the phenomenon, the appearance, expresses that God cannot possibly be there, the nearer he is. And inversely, the more the phenomenon, the appearance, expresses that God is quite near, the more distant he is.1
Up to this point we have been insistent that first and foremost S.K. was a religious thinker. Now, without going back on what has been said, we want to be equally insistent that “religious thinker” is about the worst possible choice of label for S.K., seeing that one of the most fundamental characteristics of his thought is precisely its “religionlessness.”
What has happened is that the word “religion” has switched meanings on us. We had to call S.K.’s thought “religious” in order to distinguish it from “theological”–the point being that his interest almost exclusively was to help men into a personal, existential relationship to God rather than simply give intellectual formulation to the Christian faith. But as soon as we understand “religion” in the negative sense in which Barth and Bonhoeffer have forced it into our vocabulary, then S.K. must be seen as joining them–better, as being way ahead of them (and our current “radical theologians” so-called)–in religionlessness.
Although S.K. did not use the term “religionlessness,” a moment’s thought will make it evident that what we have seen S.K. protesting in this chapter on “the church well lost” is precisely what Bonhoeffer and company signify by “religion.” “Religion,” now, denotes any and all thought and practice which implies that man has some sort of control over God’s end of his God-relationship, that he can dictate the terms of that relationship, that he has the wherewithal to turn God on and off or channel God’s grace to suit his own convenience.
But S.K. did not stop with what we have examined thus far, simply a protest against various manifestations of religiousness; he saw to the heart of the basic principle involved. Indeed, we submit that he saw more clearly than Bonhoeffer, even though it is Bonhoeffer rather than S.K. who came up with the term “religionlessness” and so launched a movement. It is in a group of journal entries (which clearly hang together as a series) that S.K. presented his thought; these are found in Ronald Gregor Smith’s, The Last Years, (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 11:2:A:50-56 (1854).
Bonhoeffer based his idea of religionlessness upon (or at least tied it to) the very problematical thesis that modern man somehow has “come of age”–which also has the effect of making it merely a twentieth century phase of the gospel. S.K., on the other hand, saw religionlessness as being the necessary implication of God’s sovereignty (or his “majesty,” to use the term he preferred). He explicates it, then, as a basic theme of the biblical revelation, without regard to what may or may not be the sensibilities of contemporary man. (Also, if S.K. is right, the latest fillip of pronouncing God dead is seen to be, not the zenith of religionlessness, but just the opposite, the height of religious presumption which leaves man completely and absolutely in control of whatever of the Christian faith is left.)
As we have noted, for S.K., even the human person is, above all, a free and integral agent. How much more is it the case, then, that God, the primordial Person, is–whatever else may be said of him–“a free spirit”? While it is true that God (particularly as he is seen in Jesus Christ) in love and service has given himself for man to the uttermost, this is not to say that he has given himself over to man’s control. If we may put it thus: God is servant of all but lackey of none. And man’s religious effort at domesticating God then takes on the aspect of small children designing a birdhouse which, to their minds, any bird would fall over himself to live in. But birds, thank God, still retain enough independent judgment not to let themselves be suckered into living as children think birds ought to live; and God, thank God, is at least as bright as the birds he created. God, therefore, is not about to let himself be geared into a bunch of “holy visibilities” which would have the effect of man’s putting Him in His place.
Now it becomes clear why S.K.–and the sectaries–were so opposed to the “commissary concept” of the church; it is essentially a “religious” view. The church is a holy institution, authorized by a holy book, housed in holy buildings, managed by a holy officialdom as they dispense the commodities of holy sacrament and holy beliefs–and the whole holy bit is under human control. And this is why S.K. took bead on the concepts of
- the church as an institution [see above];
- the Bible as a legal franchise: “It is very remarkable how ingenious, how inventive, how sophistical, how persevering in learned investigations certain men may be, merely to get a Bible text to appeal to. On the other hand, they do not seem to observe that this precisely is to make a fool of God, to treat him as a poor devil who has been foolish enough to commit something to writing and now must put up with what the lawyers will make of it.”2
- church buildings as houses of God: “[Christendom] plays at Christianity… in theaters built for the purpose, called houses of God–very apt, if it is the same sense as one defines a stormhouse as a house intended to keep storms out. No, God does not need a house–the world of reality is what he wishes to be with.”3
- the clergy as God’s official representatives [see above];
- the sacraments as carrying intrinsic spiritual benefit and power [see Infant Baptistm andSacramentalism, above]; and
- the creeds as guarantees of correct belief [see above]
And the basic principle of religionlessness which stands behind these separate protests S.K. put in these words:
God is Spirit. As Spirit God is related paradoxically to appearance (phenomenon), but paradoxically he can in turn come so near to reality that he is right in the midst of it, in the midst of the streets of Jerusalem….
If I were to suggest a feeble analogy, I should say that at certain times in human history, when everything was in confusion, there have arisen rulers who have ruled, if I may say so, in shirt-sleeves. This is a much higher majesty than that of an emperor who is directly recognizable: here is something paradoxical that the rulers are recognized because they go about in their shirt-sleeves. It follows from this–and we should not omit it–that if one imagined such a ruler later getting established as an emperor who was directly recognizable as such, then one should have to laugh (the comical nature of direct recognizability) if he thought he had become something more, for in fact he had become something less.
Therefore God can be related only paradoxically to appearance, but then he also comes so near that he can stand in the midst of reality before our very noses….
“The more the phenomenon, the appearance, expresses that God cannot possibly be there, the nearer he is. So in Christ. And just at the moment when the appearance expressed that not only was it impossible that this man should be the God-man–no, when the appearance expressed that men even denied that he was a man (see, what a man!), at that moment God’s reality was the nearest it has ever been.
“The law for God’s farness (and this is the history of Christianity) is therefore that everything that strengthens the appearance makes God distant. At the time when there were no churches, but the handful of Christians gathered as refugees and persecuted people in catacombs, God was nearer to reality. Then came churches, so many churches, such large and splendid churches–and to the same degree God is made distant. For God’s nearness is related inversely to the appearance, and this increase (churches, many churches, splendid churches) is an increase in appearance. When Christianity was not a doctrine, when it was a few poor propositions, but these were expressed in life, then God was nearer to reality than when Christianity became a doctrine. And with each increase and embellishment, etc., of doctrine, God removes himself the more. For doctrine and its spread mean an increase in the direction of appearance, and God is related inversely to appearance. When there were no priests, but the Christians were all brothers, then God was nearer to reality than when there were priests, many priests, a powerful priesthood. For priests are an increase in the direction of appearance, and God is related inversely to the phenomenon….
And this is the history of Christendom: by strengthening the appearance it puts a distance between itself and God, or else (as in certain circumstances one speaks of removing someone in a refined manner) the history of Christendom consists of removing God more and more, in a refined manner, by building churches and splendid buildings, by elaborating monstrous edifices of doctrine, along with an endless horde of priests.
So Christendom practically means the greatest possible distance from God.4
Here is a religionlessness more radical than that of Bonhoeffer, both in its basic dynamic and in the thoroughness and consistency of its application (Bonhoeffer somehow managed to preach religionlessness without its affecting his rather churchly view of the church, his sacramentalism, his support of infant baptism, etc.). And here, note well, is not a religionlessness sponsored by twentieth century man in the interests of winning his own freedom (whether from old and outmoded concepts of God or from any and all concepts of God) but a religionlessness sponsored from eternity by God himself in the interests of God’s preserving his own independence so that he is free to be for man in his own way, at the time and place of his own choosing.
And right here S.K. has stated the fundamental motif of sectarianism more precisely than it ever has been stated before, because, in essence, classic Protestant sectarianism is nothing more nor less than the attempt to recapture the New Testament ideal of religionless Christianity.
1. Smith Journals, 11:2:A:51 (1854).
2. Postscript, 534.
3. Smith Journals, 11:2:A:50 (1854).
4. Smith Journals, 11:2:A:51 (1854).
VII. The Churh Well Loved
This chapter completes the five dealing with S.K. and sociality; and the pattern developed in Chapter VII shows up nowhere more clearly than here. We have examined the Crowd-World that S.K. renounced, the Neighbor-World he accepted and loved, the Crowd-Church he attacked–and now comes the keystone of the entire structure. It is at this point that the whole must tie together—or else the whole falls apart.
The problem–the terms of which S.K. already has set and to which he must give answer–can be put rather concisely. S.K. must devise (or better, describe) a religious (yet religionless) sociality, i.e. a church, a grouping of men associated with one another for the sake of their relationship to God. His social concept will need to be closely related to his concept of den Enkelte, because it is plain that for S.K. a man cannot be related to God except as den Enkelte. Likewise, this sociality must studiously avoid each and every aspect of crowd-mentality which S.K. attacked so vigorously in the Establishment, for this of course represents a direct threat to den Enkelte. In short, S.K. must provide a concept of sociality that is real and meaningful and yet one that, rather than compromising his concept of den Enkelte, can stand in a true dialectic relationship to it. Thus the crux of the problem of sociality necessarily falls here, within the religious sphere, rather than earlier, for no other reason than that den Enkelte itself is essentially a religious concept.
This was S.K.’s problem; and many commentators feel that it was precisely this problem that he failed to answer (or to answer adequately). The defect–if actual–would be a serious one, for then S.K.’s concept of den Enkelte would lead to a churchless atomism, an alternative that is as little acceptable to the sectaries as to the “church”men. However, we intend to show that there was no defect in the quality of S.K.’s answer. Indeed, we will maintain that he offered as profound an analysis concerning the nature of the sectarian church (the Gemeinde) as has ever been made and that this constitutes one of the most valuable contributions of Kierkegaardian thought.1 The defect lies solely in the fact that S.K. hid his light under a bushel (as he did regarding the political relevancy of nonresistance), in this case confining the crucial statements to a few hitherto untranslated entries in the journals and dropping only some broad hints in the published works themselves.
a. Gemeinde / Community
Religiously speaking, there is no such thing as a public, but only individuals…. And insofar as there is, in a religious sense such a thing as a “congregation,” this is a concept which does not conflict with “the individual,” and which is by no means to be confounded with what may have political importance: the public, the crowd, the numerical, etc.2
Because sectarianism lays great stress upon the individual believer, and because it is so deeply critical of the churchly concept of corporation, or institution, the temptation might be to epitomize sectarianism simply as individualistic Christianity and churchism as social Christianity. But such a distinction falls far wide of the mark, for it overlooks the fact that a hallmark of the sects is their sense of Gemeinschaft. Although it is very true that sectarianism is insistent against one sort of sociality, this truth always must be supplemented by the recognition that sectaries are equally insistent in favor of another sort of sociality.
The terms that denote the two types are “church” (the rejected sociality) and Gemeinde (the approved sociality). We should pause to clarify this terminology. Gemeinde (German), Menighed (Danish), and “community” (English) would seem to be precise equivalents in the three languages. Each is constructed over the root that means “common” and points toward the definition: “a group of persons drawn together on the basis of something they have in common.” It follows that the quality of Gemeinschaft will be in proportion to the extensiveness, intensiveness, and evaluation of the common factor that constitutes the group. Thus a community based solely on the geographical proximity of its residents is not likely to be very strong in Gemeinschaft; one based upon a common concern for the public school, such as a PTA, gives promise of being somewhat stronger; etc. The Gemeinde that should display the most profound Gemeinschaft is that based upon the commonality of a redemptive relationship to God in Jesus Christ, i.e. the Christian church. Therefore, although etymologically speaking Gemeinde and Gemeinschaft have no necessary religious connotations, we will proceed to use them in a highly religious sense.
Ultimately, Christian Gemeinschaft amounts to “the love of the brethren,” the love of the brethren for one another, which is consequent upon God’s love for them and upon the mutual love they hold for Him. Obviously, true Gemmeinschaft necessarily involves the intimate, face-to-face relationships of comparatively small groups sharing “life together”; the mere recitation of a common creed or attendance at a common service of worship can hardly represent Gemeinschaft at its deepest level. By its very nature Gemeinschaft cannot be a purely formal concept; it must exist as an existential reality or not at all.
Early Brethren literature is dominated by the theme; clearly, it was not by accident that the Brethren came to be identified as “the Brethren.” For them, the element that made the church the church was precisely Gemeinschaft in Christ–not the possession of true doctrine and efficacious sacraments. Of course, both doctrine and sacraments play their roles in creating Gemeinschaft, but until they do eventuate in Gemeinschaft they have failed to perform one of their major functions. Indeed, it is worthwhile to note that, by filling out the Lord’s Supper with the feetwashing and the agape meal, the Brethren explicitly were giving symbolic expression to the fact that true communion with Christ in his body must involve and produce Gemeinschaft with the brethren, a symbolism that is not nearly as clear when the eucharist is left to stand alone.
Although it will become plain that the Brethren and S.K. held a common view of the gemeinschaftlich nature of the church, their points of departure are different enough to add real interest. The Brethren gave most attention to the character of Gemeinschaft, signalizing the quality of the love that hinds the brethren together, describing the means through which this love finds expression. S.K. started farther back, with what might be called the “metaphysics of the Gemeinde,” i.e. an analysis of the basic spiritual economy that brings the Gemeinde into being and gives it its distinctive character. S.K.’s work can be of immense value in defining and understanding sectarian ecclesiology.
Rather than attempting a comprehensive survey of eighteenth century Brethren treatments, we will present only three outstanding commentaries on our theme; they communicate the thought and tone that pervade many Brethren writings. The earliest and fullest discussion–a truly notable piece of work for a Brethren author–is an essay (or possibly, a sermon) by Michael Frantz, An die Gemeinde.3 What follows is a paraphrased condensation, interspersed with observations and comments:
Our communion [Gemeinschaft] is with God in Christ. We have nothing of our own but inherit all things through him, for all is Christ’s and we are his. From God’s good gifts we bring forth spiritual fruit…. Christ imparts his own nature to us; he knocks at our hearts and would sup with us. O what a true love feast! Our communion is in suffering; suffering with the Jesus who bears the cross, we die with him, rise with him, and go with him to heaven.
Clearly, Gemeinschaft is not essentially the work of man–even of those who make up the Gemeinde. It finds its source in the grace of God that comes through Christ, and it is only as men are in fellowship with Him that Gemeinschaft is produced among themselves. Also, suffering for Christ and with Christ gives a strong impetus to Gemeinschaft.
The communion of Christians is in eating, drinking, working, reading, speaking, etc.–in all these things being mindful of the Lord. Thus they have fellowship with one another, admonish, edify, and correct one another; together they follow, imitate, and praise God. They assemble in simplicity before their king to glorify him and to learn from his word. They become one heart and soul, because they have only one knowledge and one gospel basis of the truth they understand in common. So they serve one another with the gifts they have received, obey one another in the fear of God, and practice humility.
Just as God’s will and work affect a man’s total life; so Gemeinschaft is practiced broadly, touching all aspects of life together; it is not confined to public worship or to one day a week.
Those of the community [Gemeinde] are members of one body and one of another; they suffer together and they rejoice together. As do man and wife, so do the children of God become one flesh; they are like him in love, purity, etc. For if their communion is with God, it cannot be with darkness. With his good gifts God also gives Christian virtues; and in the community men partake of God’s very nature and thus show forth his virtues.
Gemeinschaft produces the most profound sort of unity between man and God and between man and man. And because of God’s participation, this Gemeinschaft will always have a very high moral and ethical quality. It will also show the more active character of works of love:
True members of the community love their enemies, feed the hungry, etc. “Thine” and “mine” are no longer heard; one holds his goods to use in behalf of the neighbor (both the one within the community and the one outside). Everything he owns he holds simply as a trustee for the community; this is what it means to “lay it at the Apostles’s feet” and follow the practice of the Book of Acts.4 One will give without stint as long as he can be of help; for God demands back from us what he has given to us through Christ–and that with interest–although always out of love and not through compulsion.
It is clear that Gemeinschaft and neighbor love are closely related themes. And Frantz concluded with these words:
The community [Gemeinde] is from God; and whatever its accomplishments, God is to he thanked for them. Indeed, the unity of the one community is its common source in and common loyalty to God.
A second portrayal of Brethren Gemeinschaft–this more in the character of a demonstration than a disquisition–has to do with the Hummer incident. Catharine Hummer was a young woman, the daughter of one of the ministers of the congregation at White Oak. In 1762 she developed a propensity for ecstatic trances in which she enjoyed visions. These immediately made her a sensation–and also a focus of strong contention throughout the brotherhood. Her father and others accepted and promoted the visions as divine communications; many condemned them as diabolical.5 The matter became an Issue of dispute before the Annual Meeting of 1763, but the conference refused to rule on the visions either one way or the other. The wording of the minute makes it plain that the Brethren saw Gemeinschaft as taking precedence over all other considerations, saw it, indeed, as the only basis for any ultimate resolution of the problem:
If there are on both sides conviction and acknowledgment, then we advise out of brotherly love, that on both sides all judgments and harsh expressions might be entirely laid down, though we have not the same opinion of that noted (singular) occurrence, so that those who think well of it, should not judge those who are of the contrary opinion, and those who do not esteem it, should not despise those who expect to derive some use and benefit from it.
For the rest, we advise you, beloved brethren, receive one another as Christ has received you, and pardon one another as Christ has pardoned us also, and let us everywhere consider that all disputing, judging, and despising should be entirely laid aside, and thus remain, that everyone leave to the other his own opinion, in the fear of the Lord, and altogether for conscience’s sake…. If now one or the other should think we have not sufficiently judged the occurrence, let him consider, that we cannot see the least cause for a separation for conscience’s sake. Hence, we have felt constrained not to criticize or judge this (strange) affair, but rather to advise everyone to a godly impartiality and patience.6
There is much about this statement that is reminiscent of the “writ of censure” which the Germantown brethren did not serve on Sauer Junior, [see above] and together they underline an important feature of Gemeinschaft. Gemeinschaft does presuppose an openness toward God and a love toward the brethren, but it does not demand that the brethren possess a uniformity in their apprehension of God-whether affecting doctrine, gifts, church order, or whatever. Indeed, the surest way to kill the unity of Gemeinschaft is to enforce uniformity. Gemeinschaft can exist only as den Enkelte is left free in conscience to find God’s leading for him and thus make his own peculiar contribution to the Gemeinde. The Gemeinde will step in to discipline or to ban only when it has reason to believe that the individual has deserted his sincerity toward God and/or his love of the brethren.
This line of thought leads directly to the third and undoubtedly greatest portrayal of Brethren Gemeinschaft, namely Mack Junior’s open letter on feetwashing which was examined earlier. We will not review that document except to recall that it catches up much of the thought presented above and then goes on to suggest a “gemeinschaftlich epistemology”: “Above all, preserve love, for then we shall preserve light.” A Gemeinde is the most effective receptor for divine truth and leading; and the religious insight received will be complete and true only so long as it is held and practiced within a setting of Gemeinschaft.
It must be admitted from the outset that S.K. had not the “feel” for Gemeinschaft that the early Brethren did; he showed no similar appreciation of its power, its depth, its efficacy as a way to truth. S.K. saw (intellectually) the Gemeinde as a possibility, indeed, as the only proper alternative for a Christian church, but he did not know (existentially) Gemeinschaft. However, it is not difficult to explain either S.K.’s deficiency of feeling or the fact that he “hid” the insight he did have.
- S.K. simply had neither the temperament nor the opportunity to learn true Gemeinschaft; everything was against him on this score. Indeed, it is amazing that he saw as far as he did; a melancholy genius with jammed-lock inwardness is not the most promising material for the practice of community.
- S.K. himself suggested another consideration. He was not at the place on the sectarian cycle where a strong emphasis on the Gemeinde would have been appropriate. His job–his proper job–was “to oppose a given factor wrongly promulgated”9 ; first the Attack, and then (if “then” had ever come) might be the right time to talk about a Gemeinde.
- A final consideration is important although not readily apparent. S.K. was hampered in developing his concept of Menighed (Gemeinde) simply because N. F. S. Grundtvig already had appropriated the term and ruined it. Grundtvig made the word the touchstone of his movement, although using it to denote only a sentimentalized, nationalized, enculturated concept which did not mark any real move out of churchism at all. But as a consequence, one finds in S.K. such statements as the following: “Such a conception as that of ‘the congregation’ [Menigheden], about which people in these days especially have been so busy, is really, as applied to this life, an impatient anticipation of eternity…. ‘The congregation’ therefore belongs properly to eternity; ‘the congregation’ is at rest what ‘the individual’ is in unrest. But this life is precisely the time of testing, the time of unrest, hence ‘the congregation’ has not its abiding place in time but only in eternity.10
The fact that S.K. here put Menighed into diametric opposition to den Enkelte, whereas in his crucial statements he put them into correlation, and that he made Menighed the equivalent of the “triumphant church,” the Establishment, precisely that which is not “caravan”–all this clearly indicates that S.K. here was using Menighed only in Grundtvig’s sense and entirely counter to his own. This, of course, makes confusion all but inevitable and would have frustrated any effort S.K. might have made to communicate his own insights about the Gemeinde.
So much as apology for the fact that S.K.’s treatment of Gemeinschaft was not more extensive; we proceed to the demonstration of our thesis that his treatment was very intensive. Amazingly early in S.K.’s writings there appeared notices indicative of his feeling of a need for a doctrine of Gemeinschaft and a reaching after the same; for example:
How dreadful it is when everything historical vanishes before a diseased probing of one’s own miserable history! Who is to show us the middle course between being devoured by one’s own reflection, as though one were the only man who ever had existed or ever would exist, and–seeking a worthless consolation in the commune naufragium of mankind? That is really what the doctrine of an ecclesia should do.11
Although statements such as this by no means constitute a full-fledged doctrine, they do reflect both a dissatisfaction with the usual crowd-institutions and the hint that there must he something better. S.K. was getting the problem formulated even before he opened his authorship in 1843.
But the answer to which S.K. eventually came must itself be read against the background of his understanding of the role that Gemeinschaft (in the general sense of the term) plays in the very constitution and life of mankind:
All through the ages everyone who has thought deeply over the nature of man has recognized in him this need for community…. In the busy, teeming crowd, which as community is both too much and too little, man becomes weary of society, but the cure is not in making the discovery that God’s thought [i.e. that Adam needed community] was incorrect…. So deeply is this need grounded in the nature of man that since the creation of the first man there has been no change, no new discovery made; this self-same first observation has only been confirmed in various ways, from generation to generation varied in expression, in presentation, in turns of thought. So deeply is this need grounded in the nature of man and so essentially does it belong to being a human being that even He who was One with the Father and in the communion of love with the Father and Spint, He who loved the whole race, our Lord Jesus Christ, even He felt in a human way this need to love and be loved by an individual human being.12
This statement, of course, stands in direct contradiction to the understanding of S.K. that many scholars would foster. Granted this was not a major, or even typical, theme with S.K., but it was an authentic one. Any exegesis of den Enkelte that would exclude and prohibit the role of Gemeinschaft is not true to S.K.; he must have and will have den Enkelte in society and in a church.
We come, then, to S.K.’s doctrine of religious Gemeinschaft–which is his ecclesiology.13 The basic and all-controlling principle is that the Gemeinde must be something categorically different from a “crowd,” which by its very constitution is religiously negative–indeed, religiously prohibitive.14 The Gemeinde, therefore, must be so formed that both in point of order and of value den Enkelte takes precedence over the group itself:
It is not the individual’s relationship to the congregation which determines his relationship to God, but his relationship to God which determines his relationship to the congregation. [This sentence recalls much of what was said in the previous chapter regarding the churchly and the sectarian views of the church, baptism, etc.] Ultimately, in addition, there is a supreme relationship in which “the individual” is absolutely higher than the “congregation.” … [When] a person first of all and qualitatively [is] an “individual” … the concept “Christian congregation” is secured as qualitatively different from “public, ” “many, ” etc.15
Given this as his determinative principle, S.K. could then proceed to explicate Gemeinschaft. What follows is his definitive statement on the subject:
[The journal entry bears the title:] The Difference Between “Crowd,” “Public”–and “Community” (Menighed).
In “the public” and the like, the individual is nothing; there is no individual; “the numerical” is the constitution and law of its genesis, a generatio aequivoca [an equivocal beginning]. Detached from “the public” the individual is nothing, and in the public–more deeply understood–he actually has nothing either.
In community, the individual is; the individual is dialectically decisive as prius in order to form community, and in community the qualitative individual is essential and can at any instant become higher than “the community,” namely, as soon as “the others” fall away from the idea.
S.K. has here stated the principle that accounts for the characteristic sectarian emphases on the right of conscience, noncreedalism, and anti-authoritarianism in all its aspects. He continues:
The binding force of community is: that each is an individual–and thus the idea. The public’s bond–or rather, its looseness–is: that the numerical is everything. Each individual, in community, guarantees the community; the public is a chimera. The individual, in community, is a microcosm which qualitatively reduplicates the macrocosm; in this respect it is very true, “unum noris omnes” \[referring to the saying from Terrence, “To know one is to know all”]. In the public, no individual is; the whole is nothing. Here it is impossible to say, “unum noris omnes,” for no “one” is here. A community is certainly more than a sum, but it is in truth a sum of units. The public is nonsense: a sum of negative units, of units which are not units, which become units in the sum, whereas the sum should become sum in the units.16
The thought about den Enkelte guaranteeing the Gemeinde and being “a microcosm which qualitatively reduplicates the macrocosm” gets directly to the heart of the sectarian understanding of the church; and the matter has never been better put. In the sect, ideally any member–and not simply the pope, or a bishop, or a priest, or a clergyman, or a theologian–demonstrates on a small scale within himself every power, every attribute, every grace that the church itself can demonstrate. And within this context, the sectarian teachings regarding such things as free personal decision, inwardness, obedience, devotional immediacy, equality before God, and Nachfolge suddenly become obvious: the church can be no more Christian than are the individuals who make it up; the church becomes Christian as those who constitute it become Christian.
S.K. went on to show that it is precisely the stance of contradiction between Christianity and the world, between the Gemeinde and the public, that gives Christian Gemeinschaft its depth and power. Nonconformity and Gemeinschaft are two sides of the same coin. S.K.’s metaphor is a striking one:
CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY: In order to indicate where it lies I see no better illustration than an analogy, although it actually is beyond comparison. The criminal world creates a little society for itself which lies on the other side of human society, a little society which also has an intense solidarity that is not entirely common to the world–perhaps because each person feels himself expelled from human society.
So with the society of Christians. Each one, by accepting Christianity, in consequence of becoming a believer, i.e. by accepting–indeed, by basing his life upon–the Absurd, has told the world goodbye, has broken with the world. For this very reason there is a society among these who of their own free will have put themselves outside of society in the general sense; and their society is all the more intense because each of them feels how isolated he is from “the world.” But as with the criminal club it must be precisely the case that no one can come into the club if he does not discover this, so with the society of Christians: it must be that no one comes into this society except precisely those who are known to have been polemical in the extreme against society in general. This, the Christian community, is a society consisting of qualitative “individuals,” the fervor of which society is determined by this polemical attitude toward the great society of mankind.
But when, as in the course of time and in the constant advance of nonsense, to be a Christian became identical with to be human, so did the Christian community become the human race–good night nurse! Now the Christian community is the public, and in every cultured cleric’s eyes and finally in the eyes of the lay people, it is offensive to talk about “the individual.”17
Finally, S.K. addressed himself to what must be the decisive question for sectarian ecclesiology: Is the Gemeinde a necessary feature for the faith of den Enkelte? If the church is in no sense a “saving institution,” and if den Enkelte possesses in himself all the attributes of the church, why can he not “go it alone”? Does faith require a Gemeinde as its context?
Surprisingly enough, the answer of S.K.–who probably never experienced true Christian Gemeinschaft, whose career marked a struggling free from the “church,” and who died separated from both “church” and Gemeinde–was a strong affirmative. And as we shall see, that affirmation of the Gemeinde seems to have been based directly on the lack, the “sickness,” he felt in his own ungemeinschaftlich experience “Here, upon this point, properly lies the significance of religious sociality, namely, that as the fact of God’s ideality becomes powerful to the individual (thus he cannot indeed desire an unmediated revelation of God, and reflection [i.e. thinking about God] catches him);18 he now must have other men with whom he can talk about it. But one sees, therefore, that sociality is not the highest but is a concession as regards what it is to be man in his infirmity.” It will become apparent that for S.K. to call sociality “a concession” was in no way intended as derogatory. Indeed, by far the greater part of the Christian faith represents God’s “concession as regards what it is to be man in his infirmity.” God’s election of Israel, the Incarnation, particularly Christ’s death on the cross-every manifestation of grace–all are concessions made necessary only because of man’s sin and finitude. But concession or not, these things were necessary and are necessary for every man; and just so with sociality. S.K. continues:
Here again, then, lies the significance of the fact that God relates himself to the whole race. The race (sociality) is thus a middle term between God and the individual.
This is the retrogressive movement; but wherever there shall be preaching for revival, wherever the price will be hiked up, there individuality shall be maintained. And in point of order this is the more necessary movement, because men in general live slackly and lazily enough.
The relief, on the other hand, is to apply sociality. It is not good for man to be alone, it is said, therefore woman was given to him for society. But it is beholden upon us to be alone–literally alone–with God. That the neighbor is not to stand in one’s stead, this is terribly strenuous; therefore man seeks society…. Religious sociality, then, is God pointing away from himself, as it were. Being love, he nevertheless says, in effect: “Yes, yes, my child, now let this [the seeking of relaxation in sociality] be for good; also remember that I am still God. How humble, how believing, how burning your prayer and devotion are even so [even though you cannot sustain a direct, immediate, unbroken relationship]; in this way neither can you nor should you be thinking of me at every moment.”
The character and function of the Gemeinde here are coming into focus. The direct relationship of den Enkelte with God is too strenuous for any man to maintain or endure without interruption; the sheer finitude of our nature makes this inevitable. However, the full alternation between being in relationship to God and then being wholly out of relationship certainly would not be good. Thus God has set up the Geminde to help carry den Enkelte over the troughs. Here one is somewhat sustained in his relationship to God through the aid of his brethren (and the “caravan” analogy is nowhere more apropos). Here is made possible a “semi-” or “secondary”relationship to God which allows the tension to be relaxed without the connection being completely broken; den Enkelte now can supplement his talking to God with talking to his brethren about God.
And although S.K. did not speak to the point, there is an implication which should be followed up. It would not be correct to picture the situation as though den Enkelte rests in the Gemeinde during his troughs but rises out of it and beyond it during his peaks, for although it is during his troughs that he needs the Gemeinde, it is during his peaks that the Gemeinde needs him. In other words, den Enkelte must help to carry his brethren as well as being carried by them.
From all this, we can derive insight into the character of true Gemeinschaft. In its life and work the Gemeinde must strike the fine dialectical balance that truly bears up den Enkelte–but without infringing on his personal relationship to God. It must afford him true repose–but without encouraging him to stay in repose. It must provide him a truly helpful “secondary” relationship to God–but without letting this become a substitute for the “primary” relationship.
As S.K. continued this same passage, he made the point that to try–or even to desire–to bypass the Gemeinde in the interests of living solely as den Enkelte, far from being heroism, is actually presumption, a sin against God:
Here lies a dangerous point, namely, that the highest culmination of true religiousness [a personal, intimate, and individual relationship with God] can indeed hang by a hair and also can come to be recognized as a presumption, because even the humblest consciousness of being less than a sparrow before God, of being a nothing–yes, this is good–but presumption still can lie within it, within this consciousness that would think upon God at every instant and be conscious of itself as existing before him. It is proper to be conscious of oneself as nothing before God, but it is asking too much to wish to have this consciousness at every instant–or, if I dare say so (in order to indicate the error, because it is like a love affair), to wish to see the beloved every instant, even if one understands deeply enough that before him one is nothing.
In the next succeeding journal entry, which clearly is to be read in continuity with the foregoing, S.K. proceeded to describe the fruits of such presumption, the sort of soul-sickness to which it gives rise. And it is here that S.K. may have been referring to his own experience:
A particular, individual God-relationship (in which each individual relates himself to God) is still the goal and norm…. But when the particular God-relationship of the individual becomes sick [which, he has implied, is inevitable if the individual presumes to “go it alone”], then one sets up temporarily the middle term of sociality, or “the other people.” This sickness can take indeed the almost physical character of melancholy and the like. [Is S.K. referring to his own melancholy?] But principally it is the passion which, through vanity, is mistaken about how the individual relates himself to God, imagining that he wishes to be or that he is the entirely exceptional individual, [S.K. often spoke of himself as “the exceptional individual”; is he here repenting of at least some aspects of that role?] thus troubling himself to do nothing but sit and play the coquette with God as it were. But the fact is that he cannot remain in unhealthy intoxication with the thought of how the individual relates himself to God–if he becomes sober with the help of that which is possible to everyone, which is indeed commanded to everyone [i.e. through a consciousness of sociality].19
As S.K. continued this particular entry he also pointed out that this sickness in the God-relationship might be a temptation, leading den Enkelte to seek refuge in sociality before that was appropriate, so the passage may not be as confessional as it sounds. In any case, it is clear that S.K. recognized the Gemeinde as a real and necessary aspect of the Christian life. And indeed, it may he that some of the tragedy of S.K.’s melancholy life came about through the fact that he was a convinced sectary who never found a Gemeinde.
But whether consciously or not, S.K. was here constructing one of his characteristic dialectics–perhaps the most fundamental of them all. Den Enkelte is a good and necessary concept–but not apart from the Gemeinde. The Gemeinde is a good and necessary concept–but not apart from den Enkelte. Den Enkelte, apart from the Gemeinde, contracts a sickness in his God-relationship, becomes melancholy and/or vain. The Gemeinde, if it loses sight of den Enkelte, also loses its Gemeinschaft and degenerates into a crowd. Although he failed to emphasize it as he might have, S.K.’s most basic premise was not “den Enkelte before God” but actually “Enkelter in Gemeinschaft before God.”
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 sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies (Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, 1887) is usually credited with having formulated the classic typology of human sociality. He developed his theory at much greater length and applied it much more broadly, but S.K. preceded him in point of time; and a strong case could be made that, aided by his concept of den Enkelte, S.K. drew the distinction even more fundamentally and more seminally than did Tönnies.
2. “The Accounting” (1849) in Point of View, 149 (with the foot-note accompanying).
3. The essay appears in the same volume with his long poem; Michael Frantz, op.cit., 35-46.
4. At this point I have transposed some of Frantz’s material to give it a more logical progression–V.E.
5. For two complementary accounts, see Brumbaugh, op.cit., 520-23, and Mallott, op.cit., 76-77. Cf. Catharine Hummer’s letter to Mack Junior in Holsinger, op.cit., 779ff.
6. A minute dated May 28, 1763, recorded in Kurtz, op.cit., 135-37.
9. “Regarding the ‘Two Notes,’” a postscript dated March 1855, only a few months preceding his death, in Point of View, 137-38.
10. “Lifted Up On High …” (Pt. III, Reflection 5) in Training in Christianity, 217.
11. Dru Journals, 163 (1837); cf. 85 (1836) and 192 (1838).
12. Works of Love, 153-54.
13. The pages that follow include several rather lengthy passages from S.K.’s journals. They are reproduced in toto (or at least, at length), first, because they are crucial statements of a little recognized aspect of S.K.’s thought, and second, because they are not elsewhere available in English translation.
14. The Present Age, 61-63.
15. Papirer, 10:5:B:208, 392 (1849), quoted by the translators in a footnote in Works of Love, 362.
16. Papirer, 10:2:A:390 (1850) [my trans.–V.E.].
17. Papirer, 10:2:A:478 (1850) [my trans.–V.E.].
18. Here as always, the bracketed material is mine; all else (including the parentheses) is S.K.’s–V.E.
19. Papirer, 9:A:315-16 (1848) [my trans.–V.E.].