This is the final paper I wrote for my History of Western Philosophy Class. The prompt was to choose a philosopher we studied this year and an area of their work and then write about it. I chose Soren Kierkegaard and Christianity. I'm sure that the essay I wrote doesn't do the man justice, nor does it point out the parts of him that absolutely blow my mind.
Introduction
Soren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher and theologian. During his short life of forty-two years, Kierkegaard wrote dozens of books on a variety of topics ranging from critiques of Christianity to personal thoughts and feelings. More often than not, he would publish these many volumes under pseudonyms as he felt he was not worthy to place his work on an absolute scale with that of God’s. By the time of his death in 1855, Kierkegaard had dedicated countless hours to studying, to writing, and to living a life dedicated to the God of Christianity. His thoughts and feelings on God and Christianity are manifest in his work. Soren Kierkegaard sought a personal and submissive relationship to God outside of dogmatic religious institutions.
Critique of Religious Institutions
Kierkegaard lays out his thoughts on the establishment of religious order in his Training in Christianity, which he considered to be his most important work. Early on in the work, Kierkegaard purports that the Christian faith should be open and welcoming to persons of all faith. What he seeks is quite simple. He writes, “Oh Lord Jesus Christ, would that we also might be contemporary with Thee, see Thee in Thy true form and in the actual environment in which Thou didst walk here on earth.”[1] Contemporariness is not something that Kierkegaard speaks at long lengths on. Yet, it is fundamental for his faith. He seeks to see Jesus Christ as he was when he walked on earth. For Kierkegaard, the works and actions of Jesus Christ have become skewed over time. He goes to great lengths to explain how the eighteen hundred years between the time of Christ and the time of his writing do not matter much whatsoever.
Kierkegaard has much distaste for the Christian establishment. In his mind, both Protestant and Catholics alike have taken great liberties with the Christian faith that Jesus and his disciples laid down eighteen hundred years ago. He continues, “Thou didst walk here on earth; not in the form in which an empty and meaningless tradition, has deformed Thee; for it is not possible in the form of abasement the believer sees Thee…”[2] His critiques of religious institutions have an oddly familiar ring to them. In many respects, his thoughts correlate well to the critiques that Martin Luther levied against the Catholic Church in his 95 Theses. Amongst Luther’s complaints were against the practices of simony and the selling of indulgences. Both practices are not from the preaching of Jesus Christ, but rather, from the human beings who have taken over the Church and skewed the faith. A part of Kierkegaard’s ideological thought is to move Christianity back to where it should have been. He writes, “Christendom has done away with Christianity, without being quite aware of it. The consequence is that, if anything is to be done, one must try again to introduce Christianity into Christendom.”[3] A part of Kierkegaard’s critique of what has happened to Christendom is an indirect attack on G.W.F. Hegel’s philosophy of history. According to Hegel, humanity would move towards a more perfect unity with a supreme purpose and end. Religion would play its part in the movement towards the ultimate end. For Kierkegaard, this is an abominable thought. It is one that allows human beings to potentially alter the teachings of Christ. It forces one to move away from the contemporariness that is vital for true Christianity.
The Changelessness of God
Kierkegaard develops his construct for what Christianity should be based on a contemporariness with Christ and his apostles. It is founded upon Jesus’ teachings that are found in Holy Scripture—the Bible. One of Kierkegaard’s final publications before his death in 1855 was an essay on The Changelessness of God. He begins by rooting everything that he argues in actual Biblical text. It is an essay based on James 1:17-21, which purports that “every good and perfect gift” comes from God “with whom there is no change or shadow of variation.” Kierkegaard takes the issue of God’s changelessness head on. In many ways his argument, constructed at the end of his life, in many ways relates to his thoughts about contemporariness. He writes, “God is changeless. Omnipotent, he created this visible world—and made himself invisible. He put on the visible world as a garment; he changes it as one changes a garment—himself unchanged.”[4] God is constant and unchanging—this brings up many important points for how we, as human beings, are to interact with him and the idea of him. A part of the recognition that God is infinitely unchangeable is the counterpart of human beings being infinitely changeable. Human thought fluctuates from day to day in accordance with its experiences in the world. Humanity evolves and changes itself regularly, but God does not change with it—only one’s perception of God changes. Kierkegaard explains this beautifully when he writes,
Now change takes place around us and the shadow of variation slides changingly over us; now the changing light from the surrounding world falls upon us, while we ourselves in all this are in turn changed within ourselves. But God is changeless.[5]
From this image of changelessness, Kierkegaard derives a simplified model for how a Christian man or woman is to act.
For Soren Kierkegaard, this infinite changeless and omnipotent power of God is something that brings about “fear and trembling”, and rightfully so. For many it is hard, even impossible, to imagine that there exists a being whose might and power rival and surpass that of our own volition. A part of the ominous power of God is an undying plan for human beings, that they might have a subjective experience within God’s objective glory. Kierkegaard writes, “If then your will is not in accord with his, consider this: you will never escape him. Thank him if he through gentleness or severity teaches you to bring your will into accord with his.”[6] That is to be the goal of the contemporary Christian—to align one’s will in accordance with that of God. It is a fallacy to believe that one might control God—that he would give every person everything that they desire as if they have a view of the grand scheme of their lives, let alone humanity as a whole. The message is loud and it is clear. Once again it alludes to many teachings found in Biblical text, particularly 1 Peter 5, which discusses submitting oneself to God with all humility and meekness that are do. The power of God is to be feared and revered. Often a mistake made by the changeful human beings is to expect God, the changeless, to operate on their short time table. The hundreds of years of human existence might be but seconds for an eternal God in the same way that all the riches of this world might be but pennies for him. One might ask God for his two cents, but they shouldn’t be surprised to find that it takes Him a couple seconds.
The Full Power of God
Soren Kierkegaard’s best known and most read work is undoubtedly Fear and Trembling. In it Kierkegaard provides further account of the awesome power of God over humanity. This book has been cited by many existentialists, including Jean-Paul Sartre , as being infinitely influential—though Kierkegaard would never be characterized as an existentialist. Once again, he pulls the derivation for his thoughts from Biblical scripture; this time from the Old Testament story of Abraham and Isaac. The Jewish ethical law that supposedly perpetuates at the time of Abraham boldly states that murder is prohibited in all cases. Yet in this story, God has asked Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. With odd argumentation, Kierkegaard writes,
It is an ordeal, a temptation. A temptation—but what does that mean? As a rule, what tempts a person is something that will hold him back from doing his duty, but here the temptation is the ethical itself, which would hold him back from doing God’s will. But what is duty? Duty is simply doing God’s will.[7]
From Kierkegaard’s perspective, Abraham’s predicament is paradoxical. The universal law is that one should not kill. Therefore in accordance with one’s duty to ethical law, he could not kill his own son. Yet, by being tempted to escape from following God’s will in sacrificing Isaac, Abraham is forced to choose between following universal ethical law that comes from God or following God’s will itself.
Kierkegaard explains how this story could possibly work without God being put on trial for planning to commit murder. He dubs the action a “teleological suspension of the ethical”. He writes, “As the single individual he became higher than the universal. This is the paradox, which cannot be mediated. How he entered into it is just as inexplicable as how he remains in it.”[8] By human understanding and practice of ethical laws, the actions taken by Abraham were out of order and inexplicable. This is a supreme example of how God, in all of his vast power, is not constrained to follow human law. He can remove ethical law as he chooses and if he chooses. He can do this, because it is fully within the capacity of his unchangeable plan. Yet these are not grounds to commit murder and then shirk guilt by claiming that God said he would teleologically suspend the ethical.
Summation
The thoughts of Soren Kierkegaard concerning Christianity and his thoughts about the divine are scattered throughout his many works. Firstly, he believed that the teachings of Jesus Christ should be kept in their contemporary state, without alterations and evolution of history. Secondly, God is infinitely changeless and humans are infinitely changeable. Thirdly, human beings should align their will in accordance with that of God, within the realm of subjective experience. Fourthly, the power of God is far and away greater than any human being. Therefore, God is not restricted to the same laws that he gave to govern humanity. Encompassing all of these thoughts is the motivation and goal of moving truly pure Christianity back into Christendom.
[1] Kierkegaard, Soren. Training in Christianity (
[2] Ibid. 5
[3] Ibid. 31
[4] Kierkegaard, Soren. The Changlessness of God (The Essential Kierkegaard); (
[5] Ibid. 485
[6] Ibid. 488
[7] Kierkegaard, Soren. Fear and Trembling (The Essential Kierkegaard); (
[8] Ibid. 101
