As we have seen here (in my posts and the comments), one can make K. into almost anything.\u00a0 He wrote much and sometimes seemed to contradict himself.\u00a0 His goal was not so much to produce a system (in fact that was no goal at all!) but to make people think\u2013to shake them out of complacency both about their own lives and about Christianity.<\/p>\n
My own reading of K. has led me to believe he was what I consider an evangelical\u2013a person of passionate faith in Jesus Christ\u2013even if not a typical one by contemporary North American standards.\u00a0 (This reminds me of the old story, possibly apocryphal, that a leading American fundamentalist traveled to England to have a conversation with C. S. Lewis.\u00a0 Upon returning he said that he concluded Lewis was a Christian even though he smoked a pipe and drank sherry.)<\/p>\n
What made K. an evangelical?\u00a0 His absolute determination to find and live authentically according to the gospel of Jesus Christ.\u00a0 Now, for those who define \u201cevangelical\u201d in terms of doctrinal orthodoxy, K. never (to the best of my knowledge) denied any tenet of orthodox Christianity.\u00a0 He did try to show that they are beyond comprehension and are paradoxes\u2013as a sign of God\u2019s transcendence and humans\u2019 sinfulness.\u00a0 He perhaps over reacted to the dead orthodoxy and rationalistic religious philosophies (especially Hegel\u2019s) of his day.\u00a0 But that doesn\u2019t make him non-evangelical in my opinion.<\/p>\n
One of the books that has helped me understand K. as an evangelical is Kierkegaard as Theologian: The Dialectic of Christian Existence by Louis Dupre (1963).\u00a0 Admittedly it\u2019s an older book, but that doesn\u2019t disqualify it from having something valuable to say about someone who lived a century earlier.\u00a0 It is also written by a Catholic scholar and published by a Catholic publisher (Sheed & Ward).\u00a0 So what?\u00a0 I\u2019m not into judging a book by its author (necessarily or categorically) or its publisher.<\/p>\n
Dupre\u2019s treatment of K. is very sympathetic while at the same time critical.\u00a0 He treats K. as a theologian more than as a philosopher while admitting that K. didn\u2019t fit the typical profile of a theologian (viz., producer of tomes of systematic theology or even monographs on doctrines).\u00a0 Most of his criticisms come at the end of the book and are what you would expect from a Catholic\u2013K. was too Protestant.\u00a0 (Dupre does an excellent job of debunking the occasional claims that K. was a closet Catholic and would have joined the RCC if he had lived longer.)<\/p>\n
One thing Dupre tackles is the old canard that K. was a complete irrationalist.\u00a0 He demonstrates from K.\u2019s own statements that he did not disdain every use of reason in theology.\u00a0 Dupre admits (of course) that for K. coming to faith in Jesus Christ cannot be a smooth process of reasoning as if authentic faith would arrive at the end of a syllogism.\u00a0 And the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob cannot be proven to exist by philosophy.\u00a0 Yes, true faith requires a \u201cleap\u201d by which he meant a choice.\u00a0 So what? Luther said the same in various ways.\u00a0 What K. added to Luther was the corrective that the choice of faith cannot be made FOR another (e.g., a child).\u00a0 (K. ended up arguing that infant baptism is a mistake.)<\/p>\n
But K. was not an irrationalist about Christianity.\u00a0 True, like Tertullian, he sometimes referred to what Christians believe (e.g., the incarnation) as absurd, but he MEANT by secular standards of rationality.\u00a0 He obvious did not think that believing Christianly requires a sacrifice of the intellect UNLESS \u201cintellect\u201d MEANS Hegelian-type dialectical reasoning (arriving at a smooth synthesis through sublation of the tension between opposites).<\/p>\n
Dupre does an excellent job of showing, from K. himself, that K. actually valued reflection in faith.\u00a0 Reflection won\u2019t get you TO faith, but once faith is found, reflection has value.\u00a0 On faith and reason Dupre says rightly \u201cHis [K.\u2019s] entire work should be regarded as an effort, by means of a more profound meditation on the experience of modern man, to rediscover the commensurability of faith with reflective thought.\u201d (142)<\/p>\n
What about the charge that K. was against the church?\u00a0 That he reveled in individualism and rejected the communal dimension of Christianity?\u00a0 Again, Dupre debunks this.\u00a0 For example, K. wrote that \u201cThe individual is first related to God and only secondarily to the community: the first relation is the highest, although he must not despise the second.\u201d (192)\u00a0 His objection was to the common notion that faith can somehow be handed down within the church (e.g., Bushnell\u2019s \u201cChristian nurture\u201d).\u00a0 What is this other than another way of saying that \u201cGod has no grandchildren\u201d\u2013an old evangelical axiom?<\/p>\n
K. wrote much about the church and most of it was negative.\u00a0 That was not because he disdained church but because the only church he knew (in his context) was the Danish Lutheran (state) Church.\u00a0 When he outlined his vision for church he said it should be a \u201csmall group of outlaws\u201d (Dupre\u2019s paraphrase of K. on this point) banded together for resistance to the world.\u00a0 (H. Richard Niebuhr uses K. as an example of his \u201cChrist and culture in tension\u201d model of Christ and culture.\u00a0 If Dupre is right, as I think he is, K. was rather a Christ against culture Christian.)\u00a0 But the point is that K. did NOT reject church in favor of a totally atomistic understanding of Christianity.\u00a0 What he rejected was Christendom\u2013the church as synthesized with society such that belonging to the society made one a Christian and vice versa.<\/p>\n
K.\u2019s pietism appears not in a mystical approach to faith as union with God but in his strong emphasis on the personal relationship with God.\u00a0 But for him, this personal relationship with God is NOT one of smooth acceptance because of one\u2019s goodness or worthiness.\u00a0 Rather, it begins AND REMAINS a consciousness of sin before God.\u00a0 K. wrote: \u201cIf you are not conscious of your sinfulness to the extent that, in the most terrible anxiety of conscience, you dare not act otherwise than to cleave to Christ, you will never be a Christian.\u00a0 Only the torture of the consciousness of sin could account for a man\u2019s subjecting himself to this radical cure.\u00a0 To become a Christian is, among all, all, the most terrible operation.\u00a0 No more than a man who feels slightly indisposed would ever get the idea of subjecting himself to the most painful operation, would it ever enter one\u2019s head to concern himself with Christianity, if sin did not infinitely torture him.\u201d (90)\u00a0 Yet, that was not the final word; K. always went on (eventually) to pronounce grace and forgiveness for those who are tortured by their sinfulness and cleave to Christ with faith: \u201c\u2018Thy sins are forgiven thee\u2019 (Luke 7, 49), that is the cry of encouragement of the Christians to one another; with this cry Christianity spreads all over the world, by these words it is recognized as a race apart, a separate nation.\u201d (95)<\/p>\n
I suspect that one reason especially Reformed evangelicals are uncomfortable with K. and wish to turn people away from him is that he was no Calvinist.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t even agree with Luther about the bondage of the will.\u00a0 I wouldn\u2019t call him an Arminian, but that\u2019s only because he was Lutheran.\u00a0 (There\u2019s something odd and unfitting about calling a Lutheran an Arminian as Arminianism is part of the Reformed tradition\u2013historically and sociologically speaking.)\u00a0 Dupre spends pages proving that K. believed grace can never be compelled and that true, saving faith is always a free choice enabled by grace.\u00a0 But here is a quote from K. on the subject: \u201cFrom every point of view the concept of predestination may be considered as an abortion, for having unquestionably arisen in order to relate freedom and God\u2019s omnipotence, it solves teh riddle by denying one of the concepts and consequently explains nothing.\u201d (107-108)\u00a0 K. called Luther\u2019s and Calvin\u2019s ideas of grace \u201cfatalistic\u201d but WITHOUT embracing Pelagianism or semi-Pelagianism.\u00a0 As Dupre notes, for K. \u201cAll the initiative [in salvation] rests with God.\u201d (109)\u00a0 Without naming it as such, K. clearly believed in prevenient grace as the ground a power of conversion, but he also believed the human person plays a role in his or her conversion.\u00a0 But that role is only to assent to grace; it has nothing to do with merit.<\/p>\n
What about the Bible?\u00a0 One reason some evangelicals have rejected K. is that he supposedly elevated individual experience over Scripture.\u00a0 That\u2019s simply false.\u00a0 It\u2019s a misinterpretation of K.\u2019s attitude toward the Bible.\u00a0 For him the Bible IS authoritative FOR THE CHRISTIAN, but faith is not founded on the Bible but the Bible\u2019s authority is founded on faith.\u00a0 K\u2019s view is nothing other than Calvin\u2019s view of the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit.\u00a0 A person without faith will never recognize the Bible as God\u2019s Word and a person with faith always will.\u00a0 But \u201cproof\u201d is not possible in spiritual matters.<\/p>\n
I think K. was thinking along the same lines I have mentioned as Scot McKnight\u2019s and mine (and, of course, many others\u2019).\u00a0 I do not believe in God and Jesus Christ because I FIRST (in order of priority) believe in the Bible as if the Bible had some intrinsic authority over and above God and Jesus Christ.\u00a0 I accept the Bible as God\u2019s Word because (as Luther said) it is the \u201ccradle that carries Christ.\u201d\u00a0 In and through the Bible\u2019s words I am encountered by Jesus and brought into relationship with him, but the Bible\u2019s inspiration and authority are not self-evidence or based on historical proofs.\u00a0 They are based on my and the church\u2019s relationship with God revealed in Jesus Christ and the gospel.\u00a0 K.\u2019s view (and mine and McKnights and Luther\u2019s!) relativizes the Bible IN COMPARISON with Jesus Christ; Christianity is Christ and faith in him (what K. called \u201ccleaving to Christ\u201d) and is a matter of passionate inwardness (subjectivity) and not of objective reasoning including some kind of presuppositionalist apologetics.\u00a0 But K. never denied the inspiration of Scripture or its authority for Christian doctrine.\u00a0 What he did, however, was make the typical Pietist move of subordinating doctrine to Jesus Christ and having a personal relationship with him.\u00a0 The essence of faith is not belief in the Bible or doctrine but (in Dupre\u2019s words paraphrasing K.) \u201ca Person to Whom I entrust myself without reserve.\u201d (137)<\/p>\n
In conclusion, when I read K., I hear loud echoes of the evangelical faith of my childhood and youth and early education among the German Pietist Baptists.\u00a0 All the evangelical critiques of K. sound to me like rationalism and dogmatism (what Brunner called \u201ctheologismus\u201d\u2013faith in doctrines and theology).\u00a0 Yes, K. was a kind of fideist; so what?\u00a0 One can certainly argue against that, but one cannot argue that fideism is foreign to evangelical faith.\u00a0 Luther was a fideist as was Calvin!\u00a0 (Anyone who doubts that about Calvin needs to go back and read (or re-read) the first chapters of the Institutes where Calvin absolutely dismisses every form of natural theology and calls the mind of the unconverted person a \u201cfactory of idols\u201d and bases everything on the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit.\u00a0 Somehow or other, \u201cmainstream\u201d evangelicals have become enamored with rational apologetics\u00a0 often to the detriment of true faith.\u00a0 The \u201cFour Spiritual Laws\u201d booklet contained the illustration of a train with the engine being \u201cfacts\u201d and \u201cfaith\u201d the coal car and \u201cfeelings\u201d the caboose!<\/p>\n
Why am I passionate about this matter of K.\u2019s reputation?\u00a0 Because I think it illustrates a deep problem in modern evangelicalism\u2019s DNA.\u00a0 Too many evangelicals simply accept the word of their favorite Christian speaker or writer, be it Francis Schaeffer or John MacArthur, and don\u2019t exercise the least bit of skepticism when they bash someone like K.\u00a0 And they do.\u00a0 As I have pointed out here before, a pathos of modern evangelicalism is that it rewards those in its ranks who are the first to point out heresy where nobody has yet recognized it which then results in continuous heresy hunting even among themselves!\u00a0 Finger pointing and half-baked (or completely raw) accusations of heresy are the norm among conservative evangelicals.\u00a0 Their treatment of K. is a good example.\u00a0 We need to speak out against this habit of the evangelical mind and my little contribution is to assert that K. was NOT what Schaeffer and MacArthur said (along with many other evangelicals) and even where they were right about K., those characteristics have always been part of the evangelical movement and do not make one non-evangelical.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As we have seen here (in my posts and the comments), one can make K. into almost anything.\u00a0 He wrote much and sometimes seemed to contradict himself.\u00a0 His goal was not so much to produce a system (in fact that was no goal at all!) but to make people think\u2013to shake them out of complacency […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n