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Religion A / Religion B
A Kierkegaard Study
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
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This article is concerned with the relation of ‘religion A’ to ‘religion B’ in the thought of Søren Kierkegaard. The point of departure for my study is a disagreement with the views of Walter Lowrie, one of the most prolific translators of SK into English and the author of the extensive and competent biography, Kierkegaard (Princeton, 1938). Lowrie's main discussion of the question at hand occurs in his introduction to the Postscript. If my alternative thesis has any merit, it is indeed unfortunate that English readers are confronted with Lowrie's understanding of the matter before they have had a chance to form a judgment of their own.
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References
page 245 note 1 Concluding Unscientific Postscript (Princeton, 1944).Google Scholar
page 246 note 1 ibid.., p. xviii.
page 246 note 2 ibid.., p. xviiif.
page 246 note 3 ibid.., p. xix.
page 246 note 4 ibid.., p. xx.
page 246 note 5 ibid.., p. xix.
page 247 note 1 ibid.., p. 292f.
page 247 note 2 ibid.., p. 112.
page 247 note 3 ibid.., p. 296.
page 247 note 4 ibid.., p. 100.
page 248 note 1 Jolivet, Regis, Introduction to Kierkegaard (New York, 1946), p. 114.Google Scholar
page 248 note 2 The Concept of Dread (Princeton, 1957), pp. 76, 78Google Scholar; Postscript, p. 262.
page 248 note 3 Postscript, p. 19f.
page 248 note 4 As far as I can determine, this presupposition results from SK's Platonism, which sees man as a synthesis of finite and infinite, of temporal and eternal. Cf. the opening pages of The Sickness Unto Death (Princeton, 1946)Google Scholar where he discusses the relation of the Self to the Eternal Self; pp. 17ff. Cf. also Postscript, pp. 54, 267ff.
page 249 note 1 Postscript, p. 506.
page 249 note 2 ‘My whole being is changed’: 9th April 1848; The Journals of Sören Kierkegaard (London, 1938), Dru, Alexander, ed., p. 235.Google Scholar Hereafter cited as ‘Dru’.
page 249 note 3 op. cit., pp. 408–49.
page 249 note 4 Sickness, p. ix; ‘Introduction by the Translator’.
page 249 note 5 ibid..
page 249 note 6 ibid.., p. 21.
page 249 note 7 ibid.., p. 185.
page 249 note 8 ibid.., p. 209f.
page 249 note 9 ibid.., p. xviiif.
page 249 note 10 cf. ibid..,‘Preface’ and ‘Introduction’.
page 249 note 11 Postscript, p. 19.
page 250 note 1 ibid.., p. 498.
page 250 note 2 ibid.., p. 220f. This kind of Platonism is likewise the basis upon which many of SK's early psychological studies are dependent.
page 251 note 1 ibid.., pp. 276ff.
page 251 note 2 ibid.., p. 348.
page 251 note 3 ibid.., p. 350.
page 251 note 4 ibid.., p. 367.
page 251 note 5 ibid.., p. 386.
page 251 note 6 ibid.., p. 369.
page 252 note 1 ibid.., p. 387.
page 252 note 2 ibid.., p. 389.
page 252 note 3 ibid.., note.
page 252 note 5 ibid.., p. 405.
page 252 note 6 ibid.., p. 412.
page 253 note 1 ibid.., p. 413.
page 253 note 2 ibid.., p. 469.
page 253 note 3 ibid.., p. 471.
page 253 note 4 ibid.., p. 473.
page 253 note 5 ibid.., p. 473f.
page 254 note 1 ibid.., p. 476f.
page 254 note 2 ibid.., p. 477.
page 254 note 3 ibid.., p. 478f.
page 254 note 4 ibid.., p. 494.
page 254 note 5 ibid.., p. 495.
page 254 note 6 ibid..
page 254 note 7 ibid.., p. 496.
page 254 note 8 ibid.., p. 497.
page 254 note 9 ibid..
page 254 note 10 ibid.., p. 498.
page 255 note 1 ibid.., p. 494.
page 255 note 2 ibid..
page 255 note 3 ibid.., p. 496.
page 255 note 4 ibid.., p. 497.
page 255 note 5 ibid..
page 255 note 6 ibid.., p. 498. Cf. my previous discussion of ‘edification’ within religion A, above.
page 255 note 7 Postscript, p. 498. Mackintosh, H. R., Types of Modern Theology (London, 1947)Google Scholar, objects that SK ‘errs … in selecting the two-nature doctrine of Christ's Person as the supreme example of paradox’ (p. 250); Mackintosh would rather say with Denny: ‘The presence and work of Jesus in the world, even the work of bearing sin, does not prompt us to define human and Divine by contrast with each other: there is no suggestion of incongruity between them’ (p. 248). I suggest this comment may indicate why SK's theology did not have an impact in Europe until this century and in the English speaking world until very recently. To an age that saw no reason to doubt its firm belief in the presence of the Divine within human nature, SK's paradox seemed a fabrication. Why should not God appear in time in a particular man, Jesus Christ—He was in every other man as well? That this immanent God of nineteenth-century ‘religion A’ is not the God of the Old and New Testaments did not become apparent until the combination of external world events and a resurgence of biblical theology again brought men to their knees before a transcendent God, the God of Luther and SK, as well as the God of the Bible.
page 256 note 1 Postscript, p. 506.
page 256 note 2 ibid..
page 256 note 3 cf. my previous discussion of the leap as SK's category of transition, above.
page 256 note 4 Postscript, p. xviif.
page 256 note 5 ibid.., p. 507.
page 256 note 6 ibid..
page 256 note 7 ibid.., p. 507f.
page 257 note 1 ibid.., pp. 508–15. Cf. particularly SK's initial statement of the problem on the title page of Philosophical Fragments (Princeton, 1957).
page 257 note 2 Postscript, pp. 512f, 188.
page 257 note 3 ibid.., p. 508.
page 257 note 4 ibid.., p. 510.
page 257 note 5 ibid.., p. 186. This is the ‘Error’ of the Fragments, p. 10. Although SK suggests in the Postscript, pp. 186, 517, that Sin is the result of coming into being, he insists in the Fragments, p. 10f, that it is due to the individual himself, ‘in consequence of his own act’.
page 257 note 6 Postscript, p. 517. Cf. also Sickness, p. 153: ‘No man by himself … can explain what sin is, precisely because he is in sin. … There must be a revelation from God in order to instruct man what sin is.’
page 258 note 1 cf. above.
page 258 note 2 Postscript, p. 517.
page 258 note 3 ibid..
page 258 note 4 ibid.., p. xix. The dictionary definition of ‘humane’ suggests the determination of existence by that which is creditable to man, or self-determination. This, I submit, is in sharp contrast to the determination of existence by God.
page 258 note 5 ibid.., p. 517.
page 259 note 1 ibid.., p. 494.
page 259 note 2 ibid.., pp. 494–8.
page 259 note 3 ibid.., p. 497.
page 259 note 4 The same kind of discussion occurs in Sickness, p. 99, where the most ‘intense despair’ is called the ‘possibility of salvation’.
page 259 note 6 Postscript, p. 19.
page 259 note 7 ibid.., p. 37f.
page 260 note 1 The use of capital letters in my text has no significance beyond the fact that SK uses them in the Fragments and thus I employ them for the sake of uniformity.
page 260 note 2 Fragments, p. 6.
page 260 note 3 ibid.., p. 8. I need hardly note here that SK uses these exact words in denning religion A in the Postscript, p. 506. Cf. above.
page 260 note 4 SK never uses the word ‘Christian’ or the phrase ‘religion B’ in the Fragments, but there is no question that it is Christianity which he is here contrasting to Socrates' teachings.
page 260 note 5 Fragments, p. 6.
page 260 note 6 ibid.., p. 9.
page 261 note 1 Fragments, p. 9f.
page 261 note 2 ibid.., pp. 41, 53. It sometimes appears that faith is ‘the condition’ (ibid.., p. 47), but the opposition ‘sin/faith’—vis-d-vis sin/virtue—(Sickness, p. 129f) indicates further that consciousness of sin is a prior category. On the basis of this evidence I treat the consciousness of sin as prior, although not necessarily in a chronological sense, for both consciousness of sin and faith are given in the Moment.
page 261 note 3 Dru, p. 131.
page 261 note 4 Training in Christianity (Princeton, 1957), p. 71.Google Scholar
page 261 note 5 ibid.., p. 153; Postscript, p. 517.
page 261 note 6 Fragments, pp. 9f, 53.
page 261 note 7 Karl Barth and Emil Brunner, Natural Theology (London, 1946), p. 120. Of course Barth is attacking Brunner here. Barth confesses that: ‘around 1920, and perhaps even later, I might still have succumbed to … [this] tempting and dangerous [idea] … of a peculiar aptitude of man for divine revelation’ (ibid.., p. 114f).
page 262 note 1 Fear and Trembling (London, 1939), p. 68.Google Scholar
page 262 note 2 ibid.., p. 71.
page 262 note 3 ibid.., p. 96.
page 262 note 4 The Concept of Dread, p. 143.
page 262 note 5 ibid.., p. 82.
page 262 note 6 For Self-Examination (Minneapolis, 1958), p. 89.Google Scholar
page 262 note 7 Sickness, p. 20.
page 262 note 8 Training in Christianity, p. 126. The reference here to the ‘mirror’ of man in Christ is a consequence of SK's incarnational theology, which certainly has Abelardian overtones. A subjective view of the Atonement is hardly surprising for one to whom ‘subjectivity is all that really matters’.
page 262 note 9 Dru, p. 264.
page 263 note 1 Postscript, p. 474.
page 263 note 2 ibid.., p. 184.
page 263 note 3 ibid.., p. 188. Although we need not go into this aspect of the problem here, SK is insistent that there was neither any divinity immediately recognisable for Jesus' contemporaries, nor any proof of it for us in the biblical narratives. He emphasises this point both in the Fragments and the Postscript to ensure that relation to Christ is an inward appropriation. Yet, interestingly enough, SK does not hesitate to refer to the human characteristics of the historical Jesus (Fragments, pp. 24ff) even though the form which he assumed neither heightens nor lessens the absurdity.
page 263 note 4 Postscript, p. 182.
page 264 note 1 cf. DeWolf, L. H., The Case for Theology in Liberal Perspective (Philadelphia, 1959), Chapters 1 and 2.Google Scholar
page 264 note 2 Postscript, p. 189.
page 264 note 3 ibid.., p. 500.
page 264 note 4 ibid.., p. 503.
page 264 note 5 ibid.., p. 501.
page 264 note 6 ibid.., p. 504.
page 264 note 7 Training in Christianity, p. 85.
page 264 note 8 Postscript, p. 495.
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