Kierkegaard, Pietism and Holiness (Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies) 9781409411567, 9781409411574, 1409411567

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Kierkegaard, Pietism and Holiness Søren Kierkegaard wrote that Pietism is ‘the one and only consequence of Christianity’. Praise of this sort – particularly when coupled with Kierkegaard’s significant personal connections to the movement in Christian spirituality known as Pietism – would seem to demand thorough investigation. And yet, Kierkegaard’s relation to Pietism has been largely neglected in the secondary literature. Kierkegaard, Pietism and Holiness fills this scholarly gap and, in doing so, provides the first full-length study of Kierkegaard’s relation to the Pietist movement. First accounting for Pietism’s role in Kierkegaard’s social, ecclesial and intellectual background, Barnett goes on to demonstrate Pietism’s impact on Kierkegaard’s published authorship, principally regarding the relationship between Christian holiness and secular culture. This book not only establishes Pietism as a formative influence on Kierkegaard’s life and thinking, but also sheds fresh light on crucial Kierkegaardian concepts, from the importance of ‘upbuilding’ to the imitation of Christ.

ASHGATE NEW CRITICAL THINKING IN RELIGION, THEOLOGY AND BIBLICAL STUDIES The Ashgate New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies series brings high quality research monograph publishing back into focus for authors, international libraries, and student, academic and research readers. Headed by an international editorial advisory board of acclaimed scholars spanning the breadth of religious studies, theology and biblical studies, this openended monograph series presents cutting-edge research from both established and new authors in the field. With specialist focus yet clear contextual presentation of contemporary research, books in the series take research into important new directions and open the field to new critical debate within the discipline, in areas of related study, and in key areas for contemporary society. Other Recently Published Titles in the Series: Creativity, Spirituality, and Mental Health Exploring Connections Kelley Raab Mayo Trusting Others, Trusting God Concepts of Belief, Faith and Rationality Sheela Pawar What’s Right with the Trinity? Conversations in Feminist Theology Hannah Bacon Spirit and Sonship Colin Gunton’s Theology of Particularity and the Holy Spirit David A. Höhne Dalit Theology and Dalit Liberation Problems, Paradigms and Possibilities Peniel Rajkumar Beyond Evangelicalism The Theological Methodology of Stanley J. Grenz Steven Knowles Concepts of Power in Kierkegaard and Nietzsche J. Keith Hyde

Kierkegaard, Pietism and Holiness

Christopher B. Barnett Berry College, Georgia, USA

© Christopher B. Barnett 2011 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Christopher B. Barnett has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company Wey Court East Suite 420 Union Road 101 Cherry Street Farnham Burlington Surrey, GU9 7PT VT 05401-4405 England USA www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Barnett, Christopher B. (Christopher Baldwin), 1976 Kierkegaard, pietism and holiness. -- (Ashgate new critical thinking in religion, theology and biblical studies) 1. Kierkegaard, Søren, 1813-1855. 2. Pietism. 3. Christianity--Philosophy. I. Title II. Series 230'.092-dc22 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Barnett, Christopher B. (Christopher Baldwin), 1976 Kierkegaard, pietism, and holiness / Christopher B. Barnett. p. cm. -- (New critical thinking in religion, theology, and biblical studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4094-1156-7 (hardcover) -- ISBN 978-1-4094-1157-4 (ebook) 1. Kierkegaard, Søren, 1813-1855. 2. Pietism. I. Title. B4378.C5B37 2010 273'.7--dc22  2010031155 ISBN 9781409411567 (hbk) ISBN 9781409411574 (ebk) V

In honour of my mother, Mrs Connie L. Barnett In memory of my father, Dr Donald O. Barnett And all my sowre-sweet dayes I will lament, and love. George Herbert

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Contents

List of Abbreviations to Kierkegaard’s Works   Preface  

ix xi

Part I: Kierkegaard and Pietism 1

The Origin and Development of Pietism: A Selective History  

2

Pietism in the Danish Context: From Its Beginning to the Family Kierkegaard  

35

3

Kierkegaard’s Reading of Pietist Literature:An Investigation of Themes Christian and Socratic  

63

3

Part II: Holiness in ‘the Present Age’ 4

‘Misunderstanding the Meaning of Venturing Everything’: Kierkegaard’s Analysis of Monastic and Pietist Separatism  

111

5

Kierkegaard, ‘The Present Age’ and the Call for Suffering Servants  

141

6

Should One Suffer Death for the Truth?:Kierkegaard’s Development of Imitatio Christi  

169

Conclusion Kierkegaard, Pietism and Issues in Theology: Some Anticipatory Remarks  

201

Bibliography   Index  

213 227

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List of Abbreviations to Kierkegaard’s Works

In Danish ASKB SKS SV1

Auktionsprotokol over Søren Kierkegaard’s Bogsamling (1967) Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter (1997–) Samlede Værker, 1st edn (1901–06)

In English BA CA CD CI COR CUP EO1 / EO2 EUD FSE / JFY JP LD LR M PC PF / JC PV SLW SUD TA 

The Book on Adler (1995) The Concept of Anxiety (1980) Christian Discourses / The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress (1997) The Concept of Irony (1989) The Corsair Affair (1982) Concluding Unscientific Postscript to ‘Philosophical Fragments’ (1992) Either/Or, 2 vols (1987) Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses (1990) For Self-Examination / Judge for Yourself! (1990) Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, vols 1–7 (1967–78) Letters and Documents (1978) A Literary Review (2001) ‘The Moment’ and Late Writings (1998) Practice in Christianity (1991) Philosophical Fragments / Johannes Climacus (1985) The Point of View (1998) Stages on Life’s Way (1988) The Sickness unto Death (1980) Two Ages (1978)

  See the Bibliography for complete details.   Unless otherwise noted, all abbreviations in this list correspond to editions of Kierkegaard’s Writings, edited by Howard and Edna Hong. Again, see the Bibliography for more information. 



TDIO UDVS WA WL

Kierkegaard, Pietism and Holiness

Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions (1993) Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (1993) Without Authority (1997) Works of Love (1995)

Preface

This book was meant to be about Fyodor Dostoevsky. My master’s thesis at St John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, focussed on The Brothers Karamazov in general and on the character of Elder Zosima in particular – the character whom Dostoevsky saw as his ‘answer’ to atheist humanism. I was interested in Dostoevsky’s suggestion, gradually refined since 1864’s Notes from Underground, that modernity’s reductionistic tendencies are best ‘answered’ by a way of life. My intention was to develop that interest into a doctoral thesis, although I did not anticipate it would concern Kierkegaard, rather than his Russian counterpart. My switch to Kierkegaard was unexpected: in 2001, I (quite naïvely) took Practice in Christianity with me on a trip to the west of Ireland, thumbing through it on bus rides to places such as Glencolmcille and Croagh Patrick. I found Kierkegaard’s prose as arresting and unsettling as the surrounding country. Of course, as I have moved forward in my studies, a number of scholars have sustained me through their encouragement and their guidance. George Kalantzis, Ken Vaux, Brent Waters and, above all, D. Stephen Long have supported my scholarly work from the beginning. Likewise, I have profited from the stimulus of my colleagues at Oxford, particularly those ‘members’ of our Friday evening book group – Clark Elliston, Guido de Graaf, Michael Jensen, Faimon Roberts and Matheson Russell, just to name a few. And last – but hardly least – I have benefited from the interest and insight of persons working in Kierkegaard scholarship. Andrew Burgess, Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Amy Laura Hall, Vincent McCarthy, Robert Perkins, Richard Purkarthofer, Hugh Pyper, Joel Rasmussen and Jon Stewart have been particularly helpful. I am most indebted to my Doktorvater, George Pattison. He was not only an invaluable resource and a discerning reader, but also a reliable and thoughtful supervisor. I really cannot thank him enough. These expressions of gratitude could be multiplied, for the researcher does not work in a vacuum – or even in an ivory tower. The following libraries and/ or institutions have been an immense help: the Bodleian Library, the Taylor Institution, the Theology Faculty Library and the Regent’s Park College Library, all in Oxford; the Unitätsarchiv, Herrnhut (with special thanks to its director, Dr Rüdiger Kröger); and the Søren Kierkegaard Forskningscenteret, Copenhagen, where I worked as a ‘guest researcher’ during August 2007. On a more personal level, I also want to thank my family and my friends for supporting me in so many ways. Numerous people could be listed here. However, I would be remiss if I failed to mention my mother, Connie Barnett; my sons, Luke, Caleb and Paul; and my parents-in-law, Jane and Larry Weygand. Above all,

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I would like to acknowledge the encouragement and the dedication of my wife, to whom I can only say: we did it together, Stacy. This study, particularly in its first part, makes use of a number of foreign language titles. Unless otherwise noted, the translations from these works are my responsibility. Quotations from Kierkegaard’s published writings generally have been taken from the current standard English translations of his work – namely, Kierkegaard’s Writings, issued by Princeton University Press under the direction of Howard and Edna Hong. Likewise, most of the quotations from Kierkegaard’s Nachlaß have been taken from Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, the seven-volume edition also arranged by the Hongs. However, I occasionally have elected to provide my own translations of Kierkegaard’s writings, and, where appropriate, I have made a note of that decision. References to Kierkegaard’s published writings are twofold. I have indicated the standard Danish edition, Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter (SKS), in addition to the English translations of Howard and Edna Hong. Where individual volumes have yet to appear in the SKS series, I have referenced the first edition of Samlede Værker. Whatever the case, I have listed the text, the volume number (when apt) and the page number(s). Similarly, as regards Kierkegaard’s journals, I have given the Danish journal or textual unit – typically from SKS, but, if a passage does not appear there, from the older Papirer instead – as well as the volume number and the entry number from the Hong and Hong editions, when available. A register of abbreviations has been provided, and, of course, full documentary information can be accessed in the Bibliography. Finally, before moving on to the book itself, it should be made clear that this study above all concerns Kierkegaard’s relationship with Pietism and how that relationship impacts his authorship, particularly over the question of how persons are to dedicate themselves to God – over the question of ‘holiness’. Thus it neither is nor pretends to be a comprehensive analysis of the various systematic issues raised by its findings. That is not to suggest, however, that such issues are unimportant. On the contrary, it is hoped that the historical and textual work undertaken in this study will serve as a basis for future systematic construction. Christopher B. Barnett

  For example: SKS 7, 41 / CUP1, 34 or SV1 XIII, 516 / PV, 22.   For example: AA:13 / JP 3, 3245 or Pap. XI2 A 98 / JP 2, 1445. A new anglophone series of Kierkegaard’s journals is currently under way, but, as of this writing, it is not yet complete. Hence, for the sake of simplicity, I have elected to use the Hong and Hong editions throughout this study.  

Part I Kierkegaard and Pietism

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Chapter 1

The Origin and Development of Pietism: A Selective History Defining ‘Pietism’ This is the first of three chapters that collectively intend to establish Søren Kierkegaard’s relationship with the Pietist movement. Each of these chapters will comprise a particular, though not exclusive, way of approaching the matter. While this opening chapter aims to provide a general orientation to Pietism, its successors will focus on Pietism in the Danish context and on Kierkegaard’s reading of Pietist literature respectively. At the conclusion of the third chapter, it should be clear that Pietism constituted a key part of Kierkegaard’s historical and literary background, although the question of its impact on the Dane’s authorship will be postponed largely until the second part of this study. Before getting started, however, it must be said that presenting an overview of ‘Pietism’ is, in scholarly terms, a perilous undertaking. A survey of the secondary literature reveals that what one commentator means by ‘Pietism’ may not correspond to another’s use of the term. This disparity has to do with the difficulty of settling on the parameters necessary for a definition of ‘Pietism’. In a recent text, Carter Lindberg illustrates this point by way of a debate between two leading scholars, Johannes Wallmann and Martin Brecht. As a ‘strict constructionist’, Wallmann insists that ‘Pietism’ properly signifies the movement launched by Philipp Jakob Spener (1635–1705) in the late seventeenth century. He stresses that the label ‘Pietist’ did not achieve currency until the 1680s, when it first was applied disapprovingly to Spener and to his followers, yet subsequently taken up by them as denoting one ‘who studies God’s Word / And also leads a holy life according to it’. In light of this fact, Wallmann considers Spener ‘the normative figure for understanding Pietism’. Brecht, meanwhile, takes a far more expansive approach to the issue. For him, it is insufficient to limit ‘Pietism’ to Spener and to his immediate heirs, for such a restriction at once overemphasizes Spener’s novelty and deemphasizes the array of 

  Qtd. in Carter Lindberg, ‘Introduction’, in Carter Lindberg (ed.), The Pietist Theologians (Oxford, 2005), p. 3.    Ibid., p. 2. See also Johannes Wallmann, ‘Johann Arndt und die Protestantische Frömmigkeit: Zur Rezeption der mittelalterlichen Mystik im Luthertum’, in Dieter Breuer (ed.), Frömmigkeit in der Frühen Neuzeit: Studien zur religiösen Literatur des 17. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland (Amsterdam, 1984), pp. 55–7.

Kierkegaard, Pietism and Holiness



expressions meriting the name ‘Pietism’. Thus he claims that the true originator of the Pietist movement was Johann Arndt (1555–1621), whose devotional writings spawned a ‘transnational and transconfessional phenomenon’ within Protestantism that extended all the way into the twentieth century. On this reading, Spener’s efforts amount to a significant interpretation of Arndtian piety, but hardly can be said to exhaust Arndt’s influence. It is doubtful that this debate, as exemplified by Wallmann and Brecht, will be resolved in the near future. Consequently, Eric Lund’s advice seems apt: ‘Since scholars are far from reaching a consensus about the defining characteristics of pietism, it is important to recognize the merits of both points of view.’ Still, this study cannot proceed without a working definition of ‘Pietism’. If only for the sake of clarity – rather than as an attempt to sort out the larger scholarly problem – the following query must be addressed: does ‘Pietism’, in this work, strictly denote Spener’s movement, or is it an indicator of a phenomenon spanning confessional, geographical and generational divides? Kierkegaard determines the answer to this question himself. It is highly germane that his own understanding of what he calls Pietismen was capacious. As he writes in an 1850 journal entry: Yes, indeed, pietism (properly understood, not simply in the sense of abstaining from dancing and such externals, no, in the sense of witnessing for the truth and suffering for it, together with the understanding that suffering in this world belongs to being a Christian, and that a shrewd and secular conformity with this world is unchristian) – yes, indeed, pietism is the one and only consequence of Christianity.

This passage demonstrates that Kierkegaard does not confine ‘Pietism’ to the era or to the brand of Spener. In fact, it will become evident later that he does quite the opposite, for it was precisely the so-called ‘Halle Pietism’ of Spener and, in particular, his successor, August Hermann Francke (1663–1727), that moved Arndtian piety in the moralistic direction repudiated here. As Kierkegaard’s pseudonym, Anti-Climacus, elucidates in Practice in Christianity, Pietism is rooted in the example of Christ himself and in his attack upon the superficial legalism of the Pharisees. Wherever Pietism is found, its stress on genuine inwardness collides with the ‘established order’.



  Lindberg, ‘Introduction’, p. 3.   Eric Lund, ‘Protestant Spirituality: Orthodoxy and Piety in Modernity: Second Age of the Reformation: Lutheran and Reformed Spirituality, 1550–1700’, in Louis Dupré and Don E. Saliers (eds), Christian Spirituality: Post-Reformation and Modern (London, 1990), pp. 230f.    NB20:175, NB20:175.a / JP 3, 3318.    SKS 12, 95 / PC, 86. 

The Origin and Development of Pietism



Already, then, it is clear why this study cannot use ‘Pietism’ in Wallmann’s restrictive sense: Kierkegaard himself does not do so. To this point, however, one might counter that the expansiveness of Kierkegaard’s understanding of ‘Pietism’ virtually drains the term of historical specificity – a flaw that, accordingly, would seem to demand an ahistorical, purely conceptual treatment of ‘Kierkegaard and Pietism’. Why, one might add, even discuss the historical Pietists at all, given Kierkegaard’s refusal to equate their particular efforts with ‘Pietism’ as such? It is with this query that Kierkegaard’s relationship with the Moravian Brethren comes into play. As will be detailed in Chapter 2, Kierkegaard’s family had roots in the communal piety of the Moravians and, by association, their leader, Nikolaus Ludwig Graf von Zinzendorf (1700–60). Furthermore, as a youth, Kierkegaard himself attended the weekly meetings of Copenhagen’s Moravian community – also known as the Brødremenighed [‘Congregation of Brothers’] or the Brødresocietet [‘Society of Brothers’] – who maintained a meeting hall in the city centre. This relationship helps to determine what ‘Pietism’ means in this study. Though similar in several respects, the Moravians are not to be confused with Halle Pietists, especially as regards their dealings with the establishment. And yet, for scholars such as Brecht, Lindberg and Peter Erb, they constitute one of the key expressions of the ‘polygenetic’ devotional movement of ‘Pietism’. Hence, inasmuch as ‘Pietism’ is understood as a multifarious phenomenon, inclusive of groups such as the Moravians, it is both prudent and essential to underline Kierkegaard’s historical connections to it. Still, if Kierkegaard was linked to Pietism by way of the Moravian Brethren, then why not limit the discussion to ‘Kierkegaard and the Moravians’? Does not the more general term ‘Pietism’ cloud the matter, not only because it invites controversy, but also because it fails to do justice to the uniqueness of Moravian life and thought? This question would be more persuasive if Kierkegaard’s relation to Pietism could be reduced to his interaction with the Moravians – something that would be possible, however, only at the expense of Kierkegaard’s interest in and admiration for a strand of literature valued across the Pietist movement. Indeed, as F. Ernest Stoeffler contends, a shared emphasis on the praxis pietatis is what enables talk of a unitary ‘Pietism’. Despite differences between, say, Halle Pietists and Moravians, it is nevertheless true that both groups stressed the inculcation of pious habits and practices. Stoeffler adds that these habits and practices assumed a number of forms: hymn-writing, social outreach, pastoral care, ecumenical endeavours and, finally, the reading and production of edificatory literature. As will be described in Chapter 3, it was this last form that made the most striking impression on Kierkegaard. His library was stocked with Pietist writings of all sorts: the practical spirituality of Christian Scriver (1629–93), the mystical thought    Lindberg, ‘Introduction’, p. 3. See also Peter Erb, ‘Introduction’, in Peter Erb (ed.), Pietists: Selected Writings (New York, 1979), pp. 19–22.    F. Ernest Stoeffler, The Rise of Evangelical Pietism (Leiden, 1965), p. 9.    Ibid., pp. 3–5.

Kierkegaard, Pietism and Holiness



of Gerhard Tersteegen (1697–1769) and the theological reflection of Spener, not to mention works by the ‘father of Pietism’,10 Johann Arndt, and three of his most significant predecessors, Johannes Tauler (ca. 1300–61), the Frankfurter (the anonymous author of the fourteenth-century treatise Theologia deutsch) and Thomas à Kempis (ca. 1380–1471). Though popular among the Moravians – it will be shown that, in all likelihood, the Moravians mediated this Erbauungsliteratur (‘upbuilding literature’) to Kierkegaard – not one of these authors actually belonged to the Brethren. On the contrary, they were writers whose influence reached Pietists everywhere, irrespective of their confessional or national status. Kierkegaard’s affinity for these Erbauungsautoren, then, places him in the larger current of the Pietist tradition and, for that reason, makes a discussion of ‘Kierkegaard and Pietism’ preferable to one narrowed to ‘Kierkegaard and the Moravians’. Thus Kierkegaard’s life and thought necessitates – for this study, at least – a Brechtian employment of the term ‘Pietism’. To speak of ‘Kierkegaard and Pietism’ is to speak of Kierkegaard’s relation to a ‘transnational and transconfessional’ movement of piety that, in order to counteract the ‘difficulties the Reformation churches experienced in realizing Christian life and activity’, sought to promote habits and practices consonant with ‘piety’ or ‘holiness’.11 As noted, this relation has its foundations in Kierkegaard’s association with the Moravian Brethren, as well as in his reading of Pietist Erbauungsliteratur – topics that will be handled in due course. But, first, a short history of Pietism would seem to be in order. With the parameters of Pietism now set, it is possible to go back over its origins and its development. And given the scale of the term in this study, that not only implies a return to Arndt, but also to some of his chief influences.

The Need for a ‘Selective History’ In the previous section a preliminary understanding of Pietism was established. The task now is to fill in margins, to illustrate how this ‘transnational and transconfessional’ movement took shape and evolved over time. Yet, as above, the very formulation of this objective occasions a methodological question: how can one write a ‘short history’ of a phenomenon as large as the ‘Pietism’ intended here? The answer is that one cannot. To the extent that Pietism ranges across centuries and confessions, continents and oceans, it is simply not practicable to chronicle it in a mere chapter. Thus it is necessary to determine those elements of Pietism’s history that are most pertinent to Kierkegaard’s context and authorship, for if a ‘short history’ of Pietism remains beyond the pale of this endeavour, a selective one does not. As will be made clear in Chapter 2, the story of Pietism in Denmark largely has to do with the relationship between the state-sponsored Halle Pietism and the 10

  Ibid., pp. 202f.   Lindberg, ‘Introduction’, pp. 3f.

11

The Origin and Development of Pietism



more radical Moravian Pietism (or, alternatively, Herrnhutism) – a relationship that, divergences aside, was characterized by cross-pollination between the two movements. As members of what might be termed ‘the Pietist family’, theirs was not so much a relationship of opposition as one of tension. Understanding this tension is critical if one is to understand Kierkegaard’s engagement with Pietism, both in terms of what he received and what he rebuffed. Consequently, the selective history that follows will centre on the origins and development of Halle and Moravian Pietism respectively. At this juncture, however, the ideational aspects of their genesis will only be touched on, since fuller treatments of the thinking of some of the figures mentioned here will be tendered in Chapter 3.

The Rise of Arndtian Piety To look into the origins and development of both Halle and Moravian Pietism is to look into the emergence of Johann Arndt around the turn of the seventeenth century. What was it that thrust this German pastor, born in 1555, into a role of such prominence that, according to Johannes Wallmann, his influence among Protestants actually bests Martin Luther’s?12 To answer this question, one first has to consider the crisis facing Lutheranism in the wake of Luther’s death in 1546 and, second, how Arndt sought to address it. This ‘crisis’, in Eric Lund’s estimation, began with the Augsburg Interim – ‘a modest program of recatholicization’ carried out by Emperor Charles V after his victory in the Schmalkaldic War (1547).13 Although strengthening the resolve of Lutherans everywhere, particularly by deepening what Lund calls ‘confessional consciousness’,14 the Augsburg Interim also manifested the fault lines running through Lutheranism. The most familiar of these rifts divided the Philippist party, led by Philipp Melancthon (1497–1560), from the Gnesio-Lutherans, headed up by Matija Vlacic (1520–75), better known as Matthias Flacius Illyricus. As with later splits among Lutherans, the conflict between the Philippists and the GnesioLutherans was fundamentally soteriological, centring on the dialectic between human works and salvation. While the Gnesio-Lutherans opposed any hint of a righteousness won through human works,15 the Philippists pointed out that the person must not refuse the grace tendered by God. The fervour of this and other debates certified that a new Lutheran confession was imperative. Hence, through

  Wallmann, ‘Johann Arndt und die Protestantische Frömmigkeit’, p. 52.   Lund, ‘Protestant Spirituality’, p. 213. 14   Ibid. 15   In his church history, Catalogue of Witnesses to the Truth [Catalogus Testium Veritatis], Flacius maintains that this opposition is the mark of authentic Christianity. See Oliver K. Olson, ‘Matthias Flacius (1520–1575)’, in Carter Lindberg (ed.), The Reformation Theologians (Oxford, 2002), p. 88. 12 13

Kierkegaard, Pietism and Holiness



the efforts of a pair of theologians, Jacob Andreae (1528–90) and Martin Chemnitz (1522–86), the Formula of Concord was drafted in 1580.16 From the perspective of this study, the significance of the Formula of Concord lies less in its contents than in the epoch it commenced. Since the Formula effectively secured a theological consensus among Lutherans, its defence became one of the chief concerns of the so-called ‘Age of Orthodoxy’,17 which endured until the early part of the eighteenth century.18 As ambassadors of a newfound ‘Protestant Scholasticism’, the theologians of Lutheran orthodoxy bolstered their efforts by way of a ‘precise theological methodology’, rooted in Aristotelian categories and logic, in addition to ‘closely worded doctrinal statements of faith’.19 Systematic treatises were common, and these were communicated to the laity through sermons and catechisms. Such means were intended to nurture the faith of the people, but, in many instances, the clergy used them to monitor and to control their parishioners instead.20 Whether or not this development actually hindered lay piety or popular morality remains a matter of debate. However, what is certain is that orthodoxy increasingly was ‘seen as a dry, polemical, intolerant defense of a single denomination’s position, lacking any concern with issues relevant to religious life or the practice of Christian virtue or devotion’.21 And, as such, it was accused of engendering a crisis of piety within Lutheranism. One of the first and most noteworthy persons to level this charge was the pastor and theosophist, Valentin Weigel (1533–88). Educated at Wittenberg and then appointed to a Lutheran pastorate in Zschopau, Saxony, Weigel was able to veil his interest in mystical and theosophical thought for much of his life, although his reading of Tauler and his publication of the Theologia deutsch were indications of this leaning.22 Nevertheless, it was not until the posthumous publication of his writings that the radicalness of his thought was disclosed. Borrowing from the pantheism of Paracelsus (1493–1541) and the spiritualism of persons such as Kaspar Schwenckfeld (1490–1561), Weigel polemicized against

16

  Erb, ‘Introduction’, in Johann Arndt: True Christianity (New York, 1979), p. 3. Kierkegaard was familiar with the Formula of Concord through textbooks such as Karl August von Hase’s Hutterus redivivus (Leipzig: 4th edn, 1839; ASKB 437–8, 581) and Henrik Nicolaj Clausen’s lectures on dogmatics. See, for example, EE:75 / JP 3, 2459; Pap. I A 243 / JP 3, 3656. 17   Lund, ‘Protestant Spirituality’, pp. 214f. 18   Erb, ‘Introduction’, in Johann Arndt: True Christianity, p. 4. 19   Ibid., p. 3. Johann Gerhard (1582–1637) was an exception to this rule. One of Lutheran Orthodoxy’s leading representatives, he also was influenced by Arndt. As will be discussed in Chapter 3, Kierkegaard read and appreciated Gerhard’s upbuilding masterwork, Meditationes sacrae. 20   Lund, ‘Protestant Spirituality’, pp. 216f. 21   Erb, ‘Introduction’, in Johann Arndt: True Christianity, pp. 3f. 22   Stoeffler, The Rise of Evangelical Pietism, p. 200.

The Origin and Development of Pietism



the Zank-und-Buchstabentheologen [‘theologians of quarrel and letters’],23 along with their emphases on ‘detailed creeds and the importance of external religious ceremonies’.24 In this way – and in his stress on the practical import of the Christian faith, particularly as it culminates in the imitatio Christi – Weigel may be understood as a forerunner of Pietism. Furthermore, if his theosophy did not deeply inform the Pietist movement, his retrieval of medieval mysticism – especially that of Tauler and the Theologia deutsch – was indicative of one of Pietism’s most decisive turns. Indeed, as ‘the intensified dissatisfaction with the state of religious life stimulated new interest in the production of popular religious books’, so did the authors of these books look to the medieval mystics ‘for guidance in nurturing spiritual growth’.25 In addition to Weigel, some of the first Lutherans to appropriate mystical sources were Stephan Praetorious (1536–1603) and Martin Moller (1547–1606). Praetorious, a pastor in the town of Salzwedel, is well known for his Spiritual Treasure Chest, which, according to Stoeffler, was the first ‘combination of evangelical mysticism and practical piety which culminated in Arndt’.26 Meanwhile, in his edificatory writings, Moller made extensive use of extracts from Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux and Tauler,27 and, as a pastor in Görlitz, he notably organized collegia pietatis for the sake of upbuilding.28 Following Praetorious and Moller was the Westphalian pastor, Philipp Nicolai (1556–1608). In his great work, Mirror of Joy, Nicolai places accent on the believer’s mystical union with Christ, which, for him, is a union effected in and through love, with the result that the human ‘wills nothing but what God wills’.29 In this way, he drew on the thought of Richard of St Victor (died 1173) and, once again, on that of Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), whose ‘On Loving God’ celebrates the ‘holy and chaste love’ that has ‘no mixture of self-will in it’.30 In their turn to mystical literature, Weigel, Praetorious, Moller and Nicolai were all propaedeutic to Arndt and to Pietism. Yet, it is important to recall that their efforts would have had a much more limited effect – at least among Lutherans – if not for Martin Luther’s own interest in medieval mysticism. In his theological studies, as well as in his life as an Augustinian monk, Luther not only became well acquainted with the mystical tradition, but, in fact, was influenced by it, both in negative and positive fashion. Negatively, he came to reject the Neoplatonic element within the mystical tradition, which, as he saw it, fostered inappropriate 23

  Ibid., p. 202.   Lund, ‘Protestant Spirituality’, p. 220. 25   Ibid., p. 221. 26   Stoeffler, The Rise of Evangelical Pietism, p. 193. 27   Lund, ‘Protestant Spirituality’, pp. 222f. 28   Stoeffler, The Rise of Evangelical Pietism, p. 237. 29   Ibid., p. 198. 30   Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘On Loving God’, in Bernard of Clairvaux: Selected Works (New York, 1987), p. 196. 24

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metaphysical speculation.31 Much like the nominalists, who sought to limit the content of faith to God’s self-revelation, with the further implication that human beings are unable to have knowledge of God’s potentia absoluta,32 Luther was concerned that speculative mysticism led to hubristic and, ultimately, dangerous attempts to ascend to God, whether via philosophy or askesis. The positive corollary to this refutation, however, was Luther’s notable attraction to the practical and ‘humble’ mysticism espoused by other thinkers. Important in this connection were the works of Bernard of Clairvaux, Bonaventure (1221–74) and Jean Gerson (1363–1429),33 though, famously, Tauler’s sermons and the Theologia deutsch had the most profound impact on Luther. During the years 1516–18, Luther ‘had only the highest praise for the German mystical tradition’.34 In a letter to a friend, dated 14 December 1516, he explains that Tauler’s theology is ‘rein’ [‘pure’] and ‘gründlich’ [‘thorough’].35 And, in another comment, he writes of Tauler’s thought: ‘I have never … either in Latin or in [German], seen a theology that was saner and more in accord with the Evangelists.’36 With regard to the Theologia deutsch, which he mistakenly attributed to ‘the illumined doctor Tauler’,37 Luther was no less upbeat. As he notes in his preface to the 1518 edition of the text,38 ‘Next to the Bible and Saint Augustine no other book has come to my attention from which I have learned – and desired to learn – more concerning God, Christ, man, and what all things are.’39 It is clear, then, that Luther had an affinity for this strand of mystical theology. But why? In a letter to his mentor, Johann von Staupitz (1460–1524), he singles out Tauler’s stress on the fact that human beings are not made righteous by their own merits, but by Christ alone.40 There is, of course, a biographical note in this commendation: Luther’s own ‘failed’ attempts to ascend to God made him receptive to the notion, stressed in both Tauler and the Theologia deutsch, that ‘the soul prepares a way for a complete union with God only by filling itself with a sense of

  Robert Herndon Fife, The Revolt of Martin Luther (New York, 1957), p. 217.   Heiko A. Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1963), pp. 330–35. 33   Fife, The Revolt of Martin Luther, p. 217. 34   Steven Ozment, The Age of Reform 1250–1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe (London, 1980), p. 239. 35   Qtd. in Alphons V. Müller, Luther und Tauler (Bern, 1918), p. 23. 36   Qtd. in Fife, The Revolt of Martin Luther, p. 219. 37   Qtd. in Bengt Hoffman, ‘Introduction’, in The Theologia Germanica of Martin Luther (New York, 1980), p. 41. 38   Luther also issued an edition of the Theologia deutsch in 1516. 39   Luther, ‘Preface’, in The Theologia Germanica of Martin Luther (New York, 1980), p. 54. 40   Müller, Luther und Tauler, p. 23. 31 32

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its own nothingness’.41 Over time, however, Luther came to interpret the idea of ‘nothingness’ in a way contrary to Tauler and to the Theologia deutsch, jettisoning, in particular, its ontological basis. To the extent that ‘nothingness’ is an apophatic indicator of the ineradicable presence of an anthropological resource subsisting in ‘substantive unity’ with the divine – what Tauler terms the Seelengrund [‘ground of the soul’] – Luther rejected it, preferring instead to underline the human being’s ‘opposition to God’.42 And yet, despite such conceptual differences, Luther remained indebted to Tauler and to the Theologia deutsch. On a methodological level, he valued their antipathy toward scholastic theology and its seemingly aloof treatment of theological material. Furthermore, he extolled their use of the German language, noting in his 1518 preface to the Theologia deutsch, ‘I thank God that I can hear and find my God in the German tongue, the way I do here, in a manner in which I … did not find Him even in Latin, Greek, or Hebrew.’43 And, conceptually, he learned much from their handling of themes such as detachment, suffering and the imitation of Christ; though, as with the notion of ‘nothingness’, one must avoid a facile conflation of his positions with those of Tauler and the Theologia deutsch. Still, borrowing from his mystical influences, Luther never intended the ‘objective’ or ‘imputative’ component of Christian faith to trump its existential side.44 For him, the Lebmeister [‘master of living’] was always superior to the Lesemeister [‘master of reading’]45 – an insight preserved by Weigel, Praetorious and others, and then taken up vigorously by Arndt around the turn of the seventeenth century. Indeed, what distinguishes Arndt is not that he saw the ‘crisis’ facing him differently from his predecessors. As he explains regarding the origins of his masterwork, True Christianity: ‘Through [the] disintegration of true Christianity I was moved to write of love, under which circumstance the thoughts occurred to me, out of which my books came.’46 Nor is it that he addressed this crisis in a fashion altogether unlike persons such as Praetorious. Arndt, too, aimed to centre the Christian life on praxis, and, for that purpose, he reclaimed the writings of medieval mysticism. Furthermore, in this reclamation, he also understood himself as promoting a ‘pure’ Lutheranism that was in accord with The Augsburg Confession (1530) and the Formula of Concord, not to mention

  Fife, The Revolt of Martin Luther, p. 221.   Steven Ozment, Homo Spiritualis: A Comparative Study of the Anthropology of Johannes Tauler, Jean Gerson and Martin Luther (1509–16) in the Context of Their Theological Thought (Leiden, 1969), pp. 205, 215. 43   Luther, ‘Preface’, p. 54. 44   Bengt Hoffman, ‘Lutheran Spirituality’, in Kenneth J. Collins (ed.), Exploring Christian Spirituality: An Ecumenical Reader (Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2000), pp. 123f. 45   Ibid. 46   Qtd. in Stoeffler, The Rise of Evangelical Pietism, p. 204. 41 42

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with the example of Luther himself.47 Consequently, Arndt’s identification of and response to the post-Reformation crisis of piety was not new. Rather, he intensified it – he was the first Lutheran to cite the medieval mystics as Zeugen der Wahrheit (‘witnesses of truth’) in defence of what became the Pietist cause48 – and thereby gave it needed impetus. Arndt was a capable clergyman, who was appointed ‘general superintendent’ at Celle in 1611.49 Yet, his impact on Protestantism almost exclusively stems from his literary efforts, which received their most famous expression in True Christianity – a book whose influence was so great that 123 editions of it were issued between 1605 and 1740.50 But it is hardly the case that True Christianity exhausted Arndt’s importance as an author and/or publisher. If anything, it brought together and sharpened Arndt’s larger literary purpose, which, unlike Weigel and Jakob Böhme (1575–1624), was not to mould a peculiar Protestant mysticism, but to return to and to build on ‘an earlier pipeline, through which the water of the suppressed stream of medieval mysticism again would come into Lutheranism’.51 Arndt launched this project by editing Luther’s 1518 printing of the Theologia deutsch and adding an introduction of his own, which lamented the ‘polemical publications’ of the day.52 He issued this copy in 1597 and then followed with further editions in 1605, 1617 and 1621 – the latter three times with Thomas à Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ. The inclusion of Thomas’s devotional text proved to be a masterstroke. While Luther had read and admired the Theologia deutsch, he apparently was unfamiliar with The Imitation of Christ, despite the fact that, by 1521, it had been printed in Latin 15 times and in German five times.53 Hence, according to Wallmann, Arndt’s 1605 translation and printing of The Imitation of Christ effectively introduced the text into Lutheranism.54 Further, by smoothing over its more overtly Catholic edges, he enabled its readership to swell to almost 47   Stoeffler, The Rise of Evangelical Pietism, p. 207. Also see, for example, Johann Arndt, Johann Arndt: True Christianity (New York, 1979), p. 233. 48   Peter Erb, Pietists, Protestants, and Mysticism: The Use of Late Medieval Spiritual Texts in the Work of Gottfried Arnold (1666–1714) (London, 1989), p. 75. It is this point, it seems, that Erb is trying to make when he writes, ‘Arndt marks the beginning of a tradition in Lutheranism in which the medieval mystics are used as Zeugen in support of a specific wing within Lutheranism’ [ibid.]. Taken literally, however, Erb’s claim appears incorrect, for Flacius’ Catalogus Testium Veritatis – partly an apology for the Gnesio-Lutherans – lists Tauler as a witness to their rigorous emphasis on the doctrine of justification by faith alone. See Olson, ‘Matthias Flacius (1520–1575)’, pp. 88ff. 49   Stoeffler, The Rise of Evangelical Pietism, p. 204. 50   Wolfgang Sommer, Politik, Theologie, und Frömmigkeit im Luthertum der Frühen Neuzeit (Göttingen, 1999), p. 263. 51   Wallmann, ‘Johann Arndt und die Protestantische Frömmigkeit’, p. 62. 52   Erb, ‘Introduction’, in Johann Arndt: True Christianity, p. 5. 53   Wallmann, ‘Johann Arndt und die Protestantische Frömmigkeit’, p. 65. 54   Ibid.

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unimaginable proportions. Esteemed by Catholics and, now, Protestants alike, The Imitation of Christ was produced at a rate of over five editions per year during the period 1605–1740.55 Arndt’s interaction with medieval mystical literature did not end there. In the second book of True Christianity, he extensively appropriated the thought of Angela da Foligno (1248–1309), particularly with regard to the centrality of prayer in the Christian life56 – a theme revisited in his other well-known text, the 1612 prayer guide A Little Garden of Paradise Full of Christian Virtues. Additionally, in True Christianity, as well as in his sermons, he drew on Meister Eckhart (ca. 1260– 1328), Bernard of Clairvaux and Weigel.57 Yet, of all the medieval mystics, it was Tauler who made the greatest impression on Arndt, so much so that one of Arndt’s orthodox Lutheran opponents, Lucas Osiander the Younger (1571–1638), claimed that Arndt’s interest was not in true Christianity but in ‘poor Taulerianism’.58 As will be explained in Chapter 3, this is a hyperbolic characterization: Arndt attempted to rework his mystical sources, including Tauler, so as to align them with what a Lutheran would consider ‘true Christianity’. However, it cannot be denied that he had an affinity for Tauler. Aside from his reprints of the Theologia deutsch – a text that for centuries was associated with Tauler and still remains, in the words of George Huntston Williams, a ‘Deutero-Taulerian’ work59 – Arndt penned a foreword to the 1621 edition of Tauler’s sermons; and, in True Christianity, he made use of over 30 of Tauler’s sermons, quoting the German Lebmeister in a number of places, especially in Book Three.60 In utilizing Tauler so frequently and so openly, Arndt set the stage for one of the great debates among seventeenthand eighteenth-century Lutherans. As Wallmann puts it, ‘In the Lutheranism after Arndt’s death, the quarrel flaring up over Johann Arndt was conducted primarily as a quarrel about the right to read and to use Johann Tauler.’61 Indeed, Arndt was so effectual as a ‘mediator of mystical piety to Protestantism’62 that numerous groups and persons sought to extend his legacy, albeit in different 55

  Sommer, Politik, Theologie, und Frömmigkeit, p. 263.   For a parallel of Arndt and Angela on prayer, see Erb, ‘Introduction’, in Johann Arndt: True Christianity, pp. 10–12. 57   Ibid., pp. 15, 17, and Wallmann, ‘Johann Arndt und die Protestantische Frömmigkeit’, pp. 63, 68–70. 58   Qtd. in Wallmann, ‘Johann Arndt und die Protestantische Frömmigkeit’, p. 62. 59   George Huntston Williams, ‘Popularized German Mysticism as a Factor in the Rise of Anabaptist Communism’, in Gerhard Müller and Winfried Zeller (eds), Glaube Geist Geschichte: Festschrift für Ernst Benz zum 60. Geburtstage am 17. November 1967 (Leiden, 1967), pp. 291–3. 60   Wallmann, ‘Johann Arndt und die Protestantische Frömmigkeit’, p. 63. 61   Ibid. See also Eric Lund, ‘Tauler the Mystic’s Lutheran Admirers’, in Marc Forster and Benjamin Kaplan (eds), Piety and Family in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honour of Steven Ozment (Burlington, Vermont, 2005), pp. 10–27. 62   Ibid., p. 74. 56

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ways. There was an ‘erotic type of Pietism’, which tended to downplay Arndt’s principal interest in mystical Erbauungsliteratur – namely, as a means of spurring Christians toward a ‘new life’, toward the ideal of living as persons who humbly serve God and neighbour – in favour of a stress on the unio mystica that ‘had as its major aim pleasant feeling states’.63 Johann Lassenius (1636–92) is the most prominent exemplar of this approach.64 Another, more faithful perspective on Arndtian piety was promoted by members of the so-called ‘reform party’, also collectively known as Reformorthodoxy.65 Initiated by social utopians such as Johann Valentin Andreae (1586–1654) and furthered by the church reformer Theophilus Grossgebauer (1628–61), this movement was headquartered in the university town of Rostock and, in general, advanced the ethico-political implications of Arndt’s programme.66 At times, its members could put the end of church reform before the means of genuine piety – thereby deviating from more thoroughgoing Arndtians – but nevertheless Reformorthodoxy encouraged the development of Pietism, particularly by way of three figures: Joachim Lütkemann (1608–55), Heinrich Müller (1631–75) and Christian Scriver.67 Of these three, Scriver is especially significant, not least because he authored ‘one of the most outstanding of Lutheran edificatory works’, Treasure of the Soul68 – a text that, as will be discussed further in Chapter 3, Kierkegaard read and admired. In this massive, five-volume work, Scriver effectively recapitulated the Arndtian programme, mapping the key themes of Lutheran theology onto a scheme oriented toward holy living. Hence, for him, one must not stress simply God’s work for human beings, but, as it were, God’s work for human beings in human beings, whereby they might be moved to love both God and neighbour in ‘humility, mildness, mercy, peaceableness, purity, moderation, and truthfulness’.69 It is in this emphasis, with its implication that Christian piety is inseparable from an ethic of love, that Scriver in particular and Reformorthodoxy in general both maintained and handed down Arndt’s message. But they were not alone. In 1675, the same year that Scriver issued the first three parts of Treasure of the Soul, another book influenced by Arndt appeared: Philipp Jakob Spener’s Pia desideria. And although it did not represent a break from Arndtians such as Scriver, it nevertheless announced the furtherance of their Pietist vision – one that, eventually, would alter the direction of the movement.

63

    65   66   67   68   69   64

Stoeffler, The Rise of Evangelical Pietism, p. 214. Ibid., pp. 215f. Lund, ‘Protestant Spirituality’, pp. 229–30. Stoeffler, The Rise of Evangelical Pietism, pp. 217f. Ibid., pp. 218f. Ibid., p. 225. Ibid., p. 227.

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Spener, Halle and the Move toward an ‘Established’ Pietism If the status of Spener as the ‘Father of Pietism’ is debatable, it nonetheless would be difficult to deny his enormous influence on subsequent Pietist expressions. With his organizational genius and eschatological optimism, he gave a more concrete determination to Arndtian piety, binding its emphasis on personal upbuilding to projects for both ecclesial and social renewal. Thus he foreshadowed Halle Pietism and Moravian Pietism alike, even though, as has been noted, these two expressions approached the goal of renewal in different fashion. Before discussing those topics, however, it must be reiterated that Spener’s devotional interests were very much in line with Arndt and his followers. As Stoeffler puts it, ‘In the background of everything Spener thought and did is the Arndtian piety from the central emphases of which he never really departed.’70 Raised in an environment where reading ‘True Christianity was as natural as reading the Bible’,71 Spener’s literary endeavours often received direct inspiration from Arndt. His Pia desideria, for instance, first appeared as a foreword to Arndt’s sermons, and his posthumously published Mirror of Virtue for Christian Maidens was originally inscribed into a copy of Arndt’s Little Garden of Paradise.72 Yet, more importantly, Spener shared Arndt’s appreciation of medieval mystical literature – something that he makes clear, with qualifications, in Pia desideria and elsewhere. Indeed, in Pia desideria, he argues that ‘Christianity consists … of practice’, inasmuch as its end is not knowledge but the love that is ‘the whole life of the man who has faith’.73 Consequently, for Spener, theologians are mistaken if they think the study of dogmatics is sufficient without works such as the Theologia deutsch, The Imitation of Christ and ‘the writings of Tauler, which, next to the Scriptures, probably made our dear Luther what he was’.74 This point is clarified in a later essay, ‘On Hindrances to Theological Studies’ (1680), where Spener maintains that dogmatics and mysticism ‘deal with the same material but in different ways’.75 Mysticism presupposes the propositional content of dogmatics, but, unsatisfied ‘with mere knowledge’, it also aims to show ‘how the truth contained in [dogmatics] is to be understood as practical’.76 In the end, then, the division between these two theological approaches is artificial, having more to do with methodology than anything of substance. After all, insofar as the scholar

70

  Ibid., p. 230.   Ibid. 72   Ibid. 73   Philipp Jakob Spener, Pia Desideria, in Peter C. Erb (ed.), Pietists: Selected Writings, p. 36. 74   Ibid., pp. 44f. 75   Phillipp Jakob Spener, ‘On Hindrances to Theological Study’, in Peter C. Erb (ed.), Pietists: Selected Writings, p. 68. 76   Ibid. 71

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emphasizes the practical application of dogmatic principles, ‘he will scarcely be distinguished from a mystic.’77 That is not to suggest, however, that Spener was wholly trusting of the mystical tradition. As he remarks in Pia desideria, ‘There is no doubt that such little [mystical] books, to which something of the darkness of their age still clings, can and may easily be esteemed too highly’.78 But, for him, that did not mean that mystical Erbauungsliteratur was to be jettisoned. On the contrary, it was to be read with discretion: ‘Anything that is in these books which arises out of the papal filth and the errors ascribed to Platonism can be noted and avoided without difficulty by anyone who understands our true doctrine.’79 Thus Spener had no reservations about stimulating what Lund terms ‘the last great wave of Tauler publications by Lutherans’.80 In 1680, for instance, Spener wrote a foreword to a compilation of Tauler’s works, the Theologia deutsch and The Imitation of Christ, and, in 1687, his Nature and Grace included lengthy extracts from these same sources.81 Moreover, he issued new printings of Tauler’s sermons in 1688, 1692 and 1703. In Tauler, Spener saw an authentic Zeuge der Wahrheit, whose struggle against scholasticism anticipated his own opposition to Lutheran orthodoxy82 – an assessment that further underlines Spener’s continuity with Arndt. To the extent, then, that Spener’s attraction to and promotion of mystical theology was indebted to Arndt, so were his ethical concerns beholden to the Arndtians of Reformorthodoxy. However, ‘[w]ith Spener the reform party within seventeenth century Lutheranism had moved from sincere but indiscriminate criticism to a plan of action.’83 Out of concern for worsening church and social conditions, particularly those fuelled by the complex, religiously stained Thirty Years War (1618–48), Spener established collegia pietatis at Frankfurt am Main in 1670.84 A few years later, in Pia desideria, he articulated the need for such ‘colleges’ or conventicles, claiming that they would facilitate the clergy’s ‘spiritual oversight’ of the laity.85 This goal was reflected in the structure of conventicle life itself. Gatherings were convened twice a week, often taking place on Monday and Wednesday. They began with a prayer, followed by a period of edificatory reading and discussion, typically centring on a passage from the Bible.86 By providing such sites for ‘mutual edification’, the collegia pietatis were not meant to undercut the authority of the established church or to isolate ‘true’ Christians from ‘false’ 77

    79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   78

Ibid. Spener, Pia desideria, p. 45. Spener, ‘On Hindrances to Theological Study’, p. 69. Lund, ‘Tauler the Mystic’s Lutheran Admirers’, pp. 25f. Erb, Pietists, Protestants, and Mysticism, pp. 75f. Ibid., pp. 74f. Stoeffler, The Rise of Evangelical Pietism, p. 235. Ibid., p. 229. Ibid., p. 236. Ibid., p. 237.

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ones – accusations that often were levelled at Spener’s programme – but to help move the larger church toward its fulfilment.87 They were to be ecclesiolae in ecclesia, not ecclesiolae contra ecclesia. This logic, while eliciting harsh criticism from persons such as the Hamburg pastor Johann Friedrich Mayer (1650–1712), nonetheless appealed to many.88 Within two years of the publication of Pia desideria, Pietist conventicles had been instituted across Germany, including the cities of Erfurt, Augsburg, Schweinfurt, Rothenburg and Darmstadt.89 It is important to add that, for Spener, the collegia pietatis were not mere responses to the decline of German society. Rather, they were signs of his fundamental optimism regarding Christian sanctification and eschatology. With regard to the former, he asserted that, within the Lutheran ordo salutis [‘order of salvation’], strong emphasis should be placed on renovatio or sanctificatio,90 which, for him, is the necessary complement to the individual’s reception of ‘Wiedergeburt’ [‘new birth’] in and through Christ. Indeed, in his scheme, sanctification is not opposed to new birth, but issues from it diachronically. Thus it involves one’s temporal participation in God’s grace, including one’s gradual maturation in holy living and, in turn, one’s advancement toward complete ‘Erneuerung’ [‘renewal’] in God.91 Conventicles, naturally, were to encourage this process and, in that way, were integral to Spener’s eschatological hope. In contrast to his orthodox Lutheran rivals, who were sceptical of proposals for the ethical improvement of the church, Spener penned treatises such as 1693’s Assertion of the Hope of Future Better Times, maintaining that such improvement indicates Christ’s spiritual presence and so heralds his joyous Second Coming.92 This post-millennial eschatology reinforced the vitality of the collegia pietatis, providing a metaphysical rationale for their function as sites of personal edification. To foster the Erneuerung of the individual Christian, Spener suggests, is to foster the Erneuerung of the church and thereby to prefigure the Erneuerung of the world through Christ. In this programmatic application of Arndtian piety, Spener gave rise to a number of expressions, which, in spite of their shared origins and interests, nevertheless came to differ as regards the social ramifications of Pietism. Perhaps the most famous of these was the ‘Halle Pietism’ of August Hermann Francke (1663–1727). Officially, Francke got his start as a Pietist leader during his student years, when, in Leipzig, he was a leader of a collegium established along Spenerian lines. In retrospect, however, Francke viewed this as little more than a nominal role, for he considered his Leipzig years marred by a mixture of apathy and ambition:

87

  Ibid.   Ibid., p. 245. 89   Ibid., p. 244. 90   Erb, ‘Introduction’, in Pietists: Selected Writings, p. 6. 91   K. James Stein, ‘Philipp Jakob Spener (1635–1705)’, in Carter Lindberg (ed.), The Pietist Theologians (Oxford, 2005), p. 92. 92   Ibid., pp. 95f. 88

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Kierkegaard, Pietism and Holiness [A]mong the pious I had the appearance of being pious, and among the evil I was truly evil; I had learned to let my cloak blow in the direction the wind was blowing. No one hated me for the sake of the truth because I did not eagerly make people my enemy … . Nevertheless such a peace with the world was not able to bring any rest to my heart. But concern for the future, desire for position, the desire to know everything, the search for human favor and friendship and other similar things flowing from the evils of worldly love … drove my heart as a stormy sea now to one side, now to the other, even though I often presented an external joyousness before others.93

For some time, Francke recounts, the situation deteriorated. He fell into a ‘great dread’, coming to survey his existence ‘as one who looked over a whole town from a high tower’, from where he ‘could count the sins but then the chief source opened itself, namely unbelief or mere false belief’.94 In this state, nothing seemed to be of help, not even the Bible: I thought that I could hold to the Holy Scriptures but as soon as this came into my mind I wondered, who knows if the Holy Scripture is God’s Word; the Turks have their Koran and the Jews their Talmud, and who is to say which one of the three is correct.95

The only thing he could do, then, was to beseech God ‘for salvation from such a miserable state’96 – something that he had done a number of times before, but to no avail. Yet, on a Saturday evening in 1687, his entreaty finally was answered. Francke reports that, during a time of prayer, ‘[m]y doubt vanished as quickly as one turns one’s hand; I was assured in my heart of the grace of God in Christ Jesus and I knew God not only as God but as my Father.’97 Subsequent to this event, Francke’s involvement with Spener and his reform movement intensified. As Richard Gawthrop notes, ‘Spener became Francke’s spiritual mentor and began to help Francke give constructive expression to the religious energies released by his conversion.’98 Despite this relationship, however, Francke remained distinct from Spener is some crucial respects. While Spener himself had never experienced ‘a sudden, datable, and one-time conversion’99 and so was reticent to tie faith to an explicit experience of God’s favour, Francke’s 93   August Hermann Francke, Autobiography, in Peter C. Erb (ed.), Pietists: Selected Writings, p. 100. 94   Ibid., p. 103. 95   Ibid. 96   Ibid., p. 105. 97   Ibid. 98   Richard Gawthrop, Pietism and the Making of Eighteenth Century Prussia (Cambridge, 1993), p. 139. 99   Lindberg, ‘Introduction’, p. 9.

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piety centred on just this experiential foundation, which, as he saw it, emanated from the individual’s ‘Busskampf’ [‘struggle for penance’]. Hence, in practice, Francke turned the concept of Wiedergeburt on its head, accentuating its process from the human side, but understating what Spener always had deemed most important – namely, its grounding in God’s prior, mysterious and loving work in each person.100 This shift had ramifications within the sphere of sanctification. Francke realized that faith’s experiential basis could not shoulder the burden of quotidian living. Even after conversion, there would be many times that the faithful could not ‘feel’ God’s presence. Yet, in his view, such periods of abandonment ultimately would yield to further ‘Gnadenstunden’ [‘hours of grace’], if only persons would seek to act in accordance with God’s law, no matter their present feelings.101 Thus he came to develop a robust doctrine of earthly work. Inasmuch as it signifies the promise of Gnadenstunden – both those past and those to come – appropriate earthly work provides ‘empirical verification of the presence of God’s grace’.102 In other words, good deeds uphold faith amid the ineluctable vicissitudes of experience. Crucially, however, Francke uncoupled this notion from Spener’s eschatology, with its assumption that earthly improvement is, finally, dependent upon God. As a result, the Franckean stress on earthly work could not be satisfied by the relatively modest endeavours of forming collegia and cultivating genuine inwardness.103 Rather, it required a larger, more forceful articulation – an articulation it was to find in the institutional life of the state. Francke’s linking of piety with institutions [Anstalten] is most pertinent to this study. With his appointment to the newfound university at Halle in 1692 – a position he won through Spener’s blessing – Francke fashioned the area into a Pietist stronghold, setting up a number of Anstalten dedicated to both true religion and social progress. As Lindberg summarizes, ‘The growth of the Halle institutions is legendary. The “Franckean Institutions” included an orphanage, training schools for teachers and pastors, various schools for different levels and classes of students, a collegium orientale for Scripture study and translation, publishing house, science laboratory and apothecary.’104 In effect, the erection of these and other institutions signalled the arrival of Halle Pietism. Drawing on Spener’s activist spirit, but channelling it into bureaucratic structures and thereby giving it ‘greater coherence and tighter discipline’,105 Francke made this Pietist expression the most powerful social movement in eighteenth-century Germany. Its influence was particularly strong in Prussia, where those training for clerical or pedagogical positions were required to attend Halle, often alongside those seeking civil or 100

    102   103   104   105   101

Gawthrop, Pietism, p. 140. Ibid., p. 143, and Erb, ‘Introduction’, in Pietists: Selected Writings, p. 9. Gawthrop, Pietism, p. 146. Ibid., pp. 147f. Lindberg, ‘Introduction’, p. 9. Gawthrop, Pietism, p. 150.

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military service.106 That Prussia subsequently emerged as a leading European power was scarcely an accident. The Pietist emphasis on ‘dutiful conduct’ [pietas], once viewed primarily in terms of the God-relationship, was applied easily to the nation-state, supplying the values needed to animate the developing public machinery.107 Hence, when Prussia’s Frederick William I (1688–1740) assigned Halle Pietists to important posts in his government,108 he not only confirmed their alliance, but also established a precedent that was to have significant impact on the future of Pietism in Europe. In becoming the Pietism of the establishment, Halle Pietism began to draw criticism from less conformist Pietist expressions – expressions that disapproved of institutional Christianity altogether. A notable advocate for this ‘Radical Pietism’ was Gottfried Arnold (1666–1714). Like many other Radical Pietists, Arnold got his start through the larger Pietist movement. He studied Spener’s work energetically and, while living in Dresden, developed a friendship with the Pietist leader.109 Likewise, during his time in Quedlinburg, Arnold received encouragement not only from the ‘separatist-spiritualist’ court chaplain, Johann Heinrich Sprögel (1644–1722), but also from the influential philosopher, church historian and Halle Pietist, Christian Thomasius (1655–1728).110 Hence, in coming to develop a more ‘radical’ form of Pietism, Arnold was not so much breaking from figures such as Spener and Francke as teasing out the implications of their thought. In their emphasis on holiness and the theologia experimentalis, Arnold found the very key to the entire Christian tradition, so much so that, for a time at least, he saw it in stark contrast to the putatively orthodox Christianity of the establishment. Most famously, Arnold developed this claim in his Impartial History of Churches and Heretics. Published in 1699, this text maintains that the church, qua institution, has been ‘torn and separated from the beginning’.111 For one thing, Arnold notes, differences of opinion always have been manifold within the church, as various doctrinal disputes attest. Moreover, that many of these conflicts have been resolved means little, for their so-called resolutions do not signal an ecclesial consensus, but the victory of the powerful, state-supported clergy over weaker persons and/or groups, who then are deemed ‘heretics’. With this argument, Arnold called into question the veracity of the institutional church. Its legacy, he claims, is not that of the Gospel, but, rather, that of the worldly longing for power. Meanwhile, the members of the true church, the Zeugen der Wahrheit, who 106

  Lindberg, ‘Introduction’, pp. 9f.   Ibid. 108   Gawthrop, Pietism, p. 215. 109   Johannes Wallmann, Der Pietismus (Göttingen, 1990), pp. 90f. 110   Ibid., pp. 91f. As will be discussed in Chapter 3, Thomasius’s interest in Socrates also made an impact on Pietism, particularly by way of Zinzendorf and Hamann. 111   Gottfried Arnold, ‘Beschluß der Kirchen- und Ketzer Historie’, in Martin Schmidt and Wilhelm Jannasch (eds), Das Zeitalter des Pietismus (Bremen, 1965), p. 144. 107

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‘alone held themselves to [Christ] in quiet lowliness’,112 have been slandered and persecuted. For Arnold, the latter include medieval mystics such as Tauler and Thomas à Kempis, along with Lutheran successors such as Arndt.113 Thus it is not surprising that, among other endeavours, he issued and wrote a preface to a new German edition of The Imitation of Christ in December 1711.114 In its most basic form, Arnold’s critique of institutional Christianity strongly anticipated Kierkegaard’s own ‘attack upon Christendom’. And, intriguingly, Kierkegaard himself kept a copy of Impartial History in his library.115 But Arnold, it must be said, did not persist in his polemics, eventually taking a handful of posts within the established church, including an appointment as Prussia’s ‘first royal historian’.116 Hence, in the end, his position was quite close to that of the Halle Pietists: he did not want to separate from the Lutheran church, only to purify it by way of individual renewal and a stress on the ‘inner life’.117 There were, however, more thoroughgoing Radical Pietists. One of these was Arnold’s ‘radical student’, Johann Konrad Dippel (1673–1734), whose individualism was so absolute that he opposed even the formation of Pietist and separatist groups.118 Another, more important figure was Gerhard Tersteegen, a Pietist from the Reformed tradition, who, like Dippel, did not belong to any particular movement or community. Rather, he elected to work as a freestanding ‘Seelsorger’ [‘pastoral caregiver’], instructing persons through a variety of media – public talks, poetry, Erbauungsliteratur and letter writing – about the primacy of the ‘internal concentration of the soul’.119 More will be said about Tersteegen’s thought in Chapter 3, where it will be shown that he had significant influence on Kierkegaard. For now, however, it is sufficient to note that Tersteegen’s brand of Pietism was, in many respects, an amalgamation of a number of mystical approaches to the Christian life, including Eckhart and Tauler’s mysticism of Gelassenheit [‘releasement’], the Quietist spirituality of Jeanne-Marie Bouvier de la Motte-Guyon (1648–1717) and the Christ-centred piety of Thomas à Kempis.120 And, as with other persons examined thus far, he reflected those interests not only in his own writings, but also in his editorial activity. For example, in 1727, he issued a new edition of The Imitation of Christ and, later on, he published and introduced a collection of Tauler’s sayings entitled A Small String of Pearls. 112

  Ibid., p. 145.   Erb, Pietists, Protestants, and Mysticism, pp. 81, 148. 114   Ibid., p. 148. 115   Marie Thulstrup, Kierkegaard og Pietismen (Copenhagen, 1967), p. 29. 116   Peter Erb, ‘Gottfried Arnold (1666–1714)’, in Carter Lindberg (ed.), The Pietist Theologians (Oxford, 2005), p. 184. 117   Erb, Pietists, Protestants, and Mysticism, pp. 120f. 118   Wallmann, Der Pietismus, p. 98. 119   Ibid., 33. 120   Hansgünter Ludewig, ‘Gerhard Tersteegen (1697–1769)’, in Carter Lindberg (ed.), The Pietist Theologians, pp. 191, 195, 204. 113

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Yet, if Tersteegen represents a particular separatist tendency in Pietism, the efforts of Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf represent a somewhat different trajectory. Each of these men moved Pietism beyond the pale of the establishment and so, to some degree, presented a challenge to Halle. The difference is that, while Tersteegen promoted a mystical, internally directed Pietism, Zinzendorf’s ‘Moravian Pietism’ had a marked communal orientation,121 thereby making it a palpable social force in Germany, England, America and, as has been noted, Denmark. Before concluding this selective history, then, an exposition of Moravian Pietism is in order.

Moravian Pietism It has been observed that, with Spener, the edificatory focus of Arndtian piety was developed into a programme whereby it might come to serve the regeneration of German society. However, it also has been pointed out that Spener’s Pietist vision did not take long to fragment, particularly over the question of how it was to be implemented in the socio-ecclesial milieu of the day. Whereas Halle Pietists favoured cooperation with the establishment, Radical Pietists tended to repudiate that strategy. As will be detailed below, what is salient about Moravian Pietism is that it did not fit in seamlessly with either of these camps, but, instead, attempted to hold the poles of collaboration and separation in tension. In part, the ‘separatist’ side of Moravian Pietism can be traced back to its unique roots. The Moravians originally were followers of the Czech reformer Jan Hus (1369–1415), but, in the aftermath of Hus’s execution by Catholic authorities, they scattered into the rural villages of Bohemia and Moravia, identifying themselves as the ‘brethren’ according to their specific location (‘Moravian Brethren’), and as the ‘unity’ according to their common fellowship (‘Unity of Brethren’ or Unitas Fratrum).122 Although persecuted from the beginning, it was the Battle of White Mountain (1620) that nearly led to the obliteration of the Unitas Fratrum. In the battle’s wake, a ‘governing Catholic absolutism’ was established in Czech lands, resulting in a ‘deliberate extermination of all Protestants’.123 This effort came to a head in 1627, when Emperor Ferdinand II issued a ‘Renewed Constitution’, requiring his subjects to confess Catholicism or else be prosecuted as enemies of the state.124 In turn, many of the Brethren emigrated to places such as Poland and Hungary, while others were forced to stay behind and exercise their faith in 121

  Wallmann, Der Pietismus, p. 33.   Andrew Burgess, ‘Kierkegaard, Brorson, and Moravian Music’, in Robert L. Perkins (ed.), Practice in Christianity (Macon, Georgia, 2004), p. 220. 123   Adolf Vacovský, ‘History of the “Hidden Seed” (1620–1722)’, in Mari P. Van Buijtenen, C. Dekker and H. Leeuwenberg (eds), Unitas Fratrum: Herrnhuter Studien (Utrecht, 1975), p. 35. 124   Ibid., p. 36. 122

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secret.125 Thus the Unitas Fratrum was disjointed even further – a trend that did not cease for almost another century.126 Indeed, it was in 1722 that a young Saxon Pietist and landowner, Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, agreed to provide sanctuary for a group of Moravian refugees, inviting them to settle on his estate in Berthelsdorf. Two years later, five more émigrés arrived – a trio of David Nitschmanns, Melchior Zeisberger and Jan Telčik – who saw the new settlement, known as Herrnhut [‘Lord’s Watch’], as an opportunity to renew the Unitas Fratrum.127 And so the community began to grow, drawing, over a period of about 20 years, more and more refugees who wanted ‘to worship according to their old Brethren rules and regulations’.128 That is not to suggest, however, that Herrnhut’s establishment proceeded smoothly. Zinzendorf’s very involvement in the community was precipitated by the number of problems facing Herrnhut. A legal advisor to the Saxon government in Dresden, Zinzendorf had wished to devote himself to some kind of Christian service from an early age. Consequently, when it became clear that Herrnhut was not only sparking the ire of parish clergy, neighbouring landowners and nearby nation-states, but also being wrecked by internal disputes regarding the confessional and liturgical character of the new settlement, Zinzendorf intervened, acting politically as an advocate for the Herrnhuters and pastorally as a moderator of their disagreements.129 So taxing was this work that, in 1727, he took leave of his office in Dresden and began to reside permanently in Herrnhut.130 His efforts were not to go unrewarded. On 13 August 1727, while celebrating the Eucharist in Berthelsdorf, the people of Herrnhut had what has been described as a ‘Pentecostal experience’ – a shared ‘sense of the presence of the Holy Spirit’, which did not eradicate all of Herrnhut’s internal difficulties, but, nevertheless, gave the community ‘momentum to handle its problems in stride’.131 Accordingly, in the same year, a ‘Brotherly Union and Agreement’ was ratified by Herrnhut’s members. This pact demanded that each inhabitant of Herrnhut was to ‘follow daily more after holiness, to grow in the likeness of his Lord … to walk as Jesus

125

  Ibid., pp. 36–41.   For more on this period of the Brethren’s life, cf. ibid., pp. 41–51. 127   Ibid., p. 51. 128   Ibid., p. 52. 129   John R. Weinlick, Count Zinzendorf: The Story of His Life and Leadership in the Renewed Moravian Church (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 2001), pp. 69–73. 130   Ibid., p. 74. It was also during this period that Zinzendorf worked on his Socratic pamphlets, later collected as Der Deutsche Socrates. Together with persons such as Thomasius and Hamann, he made Socrates an important figure in Pietism’s engagement with the Aufklärung. Chapter 3 will return to this issue in more detail. 131   Weinlick, Count Zinzendorf, pp. 77f. Also see Andrew Davies, ‘The Moravian Revival of 1727 and Some of Its Consequences’, in The Annual Lecture of the Evangelical Library, London (Rushden, 1977), pp. 4f. 126

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did, and to bear his reproach and shame’.132 Indeed, a return to the example of Jesus, the apostles and the early church pervades the document. Article 15 states that the Brethren are to follow the ‘practice of the primitive church’,133 a point that Article 42 spells out even more vividly: ‘Should we be called to suffer persecutions, everyone should consider them precious and most useful exercises; love those that persecute us, treat them respectfully, answer their questions with modesty and simplicity, and cheerfully submit to what may befall us, according to the confession we make before God and man.’134 The idea that Herrnhut was a fellowship subject to the will of God came to permeate even ordinary life in the colony. Following Zinzendorf’s robust Wirtschaftethik [‘ethic of industry’], grounded in his maxim that ‘we do our work for [Christ]’,135 Herrnhut developed into an industrious and prosperous community. Nonetheless, its members agreed to eschew practices associated with open markets, prohibiting competitive trade and ensuring good work and fair wages for all.136 Furthermore, any economic dispute arising within Herrnhut was to be settled within Herrnhut itself, since reliance on external, secular intervention was deemed contrary to Christian Gemeinschaft – a point that is indicative of the theocratic leanings of Moravian Pietism. Dietrich Meyer explains that, for Zinzendorf, ‘Moravian congregations, while still subject to their local secular governments, formed societies under the direct leadership and administration of Christ, not unlike the People of Israel when they were led by God into Canaan.’137 Thus Christ was the Brethren’s ‘Chief Elder’, who, quite literally, presided over ‘closed settlement congregations’ such as Herrnhut.138 In practice, this seemingly puzzling view was worked out rather simply. Decisions among Moravians were determined in one of two ways: either ‘by a clear word of Jesus in the Bible’ or, failing that, by the lot, which was said to reveal Christ’s will.139 Neither the laws of state nor a majority vote were taken into consideration. According to the 1764 document On Theocracy, this break 132

  Zinzendorf, ‘Brotherly Union and Agreement at Herrnhut’, in Peter C. Erb (ed.), Pietists: Selected Writings, pp. 325f. 133   Ibid, p. 328. 134   Ibid, p. 330. 135   Qtd. in Guntram Philipp, ‘Wirtschaftethik und Wirtschaftpraxis in der Geschichte der Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine’, in Mari P. Van Buijtenen, C. Dekker and H. Leeuwenberg (eds), Unitas Fratrum: Herrnhuter Studien (Utrecht, 1975), p. 405. 136   A.J. Lewis, Zinzendorf the Ecumenical Pioneer: A Study in the Moravian Contribution to Christian Mission and Unity (London, 1962), pp. 76f. 137   Dietrich Meyer, ‘The Moravian Church as a Theocracy: The Resolution of the Synod of 1764’, in Craig Atwood and Peter Vogt (eds), The Distinctiveness of Moravian Culture: Essays and Documents in Moravian History in Honor of Vernon H. Nelson on his Seventieth Birthday (Nazareth, Pennsylvania, 2003), p. 255. 138   Ibid., p. 256. 139   Qtd. ibid., p. 257.

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from secular life ensured that submission to Christ would remain at the heart of the community: This form of theocracy has nothing that could irritate the rulers on earth. He, who Himself became submissive and was crucified in shame, is our Head, and we are in His Kingdom. Yet, this kingdom is a kingdom of the cross, whose principles are based on submissiveness. But that we should act contrary to the mind of our Lord, from this may He preserve us.140

Hence, as Christ lived, so did the Herrnhuters aim to live – namely, as a fellowship sub cruce, desiring only to do the will of God. So, despite its rancorous beginning, Herrnhut metamorphosed into a community that sought to realize the more radical teachings of the New Testament message – a goal that many observers regarded with hostility. Tracts opposing Herrnhut’s separatist tendencies soon appeared, and, on occasion, Herrnhuters were imprisoned while travelling in adjacent areas.141 That some of their harshest critics came from Halle only aggravated the situation, so much so that, in 1731, Zinzendorf temporarily considered dissolving the community. Ultimately, however, he refused to do so, concluding that Herrnhut was meant to fulfil a ‘special mission’.142 This was not the first time Zinzendorf came into conflict with Halle, nor would it be the last – points that indicate the underlying irony of his endeavours. After all, Zinzendorf was a nobleman. His father, Georg Ludwig, was a Minister of State in Saxony and a friend of Spener. Moreover, his grandmother and caretaker, Baroness Henrietta Catherine von Gersdorf (1648–1726), was a poet, independent biblical scholar and close companion of many ‘eminent Pietists’, including Spener, Francke and Paul Anton (1661–1730) of Halle.143 Furthermore, at the age of ten, Zinzendorf was sent to Halle, where he spent six years at Francke’s Paedagogium and was drilled further in Halle thinking. Hence, due to his background, Zinzendorf was an ideal candidate for the establishment-friendly Halle Pietism. And yet, even as a youth, he was not entirely comfortable with the Hallensian approach to Christian piety. For one thing, he struggled to comprehend Francke’s insistence that true piety must issue from a Busskampf. As he put it, ‘I can say with truth that my heart was religiously inclined as far back as I can recollect.’144 Equally important – and following on from the previous point – was the fact that Zinzendorf was uncomfortable with Halle’s prioritization of anthropology before Christology. Indeed, for Zinzendorf, Luther properly identified Creutzes-Theologie as the backbone of Christian life, since it was on the cross that Christ, qua Atoner, 140

    142   143   pp. 14f. 144   141

Qtd. ibid., p. 258. Weinlick, Count Zinzendorf, p. 107. Ibid., pp. 107f. Lewis, Zinzendorf the Ecumenical Pioneer, p. 21, and Weinlick, Count Zinzendorf, Qtd. in Weinlick, Count Zinzendorf, p. 19.

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definitively bridged the otherwise infinite gap between God and humanity.145 Yet, as a Pietist, Zinzendorf was not content merely to underline the ‘objectivity’ of this dogmatic principle. Rather, he sought to put it in service to faith’s experiential element. Thus he developed his notion of Herzensreligion [‘religion of the heart’]. As he explains it, das Herz is the ‘department of our spiritual life, the seat of all our powers of soul and feeling’146 and, therefore, the place where one is able to experience genuine faith in Christ’s salvific act. Consequently, one must avoid treating Christian theology in intellectual fashion, for, as the ‘highest form’ of Herzensreligion, Christianity ultimately ‘has nothing to do with reason’.147 On the contrary, the goal of the Christian speaker or teacher is to bring the crucified Christ before the ‘eyes of the heart’, whereby the heart, in a mysterious ‘inward vision’, might come to love him in faith.148 When this happens, the faithful person ‘remains in [Christ] eternally, without interruption, through all eons’,149 and, for that reason, is now able to live ethically, to grow in Christlikeness. As Zinzendorf puts it, ‘Now there is no need to preach one point of morality after the other at a person … . For every loving look from the Saviour indicates our morality to us throughout our whole life …’.150 On the whole, then, Zinzendorf’s piety represents a return to the Arndtian basis of Pietism. It does have its share of eccentricities, which came to the fore during the Sichtungszeit [‘Time of Sifting’] – the period between 1743 and 1750 when Moravian life exhibited a ‘morbid concentration and wordplay upon the blood and wounds of the crucified Christ’.151 Nonetheless, if one puts aside the extravagance   Peter Vogt, ‘Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700–1760)’, in Carter Lindberg (ed.), The Pietist Theologians, p. 211. 146   Qtd. in Hans-Christoph Hahn, ‘Theologie, Apostolat und Spiritualität der Evangelischen’, in Mari P. Van Buijtenen, C. Dekker and H. Leeuwenberg (eds), Unitas Fratrum: Herrnhuter Studien (Utrecht, 1975), p. 293. 147   Gösta Hök, Zinzendorfs Begriff der Religion (Uppsala, 1948), pp. 104f., 109. Hök seems to be overstressing this point – see, for example, Chapter 3’s discussion of Zinzendorf’s Der Deutsche Socrates and the role it gives philosophy in the life of faith – but it is nevertheless true that Zinzendorf wanted to protect the revealed character of Christianity. 148   Vogt, ‘Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf’ (1700–1760)’, pp. 212f. 149   Zinzendorf, ‘From Nine Public Lectures’, in Peter C. Erb (ed.), Pietists: Selected Writings, p. 320. 150   Ibid., p. 321. 151   Weinlick, Count Zinzendorf, p. 198. Scholars remain divided as to the significance of this period. Some interpret it as an overwrought, even ‘baroque’ reaction to Hallensian legalism or Enlightenment rationalism, which nevertheless has its roots in earlier Pietist and/or Spiritualist sources [ibid., pp. 202f., and Franz-Heinrich Philipp, ‘Zinzendorf und die Christusmystik des Frühen 18. Jahrhunderts’, in Gerhard Müller and Winfried Zeller (eds), Glaube Geist Geschichte: Festschrift für Ernst Benz zum 60. Geburtstage am 17. November 1967 (Leiden, 1967), pp. 340–42]. Others, meanwhile, view it as a heterodox move from Christianity to ‘Jesuanity’ [Louis Bouyer, Orthodox Spirituality and Protestant 145

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of Zinzendorf’s Christological language, it is clear that he was trying to recapture Arndt’s insistence on the person’s joyful recognition of Christ’s redemptive work, and on how that recognition draws the person into an ever deeper relationship with Christ, whereby he or she comes to live as Christ lived. Moreover, in accentuating this sort of Pietist vision, Zinzendorf tended to moderate Halle’s rigid and sombre understanding of conversion, as well as its effort to identify Pietism with established Anstalten. This overall tendency can be illustrated further. Already it has been pointed out that Herrnhut was patterned explicitly after the early church – a move that elicited charges of separatism from Halle Pietists. In addition, Zinzendorf’s own interest in Erbauungsliteratur suggests a more ‘classical’ Pietist orientation, which goes beyond the range of Halle. For instance, while visiting in Paris during his Wanderjahr of 1719–20, Zinzendorf befriended the Jansenist prelate, Cardinal Louis-Antoine de Noailles (1651–1729), with whom he maintained correspondence until Noailles’s death.152 As a gesture of friendship, Zinzendorf, in 1723, had two editions of Arndt’s True Christianity published in French as Quatre Livres du Vrai Christianisme, followed by a third edition, issued in 1725, that also was dedicated to Cardinal Noailles. To this latter version Zinzendorf himself penned a dedication, which is an attempt to situate interdenominational unity in the Christian life or, more specifically, in the earthly example of Jesus Christ. As Zinzendorf points out, that a ‘saintly and Christian life’ is esteemed by all Christians is implied in the fact that devotional literature spans confessional divides. Many Lutherans, he notes, consider Catholics their ‘adversaries’, but they nevertheless read works by Catholic authors, such as ‘the beautiful treatise of The Imitation of Jesus Christ, the sermons of Tauler, [and] the thoughts of M. Pascal’.153 With the French publication of True Christianity, Zinzendorf was presumably hoping to return the favour. Here Zinzendorf’s reference to Thomas à Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ and the sermons of Tauler – writings that, in the context of Lutheranism, were popularized above all by Arndt – flags an affinity that he was to revisit in another essay, ‘Brief Principles of the Theologia Mysticae’. In this piece, Zinzendorf advocates for a characteristically Pietist understanding of ‘mystical theology’. He roots the spiritual life in ‘faith and humility’, for, in his view, illumination [Erleuchtung] is not a product of mystical achievement, but of heartfelt belief.154 In order to buttress this point, he also appeals to the principal early sources of Pietist spirituality:

and Anglican Spirituality (London, 1968), pp. 182f.] or perhaps as a sign of Zinzendorf’s psychological fragility [see Weinlick, Count Zinzendorf, p. 203]. 152   Weinlick, Count Zinzendorf, p. 45. 153   Zinzendorf, ‘Dedicace’, in Quatre Livres du Vray Christianisme de J.A. (Paris, 1725), pp. 5f. 154   Zinzendorf, ‘Kurtze Sätze der Theologia Mysticae’, in Freywillige Nachlese (Kleine Schriften) (Hildesheim, 1972), pp. 833f.

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In this [understanding of mystical theology] Luther has led the way with his example, in that he diligently read and made good use of the writings of Tauler, the excellent mystic; as well as the so-called deutsche Theologie, which itself supports just this doctrine, adorned [by Luther] with a beautiful foreword, [wherein he] recommended it to the Christian as a little book of the highest necessity for the promotion of the spiritual life. The same is … laudably imitated by Johann Arndt, whose chief object in his writings has been to detach persons from the world, and to instruct them for union with God … .155

Remarks such as these do not fix an absolute wedge between Zinzendorf and Halle. But if, as Peter Erb notes, the Pietist attraction to the via mystica began to wane with Spener and especially with Francke,156 it appears that Zinzendorf, in contrast, was interested in reviving it157 – an interest that, as will be discussed in Chapter 2, can be detected in the Moravians, including those from Copenhagen. Nevertheless, perhaps the key point of divergence between the two expressions lies with Zinzendorf’s ecclesiology. Whereas Halle wanted to locate Pietism within the confines of the state church – and so endeavoured to inculcate Pietist sensibilities in persons associated with the establishment, particularly in and through the clergy – Zinzendorf’s ecclesial approach was more nuanced, neither explicitly established nor explicitly separatist. As usual, Zinzendorf began with the crucified Christ, with the ‘unchanging source and preserver of all true unity among men’.158 Then, presupposing Christ’s prevenient achievement of Christian concord, he endeavoured to outline a church model that would make sense of ecclesial differences, even as it simultaneously underlined the deeper union shared by all Christians. Thus he divided church communion into three levels. The first, Kirche, resembles the civitas dei of Augustine of Hippo (354– 430): it is the ‘invisible communion of all true believers … the heavenly church triumphant and the earthly church militant’.159 The second level, Religionen, is 155

  Ibid., pp. 802f.   Erb, Pietists, Protestants, and Mysticism, p. 77. 157   Later in life – in the wake of the Sichtungszeit – Zinzendorf grew critical of Arndt’s ‘method’. In strict Lutheran fashion, he argued that Arndt should have focussed more on ‘Christ’s blood and righteousness’ than on human ‘self-righteousness’ [quoted in Hans Schneider, Der fremde Arndt: Studien zu Leben, Werk and Wirkung Johann Arndts (1555–1621) (Göttingen, 2006), p. 78]. This critique harks back to Luther. The issue has to do with the degree to which imitatio Christi indicates the existential ideal toward which all persons are to progress in cooperation with grace (as in Catholicism and in many Pietists) or a hidden, even unconscious fruit of faith (Luther). Kierkegaard ultimately sides with the former. See Chapter 6. 158   Lewis, Zinzendorf the Ecumenical Pioneer, p. 66. 159   Vogt, ‘Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700–1760)’, p. 215. 156

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more historically determined, referring to the ‘visible institutional churches’,160 which are imperfect but nonetheless contributory ‘to the whole Body of Christ in setting forth the full glory and mission of the Lamb’.161 The final level is Gemeine, which is the ‘spiritual brotherhood of all true believers across all confessional and denominational lines’.162 Gemeine, however, is more than a ‘spiritual’ construct, since, for Zinzendorf, it is embodied whenever and wherever ‘true believers unite in fellowship’.163 He considered Herrnhuters just such an embodiment, and, for that reason, they also were referred to as the Brüdergemeine [‘Brethren in Common’]. In this understanding of ecclesial relations, Zinzendorf exhibited a pronounced ecumenical focus – one of his most abiding characteristics, dating back to his teenage years, when he penned a pair of tracts, ‘The Quarrelsomeness of Learned Men’ and Various Thoughts on Peace to the Quarrelling Lutheran Churches.164 Indeed, he cared little for the doctrinal and methodological disputes that continued to vex Christianity, but preferred to see each approach to these matters as a ‘“school of wisdom” with its own particular “Jewel” of truth, ritual, or order, to contribute to the whole Body of Christ’.165 In his view, then, the development of particular confessions or dogmatic principles need not be understood as salvos fired off by one group against another, but, rather, as gifts enabling the entire Kirche to flourish. With that said, however, it should be added that Zinzendorf’s ecumenism assumed the ultimate subordination of theory to practice. For him, the essence of Christianity was the interpersonal unity won by the slaughtered yet triumphant Lamb of God, Jesus Christ. Hence, while other doctrinal details are of worth, adherence to them does not make one a Christian.166 Only the person who loves Christ crucified and, in turn, his or her neighbour may lay claim to that title. Thus Zinzendorf downplayed much of Christianity’s propositional content in favour of a rigorous existential ethic. For him, love of Christ and neighbour meant that nothing could prevent true Christians from living together in unanimity – a condition that, in turn, was intended to expose those who were Christianity’s real adversaries: nominal Christians. In Zinzendorf’s view, the myth of a tacitly Christian world had enervated Christianity, allowing people who were not true Christians to determine the fate of the church. As A.J. Lewis writes, ‘The greatest barrier to Christian unity [for Zinzendorf] was not the division into the different denominations, but the anomalous mixture and the lack of demarcation between the true children of God (“wrapt in the Saviour”) and the nominal Christians within the denominations 160

    162   163   164   165   166   161

Ibid. Lewis, Zinzendorf the Ecumenical Pioneer, p. 139. Vogt, ‘Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700–1760)’, p. 216. Ibid. Weinlick, Count Zinzendorf, pp. 39f. Lewis, Zinzendorf the Ecumenical Pioneer, p. 139. Ibid, p. 107.

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themselves.’167 As Zinzendorf himself puts it, it is the nominal Christians who ‘perform the outward ceremonies and duties of religion, but in reality deny the truth of it, or betray their infidelity by their life and conversation’.168 With this in mind, he devised a task for Moravian Pietism – to make visible the unity already present in the church. As Lewis clarifies: It was the ecumenical task to manifest more clearly the true nature of the Church of Christ by bringing together in some ‘field of encounter’ those ‘christed souls’, within and outside the denominations, who are already at one with Christ and with one another in the ‘unity of His wounds’ and in the Invisible Church.169

This manifestation of authentic Christian unity also involved an important corollary, namely, that the church’s nominal members either would be converted or driven away. In this expectation, one can detect more than a little of Spener’s postmillennial eschatology, with its assumption that, independently of state power, the edificatory efforts of collegia pietatis promised renewal in and through Christ – a further example of Zinzendorf’s reclamation of pre-Hallensian Pietism. In order to promote this vision, the Moravian Diaspora was created. Leaving from Herrnhut, Moravians scattered across Europe, establishing networks of assemblies and bands that were to encourage Christian discipleship.170 These representatives of the Diaspora were not to be considered evangelists, since their province was Christendom, nor clergy, since clergymen already served the areas in which they worked. Rather, they were simply called ‘itinerant messengers’,171 a title that befitted their lack of authority.172 In this way, according to Zinzendorf, the Diaspora consummated the Moravians’ ‘self-denying task of being a servant to all the Churches’.173 With time, the work of itinerant messengers led to the development of Moravian settlements throughout Europe. Fashioned after Herrnhut, these communities were considered ‘citadels of training’,174 wherein, among other things, members received the coaching necessary to serve the cause of the Diaspora. Part of that training, not incidentally, involved coming to accept the fact that working on behalf of the Diaspora might result in imprisonment or even death – a possibility 167

  Ibid, p. 105.   Qtd. ibid. It is worth adding that Lewis, who does not otherwise refer to Kierkegaard in his book, claims that Zinzendorf, in ‘attacking’ nominal Christianity, augured Kierkegaard’s attack on Christendom. See ibid., p. 119. 169   Ibid, p. 108. 170   Ibid, p. 119. 171   Ibid, p. 120. 172   This is another intriguing point of contact between the Moravians and Kierkegaard, insofar as the latter reminded his readers again and again that he was ‘without authority’. 173   Lewis, Zinzendorf the Ecumenical Pioneer, p. 119. 174   Ibid, p. 132. 168

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that was certainly true of overseas missions, which were often perilous, but also true of work in Europe. One renowned story among the Moravians was that of Melchior Nitschmann and Georg Schmidt, who, in 1728, were captured by Catholic authorities in Lititz, Bohemia.175 Both were imprisoned, and Nitschmann eventually died in jail. His body, moreover, was buried in a cemetery set aside for heretics and convicts. Though a dramatic story, it is nonetheless indicative of the general distrust of Moravians in many countries, including eighteenth-century Denmark. As will be detailed in the next chapter, the Moravian Diaspora quickly pushed northward and came to Denmark, where it did not fail to make an impression. It could be said, in fact, that the destiny of Danish Moravianism sums up the peculiar course the movement had set for itself. Accused of separatism by many in the establishment, who viewed the Hallensian programme in favourable contrast, it also was welcomed by laypersons – especially those of peasant or ‘working-class’ backgrounds – and a number of sympathetic clergy, who understood the Diaspora’s edificatory aims as basically consonant with those of Halle. This mixed reception mirrored the existing tension between the Pietist schools of Halle and Herrnhut. Each side agreed that socio-ecclesial change was needed, but could not reach a precise agreement as to how that change was to be effected. Was it to be through the establishment or apart from the establishment? For Zinzendorf, Pietism’s attempt to foster holiness would be served best by persons absolutely committed to that end – persons set apart for the sake of the larger church and society. In this sense, as Peter Zimmerling notes, the Moravian Pietists were very much like the monastics of the Middle Ages: both were ‘revivalist movements’ that sought to get ‘the established church into motion’.176 Indeed, even after the clerical orders of the Unitas Fratrum were resumed in 1735, Zinzendorf continued to see the Moravians as a people dedicated to promoting holiness within the Catholic Church.177 Thus the Renewed Moravian Church never really strayed from its roots in Pietism.

Conclusion Though one of Pietism’s last great expressions, the Moravians did not signal the end of Pietism’s influence in Europe. The movement was to have an impact on a number of thinkers who prominently factor into the West’s intellectual history, particularly in German philosophy and in Romanticism. Important precursors of and contributors to the Enlightenment had connections to Pietism, whether through institutions such as Halle or through Pietist friends and family members. In this 175

  Ibid, pp. 120f.   Peter Zimmerling, Nachfolge lernen: Zinzendorf und das Leben der Brüdergemeine (Moers, 1990), p. 21. This point will be revisited in the Conclusion of this book, particularly as regards Kierkegaard’s own relation to the church. 177   Lewis, Zinzendorf the Ecumenical Pioneer, p. 141. 176

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category belong Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), Christian Thomasius, Johann Franz Budde (1667–1729), Joachim Lange (1670–1744),178 Christian Wolff (1679–1754) and Immanuel Kant (1724–1804).179 More typical, however, were Pietism’s links to the so-called ‘Counter-Enlightenment’, which, in the late eighteenth century, came to overlap with Romanticism. Figures such as Zinzendorf, Johann Georg Hamann (1730–88), Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743–1819), Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803), Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (1768– 1834)180 and Friedrich von Hardenberg (1772–1801), better known as Novalis, are representative of this connection. This study will return to a few of these thinkers later. Kierkegaard’s relation to Hamann will merit specific attention, while Zinzendorf, Thomasius, Novalis and Kant will turn up in smaller roles. However, the larger point here is that Pietism’s effect in European life goes beyond its appropriation of medieval mysticism and its role in Protestant Church life. Karl Barth argues that Pietism had an intricate relation to the eighteenth century’s ‘enlightened’ rationalism. The former’s attempt to get at the ‘core’ of Christian doctrine precipitated the latter’s search for a moralistic faith that was not ‘identical with Christian dogma’.181 Likewise, the Pietist stress on individual ‘appropriation of Christianity’ prepared the way ‘not only for the idea of tolerance, but positively, for the ideal of religious freedom’.182 And yet, says Barth, Pietism kept Christianity from collapsing willy-nilly into the Enlightenment. Pietism was ‘like Noah’s ark, in which the doctrine of justification through faith alone was able to be saved from … rational Pelagianism’.183 It made visible the ‘the problem of theology’, ‘warning against

178   For more on Thomasius, Budde and Lange, see Walter Sparn, ‘Philosophie’, in Hartmut Lehmann (ed.), Glaubenswelt und Lebenswelten (Göttingen, 2004), pp. 234–41. 179   That Kant came from a Pietist background has been seen as an influence on his thinking. However, Manfred Kuehn’s recent biography maintains that Kant broke decisively from Pietism. Kant’s opposition to Hamann’s ‘evangelical’ turn would seem to confirm Kuehn’s thesis. See Manfred Kuehn, Kant: A Biography (Cambridge, 2001), especially Chapters 1 and 2, pp. 24ff. Also see Chapter 3 of this study. 180   Famously, Schleiermacher left little doubt as to Moravian Pietism’s influence on his life and thought. As he wrote in 1802, ‘I may say, that after all that I have passed through, I have become a Herrnhuter again, only of a higher order’ [Friedrich Schleiermacher, Aus Schleiermacher’s Leben. In Briefen, eds Ludwig Jonas and Wilhelm Dilthey (vol. 1, Berlin: 1860), pp. 294f., emphasis added]. This last phrase receives almost obligatory mention in any introduction to Schleiermacher’s thought, suggesting, among other things, that he saw himself as a more refined, but no less authentic, adherent to Moravian ideas. Whether or not this is an accurate self-assessment is another question. 181   Karl Barth, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century: Its Background and History (London, 1972), pp. 104, 111. 182   Ibid., pp. 114, 117. 183   Ibid., pp. 133f.

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the conception that this century was only a saeculum obscurum, and did not have its own immediacy to God’.184 Walter Sparn also claims that Pietism made a number contributions to modern Western thinking. Like Barth, he sees Pietism as a key participant in the eighteenthcentury ‘anthropological turn’, particularly over the questions of the mind–body relationship and of reason’s epistemological limits. Here Kant’s ‘Copernican revolution’ and Hamann’s Socratic response loom large.185 Also decisive is Pietism’s involvement in the field of hermeneutics. Seventeenth-century Halle was at the forefront of historical-critical analyses of the Bible,186 but, through persons such as Johann Gottlieb Töllner (1724–74), Pietism’s hermeneutical interest shifted from the history of texts to the history of interpretation – an approach handed down to Herder and Schleiermacher and, subsequently, to Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911) and Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002).187 Also notable for Sparn are Pietist theosophy and its influence on German idealism,188 as well as Pietism’s understanding of philosophy as the handmaid of theology [ancilla theologiae].189 This latter view gained prominence among Pietists as the eighteenth century passed, finding expression in the writings of Zinzendorf, Hamann and Jacobi.190 It is for this reason that, in a recent essay, John Milbank champions the ‘radical pietists’, whose theological critique of philosophy is more resistant to modern nihilism than Barth’s neo-orthodoxy.191 This last point marks the close of this chapter, the primary goals of which now have been met. A working understanding of ‘Pietism’ has been established, and a pertinent, if selective, history of the movement has been tendered. It should be clear that Pietism emerged out of the post-Reformation context, gaining decisive impetus from the editorial and literary efforts of Johann Arndt. Moreover, Arndt’s influence on a number of Pietists and Pietist expressions should be plain as well. In this connection, particular attention has been allocated to Philipp Jakob Spener, as well as to the two most significant expressions emanating from his ecclesial programme – Halle Pietism and Moravian Pietism. As has been shown, these two expressions were not in direct opposition to each other, but, nevertheless, approached their Pietistic aims in diverse fashion.

184

  Ibid., p. 134.   Sparn, ‘Philosophie’, pp. 251f. 186   Ibid., p. 253. 187   Ibid., p. 255. 188   Ibid., pp. 255f. 189   Ibid., p. 249. 190   Chapter 3 will treat Zinzendorf’s and Hamann’s Socratic critiques of philosophy. 191   John Milbank, ‘Knowledge: The Theological Critique of Philosophy in Hamann and Jacobi’, in John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock and Graham Ward (eds), Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology (London, 1999), pp. 22f. Milbank also considers Kierkegaard a ‘radical pietist’ (ibid., p. 22). 185

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With those points determined, it is time to move forward and to survey the role of Pietism in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Denmark – a role that largely was assumed by representatives of Halle and Herrnhut alike. Their interaction was to make Pietism a notable church and social force in Denmark, where, eventually, it came to bear on the life of Søren Kierkegaard.

Chapter 2

Pietism in the Danish Context: From Its Beginning to the Family Kierkegaard

Church Life in Denmark Before Pietism If the objective of Chapter 1 was to provide an overview of the Pietist movement, the objective of this chapter is to situate Pietism in the context of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Denmark and, more particularly, to show its impact on Søren Kierkegaard and his family. In order to meet this aim, a number of interlinking topics need to be reviewed, for example, the state of the Danish church during the period in question, its relationship with the Pietist movement and how that relationship came to bear on the Kierkegaard family, whether directly or indirectly. By the end of the chapter, it should be clear that Søren Kierkegaard had substantive personal connections to Pietism, not only in terms of its role in Danish society, but also – or even especially – in terms of its importance within his family. Moreover, in reaching this conclusion, the stage will be set for the remainder of this study, providing an historical backdrop, as it were, for its literary and conceptual considerations. At the outset, it is worth noting that Pietism arrived in Denmark rather late, not making its presence felt until the latter half of the seventeenth century, and even then only ‘sporadically’. By the turn of the eighteenth century, however, Pietist activity in the kingdom began to increase, particularly among laypersons. Yet, before examining this Pietist activity in further detail, an important question should be dealt with first: what sort of ecclesial context did Pietism encounter upon its arrival in Denmark? The answer to this enquiry must account for the Danish church’s intimate relationship with the state – a relationship that dates back to October 1536, when the Danish Crown formally sided with Luther’s Reformation. At that time, the state took control of the church, and, over the ensuing decades, it worked to establish ecclesial uniformity, sponsoring new, normalizing hymnals in 1544 and    J. Oskar Andersen, Survey of the History of the Church in Denmark (Copenhagen, 1930), p. 32.    Ibid., pp. 32f., and Bruce Kirmmse, Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark (Bloomington, Indiana, 1990), p. 30.    Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaard and the Church in Denmark (Copenhagen, 1984), p. 12.

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1569, as well as a Danish translation of the Bible in 1550. Furthermore, in 1569, a law was passed declaring that all foreigners living in Denmark had to endorse Lutheran doctrine. With time, this tendency toward uniformity found expression in a vigorous Lutheran orthodoxy. Thus theologians such as Hans Poulsen Resen (1561–1638) and Jesper Rasmussen Brochmand (1585–1652) composed great dogmatic treatises – most notably, Brochmand’s 1633 work, Universae theologiae systema – and positioned the Augsburg confession at the centre of the church’s life. Manifestations of piety did not vanish entirely during this period: the bishop, Jens Dinesen Jersin (1588–1634), issued some influential edifying writings. However, they were bound to the orthodox ecclesial establishment and so should not be confused with Pietism per se. In the latter half of the seventeenth century, the Danish church’s identification with the state on one hand, and orthodox Lutheranism on the other, was to be intensified. An ‘increasing discontent with the privileges and autonomy of the nobility’ encouraged the Danish parliament [Rigsdag] to grant hereditary rights and absolute authority to the monarchy. This move led to the adoption of the Royal Law [Lex regia] of 1665, which gave the state even more power vis-à-vis the church. In fact, as Niels Thulstrup explains, this statute effectively made the church an arm of the king’s authority: [According to the Lex regia] the king is above all human law and is answerable only to God. The posterity of the king for the next thousand generations are to worship God on the lines of indicated by the Confession of Augsburg, and with the further commission to keep the inhabitants of the land in their pursuit of the pure and unadulterated Christian faith and to ensure that royal power will be employed to defend against all heretics, enthusiasts, and blasphemers. The king is the ultimate authority over the clergy, and accordingly has the right to determine all ecclesiastical ceremonial and worship.

The establishment of the Lex regia received reinforcement throughout the remainder of the seventeenth century. These later legislative additions – the Danish Law (1683), the Ritual (1685) and the new hymnbook (1699) – illustrate more explicitly the relation between Enevælde [‘absolute monarchy’] and ecclesial orthodoxy. For instance, the Danish Law stipulated that the king was to direct the church in accordance with three creeds of the early church (Apostles’, Nicene, Athanasian), the unaltered Augsburg Confession of 1530 and the Lutheran catechism. The new hymnal – often referred to as ‘Kingo’s Hymnbook’, since many of its hymns were 

                

Andersen, Survey, p. 26. Ibid., p. 27. Ibid., pp. 28f. Thulstrup, Kierkegaard and the Church in Denmark, p. 12. Ibid. Ibid., p. 13.

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penned by Thomas Hansen Kingo (1634–1703), one of the great hymnists of Lutheran orthodoxy – promised to disseminate and to nurture orthodox teaching in every Danish church.10 Hence, in consideration of this period, it is impossible to distinguish between church orthodoxy and absolute monarchy. Each benefited from the other’s support. Despite its formal relationship with the state, Lutheran orthodoxy in Denmark was not unmindful of the devotional lives of its laypersons. However, the blatant political interests of the Danish church could not be concealed. During what Bruce Kirmmse terms ‘the absolutist period’ of 1660–1849, the basic rights of Danish citizenship almost entirely depended upon the ‘granting of the confirmation certificate by the pastor of the local parish of the official Lutheran State Church’.11 This function gave the clergy a kind of civil authority over their parishioners, but, at the same time, it could not help but undermine their religious influence. Weighed down with public responsibilities, priests were often viewed as ‘ecclesiastic police officials and rulers’,12 rather than as mediators between the divine and the temporal. It was in this church context, then, that Pietism began to take root in Denmark, one where ecclesial orthodoxy formed a ‘decisively important part of the absolute monarchy’s basis of power’.13 Thus it stands to reason that, if Pietism were to make progress on Danish soil, it would have to do so gently, making sure that it, too, was compatible with ecclesial and national uniformity. Conditions, then, clearly favoured Halle Pietism; though, as will be shown, Moravian Pietism ultimately was able to adapt to the Danish situation as well.

Denmark’s Early Reception of State Church Pietism As Chapter 1 suggested, Pietism’s spread throughout northern Europe meant that its arrival in Denmark was practically inexorable. But that fact, in and of itself, did not concern Denmark’s absolute monarchy. It was not the case that the Danish state opposed Pietism altogether. Rather, as far as the absolute monarchy was concerned, the challenge was how to weave Pietism into the fabric of the Danish Church without compromising state authority – a position that resulted in an oscillating approach to the movement. As Ole Feldbæk puts it, ‘The Danish absolute monarchy’s reaction was characterized by duplicity. On the one hand, it saw in Pietism a menace to the state church’s unity and the authority of the individual parish priest. On the other hand, both Frederik IV and Christian VI personally were gripped by Pietism.’14 10

    12   13   14   11

Andersen, Survey, pp. 30f. Kirmmse, Kierkegaard, p. 27. Andersen, Survey, p. 31. Ole Feldbæk, Den lange fred: 1700–1800 (Copenhagen, 1990), p. 183. Ibid.

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The tension in this position became evident after the turn of the eighteenth century. At that time, Pietist conventicles, typically made up of laypersons, expanded their presence in Copenhagen. These promptly were prohibited in 1706.15 Yet, it was also during this period that Halle Pietism began to gain sway with the absolute monarchy. In 1703, the eminent linguist and Halle ambassador, Heinrich Wilhelm Ludolf (1655–1712), met with Frederik IV (1671–1730), convincing the king to promote a number of institutional reforms, as well as to sponsor overseas mission work – aims that often went hand in hand. For example, in 1705, Frederik IV established a partnership with Francke and with Halle, ordaining two young Halle Pietists to evangelize the Danish colony of Trankebar, located on the east coast of India.16 This move was opposed by representatives of Lutheran orthodoxy, but the king was not deterred. Increasingly, Danish students were sent to Halle, and, in 1714, Frederik IV founded a missionary college in Copenhagen, which was to govern Pietist missions in Danish territories such as Trankebar, Lapland and, eventually, Greenland.17 This college, moreover, heralded a number of Danish institutional reforms patterned after Halle, particularly those concerned with bettering the poor. Hallensian ‘charity schools’ were set up, and, in 1727, an influential orphanage was founded in Copenhagen,18 managed by the South Jutland pastor, Enevold Ewald (1696–1754). Ewald was already a well-known figure in Danish church life. After studying at Halle, he became an early conduit for Hallensian piety in his native region, delivering popular ‘converting sermons’ and disseminating ‘cheap pietistic literature’.19 The establishment of the Copenhagen orphanage was further confirmation of his success. Not only had Halle Pietism reached the hovedstad [‘capital city’], but it had become ensconced in the Danish government, so much so that, under Frederik IV’s son, Christian VI (1699–1746), ‘the whole state power was placed at disposal for its furtherance’.20 That is not to suggest, however, that the absolute monarchy abandoned its earlier circumspection vis-à-vis the Pietist movement. The Hallensian emphases on missionary activity and institutional progress, along with its professed acceptance of the state church apparatus, were embraced by the Danish Crown. Yet, as the 1706 proscription of lay conventicles evinces, the Enevælde wanted to suppress any Pietist expressions that bore radical or separatist tendencies – a policy that was more complicated than it otherwise appeared. For, as Peter Erb writes, ‘Halle

15

  Andersen, Survey, pp. 32f.   Ibid., p. 33, and Elmo Knudsen, ‘Die Brüdergemeine in Dänemark’, in Mari P. Van Buijtenen, C. Dekker and H. Leeuwenberg (eds), Unitas Fratrum: Herrnhuter Studien (Utrecht, 1975), p. 207. 17   Andersen, Survey, p. 33. 18   Ibid. 19   Ibid., p. 34. 20   Ibid. 16

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Pietists had, nevertheless, much in common with those Pietists labeled Radical’,21 counterbalancing a stress on duty and state service with a deep scepticism regarding the scope and sufficiency of the established church. So, in a certain sense, to foster Halle Pietism was to incubate Radical Pietism as well. German Pietists such as Gottfried Arnold had exemplified this point, and it also proved true in the Danish context. In South Jutland, for instance, a pastor named Otto Lorenzen Strandiger (ca. 1650–1724), who had initiated a well-received Hallensian social programme in Flensborg, began denouncing the ‘rottenness’ of public worship and arguing that the ‘spiritually renewed’ Christian should break from the state church and form his own congregation.22 Eventually, he was expelled from Denmark. Likewise, pockets of Radical Pietism surfaced intermittently in Copenhagen. In one case, a number of the city’s Pietists, encouraged by German tutors, began reading the works of Arnold and Johann Konrad Dippel.23 Attacks on ‘dead’ orthodoxy and ‘heretical’ priests followed, so much so that Frantz Julius Lütkens (1650–1712), the Danish court’s priest, who was not without Pietist sympathies, felt compelled to marshal royal authority in order to suppress them.24 Hence, as Frederik IV’s reign neared its end, the future of Danish Pietism remained uncertain. Halle Pietism had made an impact on the kingdom. Yet, with concerns about separatism persisting, the absolute monarchy remained open to a newer Pietist expression, Herrnhutism. This receptivity was evidenced in 1727 when a pair of Moravian representatives – the craftsman and so-called Syndikus, David Nitschmann (ca. 1703–79), along with his cousin, Johann Nitschmann – visited Copenhagen. They were to enquire about Danish missionary activity overseas,25 as well as to see if the Danish court might welcome Nicolas Ludwig, Count von Zinzendorf as hofpræst [‘court chaplain’].26 As tradesmen, who bore letters from Zinzendorf in a hat box, the Nitschmanns were unlikely emissaries. Nevertheless, they were granted a royal audience on four occasions,27 thereby inaugurating what was to be an uneven relationship between Moravian Pietism and the absolute monarchy.

21

  Peter C. Erb, ‘Introduction’, in Peter C. Erb (ed.), Pietists: Selected Writings (New York, 1983), p. 10. 22   Martin Schwarz Lausten, Danmarks kirkehistorie (Copenhagen, 2004), p. 172. 23   Ibid. 24   Ibid. 25   John R. Weinlick, Count Zinzendorf: The Story of his Life and Leadership in the Renewed Moravian Church (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 2001), p. 93. 26   J. Taylor Hamilton, A History of the Church Known as the Moravian Church (New York, 1971), p. 49. 27   Knudsen, ‘Die Brüdergemeine in Dänemark’, pp. 208f.

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The Moravians in Denmark As has been noted, it was the Hallensian brand of Pietism that first broke into the Danish context, earning the favour of Frederik IV through its missionary and reformatory emphases. Yet, with the arrival of Herrnhutist representatives in Copenhagen, Moravian Pietism entered the scene and, ultimately, was to play a key role in the Danish context. In the discussion below, this role will be detailed further. However, it is important to underline at the outset that, despite differences between the two expressions, Moravian Pietism could not have taken root in Denmark without its Hallensian relative. Not only did the latter pave the way for the former, but it also furthered its growth and, finally, gave way to it – an association that, as will be shown, says as much about the Enevælde’s varying approaches to Pietism as anything else. Initially, Herrnhutism was set over against Halle Pietism. This opposition had much to do with the manoeuvring of the new Danish king, Christian VI, who ‘could not make up his mind whether to decide for the Halle Pietism or the Moravian Brethren’.28 On the one hand, Zinzendorf was, literally, a member of the family. His cousin, the widowed Margravine Sophie Christiane von BrandenburgCulmbach (1667–1737), was the mother of Christian VI’s wife, Sophie Magdalena (1700–70),29 and this connection gave Zinzendorf and Moravian representatives ready access to the Danish Crown. In addition to the 1727 visit by the Nitschmanns, Zinzendorf met with Christian and Sophie Magdalena in 1728, briefing them on the development of Herrnhut.30 Later, in 1731, Zinzendorf attended the coronation of Christian VI and Sophie Magdalena. At this time, he still nurtured hopes that he might be offered a position in the Danish court,31 and, to be sure, he was received warmly by the king and queen, who awarded him the Order of the Danebrog.32 It was telling, however, that this gesture was not accompanied by an invitation to serve the Enevælde. Halle Pietism was to remain favoured in Denmark. Despite his royal connections, Zinzendorf had been unable to convince Christian VI that Moravian Pietism would be able to work within Denmark’s state church system. One of the reasons for this impression was Zinzendorf’s association with Copenhagen’s lay Pietist circles, which gathered in a local pub under the leadership of Ewald and his wife, Maria Wulf (1715–91).33 Attended by students and soldiers, shop assistants and craftsmen, these meetings mostly were characterized by hymn singing and the reading of edificatory literature. Yet, they also served as forums for Radical Pietists, who openly criticized the state church

28

    30   31   32   33   29

Andersen, Survey, p. 34. Knudsen, ‘Die Brüdergemeine in Dänemark’, p. 208. Ibid. Hamilton, Moravian Church, p. 50. Also see Lausten, Danmarks kirkehistorie, p. 180. Knudsen, ‘Die Brüdergemeine in Dänemark’, p. 209. Lausten, Danmarks kirkehistorie, p. 180.

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and, on occasion, fomented public protests against their orthodox opponents.34 These disturbances led to a ‘soft’ royal ordinance, which forbade any upbuilding meetings allowing laypersons to expound the Bible. Zinzendorf himself did not get involved with these lay Pietists during his time in Copenhagen. But through his friend, Beate Henriette Baroness of Söhlenthal (1696–1757), he did hope to incorporate them into the Moravian movement, and, boldly, he expressed his displeasure with the Crown’s prohibition of lay scriptural interpretation.35 Moreover, it hardly helped that, in the summer of 1733, the Moravian emissary and future bishop, August Gottlieb Spangenberg (1704–92), held meetings in Copenhagen that resulted in further unrest.36 As a result, Spangenberg was told to leave the country, and Zinzendorf was accused of being an agitator.37 The latter view, in particular, was promoted by King Christian VI’s cousin, Count Christian Ernst Stolberg-Wernigerode (1691–1771), who lobbied ardently on behalf of Halle Pietism, maintaining that ‘its whole church conception could best be united with the preservation of the Lutheran uniformity’.38 He was so persuasive that, when Zinzendorf returned to Copenhagen in 1735, the king not only refused to receive him, but also issued a directive that Zinzendorf had to leave Denmark within two days.39 In the meantime, Halle Pietism was thriving under Christian VI’s administration. Led by Johannes Bartholomæus Bluhme (1681–1753), formerly Frederik IV’s hofpræst and now Christian VI’s confessor,40 this so-called statskirkelige pietisme41 [‘state church Pietism’] asserted its presence throughout the realm. Hallensian bishops and clergy were preferred for appointments,42 and a string of institutional reforms were introduced, aiming to advance Christian living among the populace. In 1732, the University of Copenhagen, which was primarily a school for priests, began emphasizing Pietist teaching. In 1737, a General Church Inspection College [Generalkirkeinspektionskollegiet] was founded, which, among other things, was to facilitate the management of church discipline and priestly work.43 The most important of these reforms was the 1736 regulation requiring church confirmation – a rule that put every Danish child in contact with Hallensian piety. In keeping with absolute monarchy’s interest in maintaining ecclesial and national unity, 34

  Ibid.   Ibid., pp. 180–82. 36   Knudsen, ‘Die Brüdergemeine in Dänemark’, p. 212. 37   Ibid. 38   Andersen, Survey, p. 34. 39   Knudsen, ‘Die Brüdergemeine in Dänemark’, p. 212. 40   Feldbæk, Den lange fred, p. 183. 41   Lausten, Danmarks kirkehistorie, p. 183. 42   Among these appointments was that of Hans Adolph Brorson (1694–1764), who was made Bishop of Ribe in 1741 and, as will be shown, came to have a notable impact on Søren Kierkegaard. 43   Lausten, Danmarks kirkehistorie, pp. 184f., and Andersen, Survey, p. 34. 35

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Christian VI authorized the suspension of individual diocesan catechisms and replaced them with a single, standardizing textbook, Truth for Piety, authored by the Halle Pietist, Erik Ludvigsson Pontoppidan (1698–1765).44 Issued in 1738, this book effectively made Pietism ‘official’ in Denmark. Stressing the necessity of repentance and conversion, as well as warning against ‘the delights of sin’, such as dancing and card playing,45 Truth for Piety had to be mastered by children if they were to be confirmed in the church and, subsequently, admitted into legal adulthood.46 Although the arrival of Pontoppidan’s catechism meant that Halle Pietism had become a dominant force in Denmark’s church life, the Moravians continued to play an active role in the Danish context – a fact that testifies to the real, if not always harmonious, relationship between Hallensians and Moravians. Even when Christian VI and his Hallensian advisors legally prohibited Herrnhutist work on Danish soil, they permitted the Moravians to organize missions in royal territories such as Greenland, Lapland and the West Indies.47 Furthermore, Moravian representatives remained quietly active within Denmark’s borders, holding small meetings in Copenhagen and, often with the support of sympathetic Hallensian priests, working among Pietist groups in the countryside.48 From the mid-1730s onward, itinerant Moravian emissaries such as Gert Hansen, Jens Høyer and Jens Block travelled throughout Funen and Jutland. They reached, as will be discussed below, the West Jutland villages adjacent to the Kierkegaard family home in Sædding, where they participated in Pietist gatherings and introduced Herrnhutist ideas. Again, though, they could not have done so without the cooperation of statskirkelige Pietists, who did not wish to drive a wedge between Halle and Herrnhut: This emissary work sufficiently shows Herrnhutism’s independence; but, in addition, it was a further dispensation of the Pietist revivals, because one sought everywhere connection with the already awoken circles and not least with the Pietist priests. It led strikingly seldom to collision; in the majority of places the emissaries were well-received, and not a few of the priests were gradually won for Herrnhutism. Their pietism has therefore hardly had a unilaterally ‘Halle’ character.49

  Feldbæk, Den lange fred, pp. 181f. Truth for Piety is a translation of the Danish title, Sandhed til Gudfrygtighed. More evocatively, it might be rendered Truth for a GodFearing Life. 45   Lausten, Danmarks kirkehistorie, p. 184. 46   Feldbæk, Den lange fred, p. 182. 47   Hamilton, Moravian Church, p. 50. 48   Knudsen, ‘Die Brüdergemeine in Dänemark’, p. 212. 49   Anders Pontoppidan Thyssen, De ældre jyske vækkelser: Brødremenigheden i Christiansfeld og herrnhutismen i Jylland til o. 1815 (Copenhagen, 1967), p. 19. 44

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So, despite Christian VI’s preference for Halle Pietism, Moravianism persisted in Denmark. And, with the passage of time, the Crown grew less chary of the movement. In 1739, Christian VI allowed the Moravians to form societies for upbuilding, provided that they remained loyal to the state church and avoided contact with their German colleagues.50 The Brethren took quick advantage of this amendment. On 14 September 1739, a Brødresocietet was established in Copenhagen, the very society that Søren Kierkegaard was to attend as a youth. The founding of the Copenhagen society was, obviously, an important event for Herrnhutism in Denmark, giving the movement a stability it had lacked up to that point. That does not mean, however, that the Moravians faced no further obstacles from the Danish government. As usual, national unity was the biggest issue. Whenever concern grew about Radical Pietist circles and their destabilization of the established church, the state countered with ordinances designed to undermine the effectiveness of these circles – ordinances that, in one way or another, could not help but bear on the Brødremenighed. For example, there was the Conventicle Notice [Konventikelplakat] of 1741, which, as Elmo Knudsen explains, authorized the supervision of Herrnhutist gatherings: In 1741 an ecclesial ordinance appeared about edifying gatherings outside of the public services. It was forbidden to hold public gatherings with outside speakers. The master of the house can hold daily devotions with his servants, but at most three outsiders may be allowed to take part. The pastors have the right to hold Bible studies in private homes or elsewhere. Should others have need to edify themselves together with others, then they must first get permission from the pastor. He also must be there himself or send a stand-in to supervise, so that nothing against the word of God, the church, or the state is said.51

Subsequent regulations would be even stronger. A pair of ordinances, passed in November 1744 and January 1745 respectively, forbade Danish citizens to visit German congregations, lest they be stripped of their property and inheritance rights.52 Next came the laws of March 1745 and December 1746, which closed Denmark to foreign emissaries, including Herrnhuters who worked as tutors in private households.53 It is unlikely that these ordinances were directed simply or even principally at the Moravians. Unlike other Radical Pietist leaders, Zinzendorf had insisted that Herrnhutist representatives were to cooperate with local authorities, adding that they were obligated ‘to avoid all appearance of obtrusiveness’.54 And Danish Moravians tended to follow suit. They acted loyally 50

  Lausten, Danmarks kirkehistorie, p. 185.   Knudsen, ‘Die Brüdergemeine in Dänemark’, p. 213. 52   Thyssen, De ældre jyske vækkelser, p. 19. 53   Ibid., p. 20, and Knudsen, ‘Die Brüdergemeine in Dänemark’, p. 213. 54   Qtd. in Lewis, Zinzendorf the Ecumenical Pioneer: A Study in the Moravian Contribution to Christian Mission and Unity (London, 1962), pp. 121f. 51

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toward the state church,55 so much so that, according to Jørgen Bukdahl, they came across as ‘cowardly’ on certain occasions.56 Yet, for a movement with such deep German roots, the regulations of 1744–46 were a blow. The future of Herrnhutism in Denmark became, at the very least, uncertain. Ironically, however, it was Christian VI’s death – also in 1746 – that helped reverse the fortunes of the Brødremenighed once again, for the passing of the Pietist king also heralded the decline of Denmark’s statskirkelige pietisme and its hold on the nation. Christian VI’s son and successor, Frederik V (1723–1766), was not inclined toward Pietism, and, gradually, Hallensian religiosity lost ‘the favour and the protection’57 of the royal court. As a result, the Danish public, particularly those among the upper classes, began to manifest an antipathy toward Pietist austerity, celebrating, in the words of the great Scandinavian homme de lettres, Ludvig Holberg (1684–1754), the ‘blissful rule’ of the new king.58 Restrictions against amusements were eased, and a ‘growing religious indifference appeared’.59 The Age of Enlightenment, with its scepticism regarding traditional Christian doctrine and its faith in unaided human reason, was dawning over Denmark, and it demanded that the state church move in the direction of rationalism, a trajectory that meant Halle Pietism’s ‘role, on the whole, was spent by around 1760’.60 This development was something of a boon for Herrnhutism. From 1750, increased religious freedoms entailed fewer obstacles for the Moravian emissaries, who continued to circulate among the villages of Funen and Jutland.61 Moreover, in these rural areas, the influence of the Enlightenment was far dimmer than in Copenhagen and its environs. Consequently, Pietism there did not so much diminish as evolve, jettisoning its dependence on statskirkelige clergy, who realized that Hallensian piety was no longer beneficial for their careers, and becoming primarily a lay movement.62 Naturally, this was a situation tailor-made for the Herrnhuters, who were able to incorporate many of these lay Pietists – and even a number of formerly Hallensian priests – into their congregations.63 In that way, Moravian life in the latter half of the eighteenth century anticipated the future of Danish Pietism, which, as it drifted further and further away from its basis in the state church, became the vehicle for the newfound ‘individualism and selfassertiveness of the peasantry’.64 Indeed, with the assistance of Moravian Pietism, 55

  Lausten, Danmarks kirkehistorie, p. 185.   Jørgen Bukdahl, Søren Kierkegaard and the Common Man (Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2001), p. 34. 57   Lausten, Danmarks kirkehistorie, p. 192. 58   Ibid. 59   Andersen, Survey, p. 35. 60   Lausten, Danmarks kirkehistorie, p. 192. 61   Ibid., and Knudsen, ‘Die Brüdergemeine in Dänemark’, p. 213. 62   Lausten, Danmarks kirkehistorie, p. 192. 63   Ibid. 64   Kirmmse, Kierkegaard, pp. 40f. 56

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the laity was beginning ‘to emancipate itself spiritually from the guardianship of church and theology’.65 That is not to imply, however, that the Herrnhuters themselves promoted socio-political change. They were content to nurture the state church through their edificatory meetings, electing to avoid ‘publicity and theological debate’ in favour of simple evangelical preaching.66 That they preferred to live in small and, in a sense, ‘closed’ communities was also significant, evidencing a separatist, apolitical tendency that, as they saw it, was a necessity for service to the church writ large.67 As will be seen with regard to Copenhagen’s Brødresocietet, this ‘quietistic’ posture (to borrow Bukdahl’s language)68 eventually curtailed the efforts of Denmark’s Moravians. Yet, for the time being, it was not only accepted, but, in a curious twist of fate, even embraced. Following the death of the ever controversial Zinzendorf in 1760, the Moravians began to earn the admiration of the Danish government. Their emphases on craftsmanship and industriousness – encouraged, in part, by Zinzendorf’s attention to Jesus’ own life as a labourer69 – resulted in businesses of ‘an enviable reputation’.70 In 1771, the liberal royal physician and de facto head of Denmark, Johann Friedrich Struensee (1737–72), along with his brother, finance minister Carl August Struensee (1735–1804), determined that the Danish economy would profit if the Herrnhuters were granted a number of freedoms.71 Thus they allowed the Moravians to establish a colony in the southeastern part of Jutland, located between Kolding and Haderslev. Its members were given ‘complete freedom’ vis-à-vis ecclesial, educational and commercial activities. Its pastors and teachers were accorded ‘the same rights as other clergy in the kingdom’ and its residents received exemptions from serving in the military and from swearing oaths of allegiance, not to mention state subsidies for the colony’s construction.72 In a country that heretofore had demanded state church unity, these were extensive, even unprecedented concessions. Accordingly, the colony was given the name Christiansfeld – a permanent, if somewhat ironic, tribute to King Christian VII (1749–1808), the troubled and, indeed, schizophrenic sovereign in whose stead the Struensees had acted.

65

  Andersen, Survey, p. 36.   Thyssen, De ældre jyske vækkelser, p. 12. 67   Ibid., p. 11. 68   Bukdahl, Søren Kierkegaard and the Common Man, p. 34. 69   Philipp Guntram, ‘Wirtschaftethik und Wirtschaftpraxis in der Geschichte der Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine’, in Mari P. Van Buijtenen, C. Dekker and H. Leeuwenberg (eds), Unitas Fratrum: Herrnhuter Studien (Utrecht, 1975), p. 405. 70   Hamilton, Moravian Church, pp. 205f. 71   Lausten, Danmarks kirkehistorie, pp. 193f. Also see Jens Holdt, ‘Brødrekolonien Christiansfeld indtil Aar 1800’, Sønderjydske Aarbøger, 3/1 (1940): 62–4. 72   Ibid. 66

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Christiansfeld was to be patterned after Herrnhut, and, with that in mind, its members established a ‘brotherly agreement’ along the lines of their Saxon predecessors. Formally adopted on 24 November 1780, this document makes clear that, by way of their absolute service to Christ, Christiansfeld’s residents were to form a Gemeinschaft distinct from the world – an objective that, as will be discussed in Chapter 4, Søren Kierkegaard scrutinized in his writings. Thyssen describes Christiansfeld’s separatism in this way: The crimson thread through every part of the congregational arrangement is a strong emphasis on the congregation’s New Testament foundation: it acknowledges only what agrees with the teaching of Jesus and his apostles, and therefore abstains from all religious quarrelling; and all its praxis is to conform to Jesus’ ‘rules’ or apostolic examples. It is the Christianity of the New Testament that the congregation will realize, ‘die einfältige Nachfolge Jesu und seiner Apostel in der geringen und armen Gestalt’ [the simple imitation of Jesus and his apostles in the form of lowliness and poverty], to which belongs first and foremost the brotherly community as the limbs on one body with Christ as head. Therefore no one can be admitted or remain in the congregation, in whom one does not find a convincing sign of the Holy Spirit’s work, ‘die Geburt aus Gott’ [birth from God] or at least a longing for that.73

On a more pragmatic level, this theocratic communal vision – which, as was pointed out in Chapter 1, was a hallmark of Moravianism – was to receive systematic arrangement. As with Herrnhut, a variety of administrative ‘councils’ were established, and the community was divided into so-called ‘choirs’, which, by grouping together persons of similar life circumstances (for example, married persons, single ‘brothers’, single ‘sisters’, widowers, widows and so on), were thought to further Christian growth.74 Some of these persons trained for itinerant ministry, leaving Christiansfeld in order to do evangelical work around Denmark.75 Others, meanwhile, remained in the small Jutland community, supporting the number of industries that flourished there, ranging from the production of cigars to the baking of ‘honey cakes’.76 In both cases, Christiansfeld was a success, and, for that reason, its population grew steadily over the years. In 1780, it could boast of only 329 persons, but, by 1800, that number had more than doubled, reaching 712.77 The highpoint, incidentally, came a few decades later, when Christiansfeld’s Brødremenighed totalled 761 members.78 That was 1845, the year Søren Kierkegaard, now in the 73

    75   76   77   78   74

Thyssen, De ældre jyske vækkelser, p. 44. Ibid., pp. 46f. Lausten, Danmarks kirkehistorie, pp. 194, 213. Lorenz Asmussen (ed.), Christiansfeld før og nu (Christiansfeld, 1997), p. 10. Ibid., p. 12. Ibid., p. 10.

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thick of his authorship, issued Stage’s on Life’s Way and Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions. Kierkegaard himself was a product of the city, and so his literary efforts, prima facie, would seem unrelated to the lives of Christiansfeld’s inhabitants. Yet, upon closer inspection, that is not the case at all. As noted earlier, Moravian emissaries were a regular presence in the villages of West Jutland, from where Kierkegaard’s family originated. Furthermore, Kierkegaard attended the meetings of Copenhagen’s Brødresocietet as a youth. Hence, with Denmark’s Halle Pietism more or less defunct by the late 1700s, it would seem that the Moravians are one of the key vinculums linking Kierkegaard to the Pietist movement. But how, exactly, did Kierkegaard’s relationship with Moravian Pietism come about? And of what did it consist? It is to these questions that this study now turns.

The Kierkegaard Family and Moravian Pietism The story of Kierkegaard’s relationship with the Moravians is, in many respects, the story of the Kierkegaard family itself. From the family’s West Jutland roots to its place in ‘Golden Age’ Copenhagen, from its religious proclivities to its responses to the age’s political questions, there is little in the family’s history that was not impacted by Moravian Pietism. That is not to say that Moravianism is the key to understanding the Kierkegaard family. Rather, it is to underline the fact that Kierkegaard’s connection to Moravian Pietism cannot be understood purely abstractly, for it is a connection bound up with the movement’s enduring and quite concrete role in Danish cultural life. If there is a famous aspect to this narrative, it almost certainly has to do with Søren Kierkegaard’s father, Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard (1756–1838), who hailed from the tiny West Jutland parish of Sædding. Located in Ringkøbing county, not far from the village of Bølling, Sædding parish often has been thought of as a dark and forbidding place, whose windswept heath imbued M.P. Kierkegaard with a correspondingly bleak view of life. Yet, as Thorkild Andersen points out, this is a false assumption: [Sædding] is depicted by Kierkegaard biographers as the poor and meagre parish of the heath. The matter seems to have become legendary, and one has perhaps frequently wanted to make the whole thing more interesting by seeing everything against this background. The truth is far from it: the parish is a gentle, fertile parish. Even if the conditions are probably better now than 100 years ago, the parish has nevertheless for a long time borne the name ‘the cosy little corner in Bølling district’ [Smørhullet i Bølling Herred], an appellation that just does not suggest poverty.79 79   Thorkild Andersen, ‘Kierkegaard-Slægten og Sædding’, Hardsyssels Aarbog, 27 (1933): p. 26.

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That is not to suggest, however, that M.P. Kierkegaard’s family was not poor. His father, Peder Christensen (1712–99), was a peasant hired to look after the small churchyard [kirkegaard] adjacent to Sædding parish church. Thus he took the surname ‘Kierkegaard’, spelling it according to West Jutland pronunciation.80 His wife’s name was Maren Andersdatter Steengaard (1726–1813), and together they had nine children, including M.P. Kierkegaard, their fourth. Given the family’s humble circumstances, it is not surprising that M.P. Kierkegaard was put to work at a young age. The severity of the situation is partly disclosed by the tale of the impoverished M.P. Kierkegaard cursing God as he toiled out on Sædding heath. But there is a more illuminating sign. Around 1768, M.P. Kierkegaard moved to Copenhagen so that he could apprentice with his mother’s brother, Niels Andersen Seding (1720–96), who maintained a hosiery shop at 29 East Street.81 Roughly a decade later, Bølling’s parish priest, Nikolaj Satterup, issued M.P. Kierkegaard a ‘free pass’, allowing his ‘peasant’s son’ to remain in Copenhagen as long as he wished.82 M.P. Kierkegaard was never to return to his native region. Still, the West Jutland remained with him, particularly in his lifelong inclination toward Pietism. Despite Frederik V’s establishment of Enlightenment rationalism in Denmark, church life in and around Sædding parish – the vitality of which is indicated by extant communion records83 – retained an old-fashioned character. Persons held fast to the hymns of Kingo and Brorson, as well as to the teaching of Pontoppidan’s catechism.84 It was an area known for its Pietist representatives. In Stauning, roughly 3 miles from Sædding, the priests Peder Wessel, Andreas Balslev and Jens Bering promoted Halle Pietism in the parish, drawing eager followers from places such as Skjern and Sædding.85 In turn, these Hallensian priests welcomed Moravian emissaries to their congregations. As was noted earlier, Herrnhuters such as Gert Hansen, Jens Høyer and Jens Block passed through the area,86 and they even came to base their local mission in Stauning.87 Sædding parish, then, was more than merely traditional in its ecclesial life. It also found itself in the heart of an area staunchly committed to Pietism, despite the fashion of the day. In this way, it prefigured some of the ecclesial controversies that appeared during the final decade of the eighteenth century.

80

  Ibid., p. 28.   Ibid., p. 31, and Peter Tudvad, Kierkegaards København (Copenhagen, 2003), pp.

81

337f.   Tudvad, Kierkegaards København, p. 338.   Andersen, ‘Kierkegaard-Slægten og Sædding’, p. 28. 84   Jørgen Bukdahl, Søren Kierkegaard: Hans Fader og Slægten i Sædding (Ribe, 1960), pp. 18f. 85   Ibid. 86   Thyssen, De ældre jyske vækkelser, p. 18. 87   Bukdahl, Søren Kierkegaard: Hans Fader og Slægten i Sædding, p. 19. 82 83

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At that time, rationalism came to dominate the state church, so much so that, in 1794, Pontoppidan’s Hallensian catechism was exchanged for the more ‘progressive’ Textbook in the Evangelical Christian Religion, composed by the bishop of Zealand, Nikolai Edinger Balle (1744–1816). Similarly, in 1798, Kingo’s 1699 hymnbook was replaced by the updated, if ‘mercilessly watered down’,88 Evangelical Christian Hymnbook.89 On the whole, these changes were well liked. Balle’s book, for instance, found a sizeable and approving audience, especially among the bourgeoisie.90 Yet, in certain Jutland communities, the newly ordained church books were not met with kindly. Particularly in the East Jutland parishes stretching from Vejle to Horsens – then a Pietist area, which lies just north of Christiansfeld – clusters of laypersons known as ‘de stærke jyder’ [‘the strong Jutlanders’] refused to recognize them.91 Their disobedience led to some memorable conflicts. In the village of Nebsager, a couple of Pietist farmhands, Jens Andersen and Claus Pedersen, instigated a ‘singing war’ in the middle of a worship service. This was a surprisingly effective strategy, which postponed the introduction of the new hymnal.92 Meanwhile, in East Snede, the parishioners proved even more unyielding: there Kingo’s hymnal was used until 1966.93 M.P. Kierkegaard himself was not one of these stærke jyder, but their allegiance to an increasingly lay-dominated Pietism, and their scepticism regarding the authority of the state church, were indicative of the kind of views prevalent in M.P. Kierkegaard’s West Jutland homeland – views from which he would not distance himself upon arriving in Copenhagen. As Jørgen Bukdahl puts it, he sustained an ‘unbroken connection with the religious awakening movement of the faraway West Jutland village of [his] childhood’.94 Following the example of his uncle, N.A. Seding, who had maintained links to the Moravians, M.P. Kierkegaard soon joined up with Copenhagen’s Brødremenighed. In addition, for a number of years, M.P. Kierkegaard’s dealings with the state church in Copenhagen passed through Pietist channels. In 1773, he was confirmed by Hans Sørensen Lemming (1707– 88) of Nikolaj church, a Pietist and a Moravian supporter.95 In 1774, the Moravianinfluenced Peter Saxtorph (1720–1803) became curate of Nikolaj church and 88

  Andersen, Survey, p. 40.   Claus Bjørn, Fra reaktion til grundlov: 1800–1850 (Copenhagen, 1990), p. 215. 90   Julia Watkin, Historical Dictionary of Kierkegaard’s Philosophy (Lanham, Maryland, 2001), pp. 21–3. This fact is reflected in the second part of Kierkegaard’s 1843 work, Either/Or, wherein Assessor Wilhelm uses Balle’s catechism to underwrite his stress on a Sittlichkeit of duty. See, for example, SKS 3, 253–6 / EO2, 266–70. 91   Bjørn, Fra reaktion til grundlov: 1800–1850, pp. 215f. 92   Feldbæk, Den lange fred: 1700–1800, p. 309. 93   Ibid. 94   Bukdahl, Søren Kierkegaard and the Common Man, p. 35. Many of his business connections also were from the Jutland. See Tudvad, Kierkegaards København, p. 404, and Joakim Garff, Søren Kierkegaard: A Biography (Princeton, New Jersey, 2004), pp. 3f. 95   Tudvad, Kierkegaards København, p. 396. 89

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moved in next door to N.A. Seding and M.P. Kierkegaard. Saxtorph, then, was not only the family’s pastor, but also a regular presence in their home.96 Several years later, M.P. Kierkegaard was to attend the Church of Our Lady [Vor Frue Kirke], where Jakob Peter Mynster (1775–1854) served as curate. Mynster himself was not tied to the Brødremenighed. However, he shared the Moravians’ antipathy toward rationalism, espousing a Christ-centred faith that, in the words of George Pattison, brings to mind ‘the pietism of the eighteenth century’.97 M.P. Kierkegaard’s involvement in Copenhagen’s Moravian society makes his Pietist sympathies all the more clear. It is worth recalling that the capital city’s Brødresocietet pre-dated M.P. Kierkegaard’s arrival in Copenhagen by nearly three decades. The society was founded in 1739, and, from that point forward, it came to play a significant role in local church life. A year after its formation it only had 29 members, but, by 1742, it could boast of a membership of 242, and, by 1760, that number had swelled to 417.98 However, it had grown despite the Konventikelplakat of 1741, which required that societies of its size be divided into smaller bands.99 That meant that the expansion of the society was always in jeopardy, though clerics such as Preben Schiøtt (1703–82), curate of the Church of Our Lady, managed to protect it.100 After Schiøtt’s death, the Brødremenighed obtained permission to hold meetings in their own private hall. Thus they purchased a building on Storm Street in the city centre and opened it in 1784. Ironically, however, the private hall did not translate into unparalleled success. After an initial spike in membership, the Brødresocietet steadily lost members from the 1790s until the 1810s, probably due to the ‘rising prevalence of Enlightenment philosophy and rationalism’.101 But with the 1815 appointment of Johannes Christian Reuss (1778–1838), the fortunes of the congregation again improved. A native of Christiansfeld, who also had served Moravian congregations in Neusalz,

96 

Bukdahl, Søren Kierkegaard and the Common Man, p. 35.   George Pattison, Kierkegaard and the Crisis of Faith (London, 1997), p. 45. Also see George Pattison, Kierkegaard, Religion and the Nineteenth-Century Crisis of Culture (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 165–9. Mynster might be compared to the statskirkelige Pietists of the early to mid-1700s. He did not want religious piety to find expression outside the established church. As Julia Watkin writes, ‘[Mynster] unsuccessfully tried to stop the laypreacher revivalist movement, and in 1842, he got the king to pass an ordinance for the forcible baptism of the children of Baptists’ [Watkin, Kierkegaard’s Philosophy, p. 172]. That Søren Kierkegaard’s older brother, Peter Christian, refused to comply with this measure is significant: it suggests how someone with a Moravian background viewed Mynster’s rigid commitment to the state church. More will be said about P.C. Kierkegaard below. 98   Kaj Baagø, Vækkelse og Kirkeliv i København og Omegn (Copenhagen, 1960), p. 19. 99   Ibid., p. 20. 100   Ibid. 101   Ibid. 97

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Zeist and Herrnhut,102 Reuss was a modest yet ‘capable’ leader.103 He quickly made a good impression on the society’s governing body. Often referred to as the ‘Gehülfen’ [‘the helpers’], this governing body consisted of a number of prominent Copenhageners. These included sea service captain Thomas Christian Stibolt, whose legacy will be discussed below; councillor of justice Johannes Boesen, the father of Søren Kierkegaard’s closest friend, Emil Boesen (1812–79); wholesale dealer Johannes Hammerich, whose son Frederik (1809–77) went on to become an important church historian; and the now well-heeled hosier M.P. Kierkegaard, who, along with Hammerich, advised the society on financial matters. Citing a need for authentic evangelical proclamation in Copenhagen, the Gehülfen persuaded Reuss to open the society’s meetings to the general public.104 Further, they agreed that a larger auditorium was required. Thus a new hall, capable of holding up to 600 persons, was opened in November 1816. It was at this point that the Brødresocietet began to flourish. In his regular reports (or, in Moravian parlance, Berichte) to Herrnhut, Reuss frequently comments on the throng of persons attending the society’s Sunday evening services. As he puts it in a January 1818 letter: ‘Already at 5 o’clock the yard is, as a rule, full of persons, no matter how the weather is, and they must sit and freeze a whole hour inside the hall before the meeting begins – only in order to be sure of a seat.’105 Many who arrived failed to get a seat or even a place to stand. On New Year’s Day 1819, 400 persons were turned away due to a lack of space in the meeting hall.106 But what, exactly, made these gatherings so popular? Reuss ventured a simple theory: ‘One sees by far the greatest number come Sunday after Sunday, so there is surely no doubting that they seek and find upbuilding [opbyggelse], about which one then also hears many remarks.’107 While there may have been an overall dissatisfaction with the performance of the established church at this time, it seems equally true that the society’s meetings in general, and Reuss’s preaching in particular, offered comfort to a host of Copenhageners. For instance, a February 1818 advertisement in The Newspaper of Address [Adresseavisen] expressed the wish that ‘the respectable teacher’s [recent] awakening talk, giving strength in many struggles of soul and reflection, ought to be given to the press for the common benefit’.108 Fearing the intervention of governmental authorities, Reuss did not comply with this request and even asked the paper’s editor to disallow similar petitions in the future.109 And yet, the lone extant fragment of Reuss’s 102   See Unitätsarchiv, Herrnhut, ‘Johannes Christian Reuss’, in Dienerblätter: Biographische Übersichten von Personen, die im Dienst der Brüdergemeine standen, O–Re. 103   Baagø, Vækkelse og Kirkeliv, p. 20. 104   Ibid., pp. 20f. 105   Qtd. ibid., p. 22. 106   Ibid. 107   Qtd. ibid., p. 23. 108   Qtd. ibid., p. 24. 109   Ibid.

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preaching confirms the testimony of the advertisement, namely, that Reuss’s talks were oriented toward the edification and consolation of his listeners: Dear Brothers … next week most of us again intend to go the Lord’s table, in order once more to be initiated into the blessing of Jesus Christ’s Testament. – Our Saviour takes pity on us, he knows our hearts, knows our sinfulness, knows how we need help, comfort, strength and encouragement in order to live for him and proclaim his death by living in humility, love [Kierlighed] and according to his mind and heart. He is also prepared to grant us all his merit’s precious blessings, and satisfy our exhausted souls with his gifts of grace. – Dear Brothers, he must find our hearts opened for him. … We know we are sinners, great is imperfection and weakness and we err often and many times over; and we think on all the grace the Saviour prepares for us as the one who comes to the world in order to save sinners, then my dear Brothers, then we find, I dare say, reason enough to pray to him about the forgiveness of sin, that he afresh would take care of our souls and not become tired of taking pity on us.110

Words such as these drew people to the gatherings on Storm Street, especially people from the working classes, although the abovementioned Gehülfen were a notable exception to this rule.111 Yet, no matter their social status, people came, in the words of Reuss’s wife, to hear the speaker’s warm-hearted testimony to ‘God’s grace in the merit of Christ’.112 That is not to imply, however, that Reuss’s preaching dominated the spiritual life of the Brødresocietet. On the contrary, his talks were but a part of a larger Pietist orientation, which found expression in the community’s liturgical and devotional practices. Andrew Burgess underlines this point in ‘Kierkegaard, Brorson, and Moravian Music’, where he argues that Søren Kierkegaard’s fondness for the hymns of Hans Adolph Brorson – a subject that will be broached in the next chapter – was inculcated among Copenhagen’s Brødresocietet. In order to establish this claim, Burgess turns to the unique Moravian practice of Singstunde [‘Singing Hour’] or, in Danish, Syngetime, which frequently was employed by Copenhagen’s Moravians.113 First started in 1727, the Singstunde might be compared to a sermon of songs [Liederpredigt],114 in which a leader guides the congregation through a collection of different yet thematically related hymns. Brorson’s hymnody, with its Moravian-like stress on the joyful redemption found in Christ’s cross, often made its way into the Singstunde of the Copenhagen society, along with works by 110

  Qtd. ibid., pp. 23f.   Ibid., pp. 24f. 112   Ibid., p. 24. 113   Andrew Burgess, ‘Kierkegaard, Brorson, and Moravian Music’, in Robert L. Perkins (ed.), Practice in Christianity (Macon, Georgia, 2004), pp. 232f. 114   Paul Peucker, Herrnhuter Wörterbuch: Kleines Lexicon von brüderischen Begriffen (Herrnhut, 2000), p. 49. 111

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hymnists such as Zinzendorf, Lorenz Praetorious and Jonathan Briant.115 In this way, those worshipping with the Brødremenighed – including M.P. Kierkegaard and his two youthful sons, Peter Christian and Søren Aabye116 – were not only steeped in the hymnody of Brorson and other Pietists, but also in the tradition of Singstunde. As Burgess points out, the epigraph to Søren Kierkegaard’s 1849 work, The Sickness Unto Death, contains the words of a Moravian bishop, Johann Baptist von Albertini (1769–1831). Notably, these words were a combination of hymn verses, following the custom of Singstunde.117 In addition to Reuss’s upbuilding talks and the practice of Singstunde, it is likely that Copenhagen’s Brødresocietet either employed or, at least, drew on other Herrnhutist liturgical forms. One of the most notable aspects of Moravian Pietism was its development of a number of liturgical practices – the Singstunde being only one of them – which were said to facilitate the individual’s and the community’s relationship with God.118 Moreover, though these practices could be altered depending on the needs of a particular congregation, the Moravians, as a rule, preferred to adhere to standardized forms. As Nicole Schatull puts it, ‘The worship service meetings of the Brethren were not accidental and constantly developing in new ways, but ritualized and conventionalized.’119 Schatull here is not speaking explicitly of the Brødresocietet, but her claim, in addition to Burgess’s findings, suggests that it is probable, if not certain, that the meetings of Copenhagen’s Moravians corresponded to those elsewhere. Perhaps even Moravian liturgical guides such as the Common Prayer of 1744, the Small Book of Liturgies of 1755 or the Small Book of Litanies of 1757 were used by the community,120 though the available evidence does not answer that question one way or another. Still, it is hardly a stretch to assume that, whether or not these precise liturgical texts were followed, the Copenhagen society would have had some familiarity with their contents. Thus it makes sense to look over a prayer characteristic of Moravian worship life, ‘The Litany of the Life, Suffering and Death of the Lord’. A piece that customarily was prayed in the week after Quinquagesima Sunday or Estomihi (the Sunday before Ash Wednesday),121 ‘The Litany of the Life,   Burgess, ‘Kierkegaard, Brorson, and Moravian Music’, pp. 226f., 234f.   Bukdahl, Søren Kierkegaard and the Common Man, p. 33. 117   Burgess, ‘Kierkegaard, Brorson, and Moravian Music’, p. 234. 118   Nicole Schatull, Die Liturgie in der Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine Zinzendorfs (Tübingen, 2005), p. 196. 119   Ibid., p. 198. Also see Craig Atwood, ‘Theology in Song: Daily Litanies in the Eighteenth-Century Moravian Church’, in Craig Atwood and Peter Vogt (eds), The Distinctiveness of Moravian Culture: Essays and Documents in Moravian History in Honor of Vernon H. Nelson on his Seventieth Birthday (Nazareth, Pennsylvania, 2003), pp. 47–51. 120   Schatull, Die Liturgie, pp. 171–84. 121   Johannes Welschen and Martin Theile (eds), Handbuch für Versammlungen in der Brüdergemeine (Herrnhut, 2006), p. 44. 115 116

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Suffering and Death of the Lord’ belongs to a set of Moravian rites that concern the ‘death and wounds of Jesus Christ’.122 It was penned by Zinzendorf during the infamous Sichtungszeit. Consequently, if it (or something like it) were repeated in the Copenhagen society, the assertions of commentators such as Jørgen Bukdahl and Joakim Garff would be confirmed, namely, that the Kierkegaard family became acquainted with ‘[s]omber images’ of Jesus Christ, Smertensmand [‘the Man of Pain’], while worshipping with the Moravians on Storm Street.123 And yet, pace Garff, such images were hardly ‘the epitome of Moravianism’,124 not even the Moravianism conveyed in ‘The Litany of the Life, Suffering and Death of the Lord’. This litany does not celebrate Christ’s suffering as an end in itself but, rather, it exalts Christ as the Saviour, who enables his disciples to live as he did: Leader: O Immanuel, Savior of the World Congregation: Make yourself known to us! Leader: By your holy incarnation and birth Congregation: Make us love our humanity! Leader: By your poverty and servanthood Congregation: Teach us to be lowly in this world! Leader: By your powerlessness and weakness Congregation: Strengthen our weakness!125

This section of the prayer continues, listing several more aspects of Christ’s earthly life that his disciples are to imitate, for example, peacefulness, wayfaring and mercifulness.126 All of these traits, however, seem to issue from humble obedience. In a shift to the first person, which calls attention to the immediacy of the petition, the congregation asks, ‘Make me like in mind to you, as an obedient child, meek and still. Jesus, now, help me that I might be obedient as you.’127 Here the value of the cross does not lie in bloodshed per se, but in the fact that Jesus’ love for and obedience to the Father were firm enough to endure bloodshed. As the litany concludes, ‘We wish to remain by the Cross, and to follow your martyrdom until we see you face to face.’128 Sentiments such as these found their way into the Brødresocietet, regardless of whether or not the congregation recited ‘The Litany of the Life, Suffering and Death of the Lord’. Pietist edificatory literature, which accentuated motifs such 122

  Schatull, Die Liturgie, p. 174.   Garff, Søren Kierkegaard, p. 12, and Bukdahl, Søren Kierkegaard and the Common Man, p. 33. 124   Garff, Søren Kierkegaard, p. 12. 125   Nicolas Ludwig, Count von Zinzendorf, ‘The Litany of the Life, Suffering and Death of Jesus Christ’, in Peter C. Erb (ed.), Pietists: Selected Writings, p. 297. 126   Ibid., p. 298. 127   Ibid. 128   Ibid., p. 299. 123

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as imitatio Christi, was also present among Copenhagen’s Moravians, serving to supplement Reuss’s talks and the liturgical life of the society. This point is supported by a number of facts. First, Søren Kierkegaard’s library contained numerous books in the Erbauungsliteratur tradition,129 which were ‘in the family’s possession for a long time’.130 These writings have been called ‘the most characteristic [group] in Kierkegaard’s book collection’, indicating ‘how great a place the upbuilding had for him’.131 Another attender of the Brødresocietet’s meetings – Kierkegaard’s one-time fiancée, Regine Schlegel, née Olsen (1822–1904) – also cited an appreciation for Erbauungsliteratur. As her friend, Hanne Mourier (1824–1918), recorded in 1896: You [Regine] have told me that while you were still a child, your mother took you with her to the ‘gathering of the Holy’ (The Moravians?) in Stormgade; and, as was she, you too were by nature religiously inclined. You found it satisfying to read The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis, and you sought your refuge in God.132

As explained in Chapter 1, The Imitation of Christ entered Protestantism by way of Johann Arndt and, subsequently, became one of Pietism’s central upbuilding texts. So, that Regine mentioned it in connection with the Brødremenighed was no accident. An appreciation for Erbauungsliteratur often went hand in hand with a relation to the Moravians. A pair of extant library catalogues further corroborates this point. The first of these catalogues belonged to one of the three David Nitschmanns mentioned in Chapter 1, probably the one later known as Syndikus [‘legal counsel’] due to ‘his service to the Moravian Church as a negotiator with various governments’.133 This particular David Nitschmann not only journeyed throughout Germany on behalf of the Herrnhuters, but also throughout much of Europe, visiting England, Russia and Denmark on a number of occasions (1727, twice in 1733, 1742 and four times in 1759). The library catalogue he left behind is not dated, although he may have compiled it while working at Herrnhut’s Unitätsarchiv in 1769. Its cover is blank and its first page adorned with a simple title, Catalogue of My Small Book Collection.134 Inside is a list divided into a variety of categories, for example, Geographica or Theologica/Ascetica. In this latter grouping, Nitschmann lists 129

  This topic will be discussed further in Chapter 3.   Marie Mikulová Thulstrup, Kierkegaard og Pietismen (Copenhagen, 1967), p. 13. 131   Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, ‘Kierkegaard som bogkøber og bogsamler’, in Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Gert Posselt and Bent Rohde (eds), Tekstspejle: Om Søren Kierkegaard som bogtilrettelægger, boggiver og bogsamler (Copenhagen, 2002), p. 135. 132   Qtd. in Bruce Kirmmse (ed.), Encounters with Kierkegaard (Princeton, New Jersey, 1996), p. 35. 133   Weinlick, Count Zinzendorf, p. 68. 134   Unitätsarchiv, Herrnhut, R. 4 E 29. 130

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the major texts of the Erbauungsliteratur tradition, many of which Kierkegaard himself owned. He registers editions of Jakob Böhme (1682), Gottfried Arnold (1702) and Miguel de Molinos (1712), in addition to an undated Dutch copy of Tauler’s Sermons, two copies of Thomas à Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ (1728, 1734) and four editions of Arndt’s True Christianity (1708, 1723, 1734, 1743). The first of these Arndt copies is in Latin, the second in French and the last two in German. It is clear, then, that ‘the syndic’ was familiar with the devotional literature favoured by his fellow Pietists. And, given that the writings of magisterial figures such as Martin Luther do not turn up in his catalogue, it also appears that Erbauungsliteratur lay at the heart of his Christian formation. But to what extent is it viable to connect Nitschmann’s literary interests with the Brødresocietet? Even if he played a role in the development of Herrnhutism in Denmark – and surely he spent time with the capital city’s Moravian congregation – one cannot be certain that his library catalogue indicates the texts favoured by society members during Kierkegaard’s day. A second library catalogue, found in the Nachlaß [‘estate’] of Thomas Christian Stibolt,135 effectively addresses this concern. Received on 15 November 1816 by J.C. Reuss, Stibolt’s Nachlaß manifests his firm commitment to the congregation. In particular, it appears that Stibolt – a Danish sea captain and, as mentioned earlier, a member of the Gehülfen – was quite enthusiastic about the expansion of the society’s meeting place. According to the Nachlaß, he left the ‘Danish equivalent’ of 9,291 taler, 5 marks and 4 shillings for its construction.136 But the Nachlaß contains a further stipulation: Stibolt’s small library, containing titles in Danish, English, German and Dutch, was to pass into the possession of the Brødresocietet. For that reason, the texts in his library were documented. As with Nitschmann’s library, they represent an array of fields, including geography, poetry,137 economics and medicine. With regard to theological texts, Stibolt’s catalogue records a pair of Bibles (one in English, another a 1754 Halle edition), a report on missionary activity in England and three theological works. The first was a compilation of the sermons of the German Pietist priest, Johann Gangolf Wilhelm Forstmann (1706–59), who   Unitätsarchiv, Herrnhut, R.19.E.14.g.   It should be added that this donation comes with a provision – namely, that any interest accrued therefrom should be given to Elisabet Dresing and Sophie Kierulf until either marriage or death. Aside from this qualification, nothing else is said of these two women. 137   Intriguingly, one of the poetic texts listed is Edward Young’s Night-Thoughts. Kierkegaard owned this book as well, even citing it as the epigraph to the first part of Either/Or [‘Is reason then alone baptized, are the passions pagans?’]. However, it seems that Kierkegaard did not own the same edition as Stibolt. The latter’s Nachlaß registers a Danish title – that is, Natte-tanker, presumably referring to either the 1767 or the 1783 Danish editions – whereas Kierkegaard held Einige Werke von Dr. Eduard Young, a German collection from 1767–72. 135 136

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was an admirer of Zinzendorf as well as an acquaintance of Tersteegen. Even more tellingly, the second was a Danish copy of Arndt’s True Christianity. Thus Stibolt’s library gives a final indication that the Erbauungsliteratur tradition was alive and well among the Copenhagen Brethren. This group of nineteenthcentury Moravians, no less than their counterparts in other times and places, maintained a connection with Arndtian piety and, by association, with Arndt’s medieval precursors and Pietist followers. Yet, the third theological work in Stibolt’s library does not point back to the society’s heritage, but, rather, to its eventual disintegration. That text is a collection of writings by the Danish author, priest and reformer, Nicolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig (1783–1872). Indeed, with the ascendancy of Grundtvig’s movement, the Brødresocietet grew weaker, steadily losing persons attracted to the reformer’s socio-political zeal. In the final section of this chapter, the deterioration of the Copenhagen society will be looked at more closely, with particular attention given to the lot of the Kierkegaard family.

The Decline of the Brødresocietet It has been shown that Pietism entered Denmark largely as Halle Pietism, although Moravian Pietism came to supplant it. It also has been noted that, while the Moravians tended to avoid conflict with the state church, the lay Pietist gatherings inspired and nurtured by them occasionally took a more confrontational turn, sharply repudiating the rationalism prevailing in the nation’s ‘official’ Christianity. As will be shown below, it was this tension – the tension between upbuilding and activism – that ultimately undid Copenhagen’s Brødremenighed. Pietism’s political turn, which was to be harnessed by Grundtvig, rendered Moravian Pietism expendable, thereby forcing M.P. Kierkegaard and his sons, Peter Christian and Søren Aabye, to diverge in their approaches to Christianity. Yet, before examining those developments, an overview of Grundtvig and his movement is in order. The son of a conservative priest, Grundtvig’s student years were marked by a high degree of intellectual experimentation. Bouncing from a ‘deistic neology’ to a ‘romantic-influenced religiosity’,138 which aimed to ‘awaken the Danish people through the help of Norse mythology and Christianity’,139 Grundtvig came to experience a Pietist-like conversion in the years 1810–11, thereby compelling him to conclude ‘Now the Bible has become my book.’140 But this thoroughgoing biblicism proved to be just a phase as well. Further study of the church fathers, alongside a growing awareness of the exegetical problems raised by historical-critical approaches to Scripture, encouraged Grundtvig to see

138

  Andersen, Survey, p. 46.   Lausten, Danmarks kirkehistorie, p. 217. 140   Qtd. ibid., p. 218. 139

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the church as more primary than the Bible.141 As he reasoned, the New Testament came after the church’s institution. Consequently, it is a set of texts authored in and by the church’s faith, rather than the foundation of faith itself. It was this insight that fuelled Grundtvig’s polemics against the state church’s rationalist tendencies. In his 1825 book, The Church’s Retort, he attacked the rationalism of Henrik Nocolaj Clausen (1793–1877), Professor of Theology at the University of Copenhagen. Over against Clausen’s assertion that a ‘scientifically interpreted Scripture’142 formed the basis of Protestantism, Grundtvig held up his own ‘matchless discovery’ [mageløse opdagelse], which regarded the sacraments and the Apostle’s Creed as the true ‘living word’ of Christianity.143 Thus the struggle between the state church and Grundtvig began. Despite being fined and censored for his condemnation of Clausen, Grundtvig emerged as a popular figure, who had no trouble winning a flock of adherents.144 Aptly known as ‘Grundtvigians’, these disciples constituted an increasingly important faction in Danish cultural life. They decried state church priests and lobbied for greater religious freedom – concerns that resonated with many of the persons affiliated with Copenhagen’s Moravians. The Brødresocietet was never a unitary group. Even in the years after Reuss’s arrival, when its meetings literally were overflowing, most of its attendees failed to join the community.145 They were drawn by what the Brødresocietet offered – whether personal upbuilding, old-fashioned Pietist Christianity or anticlericalism146 – but did not seek formal membership in the community. A good example of this tendency is M.P. Kierkegaard himself, who ‘never explicitly joined the Society of Brothers’.147 This point does not contradict Jørgen Bukdahl’s claim that ‘it was certainly in Stormgade that the elder Kierkegaard acquired his view of Christianity’.148 It does suggest, however, that M.P. Kierkegaard was sensitive to the Brødresocietet’s socio-political significance. He was careful not to upset his family’s relations with the prominent, urbane congregations of the Church of the Holy Spirit [Helliggeistes Kirke] and the Church of Our Lady. On Sundays, the Kierkegaard family attended state church services in the mornings and Moravian meetings in the evenings, thereby evidencing the sort of circumspection symptomatic of the larger problem facing the Brødresocietet. For, qua society, it was required to cooperate with the established church, whereas many of the ‘awakened’ Christians it nurtured did not want cooperation, but, rather, the freedom to worship where and with whom they liked. 141

    143   144   145   146   147   148   142

Ibid., pp. 219f. Andersen, Survey, p. 48. Qtd. in Lausten, Danmarks kirkehistorie, p. 220. Ibid., p. 222. Baagø, Vækkelse og Kirkeliv, p. 25. Ibid., p. 24, and Kirmmse, Kierkegaard, p. 33. Bukdahl, Søren Kierkegaard and the Common Man, pp. 32f. Ibid., p. 33.

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Opposite the Brødremenighed, however, was Grundtvig, whose bravado seemed to promise such freedom. Consequently, as he increased his activity in the city, he began to recruit and ultimately to draw persons from the Moravian congregation. Grundtvig was no admirer of Herrnhutism. He disliked its irenism, which he interpreted as a tendency toward aloofness or, in his words, ‘darkness’ – characteristics that he traced back to Zinzendorf’s own ‘constant halts and turns and evasions’.149 This critical appraisal of the Moravians was not lost on Reuss, who, despite acknowledging and even appreciating Grundtvig’s evangelical fervour,150 sought to distance the society from the reformer, not least because an alliance with the Grundtvigians could undermine the Brødremenighed’s good standing with the city’s authorities.151 But Reuss became ill in 1834 and, a year later, moved from Copenhagen to Christiansfeld, citing a need for rest. Rightly sensing a leadership vacuum – many of the Brothers did not support the man appointed in Reuss’s stead, Johann Friedrich Matthiesen (1788–1869) – the Grundtvigians stepped up their recruiting efforts. Matthiesen’s Berichte refer to this development with pitiable consistency. The Grundtvigians are ‘die Brüder-Feinde’ [‘enemies of the Brothers’], he wrote in February 1839, and, in a later summary of the decline of the Copenhagen society, he goes on to explain: [Grundtvig’s followers] probably held more onto [him] than to the Saviour. [He] disliked the Brothers, and since many members of the society frequented his sermons, so he took the trouble, along with several theologians, to dissuade them from our association in visits to the families of his listeners … . The admission of new members to the society was often prevented by their activity … and thus in recent times even quite a few admitted persons have withdrawn from us again. The latter has partly its basis in that some followers of the named preacher give lectures in accordance with his views, which are strongly attended.152

A note of resignation can be detected here. By 1848, the Brødresocietet had withered to a mere 64 members and, decades later, to roughly a third of that number. On 1 April 1923, the community was officially disbanded.153 The breakdown of Copenhagen’s Brødresocietet impacted the future of the Kierkegaard family. On the one hand, there was Peter Christian Kierkegaard (1805–88), who allied himself with the Grundtvigians. He was not alone in this decision. A number of important theologians, including Andreas Gottlob Rudelbach (1792–1862) and Jacob Christian Lindberg (1797–1857), already had sided with Grundtvig. They were followed by a group with connections to 149

  Qtd. in Thyssen, De ældre jyske vækkelser, p. 12.   Knud Heiberg, ‘Brødresocietets Forhold til Grundtvigs Kamp mod Rationalismen Oplyst ved Breve’, Kirkehistoriske Samlinger, no. 4 (Copenhagen, 1900): pp. 209–40. 151   Baagø, Vækkelse og Kirkeliv, p. 27. 152   Qtd. ibid., p. 28 (my translation from the German). 153   Ibid., p. 29. 150

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the Brødremenighed: the abovementioned Frederik Hammerich, Johann Peter Østrup (1800–33), Christian Sigfred Ley (1806–74), the brothers Peter Andreas Fenger (1799–1878) and Johannes Ferdinand Fenger (1805–61) and, finally, P.C. Kierkegaard.154 It did not take P.C. Kierkegaard long to emerge as a leader in the movement. In 1839, he and Grundtvig founded the Danske Samfund [‘Danish Society’], which, by way of sympathetic clergy, soon garnered chapters throughout the nation.155 In organization, the society seems to have been a nod to P.C. Kierkegaard’s Moravian heritage. But there was a telling difference: whereas the Brødresocietet’s gatherings centred on upbuilding talks and hymn singing, the Danske Samfund preferred ‘festive meetings’, punctuated by ‘cultural and political lectures’.156 While this situation developed during the 1830s, M.P. Kierkegaard stayed firm. Even as P.C. Kierkegaard entertained Grundtvigians in the family home, the old man refused to endorse the movement. Letters from the sisters, Juliane and Christine Rudelbach, who endeavoured to keep their brother, A.G. Rudelbach, apprised of the local gossip, confirm M.P. Kierkegaard’s reluctance. In an April 1831 note, they complain that ‘old Kierkegaard has totally refused to lend support’ to Grundtvig’s efforts, adding that he ‘does not dare to do so, because he has two sons who are university students, who must obtain positions’.157 Later, in July 1832, the Rudelbach sisters issued another report, complaining that the affluent M.P. Kierkegaard declined to give money to the cause, since ‘he does not approve of [Jacob Christian] Lindberg’s attacks upon individual persons’.158 Rather than back the upstart Grundtvigians, M.P. Kierkegaard remained a supporter of J.P. Mynster, who was ordained bishop of Zealand in 1834, and he continued to participate in the Brødresocietet. Of the two, it appears he was closest to the community on Storm Street. Whereas Søren recalls that, upon informing Mynster of M.P. Kierkegaard’s death in 1838, the bishop appeared ‘at first unable to remember who the old man was’,159 the Moravians considered M.P. Kierkegaard a respectable and dedicated congregant. As Johann Matthiesen explains in a letter dated 28 August 1838, roughly two weeks after M.P. Kierkegaard’s death: Our society loses in him one of the most faithful members, both for the outer and for the inner, and many a poorhouse will miss him badly. – He has certainly done in the quiet more good than many have thought, who declare and take him for a miser, because he does not distribute without regard for the right hand and 154

  Ibid., pp. 26f.   Lausten, Danmarks kirkehistorie, p. 233. 156   Ibid. 157   Qtd. in Bukdahl, Søren Kierkegaard and the Common Man, p. 38. 158   Qtd. ibid., p. 39. 159   Bruce Kirmmse, ‘“Out with It!”: The Modern Breakthrough, Kierkegaard and Denmark’, in Alastair Hannay and Gordon D. Marino (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard (Cambridge, 1998), p. 27. See also Pap. XI2 A 419. 155

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for the left hand. We knew his principles and must think of him rightly. In him I lose a faithful brother in the true sense of the word, who at each opportunity told me his opinion openly, but in a very plain way, and who in our society’s affairs, which he covered with particular love and took to heart, has given us good advice for many a year. For, in years of experience and with a good mind, he had, without rushing himself, nevertheless normally very nearly got things sorted out. We never ought to regret it – that we asked him for advice and also profited by the same. He was born on 12 December 1756 and therefore was 81 years, 7 months, 27 days old.160

Matthiesen’s comments about M.P. Kierkegaard are at once consistent with and divergent from the standard view of the old man. They uphold Bruce Kirmmse’s representative characterization – that M.P. Kierkegaard was an ‘astute businessman and a stubborn individual’161 – even as they complicate the prevailing assumption that his religiousness was overrun by melancholic feelings of guilt and despair.162 For Matthiesen, M.P. Kierkegaard was a charitable and, in a certain sense, likable human being, whose acumen and seriousness often were misinterpreted as callousness. Perhaps, then, it was among the Herrnhuters that M.P. Kierkegaard truly belonged. Their relationship spanned much of his long life, and he never took leave of their company. The same cannot be said of Søren Kierkegaard. After his father’s death, he seems to have cut any direct links to the Brødresocietet. Yet, he also refused to get involved with the Grundtvigians, even though he shared some of Grundtvig’s concerns. As Niels Thulstrup explains: ‘[I]n the 1830’s and 1840’s Grundtvig and SK generally agreed with one another in their criticism of the state of society. This applies to the general ecclesiastical rationalism, the romantic and speculative philosophy of identity, and, eventually, also to Mynster and his circle and their Christian cultural synthesis.’163 It is not surprising that similarities between Grundtvig and Kierkegaard can be detected. As has been indicated, Grundtvig’s message appealed to many in Copenhagen’s Brødresocietet. Why, then, did Kierkegaard refrain from collaborating with the reformer? Putting aside dissimilarities in temperament, which were significant, one of the greatest differences between Grundtvig and Kierkegaard was the former’s promotion of a populist Christianity. The Grundtvigian movement had come to develop a strong nationalistic propensity: Denmark in particular, and the Scandinavian countries in general, were seen as the home of the church of the ‘living word’. Consequently, it was not uncommon for Grundtvigians to hold patriotic assemblies. Joakim Garff describes one such occasion:

160

    162   163   161

Qtd. in Baagø, Vækkelse og Kirkeliv, p. 21 (my translation from the German). Kirmmse, ‘Kierkegaard and Denmark’, p. 21. Cf. ibid., p. 21, as well as, for example, Garff, Søren Kierkegaard, pp. 12–17. Thulstrup, Kierkegaard and the Church in Denmark, p. 214.

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Kierkegaard, Pietism and Holiness [O]n June 23, 1845, Swedish and Norwegian students arrived in Copenhagen to participate in a Scandinavian student rally. The next evening they celebrated in the riding school of Christiansborg Palace, where Archdeacon Tryde164 spoke, and the following day the festivities of the Scandinavian Society continued in the Deer Park with singing and with no fewer than two addresses by Grundtvig.165

Monitoring these events in the newspaper, Kierkegaard could stomach neither the pomp nor Grundtvig himself, who, in order to ‘satisfy [the] age’, acted like a ‘high priest’ one moment and ‘Holger the Dane’ the next.166 Yet, for Kierkegaard, such pandering antics and nationalistic hubbub were more than just cloying. Rather, they ultimately were damaging to Christianity, for ‘[e]very more quiet concern about the religious, every more inward understanding that in fear and trembling is disciplined by self-concern, readily feels painfully disturbed by this unconstraint.’167 A few years later, when commenting on the ‘nationality issue’, he put it even more directly: ‘I know only one risk, the risk of religiousness.’168 In expressing these views, Kierkegaard suggests that his sympathies remain with the Brødresocietet and with much of the Pietist tradition. The concern, even the risk, of religiousness lies in the upbuilding, which, as he explains in a journal entry, ‘is a necessity of life’ that ‘wants to unite, if possible, the most different in essential truth’.169 Thus the upbuilding is ‘[j]ust like love’.170 As the Moravians had stressed edification above all else, so did Kierkegaard see his authorial task as one of edification. In that way, he disclosed and developed his Pietist background. Furthermore, he continued to peruse Pietist Erbauungsliteratur throughout his life, finding it a source of inspiration, both on a personal and on an authorial level – a topic that will be treated in the next chapter. In short, by the time Kierkegaard received his Magister Artium degree in October 1841, Pietism in Denmark had run its course and all but petered out. And yet, it lived on in his own reading. Moreover, as will become increasingly clear over the course of this study, it came to supply some of the key questions – and answers – characterizing his life’s work.

164   That is, Christoffer Eggert Tryde (1781–1860), a Grundtvigian-leaning pastor, who, incidentally, was to conduct Kierkegaard’s funeral service ten years later. 165   Garff, Søren Kierkegaard, p. 324. 166   Pap. VI B 29. 167   Ibid. 168   NB4:118 / JP 5, 6125. 169   Pap. VIII2 B 188 / JP 5, 6095. 170   Ibid.

Chapter 3

Kierkegaard’s Reading of Pietist Literature: An Investigation of Themes Christian and Socratic

Introduction The first two chapters of this study offered a selective history of the Pietist movement and a survey of Pietism’s role in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Denmark. Those chapters depicted the Pietist background of Kierkegaard’s life and authorship, and this chapter, too, aims to contextualize the question of ‘Kierkegaard and Pietism’, focussing on Kierkegaard himself. Taking its cue from the latter half of Chapter 2, which establishes the Kierkegaard family’s connections to Copenhagen’s Brødresocietet, the chief task of this chapter is to explore how those connections made a tangible impact on Kierkegaard – a task it will approach largely, but not exclusively, by way of Kierkegaard’s reading of Erbauungsliteratur. In her Kierkegaard og Pietismen [1967], Marie Mikulová Thulstrup also considers Kierkegaard’s relationship to Pietism through his study of devotional literature. But it is a short work, which fails to provide detailed examinations of Pietism’s history and of the social links between Kierkegaard and the Pietist movement – omissions that result in a neglect of Pietism’s ramifications for church and culture. Still, Thulstrup was clearly right to attend to Kierkegaard’s attraction to Pietist writings, since a review of his journals, not to mention his library catalogue, confirms its importance for him. To paraphrase a quote mentioned previously: Pietist writings, particularly those in the upbuilding tradition, were an essential part of his reading. But what, exactly, did Kierkegaard find in this Erbauungsliteratur? And how did he receive it? These are critical questions, which this chapter will strive to address in two ways: (i) by demonstrating that the theme of imitatio Christi – which Kierkegaard was to adopt in his later authorship – runs through the Erbauungsliteratur tradition; and (ii) by showing that Kierkegaard venerated this literature. A number of edificatory works associated with Pietism will be    Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, ‘Kierkegaard som bogkøber og bogsamler’, in Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Gert Posselt and Bent Rohde (eds.), Tekstspejle: Om Søren Kierkegaard som bogtilrettelægger, boggiver og bogsamler (Copenhagen, 2002), p. 135    See Chapter 6.

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surveyed, ranging from the mystical thought of the fourteenth-century friar, Johannes Tauler, to the hymnody of the eighteenth-century bishop, Hans Adolph Brorson. These analyses will not treat such figures exhaustively. Rather, they will seek to situate them in an approach to the imitatio motif that spans two related literary movements, namely, the Erbauungsliteratur of late medieval Catholicism on the one hand, and that of its Pietist inheritors on the other. In doing so, Kierkegaard’s association with Pietism will be developed further. Chapter 2 showed that Pietism played a key role in Kierkegaard’s cultural and familial background; this chapter intends to show that it was an important part of his intellectual milieu as well.

Kierkegaard, Erbauungsliteratur and the Imitation of Christ This section will proceed by focussing on five topics: (a) the development of the imitatio motif up to the fourteenth century; (b) the treatment of imitatio Christi in Kierkegaard’s Catholic sources, starting with Johannes Tauler; (c) Kierkegaard’s evaluation of these Catholic writings; (d) the handling of the same theme in his Pietist sources, beginning with Johann Arndt; and (e) Kierkegaard’s response to these Pietist writings. Of these topics, the first will be the broadest in scope, intending mainly to supply the background for the others, which, given the thrust of this study, naturally demand the most attention. Yet, even in these latter parts, the discussion will possess a certain breadth, not least because Kierkegaard’s reading of Erbauungsliteratur was extremely broad. That does not mean, of course, that this section will consist only of sweeping generalities. Tauler and Arndt will require particular focus, and figures such as Tersteegen and Brorson will receive consideration previously lacking in Kierkegaard scholarship. However, it must be stressed that the fundamental purpose of this section is to introduce this strand of literature, as well as to highlight Kierkegaard’s affinity for it. In the process, it will not only prepare the way for Chapter 6, which will examine the theme of imitatio Christi in Kierkegaard’s own writings, but, hopefully, carve out a foothold for future research as well. Early Development of the Imitatio Motif When, during the 1420s, Thomas à Kempis began circulating his landmark devotional text, The Imitation of Christ, Christian spirituality received a decisive contribution. No other devotional work has been as popular or, perhaps, as controversial. And yet, what is often forgotten – or, at least, underemphasized – is that Thomas himself did not establish the theme of imitatio Christi. On the contrary, it was a theme already accentuated in the Bible and in ecclesial tradition.    Joseph N. Tylenda, SJ, ‘Introduction’, in The Imitation of Christ (New York, 1998), p. xxxiv.

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The New Testament itself is undoubtedly the primary source of the imitatio motif. In Matthew’s Gospel, for example, Jesus tells his disciples ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.’ Or, as Jesus tells Thomas in John 14:6, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life.’ Such exhortations are not confined to the Gospels, but also turn up in the epistolary writings of the New Testament. As it says in 1 Peter 2:20–21, ‘[I]f you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps.’ The Apostle Paul echoes this exhortation in the so-called ‘kenotic hymn’ of Philippians 2:5–8: Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.

These are only some of the more obvious passages regarding the imitatio motif. Yet, within the framework of this study, the essential point is that the theme traces its roots to the New Testament itself. For the New Testament writers, Christ’s life provides a pattern for disciples, which they are to follow in their own lives, albeit through divine assistance. That this is the case – that, in the words of Johannes Zachhuber, Christianity involves a ‘determinative Lebenspraxis’ – has not been disputed over the course of its history. What has been disputed, however, is just how the disciple is to imitate Christ. For example, as Zachhuber points out, to view Christ as Vorbild [‘example’] is not to conclude that one should dress like a first-century Palestinian   Matthew 16:24–25 (all biblical quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version, NRSV, unless otherwise noted). Also see, for example, Matthew 8:19, 8:21, 11:29, 19:28; Mark 1:17, 2:14, 8:34, 10:21; Luke 9:23, 9:57, 9:61; John 1:43, 10:4, 10:27, 12:26, 13:36, 21:19, 21:22.    In this connection, E.J. Tinsley argues that the fundamental theme of the Old Testament is that of ‘the Way’ [derek], understood both as YHWH’s historical ‘way’ with Israel and the ‘way’ of Torah to which the people of Israel are called (Deut. 8:1–3). Thus it looks forward to the New Testament, including the book of Acts, which refers to Christianity as ‘the Way’ [Acts 9:2, 16:17, 18:25, 19:9, 19:23, 22:4, 24:14, 24:22]. See E.J. Tinsley, The Imitation of God in Christ: An Essay on the Biblical Basis of Christian Spirituality (London, 1960), pp. 34–49.    Also see Rom. 6:4, 8:4; 1 Cor. 7:17; 2 Cor. 5:7; Eph. 2:10, 5:2; Phil. 3:17; 1 Thess. 2:12, 4:1; 1 John 2:6.    See, for example, John 14:26, 16:13.    Johannes Zachhuber, ‘“Imitatio Christi” im 17. Jahrhundert: Eine Konzept theologischer Ethik und Spiritualität im Zeitalter Paul Gerhardts’, in Winfried Böttler (ed.), Paul Gerhardt: Erinnerung und Gegenwart (Berlin, 2006), p. 109. 

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rabbi. Rather, it is to say something about the disciple’s ‘ethical orientation’,10 although such an orientation has been interpreted variously since the patristic era. According to Giles Constable, the theme of imitatio Christi has received two principal treatments during ecclesiastical history. The first, which predominated throughout much of the church’s opening millennium, understood the imitatio motif in terms of future deification: The imitation of Christ [during this period] was the means provided by God for man to recover the lost image and likeness to God, and to pass from the visible and material to the invisible and immaterial, bridging ‘the region of dissimilitude’ (as it was called) between his present condition and the form in which he was created.11

This approach to imitatio Christi led to a deemphasis of Christ’s humanity. His relationship with the Father was given priority over his human relationships;12 his human life was not as important as what his life accomplished.13 Consequently, the abasement of Christ – and its significance for discipleship – was exchanged for triumph. Two ways of imitating Christ emerged as a result. On the one hand, church fathers such as Gregory of Nyssa (ca. 335–94) gave the imitatio motif a monastic character, promoting the contemplative life as a Christian ideal.14 On the other hand, to imitate Christ was to possess power in a heavenly and in an earthly sense. Kings, in fact, were seen ‘as imitating Christ in his royal role’, as when Pope John VII declared that the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles the Bald (823–77), ‘was established by God “in imitation … of the true king Christ His son”’.15 The situation began to change as the church entered its second millennium. The earlier accent on Christ’s divinity and its salvific efficacy was broadened and, in time, overshadowed by an emphasis on Christ’s human life, which began to be seen as a mimetic object in and of itself. As Constable puts it: ‘The ideal of imitating Christ in all respects deepened in the eleventh century into a passionate devotion to His humanity, which increasingly excluded other models and established Christ as the supreme exemplar for devout Christians. Every detail of His behaviour, appearance, and clothing was seen as a pattern.’16 New importance, then, was accorded to bodily existence, for the body was the vehicle in and through 

  Ibid., p. 110.   Ibid. 11   Giles Constable, Three Studies in Medieval Religious and Social Thought (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 167f. 12   Zachhuber, ‘“Imitatio Christi” im 17. Jahrhundert’, p. 112. 13   Constable, Three Studies, p. 155. 14   Zachhuber, ‘“Imitatio Christi” im 17. Jahrhundert’, pp. 112f. 15   Qtd. in Constable, Three Studies, p. 160. 16   Ibid., pp. 179f. 10

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which one participated in Christ’s humble suffering. Moreover, drawing on the teachings of Paul,17 the crucifixion of Christ became less something on which to meditate and more something to reenact in the believer’s fleshly life.18 In short, as contemporaneous accounts of stigmata suggest,19 the imitatio motif had taken on striking palpability. Although the source of this new or, at least, renewed understanding of imitatio Christi is impossible to pinpoint, Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) stands as a key transitional figure.20 He is ‘associated with the type of personal devotion to Christ and desire to imitate Him literally which emerged in the twelfth century’,21 in part because he was careful to maintain an ontological difference between God and humanity.22 For Bernard, the fact that a ‘human being [cannot] simply confront God as a being on his own level’23 furnishes a turn to the theme of imitatio Christi, with especial emphasis falling on Christ’s humble incarnation. In ‘On the Steps of Humility and Pride’, he writes: [Y]ou ask, how do I know that [Christ] is speaking of humility when he says only, ‘I am the way’? Listen to this clearer statement, ‘Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart’ (Mt 11:29). He offers himself as an example of humility, a model of gentleness. If you imitate him you will not walk in darkness; you will have the light of life.24

Humility, according to Bernard, is a concrete means of arriving at the truth, involving, among other things, suffering with and on behalf of the neighbour. In this form of suffering love, which is a self-emptying,25 Christ again stands as humanity’s Vorbild. As Bernard explains, ‘We have an example in our Savior. He wanted to suffer so that he should know how to suffer with us (Heb 2:17), to become wretched so that he could learn mercy’.26 In Chapter 1, it was noted that Bernard was an influence on Pietism, and, in fact, it was through his stress on the imitatio motif that he reached the movement. As Constable points out, the ‘humanistic’ interpretation of imitatio Christi grew in popularity as the Middle Ages unfolded, so that, by the fifteenth century, the imitation of Christ’s poor humanity was a defining theme of Christian spirituality.   Gal. 2:19, 5:24 and 6:17.   Constable, Three Studies, p. 197. 19   Ibid., p. 218. 20   See below for Kierkegaard’s relation to Bernard. 21   Constable, Three Studies, p. 188. 22   Rowan Williams, The Wound of Knowledge (London, 1990), p. 114. 23   Ibid., p. 115. 24   Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘On the Steps of Humility and Pride’, in Bernard of Clairvaux: Selected Works (New York, 1987), p. 102. 25   Ibid., p. 108. 26   Ibid., p. 107. 17 18

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Indeed, Kierkegaard’s reading of Catholic and Pietist Erbauungsliteratur will be examined below, and it will be demonstrated that, in this literary strand, he encountered again and again the turn to the imitation of Christ’s humble human life. Moreover, it will be shown that Kierkegaard esteemed this literature highly, deeming it an ‘older’, more authoritative approach to Christianity. In light of this evaluation, his own move toward the imitatio motif will be seen as his most significant debt to the Pietist tradition. Kierkegaard’s Reading of Catholic Erbauungsliteratur In the opening chapter of this study, it was stressed that one of Pietism’s hallmarks was its retrieval of late medieval Catholic devotional literature or, in the idiom of German scholarship, Erbauungsliteratur. One of the key developments of the later Middle Ages, this literary genre was formally wide-ranging. It included, for example, collections of prayers, hymns, sermons and anecdotes [‘sermon exempla’], the latter often dealing with the life of Christ or the stories of saints.27 This breadth of expression evinces the mixed character of Erbauungsliteratur. Taken from church life, but often practised alone or in small groups, it might be understood as an ‘intermediate phenomenon’ between liturgy and contemplation.28 It was a way of participating in church outside church – a way of making ordinary life holy, of ‘upbuilding’ the everyday. Kierkegaard was a great collector and reader of this literature. By way of the Moravian Brethren – understood here both in terms of his family and in terms of Copenhagen’s Brødresocietet – he encountered upbuilding writings from a young age and maintained an affinity for them throughout his life. Furthermore, as with most Pietists, he did not restrict his interest in Erbauungsliteratur to Protestant sources. Rather, he engaged a number of Catholic sources, first and foremost those late medieval writers championed by Arndt and by his Pietist successors. These Catholic, ‘proto-Pietist’ sources, along with Kierkegaard’s reaction to them, constitute the principal business of this section. Johannes Tauler  Of medieval Catholicism’s devotional writers, Johannes Tauler was the most significant for Pietism. As discussed in Chapter 1, it was Tauler who appealed to Luther, both through his own sermons and, as Luther supposed, through the Theologia deutsch. And when early Pietists such as Arndt aimed to recover an ‘authentic’ Lutheranism centred on growth in the spiritual life, they came to promote Tauler as one of their fathers – an understanding also enunciated by later figures such as Spener and Zinzendorf. Thus it is significant that, according

27   Richard Kieckhefer, ‘Major Currents in Late Medieval Devotion’, in Jill Raitt (ed.), Christian Spirituality: High Middle Ages and Reformation (London, 1988), pp. 77–9. 28   Ibid., p. 76.

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to the inventory of Kierkegaard’s library,29 he kept a number of Tauler editions: an 1821 copy of the fifteenth-century Deutero-Taulerian work, Imitation of the Poor Life of Christ, as well as two multivolume collections of Tauler’s sermons from 1841–42.30 What did he find in these writings, particularly as regards the theme of imitatio Christi? For Tauler, the imitatio motif is grounded in the Christian doctrine of creation. The fact that God creates ex nihilo means that all creatures, even human beings, are ‘truly nothing’ in their ground.31 In other words, creaturely existence, in and of itself, is a ‘pure receiving’.32 As with his predecessor, Meister Eckhart (ca. 1260–1327),33 this lends a metaphysical character to Tauler’s programme. On his reckoning, the aim of the Christian life is for the person to return ‘into God’34 or, more explicitly, for the human being to ‘give up the nothingness of its created self’35 so that, ultimately, he or she might pass into the eminent ‘nothingness of God’. Although thoroughly metaphysical, Tauler, unlike Eckhart, works to root these ontological concerns in concrete, practical guidance. Drawing on his foundational doctrine of creaturely nothingness, Tauler maintains that the human being’s proper existential orientation is one of ‘ultimate humility’.36 Persons are both physically and morally feeble, and no human life is in want of suffering. Yet, as Tauler stresses, most persons are willing, if not able, to forget 29

  H.P. Rohde (ed.), Auktionsprotokol over Søren Kierkegaard’s Bogsamling (Copenhagen, 1967). Where appropriate, books in Kierkegaard’s personal library will be identified by their extant bibliographic information and by their number in Rohde’s Auktionsprotokol [ASKB]. 30   Johannes Tauler, Nachfolgung des armen Lebens Christi (Frankfurt am Main, 1821 / ASKB 282); Johannes Tauler, Predigten, E. Kunze and J.H.R. Bilsenthal (eds), 2 pts (Berlin, 1841–42 / ASKB 245–46); Johannes Tauler, Predigten auf alle Sonn- und Festtage im Jahr, 2 vols (Berlin, 1841 / ASKB 247). 31   Qtd. in Oliver Davies, God Within: The Mystical Tradition of Northern Europe, 2nd edn (London, 2006), p. 86. Indeed, in the manner of Davies, I agree that Tauler’s insistence on the ‘nothingness’ of creatures situates him within the orthodox Christian tradition of creatio ex nihilo, despite the criticisms of Tauler’s forerunner, Meister Eckhart, on this point. See ibid., p. 42. 32   Bernard McGinn, The Harvest of Mysticism in Medieval Germany (1300–1500) (New York, 2005), p. 145. 33   Incidentally, although it appears Kierkegaard did not own any of Eckhart’s works, he did have Hans Lassen Martensen, Mester Eckart: Et Bidrag til at oplyse Middelalderens Mystik (Copenhagen, 1840 / ASKB 649). This treatise recently has been translated into English. See Curtis L. Thompson and David J. Kangas (trans.), Between Hegel and Kierkegaard: Hans L. Martensen’s Philosophy of Religion (Atlanta, 1997). 34   See Josef Schmidt, ‘Introduction’, in Johannes Tauler: Sermons (New York, 1985), pp. 29f. 35   McGinn, The Harvest of Mysticism, p. 145. 36   Schmidt, ‘Introduction’, pp. 31f.

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this basic component of human existence: being ‘worldly-minded’, they ‘strive for transitory fortune and enjoyment of fortune’.37 But, he says, such things only lead to more sorrow, since they are ‘divisive forces’ that stifle the ‘divine restlessness’ native to the human being.38 So, via the process of ‘detachment’ [Abgeschiedenheit] or, alternatively, ‘releasement’ [Gelassenheit], persons are to attend to the manifold frailties of creaturely life, letting go of the self’s narrow ‘desires, demands, and needs’.39 For the Taulerian author of the Imitation of the Poor Life of Christ, this detached state is synonymous with ‘poverty of spirit’,40 and it is marked by a total dependence on ‘that which is beyond all things’.41 All activities ‘not directed toward [God]’,42 even those with an ostensible spiritual orientation, undermine ‘the true poverty of spirit’, which ‘actually clings to nothing, and nothing to it’.43 Hence, for Tauler, self-assertion is the greatest danger to the spiritual life. It is with this in mind that Tauler, in a further divergence from Eckhart, turns his attention to the theme of imitatio Christi. In his life, and especially in his Passion, Christ demonstrates the manner in which human beings are to devote themselves to the Godhead.44 As the Poor Life of Christ goes on: We have seen … that the highest perfection of the human being consists in true, complete poverty of spirit, and that only it is the stage of human perfection. Now, then, we want to show also to which endpoint its inner eyes must be directed in order to achieve it. This endpoint is, first, the life and the teaching of Jesus Christ, since he himself not only taught poverty, but also lived it. Now, this life and this teaching you should follow, O man, if you would be perfect!45

Christ incarnates this ‘poverty’ in a number of interlinked ways: in his ‘humble forgetfulness of self’ and ‘true submission’ to God’s will;46 in his bearing of trial and temptation, exemplified on Good Friday;47 and in his 37   Christine Pleuser, Die Benennungen und der Begriff des Leides bei J. Tauler (Berlin, 1967), p. 184. 38   Johannes Tauler, ‘Sermon 55’, in Johannes Tauler: Sermons, p. 159. 39   Qtd. in McGinn, The Harvest of Mysticism, p. 268. 40   Tauler, Nachfolgung, p. 1. 41   Ibid., p. 2. 42   Tauler, ‘Sermon 23’, in Johannes Tauler: Sermons, p. 80. 43   Tauler, Nachfolgung, p. 1. 44   Tauler, ‘Sermon 40’, in Johannes Tauler: Sermons, p. 139. 45   Tauler, Nachfolgung, p. 107. 46   Tauler, ‘Sermon 27’, in Johannes Tauler: Sermons, p. 100. 47   Tauler, ‘Sermon 59’, in Johannes Tauler: Sermons, pp. 163–8. Intriguingly, this sermon is based on John 12:32 [‘If I be lifted up, I will draw all things to Myself.’], the text

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love for God and neighbour. 48 As Tauler summarizes, ‘We are to look at how patient, how gentle, how kind, how quiet, how faithful, how charitable, how just, how true and so forth his exuding love itself and his entire life have been’.49 For all of Tauler’s metaphysical commitments, this is the core of his thought. Mystical speculation is inefficacious, if one thinks that it somehow replaces or surpasses the Vorbild of Christ. 50 That does not mean, however, that Tauler thinks one can achieve a likeness to Christ, or even that one should endeavour to do so. Rather, one is to submit oneself to God in everything, acknowledging one’s lack of correspondence to Christ’s example – a submission that establishes a proper relation to God, who alone can enable one to imitate Christ in stricter fashion.51 upon which Kierkegaard based the seven discourses making up the third part of Practice in Christianity. 48   Tauler, ‘Sermon 76’, in Johannes Tauler: Sermons, p. 169. 49   Qtd. in Louise Gnädinger, Johannes Tauler: Lebenswelt und Mystiche Lehre (Munich, 1993), p. 286. 50   Ibid. 51   Ibid, pp. 286–9. On this point, Tauler and Luther are basically in agreement. Both are critical of an ascetic, ‘self-imposed imitation of the suffering Christus exemplum’, a practice that ‘denies the very humilitas’ incarnated by Christ [Dietmar Lage, Martin Luther’s Christology and Ethics (Lewiston, New York, 1990), p. 60]. Both emphasize the notion of pati Deum: likeness to Christ is not a result of activity, but of passivity. But Luther’s rejection of ‘the Platonic ontological and cosmological elements of Tauler’s thought’ [ibid., p. 80] still has notable ramifications. While Tauler sees Gelassenheit as a posture preparatory to conformitas Christi and, finally, to union with God, Luther worries that any human conceptualization of this process implies a self ‘with the ability to retain control over the flow of grace’ [ibid., p. 83]. For him, ‘detachment’ is not the first step in a larger metaphysical scheme – a scheme that tempts human beings, since the ‘desire to be as God (homo deificatus) is the root of all sin’ [ibid., p. 81] – but the fruit of a simple faith in God’s grace. Luther’s principle of sola fide means that Christlikeness ‘occurs beyond reason, perception or conscious awareness’ [ibid., p. 86]. Hence, on a Lutheran reading, Tauler’s sanctifying method turns Gelassenheit into a form of works-righteousness, no matter how passive Tauler tries to render it. In response to this view, one could counter (as Arndt did) that Tauler presupposes the priority of faith – that Tauler’s Gelassenheit also issues from faith. Thus the following statement by Luther also might be seen as indicative of Tauler’s position: ‘Christ is held up and given to us as an example and a pattern for us to follow, for if we now have Christ as a gift through faith, we should go forward and do as He does for us. We should imitate Him in our whole life and in all our suffering’ [Martin Luther, ‘Sermons on the First Epistle of St. Peter’, in Jaroslav Pelikan (ed.), Luther’s Works (St Louis, Missouri, 1967), vol. 30, p. 117]. Luther, then, never relinquishes the imitatio motif. As Ian Siggins writes, ‘[T]he role of the imitation of Christ in the daily life of the Christian should not be denied, and Luther, so far from denying it, vigorously affirms it’ [Ian D. Kingston Siggins, Martin Luther’s Doctrine of Christ (New Haven, Connecticut, 1970), p. 160]. In short, Luther takes a razor to the metaphysical context of Tauler’s teaching – leaving practice and theory in God’s hands, as it were – but does not

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Henry Suso and the Theologia deutsch  A similar approach to the theme of imitatio Christi can be located in Kierkegaard’s other holdings from the German mystical tradition. For instance, he owned an 1837 collection52 of the writings of Henry Suso (ca. 1300–66), who, like Tauler, rooted Eckhart’s metaphysical speculations in the imitatio motif. For Suso, too, Christ’s life and Passion exemplify the Eckhartian teaching of Gelassenheit, thereby indicating how persons are to return to God.53 As he puts it, ‘[Christ] did not just become a person, but took on human nature … and whoever therefore seeks a true return to God and to be themselves a son of God in Christ, must turn from themselves to him; then he will attain his goal.’54 This ‘turn’ to Christ is neither metaphorical nor merely spiritual. Suso, for a time, adopted ‘strikingly austere practices of physical mortification’,55 and he maintained that, through the believer’s imitatio passionis, a special and loving bond with Christ is forged.56 Also in this tradition of Deutsche Mystik, but far more important for Pietism, was the Theologia deutsch. Long attributed to Tauler, it stands as a companion piece to the abovementioned Imitation of the Poor Life of Christ. Both texts, in fact, were written at some point in the early fifteenth century, and both trade in Taulerian concepts.57 Yet, between the two, the Theologia deutsch came to exercise far greater influence, not least because Martin Luther issued editions of it in 1516 and 1518. Furthermore, as noted in Chapter 1, Johann Arndt ensconced the Theologia deutsch in the Pietist movement, publishing his own editions in 1597, 1605, 1617 and 1621. Fittingly, then, Kierkegaard owned an edition58 of the Theologia deutsch that included forewords by both Luther and Arndt. Thus he had access to Arndt’s synopsis of the book, which proclaims that the Theologia deutsch ‘brilliantly and plainly’ teaches that Christian discipleship fundamentally concerns the imitation of Christ.59 As Arndt elucidates:

repudiate imitatio Christi itself. As will be seen below, he is therefore in the company of the Frankfurter and of Thomas à Kempis – just one reason why many of the Pietists could claim to be Lutheran and, at the same time, approve of Catholic Erbauungsliteratur. It is part of Kierkegaard’s Pietist heritage that he could do something similar. 52   Heinrich Suso, Leben und Schriften, 2nd edn (Regensburg, 1837 / ASKB 809). 53   McGinn, The Harvest of Mysticism, p. 212. 54   Qtd. in Davies, God Within, p. 106. 55   Ibid., p. 100. 56   McGinn, The Harvest of Mysticism, p. 213. 57   Davies, God Within, p. 110. 58   Friedrich Conrad Krüger (ed.), Die Deutsche Theologie, eine sehr alte, für jeden Christen außerst wichtige Schrift, mit einer Vorrede von Dr. Martin Luther und dem gewesenen Generalsuperintendenten Johann Arnd (Lemgo, 1822 / ASKB 634). 59   Johann Arndt, ‘Vorrede’, in Krüger, Die Deutsche Theologie, p. 6.

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In this little book, you will not find much quarrelling, wayward emotions or prickly talk, but rather pure love, desire for the highest, eternal good, disdain for the world, sacrifice of the individual will, the crucifixion of your flesh, the uniformity with Christ in patience, gentleness, humility, cross and affliction. In sum, how you are to die to yourself and to the world, and to live in Christ.60

Arndt’s assessment of the Theologia deutsch is by no means inaccurate. The author of the treatise – now typically referred to as the ‘Frankfurter’, since he was a priest from an area near Frankfurt am Main – follows Tauler, but in a less speculative way.61 The result is a text centred on practical spirituality, providing an even more intensive emphasis on the theme of imitatio Christi. Indeed, according to the Frankfurter, Christ is the embodiment of ‘true obedience’, who demonstrates that a person ‘must put aside all “selfdom” and concern with the “Self”’, so that he takes ‘as little account of himself as though he were not’.62 Hence, to the degree that Christ ‘was the freest, most unfettered, least I-bound will that ever appeared, ever was, ever will be in human form’,63 he stands as the prototype for all other persons, requiring that they ‘surrender all things, just as everything was surrendered in Him’.64 This is the way of the cross, and it issues neither in passive contemplation of the divine nor in selfinterested activity in the world,65 but in a life, fully moved by God, devoted to humble service.66 Thomas à Kempis  As has been noted, the Frankfurter borrows from Tauler’s understanding of the imitatio motif, but also distances himself from Tauler’s metaphysical dependence on Eckhart. Thus his approach resembles that of Thomas à Kempis (ca. 1380–1471), another medieval Erbauungsautor whom Kierkegaard read. Indeed, Kierkegaard owned three books by Thomas: two editions of The Imitation of Christ – a 1702 Latin edition, as well as an 1848 Danish copy – and an 1849 Danish edition of The Rose Bower and the Garden of Lilies.67 Famously, Thomas was an adherent to the Devotio moderna movement in the Netherlands, which Geert Groote (1340–84) founded as an antidote to the dangers 60

  Ibid., p. 7.   Davies, God Within, p. 113. 62   Bengt Hoffman (trans.), The Theologia Germanica of Martin Luther (New York, 1980), p. 76. 63   Ibid., p. 141. 64   Ibid., p. 143. 65   Ibid., p. 96. 66   Ibid., pp. 92f. 67   Thomas à Kempis, De imitatione Christi (Paris, 1702 / ASKB 272); Thomas à Kempis, Om Christi Efterfølgelse, fire Bøger, 3rd edn (Copenhagen, 1848 / ASKB 273); Thomas à Kempis, Rosengaarden og Liliehaven (Copenhagen, 1849 / ASKB 274). 61

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of speculative mysticism and formalistic religiosity. It was a movement, then, that might be seen as compatible with the Taulerian emphasis on the imitation of Christ, but otherwise hostile to the Neoplatonic tendencies present in the Deutsche Mystik. And yet, even this point is debatable, since one of Groote’s chief mentors, Jan van Ruusbroec (1293–1381), seems to have been visited by Tauler around 1350 and, accordingly, betrays a familiarity with Eckhartian ideas.68 To be sure, scholars continue to debate the tacit influence of Eckhart on the Devotio moderna, which assumed the concept of Gelassenheit, but applied it almost exclusively to the ethical life.69 For its followers, such as Thomas à Kempis, detachment is not a metaphysical principle, but a way of living. Thomas’s The Imitation of Christ accentuates this point forcefully, using Christ’s humble human life as a paradigm. Comprised of four books, The Imitation of Christ is united by its consistent recommendation of ascetic virtues, which, according to R.R. Post, are five in number: humility, prudence, obedience, mutual love and diligence.70 These are to be practised with an eye always on Christ, who incarnated them and so stands before the believer as a prototype. As with the other Erbauungsautoren mentioned above, this insight leads Thomas to place great stress on Christ’s Passion and on the disciple’s need to imitate it: Nothing is more acceptable to God, nor is there anything more beneficial in this world, than being willing to suffer for Christ. If you were given the choice you ought to prefer to suffer adversity for Christ’s sake rather than to be comforted by many consolations. In this way you make yourself more like Christ and model yourself more closely on the saints.71

Thomas then concludes that Christian existence is, finally, paradoxical. It measures progress not in terms of the accrual of pleasures, but, rather, ‘in bearing great trials and tribulations’ or, as Kierkegaard’s Danish version has it, ‘in enduring severe sufferings [Lidelser] and much hardship [Gjenvordighed]’.72 In this outlook, Thomas recapitulates the Devotio moderna’s accent on the striving nature of Christian life – a point identified by Kierkegaard’s contemporary and occasional interlocutor, Andreas Gottlob Rudelbach (1792–1862),73 who 68

  A. Wautier D’Aygalliers, Ruysbroeck the Admirable (Port Washington, New York, 1969), pp. 140–43, and Davies, God Within, pp. 128f. 69   Davies, God Within, pp. 129, 156. 70   R.R. Post, The Modern Devotion: Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism (Leiden, 1968), p. 533. 71   Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ (New York, 1998), p. 69. Also see Thomas à Kempis, Om Christi Efterfølgelse, pp. 68f. 72   Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, p. 69. 73   As alluded to in Chapter 2, Rudelbach was a Lutheran dogmatician, sometime Grundtvigian and friend to Kierkegaard’s older brother, Peter Christian. In 1851, Rudelbach

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penned an introduction to the 1848 Danish edition of The Imitation of Christ. As Rudelbach sees it, one of the central theses of Thomas’s work is that ‘the Christian life must be completed in a struggle, that the crown is only placed on those who, by their Saviour’s almighty assistance, have overcome the world’.74 Thus, he claims, it is a profitable text for Protestants,75 thereby following Arndt, whose 1605, 1617 and 1621 editions of the Theologia deutsch included The Imitation of Christ and, in so doing, introduced the text into Lutheranism.76 Additional Catholic Sources  Tauler, the Frankfurter and Thomas à Kempis stand as the most significant of Kierkegaard’s Catholic Erbauungsquellen. This is an unsurprising conclusion, given their importance for the Pietist movement. And yet, before taking up that topic, it is worth pointing out that Kierkegaard displayed an interest in other late medieval and even post-Reformation Catholic writers who also had connections to Pietism. For instance, Kierkegaard owned a 1566 Latin edition of Bernard of Clairvaux’s works,77 and he read biographies about him.78 Further, in his journals, he makes a handful of references to Bernard.79 Most of these are mere observations, though others suggest that Kierkegaard struggled to comprehend him. In 1850, he cites Bernard as one who understood the rigorous nature of Christianity,80 while, in 1854, he claims that Bernard’s respect for the Petrine office betrays a misunderstanding of the imitation of Christ.81 In the same entry, he also levels this charge at the French scientist and religious thinker, Blaise Pascal (1623–62), but, curiously, never applies it to the Catholic figures surveyed above. As noted, Kierkegaard also owned Erbauungsliteratur by post-Reformation Catholics who came to wield influence in Pietist circles. One of these was Johannes published a treatise, On Civil Marriage, in which he claimed that Kierkegaard supported the separation of church and state. This comment occasioned Kierkegaard’s article, ‘An Open Letter Prompted by a Reference to Me by Dr. Rudelbach’, which was published in The Fatherland on 31 January 1851. 74   A.G. Rudelbach, ‘Indledning til Læsningen af Thomas a Kempis’, in Om Christi Efterfølgelse, fire Bøger, 3rd edn (Copenhagen, 1848 / ASKB 273), p. xvi. 75   Ibid., p. xiii. 76   Johannes Wallmann, ‘Johann Arndt und die Protestantische Frömmigkeit: Zur Rezeption der mittelalterlichen Mystik im Luthertum’, in Dieter Breuer (ed.), Frömmigkeit in der Frühen Neuzeit: Studien zur religiösen Literatur des 17. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland (Amsterdam, 1984), p. 65. 77   Bernardi Clarevallensis, Opera (Basil [Basle], 1566 / ASKB 427). 78   NB21:149 / JP 3, 2722; NB28:44 / JP 3, 2899; NB28:42 / JP 4, 4295; NB22:23.b / JP 6, 6703. 79   JJ:424; NB2:100; NB15:48 / JP 1, 201; NB24:34 / JP 2, 1517; NB30:119 / JP 2, 1930; NB21:144 / JP 4, 5015. 80   See especially NB15:48 / JP 1, 201. 81   NB30:119 / JP 2, 1930.

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Scheffler (1624–77), better known as Angelus Silesius, whose Cherubic Wanderer was inspired by Eckhart’s thought.82 Kierkegaard kept an 1829 edition of this text, as well as an 1838 copy of Angelus’s Holy Desire of the Soul.83 Also pertinent in this connection are Kierkegaard’s holdings of works by the prominent French Quietists, Madame Guyon (1648–1717) and François Fénelon (1651–1715).84 Fénelon, in particular, appealed to Kierkegaard,85 who considered him a ‘pious man’86 and a penetrating observer of religious existence.87 Still, given the concerns of this study, Tauler, the Theologia deutsch and Thomas à Kempis remain central. They were not only decisive influences on Pietism, but also key expositors of the imitatio motif. What remains to be explored, then, is just how Kierkegaard responded to them. Kierkegaard’s Response to Catholic Erbauungsliteratur Though extant references are few, it is nevertheless clear that Kierkegaard read and admired Tauler. In a passage from The Concept of Irony, which alludes to the necessity of negation in the early thought of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814), he writes, ‘[A]s Tauler so beautifully says in an even more concrete situation: Yet this loss, this vanishing, / Is indeed the genuine and proper finding.’88 Likewise, in an 1847 journal entry, Kierkegaard cites another lyric from Tauler: ‘Let him to whom suffering is like joy / And joy like suffering, / Thank God for such equivalence.’89 This quote is not taken from any of the Taulerian texts mentioned above, but, rather, from a secondary work concerning philosophy during the time   Davies, God Within, p. 117.   Angelus Silesius, Cherubinischer Wandersmann (Sulzbach, 1829 / ASKB 783); Angelus Silesius, Heilige Seelenlust (Mannheim, 1838 / ASKB 208). Silesius was a convert from Lutheranism. Intriguingly, Kierkegaard’s attraction to him may have some relation to Hans Adolph Brorson, the eighteenth-century Danish hymnist whom Kierkegaard greatly admired. As Niels Jørgen Cappelørn notes, Brorson was largely responsible for introducing Silesius’s hymns and songs into Denmark’s Pietist circles [Cappelørn, ‘Kierkegaard som bogkøber og bogsamler’, p. 133]. 84   Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon, Das Leben der Frau J.M.B. von la Mothe Guion, von ihr selbst beschreiben, 3 pts (Berlin, 1826 / ASKB 1915–17). François Fénelon, Sämtliche Werke, 2 vols (Leipzig, 1782 / ASKB 1912–13); François Fénelon, Werke religiösen Inhalts, 3 vols (Hamburg, 1822 / ASKB 1914); François Fénelon, Herrn von Fenelons kurze Lebens-Beschreibungen und Lehr-Sätze der alten Welt-Weisen (Leipzig, 1741 / ASKB 486). 85   See NB11:215 / JP 1, 818; NB10:210 / JP 3, 3435; NB12:119 / JP 4, 4638; NB11:148 / JP 4, 4863; JJ:238 / JP 5, 5736; NB11:192, NB11:192.a, NB11:192.a.a / JP 6, 6426; NB24:54, NB24:54.d, NB24:54.e / JP 6, 6762. 86   NB12:119 / JP 4, 4638. 87   See especially NB11:192, NB11:192.a, NB11:192.a.a / JP 6, 6426. 88   SKS 1 / CI, 274. Also see Tauler, Nachfolgung, p. 254. 89   NB2:10 / JP 4, 4598. 82 83

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of the Reformation.90 A third brief citation dates from 1848. In a journal note,91 Kierkegaard refers to the second part of the Poor Life of Christ, indicating that, for Tauler,92 ‘the highest’ is precisely the point where human notions of knowledge and love collapse. The Taulerian author of the Poor Life of Christ illustrates this point with Paul’s comment from Galatians 2:20: ‘It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.’93 Taken together, these citations are noteworthy, not least because they imply that Kierkegaard was attracted to Tauler’s paradoxical spirituality. However, among Kierkegaard’s references to Tauler, it is a second 1848 journal entry that is most significant: In Tauler’s Nachfolgung des armen Lebens Jesu Christi, which I am presently reading for my edification, I find (pt. 2, para. 33, p. 137) a striking similarity to what I have developed in Christian discourses (third section, second discourse). The following is especially excellent: that love prefers to obey counsel rather than commands. Consequently, as I have presented it, renunciation of all things is Christian counsel; Christ desires that you do it but does not command it. Nor does he judge every person who does not do it to be no Christian.94

This passage’s significance lies in its explicit endorsement of Taulerian thinking. Not only does Kierkegaard describe Tauler’s understanding of ‘Nachfolge’ – which often is translated as ‘succession’ or ‘discipleship’, but, in its richest sense, carries the weight of ‘imitation’ – as ‘especially excellent’, but he also notes that he is reading Tauler for his own ‘edification’ [Opbyggelse]. This is one of the highest compliments he pays to an author, signifying that, opposite Tauler, a posture of earnestness is appropriate. In short, Tauler’s approach to Christianity, with its penchant for paradox and emphasis on imitatio Christi, nurtures piety and so is propaedeutic to ethico-religious development. Kierkegaard has less to say about the Theologia deutsch, though, again, his familiarity with and approval of the text are evident. In his 1843 upbuilding discourse, ‘Strengthening in the Inner Being’, he refers to the Theologia deutsch as ‘an old devotional book’.95 As will be seen, he applies this designation of respect to a number of Erbauungsbücher. Moreover, in a related 1843 journal entry, he makes reference to the tenth chapter of Theologia deutsch, wherein the Frankfurter 90

  Moriz Carriere, Die philosophische Weltanschauung der Reformationszeit (Stuttgart, 1847 / ASKB 458). 91   NB4:91. 92   Indeed, Kierkegaard did not know that the Poor Life of Christ was written by someone other than Tauler. For him, in other words, it does not have deuterocanonical status, but, in fact, is a work of Tauler himself. 93   Tauler, Nachfolgung, p. 121. 94   NB4:102 / JP 2, 1844. 95   SKS 5, 103 / EUD, 98.

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observes that people imagine they love God when life is going well, but, ‘when the illusion is withdrawn’, they ‘forget God’ in their distress.96 Kierkegaard comments that this is an astute observation, which ‘can really be regarded as a motto for the times’.97 He thinks that the Frankfurter has grasped a key aspect of despair: the despairing person’s turn away from God and toward ‘creatures’ presupposes a prevenient dependence on God, much like a girl ‘who, when she cannot get her way with the beloved, spites him by falling in love with another’.98 Although these two citations are, at best, suggestive, they do underline – along with his mention of Tauler in The Concept of Irony – that Kierkegaard’s interest in Erbauungsliteratur is not characteristic only of his later years.99 Further, they show that, in addition to his understanding of the imitatio motif, Kierkegaard’s reading of upbuilding texts informed his own theological anthropology. Kierkegaard cites Thomas à Kempis more than any of his other Catholic Erbauungsquellen.100 And, naturally, it follows that Thomas’s The Imitation of Christ stands in the background of Kierkegaard’s adoption of the imitatio motif, whether in terms of its influence on Pietists such as Arndt or in its own right. Yet, as with the Theologia deutsch, Kierkegaard’s direct references to The Imitation of Christ tend to have a broader, more existential orientation. In one journal entry, he alludes to Thomas’s commendation of silence and solitude, adding that, à la Thomas, he wonders ‘[t]o what a degree men would become men and lovable characters’ if only they would shun the life of the crowd.101 Another passage refers to Book 3, Chapter 23 of The Imitation of Christ, where Thomas discusses ‘the Lord’s teaching about the true peace’.102 Noting Thomas’s first injunction – namely, that peace comes from doing another’s will, rather than one’s own – Kierkegaard writes that, while ‘there is something very appealing to this’,103 he worries that the church’s identification with the state has rendered such counsel problematic. ‘If I were to submit myself to any clergyman, I am

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  Theologia Germanica, p. 72.   JJ:168 / JP 1, 744. 98   JJ:168 / JP 1, 744. 99   Also see AA:14 / JP 1, 416. This 1835 entry speaks of ‘those upbuilding writings’ [Opbyggelsesskrifter] that manifest ‘a completely Christian life’ – a life that, as Kierkegaard understands it, one reaches only by passing through ‘many struggles and much spiritual suffering’. Only 22 years old at the time, the youthful Kierkegaard was obviously intimate with the Erbauungsliteratur tradition already. 100   NB10:205 / JP 2, 2016; NB11:101 / JP 3, 2691; NB12:11 / JP 4, 4783; NB12:172 / JP 4, 4784; NB13:24 / JP 4, 4785; NB13:53 / JP 4, 4786; NB14:4 / JP 6, 6524; NB14:104 / JP 4, 4787. 101   NB10:205 / JP 2, 2016. Also see Thomas à Kempis, Om Christi Efterfølgelse, pp. 26–8. 102   Thomas à Kempis, Om Christi Efterfølgelse, p. 110. 103   NB11:101 / JP 3, 2691. 97

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sure he would secularize my whole endeavor by promptly getting me into the establishment,’104 he explains. A third reference moves closer to the theme of imitatio Christi. In an allusion to Thomas’s discussion of the Apostle Paul,105 Kierkegaard writes: A line by Thomas à Kempis which perhaps could be used as a motto sometime. He says of Paul: Therefore he turned everything over to God, who knows all, and defended himself solely by means of patience and humility … . He did defend himself now and then so that the weak would not be offended by his silence.106

For Thomas, the virtues of patience and humility essentially belong to the imitation of Christ – virtues that Paul, as a true imitator of Christ, duly emulates. Kierkegaard, in turn, sanctions this line of thinking. Remarkably, not only the above entries, but all of Kierkegaard’s references to The Imitation of Christ stem from 1849, the year in which The Sickness unto Death was published. A year later, Practice in Christianity also appeared. These are, of course, the Anti-Climican writings, which, according to Kierkegaard, represent the ‘zenith of Christianity in ethical rigorousness’.107 Might Kierkegaard have been drawing on The Imitation of Christ during the composition of these works, whether for personal upbuilding or for existential insight? That is certainly a possibility, although Kierkegaard gives no direct indication of it. What is clear, however, is that Kierkegaard considered Thomas à Kempis, like Tauler, an important exponent of the nature of Christian discipleship.108 Tauler, the Theologia deutsch and Thomas à Kempis: Kierkegaard read each of these Catholic, ‘proto-Pietist’ sources with appreciation. In them, he found lyrical renderings of the Christian life, incisive analyses of the human condition, an unfailing emphasis on the imitation of Christ’s way as a lowly human being   NB11:101 / JP 3, 2691.   Thomas à Kempis, Om Christi Efterfølgelse, pp. 130f. 106   NB14:4 / JP 6, 6524. 107   NB12:7 / JP 6, 6445. 108   Although an incidental topic here, it is intriguing that the fourth book of The Imitation of Christ concerns the Eucharist. In these writings, Thomas gives especial attention to the believer’s earnest preparation for the communion meal, even though, ultimately, he concludes that no amount of preparation is sufficient to properly receive the gift of Christ’s body and blood. Thus he writes, ‘Do what you can, but do it with dedication, not as a matter of course or compulsion, but with childlike fear, with love [Kjærlighed] and awe you shall receive the Body of your beloved Lord and God, him who deigns to come to you’ [Thomas à Kempis, Om Christi Efterfølgelse, p. 202]. This is germane with respect to Kierkegaard, as he, too, penned several communion discourses emphasizing the recipient’s passionate preparation for and reception of the Eucharistic meal. See SKS 10, 261–325 / CD, 251–300; SKS 11, 247–80 / WA, 109–44; SKS 12, 281–302 / WA, 165–88. 104 105

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and, above all, encouragement toward upbuilding – a response he shared with most of Pietism’s leading figures. Yet, what did Kierkegaard find in these Pietist inheritors of late medieval Erbauungsliteratur? And how did he receive them? These questions will occupy the remainder of this overarching section on the Erbauungsliteratur tradition and on Kierkegaard’s evaluation of it. Kierkegaard’s Reading of Pietist Erbauungsliteratur As was detailed in Chapter 1, Johann Arndt was largely responsible for the birth of the Pietist movement. As an editor and as a publisher, he retrieved and popularized late medieval devotional writings – which he called ‘old, short little books that lead to a holy life’109 – for the Protestant world. Among these writings, Tauler’s sermons, the Theologia deutsch and The Imitation of Christ were, for Arndt, the most significant110 and, through him, they entered into the Pietist canon and ultimately made their way to Kierkegaard. But Arndt did far more than reissue texts. He himself was a great devotional writer, whose True Christianity was to have an immense impact on Protestant spirituality and, in turn, inspire a wave of Pietist Erbauungsliteratur. As will be shown, Kierkegaard displayed a keen interest in this devotional literature, too. Johann Arndt  Kierkegaard owned two editions of Arndt’s True Christianity, one in German and another in Danish.111 Thus he was able to gain firsthand knowledge of Arndt’s thought, which was a Lutheran reworking of late medieval Catholic mysticism. At the time, his was an original, yet controversial effort, validated by maintaining that the Protestant principle of ‘justification by faith alone’ was implicit in authors such as Tauler and Thomas à Kempis.112 As Arndt wrote in a letter to Herzog August (1579–1666), ‘If … Tauler had not followed Christ as way, truth, and life, he would not have been able to be raised to such spiritual riches.’113 With this presupposition, Arndt was freed to appropriate Catholic mysticism for the sake of his most heartfelt concern – the spiritual and moral renewal of the Lutheran church. Christian Braw summarizes this point: 109   Qtd. in Christian Braw, Bücher im Staube: Die Theologie Johann Arndts in ihrem Verhältnis zur Mystik (Leiden, 1985), p. 43. 110   Braw, Bücher im Staube, p. 43. Another significant influence on Arndt was the Franciscan tertiary, Angela of Foligno (ca. 1248–1309). The second book of True Christianity borrows from Angela’s writings on prayer and love for God. Arndt’s variety of sources – from Angela and Tauler to Luther – makes True Christianity a kind of spiritual ‘collage’. 111   Johann Arndt, Sämtliche geistreiche Bücher vom wahren Christenthum, 2nd edn (Tübingen, 1777 / ASKB 276); Fire Bøger om den sande Christendom (Christiana, 1829 / ASKB 277). 112   Braw, Bücher im Staube, p. 46. 113   Qtd. in Braw, Bücher im Staube, p. 49.

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Arndt’s matter of concern is ethics, how true doctrine and Christian life are to hold together, how doctrine is to transform life. Arndt has learned this in the Theologia deutsch as well as in Tauler. … Through this chief matter of concern – ethics – Arndt was led to the focal point of mysticism, the incarnation of Christ. The mystics have taught him that the ethical question, which was his pastoral concern, is not to be answered from the outside, but from the inside.114

Thus Arndt came to centre True Christianity on Christ, both as Heiland [‘Saviour’] and Vorbild. In this way, the imitatio Christi is treated as a regulative principle – Christ is the ‘example, mirror, and rule for [one’s] life’115 – even as it is made possible ‘only by the merits of Christ’.116 For all of its balance, however, Arndt’s ‘evangelical mysticism’117 finds its most characteristic expression in the imitatio motif, not least because, for him, the imitation of Christ is a consequence of evangelical faith.118 In a chapter on the necessity of self-denial in the Christian life, Arndt expounds this point: If the love of the world dies in you, God’s love will be raised up in its place. This is the new inner man with his members; these are the fruits of the Holy Spirit; this is living active faith. This is Christ in us and his noble life; it is the new obedience, the new commandment of Christ, it is the fruit of the new birth in us, in which you must live if you wish to be a child of God. Only those who live in this new birth are the children of God.119

Here Arndt’s debt to Tauler and to the tradition of Deutsche Mystik is also evident. The Christian is to ‘resign’ from creatures – to die to the world – so that ‘nothing other is to live, shine, act, will, love, think, speak, or rejoice in man except God himself’.120 In this way, one becomes a ‘simple, pure, clear, holy instrument of God and of God’s holy will and of all divine acts’,121 just like Christ, who ‘completely sacrificed his will to his heavenly Father’s will in highest obedience, humility, and meekness without any self-honor, self-love, self-gain, or possessiveness’.122 Hence, as Peter Erb notes, ‘Tauler’s emphasis on Gelassenheit worked easily into Arndt’s order of salvation.’123 114

  Braw, Bücher im Staube, pp. 43f.   Arndt, True Christianity, p. 39. 116   Ibid., p. 45. 117   Braw, Bücher im Staube, p. 220. 118   Ibid., p. 137. As mentioned in an earlier footnote, this approach resembles Luther’s. 119   Arndt, True Christianity, p. 83. 120   Ibid., p. 30. 121   Ibid., p. 31. 122   Ibid., p. 31. 123   Erb, ‘Introduction’, in Johann Arndt: True Christianity (New York, 1979), p. 13. 115

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Something similar could be said with regard to Arndt’s portrayal of the imitation of Christ. For Arndt and for his mystical sources, if one realizes that one ‘is nothing’, a mere ‘shadow’ or a ‘dream’,124 whose consolation does not lie in creatures but in God alone, then one will follow the example of Christ, giving oneself over to God’s will and so living a life of humility and charity. Thus internal self-abnegation is not an end in itself,125 but, rather, a means toward holy living. And yet, it is precisely for this reason that, in a fallen world, the Christian must expect to suffer bodily. To live in and for God alone is to bear with poverty, loneliness, derision, slander, pain and persecution.126 As Arndt puts it, ‘Since Christ suffered such tribulation, we ought also to suffer willingly out of love for him.’127 Again, though, it must be stressed that Arndt sees this suffering neither as a destination nor even as a way of attaining certain spiritual experiences. On the contrary, Christian suffering divulges ‘the true perfection of the Christian life’, which, according to Arndt, is ‘a denial of one’s own will … a knowledge of one’s nothingness, a continual completion of the will of God, a burning love for neighbor, [and] a heartheld compassion’.128 As Braw stresses, this ‘ethical focal point’ differentiates Arndt’s piety from the Taulerian ‘metaphysics of unity’, even as it also distinguishes his viewpoint from the ‘Reformation piety’ of Luther.129 Herein lies the peculiar genesis of Pietism. Seventeenth-Century Pietist Sources  In Chapter 1, it was noted that True Christianity provided inspiration for a number of Protestant pastors and theologians, whose efforts eventually gave rise to the Pietist movement. Appropriately, Kierkegaard also owned a number of their devotional works. From the Jena theologian, Johann Gerhard (1582–1637), he kept both a Latin and a Danish edition of the well-known Sacred Meditations.130 Likewise, he 124

  Arndt, True Christianity, p. 208.   Braw, Bücher im Staube, p. 229. 126   These themes are present throughout True Christianity, but have particular prominence in Book 2, Chapters 13–21. 127   Arndt, True Christianity, p. 207. 128   Ibid., p. 224. 129   Braw, Bücher im Staube, pp. 225, 229. Indeed, Luther’s insistence on the ‘imperceptibleness’ of imitatio Christi – on the disconnection of Christlikeness from any sort of sanctifying process – means that he cannot have an ethical ‘focal-point’. This fact explains why Arndt’s project was regarded with scepticism by many Lutherans [see, for example, Hans Schneider, Der fremde Arndt: Studien zu Leben, Werk und Wirkung Johann Arndts (1555–1621) (Göttingen, 2006), especially Chapter 3, ‘Johann Arndt als Lutheraner?’], although Arndt’s return to the question of ‘ethics’ indicates the difficulty of neglecting what the imitation of Christ looks like. 130   Johann Gerhard, Meditationes sacrae (Leipzig, 1842 / ASKB 518); Johann Gerhard’s Opbyggelige Betragtninger, oversat fra Latin og ledsaget med et Omrids af Joh. 125

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owned all five volumes of Christian Scriver’s devotional masterpiece, Treasure of the Soul,131 which was the most significant work to emerge from the Arndtian Reformorthodoxy party. In addition, Kierkegaard’s library reveals an interest in Philipp Jakob Spener and August Hermann Francke, arguably the most prominent of Arndt’s successors and the ones who first garnered the ‘Pietist’ label. Yet, somewhat surprisingly, their most famous works, such as Spener’s Pia Desideria, do not turn up in Kierkegaard’s book catalogue. Rather, he kept an 1838 edition of Spener’s Theological Reflections,132 along with biographies of Spener and of Francke respectively.133 Kierkegaard also owned a number of works from the Radical Pietist camp, which took Arndtian spirituality in a more mystical direction and so countered the encroaching institutionalization of the Pietist movement. Among these efforts, Kierkegaard held an edition of Gottfried Arnold’s revisionary ecclesiastical history, Impartial History of Churches and Heretics.134 In this text – which preceded Kierkegaard’s comparable ‘attack upon Christendom’ by more than 150 years – Arnold set Christianity’s Zeugen der Wahrheit [‘witnesses of truth’] over against the dogmatic and the social dominance of the institutional church. Furthermore, according to Arnold, persons such as Tauler, Thomas à Kempis and Arndt are key representatives of these Zeugen.135 In this connection, it is also relevant that Kierkegaard kept works by the German theosophist, Jakob Böhme (1575–1624),136 as well as by the Swedish scientist and mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772).137 Neither of these figures were Pietists sensu stricto. However, they exercised influence on persons such as Arnold Gerhard’s Liv og Skjæbne (Copenhagen, 1848 / ASKB 275). Gerhard is an unusual case. He is considered one of Lutheran orthodoxy’s chief representatives, even though he also was influenced by Arndt. Thus his Meditationes sacrae exhibits that the Orthodox–Pietist divide was not absolute. 131   Christian Scriver, Seelen-Schatz, 5 vols (Leipzig, 1723 / ASKB 261–63). 132   Phillip Jakob Spener, Deutsche und lateinische theologische Bedenken (Halle, 1838 / ASKB 268). 133   Wilhelm Hossbach, Philipp Jakob Spener und seine Zeit (Berlin, 1828), and H.E.F. Guericke, August Hermann Francke (Halle, 1827). 134   Gottfried Arnold, Kirchen- und Ketzerhistorie, 4 vols (Frankfurt am Main, 1699– 1700 / ASKB 154–55). 135   Peter Erb, Pietists, Protestants, and Mysticism: The Use of Late Medieval Spiritual Texts in the Work of Gottfried Arnold (1666–1714) (London, 1989), pp. 81, 148. 136   Jakob Böhme, Beschreibung der drei Principien Göttliches Wesens (Amsterdam, 1660 / ASKB 451); Jakob Böhme, Hohe und tiefe Gründe von dem dreyfachen Leben des Menschen (Amsterdam, 1660 / ASKB 452); Jakob Böhme, Mysterium magnum (Amsterdam, 1682 / ASKB 453); Jakob Böhme, Christosophia oder Weg zu Christo (1731 / ASKB 454). 137   Emanuel Swedenborg, Opuscula (London, 1758 and 1763 / ASKB 810–11); Emanuel Swedenborg, Die ganze Theologie der Neuen Kirche, 2 vols (Basle, 1795 / ASKB 812–13).

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and the Württemberg Pietist, Friedrich Christoph Oetinger (1702–82), who was an acquaintance of Zinzendorf as well.138 Gerhard Tersteegen  Nevertheless, of the Radical Pietists, Gerhard Tersteegen is the most important for this study, not least because Kierkegaard owned his collected works139 and greatly admired his devotional writings. Tersteegen was a Pietist from the Reformed tradition, who, rebuffing invitations from groups such as the Moravians,140 became a monastic of sorts, carrying out an independent ministry of pastoral care, spiritual counsel and preaching, not to mention a host of literary activities. Influenced by Madame Guyon, the Catholic spiritual counselor, Jean de Bernières de Louvigny (1602–59) and Thomas à Kempis, Tersteegen’s piety combined an emphasis on the ‘presence’ or ‘nearness’ of God with an equally strong accent on following Christ. As his famous 1724 dedication expresses it: I devote myself to you, my sole Saviour and Bridegroom, Christ Jesus, for your complete and eternal ownership. I renounce with pleasure all right and power – which Satan, wrongly, would like to have given me over myself – from this night on, as on [the night] which you, my blood Bridegroom, my Saviour, through your throes of death, struggle and blood-sweat in the garden Gethsemane, have bought me for your ownership, shattered the gates of hell and opened the loving heart of your Father. From this night on, may my heart and whole love be devoted and sacrificed to you in eternally due thanks. From now on until eternity, not my but your will be done! Order, rule and reign in me! I give to you full power over me and promise, with your help and support, to let spill rather this my blood until the last drop than with will and knowledge to become unfaithful or disobedient to you inside or out. See, here you have me entirely, sweet friend of the soul, in chaste, virginal love to follow you constantly! Your spirit go not from me, and your throes of death assist me! Yes, amen! Your spirit seal it, what your unworthy property wrote out in simplicity.141

138

  Peter C. Erb, ‘Introduction’, in Peter C. Erb (ed.), Pietists: Selected Writings (New York, 1983), pp. 11, 18f. 139   Gerhard Tersteegen, Gesammelte Schriften, 4 vols (Stuttgart, 1844–45 / ASKB 827–30). Kierkegaard also kept and, it seems, preferred to use an anthology of Tersteegen’s writings, namely, Georg Rapp (ed.), Auswahl aus Gerhard Tersteegens Schriften nebst dem Leben desselben (Essen, 1841 / ASKB 729). 140   Hansgünter Ludewig, ‘Gerhard Tersteegen (1697–1769)’, in Carter Lindberg (ed.), The Pietist Theologians (Oxford, 2005), pp. 197f. 141   Gerhard Tersteegen, ‘Die Verschreibung an Jesus mit dem eigenen Blute’, in Martin Schmidt and Wilhelm Jannasch (eds), Das Zeitalter des Pietismus (Bremen, 1965), p. 236.

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This proclamation shows that, despite points of overlap, Tersteegen did not subscribe to a full-blown Quietism. For him, active Christian discipleship is essential, although it ought to come about through the individual’s self-effacement before God. In this way, he resembled many of the figures surveyed above, including Tauler, whom he called ‘blessed’ and ‘enlightened’.142 As with Tauler, Arndt and others, Tersteegen is sceptical about religious works, which, like all worldly things, foster an attitude of attachment. Hence, for him, if one truly wants to do God’s will, one has to withdraw from all that is not God. This withdrawal involves a physical retreat from worldly affairs, but, first and foremost, it entails an ‘inward detachment’,143 whereby one increasingly surrenders to God and so comes to participate in God’s being. As Tersteegen puts it, ‘Giving-in is a truly God-like virtue.’144 To be sure, for Tersteegen, what Christ exemplifies, both as a helpless child and as a helpless man on the cross, is complete receptivity to God.145 In this way, he ‘gave us an example [Vorbild] that we should follow his footsteps’.146 This comment is not meant only in a ‘spiritual’ or ‘internal’ sense. As Tersteegen sees it, Christ’s inward detachment from ‘alien things’ was fundamentally propaedeutic to his life in the world,147 and, in both ways, he stands as a prototype for human beings: Our Jesus was silent for thirty years so that He might imbue us with the love of the life of withdrawal. In public life He spent scarcely four years. Often I think to myself: Oh, if we awakened souls could only endure four apprentice years of quiet praying and dying to self-will before we launched forth, then our subsequent activities would be a little purer and less injurious to the Kingdom of God in us and around us! This is the secret; but the Enemy, using the common and subtle temptations of nature, would entice us away from the ONE THING NEEDFUL and weaken our strength in a multiplicity of works.148

The distinction between power and truth, so prevalent in Radical Pietism, is implied in this remark. Elsewhere, however, Tersteegen is less subtle. Christ’s detachment, he maintains, also necessitates a break from ecclesial and socio-political power – a point that goes back to the self-emptying of the Incarnation:

142   Gerhard Tersteegen, Kleine Perlen Schnur, für die Kleinen nur; hie und da zerstreut gefunden, jetzt beisammen hier gebunden (Golingen, 1775), p. 169. 143   Gerhard Tersteegen, The Quiet Way: Selections from the Letters of Gerhart Tersteegen (London, 1950), p. 52. 144   Ibid., p. 51. 145   Ibid., pp. 25f., 32. 146   Auswahl aus Gerhard Tersteegens Schriften, p. 499. 147   Ibid., p. 498. 148   Tersteegen, The Quiet Way, pp. 62f.

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He, the Saviour Jesus, who in this world … could live in honour, riches, sensuality, and pleasure, has still not wanted to have everything such, but, in order to give us an example, chose rather disgrace, poverty, and the cross. He left to the Herods and to the Pharisees their state [Staat], prestige, and leisureliness … .149

So, to imitate Christ is, finally, to suffer like Christ, to do God’s will in earthly powerlessness, exposing oneself to hardship and to persecution. As Tersteegen concludes, ‘It is not in pleasantness and enjoyment that we know ourselves. The cross must reveal what we are.’150 Hans Adolph Brorson  Chronologically, Tersteegen was the last German Pietist whose Erbauungsliteratur was read by Kierkegaard. Yet, in Denmark’s most celebrated Pietist writer, Hans Adolph Brorson, Kierkegaard found another key devotional source. Brorson was a Pietist bishop, whose hymns are some of the most beloved in the Danish church. A native of Denmark’s South Jutland region, where Halle-educated Pietists and, later, Moravian emissaries were able to secure influence during the eighteenth century, Brorson worked to integrate Pietist thought into mainstream ecclesial life, not only as a hymnist, but also in his determined advocacy for Erik Pontoppidan’s Truth for Piety – a Pietist catechism that, upon its authorization in 1738, sparked controversy.151 Yet Brorson was not wedded rigidly to the state church. As with many Pietist priests in Denmark, he had sympathy for the Moravians, despite their contentious status in the Danish kingdom.152 In the words of the Moravian emissary, Andreas Grassmann, Brorson considered himself ‘a friend to the Moravians’.153 And the Moravians had reciprocal feelings. By Kierkegaard’s day, Brorson’s hymns were no longer popular in the ‘cultured’ state church, but, among Copenhagen’s Brødremenighed, they remained central to worship services.154 Hence it is not surprising that, with his Moravian roots, Kierkegaard owned two collections of Brorson’s hymnody, an 1834 copy of Faith’s Rare Jewel and an 1838 anthology entitled Hymns and Spiritual Songs.155 In each of these texts, as well as in the meetings of the Brødresocietet, he had access to Brorson’s 149

  Auswahl aus Gerhard Tersteegens Schriften, p. 497.   Tersteegen, The Quiet Way, pp. 62f. 151   L.J. Koch, ‘Hans Adolph Brorson’, in Povl Engelstoft (ed.), Dansk Biografisk Leksikon (Copenhagen, 1934), vol. 4, p. 180. 152   Ibid. 153   Andrew Burgess, ‘Kierkegaard, Brorson, and Moravian Music’, in Robert L. Perkins (ed.), Practice in Christianity (Macon, Georgia, 2004), pp. 226f. 154   Ibid., pp. 218f. 155   Hans Adolph Brorson, Troens rare Klenodie (Copenhagen, 1834 / ASKB 199); Hans Adolph Brorson, Psalmer og aandelige Sange (Copenhagen, 1838 / ASKB 200). 150

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Pietist vision. As with most of the figures reviewed in this chapter, Brorson places distinct emphasis on the cross of Christ, both as a meditative object and as a pattern for human living. For him, to reflect earnestly upon ‘the blood and death of Jesus’ is to open oneself up to God’s mysterious but sure action, whereby one, in a ‘moment’ [øyeblik], becomes aware of one’s justification in Christ.156 As Andrew Burgess has argued,157 this stress underlines Brorson’s affinity for Moravian Pietism – an affinity that becomes even clearer in a hymn such as ‘I See Jesus Before My Eyes’. In this piece, Brorson attempts to render the scene on Good Friday so that one ‘will look, as far as [one] can, into Jesus’ state of torment’.158 At times, it is a graphic poem, but, for Brorson, the ‘bloody wounds’ of Christ, in and of themselves, are not the object of devotion. Rather, it is the loving and reconciling nature they reveal: Thus is to know Jesus’ heart, Which was opened with a spear, That his heart’s open side May be the heart of my heart’s joy; Here is room and heart enough For the whole world’s flock, O! I wish all hearts’ hearts Would find this heart.159

Here the ‘heart’ [hierte] imagery is striking and, again, reminiscent of Moravian piety. It is the heart of Christ that melts the heart of the believer, resulting, finally, in his or her surrender to God. And yet, for Brorson, this surrender is not complete unless it is followed by committed Christian discipleship. So, in the fourth part of Faith’s Rare Jewel, he dedicates an entire section to ‘Christi Efterfølgelse og Verdens Fornegtelse’ [‘The Imitation of Christ and the Denial of World’], wherein he urges persons to ‘be awake, yearn for, fight for, search for the true path of Jesus’.160 This path, however, is a ‘dangerous’ one,161 and so, ‘in profound humility’, the believer must ‘wholly sink down into the grace of our Lord Jesus’.162 Only in that way can he or she ‘imitate Jesus rightly’ and, in turn, ‘love [the] neighbour faithfully, [and] seek each

156   Hans Adolph Brorson, ‘Ach! vidste du, som gaaer i syndens lenke’, in Troens rare Klenodie med Svane-Sang: Psalmer og aandelige Sange (Copenhagen, 1879), pp. 150f. 157   Burgess, ‘Kierkegaard, Brorson, and Moravian Music’, pp. 226f. 158   Brorson, ‘Jesum seer jeg for mit Øye’, in Troens rare Klenodie med Svane-Sang: Psalmer og aandelige Sange, p. 48. 159   Ibid., p. 50. 160   Brorson, ‘Hvo vil med til Himmerige’, ibid., p. 217. 161   Brorson, ‘Den onde Leve-Maade’, ibid., p. 219. 162   Brorson, ‘Hvo vil med til Himmerige’, ibid., p. 217.

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other’s best in everything’.163 Here Brorson’s language is characteristically Pietist, inasmuch as he draws on the Taulerian motif of ‘sinking’, but associates it with the New Testament category of ‘grace’. The result, in either case, is an emphasis on the theme of imitatio Christi. As Brorson writes: The footprints of Jesus are the only way to the glory of heaven, And the one who will not consider this, the one who knows nothing of the fear of God, all his wisdom, all his talent, all his work are in vain.164

On the whole, then, Kierkegaard’s Pietist Erbauungsliteratur – ranging from Arndt to Brorson – exhibits a notable degree of continuity. Yet, how did Kierkegaard receive this literature? Did he respond to it positively, much as he responded to its Catholic predecessors? These questions mainly will be addressed by way of Arndt, Tersteegen and Brorson. However, it also will be shown that Kierkegaard’s evaluation of Pietist Erbauungsliteratur cannot be reduced to that trio of authors. Kierkegaard’s Response to Pietist Erbauungsliteratur As a rule, Kierkegaard’s comments on the above Pietist Erbauungsautoren were laudatory. However, as will be seen, he also offset them with occasional criticisms, particularly of Halle-influenced Pietism. On the one hand, for instance, Kierkegaard appreciated Scriver’s work immensely. In his view, Scriver is a ‘devotional writer’165 of ‘frightful earnestness’,166 who offers insightful comments on topics such as prayer167 and God’s relation to the human soul.168 Moreover, Kierkegaard valued Scriver’s claim that, while the ‘distinguished’ and the ‘powerful’ belong to the world, ‘the poor and the forsaken’ belong to God.169 In like fashion, Kierkegaard acclaims Johann Gerhard. First, he lauds Gerhard’s contention that ‘sapientia vera’ lies in wonder rather than in scrutiny,170 and he calls Gerhard’s analysis of the teaching that ‘Gud er Kjerlighed’ [‘God is love’] ‘quite

163

  Ibid.   Ibid., p. 216. 165   NB19:24 / JP 6, 6644. 166   NB22:90 / JP 4, 3951. 167   NB21:89 / JP 3, 3456. 168   NB23:192 / JP 3, 2327. 169   NB23:191 / JP 3, 2325; NB23:191.a / JP 3, 2326. Also see additional references to Scriver: NB23:58 / JP 1, 726; NB23:17 / JP 3, 3200; NB23:57 / JP 4, 4468. 170   NB2:147 / JP 4, 3918. 164

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remarkable’.171 Most pertinently, however, Kierkegaard notes that, according to Gerhard’s Sacred Meditations, the Christian task is ‘not only frui Christo, but above all imitari Christum’.172 He uses this comment to support his own view that ‘true conformity’ with Christ does not terminate in miraculous signs such as the stigmata, but, rather, in social persecution.173 Böhme, too, elicits praise from Kierkegaard. For example, in an 1841 journal entry, Kierkegaard speaks of ‘[h]ow beautiful, how true, and how profound’ is Böhme’s counsel that, in the midst of ‘spiritual trial’, one should pray the simple words, ‘God, give me the strength for this.’174 Other journal entries, however, point to Böhme’s influence on Right Hegelians such as Philip Marheineke (1780–1846) and Karl Daub (1765–1836).175 So, despite differences between Kierkegaard and the Right Hegelians,176 the speculative appropriation of Böhme’s theosophy did not prejudice Kierkegaard against his thinking, at least in its edificatory aspects. Opposite the positive appraisals of Scriver, Gerhard and Böhme177 stand Kierkegaard’s critical assessments of Spener and Francke or, more aptly, of the Hallensian project. To be sure, for Kierkegaard, Spener himself merits neither admiration nor censure, garnering only a couple of brief notes.178 And, similarly, Kierkegaard does not always disapprove of Francke.179 And yet, as Kierkegaard sees it, the latter’s development of Spener’s Pietist programme resulted in a petty, pharisaical version of Pietism, which conflated bourgeois propriety and true Christianity. This confusion, in part, stems from Francke’s misunderstanding of the theme of imitatio Christi. In combating ‘undignified’ social activities such as dancing, Francke appeals to the example of Christ. However, according to Kierkegaard, this application of the imitatio motif misses the point:

  NB4:35 / JP 2, 1361.   NB2:227.a / JP 2, 1840. 173   NB2:227 / JP 2, 1839. 174   Not7:39 / JP 1, 884. Also see NB:214.a / JP 4, 5010. 175   See Not9:1 / JP 5, 5514; Not4:5; Not4:7; Not11:20; Not11:29. It is worth adding that Hans Lassen Martensen also had an interest in Böhme, publishing his Jacob Bøhme: theosophiske Studier in 1881. Of course, it was also Martensen who, nearly 30 years earlier, provoked Kierkegaard’s polemics against the Danish state church. 176   See, for example, George Pattison, The Philosophy of Kierkegaard (Chesham, 2005), pp. 152–6. 177   It should be pointed out that Kierkegaard mentions neither Gottfried Arnold nor Emanuel Swedenborg in his authorship. It does appear, however, that he occasionally consulted Arnold’s Kirchen- und Ketzer-Historie. See, for example, DD:31 / JP 1, 219 and Not8:47 / JP 1, 741. 178   NB22:67 / JP 3, 3320; DD:180 / JP 1, 866. 179   NB23:82 / JP 3, 3321. 171 172

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Among the reasons against dancing Francke gives there is one which is so lofty or high that one almost has to laugh – he says that dancing conflicts with ‘the imitation of Christ’. No doubt a dancing partner really does not look like an ‘imitator of Christ’, but here, as we say of the voice, Francke’s voice breaks into a falsetto; it is too high.180

So, for Kierkegaard, Francke and his establishment-friendly Halle Pietism have lost sight of the bigger picture. Old upbuilding themes such as imitatio Christi are retained, but, far from fostering humility and piety within the believer, they are employed as ‘evidence’ in tedious squabbles about social manners. Kierkegaard makes this point even clearer in an 1850 journal passage, wherein he avers that, insofar as Pietism represents a ‘petty and pusillanimous renunciation in things that do not matter’, he has ‘never made the slightest gesture’ toward it.181 On the contrary, his interest lies ‘in the direction of becoming ethical characters, witnesses of the truth, of willing to suffer for truth and to renounce worldly shrewdness’.182 With these comments in mind, it is striking that, in an 1850 journal entry, Kierkegaard argues that Pietism is Christianity’s most fitting expression: Yes, indeed, pietism (properly understood, not simply in the sense of abstaining from dancing and such externals, no, in the sense of witnessing for the truth and suffering for it, together with the understanding that suffering in this world belongs to being a Christian, and that a shrewd and secular conformity with this world is unchristian) – yes, indeed, pietism is the one and only consequence of Christianity.183

For Marie Thulstrup, this remark, when juxtaposed with the one referenced in the preceding paragraph,184 implies that Kierkegaard was confused about his relation to the Pietist movement. How, she wonders, could he critique and extol Pietism at the same time?185 Yet, granting that Kierkegaard’s terminology is imprecise, it nevertheless appears that Thulstrup exaggerates the problem. Kierkegaard’s opposition to Hallensian quibbling or, as will be discussed in Chapter 4, Moravian separatism is a critique levelled from within Pietism – a critique, in other words, levelled by one who preferred the older, more mystical Arndtian piety and its stress on the imitation of Christ’s poor humanity. This point is reinforced by Kierkegaard’s deep appreciation for Arndt, Tersteegen and Brorson.

180

    182   183   184   185   181

NB23:92 / JP 3, 3322. NB21:114, NB21:114.a / JP 3, 3319. Also see SKS 13, 25 / PV, 17. NB21:114, NB21:114.a / JP 3, 3319. NB20:175, NB20:175.a / JP 3, 3318. In particular, NB23:92 / JP 3, 3322. Thulstrup, Kierkegaard og Pietismen, p. 47.

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Indeed, as Thulstrup herself notes, Kierkegaard looked upon Arndt as an ‘authority’, not only because Kierkegaard found True Christianity upbuilding, but also because Kierkegaard, like Arndt, ‘pointed out that Christianity is to be realized by a personal engagement with the imitation of Christ’.186 ‘They had a related mission,’187 as she puts it. Kierkegaard’s numerous references to Arndt confirm the thrust of this statement.188 In the journals, Arndt crops up repeatedly as a sure exponent of Christianity, particularly as regards prayer189 and the role of suffering in the Christian life. Apropos the latter topic, Kierkegaard commends the ‘truth’ and ‘stirring eloquence’ of Arndt’s claim that God cannot assuage persons who refrain from suffering on his behalf190 – a point Kierkegaard revisits in his 1847 work, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, wherein he calls True Christianity an ‘old devotional book’ that ‘simply and movingly’ explains that the biblical notion of God’s consolation presupposes a life of suffering.191 A later journal entry, however, suggests that the weight of these reflections falls on God’s loving comfort, and that Arndt had especial insight into the relationship between sufferer and God: ‘An Upbuilding Observation. In an old devotional book (Arndt) it says that God sleeps with those who suffer as the mother with a sick child, that she awakens the instant it moves. A masterpiece of pathos, skirting the boundary of distraction.’192 Through Arndt, Kierkegaard also refined his views on the more challenging aspects of what it means to follow Christ. As he sees it, the Christian is to give up things to which he or she is ‘selfishly or sensately attached’, but, following Arndt, he refuses to conclude that the Christian is to ‘break with everything in self-denial’.193 In short, self-denial is never an end in itself, lest it terminate in a ‘satisfaction over being able to do without’.194 This dialectical approach to selfdenial, so characteristic of the Erbauungsliteratur emanating from Tauler, is thus adopted by Kierkegaard. And, as will be discussed in Chapter 6, it figures into his treatment of imitatio Christi, which has its basis in the ‘nothingness’ of the self before God.

186

  Ibid., p. 20.   Ibid. 188   BB:40.a; JJ:451 / JP 5, 5920; NB7:79 / JP 6, 6264; NB7:100.a; NB8:9 / JP 3, 2864; NB8:16 / JP 2, 1949; NB 8:22; NB8:51 / JP 3, 3431; NB17:18 / JP 2, 1404; NB16:28 / JP 3, 3446; NB28:66 / JP 3, 3463; NB27:52, NB27:52.a / JP 3, 3771; NB15:70 / JP 4, 4026; NB18:39 / JP 4, 4926. 189   See especially NB8:51 / JP 3, 3431; NB16:28 / JP 3, 3446; NB28:66 / JP 3, 3463. 190   JJ:451 / JP 5, 5920. 191   SKS 8, 206 / UDVS, 102. For other allusions to Arndt in Kierkegaard’s published writings, see SKS 5, 333 / EUD, 344; SKS 6, 214 / SLW, 230; SKS 7, 418 / CUP1, 460. 192   NB18:39 / JP 4, 4926. 193   NB27:52, NB27:52.a / JP 3, 3771. 194   NB27:52, NB27:52.a / JP 3, 3771. 187

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The above citations establish Kierkegaard’s interest in and respect for Arndt. Moreover, they indicate Kierkegaard’s familiarity with Arndt’s appropriation of the imitatio motif. In moving on to Tersteegen – whom Kierkegaard also frequently references195 – an equivalent conclusion can be reached. Indeed, Kierkegaard makes no secret of his veneration of Tersteegen: ‘On the whole Tersteegen is incomparable. In him I find genuine and noble piety and simple wisdom,’196 he writes in an 1850 journal entry. Similarly, in an 1849 passage, he declares, ‘Truly in [Tersteegen] there is inward truth.’197 For Kierkegaard, this ‘inward truth’ concerns Tersteegen’s recognition that, first and foremost, Christianity involves a living piety, which starts with detachment from the world. Thus Kierkegaard reiterates the following ‘superb’198 quote from Tersteegen’s ‘On the Difference and Progress in God-Blessedness’: But where does it come from, that, on the whole, such valuable writings are so little honoured and used? Is it not therefore because the inquisitive reason does not find such nourishment in them, also that the old interest of the flesh and of the deep ground of one’s own life are weakened too severely in them, and they do not call for reason and speculation like other books – which accommodated a bit more according to the preference of the old Adam and of reason – but for mortification and denial.199

As Kierkegaard well understood, the ‘valuable writings’ mentioned here are those of the mystics, who, according to Tersteegen, rightly ‘serve and adore God in spirit and in truth, with a withdrawal of their love and their confidence from all creatures’.200 In 1850, a year after highlighting these remarks, Kierkegaard returned to a comparable statement from one of Tersteegen’s sermons: ‘Yes, souls, evacuate your hearts of your sins, of the world and of all your vanities; for Christ wants to come and be born in us.’201 ‘Tersteegen says it beautifully’,202 Kierkegaard adds. The journals, then, testify to Kierkegaard’s positive response to Tersteegen. However, in 1851, Kierkegaard publicly confirmed this reception when he   NB11:177 / JP 2, 1390; NB11:182 / JP 4, 4750; NB11:184 / JP 4, 4751; NB11:188 / JP 4, 4752; NB11:190 / JP 4, 4753; NB11:192 / JP 6, 6426; NB12:31 / JP 4, 4754; NB12:65 / JP 4, 4755; NB18:80 / JP 4, 4040; NB24:54, NB24:54.d, NB24:54.e / JP 6, 6762; NB19:26 / JP 4, 4756; NB19:43 / JP 4, 4757; NB19:43.a / JP 4, 4758; NB19:405 / JP 4, 4759; NB19:68 / JP 4, 4760; NB19:78 / JP 4, 4761; NB20:6 / JP 4, 4762; NB20:32 / JP 4, 4763. 196   NB19:43 / JP 4, 4757. 197   NB11:190 / JP 4, 4753. 198   NB12:31 / JP 4, 4754. 199   Auswahl aus Gerhard Tersteegens Schriften, p. 443. Also see NB12:31 / JP 4, 4754. 200   Auswahl aus Gerhard Tersteegens Schriften, p. 443. 201   Ibid., p. 108. Also see NB19:68 / JP 4, 4760. 202   NB19:68 / JP 4, 4760. 195

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used a stanza from Tersteegen’s poetic work, Voice from the Sanctuary, as the epigraph to On My Work as an Author: ‘The one who believes is great and rich, / He has God and the Kingdom of Heaven. / The one who believes is small and poor, / He cries simply: Lord, take pity on me!’203 With this citation, Kierkegaard suggests that Tersteegen understood and encapsulated the simple, yet paradoxical character of faith. Hence, once again, he underlined his respect for Tersteegen, as well as exhibited an intimacy with Tersteegen’s work, including his treatment of imitatio Christi. Given the affection Kierkegaard shows toward Arndt and Tersteegen, it is telling that Brorson appears in Kierkegaard’s published authorship more than either of them.204 Allusions to Brorson’s songs crop up throughout Kierkegaard’s writings, often quite subtly. In addition to Kierkegaard’s appropriation of Brorson’s hymn, ‘Draw me, Jesus’, in the third section of Practice in Christianity,205 Brorson’s songs, ‘I Go in Danger, Where I Go’, ‘Up! All Things That God Has Made’ and ‘Hallelujah! I Have Found My Jesus’ are also significant. In ‘I Go in Danger, Where I Go’, Brorson depicts the world as a place of unavoidable ‘danger’, where the ‘chain’ of sin and the certainty of death ever confront the person. In this scenario, one is invited to ‘walk with Jesus’, who ‘hides [one] with his wounds’, although, as Brorson makes clear, that does not mean the dangers of earthly life have been taken away.206 In Stage’s on Life’s Way, Kierkegaard’s pseudonym, Frater Taciturnus, refers to this insight as ‘the most glorious statement made in the world’ and uses it to buttress his notion that the religious life is lived ‘out on 70,000 fathoms of water’.207 Similarly, in the Postscript, Johannes Climacus returns to this theme and, he, too, makes a veiled reference to ‘I Go in Danger, Where I Go’.208 In this way, Brorson seems to have influenced or, at least, confirmed Kierkegaard’s understanding of Christian existence, and, inasmuch as the imitatio motif concerns a life of suffering and peril, ‘I Go in Danger, Where I Go’ also might be seen in the background of Kierkegaard’s approach to imitatio Christi. The other two hymns are, above all, significant for where they are used. Kierkegaard employed the twelfth stanza of ‘Up! All Things That God Has Made’ as an epigraph to the posthumously published The Point of View for My Work as an

  Auswahl aus Gerhard Tersteegens Schriften, p. 509. Also see NB20:6 / JP 4, 4762.   SKS 5, 84 / EUD, 75; SKS 5, 291 / EUD, 297; SKS 5, 187 / EUD, 183; SKS 5, 326 / EUD, 338; SKS 5, 414 / TDIO, 36; SKS 6, 433 / SLW, 470; SKS 7, 35 / CUP1, 28; SKS 10, 32 / CD, 20; SKS 10, 165 / CD, 157; SKS 12, 159 / PC, 156; SV1 XIII, 516 / PV, 22. 205   SKS 12, 159 / PC, 156. Also see Burgess, ‘Kierkegaard, Brorson, and Moravian Music’, p. 212. 206   Hans Adolph Brorson, Udvalgte salmer og digte (Borgen, 1994), pp. 160f. 207   SKS 6, 433 / SLW, 470. 208   SKS 7, 35 / CUP1, 28. 203

204

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Author. This quote, which displays the apophatic tendencies typical of Pietism,209 speaks of the weakness of human words – ‘like crumbs’ – before God’s ‘goodness, strength, and kingdom’.210 And, in even more powerful fashion, Kierkegaard requested that the tenth stanza of ‘Hallelujah! I Have Found My Jesus’ be used as the inscription on his gravestone: It is a little time, Then I have won, Then is the whole struggle Over and done, Then I can rest In halls of roses, And continually, And continually Talk with my Jesus.211

Kierkegaard noted that this stanza concerns ‘constancy and growth in the faith’,212 but, in uniting this verse to his tombstone, it also might be considered his ultimate word on Christian existence. As Johannes Climacus explains, the words on one’s tombstone signify what ‘the dead person calls out’213 from the grave. Kierkegaard’s journals, too, contain numerous references to Brorson.214 For instance, a pair of 1849 entries show that Kierkegaard contemplated using lines from Brorson’s ‘Conversation Between the Bridegroom and the Bride’ as a rhetorical flourish at the end of a discourse or, alternatively, as the source for what he calls a ‘lyrical commentary’.215 Significantly, the hymn concerns the suffering soul’s longing for eternity.216 Equally salient, however, are Kierkegaard’s repeated remarks about its status as an ‘old hymn’, which belongs to the ‘hymnody of an earlier period’.217 As Thulstrup notes, such comments, for Kierkegaard, are 209   See Albert Outler, ‘Protestant Spirituality: Orthodoxy and Piety in Modernity: Pietism and Enlightenment: Alternatives to Tradition’, in Louis Dupré and Don E. Saliers (eds), Christian Spirituality: Post-Reformation and Modern (London, 1990), pp. 248f. 210   Brorson, Udvalgte salmer og digte, pp. 99–101. 211   Ibid., pp. 192–5. See also LD, 26f. 212   LD, 27. 213   SKS 7, 214 / CUP1, 235. 214   Pap. III A 12 / JP 1, 800; NB4:148 / JP 6, 6129; NB7:4 / JP 6, 6245; NB9:53.a / JP 6, 6315; NB9:54.a / JP 6, 6316; NB12:132; NB14:74; NB14:109; NB9:70.a; NB15:43, NB15:43.a / JP 6, 6575; NB22:108 / JP 6, 6711. Also see DD:196 / JP 3, 3373; NB2:247 / JP 1, 311; NB7:75 / JP 4, 4370; NB12:128 / JP 2, 1855; DD:6 / JP 2, 1682; NB14:46 / JP 2, 1473. 215   NB9:53.a / JP 6, 6315; NB9:54.a. / JP 6, 6316. 216   Brorson, Udvalgte salmer og digte, pp. 266f. 217   NB9:53.a / JP 6, 6315; NB9:54.a / JP 6, 6316.

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not to be understood as historical markers, but, rather, as qualitative judgements, which indicate that Kierkegaard ascribed authority to the writer (or the writings) in question.218 To be sure, it has been shown that Kierkegaard applies the word ‘old’ to works such as the Theologia deutsch and True Christianity, and so his use of it in these journal passages further demonstrates the select company with which he associated Brorson’s hymnody. In the end, then, it is clear that Kierkegaard was an appreciative reader of Pietist Erbauungsliteratur. He found a great deal of upbuilding, not only in his favourite Pietist authors – Arndt, Tersteegen and Brorson – but also in writers such as Scriver and Gerhard. In his view, these Pietist Erbauungsautoren, like their Catholic predecessors, possessed penetrating insight into Christian existence, placing apposite emphasis on the virtues of Gelassenheit, prayer, humility and, as a kind of categorical catch-all, the theme of imitatio Christi. It also has been pointed out that Kierkegaard was not reluctant to criticize other Pietists, particularly Francke and the Halle school. And yet, in these criticisms, he does not move away from the larger Pietist movement, but, rather, reiterates his commitment to the piety articulated in the devotional writings of Tauler, Arndt and others. Therefore, in light of this introductory investigation, it reasonably can be concluded that the Erbauungsliteratur tradition constituted a significant part of Kierkegaard’s intellectual background. This conclusion not only has direct bearing on the sixth chapter of this study, but further confirms that Kierkegaard’s relationship with Pietism merits serious enquiry.

Hamann, Zinzendorf and the Socratic in Pietism The basic aim of this chapter has been to investigate Kierkegaard’s reading and appraisal of Pietist devotional literature. Yet, in performing this task, it should be asked whether Kierkegaard was interested in other Pietist writings and/or themes apart from Erbauungsliteratur? Or, put differently, is Kierkegaard’s literary interest in Pietism reducible to Erbauungsliteratur? Such enquiries might be approached in a number of ways. Several notable eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury philosophers and theologians had personal ties to Pietism – for example, Kant, Hamann, Jacobi, Herder, Schleiermacher and Novalis. Any of these might be isolated for further study, but, given the objective of this chapter, Hamann is the most pertinent. For, in celebrating the historical example of Socrates, he hit on a theme already present in Pietism, chiefly by way of Zinzendorf. Thus Kierkegaard’s later attraction to Hamann and to the Socratic adds another layer to his relationship with Pietist literature; though, as will be seen, his criticism of Hamann implies that his deepest sympathies lay with the Erbauungsliteratur tradition and its emphasis on the imitation of Christ.

218

  Thulstrup, Kierkegaard og Pietismen, p. 17.

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The Figure of Socrates in Pietism As mentioned in Chapter 1, John Milbank refers to Hamann and his inheritors –including Kierkegaard – as ‘radical pietists’.219 He uses this term in a philosophical sense: Hamann, for Milbank, is a radical pietist insofar as he ‘denied the validity of the enterprises of ontology or epistemology as pure philosophical endeavours’ and, instead, argued that ‘true reason anticipates revelation, while revelation simply is of true reason.’220 Yet, in developing this philosophical understanding of ‘radical pietism’, Milbank neglects to explore its historical aspect. To what extent was Hamann actually related to Pietism, much less to the Radical Pietism of figures such as Arnold, Tersteegen and, in a sense, Zinzendorf? This question has no straightforward answer. While the secondary literature on Hamann confirms that he had a Pietist upbringing, commentators disagree as to its character. According to James O’Flaherty, it was basically ‘mild’ in form, thereby complementing the overall lenience of Hamann’s middle-class rearing,221 while, for Isaiah Berlin, it must have had a more rigid quality, given Hamann’s later criticism of the Enlightenment.222 Neither view says very much about the precise nature of Hamann’s Pietist roots. What does seem significant, however, is that the Königsberg of Hamann’s youth had a strong Hallensian character. Under the leadership of persons such as Jakob Benjamin Fischer (1684–1744) and Christoph Friedrich Mickwitz (1696–1748), Königsberg experienced an influx of Halle-trained clergy, who, in turn, promoted a variety of institutional and educational reforms.223 Meanwhile, the Moravians, too, were present in the area, but they operated mostly in the surrounding countryside, where, much to the chagrin of Fischer,224 they won over many peasants.225 Thus it appears that, as a city youth, Hamann would have had the most contact with Halle Pietists – a point that may pertain to his famous ‘conversion’ experience some years later.

219   John Milbank, ‘Knowledge: The theological critique of philosophy in Hamann and Jacobi’, in John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock and Graham Ward (eds), Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology (London, 1999), p. 22. 220   Ibid., p. 24. 221   James C. O’Flaherty, Johann Georg Hamann (Boston, 1979), p. 17. 222   Isaiah Berlin, Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder (London, 2000), p. 258. 223   Nicholas Hope, German and Scandinavian Protestantism, 1700–1918 (Oxford, 1995), pp. 163–4. 224   Haralds Biezais, ‘Anfang und Krisis der Brüdergemeine im Baltikum’, in Mari P. Van Buijtenen, C. Dekker and H. Leeuwenberg (eds), Unitas Fratrum: Herrnhuter Studien (Utrecht, 1975), pp. 184f. 225   Hope, German and Scandinavian Protestantism, pp. 164f.

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Indeed, it is worth recalling that one of the hallmarks of Hallensian piety was the Busskampf, the struggle for repentance, which occurs when one comes face to face with one’s own sinfulness. Only through such a struggle, Halle Pietists maintained, can one experience the breakthrough of new birth in Christ. Intriguingly, Hamann’s own conversion followed this pattern. In 1758, while working as a representative for a trading firm in London, Hamann squandered his money and fell into ‘dissolute company’.226 Yet, after a period of time, he began to reorient his life, taking up new lodgings in a ‘decent and friendly household’ and adopting a number of Pietist practices, including Bible study, meditation and physical self-denial.227 It was a time of ‘painful soul-searching’228 or, in Hallensian terms, a Busskampf that was correspondingly succeeded by a strong sense of renewal. As Hamann describes it: I could no longer conceal from my God that I was a fratricide, the murderer of his only begotten Son. [But] the Spirit of God went on … to reveal to me more and more the mystery of the divine love and the benefit of faith in our gracious and only Saviour.229

If, however, it is probable that Halle Pietism lay behind Hamann’s conversion, there is also evidence that he had contact with Moravian Pietism during this period. According to Jörg-Ulrich Fechner, Hamann’s first post-conversion writings – namely, Biblical Reflections, Reflections on the Hymns of the Church and Thoughts about My Life’s Course – seem to draw on Moravian piety, evincing, for example, a familiarity with the Moravians’s practice of Singstunde and their use of daily biblical ‘watchwords’ [Losungen].230 Also relevant here is the fact that, while Hamann was in London, the Moravians played an active role in the city.231 The English government had recognized the Brethren as ‘an ancient Protestant Episcopal Church’ and, therefore, did not view them as sectarian. This concession freed the local Moravian community to engage in a vigorous ministry.232 Zinzendorf himself lived off and on in London for a number of years, and, in Chelsea, a Moravian headquarters was founded. Named Lindsey House, it maintained a   O’Flaherty, Hamann, p. 22.   Ibid., pp. 22f. 228   Ibid. 229   Qtd. in Ronald Gregor Smith, J.G. Hamann: A Study in Christian Existence (London, 1960), p. 153. 230   Jörg-Ulrich Fechner, ‘Philologische Einfälle und Zweifel zu Hamanns Londoner Aufenthalt: Die “Senel-Affäre” und die “Generalbeichte”’ in Johann Georg Hamann: Acta des internationalen Hamann-Colloquiums in Lüneburg 1976 (Frankfurt am Main, 1979), pp. 5–11. 231   Ibid. 232   John R. Weinlick, Count Zinzendorf: The Story of His Life and Leadership in the Renewed Moravian Church (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 2001), p. 207. 226

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chapel, a cemetery and a printing press from which apologetic tracts233 and hymn books were issued, including, in 1753, a new edition of the German hymnal and, in 1756, two volumes of Zinzendorf’s London sermons.234 Thus it seems scarcely possible that Hamann, a German expatriate with Pietist sympathies, could have missed the Moravians during his stay in London. In the absence of Halle Pietists, whose basis in established Lutheranism did not translate into the English context, he would have turned to the Herrnhuters. Despite the textual reasons supporting this argument, some commentators argue that Hamann’s conversion experience marks a critique of or even a split from his Pietist roots: insofar as Hamann’s conversion involved his whole person – body and mind – it was a reaction against Pietism’s tendency to isolate faith over against reason, corporeality and so on.235 But this is a tendentious and inadequately argued claim, which, as Milbank’s essay points out, applies more to ‘classical’ Protestantism than to Pietism and its attempt to keep faith central to the believer’s everyday life. On the other hand, it does appear that, starting with 1759’s Socratic Memorabilia, Hamann moved away from the noticeable Pietist tendencies typical of his London writings. What needs to be shown, then, is a link between Pietism and Hamann’s post-London production. This link, perhaps surprisingly, is provided by Hamann’s turn to the Socratic. Indeed, while in London, if not before, it is possible that Hamann encountered Zinzendorf’s prior Socratic project. Recall that, during the 1720s, Zinzendorf worked in Dresden – a period that saw him divided between his duties as a legal counsellor and his lay Christian work.236 With regard to the latter, he held edificatory meetings in his apartment and, of course, began supervising the development of Herrnhut. Moreover, in 1725, he launched a weekly periodical, originally called Le Socrate de Dresde and later renamed Dresdner Socrates. In putting forward the ‘thoughts of a Christian philosopher’,237 the journal had two main objectives. First, it aimed to critique the church’s orthodox guardians, whose appeals to the dogmatic tradition were, in Zinzendorf’s opinion, incapable of defending Christianity against the ‘great Western crisis of faith’.238 Second, and most urgently, it sought to interrogate a new generation of philosophers, whose elevation of reason threatened to reduce Christianity

  To be sure, despite official sanction, many in England disapproved of the Moravians’ presence. Not least among these was the Methodist leader, John Wesley, who, after 1740, became a fierce critic of the Brethren. See ibid., pp. 216–18. 234   Ibid., pp. 208, 215f. 235   See O’Flaherty, Hamann, p. 24, and Smith, J.G. Hamann, pp. 41–4. 236   Weinlick, Count Zinzendorf, p. 62. 237   Qtd. in Erich Beyreuther, ‘Einführung in den ersten Band’, in Erich Beyreuther and Gerhard Meyer (eds), Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf’s Hauptschriften (6 vols, Hildesheim, 1962–63), vol. 1, p. xii. 238   Ibid., p. xiii. 233

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to a series of rational principles.239 In these endeavours, Zinzendorf was inspired by a handful of seventeenth-century Frenchmen. From the sceptic, Pierre Bayle (1647–1706), he not only borrowed a distrust of philosophical and theological systems, but also a pseudonymous mode of communication. Given Zinzendorf’s societal prominence, the latter was particularly important. As he explains, ‘I want to talk plainly … . On account of an unknown author, [readers] are able to read much more usefully, since nobody thinks about [the writer] with love or with hate. Really, the truth demands no good and inclined prejudice, but freedom.’240 Meanwhile, from Blaise Pascal, he adopted an inquisitive, searching faith, which brought Christianity to bear on issues raised by Cartesian philosophy and the burgeoning natural sciences.241 And, finally, from both the mystic, Pierre Poiret (1646–1719), and the writer, François Charpentier (1620–1702), he gained an appreciation for Socrates himself, who, it was said, prefigured the Christian’s humble quest for the divine and the true philosopher’s hatred of pedantry.242 In this connection, it is also germane that Charpentier’s 1650 work, Life of Socrates, was translated and popularized by Zinzendorf’s friend, the Halle philosopher and Pietist, Christian Thomasius (1655–1728).243 The relevance of this point is underscored further by the fact that Hamann, too, was to use Thomasius’s translation as a source on the life of Socrates.244 Clearly, then, the Socratic motif was present in Pietism before Hamann took it up in Socratic Memorabilia. But to what degree did Zinzendorf’s Socratic papers – which, in 1732, were collected under the title The German Socrates245 – anticipate Hamann’s subsequent project? Regarding the former, it is significant that, for Zinzendorf, the figure of Socrates represents continuity between reason and faith, albeit in a qualified sense. Indeed, the philosophical enterprise is never selfsufficient, for, in the words of Zinzendorf’s pseudonym, ‘the German Socrates’, ‘everything that one can do in philosophy is suspect’.246 And yet, the trouble is not philosophy or reason per se, but, rather, their misuse: ‘The right use of reason 239

  Ibid.   Qtd. in Erich Beyreuther, Zinzendorf und die sich allhier beisammen finden (Marburg, 1959), p. 52. 241   Beyreuther, ‘Einführung’, pp. xiii-xiv. 242   Beyreuther, Zinzendorf, p. 53. 243   Ibid., pp. 53f. 244   Gwen Griffith Dickson, Johann Georg Hamann’s Relational Metacriticism (Berlin, 1995), p. 31. 245   Zinzendorf dedicated this collection to Denmark’s Pietist king, Christian VI, whose topsy-turvy relationship with the count and Moravian Pietism was discussed in Chapter 2. 246   Zinzendorf, ‘Contents’, in Der Deutsche Socrates. This citation and all others from Zinzendorf’s Der Deutsche Socrates are found on unnumbered pages – in particular, those pages that constitute Zinzendorf’s quite lengthy prefatory material, wherein he introduces the basic themes of the text proper. 240

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makes one into a humble worshipper of the deity, the deficiency of reason into fools. And the untimely use of [reason] into a spiritual Don Quixote.’247 A ‘spiritual Don Quixote’, a footnote explains, is one who seeks to vanquish philosophical or theological problems when, in actuality, ‘there is nothing to fight or to do’.248 Such are the modern exponents of ‘pure’ reason, who, comically, would lay hands on ‘things reserved for the deity’.249 Over against these philosophers, the task of the Socratic thinker is ‘to reduce the number of biases’250 so that the truth may be allowed to disclose itself. But this purpose is a perilous one. Many will view it as a form of arrogance, but, in fact, it is a lowly service, a form of Christian discipleship. As the German Socrates writes, ‘I am small and lowly compared with the great Jesus, so I do not ascribe worldly honour to myself. I am happy to become all-despised for Jesus’ sake.’251 In the attempt to undermine the idées reçues of Enlightenment philosophers, as well as in the desire to situate the Socratic task within Christianity, Zinzendorf anticipates Hamann’s more celebrated invocation of Socrates. Ironically dedicated to both Christoph Berens and to Kant, who had told Hamann that they disapproved of his Christian ‘Schwärmerei’ [‘enthusiasm’],252 Socratic Memorabilia takes up and advances Zinzendorf’s agenda in Der Deutsche Socrates. For Hamann, Socratic thinking supplies the negative moment propaedeutic to the positive one of Christian revelation.253 As embodied in the historical figure of Socrates, whose supreme wisdom lay in his admission that he ‘knew that he knew nothing’,254 this mode of philosophy works ‘to expose ignorance and insufficiency’, thereby enabling persons to ‘become aware of mysteries in reality and of abysses in human knowledge, in the human soul, in the mystery of language, in nature and in history’.255 In this way, it is a thinking prior – but not contrary – to the person’s rebirth in Christ. As Hamann explains, ‘[A]s the seed of all our natural wisdom must decay, must pass away in ignorance, and as from death, from this nothingness life and being sprout forth newly-created in a higher knowledge …’.256 With this in mind, it is important that, in Socratic Memorabilia’s dedication to ‘the two’ (Berens and Kant), Hamann points out that the work itself is an 247

  Ibid.   Ibid. 249   Ibid. 250   Zinzendorf, ‘Preface’, Der Deutsche Socrates. 251   Ibid. 252   Dickson, Hamann’s Relational Metacriticism, p. 29. 253   W.M. Alexander, Johann Georg Hamann: Philosophy and Faith (The Hague, 1966), p. 146. 254   Johann Georg Hamann, Socratic Memorabilia, in Gwen Griffith Dickson (trans.), Johann Georg Hamann’s Relational Metacriticism (Berlin, 1995), p. 389. 255   Alexander, Hamann, p. 155. 256   Hamann, Socratic Memorabilia, p. 392 (Hamann’s emphasis). 248

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imitation of Socratic philosophizing. ‘I have written about Socrates in a Socratic manner,’257 he notes. Socratic Memorabilia, then, is also a critical and preparatory exercise, set over against the ‘new Athenians’ of the Enlightenment, who appropriate philosophy ‘in order to be better able to mock the carpenter’s son’.258 In contrast, Hamann’s Socratic task is to distinguish between the known and the unknown and so to presume ‘from the comprehensible to the incomprehensible’.259 Thus it is, as Gwen Griffith Dickson writes, an attempt to justify ‘Jesus to a rationalist age’, as well as an effort to reclaim Socrates from those who would treat philosophy as a matter of fashion, power and/or prestige,260 rather than ‘the service of the truth’.261 Whether or not Hamann understood Socratic Memorabilia as a relative of Zinzendorf’s The German Socrates is difficult to verify: apart from the Moravian connections mentioned above, extant evidence is lacking and, accordingly, commentators mum. The essential point, however, does not concern the relationship (or lack thereof) between the two authors. Rather, it has to do with the fact that, in the figure of Socrates, Pietists such as Zinzendorf and Hamann found a philosophical icon, who, for them, represented reason’s participation in the life of faith. Moreover, in this way, they foreshadowed the Socratic concerns of Kierkegaard’s authorship. Kierkegaard, Hamann and the Place of the Socratic It has been seen that, like Zinzendorf and Hamann, Kierkegaard also was of Pietist stock. Like them, too, he frequently praised Socrates, once calling the Athenian a ‘true intellectual hero’.262 For Joakim Garff, such statements suggest that Socrates was not only Kierkegaard’s ‘exemplar’, but also his ‘spiritual ancestor’,263 while George Pattison adds that ‘Kierkegaard’s relation to Socrates was … both complex and varied’: Socrates could … variously serve Kierkegaard as the subject of a fairly conventional academic study, as a model for his own authorship, as a counterinstance to Hegel and to the Hegelian way of doing philosophy, and even as foreshadowing the essential features of a genuine witness to Christ.264

257

  Ibid., p. 379.   Ibid., p. 385. 259   Ibid., p. 379. 260   Dickson, Hamann’s Relational Metacriticism, p. 32. 261   Hamann, Socratic Memorabilia, p. 400. 262   NB25:43 / JP 4, 4288. 263   Joakim Garff, Søren Kierkegaard: A Biography (Princeton, New Jersey, 2004), pp. 318, 475. 264   Pattison The Philosophy of Kierkegaard, p. 172. 258

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Thus Kierkegaard’s diverse approaches to Socrates – while too broad to scrutinize here – clearly evoke the Socratic projects of both Zinzendorf and Hamann. What is not clear, however, is the degree to which he understood his Socratic efforts to be akin to theirs. In other words, to what extent did he agree with the Pietist retrieval of Socrates? Before taking up this question, it is important to note that Kierkegaard makes no mention of Zinzendorf in any of his writings – a surprising omission, given his relationship with the Brødresocietet. And yet, his esteem for Hamann is both unmistakable and well known. As Ronald Gregor Smith writes, ‘Hamann indeed was the figure who more than any other of modern times influenced Kierkegaard both in the form and content of his authorship’.265 This is a weighty claim, but a run through Kierkegaard’s writings lends it credibility. In 1844’s Philosophical Fragments, Kierkegaard’s pseudonym, Johannes Climacus, speaks of ‘the passion of my admiration’ for Socrates, ‘that noble man’ whose ‘rare modesty’ and ‘zeal for the human’ contrast sharply with the superciliousness of system-building philosophers.266 Notably, Climacus similarly describes Hamann in 1846’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript, extolling the ‘originality of genius’ in Hamann, who ‘down to his last drop of blood … concentrated in a single word, a highly gifted genius’s passionate protest against a system of existence’.267 Hamann’s protest, then, was not lodged merely in writing, but also in life. In fact, he was not even a writer per se, since he published neither for a living nor for a readership. As Kierkegaard notes, ‘Hamann left only as much as the modern period’s rage for writing made relatively necessary, and furthermore only occasional pieces.’268 Thus Hamann was, first and foremost, an existential thinker, who refused assimilation into worldly conventions and systems and, for that reason, can be summed up in a simple phrase: ‘allicit atque terret’ [‘it allures and it terrifies’].269 In this way, according to Kierkegaard, Hamann was the true successor of Socrates. His dispute with the Enlightenment was a renewal of the latter’s dispute with the Sophists.270 In drawing this comparison, however, Kierkegaard did not intend to equate Socrates and Hamann. Although both, according to Climacus, endure as ‘the two proponents’ of the distinction between what they understood and what they did not understand,271 their positions are not identical. On the one hand, Socrates was ‘the greatest master of irony’,272 while, on the other, Hamann was ‘the greatest 265   Ronald Gregor Smith, ‘Hamann and Kierkegaard’, in Niels Thulstrup (ed.), Kierkegaardiana (Copenhagen, 1964), vol. 5, p. 52. 266   SKS 4, 231 / PF, 23f. 267   SKS 7, 227f. / CUP1, 250. 268   DD:37 / JP 2, 1700. 269   EE:82 / JP 2, 1546. 270   Pap. III B 17 / JP 2, 1547; Pap. V B 43 / JP 2, 1553. 271   SKS 7, 507 / CUP1, 558. 272   Pap. V B 44 / JP 2, 1554.

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and most authentic humorist’.273 The difference here is subtle, yet important. It suggests Hamann’s Christian advance on the Socratic position and, at the same time, his failure to realize the Christian ideal. In his 1841 doctoral dissertation, The Concept of Irony, Kierkegaard defines irony as ‘infinite absolute negativity’.274 As such, it can assume two main forms. In the case of post-Fichtean Romantics such as Friedrich von Schlegel (1772–1829), the stance of infinite absolute negativity annihilates ‘all actuality’275 and, with it, that which ‘is constitutive in actuality, that which orders and supports it’276 – ethics [Sædelighed]. In its wake, nothing is left but a self-enfolded, self-creating ‘I’ that conforms the world to itself. Over against this type of irony is the Socratic. As Kierkegaard explains: Socrates’ position was, as infinite absolute negativity, irony. But it was not actuality in general that he negated; it was the given actuality at a particular time, the substantial actuality as it was in Greece, and what his irony was demanding was the actuality of subjectivity, of ideality.277

Hence, in Kierkegaard’s view, Socrates was not polemical toward all existence, but, rather, toward the city of Athens, which ‘had lost its validity for him’.278 He would undermine Athenian sophistry, but only for the sake of ‘a higher something’279 that had yet to emerge. Kierkegaard interprets Hamann in a different manner – a difference that corresponds to the one between irony and humour: Humor in contrast to irony – and yet as a rule they can be united in one individual, since both components are contingent on one’s not having compromised with the world. This noncompromise with the world is modified in humor by one’s not giving two hoots for it, and in the other [irony], however, by one’s trying to influence the world and for precisely this reason being ridiculed by the world. They are the two opposite ends of a teeter-totter (wave motions). The humorist, when the world makes fun of him, feels for a time like the other, who must often go under in his battle with life and then again often rises above it and smiles at it.280

273

    275   276   277   278   279   280   274

DD:36 / JP 2, 1699. SKS 1, 299 / CI, 261. SKS 1, 313 / CI, 276. SKS 1, 318 / CI, 283. SKS 1, 307 / CI, 271. SKS 1, 307 / CI, 270. SKS 1, 299 / CI, 261. Pap. I A 154 / JP 2, 1671.

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As with Socrates, the ironist’s ‘highest movement is nil admirari’,281 and it imbues him or her with a grave sense of vocation. The humourist, however, transcends even this movement, realizing the relativity of all earthly pursuits. In humour, then, irony has ‘slain itself by looking at itself’,282 resulting in a standpoint evacuated of self-concern and decisiveness. According to Kierkegaard, this progression is both humour’s accomplishment and its failure. Indeed, for Kierkegaard, humour advances toward the Christian position, insofar as it, like Christianity, acknowledges the insufficiency of human striving. For the humourist, as for the Christian, the finality of the world has been undercut, and things are not as they seem.283 In fact, humour, as a perspective, opens up a view on the humorous aspects of Christianity – for example, that truth is hidden in mystery,284 or that strength is found in weakness285 – and so Climacus refers to it as ‘the confinium between the ethical and the religious’.286 And yet, it must be stressed that humour is not Christianity: it may appropriate Christian categories, but it does so falsely, because it never wrenches itself free from irony. It remains, in Climacus’s words, bound by ‘recollection’s withdrawal from temporality into the eternal’:287 [Humour] can come deceptively close to the essentially Christian, but at the point where existence captures the existing person … so that he must remain in existence, while the bridge of recollection and immanence behind is demolished; at the point where the decision comes in the moment and the movement is forward toward the relation to the eternal truth that came into existence in time – at that point humor is not present.288

Here Climacus anticipates his subsequent distinction between Religiousness A and Religiousness B. While the former is present within the human as such, consisting of ‘dialectical inward deepening’,289 the latter is performed by one who ‘relates himself to something outside himself’, namely, to the ‘God in time as an individual human being’.290 It is a distinction, in short, that marks the line between immanent thought and concrete involvement with Jesus Christ. And to the extent that humour, for its part, remains with the former, it falls short of the Christian ideal. Humour, as such, fails to follow Christ into the world. 281

    283   284   285   286   287   288   289   290   282

DD:18 / JP 2, 1690. DD:18 / JP 2, 1690. DD:6 / JP 2, 1682. DD:6 / JP 2, 1682. DD:41 / JP 2, 1704. SKS 7, 454 / CUP1, 502. SKS 7, 247 / CUP1, 272. SKS 7, 247 / CUP1, 272. SKS 7, 505 / CUP1, 556. SKS 7, 510 / CUP1, 561.

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With these reflections in mind, Kierkegaard’s understanding of Hamann – and, by association, the Socratic move within Pietism – becomes clearer. As ‘the greatest humorist in the world’,291 Hamann brings Socratic irony to the point at which it touches, but does not cross into, Christianity. Thus his efforts are commendable, even essential, but not ultimate. In Kierkegaard’s view, however, Hamann failed to perceive this limitation. As he remarks, ‘Humor can therefore approach blasphemy; Hamann would rather hear wisdom from Balaam’s ass or from a philosopher against his will than from an angel or an apostle.’292 This amusing comment becomes far more serious in light of Kierkegaard’s 1849 essay, ‘The Difference between a Genius and an Apostle’. In that piece, Kierkegaard’s pseudonym, H.H., argues that, opposite the work of a genius, critical assessment is appropriate.293 One can and should evaluate the form and content of a work of art or a philosophical treatise, for, no matter their profundity, they emanate from human beings, whose relative talents mark the limits of their authority. With an apostle, it is different: an apostle paradoxically claims to bear divine authority, and thus his or her works do not call for critical valuation, but, rather, acceptance or rejection.294 The trouble with Hamann, Kierkegaard implies, is that he has conflated these categorical distinctions. A philosopher, particularly of the Socratic variety, can promote inward deepening, which is a necessary precursor of Christian faith.295 But this inward deepening must not be mistaken for Christianity itself – a confusion native to Hamann’s humour, which, in its overestimation of immanence, fails to submit itself to the paradoxical demands of Christianity. For scholars such as Ronald Gregor Smith and Walter Leibrecht, this is a valid analysis of Hamann’s thought, but a flawed understanding of Christianity. Indeed, as they see it, Hamann’s worth lies precisely in his ‘connexion of God and the world’,296 his willingness to see God’s ‘yes’ to creation.297 Moreover, that Kierkegaard rejected this aspect of Hamann’s faith testifies to ‘an ascetic Christianity, in which the law now nevertheless appears to prevail over the gospel again’.298 Hamann, they insist, did not so much shy away from the cost of Christian discipleship as realize that it ‘is not the last word’.299 In contrast, Kierkegaard would imprison God’s love ‘in the suffering of Christ’.300   DD:3 / JP 2, 1681.   DD:18.c / JP 2, 1693. 293   SKS 11, 100 / WA, 96. 294   SKS 11, 102 / WA, 98. 295   SKS 7, 507 / CUP1, 557. 296   Smith, ‘Hamann and Kierkegaard’, p. 64. 297   Walter Leibrecht, Gott und Mensch bei Johann Georg Hamann (Gütersloh, 1958), pp. 11–16. 298   Ibid., p. 13. 299   Smith, ‘Hamann and Kierkegaard’, p. 67. 300   Ibid., p. 66. 291 292

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A counter perspective is tendered by Hans Urs von Balthasar, who points out that Hamann’s inheritors necessitated Kierkegaard’s critique: Hamann is speaking at the beginning of German idealism, and the hope that one could show how the mythical in toto led into, was transparent to revelation – the great theme of the old Schelling, upon whom, according to Horst Fuhrman, Hamann exerted a decisive influence – belonged as yet to the future; Kierkegaard, writing at the end of the era, will have to set in order the borders of Christianity because of the infringements that have occurred.301

According to Balthasar, then, Kierkegaard’s distinction between humour and Christianity is of descriptive or, so to speak, grammatical importance, serving to demarcate properly the spheres of immanence and transcendence. It need not be understood, however, as a denigration of creation per se. Nevertheless, each of the above commentators agrees on the decisive point: Kierkegaard’s profound admiration for Hamann was limited by what he saw as Hamann’s failure to grasp the specifically Christian. But this was not merely a critique of Hamann. It was also an expression of discomfort with the Pietist reclamation of Socrates, which took place in Thomasius and especially in Zinzendorf – a reclamation that Hamann built upon, advanced and, up to a point, transmitted to Kierkegaard. This ‘up to a point’, however, calls to mind Kierkegaard’s affinity for Pietist Erbauungsliteratur, wherein he encountered an emphasis on Christian discipleship, on imitatio Christi, that he found lacking in Hamann.

Conclusion At the outset of Chapter 1, it was noted that, in different yet interrelated ways, the first three chapters of this study aim to establish Kierkegaard’s relationship with the Pietist movement. So, as has been seen, the first chapter offered a general orientation to Pietism, whereas Chapter 2 and this chapter took on more specific topics – the role of Pietism in Denmark and Kierkegaard’s reading of Pietist literature respectively. With these tasks now accomplished, this study will move away from Kierkegaard’s personal connections to Pietism and, instead, home in on how Pietism impacts his authorship itself. Given the constellation of issues that fall under the heading of ‘Pietism’, this thematic transition could be carried out in a number of ways. However, the focus here will be on how Pietism forced Kierkegaard to grapple with the relationship between Christianity and secular society, between the holy and the worldly.

301   Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics (7 vols, Edinburgh, 1986), vol. 3, p. 242.

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In its various expressions, Pietism presented Kierkegaard with a set of existential options vis-à-vis the secular. It is already clear, of course, that he never sympathized with the more conformist Hallensian alternative. Yet, the remainder of this study will show that he was drawn to other Pietist options – namely, a Moravian-type ‘separatism’ on the one hand, and the ideal of imitating the lowly and poor Christ on the other. Moreover, it will be explained that, in grappling with these options, he ultimately sided with the latter. In nuce, Kierkegaard held that Christian piety presses one into the midst of society, not as a leader, but as a suffering servant. And, from this point forward, it is this study’s task to show how and why he arrived at that conclusion.

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Part II Holiness in ‘the Present Age’

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Chapter 4

‘Misunderstanding the Meaning of Venturing Everything’: Kierkegaard’s Analysis of Monastic and Pietist Separatism

The Breadth of Religious Separatism The first part of this study has established Kierkegaard’s social, familial and intellectual connections to Pietism. This chapter inaugurates a second part and, with it, a new subject: how did the Pietist movement impact Kierkegaard’s authorship? This enquiry will occupy the remainder of this study, albeit under a more specific aspect. Pietism was, above all, a phenomenon interested in the person’s spiritual growth before God, whereby he or she is increasingly purified and strengthened for divine service. Terms such as ‘godliness’, ‘piety’, ‘sanctification’ and ‘holiness’ were used to denote the goal of this process. Raised among Pietists, and conversant with the movement’s seminal literature, Kierkegaard shared this interest and drew on this language. For instance, in his 1844 upbuilding discourse, ‘To Need God Is the Human Being’s Highest Perfection’, he argues that to know oneself in one’s own nothingness is ‘the condition for a human being to be made holy [helliggjøres] by [God’s] assistance and according to his purpose’. Moreover, he sympathized with Pietist concerns about the godly person’s interaction with secular society, that is, with a society that either explicitly or implicitly gives priority to ‘the present world’ [sæculum]. The next three chapters will show how Kierkegaard’s approach to this matter betrays a negative and a positive Pietist influence. In other words, it will be illustrated that he both rejected and embraced Pietist responses to the secular, declining a separatist model of holiness in favour of the theme of imitatio Christi. Kierkegaard’s basic analysis of religious ‘separatism’ – understood first and foremost as a posture or an attitude of pious separation, rather than as an attempt at formal schism – will be probed in this chapter. But how, exactly, is this separatism related to the Pietist movement? Recall that Johann Arndt provided the Pietist movement with its impetus, not as an advance opposite the Reformation, but as the authentic realization of the ideals of the Reformers. Pietists maintained that Luther’s stress on ‘justification by faith alone’ was not to engender doctrinal severity or    In Danish, gudelighed, fromhed / gudfrygtighed, helliggørelse and hellighed respectively.    SKS 5, 316 / EUD, 325.

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ethical laxity, but, rather, to promote a godliness available to all believers. Philipp Jakob Spener gave determinate form to this idea. For the sake of communal and personal upbuilding, he organized ecclesiolae in ecclesia – an effort that became one of Pietism’s hallmarks, replicated by persons such as Zinzendorf and Wesley. Centred on prayer, as well as on the study of Scripture and Erbauungsliteratur, these ‘little churches’ or bands came to resemble the monasteries of the Catholic tradition. In both cases, ‘true’ Christianity was pursued with some degree of separation from the rest of the church and of the world. Kierkegaard himself was well aware of the connections between Pietism and monastic life. In Chapter 3, it was shown that he perused and admired devotional writings common among Pietists and Catholic monastics alike. Furthermore, he perceived that Pietist life was strongly reminiscent of monastic separatism. As he writes in an 1838 journal entry, ‘[T]he Quakers, Methodists, Herrnhutters, etc. can be regarded as Protestantism’s monasticism, since by abstraction from wider ranges of secular life they hope to present the Christian life in its purity.’ In 1848, he returns to this point, stating that the Moravians ‘actually are a more secular edition of the monastery; they are people who tend to their businesses, beget children, etc.’ Of course, here the phrase ‘more secular’ is an interpretive claim. The Moravians did not view business ownership and conjugal sex as concessions to an extra-religious secularity. Yet, Kierkegaard’s point is plain enough: in their quiet separation from church and world, the Moravians (and, accordingly, other Pietist groups such as Quakers, Methodists and so on) constituted a kind of monasticism, indeed, a Protestant monasticism. And, in drawing this conclusion, Kierkegaard recognized an important feature of Pietism. Given the concerns of this study, it is necessary to accentuate Kierkegaard’s identification of Pietism and monasticism, so that the full implications of his analysis of religious separatism may be manifested. Indeed, in many cases, he will broadly refer to ‘monasticism’ or the ‘monastery’ [Kloster] without instantiation. This omission can be frustrating and misleading. What needs to be remembered is that, even when he locates monasticism in a specific historical epoch (as when he refers to ‘the Middle Ages’), he is referring to a concrete existential stance. As such, monasticism cannot be confined to or associated with one ecclesial tradition or one chronological period. Rather, insofar as it has been exemplified in a number   KK:4 / JP 3, 2747.   NB7:101 / JP 3, 2751. It should be noted that, in this passage, Kierkegaard refers to the Moravians as ‘the quiet ones’ [de Stille] – a nickname at the time, which indicated their socio-political separation.    Indeed, Kierkegaard will even accuse particular monastic groups of not being ‘monastic’ at all. As he writes in one early journal entry, ‘With the Jesuits the monastic orders are at an end, for here in a completely secular operation they achieved a parody of themselves’ [DD:169 / JP 3, 2746]. Again, the point is that, for Kierkegaard, reputed or avowed monastics are not necessarily monastic, even if their ecclesial status suggests otherwise. Thus Kierkegaard, qua dialectician, seeks to evaluate monasticism’s existential  

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of traditions and periods, it exists as an ever-present existential possibility – the possibility of seeking the religious outside of common society. Similarly, Kierkegaard’s particular socio-political location demands an elucidation of the wider, existential thrust underlying his analysis of monasticism. After all, Denmark was (and is) a Protestant nation, and, in Kierkegaard’s era, becoming a Catholic monastic would have been as untenable as it was unlikely. Throughout the ‘absolutist period’ (1660–1849), the attainment of Danish citizenship passed through the established Lutheran church, so much so that ‘legal adulthood’ was not granted without a ‘confirmation certificate by the pastor of the local parish of the official Lutheran State Church’. Consequently, Catholicism and its monastic orders were not live options for persons living in Kierkegaard’s Denmark, but more like legends or fictional entities. At best, they retained an imaginative hold on popular consciousness. Kierkegaard, however, knew that the absence of Catholicism on the Danish landscape hardly meant that all monastic tendencies had vanished. As has been seen, Moravian Pietism offered a viable separatistic option in Kierkegaard’s day, fostering a community-centred evangelicalism over against the theological rationalism and secular interests of the Danish establishment and its liberal opponents. This separatism was especially true of the Jutland town of Christiansfeld, which was, in effect, the Danish Herrnhut – a colony dedicated to Christian living, from its economic regulations to its pacifism. Yet, if Moravian Pietism presented a key monastic option, so did Romanticism. In fact, there is a very real sense in which Pietism and Romanticism were interrelated, if not identical, movements. They both stressed, in particular, ‘a new church, whose sole foundation would be the brotherhood of the spirit rather than the coercion of the state’. In this respect, Pietist writers such as Arndt, Arnold, Dippel and Zinzendorf were immediate influences on the Romantics. As Frederick Beiser explains: One of the leitmotifs of this [radical Pietist] tradition, which reappears later in Romanticism, is its activism and chiliasm, the convictions that the responsible Christian should strive to realize ‘the kingdom of God on earth’. The radicals

posture on its terms, rather than get bogged down in historical and/or institutional concerns. His appeals to the ‘Middle Ages’ or ‘monasticism’, then, are appropriately broad rhetorical devices, intending to evoke a particular and well-known position vis-à-vis society – a position, moreover, that can be reduplicated in different circumstances and by different persons.    Bruce Kirmmse, Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark (Bloomington, Indiana, 1990), p. 27.    Frederick C. Beiser, ‘Introduction’, in Frederick C. Beiser (ed.), The Early Political Writings of the German Romantics (Cambridge, 1996), p. xviii.

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believed that Luther’s ideals should be practised not only in the church, but also in social and political life.

According to Beiser, the communitarian politics of radical Pietism and Romanticism constituted a tertium quid in relation to ‘enlightened absolutism’ and to liberalism, the predominant traditions of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century political philosophy. While enlightened absolutism aimed to foster societal happiness via the rule of an élite few, liberalism understood societal happiness in terms of the individual’s right to self-determination. For the communitarians, however, absolutists mistakenly devalued liberty to the same extent that liberals mistakenly devalued community.10 What was needed, they argued, was a society centred on an ‘ethic of love’, since, in their view, it was love, rather than law, that stood as the true basis of socio-political life.11 Novalis is a fine representative of this overlap between Pietism and Romanticism.12 A poet, essayist and philosopher, Novalis was raised in a Moravian home and, accordingly, came to invoke a Christianity whose societal influence promised to redeem a civilization dogged by uncertainty, division and war. For example, in his ‘Christendom or Europe’, Novalis calls for a return to the medieval synthesis of Christianity and government. Indeed, for him, the Reformation has resulted in a perilous ‘new politics’: now free of ecclesial interference, corrupt statesmen have become ‘sovereign on earth’.13 Among Protestants, he adds, only persons such as Böhme and Zinzendorf have countered this trend, forming communities devoted to Christian love, to the ‘pure, eternal spark of life’.14 But their efforts, however noble, were unable to gain traction, and thus it is for the Romantics to sound the call for ‘a new assembly’,15 which can only be achieved by way of something ‘worldly and supernatural at the same time’.16 And that something, for Novalis, is the Christian church, although, in his view, this ‘new more lasting church’ is both after Rome and after Protestantism. Rather, it is a church that is, first and foremost, ‘a happy community’, whose essence is ‘genuine freedom’.17 As it was in the Middle Ages, when ‘one Christianity dwelled [in

  Ibid., p. xx.   Ibid., p. xxiii. 10   Ibid., p. xxvi. 11   Ibid., p. xxviii. 12   For more on Novalis’s life and thought, see, for example, John Neubauer, Novalis (Boston, 1980), and Margot Seidel Novalis: Eine Biographie (Munich, 1988). 13   Novalis, ‘Christendom or Europe’, in Frederick C. Beiser (ed.), The Early Political Writings of the German Romantics, p. 67. 14   Ibid. 15   Ibid., p. 76. 16   Ibid., p. 77. 17   Ibid., p. 79.  

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Europe]’, so will this new Christianity reign supreme and, in doing so, effect a united and ‘truly catholic’ civilization.18 Yet, despite the power and scope of Novalis’s eschatological vision, it was, nevertheless, largely an internal gospel, written to and for the ‘[c]ompanions of [his] faith’.19 As a matter of fact, Novalis himself did not publish ‘Christendom or Europe’, but read it before a group of Romantics in November 1799. This detail hints at an important Romantic tendency. Despite its ‘traditional identification with the lone poet’,20 it was always already a social phenomenon. Throughout Europe, Romantics gathered in like-minded circles, whether at ‘the theatre, the debating club, the bookshop or the dining room’.21 Thus they were not so much isolationists as communal separatists. Disdainful of the political and ecclesial establishment, and finding liberal reform equally unpalatable, the Romantics became champions of an artistic and religious retreat from the barbarism of larger society. Moreover, in doing so, they were not incapable of espousing the virtues of an ascetic lifestyle. As Novalis writes in Pollen, ‘Self-denial is the source of all humiliation, but also the source of all genuine exaltation.’22 In England, similar sentiments were expressed by William Wordsworth (1770–1850), who, in works such as Poems, in Two Volumes (1807), extolled the benefits of rural refuge and economic selfsufficiency, even as he denounced the ‘money’d Worldlings’ who had made wealth into an idol and commerce into a religion.23 Indeed, in the austerity of country living, Wordsworth had found genuine freedom. As he wrote: In truth, the prison unto which we doom Ourselves, no prison is.24

As an offshoot of Pietism, then, Romanticism offered a significant analogy to monasticism. In nurturing separatistic communities, which were centred on artistic and religious accounts of egalitarian, self-sacrificial love, the Romantics pursued their ideals largely outside of common society, much like their Catholic and Pietist counterparts. That is not to say, of course, that the Romantic project is indistinguishable from either Catholic monasticism or, say, Moravian Pietism. 18   Ibid., pp. 61, 63. Notably, Novalis here comes close to replicating Zinzendorf’s notion of a ‘Congregation of God in the Spirit’. See Chapter 1. 19   Novalis, ‘Christendom or Europe’, p. 79. 20   Gillian Russell and Clara Tuite, ‘Introducing Romantic Sociability’, in Gillian Russell and Clara Tuite (eds), Romantic Sociability (Cambridge, 2002), p. 4. 21   Ibid. 22   Novalis, ‘Pollen’, in Frederick C. Beiser (ed.), The Early Political Writings of the German Romantics, p. 13. 23   Richard Cronin, The Politics of Romantic Poetry (London, 2000), p. 112. 24   Qtd. ibid., p. 113. Here Wordsworth employs the monastic imagery popular among Romantics such as Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder (1773–98), who celebrated medieval life in his aptly named 1797 work, Outpourings from the Heart of an Art-Loving Monk.

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To take only one obvious example, most Romantics ascribed to a Spinozistic pantheism,25 in contradistinction to the explicitly Christian orientations of Catholic monastics and Protestant Moravians. But such differences, while important in many respects, only reinforce the need to view Kierkegaard’s analysis of monasticism in the broadest possible light. After all, as has already been alluded to, Kierkegaard did not regard monasticism as a specifically Christian phenomenon, but as a potentiality implied in the task of all forms of immanent religiousness. Kierkegaard most thoroughly develops this point in 1846’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript, where, via the persona of Johannes Climacus,26 he tenders an analysis of monastic holiness. And so it is to the Postscript, arguably Kierkegaard’s greatest work, that this study now turns.

The Challenge of Pathos-Filled Religiousness Famously, Kierkegaard’s Postscript is a massive effort, covering some 600 pages and taking on a wealth of topics, from the prospect of establishing the objective truth of Christianity to the individual’s subjective relationship to the eternal. Moreover, it does not treat these subjects in systematic and straightforward fashion, but, by way of a dizzying organizational structure, it makes a number of odd detours, including an encomium for Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–81)

  See Beiser, ‘Introduction’, pp. xx–xxi.   Intriguingly, ‘Johannes Climacus’ is one of a number of Kierkegaardian pseudonyms that has monastic overtones. In fact, Kierkegaard borrowed this name from a historical figure, John Climacus (ca. 570–649), who penned the spiritual guide, Ladder of Paradise, and directed a monastery on Mount Sinai [Julia Watkin, Historical Dictionary of Kierkegaard’s Philosophy (Lanham, Maryland, 2001), p. 404]. The other ‘monastic’ pseudonyms are Anti-Climacus (see below), Frater Taciturnus (‘Silent Brother’), Hilarius Bookbinder (probably after the fourth-century patristic theologian, Hilary), Johannes de silentio (‘John the Silent’) and Victor Eremita (‘Victorious Hermit’). Kierkegaard also considered using the pseudonym Simon Stylita [sic], the name of a fifth-century Syrian monk who lived on a platform atop a high pole [Pap. I A 252 / JP 2, 1188; CC:25 / JP 2, 1541; Pap. IV B 78 / JP 5, 5659]. This authorial curiosity is difficult to interpret, but, given the above discussion, it is striking that in many of the works often labelled ‘aesthetic’ or ‘Romantic’, Kierkegaard employed pseudonyms bearing monastic connotations. Might have he, too, recognized the convergence of religious and aesthetic (or Pietistic and Romantic) separatism? That appears likely, especially in light of Kierkegaard’s famous comment that ‘Either/Or was written in a monastery’ [SV1 XIII, 526 / PV, 35]. Indeed, as Kierkegaard further explains, the monastic and Pietistic practice of daily devotional reading sustained his aesthetic production during the writing of Either/Or, including the then scandalous piece ‘The Seducer’s Diary’ [SV1 XIII, 526f. / PV, 35f.]. It would seem, then, that in the manner of other Romantic authors, Kierkegaard’s aesthetic work has religious undercurrents – a point to which the pseudonyms themselves also testify. 25 26

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and a review of contemporary works in Danish literature – amusingly, all works by Kierkegaard himself. It is not surprising, then, that Climacus’s discussion of monasticism crops up in the midst of a chapter that comprises approximately one-third of the book itself. In this sprawling fourth chapter, Climacus returns to the question he first poses in 1844’s Philosophical Fragments: how can an eternal happiness be built on historical knowledge? On the surface, this is a provocative question, but, according to Climacus, Christianity’s entanglement with modern (especially Hegelian) philosophy has tamed it. So, before properly taking up his orienting question, he endeavours to sharpen the differences between Christianity and speculative thought. The trouble, as Climacus sees it, is that Christianity posits an eternal happiness that ‘is decided in time and is decided by the relation to Christianity as something historical’.27 But philosophical speculation, in contemplating Christianity, abstracts from time and history, thereby making the truth of Christianity an object of thought, rather than the goal of existence. In this situation, speculative philosophy stands, as it were, over Christianity, controlling it as ‘an element within speculation’.28 But this, argues Climacus, is to completely misunderstand the nature of Christianity, for, as an ‘existence-communication’ that expresses an ‘existence-contradiction’,29 Christianity stands diametrically opposed to speculative thought. Therefore, there can be no talk of mediating the two, not only because ‘mediation is speculation’s idea’,30 but also because mediation veils the difficulty of becoming a Christian – indeed, the very fact that Christianity requires an ‘absolute decision’.31 With these points established, Climacus moves on to what he calls ‘the issue itself’.32 As he puts it: The individual’s eternal blessedness is determined in time by the relation to something historical, which furthermore is historical in this way, that in its composition it is preoccupied with what according to its essence cannot become historical and therefore must become that by virtue of the absurd.33

27

  SKS 7, 337 / CUP1, 369.   SKS 7, 343 / CUP1, 376. 29   SKS 7, 346 / CUP1, 380. It is an ‘existence-communication’ insofar as the doctrines it communicates demand existential appropriation; in other words, its teaching requires actual complicity. It is an ‘existence-contradiction’ insofar as it presupposes that one’s eternal state is determined in time by one’s relation to an historical event. Also see SKS 7, 346 / CUP1, 380. 30   SKS 7, 343 / CUP1, 376. 31   SKS 7, 350 / CUP1, 384. 32   SKS 7, 351 / CUP1, 385. 33   SKS 7, 351 / CUP1, 385 (my translation). 28

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There are, Climacus adds, two features to this issue. First, it is ‘pathos-filled’ [pathetisk], in that one’s relation to an eternal, rather than merely temporal, happiness brings passion to its culmination. Second, it is ‘dialectical’, in that Christianity posits a set of ‘dialectical contradictions’ centring on its claim that ‘the god, the eternal, has come into existence at a specific moment in time as an individual human being’,34 and that this historical event, which is prima facie absurd, is constitutive of the individual’s eternal happiness. As Climacus goes on to show, these features can be treated separately; however, he is also clear that, if one is to be a Christian, the two must be combined. That is precisely the difficulty of becoming a Christian.35 Nevertheless, for the sake of clarity, Climacus proceeds by first unpacking the ‘pathos-filled’ aspect of religiousness. Indeed, it is religiousness, rather than Christianity per se, that Climacus’s discussion of pathos involves, since pathos as such is characteristic of all religious ‘inward deepening’.36 That is not to suggest, however, that pathetic religiousness is ‘easy’ or simply a propaedeutic to Christianity. On the contrary, as Climacus writes, it ‘is so strenuous for a human being that there is always a sufficient task in it’.37 In order to facilitate his analysis of pathetic religiousness, Climacus divides this ‘existential pathos’ into a trio of escalating expressions: (i) an ‘initial expression’, in which an absolute orientation toward the absolute τέλος is conveyed through action; (ii) an ‘essential expression’, in which one recognizes that one’s passionate interest in eternal happiness is necessarily constrained by mundane interests, so that one must suffer as one separated from the absolute; and (iii) a ‘final expression’, in which one takes responsibility for one’s separation from the absolute τέλος and thereby comes to experience this separation as guilt. For Climacus, monasticism falls under the initial expression of existential pathos, but, as discussed above, the same would be true for other forms of religious separatism, including Pietism. Indeed, wherever Climacus comments on ‘monasticism’, his assessment also pertains to separatistic Pietist expressions and to other correlative existential stances. This assumption is underlined here, so that it need not be noted continually (and cumbersomely) over the remainder of this chapter. Before approaching monasticism’s embodiment of this kind of pathos, Climacus turns to the notion of the absolute τέλος, stressing, in particular, the way in which it should impinge upon existence – an approach warranted not only because the absolute τέλος is indefinable in and of itself, but also because it is undesirable

34

  SKS 7, 526 / CUP1, 578.   SKS 7, 352 / CUP1, 386. 36   SKS 7, 506 / CUP1, 556. Notably, Climacus terms this pathetic religiousness ‘Religiousness A’, and it is to be distinguished from ‘paradoxically dialectical’ religiousness, or ‘Religiousness B’. Again, however, both are to be combined, if one is to become a Christian. 37   SKS 7, 506 / CUP1, 557. 35

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to want to define it or to demonstrate its existence philosophically.38 Indeed, the absolute τέλος is, according to Climacus, ‘the meagerest of conceptions’ from an aesthetic standpoint.39 It exists in and for existential actualization. What, then, might be said about Climacus’s understanding of the absolute τέλος? Putting off to the side any possibility of giving the concept a determinate content, it is nevertheless apparent that the absolute τέλος has a particular form. In many places Climacus equates the absolute τέλος with eternal happiness,40 so much so that, according to David Law, the two concepts are effectively interchangeable.41 Furthermore, Climacus relates both of these notions to what he terms the ‘highest good’,42 prompting Law to conclude that ‘eternal happiness is the highest good and the goal [τέλος] of human existence’ – a definition that helpfully arranges these terms, even as it avoids weighing them down with determinacy.43 With something like this in mind, Climacus declares that one can relate to the absolute τέλος either existentially or aesthetically. As he explains: If the absolute τέλος [end, goal] does not absolutely reshape the individual’s existence by relating to it, then the individual does not relate himself existentiallypathetically, but aesthetically-pathetically – for example, by having a correct idea, but, mark well, by which he is outside himself in the ideality of possibility with the correctness of the idea, not in himself in existence with the correctness of the idea in the ideality of actuality, himself transformed into the actuality of the idea.44

This aesthetic pathos is, essentially, poetic pathos. It is a flight out of the real world and into the realm of ideational ‘fantasy’, where the possibility of an absolute relation to the absolute τέλος is enjoyed at the expense of the actualization of such a relation.45 In polemical fashion, Climacus asserts that this sort of pathos is common in the church, where ‘poetic natures’ are drawn to the pulpit and attain

  SKS 7, 358 / CUP1, 394; SKS 7, 386 / CUP1, 424.   SKS 7, 358 / CUP1, 394. 40   SKS 7, 411–15 / CUP1, 452–6. 41   David R. Law, Kierkegaard as Negative Theologian (Oxford, 1993), p. 102. 42   SKS 7, 354–8 / CUP1, 389–92. 43   Law, Kierkegaard as Negative Theologian, p. 102. However, Law is right that this is an ‘initial definition’, since, as already alluded to, there is an additional question as to the content of concepts such as ‘eternal happiness’ or ‘the absolute τέλος’. But that is an intricate matter, which tends to centre on whether these terms are to be interpreted anthropologically, theologically or merely as regulative ideals. Law, for one, wants to claim that ‘eternal happiness’ is synonymous with ‘God’, although in keeping with his overall project, he sees this identification in apophatic terms [ibid., p. 103]. 44   SKS 7, 353 / CUP1, 387 (my translation). 45   SKS 7, 353 / CUP1, 388. 38 39

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prominence by way of their ability to celebrate ‘the pathos of possibility’.46 But, he adds, such prominence is an ‘aesthetic reminiscence’, whereas the ‘pathos that corresponds to and is adequate to an eternal happiness is the transformation by which the existing person in existing changes everything in his existence in relation to that highest good.’47 To see this, according to Climacus, is no more difficult than ‘ABC reading’.48 It is only when an aesthetically minded person – a ‘person who became untrue to himself’ – mediates between the aesthetic and the existential that trouble arises.49 Here the problem of mediation returns, although Climacus’s interest is now more existential than philosophical; in other words, here he is more concerned about how mediation disturbs one’s concrete relation to the absolute τέλος than about the abstract, atemporal conditions by which one constructs a mediating system of thought. As Climacus explains in a lucid (and quite funny) passage, mediation cannot help but relativize the individual’s relation to his or her eternal happiness: It can, indeed, be very commendable for the single individual to be a councilor of justice, a nice worker in the office, first lover in the society, nearly a virtuoso on the flute, captain of the popinjay shooting club, a noble father with dignity – in short, a hell of a guy who can both-and and has time for everything. But let the councilor of justice just watch that he does not become far too big of a hell of a guy and proceed both to do all this and have time to direct his life toward the absolute τέλος. In other words, this both-and means that the absolute τέλος is on the same level with everything else. But the absolute τέλος has the remarkable quality of wanting to be the absolute τέλος at every moment.50

It is worth keeping this passage in mind, since here Climacus suggests that one’s outward orientation is indicative of one’s inward one – a claim that he later calls into question. Nevertheless, this text nicely illustrates Climacus’s point that it is a contradiction to include the absolute τέλος along with another set of goals, for this makes the absolute merely a relative or finite end.51 It is, finally, at this point that monasticism enters the discussion, for Climacus sees the monastic question as undergirding what is, in his view, the bourgeois project of mediation. He notes that mediation gathers steam from the alleged excesses of the monastic movement, particularly the implication that ‘the existing person’s

46

  SKS 7, 353f. / CUP1, 388f.   SKS 7, 354 / CUP1, 389. Note, again, the interchangeableness of the concepts ‘eternal happiness’ and ‘highest good’. 48   SKS 7, 356 / CUP1, 391. 49   SKS 7, 360 / CUP1, 396. 50   SKS 7, 364 / CUP1, 401 (my translation). 51   SKS 7, 358 / CUP1, 394; SKS 7, 364 / CUP1, 400. 47

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absolute respect for the absolute τέλος would lead to entering the monastery’.52 Climacus agrees that such an inference is erroneous; but, he adds, mediation is even more so. After all, ‘the monastic movement is a passionate decision, as is appropriate with respect to the absolute τέλος,’53 whereas mediation (both speculatively and ethically) dispels with passion and is therefore ‘a forgery by sloth’.54 In this way, monasticism has arrived at the initial expression of existential pathos, whereas mediation is always already aesthetic pathos. As an initial expression of existential pathos, monasticism is positively characterized by passion. This is a point that Climacus underlines. Reasserting that the initial expression of existential pathos is ‘to be able simultaneously to relate oneself absolutely to the absolute τέλος and relatively to the relative ends’, he then adds: If this is not possible or if one is unwilling to accept this as the task, then analogies to the monastic movement are unconditionally to be preferred, whether one likes it or not, whether one wants to laugh or to cry over this thesis in the speculative nineteenth century. In the monastic movement there was at least passion and respect for the absolute τέλος.55

There is also an element of critique ensconced within this statement, and, as will be seen, Climacus’s criticism of monasticism ultimately overshadows his approval. Yet, once again, Climacus’s positive reference to monastic passion suggests that monasticism makes a move, however preliminary, toward the realization of pathos-filled religiousness. There is, then, something about passion that is integral to the religious and, in turn, to the Christian life. So, before proceeding to Climacus’s criticism of monasticism, it is necessary to take a closer look at his understanding of passion – indeed, a closer look at the way passion generally operates in Kierkegaard’s authorship. Not only will this excursus help illustrate what monastic movements have to offer, but, in the end, it will help demonstrate where, in Climacus’s view, such movements go astray.

‘Passion’ in Kierkegaard’s Authorship: An Excursus The concept of passion surfaces periodically in Kierkegaard’s authorship, and the range of references, coupled with Kierkegaard’s various and equivocal rhetorical strategies, make it difficult to pin down. Indeed, it would take a monograph to unpack sufficiently the variety of ways that Kierkegaard uses ‘passion’ in his writings – a task that exceeds the reach of this study. For that reason, this 52

    54   55   53

SKS 7, 365 / CUP1, 401. SKS 7, 367 / CUP1, 402. SKS 7, 360 / CUP1, 396. SKS 7, 376 / CUP1, 414.

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section is simply an ‘excursus’: its task is not to delineate Kierkegaardian passion exhaustively, but, rather, to offer a basic overview of the concept, focussing on how Kierkegaard represents it in a few of his literary characters. In Danish, the word for ‘passion’ is lidenskab. Much like its English equivalent, which originates in the Latin words passio (‘being acted upon’) and pati (‘to suffer’), lidenskab is etymologically connected to the Danish word for ‘suffer’, or lide. This link indicates that passion is always in some sense tied to an object, inasmuch as it must suffer or be passively determined by some object that ‘calls it forth’.56 Consequently, passion is not something that one can fashion out of one’s own resources, and it is this very openness to the other that renders it ambiguous. For, at least partly depending on its object, passion can be either negative or positive. As Julia Watkin notes, ‘Passion is negative in connection with self-interested desires and unbridled emotions; it is positive where it is connected with the ethical-religious in some way’.57 And yet, for Kierkegaard, passion is never thoroughly passive. Watkin also notes that passion has to do with a ‘longing for something’, and, as such, it has an active element as well: even as one’s passion is called forth, so must one cultivate it in a particular direction. Likewise, an object may ignite one’s passion, only to be snuffed out in some way. There is, then, a kind of responsibility that accompanies passion, since the passion that one cultivates ‘provides both continuity and impetus to the exister’s life’.58 And this tendency is true for each of Kierkegaard’s three main existential stages: the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious. Of course, given Kierkegaard’s predilection for showing rather than telling, it is not enough to refer to these stages as if they were presented in a straightforward manner. On the contrary, as someone with a ‘natural sympathy with the Romantic vision’,59 Kierkegaard seeks to embody the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious through a number of intricately drawn figures, who each present a kind of Weltanschauung for the reader’s evaluation. As George Pattison notes, ‘[I]t is extremely difficult to differentiate between “philosophy” and “literature” in many of [Kierkegaard’s] works, several of which could be read as novels in the Bildungsroman tradition.’60 It makes sense, then, to survey Kierkegaard’s depictions of aesthetic and ethical passion if we are to arrive at a better understanding of the religious passion associated with monasticism. And yet, even before commencing, an objection might be raised: if passion bestows continuity on one’s life, is it not always already mistaken to speak

56   C. Stephen Evans, Kierkegaard’s Fragments and Postscript: The Religious Philosophy of Johannes Climacus (Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, 1983), p. 39. 57   Watkin, Kierkegaard’s Philosophy, p. 189. 58   Evans, Kierkegaard’s Fragments and Postscript, p. 131. 59   George Pattison, Kierkegaard and the Crisis of Faith (London, 1997), p. 73. 60   Ibid.

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of an aesthetic passion? After all, as Assessor Wilhelm suggests,61 aesthetic existence tends toward disintegration and thus lacks passion, at least in the highest, active sense: Every human being … has a natural need to formulate a life-view, a conception of the meaning of life and of its purpose. The person who lives esthetically also does that, and the popular expression heard in all ages and from various stages is this: One must enjoy life. There are, of course, many variations of this, depending on differences in the conceptions of enjoyment, but all agreed that we are to enjoy life. But the person who says that he wants to enjoy life always posits a condition that either lies outside the individual or is within the individual in such a way that it is not there by virtue of the individual himself.62

So, inasmuch as the aesthete’s conditions for enjoyment lie beyond his or her direction, he or she remains enslaved to ‘fortune’, to the fact that his or her lifeview is as unstable and impermanent as any other finite entity. In this situation, passion is doomed to dispersion and, ultimately, dissolution, thereby making genuine continuity impossible.63 But does this conclusion mean that, for Kierkegaard, there is no such thing as aesthetic passion? And if so, what is to be made of Quidam, the main character of ‘Guilty?/Not Guilty?’, an ‘epistolary novel’64 in Kierkegaard’s Stages on Life’s Way? Subtitled ‘A Story of Suffering’, ‘Guilty?/Not Guilty?’ is, indeed, a ‘passion narrative’ of sorts, which chronicles Quidam’s tortured (and tortuous) ruminating and thereby displays ‘passion carried to its extreme limit’.65 But surely this is a strange theme, especially since the ‘troubled passion’66 characteristic of

61

  Assessor (or Judge) Wilhelm is a character in Kierkegaard’s Either/Or. Greater attention will be paid to him below. 62   SKS 3, 175 / EO2, 179f. In 1847’s ‘An Occasional Discourse’, which also has been published as Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing, Kierkegaard returns to this line of thought. There, following the epistle of James, Kierkegaard refers to the person who has a multiplicity of pursuits as ‘double-minded’, in contrast to the person who wills the good, which ‘is unconditionally the one and only thing that a person may will and shall will, and is only one thing’ [SKS 8, 141 / UDVS, 25]. Here the good, as in Climacus’s discussion of the absolute τέλος, eludes objective circumscription. But, for Kierkegaard, that is precisely the point, since an objective circumscription of the good would only ‘finitize’ it and thus relocate it to the realm of multiplicity. As a ‘condition’ that is eternal and therefore always before the individual, the good offers continuity to the person’s otherwise fragmented (that is, double-minded) existence. 63   Cf. Evans, Kierkegaard’s Fragments and Postscript, p. 40. 64   Howard Hong and Edna Hong, ‘Historical Introduction’, in Howard Hong and Edna Hong (eds and trans.), Stages on Life’s Way (Princeton, New Jersey, 1988), p. xi. 65   SKS 6, 179 / SLW, 191. 66   SKS 6, 431 / SLW, 467.

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Quidam is ‘infinite reflection’.67 How can reflection, the action of thought folding back over itself, constitute a passion? According to Frater Taciturnus, the story’s pseudonymous author, it does so when reflection metamorphoses into a form of dialectical ‘self-torment’,68 which, in turn, obviates what might be termed ‘forward movement’. In this situation, the person literally suffers the weight of reflection, collapsing into a state of immobility. For Quidam, in particular, the problem stems from a broken engagement. As an expression of his tendency toward religiousness,69 he wants to determine the extent of his guilt in the failed relationship, so that he can repent properly and thereby find peace.70 But this determination proves impossible. So, rather than choose to view himself as guilty, Quidam continues to shoulder the burden of his reflection.71 According to Taciturnus, this makes Quidam a ‘demonic’ character, since ‘he cannot find rest and come to rest in the ultimate religious resolution but is constantly kept in a state of suspension’.72 That is to say, rather than ‘take himself back in repentance’,73 Quidam uses his own self-torment as a means of warding off the reconciliation found in the God-relationship. As Taciturnus puts it, ‘A religious healing is accomplished not by laughter but by repentance; self-torment is a sin like other sins.’74 Quidam, then, is something of a paradox: he is passionate, but his passion, in the end, is for dialectic. He humbles himself under reflection, rather than under God. With these points in mind, it is apparent that Quidam stands in particular contrast to ‘A’, the character who draws the attention of Assessor Wilhelm in Either/Or.

67

  SKS 6, 382 / SLW, 413.   SKS 6, 429 / SLW, 465. 69   SKS 6, 207 / SLW, 222; SKS 6, 369 / SLW, 398. 70   SKS 6, 403 / SLW, 436. 71   Watkin, Kierkegaard’s Philosophy, p. 406. It is important to note that this aspect of Quidam’s character links up conspicuously with Either/Or’s concluding discourse, ‘The Upbuilding That Lies in the Thought That in Relation to God We Are Always in the Wrong’. In that piece, Kierkegaard’s pseudonym, a Jutland pastor, argues that the thought that ‘in relation to God you are always in the wrong’ both ‘puts an end to doubt’ and ‘animates and inspires to action’ [SKS 3, 331 / EO2, 353]. According to the pastor, doubt is engendered by one’s attempt to determine the degree to which one is right or wrong in relation to another – a common, if not always desirable tendency. With respect to God, however, such a line of reasoning is not only based on an improper conception of the divine [SKS 3, 327f. / EO2, 349]; it is also suffocating, depriving the person of the only certainty capable of breaking the cycle of doubtful self-reflection, namely, that in relation to God one is always in the wrong. Quidam, then, fails ‘to incorporate this acknowledgement in [his] whole being’ [SKS 3, 329 / EO2, 350]. Nevertheless, the fact that the pastor’s words address his very situation suggests that he could, if only he would resolve to. 72   SKS 6, 395 / SLW, 426. 73   SKS 6, 413 / SLW, 447. 74   SKS 6, 432 / SLW, 468. 68

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Both characters, it must be stressed, are representations of aesthetic passion.75 Yet, while ‘A’ lacks existential continuity, insofar as he has no teleological concerns and therefore lives on a moment-to-moment basis,76 Quidam’s life possesses a frightening degree of continuity. Suspended at the outskirts of the religious, immobilized by the force of his ‘hyperactive imagination’,77 he has come to erect a wall between himself and the good, between himself and the ethical-religious ‘fulfillment’ that succeeds the forgiveness of sins.78 Consequently, as this entry shows, Quidam is no longer able to bring himself to act in the world: A year ago today. No new symptom. Whether this security and stillness are a good sign I do not know; whether in the spiritual sense this is growing weather and the beautiful flower is sprouting in secret or whether stormy weather is brewing, I do not know; I do not even dare to investigate lest I do it prematurely and thereby disturb.79

As the diary trudges forward, so does Quidam, albeit in the direction of nothingness. ‘I have no desire to record anything, nor is there anything’, he states.80 Hence, even as Quidam longs for some ‘impassioned decision’, he is intoxicated by the ‘stillness of solitude’, which, for him, is more enticing ‘than anything that is multifarious, for [it] is infinite.’81 Quidam, then, signifies aesthetic passion at its apex: he is a picture of continuity without action, of a despair that posits itself ad infinitum. Of course, that is not to suggest that he is some sort of ‘esthetic hero’ – a label that Taciturnus directly rejects.82 However, it is to say that, not unlike Johannes the Seducer in Either/Or, Quidam’s self-enclosed, purely imaginative relationship with actuality marks the culmination of the aesthetic, in spite of the fact that his reflection differentiates him from aestheticism’s more pedestrian forms. Indeed, that which ‘A’ personified   Notably, the epigraph to the first part of Either/Or, which is made up of A’s papers, reads: ‘Is reason then alone baptized, are the passions pagans?’ As noted in Chapter 2, Kierkegaard adapted this from The Complaint or Night-Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality by the English poet, Edward Young. This passage suggests that A’s writings present a case for the adoption (or baptism) of an existence devoted to passion. Of course, neither the Assessor nor Kierkegaard would oppose such an advocacy; however, each would baulk at A’s apparent conflation of passion with aestheticism. 76   SKS 3, 189f. / EO2, 195f. 77   Pattison, Kierkegaard and the Crisis of Faith, p. 82. 78   SKS 6, 438–46 / SLW, 476–85. Taciturnus, however, stops short of describing this fulfilment, since, in his words, ‘the issue is beyond both my understanding and my capacities’ [SKS 6, 446 / SLW, 484]. 79   SKS 6, 239 / SLW, 257. 80   SKS 6, 292 / SLW, 315. 81   SKS 6, 310f. / SLW, 333f. 82   SKS 6, 423 / SLW, 459. 75

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– the ironic and creative detachment of the Romantic poet – has been subsumed by Quidam’s nihilistic disengagement from the world and from God. And, as such, Quidam serves as a warning to those who would seek the religious in modernity, an age that has abolished immediacy and consecrated reflection in its place.83 Yet, if Quidam exemplifies a variant of aesthetic passion, it is, arguably, difficult to find such an arresting representative of ethical passion. After all, it is easy to interpret Kierkegaard’s ethical stage as rather colourless, centring, above all, on a Kantian understanding of obligation. But such an interpretation, however pertinent in some respects, does not do justice to Kierkegaard’s portrayal of Assessor Wilhelm, the authorship’s chief advocate of ethical life. Wilhelm, it is true, fails to astound in the manner of Quidam, but that does not mean he lacks passion. In fact, as his reflections on marriage demonstrate, he robustly personifies passion’s passive and active elements, whereby that which is called forth is integrated into a unitary life-view. A devoted husband, Wilhelm is not immune to the pleasures of erotic passion. He considers his wife ‘beautiful’ and ‘exceptionally charming’,84 and, though he is not ignorant to the effects of time, the erotic side of their relationship has not faded away. As he writes, ‘[I]t still gives me joy to rejuvenate continually our first love.’85 Nevertheless, for Wilhelm, passion cannot be reduced to erotic immediacy, since such immediacy is, as it were, only part of the story. The ‘first’ passion must be developed, even ‘transfigured’ in the passionate activity of marriage.86 Indeed, insofar as marriage is a form of ‘resignation’, it is also a suffering, a passion, in which both spouses ‘refer their love to God’.87 This divine reference is, in fact, an exercise in thanksgiving, whose practice provides an ‘ennobling change’ in the relationship.88 As the Assessor explains: How much more richness of modulation there is in the marital ‘mine’ than in the erotic. It resonates not only in the eternity of the seductive moment, not only in the illusory eternity of imagination and idea, but in the eternity of consciousness, in the eternity of eternity. What power there is in the marital ‘mine’, for will, decision, intention, have a far deeper tone; what energy and suppleness, for what is as hard as will, and what so soft. What power of movement there is, not just the confused excitement of dark impulses, for marriage is instituted in heaven, and duty penetrates the whole body of existence to the uttermost extremity and prepares the way and gives the assurance that in all eternity no obstacle will be able to disturb love! So let Don Juan keep his romantic bower, and the knight

83

    85   86   87   88   84

NB25:96 / JP 3, 3715; NB17:48 / JP 6, 6604. SKS 3, 19 / EO2, 9. SKS 3, 20 / EO2, 10. SKS 3, 39 / EO2, 31. SKS 3, 63 / EO2, 58. SKS 3, 62 / EO2, 57.

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his nocturnal sky and stars – if he sees nothing beyond them. Marriage has its heaven even higher.89

Passages such as these show that the Assessor’s life-view is neither aloof nor prudish. He is a poet of the universally human – a task that his reflections on marriage disclose, but hardly complete. For, in the longest of Wilhelm’s three essays, ‘The Balance between the Esthetic and the Ethical in the Development of the Personality’,90 he makes a sustained case for passionately choosing the ethical, where the ethical is understood precisely as the universally human. As he puts it, ‘The genuinely extraordinary person is the genuinely ordinary person. The more of the universally human an individual can actualize in his life, the more extraordinary a human being he is.’91 In connecting the extraordinary with the ordinary, however, the Assessor betrays a pair of key presuppositions underlying his thought: (i) that the ethical is a demand that can be fulfilled by everyone; and (ii) that its fulfilment should be accomplished not only in the midst of, but also in accordance with, the mores of common society. These presuppositions fund Wilhelm’s criticism of those who, in his opinion, seek ethico-religious fulfilment outside of bourgeois civic life. In particular, he singles out the mystic, who ‘chooses himself abstractly’ and thus disparages ‘finite actuality’,92 and the monastic, who speciously thinks that ‘in choosing the monastery one [chooses] the extraordinary and [becomes] an extraordinary person oneself’.93 In both cases, the problem has to do with religious separation, and, notably, Wilhelm’s criticism thus anticipates Climacus’s evaluation of monasticism. Yet, at the same time, the Assessor makes an assumption that Climacus does not – namely, that the ethical life, which is always already grounded in civic duties, is sufficient to meet the requirements of the God-relationship. In other words, for Wilhelm, ‘[T]here are no duties owed specifically to God over and above the duties owed other persons.’94 89

  SKS 3, 64 / EO2, 58f.   The Assessor has two essays in Either/Or, one in Stages on Life’s Way. 91   SKS 3, 309 / EO2, 328. 92   SKS 3, 237 / EO2, 248. 93   SKS 3, 309f. / EO2, 327f. Curiously, Wilhelm does not directly equate mysticism with monasticism, in spite of the historical connections between the two. For him, mysticism implies individual isolation, whereas monasticism implies communal separation. Wilhelm does suggest, however, that monastic life has a moderating effect on the mystic, who otherwise would be consumed by his or her inwardness [SKS 3, 234 / EO2, 245f.]. Therefore, the chief temptation of mysticism is that, divorced from the ethical, it can become an end in itself. In contrast, the chief temptation of monasticism is that it can come to identify itself with the ethico-religious. This is a point to which the discussion will return below. 94   Robert Perkins, ‘The Politics of Existence: Buber and Kierkegaard’, in Martin J. Matuštík and Merold Westphal (eds), Kierkegaard in Post/Modernity (Bloomington, Indiana, 1995), p. 173. 90

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‘A’, Quidam and the Assessor are good portraits of aesthetic and ethical passion – portraits that Kierkegaard, no doubt, put a great deal of time and care into rendering. But why? Kierkegaard himself supplies a helpful answer: What our age needs is pathos (just as scurvy needs green vegetables); but, truly, the work of boring an artesian well cannot be more artful than all my dialectical reckoning of the comic, the pathos-filled, and the passionate in order to get, if possible, a beneficial pathos-filled breeze blowing. The tragedy of our age is reason and reflection.95

This passage dates from 1847 and therefore comes on the heels of A Literary Review, which Kierkegaard issued in 1846. This chronology is significant because the above journal entry recalls one of A Literary Review’s key contentions, namely, that ‘the present age’ is an age of reflection, an ‘age of anticipation’, in which ‘great and good actions’96 have been swapped for ‘miscellaneous announcements’ and glass-clinking banquets.97 As such, the present age contrasts sharply with the preceding ‘age of revolution’, which is ‘essentially passionate’ and therefore is able to ‘act decisively’.98 For Kierkegaard, this distinction is critical. The passion of the age of revolution is the very thing that enables it to act on behalf of the good (or the ill). But the present age lacks passion, and as a result it has no drive to act. On the contrary, it ‘lets everything remain’ by converting ‘the whole of existence into an equivocation’.99 A Literary Review stands as a key point of transition in Kierkegaard’s authorship, and, accordingly, the next chapter will discuss it in detail. Nevertheless, this precis of A Literary Review is enough to illuminate the journal entry cited above. In that excerpt, Kierkegaard claims that his ‘reckoning’ of the passionate was intended to stir his readers’s passions, to get ‘a beneficial pathos-filled breeze blowing’. Such a breeze is needed to clear the air of the present age, which, in his view, has become muggy with reflection. Thus Kierkegaard developed characters such as ‘A’, the Assessor and Quidam, for it is the passions of these and other Kierkegaardian characters that are to draw one to the religious,100 albeit not in such a way that passion is abolished. Indeed, passion itself is not the problem, for its responsiveness to the other is indispensable if one is to come into a salvific relationship with the eternal. What needs to be remedied, then, is the direction passion takes when it is

95

    97   98   99   100   96

NB:202 / JP 3, 3129. SKS 8, 69 / TA, 71. SKS 8, 68 / TA, 70. SKS 8, 59–65 / TA, 61–8. SKS 8, 75 / TA, 77. SV1 XIII, 530–35 / PV, 41–7.

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either ‘unshaven’101 or wrapped up in itself. As Kierkegaard puts it, ‘Passion must be purified’.102 Kierkegaard clarifies this strategy in The Point of View for My Work as an Author, which was published posthumously in 1859. There, in an effort to explain his authorial intentions ‘as directly and openly and specifically as possible’,103 Kierkegaard declares that his aesthetic writings (including, among others, Either/ Or and Stages on Life’s Way) constitute a communicative strategy, in which, by inhabiting aesthetic viewpoints from the inside, he ‘humble[s] himself under the person he wants to help and thereby understand[s] that to help is not to dominate but to serve’.104 In other words, qua writer, he empathically assumes an aesthetic passion in order that the (presumably aesthetic) reader might ‘become aware’ and, in turn, come to ‘judge’ that which has been presented.105 As Kierkegaard explains: Consider an infatuated person who became unhappy in love; assume that it is actually indefensible, sinful, and unchristian to surrender to his passion as he does. If you cannot begin in such a way with him that … you, in what you add concerning his suffering, almost enrich him with a poetical view, you who still do not share the passion and specifically want to have him out of it – if you cannot do that, you cannot help him either. He shuts himself off from you, shuts himself up in his innermost being … .106

Strikingly, the ‘person’ described in this passage is reminiscent of Quidam. And this connection at least suggests how Kierkegaard’s depiction of Quidam might be seen as an instance of a larger authorial strategy, namely, to portray a type of aesthetic passion for the sake of bringing it to a place of crisis or judgement, where the religious is poised ‘to come forward’.107 Famously, this approach has come to be known as ‘indirect communication’, but, more prosaically, one might say that it is Kierkegaard’s attempt to defeat reflection by reflection,108 not so that reflection might continue, but so that it might surrender to (or suffer) a ‘second immediacy’ – an ‘intensive enthusiasm’ that comes after prudent reflection.109 This enthusiasm is, in fact, the ‘purified’ passion that Kierkegaard wants to draw out.   JJ:237 / JP 3, 3127.   NB:10 / JP 3, 3128 (emphasis added). 103   SV1 XIII, 517 / PV, 23. 104   SV1 XIII, 533 / PV, 45. 105   SV1 XIII, 538–40 / PV, 50–53. 106   SV1 XIII, 533 / PV, 45. 107   SV1 XIII, 534 / PV, 46. Of course, the same could be said of other Kierkegaardian characters. Further, given the similitude between Quidam’s broken engagement and Kierkegaard’s, it is tempting to opine that ‘Guilty?/Not Guilty?’ is also a form of self-help. 108   SV1 XIII, 539–40 / PV, 52. 109   SKS 8, 92 / TA, 111. 101 102

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Over the course of Kierkegaard’s authorship, perhaps the best image of this sort of passion is ‘the woman who was a sinner’. A figure from Scripture [Luke 7:36–50], Kierkegaard interprets this woman as a kind of icon,110 whose bearing perfectly captures the pure, unconditional passion that is to be characteristic of the God-relationship. Indeed, in her passionate, single-minded sorrow over her own sinfulness, she is called to forego ‘thoughts, intentions, resolutions’ and to act decisively instead: She did not wait to go … where she would find the Saviour and salvation, she did not wait until she felt worthy. No, then she would have stayed away for a long time, perhaps would never have gone there or entered; she decides to go immediately, in her unworthiness. The very feeling of her unworthiness impels her; therefore her decision is to go immediately – in this way she herself does nothing, or she understands that she herself is able to do nothing.111

More will be said about the woman who was a sinner in Chapter 6. At this juncture, however, it is important to note that she stands as Quidam’s antipode. Whereas he yields to reflection, the woman who was a sinner yields to Christ. Furthermore, while Quidam thinks, she acts. And in her action she registers passion’s proper terminus – there, at the feet of the Saviour.112 So, by way of sundry characters, it is now clear that Kierkegaard envisions both negative and positive outcomes for passion – a conclusion that is preparatory to understanding Kierkegaard’s assessment of monasticism. Indeed, as will be seen, Kierkegaard determines that the passion of monasticism, though in the direction of religiousness, is ultimately a false start.

The Postscript’s Analysis of Monasticism In the previous section, Kierkegaardian characters such as Quidam and Wilhelm were surveyed. Likewise, it would not be improper to identify ‘the monastic’ as one of these characters, since the Postscript depicts the monastic as inhabiting a particular point of view – a point of view, moreover, that is available for the 110

  SKS 11, 277 / WA, 141. Interestingly, Kierkegaard suggests that Christ, too, saw her this way, since, in Luke’s Gospel, Christ initially speaks about her, rather than to her [SKS 11, 277 / WA, 141]. 111   SKS 12, 268 / WA, 155 (emphasis added). 112   That is not to argue, however, that the kind of passion for which Kierkegaard advocates is always so identifiably religious. To be sure, in Philosophical Fragments, Johannes Climacus contends that passion propels all genuine thinking, since, in the ‘moment’ of passion, ‘the understanding does indeed will its own downfall’ [SKS 4, 253 / PF, 47]. For Climacus, as for Kierkegaard, philosophy culminates in a self-effacing passion that is remarkably similar to religious passion.

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reader’s adoption (or rejection).113 Of course, that is not to say that ‘the monastic’ is as well developed as Quidam. However, it does appear that Climacus’s rather stereotypical portrayal of monasticism is intentional, since his medieval monastic is an almost instantly recognizable figure. At one point, Climacus even sniggers at the monastic’s hold on popular consciousness: [I]n the nineteenth century, in which secularism is triumphant, we now and then still hear a pastor who, in a discourse urging his listeners to participate in life’s innocent joys, warns against entering the monastery; one hears this and sees, behold, the pastor is so gripped by his subject that he perspires and wipes away the perspiration … .114

Of course, part of Climacus’s point here is that an established church pastor, preaching to a bourgeois congregation, hardly needs to worry about mass flight to the monastery. But that suggestion alone furnishes a negative characterization of the monastic, whose passion stands in implicit contrast to the ‘brokerage wisdom’ of respectable society. If, then, it is a stretch to put the monastic on par with other Kierkegaardian characters, it is nonetheless true that he or she has a place in Kierkegaard’s ‘magic theatre’, where a variety of roles and possibilities are presented to the reader in order to elicit self-examination.115 Previously, it was noted that Climacus extols monasticism for its passion. Moreover, as if to incite his contemporaries, he repeatedly states, ‘[I]t behooves us to have respect for the monastic movement’.116 But what, exactly, is it that Climacus admires about monastic passion? Or, put differently, what is it that differentiates monastic passion from its aesthetic and ethical relatives? These are vital questions, for, inasmuch as monasticism possesses authentic religious passion, it has ‘the kind of passion which is the formal condition of being able to receive the content of Christianity, unconditioned passion, the passion of the unconditioned’.117 In Climacus’s view, that is precisely why it deserves respect, even though, as will be discussed below, his respect is by no means unqualified.

  Given Kierkegaard’s penchant for personifying the inanimate and/or the conceptual, ‘the monastery’, too, might be seen as a freestanding character. See, for example, George Pattison, Kierkegaard’s Upbuilding Discourses: Philosophy, Theology, Literature (London, 2002), pp. 149ff., as well as George Pattison, ‘“Who is the Discourse?” A Study in Kierkegaard’s Religious Literature’, in Joakim Garff, Arne Grøn, Eberhard Harbsmeier and Julia Watkin (eds), Kierkegaardiana (Copenhagen, 1993), vol. 16, pp. 28–45. 114   SKS 7, 365 / CUP1, 402. 115   For more on this notion of a ‘magic theatre’ in Kierkegaard’s authorship, see George Pattison, Kierkegaard: The Aesthetic and the Religious, 2nd edn (London, 1999), especially Chapter 4, ‘Life in the Magic Theatre’. 116   SKS 7, 378 / CUP1, 416; SKS 7, 381 / CUP1, 419. 117   NB29:77 / JP 3, 3133. 113

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A crucial indicator of the nature of monastic passion is found in the above phrase – ‘unconditioned passion, the passion of the unconditioned’. Not only does this expression call to mind the distinction between active and passive passion, but it also hints at what gives monastic passion its particular character. Indeed, the passive aspect of monastic passion might very well be termed ‘the passion of the unconditioned’. Whereas aesthetic and ethical passion are called forth by finite entities – Quidam is a jilted lover, and the Assessor is happy to acknowledge the sensual basis of ethical life – the religious passion of monasticism is summoned by that which is not subject to external conditions and is, therefore, eternal. The lover may leave, and the Sittlichkeit of society may pass, but the unconditioned abides. Furthermore, it abides in such a way that, as ‘the frontier that is continually arrived at’,118 it perpetually calls forth human passion, both as a mystery and an end. In other words, to put it in Climacan terminology, the unconditioned is the absolute τέλος. So, the first aspect of monastic passion is that its ‘object’ is the absolute τέλος. But, again, there is an active component to passion as well: once summoned, it has to be responsibly cultivated in a direction that provides continuity to one’s life. As we have seen, aesthetic passion struggles to find any continuity at all, and, when it does, it only achieves continuity through a disengagement from existence. Ethical passion, meanwhile, is able to realize existential continuity, but only in such a way that its continuity is identical with the relative ends of the universally human. In contradistinction to both of these, however, the religious passion of monasticism strives to attain existential continuity by way of an absolute relation to the absolute τέλος. As Climacus states, ‘The monastery candidate thought the greatest danger was not to relate oneself absolutely to the absolute τέλος at every moment.’119 And this approach, he adds, is entirely appropriate, since one’s relationship with the absolute τέλος is ‘the absolute passionate relationship’.120 With this point in mind, the question becomes: in what does this absolute passionate relationship consist? Climacus proffers an answer, ‘[T]he point is absolutely to venture everything, absolutely to stake everything, absolutely to desire the highest τέλος … The first true expression of relating oneself to the absolute τέλος is to renounce everything’.121 As in the ethical, then, a movement of resignation is necessitated, although here it is intensified. Prefiguring a point he will later stress in his discussion of the essential expression of existential pathos, Climacus suggests that the absolute passionate relationship demands that one resign from one’s present state and, in turn, devote oneself to the absolute τέλος. It is just this point that the monastic ostensibly grasps. From spending time ‘praying and singing hymns’ to making a break from common society,122 the monastic 118

    120   121   122   119

SKS 4, 250 / PF, 44. SKS 7, 378 / CUP1, 416. SKS 7, 368 / CUP1, 404. SKS 7, 368 / CUP1, 404. SKS 7, 365 / CUP1, 401.

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rejects the motto of ‘all finite worldly wisdom’, ne quid nimis [nothing too much], and thereby passionately ventures everything for the sake of God.123 Or so it seems. Indeed, despite his respect for monasticism, Climacus is unwilling to endorse such a movement.124 Even if it has the passion necessary for the reception of Christianity, even if it passionately seeks a continual orientation toward the absolute τέλος, it has come to express that passion improperly, resulting in a ‘misunderstanding [of] the meaning of venturing everything’.125 But what does Climacus mean by this assertion? Before endeavouring to answer this question, it is worth reiterating that his analyses are short on historical and traditional specificity. It has been shown that he makes reference to monasticism’s emphasis on praying and singing, and, in following the development of his argument, other broad observations will be noted. Some of these, naturally, carry historical connotations, but never are they identified with or restricted to a single strand of monasticism. As has been suggested, this is not an oversight on Climacus’s part, but is, in fact, a necessary feature of his analysis, granting it scope to be applied to a wide range of examples. With that in mind, it is unsurprising that Climacus centres his critique of monasticism on a wide-ranging point: The dubious character of the monastic movement … was that the absolute interiority, probably in order to demonstrate very energetically that it existed, acquired its obvious expression in a distinctive separate outwardness, whereby it nevertheless, however one twists and turns, became only relatively different from all other outwardness.126

This is a highly compressed assertion, but what Climacus is driving at is simple enough: the problem with monastic movements is that they are predicated on an alleged correspondence between one’s internal life and one’s external appearance. Consequently, the monastic’s passionate relationship with the absolute τέλος is 123

  SKS 7, 368 / CUP1, 404.   Indeed, this claim also pertains to some of Kierkegaard’s other passionate exemplars, for instance, the lover and the revolutionary. Their passion distinguishes them from those locked in the labyrinth of reflection, and, as a result, they merit a certain respect. And yet, for each of them (the monastic, the lover and the revolutionary), there is something missing. Kierkegaard clarifies this point as he increasingly centres his attention on the passionate exemplar nonpareil, the God-man. In particular, the revolutionary will be discussed in the next chapter, which will explore A Literary Review. As mentioned above, it is there that Kierkegaard presents his contrast of the ‘two ages’, the age of revolution and the age of reflection. Given the findings of this chapter, it is unsurprising that, in setting forth this distinction, Kierkegaard explicitly identifies the Moravians as revolutionaries of a sort [SKS 8, 64 / TA, 66]. 125   SKS 7, 368 / CUP1, 405. 126   SKS 7, 368 / CUP1, 405. 124

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said to be signified in his or her lifestyle, whether in terms of living apart from the secular city, wearing unusual clothing and so on. But Climacus says that this is a misunderstanding, insofar as ‘the task is to practice one’s relation to one’s absolute τέλος so that one continually has it within while continuing in the relative objectives of existence’.127 To do this, however, is exceedingly difficult. After all, ‘the specific sign that one relates oneself to the absolute is that not only is there no reward to expect but suffering to endure’.128 According to Climacus, by insisting on an external guarantor of one’s internal passion, monasticism ultimately tempers the difficulty of the task of existential pathos. It does this, he explains, in a pair of ways: (i) by avoiding suffering, and (ii) by earning merit. In order to understand the first instance, the struggle of existential pathos ought to be reiterated: one is to remain in the world even as one absolutely relates to the absolute τέλος – a prescription that recalls Paul’s counsel that ‘those who deal with the world [are to be] as though they had no dealings with it’.129 And, on Climacus’s reading, this is not an easy task. If one externally differentiates oneself from the world, then one can hardly be said to be in the world. At the same time, however, if one does not externally differentiate oneself from the world, then one continually must question whether one is, in truth, relating absolutely to the absolute τέλος. In other words, one constantly has to grapple with the problem of personal integrity. As Climacus puts it, ‘[L]et us never forget that interiority without outwardness is the most difficult interiority, in which self-deception is easiest.’130 This possibility of self-deception, in turn, fosters an irresolvable sense of uncertainty, thereby preventing the person from getting any purchase on the question of his or her own righteousness and/or salvation. As a matter of fact, with regard to these matters, the ‘authentic religious individuality’ is ‘cold and severe like a grand-inquisitor’.131 Yet, monastic outwardness is based on a different premise and therefore yields a different result. Presupposing that one’s external separation from the world is indicative of an authentic internal religiousness, the monastic is able to sidestep (or leave behind) the painful self-doubt that accompanies genuine existential pathos. In short, at precisely the point where passion reaches its extreme, monasticism recoils, preferring the comfort of external recognition to the anguish of internal suffering. But, according to Climacus, monasticism does more than avoid internal suffering. It also avoids the very tangible problem of absolutely relating to the absolute τέλος in the midst of the world and its distractions. By separating from 127

  SKS 7, 371 / CUP1, 408 (emphasis added).   SKS 7, 367 / CUP1, 402. 129   1 Cor. 7:31. 130   SKS 7, 369 / CUP1, 406. 131   SKS 7, 355 / CUP1, 389. Conversely, with regard to the righteousness and/or salvation of others, the authentically religious person is ‘lenient’ – indeed, ‘as a kindly old man usually is with a young person’ [SKS 7, 355 / CUP1, 389]. 128

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the world, the monastic takes leave of the other task of existential pathos – relating relatively to relative ends. As Climacus remarks: If a person is involved in some great plan, that alone makes it difficult to be like others. He is absentminded, does not care to participate in anything else, is tormented by all the commotion around him. The busyness of others is irksome; he would like a little cubbyhole to himself where he could sit and ponder his great plan – and it can be a suitable task for diplomats and police agents to acquire the art and self-control to be able to hold fast to the great plan and simultaneously go to dances, converse with the ladies, go bowling, and do whatever one likes. But the absolute τέλος is the greatest plan to which a human being can relate himself, and therefore the Middle Ages wanted a little cubbyhole in order to be able to occupy itself properly with the absolute; but it was precisely by this that the absolute lost, because it still became something outward.132

Here Climacus is doing more than accusing monasticism of ‘cheating’ or gaining an unfair advantage over other religiously minded strivers. Rather, his argument continues to revolve around the problem of suffering – a problem that he seeks to clarify in his ensuing discussion of the essential expression of existential pathos. Indeed, as Climacus goes on to explain, this intermediary expression is rooted in the recognition that, despite the best of one’s efforts, it simply is not possible to relate absolutely to the absolute τέλος. One has to suffer the demands of everyday life and, in turn, the recognition that one ‘is unable to transform [oneself]’.133 In this situation, no ‘decisive outward expression’ can signify one’s relationship with God, for even ‘the most decisive outward expression is only relative’.134 The monastic, however, seeks to ignore the inexorableness of this suffering. In eschewing the relative ends of common life, he or she obtains a false sense of achievement – a sense that it is possible to relate absolutely to the absolute τέλος. But this confidence is only won by means of a ‘cubbyhole’, by inhabiting a safe and quiet place apart from the conflict and clamour of the secular world. For Climacus, this is more than a case of self-deception; it is also one where arrogance and self-justification are liable to insinuate themselves. ‘The monastic movement is an attempt at wanting to be more than a human being, an enthusiastic, perhaps pious attempt to be like God,’135 he concludes. As noted above, Climacus also discerns a flipside to monasticism’s attempt to avoid suffering – in particular, its attempt to earn merit. This critique, of course, is already present in his claim that the monastic wants to collapse the distinction between the human and the divine. It is also presupposed in his disparagement of monasticism’s ‘distrustful inwardness’ (or ‘unhappy inwardness’), which seeks 132

    134   135   133

SKS 7, 370f. / CUP1, 407f. SKS 7, 393 / CUP1, 433. SKS 7, 447 / CUP1, 492. SKS 7, 446f. / CUP1, 492.

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verification where it should be content with humility.136 Not surprisingly, then, Climacus declares ‘[T]he monastic movement must not be made as something meritorious.’137 Indeed, it would be better if members of such movements were regarded as insane, rather than as ‘holy in earnest’.138 Given the above analyses, Climacus’s professed respect for monasticism has to be called into question. On his reading, in fact, it has come to resemble another attempt at mediation. As he explains, the mediator wants to relate to the absolute τέλος and, at the same time, attain a position of respectability in the world. ‘He does not want to leave the world; he wants to be like the rest of us, perhaps a councilor of justice, perhaps a merchant, etc.’139 Yet, in earning merit, the monastic does not do anything different: ‘The monastic movement wants to express interiority by an outwardness that is supposed to be interiority. Herein lies the contradiction, because to be a monk is just as much something outward as being a councilor of justice. Mediation abolishes the absolute τέλος.’140 For Climacus, then, it is every bit as worldly, every bit as mediatory, to define oneself as a monastic as it is to define oneself as, say, a businessman. The two appear dissimilar, but, in positing a measurable standard of temporal success, they both treat the absolute τέλος as if it were a goal among goals. Hence, much like speculative philosophy, monasticism wants too much. Unsatisfied with the inward and outward tasks of existential pathos, it tosses them aside both despite and because of their difficulty, converting a temporally undecidable pursuit into something resolved in a matter of steps. Yet, neither thought nor existence can be mastered in this way; as a result, whenever a person or group claims to have merited such mastery, one can be sure that the ‘absolute difference’ has been violated. As Climacus puts it, ‘Precisely because there is the absolute difference between God and man, man expresses himself most perfectly when he absolutely expresses the difference. Worship is the maximum for a human being’s relationship with God, and thereby for his likeness to God, since the qualities are absolutely different.’141 Just as, for Anti-Climacus, the opposite of sin is faith,142 so, for Climacus, the opposite of merit is worship. It is in worship

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  SKS 7, 375 / CUP1, 413.   SKS 7, 376 / CUP1, 414. 138   SKS 7, 378 / CUP1, 416. It is worth underlining this point, since Kierkegaard’s later works come to express something quite similar, but without Climacus’s sarcasm. 139   SKS 7, 371 / CUP1, 408. 140   SKS 7, 372 / CUP1, 409. 141   SKS 7, 375 / CUP1, 413. 142   SKS 11, 209–16 / SUD, 124–31. Anti-Climacus is the pseudonymous author of The Sickness unto Death and Practice in Christianity. The prefix ‘Anti’ does not mean ‘in opposition to’, but ‘before’ or ‘higher than’, signifying that Anti-Climacus is above Johannes Climacus, at least in terms of his understanding and appropriation of Christianity. See, for example, NB11:209 / JP 6, 6433. 137

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that the limitations of finite existence are acknowledged and, in turn, the absolute difference between God and man honoured.143 With this point in mind, it is fitting that in concluding his section on the initial expression of existential pathos, Climacus proffers a concession to monasticism: if it will reinstate the absolute difference – and thereby regard all pretensions to meritoriousness as ‘shameful’ – then the monastic life as such cannot be objected to. He illuminates this point with a twofold metaphor: Just as a sick child does not regard it as meritorious to be allowed to remain at home with his parents, just as a beloved does not regard it as meritorious that she cannot at any moment do without the sight of her lover and is unable to gain the strength to have the thought of him with her as she goes about her work as usual, just as she does not regard it as meritorious to be allowed to sit with him at his place of work and to be with him continually – so must the candidate for the monastery regard his relationship with God.144

Thus Climacus would flip the usual conception of monasticism: it is not for the strong, but the weak, not for the righteous, but the reprobate. In this sense, he anticipates Dostoevsky’s portrayal of Elder Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov – a monastic character who, despite his renowned holiness, maintains that ‘I am perhaps the most guilty of all, and the worst of all men in the world as well!’145 More pertinently, however, Climacus recalls monastics such as Eckhart and Tauler, who emphasized an inward ‘detachment’ from religious works and meritorious self-conceptions. As Tauler explains, some monastics ‘perform a number of good works, they chant and study pious texts, they observe silence’, so that they will ‘impress people with their devoutness … [and] pious tears’.146 But this is only a form of spiritual ‘captivity’, since they are exploiting ‘God and the world for their own enjoyment’.147 The references to Dostoevsky, Eckhart and Tauler conclude this section in an appropriately ambiguous manner. For even as these figures envision a nonmeritorious monasticism, so, in a sense, does Kierkegaard. His later journals, in

143   Given his ironical take on monastic praying and hymn singing [SKS 7, 365 / CUP1, 401], it is clear that Climacus does not conceive of ‘worship’ solely in terms of traditional church liturgy. What he has in mind is a kind of existential posture that takes into account both human deficiency and divine perfection. For Climacus, then, although ecclesial worship may nurture this requisite posture, it by no means ensures it. See also his amusing critique of those calling for a new hymnbook [SKS 7, 434f. / CUP1, 478–80], which lends credence to this point. 144   SKS 7, 376 / CUP1, 414. 145   Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (New York, 1992), p. 298. 146   Tauler, ‘Sermon 19’, in Johannes Tauler: Sermons (New York, 1985), pp. 69f. 147   Ibid., p. 70.

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fact, contain numerous entries that call for a return to the monastery.148 This twist, however, does not come until the 1850s, and even then it is not discontinuous with Climacus’s analysis. Indeed, Climacus’s discussion of monasticism is the most sustained treatment of the subject in Kierkegaard’s writings, and it lays the groundwork for a number of his later reflections on Christianity’s relationship with secular society. For those reasons alone, it demands attention. Still, as will be seen, it can hardly be taken as Kierkegaard’s last word on such questions.

Pietism, Suffering and the Problem of ‘Hidden Inwardness’ As discussed in the first three chapters, Pietism stands as a key element in Kierkegaard’s personal and intellectual background. From its central role in his family life to his own study of works associated with the movement, Kierkegaard was an inheritor of Pietist concerns, habits and motifs. And yet, despite these connections, it would seem that Kierkegaard eschewed Pietism in his published authorship. He never devoted an essay to it, much less a full-length work. One of the aims of this chapter, however, has been to show that such omissions do not mean that Kierkegaard failed to respond to Pietism. On the contrary, he likened Pietist groups to monastics, and, therefore, the Postscript’s analysis of monasticism indicates one way that he assessed Pietism. Moreover, certain journal entries confirm this conclusion. It was pointed out in Chapter 3 that Kierkegaard’s journals disclose an ambivalent posture toward Pietism – a posture, not surprisingly, similar to Climacus’s stance opposite monasticism. On the one hand, for example, Kierkegaard praises Pietism’s break from secularity. On the other hand, it is clear that he had little tolerance for Francke’s Halle Pietism, which did not so much challenge secular society as promote a Christianity centred on expedient civic works and ‘proper’ ethical conduct. With regard to more radical, separatist Pietist groups such as the Brødremenighed, Kierkegaard also remains hesitant. He commends the Moravians’ stress on social equality and, at one point, goes so far as to suggest that they are the only Christians left in Denmark.149 At the same time, however, he writes ‘There is much that is beautiful in their lives, but their quietness is still not Christianity, not in the deepest sense.’150 Again, as with Climacus, the problem has to do with the avoidance of suffering. In gathering in close-knit communities such as Christiansfeld – communities in which, according to Kierkegaard, ‘all people [are] alike … dressed alike, praying at specified times, marrying by drawing lots, going to bed by the clock’151 – the Moravians fashion a ‘cubbyhole’ for themselves. ‘[T]hey completely 148

    150   151   149

NB25:100 / JP 3, 2760; NB29:85 / JP 3, 2762; NB30:26 / JP 3, 2763. NB7:101 / JP 3, 2751. NB7:101 / JP 3, 2751. Pap. IX B 22.

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avoid … suffering for the sake of truth; they shun being led out into the actual Christian situation,’152 he asserts. These remarks date from 1848, showing that, in most respects, Kierkegaard’s evaluation of Pietism remained true to Climacus’s earlier analysis of monasticism. The place of the religious person is never on the margins of society, but in society itself, for that is where the religious person’s ineluctable encounter with suffering takes place. Despite such consistency, however, Kierkegaard’s understanding of the nature of suffering underwent a profound change following the publication of the Postscript in 1846. While Climacus sees suffering as a matter of ‘hidden inwardness’ – a passion to be cultivated within the individual, lest it be annulled in outward expression, à la monasticism – Kierkegaard soon comes to repudiate this approach. Or, more accurately, Kierkegaard soon comes to seize on a suspicion already present in the Postscript. Far from an uncritical proponent of ‘hidden inwardness’, Climacus is keenly aware of the difficulty that this notion produces: In a certain sense it is somewhat appalling to speak this way about a person’s interiority [Indvorteshed], that it can be there and not be there without being directly discernible outwardly. But it is also glorious to speak this way about interiority – if it is there – because this is precisely the expression for its inwardness [Inderlighed].153

‘If it is there’: this phrase sums up Climacus’s apprehension regarding hidden inwardness. There is no way of recognizing its presence, which, in the end, makes it an untenable concept, given Climacus’s claim that the ‘pathos that corresponds to and is adequate to an eternal happiness is the transformation by which the existing person in existing changes everything in his existence in relation to that highest good’.154 Surely, with such an absolute transformation, the external is made commensurable with the internal in some fashion. But Climacus retains the notion of hidden inwardness, chiefly because he cannot conceive of how to recommend ‘distinctive outwardness’ without simultaneously recommending monasticism and its tendency toward meritoriousness.155 However, as will be seen in Chapter 5, the infamous ‘Corsair affair’ forced Kierkegaard to look at this problem in a different way. His accent now fell on suffering servanthood, rather than on hidden inwardness, and this change set the stage for a new approach to the questions posed by monasticism and Pietism – an approach that was to reveal another way of appropriating the Pietist legacy.

152

    154   155   153

NB7:101 / JP 3, 2751. SKS 7, 370 / CUP1, 407. Also see SKS 7, 369, 372, 375f. / CUP1, 406, 409, 413f. SKS 7, 354 / CUP1, 389 (emphasis added). SKS 7, 369 / CUP1, 406.

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Chapter 5

Kierkegaard, ‘The Present Age’ and the Call for Suffering Servants

Introduction One of the central themes of Chapter 4 was Kierkegaard’s analysis of monasticism and/or Pietism – an analysis that, while appreciative of certain aspects of those movements, nevertheless judged that they abstract religiousness from secular society and so escape the demands of authentic religious existence. Taken by itself, this criticism appears to mark Kierkegaard as an opponent of a Pietist understanding of holiness. Yet, as was seen in the first part of this study, Pietism was a complex movement, which cannot be reduced to the separatism critiqued in the Postscript. The Pietist ecclesiolae in ecclesia – robustly embodied in Moravian colonies such as Herrnhut and Christiansfeld, but also seen in Copenhagen’s Brødresocietet – nurtured practices and motifs cherished by Kierkegaard. Through them, for instance, a Taulerian-Arndtian stress on the humility of Christian discipleship and on imitatio Christi was preserved and handed down. Chapter 6 will detail Kierkegaard’s own turn to those themes in his later authorship. First, however, it is important to discuss one of the pivotal steps preceding Kierkegaard’s assumption of the imitatio motif, namely, his A Literary Review and its critique of ‘the present age’. Indeed, it will be argued below that, coming on the heels of the so-called Corsair affair, A Literary Review represented a change in Kierkegaard’s understanding of secular society and, with it, a change in his approach to holiness. Whereas the Postscript argues that authentic religious existence is primarily a matter of ‘hidden inwardness’ – a conclusion that follows from Climacus’s twofold rejection of monastic/Pietist external separateness and bourgeois mediatory Christianity – A Literary Review shows Kierkegaard reworking this conclusion in light of the ills of modern secularity. This chapter will probe Kierkegaard’s social analysis, establishing that, in his view, ‘the present age’ necessitates a religiousness of suffering servanthood. In other words, it demands a paradoxical form of holiness that, as will be seen, is both distinct and unmeritorious. As regards his relation to Pietism, this conclusion reconfirms his ambivalent posture vis-à-vis certain Pietist tendencies, even as it paves the way for his most significant appropriation of Pietist spirituality, the theme of imitatio Christi.

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The Background to A Literary Review Thomasine Gyllembourg’s 1845 novel, Two Ages [To Tidsaldre], provided the occasion for Kierkegaard’s A Literary Review. The novel tells the story of a pair of historical time periods: the activist, passionate age of the 1790s and the prosaic, reflective 1840s, a decade characterized by ‘bourgeois liberalism and aristocratic Hegelian conservatism’. Its plot follows a family whose fortunes ebb and flow across both ages, culminating in a pair of romantic ‘repetitions’, where two couples (one in the age of passion, the other in the age of reflection) are reunited despite their expectations. Kierkegaard began reviewing the novel soon after its publication; however, he postponed his efforts while finishing the Postscript, which he sent to the printer in December 1845. Around that time, Peder Ludvig Møller (1814–65) published a critical essay entitled ‘A Visit in Sorø’. Møller was a gifted poet, notorious philanderer and known contributor to the popular satirical periodical, Corsaren [The Corsair]. Founded by Meïr Goldschmidt (1819–87), The Corsair displayed republican sympathies, which its motto – ‘les aristocrates à la lanterne’ [‘hang the aristocrats’] – expressed with vivid economy. Møller’s connection to The Corsair is noteworthy because, when ‘A Visit in Sorø’ both questioned Kierkegaard’s mental fitness and criticized his treatment of Regine Olsen, Kierkegaard fired back with a pseudonymous strike   Notably, Fru Gyllembourg (1773–1856) was also the mother of Johan Ludvig Heiberg (1791–1860), who, during Kierkegaard’s life, was Denmark’s leading homme de lettres. Together with Heiberg’s wife, the great actress Johanne Luise Pätges (1812–90), they made up the inner circle of ‘the family’ [Familien] – a group of élites who formed the conservative backbone of Danish society, espousing a ‘right Hegelian’ political theory that stressed the representation of the many by a ‘cultured’ few. That Kierkegaard’s A Literary Review bears traces of Heibergian social analysis has been noted by commentators such as Michael Plekon and George Pattison. However, in the words of Pattison, Kierkegaard’s promotion of a religious response to modern society ‘“goes beyond” Heiberg’ [George Pattison, Kierkegaard, Religion and the Nineteenth-Century Crisis of Culture (Cambridge, 2002), p. 69]. One of the chief tasks of this chapter is to investigate this ‘religious response’.    Bruce Kirmmse, Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark (Bloomington, Indiana, 1990), pp. 266f.    As Alastair Hannay notes, ‘Repetition … is a leitmotif for Kierkegaard’s own interest in [Two Ages]’. However, he adds that Gyllembourg’s depictions of ‘repetition’ do not correspond exactly with Kierkegaard’s understanding of the term, since Gyllembourg, unlike Kierkegaard, tends to portray repetition more as a recurrence than as a venture. See Alastair Hannay, ‘Translator’s Introduction’, in A Literary Review (London, 2001), pp. xiv.    Howard Hong and Edna Hong, ‘Historical Introduction’, in Two Ages (Princeton, New Jersey, 1978), pp. ixf.    Howard Hong and Edna Hong, ‘Historical Introduction’, in The Corsair Affair and Articles Related to the Writings (Princeton, New Jersey, 1982), p. x. 

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on Møller and The Corsair: ‘[F]or ubi spiritus, ibi ecclesia [where the spirit is, there is the church]: ubi P.L. Møller, ibi The Corsair. Therefore our vagabond quite properly ends his “Visit to Sorø” with one of those loathsome Corsair attacks on peaceable, respectable men’. In turn, The Corsair launched its own literary assault on Kierkegaard – one that, from 2 January 1846 to 7 January 1848, employed tactics such as ‘defamation of character by association and personal ridicule by caricature of external appearance’. Kierkegaard’s sanity again was called into question, and, most famously, the length of his trousers was mocked. Kierkegaard tried to wring humour from the situation, but his journals also betray a sense of pain: ‘What rare luck, for my life acquires exceptional significance; to my contemporaries I acquire significance by means of my trousers, but for a later generation perhaps my writings will help a little.’ In the wake of The Corsair’s first attacks, Kierkegaard resumed work on A Literary Review, although it is hard to tell just when or at what pace he recommenced his efforts. By February 1846, he had decided that he would publish A Literary Review, and that it would close his authorship. As he explains in a journal entry from that period: [I]t has been clear to me for some time now that I ought not be a writer any longer, something I can be only totally or not at all. This is the reason I have not started anything new along with proof-correcting except for the little review of The Two Ages, which, I repeat, is final.

This is the same passage in which Kierkegaard declares that he has decided ‘to qualify as a pastor’.10 But that was not an easy decision for him, and so it is unsurprising that, a few entries later, Kierkegaard reformulates his plans: ‘What if I decided from now on to do the little writing I can excuse in the form of criticism. Then I would put down what I had to say in reviews, developing my ideas from some book or other’.11 This quote refers to Kierkegaard’s plan to continue writing without being a writer – a plan that not only hints at the persistent shakiness of his pastoral designs, but also at his satisfaction with the progress of A Literary Review, both as a work in its own right and as a template for future endeavours. Given the timing of this passage, it also can be inferred that Kierkegaard was working on the review for most of February 1846, a month that also saw the publication of the Postscript. He seems to have completed A Literary Review around the turn of the next month, since, on 9 March 1846, he notes that ‘one of these days the



          10   11   

SV1 XIII, 431 / COR, 46. Hong and Hong, ‘Historical Introduction’, in TA, p. xx. Pap. VII1 B 55. JJ:415 / JP 5, 5873. JJ:415 / JP 5, 5873. JJ:419 / JP 5, 5877.

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printing of the “Literary Review” will begin’.12 And so it did, with the book finally appearing on 30 March 1846. Though rather tedious, this timeline leads to an important conclusion. Even though A Literary Review was conceived prior to the Corsair affair, it was composed primarily during the earliest and most painful months of The Corsair’s polemics. It seems likely, therefore, that A Literary Review will reflect the Corsair affair. The following analysis will support that assumption. A Literary Review sees Kierkegaard roll over the progressive bourgeois city of the Postscript and find an insidious underbelly – a discovery that affects his approach to the religious life as well.

The Age of Revolution The bulk of A Literary Review’s ‘ethical-philosophical evaluation’13 lies in its third and final section, ‘The Results of Observing the Two Ages’. Kierkegaard begins with the ‘Age of Revolution’, which, he says, is foremost an age of passion and, therefore, an age of form. The treatment of passion in Chapter 4 has introduced these terms already: insofar as passion [lidenskab] is (i) determined or ‘called forth’ by some object and (ii) must be cultivated actively in the direction of that object, the passionate person possesses ‘continuity and impetus’.14 In A Literary Review, Kierkegaard applies this principle to the age of revolution. Like the passionate person, the revolutionary age is drawn by an object (or an ‘idea’) and dedicates itself actively to that object. Thus it takes on form, an expression of its object.15 It also takes on ‘culture’, which Kierkegaard equates with ‘tension and resilience’, as well as the possibility of turning ‘ruthless toward everything but its idea’.16 Put briefly, it is the ardent commitment to an idea that puts the ‘revolution’ in the age of revolution, for without this commitment all of its slogans and symbols merely would be pretensions. This line of thought leads to a passage that has important ramifications for Kierkegaard’s understanding of social relations: Purely dialectically the relations are as follows, and let us think them through dialectically without considering any specific age. When individuals (each one individually) are essentially and passionately related to an idea and together are essentially related to the same idea, the relation is optimal and normative. Individually the relation separates them (each one has himself for himself), and ideally it unites them. Where there is essential inwardness, there is a decent   NB:7 / JP 5887.   SKS 8, 59 / TA, 61. 14   C. Stephen Evans, Kierkegaard’s Fragments and Postscript: The Religious Philosophy of Johannes Climacus (Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, 1983), p. 131. 15   SKS 8, 59 / TA, 61. 16   SKS 8, 60 / TA, 62. 12 13

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modesty between man and man that prevents crude aggressiveness; in the relation of unanimity to the idea there is the elevation that again in consideration of the whole forgets the accidentality of the details. Thus the individuals never come too close to each other in the herd sense, simply because they are united on the basis of an ideal distance. The unanimity of separation is indeed fully orchestrated music. On the other hand, if individuals relate to an idea merely en masse (consequently without the individual separation of inwardness), we get violence, anarchy, riotousness; but if there is no idea for the individuals en masse and no individually separating essential inwardness, either, then we have crudeness.17

Here, then, Kierkegaard lays out a basic sociological theory. An ‘optimal and normative’ society is one in which individuals ‘essentially and passionately’ relate to the same idea, much as members of a band singly but simultaneously play a piece of music. However, when this ‘unanimity of separation’ is missing – either because the persons in question fail to relate to the idea individually, or because there is simply no idea to relate to – then chaotic violence results on the one hand, ‘crudeness’ or ‘an uncomfortable lack of specific quality’18 on the other. Thus Kierkegaard’s oft-derided individualism is something of a caricature, since, as he sees it, the fundamental question facing individuals is not if they will relate to others, but how they will relate to others.19 The revolutionary age exemplifies a key relational model, which, for all of its allure, bears a dangerous side. This peril is captured by the image of the riot, where individuals lose themselves, as it were, in the idea. In this scenario, the receptivecreative dialectic of passion is collapsed in favour of the receptive, so that the idea’s drawing power becomes wholly determinative, thereby eclipsing any notion of individual responsibility, whether toward oneself or toward other persons. A concrete example might be a throng of persons, motivated by a particular idea of justice, slaughtering others. But riotousness is not the only danger posed by the age of revolution, and it may be better understood as a symptom of the real threat of the revolutionary age – namely, that its idea is all too often wrong or, at least, wrongly understood. The age of revolution never lacks an idea of, say, propriety, but, as Kierkegaard is quick to point out, it ‘may well be that it has a false concept of propriety’.20 That this is worrisome is only heightened by the 17

  SKS 8, 60 / TA 62f.   SKS 8, 60 / TA, 62. 19   Though long considered a precursor to (or a symptom of) modern existentialist isolation, Kierkegaard is increasingly read as a social thinker. Two recent collections bear out this development: George Pattison and Steven Shakespeare (eds), Kierkegaard: The Self in Society (Basingstoke, 1998), and George B. Connell and C. Stephen Evans (eds), Foundations of Kierkegaard’s Vision of Community: Religion, Ethics, and Politics in Kierkegaard (London, 1992). A Literary Review is evidence that this trend is overdue. 20   SKS 8, 63 / TA, 64 (emphasis added). 18

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very nature of the revolutionary idea, which, according to Kierkegaard, engenders an immediacy that is reactive and provisional.21 Indeed, as was suggested above, since the age of revolution often fails to recognize its own provisionality, it tends to lapse into brutality and wildness. As Kierkegaard explains, ‘Simply as reaction [the revolutionary age] can be transformed by one single deviation into untruth, which in an accidental way accentuates the polemical’.22 Does, then, the age of revolution have any potential for good? Kierkegaard states it ‘can become either good or evil’.23 In other words, it is possible to conceive of a good age of revolution, provided that such an age not only has the right idea, but understands itself properly in relation to that idea. And what, for Kierkegaard, is the idea that would facilitate a ‘good’ revolution? He remarks, ‘From the standpoint of the idea, a person finds definitive rest only in the highest idea, which is the religious …’.24 What makes the religious the ‘highest idea’ is that it, as the place of ‘definitive rest’, is where the reactive and provisional elements of the age of revolution find their terminus. The religious revolution, therefore, is the end of all revolutions – the revolutionary ne plus ultra. Kierkegaard is loath to give determinate content to this notion of a religious revolution, preferring intimations to prescriptions. One such hint occurs in the paragraph immediately following the lines cited above. There, after referring to some depictions of ‘reactionary immediacy’ in Two Ages, he notes that this sort of immediacy is prone to mistake its provisional nature for something more comprehensive. For instance, in its zeal for the ideas of freedom and equality, the age of revolution would go so far as to annihilate what Kierkegaard terms ‘the inexplicables of piety’,25 meaning those hierarchical relationships that are seemingly fundamental to social organization and practice, such as the relationship between father and son. And yet, Kierkegaard goes on, the accomplishment of freedom and equality need not follow that revolutionary model: In fact this idea, yes, even the idea of freedom and equality, is not without form as long as the idea itself is the essential truth inspiring the enthusiast, for then the inwardness is not abolished. When the religious idea inspires the Moravian Brethren [Brødre-Menighed] to express equality by being brothers and sisters,

21

  SKS 8, 63 / TA, 65.   SKS 8, 64 / TA, 65. Such comments call into question Bruce Kirmmse’s suggestion that Kierkegaard uses the age of revolution as a positive contrast to the present age. Apart from the possibility of a religious revolution, Kierkegaard is generally chary of the longterm merits of the revolutionary age. See Kirmmse, Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark, pp. 270ff. 23   SKS 8, 65 / TA, 66. 24   SKS 8, 63 / TA, 65. 25   SKS 8, 64 / TA, 65. 22

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this is not formlessness at all, for uniformity is the essential form; nor is it an empty abstraction as long as inwardness is implicit.26

This passage further illustrates that, for Kierkegaard, the revolutionary age’s ideas must be brought within the domain of the religious if they are to achieve permanence and elude injury. In an allusion to his sociological theory, Kierkegaard implies that the religious idea should serve (or, in the case of the Moravians, has served) as a check on the presumption that would treat an idea such as ‘equality’ in superficial fashion – the presumption that would not recognize it as ‘the essential truth’ but, rather, use it as a catchword in a revolutionary campaign motivated by other interests. This section also betrays Kierkegaard’s long-standing relationship with Denmark’s Brødremenighed, as well as his familiarity with the Moravian community of Christiansfeld,27 where the notions of ‘freedom’ and ‘equality’ were implemented along religious lines. That Kierkegaard approved of this religious equality – and more evidence of such approval will be seen later in this chapter – is another reason why A Literary Review’s reference to the Moravians is significant. It prompts the question: if Kierkegaard desired or awaited a freedom and an equality determined in and by the religious idea, then why did he not become a Moravian? Or better yet, since it has been shown that Kierkegaard ultimately objected to what he saw as the Moravian tendency to avoid suffering in the world, one is compelled to ask: how does Kierkegaard think the religious revolution ought to proceed? Kierkegaard’s investigation of the present age [Nutiden], which predominantly occupies the A Literary Review’s third section, offers some important answers.

26

  SKS 8, 64 / TA, 65f. Based on this comment, it appears that, for Kierkegaard, not every age of revolution has form, despite his earlier contention that such an age ‘essentially has form’. On the surface, this looks to be a plain contradiction. However, if we keep in mind the determinative importance Kierkegaard attaches to the revolutionary idea, not to mention his remarks about its provisional and reactive nature, it is not hard to see how an idea such as ‘equality’ can tumble a society into formlessness. When a flat notion of ‘equality’ is related to en masse and, thus, without ‘the individual separation of inwardness’, its most natural expressive form is formlessness, or anarchy. Thus Kierkegaard suggests (and not without historical corroboration) that the step from a people’s republic to a reign of terror is unsettlingly short. In this respect, the French Revolution, which figures prominently in Fru Gyllembourg’s Two Ages, is germane. 27   That is not to say that this reference necessarily applies to Christiansfeld; Kierkegaard may have had Copenhagen’s Brødresocietet in mind. Still, Christiansfeld was Danish Moravianism’s most conspicuous community and, in its radical egalitarianism, best fits with the passage in A Literary Review. As was noted in Chapter 4, Kierkegaard’s familiarity with Christiansfeld is exhibited in an 1848 journal entry. He called it a place where all are ‘dressed alike, praying at specified times, marrying by drawing lots, going to bed by the clock’ and so on [Pap. IX B 22].

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The Present Age Kierkegaard’s analysis of the present age begins with a definition: ‘The present age is essentially a sensible, reflecting age, devoid of passion, flaring up in superficial, short-lived enthusiasm and prudentially relaxing in indolence.’28 This description previews Kierkegaard’s critique, which uses a variety of rhetorical elements – for example, satire and parable – to reinforce its case. Regarding ‘prudent’ reflection, which he considers the ultimate hindrance to the kind of action associated with the revolutionary age, Kierkegaard ribs: I wonder if there is a person anymore who ever makes just one big stupid blunder. Not even a suicide these days does away with himself in desperation but deliberates on this step so long and so sensibly that he is strangled by calculation, making it a moot point whether or not he can really be called a suicide, inasmuch as it was in fact the deliberating that took his life. A premeditated suicide he was not, but rather a suicide by means of premeditation.29

In the present age, people are thinking themselves to death, as it were, and the result is a kind of social inertia, which shrewdly is made palatable by advertisements and various notices. A rebellion fails to happen in society, but the trivial and passionless things that do happen are publicized at once.30 In such an age of reflection, great deeds have been traded in for the anticipation of great deeds, even as serious work has been traded in for ‘banquets’.31 And yet, Kierkegaard seems to suggest, banqueters long to witness feats of bravery as well – a point he illustrates brilliantly in his ‘parable of the treasure’. Imagine an alluring treasure, he begins, that lies far out on a thin sheet of ice. In a passionate age, if a ‘bold, brave person’ were to put himself in danger by venturing onto the ice in order to retrieve the treasure, the crowd of onlookers ‘would shudder for him and with him in his perilous decision, would grieve for him if he meets his death, and would idealize him if he gets the treasure’.32 But persons in a reflective age would handle the matter differently. They would want to keep the thrill of risk without the risk itself. Hence, apparently disregarding the treasure altogether, they would employ trained skaters to skate right to the edge of the thin ice and then, at the last moment, turn away. The reflective onlookers would ooh, ah and shout their approval, and afterwards they would honour the best skater (or performer) with a banquet. But beneath their jocularity, Kierkegaard intimates, something ominous is taking place:

28

    30   31   32   29

SKS 8, 65 / TA, 68. SKS 8, 67 / TA, 68f. SKS 8, 68 / TA, 70. SKS 8, 69 / TA, 71. SKS 8, 70 / TA, 72.

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At the banquet in the evening, the admiration would resound. But whereas what usually happens where admiration is authentic is that the admirer is inspired by the thought of being a man just like the distinguished person, is humbled by the awareness of not having been able to accomplish this great thing himself, is ethically encouraged by the prototype to follow this exceptional man’s example to the best of his ability, here again practical common sense would alter the pattern of admiration. Even at the giddy height of the fanfare and the volley of hurrahs, the celebrators at the banquet would have a shrewd and practical understanding that their hero’s exploit was not all that good, that … any one of the participants could have done almost the same thing with some practice in tricky turns.33

Thus the genuine admiration of the passionate age has been replaced by the reflective age’s ‘festival of admiration’, its bogus veneration of an event that it has subtly but knowingly rendered meaningless.34 In Kierkegaardian terms, this is also known as ‘envy’, and it is the ‘most dangerous … of all diseases’.35 33

  SKS 8, 70f. / TA, 72f.   SKS 8, 71 / TA, 73. 35   SKS 8, 71 / TA, 73. Kierkegaard’s notion of ‘envy’ anticipates René Girard’s theory of ‘mimetic desire’. According to Girard, people desire objects because their rivals desire them [René Girard, Violence and the Sacred (Baltimore, 1977), p. 145]. In this social phenomenon, rather than in some ‘outside influence’, lies the origin of human discord. As Girard explains, ‘Two desires converging on the same object are bound to clash. Thus, mimesis coupled with desire leads automatically to conflict’ [ibid., p. 146]. Society, says Girard, cannot afford to let this process unfold, lest it be thrown into chaotic violence. Thus a ‘monstrous double’ is selected, who, as a sacrificial victim, provides a ‘safe’ (that is, unifying) channel for the release of mimetically induced conflict [ibid., p. 161]. As will be seen below, Kierkegaard, too, contends that the envy of ‘the present age’ finds needed relief in the abuse of powerless victims. He therefore suggests that the ‘tolerance’ and ‘liberality’ of secular society is purchased with the pain of a sacrificed minority. Importantly, this is not the only connection between Girard and Kierkegaard. In a recent essay, Girard argues that the New Testament offers a way out of mimetic desire and its consequences – namely, the imitation of Christ. Over against ‘Protestant theologians’ who ‘traditionally have de-emphasized imitatio Christi’, Girard insists that ‘the imitation of Christ protects us from mimetic rivalries’ [René Girard, ‘Violence Renounced: Response by René Girard’, in Willard M. Swartley (ed.), Violence Renounced: René Girard, Biblical Studies, and Peacemaking (Telford, Pennsylvania, 2000), pp. 310–11]. Drawing on the New Testament notion of skandalon, which he defines as the ‘mutual entrapment of mimetic desires’, Girard writes that ‘[Paul] keeps warning his readers that the imitation of Christ is necessary to avoid scandals. Instead of desiring avidly and selfishly, Jesus imitates the pure generosity of his Father who “makes his sun shine and his rain fall on the just as on the unjust.” As soon as we sincerely imitate Jesus instead of our neighbors, the power of scandals vanishes’ [ibid.]. Kierkegaard views imitatio Christi in similar fashion. In both this chapter and in Chapter 6, it will be seen that, for Kierkegaard, the imitatio motif calls persons to a life of powerlessness, service and suffering – traits that point away from the violent devices 34

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Yet, before unpacking the concept of envy itself, a key question must be investigated: where does it come from? Or, to put it more pointedly, in what sort of society does envy germinate and flourish? Kierkegaard’s sociological theory remains a helpful analytic tool. As mentioned above, he says that societies straying from ‘perfect and normal’ relations do so in two ways: (i) by relating to the same idea en masse, which results in brutality; or (ii) by lacking a common idea to which persons can individually relate, resulting in what might be termed ‘characterlessness’. Merold Westphal labels these deviant societies ‘barbaric’ and ‘decadent’ respectively.36 He also adds, ‘[I]t is clear that when Kierkegaard speaks of the herd that typifies the modern age it is the decadent society … which he has in mind.’37 Kierkegaard’s definition of the present age suggests as much, with its references to ephemeral pursuits and indolence, not to mention his ‘parable of the treasure’ and its description of ‘glass-clinkers’ and banquets. Thus envy flourishes in a society that simultaneously lacks a common idea and passionate individual self-engagement, one that is characterless and decadent. In short, it does so in the present age. Envy, then, is not only a personal peccadillo, but also a social disease, which ‘terminates every enthusiastic and appreciative relation to another’.38 However, in contrast to the age of revolution, which tends toward radical, even violent reformation, change does not happen in the present age.39 But that does not mean that Nutiden is characterized by concord. On the contrary, an ‘enervating tension’40 lies just under its surface, so that life is debilitated. ‘Gone are the fervor, enthusiasm, and inwardness that make the links of dependency and the crown of rule light’.41 Here Kierkegaard begins to tread on conservative ground, especially with his rather unsubtle reference to the ‘crown of dominion’. Indeed, as Michael Plekon notes, ‘Central among the conservatives’ social and political positions was support for a paternalistic … a “fatherly” absolute monarchy.’42 And yet, it must be said that Kierkegaard’s concept of ‘debilitating tension’ has effects far of the socio-political order and toward the arrival of a society centred on love. For more on the connections between Kierkegaard and Girard, see David McCracken, The Scandal of the Gospels (Oxford, 1994); Charles Bellinger, The Genealogy of Violence: Reflections on Creation, Freedom, and Evil (Oxford, 2001); and George Pattison, Kierkegaard, Religion and the Nineteenth-Century Crisis of Culture, especially pp. 210–21. 36   Merold Westphal, ‘Kierkegaard’s Sociology’, in Robert L. Perkins (ed.), Two Ages (Macon, Georgia, 1984), p. 139. 37   Ibid., p. 140. 38   Robert L. Perkins, ‘Envy as Personal Phenomenon and as Politics’, in Robert L. Perkins (ed.), Two Ages, p. 114. 39   SKS 8, 77 / TA, 80. 40   SKS 8, 77 / TA, 80. 41   SKS 8, 77 / TA, 80. 42   Michael Plekon, ‘Towards Apocalypse: Kierkegaard’s Two Ages in Golden Age Denmark’, in Robert L. Perkins (ed.), Two Ages, p. 27.

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beyond monarchical power; rather, it is an existential posture that has come to characterize all social relations. Children are still raised by parents, students still taught by teachers, parishioners still led by pastors; but these relationships have been enervated by the ‘equivocal and ambiguous’43 nature of reflection. They stand, but are no longer respected. According to Kierkegaard, once this tension ‘establishes itself as a principle’, envy comes to dominate the age as a ‘negatively unifying principle’.44 This phrase means that people are brought ‘together on the basis of what they are against rather than what they are for. The term envy suggests that what they are against is a person’s being different.’45 Thus one cannot consider envy the present age’s shared idea, since it is not so much an idea as the absence of an idea. Furthermore, when one does step forth with an idea, envy works to take it away – if one can advance even that far. As Kierkegaard notes, ‘Reflection’s envy in the individual frustrates an impassioned decision on his part, and if he is on the verge of decision, the reflective opposition of his associates stops him.’46 Kierkegaard also terms this process ‘levelling’, which, according to Robert Perkins, ‘is personal, characterless envy on the political or social scale’.47 Levelling, says Kierkegaard, ‘is an abstract power and is abstraction’s victory over individuals’.48 As such, he likens it to a ‘deathly stillness in which nothing can rise up but everything sinks down into it, impotent’.49 Despite imbuing it with such supernatural traits, Kierkegaard maintains that individuals can and do participate in the levelling process. Their participation, however, is of minimal consequence, because they did not start it; nor can they stop it: ‘A demon that no individual can control is conjured up, and although the individual selfishly enjoys the abstraction during the brief moment of pleasure in the leveling, he is also underwriting his own downfall.’50 Nevertheless, in arguing that levelling is a power that receives momentum from participating individuals, Kierkegaard prepares the way for his critique of the press, perhaps A Literary Review’s principal target. Given that Kierkegaard wrote A Literary Review during his row with The Corsair, these are themes that the book touches on, albeit somewhat obliquely. The power of the press, Kierkegaard contends, lies in its ability to invoke a ‘phantom’, an ‘all-encompassing something that is nothing’.51 This is ‘the public’, which, as

43

    45   46   47   48   49   50   51   44

SKS 8, 77 / TA, 80. SKS 8, 78 / TA, 81. Westphal, ‘Kierkegaard’s Sociology’, p. 151. SKS 8, 78 / TA, 81. Perkins, ‘Envy as Personal Phenomenon and as Politics’, p. 124. SKS 8, 81 / TA, 84. SKS 8, 81 / TA, 84. SKS 8, 83 / TA, 86. SKS 8, 86 / TA, 90.

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a ‘monstrous nonentity’, tends to defy accurate characterization.52 An undeterred Kierkegaard, however, gives it an attempt: If I were to imagine this public as a person … I most likely would think of one of the Roman emperors, an imposing, well-fed figure suffering from boredom and therefore craving only the sensate titillation of laughter, for the divine gift of wit is not worldly enough. So this person, more sluggish than he is evil, but negatively domineering, saunters around looking for variety. Anyone who has read the ancient authors knows how many things an emperor could think up to beguile the time. In the same way the public keeps a dog for its amusement. This dog is the contemptible part of the literary world. If a superior person shows up, perhaps even a man of distinction, the dog is goaded to attack him, and then the fun begins. The nasty dog tears at his coattails, indulges in all sorts of rough tricks, until the public is tired of it and says: That is enough now. So the public has done its leveling.53

This passage is pregnant with meaning. First – and perhaps most obviously – it recalls the Corsair affair. Kierkegaard seems to be suggesting that, malicious and deplorable as The Corsair may be, it is ultimately in service to the levelling powers of the present age, namely, the public, which is ‘the actual master of leveling’.54 This claim may appear contradictory, inasmuch as Kierkegaard also maintains that the press creates the public.55 Yet, just as individuals can take part in, but not control, the levelling process, so the press calls forth ‘the public’ only to have it slip its grasp. The public, in effect, is a genie that cannot be put back into its bottle. Once let loose, it can be invoked by anyone and everyone, though ‘never be called up for inspection’.56 Second, Kierkegaard’s comparison of the public to a plump, listless ‘Roman emperor’ hearkens back to his pseudonymous discussion of Nero in Either/Or. There Assessor Wilhelm describes Nero as an ‘imperial sensualist’ whose ‘nature was depression’.57 These descriptions signify that, although the emperor has all power and gratification at his disposal, he is, as it were, spiritually retarded. Drowning in ‘new pleasures’, Nero is the epitome of Kierkegaard’s aesthetic stage; his existence is one ‘frozen in possibility, a life that, so to speak, remains in the theatre – remains the life of a spectator’.58 Simply put, he ‘has not developed

52

    54   55   56   57   58   53

SKS 8, 87 / TA, 91. SKS 8, 91 / TA, 94f. SKS 8, 87 / TA, 91. Ibid. Ibid. SKS 3, 180 / EO2, 185. George Pattison, The Philosophy of Kierkegaard (Chesham, 2005), p. 59.

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a correspondingly adult attitude towards his own freedom and responsibility’.59 Such a failure is disastrous, not only for Nero, but also for those around him: [N]ero is as if possessed, inwardly unfree, and that is why it seems to him as if every glance would bind him. He, the emperor of Rome, can be afraid of the look of the lowliest slave. He catches such a look; his eyes dispatch the person who dares to look at him that way. A miscreant stands at the emperor’s side, comprehends this wild glance, and that person is no more.60

So, his spirit unable to ‘achieve a breakthrough’ into maturity, Nero remains in an ‘anxiety that does not cease even in the moment of enjoyment’.61 Consequently, he ‘does not possess himself’ and lives in fear of others – a fear that manifests itself violently, even toward the powerless persons who merely look at him.62 A Literary Review’s comparison of the public to a debauched Roman emperor seems to be a deliberate cross-reference to Kierkegaard’s characterization of Nero years before. This connection implies that, for Kierkegaard, a ‘culture of aesthetic spectatorship … is also inherently a culture greedy for images of violence’.63 Indeed, like Nero, the public qua emperor craves brutality. By way of the press, it punishes those who are different, especially the ones ‘who take their spiritual nature seriously enough to be anything but just like the others’.64 It levels. And, also like Nero, who ‘has no murder on his conscience’,65 the public does not repent of its hostility. An amorphous blob that ipso facto abolishes individual commitment and responsibility, it shifts the blame to its ‘dog’ (the press) and laughs the whole thing off as ‘a bit of fun’.66 With such descriptions, Kierkegaard casts a new, penetrating light on Johannes Climacus’s sketches of life in the secular city. For Climacus, modern Copenhagen is, primarily, a place of diversion and ease, where he can enjoy a comfortable outdoor spot at the café (Josty’s) in Fredericksberg Garden, ‘that friendly garden which for the adult is so cozy in its wistful elevation above the world and what belongs to the world’.67 As Climacus recalls, it was there, on a Sunday afternoon, that he first considered becoming an author: So there I sat and smoked my cigar until I drifted into thought. Among other thoughts, I recall these. You are getting on in years, I said to myself, and are 59

    61   62   63   64   65   66   67   60

Ibid. SKS 3, 181 / EO2, 186f. SKS 3, 180 / EO2, 186. SKS 3, 181 / EO2, 186f. Pattison, The Philosophy of Kierkegaard, p. 60. Westphal, ‘Kierkegaard’s Sociology’, p. 151. SKS 3, 181 / EO2, 187. SKS 8, 91 / TA, 95. SKS 7, 171 / CUP1, 185.

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becoming an old man without being anything and without actually undertaking anything. On the other hand, wherever you look in literature or in life, you see the names and figures of celebrities, the prized and highly acclaimed people … the many benefactors of the age who know how to benefit humankind by making life easier and easier, some by railroads, others by omnibuses and steamships, others by telegraph, others by easily understood surveys and brief publications about everything worth knowing, and finally the true benefactors of the age who by virtue of thought systematically make spiritual existence easier and easier and yet more and more meaningful – and what are you doing?68

In the face of this rapidly ‘progressing’ society, Climacus assumes the role of a gadfly, aiming ‘to make difficulties everywhere’.69 But this task implies that he takes the present age at face value. There is no intimation that this world – with its transport and commerce, with its media and religious gurus – is anything other than a place where ‘all join together to make everything easier in every way’.70 As Climacus concludes, ‘[T]here remains only one possible danger, namely, that the easiness would become so great that it would become all too easy.’71 That is one reason why he takes up the theme of ‘becoming subjective’, since, in his view, subjective existence neither can nor should be made easy in the manner of modern living tout ensemble.72 In A Literary Review, however, Kierkegaard turns Climacus’s surface-level descriptions of the modern city inside out. The Postscript, no less than A Literary Review, depicts a locale marked by amusement parks and banquets.73 But the latter text is not content to stop there. A Literary Review wants to account for the inner dynamics of the secular polis, and what it finds is grim indeed – a culture, so congenial and smart on the outside, that in truth is shot through with lassitude, envy and a peculiar penchant for violence. Beneath the modern city’s desires for ease and self-gratification lies a state of crude ‘unfreedom’, which, lacking any teleological determination, constantly seeks an aesthetic stimulation that is bound 68

  SKS 7, 172 / CUP1, 186.   SKS 7, 172 / CUP1, 187. 70   SKS 7, 172 / CUP1, 186. 71   Ibid. 72   For example, Climacus writes, ‘[T]ruly to exist, that is, to permeate one’s existence with consciousness, simultaneously to be eternal, far beyond it, as it were, and nevertheless present in it and nevertheless in a process of becoming – that is truly difficult’ [SKS 7, 281 / CUP1, 308]. 73   Also see Climacus’s discussion [SKS 7, 428–36 / CUP1, 472–80] of the spy who collects ‘testimonies’ about the propriety of spending a day at Deer Park, a large park north of Copenhagen that, from May to September, hosts a kind of carnival or fair. For more on Deer Park, see, for example, George Pattison, ‘Poor Paris!’ Kierkegaard’s Critique of the Spectacular City (Berlin, 1999), as well as his Kierkegaard, Religion and the NineteenthCentury Crisis of Culture, pp. 55ff. 69

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to crave viciousness. Even worse, presiding over this situation is a transmogrified Nero, the ghostly Publikum, which uses the press to reproduce and to intensify the tendencies of envy and levelling. Consequently, A Literary Review’s trenchant sociological analysis obliges Kierkegaard to revisit Climacus’s religious individual, whose relationship with the absolute τέλος is to be pursued in the midst of the world. But how? Recall that, according to Climacus, ‘worldly religiousness’ will involve a kind of suffering, but only on an inward level, where, for instance, the individual must come to terms with his or her separation from God or, in the case of Religiousness B, the sense of isolation that accompanies ‘the paradoxical transformation of existence by faith through the relation to something historical’.74 As has been indicated, Climacus himself has reservations about this notion of ‘hidden inwardness’, and, with A Literary Review, Kierkegaard confirms Climacus’s suspicions. First and foremost, he suggests that the concept of ‘hidden inwardness’ is based on a misunderstanding, namely, that one can seek the religious in the secular polis and not arouse the malice of the envious society around oneself. A Literary Review, then, argues that the present age exacts an additional toll from the religious individual. If one is committed to the religious and, therefore, willing to individuate opposite the powers of envy and levelling, the present age will strike back violently. The Corsair affair’s imprint is palpable in this inference. Just as The Corsair publicly ridiculed Kierkegaard, so, on Kierkegaard’s interpretation, will the religious individual be publicly oppressed by the agents and adherents of levelling. But this, it would seem, is an unsatisfactory conclusion. Cannot something be done to stop levelling? Kierkegaard’s answer to this question is yes, but, as one might expect, he rejects any programmatic solution. This is not because he was unable to see the appeal of recommending such a solution; on the contrary, it concerns the very nature of levelling itself, and how it precludes direct and, for lack of a better word, ‘muscular’ responses to the problems it poses. As Kierkegaard notes, ‘No period, no age, and therefore not the present one, either, can halt the scepticism of leveling, for the moment it wants to halt leveling, it will once again exemplify the law.’75 In the end, explicit responses to levelling will induce only the ‘state of reflection, stagnation in reflection’.76 Kierkegaard applies this point to a pair of potential scenarios: (i) an attempt to end levelling via the ‘great person’ and (ii) an attempt to end levelling via the ‘strong community’.77 As regards the former, Kierkegaard argues that not only 74

  SKS 7, 530 / CUP1, 581.   SKS 8, 83 / TA, 86. 76   SKS 8, 93 / TA, 96. 77   Though it is a topic that outstrips the considerations of this study, this point and its concomitants indicate why Kierkegaard’s critique of the present age could not be appropriated by anti-bourgeois movements such as National Socialism, at least not without gross distortions to his meaning and intent. For Kierkegaard, the Nazis’ elevation of der Führer and das Volk, not to mention their creation of a new symbology, would mark an egregiously 75

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has the traditional reformatory ‘hero’ failed to secure long-term results, inasmuch as his disciples have followed him at a ‘good’ price and therefore fallen short of the greatness he bought ‘very dearly’,78 but that those calling for such a hero forget that the problem is, after all, levelling – an ‘abstraction’ that reduces all persons to equals and, therefore, militates against ‘the eminent personage’.79 Besides, Kierkegaard adds, it is simply lazy to pine for a great person to overcome levelling, when, in reality, that task belongs to each and every person. Those who rally behind a distinguished figure, then, are guilty of ‘finitude’s impatience’,80 of using the great person’s reputation as a ‘quick-fix’ to a problem that resists all but humble, quotidian suffering. As Kierkegaard quips, ‘It does not help to herald and augur a Holger Danske or a Martin Luther, their age is over’.81 Kierkegaard takes a related approach with regard to the ‘strong community’: ‘No congregation [Congregatio] will be able to halt the abstraction of levelling, for in the context of reflection the congregation itself is in the service of levelling.’82 One reason for this is the sheer power and extent of levelling, which is a ‘negatively superior force’ that ‘consumes everything’.83 Another reason, however, is that the dynamics of the present age, including levelling, were brought about by a communal vacuum. Indeed, it was only with the loss of ‘perfect and normal’ social relations – in Kierkegaardian terms, a situation in which individuals simultaneously relate to a shared idea – that the abstract public was able to steal into society. As Kierkegaard writes: Only when there is no strong communal life [Samliv] to give substance to the concretion will the press create this abstraction ‘the public’, made up of unsubstantial individuals who are never united or never can be united in the simultaneity of any situation or organization and yet are claimed to be whole.84

reactive and, thus, violent ‘revolutionary’ development – a development, furthermore, that is in denial about the nature and sweep of the present age. In Kierkegaard’s view, there is, finally, only one revolution – the religious one – and that revolution overcomes the present age not by trying to escape its repercussions, but by suffering them. It does not retreat to the ‘great person’ or the ‘strong community’, but relinquishes them in favour of the social equality essential to the religious idea. For a not unrelated discussion of how Kierkegaard leads us in a very different direction from National Socialism, see Patricia Huntington’s ‘Heidegger’s Reading of Kierkegaard Revisited: From Ontological Abstraction to Ethical Concretion’, in Martin J. Matuštík and Merold Westphal (eds), Kierkegaard in Post/ Modernity (Bloomington, Indiana, 1995), pp. 43–65. 78   SKS 8, 85 / TA, 88. 79   SKS 8, 84f. / TA, 87–9. 80   SKS 8, 85 / TA, 89 (my translation). 81   SKS 8, 85 / TA, 89 (my translation). 82   SKS 8, 85 / TA, 87 (my translation). 83   SKS 8, 85 / TA, 87. 84   SKS 8, 87 / TA, 91.

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And yet, once introduced, the public prohibits a return of the ‘strong community’; it stands between individuals and thereby deters actual relationships, ‘for the public is a phantom that does not allow any personal approach’.85 By usurping contexts where concrete interpersonal relationships might take place and flourish, the public suppresses any direct move back to the communal. As Kierkegaard notes, ‘[T]he existence of a public creates no situation and no community [Forsamling].’86 Later in A Literary Review, Kierkegaard comes back to this issue, but now approaches it in slightly different fashion: It is, then, as far as possible from the fact that sociality’s, the community’s [Menighedens] idea will become the age’s salvation, that it, on the contrary, is the scepticism, which has to – in order that the development of the individuality can go on, because each individual either is forfeited or brought up by the abstraction – religiously win itself.87

Here Kierkegaard leaves the door open for a return of community, although not without some key qualifications. It is no use, he suggests, to set forth some idea of ‘strong community’ and then go from there. As with the ‘great person’, such an approach is nothing other than an ‘evasive answer’, a ‘diversion’.88 What must happen, then, is that communal life must be won through doubt or, in Kierkegaard’s word, Skepsis, because only when the individual doubts that he or she will have recourse to some easier path will he or she confront the challenges posed by the present age. Yet, if that happens, if individuals allow themselves to be ‘brought up’ by levelling, then communal life may emerge on the other side. As Kierkegaard says, ‘Only when the single individual in himself has won ethical firmness despite the whole world, not until then can there be talk about uniting in truth.’89 Kierkegaard sketches out this sort of uniting in his subsequent discussion of ‘the unrecognizables’ – a community that will neither show nor announce itself as such, since each of its members ‘have divinely understood the diabolical principle of the leveling process’.90 The unrecognizables comprehend that the old,   SKS 8, 86 / TA, 92. For Kierkegaard, the problem is not that something stands ‘between’ individuals, since, in books such as Works of Love, he goes to great lengths to stress that God is the ‘middle term’ that makes Christian love [Kjerlighed] possible. Thus the public has assumed God’s place in human relations – a point that hints at how Kierkegaard might have interpreted Nietzsche’s (in)famous claim that ‘God is dead’. 86   SKS 8, 87 / TA, 91. 87   SKS 8, 101 / TA, 106 (my translation). The word Menighedens in this passage may nod to the Brødremenighed. However, A Literary Review’s employment of a variety of signifiers [Congregatio, Samliv, Forsamling] suggests that his critique is not limited to the Moravians and, in fact, applies across communal contexts. 88   SKS 8, 101 / TA, 106 (my translation). 89   SKS 8, 101 / TA, 106 (my translation). 90   SKS 8, 101 / TA, 107. 85

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recognizable chain of command has passed away, that the authority once exerted by certain persons and social bodies has been bulldozed by levelling. Thus they choose to be ‘without authority’, existing like ‘plainclothes policemen’ in the very midst of the present age.91 As Kierkegaard explains: Like secret agents they are unrecognizable, not according to private instructions from God, for that in fact is the situation of the prophets and judges, but they are unrecognizable (without authority) because of their apprehension of the universal in equality before God, because of their acceptance of the responsibility for this at all times, and thus they are prevented from being caught off guard and becoming guilty of conduct inconsistent with their consistent intuition.92

Kierkegaard’s reference to equality [Ligelighed] warrants further attention. It has been shown that he commends the Moravians for expressing ‘the religious idea’ and living equally as brothers and sisters. He returns to this topic as his analysis of the present age unfolds, observing, at one juncture, that ‘equality before God and equality with all men’ is ‘the full sense of equality’. Further, he continues to emphasize that this ‘full’ sense of Ligelighed is nothing other than ‘the idea of religiousness’.93 Clearly, then, when Kierkegaard refers to the unrecognizables’ realization of equality before God, it is this equality that he is talking about. It is important to note this distinction because levelling, too, achieves a variant of equality. According to Kierkegaard, levelling ‘has eliminated individualities and all the organic concretions and has substituted humanity and numerical equality among men’.94 This idea of ‘numerical equality’ is generated by the envy that does not want others to stick out – the envy that, in its vision of a ‘pure humanity’,95 seeks to flatten out human goals and to leave persons only with ‘the broad vista of abstract infinity’.96 As Merold Westphal notes, this levelling movement is, for Kierkegaard, a ‘form of escapism’, which, paradoxically, would free humans from having to be human.97 It would achieve equality by treating persons as if they were animals in a herd and, therefore, little more than indistinguishable lumps of sentient

91

  Ibid.   SKS 8, 102 / TA, 107. 93   SKS 8, 85 / TA, 88. In Works of Love, Kierkegaard also speaks of ‘eternity’s equality’, which is ‘to love the neighbor’ [SKS 9, 87 / WL, 81]. 94   SKS 8, 102 / TA, 108. 95   SKS 8, 85 / TA, 88. 96   SKS 8, 102 / TA, 108. 97   Merold Westphal, Kierkegaard’s Critique of Reason and Society (University Park, Pennsylvania, 1991), p. 49. 92

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materiality.98 Far from signalling a humanity emancipated from past hegemonies, numerical equality is the present age’s most rampant form of despair.99 So, as Kierkegaard brings A Literary Review to its dénouement, he characteristically sets up an either-or: either numerical equality or religious equality. For him, these are the only real options, and he underscores the urgency of the situation with a series of sublime images. As mentioned above, Kierkegaard depicts a ‘broad vista of abstract infinity’, an undifferentiated plane that he likens to an endless expanse of ‘air and sea’. And before this view, which, on account of levelling, offers no points of orientation, stand the individuals of the present age: ‘They either must be lost in the dizziness of the abstract infinity or be saved infinitely in the essentiality of the religious life,’100 he envisages. Here the word ‘dizziness’ harks back to Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous work, The Concept of Anxiety, in which, writing as Vigilius Haufniensis, he describes subjective anxiety as the ‘dizziness of freedom’.101 For Haufniensis, this anxiety or dizziness surfaces when the individual stands face to face, so to speak, with his or her own possibility. In other words, it is in the anxious moment that the human being’s ever-present freedom is disclosed qua possibility – an encounter that, according to Haufniensis, is ‘terrifying’, but, in another sense, essential if the person is to develop properly.102 As some commentators have noted,103 Haufniensis’s account displays affinities with Kant’s concept of the sublime, found in the Critique of Judgment. Yet, in A Literary Review, Kierkegaard’s debt to the Kantian sublime is also apparent, since he employs aesthetic imagery to capture the possibility facing the individuals of the present age. Just as, for Kant, the spectacles of the natural world frighten persons and, in turn, awaken their awareness of freedom, so, for Kierkegaard, does ‘the broad vista of abstract infinity’, the dizzying panorama of ‘air and sea’, reveal the terrible but free decision now confronting persons. ‘Many, many will 98

  Ibid., pp. 48f.   As Kierkegaard further suggests in The Sickness unto Death, numerical equality may also be called ‘finitude’s despair’ – a despair that results when the infinite aspect of the self is collapsed into the finite, so that one becomes ‘a number instead of a self, just one more man, just one more repetition of this everlasting Einerlei’ [SKS 11, 149 / SUD, 33]. He later adds, ‘In fact, what is called the secular mentality consists simply of such men who, so to speak, mortgage themselves to the world’ [SKS 11, 151 / SUD, 35]. 100   SKS 8, 102 / TA, 108. 101   SKS 4, 366 / CA, 61. 102   SKS 4, 454–61 / CA, 155–62. 103   See, for example, George Pattison, Kierkegaard, Religion and the NineteenthCentury Crisis of Culture, pp. 1ff. Also see John Milbank, ‘The Sublime in Kierkegaard’, in Phillip Blond (ed.), Post-Secular Philosophy (London, 1998), pp. 131–56. Though Pattison, perhaps, is more willing than Milbank to draw parallels between Kantian and Kierkegaardian approaches to indeterminable sublimity, both agree that there are, finally, important differences between the two thinkers on this subject. 99

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perhaps scream in despair,’104 Kierkegaard writes. And yet, at the same time, some will be saved by turning to the religious idea;105 they will heed the mysterious, eschatological call that, according to Kierkegaard’s vision, will echo across the unbroken plane of levelling: Then it will be said: ‘Look, everything is ready; look, the cruelty of abstraction exposes the vanity of the finite in itself; look, the abyss of the infinite is opening up; look, the sharp scythe of leveling permits all, every single one, to leap over the blade – look, God is waiting! Leap, then, into the embrace of God.’106

And, as has been shown, these ‘leapers’ are the unrecognizables; or, to put it another way, those who leap become unrecognizable. It must be stressed that, for Kierkegaard, unrecognizability is not synonymous with invisibility. On this point, his comparison of the unrecognizables to ‘plainclothes policemen’ is instructive, for such policemen are, after all, visible. They can be perceived; they do act within the continuum of reality. However, their identities and the nature of their actions are not immediately apparent. They seem to be ‘civilians’, but, in truth, belong to an order whose mission is peculiar within the context of everyday life. At almost every moment, furthermore, they experience their unrecognizability as a burden, since, if they are exposed, their mission will be compromised in one way or another. And yet, they accept or suffer this burden, perhaps even in the face of much criminality, for the sake of their larger aims. This analogy clarifies what religious unrecognizability means for Kierkegaard. It is not a quasi-gnostic flight from the world, but, rather, a solidarity with the world so deep that it is willing to suffer worldly evil for the sake of the good.107 Or, to draw explicitly from Kierkegaard’s language, the unrecognizables have learned from God that loving others is not about ‘ruling’ [herskende] them, but about ‘constraining oneself’ [at tvinge sig selv] on their behalf.108 There are 104

  SKS 8, 102 / TA, 108 (my translation).   Here, arguably, is where Kierkegaard’s approach most obviously breaks with Kant’s: what Kant would conquer via reason, Kierkegaard would suffer (and hence only paradoxically conquer) via faith. 106   SKS 8, 103 / TA, 108. 107   Rowan Williams is a contemporary thinker who articulates a similar understanding of Christian thought and practice. He maintains that attitudes of ‘dispossession’ or ‘detachment’ are not meant to split nature and grace, but, rather, to express unity with the world by giving up mastery of it. In other words, for Williams, to love the world is to respect and even to suffer its otherness. He sees this pattern expressed both in the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, as well as in Christian soteriology. The similarities between Williams and Kierkegaard might be traced back to their common interest in the mystics. See Rowan Williams, On Christian Theology (Oxford, 2000), pp. 10–12, 269–71. 108   SKS 8, 104 / TA, 109 (my translation). 105

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Christological undertones in such remarks, and, for Kierkegaard, that is not at all inapt. As will be discussed in Chapter 6, Kierkegaard applies this principle of unrecognizability to Christ himself in works such as Practice in Christianity. At present, however, what is important is how these comments pertain to A Literary Review’s unrecognizables. For, in Kierkegaard’s view, their burden, too, is precisely that they have to suffer under the servants of levelling, who, in turn, are ‘servants of the power of evil’:109 The unrecognizables recognize the servants of leveling but dare not use power or authority against them, for then there would be a regression, because it would be instantly obvious to a third party that the unrecognizable one was an authority, and then the third party would be hindered from attaining the highest. Only through a suffering act will the unrecognizable one dare contribute to leveling and by the same suffering act will pass judgment on the instrument. He does not dare to defeat leveling outright – he would be dismissed for that, since it would be acting with authority – but in suffering he will defeat it and thereby experience in turn the law of his existence, which is not to rule [herske], to guide [styre], to lead [lede], but in suffering to serve, to help indirectly.110

There is an ‘anti-Constantinian’ ring here that is underemphasized in the above translation. Toward the end of the passage, Kierkegaard drives home his point with the verbs herske, styre and lede, which accurately could be rendered ‘reign’, ‘control’ and ‘head’ respectively. Thus Kierkegaard suggests that, in the present age, religiousness can no longer collude with temporal authority, and, as his authorship progresses, he begins to argue that such a collusion was unacceptable from the start. The task of unrecognizability necessitates an alternative course – in particular, suffering servanthood in the midst of a hostile world. Employing Kierkegaardian terminology, this task could be labelled ‘indirect’, although, without qualification, such a term could be misleading. The unrecognizables ‘help indirectly’, not in the sense that their work ‘spiritually’ enriches those who exert socio-political power, but in the sense that their work is not recognized as a service to either God or to humanity.111 Their willingness to let 109

  SKS 8, 103 / TA, 109.   SKS 8, 103–4 / TA, 109. 111   To grasp this point is to begin to see how Kierkegaard might be read as a Christian pacifist. Building on the logic of the Moravian position – and, in the process, anticipating more recent thinkers such as John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas – Kierkegaard refuses to let the question of political ‘effectiveness’ govern religious piety. In that particular sense, the unrecognizables could be allied with a strand of religious pacifism that contends that, in service to God, religious persons are to give up the reins of history. As Vernard Eller points out, Kierkegaard had a penetrating understanding of the ‘dynamics of nonresistance’. See Vernard Eller, Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship (Princeton, New Jersey, 1968), pp. 277ff. See also, for example, John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus, 110

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themselves be acted upon, which cannot be distinguished from their willingness to renounce socio-political influence, disguises them and must disguise them as they act in a society of levellers (whom they will not join) and would-be heroes (whom they will not follow). Thus they are unrecognizable, but not separatistic. They do not pursue the religious in abstraction from the present age, but, rather, remain in the world and work toward the final revolution, toward the indeterminable arrival of the truly religious society.112 Curiously, as soon as Kierkegaard sets forth his vision, he takes it back: But I interrupt. Naturally, this can only interest as tomfoolery, for it is thus – that every person is to work at his or her own salvation: so will prophesying about the world’s future at most be tolerable and permissible as a means of recreation, a pleasantry, just like playing skittles or tilting at barrels.113

Yet, the findings of this analysis suggest that these words are little more than a jest. As this chapter is brought to a close, A Literary Review will be put in the larger context of this study, namely, in the context of Kierkegaard’s relationship with the Pietist movement. Thereby it will be shown how the Review indicates the significance of Kierkegaard’s continued engagement with Pietism.

A Literary Review and Kierkegaard’s Relation to Pietism The preceding discussion has illuminated A Literary Review’s connection to the Corsair affair, its analyses of both ‘the revolutionary age’ and ‘the present age’ and its recommendation of suffering servanthood over against the envy-driven machinations of secular society. But what, exactly, do these aspects have to do with Kierkegaard’s relation to Pietism? This section will address that question by way of three topics: (A) A Literary Review’s interest in the holiness of the Brødremenighed; (B) its stress on suffering in the world; and (C) its move toward resolving the tension between outward and inward piety. These topics betray a degree of continuity with the Postscript, but, in closing, it will be reiterated that A Literary Review marks an advance in Kierkegaard’s thought. Its turn away from hidden inwardness and toward suffering servanthood is propaedeutic to one of the decisive themes in Kierkegaard’s authorship – the imitation of Christ.

2nd edn (Carlisle, 1994); Stanley Hauerwas, The Hauerwas Reader, eds John Berkman and Michael Cartwright (Durham, , North Carolina, 2001). 112   Understandably, Kierkegaard is reluctant to delineate the work of the unrecognizables, though he is clear that they are to work; in fact, he claims that they have a ‘double task’ [SKS 8, 103 / TA, 109]. As he explains, ‘[T]he unrecognizables must constantly work [arbeide] – and in addition work in order to hide it’ [ibid., my translation]. 113   SKS 8, 104 / TA, 109f. (my translation).

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The Moravians: Pro and Contra As discussed in Chapter 4, the Postscript’s critique of monasticism resembles Kierkegaard’s analysis of Denmark’s Moravians. Just as Climacus praises monasticism for its admirable, if finally defective, attempt to relate absolutely to the absolute τέλος, so does Kierkegaard praise the Moravians for their readiness to renounce the ‘politics of secularism’ set in motion by the Reformation.114 For Kierkegaard, both monastics and Moravians recognize that religiousness prioritizes the absolute in such a way that the existing follower will have to give up something in order to meet its demands – a renunciation that is expressed in both movements by their respective retreats from an economy of secularity. Likewise, this chapter has shown that Kierkegaard’s appreciation of Moravian Pietism appears in A Literary Review, where Kierkegaard cites the Moravians as an example of the equality ultimately necessitated by ‘the religious idea’. That he would slip in such a reference is not surprising. A Literary Review’s recurring interest in the triumph of religiousness and, with it, social equality suggests that Kierkegaard’s debt to the Moravians is significant, informing his ethicoreligious thinking and his responses to the present age. From Moravian Pietism, in other words, Kierkegaard learned that levelling’s corrosion of the established, authoritative church did not threaten ‘true’ Christianity. And yet, one might ask: what of the Postscript’s sharp criticism of monasticism/ Pietism? What of Kierkegaard’s claim, expressed in the journals, that ‘in a decisive sense the [Moravians] are actually not Christians’, because ‘their lives are not exposed to double danger’?115 Does Kierkegaard’s positive reading of Moravianism in A Literary Review abolish these other, more reproachful assessments of the monastic/Pietist option? On the contrary, these criticisms are implicit in A Literary Review for a pair of reasons. First, Kierkegaard deals with the Moravians during his discussion of the age of revolution, which implies that, in his view, they are passionate and therefore free from the snares of reflection that have so hindered the present age. But passion, for Kierkegaard, does not wholly constitute the religious. It is, at best, a precondition for proper religiousness. Thus the implication that the Moravians are akin to revolutionaries bears a critique spelled out elsewhere: Moravian Pietism, for all of its good points, nevertheless lacks determinate aspects of the essentially Christian.116   NB7:101 / JP 3, 2751.   Ibid. 116   In this connection, the Postscript’s critique of the monastery has been treated; however, it also would be useful to note that Kierkegaard presents a similar case in his posthumously published The Book on Adler. A.P. Adler (1812–69) was a Danish priest and Hegel scholar who, in 1842, claimed to have received a divine revelation. While Kierkegaard commends Adler for having been ‘deeply moved’ and ‘shaken in his inmost being’, he adds that such religious feelings and experiences belong to all religions and, therefore, are not necessarily Christian. Rather, for religious passion to be Christian, it has 114 115

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Second, that Kierkegaard closes A Literary Review with a discussion of the unrecognizables demonstrates that, as far as he is concerned, no present group (or, at least, no present recognizable group) is meeting the requirements of religiousness – an inference that, once again, indicates that he does not retract his criticisms of the monastic/Pietist option. If he had, he surely would have substituted a fellowship such as the Moravians for the unrecognizables, arguing that persons must choose between, say, Christiansfeld and secular society. But he did no such thing, and, in fact, his concerns about trying to halt levelling via the ‘strong community’ preclude such a move. It follows, then, that Kierkegaard saw Moravian communitarianism as poorly equipped to face the challenges of the present age, since, on his terms, such communal movements fail to take the dynamics of levelling seriously enough. While the Moravians understood community as a given stronghold – the very name, Brødremenighed, says as much – Kierkegaard concluded that levelling had rendered such communal strongholds both ineffective and illusory.117 He kept open the promise of community, but repudiated its ‘givenness’ and its strength. From his standpoint, communal life must be acquired continuously through each individual’s acceptance of religious suffering and unrecognizability. All in all, then, A Literary Review reconfirms Kierkegaard’s dialectical relation to Pietism: while he notes that a Pietist group such as the Brødremenighed exemplifies a passionate advance on the languor of the present age, he does not consider Moravian holiness an adequate response to secularity. For him, the beauty of fraternal piety must not come at the expense of suffering service in and for secular society. Yet, in reaffirming this conclusion, Kierkegaard’s interest in imitatio Christi – itself a great Pietist concern – pressed closer and closer to the surface. Suffering in the World Topics ‘B’ and ‘C’ relate to Kierkegaard’s understanding of worldly suffering. As before, it will be argued that the Postscript and A Literary Review exhibit a degree

to be determined by Christian concepts. Or, as he puts it, ‘[E]motion that is Christian is controlled by conceptual definitions’ [Pap. VII2 B 235, 200 / BA, 113]. And, as has been noted, he suggests that something similar is going on with the Moravians, whose passion lacks certain qualifications of the truly Christian. 117   It is well known that Kierkegaard had similar feelings about N.F.S. Grundtvig’s move toward a ‘folk’ Christianity. This study does not want to cover up the Grundtvigian connection in Kierkegaard’s analysis, but, rather, to bring out its extensity, showing how Kierkegaard’s reflections on communal life apply (and, arguably, apply better) to other communally oriented groups. In terms of Kierkegaard’s impact on current debates in political theology, this point is worth underlining, since Grundtvig’s tendency toward nationalism would make him an easy target for thinkers such as Hauerwas. Kierkegaard, then, could be enlisted in a Hauerwasian project effortlessly, unless one also recognizes Kierkegaard’s concerns about ‘peace’ communities such as the Moravians.

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of continuity. However, it also will continue to be stressed that the latter registers a shift in Kierkegaard’s thinking. For Climacus, religious existence is permeated by suffering, understood in the broadest possible terms. In Religiousness A, for example, the religious person moves through an escalating trio of pathetic expressions, in which he or she comes to recognize his or her failure to relate absolutely to the absolute τέλος, thereby acknowledging and suffering the limitations (finitude, relativity and so on) native to the human condition. Meanwhile, in Religiousness B, the individual’s contemplative relationship with the eternal is transferred to the theatre of temporality, since, according to this form of religiousness, the eternal has appeared in time – a humbling paradox that further intensifies religious pathos, inasmuch as it originates, among other things, sin-consciousness and the possibility of offence. But these types of religiousness, for Climacus, are not discrete in such a way that a person is permitted to jettison one and hold on to the other. Rather, Religiousness A has to be present if one is to actualize Religiousness B, since the former’s ‘recollective’ suffering is that which thrusts the individual into an encounter with ‘the pathos of the absurd’.118 The Climacan picture of religiousness, then, is a rigorous one, and Climacus heightens this rigour by insisting that the proper locus of religiousness is the world – that is, the secular world, with its distractions, compromises and perplexities. For that reason, he rebukes monastic/Pietist movements, since they pursue religiousness in some kind of abstraction from secular society, thus mollifying the suffering endemic to religious existence. According to Climacus, not only is this abstraction a misreading of the religious task, but also it makes the monastic prone to a repugnant form of spiritual pride. With its discussion of the unrecognizables, A Literary Review builds on the Postscript’s emphasis on religious suffering. That is not to say, of course, that it employs Climacus’s characteristic taxonomic divisions – Kierkegaard seems disinterested in identifying the unrecognizables with either Religiousness A or Religiousness B – but it is to spotlight A Literary Review’s equally emphatic accent on worldly suffering. The task of the unrecognizables is precisely to suffer in the world, to pursue the religious in the midst of the envy expressed in secular urbanity. In Climacan language, the unrecognizables do not seek religious achievement in abstraction from the world and, in doing so, call attention to their extraordinary religiousness. On the contrary, they take up the religious amid the present age’s admixture of banality and spectacle and, ever attentive to secularity’s two temptations (namely, levelling and the attempt to reverse levelling), suffer socio-political powerlessness for the sake of assisting the indeterminable triumph of religious equality. It is precisely this aim that renders them unrecognizable, since it corresponds neither with the agenda of the levellers nor with that of the ‘authorities’ who would overcome them. Thus Kierkegaard would invert the saying ‘out of sight, out of mind’: with their 118

  SKS 7, 507 / CUP1, 557.

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peculiar aims and activities, the unrecognizables are out of the present age’s mind and, as a result, out of its sight.119 It is clear, then, that Kierkegaard’s stress on worldly suffering – and its accompanying opposition to separatistic Pietist holiness – carries over from the Postscript to A Literary Review. That does not mean, however, that this continuity is perfect. Indeed, in considering the final topic, it will be argued that the unrecognizable suffering depicted in A Literary Review goes a long way toward redressing the tension between meritoriousness and hidden inwardness in the Postscript. Overcoming ‘Hidden Inwardness’ and the Turn to Imitatio Christi Climacus’s critique of monasticism in the Postscript can be summarized in the following manner. While he applauds the monastic’s willingness to break with the ordinary and to seek an absolute relationship with the absolute τέλος (distinct piety), he worries that the outward expression of that distinct piety fosters a pridefulness that, in one way or another, serves to give the monastic a sense of having met the requirements of existential pathos (meritoriousness). He concludes, then, that monasticism/Pietism is deeply flawed, but not because it promotes a distinct piety. What is needed is a distinct piety that avoids meritoriousness. But Climacus cannot conceive of such a piety. For him, if one’s religiousness distinguishes one from the world, one is bound to earn some sort of merit, whether as a member of a separatistic religious community or by converting one’s religiousness into socio-political capital, as when one becomes a celebrated religious figure. Thus he claims that religious existence primarily must be a matter of ‘hidden inwardness’ [skjulte Inderlighed].120 Since external expressions of piety issue in monastic meritoriousness and thus cancel (or at least assuage) the suffering intrinsic to religious existence, the religious individual is to look entirely like other persons.121 The sufferings and even the blessings of religiousness are to be carried within.122

  To be out of the present age’s mind and sight is not, however, to be immune from socio-political persecution. Indeed, to be ‘out of mind’ may itself be a form of persecution, as when persons are ‘forgotten’ by a society that is devoted to or oriented toward the wellbeing of another group of persons. Yet, in a certain sense, persons are ‘out of mind’ even when their persecutors directly harm them, since those persecutors fail to see them for what they are – that is, human beings with dignity or, in Christian parlance, children of God. A Literary Review seems to put greater stress on the first kind of persecution, Kierkegaard’s later writings on the second. 120   SKS 7, 453f. / CUP1, 499–501. 121   SKS 7, 453 / CUP1, 499. 122   Ibid. 119

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Yet, Climacus also admits that the notion of hidden inwardness is ‘somewhat appalling’,123 chiefly because it makes possible ethico-religious deceit. One can appeal to an interiority that simply is not there, to an inward commitment that leaves no sign of its existence. In the journals, Kierkegaard uses the issue of selfrenunciation as an instance of the larger problem: if one never actually gives something up, then how can one be said to have practised self-renunciation?124 But this question, when taken to its logical conclusion, leads back to a distinct, external piety. In other words, a pious outwardness is needed to correct the ‘appalling’ aspects of hidden inwardness, although, if the errors of monasticism are to be avoided, it cannot be meritorious. But is such an outwardness possible? Kierkegaard begins to tackle this problem in A Literary Review, particularly in his discussion of the unrecognizables. As he sees it, the unrecognizables distinguish themselves from their contemporaries (distinct piety), but they do so by their willingness to let go of and, in turn, to suffer temporal power in the midst of secular society. Thus their distinctiveness does not issue in meritoriousness, but rather is covered up, overlooked, unrecognizable. In this way, Kierkegaard is able to ‘solve’ the twin problems of hidden inwardness and meritoriousness, since, as he presents it, the unrecognizables suffer inwardly and outwardly and, in consequence, receive no merit for their adherence to the religious. Here, finally, is holiness without meritoriousness. It is tempting to view this solution as a kind of Hegelian Aufhebung, whereby Kierkegaard posits a synthesis between Climacus’s understanding of worldly suffering and Pietism’s emphasis on pious outwardness. In unrecognizability, these poles are at once sublated and reconciled, inasmuch as ‘unrecognizability’ denotes the transformation of Climacus’s hidden suffering into something social and Pietism’s meritorious externality into something onerous. And yet, to the extent that Kierkegaard is an existential dialectician,125 this Hegelian approach would require decisive qualification. A Kierkegaardian synthesis of hidden worldly suffering and distinct piety would not be a logical one, posited in and for thought, but one that must take place in existence. Moreover, as Kierkegaard depicts it, unrecognizability is not so much something one accomplishes (whether in thought or in deed) as something one suffers. The unrecognizables make themselves unrecognizable, but only by letting others seize recognizability, by letting others have control of secular society. Indeed, as already has been argued, A Literary Review first and foremost registers a shift in Kierkegaard’s understanding of society – a shift that results in attendant modifications of his approach to religious existence. After all, there is little need to worry about either hidden inwardness or meritoriousness when a hostile society renders the former unnecessary and the latter impossible. What 123

  SKS 7, 370 / CUP1, 407.   NB4:30 / JP 2, 2119. 125   For a good summary of Kierkegaard’s ‘existential dialectics’, see, for example, David Law, Kierkegaard as Negative Theologian (Oxford, 1993), pp. 50ff. 124

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looks to be a synthesis, then, actually may be a further reformulation of the eitheror available to the religious individuality: what once was ‘either meritoriousness or hidden inwardness’ has become ‘either recognizability or unrecognizability’. One either can contribute to a culture that oscillates between levelling and counterlevelling, or one can bear the cross of religiousness, humbling oneself before God and before others in quiet, even disregarded service. In invoking this crisis, Kierkegaard arrives at the gateway to his so-called ‘second authorship’. As he comes to stress in ‘Christ as the Prototype’: ‘No one can serve two masters.’126 Ultimately, topics ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’ underscore that Kierkegaard’s engagement with Pietism is a key factor in understanding his approach to Christian holiness. This conclusion will be reinforced in Chapter 6. Indeed, earlier in this study, Catholic and Pietist treatments of the imitation of Christ – particularly those appearing in Kierkegaard’s Erbauungsliteratur – were surveyed. Now, in the concluding chapter of this investigation, Kierkegaard’s own development of the imitatio motif will be examined. To this point, it has been shown that Kierkegaard’s relation to Pietism was dialectical. Yet, in turning to the theme of imitatio Christi, he revealed a profound agreement with the Pietist movement.

126   SV1 XII, 424 / JFY, 150. ‘Christ as the Prototype’ is a treatise in Kierkegaard’s Judge for Yourself!, written in 1851–52, but not published until 1876.

Chapter 6

Should One Suffer Death for the Truth?: Kierkegaard’s Development of Imitatio Christi

Introduction Whether or not one agrees that Kierkegaard embarked on a ‘second authorship’ during the years 1847–55, there is little question that his later writings are ‘marked by a heightened level of ideality in the requirement of imitatio Christi’. Louis Dupré writes that Kierkegaard ‘gradually reached the conclusion that the internal attitude of the “ethics of faith” must manifest itself in the Christian’s external behavior. He must become an imitator of Christ in this world.’ David Gouwens concurs: ‘In the later literature, Kierkegaard’s concern with Christian existence as “taking up one’s cross” deepens.’ Bradley Dewey and Joel Rasmussen put it even more strongly. For the former, the theme of imitatio Christi ‘seems to have been a constant and central reference point for his entire authorship’, while the latter claims ‘Imitation is the capstone of Kierkegaard’s understanding of what it means to become a Christian.’ In short, the imitatio motif plays an important role in Kierkegaard’s oeuvre, especially in his later work. And, accordingly, it has garnered significant scholarly attention. Much of that attention, however, has been critical. In the manner of thinkers such as Martin Buber and Theodor Adorno, Kierkegaard’s turn to the imitatio Christi has been seen as symptomatic of a metaphysical dualism, which would set the divine over against the creaturely. On this reading, Kierkegaard’s later accentuation    Howard Hong and Edna Hong, ‘Historical Introduction’, in Howard Hong and Edna Hong (eds), Two Ages (Princeton, New Jersey, 1978), p. xxiii.    Louis Dupré, Kierkegaard as Theologian: The Dialectic of Christian Existence (New York, 1963), pp. 170f.    David Gouwens, Kierkegaard as Religious Thinker (Cambridge, 1996), p. 173.    Bradley Dewey, The New Obedience: Kierkegaard on Imitating Christ (Washington, DC, 1968), p. 166.    Joel Rasmussen, Between Irony and Witness: Kierkegaard’s Poetics of Faith, Hope, and Love (New York, 2005), p. 136.    See Martin Buber, Between Man and Man (New York, 1965), pp. 40–42, 211–13, and Theodor W. Adorno, ‘On Kierkegaard’s Doctrine of Love’, Studies in Philosophy and Social Science, 8/3 (1939): 413–29.

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of Christ’s prototypical life betrays a desire ‘to take refuge from temporality in an abstract eternity’, a world-weariness that, in Buber’s words, is ‘in the last instance ananthropic’. Criticism also has come from more explicitly theological quarters, particularly over the related, if not identical, question of martyrdom. Rasmussen draws attention to this issue in a recent essay, where he argues that Kierkegaard sees ‘martyrdom as definitive of “essentially Christian” discipleship’ – a tendency that, from his perspective, stems from Kierkegaard’s tendentious biblical hermeneutic. Marie Thulstrup levels a similar charge, but in a more pointed way. In her view, Kierkegaard derives a ‘pure Christianity’ from a unilateral reading of the Synoptic Gospels, whereby he arrives at an ‘unmistakable’ conclusion: ‘The Pattern points the way to martyrdom; it is the Christian’s destiny.’10 She views imitatio Christi as a conceptual spur, which drives Kierkegaard along the path of austerity until, inexorably, he reaches the endpoint of martyrdom. As she concludes, ‘Becoming a sacrifice follows logically from imitation.’11 This chapter aims to counter such contentions and, with them, the idea that martyrdom is the upshot of Kierkegaard’s turn to imitatio Christi – a task that, at the same time, marks the convergence of the preceding explorations of Kierkegaard’s relation to Pietism. Chapters 2 and 3 showed that Kierkegaard had significant personal and literary connections to the Pietist movement. Not only did he grow up in a household characterized by Moravian piety, but he also cherished   Vanessa Rumble, ‘Christianly Speaking, Humanly Speaking: Kierkegaard’s Response to Leveling in Christian Discourses’, in Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Hermann Deuser and K. Brian Söderquist (eds), Yearbook 2007 (Berlin, 2007), pp. 211f.    Buber, Between Man and Man, pp. 211, 213.    Joel Rasmussen, ‘The Pitiful Prototype: Concerning Kierkegaard’s Reflections on the Apostle Peter as a Model for Christian Witness’, in Cappelørn, Deuser and Söderquist (eds), Yearbook 2007, pp. 290f. 10   Marie Mikulová Thulstrup, ‘Kierkegaard’s Dialectic of Imitation’, in Howard A. Johnson and Niels Thulstrup (eds), A Kierkegaard Critique: An International Selection of Essays Interpreting Kierkegaard (New York, 1962), p. 277. 11   Ibid. Here is the biggest problem with Thulstrup’s exposition. She is aware that Kierkegaard does not straightforwardly promote martyrdom – for ‘the question of what Kierkegaard would have done must remain unanswered’ [ibid., p. 280] – but nevertheless maintains that his understanding of Christianity frames ‘martyrdom as the mark of the true imitation of Christ’ [ibid., p. 281]. Her rationale for this conclusion is Kierkegaard’s mounting austerity, which reaches its fullest articulation in his so-called ‘attack upon Christendom’. There, for instance, he questions the validity of the church, particularly as an established political entity [SV1 XIV, 48 / M, 41f.], and satirizes the ease with which persons overlook the New Testament’s teaching on marriage and sexuality [SKS 13, 302f. / M, 246f.]. Thus, she reasons, Kierkegaard was bound to wind up with a ‘pure Christianity’ centred on martyrdom. In contrast, this chapter will show that Kierkegaard’s use of the imitatio motif does not necessarily involve martyrdom. Kierkegaard may have taken some problematic positions in his later writings, but they do not follow from his invocation of imitatio Christi. 

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a strand of Erbauungsliteratur, originating in late medieval Catholicism, that was adopted and developed in Pietist circles. A key aspect of this Erbauungsliteratur was its emphasis on the theme of imitatio Christi. Meanwhile, Chapters 4 and 5 traced Kierkegaard’s handling of holiness in ‘the present age’. Together they demonstrated that, for Kierkegaard, the problems of secular society are not to be avoided – in the manner of separatist monastic and Pietist groups – but encountered by persons dedicated to suffering servanthood. Thus he laid the groundwork for his own development of the imitatio motif. This chapter, in turn, will interpret that development. Much like Sylvia Walsh and Dewey, it will show that, for Kierkegaard, the imitator of Christ is ‘enabled by grace’12 in such a way that ‘along the continuum of [imitation] – from start to finish – grace is present’.13 However, this chapter also will account for the inner dynamics of the imitator’s dependence on grace. It will attend to Kierkegaard’s ‘spirituality’, to the inward state that, in his view, makes Christian discipleship possible. It is on this point that he is most indebted to the Erbauungsliteratur tradition.14 As 12   Sylvia Walsh, Living Christianly: Kierkegaard’s Dialectic of Existence (University Park, Pennsylvania, 2005), p. 159. 13   Dewey, The New Obedience, p. 161. 14   The weakness of Dewey’s exposition is that he fails to grasp this connection. While noting Kierkegaard’s interest in works by Tauler and by Thomas à Kempis [ibid., pp. 111f.], as well as his connections to the Brødremenighed [ibid., p. 138], he does not examine these links in detail. This leads him to make some false assumptions, particularly about Tauler and Thomas. As he sees it, they put forward an ‘ascetic imitation’ marked by ‘hour-by-hour regulae controlling activity, speech, solitude’ [ibid., p. 111]. But this point overlooks the criticisms of such asceticism present in Tauler and even in Thomas. For example, Tauler insists that the ‘attached’ self, ascetic or not, is the real barrier to a relationship with God: ‘No one receives [the light of God] but the poor in spirit who have stripped themselves of self-love and self-will. There are many who have lived for 40 years in material poverty without having ever beheld this light’ [Johannes Tauler, ‘Sermon 10’, in Johannes Tauler: Sermons (New York, 1985), pp. 53f.]. Despite fewer Eckhartian tendencies, Thomas nevertheless echoes this point: ‘Wearing a monk’s habit and having one’s head tonsured produces little change in the monk himself. What truly distinguishes the real religious are his change in outlook on life …’ [Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ (New York, 1998), p. 21]. Dupré makes a similar mistake, but with regard to the Moravians. He notes that Kierkegaard’s ‘pietistic background may have prepared him’ to emphasize ‘the centuriesold tradition of practicing the imitation of Christ’ [Dupré, Kierkegaard as Theologian, p. 171]. However, since Kierkegaard also critiques the Brødremenighed, he dismisses the connection. Both Dewey and Dupré are right that Kierkegaard does not understand the imitatio motif in monastic or separatist terms – a point that this study has accentuated. But they are wrong to assume that Kierkegaard thereby found himself completely at odds with these sources. A related problem occurs in another essay: Marie Mikulová Thulstrup, ‘Lidelsens problematik hos Kierkegaard og mystikerne’, in Niels Thulstrup (ed.), Kierkegaardiana III (Copenhagen, 1959), pp. 48–72. Here Thulstrup endeavours to compare Kierkegaard and

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with Tauler, Arndt and others, Kierkegaard wants to elevate the importance of imitatio Christi. However, also like them, he does not think that a human being can achieve Christlikeness, and thus he constantly stresses the humility, even the nothingness, of the imitator. Persons neither can nor should pursue a strict likeness to Christ, much less martyrdom. Rather, they are to emulate Christ’s ‘detachment’ from worldly things – particularly socio-political power – so that they might stand before God in spiritual poverty, open to the gift of grace. At that point, they might be fashioned into instruments of God, who live in the world for the sake of loving God and neighbour. Only such ‘grace-filled’ persons are disposed to bear the cross of ‘the present age’ and, paradoxically, to overcome it. Chapter 3 showed that Kierkegaard encountered this approach to the imitatio motif in his favourite Erbauungsautoren. This chapter will illustrate how he incorporated it into his later authorship, and how it bears on his understanding of martyrdom. Kierkegaard was not uncritical of Pietism, as has been seen. But here a larger sympathy will be manifested – one that was integrally related to his own vision of holiness in ‘the present age’.

Kierkegaard and the Imitation of Christ: Some Basic Attributes The opening discourse of Kierkegaard’s 1847 treatise, ‘The Gospel of Sufferings’, is entitled ‘What Meaning and What Joy There Are in the Thought of Following Christ’. This piece effectively announces Kierkegaard’s turn to the imitatio motif.15 In particular, it establishes a few key characteristics of Kierkegaard’s understanding of what it means to imitate Christ – characteristics that are shared between Kierkegaard’s other discourses on the topic. It might be viewed, then, as programmatic for much of the later authorship. The discourse is divided into a pair of sections. The first substantiates that to imitate Christ is to suffer, the second that to imitate Christ is to receive joy. ‘the mystics’ on the question of suffering, but, in the process, adopts a peculiar methodology: ‘For a comparison between Kierkegaard and the mystics, we will use individual texts that by all accounts he had no knowledge of’ [ibid., p. 63]. Thus she focusses on formal similarities between Kierkegaard and writers such as Theresa of Jesus [ibid., pp. 65ff.] – an interesting and useful exercise, but one that shelves the generally substantive links between Kierkegaard and the Erbauungsliteratur tradition. 15   In Danish, the pairing of the verb, følge, with the adverb, efter, is translated as ‘follow’ or ‘succeed’. Thus it is closely related to the word often used for ‘imitation’, Efterfølgelse. Dewey prefers to translate Efterfølgelse in Kierkegaard’s writings as ‘following’, since ‘“imitation” smacks of pretense and retreat’ [The New Obedience, p. 120]. Chapters 4 and 5, however, already have demonstrated that Kierkegaard would not use Efterfølgelse in that sense; consequently, the danger of such a misinterpretation has been obviated. On the other hand, to render Efterfølgelse as ‘imitation’ indicates Kierkegaard’s continuity with the larger Christian tradition – a point not lost on Dewey. After all, his book is subtitled ‘Kierkegaard on Imitating Christ’.

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Kierkegaard begins by citing Luke 14:27: ‘Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.’16 A few pages later, he quotes from Scripture again, now drawing on the so-called ‘kenotic hymn’ of Philippians: ‘[T]his mind that was in Christ Jesus, he who thought it not robbery to be equal with God but humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even to death on the cross.’17 With these texts in mind, Kierkegaard adds: As was the prototype, so must the imitation [Efterfølgelsen] also be, even though it is a slow and difficult task to deny oneself, a heavy cross to take up, a heavy cross to bear, and one that, according to the prototype’s instructions, is to be carried in obedience unto death, so that the imitator [Efterfølger], even if he does not die on the cross, nevertheless resembles the prototype in dying ‘with the cross on’.18

As Sylvia Walsh points out, this passage describes Christian self-denial, inasmuch as it grounds ‘dying to selfishness and worldliness’19 in Christ’s prototypical life. To imitate Christ is to bear or to suffer the cross of self-denial. But what, exactly, does this mean? Or, more precisely, what does it look like? For Walsh, ‘The Gospel of Sufferings’ is, at best, a first step toward answering such questions. In her view, ‘although the establishment of Christ’s life as the pattern for Christian self-denial would seem to require some form of outward expression’, Kierkegaard ‘does not develop that implication’ in ‘The Gospel of Sufferings’.20 But this appears to be a misreading. ‘The Gospel of Sufferings’ is clear that Christ-like self-denial has external, social ramifications. The one who walks ‘by the same road as Christ’ walks in a ‘servant’s lowly form’,21 and it is this form that brings the imitator into conflict with others. ‘Indigent, forsaken, mocked’,22 the one imitating Christ is unloved by the world, since he or she gives up everything that ‘ordinarily tempts and captures’.23 Kierkegaard points out that this sort of suffering often involves letting go of friends and family. Yet, more than anything else, it involves the giving up of temporal power. Christ was not a ‘military commander’, ‘robed in purple’ or a ‘powerfully influential’ person;24 rather, in his renunciation of self-interestedness and in his single-minded pursuit of 16

  SKS 8, 319 / UDVS, 217.   SKS 8, 322f. / UDVS, 221. See also Phil. 2:5–8. 18   SKS 8, 323 / UDVS, 221. 19   Sylvia Walsh, ‘Dying to the World and Self-Denial in Kierkegaard’s Religious Thought’, in Robert L. Perkins (ed.), For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourself! (Macon, Georgia, 2002), p. 183. 20   Ibid. 21   SKS 8, 325 / UDVS, 223 (my translation). 22   SKS 8, 325 / UDVS, 223. 23   SKS 8, 325 / UDVS, 223. 24   SKS 8, 325 / UDVS, 224. 17

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God’s will, ‘he was self-denial’.25 And it is by that standard that persons ultimately will be judged: [H]is presence is the judging … . He who was equal with God took the form of a lowly servant, he who could command legions of angels, indeed, could command the world’s creation and destruction, he walked about defenseless; he who had everything in his power surrendered all power and could not even do anything for his beloved disciples but could only offer them the very same conditions of lowliness and contempt; he who was the lord of creation constrained nature itself to keep quiet, for it was not until he had given up his spirit that the curtain tore and the graves opened and the powers of nature betrayed who he was: if this is not self-denial, what then is self-denial!26

This text shows that Kierkegaard’s invocation of Christ’s self-emptying (kenosis) does not disregard Christ’s divine qualities. What Kierkegaard stresses here and elsewhere is Christ’s ‘lowly status in society’ – a lowliness that is not constitutive of Christ’s person, but, rather, indicates the ‘radical nature of his commitment to the Father’.27 Thus Christ’s self-denial is fundamentally social and political: he dispossesses himself not of eternal power, but of temporal power, in order to incarnate a truly God-centred life. For Kierkegaard, it is in this sense that Christ is the prototype for all human beings, since the ability to place God and neighbour above all else is denied to no person, while things such as power, prestige and wealth are always already scarce. At the same time, however, Kierkegaard understands that persons are daunted by the idea of powerlessness. After all, human beings are born into various relations (for example, the family, the state, the market),28 which have their own hierarchical power structures and economies of desire. Hence, with respect to imitatio Christi, Kierkegaard writes ‘[I]n the crisscrossing busyness of life it seems to be difficult, impossible, to live in this manner’.29 That is why he moves the discourse into its second, more exhortative section, in which he reminds the reader that the one imitating Christ also receives great joy. For Kierkegaard, the joyfulness of imitating Christ primarily has to do with confidence – confidence that, since Christ himself trod the way of earthly lowliness, that way is ‘the best road, the road to the highest’.30 The imitator is freed from 25

  SKS 8, 325 / UDVS, 224 (emphasis added).   SKS 8, 326 / UDVS, 224f. (emphasis added). 27   Tim Rose, Kierkegaard’s Christocentric Theology (Aldershot, 2001), p. 112. Also see, for example, Merold Westphal, ‘Kenosis and Offense: A Kierkegaardian Look at Divine Transcendence’, in Robert L. Perkins (ed.), Practice in Christianity (Macon, Georgia, 2004), pp. 19ff. 28   SKS 8, 325 / UDVS, 223. 29   SKS 8, 325 / UDVS, 223. 30   SKS 8, 328 / UDVS, 227. 26

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anxiety about how to live on earth, as well as about what to expect after death. But how does one know that Christ’s way is, in fact, the best and the highest way? According to Kierkegaard – and here his debt to Erbauungsautoren such as Tauler and Arndt is plain – one knows by participating in, by imitating, Christ’s life of powerlessness and suffering. The more one suffers in the world for the sake of the good, the closer one comes to God. In giving up ‘all the world’s goods and bear[ing] all its evils’, the Efterfølger comes to experience another world or, better yet, another kingdom, which is characterized by ‘blessedness’ [Salighed].31 Thus Kierkegaard refuses to acknowledge the sceptic’s question, since, in his view, doubting the certainty of God’s kingdom only confirms one’s unwillingness to humble oneself before God and, in turn, to surrender temporal power. ‘How easy this is for a person to understand if he has actually denied himself and the world!’32 he exclaims. ‘What Meaning and What Joy There Are in the Thought of Imitating Christ’ establishes the thrust of Kierkegaard’s treatment of the imitatio motif. To imitate Christ is to practise self-denial in the way that Christ did – namely, by seeking a life of humility, long suffering and dedication to God and to neighbour,33 rather than a life committed to the attainment of worldly power. And yet, for Kierkegaard, this life of self-surrender and earthly powerlessness is not one of abject misery, but one of confidence and even of joyfulness, inasmuch as it has been incarnated and, in that sense, ‘justified’ by Christ himself. In the seventh and last discourse of ‘The Gospel of Sufferings’ – ‘The Joy of It That Bold Suffering is Able to Take Power from the World and Has the Power to Change Scorn into Honour, Downfall into Victory’ – Kierkegaard revisits the social ramifications of the imitatio motif. Starting with a few remarks on the nature of Christian testimony (or ‘confession’), Kierkegaard notes that it is doubtful that a person in modern Christendom will be ‘compelled to confess Christ’.34 After all, whereas the early Christians confessed Christ in the midst of pagan societies, the

31

  SKS 8, 329 / UDVS, 228.   SKS 8, 329 / UDVS, 228. 33   With this in mind, it is tempting to view Works of Love (also from 1847) as filling in more of the content of Kierkegaard’s understanding of a life ‘dedicated to God and to neighbour’. Indeed, the imitatio motif as such does not factor into Kierkegaard’s argumentation in Works of Love, but it is strongly implied that Kierkegaard’s presentation of Christian love is grounded in the example of Christ. As Kierkegaard puts it in the prayer that opens the book, ‘How could one speak properly about love if you were forgotten, you who revealed what love is, you our Savior and Redeemer, who gave yourself in order to save all’ [SKS 9, 12 / WL, 3]. For a complementary, if not identical, reading of the relationship between imitatio Christi and Works of Love, see M. Jamie Ferreira, Love’s Grateful Striving (Oxford, 2001), especially pp. 81–3, where she argues (contra Knud Løgstrup) that Kierkegaard’s ‘love commandment’ does, in fact, concern ‘worldly responsibility’, since it is clearly based on imitatio Christi. 34   SKS 8, 416f. / UDVS, 325 (my translation). 32

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situation in Christendom, where everyone is said to be a Christian, is different. In this latter context, to confess Christ is to ‘judge’ that those who claim to be Christians are not really Christians, but, rather, persons masquerading as Christians. This sort of judgement is precarious, since it may also indicate that the one judging is presumptuous and arrogant.35 Still, according to Kierkegaard, one has to remain open to the possibility that, even in Christendom, one may have to confess Christ or, at least, stand up for a ‘conviction’.36 In terms strongly reminiscent of A Literary Review, he says that modern talk of social ‘progress’ is misleading, since the downfall of the ancien régime has not led to the eradication of evil and tyranny, but to their metamorphosis: [O]ur freedom-loving age thinks … that if one is not dependent on a ruler [Hersker], then one is not a slave either; if there is no ruler, then there is no slave either. One is scarcely aware that it is a slavery that is being created, and just this makes it so difficult to tear oneself away from it. This slavery is not that one person wants to subjugate many (then one would of course become aware), but that individuals, when they forget their relation to God, become mutually afraid of one another … .37

As discussed in Chapter 5, Kierkegaard also refers to this slavery as ‘levelling’, and, among other things, it is marked by a tendency to persecute (both positively and negatively) those who pursue religiousness in the midst of ‘the present age’. Therefore, Kierkegaard maintains that the world remains a place where one ‘can be brought to the point that he must and should stand by a conviction’.38 But must it always be the case that the world is held in the power of evil and of despair? And, if so, what can be done? Kierkegaard suggests that such questions are understandable. As youths, people are ‘well instructed in truth’, and, in their ‘credulity’, they happily suppose that the truth and the world are in harmony.39 Yet, according to Kierkegaard, this harmony does not reflect the real world, but, on the contrary, is a projection: ‘[The youth’s] immature but beautiful imagination then creates for him a picture he calls the world, where what he has learned now unfolds before him as on a stage.’40 Thus young persons go out into ‘the world of actuality’;41 however, once there, they find that the world is not as they had imagined. Not only do many people commit evil deeds, but they do so blatantly. Worst of all, the truth is powerless against such evil, so much so that ‘the good 35

    37   38   39   40   41   36

SKS 8, 417 / UDVS, 325. SKS 8, 417 / UDVS, 325. SKS 8, 418 / UDVS, 327. SKS 8, 420 / UDVS, 327. SKS 8, 420 / UDVS, 328. SKS 8, 420 / UDVS, 328. SKS 8, 420 / UDVS, 328.

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must suffer in the world for the sake of the truth’.42 To recognize this, according to Kierkegaard, is to recognize the world’s ‘invertedness’ or ‘turned-roundness’ [Omvendthed].43 It is at this point that Kierkegaard returns to the theme of imitatio Christi, as exemplified by the apostles. In witnessing the crucifixion of Christ, the apostles gained brutal confirmation of the world’s ‘turned-roundness’. And yet, from Christ, they also learned that this ‘turned-roundness’ can itself be turned round, not by triumphing over it, but by suffering under it. According to Kierkegaard, it takes a certain ‘boldness’ or ‘free-spiritedness’ [Frimodighed] to approach the world in this way,44 but such was the example of Christ: [The apostle] had seen the Holy One crucified. He had seen the evil and corruption of the whole world disclosed when the Lord and Master was scorned – with this impression the apostle went out into the world. If you possibly can, try to imagine it any other way than that this man had to wish that this same world would treat him in the same way, that this man, disheartened and deeply troubled, would have had to blame himself if he was not persecuted, whereas he could fear only one thing, whether it still would not be too great an honor to be crucified!45

Thus the apostle, like Christ, accepts that the truth is powerless in the world and thereby comes to rejoice. But why should anyone rejoice in the face of such injustice? For Kierkegaard, the answer lies in the apostle’s Christlike relationship with God. The apostle has learned that earthly victory only has to do with one’s submission to God’s will.46 Nothing else is asked of a person.47 Therefore, the one who obeys God, even and especially when one is persecuted, can rejoice that one is victorious in the eyes of God, who alone determines the victoriousness of earthly life.48 Here, then, is another example of Kierkegaard’s debt to the Erbauungsliteratur tradition. The person who imitates Christ is to be so humble, so spiritually impoverished, that he or she seeks nothing other than to rest in God.49 As the Frankfurter puts it, the ‘created will flows into the eternal Will and ceases to be therein, becomes nought, with the result that the eternal Will alone wills, works, 42

  SKS 8, 421 / UDVS, 329.   SKS 8, 420 / UDVS, 329 (my translation). 44   SKS 8, 421 / UDVS, 330 (my translation). 45   SKS 8, 428 / UDVS, 337f. 46   SKS 8, 426 / UDVS, 334f. 47   SKS 8, 426 / UDVS, 334f. 48   SKS 8, 426 / UDVS, 334f. 49   This point also sheds light on Kierkegaard’s definition of faith in The Sickness unto Death: ‘Faith is: that the self in being itself and in willing to be itself rests transparently in God’ [SKS 11, 197 / SUD, 82]. 43

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and speaks in us.’50 This statement does not mean that the imitator no longer moves about the world, serving others and so on. What it does mean, however, is that the imitator has ‘no “wherefore” or real purpose except to fulfil the eternal Will’.51 This is the kind of ‘action’ that Kierkegaard ascribes to the apostles in the seventh discourse of ‘The Gospel of Sufferings’. But Kierkegaard, attentive to the problem of holiness in a secular age, is also keen to underscore the social application of this understanding of the imitatio motif. Indeed, it is significant that the discourse on ‘Bold Suffering’ takes up an urban setting. Drawing on the book of Acts, Kierkegaard recalls how, in Jerusalem, the apostles were flogged for teaching about Jesus,52 as well as how Paul was tried by King Agrippa in Caesarea.53 According to Kierkegaard, these accounts demonstrate that the apostles, in spite of their renunciation of all temporal power, were led into major cities and often came into conflict with the socio-political authorities. They did so because ‘in suffering they obeyed God more than people’.54 In other words, they sought to do God’s will, to imitate Christ, no matter the consequences. In some cases, they converted other persons; in other cases, they were persecuted. Yet, whatever the case, they had ‘forgotten their relation to people’,55 which, for Kierkegaard, means that they had abandoned all earthly agendas. Only God’s agenda, so to speak, mattered to them. This point, says Kierkegaard, bears heavily on how one understands martyrdom. For it would seem that the martyr dies for this group of people here or against that group of people there. In Kierkegaard’s view, however, that is not at all the case. The martyr’s death is something that happens to him or her while he or she is seeking to do God’s will. In this respect, to be martyred simply indicates that the martyr’s grounding in God is so unshakeable that he or she is not afraid to die. That is why martyrdom is a sign of blessedness.56 And yet, it is precisely this that the martyr’s persecutors fail to understand:

50

  Bengt Hoffman (trans.), The Theologia Germanica of Martin Luther (New York, 1980), p. 96. 51   Ibid., p. 97. 52   Acts 5:17–42. 53   Acts 25:13–26:32. 54   SKS 8, 426 / UDVS, 334. 55   SKS 8, 426 / UDVS, 335. 56   It is worth noting that Kierkegaard is conscious of how talk of martyrdom can be abused. Thus he is at pains to stress that, in the New Testament, martyrdom is strictly a suffering. It does not apply to earthly objectives, no matter how righteous they might seem to be. As he writes about the apostles, ‘[T]hey did it in suffering. At this point let us promptly say what we should repeat again and again – they did it in suffering; otherwise the discourse would in essence become a presumptuous lie and, if anyone were to act accordingly, would in the result become the most dreadful error’ [SKS 8, 422 / UDVS, 330f.].

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See, a raging crowd collects around the martyr; it believes that this affair is between them and him, it jeers at him even in the last moment and then waits to hear either wailing or proud words from the suffering one. It is hidden from the eyes of the crowd that someone else is present, and yet it is true, the martyr sees only God and is speaking only with God. His words – well, they do indeed sound like a ridiculing of the deluded crowd, but they are not said in that way. The martyr is speaking with God; he is giving thanks for being deemed worthy of this suffering.57

Kierkegaard adds that, at the point of martyrdom, the boldness of the one imitating Christ appears to be ‘madness’.58 That, in fact, is how it would have to appear to the vast majority of people, ‘who whine and complain when the world goes against [them] a little … who are busy in order to get rights [Ret], are proud of being right [Ret].’59 Still, though it may be hard for most persons to understand the bold powerlessness of the one imitating Christ, Kierkegaard suggests that this powerlessness demands consideration, since it presupposes a trust in God that may effect genuine improvement in the world. After all, he says, many good efforts have been ‘ruined’ by and through the involvement of worldly power.60 Perhaps it would be different if only persons would ‘earnestly strive to win bold confidence before God’.61 So, as ‘The Gospel of Sufferings’ comes to a close, Kierkegaard quite clearly moves in the direction of martyrdom – a tendency that stems from his understanding of imitatio Christi. To imitate Christ is to strip away the entanglements of earthly power, so much so that one’s service to God, which is absolute, leaves one absolutely exposed to others. And while this bold powerlessness may bring about charitable responses in others, the Efterfølger does not expect charity and realizes that, in one form or another, abuse is inevitable. As Kierkegaard puts in a later journal entry: [S]uffering will surely come. For the moment an imitator introduces into the world an action properly characterized qualitatively as being essentially Christian, he will of course collide with the world, with Christendom. Any essentially Christian action is characterized by the quid nimis which creates an offense. If you are a millionaire and give 100,000 dollars to the poor, you make people happy; if you give it all, you will collide. Accept a big salary and a distinguished office in order to proclaim Christianity, and you will make people

57

    59   60   61   58

SKS 8, 426f. / UDVS, 336. SKS 8, 427 / UDVS, 337. SKS 8, 427 / UDVS, 337. SKS 8, 431 / UDVS, 340. SKS 8, 431 / UDVS, 341.

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happy; renounce everything, every personal advantage, in order to proclaim Christianity, and you will collide.62

If, then, the Christian life terminates in imitatio Christi, then imitatio Christi seems to terminate on the cross. Yet, as one moves through Kierkegaard’s authorship, it becomes clear that he wants to take a circumspect approach to the imitatio motif and, in turn, to Christian existence. In particular, his interest in reconciling the theme of imitatio Christi with doctrinal orthodoxy’s emphasis on Christ’s divinity and salvific work becomes manifest. Indeed, Christian soteriology complicates the imitatio motif in two main ways: (i) by positing that every human being is a sinner and, therefore, in need of salvific help (‘grace’); and (ii) by declaring that Christ, as God-man, is uniquely capable of providing that help. Consequently, for the one who takes Christian dogma seriously (as Kierkegaard is wont to do),63 there is a sense in which imitatio Christi is, finally, impossible. Between the helpless and the helper has been set a chasm, which can be bridged only by the latter’s graciousness. Thus it becomes important for Kierkegaard to set forth an account of imitatio Christi that takes grace into consideration.64 And, as will be argued below, he does this by identifying the essence of imitatio Christi as a stance of humble and grateful receptivity to God. This emphasis does not overturn the way in which Kierkegaard develops the imitatio motif in ‘The Gospel of Sufferings’, but, rather, makes plain that the imitator’s socio-political persecution, including his or her martyrdom, is an epiphenomenon that cannot be required a priori of the imitator.

Imitation as Humilitas: The Problem of Seeking Martyrdom This study has discussed the approach to imitatio Christi found in Kierkegaard’s favourite upbuilding literature: from Tauler to Arndt and through to Brorson, the imitatio motif was understood primarily in terms of Christ’s humble receptivity before God. Weak and sinful persons, in and of themselves, neither can nor should hope to replicate the rigours of Christ’s Passion. What they are to imitate, however, is Christ’s ‘forgetfulness of self’, his submission to and love for God – in short, his   NB20:23 / JP 2, 1867.   See Rose, Kierkegaard’s Christocentric Theology, pp. 105ff, and Murray Rae, Kierkegaard’s Vision of the Incarnation: By Faith Transformed (Oxford, 1997), pp. 237ff. 64   As with many Pietists, this intention flags Kierkegaard’s sympathy for Luther. However, also like the Pietists, Kierkegaard diverges from Luther’s attempt to divest imitatio Christi of perceptible characteristics. The poor and humble life incarnated by Christ must not be forgotten if ‘grace’ is to have any meaning. In other words, one has to be able to identify Christlikeness so that one can know why one needs grace. ‘[I]mitation must be stressed again … in order to teach standing in need of grace’ [NB24:115 / JP 2, 1905]. Grace is not ‘point-less’, but tends toward Christ’s prototypical life. 62 63

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incarnation of a human life dependent on God’s grace. This section will show how Kierkegaard approaches imitatio Christi in similar fashion and, therefore, is able to maintain Christ’s heterogeneousness without abandoning the imitatio motif. The discourse ‘“See, We Have Left All Things and Followed You, What Are We to Have?” (Matthew 19:27) – and What Are We to Have?’ indicates Kierkegaard’s move in this direction. Located in the third part of Christian Discourses, which is entitled ‘Thoughts That Wound From Behind’, ‘What Are We to Have?’ is a meditation on what it means to follow Christ, especially as regards the renunciation of worldly things. Drawing on the words of the Apostle Peter, Kierkegaard begins by noting that the New Testament’s language about voluntary renunciation mocks persons who praise Christianity but nonetheless ‘cling with their whole soul to the worldly [det Verdslige]’.65 In other words, it exposes the hypocrisy of the one who fails to praise Christianity with one’s whole life. That is why Peter’s declaration about having renounced everything for the sake of Christ is the highest and most eloquent praise of Christianity, for it shows that he values Christianity above all else. As Kierkegaard puts it, ‘[T]o the same degree that your life shows how much you have left for [Christianity’s] sake, to the same degree you praise Christianity.’66 After establishing this criterion or ‘test’, Kierkegaard unpacks a bit more of what renunciation means in the context of Christianity. It is, he says, ‘voluntarily to give up everything to follow Christ’ [at følge Christum efter],67 and, with this definition in mind, he returns to the example of Peter. According to Kierkegaard, when Peter left everything in order to follow Christ, he really left the certainty of earthly comfort and ease. ‘Christ, in imitation [Efterfølgelse] of whom [Peter] left everything, was no man of independent means who could give his disciples a fixed income annually or guarantee them a permanent job and a livelihood’.68 Christ was temporally powerless, and, in choosing to become like this powerless one, Peter also had to break with every person who failed to understand his decision. Thus he ‘left family and friends and peers, the concepts and ideas in which his associates had had their lives’.69 Peter elected to leave everything and everyone that, at one time, secured his happiness and his confidence. Furthermore, he did not retreat from persons with whom he broke, but remained in their midst, ‘exposing himself to all the consequences’70 of that decision.

65

  SKS 10, 187 / CD, 176 (my translation). It is worth noting that det Verdslige can also be translated ‘the temporal’ or ‘the secular’. This undergirds the contention that, for Kierkegaard, Christlike renunciation chiefly concerns the renunciation of temporal or secular interests. 66   SKS 10, 188 / CD, 177. 67   SKS 10, 190 / CD, 179 (my translation). 68   SKS 10, 192 / CD, 182. 69   SKS 10, 193 / CD, 183. 70   SKS 10, 195 / CD, 185.

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Up to this point, Kierkegaard is basically in accord with his depiction of imitatio Christi in ‘The Gospel of Sufferings’. Yet, as he concludes ‘What Are We to Have?’, the subject of the discourse changes. No longer does he deal with Peter and his bold imitation of Christ, but with the topic of ‘genuine honesty before God’.71 According to Kierkegaard, there is no point in trying to convince persons to leave all things in order to follow Christ, since ‘perhaps God does not demand’72 such an austere expression of self-denial. Thus it is vital to focus on what God does demand of all persons – honesty. It is honesty that God demands, since, on the human side of things, honesty is necessary if God is going to be able to work in a person: For every human being, no matter whether any other help is available to him or all other help is at an end, there is still only one help in heaven and on earth, this, that God helps him. But how would God be able to help a person if he is not honest toward God? Perhaps one often thinks that God is slow to help, or that the complexity of the infinitely many circumstances in governing the world makes the help so slow in being to one’s benefit. Oh, far from it, God is swift to help, swifter than thought, and for God there is no complexity. But the human being is dishonest toward God in craving help and in any case is very slow about becoming honest.73

For Kierkegaard, God’s grace is not irresistible: it is offered to all, but not all will accept it.74 One major reason for such resistance is that persons tend to lie to themselves and to God. They convince themselves that they love the good, that they would give up everything for its sake. And yet, their lives do not change, for their self-congratulation prevents them from truly appraising their situation and, in turn, from opening themselves up to God. What they need to do, then, is strip away all the deceits and attachments that stand between them and God. They need to ‘dis-illusion’ themselves, to work toward honesty, so that God can come to work in them. In taking this approach, it may seem that Kierkegaard is weakening or even retracting his earlier remarks about Peter and imitatio Christi. In a recent paper, Pia Søltoft claims that the turn to honesty in ‘What Are We to Have?’ represents

71

  SKS 10, 195 / CD, 185.   SKS 10, 196 / CD, 186. 73   SKS 10, 195f. / CD, 185. 74   On this point, Kierkegaard resembles a Thomist or, on the Protestant side, an Arminian – another trait he shares with Pietists such as John Wesley. For more on Kierkegaard’s Arminian tendencies, see Timothy Jackson, ‘Arminian Edification: Kierkegaard on Grace and Free Will’, in Alastair Hannay and Gordon D. Marino (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 235–56. Also see the Conclusion to this study. 72

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Kierkegaard’s ‘mitigated version’75 of Christianity, which, in turn, ‘weakens the radical understanding of Christianity’ present elsewhere in his writings.76 But this conclusion is a misunderstanding. First, Søltoft fails to note that, for Kierkegaard, ‘honesty before God’ is an attitude won only through the rigorous and painful process of self-stripping. It is, then, hardly a ‘mitigated’ posture, and, for most persons, it would seem all too radical. As Kierkegaard explains, ‘It is, however, very wrong to make this [honesty] into a platitude or in a platitudinous way to say about all of us something that, if it is actually in earnest, is carried out only by one in thousands and thousands.’77 More importantly, however, Søltoft overlooks Kierkegaard’s insistence that ‘honesty before God’ is that which makes ‘radical Christianity’ possible. Recall that, for Kierkegaard, the question is not if Christians are to imitate Christ, but how. How can a helpless sinner come to imitate his or her sinless helper? According to Kierkegaard, it is possible only through the sinner’s honest recognition of his or her condition – a recognition that, in turn, opens himself or herself to God’s help. Just as Christ incarnated a life fully open to God’s gifts, so must the sinner, in and through Oprigtighed, become open to God and to God’s grace. This honesty is all that is required of the sinner. But that requirement does not rule out the possibility of ‘radical Christianity’, of leaving everything in imitation of Christ. On the contrary, for Kierkegaard, the more one comes to rest in God’s grace, the more one’s life will be conformed to Christ’s, as the example of Peter demonstrates: No person is saved except by grace; the apostle, too, was accepted only by grace. But there is one sin that makes grace impossible, that is dishonesty; and there is one thing God unconditionally must require, that is honesty. If, however, a person keeps God away through dishonesty, such a person can come neither to understand that he, if God should require it, in the more rigorous sense would leave everything, nor to understand himself in humbly admitting that he certainly did not in the literal sense leave everything but still entrusts himself to God’s grace.78

Pace Søltoft, Kierkegaard here is not so much allaying the radical aspects of Christian discipleship as treating them as potential consequences of the reception of God’s grace. Put differently, Kierkegaard is avoiding the prescription of certain Christian behaviours, not because they no longer obtain, but because they fall under the province of God. Whether or not one, like Peter, will imitate Christ in such a way that one renounces power and comfort, even unto death, is not

75   Pia Søltoft, ‘Is Love of God Hatred of the World?’, in Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Hermann Deuser and K. Brian Söderquist (eds), Yearbook 2007, p. 74. 76   Ibid., p. 75. 77   SKS 10, 196 / CD, 186. 78   SKS 10, 197 / CD, 187.

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something that can be decided in advance. It depends on the way in which one is moved by and for God. Here again Kierkegaard resembles Luther. But there is an important difference: Kierkegaard establishes ‘honesty’ – an adaptation of Taulerian Gelassenheit – as a precondition for the reception of God’s grace. It was precisely this sort of precondition that Luther criticized in Tauler. Kierkegaard realized he differed from Luther on this point. For him, the human being arrives at the point of receptivity to God’s grace through ‘cooperative’ virtues such as honesty and humility – virtues incarnated by Christ himself. As he puts it in an 1852 journal entry: Luther rightly orders it this way. Christ is the gift – to which faith corresponds. Then he is the prototype [Forbilledet] – to which imitation corresponds. Still more accurately one may say: (1) imitation in the direction of decisive action whereby the situation for becoming a Christian comes into existence; (2) Christ as gift – faith; (3) imitation as the fruit of faith.79

On this point, then, Kierkegaard aligns himself with the Catholic tradition and its insistence on human cooperation with grace. Consequently, it is hardly surprising to find him praising Catholicism’s approach to imitatio Christi: ‘[T]here is always present in Catholicism this element of good – namely, that imitation [Efterfølgelsen] of Christ is demanded, imitation with all that this means remains firm.’80 However, his avoidance of the Catholic metaphysical tradition betrays a more robust Pietist background. Whatever the case, it must be conceded that Kierkegaard does appear to rule out a ‘radical’ understanding of imitatio Christi in a later work. In fact, if there is a text in his authorship that ostensibly satisfies Søltoft’s search for a ‘mitigated version’ of Kierkegaardian Christianity, it would have to be the 1849 treatise, ‘Does a Person Have Permission to Let Himself Be Killed for the Truth?’.81 In this piece, Kierkegaard places the most severe aspects of the imitatio motif under dialectical scrutiny. It begins with a short introduction, in which its pseudonymous author, H.H., tells the story of a man who, ‘strictly brought up in the Christian   NB25:35 / JP 2, 1908 (emphasis added).   NB28:48 / JP 2, 1923. 81   The Hongs, in contrast, render this title ‘Does a Human Being Have the Right to Let Himself Be Put to Death for the Truth?’. The main difference here has to do with the Danish noun Lov. They have translated it as ‘right’, but ‘permission’ is preferable. Indeed, this writing is not dealing with ‘rights’ in the modern, democratic sense. Kierkegaard is not asking about the degree to which an autonomous individual is free from the encroachment of a ‘higher’ authority. Rather, the man in this philosophical narrative is always already in relation with a ‘higher’ authority (God or, at least, Christ’s example) and so is always already constrained to some extent. Thus the essay is really interested in the question of what the individual, before God, is free to do: in particular, is he free to let himself be killed for the truth? 79 80

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religion’,82 desired to imitate Christ in the highest degree. Dissatisfied with having a merely observational relation to Christ’s sufferings, the man longed to take them on himself: [A]s he grew older, [the image of Christ’s crucifixion] acquired even more power over him. It seemed to him as if it continually required something of him. He had always considered it ungodly that one would undertake to paint this picture [Billede] and equally ungodly to look artistically at such a painted picture to see if it resembled him [the Crucified One] – instead of becoming himself the picture that resembled him – and he was driven by an inexplicable power to want to resemble him insofar as a human being can resemble him.83

In the background of H.H.’s narrative is Kierkegaard’s own life, not least his encounters with the Moravians. For example, the comment that it is ‘ungodly’ to ‘look artistically’ at Christ’s suffering recalls a journal entry from 1850, in which Kierkegaard writes that the Moravians ‘do not accentuate imitation – in place of a blood-theory lyric there is all this staring at Christ’s suffering’.84 Here, then, is another articulation of Kierkegaard’s critique of separatist Moravian holiness, as discussed in Chapters 4 and 5. Likewise, as with the man in H.H.’s story, Kierkegaard was raised in what might be seen as a ‘strict’ form of Christianity, insofar as the Moravians emphasized Christ’s suffering and Passion. There is a final biographical note in the story. H.H. remarks that, even while young, the man in his narrative had been made ‘old like an old man’.85 This detail recalls the testimony of a number of Kierkegaard’s contemporaries, who claimed that he had aged rapidly. For instance, Hans Brøchner (1820–75) – a philosopher and a distant relative of the Kierkegaard family – once called Kierkegaard ‘the oldest man’ he had ever known, if age were calculated according to ‘existential intensity’.86 Kierkegaard, apparently, was not offended by Brøchner’s remark, though a journal passage suggests a different understanding of such precocious ageing: There is something appalling, an extremely concentrated sadness, in one single phrase in the first essay by H.H., right at the beginning of the introduction. Already as a child he was an old man … he went on living, he never became younger … . Oh, what a frightful expression for frightful suffering.87

82

  SKS 11, 61 / WA, 55.   SKS 11, 61 / WA, 55. 84   NB20:78 / JP 2, 1874. For another discussion of the ‘image’ of Christ’s suffering, see SKS 12, 176–80 / PC, 174–9. 85   SKS 11, 61 / WA, 55. 86   Joakim Garff, Søren Kierkegaard: A Biography (Princeton, New Jersey, 2004), p. 428. 87   NB11:141 / JP 6, 6420. 83

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H.H.’s story, however, is less interested in the man’s psychology than in his Christology. As H.H. notes, the man did not think he could overcome the gap between himself, a sinner, and Christ, the God-man. Rather, he so loved Christ and so identified with Christ’s ‘cause’ that he wanted to give his life for it.88 Nevertheless, one day a ‘doubt’ came upon him: was it permissible for him, or for any other person, to allow such a thing to happen? In a sequence of five sections, H.H. proceeds to analyse his question. First, he turns his attention to Christ. Why, he wonders, did Christ allow himself to be crucified, when his crucifixion ipso facto would condemn his persecutors? Why did Christ’s love for his persecutors not persuade him to avoid his martyrdom? H.H. grants that one could come up with a number of explanations as to why people wanted to kill Christ. Since Christ emptied himself of selfishness and, in doing so, gave up all pursuits of temporal glory and power, he came into conflict with those who wanted him to become an earthly king. His holiness, in short, appeared to be ‘treason against his contemporaries, against the people, against the people’s cause’.89 Thus he was crucified. But why, H.H. continues, did he allow it to happen? While stopping short of providing a definitive answer – after all, a human being is not to comprehend the ways of God, but to submit as one ‘less than nothing’90 – H.H. concludes that, insofar as Christ’s death was salvific, it had ‘retroactive power’.91 In other words, ‘His death was indeed the Atonement and consequently also atones for the guilt of crucifying him’.92 Christ’s atoning martyrdom, however, says little about the treatise’s guiding question: does a human being – a sinner – have permission to allow himself93 to be put to death for the sake of the truth? H.H. argues that context determines the answer to this question. On the one hand, if one of Christ’s followers, who, through Christ, has come to know the truth, lets himself be put to death for the truth by those rejecting the truth, then his martyrdom is permissible on the grounds that his death is the ‘absolute expression’ of the ‘absolute difference’ between what is true and what is false.94 In this scenario, the martyr comes to resemble Christ analogously: although not the truth in and of himself, his relation to his anti-Christian persecutors is like Christ’s relation to his own persecutors. This, H.H. notes, was the situation of the apostles and the martyrs of the early church, and, for that reason, it must be deemed appropriate.95 88

  SKS 11, 62 / WA, 55.   SKS 11, 68 / WA, 62 (my translation). 90   SKS 11, 71 / WA, 65. 91   SKS 11, 70 / WA, 64. 92   SKS 11, 70 / WA, 64. 93   Following H.H., and for the sake of simplicity, the male pronoun will be used over the course of this discussion. However, H.H.’s use of the word Menneske (‘human being’ or ‘person’) indicates that his conclusions apply to both men and women. 94   SKS 11, 90 / WA, 86. 95   SKS 11, 90 / WA, 86. 89

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On the other hand, if the context is Christendom or a scenario in which Christians are pitted against each other, then the analogy to Christ is cancelled. Here the difference between the martyr and his persecutors is rendered ‘relative’. Both are of the truth, but they differ as regards its interpretation and/or its application. Consequently, in this situation, the martyr cannot allow himself to be killed for the truth, for, as a sinful Christian in relation to other sinful Christians, he cannot be certain that he is in ‘absolute possession of the truth’.96 Thus it would be wrong for him to ‘let others become guilty in killing him for the truth’.97 Indeed, it would be far better if he would imitate Christ in another way: [T]he one who has a conception of the guilt of killing an innocent person will certainly examine himself before he allows anyone to become guilty in this way. In this self-examination, he will understand that he does not have the right to do it. Thus love will prevent him. It is this love, which in its eternal, divine perfection was in him who, as the Truth, had to express absolutely that he was the Truth and therefore let the ungodly world become guilty in this way – it is this love in him that prayed for his enemies.98

It must be stressed that, for H.H., the martyr’s weakness is superficial. The age drags him to the gallows, and so the age appears stronger.99 In truth, however, the martyr ‘compels’ [tvinger] his contemporaries to persecute him, insofar as he willingly has brought about the conflict with others and, furthermore, has refused to accede to their demands.100 This insight makes H.H.’s conclusion all the more remarkable. For, in prioritizing love, he is prioritizing an authentic powerlessness – a powerless love so deep that, in contrast to the one dedicated to martyrdom, it is even willing to give up the power of its cause for the sake of others. As H.H. affirms, ‘This is the unity of “the truth” [Sandheden] and “love” [Kjerligheden].’101 Such a conclusion militates against an ‘extreme’ approach to imitatio Christi – an approach that uncomplicatedly puts forward martyrdom as the consummation of Christian existence. Clearly, for H.H., such an approach is a misunderstanding of the true nature of imitatio Christi, which, in actuality, has to do with powerless love. Still, it would be a mistake to understand H.H.’s position as representative of a softer, more easygoing Christianity. As in ‘What Are We to Have?’, ‘Does a Person Have Permission to Let Himself Be Killed for the Truth?’ does not foreclose on the possibility of the Christian martyrdom. If ‘martyrdom’ is understood in broader terms, then it is clear that H.H. approves of ‘lesser’ martyrdoms, such

96

    98   99   100   101   97

SKS 11, 91 / WA, 86. SKS 11, 92 / WA, 88. SKS 11, 92 / WA, 88. SKS 11, 84–5 / WA, 80. SKS 11, 84–6 / WA, 80–82. SKS 11, 92 / WA, 88.

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as allowing oneself to be mocked and insulted.102 This sort of martyrdom, he says, has the benefit of providing ‘awakening’ [Opvækkelse] without forcing the martyr’s persecutors to commit a virtually unpardonable crime.103 Moreover, as Kierkegaard echoes in a journal entry, H.H. is willing to leave open the possibility of a martyrdom unto death, provided that it comes about in the right way: [I]n the book itself a martyrdom is still made possible – namely, to be put to death because one has defended the thesis that a human being does not have the right to let himself be put to death for the truth, since one’s contemporaries would regard this as an enormous arrogance.104

This is not a jest. Kierkegaard is suggesting that, even if one purges oneself of the desire to follow Christ unto death and instead imitates Christ’s powerless love, it nevertheless may come to pass that one is killed for the truth. As Kierkegaard repeats throughout his later writings, such love is just not respected in the world. Yet, in this case, the difference is that the martyr neither wants to be put to death nor thinks he has permission to let that happen. Thus his execution is truly a suffering, a total submission to the will of God.105 In terms of Kierkegaard’s development of the imitatio motif, ‘Does a Person Have Permission to Let Himself Be Killed for the Truth?’ stands as both a reiteration and an advance. It is a reiteration in that it upholds Kierkegaard’s distinction between Christ and the Efterfølger; and, importantly, it continues to maintain that Christ, first and foremost, sets an example of powerless love for his followers. Its advancement, meanwhile, lies in its added specificity vis-à-vis imitatio Christi. So powerless is the Efterfølger that he is forbidden to pursue a martyrdom unto death. It is simply not allowable for him to have that kind of control over others, who, like him, are sinners. Consequently, the imitator is to attend to Christ’s embodiment of a love purified of egocentrism, and, in turn, he is to surrender everything to the grace of God – including, in a certain sense, his will to imitate Christ.106 As Kierkegaard, using more familiar terminology, explains in a journal passage, ‘Is it Christianity’s intention to eliminate striving by means of grace? No, Christianity simply wants to have the law fulfilled, if possible, by means of grace.’107 Only when one fully relies on grace is it permissible and, to be 102

  Behind this assertion, doubtless, is Kierkegaard’s suffering at the hands of The Corsair, which he termed a ‘martyrdom of laughter’ [NB10:42 / JP 6, 6348]. 103   SKS 11, 91 / WA, 87. 104   NB14:107 / JP 6, 6562. Also see SKS 11, 89 / WA, 85. 105   NB27:86 / JP 2, 1921. 106   Merold Westphal hints at this point in his discussion of ‘decentering’ in Kierkegaard’s work. In his view, Kierkegaard (particularly in the Anti-Climacan writings) posits a God who, ‘as both the ground and norm of human truth’, unbalances the human self and, in turn, ‘evokes self-transcendence’. See Westphal, ‘Kenosis and Offense’, pp. 23ff. 107   NB27:8 / JP 2, 1489.

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precise, possible for one to suffer death for the truth. In this way, Kierkegaard’s stress on the self’s nothingness before God is given vivid expression.108 Thus it appears that Kierkegaard has divested the imitatio motif of many of its ‘active’ connotations. For him, if one is honest about one’s sinful condition, one will come to see that one needs God and, in fact, can do nothing without God’s grace. As he adds in a journal passage from 1851: If I were to define Christian perfection, I should not say that it is a perfection of striving but specifically that it is the deep recognition of the imperfection of one’s striving, and precisely because of this a deeper and deeper consciousness of the need for grace, not grace for this or that, but the infinite need infinitely for grace.109

But how, exactly, does one come to see one’s ‘need for grace’? In ‘Christ as the Prototype’, the second treatise in Judge for Yourself!, Kierkegaard contends that this ‘revelation’ happens by way of the imitatio motif itself.110 To the extent that Christ is understood as ‘the prototype, the ideal’,111 one has no recourse but to own up to one’s sinfulness (nothingness) and, in turn, to seek the reconciliation offered in Christ (grace). ‘Imitation must be applied in order to push to humiliation,’112 Kierkegaard states. To be brought face to face with Christ’s perfection is to be brought face to face with one’s imperfection. This is honesty. And yet, as has been shown, it is this very honesty that creates a channel, as it were, for God’s activity in the person, thereby enabling him or her to imitate Christ’s powerless love.

  NB22:159 / JP 2, 1482, where Kierkegaard writes ‘A man is capable of nothing at all – it is grace alone.’ 109   NB22:159 / JP 2, 1482. Notably, this line of thinking is anticipated in Kierkegaard’s 1844 discourse ‘To Need God Is a Human Being’s Highest Perfection’ [SKS 5, 291–316 / EUD, 297–326]. 110   The human imagination plays a vital role in this step. For Kierkegaard, as Rasmussen explains, ‘It is possible to imagine the ideal without striving to imitate it, but it is not possible to imitate the ideal without first having an imaginative relation to it’ [Between Irony and Witness, p. 141]. In addition to Rasmussen’s study, also see David Gouwens, Kierkegaard’s Dialectic of the Imagination (New York, 1989), especially pp. 246–61. 111   SV1 XII, 466 / JFY, 198. 112   SV1 XII, 466 / JFY, 198 (my translation). Incidentally, this comment suggests another way in which Kierkegaard could be read alongside Dostoevsky. See Henry M.W. Russell, ‘Beyond the Will: Humiliation as Christian Necessity in Crime and Punishment’, in George Pattison and Diane Oenning Thompson (eds), Dostoevsky and the Christian Tradition (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 226–36. 108

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The Imitation of Christ and Holiness in ‘The Present Age’ Up to this point, the ‘basics’ of Kierkegaard’s development of imitatio Christi have been treated. It has been shown that, for Kierkegaard, the imitation of Christ concerns a movement from Gelassenheit – detachment from self-love (‘honesty’), self-will and the pursuit of worldly power – to a receptivity to and a reliance on God’s grace. In that way, a person might become an instrument of God, who is moved to do God’s will in time, even at risk of death. Kierkegaard thereby hints at the social implications of imitatio Christi: the Efterfølger, he insists, is apt to conflict with the powers that be, even though he or she only seeks to love God and neighbour. Already, then, Kierkegaard is close to his stress on suffering servanthood, as worked out over the course of the Postscript and A Literary Review. This section will clarify that connection, showing, in particular, how Kierkegaard identifies the theme of imitatio Christi with his understanding of holiness in the present age. The notion of ‘venture’ in ‘Christ as the Prototype’ inaugurates this task. There Kierkegaard almost suggests that it is through venturing that one comes to rely on Christ, on grace: ‘If someone wanted to be [Christ’s] follower’, he writes, ‘[Christ’s] approach, as seen in the Gospel, was different from lecturing. To such a person he said something like this: Venture a decisive act; then we can begin.’113 Here, then, self-driven activity appears to enter the discussion. Perhaps the person is capable of doing something, namely, venturing, so that one can ‘begin’ with Christ. Yet, it must be remembered that Kierkegaard makes this point over against the modern fixation on doubt. In his view, whether one doubts or tries to refute doubts, the upshot is the same – more doubts.114 This argument echoes A Literary Review’s analysis of levelling – for levelling is the outcome of doubt – and so Kierkegaard recommends a ‘solution’ in accordance with that earlier work. The doubt of the present age cannot be overcome by reflection, by thought’s attempt to get control of the situation, but only by way of a ‘decisive act’. This proposal, however, does not account for the source of such an act – a point that is significant with respect to both A Literary Review and Judge for Yourself! In the former text, the unrecognizables are the recipients of a sublime vision, in which the levelled plain of the present age is revealed to them. They are as if surrounded by nothing but ‘air and sea’, deprived of all points of orientation. Then they hear a voice from beyond: Then it will be said: ‘Look, everything is ready; look, the cruelty of abstraction exposes the vanity of the finite in itself; look, the abyss of the infinite is opening

  SV1 XII, 459 / JFY, 191.   SV1 XII, 458f. / JFY, 190f.

113 114

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up; look, the sharp scythe of leveling permits all, every single one, to leap over the blade – look, God is waiting! Leap, then, into the embrace of God.’115

As Kierkegaard pictures it, the unrecognizables are dependent on a prevenient occasion. They do not fashion the religious out of their own resources, but, instead, submit to its call. This point is instructive with respect to the relationship between venturing and imitatio Christi. For Kierkegaard, to venture Christianly is to depend wholly upon God. In Judge for Yourself!’s first discourse, ‘To Become Sober’, he repeatedly stresses that one is ‘to venture in reliance upon God’.116 Not only does this phrase suggest a prior relationship with God, but it also suggests that the person’s venturing is a letting go, a handing over of one’s life to God: [Y]ou did not appeal to God in order to bring about your victory, but that you might have an understanding with God that he would strengthen you to be able to bear succumbing for [ligge under for] a good cause, for a venture in reliance upon God (if it should not please God to let you be successful – while it is not impossible, since everything is possible for God; indeed, it even must not be impossible, because in that case your venturing is presumptuous).117

It has been shown that, for Kierkegaard, the concomitant of one’s nothingness before God is that one ‘cannot undertake the least thing without God’s help’.118 To venture, then, is to actualize this recognition, to proceed in the world in total dependence on God, regardless of the consequences. Venturing is the union of self-knowledge, God-reliance and earthly activity.119 This combination of factors alludes to the social character of venturing and, in turn, to its riskiness. In the first place, venturing is a risk because it is opposed to the logic underwriting secular politics, namely, probability. As Kierkegaard puts it in an 1854 journal entry, ‘Politics is: never venturing more than is possible at any moment, never beyond human probability.’120 The politically motivated person attempts to calculate temporal probabilities, whereas the Christianly motivated person endeavours to do God’s will irrespective of probability.121 The one who ventures Christianly does not act on the basis of socio-political respectability or 115

  SKS 8, 103 / TA, 108.   SV1 XII, 383 / JFY, 100. 117   SV1 XII, 384 / JFY, 101. 118   SKS 5, 314 / EUD, 322. 119   Here it is worth noting Kierkegaard’s definition of Christian sobriety: ‘to come to oneself in self-knowledge and before God as nothing before him, yet infinitely, unconditionally engaged’ [SV1 XII, 386 / JFY, 104]. 120   NB32:4 / JP 4, 4943. 121   NB32:4 / JP 4, 4943. Kierkegaard adds, however, that Christianity is not merely a ‘venturing beyond the probable’ [NB 32:4 / JP 4, 4943]. 116

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utility, but, again, only seeks to be an ‘instrument for God’.122 As a result, he or she will disregard the crowd of secular society. ‘[T]o venture means quite simply not to have others out in front’,123 Kierkegaard writes. Alone before the believer goes Christ, and ‘[W]hen Christ is the prototype and every single individual is supposed to strive – to have to strive in this way means suffering.’124 Hence, as opposed to the shrewd calculus of secular society, the Christian venturer renounces all assumptions and inferences regarding one’s activity in the world. This renunciation includes one’s Christian activity. As Kierkegaard explains, ‘[Y]ou do not necessarily become a martyr by giving yourself completely [to Christ]. No, the result of this is only that you are no longer the master of your own life, you do not know how it will end.’125 Importantly, though, reliance on Christ adds to the riskiness of the Christian venture, for Christ walked the earth as a powerless servant, exposed to persecution. For that reason, his divinity was not recognized by others. Kierkegaard lays out this argument in Practice in Christianity, which might be understood as an analysis of the existential ramifications of Chalcedonian Christology. Kierkegaard’s pseudonym, Anti-Climacus, accepts the Council of Chalcedon’s (451) position that Christ was both divine and human, the God-man. Yet, in a striking example of ressourcement, he argues that the signifier ‘God-man’ also bears the ‘possibility of offence’. It describes an individual who confronts persons with a choice: Just as the concept ‘faith’ is an altogether distinctively Christian term, so in turn is ‘offence’ an altogether distinctively Christian term relating to faith. The possibility of offence is the crossroad, or it is like standing at the crossroad. From the possibility of offence, one turns either to offence or to faith, but one never comes to faith except from the possibility of offence.126

There are, he says, two forms of this intrinsic or ‘essential’ offence. In the first, one is offended by the fact that Jesus of Nazareth, an individual human being, claims to be God. This is offence in relation to ‘highness’.127 In the second, one is offended by the fact that Jesus, who claims to be God, is so powerless that he suffers death at the hands of others. This is offence in relation to ‘lowness’.128 In both cases, it is not apparent that Jesus is both divine and human; nor can it

  SV1 XII, 386 / JFY, 103.   NB31:122 / JP 4, 4942. 124   NB24:105 / JP 2, 1904. 125   NB24:45 / JP 4, 4937. 126   SKS 12, 91 / PC, 81. 127   SKS 12, 81f. / PC, 82f. 128   SKS 12, 81f. / PC, 82f. It should be noted that Anti-Climacus also conceives of a non-essential or contingent offence, which stems from Jesus’ merely human collision with the established order. 122 123

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be ‘proven’ that he is so. Thus Christ brings thinking to a halt. One either has to believe in him or be offended. Anti-Climacus sharpens these remarks later. The God-man, he claims, is a ‘sign of contradiction’, inasmuch as what he really is contrasts with what he immediately is.129 The God-man draws attention to himself by way of a surprising action (say, a miracle) or a statement about being divine, but, when persons attend to him, they see an exterior in contradiction with what he has done or claims to be. This incongruity stems from his assumption of a servant’s form, which, in turn, has made him unrecognizable. In a comment that harks back to A Literary Review, Anti-Climacus writes, ‘Unrecognizability is not to be in the character of what one essentially is – for example, when a policeman is in plain clothes.’130 Thus the Godman has ‘absolute unrecognizability’.131 His incognito is the ‘deepest incognito’,132 which, in self-denial, he has taken on for the sake of others.133 Only in this way can the true God come into a non-idolatrous relationship with his creatures.134 By annulling direct recognizability and, with it, direct communication,135 the Godman is able to maintain his otherness, even as he sets up a medium by which the divine and the human can communicate – faith. Thus Practice in Christianity returns to Kierkegaard’s general emphasis on Christ’s self-emptying and earthly powerlessness. Furthermore, the book’s third and final treatise, ‘From on High He Will Draw All to Himself’,136 specifically commends the imitatio motif, asserting again and again that Christians should imitate Christ.137 Accordingly, Anti-Climacus accentuates the ‘struggling’ nature of Christian discipleship, contending that, inasmuch as Christ is ‘the Way’,138 his followers are to imitate his temporal powerlessness and suffering – indeed, his unrecognizability.

129

  SKS 12, 130f. / PC, 125f.   SKS 12, 132 / PC, 127. 131   SKS 12, 132 / PC, 127. 132   SKS 12, 132f. / PC, 128. 133   SKS 12, 151 / PC, 137. For more on this apophatic bent in Kierkegaard’s Christology, see David Law, Kierkegaard as Negative Theologian (Oxford, 1993), pp. 183ff. 134   SKS 12, 140 / PC, 136. Philosophical Fragments articulates this point by way of the ‘king and maiden’ analogy. See SKS 4, 195–202 / PF, 26–35. 135   SKS 12, 137–47 / PC, 133–43. 136   Intriguingly, as pointed out in Chapter 2, it is this third part of Practice in Christianity that makes use of Brorson’s hymnody. Thus Kierkegaard employs Brorson’s ‘high’ Christology and accent on grace in order to undergird a mimetic stress. By now, this usage is not surprising, since it has been shown that, for Kierkegaard, one’s ability to imitate Christ issues from a reliance on God’s grace. 137   SKS 12, 227–49 / PC, 233–57. 138   SKS 12, 203f. / PC, 206f. 130

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Anti-Climacus defends this point by way of a distinction between a ‘triumphing Church’ and a ‘struggling Church’.139 The former adheres to a realized eschatology: ‘What is meant by a triumphant church? By this is meant a church that assumes that the time of struggling is over, that the church, although it is still in this world, has nothing more about or for which to struggle.’140 The scope of this ‘triumph’ is subject to variation. It could be realized in a small community of believers or in a large entity such as ‘established Christendom’. Therefore, what particularly characterizes the triumphing church is its demarcation of a Christian ‘environment’ that a priori identifies its inhabitants as Christian.141 For the triumphing church, the ‘Christianness’ of a certain place and/or person is ‘directly recognizable’.142 The opposite is the case in the struggling church. Here ‘direct recognizability is impossible, because to be a Christian is expressed within the contrast to being a Christian’.143 In other words, the struggling church moves and has its being in a non-Christian environment – an environment that it neither flees from nor seeks to convert through the attainment of temporal power. Anti-Climacus is aware that persons will object to his portrayal of the struggling church. But he insists that it is the ‘truth’.144 Only those who elide the example of Christ’s life are against it: [T]he day when Christianity and the world become friends – yes, then Christianity is abolished. Then there is no question any more of Christ’s coming again and judging – no, then the judgement is passed on him that he was really a dreamer, an impulsive man. If he had not been so impulsive, he would have gotten on well with the world; then he would not have been put to death, which would have been totally unnecessary, and he would have become something great in 139   ‘Struggling’ here is most literal, but the Hongs’ use of ‘militant’ has the advantage of being traditional among English speakers. 140   SKS 12, 208 / PC, 211. 141   SKS 12, 208 / PC, 212. 142   SKS 12, 208 / PC, 212. Anti-Climacus later qualifies the degree to which ‘existing Christendom’ is marked by ‘direct recognizability’. His point is that, in existing Christendom, the church’s ‘triumph’ is only an appearance. In truth, persons are indifferent to the church, even if they accept its place in society and are happy to accept that, insofar as they live in a Christian society, they are Christians. In this context, according to Anti Climacus, one is not so much directly recognizable as a Christian as assumed to be a Christian in ‘hidden inwardness’. He adds that this evolution of the triumphing church was inevitable: it was simply not possible for one’s recognizability as a Christian to remain commensurate with one’s success in life, especially, as he seems to adumbrate, in the Protestant West, where Catholicism’s monastic orders were overturned. Still, Anti-Climacus is making a distinction within the concept of ‘direct recognizability’. Persons are directly recognized as Christians simply by virtue of where they live, which means that their society is seen to be Christian in such a way that they, too, are seen to be Christian. See SKS 12, 210–13 / PC, 214–16, as well as SKS 12, 214f. / PC, 219f. 143   SKS 12, 210 / PC, 214f. 144   SKS 12, 226 / PC, 232.

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the world, just as his followers did in the Church triumphant, which indeed abolished or made a lie of the saying that the pupil is not above the teacher –for he was crucified and they became powerful … .145

In contrast, the struggling church honours the example of Christ’s life. It ‘does not wish to rule’, but ‘only to serve the truth’.146 As Christ lived as a servant and thus was unrecognizable in the world, so is the church to serve Christ and, in turn, to venture unrecognizability. It is not to secure a place where devotion to Christ will be rewarded in one way or another – for that is an ‘illusion’147 – but to hold fast to the truth, even without recognition, in the midst of a world that remains largely hostile to it. Here, then, A Literary Review’s discussion of unrecognizability becomes an ecclesiological principle. Only suffering servants, rendered unrecognizable by a society given over to envy, levelling and political power, can remedy the ills of the age and, in turn, prepare the way for true social equality. And this is the mission of the church, which, with Christ as its head, is uniquely equipped to respond to the problems of modern secularity. Thus Kierkegaard’s approach to holiness, as discussed in Chapters 4 and 5, returns once again. Now, however, it is assigned a more explicitly Christian form: in imitation of Christ, the holy person is to remain in society, suffering, serving, for the sake of God. This approach retains Kierkegaard’s critique of Pietist separatism, even as it further exemplifies his appropriation of Pietism’s stress on imitatio Christi.

The Woman Who Was a Sinner As has been argued, the key to Kierkegaard’s development of the imitatio motif lies neither in an outright promotion of martyrdom nor in a gnostic flight from the temporal. For Kierkegaard, the human being is a sinner and incapable of achieving holiness. Thus it is no use for one to will a resemblance to Christ, to seek martyrdom and the like. The very question of martyrdom has to be set aside. What really is needed is for one to become aware of one’s nothingness before God – an awareness arrived at via a process of ‘detachment’, whereby the aesthetic and ethical (‘worldly’) cares that blind one to this basic reality are stripped away – so that one will come to love God and to rely on God alone. It is in this absolute reliance on God’s grace that one begins to resemble Christ himself, who incarnated a human life wholly receptive to God’s gifts, a human life lovingly at rest in God. That is why he was able to serve God fully, without entangling himself in the selfish pursuits of power, prestige, security and wealth.

145

  SKS 12, 218f. / PC, 224.   SKS 12, 223 / PC, 229. 147   SKS 12, 214 / PC, 219. 146

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Likewise, as the disciple comes to rely more and more on God’s grace, so will he or she be moved to give up worldly pursuits and to do God’s will alone. For Kierkegaard, it is at this point that martyrdom enters the picture, not because one is required to seek it, but because one’s suffering service to the truth has rendered one vulnerable and unrecognizable to those who reject it. Far from taking refuge in the ‘abstract eternal’, the one who imitates Christ in reliance on grace testifies to the continued presence of the eternal in time – a testimony that may come at the expense of the Efterfølger’s life, even as it also indicates the joyful depth of his or her grounding in God. Kierkegaard’s discourses about the woman who was a sinner [Synderinden or ‘the sinner woman’] epitomize this approach to imitatio Christi and so stand as a fitting conclusion to this chapter. Kierkegaard gives sustained attention to the woman who was a sinner in a pair of discourses – one entitled ‘The Woman Who Was a Sinner’ (1849), the other ‘An Upbuilding Discourse’ (1850). The first of these was published in a collection, Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays, while the latter was published alone. Both take their cue from Luke 7:36– 50,148 which tells of the sinful woman who encountered Jesus at the home of Simon, a Pharisee. Though condemned by Simon, the woman tearfully presents Jesus with some ointment and proceeds to anoint his feet. Jesus then praises the love that the woman has shown him, contrasting it with Simon’s more aloof posture, and declares that the woman’s sins, ‘which were many’,149 have been forgiven. According to Kierkegaard, the woman who was a sinner is both a ‘picture’ [Billede] and a ‘prototype’ [Forbillede] of ‘piety’ [Fromhed] or ‘godliness’ [Gudelighed].150 Here the use of the traditional Pietist language is significant. On Kierkegaard’s rendering, the woman who was a sinner recapitulates many of the qualities extolled by Pietism’s Erbauungsautoren: (i) a sense of nothingness before God, (ii) a reliance on God’s grace, given expression in a venture and (iii) a love for and openness to God that is Christlike. Regarding the first quality, Kierkegaard writes ‘If we are to denote her whole behaviour from first to last, we have to say: she does nothing at all.’151 This statement does not mean that Synderinden fails to act in the world. Rather, it means that her actions stem from a preceding and more basic submission: ‘She cries. Perhaps one will say: then she did something after all. Now, yes, she could not hold back the

148   In 1849’s Two Discourses at the Communion on Fridays [SKS 12, 285–92 / WA, 169–77], Kierkegaard also draws on this biblical text, but does not specifically deal with the woman who was a sinner. However, she does appear in a much earlier text, the 1843 discourse ‘Love Will Hide a Multitude of Sins’. There, in a prescient passage, Kierkegaard writes ‘This woman was granted the grace to weep herself out of herself, as it were, and to weep herself into the peacefulness of love’ [SKS 5, 84 / EUD, 76]. 149   Luke 7:47. 150   SKS 11, 277 / WA, 141; SKS 12, 263 / WA, 149. 151   SKS 12, 268 / WA, 155.

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tears.’152 In other words, the woman who was a sinner is moved, not only to weep, but also to hate her sins153 and to find forgiveness, even at the expense of her most valued worldly attachments: To the woman who was a sinner everything else has become unimportant: everything temporal, earthly, and worldly, honors, esteem, prosperity, the future, relatives, people’s opinion. All concerns, whatever their name might be, she had borne lightly, almost as if they were nothing, because in concern she was preoccupied unconditionally with only one thing: her sin.154

The woman who was a sinner, however, knows that she is weaker than her sin, which can be conquered by God alone.155 Thus she has become as nothing before God – indeed, not only ‘with regard to acquiring the forgiveness of sins’,156 but in all other matters as well. As Kierkegaard writes, ‘[E]ven in connection with the slightest thing of which a person is capable, humanly speaking, she is capable of nothing except through God.’157 So, as one who stands as nothing before God, the woman who was a sinner has come to rely wholly on God. But such a reliance, for Kierkegaard, finds expression in a venture, whereby one comes to live in the world as one wholly dependent on God – a move that separates one from the crowd and thus leaves one vulnerable to scorn and abuse. This suffering is especially true of the Christian venture, since it involves a submission to Christ, the God-man, who himself walked the earth in powerless vulnerability. The relationship with Christ, then, comes at the expense of earthly security and comfort. According to Kierkegaard, the woman who was a sinner understood this point: She went in to the Holy One in the Pharisee’s house, where the many Pharisees were assembled who would judge her, also in this way, that it was vanity, disgusting vanity, especially for a woman, to thrust herself forward with her sin, she who should hide herself from the eyes of all people in a remote corner of the world. She could have travelled the world over and been certain of finding nowhere such a severe judgment as the one that awaited her from the proud Pharisees in the house of the Pharisee.158

In this way, the woman who was a sinner stands as a fine example of a Christian venturer. She neither wills to suffer nor aims to expose the mercilessness of the 152

    154   155   156   157   158   153

SKS 12, 269 / WA, 156. SKS 11, 275 / WA, 138. SV1 XII, 253 / WA, 153. SKS 12, 267 / WA, 157. SKS 12, 271 / WA, 158. SKS 12, 271 / WA, 158. SKS 11, 274f. / WA, 138.

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Pharisees. Her only self-concern is to give herself to Christ; but, as Kierkegaard sees it, it is precisely this self-concern that others cannot accept. Still, one might ask: is not the woman who was a sinner simply an unhappy person, whose bold reliance on God is nothing but the flipside of desperation? As Kierkegaard sees it, however, love is the decisive characteristic of Synderinden. He stresses that the woman who was a sinner ‘loved much’,159 meaning that, in sorrowing over her sin and in realizing her own nothingness before God, she has come to love Christ above all things. Indeed, she loves Christ so much that she no longer concentrates on her despair. She does not wallow in ‘shame, dishonour, humiliation’, for those belong to ‘the sickness’, not to ‘the remedy’.160 She has been brought to a state of blessedness – here one is reminded of the mystics’ and Pietists’ interest in the unio mystica – by way of her love for Christ, which is synonymous with her transparent reliance on the grace of God: [Y]ou may turn it however you wish and still say basically the same thing. You can consider her blessed because her many sins are forgiven, and you can consider her blessed because she loved much – basically you are saying the same thing – if you note well that the one she loved much was specifically Christ, and if you also do not forget that Christ is grace and the giver of grace.161

Thus Kierkegaard suggests that, at its height, Christian existence is a love of Love or, following George Pattison, a ‘virtuous circle of love begetting love’.162 This understanding also applies to Kierkegaard’s development of imitatio Christi, for it is in this love of Love that the human being most resembles Christ. As Kierkegaard writes in a journal entry, ‘What does it mean to love? It is to want to be like the beloved, or it is to move out of one’s own [interests] into the beloved’s [interests].’163 In each of these ways, the woman who was a sinner models true Gudelighed – a word that, in its most literal rendering, means ‘godlikeness’.164 As with the 159

  SKS 11, 273–80 / WA, 137–44.   SKS 12, 267 / WA, 153. 161   SKS 11, 279 / WA, 143. 162   George Pattison, The Philosophy of Kierkegaard (Chesham, 2005), p. 163. 163   NB26:41 / JP 3, 2438. 164   SKS 12, 263 / WA, 149. Kierkegaard is also keen to connect Synderinden’s piety with her ‘womanliness’. As a matter of fact, he says that at bottom holiness is womanliness, for holiness requires submission, feeling, passion and decision – qualities that, in his view, belong essentially to womanliness. Kierkegaard is on delicate ground here, but his point, in and of itself, is meant to subvert patriarchal ideas about religiousness (especially those prioritizing power and authority), not underwrite them. Also, it is clear that, as with his discussion of masculine and feminine despair in The Sickness unto Death, ‘womanly’ piety is not limited to members of the female sex. For Kierkegaard, men can and should be ‘womanly’, insofar as their relationship with God is concerned. 160

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apostles, but on a more ‘ordinary’ or fundamental level, she is a true imitator of Christ, for she realizes that she cannot imitate him, but only lovingly rest in him. Likeness to Christ, while the pinnacle of Christian existence, is not something that human beings can accomplish themselves, but something that God accomplishes for those who are receptive to his grace.165 A final passage in Kierkegaard’s authorship indirectly, but appositely, bears on this understanding of imitatio Christi. It comes from Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits and its second treatise, ‘What We Learn from the Lilies in the Field and from the Birds of the Air’. There Kierkegaard, in a discussion about the gloriousness of being human, manages to sum up (or look forward to) his development of imitatio Christi in remarkable fashion: To worship is not to rule [herske], and yet worship is what makes the human being resemble God, and to be able truly to worship is the excellence of the invisible glory above all creation. The pagan was not aware of God and therefore sought likeness in ruling. But the likeness is not like that – no, then instead it is taken in vain. It truly is only within the infinite difference, and this is why to worship is likeness with God just as it is the excellence above all creation. The human being and God do not resemble each other directly, but inversely; only when God has infinitely become the eternal and omnipresent object of worship and the human being always the worshiper, only then do they resemble each other.166

This passage shows why Kierkegaard recognizes Synderinden as a model of Christian piety. She neither rules nor desires to rule, but comes before Christ trusting in his power alone. Thus she recognizes the ‘infinite difference’ between herself, a sinner, and Christ, the God-man. She worships him. And, in this worship or adoration, she takes on an inverse likeness to Christ – a likeness that does not presume identity with the beloved, but resembles the beloved in its absolute respect for alterity, in its unconditional love for the other.

  NB27:87, NB27:87.a / JP 2, 1922.   SKS 8, 291 / UDVS, 193.

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Conclusion

Kierkegaard, Pietism and Issues in Theology: Some Anticipatory Remarks

The preceding chapters have presented Kierkegaard’s relation to Pietism in two main ways. First, Chapters 1–3 demonstrated the important role Pietism played in Kierkegaard’s personal background. Chapter 1 offered a historical survey of the Pietist movement, while Chapter 2 elucidated the position of Pietism in Denmark, including its impact on the Kierkegaard family. Chapter 3 then highlighted Kierkegaard’s reading and appreciation of Pietist literature. Next, Chapters 4–6 traced Kierkegaard’s response to Pietist models of holiness. Chapter 4 addressed Kierkegaard’s analysis of religious ‘separatism’, showing that he considers it an understandable, yet ultimately erroneous, attempt to abstract holiness from worldly life. Chapter 5 developed this point, detailing A Literary Review’s contention that the ills of ‘the present age’ cannot be overcome by political manoeuvring or by pious gesturing, but only by suffering servanthood. Lastly, Chapter 6 connected this ‘turn’ in Kierkegaard’s authorship to his subsequent promotion of the theme of imitatio Christi. It showed that Kierkegaard’s appropriation of the imitatio motif is not a wanton call for martyrdom, but, in the manner of his favourite Pietist Erbauungsautoren, a means of encouraging Christians to live humbly and charitably in a fallen world. Thus the complexity of Kierkegaard’s relation to Pietism has emerged – his deep appreciation for its literature and understanding of imitatio Christi, combined with his scepticism regarding its tendency to pursue holiness in abstraction from secular society. It is worth returning to the following 1850 journal comment: Yes, indeed, pietism (properly understood, not simply in the sense of abstaining from dancing and such externals, no, in the sense of witnessing for the truth and suffering for it, together with the understanding that suffering in this world belongs to being a Christian, and that a shrewd and secular conformity with this world is unchristian) – yes, indeed, pietism is the one and only consequence of Christianity.

In light of this study, the meaning of this remark should be clear. It is an accurate synopsis of Kierkegaard’s lifelong association with Pietism. Hopefully, the findings of this work will encourage further explorations of its subject matter. Consider some of the important writers looked at in this   NB20:175, NB20:175.a / JP 3, 3318.



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study – persons such as Tauler, Arndt, Tersteegen and Hamann. Kierkegaard both read and admired their work, and yet not a single monograph has been dedicated to his relationship to any of these figures. This treatise has taken a first step in that direction, but its larger concerns highlight, rather than obviate, the need for more focussed studies. The same could be said for thinkers who did not play a key role in this study, but now might be seen in closer connection to Kierkegaard. John and Charles Wesley, the anglophone world’s most prominent Pietists and the founders of Methodism, are good examples of this possibility. Any of these comparative enquiries would promote the aims of this work, showing that, qua Christian thinker, Kierkegaard ought to be seen as more than a footnote to Luther or a harbinger of Barth. Furthermore, they might continue to recover the significance of the mystical tradition in general and of Pietism in particular, encouraging scholars to ascertain theological and philosophical contributions hitherto neglected. Yet, beyond the immediate purview of Pietism, what does this study offer? To what extent does it pertain to other issues in theology or in Kierkegaard scholarship? In closing, it will be argued that this exposition especially helps prepare the way for further research into two key topics: the church and Christian spirituality. In the process of examining these, it will become clear that these categories are not hermetic, but, in fact, overlap each other in their concerns. That is as it should be. However, the point here is not to elaborate on places of connection or to smooth over rough edges, but, rather, to provide some anticipatory remarks. These are the initial chisel marks on works still taking shape.

  Out of this group, Hamann has received the most attention in Kierkegaard scholarship, albeit chiefly in the form of articles or brief comparisons within larger works (see Bibliography). Moreover, these efforts have tended to prioritize the philosophical aspects of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hamann, while Hamann’s early, Pietistic (and still untranslated) writings have been ignored.    Kierkegaard had some familiarity with Methodism. He owned and read a German translation of Robert Southey, John Wesleys Leben (2 vols, Hamburg, 1841 / ASKB 785–6). He also made a few comments on Methodism in the journals, praising, for instance, the fact that Methodist preachers were expected to have a ministerial ‘calling’ [NB21:75 / JP 3, 2694]. Also see NB21:76 / JP 3, 2695; NB21:78 / JP 3, 2696; NB21:81 / JP 3, 2697.    John Milbank has suggested how one might view Pietism’s role in the shaping of modern (or ‘postmodern’) thinking: ‘[I]t is to the essentially theological contributions of the radical pietists that one can trace many of the most potent themes of modern philosophy: for example, the priority of existence over thought; the primacy of language; the “ecstatic” character of time; the historicity of reason; the dialogical principle; the suspension of the ethical; and the ontological difference’ [John Milbank, ‘Knowledge: The Theological Critique of Philosophy in Hamann and Jacobi’, in John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock and Graham Ward (eds), Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology (London, 1999), p. 22]. 

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The Church When Kierkegaard launched his so-called ‘attack upon Christendom’ in December 1854, he ensured that his understanding of and relation to the church would be long disputed among commentators. Louis Dupré considers ‘Kierkegaard’s effort a consistent Protestantism’, while Howard Johnson emphasizes the ‘corrective’ nature of Kierkegaard’s polemic, maintaining that it ‘cost him the agony of endless soul-searching, for he was attacking something [the church] to which he was devoted’. Vernard Eller counters that Kierkegaard was a supporter of ‘classic Protestant sectarianism’ – a view already put forward by Kierkegaard’s former philosophy professor, Frederik Christian Sibbern (1785–1872), who wrote that Kierkegaard was ‘only a sectarian, whose attacks resemble those made by the Baptists and the Mormon preachers’. Harald Høffding posits that Kierkegaard’s ‘sympathy for Catholicism’ may have led him to Rome, and, similarly, Erich Przywara speaks of ‘Kierkegaard’s conscious relationship with Catholicism’,10 which inevitably ‘leads [him] into Catholicism’.11 And, finally, there is the position of Bruce Kirmmse, who summarizes Kierkegaard’s ‘final view of the Church’ as follows: ‘(1) true Christianity is too unsocial for the concept of congregation; and (2) the concept of congregation has been “the ruination of Christianity”’.12 Such divergent appraisals have rendered Kierkegaard’s relation to the church even more puzzling. And yet, Kierkegaard’s connection to Pietism sheds light on the issue, helping to counter certain positions and to substantiate others. Negatively, this study shows that Kierkegaard cannot be identified easily with ‘sectarian’    Louis Dupré, Kierkegaard as Theologian: The Dialectic of Christian Existence (New York, 1963), p. 222.    Howard A. Johnson, ‘Kierkegaard and the Church: A Supplement to the Translator’s Introduction’, in Walter Lowrie (trans.), Kierkegaard’s Attack upon ‘Christendom’ 1854– 1855 (Princeton, New Jersey, 1968), p. xxv.    Vernard Eller, Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship: A New Perspective (Princeton, New Jersey, 1968), p. 231.    Qtd in Bruce Kirmmse (ed.), Encounters with Kierkegaard (Princeton, New Jersey, 1996), pp. 103f. For more on Sibbern’s relationship with Kierkegaard, see Joakim Garff, Søren Kierkegaard: A Biography (Princeton, New Jersey, 2004), pp. 50, 186f., 459f.    Harald Høffding, Søren Kierkegaard som Filosof (Copenhagen, 1892), p. 158. 10   Erich Przywara, Das Geheimnis Kierkegaards (Munich and Berlin, 1929), p. 102. 11   Ibid., p. 77. Høffding and Przywara also could point to persons such as Hans Peter Kofoed-Hansen (1813–93), Theodor Häcker (1879–1945) and Ferdinand Ebner (1882– 1931) – early interpreters of Kierkegaard who converted to Catholicism. See Heinrich Roos, Søren Kierkegaard og Katolicismen (Copenhagen, 1952), pp. 7–10. 12   Bruce Kirmmse, ‘“But I am almost never understood …” Or, Who Killed Søren Kierkegaard?’, in George Pattison and Steven Shakespeare (eds), Kierkegaard: The Self in Society (Basingstoke, 1998), p. 188. Also see Bruce Kirmmse, ‘Kierkegaard and MacIntyre: Possibilities for Dialogue’, in John J. Davenport and Anthony Rudd (eds), Kierkegaard After MacIntyre: Essays on Freedom, Narrative, and Virtue (Chicago, 2001), pp. 203–5.

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Christianity. While it is true that he had links to and sympathies for such movements – and, in this connection, Eller is happy to underline Kierkegaard’s Moravian background13 – Chapters 4 and 5 have uncovered his profound scepticism about their ‘separatism’ and about their prospects for countering ‘the present age’.14 Likewise, this study casts doubt on Kirmmse’s claim that Kierkegaard breaks from all church conceptions. It has been shown that A Literary Review envisions a community of suffering servants – an ‘unrecognizable’ congregation that, as was indicated in Chapter 6, Kierkegaard comes to equate with ‘the struggling Church’. Thus he did not so much jettison the church from Christianity as strive to articulate the repercussions of its suffering mission, of its imitation of Christ. Kirmmse is right to flag Kierkegaard’s most difficult remarks on the subject,15 but these should not be seen as definitive. This study has emphasized Kierkegaard’s interest in piety or holiness – an issue that met him in his own reading and constituted one of his key authorial concerns. As has been shown, these concerns put Kierkegaard in contact with Catholic writers such as Bernard of Clairvaux, Johannes Tauler, the Frankfurter and Thomas à Kempis. Thus Kierkegaard’s affinity for Catholicism, like that of the Pietist writers before him, was of a certain sort. He did not gravitate toward the metaphysical system of Thomas Aquinas,16 nor did he have sympathy for

13

  Eller, Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship, p. 12.   This conclusion also suggests how Kierkegaard might be used to critique one of the most well-known theologians working today, Stanley Hauerwas. It is not that the two thinkers lack similarities – a point already made in Chapter 5, and one that Jason Mahn develops in his recent essay, ‘Kierkegaard after Hauerwas’, Theology Today, 64 (2007): 172–85. However, Kierkegaard presents challenges to Hauerwas’s talk about the church’s separateness and strength. 15   Kirmmse’s argument primarily hangs on an 1854 journal entry: ‘Those three thousand who were added en masse to the congregation on Pentecost – is there not something dubious here at the very beginning? Should the apostles not have had misgivings about the appropriateness of Christian conversions by the thousands auf einmal?’ [NB30:19 / JP 2, 2056]. Notably, Kierkegaard here only asks questions. He is trying to come to grips with a ‘curious meeting of two thoughts’ – that of Christ and that of the apostles. This is a precarious venture from the viewpoint of Christian orthodoxy, and Kierkegaard knows it. That is why he refuses to define his position. Even when lamenting the problems caused by the concept of ‘community’, he relates them to ‘Christendom’ – to ‘the confusion that whole states, countries, nations, kingdoms are Christian’ – rather than to the church per se [ibid.]. 16   In fact, Kierkegaard explicitly critiques Thomas Aquinas for deemphasizing imitatio Christi: ‘What was it the greatest thinker in the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas, used to defend “indulgence”? It was the doctrine of the Church as a mystical body in which we all, as in a parlor game, participate in the Church’s fideicommissum. Every conception of Christianity which does not use “imitation” at least dialectically to train the need for grace and to prevent Christianity from becoming mythology and to maintain justice ethically – every such conception is on the whole “indulgence”’ [NB24:118 / JP 2, 1906]. 14

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the institutional side of the Catholic church.17 Instead, he was drawn to Catholic spirituality, to the devotional literature of monastics. From its inception, monastic life and literature functioned within Catholicism as a corrective to what Avery Dulles, SJ, calls ‘institutionalism’ – that is, an approach to church life ‘in which the institutional element is treated as primary’.18 This task began as early as the fourth century, at which time the church ‘seemed too established’.19 Thus ‘Christians began flocking to the desert, no longer in order to escape persecution, but, rather, to embrace an austere form of life in which the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastisement, and self-denial were more rigorously observed.’20 Monastics endeavoured to present the church with an existential ideal that ‘lay outside’21 its ordinary life, and this effort has been repeated throughout ecclesial history. The medieval period, in particular, saw a number of attempts at monastic ‘correction’. Persons such as Bernard of Clairvaux, Francis of Assisi, Meister Eckhart and Catherine of Siena emphasized a ‘concern for service, evangelical simplicity, and … an active role for all the baptized’22 in contrast to ‘the papal vision of a fullness of power over the whole world’.23 As has been argued, their efforts survived the Protestant Reformation and eventually were assumed and adapted by Pietists such as Arndt, who critiqued Protestant institutionalism via a stress on evangelical holiness. The implication here is not that Kierkegaard either can or should be seen as a monastic per se. Rather, it is to point out that the church – whether Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant – always has had its ‘correctives’. Their presence follows from the very nature of ecclesial life. As Dulles puts it, ‘In every generation the church has to face anew the problem of how to maintain its institutional strength and societal stability without falling into the defects of exaggerated institutionalism.’24

  For example, he criticizes the ‘confusion’ caused by the papal office: that the Pope is called Peter’s successor [Efterfølger] is a ‘parodying of the imitation [Efterfølgelse] of Christ’ [NB30:119 / JP 2, 1930]. 18   Avery Dulles, SJ, Models of the Church: A Critical Assessment of the Church in All Its Aspects, 2nd edn (Dublin, 1987), p. 35. 19   Bernard P. Prusak, The Church Unfinished: Ecclesiology Through the Centuries (New York, 2004), p. 161. 20   Dulles, Models of the Church, p. 213. 21   Herbert B. Workman, The Evolution of the Monastic Ideal: From the Earliest Times Down to the Coming of the Friars (London, 1913), p. 15. 22   Prusak, The Church Unfinished, p. 220. 23   Ibid., p. 218. 24   Dulles, Models of the Church, p. 45. Karl Rahner puts it this way: ‘Legitimate opposition and criticism may be levelled at the Church’s lack of commitment in its task towards “the world” … or at the insufficiency of that commitment or its wrong orientation’ [Karl Rahner, Jesus, Man, and the Church (London, 1981), p. 132]. 17

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Kierkegaard saw his authorship as facilitating such a process: ‘My task has continually been to provide the existential-corrective by poetically presenting the ideals and inciting people about the established order’.25 He realized that the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of his undertaking might not obtain across periods – for ‘development is always dialectical; the “next generation” will always need the “opposite” as corrective’26 – but also insisted on the timelessness of his task. ‘I want to apply the Christian requirement, imitation, in all its finitude, in order to place the emphasis in the direction of grace.’27 Taken by itself, Kierkegaard’s effort can appear arbitrary – the product of a jaded eccentric, whose attack on the Danish state church marks his inevitable rupture from ecclesial community and tradition. This study, however, demonstrates that Kierkegaard’s task should not simply be ‘taken by itself’. It has shown Kierkegaard’s multifaceted connection to the ‘corrective’ movement of Pietism, and thereby it has revealed how Kierkegaard’s own ‘corrective’ task was not random, but, rather, an outcome of his upbringing and intellectual background. Though irreducible in its perspicacity and its development, Kierkegaard’s mission was not so much new to church life as part of church life itself.28 He, too, acknowledged this point. As he once wrote: ‘I am only a corrective. I have nothing new to bring.’29 Kierkegaard’s relation to the church remains a difficult question, complicated, above all, by his untimely passing. No one knows where his ‘attack’ might have led him. Still, this study suggests that where he came from is more pertinent than where he might have gone. Kierkegaard’s connection to Pietism may not address every issue surrounding his church status, but it offers resources that should not be overlooked.

Spirituality It has been said that Kierkegaard was not only an ‘existentialist’, but, more accurately, the ‘father of existentialism’. As Robert Solomon puts it, ‘It is generally acknowledged that if existentialism is a “movement” at all, Kierkegaard is its prime mover.’30 Indeed, as Enlightenment optimism gave way to the portentous ambiguity of the nineteenth century, Kierkegaard was at the forefront of those thinkers who identified ‘the unresolvable confusion of the human world’ and illuminated the   NB23:15 / JP 1, 708.   NB28:17 / JP 1, 710. 27   NB27:87, NB27:87.a / JP 2, 1922. 28   Here ‘church life’ is to be understood ecumenically. Indeed, Kierkegaard’s own ecumenical orientation – itself a Pietist trait, particularly given the time period – renders his task meaningful in a variety of church contexts. 29   NB22:172. 30   Robert Solomon, ‘Introduction’, in Robert C. Solomon (ed.), Existentialism (Oxford, 2005), p. 1. 25 26

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multifaceted self-consciousness of a ‘disoriented individual facing a confusing world that she cannot accept’.31 That Kierkegaard bequeathed such themes to later writers such as Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus is undeniable. However, in the manner of commentators such as Marie Thulstrup32 and John Macquarrie,33 the findings of this study suggest that Kierkegaard might be better seen as a ‘spiritual writer’ or as a ‘mystic’.34 The difference between an ‘existentialist’ and a ‘mystic’ is not necessarily clear-cut. As Thomas Merton explains: [S]ome of the basic themes of the existentialism of Heidegger, laying stress as they do on the ineluctable fact of death, on man’s need for authenticity, and on a kind of spiritual liberation, can remind us that the climate in which monastic prayer flourished is not altogether absent from our modern world.35

And yet, Merton does not want to equate existentialism and mysticism. Although both ‘movements’ lay stress on human existence – on the person’s experience of being-in-the-world – the Christian mystic does so by virtue of the Incarnation. He or she confronts a kind of ‘existential dread’, understood as a ‘sense of insecurity, of “lostness”, of exile, of sin’, but faces it in ‘direct dependence on an invisible and inscrutable God, in pure faith’.36 In other words, if the existentialist overcomes dread through freedom, the mystic does so through ‘pure and humble   Ibid., p. xi.   See Marie Mikulová Thulstrup, ‘Lidelsens problematik hos Kierkegaard og mystikerne’, in Niels Thulstrup (ed.), Kierkegaardiana III (Copenhagen, 1959), pp. 48–72. 33   See John Macquarrie, Two Worlds Are Ours: An Introduction to Christian Mysticism (London, 2004), pp. 10, 224ff. A well-known commentator on existentialism, Macquarrie also relates Kierkegaard to that movement. See, for example, John Macquarrie, Existentialism (London, 1972). This detail underlines the difficulty of absolutely sundering existentialism and mysticism, although, as will be seen, there are some pertinent differences between the two. 34   ‘Spiritual writer’ is, perhaps, more palatable than ‘mystic’, but not because these terms are opposed. Rather, it is due to the connotations ‘mystical’ and its variants bring to mind, especially those linking the mystical with unusual and privileged experiences of the divine. Yet, as was seen in Tauler, Arndt and Kierkegaard, the experience of God can be viewed less as a movement of self-transcendence and more as one of self-acceptance – that is, as a recognition of the poverty of human existence, and how God meets persons in that poverty. Faith, on this understanding, might even be seen as non-experience. Nuances such as these easily can be obscured by talk about the ‘mystical’. For more on these issues, see, for example, Alister McGrath, Christian Spirituality: An Introduction (Oxford, 1999), pp. 5–7, and Denys Turner, The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 1–8. 35   Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer (London, 1969), p. 24. Also see, for example, John Caputo, The Mystical Element in Heidegger’s Thought (New York, 1986). 36   Merton, Contemplative Prayer, pp. 26f. 31 32

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supplication’.37 The latter’s experience is nothing other than ‘a participation in the saving death and resurrection of Christ’.38 In her 1970 essay, ‘Existentialists and Mystics’, Iris Murdoch draws a similar distinction between these two types and, in doing so, suggests why the ‘mystic’ label is more suitable for Kierkegaard. For Murdoch, the post-Kantian novel tends to feature one of two characters – either the ‘existentialist’ or the ‘mystic’. She describes the former in this way: ‘He is an adventurer. He is godless. He does not suffer from guilt. He thinks of himself as free.’39 The ‘mystic’, on the other hand, chiefly exhibits the virtue of ‘humility’.40 This hero is a modern ‘man of faith’, who believes ‘in goodness without religious guarantees, guilty, muddled, yet not without hope’.41 Still, in the end, Murdoch wonders if these characters have grown archaic.42 They hark back to a period when theology and ‘moral philosophy’ were hotly debated, whereas now the world is ‘entering an untheological time’.43 Although a kind of novelist, rather than a novelistic character, Kierkegaard himself embodies many of the ‘mystical’ virtues discussed by Merton and by Murdoch. Repeatedly, this study has underlined his stress on the ‘humility’ or the ‘weakness’ of faith. Moreover – and with not a little irony – Kierkegaard’s ‘spirituality’ addresses just this ‘untheological time’ of late modernity. As has been seen, Kierkegaard was one of the first chroniclers of the tension between religious holiness and ‘the present age’, between the example of Christ on the one hand and the superficiality of a mechanized, politicized world on the other. For him, modernity’s ‘anthropological turn’ has not ‘killed’ God. Rather, it has occasioned an epoch of profound self-examination, whereby the human subject is confronted with his or her own freedom and fragility. Here Kierkegaard clearly resembles many twentieth-century existentialists. Yet, not unlike mystics such as John of the Cross, he wants to throw light on another dimension of humanity’s existential crisis. On Kierkegaard’s rendering, this time is less ‘untheological’ than purgative. It is a genuine, if also painful, opportunity for a return to holy living and to God. Kierkegaard doubtless would have agreed with Flannery O’Connor’s famous remark: ‘Witness the dark night of the soul in individual saints. Right now the whole world seems to be going through a dark night of the soul.’44 This study has helped contextualize Kierkegaard’s insights. It has shown that he was an inheritor and an adapter of Christian upbuilding literature, particularly that of the Deutsche Mystik tradition and its Pietist recipients. It also has demonstrated 37

  Ibid., p. 28.   Ibid. 39   Iris Murdoch, Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature (London, 1997), p. 225. 40   Ibid., p. 227. 41   Ibid. 42   Ibid. 43   Ibid., p. 232. 44   Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being (New York, 1979), p. 100. 38

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that Kierkegaard brought this tradition to bear on the modern situation, applying its theological anthropology and understanding of sanctification to the religious encounter with secular society. During an age weakly determined by church life and concerns – an age that, despite the upheavals of the twentieth century, has not yet come to pass – Kierkegaard was something of a pioneer. His writings signal the emergence of a kind of ‘dialectical spirituality’, which locates the human ascent to God in humble, quotidian and, in a peculiar sense, ‘secular’ service. Despite his originality, however, Kierkegaard should not be understood as an isolated figure. There are a number of other modern thinkers who, in related but not identical fashion, have viewed religious life against the backdrop of a world seemingly devoid of God. For them, modernity is best interpreted via the complex framework of the Incarnation. Above all, the ‘sorrowful mysteries’ of Christ’s life give the Christian a foothold in a troubled, even godless world. Thus these authors do not so much ‘reinvent’ mystical consciousness as return to one of its presuppositions. As Rowan Williams puts it, ‘The Christian writer dealing with spirituality is writing essentially about what it is for a whole human life to be lived in the “place” defined by Jesus.’45 Precisely identifying this strand of thinkers is difficult, for each of them approaches the modern problem in distinctive fashion. Some commentators, however, have located a kind of ‘family resemblance’ between several modern novelists, poets, philosophers and theologians. Malcolm Muggeridge, for instance, groups together figures such as Kierkegaard, William Blake, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.46 For him, each of these persons ‘had a special

45

  Rowan Williams, ‘To Stand Where Christ Stands’, in Ralph Waller and Benedicta Ward (eds), An Introduction to Christian Spirituality (London, 1999), p. 3. 46   Bonhoeffer’s letters from Tegel prison bear a strong Kierkegaardian element. For Bonhoeffer, too, Christians in ‘the present age’ (or, in his idiom, ‘the world come of age’) must attend to the example of Christ: ‘God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross. He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us. Matt. 8.17 makes it quite clear that Christ helps us, not by virtue of his omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering’ [Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters & Papers from Prison: The Enlarged Edition (New York, 1971), pp. 360f]. But Christ’s ‘help’ does not pluck people out of the world, but, rather, roots them in the very midst of secular society. As Bonhoeffer goes on, ‘Man is summoned to share in God’s sufferings at the hands of a godless world. He must therefore really live in the godless world, without attempting to gloss over or explain its ungodliness in some religious way or other. He must live a “secular” life, and thereby share in God’s sufferings. … It is not the religious act that makes the Christian, but participation in the sufferings of God in the secular life. That is metanoia: not in the first place thinking about one’s own needs, problems, sins, and fears, but allowing oneself to be caught up into the way of Jesus Christ’ [ibid., p. 361].

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role in common, which was none other than to relate their time to eternity’.47 Thus they are modern equivalents of the biblical prophets.48 Similarly, Robert Inchausti puts Kierkegaard alongside a number of thinkers – for example, Nikolai Berdyaev, Walker Percy, E.F. Schumacher and René Girard – who offer a spiritual vision ‘subversive’ of accepted political norms. Indeed, Kierkegaard is not interested in making the world a ‘better’ place, insofar as that entails a focus on the perpetual modification of political institutions and systems.49 As he puts it in his 1851 treatise, ‘An Open Letter’: I can understand why a politician counts on free institutions as an aid to the state, for politics is externality, which by its very nature has no life in itself but must borrow it from the forms, hence this faith in forms. But that Christianity, which has life in itself, is supposed to be aided by the free institutions – this, according to my understanding, is a complete misconception of Christianity, which, where it is true in true inwardness, is infinitely higher and infinitely freer than all institutions, constitutions, etc. Christianity will not be helped from the outside by institutions and constitutions … .50

For Kierkegaard, the formal concerns of modern society threaten to eclipse Christianity’s perspective on human life. Institutional control has come to obscure the infinite and qualitatively distinct source of creation. Thus Kierkegaard works to eliminate ‘false identifications, cognitive distortions, and idolatrous conceptions’,51 so that persons might come to serve the world as it is, rather than focus on what they would like it to be. On this logic, ‘truth’ is not something that needs to be manufactured or negotiated, for it is already there. The primary ‘political’ task is for persons to live according to it.52 Kierkegaard learned from the Pietists that humans are not so much ‘political animals’ as ‘spiritual beings’. He also learned from them that social relations – no matter their scale – can flourish only when persons realize their spiritual natures. This insight also puts him in conversation with the French philosopher and mystic, Simone Weil (1909–43), whom Muggeridge calls ‘another of God’s spies’.53 47   Malcolm Muggeridge, A Third Testament: A Modern Pilgrim Explores the Spiritual Wanderings of Augustine, Blake, Tolstoy, Bonhoeffer, Kierkegaard, and Dostoevsky (Maryknoll, New York, 2004), p. x. 48   Ibid., p. xx. 49   Robert Inchausti, Subversive Orthodoxy: Outlaws, Revolutionaries, and Other Christians in Disguise (Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2005), pp. 33–7, 187f. 50   SV1 XIII, 440 / COR, 54f. 51   Inchausti, Subversive Orthodoxy, p. 194. 52   Ibid., p. 188. 53   Muggeridge, A Third Testament, p. xxix. Not many scholars have compared Kierkegaard and Weil, although a handful of studies are available. See Diogenes Allen, Three Outsiders: Pascal, Kierkegaard, Simone Weil (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1983);

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Weil was a more constructive political philosopher than Kierkegaard: she wrote The Need for Roots as a blueprint for France’s restoration after World War II. Much like Kierkegaard, however, Weil was certain that a society cannot thrive if it insists on bracketing out the spiritual needs of human beings. As she sees it, this exclusion has plagued Western civilization for centuries, resulting in the suppression of its spiritual constitution – grounded in Platonic philosophy and in Christianity – in favour of the legacy of the Roman Empire and its identification of greatness with human force.54 Weil seems to sum up this ‘Roman’ inheritance with a simple sentence: ‘We are really and truly suffering from the disease of idolatry.’55 Persons, she says, have mistaken the nature of God and, in turn, the nature of the divine–human relationship. God is not the ‘infinite equivalent of a Roman slave-holder’,56 who achieves results in the world by capriciously tinkering with certain means.57 Rather, as she explains in Waiting on God, God has lovingly and freely divested himself of ‘command’ over the created order and so remains, unchangeably, an exemplar for humanity. ‘God denied himself for our sakes in order to give us the possibility of denying ourselves for him.’58 This sentiment manifests another point of overlap between Weil and Kierkegaard. As Kierkegaard considers ‘godlikeness’ [Gudelighed] the fruit of the human being’s existing as ‘nothing’ before God, so does Weil’s concept of ‘decreation’ emphasize that persons are to hand over their being to God. Thus she writes in Gravity and Grace: ‘He emptied himself of his divinity. We should empty ourselves of the false divinity with which we were born. Once we have understood we are nothing, the object of all our efforts is to become nothing.’59 This is a sketch of how Kierkegaard and Weil might be connected. Both might be seen as representatives of what Karl Rahner calls the ‘spirituality of the future’ – that is, ‘a spirituality of the Sermon on the Mount and of the evangelical counsels, continually involved in renewing its protest against the idols of wealth, pleasure and power.’60 However, the significance of this sketch lies not in its comprehensiveness, but in its possibility. It is now clear that Kierkegaard’s relationship with Pietism has implications beyond the pale of specialist interest, linking him to larger issues in modern theological reflection and, in turn, putting Martin Andic, ‘Simone Weil and Kierkegaard’, Modern Theology, 2/1 (1985): 20–41; and George Pattison, ‘Desire, Decreation and Unknowing in the God-Relationship: Mystical Theology and Its Transformation in Kierkegaard, Simone Weil and Dostoevsky’, in Arne Grøn, Iben Damgaard and Søren Overgaard (eds), Subjectivity and Transcendence (Tübingen, 2007). 54   Simone Weil, The Need for Roots (London, 2002), pp. 218ff. 55   Ibid., pp. 256, 274. 56   Ibid., p. 275. 57   Ibid., p. 276. 58   Simone Weil, Waiting on God (London, 1951), p. 87. 59   Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace (London, 2002), p. 34. 60   Karl Rahner, Concern for the Church (London, 1981), p. 145.

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him in fresh contact with other thinkers. To say, then, that these remarks have been anticipatory is to look forward to more robust treatments later, when the question of ‘Kierkegaard and Pietism’ has given way to its application. If the present study contributes to that transformation, then it has been well worth undertaking.

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Index

References to notes are shown as 12n48 (page 12 note 48). absolute difference 136–37, 186 absolute monarchy 36, 37–38, 39, 41–42 absolute τέλος 118–21, 132, 133–34, 135, 136, 155, 165, 166 absolutism 37, 113, 114 aesthetic passion 122, 123–26, 128, 129, 132 age of reflection 128, 133n124, 148–49 age of revolution 128, 133n124, 144–47, 150 Anti-Climacus 4, 79, 116n26, 136, 188, 192–95 anxiety 159 Arndt, J. 4, 6, 7, 9, 11–14, 15, 33, 80–82, 111 imitatio Christi 81, 82n129 Theologia deutsch 72–73, 75 True Christianity 11, 12, 13, 56, 80, 81–82, 83, 91, 95 Arndtian Pietism 4, 7–14, 15, 17, 91 Arnold, G. 20–21, 83 attack, on Christendom 21, 30n168, 83, 170n11, 203 Augsburg Interim 7 Barth, K. 32 Bernard of Clairvaux 9, 10, 13, 67, 75, 204, 205 Böhme, J. 12, 83, 89, 114 Bonhoeffer, D. 209n46 Brecht, M. 3–4, 5 Brødremenighed 5, 43, 44, 46, 50, 57, 59, 60, 86, 138 holiness 162, 164 Brødresocietet 5, 43, 47, 50–51, 52, 53, 56, 57, 58–62, 86 Brorson, H.A. 41n42, 48, 52–53, 64, 76n83, 86–88, 93, 94, 193 Burgess, A. 52–53, 87

Catholicism 22, 28, 64, 68, 113, 171, 184, 194n142, 203–5 Christ, life of 65, 66–67, 70–71, 73, 86, 186, 209 Christendom 175–76, 187, 194n142 attack upon 21, 30n168, 83, 170n11, 203 Christian discipleship 66, 72–73, 85, 87, 100, 106, 171, 183, 193 Christian Discourses 181 Christian life 13, 14, 25–26, 27, 69, 74–75, 78n99, 95, 104, 180 self-denial 81–82, 91, 172–74, 175 venturing 190, 191–92, 197–98 Christian VI 37, 38, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45 Christianity 20–21, 28–30, 32, 91, 98–99, 104–5, 114–15, 117–18, 181, 183 Christiansfeld 45–47, 59, 113, 138–39, 141, 147 church 203–6 Climacus, J. 93, 102–3, 104, 116–21, 123n62, 138, 153–54, 165 hidden inwardness 139, 155, 166–67 monasticism 116, 118, 120–21, 127, 131, 132–38, 163, 166 Philosophical Fragments 102, 117, 130n112, 193 collegia pietatis 9, 16–17, 19, 30 Concept of Irony, The 76, 103 Concluding Unscientific Postscript. see Postscript Corsair, The 139, 141, 142–43, 144, 151–52, 155, 188n102 Danske Samfund (Danish Society) 60 Denmark 6–7, 34, 35, 37–38, 62, 113 Halle Pietism 38–39, 40, 41–43, 44, 47 Lutheranism 35–37

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Moravian Pietism 31, 37, 39, 40–41, 42–47, 57 Radical Pietism 39, 40–41, 43 Devotio moderna 73–74 Dewey, B.R. 169, 171n14, 172n15 Diaspora, Moravian 30–31 Dippel, J.K. 21 discipleship 66, 72–73, 85, 87, 100, 106, 171, 183, 193 ‘Does a Person Have Permission to Let Himself be Killed for the Truth?’ 184–88 doubt 124n71, 157, 190 Dupré, L. 169, 171n14, 203 Eckhart, Meister 69, 72, 74 Efterfølgelse 172n15 Efterfølger 175, 179, 188, 190, 196 Either/Or 49n90, 56n137, 116n26, 123–28, 129, 130, 132, 152 Enlightenment 32–33, 44, 101, 102 envy 149n35, 150–51, 155, 158 equality 146–47, 158–59, 163 Erb, P.C. 5, 12n48, 28, 38–39, 81 Erbauungsliteratur 6, 16, 55–57, 62, 63–64, 68, 75–80, 88–95, 171–72, 196 ethical passion 122, 126–27, 128, 132 existentialism 206–8 Formula of Concord 8, 11 Francke, A.H. 4, 17–19, 25, 38, 83, 89–90, 138 Frankfurter 6, 73, 77–78, 177 Frederik IV 37, 38, 39, 40 Gerhard, J. 8n19, 82n130, 88–89 German Socrates 99–100, 101 Germany 17, 19–20, 22 Girard, R. 149n35, 210 Gnesio-Lutherans 7 Gospel of Sufferings, The 172–80, 182 grace 171, 172, 180, 182, 183–84, 188–89, 190, 195–96 Grundtvig, N.F.S. 57–58, 59, 60, 61–62, 164n117 Halle Pietism 5, 17, 19–20, 22, 25–26, 28, 31, 33–34, 90, 97, 138

Denmark 38–39, 40, 41–43, 44, 47 ‘Hallelujah! I Have Found My Jesus’ 93, 94 Hamann, J.G. 32, 95, 96–98, 102–3, 105–6, 202n2 Socratic Memorabilia 98, 99, 100–101 Hauerwas, S. 161n111, 164n117, 204n14 Haufniensis, V. 159 Herrnhut 23–25, 27, 29, 46, 113 Herrnhutism. see Moravian Pietism H.H. 105, 184–88 hidden inwardness 139, 141, 155, 162, 166–68, 194n142 holiness 31, 111, 141, 167, 168, 195, 201 honesty 182–83, 184, 189, 190 humour 103–4, 105, 106 ‘I Go in Danger Where I Go’ 93 ‘I See Jesus Before My Eyes’ 87 imitatio Christi 9, 28n157, 63, 64–67, 70, 81, 169–72, 179–80, 181–82, 190 Arndt, J. 81, 82n129 Brorson, H.A. 88 Francke, A.H. 89–90 Gospel of Sufferings, The 177–78, 179, 182 ‘woman who was a sinner’ 195–96, 198–99 imitatio motif 64–68, 69, 169, 175, 177, 180–81, 187, 188 imitation, of Christ 64–68, 70–71, 82, 86, 149n35, 172–80, 190–95 Imitation of Christ, The 12–13, 27, 55, 64, 74, 78–79 Imitation of the Poor Life of Christ 70, 72, 77 Impartial History of Churches and Heretics 20, 21, 83 institutionalism 83, 205, 210 irony 103–4, 105 Judge for Yourself 189, 190, 191 Kant, I. 32n179, 33, 126, 159, 160n105 Kierkegaard, M.P. 47–48, 49–50, 51, 53, 57, 58, 60–61 Kierkegaard, P.C. 50n97, 53, 57, 59, 60 Kierkegaard, S.A. 4, 6, 47, 52, 55, 61, 62 Christian Discourses 181

Index Concept of Irony, The 76, 103 ‘Does a Person Have Permission to Let Himself be Killed for the Truth?’ 184–88 Either/Or 49n90, 56n137, 116n26, 123–28, 129, 130, 132, 152 Gospel of Sufferings, The 172–80, 182 A Literary Review 133n124, 142, 143–44, 159–60, 162, 163–64 age of revolution 144–47 levelling 151, 155–56, 190 present age 128, 141, 148–51, 152, 154–57, 201 unrecognizables 157–58, 161–62, 164, 165–66, 167, 190–91, 195, 204 Philosophical Fragments 102, 117, 130n112, 193 Postscript 93, 102, 116–21, 139, 141, 142, 143, 154 monasticism 117, 118, 120–21, 130–38, 139, 163, 166 suffering servants 164–65 Practice in Christianity 4, 70n47, 79, 93, 161, 92–95 ‘woman who was a sinner’ 130, 196–99 Kirmmse, B.H. 37, 61, 146n22, 203, 204 levelling 151, 152, 155–56, 157, 158, 164, 176, 190 Lindberg, C. 5 Literary Review, A 133n124, 142, 143–44, 159–60, 162, 163–64 age of revolution 144–47 levelling 151, 155–56, 190 present age 128, 141, 148–51, 152, 154–57, 201 unrecognizables 157–58, 161–62, 164, 165–66, 167, 190–91, 195, 204 Lund, E. 4, 7, 16 Luther, M. 7, 9–11, 12, 68, 71n51, 82n129, 111–12, 184 Lutheranism 7–8, 11–12, 13, 17, 27, 35–37, 68 martyrdom 170, 178–79, 180, 186, 187–88, 195, 196, 201

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mediation 117, 120–21, 136 Merton, T. 207, 208 Milbank, J. 33, 96, 98, 159n103, 202n4 mimetic desire 149n35 Moller, M. 9 Møller, P.D. 142–43 monasticism 112–13, 115–16, 127, 130, 139, 205 Postscript 117, 118, 120–21, 130–38, 139, 163, 166 Moravian Pietism 5, 6, 7, 22–31, 33–34, 97–98, 112, 113, 163–64 Denmark 31, 37, 39, 40–41, 42–47, 57 Murdoch, I. 208 mysticism 9–10, 11–12, 13–14, 15–16, 80–81, 82, 127n93, 207–8 Nero 152–53, 155 Nicolai, P. 9 Nitschmanns, D. 23, 39, 40, 55–56 Novalis 32, 114–15 numerical equality 158–59 paradoxically dialectical religiousness. see Religiousness B passion 121–30, 131–33, 134, 144, 145, 163 pathetic religiousness. see Religiousness A Pattison, G. 50, 101, 122, 142n1, 159n103, 198 Peter, Apostle 181, 182, 183 Philippist party 7 Philosophical Fragments 102, 117, 130n112, 193 Pia desideria 14, 15, 16, 17, 83 Pietism 3–6, 31–34, 90, 106–7, 111–12, 138–39, 141, 167, 201–2 Denmark 6–7, 35, 37–39 Pontoppidian, E. 39, 42, 48, 86 Postscript 93, 102, 116–21, 139, 141, 142, 143, 154 monasticism 117, 118, 120–21, 130–38, 139, 163, 166 suffering servants 164–65 Practice in Christianity 4, 70n47, 79, 93, 161, 192–95 Praetorious, S. 9 present age 128, 141, 148–51, 152, 154–62, 171, 190–91, 201, 208

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press, power of 151–52, 153, 155 public 151–52, 153, 156–57 Quidam 123–26, 128, 129, 130, 132 Radical Pietism 20, 21, 22, 83, 84, 85 Denmark 39, 40–41, 43 radical pietists 33, 96 Reformorthodoxy 14, 16, 83 religious revolution 146–47 religiousness 62, 118–20, 155, 161, 163–64, 165, 166, 208–9 Religiousness A 104, 118, 165 Religiousness B 104, 118n36, 155, 165 renunciation 181 Reuss, J.C. 50–52, 53, 58, 59 riskiness 191–92 Romanticism 31, 113–14, 115–16 Rudelbach, A.G. 59, 60, 74–75 sanctification 17, 19 Scriver, C. 5, 14, 83, 88 self-denial 81–82, 91, 172–74, 175 separatism 22, 111–12, 113, 115, 118, 201 Singstunde 52–53 Socrates 23n130, 95, 99, 100, 101–3, 104, 106 Socratic Memorabilia 98, 99, 100–101 Søltoft, P. 182–83, 184 Sparn, W. 33 Spener, P.J. 3, 4, 6, 15–17, 18, 19, 22, 83, 89, 112 Pia desideria 14, 15, 16, 17, 83 spirituality 73, 208, 209, 210, 211 Stibolt, T.C. 56–57 Stoeffler, F.E. 5, 9, 15 strong community 155, 156–57, 164 struggling church 194–95 sublime, concept of 159 suffering servants 107, 139, 141, 161, 162, 164–65, 195, 201, 204

Suso, H. 72 Taciturnus, Frater 93, 124, 125 Tauler, J. 6, 8, 9, 10–11, 13, 16, 68–71, 76–77, 137, 171n14 Tersteegen, G. 6, 21–22, 84–86, 92–93 Theologia deutsch 6, 10–11, 12, 13, 68, 72–73, 75, 76, 77–78, 80, 95 Thomas à Kempis 6, 12, 21, 27, 64, 73–75, 78–79, 171n14 Thulstrup, M.M. 63, 90, 91, 94–95, 170, 171n14 Treasure of the Soul 14, 83 triumphant church 194 True Christianity 11, 12, 13, 56, 80, 81–82, 83, 91, 95 unrecognizables 157–58, 160–62, 164, 165–66, 167, 190–91, 193, 195, 204 ‘Up! All Things That God Has Made’ 93–94 upbuilding literature. see Erbauungsliteratur venturing 190, 191–92, 197–98 Wallmann, J. 3, 4, 5, 7, 12, 13 Walsh, S. 171, 173 Weigel, V. 8–9, 11 Weil, S. 210–11 Wilhelm, Assessor 49n90, 123, 124–25, 126–28, 132, 152 Williams, R. 160n107, 209 ‘woman who was a sinner’ 130, 196–99 worldly suffering 164–66, 167 Zinzendorf, N.L.G. von 5, 25–30, 31, 32, 40–41, 45, 54, 95, 98–100, 102 German Socrates 99–100, 101 Moravian Pietism 22, 23, 24, 43