Kierkegaard and Luther 9781978710832, 9781978710849, 1978710836

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“Coe’s marvelous and engagingly written volume fills a yawning gap in Kierkegaard scholarship. For over a century scholars have puzzled over the relationship of Kierkegaard and Luther, for Kierkegaard’s texts express a profound indebtedness to Luther’s principle of sola fide, while his later journal entries frequently blame Luther for the spiritual lassitude of bourgeois Christianity. Coe sheds needed light on Kierkegaard’s ambivalence. While Kierkegaard applauded Luther’s focus on the subjective appropriation of unmerited grace, he critiqued him for not ‘dialectically’ emphasizing the need to actually follow Christ. With rare thoroughness, Coe discovers that Kierkegaard’s understanding of Luther was based on edited versions of Luther’s homilies that underplayed the tensive nature of Luther’s thought. One of the most valuable aspects of this book is the discovery that Luther was much more dialectical than Kierkegaard realized. While not minimizing their differences, Coe convincingly shows that these two theological giants of the Lutheran tradition shared a common appreciation of the interaction of the indicative of grace and the imperative of works in the Christian life.” —Lee C. Barrett, Lancaster Theological Seminary

Kierkegaard and Luther

Kierkegaard and Luther David Lawrence Coe

LEXINGTON BOOKS/FORTRESS ACADEMIC

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books/Fortress Academic Lexington Books is an imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom Copyright © 2020 The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. Excerpts from The Sermons of Martin Luther by Martin Luther and edited and translated by John Nicholas Lenker. Used by permission of Baker Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group. Excerpts from Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, Volume 1-7, by Søren Kierkegaard, edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (copyright © 1967–1978 Indiana University Press), reprinted with permission of Indiana University Press. Excerpts from For Self-Examination; Judge For Yourself! (Vol. 21 of Kierkegaard’s Writings), by Søren Kierkegaard, edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (copyright 1990 Princeton University Press), reprinted with permission of Princeton University Press; permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. Cover art: Brooke Gettman. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available ISBN 9781978710832 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 9781978710849 (electronic) ∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

So you have pain now; but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you. –John 16:22

Contents

Abbreviations xi Acknowledgments xv Introduction: Kierkegaard’s Relation to Luther

1

1 Presumptuous and Pious Historical-Theological Backdrops

27

2 Kierkegaard’s Forkful Reading of an Abridged Edition of Luther’s Church and House Postils

53

3 Lauding Luther in Kierkegaard’s Private Discourse

79

4 Lancing Luther in Kierkegaard’s Private Discourse

123

5 Lauding Luther in Kierkegaard’s Public Discourse

175

6 Anfechtung/Anfægtelse: Luther’s Sigh of Resolve and Kierkegaard’s Sigh of Resign

195

Bibliography 239 Index 251 About the Author

257

ix

Abbreviations

BC

CA

CD

COR

CUP

EO1

Kolb, Robert, and Timothy J. Wengert, eds. The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Translated by Charles Arand et al. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000. Kierkegaard, Søren. The Concept of Anxiety. A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin. Edited and translated by Reidar Thomte and Albert B. Anderson. Vol. 8 of Kierkegaard’s Writings. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980. Kierkegaard, Søren. Christian Discourses; The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress. Edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Vol. 17 of Kierkegaard’s Writings. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. Kierkegaard, Søren. The Corsair Affair. Edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Vol. 13 of Kierkegaard’s Writings. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982. Kierkegaard, Søren. Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments. Edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Vol. 12 of Kierkegaard’s Writings. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992. Kierkegaard, Søren. Either/Or I. Edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Vol. 3 of

xi

xii

EO2

EUD

FSE

FT

JFY

JP

KJN LD

Leipzig Lenker

Lindner

Abbreviations

Kierkegaard’s Writings. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987. Kierkegaard, Søren. Either/Or II. Edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Vol. 4 of Kierkegaard’s Writings. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987. Kierkegaard, Søren. Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses. Edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Vol. 5 of Kierkegaard’s Writings. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990. Kierkegaard, Søren. For Self-Examination; Judge For Yourself! Edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Vol. 21 of Kierkegaard’s Writings. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990. Kierkegaard, Søren. Fear and Trembling; Repetition. Edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Vol. 6 of Kierkegaard’s Writings. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987. Kierkegaard, Søren. For Self-Examination; Judge For Yourself! Edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Vol. 21 of Kierkegaard’s Writings. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990. Kierkegaard, Søren. Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers. Edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. 7 vols. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1967–78. Kierkegaard, Søren. Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks. Edited by Niels Jørgen Cappelørn et al. 11 vols. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007–. Kierkegaard, Søren. Kierkegaard: Letters and Documents. Edited and translated by Henrik Rosenmeier. Vol. 25 of Kierkegaard’s Writings. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978. Luther, Martin. D. Martin Luthers Schrifften und Wercke. Ausgegangenen Sammlungen. 23 vols. Leipzig: Johann Heinrich Zedler, 1729–40. Luther, Martin. The Complete Sermons of Martin Luther. Edited by John Nicholas Lenker. Translated by John Nicholas Lenker et al. 7 vols. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000. Luther, Martin. Das nutzbareste aus denen gesamten Erbaulichen Schriften des seligen Herrn Martini

Abbreviations

LW

Papirer PC

PF

PV

R

SKS

SLW

SUD

Lutheri: in umstandlichen Auszugen alles desen was darinnen zur Erbauung dienlich seyn kan / mit noethigen und nutzlichen Registern versehe und mit einer Vorrede dem Druck ubergeben von Benjamin Lindnern. 9 vols. Salfeld: Gottfried Böhmer, 1739–42. Luther, Martin. Luther’s Works: American Edition. Volumes 1–30: Edited by Jaroslav Pelikan. St. Louis: Concordia, 1955–76. Volumes 31–55: Edited by Helmut Lehmann. Philadelphia/Minneapolis: Muhlenberg/Fortress, 1957–86. Volumes 56–82: Edited by Christopher Boyd Brown. St. Louis: Concordia: 2009–. Kierkegaard, Søren. Søren Kierkegaards Papirer. Edited by P. A. Heiberg, V. Kuhr, and E. Torsting. 20 vols. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1909–48. Kierkegaard, Søren. Practice in Christianity. Edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Vol. 20 of Kierkegaard’s Writings. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991. Kierkegaard, Søren. Philosophical Fragments. Edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Vol. 6 of Kierkegaard’s Writings. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985. Kierkegaard, Søren. The Point of View. Edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Vol. 22 of Kierkegaard’s Writings. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998. Kierkegaard, Søren. Fear and Trembling; Repetition. Edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Vol. 6 of Kierkegaard’s Writings. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987. Kierkegaard, Søren. Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter. Edited by Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Joakim Garff, Jette Knudsen, Johnny Kondrup, and Alastair McKinnon. Søren Kierkegaard Forskningscenteret, Copenhagen: Gads Forlag, 1997–2011. Kierkegaard, Søren. Stages on Life’s Way. Edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Vol. 11 of Kierkegaard’s Writings. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988. Kierkegaard, Søren. The Sickness Unto Death. Edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong.

xiii

xiv

SV

TA

TDIO

Thisted

TM

UDVS

WA WL

WOA

Abbreviations

Vol. 19 of Kierkegaard’s Writings. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980. Kierkegaard, Søren. Søren Kierkegaards Samlede Værker. Edited by A. B. Drachman, J. L. Heiberg, and H. O. Lange. 14 vols. Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag, 1901–6. Kierkegaard, Søren. Two Ages. Edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Vol. 14 of Kierkegaard’s Writings. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978. Kierkegaard, Søren. Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions. Edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Vol. 10 of Kierkegaard’s Writings. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993. Luther, Martin. En christelig Postille, sammendragen af Dr. Morten Luthers Kirke- og Huuspostiller efter Benjamin Lindners tyske Samling udgiven I ny dansk Oversættelse af Jørgen Thisted. 2 pts. Copenhagen: Wahlske Boghandling, 1828. Kierkegaard, Søren. The Moment and Late Writings. Edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Vol. 23 of Kierkegaard’s Writings. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998. Kierkegaard, Søren. Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits. Edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Vol. 15 of Kierkegaard’s Writings. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993. Luther, Martin. D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe. 90 vols. Weimar: H. Böhlau 1883–1993. Kierkegaard, Søren. Works of Love. Edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Vol. 16 of Kierkegaard’s Writings. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995. Kierkegaard, Søren. Without Authority. Edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Vol. 18 of Kierkegaard’s Writings. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997.

Acknowledgments

Kierkegaard’s favorite Bible verse was James 1:17: “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” Thanks be to God for everyone, every good and perfect gift from above, whose support made this study possible. This book began as a dissertation at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, and I could not have received a team I more dearly respect in Paul Robinson, my Doktorvater and first professor of historical theology, and my readers, the all-encompassing Robert Rosin and David Schmitt, my preaching prototype. Laine Rosin befriended me and ameliorated each chapter. Simon Podmore and Erik Herrmann gave their time and insight during the early stages of this study, and Sylvia Walsh gave her counsel and encouragement to bring this study to publication. I am especially thankful for the conversation and counsel of Joel Meyer and David Zehnder. David also discovered Lindner, the most crucial primary source for this project. In Cambridge in 2003, Ronald Feuerhahn was the first to kindly suggest and tutor me in this subject of Kierkegaard’s relation to Luther. Gordon Marino and Cynthia Lund graciously hosted me at the Hong Kierkegaard Library at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, for three refreshing summers, providing key Kierkegaard sources and the friendship of an international Kierkegaard community. At St. Olaf, Sinead Knox instructed me in Danish, and Elisabete de Sousa greatly advanced my research. Tusind Tak! My family from the Deep South, my father and mother, Rod and Judy, brother and sister-in-law, Chandler and Camberly, has loved me deeply, built

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Acknowledgments

up my Kierkegaard library for many Christmases and birthdays, and believed in me all along the way. Joanna, my beloved wife and loving mother of our two boys, Samuel and Caleb, has hemmed me in, behind and before, in the grace of God (Psalm 139:5).

Introduction Kierkegaard’s Relation to Luther

Today, there is a significant irony in both Luther and Kierkegaard scholarship. Although Søren Kierkegaard is arguably the most influential Lutheran of the last 200 years, having been the last Christian to give rise to both a major Christian theology (Dialectical Theology) and a major secular philosophy (Existentialism), both seminal to our understanding of modernity, Kierkegaard remains an enigma to American Lutheran scholarship.1 Conversely, although Kierkegaard was a lifelong Lutheran, read Martin Luther’s sermons devotionally, and proffered a profusion of public discourses as dialectical correctives to the one-sided errors of the Lutheran church, modern Kierkegaard scholarship’s present Lutherbild is lacunal and attenuated.2 But by illuminating the unexplored Luther sermons on which Kierkegaard privately discoursed, this study conveys their confluent correctives and dialectical concord, integrating the scholarship of these two theological giants.3 Although American Luther scholar Jaroslav Pelikan briefly noted in 1950 that Søren Kierkegaard “made possible a recovery of the deep evangelical insights of the theology of Martin Luther,”4 present-day American Lutheran scholarship is apprehensive to regard Kierkegaard’s insights. Students of Luther hear Kierkegaard’s strange Scandinavian name and feel they ought to know something about him, intuiting that perhaps he can deepen their understanding of themselves and God. But the deep subjects on which he expounds (e.g., anxiety, despair, fear, and trembling) are also dark and repelling. In the wake of anti-Christian existential philosophers such as Nietzsche and Sartre and demythologizing dialectical theologians such as Bultmann and Tillich, Lutherans wonder if Kierkegaard is a ship worth sailing. With titles such as Attack upon Christendom5 and Kierkegaard’s capacity for writing in pseudonyms from non-Christian perspectives,6 one of the first questions Lutheran peers often ask me is, “Was Kierkegaard a Christian?” While Lutheran 1

2

Introduction

orthodoxy focuses on the objectivity of Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions, Kierkegaard’s focus on the subjectivity of a Christian life may, prima facie, seem contrary to traditional Lutheran values.7 Instead of propitiously beginning with his accessible and signed sermon-like discourses,8 most American Lutherans drop Kierkegaard after slogging through one of his perplexing pseudonyms in either Either/Or or Fear and Trembling. Given these presuppositions, it is understandable why Kierkegaard remains an enigma in American Lutheran circles. But if Lutherans will leap over these vague presuppositions and grasp Kierkegaard’s concrete relation to Luther, as this study aims, we may begin to recover the deep evangelical insights of Luther that Kierkegaard made possible. Although modern Kierkegaard scholarship is not ignorant of Luther,9 its Lutherbild is presently lacunal and attenuated, especially picturing Luther through the lens of Kierkegaard’s famous lance, “Luther was no dialectician.”10 Hermann Diem calls attention to Kierkegaard’s criticism of Luther’s “undialectic” sermons: “What Luther cannot do is announce simultaneously the summons to follow Christ and the offer of grace. And Kierkegaard attempts to outdo him and to rectify this defect by means of a communication of the Christian message which is to make it impossible for the communicatee to receive grace without at the same time being led to follow Christ.”11 Sylvia Walsh confirms, “[Kierkegaard] often chided Luther for being undialectical while claiming without modesty of himself: ‘My service through literature is and will always be that I have set forth the decisive qualifications of the whole existential arena with a dialectical acuteness and a primitivity not to be found in any other literature, as far as I know.’”12 And David Yoon-Jung Kim and Joel D. S. Rasmussen assume, If [Kierkegaard] had found in Luther’s postils a censure of the apparent selfrighteousness of the earlier piety that nonetheless retained an emphasis on striving to live a life patterned after the life of Christ, then perhaps he might have excused Luther himself from his charges against Lutheranism. But when he alleges, “Luther struck too hard,” he seems to mean that overall Luther’s postils emphasize Christ as gift to the neglect of Christ as pattern and, therefore, do not communicate the law-gospel (works-faith, pattern-gift) dialectic in its fullest rigor.13

Hence, while many Kierkegaard scholars are aware of Kierkegaard’s dialectical critique of Luther, this critique begs to be investigated before implicitly concurring with Kierkegaard’s verdict. Without examining the postils for ourselves, we may prematurely assume that Kierkegaard’s critique of Luther’s dialectical capacity is justified.14 It is my hope that this study, laying open Luther’s postils for the first time in a Kierkegaardian setting, will reverse

Introduction

3

this assumption, helping us to see that the dialectical problem Kierkegaard spotlights does not lie with Luther. Instead, the problem lies with a cursory, or even nonexistent, reading of Luther’s postils by Luther’s inheritors, Kierkegaard, and scholarship. The dominant and central locus of Kierkegaard’s concrete relation to Luther comes to us through Kierkegaard’s private journal discourse on Luther’s sermons. Although a Lutheran his entire forty-two-year life, Kierkegaard did not come into this invested contact with Luther until age 34. In 1847, after completing the first half of his corpus from 1843’s Either/Or to 1846’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, Kierkegaard began reading Luther’s sermons devotionally for the first time, and his first encounter with a Luther sermon was “Wonderful!”15 Reading the very first sermon in a collection of Luther’s postils, Kierkegaard lauds in his journal: Wonderful! The category “for you” (subjectivity, inwardness) with which Either/Or concludes (only the truth which builds up [opbygger] is truth for you) is Luther’s own. I have never really read anything by Luther. But now I open up his sermons—and right there in the Gospel for the First Sunday in Advent he says, “for you,” on this everything depends (see second page, first column, and first page, fourth column).16

After this propitious encounter, Kierkegaard remained a faithful reader of Luther’s sermons until his death in 1855, often recording his reflections in his journals. Therein, Kierkegaard could be rhapsodic in his laud of Luther: “Today I have read Luther’s sermon according to plan; it was the Gospel about the ten lepers. O, Luther is still the master of us all.”17 But Kierkegaard was no one-sided worshiper of Luther, and given the upsetting setting of a nineteenth-century Danish State Lutheranism prone to the exploitation of Luther’s teaching, Kierkegaard was publicly critical of Lutheranism and privately critical of Luther. Publicly, Kierkegaard denounced Danish Lutheranism for exploiting Luther’s doctrine of justification “without works” as antinomian justification for doing whatever they pleased, namely, as a God-ordained justification for the bourgeois Enlightenment pursuit of happiness. For Kierkegaard, this was a one-sided abuse of the dialectical truth of Luther’s message and life. But privately in his journals, Kierkegaard sometimes lanced that Luther’s own sermons and life were susceptible and to a degree responsible for this Lutheran abuse and that Luther could have better thwarted such through a more dialectical presentation of his sermons and life. Thus, Kierkegaard saw his public authorship as a strategic corrective to this undialectical misappropriation of Luther, sighing, “I have wanted to prevent people in ‘Christendom’ from existentially taking in vain Luther and the significance of Luther’s life—I have wished, if possible, to

4

Introduction

contribute to preventing this.”18 While his private relation to Luther could be called critical, harsh, or ambivalent, Kierkegaard’s public intention was to compassionately proclaim for Luther’s inheritors a dialectical corrective to this perennial susceptibility without denying the truth of Luther’s message and life. While well-intentioned, an examination of the Luther sermons on which Kierkegaard commented and Kierkegaard’s journal comments on those sermons evidences that Kierkegaard’s reading of Luther’s sermons was often cursory and lacked a well-rounded effort to comprehend each sermon as a whole. Also crucial, the 1828 edition of Luther’s sermons that Kierkegaard read is a Danish translation by Jørgen Thisted19 of Benjamin Lindner’s 1741 and 1742 German edition of Luther’s sermons,20 which this study has discovered is a heavily edited and abridged edition of the critical German edition of Luther’s works at the time, namely, the Leipzig Edition.21 Therefore, this study is the first to lay open the concrete content of the Luther sermons on which Kierkegaard commented, revealing what Lindner deleted from Leipzig and Kierkegaard’s cursory reading of Thisted, both lacunae effectually attenuating Kierkegaard’s Lutherbild from the inception of his reading of the sermons. Given these lacunae, this study reveals how much Kierkegaard missed and misjudged of Luther’s dialectical aptitude, most of which was actually in harmony with Kierkegaard’s dialectical concern. It is hoped that such concrete detail into both giants will not only offer more historically unabridged pictures of them ironically missing in American Lutheran scholarship and modern Kierkegaard scholarship but also aid in solidifying their concord. Scholarship on Kierkegaard’s Relation to Luther When I first mentioned this research topic, namely, Kierkegaard’s relation to Luther, to Dr. Gordon Marino, curator of the Hong Kierkegaard Library at St. Olaf College, his first descriptor of that relation was “ambivalent.” This word indeed describes the current status of the research of this question. To this point, several helpful studies over the last century have analyzed Kierkegaard’s relation to Luther.22 All of them note the apparent ambivalence of Kierkegaard’s relation to Luther, namely, that Kierkegaard records in his journals both praise and critique for Luther.23 Given this ambivalence, these studies distinguish themselves via the degree and manner in which they attempt to positively or negatively resolve Kierkegaard’s relation to Luther. Earliest in the twentieth century, Danish pastor and theologian Eduard Geismar resolved the ambivalence positively. In an insightful article,24 although focusing little upon Kierkegaard’s concrete journal discourse on

Introduction

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Luther’s sermons, Geismar outlined some of the conceptual divergences and one major convergence of Luther and Kierkegaard.25 Geismar noted that it may seem nonsensical to hold Luther and Kierkegaard together given their apparent conceptual divergences.26 One divergence concerns their modes of communication, that is, Luther’s direct communication of evangelical Christianity and Kierkegaard’s indirect communication behind pseudonyms.27 Another divergence concerns the relation between Christianity and culture, that is, Luther’s grounding of the evangelical church as Landeskirche and Kierkegaard’s final attack on the state church.28 Another divergence concerns human enjoyment of God’s creation, that is, Luther’s rejection of Catholic teachings on monasticism and celibacy and Kierkegaard’s unremitting asceticism.29 While these divergences are apparent, Geismar perspicaciously notes one conceptual convergence that not only draws Luther and Kierkegaard together but also serves as a Rosetta stone for positively resolving their divergences, namely, the Theology of the Cross. Geismar noted that the substance of the Theology of the Cross is the cross of Christ as both sacramentum and exemplum for the human being.30 The cross as sacramentum and exemplum constitutes two types of suffering for the Christian, namely, the suffering of becoming righteous and the suffering of persecution, respectively.31 Regarding the cross as sacrementum, Geismar noted that when he is pierced by the thought of Christ suffering because of his sin, his whole soul is pierced through by the pain of repentance.32 Geismar praised Karl Holl’s understanding of Luther, namely, that Anfechtung is paradoxically both the painful and the good experience of God’s ira misericordiae, in which God causes the sinner to be both absolutely conscious of his sin before the absolute God and absolutely forgiven.33 If Holl’s understanding of Luther is accurate, then, Geismar concludes that this “matches Kierkegaard exactly.”34 The grace of God-consciousness (Gottesbewusstsein) comes only through sin-consciousness (Sündenbewusstsein) when God’s revelatory Anfechtung terrifies the sinner to an honest humility before God.35 Hence, according to Geismar, there is in both Luther and Kierkegaard an intimate convergence of judgment and grace where the Christian is ever simil iustus et peccator before the cross of Christ as sacramentum.36 But, on the other side of the cross, when one experiences the suffering of persecution from the world because of one’s Christian faith, the cross of Christ is exemplum.37 For both Luther and Kierkegaard, Christ and his disciples must suffer persecution from the world, and the cross condemns each Christian who finds himself friendly with the world.38 Concerning Luther’s and Kierkegaard’s conceptual convergence at the Theology of the Cross, Geismar praises, “It is the honor of Luther that he never forgot his Theology of the Cross; it is the significance of Kierkegaard that he asserted this Theology of the Cross with adamant earnestness in opposition to worldly Christianity.”39

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Introduction

Via the concept that Luther and Kierkegaard share, namely, the Theology of the Cross, Geismar positively resolves their apparent divergences. Geismar’s key is to recognize that Luther and Kierkegaard each applied the same Theology of the Cross to different enemies in different ages, namely, latemedieval works-righteousness (Werkgerechtigkeit) and late-Enlightenment worldliness (Weltlichkeit), respectively.40 While Luther directly confronted with the Theology of the Cross an age that believed it could become righteous through good works, Kierkegaard spoke the Theology of the Cross indirectly in order to Socratically draw his contemporaries out of a cave that sublimated Luther’s message into a cloak of worldliness without the suffering of the cross. While Luther’s Theology of the Cross propounded a paradoxical, that is, God-ordained but anti-utopian, dialectic of Two Kingdoms in the face of unilateral Catholicism and Anabaptism, Kierkegaard asserted the Theology of the Cross’s infinite qualitative difference between the left and right-hand kingdoms amidst a society that conflated the two. While Luther’s Theology of the Cross freed Christians from the anxious stringencies of monasticism and celibacy, Kierkegaard laid the cross of suffering discipleship upon a society exploiting Luther’s doctrine of justification without works. A scholar and lover of both Luther and Kierkegaard,41 Geismar concludes that Kierkegaard accurately appropriated Luther’s Theology of the Cross for the different enemy of his time. Luther and Kierkegaard’s apparent divergences do not signify their disunity; instead, their divergences, given two different enemies, reflect an accurate application of the concept that unites them. Geismar concludes, challenging the theologian who would disagree with his assessment, “Whether Kierkegaard has the right enemy, the single individual must differentiate, and this difference assesses the state of his theology.”42 Danish philosopher Johannes Sløk also emphasizes, like Geismar, Luther and Kierkegaard’s disparate historical situations. But unlike Geismar, Sløk resolves their relation more critically. Sløk acknowledges that a Lutheran theologian who is also a student of Kierkegaard will be confronted by the question of the relation between Luther and Kierkegaard, but Sløk critically warns that it is meaningless to compare and contrast the two without due account of their disparate historical factors.43 Interestingly, Sløk contends that Kierkegaard’s own critique of Luther makes just this methodological mistake, anachronistically placing his nineteenth-century philosophical worldview upon Luther’s.44 Sløk also criticizes Kierkegaard’s study of Luther as too disjointed and cursory, identifying that most of his contact with Luther was via Luther’s sermons and devotional, rather than a scholarly study of Luther’s dogmatic works.45 To illustrate a proper use of historical method, Sløk takes up a central concern of both Luther and Kierkegaard, namely, the relation between faith and works, but outlines their disparate historical situations to demonstrate how

Introduction

7

they answered this question differently. Sløk propounds that Luther’s historic worldview is a God-ordained, hierarchic, Aristotelian ordo in metaphysics, which concretely manifests itself in the medieval community’s division into hierarchic estates, with monasticism as the estate at the top of this hierarchy in which a human being could attain religious perfection by Aristotelian moral effort.46 By testing the truth and adequacy of this worldview and discovering the impossibility of becoming good by moral effort, Luther directed his criticism against a church that advocated monasticism as a logical consequence. Monasticism was a man-made, rather than a God-ordained, estate. Since it is faith that makes a work good, rather than a specific work, a man with faith can perform good works in any estate (i.e., “vocation”) in which God has ordained and called him.47 Thus, Luther holds on to a God-ordained ordo but rejects monasticism as a member of this ordo. But, Sløk propounds, this God-ordained ordo and community of estates does not exist in Kierkegaaard’s modernity 300 years later, and this situation causes Kierkegaard to distinguish the relation between faith and vocation differently than Luther does. In the modernity of the Enlightenment, a man’s being is not determined by the estate into which God has placed him. Instead, a God-ordained egalitarianism of individuals has replaced God’s medieval ordo.48 Sløk holds that while Kierkegaard accepted modernity’s new worldview, he also recognized the threats of teleological arbitrariness and bourgeois complacency that can result from the presumptuous modern motto Annuit Coeptis.49 Thus, Kierkegaard is unable to prescribe “vocation” as Luther could within the medieval ordo.50 Instead, to a much greater extent than Luther, Kierkegaard, in order to counteract the conflation of service to God and modern society, had to proclaim the infinite distinction between the absolute relation to God and the relative relation to society, qualitatively distinguishing faith and vocation in a way Luther had not given their disparate historical situations.51 Thus, Sløk’s study focused more upon the disparate historical situations that cause Luther and Kierkegaard to diverge, as compared to Geismar’s focus upon their theological convergence that unites their historical divergences. In a twenty-page essay, Ernest Koenker, of Valparaiso and USC, offers the best and most subtle point-by-point contrast of Kierkegaard’s praise and critique of Luther to date.52 Here Koenker insightfully notes that the points where Kierkegaard praises Luther are dialectically also the points where he most criticizes Luther.53 For example, while Kierkegaard praises Luther as a corrective against the merit-based excesses of Catholic asceticism, Kierkgaard also critiques Luther’s corrective because it became a new societal status quo that forsook the Christian ideal of forsaking the world.54 Koenker writes of Kierkegaard’s “patient-physician” perspective that “Luther, finally, lacked the ‘overall view’ that would have enabled him to prescribe, at the right time and in just the proper amount, the propitious treatment for

8

Introduction

his patient.”55 For Kierkegaard, Luther’s emphasis upon the gospel, grace, and faith, while correct, needed to be better dialectically balanced with the ongoing discipleship of Christ so as to inhibit society’s abuse of Luther’s emphasis as a justification for worldliness. After enumerating several points of Kierkegaard’s praise and critique of Luther (e.g., Luther’s positions on anxiety, freedom, “pro me,” the papacy, and marriage), Koenker wisely perceives that Kierkegaard’s central critique of Luther was his failure to think dialectically, needing to dialectically balance grace and discipleship.56 Critically of Kierkegaard, and more psychologically than Sløk’s historical approach, Koenker also notes, “Kierkegaard’s Lutherbild is attenuated and programmatic, always reflecting more of Kierkegaard than of Luther.”57 But with this criticism, Koenker dialectically applauds Kierkegaard for his genuine suffering, along with Luther, as both a patient and doctor of Christianity. Koenker well, but too tersely, notes that both Luther and Kierkegaard experienced a personal suffering that “became, by a secret, divine alembic, a healing for their own lives and for the church.”58 Expanding upon Koenker’s recognition of Kierkegaard’s central critique of Luther, namely, Luther’s failure to think dialectically, German theologian Hermann Diem, in a section of a chapter from Kierkegaard’s Dialectic of Existence, examines Kierkegaard’s relation to Luther in the light of Kierkegaard’s dialectical method.59 Diem defines “dialectic” in its most general sense as “the activity of that type of thought which reaches its goal by moving between question and answer or assertion and contradiction in dialogue.”60 Diem nicely illustrates this dialectic as like a dialogue taking place between Plato and Socrates on the topic of thought’s correspondence to reality.61 Plato represents the positive presentation of the abstract ideal of speculative thought as an ontological reality. Socrates represents the antithetical questioning of Plato’s thesis, overthrowing a supposed knowledge of reality, leaving a void.62 While Hegel’s dialectic of Plato’s thesis and Socrates’s antithesis eventually merge in synthesis, Kierkegaard’s existential dialectic consists not in synthesis, but in holding Plato and Socrates together in tension without allowing either the former to fly to fantastical heights of pure abstraction or the latter to sink to depths of abyssal void.63 In the face of Hegel’s presumption that his triadic, dialectical thought was itself ontological reality, Kierkegaard heightened his focus upon the concerned (rather than objective) existence of the thinker, especially emphasizing the Socratic antithesis of dialectic, so as to temper the infinitude of the thinker’s speculation with the finitude of the thinker’s reality.64 For Kierkegaard, although the thinker rightly desires the infinite ideal to come about in reality, the ideal does not come about for the thinker merely by either thinking or ontological necessity. Instead, the thinker infinitely strives to realize the ideal in passionate action. In this endless striving, Kierkegaard wants the thinker to become more and

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more self-consciously aware of the ongoing tension between the infinite ideal and finite reality, rather than presuming their synthesis by either ontological necessity or philosophical thought. Here, the thinker is prevented from losing himself in boundless, fantastical thought and “becomes aware of himself as existent and so wins reality.”65 Thus, for Kierkegaard, ontology is not a statement of objective thought, as Hegel and the history of philosophy have historically believed. Instead, ontology, from a human thinker’s perspective, is the concrete existence of the individual thinker who both thinks the ideal and longingly gauges his active existence against it.66 Ontology is the ongoing dialogue between Plato and Socrates, rather than the ignorance of either, or the synthesis of both. Regarding Kierkegaard’s relation to Luther in light of Kierkegaard’s above dialectic, Diem makes several points. Positively, Kierkegaard applauds Luther’s Gospel discovery through Luther’s agonizing struggle. Out of this struggle, Luther becomes self-consciously aware of the infinite qualitative difference between the God-man and other men, that is, the dialectical tension between the infinite ideal and finite striving.67 This, Kierkegaard lauds. The problem, Diem notes, is that, from Kierkegaard’s perspective, Luther’s teaching and preaching did not do justice to the dialectical tension he discovered.68 If the dialectical tension is taught or preached outside of the agonizing context of striving to follow Jesus and the existential need for grace, then the dialectical tension too easily becomes an objective doctrine about faith rather than faith.69 And this leads to an easy and abusive subscription to Luther’s discovery by the masses without Luther’s struggle. Here, when a thesis— free grace—is not expressed at every moment in dialectical tension to its antithesis—struggling discipleship—the truth is lost in one-sided, fantastical abstraction. Hence, for Kierkegaard, Luther needed to be clearer about the existential nature of the antithesis so as to prevent the presumption and abuse of the thesis. Without this equal emphasis on the finitude of the antithesis, two possible fallouts occur. (1) Either the antithesis is ignored, causing the thesis to fly into fantastical abstraction without existential appropriation or (2) the dialectic of thesis and antithesis is objectively synthesized as a philosophical or doctrinal necessity, also without existential appropriation. Text-critically, Diem propounds that Kierkegaard’s critique of Luther occurs only in his journals; whereas, Kierkegaard exemplifies only the greatest respect for Luther in his published writings.70 From this observation, Diem concludes that Kierkegaard did not want to be known by his contemporaries as a critic of Luther; instead, Kierkegaard wanted only to be known as a corrective to his own Danish State Lutheranism.71 While Diem’s conclusion raises a valid hermeneutical question of the role of Kierkegaard’s journals in examining his relation to Luther, Danish theologian Regin Prenter defends the role of the journals. While Prenter concurs

10

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with Diem’s conclusion that Kierkegaard’s critical attitude toward Luther is absent from his published works, Prenter propounds that the journals still represent “an unmistakable line of development” in Kierkegaard’s relation to Luther from 1847 to 1855 and cohere with Kierkegaard’s published works from this period.72 When Kierkegaard was advocating a heightened awareness of the discrepancy between authentic Christianity and his contemporary Lutheranism in his published works from 1848 to 1851, Kierkegaard maintained a positive attitude toward Luther in his journals from the same period.73 But when Kierkegaard increased his attack upon Christendom, especially between 1854 and 1855, the last two years of his life, there is an increased criticism of Luther during the same period.74 Prenter briefly notes, but more than any other Kierkegaard scholar, the influence of Luther’s sermons upon the second authorship of Kierkegaard from 1847’s Works of Love to 1855.75 But if Kierkegaard’s journals were not used as guide, “we would hardly guess that Luther had any influence upon Kierkegaard during that period.”76 Hence, while the journals represent a conversation of thought experiments Kierkegaard had with himself and care is needed in their use, they are invaluable for gauging the influences and life circumstances behind his published works. While defending the role of the journals, Prenter attacks any methodology that attempts to compare Luther and Kierkegaard and find a common thread between the two (e.g., Geismar).77 “A direct comparison between the two great Christian thinkers will easily lead to a one-sided and unjust presentation of at least one of them or even of both.”78 In making this assertion, similar to Sløk, Prenter subtly attacks Kierkegaard for making the same mistake by applying his criticism of nineteenth-century Danish State Lutheranism to Luther himself. In doing so, Prenter answers many scholarly questions about Kierkegaard’s methodology for reading Luther. For example, while Kierkegaard owned a fairly comprehensive library of Luther’s main works, Kierkegaard’s journals evidence that he restricted his reading almost exclusively to his Danish edition of Luther’s sermons in two volumes, namely, Thisted.79 Prenter also briefly elucidates the cursory style of Kierkegaard’s reading of Luther’s sermons: [Kierkegaard’s critical journal mark on Luther] usually takes the shape of a comment upon a single sermon or even a single passage or sentence in the sermon in question which Kierkegaard has just been reading. He stops the reading and reflects upon the statements made in the sermon or in parts of it from his own premises. And then he formulates his verdict without further investigation and without the slightest hesitation.80

Prenter critiques that Kierkegaard’s “edification” reading of Luther is onesided, mostly interested in “finding his own opinions restated and confirmed

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by Luther,”81 rather than searching for Luther’s fully expressed opinions. Thus, Prenter critiques that not only did Kierkegaard not concern himself with a comprehensive knowledge of Luther but also that Kierkegaard’s journal comments on Luther’s sermons were hasty and often superficial and, therefore, unjust to Luther.82 Still, Prenter concedes that Kierkegaard had a talent for perceiving and explicating upon essentials that could compensate for his lack of thoroughness in many cases.83 Rounding out the last century’s scholarship on the relation of Luther and Kierkegaard is Liberty University theology professor Craig Hinkson, who inherits Geismar’s early thesis that the Theology of the Cross is the key concept that binds the two. The late nineteenth-century German reception of Kierkegaard and the early twentieth-century Luther Renaissance both contributed to a substantial reading of these two giants off of each other, and this contributed to the rise of dialectical theology.84 During this period, it was generally assumed that Luther and Kierkegaard shared a deep affinity, and scholars such as Emanuel Hirsch and Torsten Bohlin touched on this.85 But it is Geismar, Hinkson notes, who is the only scholar to significantly link the two via the Theology of the Cross, but only within the confines of a single article, as explicated above.86 Thus, Hinkson’s 1993 University of Chicago dissertation presents the most thorough expounding of Geismar’s thesis available.87 Hinkson expounds Luther’s Theology of the Cross especially from Luther’s 1518 Heidelberg Disputation theses, providing the epistemological prolegomena of Geismar’s explication of the cross as sacramentum and exemplum. In the face of medieval scholasticism’s approbation of rational speculation and works-righteousness as the theoretical and practical means of accessing God, Luther holds the cross.88 The cross is an offense confounding that God is not approached by man’s own epistemological or ethical capacities; instead, the cross is the means through which God has chosen to reveal himself to man outside of man’s capacities. Epistemologically, not only is God a Deus Absconditus, transcendent above natural human reason, but also human reason is darkened by the sin of pride, presumptuously overestimating whatever good faculties human reason does naturally possess. If this Deus Absconditus is to reveal himself, he must do so under the nature of offensive, paradoxical revelation since reason is incapable of perceiving the Deus Nudus. And the crucified Christ is an offensive veil to human epistemology and ethics, revealing God under the paradoxical opposite of his glory and putting works-righteousness to shame. Hence, even if the Deus Absconditus reveals himself paradoxically against reason as the Deus Revelatus, this Deus Revelatus is still a Deus Absconditus since the Deus Nudus can reveal himself only under a veil offensive to reason.89 The very existence of faith in God, as opposed to reason about God, depends upon the Deus Absconditus.90

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Introduction

But the Theology of the Cross is not another objective, epistemological speculation supplanting the Theology of Glory with another Theology of Glory.91 The Theology of the Cross is a fighting faith activated and repeated again and again by both the Anfechtung of God and the revelation of God as Christ crucified.92 With Anfechtung, God the Father causes his children to feel God-forsaken in suffering as either sacramentum or exemplum. Here, Luther counsels the suffering child to fight and push through this Deus Absconditus and hold firm to the Deus Revelatus, where Christ’s cross affirms God’s gracious will toward us.93 Thus, God performs his opus alienum with Anfechtung as the Deus Absconditus in order to effect a leap to the Deus Revelatus, where God performs his opus proprium.94 Instead of knowing about God through objective speculation, belief in God comes about through the actual suffering he sends and his revelation of the cross, preventing a presumptuous reliance upon one’s own epistemological or ethical capacities. Hinkson rightly continues that Luther’s Theology of the Cross does not end with a singular moment of justification. Instead, the Christian life of discipleship is a continual baptism of being crucified with Christ, suffering inwardly via the cross as sacramentum and suffering outwardly via the cross as exemplum.95 Hinkson insightfully notes that as presumptuous scholasticism evoked Luther’s Theology of the Cross, so did a presumptuous nineteenth-century, late-Enlightenment Danish Christendom evoke Kierkegaard’s Theology of the Cross.96 While Luther and Kierkegaard lived at different times with different enemies, both shared a “concern for introducing the personal appropriation of grace into a context in which the means of its conferral had come to be conceived as an opus operatum.”97 As Luther’s God must first slay with Anfechtung in order to make alive, so did Kierkegaard use his aesthetic and ethical caricatures to bring his contemporaries to despair of their aesthetic and speculative fantasies and to experience the bankruptcy of enlightenment civic ethics, readying them to appropriate grace.98 Through investigating several of Kierkegaard’s writings from both the first and second authorship, Hinkson elucidates Kierkegaard’s corroboration with Luther on the Deus Absconditus, Anfechtung, the paradox of Christ, and the suffering life of discipleship.99 Like Luther, Kierkegaard’s Theology of the Cross uproots theology from the overconfident realms of either epistemological theory or ethical capacity and carries it to the hard realm of passively suffering the cross.100 Finally, while Hinkson, like Geismar, links Luther and Kierkegaard via the Theology of the Cross, he also, unlike Geismar, criticizes Kierkegaard’s critique of Luther, standing up for Luther. Regarding Kierkegaard’s asceticism in contradistinction to Luther’s earthiness, Hinkson senses in Kierkegaard a Gnostic bias against corporeality.101 Hinkson notes that the late Kierkegaard sloughs off Luther’s concern for the “orders of creation,” “the two kingdoms,” “marriage,” “vocation,” etc., all for the sake of one’s relationship

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with God.102 Redemption, for Kierkegaard, is not fully experienced in this life. Instead, one is to follow the “pre-Easter” Christ in discipleship to his cross.103 Hinkson rightly notes that Kierkegaard’s concern in his context is for Luther’s teaching on grace not to be appropriated for the purpose of relieving one from following Christ and engaging in whatever conduct one pleases.104 But Hinkson finally distinguishes Kierkegaard from Luther. For Kierkegaard, “in order for grace not to be taken in vain, one’s feet must be ‘kept to the fire’ of the infinite requirement and from there be repeatedly driven to grace.”105 But for Luther, “grace is taken in vain if it is followed by the renewed tyranny of the requirement.”106 For Kierkegaard, progress in discipleship is not by advancing ever closer to the ideal of Christ, but by a deepened awareness of one’s need for grace and a repudiation of merit.107 “Still,” Hinkson warns, “one must ask whether he has not—against his own best intentions!—brought back into Christianity ‘the dread of not having done enough.’”108 But “Despite these shortcomings,” Hinkson concludes, Kierkegaard’s application of the theology of the cross is a defining moment in the history of Lutheranism. In it, Lutheran theology’s self-critical moment comes to expression. . . . To deny the authentically Lutheran character of Kierkegaard’s enterprise is to deprive Lutheranism of the critical vantage point of which it is perennially in need if its understanding of grace is not to degenerate into indulgence and its praxis into quietism.109

Henceforth, we have seen how the last century’s studies of Kierkegaard’s relation to Luther distinguish themselves via the degrees and manners in which they resolve the ambivalence of Kierkegaard’s praise and critique of Luther. Earliest and most favorably, Geismar resolved Luther and Kierkegaard’s divergences via their convergence at the Theology of the Cross. For Geismar, the accurate application of the same Theology of the Cross by both Luther and Kierkegaard to divergent historical enemies positively resolves the ambivalence. Other scholars, such as Sløk and Prenter, criticize any methodology, such as Geismar’s, that anachronistically and qualitatively compares the values of two divergent historical periods. Such, they worry, will result in an inaccurate historical picture that either abruptly mollifies the historical differences or wrongly blames one era’s values for another era’s downfall. Thus, for Sløk and Prenter, Kierkegaard himself is guilty of the same methodological error, anachronistically blaming sixteenth-century Luther for nineteenth-century Danish Lutheranism’s errors. Better, they cautiously hold, is to isolate each era as a separate historical entity, each with its own disparate worldview. While this will encourage increased historical objectivity and perhaps result in a more accurate historical picture of each era, such will inhibit a

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methodology of searching for the historical causes of modern problems. Thus, Sløk and Prenter negatively resolve the ambivalence by criticizing Kierkegaard’s historical method of critiquing Luther. While Geismar positively draws Luther and Kierkegaard together at the Theology of the Cross, Koenker and Diem draw Kierkegaard’s praise and critique of Luther together around the issue of the existential use of dialectic. Kierkegaard praises Luther when Luther adequately exemplifies existential dialectic, but Kierkegaard critiques Luther when Kierkegaard deems that Luther is not exemplifying the same. Thus, Koenker and Diem resolve the ambivalence through Kierkegaard’s foremost concern for the adequate application of existential dialectic to theological thought and action. Rounding out the century, Hinkson repeats Geismar’s early thesis on the Theology of the Cross but pastorally warns that while Kierkegaard is “Lutheranism’s self-critical moment,”110 Kierkegaard’s suffering discipleship of following Christ to the cross errs by being unwilling to experience the earthly joys of the resurrection, as Luther experienced them, in this present life. Thus, Hinkson resolves the ambivalence positively, but with a warning to anyone who would follow Kierkegaard’s way to the cross. The Contribution of this Study In light of the last century’s scholarship on the ambivalence of Kierkegaard’s relation to Luther, this study fills one major methodological gap, being the first to lay Luther’s sermons open on the table alongside Kierkegaard’s journal laud and lance of them. While few, especially Koenker, Diem, and Prenter, have studied Kierkegaard’s private discourse on Luther, none have studied these in the light of the Luther sermons he was reading when he made his journal comments. Consequently, if only Kierkegaard’s comments on Luther are regarded without reference to the concrete Luther sermons on which Kierkegaard commented, then the resulting Lutherbild will be attenuated for both Kierkegaard and Luther scholars. For Kierkegaard scholars, if we know little or nothing of Luther before considering Kierkegaard’s comments about him, then our resulting Lutherbild will only be the one we construct from Kierkegaard’s comments. For Luther scholars, if we know something of Luther without regarding the sermons on which Kierkegaard is commenting, then Kierkegaard is only commenting on the Lutherbild we have previously built.111 Filling this methodological gap not only balances the dialogue between Luther and Kierkegaard but also builds a more historically accurate Lutherbild. Koenker and Diem rightly note that Kierkegaard’s central critique of Luther is Luther’s lack of dialectic. But by filling the above methodological

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gap, this study reconsiders this judgment on Luther’s dialectical aptitude. Without this, we may prematurely accept the ambivalent Lutherbild revealed in Kierkegaard’s journals, namely, that Luther is to be lauded for several factors, but in the end, “Luther was no dialectician”112 and is therefore a one-sided and superficial theologian.113 Sløk and Prenter indirectly defend Luther by criticizing Kierkegaard’s choice of Luther’s sermons for devotional reading rather than Luther’s theological treatises for scholarly treatment. This study, however, does not argue with Kierkegaard’s choice of source or motive. Instead, accepting and analyzing the source Kierkegaard chose, it directly defends that Luther’s sermons are strong enough to stand on their own against the critique of Kierkegaard without needing to defer to other primary sources as if Luther’s sermons, taken by themselves, would prove Kierkegaard’s critique that Luther was no dialectician. By unveiling what Kierkegaard’s cursory reading of an abridged edition of Luther’s sermons missed, this study reveals Luther’s use of the very dialectic Kierkegaard cursorily accused Luther of not preaching. Moreover, by opening Luther’s sermons on the table, the question of Kierkegaard’s relation to Luther returns from its illocutionary force to the perlocutionary force Kierkegaard originally intended. Kierkegaard’s relation to Luther is not merely a historical curiosity; instead, Kierkegaard, again, “wanted to prevent people in ‘Christendom’ from existentially taking in vain Luther and the significance of Luther’s life.”114 Not calling for a reformation of the doctrine or organization of his Lutheran church, Kierkegaard did call for a renovation of Lutheran preaching in order to inhibit the above existential error.115 He wrote in his journal: “The doctrine in the established Church and its organization are very good. But the lives, our lives—believe me, they are mediocre. [In margin: The proclamation of the doctrine is done at too great a distance, Christianity is not a power in actuality, our lives are only slightly touched by the doctrine.] But this can be forgiven if it only is acknowledged.”116 In the light of his Lutheran church’s “mediocrity,” Kierkegaard read Luther’s sermons not only for his own edification but also to procure homiletic insight from the Lutheran “Master.”117 Although Sløk and Prenter rightly warn of Kierkegaard’s cavalier historical method, an accurate historical presentation of Kierkegaard’s relation to Luther will neither disallow Kierkegaard’s historical judgments of Luther nor overlook Kierkegaard’s historical intentions. While all of the above scholars have insightfully resolved the ambivalence of Kierkegaard’s relation to Luther, Kierkegaard was only penultimately concerned with harmonizing his relation to Luther.118 Ultimately, Kierkegaard was concerned for the lives of Luther’s inheritors and the hearers of Lutheran preaching, proffering for them and for us a dialectical corrective that neither denies nor abuses Luther’s message and life.

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Introduction

The Method of this Study To set the stage for Kierkegaard’s reading of a Danish edition of Luther’s sermons and publishing his own sermon-like discourses, chapter 1 unfurls two nineteenth-century historical-theological backdrops: (1) Kierkegaard’s criticism that Danish State Lutheranism was presumptuously taking Luther’s message and life in vain (2) Denmark’s pious devotion to homiletic literature. Setting this stage, the study then presents a dialogue between two primary sources, namely, Kierkegaard’s private discourse and Luther’s sermons. While Kierkegaard’s private discourse (i.e., his journals) and Luther’s sermons are neither of their most popular works and each has its own philological issues, these two unsung sources mark the necessary historical loci for concretely, rather than conjecturally, examining Kierkegaard’s relation to Luther. Thankfully, Kierkegaard kept extensive journals for twenty-four years of his adult life. They are not diaries, recordings of daily activities. Instead, Kierkegaard’s journals are “timeless, they were the records of his thoughts, things he wanted to remember, some of them thoughts he would use ultimately in his writings.”119 He kept his journals in a two-column format—a larger column for the main text and a smaller column for subsequent reflections—and encased them in labeled notebooks for his own later reference.120 Hermann Diem’s caution concerning the journals’ role in interpreting Kierkegaard’s published works121 has not been the norm in Kierkegaard scholarship. Since the very moment of his death, the journals have been regarded as an invaluable tool for Kierkegaard interpretation. In the month he died, Kierkegaard’s nephew and disciple Henrik Lund entered his uncle’s apartment and began cataloguing the journals and the other masses of papers he found there.122 These eventually made their way to Kierkegaard’s surviving brother, Peter Christian, the bishop of Aalborg in Jutland. In 1867, Peter entrusted his secretary, Hans Peter Barfod, to work toward their eventual publication.123 Barfod and German Kierkegaard enthusiast Hermann Gottsched completed their nine-volume selection of Kierkegaard’s journals, Af Søren Kierkegaards efterladte Papirer, in 1881.124 Within three decades of the completion of the Barfod-Gottsched edition, P. A. Heiberg began a fortyyear process, from 1909 to 1948, providing a more comprehensive edition, Søren Kierkegaards Papirer (hereafter, Papirer).125 The Papirer have been the twentieth century’s critical edition for hundreds of scholars’ unapologetic interpretation of Kierkegaard. This study follows in their footsteps, regarding the journals as invaluable to the study of Kierkegaard’s inner thoughts and influences behind his published works. As Prenter noted, without Kierkegaard’s journals, we would have little knowledge of the role Luther played in Kierkegaard’s authorship.126

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This study utilizes four primary sources for Kierkegaard’s journals. In English, Howard and Edna Hong’s twentieth-century six-volume set, Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers (Indiana University Press, 1967–1978) (hereafter, JP), is cited first. Also in English, for ease of reference, the twenty-first century’s critical edition, Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks (Princeton University Press, 2007–17) (hereafter, KJN), is cited second. In Danish, the twenty-first century’s critical edition, Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter (Copenhagen: Gads Forlag, 1997–2013) (hereafter, SKS), is cited third.127 JP is based on Søren Kierkegaard’s Papirer edited by P. A. Heiberg, as noted above, which includes eleven volumes in twenty tomes and served as the primary twentieth-century Danish source, and it is cited fourth. Kierkegaard’s journals signal which Luther sermons for us to read, often stating to which sermon he is referring. For example, Kierkegaard writes, “In his sermon on the Gospel for the Fourth Sunday in Advent, Luther himself says that every sermon begins with preaching the law (and this is indeed forever unchangeable).”128 The source of Luther sermons that Kierkegaard owned, read, and commented on was a two-volume 1828 Danish edition of Luther’s church and house postils entitled En christelig Postille, sammendragen af Dr. Morten Luthers Kirke- og Huuspostiller efter Benjamin Lindners tyske Samling udgiven I ny dansk Oversættelse af Jørgen Thisted (hereafter, Thisted).129 Of course, Kierkegaard does not comment on every sermon in Thisted, but from my research, Kierkegaard comments on sixty-five of them. On these sixty-five, Kierkegaard sometimes makes more than one comment. Sometimes the dates of these comments on the same sermon are years removed, evidencing a re-reading. Today, it is conventional knowledge among Luther scholars that not every sermon of Luther’s in his church and house postils came from his own pen.130 From the period of 1520 to 1527, Luther wrote out his own sermons and prepared them for the printer.131 These include the sermons from Advent to Easter of the church postils, but even these were revised and edited by Caspar Cruciger at the end of Luther’s life under Luther’s supervision.132 From 1527 to 1535, Stephan Roth served as Luther’s homiletic scribe, writing down the sermon as Luther preached it. Roth often omitted and added to these sermons, of which Luther knew and ambivalently applauded.133 With regard to the house postils from the years 1531 to 1535, while Luther delivered the postils from an outline, two stenographers, Veit Dietrich and Georg Rörer, took notes and later transcribed them into final form.134 Hence, there are two versions of the house postils from two stenographers. Thus, because of the editorial assistance of Roth and Cruciger and the stenography of Dietrich and Rörer, it is very difficult to prove the authenticity of the church and house postils as strictly Luther’s own.

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Some scholars have overestimated the significance that the above philology was unknown to Kierkegaard in the mid-nineteenth century.135 Regin Prenter worries, “Kierkegaard is only acquainted with Luther-texts, the authenticity of which is, according to the criteria of modern philology, furthermore, highly disputable, even in the original language.”136 But Luther scholar Robert Kolb assures, “Luther himself regarded the Wittenberg reform as a team effort. He entrusted tasks to others. Among them was the task of bringing his spoken works into print. He lived alongside his editors, for the most part, and was quite free in his criticism of his colleagues. If he had found the published versions of these sermons flawed, he would have said so.”137 Much more philologically significant is the fact that Kierkegaard was unaware that his edition of the postils (Thisted) was formidably abridged and unsupervised by Luther, which the scholarship has not accounted for. Thisted is a word-for-word Danish translation of volumes 7 and 8 of a 1741 and 1742 German edition of Luther’s works entitled Das nutzbareste aus denen gesamten Erbaulichen Schriften des seligen Herrn Martini Lutheri: in umstandlichen Auszugen alles desen was darinnen zur Erbauung dienlich seyn kan / mit noethigen und nutzlichen Registern versehe und mit einer Vorrede dem Druck ubergeben von Benjamin Lindnern (hereafter, Lindner).138 This study has uncovered that Lindner is a heavily abridged edition of the 1732 Leipzig Edition of Luther’s Works (hereafter, Leipzig).139 Given the evolution of these sources, chapter 2 unveils to what extent Kierkegaard’s copy of Luther’s postils is abridged and its significance in attenuating Kierkegaard’s Lutherbild. Through the lenses of Kierkegaard’s private and public discourse,140 this study thus utilizes four sources to examine each Luther sermon on which Kierkegaard commented. Thisted reveals the Danish in which Kierkegaard received Luther. Lindner reveals Luther’s German, which Thisted translated. Leipzig reveals what Lindner cut, pasted, and deleted from the then-critical edition Luther’s postils.141 Also, for ease of reference, this study cites the popular English edition of the church and house postils, namely, John Nicholas Lenker’s The Complete Sermons of Martin Luther (hereafter, Lenker), first.142 Illuminating what Luther’s sermons actually say, this study concretely reveals what Kierkegaard lauded, lanced, missed, and misjudged of Luther’s sermons. Conveying their dialectical concord, chapter 3 reveals Kierkegaard privately lauding Luther’s sermons when Kierkegaard discovers Luther preaching a “sigh.” Contrasted with groaning despair and crowing presumption, which one-sidedly isolate either Christian suffering or Christian salvation, respectively, a sigh hinges them together, securing a correct dialectical expression of Christian existence. Given his laud, chapter 4 reveals Kierkegaard privately lancing Luther’s dialectical aptitude when he senses Luther’s sermons crowing over Christian salvation but quelling Christian suffering. Consequently, Kierkegaard privately judged that Luther was to a

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degree responsible for his inheritors’ justification of “Jewish worldliness” and obfuscation of Christian discipleship. Correcting this one-sided crowing over Luther’s Redeemer, Kierkegaard in his public discourses dialectically hinges Christ the Prototype to Christ the Redeemer. Kierkegaard’s pressing Prototype anteriorly agitates and posteriorly perpetuates anxious need for redemption, securing sighs that do not take Luther’s Redeemer in vain. But by illuminating what Kierkegaard’s cursory reading of an abridged edition of Luther’s sermons missed, it is shown that Kierkegaard’s private lances regularly misjudge Luther, ironically revealing a dialectical concord Kierkegaard did not always appreciate. Examining Kierkegaard’s public discourse on Luther, chapter 5 divulges how Kierkegaard charitably cloaked his private lances of Luther to present a dialectically ideal Lutherbild to his Danish Lutheran public, but in doing so, he fortuitously portrayed Luther as the dialectician he actually was. Finally, while Luther’s medieval audience and Kierkegaard’s modern audience required them to accent different aspects of Christian suffering (Anfechtung/Anfægtelse), chapter 6 reveals Luther and Kierkegaard’s ultimate concord at the negative yet necessary role Christian suffering plays in securing a sighing relation to Christ. NOTES 1. I define “American Lutheran scholarship” as the gamut of Lutheran theology in its historical, systematic, exegetical, and practical aspects in its present-day American context. I highlight the descriptor “American” in contrast to continental Europe because the latter, especially during the early twentieth-century years of the Luther Renaissance and Dialectical Theology, saw an important confluence in the theology of Luther and Kierkegaard, which American Lutheran scholarship has not adequately observed. See, for example, Heinrich Bornkamm, Luther im Spiegel der deutschen Geistesgeschichte: Mit ausgewählten Texten von Lessing bis zur Gegenwart. 2nd ed., rev. and enl. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970), 95. 2. I define “modern Kierkegaard scholarship” as the gamut of Kierkegaard studies in its aesthetic, philosophical, and theological aspects. I highlight the descriptor “modern” for the same reason as noted above, for early twentieth-century scholarship significantly read Kierkegaard in light of his historic Lutheran context. 3. M. Jamie Ferreira, Love’s Grateful Striving: A Commentary on Kierkegaard’s Works of Love (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 11, prompts, “The more general question of Kierkegaard’s relation both to Luther’s thought and to the Lutheranism of his day is an important one and awaits comprehensive treatment.” 4. Jaroslav Pelikan, From Luther to Kierkegaard: A Study in the History of Theology (St. Louis: Concordia, 1950), 113–14. 5. See the title of the earliest English translation of the attack writings from 1854 to 1855: Søren Kierkegaard, Kierkegaard’s Attack Upon “Christendom,” trans. Walter Lowrie (Boston: Beacon, 1963).

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6. See, for example, Kierkegaard’s pseudonym, Johannes Climacus: “The undersigned, Johannes Climacus, who has written this book, does not make out that he is a Christian; for he is, to be sure, completely preoccupied with how difficult it must be to become one,” CUP 617. 7. M. Whitcomb Hess, “Browning and Kierkegaard as Heirs of Luther,” Christian Century 80 (June 19, 1963): 801, succinctly informs, “[Kierkegaard’s] was, in short, a battle for the biblical notion of faith against the Hegelian doctrine that man’s reason should take precedence over his faith.” 8. Jolita Pons, “On Imitating the Inimitable: Example, Comparison, and Prototype,” in International Kierkegaard Commentary: Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, vol. 15, ed. Robert L. Perkins (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2005), 171: “Although Kierkegaard insisted that his upbuilding discourses are not sermons they are nevertheless constructed like sermons in a sense that they take a particular biblical quotation as a starting point, use the biblical material extensively and deal with the problems of interpreting and understanding the Bible.” 9. Such is nearly impossible, given that “Along with Lessing and Socrates, and with Hegel too, of course, Luther is the thinker mentioned most in Kierkegaard’s writings.” Murray Rae, Kierkegaard and Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 172. 10. E.g., JP 3:2467; KJN 4, NB5:10; SKS 20, 375; Papirer IX A 11. JP 3:2512; KJN 7, NB15:111; SKS 23, 77; Papirer X.2 A 448. JP 3:2541; KJN 8, NB24:141; SKS 24, 414; Papirer X.4 A 394. JP 3:3153; KJN 7, NB20:14; SKS 23, 398; Papirer X.3 A 267. 11. Hermann Diem, “Kierkegaard’s Bequest to Theology,” trans. Thora Moulton, in A Kierkegaard Critique, ed. Howard A. Johnson and Niels Thulstrup (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 261. 12. Sylvia Walsh, Living Christianly: Kierkegaard’s Dialectic of Christian Existence (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), 6. 13. David Yoon-Jung Kim and Joel D. S. Rasmussen, “Martin Luther: Reform, Secularization, and the Question of His ‘True Successor,’” in Kierkegaard and the Renaissance and Modern Traditions: Tome II: Theology, ed. Jon Stewart, vol. 5 of Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009), 195–96. 14. Niels Thulstrup, “The Complex of Problems Called ‘Kierkegaard,’” trans. Margaret Grieve, in A Kierkegaard Critique, ed. Howard A. Johnson and Niels Thulstrup (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 287, advises not “to know Kierkegaard’s adversaries only through his own descriptions of them. This would be almost the same as trying to understand the thought of Aristotle and the scholastic philosophers only through Luther’s comments on them. A special detailed study is usually required if a genuine and thorough understanding is to be obtained not only of everything that Kierkegaard refuted but also of everything that he himself advocated.” 15. JP 3:2463; KJN 4, NB3:61; SKS 20, 274; Papirer VIII.1 A 465. 16. When Kierkegaard writes, “I have never really read anything by Luther,” he “meant that until then he was merely acquainted with Luther . . . because of his theological studies in a Protestant university and that he had not intensively studied any of Luther’s writings,” JP 3:p802. 17. JP 3:2465; KJN 4, NB4:153; SKS 20, 357; Papirer VIII.1 A 642.

Introduction

21

18. PV 17. 19. Martin Luther, En christelig Postille, sammendragen af Dr. Morten Luthers Kirke- og Huuspostiller efter Benjamin Lindners tyske Samling udgiven I ny dansk Oversættelse af Jørgen Thisted, 2 pts. (Copenhagen: Wahlske Boghandling, 1828) (hereafter cited in text as Thisted). 20. Martin Luther, Das nutzbareste aus denen gesamten Erbaulichen Schriften des seligen Herrn Martini Lutheri: in umstandlichen Auszugen alles desen was darinnen zur Erbauung dienlich seyn kan / mit noethigen und nutzlichen Registern versehe und mit einer Vorrede dem Druck ubergeben von Benjamin Lindnern, 9 vols. (Salfeld: Gottfried Böhmer, 1739–1742), (hereafter cited in text as Lindner). Thisted vols. 1 and 2 is a Danish translation of Lindner vols. 7 and 8, respectively. 21. Martin Luther, D. Martin Luthers Schrifften und Wercke. Ausgegangenen Sammlungen. 23 vols (Leipzig, 1729–1740) (hereafter cited in text as Leipzig). The church and house postils from which Lindner vols. 7 and 8 are composed are found in vols. 13–16 of Leipzig. 22. Viggo Mortensen, “Luther og Kierkegaard,” Kierkegaardiana 9 (1974): 163–95, provides the most comprehensive overview of most of the studies. 23. This is in contradistinction to the nineteenth-century studies of J. C. M. Ørum, Om Forholdet imellem Søren Kierkegaard og Luther: Iagttagelser af en Lægmand (Copenhagen: F. H. Elbe, 1858), who was unaware of Kierkegaard’s journal critique of Luther, and A. Listov, Morten Luther opfattet af Søren Kierkegaard: Et historisk Lejlighedsskrift (Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag, 1883), who preferably cites Kierkegaard’s praise of Luther, overlooking the journal critique. See Mortensen, “Luther og Kierkegaard,” 164–65. 24. Eduard Geismar, “Kierkegaard und Luther,” Monatschrift für Pastoraltheologie 25 (October–November 1929): 227–41. 25. Jean Brun, “Kierkegaard et Luther,” Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale 75 (July–September 1970): 301–8, follows a similar outline as Geismar but locates Kierkegaard and Luther’s convergence, amidst their many divergences, at their respective attacks upon a Christendom corrupted by money. 26. Geismar, “Kierkegaard und Luther,” 227. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid., 228. 31. Ibid. While Geismar’s understanding of Luther’s Theology of the Cross focuses upon Christian suffering, modern Lutheran scholarship sees the Theology of the Cross more broadly as a hermeneutical framework for knowing who God is and who we are through the lens of the cross, serving also as an orientation for theological criticism. See, for example, Robert Kolb, “Luther on the Theology of the Cross,” in The Pastoral Luther: Essays on Martin Luther’s Practical Theology, ed. Timothy J. Wengert (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 44. 32. Geismar, Kierkegaard und Luther, 228. 33. Ibid., 229. See Karl Holl, What Did Luther Understand by Religion? ed. James Luther Adams and Walter F. Bense, trans. Fred W. Meuser and Walter R. Wietzke (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), 80, 85.

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34. “Diese Bestimmungen passen genau auf Kierkegaard.” Geismar, “Kierkegaard und Luther,” 229. While Geismar senses corroboration between Kierkegaard’s values and Holl’s understanding of Luther’s theology, it should be noted that Holl’s interpretation of Luther was directly influenced by the late nineteenth-century German reception of Kierkegaard. See Craig Quentin Hinkson, “Luther and Kierkegaard: Theologians of the Cross,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 3 (March 2001): 28. 35. Geismar, “Kierkegaard und Luther,” 232. 36. Ibid., 231. 37. Ibid., 228. 38. Ibid., 240–41. 39. “Es ist die Ehre Luthers, dass er seine theologia crucis nie vergessen hat; es ist die Bedeutung Kierkegaards, dass er dem verweltlichen Christentum gegenüber diese theologia crucis mit unerbittlichem Ernst geltend gemacht hat.” Ibid., 228 (translation mine). 40. Ibid., 241. 41. N. H. Søe, “Geismar,” in The Legacy and Interpretation of Kierkegaard, ed. Niels Thulstrup and Marie Mikulova Thulstrup, vol. 8 of Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana (Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Boghandel, 1981), 215. 42. Geismar, “Kierkegaard und Luther,” 241: “Ob Kierkegaard diesem Feinde gegenüber Recht has, das muss der Einzelne entscheiden, und diese Entscheidung ist fur die Beurteilung seiner Theologie entscheidend,” (translation mine). 43. Johannes Sløk, “Kierkegaard and Luther,” trans. A. Roussing, in A Kierkegaard Critique: An International Selection of Essays Interpreting Kierkegaard, ed. Howard A. Johnson and Niels Thulstrup (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1962), 85, 87, 100. 44. Ibid., 86. 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid., 88–89. 47. Ibid., 92. 48. Ibid., 97. 49. “He approves our undertakings” was a motto for God’s approval of Enlightenment values and goals. 50. Sløk, “Kierkegaard and Luther,” 97, 99. 51. Ibid., 100. 52. Ernest B. Koenker, “Søren Kierkegaard on Luther,” in Interpreters of Luther: Essays in Honor of Wilhelm Pauck, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1968), 231–52. 53. Ibid., 236. 54. Ibid., 237. 55. Ibid., 250. 56. Ibid., 247. 57. Ibid., 232. 58. Ibid., 250. 59. Hermann Diem, Kierkegaard’s Dialectic of Existence, trans. Harold Knight (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1957), 158–85.

Introduction

23

60. Ibid., 9. 61. Ibid., 11–15. 62. Ibid., 11. 63. Ibid., 19. 64. Ibid., 16–21. 65. Ibid., 21. 66. Ibid., 38. It is important to recognize that Kierkegaard differentiated between paradoxical human truth and essential eternal truth. Kierkegaard did not doubt the existence of the latter, but he held that when eternal truth comes into relation with a finite human being, the relation is paradoxical. Thus, it should not be concluded that Kierkegaard, as an “existential” thinker, did not presuppose eternal truth. See ibid., 49–50. 67. Ibid., 163. 68. Ibid., 166. 69. Ibid., 163. 70. Ibid., 159. 71. Ibid., 185–86. 72. Regin Prenter, “Luther and Lutheranism,” in Kierkegaard and Great Traditions, ed. Niels Thulstrup and Marie Mikulova Thulstrup, vol. 6 of Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana (Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag, 1981), 133, 169. 73. Ibid., 158. 74. Ibid., 124. 75. Ibid., 130–31. 76. Ibid., 131. 77. Ibid., 168. 78. Ibid., 122. 79. Ibid., 123, 125. 80. Ibid., 160. 81. Ibid., 126. 82. Ibid. Prenter does not defend Luther via a reading of Luther’s sermons; instead, Prenter defends Luther via denouncing Kierkegaard’s cursory methodology. 83. Ibid. 84. Hinkson, “Luther and Kierkegaard,” 28. 85. See Henning Schröer, “Kierkegaard und Luther,” Kerygma und Dogma: Zeitschrift für theologische Forschung und kirchliche Lehre 30 (1984): 225–237. 86. Hinkson, “Luther and Kierkegaard,” 29. 87. Craig Quentin Hinkson, “Kierkegaard’s Theology: Cross and Grace: The Lutheran and Idealist Traditions in His Thought” (PhD diss., The University of Chicago, 1993). 88. Ibid., 19–20. 89. Ibid., 24–25. 90. Ibid., 27. 91. Ibid., 93. 92. Hinkson, “Luther and Kierkegaard,” 34–35. 93. Ibid., 35; Hinkson, “Kierkegaard’s Theology,” 30. 94. Hinkson, “Kierkegaard’s Theology,” 35.

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95. Ibid., 39–40. 96. Hinkson, “Luther and Kierkegaard,” 38. 97. Hinkson, “Kierkegaard’s Theology,” 53. 98. Ibid., 53–55. 99. Ibid., 55–94. 100. Ibid., 93. 101. Ibid., 292–93. 102. Ibid., 294–98. 103. Ibid., 324. 104. Ibid., 323. 105. Ibid., 328. 106. Ibid. 107. Ibid., 331. 108. Ibid., 336. 109. Ibid., 337. 110. Ibid. 111. Not only in Kierkegaard scholarship, but ironically the study of Luther’s sermons is largely missing in the history of Luther scholarship. Fred Meuser bemoans in Luther the Preacher (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1983), 10, “Literature on Luther the preacher is virtually non-existent in English. . . . In no language is there a definitive book on Luther the preacher. Yet that is the single most intimate point of contact between Luther and many of us preachers and hearers.” This issue is being rectified with the recent publication of Luther’s sermons in LW volumes 56–58, 67–69, 75–79. 112. JP 3:2541; KJN 8, NB24:141; SKS 24, 414; Papirer X.4 A 394. 113. Lev Shestov, Kierkegaard and the Existential Philosophy, trans. Elinor Hewitt (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1969), 244, goes so far as to unfairly misinform, “Kierkegaard had, by his own admission, read little of Luther, and, as we will recall, did not particularly like him.” 114. PV 17. 115. Hermann Deuser, “Kierkegaard and Luther: Kierkegaard’s ‘One Thesis,’” in The Gift of Grace: The Future of Lutheran Theology, ed. Niels Henrik Gregersen et al. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 207. 116. JP 6:6727; KJN 8, NB23:33; SKS 24, 221; Papirer X.4 A 33. 117. See again, “O, Luther Is Still the Master of Us All,” JP 3:2465; KJN 4, NB4:153; SKS 20, 357; Papirer VIII.1 A 642. 118. Diem, Kierkegaard’s Dialectic of Existence, 185–86. 119. JP 1:xiv. 120. Søren Kierkegaard, Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, ed. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn et al., 10 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007–17) (hereafter cited in text as KJN), 1: xiv. KJN excellently replicates Kierkegaard’s two-column format in print. 121. Diem, Kierkegaard’s Dialectic of Existence, 185–86. 122. KJN 1:vii–viii. 123. KJN 1:viii–ix. 124. KJN 1:x.

Introduction

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125. Søren Kierkegaard, Søren Kierkegaards Papirer, ed. P. A. Heiberg et al., 20 vols. (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1909–48) (hereafter cited in text as Papirer). 126. Prenter, “Luther and Lutheranism,” 131. 127. Søren Kierkegaard, Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter, ed. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn et al., 28 vols. (Copenhagen: Gads Forlag, 1997–2013) (hereafter cited in text as SKS). 128. JP 2:1857; KJN 6, NB12:177; SKS 22, 249; Papirer X.2 A 47. 129. Op. cit. 130. See Patrick Ferry, “Martin Luther on Preaching: Promises and Problems of the Sermon as a Source of Reformation and as an Instrument of the Reformation,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 54 (1990): 265–80. See also LW 75:xvii–xxiv. 131. Lenker 1:3; LW 75:xiv–xvi. 132. Lenker 1:4–5; LW 75:xxii–xxiv. 133. Lenker 1:4; LW 75:xvii–xix. 134. Lenker 5:14. 135. E.g., Schröer, “Kierkegaard und Luther,” 238, demonstrates Emanuel Hirsch’s concern that Kierkegaard is unaware of Luther’s sermons being edited by Cruciger et al. 136. Prenter, “Luther and Lutheranism,” 125. 137. Kolb, Robert, “‘The Noblest Skill in the Christian Church’: Luther’s Sermons on the Proper Distinction of Law and Gospel,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 71 (2007): 304. See also LW 75:xix. 138. Op. cit. 139. Op. cit. 140. The primary text utilized for Kierkegaard’s published writings is the critical edition of Kierkegaard’s writings in English, viz., Princeton University Press’s Kierkegaard’s Writings, translated by Howard and Edna Hong. Søren Kierkegaard, Kierkegaard’s Writings, 26 vols., trans. Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 1978–2000). As necessary, the original Danish is checked via Søren Kierkegaard’s Samlede Værker, 14 vols., ed. A. B. Drachman, J. L. Heiberg, and H. O. Lange (Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel Nordisk Forlag, 1901–06) (hereafter cited in text as SV), the edition the Hongs translated into English. 141. The present-day critical edition of Luther’s Works is the Weimar Edition (Martin Luther, D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, 90 vols. [Weimar: H. Böhlau, 1883–1993]) (hereafter cited in text as WA). Because Leipzig was the critical edition utilized to form Lindner and Thisted, this study does not cite Weimar when referencing the Luther sermons Kierkegaard read since Weimar played no role in forming Kierkegaard’s primary text. 142. Martin Luther, The Complete Sermons of Martin Luther, 7 vols. ed. John Nicholas Lenker, trans. John Nicholas Lenker et al. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000) (hereafter cited in text as Lenker). Lenker is based upon two German editions, namely, St. Louis-Walch (Martin Luther, Dr. Martin Luthers Sämmtliche Schriften, 23 vols. [St. Louis: Concordia, 1880–1910]) and Erlangen (Martin Luther, Dr. Martin Luthers Sämmtliche Werke, 26 vols. [Frankfurt am Main and Erlangen: C. Heyder, 1826–86]). Because Lindner is an amalgamation of the church and house postils from Leipzig, this study does not cite LW, which has not yet translated the house postils.

Chapter 1

Presumptuous and Pious Historical-Theological Backdrops

While there have been numerous exemplary studies of the broad historical background of Kierkegaard’s nineteenth-century Denmark in all its sociological, political, and philosophical facets,1 this chapter spotlights two historical-theological backdrops—one presumptuous and one pious—that together set the historical stage for Kierkegaard’s reading of a Danish edition of Luther’s sermons and publishing his own sermon-like discourses. These two nineteenth-century backdrops are the following: (1) Kierkegaard’s criticism that Danish State Lutheranism was taking Luther’s message and life in vain and (2) Denmark’s devotion to homiletic literature. TAKING LUTHER’S MESSAGE AND LIFE IN VAIN “I have wanted to prevent people in ‘Christendom’ from existentially taking in vain Luther and the significance of Luther’s life—I have wished, if possible, to contribute to preventing this.”2 As in its inception as a Lutheran state,3 Denmark followed and mirrored the primary movements in Lutheran Germany through Orthodoxy, Pietism, and the Enlightenment leading up to Kierkegaard’s nineteenth-century Lutheran Denmark.4 One of the last century’s most eminent Luther historians, Jaroslav Pelikan, and this century’s most eminent Kierkegaard historian, Bruce Kirmmse, both describe the history of Lutheranism as an oscillation between the Orthodox stress on right doctrine (faith) and the Pietist stress on right action (works).5 As the Kierkegaard scholar, Kirmmse, lauds that Luther possessed an “original fervor” that was able to hold these two elements together,6 the Luther scholar, Pelikan, lauds that Kierkegaard “made 27

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possible a recovery of the deep evangelical insights of the theology of Martin Luther.”7 Here, Pelikan and Kirmmse begin to uncover the essential relation of Kierkegaard to Luther. This relation is that Kierkegaard lauds Luther for his original historic capacity to hold these two elements of faith and works dialectically together in his message and life, and Kierkegaard lances anyone in Lutheranism who would obviate their tension, taking Luther’s message and life in vain.8 In the end for Kierkegaard, the root of the religious crisis of nineteenth-century Denmark, with all its many facets, was ultimately Danish State Lutheranism’s presumptuous abuse of Luther’s confident message, namely, the doctrine of justification by grace—through faith—without works. Kierkegaard perceived that his late Enlightenment age 300 years after Luther required not an abandonment of Luther’s message. Instead, in order to safeguard its existential authenticity, Luther’s message needed to be contemplated through the lens of Luther’s historical life for the sake of its existential appropriation by Kierkegaard’s countrymen: Present-day Christendom, at least that which I am talking about, adheres to Luther; it is another matter whether Luther could acknowledge it, whether the turn that Luther made cannot all to easily become a wrong road as soon as there is no Luther whose life makes the truth turn the truth. In any case, if someone wants to see whether there are some dubious aspects in the contemporary situation, it is certainly best to look back to Luther and the turn he made.9

Although Kierkegaard rarely references Luther prior to the beginning of his 1847 reading of Luther’s sermons, he still possessed both a secondhand and firsthand knowledge of Luther before this date. Regin Prenter informs, “Of course he possessed, like other university-trained theologians of his time, a certain secondhand knowledge of Luther and the Lutheran reformation.”10 But Craig Hinkson cautions, “At the time that SK studied theology at the University of Copenhagen the faculty was under the firm leadership of H. N. Clausen, a rationalist theologian whose contempt for Lutheran orthodoxy was but thinly veiled. As was the case at many Lutheran theology faculties during the early nineteenth century, few of Luther’s own writings were read.”11 Niels Thulstrup reveals the small stature of pre-Luther Renaissance Luther studies in Kierkegaard’s time: In the mid-19th century Luther did not play the same great role in German or Danish theological circles that he came to play a hundred years later. His works were indeed published, both in complete and selected editions, but it was characteristic of the selections that they adhered to certain principal Reformation writings from the 1520’s, examples of Luther’s interpretation of Scripture, and of his sermons. The interpretation of the Epistle of the Romans had not yet been rediscovered, and the writing on the bondage of the will was avoided.12

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Kierkegaard’s private library, though, did include the following: Luther’s Works in 10 volumes, ed. Otto von Gerlach; a selection in German of Lutheran apothegms in 4 volumes; the Table Talks; and a Danish edition of Luther’s church and house postils in 2 volumes, the subject of this study.13 A journal comment in 1845 evidences Kierkegaard’s having read a fair amount of Luther firsthand prior to his reading of the sermons in 1847: “Luther, as you know, was very shaken by a stroke of lightening which killed the friend at his side, but his words always sound as if the lightening were continually striking behind him.”14 Kierkegaard lauded and published similarly in 1846’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript, “Take appropriation away from the essentially Christian, and what is Luther’s merit then? But open his books. Note the strong pulse-beat of appropriation in every line; note it in the vibrant forward thrust of his whole style, which continually seems to have behind it that thunderstorm of terror that killed Alexius and created Luther.”15 Hence, it seems that Kierkegaard had read a fair amount of Luther firsthand prior to beginning his 1847 reading of Luther’s sermons, but Kierkegaard did not comment on these early readings as specifically and thoroughly as he did the sermons. Kierkegaard honored and employed Luther’s life as a hermeneutical lens through which to contemplate and safeguard Luther’s message. Kierkegaard especially focused on Luther’s early life—on the anxious conscience Luther originally bore as a Catholic monk attempting to merit God’s salvation through the external devotions of late medieval piety16 prior to his Tower Experience. Through his agonizing historical trial, Luther’s personal experience disallowed taking his discovered grace of God in vain. Thus, Kierkegaard resurrected and proffered an anxious conscience similar to Luther’s in order that Luther’s inheritors would not take Luther’s message of the grace of God in vain. Taking Luther’s Message in Vain Reared in a Lutheran land, Kierkegaard, like other Danes, possessed a knowledge of Luther’s message, namely, the doctrine of justification by grace through faith without works. For centuries, this central doctrine on the efficient means of salvation has been for Lutherans the “article upon which the church stands or falls.”17 Like Kierkegaard’s relation to Luther, Kierkegaard’s relation to this message of Luther could also be ambivalent, that is, Kierkegaard could be both lauding and lancing toward it. Laudably, like Luther, Kierkegaard localizes Luther’s doctrine of justification in the material cause of the concrete historical work of the Atonement of Christ the Redeemer.18 Although Kierkegaard lived on the backside of the Enlightenment, when philosophers and theologians regularly argued positively and negatively over the

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historical veracity of the Bible, Kierkegaard did not treat the Bible’s contents as phenomena to be clinically probed or verified rationally or empirically. Instead, Kierkegaard, like Luther,19 writes about the contents of the Bible, the Atonement, and Christ the Redeemer not systematically or objectively or apologetically, but unapologetically and homiletically for the soteriological and existential need of the hearer. For example: What is the Redeemer but a substitute who puts himself completely in your place and in mine, and what is the comfort of Redemption but this, that the substitute, atoning, puts himself completely in your place and in mine! Thus, when punitive justice here in the world or in judgment in the next seeks the place where I, a sinner, stand with all my guilt, with my many sins—it does not find me. I no longer stand in that place; I have left it and someone else stands in my place, someone who puts himself completely in my place. I stand saved beside this other one, bes 12ide him, my Redeemer, who put himself completely in my place—for this accept my gratitude, Lord Jesus Christ!20

Kierkegaard prays similarly, bearing out Luther’s doctrine of justification without works: “O Redeemer, by your holy suffering and death you have made satisfaction for everyone and everything; no eternal salvation either can or shall be earned—it has been earned.”21 Hence, Kierkegaard had no qualms with the truth of Luther’s message and did not call for a reformation in Lutheran doctrine. “Lutheran doctrine is excellent, is the truth,”22 Kierkegaard lauded. But Kierkegaard lanced Lutheran doctrine not for its content but for the existentially distancing effect the proclamation of Lutheran doctrine as an objective truth was having on its Lutheran hearers: “The doctrine in the established Church and its organization are very good. But the lives, our lives—believe me, they are mediocre. . . . The proclamation of the doctrine is done at too great a distance, Christianity is not a power in actuality, our lives are only slightly touched by the doctrine.”23 While Luther’s message of the doctrine of justification by grace through faith without works is Christianity’s main course, it is not to be introduced as a matter of course.24 In his lateEnlightenment Lutheran landscape, Kierkegaard pinpointed that the Lutheran doctrine of justification “without works,” if proclaimed as an objective truth to which the intellect rationally assents, is susceptible to being abused and breeding antinomianism.25 A stance that focuses objectively on the efficient means of salvation through grace and faith without works has the existential potential of creating a presumptuous sophistry that overconfidently crows, “Grace alone does everything, they say, and so everything can remain as it was before.”26 Kierkegaard illustrates this presumptuous antinomian logic of one-sidedly regarding the doctrine of justification: “It’s one or the other,” says man. “If it is to be works—fine, but then I must also ask for the

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legitimate yield I have coming from my works, so that they are meritorious. If it is to be grace—fine, but then I must also ask to be free from works—otherwise it surely is not grace. If it is to be grace and nevertheless works, that is indeed foolishness.”27 Not desiring to abandon the truth of Luther’s message, Kierkegaard rebukes the above sophistry with his dialectical interpretation of “true Lutheranism”: “Yes, that is indeed foolishness; that would also be true Lutheranism; that would indeed be Christianity. Christianity’s requirement is this: your life should express works as strenuously as possible; then one thing more is required—that you humble yourself and confess: But my being saved is nevertheless grace.”28 Hence, however earnest Luther originally was in proclaiming his laudable message of salvation by grace through faith without works, Kierkegaard lanced that the doctrine of justification “without works,” assented to noetically, was susceptible to breeding religious presumption in the lives of Luther’s inheritors, and the proof for Kierkegaard was in the floppy pudding of nineteenth-century Danish Lutheranism 300 years after Luther.29 “The tragedy of Christendom,” Kierkegaard lanced, “is clearly that we have removed the dialectical element from Luther’s doctrine of faith, so that it has become a cloak for sheer paganism and epicureanism”30—“a fig leaf for the most unchristian shirking.”31 At the core, Danish Lutheranism was abusing Luther’s message of the doctrine of justification “without works” as justification for doing whatever they pleased, namely, as a God-ordained justification for the bourgeois Enlightenment pursuit of happiness. Thus, because of the self-serving sophistry of its one-sided view of Luther’s message, Kierkegaard judged that his nineteenth-century Danish State Lutheranism was taking Luther’s message in vain. Taking Luther’s Life in Vain Along with his knowledge of Luther’s message, Kierkegaard, like many Lutherans still today, also possessed some knowledge of Luther’s life. Kierkegaard looked to his and his countrymen’s common knowledge of Luther’s life as a corrective for his Lutheran country’s taking of Luther’s message in vain. A helpful way to understand how Kierkegaard’s nemesis, the nineteenth-century late Enlightenment, took Luther’s life in vain is to discern on which popular picture from Luther’s life the late Enlightenment and Kierkegaard focused.32 Though by no means his most significant act, the most popular image from Luther’s life is his nailing the Ninety-five Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg in 1517 on the subsidiary issue of indulgences. More significantly than the “Ninety-five Nailing,” two other images in the legacy of Luther’s life duke it out for second place in the minds of his inheritors. One is Luther’s much-debated “Tower Experience” in which he experienced a conversion on coming to terms with Romans 1:17. Out of

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his anxious struggles that led up to this event, his doctrine of justification by grace through faith without works was birthed. The other image is Luther at the Diet of Worms in 1521 standing before the Holy Roman Emperor, papal legates, and a panoply of others avowing, “Here I stand!” Here, Luther would not, under the compulsion of excommunication and possible death, recant his controversial writings propounding his doctrine of justification. The Enlightenment’s Confident Diet of Worms The Enlightenment and the nineteenth century preferred this confident Diet of Worms image from Luther’s life. The Enlightenment presumed that individuals would be enlightened and free if they would attune themselves to an inherent and universal philosophical objectivity that each individual latently possessed, rather than obsequiously conforming to medieval church and state hierarchies. If this would occur on a popular scale, then society’s happiness and/or teleological destiny would necessarily proliferate. To the Enlightenment, the Diet of Worms image portrayed Luther as the progenitor of the Enlightenment—an individual taking his stand against hierarchical hegemonic structures based on individual, but universal, conscience—avowing, “Here I Stand,” a century and a score before Descartes’s “Cogito ergo sum.” It is important to see Luther’s final words at the diet: “Unless I can be instructed and convinced with evidence from the Holy Scriptures or with open, clear, and distinct grounds and reasoning—and my conscience is captive to the Word of God—then I cannot and will not recant, because it is neither safe nor wise to act against conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me! Amen.”33 Nineteenth-century scholarship, while exalting this image from Luther’s life, took it with a grain of salt. They held that Luther, as a child of medieval times, was still naively caught up in medieval superstitions, that is, his captivity to the Word of God.34 The Enlightenment, on the other hand, was an educated age for grown-ups, sublimating parental dogma from above.35 For enlightened adults, the truths of the Bible were true not because the Bible says so, but because their own reason could validate them. The Enlightenment looked sympathetically at Luther in this image, for he was not to blame for the naivety of his medieval bondage to Scripture, which he would not have held had he lived and progressed 200–300 years later. Looking at this image, the Enlightenment took the focus off of the phrase “My conscience is captive to the Word of God” and focused on that “it is neither safe nor wise to act against conscience.” Historically extracting the former, Luther is left only with his individual conscience, against which neither pope, nor council, nor any hegemonic structure could rightfully impose. Adding a little fig leaf to this image, covering Luther’s scriptural loins, out of which his doctrine of justification was birthed, this censored image was the icon

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of German Enlightenment religion.36 Taking a stand against medieval hegemony—and freed from his bondage to ancient Scripture—Luther paved the way for the Enlightenment worship of the modern conscience.37 Kierkegaard’s Diffident Tower Experience While Kierkegaard no doubt upheld the value of the individual conscience,38 his preferred image from Luther’s life is not the above confident image of Luther at the Diet of Worms—the free modern conscience—but the diffident image of Luther’s Tower Experience—the captive anxious conscience. Read Luther’s description of the latter experience, and you will see why: I was seized with the conviction that I must understand (St. Paul’s) letter to the Romans. I did not have a heart of stone, but to that moment one phrase in chapter 1(:17) stood in my way. I hated the idea, “in it the righteousness of God is revealed,” for I had been taught to understand the term, “the righteousness of God,” in the formal or active sense, as the philosophers called it, according to which God is righteous and punishes the unrighteous sinner. I lived without reproach as a monk, but my conscience was disturbed to its very depths and all I knew about myself was that I was a sinner. I could not believe that anything that I thought or did or prayed satisfied God. I did not love, nay, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners. Certainly, and with intense grumbling (perhaps even blasphemy), I was angry with God. . . . At last, meditating day and night and by the mercy of God, I gave heed to the context of the words, “In the righteousness of God is revealed, as it is written, He who through faith is righteous shall live.” Then I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that through which the righteous live by a gift of God, namely by faith. . . . Here I felt as if I were entirely born again and had entered paradise itself through gates that had been flung open.39

More than Luther’s confident modern conscience freed from medieval hegemony, what Kierkegaard most appreciates about Luther is his presupposing anxious conscience, that is, his diffident struggle with a righteous God, which historically directed Luther to this conversion point and his subsequent message. Luther’s anxious conscience before God paralleled Kierkegaard’s existential concerns that arise out of anxiety, which are more primary to being a human being than being a homo sapiens,40 for Luther’s message was not the result of objective sapience but an anxious concern for his relation with God. When Kierkegaard is lauding Luther instead of lancing him, much of Kierkegaard’s positive comments regard the respect he has for Luther’s life, namely, for the anxious conscience he earnestly bore, out of which Luther’s message, the doctrine of justification, was birthed. Kierkegaard lauds this secondhand knowledge of Luther’s life:

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Let us see how things went with Luther! After about 20 years of fear and trembling and spiritual trial (Anfœgtelse) so terrible that—note this well!—there is hardly one individual in a generation who experiences anything like it, his human nature reacted, to put it this way, and this fear and trembling was transfigured into the most blissful and happy confidence and joy—wonderful!41

Contrary to the Enlightenment’s censored Diet of Worms Lutherbild, exalting the confident freedom of the modern conscience, Kierkegaard’s Lutherbild is the Tower Experience, applauding the presupposing diffidence of an anxious conscience before God: What Luther says is excellent, the one thing needful and the sole explanation— that this whole doctrine (of the Atonement and in the main all Christianity) must be traced back to the struggle of the anguished conscience. Remove the anguished conscience, and you may as well lock the churches and convert them into dance halls. The anguished conscience understands Christianity.42

For Kierkegaard, religious truth is not a verity the modern conscience can freely and objectively confirm without existential struggle. Instead, an anxious conscience captive to the Word of God, as exemplified in Luther’s life, is Kierkegaard’s existential presupposition for religious truth. “The discipline which Luther underwent (in fact, it was carried to an immoderate degree) is precisely what guarantees that what he says about his inwardness can be the truth.”43 Through the lens of the Tower Experience, Kierkegaard rips off the fig leaf from the Enlightenment’s Lutherbild, exposing again Luther’s anxious conscience captive to the Word of God. Although censored by the Enlightenment, it is more historically accurate to recognize that it was Luther’s anxious conscience captive to the Word of God that gave him the courage to confidently say “Here I stand” in the first place. From the perspective of the Tower Experience, Kierkegaard loved Luther—the uncensored Luther—exposed with all of Luther’s original historical anxiety out of which the doctrine of justification was birthed, not a Luther censored by the Enlightenment’s historical criticism. Appreciating the diffident anxious conscience from his knowledge of Luther’s life aided Kierkegaard in perceiving how to protect Luther’s confident message from being taken in vain by a late-Enlightenment Lutheran mentality. The confidence of Luther’s message needed to be dialectically tensioned with the diffidence of Luther’s life. If Luther’s confident message is presupposed without the presupposition of Luther’s diffident life, as Kierkegaard diagnosed his nineteenth-century audience, then the doctrine of justification is presumptuously abused as a justification for pleasurable secularity since, it is perfunctorily held, salvation is a gift of grace without works. Kierkegaard journaled, “Here again we see how infinitely important

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it is in respect to the essentially Christian to take the proclaimer along. For they took Luther’s doctrine about faith—but Luther’s life, that they forgot.”44 Thus, Kierkegaard wished the inheritors of Luther’s message to be refined in the fire of an anxious conscience similar to Luther’s life. The Lutheran Loss of Luther’s Life But even prior to Enlightenment’s fig leaf, and perhaps more harmful, was the misappropriation of Luther’s anxious conscience by Luther and Lutherans themselves. Luther’s was an anxious conscience so terrified for his eternal salvation in the face of a terrifying God who judged his every work as eternally damnable. Only the Gospel of the full merit of Christ’s atonement could assuage his anxious conscience. And this assuagement of his anxious conscience was not just a one-time Tower Event, but was a fight (Anfechtung) the melodramatic Martin Luther fought with God his whole life.45 But as early as the late 1520s, ten to fifteen years after the Tower Event,46 Luther himself was astonished at the lack of kindred-anxious consciences like his and the abundance of spiritless indifference in the churches claiming to follow his way.47 The Small Catechism, which he wrote not for anxious consciences but for the bovine and the porcine,48 anatomized the faith into a mnemonic form to impress on the minds of the laity. While an incisive solution for the time, his didactic catechism accidentally had the long-term effect of setting the historic post-Luther Lutheran stage for accounting faith as an objective assent to correct doctrine, rather than the subjective encounter of an anxious conscience with the Word of God. The earliest Lutheran doctrinal statements had this long-term objective effect. The memorized Small Catechism was for laity at the bottom. The preached Large Catechism was for pastors in the middle. And the syllogistic Loci Communes of Philip Melanchthon was for theologians at the top. But without a Lutheran’s subjective experience paralleling Luther’s heightened awareness of his anxious conscience before God, from the laity to the theologians, anxious faith often became sublimated into abstract recitation of rote formulae with little appropriation to personal existence. Just a few years after the catechism, the Augsburg Confession and its Apology, both by Philip Melanchthon, Luther’s dearest colleague, proclaimed again and again the Gospel’s value in assuaging anxious consciences.49 But this and the above doctrinal confessions of the Lutheran church can leave the unintended existential impression on Lutherans, from laity to theologians, that an anxious conscience ought never occur in believers who have faith, fantastically believing that to believe means to not be afflicted by God (Anfechtung) with the same doubt by which Luther was afflicted his whole life.50 Although present in Luther’s own life and psychology, some of Luther’s and Lutheranism’s earliest doctrinal documents had the adverse effect on Lutherans of

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not only inhibiting the phenomenology of an anxious conscience but also preventing its occurrence in persons who have never recognized a heightened awareness of it in the first place.51 Kierkegaard wrote: The error from which Luther turned was an exaggeration with regard to works. And he was entirely right; he did not make a mistake—a person is justified solely and only by faith. . . . But already the next generation slackened; it did not turn with horror away from exaggeration with regard to works (in which exaggeration Luther lived) toward faith. No, it made the Lutheran position into doctrine, and in this way faith also diminished in vital power.”52

And Kierkegaard perceived that what occurred in the generation after Luther continued up into his day, as well: “In our day . . . our entire way of life is calculated to prevent the mind from gaining the interiority that would enable such psychical conditions53 to become characteristic.”54 Thus, Kierkegaard wanted to inculcate this missing anxious conscience, similar to what Luther experienced in his life, in the Lutherans who would inherit Luther’s message. Without this presupposing anxious conscience, Lutheran reasoning could look blithely like the following: “Why should we be anxious? Since our father Luther through the history of his own anxious conscience discovered the Gospel for us, we are therefore freed from needing to subjectively experience a similar anxious conscience. Our sole role now is to merely doctrinally protect what Luther discovered for us in our stead and objectively ascent to it as true.” But again, for Kierkegaard, religious truth is not a fact to which a conscience can freely and objectively ascent à la the Enlightenment without existential struggle. “The anguished conscience understands Christianity.”55 Kierkegaard argues against anxiety-free religious objectivity: But why, then, do we not want to understand that there is this kind of difference when someone (Luther, for example), after having fasted and disciplined the flesh for twenty years and consequently conscious of being able to do this and able at any time to do this if necessary, says: No, it does not depend on this—and when we say the same thing, we who have not even tried. Are there no grounds for being suspicious about oneself if one has not tried at all?56

Thus, Kierkegaard wished each inheritor of Luther’s message to begin at an existential locus similar to where Luther began, not where Luther left off.57 Without the fires of a similar spiritual trial, the individual does not experience the deep existential need for grace for himself. And without this subjective presupposition, Kierkegaard concluded that the Lutheran inheritance of Luther’s confident message can easily become a frightful lie, lacking a personal experience similar to Luther’s diffident life:

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In this way and only this way (for this is true Christianity) is Christianity to be presented, this extremely powerful resource and reassurance which Luther, in fear and trembling and spiritual trials, fighting unto death, discovered in the extremity of his anxiety [Angst]—this is to be proclaimed as the one and only means for all, and yet there is not one individual in each generation who is put to the test in this way—yet if we take this presupposition away, this frightful antecedent, this fear and trembling and spiritual trial (Anfægtelse), it all too easily becomes a lie, a frightful lie.58

DENMARK’S DEVOTION TO HOMILETIC LITERATURE Even though Kierkegaard judged his state Lutheran church to be taking Luther’s message and life in vain, a pious practice of reading published sermons and other devotional literature was common in Kierkegaard’s nineteenth-century Denmark, of which Kierkegaard approved and practiced himself. That Kierkegaard owned and read a Danish translation of Luther’s sermons and published his own sermon-like discourses for the Danish public to read fits directly into this pious Lutheran landscape.59 While the Lutheran theological faculty at the University of Copenhagen of Kierkegaard’s day was becoming increasingly Rationalist under the headship of rector H. N. Clausen60 and increasingly Hegelian under the rising popularity of Professor H. L. Martensen,61 two counteracting historical factors especially nurtured Denmark’s abiding devotion to homiletic literature: (1) Herrnhut pietism and (2) Bishop Jakob Peter Mynster, the Primate of the Danish Lutheran Church. In the midst of a Copenhagen quickly secularizing under the influence of the Enlightenment, Kierkegaard’s father, Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard, reared his children, Søren being the youngest of seven, under the auspices of both of these counteracting factors, both of which made indelible marks on Kierkegaard’s theology, devotional reading practice, and life. Herrnhut Pietism While Lutheranism had been the official state religion since 1537,62 as in Germany, German pietism had significant influence in Denmark’s geographically adjacent Jutland in the eighteenth century.63 In 1731, Herrnhut pietism’s charismatic representative Count Ludwig von Zinzendorf made an in-person appeal to King Christian VI for Herrnhutism to become the officially sponsored strain of pietism in Denmark, yet the king chose the more moderate and clergy-oriented Halle pietism over the more radical and lay-oriented Herrnhutism.64 Nevertheless, the Herrnhut strain thrived among the less-monitored peasants in rural Jutland.

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Søren’s father was a shepherd from rural Jutland and a Herrnhut Pietist. With many other peasants from Denmark’s Golden Age of the early nineteenth century, Michael left behind the dark Jutland heath for the enlightened Copenhagen harbor as a teenager, where he became rags-to-riches wealthy as a cloth merchant. Although he left behind his Jutland rags, Michael never left his Jutland faith, joining the Herrnhut Congregation of Moravian Brothers shortly after arriving in Copenhagen.65 His whole life, Michael was haunted by the emotional extremes of Herrnhut piety and impressed the same upon young Søren.66 Herrnhutism from Zinzendorf onward especially imprinted the evocative image of a bloody and wounded Jesus, “the Man of Pain,”67 upon the experiential piety of its hearers early, even in childhood.68 Søren describes, in third person, his own young embossment of the same Herrnhut image by his father: Once upon a time there was a man. As a child he had been strictly brought up in the Christian religion. He had not heard much of what children ordinarily hear about the little baby Jesus, about angels and the like. On the other hand, the Crucified One had been all the more frequently depicted to him; therefore this picture was the one and only impression he had of the Savior. Although a child, he was already old like an old man. This picture followed him throughout his life; he never became young again, and he never lost sight of this picture.69

While Michael’s Herrnhutism imprinted the indelible and ignominious image of Christ crucified on young Søren, Michael also imprinted the Herrnhut practice of reading published sermons and other devotional literature, which also made an indelible mark that remained with Søren throughout his life. Herrnhutism from Zinzendorf onward especially practiced the art of delivering sermon-like speeches to the Moravian brotherhood and publishing them for distribution to other Moravian centers throughout the world.70 Zinzendorf’s sermon-like speeches were called “Reden” rather than “Predigten” because Zinzendorf was not ordained and therefore did not have the stategiven authority in Germany to preach.71 But Herrnhutism’s egalitarian, layfocused, and oftentimes anticlerical approach was suited to Reden delivered by laity over against Predigten delivered by authorized clergy. Following Zinzendorf’s example, Reden delivered by lay preachers became the dominant form of preaching in Herrnhutism into Kierkegaard’s time.72 Attending the Moravian meetings with his father on Sunday evenings, Kierkegaard was regularly exposed to the Reden (“Taler” in Danish) of lay preachers not authorized but tolerated by the Danish state Lutheran church. This regular experience with lay-read but sermon-like Reden/Taler may have played a significant influence on Kierkegaard’s practice of being a lay person who composed sermon-like discourses.73

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Common also to Herrnhut meetings would be recited selections from the Bible, the works of Luther, and other Pietist authors, such as Johann Arndt.74 Jørgen Bukdahl briefly notes that Jørgen Thisted’s edition of Luther’s sermons, which is the focus of this study, was the principal devotional book of the Herrnhut at this time.75 Søren Kierkegaard carried out this Moravian practice in his own lifelong private reading of devotional literature. Kierkegaard began each day reading from the New Testament, but he relied on other spiritual guides for the proper interpretation of the New Testament.76 As Kierkegaard regarded his “upbuilding” works as his most important, his private theological reading tended to focus on the “upbuilding” works of other theologians, such as sermons and devotional literature, as opposed to doctrinal treatises.77 As noted by Prenter, although Kierkegaard possessed a thorough collection of Luther’s works, Kierkegaard’s journals on his reading of Luther are almost exclusively from Luther’s sermons.78 Kierkegaard, of course, read the upbuilding literature of more than just Luther. Like his Moravian brethren, Kierkegaard privately read and commented on several published Pietist authors, including Arndt,79 Tersteegen,80 Spener, and Franke.81 Kierkegaard also selectively read from the late medieval mystics and the early church fathers, bypassing the doctrinal works of medieval scholasticism altogether.82 Kierkegaard scholar Marie Mikulova Thulstrup notes that Kierkegaard’s selective reading of the devotional literature of other spiritual authors was a consistent and conscious search to find not the noetic, but the existential—the implementation of doctrine into life—confirmed in Kierkegaard’s quest for authentic Christianity.83 Bishop Jakob Peter Mynster While Søren’s father, Michael, took him to the Moravian Herrnhut meetings on Sunday evenings, this was dialectically balanced with taking Søren on Sunday mornings to the state Lutheran services of Jakob Peter Mynster, who became the Bishop of Zealand and the Primate of Denmark in 1834, at the Lutheran cathedral of Denmark in Copenhagen, Our Lady Church.84 In the midst of the extremes of the Rationalism of the academy and the piety of the Herrnhut, Copenhagen’s Mynster was not only his own person but also a dialectical figure able to appeal to both extremes. While not a supporter of the Hegelian Geist rising and reigning in Copenhagen’s humanities and theology faculties, which he believed was a fad, Mynster’s intellectual sermons combined the ethical rationalism of Kantian duty and the supernaturalism of Schleiermacherian intuition, appealing to intellectuals and the wealthy.85 As the conservative Primate of Danish State Lutheranism, Mynster was not a backer of the anticlerical Herrnhut or the nationalistic church reform movement of N. F. S. Grundtvig,86 but Mynster’s intellectual sermons were

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comforting and delivered in a charismatic and heartfelt manner that appealed to lower classes as well.87 “Mynster’s theology strived for a consensus, which sought to contain both rationalist and pietists within the framework of the church.”88 Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard, being not only of Herrnhut affections but also of a brilliant lay-intellectual, was the perfect confluence of Mynster’s paradigmatic parishioner. Although Michael was not formally educated at the university, he was a voracious reader of German philosophers such as Christian Wolff and often entertained Mynster and other theological elites in his home for philosophical discussion when Søren was young.89 Under his father’s religious headship, Søren was raised on the sermons of Mynster not only in church on Sunday mornings but also in the home. “I was brought up on Mynster’s sermons—by my father.”90 The Kierkegaards, though, were not unique in Denmark in their private home reading of Mynster’s published sermons, which were read across the country.91 Before his appointment in Copenhagen, while still a young pastor in rural Spjellerup, Mynster quickly became famous in Denmark for his Spjellerup Sermons, an 1809 publication of his twelve best sermons, followed a year later by the successful reception of a homiletics textbook, Remarks on the Art of Preaching.92 Only a year later in 1811, Mynster was appointed first curate at Copenhagen’s cathedral.93 In this position, he enjoyed a packed house as a popular preacher94 and continued to publish collections of his sermons throughout his calling, including publishing a collection every year from 1846 to 1853, the year before his death.95 Along with his sermons, Mynster published a devotional book, Observations on the Doctrines of the Christian Faith,96 which was found in the majority of Danish homes during this period.97 Mynster thus became Denmark’s most famous preacher in both the pulpit and the home. Reading Mynster’s sermons aloud at home with his father also left an indelible mark on Søren that remained with him his whole life. Søren reports about his father: “He promised me a rix-dollar if I read one of Mynster’s sermons aloud for him, and four rix-dollars if I would write up the sermon I had heard in church.”98 Similar to the “addressive” and “responsive” Herrnhut practice of egalitarian conversation occurring after being stimulated by the Reden,99 the Kierkegaards followed their reading of Mynster’s sermons with conversation about what the sermons meant to each of them personally.100 Kierkegaard continued this devotional practice of reading one of Mynster’s sermons every Sunday throughout his life,101 even sharing the same practice with his fiancée Regine when they were betrothed.102 But just because Kierkegaard continued reading Mynster’s sermons throughout his life does not mean he consistently lauded Mynster.103 Like his relation to Luther and Luther’s sermons, Kierkegaard also had an ambivalent relation to Mynster. While Kierkegaard always showed due regard for “his father’s pastor,”104 Kierkegaard had essentially two critiques of Mynster’s

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sermons, both of which revolved around Mynster’s omission of Christian suffering. The first critique concerns the content of Mynster’s sermons, namely, their frequent abolition of Christian suffering, accommodating Christianity to bourgeois secularity, “making Christianity into ‘the gentle comfort.’”105 The ever-kenotic Kierkegaard crucified Mynster’s sentimental sermons: “Who would ever think on reading Mynster’s sermons that becoming a Christian is a life-and-death battle, a protracted life-and-death struggle, full of the most dreadful episodes.”106 Kierkegaard, on two occasions, contrasted Luther’s and Mynster’s sermons in preference for Luther: Somewhere in his sermons Luther declares that three things belong to a Christian life: (1) faith, (2) works of love, (3) persecution for this faith and for these works of love.107 Take Mynster now. He has reduced faith oriented toward tension and inwardness. He has set legality in the place of works of love. And persecution he has completely abolished.108 Some Sunday let Mynster, instead of preaching himself, take one of Luther’s sermons, particularly one of the characteristic ones, and read it aloud—and the whole thing will sound like a satire on Mynster, unless he hurries and makes a little admission concerning himself.109

Although critical of Mynster’s content, Kierkegaard’s second critique concerned not the content of Mynster’s sermons per se, but Mynster’s avoidance of practicing on Mondays what he preached on Sundays: “If on Monday Bishop Mynster had not himself worldly-sagaciously avoided taking the consequences of his Sunday sermon, if he had ventured an existence and actions that corresponded to the rhetoric of the Sunday discourse instead of availing himself of different models—his life would also have come to look entirely different.”110 Thus, oftentimes Kierkegaard had no qualms with the content of Mynster’s sermons and also even lauded Mynster’s evocative aesthetic abilities as a preacher.111 But Kierkegaard scrutinized Mynster’s existential motives, which looked more like securing a good living for oneself112 rather than following Jesus in suffering. While lauding the content of Mynster’s sermons, Kierkegaard lanced Mynster in comparison with the existential earnestness of Søren’s father: I was brought up on Mynster’s sermons . . . by my father, a simple, unassuming, earnest, and rigorous man to whom it never in the world occurred that one should not imitate what was read. If I had been brought up by Mynster, I of course would have found out on Monday, Tuesday, etc., the weekdays, that one is not to be a fanatic who goes and promptly imitates in that way.113

Hence, although Kierkegaard had an ambivalent relation to Mynster, sometimes critical of the message of Mynster’s sermons and sometimes lauding

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of the content but lancing of Mynster’s life, Kierkegaard piously continued throughout his life to devotionally read the sermons of his father’s pastor: “Christianity is a unity of gentleness and rigorousness. . . . This is also Christianity according to Mynster’s most remarkable and to me unforgettable preaching, which I have read, do read, and will read again and again to my upbuilding. But then is it not also Christianity to act accordingly?”114 It is, of course, beyond the scope of this study on the content of the Luther sermons Kierkegaard read to also study the content of Mynster’s sermons, and such a complete study of Mynster’s sermons has yet to be commenced. The purpose of this chapter, though, was to spotlight the historical nineteenthcentury Danish devotional reading practice, influenced by the confluence of Herrnhut pietism and J. P. Mynster, both of which were deeply influential on the piety of nineteenth-century Denmark and Kierkegaard himself. This common reading practice, together with Kierkegaard’s adjudication that his Danish Lutheran church was taking Luther’s message and life in vain unfurl the backdrops and set the stage for Kierkegaard’s opening of Martin Luther’s sermons. NOTES 1. See especially Merold Westphal, Kierkegaard’s Critique of Reason and Society (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987); John W. Elrod, Kierkegaard and Christendom (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981); and Alastair Hannay, Kierkegaard: The Arguments of the Philosophers (London: Routledge, 1982). 2. PV 17. 3. In 1537, Luther’s Wittenberg pastor, Johannes Bugenhagen, assisted Christian III in Denmark’s abolition of Catholicism and introduction of Lutheranism. To this day, Lutheranism remains the official state religion of Denmark. Martin Schwarz Lausten, A Church History of Denmark, trans. Frederick H. Cryer (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002), 110–11. 4. See Conrad Bergendoff, The Church of the Lutheran Reformation: A Historical Survey of Lutheranism (St. Louis: Concordia, 1967), 159, 179. 5. Pelikan, From Luther to Kierkegaard, 115, especially bemoans the Orthodox strain of Lutheranism: “Melanchthonianism, Orthodoxy, Rationalism, and Hegelianism all sought a comprehensive rational system. To that extent they all constitute a misinterpretation of Luther.” 6. Bruce H. Kirmmse, Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 28. 7. Pelikan, From Luther to Kierkegaard, 113–14. 8. As I shall demonstrate in chapter 4, Kierkegaard even lanced Luther when Kierkegaard judged that Luther was obviating this tension. 9. JFY 193.

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10. Prenter, “Luther and Lutheranism,” 126, 11. Hinkson, “Kierkegaard’s Theology,” 2, 12. Niels Thulstrup, “Theological and Philosophical Studies,” in Kierkegaard’s View of Christianity, ed. Niels Thulstrup and Marie Mikulova Thulstrup, vol. 1 of Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana (Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag, 1978), 46. 13. Simon D. Podmore, “The Lightning and the Earthquake: Kierkegaard on Luther’s Anfechtung,” Heythrop Journal 47 (2006): 575. 14. JP 3:2461; KJN 2, JJ:380; SKS 18, 267; Papirer VI A 108. 15. CUP 366. 16. E.g., masses and vigils, devotions to saints and pilgrimages to their shrines, the penitential system with its indulgences, and the world of monasticism. See Scott Hendrix, “Martin Luther’s Reformation of Spirituality,” in Harvesting Martin Luther’s Reflections on Theology, Ethics, and the Church, ed. Timothy J. Wengert (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 244. 17. “Articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae,” Robert D. Preus, Justification and Rome (St. Louis: Concordia, 1997), 15. 18. David Gouwens, Kierkegaard as Religious Thinker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 12, rightly corrects the common mistake of corroborating Kierkegaard with his twentieth-century existentialist inheritors (e.g., Bultmann and Tillich), the latter, of which, lose Christ as a concrete historical referent in preference for a Heideggerian translation of the content of the New Testament to make it comprehensible to moderns. “For Kierkegaard, translation is treason, and the basic task of the theologian is not to make Christianity understandable to moderns, but to train moderns in the capabilities that can allow them to understand the gospel.” 19. Heinrich Bornkamm eulogizes Luther’s lack of systematic approach out of his reverence for Scripture: “Luther’s words betoken a profound reverence, in fact, an adoration before the fathomless riches of Holy Writ. Luther never presumed to be able to expound the Scriptures fully and completely; nor did he arrogate to himself the right to force the content of the Scriptures into formulas. Here we find the strongest reason why he never composed a theological system, as Thomas Aquinas, Melanchthon, or Calvin did. He did not compress the Bible pedantically into textbooks as later orthodoxy did; nor did he impertinently mutilate and hack it to pieces as the Enlightenment did. He never lost his sense of venerating awe before the riches of God’s Word. His whole theology presents one long, never-ending grappling with the Bible’s superior might,” Luther’s World of Thought, trans. Martin H. Bertram (St. Louis: Concordia, 1958), 292–93. 20. WOA 123. 21. JFY 147. 22. FSE 24. 23. JP 6:6727; KJN 8, NB23:33; SKS 24, 220; Papirer X.4 A 33. 24. PV 16. 25. Hence, Kierkegaard stands in a long historical line of those inside and outside of Lutheranism who have perennially recognized this potential fallout of Lutheran doctrine. Catholic theologian Daniel Olivier explains the Catholic indictment of Luther’s message on moral grounds: “It was not for exegetical reasons that Rome

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condemned Luther. His attack against works were objected to because of their practical consequences. Even today, the Catholic is not ready to renounce the meritorious value of good deeds. . . . For Catholics in Luther’s time to deny any saving value to works was to encourage a lack of zeal and indolence; if the good that one does serves for nothing and has no importance, what is the point of it, and why put oneself out?” Luther’s Faith: The Cause of the Gospel in the Church, trans. John Tonkin (St. Louis: Concordia, 1982), 93. 26. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 43. Bonhoeffer’s description of “cheap grace” corroborates Kierkegaard’s concern about an objective approach to Lutheran doctrine: “Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian ‘conception’ of God. An intellectual assent to that idea is held to be of itself sufficient to secure remission of sins. The Church which holds the correct doctrine of grace has, it is supposed, ipso facto a part in that grace. In such a Church the world finds a cheap covering for its sins; no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin.” 27. FSE 16–17. 28. FSE 17. 29. Oswald Bayer’s interpretation of Luther’s theology corroborates Kierkegaard’s concern that the doctrine of justification not be isolated as timeless, universal principle: “Only when one places Luther’s specific concept of theology within the larger framework of his specific concept of time and experience, and within his theological understanding that results in his pastoral interest to comfort the troubled conscience, does it become clear that justification is no timeless principle but is an occurrence that happens in a dramatic way.” Martin Luther’s Theology: A Contemporary Interpretation, trans. Thomas H. Trapp (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 29. 30. JP 3:2484; KJN 5, NB10:132; SKS 21, 323; Papirer X.1 A 213. 31. JP 3:2481; KJN 5, NB10:76; SKS 21, 296; Papirer X.1 A 154. 32. I am indebted to Craig Hinkson’s article, “Will the Real Martin Luther Please Stand Up!: Kierkegaard’s View of Luther versus the Evolving Perceptions of the Tradition,” in For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourself!, ed. Robert L. Perkins, vol. 21 of International Kierkegaard Commentary (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2002), 37–76, and James Stayer, Martin Luther, German Savior: German Evangelical Theological Factions and the Interpretation of Luther, 1917–1933 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000) for their insights on each age’s amorphous interpretation of Luther. 33. James M. Kittelson, Luther the Reformer: The Story of the Man and His Career (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1986), 161. 34. Stayer, Martin Luther, German Savior, 5. 35. See especially “The Education of the Human Race” in Gotthold Lessing, Lessing’s Theological Writings, ed. and trans., Henry Chadwick (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1956), 82–98. 36. Hinkson, “Will the Real Martin Luther,” 62, writes, “The Enlightenment modification to the received image of Luther is apparent: where Luther had been the liberator of conscience from papal authority, or from the oppressive authority of the state church, he was now the liberator from every external authority.”

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37. “For Lessing, then, Luther and Christ were champions of autonomous reason, the prototypes of its revolt against anyone or anything that would inhibit its free exercise,” Lessing, Lessing’s Theological Writings, 82–98. 38. Kierkegaard, often labeled the “Father of Existentialism,” corrected that an individual latently possesses even deeper concerns than the Enlightenment’s philosophical objectivity and civic happiness. These concerns were subjective concerns such as one’s anxiety over who she will become, her relation before God, and her eternal happiness. Although believing they were now enlightened and free, Kierkegaard wanted to draw out individuals of his enlightened age into these deeper and darker concerns more primary to existing as an individual where he believed individual freedom was truly found. 39. Kittelson, Luther the Reformer, 134. 40. Kierkegaard describes uncomfortable anxiety as an essential feature of human existence more primary to human existence than human capacity for reason. Anxiety ambivalently oscillates back and forth between the infinite possibility of freedom (i.e., “spirit”) and the reluctant necessity of having to choose oneself in finite conditionality. He writes, “How does spirit relate itself to itself and to its conditionality? It relates itself as anxiety. Do away with itself, the spirit cannot; lay hold of itself, it cannot, as long as it has itself outside of itself. Nor can man sink down into the vegetative, for he is qualified as spirit; flee away from anxiety, he cannot, for he loves it; really love it, he cannot, for he flees from it,” CA 44. 41. JP 3:2544; Papirer XI.2 A 303. 42. JP 3:2461; KJN 4, NB:79; SKS 20, 69; Papirer VII.1 A 192. 43. JP 3:2543; Papirer XI.2 A 301. Kierkegaard privately described his own life’s suffering as similar to Luther’s: “Very far back in my recollection goes the thought that in each generation there are two or three who become sacrificed for the others, are used to find out in frightful sufferings what is beneficial for others. That is how I sadly understood myself, that I was designated for this,” PV 81. 44. JP 2:2140; KJN 8, NB22:57; SKS 24, 134; Papirer X.3 A 672. See also JP 3:2521; KJN 7, NB19:57; SKS 23, 367; Papirer X.3 A 217 on Kierkegaard’s regard of Luther’s life and its abuse by Lutherans: “And it is true—it takes great courage, great faith and fearlessness, devoutly to venture such things—on the other hand, it requires only a very ordinary scoundrel to take it in vain.” 45. Wilhelm Pauck, From Luther to Tillich: The Reformers and Their Heirs (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984), 6–7. See also Roland Bainton, “Luther’s Struggle for Faith,” Church History 17 (1948): 198. 46. The date of Luther’s Tower Experience is one of the most debated issues in twentieth-century Luther scholarship. See, for example, Uuras Saarnivaara, Luther Discovers the Gospel: New Light Upon Luther’s Way from Medieval Catholicism to Evangelical Faith (St. Louis: Concordia, 2005). Robert Kolb, Martin Luther: Confessor of the Faith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 42, represents the twenty-first-century perspective in Luther scholarship, preferring to speak of Luther’s theology as an “evangelical maturation” rather than a “dramatic breakthrough.” 47. See Luther’s preface to his Small Catechism: “Dear God, what misery I beheld! The ordinary person, especially in the villages, knows absolutely nothing about the Christian faith, and unfortunately many pastors are completely unskilled

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and incompetent teachers. Yet supposedly they all bear the name Christian, are baptized, and receive the holy sacrament, even though they do not know the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, or the Ten Commandments! As a result they live like simple cattle or irrational pigs and, despite the fact that the gospel has returned, have mastered the fine art of misusing all their freedom,” BC 347–48. 48. Ibid. 49. E.g., “This controversy deals with the most important topic of Christian teaching which, rightly understood, illumines and magnifies the honor of Christ and brings abundant consolation that devout consciences need,” BC 120–21. “Our adversaries arouse presumptuous and futile trust in works as well as contempt for the grace of Christ. Conversely, they drive frightened consciences to despair who, beset by doubt, can never experience what faith is and how efficacious it is,” BC 124. 50. Many twentieth-century Luther scholars, e.g., Jaroslav Pelikan’s From Luther to Kierkegaard, lay the loss of Luther’s anxious conscience at the feet of Melanchthon’s Aristotelian systematization of Luther’s message and the subsequent Lutheran orthodoxy of the seventeenth century. Craig Hinkson, “Will the Real Martin Luther,” 48, mirrors this adjudication: “Orthodoxy’s image of Luther was highly ahistorical . . . for hardly a trace of Luther’s personality or of the existential elements that had characterized his theology. It is well known how Luther’s followers sought almost immediately to systematize his teachings. . . . Yet this systematization of Luther’s thought was simultaneously a depersonalization of it. Gone were the passionate vibrancy that characterized Luther’s own writings, the references to his dark despair amid recurring spiritual trials (Anfechtungen), and mention of his oft-repeated struggle to find a gracious God. In their place a measured intellectualism came to dominate.” 51. Timothy J. Wengert’s Law and Gospel: Philip Melanchthon’s Debate with John Agricola of Eisleben over Poenitentia (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1997) is an excellent source demonstrating how Luther’s immediate inheritors debated how “poenitentia” (contrition) is induced, whether via the Law (Melanchthon) or via the Gospel (Agricola). Both of Luther’s inheritors, though, in their concern to conclusively assuage the anxious conscience, lose the emphasis of one of Luther’s earliest insights, indeed his first thesis of the Ninety-five theses: “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said “Penitentiam agite,” he willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance.” WA 1:233; AE 31:83. 52. JFY 193–94. 53. JFY 201: “The psychical conditions that Christianity presupposes are, as one says of a disease, identifiable, characteristically identifiable, the struggle of an anguished conscience, fear and trembling.” 54. JFY 201. 55. JP 3:2461; KJN 4, NB2:80; SKS 20, 174; Papirer VIII.1 A 192. 56. JP 3:2542; KJN 8, NB24:141; SKS 24, 414; Papirer X.4 A 394. 57. “The ‘anguished conscience’ of Luther is more than a biographical fact about the Reformer, now dispensable; it is rather a necessary Christian concept, a prior condition for anyone confronting the Christian offer of salvation.” Gouwens, Kierkegaard as Religious Thinker, 48. 58. JP 3:2544; Papirer XI.2 A 303.

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59. Pia Søltoft, “The Power of Eloquence: On the Relation between Ethics and Rhetoric in Preaching,” in Søren Kierkegaard and the Word(s): Essays on Hermeneutics and Communication, ed. Poul Houe and Gordon D. Marino (Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel, 2003), 241, notes, “Kierkegaard himself only gave six sermons, but, as is well known, he wrote a shelf of edifying, Christian or pious discourses.” 60. See Hinkson, “Kierkegaard’s Theology,” 2, and Joakim Garff, Søren Kierkegaard: A Biography, trans. Bruce H. Kirmmse (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 29. 61. Curtis L. Thompson, “Hans Lassen Martensen: A Speculative Theologian Determining the Agenda of the Day,” in Kierkegaaard and His Danish Contemporaries: Tome 2, Theology, ed. Jon Stewart, vol. 7 of Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009), 231. 62. Lausten, Church History of Denmark, 110. 63. Following most historical theology scholars, Kierkegaard scholar Bruce Kirmmse accounts for the rise of pietism as a historical corrective to the seventeenthcentury orthodox focus upon doctrine. He writes, “Pietism placed great stress upon personal piety, conversion, and the conduct of life rather than upon doctrinal niceties,” Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark, 30. 64. Lausten, Church History of Denmark, 171, 173. Kirmmse, Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark, 31, notes, “The officially sponsored Danish variant of Halle pietism remained a movement of pastors and not of the people, and was unwilling to take seriously its original stress upon the priesthood of all believers. Herrnhutism, on the other hand, took its lay commitment far more seriously and was much more of a popular success.” 65. Michael was not merely a nominal Herrnhuter. As a pious and wealthy man, Michael was chosen as the chairman to oversee the building of the new 600-seat Moravian meeting hall in Copenhagen in 1816. Ibid., 33–34. See also Garff, Søren Kierkegaard, 11–12. 66. Walter Lowrie, A Short Life of Kierkegaard (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970), 23, 48–52. See pages 67–78 for the description of the “Great Earthquake,” (viz., Michael’s revelation to Søren that Michael had cursed God when he was younger and subsequently Michael and his family were now cursed because of it) which especially haunted both Michael and Søren. 67. Jørgen Bukdahl, Søren Kierkegaard and the Common Man, trans. Bruce H. Kirmmse (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 33. 68. Ibid., 32. See also Peter Vogt, “Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf” in The Pietist Theologians, ed. Carter Lindberg (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2005), 211–14. 69. WOA 55. Other descriptions of the image of the crucified Jesus embossed upon Søren by his father include CUP 590–91; PC 174–75; PV 79–81. See also Garff, Søren Kierkegaard, 12. 70. See Kierkegaard scholar Andrew J. Burgess’s insightful article on this Moravian practice, “Kierkegaard’s Taler, Moravian Reden?” in Kierkegaard and the Nineteenth Century Crisis in Europe, ed. Roman Kralik et al., vol. 4 of Acta Kierkegaardiana (Toronto: Kierkegaard Circle, Trinity College, University of Toronto, 2009), 202–15. 71. Ibid., 206–7.

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72. Burgess distinguishes the literary nature of Reden and Predigten: “Whereas the state churches restricted the right to deliver Predigten to those who had been ordained, some Moravian settlements, such as the congregation in Copenhagen, had no such right and they learned to live without one. Zinzendorf’s example was followed by the leaders who followed him, by lay preachers, and by Moravian speakers in general. The tone of Moravian Rede is thus often more personal and more informal than might be expected in churches elsewhere.” Ibid., 209. 73. Burgess conjectures a connection between Moravian Reden and Kierkegaard’s “Discourses.” In Danish, the word for the German “Reden” and the English “Discourses” is “Taler.” For example, the Danish names for all of Kierkegaard’s published discourses use the word Taler (e.g., Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses is Atten opbyggelige Taler in Danish; Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits is Opbyggelige Taler i forskjellig Aand; Christian Discourses is Christelige Taler). Burgess notes that Kierkegaard’s Taler fit in well with traditional Moravian Reden with respect to overall egalitarian style and conversational-dialogical approach. Each volume of Kierkegaard’s Taler contains a preface insisting that it is “without authority,” that is, that he is not ordained by the state. Ibid., 211, 213. 74. Lausten, Church History of Denmark, 204. Recall John Wesley’s famous conversion on hearing a lay member simply reading Luther’s Preface to Romans at a Moravian meeting at Aldersgate in 1738. See Ralph Waller, John Wesley: A Personal Portrait (New York: Continuum, 2003), 49. It is also significant to recognize that the first edition of Luther’s sermons for the laity was published by the founder of the Pietist movement, Philip Jakob Spener, see Lenker 1.1:5. 75. Bukdahl, Søren Kierkegaard and the Common Man, 20. 76. Marie Mikulova Thulstrup, “Pietism,” in Kierkegaard and Great Traditions, ed. Niels Thulstrup and Marie Mikulova Thulstrup, vol. 6 of Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana (Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Boghandel, 1981), 206. 77. JP 3:p803. 78. Prenter, Luther and Lutheranism, 123f. 79. Joseph Ballan, “Johann Arndt: The Pietist Impulse in Kierkegaard and Seventeenth-Century Lutheran Devotional Literature,” in Kierkegaard and the Renaissance and Modern Traditions, ed. Jon Stewart, vol. 5 of Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009), 21–23, notes not only that Kierkegaard was an avid reader of Arndt’s, the sixteenth and seventeenth-century Lutheran pastor, Sechs Bücher vom wahren Christentum but also that this text was more widely read than the writings of Luther. Marie Mikulova Thulstrup, “Studies of Pietists, Mystics, and Church Fathers,” in Kierkegaard’s View of Christianity, ed. Niels Thulstrup and Marie Mikulova Thulstrup, vol. 1 of Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana (Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag, 1978), 62, writes that for Kierkegaard, “Arndt’s authority was so great that he caused SK to drop his earlier dissociation from looking upon Christ’s sufferings (cf. e.g. Pap. VIII, 1 A 349). SK says expressly that Arndt taught him that Christ’s sufferings are an important factor which is necessary in order to form the proper impression of the seriousness of sin (Pap. X, 2 A 400, from 1850).” 80. Pietism’s eighteenth-century lay mystic Gerhard Tersteegen (1697–1796), as a layman who produced his own sermon-like discourses for reading at Pietist

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meetings, may have especially been an influence on Kierkegaard’s lay-produced, sermon-like discourses. Kierkegaard possessed an eight-volume German edition of Tersteegen’s complete works and another selection of Tersteegen’s works. Marie Mikulova Thulstrup, “Pietism,” 197, 200–1, writes, “Kierkegaard’s relation to Teersteegen was warm and characterized by great respect. . . . Tersteegen was the object of the greatest recognition that Kierkegaard ever expressed: ‘On the whole Tersteegen is incomparable. In him I find genuine and noble piety and simple wisdom.’” 81. Along with Pietist authors Tersteegen and Arndt, Kierkegaard was especially appreciative of Hans Adolph Brorson, the Danish hymn-writer, for his heartfelt focus on Christ’s suffering and humility and the Christian’s imitation of the suffering and humiliated Christ. Kierkegaard was frustrated by Spener and Franke’s punctilious concern for adiaphoral moral questions and external moral prescriptions. See Thulstrup, “Studies of Pietists, Mystics, and Church Fathers,” 61–65. Kierkegaard (JP 3:3318; Papirer X.3 A 437) summarizes his dialectical evaluation of pietism: “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.” See Thulstrup, “Pietism,” 209. 82. Kierkegaard appreciated Tauler, Bernhard of Clairvaux, Bonaventure, and the Theologia Deutsch for their spiritual consciousness and striving to realize Christianity in life. Thulstrup, “Studies of Pietists, Mystics, and Church Fathers,” 66. Kierkegaard found in the early church fathers, especially Tertullian, confirmation that true Christianity requires witnessing and suffering for the truth. Ibid., 71, 76. 83. Ibid., 60–61. 84. Garff, Søren Kierkegaard, 10. 85. Ibid., 618. 86. Grundtvig’s populist, yet at the same time esoteric, movement eventually absorbed most of the Herrnhut brethren in nineteenth-century Denmark, including Søren’s only surviving brother, Danish bishop Peter Christian Kierkegaard. Alastair Hannay, Kierkegaard: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 40–41. Kierkegaard also read and commented on a collection of Grundtvig’s sermons (Garff, Søren Kierkegaard, 36), but Kierkegaard did not take Grundtvig seriously, regarding him as an “intellectual midget in the guise of a giant” (Hannay, Kierkegaard, 45). 87. Garff, Søren Kierkegaard, 36, quotes Mynster: “I have always had the pleasure of having a large audience, drawn from various social classes. If I have often been dissatisfied with myself for having spoken edifyingly to the lower social classes perhaps less frequently than I should have, I have also seen consoling evidence to the effect that this was not entirely the case: I had many plain citizens and manual laborers among my regular listeners.” 88. Christian Fink Tolstrup, “Jakob Peter Mynster: A Guiding Thread in Kierkegaard’s Authorship?” in Kierkegaard and His Danish Contemporaries: Tome II: Theology, ed. Jon Stewart, vol. 7 of Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009), 267.

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89. Ibid., 13–14. Lowrie, Short Life of Kierkegaard, 47. 90. JP 5:6073; KJN 4, NB2:267; SKS 20, 240; Papirer VIII.1 A 397. 91. Christian Fink Tolstrup, “‘Playing a Profane Game with Holy Things’: Understanding Kierkegaard’s Critical Encounter with Bishop Mynster,” in Practice in Christianity, ed. Robert L. Perkins, vol. 20 of International Kierkegaard Commentary (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2004), 249. 92. Garff, Søren Kierkegaard, 615. J. P. Mynster, Bemærkninger om den konst at prædike (first ed., 1810) in Blandede Skrivter, 6 vols. (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1852–57). 93. Within four years after arriving in Copenhagen, Mynster became a professor of pastoral psychology, published a commentated edition of Luther’s Small Catechism, co-founded the Danish Bible Society, completed his doctorate, and married. Ibid., 616–17. Before his appointment as bishop in 1834, he was appointed in 1826 as Court Chaplain at Christiansborg Palace and Confessor to King Frederick. See John Saxbee, “The Golden Age in an Earthen Vessel: The Life and Times of Bishop J. P. Mynster,” in Kierkegaard and His Contemporaries: The Culture of Golden Age Denmark, ed. Jon Stewart (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2003), 154. 94. Ibid., 161. 95. Garff, Søren Kierkegaard, 618. 96. J. P. Mynster, Betragtninger over de christelige Troeslærdomme, 2 vols. (Copenhagen: J. Deichmanns Forlag, 1833). 97. Tolstrup, “Playing a Profane Game,” 248. 98. JP 6:6355; KJN 5, NB10:59; SKS 21, 288; Papirer X.1 A 137. 99. Burgess, “Kierkegaard’s Taler, Moravian Reden,” 211. 100. JP 6:6768; KJN 8, NB24:73; SKS 24, 365; Papirer X.4 A 322. 101. JP 5:6126; Papirer VIII.1 A 603. JP 6:6769; KJN 8, NB24:74; SKS 24, 365; Papirer X.4 A 323. 102. JP 5:5689; KJN 9, NB29:93; SKS 25, 351; Papirer IV A 142. 103. Mynster’s place in history remains especially known through the critical lens of Kierkegaard. For a more sympathetic regard of the life and religious affections of Mynster, see Saxbee, “The Golden Age in an Earthen Vessel,” 149–63. 104. JP 6:6853; KJN 9, NB28:56; SKS 25, 262; Papirer XI.1 A 1. While Kierkegaard publicly attacked the Danish State Church at the end of his life, he purposely muted any direct attack on Mynster until after Mynster’s death out of respect for “his father’s pastor.” 105. JP 6:6171; KJN 8, NB24:73; SKS 24, 365; Papirer IX A 81. Garff, Søren Kierkegaard, 615, writes, “There were obvious differences between the two, the old ecclesiastical inside, and the brilliant little fellow waiting outside; the most marked of these was that Mynster regarded Christianity as a great source of reassurance and relief, while Kierkegaard saw it as a scandalous reversal of all human and cultural values, a permanent conflict with the world.” Kirmmse, Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark, 103–7, describes Mynster’s sermons as exhortations to intentionally submit to the ethical demands of one’s natural conscience; Christ serves not to “transform us in our attempts at ethical religion but assures us and strengthens us in our endeavor by vouching for the fact that God is indeed what natural religion, however fleetingly or imperfectly, perceives him as being.”

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106. JP 6:6682; KJN 8, NB21:30; SKS 24, 27; Papirer X.3 A 472. 107. Kierkegaard is referencing Luther’s sermon on the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity from Luke 17:11–18; Thisted 1:513. 108. JP 6:6653; KJN 7, NB19:86; SKS 23, 384; Papirer X.3 A 249. 109. JP 3:2530; KJN 8, NB21:91; SKS 24, 59; Papirer X.3 A 533. 110. JP 6:6677; KJN 7, NB17:111; SKS 23, 249; Papirer X.3 A 43. 111. JP 6:6848; KJN 10, NB35:25; SKS 26, 388; Papirer XI.2 A 213: “[Mynster] was in fact a very gifted man intellectually, an exceptional orator.” See also Garff, Søren Kierkegaard, 621–22. Eduard Geismar, Lectures on the Religious Thought of Søren Kierkegaard (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1937), 81, writes, “As for the sameness of aim that Kierkegaard here admits, it is to be noted that he speaks of having had the same aim as Mynster in his sermons. But he does not say that he regards Mynster’s life as a reduplication of his sermons.” 112. JP 1:376; KJN 5, NB6:10; SKS 21, 15; Papirer IX A 60: “Right here lies Mynster’s basic heresy. This business about going along with the established order of things, getting a secure position—all of which may be all right—if this is going to be life’s highest earnestness, then Christ, the apostles, all Christians in the strictest sense of the word—are impractical visionaries. But this is the way it always is with secular-mindedness—you win in two ways: first security and comfort and a good income and assured advancement—and then in addition honor and reputation as a genuinely earnest person.” About Mynster’s personal motives, Kierkegaard writes (JP 6:6648; KJN 7, NB19:35; SKS 23, 355; Papirer X.3 A 194), “In character he was a weak man; moreover, he had a great sense and fondness for enjoying life, and not the simpler pleasures but the more refined, yes, the most refined of all, precisely this: being honored, esteemed, and respected as a man of earnestness, character, and principles, a man who stands firm when everything is tottering, etc.” 113. JP 6:6627; KJN 7, NB18:77; SKS 23, 305; Papirer X.3 A 128. See also JP 5:6073; KJN 4, NB2:267; SKS 20, 240; Papirer VIII.1 A 397: “I was brought up on Mynster’s sermons—by my father. This is the trouble; of course it could never have occurred to my father to take those sermons otherwise than literally. Brought up on Mynster’s sermons—by Mynster: yes, a problem.” 114. JP 6:6784; KJN 8, NB24:150; SKS 24, 418; Papirer X.4 A 404.

Chapter 2

Kierkegaard’s Forkful Reading of an Abridged Edition of Luther’s Church and House Postils

In front of the nineteenth-century Danish backdrops of a presumptuous Lutheranism and yet a pious devotion to homiletic literature, Kierkegaard began his devotional and planned1 reading of Martin Luther’s sermons in 1847. Hastily forking2 for Luther’s corrective insights into Kierkegaard’s Lutheran problem 300 years removed, Kierkegaard’s quest was not historically holistic—a quest for the corpulent Luther.3 Instead, Kierkegaard began his reading cursorily forking through only two volumes of Luther’s corpus,4 foraging for extracts (Uddrager)5 to confirm and support Kierkegaard’s already developed corrective concerns, not to learn something new. By itself, this reading purpose and practice necessarily built a very lacunal Lutherbild for Kierkegaard. But Kierkegaard’s Lutherbild is doubly lacunal because he was unaware, along with Kierkegaard scholarship up to this point, that the edition of Luther’s church and house postils he was reading was a heavily abridged edition of extracts (Sammendragen)6 from those postils. This chapter forks out and carves up these two lacunae that effectually attenuated Kierkegaard’s Lutherbild from the inception of his reading of the sermons. FORKING FOR UDDRAGER Kierkegaard’s childhood nickname, “The Fork,”7 well describes the decisive and divisive8 method by which he reads Luther. Kierkegaard does not read Luther in order to serve as a fancy butler presenting a great banquet table of Luther’s entire corpus on which scholarly guests can historically relish. Kierkegaard is not an encyclopedic historical theologian’s theologian. Instead, Kierkegaard is an obdurate Lutheran with an agenda with other obdurate Lutherans at the table of Luther’s corpus, with only his single plate 53

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of Thisted, his Danish dessert of Luther’s church and house postils, a small portion of one dish of Luther’s entire corpus. Although Kierkegaard has easy access to other dishes from Luther’s corpus, he devotes himself almost entirely to the sermons because, as Howard Hong notes, “Just as Kierkegaard regarded his own devotional (opbyggelige: upbuilding, edifying) writings as the central portion of his works, he turned to Luther’s devotional writings as the most important part of his works.”9 Tasting Thisted, Kierkegaard is a finicky eater with an already welldeveloped palate. He samples Luther only for the purpose of finding confirmation for what he already appreciates.10 He forks through Thisted, stabbing at random pieces, rarely cleaning his plate, concentrating on the subjectively sweet and sour, never concerned for well-rounded objectivity. Poking a piece that pleases his palate, he puts down his fork like a connoisseur, picks up his pen, and jots his laud in his journals. Stabbing a bite from another sermon at another sitting that piques his palate, he slams his fork and leaves the table to scrawl his gall in his journals. When he jots a comment on an aspect of a sermon that either delights or piques his palate, he never comments on the sermon again in the same sitting, evidencing unconcern for comprehending or later recalling the sermon as a whole. Although he experiences both validation and vexation, Kierkegaard keeps returning to Luther again and again for years, evidencing ultimate admiration for Lutheranism’s founder, and courteously never mentions his private disgust to others. Hence, Kierkegaard’s private discourse on his forkful reading of Luther’s sermons is finicky and ambivalent, yet respectful. But his public discourse on Luther, as we will see in chapter 5, conceals all private contempt, being charitable and deferential. In only two journal entries, Kierkegaard comments on his collection of Luther’s sermons as a whole. One of them is the following from 1850: “I could be tempted to take Luther’s book of sermons (Luthers Postil) and extract (uddrage) a great many sentences and ideas, all of which are marked in my copy,11 and publish them in order to show how far the preaching nowadays is from Christianity, so that it shall not be said that I am the one who hits upon exaggerations.”12 In Kierkegaard’s devotional reading of Luther, his concern was neither to holistically study nor historically repristinate Luther. Instead, Kierkegaard’s concern is accurately depicted above as a subjective ecclesiastical corrective, not an objective individualistic curiosity. As noted in chapter 1, the history of Lutheranism has been an oscillation between Orthodox and Pietist stresses, or, to continue our analogy, a food fight between two sides sitting at the table of Luther’s corpus, with both sides forking for fragments from the founder of Lutheranism to authoritatively throw at the other. As a Lutheran sitting at Luther’s table, Kierkegaard is no different. Sitting opposite of a late-Enlightenment Lutheranism erring toward noetic objectivity as justification for aesthetic and civic comforts, Kierekegaard’s

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forkful temperament had no qualms with forking for extracts (Uddrager) from his collection of Luther’s sermons “in order to show how far the preaching nowadays is from Christianity.”13 By the time he began reading Luther’s sermons, in the middle of his own corpus at the beginning of his second authorship, Kierkegaard already possessed a well-developed palate, preferring the subjectively existential over against the objectively noetic and was already well set in his purpose as a religious author introducing a conscience-stricken Christianity into a casual Christendom. His very first reading of a Luther sermon—the first sermon in Thisted, the first Sunday in the Church Year, the First Sunday in Advent—is “Wonderful” (Forunderligt) not because Luther provides Kierkegaard with some new revelation, but because he comes upon an Uddrag that one of Luther’s categories concurs with his own from the conclusion of Either/Or,14 which he had published in 1843, four years before he began reading Luther’s sermons: Wonderful! The category “for you” (subjectivity, inwardness) with which Either/Or concludes (only the truth which builds up [opbygger] is truth for you) is Luther’s own. I have never really read anything by Luther. But now I open up his sermons—and right there in the Gospel for the First Sunday in Advent he says, “for you” (for dig), on this everything depends (see second page, first column, and first page, fourth column).15

This very first journal entry on his first Luther sermon well foreshadows both Kierkegaard’s method of forking for Uddrager in Thisted and his already developed connoisseur’s palate. “I open up his sermons—and right there (strax).” Kierkegaard opened up Luther’s sermons to the very first sermon on page 15 in Thisted,16 namely, Luther’s 1522 postil for the First Sunday in Advent, and immediately (strax) on pages 16 and 17 forks out and relishes what is “wonderful” to his palate. What is so “wonderful” to Kierkegaard on these two pages? On page 16, Luther appetizingly sets forth “two kinds of faith”: Now I have often talked about two kinds of faith (toslags Tro). The first you have when you well believe that Christ is such a man as he is described here and in all the Gospels to be, but not that he is such a man for you (for dig). Behold, this faith is nothing (Intet), neither receiving nor tasting (smager) of Christ ever, nor feeling some desire or love from (af) him or to (til) him. It is a faith about (om) Christ, but not in (til) or of (paa) Christ. It is a faith as also devils and all evil men have.17

And on page 17, Luther contrasts the first kind of faith with the second kind of faith:

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Here touches the second, upright faith, as alone is called the Christian faith, when you namely steadily believe that Christ is such a man not alone for Saint Peter and other saints, but also for yourself (for dig selv), indeed, for yourself more than all others. Your salvation does not depend upon that you believe Christ is a Christ for the pious, but that he is a Christ for you (for dig), that he is yours.18 If you would be a Christian, so must you mark the word: for you, for you (for dig, for dig), and hold fast thereto and believe without doubt that you will experience what they say.19

Here, commenting on only two of the first three pages of a sixteen-page sermon, Kierkegaard comments that Luther’s “for you” category concurs with his own category of subjectivity/inwardness, which pervades as a conspicuous theme throughout Kierkegaard’s authorship. Kierkegaard’s epistemological and volitional category of subjectivity was a reaction to Hegel’s phenomenological objectivity, the up-and-coming progressive worldview in late-Enlightenment Lutheranism. For Hegel, Christian faith is merely an undeveloped form of knowledge to be sublimated and developed into a science, which upon philosophical reflection makes the symbolic content of the faith explicit as an object of pure knowledge.20 Hegel believed his objective philosophy had unlocked and laid bare the immanent mind of God and had so surpassed the need for child-like faith or theology, which were anachronistic and imprecise methods for explicating God.21 Prior to his reading of Luther and in response to a Hegelian view of objective and sublimated faith, Kierkegaard propounded subjectivity—a thinking by which the thinker consciously reminds himself that he is an existing individual, concerned not only with the object of thought but also his subjective relation to the object of thought.22 Good epistemology, for Kierkegaard, requires that the thinker humbly recalls he is a finite human being always in the process of becoming, never obviating from the sphere of his thinking his existential longing to effectuate his infinite ideal in his finite reality. In order for an object of thought to be properly thought, it must not be abstracted away from the existential concern of the thinker. If the object of one’s thought is “God,” a human cannot properly think about this object without also being subjectively concerned for one’s eternal happiness.23 If the thinker abstracts the object of God away from this subjective concern, then the human thought about God is epistemologically false. Like Luther and Kant, good epistemology must know its limits and make room for faith as a category of human thought.24 Therefore, for Kierkegaard, an abstract epistemology about God is a philosophical impossibility for a human being. Valid human epistemology must include the individual’s passionate regard for the object’s implications on the subject.

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Thus, there is confluent concord between Luther’s first and second kind of faith and Kierkegaard’s categories of objectivity and subjectivity, respectively. While Luther’s explanation of a merely historical understanding of the attributes of the Gospel story is not the same as Hegel’s objectivity, these two concepts share an epistemological characteristic of removed distance between the account of the object and its existential significance for the subject. The gospel hearer who practices Luther’s first kind of faith merely recognizes the empirical attributes of the Gospel but does not recognize the significance of those attributes for his own standing before God. For both Luther and Kierkegaard, correct hearing requires the second kind of faith, recognizing the object’s subjective significance for one’s existence. Without a “for you/subjective” hearing of the gospel, “faith is nothing,” preaches Luther. But with it, “on this everything depends,” comments Kierkegaard. As Kierkegaard epistemologically refused to think about “God” objectively, he also refused to read and consider Luther and other objects of inquiry objectively. His reading of Luther, the Bible, and every book he read was a subjective forking for each work’s existential implications.25 Kierkegaard cared little that his understanding of any author was lacunal; instead, he cared more about his subjective response to whatever excited his already developed palate. Joakim Garff explains Kierkegaard’s forkful reading style: He read zigzag style, surfing and zapping from one point to another, and he honestly confessed his selective tendencies. “When I read a book,” he wrote in an entry from January 13, 1838, “it is not so much the book itself which pleases me as the infinite possibilities that must have existed at every point, the complex story, rooted in the author’s individual personality, in his studies, et cetera.” Kierkegaard was an active reader who was not satisfied with opening a book, but stepped into the book himself, with his entire personality, so to speak, in order to involve himself totally with the work. Even texts ingested in quite small doses were enough to set up powerful oscillations within his productive fantasy, and this helped confirm his own “thesis,” put forward in March 1837, to the effect that “great geniuses” cannot really read a book, because “when they read they always develop themselves more than they understand the author.”26

Kierkegaard’s subjective reading of Luther was thus no different than the way he read every book he opened.27 Because he propitiously found in his very first reading of a Luther sermon, the very first sermon in Thisted, an Uddrag that complemented Kierkegaard’s proclivity for subjectivity, Kierkegaard was inspired to continue forking for more Uddrager in Thisted, not to learn something new from Luther, but “so that it shall not be said that I am the one who hits upon exaggerations.”28

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Reading forkfully, rarely does Kierkegaard comment on a sermon as a whole. This is not to say that Kierkegaard did not read the entirety of the sermon on which he commented. But it is to say that because Kierkegaard’s journal comments on Luther’s sermons are never summaries of the entirety of each sermon’s contents, they evidence Kierkegaard’s subjective and forkful quest for philosophical fragments—Uddrager—to support his existential and ecclesiastical polemics rather than building an objective Lutherbild, which was never his reading practice with any author. In his only other quote about Luther’s sermons as a whole, Kierkegaard speaks confidently about the value of the entirety of Luther’s sermons: “It might sometime be appropriate to memorize one of Luther’s sermons and deliver it without giving any hint of it—and then see how furious the clergy would become—and then say: This is a sermon by Luther, word for word.”29 But overall, Kierkegaard’s comments evidence a cursory and forkful approach to reading Luther’s sermons, decisively lauding what concurs with his already developed palate and divisively lancing what conflicts with the same, unconcerned for the lacunal Lutherbild this method builds. FORKING THROUGH SAMMENDRAGEN Kierkegaard’s Lutherbild is lacunal not only because of Kierkegaard’s forkful reading method but also because of the lacunal nature of the source by which he reads Luther. We must remember that Kierkegaard invests himself in only one dish of Luther’s entire corpus, Luther’s church and house postils. And even this one dish omits many of the ingredients Luther included in his original recipe, a fact that Kierkegaard never mentioned and that Kierkegaard scholarship has not recognized.30 This section unveils to what extent Kierkegaard’s copy of Luther’s sermons is abridged. As noted in the introduction, Kierkegaard read Luther’s sermons from a two-volume 1828 Danish edition of Luther’s sermons entitled En christelig Postille, sammendragen af Dr. Morten Luthers Kirke- og Huuspostiller efter Benjamin Lindners tyske Samling udgiven I ny dansk Oversættelse af Jørgen Thisted,31 translated: A Christian Book of Postils, The Summary of Dr. Martin Luther’s Church and House Postiles after Benjamin Lindner’s German Collection Released in New Danish Translation by Jørgen Thisted.32 Thisted’s33 Danish edition is a word-for-word translation of volumes 7 and 8 of a ninevolume German edition of Luther’s works entitled Das nutzbareste aus denen gesamten Erbaulichen Schriften des seligen Herrn Martini Lutheri: in umständlichen Auszügen Alles dessen, was darinnen zur Erbauung dienlich seyn kan, sorgfältig zusammen getragen, Mit nöthigen und nützlichen Registern versehen, und nebst einer Vorrede dem Druck übergeben von Benjamin

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Lindnern,34 translated: The Most Useful of all the Devotional Writings of the blessed lord Martin Luther: in minute extracts of all that in them can be of service to edification, carefully assembled, equipped with a necessary and useful index, and together with a preface to the publication by Benjamin Lindner.35 Thisted volume 1 matches Lindner volume 7, which is an abridged compilation of the church and house postils of Luther on the Gospels for each Sunday and festival day in the Church Year. Thisted volume 2 matches Lindner volume 8, which is the same format as volume 7, but on the Epistles instead of the Gospels. The conspicuous words from the titles of these two works bespeak much about their contents, namely, that they are incomplete editions of Luther’s church and house postils. Thisted’s Sammendrag Regarding the long title of Thisted, En christelig Postille, sammendragen af Dr. Morten Luthers Kirke- og Huuspostiller efter Benjamin Lindners tyske Samling udgiven I ny dansk Oversættelse af Jørgen Thisted, the Danish word sammendragen is especially conspicuous. Sammendrag, from the root words samme (literally, “together”) and drage (literally, “to draw”), means “summary” or “abstract,” which indicates that Thisted is not a complete edition (samling) of Luther’s church and house postils. Again, Kierkegaard reveals no concern in his journals that his edition of Luther’s sermons is an abridged edition (sammendrag) rather than a complete edition (samling). Thus far, Kierkegaard’s lacunal Lutherbild was created by the double combination of (1) forking for Uddrager (2) through Sammendragen. But while Kierkegaard was unapologetic about the former, Kierkegaard seems uninformed about the latter. Lindner’s Auszüge But why is Thisted a sammendrag and not a samling? This is because Thisted is a Danish translation of volumes 7 and 8 of Lindner. The full title of Lindner gives more indications about the edited nature of Kierkegaard’s copy of Luther sermons. Again, the full title of Lindner: Das nutzbareste aus denen gesamten Erbaulichen Schriften des seligen Herrn Martini Lutheri: in umständlichen Auszügen Alles dessen, was darinnen zur Erbauung dienlich seyn kan, sorgfältig zusammen getragen, Mit nöthigen und nützlichen Registern versehen, und nebst einer Vorrede dem Druck übergeben von Benjamin Lindnern. In the eighteenth century (1729–1774), the twenty-three-volume Leipzig Edition, the most complete edition of Luther’s Works at the time, was in the process of being completed.36 Before Leipzig’s completion, Lutheran pastor and superintendent at Saalfeld Benjamin Lindner began “carefully

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assembling” (sorgfältig zusammen getragen) a “devotional” (Erbaulichen) work of Luther’s writings by extracting “extracts” (Auszügen) from what was completed of Leipzig that he deemed “the most useful” (Das nutzbareste), that is, what of Leipzig was of “service to edification” (zur Erbauung dienlich). Why did Lindner construct this abridged devotional edition of Luther’s writings? In Lindner’s forward to volume 7, which contains the postils on the Gospels, Lindner gives several answers to this question. First, Lindner evidences himself a devout Lutheran out to propound Luther’s emphasis on the merit of Christ over against the merit of works.37 Second, Lindner aligns himself with Lutheran Pietist leaders Philip Jakob Spener and August Hermann Franke in their judgment that Luther’s church and house postils are among Luther’s very best works for communicating this Lutheran doctrine with a power that should be diligently studied and delighted in by young pastors.38 Similarly, Lindner hopes that many preachers in his day would study and follow Luther’s preaching, rather than lecturing “poor souls” in morals and merits.39 With this goal in mind, Lindner presents his “affordable” edition not only for pastors and school superintendents but also for burghers, peasants, and families to read in the home for edification.40 But Lindner announces that his work is not a complete edition of Luther’s church and house postils and why: First, the beloved reader will find herein the precious evangelical fundamental truths found in the church and both house postils. Admittedly, it has not exacted a little effort to pull together the kernel (den Kern) so succinctly from so many sermons on the Gospel text found in these three postils so that just one single sermon results, which will not make the reader tired and annoyed by too great length.41

Hence, Lindner exacted a lot of effort amalgamating one sermon by cutting, pasting, and deleting from three sermons (i.e., the church postils and Dietrich’s and Rörer’s house postils) in order to pull together what Lindner believed was the kernel of Luther’s sermons on each Gospel text. He did this so that readers, both clergy and laity, would not become exhausted slogging through more than one lengthy sermon on the Gospel or Epistle text for the day in the Church Year. Lindner’s source for the church postils is volumes 13 and 14 of Leipzig, and volumes 15 and 16 of Leipzig contain the house postils. This is evident because the top of each page in Lindner cites the volume and page of Leipzig from which he is piecing together his amalgamated sermon. Summarily, Lindner constructed a simple devotional work, that is, a heavily abridged and amalgamated edition of Luther’s church and house postils, so that Luther’s postils would be easily purchased, read, and comprehended by clergy for the pulpit and laity for the home.

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Lindner’s Amalgamations Kierkegaard was unaware that he was forking for extracts (Uddrager) from extracts (Auszüge). An example of Kierkegaard’s lack of awareness of the amalgamated nature of Thisted can be shown by regarding Kierkegaard’s ambivalent 1850 comment on Luther’s sermon on the Gospel for the Second Sunday after Easter. Kierkegaard lances and lauds Luther: In his sermon on the Gospel “I am the good shepherd” Luther still does not put it together rightly. He speaks about, and in the strongest terms, that Christ takes to himself the brokenhearted, etc. all quite true. But now see if the same sermon declares that when a person becomes a Christian, immediately there will be persecution for the sake of the Word, that this is inherent in the Gospel, so that it must be dearer to a person than his life. Furthermore, that Christ at times even leaves his own in a pricking situation, a new suffering apart from the persecution by the world and of inner anxiety. Furthermore, that the suffering is so great and fearful that it truly is a matter of not being offended by Christ. But, my God, is this doctrine then so mild. O, no, this is half information that people run around with—well, not Luther, for he knows yet to hold back—but that is how it is given in general.42

In this ambivalent comment, it is difficult to tell what Kierkegaard adjudicates of this sermon. Does Luther “not put it together rightly,” giving only “half information”?43 When we examine the Luther sermon for ourselves, this one sermon is actually an amalgamation from three separate church postils on this Gospel text, John 10:11–16.44 Regarding this sermon on the pages in Thisted,45 as Kierkegaard did, there is no way to grasp that the sermon is this amalgamation. The only way to grasp this fact is to regard the header on each page of Lindner, which cites the pages sourced from Leipzig. Thisted does not display these headers like Lindner, nor any other critical notes. Hence, a fuller-bodied comprehension of the sermon Kierkegaard read requires a fastidious referencing of three separate sources, namely, Thisted, Lindner, and Leipzig, at the same time. So when Kierkegaard lances “the same sermon” in his comment on this sermon, we must recognize that Kierkegaard was unaware that the amalgamated construction of the sermon he is lancing in Thisted was not Luther’s ultimate responsibility, but Lindner’s. Further demonstrating the amalgamated nature of Lindner, it is important to recognize that Lindner can amalgamate one postil on a Gospel or Epistle text from as many as three church postils and four house postils on the given text. Thus, while Kierkegaard believes he is reading from one Luther sermon each sitting with Thisted, he is actually most often reading from an amalgamation of more than one sermon. A typical sermon in Lindner is an amalgamation of excerpts from one or two church postils on a Gospel or Epistle text combined with excerpts from one or two house postils on the

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same Gospel or Epistle text. Examples of this formula are found in Lindner’s Gospel postils for the Second Sunday after Epiphany,46 the First Sunday in Lent,47 Easter Monday,48 Third Sunday after Easter,49 Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity,50 all of which Kierkegaard uncritically refers to each as one single sermon with the comments such as “in Luther’s sermon,”51 “his sermon,”52 or “Luther in the sermon on the gospel.”53 Some of Lindner’s amalgamations are composites only of church postils, not including house postils, for example, the Second Sunday after Easter, which is a composite of three separate church postils.54 Sometimes, one of Lindner’s sermons will source and abridge only one church postil.55 Other times, one of Lindner’s sermons will source only from the house postils and not the church postils and Lindner sources from both Rörer’s and Dietrich’s house postils.56 All of this is to show the critical variety of amalgamated Luther sermons that Lindner created, all of which Kierkegaard was unaware. Lindner’s Deletions Not only are Lindner’s sermons amalgamations of several different sermons but also, in order to amalgamate one concise sermon from several different sermons, Lindner deletes significant amounts from Leipzig’s church and house postils, all of which, again, Kierkegaard is critically unaware. What does Lindner regularly delete? Luther’s Polemic against Rome Most conspicuously, the first element noticed upon a comparison of the abridged postils in Thisted and Lindner with the unabridged postils in Leipzig is Lindner’s deletion of every polemic in Luther’s postils against Rome. Kierkegaard, thus, completely missed the constant fulminations basic to Luther’s preaching, which sought to liberate his anxious hearers from captivity to the Catholic penitential, monastic, and sacramental systems.57 After the devastating effects of the Thirty Years’ War and the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which granted Catholics and Protestants equality before the law, Lindner’s 1740s reader’s edition of Luther works reflects a post-Thirty Years’ War Pietist effort to go behind Catholic and Protestant confessional and civic divisions to focus on a spiritual and practical faith.58 An excellent example of this deletion is Lindner’s Gospel postil for the Second Sunday after Trinity.59 Lindner begins this sermon at the tenth paragraph of the house postil in Leipzig,60 deleting the first nine paragraphs. What Lindner deletes is nine paragraphs of Luther’s polemic against the Papist abuse of the Lord’s Supper. The following is sample from this deleted polemic:

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But to the shame and disgrace of the Sacrament, they do this that they themselves may thereby be honored, namely, that the distinction be maintained, that the order of priests is a more special and a higher order before God, than the common order of Christians; because the priests alone receive the entire Sacrament or both elements, the body and the blood of Christ, and other Christians, as people of a lower order, must be satisfied with only one part of the Sacrament.61

Not only does Lindner delete whole paragraphs on anything having to do with Luther’s polemic against Rome but also Lindner is careful to delete even short phrases concerning the same. Notice in the following excerpt from the Gospel postil for Quinquagesima Sunday that the text is from Leipzig while the italicized is deleted in Lindner: We should learn to imitate the blind man, even also with our prayers and to bring our needs to Christ and certainly believe he will hear and grant us. Under the Papacy we have despised our own prayer, and thought: If others do not pray for us, then we would obtain nothing. But these things should not be done by a Christian; rather [A]s soon as need presses him, hastily hurry into the chamber, and fall to the knees and say: Lord, here I come, in this need or desire I call for help, although I am indeed unworthy.62

Not only the papacy but also every one of Luther’s denigrations of monasticism falls under what Lindner deletes of Luther’s polemic against Rome. Note, for example, the following deletion: “In the world’s eyes it’s a big deal when a monk denies himself everything, enters a cloister, leads a disciplined, austere life, fasts, prays, and so on. No lack of activity exists there, except only that God’s command is lacking to do these things. Therefore, this cannot be extolled as serving God.”63 After deleting this section that denigrates monasticism, Lindner picks back up in the very next paragraph where Luther makes his theological point without the polemic of a binary opposite, pasting, “In every way, therefore, it is serving God when one does what God has commanded, and does not do what God has forbidden.”64 Hence, by reading Thisted, a Danish translation of Lindner, Kierkegaard’s primary source for reading Luther lacks the polemical and historical battle against Rome, the papacy, and monasticism out of which Luther’s message was birthed. Even though he did not read it in Thisted, Kierkegaard, as a student of Lutheran theology, was, of course, well acquainted with Luther’s historical battle against Rome before reading Thisted. Significantly, Kierkegaard was never overly sympathetic to Luther’s stance against Rome and monasticism because he felt such polemic degenerately substituted the spiritual exigency of Rome with the temporal tranquility of the Protestant bourgeois crowd. This did not mean that Kierkegaard signaled a return to Rome, for Kierkegaard

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was dialectically able to see the downsides of both Catholicism and Protestantism: “When Catholicism degenerates, what form of corruption is likely to appear? Surface sanctity. When Protestantism degenerates, what form of corruption will appear? The answer is easy: spiritless secularism.”65 Instead, Kierkegaard wanted to hold the upside of both churches in dialectical tension, namely, the spiritual exigency of Catholicism that engenders the anxious conscience as the existential presupposition to Protestantism’s justification by grace. Kierkegaard incisively explains in an 1853 journal entry: Consider the situation when Luther broke out: there was falsification. Remove entirely this presupposition for Luther and Luther’s position is completely meaningless. Imagine that what Luther in the utmost tension comprehended as the ultimate is taken as a kind of “conclusion” in such a way that people omit the tension completely—then Luther’s position is utter nonsense. Imagine a country, far removed from all Catholicism, where the Lutheran “conclusion” has been introduced; there a generation lives who have never heard a single word about the side of the matter expressed by the monastery, asceticism, etc., the side which the middle ages exaggerated—but have been sentimentally reared and spoiled from childhood by Luther’s “conclusion” about reassurance for the troubled conscience. But there is no one, note well, who even in the remotest way has this troubled conscience! What then is Luther’s “conclusion”? Is there any meaning in reassurance for troubled consciences if the presupposition of the troubled conscience is not there? Does not Luther’s conclusion thereby become meaningless, yes, what is worse, a refinement which makes the difference between degenerated Protestantism and the corruption of degenerated Catholicism.66

Hence, in order to reintroduce the Catholic presupposition, Kierkegaard could be ambivalently sympathetic especially toward Roman monasticism, lancing its soteriological merit but lauding its methodological value. He wrote in the year he began reading Luther’s sermons: There is no doubt that our age and Protestantism especially may need the monastery again or that it should exist. “The monastery” is an essential dialectical element in Christianity; therefore we need to have it out there like a buoy at sea in order to see where we are, even though I myself would not enter it. But if there really is true Christianity in every generation, there must also be individuals who have this need. What would Luther think if he were to look around now?—That there are not very many in our time overwhelmed by the religious, that we have all become so strong—or so weak, in religiousness!67

Kierkegaard often regarded Luther as the model who was able to dialectically balance the Catholic presupposition with the Protestant conclusion. In 1850, Kierkegaard expressed in his journal that it was Luther’s later progeny who

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sophistically metamorphosed Luther’s Anfægtelser into worldly happiness and Luther’s attack on the pope into political justification for the pursuit of happiness.68 But Kierkegaard could sometimes lay blame on Luther himself, as in the following 1854 journal comment: “Luther, you do have an enormous responsibility, for when I look more closely I see ever more clearly that you toppled the Pope—and set ‘the public’ upon the throne.”69 Hence, while Kierkegaard applauded Luther’s attack upon Rome’s soteriology of merit, Kierkegaard was never overly sympathetic to Luther’s polemic because of the worldliness he believed it accidentally engendered. Because of Kierkegaard’s lack of full sympathy for Luther’s polemic against Rome, we can only conjecture what effect this polemic would have had on Kierkegaard had it not been deleted. My conjecture is that these deletions by Lindner may have actually accommodated Kierkegaard’s sympathies for the upside of Rome. For example, Lindner deletes several paragraphs from the Gospel postil for the First Sunday in Advent, again, the very first sermon Kierkegaard read in Thisted and commented on in his journals. The very first Lindner deletion occurs just two pages into the sermon on Thisted page 17 (1st column). The end of the paragraph at the bottom of Thisted page 16 (2nd column) and concluding on page 17 (1st column) states: “Behold, this faith is nothing (Intet), neither receiving nor tasting (smager) of Christ ever, nor feeling some desire or love from (af) him or to (til) him. It is a faith about (om) Christ, but not in (til) or of (paa) Christ. It is a faith as also devils and all evil men have.”70 While the above is present in Thisted and Lindner, now notice the rest of this paragraph, which was deleted from Thisted via Lindner: For who is it that does not believe that Christ is a gracious king to the saints? This vain and wicked faith is now taught by the pernicious synagogues of Satan. The universities (Paris and her sister schools), together with the monasteries and all Papists, say that this faith is sufficient to make Christians. In this way they virtually deny Christian faith, make heathen and Turks out of Christians, as St. Peter in 2 Pet. 2, 1 had foretold: “There shall be false teachers, who shall privily bring in destructive heresies, denying even the Master that bought them.”71

It is significant that Kierkegaard never read this deleted polemic against Rome, which, if it had not, would have been found beginning on Thisted page 16, which is the very same page about which Kierkegaard commented that Luther’s “for you” category wonderfully matched his “subjectivity/ inwardness” category.72 Had these three polemical sentences not been deleted, would Kierkegaard have so wonderfully commented and would he have continued to read and comment on more Luther sermons after this first one? Had the regular fulminations against Rome not been regularly deleted, would Kierkegaard have remained a regular reader of Luther’s postils the

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last eight years of his life? While the lack of Luther’s polemic against Rome in Lindner’s Luther certainly builds a lacunal Lutherbild, such lacunae may have propitiously accommodated Kierkegaard’s dialectical sympathy toward Rome while its offensive inclusion may have precluded Kierkegaard’s further esteem of Luther as a spiritual guide. Less conspicuous than the deletion of Luther’s polemic against Rome, Lindner sometimes, but not always, deletes polemic against the Anabaptists73 and other radical groups, but does not delete Luther’s invective against the Jews or Turks.74 While the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, ending the Thirty Years’ War, granted Catholics and Protestants equality before the law, Jews and Turks, as non-Christian religions, continued to be viewed as opponents both of Christ and of the state.75 Hence, Lindner tends to delete interdenominational controversies from Luther’s postils, but not inter-religious invective. Pulling the Kernel Together If Lindner only deleted the polemic against Rome, the final amalgamated sermon would still be very long and laborious. Lindner’s other deletions are subtler and evidence him to be a master craftsman, assimilating Luther’s various postils on one text into one easy-to-read devotional sermon. The idea of deleting significant sections of Luther’s postils may first seem arrogating and appalling to today’s historical theologian, and we may be tempted to hypothesize that Lindner so laundered Luther that the Luther Kierkegaard read was not Luther, but Lindner. Granted, Lindner’s deletions create a lacunal Lutherbild, yet Lindner’s presentations of Luther’s postils are still fair. That is, Lindner did a fine job doing what he set out to do—“to succinctly pull together the kernel” from Luther’s various church and house postils on specific texts in order to create an abridged devotional reader’s edition of Luther’s postils. Luther’s excessive repetition is one facet Lindner regularly deletes. When there are several postils on one Gospel or Epistle text, Luther most often makes the same point in one postil as he does in another. Luther can even make the same point in just one postil repeatedly. Reading Lindner in the light of Leipzig, Lindner always allows Luther to make his main point, and Lindner well chooses from the postils the form in which Luther makes his main point in the most poignant way. For example, there are two church postils76 and one house postil77 in Leipzig on the John 16:16–23 Gospel for the Third Sunday after Easter, and Lindner amalgamates his one sermon on this text78 from all three. In these three postils, Luther makes the same main point three separate times, that is, the parable of the woman who has sorrow in labor but joy after childbirth is an encouragement to Christians that they will experience Anfechtung, suffering, and sorrow, but that sorrow will last only “a little while” and that great joy will follow. Because Lindner’s purpose is to create

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a reader’s edition of the postils, he amalgamates what he believes to be the best of the three postils’ expression of this main point and necessarily deletes what would make for excessive repetition and an excessively long sermon. While deleting excessive repetition, Lindner most often keeps whole paragraphs together, respecting the paragraph construction of the postils in Leipzig. Lindner does not, for example, erratically construct his paragraphs by pulling one sentence from one postil, the next sentence from another postil, and the next sentence from another. Instead, Lindner most often will quote a whole paragraph from one postil, and if in the next paragraph he then leaps to another postil, he will quote the whole paragraph from the new postil he is referencing. Also, again, Lindner’s references of Leipzig at the top of each page always give notice to which volume and page in Leipzig he is referencing. Hence, it is easy to recognize when he switches to another page or postil in Leipzig.79 Thus, Lindner’s presentation of Luther is not an interweaving of sentences from different postils but an interweaving of paragraphs from different postils. This fact helps us to recognize that Lindner is neither a paraphrase nor a haphazard cutting and pasting of individual sentences, but an abridgement. Also pulling the kernel together, Lindner sometimes deletes extraneous expositional commentary that does not support the sermon’s main point. For example, in the Gospel postil on the wedding at Cana from the Second Sunday after Epiphany, the main point Lindner highlights from the circumstances of the wedding’s running out of wine and Jesus’s rebuff of his mother is that “Men first give the best, then the worst. God first gives cross and suffering, then honor and blessedness.”80 Given this main point, Lindner deletes commentary (e.g., customs at wedding feasts,81 the meaning of the word “Cana,”82 and the identity of the ruler of the feast83) that does not directly support it. Hence, whereas the original intention of Luther’s church postils was to serve as exegetical studies and sermon helps to assist ill-prepared clergy,84 Lindner’s deletion of some, but not the majority, of the expositional matter in the postils morphs the purpose of the postils more toward devotional literature and less toward biblical commentary. Also, Lindner sometimes, but not always, deletes some of Luther’s more bizarre original ingredients. For example, in the sermon for the Second Sunday after Trinity, a section taken from Rörer’s house postil compares Christ to a roasted chicken, but Lindner is punctiliously careful to delete all of these references. After deleting one full paragraph on this analogy, Lindner deletes any other little saying that mentions this chicken again. For example, in italics below: All believers eat of Christ, and every man receives him wholly, and despite which Christ remains whole. Such does not occur in bodily food, chicken or capon.85

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What is this food? How does it taste? A well roasted chicken gives a sweet taste, furthers the body and soul, as we talk, together, sates and strengthens the body: So here also, if I believe the gospel, then I eat of Christ, and feed and strengthen my soul, tasting the forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and salvation.86 Christ is roasted upon the cross, and died for me, he is my capon, he was carried and laid before me in the gospel, I eat of him, believe in him.87

Although the above deletions in Lindner are less significant, nonetheless, they contribute to a lacunal Lutherbild for Kierkegaard. While we must acknowledge the lacunae created by Lindner’s deletions and amalgamations, Lindner’s abridgement does not lose the postils’ paragraph construction or main points. SIGNIFICANCE FOR SCHOLARSHIP Our awareness of the abridged and amalgamated nature of Thisted and Lindner not only clarifies what Kierkegaard read of Luther’s sermons but also corrects the most recent scholarship on this topic. As recently as 2009, the content and organization of the edition of Luther’s sermons that Kierkegaard read had not been recognized. David Yoon-Jung Kim and Joel D. S. Rasmussen were uninformed when they published: The two-volume collection of Luther’s postils which Kierkegaard owned contains Luther’s Church Postil (Kirchenpostille) and selections from the so-called “house postils.” See [Luther] En christelig Postille. The majority of Kierkegaard’s comments refer to Luther’s Church Postil (1521), which cover the church year from the First Sunday in Advent to the end of the Holy Week (i.e., from Christmas to Advent). Luther also wrote a “winter-portion,” covering Epiphany to Easter, which appeared in 1525. The so-called House Postil contains the church-year sermons Luther preached in his home between 1531 and 1535, when poor health prohibited him from preaching in public. Unlike the Church Postil, these house postils were not written by Luther but based on stenographic notes of Georg Rörer, and are therefore not “exemplary” sermons in the same sense as the former.88

While Kim and Rasmussen give a fair, but incomplete, history of Luther’s church and house postils, there are two major problems with their account.89 (1) It is an incorrect description of the contents and organization of Thisted because it does not reflect the abridged and amalgamated nature of Thisted via Lindner and (2) it is incorrect to say that the majority of Kierkegaard’s comments refer to Luther’s 1521 church postils. To correct these problems, let us again regard the contents of Thisted’s Sermon for the First Sunday in Advent, the very first sermon in Thisted and

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the very first Luther sermon Kierkegaard read. This sermon is not simply a Danish translation of Luther’s 1521 church postil on Matthew 21:1–9. Instead, it is a Danish translation of Lindner’s abridged and amalgamated sermon for the First Sunday in Advent. Not only are several paragraphs from the 1521 church postil deleted but Lindner also sources a 1533 house postil, amalgamating the final sermon from both a church and house postil over a decade apart. While the sermon that begins on Thisted page 15 is from Luther’s 1521 church postil,90 on Thisted page 22 (1st column) a large section from a 1533 Rörer house postil is inserted, continuing to Thisted page 24 (1st column).91 The bottom paragraph on Thisted page 24 (1st column) then picks back up with Luther’s 1521 church postil. But Lindner does not pick back up where he left off in Luther’s 1521 church postil. Instead, Lindner deletes three paragraphs from the 1521 postil and then continues.92 The rest of this Lindner sermon is sourced from the 1521 postil, deleting several pages and paragraphs from Leipzig along the way. Lindner’s abridgement of amalgamated sermons from church and house postils more than a decade apart, as exemplified here in the first Luther sermon Kierkegaard read, disproves Kim and Rasmussen’s assumption that Kierkegaard almost exclusively confined himself to Luther’s 1521 church postils. Our awareness of the content and organization of Lindner clarifies what Kierkegaard could have read of Luther in Thisted. Also, without examining the contents of Thisted, Kim and Rasmussen misconceive that Kierkegaard was an unfair critic of Luther’s dialectical aptitude because of Kierkegaard’s exclusive reliance on the early 1521 postils. Kim and Rasmussen state: Without dismissing the possibility that Kierkegaard’s penchant for polemic leads him to oversimplify Luther’s situation, it is important to see how Kierkegaard’s restricted reading of Luther’s writings partially accounts for this historical reduction. That is to say, while his primary (and almost exclusive) reliance on the postils—and the Church Postil in particular—afforded him a rich and terse exposition of the major themes and arguments of Luther’s theology, the fact that the Church Postil dates to 1521 means the collection gives no indication of the challenges that Luther faced with the expansion and consolidation of the evangelical movement.93

As shown, the very first sermon Kierkegaard read was from both 1521 and 1533, and all of the Thisted sermons are similar abridged amalgamations of sermons dating from 1521 to 1535, spanning the most significant period of Luther’s theological expansion and consolidation. The remaining chapters evidence that Kierkegaard’s comments span this entire corpus of Thisted. Therefore, Kierkegaard’s critique is not restricted to the 1521 postils alone. These two lacunae—(1) Kierkegaard’s forking for Uddrager (2) through

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Sammendragen—serve as binocular lenses through which to freshly adjudicate every one of Kierkegaard’s comments on Luther’s sermons, giving Luther a fairer hearing. NOTES 1. Kierkegaard notes that he read Luther’s sermons “according to plan” (efter Tour), JP 3:2465; KJN 4, NB4:153; SKS 20, 357; Papirer VIII.1 A 642; JP 6:6328; KJN 5, NB10:1; SKS 21, 255; Papirer X.1 A 80. Kierkegaard’s journals evidence that his reading “plan” did not always follow the church year calendar, of which the organization of Luther’s postils in Thisted would have accommodated. One of Kierkegaard’s journal notes illustrates the difficulty of deciphering Kierkegaard’s plan: “This year, August 9 (the date of Father’s death) happened to fall on a Friday. I went to communion that day. And, strangely enough, the sermon in Luther I read according to plan that day was on the verse ‘All good and perfect gifts, etc.’ from the Epistle of James. . . . This strikes me as very curious; I myself also find it curiously impressive since I do not remember beforehand which sermon is to be read according to the schedule. September 8 (which I really call my engagement day) is on a Sunday this year, and the Gospel is: No man can serve two masters,” JP 6:6666; KJN 7, NB20:130; SKS 23, 461; Papirer X.3 A 391. This means that on Friday August 9, 1850 Kierkegaard read Luther’s Epistle sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Easter, Thisted 2:248, which never occurs in August. On Sunday September 8, 1850 Kierkegaard read Luther’s Gospel sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity, which would have been exactly according to the church year calendar. From this we might conjecture that Kierkegaard’s reading of the Gospel sermons at least followed the church year calendar. But on Saturday April 22, 1848, Kierkegaard logged in his journal, “Today I have read Luther’s sermon according to plan; it was the Gospel about the ten lepers,” JP 3:2465; KJN 4, NB4:153; SKS 20, 357; Papirer VIII.1 A 642, and this sermon on Luke 17:11–19 is Luther’s Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity sermon, which never falls in April. Hence, although Kierkegaard followed some plan in reading Luther’s sermons, it is difficult to decipher the logic of the plan. 2. Garff, Søren Kierkegaard, 8–9: “At home he bore the nickname ‘the fork,’ because that was the utensil he had named when he had been asked what he would most like to be: ‘A fork,’ the freckled little boy had answered. ‘Why?’ ‘Well, then I could spear anything I wanted on the dinner table.’ ‘But what if we come after you?’ ‘Then I’ll spear you.’ And the name ‘the fork’ stuck to him because of ‘his precocious tendency to make satirical remarks.’” 3. One example of a more holistic and corpulent quest for the historical Luther isolated in his own time is Heiko A. Oberman’s Luther: Man Between God and the Devil, trans. Eileen Walliser-Schwarzbart (New York: Image, 1992). Here, Oberman emphasizes that Luther was a pre-Enlightenment “child of his time,” defined by a medieval fear of God and contempt for the devil who “cannot simply be transplanted to an era centuries later,” 314–15. Oberman uses the metaphor of needing to view not only the popular portrait of Luther the Reformer from the neck upward but also

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the need to see the rest of his corpulent and vulnerable body racked with pain from fighting with God and the devil, 328. 4. Thisted is a two-volume work. 5. I will follow Kierkegaard’s nineteenth-century Danish spelling, in which all nouns were capitalized. The Danish suffix “-er” pluralizes the noun Uddrag. 6. The Danish suffix “-en” denotes the definite article. Hence, “Sammendragen” is translated “the summary.” 7. Garff, Søren Kierkegaard, 8–9. 8. Helmut Thielicke, Modern Faith and Thought, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 493. 9. JP 3:803. Sløk, “Kierkegaard and Luther, 86, writes: “As far as Luther was concerned, Kierkegaard’s study of him was rather one-sided. Luther’s great theological, philosophical, and polemical works apparently did not matter much to him. Even though he had read these works, his writings give no evidence that he was deeply concerned with them. On the other hand, he was a constant reader of Luther’s Postil, and, let it be noted, he read it for edification. It occupied a prominent place in the edifying literature of both Protestant and Catholic origin which he read constantly—a literature always showing a more or less pietistic strain. The very fact that Kierkegaard read Luther for devotional purposes undeniably had a decisive effect on his interpretation of Luther.” 10. Paul Sponheim, Kierkegaard on Christ and Christian Coherence (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), 87: “It appears probable, nonetheless, that Kierkegaard’s exposure to Luther—as distinguished from Lutheran dogmatics—was both late and sketchy, so that in describing this relationship we at best are identifying parallels, rather than tracing indebtedness.” 11. This project would be more complete if the copy of Thisted with which I was working was Kierkegaard’s own annotated copy, but alas, such is not the case. Kierkegaard’s journals are the primary source for his thoughts on Luther’s sermons. 12. JP 3:2516; KJN 7, NB18:76; SKS 23, 304; Papirer X.3 A 127. 13. JP 3:2516; KJN 7, NB18:76; SKS 23, 304; Papirer X.3 A 127. 14. EO2 354: “Do not interrupt the flight of your soul; do not distress what is best in you; do not enfeeble your spirit with half wishes and half thoughts. Ask yourself and keep on asking until you find the answer, for one may have known something many times, acknowledged it; one may have willed something many times, attempted it—and yet, only the deep inner motion, only the heart’s indescribable emotion, only that will convince you that what you have acknowledged belongs to you, that no power can take it from you—for only the truth that builds up is truth for you.” 15. JP 3:2463; KJN 4, NB3:61; SKS 20, 274; Papirer VIII.1 A 465. Note how Kierkegaard here marks in his journal where in the sermon this corroboration comes from. Kierkegaard does not make this a habit in future comments on Luther’s sermons. 16. Thisted 1:15. 17. Thisted 1:16 (translation mine); Lindner 7:9; Leipzig 13:12. 18. Thisted 1:17 (translation mine); Lindner 7:9–10; Leipzig 13:13. 19. Thisted 1:17 (translation mine); Lindner 7:10; Leipzig 13:13.

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20. Louis Dupré, Kierkegaard as Theologian: The Dialectic of Christian Existence (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1963), 115. 21. Regard how Hegel introduced his Science of Logic: “This realm is truth as it is without veil and in its own absolute nature. It can therefore be said that this content is the exposition of God as he is in his eternal essence before the creation of nature and a finite mind.” In Merold Westphal, “Kierkegaard and Hegel,” in The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, ed. Alastair Hannay and Gordon D. Marino (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 124. 22. Gouwens, Kierkegaard as Religious Thinker, 43. 23. CUP 16. 24. See B. A. Gerrish’s description of Luther’s “Regenerate Reason,” which is a tension between what can be known naturally and what can be known only by faith in Grace and Reason: A Study in the Theology of Luther (Oxford: Clarendon, 1962), 22. Recall Immanuel Kant’s famous note in the preface to the Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1996), 31: “I therefore had to annul knowledge in order to make room for faith. And the source of all the lack of faith which conflicts with morality—and is always highly dogmatic—is dogmatism in metaphysics, i.e., the prejudice according to which we can make progress in metaphysics without a prior critique of pure reason.” 25. Thulstrup, “Studies of Pietists, Mystics, and Church Fathers,” 60, 80, notes that Kierkegaard deliberately and eagerly read from “the upbuilding literature of the Church Fathers, mystics, and pietists,” searching for the existential element in Christianity carried out in life, as opposed to merely the noetic. 26. Garff, Søren Kierkegaard, 125. 27. Prenter, “Luther and Lutheranism,” 125–26, notes, “Kierkegaard reads Luther in his own specific manner. He is not very interested in getting a solid and comprehensive knowledge of Luther’s own thought. He reads Luther for his own ‘edification.’ He seeks in Luther an ally in the struggle against his philosophical and theological opponents . . . . Thus Kierkegaard is not very eager to find Luther’s opinion in his own works. He seems more interested in finding his own opinions restated and confirmed by Luther.” Sløk, “Kierkegaard and Luther,” 85–86, affirms the same: “Kierkegaard’s knowledge of Luther was of a strangely accidental character. This is not unusual for Kierkegaard; somewhere in his Journals he complains of it himself. It is very difficult for him to concern himself objectively with another author: he invariably views him from his own positions and, accordingly, he sometimes fastens upon quite accidental and unrelated things. He had a tendency—of which he was well aware—to evaluate others on the basis of highly arbitrary associations which might be aroused by some peculiar phrase or the like.” 28. JP 3:2516; KJN 7, NB18:76; SKS 23, 204; Papirer X3 A 127. 29. JP 3:2493. 30. E.g., Thulstrup, “Theological and Philosophical Studies,” 46, merely mentions, “For upbuilding he soon began to read in Jørgen Thisted’s Danish translation of Benjamin Lindner’s German edition of the postils for home and church.” Prenter, “Luther and Lutheranism,” 125, mentions only that Kierkegaard read a Danish translation of Luther’s postils. Andrew J. Burgess, “Kierkegaard’s Concept of Redoubling and

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Luther’s Simul Justus,” in International Kierkegaard Commentary: Works of Love, vol. 16, ed. Robert L. Perkins (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2004), 51–52, deficiently describes this collection of Luther’s postils as only “Huuspostiller.” 31. Op. cit. 32. Translation mine. 33. Throughout this study, I will italicize Thisted in reference to the volume, and I will not italicize Thisted in reference to the man. The same holds for Lindner and Lindner. 34. Op. cit. 35. Translation mine. 36. Heino O. Kadai, Guide to Luther Studies (Springfield, IL: Concordia Theological Seminary, 1966), 6. Leipzig was also the first edition to translate all of Luther’s Latin writings into German. 37. Lindner 7:ii; Thisted 1:vii. 38. Lindner 7:viii; Thisted 1:ix. Lindner, Lindner 7:vi, writes: “Now those connoisseurs of Lutheran writings know that among those many edifying (erbaulichen) and spiritual books which have been left to us by this man of God, his church postil together with the commentaries on Genesis and the Epistle to the Galatians have a great advantage over many others. The late man held it not only as his very best book that he wrote but also declared: ‘I hope a Christian will find therein what is needful to know,’” (translation mine). “Nun ist denen kennern derer Lutherischen schriften bekannt, dass unter denen vielen erbaulichen und geistreichen büchern, die uns dieser theure Gottes-mann hinterlassen hat, seine kirchen-postille, nebst denen auslegungen des ersten buches Mosis und der epistle an die Galater vor vielen andern grossen vorzug hat. Der selige mann hat sie nicht allein selbst für sein allerbestes buch gehalten, das er ie gemacht; sondern auch davon geurtheilet: ‘Er hoffe, ein christ sole darin finden, was ihm noth ist zu wissen.’” Significantly, Spener, the father of German Lutheran Pietism, was the first to issue an edition of Luther’s church postils (Martin Luther, Kirchen-Postille, Auslegung Der Episteln und Evangelien auff alle Sonntage und Feste durchs gantze Jahr, 4 vols. [Leipzig: T. Fritschen, 1710]), for both clergy and laity, but Spener’s edition is not abridged like Lindner. 39. Lindner 7:iv; Thisted 1:viii: “I do not doubt that many, when they read the glorious sermons on faith in this seventh part, will say with me: ‘O, if only many preachers would concisely read aloud all the simple evangelical preaching of Luther to his hearers instead of lecturing poor souls in strong and weak morals or wretched fables and stories, which leave them spiritually dead year after year!’” (translation mine). “Ja ich zweifele nicht, viele, wenn sie die herrlichen predigten vom glauben in diesem VII theile lessen, werden mit mir sagen: O, wenn mancher prediger solche kurtzgefasste evangel. predigten Lutheri gantz einfältig seinen zuhörern vorlesen wolte, an statt, dass er denen armen seelen pures stroh und stoppeln einer kraft und saft-losen moral oder wol gar elender fabeln und histörschen vorträget, und mit ihnen ein jahr nach dem andern darbey geistlich todt und erstorben bleibet!” 40. Lindner 7:xiii; Thisted 1:x. 41. Lindner 7:xv (translation mine). “Erstlich findet der geliebter Leser hierinnen die theuersten evangelischen grund-wahrheiten, welche in der kirchen und beyden

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haus-postillen anzutreffen sind. Es hat freylich nicht geringe mühe gekostet, aus so vielen predigten, die in diesen dreyen postillen über die evangelischen texte befindlich, den kern so kurtz zusammen zu ziehen, dass nur eine einige predigt daraus werde, die auch durch allzugrosse länge den leser nicht müde oder verdrieslich mache.” Significantly, for Kierkegaard and any Danish reader of Thisted, this section explaining the edited nature of Lindner in Lindner’s forward is not present in Thisted. 42. SKS 4, 84; Papirer X.3 A 579 (translation mine). “I sin Prædiken over Evangeliet ‘den gode Hyrde’ sætter Luther det dog heller ikke rigtigt sammen. Han taler om, og i de stærkeste Udtryk, at Christus antager sig det Sønderknuste o:s:v:, alt ganske sandt. Men see nu, naar det saa i samme Prædiken hedder, flux En er blevet Christen, strax Forfølgelse for Ordets Skyld, at dette ligger naturligt i Evangeliet, saa det maa være En kjerere end Ens Hals. Fremdeles at Christus saa stundom endog lader sine i Stikken, en ny Lidelse foruden Verdens Forfølgelse og indvortes Angest. Fremdeles, at Lidelsen er saa stor og frygtelig, at det gjælder i Sandhed om: ikke at forarges paa Christus. Men Du min Gud, er saa denne Lære saa mild. O, nei, det er halv Beskeed man render med vel ikke Luther, thi han veed dog at holde igjen men som det i Almindelighed forkyndes.” 43. Chapter 4 answers these questions on this sermon. 44. Lindner amalgamates one sermon from the three separate church postils on this text found in Leipzig. The first postil, found at Leipzig 13:567, was first printed in 1523. The second postil, found at Leipzig 13:573, was printed in 1522. The source of the third postil, found at Leipzig 13:576, was from Cruciger’s 1543 edition of Luther’s church postils. 45. Thisted 1:294–302. 46. Thisted 1:151–59; Lindner 7:264–79; Leipzig 13:349–54; 15:94–98. Note especially the separate volume references in Leipzig, denoting that these Thisted and Lindner sermons are amalgamations of both church and house postils. Number 13 is from the church postils, and 15 is from the house postils. 47. Thisted 1:201–7; Lindner 7:357–71; Leipzig 13:412–17; Leipzig 15:135–40. 48. Thisted 1:264–73; Lindner 7:487–510; Leipzig 13:490–97; Leipzig 16:243–49. Leipzig 16 is a volume of house postils. 49. Thisted 1:302–9; Lindner 7:574–89; Leipzig 13:593–602; Leipzig 16:274–78. 50. Thisted 1:490–501; Lindner 7:990–1015; Leipzig 14:275–84: Leipzig 16:419– 24. Leipzig 14 is a volume of church postils. 51. SKS 22, 13; Papirer X.1 A 303: “i Luthers Prædiken” on the sermon for the Second Sunday after Epiphany. 52. SKS 22, 316; Papirer X.2 A 139: “hans Prædiken” on the sermon for the Third Sunday after Easter. 53. SKS 22, 25 Papirer X.1 A 326: “Luther i Prædiken over Evangeliet” on the sermon for the First Sunday in Lent. 54. See footnote 42. 55. E.g., Lindner’s sermon on the Gospel for Pentecost Monday: Thisted 1:354– 64; Lindner 7:688–711; Leipzig 13:719–28. 56. E.g., Lindner’s sermon on the Gospel for the Sixth Sunday after Trinity is one amalgamated sermon sourcing from both Rörer and Dietrich’s house postils for that Sunday. Thisted 1:430–37; Lindner 7:855–71; Leipzig 15:363–68.

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57. On Luther’s regular homiletic fulminations at Rome, see Eduard Richard Riegert, “To Impart to Everyone a Little of What God Has Given Me,” Consensus 9 (October 1983): 3, 6–9. 58. Carter Lindberg, “Introduction,” in The Pietist Theologians: An Introduction in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, ed. Carter Lindberg (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2005), 7. See also Jeremy Black, Eighteenth Century Europe 1700–1789 (New York: St. Martin’s, 1990), 172–73. 59. Thisted 1:391–400; Lindner 7:768–89. 60. Leipzig 15:338. 61. Lenker 2.2:39–40; Leipzig 15:337. 62. Leipzig 15:135; Lindner 7:355 (found in Thisted at 1:200). “Das sollen wir lernen dem Blinden nachthun, also auch mit unserm Gebet heraus fahren, und Christo unsere Noth fürbringen, und gewiss gläuben, er werede uns erhören und gewähren. Im Pabsthum haben wir selbst unser Gebet verachtet, und gedacht: Wo nicht andere für uns bitten, so würden wir nichts erlangen. Aber solchs soll bey Leibe kein Christ thun; Sondern [A]lsbald die Noth herdringet, flugs in die Kammer gelauffen, und auf die Knie gefallen, und gesagt: Herr, hie komme ich, in dieser Noth bedarff ich Hülffe, ob ich wol unwürdig bin” (translation mine). 63. Lenker 7:10; Leipzig 16:435. 64. Lenker 7:10; Leipzig 16:435; Lindner 7:1053; Thisted 1:518. 65. JP 3:3617; Papirer XI.2 A 305. 66. JP 3:3617; Papirer XI.2 A 305. 67. JP 3:2750; KJN 4, NB3:4; SKS 20, 247; Papirer VIII.1 A 403. 68. JP 3:2524; KJN 7, NB19:73; SKS 23, 377; Papirer X.3 A 234: “Luther’s contemporaries, especially his intimates, received the strong impression that he was a hero of the faith, at first excessively melancholy and then dreadfully tested in the most frightful spiritual trials [Anfægtelser], a devout, God-fearing man, and as such essentially a stranger in the world. Soon afterward the impression of Luther changed; he actually came to be construed as a political hero, and the key phrase by which he was remembered came to be: Hear, O Pope, etc. Once again the impression changed, now that the Pope was humbled, and Luther was construed as a happy man of the world and good company, the key phrase by which he was remembered by both the clergy and the lay people became: Wer nicht liebt Weiber, Wein, Gesang, etc. To use the vernacular, one can say today that the significance of the Reformation is construed as follows: Luther set girls and wine and card-playing in their rightful place in the Christian Church, as an essential ingredient, yes, as the true consummation in contrast to the defectiveness of poverty, prayer, and fasting. To that extent the best way to celebrate his memory is as follows. Chorus of clergy and lay people: A toast to Martin Luther! Hurrah! Hurrah! That was a good toast! Hurrah! Once again, hurrah! hurrah! To preserve his memory his portrait could be put on cards as the jack-of-clubs. It is not enough to erect monuments to him. No, make him into the jack-of-clubs, and there will be hardly a clergyman who will not have occasion again and again to be reminded of Martin Luther and the Reformation.” 69. JP 3:2548; KJN 5, NB10:30; SKS 21,272; Papirer XI.1 A 108. 70. Thisted 1:16 (translation mine); Lindner 7:9; Leipzig 13:12. 71. Lenker 1:21; Leipzig 13:12.

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72. JP 3:2463; KJN 4, NB3:61; SKS 20, 274; Papirer VIII.1 A 465. See again: “Wonderful! The category “for you” (subjectivity, inwardness) with which Either/ Or concludes (only the truth which builds up [opbygger] is truth for you) is Luther’s own. I have never really read anything by Luther. But now I open up his sermons— and right there in the Gospel for the First Sunday in Advent he says, “for you” (for dig), on this everything depends (see second page, first column, and first page, fourth column).” 73. E.g., note how Luther’s paragraph indicting the Wiedertäuffer in Leipzig 15:98 is not present in Lindner 7:268–69 where it would be. 74. E.g., Thisted 1:430–37; Lindner 7:855–71; Leipzig 15:363–68. 75. Black, Eighteenth-century Europe, 172. For more on the history of the contemptuous relation between Christians and Jews in Europe, see my section on “Kierkegaard’s Crux: Jewish Worldliness” in chapter 4. 76. Leipzig 13:593–602. 77. Leipzig 15:275–78. 78. Lindner 7:574–89; Thisted 1:302–9. 79. Again, important for Kierkegaard research is the fact that Thisted, the Danish translation of Lindner that Kierkegaard read, does not exhibit these same critical references to Leipzig, making it more difficult for the reader of Thisted to follow the original postils or comprehend the abridged nature of Thisted. 80. Lindner 7:278: “Die menschen geben zu erst das beste; darnach das ärgte. Gott zu erst das creuz und leiden; darnach ehre und seligkeit” (translation mine). Leipzig 13:354; Thisted 1:159. 81. Leipzig 13:350–51. 82. Leipzig 13:352–53. 83. Leipzig 13:353. 84. Lenker 5:12–13. “The term ‘postil’ itself derives out of the Latin phrase post illa verba textus, ‘after those words of the text,’ and refers to the commentary or homily which followed upon the reading of the standard pericope, the Gospel or Epistle, by the preacher at the service of worship.” 85. Leipzig 16:347; Lindner 1:781: “Alle Gläubigen essen von dem Christo, und ein ieglicher kriegt ihn ganz; Und bleibet dennoch der Christus ganz. Solches geschicht in leiblicher Speise, Huhn, oder Caphan nicht,” (translation mine). Unitalicized not present in Lindner. 86. Leipzig 16:347; Lindner 1:782: “Was giebt diese Speise? Wie schmecket sie? Ein recht wohl gebraten Huhn giebt einen lieblichen Geschmack, bringet Leib und Seel, wie man spricht, zusammen, sättiget und stärcket den Leib: Also hie auch; Wenn ich dem Evangelio gläube, so esse ich von Christo, und weidet und stärcket sich meine Seele, schmeckt nach Vergebung der Sünden, ewigem Leben und Seligkeit,” (translation mine). Unitalicized not present in Lindner. 87. Leipzig 16:347; Lindner 1:783: “Christus ist am Creuz gebraten, und für mich gestorben, er ist mein Kaphan, er wird mir Evangelio fürgetragen und fürgelegt, ich esse von ihm, gläube an ihm,” (translation mine). Unitalicized not present in Lindner. 88. Kim and Rasmussen, “Martin Luther,” 192. 89. One minor problem is the omission of Veit Dietrich’s role, alongside of Rörer, in the transmission of the house postils. Another minor problem is Kim and

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Rasmussen’s misprint when they say “from Christmas to Advent,” they likely meant “from Christmas to Easter.” 90. Thisted 1:15–22; Lindner 7:6–19; Leipzig 13:12–18; WA 10 I 2, 21–36. 91. Thisted 1:22–24; Lindner 7:19–23; Leipzig 15:9–11; WA 37, 201–3. Notice especially the volume changes in Leipzig and WA, showing that what seems to be a seamless sermon in Thisted and Lindner is actually an amalgamated sermon from two separate sermons from 1521 and 1533. 92. Thisted 1:24; Lindner 7:23; Leipzig 13:18; WA 10 I 2, 37. 93. Kim and Rasmussen, “Martin Luther,” 205.

Chapter 3

Lauding Luther in Kierkegaard’s Private Discourse

The confluent aspiration of Luther’s sermons and Kierkegaard’s public discourses was to leave their hearers in prayerful respiration before God, dialectically neither groaning in diffidence nor crowing in overconfidence, but sighing. Groaning, crowing, and sighing are synonymous with despair, presumption, and anxiety, respectively. These three exhalations help safeguard the subjectivity of despair, presumption, and anxiety from objective philosophical abstraction. For anyone can prattle about despair, presumption, or anxiety, but a groan, crow, or sigh, veritable only in the moment of its spontaneous expression, authentically conveys one’s emotional and existential comportment. Similarly, both Luther and Kierkegaard were concerned not to lecture about God abstractly, annihilating the corresponding existential mood of earnestness necessary for authentically communicating about one’s standing before God.1 To secure a subjective homiletic hearing, Luther and Kierkegaard regularly juxtaposed the above three responses the hearer can potentially express to God, arousing involved self-examination of one’s present comportment before God. This chapter conveys their dialectical concord by recognizing how in his private discourse Kierkegaard lauds Luther’s sermons when he perceives Luther’s accurate portrayal of groaning, crowing, and especially sighing. GROANING A groan of diffidence is an expression of ethical guilt by an anguished conscience in fear and trembling under the crushing weight of the Law and/or the guilt of sin before God, the author of the unconditioned “You shall.”2 As 79

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painful as authentic groaning is, Luther regularly and positively preaches that a groaning individual is existentially prepared to hear and receive the comfort of the Gospel.3 Kierkegaard concurs, “Christianity presupposes: the anguish of a contrite conscience, the need for grace, the deeply felt need, all these terrible inner struggles and sufferings.”4 Hence, the ethical is the stage on which the groaning relation before God can potentially be birthed.5 But, as noted in chapter 1, Kierkegaard lived in a post-Luther age that took Luther’s message in vain. This age could presumptuously leap over God’s ethical requirement in two ways. (1) They could leap over the ethical demand of the Law straightway to the comfort of Luther’s Gospel, exploiting the latter for antinomian freedom from God’s Law, paralleling Kierkegaard’s “Aesthetic stage.”6 (2) Or they could leap over God’s Law by misconstruing it as being a good citizen in Christendom, paralleling Kierkegaard’s “Ethical stage.”7 With an eye toward hindering these cavalier leaps, Kierkegaard looked back to Luther’s sermons and regularly lauded Luther’s original goading of the groaning prerequisite to the reception of the Gospel.8 In a journal entry from 1846, the year prior to beginning his reading of Luther’s sermons, Kierkegaard already appreciated Luther’s groaning existential prerequisite to the reception of the Gospel: What Luther says is excellent, the one thing needful and the sole explanation— that this whole doctrine (of the Atonement and in the main all Christianity) must be traced back to the struggle of the anguished conscience (den ængstede Samvittigheds Kamp). Remove the anguished conscience, and you may as well close the churches and turn them into dance halls. The anguished conscience understands Christianity (Den ængstede Samvittighed forstaaer Christendommen).9

Kierkegaard does not, here, reference a specific work or sermon by Luther. But later in 1850, he lauds a similar point, referencing a specific Luther sermon: Luther is right in saying in his sermon on the Gospel for Christmas Day that there is nothing else to say about Christ than that he is “a great joy”—but, but “for sin-crushed consciences” (men, men “for synderknusede Samvittigheder”)—otherwise not, otherwise he is taken in vain (ellers er han taget forfængeligt). The part about joy is promptly seized upon—the part about “a sincrushed conscience” meets with extreme resistance. But it is all taken in vain. We take the word “a Savior,” run away with it, and understand something else by it than Christianity does. We take the words “a great joy”—and then, scram, we want nothing to do with a more explicit understanding of it.10

Kierkegaard’s lauding concern for the prerequisite groaning conscience follows exactly from Luther’s Christmas Day sermon:

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“Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.” That signified that this joy would be proclaimed to all people, but only those would be receptive whose consciences were stricken and hearts troubled (Lindner: die erschrockenes gewissens und betrübtes hertzens sind; Thisted: som have en bange Samvittighed og et bedrøvet hjerte); these are the ones that belong to me and to my message, and to whom I proclaim something good.11

Luther drives this point home more than once in the same sermon. “This sermon, as stated, pertains only to the poor, terrified consciences; they are the ones who should learn this definition and picture Christ as nothing other than joy personified.”12 “‘Great Joy.’ For whose good? For all troubled hearts.”13 Both Luther and Kierkegaard emphasize that Christ can only be a “great joy” for those who were previously groaning. “Grace would not be grace without prior terror of conscience.”14 Luther preaches, It is the nature of things that those who are ready to grant that Christ is sheer joy allow it to become nothing but terror for themselves. And, on the other hand, those for whom this definition is not intended turn it for themselves towards fleshly security. Those to whom it does not pertain learn it quickly, while those who ought to take hold of it have difficulty. But they ought nonetheless grasp it, since it applies to them alone.15 The words, Christ the Lord, sound terrifying to us. In the pope’s theology, and our own weak nature, it makes us think of the hangman with his gallows, rope, and sword. But it is actually a comforting word, especially because with it stands “Saviour,” that is a helper who brings bliss and salvation. Whoever has no fear and cross does not need this Saviour. But those poor sinners who are in fear and angst (Lindner: furcht und anfechtung; Thisted: Frygt og Fristelse) are in need of Him, for none can help except this Saviour.16

And Kierkegaard corroborates in his journal, It is this shameful, frivolous use of the essentially Christian which has abolished Christianity under the guise of preserving it, for, as it goes, “After all, we are saying the same thing; we call Christ a Savior, say his birth is a great joy”—rubbish, what good does that do if you understand something different and exclude the more specific understanding by which the words first became Christianly true.17

In 1849, after reading Luther’s sermon on John 3:16, Kierkegaard lauds Luther similarly, hoping the whole world would come to this groaning in order to receive God’s love: “Luther is entirely right in saying (in the sermon on the Gospel) that these are strong words about God—for God so loved the world—because ‘the world is an abomination to God.’”18 In this sermon, Luther contrasted the world’s evil with the inexplicable nature of God’s love:

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How can this love of God for the world be explained? What does he see in the world that he is so ready to unbosom himself toward her? . . . But, what, on the contrary, is the world but a great mass of people who neither fear nor love nor praise nor thank God, who misuse every creature, blaspheme God’s name and despise his Word, and are, furthermore disobedient, murderers, adulterers, thieves, knaves, liars, betrayers, full of treachery and all malice; in short, transgressors of every commandment. . . . The word “world” (Lindner: welt; Thisted: Berden) is a sound hateful to God beyond expression; and this is a most strange paradox: God loves the world. Here two things that are in the highest degree antagonistic are combined. It is almost like saying: God loves death and hell, and is the friend of his most bitter enemy, the accursed devil.19

Kierkegaard continues lauding Luther’s sermon that because God loves an abominable world: “This is just to show that no one is excluded except one who excludes himself.”20 Luther preached, You say: Yes, I would gladly believe it if I were like St. Peter and St. Paul and others who are pious and holy; but I am too great a sinner, and who knows whether I am predestined? Answer: Look at these words! What do they say, and of whom do they speak? “For God so loved the world”; and “that whosoever believeth on him.” Now, the world is simply no St. Peter and St. Paul, but the entire human race collectively, and here no one is excluded: God’s Son was given for all, all are asked to believe, and all who believe shall not be lost.21

Hence, Kierkegaard lauds Luther that all share the potential for coming to a groaning that existentially facilitates an authentic grasping for God’s love. For the sake of goading groaning, Kierkegaard lauds Luther’s Law and Gospel homiletic in 1849: “In his sermon on the Gospel for the Fourth Sunday in Advent, Luther himself says that every sermon begins with preaching the law (and this is indeed forever unchangeable).”22 In this sermon, Luther preaches about a true Christian preacher: “First, he must preach the Law so that the people may learn what great things God demands of us; of these we cannot perform any because of the impotence of our nature which has been corrupted by Adam’s fall.”23 Reading this sermon, Kierkegaard continued journaling: “I find that what he says about preaching the law corresponds to what I am accustomed to say concerning the prototype [Forbilledet] in order to preach men to bits so that they turn to grace.”24 Kierkegaard continues this journal entry, “But back to Luther. Luther says that when the law is thus rightly proclaimed to a man, he becomes aware of his wretchedness—and then he becomes embittered about the law—and this is precisely the judgment upon him.”25 Luther preached in this sermon, The Law does not kindle love but rather extinguishes it. For through the Law man learns how difficult and how impossible of fulfillment the Law is. Then he

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becomes hostile to it, and his love for it cools; he feels that he heartily hates it. This of course is a grievous sin, to be hostile to God’s commands. Therefore man must humble himself, and confess that he is lost and that all his works are sins, aye, that his whole life is sinful.26

Kierkegaard confirms, “This is absolutely correct. The law captures totally, not by thundering about this one or that one of a man’s actual sins, but by making him in total desperation a rebel against the law, from which he nevertheless cannot tear himself—and thus he is captured.”27 Hence, Kierkegaard lauded how Luther captured persons in this groaning prerequisite to the reception of the Gospel. Luther’s homiletic, Kierkegaard concurred, is “forever unchangeable”28 because a groaning conscience “understands Christianity.”29

CROWING Crowing, like a cocky rooster, is an expression of overconfidence in one’s epistemological and/or ethical capacities, that is, overconfidence in one’s capacity to know and/or do what one believes to be right. Historically for Luther, these roosters were all of his foes overconfident especially in some form of works-righteousness: the Pope and his bishops, scholastic theologians of glory such as John Eck, free-will humanists such as Erasmus, the Turk, the Jew, and the whole monastic system. As a young monk himself, Luther heard all these roosters, and he “did what was in him”30 to crow along with them. Running this medieval gauntlet, Luther discovered and Kierkegaard concurred that pre-Luther preaching inhibited the reception of the Gospel by instigating overconfidence in ethical works-righteousness, the capacity to fulfill the Law. But Kierkegaard diagnosed that post-Luther preaching can instigate overconfidence in epistemological words-righteousness, the capacity to outwit the Law. Rationally assenting to indisputable church doctrine and/ or philosophical reason, preeminent in late-Enlightenment Denmark,31 the prerequisite groaning goaded by trespassing the Law could be sidestepped. With his Theology of the Cross, Luther originally kenosized theologies of glory—theologies that apotheosize either man’s epistemological or ethical capacities. But Luther’s inheritors, in their focused battle against ethical apotheosis, lost Luther’s epistemological kenosis.32 In the face of a Lutheranism crowing in its epistemological apotheosis, Kierkegaard was exhilarated to discover Luther’s original epistemological kenosis in his sermons, regularly lauding him for squelching words-righteousness crowing. In 1849, Kierkegaard tersely logged in his journal, “Luther’s sermon on the Gospel for Epiphany is worth reading again and again, especially the first part,”33 begging us to search the sermon for Kierkegaard’s treasure.

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Preaching on the Magi’s search for the Christ child, here is the first part of Luther’ sermon: The Magi first come to Jerusalem to search for Christ. For because Jerusalem was the capital and that this child should be King of the Jews, they could not think otherwise that he must be found in Jerusalem. But this thought strikingly fails them. They do not find the child in the city of Jerusalem, but in the poor city of Bethlehem. Let us mark this! For we would come to this child and find what must not follow our own thought or our reason, but instead remain with the Word alone, and not turn from there. We let go of the Word immediately in offense. For this child has a strong and lordly name, yet he is poor and wretched, therefore he will not let himself be found in Jerusalem as great and majestic. Therefore we must, as the Magi here do, hold on to the Word, and not let ourselves be seduced by the world’s splendor. But whoso gets away from the Word and will not hear what the Scripture sees concerning this child, rather wants to judge it according to its external view, will not come to Christ or find him. Therefore this is the highest and greatest art, namely, that one holds fast to the Word and does not think otherwise about divine things other than what it says. This is the right star and the shining sun that points to Christ. Therefore the Magi have given us an excellent example of a beautiful and majestic faith because they let go of all other thoughts, which they and the whole world have by sight and mind, and single-mindedly follow the Word, as foretold by the prophet Micah. They are not offended at all, turning out from Jerusalem, where the right service of God was, where God himself is located, as from his temple, to a cattle stall in Bethlehem, by which they did not see some beggarly child, but the King of the Jews. As they hear, so they do, without worrying themselves about their suitable thoughts. . . . This faith is to be praised as the highest example.34

For Kierkegaard, the example of the Magi’s epistemological kenosis in Luther’s sermon was “worth reading again and again” by persons of Kierkegaard’s age. The late-Enlightenment’s scholarly approach to Scriptures was heavily influenced by David Hume (1711–76) and Gotthold Lessing (1729–81). Against any positive theology, Hume’s empiricist dogma held not only that metaphysical knowledge was impossible but also that even empirical knowledge (i.e., “matters of fact”) could not be proven.35 Corroborative, Lessing’s “broad, ugly ditch” (“accidental truths of history can never become the proof of necessary truths of reason”)36 popularly portrayed an ontological chasm across which many Enlightenment scholars could not epistemologically leap. After Hume’s and Lessing’s axioms, theologians could either persist in early-Enlightenment crowing, rationally establishing the historical reliability of the Bible, or squelch the same in late-Enlightenment doubt. Kierkegaard

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did not resort to early-Enlightenment crowing, nor did he deny Hume’s and Lessing’s axioms. Instead, he concurred with Hume37 and Lessing, granting that historical knowledge can, at best, result in an “approximation” and that an approximation is too little on which to build one’s eternal happiness.38 But Kierkegaard perceived that the central problem is neither the early-Enlightenment’s need for historical verification39 nor the late-Enlightenment’s historical/eternal impasse.40 The problem is both sides’ epistemological desire to remove scripture’s historical/eternal paradox from Christianity in order to render it less offensive and more plausible to an enlightened age that idolizes philosophical objectivity.41 For Kierkegaard, to overcome doubt stemming from Enlightenment anxiety over approximation, one should not feed its fire with more quantitative research and speculation. Instead, a qualitative leap over Lessing’s ditch must be made from approximation to appropriation.42 Instead of grasping for more and more quantitative approximation, Kierkegaard exhorts to let go of approximation and risk appropriating Christ by believing and following him, passing over the world’s epistemological and ethical impasses.43 Thus, in an age seeking enlightenment by removing the paradoxes of Christianity, Kierkegaard looks back and lauds Luther’s ancient magi, who are “wise men” for the very reason that “they let go of all other thoughts, which they and the whole world have by sight and mind, and single-mindedly follow the Word.”44 Such a leap from approximation to appropriation “is worth reading again and again.”45 In the same year, Kierkegaard lauded similarly: “In the sermon on the Gospel for Easter Monday, in the final passage, Luther makes the distinction: You have the right to argue the Bible, but you do not have the right to argue the Holy Scriptures.”46 In the final passage of this sermon on the two Emmaus disciples, Luther preached, God gave other disciplines—grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, philosophy, jurisprudence, medicine—in which we can be judicious, dispute, dig, and question as to what is right and what is not. But here with Holy Scripture, the Word of God, let disputing and questioning cease, and say, God has spoken; therefore, I believe. Here there’s no room for disputation and argument, but rather, be baptized, believe on the woman’s seed, Jesus Christ, true God and man, so that you might have the forgiveness of sins and everlasting life through his death and resurrection. Don’t ask, Why and how can this be? If you proceed this way, your heart will burn within you and you will rejoice. But if you want to dispute and ask, How is that possible? you will distance yourself from the truth and understanding of Scripture. These two disciples don’t dispute or question the Lord’s Word but bind themselves to it and obediently accede to what he says. The Word penetrates mightily within them and enlightens their hearts, so that they have no doubts concerning it, but are buoyant, on fire, and glad, as though they have just come through a fire.47

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Having read this sermon, Kierkegaard continued lauding, “The Bible and Holy Scriptures are the same book, to be sure, but the way in which it is regarded makes the difference.”48 In a discourse two years later on James 1:22–27,49 Kierkegaard distinguishes reading the Bible from reading Holy Scriptures. Reading the Bible is either reading it as an ordinary human book or the “necessary evil” of analyzing the mirror in scholarly preliminaries, translation, isagogics, etc.50 But reading Holy Scripture is to see yourself in the mirror of Scripture and to say to yourself incessantly, “It is I to whom it is speaking; it is I about whom it is speaking.”51 Conveying the subjectivity of reading Holy Scripture, Kierkegaard passionately portrays reading Holy Scripture as reading a love letter from the beloved, getting alone to be immersed in the letter, and if the beloved asks a request, then straightway complying. Kierkegaard summarizes, When you read God’s Word in a scholarly way—we do not disparage scholarship, no, far from it, but do bear this in mind: when you are reading God’s Word in a scholarly way, with a dictionary etc., then you are not reading God’s Word—remember what the lover said: “This is not reading the letter from the beloved.” If you happen to be a scholar, then please, do see to it that in all this learned reading (which is not reading God’s Word) you do not forget to read God’s Word. If you are not a scholar, do not envy him: be glad that you can start reading God’s Word right away! And if there happens to be a wish, a command, an order, then—remember the lover!—then off with you at once to do what it asks.52

Here again, we see Kierkegaard’s approach toward Holy Scriptures53—leaping from approximation to appropriation—echoing Luther’s position: “These two disciples don’t dispute or question the Lord’s Word but bind themselves to it and obediently accede to what he says.”54 Kierkegaard finishes his comment on this Luther sermon, Here as everywhere we must pay attention to the qualitative leap, that there is no direct transition (for example, as from reading and studying the Bible as an ordinary human book—to taking it as God’s word, as Holy Scripture), but everywhere a metabasis eis allo genos, a leap, whereby I burst the whole progression of reason and define a qualitative newness, but a newness allo genos.55

For Kierkegaard, not only one’s Scripture reading but also one’s relation before God is to be adjudicated by a qualitatively different category than reason, namely, passionate faith. In 1849, Kierkegaard lauds Luther’s Quinquagesima Sunday sermon on the blind Bartimaeus: “Precisely when the religious is most true it is true in such a way that reason almost has to smile at it—and start believing. How refreshing and invigorating what

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Luther says about praying boldly, rightly imploring and pestering God—he likes it, it pleases him very much.”56 Luther preached in this sermon about a “Beggar-art” (Lindner: bettlerische kunst; Thisted: Tigger-kunst), namely, that we should learn to be lewd and brazen before God and not be ashamed to ask him for every good thing because it pleases him.57 Kierkegaard continues his comment on how reason would logically, but presumptuously, conclude if the premise that God enjoys our importunate prayers is true: “Here reason might say: Yes, this is all right, but it is still dangerous to pray in this way if my primary desire is to get something; since my praying pleases God, he could decline to give me what I pray for simply in order that I could become more and more pleasing to him, in so far as my imploring becomes more and more fervent.”58 Even if reason accepts the premise that God enjoys our importunate prayers, reason still wants to play its logical game. Kierkegaard answers reason, not with more logic, but lauding the spiritually tried and contemptuous character of Martin Luther: “To this must be answered: Rubbish (Sludder)! This is one of Luther’s immortal services and the surest testimony of how tried and tested (hvor forsøgt i Anfægtelse) he was—the fact he invented the category of rubbish as the only reply one ought to give to doubt.”59 For Kierkegaard and Luther, reason’s incessant crowing, which leads to doubt, is not to be squelched with louder crowing. Therefore, the only way to squelch crowing and stop doubting is to venture a leap that leaves approximation behind and takes appropriation up. Here, Kierkegaard is not reverting to pre-Luther works-righteousness in order to combat post-Luther words-righteousness. His goal, like Luther’s, is the kenosis of both ethical and epistemological apotheosis.60 But this kenosis can only occur through an ethical crisis that goads groaning because only “the anguished conscience understands Christianity.”61 Squelching this section on epistemological crowing, let us recall chapter 1’s groaning image of Luther’s Tower Experience and contrast it with the crowing image of René Descartes sitting placidly in his study, the earliest prototype of Enlightenment objectivity.62 Kierkegaard would laud the former and lance the latter: But you say, “I still cannot grasp the Atonement.” Here I must ask in which understanding—in the understanding of the anguished conscience or in the understanding of indifferent and objective speculation? How could anyone sitting placidly and objectively in his study and speculating ever be able to understand the necessity of an atonement, since an atonement is necessary only in the understanding of the anguished conscience. If a person had the power to live without needing to eat, how could he understand the necessity of eating—something the hungry person easily understands. It is the same in the life of the spirit.63

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SIGHING A sigh of confidence is the ambivalent but worshipful existential state64 where Luther’s sermons and Kierkegaard’s discourses aspire to leave us. Everyone everywhere has breathed out a sigh before. This spontaneous exhalation paradoxically signals both exhaustion and relief at the same time. Kierkegaard physiologically describes a sigh similarly: “What is a sigh? A sigh signifies that something is locked up inside, something that wants to get out but cannot or must not come out, something that wants to have air. Thus a person sighs and gets something off his chest (in order not to perish) just as he gasps for air in order not to perish.”65 A sigh requires an existential prerequisite—“something locked up inside”—an anxious conscience on the verge of exhaustion before a foreboding goal beyond one’s present grasp. Given this pent-up diffidence, the one who finally sighs cannot command its coming nor feign its expression. A posteriori, one can only recognize one’s sigh as an afterthought of its momentary utterance. Yet that sigh is a sign to the one who sighs of not only her resigned humility but also her earnest resolve. Although she has not reached her goal, a sigh affirms the authenticity of her passionate quest; it is “too deep for words.”66 Resigned yet resolved, a sigh provides the relief to keep pursuing the goal, renewed with the aid and appreciation of the arduous art of living between a tension of diffidence and confidence. The sigh helps us incarnate and better comprehend two elusive concepts key to Kierkegaard, dialectic and anxiety. Given that Kierkegaard’s primary laud of Luther is for his anxious conscience while his primary lance is that “Luther is no dialectician,”67 these two concepts are also key to Kierkegaard’s relation to Luther. Dialectic and Anxiety The “Introduction” sketched Hermann Diem’s analogical diagram of Kierkegaardian dialectic as an inner, ongoing, and tense dialogue between the infinite ideals of Plato being cross-examined by the finite reality of Socrates.68 Diem’s diagram of dialectic is not only an excellent description of Kierkegaard’s epistemology, it also mirrors Kierkegaard’s69 Sickness Unto Death definition of a human being as a synthesis of the infinite and the finite: “A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity, in short, a synthesis. A synthesis is a relation between two.”70 This dialectical synthesis of the infinite and finite, though, is not a peacefully resolved Hegelian synthesis;71 it is an unresolved tension that Kierkegaard forebodingly terms “anxiety” (Angst):72

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That anxiety makes its appearance is the pivot upon which everything turns. Man is a synthesis of the psychical (infinite/soul) and the physical (finite/body); however, a synthesis is unthinkable if the two are not united in a third. This third is spirit. . . . Inasmuch as (spirit) is now present, it is in a sense a hostile power, for it constantly disturbs the relation between soul and body.73

Hence, anxiety/spirit is a hostile hinge yoking, not harmonizing, two panels of the human diptych, the psychical and the physical, together.74 When it is recognized that Kierkegaard equates human existence with anxiety, many, including Christians and Luther scholars, are tempted to disregard Kierkegaard. But it is important is to recognize that anxiety is not only the hinge of human existence but also that, for Kierkegaard, God himself has created us with this anxiety that incessantly implores each to strive to hinge soul and body together.75 Hence, while anxiety is a “hostile power,” it is not an aberrant psychological disorder to be corrected with either medication or ignorance; it is universally God-given and universally induces the human concern for righteousness.76 While the term “anxiety” is repelling when one-sidedly misunderstood as merely “unease,” Kierkegaard more fully describes anxiety as a dialectical love-hate relationship: What, then, is man’s relation to this ambiguous power? How does spirit relate itself to itself and to its conditionality? It relates itself as anxiety. Do away with itself, the spirit cannot; lay hold of itself, it cannot, as long as it has itself outside of itself. Nor can man sink down into the vegetative, for he is qualified as spirit; flee away from anxiety, he cannot, for he loves it; really love it, he cannot, for he flees from it.77

Hence, the experience of anxiety (i.e., spirit) is a dialectical and paradoxical experience of both positive and negative factors simultaneously. Positively, as soul, a human being always has before him an infinite amount of possible ideals he is free to choose to become; “he loves it.” But negatively, as body, in conditional finitude, he experiences anxiety with both the need to choose, forfeiting other ideals, and the attempt to actuate an ideal, aware he will not realize it perfectly; “really love it, he cannot.”78 But there is another side to anxiety that makes anxiety even more complex and “dizzying.”79 This is the confounding fact that we do not merely desire to actuate our ideals; we also bizarrely but naturally fear the very ideals we desire and therefore desire and act upon inferiors contrary to the ideals we desire.80 Hence, anxiety is the confounding, but humanly universal, dialectic of both attraction and repulsion toward the possibility of actuating our ideals.81 Kierkegaard’s dizzying concept of anxiety mirrors Luther’s description

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of the “Second Use of the Law” when Luther, mirroring St. Paul,82 propounds that knowledge of the Law and attempts to actuate it actually do not make us righteous because the Law by its commands and prohibitions bewilderingly provokes our human nature to act contrary to it.83 Thus, for Luther and Kierkegaard, knowledge of the Law (the ethical ideals that our consciences anxiously and incessantly beckon us to mirror in our actions) does not necessitate either righteousness or sin; instead, knowledge of the Law merely acts as a mirror, reflecting our actual distance from actuating the ideal. Therefore, anxiety is the God-given normative experience of the ambivalent polar pull of both the infinitude of ideals and the finitude of our incapacity to actuate them, that is, “entangled freedom.”84 While this ethical attraction and repulsion is normative for human beings, it is crucial to note that anxiety is not sin. Instead, sin is a despairing misrelation to anxiety,85 a “misrelation in the relation of a synthesis that relates itself to itself.”86 According to Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Anti-Climacus, there are two kinds of despair, misrelations to anxiety that unhinge the dialectical diptych of infinitude and finitude. One is “Infinitude’s Despair,”87 which unhinges itself from finitude, aesthetically “fantasizing”88 over a plethora of epistemological and ethical ideals but not exerting the effort to actuate them existentially.89 The other is “Finitude’s Despair,”90 which unhinges itself from infinitude, mundanely suppressing his idealistic imagination for fear of the crowd and conforming to its expectations.91 Anti-Climacus defines sin, “the sickness unto death”: “before God in despair not to will to be oneself, or before God in despair to will to be oneself.”92 This means that to sin is, before God,93 not to will to be the dialectical synthesis God has created one to be, vainly fleeing the gnawing reality of anxiety,94 indirectly choosing one of the two above forms of despair, or, before God, to directly will to be either of the two above forms of despair. Both despairs succumb in the face of anxiety95 by unhinging the dialectical diptych and supporting oneself with either the infinite or the finite, one-sidedly ignoring the God-given self that incessantly aches for their synthesis. The solution to this misrelation to anxiety is not a disrelation to anxiety but a healthy relation to anxiety. While anxiety is the universal condition for the possibility of sin, it is also the universal condition for relation with God, which for Kierkegaard is learning how to become “anxious in the right way”:96 “I will say that this is an adventure that every human being must go through—to learn to be anxious in order that he may not perish either by never having been in anxiety or by succumbing in anxiety. Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate.”97 Becoming anxious in the right way does not mean epistemologically acknowledging anxiety (i.e., acknowledging ourselves as tense God-created spirits) or ethically straining within oneself to inhibit despairing misrelations to anxiety in the future.98 In human religions,

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which Kierkegaard coined “Religiousness A,” the ethically guilty optimistically attempts to reform himself via attunement to his immanent epistemological and ethical capacities.99 But Christianity, “Religiousness B,” a divine revelation transcendent of human epistemology, must offensively teach how deep one lies in sin, his incapacity to act otherwise, and to despair before the abyssal anxiety demanding perfection.100 Kierkegaard lauds Luther on this point: “It is. . .very consistent for Luther to teach that a person must be taught by a revelation concerning how deeply he lies in sin, that the anguished conscience is not a natural consequence like being hungry.”101 Goading groaning, Christianity also absurdly102 reveals Jesus Christ, the absolute Paradox, the God-man who has mercifully made complete vicarious atonement for one’s sin through his redemptive sacrifice.103 “The task of faith is for the individual to believe that he has been saved by this unmerited act of divine love, to be inwardly transformed by this saving truth.”104 Kierkegaard’s Anti-Climacus describes this “faith”: “The formula that describes the state of the self when despair is completely rooted out is this: in relating itself to itself and in willing to be itself, the self rests transparently in the power that established it.”105 Here, one confesses one’s past misrelation to anxiety and abiding temptation to despair the same (“relates itself to itself”). And yet this confessee ventures to healthily relate himself to anxiety (“wills to be itself”), not out of crowing self-confidence, but out of sighing thanksgiving for Christ’s forgiveness and redemption (“rests transparently in the power that established it”). “A man rests in the forgiveness of sins when the thought of God does not remind him of the sin but that it is forgiven, when the past is not a memory of how much he trespassed but of how much he has been forgiven.”106 Kierkegaard accords with Luther that good works do not achieve faith or merit salvation, but faith works good works thankful for forgiveness: The relation of Christ as redeemer to the believer is, I think, somewhat like that of an adult to children when the adult says: Now I will take care of everything; just be very calm and trust me—and then becomes angry when the children, instead of being happy and letting him take care of things, want to do it themselves. I believe that Christ as redeemer is angered in the same way when the believer in any manner occupies himself with making restitution for his sin. No! The atonement is the decisive thing. Then, on the other side, precisely out of joy over the reconciliation, comes an honest striving, which he himself, it is well to note, nevertheless understands almost as jest, however honest and earnest his striving is, as a jest if in any shape or manner it is supposed to be a restitution. It is by no means man’s effort which brings atonement, but it is joy over the reconciliation, over the fact that atonement has been made, it is the joy which produces an honest striving. It is somewhat as Luther says: It is not good works which make a good man but the good man who does good works, that is, the man is the character, that which is more than all the individual acts. And,

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according to Luther, one becomes a good man by faith. Consequently, faith first of all. It is not by a good life, good works, and the like that one achieves faith. No, it is faith which works that one does truly good works.107

Hence, faith is an ongoing dialectical awareness of self-diffidence and Godconfidence. Faith is semper simul iustus et peccator.108 The Christian wills to become anxious in the right way before God by being an anxious conscience who continually casts her anxieties upon God in prayer.109 Abiding yet redeemed, anxiety is no longer only the condition for the possibility to sin but is now also the condition for prayerful relation to God. A Sigh A sigh is analogically helpful for comprehending Kierkegaard’s dialectical goal, namely, faith, willing to be anxious in the right way, resting transparently in God. As opposed to groaning or crowing, both misrelations to anxiety, sighing is the healthy physiological expression of anxiety, expressing the infinitude of possibility in relation to the finitude of necessity, desiring an ideal to be actuated that is not actuated in the midst of variables obstructing its actuation. As a sigh simultaneously signals both one’s diffidence and confidence, so does faith signal both one’s humility and thanksgiving to God. For example, I sigh a lot as I write this study. Resigned, I often sigh because I intuitionally know what I want to say but struggle to find the finite words to express it. Resolved, I sigh because I can envision myself finishing, but I am not there yet. Relieved, I am humbled by my finite ineptitude yet also encouraged to keep pressing on toward the goal with the aptitude I have been given. A student crafting a study without many sighs is inhuman and impossible. How much more inhuman and impossible if the human relation with God is not filled with many sighs? Applying the physiology of the sigh religiously, Kierkegaard saw sighing as a humble and earnest prayer to God: Suppose that all of Europe’s emperors and kings issued an edict commanding thousands of ordained hired servants (I mean the clergy) officially to invoke the support of heaven, and suppose a gigantic united church service with 100,000 musicians, 50,000 organ pumpers, and 1,000,000 ordained hired servants was arranged for the purpose of officially invoking the support of heaven. This does not concern the heavenly majesty at all—but a poor man walking along Kjøbmagergade, sighing out of the depths of his heart to God—this concerns him infinitely, ineffably, for his majesty is so disposed, and this would move him subjectively. . . . Therefore what an infinite distance from God—an emperor who by means of an edict concocted by a prime minister orders 10,000 ordained hired servants to bawl officially to God—what an infinite distance in comparison with a poor man who sighs to God out of the depths of his heart.110

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Religiously, the one who sighs to God is dialectically aware of both his own finite weakness and the infinite extent of God’s mercy. Kierkegaard prays, What is a man to you, O infinite one, that you are mindful of him—but still more, what is the son of the fallen race to you, you Holy One, that you nevertheless will visit him. Yes, what is a sinner that for his sake your Son would come to the world, not to condemn but to save, not to make known his place of residence so the lost could seek him, but to seek the lost one, without having a resting place as even the animal has, without having a stone on which to rest his head, hungering in the desert, thirsting on the cross. Merciful God and Father! What can a man do in return; without you he is unable to thank you. Teach us, then, the properly humble discernment of understanding so that—like the broken sinner who sighs under his guilt, saying: It is impossible, it is impossible that God can have mercy on me in this way—in the very same way he who in faith appropriates this mercy to himself must say in his joy: It is impossible.111

While the Christian takes the sighing middle road between groaning despair and crowing presumption, groaning is better than crowing because groaning can prelude sighing. In Luther’s Good Shepherd sermon that Kierkegaard read, Luther juxtaposes groaning persons from the crowing.112 First, the groaning individuals are obliged to do the following: Learn to find comfort when a bad conscience and our sins accuse us. For we humans are all sinners and there isn’t a one whom the devil hasn’t frightened into the wilderness, nor anyone who after his baptism hasn’t gone astray like a lost sheep and thus sinned against God. Where there is sin, there the person is terrified before God. . . . A heart that knows itself to be guilty naturally feels fright, turns from grace, and anticipates punishment. But at this point is where power lies, that we, against our hearts and consciences, join with Christ to say, I am a poor sinner, that I will not deny; however, I will not for that reason despair, as though God did not want me, because my Lord Jesus Christ says that a poor sinner is just like a little sheep that has lost its shepherd and gone astray. Christ will not let such an erring sheep be lost, but will look for it and carry it back to the other sheep.113

In the very same sermon, this Gospel’s comfort for the groaning is not to be applied to the crowing, who take the Gospel in vain. Luther warns about such roosters, Who praise themselves as being evangelical, but who misuse these beautiful, comforting comparisons and examples, asserting that Christ loves sinners and that the angels in heaven rejoice over one sinner who repents, and then they themselves forget about repentance. They continue in all types of sin, defiance, and wantonness before God and their fellowmen, without fear and timidity, shamefully secure. . . . They do not listen to the preaching sincerely, nor do they

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have heartfelt sorrow and repentance over their godless lives, their many sins and iniquities. They have learned nothing more from the gospel than to babble that our Lord God will not cast a sinner away because Christ came for the sake of the sinner, and so on. This Gospel lesson is not speaking of this sort of sinner, nor ought they comfort themselves herewith.114

Just as Kierkegaard lauded Luther that “the anguished conscience understands Christianity,”115 for the groaning, not the crowing, has the relief of sighing been ordained. In this concern, for Luther a sigh is an existential moment between the groan of the individual despairing of himself before God’s ethical requirement and finding relief in the mercy of Christ’s forgiveness: But those are called the stray, lost sheep, whose sins oppress them and who struggle in the conflict of faith (Lindner: kampf des glaubens; Thisted: Troens Kamp), where there is no danger of losing Moses but Christ and his chief article of faith, that is, where the conscience is in anxiety and worry as to whether God is merciful to him. This is the true sheep which sighs (Lindner: seufzt; Thisted: sukke) and cries for its Shepherd, and would be glad for help.116

Commenting on another sermon, but lauding Luther’s sigh that is the moment between despair and relief, Kierkegaard journals, “What Luther emphasizes is very true, that the more one does his best to do good works with the idea of becoming saved, all the more anxious does he become, and his life becomes sheer self-torment. Far happier is the sinner who sighs (sukker) briefly and to the point, ‘God be merciful to me, a sinner.’”117 Hence, the one who sighs is near to the one who groans; both are agonizingly aware of their sins of the past and their sinful proclivities for the future. But the one who sighs is blessed, not because he is not diffident like the one who groans, but because he sighs his diffidence in confidence to the care of God, creating for the one who sighs an ambivalent but worshipful prayer that is a dialectic of diffidence and confidence.118 The blessedness of this prayer in the moment of its existence, confirming its earnestness, is often too deep for words: There is a benediction of prayer; when your lips are dumb but your heart has overflowed, there is a benediction of prayer which possesses the assurance of prayers answered, there is an assurance of prayers answered which holds fast to God, because the Spirit given to each person individually is the one who prays within you, because the Spirit comes to the aid of your frailty when it comes forward with unutterable sighs, and he who searches hearts discerns the Spirit. There is a blessedness of contemplation; it unites what God has united, it links together what God has linked together—man with God and God with man; it shows you the image of your Lord and Master, the image of man in God and the image of God in man; it humbles you with the representation of your unlikeness,

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and you sink to your knees in adoration; it raises you with the hope of likeness, and you rise up humble and full of confidence.119

Lauding the Sighs in Luther’s Sermons So far, a sigh is an ambivalent but worshipful state—a middle ground between self-diffidence and God-confidence, expressing both exhaustion and relief, humility and gratitude, at the same time. The confluent aspiration of Luther and Kierkegaard was to leave their hearers respiring in prayer before God, neither groaning nor crowing, but sighing. Out of Luther’s own existential history of his attempts at crowing, but his resultant experience of groaning, Luther made it his preaching mission to squelch crowing and relieve groaning with the sigh of the Gospel where the hearer simultaneously recognizes both her full diffidence as a condemned sinner under the Law and her full confidence as a justified saint under the Gospel. In a sermon Kierkegaard read, Luther preached about the necessity of this sigh that is the Christian’s “middle road” (Lindner: Mittel-Strasse; Thisted: Middelvejen) between despair and presumption (Lindner: Verzweiflung und Vermessenheit; Thisted: Fortvivlelse og Formastelse): This is a temptation (Lindner: anfechtung; Thisted: Fristelse) which no one understands except the one who has been there and been tempted. For just as the first temptation leads to despair (Lindner: verzweifelung; Thisted: Fortvivlelse), this one leads to audacity (Lindner: vermessenheit; Thisted: Formastelse) and to rash actions that contravene God’s Word and command. A Christian needs to take the middle road (Lindner: mittel-strassen; Thisted: Middelvejen) so that he neither despairs nor becomes arrogant, for both are contrary to the Word of God. He should instead continue in all sincerity with the Word in true faith and trust.120

Kierkegaard publicly lauded this sighing middle road between crowing presumption and groaning despair as the premier value of Luther’s message: Then Luther appears. . . . You who think to earn salvation by good works are bound to perceive that this is the sure road either to presumptuousness (Formastelse), consequently to the loss of salvation, or to despair (Fortvivlelse), consequently to the loss of salvation. To want to build upon good works—the more you practice them, the stricter you are with yourself, the more you merely develop the anxiety in you, and new anxiety. . . . No, a person is justified solely by faith.121

The Sigh of Faith and Works of Love Contrary to a Pelagian or semi-Pelagian interpretation of Kierkegaard,122 Kierkegaard wholeheartedly embraces Luther’s principle of the denial of

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works-righteousness merit.123 But, as previously noted, nineteenth-century Danish Lutheranism, while anti-Pelagian, still one-sidedly appropriated Luther’s doctrine of justification by grace through faith without works as justification for the pursuit of happiness. Kierkegaard lanced, “The tragedy of Christendom is clearly that we have removed the dialectical element from Luther’s doctrine of faith, so that it has become a cloak for sheer paganism and epicureanism.”124 The dialectical element in Luther’s doctrine is that while justification is by grace through faith without works, grace and faith do not abrogate good works, but actuate good works.125 One of Luther’s most popular Reformation treatises, September 1520’s “The Freedom of a Christian,” early propounded this double-sided dialectic of faith and works in two well-known, paradoxical propositions: (1) A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none; (2) A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.126 Luther’s first proposition asserts the priority of faith in righteousness before God, ascribing righteousness neither to good nor bad works but to either belief or unbelief in God’s forgiveness of sin in Christ.127 Thus, by faith alone “A Christian is free from all things and over all things so that he needs no works to make him righteous and save him.”128 But in this same treatise, one of his earliest expressions of this doctrine of justification without works, Luther straightway explicates how a Christian sighs, holding the first proposition in dialectic with the second: [A Christian] ought to think: “Although I am an unworthy and condemned man, my God has given me in Christ all the riches of righteousness and salvation without any merit of my part, out of pure, free mercy, so that from now on I need nothing except faith which believes that this is true. Why should I not therefore freely, joyfully, with all my heart, and with an eager will do all things which I know are pleasing and acceptable to such a Father who has overwhelmed me with his inestimable riches? I will therefore give myself as a Christ to my neighbor, just as Christ offered himself to me; I will do nothing in this life except what I see is necessary, profitable, and salutary to my neighbor, since through faith I have an abundance of all good things.129

So from the beginning, Luther’s perennial antagonist is not only the Pelagian or semi-Pelagian, to whom the first proposition is directed but also the Antinomian, who one-sidedly appropriates the first proposition without the dialectic of the second. Luther lances the Antinomian crower in this early treatise: “There are very many who, when they hear of this freedom of faith, immediately turn it into an occasion for the flesh and think that now all things are allowed them.”130 But Luther forewarns and concludes, “We conclude, therefore, that a Christian lives not in himself, but in Christ and in his neighbor. Otherwise he is not a Christian. He lives in Christ through faith,

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in his neighbor through love. By faith he is caught up beyond himself into God. By love he descends beneath himself into his neighbor.”131 Of Luther’s two perennial antagonists, Kierkegaard’s primary antagonist in nineteenthcentury Danish Lutheranism is not the Pelagian or semi-Pelagian, but the Antinomian who has “removed the dialectical element from Luther’s doctrine of faith.”132 Thus, in order to neither deny nor abuse Luther’s doctrine of faith, Kierkegaard was necessitated in stressing, as Luther did, the dialectical relationship between Luther’s two propositions, that is, the sigh of faith and works, neither denying the priority of faith nor obviating its relation to works of love.133 This is not to say that Kierkegaard read “Freedom of a Christian” for certain. But it is to say that Luther’s popular treatise on justification serves as a paradigm for how Luther very early advanced a dialectic of the priority of faith and its relationship to subsequent works, rather than a one-sided focus on faith without works ever. Whether Kierkegaard actually read this treatise is unknown. Kierkegaard scholars have highlighted how his 1847 Works of Love especially stressed Luther’s dialectic of faith and works of love, yet it was published the same year he began reading Luther’s sermons.134 Kierkegaard scholars Amy Laura Hall and M. Jamie Ferreira have conjectured that perhaps Kierkegaard’s Works of Love was influenced by Luther’s “Freedom of a Christian” (Hall) or “Treatise on Good Works” (Ferreira).135 David Yoon-Jung Kim and Joel D. S. Rasmussen urge that Luther’s early Advent postils are substantive enough to serve as an influence for Works of Love without necessitating a reading of one of the above earlier treatises, and they conjecture that Kierkegaard may have been reading the postils earlier than 1847.136 But we have no direct proof from Kierkegaard’s journals of what he was reading of Luther before or during his composition of Works of Love. Unfortunately, we have to be satisfied with the vaguer knowledge of Kierkegaard’s Lutheran upbringing and theological education than a specific knowledge of primary Luther texts read prior to 1847. But given the evidence we do have from Kierkegaard’s journals after 1847, we can be certain that Kierkegaard enthusiastically lauded Luther’s sermons when he found in them the same dialectic of the priority of faith in the performance of works of love as found in “Freedom of a Christian.” For example, in 1850, Kierkegaard read Luther’s Epistle sermon for the First Sunday in Lent and lauded the priority of faith: “Luther is completely right in saying that if a man had to acquire his salvation by his own striving, it would end either in presumption (Formastelse) or in despair (Fortvivlelse), and therefore it is faith that saves.”137 Either crowing or groaning will be the result of meritbased works-righteousness. Lauding Luther’s first proposition, Kierkegaard straightway holds this in dialectic with Luther’s second proposition:

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But yet not in such a way that striving vanishes completely. Faith should make striving possible, because the very fact that I am saved by faith and that nothing at all is demanded from me should itself make it possible that I begin to strive, that I do not collapse under impossibility but am encouraged and refreshed, because it has been decided I am saved, I am God’s child by virtue of faith. This is how faith must relate itself to striving, both in its beginning and during its progress, but it cannot mean that striving is to vanish entirely.138

In the context of a one-sided antinomian Lutheranism that sees only the first proposition, Kierkegaard is ardent to reassert Luther’s second proposition without nullifying the first. Kierkegaard is thrilled finding this same dialectic in Luther’s sermon: “Luther therefore even urges (for example, in the sermon on the Epistle for the First Sunday in Lent and many other places) that there should be fasting, etc., only that salvation should not be regarded as dependent upon it.”139 Luther preached in this sermon, What a remarkable service for God is this wherein we must endure so much suffering, so much affliction, privation, anxiety, stripes, imprisonment, tumult or sedition, labor, watching fasting, and so on! No mass here, no vigil, no hallucinations of a fictitious service of God. It is a true service of God, which subdues the body and mortifies the flesh. Not, indeed, as if fasting, watching and toiling are to be despised because they do not make just. Though we are not thereby justified, we must nevertheless practice those things, instead of giving rein to the flesh and indulging our idleness.140

Thus, Kierkegaard loves seeing Luther originally assert the dialectical element removed by antinomian Lutheranism. Kierkegaard straightway explicates in the same journal comment, Here comes the dialectical—salvation is not dependent upon it—ergo, we think, we can let striving drop out completely. But this was never Luther’s meaning; if so, he would have become a champion of dead faith. His meaning is: if salvation is regarded as dependent on this, then it is law, and evil drives a person to strive. When it is faith which saves, then a striving follows which is nurtured by the help of the good. But if no striving at all follows faith but, indeed, even the opposite, then such a one is lost, and why? Is it because the striving did not come? If this is the case, then salvation is still dependent on striving. No, it is because the absence of striving makes it obvious that he does not have faith, and therefore he is lost because he does not have faith.141

Reading Kierkegaard’s words above, it is difficult not to become anxious trying to balance two dialectical propositions: (1) Salvation is not dependent on striving, but on faith; yet (2) A person who does not strive does not have faith. While heightening our anxiety, which not only disturbs the relation between

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soul and body but also incessantly beckons a synthesis of the two,142 Kierkegaard also lauds Luther’s sermons when he helps us to rest in God, becoming anxious in the right way. In 1849, Kierkegaard remarked in his journal, as seen above, on Luther’s Gospel sermon on the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity, Luther makes an utterly masterful distinction in his sermon on the Gospel about the lilies and the birds. Faith is indeed without care and concern [Bekymring]. Why, then, do the Scriptures elsewhere commend being concerned? Luther replies: In Christianity everything revolves around faith—and love. In relation to faith, care and concern are sinful. In relation to love, however, care and concern are altogether in place.143

Luther preached in this sermon, Here you see how we are nevertheless to be anxious. Answer: Our life and a Christian character consist of two parts, of faith and of love. The first points us to God, the other to our neighbor. The first, namely faith, is not visible, God alone sees that; the other is visible, and is love, that we are to manifest to our neighbor. Now the anxiety that springs from love is commanded, but that which accompanies faith is forbidden. If I believe that I have a God, then I cannot be anxious about my welfare; for if I know that God cares for me as a father for his child, why should I fear? Why need I to be anxious, I simply say: Art thou my Father? . . . If I rush ahead and try to care for myself, that is always contrary to faith; therefore God forbids this kind of anxiety. But it is his pleasure to maintain the anxious care of love, that we may help others, and share our possessions and gifts with them.144

Since both Luther and Kierkegaard stress that faith subsequently causes works of love, knowledge of this cause-and-effect relationship can arouse anxiety over the existence of our faith when our works of love are lacking. But when we find ourselves anxious over this dialectic between faith and works of love, regarding the latter as proof of the former, for Luther and Kierkegaard, it is not then time to hold our breath and strain out works to prove to ourselves that we have faith. No, it is then time again to release this diffident anxiety in a sigh of relief to the priority of God’s grace. And then, out of thanksgiving to God for this restful relief, anxiety is directed away from oneself toward one’s neighbor to relieve him the way God has relieved oneself. This way, works of love are not performed to prove our justification but performed out of thanksgiving for our justification. Hence, a Christian becomes anxious in the right way by sighing her anxiety in faith away from concern over her salvation toward anxiety for her neighbor to experience the same relief. Kierkegaard reviews in his journal comment on Luther’s sermon, “Masterful! But that sad thing about us human beings is simply that

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we usually have care and concern in the wrong place (i.e., in relation to faith, then care and concern are doubt, disbelief, etc.) and so rarely in the right place! O, how rare is genuine love-concern, and how common is [worrying] concern. Here again Luther is completely right.”145 Hence, for Luther and Kierkegaard, faith must always be preached in a double proposition dialectic with works of love in order that neither the priority of faith nor subsequent works of love is existentially isolated by itself, thereby nullifying both. For the crowing antinomian one-sidedly arrogating the first proposition of faith without concern for subsequent works of love, Luther and Kierkegaard purposely heighten his anxiety with the second proposition. Luther preaches in his Epistle sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Trinity, For when God out of grace, without any merit on our part, bestows upon us the forgiveness of sins which we ourselves are unable to buy or acquire, the devil instigates men at once to conclude and exclaim: Oh, in that case we need no longer do good! Whenever, therefore, the apostle speaks of the doctrine of faith, he is obliged continually to maintain that grace implies nothing of that kind. For our sins are not forgiven with the design that we should continue to commit sin, but that we should cease from it. Otherwise it would more justly be called, not forgiveness of sin but permission of sin.146

And Kierkegaard lauds in 1849, “Luther rightly says (in the sermon on the Epistle for the Eighth Sunday after Trinity) that if the forgiveness of sins was intended to make good works superfluous, the doctrine should not be called the doctrine of the forgiveness of sins but the doctrine of the permissions of sins.”147 But for the groaning Pelagian who is one-sidedly grasping the second proposition of works as a proof of faith, Luther and Kierkegaard are ready to assuage his anguished conscience with the priority of the first proposition. Kierkegaard journals in 1851, When Moses descended the mountain with the law, no one could bear to look at his face—because of the brightness [Klarhed]. When Christ was transfigured [forklaredes] upon the mountain, the disciples could not only endure this brightness but even found it infinitely salutary. The brightness of the law is fatal, that of the gospel infinitely salutary. This observation is found somewhere in Luther’s sermon on the Epistle for the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity.148

Here is Luther’s observation in his Epistle sermon for the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity: To Christ, Moses shall yield, that he alone may hold sway. Moses shall not terrify the conscience of the believer. When, perceiving the glory of Moses, the conscience trembles and despairs before God’s wrath, then it is time for Christ’s

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glory to shine with its gracious, comforting light into the heart. Then can the heart endure Moses and Elijah. For the glory of the Law, or the unveiled face of Moses, shall shine only until man is humbled and driven to desire the blessed countenance of Christ. If you come to Christ, you shall no longer hear Moses to your fright and terror; you shall hear him as one who remains servant to the Lord Christ, leaving the solace and the joy of his countenance unobscured.149

Hence, before the nineteenth-century backdrop of an antinomian Lutheranism that “removed the dialectical element from Luther’s doctrine of faith,”150 Kierkegaard regularly lauded Luther’s preaching of the dialectical sigh of faith and works of love 300 years prior, asserting the priority of faith without obviating it from subsequent works of love. The Sigh of Faith and Suffering But the dialectical activity of faith and works of love, both Luther and Kierkegaard forewarn, is not fantastically facile. In fact, Christian faith and works of love necessarily entail suffering.151 Sylvia Walsh propounds Kierkegaard’s “inverse dialectic” (omvendt Dialektik) as the existential qualification appropriate to Christianity.152 Inverse dialectic is when “the positive is known and expressed through the negative, what appears to be negative may be indirectly positive (and vice versa).”153 Consciously, for example, the positive of forgiveness is known only dialectically through the negative consciousness of sin. Here, sin not only posits a radical separation between a human being and God but also functions dialectically in an inverse manner as the stage for the relation with God to begin.154 Concretely, new life, love, and hope in the spirit are known only through tangible dying to the world and self-denial.155 Likewise, Christian joy and consolation are known only via suffering.156 Kierkegaard’s dialectical task, therefore, is “to sustain a dual or paradoxical perspective that emphasizes the opposition, duplicity, and tension between concepts rather than a synthesis and mediation of them as in Hegelian dialectic.”157 As the sigh of faith and works of love dialectically squelch crowing Antinomianism, the antidote that Christians are released by grace from the obligation of observing God’s commands, the sigh of faith and suffering dialectically squelch crowing “Fantanomianism,” the fantasy that Christians will, with grace and without suffering, facilely observe God’s commands. Kierkegaard elatedly lauds Luther’s sermons that preach this sigh of faith and suffering, a dialectic many pastors are afraid to preach.158 In comparison to his own contemporary preachers, Kierkegaard was relieved to find in Luther a preacher who knew how to preach this sad but true sigh: “What a relief for the person who hears and reads the contemporary pastors and almost has to say to himself, “I understand from you what I am to do—simply take

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it easy, because I have already become too perfect”—what a relief to read Luther. There is a man who can really stay by a person and preach him farther out instead of backwards.”159 One of the most noted, yet terse, Luther lauds in Kierkegaard’s journals is the following from 1848: “Today I have read Luther’s sermons according to plan; it was the Gospel about the ten lepers. O, Luther is still the master of us all.”160 But what in Luther’s sermon on the Gospel about the ten lepers, the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity, makes Luther “the master” for Kierkegaard? Regarding this short, enigmatic journal entry alone does not answer this question. But two separate journal entries from two different dates, upon which Kierkegaard did not read but recalled this Luther sermon, reveal the thrust of the sermon that impressed Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard journals in 1850, Somewhere in his sermons Luther declares that three things belong to a Christian life: (1) faith (Tro), (2) works of love (Kjerligheds-Gjerninger), (3) persecution (Forfølgelse) for this faith and for these works of love. Take Mynster now. He has reduced faith oriented toward tension and inwardness. He has set legality in the place of works of love. And persecution he has completely abolished.161

In another journal entry with no date given, Kierkegaard remembers the same thrust: “Luther declares that to Christian faith belong faith—works of love— and then persecution for the faith and love (the passage is marked in my copy of his sermons).”162 At the beginning of the sermon for the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity, Luther positively considers faith and love: “Now, as I have often said, faith and love constitute the whole character of the Christian. Faith receives, love gives. Faith brings man to God, love brings man to his fellow. Through faith he permits God to do him good, through love he does good to his brother man.”163 But Luther in this same sermon does not express these two positive Christian ideals without also expressing the corresponding negative dialectic in which faith and love are realized, that is, persecution for faith and love, what Luther calls “hope”: Whoever wants to be a Christian must clearly understand the fact that all his good deeds, faithfulness, and service to others will only result in ingratitude, and he must guard against letting that fact move him to quit doing good deeds and helping others. . . . But there are very few who have that kind of love, and that’s also why there are very few true Christians. If we want to live in the world and still be Christians, we must learn to gladly help and do good to other people. If that gets us nothing but ingratitude, we should not allow that to discourage or surprise us, as is the case with the children of the world. When their deeds of kindness are not requited, they feel deeply hurt and become very resentful. As a Christian you should learn to expect and simply accept that as a fact of life.164 And in conclusion we observe that this Gospel sufficiently teaches and represents the entire Christian life with all its events and sufferings (Lindner: leiden;

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Thisted: Lidelser); for the two chief things are faith (Lindner: glaube; Thisted: Troen) and love (Lindner: liebe; Thisted: Kjærligheden). . . . Now when such life begins, God goes to work and improves it by trials (Lindner: versuchung; Thisted: Prøver) and conflicts (Lindner: anfechtung; Thisted: Anfægtninger), through which a man increases more and more in faith and love, that through his own experience (Lindner: erfahrung; Thisted: Erfaring) God becomes to him so heartily dear and precious, and he no longer fears anything. Then hope grows which is certain that God will not forsake her.165

The sermon ends, “Thus a Christian life goes through good and evil until the end, and yet it does not seek revenge, and only grows more and more in faith, love and hope.”166 Thus, that Luther preaches the inverse dialectic of faith and love with suffering, such, for Kierkegaard, makes Luther “the master of us all.”167 That Kierkegaard referred to Luther in this dialectical context as “the master of us all,” though, does not mean that Kierkegaard learned something new from Luther. In his 1847 publication Works of Love (Kjerlighedens Gjerninger), one year prior to his 1848 “master” journal comment, Kierkegaard had already given the same warning to those who would practice Christian works of love: “Remember in good time that if you do this or at least strive to act accordingly, you will fare badly in the world.”168 In his discourse from Works of Love, Kierkegaard is careful to truthfully proclaim Christianity with inverse dialectic—with both exhortation and forewarning simultaneously. Lengthily, but vitally, Kierkegaard forewarns about Christian sermons that are only one-sided exhortation, lacking the dialectical forewarning: At times we read and hear with sadness Christian addresses that actually leave out the final danger. What is said there about faith, about love, and about humility is entirely correct and entirely Christian; yet a discourse such as that is bound to mislead a young person instead of guiding him, because the discourse leaves out what later happens in the world to the essentially Christian. . . . You see, this suppression of the final difficulty (namely, that humanly speaking it will go badly with him in the world and the more so as he develops a Christian disposition in himself) is a deception that leads the young person either to despair over himself (as if it were all his fault because he was not a true Christian) or despondently to give up his striving, as if something altogether unusual had happened to him, whereas what happens to him is only what the Apostle John speaks of as something altogether ordinary when he says (1 John 3:13), “Do not let this surprise you.” Thus the speaker has deceived the young person by suppressing the true connectedness, by letting it seem as if Christianly there is struggle in only one place instead of pointing out that the truly Christian struggle always involves a double danger because there is struggle in two places: first in the person’s inner being, where he must struggle with himself, and then, when he makes progress in this struggle, outside the person with the world.169

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Following this example of a one-sided and therefore misleading sermon, Kierkegaard lays down his most important rule for preaching a sigh: We put our confidence in boldly daring to praise Christianity, also with the addition that in the world its reward, to put it mildly, is ingratitude. We regard it as our duty continually to speak about it in advance, so that we not sometimes praise Christianity with an omission of what is essentially difficult, and at other times, perhaps on the occasion of a particular text, hit upon a few grounds of comfort for the person tried and tested in life. No, just when Christianity is being praised most strongly, the difficulty must simultaneously be emphasized.170

Hence, Kierkegaard had already established his most important homiletic rule prior to reading and declaring Luther to be “the master.” Kierkegaard’s rule for preaching a sigh is the measure by which he adjudicates Luther to be “the master.” Via his already developed palate, Kierkegaard is “more interested in finding his own opinions restated and confirmed by Luther”171 than learning something new from Luther. In the face of Fantanomian Lutheranism, Kierkegaard was tempted, but never acceded, to publicly capitalize on Luther in order to substantiate his position.172 Another of Kierkegaard’s greatest journal lauds regards not only this temptation but also Kierkegaard’s thrill at seeing again the sigh of faith and suffering preached in Luther’s sermon. Kierkegaard lauds in 1849, “The conclusion of Luther’s sermon on the Gospel ‘I am the good shepherd’ deserves to be [re]printed (aftrykkes) just in order, if possible, to put an end once and for all to all the nonsense that there are supposedly pure Christians, and consequently Christianity quits striving.”173 In the same year, Kierkegaard made a similar comment about the same sermon, noting what he loves about this sermon: “In his sermon on the Gospel for the Second Sunday after Easter (‘I am the good shepherd’), Luther very movingly develops the way the true Christian becomes unrecognizable, as it were, through all the persecution and mistreatment etc. he suffers—but Christ still knows him and recognizes him as his own.”174 Since Kierkegaard believes the conclusion to Luther’s sermon “deserves to be reprinted,” it is here reprinted for the first time to see for ourselves what Kierkegaard so lauded. To better perceive how Luther preaches the simultaneous sigh of faith and suffering, the positive constituents are reprinted in plain text and the negative in italics: Under these circumstances, who knows the sheep? Certainly nobody but Christ alone. He tells them, and comforts them by it, and neither forgets nor forsakes them, although so it seems. And in order to impress this more deeply upon us, he adds a comparison and says: “Even as the Father knoweth me.” This is truly also a deep, hidden knowledge, that God the Father knew his only begotten and beloved Son, when like

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the child of the poorest beggar he had to lie in the manger, not only unknown by his entire people, but cast out and rejected; or when he hung in the air most disgracefully and ignominiously, naked and bare, between two murderers, as the most wicked blasphemer of God, and a rebel, cursed by God and all the world, so that he was compelled to cry out to him in great agony: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Matt. 27:46. Nevertheless, he says here: My Father knoweth me, precisely in this suffering, disgrace and offensive form, as his only Son, sent by him to be the sacrifice and to offer up my soul for the salvation and redemption of the sheep. Likewise I know him, and am aware that he has not forgotten and forsaken me, but that he will lead me through and out of disgrace, the cross and death to eternal honor, life, and glory. In the same way my sheep also learn to know me in their misery, shame, suffering, and death, as their dear, faithful Savior, who has suffered in like manner and given his life for them. They shall trust me with assurance that in their distress they are not forsaken or forgotten by me, as reason and the world imagine; but that in all this I will wonderfully preserve them and thereby bring them to eternal victory and glory. Behold, this is the true knowledge of Christ, with which he knows us and we are known by him. High and glorious wisdom! But for the reason and thought of the world it is far too deeply buried and hidden. It is comprehended by faith alone, which must here undergo a great conflict in order to keep this knowledge and to increase in it, lest by the great occasion for stumbling which appears here it be drawn away from Christ; as he himself admonishes in Matthew 11:6: “Blessed is he, whosever shall find no occasion of stumbling in me.”175

Because Luther “very movingly” interweaves the positive with the negative qualifications of Christianity thereby “securing a correct understanding and expression of the positive qualifications of Christian existence,”176 it is easy to recognize why Kierkegaard was tempted to reprint the above. Noting in 1849 that Luther’s sermon deserved to reprinted, Kierkegaard printed his own version of Luther’s sigh of faith and suffering in 1850’s Practice in Christianity without referencing Luther. Mirroring Luther’s conclusion above, the thesis of Practice in Christianity is that positive knowledge of Christ necessarily requires the negative practice of following him in his abasement. Read the invocation to Practice in Christianity and note the parallel between Luther’s conclusion above and Kierkegaard’s prayer below, even the concluding quotation of Matthew 11:6: Lord Jesus Christ, would that we, too, might become contemporary with you in this way, might see you in your true form and in the surroundings of actuality as you walked here on earth, not in the form in which an empty and meaningless or thoughtless-romantic or a historical-talkative remembrance has distorted you, since it is not the form of abasement in which the believer sees you, and it cannot possibly be the form of glory in which no one has seen you. Would that

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we might see you as you are and were and will be until your second coming in glory, as the sign of offense and the object of faith, the lowly man, yet the Savior and Redeemer of the human race, who out of love came to earth to seek the lost, to suffer and die, and yet, alas, every step you took on earth, every time you called to the straying, every time you reached out your hand to do signs and wonders, and every time you defenselessly suffered the opposition of people without raising a hand—again and again in concern you had to repeat, “Blessed is the one who is not offended at me.” Would that we might see you in this way and that we then might not be offended at you!177

This is not to say the thesis of Practice in Christianity was a direct result of reading the above Luther sermon,178 for prior to 1849, Kierkegaard had already formulated, especially in 1847’s Works of Love, his rule for preaching this sigh, interweaving the positive and negative qualifications of Christianity.179 While not citing Luther publicly, privately Luther excited Kierkegaard, confirming and encouraging his dialectical position. Again, his alreadyformulated rule for preaching a sigh is the measure by which Kierkegaard lauds Luther the most. Kierkegaard commented on the same Luther sermon a year later in 1850, but this time more ambivalently. Kierkegaard first criticizes, “In his sermon on the Gospel ‘the good shepherd,’ (Luther still does not put it together rightly).”180 Kierkegaard then immediately lauds Luther, “He speaks—and in the strongest terms—of Christ taking to himself the crushed and (brokenhearted)—all quite true.”181 This coincides with Luther’s sermon: My kingdom is only to rule the sheep; that is poor, needy, wretched men, who well see and realize that there is no other help or salvation for them. . . . Here you see that Christ’s kingdom is to be concerned about the weak, the sick, the brokenhearted, that he may help them. That is indeed a comforting declaration. The only trouble is that we do not realize our needs and infirmities. If we realized them, we would soon flee to him.182

Then Kierkegaard again stresses his rule for preaching a sigh: “But now see if the same sermon declares that when a person becomes a Christian (flux En er blevet Christen) straightway (strax) there will be persecution (Forfølgelse) for the sake of the Word, that this is inherent in the Gospel, and therefore the Word must be dearer to a person than his life.”183 The rule is that when Christianity is lauded in its positivity, straightway (strax) its concomitant negativity must also lance. Luther coincides, In the world they take offense at this kingdom of Christ and his church, because it does not accord with their wisdom and is not organized and regulated as in their opinion it should be regulated if it is to be God’s government and work.

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Indeed, because it is contrary to reason, sense, and thought, the world regards the doctrine as pure folly and delusion, and condemns and persecutes all who adhere to it and are unwilling to follow the world’s own opinion.184

Christianity necessarily involves a “double danger.”185 Not only will the Christian suffer persecution outwardly from the world but also inwardly in his own relation with Christ. Kierkegaard immediately comments, “Furthermore, that Christ at times leaves his own in the pricking situation, a new suffering apart from the persecution by the world and of inner anxiety.”186 Luther, straightway in the very next sentence in his sermon, coincides, Not only is Christ hidden from the world, but a still harder thing is it that in such trials Christ conceals himself even from his church, and acts as if he had forgotten, aye, had entirely forsaken and rejected it, since he permits it to be oppressed under the cross and subjected to all the cruelty of the world, while its enemies boast, glory and rejoice over it.187

Kierkegaard then adds, “Furthermore, that the suffering is great and fearful that it truly is a matter of not being offended by Christ,”188 mirroring the conclusion of Luther’s sermon Kierkegaard so lauded above: “It is comprehended by faith alone, which must stay in fighting and striving in order to keep this knowledge and to increase in it, lest by the great occasion for stumbling which appears here it be drawn away from Christ; as he himself admonishes in Mt 11:6: “Blessed is he, whosoever shall find no occasion of stumbling in me.”189 But then after lauding Luther, Kierkegaard lances, “But, my God, is this doctrine then so mild,”190 insinuating that Luther mistakenly preaches the above double danger as mild. Reading through the entirety of the Luther sermon, there is a short section near the beginning of the sermon that does sound a little mild: If you believe that Christ died to save you from all evil, and will hold fast to that Word, you will find it so certain and sure that no creature can overthrow it; and as no one can overthrow the Word, neither can anyone harm you who believe it. Accordingly, with the Word you will overcome sin, death, devil and hell, and you will find refuge in the Word and attain that which is found where the Word is, namely, everlasting peace, joy and life.191

But for Kierkegaard, proclamation of Christian peace, joy, and life must straightway (strax) be interweaved with the inverse dialectic of Christianity’s double danger in order to safeguard a correct expression of Christianity’s positive qualifications. This may be the reason why Kierkegaard wanted only the conclusion to this Luther sermon reprinted and not the beginning. Kierkegaard’s journal comment then expresses his disappointment with

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ordinary sermons that lack this dialectic, but at the same time he is generous to Luther. “O, no, this is half information that people run around with—well, not Luther, for he knows how to exercise a restraining influence—but that is the way it goes in ordinary preaching.”192 Kierkegaard lances “ordinary preaching” that lacks the sighing dialectic but lauds Luther’s preaching a sigh. But this is striking when the beginning of the comment noted that Luther did not put the sermon together rightly. Here, we must allow, as with anyone’s private journal, that Kierkegaard likely jotted it down in haste without concern for a clean final draft for the public to read.193 More important is to recognize Kierkegaard’s omnipresent rule that the positive of Christianity be straightway interweaved with its concomitant negative. Further in this same journal comment, mirroring his 1847 discourse from Works of Love, Kierkegaard again explains why this dialectical tension needs to be the norm in Christian preaching: The matter is quite simple. If I were spirit, I would consequently be so strong that I would have but one single concern—for my sin and for my soul’s salvation. If this is true, then Christianity is as mild as mild can be, for what is milder than this—that in this respect I have nothing at all to be concerned about, that satisfaction has been made. But unfortunately I am not a pure spirit, or I am not spirit; I am flesh and blood, a weak human being—and so Christianity is exceedingly rigorous. For Christianity will not introduce its mildness as matter of course (this would be taking it in vain) but first of all desires to transform me into spirit. If a man who has not a trace of the qualification of spirit in him could understand this, he would be obliged to flee Christianity as the greatest plague.194

Why would someone subject himself to this plague, the double danger of Christianity? Kierkegaard answers, Because the consciousness of sin within him allows him no rest anywhere; its grief strengthens him to endure everything else if he can only find reconciliation. . . . This means that the grief of sin must be very deep within a person, and therefore Christianity must be presented as the difficult thing it is, so that it may be entirely clear that Christianity is related solely to the consciousness of sin. To want to be involved in becoming a Christian for any other reason is literally foolishness—and so it must be.195

Hence, before the nineteenth-century backdrop of Fantanomian Lutheranism, Kierkegaard regularly lauded Luther’s preaching of the dialectical sigh of faith and suffering, preparing the hearer in advance not only for the comfort of the forgiveness of sins but also for the inner and outer double danger that will follow, securing a correct expression of Christian existence.

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Kierkegaard often recalled and lauded an image from Luther’s Fourth Sunday after Epiphany Sermon on Matthew 8:23–27 wherein Luther encapsulated Kierkegaard’s rule for straightway (strax) preaching the positive and negative qualifications of Christianity together. Luther illustrated, “If you will to be a Christian, then expect stormy weather and turmoil. . . . This is what the evangelist would teach us when he says: This stormy weather raises itself first when Christ stepped into the boat and was launched from land. Whoever wants to live a godly life in Christ, he must suffer persecution, says Paul.”196 And Kierkegaard lauded this image on more than one occasion: “Luther says that as soon as Christ has come on board the storm immediately (strax) begins,”197 and, “Luther speaks this way in other places where he speaks about storms coming as soon as (strax) there is a true Christian and true Christian confession—‘If Christ is along in the ship, there is stormy weather at once (strax).’”198 If you desire Christ to step on board your ship, then straightway (strax) the preacher must dialectically forecast and forewarn you in advance of the treacherous waters to come. The confluent aspiration of Luther’s sermons and Kierkegaard’s public discourses was to leave their hearers neither overconfidently crowing nor diffidently groaning, but sighing before God here. NOTES 1. For Kierkegaard, every concept has both its appropriate discipline and mood. If the concept is removed from its appropriate discipline or mood, then the concept is ruined. For example, “sin” is not to be studied by aesthetics, metaphysics, or psychology; these disciplines disfigure sin with their corresponding moods of melancholy, disinterestedness, and antipathetic curiosity, respectively. Instead, “Sin does not properly belong in any science, but it is the subject of the sermon, in which the single individual speaks as the single individual to the single individual,” and “the mood that corresponds to sin is earnestness.” See CA 14–16. 2. Luther (see Bernhard Lohse, Martin Luther’s Theology: Its Historical and Systematic Development, trans. and ed. Roy A. Harrisville [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999], 273) and Kierkegaard held that the knowledge and the requirement of the unconditioned ethical is experienced universally: “The ethical begins straightway with this requirement to every person: you shall be perfect; if you are not, it is immediately charged to you as guilt,” JP 1:998; KJN 8, NB24:112; SKS 24, 390; Papirer X.4 A 362. 3. Kierkegaard corroborates, “The way to Christianity is not that another person by coaxing etc., undertakes to lead you to it. No, you must go through this ‘You shall’; this is the condition for unconditional respect. And behind this ‘You shall’ lies grace, and there everything smiles, there all is gentleness,” JP 1:994; KJN 8, NB22:115; SKS 24, 164; Papirer X.3 A 737.

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4. JFY 201. 5. C. Stephen Evans, Kierkegaard’s Ethic of Love: Divine Commands and Moral Obligations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 51: “It is certainly arguable that a good deal of the concern of the world’s religions lies in finding some way to deal with guilt and suffering.” 6. For Kierkegaard every human being, even a Christian, is commanded to strive to fulfill the ethical ideal in God’s unconditional command, “You shall.” A Christian, in love for his savior’s fulfillment and forgiveness, still strives to fulfill the ethical, now identified in following Christ, because “to love is to be transformed into likeness to the beloved; otherwise it is merely wanting to profit by the beloved,” JP 2:1870; KJN 7, NB20:37; SKS 23, 413; Papirer X.3 A 294. 7. Kierkegaard lived prior to Ritschl’s liberal popularization of Luther’s concept of vocation in which “freedom from the obligation of works righteousness and merit theology was freedom for Christian work in worldly callings,” Stayer, Martin Luther, German Saviour, 4. Kierkegaard’s primary late-Enlightenment philosophical opponents who saw the telos of the relation with God fulfilled in either the ethical life or good citizenship were Kant and Hegel, respectively. 8. See Geismar, Lectures, 77: “It is now needful to stress what Luther did not need to stress, because it was everywhere taken for granted and profoundly felt. The Lutheran stress upon grace is not to be forgotten, but the need of men for this grace is to be developed.” Kierkegaard published this same sentiment toward the value of groaning prior to his reading of Luther, for example, 1845’s TDIO 29: “The more profound the sorrow is, the more a person feels himself as nothing, as less than nothing, and this diminishing self-esteem is a sign that the sorrower is the seeker who is beginning to become aware of God.” 9. JP 3:2463; KJN 4, NB:79; SKS 20, 69; Papirer VII.1 A 192. Kierkegaard published almost exactly the same in 1847’s Works of Love, WL 201: “Therefore, take away from the essentially Christian the possibility of offense, or take away from the forgiveness of sins the battle of the anguished conscience (to which, according to Luther’s excellent explanation, this whole doctrine is to lead), and then close the churches, the sooner the better, or turn them into places of amusement that stand open all day!” 10. JP 6:6686; KJN 8, NB21:84; SKS 24, 55; Papirer X.3 A 526. 11. Lenker 5:105; Thisted 1:65; Lindner 7:96–97; Leipzig 16:50. Note that Lindner does not capitalize German nouns although Leipzig does. Thisted and the Danish of the nineteenth century capitalized all Danish nouns. 12. Lenker 5:106–7; Thisted 1:66; Lindner 7:97; Leipzig 16:50. 13. Lenker 5:108; Thisted 1:66; Lindner 7:98; Leipzig 16:51. 14. Gustaf Wingren, Luther on Vocation, trans. Carl C. Rasmussen (Evansville, IN: Ballast, 1999), 60. 15. Lenker 5:107; Thisted 1:66; Lindner 7:97; Leipzig 16:50. 16. Lenker 5:108; Thisted 1:66; Lindner 7:99; Leipzig 16:51. The italicized is not present in Thisted and Lindner, exemplifying Lindner’s regular deletion of Luther’s polemic against Rome. 17. JP 6:6686; KJN 8, NB21:84; SKS 24, 55; Papirer X.3 A 526.

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18. JP 3:494; KJN 6, NB11:120; SKS 22, 67; Papirer X.1 A 419. 19. Lenker 2.1:356; Thisted 1:357; Lindner 7:695; Leipzig 13:722. 20. JP 3:494; KJN 6, NB11:120; SKS 22, 67; Papirer X.1 A 419. 21. Lenker 2.1:363–64; Thisted 1:361; Lindner 7:703; Leipzig 13:725. 22. JP 2:1857; KJN 6, NB12:177; SKS 22, 249; Papirer X.2 A 47. 23. Lenker 1:131; Thisted 1:60; Lindner 7:87; Leipzig 13:93. 24. JP 2:1857. Hong’s translation, “to preach men to bits,” of “at prædike Menneskene synder” (SKS 22, 249; Papirer X2 A 47) is better translated, “to preach men as sinners.” Concerning the prototype, see chapter 4. 25. JP 2:1857; KJN 6, NB12:177; SKS 22, 249; Papirer X.2 A 47. 26. Lenker 1:132; Thisted 1:60; Lindner 7:88; Leipzig 13:93. 27. JP 2:1857; KJN 6, NB12:177; SKS 22, 249; Papirer X.2 A 47. Kierkegaard expressed this same sentiment before he began reading Luther. In a discourse published in 1845, TDIO 32, Kierkegaard wrote: “The confession of sin is not merely a counting of all the particular sins but is a comprehending before God that sin has a coherence in itself.” 28. JP 2:1857; KJN 6, NB12:177; SKS 22, 249; Papirer X.2 A 47. 29. JP 3:2463; KJN 4, NB:79; SKS 20, 69; Papirer VII.1 A 192. 30. Gabriel Biel and other late medieval theologians were influential on Luther’s piety when he was a Catholic monk. They taught “facere quod in se est” (“to do what is in one”), that is, to exercise one’s natural powers without the assistance of grace. BC 121. 31. German philosophers Christian Wolff (eighteenth century) and G. W. F. Hegel (nineteenth century) were especially influential. Both held that scriptural revelation was distinct from rational thought, yet each was wholly consistent with the other. See Allen W. Wood, “Rational Theology, Moral Faith, and Religion,” in The Cambridge Companion to Kant, ed. Paul Guyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 395. 32. See Pelikan, From Luther to Kierkegaard, 115: “When viewed in contrast to the development of Lutheranism and philosophy between Luther and Kierkegaard, those affinities become all the more striking. Melanchthonianism, Orthodoxy, Rationalism, and Hegelianism all sought a comprehensive rational system. To that extent they all constitute a misrepresentation of Luther.” 33. JP 3:2485; KJN 6, 11:3; SKS 22, 9; Papirer X.1 A 297. 34. Thisted 1:132–33; Lindner 7:231–32; Leipzig 15:80–81. This section of the sermon is from Dietrich’s first house postil on the Gospel for Epiphany, of which there is no English translation; hence, the translation is mine. 35. David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, in The Empiricists (New York: Anchor, 1961), 312, 324. 36. Lessing, Lessing’s Theological Writings, 53, 55. 37. C. Stephen Evans, “Kierkegaard’s Attack on Apologetics,” Christian Scholar’s Review 10 (1981): 323. 38. CUP 23. 39. CUP 29: “Thus everything is assumed to be in order with regard to the Holy Scriptures—what then? Has the person who did not believe come a single step closer

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to faith? No, not a single step. Faith does not result from straightforward scholarly deliberation, nor does it come directly; on the contrary, in this objectivity one loses that infinite, personal, impassioned interestedness, which is the condition of faith, the ubique et nusquam [everywhere and nowhere] in which faith can come into existence.” 40. CUP 95: “The basis of the paradox of Christianity is that it continually uses time and the historical in relation to the eternal.” 41. CUP 105: “All Christianity is rooted in the paradox, according to Fear and Trembling—yes, it is rooted in fear and trembling (which are specifically the desperate categories of Christianity and the leap)—whether one accepts it (that is, is a believer) or rejects it (for the very reason that it is the paradox).” 42. By “appropriation” Kierkegaard means “imitation” of Christ the Prototype. In his discourse entitled “Christ the Prototype,” JFY 190–91, Kierkegaard writes about the leap from approximation to appropriation: “Without introducing imitation, it is impossible to gain mastery over doubts. Therefore, the state of things in Christendom is such that doubt has replaced faith. And then they want to stop doubt with—reasons; and they still are moving in that direction. They still have not learned that it is wasted effort—indeed, that it feeds doubt, gives it a basis for continuing. . . . Imitation, which corresponds to Christ as prototype, must be advanced, be affirmed, be called to our attention. Let us examine this matter from the beginning but with all brevity. The Savior of the world, our Lord Jesus Christ, did not come to the world in order to bring a doctrine; he never lectured. Since he did not bring a doctrine, he did not try by way of reasons to prevail upon anyone to accept his doctrine, nor did he try to authenticate it by proofs. His teaching was really his life, his existence. If someone wanted to be his follower, his 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. . . . The proof does not precede but follows, is in and with the imitation that follows Christ.” 43. It is crucial to see how Kierkegaard is different from the practice of the philosophy of religion that has been dominated since the Enlightenment with objective questions of how one can know God’s existence and the problem of evil. Kierkegaard ignores such questions and, instead, finds awareness of God’s reality implicit in the ethical conscience every individual subjectively experiences. While ethics is not the entirety of the relation with God, it is the beginning of one’s awareness of God. See C. Stephen Evans, Kierkegaard: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 114–15. 44. Thisted 1:133; Lindner 7:232; Leipzig 15:81. 45. JP 3:2485; KJN 6, NB11:3; SKS 22, 9; Papirer X.1 A 297. 46. JP 3:2358; KJN 6, NB11:63; SKS 22, 40; Papirer X.1 A 361. 47. Lenker 6:31; Thisted 1:273; Lindner 1:509f; Leipzig 16:248. 48. JP 3:2358; KJN 6, NB11:63; SKS 22, 40; Papirer X.1 A 361. 49. FSE 13. 50. FSE 27. 51. FSE 35. 52. FSE 28–29.

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53. L. Joseph Rosas III summarizes in Scripture in the Thought of Søren Kierkegaard (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 1994), 46: “Personal appropriation, then, is the standard by which Kierkegaard judged the value of Bible study methods. . . . A mature person learns only ‘by appropriation.’ Kierkegaard’s concern was not that one should exegete Scripture in a certain way, rather that Scripture should be allowed to exegete life.” 54. Lenker 6:31; Thisted 1:273; Lindner 1:509–10; Leipzig 16:248. 55. JP 3:2358; KJN 6, NB11:63; SKS 22, 40; Papirer X.1 A 361. Hong, JP 3:p796, translates Kierkegaard’s Greek, “Change into another category.” 56. JP 3:2489; KJN 6, NB11:29; SKS 22, 24; Papirer X.1 A 324. 57. Thisted 1:199; Lindner 7:352–53; Leipzig 15:134. 58. JP 3:2489; KJN 6, NB11:29; SKS 22, 24; Papirer X.1 A 324. 59. JP 3:2489; KJN 6, NB11:29; SKS 22, 24; Papirer X.1 A 324. Kierkegaard publishes the same point about Luther and doubt in 1848, CD 190: “In the Christian sense, the only weapon against doubt is, ‘Be still,’ or, Luther-like, ‘Shut your mouth!’ Doubt, however, says, ‘Get involved with me, fight me with my weapons.’” 60. Kierkegaard especially focused on the kenosis of the late-Enlightenment ethics in probably his most-read work, Fear and Trembling. Here, Kierkegaard, through the pseudonym Johannes de Silentio and the biblical account of Abraham’s near sacrifice of Issac, especially questioned the late-Enlightenment belief, namely, Hegel’s Sittlichkeit, misconceiving Christianity with absorbing the ethical values that dominate the culture. See Evans, Kierkegaard: An Introduction, 102–3. 61. JP 3:2463; KJN 4, NB:79; SKS 20, 69; Papirer VII.1 A 192. 62. René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy in The European Philosophers from Descartes to Nietzsche, ed. Monroe C. Beardsley (New York: Modern Library, 1992), 28–29: “Today, then, as I have suitably freed my mind of all cares, and have secured for myself an assured leisure in peaceful solitude, I shall at last apply myself earnestly and freely to the general overthrow of all my former opinions. . . . I am in this place, seated by the fire, attired in a dressing-gown, having this paper in my hands.” 63. JP 3:2463; KJN 4, NB:79; SKS 20, 69; Papirer VII.1 A 192. Cf. CA ix: “Kierkegaard criticized the Cartesian principle of methodological doubt because it mistakenly gives more weight to reflection (thought) than it does to act (will). . . . Descartes’s apparently epistemological problem is for Kierkegaard an existential one; that is, the solution of doubt lies not in reflection but in resolution.” 64. Two years before he began his reading of Luther, Kierkegaard, TDIO 18, wrote, “Wonder is an ambivalent state of mind containing both fear and blessedness. Worship therefore is simultaneously a mixture of fear and blessedness. Even the most purified, reasonable worship is blessedness in fear and trembling, trust in mortal danger, bold confidence in the consciousness of sin.” 65. FSE 62. 66. Cf. Romans 8:26 (RSV): “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.” 67. JP 3:2467; KJN 4, NB5:10; SKS 20, 273; Papirer IX A 11.

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68. Diem, Kierkegaard’s Dialectic of Existence, 11–15. 69. Through the pseudonym “Anti-Climacus.” 70. SUD 13. Reinhold Niebuhr, Human Nature, vol. 1 of The Nature and Destiny of Man (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1964), 3, defines human beings similarly, noting that there are two facts about man: “The obvious fact is that man is a child of nature, subject to its vicissitudes, compelled by its necessities, driven by its impulses, and confined within the brevity of years which nature permits its varied organic form, allowing them some, but not too much, latitude. The other less obvious fact is that man is spirit who stands outside of nature, life, himself, his reason and the world.” 71. Per Lønning, “Kierkegaard: A Stumbling-Block to ‘Kierkegaardians,’” in Kierkegaard Revisited: Proceedings from the Conference “Kierkegaard and the Meaning of Meaning It,” ed. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn and Jon Stewart (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1997), 96: “The difference between Kierkegaardian and Hegelian dialectic is obviously that the Hegelian is one of reconciliation, with history itself as the acting dynamic; Kierkegaard’s dialectic is one of unbridgeable confrontation, urging subjective response and responsibility.” 72. Other dominant philosophers in the West, for example, Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes, have posited human being as a synthesis of soul and body, “yet none of these thinkers argued that there was something else that related body and soul to each other,” Gordon D. Marino, “Anxiety in the Concept of Anxiety,” in The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, ed. Alastair Hannay and Gordon D. Marino (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 315. Plato and Descartes, like much of Western philosophy, especially propound an epistemological and ontological freedom where the soul could be free from the limitations of the body, but “On Kierkegaard’s view this is precisely what the human self cannot do,” Martin J. Heinecken, The Moment Before God: An Interpretation of Kierkegaard (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 169. Hannay, Kierkegaard: The Arguments of the Philosophers, 143, writes, “For Kierkegaard the ‘real’ individual is in this sense a ‘compound of infinite and finite,’ and the problems of existence (‘existential problems’) are those involved in keeping these opposites deliberately and consciously in full view of one another.” 73. CA 43 (parentheses mine and added for clarification). 74. Kierkegaard’s concept of anxiety as ontologically fundamental to human existence was a turn in philosophical thought especially influential on many twentieth-century thinkers, including Heidegger, Sartre, Tillich, Rollo May, and Reinhold Niebuhr; see CA xvi–xvii. 75. SUD 21: “Eternity is obliged to do this, because to have a self, to be a self, is the greatest concession, an infinite concession, given to man, but it is also eternity’s claim upon him.” 76. Marino, “Anxiety in the Concept of Anxiety,” 309, writes, “Anxiety is a primary resource for our spiritual education, as opposed to something that should be taken to the physician and if necessary suppressed with medication.” Cf. Luther scholar Oswald Bayer, Living by Faith: Justification and Sanctification, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 1–4, where he propounds the anxious compulsion to justify oneself is an ontological necessity for every human being. 77. CA 44.

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78. Anxiety is manifested in man’s concern for the future (i.e., presentiment); Marino, “Anxiety in The Concept of Anxiety,” 319. 79. CA 61: “Anxiety may be compared with dizziness. He whose eye happens to look down in the yawning abyss becomes dizzy. But what is the reason for this? It is just as much in his own eye as in the abyss, for suppose he had not looked down. Hence anxiety is the dizziness of freedom, which emerges when the spirit wants to posit the synthesis and freedom looks down into its own possibility, laying hold of finiteness to support itself. Freedom succumbs in this dizziness.” 80. A tangible example of this is my ideal desire to see this study through to completion, yet in attempting to actuate this ideal by seemingly infinite reading and writing, there is also a consistent fight to fend off inferior immediate diversions (e.g., checking email, surfing the internet, browsing periodicals) that not only inhibit this ideal but are also desired alongside of my ideal for the sense of immediate, but ephemeral, gratification with which they entice. I both desire and fear both, that is, I want both immediate gratification and long-lasting results, yet I fear both hard work and ephemeral gratification. Haufniensis, CA 42, dialectically and enigmatically neologizes the desire for what one fears as “sympathetic antipathy” and the fear of what one desires as “antipathetic sympathy”: “Anxiety is a sympathetic antipathy and an antipathetic sympathy.” 81. Sylvia Walsh, Kierkegaard: Thinking Christianly in an Existential Mode (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 91. 82. See Rom. 7:15, 18–19, 21 (ESV): “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. . . . For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. . . . So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.” 83. Lenker 3.2:276. 84. CA 49. 85. Anxiety is not itself the misrelation; rather, despair is the misrelation to anxiety. See Gregory R. Beabout, Freedom and Its Misuses: Kierkegaard on Anxiety and Despair (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2009), 26. 86. SUD 15. 87. SUD 30. Infinitude’s Despair is also called “Possibility’s Despair,” lacking necessity; ibid., 35. 88. SUD 31–32. 89. Evans, Kierkegaard: An Introduction, 171, gives several examples of Infinitude’s Despair. Epistemologically, a person may have knowledge of numerous facts, but does not attend to the question of why this knowledge is valuable, remaining an observer of life. Ethically, a person may sympathize with the plight of the poor, yet does not take the concrete steps to help the poor person he encounters. “Reduplication” (Reduplikation) is Kierkegaard’s term for existing in what one thinks, “to express the content of one’s understanding in one’s actions in order to realize a fusion of thought and being in existence, not merely conceptually or abstractly but actually,” Walsh, Living Christianly, 10. CA 138: “Truth is for the particular individual only as he himself produces it in action. If the truth is for the individual in any other way, or

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if he prevents the truth from being for him in that way, we have a phenomenon of the demonic. Truth has always had many loud proclaimers, but the question is whether a person will in the deepest sense acknowledge the truth, will allow it to permeate his whole being, will accept all its consequences, and not have an emergency hiding place for himself and a Judas kiss for the consequence.” 90. SUD 33. Finitude’s Despair is also called “Necessity’s Despair,” lacking possibility; ibid., 37. 91. SUD 33–34: “Surrounded by hordes of men, absorbed in all sorts of secular matters, more and more shrewd about the ways of the world—such a person forgets himself, forgets his name divinely understood, does not dare to believe in himself, finds it too hazardous to be himself and far easier and safer to be like the others, to become a copy, a number, a mass man.” 92. SUD 81. 93. Walsh, Living Christianly, 22–23, asserts that Kierkegaard’s use of “before God” is Luther’s “coram Deo,” citing Luther scholar Gerhard Ebeling, Luther: An Introduction to His Thought, trans. R. A. Wilson (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1964), 194: “The most important element in the situation that is implied by the preposition coram is not the way in which someone else is present before me, in my sight, but the way that I myself am before someone else and exist in the sight of someone else, so that my existential life is affected.” 94. SUD 26: “The common view that despair is a rarity is entirely wrong; on the contrary, it is universal. The common view, which assumes that everyone who does not think or feel he is in despair is not or that only he who says he is in despair is, is totally false.” 95. SUD 82: “Sin is not the turbulence of flesh and blood but is the spirit’s consent to it.” 96. Heinecken, The Moment before God, 165. 97. CA 55. 98. Beabout, Freedom and Its Misuses, 53: “Ethics does not concern itself with the fact that people fall short of the ideal. All that it can do is demand that the individual try harder.” 99. Examples of Religiousness A would be any form of works-righteous Pelagianism, but also, more specifically to Kierkegaard, any of the early nineteenth-century liberal theologians who argued that the truth of Christianity is discoverable apart from revelation, through either ethical reasoning (Kant), aesthetic feeling (Schleiermacher), or philosophical speculation (Hegel). See C. Stephen Evans, Kierkegaard’s “Fragments” and “Postscript”: The Religious Philosophy of Johannes Climacus (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities, 1983), 240. Apologetic forms of Christianity claiming to recognize divinity via empirical investigation, popular in Scottish Commonsense Realism, the dominant philosophy of Christian thinkers in the early United States, would also fall under Religiousness A. See Tim Rose, Kierkegaard’s Christocentric Theology (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2001), 98. 100. Steven M. Emmanuel, Kierkegaard and the Concept of Revelation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 47. 101. JP 3:2463; KJN 4, NB:79; SKS 20, 69; Papirer VII.1 A 192.

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102. Christian revelation is “absurd” because it transcends our immanent epistemological and ethical faculties. 103. Gouwens, Kierkegaard as Religious Thinker, 20–21, rightly stresses against misreadings of Kierkegaard as the progenitor of twentieth-century existentialism. Kierkegaard “steers a path between theological subjectivism and objectivism.” Subjectively, Kierkegaard acknowledges the value of the nineteenth-century anthropocentric “turn to the self” as basic to immanent religious thinking. despite his stress on ‘subjectivity,’ emphasizes the ‘objectivity’ of Christ extra nos and so avoids reducing Christology to anthropological categories. Many twentieth-century existential philosophers (e.g., Heidegger and Sartre) and theologians (e.g., Bultmann and Tillich) merely locate the meaning of human life in the pathos of existential choice, which, without the necessity of Christ, remains in Kierkegaard’s stages of either Ethics or Religiousness A. In contradistinction Rose, Kierkegaard’s Christocentric Theology, 44, writes, “To fail to give enough significance to the Incarnation as the decisive Christian revelation is to omit the central tenet of Kierkegaard’s faith.” 104. Emmanuel, Kierkegaard and the Concept of Revelation, 47. 105. SUD 14, 82. 106. JP 2:1209; KJN 4, NB2:116; SKS 20, 187; Papirer VIII.1 A 230. Simon D. Podmore, “The Infinite Quality of Forgiveness: The (Im)possible and the (Un)forgivable,” in Kierkegaard and Christianity, ed. Roman Kralik et al., vol. 3 of Acta Kierkegaardiana (Toronto: Kierkegaard Circle, Trinity College, University of Toronto, 2008), 119–21, insightfully notes that Kierkegaard’s famous chasmic abyss, the “Infinite Qualitative Difference” between God and man is correctly understood not merely via the melancholic lens of the anthropocentric fault of sin but also, and more pastorally, via the theocentric lens of God’s willingness to overcome this abyss in the forgiveness of sins. 107. JP 1:983; KJN 6, NB14:42; SKS 22, 368; Papirer X.2 A 208. 108. David J. Lose, “Martin Luther on Preaching the Law,” Word & World 21 (Summer 2001): 256. See also Ernest B. Koenker, “Man: Simul justus et peccator” in Accents in Luther’s Theology, ed. Heino O. Kadai (St. Louis: Concordia, 1967), 100: “The simil is significant in this connection because no single proposition stating either the justus or the peccator conveys God’s final judgment. Existentialist truth, a truth that conveys a proper understanding of existence, is arrived at only by way of supplementing a partial or limited truth with an opposing statement: the assertion “God takes me to be righteous” can and must be supplemented by the opposing assertion “God takes me to be sinful.” 109. Cf. 1 Peter 5:7. CD 15: “[The Christian] believes that he has a Father in heaven, who every day opens his benign hand and satisfies everything that lives—also him—with his blessing; yet what he seeks is not to become satisfied, but the heavenly Father.” 110. JP 3:2570; KJN 10, NB32:134; SKS 26, 227; Papirer XI.2 A 54. 111. JP 3:3409; KJN 4, NB2:34; SKS 20, 154; Papirer VII.1 A 142. 112. Harold J. Grimm, “The Human Element in Luther’s Sermons,” Archiv für Refomationsgeschichte 49 (1958): 53: “[Luther] addressed his powerful opponents and also hardened sinners in harsh and occasionally crude terms; but he treated with

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delicacy and tact sincere believers and frequently expressed himself to the effect that these people worried too much.” 113. Lenker 6:254; Thisted 1:403; Lindner 1:761; Leipzig 16:352. 114. Lenker 6:256; Thisted 1:404–5; Lindner 1:764; Leipzig 16:353. 115. JP 3:2463; KJN 4, NB:79; SKS 20, 69; Papirer VII.1 A 192. 116. Lenker 2.2:89; Thisted 1:407; Lindner 1:805; Leipzig 14:89. 117. JP 2:1485; KJN 8, NB24:166; SKS 24, 429; Papirer X.4 A 419. 118. SUD 39: “The believer sees and understands his downfall, humanly speaking (in what has happened to him, or in what he has ventured), but he believes. For this reason he does not collapse. He leaves it entirely to God how he is to be helped, but he believes that for God everything is possible.” 119. JP 4:3915; Papirer III C 1. 120. Lenker 5:318; Thisted 1:206; Lindner 7:368; Leipzig 15:139. 121. JFY 193; SV XII 461. 122. See, for example, Poul Lübeke, “Freedom and Modality,” in Kierkegaard and Freedom, ed. James Giles (London: Palgrave, 2000), 93–104. 123. Ferreira, Love’s Grateful Striving, 17. 124. JP 3:2484; KJN 9, NB30:40; SKS 25, 413; Papirer X.1 A 213. 125. From very early in the Reformation, Luther always propounded this dialectic of grace and works, especially when the Roman church accused him of abrogating good works by stressing grace. See Martin Luther’s March 1520 “Treatise on Good Works,” LW 44: 24: “This is the reason that when I exalt faith and reject such works done without faith they accuse me of forbidding good works. The fact of the matter is that I want very much to teach the real good works which spring from faith.” 126. Martin Luther, Martin Luther: Selections From His Writings, ed. John Dillenberger (New York: Anchor, 1962), 53. 127. Luther, Martin Luther, 59–60. Charles L. Campbell, “Living Faith: Luther, Preaching, and Ethics,” Word & World 10 (Fall 1990): 376: “What is central for Luther is not the external deed, but the person who does it. The disposition of the person, her motivation and attitude, is the critical ethical factor, apart from which no good works are possible.” 128. Ibid., 64–65. 129. Ibid., 75. 130. Ibid., 80. 131. Ibid. 132. JP 3:2484; KJN 9, NB30:40; SKS 25, 413; Papirer X.1 A 213. 133. Ferreira, Love’s Grateful Striving, 248: “Kierkegaard’s steadfast commitment to the Lutheran denial of merit, as well as to the priority of grace, leaves no doubt that his criticism of the Lutheranism of his day did not in fact challenge what is arguably the core of Luther’s theology.” 134. Works of Love was published on September 29, 1847, but we do not know the month and day in 1847 on which Luther began reading his first Luther sermon on the Gospel for the First Sunday in Advent (JP 3:2463; KJN 4, NB3:61; SKS 20, 274; Papirer VIII.1 A 465). If be began reading this sermon around that period of the Church Year, then Works of Love would have been published prior to his commencement of reading Luther’s sermons.

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135. Amy Laura Hall, Kierkegaard and The Treachery of Love (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 37–38; Ferreira, Love’s Grateful Striving, 250. See also Koenker, “Søren Kierkegaard on Luther,” 233. 136. Kim and Rasmussen, “Martin Luther,” 188–90. 137. JP 2:1139; KJN 7, NB20:65; SKS 23, 428; Papirer X.3 A 322. 138. JP 2:1139; KJN 7, NB20:65; SKS 23, 428; Papirer X.3 A 322. 139. JP 2:1140; KJN 7, NB20:65; SKS 23, 428; Papirer X.3 A 323. 140. Lenker 4.1:138; Thisted 2:165; Lindner 8:392; Leipzig 13:410. The italicized, being polemic against Rome, is not found in Lindner and Thisted. 141. JP 2:1140; KJN 7, NB20:65; SKS 23, 428; Papirer X.3 A 323. 142. CA 43. 143. JP 3:2422; KJN 6, NB11:185; SKS 22, 112; Papirer X.1 A 487. 144. Lenker 3.1:112; Thisted 1:520; Lindner 7:1057–58; Leipzig 14:304. 145. JP 3:2422; KJN 6, NB11:185; SKS 22, 112; Papirer X.1 A 487. 146. Lenker 4.2:168–69; Thisted 2:378; Lindner 8:865–66; Leipzig 14:176. 147. JP 3:2483; KJN 5, NB10:118; SKS 21, 318; Papirer X.1 A 197. 148. JP 3:2533; KJN 8, NB23:12; SKS 24, 211; Papirer X.4 A 12. 149. Lenker 4.2:246; Thisted 2:421; Lindner 8:959; Leipzig 14:257. 150. JP 3:2484; KJN 5, NB10:132; SKS 21, 323; Papirer X.1 A 213. 151. Paul Althaus, The Ethics of Martin Luther, trans. Robert C. Schultz (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1972), 18. 152. Walsh, Living Poetically, 227. 153. Walsh, Living Christianly, 8. 154. Ibid., 17. 155. Ibid., 79. 156. Cf. the titles of some of Kierkegaard’s discourses from UDVS: “The Joy of It That the School of Sufferings Educates for Eternity”; “The Joy of It That in Relation to God a Person Always Suffers as Guilty”; “The Joy of It That the Happiness of Eternity Still Outweighs Even the Heaviest Temporal Suffering.” 157. Walsh, Living Christianly, 6. Walsh, ibid., 14, similarly propounds that “[Kierkegaard’s] task, as he conceived it, was to bring the negative qualifications, which he believed had been virtually eliminated in Christendom, once again into view, to provide them with conceptual clarity, and to show their essential relation to, and necessity in, securing a correct understanding and expression of the positive qualifications of Christian existence.” 158. See JP 3:3475; KJN 4, NB:208; SKS 20, 121; Papirer VIII.1 A 98: “Most men really never come into contact with the religious; they live out their lives in an imaginary notion of God’s nice, cozy, pleasant goodness and love and the notion that if they ever did decide to enter his house their consolation and confidence would be extraordinary. O you fools—likewise you pastors, who know nothing at all about preaching effectively to men. A pastor should say: What do you really want in church; have you considered what you will discover here, what horrors will be spoken of here such as the world does not know, that it is not evil men who persecute and martyr the good but God himself who tests throughout the long years; do you have any intimation of the horrors of spiritual trials (Anfægtelsens)? Therefore stay at home instead; manage to sneak through the world, but watch out for God.—After all, what good is

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it that those slobbering preachers change God into sweets and moonlight and then call such sentimentality and rubbish Christianity.” 159. JP 3:2464; KJN 4, NB4:59; SKS 20, 315; Papirer VIII.1 A 541. 160. JP 3:2465; KJN 4, NB4:153; SKS 20, 357; Papirer VIII.1 A 642: “O, Luther er dog Mesteren for os Alle.” This laud is often referred to by scholars in describing Kierkegaard’s positive relation to Luther; for example, Hinkson, “Kierkegaard’s Theology,” 179; Simon D. Podmore, “The Lightning and the Earthquake: Kierkegaard on the Anfechtung of Luther,” Heythrop Journal 47 (2006), 564. 161. JP 6:6653; KJN 7, NB19:86; SKS 23, 384; Papirer X.3 A 249. 162. JP 3:3677; KJN 7, NB18:74; SKS 23, 303; Papirer X.3 A 125. 163. Lenker 3.1:63; Thisted 1:502; Lindner 7:1016; Leipzig 14:286. 164. Lenker 6:427–28; Thisted 1:508; Lindner 7:1030–31; Leipzig 16:432. 165. Lenker 3.1:100; Thisted 1:513; Lindner 7:1043; Leipzig 14:298–99. 166. Lenker 3.1:101; Thisted 1:514; Lindner 7:1044; Leipzig 14:299. 167. In a posthumously published discourse, Kierkegaard publicly celebrated this masterful aspect of Luther, JFY 169: “Luther, the superb teacher of our Church, continually points out as belonging to true Christianity: to suffer for the doctrine, to do good and suffer for it, and that suffering in this world is inseparable from being a Christian in this world.” 168. WL 191. 169. WL 191–92. 170. WL 193 (italics mine). Cf. Diem, “Kierkegaard’s Bequest to Theology,” 260: “The ideal requirement of Christian speech—which Kierkegaard himself said he had never achieved in spite of years of practice—consists in this: at the very moment in which it offers Christianity it must also directly make clear the possibility of offense.” 171. Prenter, “Luther and Lutheranism,” 126. 172. JP 3:2516; KJN 7, NB18:76; SKS 23, 304; Papirer X.3 A 127. JP 3:2493; KJN 6, NB11:104; SKS 22, 58; Papirer X.1 A 403. 173. JP 3:2492; KJN 6, NB11:78; SKS 22, 46; Papirer X.1 A 376. The Danish aftrykkes is best translated “reprinted,” while Hong translates it as “printed.” 174. JP 3:2491; KJN 6, NB11:72; SKS 22, 43; Papirer X.1 A 370. 175. Lenker 2.1:68–69; Thisted 1:301; Lindner 7:571–73; Leipzig 13:585–86. 176. Walsh, Living Christianly, 14. 177. PC 9–10. 178. William R. Bragstad, “Luther’s Influence on Training in Christianity,” Lutheran Quarterly 28 (August 1976): 263, conjectures that Practice in Christianity may have been the result of Kierkegaard’s reading of Luther’s sermons on the Gospel of John, from which the above Luther sermon quote is taken, and possibly Luther’s Bondage of the Will, yet there is no concrete proof that Kierkegaard read the latter. If Luther plays some influence on Practice in Christianity, it is certainly “disguised” by Kierkegaard. 179. Kierkegaard had already written in his journals about the issue of not being offended at Christ in 1847. See, for example, JP 3:3025; KJN 4, NB2:253; SKS 235; Papirer VIII.1 A 381. 180. JP 4:4336; KJN 8, NB21:135; SKS 24, 84; Papirer X.3 A 579. Hong translates the section in parentheses as “Luther does not develop the text properly”;

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whereas, my translation, in the parentheses above, better reflects the Danish, “Luther det dog heller ikke rigtig sammen.” Further, it will be shown that Kierkegaard’s concern is not primarily an exegetical problem but a homiletical one. 181. Ibid. “Brokenhearted” better reflects the Danish “Sønderknuste” than Hong’s “broken spirits.” 182. Lenker 2.1:21–22; Thisted 1:300; Lindner 7:570–71; Leipzig 13:585. 183. SKS 24, 84; Papirer X.3 A 579 (translation mine). 184. Lenker 2.1:67; Thisted 1:296; Lindner 7:561; Leipzig 13:569. The Luther sermon found in Lindner and Thisted is an amalgamation of three sermons on the same text in the church postils. Walsh, Living Christianly, 10, writes, “The world’s procedure is to understand everything in a direct manner, while Christianity views everything inversely and indirectly. In Christianity the positive is not immediately, simply, or directly what it is but appears in the first instance as its own opposite or has negative consequences.” Cf. several theses from Luther’s 1518 Heidelberg Disputation (Luther, Selections from his Writings, 501–2): “(3) The works of men may always be attractive and seemingly good. It appears nevertheless that they are mortal sins; (4) The works of God may always appear to be unattractive and seemingly bad. They are nevertheless truly immortal merits; (19) The one who beholds what is invisible of God, through perception of what is made [cf. Rom. 1:20], is not rightly call a theologian; (20) But rather the one who perceives what is visible of God, God’s ‘backside’ [Ex. 33:23], by beholding the sufferings and the cross.” 185. See JP 1:493; KJN 5, NB8:39; SKS 21, 163; Papirer IX A 414; WL 194. 186. Papirer X.3 A 579 (translation mine). 187. Lenker 2.1:67; Thisted 1:296; Lindner 7:561; Leipzig 13:569. 188. JP 4:4336; KJN 8, NB21:135; SKS 24, 84; Papirer X.3 A 579. 189. Lenker 2.1:69; Thisted 1:301; Lindner 7:573; Leipzig 13:586. 190. JP 4:4336; KJN 8, NB21:135; SKS 24, 84; Papirer X.3 A 579. 191. Lenker 2.1:20; Thisted 1:295; Lindner 7:558 Leipzig 13:568. 192. JP 4:4336; KJN 8 NB21:135; SKS 24, 84; Papirer X.3 A 579. 193. See Kierkegaard’s clean final draft for the public to read in chapter 5. 194. JP 4:4336; KJN 8, NB21:135; SKS 24, 84; Papirer X.3 A 579. 195. JP 1:493; KJN 5, NB8:39; SKS 21, 163; Papirer IX A 414. 196. Thisted 1:169; Lindner 7:297–98; Leipzig 15:103 (translation mine). 197. JP 4:4372; KJN 5, NB9:22; SKS 21, 209; Papirer X.1 A 22. 198. JP 3:2495; KJN 6, NB11:121; SKS 22, 67; Papirer X.1 A 420.

Chapter 4

Lancing Luther in Kierkegaard’s Private Discourse

Kierkegaard’s greatest lauds of Luther’s sermons occur when Kierkegaard discovers Luther preaching a sigh, interweaving straightway Christianity’s positive and negative qualifications, securing an inverse dialectic and expression of Christianity.1 Consequently, Kierkegaard’s greatest lances of Luther’s sermons occur when Kierkegaard perceives Luther lacking this sigh, seemingly crowing about the positive of Christianity without its dialectical inverse. Thus, Kierkegaard famously lances Luther on several different occasions: “Luther was no dialectician.”2 But what is Kierkegaard’s point of view underlying this adjudication of Luther’s dialectical aptitude? In a journal entry from 1851, Kierkegaard lauds Luther’s sermon on the Gospel for the Eleventh Sunday after Trinity for its sighing dialectic: “What Luther emphasizes is very true, that the more one does his best to do good works with the idea of becoming saved, all the more anxious does he become, and his life becomes sheer self-torment. Far happier is the sinner who sighs (sukker) briefly and to the point, ‘God be merciful to me, a sinner.’”3 Here, Kierkegaard is lauding the existential move from Pelagian groaning over works-righteousness to Christian sighing for God’s mercy. But for Kierkegaard, the sighing dialectic for the Christian is not only a pre-Gospel occurrence. Post-Gospel, the sighing dialectic continues by rebuffing temptations to Antinomian crowing, which one-sidedly arrogates the Gospel as a license for worldliness. Therefore, Kierkegaard dialectically journals straightway after the above laud, “Yet it must also be remembered that this can easily lead to wanting to live out one’s life in worldliness out of fear of being ensnared in the traps of meritoriousness and self-tormenting if one undertook something which would not be to one’s worldly advantage, etc.”4 In his post-Luther Lutheranism context well versed in Luther’s Gospel, Kierkegaard diagnoses that post-Gospel worldliness is his Lutheran country’s 123

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blight. Not that Luther was wrong in prescribing the pre-Gospel-to-Gospel move from groaning to sighing, but such treatment alone does not quarantine hearers of the Gospel from post-Gospel maladies. In the same year, Kierkegaard lauded Luther for his accurate perception of a human proclivity for one-sidedness: “Imagine if Luther in our own generation, aware of our condition—do you not think he would say as he says in a sermon, ‘The world is like a drunken peasant; if you help him up on one side of the horse, he falls off on the other side.’”5 Thus, Luther and Kierkegaard dialectically concur that the Christian must be made aware of both one-sided failures and stay up on the horse on a sighing middle way between pre-Gospel groaning despair and post-Gospel crowing presumption.6 In his post-Luther context that fell on the post-Gospel side of the horse, Kierkegaard was ardent to balance his Danish Lutheran brethren back up from this side of the horse, ardent to root out any one-sided semblance of the Gospel as justification for worldliness. But when Kierkegaard’s valid ardency merges with his forkful reading of Luther’s sermons, many of Kierkegaard’s journal comments on the sermons become zealous, often accusing Luther himself for instigating his Lutheran country’s post-Gospel worldliness. But by revealing what Kierkegaard’s cursory reading of Luther’s sermons missed, this chapter evidences that Kierkegaard’s lances regularly misjudge Luther’s dialectical aptitude, ironically revealing a dialectical concord Kierkegaard did not always appreciate. KIERKEGAARD’S CRUX: JEWISH WORLDLINESS Therefore, underlying Kierkegaard’s philosophical lances of Luther’s dialectical aptitude are Kierkegaard’s more personal lances that Luther’s preaching advocates worldliness rather than abrogating it. Adding to the personal element is Kierkegaard’s surprisingly frequent use of anti-Semitic language to ridicule Luther’s error, allying it with Judaism. While Kierkegaard scholars have noted that Kierkegaard lanced Luther for advocating “Weltlichkeit,”7 they have not noted how regularly Kierkegaard unfortunately cited Luther’s “worldliness” as tantamount to “Judaism.” Given this offense to our postNazi era ears, this section unpacks both Luther’s and Kierkegaard’s historical relations to and ideological concepts of Judaism. Luther and Jews Christians from the early church to the medieval period adjudged Jews as ignorant adherents to an old covenant and law, which had been fulfilled in Jesus Christ.8 Rejecting Jesus as the Christ rendered the Jews a guilty

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people—guilty not only for general sins common to every man but even more so for the most egregious sin—for killing of God’s Son. Their guilt was manifested to Christians by their blatant plight as a people forsaken by God: the first-century destruction of their temple, their expulsion from Jerusalem, and their incessant wandering as a people without a homeland. This predicament was a convincing warning to Christians, foreboding the sociological plight of those who would reject Jesus as the Christ.9 Given this omen, medieval Christians, though pursuant to convert Jews to Christianity, treated Jews with a perennial coarseness unbecoming to any human being. As an egregious minority religion in medieval Europe, believed stiff-necked in open defiance of the Christian majority, Jews were subject to a perpetual persecution, showcasing Christianity’s sociological dominance. Economically, the Christian infrastructure gave Jews little room to participate in reputable occupations, such as agriculture and industry, indirectly forcing them into work as moneylenders and pawnbrokers, directly violating the church’s prohibition against usury.10 Such a situation, precipitated by Christians, ironically led to Christians incessantly viewing Jews as habitually selfish usurers, as detestable as the tax collectors of the New Testament. Also around the time of the crusades, malicious rumors about Jews began to spread among Christians that would last through the Middle Ages, namely, that Jews would kidnap and ritually murder Christian children for the celebration of the Passover.11 During the fourteenth century, rumors spread that Jews regularly poisoned wells, believed to be the cause of the plague.12 Jews were disdained for their rabbis’ reportedly regular blasphemy of the blessed Virgin Mary as a whore and Jesus as a bastard.13 With these persistent rumors plus Jewish dietary and prohibition of intermarriage laws, Christians were perennially suspicious of the Jews and held them at a safe distance. Even the view of Jews as a wandering people without a homeland was largely due to regular mass expulsions of Jews from western medieval lands by civil rulers countless times in the fifteenth century.14 Such expulsions resulted from unfailing rumors of Jews as shrewd, bloodthirsty usurers, forever finding ways to exploit the Christian majority. Yet, sometimes Christians chose not to hold Jews at a distance, resulting in the mass murder of thousands of Jews during the crusades or forced baptisms after a fiery sermon by a traveling friar blaming the Jews’ sociological plight on their refusal to accept Jesus as the messianic Christ.15 Whether Christians held Jews at a safe distance or dealt with them hands-on, Jews in the Middle Ages were perpetually vulnerable to a Christian majority that left little room for egalitarian communion. Given our post-Nazi context, the greatest eyesore to any contemporary study of Luther was his negative opinion of the Jews in the latter years of his life. Kierkegaard’s journals and publications, though, evidence no awareness of Luther’s infamous relation to the Jews. Although Luther was raised in the

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above anti-Semitic context, it is astonishing to read his sympathy toward the medieval plight of Jews in his first treatise concerning them in 1523, That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew. While the tract was specifically addressed to false Roman charges that Luther denied the virgin birth, Luther used the opportunity to gain a Jewish audience and to hopefully convert some. Blaming the callousness of Roman Catholic efforts, Luther sympathizes with the Jewish plight: “Our fools, the popes, bishops, sophists, and monks—the crude asses’ heads—have hitherto so treated the Jews that anyone who wished to be a good Christian would almost have had to become a Jew. If I had been a Jew and had seen such dolts and blockheads govern and teach the Christian faith, I would sooner have become a hog than a Christian.”16 Luther recognized the unlikelihood that Jews would become Christians if they were not treated with civil equality and respect.17 Thus, Luther hoped, in spite of the medieval Catholic context, that if Jews were treated congenially, actually taught from Scripture, and given a positive example of Christian servant-hood, then Jewish conversion to Christianity would be more likely and genuine. Therefore, Luther gave civil rulers and Christians a sympathetic prescription for the Jews in contradistinction to their perennial plight: Therefore, I would request and advise that one deal gently with them and instruct them from Scripture; then some of them may come along. Instead of this we are trying to drive them by force, slandering them, accusing them of having Christian blood if they don’t stink, and I know not what other foolishness. So long as we thus treat them like dogs, how can we expect to work any good among them? Again, when we forbid them to labor and do business and have any human fellowship with us, thereby forcing them into usury, how is that supposed to do them any good? If we really want to help them, we must be guided in our dealings with them not by papal law but by the law of Christian love. We must receive them cordially, and permit them to trade and work with us, that they may have occasion and opportunity to associate with us, hear our Christian teaching, and witness our Christian life.18

At this early period of the Protestant Reformation, Luther optimistically expected the rediscovered Gospel to work its magic among Jews and others. Therefore, Jews were to be treated congenially and with patience while the purified Gospel was allowed to work: “If some of (the Jews) should prove stiff-necked, what of it? After all, we ourselves are not all good Christians either. Here I will let matters rest for the present, until I see what I have accomplished.”19 Luther let these matters rest until the mid-1530s, for when his optimistic prognosis of a mass conversion of Jews did not come to fruition, Luther pessimistically turned back to the fatalistic medieval prescription. Luther may have met with three Jewish exegetes in the mid-1530s to convince them of

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his Christological interpretation of messianic passages in the Old Testament. But they were unconvinced, and Luther was extremely hardened toward Jews by their response.20 Luther’s regressing feelings toward Jews were outwardly manifested in the situation of Elector John Fredrick’s mandate on August 6, 1536 forbidding Jews to settle, do business, or even travel through Electoral Saxony,21 which, as noted above, was a characteristic medieval prescription. In response to this mandate, the Jews had a well-known advocate, Josel of Rosheim, the official spokesman of the Jews in the Holy Roman Empire. Via the empire-wide dissemination of Luther’s popular That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew tract, Josel knew whom to contact in Electoral Saxony to intervene on the Jews’ behalf. But upon receiving Josel’s request and out-ofcharacter with his earlier sympathy, Luther harshly refused to intervene. He commented to some table companions, Why should these rascals, who injure people in body and property and who withdraw many Christians to their superstitions, be given permission? In Moravia they have circumcised many Christians and call them by the new name of Sabbatarians. This is what happens in those regions from which preachers of the gospel are expelled; there people are compelled to tolerate the Jews. . . . I’ll write this Jew not to return.22

In this comment, Luther was referring to reports from Count Wolfgang Schlick zu Falkenau, who informed Luther that Jews in Moravia and Bohemia were successfully proselytizing Christians with the message that Jesus was not the Christ, that the Old Testament law was still in effect, and therefore that circumcision was required.23 In his letter to Josel, a perturbed Luther writes that although his That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew tract was of great service to Jews, unfortunately they had exploited the tract, neither converting to Christianity nor improving their infamous behavior. Luther wrote on June 11, 1537, My dear Josel: I would have gladly interceded for you, both orally and in writing, before my gracious lord (the elector), just as my writings have greatly served the whole of Jewry. But because your people so shamefully misuse this service of mine and undertake things that we Christians simply shall not bear from you, they themselves have robbed me of all the influence I might otherwise have been able to exercise before princes and lords on your behalf. For my opinion was, and still is, that one should treat the Jews in a kindly manner, that God may perhaps look graciously upon them and bring them to their Messiah—but not so that through my good will and influence they might be strengthened in their error and become still more bothersome.24

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Luther’s optimistic dream concerning the hopeful conversion of Jews was awoken by hard reality, and, thus, he did not advocate for John Frederick’s mandate to be allayed. Believing Jews were proselytizing Christians and exploiting the 1523 favor he had shown them, Luther published the notorious On the Jews and Their Lies and two other treatises against them in 1543. In the former, Luther fiercely lays out his comprehensive arguments against the beliefs of the Jews, showing little hope of converting them, whom he now considers as stubborn as the devil. Written no longer for the purpose of converting the Jews but for protecting Christians susceptible Jewish proselytizing, Luther rails against the physical things in which Jews boast and put their trust: being descendants of Abraham, being circumcised, possessing the Law of Moses, their rightful ownership of the land of Canaan and the city of Jerusalem. For their superficial trust in such outward symbols without adequate understanding of their exegetical significance, Luther lumps Jews together with papists and Turks as those guilty of works-righteousness, becoming God’s people by their own deeds.25 Utilizing the exegesis of Nicholas of Lyra and Paul of Burgos, Luther examines the Old Testament passages pointing prophetically to Christ, accusing the rabbis for knowingly and deliberately misinterpreting scripture.26 Then Luther reverts to the old medieval stereotypes of the Jews: that they kidnap and sacrifice Christian children, poison wells, are usurers, blaspheme Jesus and Mary. Given these indictments, Luther reverts from his sympathetic 1523 treatise and prescribes the customary treatment. Excepting their genocide, he prescribes burning of their synagogues, schools, and homes; seizing the Talmud and prayer books; outlawing their rabbis from teach; and nullifying the laws for their safe-conduct in travel.27 Although not widely published, On the Jews and Their Lies influenced many Protestant rulers, who added new restrictions and revocations of privilege for Jews in their lands. Thankfully, no ruler put Luther’s full prescription into practice.28 With this cringeworthy outburst, Luther’s depravity is not to be mollified nor forgotten. But with this judgment, we must still recognize Luther as a man of his medieval time and that his late opinion of the Jews was not egregious in this brusque, and often brutal, period. Kierkegaard and Jews Again, although Luther is controversially recalled today for his infamous relation to the Jews, Kierkegaard’s journals and publications reveal no awareness of these facts. Knowledge of Kierkegaard’s ignorance of this is significant given how much Kierkegaard’s journals deprecatingly align Luther with Kierkegaard’s concept of Judaism. Unlike Luther’s infamous relation to the Jews, Kierkegaard’s relation to the Jews is less well-known.

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Yet Kierkegaard’s historical encounter with a particular Jew in what is known as The Corsair affair is not only the “most renowned controversy in Danish literary history”29 but it also ignited Kierkegaard’s second authorship, sharpening his focus and tone. Like Luther, Kierkegaard had an early abstract relation to Jews in general, but also like Luther, a specific incident with a Jew in Kierkegaard’s lifetime may have led to a more incendiary personal view of Jews. The tangible effect of Kierkegaard’s encounter with a Jew through The Corsair affair transfigures Kierkegaard’s opinion of Jews and Judaism from condescendingly tolerant to contemptuously indignant. Kierkegaard’s early journal entries from the 1830s on the subject of Jews especially focus on the medieval legend of the “Wandering Jew,” which popularly contributed to Christian Europe’s unabated contempt of the Jews.30 The legend goes that Ahasuerus either taunted Jesus on the way to his crucifixion or refused to allow Jesus to rest in his shoe shop as he carried the cross, resulting in Christ condemning him to wander the earth until Christ’s second coming.31 Through this medieval legend, Kierkegaard, like Luther, also inherited a popular view of Jews as a people condemned to incessantly wander the earth as an indirect omen to the truth of Christianity. Kierkegaard briefly journaled in 1835, “The Wandering Jew seems to have his prototype in the fig tree that Christ commanded to wither away.”32 In typical nineteenthcentury fashion, Kierkegaard wrote of Jews and the Wandering Jew as both preparatory for and a point of transition to Christianity.33 Alongside of Don Juan’s dissoluteness and Faust’s doubt, Kierkegaard’s early journals ideologically speak of the Wandering Jew as the embodiment of despair.34 During this early period, Kierkegaard’s pretentious position toward Jews was no different than most in Christian Europe, considered normal and acceptable at the time.35 But Kierkegaard scholar Bruce Kirmmse perceptively notes that Kierkegaard’s early relation toward Jews developed from merely pretentious to poignantly sympathetic.36 By the time of his writing of 1846’s Socratic Concluding Unscientific Postscript under the non-Christian pseudonym Johannes Climacus, Kierkegaard wonders in trepidation if “like the Wandering Jew in a beautiful legend, I should lead the pilgrims to the promised land and not enter myself, that I should guide men to the truth of Christianity. . .but would venture only to be an omen of an incomparable future.”37 Nevertheless, Kierkegaard’s relation to the Jews from 1835 to 1845 remained abstract and ideological. Kierkegaard’s relation to the Jews became more tangible in 1846 through his relation to the most significant Jew in his life, Meir Aron Goldschmidt, the editor of Copenhagen’s libertarian tabloid, The Corsair.38 Their relation began friendly enough in 1837 with Goldschmidt being an admirer of Kierkegaard’s writings and Kierkegaard an encourager of Goldschmidt’s talents, being seven years Goldschmidt’s senior.39 Neither made any

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condescending comment about the other’s religion. Early, Kierkegaard had recognized and encouraged Goldschmidt’s talents as a comic author, which Goldschmidt believed he had put into practice via founding The Corsair in 1840. The Corsair, with its titillating gossip and yellow satire of the Danish elite written by irresponsible pseudonymous authors, quickly became the most read paper in Denmark, with a circulation of 5,000 and reaching even into Norway and Sweden.40 While regularly lancing others, The Corsair regularly lauded Kierkegaard and Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms, namely, Hilarious Bookbinder, the publisher of 1845’s Stages on Life’s Way, and Victor Eremita, the mysterious editor of 1843’s Either/Or and Socratic character in Stages. The Corsair lauded and immortalized in 1845: “Victor Eremita will never die.”41 Kierkegaard, though, was not flattered by The Corsair’s flattery, not wanting to be misunderstood as a merely aesthetic author enjoyed by an aesthetic public who reveled in reading The Corsair. He wrote in The Point of View for My Work as an Author: Because I am a religious author, it of course is on the whole a matter of indifference to me whether a so-called esthetic public has found or would be able to find some enjoyment through reading the esthetic works, or through reading the esthetic in the works, which is the incognito and the deception in the service of Christianity. If it is assumed that such a reader perfectly understands and judges the particular esthetic work, he totally misunderstands me, since he does not understand it in the religious totality of my work as an author.42

The authorial intention of works like Either/Or and Stages on Life’s Way was to maieutically help those living in aesthetic categories, languidly lounging in The Corsair, to recognize their purposeless plight and leap to ethical, religious, and Christian stages.43 From this point of view, Kierkegaard was not impressed with Goldschmidt’s one-sided employment of the comic, believing the comic must be responsibly expressed with dialectical recourse to a consistent ethical worldview similar to Socrates’ purposeful employment of the comic.44 Kierkegaard wrote, “To aspire to wittiness without possessing the wealth of inwardness is like wanting to be prodigal on luxuries and to dispense with the necessities of life; as the proverb puts it, it is selling one’s trousers and buying a wig.”45 Yet in 1845, Goldschmidt wrote and published a serious work, En Jøde, under the pseudonym Adolf Meyer, fictionally portraying the sociological sufferings of being a Jew in a hostile Christian majority.46 Kierkegaard quickly read and lauded Goldschmidt for this surprisingly sympathetic work and encouraged him to separate himself from The Corsair and focus on more serious work, saying to Goldschmidt directly, “There are people who want to see you as the author of A Jew, but not as the editor of The Corsair. The Corsair is P. L. Møller.”47 Kierkegaard had less sympathy

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for Goldschmidt’s partner at The Corsair, P. L. Møller, a Don Juan with academic ambitions of teaching aesthetics at Copenhagen’s university.48 While Møller and Goldschmidt both wished to keep Møller’s connection to The Corsair secret in order not to ruin his prospects as a professor, Kierkegaard, under the pseudonym Frater Taciturnus, chief of part 3 in Stages on Life’s Way, menacingly and provocatively disclosed Møller’s connection without mentioning Goldschmidt in December 1845 in a rival paper, Fæderlandet: Would that I might only get into The Corsair soon. It is really hard for a poor author to be so singled out in Danish literature that he (assuming that we pseudonyms are one) is the one who is not abused there. My superior, Hilarious Bookbinder, has been flattered in The Corsair, if I am not mistaken; Victor Eremita has even had to experience the disgrace of being immortalized—in The Corsair! And yet, I have already been there, for ubi spiritus, ibi ecclesia [where the spirit is, there is the Church]: ubi P. L. Møller, ibi The Corsair.49

Kierkegaard provocatively published again as Frater Taciturnus in Fæderlandet the next month in January 1846, Anyone who is insulted by being praised by [The Corsair]—if he happens to find out about it—will protest if he so pleases and thereby confirm the judgment of decent literature upon The Corsair: it is to be permitted to continue its trade in attacking and vilifying at will, but if it has the nerve to praise, it must on this occasion encounter the brief protest: May I asked to be abused—the personal injury of being immortalized by The Corsair is just too much.50

With this request to be abused, in only a week’s time, the abuse followed from Goldschmidt while Møller distanced himself from The Corsair. The abuse not only referred to Kierkegaard by name but also included regular cartoons mocking Kierkegaard’s personal appearance with “his crabwise gait, his hunched shoulder, the thin legs and apparently uneven trouser legs, the cane or umbrella always in hand.”51 These caricatures quickly led to Kierkegaard being shunned by Copenhagen’s adults and taunted by Copenhagen’s children with either “Søren, Søren”52 or “Enten/Eller.”53 The Corsair especially lambasted Kierkegaard’s aloof smugness toward The Corsair’s past praise of his writings. The most famous caricature, from March 1846, mockingly depicts Kierkegaard smug on a cloud with the universe revolving around him, accompanied by the following ridicule: “Nicolaus Copernicus was a fool when he insisted that the earth revolves around the sun; on the contrary, the heavens, the sun, the planets, the earth, Europe, and Copenhagen itself revolve around Søren Kierkegaard, who stands silent in the middle and does not take off his hat in recognition of the honor shown to him.”54 After months of The Corsair’s slander, without reciprocation from Kierkegaard,

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Goldschmidt encountered a silent but piercingly bitter Kierkegaard on the street in Copenhagen. Upon this bitter silence, Goldschmidt recognized and wrote, The Corsair had triumphed in the battle, yet I myself had acquired a false sense of being number one. . . . Walking through the streets, and before I reached home, I arrived at a firm decision to give up The Corsair. When I announced it at home they said Thank God!—so happy, but only a little surprised, as if they had known about the matter before I did.55

But the damage to Kierkegaard was already done, and Copenhagen’s condescension toward Kierkegaard lingered the rest of his life. Three years after Goldschmidt was done with The Corsair, Kierkegaard journaled about its ongoing effects, Incidentally, the nonsense they said about me in other respects has been long forgotten and makes no difference. But it has had the effect that for the lowest class I live under a nickname, am tagged by one comical oddity or another which I am forced to carry (for I cannot in fact put off my legs—that is, I no doubt may do so in the grave)—in that way my life is a daily martyrdom. Even the elite have the power any time they are so inclined to let me understand that this is how the rabble look upon me. Such a martyrdom is not the easiest. My fame is utilized to sustain the insults. It is both laughable and lamentable, but one thing is sure, it would be a relief if I could get Goldschmidt to write, for example, about my suit-coat, my vest, my hat, so my legs could get a little peace.56

After The Corsair affair of 1846, Kierkegaard’s private journal comments about Jews become more aggravated. Like Luther’s tangible encounter with Josel and the reports of Jewish proselytism in Moravia, Kierkegaard’s tangible encounter with Goldschmidt may have led to a more contentious view of Jews in general. Unlike Luther, Kierkegaard kept this opinion mostly to himself.57 Rikard Magnussen writes of the nineteenth century that “the position of the Jews in Denmark was still such that the oppression of the race could force upon the gifted Jew a constrictive inner insecurity and a passionate need for recognition, a need that in reality still contained a certain contempt for the society whose recognition it sought.”58 In 1847, Kierkegaard privately expressed the same sentiment derogatorily about Goldschmidt being a Jew: Goldschmidt personally despises the legions he commands; he himself knows best that their judgment is less than nothing. . . . With Goldschmidt there is a ludicrous self-contradiction: he is victorious—at the head of and with the help of those he despises, and with their help he wins over the only one he respects.

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Thanks for the victory! And Goldschmidt understands this himself. He is like a person who despairs over being ejected from the exclusive, cultured, noble circle where he longs and craves to be, and who is now admired in a public dance hall—that is, by those whose opinion he despises. I believe that only a Jew could endure this; for in a Jew there is once and for all a certain despair.59

In 1849, Kierkegaard begins privately questioning Luther’s correlation to Judaism; Kierkegaard also expresses a lingering bitterness for Goldschmidt as a Jewish head of the soulless media60 unconcerned for society’s ultimate good: And what was all that happened here with The Corsair? It was the public’s mad desire for power, and it was a Jew who was to serve as the means. Just as, in France, a prostitute was one time the goddess of Reason, I believe a Jew could be suited to the sort of tyranny which is the most ambivalent of all, even more ambivalent than that of a usurer (for which, however, Jews are most suited).61 For any person who has made gossip his profession and living etc. (for example, Goldschmidt) to be considered as belonging to the community again, it should be required that he first and foremost unconditionally apologize at least once a year for as many years as he has carried on the profession. He also could be required to give back the money he has made—Judas did that; after all, he gave back the thirty shekels.62

Instead of society’s good, Kierkegaard, like other Danes and Germans of his time, viewed Jews as devoid of ethical and religious principles, concerned ultimately for “numbers,” public opinion, and meaningless approval:63 The public is entirely devoid of ideas. Indeed, it is the very opposite of an idea, because the public is a number. And this is why Jews are especially well-suited to be publicists. . . . The Jew generally lacks fantasy and sensibility, but he does have abstract understanding, and numbers are his element. For the publicist, the battle for public opinion is neither more nor less than stock-exchange business.64 If there suddenly were to be a strong upsurge of interest in religion, I imagine that Goldschmidt, always the business man, would eventually initiate a devotional magazine for home use, Christian anthologies, and the like.65

Along with Kierkegaard’s private criticism of Jewish proclivities for quantity over quality, after The Corsair affair Kierkegaard also began to contrast Judaism with Christianity: Here we see a striking contrast between Judaism and Christianity. Jewish piety always clings firmly to the world and construes essentially according to ratio: the more pious one is, the better it goes for him on earth, the longer he lives, etc. . . . Judaism postulates a unity of the divine and this life—Christianity postulates a

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cleft. The life of the true Christian, therefore, is to be fashioned according to the paradigm which for the Jews is the very paradigm of the ungodly man.66

Thus, Kierkegaard’s ideological description of the Jews pre-Corsair as the harmless “Wandering Jew” has been transfigured post-Corsair to a religious worldliness corruptive to true Christianity. After concluding 1846’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard had intended to conclude his laborious authorship and take a peaceful call as a country pastor.67 Instead, the second phase of Kierkegaard’s authorship was ignited by the 1846 Corsair affair.68 Jørgen Bukdahl notes, “The battle with The Corsair is the hinge on which Kierkegaard’s canon pivots,” causing Kierkegaard’s understanding of Christianity to become more “flesh and blood.”69 Kierkegaard dialectically saw the pain of The Corsair affair as the grace of God’s providence: I had planned to stop with the Concluding Postscript. But what happens, I get involved in all that rabble persecution, and that was the very thing that made me remain on the spot. . . . Thus Governance himself has kept me in the harness. I ask myself: Do you believe that out in the rural parish you would have been able to write three religious books such as the three following Concluding Postscript? And I am obliged to answer: No! It was the tension of actuality which put new strength into my instrument, forced me to publish even more.70

Publicly, compared to the indirect writings of the pre-Corsair period, where Kierkegaard and his pseudonyms Socratically postulate what it means to become a Christian, the post-Corsair writings are more direct, exhorting the strenuousness of being a Christian in a world that persecutes Christians for carrying a cross rather than pursuing pleasure. Kierkegaard did not intend his suffering at the hands of The Corsair to serve as a prototype for Christian suffering,71 but the effect of the humiliating affair did develop Kierkegaard’s understanding of Christianity’s offensiveness. In the pre-Corsair Concluding Unscientific Postscript, the offense of Christianity is primarily epistemological.72 But post-Corsair, the offense becomes increasingly concrete.73 Reflecting on The Corsair affair, Kierkegaard journaled, “If I had not taken this action, I would have escaped completely the double-danger connected with the essentially Christian, I would have gone on thinking of the difficulties involved with Christianity as being purely interior to the self.”74 The offense now consists in the Christian voluntarily emptying himself of every worldly distraction in order to follow the kenotic Christ, contrasting “Christendom,” which merely admires Christ’s kenosis for the sake of its own apotheosis and temporal pleasure.75 Significantly though, post-Corsair, Kierkegaard does not publish his derogatory opinion of Goldschmidt, nor does Kierkegaard publish

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much of his opinion of Judaism.76 He sets up neither as his public nemesis. Instead, his public nemesis is “Christendom,” while Judaism is mostly his private ideological paradigm for any religion that worships God as a means to temporal happiness. Thereby, he equates Christendom and Judaism in his private journals but attacks only the former publicly. This evidences that Kierkegaard’s adversary is not the Jews, in particular, but any religiously justified worldliness. Kierkegaard scholar Bruce Kirmmse incisively notes that when Kierkegaard attacks “Judaism” in his private discourse, the object of his attack is never primarily Judaism; instead, it is his own Danish Lutheran Christendom.77 “It doesn’t really have a great deal to do with Jews and Judaism, but is principally a part of Kierkegaard’s battle against the lukewarm and flimsy Christendom of his times.”78 Nevertheless, whether ideologically viewing the Jews pre-Corsair as the “Wandering Jew” or post-Corsair as the paradigm of religiously justified worldliness, Kierkegaard still used an anti-Semitic rhetoric customary to Christian Europe since before Luther. Like Luther in his medieval era, Kierkegaard was by no means alone in Golden Age Denmark’s use of such denigrating language.79 While unfortunate to our post-Nazi era ears, nevertheless, knowledge of Kierkegaard’s historically evolving opinion of Jews and especially his direct encounter with a Jew in The Corsair affair helps us to better apprehend why Kierkegaard’s post-Corsair private lances of Luther’s “worldliness” are so often aligned with a derogatory conception of “Judaism.” Lancing Judaism and Lauding Luther Given Kierkegaard’s post-Corsair conception of Judaism as a paradigm of religiously justified worldliness, Kierkegaard often forked extracts out of Luther’s sermons to confirm his conception of his opponent. While they held a concordant conception of Judaism, a fuller reading of the sermons on which Kierkegaard was commenting reveals their discordant conceptions of Christianity, which Kierkegaard’s cursory reading did not always recognize. In 1849, we see Kierkegaard’s earliest comment about Luther and Judaism: Luther’s sermon on the Gospel for New Year’s Day contains the authentic Christian distinction, the stringent (strenge) assertion that: Christ is not a savior for this life but for eternal life. Yes, what is more—and Luther says this, too, in the same place—he is the very opposite (Modsatte) of a savior for this life; for Luther declares that in this life—precisely to express that he is no savior for this life—he lets those who believe in him slog along as if in a bog. Incidentally, here one sees the distinction between Jewish and Christian piety, for Jewish piety wants a savior for this life (jødisk Fromhed vil have en Frelser for dette Liv).80

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Kierkegaard’s conception of Judaism is that it “wants a savior for this life;” whereas, Christianity, through suffering, purposely inhibits the Christian from hoping for such. Kierkegaard lauds this Luther sermon for portraying Christ as a savior for eternal life, not for temporal life. But Luther preached in this sermon, Whoever will take this child and let it be Jesus81 or his savior will view him as a savior, not chiefly (Lindner: sonderlich; Thisted: fortrinsviis) for this life, which he has enjoined upon others (Lindner: welches er andern befohlet hat; Thisted: hvilket Han har befalet i Andres haand), but for eternal life, which he will save from sin and death. . . . If you will not believe that there is another life after this life, then you have enough of a savior in the king, in father and mother, in the physician. For these are given for this life and temporal (Lindner: zeitliche; Thisted: timelige) need. But if you believe that after this life there is another life, then you need this savior and his help. For he helps where no king, father, mother, physician, nor anyone else, not even an angel, can help. Indeed it is true that when no king, father and mother, and other people will not or cannot help in temporal (Lindner: leiblicher; Thisted: timelige) need, then the Lord Jesus will be at hand and stand beside his own. But this is not his primary and foremost office; which is why preachers do not chiefly point the people thereto.82

Luther is not as stringent (strenge) as Kierkegaard makes him out to be. In this sermon, God indeed caringly provides for temporal life by entrusting it to kings, fathers and mothers, and physicians. And even when these do not come through, Christ himself is there to provide for the temporal life. But because there is a life after this temporal life, Christ must do even more than provide for temporal good. Hence, for Luther, Christ is not the “opposite (Modsatte) of a savior for this life,” as Kierkegaard claims Luther says. Instead, Luther is more moderate with regard to the eternal and temporal. It is not that Christ does not care about temporal well-being; it is that it is not his chief office. As Kierkegaard pointed out, Luther does speak on the same page of God not allowing his children to experience every temporal good for the sake of their eternal good: Experience teaches us that God does not chiefly concern himself with this temporal life—otherwise he would not let so many wicked rascals run their wanton game so long and there have plenty of good things on this earth. But God promises us after this life, an eternal life, and thereto must our dear little83 Jesus help us. And if he helps us to do so, then he has helped enough. And it is not nothing that he also lets us wade around (Lindner: umwaten; Thisted: vade omkring) in this temporal life as if we had no God who would or could help us. For his help shall be an eternal help; there we shall have enough—the temporal must go as it will.84

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But this does not support Kierkegaard’s stringent assertion that Christ is unconcerned for temporal life. Luther’s point is that Christ is concerned primarily for the eternal and secondarily for the temporal, and Christ does use the latter to serve the former as he wills. Significantly, Luther makes no mention of “Jewish” piety in this sermon. Another journal comment by Kierkegaard, this time in 1850, magnifies a stringent section from a Luther sermon, but Kierkegaard’s magnification is not the sense of Luther’s sermon as a whole. Kierkegaard highlights Luther’s laboriousness in comparison to Judaism’s ease: In the sermon on the Epistle for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, Luther interprets Christianity as if in a certain sense it were the wrath of God (Guds Vrede). He explains that to love God means to love one’s neighbor—for two reasons. The first is that God does not need our love. The second is that God has made folly of the world and wants to be loved under the cross and amidst lamentation and in death on the cross and has given his faithful followers the same to suffer, so that all those who have not willed to love God previously, when he gave them food and drink, honor and prestige, now are to love him in hunger and distress, in trouble and ignominy. The category is as follows: the God-relationship is not directly recognizable (Judaism) but inversely (omvendt). The mark of offense (Forargelsens Mærke) is also here—to love God, not only when things go wrong. . .but when the opposition arises from the God-relationship itself, originates from one’s relating himself to God.85

Luther certainly expressed this laboriousness of Christian love that Kierkegaard lauded: [Christ] makes love to God and love to our neighbor the same love. The reason for this is, first: God, having no need for our works and benefactions for himself, bids us to do for our neighbor what we would do for God. He asks for himself only our faith and our recognition of him as God. The object of proclaiming his honor and rendering him praise and thanks here on earth is that our neighbor may be converted and brought into fellowship with God. Such service is called love to God, and is performed out of love to God; but it is exercised for the benefit of our neighbor only. The second reason why God makes love to our neighbor an obligation equal to love to himself is: God has made worldly wisdom foolish, desiring henceforth to be loved amid crosses and afflictions. . . . Therefore, upon the cross he submitted himself unto death and misery, and imposed the same submission upon all his disciples. They who refused to love him before when he bestowed upon them food and drink, blessing and honor, must now love him in hunger and sorrow, in adversity and disgrace.86

Yet Luther’s sermon as a whole hardly expresses Christianity as the “wrath of God” as Kierkegaard hyperbolizes. Instead, the chief antagonist in Luther’s

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sermon is the incessant Law upon the conscience, commanding us to love our neighbors as ourselves.87 This Law always accuses and exhorts with threats. But, being motivated by threat is not love, and “admonition does not avail” because it merely reveals an inherent evil lust that only seeks love if it serves self-interest.88 But, being forgiven by God, “accepted and justified as to our person, love is given us in the Holy Spirit and we delight in doing good.”89 Hence, Kierkegaard’s spotlight on the laboriousness of Christianity in contrast to Judaism’s ease must be seen in the context of the whole sermon. This strenuous love toward one’s neighbor is possible not simply because of the “wrath of God,” as Kierkegaard journals, but primarily because of the “forgiveness of God,” as Luther preaches. In this sermon, as well, Luther makes no mention of Judaism. Back in 1849, Kierkegaard prefaced a very short journal laud of a Luther sermon with a longer lance of a Judaic form of Christianity: We appropriate from Judaism everything connected with promises, promises for this life (Forjættelser for dette Liv); we teach that like a Jew one is to pursue them, and, like a Jew, to see the proof of God’s grace in the fact that one is rich, happily married, blessed in an earthly sense. And if this fails, then we take the other dose—Christianity’s promises for eternity. And this mixture is Christianity! We completely forget that Christianity’s promise of eternity is glowing because it requires such a complete forsaking of temporality (Forsagelse af Timeligheden), and further, that Christianity teaches specifically that to suffer in the temporal (at lide i Timeligheden) is the very mark of God’s grace. We forget that Judaism’s conception of eternity was weak because it promised so much in this life. Take the gospel story about the rich man. The only omission (yet this needs to be pointed out in order to illuminate the essentially Christian) is that he felt perfectly assured of being in the grace of God. Why? Because he was successful in everything. Luther also makes this observation in his sermon on the gospel account of the rich man and the poor man. The fact is that the Jews and men in general make God too small and not spirit enough.90

While Kierkegaard lauds Luther’s Gospel sermon for the First Sunday after Trinity for noting that being rich is not proof of being a Christian, Kierkegaard’s “complete forsaking of temporality” is, again, not a value Luther so stringently shares in this sermon. Luther’s point is that it is not whether one is rich that makes one a Christian; instead, it is the desire and trust of the heart that matters: For this rich man is not punished because he indulged in sumptuous fare and fine clothes; since many saints, kings and queens in ancient times wore costly apparel, as Solomon, Esther, David, Daniel and others: but because his heart was attached to them, sought them, trusted in and chose them, and because he found in them all his joy, delight and pleasure; and made them in fact his idols.91

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While Kierkegaard, in his journal comment, emphasizes suffering in the temporal as the mark of God’s grace, Luther, in this sermon, emphasizes that a Christian in thanksgiving uses his gifts from God, both eternal and temporal, to serve his neighbor: For the nature of faith is that it expects all good from God, and relies only on God. For from this faith man knows God, how he is good and gracious, that by reason of such knowledge his heart becomes so tender and merciful, that he wishes cheerfully to do to every one, as he experiences God has done to him. Therefore he breaks forth with love and serves his neighbor out of his whole heart, with his body and life, with his means and honor, with his soul and spirit, and makes him partaker of all he has, just like God did to him.92

While Kierkegaard’s point in the above journal comment is that the essentially Christian is becoming more spirit and therefore forsaking the temporal, Luther’s point in the sermon referenced is not so ascetic. Instead, for Luther, the essentially Christian is faith in God and love toward neighbor. This is not to say that Kierkegaard never emphasized Luther’s point93 or that Luther never emphasized Kierkegaard’s point.94 But Kierkegaard’s lauds do not always render a fair representation of Luther’s main points, often expressing more of Kierkegaard’s position on temporal suffering than Luther’s. Again, in this sermon, Luther makes no remark about Judaism. Anyone familiar with Kierkegaard knows that he infamously broke off his engagement to Regine Olsen, which occurred on October 11, 1841, and that he never married, making the above comment that briefly scorns being “happily married”95 alongside being rich and temporally blessed fairly conspicuous. Kierkegaard’s own reasons and speculations for terminating his engagement abound from the more pathological sense that he was too melancholic to make Regine happy to the more theological sense that God had called him to become a religious author, which precluded the matrimonial vocation.96 While Kierkegaard had doubts the rest of his life over having broken the engagement, there is no doubt that his historical act colored much of his authorship regarding forsaking the temporal for the sake of God.97 In the same year, 1849, he briefly mentions marriage in the context of reading the Gospel for the Second Sunday after Trinity (Luke 14:16–24) and Luther’s sermon on the same: The Gospel about the great banquet begins with the statement by one of the guests: Blessed is he who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God. But Christ takes the occasion for a parable, showing that he might not make it to the table in the kingdom of God. Humanly speaking, this is somewhat harsh. In his sermon Luther himself takes note of this discourtesy. The same Gospel presents marriage as an excuse for not seeking God’s kingdom.98

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While Kierkegaard’s note on Luther’s sermon is brief, Luther’s sermon here is discursive on the subjects of temporal goods, marriage, and finally, also Judaism. Luther preaches, Of course it is not something evil, nor is it forbidden by God, to have temporal goods (Lindner: zeitliche Güter; Thisted: timelige Goder), to buy land and oxen, or to marry a wife. To have a wife and child is a gift of God. And they require food and drink, and for this reason a person needs to have cows, oxen, land, meadows, and so on. So the wrong is not that they have land, oxen, wife, and child (for the guests could have all these things had they not spurned the banquet!); but the lament is that they are unwilling to come to the banquet and are so attached to land, oxen, and wife, that because of these things they spurn and absent themselves from this banquet.99

Luther’s point is that temporal goods and marriage are not evil nor should they be disdained. Instead, they are secondary in a hierarchy under the primacy of God’s eternal good: The Gospel is a doctrine that will not allow covetousness, nor permit us to strive to have sufficient bodily needs, but commands us to risk everything, body and life, money and goods, for Christ’s sake. . . . For to take a wife is not to do or undertake anything dishonorable, but to enter an honorable state, and to be at home and plan how to support yourself, which is everyone’s duty. But all this is just that by which an honest housefather commits sin, when he only thinks of this, how he may become rich, keep house well and prosper.100

In this sermon, Luther memorably captures not a shunning of temporal goods but keeping them in the right hierarchical perspective: We pray in the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer: Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done. After that: Give us this day our daily bread. This is the right order. For Christ himself thus formulated the prayer, enjoining and commanding us to pray in this way. But when one wants to turn the Lord’s Prayer around seeking and petitioning first for daily bread, without regard for first things first, namely, for God’s name, kingdom, and will, this is to pray improperly and wrongfully.101

Again, this is not to say Kierkegaard never wrote of a similar hierarchy of daily bread under the eternal good of God’s kingdom.102 But it is to say that he often expresses disdain for temporal goods and marriage when regarding Luther’s sermons on these topics; whereas, Luther regularly expresses a hierarchy that does not disdain temporal goods or marriage but keeps them in proper perspective.103

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Straightway after his hierarchical illustration from the Lord’s Prayer, Luther preaches about Jews in the same context, that is, holding temporal goods in an improper perspective: This is exactly what the Jews did: they persisted in clinging to their land, oxen, wives, and neglected Christ and his gospel. The clergy within the papacy act the same way today: they do not wish to eat of the crucified Christ, but instead head for the monastery, vow poverty, chastity, obedience, and presume by these means to enter heaven. But where is Christ in all this? . . . And, though I omit saying anything about the pope and his hangers-on, what about our people who boast of being evangelical? Peasants, burghers, and aristocrats cling so firmly to things temporal and perishable that because of it they forget all about the Lord Christ and his gospel. Now, they would have had it all in Christ; they could even have kept wife and child; but they do not wish to come to Christ.104

While the italicized polemic against the papacy is deleted from Lindner and Thisted, the context in which Luther speaks unfavorably of Jews is within the context of Catholics and even Evangelicals who also reverse the hierarchy, placing their livelihood above Christ. In another section deleted from Thisted and Lindner, Luther portrays Jews similarly to Kierkegaard’s portrayal that Jews want “promises for this life.”105 Luther preaches, but Kierkegaard did not read, the following: For the Jews took into consideration only how Moses had promised them if they would be good and keep God’s commandments, to give temporal blessings, cattle, lands, wife, child, and all things should be blessed and prosper. Therefore they only sought to have their cellars and kitchens full, and to be rich, and then they thought that they were good, and that God had thus blessed them. Just in this very manner our Papists still excuse themselves.106

Hence, Luther is not ontologically racist toward Jews; instead, their fault, along with Catholics and Protestants, is teleologically valuing temporal blessings over the Gospel. In the next year, 1850, Kierkegaard confirms and approves of Luther’s position on Jews: “In the beginning of the sermon on the Epistle for the Third Sunday after Easter, Luther rightly shows that it is Jewish to cling to this life, the wish that one may prosper in everything and that he may live long in the land.”107 Near the beginning of this sermon Luther preached, and Kierkegaard lauded, the following: The entire Jewish nation, had no other conception of Christ’s kingdom—or the kingdom of God—than as an earthly one wherein they should know only happiness, figuring as wealthy farmers, citizens, noblemen, counts and lords. The sum of the world’s goods should be theirs, and all the gentiles their vassals. They

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were to be thenceforth undisturbed by enemies, wars, famine or misfortune, and to enjoy the extremity of peace, leisure, and happiness under their supreme King, the Messiah. Such were their hopes, even their expectations. With these pleasing fancies were their minds filled. And just so today are the Jews full and drunken with their visionary dreams.108

Notice their concordant conception of Judaism. Earlier, for Kierkegaard, “Jewish piety wants a savior for this life,”109 and the above affirmation confirms Luther’s and Kierkegaard’s identical adjudications of Judaism on this point. But Luther places Jews alongside Catholics and Evangelicals who erringly transpose this hierarchy, while Kierkegaard similarly says, “Jews and men in general make God too small and not spirit enough.”110 Both Luther’s and Kierkegaard’s unfavorable depictions of Judaism are not ontologically racist. Yet, both deprecatingly employ a customary anti-Semitic rhetoric common to Christian Europe since medieval times to mark their disfavor toward any teleological hope for temporal comfort. But Kierkegaard and Luther diverge when Kierkegaard radically contrasts Jewish Forjættelser (promises for this life) with Christian Forsagelse (forsaking of this life);111 whereas, Luther more moderately views eternal and temporal goods in a Godordained hierarchy.112 As shown above, Kierkegaard did not always recognize this divergence while he was lancing Judaism and lauding Luther. Lancing Judaism and Luther While in 1849 and part of 1850, Kierkegaard lauded Luther for his conception of Judaism, for most of 1850 and afterwards, Kierkegaard lanced Luther for advocating a Christianity that Kierkegaard claimed looked like Judaism, that is, focused on temporal promises for this life. In 1850, Kierkegaard’s adjudication of Judaism is the measure by which he adjudicates Luther: Even Luther was not sure about the difference between Jewish religiousness and Christian religiousness. Judaic religion relates to this life, has promise for this life (Forjættelse for dette Liv)—the Christian religion is essentially promise for the next life, since essential Christianity is suffering truth (Christelig egentlig er den lidende Sandhed). In one and the same sermon (the sermon on the Gospel for the first day of Pentecost)—yes, with only a few periods between—Luther represents the Christian “as a man of God, a man for whose sake God spares country and people,” and he also says that “the world must regard the Christian as the bird of ill omen which brings corruption and damnation upon country and people.” Luther speaks this way in other places where he speaks about storms coming as soon as there is a true Christian and true Christian confession—“If Christ is along in the ship, there is stormy weather at once (strax)”—thus the Christian simply cannot be acceptable to the world “which lived in peace and

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quiet until that man came and disturbed everything,” as it is stated also in one of Luther’s sermons.113

The above journal entry deserves some unpacking, which will again demonstrate Kierkegaard’s cursory comprehension of a Luther sermon. First, when Kierkegaard lances that Luther “was not sure about the difference between Jewish religiousness and Christian religiousness,” defining Jewish religiousness as relating to “promise for this life,” Luther’s definition of Jewish religiousness, in this very sermon, is concordant with Kierkegaard’s: For [Judas], together with the other disciples, was still entangled in the Jewish notion (Lindner: jüdischen sinn; Thisted: jødiske Tanker) that Christ would become a secular (Lindner: weltlicher; Thisted: verdslig) lord and king; they hoped that they, themselves, should become great and mighty lords over lands and people, and oft had they disputed and quarreled among themselves as to who among them should be the greatest.114 But Christ answers in the same strain just for the purpose of rooting out their Jewish notions and of portraying his kingdom in the right light. No, my dear Judas, he would say, it will not be as you think. The world (Lindner: die welt; Thisted: Berden) has honor and glory here on earth (Lindner: hier auf erden; Thisted: her paa Jorden), and power and might. It is by means of these that the world rules in the kingdom of men; those things do not concern you and me.115

Kierkegaard’s lance does not acknowledge that they share a concordant conception of Jewish religiousness. Where they really diverge is not over their conception of Judaism but over their conceptions of Christianity. Is Christianity, as Kierkegaard says, essentially temporal suffering in this life? While in this same sermon, Luther acknowledges that a Christian may suffer, such is secondary and a potential result of the primary loving of God by keeping his Word: Whoever would be a Christian must love. To love means, cheerfully and willingly to keep God’s Word. Either do this or nothing. We must sincerely desire and love Christ, or else abandon him altogether. For he that seeks his own in Christ, and does not sufficiently love him to be willing for his sake to sacrifice his own honor and reputation and righteousness, and to abandon everything earthly, is of no value to Christ’s kingdom.116

While Luther emphasizes more than once in this sermon this potential suffering resulting from loving Christ,117 he also emphasizes more than once the enjoyment of relationship with God: This is. . .one of the precious and exceeding great promises granted unto us poor, miserable sinners, that we through them should become partakers of the

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divine nature, and should be so highly honored as not only to be loved of God through Christ Jesus and to enjoy his favor and grace. . .but should even have the Lord himself completely in us. For it shall not, he would say, be love—simply that he turns his wrath from us and shows a gracious, fatherly heart toward us— but we are also to enjoy (Lindner: geniessen; Thisted: nyde) that love; otherwise, his love to us would be vain and useless.118 For ye shall have from me, in my stead, the best that ye can wish, the peace and good of the fact that in my Father ye have a merciful God, whose thoughts toward you are those of a father’s heart and love. And in me ye shall have a good, faithful Savior, who will do you all good, and not forsake you in any need, will defend and stand by you against the devil, the world and all wickedness, and in addition will give you the Holy Spirit, who shall so rule your hearts that you find in me true comfort, peace and joy.119

While Luther is here praising Christianity in its highest positivity, straightway, he dialectically interweaves it with its negative qualification, preaching a sigh: The world bases peace and comfort only upon transient things—gold, possessions, power, honor, the friendship of men etc. When these are gone, then peace and confidence and courage are gone. . . . But since this is not the world’s peace, the holy cross (Lindner: das heilige creuz; Thisted: det hellige Kors) is laid upon it; then, measured by reason and by our feelings, it means no peace, but dissensions, anguish, terror, fear and trembling. . . . The devil and the world, for the sake of the Word and of confession of Christ, will sting, torture and plague you; so that, as the Word is a Word of grace, love and of the peace of God and Christ toward us, so is it here in the world a Word of wrath and trouble.120

Then, Luther straightway exhorts his hearer in advance to hold the positive and negative of Christianity together in tension, never obviating the two from each other: Therefore, when the heart feels oppressed, in anguish and even terrified and as if a fugitive before God on account of the devil’s suggestion, this peace must be fixed in faith, the heart may inclose and secure itself in the Word of Christ and say: I know, nevertheless, that I have God’s pledge and the witness of the Holy Spirit, that he wants to be my kind Father and is not angry with me, but assures me of peace and good through Christ, his Son. If he is my friend, then let the devil and the world, so long as they do not want to smile, be angry and rave with their affliction.121

Kierkegaard’s lance cursorily misjudges Luther’s sermon. Not only do they actually share a concordant conception of Judaism but Kierkegaard also misses Luther’s emphasis on Christian suffering and forsaking the world in dialectical relation to Christian enjoyment of God.

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Finally in 1854, the same year, Kierkegaard unleashed his acrimonious attack upon Christendom, Kierkegaard lanced Luther with his deepest lance yet, accusing Luther of preaching a Christianity that is actually Judaism: The way in which even Luther speaks of the law and gospel (Loven og Evangeliet) is still not the teaching of Christ. [In margin: Luther’s sermon on the Gospel for the Third Sunday in Advent can be used as an example.]122 Luther separates the two: the law and the gospel. First the law and then the gospel, which is sheer leniency (idel Mildhed), etc. This way Christianity becomes optimism anticipating that we are to have an easy life in this world (have det godt i denne Verden). This means that Christianity becomes Judaism. . . . But, as I have frequently said,123 every human existence in which the tension of life (Livets Spænding) is resolved within this life (dette Liv) is Judaism (Jødedom). Christianity is: this life, sheer suffering (idel Lidelse)—eternity (Evigheden).124

Again, by this date, Kierkegaard’s concept of Judaism has not changed since 1846’s Corsair affair. “Judaism” is still Kierkegaard’s ideological nomenclature for teleological promises for this life (Forjættelser for dette Liv).125 While Kierkegaard’s adjudication of Judaism has not changed in this eight-year period, Kierkegaard’s adjudication of Luther’s relation to Kierkegaard’s concept of Judaism has transfigured from laud to lance. In 1849, we saw Kierkegaard’s exhilaration, finding Luther an ally in the fight for stringent Christianity against lenient Judaism. By 1850, Kierkegaard is beginning to wonder, and perhaps rightfully so, how much of an ally Luther really is in this fight. Compared to the early lauds of 1847’s “Wonderful!”126 and 1848’s “O, Luther is still the master of us all,”127 here, late in 1854, Kierkegaard, finally lances that Luther’s preaching is “not the teaching of Christ,” “sheer leniency,” and “Judaism.” Kierkegaard’s adjudication regards Luther’s Law and Gospel homiletic methodology, and he states in the margin of this journal entry, “Luther’s sermon on the Gospel for the Third Sunday in Advent can be used as an example.” This 1854 lance seems contrary to his laud in 1849: “In his sermon on the Gospel for the Fourth Sunday in Advent, Luther himself says that every sermon begins with preaching the law (and this is indeed forever unchangeable).”128 Is Luther’s Gospel postil for the Third Sunday in Advent really an example of Luther’s lenient Judaism? Again, only a cursory reading of this Luther sermon could cause this misjudgment. While Kierkegaard is rightly concerned that the Gospel not be used to justify an easy life, this Luther sermon never uses Law and Gospel to justify such. In this Advent postil from 1522, in the face of a Roman church that has been defining the Gospel as the gracious means for virtuously fulfilling the Law, thereby meriting salvation, Luther is ardent to help his hearers distinguish Law and Gospel, showing that while the Gospel indeed fulfills the

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Law, salvation is not thereby merited.129 Luther distinguishes Law and Gospel early in this sermon: The Law is that word by which God teaches what we shall do, as for instance, the Ten Commandments. Now if human nature is not aided by God’s grace, it is impossible to keep the law, for the reason that man since the fall of Adam in Paradise is depraved and full of sinful desires, so that he cannot from his heart’s desire find pleasure in the law, which fact we all experience in ourselves. . . . From all this either self-confidence (Lindner: Vermessenheit; Thisted: Formastelse) or despair (Lindner: Verzweifelung; Thisted: Fortvivlelse) must follow. Self-confidence follows when a man strives to fulfill the law by his own good works, by trying hard to do as the words of the law command. . . . But meanwhile he does not look into his heart, does not realize with what motives he leads a good life, and conceals the old Adam in his heart. For if he would truly examine his heart, he would realize that he is doing all unwillingly and with compulsion, that he fears hell or seeks heaven, if he be not prompted by things of less importance, as honor, goods, health and fear of being humiliated, of being punished or of being visited by a plague. . . . Despair follows when man becomes conscious of his evil motives, and realizes it is impossible for him to love the law of God, finding nothing good in himself; but only hatred of the good and delight in doing evil.130

Here, the preaching of the Law certainly does not make for leniency, but either presumption or despair, for the Law is intended to squelch the former and goad the latter, readying the hearer for the Gospel, which Luther distinguishes from the Law: The other word of God is neither law nor commandments, and demands nothing of us. But when that has been done by the first word, namely, the law, and has worked deep despair and wretchedness in our hearts, then God comes and offers us his blessed and life-giving word and promises; he pledges and obligates himself to grant grace and help in order to deliver us from misery, not only to pardon all our sins, but even to blot them out, and in addition to this to create in us love and delight in keeping his law. Behold, this divine promise of grace and forgiveness of sin is rightly called the Gospel. And I say here, again, that by the Gospel you must by no means understand anything else than the divine promise of God’s grace and his forgiveness of sin. For thus it was that Paul’s epistles were never understood, nor can they be understood by the Papists, because they do not know what the Law and the Gospel really mean. They hold Christ to be a law-maker, and the Gospel a mere doctrine of new law. That is nothing else than locking up the Gospel and entirely concealing it.131

Notice again how Lindner and Thisted delete from Kierkegaard’s view the Papist context against which Luther strenuously distinguishes Law and

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Gospel.132 Deleting Luther’s historical nemesis, Kierkegaard merely lances the formulaic “First Law, then Gospel” preaching paradigm: “First the law and then the gospel, which is sheer leniency, etc. This way Christianity becomes optimism anticipating that we are to have an easy life in this world. This means that Christianity becomes Judaism.” Certainly in the early paragraphs of this sermon, Luther distinguishes the Law as driving to despair and the Gospel as assuaging that despair. But Luther concludes this sermon stressing not an easy life post-Gospel but a stringent life of faith manifesting itself in works of love toward the neighbor. Luther rigorously concludes, Christ has bestowed on us needy ones his great, rich, eternal blessings, but we will not bestow our meager service on our neighbors, thus showing that we do not truly believe, and that we have neither accepted nor tasted his blessings. . . . Even those who gladly hear and understand the doctrine of pure faith do not proceed to serve their neighbor, as though they expected to be saved by faith without works; they see not that their faith is not faith, but a shadow of faith, just as the picture in the mirror is not the face itself, but only a reflection of the same, as St. James so beautifully writes, saying, “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deluding your own selves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a mirror; for he beholdeth himself, and goeth away, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was,” James 1, 22–25.133 So also there within themselves many behold a reflection of true faith when they hear and speak of the Word, but as soon as the hearing and speaking are done, they are concerned about other affairs and are not doing according to it, and thus they always forget about the fruit of faith, namely, Christian love, of which Paul also says, “For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power,” 1 Cor. 4, 20.134

Hence, Luther’s preaching paradigm, in this sermon, is not merely a bipartite “First Law, then Gospel.” It is a tripartite Law—Gospel—and good works. While Kierkegaard is concerned that a sermon merely following a “First Law, then Gospel” format would lead to “sheer leniency,”135 this is not the format of Luther’s sermon. Instead, Luther preaches on the strenuous post-Gospel life, the sigh of faith and good works Kierkegaard lauded in other Luther sermons. Crucially, Kierkegaard’s meanest lance not only misrepresents Luther’s sermon but Luther’s sermon is actually in harmony with Kierkegaard’s corrective concern. Had Kierkegaard regarded the whole sermon, he might have lauded the dialectical concord they share. Significance for Scholarship Modern Kierkegaard scholars, with the same valid concern as Kierkegaard, can also misjudge Luther by concurring with Kierkegaard without fully

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examining Luther sermons. A recent publication on Kierkegaard’s relation to Luther exemplifies this. Kim and Rasmussen present the same mean lance of Luther’s Third Sunday in Advent sermon as above: Luther’s presentation of Law and Gospel in this sermon is “sheer leniency.”136 Without examining the Third Sunday in Advent sermon, they conjecture, “[Kierkegaard] seems to mean that overall Luther’s postils emphasize Christ as gift to the neglect of Christ as pattern and, therefore, do not communicate the law–gospel (works– faith, pattern–gift) dialectic in its fullest rigor.”137 But as shown above, only a cursory or nonexistent reading of this Luther sermon by Kierkegaard or Kierkegaard scholars could cause this misjudgment. Not examining Luther’s sermons, Kim and Rasmussen assume, “If he had found in Luther’s postils a censure of the apparent self-righteousness of the earlier piety that nonetheless retained an emphasis on striving to live a life patterned after the life of Christ, then perhaps he might have excused Luther himself from his charges against Lutheranism.”138 Uninformed conclusions like these can perpetuate an attenuated Lutherbild that “Luther was no dialectician.” But Luther’s postils not only censure pre-Gospel Pelagian self-righteousness with the full merit of the Gospel won by Christ but also censure post-Gospel Antinomianism (Jewish worldliness) with a dialectical rigor often missed by Luther’s inheritors, Kierkegaard, and Kierkegaard scholars. Although Kierkegaard’s forkful reading often misjudged Luther’s dialectical aptitude, comprehensive readings of Luther’s postils reveal their actual dialectical concord, building up the Lutherbild of both Kierkegaard and Luther scholarship. KIERKEGAARD’S CORRECTIVE: CHRIST THE PROTOTYPE Having unearthed Kierkegaard’s underlying crux, Jewish worldliness, Kierkegaard’s intention, abrogating religiously justified worldliness, is faultless. But Kierkegaard’s verdict that Luther’s preaching advocates such worldliness is faulty. While Kierkegaard mistakenly lanced Luther with regard to his identification of the crux, he also mistakenly lances Luther with regard to his corrective of the crux. So far, two ingredients are religiously true for Kierkegaard if and only if they arrive in the appropriate existential order: first—the seasoning—the prerequisite anxious conscience before God, followed by, second—the main course—justification from God by grace through faith without works. But if the latter is presupposed without the presupposition of the former, then the doctrine of justification justifies Jewish worldliness. As a corrective, Kierkegaard wished Luther’s inheritors to be anteriorly seasoned with an

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anxious conscience similar to Luther’s prior to the proclamation of justification, pre-Gospel. He also wished to posteriorly season them with an anxious conscience after the proclamation of justification to sustain an earnestness that would inhibit the doctrine’s vain abuse, post-Gospel. With what would Kierkegaard anteriorly agitate the anxious conscience of his nineteenthcentury peers for the grace of God but also posteriorly perpetuate earnestness, arousing unabated hunger for the grace of God in every season? Luther’s Christ the Redeemer and Kierkegaard’s Christ the Prototype Kierkegaard’s corrective looked to a binocular Christology: Christ the Prototype interweaved in dialectical tension with Christ the Redeemer. This corrective is controversial to the Lutheran who objectively assents to the Redeemer without the pathos of anterior repentance or posterior repentant life. Indeed, if Christ is viewed monocularly as Prototype, groaning despair ensues.139 But if Christ is viewed monocularly as Redeemer, crowing presumption ensues. Thus, Christ must be viewed binocularly not only as Redeemer but also as Prototype in order to anteriorly agitate the anxious conscience for the grace of the Redeemer and to posteriorly perpetuate humble dependence on the grace of the Redeemer.140 While many Christologies monocularly emphasize Christ as only Redeemer or Prototype to the detriment of either good works or grace, respectively, Kierkegaard’s binocular Christology intended “to weld the elements of each pair together in such a way that one could not be defined without involving the other.”141 While Kierkegaard’s Christology is binocular, he especially focused on Christ the Prototype because he often perceived Luther’s message and/or Luther’s inheritors monocularly focusing on Christ the Redeemer, blurring the Prototype. Without blurring the validity of Christ the Redeemer, Kierkegaard refocuses on the Prototype: “I have also thought that Christ as example must be used in a way different from what Luther or the Middle Ages had in mind. Christ as pattern ought to jack up the price so enormously that the prototype [Forbilledet] itself teaches men to resort to grace.”142 While Luther acknowledged that Christ the Redeemer was the focus of his preaching, he was also a more farsighted dialectician than Kierkegaard gave him credit. Luther perceived, as Kierkegaard diagnosed, that spotlighting the Redeemer has the potential to leave hearers presumptuously lax. 300 years prior, Luther discerned Kierkegaard’s crux several times in his own hearers, even boycotting the Wittenberg pulpit for a time, attempting to incite a local reform of moral behavior.143 But Luther judged it was still better to have the Redeemer generally known:

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If you preach faith and assurance people become lax. But if you do not preach faith, hearts become frightened and dejected. . . . Yet faith in Christ should be preached, no matter what happens. I would much rather hear people say of me that I preach too sweetly. . .than not preach faith in Christ at all, for then there would be no help for timid, frightened consciousness. . . . Therefore I should like to have the message of faith in Christ not forgotten but generally known. It is so sweet a message, full of sheer joy, comfort, mercy, and grace. We shall have to let it happen that some. . .turn the message into an occasion for security and presumption; others slander us and say we make people lazy and thus keep them from reaching perfection. Christ himself had to hear that he was a friend of publicans and sinners. . . . We shall not fare any better.144

Hence, Luther recognized spotlighting the Redeemer could, and often did, lead to vain “security and presumption,” yet such misuse was no excuse for curtaining the Redeemer from the “frightened and dejected” who needed him.145 As seen above, Luther regularly preached to anteriorly agitate the conscience and posteriorly prohibit vain presumption. But in Kierkegaard’s age when Luther’s Christ the Redeemer was generally known and presumption the general norm, Kierkegaard was more focused in propounding Christ the Prototype as the anterior and posterior corrective for agitating and perpetuating earnest dependence on Christ the Redeemer. Logos, Pathos, and Ethos: Kenosis Incarnated and Imitated To abrogate the misuse of Christ the Redeemer as an excuse for Jewish worldliness, Kierkegaard corrects that Christ cannot legitimately be your Redeemer unless he is also dialectically your Prototype. Kierkegaard’s spotlights the incarnated Christ’s kenosis as the Christian’s Prototype. Therewith, Kierkegaard propounds his Christology not with cool objectivity but by beseeching that legitimate Christological comprehension not only constrains logos with kenotic pathos146 but also compels imitation with kenotic ethos. For Kierkegaard, Christ the Logos is not a mythical expression of the race’s general unity with God, the object of nineteenth-century Idealism,147 or a demythologized “absurd choice,” the object of twentieth-century Existentialism.148 The Logos is the unassimilable historical God-man, Jesus Christ, of Scripture. Knowledge of the Logos is exacted neither by philosophical sublimation nor by empirical approximations of Christian apologetics.149 Instead, the correct way for a contemporary person to encounter the Logos is the way those contemporaneous with the Logos encountered him.150 In the Gospels, Christ was not a Logos soliciting aloof epistemic confirmation from his contemporaries. Instead, his corporeal kenosis consistently confounded logos and confirmed pathos of epistemic offense. In 1850’s Practice in Christianity, Christ the

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Logos is not epistemologically offensive merely because he is the theoretical “Absolute Paradox” of 1846’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript, that is, the philosophical paradox “that God, the eternal, has entered into time as an individual human being.”151 More concretely, Christ the Logos is sociologically offensive to his contemporaries in three ways. (1) He comes into collision with an established order.152 (2) He is an individual human being who speaks or acts as if he were God, declaring himself to be God.153 (3) He “who passes himself off as God proves to be the lowly, poor, suffering, and finally powerless human being.”154 Hence, this Logos is not merely an epistemological offense but more crucially a sociological offense to our human hankerings for civility, sanity, and sybaritism, directly confronting the universally selfevident penchant for the pursuit of happiness. The one contemporaneously encountering the kenotic Logos does not conclude by epistemologically deducing divinity. Instead, epistemologically emptied by the sight of Christ’s sufferings and cross,155 the path of Christ’s contemporary is either the pathos of repulsive offense or the pathos of needful belief. Concomitant to pathos of needful belief, conscious need for the Redeemer results only from a remorsefully conscious need for redemption of ethos. Here, the honesty of one’s pathos—one’s conviction of their need for Christ the Redeemer—finds its crucible in one’s ethos—one’s convention of their life after Christ the Prototype.156 For Kierkegaard, one can gauge the conviction of their pathos by the convention of their ethos; is one an “admirer” or an “imitator” (Efterfølger)157 of Christ the Prototype (Forbillede)?158 “An imitator is or strives to be what he admires, and an admirer keeps himself personally detached, consciously or unconsciously does not discover that what is admired involves a claim upon him, to be or at least to strive to be what is admired.”159 The telos of this test has two dialectical ends that cannot be existentially obviated from one another: (1) It convicts admiration, raising the conviction of one’s pathos by regarding the convention of one’s ethos, necessitating need for the Redeemer and (2) it convenes imitation, raising the convention of one’s ethos by the raised conviction of one’s pathos, palpitating passion for the Prototype.160 This repeated test, standardized by Christ as both Redeemer and Prototype and the self as either admirer or imitator, repeatedly evokes a sigh of earnestness that Kierkegaard saw as a corrective to a monocular view of Christ as Redeemer and the self as crowing admirer. Only with this peripatetic pathos and ethos does one comprehend the Logos the way the Logos willed to be comprehended. While Redeemer and Prototype are inseparable in Christ, the Christian distinguishes these offices to recognize which attributes of Christ he should imitate. Obviously, Christ’s loftiness as Redeemer cannot be imitated. Kierkegaard apprises,

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If Christ exists for us only in loftiness, if his abasement is forgotten or if he had never existed in lowliness, then in that case not even Christ himself, in order to be self-consistent, could require anything but admirers, adoring admirers, since loftiness and admirer, divine loftiness and adoring admirer, correspond perfectly to each other. . . . But the correlative of abasement and lowliness is: imitators. . . . The lowliness. . . makes sure that loftiness is not taken in vain.161

Hence, it is not Christ’s loftiness as Redeemer, but his lowliness, his kenosis as Prototype, that is to be imitated.162 Kierkegaard comments on two key verses, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24), and “Have this mind in you 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” (Philippians 2:5): 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.”163

Because Christians endure as the Church Militant, the Christ we follow, for now, is the kenotic Christ not the glorified and exalted Christ of the Church Triumphant, which assumes the struggle is already over.164 As we can see, Kierkegaard did not refocus on Christ the Prototype in order to reintroduce medieval works-righteousness or to merely terrorize with the Law. His purpose was to perpetuate an honest confession: “It must be presented in all its demand and men must then be told: If you cannot do it, then entrust yourself to God, confess your weakness: he is no cruel Lord, he has great compassion. But you are not permitted to be ignorant of the highest aspects of God’s requirement.”165 Kierkegaard’s situation, exemplified in Mynster, ignored God’s requirement: Here is where I differ from Mynster and the like; he wants to suppress it completely. I want to have it said. . . . On the whole I believe that this is the ethical respect which has to be introduced. . . . And above all I must not suppress the highest and make my little no. 2 or no. 3 or no. 10 into the highest. Mynster may have some justification for everything he says about the necessity for moderation etc.—but, but the highest must not be suppressed in the name of moderation. No, it must be presented in all its demand.166

Presenting the unconditional ethical requirement of the Prototype, the anxious conscience missing in nineteenth-century Christendom is agitated, goading

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the hearer for the gracious message of the Redeemer. Yet, the Prototype also invites the believer to follow him, not for the sake of frantically accruing soteriological merit but out of newfound existential attraction to Christ’s kenotic love.167 While this attraction is the ideal motive for the Christian, Kierkegaard recognizes the more complex reality that although it is “the very nature of love to seek to be transformed into the image of the beloved,” still “aspiring lovers cannot rely exclusively upon the spontaneity of benevolent inclinations.”168 Thus, because Christians remain simul iustus et peccator, the Prototype dialectically relates to the Christian as simultaneously both goal of love and goad of Law, never wholly one without the other. With this dialectical reality in view, the Christian sighs, neither diffidently groaning under the Prototype nor overconfidently crowing over the Redeemer, but sighing in simultaneous sorrow and thanksgiving in true joy.169 Kierkegaard’s Christology is thus binocular, perceiving Christ through the pathos and ethos of Redeemer and Prototype. Kierkegaard portrays this dialectical perception in his sighing prayer at the beginning of his discourse entitled “Christ as the Prototype”: Lord Jesus Christ, it was not to torment us human beings but to save us that you said the words “No one can serve two masters.” Would that we might be willing to comply with them by doing accordingly—that is, by following you! Help us all, each one of us, you who both will and can, you who are both the prototype and the Redeemer, and in turn both the Redeemer and the prototype, so that when the striving one droops under the prototype, crushed, almost despairing, the Redeemer raises him up again; but at the same moment you are again the prototype so that he may be kept in the striving. O Redeemer, by your holy suffering and death you have made satisfaction for everyone and everything; no eternal salvation either can or shall be earned—it has been earned. Yet you left your footprints, you, the holy prototype for the human race and for every individual, so that by your Atonement the saved might at every moment find the confidence and boldness to want to strive to follow you.170

Lancing Luther with Kierkegaard’s Corrective Given this binocular corrective of Christ as Prototype and Redeemer to a monocular view of Christ the Redeemer used as a trump card for lax worldliness, Kierkegaard lances Luther when he suspects Luther’s sermons of spotlighting the Redeemer while dimming the Prototype. Despite his lances, both Luther and Kierkegaard regularly exude a similar tripartite preaching paradigm, which Kierkegaard’s cursory reading did not always appreciate. For Luther, this tripartite paradigm is the following: (1) Law (2) faith (3) good works. The key to understanding Kierkegaard’s lances is his hasty suspicion that Luther is one-sidedly preaching (2) faith (Christ the Redeemer)

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either without the prerequisite (1) Law (Christ the Prototype) or without the requisite (3) good works (Christ the Prototype). Thus, if Kierkegaard perceives Luther preaching (2) faith and (3) good works without (1) the prerequisite Law, then Kierkegaard will lance. Conversely, if Kierkegaard perceives Luther preaching (1) the Law and (2) faith without (3) requisite good works, then Kierkegaard will also lance. For Kierkegaard, Christ the Prototype must be dialectically anterior and posterior to the proclamation of Christ the Redeemer to secure a sighing expression of Christ and Christianity. Faith and Good Works without the Law An 1850 lance exemplifies Kierkegaard’s suspicion of Luther preaching (2) faith and (3) good works without (1) the Law: In his sermon on the Gospel for the First Sunday in Advent, right at the beginning, Luther states that every legitimate gospel (ret Evangelium) proclaims first faith then works, and every gospel in which this is the case is a legitimate gospel. But what about appealing to Scripture (Skriften) as the only norm (Norm)? Here Luther has himself made a norm by which he determines what is a legitimate gospel.171

While Luther and Kierkegaard can define the Gospel differently, Kierkegaard does not recognize that this does not confound the perlocutionary concord they share. In this sermon, Luther defines the Gospel in its doctrinal sense, as he states at the beginning, There are two things to be observed and marked in the Gospels. First, the works of Christ presented to us as gift and good, on which our faith should hang and exercise. Second, the same works are offered as an example (Lindner: exempel / Thisted: Mønster) and prototype (Lindner: vorbild / Thisted: Forbilled) for us to follow (Lindner: folgen / Thisted: følgen) and look like (Lindner: gleich / Thisted: ligne). Thus, all Gospels that teach faith first (Lindner: ersten den glauben / Thisted: først Tro) and then works (Lindner: darnach die werke / Thisted: dernæst Gjerninger) are true Gospels (Thisted: sande Evangelier).172

Here, for Luther the Gospel is the central message to be exegeted out of the Gospel narratives. This central message is the cause-and-effect sequence of the grace of Christ’s works inducing (2) faith followed by (3) Christian works that imitate Christ’s works, not the reverse. Here, the Gospel is firstly the message of Christ the Redeemer and consequentially Christ the Prototype. Given Kierkegaard’s laud of Luther’s sigh of faith and works of love seen in chapter 3, it is surprising to find Kierkegaard lancing Luther here. But Kierkegaard’s lance alludes to his anxious concern to antedate the message

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of (2) and (3) with (1) the Law or Christ the Prototype in order to agitate the anxious conscience. To ensure this, Kierkegaard expands his definition of the Gospel to include not only (2) faith and (3) good works but also (1) Law. When Kierkegaard lances, “But what about appealing to Scripture as the only norm”173 for a legitimate Gospel, Kierkegaard has in mind a broader definition of the Gospel as the New Testament narratives of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, rather than a theoretical doctrine abstracted from the narrative. In Kierkegaard’s age, liberal readings dissected the Bible into interrogations of objective veracity, and conservative readings automatically identified with (2) faith, obviating it from the culpability of (1) and the responsibility of (3). In response, Kierkegaard propounded reading the Bible “humanly”174 again, allowing the narrative to have its performative effect, causing dialectical discipleship rather than evading it through hermeneutical hemming and hawing over historical or doctrinal objectivity.175 If the Gospel narratives would be read this way, Kierkegaard believed, then it would ensure the tripartite existential effects of (1), (2), and (3), rather than obviating (2) from either (1) or (3). Kierkegaard explains how the Gospel narratives really read: The Savior of the world, our Lord Jesus Christ, did not come to the world in order to bring a doctrine, he never lectured. Since he did not bring a doctrine, he did not try by way of reasons to prevail upon anyone to accept the doctrine, nor did he try to authenticate it by proofs. His teaching was really his life, his existence. If someone wanted to be his follower, his 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. . . . The proof does not precede but follows, is in and with the imitation that follows Christ.176

Christ’s consistent call in the Gospel narratives to “venture a decisive act”177 effects the existential function of (1) the Law, agitating the anxious conscience, which is the prerequisite context in which (2) faith and (3) good works are made possible. Two years later, in 1852, Kierkegaard lauded Luther’s explication of the Gospel as (2) and (3): “Luther rightly orders it this way. Christ is the gift—to which faith corresponds. Then he is the prototype—to which imitation corresponds.”178 But straightway in this same journal comment, Kierkegaard elaborates, “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.”179 Hence, while (2) faith and (3) good works are essential, a more accurate description of the components of Gospel proclamation is Luther’s tripartite (1) Law (2) faith (3) good works, with which Kierkegaard corroborates and secures with Christ as (1) Prototype (2) Redeemer (3) Prototype.

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While Kierkegaard is concerned in his 1850 lance that the proclamation of the Gospel not be presented as (2) and (3) without the prerequisite (1), Kierkegaard does not, here, comprehend that he and Luther are already in virtual agreement on this issue. When Kierkegaard expands the definition of the Gospel to include a narrative presentation of (1), (2), and (3), he does not recognize that Luther often referred to the Gospel in the same synecdochical way, often referring to the proclamation of the Gospel as synecdoche for both Law and Gospel or, more accurately, (1) Law, (2) faith, and (3) good works.180 Hence, while Kierkegaard has a justified concern, he has incorrectly incriminated Luther as culprit. The Luther sermon in question, the First Sunday in Advent postil, develops around the Matthew 21:1–9 image of Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem on a donkey. For Luther, this image signifies that Christ willingly, meekly, and lowly “comes not to frighten man, nor to drive and crush him, but to help him and to carry his burden for him.”181 Since Christ does not come seated on a warhorse in this passage, admittedly the terror of the Law is lessoned in this sermon. The historical circumstances surrounding the 1522 sermon reveal Luther’s motive for this. 1522 marks the year of Luther’s return to Wittenberg from exile at the Wartburg. Luther returned on March 6 out of necessity. Wittenberg was enacting reformatory change based upon Luther’s arguments from his 1520 treatises, but the hasty coercion by which these changes were taking place under the iconoclasm of Carlstadt and the enthusiasm of the Zwickau Prophets alarmed Luther.182 Luther felt such precipitous change would harm the consciences of the laity. Luther’s means for correcting these radical extremes was patient preaching, and in the same month, he began composing his Advent postils for those suffering under the coercion of both Carlstadt and Catholicism. Thus, Luther’s sermon assumes, as Kierkegaard once noted about Luther’s audience, “that men are suffering under fear and trembling and spiritual trials, therefore console, console them, reassure them, reassure them so that no such poor Christian man sits in mortal anxiety and doubts his salvation.”183 But this historical circumstance does not mean that Luther has dropped the preparatory role of the Law from this sermon. Not only does Luther see his audience already existentially burdened by Carlstadt and Catholicism but he also sympathetically speaks to the nature of a conscience burdened to justify itself without the help of Christ: Oh, this is a comforting word to a believing heart, for without Christ, man is subjected to many raging tyrants who are not kings but murderers, at whose hand he suffers great misery and fear. These are the devil, the flesh, the world, sin, also the law and eternal death, by all of which the troubled conscience is burdened, is under bondage, and lives in anguish. For where there is sin there is

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no clear conscience; where there is no clear conscience, there is a life of uncertainty and an unquenchable fear of death and hell in the presence of which no real joy can exist in the heart, as Lev. 26, 36 says: “The sound of a driven leaf shall chase them.”184

Notice in the following quote from the same sermon how Luther refers to the “Gospel” as synecdoche for the preaching of the Law, too: Learn then from this Gospel what takes place when God begins to make us godly, and what the first step is in becoming godly. There is no other beginning than that your king comes to you and begins to work in you. It is done in this way: The Gospel must be the first, this must be preached and heard. In it you hear and learn how all your works count for nothing before God and that everything is sinful that you work and do. Your king must first be in you and rule you. Behold, here is the beginning of your salvation; you relinquish your works and despair of yourself, because you hear and see that all you do is sin and amounts to nothing, as the Gospel tells you, and you receive your king in faith, cling to him, implore his grace and find consolation in his mercy alone.185

For Luther, the proclamation of “Gospel” includes the function of the Law, bringing the hearer to despair of himself, emptying out a place into which Christ can ride in mercy. Hence, while Kierkegaard’s lances that this Luther sermon preaches (2) faith and (3) good works without (1) the Law, Luther adequately preached (1), (2), and (3), evidencing not only Kierkegaard’s cursory reading and unfair adjudication but also their dialectical concord. Law and Gospel without Suffering Works of Love While, above, Luther broadly defined “Gospel” as both (2) faith and (3) good works, below, Kierkegaard’s fears that Luther narrowly defines “Gospel” as only (2) faith without (3) suffering works of love. In an 1854 lance, introduced earlier, Kierkegaard’s suspects Luther of preaching (1) Law and (2) Gospel/faith without (3) requisite suffering: The way in which even Luther speaks of the law and gospel is still not the teaching of Christ. . . . Luther separates the two: the law and the gospel. First the law and then the gospel, which is sheer leniency, etc. This way Christianity become optimism anticipating that we are to have an easy life in this world. This means that Christianity becomes Judaism.186

Earlier, we saw that Kierkegaard rightly wanted to ensure that Luther’s Law and Gospel preaching paradigm did not result in a life of “sheer leniency.” But we also saw that Luther’s Third Sunday in Advent postil, the sermon Kierkegaard gave as an example of this error, does not make this error. But

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Kierkegaard continues to lance Luther, deficiently describing Luther’s concepts of Law and Gospel: The law corresponds, for example, to what being tempted and tried (fristes og prøves) by God was in the Old Testament, but then comes the gospel, just as in the Old Testament the time of testing came to an end and everything became joy and jubilation. But, as I have frequently said, every human existence in which the tension of life is resolved within this life is Judaism. Christianity is: this life sheer suffering—eternity (idel Lidelse—Evigheden).187

Kierkegaard critically distinguished the Old and New Testaments, preferring the latter as the prototypical description of Christianity. Kierkegaard’s distinction is not Marcionite, relegating the Old Testament to another deity. Nor does Kierkegaard’s distinction superficially regard the Old Testament’s teaching as solely Law, as compared to the New Testament’s Gospel. Rather, Kierkegaard’s downplay of the Old Testament is much the result of his Lutheran heritage.188 For Lutherans, given the centrality of Christ’s atoning work in the New Testament gospels and Paul’s explication of the same in the New Testament epistles, “the Old Testament was of derivative value insofar as it could be seen as presaging the gospel of God’s gracious love clearly revealed in Christ.”189 But Kierkegaard’s distinction of the Old Testament from the New with regard to suffering is unique. Kierkegaard held this distinction early, prior to 1846’s Corsair affair.190 But prior to the Corsair affair, Kierkegaard positively attended to the Old Testament figures of Abraham and Job as prototypes of Christian faith and action. In 1843’s Fear and Trembling, Abraham is the “Knight of Faith” not only because of his willingness to sacrifice Isaac but also because of his absurd belief that he will receive Isaac back, temporally.191 In a discourse from 1843, Job is heralded as a prototype for his blessing of God in the moment God takes everything away,192 and yet Job receives everything back double, temporally.193 But after The Corsair affair of 1846,194 Kierkegaard eventually downgrades the importance of Abraham’s and Job’s trials because of their relatively short duration and eventual temporal relief.195 A journal entry from 1852 portrays Kierkegaard’s late and negative delineation of Old Testament Judaism, comparing it to paganism and New Testament Christianity: 1) In paganism and anything pagan the distinguishing mark of the Godrelationship is: happiness, prosperity; being loved by God is marked by being successful in everything. 2) In Judaism the shift begins: to be God’s friend etc. is expressed by suffering. Yet this suffering is essentially only for a time, is a test [Prøvelse]—then comes happiness and prosperity even in this life. But it is essentially distinguishable from all paganism in that being loved of God is not as completely direct as being a Pamphilius of fortune. 3) In Christianity being

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loved of God is suffering, continual suffering (idel Lidelse), the closer to God the more suffering, yet with the consolation of eternity and with the Spirit’s testimony that this is God’s love, this is what it is to dare to love God.196

Hence, Kierkegaard’s evaluation of the Old Testament is the same as his evaluation of Judaism. Both concepts regard the relation with God in suffering as a temporary test only to be eventually relieved with temporal reward. Kierkegaard is concerned that Luther’s Law and Gospel preaching paradigm simply encourages this kind of Jewish/Old Testament relation with God, where the Law is the anterior test and the Gospel is the temporal reward, without any posterior suffering. As noted in chapter 3, not only is Christian suffering concomitant with Christian works of love, suffering is also the negative means through which the positive of Christianity is inversely recognized.197 Suffering provides the anterior and posterior tensions of actuality for potentially inverting a sinful and worldly approach to suffering, which always desires relief as soon as possible.198 To reverse this presumption, Kierkegaard invites the hearer in a series of discourses from 1848 to “look at everything turned around,”199 that is, to inversely see the dialectical joy of it that adversity is prosperity, that what you lose temporally you gain eternally, that the weaker you become the stronger God becomes in you.200 For Kierkegaard, the goal is that the sufferer will more and more see his suffering not as either punishment or fate (paganism) or rigorous testing (Judaism) but as a sign of God’s love, pursuit, and transformation of his egotistic identity (Christianity),201 there finding patience, consolation, and the experience necessary for empathetically consoling others. The Christian suffers especially in the call to imitate Christ the Prototype, suffering not only outwardly in the stress of taking up one’s cross before a world that scorns suffering but also inwardly in the failure to take up the cross with all one’s might or the worry that perhaps one is being audacious in venturing too far.202 In the suffering recognition of that failure or worry, the mercy of Christ the Redeemer becomes all the more inversely recognized. Suffering provides the negative anterior and posterior means through which the wonder of Christianity is continually glorified. Since his age could isolate Luther’s (1) Law and (2) Gospel from the (3) suffering works of love requisite to Christianity, Kierkegaard was anxious to reinstate (3) and therefore angry when he suspected Luther of abrogating (3): It does not help that we men get angry ten times over and say: No human being can endure that. This does not help. God is not impressed. The error in Luther’s preaching is that it bears the mark of this consolation for us poor human beings, which shows that he does not hold Christianity at the level which is found in the New Testament, specifically in the gospel: the unconditioned (det Ubetingede).203

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Because in the Gospel narratives Christ the Prototype causes hearers both to suffer and to rejoice in Christ the Redeemer, Kierkegaard wants Christian preaching to not alleviate suffering by lessening the unconditional demands of the Prototype, leaping to (2) the doctrine of grace without (1) the anterior and (3) posterior call to discipleship. Kierkegaard continues, No, God is not impressed; he changes nothing. Yet believe that it is out of love that he wills what he wills. He himself suffers infinitely in this, but he does not change. Yes, he suffers in love more than you do, but he does not change. He sets everything in motion to bring a human being to what most surely is the greatest agony possible for a man—to hate himself (for to hate himself and the world and so on are the condition for loving God). He sets everything in motion, entices, moves, persuades, sometimes almost as if he were begging, as if he were the one in need. At other times he terrifyingly lets go of you momentarily so that a moment’s relapse into sin may teach you both new strenuousness and not to take his love in vain, or he alternately approaches you and withdraws from you—in all this he suffers infinitely more than you do, even when it is you who distress him by new sin—but he does not change, O, infinite love!204

The purpose of suffering is not incessant suffering. Kierkegaard wants to encourage his peers to peer behind God’s mask: “It sometimes seems as if God allowed everything to go wrong for him—and yet he can have the blessing of being able to affirm that God does it out of love.”205 Although Christ lovingly does not remove the suffering, he makes the suffering lighter in three ways: (1) he offers himself as the prototype who has gone this way before; (2) he evokes faith in his followers that their suffering is beneficial; (3) he alleviates the heaviest burden of the consciousness of sin.206 Reaffirming the role of suffering in redemption, Kierkegaard continues lancing, But it is easy to see that Luther’s preaching of Christianity changes Christianity’s life-view and worldview. He has one-sidedly appropriated “the apostle” and goes so far—as he frequently does with his yardstick (turned the wrong way)—that he criticizes the gospels. If he does not find the apostle’s teaching in the gospel he concludes this is no gospel. Luther does not seem to see that the apostle has already relaxed in relation to the gospels. And this wrong tack Luther made has been continued in Protestantism, which has made Luther absolute. When he found the apostle to be more rigorous (which he is) than Luther, we concluded: Here the apostle is wrong, this is not pure gospel. In this way we have systematically, step by step, cheated—that is, attempted to cheat God out of the gospel by turning the whole relationship around.207

Here, we again see Kierkegaard’s preference for the Gospel narratives’ strenuous presentation of Christ the Prototype dialectically interweaved with the

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Redeemer. Kierkegaard’s comment alludes to his judgment that the Apostle Paul’s epistolary explication of Christ relaxes the confrontation with the Prototype found in the Gospel narratives.208 While not rejecting Paul,209 when Kierkegaard based several of his public discourses on Pauline texts, he tended to choose the paraenetic texts more than the classic “salvation by grace” texts historically lauded by Lutherans.210 Although Kierkegaard does not refer to a specific Luther text in this journal comment, Luther’s Preface to the New Testament not only rejects a definition of “Gospel” as the narrative Gospels211 but also defines the Gospel as the word about salvation through Christ, valued more than the narrative descriptions of Christ’s works or exhortations to good works: If I were ever compelled to make a choice, and had to dispense with either the works or the preaching of Christ, I would rather do without the works than the preaching; for the works are of no avail to me, whereas His words give life, as He himself declared. John records but few of the works of Christ, but a great deal of His preaching, whereas the other three evangelists record many of His works, but few of His words. It follows that the gospel of John is unique in loveliness, and of a truth the principal gospel, far, far superior to the other three, and much to be preferred. And in the same way, the epistles of St. Paul and St. Peter are far in advance of the three gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. . . . In comparison with these, the epistle of St. James is an epistle full of straw, because it contains nothing evangelical.212

Given his definition of the Gospel, in his 1522 Preface to the Epistle to the Romans, Luther validates Kierkegaard’s critique that Luther prefers the apostle over the synoptic gospels: “This epistle is in truth the most important document in the New Testament, the gospel in its purest expression.”213 Luther further elucidates his preference for the Pauline Gospel and his resultant distaste for James in his 1522 Preface to the Epistle of St. James: The true touchstone for testing every book is to discover whether it emphasizes the prominence of Christ or not. . . . The epistle of James, however, only drives you to the law and its works. . . . In sum: he wished to guard against those who depended on faith without going on to works, but he had neither the spirit nor the thought nor the eloquence equal to the task. He does violence to Scripture, and so contradicts Paul and all Scripture. . . . I therefore refuse him a place among the writers of the true canon of my Bible; but I would not prevent anyone placing him or raising him where he likes, for the epistle contains many excellent passages.214

Prior to his 1847 commencement of reading Luther’s sermons, Kierkegaard evidences in 1846’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript that he was familiar with Luther’s determination and gradation of the Gospel as found in various

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New Testament texts.215 But this previous familiarity prejudiced an unfair reading because the sermon in which Kierkegaard lances Luther for relaxing in relation to the Gospels actually concludes with Luther astoundingly lauding James, “the epistle of straw,” for the same dialectical reason Kierkegaard would.216 This last lance of Luther in 1854 is not only one of Kierkegaard’s meanest but also one of his most incisive. By incriminating Luther’s preference for the “Gospel” as found in the classic “salvation by grace” texts over against the stringent Gospel narratives, Kierkegaard locates the dragon’s teeth for his Lutheran generation’s lenient emphasis on grace to the exclusion of suffering discipleship. Kyle Roberts encapsulates, “Thus the biblical passages that conferred leniency and consolation were readily appropriated both by the average Christian and by the cleric, while the imperatives of the New Testament were rationalized away.”217 In sum, Kierkegaard ultimately lanced that Luther’s Law and Gospel preaching, “in consideration for us poor human beings,” does away with the anterior and posterior inducement of suffering by Christ the Prototype, which is Kierkegaard’s sighing corrective for the misuse of Christ the Redeemer as an excuse for Jewish worldliness. But, while Kierkegaard lances the Third Sunday in Advent sermon for preaching (1) Law and (2) Gospel without (3) suffering works of love, Luther’s sermon adequately preaches all three, evidencing again not only Kierkegaard’s cursory reading and unfair adjudication but also their dialectical concord. NOTES 1. Walsh, Living Christianly, 14. 2. E.g., JP 3:2467; KJN 4, NB5:10; SKS 20, 375; Papirer IX A 11. JP 3:2512; KJN 7, NB15:111; SKS 23, 77; Papirer X.2 A 448. JP 3:2541; KJN 8, NB24:141; SKS 24, 414; Papirer X.4 A 394. JP 3:3153; KJN 7, NB20:14; SKS 23, 398; Papirer X.3 A 267. 3. JP 2:1485; KJN 8, NB24:166; SKS 24, 429; Papirer X.4 A 419. 4. JP 2:1485; KJN 8, NB24:166; SKS 24, 429; Papirer X.4 A 419. 5. FSE 24. 6. Cf. Lenker 5:318; Thisted 1:206; Lindner 7:368; Leipzig 15:139. 7. E.g., Geismar, “Kierkegaard und Luther,” 241; Koenker, “Søren Kierkegaard on Luther,” 239. 8. See Gavin I. Langmuir, History, Religion, and Antisemitism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 275–305. 9. Mark U. Edwards, Luther’s Last Battles: Politics and Polemics, 1531–46 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), 115–17. 10. Edwards, Luther’s Last Battles, 117. 11. Langmuir, History, Religion, and Antisemitism, 298–300.

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12. Lohse, Luther’s Theology, 337. 13. Oberman, Luther, 294. 14. Edwards, Luther’s Last Battles, 118. 15. Ibid. 16. LW 45:200. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid., 229. 19. Ibid. 20. Edwards, Luther’s Last Battles, 123–24. 21. Ibid., 124. 22. LW 54:239. 23. Edwards, Luther’s Last Battles, 125. 24. LW 47:62. 25. Edwards, Luther’s Last Battles, 129–30. 26. Ibid., 130. 27. LW 47:285–87. 28. Edwards, Luther’s Last Battles, 135–36. 29. COR vii, quoting Paul Rubow, Goldschmidt og Nemesis (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1968), 118. 30. Leon Poliakov, From the Time of Christ to the Court Jews, vol. 1 of The History of Anti-Semitism, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Schocken, 1976), 242. As in Luther’s time, the Jews continued to be associated with deicide and perfidy among nineteenth-century Europe, Leon Poliakov, From Voltaire to Wagner, vol. 3 of The History of Anti-Semitism, trans. Miriam Kochan (New York: Vanguard, 1975), 20. 31. Joseph Gaer, The Legend of the Wandering Jew (New York: Mentor, 1961), viii. 32. JP 5:5087; KJN II:1, Not2:14; SKS 19, 95; Papirer I C 65. 33. E.g., JP 2:2208; Papirer I A 49 and JP 2:2210; Papirer I A 299. See also Eric Michael Dale, “Hegel, Jesus, and Judaism,” Animus 11 (2006), 16–17: “Hegel developed the usefulness of Judaism as a determinate religion which cleared the way for and in fact necessitated the consummate religion, Christianity. . . . Hegel’s Jesus moved from a confrontation with Judaism to a consummation of Judaism.” 34. JP 2:2206; Papirer I C 66: “People often say that someone is a Don Juan or a Faust but rarely say that someone is the Wandering Jew. Should there not also be individuals of this kind who have embodied in themselves too much of the essence of the Wandering Jew?” 35. Bruce H. Kirmmse, “Kierkegaard, Jews, and Judaism,” Kierkegaardiana 17 (1994): 83. 36. Ibid., 84. 37. JP 5:5797; Papirer VI B 35. See also JP 6:6523; KJN 6, NB13:92; SKS 22, 335; Papirer X.2 A 163 in 1849: “Even if it was my most honest intention to devote my whole life and daily diligence to the cause of Christianity, to do everything, to do nothing else but to expound and interpret it, even though I were to become like, be like the Wandering Jew—myself not a Christian in the final and most decisive sense of the word and yet leading others to Christianity.”

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38. Rosas, Scripture in the Thought of Søren Kierkegaard, 13, notes that the Danish Corsaren literally means “pirate.” “The publishers of The Corsair were inspired by the ideas of the French revolution (1830) and the agitation for liberty that swept Europe in its wake. In Denmark the conservative papers supported the status quo and the liberal press sought a constitutional monarchy, while The Corsair advocated the complete abolition of the institutional monarchy.” 39. Bruce H. Kirmmse, Encounters with Kierkegaard: A Life as Seen by His Contemporaries (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 65. 40. Rosas, Scripture in the Thought of Søren Kierkegaard, 13; Garff, Søren Kierkegaard, 378. 41. COR 96. 42. PV 23–24. 43. Walsh, Living Christianly, 3. See also PV 45–46. 44. COR xvii. 45. TA 74. 46. Garff, Søren Kierkegaard, 385. While En Jøde was well received by reviewers, many Danish Jews were offended “because it was impolitic to separate the Jews as a special group and a profanation to portray their intimate family and religious life,” COR 280. Kirmmse, Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark, 27, notes that the Jews, along with Roman Catholics and Calvinist Huguenots, being non-Lutheran, were not considered “Danish,” “and their members existed in Danish society only under special dispensations and within certain restrictions.” 47. Kirmmse, Encounters with Kierkegaard, 71. 48. Hannay, Kierkegaard: A Biography, 319. Møller was reputedly Kierkegaard’s model for the seducer in “The Seducer’s Diary” in Either/Or. 49. COR 46. 50. COR 50. 51. Hannay, Kierkegaard: A Biography, 321. 52. Lowrie, A Short Life of Kierkegaard, 180: “The very name Søren became comic throughout the whole of Scandinavia, so that fond parents no longer bestowed it upon their children.” 53. Enter/Eller is the Danish title of Either/Or. 54. COR 133. Kierkegaard felt the same way about Goldschmidt and Møller: “What Goldschmidt and P. L. Møller practice on a large scale, every individual here does on a smaller scale. If one did not want to greet Goldschmidt, refused to visit him, he was put in the paper. He wanted to gain equal footing by defiance and provocation. It is the same with the readers of his paper. If one is unwilling to flatter them, they use his paper to insult one; if one is unwilling to flatter them, their real opinion emerges,” JP 5:6031; KJN 4, NB2:104; SKS 20, 182; Papirer VIII.1 A 218. 55. Kirmmse, Encounters with Kierkegaard, 75–76. 56. JP 6:6509; KJN 6, NB13:32; SKS 22, 292; Papirer X.2 A 101. 57. Kierkegaard did, for example, publish the following in 1847’s Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits: “It certainly was not Christ’s intention to lead people out of the world into regions of paradise where there is no need or wretchedness at all or by magic to make mortal life into worldly delight and joy. This would be only

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a Jewish misunderstanding, a sensate, frivolous misunderstanding,” UDVS 233. See also CD 178. 58. COR ix, citing Rikard Magnussen, Det særlig Kors (Copenhagen: 1942), 161. 59. JP 5:6044; KJN 4, NB2:140; SKS 20, 198; Papirer VIII.1 A 254. 60. See, for example, PV 57: “On the whole the press, representing abstract, impersonal communication, is demoralizing, especially since the daily press, purely formally and with no regard to whether what it says is true or false, contributes enormously to demoralization because of all the impersonality, which in turn is more or less irresponsibility and impenitence.” 61. Copied from Kirmmse, Kierkegaard, Jews, and Judaism, 86, citing Papirer X.1 A 129. 62. JP 6:6321; KJN 5, NB9:67; SKS 21, 241; Papirer X.1 A 67. After The Corsair affair, Goldschmidt left Denmark for the Continent, but returned in October 1847 to begin a more serious literary journal, Nord og Syd, about which Kierkegaard was contemptuous for Goldschmidt’s perfunctory amendment, Garff, Søren Kierkegaard, 668–69. Kierkegaard expressed this contempt in his journals: “Goldschmidt stated someplace in Nord og Syd that if a paper such as The Corsair had a sufficient public, it was thereby justified. Charming! Consequently the public says: We have no responsibility, no guilt; for we are not the ones who write it. G. says: I have no responsibility, for if there is a sufficient public—then etc.” JP 6:6886; KJN 9, NB30:61; SKS 25, 437; Papirer XI.1 A 242. 63. Kirmmse, “Kierkegaard, Jews, and Judaism,” 85. 64. JP 3:2985; KJN 10, NB32:108; SKS 26, 196; Papirer XI.2 A 26. 65. JP 6:6546; KJN 6, NB14:54; SKS 22, 376; Papirer X.2 A 228. 66. JP 2:2217; KJN 5, NB8:49; SKS 21, 167; Papirer IX A 424. 67. Evans, Kierkegaard: An Introduction, 6. 68. COR xxxii–xxxiii. 69. Bukdahl, Søren Kierkegaard and the Common Man, 82. 70. JP 6:6356; KJN 5, NB10:51; SKS 21, 283; Papirer X.1 A 130. 71. PV 67–68. 72. See, for example, CUP 213: “Christianity has itself proclaimed itself to be the eternal, essential truth that has come into existence in time; it has proclaimed itself as the paradox and has required the inwardness of faith with regard to what is an offense to the Jews, foolishness to the Greeks—and an absurdity to understanding.” 73. See, for example, PC 106: “You must go through the possibility of offense, for truly to be a Christian certainly does not mean to be Christ (what blasphemy!) but means to be his imitator, yet not as the kind of prinked-up, nice-looking successor who makes use of the firm and leaves Christ’s having suffered many centuries in the past; no, to be an imitator means that your life has as much similarity to his as is possible for a human life to have.” 74. JP 6:6548; KJN 6, NB14:77; SKS 22, 389; Papirer X.2 A 251. 75. Sylvia Walsh, “Standing at the Crossroads: The Invitation of Christ to a Life of Suffering,” in Practice in Christianity, ed. Robert L. Perkins, vol. 20 of International Kierkegaard Commentary (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2004), 143. 76. See again UDVS 233 and CD 178.

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77. Kirmmse, “Kierkegaard, Jews, and Judaism,” 91–93. 78. Ibid., 95. 79. Kirmmse, Ibid., 85, 93–94, notes several others from Golden Age Denmark who used anti-Semitic language, including Hans Christian Andersen and Kierkegaard’s favorite professor, Poul Martin Møller. 80. JP 6:6503; KJN 6, NB13:8; SKS 22, 276; Papirer X.2 A 75. 81. Luther’s sermon for New Year’s Day, following church tradition, is on the subject of the circumcision of Christ, the day on which he received the name “Jesus.” See Matt. 2:21 (ESV): “She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” 82. Thisted 1:124; Lindner 7:215–16; Leipzig 15:76–77 (translation mine). 83. Jesus is referred to as “little” because the sermon is about Luke 2:21, where Jesus is an infant. 84. Thisted 1:124–25; Lindner 7:216; Leipzig 15:77 (translation mine). Hong translates Kierkegaard’s phrase “traske om som i Kjær” as “slog along as if in a bog.” The Thisted reference Kierkegaard is referring is “vade omkring in dette timelige Liv, som i et Kjær.” While it is easy to translate the Thisted’s first phrase “wade around in this temporal life,” it is difficult to translate the latter because “Kjær” is a word meaning a beloved or dear person. Significantly, this latter Thisted phrase has no equivalent in Lindner or Leipzig, and is therefore an addition by Thisted. 85. KJN 7, NB20:45; SKS 23, 426; Papirer X.3 A 302. 86. Lenker 4.1:69; Thisted 2:122–23; Lindner 8:303–4; Leipzig 13:368. 87. Lenker 4.1:73–74; Thisted 2:125–26; Lindner 8:309–10; Leipzig 13:370. 88. Lenker 4.1:73; Thisted 2:125; Lindner 8:310; Leipzig 13:370. 89. Lenker 4.1:67; Thisted 2:121; Lindner 8:301; Leipzig 13:367. 90. JP 1:843; KJN 6, NB11:127; SKS 22, 76; Papirer X.1 A 426. 91. Lenker 2.2:19; Thisted 1:385; Lindner 7:756; Leipzig 14:36. 92. Lenker 2.2:20–21; Thisted 1:386; Lindner 7:758; Leipzig 14:37. 93. See, for example, 1847’s WL 107: “To love God is to love oneself truly; to help another person to love God is to love another person; to be helped by another person to love God is to be loved.” 94. See, for example, from the very same sermon, Lenker 2.2:19; Thisted 1:385; Lindner 7:756; Leipzig 14:36, “For where faith is, there is no anxiety for fine clothing and sumptuous feasting, yea, there is no longing for riches, honor, pleasure, influence and all that is not God himself; but there is a seeking and a striving for and a cleaving to nothing except to God, the highest good alone.” 95. JP 1:843; KJN 5, NB11:127; SKS 22, 76; Papirer X.1 A 426. 96. Lee C. Barrett III, Kierkegaard: Abingdon Pillars of Theology (Nashville: Abingdon, 2010), 12. 97. Evans, Kierkegaard: An Introduction, 5. 98. JP 2:2225; KJN 6, NB10:73; SKS 21, 296; Papirer XI.1 A 151. 99. Lenker 6:247; Thisted 1:398; Lindner 7:786; Leipzig 16:349. 100. Lenker 2.2:47; Thisted 1:393; Lindner 7:774; Leipzig 15:340. 101. Lenker 6:248; Thisted 1:399; Lindner 7:787; Leipzig 16:349. 102. See, for example, 1848’s CD 15: “[The Christian] believes that he has a Father in heaven, who every day opens his benign hand and satisfies everything that

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lives—also him—with his blessing; yet what he seeks is not to become satisfied, but the heavenly Father.” 103. By 1854, Kierkegaard became explicitly disdainful of equating Christianity and marriage, Kirmmse, “Kierkegaard, Jews, and Judaism,” 89–90. By this year Kierkegaard explicitly equates Judaism with marriage: “Judaism is marriage and again marriage: Mutiply and be fruitful, blessings on the race, etc. . . . In Judaism everything is promise for this life, to live long upon the earth,” JP 3:2496; KJN 6, NB11:139; SKS 22, 82; Papirer X.1 A 439. See also JP 6:6876; KJN 5, NB10:71; SKS 21, 295; Papirer XI.1 A 149. Also in 1854, not in reference to a Luther sermon, but in reference to Luther’s marriage to Katharina von Bora, Kierkegaard lances that Luther “should have rather married an ironing board. I mean that he simply should have taken pains to stress the fact: Although I am a monk, I have married—the woman is not at all the important factor here; what was needed was an awakening, and it would have been just as awakening if it had been an ironing board, which naturally would have had to be kept secret. This would have been a way of being salt! But instead Luther became the commander-in-chief of that whole swarm of prolific people or breeders who, inspired by Luther, assume that getting married belongs to true Christianity. . . . Christianity insists on the single state and rather makes marriage the exception,” JP 4:5000; KJN 9, NB30:48; SKS 25, 421; Papirer XI.1 A 226. 104. Lenker 6:248–9; Thisted 1:399; Lindner 7:788; Leipzig 16:349. The italicized, polemic against the papacy, is deleted in Thisted and Lindner. 105. JP 1:843; KJN 6, NB11:127; SKS 22, 76; Papirer X.1 A 426. 106. Lenker 2.2:47; Leipzig 15:340. 107. JP 3:2511; KJN 7, NB15:35; SKS 23, 28; Papirer X.2 A 364. 108. Lenker 4.1:274; Thisted 2:241–42; Lindner 8:570–71; Leipzig 13:588. 109. JP 6:6503; KJN 6, NB13:8; SKS 22, 276; Papirer X.2 A 75. 110. JP 1:843; KJN 6, NB11:127; SKS 22, 76; Papirer X.1 A 426. See also JP 2:2225; KJN 6, NB10:73; SKS 21, 296; Papirer XI.1 A 151: “But men would rather be Jews—sensately holding fast to this life and with divine sanction to boot—than be Christians, that is, be spirit.” 111. JP 1:843; KJN 6, NB11:127; SKS 22, 76; Papirer X.1 A 426. 112. James Arne Nestingen, “Luther on Marriage, Vocation, and the Cross,” Word & World 23 (Winter 2003): 35, points out that the fourth verse of Luther’s most famous hymn, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God,” populary depicts Luther’s normal hierarchy regarding temporal and eternal goods: “And take they our life, Goods, fame, child, and wife, Though these all be gone, Our victory has been won, The kingdom ours remaineth.” 113. JP 3:2517; KJN 5, NB18:86; SKS 23, 314; Papirer X.3 A 138. 114. Lenker 2.1:307; Thisted 1:344; Lindner 7:666–67; Leipzig 13:701. 115. Lenker 2.1:307–8; Thisted 1:344; Lindner 7:667; Leipzig 13:701. 116. Lenker 2.1:323; Thisted 1:349; Lindner 7:676–77; Leipzig 13:708. 117. See also Lenker 2.1:325; Thisted 1:349; Lindner 7:677; Leipzig 13:708: “Christians are set apart from all other people upon earth, not by certain outward signs or certain works which all non-Christians and hypocrites may likewise do, but only by this, that they love Christ and keep his Word. . . . Notice that it is not enough to hear the Word; it must be kept; that is, one must bear witness before all the world in deed

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and in confession, and must stand by the faith even though it should mean the loss of everything on account of it.” 118. Lenker 2.1:316; Thisted 1:348; Lindner 7:674; Leipzig 13:705. 119. Lenker 2.1:332–33; Thisted 1:351; Lindner 7:681–82; Leipzig 13:711. 120. Lenker 2.1:333; Thisted 1:351; Lindner 7:682–83; Leipzig 13:712. 121. Lenker 2.1:333–34; Thisted 1:351; Lindner 7:683; Leipzig 13:712. 122. This note in the margin is an example of Kierkegaard’s use of a two-column format for keeping his journals; see KJN xiv. 123. See, for example, JP 6:6503; KJN 6, NB13:8; SKS 22, 276; Papirer X.2 A 75 and JP 1:843; KJN 6, NB11:127; SKS 22, 76; Papirer X.1 A 426, previously quoted above. 124. JP 3:2554; KJN 10, NB32:67; SKS 26, 166; Papirer XI.1 A 572. 125. Recall 1849’s JP 1:843; KJN 6, NB11:127; SKS 22, 76; Papirer X.1 A 426, as seen above. 126. JP 3:2463; KJN 4, NB3:61; SKS 20, 274; Papirer VIII.1 A 465. 127. JP 3:2465; KJN 4, NB4:152; SKS 20, 357; Papirer VIII.1 A 642. 128. JP 2:1857; KJN 6, NB12:177; SKS 22, 249; Papirer X.2 A 47. 129. See 1520’s “Freedom of Christian”: “This is that Christian liberty, our faith, which does not induce us to live in idleness or wickedness but makes the law and works unnecessary for any man’s righteousness and salvation,” Luther, Selections from His Writings, 58–59. 130. Lenker 1.1:96–98; Thisted 1:42; Lindner 7:56–57; Leipzig 13:70–71. 131. Lenker 1.1:99; Thisted 1:42; Lindner 7:55–56; Leipzig 13:71. The italicized, being anti-papal polemic, is not present in Thisted and Lindner. 132. While the polemic against the papacy is deleted, Luther’s words about the Jews are published on the next page: “All these promises from the beginning are founded on Christ. . . . It is, therefore, in vain if anyone, like the Jews, expects the fulfillment of the divine promises without Christ,” Lenker 1.1:100; Thisted 1:43; Lindner 7:57; Leipzig 13:72. Significantly, deleted from this sermon is again Luther’s similar opinion about the Jews as Kierkegaard’s: “The offense of doctrine comes when one believes, teaches or thinks of Christ in a different way than he should, as the Jews here thought of and taught Christ to be different than he really was, expecting him to be a temporal (weltlichen) king,” Lenker 1.1:104; Leipzig 13:73. 133. Significantly, as we will see in chapter 5, Kierkegaard publishes a sermon in 1851 on this passage from the Epistle of James with direct reference to Luther. But Kierkegaard makes no mention of Luther’s preaching on this passage in either his private or public discourses. 134. Lenker 1:112–13; Thisted 1:50–51; Lindner 7:72; Leipzig 13:77. A scholar could conjecture that perhaps this stringent section of Luther’s sermon was deleted in Thisted and Lindner. But as this footnote reveals, it is indeed the conclusion in Thisted and Lindner. 135. David Schmitt, “Freedom of Form: Law/Gospel and Sermon Structure in Contemporary Lutheran Proclamation,” Concordia Journal 25 (January 1999): 42–50, argues that other weaknesses of the “Law then Gospel” sermon form are that it not only bores hearers with predictability but also often misinterprets scripture by fabricating Law and Gospel out of every text.

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136. Again, “The way in which even Luther speaks of the law and gospel is still not the teaching of Christ. . . . Luther separates the two: the law and the gospel. First the law and then the gospel, which is sheer leniency, etc. This way Christianity becomes optimism anticipating that we are to have an easy life in this world.” JP 3:2554; KJN 10, NB32:67; SKS 26, 166; Papirer XI.1 A 572; Kim and Rasmussen, “Martin Luther,” 196. 137. Kim and Rasmussen, “Martin Luther,” 196. 138. Ibid., 195–96. 139. See JP 2:1852; KJN 5, NB10:163; SKS 21, 337; Papirer X.1 A 246: “I must now take care, or rather God will take care of me, so that I do not go astray by all too one-sidedly staring at Christ as the prototype [Forbilledet]. It is the dialectical element connected with Christ as the gift, as that which is given to us (to call to mind Luther’s standard classification). But dialectical as my nature is, in the passion of the dialectical it always seems as if the contrasting thought were not present at all—and so the one side comes first of all and most strongly.” 140. As the early church struggled to binocularly behold Christ’s human and divine natures, the modern church struggles to binocularly behold Christ as Redeemer and Prototype. 141. Eller, Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship, 354. 142. Ibid. Kierkegaard concisely prefaces Practice in Christianity similarly, propounding the ultimate purpose of the Prototype presented in Practice, PC 7: “From the Christian point of view, there ought to be no scaling down of the requirement, nor suppression of it—instead of a personal admission and confession. The requirement should be heard—and I understand what is said as spoken to me alone—so that I might learn to resort to grace but to resort to it in relation to the use of grace.” 143. Paul W. Robinson, Martin Luther: A Life Reformed (Boston: Longman, 2010), 75–77. See Grimm, “The Human Element in Luther’s Sermons,” 59: “As early as November, 1528, Luther threatened to give up preaching. ‘I greatly regret that I freed you from the tyrants and papists. You ungrateful beasts do not deserve the gospel treasure. If you do not reconsider and mend your ways, I will stop preaching to you and will no longer cast pearls before the swine or give what is holy to the dogs.’” 144. WA 37:394–95 in Fred W. Meuser, Luther the Preacher (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1983), 24–25. 145. Heinrich Bornkamm, Luther in Mid-career: 1521–1530, ed. Karin Bornkamm, trans. E. Theodore Bachmann (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), 227. 146. Lee Barrett, “The Joy in the Cross: Kierkegaard’s Appropriation of Lutheran Christology in ‘The Gospel of Sufferings,’” in Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, ed. Robert L. Perkins, vol. 15 of International Kierkegaard Commentary (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2005), 266, “[Kierkegaard] appropriated the doctrines but ignored the scholastic conceptuality in which they were embedded. Rather than attempting to promote comprehension by locating concepts in a theoretic system, Kierkegaard provides a new context for understanding the teachings, situating them in the ‘pathos,’ the set of deep and pervasive interests, concerns, and passions, that give them significance.” 147. Timothy H. Polk, “Kierkegaard’s Use of the New Testament: Intratextuality, Indirect Communication, and Appropriation,” in Kierkegaard and the Bible: Tome

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II: The New Testament, ed. Lee C. Barrett and Jon Stewart, vol. 1 of Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, ed. Jon Stewart (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), 241. 148. Gouwens, Kierkegaard as Religious Thinker, 10–12. 149. See CUP 23–57; PC 25–31. 150. PC 9. 151. CUP 596. 152. PC 87. 153. PC 94. 154. PC 102. 155. Cf. Luther’s Heidelberg Theses: “19: The one who beholds what is invisible of God, through the perception of what is made, is not rightly called a theologian. 20: But rather the one who perceives what is visible of God’s ‘backside,’ by beholding the sufferings and the cross.” Luther, Selections from His Writings, 502. Merold Westphal, “Kenosis and Offense,” in Practice in Christianity, ed. Robert L. Perkins, vol. 20 of International Kierkegaard Commentary (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2004), 19, writes, “Kierkegaard is in many respects simply a good Lutheran. The distinction in Practice in Christianity between the lowly and abased Jesus with who we can become contemporary and the exalted and glorified Christ with whom we cannot now, since he has not yet come in his glory, echoes the theologia crucis of Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation of 1518.” 156. Rose, Kierkegaard’s Christocentric Theology, 115: “Not only does the believer see God revealed in the cross of Christ, she also comes to know God through taking up her own ‘cross’ of following the crucified Christ.” 157. Cf. the German word for “disciple,” “Nachfolger.” Both the Danish and German are literally “after-follower.” The Hong translations translate “Efterføgelse” and “Efterfølger” as “imitation” and “imitator”. Many Kierkegaard scholars, including Arnold B. Come, Kierkegaard as Theologian: Recovering My Self (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997), 278, are uncomfortable with Hong’s choice for its association with Thomas à Kempis’s De imitatione Christi, making possible a Catholic interpretation of Kierkegaard. Catholic theologian Dupré, Kierkegaard as Theologian, 216–22, argues that while Kierkegaard attacked the Lutheranism of his day, Kierkegaard’s final attack on any established church would inhibit his return to Rome. Eller, Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship, 176, though, prefers “imitation” because “disciple” can suggest mere adherence to a philosophy rather than outward obedience. Eller summarizes that Kierkegaard’s “insistence upon outward obedience served simply to magnify the role of grace—when he did this, he made himself not a crypto-Catholic but a Protestant’s Protestant.” 158. Kierkegaard, PC 205, is ardent to abrogate the distinction between knowing and being in Christianity: “Christ is the truth in the sense that to be the truth is the only true explanation of what truth is. . . . This means that truth in the sense in which Christ is the truth is not a sum of statements, not a definition etc., but a life.” 159. PC 241. 160. Cf. Althaus, The Ethics of Martin Luther, 17–18: “As a man through his actions becomes aware of what faith means, he also becomes certain that he believes. Faith that is exercised thus becomes certain of itself in a twofold sense. First, the

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practice of works is the test of faith. Our works show that we have faith and thereby make us certain both that we have faith and that we are saved. . . . Second, such exercise also trains faith. As faith is realized in the concrete situations of life it becomes stronger, increases, and grows.” 161. PC 237–38. 162. Westphal, “Kenosis and Offense,” 21, writes, “We find a kenotic Christology (at once a metaphysics and an epistemology) linked inextricably with a kenotic ethic of imitatio Christi.” 163. UDVS 221. 164. PC 211–12. 165. JP 6:6503; KJN 6, NB13:8; SKS 22, 276; Papirer X.2 A 75. 166. JP 6:6503; KJN 6, NB13:8; SKS 22, 276; Papirer X.2 A 75. 167. Ferreira, Love’s Grateful Striving, 124: “The point, then, is the attenuation of anxiety rather than the mitigation of the law.” 168. Barrett, Kierkegaard, 67–68. 169. EUD 122: “Just as faith and hope without love are but sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal, so all the joy proclaimed in the world in which sorrow is not heard along with it is but sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal that tickle the ears but are repulsive to the soul.” 170. JFY 147. 171. JP 3:2529; KJN 8, NB21:72; SKS 24, 50; Papirer X.3 A 516. Recall that this sermon being commented on in 1850 was the very first “Wonderful” sermon of Luther that Kierkegaard read in 1847 (JP 3:2463; KJN 4, NB3:61; SKS 20, 274; Papirer VIII.1 A 465). 172. Thisted 1:15; Lindner 7:7; Leipzig 13:12 (translation, mine). 173. JP 3:2529; KJN 8, NB21:72; SKS 24, 50; Papirer X.3 A 516. 174. JP 1:209; KJN 5, NB8:67; SKS 21, 173; Papirer IX A 442: “Emphasis on the Bible has brought forth a religiosity of learning and legal chicanery, sheer division. A kind of knowledge of this sort has gradually trickled down to the simplest people so that no one can read the Bible humanly any more. But this works irreparable damage; with regard to what it means to exist, its presence is like a fortress of excuses and escapes, etc., for there is always something we have to take care of first, always this illusion that we must first have the doctrine in perfect form before we can begin to live—that is, we never get around to the latter.” 175. Polk, “Kierkegaard’s Use of the New Testament,” 241–43. 176. JFY 191. 177. JFY 194. 178. JP 2:1908; KJN 8, NB25:35; SKS 24, 459; Papirer X.4 A 459. 179. JP 2:1908; KJN 8, NB25:35; SKS 24, 459; Papirer X.4 A 459. Recall another corroboration of Kierkegaard’s, JP 2:1857; KJN 6, NB12:177; SKS 22, 249; Papirer X.2 A 47: “I find what [Luther] says about preaching the law corresponds to what I am accustomed to say concerning the use of the prototype in order to preach men to bits so that they turn to grace.” 180. This especially came to the fore in Luther’s lifetime in his conflict with Agricola and the Antinomians. Against the Antinomians, who believed the Law had no place in the proclamation of the Gospel, Luther asserted, “Whoever abolishes the

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law abolishes the gospel also,” for the significance of the Gospel can only be comprehended by the prerequisite need created by the Law. See Lohse, Martin Luther’s Theology, 181–82. See also Ebeling, Luther: An Introduction to His Thought, 118: “The gospel is not present in a pure and undefiled form when it stands on its own, untroubled and undisturbed, with its relation to the law never considered. For the gospel only comes into action when it does so in distinction from and in opposition to the law—and when as a result the law is really the law.” 181. Lenker 1:19; Thisted 1:15; Lindner 7:7–8; Leipzig 13:12. 182. Kittleson, Luther the Reformer, 180. 183. JP 3:2544; Papirer XI.2 A 303. 184. Lenker 1:23–24; Thisted 1:18; Lindner 7:12; Leipzig 13:14. 185. Lenker 1:26; Thisted 1:19; Lindner 7:14; Leipzig 13:15. 186. JP 3:2554; KJN 10, NB32:67; SKS 26, 166; Papirer XI.1 A 572. 187. JP 3:2554; KJN 10, NB32:67; SKS 26, 166; Papirer XI.1 A 572. 188. Lori Unger Brandt, “Kierkegaard’s Use of the Old Testament,” in Kierkegaard and the Bible: Tome I: The Old Testament, ed. Lee C. Barrett and Jon Stewart, vol. 1 of Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, ed. Jon Stewart (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), 232. 189. Ibid., 232–33. 190. See the 1843 journal comment, JP 1:206; KJN 2, JJ:146; SKS 18, 188; Papirer IV A 143: “It is not easy to have both the Old and the New Testament, for the O.T. contains altogether different categories. What, indeed, would the N.T. say about a faith which believes that it is going to be well off in the world, in temporality, instead of giving this up in order to grasp the eternal.” 191. FT 49. 192. EUD 109–24. 193. R 304. 194. In 1849 Kierkegaard expressed private resentment that Goldschmidt was temporally well-received back into to Danish culture with the publication of the more respectable journal Nord og Syd in 1847 after leaving the gossipy Corsair and vacating to the Continent for a year, while he, Kierkegaard, continued to suffer from the effects of The Corsair. See JP 6:6321; KJN 5, NB9:67; SKS 21, 241; Papirer X.1 A 67. 195. Kirmmse, “Kierkegaard, Jews, and Judaism,” 87. 196. JP 2:1433; KJN 9, NB27:39; SKS 25, 152; Papirer X.5 A 39. 197. Walsh, Living Christianly, 113. 198. Walsh, “Standing at the Crossroads,” 132–33. 199. CD 151. 200. CD vi. 201. Kierkegaard journals in 1852, JP 2:1433; KJN 9, NB27:39; SKS 25, 152; Papirer X.5 A 39, “When God involves himself with a man, he says something like this: I love you, be eternally convinced of it, I, who am eternally love. This does not mean unqualified suffering, although it may begin. O, but if this love of mine stirs you, and you wish—and this is indeed my will—gratefully to love your God in return, then it must become suffering. Just do not become impatient, and you will find that

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you will do well. But I cannot alter my majesty in such a way that when the most blessed of all is granted you or permitted you—to love your God—that things become easier—no, they will get harder, there is more suffering—yet behind all this is my confiding that this is love.” 202. Martin Andic, “The Secret of Sufferings.” in Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, ed. Robert L. Perkins, vol. 15 of International Kierkegaard Commentary (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2005), 201. Cf. Luther’s being plagued by the taunt, “Are you alone wise?” See Bainton, “Luther’s Struggle for Faith,” 197. 203. JP 3:2554; KJN 10, NB32:67; SKS 26, 166; Papirer XI.1 A 572. 204. JP 2:1434; KJN 9, NB27:54; SKS 25, 166; Papirer X.5 A 55. 205. JP 2:1434; KJN 9, NB27:54; SKS 25, 166; Papirer X.5 A 55. 206. Walsh, Living Christianly, 122. 207. JP 2:1434; KJN 9, NB27:54; SKS 25, 166; Papirer X.5 A 55. See also JP 3:2507; KJN 6, NB14:68; SKS 22, 386; Papirer X.2 A 244: “Luther’s teaching is not only a return to original Christianity but a modification of the essentially Christian. He one-sidedly draws Paul forward and uses the gospels less. He himself best disproves his conception of the Bible, he who throws out the epistle of James. Why? Because it does not belong to the canon? No, this he does not deny. But on dogmatic grounds. Therefore he himself has a point of departure superior to the Bible.” 208. Kierkegaard is not alone in this adjudication of Luther. Fred W. Meuser, “Luther as Preacher of the Word of God,” in The Cambridge Companion to Martin Luther, ed. Donald K. McKim (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 138, notes, “Critics have accused Luther of being so prejudiced in favor of Paul that he almost ignored the rest of the New Testament. They have implied that, because Romans and Galatians were basic to his doctrine, he pushed the Gospels aside in favor of a few favorite epistle texts. Those who have read his sermons know better.” 209. See, for example, UDVS 229. 210. Lori Unger Brandt, “Paul: Herald of Grace and Paradigm of Christian Living,” in Kierkegaard and the Bible: Tome II: The New Testament, ed. Lee C. Barrett and Jon Stewart, vol. 1 of Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, ed. Jon Stewart (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), 198–99. Brandt insightfully notes, Ibid., 192–93, that Kierkegaard followed a Lutheran Pietist reading of Paul in the vein of Spener and Francke, in which they emphasized the Pauline themes of internal regeneration and sanctification, not extrinsic imputed justification alone. 211. Luther, Selections from His Writings, 14. 212. Ibid., 18–19. 213. Ibid., 19. 214. Ibid., 35–36. 215. CUP 26. 216. Lenker 1:112–13; Thisted 1:50–51; Lindner 7:72; Leipzig 13:77. “Even those who gladly hear and understand the doctrine of pure faith do not proceed to serve their neighbor, as though they expected to be saved by faith without works; they see not that their faith is not faith, but a shadow of faith, just as the picture in the mirror is not the face itself, but only a reflection of the same, as St. James so beautifully writes, saying, ‘But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deluding your own

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selves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a mirror; for he beholdeth himself, and goeth away, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was,’ James 1, 22–25.” See chapter 5 for Kierkegaard’s laud of this same passage from James. 217. Kyle A. Roberts, “James: Putting Faith to Action,” in Kierkegaard and the Bible: Tome II: The New Testament, ed. Lee C. Barrett and Jon Stewart, vol. 1 of Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, ed. Jon Stewart (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), 209–10.

Chapter 5

Lauding Luther in Kierkegaard’s Public Discourse

In the two previous chapters we have seen Kierkegaard’s ambivalent private relation to Luther. He lauds Luther for preaching a sigh, interweaving straightway Christianity’s positive and negative qualifications, securing a correct understanding and expression of Christianity. And he lances Luther for the perceived lack of the same. Underlying Kierkegaard’s adjudications is his concern not to obviate the requisite suffering works of love induced by Christ the Prototype from the proclamation of Christ the Redeemer. Obviate the Prototype from the Redeemer, and the Redeemer justifies Jewish worldliness instead of Christian discipleship. While we saw that Luther’s sermons are not as stringent as Kierkegaard stressed, we also saw that Luther’s sermons do not abrogate Christian works of love and suffering as Kierkegaard sometimes lanced. Kierkegaard’s reading of Luther is simply colored by his post-Luther antinomian context, and Kierkegaard’s ardent concern to correct this context was more important to him than reading Luther’s sermons holistically. Given his post-Luther context and his cursory reading of Luther, Kierkegaard sometimes privately misconceived that the problem lied with Luther’s original preaching. But when the time came to publicly address his fellow Lutherans on the abrogation of suffering works of love in nineteenthcentury Danish State Lutheranism and their regard of Luther, Kierkegaard astoundingly cloaked the dagger with which he privately lanced Luther’s sermons behind the veneer of public veneration of Luther, laying all the blame on the Lutheran leaders and laity who have taken Luther in vain. As Hermann Diem noted,1 Kierkegaard in his public discourses was all laud of Luther. This chapter, counterpointing the locus classicus of Kierkegaard’s public discourse on Luther with Kierkegaard’s private discourse on Luther, reveals how Kierkegaard swallowed his private lances of Luther to publicly present 175

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his own idealized Lutherbild as he wanted Lutherans to inherit Luther, fortuitously portraying Luther as the dialectician he actually was. The locus classicus of Kierkegaard’s public discourse on Luther, as opposed to his private discourse in his journals, is his 1851 published discourse entitled “What Is Required in Order to Look at Oneself with True Blessing in the Mirror of the Word?,”2 not coincidentally based upon James 1:22–27: But be ye doers of the Word, and not only hearers of it, whereby you deceive yourselves. If anyone is a hearer of the Word and not a doer of it, he is like a man who observes his bodily face in a mirror, for he would observe himself and go away and at once forget what he was like. But he who looks into the perfect law of freedom and perseveres has not become a forgetful hearer but a doer of a work; he shall be blessed in his work. If anyone among you thinks he is a worshiper of God but does not hold his tongue in check and deceives his own heart, his worship of God is vain. Pure undefiled worship before God and the Father is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their distress and to keep oneself undefiled by the world.3

By the publishing of this public discourse, Kierkegaard has been privately reading and commenting on Luther’s sermons for four years and has several insights on Luther to share with his Lutheran public. LUTHER’S MEDIEVAL HEARERS AND KIERKEGAARD’S MODERN HEARERS While Kierkegaard’s main point for his audience in this discourse is instruction in reading the Bible “humanly”4 instead of scholarly, Kierkegaard prefaces the discourse with ten pages of historical insight for the public to understand what happened in Luther’s medieval day and how that has affected Lutherans in Kierkegaard’s modern day. Contemplating Luther’s medieval context and audience, Kierkegaard diagnosed disparate religious crises in Luther’s Middle Ages and his own late-Enlightenment Lutheranism. While the former was abusing works, the latter was abusing faith. While the former was Pelagian, the latter was Antinomian. While the former idealized the ascetic monk, the latter idealized the worldly philosopher. While the former groaned with an anxious conscience pre-Gospel, the latter crowed about their freedom post-Gospel. Given this distinction, Kierkegaard critiqued that Luther’s method of preaching to an audience already burdened with anxious consciences could not be universalized as a preaching method for all time. After an invocation, Kierkegaard begins the discourse advancing that different times have different requirements: “Times are different, and even

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though the times are often like a human being—he changes completely but nevertheless remains just as foolish, only in a new pattern—it nevertheless is true that times are different and different times have different requirements.”5 The time Kierkegaard publicly contrasts to his own is Luther’s Middle Ages: There was a time when the Gospel, grace, was changed into a new Law, more rigorous with people than the old Law.6 . . . Everything had become works. And just like unhealthy growths, thus were often only hypocrisy, the conceitedness of merit, idleness. The error was precisely there and not so much in the works. Let us not go too far; let us not make a previous age’s error an excuse for a new error. No, take this unhealthiness and falsity away from the works and let us then retain the works in honesty, in humility, in beneficial activity.7

Before introducing Luther to the public, Kierkegaard already warns that it is not the works themselves that are the problem of the Middle Ages but the attachment of soteriological merit to them.8 Without the hypocrisy of merit, works are always beneficial to the kingdom of God.9 Privately, Kierkegaard had been musing about this distinction between his and Luther’s times for several years prior to this public discourse. Kierkegaard viewed Luther as a man of the Middle Ages, an age whose error Kierkegaard described as “a mistaken, deluded inflation of asceticism.”10 During this period, the imitation of Christ via monastic asceticism was the church’s prescribed soteriological methodology, of which Kierkegaard ambivalently approved. The error of the medieval period for Kierkegaard was not its monastic methodology, per se, but the vain “imagining that men could possibly manage to be like Christ”11 in the first place and believing that such imitation was meritorious for salvation. Kierkegaard summarizes, “The degeneration was not so much the monastic life as the meritoriousness it was presumed to have.”12 Being a product of the Middle Ages, Luther anxiously attempted monasticism for the sake of meriting his salvation. But Luther was of such an exacting conscience that, after years of attempt, he not only knew he could not imitate Christ but also he could not assuage a wrathful God. Luther anxiously felt his every good work for soteriological merit as presumptuous, prideful, and even resentful of God. As described in chapter 1, after years of despairing effort to merit salvation for himself, Luther’s scriptural discovery of the full merit of Christ alone given by grace alone— received by faith alone—without any merit of his own works was a subjective and existential relief to Luther: “I felt as if I were entirely born again.”13 Given Luther’s medieval context, Kierkegaard privately respected Luther’s timely message of grace to a works-ridden Middle Ages: “Since the Middle Ages had gone farther and farther astray in accentuating the aspect of Christ as the prototype—Luther came along and accentuated the other side, that he is a gift and this gift is to be received in faith.”14

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But while privately praising Luther’s prescription of grace alone in Luther’s medieval context, Kierkegaard recognized that the context of nineteenth-century Denmark was the opposite of the medieval Christianity of Luther’s time. For 300 years, Lutheranism had been the state church of Denmark, but Danish Lutheran Christendom, generations removed, no longer possessed an anxious conscience similar to Luther’s or Luther’s medieval hearers. They assented objectively to the doctrine of justification and took it to such a one-sided extreme that the doctrine of justification by grace alone apart from works served as justification for ceasing to do works altogether.15 Because of the change in the historic situation from the Middle Ages to modernity, Kierkegaard corrects that Luther’s message has to be taken with a grain of salt. Luther’s message, while true, presupposes a medieval audience, works-ridden and hungry for grace, but the nineteenth century is not the same audience: Luther’s approach presupposes that men are suffering under fear and trembling and spiritual trials, therefore console, console them, reassure them, reassure them so that no such poor Christian man sits in mortal anxiety and doubts his salvation—O, I know what this means—therefore reassure them. O, dear Luther, where are these Christian men you speak of? And if such an individual is found ever so seldom, can and ought this be made the universal principle we swindlers have made it by taking advantage of Luther?16 Luther laments (in the sermon on the Epistle for the Fourth Sunday in Lent) that there are many more who want to hear the law proclaimed rather than the gospel. In our day it is exactly the opposite. They want to hear nothing at all except gospel, gospel.17

Therefore, Kierkegaard recognized that in the Middle Ages, Luther preached the right message to those burdened with anxious consciences. But in nineteenth-century Denmark, when hearers are not burdened with the same and are abusing the doctrine of justification, another homiletic is needed. Kierkegaard summarizes, The error of the Middle Ages was in imagining that men could possibly manage to be like Christ. From this came sanctification by works and the like. Then came Luther and quite rightly emphasized Christ as gift and made the distinction between Christ as gift and as pattern as between faith and works. But I wonder if Luther ever dreamed of the pretense involved in the hidden inwardness which this has engendered.18

So privately before this public discourse, Kierkegaard has already thought through this distinction between his and Luther’s times, and he privately wonders about Luther’s aptitude for dialectical foresight.

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But publicly, having accounted for medieval meritology, Kierkegaard heroically introduces Luther to his nineteenth-century Danish Lutheran public: “At that time appeared a man from God and with faith, Martin Luther; with faith (for truly this required faith) or by faith he established faith in its rights.”19 Straightway, Kierkegaard dialectically presents Luther to the Lutheran public as a man of both faith and works, not someone who so stressed faith so as to exclude works: “His life expressed works—let us never forget that—but he said: A person is saved by faith alone.”20 Kierkegaard then explains that the malady of merit-based works-righteousness in the Middle Ages was so grave that Luther was required to resort to grave measures for a corrective: “The danger was great. I know of no stronger expression of how great it was in Luther’s eyes than that he decided that in order to get things straight: the Apostle James must be shoved aside. Imagine Luther’s respect for the apostle—and then to have to dare to do this in order to get faith restored to its rights!”21 Notice how lauding Kierkegaard is toward Luther in public. Kierkegaard even distorts what he knows of Luther’s history in order to present Luther in the most pious light to the public. As we saw in chapter 4 on Luther’s comments on James, Kierkegaard knew that Luther did not wholly respect James because of the lack of Luther’s emphasis on salvation by grace in James’s epistle, and Kierkegaard did not respect Luther’s gradation of different books of the New Testament. In private, in 1849, Kierkegaard lanced Luther for his jettison of James: Luther’s teaching is not only a return to original Christianity but a modification of the essentially Christian. He one-sidedly draws Paul forward and uses the gospels less. He himself best disproves his conception of the Bible, he throws out the epistle of James. Why? Because it does not belong to the canon? No, this he does not deny. But on dogmatic grounds. Therefore he himself has a point of departure superior to the Bible.22

But recall that Kierkegaard cursorily missed Luther’s positive comments on James in Luther’s Third Sunday in Advent Gospel postil.23 Although Kierkegaard did not have a full picture of Luther’s ambivalent relation to James, Kierkegaard’s private lance—“(Luther) throws out the epistle of James”—proves that Kierkegaard’s public laud—“Imagine Luther’s respect for the apostle (James)”—was a charitable effort by Kierkegaard to swallow his private lance and laud Luther in the best possible light before his Lutheran inheritors. By this point in 1851, Kierkegaard has been privately ambivalent in his relation to Luther—sometimes blaming Lutherans for their abuse of Luther’s doctrine—sometimes blaming Luther for Lutherans’ abuse of Luther’s

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doctrine. While twentieth-century Luther scholarship largely blames Melanchthon and his methodological inheritors for their lack of melancholy and loss of Luther’s anxious conscience in Lutheran theology,24 Kierkegaard himself is not of this anti-Melanchthon persuasion. Kierkegaard adjudicated that Luther’s contemporaries (e.g., Melanchthon) understood Luther correctly: “Luther’s contemporaries, especially his intimates, received the strong impression that he was a hero of the faith, at first excessively melancholy and then dreadfully tested in the most frightful spiritual trials [Anfægtelser], a devout, God-fearing man, and as such essentially a stranger in the world.”25 Instead of Melanchthon, Kierkegaard privately lays much of the blame for this at the feet of Luther himself. But in this public discourse in 1851, Kierkegaard is all laud of Luther and all lance of later Lutherans. Kierkegaard continues the public discourse painting an ideological picture of how later Lutherans took Luther in vain: But what happened? There is always a secular mentality that no doubt wants to have the name of being Christian but wants to become Christian as cheaply as possible. This secular mentality became aware of Luther. . . . It said, “Excellent! This is something for us. Luther says: It depends on faith alone. He himself does not say that his life expresses works, and since he is now dead it is no longer an actuality. So we take his words, his doctrine—and we are free from all works— long live Luther! Wer nicht liebt Weiber, Wein, Gesang / Er wird ein Narr sein Leben lang [Who loves not women, wine, and song / He is a fool his whole life long].26 This is the meaning of Luther’s life, this man of God who, in keeping with the times, reformed Christianity.”27

The fault lies with a universal secular mentality that wants both remission of sin and permission to sin.28 Kierkegaard interprets that Lutherans sagaciously contrived this contradiction by minimizing Luther’s life while magnifying Luther’s message. “They applied grace in such a way that they freed themselves from works.”29 Kierkegaard qualifies and conditions, “Even though not everyone took Luther in vain in such a downright secular way—in every human being there is an inclination either to want to be meritorious when it comes to works or, when faith and grace are to be emphasized, also to want to be free from works as far as possible.”30 But for Kierkegaard, “true Lutheranism”—“Christianity”—is not an either/or of either grace or works; instead, it is a dialectic that sighs, “Your life should express works as strenuously as possible; then one thing more is required— that you humble yourself and confess: But my being saved is nevertheless grace.”31 Thus far in his public discourse, the fault lies with the public, not with Luther.

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LUTHER RESURRECTED IN KIERKEGAARD’S DENMARK In the discourse, characteristically disregarding himself as an authority, Kierkegaard imaginatively raises Luther from the dead as authority and hypothetical judge over the nineteenth-century Lutheran situation: “I assume, then, that Luther has risen from his grave. For several years now he has been living among us but incognito; he has been observing the lives we lead, has been scrutinizing everyone in this regard and me also.”32 Luther interrogates Kierkegaard: “Are you a believer? Do you have faith?”33 Kierkegaard, in his characteristic Socratic manner, replies to Luther, “No, dear Luther, I have at least shown the respect of saying: I do not have faith.”34 But then Kierkegaard replies for the sake of hypothetical illustration for his presumptuous audience, “Yes, I am a believer.”35 “Why, then,” responds Luther, “have I not noticed anything in you? I have indeed been observing your life, and you know that faith is a restless thing (Troen er en urolig Ting).36 To what end has faith, which you say you have, made you restless, where have you witnessed for the truth, where against untruth, what sacrifices have you made, what persecution have you suffered for your Christianity, and at home in your domestic life where have your self-denial and renunciation been noticeable?”37

Here, Kierkegaard presents Luther not only as one whose “life expressed works”38 but also, if Luther were raised from the dead, he would personally ask if your life expressed works. Three times Kierkegaard comically assures Luther that he has faith, to which Luther replies, “Assure, assure—what kind of talk is that? In connection with having faith, no assurances are needed if one has it (since faith is a restless thing and is noticed at once), and no assurance can help if one does not have it.”39 Luther then lectures Kierkegaard about restless faith and its relation to real preaching: No, my friend, faith is a restless thing. It is health, but stronger and more violent than the most burning fever. . . . If, however, one senses the restlessness of faith as the pulse of your life, you can be said to have faith and to “witness” to the faith. And this, in turn, is essentially what it is to preach, because to preach is neither to describe faith in books nor as a speaker to describe in “quiet hours” that which, as I have said in a sermon, should actually “not be preached in churches but on the street,”40 nor is it to be a speaker but a witness—in other words, faith, this restless thing, should be recognizable in his life.41

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Kierkegaard is here using Luther as a pseudonym and authoritative mouthpiece for taking indirect jabs at the authority of Danish Lutheranism, Bishop Mynster. Privately, in 1850, Kierkegaard lauded, “Luther rightly says (in the sermon about Stephen) that there should be no preaching in the churches.”42 But five years later, Kierkegaard privately lanced that Luther did not carry this out, relegating Luther to the same category as Mynster: Luther declares in one of his sermons that preaching actually should not be done inside of churches. He says this in a sermon which as a matter of fact was delivered inside a church. So it was nothing more than talk; he did not carry it out in earnest. But certainly preaching should not be done inside of churches. It is extremely damaging for Christianity and represents a changing (a modifying) of Christianity by placing it at an artistic distance from actuality instead of letting it be heard right in the middle of actuality—and precisely for the sake of conflict, for all this talk about quiet and quiet places and quiet hours as the proper element for the essentially Christian is upside down. Therefore preaching should not be done in churches but on the street, right in the middle of life, the actuality of ordinary, weekday life.43

As noted in chapter 1, Mynster not only published several homiletic books, but Kierkegaard was critical that Mynster’s weekday life did not witness to his Sunday message. Kierkegaard detests a Christianity reduced to the “quiet hours” of being in church on Sunday morning, noting in his journal in 1848, [Mynster] has always been very fond of “these quiet hours in holy places” because: (1) he distributes the religious as an ingredient in life, not as the absolute, (2) he takes a thousand things into account and wants to be sure of them before he opens his mouth (in short, his discourse has to be a masterpiece and delivering it a triumph), (3) he personally wants to protect himself and remain aloof.—It would be impossible, yes, most impossible of all, for Mynster to preach in the public square. And yet preaching in churches has practically become paganism and theatricality, and Luther was very right in declaring that preaching should really not be done in churches.44

Hence, although privately critical of Luther’s indoor preaching, in his public discourse, the resurrected Luther is Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous authority on a restless faith recognized outdoors, indirectly unmasking the masquerading Mynster. LUTHER AS REFORMER After lancing Mynster with Luther, Kierkegaard then goes after the crowing crowd in his public discourse. In the vein of the Enlightenment times, political

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and religious powers were being extracted from the Danish monarchy and state church and becoming more democratic. The momentous 1848 transition from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy, along with the evergrowing popularity of N. F. S. Grundtvig’s Danish Folkekirke,45 was heralded as a time of popular “reformation.”46 But speaking to the nature of authentic religious reformations, Kierkegaard proclaims that they are not the product of mutinous crowds, who always merely demand greater political and external ease.47 True reformation demands greater spiritual and internal suffering, which is the product of “a solitary person in spiritual trial (Anfægtelse),” “like Luther in a cloister cell or in a remote room,” Kierkegaard illustrates.48 Then Kierkegaard describes the spiritual agony with which the true reformer reforms: That for which he has suffered in spiritual trial (Anfægtelse) must now be transposed into actuality. Do you think he enjoys it? Truly, rest assured that anyone who comes down these paths shouting with joy has not been called. There is not one of those called who has not preferred to be exempted, not one who, as a child begs and pleads to be let off, has not pleaded for himself, but it does not help—he must go on.49

Inevitably persecution by the crowd follows for the true reformer, and his few loyal comrades cry out, “Be careful! You are making yourself and everybody else unhappy. Stop now and do not make the terror more intense.”50 But the reformer cannot stop because “as soon as he turns to flee he sees—he sees an even greater horror behind him, the horror of spiritual trial (Anfægteslse), and he must go forward—so he goes forward; now he is perfectly calm, because the horror of spiritual trial is a formidable disciplinarian.”51 Kierkegaard publicly portrays Luther as that kind of reformer, struggling against the double danger of his own Anfægtelse and persecution by others, both dialectically concomitant to authentic Christianity. In another 1851 discourse that was published posthumously in 1876, Kierkegaard contrasts Luther the Reformer to nineteenth-century popular reform: When the Church needed a reformation, no one reported for duty, there was no crowd to join up; all fled away. Only one solitary man, the reformer, was disciplined in all secrecy by fear and trembling and much spiritual trial (Anfægteslse) for venturing the extraordinary in God’s name. Now that all want reform, there is an uproar as if it were in a public dance hall. This cannot be God’s idea but is a foppish human device, which is why, instead of fear and trembling and much spiritual trial, there is: hurrah, bravo, applause, balloting, bumbling, hubbub, noise—and false alarm.52

Hence, reformation is not the triumphant time of a crowd crowing for augmented civil liberties but a militant time of a sighing individual fired by Anfægtelse before God and persecution before men.

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Although publicly in this discourse Kierkegaard lauds Luther and his preReformation experience of Anfægtelse as the prerequisite of a true reformer, privately Kierkegaard is more ambivalent about Luther’s capacity as a reformer during the Reformation. Positively, as noted in chapter 1, Kierkegaard especially lauds Luther’s pre-Reformation spiritual trial (Anfægteslse) as a Catholic monk anguished before God, as he pictures “Luther in a cloister cell” in the above public discourse. Kierkegaard often refers to Luther’s period of spiritual trial as “twenty years,”53 a prolonged period of existential striving that validates Luther’s authority as a reformer: But why, then, do we not want to understand that there is this kind of difference when someone (Luther, for example), after having fasted and disciplined his flesh for twenty years and consequently conscious of being able to do this and able at any time to do this if necessary, says: No, it does not depend on this—and when we say the same thing, we who have not even tried. Are there no grounds for being suspicious about oneself if one has not tried at all?54

While lauding the pre-Reformation Luther’s Anfægtelse privately and publicly, Kierkegaard does not publicly mention his private lances of Luther’s later activity as a reformer after the cloister and Tower experience. Kierkegaard privately lanced that Luther’s Reformation quickly became too political and therefore too easy for a capricious crowd to quickly jump on a political party wagon. “True reforming always makes life difficult, lays on burdens, and therefore the true reformer is always slain, as if it were enmity toward mankind.”55 But Kierkegaard believes that Luther’s taking the focus off the spiritual trial of each individual and placing it on a spiritual wrong of the Pope, falsely won Luther popular support rather than local persecution.56 In 1850, the year prior to publicly lauding Luther in the 1851 discourse, Kierkegaard extensively lanced Luther privately: When I look at Luther, I often come to think that there is something dubious about him—a reformer who wants to throw off the yoke is questionable. This is precisely why he was promptly taken in vain politically; for he himself as well as his whole position share a common boundary with politics—not attacking “the crowd” but a high-ranking individual. This is why the battle was so easy for Luther. What is difficult is simply having to suffer because one has to make things more difficult for others. When one is fighting to throw off burdens, he is, of course, promptly understood by a whole mass of people who are interested in having burdens thrown off. Consequently the proper Christian mark of double danger is missing here. In a certain sense Luther took the matter too lightly. He ought to have made it obvious that the freedom he was fighting for (and in this battle he was right) leads to making life, the life of the spirit, infinitely more strenuous than it was before. If he had rigorously kept to that, then surely no one

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would have cared to line up with him, and he would have experienced the double danger; for no one joins forces with someone—in order to have his life made more strenuous. But he swung too hastily. Jubilantly, politically jubilantly, the contemporary age embraced his cause, joined the party—Luther wants to topple the Pope—bravo! Well, all I can say is that this is pure political bargaining.57

While the above privately lays the blame on Luther, Kierkegaard could also privately sympathize with Luther and lay the blame on Lutherans’ misreading of Luther, as in the following journal entry from 1851: To think of Luther as popular is a total misunderstanding. No, no. By what means did Luther become so popular? Well, look more closely and you will see the connection. It was found that the Pope had become too expensive—and then Luther was taken in vain and through the turn which he gave to the matter men thought to get salvation a little cheaper, absolutely free. It is never popular to enter earnestly into the way Luther took. No, the object of popular rage was that the Pope was too expensive, especially when word got around that there was the possibility of getting the same thing completely gratis without any expense whatsoever. . . . Luther’s way in its essential truth, with its more precise understanding, is infinitely too high, much much too intended for “spirit,” ever to become really popular.58

While Kierkegaard expresses a private ambivalence shown in the above two journal entries, Kierkegaard’s public discourses on Luther’s performance as a reformer are all laudable. In the posthumously published discourse that Kierkegaard wrote in 1851, he lauds Luther as a disciple of Christ the Prototype, heterogenous to the world’s values: This is Christian piety: renouncing everything to serve God alone, to deny oneself in order to serve God alone—and then to have to suffer for it—to do good and then to have to suffer for it. It is this that the prototype expresses; it is also this, to mention a mere man, that Luther, the superb teacher of our Church, continually points out as belonging to true Christianity: to suffer for the doctrine, to do good and suffer for it, and that suffering in this world is inseparable from being a Christian in this world.59

In an 1848 public discourse, Kierkegaard more subtly alludes to Luther through Kierkegaard’s own ideals: See, that truth-witness, it is now several centuries since he lived, but when he was living he was mocked and persecuted. . . . Then he died and became still in the grave—then limping justice caught up to him: his name is honored and praised in history. We are now so accustomed to honoring and praising it that eventually someone will no doubt make the mistake of believing that he was

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honored and esteemed while he was living. Time exercises its foreshortening power. His name now, honored and praised for three centuries.60

Publicly, Kierkegaard presents Luther as the ideal reformer, with the prerequisite Anfægtelse and the requisite persecution, not as a politician whose goal is to throw off burdens for a crowing crowd. But privately, Kierkegaard lauds Luther’s prerequisite Anfægtelse but lances either Luther’s political maneuvers during the Reformation or the Lutheran misinterpretation of the same. LUTHER ON GRACE AND WORKS Another of Kierkegaard’s private lances is that Luther’s Reformation onesidedly presented confident grace without holding it in dialectical tension with diffident works. Luther “struck too hard. He should have done everything to remove self-righteousness from such works and then otherwise left them standing.”61 Kierkegaard privately lances in 1850, Ah, but Luther was not a dialectician; he did not see the enormous danger involved in making something else supreme, something which relates to and presupposes a first for which there is no test whatsoever. He did not understand that he had provided the corrective and that he ought to turn off the tap with extreme caution lest people automatically make him into a paradigm. But this is exactly what happened.62

Again, Kierkegaard lauds Luther’s own arrival at justification by grace without works through his personal spiritual trial in works, but he lances Luther’s universal prescription of justification by grace without also dialectically prescribing a similar spiritual trial in works: But is it not something entirely different when someone begins immediately (not where Luther began, because many years earlier Luther quite simply began at the beginning, with works), there where Luther, so to speak, ended in order to begin the new beginning, this new beginning which, if it is to be true in any way, must always presuppose that the simple beginning has gone before.63

As noted in chapter 1, Kierkegaard criticized that Luther’s inheritors of his message of grace were not tried in the spiritual fires of Luther’s life, nullifying the contribution of his message. As seen above, Kierkegaard sometimes privately lances Luther for this undialectical outcome. But publicly in the 1851 discourse, Kierkegaard is more lenient toward Luther, portraying Luther as an “honest soul,” whose naiveté innocently overlooked this possibility:

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Luther—this man of God, this honest soul!—overlooked or perhaps really forgot a certain something that a later age, especially ours, may perhaps stress only far too much. He forgot—once again, you honest soul!—he forgot what he himself was too honest to know, what an honest soul he himself was, something I must stress, and not on account of my virtue but for the sake of the truth.64

Publicly declaiming Luther an “honest soul,” in the same year, Kierkegaard privately lauds the same but also lances that Luther should have had eyes in the back of his head: “O Luther, Luther, alas, the Reformation went as easily as it did because the ‘secular mentality’ understood that ‘this is something for us.’ O, you honest man, why did you not suspect how sly we human beings are! Why did you not have eyes in the back of your head so you could have prevented what was going on behind your back.”65 In the public discourse, Kierkegaard raises Luther from the dead again, noting that Luther would surely rectify the situation if he were to see the consequences in Lutheranism three centuries later: But imagine Luther in our own generation, aware of our condition—do you think he would say as he says in a sermon, “The world is like a drunken peasant; if you help him up on one side of the horse, he falls off the other side.”66 Do you not think he would say: The Apostle James must be drawn forward a little,67 not for works against faith—no, no, that was not the apostle’s meaning either—but for faith, in order, if possible, to cause the need for grace to be felt deeply in genuine humble inwardness and, if possible, to prevent grace, faith and grace as the only redemption and salvation, from being taken totally in vain, from becoming a camouflage even for a refined worldliness.68

Significantly, although Kierkegaard is really imposing his own values on his resurrected Luther, Kierkegaard does not know that the actual Luther would very likely agree with Kierkegaard’s prescription to draw the Apostle James forward.69 In Luther’s Gospel sermon for the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity, the very sermon by which Kierkegaard lauded, “O, Luther is still the master of us all,”70 Lindner deletes a very long section of Luther’s regular polemic against Rome. But within this deleted polemic is a surprising laud of the Apostle James by Luther, which Kierkegaard never had the possibility of reading in Thisted. Let us see what Kierkegaard never had the chance to see: See, this is what James means when he says, 2, 26: “Faith apart from works is dead.” For as the body without the soul is dead, so is faith without works. Not that faith is in man and does not work, which is impossible. For faith is a living, active thing. But in order that men may not deceive themselves and think they have faith when they have not, they are to examine their works, whether they also love their neighbors and do good to them. If they do this, it is a sign that

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they have the true faith. If they do not do this, they only have the sound of faith, and it is with them as the one who sees himself in the glass and when he leaves it and sees himself no more, but sees other things, forgets the face in the glass, as James says in his first chapter, verses 23–24.71

Here, Luther even lauds the very verses from James on which Kierkegaard bases this public discourse. Although he is unaware of Luther’s full-bodied perspective on James, Kierkegaard has fortuitously painted a historically accurate depiction of Luther on James for the public to see. Thus, as Hermann Diem has noted,72 while holding ambivalent feelings about Luther privately, Kierkegaard publicly leans on Luther as the fortress for his position and corrective strategy within Lutheranism. Kierkegaard concludes his preface to this public discourse by elucidating this position and strategy, which he believes is faithful to Lutheranism but also a necessary and timely corrective: Lutheran doctrine is excellent, is the truth. With regard to this excellent Lutheran doctrine, I have but one misgiving. It does not concern Lutheran doctrine—no, it concerns myself: I have become convinced that I am not an honest soul but a cunning fellow. Thus it certainly becomes most proper to pay a little more attention to the minor premise (works, existence, to witness to and suffer for the truth, works of love, etc.), the minor premise in Lutheran doctrine. Not that the minor premise should now be made the major premise, not that faith and grace should be abolished and disparaged—God forbid—no, it is precisely for the sake of the major premise, and because I am the kind of fellow I am, it certainly becomes most proper to pay more attention to the minor premise in Lutheran doctrine—for in relation to “honest souls” nothing needs to be done.73

Hence, Kierkegaard is not attempting to abolish Lutheranism or grace by emphasizing works. Instead, Kierkegaard admits that works are the minor premise in Lutheranism meant to support the major premise, grace. Kierkegaard privately wondered in 1849 if other Lutherans would either see his position on the minor premise as helpful or heretical: “I see very clearly how I could be attacked from Luther’s own position, but, truly, I have also understood Luther well—and therefore I have also taken care not to tumble around in a fog, as if everything were still as it was in Luther’s day.”74 Luther’s day stressed the minor premise, ignoring the major premise. Kierkegaard’s day stressed the major premise, ignoring the minor premise. Kierkegaard recognized that the major premise—Christ the Redeemer—is only authentically desired or required through the anterior and posterior proclamation and imitation of the minor premise—Christ the Prototype. Without the pendular dialectic of both the major and minor premise, the major premise is taken in vain. The homiletic key is for the preacher to preach the major premise

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while simultaneously preaching the minor premise, keeping his eye peeled for cunning fellows who covet grace at the cheapest price, without costly discipleship. In the end, Kierkegaard’s relation to Luther, whether privately ambivalent or publicly lauding, serves the ultimate existential end of preaching and living a sigh. NOTES 1. Diem, Kierkegaard’s Dialectic of Existence, 159. 2. Kierkegaard makes parallel remarks about Luther in another discourse from 1851 entitled “Christ the Prototype,” JFY 192–209. Yet because this latter discourse was published posthumously in 1876, I do not designate it as the primary locus of Kierkegaard’s public discourse on Luther, but I will refer to the parallels in the endnotes. 3. FSE 13. 4. Kierkegaard posits three requirements for a human reading of the Bible: (1) You must not overanalyze the mirror, that is, the Word, but see yourself in it, FSE 25; (2) You must remember to say to yourself incessantly, “it is I about whom it is speaking, FSE 35; (3) You must not promptly forget how you looked in the mirror of the Word, FSE 44. 5. FSE 15. 6. Cf. Luther’s words from his 1545 Preface to his Latin writings concerning his pre-conversion view of the Gospel as a new Law : “I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners, and secretly, if not blasphemously, certainly murmuring greatly, I was angry with God, and said, “As if, indeed it is not enough, that miserable sinners, eternally lost through original sin, are crushed by every kind of calamity by the law of the decalogue, without having God add pain to pain by the gospel and also by the gospel threatening us with his righteousness and wrath!” 7. FSE 15. For Kierkegaard’s corroborating journal evaluations of Luther’s Middle Ages see especially JP 3:2481 and JP 3:2503, both from 1849. Kierkegaard makes the same point in the reverse in the other discourse from 1851, published posthumously in 1876, JFY 192. 8. Kierkegaard (JP 3:2521; KJN 7, NB19:57; SKS 23, 367; Papirer X.3 A 217) privately elaborated in 1850: “The degeneration was not so much the monastic life as the meritoriousness it was presumed to have, this was certainly true of Luther. In addition, to keep the record straight, he was also the man who had shown that he knew and at every moment how to do the former.” 9. Kierkegaard homiletically illustrates the wrong and the right approach to good works, FSE 15: “The approach to these works should indeed be, for example, like that of a militant youth who, in connection with a dangerous undertaking, voluntarily comes and pleads with his leader, saying: May I not be permitted to come along! If in the same way a person were to say to God: “May I not be permitted to give all I own to the poor—not that this should be meritorious, no, no, I am deeply and humbly aware that if I am ever saved I will be saved by grace, just as the robber on the cross,

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but may I not be permitted to do this so that I can work solely for the extension of God’s kingdom among my fellow beings.” 10. JP 3:2513; KJN 7, NB16:86; SKS 23, 152; Papirer X.2 A 558. 11. JP 3:2503; KJN 6, NB12:162; SKS 22, 241; Papirer X.2 A 30. 12. JP 3:2521; KJN 7, NB19:57; SKS 23, 367; Papirer X.3 A 217. 13. Kittelson, Luther the Reformer, 134. 14. JP 3:2481; KJN 5, NB10:76; SKS 21, 296; Papirer X.1 A 154. 15. David R. Law, “Cheap Grace and the Cost of Discipleship in Kierkegaard’s For Self-Examination,” in For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourself!, ed. Robert L. Perkins, vol. 20 of International Kierkegaard Commentary (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2002), 114. 16. JP 3:2544; Papirer XI.2 A 303. 17. JP 3:2527; KJN 7, NB20:76; SKS 23, 437; Papirer X.3 A 336. 18. JP 3:2503; KJN 6, NB12:162; SKS 22, 241; Papirer X.2 A 30. 19. FSE 16. 20. FSE 16. Kierkegaard privately expressed the same in an 1850 journal, JP 3:2521; KJN 7, NB19:57; SKS 23, 367; Papirer X.3 A 217: “The degeneration was not so much the monastic life as the meritoriousness it was presumed to have, this was certainly true of Luther. In addition, to keep the record straight, he was also a man who had shown that he knew and at every moment how to do the former.” Kierkegaard echoed the same in a posthumously published discourse, JFY 193: “But let us not forget, Luther did not therefore abolish imitation, nor did he do away with the voluntary, as pampered sentimentality would like to have us think about Luther. He affirmed imitation in the direction of witnessing to the truth and voluntarily exposed himself there to dangers (yet without deluding himself that this was meritorious).” 21. FSE 16. 22. JP 3:2507; KJN 6, NB14:68; SKS 22, 386; Papirer X.2 A 244. 23. Lenker 1.1:112–13; Thisted 1:50–51; Lindner 7:72; Leipzig 13:77. 24. E.g., Pelikan, From Luther to Kierkegaard, 24–48; Bornkamm, Luther’s World of Thought, 193, 293. 25. JP 3:2524; KJN 7, NB19:73; SKS 23, 377; Papirer X.3 A 234. 26. Kierkegaard similarly lampooned the Lutheran inheritance of Luther even further in his journal in the year 1850: “Luther was construed as a happy man of the world and good company; the key phrase by which he was remembered by both the clergy and the lay people became: Wer nicht liebt Weiber, Wein, Geasang, etc. To use the vernacular, one can say today that the significance of the Reformation is construed as follows: Luther set girls and wine and card-playing in their rightful place in the Christian Church, as an essential ingredient, yes, as the true consummation in contrast to the defectiveness of poverty, prayer, and fasting. To that extent the best way to celebrate his memory is as follows. Chorus of clergy and lay people: A toast to Martin Luther! That was a good toast! Hurrah! Once again, hurrah! hurrah! To preserve his memory his portrait could also be put on cards as the jack-of-clubs. It is not enough to erect monuments to him. No, make him into the jack-of-clubs, and there will be hardly a clergyman who will not have occasion again and again to be reminded of Martin Luther and the Reformation,” JP 3:2524. Kierkegaard privately lampooned

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them again in 1850: “Aha! There is just the man for us, that Luther! Aided and abetted by his theory, we get permission to hang on to a thoroughgoing secularity, to arrange our lives so secularly that it is a pleasure, and then we add: ‘To give everything to the poor, to live in the monastery is not the best thing—that is what Luther said’—not even one of our most cunning schemers would have had the courage to contrive that,” JP 3:2521; KJN 7, NB19:57; SKS 23, 367; Papirer X.3 A 217. 27. FSE 16. 28. See JP 3:2483; KJN 5, NB10:118; SKS 21, 318; Papirer X.1 A 197: “Luther rightly says (in the sermon on the Epistle for the Eighth Sunday after Trinity) that if the forgiveness of sins was intended to make good works superfluous, the doctrine should not be called the doctrine of the forgiveness of sins but the doctrine of the permission of sins.” 29. FSE 17. Kierkegaard privately journaled in 1850: “Precisely in contrast to the exaggeration and deluded meritoriousness of the ascetic, Luther devoutly marked out a simple secularity in the good sense of the word. But here the contrast is the very point. Now Christianity has been completely homogenized with unadulterated secularism—and we still appeal to Luther,” JP 3:2513; KJN 7, NB16:86; SKS 23, 152; Papirer X.2 A 558. See also JP 3:2481; KJN 5, NB10:76; SKS 21, 296; Papirer X.1 A 154 from 1849: “The main point is to have learned from the Middle Ages to avoid the errors of this approach. But . . . the Lutheran emphasis on faith has now simply become a fig leaf for the most unchristian shirking.” 30. FSE 16. 31. FSE 17. 32. FSE 17. 33. FSE 17. 34. FSE 17. As an author Kierkegaard was adamant about not setting himself up as an authority or prototype of Christianity, preferring to Socratically put forward the issues in becoming and being a Christian, leaving the reader to judge for himself. For example, pseudonymously, Kierkegaard would use the pseudonym of Johannes Climacus, a non-Christian, to put forward the issues of becoming a Christian, and he would use the pseudonym Anti-Climacus, a hyper-Christian, to put forward the strenuous issues of being a Christian. Kierkegaard privately confessed his own status as a Christian, “I would place myself higher than Johannes Climacus, lower than Anti-Climacus,” JP 6:6433; KJN 6, NB11:209; SKS 22, 130; Papirer X.1 A 517. Kierkegaard states three pages later in the public discourse, “There are among us some who claim to be Christian in the strictest sense of the word, to that in contrast to the rest of us. I have been unable to associate myself with them. For one thing, I think that their lives do not meet the standard that they themselves prompt or constrain one to apply by so strongly stressing that they are Christians,” FSE 21. 35. FSE 18. 36. SV XII:309. Hong notes that Kierkegaard likely receives the phrase “Faith is a restless thing” from Luther’s Gospel Sermon for the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity at Thisted 1:503: “Men her seer du,hvad Troen er for en levende, vældig Ting” (“But here you see that faith is a living, powerful thing”). Since it has been shown above that Kierkegaard was familiar with Luther’s arguments against the Epistle of James

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from Luther’s Preface to the New Testament and Preface to the Epistle of James, Kierkegaard may have received this phrase from Luther’s famous Preface to the Epistle to the Romans: “O it is a living (lebendig), busy (schefftig), active (thettig), mighty thing (mechtig ding), this faith. It is impossible for it not to be doing good works incessantly. It does not ask whether good works are to be done, but before the question is asked, it has already done them, and is constantly doing them. Whoever does not do such works, however, is an unbeliever,” LW 35:370; WA DB 7:10. In both cases, though, the word “restless” (German: unruhig; Danish: urolig) is not used by Luther. But the context of faith that issues forth in good works is better displayed in the Preface to the Romans than the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity Sermon, where Luther is describing faith that expects all grace from God. 37. FSE 18. 38. FSE 16. 39. FSE 18. 40. Lenker 3.2:199; Thisted 2:66; Lindner 8:150; Leipzig 13:165: “I continue to assert that for the sake of exterminating the error mentioned, it would be well to overthrow at once all the churches in the world, and to utilize ordinary dwellings or the open air for preaching, praying and baptizing, and for all Christian requirements.” 41. FSE 18–19. 42. JP 3:2510; KJN 7, NB15:6; SKS 23, 10; Papirer X.2 A 334. 43. JP 6:6957; Papirer XI.3 B 120. 44. JP 6:6150; KJN 4, NB5:37; SKS 20, 385; Papirer IX A 39. See also JP 2:2132; KJN 9, NB27:151; SKS 25, 263; Papirer X.5 A 51: “A person who worships only in quiet hours, thinks of God only in quiet hours—puts Christianity at a distance, sneaks out of the very thing God wants, that religion is to be introduced right in the middle of actual life, everyday, weekdays (the most strenuous of all) and not be satisfied with the Jewish way of doing things—Sabbath worship or an hour or a half-hour each day. Christianity is nothing else but religion right in the middle of actual life and weekdays—and we have reduced it to quiet hours, thereby indirectly admitting that we are not really being Christians.” 45. Kirmmse, Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark, 214–24. 46. Walsh, Kierkegaard: Thinking Christianly, 181–85. 47. Kierkegaard, JP 3:2929; KJN 4, NB3:58; SKS 20, 273; Papirer VIII.1 A 461, wrote in his journal in 1847: “There never has been and there cannot be a Christian reformation which turns against authority as if all would then be well; that would be much too secular a movement. No, the essentially Christian reformation means to turn against the mass, for the essentially Christian reformation means that each person must be reformed, and only then is the most ungodly of all unchristian categories overthrown: the crowd, the public.” 48. FSE 19. 49. FSE 20. 50. FSE 20. Notice, here, Kierkegaard’s embodiment of the “double danger,” WL 192. 51. FSE 20. Cf. SUD 8–9: “Only the Christian knows what is meant by the sickness unto death. As a Christian, he gained a courage that the natural man does not

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know, and he gained this courage by learning to fear something even more horrifying. This is the way a person always gains courage; when he fears a greater danger, he always has the courage to face a lesser one; when he is exceedingly afraid of one danger, it is as is the others did not exist at all.” 52. JFY 213. 53. Kierkegaard’s “twenty years” is a generous guesstimate. The actual amount of time of Luther’s pre-Reformation spiritual trial is unknown. The beginning point is popularly recognized by the July 2, 1505 thunderstorm experience, in which Luther vowed to become a monk. The ending point is popularly recognized by the tower experience, portrayed in Luther’s 1545 Preface to his Latin Writings, the date of which is one of the most debated issues in twentieth-century Luther scholarship. Significant scholarship has most often conjectured that Luther’s breakthrough took place as early as the early 15-teens to as late as the early 15-twenties. See Robinson, Martin Luther: A Life Reformed, 33–34. 54. JP 3:2452; KJN 8, NB25:27; SKS 24, 454; Papirer X.4 A 451. See also JP 3:2544; Papirer XI.2 A 303. 55. JP 3:2481; KJN 5, NB10:76; SKS 21, 296; Papirer X.1 A 154. See also CUP 186–87: “Wherever you look in literature or in life, you see the names and figures of celebrities, the prized and highly acclaimed people, prominent or much discussed, 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. . . .Out of love of humankind . . . I comprehended that it was my task: to make difficulties everywhere.” 56. JP 3:2481; KJN 5, NB10:76; SKS 21, 296; Papirer X.1 A 154. 57. JP 3:2514; KJN 7, NB16:87; SKS 23, 152; Papirer X.2 A 559. 58. JP 3:2539; KJN 8, NB24:120; SKS 24, 396; Papirer X.4 A 371. 59. JFY 169. Notice, here, how Kierkegaard published the impact of Luther’s Gospel postil for the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity, the sermon by which Kierkegaard journaled, “O, Luther is still the master of us all,” JP 3:2465; KJN 4, NB4:153; SKS 20, 357; Papirer VIII.1 A 642. 60. CD 226. It had been three centuries between the time of Luther and the time of Kierkegaard. 61. JP 3:2522; KJN 7, NB19:58; SKS 23, 368; Papirer X.3 A 218. 62. JP 3:2521; KJN 7, NB19:57; SKS 23, 367; Papirer X.3 A 217. 63. JP 3:2543; Papirer XI.2 A 301. 64. FSE 24. 65. JP 2:1904; KJN 8, NB24:105; SKS 24, 384; Papirer X.4 A 354. 66. The quote is actually from Luther’s Table Talk; see LW 54:111. 67. Thus, the text of Kierkegaard’s discourse is on the Epistle of James’s admonition to “be doers of the Word, and not only hearers of it, whereby you deceive yourselves.” 68. FSE 24. Cf Kierkegaard’s private journal comment from 1849, JP 3:2481; KJN 5, NB10:76; SKS 21, 296; Papirer X.1 A 154: “Since the Middle Ages had

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gone farther and farther astray in accentuating the aspect of Christ as the prototype— Luther came alone and accentuated the other side, that he is a gift and this gift is to be received in faith. . . . But now in our time it is clear that what must come to the fore is the aspect of Christ the prototype. The main point is to have learned from the Middle Ages to avoid the errors of this approach. But it is this side which must come to the fore, because the Lutheran emphasis on faith has now simply become a fig leaf for the most unchristian shirking.” 69. Timothy Matthew Slemmons, “Toward a Penitential Homiletic: Authority and Direct Communication in Christian Proclamation” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton Theological Seminary, 2004), 299: “James represents in broad terms Kierkegaard’s corrective to Luther.” 70. JP 3:2465; KJN 4, NB4:153; SKS 20, 357; Papirer VIII.1 A 642. 71. Lenker 3.1:71–72; Leipzig 14:289. Again, the passage is deleted in Lindner and Thisted. Luther further explains how Rome had distorted James: “This passage in James deceivers and blind masters have spun out so far, that they have demolished faith and established only works, as though righteousness and salvation did not rest on faith, but on our works. To this great darkness they afterwards added still more, and taught only good works which are no benefit to your neighbor, as fasting, repeating many prayers, observing festival days; not to eat meat, butter, eggs and milk; to build churches, cloisters, chapels, altars . . . from which no man has any benefit or enjoyment; all which God condemns, and that justly. But St. James means that a Christian life is nothing but faith and love. Love is only being kind and useful to all men, to friends and enemies. And where faith is right, it also certainly loves, and does to another in love as Christ did to him in faith. . . . Therefore St. James means to say: Beware, if your life is not in the service of others, and you live for yourself, and care nothing for your neighbor, then your faith is certainly nothing; for it does not do what Christ has done for him. Yea, he does not believe that Christ has done good to him, or he would not omit to do good to his neighbor,” Lenker 3.1:72; Leipzig 14:289. 72. Diem, Kierkegaard’s Dialectic of Existence, 159. 73. FSE 24–25. 74. JP 3:2503; KJN 6, NB12:162; SKS 22, 241; Papirer X.2 A 30.

Chapter 6

Anfechtung/Anfægtelse Luther’s Sigh of Resolve and Kierkegaard’s Sigh of Resign

Quantitatively, if we count the number of times Kierkegaard lauded a single Luther sermon in chapter 3, then Kierkegaard’s three favorite Luther sermons were (1) the “Good Shepherd” sermon (the sermon that “deserves to be reprinted”), (2) the “If Christ is Along in the Ship” sermon (the “straightway [strax] there is stormy weather” sermon), and (3) the “Faith, Love, and Hope” sermon (the “O, Luther is still the master of us all” sermon). Regarding these three, we get a good picture of what Kierkegaard lauded in Luther’s sermons. Respectively, Kierkegaard lauded Luther’s (1) conceiving Christ and Christians both revealed under the weakness of sufferings and the cross, (2) conceding that Christ’s presence in a person’s life straightway leads to suffering, and (3) confessing that Christianity is comprehensively faith, works of love, and suffering for this faith and works of love. Summarizing all three, Kierkegaard loved Luther’s preaching a sigh, paradoxically expressing relieved blessing in the midst of tense suffering (Anfechtung/Anfægtelse),1 securing a correct dialectical expression of Christianity. Kierkegaard’s laud of Luther’s homiletic confluence of Christ and Christian at suffering confirms Geismar and Hinkson’s conceptual concord of Luther and Kierkegaard at Luther’s Theology of the Cross.2 Luther and Kierkegaard scholar Regin Prenter notes that Luther’s Theology of the Cross is a theology concerning two kinds of crosses: (1) the historical cross of Christ upon which salvation has been won and (2) the daily cross laid upon the Christian by God—Anfechtung/Anfægtelse.3 Explaining in his 1530 “Sermon at Coburg on Cross and Suffering,” Luther neither conflates nor obviates these two crosses: Therefore we must note in the first place that Christ by his suffering not only saved us from the devil, death, and sin, but also that his suffering is an example, which we are to follow in our suffering. Though our suffering and cross should 195

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never be so exalted that we think we can be saved by it or earn the least merit through it, nevertheless we should suffer after Christ, that we may be conformed to him.4

The latter cross signals neither synergism nor Pelagianism. Instead, it is the painful cross on which our faith in the former cross is daily tested and sighfully animated. If we did not receive the latter cross lovingly from God, we would become “sleepy and secure” in a one-sided view of the Theology of the Cross: We see so many people, unfortunately it is all too common, so misusing the gospel that it is a sin and a shame, as if now of course they have been so liberated by the gospel that there is no further need to do anything, give anything, or suffer anything. This kind of wickedness our God cannot check except through suffering. Hence he must keep disciplining and driving us, that our faith may increase and grow stronger and thus bring the Savior more deeply in our hearts. For just as we cannot get along without eating and drinking so we cannot get along without affliction and suffering.5

Because he denounced Danish Lutheranism for obviating Luther’s word about Christ’s cross from Luther’s word about the Christian’s cross, objectifying the former while ignoring the latter, Kierkegaard was especially thankful to find Luther originally preaching both crosses, inspiring not a crow of overconfidence but a sigh of simultaneous self-diffidence and Godconfidence in his hearers. Convergent, Luther and Kierkegaard both aspire to preach their hearer to this sigh. They do so by disclosing the two kinds of crosses. Christ’s cross is neither conflated nor obviated from the Christian’s cross— Anfechtung/Anfægtelse—the negative yet necessary cross by which the Christian continues to be woundingly hallowed by God in passion for Christ’s cross. Seemingly callous, Luther and Kierkegaard throw you, a covetous and sinful human being, into the throes with this wrathfully righteous yet cryptically kenotic God. Hoping you have been mercifully wounded by God’s misericord, neither Luther nor Kierkegaard callously aspires to leave you groaning in despair that this repellently mean yet irresistible Alpha and Omega wants nothing more to do with you. But they especially do not want to hear their hearer crowing, impudently preening himself before others for having decoded and indoctrinated the deity. Instead, both aspire to leave you in an ambivalent but worshipful state: a sigh of having been crucified on both crosses. Unlike a groan without Christ’s cross, a grateful sigh does not squall the loss of God. Unlike a crow without the Christian’s cross, a quiet sigh does not bluster as boss of God. Instead, a sigh dialectically walks the ambivalent but worshipful middle road,6 confessing to God one’s intractable avarice for

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apotheosis while simultaneously surrendering to God’s compassionate kenosis. Dialectically concordant, Luther and Kierkegaard both aspire to hear their hearer respire a sigh signaled by thanksgiving to God for the two kinds of crosses laid on him. Divergent, Luther and Kierkegaard can be distinguished by listening to the kind of sigh each leaves his hearer expressing, betraying how each hopes his hearer will comport himself before God in the face of Anfechtung/Anfægtelse, the second cross. Here, there are three kinds of sighs. One of these—the idiomatic “sigh of relief”—is better known than the other two. A sigh of relief expresses a tension relieved. For example, when this study is complete, then I will express a great big sigh of relief. But this study is not yet complete, and yet, still I sigh. That is because there is another kind of sigh that often goes unnoticed, needing a name to dignify it, namely, a “sigh of resolve.” This sigh expresses a tension not yet relieved but also an optimistic resolve to see the tension through to resolution. “Come on! You can do it! You’re almost there!” Luther’s sigh, expressing Anfechtung’s present affliction but also hope for its temporal relief, is a sigh of resolve. While a sigh of resolve is not as pleasant as a sigh of relief, it is much more pleasant than the final and most dreaded sigh, a “sigh of resign.” This sigh expresses a tension not relieved and a pessimistic resignation that the tension will not be relieved in the foreseeable future. Kierkegaard’s sigh, expressing Anfægtelse’s present affliction but only hope for its relief in eternity, is a sigh of resign. Hence, Luther and Kierkegaard conceptually converge at the value they place on the negative yet necessary role Anfechtung/Anfægtelse plays in securing a relation with Christ. But Luther and Kierkegaard methodologically diverge with regard to the kind of sigh each sighs. Is the Christian resolved for relief from Anfechtung in this temporal life (Luther’s sigh of resolve), or is the Christian resigned to Anfægtelse in this temporal life, hoping only for its relief in the life to come (Kierkegaard’s sigh of resign)? Their divergent sighs, though, do not signal theological discord. Instead, given their respective audiences’ divergent relations to Anfechtung/Anfægtelse, Luther and Kierkegaard accent divergent aspects of Anfechtung/Anfægtelse in order to converge their hearers at the same relation with Christ, signaling their ultimate theological concord. LUTHER’S SIGH OF RESOLVE If we regard the entirety of the Luther sermons Kierkegaard read, it is easy to recognize a repeating pattern by which Luther inspires his hearer to sigh a sigh of resolve. While Luther sometimes propounds Christ as the Christian’s prototype, it is significant that he does not press Christ as Prototype

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as constantly as Kierkegaard. Instead, Luther in his Gospel postils regularly spotlights a character from the Gospel and prototypes him or her as the Christian’s prototype for how to comport oneself before God in the face of Anfechtung.7 Examples of these prototypes are Mary, the Magi, Bartimaeus, the Tax Collector, the Widow of Nain, the Centurion, the Hemorrhaging Woman, the Canaanite Woman. These mere men and women are the Christian’s prototype by the exemplary way they hold fast to God’s Word (Lindner: dass man fest am wort halte; Thisted: at Man holder fast ved Ordet)8 in the midst of the Anfechtung God sends them.9 For Luther, this tenacious faith under the tentatio of Anfechtung is the Christian’s “highest and greatest art” (Lindner: höchste und gröste kunst; Thisted: højeste og største Kunst).10 This art is the repeated prototypical pattern in Luther’s Gospel postils by which he prepares his hearers in advance to hold fast and sigh a sigh of resolve when Anfechtung afflicts, for the Anfechtung will eventually be temporally relieved.11 Anfechtung: Luther’s Lost Locus Before we observe this repeating pattern in Luther’s postils, let us first recover this lost locus in Luther’s theology, Anfechtung. Because of its conceptual convolution, Luther scholars often do not translate the German “Anfechtung.” Yet this may be a reason for its neglect among American Lutheran theologians.12 Kierkegaard translator Howard Hong almost always translates the Danish cognate “Anfægtelse” as “spiritual trial.”13 But “spiritual trial” may not do “Anfechtung/Anfægtelse” comprehensive justice. While Anfechtung is indeed “spiritual,” that is, its cause is divine, the anthropological experience of Anfechtung, prima facie, is God-forsakenness, not a feeling of receiving counsel from the Paraclete. The word “trial” can also suggest juridical proceedings over a crime over and done with, yet Anfechtung is the immediate experience of being afflicted by God. Because “Anfechtung/Anfægtelse” are rooted in the words “fechten/fægte”—“to fight”14—the English word “affliction” may be better. The American Edition of Luther’s Works translates Anfechtung as “trial,” “affliction,” “temptation,”15 and “tribulation,”16 yet this plethora of ambiguous psychological states may also contribute to Anfechtung’s ambiguity among Luther’s English-speaking inheritors. When used colloquially, “affliction,” “trial,” and “temptation” do not necessarily signal divine activity. Since, for Luther, God purposely wills Anfechtung for a Christian’s good, a God-caused affliction may need its own definite nomenclature17 and may be better left untranslated.18 But keeping it untranslated can accidentally have the effect of keeping it foreign to Christian life. While respecting the foreign nomenclature, I often interweave Anfechtung with “Christian suffering” or “the Christian’s cross” to help naturalize its negative yet necessary role in Christian life.

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Although its foreign nomenclature contributes to the loss of Anfechtung as a theological locus, its loss may have more to do with ignorance of the role Anfechtung played in Luther’s personal history, early, middle, and late. Although many recognize and relish the paradoxical tensions running through Luther’s theological loci (Law and Gospel, the Twofold Use of the Law, Two Kingdoms),19 many neither relish nor recognize the crucial locus that necessitates these other loci.20 While many Lutherans, including Kierkegaard,21 are aware of Luther’s early Anfechtung leading up to his evangelical Tower Experience, most Lutherans, also including Kierkegaard, do not appreciate that Anfechtung was a fight Luther fought his whole life.22 Kierkegaard is ambivalent about the role of Anfechtung in Luther’s career as a reformer after the Tower Experience. One of Kierkegaard’s journal comments perhaps portrays how many Lutherans imagine Luther’s legacy: “Although it is true that for some years he was salt, his later life was not devoid of pointlessness. The Table Talks are an example: a man of God sitting in placid comfort, ringed by admiring adorers who believe that if he simply breaks wind it is a revelation or the result of inspiration.”23 But is important to recognize that although Luther in the tower “felt as if he were entirely born again,” this evangelical conversion did not convert him into an Anfechtung-less automaton. Instead, Anfechtung characterized Luther’s whole life.24 Justification by grace through faith does not abrogate Anfechtung in the Christian’s life;25 instead, Anfechtung is the battlefield on which justification by grace through faith is both birthed and sustained. Even at a Table Talk, Luther said in the last year of his life, “If I live longer, I would like to write a book about Anfechtungen, for without them no man can understand Scripture, faith, the fear and love of God. He does not know the meaning of hope who was never subject to temptations.”26 Although Luther never wrote that theological treatise on Anfechtung, this lost locus emerges repeatedly in the Luther postils Kierkegaard read.27 While Luther read the Anfechtung-afflicted characters of the Bible through the light of his own post-conversion experience with Anfechtung,28 he rarely spoke in the pulpit about his own personal struggles with Anfechtung.29 Roland Bainton, though, remarks it is nearly impossible to read Luther’s sermons on all the troubled spirits in the Bible without feeling that they are autobiographical of Luther.30 More than its foreign nomenclature or ignorance of it in Luther’s life, the loss of Anfechtung as a theological locus probably has most to do with its frightening phenomenology. Although Kierkegaard often missed its significance in Luther’s later life, Anfechtung was not a phenomenon from which Kierkegaard hid. Kierkegaard admitted Christianity was “the greatest horror.” “Very Lutheranly,” he trembled, “only the consciousness of sin can force one . . . into this horror.”31 After preaching the Law and the forgiveness

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of sin through the Gospel, Luther regularly and forebodingly preaches that a Christian had better resign himself to Anfechtung in this life: This is spoken to all Christians, for every Christian must have temptations (Lindner: anfechtung; Thisted: Anfægtning), anxieties (Lindner: angst; Thisted: Angst), need (Lindner: noth; Thisted: Nød), disappointment (Lindner: widerwärtigkeit; Thisted: modgang), grief (Lindner: betrübnis; Thisted: Bedrøvelse), come what may. Therefore [Christ] mentions here no suffering nor cross, simply saying: You shall weep, lament, and be sorrowful, for the Christian has many persecutions. Some are suffering loss of goods; others there are whose character is suffering ignominy and scorn; some are drowned, others are burned; some are beheaded; one perishes in this manner, and another in that; it is therefore the lot of the Christian always (Lindner: stets; Thisted: allenstund) to suffer misfortune, persecution, need, and disappointment. This is the foxtail with which they are punished. They dare not look for anything better while they are here. This is the court color (Lindner: hof-farbe; Thisted: hof-Farve) by which the Christian is recognized. Whoever would now be a Christian, he must not be ashamed of this court color.32

But Anfechtung is not only awful; it is ambivalently also awesome: At times God permits (Lindner: läst; Thisted: lader) some man to fall into anxiety and need (Lindner: angst und noth; Thisted: Angst og Nød), into pain and distress, so that the world seems as though it had no God, and it makes a person blind, lame, dropsical, and lets anyone die, as here the widow’s son; for they are his creatures, he can do with them what he will. Now why does he do this? He does it in such an abundance (Lindner: überflus; Thisted: Overflod) only that we may continually experience his lovingkindness.33

Anfechtung is both awful and awesome through its purgative and preparatory effect. For both Luther and Kierkegaard, it is the dialectical means by which faith is both birthed through consciousness of sin pre-Gospel and sustained through trying discipleship post-Gospel.34 A sighing passionate passivity to God’s cutting Anfechtung quells a one-sided crowing about one’s fantastic faith sans suffering. Paul Bühler comprehensively conceptualizes Luther’s Anfechtung: Through the Gospel the Christian has come to learn of a gracious God in Christ Jesus; however his life experiences present to him a God who is still wrathful and who not only refuses to forgive sins, but reminds him of them. The hard concrete experiences of life contradict what he had learned by faith. God on his side through the Anfechtungen is drawing the Christian closer to him and throughout the Anfechtungen always intends that they should be beneficial to the Christian. The Christian, however, interprets them as forms of God’s retribution

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for sins and signs of his wrath. In desperation the Christian flees to Christ for salvation. In this God has accomplished his purpose of bringing the Christian closer to himself. Though the Christian can through faith conquer one Anfechtung—and indeed he must if he is to survive—he must face a lifelong series of Anfechtungen. Resurrection is the only permanent solution. Anfechtungen are an aspect of faith, not as that faith trusts in God and totally relies on him for all good, but as that faith faces realities in life and in the world different from those offered in the Gospel.35

Summing up, God, behind the mask of the Deus Absconditus, performs a divine discipline, his opus alienum, Anfechtung, in order to goad a needful leap to the Deus Revelatus, where God performs his opus proprium, bringing the Christian existentially closer to Christ.36 For Luther and Kierkegaard, there is no concordia without antecedent and attendant misericordia.37 Anfechtung in Luther’s Gospel Postils Let us now observe how Luther incarnated Anfechtung in the Gospel postils Kierkegaard read. Notice a pattern from (1) misericord to (2) misericordia. Luther repeatedly (1) lances his hearers with God’s misericord of Anfechtung to (2) arouse a sigh of resolve that holds fast to God’s hidden misericordia. In the Gospel postil for the Second Sunday after Trinity, Jesus rebuffs his own petitioning mother at the wedding at Cana, that is, God afflicts Anfechtung upon a woman he loves: “What have I to do with thee?”38 Luther doesn’t censor Jesus’s meanness: “But see, how unkindly he turns away the humble request of his mother, who addresses him with such great confidence.”39 Luther straightway universalizes Mary’s suffered Anfechtung as the nature of faith by which every Christian can learn: Now observe the nature of faith. What has it to rely on? Absolutely nothing, all is darkness. It feels its need and sees help nowhere; in addition, God turns against it like a stranger and does not recognize it, so that absolutely nothing is left. It is the same way with our conscience (Lindner: gewissen; Thisted: Samvittigheden) when we feel our sin and the lack of righteousness; or in the agony of death when we feel the lack of life; or in the dread of hell when eternal salvation seems to have left us.40

God having afflicted this Anfectung, the wrong response is for the petitioner to then despair based upon her resulting offended feelings. Mary prototypes otherwise: This is where faith stands in the heat of battle (Lindner: kampf; Thisted: Stampe). Now observe how his mother acts and here becomes our teacher.

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However harsh his words sound, however unkind he appears, she does not in her heart interpret this as anger, or as the opposite of kindness, but adheres firmly to the conviction that he is kind, refusing to give up this opinion because of the thrust she received, and unwilling to dishonor him in her heart by thinking him to be otherwise than kind and gracious—as they do who are without faith, who fall back at the first shock and think of God merely according to what they feel, like the horse and the mule, Ps 32, 9.41

Hence, the pattern is (1) God afflicts with revealed Anfechtung but (2) the Christian holds fast to God’s hidden misericordia, believing God is kind and gracious behind his scary mask.42 Prototyping Mary’s tenacious faith in the midst of her unresolved Anfechtung, Luther prepares his hearers to hold on to God with a similar sigh of resolve when God afflicts with the same.43 In the Gospel postil for Quinquagesima Sunday, Luther prototypes the blind Bartimaeus. Bartimaeus has heard word that Christ is kind and gracious, and thus he cries to Christ when Christ comes to town. In the midst of Bartimaeus’s importunate cries, Luther intensifies Christian Anfechtung as a double danger: He struggles (Lindner: kämpfet; Thisted: kæmper) not only with his conscience (Lindner: gewissen; Thisted: Samvittigheden), which doubtless moves him to think he is not worthy of such favor, but he also struggles with those who threatened him and urged him to keep quiet. They wished thereby to terrify (Lindner: schrecken; Thisted: strække) his conscience and make him bashful, so that he should see his own unworthiness, and then despair (Lindner: verzagen; Thisted: fortvivle). For wherever faith begins, there begin also war and strife (Lindner: kamp und streit; Thisted: Kamp og Strid).44

Anfechtung is not only the rebuff of God. It also includes fighting against both one’s own conscience and against the world, that is, the double danger so dear to Kierkegaard.45 But Bartimaeus is our prototype, teaching us the “BeggarArt” of (2) “holding on” in the midst of (1) Anfechtung: “Hereby, the evangelist teaches us a very good Beggar-Art (Lindner: bettlerische kunst; Thisted: Tigger-Kunst), that we should lewdly pray to him without shyness or shame, and not stop, but always hold on (Lindner: anhalten; Thisted: holde ved).”46 For Luther, Bartimaues represents the spiritually blind, who by grace feels and knows his blindness and would gladly be delivered from it. “They are saintly sinners (Lindner: heiligen sünder; Thisted: hellige Syndere) who feel their faults and sigh (Lindner: seufzen; Thisted: sukke) for grace.”47 Stricken with Anfechtung, but believing in God’s mercy, Bartimaeus prototypes the Beggar-Art: holding on with a sigh of resolve. Like Bartimaeus’s Beggar-Art, the Hemorrhaging Woman who touches the hem of Jesus’s robe in Luther’s Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Trinity

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Gospel postil is a similar “masterpiece” (Lindner: meisterstück; Thisted: Mesterstykke):48 She is able to overcome the feeling of her own unworthiness and roll from her heart the heavy stone, which weighed her down so heavily, and yet makes her so diffident that she dare not publicly approach Christ like other persons. The judgment passed upon her by the law was that, as an unclean woman, she was not allowed to associate with other people. . . . It was, therefore, not without a struggle and conflict (Lindner: anfechtung; Thisted: Anfægtning) that she maintained her faith in that which she sought in Christ.49

The woman’s affliction is her Anfechtung, believing “that God had punished her with special severity because of her sins and would not help her.”50 Though all Anfechtung afflicts her, the sight of this hemorrhaging woman timidly yet tenaciously touching Christ’s hem is a prototypical masterpiece for Christians to copy: Behold, that is a beautiful faith, which realizes its unworthiness and yet does not permit itself to be hindered on this account to place its confidence in Christ, nor to doubt his grace and help, but breaks through the law and everything that frightens away from him. . . . We should learn from this woman to realize the power of faith, and in our struggle and conflicts (Lindner: kampf und anfechtungen; Thisted: Kamp og Anfægtning) to call for help. For, as I have already stated, it is through such faith that we become Christians.51

Luther summarizes the sigh of resolve, which holds (1) self-diffidence and (2) God-confidence together, “A Christian. . .in all his need, when he feels his own weakness, or is tempted (Lindner: angefochten; Thisted: anfægtes), can find refuge in God, appeal to him and expect his help.”52 The Tax Collector in Luther’s Eleventh Sunday after Trinity Gospel postil is similarly “our example, our teacher and doctor.”53 The Tax Collector in his sighing prayer, “God be merciful to me, a sinner,” exemplifies for us this “art (Lindner: kunst; Thisted: Kunst) above all human art, yea, the most wonderful thing on earth, that a man may have the grace truly to know himself a sinner, and yet again turn round and cast away all thoughts of God’s wrath and hold to mere grace.”54 The Tax Collector’s Kunst ambivalently yet worshipfully “holds together” (Lindner: zusammen zufassen; Thisted: sammensatte)55 two opposing words, sinner and mercy. This time, the Law afflicts the Tax Collector with purifying Anfechtung. In comparison with the crowing Pharisee, who feels no Anfechtung, the Tax Collector sighs: He has the advantage in that he confesses himself a poor sinner, convinced by his own conscience and condemned, in that he has nothing of which he can boast

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or be proud before God or the world, but must be ashamed of himself; for the law has so smitten his heart that he feels his misery and distress, and is terrified and filled with anguish at the judgment and wrath of God, and sighs (Lindner: seufzet; Thisted: sukker) from his heart to be delivered.56

“Therefore,” preaches Luther, “see to it, that you properly follow this publican, and become like him. Namely, in the first place, that you are not a false but a real sinner. . .but in the same flight (Lindner: in demselben flugs; Thisted: i det samme hellige Oieblik)57 lay hold of the other word, ‘Be thou merciful to me.’”58 Holding (1) the effect of Anfechtung, in the same flight, straightway, together with (2) hope for God’s mercy portrays the highest human art: a sigh of resolve. Anfechtung’s Author and Agent: God and the Devil In the examples above, several different efficient agents (the Law, illness, the world, one’s conscience, even Jesus) afflict Anfechtung. But God himself is ultimate author of every Anfechtung. In 1849, Kierkegaard lanced one of his favorite Luther sermons (the Gospel postil for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany), lancing that Luther mistakenly attributed Anfechtung’s authorship to the devil: Luther says that as soon as Christ has come on board the storm immediately (strax) begins; this storm is spiritual trial (Anfægtelsen), which Luther attributes to the devil (Djævelen). This, however, is more childish than true. No, it is spiritual trial (Anfægtelsen) because it seems to the person himself as if the relationship were stretched too tightly, as if he were venturing too boldly in literally involving himself personally with God and Christ.59

Recall from chapter 3 how Kierkegaard regularly lauded Luther’s acknowledgment of the requisite Anfechtung attendant to a relationship with Christ. But in this 1849 comment, Kierkegaard adjudicates that Luther’s attribution of Anfechtung to the devil makes Anfechtung an accident rather than attendant to a Christ-relationship. In the sermon, Luther is answering those surprised at the number of misfortunes (Lindner: unglücks; Thisted: Ulykker) following them upon becoming involved with Christ: Dear, have you not already read in the Gospel that as soon as (Lindner: alsbald; Thisted: saasnart) Christ comes in the boat and out to sea that a storm rises. The Gospel is not guilty in all this. All guilt must be ascribed to the devil and our ungratefulness. The devil cannot suffer the Gospel and would gladly dampen it, thereby readying all misfortune. And the wider and larger the Word goes, the more agitated and angry he becomes. Further, when we show our ungratefulness

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against so great a gem that we neither receive nor use it and would even hate and persecute it, then God cannot let it go unpunished and must therefore come with all sorts of punishments and plagues to counter our ungratefulness.60

The Anfechtung afflicted upon the Christian is not simply the work of the devil; God also willingly sends punishment and plague. In the very next paragraph, Luther prepares his hearer for a sigh of resolve, namely, that “faith progresses forward in such struggles and storms, seeking Christ and waking him up.”61 Notice in the following fight of Anfechtung, the affliction of the devil precipitates serious need for Christ alone: Thus we should also do, in privatis tentationibus, in our own danger and Anfechtungen, which everyone meets when the devil comes, holds your sins before you, and terrifies you with God’s wrath and eternal damnation. Then think and do not doubt, “My Lord Christ is not far from me, but he sleeps. I must therefore come to him in earnest prayer and wake him up, as the disciples here do.” . . . Therefore, think, short and sweet, “We must now have an awake Christ or we are doomed.” They let him have no peace until they wake him up.62

Luther sighs in resolve in the sermon, “Anfechtung we must have, but also happiness and salvation (Lindner: glück und heil; Thisted: Lykke og Salighed) must also be ours. For Christ, true God and true man, helps all those who believe in him and call upon him in every time of need and danger.”63 Hence, if the devil plays a role in Anfechtung, he is a penultimate agent, ultimately serving Christ’s purpose. A section from Rörer’s house postil is deleted in Lindner and Thisted that could have made it even clearer for Kierkegaard: “These, then, are the trials (Leipzig: Anfechtungen) which regularly befall us, namely, that our dear Lord Jesus permits (Leipzig: lässt) the waves to swamp the ship, that is, permits (Leipzig: lässt) the devil and the world to rage against the Christian to make him concerned that the ship will sink.”64 But the context of the Thisted sermon alone could have prevented Kierkegaard from such a one-sided interpretation of Luther’s view of the devil. Again, Kierkegaard’s cursory reading, unfair adjudication, but ultimate concord with Luther manifests itself. The above 1849 journal comment is the only time Kierkegaard lances Luther on the role of the devil with reference to a specific sermon. But Kierkegaard’s unfair adjudication of Luther on this issue is one Kierkegaard seems to have brought with him into his reading of Luther.65 In 1848, Kierkegaard lances Luther in general: Luther’s approach is similar to one’s teaching a child to attribute everything good to God—evil comes from evil men, a bad man, etc. This is undialectical (udialektisk). It is the same with Luther’s understanding of Christianity. He

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distributes: the good is credited to Christianity; all sufferings (Lidelser), spiritual trial (Anfægtelse), etc., come from the devil. Dialectically one must say: both the consolation and the suffering come with Christianity.66

Late in 1854, after several years of reading Luther’s sermons, Kierkegaard still lances similarly: Luther declares that all sufferings (Lidelser) and spiritual trials (Anfægtelser), all troubles and persecutions, and so on come from the devil; if there were no devil, being a Christian would be a life of milk and honey. This conception is not truly Christian and in part is related to Luther’s assumption that Christianity is an optimism, that opposition and sufferings are only accidentally related to being a Christian and therefore originate from an external power. . . . That Christians must suffer does not come from the devil. The suffering comes from God—and right at this point begins the most extreme spiritual strenuousness in the Christian life. If a person thinks of a being who is pure love, it is then the most excruciating effort for his heart and mind to grasp that this love in a certain sense may be like cruelty. . . . But this contradiction, that humanly speaking love makes the beloved unhappy, yet out of love, but nevertheless, humanly speaking unhappy—this thought is fatal to a human orientation.67

But regularly manifest in Luther’s postils, and regularly missed by Kierkegaard, is the acknowledgment that God is author of every Anfechtung. In the Gospel postil for the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity (the “O, Luther is still the master of us all” sermon),68 Luther explains God’s ultimate purpose in lovingly afflicting Anfechtung: And this is the method God employs with us all to strengthen and prove our faith, and he treats us so that we know not what he will do with us. This he does for the reason, that man is to commend himself to him and rely on his mere goodness. . . . Such trials (Lindner: versuchen; Thisted: Prøve) continue as long as we live, therefore we must also continue to grow just as long. For when he tries us in one instance in which he makes us uncertain how he will treat us, he afterwards always takes another and continually enlarges our faith and confidence, if we only remain unmovably steadfast.69

A large section from this sermon is deleted in Lindner and Thisted that might have made this even clearer to Kierkegaard: But it is still harder when the evil spirit torments the conscience in the throes of death, and pretends God is angry and does not care for you. . . . Or when God himself thus tries and forsakes a man so that he feels nothing else in his conscience than that God has forsaken him, and will never welcome him. . . . Here faith suffers its greatest distress, and is in the pangs of hell. Here it is necessary

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to hold fast (Leipzig: feste halten) and not suffer yourself to err, when God is pictured before you. Behold, this is the last and greatest trial of faith (Leipzig: die letzte und grösseste Anfechtung des Glaubens); he who remains firm here abides firm forever, for here is overcome the fear of death and hell with all the terrors in this world and the world to come. They are the strongest Christians and the greatest spirits, who resist this temptation. All this I say that we may learn to hold fast (Leipzig: feste halten) to faith, in which we have begun, and ever remain in the same firm conviction that looks to God for every good thing, and not permit ourselves to be forced or driven from it by man, the devil, sin, the law, the name of God or God himself, which we will be able to do if we only abide in the true nature of faith.70

For Luther, the greatest Anfechtung is not being afflicted by the devil, but by God himself.71 While Kierkegaard is incorrect in his adjudication, Kierkegaard scholar Simon Podmore diagnoses that Kierkegaard’s anxiety to situate Anfechtung’s authorship not with the devil, but with God, reveals more fundamental concord with Luther than Kierkegaard acknowledged.72 While many readers of Luther maintain the same incorrect opinion of Luther that Kierkegaard held— the devil is Anfechtung’s author—Luther scholar Jørgen Pedersen resolves how crucial it is to ultimately find God behind every Anfechtung: Several believe that Anfechtung for Luther is the devil’s attacks on faith, and the flesh, world, sin, and death must be regarded as his tools. It is relatively easy to substantiate this with a series of quotations. However, there is equally plentiful evidence to suggest that God himself is Anfechtung’s author. . . . God uses the devil as his tool. The devil is not God’s equal opponent, but God’s assistant. Surely it is God who lets the evil spirit anfægte and test you if you want to be vacillating or resistant, and gives your faith cause for strengthening. . . . Looking at the devil incessantly is to distort God’s Anfechtung. The devil can gain victory over us, if it remains hidden that it is ultimately God who is behind Anfechtung.73

Kierkegaard scholar Niels Thulstrup ends, “In the end, therefore, Luther saw God behind trial. We are directly tempted by the Devil, the world, and our own carnal selves; but it is part of God’s training that we should be subject to trial, and therefore we should always be forced to prayer.”74 Luther’s Both/And Resolve Luther’s sigh of resolve anticipates a sigh of relief, informing his hearer in advance that the tension of holding fast to God’s Word in the midst of God’s Anfechtung will eventually find relief in both temporal and eternal blessing. Convergent, Kierkegaard also believes in a sigh of relief. Divergent, Kierkegaard’s sigh of relief is mostly eternal and rarely temporal.

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Luther’s Gospel postil for the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity prototypically portrays Luther’s both/and. First, he prototypes a biblical character, this time, the Widow of Nain, portraying her in Anfechtung: This you see beautifully illustrated in the case of this woman. She is overwhelmed by exceedingly great pain and anguish, so that she thinks God, heaven, earth and all things are opposed to her. And since she looks into this with the eyes of sense, sees it as it is before her natural eyes, she must conclude it is impossible for her to be delivered from her great anxiety.75

Then Luther relieves her Anfechtung with a sigh of temporal relief: “But when her son was raised from the dead for her, she was as though the whole heaven and earth, wood and stone, and everything laughed and rejoiced with her; thus she forgot all the pain and suffering, this wholly disappeared just like a spark of fire is extinguished when it falls into the sea.”76 Then Luther prototypes her as an example for the Christian to follow: Thus God certainly deals also with us. Here we should learn the kind of God we have, namely, he who surrounds us and is about us in our very greatest dangers and troubles. Therefore, if one is poor, sticks deep in sin, lies in death, is in sorrows and other afflictions (Lindner: anfechtungen; Thisted: Anfægtninger), he thinks: it is a transition state (Lindner: übergang; Thisted: Overgang), it is a drop and a spark; for God has surrounded him on all sides with pure wealth, righteousness, life and joy, only he does not permit him to see it. But it is a matter of only a little time (Lindner: eine kleine zeit; Thisted: en liden Stund) when we shall see and enjoy it.77

Thus, the Widow of Nain is our prototype, teaching us to believe with a sigh of resolve in a God who permits Anfechtung but will relieve in “a little time” with a sigh of relief. Luther sums up, Therefore learn from this, whoever can learn: If we are pious and the trials (Lindner: anfechtung; Thisted: Anfægtningens) come, which God sends upon us, let us cherish (Lindner: bleiben; Thisted: holde fast) the thought that he means it well with us, and let us not be offended when he permits (Lindner: lässet; Thisted: lader) the wicked, the Pope, the bishops and all others to do as they please. . . . But, dear friends, let us freely confess and say: Lord, thou doest right, even though thou dost punish us; for before thee, Lord, we have no right. But we hope that thou wilt punish graciously (Lindner: gnädiglich strafen; Thisted: straffe i Naade) and in thine own good time cease.78

The same sigh of temporal relief comes to Mary, Bartimaeus, the Hemorrhaging Woman, the Tax Collector, and others Gospel characters in Luther’s postils who hold on with a sigh of resolve to this God who graciously both

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punishes and will also relent at the right divine time.79 A sigh of resolve anticipates a sigh of relief. Luther’s Gospel postil for the Third Sunday after Easter especially distends Luther’s conviction that a sigh of both temporal and eternal relief undergirds every Christian sigh of resolve. Preaching on Jesus’s image to his disciples of a woman in labor from John 16, Luther impregnates that the Christian will also have her hour of labor pangs in Anfechtung: When the hour finally comes, of which you never thought before, you will hardly be able to stand, unless you become a new man. The Old Adam despairs, he does not abide, he cannot abide, for it goes against his nature, against his purpose, against his designs. Hence you must have your own time, then you must suffer a little. For Christ withdraws (Lindner: entzeucht; Thisted: skjuler) himself from you and permits (Lindner: läst; Thisted: lader) you to remain in the power of sin, of death and of hell. There the heart cannot accomplish very much to calm the conscience, do whatever it will, for Christ departs and dies. Then you will have the refrain, “A little while, and ye shall not behold me.” Where will you go? There is no comfort. There is no help. You are in the midst of sin; in the midst of death; in the midst of hell.80

But like a woman in labor, Luther assures all Christians, like Jesus assured his disciples, that the Anfechtung will only last “a little while”: Notice, Christ preaches here for the comfort of his disciples and of all Christians when they are tried in such Anfechtung by God (Lindner: anfechtung von Gott; Thisted: Anfægtning af Gud), whether it takes place inwardly or outwardly, bodily or spiritually, especially in the highest form, which is called losing Christ out of the heart; that they may learn this passage, and retain this drop of lavender water, by which to refresh and strengthen their hearts. Christ, my Lord, has surely said it shall be only a little while (Lindner: ein kleines; Thisted: en liden Stund).81

Kierkegaard would agree with Luther on the above relief, but only if the relief is nuanced as eternal alone, not both eternal and temporal, resigning the temporal away. But Luther sees that both temporal and eternal relief play a role in Christian expectation, making Luther’s sigh in the midst of Anfechtung a sigh of resolve, not resign: Both your mourning and the world’s joy have their “little while”; always there comes a blessed exchange, your sorrow becoming joy, and the world’s joy becoming sorrow. He speaks in that way so that patience (Lindner: geduld; Thisted: Taalmodigheden) will be increased. Indeed, who could remain steadfast and strong if God did not provide a time of relief (Lindner: erquickung; Thisted: Vederquægelse)? For where sorrow (Lindner: traurigkeit; Thisted: Bedrøvelsen) has no end, that would be hell (Lindner: hölle; Thisted: Helved) itself.82

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Luther is especially clear on both temporal and eternal relief in his Gospel postil on Mary at the wedding of Cana: Christ lures all hearts to himself, to rely on him as ever ready to help, even in temporal things (Lindner: zeitlichem gut; Thisted: timelige Forlegenheder), and never willing to forsake any; so that all who believe in him shall not suffer want, be it in spiritual or temporal things (Lindner: zeitlich oder ewig gut; Thisted: timeligt eller evigt Gode); rather must water become wine.83

For Luther, while the Christian trusts the Anfechtung will only last a little while and will be relieved temporally, she is not to anxiously slave for a way out of the Anfechtung, but to quietly wait and permit God to work: “Therefore, when your suffering comes, you must not straightway (Lindner: bald; Thisted: strax) think how to tear (Lindner: reissest; Thisted: slippe) yourself out of it. God will help you in due time. Only wait (Lindner: harre nur; Thisted: Tøv kun). It is only for a little while (Lindner: ein kleines; Thisted: en liden Stund).”84 Holding on and waiting in the midst of negative Anfechtung, instead of frantically grabbing for an escape, the Christian holds a positive image of relief before her eyes of faith: Therefore, when temptation, sorrow, and suffering (Lindner: anfechtung, traurigkeit und leiden; Thisted: Anfægtning, Kummer og Lidelse) come and we are engrossed in serious thoughts about it all, we should then remember that we are in travail and labor. What should we do now? Should we like the woman who does not know whether she will be delivered of a child and survive the birth or die? No, because a woman does not have the promise we have. Therefore, it is not the woman who has not given birth who is to be our example, but the woman who has delivered and survived the delivery serves as our example.85

Similarly, in another postil, Luther preaches to those who are especially caught in Anfechtung to be able to image Christ having finished the battle and resurrected: “He is no longer sorrowful or fainthearted; he no longer sweats drops of blood as he did in the Garden.”86 Holding on to these positive images and Christ’s encouraging word, “A little while,” Luther’s hearer is prepped for a sigh of resolve that anticipates both temporal and eternal relief in “a little while.” KIERKEGAARD’S SIGH OF RESIGN Kierkegaard, on the other hand, sees Christ’s “little while” of Anfechtung as lasting a lifetime. But a lifetime is always a little while when held in relation to eternity.87 Unlike Luther’s resolved hope for some temporal relief,

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Kierkegaard prescribes resigning oneself to temporal suffering in this life for eternity’s sake. Suffering is not the corruption of human life, as humans commonly conceive; “sin, only sin, is the corruption,” he repeats discourse after discourse:88 O you suffering one, whoever you are, receive what is said to you! People continually think that it is the world, the environment, the circumstances, the situations that stand in one’s way, in the way of one’s fortune and peace and joy. Basically it is always the person himself who stands in his way, the person himself who is bound up too closely with the world and the environment and the circumstances and the situations so that he is unable to come to himself, to find rest, to hope.89

For Kierkegaard, “sin essentially is: temporally to lose the eternal,”90 that is, to faithlessly entrust eternal worth to something temporal. When suffering comes, either inhibiting temporal advantage or taking a temporal good away, the emotional reactions of either impatience or despair manifest one’s treasure and heart—that one has encumbered the eternal with something temporal.91 While the world sanctimoniously clamors for the alleviation of temporal suffering, God alienly afflicts the world with temporal suffering to subvert the world’s temporal dominion of the eternal. Inversing the world’s view from eternity’s point of view, “adversity (Modgang) is prosperity (Medgang).”92 The experience of human suffering does not promise but it can procure a simultaneously disciplinary and joyful relationship with God: Everything depends on how the relationship is viewed. If the sufferer wants to go on staring despondently, dejectedly, perhaps despairingly at how weak he has become—well, there is nothing joyful in that. But if the sufferer will look away from that in order to see what it means that he becomes weak, who it is who becomes strong, that it is God—then there surely is joy.93

Hence, the experience of temporal suffering is not humankind’s corruption, and temporal suffering’s alleviation is not humankind’s salvation. Humanity’s corruption, sin, is its unwillingness to be helped by eternity in the midst of temporal suffering.94 Kierkegaard’s greatest lauds of Luther’s sermons occur when he finds Luther preaching a sigh, the simultaneous eternally positive and temporally negative dialectic of Christian existence, securing a correct understanding and expression of the existential qualifications of Christianity.95 Consequently, when Kierkegaard perceives Luther letting up on the temporally negative side of the dialectic, resolving temporal suffering instead of resigning to it, Kierkegaard will famously lance, “Luther is no dialectician.”96

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Kierkegaard publicly propounds only two goals in life: either the temporal or the eternal.97 The temporal sigh of relief is to be resigned away for the sake of the eternal sigh of relief.98 The sigh of relief, for Kierkegaard, must be either temporal or eternal, not Luther’s both/and. Almost Gnostic,99 not one hint of “Jewish” (i.e., religiously sanctioned) worldliness (i.e., temporal teleology) should creep into Christianity: “If a person could be so presumptuous as to want to gain the eternal temporally, this again is perdition. If, for example, someone wanted to grasp the eternal in order to have earthly advantage from it, he is lost. . . . Why is he lost? Because he temporally lost the eternal; he lost the eternal by wanting to reduce it to the temporal.”100 Arousing his hearer to believe that it is God who causes his temporal suffering out of eternal love, Kierkegaard prepares his hearer to sigh the sublime yet secret adoration that resigns oneself to temporal suffering in this life yet straightway is resolved for the ultimate sigh of relief that only eternity can bring: Enjoyment is pleasant at the moment but, just like the momentary in its emptiness, does not make a good showing for recollection and does not exist at all for eternal recollecting. On the other hand, there is no recollecting more blessed, and nothing more blessed to recollect, than sufferings over and done with in company with God; this is the secret of sufferings.101

Lancing Luther’s Lack of Resign Significantly, three of the five of Kierkegaard’s lances regarding Luther’s dialectical aptitude are in regard to resigning prayer before God. How do we properly and dialectically pray to God? In 1848, the year after Kierkegaard began reading Luther’s sermons, we early get a sense that while Kierkegaard values many of Luther’s spiritual insights, he also questions Luther’s capacity as a dialectician. Kierkegaard wrote in his journal that year, In Luther’s sermon on the Gospel for the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity there are some excellent observations about faith on behalf of others, but also the usual dialectical unclarity (sædvanlige dialektiske Uklarhed) when he says that only when we are able to add “It will surely happen” does it then happen. The fact is that every prayer must be made dialectical, but Luther vacillates (vakler) between the immediate (umiddelbare) definition of faith and the dialectical (dialektiske).102

Kierkegaard raises the concern that “every prayer must be made dialectical” instead of “immediate.” What does he mean? In another journal entry from the same year, Kierkegaard explains, “Every Sunday the preacher declares that when it comes to earthly desires one must add: If God wills it,

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if it is possible—that is make it dialectical—that is, be willing to accept the opposite—that is, see to it that one makes the movement of resignation (Resignationens).”103 Thus, a dialectical prayer must simultaneously express the positive of the request but also the resignation of its fulfillment to the will of God.104 Hence, resolved immediacy in prayer insists, “It will surely happen,” but resigned dialectical prayer declares, “If God wills it,” the latter of which Kierkegaard prefers. But let us regard the section from Luther’s sermon where Kierkegaard judged him to be vacillating between the resolved immediate and the resigned dialectical: So we conclude, that we will obtain whatever we earnestly pray for in the true faith, as the Lord says, John 16:24: “Ask, and ye shall receive.” But to pray powerfully is not within our strength; for the Spirit does not always vouchsafe to us to pray with power. Paul prayed that all Israel might be saved, Rom. 9–1f; why did it not come to pass? The difference lies in the faith, for the Spirit did not give it to him; had he been able to add this faith, it would surely have come to pass. For if Paul had said, “I pray for all Israel,” and had believed and said: “Lord, I am certain that thou wilt do it,” then it would certainly have come to pass. But though he often prayed for them from his heart, the Spirit did not vouchsafe to him that he should confidently believe it. Therefore it is not within our power to pray in strong confidence; the Holy Spirit does it. Whenever we pray for anyone and are able to add, “It will be done,” then it will certainly be done; but whenever we pray, we must add, “Thy will be done.” If, then, I must let it go according to his will, I cannot suggest to him either the person, or the time, or the manner, but must freely leave it all to him; then, indeed, I am sure of it. In this manner Christ acted also, who himself prayed thus: “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away from me,” but at once added: “Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.” Mat. 26:39. . . . Thus you see that we cannot always add these words: It will be so. But if we are certain in our hearts that we may add: “It will be certainly so,” then it will come to pass.105

While Kierkegaard prefers the dialectical prayer of resignation, “Thy will be done,” Kierkegaard does not appreciate that Luther’s prayer, “It will be done,” is not a prayer of immediacy since Luther clarifies that the Holy Spirit must vouchsafe these words, which the one praying cannot immediately control. If Kierkegaard maintains “every prayer must be made dialectical,” then certainly he would agree with Luther’s description of Christ’s paradigmatic Garden of Gethsemane resignation prayer. Yet Kierkegaard’s short journal comment does not account for Luther’s nuance that the prayer, “It will be done,” is not immediacy but mediation by the Holy Spirit. Again, Kierkegaard’s cursory reading, unfair adjudication, but ultimate concord with Luther manifests itself.

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In the same year, 1848, Kierkegaard famously lances “Luther is no dialectician (Luther er ingen Dialektiker)”106 regarding the same issue of immediacy versus the dialectic of resignation. Kierkegaard lances so in the context of recalling two Luther sermons: one from the Third Sunday after Epiphany on the centurion from Matthew 8 and the other from Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity on the hemorrhaging woman from Matthew 9. In this context, Kierkegaard journals, Strangely enough, the examples in the New Testament (the gospels) which are of immediate faith—for example, the centurion, the hemorrhaging woman— here Luther is inexhaustible in his praise of such faith. But this is not really faith; this is a spontaneous devotedness to Christ (hardly ever as the very Son of God) as the man who may be able to help, and this immediacy has a remarkable power to persevere. But is this faith? It is not clearly evident that Christ means anything more to them than a man who is able to help. If their immediacy is faith, then, to be sure, every young girl sincerely in love also has faith. But every Sunday the preacher declares that when it comes to earthly desires one must add: If God wills it, if it is possible—that is make it dialectical—that is, be willing to accept the opposite—that is, see to it that one makes the movement of resignation. Luther usually talks about all this, too, but not when he explains gospels like these—that is, Luther is no dialectician; sometimes he has one thought, then again another.107

Kierkegaard’s lance that “Luther is no dialectician” is in regard to Luther’s praise of the centurion and the hemorrhaging woman’s immediate faith based on Christ’s ability to help temporally, which Kierkegaard questions if such is true faith. But Luther praises the centurion’s faith not merely as belief in Christ’s ability to temporally help, but as a response to the Gospel: For this centurion also has a heartfelt confidence in Christ, and sets before his eyes nothing but the goodness and grace of Christ; otherwise he would not have come to him, or he would not have sent to him, as Lk 7, 3 says. Likewise he would not have had this bold confidence, if he had not first heard of the goodness and grace of Christ. In this instance also the Gospel is the beginning and incentive of his confidence and faith.108

While Luther conjectures extra-textually that the centurion and hemorrhaging woman’s faith are responses to the Gospel, Kierkegaard has his own extratextual conjecture: It would have to be pointed out that it is dubious whether that centurion and that woman had faith, whether it was not rather an immediacy which, altogether laudable and touching, nevertheless rushed forth too impetuously. But then a

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new difficulty arises, for Christ himself praises the centurion’s and the woman’s faith. But this difficulty is only apparent; for he could see into their heart and therefore see that their faith was after resignation.109

Hence, both are attempting to secure the priority of faith over the exigency of temporal miracles. Given their similar dialectical concern, it is cursory of Kierkegaard to lance that “Luther is no dialectician” when in these sermons Luther is careful to preclude his hearers from concluding that temporal miracles of physical healing will necessarily follow faith in Christ.110 For example, while praising the centurion’s faith as response to the Gospel, Luther is careful not to apply Jesus’s accession to the centurion’s request universally. Luther dialectically, trusting in God’s goodness while also resigning to God’s will, states in the sermon, Faith does not doubt the good will God has toward a person, by which he wishes him every good; but it is not known to us, whether what faith asks and presents, is good and useful for us; God alone knows this. Therefore faith prays in a way that it submits all to the gracious will of God, whether it is for his honor and our good, and yet it does not doubt that God will grant it, or, if it cannot be granted, that his divine will withholds it in great grace because he sees it is better not to bestow it. But in all this faith nevertheless remains certain and sure of God’s gracious will, whether he gives or withholds, as St. Paul also says in Rom. 8, we know not how to pray as we ought, and as the Lord’s Prayer bids us to prefer his will and to pray for it. This is what we have often said: we ought to believe without doubting and without limiting the divine goodness; but we ought to pray with the limitation, that it may be his honor, his kingdom and will, in order that we may not limit his will to time, place, measure or name, but leave all that freely to him.111

In the same way, while Luther praises the hemorrhaging woman’s faith, in the same sermon he does not use her example as justification for universal expectation of immediate physical miracles following faith, as Kierkegaard erroneously claims in the following lance from 1850: O, Luther, too does not think consistently but talks enthusiastically about one thing in one place and forgets that somewhere else he says something else—thus it is difficult to act on such instructions. In the Gospel about the woman who was hemorrhaging he says right at the end that even the greatest of all will happen if a man believes it will happen. This, he says, is apparent from the two miracles in the Gospel. But in other places Luther declares that to expect miracles is to tempt God.112

It is important to see how Luther’s sermon actually ends. Luther exhorts his hearers to look on physical misfortune with spiritual eyes:

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So whether we seem to be poor and dead to ourselves, or in sin, or lying prostrate before the pestilence or some other sickness, let us, in spite of all this, believe that in God’s eyes things look quite different. And let us say with a merry heart, Though poverty, pestilence, and death are before me, yet as a Christian I know no poverty, no death, no pestilence. For in the eyes of Christ my Lord there is nothing but riches, health, holiness, and life. But if I do not see this yet, it is only for him to speak the word, and I shall see it even with my very own eyes that it is true.113

Hence, if we read only Kierkegaard’s journal comments, we could be misled to believe that Luther’s two sermons simply exemplify a praise of immediate faith while lacking the dialectic of resignation. But when we read these two Luther sermons for ourselves, we must conclude not only did Luther exhort the exact dialectic of resignation Kierkegaard was lancing Luther lacked but also that Kierkegaard’s journal comment misjudges Luther’s dialectical aptitude. While Kierkegaard is to be lauded for his concentration on the dialectical definition of faith, the above evidences that we must take his most famous lance of Luther with a grain of salt, inspecting Luther’s sermons for ourselves. But as we have seen earlier in this chapter, with regard to the temporal, Luther can preach both a sigh of resolve and a sigh of resign, and because of this, Kierkegaard is logically justified when he journals, “O, Luther, too does not think consistently but talks enthusiastically about one thing in one place and forgets that somewhere else he says something else—thus it is difficult to act on such instructions.”114 Kierkegaard wants Luther to decide between either the temporal or the eternal and stick with it. For his part, Kierkegaard sides with the eternal and resigns temporal relief from Anfægtelse away until the eschaton. Kierkegaard concludes his 1848 journal comment, “But Luther was somewhat confused—that is, somewhat dialectically confused. It is upon this point among others that I must concentrate all my strength as I have been doing—the dialectical definition of faith.”115 Luther’s Involuntary Anfechtung and Kierkegaard’s Voluntary Anfægtelse Although Luther often preached a sigh of resolve for temporal relief, he would agree with Kierkegaard that eternal relief is to be valued over temporal relief. Convergent, both are resigned to the necessary role Anfechtung/Anfægtelse plays in exacting this value for the Christian. Divergent, they differ in the way they accent suffering Anfechtung/Anfægtelse involuntarily or voluntarily. Luther accents that suffering Anfechtung is involuntary. That is, at its commencement, Anfechtung is not a cross a Christian should voluntarily choose for himself, and at its involuntary conclusion when God provides temporal

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relief from Anfechtung, one should be prepared to receive it gratefully. But Kierkegaard worries that if a Christian remains resolved for both eternal and temporal relief, then her allegiance remains divided. Therefore, Kierkegaard accents that suffering Anfægtelse is voluntary. At its commencement, a Christian should not only voluntarily resign herself to the cross God has given her but also voluntarily resign hope for its temporal conclusion, pledging and practicing one’s full allegiance to eternity. In 1850, Kierkegaard privately lanced Luther’s sermon for the First Sunday in Lent on Christ’s temptation by the devil in Matthew 4: “There is a curious unclarity (Uklarhed) about this subject in Luther’s sermon on the temptation (Fristelse) of Christ. Luther uses the gospel as an occasion to warn against self-chosen sufferings (selvvalgte Lidelser). He says we are not to choose sufferings ourselves if the spirit does not drive us (naar Aanden ikke driver En).”116 Luther says in this sermon, It is well, therefore, for us to reflect on this example of Christ. He did not go into the wilderness of his own accord but was led there by the Holy Spirit,117 so that no one might imitate his example of their own choice and make of it a selfish, arbitrary, and pleasant fasting; but instead wait for the Spirit, who will send him enough fastings and temptations (Lindner: versuchens; Thisted: Fristelse). For whoever, without being led by the Spirit, wantonly resorts to the danger of hunger or to any temptation, when it is truly a blessing of God that he can eat and drink and have other comforts, tempts God (Lindner: der versucht Gott; Thisted: han frister Gud). We should not seek want and temptation (Lindner: mangel und anfechtung; Thisted: Mangel og Anfægtning), they will surely come of themselves; we ought then do our best and act honestly (Lindner: halten redelig; Thisted: kampe redeligen).118

Kierkegaard counters Luther’s admonition against voluntary suffering and conflates, “But if the spirit drives us to it, it is still the voluntary (Men naar det er, fordi Aanden driver En, saa er det jo dog det Frivillige).”119 To elucidate, Kierkegaard distinguishes involuntary and voluntary suffering, acknowledging the former but especially lauding the latter, illustrating Luther at the Diet of Worms as a prototype of voluntary suffering: As far as suffering is concerned, what is the difference between the voluntary (Frivillige) and the involuntary (Ufrivillige)? Involuntary suffering is that suffering which is factually present without my collaboration in any way. . . . If I am assaulted just as I am walking along the street, this is involuntary. But if I step forth witnessing (vidnende) as Luther himself did, witnessing against the pope, this is voluntary; he could, indeed, have refrained from doing it. To declare that he could not do otherwise is quite correct, but it is a sham if he in this way makes the prompting of the spirit identical with external necessity.120

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Kierkegaard is attempting to guard the dialectical aspect of Christian suffering. It is simultaneously both involuntary and voluntary, not either/or. Perhaps no theologian in history was more devoted to the terrifying yet terrific spiritual truth to dialectically “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”121 Kierkegaard sees Luther as involuntarily given a truth from God to which Luther must voluntarily decide to give witness, which will bring him suffering. Luther also recognizes that if he voluntarily does otherwise, then he would be unfaithful to the truth God has given him, which will bring him even greater suffering.122 Although Luther must voluntarily take his stand in fear and trembling, his completely involved volition is paradoxically at the same time involuntary, “because it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” But to one-sidedly take away the voluntary fear and trembling and only regard the involuntary volition of God is to turn Luther into an automaton and “sham.” Resolving their differences requires regarding their two different audiences, which nuance their respective instructions on involuntary and voluntary Anfechtung/Anfægtelse. Given Luther’s medieval audience tempted toward meritorious monasticism, he distinguishes voluntary self-chosen sufferings and involuntary Spirit-given sufferings, lancing the former and lauding the latter. But because Lindner/Thisted always deletes Luther’s polemic against monasticism from the postils, Kierkegaard does not always comment on Luther’s postils with the nuance of Luther’s original audience in full view. For example, the following section preludes Luther’s above admonition not to voluntarily seek Anfechtung, but it is deleted from Kierkegaard’s view: But the worst of all is that we have adopted and practiced fasting as a good work: not to bring our flesh into subjection; but, as a meritorious work before God, to atone for our sins and obtain grace. And it is this that has made our fasting a stench and so blasphemous and shameful, so that no drinking and eating, no gluttony and drunkenness, could have been as bad and foul. It would have been better had people been drunk day and night that to fast thus. Moreover, even if all had gone well and right, so that their fasting had been applied to the mortification of the flesh; but since it was not voluntary, and it was not left to each to do according to their own free will, but was compulsory by virtue of human commandment, and they did it unwillingly, it was all lost and to no purpose.123

Deleted from Kierkegaard’s view, Luther actually validates voluntary fasting, as long as its purpose is to mortify the flesh and not to merit grace. But Luther ultimately instructs his medieval audience that there is no need to voluntarily seek Anfechtung, for “we want to note and learn from the example of our dear Lord Christ that every Christian as soon as he’s baptized, is marshaled into an

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army in confrontation with the devil, and from his baptism onward is saddled with the devil who harasses him as long as he lives.”124 But Kierkegaard found this promised Anfechtung wanting in his nineteenth-century baptized audience. They dogmatically protected Luther’s abrogation of soteriological merit for the dishonest protection of their lives of ease, commonly preaching and teaching that any voluntary venture into Christian suffering was, as Luther said, “to tempt God” and a “ludicrous exaggeration.”125 Kierkegaard, of course, is not reverting to pre-Luther meritorious fasting.126 He is advancing that following Christ will involuntarily bring suffering (Anfægtelse) with it, with which Luther concurs, and that Christ’s follower at the same time always carries with him the temptation (Anfægtelse) to voluntarily extricate himself from this suffering,127 with which Luther also concurs.128 Hence, while Anfægtelse is surely involuntary, this does not mean that its simultaneously voluntary aspect can be obviated from it: “Consequently the voluntary still remains. It cannot be otherwise, either, for if the voluntary goes, Christianity is abolished—and so it is. When the voluntary disappears, ‘spiritual trial’ [Anfægtelse] disappears, and when spiritual trials disappear, Christianity disappears—as it has happened in Christendom.”129 Continuing to accent the voluntary, Kierkegaard accents the voluntary in Christ’s temptation: Yes, even in the story of the temptation and specifically in the first instance (the occasion for Luther’s observation), the voluntary is apparent. If I am hungry and have no bread, this is involuntary; but if I have bread or have it in my power to get bread and will not use it—this is voluntary—and Christ certainly had it in his power to obtain bread. The voluntary is suffering in faith’s struggle with God. I have it in my power to get out of it, but there is something in me which tells me God would rather have me keep on.130

While Kierkegaard is correctly accenting the voluntary aspect of Anfægtelse, he is incorrectly lancing that Luther is not in agreement with him. Both agree that although Christ had it in his voluntary power to obtain bread, Christ voluntarily kept on fasting in the midst of being involuntary tempted by the devil to voluntarily alleviate his temporal hunger, valuing eternal good, his Father’s will, over temporal good.131 Convergent, they concur on the involuntary and voluntary aspects of Anfechtung/Anfægtelse. Divergent, they accent these aspects differently given their different audiences. In his medieval era of monastic merit, Luther accents that no one should voluntarily venture Anfechtung, not that there is no Anfechtung to voluntarily relieve oneself from the Anfechtung once it has involuntary come. But in Kierkegaard’s era of epicurean ease, he accents that there is concurrently a voluntary Anfægtelse to either venture or rid oneself of Anfægtelse at the very moment involuntary Anfægtelse rears its head; therefore, the Christian needs to be voluntarily resigned to venture involuntary Anfægtelse rather than voluntarily resolved

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to avoid it altogether. Because of his historical situation, Luther preaches the involuntary and voluntary aspects of Anfechtung sequentially. Kierkegaard, in his situation, propounds them conflated. Thus, while Kierkegaard cursorily lanced that Luther’s Anfechtung in this sermon lacked the voluntary, it is more historically holistic to grant that Luther’s medieval era of volitional merit required Anfechtung’s involuntary aspect to be accented. As Luther and Kierkegaard dialectically concur yet divergently accent Anfechtung/Anfægtelse’s involuntary and voluntary aspects at its commencement, they also divergently accent how Anfechtung/Anfægtelse concludes, finding relief. In the same sermon, Luther prototypes Christ as our example for suffering Anfechtung. As Luther commences by emphasizing that Christ did not choose his Anfechtung for himself, Luther also concludes by emphasizing that Christ’s Anfechtung found, and therefore a Christian’s Anfechtung will find, involuntary temporal relief at the right God-ordained time: At last angels approached and served him. This must have taken place in a literal (Lindner: leiblich; Thisted: legemligen) sense, that they appeared in a bodily (Lindner: leiblich; Thisted: legemligen) form and gave him to eat and drink, and just as at a table, they ministered to all his wants. . . . This however is written for our comfort, that we may know that many angels minister also to us, where one devil attacks us; if we fight with a knightly spirit and firmly stand, God will not let us suffer want, the angels of heaven would sooner appear and be our bakers, waiters and cooks and minister to all our wants. This is not written for Christ’s sake for he does not need it. Did the angels serve him, then they may also serve us.132

Thus, for Luther, from Christ’s example, while the Christian is resigned to involuntary Anfechtung in this life, she is also resolved for its involuntary temporal relief in this life from time-to-time and its eternal relief in the next. In 1849, the year prior to his above 1850 lance of the commencement of Luther’s sermon, Kierkegaard seems to subtly laud Luther’s conclusion of this sermon, copying Luther’s comforting words from Thisted into his journal word-for-word: “Men Sligt er skrevet os til Trøst, at vi skulle vide: hvor een Djævel frister os, skulle mange Engle tjene os.”133 But notice how Kierkegaard’s short entry makes no mention of the temporal relief of bodily food and drink about which Luther is actually preaching. Lauding Luther through his own lens, Kierkegaard may see the ministry of the angels as helping Christ resign his temporal welfare in the midst of the devil’s temptation, rather than relieving Christ with temporal good after the devil’s temptation is over, as the Bible reports. A year later, commenting on this sermon, Kierkegaard does not mention Christ’s temporal relief in this life as Luther and Scripture do, but instead accents and prototypes, “Christ’s whole life is voluntary suffering, just as his coming in order to suffer is voluntary.”134 Because temporal

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Anfægtelse is forever for Kierkegaard the negative qualification for inversely recognizing Christianity in this life, Kierkegaard is voluntarily resigned to temporal Anfægtelse in this life, sighing for its relief only in eternity.135 Anfægtelse in Kierkegaard’s Public Discourses Lancing Luther’s both/and resolve and lauding Christ’s resign of his whole life to Anfægtelse, what is Kierkegaard resolved to do in his public discourses?136 Perhaps we may find an imaginative clue in Kierkegaard’s own name. As noted in chapter 4, through The Corsair affair Kierkegaard’s first name “Søren” came to be a denigrated name in Danish culture, associated with someone anally persnickety,137 which in some ways well describes Kierkegaard’s character. As noted in chapter 2, Kierkegaard’s childhood nickname “The Fork” well describes his decisive and divisive personality and reading method as an adult. In this section, I would like to proffer what his last name “Kierkegaard” can tell us about his purpose as a corrective to Luther’s and nineteenth-century Lutheran preaching. “Kierkegaard”138 in Danish literally means “churchyard,” and it is the Danish word for “graveyard” or “cemetery.”139 Kierkegaard’s corrective discourses are like a graveyard surrounding a Lutheran church. The graveyard exists on the outside of the church, not the inside, and in many ways, Kierkegaard’s public discourses are for instruction outside the church rather than instruction within its walls. Outside, Kierkegaard was always careful to emphasize that his discourses were the discourses (Taler) of a layman, not the sermons (Prædiker) of an authorized clergyman.140 Official sermons were preached inside the church by ordained charismatic characters like Mynster and Grundtvig on Sunday to large crowds, largely for their tranquilization.141 But Kierkegaard’s simultaneously terrifying yet upbuilding142 discourses were meant to be read aloud143 outside the church in private by “that single individual” who would appropriate the discourse according to the subjectivity of her disposition when reading the discourse alone.144 Kierkegaard utilized this strategy of being “without authority” not merely to be honest about his unofficial standing but also to Socratically leave his hearer alone in selfexamination before God without having Kierkegaard to ape as an authority or prototype, unafraid to regularly disclaim himself as an ideal Christian.145 Kierkegaard did not desire his corrective discourses to displace the main course—the message of Christ the Redeemer—sacramentally served inside the church. But its seasoning, the approach to it from the outside needed to be salted.146 Unlike our post-Christendom age, Kierkegaard’s churchgoing era knew the Bible’s contents and the main course of Christianity by rote. But the apéritif, the approach, from the world through the churchyard into the church and the digestif, the departure, from the church through the churchyard into

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the world both needed to be whetted with solemnity and earnestness.147 In other words, the examination of one’s anterior comportment before hearing the message of Christ the Redeemer and one’s posterior comportment after hearing the message of Christ the Redeemer needed to be accented.148 Anterior and posterior to the central message inside the church, Kierkegaard’s public discourses read like the reflections of anonymous tombstones in a church’s graveyard,149 sharing their nonchalant yet uncanny wisdom with anyone willing to pause before entering God’s house.150 An inscription on one of Kierkegaard’s discourses quietly forebodes from the graveyard, “Watch Your Step When You Go to the House of the Lord.”151 Coming across this, one can either sneeze at it, impetuously rushing through the graveyard into the church to perfunctorily partake of its bounty without self-examination. But the anxious “suffering one”152 may heed it,153 solemnly pausing “among the tombstones”154 to ponder what only death, the end of suffering, can stolidly teach.155 From this peaceful yet grave perspective of death—of “sufferings over and done with”156—Kierkegaard’s discourses, like a tested “guide and teacher,”157 grandfatherly sympathize as one who has fought the same fight and won. The discourses invitingly yet repellently lay out the realistic conditions for the hearer to enter the ring and fight the same fight unto death. Sympathizing but pulling no punches, the discourses do not apologize that it is ultimately God who afflicts the sufferer with suffering.158 Given this God-given suffering the discourse assumes every person has been given outwardly, now the sufferer is invited to take the suffering inward and is there placed at the crossroads. Will one here become a cross-bailer or a crossbearer? Here, one has the choice to bail, seeking diversion in temporality, impatiently resolved for a palliative. Or one has the choice to bear, seeking help from eternity, patiently resigned to absorb suffering’s lessons.159 With this grave either/or, Kierkegaard’s discourses exhort with Christ’s exhortation, “Whoever does not carry his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple,”160 soberly exhorting his hearer to resign away ephemeral truancy and enroll in eternity’s “school of sufferings.”161 In the graveyard, Kierkegaard secures the authentic reception of the message of Christ the Redeemer one hears inside the church by stressing the biblical invitation to follow Christ as Prototype outside the church. Given his intensity, his discourses surprisingly do not “preach us to bits.”162 Nor do they banally declaim and convict his hearer by vapidly parroting, “You have failed to follow Christ as Prototype; therefore, you are a sinner.” Kierkegaard does not repellently call his hearer a sinner; instead, he sympathetically calls her a sufferer. The inscriptions on his stolid discourses invitingly appeal to the sufferer’s potential, for example, “What Meaning and What Joy There Are in the Thought of Following Christ,”163 “The Joy of It That the School of Sufferings Educates for Eternity,”164 “The Joy of It That the Happiness of

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Eternity Still Outweighs Even the Heaviest Temporal Suffering.”165 Never alluding that Christianity will extirpate suffering, the inscriptions are uncanny invitations to potentially view one’s given suffering as God-given apparatus for appropriating a joyful life of following Christ. Exhorting his hearer to follow Christ as Prototype, Kierkegaard especially has in mind the scriptural texts that call attention to Christ’s kenotic suffering, for example, “Have this mind in you 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 (Philippians 2:5ff)”;166 “Blessed is he who is not offended at me (Matthew 11:6; Luke 7:23)”;167 “Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered (Hebrews 5:8).”168 “Alas,” Kierkegaard marvels, “he who knew everything, he whose thought encompasses everything, he who therefore needed to learn nothing because what he does not know simply does not exist—of him it says: He learned obedience from what he suffered.”169 Given this, Kierkegaard propounds a divine paradox: “Obedience is so closely related to eternal truth that the one who is Truth learns obedience.”170 In this way, Christ is the Christian’s prototype: “For a human being in his relation to God it holds true that obedience is learned only from sufferings; if this holds for the pure one, how much more then for the sinful human being!”171 Therein, Kierkegaard prepares his hearer for potentially following Christ as Prototype, indirectly inviting her to see her temporal suffering not as reason for disavowing God unto sinful despondency but as kenotic discipline for learning from Christ unto faithful obedience. Sympathetically calling his hearer a “sufferer,” whether she is a “sinner” is for her to decide. Resigned to suffering but resolved for obedience, Kierkegaard then lightly salts a sigh of eternal relief that can be temporally felt in this life that is more gratifying than any temporal diversion, whetting his hearer’s appetite for following Christ as a disciple: “Indeed, if you, disciplined by sufferings, have ever subjected yourself in perfect, in unconditional obedience, then you have discerned the presence of the eternal within you, then you have found the peace and rest of the eternal.”172 Lightly salting this temporal sigh of eternal relief in the midst of suffering, Kierkegaard straightway expresses his characteristic dialectical negative: Yet I shall not develop it further, because in my opinion it is so beautiful that it is almost dangerous and can very easily become a deception if, precisely when it manifests itself in all its beauty to someone, it fascinates his imagination instead of giving him the momentum to strive—as if rejuvenation occurred by magic, as if rejuvenation did not in another sense take a long time.173

Briefly appealing to momentary feelings of eternal joy one can experience as a Christian, Kierkegaard restrains and straightway reverts his hearer back to

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the lifelong schooling of resolved obedience in the midst of resigned suffering wherein one is educated for eternity. Kierkegaard never obviates Christian suffering from Christian joy, securing a sigh. But where is Christ the Redeemer, the main course, the major premise, in all this? Where is the forgiveness of sins in the midst of Kierkegaard’s discourse in the graveyard?174 Kierkegaard is resolving to dialectically secure the right reception of Luther’s message inside the church by first securing on the outside the redemptive comportment of the hearer wherein the need for Christ the Redeemer is necessitated. In many ways, he must preach the “opposite”175 of forgiveness, that is, the joy of following Christ, in order to anteriorly allure his hearer away from a frustrating and enslaving relation to temporal suffering. Anteriorly securing one’s desire for the redeemed life readies the hearer for forgiveness inside the church. But Kierkegaard’s discourses are not anterior recitations of an oppressive Law, only prepping the hearer for forgiveness in the church and further sin and oppression by the Law outside the church. Instead, Kierkegaard’s churchyard discourses preach the joy of following Christ not to delude the hearer but to delight her in the desire for the redeemed life, as hard as it will be. Kierkegaard secures Luther’s message by dialectically interweaving reconciliation and obedience together around the common thread of God’s rule in everything: On the whole there is only one way in which rest is to be found: to let God rule in everything. . . . That there is a reconciliation for the person who is brokenhearted—there is rest in that, but he cannot find rest in this eternal thought if he does not first find rest in the thought of obedience: that God must rule in everything, because reconciliation is indeed God’s plan for the salvation of humankind. That satisfaction has been made for guilt—there is rest for the penitent in that, but he cannot find rest in this eternal thought if he does not first rest in this: to let God rule in everything, because making satisfaction is indeed God’s plan from eternity. That God will forgive you—there is rest in that, but you cannot find rest in this eternal thought if you do not rest in the thought that God is to rule in everything.176

The need for forgiveness is superficial and will be taken in vain without the deep anterior and posterior desire for redemption. Correcting a one-sided and double-minded177 approach to Christ the Redeemer, Kierkegaard’s graveyard discourses dialectically deepen one’s hunger for redemption inside the church by resurrecting for her a hunger for the redeemed life outside the church. Kierkegaard’s epitaph, a verse he chose from a Hans Adolf Brorson hymn, sighs, In yet a little while I shall have won;

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Then the whole fight Will at once be done. Then I may rest In bowers of roses And perpetually And perpetually Speak with my Jesus.178

Kierkegaard’s Either/Or Resign It is from this grave plot that Kierkegaard privately lances Luther for accidentally encouraging his hearers’ premature resolve for temporal relief in this life without first securing that they are first and foremost resigned to eternity’s good.179 This is not to say that Luther did not value the eternal higher than the temporal. But Kierkegaard discerned that if hearers hear Luther’s both/ and too early without first experiencing Luther’s Anfechtung for themselves, then they will impetuously lump secularity and Christianity together and cavalierly leap over Anfechtung altogether, without which Christianity is taken in vain: The place where we really have to begin again is with Luther. It went a little too fast with this lumping together of secularity and religiousness. Luther was perhaps right as far as he himself was concerned; he certainly possessed the inward truth to dare to venture doing the opposite and yet be completely free in it, to be married and yet be as if not married, to be in the world and yet be as a stranger, although taking part in everything, etc. Ah, but it was a dangerous matter to extend this teaching beyond himself, for this made the matter all too easy for all secular mindedness, which is satisfied with merely giving verbal assurances and thus remains purely and simply secularism. . . . Incidentally, Luther himself was severely tried in external struggles, did not entirely conform to the secular mentality, and was tested by the enormous scandal his marriage aroused. Ah, but now all testing has vanished!180

Therefore, Kierkegaard concluded this entry: “Luther’s true successor will come to resemble the exact opposite of Luther, because Luther came after the preposterous overstatement of asceticism; whereas he will come after the horrible fraud to which Luther’s view gave birth.”181 Kierkegaard viewed himself as that successor—a “Socratic”182 “corrective”183—not to nullify or supplant Luther’s evangelical discovery, but to dialectically secure it from degenerating into the religiously justified worldliness it had accidentally become.184 Securing Luther’s message, Kierkegaard one-sidedly presses a complete either/or resign of the temporal for the eternal. Afflicted with this anguishing yet alluring Anfægtelse, now his hearer can examine whether she

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really serves one or two masters,185 setting a stringent stage on which forgiveness and redemption are less likely to be taken in vain. This does not mean that Kierkegaard is a stoic Gnostic who completely resigns away the temporal and cannot sympathize with human need for alleviation from temporal suffering.186 On rare occasions Kierkegaard, too, privately recognized that no human being could survive God-given Anfægtelse without also the God-given manna of temporal comfort in this life: It certainly must never be forgotten that Christ helped also in temporal and earthly needs (timelig og jordisk Nød). It is also possible falsely to make Christ so spiritual that he becomes sheer cruelty. After all “spirit,” absolute spirit, is the greatest of cruelties for us poor men. Consequently Christ also relieved earthly suffering (Christus hjalp ogsaa jordisk Lidende), healed the sick, the lepers, the deranged; he fed people, changed water into wine, calmed the sea, etc.187

Privately, Kierkegaard acknowledges that no Christian can follow Christ without being allowed some temporal relief: “The miracle, the miracles of compassion for earthly need and suffering are still somewhat alleviating and the altogether indispensable alleviation—otherwise it would have been impossible to live with Christ.”188 Privately, Kierkegaard can sympathize with Luther’s resolve for both eternal and temporal relief from Anfechtung. But publicly, Kierkegaard’s either/or resign to Anfægtelse teleologically suspends the temporal to teleologically secure his hearer’s heart for the eternal. CONCLUSION Jaroslav Pelikan, one of the earliest American Luther scholars to study our subject, briefly noted that Søren Kierkegaard “made possible a recovery of the deep evangelical insights of the theology of Martin Luther.”189 Perhaps this study has shined a flashlight on two of these insights. First, Kierkegaard’s pious devotion to Luther’s sermons might kindle our devotion to some of Luther’s most neglected but most insightful volumes.190 Second, digging up and dusting off the sermons, Kierkegaard’s masterful laud and even misapplied lance flicker a smoldering wick on the lost locus of Luther, namely, Anfechtung, Christian suffering, the Christian’s cross. Yes, Christ’s cross and the Christian’s cross must never be conflated, goading legalistic groaning, but Christ’s cross and the Christian’s cross must never be obviated, goading antinomian crowing. Instead, Christ’s cross (the major premise) and the Christian’s cross (the minor premise) must remain hinged together, signaling a sigh that is both self-diffident and God-confident, both humble and grateful at the same time. While Luther’s shining legacy is the

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doctrine of justification by grace through faith without works in which we all bask, Kierkegaard forks out for us Luther’s buried depth that without Anfechtung, “no man can understand Scripture, faith, the fear or the love of God.”191 Out of the depths of his love for Luther and Luther’s inheritors, Kierkegaard resigns and resolves, “This is the road we all must walk—over the Bridge of Sighs into eternity.”192

NOTES 1. Simon D. Podmore, “Kierkegaard as Physician of the Soul: On Self-forgiveness and Despair,” Journal of Psychology and Theology 37 (2009): 174: “In his anxiety over sin and a discernible need for divine reassurance, Kierkegaard can be regarded as the modern inheritor of the scrupulous self-scrutiny of Luther: struggling through the dark clouds of melancholy and despair, with self and God in the spiritual crucible of Anfechtung.” 2. Geismar, “Kierkegaard und Luther,” 228; Hinkson, “Luther and Kierkegaard,” 29. 3. Regin Prenter, Luther’s Theology of the Cross (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971), 18. 4. LW 51:198. 5. LW 51:207. 6. Lenker 5:318; Thisted 1:206; Lindner 7:368; Leipzig 15:139; TDIO 18. 7. See, for example, Lenker 3.1:128; Thisted 1:524; Lindner 7:1068; Leipzig 14:318: “Today’s lesson was not written for the sake of this widow, but for the instruction and help of all who should hear this Gospel until the end of the world, among whom we also have been reckoned.” 8. Thisted 1:133; Lindner 7:231; Leipzig 15:80. 9. C. Warren Hovland, “Anfechtung in Luther’s Biblical Exegesis,” in Reformation Studies: Essays in Honor of Roland H. Bainton, ed. Franklin H. Littell (Richmond, VA: John Knox, 1962), 48–49, asserts that Luther interpreted the whole “Bible as a collection of biographies of those who were suffering Anfechtung and a record of how God permitted the pious to fall into this state and how he helped them out again.” 10. Thisted 1:133; Lindner 7:231; Leipzig 15:80. See also from Luther’s Treatise on Good Works, LW 44:29: “Beyond all this is the highest stage of faith, when God punishes the conscience not only with temporal sufferings but with death, hell, and sin, and at the same time refuses grace and mercy, as though he wanted to condemn and show his anger eternally. Few men experience this as David did when he complained in Psalm 6, ‘O Lord, rebuke me not in thy anger.’ To believe at such times that God is gracious and well-disposed toward us is the greatest work that may ever happen to and in a man.” 11. David P. Scaer, “The Concept of Anfechtung in Luther’s Thought,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 47 (1983): 28, writes that for Luther, Anfechtung “is a bridge that brings the realities of revelation from the Biblical history into the personal

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life of the Christian. . . . The revelations made to the Biblical figures are unrepeatable because they preceded or were contemporaries of the accomplishment of salvation, but the Anfechtungen are shared by all who through faith accept the salvation accomplished long ago. . . . For as faith provides a positive bond among all believers, so the struggles of the Anfechtungen are a definite mark of the Christian and provide a negative bond among all Christians—a bond with each other and with Christ.” 12. Heinecken, The Moment Before God, 318: “It is strange that the English offers no exact equivalent. Perhaps this is a sign of how mediocre, how shallow our Christianity is!” 13. E.g., JP 4:4364–84. On Luther and spiritual trial see, for example, JP 3:2544; Papirer XI.2 A 303. See also JP 3:2524; KJN 7, NB19:73; SKS 23, 377; Papirer X.3 A 234; JP 3:2540; KJN 8, NB24:121; SKS 24, 397; Papirer X.4 A 372. 14. Simon D. Podmore, “The Lightning and the Earthquake: Kierkegaard on the Anfechtung of Luther,” Heythrop Journal 47 (2006): 565. 15. The translation “temptation” is especially confusing when Luther’s most influential Small Catechism states in regard to the sixth petition of the Lord’s Prayer that “God tempts (German: versucht; Latin: tentat; Danish: frister) no one,” F. Bente and W. H. T. Dau, ed. Trigolt Concordia: The Symbolical Books of the Ev. Lutheran Church (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1921), 548–549. Luthers Lille Katekismus (Copenhagen, D. Lohse: 1921), 22. 16. Scaer, “The Concept of Anfechtung in Luther’s Thought,” 15. 17. Heinecken, The Moment Before God, 318, agrees with Roland Bainton that Anfechtung “has as much right to be carried over into English as Blitzkrieg.” 18. Scaer, “The Concept of Anfechtung,” 15. See also Hovland, “Anfechtung in Luther’s Biblical Exegesis,” 46. 19. E.g., Ebeling, Luther, 11. 20. Randall Stephens, “An Examination of Luther’s Theology According to an Existentialist Interpretation,” Spring 2000, http:​//www​.quod​libet​.net/​artic​les/s​tephe​ ns-lu​ther.​shtml​ (March 18, 2011): “Luther’s concept of the Anfechtung from God brought persons to a point of crisis (boundary situation) where he or she was forced to make a decision for life and death.” 21. Podmore, “The Lightning and the Earthquake,” 564, insightfully notes, “Specifically, it was Luther’s avowedly anguished struggles with Anfechtung which reverberated most with Kierkegaard’s own sense of spiritual trial [Anfægtelse].” 22. Roland H. Bainton, “Luther’s Struggle for Faith,” Church History 17 (1948): 194. Kadai, “Luther’s Theology of the Cross,” 251–52, highlights Luther’s Genesis commentary, from the last ten years of Luther’s life, as evidence of the role of Anfechtung in Luther’s Theology of the Cross throughout his career. See, for example, from the Genesis commentary from the last year of Luther’s life, LW 8:4–5: “Accordingly, this is a very beautiful example of how God deals with us. For when he afflicts the godly and conceals the fact that He is our God and Father and rather conducts Himself as a tyrant and judge who wants to torture and destroy us, He says at last in His own time and at a suitable hour: ‘I am the Lord your God. Hitherto I have treated you just as if I wanted to cast you off and hurl you into hell. But this is a game I am wont to play with My saints; for if I had not wished you well from My heart, I would never

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have played with you in this manner.’ These matters are depicted in this way in the government of the saints for our consolation, in order that we may learn to endure the hand of God when He instructs and vexes us to cause us to know and humble ourselves and to mortify that horrible evil which is called original sin. For this is not done in order that we may be condemned and cast off—although our cross and affliction is similar to perdition and death—but the sin clinging to our nature must be cleaned out, in order that we may learn the meaning of what the Lord says concerning Himself in 1 Sam. 2:6–7: ‘I kill and bring to life; I bring down to Sheol and raise up; I make poor and make rich.” 23. JP 3:2546; KJN 9, NB29:12; SKS 25, 303; Papirer XI.1 A 61 24. Jane E. Strohl, “Luther’s Spiritual Journey” in The Cambridge Companion to Martin Luther, ed. Donald K. McKim (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 150. 25. Heinecken, The Moment Before God, 330. 26. Bainton, “Luther’s Struggle for Faith,” 198, translating WATr 4:4777. 27. Danish Luther scholar Jørgen Pedersen, “Lov og evangelium: samt anfægtelsen og dens overvindelse belyst ud fra Luthers prædikener” in Martin Luther: i kamp for troen, ed. Poul Langagergaard (Fredericia, DK: Lohses Forlag, 1983), 73, also especially recognizes the paramount locus of Anfechtung in Luther’s church postils. 28. Hovland, “Anfechtung in Luther’s Biblical Exegesis,” 49. Bainton, “Luther’s Struggle for Faith,” 194, remarks, “Who can read Luther’s sermons in the later years on all the troubled spirits in the Bible without feeling that they are essentially autobiographical.” 29. Meuser, “Luther as Preacher of the Word of God,” 139. 30. Bainton, “Luther’s Struggle for Faith,” 194. 31. PC 67. 32. Thisted 1:304–5; Lindner 7:580; Leipzig 13:595 (translation mine). 33. Lenker 3.1:130; Thisted 1:525; Lindner 7:1070; Leipzig 14:318. 34. Pedersen, “Lov og evangelium,” 84, insightfully notes that Anfechtung is the manifestation of God’s continuing work of Law and Gospel in the Christian’s life. Anfechtung is the repeated experience of the Law’s accusation of the Christian unto death and damnation, but “Anfechtung brings men to cry to God, which is the ultimate goal. Crying or praying is the right worship of God, for to seek God in the midst of Anfechtung and need is to give him the greatest honor.” “God gives Anfechtung unto salvation. He will always tear us away from ourselves and in the movement of faith lead us to Christ. It is his continued alien ministry. And out of our sinful flesh, necessitated” (translation mine). 35. Paul Bühler, Die Anfechtung bei Martin Luther (Zurich: Zwingli-Verlag, 1942), 7 in Scaer, “The Concept of Anfechtung in Luther’s Thought,” 15–16. 36. Hinkson, “Kierkegaard’s Theology,” 35. 37. Reflecting Anfechtung’s ambivalent nature, I refer to “misericordia” as both “merciful” and as the medieval dagger used to deliver a deathblow to a mortally wounded victim. 38. Lenker 1.2:63; Thisted 1:155; Lindner 7:272; Leipzig 13:352.

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39. Lenker 1.2:62; Thisted 1:154; Lindner 7:270; Leipzig 13:351. 40. Lenker 1.2:62; Thisted 1:154; Lindner 7:271; Leipzig 13:351. 41. Lenker 1.2:62–63; Thisted 1:155; Lindner 7:271; Leipzig 13:351. 42. Cf. Kierkegaard’s commensurate and most famous definition of faith from CUP 203: “An objective uncertainty, held fast through appropriation with the most passionate inwardness.” 43. Parallel to Mary, Hovland, “Anfechtung in Luther’s Biblical Exegesis,” 58–60, highlights the same pattern in Luther’s Gospel postil for the Second Sunday in Lent on the Canaanite woman: “In three hard blows (Schläge) Jesus tested the faith of the Canaanite woman. . . . The Canaanite was brought to a state where she was left ‘swaying between the Yes and the No.’ This is the true description of doubt. (Verzweiflung is literally ‘torn in two.’) Only the deepest kind of faith can find the Yes which lies buried under the No. It is the ability to endure these periods of Anfechtung which Luther finds most remarkable. It is the ability to see the positive character of God, the love for his creatures behind the dark face.” Pedersen, “Lov og evangelium,” 83, highlights the same Canaanite woman sermon for the same reason. 44. Lenker 1.2:130; Thisted 1:197–98; Lindner 7:350; Leipzig 13:407. 45. Luther regularly expresses this double danger that a Christian, post-Gospel, experiences as Anfechtung. See, for example, Luther’s Gospel postil for Pentecost Day, Lenker 2.1:309; Thisted 1:345; Lindner 7:669–70; Leipzig 13:702: “This loyalty to Christ’s kingdom is now considered a simple thing by the presumptuous (Lindner: vermessenen; Thisted: uforsagt) and inexperienced spirits who deem themselves so holy and so strong in the faith as to be able easily to do what they hear, and who think that the Word of God is something that is obeyed as soon as it is heard. . . . Experience (Lindner: erfahrung; Thisted: Erfaring), therefore, teaches how difficult it is to keep this Word, for the holy cross has been laid upon it. Not only do our flesh and the old nature resist, in accordance with its disposition, and prefer that which is easy and agreeable, but also, when one begins to confess the Gospel, then the devil, with all his followers and confederates, bears hard upon one and everywhere attacks him by means of the persecutions of the world (Lindner: verfolgung der welt; Thisted: Forføgelse af Verden) and by all kinds of temptations (Lindner: anfechtung; Thisted: Anfægtelse). He opposes him inwardly, with unending conflicts and fears of the heart, and outwardly, with constant danger of body and life, until one must cry to heaven for help.” 46. Thisted 1:199; Lindner 7:352; Leipzig 15:134 (translation mine). 47. Lenker 1.2:131; Thisted 1:198; Lindner 7:352; Leipzig 13:407. 48. Lenker 3.1:351; Thisted 1:606; Lindner 7:1252; Leipzig 14:414. 49. Lenker 3.1:351; Thisted 1:606–7; Lindner 7:1252; Leipzig 14:414. 50. Lenker 3.1:351; Thisted 1:606; Lindner 7:1252; Leipzig 14:414. 51. Lenker 3.1:352–53; Thisted 1:607–8; Lindner 7:1254, 56; Leipzig 14:415. 52. Lenker 3.1:354; Thisted 1:609; Lindner 7:1257; Leipzig 14:416. 53. Lenker 2.2:369; Thisted 1:482; Lindner 7:972; Leipzig 14:246. 54. Lenker 2.2:365; Thisted 1:479; Lindner 7:966; Leipzig 14:243. 55. Lenker 2.2:365; Thisted 1:479; Lindner 7:966; Leipzig 14:243. 56. Lenker 2.2:359; Thisted 1:473; Lindner 7:951; Leipzig 14:239.

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57. Thisted’s Danish: “in the same holy moment.” 58. Lenker 2.2:367; Thisted 1:481; Lindner 7:969–70; Leipzig 14:245. 59. JP 4:4372; KJN 5, NB9:22; SKS 21, 209; Papirer X.1 A 22. 60. Thisted 1:169–70; Lindner 7:298–99; Leipzig 15:104 (translation mine). 61. Thisted 1:170; Lindner 7:299; Leipzig 15:105 (translation mine). 62. Thisted 1:172; Lindner 7:303–4; Leipzig 15:106 (translation mine). 63. Thisted 1:173; Lindner 7:305; Leipzig 16:126 (translation mine). 64. Lenker 5:260; Leipzig 15:106. 65. My conjecture is that this very likely may have been due to the proliferation of Luther’s Small and Large Catechisms in Lutheran Denmark, with which Kierkegaard must have had familiarity as a Lutheran confirmand and student of theology. In these popular catechisms, Luther does not cite God as the cause of Anfechtung, but as the one to whom we pray in the midst of Anfechtung, which comes either from our flesh, the world, or the devil. Luther’s explanation of the petition “Lead us not into temptation (German: Versuchung; Danish: Fristelse)” reads in the Danish Small Catechism: “Gud frister vel ingen, men vi beder i denne Bøn, at han vil vogte og bevare os, for at Djævelen, Verden og vort Kød ikke skal bedrage o seller forføre os til Vantro, Fortvivlelse og anden skændig Synd og Last, men dersom vi saaledes fristes, at vi dog til sidst maa vinde og beholde Sejren,” Lille Katekismus, 22–23 (God indeed tempts no one, but we pray in this prayer that he will guard and preserve us so that the devil, the world, and our flesh shall not deceive us or seduce us to unbelief, despair, or other shameful sin and vice, but if we thus are tempted that we in the end must win and retain the victory) (translation mine). Even more compelling is Luther’s Large Catechism, wherein Luther uses the words Versuchung (Danish: Fristelse) and Anfechtung (Anfægtelse) interchangeably. Therein, Luther states: “Temptation (Versuchung; Fristelser) is of three kinds: of the flesh, the world, and the devil. . . . Every Christian must endure such great, grievous perils and attacks (Anfechtung; Anfægtelser). . . . This, then, is what “leading us not into temptation (Versuchungen; Fristelser)” means: when God give us power and strength to resist, even though the attack (Anfechtung; Anfægtelser) is not removed or ended. For no one can escape temptations (Versuchungen; Fristelser) and allurements as long as we live in the flesh and have the devil prowling around us. We cannot help but suffer attacks (Anfechtung; Anfægtelser). . . . Others, who are concerned with spiritual matters, that is, strong Christians, are tempted by the devil. . . . For if we did not experience it, it could not be called an attack (Anfechtung; Anfægtelse). . . . Accordingly we Christians must be armed and expect every day to be under continuous attack (angefochten; anfægtet). Then we will not go about securely and heedlessly as if the devil were far from us, but will at all times expect his blows and fend them off.” English is from BC 453–54. German is from Walch, 118–20, which is based upon the 1740–53 edition which Kierkegaard owned (see Thulstrup, Trial, Test, Tribulation, Temptation, 108). Danish is from Konkordiebogen: De reformatoriske skrifter og Den Lutherske Fælleserklæring (http​://ww​w.lut​herda​nsk.d​k/Tre​llix/​id87.​htm) (accessed November 1, 2010). 66. JP 1:486; KJN 5, NB7:35; SKS 21, 93; Papirer IX A 292. 67. JP 2:1447; KJN 10, NB33:53; SKS 26, 297; Papirer XI.2 A 130.

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68. JP 3:2465; KJN 4, NB4:153; SKS 20, 357; Papirer VIII.1 A 642. 69. Lenker 3.1:81; Thisted 1:509; Lindner 7:1033; Leipzig 14:291. 70. Lenker 3.1:87–88; Leipzig 14:294. 71. Loewenich, Luther’s Theology of the Cross, 96, “The highest and most difficult test of faith is when God not only delays but even conceals it under the opposite appearance.” 72. Podmore, “The Lightning and the Earthquake,” 571–72. 73. Pedersen, “Lov og evangelium,” 81–82 (translation mine). 74. Niels Thulstrup, “Trial, Test, Tribulation, Temptation,” in Some of Kierkegaard’s Main Categories, ed. Niels Thulstrup and Marie Mikulova Thulstrup, vol. 16 of Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana (Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag, 1988), 107. 75. Lenker 3.1:134; Thisted 1:528; Lindner 7:1076; Leipzig 14:320. 76. Lenker 3.1:134; Thisted 1:528; Lindner 7:1076; Leipzig 14:320. 77. Lenker 3.1:135; Thisted 1:528–29; Lindner 7:1077–78; Leipzig 14:320. 78. Lenker 3.1:144; Thisted 1:529; Lindner 7:1078–79; Leipzig 14:323. The italicized papal polemic is deleted in Lindner and Thisted. 79. E.g., Luther’s sermon on Mary at the wedding at Cana: “Christ waits to the very last moment when the want is felt by all present, and there is no counsel or help left. This shows the way of divine grace; it is not imparted to one who still has enough, and has not yet felt his need. For grace does not feed the full and satiated, but the hungry, as we have often said. Whoever still deems himself wise, strong and pious, and finds something good in himself, and is not yet a poor, miserable, sick sinner and fool, the same cannot come to Christ the Lord, nor receive his grace. But whenever the need is felt, he does not at once hasten and bestow what is needed and desired, but delays and tests our faith and trust, even as he does here; yea, what is still more severe, he acts as though he would not help at all, but speaks with harshness and austerity. This you observe in the case of his mother.” Lenker 1.2:61; Thisted 1:154; Lindner 7:269–70; Leipzig 13:351. 80. Lenker 2.1:78; Thisted 1:304; Lindner 7:578–79; Leipzig 13:595. 81. Lenker 2.1:105; Thisted 1:306; Lindner 7:582; Leipzig 13:601. 82. Thisted 1:306; Lindner 7:583; Leipzig 16:276 (translation mine). Another section making a similar point is deleted in Linder and Thisted: “For were Christ to have stayed away, for perhaps one, or four years, all of his disciples would have broken away from him and gone over to Annas and Caiaphas. For that reason he did not want to stay away too long but only three days; and on the third day, he again showed himself alive and comforted and strengthened the disciples. He does the same thing with us. He does not allow us to weep and mourn very long, but relieves and revives us so that we can endure it. . . . Our Lord God must so temper, allay, and cut short his people’s weeping and mourning so that they do not succumb to folly,” Lenker 6:90–91; Leipzig 16:277. 83. Lenker 1.2:61; Thisted 1:153; Lindner 7:269; Leipzig 13:351. 84. Thisted 1:304; Lindner 7:577; Leipzig 13:594 (translation mine). 85. Lenker 6:93; Thisted 1:307; Lindner 7:586; Leipzig 16:278. 86. Lenker 6:245; Thisted 1:397; Lindner 7:784; Leipzig 16:348. 87. CD 100–1.

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88. CD 103, 113, 123, 133, 143, 149, 159. 89. CD 109–10. 90. CD 136. 91. CD 99. 92. CD 150. The Hong translations well exhibit Kierkegaard’s penchant for Danish wordplay. 93. CD 126. 94. CD 113. 95. Walsh, Living Christianly, 14. 96. JP 3:2467; KJN 4, NB5:10; SKS 20, 373; Papirer IX A 11. 97. CD 152. 98. David R. Law, “Resignation, Suffering, and Guilt in Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript to ‘Philosophical Fragments,’” in Concluding Unscientific Postscript to “Philosophical Fragments,” ed. Robert L. Perkins, vol. 12 of International Kierkegaard Commentary (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1997), 267: “Resignation, then, is the means by which the individual orients the self absolutely toward the absolute telos and by which the absolute telos is distinguished from relative ends.” 99. See Hinkson, Kierkegaard’s Theology, 291–93. 100. CD 137. 101. CD 104. 102. JP 3:2474; KJN 5, NB8:58; SKS 21, 170; Papirer IX A 433. 103. JP 3:2467; KJN 4, NB5:10; SKS 20, 373; Papirer IX A 11. 104. E.g., from one of Kierkegaard’s public discourses, CD 168–69: “But if you have asked God for help, then you are bound, bound to accept the help as he sees fit.” 105. Lenker 2.2:377–78; Thisted 1:485; Lindner 7:979–80; Leipzig 14:259–60. 106. JP 3:2467; KJN 4, NB5:10; SKS 20, 373; Papirer IX A 11. 107. JP 3:2467; KJN 4, NB5:10; SKS 20, 373; Papirer IX A 11. 108. Lenker 1.2:74; Thisted 1:165; Lindner 7:289; Leipzig 13:356. 109. JP 3:2467; KJN 4, NB5:10; SKS 20, 373; Papirer IX A 11. 110. Gustaf Wingren, Luther on Vocation, 196, says of Luther that “Prayer must not bind God to a fixed resolution of man’s outward difficulties. Prayer must always come to grips with God’s ‘passivity’ and cry out for help; but it must never prescribe how God is to help. If a man does that, he does not pray; he ‘sets purpose, place, time, and manner’ for God. He does not live in faith, he knows not what faith is.” 111. Lenker 1.2:75–76; Thisted 1:164; Lindner 7:287; Leipzig 15:100. 112. JP 3:2520; Papirer X.3 A 211. 113. Lenker 7:191; Thisted 1:613; Lindner 7:1266; Leipzig 16:524. 114. JP 3:2520; Papirer X.3 A 211. 115. JP 3:2467; KJN 4, NB5:10; SKS 20, 373; Papirer IX A 11. 116. JP 4:4950; KJN 7, NB17:111; SKS 23, 249; Papirer X.3 A 43. 117. Lenker 5:314; Thisted 1:202; Lindner 7:359; Leipzig 15:136. Here is a rare example of Lindner switching mid-paragraph between a house postil and a church postil on the same Gospel text. 118. Lenker 1.2:135–36; Thisted 1:202; Lindner 7:359; Leipzig 13:413.

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119. JP 4:4950; KJN 7, NB17:111; SKS 23, 249; Papirer X.3 A 43. 120. JP 4:4950; KJN 7, NB17:111; SKS 23, 249; Papirer X.3 A 43. 121. Philippians 2:12–13 (ESV); cf. UDVS 259. 122. Cf. Jeremiah 20:9 (ESV): “If I say, ‘I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,’ there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.” 123. Lenker 1.2:134–35; Leipzig 13:412–13. 124. Lenker 5:313; Thisted 1:201; Lindner 7:358; Leipzig 15:136. 125. JP 4:3831; KJN 8, NB23:114; SKS 24, 262; Papirer X.4 A 119: “We are so far from sacrificing and from simply admitting honestly that it is required, that in order to be perfectly safe we have cooked up a sort of dogma that to sacrifice is ‘to tempt God.’ But the ancient ones, of course, had this mitigation: if someone willed to sacrifice something or himself for Christianity, it was understood—not as it is now when such a person is ridiculed as ludicrous exaggeration by—Christians!” 126. See JFY 192–93. 127. JP 1:964; KJN 5, NB8:17; SKS 21, 152; Papirer IX A 392. 128. See from this sermon Lenker 5:315; Thisted 1:202; Lindner 7:360–61; Leipzig 15:137: “This sort of temptation (Lindner: anfechtung; Thisted: Anfægtning) is still with us today. The devil still puts such thoughts into people’s hearts like: If you are a child of God, God cannot be angry with you. Let us keep hoarding and being covetous. Let’s meddle to our heart’s content into the affairs of the world; no harm is done; you are not sinning if you do. For if God does not want to give nourishment and bread, he must be a bad God and a merciless Father.” 129. JP 4:4950; KJN 7, NB17:111; SKS 23, 249; Papirer X.3 A 43. 130. JP 4:4950; KJN 7, NB17:111; SKS 23, 249; Papirer X.3 A 43. 131. See from Luther in this sermon, Lenker 5:314; Thisted 1:202; Lindner 7:360; Leipzig 15:137: “He could easily have made bread out of stones. He had already done much greater miracles! But the reason he does not want to do it is this: He knows very well what the devil is after and that he is not particularly interested in Jesus performing a miracle. Rather, as we see from Christ’s reply, Satan wanted very much to rob him of faith and reliance on God’s lovingkindness.” 132. Lenker 1.2:146–47; Thisted 1:207; Lindner 7:371; Leipzig 13:417. 133. Thisted 1:207; Papirer X.1 A 326 (underlining Kierkegaard’s). JP 3:2490: “‘But these things are written for our consolation, that we might know: where one devil tempts us, there are many angels to minister to us.’ Luther in the sermon on the gospel account of the temptations of Christ.” 134. JP 4:4950; KJN 7, NB17:111; SKS 23, 249; Papirer X.3 A 43. 135. Sylvia Walsh, “Dying to the World and Self-Denial in Kierkegaard’s Religious Thought,” in For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourself!, ed. Robert L. Perkins, vol. 21 of International Kierkegaard Commentary (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2002), 169. 136. Christian Breuinger, “Søren Kierkegaard’s Reformation of Expository Preaching,” The Covenant Quarterly 51 (Aug. 1993): 28, answers, “Kierkegaard prompts his readers to existentially realize what Luther articulated in propositional form. Put briefly, this strategy attempts to wound in order to heal.” 137. COR xxx.

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138. “Kierkegaard” is spelled “kirkegård” in modern Danish. 139. The place of Kierkegaard’s burial in Copenhagen is “Assistens Kirkegård.” 140. Andrew Burgess, “Kierkegaard on Homiletics and the Genre of the Sermon,” Journal of Communication 17 (Sept. 1994): 27–28. Kierkegaard repeatedly prefaced his books of discourses, for example, EUD 231, that they were to be “called ‘discourses,’ not sermons, because its author does not have authority to preach.” See also JP 1:638; KJN 4, NB:120; SKS 20, 87; Papirer VIII.1 A 6: “A sermon (Prædiken) presupposes a pastor (Præst) (ordination); Christian discourse (Tale) can be by a layman (almindeligt Menneske).” 141. CD 164–65. 142. CD 96: “Where there is nothing terrifying whatever and no terror whatever, there is nothing that builds up either, no upbuilding whatever. There is forgiveness of sin—that is upbuilding. The terrifying is that there is sin, and the magnitude of the terror in the inwardness of guilt-consciousness is proportionate to the dimension of the upbuilding.” 143. Kierkegaard recommended that his reader read his discourses aloud for the sake that the reader would get the sense that he was speaking to himself and not considering Kierkegaard as the author. See FSE 3: “My dear reader, read aloud, if possible! . . . By reading aloud you will gain the strongest impression that you have only yourself to consider, not me, who, after all, am ‘without authority,’ nor others, which would be a distraction.” 144. See, for example, EUD 231: “The book . . . seeks and looks for only that favorably disposed person who takes an interest in the seeker, gives an opportunity to what is said, brings the cold thoughts into flame again, transforms the discourse into a conversation, the honest confidentiality of which is not disturbed by any recollection of the one who continually desires only to be forgotten, and this is primarily and preferably the case precisely when the recipient accomplishes the great work of letting the perishability of the discourse arise in imperishability.” Burgess, “Kierkegaard on Homiletics,” 19, notes that when Kierkegaard did preach publicly, he preferred to do so at the intimate services of confession and communion on Fridays because the small audience would be one of earnest listeners gathered because of their need for God, not for a Sunday tradition. 145. George Pattison, “The Art of Upbuilding,” in Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, ed. Robert L. Perkins, vol. 5 of International Kierkegaard Commentary (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2003), 88–89. 146. CD 245–46. Cf. also, JP 6:6727; KJN 8, NB23:33; SKS 24, 221; Papirer X.4 A 33: “The doctrine in the established Church and its organization are very good. Be the lives, our lives—believe me, they are mediocre. [In margin: The proclamation of the doctrine is done at too great a distance, Christianity is not a power in actuality, our lives are only slightly touched by the doctrine.]” 147. CD 167: “God understands only one kind of honesty, that a person’s life expresses what he says. All other honesty, all other solemnity, all mere assurance that one means what one says is to God a deception, an untruth.” 148. One helpful way to view the anterior and posterior goals of Kierkegaard’s discourses might be through the lenses of ancient moral rhetoric. Anteriorly, “protrepsis” was exhortation designed to win someone over to a particular way of life;

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whereas, posteriorly, “paraenesis” was exhortation to continue pursuing what a disciple already knows. See Abraham J. Malherbe, Moral Exhortation, A Greco-Roman Sourcebook (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986), 121–27. 149. JP 1:715; Papirer V A 56: “My reader, it is very curious, but not everyone gets to become an author in this life—for that various talents are required. Ah, but go out into the graveyard and look at the graves and you will see that occasionally someone has become an author without even giving the slightest thought. Those brief inscriptions, a pious saying, an admonition—for example, remembrance of the Godfearing is a benediction—out there everything preaches; just as nature declares God, so every grave preaches.” 150. George Pattison, “‘Who’ Is the Discourse? A Study in Kierkegaard’s Religious Literature,” Kierkegaardiana 16 (1993), 30–31, asks us to imagine what kind of figure takes shape when we read Kierkegaard’s discourses. I personally see the figure of a graveyard emerging out of Pattison’s excellent description of the discourses: “The Discourse . . . is not obtrusive, does not force itself on the reader, seeking neither praise nor popularity. It is not quarrelsome and does not aim to surprise or shock or frighten the reader. Nonetheless, it can be alarming although its fundamental purpose is to be helpful. It is at home with stillness and quietness, shunning busyness and is, in a deep sense, calming. . . . It itself is not worldly-minded and, similarly, presupposes the reader’s concern for the eternal, fighting, on the basis of this presupposition, for the triumph of the eternal in a person. In this fight it cannot, as worldly oratory might, prosper prosperity or recognition but, instead, never grows tired of talking about suffering.” 151. CD 163. 152. Kierkegaard’s public discourses repeatedly appeal, “O you suffering one, whoever you are.” E.g., CD 109; UDVS 101. 153. PC 20. 154. UDVS 15. 155. See, for example, Kierkegaard’s discourse entitled “At a Graveside,” TDIO 75–76: “Death is the schoolmaster of earnestness, but in turn its earnest instruction is recognized precisely by its leaving to the single individual the task of searching himself so it can then teach him earnestness as it can be learned only by the person himself. Death minds its own business in life; it does not run around, as the timorous think, and sharpen its scythe and scare women and children—as if this were earnestness. No, death says, ‘I exist; if anyone wants to learn from me, then let him come to me.’” 156. CD 104. 157. TDIO 58. 158. CD 163–64. 159. UDVS 256–57. 160. UDVS 217, 221. 161. UDVS 248. 162. JP 2:1857; KJN 6, NB12:177; SKS 22, 249; Papirer X.2 A 47: “I find that what [Luther] says about preaching the law corresponds to what I am accustomed to say concerning the use of the prototype in order to preach men to bits so that they turn to grace.”

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163. UDVS 217. 164. UDVS 248. 165. UDVS 306. 166. UDVS 221. 167. PC 71. 168. UDVS 250. 169. UDVS 253. 170. UDVS 255. 171. UDVS 263. 172. UDVS 258. Cf. Hebrews 12:7, 11 (ESV): “It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? . . . For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” 173. UDVS 261–62. 174. PV 261: “Authority is appropriate to the ‘ordained’ pastor, and to the preaching of sin and grace in the decisive sense. But from the beginning (preface to Two Upbuilding Discourses [1843]) I have stereotypically repeated that I was without authority and even at the end, in the preface to the discourse at Communion, pointed out that these were not sermons, because I have not yet decisively advanced the doctrine of sin and grace in the strictest sense and as the decisive element.” See also Thomas C. Anderson, “Is the Religion of Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses Religiousness A?,” in Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, ed. Robert L. Perkins, vol. 5 of International Kierkegaard Commentary (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2003), 73–75. 175. JP 3:2518; KJN 7, NB18:99; SKS 23, 323; Papirer X.3 A 153. 176. UDVS 258–59. 177. UDVS 37. 178. LD 27. 179. E.g., UDVS 39: “To will the good for the sake of reward is double-mindedness; therefore to will one thing is to will the good without regard for reward.” 180. JP 3:2518; KJN 7, NB18:99; SKS 23, 323; Papirer X.3 A 153. 181. JP 3:2518; KJN 7, NB18:99; SKS 23, 323; Papirer X.3 A 153. 182. Kierkegaard valued how Socrates valued the truth over the tranquility of the state, and doing so through his dizzying dialectical and maieutic method, Socrates made life more strenuous for his contemporaries, which ultimately led to his martyrdom by the state. In view of Socrates’s sacrifice by the state and Luther’s adoption by the state, Kierkegaard commented in his journal, JP 3:2514; KJN 7, NB16:87; SKS 23, 152; Papirer X.2 A 559: “The only important thing to me in this is to get it dialectically clarified. As for the rest, I have the deepest respect for Luther—but was he a Socrates? No, no, far from that. When I talk purely and simply about man I say: Of all men old Socrates is the greatest—Socrates, the hero and martyr of intellectuality. Only you understood what it is to be a reformer, understood what it meant for you yourself to be that, and were that.” 183. JP 6:6693; KJN 8, NB21:122; SKS 24, 74; Papirer X.3 A 565. See Marie Mikulova Thulstrup, “Kierkegaard’s Dialectic of Imitation,” trans. H. R. Harcourt, in A Kierkegaard Critique, ed. Howard A. Johnson and Niels Thulstrup (New York:

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Harper & Row, 1962), 267: “For Kierkegaard, a corrective is a deliberate exaggeration, calculated to call forth a reaction.” 184. JP 3:2470; KJN 4, NB5:141; SKS 20, 425; Papirer IX A 145. 185. Kierkegaard wrote more discourses on Matthew 6:24–34 (“No one can serve two masters”) than any other text. See UDVS 159–212; CD 3–91; WOA 3–45; JFY 149–213. 186. See Hinkson, “Kierkegaard’s Theology,” 292–93. 187. JP 1:347; KJN 6, NB13:18; SKS 22, 283; Papirer X.2 A 86. 188. JP 1:347; KJN 6, NB13:18; SKS 22, 283; Papirer X.2 A 86. 189. Pelikan, From Luther to Kierkegaard, 113–14. 190. Meuser, Luther the Preacher, 9. 191. WATr 4:4777. 192. JP 1:28; Papirer I A 334.

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Index

aesthetic stage, 12, 80, 130 Anabaptists, 6, 66 anfechtung/anfægtelse, 5, 12, 19, 34–35, 37, 65–66, 87, 180, 183–84, 186, 195–227; and the devil, 204–7, 219–20; involuntary and voluntary, 216–21 antinomianism, 3, 30, 80, 96–98, 100–1, 123, 148, 175–76, 226 anxiety, 34, 37, 79, 88–92, 99–100 anxious conscience, 29, 33–37, 64, 79–81, 87–88, 94, 100, 148–50, 152, 176, 178, 180 appropriation, 85–87 approximation, 85–87 Arndt, Johann, 39 asceticism, 5, 7, 12, 139, 177, 225 Barfod, Hans Peter, 16 Bible, interpretation of, 29–30, 32–34, 84–86, 155, 158–62, 176, 179, 227 Bohlin, Torsten, 11 Brorson, Hans Adolf, 224 Bühler, Paul, 200 Bukdahl, Jørgen, 39, 134 Bultmann, Rudolf, 1 Catholicism, Roman, 5–7, 29, 62–66, 126, 142, 145, 156

Christianity, dialectical expression of, 5, 10, 13, 15, 29–31, 39, 101, 108, 123, 133–35, 138, 142–45, 175, 180, 183, 195, 211, 221 Clausen, H. N., 28, 37 The Corsair, 129–35, 158, 221 Cruciger, Caspar, 17 Descartes, René, 32, 87 despair, groaning, 12, 18, 79–83, 87, 90–97, 100–101, 109, 123–24, 129, 133, 146–47, 149, 153, 157, 176–77, 196, 201–2, 211 Deus Absconditus, 11–12, 201 Deus Nudus, 11 Deus Revelatus, 11–12, 201 dialectic, 1–4, 7–9, 14–15, 18–19, 34, 64, 79, 88–92, 103, 211, 216; Christ’s cross-Christian’s cross, 195–98, 226; faith-suffering, 101–9, 195; inverse, 101, 103, 123, 159, 221; law-gospel/works-faith, 2, 6–8, 27–28, 96–101, 145–62, 180, 186; redeemer-prototype, 149–62 dialectical theology, 1, 11 Diem, Hermann, 2, 8–10, 14, 16, 88, 175, 188 Dietrich, Veit, 17, 60, 62

251

252

discipleship, Christian, 6, 8–9, 12–14, 19, 155, 160, 162, 175, 189, 200 Enlightenment/Rationalism, 6–7, 12, 28–37, 39, 54, 83–85, 87, 182 ethical stage, 12, 79–80, 83, 87, 130 existentialism, 1, 150 faith, Christian, 5, 7, 9, 11–12, 27–33, 35–36, 41, 55–57, 65, 84, 86, 91–92, 94–109, 139, 147, 150, 153–62, 176–81, 187–88, 195–96, 198–203, 205–7, 210–19, 227 fantanomianism, 101, 104, 108 Ferreira, M. Jamie, 97 forgiveness of sin, 85, 91, 94, 96, 100–1, 108, 138, 146, 160, 199–200, 224, 226 Franke, August Hermann, 39, 60 Garff, Joakim, 57 Geismar, Eduard, 4–7, 10–14, 195 Goldschmidt, Meir Aron, 129–34 Gospel, Christian, 35, 80, 83, 95, 123–24, 145–46, 154–62, 196, 200 Gottsched, Hermann, 16 grace of God, 2, 5, 8–9, 12–13, 28–32, 34, 36, 64, 80–82, 96, 99–101, 134, 138–39, 144, 146, 148–50, 154, 157, 160–62, 176–80, 186–89, 199, 202–3, 214–15, 218, 227; as major premise, 188–89, 226 Grundtvig, N. F. S., 39, 183, 221 Hall, Amy Laura, 97 Hegel, G. W. F., 8–9, 37, 39, 56–57, 88, 101 Heiberg, P. A., 16–17 Hinkson, Craig, 11–14, 28, 195 Hirsch, Emanuel, 11 Holl, Karl, 5 Hong, Howard, 54, 198 Hume, David, 84–85

Index

James, Epistle of, 86, 147, 161–62, 176, 179, 187–88, 191–94 Jesus Christ, 5, 11–14, 30, 35, 56, 60–61, 63, 65, 67–68, 81, 100, 105, 107, 109, 124–25, 128–29, 136–37, 141, 144–47, 156–57, 195, 197, 202–4, 209–10, 214–16, 225; as prototype for Christians, 19, 82, 85, 134, 148–55, 159–60, 162, 175, 177, 185, 188, 197–98, 213, 217, 210–23, 226; as redeemer of Christians, 19, 29–30, 91, 94, 101, 106, 149–55, 158–62, 175, 188, 197–98, 201, 205, 221–22, 224 Jews/Judaism, 66, 83, 124–48 John Fredrick, Elector, 127–28 Josel of Rosheim, 127, 132 justification, 3, 6, 12, 28–31, 33–34, 64, 96–99, 148–49, 178, 186, 199, 227 Kant, Immanuel, 39, 56 Kierkegaard, Michael Pedersen, 37–41 Kierkegaard, Peter Christian, 16 Kierkegaard, Søren: Christian Discourses, 159; Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 3, 29, 129, 134, 151, 161; as discourse author, 38–39, 54, 161, 211, 221–24; Either/Or, 2–3, 55, 130; Fear and Trembling, 2; Jews, relation to, 128–35; Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, 17; library, private, 29, 39; as Lutheran, 1–3, 28–30, 38–39, 97, 161; Papirer, 16–17; The Point of View for My Work as an Author, 130; Practice in Christianity, 105–6, 150–51; as pseudonymous author, 1–2, 5; reading style, 53–58, 124; second authorship, 10, 12, 55, 129, 134; For Self-Examination, 86, 176–88; Sickness Unto Death, 88–91; Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, 3–4, 9–11, 14–19, 39, 54–55, 58–59, 65, 97, 102, 104, 108, 124– 25, 128–29, 132, 135, 176; Stages on Life’s Way, 130–31; Works of Love, 97, 103–4, 106–7

Index

Kim, David Yoon-Jung, 2, 68–69, 97, 148 Kirmmse, Bruce, 27–28, 129, 135 Koenker, Ernest, 7–8, 14 Kolb, Robert, 18 law, 17, 79–83, 90, 95, 98, 100–1, 124, 126, 138, 145–48, 152–62, 177–78, 199, 204, 207, 224 Lessing, Gotthold, 84–85 literature, homiletic, 16, 27, 37–42 Lund, Henrik, 16 Luther, Martin: as dialectician, 2–4, 7–9, 14–15, 18–19, 69, 88, 98–101, 106, 123–24, 145–49, 153–54, 157, 162, 175–76, 186, 211–16; Diet of Worms, 32–34, 217; Freedom of a Christian, 96–97; Heidelberg Disputation, 11; Jews, relation to, 124–28; Large Catechism, 35; Leipzig, 4, 18, 59–63, 66–67, 69; Lenker, 18; Lindner, 4, 17–18, 58–70; as monk, 29, 33, 83, 184; Ninety-five Theses, 31; On the Jews and Their Lies, 128; polemic against Rome, 58, 62–66, 69, 141, 187, 218; Small Catechism, 35; Table Talk, 29, 199; That Jesus Christ was Born a Jew, 126–27; Thisted, 4, 10, 17–18, 27, 39, 54–70; tower experience, 29, 31–37, 87, 184, 199; Treatise on Good Works, 97 Luther, Martin, Church and House Postils, 1–6, 10–11, 14–19, 27–29, 39–40, 42, 53–70, 79–80, 83, 88, 95, 97, 99, 101, 109, 123–24, 135, 140, 147–48, 153, 161, 175–76, 197, 199, 206, 211–12, 216, 226: First Sunday in Advent, Matthew 21:1–9, 3, 55–57, 65–66, 68–69, 154–57; Third Sunday in Advent, Matthew 11:2–10, 145–48, 157–58, 162, 179; Fourth Sunday in Advent, John 1:19–28, 17, 82–83, 145; Holy Christmas Day, Luke 2:1–14, 80–81; New Year’s Day, Luke

253

2:21, 135–37; Epiphany, Matthew 2:1–12, 83–85; Second Sunday after Epiphany, John 2:1–11, 62, 67, 210; Third Sunday after Epiphany, Matthew 8:1–13, 214–16; Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, Matthew 8:23–27, 109, 195, 204–5; Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, Romans 13:8–10, 137–38; Quinquagesima Sunday, Luke 18:31–43, 63, 86–87, 202; First Sunday in Lent, Matthew 4:1–11, 62, 95, 97–98, 217–18, 220; First Sunday in Lent, 2 Corinthians 6:1–10, 97–98; Fourth Sunday in Lent, Galatians 4:21–31, 178; Easter Monday, Luke 24:13–35, 62, 85–86; Second Sunday after Easter, John 10:11–16, 61–62, 104–7, 195; Third Sunday after Easter, John 16:16–23, 62, 66, 209; Third Sunday after Easter, 1 Pet 2:11–20, 141–42; Pentecost Sunday, John 14:23–31, 142–44; Pentecost Monday, John 3:16–21, 81–82; First Sunday after Trinity, Luke 16:19–31, 138; Second Sunday after Trinity, Luke 14:16–24, 62, 67–68, 139–41, 201–2, 210; Third Sunday after Trinity, Luke 15:1–10, 93–94; Eighth Sunday after Trinity, Romans 8:12–17, 100; Eleventh Sunday after Trinity, Luke 18:9–14, 94, 123, 203–4; Twelfth Sunday after Trinity, Matthew 7:31–37, 212–13; Twelfth Sunday after Trinity, 2 Corinthians 3:4–11, 100–1; Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity, Luke 10:23–37, 62; Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity, Luke 17:11–19, 3, 102–4, 187, 195, 206–7; Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity, Matthew 6:24–34, 99; Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity, Luke 7:11–17, 200, 208; TwentyFourth Sunday after Trinity, Matthew 9:18–26, 202–3, 214–16

254

Index

Lutheranism, 1–3, 29–31, 37, 54, 83, 180, 188; Danish State/ Christendom, 3, 5, 9–10, 12, 15–16, 27–39, 42, 55–56, 80, 96–97, 134– 35, 145, 152, 175, 178, 180–85, 187, 196, 219 Lutherbild, 1–2, 4, 8, 14–15, 18–19, 34, 53, 58–59, 66, 68, 148, 176 Luther Renaissance, 11, 28 Marino, Gordon, 4 marriage, 8, 12, 139–41, 225 Martensen, H. L., 37 Melanchthon, Philip, 35, 180 Middle Ages, 6–7, 11, 19, 29, 32–33, 39, 64, 83, 124–29, 135, 142, 149, 152, 176–79, 218–20 Møller, P. L., 130–31 monasticism, 5–7, 29, 62–65, 83, 126, 141, 176–77, 218–19 Mynster, Jakob Peter, 37, 39–42, 102, 152, 182, 221 Nicholas of Lyra, 128 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 1 objectivity, 2, 32, 36, 54–57, 85, 87, 150, 155 Olsen, Regine, 139 Orthodoxy, Lutheran, 2, 27–28, 54 papacy, 8, 32, 63, 65, 81, 83, 126, 128, 141, 146, 184–85, 208, 217 Paul of Burgos, 128 Pedersen, Jørgen, 207 Pelagianism, 95–97, 100, 123, 148, 176, 196 Pelikan, Jaroslav, 1, 27–28, 226 persecution, Christian, 5, 41, 61, 102, 104, 106–7, 109, 134, 181, 183–84, 186, 200, 206 Pietism, 27, 37, 54, 62; Halle, 37; Herrnhut, 37–40, 42 Plato, 8–9, 88 Podmore, Simon, 207

Prenter, Regin, 9–11, 13–16, 18, 28, 39, 195 presumption, crowing, 18–19, 30–31, 79, 83–87, 95, 109, 123–24, 146, 149–50, 176 Rasmussen, Joel D. S., 2, 68–69, 97, 148 Religiousness A, 91 Religiousness B, 91 Roth, Stephan, 17 Rörer, Georg, 17, 60, 62, 67–69, 205 salvation, Christian, 18, 29–31, 34–35, 56, 64, 68, 81, 91, 95–99, 105–6, 145–46, 153, 156–57, 161–62, 177–79, 185, 187, 195, 201, 205, 211, 218, 224 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 1 semi-Pelagianism, 95–97 sigh, 3, 18–19, 79, 88–109, 123–24, 144, 147, 151, 153–54, 162, 175, 180, 183, 189, 195–97, 211, 224; of relief, 197, 212; of resign, 197, 210–26; of resolve, 197–210, 216 sin, 5, 11, 30, 33, 68, 79–80, 82, 83, 90–96, 99–101, 108, 123, 125, 136, 140, 146, 150, 157, 159–60, 180, 196, 199, 200–1, 203–5, 207, 209, 211, 216, 218, 223–24 Sløk, Johannes, 6–8, 10, 13–15 Socrates, 8–9, 88, 130 Spener, Philip Jakob, 39, 60 subjectivity, 2, 3, 36, 55–57, 65, 79, 86, 221 suffering, Christian, 5–6, 8, 12, 14, 18–19, 41, 61, 66–67, 80, 98, 101–9, 134, 136, 139, 142–45, 156–62, 175, 178, 183, 185, 195–96, 198, 200, 206, 208, 210–12, 216–20, 222–26 temporality, 63, 88, 134–43, 158–59, 197–98, 207–27 Theology of the Cross, 5–6, 11–14, 83, 195–96

Index

Thulstrup, Marie Mikulova, 39 Thulstrup, Niels, 28, 207 Tillich, Paul, 1 Turks/Islam, 65–66, 83, 128 Walsh, Sylvia, 2, 101 Wolff, Christian, 40 works, Christian, 3, 6–7, 28, 30–32, 34, 36, 41, 83, 91–92, 95–101, 137, 147, 149, 153–62, 175–81, 186–89,

255

195, 218, 227; as minor premise, 188–89, 226 works-righteousness, 6, 11, 60, 83, 87, 94, 96–97, 123, 128, 146, 152, 179 worldliness, 5–6, 8, 65, 123–24, 134–35, 137, 159, 176, 187, 212, 225; Jewish, 19, 124, 145, 148, 150, 158, 162, 175 Zinzendorf, Ludwig von, 37–38

About the Author

David Lawrence Coe is an assistant professor of theology and philosophy at Concordia University in Seward, Nebraska.

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