Reflections on Kierkegaard's "Fear and Trembling"

If I am to accept Kierkegaard’s leap of faith – the actions of infinite resignation and wholly identifying oneself with the object of faith, Jesus (that is, making the God-man my paradigm for existence, the category by which I identify realities, truths, moralities, etc., and the lens by which I perceive all things epistemological and ontological) – must I also accept Kierkegaard’s notion that this act is meaningful by virtue of its identifying me as an individual, by eliminating me as a member of the mediated (as Hegel puts it) class? Kierkegaard elevates the man who, leaving the rational and logical behind (the mediated class), engages the absurd commitment to a particular relationship (i.e. makes a leap of faith) despite – and perhaps because of – the lack of verifiable evidence or reasoning to justify the commitment. However, Kierkegaard’s perception of the absurd is entirely subjective, as its very nature implies that naturally (that is, to the natural man) the evidence-less leap of faith should look ridiculous! Therefore, it cannot be shared by a community, but must be an entirely personal commitment.

Obviously, this grinds me a little because I can’t stand the abuses this notion has received in 20’th century American Evangelicalism. It also worries me as it seems to make particular religious claims (i.e. Jesus is the absolute, only way to God) irrelevant, and allows for pluralism and, as Kierkegaard himself proclaims, the subjectivity of truth. So, what must be said of Papa Sǿren?

First, Kierkegaard is right, I believe, to identify Jesus as the object of faith and the defining paradigm for existence. He is the icon by which we perceive reality, and all our decisions, actions, patterns of thought, etc., operate under this assumption, whether consciously or unconsciously. This is the leap of faith, the infinite resignation of rationality as subordinate to the commitment to Jesus. The notion that this must be a subjective decision, however, does not seem necessary, as part of the leap must be identifying oneself as a member of the body of Christ, and therefore part of the “absurd family,” the covenant community. If it is an act of infinite resignation to surrender reason for the sake of one’s subjective calling to love and believe in Jesus, is it not an even greater resignation to abrogate that calling, setting it aside in favor of the calling of the family? This greater resignation does not involve the ceasing of love for or belief in Jesus, but identifies it as the absurd resignation of those who receive the same calling (Calvin’s “effectual call” of grace). This shared calling does not make it any less absurd, nor does it imply that it is less risky, less demanding of individual devotion, etc. It merely implies that one’s leap of faith is not made alone, but by an intra-responsible group.

There are rebuttals that may be made to my statements, but I’ll forego them for now.

The second issue is pluralism, which Kierkegaard himself rejects but his heirs in secular existentialism and postmodernism do not. The subjectivity of truth comes from Kierkegaard’s notion that the object of faith becomes the paradigm for engaging all things in existence, and so for Martin Luther King the object of faith is civil rights and equality, but for Adolf Hitler the object of faith is Aryan supremacy. Both have existential value for each individual, and as such are individualized truths. This is the flip-flopping of the traditional philosophical model, essence before existence, into the existential-philosophical model, existence before essence. The individual who exists comes to define his or her own essence for Kierkegaard and his progeny, rather than the “essence of mankind,” with all of its philosophied trappings and absolute systems, working out its particular existences. This must be answered in almost the same way as the last issue, because it overemphasizes the importance of the individual while ignoring the very corporate nature of the covenant family. However, this also has greater application to all areas of life.

Kierkegaard’s process is this: Individuals possess innately their immediate desires. This is infantile immediacy, and is fulfilled by gratification. This, however, is a base feeling, and must be made subject to rational, logical mediation, which will provide the proper synthesis between opposing immediate desires or concepts. This is the state of natural, mature man – rationally and scientifically able to exist by creating new syntheses out of opposing theses. However, Kierkegaard proposes that a higher immediacy exists outside this rational stage (thereby making it “irrational” and “absurd”), and that the truly great heroes make this leap into the irrational by virtue of their infinite resignation of the rational for the sake of shifting their paradigm of existence from reason and logic to the new object of their faith. However, Kierkegaard ends the process at this stage of infinite resignation, with which I am dreadfully uncomfortable.

Consider the Bodhisattvas of Buddhism. These are people who have reached Nirvana, but return to provide assistance to those still journeying. This is similar to my perception of the stage Kierkegaard fails to see. Once the infinite-individual resignation has occurred, it must give way to an infinite-corporate resignation that identifies itself with the community. This does not occur because of a perceived reward, the avoidance of punishment, the logic of systematized doctrine, or as an individual calling, but rather as an identification of oneself as a part of a whole. The whole expands with each application: a whole family, local church, community, universal Church, state, nation, species, living organism, item in creation. Thus, the subjectivity of truth must give way to the “objectivity” of truth, or the “assigned-objectivity” of truth. The act of assigning truth to a given idea results from the conclusion of the whole, which can occur any number of ways (i.e. unanimous vote, coercion, some type of bureaucratic legality, etc.). In Christian circles, this assigned-objectivity occurs in the counsiliar decisions symbolized in the Nicene Creed, for example. In politics, this is the statement that all men are created equal. In economics, this is the resolution that laundering is a punishable crime. These examples, of course, can occur out of the lower, mediated stage (pre-leap of faith), the stage of reason and logic. However, they can be given fuller meaning and improved upon in the assigned-objectivity stage, whereas unnecessary systems still in the mediated stage may be filtered out and discarded.

You're Own Personal Jesus

"It is by all means to be believed, because it is absurd." - Tertullian, referring to the death of the Son of God

I’ve been listening to a Stanford University class on “The Historical Jesus,” taught by Thomas Sheehan (itunes U, totally free! Be careful, though, as this is a full-fledged attack on everything orthodox Christian’s believe, and is not for those who are ill-prepared.). Sheehan is a Jesus Seminar guy who is “Christian” according to only the loosest of definitions, who is lecturing on the Jesus of history as opposed to the Jesus of faith. This Jesus, according to Sheehan and the rest of the Seminar, didn’t say or do most of what is in the New Testament. He didn’t claim to be the messiah, he never thought of himself as the pre-existing, divine Son of God, and his resurrection corresponded to Siddhartha Gautama’s “awakening” (i.e. “Buddha,” the enlightened or awakened one). Obviously, this historical Jesus, a charismatic prophet by all accounts, cannot be reconciled with orthodox Christianity, and, if these ideas are true, those of us who take Jesus to be the Logos of God are naïve at very, very best.

I haven’t done much “historical Jesus” research, but it’s a field that totally fascinates me, because Jesus as God’s revelation, Jesus as the icon of our faith, is more important to me than Jesus as the worker or miracles, Jesus as the Davidite born in Bethlehem, Jesus as the apocalyptic preacher. But, like anyone with conviction and faith, I can only go so far. I get to an impasse where my gut says “Wait, I must believe points A, B, and C actually happened in space and time in order for the Gospel to have eternal value.” Let’s assume there is credibility to the Jesus Seminar’s conclusions and that the Synoptic Tradition – the Gospels as history – as well as the Pauline doctrines do not reflect in their entirety the message and life of Jesus. Of course, there is plenty of scholarly research that pokes major holes in the methods used by the Jesus Seminar, but let’s plays their game first. The questions must be these: What are the essentials (i.e. what must have happened in space and time for the Gospel to have eternal value)? If the historical Jesus is so vastly different from the Jesus of faith, should we re-interpret the Gospel according to history, or is our Christian mythology divinely inspired?

We can only tackle the first question according to denominational traditions, but certain doctrines are easy to label as “essential” to all orthodox Christians. First, the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead is perhaps the most important of all propositions. This is based on Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 15, and is, in my perspective, unavoidable for those who accept the Pauline letters as authoritative. Let’s consider those who disagree, and who say Paul’s version of Christianity is a later development, manifesting itself some 20+ years after Jesus’ death. If that is the case, and if Paul is only expressing the legends and propaganda of his particular Christian community, then we can reject the necessity of the resurrection. Of course, this means we really don’t have much else to label “essential” because Paul’s letters are the earliest Christian documents we possess. All other Gnostic texts, New Testament Apocrypha, writings of the Church Fathers, as well as the rest of the Apostolic writings and Gospels, were written much later. So where do we start? We must start with an assumption about the bearers of Christian orthodoxy – the real Christian community that carried down the exact traditions of Jesus’ life and teachings. Whose community was it? Was it the community that created Mark or John, or Paul’s community, or some Gnostics? Were things really as organized as the episcopalian-governed churches (Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican) would have us believe to the point where the Apostles gave a “deposit of faith” to their successors who maintained true Christianity up through Constantine and beyond?

Maybe our answer is that we believe God divinely inspire the Bible, and so when Matthew writes that the gates of Hell will not prevail against the Church, and that when Paul writes the Church is the pillar and ground of truth, that God is communicating to the hearers of the Scriptures His promise to guide the Church into all truth, despite the Bible’s historical flimsiness. This would have to be our assumption, however, and we would be exercising faith in spite of the testimony of history.

What about the option of assuming nothing about Jesus, and choosing to experience him in the Scriptures and in the traditions of the churches? This is the method of Schleiermacher and the classic liberals who present Jesus as a personal, existential crisis that each individual incorporates and modifies according to his or her own preferences (and prejudices). This seems like a valid option, though it wouldn’t have any significance other than serving private feelings of fulfillment. It’s theology as therapy at its most evident.

Or there’s the option of rejecting the necessity of historical accuracy: we can admit the Jesus of history is entirely different than the Jesus of faith, but refuse to label one or the other as being the “true” Jesus. This would take a position on faith that it involves intentional rejection of historical, empirical data. Faith would become an act of rebellion against science, against empirical epistemology, and demand that truth be the product not of collected data or religious dogma, but of the person of Jesus. Faith would be total cognitive absurdity, staring at a 4, knowing it is a 4, and insisting it is a 5, believing it to be a 5. This is the position of fideism, but only initially. Only the leap of faith is absurd, but after making it, one enters a new world, an enlightened (awakened) world where the language of faith may be spoken of rationally, and where divine things become objects that can be spoken of.

This doesn’t seem any different to me than actually going insane. It is the foolishness of men, retardation to a state of mental infancy. In other words, it’s exactly what the Jesus of faith demands of his followers: God confuses the wisdom of men with foolishness, and only those with a childlike faith can enter the Kingdom. Of course, the idea that this is the biblical perspective does nothing but supplement the notion that the Scriptures and Christian orthodoxy are not historically sound. Perhaps God providentially caused the Jesus Seminar to push believers into a new arena wherein it becomes necessary to conclude the absurdity of the Scriptures as well as things like the Incarnation, Resurrection, Trinity, etc. It’s that last bastion of Christianity to which we have always attempted to apply reason and human wisdom, and maybe God’s just gotten fed up with it.

Again, all of this is just reflections on the situation at hand if the Jesus Seminar’s conclusions are true. That premise is still very much up for debate, and I plan on devoting a good amount of research to that very problem. All insights are appreciated, as always.