SPROUL: We remember that Socrates was known
as the “gadfly of Athens,” because of his style that was so provocative – as he would go
through the marketplace and ask people penetrating questions and try to stimulate their thinking.
So, the modern philosopher who also was given that descriptive nickname of "gadfly" was Søren
Kierkegaard. Who, many believed him to be the father of modern existentialism. Of course,
Kierkegaard lived in Denmark. He was born in 1813 and died in 1855 at the young age of 42.
I remember as a college student being a philosophy major going through my Kierkegaard period.
Because, Kierkegaard was passionately committed to the Christian faith. And, after reading so much
of the barren wasteland of modern philosophy as a student, and, we came to the study of Kierkegaard
and it was like a breath of fresh air blowing through the abstract classrooms of philosophy.
So, for a time I, more or less, fell in love with Kierkegaard and read everything I could get
my hands on that he had written. He was a man of prodigious ability, both in term of technical
philosophy, but also was extremely gifted in a literary way. It is amazing that somebody who
spoke a language that to the rest of the world is obscure, and emanating from such a small nation as
Denmark, that he would have had the influence on 19th and 20th century culture that indeed he did.
If there is one word that summarized the concern of Søren Kierkegaard as a philosopher, it is the
word: passion. He himself was a passionate man, a man of intense feelings – feelings of love,
and devotion to Christ. But also his life was marked by a constant struggle against the
impulses of despair. Principally emanating from a lost love whose name was Regina.
This haunted him to the day that he died. Now, one of the insights that Kierkegaard gave
to the world was his analysis of what he called the ‘stadia.’ This is the plural of stadium. A
stadium is where one goes to observe some public event or spectacle like an athletic contest.
He talked about the three stadia of life. Or, sometimes termed the “three stages along life's
way,” where many people become stuck in one or the other of these stages. And, the first stadium of
the three stadia he called the aesthetic stadium, or the “aesthetic stage along life's way.” And,
this is the level of existence where one becomes and remains chiefly a spectator. And, he includes
within this group of aesthetics those who are what he called "epicurean hedonists." Namely, those
who spend their lives appreciating, admiring, and being chiefly concerned with the pursuit of
the delight that comes through the arts. Those who like to go to concerts. Those who like to
go to galleries, and enjoy being spectators to other people's creative genius. And, secondly,
he put in this stage of the aesthetics, those who were abstract intellectuals. Or what we would
call "egg heads,” whose heads are in the clouds, but remain divorced from the details of human
existence, that get down and dirty. In this regard, he once made an observation about the
culture of his day. We remember that Nietzsche had been chiefly critical of 19th century European
culture, calling it decadent because of its lack of creativity and its lack of courage. Kierkegaard
said, "Let others complain that our age is wicked, my complaint is that it is paltry." That it lacks
passion. He said, "When I become depressed with my own culture, and the world around me, I inevitably
am drawn back to the Old Testament where I encounter people who are real. They lie. They
steal. They cheat. They commit adultery. And yet, in the midst of all of this, they have this
passionate pursuit of the God who is." So he was complaining, of those who passed the time
of their lives on the sidelines. Who remain personally and existentially uninvolved with
the great cares and crises of human existence. Well, the second stage along life's way
according to Kierkegaard he called the ethical stage. Where people live on the basis
of conscience and are concerned with the value systems around them in terms of good and evil.
They are not simply disinterested spectators, but they are people who are concerned with value,
and with justice. This, of course, is an advanced stage over the aesthetic stage, but it is an
intermediate stage to the ultimate existential stage to which Kierkegaard was calling people.
He saw that the highest or the deepest stage along life's way was stage three, which he defined
as the religious stage of human existence. Now, a passion for religion and for the things
of God is what marked this philosopher's life, and his thinking. I mentioned earlier that as a
college student I read everything I could get my hands on from Kierkegaard including: Purity
Of Heart, Fear And Trembling, Attack Upon Christendom, A Concluding Unscientific Postscript,
Either Or, and others. In this religious stage, life in its existential passion is
marked, according to Kierkegaard, by the twin characteristics of fear and trembling.
He wrote a book by this title in which the hero of the story is the Biblical patriarch Abraham.
You recall Abraham's existential anguish when God called him to the supreme test whereby he was
commanded of God to take his son, the son whom he loved – Isaac, and to take him to Mount Moriah,
and there to kill him and offer him as a sacrifice unto God. And in Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard
tries to pierce the soul of Abraham, and imagine the existential anguish that Abraham went
through as he was contemplating this enormous, dreadful, task that God had set before him.
And, one of the key refrains that Kierkegaard works with in Fear and Trembling is related
to the Biblical description of that event, when we are told that after God gives this command
to Abraham, the narrative says "And Abraham rose up early in the morning." And Kierkegaard begins
to contemplate on that phrase. And, he asks the question, "Why did Abraham get up early in the
morning? Was it because he was such a virtuous, sanctified man that he rose up early to be bright
and alert, and about the business of obeying the command of God?" Well, Kierkegaard doesn't
think so. Kierkegaard thought that the reason why Abraham got up out of his bed in the morning
is because Abraham couldn't sleep. He tossed and turned on his bed. He was caught in the throes
of existential anxiety, of fear and of trembling because God had commanded him to do something
that was absolutely unthinkable – to destroy his own son, who indeed was the child of promise.
And, to do this, God was commanding Abraham to do something that the moral law, later, as it is
expressed in Moses, and already as expressed in the natural law written within us, completely
forbad – the taking of a human life in such a manner. And child sacrifice was an abomination
to Israel. And so, part of Abraham's anguish was the anguish of asking himself, "Can this really be
the voice of God?" This involved what Kierkegaard called the temporary suspension of the ethical.
I don't know what that phrase may mean to you, but the only thing I can relate it to in our day,
in terms of simple illustration is the experience you may have when you are driving through a
city. Maybe the traffic lights are not adequately performing, or there is a traffic jam, and
instead of going through the lights as they occur, there is a policeman on the corner. And if you
have ever driven your car to an intersection where a policeman is directing traffic, and the
light turned red, but the policeman motioned you to go ahead – you have the temporary suspension
of the ethical. The law requires that you stop when the light is red, unless the personal
embodiment of the law – the traffic officer is present there to override it. And, even then you
see people hesitating to go through a red light, even when the policeman in his uniform is
motioning you to come through. Well, this is just a tiny taste of the thing that Abraham struggled
with when God told him to go against the law. And so, how does Abraham respond to this
existential crisis? He does it by taking a leap of faith, and embracing the paradox of
the moment. And now, what Kierkegaard does at this point is that he uses this illustration
in the life of Abraham to illustrate the whole substance of a passionate Christian life. Because,
the Christian faith is a pilgrimage that requires the existential leap. The time comes where you
have nothing in front of you but darkness and yet you have the command of God to move ahead,
and you must leap by trusting that God will be out there in the darkness, and you must act,
and you can not simply be a spectator or sit around analyzing what is right and what is wrong
if you know that God is calling you to something, even if you can't see what’s on the other
side of the street. Just like Abraham you have to take the existential leap of faith.
Now, for Kierkegaard, the existential leap of faith was not something that was patently
irrational or absurd. But, it was something that on the surface seemed to be irrational and absurd.
And, what Kierkegaard is saying is that that’s the risk that a person has to take if they are going
to be a follower of Christ. Christ himself is the supreme paradox. In Christ, in his incarnation,
we have the intersection of the infinite with the finite, the eternal with the temporal,
the unconditioned with the conditioned. And, that is the paradox of the one who is God
and man. And so, one must passionately commit oneself to this Christ of Scripture in a moment of
crisis that later became called, by theologians, the crisis of existential "entscheidung" or
decision. And this moment of passion is the moment of faith that defines a true authentic Christian's
life. That takes place – he uses the term as I said "moment." The existential moment that is of
decisive significance for one's whole existence. Now, you remember when we were studying Descartes,
and Descartes was wrestling with the question of the interaction between act and thought; thought
and act – mind and matter. He speculated about the transition that takes place in the mind
at a given point. And, he made reference to his mathematical understanding of a point as
being something that was taking up space but had no definite dimensions. It was kind of
a hybrid, sort of hanging between mind and matter. It was an intermediate point, the point of
transition. Now, for Kierkegaard, he speaks not of a point of crisis, but of a moment of crisis. And,
what is a moment – an "augenblick?" That moment is something that takes up time but has no definite
duration. It is to time, what a point is to linear space. So, Kierkegaard speaks about this moment
of truth – this moment of decision where faith breaks in to the ordinary linear structure of
life, and defines everything from that moment on. The other person with whom Abraham so – excuse
me – with whom Kierkegaard so closely identified from Biblical literature in addition to Abraham
was the person of Job. Because, Job was the man who knew the profound depths of suffering and
of pain, and who was threatened every minute of his existence with despair. And yet, out of
his pain came insights into truth, into love, and into faith. You remember Job in the midst of
his affliction crying out, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust him." In that sequence Job became
for Kierkegaard his spiritual model, or ideal. One of the things that he was concerned about
was how pain and suffering can be translated into beauty, though the one who is experiencing
the anguish and pain that produces the beautiful, is not fully appreciated by the public. He’s
speaking here of the woes and miseries suffered by the poet or the artists. He gave two illustrations
about that. In one he told the story of a man who worked in a theatre and his role was to play the
part of a clown. And, he comes out onto the stage, and as he is going through his act, he sees in
the back of the theatre an outbreak of smoke and fire. He is alarmed. So, he cries out to the
audience that the building is on fire. And, when he does that, dressed in his
clown outfit, the audience laughs. And, the more the clown warns, and the more
he cries out about the immanent danger, the greater the laughter of the people.
Kierkegaard says that this is the problem with the prophet in any generation. That,
he is subjected to ridicule and mockery. Another illustration he used was of a rebel
who had disobeyed the rules of the king, and the punishment that the king imposed upon him
was to be burned at the stake. The problem is the king was very soft hearted, and he couldn't stand
to watch or to listen to anyone suffering. And so, it was a question as to whether he would be
able to carry out the execution. But they took the rebel and tied him to the post, and they
ignited the flames to burn him at the stake, and as soon as he cried out in the throes of
agony, the Fates intervened, and translated his screams into beautiful music. And so, the king
sat back and said, "Put more wood on the fire, that I may enjoy more of this beautiful music."
He said that that’s the way the public responds to the poet who creates his beauty out of his own
pain, or the prophet who brings truth out of his own suffering. People enjoy it without feeling
the sickness or the pain that is being undergone. Now, in another small work, he talks
on this point, which was entitled, Sickness Unto Death. Where there he talks about
loneliness. He talks about the condition of what is called existential solitude. To be shut up in
a world where you are closed in by yourself. He points out that it is the supreme punishment for
those who are incarcerated in prison to be put in solitary confinement. There one is cut off from
all human intercourse and communication. And, he said when a person goes into that depth
of loneliness, they are as a person who has a fatal illness, who is sick unto death, who has
a desire for one thing and that is to die. But he can't die. He's not allowed to die. And, again,
Kierkegaard is identifying here personally with Job who cried out to God that God would slay him
and take his life to put him out of his misery. Now, for Kierkegaard, one of the great legacies
he gave to 20th century theology was his emphasis on the subjective aspect of truth. He was not
interested in the cold abstract logic of Hegel, or of abstract speculative philosophy or
theology. He wrote a vehement attack against the institutional church for its dead orthodoxy
and formalism in his attack upon Christendom, and said that in his passion to recover
the personal dimension of authentic truth, that truth is subjectivity. Now, there’s a debate
as to whether he really meant what he said. Was he simply saying that truth doesn't come alive until
it has the personal application and appropriation by the individual or, as some as some of his
followers claimed, truth itself is reduced to personal subjective preference. If that is the
case, then of course, Kierkegaard has undermined the Christian faith that he is espousing by
setting the stage for a later relativism that would negate the objective truth of the word of
God. But the basic concern of Kierkegaard at this point, I don't think, was to give us a complete
new epistemology of the philosophy of truth, but rather to call his generation and future
generations to a passionate subjective involvement into the life of faith. That’s his legacy to me. I
believe that theology should be rational, cogent, coherent, logical and all of that. But, that
our response to that which is objectively true should be a response of unrestrained passion and
care as we show our love for the things of God.
