No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
A Kierkegaardian Guide to Reading Scripture
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
Kierkegaard is well known for being critical of a scholarly reading of the bible. It is generally understood that his primary concern was that “objective” biblical scholarship was undermining the possibility of a reader's subjective life being affected, challenged and provoked by its message. That is, it encourages an overly detached reading of Scripture that distracts persons from responding to its call to discipleship. It is indeed the case that Kierkegaard devoted himself to challenging the fact that the nominal Christians in Denmark were not actively responding Scripture. However, I shall argue that there is something much more fundamental to his critique of biblical scholarship. For Kierkegaard, the faithful reader is not primarily called to respond to the message of Scripture but to the living God who communicates to persons through Scripture. This paper will look at how Kierkegaard sought to remind Christians that Scripture is not an end in itself but a witness to the living God (who is the primary focus of the Christian life).
- Type
- Original Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © 2016 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 When discussing Kierkegaard's nervousness about certain approaches to biblical studies, it has become commonplace to cite the following sentence from Stages on Life's Way: ‘The bible lies on my table at all times and is the book in which I read the most.’ SLW, p. 230 / SKS 6, p. 214. While these words come from Kierkegaard's pseudonym Frater Taciturnus, I think that many of those who cite this passage are right to indicate that Kierkegaard probably would have been happy to own these words. See: Polk, Timothy, “Kierkegaard's Use of the New Testament: Intratextuality, Indirect Communication, and Appropriation,” in Kierkegaard and the Bible - Tome II: The New Testament, ed. Barrett, Lee C. and Stewart, Jon (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), p. 237Google Scholar; Rasmussen, Joel, “Kierkegaard's Biblical Hermeneutics: Imitation, Imaginative Freedom, and Paradoxical Fixation,” in Kierkegaard and the Bible - Tome II: The New Testament, ed. Barrett, Lee C. and Stewart, Jon (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), p. 249Google Scholar; Martens, Paul, “Kierkegaard and the Bible,” in The Oxford Handbook to Kierkegaard, ed. Pattison, George and Lippitt, John (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 153Google Scholar; Jothens, Peder, Kierkegaard, Aesthetics, and Selfhood: The Art of Subjectivity (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), p. 109Google Scholar.
2 Kierkegaard saw it as his life duty to ‘express the truth, which I had daily perceived and ascertained––that there is a God.’ Kierkegaard, Søren, The Point of View for My Work as an Author, ed. and trans. V., Howard and Hong, Edna H. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998)Google Scholar (hereafter PV), p. 72 n. / Søren Kierkegaard Skrifter vol. 16, ed. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Joakim Garff, Kette Knudsen, Johnny Kondrup, Alastair McKinnon and Finn Hauberg Mortensen (Copenhagen: Gads Forlag, 1997-2013) (hereafter SKS), p. 51n.
3 Kierkegaard continues: ‘those noble men who build the tombs of prophets, objectively recite their teaching, turn the suffering and death of the glorious ones into a profit––most likely objectively and most likely proud of the objective, since the subjective is sickliness, affectation––but keep themselves, naturally with the aid of the much-praised objectivity on the outside, far away from everything that even in the remotest manner could resemble suffering like the glorious ones.’ Kierkegaard, Søren, The Moment and Late Writings, ed. and trans. V., Howard and Hong, Edna H. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998)Google Scholar (hereafter M), pp. 340–3., p. 291 / SKS 13, pp. 348-49 (emboldening original).
4 M, p. 291 / SKS 13, pp. 349. For Kierkegaard, the primary prototype for the Christian life is Jesus Christ.
5 Kierkegaard, , Kierkegaard's Journals and Notebooks, vol. 7, ed. by Cappelørn, Niels Jørgen, Hannay, Alastair, Kangas, David, Kirmmse, Bruce H., Pattison, George, Rumble, Vanessa, and Söderquist, K. Brian (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014)Google Scholar (hereafter KJN), p. 300 / SKS 23, p. 295 [NB18:64].
6 KJN 7, p. 300 / SKS 23, p. 295 [NB18:64].
7 Kierkegaard, Søren, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, ed. and trans. Hong, Howard V. and Hong, Edna H. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 284CrossRefGoogle Scholar / SKS 8, p. 379.
8 Kierkegaard, Søren, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, trans. Hong, Howard V. and Hong, Edna (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990)Google Scholar (hereafter EUD), p. 109 / SKS 5, p. 117.
9 EUD, p. 109 / SKS 5, p. 117.
10 EUD, p. 109 / SKS 5, p. 117.
11 Søren Kierkegaard, Without Authority, trans. Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997) (hereafter WA), pp. 139-40 / SKS 11, p. 276.
12 WA, p. 140 / SKS 11, p. 276.
13 WA, p. 140 / SKS 11, p. 276.
14 WA, p. 140 / SKS 11, p. 276.
15 WA, p. 140 / SKS 11, p. 277.
16 WA, p. 141 / SKS 11, p. 277.
17 Hughes, Carl, Kierkegaard and the Staging of Desire: Rhetoric and Performance in a Theology of Eros (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014), p. 127Google Scholar.
18 That said, Kierkegaard later remarks that ‘we have one comfort that she did not have’: that Christ has died to save us, to bring about atonement ‘that makes doubting of the forgiveness of sins impossible’ for the person of faith. WA, pp. 158-59 / SKS 11, pp. 271-72.
19 Kierkegaard, Søren, Christian Discourses, ed. and trans. V., Howard and Hong, Edna H. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997)Google Scholar (hereafter CD), p. 261 / SKS 10, p. 274.
20 KJN 5, pp. 338-39 / SKS 21, p. 328 [NB10:140].
21 WA, p. 141/ SKS 11, p. 277.
22 WA, p. 141/ SKS 11, p. 277.
23 Kierkegaard, Søren, For Self-Examination, ed. and trans. V., Howard and Hong, Edna H. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990)Google Scholar (hereafter FSE), p. 26 / SKS 13, p. 54.
24 FSE, p. 32 / SKS 13, pp. 58-59. Scripture is to be read, as Paul Martens aptly notes, like ‘a letter that––much like the way that Jesus taught the disciples to pray (Matt 6:7)––is read in private, behind locked doors.’ Martens, “Kierkegaard and the Bible,” p. 158.
25 KJN 7, pp. 153-54 n. a / SKS 23, p. 151 [NB16:84a].
26 Cain, David, “‘Death Comes in Between’: Reflections on Kierkegaard's For Self-Examination,” in Kierkegaardiana 15 (1991), p 71Google Scholar.
27 FSE, p. 33 / SKS 13, p. 60.
28 Rae, , Kierkegaard's Vision of the Incarnation: By Faith Transformed (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 185CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
29 Kierkegaard, Søren, Journals and Papers, vol. 4, ed. and trans. V., Howard and Hong, Edna H. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967–78)Google Scholar (hereafter JP), 3916 / SKS 27, p. 303 [Papir 306].
30 KJN 7, pp. 450-51 / SKS 23, p. 442 [NB20:88].
31 FSE, p. 36 / SKS 13, pp. 62-63.
32 KJN 7, p. 153 / SKS 23, p. 151 [NB16:84] (emphasis original). Kierkegaard says this with regard to the New Testament. However, it is fair to assume that he would also see this rule to apply to a person's reading of the Old Testament.
33 Bauckham, Richard, James: Wisdom of James, Disciple of Jesus the Sage (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), p. 8Google Scholar.
34 See KJN 7, pp. 153-54 / SKS 23, p. 151 [NB16:84].
35 JP 1, 214 / SKS 24, p. 445 [NB25:11].
36 FSE, p. 39 / SKS 13, p. 65.
37 KJN 7, p. 245 / SKS 23, p. 241 [NB17:102].
38 KJN 6, P. 36 / SKS 22. p. 40 [NB11:63].
39 At this point, it should be made clear that Kierkegaard does not altogether neglect the fact that scholarship is needed to assist a faithful reading of Scripture. The Bible needs to be translated and, at times, carefully interpreted––as is evident in Kierkegaard's own careful engagement with Scripture. (Kierkegaard makes sure to mention that he does not set out to ‘disparage scholarship’ per se––‘no, far from it.’ Rather, he sought to challenge scholars to remember that ‘when you are reading God's Word in a scholarly way, with a dictionary etc., then you are not reading God's Word.’ FSE, pp. 28-29 / SKS 13, p. 56.) However, drawing on the metaphor of Scripture as a love letter that needs to be translated, Kierkegaard notes that once a person ‘is finished with the translation,’ ‘he reads his beloved's letter.’ FSE, p. 27 / SKS 13, p. 55. Indeed, he goes so far as to describe the ‘scholarly preliminaries’ as a ‘necessary evil’ that are required as a means of bringing a person to the point where he can read ‘the letter from his beloved.’ FSE, pp. 27-28 / SKS 13, pp. 55-56. The problem with the scholarly preliminaries is that they stall the process of Christian becoming by taking time––time that could be spent hearing and actively responding to the message. As such, for Kierkegaard, when the Christian spends time on the scholarly preliminaries, she should feel an urgency to get through this process quickly so that she can get on to responding to Scripture. The Christian should feel the kind of urgency that a lover would feel if she were to receive a love letter from a beloved that was in need of translation. As soon as she has heard the message, the Christian should be off at once to fulfil his beloved's wish. KJN 5, pp. 338-39 / SKS 21, p. 328 [NB10:140].
40 Joel Rasmussen, “Kierkegaard's Biblical Hermeneutics,” p. 262. Rasmussen continues: ‘then we might also wonder whether there is any point to talking hermeneutics at all (where the goal is to arrive at the most fitting interpretation––one where it makes sense to say interpretation X is better than Y), and say instead that “interpretation” is nothing but free and imaginative play and deferral.’ p. 262.
41 John Elrod, Kierkegaard and Christendom (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), p. 97. Kierkegaard frequently makes overstatements that are meant to provoke the reader to ask more about the point he is trying to make. As such, the reader of Kierkegaard should be careful to read too much into such statements as they immediately appear.
42 KJN 7, p. 245 / SKS 23, p. 242 [NB17:102].
43 KJN 7, p. 245 / SKS 23, p. 242 [NB17:102].
44 KJN 7, p. 245 / SKS 23, p. 242 [NB17:102].
45 Bauckham, James, p. 7. Bauckham's commentary on James is one of the few pieces of biblical scholarship to take Kierkegaard seriously. In this work, he includes quotations from Kierkegaard in the opening to each of his chapters. Also, he starts his study with an entire prologue acknowledging Kierkegaard's critique of biblical scholarship––a critique that he sees as being just as relevant today.
46 KJN 5, p. 338 / SKS 21, p. 327 [NB10:140].
47 FSE, p. 41 / SKS 13, p. 61.
48 KJN 7, p. 440 / SKS 23, p. 432 [NB20:70]; see also JP 4, 3860 / SKS 24, pp. 148-49 [NB22:86]. Kyle Roberts helpfully clarifies Kierkegaard's point here, writing: ‘It seems odd to speak of God “intending” imperfections in Scripture; Kierkegaard's point is that God's provision of revelation did not necessitate the circumvention of the ambiguities of finitude.’ Roberts, Kyle, Emerging Prophet: Kierkegaard and the Postmodern People of God (Eugene: Cascade, 2013), p. 24 n. 46Google Scholar.
49 Pyper, Hugh, The Joy of Kierkegaard: Essays on Kierkegaard as a Biblical Reader (Oakville: Equinox Publishing 2011), p. 22Google Scholar.
50 Pyper, The Joy of Kierkegaard, p. 22.
51 Pyper, The Joy of Kierkegaard, p. 50.
52 KJN 5, p. 70 / SKS 21, p. 68 [NB6:93].
53 FSE, p. 14 / SKS 13, p. 44.