So many questions

This is a quick excerpt from Repetition, one of Kierkegaard's shorter works. It is through the voice of a character simply known as 'the young man', who is frustrated with his existence and wondering exactly why he was set down here:

"Where am I? What does it mean to say: the world? What is the meaning of that word? Who tricked me into this whole thing and leaves me standing here? Who am I? How did I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it, why was I not informed of the rules and regulations but just thrust into the ranks as if I had been bought from a peddling shanghaier of human beings? How did I get involved in this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn't it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where is the manager - I have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint?"

I know this isn't for everyone. I know not everyone asks these sorts of questions. But I can relate. I ask these sort of questions quite often and can't help but wonder how peculiar our situation here really is. It's like what the lady said to Annie Dillard in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek: "Seems like we're just set down here and don't nobody know why."

I know there are Christian answers to these questions; Kierkegaard knew them, too. But the issue is not necessarily what the answers are, but what I do with the answers. The answers are there and are simple for me to say, but they can be incredibly difficult for me to live out, to actually exist in. Sometimes I despair of the answers because they don't feel satisfying enough. I can raise countless objections. But other times I'm struck into an awe-filled silence, fascinated by the whole thing, that I am called to believe that somehow this message of hope, love, and mercy, a God who has entered the world, truly underlies everything I see. But even in these times, faith is still incredibly difficult. It becomes something that I can barely grasp against all my objections, a ridiculous hope that I can only cling to desperately. I risk everything to believe against my own understanding, that somehow this thin message, this whisper in the shouts of uncertainty, this rumor of something greater that is so easily ignored, might somehow be true. How can I rest my entire existence on something so fragile and mysterious? How can I let go of everything I think the world should and should not be? How can I cry out to God with everything I am, hear only stillness, and yet somehow continue to believe that I am not only heard, but loved as well? I can only answer these questions with the greatest difficulty, because I must risk everything I am, absolutely everything, on the hope of these answers.

The "how" of belief

What does it mean to believe in Christianity?  How does one have faith?  How does one exist as a believing Christian?

These are the questions that Kierkegaard answers in what he thought would be his last work, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosphical Fragments.  It's not the most marketable title.  It probably won't end up on Oprah's book list any time soon.  But the 'Concluding' part of the title refers to the fact that Kierkegaard thought he was done as writer.  Later, he decided it would be important to return as an author and attempt to explain Christianity more directly because of the injustices he saw around him done in the name of Christ.

One of the biggest reasons Kierkegaard tends to be so misunderstood is that nearly all of his major works, particularly his early works, are written under different fictional names or "characters" that embodied particular worldviews, some of them radically different than Kierkegaard.  His purpose was to present a first-person account of a particular way of life and force the reader to reflect on their own life in response to how that character is living.  In other words, instead of just telling someone directly what to believe, for example that pursuing pleasure above all else leads to despair, Kierkegaard would write a first-person narrative of a person pursuing pleasure and falling into despair, allowing the readers to judge for themselves and reflect on how much their own life might be similar.  These weren't just characters in a book with Kierkegaard's name on it as the author.  His name didn't show up anywhere on the book, as he was hoping that no one would know he wrote it.

Postscript is no different.  It's written by a man named Johannes Climacus, a character Kierkegaard created who is closer to Christianity than all of K's previous pseudonyms, but he isn't quite ready to become one.  He claims to have discovered what it truly takes to become a Christian, but the twist is that he has realized that it is much too difficult for him to do.  This was obviously directed to those in Kierkegaard's time who felt that it was quite easy to become a Christian, that existing in one's belief was a simple matter.

So here are a few selected passages from Postscript.  It's very long (over 600 pages), but the major point that Kierkegaard was trying to convey (through Climacus) is that becoming a Christian is a matter of inwardness, an individual subjectively coming to terms with the fact that God has entered the world, and relating every aspect of one's existence to that fact.  The key emphasis here is not so much on what a Christian believes.  Although that is important, what is more important is how one believes, how one relates him/herself to the truth of Christianity:

"Christianity has made the way most difficult, and it is only an illusion, which has snared many, that Christianity has made the way easy, since it helps people precisely and only by making the beginning such that everything becomes much more difficult than ever."

"If an existing person is to relate himself with pathos [i.e. with passionate inwardness] to an eternal happiness, then the point is that his existence should express the relation…yet no one knows it except the individual himself in his own consciousness….He needs only to attend to his own existence; then he knows it. If it does not absolutely transform his existence for him, then he is not relating himself to an eternal happiness; if there is something he is not willing to give up for its sake, then he is not relating himself to an eternal happiness."

"Although in the world we frequently enough see a presumptuous religious individuality who, himself so exceedingly secure in his relationship with God and jauntily sure of his eternal happiness, is self-importantly busy doubting the salvation of others and offering them his help, I believe it would be appropriate discourse for a truly religious person if he said: I do not doubt anyone’s salvation; the only one I have fears about is myself; even if I see a person sink low, I still dare not despair of his salvation, but if it is myself, then I certainly would be forced to endure the terrible thought."

"Suppose that a person with a deeply religious need continually heard only the kind of pious address in which everything is rounded off by having the absolute telos [i.e. eternal happiness] exhaust itself in relative ends – what then? He would sink into the deepest despair, since he in himself experienced something else and yet never heard the pastor talk about this, about suffering in one’s inner being, about the suffering of the God-relationship. Out of respect for the pastor and the pastor’s rank, he perhaps would be led to interpret this suffering as a misunderstanding, or as something that other people presumably also experienced but found so easy to overcome that it is not even mentioned."

"God rescues from delusion the person who in quiet inwardness and honest before God is concerned for himself; even though he is ever so simple, God leads him in the suffering of inwardness to the truth."

Spiritual trial

The following passage is from one of Kierkegaard's later works called For Self-Examination.  The second period of K.'s writing, called the secondary literature, is mored direct and more Christian.  In a general sense, with regard to Christianity, K. was concerned with emphasizing the negative aspects of Christianity - the struggle, the suffering, the uncertainty - as a reminder to those who had forgotten these aspects.  He did write about the positive as well, but he was writing to a culture (19th century Copenhagen) where everyone believed they were Christian by virtue of their nationality, their attendance at church, their baptism, etc.  In a culture where Christianity had become too easy, K. wanted to re-establish the difficulty that can come with being a Christian (dying to the world, persecution, being an offense, etc).  This passage on spiritual trial is a good example:

"These thousands and thousands and millions, each one is looking after his own business; the public official is looking after his, and the scholar his, and the artist his, and the businessman his, and the slanderer his, and the loafer, no less busy, his, and so on and on; everyone is looking after his own business in this criss-crossing game of diversity that is actuality.  Meanwhile, like Luther in a cloister cell or in a remote room, there is not far away a solitary person in fear and trembling and much spiritual trial.  This is the state of that solitary person sitting there; he is sitting - or, if you so wish, he is pacing, perhaps up and down the floor like a lion imprisoned in a cage; and yet what imprisons him is remarkable - he is by God or because of God imprisoned within himself.

That for which he has suffered in spiritual trial 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. 

Thus he knows that when he now takes this step the terror will rise up. When the terror rises up, the person who is not called becomes so alarmed that he turns and runs. But the one who is called - ah, my friend, he would rather turn back, shuddering before the terror, but as soon as he turns to flee he sees - he sees an even greater horror behind him, the horror of spiritual trial, and he must go forward - so he goes forward; now he is perfectly calm, because the horror of spiritual trial is a formidable disciplinarian who can give courage.  The terror rises up. Everything that closely or remotely belongs to the given actuality arms itself against this man of spiritual trial whom it nevertheless is impossible to terrify because, strangely enough, he is so afraid - of God. All attack him, hate him, curse him. The few who are loyal to him cry out, 'Be careful! You are making yourself and everybody else unhappy. Stop now and do not make the terror more intense. Check the words on your lips and recant what you have just said'.  O my listener, faith is a restless thing." (For Self-Examination, 19-20)

Why a Kierkegaard blog?

Well, I'm working on my PhD at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, and since my thesis subject is Søren Kierkegaard, I thought it would be worthwhile to give those who aren't familiar with his writing an occasional passage to hopefully give a sense of his depth and brilliance as a philosopher, a theologian, a psychologist, and, most of all, a real person. Nothing fancy, just something from his writing that catches me as particularly worthwhile. Given, Kierkegaard isn't really meant for sound bites, but it's a start.

I'll try to let passages stand on their own, but if there's anything worth adding, I will. And I'll try to post new passages every couple days or so. Feel free to comment, ask questions, etc.

All excerpts are from the Princeton translations (Kierkegaard's Writings) by Howard and Edna Hong. If you like the passage, you can buy the related book at http://press.princeton.edu/catalogs/series/kw.html

So, here we go. This first passage is from a letter Kierkegaard wrote to his brother-in-law, before his "official" writing career began. He was 22 at the time, just about to graduate from the University of Copenhagen and trying to figure out what to do with the rest of his life:

"What I really need is to get clear about what I am to do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every act. What matters is to find my purpose, to see what it really is that God wills that I shall do; the crucial thing is to find a truth that is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die...of what use would it be to me to be able to formulate the meaning of Christianity, to be able to explain many specific points - if it had no deeper meaning for me and for my life...I certainly do not deny that I still accept an imperative of knowledge and that through it men may be influenced, but then it must come alive in me, and this is what I now recognize as the most important of all."