(Kierkegaard Research - Sources, Reception and Resources 1) Jon Stewart, Lee C. Barrett (Eds.) - Kierkegaard and The Bible. Tome I - The Old Testament (2010, Routledge)

KierKegaard and the BiBle
tome i: the old testament

Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources
Volume 1, Tome I
Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources

is a publication of the søren Kierkegaard research Centre
General Editor
Jon stewart
Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre,
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Editorial Board
Katalin nun
peter ŠaJda
Advisory Board
istvÁn CzaKÓ
Finn gredal Jensen
david d. possen
heiKo sChulz
This volume was published with the generous financial support

of the danish agency for science, technology and innovation
Kierkegaard and the Bible
tome i: the old testament
Edited by
lee C. Barrett and Jon stewart
First published 2010 by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2016 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright © 2010 lee C. Barrett, Jon stewart and the contributors
lee C. Barrett and Jon stewart have asserted their right under the Copyright, designs and
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Kierkegaard and the Bible.
tome 1, the old testament – (Kierkegaard research ; v. 1)
1. Kierkegaard, søren, 1813–1855. 2. Bible–use–history–
19th century. 3. hermeneutics–history–19th century.
i. series ii. Barrett, lee C. iii. stewart, Jon
198.9–dc22
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kierkegaard and the Bible / lee C. Barrett.
p. cm. — (Kierkegaard research: sources, reception, and resources)
includes indexes.
isBn 978-1-4094-0285-5 (v. 1 : hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Kierkegaard, søren, 1813–1855.
2. Bible—use—history—19th century.
3. Bible—Criticism, interpretation, etc.—history—19th century.
i. Barrett, lee C. ii. title.
B4378.B52B37 2009
220.6092—dc22
2009050212
isBn 9781409402855 (hbk)

Cover design by Katalin nun.
Contents
List of Contributors vii

Preface ix
Acknowledgements xiii
List of Abbreviations xv
PART I INDIVIDUAL TEXTS AND FIGURES
adam and eve:

human Being and nothingness
Timothy Dalrymple 3
abraham:
Framing Fear and Trembling
Timothy Dalrymple 43
moses:
the positive and negative importance of moses in Kierkegaard’s thought
Paul Martens 89
david and solomon:

models of repentance and evasion of guilt
Matthias Engelke 101
Job:
Edification against Theodicy
Timothy H. Polk 115
psalms:
source of images and Contrasts
ecclesiastes:
vanity, grief, and the distinctions of wisdom
Will Williams 179
vi Kierkegaard and the Bible
nebuchadnezzar:
the King as image of transformation
PART II OVERVIEW ARTICLES
Kierkegaard’s rewriting of Biblical narratives:

the mirror of the text
Iben Damgaard 207
Kierkegaard’s use of the old testament:

From literary resource to the word of god
Lori Unger Brandt 231
Kierkegaard’s use of the apocrypha:

is it “scripture” or “good for reading”?
W. Glenn Kirkconnell 253
Index of Persons 265

Index of Subjects 271
list of Contributors
Lori Unger Brandt, toronto school of theology, 47 Queen’s park Crescent east,
toronto, ontario, m5s 2C3, Canada.
Timothy Dalrymple, Center on the study of religion, Barker Center, harvard

university, Cambridge, ma, 02138, usa.
Iben Damgaard, department of systematic theology, aarhus university,

tåsingegade 3, 8000, Århus C, denmark.
Matthias Engelke, pfarrerhaus, steegerstr. 34, 41334 nettetal-lobberich,

germany.
W. Glenn Kirkconnell, department of humanities and Foreign languages, p–152,

santa Fe College, 3000 nw 83rd st., gainesville, Fl, 32606, usa.
Paul Martens, department of religion, Baylor university, one Bear place #97284,
waco, tX 76798–7284, usa.
Timothy H. Polk, hamline university, Box 132, 1536 hewitt ave, st. paul, mn,
55104, usa.
Will Williams, department of religion, Baylor university, one Bear place #97284,
waco, tX, 76798–7284, usa.
preface
the articles in this volume all explore Kierkegaard’s complex use of the Bible,
a use that pervades and sometimes even structures his literature. the authors of
these essays use source-critical research and the tools of many different disciplines,
ranging from literary criticism to theology and biblical studies, to situate
Kierkegaard’s appropriation of the biblical material in his cultural and intellectual
context. The essays seek to identify the possible sources that may have influenced
his understanding and employment of scripture, and to describe the debates about
the Bible that may have shaped, perhaps indirectly, his attitudes toward it. whenever
possible, the authors have sought to document the texts that were influential, either
positively or negatively, for Kierkegaard’s reading of the Bible. the authors also pay
close attention to Kierkegaard’s actual hermeneutic practice, carefully analyzing the
implicit interpretive moves that he makes as well as his more explicit statements about
the significance of various biblical passages. This close reading of Kierkegaard’s
texts enables the authors to elucidate the unique and sometimes odd features of his
frequent appeals to scripture.
many of the essays in this volume deal with particular biblical characters, such as
abraham and Job, who were important to Kierkegaard, or portions of the Bible that
played significant roles in Kierkegaard’s authorship, such as the Psalms, the Pauline
epistles, and the crucifixion narratives. Other essays present overviews of various
aspects of Kierkegaard’s interpretive practice such as his renarration of biblical
stories, his latin translations of the greek new testament, his appropriation of
contemporary biblical scholarship, and his approach to the old testament. Because
the Christian canon with which he wrestled was and is composed of two different
testaments, this volume devotes one tome to the old testament and a second tome
to the new testament. the canonically disputed literature of the apocrypha is
considered in the tome on the old testament.
reading Kierkegaard with an eye to his use of the Bible is essential for making
sense of his texts. Kierkegaard was an intensively scripturally shaped writer whose
natural idiom was the language of the Bible and who viewed the world through
biblical lenses. oddly, this aspect of Kierkegaard’s work has rarely received sustained
attention. although a few monographs have been written about Kierkegaard’s use
of the Bible,1 this literature seems puny when compared to the vast corpus that
1
see, for example, matthias engelke, Kierkegaard und das alte Testament. Zum Einfluss
der alttestamentarischen Bücher auf Kierkegaards Gesamtwerk, rheinbach: Cmz-verlag
1998 (Arbeiten zur Theologiegeschichte, vol. 3); peter parkov, Bibelen i Søren Kierkegaards
Samlede Værker, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1983; timothy polk, The Biblical Kierkegaard:
Reading by the Rule of Faith, macon, georgia: mercer university press 1997; Jolita pons,
x Kierkegaard and the Bible
has been produced dealing with Kierkegaard’s relation to various philosophical
and theological traditions. Kierkegaard the philosopher, Kierkegaard the religious
thinker, and Kierkegaard the poet are relatively well-known, but Kierkegaard the
biblical expositor is still rather obscure.
the proper characterization of Kierkegaard’s biblical interpretive practice
is surprisingly elusive. Kierkegaard lived during an era that was experiencing
a profound upheaval in the way that the Bible was viewed. From the eighteenth
century on, various styles of historical and literary criticism of the Bible had been
emerging, often with disorienting consequences. these interpretive trajectories
implied that the official theologies of the various confessional traditions had often
misconstrued the Bible in order to accommodate it to the constraints of doctrinal
orthodoxy. when the biblical writings were situated in their original contexts and
analyzed with the tools appropriate to analogous types of literature, they were often
seen to mean something quite different from the church’s construal of their message.
even more radically, literary and philological analyses seemed to reveal that the
final forms of the biblical books were actually conglomerates composed of diverse
and sometimes discordant sources. Furthermore, the enlightenment’s suspicion of
supernaturalism fed a growing skepticism about the veracity of the historical claims
made by the biblical texts. all of these factors contributed to a wide-ranging debate
about the authorship, the historical accuracy, and the very meaning of the texts. as
a result, profound questions were raised about the proper way to use the texts to
authorize convictions and values. the Bible’s capacity to guide the lives of believers
was rendered problematic.
the responses to these new challenges were distributed along an expansive
spectrum of hermeneutic options, ranging from the assertion of the biblical texts’
absolute inspiration, authenticity, and accuracy to the suspicion that much of the
biblical material was the product of human ideology-construction. various mediating
orientations developed, salvaging the authority of the Bible by regarding it as the
articulation of particularly potent myths, or as the sublime expression of human
religious self-consciousness, or as a human and culturally conditioned witness to
god’s self-revelation.
Kierkegaard’s writing shows awareness of these issues. From his theological
studies and his continuing reading in theological literature he would have been
familiar with the prevalent hermeneutic options. however, his response to this
debate was curious, for he generally refrained from engaging in the scholarly
conversation, and often ignored it. he did not align himself with either the biblical
right that advocated for the historical veracity and inspired quality of the texts or
with the biblical left that treated the Bible as a fallible expression of human religious
experience. nor did he overtly associate himself with any of the mediating positions.
in fact, Kierkegaard sometimes warned of the deleterious spiritual consequences
of taking any of the interpretive schools too seriously: “all this interpreting and
interpreting and scholarly research and new scholarly research that is produced
Stealing a Gift: Kierkegaard’s Pseudonyms and the Bible, new York: Fordham university
press 2004; l. Joseph rosas, Scripture in the Thought of Søren Kierkegaard, nashville,
tennessee: Broadman & holman 1994.
Preface xi
on the solemn and serious principle that it is in order to understand god’s word
properly—look more closely and you will see that it is in order to defend oneself
against god’s word.”2
against the background of this contest of interpretive schools with increasingly
self-conscious methodological procedures, Kierkegaard’s use of the Bible can seem
enigmatic. Consequently, in different ways all of the authors in this volume seek
to clarify Kierkegaard’s reasons for finding the terms of the academic debate to be
less than edifying. in different ways, all of the authors in this volume also attempt
to illumine Kierkegaard’s alternative way of engaging scripture. it is evident that
what Kierkegaard did with scripture was intentional and patterned, and was not
whimsical or arbitrary. the authors included here seek to clarify more exactly the
nature of his interpretive practice that did not quite fit any contemporary mold.
The first tome of this volume deals specifically with Kierkegaard’s use of
the old testament. this topic presents unique challenges because of the partial
marginalization of the old testament in the protestant theology of Kierkegaard’s era.
For most northern european protestants of the nineteenth century, the old testament
was of secondary importance to the new testament, that part of the canon in which
the redemptive grace of god was more clearly revealed. often the old testament
was regarded as a compendium of laws that had been superseded by the gospel
(although the old testament’s foreshadowings of grace were often noted). By more
theologically conservative readers the old testament was treated as a reservoir of
Christological typologies whose meaning could only be discerned by reading them
in the light of the gospels. with more progressive higher critics the old testament
often did not fare any better, for it was often disparaged as an articulation of a
religion that was ethnically particularistic, legalistically alienating, ritualistically
superstitious, and excessively concerned about this-worldly felicity. moreover, the
old testament’s prevalent view of god was declared to be abstract, heteronymously
pitting an autocratic deity against a subservient and passive humanity.
Kierkegaard was aware of these attitudes toward the old testament. to an extent,
he even shared some of them. in his authorship he certainly used the old testament
much less frequently than he did the new. he owned very few books expositing
the old testament, and never devoted as much attention to hebrew as he did to
greek. he is quite clear that for him the center of the canon is Jesus Christ as savior
and prototype. however, passages and themes from the old testament do occupy
a position of startling importance in his writings. old testament characters such as
abraham and Job often play crucial and even decisive roles in his texts. snatches of
Old Testament wisdom figure prominently in his edifying literature. The vocabulary
and cadences of the psalms saturate his expression of the range of human passions
from joy to despair. the essays in this tome seek to elucidate the crucial rhetorical
uses to which he put key passages from the old testament, and his reasons for doing
so.
the new testament generated even more heated and often vitriolic disputes
than did the old testament during Kierkegaard’s era, for more seemed to be at
stake theologically. the interpretive issues raised by new testament scholars
2
SKS 13, 61 / FSE, 34.
xii Kierkegaard and the Bible
touched not the periphery but the very core of the Christian religion. the depth of
the discrepancies among the four different gospels had been exposed, and various
rival theories had been formulated to explain their divergent chronologies and
perspectives. doubts were raised about the authorship of some of the allegedly
pauline epistles, and the canonicity of the pastoral epistles was questioned. the
evident differences between paul and James continued to worry interpreters, as did
the obvious uniqueness of the Johannine literature. early attempts were made to
situate Jesus in his historical context and to reinterpret his significance through the
lenses of the deists, Kant, hegel, schelling, and the romantics. the result was a
baffling plethora of reconceptualizations of Jesus, ranging from Jesus the very this-
worldly political messiah of Jewish expectations, to Jesus the concrete instantiation
of the generalized unity of the divine and the human, to Jesus the exemplar of absolute
god-consciousness. the sheer variety of interpretive options tended to undermine
the certainty traditionally associated with faith and threatened to defer all religious
commitments until the scholarly disputes had been resolved.
as with the old testament, Kierkegaard was aware of these developments in
new testament scholarship and troubled by them. Because these scholarly projects
generated alternative understandings of the significance of Jesus, they impinged
directly on his own work. it was crucial for Kierkegaard that Jesus be presented as
both the enactment of god’s reconciliation with humanity and as the prototype for
humanity to emulate. Consequently, Kierkegaard had to struggle with the proper
way persuasively to explicate the significance of Jesus in a situation of decreasing
academic consensus about Jesus. he also had to contend with contested interpretations
of James and paul, two biblical authors vital for his work. as a result, Kierkegaard
ruminated about the proper way to appropriate the new testament and used material
from it carefully and deliberately. the authors in the new testament tome seek to
clarify different dimensions of Kierkegaard’s interpretive theory and practice as he
sought to avoid the twin pitfalls of academic skepticism and passionless biblical
traditionalism.
Kierkegaard’s unique appropriation of biblical themes is vital for understanding
his authorship. it is hoped that this volume will stimulate more research into this
relatively neglected aspect of Kierkegaard’s life and literature.
acknowledgements
our deep gratitude must be expressed to Katalin nun, whose painstaking bibliographic
work, thorough familiarity with the literature, precision, and impeccable editorial
judgment vastly contributed to the final value of this volume. We would also like to
thank heiko schulz, istván Czakó, and peter Šajda for their useful suggestions for
the bibliographies, and Finn gredal Jensen for his careful proofreading.
as with the other volumes of this series, this one would not have been possible if
it were not for the kind and competent help of nicholas wain, philip hillyer, rachel
lynch, and the kind people at ashgate.
we must confess our profound appreciation for the staff of the phillip schaff
library of lancaster theological seminary who made much of this editorial phase
possible. Bryce rich, william marshall, and Chris Beldan deserve particular
commendation for their seemingly supernatural abilities to procure elusive and
obscure texts and for their patient willingness to help a neophyte explore the
mysteries of electronic research.
a special thanks must be offered to all of the authors, many of whom allowed their
research interests and instincts to be pushed in directions they might not ordinarily
have chosen. we are indebted to their willingness to tolerate editorial intrusions and
their patience with delays.
list of abbreviations
Danish Abbreviations
B&A Breve og Aktstykker vedrørende Søren Kierkegaard, ed. by niels thulstrup,

vols. 1-2, Copenhagen: munksgaard 1953–54.
Bl.art. S. Kierkegaard’s Bladartikler, med Bilag samlede efter Forfatterens Død,

udgivne som Supplement til hans øvrige Skrifter, ed. by rasmus nielsen,
Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1857.
EP Af Søren Kierkegaards Efterladte Papirer, vols. 1–9, ed. by h.p. Barfod

and hermann gottsched, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1869–81.
Pap. Søren Kierkegaards Papirer, vols. i to Xi–3, ed. by peter andreas heiberg,
victor Kuhr and einer torsting, Copenhagen: gyldendalske Boghandel,
nordisk Forlag 1909–48; second, expanded ed., vols. i to Xi–3, by niels
thulstrup, vols. Xii to Xiii supplementary volumes, ed. by niels thulstrup,
vols. Xiv to Xvi index by niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Copenhagen: gyldendal
1968–78.
SKS Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter, vols. 1–28, K1–K28, ed. by niels Jørgen
Cappelørn, Joakim garff, Jette Knudsen, Johnny Kondrup, alastair
mcKinnon and Finn hauberg mortensen, Copenhagen: gads Forlag
1997ff.
SV1 Samlede Værker, ed. by a.B. drachmann, Johan ludvig heiberg and h.o.
lange, vols. i– Xiv, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1901–06.
English Abbreviations
AN Armed Neutrality, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton:

princeton university press 1998.
AR On Authority and Revelation, The Book on Adler, trans. by walter lowrie,

princeton: princeton university press 1955.
ASKB The Auctioneer’s Sales Record of the Library of Søren Kierkegaard, ed. by
h.p. rohde, Copenhagen: the royal library 1967.
xvi Kierkegaard and the Bible
BA The Book on Adler, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton:
C The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress, trans. by howard v. hong
and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1997.
CA The Concept of Anxiety, trans. by reidar thomte in collaboration with

albert B. anderson, princeton: princeton university press 1980.
CD Christian Discourses, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong,

CI The Concept of Irony, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong,

CIC The Concept of Irony, trans. with an introduction and notes by lee m.
Capel, london: Collins 1966.
COR The Corsair Affair; Articles Related to the Writings, trans. by howard v.
hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1982.
CUP1 Concluding Unscientific Postscript, vol. 1, trans. by howard v. hong and

edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1982.
CUP2 Concluding Unscientific Postscript, vol. 2, trans. by howard v. hong and

EO1 Either/Or, part i, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton:
EO2 Either/Or, part ii, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton:
EOP Either/Or, trans. by alastair hannay, harmondsworth: penguin Books

1992.
EPW Early Polemical Writings, among others: From the Papers of One Still
Living; Articles from Student Days; The Battle Between the Old and the
New Soap-Cellars, trans. by Julia watkin, princeton: princeton university
press 1990.
EUD Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h.

hong, princeton: princeton university press 1990.
FSE For Self-Examination, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong,

List of Abbreviations xvii
FT Fear and Trembling, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong,
FTP Fear and Trembling, trans. by alastair hannay, harmondsworth: penguin

Books 1985.
JC Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est, trans. by howard v.

JFY Judge for Yourself!, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton:
JP Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, vols. 1–6, ed. and trans. by
howard v. hong and edna h. hong, assisted by gregor malantschuk (vol.
7, index and Composite Collation), Bloomington and london: indiana
university press 1967–78.
KAC Kierkegaard’s Attack upon “Christendom,” 1854–1855, trans. by walter

lowrie, princeton: princeton university press 1944.
KJN Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, vols. 1–11, ed. by niels Jørgen
Cappelørn, alastair hannay, david Kangas, Bruce h. Kirmmse, george
pattison, vanessa rumble, and K. Brian söderquist, princeton and oxford:
princeton university press 2007ff.
LD Letters and Documents, trans. by henrik rosenmeier, princeton: princeton

university press 1978.
LR A Literary Review, trans. by alastair hannay, harmondsworth: penguin

Books 2001.
M The Moment and Late Writings, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h.
hong, princeton: princeton university press 1998.
P Prefaces / Writing Sampler, trans. by todd w. nichol, princeton: princeton

PC Practice in Christianity, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong,

PF Philosophical Fragments, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong,

PJ Papers and Journals: A Selection, trans. by alastair hannay,

harmondsworth: penguin Books 1996.
xviii Kierkegaard and the Bible
PLR Prefaces: Light Reading for Certain Classes as the Occasion May Require,
trans. by william mcdonald, tallahassee: Florida state university press
1989.
PLS Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. by david F. swenson and walter

lowrie, princeton: princeton university press 1941.
PV The Point of View including On My Work as an Author, The Point of View

for My Work as an Author, and Armed Neutrality, trans. by howard v.
PVL The Point of View for My Work as an Author including On My Work as an

Author, trans. by walter lowrie, new York and london: oxford university
press 1939.
R Repetition, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton:

SBL Notes of Schelling’s Berlin Lectures, trans. by howard v. hong and edna
h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1989.
SLW Stages on Life’s Way, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong,
SUD The Sickness unto Death, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong,
SUDP The Sickness unto Death, trans. by alastair hannay, london and new York:
penguin Books 1989.
TA Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age. A Literary Review,
trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton
TD Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, trans. by howard v. hong and

UD Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, trans. by howard v. hong and

WA Without Authority including The Lily in the Field and the Bird of the Air,
Two Ethical-Religious Essays, Three Discourses at the Communion on
Fridays, An Upbuilding Discourse, Two Discourses at the Communion on
Fridays, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton
List of Abbreviations xix
WL Works of Love, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton:
WS Writing Sampler, trans. by todd w. nichol, princeton: princeton university

press 1997.
part i
individual texts and Figures

adam and eve:
human Being and nothingness
timothy dalrymple
although the Bible in Kierkegaard’s denmark was still the reigning religious
authority, the principal collection of stories and teachings that framed human life
in a broad vision of meaning and purpose, its explanatory sovereignty had been
severely compromised. other sources of insight in the natural and social sciences
had already begun to shine their lights on the human creature. the hermeneutic
of suspicion that today so permeates the intellectual culture of the west, which
regards ancient texts as the quaint literary vestigia of pre-scientific societies, had
begun to press its case, and the vivisection of the Jewish and Christian scriptures
into so many straining cords was well underway. hobbes and spinoza had long since
challenged the mosaic authorship of the pentateuch, and groundbreaking works
of biblical criticism were published long before Kierkegaard wrote The Concept
of Anxiety in 1844.1 Major figures from Hobbes and Hume to Rousseau and Kant
had examined human nature in ways not grounded on genesis. Karl rosenkranz
(1805–79) had generated his Psychologie through conceptual distinctions, not
1
gotthold ephraim lessing (1729–81) published the Wolfenbütteler Fragmente,
from hermann samuel reimarus’ (1694–1768) manuscript, Apologie oder Schutzschrift für
die vernünftigen Verehrer Gottes, from 1774 to 1777 in his Zur Geschichte und Literatur.
Kierkegaard possessed lessing’s collected works, see Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s sämmtliche
Schriften, vols. 1–32, vols. 1–28, Berlin: vossische Buchhandlung 1825–27; vols. 29–32
Berlin and stettin: nicolaische Buchhandlung 1828 (ASKB 1747–1762). Johann gottfried
Eichhorn (1752–1827) had put out his influential Einleitung in das Alte Testament, vols. 1–5,
leipzig: weidmann & reich 1780–83, and wilhelm martin leberecht de wette (1780–1849)
wrote many works Kierkegaard possessed, including his Lehrbuch der historisch-kritischen
Einleitung in die Bibel Alten und Neuen Testamentes, vols. 1–2 (in 1 tome), 4th ed., Berlin:
g. reimer 1833 (ASKB 80) and his Lehrbuch die hebräisch-judischen Archäologie, 3rd ed.,
leipzig: vogel 1842 (ASKB 872). david Friedrich strauss’ (1808–74) Das Leben Jesu kritisch
bearbeitet, tübingen: osiander 1835–36, was much discussed in the years when Kierkegaard
was reaching his intellectual maturity; he possessed strauss’ Fremstilling af den christelige
Troeslære i dens historiske Udvikling og i dens Kamp med den moderne Videnskab, vols. 1–2,
trans. by hans Brøchner, Copenhagen: h.C. Klein 1842–43 (ASKB 803–804), and works on
strauss, such as Franz von Baader’s Über das Leben Jesu, munich: Franz 1836 (ASKB 407),
and Julius schaller’s Der historische Christus und die Philosophie. Kritik der Grundidee des
Werks das Leben Jesu, von Dr. D.F. Strauss, leipzig: otto wigand 1838 (ASKB 759). see also
the reading notes on the latter in SKS 18, 318–37, KK:2 / KJN 2, 292–308.
4 Timothy Dalrymple
through reflection on the biblical narrative, and Kierkegaard could have done the
same.2 in this environment, under these circumstances, the fact that Kierkegaard
should root such fundamental convictions in the soil of eden, that he should write his
most psychological work expositing the temptation and Fall of adam, surely tells us
something about Kierkegaard and what he sought to communicate.
another way to frame the problem is to note that Kierkegaard was a frequent
but also a highly selective biblical commentator. some veins of insight are deeply
mined, like the binding of isaac, the suffering of Job, paul’s thorn, and Christ’s
“abasement,” while the Flood, the exodus, and the birth narratives are scarcely
touched. the lilies and birds are evoked in many works, while eucharistic metaphors
of bread, blood and water are not. Kierkegaard commented on those portions of the
scriptural heritage that helped him communicate what he considered most important.
what, then, of the eden stories? how did it serve Kierkegaard’s purposes to employ
such a fiercely contested text to set forth his view of human beings in relation to
god?
this article surveys the history of Kierkegaard’s interpretation of the adam stories
and views that history synoptically to discern patterns within it. in fair warning, it
is a lengthy essay, since adam stands with abraham and Job as the old testament
figures Kierkegaard examined most often. Two claims are put forward. First,
Kierkegaard’s interpretation of adam is best understood through three theological
principles: creatio ex nihilo, felix culpa, and the “second adam” or the new being
in Christ. second, in his reading of the eden narrative Kierkegaard is concerned not
only with the problems of knowledge and human nature, but also with the problem
of evil. The Concept of Anxiety is more than theological anthropology. it is also
theodicy.
to be precise, it is a distinctly late-modern, psychological version of what
leibniz had called theodicy. early references will clarify the three theological
principles underlying his vision of adam and of essential human being, yet two
works published over the course of six months, an upbuilding discourse on “every
good gift” from december 1843 and The Concept of Anxiety from June 1844,
advance the argument most strongly. Kierkegaard addresses the nature of spirit
and the emergence of sin and suffering through a narrative of fundamental human
experience, spanning the interval from the first creation and the first Adam to the
second creation and second adam. the individual is created from nothing and given
freedom, yet confronts in anxiety the nothing of its freedom and posits itself apart
from god in sin. in determining itself as a self, the individual strives to be a self
apart from god, effecting a “split” between itself and god, and exchanging truth
for untruth, freedom for unfreedom, being for nothingness. Yet the self that will be
instructed by suffering and anxiety in its nothingness apart from god will learn to
rest in God and receive true being and freedom. The solitary spirit flies from nothing
to nothingness, and in that nothingness finds its fullest being in the grace of the self-
giving god.
2
Johann Karl Friedrich rosenkranz, Psychologie, oder die Wissenschaft vom
subjectiven Geist, Königsberg: Bornträger 1837 (ASKB 744). the text is cited several times in
The Concept of Anxiety, for instance, in SKS 4, 337 / CA, 30. SKS 4, 447–8 / CA, 147–9.
Adam and Eve: Human Being and Nothingness 5
I. Adam in the Early Years (1834–41)
Adam is too central a figure in Western philosophical and theological discourse

for this article to supply a comprehensive account of the many figures who would
have contributed to Kierkegaard’s understanding of him. some of what leibniz,
Kant, hegel, and schelling wrote on adam will be examined along the way, yet any
exhaustive account would begin with the danes of the golden age, from Kierkegaard’s
instructors at the university to the ministers of the churches he attended and various
other Copenhagen luminaries,3 including henrik nicolai Clausen (1793–1877),
Jakob peter mynster (1775–1854), Johan ludvig heiberg (1791–1860) and hans
lassen martensen (1808–84),4 and would proceed to german-language philosophers,
theologians and biblical critics, many of whom are referenced in Kierkegaard’s
early journal and notebook entries on adam and the Fall: Johann georg hamann
(1730–88),5 Franz von Baader (1765–1841),6 Friedrich schleiermacher (1768–
1834),7 anton günther (1783–1863),8 Johann eduard erdmann (1805–92),9 philipp
3
Articles on the following figures can be found in Kierkegaard and His Contemporaries:
The Culture of Golden Age Denmark, ed. by Jon stewart, Berlin: walter de gruyter
2003 (Kierkegaard Studies Monograph Series, vol. 10); Kierkegaard and His German
Contemporaries, tomes i–iii, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2007–8 (Kierkegaard
Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 6); also see Kierkegaard and His Danish
Contemporaries, tomes i–iii, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard
Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 7).
4
some of Kierkegaard’s earliest references to the adam story are in his notes on
Clausen’s lectures on dogmatics in 1833–34, in SKS 19, 35, not1:6; also see the notes from the
1839–40 lectures, in SKS 19, 83, not1:9. martensen tutored Kierkegaard in schleiermacher’s
Glaubenslehre in 1834, when Kierkegaard was concerned about the doctrine of predestination,
and Kierkegaard attended martensen’s “lectures on speculative dogmatics” in 1837–38.
5
see SKS 17, 209, CC:25 / KJN 1, 200. SKS 18, 32, ee:82 / KJN 2, 27. SKS 18, 311,
JJ:511–511.b / KJN 2, 286. hamann helped Kierkegaard develop the category of anxiety
through which haufniensis will interpret the Fall.
6
Pap. i C 31 / JP 4, 3990 and SKS 17, 43, aa:22.2 / KJN 1, 35, referring to Franz
Baader, Vorlesungen über speculative Dogmatik, vol. 1, stuttgart, tübingen: Cotta 1828
[vols. 2–5, münster: theissing 1830–38], see especially vol. 1, pp. 105ff. (ASKB 396). Baader
wrote extensively on the problem of original sin; see the laudatory reference in The Concept
of Anxiety to Baader and his work on temptation, in SKS 4, 345 / CA, 39.
7
schleiermacher’s “relative predestination” was especially important to Kierkegaard
in his student years; see Pap. i a 295 / JP 3, 3547. also Pap. i a 273 / JP 2, 1096 equates
Schleiermacher’s “religion” with the “first immediacy” which Kierkegaard will ascribe to the
prelapsarian state. schleiermacher is also cited in SKS 17, 41, aa:22 / KJN 1, 35.
8
SKS 17, 42, aa:22 / KJN 1, 35. günther was a Catholic priest and neo-scholastic
philosopher who condemned pantheism and sought to establish theistic philosophy on the
basis of descartes. Kierkegaard collected a number of his works; see ASKB 520–523, 869–
870, and 1672.
9
SKS 17, 219, dd:8 / JP 3, 3998. Kierkegaard took reading notes in 1837 (SKS
19, 164, not4:41b) on erdmann’s Vorlesungen über Glauben und Wissen als Einleitung
in die Dogmatik und Religionsphilosophie gehalten und auf den Wunsch seiner Zühorer
herausgegeben, Berlin: duncker und humblot 1837 (ASKB 479).
6 Timothy Dalrymple
marheineke (1780–1846),10 immanuel hermann Fichte (1796–1879),11 Julius müller
(1801–78),12 Bruno Bauer (1809–82), and the aforementioned rosenkranz.13 Yet
even this would not be sufficient. The positions of Augustine, Luther, and Meister
eckhart lie in the background, and in The Concept of Anxiety Kierkegaard refers to
numerous sources in historical theology from pelagianism to aquinas to “federal
theology” to the augsburg Confession.14 Kierkegaard was immaculately educated,
and seems to have made a particular effort to familiarize himself with the wealth of
available interpretations on sin, predestination, and freedom.
a more focused approach is required. Common though it is to refer to the
“story” of adam and eve, there are four distinct stories or story threads Kierkegaard
employs: the creation of the human ex nihilo and in the divine image; the naming of
the animals; the fashioning of eve; and the temptation and Fall.15 there are also at
least four distinct uses to which Kierkegaard puts these threads: the psychological
use—a term which referred at the time to something like a phenomenology
of the human self in its emergence, development and structure, a self which for
Kierkegaard was theologically constructed;16 the epistemological use, concerning
the relationship between the knower and the known; the sexual use, concerning the
10
see the relevant portion of Kierkegaard’s notes on marheineke’s lectures, SKS 19,
249–64, not9:1, discussed in the second section of this essay. marheineke was theology
professor at the university of Berlin, and had been co-pastor with Friedrich schleiermacher at
the holy trinity Church.
11
SKS 17, 41–3, aa:22 / KJN 1, 35–6. Kierkegaard also refers, in his dissertation, to the
elder Johann gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) and “evil in the Fichtean sense of the word, apathy
and indolence” (SKS 1, 312 / CI, 276).
12
Müller is first cited in Kierkegaard’s Marheineke notes, in SKS 19, 253, not9:1. in
1850 Kierkegaard refers extensively to müller’s Die christliche Lehre von der Sünde, vols.
1–2, 3rd ed., Breslau: Josef max 1849 (ASKB 689–90), although it is possible he had read it
before writing The Concept of Anxiety; see Christine axt-piscalar, “Julius müller: parallels in
the doctrines of sin and Freedom,” in Kierkegaard and His German Contemporaries, tome
ii, Theology, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2007 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources,
Reception and Resources, vol. 6), pp. 153–4, note 46.
13
Kierkegaard took notes on rosenkranz’s Encyklopædie der theologischen
Wissenschaften, halle: C.a. schwetschke und sohn 1831, in SKS 18, 343–52, KK:4 / KJN
2, 314–22, and notes in SKS 17, 219–22, dd:10 / KJN 1, 211–4 on “eine parallele zur
religionsphilosophie,” from Bruno Bauer’s Zeitschrift für spekulative Theologie, vols. 1–3,
Berlin: dümmler 1836–38, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 1–32 (ASKB 354–357). also see SKS 17, 213,
dd:1 / KJN 1, 205. Kierkegaard made frequent use of Bauer’s Zeitschrift für spekulative
Theologie, and read Bauer’s article, the first section of which concerns the creation narrative:
“die urgeschichte der menschheit nach dem biblischen Berichte der genesis, kritisch
untersucht,” in vol. 3, no. 1, 1837, pp. 125–210.
14
SKS 4, 332–4 / CA, 25–7.
15
these four “threads” are found in gen 1:26–27 and 2:7; 2:18–20; 2:21–25; 3:1–24.
the Bible employed in this study is the Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version with
Apocrypha, oxford: oxford university press 1989.
16
rosenkranz’s Psychologie is subdivided by anthropology, phenomenology
and pneumatology. albert anderson describes the “psychology” of Kierkegaard as “a
phenomenology that is based on an ontological view of man, the fundamental presupposition
relationship between male and female; and the theodical use, concerning freedom,
sin, and suffering.
when these are properly differentiated, patterns emerge. the naming of the
animals is primarily employed to image the nature of knowledge or truth prior to
the irruption of sin, and the fashioning of eve of course expounds sexual difference
and erotic love.17 More importantly, the first and fourth threads weave together a
narrative of universal human experience. Kierkegaard’s distinctive contribution to
the interpretation of adam is in the construction of this narrative—and i will argue
the narrative is structured by three theological principles: the creatio ex nihilo (the
creation of all things from nothing), felix culpa (the Fall as a “blessed fault,” leading
to a greater good), and the second adam (a restored humanity in Christ).
Before examining the early references according to these theological principles,
the terms themselves must be defined. In telling a narrative structured by these
principles, Kierkegaard is drawing on well-established Christian traditions. to
begin with the first: the Latin ex nihilo means “out of nothing” and differentiates the
Christian creation story from other cosmogonies in which the world is refashioned
from preexistent matter or chaos (ex materia) or out of the divine being itself (ex
Deo). If God is the absolute free cause of all finite existence, then the finite world is
not necessary and eternal but possible and therefore contingent on god’s conservatio,
or continuous creative will. since creatures possess no “aseity,” no independent
power of being, they depend upon god for their very being. although the basic
assertion of creatio ex nihilo is arguably implicit in the hebrew scriptures18 and in
the new testament,19 it is openly declared as early as 2 maccabees and developed
philosophically and theologically in ancient Jewish and Christian apologists. The
of which is the transcendent reality of the individual, whose intuitively discernible character
reveals the existence of an eternal component” (CI, p. xiv).
17
Kierkegaard refers to eve rarely in the early journals, and then typically in a derisive
tone. For eve and the relations between the sexes, see Pap. i a 140 / JP 3, 3801. SKS 17, 42,
aa:22 / KJN 1, 35. SKS 17, 248, dd:84 / KJN 1, 239. SKS 18, 40–1, ee:105 / KJN 2, 35–6.
Pap. iii B 41:25 / JP 2, 2589. Also, his first published article, “Another Defense of Woman’s
great abilities,” says that eve’s “craving for deeper knowledge” led her to attend the serpent’s
“philosophical lectures,” and thus all should receive “the apple of knowledge” from woman
(SV1 Xiii, 6, 8 / EPW, 3, 5). “ogsaa et Forsvar for Qvindens høie anlœg” was published in
the Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, Interimsblad, 34, december 17, 1834, columns 4–6. For other
references among the early writings, see SKS 17, 290, dd:208 / EPW, 117.
18
there are ongoing disputes over the meanings of bara (“to create,” employed
throughout the first creation account, Genesis 1:1–2:4a) and asah (“to make,” used in genesis
1:7, 16, 25, 31, 2:3 and 2:4b), and whether either genesis account intends to speak of a
creation ex nihilo. see Jon d. levensen, Creation and the Persistence of Evil, princeton:
princeton university press 1994. what is important for our sake is that creatio ex nihilo was
taken for centuries as a legitimate interpretation of genesis, and that Kierkegaard himself took
it to apply not only to the creation in general but also specifically to the human individual.
Kierkegaard is aware of the “double account” in gen 1–2 (see SKS 19, 23, not1:6. SKS 18,
372, KK:8 / KJN 2, 340), but makes little of it, and rarely speaks of the forming from dust.
19
outside of gen 1:1–2:4, see gen 5:1–2, 6:6, 9:6; ps 33:6; is 40:26, 42:5, 45:18. in
extracanonical sources, see 2 maccabees 7:8 and 4 esdras 4:38. in the new testament: Jn 1:3,
rom 4:17, 1 Cor 1:28, Col 1:15–17, heb 1:2, 11:3.
8 Timothy Dalrymple
Shepherd of Hermas in the second century declares that god “created, increased
and multiplied that which exists out of that which does not.”20 For tertullian creatio
ex nihilo is sufficient proof of God’s power to resurrect the dead; he advises: “Trust
therefore that he has brought forth this everything out of nothing, and you will at
once know god by trusting that god has so much power.”21 augustine presents the
doctrine over against manichaeism, as did the early apologists, in order to defend
the unconditioned omnipotence of god and the original goodness of the material
world.22 as one of today’s theologians writes, the world “exists as creation, as
creatura, as contingent being; its possibility of existence, its particular constitution
and its structures are rooted in its permanent ontological dependence on god the
Creator. this contingence of the world as creation not only characterizes its being,
its ontological status, but also its intelligibility and its created goodness.”23
Felix culpa, or “fortunate fault,” refers to the paradox that adam’s sin, which
exiled humankind from the garden and cast the creation into pain and strife, also
prepared the way for the incarnation, the demonstration of divine love on the cross,
and the redemption of all things. if god is omniscient, it is argued, then presumably
god foreknew that adam would defy him, and yet with this foreknowledge permitted
adam’s freedom; if god is omnibenevolent, then god should not have permitted
the Fall, or indeed created the world, unless god also foreknew that it would lead
through salvific history to a greater good. Creatio ex nihilo is indirectly theodical
insofar as it posits the goodness of the world,24 yet the felix culpa is directly theodical
insofar as it defends god’s permission of sin and expresses the Christian hope that
divine love will prevail over evil and deliver the world from sin and suffering. thus
the roman liturgy, since at least eleven centuries before Kierkegaard, has celebrated
holy saturdays with the Exultet: “O felix culpa quae talem et tantum meruit habere
redemptorum!” or in the words of ambrose of milan in the fourth century, the sin
of Adam “has brought more benefit to us than harm”; “felix ruina, quae reparatur
in melius.”25 augustine and pope leo i (died 461) agreed, and gregory the great
(ca. 540–604) put it thus:
20
Apostolic Fathers: Volume II. Epistle of Barnabas. Papias and Quadratus. The
Shepherd of Hermas, trans. by Bart ehrman, Cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university
press 2003 (Loeb Classical Library), p. 177. For more information, see gerhard may, Creatio
Ex Nihilo: The Doctrine of ‘Creation out of Nothing’ in Early Christian Thought, trans. by a.
s. worral, edinburgh: t. & t. Clark 1994.
21
tertullian, Treatise on the Resurrection, trans. by ernest evans, london: spCK 1960,
p. 31 (11:5–10).
22
see n. Joseph torchia, ‘Creatio ex nihilo’ and the Theology of St. Augustine: The
Anti-Manichaean Polemic and Beyond, new York: peter lang 1999 (American University
Studies, series vii, Theology of Religion, vol. 205).
23
Christoph schwöbel, “god, Creation and the Christian Community,” in The Doctrine
of Creation: Essays in Dogmatics, History and Philosophy, ed. by Colin gunton, edinburgh:
t. & t. Clark 2004 [1997], p. 164.
24
See David R. Griffin, “Creation Out of Nothing, Creation Out of Chaos and The
problem of evil,” in Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy, ed. by stephen t. davis,
louisville, Kentucky: westminster John Knox press 2001, pp. 108–44.
25
ambrose, De Institutione Virginis, 17, 104; see ps, 39:20.
what greater fault than that by which we all die? and what greater goodness than that
by which we are freed from death? and certainly, unless adam had sinned, it would not
have behooved our Redeemer to take on our flesh. Almighty God saw beforehand that
from that evil because of which men were to die, he would bring about a good which
would overcome that evil.…[w]ho of the elect would not willingly endure still worse
evils, rather than not have so great a redeemer?26
The same standpoint is found in figures more proximate to Kierkegaard; Calvin

comprehended cosmic history as serving the greater glorification of God, and in
milton’s Paradise Lost adam surveys (through the prophecy of an archangel) all
the suffering that will come in consequence of his deed, along with the surpassing
goodness of the salvation of humankind through Christ, and wonders whether he
should lament over his sin or rejoice over its consequences.27 Kierkegaard notes
erdmann’s deft use of the metaphor when the latter writes that the Fall, seen from
the proper perspective, is actually “a forward step,”28 and yet Kierkegaard himself
will articulate a much fuller view, in which it is not merely in the overcoming of sin
that the fortune of this fault lies, but also in an emergence of spirit that is inseparable
from the process in which sin is chosen.
there was less need to clarify the doctrine of the second adam in later theologies,
since it was plainly impressed on the surface of the epistles of paul, and arguably the
gospels. having entered into the condition of adam, Christ returns to the garden
(of gethsemane) and passes the test that adam failed. adam grasped for the divine,
yet Christ did not consider equality with god something to be grasped, but abased
himself unto the cross.29 adam through his arrogant grasping at the fruit of the tree
had plunged humankind into sin and suffering, strife, and estrangement; Christ
through his humble sacrifice was lifted on “the tree,” a new tree of new life.30 it is
easy to see, then, how this inverted parallelism could illuminate adam proleptically
in relation to Christ, for adam was “a type of the one who was to come.” whereas
“the first man, Adam” was made into a living being yet brought death into the world,
“the last adam” or the “second man” is a “life-giving spirit” who breathed out the
holy spirit on his apostles.31 Adam, first created, determined the conditions of human
being under sin; Christ, uncreated, in becoming human and overcoming sin and death
as human made possible a new way of being human before god, so anyone in him
“is a new creation.” Christ redeems the world and confers a new being on those who
rest in him: “As all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ,” the “first fruits”
of the new life. paul writes, “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust,
26
gregory, In Primum Regum Expositiones, in Migne Patrologia Latina 79.222. Cited
in english in a.o. lovejoy, “milton and the paradox of the Fortunate Fall,” A Journal of
English Literature and History, vol. 4, no. 3, 1937, pp. 170–1.
27
see lovejoy, “milton and the paradox of the Fortunate Fall,” pp. 161–4.
28
SKS 17, 219, dd:8 / KJN 1, 211, referring to erdman’s essay, “Über den Begriff des
sündenfalls und des Bösen,” in Bruno Bauer’s Zeitschrift für spekulative Theologie, vol. 2,
no. 1, 1837, pp. 192ff. see Notebook 4 as well.
29
see phil 2:6.
30
see 1 pet 2:24; acts 5:30, 10:39, 13:29.
31
rom 5:18; 1 Cor 15:45–49; Jn 20:22.
10 Timothy Dalrymple
we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.” Christ’s suffering is essential to
this re-creation. Similarly, the Letter to the Hebrews observes, “It was fitting that
god, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to
glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings.”32 Christ
was the culmination of the providential history that adam had commenced; Christ
vanquished that which had conquered adam; Christ by his act of righteousness not
only reversed the effects of adam’s sin, but accomplished a higher reconciliation
and communion with god.
these theological principles shape Kierkegaard’s understanding of adam, as
can be seen even in the early references. Though not universally affirmed in the
philosophical discourse of his time (consider spinoza, schelling, and hegel), creatio
ex nihilo was established ecclesially. Balle’s catechism declared that god “created
heaven and earth out of nothing” (skabte Himmel og Jord af Intet), that humanity
is “created after god’s own image,” and that god preserves all created things
and governs the affairs of the world33—and Hutterus Redivivus hails “the calling
forth of being from not being.”34 likewise the dogmatic theologies of Clausen and
marheineke spoke of god’s creating (creatio primitiva, in the Clausen notes) and
conserving (creatio continuata) all things out of nothing.35 so it is unsurprising that
Kierkegaard should affirm the doctrine. As he writes in 1837, “God’s consciousness
of things is their coming into being,” and apart from this divine consciousness all
things would “instantly cease to exist.”36 he writes in the margin to an 1838 entry
that “god creates out of nothing,” and “creates saints (the communion of saints)
out of sinners.”37 there will be much more to say on the creatio ex nihilo in the
following.
the condition into which humankind is created is illustrated in the second story
thread, the naming of the animals. in 1834 Kierkegaard praises the “serene and
happy frame of mind the natural scientist must enjoy, as one familiar with the plants
and animals who “sees their significance in the whole universe,” and like “Adam
32
2 Cor 5:17; 1 Cor 15:22–3, 49; heb 2:10.
33
nikolai edinger Balle and C.h. Bastholm, Lærebog i den Evangelisk-christlige
Religion, indrettet til Brug i de danske Skoler, Copenhagen: Jens holstrup schultz 1824
[1791] (ASKB 183), 2.1.1 and 2.1.7. (translation mine).
34
Karl hase, Hutterus redivivus oder Dogmatik der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche.
Ein dogmatisches Repertorium für Studierende, ed. by Karl a. hase, 4th ed., leipzig: Breitkopf
und härtel 1839 [1829], § 62 (ASKB 581).
35
see Clausen’s exposition on being skabt i Guds Billede in SKS 19, 23, not1:6, and
on creation and preservation in SKS 19, 42, not1:7 / JP 5, 5058. the scholastic distinction
between creatio primitiva and creatio continuata is found in the 1839–40 lectures, SKS 19,
79–80, not1:9. Kierkegaard’s notes on marheineke’s lectures have sections on creation out of
nothing (Skabelse af Intet) and “on the origin of evil” in SKS 19, 250–2, 256–61, not9:1 / JP
5, 5514.
36
SKS 17, 41, aa:22 / KJN 1, 35. SKS 18, 87, FF:59 / KJN 2, 80.
37
SKS 18, 104, FF:154.a / KJN 2, 96. For more, see matthew Frawley, “the doctrine
of Creatio Ex Nihilo in the thought of søren Kierkegaard,” Kierkegaardiana, vol. 23,
pp. 7–25.
of old—all the animals come to him, and he gives them names.”38 so romantic a
vision of natural science was not out of place in the golden age, when proponents
of Naturphilosophie were many. seven months later, in a letter addressed to a
naturalist, but possibly meant for an epistolary novel, those who interpret “nature’s
runic inscriptions” are likened to adam giving names; they have transcended the
merely empirical to “that archimedean point which is nowhere in the world and from
which they have surveyed the whole and seen the details in their proper light.”39 the
naming of the animals represents for Kierkegaard a lucid and untroubled relation
between adam and the beings he named40—yet Adam finds no name for himself, no
way to “make himself intelligible” to others. the metaphor reappears in The Concept
of Irony, where Adam “finds no fellowship for himself.”41 adam receives the world
transparently, since there was not yet doubt or sin to intervene between the knower
and the known; yet he lacked the reflexive self-consciousness that is the condition
of authentic relationship. thus the enormity of the “great and deep Fall” and the
corruption of the image are rightly mourned,42 yet the “first condition” is not the
“ideal condition.”43 the point may seem pedantic, yet it is important to the doctrine
of felix culpa, for humankind can only attain a higher condition in the postlapsarian
world if the prelapsarian condition was not perfect.
this means that the perfection of humankind and its ultimate telos lie on the
other side of the garden of eden. Yet it should be noted that the felix culpa does
not imply that the power of the divine bends the individual coercively toward the
greater good. on the surprisingly rare occasions in which Kierkegaard makes early
references to the fourth thread, the tale of the Fall, he rejects any account, such as
that of hegel, which construes the Fall as a necessary movement in the dialectic of
38
Pap. i a 31 / JP 3, 2806, an entry dated november 22, 1834; cf. gen 2:19.
39
SKS 17, 20–1, aa:12 / KJN 1, 15–16, dated June 1, 1835. the letter seems addressed
to peter wilhelm lund (1801–80), a paleontologist, and relative by marriage, who had gone
to Brazil and would carry out pioneering cave excavations. Yet it may have been intended
for a volume from a “Faustian doubter.” see the notes in KJN 1, 319, and emanuel hirsch,
Kierkegaard-Studien, vols. 1–2, gütersloh: Bertelsmann 1933, vol. 2, pp. 490–2. (reprinted,
vaduz, liechtenstein: toposverlag 1978. First published in Studien des apologetischen
Seminars in Wernigerode, nos. 29, 31, 32, 36, 1930–33.) Kierkegaard finds three “worthy
representatives” of the natural scientist in Copenhagen. one is h.C. Ørsted (1777–1851),
whose discovery of electromagnetism in 1820 was perceived as an almost mystical insight
into the hidden forces governing the world. Ørsted was a towering figure in the intellectual
life of golden age Copenhagen, advancing physics and chemistry, poetry, and a philosophy
influenced by Kant and J.G. Fichte. See Hans Christian Ørsted and the Romantic Legacy in
Science, ed. by robert m. Brain, robert s. Cohen and ole Knudsen, dordrecht: springer 2007.
Kierkegaard also refers to J.w. horneman (1770–1841), and J.F. schouw (1789–1852).
40
SKS 18, 54, ee:152 / KJN 2, 49 speaks of the “anthropomorphism” and yet “objective
reality” in the naming of the animals. a note distinguishes the human from the divine act of
naming, which is “identical with creation.” SKS 25, 300, nB29:6 / JP 3, 3582 classes the
giving of names among the “distinguishing marks of man, according to genesis.”
41
Pap. i a 149 / JP 1, 26. SKS 1, 318 / CI, 283.
42
SKS 18, 12, ee:18 / KJN 2, 7–8, from 1839.
43
SKS 19, 81, not1:9 / JP 1, 36. that he ascribes to this view himself becomes clear in
The Concept of Anxiety.
absolute history. since Kierkegaard is committed to the freedom of the individual
and to the preservation of a place for it in the architecture of providence, it cannot
be the inexorable force of necessity that drives adam from the garden, but only
the spontaneous leap of freedom.44 For the same reason he rejects the doctrine of
predestination as a “thoroughgoing abortion,” since it effectively denies human
freedom.45 Difficult though it is for philosophy to comprehend, God “create[d]
human beings who are free in relation to himself.”46 So if the Fall will be beneficial
in the providence of god, it must be so in a way that maintains human freedom. the
divine maieutic must turn the baby in the womb, not coercing but subtly drawing the
individual out of a free movement toward the evil and into a free movement toward
the good. the greater good of the felix culpa must be found in freedom.
the early references also suggest the distinctive way in which Kierkegaard
frames the movement of the felix culpa as a movement from nothing to nothing, or
from a first to a second creatio ex nihilo. the language of “nothing” will be important
later, but even in the early references “nothingness” (Intethed) and “annihilation”
(Tilintetgjørelse, a making-into-nothing) are often discussed. this point is all too
often missed: when Kierkegaard speaks of nothingness and annihilation, and later of
the nothing of freedom, these should be understood in relation to the first nothing,
the nothing out of which we are created and preserved.47 thus Kierkegaard writes in
the gilleleje journal of perceiving “my nothingness” (min Intethed),48 and declares
that the person who surmounts the ironic meaninglessness of life is “elevated” above
himself and “sees himself in his nothingness [i sin Intethed], and thereby finds his
true elevation.”49 Kierkegaard prays in 1839 that god would “let me really feel my
nothingness [ret føle min Intethed],” not to despair but to “feel the greatness of your
goodness all the more strongly.”50 later in the year he reports, “now i really feel my
annihilation [Jeg føler ret i denne Tid min Tilintetgjørelse],” and his suffering (like
that of the blind man in John 9) will serve the purposes of god.51 as these entries
suggest, “nothingness” and “annihilation” do not refer to an extirpation of the self,
but to its dying to itself and to its striving to be itself apart from god. the language
44
Kierkegaard will be consistent on this point over time, but it is found in 1837, amid
notes on and excerpts from adam möhler, Athanasius der Große und die Kirche seiner Zeit,
besonders im Kampfe mit dem Arianismus, vols. 1–2, mainz: Florian Kupferberg 1827 (ASKB
635–636), in SKS 18, 355–6, KK:5 / KJN 2, 325. there is much relevant material in Journal
KK, a notebook filled with theological notes and commentary.
45
Pap i a 5 / JP 2, 1230. Pap. i a 7 / JP 2, 1231. the entries are dated to august and
november 1834.
46
SKS 18, 203, FF:149 / KJN 2, 95.
47
although the language of nothingness is more commonly directed toward the
psychological/ontological transformations of the self, it is sometimes addressed toward
epistemological concerns. see SKS 17, 27–28, aa:12 / KJN 1, 22, from 1835, and Pap i a
190 / JP 2, 1673, from 1836.
48
SKS 17, 14, aa:6 / KJN 1, 10. the entry is dated July 29, 1835.
49
Pap. ii a 627 / JP 2, 1688, dated June 2, 1837.
50
SKS 18, 28, ee:67 / KJN 2, 24
51
SKS 18, 63, ee:188 / KJN 2, 63. the entry cites Jn 9:3, where the man “was born blind
so that god’s works might be revealed in him.”
of nothingness refers to the individual’s utter unworthiness of god and incapability
of grasping or comprehending god, and thus the individual’s total dependence
upon god for being, goodness and truth. if the “adamic project” is the attempt to
grasp at the likeness of god, the “nothingness” of “annihilation” is the shipwreck
of the adamic project, the recognition that it has failed and will always fail, since
communion with and likeness to god can only be given by god.
thus this annihilation is preparatory for the second creation. in later years
Kierkegaard is perfectly clear on the matter. “god creates out of nothing,” he writes,
“and all God is to use he first turns to nothing.”52 in the early years the same point
emerges with nearly equal clarity and force. Kierkegaard speaks of being reduced to
confessing that “we ourselves can do nothing at all” as a “necessary” preparation “in
order for god to be able to make something out of us, for god always creates from
nothing [Gud skaber altid af Intet], and needs neither material nor our self-made
wisdom.”53 the individual, created and preserved out of nothing, strove to make
itself according to its own will, yet must confess its nothingness in humility before
it can be recreated in the new being. in January 1837 he speaks of augustine’s view
that there is a first creation, then the Fall into “death and powerlessness,” and then
the “new Creation” (ny Skabelse) in which positive freedom is restored.54 or more
explicitly, two months later he writes that the “first creation” confers an “immediate
consciousness” such as adam enjoyed in the garden, but the “second creation,”
“again a creation out of nothing,” brings “immediate consciousness of the second
stage.”55
perhaps the most powerful evidence of his early view of annihilation and
nothingness is found in a lengthy reflection from 1840 on the “new creation” in
Christ.56 the worldly standpoint that “There is Nothing New Under the Sun” is
contrasted with the Christian standpoint that “Everything is New in Christ.”57 in the
former there is no need for divine intervention, since the capacities of humankind
will bring forth ever greater refinements of knowledge and ever higher mediations of
the established order. Kierkegaard is responding to sentiments like those of heiberg,
who had written in 1838 that hegel had so perfected the art of philosophical
52
SKS 26, 112, nB31:155 / JP 2, 2099.
53
SKS 18, 11, ee:15–15b / KJN 2, 7; ee:15 is dated February 8, 1839.
54
SKS 17, 33, aa:14.2 / KJN 1, 27.
55
SKS 17, 42, aa:22 / KJN 1, 35, dated march 19, 1837. in an appended note
Kierkegaard refers to Franz Baader, Vorlesungen über speculative Dogmatik, vol. 1, stuttgart
and tübingen: J.g. Cotta 1828 [vols. 2–5, münster: theissing 1830–38], vol. 1, pp. 105ff.
(ASKB 396), to anton günther, Süd- und Nordlichter am Horizonte speculativer Theologie,
vienna: mechitaristen 1832, pp. 114ff. (ASKB 520), and to immanuel hermann Fichte, Die
Idee der Persönlichkeit und der individuellen Fortdauer, elberfeld: Büschler 1834 (ASKB
505).
56
rom 6:4; 1 Cor 15:23; 2 Cor 5:17. the Christian language of “rebirth” (Jn 3:3) may
lie in the background.
57
SKS 18, 125, hh:2 / KJN 2, 117, emphases original; see 2 Cor 5:17 and eccl 1:9.
Journal HH generally served as a sermon draft-book for Kierkegaard, when he was receiving
homiletical instruction at the royal pastoral seminary. hh:2 may date from slightly before
the instruction began, however.
mediation that a “sudden shift” or “leap” of understanding would no longer occur,
“but everything new will be produced by the structural development of the existing
order of things.”58 the worldly standpoint assumes that, given the powers of volition
and rationality, what has been is sufficient for what must come into being, and what
has been known is sufficient for what must come to be known. This is the Adamic
project in philosophical form, manifested in modernity’s thoroughgoing confidence
in a rationally superintended linear progress of culture. For Kierkegaard this project
expresses the arrogance and egotism that obscures the need and dissipates the desire
for the gracious self-giving of god. in the Christian standpoint, by contrast, the
individual is strong precisely in weakness, and the advent of the new is wrought
“through the annihilation of the individual.”59 “Two axiomatic thoughts” are affirmed
in the Christian view: that “Christianity did not arise in the mind of any human
being,” and that nevertheless “since it is given to a human being, it is natural to him;
here, too, god is creating.”60 Kierkegaard refers elsewhere in the early writings to
the “defectiveness of human cognition” brought about through sin,61 and here he
speaks of the need for a re-creation of the capacity to receive the truth of god, a
re-creation that occurs in the humility that perceives its need and nothingness apart
from god.62
Yet what defines this “new creation” is its relation to Christ. if adam determines
the condition of sinful man, Christ sets the conditions of the new being. this
will be fully exposited only in later works such as Practice in Christianity, yet
the inverse analogy of Christ as the second adam is certainly found in the early
writings. Kierkegaard likens “Christ’s appearance in the spiritual world” to “what
Creation was in the physical,” the inauguration of a new order and the provision
of a new being.63 even as there is a “romantic” tension between adam and eve, as
“the two halves of one idea being kept apart by some intervening foreign element,”
58
heiberg was at the time the doyen of the Copenhagen literati and the principal
disseminator of hegelian thought into denmark. the quotation is from “en logisk Bemærkning i
anledning af h. h. hr. Biskop dr. mynsters afhandling om rationalisme og supranaturalisme,
i forrige hefter af dette tidsskrift,” in Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, vol. 1, 1839,
pp. 455–6. as noted in the commentary in KJN 2, 443–5, Kierkegaard likely had in mind
the conversation precipitated by Bishop mynster’s treatise on supernaturalism, “rationalisme.
supranaturalisme,” in Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, vol. 1, 1838, pp. 249–68.
59
For a similar point, see SKS 18, 64–5, ee:190 / KJN 2, 59–60, another sermon draft,
where the individual will be made “powerless and annihilated” before the “heavenly powers
will stir within,” much as the power of god “overshadowed” mary when she humbled herself
as a vessel of the divine will.
60
SKS 18, 125–6, hh:2, hh:2.a, hh:3 / KJN 2, 119–20.
61
SKS 17, 13, aa:13 / KJN 1, 26.
62
the treatise to which Kierkegaard was likely responding, by Bishop mynster, and
to which heiberg and hans lassen martensen had responded in their own articles, claimed:
“just as the first creation could not be a part of any preexisting series and could not have
what we call natural continuity…the new creation in Christ, though prepared by divine
provisions, is…a new, unmediated infusion of divine life into the human.” see “rationalisme.
supranaturalisme,” in Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, vol. 1, p. 262.
63
SKS 18, 27, ee:63 / KJN 2, 23.
there is the same tension between “man is created, the sinner,” and the incarnation
of Christ.64 as god’s creative Logos, Christ is the re-sounding of god’s creative
word, Christ is also god’s re-creating in a world “gone so greatly astray.”65 when
Kierkegaard comments overtly on paul’s language of the “second adam,” he points
toward the view of sin and freedom found in The Concept of Anxiety. in the common
understanding of hereditary sin and redemption, Kierkegaard writes, adam and Christ
are disanalogous insofar as every person participates necessarily in the condition of
adam but individuals participate in Christ freely through a “possibility repeating itself
for every single individual.”66 this is a matter of genuine soteriological importance.
Freely entering the condition of Christ can only be redemptive if one has freely
entered the condition of adam.67 in The Concept of Anxiety vigilius haufniensis will
develop a theory of freedom and sin in which each individual participates in adam’s
condition not necessarily but freely.
that Christ is the second adam does not mean that the character of Christ is
miraculously imparted to the individual, but that the individual receives the condition
of forgiveness and fellowship with god, and Christ is established as “the norm for
the life of the following Christian.” when the grace of god is given, then “this life
[of Christ] must necessarily unfold in him who is truly regenerated.”68 the person of
faith is not “snatched as though by magic out of his old condition, the ‘body of sin,’”
but must “go back the same way he advanced,”69 to expiate his sins and cultivate
the likeness of Christ through imitation, encouraged all the while by the knowledge
of forgiveness. Kierkegaard will often describe Christ as the way and the truth and
the life; in the early works he also calls Christ the likeness of god,70 the mystery
of god,71 the fulfillment of the Law and the promise of the gospel,72 “flesh of my
flesh and bone of my bone,”73 “the goal toward which the believer strives,”74 and the
prototype,75 whose act of redemption upon the cross is the culmination of the divine
will that first acted in the Creation.76
in summary, scattered across the early journals and papers are numerous
references to adam, eden, and the Fall. when these are gathered together and
64
Pap. i a 140 / JP 3, 3801. the “intervening element” between adam and eve is the
“multiplicity” and “irony” in adam’s giving names to the animals. also of interest in the
adam-Christ relation is SKS 17, 54, aa:55 / KJN 1, 47.
65
SKS 18, 59, ee:171 / KJN 2, 54, an entry dated august 30, 1839.
66
SKS 17, 228–9, dd:27 / KJN 1, 220–1, dated July 11, 1837. Kierkegaard refers to
rom 5:13–14.
67
essentially the same point is developed later in relation to doubt, in Pap. iv B 13:21
/ JP 1, 777: “in freedom i can only emerge from that into which i have entered in freedom.”
68
Pap. i a 28 / JP 1, 273. this is an early entry, from november 1834.
69
SKS 17, 52, aa:51 / KJN 1, 46.
70
SKS 18, 41, ee:107 / KJN 2, 36.
71
SKS 18, 113, FF:197 / KJN 2, 104.
72
SKS 18, 19, ee:40 / KJN 2, 15.
73
SKS 17, 248, dd:84 / KJN 1, 239.
74
Pap. v B 237 / JP 2, 1835.
75
SKS 19, 216–7, not7:44 / JP 2, 1834.
76
SKS 17, 222, dd:11 / KJN 1, 214; see SKS 22, 177, nB12:63 / JP 2, 1391.
carefully observed, patterns reveal an emerging understanding of the eden narrative
and its portrayal of human freedom and sin. though not fully articulated, it presents
at least in skeletal form much the same adam as will be found in The Concept of
Anxiety. what is most distinctive in Kierkegaard’s reading of adam is the narrative
it offers of fundamental human experience. this narrative addresses concerns that
are psychological (in Kierkegaard’s sense), epistemological, and theodical. three
theological principles give structure to the narrative: the creatio ex nihilo, in which
not only creation but the individual itself are brought into being out of nothing, the
felix culpa, in which the individual falls into sin and nothingness and the self that
strives to be itself apart from god is annihilated, and the second adam, when the
individual in its nothingness humbly receives its condition and its telos in Christ.
god only creates out of nothing, and the work of the second adam is creation in the
world of spirit, the gift of a new being in the immediate consciousness of the second
stage.77
II. Adam’s Many Faces (1841–43)
the two years following the completion of the dissertation, The Concept of
Irony, were rich and formative years for Kierkegaard. Between autumn 1841
and autumn 1843, in addition to composing and publishing Either/Or (and Two
Upbuilding Discourses),78 Kierkegaard traveled twice to Berlin, attended lectures
at the University of Berlin, deepened his proficiency in the literature of German
philosophy and theology, and assembled the materials and insights that would yield
the extraordinary series of works presented between october 1843 and august 1844:
Fear and Trembling, Repetition, Philosophical Fragments, The Concept of Anxiety,
Prefaces, and the other 16 of what were later gathered together as the Eighteen
Upbuilding Discourses.
Kierkegaard renewed his acquaintance in this period with four significant figures
who shaped his reading of the eden narrative: immanuel Kant, g.w.F. hegel,
Friedrich wilhelm Joseph schelling and gottfried wilhelm leibniz. although
Kierkegaard’s familiarity with all of these figures predates 1841, to be sure, it will
be illuminating to examine them before moving on to the writings of 1843–44.
Kant’s initial approach to adam is not dissimilar from Kierkegaard’s. Kant
rejects the doctrine of inherited sin as “inept” because it undermines the basis of
77
SKS 18, 205, JJ:203 / KJN 2, 189: “What contemplation of nature is for the first
(human) consciousness of god the contemplation of revelation is to the second immediate
consciousness of god (consciousness of sin). it is here that the battle is to take place—do
not impute to people the likelihood of a revelation, but stop their mouths and put their god-
consciousness under the consciousness of sin.”
78
Either/Or was published on February 20 and Two Upbuilding Discourses on may 16,
1843. adam and eve are mentioned on numerous occasions, but not the subject of extensive
reflection, in both volumes of Either/Or: SKS 2, 290 / EO1, 286. SKS 2, 453 / EO1, 430. SKS
3, 27 / EO2, 29. SKS 3, 39 / EO2, 40–1. SKS 3, 51 / EO2, 52. SKS 3, 93 / EO2, 92. SKS 3, 269
/ EO2, 259. SKS 3, 272 / EO2, 261. SKS 3, 294 / EO2, 282. many of these concern the third
thread, and the relation between the sexes.
human freedom and moral responsibility; the primary significance of Adam is rather
that “we daily act in the same way.”79 Because adam’s story illumines our own, the
philosopher should approach the eden narrative to examine the “inner possibility” of
evil acts, or “what must take place within the will if evil is to be performed.”80 in his
lectures in Berlin, when he came to the problem of “the loss of that image [of god],
or the origin of evil,”81 marheineke refers to Kant and the phrase mutato nomine
de te narratur fabula: change the name, of you the tale is told. in fact the words
are from horace’s Satires, quoted in Kant’s Religion within the Limits of Reason
Alone82—and they appear in The Concept of Anxiety and Stages on Life’s Way.83
Kant employs the saying when he turns adam’s story into an outward symbolic
representation of the internal processes of every individual. although he had once
been amenable to leibnizian optimism and its attempt to show the ideal rationality
of the universe, the Kant of Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone turns the
problem of evil into a matter of psychological investigation.84
79
immanuel Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, trans. by theodore m.
greene and hoyt h. hudson, new York: harper and row 1960, p. 37.
80
ibid., p. 35. Kierkegaard possessed Kant’s Kritik der Urtheilskraft, 2nd ed., Berlin:
F.t. lagarde 1793 (ASKB 594), Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 4th ed., riga: hartknoch 1794
(ASKB 595), and Immanuel Kant’s vermischte Schriften, vols. 1–3, halle: in der rengerschen
Buchhandlung 1799 (ASKB 1731–1733).
81
SKS 19, 249, not9:1. Kierkegaard attended philipp marheineke’s lectures from
october 1841 to February 1842, on “dogmatic theology with special reference to Carl
daub’s system.” the lecture notes extend from not9:1 to not10:8–9 (SKS 19, 288–301).
Kierkegaard possessed Die Grundlehren der christlichen Dogmatik als Wissenschaft, 2nd
ed., Berlin: duncker und humblot 1827 (ASKB 644–645), and Institutiones symbolicae, 3rd
ed., Berlin: voss 1830 (ASKB 645), and in 1831–32 he had carefully read the first volume
of marheineke’s popular Geschichte der teutschen Reformation, vols. 1–4, Berlin: duncker
und humblot 1816–31; see Pap. i C 1 / JP 4, 5052. see heiko schulz, “marheineke: the
volatilization of Christian doctrine,” in Kierkegaard and His German Contemporaries, tome
ii, Theology, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2007 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources,
Reception and Resources, vol. 6), pp. 117–42; and niels thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s Relation to
Hegel, trans. by george J. stengren, princeton: princeton university press 1980, pp. 265–7.
Kant is also referenced in the lectures on sanctification and whether his construal of Christ as
the personification of the ethical ideal sufficiently accounts for the Kløft between ideality and
actuality; see SKS 19, 265, not9:1; SKS 19, 300, not10:9. also, Kant’s view on the “old man”
and the “new man” is referenced in Clausen’s earlier lectures, in SKS 19, 57, not1:7.z6; see
also SKS 18, 329, KK:2 / KJN 2, 329.
82
Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, p. 37; horace, The Satires, Epistles
and Art of Poetry, trans. by John Conington, Charleston, south Carolina: BiblioBazaar 2006,
p. 23.
83
SKS 4, 377 / CA, 73. SKS 6, 440–1 / SLW, 478–9. in The Concept of Anxiety haufniensis
speaks of a “misunderstood appropriation” of the principle.
84
see Kant’s “on the miscarriage of all philosophical attempts at theodicy,”
in Religion and Rational Theology, trans. by allen w. wood and george di giovanni,
Cambridge: Cambridge university press 1996, pp. 19–37. also see ann loades, Kant and
Job’s Comforters, newcastle upon tyne: avero 1985, and Kurt appel, Kants Theodizeekritik:
eine Auseinandersetzung mit den Theodizeekonzeption von Leibniz und Kant, Frankfurt: lang
2003.
Kant also prefigures Kierkegaard’s view of the explicability of the first sin. Kant
seeks an account of the rational and not the temporal origin of evil, since evil is a
determination of freedom and freedom is irreducible to any regime of cause and
effect. Whatever internal or external incentives there may be, these only influence
the individual insofar as the individual incorporates them into the maxim for
determining its actions; no account of preceding conditions can form a sufficient
explanation of a free decision, for freedom is “absolute spontaneity.”85 Kant defines
evil as a failure of the will (Willkür) to make the moral law (Wille) the maxim of its
actions. at the “radical” extreme of wickedness, evil is the deliberate subordination
of the moral law to other interests.86 since autonomous freedom is found in the
harmony of Wille and Willkür, the descent into evil is a descent into disintegration
and the loss of autonomous freedom. as Kant writes elsewhere, “a free will and a
will under moral laws are identical.”87
For hegel too the story of the Fall represents the “eternal and necessary history
of humanity,” or the “eternal story of human freedom” and its emergence from a
“stupefied innocence devoid of consciousness and will.”88 it describes a movement
from a unitive prelapsarian state to a divisive postlapsarian one. prior to the Fall
adam enjoyed a “natural and immediate harmony” in the garden, where he “knew
God as God is” and was “united with God and nature.” The first humans possessed
“absolute knowledge” of the world, because they beheld “the very heart of nature
as it is.”89 nonetheless eden was not “the right state”90 for humankind. adam’s
relation to god was immature, akin to “the easy harmony of childhood.”91 The first
sin is a “step into opposition,” a splintering of the world into the differentiations
hegelian dialectic requires. this is variously called a “duality,” “schism,” “inward
85
Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, p. 19. on Kant and The Concept of
Anxiety, see ronald m. green, “the limits of the ethical in Kierkegaard’s The Concept of
Anxiety and Kant’s Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone,” in The Concept of Anxiety,
ed. by robert l. perkins, macon, georgia: mercer university press 1985 (International
Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 8), p. 74: “both thinkers absolutely repudiate any effort to
provide a causal explanation of sin, and both strongly affirm sin’s origination in an inherently
‘inexplicable’ act of human freedom.”
86
Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, pp. 24–5.
87
Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. by lewis white Beck, in
Immanuel Kant: Philosophical Writings, ed. by ernst Behler, new York: Continuum 1986,
p. 66.
88
g.w.F. hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, The Lectures of 1827,
ed. by peter g. hodgson, Berkeley: university of California press 1988, see p. 215 and
p. 217. Kierkegaard’s familiarity with hegel would have been deepened and shaped through
schelling’s lectures (see Notebook 11, and SBL, 333–412) and those of Karl werder (1806–
93), a hegelian philosopher whose lectures on “logik und metaphysik” in the winter semester
of 1841–42 were based on his Logik. Als Commentar und Ergänzung zu Hegels Wissenschaft
der Logik, erste abtheilung, Berlin: veit und Comp. 1841 (ASKB 867; no further installments
were ever published). see Kierkegaard’s notes in Notebook 9 and Notebook 10.
89
hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, pp. 210–11.
90
hegel, Logic, trans. from The Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences by william
wallace, oxford: Clarendon press 1892, p. 55.
91
hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, p. 210.
breach,” a “primal division,” and a “sundering” between subject and nature”—yet
it is also an awakening to “the light of consciousness,” the opening of a “cleavage
of freedom” in which the human is free to act over against the natural world.92 the
Fall is beneficial then insofar as it awakens self-consciousness and freedom, and
provides the conditions for the dialectic of spirit and ultimately for “reconciliation”
and a “second harmony” with the world and god.93
Hegel never concealed the theodical interest flowing through his thought, nor
that he understood the philosophical task fundamentally as an effort “to comprehend
all the ills of the world, including the existence of evil, so that the thinking spirit may
be reconciled with the negative aspects of existence” and understand “that world
history is nothing more than the plan of providence.” philosophy demonstrates
“that the actual world is as it ought to be,” that the real is the rational, and thus
“defend[s] reality against its detractors.”94 insofar as hegel asserts “that what has
taken place in the world has also done so in conformity with reason,” he affirms
“trust in providence, only in another form.”95 indeed one might say that the felix
culpa describes the fundamental logic of hegel’s dialectic—yet hegel construes its
movement as necessary, and this is the critical point which Kierkegaard rejects.
Schelling’s possible influence on Kierkegaard’s reading of Adam is found
less in any commentary on the eden narrative than in schelling’s development of
the concepts of creation and freedom. that Kierkegaard was disappointed with
schelling’s lectures is well known,96 yet in the years following numerous works were
published on schelling’s Philosophie der Offenbarung, and Kierkegaard purchased
and read carefully the commentaries of marheineke and rosenkranz in 1843,97 and
92
hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, pp. 210–17.
93
hegel, Logic, p. 55. the same point is made in Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion,
pp. 213–14 and p. 217.
94
hegel, Introduction to the Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, trans. by h.B.
nisbet, Cambridge: Cambridge university press 1975, see pp. 42–3 and pp. 66–7.
95
hegel, Introduction to the Lectures on the History of Philosophy, quoted from susan
neiman, Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy, princeton: princeton
university press 2002, p. vii.
96
see tonny aagaard olesen’s account in “schelling: a historical introduction
to Kierkegaard’s schelling,” in Kierkegaard and His German Contemporaries, tome i,
Philosophy, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2007 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources,
Reception and Resources, vol. 6), pp. 234ff. Kierkegaard possessed Friedrich wilhelm Josef
von schelling’s Philosophische Schriften, landshut: philipp Krüll, universitätbuchhandler
1809 (ASKB 763), which included the Treatise on Human Freedom (Philosophische
Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit, often called the Freiheitschrift);
schelling’s Vorlesungen über die Methode des academischen Studiums, 3rd ed., stuttgart and
tübingen: Cotta 1830 (ASKB 764); Cousin’s Über französische und deutsche Philosophie,
trans. by h. Becker, stuttgart and tübingen: Cotta 1834 (ASKB 471), for which schelling had
written a foreword; Bruno, oder: Über das göttliche und natürliche Princip der Dinge, 2nd
ed., Berlin: g. reimer 1842 (ASKB 765); Schellings erste Vorlesung in Berlin, stuttgart and
tübingen: Cotta 1841 (ASKB 767); and steffens’ Nachgelassene Schriften, Berlin: schroeder
1846 (ASKB 799), with another foreword from schelling.
97
in november 1841 Kierkegaard purchased rosenkranz’s Kritische Erläuterungen
des Hegelschen Systems, Königsberg: Bornträger 1840 (ASKB 745), and read it immediately
their impact on the writings of later 1843 and 1844 is evident.98 what Kierkegaard
and the later schelling shared was a profound and abiding sense that the world is not
as it should be, that ideality and actuality are cut apart in a way that no higher rational
standpoint can mend. thus both found idealism, which schelling had formerly
championed, to be fatally flawed, and turned in their writings to those shards of
experience that could not be assimilated into a rational system. as heidegger writes,
“the system is split open by the reality of evil.”99
schelling’s theodical concern is apparent in the Freiheitschrift as well as the
1841–42 lectures, when he strives to understand the emergence of evil in relation to
freedom. his doctrine of potencies is too complicated to set forth in full.100 in brief,
since nothing precedes or stands apart from god, god must contain in himself the
basis for his own being. previous philosophies have failed to account properly for
the origin of evil because they have not differentiated god’s being and the ground
of god’s being, which is both a part of god and distinguishable from god. at the
basis of god’s being and all being is this “dark ground,” a nonbeing of chaos and
possibility, longing, and potency. in the act of self-revelation god brings order out
of chaos, differentiating forces that formerly were mixed, yet holding in indissoluble
unity the dark longing out of the depths and the striving toward the light of reason.
as god reveals himself in creative differentiation, humankind is fashioned with this
“double principle”: insofar as it emerges from the dark ground it is creaturely, self-
willful, and relatively independent of god; insofar as it seeks the light of reason
and self-disclosure it is also spirit. Yet that which is indissoluble in the goodness
of god can be separated and set against one another in humanity—and here, in
the compresence in human being of “the deepest pit and the highest heaven,” and
in the solubility of the two principles, lies the possibility of evil.101 thus there is
in humankind both “ardor for the good” and “enthusiasm for evil”; the individual
(see Pap. iii B 41.9). in 1843 he purchased marheineke’s Zur Kritik der Schellingschen
Offenbarungsphilosophie, Berlin: enslin 1843 (ASKB 647), rosenkranz’s Über Schelling und
Hegel: Ein Sendschreiben an Pierre Leroux, Königsberg: Bornträger 1843, and Schelling.
Vorlesungen gehalten im Sommer 1842 an der Universität zu Königsberg, danzig: gerhard
1843 (ASKB 766).
98
see the drafts for Repetition in Pap. iv B 117–8 / R, supplement, p. 310 and p. 322.
SKS 4, 337 / CA, 30, note, and CA, 232, notes 17–8. there is dispute on whether Kierkegaard’s
familiarity with the Freiheitschrift comes from an earlier reading, a re-reading in 1843, or
indirectly through the writings of marheineke and rosenkranz. see olesen, “schelling: a
historical introduction to Kierkegaard’s schelling,” pp. 254–8; vincent mcCarthy, “schelling
and Kierkegaard on Freedom and Fall,” in The Concept of Anxiety, ed. by robert perkins,
macon, georgia: mercer university press 1985 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol.
8), pp. 92–3. For further discussion on Schelling’s influence over Kierkegaard’s understanding
of freedom and evil, see david roberts, Kierkegaard’s Analysis of Radical Evil, new York:
Continuum 2006, pp. 10–22.
99
martin heidegger, Schelling’s Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom, trans. by
Joan stambaugh, athens, ohio: ohio university press 1985, p. 98.
100
in the interest of brevity, i blend together the Freiheitschrift of 1809 and the Philosophie
der Offenbarung of 1841–42.
101
F.w.J. schelling, Of Human Freedom, trans. by James gutmann, Chicago: open
Court 1936, p. 38.
“contains within him the source of self-impulsion towards good and evil in equal
measure,” and determines itself for good or evil.102 Freedom, for schelling as well
as for Kant, is not negative freedom from compulsion but positive freedom for the
self to be itself, in the “inner necessity which springs from the essence of the active
agent itself.” Yet no temporal account of the first sin is possible because evil is a
choice that is always already made; we always find ourselves already having chosen
evil.103
two points are of special importance for what will follow. First, in his own
version of the felix culpa, Schelling affirms that the self-will is roused “only so that
an independent basis for the good may be there and so that it may be conquered and
penetrated by the good.”104 the capacity for evil is not an imperfection, but essential
to what is best in the self. Yet it should be noted, second, that the self evanesces in its
will to establish its being independent of god. in the lectures schelling depicts the
original condition as one in which adam is “inclosed” by the threefold elohim. this
was a “primal relation” in which there was “more than a revelation.”105 the human
is “conditioned” life, or possesses itself only insofar as it remains within the three
potencies. the spirit perceives its Seyn-Könnende, its being able to be, and it strives
for lordship over Being—yet “became mastered by it.”106 like all of creation adam
rests upon the Nichts, grounded “solely in the will of god.”107 thus schelling writes
in the Freiheitschrift, “the beginning of sin consists in man’s going over from actual
being to non-being, from truth to falsehood, from light to darkness, in order himself
to become the creative basis and to rule over all things.” the self longs to return to
god, yet strives “for himself” and not “in god,” so the harder it strives the more
deeply impoverished it becomes. “in evil there is that contradiction which devours
and always negates itself, which just while striving to become creature destroys the
nexus of creation and, in its ambition to be everything, falls into non-being.”108
Finally, Kierkegaard’s engagement with leibniz in 1842–43 is consistently
overlooked, and yet so clarifying for our purposes that it requires at least a brief
consideration. scattered references to leibniz in the early journals and papers, and in
Either/Or, demonstrate only an elementary and probably second-hand familiarity.109
102
schelling, Of Human Freedom, p. 48; p. 50. dale e. snow explains, in Schelling
and the End of Idealism, albany: state university of new York press 1996, p. 165: “since
schelling has made human choice central in the way that he has, his theory of evil is in direct
conflict with all those theories which claim either that evil does not truly exist, but is rather
an imperfection or deficiency of some kind, or that apparent evil ought to be understood from
a hegelian perspective, as a manifestation of the cunning of reason, a necessary episode in a
universal world history.”
103
schelling, Of Human Freedom, pp. 66–7.
104
ibid., p. 79.
105
SKS 19, 352, not 11:32 / SBL, 394.
106
SKS 19, 353–4, not11:33 / SBL, 395–6.
107
SKS 19, 343, not11:27 / SBL, 383.
108
schelling, Of Human Freedom, p. 69.
109
SKS 19, 103, not3:6. SKS 19, 139, not4:10. SKS 18, 125, hh:2.a / KJN 2, 119. SKS 3,
28 / EO2, 20. SKS 3, 126 / EO2, 126. SKS 3, 132 / EO2, 133. later Kierkegaard purchased J.C.
gottsched’s edition of gottfried wilhelm leibniz’s Theodicee, 5th ed., hanover and leipzig:
Yet in 1842–43, after at least the greater part of Either/Or was complete, Kierkegaard
undertook a meticulous study of the Theodicy.110 he found in leibniz much to
appreciate and employ, including a talent for fine distinctions.111 Kierkegaard
commends leibniz precisely because he addresses the theodical problem, what
leibniz calls “the great question of the Free and the necessary, above all in the
production and the origin of evil.”112 while hegelians debate endlessly on abstruse,
pedantic matters, “The whole conflict between Leibniz and Bayle is very much to
the point, and one is astonished if he compares it with controversy in our time, for
we have actually gone backward.”113
the Theodicy considers many responses to the problem of evil and many ways
in which to understand adam’s Fall, but i will focus on two points. Kierkegaard
agrees with leibniz that “the ground of evil is not to be sought in matter but in the
ideal nature of creation.”114 since god could not create out of his own being (for
god’s being is necessary, and therefore eternal and uncreated), and since nothing
else was made, god could only create out of nothing. since “the creature is derived
from nothingness” instead of the perfect being of god, it is “imperfect, faulty
and corruptible.” the creature is created not sinful but imperfect, originally and
necessarily limited, dependent. metaphysical evil, the “original imperfection in the
creature,” is a logically and metaphysically necessary corollary of creation. with
this limitation, and the gift of human freedom, comes the possibility of moral evil,
the free rejection of god, and consequently of physical or natural evil, the suffering
which sin brings into the world. For those who rest in receptivity, however, god
“gives ever to the creature and produces continually all that in it is positive, good and
perfect, every perfect gift coming down from the Father of lights.”115
im verlage der Försterischen erben 1763 (ASKB 619), and leibniz’s Opera philosophica,
quæ exstant latina gallica germanica omnia, vol. 1–2, ed. by Johann eduard erdmann, Berlin:
[eichler] 1839–40 (ASKB 620). he made use of erdmann’s Versuch einer wissenschaflichen
Darstellung der Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, vols. 1–3, leipzig: vogel 1834–52.
110
Kierkegaard completed the editorial preface to Either/Or in november of 1842, and
prepared the manuscript for publication in the following months, until it was published on
February 20, 1843. the notes on leibniz come in Journal JJ and Notebook 13. JJ:12 is dated
november 20, 1842, and comments on leibniz follow in JJ:23–24, 26–30 and 36–3; Notebook
13 is dated december 2, 1842, and references to leibniz are found in entries 5, 6, 8a, 23, 24,
26a, 40, 42, 44 and 47, with the most thorough commentary on the Theodicy in not13:23. see
also not12:17. if the reading of leibniz had any effect on Either/Or, it was a very late and
likely a minimal one.
111
see ronald grimsley, “Kierkegaard and leibniz,” Journal of the History of Ideas,
vol. 26, no. 3, 1965, pp. 383ff.
112
leibniz, Theodicy, trans. by e. m. huggard, ed. by austin Farrer, la salle, illinois:
open Court 1996, p. 53. SKS 18, 150, JJ:23 / KJN 2, 139. see also SKS 19, 409, not13:44 / JP
2, 1601.
113
SKS 19, 391, not13:23 / JP 3, 3073.
114
SKS 19, 391, not13:23 / JP 3, 2364. see Theodicy, pp. 140–1, § 30: “god is the cause
of the material element of evil which lies in the positive, and not of the formal element, which
lies in privation.”
115
the quotations in this paragraph are from Theodicy, pp. 135–6, § 20; pp. 140–2,
§ 30–1.
The second point finds a stark difference between Leibniz and Kierkegaard.
Both conceive of the world in a richly teleological manner, and see humankind as
a part (not the culmination) of the grand scheme of divine purposes.116 however,
Kierkegaard disagrees with leibniz on the relationship between providence and the
individual. Confronted with extraordinary suffering, leibniz contends that what
leads to suffering in one part of the cosmos may confer a greater benefit upon the
whole.117 Kierkegaard responds:
one cannot deny that there is a weakness in all the answers leibniz gives Bayle in
paragraphs 121, 22, and following; he seeks to avoid difficulty by saying that it is not a
question of the individual man but of the whole universe. this is ridiculous, for if there
is just one individual man who has valid reason to complain, then the universe does not
help. the answer is that even in sin man is greater, more fortunate, than if it [sin] had
not appeared, for even the split [Splid] in man has more significance than immediate
innocence.118
this might be read as a purpose statement for The Concept of Anxiety. the disagreement
with leibniz occurs on two levels. theologically, Kierkegaard suggests that divine
providence redeems the life of every individual individually, absurd though this
may seem to reason. pedagogically, Kierkegaard suggests that the proper response
to Baylean skepticism is not to set forth a grand defense of cosmic history, but to
address the subjectivity of each individual, showing how the sufferings of “the split”
between the human and the divine can serve the higher purposes of god.
in summary, Kierkegaard found in his intellectual environment numerous
interpretive options concerning adam’s Fall. Kant construes the narrative as a
universal tale of how “we daily act,” and sought an account of the rational possibility
of sin in consciousness, since the spontaneity of freedom makes a temporal account
impossible. hegel describes the Fall as the production of a self-conscious agent
through a movement from a unitive state of childlike harmony with god and
nature to a “primal division” over against them. in schelling’s theogony of divine
becoming, the self perceives the nothing of possibility and strives for lordship over
being but only falls into non-being and untruth. leibniz sees metaphysical evil as a
trace within the creature of the nothingness from where it came, yet Kierkegaard’s
response to leibniz is equally important. Kierkegaard will attend not to grand cosmic
calculations or metahistorical dialectics, but to the “split” in the single individual
and how this has “more significance than immediate innocence.”
III. Adam in Doubt and Anxiety (1843–44)
The culmination of Kierkegaard’s reflection on the figure of Adam is found relatively

early in the authorship, in two works published six months apart in 1843–44. the
most renowned treatment of adam in the Kierkegaardian oeuvre, The Concept of
116
SKS 19, 391–2, not 13:23 / JP 1, 40. see leibniz, Theodicy, p. 189, § 119.
117
leibniz, Theodicy, pp. 205–7, § 134.
118
SKS 19, 392, not13:23 / JP 1, 41.
Anxiety, published in June 1844, is a famously bewildering text.119 a lesser-known
commentary on the Fall is found in an upbuilding discourse from december 1843.120
although they offer different insights, and offer them differently, the discourse and
Anxiety are fundamentally consonant and mutually enriching works, read most
fruitfully when read together.
the opening pages of “every good gift and every perfect gift is From above”
comprise one of the richest and most remarkable passages in the early authorship.
the discourse as a whole interweaves three biblical passages on giving, taking, and
the nature of the good: the Fall account, the promise in the epistle of James (cited by
leibniz) that “every good gift” descends from the “Father of lights,” and the teaching
in matthew 7:11 that the “heavenly Father” gives “good things.” it begins by taking
adam’s transgression to represent a fundamental decision that confronts every single
individual: whether to receive in humility what the self-giving god graciously and
abundantly provides, or distrust the provision and grasp for knowledge, being, or
selfhood according to human will and capability. although the discourse explicitly
addresses the epistemological relation between the knower and the known, it locates
this in the more fundamental relation between the individual and god. when adam
seizes the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, he effects a rupture between
himself and god, and this in turn precipitates a cascading series of separations. thus,
as with hegel, the condition before the Fall is described in unitive terms. if not for
the transgression,
then everything would have remained as it was, so very good, and this witness that
god gave creation would have resounded from humankind as an unceasing, blessed
repetition. then the security of peace would have prevailed in everything; then the quiet
celebration of beauty would have smiled solemnly; then the blessedness of heaven would
have enveloped everything; then heaven would not even have been mirrored in earthly
life, lest presentiment should rise from the depths of innocence; then no echo would
have summoned longing from its secret hiding place, for heaven would be earth and
everything would be fulfilled. Then man would have awakened from the deep sleep in
which eve came into existence in order once again to become absorbed in joy and glory;
then the image of God would have been stamped upon everything in a reflection of glory
that would lull everything into the spell of the perfection that moved everything, itself
unmoved. then the lamb would have lain down to rest beside the wolf…everything
would have been very good.121
The “echo” and “mirror” imply separation and diminution, as the echo and reflection
are apart from and lesser than the witness and image from which they arose. in
the prelapsarian world there was “truth in everything” and “trustworthiness in
everything,” since adam “did indeed give the proper name to everything as it truly
is” and the world was “what it seemed to be,” with justice springing “up out of the
earth.”122
119
reidar thomte calls The Concept of Anxiety “possibly the most difficult of
Kierkegaard’s works,” in CA, xii.
120
there is also a pro forma reference to adam in SKS 5, 223 / EUD, 225.
121
SKS 5, 129–30 / EUD, 125–6.
122
Quotations in this paragraph are from SKS 5, 130 / EUD, 126.
the rupture in the fundament of the divine–human relation rises upward like a
crack through many layers, effecting a series of separations. Before the Fall god was
freely and immediately given. Kierkegaard writes that “the gift itself offered itself”
at the moment and “in such a way that receiving it did not arouse questions about the
giver.”123 after the Fall, when adam is separated from god by sin, there is a distance
between heaven and earth, between the object or the world as it is (actuality) and
the representation or the world as it should be (ideality). the distinction between
good and evil is also posited in the Fall, since “this separation was indeed the very
fruit of the knowledge.” Finally, one creature is separated from another, and adam
is separated from himself. as Kierkegaard writes, after the Fall, “in the garden and
in his inner being,” adam grew “afraid of himself” and “afraid of the world around
him.”124
although the movement from unitive to divisive language recalls hegel, as
Kierkegaard enumerates the consequences of the “split” the turn to the individual—
and to the psychological—becomes apparent. A deluge of sufferings flows through
the wounded god–human relation, as “the knowledge” adam gained brings “grief
along with it”:
the pain of want and the dubious happiness of possession, the terror of separation and
the difficulty of separation, the disquietude of deliberation and the worry of deliberation,
the distress of choice and the decision of choice, the judgment of the law and the
condemnation of the law, the possibility of perdition and the anxiety of perdition, the
suffering of death and the expectation of death.125
The discourse goes on to address specifically the “grief” of endlessly grasping

for the fruit of knowledge—and consuming only the bitter seed of doubt. human
knowledge was (and is) seized in the hope of attaining sufficiency apart from God
through the powers of human intellection. Yet “the doubt that had come along with
the knowledge coiled itself alarmingly around [adam’s] heart,” and “squeezed him
in its coils.” adam searches for further knowledge in the hope it will silence doubt’s
pain, but in every fruit of knowledge doubt lies hidden like the worm within the
apple, waiting in the knowledge to “disquiet” him again. thus doubt compels the
individual to “work in the sweat of his brow,” and “sows thorns and thistles” until he
is “fettered in distress and contradiction.”126 the suffering of doubt emerges from the
brokenness of the god-relation into the fractured self and its relation to the world.
like every other part of the human creature, rationality suffers in separation from
god, for as long as the knowledge of god is pursued apart from the provision of
god there is no escape from the suffering of doubt, since doubt is intrinsic to the
relation presupposed and enacted in this human pursuit of the knowledge of god and
the good. For Kierkegaard, contra hegel, the eden narrative does present a critique
123
SKS 5, 130 / EUD, 126.
124
SKS 5, 130–1 / EUD, 126–7.
125
SKS 5, 129 / EUD, 125.
126
SKS 5, 131 / EUD, 127. later works will speak further of the paradoxical object of
faith. As Climacus explains, the discourses do not employ the “double reflected religious
categories in the paradox” (SKS 7, 233 / CUP1, 256).
of knowledge, illuminating how each individual becomes further caught in doubt’s
endlessly circulating economy.127
the three theological principles described earlier still obtain. the creatio ex
nihilo is implied here, and is clear in the general context of the discourses. after
the prelude to the eden narrative, “every good gift” narrates the story of an
individual for whom the biblical promise of good gifts from the heavenly father
takes on different meanings in different existential circumstances, until at last he
surrenders the adamic project. where adam trusted himself and doubted god, the
individual learns through sufferings to trust god and doubt himself. this is “true
doubt.” False doubt claims it has examined the truth of god and found it wanting,
yet in fact it only doubts because it has already distrusted the divine provision. the
true doubter doubts “his own capacity and competence.” as Kierkegaard writes,
“False doubt doubts everything except itself; with the help of faith, the doubt that
saves doubts only itself.”128 the individual learns that god is the good and the giver
of the good, “the only one who gives in such a way that he gives the condition along
with the gift, the only one who in giving already has given.”129 For faith, god’s self-
giving “remains outside all doubt and abides in god,” because faith is this humble
receptivity that receives itself from god. thus the “knowledge” of god becomes a
matter not of intellection but volition, for if one wills to receive the truth of god one
will find it abundantly given in God’s self-revelation. “If you, then, do not want to
abide in it, it is because you do not want to abide in god, in whom you nevertheless
live, move, and have your being.”130 and for the one who rests transparently in god’s
truth, there is no intervening space between the gift, the giver, and the recipient;
there is no occasion to question the provenance of the gift.
while the given discourse speaks of god as the source of being, others are
more explicit about the nothing from which the individual comes. John the Baptist
“comprehends his own nothingness,” and Paul’s thorn in the flesh shows that one must
be “alarmed radically, unto death and annihilation.”131 in the same way the individual
should learn that he is “capable of nothing” and “is nothing at all,” and will find his
salvation only in sinking down into his own nothingness, surrendering himself to
grace and disgrace. life, under divine direction, casts him out “to be strengthened
127
see the phenomenology of knowledge/doubt in SKS 5, 131 / EUD, 127–8, where
knowledge is “something unattainable for which he sighed…a blissfulness that his soul was
continually losing…a knowing that made his heart ashamed…a realization that only made
him tremble…a consciousness of himself…a consciousness of the whole world,” which
“stimulated every one of his capacities…enervated his whole being…overwhelmed him
with its abundance…starved him with its emptiness.” the limitation of human rationality is
described in SKS 5, 137 / EUD, 134–5, where human thought does not know the way to “the
secret hiding place of the good,” since “there is no way to it, but every good and every perfect
gift comes down from above.”
128
SKS 5, 140 / EUD, 137.
129
SKS 5, 137 / EUD, 134.
130
SKS 5, 137 / EUD, 134.
131
SKS 5, 152 / EUD, 151. SKS 5, 275 / EUD, 282. SKS 5, 321 / EUD, 331. SKS 5, 333 /
EUD, 345.
in this annihilation,” and “this annihilation is his truth.”132 the self-knowledge of
nothingness cannot be given by another, but only gained by the self for itself. “even
if the whole world united to crush and annihilate the weakest, that he is capable
of nothing, he can discover only by himself.” Comprehending this nothingness is
“the highest of which a human being is capable,” and yet one is “incapable even of
this,” for nothingness is an absolute incapability and dependence on god.133 Yet in
this knowledge one becomes “conscious in the deeper sense that god is,”134 for an
individual continually conscious of its nothingness cannot undertake the slightest
action without god, “without becoming conscious that there is a god,”135 so that
“every day and every moment [contains] the desired and irrefragable opportunity to
experience that god lives.”136
returning to “every good gift,” the felix culpa functions there as the promise
that the condition brought about by adam’s transgression is an advancement,
and ultimately the sufferings it inaugurated will find their meaning in providence
and redemption. Kierkegaard employs the eden narrative to show, as he wrote in
response to Leibniz, than “even the split in man has more significance than immediate
innocence.”137 the individual consumes the fruit and ingests the seed of doubt, so
the tree of knowledge is planted within him and produces its agonizing burden—yet
self-relationality has emerged. adam fears himself, and must choose what he will do
with the “corrupted self” he has become. he may choose the “brilliant deception”
that he has conquered himself, overcoming his sin, and emerging as a “victorious
self” worthy of admiration and esteem. or he can choose “to have little with blessing,
to have truth with concern, to suffer instead of exulting over imagined victories.”138
what is important theodically is not the knowledge gained in the fruit, but the
anguish of constantly grasping and constantly failing to achieve it, since “through its
pain it educates a person, if he is honest enough to want to be educated…out of the
multiplicity to seek the one, out of the abundance to seek the one thing needful, as
this is plainly and simply offered precisely according to the need for it.”139 to feed
doubt with knowledge is to render unto the disease the remedy it requests, for doubt
is not defeated by the venturing intellect but by the willingness to learn from the
suffering of doubt and thus “die to doubt as the perfect comes” down from above.140
in the discourse’s closing lines, having kept this secret in hand, Kierkegaard switches
from matthew 7:11 to the parallel luke 11:13, where the identity of the heavenly
Father’s “gift” is disclosed as the holy spirit. “to need the holy spirit is a perfection
132
SKS 5, 302 / EUD, 309. that the individual is “capable of nothing” is reiterated
throughout the discourse in SKS 5, 299–315 / EUD, 306–25. that the individual “is nothing”
is stated, e.g., in SKS 5, 316 / EUD, 326. the language of sinking into nothingness (SKS 5,
298, 300 / EUD, 305, 307) is familiar from the eckhartian mystical tradition.
133
SKS 5, 302 / EUD, 309.
134
SKS 5, 310 / EUD, 319.
135
SKS 5, 302 / EUD, 309.
136
SKS 5, 312–13 / EUD, 321–3.
137
SKS 19, 392, not13:23 / JP 1, 41.
138
SKS 5, 131 / EUD, 128.
139
SKS 5, 131–2 / EUD, 128–9, emphases added.
140
SKS 5, 138 / EUD, 135.
in a human being,” and in faith one receives what is “implanted within,” the telos of
being: god sublimely present, the giver given in the gift.141
it is also clear in other discourses that suffering serves the ultimate purposes of
god for those who are willing to learn in humility. suffering turns the spirit inward,
cultivates concern for itself and makes it visible to itself as spirit. it is possible in
theory to learn one’s nothingness on the day of rejoicing, but ultimately “no one
enters the kingdom of heaven without suffering,” without attending “the school of
sorrow.”142 the god who grounds human freedom will not now abrogate it, and
Kierkegaard (unlike hegel) will not frame in rigid necessity the unfolding of the
individual spirit. the individual always retains the freedom to determine what his
suffering will mean and whence it will lead.143 neither is there any need to provoke
or fabricate suffering, since suffering is not accidental or episodic, but is essential
and enduring, emerging essentially from the conditions of fallen temporality.
Kierkegaard writes, “every person in all ages does indeed have his struggle and
his spiritual trial, his distress, his solitude in which he is tempted, his anxiety and
powerlessness,”144 and concludes that the question is not whether one will suffer, but
whether one will “be open to life’s schooling” and “allow oneself to be brought up
in the school of adversities.”145 one discourse is devoted to youth’s “harmony” with
god, the “sorrow of the separation,”146 and the “retreat” through sufferings to god.147
Even Paul suffers the thorn in the flesh, which is “the suffering of separation,” an
estrangement in the fallen world that “shuts him out from the eternal” and binds
him in the “fragile earthen vessel.”148 this is “the suffering in which the soul battles
through to faith,” the “covenant of tears,”149 and the “fellowship of sufferings” with
god.”150
the second adam, or the new being, is evident when the discourse returns to the
language of eden to describe the satisfaction of the need for god:
Before the need awakens in a person, there must first be a great upheaval. All of doubt’s
busy deliberation was mankind’s first attempt to find it. However long this continues,
it is never finished, and yet it must be finished, ended, that is, broken off, before the
single individual can be what the apostle calls a first fruit of creation. That this signifies
a new order of things is easy to see…now man is the first, has no intermediary between
141
SKS 5, 142 / EUD, 139.
142
SKS 5, 29, 321 / EUD, 19, 331.
143
even the early discourses make clear that differing subjectivities will respond
differently to identical hardships (see SKS 5, 31 / EUD, 22). “what one sees depends upon
how one sees,” for observation is not merely a receiving but also a “discovering” and “bringing
forth.” adversities will necessarily come, but “a person’s inner being determines what he
discovers and what he hides” (SKS 5, 69–70 / EUD, 59–60).
144
SKS 5, 91 / EUD, 84.
145
SKS 5, 95 / EUD, 88.
146
SKS 5, 243 / EUD, 244.
147
SKS 5, 246 / EUD, 248.
148
SKS 5, 326 / EUD, 337.
149
SKS 5, 320 / EUD, 330.
150
SKS 5, 260 / EUD, 264.
god and himself, but has the condition he cannot give himself, inasmuch as it is god’s
gift.151
the remainder of the discourse interprets James’ admonitions for “strengthening and
maintaining the single individual as a first fruit of creation”152—practical wisdom
for the re-created being who does not storm the gates of heaven but receives the
self-giving god, the holy spirit, in patience and humility.153 although Christ is not
mentioned explicitly here, the allusion to him through the “new creation” and the
“first fruits” is clear. Kierkegaard will have more to say in later writings about Christ,
the paradoxical object of faith, but here he carves out the space where Christ resides,
the ground and criterion for the new being. he writes in the opening discourse of the
last set, “wherever god is in truth, there he is always creating,” and “in becoming
known by a person he wants to create in him a new human being.”154 similarly, he
writes in the last pages of the final discourse that “when it seems to [a person] that
he is reduced to nothing at all,” if he resists the temptation to want to be something,
then “the image of heaven sinks into [his] nothingness” and he is “illuminated” in
likeness to god.” 155 such a person owes everything to god and “providence.”
if “every good gift” describes in a homiletical manner the conditions of
existence before and after the Fall, The Concept of Anxiety examines the necessary
psychological conditions for what dogmatics calls sin. “every good gift” separates
the pre- and postlapsarian worlds on a cosmic canvas, while Anxiety observes
in minute care the infinitely decisive moment of transition, in which the contest
is waged between good and evil and the self is posited in faith or sin. vigilius
haufniensis turns his microscopic gaze on the constitution of the human individual,
the logic of the spirit and the spontaneous emergence of freedom, the nature of
human subjectivity according to which sin is possible. in other words, The Concept
of Anxiety is a work of theological psychology. it develops a scripturally informed
account of the possibility of human freedom and the misuse of freedom, in order to
furnish a clear conceptual basis for the doctrine of the atonement.
the following is not concerned with a complete account of The Concept of
Anxiety, but with understanding how the text construes the figure of Adam. First it
will show how Vigilius differentiates the problems of “the first sin” and “hereditary
sin,” and how his reading of the story of the Fall brings forth the concept of anxiety
in order to make the first sin and hereditary sin intelligible. It presents the story of
adam, and of every individual in every generation, as a story of freedom’s emergence
through freedom’s betrayal. Finally, it will show that adam is construed in Anxiety in
a manner consistent with the theological principles already explained.
the “introduction” to The Concept of Anxiety circumscribes the problem and
differentiates the disciplines of thought and the resources, methods, and moods they
bring to the discussion of sin. the psychological perspective observes how the human
151
SKS 5, 139 / EUD, 136–7.
152
SKS 5, 139 / EUD, 137.
153
SKS 5, 141 / EUD, 139.
154
SKS 5, 316 / EUD, 325.
155
SKS 5, 380 / EUD, 399–400.
must be constituted in order for sin and hereditary sin to be possible. although it can
never explain what springs from the spontaneity of freedom, psychology offers an
analysis of the condition of the individual preceding sin, a portrait of the “abiding
something [det Blivende] out of which sin constantly arises.”156 vigilius agrees with
Kant, then, that freedom cannot be explained by antecedent influences, but forms
a caesura in the fabric of causal explanation. when psychology has completed its
work, it gives its concept of the self over to dogmatics, faith’s confession of itself,
which presupposes sin and comprehends its significance in relation to God.157 then
a “second ethics” (ordinary ethics having foundered on sin) steps forward. informed
by a “penetrating consciousness” of the “actuality of sin,” the second ethics earnestly
gives direction for the life of faith.158
it is important to begin with a clear understanding of the two fundamental
problems in The Concept of Anxiety, as these are articulated in the first section of
Chapter i. through vigilius Kierkegaard fully displays his theological education,
surveying doctrines of hereditary sin proposed over the centuries of Christian
tradition, and finds in them a tendency to conflate the problem of hereditary sin with
that of “the first sin, Adam’s sin, the fall.”159 these are logically distinct problems;
the first concerns the individual’s qualitative transition from innocence to guilt, or
how it is possible that adam in the garden should sin, while the second concerns
the quantitative accumulation and transmission of sinfulness down the stream
of generations, or how it is possible that Adam’s sin and its effects should flow
hereditarily to later individuals.
Anxiety will illuminate both the transition from innocence to guilt (the first sin)
and the transmission of sinfulness (hereditary sin), but it is important to separate the
two problems in order to perceive the double-bind they produce. it would appear
that adam must be other than human in order to fall into humanity and for his act
to be decisive for humanity, yet it would also appear that adam must sin as human
in order for his guilt to be heritable among humanity. adam must be simultaneously
unique and universal. The first sin requires a higher condition from which to fall,
and a nature that entails all humankind; hereditary sin requires a shared condition
and a common basis in its lineage. if adam is depicted “fantastically” as “more than
the whole race,” as “standing outside the race,” or as a plenipotentiary for the race,
then he is other than human and his penalty should not be our inheritance. soaring
images of adam in superhuman perfection and miltonic splendor magnify adam’s
uniqueness and diminish his universality. only if we are his can we inherit what is
his.160 How, then, can one account for the transition of the first sin without making
the transmission of hereditary sin nonsensical, and vice versa?
Vigilius responds first by defining the relationship: Adam and his sin are
quantitatively unique and qualitatively universal: unique insofar as they stand at the
156
SKS 4, 329 / CA, 21.
157
vigilius calls faith “the organ for issues of dogma.” see SKS 4, 324 / CA, 18, note. SKS
4, 327–8 / CA, 19–20.
158
SKS 4, 328 / CA, 20.
159
SKS 4, 332 / CA, 25.
160
SKS 4, 332–3 / CA, 25–6.
beginning of the accumulating history of human sinfulness, but universal insofar
as they express what is essentially human. that which earlier theologies took to
be unique in Adam—that he represents the race—Vigilius takes to be definitive of
humanity as such. adam, like every individual, is individuum, infinitely responsible
for himself yet transcendently participant in humanity.161 likewise, that which earlier
theologies took to be unique in Adam’s sin defines every first sin, for every first sin
comprises a “qualitative leap”162 out of innocence into guilt that brings sin “into the
world.”163 Thus the two problems can be refined: every “first sin” is a qualitative leap
that adds quantitatively to the gathering history of human sinfulness; and “hereditary
sin,” at least as psychologically defined, is the effect on human consciousness of
the sinners’ history, the passing down of the history of the forms and consequences
of human sinfulness and thus the shaping of a “greater or lesser disposition in the
particular individual.”164 each individual human qua individual must retain the
freedom to remain in innocence or leap into sin and enter the history of sinfulness—
and qua human must be informed and influenced by the sinners’ history. Yet how is
this possible?
the answer is contained in the title of the work: anxiety supplies the middle term
for the qualitative transition from innocence to guilt (the problem of the first sin),
and for the transmission of sinfulness from one generation to another (the problem
of hereditary sin). as vigilius will summarize later, “anxiety means two things: the
anxiety in which the individual posits sin by the qualitative leap, and the anxiety that
entered in and enters in with sin, and that also, accordingly, enters quantitatively into
the world every time an individual posits sin.”165
the emergence of freedom in the qualitative leap is preceded by the emergence
of anxiety from the structure of human subjectivity. Yet existence in innocence is
characterized by “ignorance” and an absence of the self-relationality of spirit, for
spirit is “psychically qualified in immediate unity with his nature condition.”166 as
vigilius explains, “man is a synthesis of the psychical and the physical,” and “a
synthesis is unthinkable if the two are not united in a third. this third is spirit.”167
spirit is present in innocence, but “as immediate, as dreaming,” neither fully
inactive nor fully awake. since there is “nothing against which to strive,” what
then can spark the movement of freedom away from innocence, but the no-thing
of possibility “dreamily” projected outside the self? anxiety begins with spirit’s
obscure apprehension of the possibility of its freedom, the “intimated nothing” of
other selves and other worlds which the spirit in innocence cannot properly know or
imagine but which it projects like the silhouettes of strangers in the distant gloom.
161
SKS 4, 335–6 / CA, 28–9.
162
SKS 4, 340 / CA, 33.
163
SKS 4, 337 / CA, 31.
164
SKS 4, 344 / CA, 37.
165
SKS 4, 359 / CA, 54.
166
SKS 4, 347 / CA, 41.
167
SKS 4, 349 / CA, 43.
anxiety is “a sympathetic antipathy and an antipathetic sympathy.”168 the spirit is
titillated by the whispered promise of possibility, and terrified of the unknown.
the eden narrative illustrates the subtle ways in which anxiety takes root, for
when the divine command is delivered anxiety concresces around the specific
possibility it is made to imagine. what adam is told not to do, he grows anxiously
aware of the possibility of doing, and the divine promise of punishment sets anxiety
“closer” by elaborating the image of the existence adam would inhabit if he did
what he now dimly perceives he can do. adam perceives not only the possibility of
freedom, but the possibility of consequences for his decisions—perceives that he
is free, responsible, and imperiled. although his attention fastens on the possibility
of sin in fear and in wonder, “innocence is not yet guilty, yet there is anxiety as
though it were lost.”169 “Further than this, psychology cannot go,” since psychology
can describe the condition of the spirit before the act but no antecedent factors can
determine the act of freedom.170
the brilliance of Kierkegaard’s solution is that by offering anxiety as the
condition that conditions (but does not determine) the leap, he has constructed a
way in which the actions of preceding generations can affect the action of the later
individual, for insofar as their actions contribute to the anxiety of the individual they
contribute to the condition that conditions (but does not determine) the individual’s
action. although each individual begins anew in the inwardness of the god-relation,
“Christianity,” vigilius argues, “has never assented to give each particular individual
the privilege of starting from the beginning in an external sense.”171 adam came to
consciousness in a world where the possibilities of sin were not in evidence prior
to the communication of the divine prohibition. individuals in later generations
come to consciousness within an “historical nexus,” a world where the possibilities
and consequences of transgression are already and increasingly articulated.172 By
inheriting human history and culture the later individual inherits more substantial
material for anxiety’s reflection. Anxiety is “entangled freedom,” where freedom is
not negated by necessity but concerned and conflicted with itself. At “maximum” the
potentialities of sin are so encompassing, so pervasive, so overwhelmingly present
that the individual succumbs to anxiety in weakness, and thus “anxiety about sin
produces sin.”173 when freedom surrenders to anxiety, it falls into sin and becomes
guilty.
Finally, vigilius’ treatment of sexual difference shows how anxiety is also a
misrelation within the self. For all its attention to the cascading distinctions following
after the transgression, “every good gift” did not address the sexual distinction.
Vigilius speaks briefly of the second and third threads of the Eden narrative, the
naming of the animals and the fashioning of eve.174 he is more interested in the
168
SKS 4, 347–8 / CA, 41–2, emphases in the original.
169
SKS 4, 351 / CA, 45.
170
SKS 4, 349–51 / CA, 44–5.
171
SKS 4, 376 / CA, 73.
172
ibid.
173
SKS 4, 377 / CA, 73.
174
SKS 4, 351–2 / CA, 46.
dawning awareness of difference after the Fall, however, and he interprets this to
mean that the transgression brought into the world not only sin but also “the sexual
difference as a drive.”175 spirit only becomes “actual” when it posits itself as spirit,
for the essence of spirit is its transcendent freedom—yet when it posits itself as the
synthesis of psychical and physical it must “pervade” the synthesis “differentiatingly.”
in positing itself, the spirit, and the human being as mind and body, become actual.
in pervading the sensual part of its being, however, the individual posits the
sexual. “the moment he becomes man,” the individual “becomes so by becoming
animal as well.”176 although sexuality is not sinful originally, anxiety has become
so conscious of the possibilities of sexual sin that sexuality has come to “signify”
sinfulness for consciousness.177 likewise sensuousness is “constantly degraded”178
to mean sinfulness, and to the degree that woman is “more sensuous”179 she is more
profoundly afflicted with anxiety. Finding her being (claims Vigilius) in the more
bodily categories of beauty and childbirth, woman inhabits more exclusively the
physical aspect of the synthesis—and this opens a “greater scope” for anxiety in the
broader “cleft” between the elements of the synthesis.180
adam is rarely discussed in the third and fourth parts of the text, and i will draw
back to assess whether this construction of adam follows the contours of creatio
ex nihilo, felix culpa, and the Second Adam. To take the first, the difficulty in The
Concept of Anxiety is not in locating the nihilo theme but in following its
transformations. It first appears as the “nothing” of anxiety, the unactualized possibility
that is anxiety’s object. For dreaming innocence this nothing is “projected” outside
the self, but after the prohibition awakens “freedom’s possibility,” “the nothing has
now entered into adam, and here again it is a nothing—the anxious possibility of
being able.”181 the nothing of possibility has become the nothing of freedom, in
which the spirit perceives that the projected possibilities emerge from the inward
possibility, the being able of freedom. the metaphor of anxiety as “the dizziness
of freedom” is instructive. one becomes dizzy not by standing over the abyss, but
by letting the gaze fall downward into it; in the same way anxiety is not simply an
existing in freedom, but an attending to one’s freedom in fear and fascination. note
the spatial shift. in dreaming innocence, spirit perceived the nothing of possibility
outside itself, yet now it gazes “down” into the well of freedom and sees no end,
no ground. Then in the “weakness” and “selfish” concern of anxiety the individual
“succumbs” and “lays hold of finiteness to support itself.” Unable to ground itself in
its own being, and doubting the being that is given by the invisible god, spirit takes
refuge in what is most tangible and ready to hand. although the individual should
have looked beyond the objects to the one who gives them, and should have chosen
175
SKS 4, 380 / CA, 76.
176
SKS 4, 354 / CA, 49.
177
SKS 4, 371 / CA, 67.
178
SKS 4, 363 / CA, 58.
179
SKS 4, 370 / CA, 66.
180
SKS 4, 368–9 / CA, 64–5.
181
SKS 4, 350 / CA, 44.
to rest in the being given by God, instead it posits itself in the finite and undertakes
the manipulation of the finite that constitutes aesthetic existence.182
Adam’s relation to this “nothing” is clarified with attention to the terminological
patterns in the works of the summer of 1844. Intethed is used repeatedly and
powerfully in Philosophical Fragments183 and the upbuilding discourses of June
and august,184 but is absent from The Concept of Anxiety. although it often would
have been a more natural word-choice, and although Intet is exceedingly common
in the text, Intethed does not appear a single time. vigilius also turns the language
of nothing to a different purpose. while the discourses sometimes use Intethed to
point to the self’s insignificance and unworthiness before God, they often use Intet
to refer to incapability (the individual learns through striving and sufferings that it
is “capable of nothing,” Intet formaaer), and therefore dependence upon the self-
giving god. Yet for vigilius Intet refers to capability (adam confronts “a nothing—
the anxious possibility of being able,” et Intet, den ængstende Mulighed af at kunne)
and freedom.185 There is at least an apparent conflict here: Is “nothing” a being-able
or a being-unable? what is the relationship between the Intet of adam and the Intet
and Intethed of the discourses?
it seems to me that the answer is twofold. First, the nothing of freedom and the
nothing of incapability refer to different stages in the self’s journey to itself. the
early chapters of Anxiety speak of adam precisely because they are concerned with
the early emergence of subjectivity, which occurs only as the individual perceives
the nothing of possibility and freedom, but when the discourses speak of the nothing
of incapability they refer to a later stage when freedom has found its horizon. Anxiety
describes the beginning of the adamic project, the self’s attempt to be itself apart
from god, while the discourses refer to the end of that project, when the self has come
to the end of itself, and learned it cannot be itself apart from the self-giving god. in
fact “nothing” in the latter sense is not entirely lacking in Anxiety. after vigilius has
rendered the nothing of freedom in temporal terms—“anxiety is the moment,”186 he
explains, and “the moment is non-being under the category of time”187—he proceeds
to explain the Christian concept of non-being:
greek philosophy and the modern alike maintain that everything turns on bringing non-
being into being, for to do away with it or to make it vanish seems extremely easy. the
Christian view takes the position that non-being is present everywhere as the nothing
from which things were created, as semblance and vanity, as sin, as sensuousness
182
SKS 4, 365 / CA, 61.
183
SKS 4, 221 / PF, 12. SKS 4, 281 / PF, 82. SKS 4, 282 / PF, 82. SKS 4, 284 / PF, 85.
184
see SKS 5, 247 / EUD, 248. SKS 5, 275 / EUD, 282. SKS 5, 298 / EUD, 305. SKS 5,
300 / EUD, 307. SKS 5, 316 / EUD, 325.
185
SKS 4, 350 / CA, 44–5. Compare with the use of Intet, e.g., in SKS 5, 300–4 / EUD,
307–12. see an excellent treatment in george pattison’s Agnosis, new York: palgrave
Macmillan 1997, but it and other treatments of the theme in Kierkegaard would have benefited
from attention to the differences of Intet, Intethed, and Ikke-Værende.
186
SKS 4, 385 / CA, 81.
187
SKS 4, 385 / CA, 82, note.
removed from spirit, as the temporal forgotten by the eternal; consequently, the task is to
do away with it in order to bring forth being.188
this is important for our purposes because it associates the “non-being” (Ikke-
Værende) of “the moment” with the nothing (Intet) out of which things were created,
thus explicitly rooting human freedom in the divine freedom of creatio ex nihilo.
As Vigilius writes later, “Freedom is infinite and arises out of nothing.”189 it is
also important because it aligns non-being and nothing with sin and the artifice or
“semblance” of authentic being. vigilius explains that the Christian concept of the
human task is “to bring forth being,” to renew a being that is true and free. this is the
only way in which “the concept of the atonement” can be understood properly and
originally, as an invasion of the ruined world of nonbeing and a re-creation of being
from within. in other words, vigilius in his own way renders “nothing” not merely
as a being able but also as a failure to be, for the effort to establish being apart from
god leads only to the false being of “semblance” and “vanity.” sin, as vigilius writes
later, is an “unwarranted actuality,” and the self that posits itself in sin posits itself as
something other than what it is: a being dependent upon god.190
The second way to resolve the seeming conflict between the nothing of freedom
and the nothing of incapability is to recognize the different concepts of freedom
they employ. the narrative of the self’s journey to itself can be told in terms of the
exercise, decomposition, and restoration of freedom—and when vigilius writes that
“unfreedom makes itself a prisoner,”191 or that “unfreedom wills something” but “in
fact it has lost its will,”192 it becomes clear that negative and positive senses of freedom
are on the table. Kierkegaard knew these different senses in augustinian terms as
liberum arbitrium or freedom of choice, nondetermination by external factors, and
libertas or true freedom, the freedom to express and fulfill one’s fundamental identity
and purposes.193 the former speaks of having many options, the latter of “the one
thing needful,” the action consistent with one’s ownmost nature. For Kierkegaard as
for augustine, adam in the garden possesses both negative and positive freedoms,
but in the transgression he employs the freedom of choice to betray true freedom,
and thus gives himself into the captivity of sin. the later self, after the chastening
of the school of sufferings, perceives that its positive freedom has failed, that the
self is not free to be itself by itself. then because it is “capable of nothing,” it “is
188
SKS 4, 385, note. / CA, 83, note.
189
SKS 4, 414–15 / CA, 112.
190
SKS 4, 415 / CA, 113.
191
SKS 4, 425 / CA, 124.
192
SKS 4, 436 / CA, 135.
193
SKS 19, 68–9, not1:8. the Judge contrasts “liberum arbitrium” and “true positive
freedom” in SKS 2, 169 / EO2, 174. See Timothy Jackson, “Arminian Edification: Kierkegaard
on grace and Free will,” in The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, ed. by alastair
hannay and gordon marino, Cambridge: Cambridge university press 1998, pp. 235–256.
Kierkegaard denies an abstract or indifferent liberum arbitrium (as in SKS 4, 355 / CA, 49
and SKS 4, 414 / CA, 112), not liberum arbitrium as freedom from constraint and a necessary
condition for true freedom.
nothing,” and its “nothingness” is partly its dependence on god for being, purpose,
and redemption.
the narrative of adam in genesis, then, the narrative of essential human
experience, is permeated with nothing and nothingness. adam commences a journey
that arcs from nothing to nothingness, a nothingness in which he can surrender
the adamic project and receive in faith the being given him by god. Yet now we
come to the felix culpa in the narrative. Between the nothing of freedom and the
nothing of incapability are all the sufferings and anxieties of sin. this existence is
characterized first by “unfreedom.” As Vigilius writes, “freedom was posited by the
very fact that its misuse was posited,”194 and after the Fall unfreedom intensifies as
the individual strives even harder to overcome itself by itself. thus vigilius analyzes
the “bondage of sin” as an “unfree relation to the evil,” and the demonic as “an
unfree relation to the good,”195 and delineates the psycho-somatic and pneumatic
ways in which freedom is lost.196 Yet the condition after the Fall is also characterized
by “untruth,” a loss of the “transparency” in which adam had enjoyed the garden.
this is the decisive question of positive freedom: whether freedom will will the
truth about itself. vigilius writes that “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,” or instead will conceal or forget or flee from itself,
seeking subterfuge in the crowd or in books or in diverting pleasure. in the depths
of sin, “untruth is precisely unfreedom,” for the individual rejects the “disclosure”
and “transparency” of authenticity.197 thus existence in sin, for Kierkegaard as for
schelling, is characterized by unbeing, unfreedom, and untruth.
according to the felix culpa principle, of course, the anxieties implied and
precipitated in the Fall must be redeemed and made to serve the purposes of divine
providence. Consistent with Kierkegaard’s comments on leibniz, vigilius does not
construct a historical metanarrative to justify the sufferings of the fallen world, but
examines specifically the existence of the single individual. “Every human life is
religiously designed,” he declares.198 Yet how does the suffering of anxiety serve
the unfolding of the human spirit? the answer is twofold, and again the response
to leibniz is illuminating. note what Kierkegaard writes, that “even in sin man
is greater, more fortunate,” and “even the split in man has more significance than
immediate innocence.”199 although it is arguably implied, the redemption is not
mentioned here, or used to justify universal history. rather Kierkegaard declares
that “even in sin” humankind is better off, and “even the split” has more significance
than innocence. So we can examine the benefits of anxiety in two categories: in sin
and in ushering the individual toward faith.
194
SKS 4, 362 / CA, 58.
195
see SKS 4, 421 / CA, 119. in Philosophical Fragments, SKS 4, 224–6 / PF, 16–17,
the individual “uses the power of freedom in the service of unfreedom” and “the power of
unfreedom grows and makes him a slave of sin.”
196
SKS 4, 437ff. / CA, 136ff.
197
vigilius likens disclosure and transparency (important in The Sickness unto Death) in
SKS 4, 428 / CA, 127, note 2.
198
SKS 4, 407 / CA, 105.
199
SKS 19, 392, not13:23 / JP 1, 41.
The first benefit of anxiety is in the emergence of selfhood. In the stirrings of
anxiety “freedom’s possibility announces itself,” 200 and apart from anxiety there
could be no leap from innocence to guilt, from dreaming innocence to the self-
positing spirit. in anxiety the spirit perceives its possibilities, and ultimately anxiety
illuminates the subject’s transcendence and freedom, making spirit visible to itself.
that is, the possibility of anxiety is a perfection of the human, and apart from this
possibility it would not be human but animal. vigilius writes, “Because he is a
synthesis, he can be in anxiety; and the more profoundly he is in anxiety, the greater
is the man.”201 the mature individual is constantly aware of freedom’s possibility.
apart from awakening the self to its possibilities and making it visible to itself
as a free being, anxiety is also “educative” toward faith, and this is the second sense
in which it functions according to the logic of the felix culpa. this is the subject
of Chapter v, and as vigilius explains, “only he who passes through the anxiety
of the possible is educated to have no anxiety.”202 the narratival and redemptive
elements again are clear, as vigilius calls it “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.”203 of course this is no simple
matter, for once the individual has left innocence then anxiety becomes a “grand
inquisitor” with “dreadful torments” in store.204 since the individual is still free to
reject the truth, the instruction of anxiety may be rejected and the individual may
move toward suicide. or the individual may learn in humility—for divine providence
fills existence with purpose and hope—from the possibility that “wanted to teach
him” and the anxiety that “wanted to save him.”205 then anxiety is a “serving spirit”
that scours out everything worldly, that “consumes all finite ends and discovers their
deceptiveness,”206 and that “hand[s] him over to faith.”207 as with the “pain” of doubt
in “Every Good Gift,” the proper response to anxiety is not (first) to cease being
anxious but to be anxious rightly, to let anxiety be absolutely educative through faith,
revealing all the sins and misrelations within the self. then “when the individual
through anxiety is educated unto faith, anxiety will eradicate precisely what it brings
forth itself.”208
Finally, vigilius says little about the second adam or the new being which the
self receives from god. on this subject “every good gift” is more forthcoming, and
so one finds that the upbuilding discourse and the pseudonymous work are mutually
illuminating, each articulating the portions of the narrative and the perspectives on
its meaning for which it is most equipped. Yet vigilius does say that true freedom
200
SKS 4, 378 / CA, 74.
201
SKS 4, 454 / CA, 155.
202
SKS 4, 456 / CA, 157.
203
SKS 4, 456 / CA, 155.
204
SKS 4, 455 / CA, 155.
205
SKS 4, 457 / CA, 158.
206
SKS 4, 454 / CA, 155.
207
SKS 4, 457 / CA, 158.
208
SKS 4, 458 / CA, 159.
has a “content.” earlier it was said that the Christian task is to “bring forth being”;209
later vigilius depicts the “task” for freedom as one of “constantly bringing forth
truth”210 and letting it “permeate his whole being.”211 Yet to will the self in truth is
to will the downfall of the will, or freedom is only freedom when it surrenders the
Adamic project of establishing the self independently of God and instead finding
and receiving itself in and from god. Kierkegaard expresses this beautifully in a
later journal entry: “the very truth of freedom of choice is: there must be no choice,
even though there is a choice…if you want to rescue and keep [freedom], there is
only one way—in the very same moment unconditionally in full attachment give
it back to god and yourself along with it.”212 Yet it is also clear in The Concept of
Anxiety that one who has graduated from “the school of possibility” has learned that
“one can demand nothing in life and that the terrible, perdition, and annihilation
live next door to every man.”213 the ultimate lesson anxiety teaches is to give up
anxiety in faith’s rest—to “rest in providence”214 and “rest only in the atonement.”215
having departed from the innocence of the garden and having entered the untruth,
unfreedom and nonbeing of sin, anxiety instructs the spirit in the futility of existence
apart from god, and the anxiety of freedom is overcome only when freedom has
found its ownmost possibility: to receive truth, freedom, and being from god.
IV. Conclusion
the name of adam, having appeared so often in the pseudonymous and signed
works from the dissertation The Concept of Irony in 1841 to The Concept of Anxiety
in 1844, afterward virtually disappears. the only other work in which it appears
more than twice is Stages on Life’s Way, published in 1845. in all the other writings
published or written for publication from 1845 to 1855, the name of adam appears
only three times, in Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits in 1847 and once in
Christian Discourses in 1848. the journals show the same pattern. as the dialectic
of the authorship unfolds and its focus turns from general forms of human existence
to specifically Christian existence and its strife with the world, the figure of Adam
fades from view.
even The Sickness unto Death, a later “psychological” work that describes
selfhood in terms consistent with The Concept of Anxiety, makes no mention of
adam. perhaps in the later authorship, or in the more advanced pseudonymity of
Anti-Climacus, Kierkegaard felt less need to develop his analysis through specific
biblical or historical individuals, as he had done with adam as well as abraham, Job,
socrates, and Christ. or perhaps he had simply said all he had to say about adam.
209
SKS 4, 385, note / CA, 83, note.
210
SKS 4, 439 / CA, 138
211
ibid.
212
SKS 23, 64–6, nB15:93 / JP 2, 1261.
213
SKS 4, 455 / CA, 156.
214
SKS 4, 459 / CA, 161.
215
SKS 4, 461 / CA, 162.
One later comment clarifies the role of the serpent,216 but most of the later journal
references merely turn adam’s attempt to hide himself in the garden into a metaphor
for the tendency of individuals to conceal themselves in the finite and numerical in
order to evade eternal responsibility and the recognition that one stands “outside
of god.”217 Yet there is no evidence that Kierkegaard’s interpretation of the eden
narrative ever changed substantially or in a manner he felt compelled to explain.
Yet a clear image has emerged of the story of Adam and its significance in the
early authorship. to review, the eden narrative includes at least four story threads.
the naming of the animals is frequently referenced in the early journals, but rarely
elsewhere, and is taken to represent a lucid, untroubled relation with god prior to
the intervention of sin. the fashioning of eve from adam shows woman’s nature as
“derived” from man, and points to the greater senses of sensuousness and anxiety
among women. Yet Kierkegaard’s accomplishment is found in the way he interweaves
the creation story with the story of the Fall. even in the early references a narrative
begins to emerge in which three theological imperatives—creatio ex nihilo, felix
culpa, and the second adam—describe the life of adam and of every individual in
every generation.
Yet Kierkegaard’s commentary on adam culminates in the six-month period
from december 1843 to June 1844, when “every good gift” and The Concept of
Anxiety present a coherent and mutually-enriching portrait of the conditions and the
narrative of human existence. the journey of the self becoming itself is a journey
from nothing to nothingness, from the nothing out of which all things are created, to
the perception in dreaming innocence of the nothing of possibility and freedom, then
(through the qualitative leap) into sin and the sufferings of sin, gradually (through
humility) to the self’s comprehension of its own nothingness apart from god, and
finally (through faith) to restoration and re-creation. The Schellingian influence is
clear, and yet Kierkegaard goes further in the alignment of being with truth and
freedom. after the self freely betrays its freedom and rejects the transparency of its
previous relation to god and the world, it undertakes the adamic project of striving
to be itself apart from god—and fails—and thus gives itself over to unfreedom,
untruth, and nonbeing. Yet the sufferings of anxiety are “through faith absolutely
educative.” the self that learns from its sufferings and surrenders itself will rest in
the atonement and receive its freedom, truth, and being from the self-giving god.
Finally, this inquiry began with the question of why Kierkegaard, resident in an
intellectual culture that had begun to grow critical of the history and coherence of
the biblical texts, and the genesis stories in particular, should exposit the human
condition through commentary on the eden narrative. Kierkegaard shows no interest
in source-critical problems or in the historical facticity of adam’s transgression.
the truth of the story is found in the way it renders fundamental human experience
transparent, an experience that is defined not by abstract distinctions or systematic
216
SKS 22, 238, nB12:154 / JP 1, 102.
217
Quoted is SKS 24, 287, nB: 23:169 / JP 3, 3642; see also Pap. vii–1 B 158, 3 / JP 2,
1996. SKS 26, 339–40, nB34:28 / JP 3, 3001; reflecting on concealment less directly are SKS
26, 26, nB31:34 / JP 1, 698, and SKS 22, 378, nB14:57 / JP 4, 4549. adam also illustrates
concealment in SKS 8, 228 / UD, 128, and SKS 10, 182 / CD, 170.
categories but by a narrative of tensions, conflicts, and transformations. Kierkegaard
interpreted adam not merely for epistemological and psychological concerns, but
also to construct a theodicy in his own distinctive sense. as he explained in his
affirmation of Leibniz, the problem of freedom and evil is the fundamental existential
problem. as he explained in his disagreement with leibniz, it is best approached not
through a scheme of cosmic justification but through careful attention to individual
subjectivity. For every individual in sin the world is “split,” and sufferings flow
through the breach—but through this split the self awakens to itself, and through
these sufferings the humble self can learn the nothingness in which faith becomes
possible. this is the promise of the felix culpa, that god is always creating, and out
of nothingness will create again.
Bibliography
I. Works in the auction Catalogue of Kierkegaard’s Library that

Discuss Adam and Eve
adler, adolph peter, Forsøg til en kort systematisk Fremstilling af Christendommen

i dens Logik, Copenhagen: louis Klein 1846, pp. 5–13; pp. 27–8; p. 47 (ASKB
u 13).
Baader, Franz, Vorlesungen über speculative Dogmatik, vol. 1, stuttgart und
tübingen: J.g. Cotta 1828 [vols. 2–5, münster: theissing 1830–38], vol. 1,
pp. 105ff. (ASKB 396).
Bauer, Bruno, “die urgeschichte der menschheit nach dem biblischen Berichte der
genesis, kritisch untersucht,” Zeitschrift für spekulative Theologie, vols. 1–3,
ed. by Bruno Bauer, Berlin: dümmler 1836–38, vol. 3, no. 1, 1837, pp. 125–210
(ASKB 354–357).
erdmann, Johann eduard, “Über den Begriff des sündenfalls und des Bösen. ein
versuch,” Zeitschrift für spekulative Theologie, vols. 1–3, ed. by Bruno Bauer,
Berlin: dümmler 1836–38, vol. 2, no. 2, 1837, pp. 192–214 (ASKB 354–357).
günther, anton, Süd- und Nordlichter am Horizonte spekulativer Theologie.
Fragment eines evangelischen Briefwechsels, vienna: wallishausser 1834,
pp. 114ff. (ASKB 520).
müller, Julius, Die christliche Lehre von der Sünde, vols. 1–2, 3rd revised and
enlarged ed., Breslau: Josef max 1849, vol. 2, pp. 410–85 (ASKB 698–690).
rosenkranz, Karl, “eine parallele zur religionsphilosophie,” Zeitschrift für
spekulative Theologie, vols. 1–3, ed. by Bruno Bauer, Berlin: dümmler 1836–
38, vol. 2, no. 1, 1837, pp. 1–31 (ASKB 354–357).
wette, wilhelm martin leberecht de, Lehrbuch der historisch-kritischen Einleitung
in die Bibel Alten und Neuen Testamentes, vols. 1–2 (in one tome), 4th ed., Berlin:
g. reimer 1833, pp. 138–64 (ASKB 80).
II. Secondary Literature on Kierkegaard’s Use of Adam and Eve
axt-piscalar, Christine, “Julius müller: parallels in the doctrines of sin and Freedom
in Kierkegaard and müller,” in Kierkegaard and His German Contemporaries,
tome ii, Theology, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2007 (Kierkegaard
Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 6), pp. 143–59.
—— Ohnmächtige Freiheit. Studien zum Verhältnis von Subjektivität und Sünde bei
August Tholuck, Julius Müller, Sören Kierkegaard und Friedrich Schleiermacher,
tübingen: J.C.B. mohr (p. siebeck) 1996, pp. 26–173.
Barrett, lee, “Kierkegaard’s anxiety and the augustinian doctrine of original
sin,” in The Concept of Anxiety, ed. by robert l. perkins, macon, georgia:
mercer university press 1985 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 8),
pp. 35–61.
Beabout, gregory, Freedom and Its Misuses: Kierkegaard on Anxiety and Despair,
milwaukee, wisconsin: marquette university press 1996, pp. 35–71.
Come, arnold, Kierkegard as Theologian: Recovering My Self, mcgill-Queen’s
university press: montreal and Kingston 1997, pp. 118–20; pp. 155–9; pp. 167–
8; p. 190; pp. 182–283; p. 292.
Ferreira, m. Jamie, Kierkegaard, malden, massachusetts: wiley-Blackwell 2008,
pp. 81–5.
gouwens, david, Kierkegaard as Religious Thinker, Cambridge: Cambridge
university press 1996, p. 82.
green, ronald m., “the limits of the ethical in Kierkegaard’s The Concept of
Anxiety and Kant’s Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone,” in The Concept
of Anxiety, ed. by robert l. perkins, macon, georgia: mercer university press
1985 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 8), pp. 63–87.
grøn, arne, The Concept of Anxiety in Søren Kierkegaard, trans. by Jeanette B.l.
Knox, macon, georgia: mercer university press 2008.
holm, isak winkel, “angst: adam,” in his Tanken i billedet. Søren Kierkegaards
poetik, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1998, pp. 277–304.
Jackson, Timothy, “Arminian Edification: Kierkegaard on Grace and Free Will,”
in The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, ed. by gordon d. marino and
alastair hannay, Cambridge: Cambridge university press 1998, pp. 235–56.
James, david, and douglas moggach, “Bruno Bauer: Biblical narrative, Freedom
and anxiety,” in Kierkegaard and His German Contemporaries, tome ii,
Theology, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2007 (Kierkegaard Research:
Sources, Reception, and Resources, vol. 6), pp. 1–21.
mcCarthy, vincent a., “schelling and Kierkegaard on Freedom and Fall,” in The
Concept of Anxiety, ed. by robert l. perkins, macon, georgia: mercer university
press 1985 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 8), pp. 89–109.
polk, timothy h., The Biblical Kierkegaard: Reading by the Rule of Faith, macon,
georgia: mercer university press 1997, p. 183; p. 186.
rosas, l. Joseph, Scripture in the Thought of Søren Kierkegaard, nashville,
tennessee: Broadman & holman 1994, pp. 80–6.
russell, stanley h., “two nineteenth Century theologies of sin—Julius müller and
søren Kierkegaard,” Scottish Journal of Theology, vol. 40, 1987, pp. 231–48.
abraham:
Framing Fear and Trembling
timothy dalrymple
although søren Kierkegaard stands among the most creative and idiosyncratic of
modern thinkers, he nonetheless occupies a particular location in the intellectual
discourse of modernity. recent decades of Kierkegaard scholarship have returned
him to Golden Age Copenhagen by exhibiting the finer grains of the world in which
he lived and the richer textures of his literary life and influences in nineteenth-century
denmark. although Kierkegaard’s works are sui generis, they were not created ex
nihilo. if it were ever possible to envision him in a timeless intellectual space, with
reference only perhaps to Hegel, this was not because Kierkegaard had few influences,
but because he made use of so many that he was fully beholden to none. indeed the
array of influences seems especially broad in Kierkegaard’s case, from literature to
philosophy and theology, from the Congregation of Brethren to the university of
Copenhagen, from churches to theaters and cafés, from late moderns like hegel and
schelling to early moderns like pascal and descartes, and from medieval mystical
theologians and early church fathers to pietists and reformers. Kierkegaard cast
wide the net of an expansive intellect and drew together and reassembled whatever
he found useful.
The Bible is indisputably Kierkegaard’s principal literary influence, yet its
influence is always also more than merely literary. For one trained in dogmatics,
exegesis, and homiletics, the Bible is a library unto itself, a collection of authors and
books that ground and qualify and interpret one another, and is also a world to be
inhabited, a collection of characters and narratives, symbols and ideas within which
one interprets one’s experience. thus when Kierkegaard prays to the persons of the
trinity in 1839, his language is saturated with scripture. to the holy spirit he prays,
“may you too intercede for me with unspeakable sighs, pray for me as abraham
prayed for corrupt sodom, if there is just one pure thought, one better feeling in
me…you, noble holy spirit, who bring to new birth those who have grown old,
renew me too and create a new heart within me.”1 the delicate interweaving of
scriptures does not mean the sentiment is fabricated. For one raised in a devoutly
Christian home, who spent countless hours in churches and theological lecture halls,
1
SKS 18, 56, ee:161 / KJN 2, 51, dated august 18, 1839; see rom 8:26, gen 18:23–
33, Jn 3:4, and ps 51:10. since this article traces the evolution of Kierkegaard’s thought on
abraham, it will note composition dates when possible.
it is only natural that the deeper exhalations of the soul should be expressed through
scriptural symbols. what Kierkegaard believed viscerally, he spoke biblically.
None of the biblical figures in the Kierkegaard corpus is depicted more vividly
than abraham in Fear and Trembling in 1843. the question governing this inquiry is:
what did abraham mean for Kierkegaard? it presents an opportunity and a challenge.
Kierkegaard famously predicted in 1849 that Fear and Trembling would assure him
an “imperishable name as an author,” and indeed it may be the most widely read and
renowned of Kierkegaard’s works, and its account of abraham’s exemplary faith
has influenced major philosophical and theological movements.2 if we would get
right what Kierkegaard means by faith, then we should get right what he means by
abraham in Fear and Trembling—and if we would understand abraham in Fear
and Trembling, we should understand what abraham means to Kierkegaard over the
course of his life. thus the intention of this article is to place the abraham of Fear and
Trembling in a broader and more clarifying frame by telling the story of Kierkegaard’s
lifelong engagement with abraham and his attempt to understand through him the
nature and perseverance of faith in suffering and trial. Yet since the frame could
extend far in every direction—exegetical, historical, biographical, literary—it does
not pretend to offer an exhaustive account, but follows in a generally chronological
manner the texts which refer to abraham and their contexts in Kierkegaard’s life and
in the intellectual cultures of nineteenth-century denmark and germany. it assumes
a basic familiarity with Fear and Trembling and the abraham narrative in genesis
11–25, and makes no attempt to chart the vast landscape of secondary literature on
Fear and Trembling or take positions in its disputed territories.
Each of the following sections addresses a question. First, (I) Can one find a
“prologue” to Fear and Trembling in Kierkegaard’s earlier writings? The first section
(i. a) examines the sporadic references to abraham in the journals and papers from
Kierkegaard’s student years, and finds in them the exegetical groundwork for later
interpretations. it also (i. B) measures the distance, and considers how it might be
traversed, from the rather mundane view of abraham in a sermon draft in 1840–41
to the strikingly original account in Fear and Trembling in 1843. then, (ii) how
might the given “prologue” inform the reading of Fear and Trembling? the second
section shows how relatively neglected elements in the text come to the fore, such as
suffering, providence, and the love of god. Finally, (iii) how does Kierkegaard view
abraham in later years, or why does he contemplate a “new Fear and trembling”?
the third section shows that as Kierkegaard grew increasingly critical of modern
Christendom he drew a sharper distinction between the suffering exemplified in
abraham and authentically Christian suffering.
2
SKS 22, 235, nB12:147 / JP 6, 6491. see the “historical introduction,” FT, p. xxxiv.
Abraham: Framing Fear and trembling 45
I. A Prologue to Abraham
A. Approaching Abraham (1833–40)3
Kierkegaard commenced his education at the university of Copenhagen on october

30, 1830, and passed his examinations given by the theological Faculty on July
3, 1840. the references to abraham in this period encompass the breadth of the
Abraham narrative; they reflect on Abraham and the ‫[ עקדה‬akedah] through the
exegetical lens of the new testament; and they establish two oppositions that will
frame the interpretation of abraham in Fear and Trembling and beyond: Christianity
and philosophy, and Christianity and Judaism.
The fleeting and often cryptic references to Abraham in the early papers give
no indication that Kierkegaard had narrowed his attention to the binding of isaac
(the Hebrew is ‫[ עקדת יצחק‬akedah or akedat Yitzchak], “binding” or “binding of
isaac”).4 they refer to numerous stages in the abraham narrative: genesis 12, where
abraham (then called abram) presents his wife as his sister,5 the rescue of lot in
genesis 14,6 the intercession for sodom in genesis 18,7 and abraham’s death in
genesis 25.8 in the famed “conversion” entry from 1838, Kierkegaard refers to the
“land of mamre,” where abraham settled in genesis 13–14, where he was promised
isaac in the theophany of genesis 18, and near which he and sarah were buried in
genesis 23 and 25.9 in fact, what is noteworthy here is the scarcity of references to
the binding of isaac amid references to so many other parts of the abraham cycle.
prior to 1839, the only references to the akedah are found in translation exercises.
The most potent influence on Kierkegaard’s interpretation of Abraham is the
commentary in the new testament. of the four biblical passages most important for
our purposes (three on abraham, one on “fear and trembling”), each is referenced
3
prior to this, Kierkegaard was responsible for genesis in his hebrew exam at the
Borgerdyd school in 1830. his university courses examined genesis and other parts of the
old testament, and of course Kierkegaard would have heard numerous sermons and lessons
on the tales of genesis and their interpretation in the new testament.
4
The word ‫“( עקדה‬binding”) is drawn from the verb in 22:9, and is first used to
refer to the isaac episode in rabbinic literature in the third or fourth century ad. on ancient
interpretations, see the extensive bibliographical notes in Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “The Sacrifice
of isaac in Qumran literature,” Biblica, vol. 83, 2002, pp. 211–29.
5
SKS 18, 38, ee:102.a / KJN 2, 34, written on July 3, 1839, when Kierkegaard was
preparing for his theological examinations, which included old testament exegesis. see the
“Critical account of the text” in KJN 2, 358–62.
6
Pap. ii a 790 / JP 3, 3269. this entry dates from 1838.
7
SKS 18, 56, ee:161 / KJN 2, 51, dated august 16, 1839. see gen 18:23–33.
8
SKS 19, 25, not1:6 refers (without commentary) to abraham’s death in gen 25:8,
in a discussion of the Jewish view of the afterlife in the lectures of henrik nicolai Clausen
(1793–1877) on dogmatics in 1833.
9
SKS 17, 254–5, dd:113 / KJN 1, 245–6. see gen 13:18, 14:13, 18:1–33, 23:19, and
25:9. as noted in SKS, the danish Bible (Biblia, det er: den Ganske Hellige Skrifts Bøger,
Copenhagen: Kongelige vaisenhuses Forlag 1830 (ASKB 7)) refers to Mamre Lund in gen
13 and 18. mamre was known for its oaks, or terebinths, associated with theophanies (gen
12:6–7; Judg 6:11) and later with idolatrous rites (isa 1:29, 57:5; ezek 6:13; hos 4:13).
in the early journals and papers, and will be examined presently as the scriptural
backcloth of Kierkegaard’s later account. First is the pauline argument in romans 4.
righteousness is required for salvation, according to paul, and yet none are righteous
through their own works. instead a “righteousness of god through faith” is revealed
in Christ, and “attested by the law and the prophets.”10 since genesis says “abraham
believed god, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” paul takes abraham
as an exemplar of the righteousness that is by faith.11 as paul writes in romans 4:
17–21, abraham believed in a god:
who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. hoping
against hope, he believed that he would become “the father of many nations”…he did
not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as
dead (for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of
sarah’s womb. no distrust made him waver concerning the promise of god, but he grew
strong in his faith as he gave glory to god, being fully convinced that god was able to
do what he had promised.
Reflecting on this in 1839, Kierkegaard writes that “some have been surprised” that
paul would illustrate the faith of abraham not with reference to “the willingness to
sacrifice Isaac” but to his belief in the promise of divine provision, which would have
seemed impossible.12 however, he continues that “it seems to me to be altogether
in keeping with the pauline spirit as a whole and with the syllogistic force of this
passage to take the example of sarah’s barrenness.”13 in the akedah abraham was
bidden to act, but in the case of the provision of a son “everything was indeed left
to god.”14 god alone could bring new life into being in the barrenness of sarah’s
womb. still, in the dialectical language of a god who “gives life to the dead” and
“calls into existence the things that do not exist,” the exegetical groundwork is being
laid for the paradoxical form of abrahamic faith in Fear and Trembling, a faith
which likewise will depend on divine provision.
In Hebrews 11 this paradoxical language is directed specifically to the akedah.
hebrews was among the books of the Bible Kierkegaard translated from greek into
10
rom 3:21–2. Bible quotations from Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version with
Apocrypha, new York and oxford: oxford university press 1989.
11
gen 15:6.
12
SKS 18, 121, gg:6 / KJN 2, 113.
13
ibid. later, in the winter semester of 1839–40, Kierkegaard attended the lectures of
C.e. scharling on romans, and took extensive notes in latin on Friedrich august tholuck’s
(1799–1877) interpretation of the later chapters of romans (SKS 18, 361–71, KK:7 / KJN
2, 330–9), from Friedrich august tholuck, Auslegung des Briefes Pauli an die Römer nebst
Auszügen aus den exegetischen Schriften der Kirchenväter und Reformatoren, 3rd revised ed.,
Berlin: Ferdinand dümmler 1831 [1824] (ASKB 102). see the “Critical account of the text”
for KK, KJN 2, 588–90.
14
SKS 18, 121, gg:6 / KJN 2, 113.
latin in 1833–36,15 and abraham is found in various locations within them.16 many
terms and emphases that will later appear in Kierkegaard’s writings derive from
hebrews 11:8–19:17
By faith abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive
as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he stayed
for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land…By faith he received
power of procreation, even though he was too old—and sarah herself was barren—
because he considered him faithful who had promised. therefore from one person, and
this one as good as dead, descendants were born....By faith abraham, when put to the
test, offered up isaac. he who had received the promises was ready to offer up his only
son, of whom he had been told, “it is through isaac that descendants shall be named after
you.” he considered the fact that god is able even to raise someone from the dead—and
figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.
this applies the paradoxes of abraham’s faith (that he believed god would bring
new life from one “as good as dead”) to the akedah—and finds that Abraham must
have believed that god would ultimately restore the child of promise, even if this
required resurrection. it is nowhere stated in genesis 22, or indeed anywhere else
in the Bible that Abraham undertook to sacrifice Isaac with the trust that God could
raise him from the dead. Fear and Trembling derives this view, and much of the
“eulogy on abraham,” from hebrews 11.18
15
Kierkegaard translated acts, philippians, Colossians, 1–2 thessalonians and 1–2
timothy, titus, philemon, hebrews, and James 1:1–4:15 from g.C. Knapp’s Η ΚΑΙΝΗ
ΔΙΑΘΗΚΗ: Novum Testamentum Graece, vols. 1–2, halle: orphanotroph 1829 (ASKB
14–15), with reference to the vulgate and Bretschneider’s Lexicon manuale graeco-latinum
in libros novi Testamenti, vols. 1–2, 2nd ed., leipzig: Barth 1829 [1824] (ASKB 73–74).
the translation of hebrews may be from the winter semester of 1835–36, when a review of
hebrews was offered by e.v. Kolthoff. see “søren Kierkegaard and his latin translations
of the new testament” in KJN 1, 435–41, and Kalle sorainen, “einige Beobachtungen im
Bezug auf die lateinischen Übersetzungen søren Kierkegaards aus dem griechischen neuen
testament,” Kierkegaardiana, vol. 9, 1974, pp. 56–74.
16
in the translated books and epistles, abraham appears in acts 3:13 and 3:25 (SKS 17,
148–9, CC:1 / KJN 1, 142–3), heb 6:13–15, 7:1–10, and 11:8–22 (SKS 17, 185–6, CC:10 /
KJN 1, 177–8, and SKS 17, 191, CC:10 / KJN 1, 182), and Jas 2:18–24 (SKS 17, 195–6, CC:11
/ KJN 1, 186). “descendants of abraham” should appear in heb 2:16 but is replaced with
“descendants of david” (semen Davidis). the latter phrase is found in 1 Kings 11:39 and Jer
33:22, but to my knowledge it is not a textual variant for heb 2:16. the Knapp greek edition
uses spermatos Abraam. if a mistake of Kierkegaard’s, it may have been occasioned by the
use of the Psalms (many ascribed to David) in the first and second chapters of Hebrews, or the
reference in heb 1:5 to the covenant with david in 2 sam 7:14.
17
in addition to CC:10, Kierkegaard refers in 1839 to heb 11:11–12 in SKS 18, 45,
ee:121 / KJN 2, 41, where he states that he, “in the same situation as sarah,” is “as good as
dead” and “past the proper age” for examinations. the term “as good as dead” actually refers
to abraham, not sarah, in rom 4:19 and heb 11:12.
18
SKS 4, 113–8 / FT, 17–22. the eulogy employs the hebrews formula (“By faith
abraham…”), describes abraham’s departure from his ancestral land to live as a foreigner,
and refers to his faith in the promise of progeny and the power of god to return isaac. see
the third and fourth passages advance a starkly different argument. as a student,
Kierkegaard translated James 1:1–4:15—and though its discussion of abraham is
rarely cited by scholars, it constructs one of the most powerful tensions in Fear
and Trembling.19 the pauline argument is inverted; in James 2:20–24 abraham
is the exemplar not because of faith alone, but because his faith was “brought to
completion” in the “work” of sacrificing Isaac:
do you want to be shown, you senseless person, that faith without works is barren? was
not our ancestor Abraham justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar?
You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was brought to completion
by the works. Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it
was reckoned to him as righteousness,” and he was called the friend of god. You see that
a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.
when abraham’s faith was reckoned as righteousness in genesis 15:6, according

to James, it was implicit that his faith would be completed in works like the offering
of isaac. without the “work” of the akedah abraham would not have been “called
the friend of God” or “justified.” A similar tension is found in Paul, though not in
reference to abraham. philippians 2:12–13, frequently referenced in these years, is the
source for the title of Fear and Trembling:20 “therefore, my beloved, just as you have
always obeyed me…work out your own salvation in fear and trembling; for it is god
who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”
the imprisoned paul charges the people of the congregation at philippi to work out
their salvation with fearful reverence—and yet to trust that the true, inner work is
done by god. in the same way in Fear and Trembling abraham sets out at once for
Mount Moriah and yet believes in God’s impossible deliverance. The sacrifice will be
Abraham’s, and the sacrifice will be God’s. Thus Kierkegaard prays in 1838: “Keep
us vigilant at working out our salvation in fear and trembling. But also—when the
law speaks loudest…when it thunders from sinai—o! let there also be a soft voice,
which whispers to us that we are your children, so that we may cry out with joy: abba,
Father.”21 From romans and hebrews Kierkegaard inherited the paradoxical terms of
life and death, being and non-being, and from James and philippians the theological
tensions of faith and works, obedient action and trust in divine provision. since
Kierkegaard was so well-versed in the texts of the new testament, it is not surprising
James swetnam, Jesus and Isaac: A Study of the Epistle to the Hebrews in Light of the Aqedah,
Chicago: loyola press 1981.
19
SKS 17, 195–6, CC:11 / KJN 1, 186. Kierkegaard often interpreted the epistle of
James in his discourses and other writings. he called James his “favorite text” in 1851 (SKS
24, 365, nB24:74 / JP 6, 6769), and in 1855 he described James 1:17–21 as his “first love”
and his “only love” (Pap. Xi–3 B 291, 4 / JP 6, 6965).
20
SKS 18, 14, ee:25 / KJN 2, 9, takes “fear and trembling” from phil 2:12. other early
references: Pap. i a 174 / JP 1, 420; SKS 17, 273, dd:185 / KJN 1, 264. SKS 18, 23, ee:50 /
KJN 2, 19. SKS 18, 53, ee:150 / KJN 2, 48.
21
SKS 17, 273, dd:185 / KJN 1, 264, dated december 28, 1838; rom 8:15. the
“thunder” likely refers (as noted in the KJN) to the revelation of god atop mount sinai (e.g.,
ex 19:16), but i would suggest that the “whisper” alludes to the revelation to elijah atop
mount horeb (another name for mount sinai) in 1 Kings 19:12.
that his later account of the akedah should reflect the internal conflicts and contours of
interpretation laid down by the first generation of Christian writers and exegetes.
Finally, two other early references to abraham should be noted for the tendencies
of interpretation that they display. in 1838 he quotes a Jewish curse on a man who
raises pigs and teaches his son greek wisdom: Maledictus qui porcum alit et filium
suum docet sapientiam græcam.22 (“he is an accursed man who raises a hog and
teaches his own son greek wisdom.”) likewise, “Christianity does not want to
negotiate with philosophy,” since it “does not want to have the King of sodom say:
i have made abraham rich.”23 it is a terse, enigmatic entry. the Jewish curse derives
from a civil war in ancient israel in the hasmonean dynasty several generations
before Christ. Besieged Jews inside Jerusalem had arranged with those outside the
city for animals to be sent over the wall for use in the Temple sacrifices. Then an
elder on the outside suggested that the besieged would never surrender until they
could no longer carry out the rites; the next time the basket was lowered over the
wall, a pig was placed inside it instead.24 the reference to abraham is from genesis
14, in which abraham achieves a military triumph over men who had taken the
belongings of the king of sodom. abraham refuses to keep the plunder for himself,
lest the credit for his flourishing be accorded to the king rather than to God. There is
a threefold parallel, then, between the two parts of the curse, abraham and the king
of sodom, and Christianity and philosophy—and what they hold in common is a
straining of terms in opposite directions. how Kierkegaard understood the curse is
unclear, but his rendering of the latin suggests that it is the conjunction of the terms
that is found objectionable,25 the attempted “negotiation” binding them together.
22
Pap. ii a 790 / JP 3, 3269.
23
ibid.
24
ibid.; gen 14:23. it is not clear from where Kierkegaard learned of the curse. the civil
war arose between the sons of alexander Jannaeus, aristobulus ii and hyrcanus ii, when their
mother left the kingdom to hyrcanus in 67 bc. the story is found in the Babylonian talmud,
sotah 49b, with parallels in the palestinian talmud, Berakhot 4:1 (7b), the Babylonian Bava
Kamma 82b, and Josephus’ Antiquities Xiv.2.2. see richard lee Kalmin, The Sage in Jewish
Society of Late Antiquity, new York: routledge 1999, pp. 64–5.
25
the curse could be taken to apply to the man who raises pigs and teaches his son
greek wisdom, or to the man who raises pigs and also to the man who teaches greek
wisdom. Kierkegaard renders the latin in the conjunctive sense. i have not found this
rendering elsewhere, and others suggest the disjunctive. h.F. pfannkuche produces the curse
as Maledictus sit, qui porcos alit, maledictus, qui filium suum docet sapientiam graecam
(“Cursed be he who raises pigs; cursed be he who teaches his son greek wisdom”), in “Über
die palästin. landessprache im zeitalter Christi,” in J.g. eichhorn, Allgemeine Bibliothek
der biblischen Literatur, vols. 1–10, leipzig: weidmann 1787–1801, vol. 8, p. 385. (english
translation, The Biblical Repository, ed. by edward robinson, andover: Codman press 1831,
vol. 1, p. 348.) h.h. milman has Maledictus est, qui alit porcos, et qui docet filium suum
sapientiam Graecam (“he is cursed who raises pigs and who teaches his son greek wisdom”),
which is not clearly conjunctive or disjunctive, in The Character and Conduct of the Apostles
Considered as an Evidence of Christianity, oxford: oxford university press 1827, p. 192.
Kierkegaard may have rendered the curse in the way that best suited his purposes; he was no
novice in latin. see “søren Kierkegaard and his latin translations of the new testament”
in KJN 1, 435–41.
likewise Christianity will incur no debt to philosophy lest its glory be diminished
because it rests on a strength outside itself. what is important for our purposes is that
this entry represents the first time that Kierkegaard construes Abraham according to
the opposition of Christianity and philosophy. in Fear and Trembling, Johannes de
silentio uses similar contractual metaphors when he envisions “theology sit[ting]
all rouged and powdered in the window and courts its favor, offering its charms to
philosophy.”26 philosophy “cannot and must not give faith,” but must “know what it
offers and take nothing away, least of all trick men out of something by pretending
that it is nothing.”27
One finds in Journal EE the beginnings of another approach, interpreting
abraham according to the opposition of Judaism and Christianity. Kierkegaard
often comments in 1839 on the distinctions between the two. he writes, for instance,
that it is “like a motto for Judaism” that god “made a firmament to separate the
waters of heaven and earth,” since Judaism constructs a “firm” division between
god and humankind.28 In the next entry he differentiates the sacrifices of Abraham
and God: “And he who spared Abraham’s firstborn, and only tested the patriarch’s
faith, he did not spare his only begotten son.”29 the distinction between Judaism
and Christianity is implicit, but it is interesting that abraham is not contrasted to a
Christian but to the Christian vision of God. in other words, Kierkegaard does not
suggest now that the Christian should go beyond Abraham to imitate the sacrifice
of god. this will be Kierkegaard’s later view. “this is the relationship between
Judaism and Christianity,” he writes in 1853, adding that in Judaism “it is only a test
[en Prøvelse] and abraham keeps isaac,” and “the whole episode remains essentially
within this life,” while in Christianity “Isaac is actually sacrificed—but then [there
is] eternity.”30 abraham will be used later to dichotomize Jewish and Christian views
of suffering faith, then, but in the early papers there is only a hint that he might be
understood in the Jewish–Christian division.
in summary, in the years preceding his theological examinations the references
to abraham in Kierkegaard’s journals and papers are scattered and aphoristic, but
not without worth. the exegetical groundwork is laid through an engagement with
the whole abraham narrative in genesis and the principal commentaries on it in the
new testament. the early references also show the beginnings of two oppositions
that will frame Abraham in the later writings. The first opposition, between faith
and philosophy, will characterize Kierkegaard’s view of abraham in Fear and
Trembling; the second, between the Jewish “test” and the Christian “actual sacrifice,”
will characterize the view of Abraham in Kierkegaard’s final years.
26
SKS 4, 128–9 / FT, 32–3.
27
ibid.
28
SKS 18, 62, ee:183 / KJN 2, 57.
29
SKS 18, 62, ee:184 / KJN 2, 57, 1839; rom 8:32.
30
SKS 25, 248–9, nB28:41 / JP 2, 2223.
B. Approaching the Akedah (1840–43)
now we confront a mystery in the story of Kierkegaard’s engagement with

abraham. there is no established trajectory emerging from the early references
that would allow one to calculate that Kierkegaard’s writing would lead to a major
interpretation of the akedah. when at last he does treat it in a draft sermon from
1840–41, in spite of certain commonalities, it is dramatically different conceptually
from what will follow in 1843. why are these accounts of the akedah, written so
close together, so different? how did Kierkegaard get from the earlier to the later
text? Were there new circumstances, insights, or influences on his thought? The
first part of this section examines the draft sermon and its formal, conceptual, and
thematic continuities and discontinuities with Fear and Trembling, thus measuring
the distance Kierkegaard will have to cross in a brief span of time. then it will
consider three ways of traversing the distance: a psychological-biographical appeal
to Kierkegaard’s changing relationship with regine olsen, a textual-thematic appeal
to the development of particular themes in the texts of 1841–43, and an intellectual-
historical appeal to the Danish and German influences upon Kierkegaard.
Measuring the distance. having completed his theological examinations,
Kierkegaard received homiletical training at the royal pastoral seminary from
november 1840 to september 1841, a period in which he also wrote and defended his
dissertation on irony and broke his engagement to Regine Olsen. The first extended
reflection on the binding of Isaac is found in a sermon draft from this period,31 and
it is not insignificant that Kierkegaard’s first interpretation of the akedah is found in
a sermon in the midst of his conflicted engagement. The formal similarities between
the two accounts might suggest that the sermon draft presents Fear and Trembling
in embryo. the draft draws the hearer into a pathos of impassioned encounter (“we
are too lukewarm to really feel with abraham, to suffer with him”) and recounts the
story as narrative, transporting the hearer to ancient israel to witness the unfolding
events. phrases that will resound rhythmically in the lyric of Johannes de silentio are
also heard here: abraham arose “early in the morning” to go to mount moriah, where
he “split the firewood,” “lit the fire,” and “drew the knife.”32 portions of the draft
appear, mutatis mutandis, in Fear and Trembling, the same terms of “tempting” and
31
the sermon drafts of 1840–41 constitute an excellent but underutilized resource in
english-language Kierkegaard scholarship, in my view, partly because the hong translations
dispersed them across thematically-ordered volumes. the publication of the KJN may help to
open the window onto what Kierkegaard in this critical period of his life wrote on biblical and
theological themes. since Kierkegaard wrote his dissertation over the summer, the editors of
SKS believe the sermon drafts in Journal HH were written in the winter semester; see “Critical
account of the text,” KJN 2, 439–42. For other drafts from this period, see SKS 18, 64–9,
ee:190–94 / KJN 2, 59–63, and SKS 19, 175–88, not5:1–30.
32
SKS 2, 129–30, hh: 8 / KJN 2, 121–2. these phrases are striking when repeated in the
exordium’s variations, but they also appear elsewhere (SKS 4, 117 / FT, 20). though drawn
from different parts of the narrative (gen 22:3, 9–10), they are assembled in the journal (“and
he split the firewood and he bound Isaac and he lit the fire and he drew the knife”) as in Fear
and Trembling (SKS 4, 117 / FT, 21: “He split the firewood, he bound Isaac, he lit the fire, he
drew the knife”).
“testing” (Fristelser and Prøvelser) are employed, and both texts imagine variations
of the story in which abraham diverges from faith’s narrow way.33
a careful examination of the two akedah accounts, however, reveals a more
complicated picture. the draft may be an example of an early stage in Kierkegaard’s
reflection on the story, but it is far from Fear and Trembling. First, the formal likeness
is not complete. the language of the draft is less like that of Johannes than that of
the upbuilding discourses, with the use of the first-person plural and appeals to “my
listener.” the sermon does not use the subterfuge of pseudonymity, of course, and so
there is no disavowal of authority or understanding. when Kierkegaard returns to the
subject a few years later he does so with a dramatically different authorial apparatus.
more decisively, the characteristic conceptual elements of Fear and Trembling
are absent. in Johannes’ hands, the akedah is a prism diffracting the ethical and
religious, the universal and absolute, and the complacent rationality of the hegelian
system and the striving passion of faith. the akedah in the sermon draft is not
embedded in dialectical oppositions—and apart from these oppositions there can be
no paradox in which abraham transcends the ethical, universal, and rational. indeed,
what Johannes perceives as the heart of the paradox is missing from the sermon
draft: that abraham believed in the restoration of isaac, in the impossible possibility
of god, hope beyond hopelessness, life beyond death.34 so it is not merely that the
distinctive terms are absent from the sermon draft; the fundamental concepts that
give those terms meaning are not in place. without the belief in the restoration, and
without the chasm of oppositions underneath the narrative, there can be no leap
of faith, no teleological suspension of the ethical, and no belief “by virtue of the
absurd” that what is sacrificed will be restored.
the continuities and discontinuities are illustrated by the differences in the
imagined variations on the story. while both texts imagine how retellings of the
tale would alter the meaning of abrahamic faith, they illustrate different concepts
of faith. In the later view, “Abraham was great not because he sacrificed Isaac but
because he had faith.”35 thus in each variation in the exordium, abraham “does it,
but not in faith.”36 in the variations in the draft sermon, abraham never makes it to
the altar to raise the knife.37 that is, Johannes emphasizes the trust of abraham that
33
in the draft Kierkegaard invites the hearer to “imagine” if abraham had anxiously
searched for the ram before it was revealed (SKS 2, 130, hh: 8 / KJN 2, 121–2), or if abraham
had asked god to leave him and let him “enjoy the consolation of my old age” (SKS 2, 130,
hh:9 / KJN 2, 122). although they use the same literary technique of exploring variations of
the story, neither one finds a parallel in the four imaginary constructions in the Exordium.
34
when one reads that abraham knew “that nothing was too great for god,” one could
see this as abraham’s faith that god would return isaac. in context, the meaning is not that
nothing is impossible for God, but that nothing, not even “the weightiest sacrifice,” is too
valuable to be sacrificed for God (SKS 18, 129, hh:8 / KJN 2, 121).
35
Pap. iv B 73 / FT, supplement, p. 249.
36
ibid.
37
In the first variation Abraham desperately searches for a ram, and in the second (SKS
18, 130, hh:9 / KJN 2, 122) he argues with god to rescind the requirement. a trace of the
second is in Fear and Trembling, as Abraham “did not pray for himself, trying to influence the
lord” (SKS 4, 117 / FT, 21); see also Pap. iv B 87:1 / FT, supplement, p. 249.
isaac would be restored, while the sermon emphasizes abraham’s “willingness to
face trials,” his “prepared[ness] to make any sacrifice whatsoever for God.”38 For
Johannes, the willingness to sacrifice is a movement of resignation, and not faith,
unless abraham makes the second movement of believing that isaac will be restored.
the sermon may describe resignation, but the second movement is not clearly made
or even conceptualized.39
on the thematic level, the relationship between the sermon draft and Fear and
Trembling grows still more complicated. Certainly there are marked differences; the
themes of ethics and rationality, for instance, are entirely absent from the sermon
draft. Concerning the common themes, one might divide them into two classes:
themes that are obviously attached to the binding narrative, and themes that seem
to express a distinctively Kierkegaardian interpretation. so, one would expect any
reasonably skilled and theologically educated homiletics student in the nineteenth
century to interpret the akedah in terms of sacrifice and obedience; that the sermon
draft and Fear and Trembling both reflect on these themes is unsurprising and
unrevealing. there are, however, common themes of the second class, that (arguably)
begin to emerge in the sermon draft and are later found in Fear and Trembling, and
Kierkegaard’s continued reflection on these themes may have prepared him for the
conceptual innovations of the later text. among these themes i wish to emphasize
three presently, in order to return to them later. First is the theme of suffering: when
Kierkegaard writes that abraham “troubles no one with his suffering”40 and “did not
challenge heaven with his laments,”41 especially in the context of the surrounding
sermon drafts, it becomes clear that he is reflecting on the expressions of faith in the
midst of suffering. second is the theme of providence: the sermon draft repeatedly
points to the cheerfulness of abraham’s obedience and his “trust in the future,”42 and
the draft immediately following reflects on the importance of faith in providence.
the third is the love of God: leaving mount moriah, abraham is assured by “the
divine voice from heaven in his heart, proclaiming to him god’s grace and love.”43
in other words, the akedah is often taken as a demonstration of faith, or of a love for
god that surpasses all other loves—but rarely as a demonstration of the love of god
for abraham. of course, if god is love, then god’s every act is an act of love. Yet it
takes someone of Kierkegaard’s dialectical skill to present a story in which a father
is asked to slay his son, and only rescued from this torment in the last moment, as a
38
SKS 18, 129, hh:8 / KJN 2, 121–2.
39
one might argue that it must be faith in isaac’s eventual restoration that allows
Abraham to go to the sacrifice “cheerfully,” but this interprets the earlier text by the later,
and the point presently is to see which concepts are articulated in this text alone. in this text,
what differentiates abraham from other fathers who have lost their children is that he was
commanded “to do it with his own hands” (SKS 18, 129, hh:8 / KJN 2, 121). this passage
survives in Johannes’ account (SKS 4, 117 / FT, 21), but the emphasis in Fear and Trembling
is rather on the leap of faith by virtue of the absurd, a concept not developed in the draft
sermon.
40
SKS 18, 129, hh:8 / KJN 2, 121.
41
ibid.
42
SKS 18, 130, hh:8 / KJN 2, 122.
43
ibid.
manifestation of divine love. Kierkegaard’s further reflection on these themes, I will
show, helps bridge the gap between the sermon draft and the later text, and brings
underappreciated themes forth in Fear and Trembling.
Traversing the distance. given the conceptual distance Kierkegaard had to
cross from the mostly ordinary sermon draft in 1840–41 to Fear and Trembling in
1843, what, if anything other than the fertility of his own imagination, might have
helped Kierkegaard from the former to the latter? when he returns to the story just
a few years later, why is his treatment so different? i will sketch three (potentially
complementary) approaches to answering this question.
First, one could point to changes in his life circumstances that might make it
natural for Kierkegaard in 1843 to find different portions of the narrative compelling.
Kierkegaard had become convinced quickly that the engagement was a mistake, but
breaking it was a protracted and agonizing affair.44 after he defended his dissertation
on september 29, 1841, he returned regine’s ring on october 11. a fortnight later
he left Copenhagen and the social wreckage of the broken engagement behind and
attended the lectures of schelling and others at the university of Berlin. whether
it was the travel, the lectures, or the ceaseless “monologues” of self-torment over
the break with regine, the plates within him shifted and loosed springs of creative
energy.45 having begun work on Either/Or, Kierkegaard returned to Copenhagen
and completed the sprawling two-volume work in november. when Either/Or
was published in February 1843, he had already begun work on Two Upbuilding
Discourses, and when the latter was published in may he had returned to Berlin. there
Kierkegaard began Repetition and Fear and Trembling, and both were completed
in Copenhagen over the summer and published with Three Upbuilding Discourses
on october 16. thus Kierkegaard’s treatment of the akedah in the sermon draft
precedes, and Johannes’ treatment follows, the breaking of the engagement. this
adds another layer of complexity to the psychological-biographical interpretations of
Fear and Trembling. Since the story of the binding of Isaac first became a subject of
extended reflection when Kierkegaard was engaged to Regine, yet he knew he had to
break the engagement, the emphasis fell on Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac.
when he returns to the story in 1843, having broken the engagement, the emphasis
falls on abraham’s faith in an impossible restoration. the paradoxes of romans 4
and Hebrews 11 become more significant for Kierkegaard as he finds more need to
believe in a god who gives hope to the hopeless and life to the dead.
two entries show the import of biography. after an absence of two years, the
akedah reappears in a journal entry titled “Plot” in the spring of 1843.46 Kierkegaard
44
Kierkegaard proposed on september 10, 1840, and, at least in his retrospective
account, “the next day i saw that i had made a mistake.” he “suffered indescribably” as
he sought to overcome the Tungsind (depression) that doomed their relationship, and felt a
“divine protest” to the fact that their marriage would be “based on an untruth.” there is debate
on what Kierkegaard meant with these terms, but it was plainly a “frightfully painful” time for
Kierkegaard, and the break was not a clean one. see SKS 19, 433–7, not15:4 / JP 6, 6472.
45
B&A, vol. 1, p. 107 / LD, letter 68, p. 138. the letter is dated February 6, 1842.
46
SKS 18, 166–8, JJ:87 / KJN 2, 154–6, emphasis original. the hongs render Anlæg as
“outline” (SKS 18, 164, JJ:79 / JP 5, 5640). the entry is likely from april, before the return
to Berlin, since the next one refers to an advertisement from april 10 (sKS 18, 266, JJ:88 /
imagines the first variation in the Exordium: “Let us assume (something neither the
old testament nor the Koran reports) that isaac knew the purpose of the journey.”47
in “fatherly love” abraham explains himself and suggests “that as a father he was
suffering even more” than his son. isaac protests, and abraham transforms himself
and claims to be “an idolater” intent on murder.48 this self-transformation is likened
to the weaning of infants by blackening the breast—except abraham must “blacken”
his whole self to save isaac’s relationship to god. Kierkegaard adds: “the person
who explains this mystery has explained my life.”49 this suggests Kierkegaard
had to “blacken” himself entirely to secure the spiritual health of his beloved; if
he had explained himself, she would have blamed god for the “command” to end
the engagement. In the weeks following this entry Kierkegaard fleshes out the faith
in isaac’s return, and he writes on may 17: “had i faith i would have stayed with
regine.”50 in 1849 he writes: “Fear and Trembling actually reproduced my own
KJN 2, 485). although abraham is absent from the journals, he is found in Kierkegaard’s
notes from the lectures of philipp marheineke (1780–1846) in Berlin in 1841 (SKS 19, 272–5,
Not9:1). The first refers to Christ’s claim (in Jn 8:58), “Before Abraham was, I am,” and the
second to “the god of abraham, isaac and Jacob.”
47
in fact the Koran does show abraham explaining himself, and most muslim teaching
has Ishmael and not Isaac as the one taken for the sacrifice. Muslims interpret the Dhabih (the
akedah) as a trial for both father and son. so the Koran (37:101–2): “so we gave him tidings
of a gentle son. and when (his son) was old enough to walk with him, (abraham) said: o my
dear son, I have seen in a dream that I must sacrifice thee. So look, what thinkest thou? He
said: O my father! Do that which thou art commanded. Allah willing, thou shalt find me of the
steadfast.” Kierkegaard’s may have been misled, or may have conducted a less than thorough
examination himself. he possessed the Koran in german, Der Koran, trans. and ed. by l.
ullmann, Crefeld: J.h. Funcke 1840 (ASKB 603), and may have consulted the most obvious
portion (sura 14, “abraham,” pp. 206–11) but been unaware of sura 37.
48
Kierkegaard treats isaac as a child at the time of the journey to mount moriah (see
SKS 4, 107 / FT, 10). in Josephus (Antiquities i.13.2), isaac is 25 years old, and in some
rabbinic commentary he is 37. The Hebrew ‫ נער‬for “lad” or “young man” (Gen 22:5 and
22:12) is too vague to reveal his age.
49
SKS 18, 168, JJ:87 / KJN 2, 156. Kierkegaard also attaches (SKS 18, 167, JJ:87.a /
KJN 2, 154) a variation in which abraham considers the command to be a punishment for
past sins. there are Jewish interpretations in which the trial is punishment for the treaty with
abimelech (gen 21). this is found, for example, in rabbi samuel ben meir (rashbam), a
twelfth-century talmudist. see abraham sagi, “the meaning of the akedah in israeli Culture
and Jewish tradition,” Israel Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, 1998, pp. 45–60. hasidic interpretation in
the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (though Kierkegaard probably would not
have known this) emphasized Abraham’s “self-nullification,” in which no self-assertion or
reflection could intervene on immediate obedience. Jerome Gellman draws a parallel between
Kierkegaard’s teleological suspension of the ethical and the hasidic notion of “sacred sin”
or “sinning at god’s behest,” in Abraham! Abraham! Kierkegaard and the Hasidim on the
Binding of Isaac, aldershot: ashgate 2003, pp. 73ff. the latter, and shalom spiegel’s The
Last Trial, philadelphia: Jewish publication society 1967, are recommended for scholars
interested in bringing Kierkegaard into conversation with other religions.
50
SKS 18, 177, JJ:115 / KJN 2, 164. Fear and Trembling appears to have been
completed before Kierkegaard discovered in July that regine was engaged. see the historical
introduction, FT, xx.
life.”51 given the intimate nearness of Fear and Trembling to Kierkegaard’s life,
then, perhaps the changing circumstances of the relationship to regine elevated
different parts of the akedah narrative and prompted new interpretations.52
a second way of traversing the distance from the sermon draft to Fear and
Trembling would emphasize the further development in the intervening years of
Kierkegaard’s views on the relevant themes. the themes of suffering, providence
and divine love unfold in the sermon drafts immediately following the contemplated
sermon on the akedah. as Kierkegaard is preparing to break the engagement to
regine he composes drafts with titles like: “On the edification which lies in the
thought that we are always in the wrong before God,”53 “On Christ’s sacrificial
life among us,”54 “God’s tests,”55 and “God’s Fatherly Love.”56 The first, which
will develop into the “ultimatum” in Either/Or, is counterintuitive. Kierkegaard
seems to imagine a heavenly court scene, in which the individual accuses god
for his sufferings, claiming that god was “in the wrong,” that the individual was
“forgotten” and “not provided for” in the economy of god.57 if one could truly be “in
the right” over against god, then we should “despair of providence,” and “all would
be absurdity.”58 One should not be despairing or defiant in the face of suffering, but
like Christ should “suffer innocently” and with trust in providence.59 god’s love is
demonstrated even in suffering and trials, for god is like “the loving father, who
sent his child far away” to grow strong.60 Kierkegaard reiterates: “the reason for the
test was love…the reason for the test was love…god’s tests are grounded in love.”61
although the loving father “suffered, and suffered more, than the one he tested,”
since it would “not be fatherly love” to spare his beloved son from the suffering in
which love is won, he “tested the one he loved most” in “ever more difficult, ever
more strenuous tests” in order to assure him of “the love whose possession was his
51
SKS 22, 303, nB13:46 / JP 6, 6491. in the same year he marvels at how “governance
broadens and radicalizes whatever concerns me personally,” so the peculiarities of his life and
character were “taken over” in order to convey “the infinitely ingenious thought present in the
totality of the authorship” (SKS 21, 352, nB10:185 / JP 6, 6388).
52
it is one thing to say that Kierkegaard’s experiences led him to new perspectives
on the story of the akedah, and another to say (as i have not) that Kierkegaard constructed
Fear and Trembling merely as an elaborate apologia for regine or (less romantically) for
Copenhageners who had watched the scandal unfold on the city stage. i do not mean to offer
a psycho-biographical reading in the reductive mode. the hamann inscription at the front
of Fear and Trembling does suggest that Kierkegaard hoped regine would understand him
better through reading the text, but this does not mean that the arguments in the text were
anything less than earnest.
53
SKS 18, 130, hh:10 /KJN 2, 122, italics and bold in original.
54
SKS 18, 131, hh:11 / KJN 2, 123.
55
SKS 18, 131–2, hh:12 / KJN 2, 123–4.
56
SKS 18, 134–5, hh:17 / KJN 2, 125–6.
57
SKS 18, 130, hh:10 / KJN 2, 122.
58
ibid.
59
SKS 18, 131, hh:11 / KJN 2, 122
60
SKS 18, 131, hh:11 / KJN 2, 123.
61
ibid.
blessedness.”62 such tests “serve to: (1) educate and shape us [and] (2) establish a
deeper communion with god,” and this kind of “upbringing” is a “constant need”
in earthly existence.63 through sufferings we learn that we are “capable of nothing
without god,” and then the presence and the power of god are given, for god is
“powerful in the powerless.”64 the “constant indwelling”65 of the divine is “the aim
of our strivings,”66 and no striving or suffering is too great for an absolute purpose.67
Kierkegaard goes on to reflect in the remaining sermon drafts on how to endure
sufferings Christianly, with hope in the providence of god, and with faith that divine
love is manifest even in and through sufferings.
the themes of suffering, providence, and divine love are also developed in the
works Kierkegaard published in these years. the dissertation On the Concept of
Irony addresses the nihilism of modernity and the isolation of the self from meaning
and meaningful community.68 in the First part of Either/Or, three essays develop
themes that will appear in Fear and Trembling: “the tragic in ancient drama”
examines ancient and modern responses to tragic suffering,69 “silhouettes” concerns
the representability of suffering in art,70 and “the unhappiest man” explores the
alienated consciousness.71 the Judge in the second part has extensive discussions
62
ibid.
63
SKS 18, 131–2, hh:12 / KJN 2, 123–4.
64
SKS 18, 131, hh:11 / KJN 2, 125.
65
SKS 18, 134, hh:17/ KJN 2, 125.
66
SKS 18, 137, hh:21/ KJN 2, 128.
67
SKS 18, 135, hh:19 / KJN 2, 126. there are later entries on “Our communion with
[Christ],” and how Christ “learned from what he suffered” (SKS 18, 141–2, hh:32–4 / KJN
2, 132–2). see also SKS 18, 64–7, ee:190–2 / KJN 2, 59–61.
68
For an interpretation of On the Concept of Irony along these lines, consult K. Brian
soderquist, The Isolated Self: Truth and Untruth in Søren Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Irony,
Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 2007 (Danish Golden Age Studies, vol. 1).
69
in germany at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries
there was a flowering of philosophical aesthetics that viewed tragedy not merely as a literary
genre but as a phenomenon of philosophical import. the three roommates from tübingen—
schelling, hölderlin, and hegel—wrote on aristotle’s Poetics and the attempt through tragedy
to comprehend apparently innocent suffering. see peter szondi, “the notion of the tragic in
schelling, hölderlin, and hegel,” in On Textual Understanding and Other Essays, trans. by
harvey mendelsohn, minneapolis: university of minnesota press 1986.
70
The inner/outer conflict is significant in Either/Or. The first diapsalma imagines
inward suffering made into an object of outward beauty (SKS 2, 27 / EO1, 19); Kierkegaard
claims this aphorism sets forth “the task of the entire work” (Pap. iv a 216 / JP 5, 5629). the
examination of sorrow in “silhouettes” refers to lessing’s Laocoön, and was influenced by the
romantics. schelling writes that “pure suffering can never be an object of art, in Philosophy
of Art, trans. by douglas w. stott, minneapolis: university of minnesota press 1989, p. 64.
For the cultural and intellectual background of this sensibility, see Jay m. Bernstein, Classic
and Romantic German Esthetics, Cambridge: Cambridge university press 2003, and david
e. wellbery, Lessing’s Laocoön: Semiotics and Esthetics in the Age of Reason, Cambridge:
Cambridge university press 1984.
71
see hegel on the “unhappy consciousness,” in The Phenomenology of Mind, trans. by
J.B. Baillie, new York: harper 1967, pp. 251–67.
of depression, despair, and the providential love of god.72 in the “ultimatum” the
unnamed preacher explains that when a person fears “that he is suffering too much
or is being tested beyond his powers,” implicitly he fears “that god’s governance [is]
not wisdom” and “god’s heart [is] not love.” Yet by insisting that we are always in
the wrong before God, the faithful affirm that God is always in the right, “that God’s
love is always greater than our love,” and thus our sufferings are never without
purpose, but express divine solicitude.73 Finally, the Two Upbuilding Discourses,
published five months before Fear and Trembling, are also relevant. The first
concerns persistence in “the expectancy of faith” that “all things must serve for good
those who love god”; the second oscillates between one who suffers humbly and
one who suffers in defiance or despair “that God is not love.”74 this does not show
why Kierkegaard returned to the binding of Isaac, but it shows continued reflection
on themes that will prove vital for Fear and Trembling. when Kierkegaard returns
to the akedah in 1843, he does so not only with a different authorial strategy but also
with a more sophisticated understanding of its themes.
a third way to traverse the distance from the sermon draft to Fear and Trembling
is through careful attention to Kierkegaard’s shifting locations and increasing
familiarity with german intellectual life. to be clear, i do not argue that any of the
following provided a decisive impetus for Fear and Trembling, but merely that all
together reflect the philosophical and theological context out of which Fear and
Trembling emerged. to understand how and why Kierkegaard would write Johannes’
interpretation of abraham, one should understand the other versions of abraham in
circulation in the intellectual discourse of the time. others have shown Johannes’
polemic with danish hegelians such as Johan ludvig heiberg (1791–1860), hans
lassen martensen (1808–84), and rasmus nielsen (1809–84).75 according to Kant,
since it could not be known for certain whether the command had indeed come from
God, one could never be justified on this basis in transgressing the clear dictates of
moral reason. Kant discusses abraham in several works, and “the ethical” in Fear
72
see the discussions of depression (SKS 3, 180–4 / EO2, 184–90. SKS 3, 197–8 / EO2,
204–5. SKS 3, 274 / EO2, 289), despair (SKS 3, 186–227 / EO2, 192–238. SKS 3, 257–8 /
EO2, 270–1), and the contrast between aesthetic self-indulgence in sorrow (SKS 3, 223–8 /
EO2, 232–9) and the person of faith who “does not take god to court but repents” (SKS 3, 227
/ EO2, 237). regarding providence, “to believe in a providence without being disturbed by
contingency” (SKS 3, 245 / EO2, 257) is very nearly a description of the knight of faith, and
the judge believes one should drain the cup of suffering with the knowledge that it is given for
one’s “eternal health” (SKS 3, 172 / EO2, 287); also see SKS 3, 22 / EO2, 12–13. SKS 3, 271 /
EO2, 286. on the love of god, see SKS 3, 207–8 / EO2, 217–18. SKS 3, 227 / EO2, 237. SKS
3, 232–4 / EO2, 242–5.
73
SKS 3, 331 / EO2, 352. SKS 3, 329 / EO2, 351. SKS 3, 331 / EO2, 353.
74
SKS 5, 28 / EUD, 19, alluding to rom 8:28; SKS 5, 55 / EUD, 47.
75
see Jon stewart, Kierkegaard’s Relations to Hegel Reconsidered, new York and
Cambridge: Cambridge university press 2003, p. 335: “the use of hegel in Fear and Trembling
is only pro forma….the polemic with hegel is used by Kierkegaard merely as a means by
which he can criticize heiberg and martensen and publicly disassociate himself from them.”
and Trembling is posed in Kantian (and hegelian) terms.76 the name of abraham
also arose in german discussions of the relation of Christianity and Judaism. does
Abraham represent faith, or only Jewish faith? Schleiermacher affirmed the Pauline
view of abraham as “the prototype of Christian faith,” but also claimed that a radical
“leap” is required from Abraham to Christ, who fulfills of the promise implicit in
abraham.77
hegel in his early years saw abraham as the “true progenitor” of the Jews, their
“unity” and “soul,” “regulating the entire fate” of the nation that issued from him.78
at roughly the same age as Kierkegaard was when he began his authorship in earnest,
hegel wrote a series of essays on abraham and drew them together in The Spirit of
Christianity and its Fate.79 the narrative is set in the postlapsarian world, where
76
immanuel Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, trans. by theodore
greene and hoyt hudson, new York: harper torchbooks 1960, p. 175, and The Conflict of
the Faculties, trans. by mary J. gregor, lincoln, nebraska: university of nebraska press
1992, pp. 113–21. I find no evidence in the journals or in the text to support Ronald Green’s
conjecture that Kant’s “treatment of abraham…may have provided the stimulus for Fear and
Trembling,” but Kantian thought does form a part of the backcloth of the work. see ronald
green, “‘developing’ Fear and Trembling,” in The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard,
ed. by alastair hannay and gordon d. marino, Cambridge: Cambridge university press
1998, p. 270. see also seung-goo lee, “the antithesis between the religious view of ethics
and the rationalistic view of ethics in Fear and Trembling,” in Fear and Trembling, ed. by
robert perkins, macon, georgia: mercer university press 1993 (International Kierkegaard
Commentary, vol. 6), pp. 101–26, for a discussion of whether the view of ethics here is
Kantian or hegelian (and for a helpful bibliography on pp. 102–3, note 3).
77
Friedrich schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, trans. by h.r. mackintosh and J.s.
stewart, edinburgh: t&t Clark 1999, pp. 60–2. Kierkegaard was tutored in The Christian
Faith by h.l. martensen beginning in 1834. it might also be noted that Kierkegaard engaged
in a careful reading in 1842–43 of g.w. leibniz’s Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God,
the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil, trans. by e.m. huggard, ed. by austin Farrer, la
salle, illinois: open Court 1985 where there are brief references to abraham in the preface
(p. 50), § 137 (p. 209), § 164 (pp. 225–6), and §11 of the response to hobbes (pp. 401–2).
see SKS 18, 150, JJ:23–4 / KJN 2, 139–40. SKS 18, 151, JJ:26–30 / KJN 2, 140–1. SKS 18,
153, JJ:36–7 / KSN 2, 142–3, and SKS 19, 385, not13:5–6. SKS 19, 386, not13:8a. SKS 19,
390–4, not13:23–4 (especially). SKS 18, 394, not13:26a. SKS 18, 405, not13:40. SKS 18,
404, not13:42. SKS 18, 409, not13:44. SKS 18, 412, not13:47. Kierkegaard possessed the
following two works by leibniz: Herrn Gottfried Wilhelms, Freyherrn von Leibnitz, Theodicee,
das ist, Versuch von der Güte Gottes, Freyheit des Menschen, und vom Ursprunge des Bösen,
5th revised ed., ed. by Johann Christoph gottsched, hannover and leipzig: im verlage der
Försterischen erben 1763 (ASKB 619) and God. Guil. Leibnitii Opera philosophica, quæ
exstant latina gallica germanica omnia, vols. 1–2, ed. by Johann eduard erdmann, Berlin:
[eichler] 1839–40 (ASKB 620).
78
g.w.F. hegel, Early Theological Writings, trans. by t.m. Knox, philadelphia:
university of pennsylvania press 1948, p. 182.
79
some scholars view this as a decisive turning point for hegel. see richard Kroner’s
“introduction” to hegel, Early Theological Writings, pp. 8–11. see h. s. harris, Hegel’s
Development: Toward the Sunlight, 1770–1801, oxford: Clarendon press 1972, pp. 272–86;
mark C. taylor, “Journeys to moriah: hegel vs. Kierkegaard,” Harvard Theological Review,
vol. 70, nos. 3–4, 1977, pp. 305–26; oliva Blanchette, “the silencing of philosophy,” in Fear
nature in its majestic hostility made “none of the distinctions which love might have
made” but “poured savage devastation over everything.”80 it falls to the primeval
biblical figures to devise their responses to natural evil, and Abraham, to secure the
favor of a deity who will tame nature’s terrors, separates himself from the world in
a “spirit of self-maintenance in strict opposition to everything.”81 “it was through
god alone that abraham came into a mediate relation with the world,” hegel writes,
“the only kind of link with the world possible for him.”82 thus for abraham, cut
off from a vital relationship with the world, “love alone was beyond his power.”83
this absence of love—love that is not merely commanded and dutifully enacted but
springs from inward pathos, what Kant (disapprovingly) and hegel (approvingly)
called “pathological love”—is what hegel considers the decisive failure of Judaism,
exemplified in Abraham and the akedah. his love for isaac was “the one love he
had,” but in the struggle of the sacrifice he found consolation in “the certainty of
the feeling that his love [for isaac] was not so strong as to render him unable to slay
his beloved son with his own hand.”84 this abrahamic consciousness is concretized
in Mosaic law, which, finding the things of the world “without intrinsic worth and
empty, without life,” legislates “a consciousness of one’s annihilation, or deeds
in which man expresses his nullity.”85 when god is pure object, and the world
accessible only through god, the subject dissolves. reconciliation is found in the
spirit of Christianity. god has “placed reconciliation in love and fullness of life,”
and “only through love is the might of objectivity broken.”86 although The Spirit of
Christianity and its Fate was not published, Kierkegaard may have found some of its
claims and concepts in other writings, in lectures or conversations, or as flotsam and
jetsam on the intellectual currents circulating through the universities. regardless, it
illustrates one way in which german intellectuals sought to understand abraham and
his significance in relation to Christianity.
Kierkegaard was also familiar with historical-biblical criticism of the abraham
story. in 1838 he read Julius schaller’s (1807–68) interpretation of d.F. strauss’
(1808–74) Das Leben Jesu.87 in strauss himself are references to hermann samuel
and Trembling, ed. by robert l. perkins, macon, georgia: mercer university press 1993
(International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 6), pp. 29–65.
80
hegel, Early Theological Writings, p. 182.
81
ibid.
82
ibid.
83
ibid.
84
ibid., pp. 186–7; p. 211.
85
ibid., pp. 206–7.
86
ibid., p. 239; p. 247. For more on abraham and Judaism in hegelian thought, see
mark C. taylor, Altarity, Chicago: Chicago university press 1987, pp. 3–33, and robert l.
perkins, “abraham’s silence aesthetically Conceived,” in Fear and Trembling, ed. by robert
l. perkins, macon, georgia: mercer university press 1993 (International Kierkegaard
Commentary, vol. 6), pp. 155–76.
87
Kierkegaard read schaller in the summer of 1838. schaller employs a more
conservative hegelian frame in his critique of strauss, and Kierkegaard notes the view of
self-alienated Judaism: “God is abstract Subject, excluding humanity, and, over against the
absolute Lord, the human being is lost in his finitude.—Consciousness and self-consciousness
Reimarus’ (1694–1768) criticism of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac,
naturalistic speculations on what abraham believed to be the divine command,
and parallels between the births and temptations of Christ and abraham, drawing
on early Jewish views that god tested abraham at the bidding of satan, who then
tempted abraham all the way to moriah.88 source criticism of the pentateuch was by
then well established. schelling, too, notes in his Philosophie der Offenbarung that
Elohim commands abraham to slay isaac and Jehovah stays his hand, as though the
general heathen concept of the divine requires the sacrifice of a child, and the One
god of the hebrews intervenes to save him.89
are incompatible with each other. the absolute is the object of my consciousness…but in
this object of my consciousness i do not also know myself…i rather know myself as utterly
annihilated in this object of the absolute essence. the consciousness of this division, however,
seeks satisfaction by assigning a quite external attribute to god; in the midst of its sorrowing
over the yawning gulf that is fixed between God and humanity it seeks to find consolation
in its special relation to god, in god making a distinction between egypt and israel, which,
however, means attributing to god something that does not correspond to his universal
subjectivity” (SKS 18, 324–5, KK:2 / KJN 2, 297). Julius schaller, Der historische Christus
und die Philosophie Kritik der Grundidee des Werks: das Leben Jesu von Dr. D.F. Strauss,
leipzig: otto wigand 1838 (ASKB 759).
88
d.F. strauss, The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined, trans. by george eliot, new
York: macmillan 1892, p. 45; p. 55; pp. 260–2. much of what Kierkegaard learned of strauss
came through schaller and marheinecke’s lectures in Berlin in 1841–42. see george pattison,
“d.F. strauss: Kierkegaard and radical demythologization,” in Kierkegaard and His
German Contemporaries, tome ii, Theology, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2007
(Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception, and Resources, vol. 6), pp. 233–57.
89
see Friedrich wilhelm Joseph von schelling, Philosophie der Offenbarung, vols. 1–2,
darmstadt: wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1974, pp. 122–32. in this view of the akedah
the consciousness of the redeeming god Jehovah (a rendering of Yhwh, the name of god
revealed in ex 3:13–15) emerges from the conception of a god who would demand child
sacrifice. Elohim is taken as the universal concept of god, available even to the heathen, and
Jehovah as the unique god revealed to moses. Kierkegaard attended schelling’s 1841–42
lectures on revelation in Berlin, but the relation between the delivered and published lectures
is tangled, and it is not clear to me whether Kierkegaard heard schelling’s view of genesis 22.
his notes mention “the sole one as Jehovah,” and the “elohim” of the “mosaic creation story”
(SKS 19, 349 / SBL, 390; SKS 19, 351 / SBL, 393), but not the akedah. in any case, Kierkegaard
was familiar with the differentiations of divine names. in 1837 he refers to Karl Friedrich
göschel’s (1784–1861) “der pantheismus und die genesis” (in Zeitschrift für spekulative
Theologie, ed. by Bruno Bauer, vols. 1–3, Berlin: dümmler 1836–38 (ASKB 354–357), vol. 2,
pp. 184–91), which depicts Elohim as an undifferentiated term for god (SKS 17, 213, dd:1 /
KJN 1, 205), and he associates Jehovah with “concretized monotheism” (SKS 17, 218, dd:7 /
KJN 1, 210; cf. SKS 18, 61, ee:179 / KJN 2, 56 and SKS 18, 26, ee:186 / KJN 2, 57). in Fear
and Trembling the name “Jehovah” is not used, but later the rescuer of isaac is “Jehovah” in
1851 in SKS 24, 374–5, nB24:89 / JP 3, 3020, and in 1853 in SKS 25, 248–9, nB28:41 / JP 2,
2223; also see, from 1854, SKS 26, 323–6, nB34:13 / JP 3, 2624. see tonny aagaard olesen,
“schelling: a historical introduction to Kierkegaard’s schelling,” in Kierkegaard and His
German Contemporaries, tome i, Philosophy, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2007
one should also note that the early 1840s were awash in anti-Jewish sentiment
for political and ideological reasons—left hegelians like ludwig Feuerbach
(1804–72), Bruno Bauer (1809–82), and Karl marx (1818–83) saw Judaism as
“egoistic materialism clothed in religion”90—and there were discussions in 1842–
43 on whether the akedah should be associated with the child-sacrifice rituals
of the surrounding Canaanite religions. pseudo-scholarly works claimed that
cannibalism and blood-drinking had been passed down from abraham to modern
Jews.91 interpreting abraham as egoistic, murderous, and bloodthirsty permitted the
denigration of Judaism and thus the curtailment of Jewish freedoms and powers in
modern prussia.
the origin of Fear and Trembling may be found ultimately in the extraordinary
fertility of Kierkegaard’s imagination—yet he cannot have been unaffected by the
versions of abraham available in the intellectual cultures around him. on may 25,
with the composition of Fear and Trembling underway, Kierkegaard writes that he
had “pumped up a veritable shower bath, and now i have pulled the string and the
90
see robert s. wistrich, “radical antisemitism in France and germany (1840–80),”
Modern Judaism, vol. 15, no. 2, 1995, pp. 109–35, see p. 124. schelling, by contrast, was a
friend to the Jews over against the left hegelians, see werner J. Cahnman, “schelling and
the new thinking of Judaism,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research,
vol. 48, 1981, pp. 1–56. Kierkegaard quotes an excerpt from to Karl Friedrich göschel’s Der
Pantheismus und die Genesis, Zeitschrift für spekulative Theologie, vols. 1–3, ed. by Bruno
Bauer, Berlin: dümmler 1836–38 (ASKB 354–357), vol. 2, pp. 184–91), and Kierkegaard
purchased and read through ludwig Feuerbach’s Das Wesen des Christenthums, 2nd revised
ed., Berlin: otto wigand 1843 (ASKB 488) (where the “egoism” of Judaism is discussed in
the eleventh chapter) in 1844, though he may have been familiar with its claims earlier; the
work was published in 1841 and reissued in 1843. see istván Czakó, “Feuerbach: a malicious
demon in the service of Christianity,” in Kierkegaard and His German Contemporaries,
tome i, Philosophy, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2007 (Kierkegaard Research:
Sources, Reception, and Resources, vol. 6), pp. 25–47, and david James and douglas
moggach, “Bruno Bauer: Biblical narrative, Freedom and anxiety,” in Kierkegaard and His
German Contemporaries, tome ii, Theology, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2007
91
georg Friedrich daumer (1800–75), Der Feuer- und Molochdienst der alten Hebräer,
als urväterlicher, legaler, orthodoxer Cultus der Nation, Brunswick: F. otto 1842; Friedrich
wilhelm ghillany (1807–76), Die Menschenopfer der alten Hebräer, nuremberg: Johann
Leonard Schrag 1842; Max Löwengard (d. 1876), a German rabbi influenced by Schelling,
offered a defense, in Jehova, nicht Moloch, war der Gott der alten Hebräer: Entgegung auf
Ghillanys Werk “Die Menschenopfer der alten Hebräer,” Berlin: h. schultze 1843. there is
a long tradition of interpreting the akedah in light of pagan child-sacrifice. Josephus defended
the akedah against the charge that it showed God’s thirst for human sacrifice, and Philo
debated those who charged that abraham showed no more courage and devotion than other
parents who sacrificed children (Antiquities i.13.4, and De Abrahamo XXXii–XXXvi). some
modern scholars contend that the akedah is a trace of an earlier sacrificial practice—see Jon
d. levenson’s The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child
Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity, new haven: Yale university press 1995—but this is
quite different from daumer and ghillany, who used the contention to advance the argument
that Jews still engaged in child sacrifice, blood-drinking and the like.
ideas are cascading down upon me: healthy, happy, merry, gay, blessed children born
with ease and yet all of them with the birthmark of my personality.”92 the mix of
metaphors is telling. The ideas flowed down upon him from above, but are distinctly
his and distinctly marked as such. Yet Kierkegaard’s abraham did not emerge out
of nothing, but in an environment of scholarly and philosophical interpretation.
illuminating this context does not obscure the insights and accomplishments of his
works, but clarifies them and throws them into sharper relief. When seen amid his
traffic in the intellectual discourse of Denmark and Germany, it becomes at once
more comprehensible that Kierkegaard should write Fear and Trembling, and more
remarkable that he should not interpret genesis 22 according to source-critical
methods, not condemn the akedah as a vestige of barbarism, and not frame the story
of abraham according to the opposition of Judaism and Christianity. Johannes’
abraham, and Kierkegaard’s abraham thus far in the authorship, is the father of
faith for all.
II. On Mount Moriah: Suffering Faith and Fatherly Love
The article thus far has narrated the story of Kierkegaard’s reflection on Abraham and
the sacrifice of Isaac as a “prologue” to the major treatment of the akedah in 1843.
along the way it has sought to provide resources for scholars who approach Fear
and Trembling from various fields and with various interests, and has glanced at the
biographical, literary, and intellectual-historical contexts. now the task is different.
there is no shortage of commentary on Fear and Trembling, and it is not my intention
to make a substantial addition. i will show rather how the “prologue” might inform
the reading of Fear and Trembling and bring into the foreground certain themes or
parts of the text that are often overlooked. three questions are addressed: (1) what is
the purpose of the text, or whose fear and trembling is it? (2) does abraham believe
that isaac will die? (3) what is abraham’s faith in? in response to these questions,
the three themes drawn out of the sermon drafts will be employed: the suffering
of faith, trust in the future (or providence), and the “fatherly love” of god. in each
case, understanding the broader history of Kierkegaard’s abraham gives context and
clarity to Johannes’ abraham.
A. The Purpose of the Text—and Suffering in Faith
one might read Fear and Trembling and conclude that abraham as the father of faith
cannot suffer the condition the title names. writes one interpreter: “if faith ‘contains
doubt as a mastered moment,’ then abraham is not in fear and trembling.”93 Yet
92
B&A, vol. 1, p. 121 / LD, letter 82, p. 154 (dated may 25, 1843).
93
gene Fendt, “whose ‘Fear and Trembling’?” in Fear and Trembling, ed. by robert
l. perkins, macon, georgia: mercer university press 1993 (International Kierkegaard
Commentary, vol. 6), p. 180; p. 182. Fendt appears to be thinking of On the Concept of Irony,
where irony can be a behersket Moment, which the Capel translation (new York: harper
and row 1966) renders “mastered moment” and the hongs’ renders “controlled element.”
the phrase is not found in Fear and Trembling, and to my knowledge is never found in
this to my mind is a substantial misunderstanding. the intention of the text is made
visible in the economic metaphors undergirding the work in the preface, preliminary
Expectoration, and Epilogue. The modern age, says the Preface, offers a fire sale
“in the world of ideas,” peddling doubt and faith at such bargain rates that they lose
their apparent value.94 doubt and faith are presented in parallel because of what they
hold in common. “everyone is unwilling to stop with doubting,” and “everyone
is unwilling to stop with faith,” as though these are easily obtained and of scant
worth.95 Johannes accuses the danish hegelians of hawking counterfeits in the
marketplace of ideas with their claims that philosophy has done away with “infinite
doubt” by discovering a presuppositionless foundation,96 and that modern culture
has surpassed faith and left religion a relic of premodern mythological thinking.97
Johannes calls both doubt and faith a “task for a whole lifetime,” and emphasizes
the sufferings each requires.98 authentic doubt is anxious over what it does not know
(thus “the sufferings of doubt”),99 and authentic faith is gained through an “anxiety
and trembling” that “no man outgrows.”100 anxiety is the awakener of passion, so
Kierkegaard’s corpus in reference to doubt. still, i do not object to the use of the phrase, since
Kierkegaard does draw parallels between irony and doubt; i object to the interpretation, since
a behersket Moment does not eliminate what is mastered, but turns it in upon itself to see the
irony of irony or the doubtfulness of doubt, employing irony and doubt in a way that leads to
repentance. Fendt equates fear and trembling with doubt, but it is more accurate to say that
fear and trembling is an anxiety in the individual in the face of freedom and responsibility
before god. anxiety and doubt are related, not identical terms.
94
SKS 4, 101/ FT, 5.
95
SKS 4, 101 / FT, 7. see also SKS 4, 147 / FT, 53. SKS 4, 156, / FT, 63–4. SKS 4, 171
/ FT, 80–1.
96
hans lassen martensen is the “speculative monitor” of modern philosophy “who
claims to have surpassed doubt (SKS 4, 101 / FT, 5). after a sojourn through the intellectual
centers of prussia, martensen gave lectures in 1837 on philosophical trends and presented
hegelian thought as grounded on systematic doubt. in an unpublished comedy, Kierkegaard
depicts a stand-in for martensen saying, “i repeat, gentlemen, i have gone beyond hegel”
(SKS 17, 288, dd:208 / EPW, 114). see Jon stewart, Kierkegaard’s Relations to Hegel
Reconsidered, pp. 110–1.
97
heiberg, who had lived for years in paris, announced to his countrymen in 1833
that “the educated world” has already understood that “religion belongs to the past, to what
has been traversed,” and that modernity bids us forward, and “those who do not go further
will fall back.” Johan ludvig heiberg, Om Philosophiens Betydning for den nuværende Tid,
in Prosaiske Skrifter, vols. 1–11, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1861–62, vol. 1, p. 396, and
“recension over hr. dr. rothes treenigheds- og Forsoningslære,” in vol. 11, p. 45. see lasse
horne Kjældgaard, “ ‘the peak on which abraham stands’: the pregnant moment of søren
Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling,” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 63, no. 2, 2002,
pp. 303–21.
98
SKS 4, 101 / FT, 7.
99
SKS 4, 196 / FT, 108. in the Two Upbuilding Discourses published before Fear and
Trembling, Kierkegaard writes: “doubt is a deep and crafty passion, but he whose soul is not
gripped by it so inwardly that he becomes speechless is only shamming this passion…doubt is
guileful, on secret paths it sneaks around a person, and when faith is expecting victory, doubt
whispers that this expectancy is a deception” (SKS 5, 31 / EUD, 23).
100
SKS 4, 103 / FT, 7.
Johannes, in “an age that has crossed out passion in order to serve science,” seeks to
cultivate a fearful awareness that one is free before god and individually eternally
responsible.101
the economic metaphor is carried forward in the preliminary expectoration,
with the adage “only one who works gets bread.”102 This is strictly fulfilled only in
the world of spirit, says Johannes, and the “work” is filled with anxiety. When told
by obliging ministers in gilded churches, “what is omitted from abraham’s story is
the anxiety,” scaling abraham downward and diminishing the strenuous standard
he presents.103 properly told, the story illuminates the enormity of the anxieties and
sufferings through which faith is won. as “only the one who draws the knife gets
Isaac,” so “only the one who was in anxiety finds rest.”104 Fear and Trembling is an
appeal for fear and trembling, then, for anxiety and sleeplessness for every single
individual—but also for faith that what appears impossible to the anguished soul
is possible in divine grace. the epilogue imagines spice merchants hurling their
cargoes into the ocean so that the market, which has been saturated with cheap goods,
would raise the prices again. When a birth certificate is the only currency required
to purchase the lineage of abraham and Christ, what is needed is a raising of the
cost. what abraham means for Johannes, then, is that faith is never gained without
suffering and sacrifice, without “the distress and the agony of the paradox.”105
that fear and trembling is a species of anxiety before the absolute requirement—
and thus that abraham must experience fear and trembling—is clear in other journals
and works as well. Kierkegaard writes well before 1843 that fear and trembling is
“not finished or completed” for the person of faith due to the continual possibility
of “backsliding,”106 and fear and trembling “keeps the Christian life ticking.”107 the
Concluding Unscientific Postscript says: “Just as ‘fear and trembling’ is the state
of the teleologically suspended person when god tempts him, so also is anxiety the
teleologically suspended person’s state of mind in that desperate exemption from
fulfilling the ethical.”108 later journals are more direct. the “dialectical suspension”
of faith is “continually in fear and trembling and yet never despairs”;109 “the suffering
Christian…contends ultimately with god,” and thus endures “sufferings in fear and
trembling”;110 and “restlessness and striving and fear and trembling…should obtain
for the entire life.”111 in abraham we see the fear and trembling in which all are called
to “work toward” salvation, the anxiety that presses out the passion of the individual
and prevents faith from growing old and desiccated. since he never possesses a faith
he cannot defy, is never hermetically sealed against sin or despair, abraham can
101
SKS 4, 101–3 / FT, 5–7.
102
SKS 4, 123 / FT, 27.
103
SKS 4, 124 / FT, 28.
104
SKS 4, 123 / FT, 27. SKS 4, 124 / FT, 28. SKS 4, 126 / FT, 31.
105
SKS 4, 158 / FT, 65.
106
Pap. i a 174 / JP 1, 420 (dated June 13, 1836).
107
SKS 18, 14, ee:25 / KJN 2, 9.
108
SKS 7, 244 / CUP1, 269.
109
SKS 20, 382, nB5:30 / JP 1, 255.
110
SKS 22, 64, nB11:113 / JP 1, 974.
111
SKS 23, 347, nB19:27 / JP 1, 77, my emphases.
never cease the work of faith, which ever strives in fear and trembling. Fear and
Trembling reconstructs the tensions, then, of James 2 and philippians 2. it shows
that faith is a rare treasure, purchased in the utmost suffering and strife, for one must
“work out” one’s salvation “in fear and trembling” even as one trusts simultaneously
in the miraculous provision of god.
nor is anxiety the only suffering that abraham endures in faith. in the movement of
resignation he “drains the deep sadness of life,” “the pain of renouncing everything,”
and sacrificing his beloved.112 in the movement of faith he suffers isolation, ridicule,
and the “martyrdom of misunderstanding”;113 unlike the tragic hero, whose sufferings
are over and vanquished, abraham remains in constant testing and “sleeplessness.”114
he does not lament his sufferings or grandstand against the injustice of heaven,
but shows the “humble courage” of faith.115 For Johannes, Abraham is a figure of
suffering, a figure through whom he understands what it means to have faith in the
midst of suffering.
B. What Abraham Believes—Trust in the Future
what exactly does abraham expect to happen? according to John lippitt, although
abraham is willing to surrender isaac, he expects that god will intervene and not
allow him to perform the sacrifice.116 For evidence, lippitt points to Johannes’
contention that even as Abraham prepared to sacrifice Isaac he had faith that God
would not actually require isaac.117 this turns the journey to moriah, however, into
an elaborate performance; and since abraham never truly believed he would lose
isaac, there can be no true resignation and no faith that what is lost will be restored.
here the context of new testament interpretation is illuminating, especially the
view in hebrews 11 that abraham believed isaac would be resurrected, if necessary.
Johannes must mean that abraham believed god would not ultimately take isaac.
god had promised that abraham would become through isaac the father of nations,
so abraham trusted that in some way isaac would be saved. this does not mean
that abraham believed isaac would not die—in fact Johannes is clear on this point.
abraham was “surprised” at god’s intervention. it would also have been possible
for isaac to be killed and yet “god could give him a new isaac, could restore to life
112
SKS 4, 135 / FT, 40. resignation is a shirt “sewn in tears,” and each “must sew it
himself” (SKS 4, 140 / FT, 45).
113
SKS 4, 168–71 / FT, 77–80. Cf. the “martyrdom of misunderstanding”
(Uforstaaelighedens Martyrium) with the “martyrdom of ridicule” (meest forbittrende
Martyrium, det Redicules) in SKS 22, 239, nB12:157 / JP 6, 6493.
114
SKS 4, 169 / FT, 78.
115
SKS 4, 164 / FT, 73. more might be said, especially in light of the discussion of the
tragic in german philosophical aesthetics, about the tragic hero and the knight of faith and
their differing responses to suffering.
116
John lippitt, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Kierkegaard and Fear and
Trembling, london and new York: routledge 2003.
117
ibid., pp. 135–75.
the one sacrificed.”118 This confidence in the power of resurrection is all too often
overlooked in the interpretation of Fear and Trembling.
Lippitt ascribes a specific expectation to Abraham, but an expectation should
not be confused with faith; whatever the means he might have imagined, or whether
or not he imagined any means at all, abraham believed in a god whose power is
unbounded by death, a god for whom calculations of probability mean nothing. this
is what Johannes means by the absurd; as he writes, the person of faith believes “by
virtue of the absurd, by virtue of the fact that for God all things are possible.”119 even
when “human calculation ceased” and “the understanding” was “convinced of the
impossibility, still “in the infinite sense it was possible” for God.120 thus abraham
had “trust in the future”; he believed that god would provide what he had promised,
for god’s providential power is not circumscribed by death.
C. The Subject of Faith—the Love of God
it is possible to discuss Fear and Trembling, and comprehend something of the

symbolic world of the text and the relationships between its terms, and never consider
what abraham’s faith is in. this may be due to the limited horizon of Johannes, who
(if taken at his word) does not have faith and therefore can say little of its interior
movements. Yet three common models of faith can be quickly rejected. abrahamic
faith cannot be mere intellectual propositional assent; abraham is the father of faith
not for his confession of a creed, but for a faith that moves in passion beyond the
boundary “where thought stops.”121 also, as alastair hannay notes, abrahamic faith
cannot be in god’s mere existence.122 the knight of resignation may believe in god’s
existence, yet not have faith. nor can faith be merely in an eternal afterlife. abraham
believed that isaac would be restored to him in this life.
a part of the answer has already been shown above: abraham had faith that
all things are possible for god. But can no more be said? did abraham believe in
nothing more than a power outstripping other powers, or a single intention of god
to give him progeny? hannay writes that abraham’s faith “is not that he believes in
god’s existence, but that he believes that god wants to give him back his opportunity
to exercise paternal love.”123 Yet why would god desire such a thing? what must be
the character of the god in whom abraham trusts? here the draft sermon on the
akedah is instructive, with its emphasis on abraham’s assurance of “god’s grace and
love,” as well as the following drafts on the “Fatherly love” at work providentially
in “god’s tests.” in fact, when Fear and Trembling is properly interpreted, it is clear
that Abraham trusts, as Johannes does not, in divine love and its fulfillment in a
world of trial and suffering.
118
SKS 4, 130–1 / FT, 35–6.
119
SKS 4, 141 / FT, 46–7, my emphasis.
120
ibid.
121
SKS 4, 147 / FT, 53.
122
alastair hannay, Kierkegaard, london and new York: routledge 1982, p. 74.
123
Ibid., p. 75. Hannay also defines faith as “belief that the projects on which one has set
one’s heart are possible even when they prove humanly impossible to carry through” (p. 79).
Faith and love are imbricated in the text, and the knights of resignation and faith
are differentiated by their loves. The first is Abraham’s “fatherly love” for Isaac.124
Both the knight of faith and the knight of infinite resignation love Isaac with the
“whole soul”;125 the ethical requires that the father love the son more than himself,
and without such love the surrender of Isaac is not “sacrifice” but murder.126 when
the knight of resignation confronts the impossibility of his love’s fulfillment, it
“assume[s] a religious character” and is “transfigured” into the love of God.127 he
removes his love to eternity, “renouncing” it outwardly in the temporal world.128
in contrast, the knight of faith maintains his love in the face of the impossible and
believes in its fulfillment “by virtue of the absurd”; in fact his love is strengthened, for
it is grounded and filled with divine love.129 In the first discourse published alongside
Fear and Trembling, abraham’s intercession for sodom is held forth as an exemplar
of love for the neighbor.130 though it may lead the knight to transgress the ethical,
the absolute love of God never siphons off the love of others, but flows into it and
makes it an expression of the absolute love.131 For Johannes, it is “this love for isaac
that makes his act a sacrifice by its paradoxical contrast to his love for God.”132
the failure of the knight of resignation is no dereliction of love for god. the knights
are not differentiated on this point, for the love of god is in both. god “demands
absolute love,” and even though Johannes cannot make the second movement of
faith, his resignation is an act and expression of his love for god.133 “what i gain
in resignation is my eternal consciousness,” and “my eternal consciousness is my
love for god.”134 it is for the love of god that he renounces the world, and gains his
“eternal consciousness in blessed harmony with [his] love for the eternal being.”135
Furthermore, “i can still save my soul,” Johannes writes, as long as “my concern that
i achieve earthly happiness” is surpassed by “concern that my love of god conquer
within me.”136 although he never reaches abrahamic faith, the knight of resignation
can be “true to his love” of god, just as abraham “remained true to his love” and
forgot the “suffering in the love.”137
The other significant love—and theologically the most decisive—is the love of
god for the individual. on this the knights are differentiated. the knight of resignation
124
SKS 4, 127 / FT, 31.
125
SKS 4, 166 / FT, 74.
126
SKS 4, 150–1 / FT, 57.
127
SKS 4, 138 / FT, 43.
128
SKS 4, 141 / FT, 46.
129
SKS 4, 130 / FT, 35.
130
SKS 5, 76 / EUD, 66.
131
SKS 4, 165 / FT, 74. the absolute love of god gives the ethical “a completely different
expression, a paradoxical expression, such as, for example, that love to god may bring the
knight of faith to give his love to the neighbor” (SKS 4, 162 / FT, 70).
132
SKS 4, 165 / FT, 74.
133
SKS 4, 165 / FT, 73.
134
SKS 4, 142–3 / FT, 48.
135
ibid.
136
SKS 4, 143 / FT, 49.
137
SKS 4, 207 / FT, 120.
may assent to the proposition that god is love, but this is not faith. Johannes explains
his resignation thus:
i cannot make the movement of faith…i am convinced that god is love; for me this
thought has a primal lyrical validity. when it is present to me, i am unspeakably happy;
when it is absent, i long for it more vehemently than the lover for the object of his love.
But i do not have faith; this courage i lack. To me God’s love, in both the direct and the
converse sense, is incommensurable with the whole of actuality.138
here as elsewhere, Johannes is careful and precise in his language. he is “convinced”

by the “thought” that god is love, but he cannot shut his eyes and leap into the absurd.
this is the passive language of rational persuasion, not the passional language of
faith’s courageous action. Johannes is persuaded of the matter, and joyful when
the thought is present, yet his belief has only a “lyrical validity” since he has not
determined himself for the belief that god is love. Furthermore, Johannes does
not believe that God’s love is fulfilled in the world. In resignation the “thought” or
ideality of god’s love is estranged from the “actuality” of the world; the knight of
resignation does not believe that god’s love will provide for him in the world, when
ordinary rationality declares it impossible. “god is love and continues to be that
for me,” he writes, yet “in the world of time god and i cannot talk with each other,
we have no language in common.”139 the knight of resignation “loves god without
faith,” while the knight of faith “loves god in faith.”140 abrahamic faith is “faith for
this life…specifically for this life,”141 for “faith is convinced that god is concerned
about the smallest things.”142 even in suffering and trial, abraham has faith that the
love of god prevails in the actual world. Furthermore, as one who loves and rests in
the love of god, abraham gains the “communion” and “indwelling” that the sermon
drafts proclaimed were “the aim of our strivings”143—for abraham, Johannes writes,
becomes god’s “friend”144 and “confidant.”145
a glance at Kierkegaard’s contemporaneous writings strengthens the argument
that the faith embodied in abraham is a faith in god’s love. an earlier draft of the
Exordium considers whether the ordeal would have been more difficult for Abraham
if he had brought it on himself through his own sinfulness. Yet “abraham’s ordeal
was the most difficult” because “insofar as doubt arose in his soul, it was only about
god’s love.”146 punishment, in other words, bears at least a certain logic, and if
the akedah were a matter of punishment then abraham could blame himself for
transgressing the righteousness of god. in the story as told, however, the seemingly
arbitrary and inexplicable nature of the divine command casts the love of god into
138
SKS 4, 129 / FT, 34, emphases added.
139
SKS 4, 130 / FT, 35.
140
SKS 4, 132 / FT, 37.
141
SKS 4, 116 / FT, 20.
142
SKS 4, 129 / FT, 34.
143
SKS 18, 132, hh:12 / KJN 2, 124.
144
SKS 18, 135, hh:19 / KJN 2, 126.
145
SKS 4, 168 / FT, 77.
146
Pap. iv B 66 / FT, supplement, pp. 246–7.
doubt. the task for abraham is to believe in god’s love even when it requires him
to suffer horribly and without apparent justification—and not only to assent to the
“thought” of divine love, but to believe and act in accordance with the belief that
god’s love is so commensurable with actuality that isaac will actually be restored
and the divine promise fulfilled. In faith the individual holds divine love together
with the actual world of sin and suffering. “the important thing,” he writes in a
journal, “is to be able to have faith in god with respect to lesser things…to draw god
into the actuality of this world.”147 that “all things serve for good those who love
God” is affirmed in both of the upbuilding discourses published before Fear and
Trembling.148 the discourses published simultaneously with Fear and Trembling—
two of which are devoted to love’s overcoming of sin—also make this claim. when
“abandoned by everything” else,149 the person of faith believes that god’s love will
not abandon him, that “god’s love…loves him in the ordeal.”150 the connection
between “testing” and divine love is again explicit: through trials and sufferings the
person of faith “learn[s] the most beautiful thing of all, the most blessed—that god
love[s] him, because the one god tests he loves.”151 indeed “no favor, no concern,
no insult, no spiritual trial, neither things present nor things to come can wrench a
person” away from the love of god.152 the discourses pronounce in simpler terms
what the draft sermons had articulated, and what Johannes puts in the language of
commensurability: that faith rests in the assurance that god’s love is providentially
fulfilled and at work in the world of suffering and trial.
if this is what abrahamic faith is faith in, then the intention of Fear and Trembling
is not to justify morally repugnant behavior, but to underscore the suffering in striving
for faith and thus to provoke the single individual to the righteous anxiety of absolute
responsibility. it is not enough to rest in the ethical and the rational; the clamor of
the crowd in the universal can drown out the divine call to the individual, and the
illusion of self-sufficiency can conceal the need for the divine. Fear and Trembling
seeks to illuminate the insufficiency of the ethical, rational, and universal, to awaken
the anguished conscience for repentance, and to point through repentance to faith in
the impossible possibility of redemption. the immediate object of abraham’s faith
is the restoration of isaac, but he believes in the restoration because he believes in
the character of a loving God and the fulfillment of divine love even in a world of
sin and suffering.
While Kierkegaard is clear later that Abrahamic faith cannot be specifically in
the historical event of Christ (as examined below), insofar as it believes in the love
of god in actuality it adumbrates the form of faith in the atonement.153 three journal
entries from the weeks in which Kierkegaard was writing Fear and Trembling show
the relation between faith and divine love in the atonement. “Certainly god is love,”
147
SKS 18, 181, JJ:124 / KJN 2, 168.
148
SKS 5, 28, / EUD, 19. SKS 5, 51 / EUD, 42 (see rom 8:28).
149
SKS 5, 80 / EUD, 71.
150
SKS 5, 93 / EUD, 87.
151
SKS 5, 103–4 / EUD, 98.
152
SKS 5, 106 / EUD, 101 (see rom 8:38).
153
Pap. X–6 B 68 / JP 6, 6598. Pap. X–6 B 80–1 / JP 1, 11–12.
Kierkegaard writes in one, “but not love to sinners. he is so only in Christ, i.e.,
the atonement.”154 another states that a person “by repenting” can “remain in a
relationship of love to god,” and if this repentance is characterized “at its extremity
as suffering” it remains fundamentally a human act and not a resting in god and
god’s loving provision.155 “therefore the person who believes in the atonement is
greater than the most profoundly repentant person.”156 loving god in repentance, in
other words, is distinct from having faith in god’s love in the atonement.157 Johannes
is capable of the former, which arises when ethics comes to the end of itself; he lacks
the faith for the latter, which has left behind all human effort and calculation to rest
in the impossible gift of god.
the third journal entry illustrates how Fear and Trembling simultaneously
obscures and alludes to the atonement. it reads: “the highest expression that the
ethical view of life has is to repent, and i must always repent—but this is precisely
the self-contradiction of the ethical through which the paradox of the religious
breaks forth, i.e., the atonement, to which faith corresponds.”158 “the paradox of the
religious” is not repentance, but the atonement, and faith in the paradox is ultimately
faith in the atonement. this entry is taken up in Fear and Trembling, where Johannes
notes he has avoided reference to “sin and its reality,” because sin (like faith) lies
beyond the “immediate categories” in which he has sought to understand and
represent abraham.159 Yet “as soon as sin emerges, ethics founders precisely on
repentance, for repentance is the highest ethical expression, but precisely as such
it is the deepest ethical self-contradiction.”160 in the transfer from the journal to the
pseudonymous text, the atonement has been removed from view. thus Fear and
Trembling does not tell the end of the story, does not transport the reader through
the suffering of striving for faith to the atonement, but leaves the reader in fear and
trembling. The one who repents may find the paradox of the atonement “break[ing]
forth” through repentance as divine provision, as gift, as god’s love to sinners in
Christ.161 abraham’s hope in the return of isaac was grounded in his faith that the
love of God is commensurable with actuality; faith’s final hope is in the atonement.
154
SKS 18, 176, JJ:112 / KJN 2, 162.
155
SKS 18, 181, JJ:123 / KJN 2, 167–8.
156
ibid.
157
ibid. the SKS notes point to the augsburg Confession and the antecedence of
confession to the belief in forgiveness: “[absolution] actually consists of these two parts. the
first is true contrition and grief, so that the conscience is indeed terrified when it has confessed
the sin. the second is faith…which believes that sins are forgiven through Christ, and which
consoles the conscience and frees it of terror. this must be followed by good works….” (Den
rette uforandrede Augsburgske Troesbekjendelse med sammes, af Ph. Melanchthon forfattede,
Apologie, trans. and ed. by andreas gottlob rudelbach, Copenhagen: wahlske Boghandlings
Forlag 1825 (ASKB 386)), rendered in KJN 2, 493–4. see Pap. viii–1 a 675 / JP 2, 1216.
158
SKS 18, 179, JJ:119 / KJN 2, 166, my emphasis. Kierkegaard also calls atonement “the
most profound expression of repetition,” in Pap. iv, B117, 294 / FT, supplement, p. 313.
159
SKS 4, 188 / FT, 98, note.
160
ibid.
161
SKS 18, 179, JJ:119 / KJN 2, 166.
in summary, Fear and Trembling shows striking conceptual innovations. it also
shows substantial thematic continuities with ten years of previous references to
abraham. the paradoxes of romans 4 and hebrews 11, the tensions of James 2
and philippians 2, and the three themes drawn out of the draft sermons of 1840–41,
weave together in Fear and Trembling and its portrayal of abrahamic faith. this
article has examined Abraham specifically and not Fear and Trembling as a whole,
and there are other themes and many other legitimate interpretations that might
have been considered. Yet the biographical, literary, and historical context presented
here gives greater intelligibility to Fear and Trembling and what it intends to effect.
Johannes de silentio does not treat genesis 22 as a part of a source-critical puzzle,
nor an artifact from a culture of child-sacrifice, nor a demonstration of Judaism’s
alienated hostility; he does not interrogate the text, but projects the narrative and
with it interrogates the reader. abraham is presented as the “guiding star of the
anguished,”162 a figure whose compelling alienness, and the horror religiosus of his
ordeal, for a society that has commoditized faith and dissolved its value, reveals the
cost of faith in strife and suffering.163 For a text on faith, Fear and Trembling is shot
through with talk of love. abraham had faith and love, or faith in love, so much faith
in the love of god that he surrendered his beloved son and believed that the god of
love would restore him. He believed in the fulfillment of divine love even in a world
of trial and suffering—and this was the source of his confidence that the promise
would be fulfilled. Abraham’s surrender of Isaac and faith in his return reflects on
Kierkegaard’s relationship to regine, but also represents the fundamental form of
Christian repentance and belief in an atonement that renews all things.
III. Departing Mount Moriah: Abraham as a Jew
the story of Kierkegaard’s engagement with abraham cannot conclude with Fear
and Trembling. I will briefly characterize the comments on Abraham in the journals
and published works through the remainder of Kierkegaard’s life and authorial
career. then i will consider what is new in the “new Fear and trembling” entries
from 1850 to 1853.
after 1843 the name of abraham vanishes from the journals until 1848. Fewer
years—but many published pages, including 13 upbuilding discourses, The Concept
of Anxiety, Prefaces, and Philosophical Fragments—pass before abraham reappears
in the published works. Before the “new Fear and trembling” entries, three trends
are discernible in the references to Abraham in the journals and works. The first
follows the reading established thus far and comprehends Abraham as a figure of
suffering and faith, the second shows Kierkegaard’s increasingly scathing critique
of then-contemporary Christendom, and the third locates abraham in precisely the
Jewish–Christian dichotomy which Kierkegaard has avoided heretofore.
162
SKS 4, 117 / FT, 21.
163
SKS 4, 154 / FT, 61.
the association of abraham with faithfulness in suffering is renewed in “a
leper’s self-Contemplation” in Stages on Life’s Way.164 the story tells of two lepers,
Simon and Manasse, with an elixir that turns the signs of their affliction inward.
manasse rushes to avenge himself on the townsfolk by breathing his contagion
upon them, while simon will “voluntarily bare my fate, freely suffer necessity,” and
remain in exile “to save others.”165 abraham’s name is evoked four times in a brief
passage, associating him with divine affliction, with the contrast between inward
suffering and external appearance, and with the transformation of personal suffering
for the good of others.166 in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript the desire to
be “tried in such great sufferings as abraham” is laudable but misconceived, since
ethical and religious individuals should understand that suffering need not be sought
externally but emerges essentially from the conditions of existence.167 abraham
is a vivid, clarifying example of one called to sacrifice, yet all ethical-religious
inwardness recapitulates the surrender of isaac in form. each individual is called in
self-transformation to surrender finite attachments and then regain the finite through
the absolute relation to the absolute—and “the action of inwardness is suffering,
because the individual is unable to transform himself.”168 in Upbuilding Discourses
in Various Spirits, abraham’s departure from his ancestral homeland symbolizes the
sufferings of all who become strangers by leaving their comfort behind to follow
the call of god.169 in an 1850 journal entry, abraham is “an eternal prototype of
the religious man” because he left the land of his ancestors, and “to be an alien, to
be in exile, is precisely the characteristic suffering of the religious man.”170 and
in For Self-Examination abraham illustrates what it means to “die to” [Afdøe], to
“deprive oneself of the dearly desired one, to wound selfishness at the root,” so “the
spirit who gives life can come.”171 abraham died to that way of being a self that is
not wholly given over to the absolute. his action was a death unto itself, a death
to himself, and as isaac was restored to life after death so too was abraham. so
164
SKS 6, 217–19 / SLW, 232–4. given its references to abraham, it is not surprising
that “a leper’s self-Contemplation” was conceived as Kierkegaard was writing Fear and
Trembling. with it he meant to expel the “dark thoughts and black passions still dwell[ing]
within” (SKS 18, 179, JJ:118–118.a / KJN 2, 166). the cries to “Father abraham” and “god
of abraham” become Kierkegaard’s pleas to transform his suffering for a higher telos. Stages
emerged in a complex process, starting with a story (“Unhappy Love”) first intended to
juxtapose “the seducer’s diary” (Pap. iv a 215 / JP 5, 5628). it became “guilty/not guilty”
in 1843 (SKS 18, 177–9, JJ:115 / KJN 2, 164–6). this passage seems to have been drafted in
1844 (Pap. v B 126); Stages on Life’s Way appeared on april 30, 1845.
165
SKS 6, 217–19 / SLW, 232–4.
166
SKS 6, 218 / SLW, 234. Jesus visits the home of “simon the leper” in mt 26:6–13 and
mk 14:3–9.
167
For references to abraham in Concluding Unscientific Postscript, see SKS 7, 242–4 /
CUP1, 267–9. SKS 7, 395 / CUP1, 434–5; in Fear and Trembling, see SKS 7, 238–41 / CUP1,
261–5.
168
SKS 7, 394 / CUP1, 433.
169
SKS 8, 205 / UD, 102.
170
SKS 23, 295, nB18:64 / JP 4, 4650.
171
SKS 13, 101 / FSE, 79.
Abraham long remains a figure of suffering for Kierkegaard, of dying to oneself in
the ultimate sacrifice and yet trusting in the God, described in Romans 4, “who gives
life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.”
the second trend in the later references is their use in Kierkegaard’s increasingly
censorious account of then contemporary Christendom. in his journal in 1848 he
complains that everyone who suffers pain or loss is instantly given the mantle of
Job, abraham, or Christ in gethsemane—and Christians thus excuse themselves
from the frightful voluntary suffering of sacrificing themselves for the sake of
the truth. “men want to be Christians,” he writes, “but they do not want to hear
what Christianity in truth is,” and they “hate the person who makes it strenuous
for them to be Christians.”172 as he writes in 1849, “every person is so eager to
be flattered with the fancy that he has suffered something extraordinary” that the
quotidian suffering of the bourgeoisie is conflated with that of “religious prototypes”
like abraham and paul.173 in Practice in Christianity, written in 1848 and published
in 1850, what gave Abraham’s suffering its “infinitely intensified strain” was “the
responsibility” of taking isaac’s life himself.174 By removing the voluntary from
the religious prototypes, we “consign to total oblivion what is to be understood by
authentic Christian suffering,” and make the sufferer of misfortune a “counterpart to
abraham.”175 In 1852 Kierkegaard finds this confusion even in the early church, that
if a woman “patiently accepts” the loss of a child, then “she ranks with abraham,
for in intention she was willing.”176 the concern is not merely that preachers gratify
their listeners by likening their lives to the legendary trials of the patriarchs and
apostles. it is rather that Christendom has lost its sense of the suffering intrinsic
to its own nature. By equating involuntary sufferings with the sufferings of faith,
Christians excuse themselves from the voluntary sufferings that faith is called to
undertake in the “collision” of its witness with the world. When no actual sacrifice is
made for faith, claims of willingness to sacrifice inevitably ring hollow.
this leads to the third trend, which comprehends abraham in the distinction
between Judaism and Christianity. recall the journal entry from 1839, amid
reflections on the relationship between the forms of religion, in which Abraham
is “only tested” and his son is “spared,” while God actually sacrificed the Son.177
as shown, numerous prominent intellectuals in the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries employed abraham to represent and caricature Jewish legalism and
alienation. Kierkegaard, from the draft sermon on the akedah in 1840–41 to Fear
and Trembling in 1843 to Stages and Postscript in 1845 and 1846, has framed the
172
SKS 20, 353, nB4:143 / JP 1, 374.
173
SKS 22, 310, nB13:60 / JP 4, 4641. see SKS 22, 352, nB14:15 / JP 1, 1081 for
reference to sarah’s suffering.
174
SKS 12, 116 / PC, 108.
175
ibid.
176
SKS 24, 185, nB22:149 / JP 4, 4665, remarking on Chrysostom in august neander,
Der Heilige Johannes Chrysostomus und die Kirche, besonders des Orients, in dessen
Zeitalter, vols. 1–2, Berlin: F. dümmler 1822. Kierkegaard’s view of Chrysostom in 1851
was generally positive; see SKS 24, 174, nB22:138 / JP 1, 575. SKS 24, 187, nB22:155 / JP
6, 6716. SKS 24, 207, nB23:4 / JP 3, 2757.
177
SKS 18, 62, ee:184 / KJN 2, 57.
Abraham narrative in profound conflicts and oppositions—but the opposition of
Judaism and Christianity has been conspicuous by its absence. abraham has served
as a representative of faith and its suffering. now in the later journals abrahamic and
Christian faith will be distinguished in two ways, first in terms of the content of their
beliefs and second in terms of the nature of the sufferings each endures.
the differentiation of the content of abrahamic and Christian faith is made clear
in 1850 when Kierkegaard responded in his journals to a work by magnús eiríksson
interpreting Fear and Trembling.178 in an extensive, never-published response,
Kierkegaard explains that “abraham is called the father of faith” because “he has
the formal qualifications of faith, believing against the understanding.”179 still,
Kierkegaard says, “it has never occurred to the Christian Church that abraham’s
faith had the content of Christian faith which relates essentially to a later historical
event.”180 the absurd in Fear and Trembling and the paradox in Postscript should
not be confused; the first concerns the manner in which faith is believed, “the purely
personal definition of existential faith,” and Abraham is capable of this; the second
concerns what is believed, faith’s “relation to a doctrine.”181 although “abraham’s
faith is the formal definition of faith,” it is “clear that the content of his faith cannot
be Christian—that Jesus Christ has been in existence.”182 in other words, abraham
believes “by virtue of the absurd,” but does not “believe the absurd”; he believes
paradoxically, but not the paradox.183
the second distinction between abrahamic and Christian faith concerns the
suffering intrinsic to each—and this is made clear in Christian Discourses in 1848
when Kierkegaard contrasts the sufferings of Job with those of the apostles. “the
lord took away everything” from Job, but the apostles voluntarily “left everything
and followed” Christ.184 Job illustrates “Jewish piety,” which does not require the
individual to abandon everything but reconciles the individual to unavoidable
loss by preserving the individual’s belief in the love of god. the choice of Job
as representative is a significant one, since Abraham would have presented a
stronger challenge to Kierkegaard on this point. Abraham is called to sacrifice Isaac
voluntarily, and yet this was only a “testing,” and he was not asked for “everything”
but “only isaac.”185 voluntariness is the heart of the distinction between Job and the
apostles. the differences between abraham and the apostles are two: that abraham
was asked for something and not everything, and that he did not actually make the
178
magnús eiríksson (1806–81), as theophilus nicolaus, wrote Er Troen et Paradox og
“i Kraft af det Absurde”? et Spørgsmaal foranledigt ved “Frygt og Bæven, af Johannes de
silentio,” besvaret ved Hjelp af en Troes-Ridders fortrolige Meddelelser, til fælles Opbyggelse
for Jøder, Christne og Muhamedanere af bemeldte Troes-Ridders Broder Theophilus Nicolaus,
Copenhagen: Chr. steen & søn 1850 (ASKB 831). see SKS 23, 177–8, nB17:21 / JP 3,
3130.
179
Pap. X–6 B 68 / JP 6, 6598.
180
ibid.
181
Pap. X–6 B 80 / JP 1, 11.
182
Pap. X–6 B 81 / JP 1, 12.
183
Pap. X–6 B 80 / JP 1, 11.
184
SKS 10, 189–90 / CD, 178–9. see SKS 10, 114 / CD, 102–3.
185
SKS 10, 189–90 / CD, 178–9; see mt 19:27.
sacrifice. Yet this means that Abraham cannot stand as the image of Christian faith,
and that the sacrifice of Isaac cannot suffice as a symbol of specifically Christian
suffering.
It is difficult to say whether this represents a new understanding of Christianity
for Kierkegaard or an adaptation of his communicative strategy, so that views
previously held in abeyance are now expressed directly—or perhaps both. one
cannot see Johannes de silentio equivocating that only isaac was on the altar, and it
was merely a test. Johannes might have said that Abraham did sacrifice Isaac in the
moment he determined to be obedient to the divine order. For the later Kierkegaard,
in contrast, the metaphorical power of the akedah is diluted because it is only a
momentary test, not a continual suffering in the sacrifice of an entire life for the
sake of witness. especially in 1850–51, Kierkegaard’s vision of Christian suffering
becomes more radical and insistent. as he writes, “there is no initial stage in which
there was suffering, following by a cessation of suffering already in this life, and a
present state of pure happiness.”186 this would seem to condemn the abraham story,
in which the suffering does, after all, end. “Christianly,” in Kierkegaard’s view,
“suffering is the continual constituent in this life; if suffering disappears, this is not
perfection but apostasy from the essentially Christian.”187
that the distinction between the two faiths is drawn along these lines is clear in
an 1852 entry entitled “Christianity—Judaism.”188 Kierkegaard writes: “abraham
draws the knife—then he gets isaac again; it was not carried out in earnest; the
highest earnestness was ‘the test,’ but then once again it became the enjoyment of
life.”189 New Testament figures like Mary and Paul are not merely tested, however;
they surrender everything in actuality. the comparison with mary is intriguing, for
she gave her son up in no mere “test.” “the sword did not hang by a horsehair over
the virgin mary’s head in order to ‘test’ her to see if she would keep the obedience of
faith in the moment—no, it actually did penetrate her heart, stabbed her heart—but
then she got a claim upon eternity, which abraham did not get.”190 likewise paul
“actually did suffer everything, he actually did come to weep and cry out while the
world rejoiced, he actually was crucified—but then he got a claim upon eternity,
which abraham did not get.”191 in other words, Judaism and Christianity frame the
cosmic drama of existence in a distinctly different manner. Both envision two acts of
suffering and restoration. For the Jew, both are encompassed within earthly life, as
abraham or Job suffer through the testing and are rewarded for their faithfulness with
even greater blessing than before. For the Christian, the first act is an existence of
sheer suffering and fills the whole of earthly existence—and the restoration does not
begin until eternity. In this way, Kierkegaard believes, Christianity is both “infinitely
186
SKS 23, 348, nB19:27 / JP 1, 77.
187
SKS 23, 348, nB19:27 / JP 1, 77.
188
SKS 25, 32–4, nB26:25 / JP 2, 2222.
189
SKS 25, 32, nB26:25 / JP 2, 2222.
190
ibid. see also the comparison of mary and sarah in SKS 24, 456–7, nB25:30 / JP 3,
2672. Mary was immediately willing to make whatever sacrifice the Spirit required of her; she
actually did suffer through her son’s death, and found no recompense or restoration in this life.
mary shows what it is “in faith to become nothing, a mere instrument.”
191
SKS 25, 32, nB26:25 / JP 2, 2222.
more rigorous” and “infinitely more gentle,” because it requires an existence of
“sheer suffering, and dying to the world” and promises communion with god that is
infinite and everlasting.192
the old testament notion of a “test” is a “child’s category,” he writes. Christianity
is “a matter of being a man, Judaism of being a child.”193 though mild for their time,
such terms make us cringe. Kierkegaard evidently believes that the ancient patriarchs
held out “no hope of eternity,” and he acknowledges this must have made the pain
more acute. Yet when the eternal becomes known to the Christian it requires “the
loss of the things of this earth—the eternal does not come without this pain.”194 the
Christian’s task is to become spirit, “molded and transformed so that one is consoled
solely by eternity,” and “to become spirit is the most agonizing of all the sufferings,
even more agonizing than ‘the test.’ ”195 the Christian must “surrender the things
of this earth” before he can “receive the consolation of eternity,” but “it is in this
suffering that eternity comes into being for me.”196 Kierkegaard has articulated a
model of Christian suffering for which abraham cannot be the exemplar, so he is
dislodged and relativized as a symbol of Jewish faith, while figures like Paul and
mary become Christian exemplars.
With these things in mind, we are finally prepared for the entries from 1851 to
1853. two are entitled “Fear and trembling” and two “new Fear and trembling,”
and they internally reference each other. the abraham in these entries stands on
the margin of insanity. In the second, Isaac is spared and sacrifices the ram, but
the crucible of the sacrifice has changed Abraham so he no longer has “common
concepts” with humankind.197 With concepts “infinitely opposite at the most crucial
points,” he is isolated; “just to have such a relationship with you [god] still sets
me at variance with what it is to be man.”198 in the others, abraham takes isaac to
the mountain, raises the knife and fails to hear the intervening cry of god. unable
“to keep himself in suspenso at the apex of faith,” he thrusts the knife into isaac.199
“Jehovah” explains that he had not really required the death of his son: “you were my
friend, and i merely wanted to test your faith!”200 god resurrects isaac, but abraham
cannot take joy in him as before. In the fourth, Abraham explains the sacrifice and
isaac agrees, so they are not like father and son but like “obedient children before
Jehovah.”201 afterward isaac is different, for “by having understood what he had
192
ibid.
193
SKS 25, 33, nB26:25 / JP 2, 2222.
194
ibid.
195
ibid.
196
ibid. see SKS 25, 348, nB29:90 / JP 2, 2224, from 1854. Judaism serves as
Christianity’s point of departure for the early Hegel and Kierkegaard: for Hegel from conflict
to unity, for Kierkegaard from “divinely sanctioned optimism” and “sheer promise for this
life” to the “unconditional renunciation” of Christian life.
197
SKS 24, 387, nB24:108 / JP 3, 3714.
198
ibid.
199
SKS 24, 458, nB25:34 / JP 6, 6791.
200
SKS 24, 374, nB24:89 / JP 3, 3020.
201
SKS 25, 248, nB28:41 / JP 2, 2223.
understood on Mount Moriah, that he had been selected by God for the sacrifice, he
had in a sense become an old man, just as old as abraham.”202
gregor malantschuk takes these entries to point to Kierkegaard and his father—
and to indicate that the relationship to his father, and not to regine, had always been
the most proximate referent in the writings on the akedah.203 in 1848 Kierkegaard
did call himself “an old man brought up with extraordinary rigor in Christianity,” so
malantschuk’s thesis (at least in regard to these later entries) is not unreasonable.204
what it does not explain is why Kierkegaard would return to the akedah in the first
place, and why his rendering of the story would now be different. the only explanation
given is that Kierkegaard had gained “a more detached view of his relations to his
father and Regine and can confide more freely on paper.”205 I find it more illuminating
to understand these later retellings of the akedah in light of Kierkegaard’s evolving
views on Jewish and Christian concepts of suffering. Between Johannes de silentio
in 1843 and the journals in 1851–53, Kierkegaard had developed a different vision of
the suffering that Christian existence requires, and a more critical appraisal of what
he considered the Jewish view of suffering and restoration in this life. presumably
this was why Kierkegaard returned to the subject; earlier he had made abraham
an exemplar of religious suffering, but later he considers how the story would be
different if a Christian concept of suffering were operative instead.
there are two indications that these entries should be interpreted through the
contrast between Jewish and Christian views of suffering. The first is the removal of
true restoration to eternity. “there is, [god] said, an eternity; soon you will be united
eternally with isaac, and you will be in harmony for eternity.”206 This reflects the
Christian view of life as sheer and unceasing suffering, and contrasts with Johannes
de silentio’s emphasis on faith’s belief in restoration within this life. the second
indication is more overt, in Kierkegaard’s conclusion to the final entry: “This is the
relationship between Judaism and Christianity. in the Christian view isaac actually
is sacrificed—but then eternity. In Judaism it is only a test and Abraham keeps Isaac,
but then the whole episode still remains essentially within this life.”207 For the first
time in the Kierkegaardian corpus, Jewish and Christian versions of the akedah are
overtly contrasted.
of course the story may also reflect the way in which Kierkegaard had come
to understand his relationship to regine or his father or the world.208 Yet it reflects
a significant philosophical change for Kierkegaard, the articulation of a distinctly
202
ibid.
203
gregor malantschuk, Kierkegaard’s Thought, trans. by howard v. and edna h. hong,
princeton: princeton university press 1971, pp. 237–9.
204
Pap. viii–1 a 663 / JP 2, 1215.
205
malantschuk, Kierkegaard’s Thought, pp. 237–9.
206
SKS 25, 248, nB28:41 / JP 2, 2223.
207
SKS 25, 248–9, nB28:41 / JP 2, 2223.
208
in my own view, Kierkegaard is still considering his relationship to regine, and this
is the meaning of abraham’s failure to hear when the voice of “Jehovah” bids him stop.
Kierkegaard may have felt he should have had faith and remained with regine, but then “that
which concerns eternity would not have become clear” to him (SKS 25, 248, nB28:41 / JP
2, 2223). He had sacrificed Regine, perhaps unnecessarily, and would not be reconciled with
“Christian” vision of suffering, according to which an ordinary telling of the
akedah falls short. Kierkegaard by 1853, as he prepared for his polemic against the
established church, could no longer consider abraham the exemplar of faith and
faith’s suffering. in this period he turns to the examples of Christ and the martyrs,
who were not “merely” tried but suffered unto death, who were not “only” asked to
sacrifice Isaac but actually surrendered everything. What served Johannes’ purposes
in 1843 is not sufficient for Kierkegaard’s ten years later.
In the end, Johannes’ Abraham should not be conflated with Kierkegaard’s, if
only because there is no single thing which can be called Kierkegaard’s abraham,
but over the course of his life Kierkegaard presents a complex and evolving
understanding of the various abraham narratives. the story of his engagement
with Abraham spans 20 years of texts, one of the most difficult and contested
pseudonymous works, and scores of passages and references in other writings and
journals. there are numerous other ways in which the story might have been told,
and parts of the story have not received here the attention they deserve—the reader
is invited to consult the bibliography. Yet it is clear that Kierkegaard’s reflections
on abraham undergo several transformations. in his student years Kierkegaard
engaged the whole of the abraham cycle and the whole biblical witness concerning
it. after the akedah became a subject of special interest, in Fear and Trembling and
immediately afterward, the principal emphasis shifted from obedient willingness to
surrender isaac to paradoxical faith in isaac’s return, and abraham was symbolic of
the characteristic suffering of religious consciousness. then, especially in the later
authorship and journals, Kierkegaard developed a vision of Christian imitation and
suffering according to which abraham could no longer serve as the exemplar.
i have sought to show that the broader backcloth of Kierkegaard’s lifelong
engagement with Abraham yields a richer and more sharply defined portrait of the
abraham of Fear and Trembling. The exegetical context clarifies why Kierkegaard
and Johannes interpret abraham in the ways they do, in the paradoxical oppositions
of romans and hebrews and the theological and existential tensions of James and
philippians. Fear and Trembling may be called biblical not only insofar as it concerns
the genesis narrative but insofar as it follows general contours of interpretation
set forth by the authors of the new testament. the biographical context shows
that Kierkegaard first seriously examined the “binding” narrative in the midst of
his anguished engagement with regine, and Fear and Trembling appeared with
conceptual differences corresponding to the different circumstances of the broken
engagement. Certain themes persisted, however: the suffering of faith, trust in divine
provision, and faith’s conviction that god is love and remains love even during times
of trial. Finally, the historical context shows the intellectual culture out of which Fear
and Trembling emerged, and throws into relief the philosophical and ideological
options which Kierkegaard might have chosen but did not.
where earlier he had understood abraham according to the distinction of
Christianity and philosophy, in later years Kierkegaard dichotomized Jewish and
Christian views of suffering and assigned abraham to the former camp. By elevating
her until eternity—and yet through his sacrifice he had gained a view of eternity that he then
sought to communicate.
the ideal and the cost of faith, Fear and Trembling sought to draw individuals out of the
multiplicity and throw them back upon themselves and their ownmost responsibility
before god, to show simultaneously that every bone, muscle and tendon must be
strained to the breaking point in the striving for salvation, and that faith believes that
god per impossible provides the true sacrifice in love. Later Kierkegaard lamented
that the co-optation of abraham was all too common among his contemporaries, the
mantle of the epic sufferer too easily assumed—and concluded that a new vision
of Christian suffering must be upheld, one in which there is no “after” but the
“hereafter,” no return to a life of worldly comfort but a continual return to the cross
of Christ and the martyrs.
Bibliography
I. Works in the auction Catalogue of Kierkegaard’s Library that Discuss Abraham
(ASKB 354–357).
gesenius, wilhelm, Lexicon hebraicum & chaldaicum in veteris testamenti libros,
leipzig: vogel 1833, p. 11 (ASKB 72).
göschel, Karl Friedrich, “der pantheismus und die genesis,” in Zeitschrift für
spekulative Theologie, ed. by Bruno Bauer, vols. 1–3, Berlin: dümmler 1836–
38, vol. 2, pp. 184–91 (ASKB 354–357).
pp. 114ff. (ASKB 520).
olshausen, hermann, Die Briefe Pauli an die Römer und Korinthier, Königsberg:
unzer 1837 (ASKB 103), pp. 10–11.
rosenkranz, Karl, Encyklopädie der theologischen Wissenschaften, halle: C.a.
schwetschke und sohn 1831, pp. 136–42 (ASKB 35).
tholuck, Friedrich august, Auslegung des Briefes Pauli an die Römer nebst Auszügen
aus den exegetischen Schriften der Kirchenväter und Reformatoren, 3rd revised
ed., Berlin: Ferdinand dümmler 1831 [1824], pp. 1–51 (ASKB 102).
g. reimer 1833, p. 180; pp. 191–5 (ASKB 80).
winer, georg Benedict, Biblisches Realwörterbuch zum Handgebrauch für
Studirende, Kandidaten, Gymnasiallehrer und Prediger, vols. 1–2, 2nd revised
ed., leipzig: Carl heinrich reclam 1833–38, vol. 1, pp. 12–16 (ASKB 70–71).
II. Secondary Literature on Kierkegaard’s Use of Abraham
Agacinski, Sylviane, “We Are Not Sublime: Love and Sacrifice, Abraham and
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moses:
the positive and negative importance
of moses in Kierkegaard’s thought
paul martens
Moses is arguably the most important figure in the Old Testament, yet he has always
stood in abraham’s shadow in the corpus of søren Kierkegaard. this life in the
shadows has left the question of moses’ place in Kierkegaard’s corpus relatively
undisturbed. he appears very occasionally in the secondary literature alongside
generic references to “the law” of the ten Commandments,1 and even less frequently
with references to Judaism.2 Yet, there is certainly more to say about moses’
multifaceted role in inflecting and illuminating Kierkegaard’s developing thought.
the purpose of this article is to highlight precisely how moses, the very pivotal
biblical figure, is important for Kierkegaard in both positive and negative ways.
To accomplish this purpose, the first section of this article examines Kierkegaard’s
early encounters with the Jewish moses of world-historical importance. the second
section traces Kierkegaard’s continued reflection focused on two biblical texts that
surface already in the 1830s, and in the process, describes the slow revaluation and
humiliation of Kierkegaard’s moses. the third section presents a transformed moses
who becomes important again, but in a new vein as a prototype for what it means
to be chosen by god. in conclusion, i suggest that there are several formal elements
about Kierkegaard’s moses that look very similar both early and late in his life. Yet,
despite these formal similarities, there are irreconcilable differences, leading to a late
moses that serves as a “faithless” prototype for true Christianity.
1
see, for example, the passing mention of the mosaic law in philip J. Quinn’s
“Kierkegaard’s Christian ethics,” in The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, ed. by
alastair hannay and gordon d. marino, Cambridge: Cambridge university press 1998,
p. 373. also, see the reference to moses and the ten Commandments in C. stephen evans,
Kierkegaard’s Ethic of Love: Divine Commands and Moral Obligations, oxford: oxford
2
indicative of the lack of attention to moses by both Kierkegaard and his commentators,
Bruce h. Kirmmse can describe Kierkegaard’s understanding of and criticism of Judaism
without mentioning moses. see Bruce h. Kirmmse “Kierkegaard, Jews, and Judaism,”
Kierkegaardiana, vol. 17, 1994, pp. 83–97. and, although moses appears three times in timothy
polk’s volume on Kierkegaard’s strategies for reading scripture, none of these elaborates
Kierkegaard’s use of moses. see timothy h. polk, The Biblical Kierkegaard: Reading by the
Rule of Faith, macon, georgia: mercer university press 1997, p. 128; p. 167; p. 188.
90 Paul Martens
I. The Young Kierkegaard and Moses’ Critical Importance
in his early writing, both published and unpublished, Kierkegaard attributes to

moses a sort of world-historical importance, or at least an association with world-
historical events. Although Moses is rarely mentioned, his identification occurs in
two ways. First, moses is depicted as one of the world’s greatest reformers; second,
Moses is highlighted as the figure intimately linked with the unique characteristics of
Judaism, both with respect to the emergence of monotheism and in contrast to islam.
in all of these circumstances, however, the canvas under discussion is the history of
the world.
on February 18, 1836, Kierkegaard (under the pseudonym “B”) published his
second newspaper article, “the morning observations in Kjøbenhavnsposten No.
43.”3 in this biting critique of the role that the newspaper was playing in the danish
struggle for the freedom of the press, Kierkegaard challenged the assumption that the
anonymous authors publishing in the newspaper (and the newspaper itself) should
be taken seriously as reforming agents. it is in this context, amidst Kierkegaard’s
sarcastic wit, that moses emerges in Kierkegaard’s writings. Kierkegaard asks:
where, then, is that energetic, that serious, reforming spirit? is it identical with
those anonymous reformers…who have their prototype in that anonymous or rather
pseudonymous reformer, the snake of eden? and shall i call with them all the world’s
reformers straight from moses, who although he used aaron’s mouth, nevertheless did
not stay in the background in order to let him fall victim to pharaoh’s wrath but faithfully
met dangers and difficulties—through Luther to an O’Connell—those anonymous
reformers who work under the auspices of liunge?4
Although there is no significant discussion of Moses in this context, the assumption

is that he is one of the world’s great reformers, much like martin luther (1483–1546)
and daniel o’Connell (1775–1847), the famous irish politician. after all, according
to the biblical narrative, it is during moses’ leadership that the egypt-bound hebrew
slaves are transformed into the socially and religiously organized israelites prepared
for the “conquest of Canaan.” and, the critical implication of Kierkegaard’s
invocation of moses is that the contemporary contributors to Kjøbenhavns flyvende
Post are but mere sinister imitations of the great, actual reformers. interestingly, in
his response to “mr. B’s” article, orla lehmann (1810–70), who eventually became
a prominent danish statesman, accepts Kierkegaard’s characterization of moses and
its polemical intent in its entirety, acknowledging that “i am in agreement with the
author in regretting that the work of reform here at home still cannot boast any
o’Connell, let alone any luther or moses.”5
Along these same lines, Kierkegaard also briefly noted the greatness of Moses
and his clash with actuality, the actuality of nineteenth-century denmark. in /EPW,
6–11. From the Papers of One Still Living (1838), moses again appears, but this time
3
Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post. Interimsblad, no. 76, February 18, 1836 / EPW, 6–11.
4
SV1 Xiii, 14 / EPW, 10.
5
orla lehmann, “reply to mr. ‘B’ of Flyveposten,” Kjøbenhavnsposten, no. 96, march
31, 1836 / EPW, 157.
Moses: The Positive and Negative Importance of Moses in Kierkegaard’s Thought 91
he is juxtaposed with Joshua.6 in the Journal DD moses is characterized as “our
whole, entire poetic vitality,” while Joshua is identified with “reality.”7 speaking of
a cycle of short novels by thomasine gyllembourg (1773–1856) that began with En
Hverdags-Historie,8 Kierkegaard suggests that the younger generation may come to
the conclusion that “it is only the Joshua of our life that enters the promised land and
not its moses,” its “mighty, long-since vanished past.”9 as it turns out, Kierkegaard
assures the reader that the younger generation is wrong about this, assures the reader
that the life-view of the author of En Hverdags-Historie belongs to the individual
“who has finished the race and kept the faith.” The essay itself critically reviews Hans
Christian Andersen’s work, but the immediate critique is directed more specifically
against those “politicians” who, like Joshua, can only exist in actuality when “our
life’s poetic dawn dream” is dead,10 when “genius, beauty, art and the whole glorious
world” are left behind,11 when the struggles and hardships of the past are forgotten,
and when the “graduate-student prose” of politics has taken over.12 taken together,
these early evocations of Moses could not be more affirming in their assumptions of
his importance, both in representing what is good and also in illuminating how far
nineteenth-century denmark fell short of this good.
in a second series of remarks, Kierkegaard utilizes moses to identify a particular
stage in the world’s religious development, or more accurately, in the development
of the world’s religions. in a sense, this series of comments assumes the positive
importance of moses, but in another sense, moses begins to recede from focus as
merely “one of” a number of world-historical people and events. and, in the process
of moses’ recession, one begins to see the emergence of god as the central actor.
in fact, in these particular early entries, the basic issue at stake is the relationship
between temporality and eternity, and more specifically, whether or how the divine
can enter temporality. arguing that the divine can, in fact, enter temporality,
Kierkegaard cites the incident of the burning bush, where the spirit of god speaks in
a burning bush “which burned without being consumed.”13
Kierkegaard’s attention to islam is rather interesting in this context. on June
3, 1837, he wrote: “no prophet, no historian could come up with a more apt
expression for mohammedanism than the one it has given itself in the suspension
6
SKS 1, 22 / EPW, 66.
7
SKS 17, 240–1, dd:57 / KJN 1, 231–2.
8
see anonymous [thomasine gyllembourg], “en hverdags-historie,” Kjøbenhavns
Flyvende Post, nos. 69–76 [pp. 285–8; pp. 289–92; pp. 293–5; pp. 297–300; pp. 301–2;
pp. 305–7; pp. 310–12; pp. 313–15], 1828. (reprinted in Samlede Skrifter af Forf. til “En
Hverdags-Historie,” Fru Gyllembourg-Ehrensvärd, vols. 1–12, 2nd ed., Copenhagen: C.a.
reitzel 1866–67, vol. 1, pp. 161–218.).
9
SKS 1, 22 / EPW, 66. this section of text from “andersen as a novelist” also appears
in the supplementary material included at the end of the hong translation of Two Ages. see
TA, supplement, p. 125.
10
SKS 17, 240–1, dd:57 / KJN 1, 231–2.
11
SKS 1, 22 / EPW, 66.
12
SKS 1, 23 / EPW, 67.
13
Pap. i a 40 / JP 1, 413. see exodus 3.
92 Paul Martens
of its sacred tomb between two magnets.”14 Kierkegaard’s intention is to point out
that mohammed stands between incarnation (the divine becoming human) and the
notion of co-heirs in Christ (humans becoming divine). this position of islam, for
Kierkegaard, is merely “abstract monotheism—‘god is one.’ ” having asserted this,
he continues: “it is not incarnation (messiah), not merely prophet (like moses)…
but Mohammed claimed a specific priority (approximating an incarnation, but, of
course, like everything in mohammedanism, stopping halfway).”15
Yet, for all this differentiation between moses and mohammedanism, it should
surprise no reader of Kierkegaard that when these two encounter Christianity,
suddenly substantial similarities emerge. Foreshadowing the clash between moses
and Christ which will be examined in the following section, Kierkegaard is more
than willing to link moses with mohammed on the issue of salvation. in contrast
to Christianity’s notion of eternal salvation and damnation, both mohammed and
moses merely “recognized the temporal in the plan and therefore did not regard it as
entering the picture of eternity.”16 later in his corpus, Judaism is severely criticized
by Kierkegaard because of its single-minded concern with temporality.17 in this entry
from 1834, the critique is neither developed nor acerbic. But, on this matter, the die
seems to have been cast very early.
these early entries, however, are fairly undeveloped and sporadic. drawing
conclusions and trajectories from these alone is, of course, very risky. i have attempted
to make some thematic sense of Kierkegaard’s near-hegelian appropriation of moses
in his early years, and i suggest that moses is important because he either stands at
a critical juncture in history or he is the world-historical instrument that facilitates
the development of history. as he matures, continues writing, and increasingly
distances himself from his hegelian contemporaries, Kierkegaard’s appraisal of
moses dims in this world-historical regard, eventually leading him to elevate moses
because of his obedience and willingness to witness to the truth. Before addressing
his final position, however, allow me to highlight a series of comments focused on
two particular biblical texts that illuminate the transition from the early, positive
portrayal of moses in the 1830s to the later, more nuanced picture.
14
SKS 17, 218–19, dd:7 / KJN 1, 210f.
15
ibid. see also SKS 17, 219–22, dd:10 / KJN 1, 211–13. in this journal entry,
Kierkegaard essentially sums up what he takes to be the logic of Karl rosenkranz’s “eine
parallele zur religionsphilosophie,” Zeitschrift für spekulative Theologie, vols. 1–3, ed. by
Bruno Bauer, Berlin: drümmler 1836–38, vol. 2, no. 1, 1837, pp. 1–31 (ASKB 354–357).
in Kierkegaard’s recounting of the emergence of monotheism, Judaism’s god stands at the
forefront and is initially revealed as an omnipotent lawgiver. moses stands in the background
as merely the instrument, who is followed by Job—representing “detached individuality”—
who stands somewhat in opposition to god, who is in turn followed by the psalms which put
things to rest, acknowledging that god is god. again, islam is criticized because it “develops
a caricature; god’s omnipotence becomes arbitrariness, and his governance becomes
fatalism.”
16
Pap. i a 40 / JP 1, 413.
17
see Kirmmse, “Kierkegaard, Jews, and Judaism,” for a good summary of
Kierkegaard’s interpretation of Judaism, and its intimate association with his critique of
danish Christendom.
II. Transitional Themes: Dead Raised, Bright Faces, and Christianity’s Leniency
in luke 16, Jesus’ parable concerning a rich man and lazarus is recorded. in this
parable, a rich man and a poor man (lazarus), who had been ignored by the rich
man, both die. From the torments of hades, the rich man looks up and sees the
poor man being comforted by abraham. the rich man calls for similar relief, yet
is refused because of the great impassable chasm separating them. he then begs
Abraham to send Lazarus to his five brothers so that they do not end up in the same
torment. But, abraham responds: “they have moses and the prophets; they should
listen to them.”18 Not satisfied, the rich man suggests that a man who returned from
the dead may be more persuasive than even moses and the prophets had been, to
which abraham replies: “if they do not listen to moses and the prophets, neither will
they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”19
on december 2, 1836, Kierkegaard, speaking of luke 16:31, asked: “what is
meant by these words [?]”20 he revisits this question later, answering in two ways.
First, simply, he uses this text to enliven his critique of assistant professors, suggesting
that if these assistant professors are not threatened by Christ’s utterances against the
Pharisees—and “pontificating” in general—then it is certain that he should expect
his own writing to have very little influence.21 second, and more subtly, Kierkegaard
turns to the imagined response of the five brothers. Would they be more terrified
by someone raised from the dead than they are of moses? the answer, of course, is
affirmative. But, the interesting point here is Kierkegaard’s definition of what such a
fear is not. Being terrified is something different from belief; this fear does not have
the earnestness of the simple “you shall believe.” Being terrified is not the same
thing as appropriate fear and trembling; “neither is it the submissiveness of faith.”22
Yet, does the answer in the negative concerning the one raised from the dead entail
a positive assertion about moses?
there is ambiguity here, because one might read Kierkegaard as indicating that
moses (and the prophets) had faith, had earnestness, and had appropriate fear and
trembling. or, at the very least, is Kierkegaard suggesting that reading moses and
the prophets is enough to discern the “you shall believe,” the earnest submissiveness
of faith? later in the corpus, the “you shall” in its appropriate form is attributed
to Christ (see, for example, Works of Love),23 yet, in the earlier texts, Kierkegaard
is also nervous about attributing faith to moses. in his only appearance in
18
lk 16:29.
19
lk 16:31.
20
SKS 18, 79, FF:23 / KJN 2, 73.
21
SKS 26, 58, nB31:77 / JP 6, 6897.
22
SKS 20, 350–1, nB4:133 / JP 2, 1122.
23
Works of Love particularly addresses the emphatic “shall” as the entry also indicates
in Chapter ii.a, “You Shall love” (SKS 19, 26–48 / WL, 17–43). interestingly, Kierkegaard,
in Works of Love, spends considerable time and energy arguing that Christ is the fulfillment of
“the law,” and yet never mentions moses once in this connection (SKS 9, 97–141 / WL, 91–
134). the closest Kierkegaard comes to overtly addressing moses in this regard is in Either/
Or, part ii, where Judge william makes a cursory mention of the mosaic law, noting that the
Jews understood most of the commandments of the law, but what they did not understand is
94 Paul Martens
Fear and Trembling, moses is juxtaposed with abraham precisely on this matter
of faith. The conclusion is clear: Abraham accepted the fulfillment of the promise
in faith; moses, unintentionally sealing his death in the wilderness outside of the
promised land, struck the rock with his staff because he did not have such faith.24 we
may suspect that Kierkegaard’s lutheran and antinomian roots are enough to force
him to withdraw from the positive account of moses intimated earlier. or, perhaps
more precisely, we should suspect that Kierkegaard’s prior elevation of moses as a
reformer is self-consciously being restricted and redefined. Or, we should suspect
that Kierkegaard’s very familiar attention to the internal is emerging along with
the inevitable corollary—the critique of the external. and, as Fear and Trembling
illustrates, abraham suits this trajectory much better than moses does.
aside from luke 16, Kierkegaard also appeals to the gospel of matthew with
reference to moses. Kierkegaard’s attention to the “sermon on the mount”25 serves
to highlight further his evolving assessment of moses. on July 1839, returning to the
issue of whether the divine can engage temporality, Kierkegaard observes that the
sermon on the mount evokes the events of mount sinai. the differences, according
to Kierkegaard, are that moses had to climb mount sinai to speak to god while Jesus
sat at the foot of the mountain, thereby suggesting “the fulfillment of the Law and
that this fulfillment of the Law had now been made possible on earth.”26 another
mountaintop comparison between moses and Jesus occurs later, and this time moses’
descent from Mount Sinai is compared to Jesus’ transfiguration.27 Kierkegaard does
not mention that Moses and Elijah appear with Jesus in the transfiguration narrative,28
but, crediting luther, he goes on to compare their respective “brightnesses.” on one
hand, moses had to hide his face because people could not bear to look at his face
after his encounter with god;29 on the other hand, the disciples could not only endure
Jesus’ brightness, but they “found it infinitely salutary.”30
the “you shall love god with all your heart,” the command that Christianity grasped most of
all. see SKS 3, 243 / EO2, 255).
24
num 20:11–12.
25
mt 5–7.
26
SKS 18, 41, ee:107 / KJN 2, 36–7.
27
mt 17:1–13.
28
mt 17:3.
29
ex 34:29–35.
30
SKS 24, 211, nB 23:12 / JP 3, 2533. luther’s sermon that Kierkegaard cites for
this observation is the found in a sermon for the twelfth sunday after trinity. see luther,
En Christelig Postille, sammendragen af Dr. Morten Luthers Kirke- og Huuspostiller, new
danish trans. by Jørgen thisted, Copenhagen: den wahlske Boghandling 1828, pp. 420ff.
(ASKB 283). interestingly, the only other explicit link between luther and moses is drawn
from another sermon, the Fifth sunday after easter (1849), and not from any of luther’s more
famous theological texts. in this case, the text in question is exodus 14:15 and the observation
noted by luther (and then Kierkegaard) is that while moses is silent, god asks, “why are you
crying out to me?” whether the text warrants the observation or not is a good question, but
Kierkegaard then continues, “silence can be that heaven-scaling” (SKS 22, 54, nB11:95 / JP,
4, 3984). see luther, En christelig Postille, p. 322.
and, further heightening the salutary uniqueness of Christ in the biblical
narrative, Kierkegaard also provides a comparison of moses and peter. as already
noted, moses was not allowed into the promised land because he did not follow
one of god’s commands.31 peter, on the other hand, denies that he knows Christ
three times before Christ’s death.32 Yet, peter “resorts to grace” and becomes an
apostle. this gentleness, this “leniency beyond measure” is Kierkegaard’s “greatest
disquietude about Christianity,” his great anxiety about the possibility of one taking
it in vain.33 and, so we return to a rather familiar refrain in Kierkegaard’s corpus:
taking Christianity in vain.
Clearly, a brief analysis of the transitional themes in Kierkegaard’s interpretation
of moses sketched above demonstrates that Kierkegaard quickly ceased his
employment of moses as a reforming prototype of world-historical importance
before the close of the 1830s. in its place, a more humbled moses appeared, a moses
related to Christ, a moses who was in fact negatively related to Christ. and, with the
surpassing of the law, a new worry also appears: not doing enough. the reforming
moses was used to criticize those pretending to do something; the humbled moses
is criticized because his message is much more rigorous than Christ’s. Yet, Christ’s
new gentle and salutary message presents the possible return of the original problem
to which moses had been the solution: not doing enough. vaguely foreshadowing
this problem, Kierkegaard penned the following prayer in 1839:
Father in heaven! teach us to walk in the light of your countenance, and let not our
thoughts and deeds be like visitors in your dwelling place who come as strangers from
far away, a single meager once, but, like children of the house, let us sense your dwelling
with us—for what would it avail us, no matter how splendid such a visit might be; what
would it avail us, if our faces shone like that of moses when he had been speaking with
the lord; what would it avail us, if like moses we hid our faces from the Jews so as not
to reveal how quickly the radiance vanished—? let us never forget that all Christianity
is a lifetime’s journey….34
III. The Later Kierkegaard and Moses’ Critical Importance
as his corpus progresses, Kierkegaard increasingly voices his concern that

Christianity is being taken in vain, and increasingly criticizes his contemporaries
for not taking the “life course” of Christianity seriously. nearly everything in
Kierkegaard’s intellectual storehouse eventually becomes polemically involved in
this critique, and moses is no exception. in short, moses becomes god’s instrument
in the later critique, an instrument that is unconditionally obedient. Certainly, there
are nuances to this later portrait that i will highlight below, but the unifying theme
is absolutely clear: moses is reintroduced as a new kind of reformer, a prototype for
a reformed Christianity.
31
Kierkegaard refers to this as a “monstrous severity.” see SKS 20, 247, nB3:2.
32
mt 26:69–75.
33
SKS 23, 321, nB18:97 / JP 3, 3234.
34
SKS 18, 15–16, ee:31 / KJN 2, 11.
96 Paul Martens
To briefly return again to Moses’ encounter with God on Mount Sinai, the focus
has now shifted. the brightness of moses’ face has faded from view, and this is not a
bad thing, as there is no glory now. earlier, in one of the “upbuilding discourses” of
1843, the fact that moses only saw god’s back intimated the important theological
truth that god gives but also takes away.35 But, later, the fact that moses only saw
God’s back seems to mean that the one chosen by God (though not specifically
Christian) does not know in advance what her actions mean or how they are being
used by god. rather, unconditional obedience is all that is required.36
At first glance, Moses’ work looks almost desirable. In Three Discourses on
Imagined Occasions, Kierkegaard remarks that the key to the relationship between
moses and god is moses’ fear and wonder over god, or “the wonder’s fear and
its blessedness.”37 moreover, in a draft of one of the “upbuilding discourses,” he
goes as far as claiming that precisely because moses knew that he was capable of
nothing, he was “happy and confident in his trust in God, and in whatever happened
he was blessed….”38 these texts certainly presume that moses was capable of
nothing on his own,39 yet there is a sense in which these particular earlier texts
in Kierkegaard’s corpus paint a portrait of Moses as satisfied, blessed, and even
happy to be an obedient servant of god. and, in this vein, even though Kierkegaard
acknowledges that moses raises certain objections concerning his suitability for the
job,40 he also notes that there must have been an agreement between moses and god,
there must have been an implicit humility that acknowledged, like mary, “here i am,
the servant of the lord,”41 there must have been a disposition that was willing to say,
like samuel, “speak, lord, for your servant is listening.”42
as Kierkegaard’s polemic against his contemporary Christendom sharpened,
however, this sense of the blessedness of a common agreement between god and
moses fades. a rather stark and simple obedience takes its place. there is no joy, there
is no common agreement. moses simply says “no, send someone else.”43 Yet, against
his will, moses is led—“educated”—little by little. referring to plato’s Republic,
Kierkegaard argues that just as those who should rule must have no desire to rule,
“man is used by governance for the very thing he in a certain sense is most disinclined
to do. For, governance uses the most sensitive men for almost the cruelest jobs.” 44
and, even though we should probably suspect some autobiographical seepage into
the picture, the perfect biblical example evoked is that of moses. if one might want
to refuse obedience, Kierkegaard is convinced that god will have his way anyway.
Condemning a prevalent lack of imagination concerning the power of the almighty,
Kierkegaard restates the matter in an almost threatening tone:
35
SKS 5, 126 / EUD, 121.
36
SKS 23, 212, nB17:68 / JP 4, 4460.
37
SKS 5, 405 / TD, 25.
38
Pap. v B 207, 2 / EUD, supplement, p. 449.
39
see also SKS 5, 303–4 / EUD, 311–12. SKS 10, 308 / CD, 300.
40
see ex 3:11, 4:1, 10.
41
lk 1:38.
42
1 sam 3:10. Pap. vii B 235, 60 / BA, 248.
43
SKS 21, 169, nB8:55.a / JP 4, 5013.
44
SKS 22, 234–5, nB12:145 / JP 4, 4053. see plato, Republic, 520d.
what security do you have against the almighty—when you, with all the ingenuity you
possess, schemed to escape this and this, and then god brought it upon you, perhaps in a
completely different manner. no, there is only one security and assurance in relation to
the almighty—namely, to obey him unconditionally.45
upon closer examination, however, the consequences of this turn towards

unconditional obedience are significant. And, as the attack on Christendom gains
momentum, the faith that elevated abraham and denigrated moses earlier in the
corpus becomes somewhat transvalued. For example, Kierkegaard states, “a whole
country is Christian; there are several million Christians, 10,000 preachers, and there
is constant talk about faith. let us take a look at it!” Certainly, the challenge is directed
at merely talk about faith, but he continues: “moses is commanded by god to be an
instrument by which a miracle is to be performed. (we only imagine the torture, what
a maiming it must be for an individual to be used in that way—we imagine it but
do not grasp it).”46 at this juncture, there is no talk of the blessedness of obedience.
and, if being used as an instrument is tormenting, Kierkegaard heaps on even more
in his description of moses’ particular task, the task of setting a slave-minded people
free,47 the task he so innocently elevated early in his life. Yes, Kierkegaard’s new
moses is cast as one who witnesses to the truth and is still opposed with ingratitude
by both egyptians and hebrews.48
IV. Conclusion
as one stands back and gazes over the interpretation and appropriation of moses
in Kierkegaard’s corpus, it is clear that we have a very different moses in the early
and the late writings. the reforming Jewish moses of the early comments is world-
historical and is used by god to move the development of religion in the world;
the late, prototypically obedient moses is barely more than a chosen shell for
governance to accomplish his purpose in the world. Yet, stating the differences in
this way also reveals formal similarities. in both cases, god is at work accomplishing
his purposes in the world. in both cases, moses is employed as a critical prototype
against select contemporaries. therefore, the humiliation of moses that occurs in
Kierkegaard’s thought, evidenced in the transitions highlighted in the second section
of this article, becomes very important in distinguishing precisely how the early and
the late moses are different, and why their difference matters. essentially, the key
lies in the difference between focusing on what god has done and focusing on what
one must do for God. In the early writings, Kierkegaard pronounces with confidence
how god has worked in history; in the late writings, Kierkegaard proclaims that one
cannot presume to know how god is working in history. and, in this slight shift,
45
SKS 20, 218–19, nB2:198 / JP 1, 951. in this same entry, Kierkegaard continues by
postulating that even if moses refused to go to pharaoh, there are still many other ways in
which god could have ensured his return to egypt.
46
SKS 20, 372–3, nB5:7 / JP 6, 6141.
47
SKS 23, 158–69, nB16:99 / JP 4, 4182.
48
SV1 Xii, 472 / JFY, 206.
98 Paul Martens
everything changes. one no longer looks at the history of the world for meaning;
one must look to one’s relationship with god to discover what one must do. and,
it is precisely in this shift that moses slides from a world-historical reformer to a
“faithless” prototype for true Christianity in nineteenth-century denmark.
Bibliography
I. Works in the auction Catalogue of Kierkegaard’s Library that Discuss Moses
[luther, martin], En Christelig Postille, sammendragen af Dr. Morten Luthers

Kirke- og Huuspostiller, new danish trans. by Jörgen thisted, Copenhagen: den
wahlske Boghandling 1828, p. 322; p. 420 (ASKB 283).
rosenkranz, Karl, “eine parallele zur religionsphilosophie,” Zeitschrift für
38, vol. 2, no. 1, 1837, pp. 1–31 (ASKB 354–357).
in die Bibel Alten und Neuen Testamentes, vols. 1–2 (in 1 tome), 4th ed., Berlin:
g. reimer 1833, pp. 138–64 (ASKB 80).
II. Secondary Literature on Kierkegaard’s Use of Moses
engelke, matthias, Kierkegaard und das Alte Testament, rheinbach: Cmz-verlag

1998, p. 46; p. 87; p. 103; p. 110; p. 120; p. 141; p. 213; p. 270.
evans, C. stephen, Kierkegaard’s Ethic of Love: Divine Commands and Moral
Obligations, oxford: oxford university press 2004, p. 310.
georgia: mercer university press 1997, p. 128; p. 167; p. 188.
Quinn, philip, J., “Kierkegaard’s Christian ethics,” in The Cambridge Companion
to Kierkegaard, ed. by alastair hannay and gordon d. marino, Cambridge:
Cambridge university press 1998, p. 373.
tennessee: Broadman & holman 1994, p. 62; p. 160.
david and solomon:
models of repentance and evasion of guilt
matthias engelke
I. Introduction
as king of israel and the successor of saul, david ruled in Judah and israel from
about 1000 bc to 961 bc and founded a dynasty of kings. solomon was one of his
sons who, after quarrelling with his siblings about the succession to the throne,
became david’s successor, reigning from 961 to 926 bc.
the biblical books of samuel and Chronicles report david’s origin, advancement,
kingship, and death. in the history of the literature of ancient israel, david came to
be regarded as the epitome of the devout poet and singer. a multitude of prayers
and songs in the Book of psalms were ascribed to david. his son solomon, whose
reign is narrated in Kings, was idealized as a paragon of wisdom; he is described
by Jewish and Christian traditions as being the author of proverbs of solomon, the
words of the preacher, ecclesiastes, and the song of solomon, all of which fall in
the category of wisdom literature.
in the canonical version of the story of the kings david and solomon, not only
official statements1 and loyal reports2 can be found, but also critical narrations, such
as the tales of david’s adultery3 and the ill-advised national census.4 in spite of
these sometimes critical portrayals, the expectation and hope for good kingly rule
and an everlasting dynasty, the messianic idea, was attached to the person of david
and his dynasty. This expectation was probably first developed and spread under
his successor solomon5 and is evident in such biblical passages as psalm 89 and 2
samuel 7.6
The historicity and significance of these biblical narratives concerning David
and solomon were contested in early nineteenth-century europe. martin leberecht
de wette (1780–1847) argued that the books of samuel were compiled later than
1
see, for example, the list of administrators in 2 sam 8:15–18 and in 1 Chr 18:14–17.
2
see the confusion about the throne in 2 sam 15ff., and 2 sam 20.
3
see 2 sam 11.
4
see 2 sam 24 and 1 Kings 11.
5
lawrence a. sinclair, “david i. altes testament,” in Theologische Realenzyklopädie,
vols. 1–36, Berlin and new York: studienausgabe 1993–2006, vol. 8, 1993, p. 383, lines
9–10.
6
see ludwig schmidt, “Königtum ii. altes testament,” in Theologische Real-
enzyklopädie, vol. 19, 2000, p. 328, lines 19ff.
102 Matthias Engelke
the events depicted in them but earlier than the consolidation of the deuteronomic
and levitical traditions, and that the books of Chronicles were redacted at an
even later date.7 Both sets of literature contained material from different sources,
including legends and myths, although some of the material was to be regarded as
historical. In spite of the affirmation of the real existence of David and Solomon,
de Wette’s work did undermine confidence in the general historical reliability of
the texts. meanwhile, Friedrich schleiermacher (1768–1834) voiced doubts about
the significance of the Old Testament by advocating the view that Christianity
was fundamentally different from the religion of ancient israel that had preceded
it, thereby making the political institution of the monarchy of david and solomon
problematic for Christian theology.8 nevertheless hans lassen martensen (1808–84)
argued that in spite of critical doubts about the historical accuracy of some texts, and
in spite of the difference between old testament piety and new testament faith, the
history of israel was genuinely revelatory of god for Christians.9 For martensen, the
old testament expressed the progressive realization of the fellowship of god with
humanity, instantiating in the history of a particular race the universal truth of god’s
fellowship with all people. The historically specific episodes in the Old Testament
are types of god’s activity in general and types of the career of Jesus in particular,
whose life was the richest instance of god’s redemptive activity. in general the old
Testament, including Samuel and Chronicles, is limited by the specificities of its
cultural context, and can point to the activity of god only fragmentarily. in spite of
this liability, the davidic kingdom functions in this history as an expression of one
aspect of israel’s messianic hope. the kingdom of david and solomon foreshadows
the kingly office of Christ, Christ’s eschatological rule over the entire cosmos.
as we shall see, Kierkegaard was largely uninvolved in these disputes. he wrote
as if the episodes concerning david and solomon reported in the Bible were real
events. usually, he neither dismissed the old testament stories as irrelevant to
Christians nor did he treat them as prefigurements of Christ. Rather, he used the
narratives as illustrations of spiritual dynamics that can potentially occur in the
life of any individual. Kierkegaard was most interested in david and solomon as
exemplars of certain types of virtues and vices. we shall explore the ways in which
he uses each of them as examples in the development of his literature, proceeding
from the earlier works to the later ones.
7
wilhelm martin leberecht de wette, Lehrbuch der historisch-kritischen Einleitung
in die Bibel Alten und Neuen Testamentes, vols. 1–2 (in one tome), 4th ed., Berlin: g. reimer
1833, vol. 1, pp. 225–43 (ASKB 80).
8
Friedrich schleiermacher, Der christliche Glaube nach den Grundsä[t]zen der
evangelischen Kirche im Zusammenhange dargestellt, vols. 1–2, 3rd ed., Berlin: g. reimer
1835–36 [vols. 3–4, in Friedrich Schleiermacher’s sämmtliche Werke, Erste Abtheilung. Zur
Theologie, Berlin: g. reimer 1834–64 (some of the volumes were published in Berlin: august
herbig)], vol. 2, pp. 346–51 (AKSB 258).
9
hans lassen martensen, Den christelige Dogmatik, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1849,
pp. 228–35 (ASKB 653).
David and Solomon: Models of Repentance and Evasion of Guilt 103
II. David
A. either/or
three allusions to the stories of david occur in Either/Or, including references to

1 samuel 16:14–23, 2 samuel 24, and 2 samuel 12:7. Because these references
function differently in Kierkegaard’s text, they must be treated separately.
The first passage attempts to explain David’s coming to the royal court of Saul,
the reigning king of israel. according to this passage the harpist david soothes the
troubled Saul with his music. A reference to this episode can be found in the first
part of Either/Or, in the papers of a published by victor eremita that contain a
study of mozart’s “magic Flute.” in this essay the power to while away the time
is attributed to Tamino’s flute playing. However, the more important ability of the
music to drive away evil thoughts is questioned, while its capacity to cure insanity
and psychological ailments is completely denied. 10 this reference to the possibility
that music might have the power to dispel evil spirits and emotional woes is an
allusion to the potency of david’s music as described in 1 samuel.
among the papers of a in Either/Or a study is included concerning the concept
of “the tragic” and the way the concept differs in the ancient and the modern ages.
the chief characteristic of the modern age is the widespread social disintegration
that produces the phenomenon of isolation. the narrative of david’s census of his
subjects found in 2 samuel 24 is taken as an example of the futile effort to overcome
isolation by seeking solace in associations of large numbers of persons. a remarks,
“when david really wanted to feel his power and glory, he had his people counted;
in our age, however, it may be said that the people, in order to feel significant over
against a superior power, count themselves.”11 Here the figure of David functions as
an example of an unfortunate human tendency to identify with a collectivity in order
to attain a sense of personal significance, a perennial tendency that has become more
overt in the modern age.
among the papers of B in the second part of Either/Or is the contribution “the
esthetic validity of marriage,” an essay addressed to a in the form of a letter. on
the very first page of this attempt to convince the young aesthete that marriage is
not inimical to romantic happiness, an allusion to 2 samuel 12:7 is prominently
featured.12after david has committed adultery with Bathsheba and indirectly caused
the death of her husband, the prophet nathan presents to his king a lawsuit concerning
the robbery of a poor man’s sheep by a wealthy neighbor. infuriated about the rich
man’s insolence in stealing the last sheep of a poor man, david exclaims, “as the
lord lives, the man who has done this shall surely die!” as soon as david pronounces
these words, nathan replies, “You are the man!”13
B’s introduction to his reflections on marriage emphasizes the fact that the writing
is intended to be a letter to a, and therefore should be read as one. he insists that the
10
SKS 1, 88 / EO1, 82.
11
SKS 1, 141 / EO1, 141.
12
SKS 2, 15 / EO2, 5.
13
see 2 sam 12:1–7.
writing is really about a, and that this fact should be recognized by a when reading
the long epistle. Just like david (and B mentions this explicitly), a must realize that
the parable is aimed at himself. in the context of the letter it is a who is the target of
the accusation “You are the man, o King.”14
For B this biblical excerpt, which Kierkegaard cites as early as 1837 in one of
the fragmentary notes in his journals,15 functions as an instance of a fundamental
dilemma of the dramatic art. when viewing a theatrical performance that uses the
limited medium of acting, it is impossible for the onlookers to perceive that “this
drama is about me!” due to the phenomenon of personal distancing generated by
the fact that the drama is enacted on a stage, a member of the audience is allowed
to presume that he is not implicated by the story being performed, but rather that
it refers to someone else. therefore, another person is required to join the action,
such as nathan with his direct address after relating his parable to david, in order
to establish a direct connection and to state the essential point: “You are the man, o
King!”
this motif of nathan’s denunciation “You are the man” was critically important
to Kierkegaard’s literary strategy of provoking the reader to apply Kierkegaard’s
writings to the reader’s own self. as we shall see, references to this passage reappear
throughout Kierkegaard’s later works and play a key role in them.
B. Four upbuilding discourses
in “every good gift and every perfect gift is from above,” based on James 1:17–
22 and included as the second discourse in Four Upbuilding Discourses of 1843,
Kierkegaard explores the verse “let everyone be quick to listen.”16 according to
Kierkegaard, an individual who has started to listen to the word of god will begin to
trust more in listening than in talking. it is in this context that Kierkegaard refers to
david in order to contrast the attitude of the truly pious individual to that of the old
testament king. Kierkegaard asserts, “ultimately he will not even say with david:
hasten, o lord, to speak! but will say to his own soul: hasten, oh, hasten to listen!”17
david’s words are presented as an example of inadequate attention to the quality of
the individual’s own listening.
oddly, here Kierkegaard is misrepresenting the biblical material. Certainly the
prayerful supplication “make haste, o lord” is a common idiom in the psalms.18
however, not a single biblical passage exclaims, “hasten, o lord, to speak!” the
redactors of the biblical books do not put these words into the mouth of david. in
the psalms god is asked to aid,19 to stand by,20 and to deliver,21 but not to speak.
14
SKS 2, 15 / EO2, 5.
15
SKS 17, 51, aa:45.a / KJN 1, 44.
16
see Jas 1:19b.
17
SKS 5, 141 / EUD, 138.
18
see ps 22:20; ps 38:23; ps 40:14; ps 70:2; ps 71:12.
19
see ps 22:20; ps 40:14; ps 71:12.
20
see ps 38:23.
21
see ps 70:2.
although imploring god to speak may sound like scriptural language, it actually
has no backing in the Bible. nowhere in the biblical texts does david call upon
god to speak, for such a demand would have appeared to be an utterly improper
attempt to seize hold of god. the few biblical verses that do seem to be requests
for divine speech are actually commitments to listen to god. For example, in 1
samuel 3:9 samuel calls out, “speak, lord, for Your servant hears,” after he had
been raised from sleep three times by god. psalm 85:9 is the opposite of a demand
for god’s speech when it announces, “i will hear what god the lord will speak.” at
other times god is called upon to listen to the individual’s prayers: “give ear to my
words, o lord, consider my meditation.”22 similarly, the psalmist implores, “i have
called upon You, for You will hear me, o god; incline Your ear to me, and hear my
speech.”23 psalm 141:1 begs, “lord, i cry out to You; make haste to me! give ear to
my voice when i cry out to You.” the biblical texts that articulate god’s promises
include god’s speaking and hearing as an aspect of the envisioned new heaven and
new earth. this is evident in the verse: “it shall come to pass that before they call, i
will answer; and while they are still speaking, i will hear.”24 a close examination of
these passages shows that the theme from which Kierkegaard distances himself, the
words ascribed to david “hasten, o lord, to speak!,” is actually not to be found in
the Bible.
the motif of imploring of god to speak can be traced to the origins of german
revivalism. through the religiosity of his father Kierkegaard had become acquainted
with the piety and literature of the awakening movement, including the writings
of Gerhard Tersteegen (1697–1769). In the first booklet of Tersteegen’s Geistliches
Blumen-Gärtlein from 1729,25 the poem “die himmlische Berufung” [“the heavenly
appeal”]26 ends thus: Herr, rede du, dir schweige ich! [“lord, you speak; i am silent
before you”]. in his second booklet tersteegen quotes the only biblical passage he
can claim to support his choice of words, daniel 10:19.27 in this verse daniel speaks
after he had been overwhelmed by a vision of god and is subsequently encouraged by
god, saying, “let my lord speak, for you have strengthened me.” in the third booklet
under the heading “abendgedanken einer gottseligen seele” [“evening thoughts of
a god-blessed soul”] tersteegen implores in the seventh stanza, Herr, rede du, lass
mich ganz stille sein! [“lord, you speak; let me be totally silent”]. the importance
of tersteegen to Kierkegaard is evident in the fact that a four-line poem in german
from the appendix “dies ist der Frommen lotterie” [“this is the devout lottery”] of
tersteegen’s Blumen-Gärtlein28 is featured as a motto in Kierkegaard’s On My Work
22
see ps 5:2.
23
see ps 17:6.
24
isa 65:24.
25
gerhard tersteegen, Geistliches Blumen-Gärtlein, Frankfurt and leipzig: g.C.B.
hoffman 1769; see gerhard tersteegen, Des gottseligen Arbeiters im Weinberge des Herrn:
Gerhard Tersteegen’s…gesammelte Schriften, vols. 1–4, stuttgart: l.F. rieger, stuttgart:
Becher und müller 1844–45 (ASKB 827–830).
26
tersteegen, Geistliches Blumen-Gärtlein, p. 119, no. 534.
27
ibid., p. 231, no. 117.
28
see ibid., p. 476, no. 78.
as an Author from 1851.29 Kierkegaard quotes, Wer glaubet, der ist groß und reich, /
Er hat Gott und das Himmelreich. / Wer glaubet, der ist klein und arm, / Er schreiet
nur: Herr Dich erbarm! [“whoever believes is great and rich, / he has god and the
Kingdom of heaven. / whoever believes is small and poor, / he only cries: lord,
have mercy!”]. given Kierkegaard’s familiarity with tersteegen, it is possible that
Kierkegaard was projecting tersteegen’s phraseology onto the Bible.
C. stages on life’s way
In the epilogue to the diary that was fished from the lake in Stages on Life’s Way,
Frater taciturnus analyzes the unfortunate love story and proceeds to discuss the
issue of repentance in the third section (§ 4).30 it should be noted that the setting
of the first of the Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions published just one day
before Stages on Life’s Way is confession and its theme is also repentance.31
in Stages on Life’s Way david’s adultery32 serves as a foil for the discussion of the
unusual quality of the case of the failed romance related in the diary. in many of his
writings Kierkegaard applied the method of “experimental hermeneutic,” retelling the
same biblical narrative in different ways in order to explore its different interpretive
possibilities.33 accordingly, the narration of david’s adultery with Bathsheba and
the death of her husband uriah vary in Kierkegaard’s literature according to the
particularities of the context and the rhetorical purpose.
according to the story as narrated in 2 samuel, david had ordered uriah, a
noted warrior, to be stationed in the front line of his troops. Kierkegaard retells the
episode, altering and embellishing it. in Kierkegaard’s altered version david sends
a messenger to uriah’s superiors with the order to expose uriah to fatal danger, but
then suffers from second thoughts and dispatches a second messenger to intervene
and undo the earlier command. in this scenario genuine repentance over a course
of action that may not have been completed involves a willingness to intervene and
an attempt to prevent the guilt from becoming established. in some respects, the
situation of the lover in the diary is analogous to the situation of david, for the lover
too finds himself to be in an intermediate stage, waiting for what may happen. He
is willing to part with his fiancée so that she would no longer feel bound to him in
any respect, but is not sure that she will emotionally sever the ties. however, in
other respects the situation of david and the lover are different. in comparison with
the anonymous lover, david’s case appears to be rather simple to Frater taciturnus.
david’s case lacks the simultaneity of tragedy and comedy, a simultaneity that is
evident in the situation of the lover. even if the lover’s intention succeeded, he still
remains bound to his fiancée on an inward level because he has not determined
29
SKS 13, 8 / PV, 2.
30
SKS 6, 416–17 / SLW, 450–1.
31
SKS 5, 391–418 / TD, 9–40.
32
see 2 sam 11.
33
matthias engelke, Kierkegaard und das Alte Testament. Zum Einfluss der
alttestamentarischen Bücher auf Kierkegaards Gesamtwerk, rheinbach: Cmz-verlag
winrich C.-w. Clasen 1998, p. 197.
whether his behavior toward her was culpable or not, a dilemma that is at once tragic
(a failure) and comic (the simultaneity of success and failure). the commentator
accurately observes that “he cannot begin to repent, because what it is he ought to
repent of seems to be undecided as yet.”34
in contrast to the lover’s incapability to comprehend himself and determine
his guilt or innocence, the first of the Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions,
also published in 1845, expresses the attitude that, independent of specific concrete
occasions of culpability, an individual should experience a pervasive sense of guilt
in the face of God. The acceptance of guilt is necessary in order to find God, for it
promotes the realization that without god the individual can do nothing and that
god had always been with the individual.35 the description in Stages on Life’s
Way of David’s anguished perplexity about his guilt or innocence in a very specific
matter serves as a contrast to the discourse’s articulation of a religious individual’s
willingness to regard himself as guilty in general.
D. works of love—2 Samuel 12:7
Kierkegaard returned to the story of nathan’s implicit accusation of King david

in Works of Love during his explication of one phrase from Jesus’ sermon on the
plain in luke 6. Kierkegaard paraphrases luke 6:44: “the tree is to be known by
its fruits.” in this context he observed, “the gospel does not need to add what the
prophet nathan added to his parable, ‘You are the man,’ since it is already contained
in the form of the statement and in its being a word of the gospel.” 36 the obvious
interpretation of this passage is that anyone who reads these words of the gospel is
the tree mentioned by Jesus. in such contexts where the rhetorical force is clear, the
explicit clarification provided by Nathan is not needed.
E. For self-examination
For Self-Examination, published in 1851, contains discourses, introduced without

the addition of “upbuilding” or “Christian,” for three consecutive holy days: the
last Sunday before Pentecost (the fifth Sunday after Easter), Ascension Day, and
Pentecost. The first discourse is based on James 1:22ff. and bears the title “What Is
required to look at oneself with true Blessing in the mirror of the word?” in the
course of the discourse, the familiar narrative of 2 samuel 11–12, the adultery of
david and the objection of the prophet nathan, is retold in a free style.37 Kierkegaard
explains emphatically that reading god’s word is like looking in the mirror. he
remarks, “when you read god’s word, in everything you read, continually to say
to yourself: it is i to whom it is speaking, it is i about whom it is speaking—this is
earnestness, precisely this is earnestness.”38 in this divergent retelling of david’s
34
SKS 6, 417 / SLW, 451.
35
SKS 391–418 / TD, 8–40.
36
SKS 9, 22 / WL, 14.
37
SKS 13, 64–6 / FSE, 37–9.
38
SKS 13, 63 / FSE, 36.
adultery and nathan’s objection to it, Kierkegaard casts david and nathan as two
intellectuals with refined literary tastes. He describes a conversation between them
about the virtues and flaws of a novel that Nathan has read to his poetry-sensitive
king. the conversation about the literary merits of the story takes a more personal
turn only when nathan says: “thou art the man.”39 as learned as david was, in order
for him to grasp the import of the passage someone from the outside was needed,
someone who said to him: “You.” here again the story of david and nathan is used
to encourage the reader to engage the Bible in a self-involving manner. this time
david is portrayed as an example of a literary aesthete prone to ignore the existential
significance of text because of undue fascination with its aesthetic form.
III. Solomon
throughout his works Kierkegaard took the details in the biblical material to be the
authentic words of the traditionally supposed authors, although he was probably
familiar with the discussions in academic literature concerning the true authorship of
those texts. de wette, for example, had argued that the wisdom literature attributed
to solomon actually dated from a much later period.40 however, for Kierkegaard, the
books of proverbs, ecclesiastes, and song of songs were indeed works by solomon
and therefore contained information about solomon’s personality. we shall examine
these passages in order to understand Kierkegaard’s use of solomon both as a literary
ornament and as an illustration of certain dynamics in an individual’s religious life.
in the following inquiry no further reference will be made to ecclesiastes, because
a separate article in this volume is dedicated to it. moreover, we will not deal with
matthew 6:29 and luke 12:27 in which the fantastic splendor of King solomon is
compared with the beauty of the lilies in the field, even though Kierkegaard often
referred to this Bible passage. a separate article is dedicated to these passages as
well.
A. Letters
In a letter to his fiancée Regine Olsen from May 5, 1841, Kierkegaard briefly
mentions a girl from the Tales of the Thousand and One Nights, “who in addition
to other virtues also had a mouth like the seal of solomon.”41 Kierkegaard sent
a rose back with the letter and sealed the envelope with a kiss—a seal which, so
Kierkegaard notes, is actually regine’s.42 here the reference to solomon is merely a
literary embellishment.
39
SKS 13, 66 / FSE, 39.
40
de wette, Lehrbuch der historisch-kritischen Einleitung in die Bibel Alten und Neuen
Testamentes, vol. 1, pp. 347–56.
41
this may be an allusion to the story of the love between dschubair bin umair and the
lady Budur. see Tausend und eine Nacht. Arabische Erzählungen, vols. 1–4, trans. by gustav
weil, ed. by august lewald, stuttgart und pforzheim: dennig, Finck & Co. 1838–41, vol. 3,
p. 17 (ASKB 1414–1417).
42
B&A, vol. 1 p. 67 / LD, letter 40, p. 85. see song of solomon 8:6.
B. repetition
Constantin Constantius, the pseudonymous author of Repetition, asks himself,

“solomon says that a woman’s nagging is like rain dripping from the roof; i wonder
what he would say about this still life.”43 he muses about this on the occasion of a
visit to a restaurant that he has often frequented and has observed that the customers
always follow the same routine. sadly, he discovers that “here a repetition was
possible!”—for the same things happen over and over again.44 in this context
solomon functions as the source of a bit of commonplace wisdom about ordinary
life.
C. stages on life’s way
After a brief excursus on Goethe in “Some Reflections on Marriage In Answer to

objections” contained in Stages on Life’s Way, a “married man” writes, “solomon
puts it beautifully when he says that he who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains
a good gift from god—or, to modernize the saying a bit, to him who falls in love,
the god has been gracious. if he marries the beloved, he does a good deed and does
well to finish what he has begun.”45 In these reflections it is the husband’s purpose to
argue that marriage is the only appropriate continuation to the state of being in love,
as opposed to the purely erotic liaison by a lover who avoids marriage. of course,
the reader must wonder if solomon, the polygamist and lover of many foreign
women, is an effective witness to the virtues of responsible monogamy.46 given the
inappropriateness of solomon as the married man’s example of marital duty, it is
possible that Kierkegaard may be distancing himself from his pseudonym.
D. “Solomon’s Dream”
the second part of the Stages, the diary of an anonymous, unhappy lover found
by Frater taciturnus, contains six literary sketches in which the author of the diary
contemplates various possibilities for his existence.47 they bear the titles “Quiet
despair,” “a leper’s self-Contemplation,” “solomon’s dream,” “a possibility,”
“the reading lesson: periander,” and “nebuchadnezzar.” during the day the
unhappy man reports on occurrences with his former fiancée that had happened
exactly one year ago and at midnight of the same day he reflects on the question
of whether he has become guilty or not by slipping out of the engagement. the
midnight entry “solomon’s dream” corresponds to the morning’s reminiscence that
his fiancée’s demeanor had become “somewhat unfree” and that a reticence had
appeared in the conversations between his fiancée and himself, as if she was afraid
to be criticized by him. perhaps, he speculates, this reticence is motivated by her fear
43
SKS 4, 44 / R, 170. see prov 19.13.
44
ibid.
45
SKS 6, 146 / SLW, 156. see prov 18:22.
46
see 1 Kings 11:1–3.
47
SKS 6, 234ff. / SLW, 250–2.
that “what she says would not be brilliant enough. That is how difficult my external
nature has made our mutual understanding for me.”48 the reference to a dream
of solomon remotely recalls the story in 1 Kings 3:5–15 in which god promises
solomon that he will develop a discerning heart like his father’s that can distinguish
between right and wrong. Frater tacitunus, however, takes great liberties with the
story and develops it in an entirely different direction.
In the evening’s reflection Solomon is sketched as a happy man, not only happy
to be among the chosen people, but happy to be allowed to be the son of the chosen
one, King david. in solomon’s eyes david is the idealized hero while solomon
himself is merely the admiring poet, happy to laud the virtues of the hero. solomon’s
happiness is disturbed when Solomon awakens one night to find his father alone and
in the deepest despair. the diarist reports that solomon “hears the cry of despair from
the penitent’s soul.”49 solomon then hypothesizes in a dream that it is not david’s
sincerity to god or his familiarity with god that is the basis of david’s status as
the chosen one of god.50 rather, “that secret guilt was the secret that explained
everything.” according to the diarist, solomon’s dream “intimates that god is not
the god of the godly but of the ungodly, and that to be singled out by god one has
to be an ungodly person.”51 through his recognition of this contradiction between
inner despair and outward felicity solomon “became wise, but he did not become a
hero; he became a thinker, but he did not become a man of prayer; and he became a
preacher, but he did not become a believer, and he could help many people, but he
could not help himself; and he became sensual, but not repentant; and he became
crushed but not raised up again, for the power of the will had been overstrained in
lifting what was beyond the lad’s strength.”52
in this story of david and solomon, father and son, two ways of existence are
described, anguished remorse and perplexity about possible guilt. these existential
possibilities are related to one another in the way that the repentance typical of
religiosity is related to the ambiguous attitude of this unhappy lover. possibly
Kierkegaard discerned the same relation reflected in the difference between his
father’s religiosity and his own passional life, even though “solomon’s dream” is
free of autobiographical details.
the story of the relationship of solomon the son and david the father runs parallel
to the sad love story of the former couple. in both instances a type of melancholy
disrupts the understanding that had seemed to characterize the relationship. in
the story of solomon’s dream the lack of understanding arises due to solomon’s
discovery of david’s hidden melancholy. solomon, who is only a child, is unable
to comprehend the change in his father from a secret criminal to a (seemingly)
repentant man. For the rest of his life solomon, like the author of the diary, remains
in an intermediate stage, imagining what god’s forgiveness might be like, but unable
48
SKS 6, 233 / SLW, 250.
49
SKS 6, 234 / SLW, 251.
50
SKS 6, 234 / SLW, 252.
51
SKS 6, 234 / SLW, 251.
52
ibid.
to appropriate it. solomon, like the author of the diary, epitomizes the individual
who cannot decisively repent and therefore cannot embrace god’s forgiveness.
in the story of solomon’s dream the new testament message of god’s love for
sinners (see romans 5:8) is alluded to in an ambiguous way in the relation of the
two generations, the two famous royal witnesses of the old testament. it remains
an open question which option is chosen in the end: is it god’s forgiveness that is
accepted or is it the shock triggered by the sudden perception of perversion and the
anomaly that the godless one is chosen by god? this open-endedness is deliberate,
for it compels the reader to decide for himself or herself to which side the pendulum
will swing. here Kierkegaard puts into practice the “You are the man” theme from
2 samuel 12:7.53
Both david and solomon function in many different ways in Kierkegaard’s
literature. sometimes references to them are simply literary ornaments to embellish
a point that Kierkegaard or one of his pseudonyms is making. however, at other
times david and solomon play more substantial roles, all of them related to the
ethical and religious struggles of the two kings. david’s interaction with nathan
is used by Kierkegaard to draw attention to humanity’s general unwillingness to
engage in self-examination. david’s imagined effort to countermand the order to
engineer uriah’s demise provides an example of the failure to simply accept one’s
pervasive guilt without trying to exonerate oneself. similarly, the non-biblical
story of solomon’s dream serves as a vivid example of the inability to thoroughly
repent and open oneself to god’s grace. neither david nor solomon function as
prefigurements of the messianic reign of Christ. In spite of their royalty and heroic
status, both men usually serve in Kierkegaard’s literature to draw attention to the
dangers, temptations, and failures that haunt religious life.
53
SKS 6, 440 / SLW, 478.
Bibliography
I. Works in the auction Catalogue of Kierkegaard’s Library that Discuss David

and Solomon
gesenius, wilhelm, Lexicon hebraicum & chaldaicum in veteris testamenti libros,

leipzig: vogel 1833, pp. 451–2 (ASKB 72).
martensen, hans lassen, Den christelige Dogmatik, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel
1849, pp. 228–35 (ASKB 653).
rosenkranz, Karl, Encyclopädie der theologischen Wissenschaften, halle: C.a.
schwetschke und son 1831, pp. 139–41 (ASKB 35).
wette, martin leberecht de, Lehrbuch der historisch-kritischen Einleitung in die
Bibel Alten und Neuen Testamentes, vols. 1–2 (in one tome), 4th ed., Berlin: g.
reimer 1833, vol. 1, pp. 225–43 (ASKB 80).
winer, georg Benedikt, Biblisches Realwörterbuch zum Handgebrauch für
ed., leipzig: reclam 1833–38, vol. 1, 1833, pp. 298–307 (ASKB 70–71).
II. Secondary Literature on Kierkegaard’s Use of David and Solomon
Barrett, lee C., “authorial voices and the limits of Communication in Kierkegaard’s
‘signed’ literature: a Comparison of Works of Love to For Self-Examination and
Judge for Yourself!,” in For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourself!, ed. by
Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 21), p. 30.
dunning, stephen, Kierkegaard’s Dialectic of Inwardness: A Structural Analysis
of the Theory of the Stages, princeton, new Jersey: princeton university press
1985, pp. 126–7.
engelke, matthias, Kierkegaard und das Alte Testament. Zum Einfluss der
verlag 1998, p. 84; p. 101; p. 109; p. 130; p. 159; p. 166; p. 174; p. 260; p. 269.
guillamore hansen, p., Søren Kierkegaard og Bibelen, Copenhagen: p. haase 1924,
pp. 33–5; p. 38.
—— “stages on the wrong way: love and the other in Kierkegaard’s Stages on
Life’s Way and Works of Love,” in Stages on Life’s Way, ed. by robert l. perkins,
macon: georgia 2000 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 11), p. 40.
Kjær, grethe, “the Concept of Fate in Stages on Life’s Way,” in Stages on Life’s
Way, ed. by robert l. perkins, macon georgia: mercer university press 2000
(International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 11), p. 253.
law, david, “Cheap grace and the Cost of discipleship in Kierkegaard’s For Self-
Examination,” in For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourself!, ed. by robert
mcCarthy, vincent, “morning and melancholia in ‘Quidam’s diary,’ ” in Stages on
Life’s Way, ed. by robert l. perkins, macon: georgia: mercer university press
2000 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 11), p. 163; p. 166.
martens, paul, “authority, authorship, and the difference between Kierkegaard’s
old and new testament,” in The Book on Adler, ed. by robert l. perkins,
macon, georgia: mercer university press 2008 (International Kierkegaard
Commentary, vol. 24), p. 132.
reitzel 1983, pp. 14–16.
georgia: mercer university press 1997, pp. 36–7.
poole, roger, Kierkegaard: The Indirect Communication, Charlottesville, virginia:
university of virginia press 1993, pp. 115–25.
Pyper, Hugh, “The Apostle, the Genius and the Monkey: Reflections on Kierkegaard’s
‘the mirror of the word,’ ” in Kierkegaard on Art and Communication, ed. by
george pattison, new York: st. martin’s press 1992, pp. 132–3.
tennessee: Broadman & holman 1994, p. 62; p. 91.
Job:
Edification against Theodicy
timothy h. polk
I. Introduction
the Book of Job is the Bible’s classic response to the constellation of issues that
have been traditionally labeled “theodicy.” theodicy is the struggle to legitimate talk
of god’s love and justice in situations of theological dissonance, most particularly
when natural and moral evil is evident and severe. Theodicy can be defined narrowly
as the attempt to justify the ways of god in the face of evil, or more broadly as any
response to the experience of disorientation when a society’s given religious nomos
is challenged. in his writings on Job, Kierkegaard was critical of the enterprise of
theodicy when it was construed as a conceptual exercise, as if the alleged “problem
of evil” were amenable to a resolution through the development of more satisfying
conceptual networks or more plausible hypotheses about god and the universe. For
Kierkegaard, the problem of human tragedy should be addressed doxologically,
not theoretically. doxology is preferable to theodicy in the way that blessing the
name of god is preferable to cursing it. this is true not only of our speaking of
God but also of our reading of Scripture. For the purpose of edification, reading the
Bible doxologically makes better sense than reading the Bible in order to distill a
metaphysics or to reconstruct the cultural dynamics of an ancient society.
Kierkegaard’s authorial practice presaged a “post-critical” way of engaging
scripture, a way that avoids the reduction of meaning to an allegedly objective
reconstruction of the original situation of a book’s composition or redaction.
Kierkegaard takes the passions and purposes of readers seriously as critical factors
in the construction of textual meaning. Kierkegaard illustrates how a certain set of
passions and interests can generate a doxological reading of the Book of Job in
his short novel, Repetition, and in the edifying discourse titled after the celebrated
proverb in Job 1:21, “the lord gave, the lord took away; Blessed Be the name
of the lord.”1 Before examining Kierkegaard’s doxological alternative to purely
historical-critical readings of Job and to theodicy, i shall consider two contrasting
ways of reading this work, which i shall call the metaphysical and the socio-cultural
readings.
Kierkegaard did not read the Book of Job in order to find a propositional answer
to the question, “why does god allow suffering and evil?” as a reader of the Bible
1
SKS 5, 115–28 / EUD, 109–24.
116 Timothy H. Polk
who engaged the texts for edifying purposes, he was suspicious of any reading aimed
at the generation of a theodicy. theodicy is not a purely objective or morally neutral
endeavor. as we shall see, for Kierkegaard, the seemingly intellectual “problem of
theodicy” has a way of transforming itself into an existential problem for the individuals
who engage in theodicy, for such reflections encourage a mood of detachment that
makes encountering God difficult. The problem of theodicy becomes severe if a
reader is concerned about the Bible’s normative status, its capacity to function as
canonical scripture. theodicy often involves a drastic distancing from the Bible’s
first-order language of faith and from its use in the activities that constitute the life
of faith. Consequently, theodicy itself may be an even more powerful incentive to
disbelief than is the evil that it seeks to explain. Kierkegaard warns that Job “did not
detain his soul and quench his spirit with deliberations or explanations that only feed
and foster doubt, even though the person suspended in them does not even notice
that.”2 For Kierkegaard, theodicy typically involves a suspension of the relationship
with god that Christians call faith, and, as such, would qualify as a form of despair,
or, to use doctrinal language, sin.3
II. Job in Kierkegaard’s Intellectual Context
in the intellectual environment that shaped Kierkegaard, biblical scholars had

been disputing almost every aspect of the Book of Job for several decades. indeed,
they rarely agreed about its author, place of origin, genre, and date, much less its
theological or ideological implications. First, there was extreme and impassioned
disagreement about the time of the book’s composition. Johann gottfried herder
(1744–1803) suspected that it predated the formation of the israelite kingdom, for
it seemed to contain traces of a nomadic culture.4 The influential exegete Wilhelm
martin leberecht de wette (1780–1849), by contrast, favored a much later date,
probably during the Chaldean period.5 a further heated debate concerned the
authenticity of the book’s various literary components. herder and leonhard
Bertholdt (1774–1822)6 found elihu’s speech to be an integral part of the book,
while de wette dismissed it as a spurious later interpolation. most scholars were
keenly aware of the profound difference between the poetic dialogues (Job 3:2–
42:6) and the prose framework (Job 1–2; Job 42:7ff.) and the difference between
the poet’s “protesting Job” and the “patient Job” of the folk tale. many doubted that
2
SKS 5, 125 / EUD, 121.
3
SKS 11, 189–242 / SUD, 75–131. see also SKS 9, 48–50 / WL, 40–43.
4
Johann gottfried herder, Vom Geist der hebräischen Poesie, in Johann Gottfried von
Herder’s sämmtliche Werke. Zur Religion und Theologie, vols. 1–18, stuttgart and tübingen:
J.g. Cotta 1827–30, vol. 1, pp. 86–137 (ASKB 1676–1684).
5
1833, vol. 1, pp. 356–65 (ASKB 80).
6
leonhard Bertholdt, Historisch-kritische Einleitung in sämmtliche kanonische und
apokryphische Schriften des alten und neuen Testaments, vols. 1–7, erlangen: palm 1812–19,
vol. 5, pp. 2151–63.
Job: Edification against Theodicy 117
the prologue and epilogue were original parts of the composition,7 and advanced
arguments against its authenticity that de wette rehearsed in a text that Kierkegaard
owned.8 Johann gottfried eichhorn (1752–1827) proposed that the entire book was a
poetic composition with few roots in history.9 Most significantly, disagreement raged
about the main point of the text. For herder, who abstracted the poetic dialogues
from the prose framework, the text poetically expresses the sublimity of god as
creator and as judge in order to stimulate a sense of awe and wonder in the reader.
in herder’s view the book’s main theme is its depiction of god as pervading and
animating nature; the entire cosmos is god’s palace.10 de wette regarded the Book
of Job as a not entirely successful attempt to overcome a theology of retribution
according to which the good prosper and the wicked suffer. in the face of life’s
unfairness and tragedy, the book encourages the virtues of resignation, trust, and
humble submission as antidotes to doubts about god’s purposes.11 Karl rosenkranz
(1805–79) cited Job as an extreme instance of Judaism’s acute differentiation of god
and humanity, in which the individual stands in opposition to god.12 Job presents an
abstract monotheism that defines God as absolute will to be obeyed and sheer glory
to be adored with awe. From the books in his library Kierkegaard would have been
familiar with many of these views. Although he did not find it religiously profitable
to engage in scholarly disputes about the historical context of Job, echoes of some of
the themes from this scholarly conversation can be detected in his writings.
III. Metaphysical Readings
Of the two varieties of non-Kierkegaardian reading that we shall consider, the first
is so distant from the biblical idiom that it need refer to Job only tangentially, as
an illustration of points independently established. it is theodicy done in the grand
manner of metaphysics, a way of engaging Job with which Kierkegaard was quite
familiar. the problem for Kierkegaard was that such academic work proceeded in a
spirit entirely different from that which generated the biblical materials. it tended to
marginalize Job’s normative role in the practice of piety. divorced from the context
of the religious life, in particular from the activities of praise central to that life,
biblical scholarship easily slipped into an attitude foreign to that which enables the
Bible to function as scripture.
7
matthias stuhlmann, Hiob. Ein religiöses Gedicht, hamburg: perthes 1804.
8
Testamentes, vol. 1, p. 361.
9
Johann gottfried eichhorn, Einleitung in das Alte Testament, vols. 1–5, 4th ed.,
göttingen: rosenbusch 1824 [1780–83], vol. 5, pp. 114–34.
10
Johann gottfried herder, Vom Geist der hebräischen Poesie, pp. 86–137.
11
Testamentes, vol. 1, pp. 357–8; pp. 362–3.
12
Karl rosenkranz, “eine parallele zur religionsphilosophie,” Zeitschrift für spekulative
Theologie, vols. 1–3, ed. by Bruno Bauer, Berlin: dümmler 1836–38, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 13–14
(ASKB 354–357). in 1837 Kierkegaard took extensive notes from this article. see SKS 17,
220–1, dd:10 / KJN 1, 212.
118 Timothy H. Polk
metaphysically oriented theology has typically framed theodicy in terms of
conceptual challenges to the theological claims that god is powerful (usually the
claim is that god is omnipotent) and absolutely loving. the plausibility of these
propositions is thrown into question by the evident tragedy and suffering that pervade
the created order, things which a loving and powerful god presumably could prevent
and would want to prevent. the metaphysical response to this conundrum is to attempt
to discern a reason for this suffering, a reason that does not impugn god’s power,
justice, or love. theodicy is, in John hick’s words, “an exercise in metaphysical
construction consisting in the formation of large-scale hypotheses concerning the
nature and process of the universe.”13 the assumption is that religious beliefs are
justified primarily by occupying a position in a theoretical scheme. That scheme
is composed of highly general propositions about the world, propositions to which
one’s concept of God must conform in order to be justified. In this strategy common
to all theodicies, the concept god is made to function as a cypher within a particular
metaphysics, uprooted from its natural context of worship. the Book of Job would
be of interest to this enterprise insofar as it could provide images and narratives
that would trigger the development of an adequate metaphysical scheme or provide
illustrations for such a scheme.
The impulse to generate theodicies was strong in Kierkegaard’s era. The influential
gottfried wilhelm von leibniz (1646–1716), whose work Kierkegaard frequently
cited, had reanimated the enterprise of doing theodicy by explaining the presence of
tragedy in terms of the necessary imperfection of finite being.14 Ferdinand Christian
Baur (1792–1860), using a different conceptual idiom, continued this explanatory
strategy in the first half of the nineteenth century.15 Baur also drew critical attention
to the very different “gnostic” theory that a dimension of negativity exists in god
which, when projected outward into the finite universe, manifests itself as evil.16
Baur claimed that this gnostic view had been revived and reworked by Jacob Böhme
(1525–1624) and further developed in a more subtle guise in Friedrich wilhelm
Joseph von schelling’s (1775–1854) philosophy of nature. Kierkegaard was aware
of this gnostic view and realized that it implied the identification of creation with
13
John hick, Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy, ed. by stephen t. david,
atlanta, georgia: John Knox 1981, p. 39.
14
see Herrn Gottfried Wilhelms, Freyherrn von Leibnitz, Theodicee, das ist, Versuch
von der Güte Gottes, Freyheit des Menschen, und vom Ursprunge des Bösen, 5th revised ed.,
ed. by Johann Christoph gottsched, hannover and leipzig: im verlage der Försterischen
erben 1763 (ASKB 619).
15
Ferdinand Christian Baur, “erwiderung auf herr dr. möhler’s neueste polemik gegen
die protestantische lehre und Kirche,” Tübinger Zeitschrift für Theologie, vol. 1834, tome
3, 1834, pp. 127–248. Kierkegaard owned a danish translation of this article, see Ferdinand
Christian Baur, “Besvarelse af hr. dr. möhler’s nyeste polemik imod den protestantiske lære
og Kirke,” Tidsskrift for udenlandsk theologisk Litteratur, vol. 2, 1834, pp. 587–625 (ASKB u
29).
16
Ferdinand Christian Baur, Die christliche Gnosis oder die christliche Religions-
Philosophie in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung, tübingen: C.F. osiander 1835, pp. 557–626
(ASKB 421).
the fall.17 other authors drew attention to the ancient theory, suggested by augustine,
that good required evil as a term of contrast.18 pursuing a different strategy, Karl
daub (1765–1836) proposed that all relative evils are the expression of essential
evil, a reality whose existence is utterly inexplicable and must be regarded as being
as miraculous as is the good creative activity of god.19 daub’s view was often
disparagingly regarded as a sophisticated variant of dualism.20 dualistic tendencies
were also evident in the controversial work of Bernard heinrich Blasche (1766–
1832).21 an alternative view was commonly ascribed to georg wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel (1770–1831), who was credited with being the most influential modern
advocate of the view that human evil was the product of the assertion of individuated
subjectivity, a transitory negative moment to be sublated.22 hegel was accused of
entertaining the view that a necessary dialectic governs the self-unfolding of spirit,
which was taken to imply a fatalism that would include the suffering caused by
human agency.23
although each of these theodicies explained the presence of evil differently, they
all shared a crucial common feature. all of these speculations implicitly assumed
that biblical faith in god entails or depends upon a “theory,” an ideology or system
of theoretical propositions.24 Combating this assumption, Kierkegaard wrote as if the
concept of god only acquires meaning when it is properly embedded in a particular
way of life. For Christians, this way of life is normed by the primary witnesses of
faith, the Bible. understanding the god presented in the Book of Job has more to do
17
SKS 17, 257, dd:122 / KJN 1, 248.
18
m. Fronmüller, “die lehre des Joh. scotus erigena vom wesen des Bösen nach
ihrem inneren zusammenhang,” Tübinger Zeitschrift für Theologie, vol. 1830, tome 1, 1830,
pp. 49–89.
19
see Carl daub, Judas Ischariot, oder das Böse im Verhältniß zum Guten, vols. 1–
2, heidelberg: mohr and winter 1816–18. Kierkegaard was aware of this book and spoke
approvingly of daub’s placing evil in the category of the miraculous. see SKS 23, 70,
nB15:101 / JP 4, 4030. see also Jon stewart, “daub: Kierkegaard’s paradoxical appropriation
of a hegelian sentry,” in Kierkegaard and His German Contemporaries, tome ii, Theology,
ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2007 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception, and
Resources, vol. 6), p. 69. hans lassen martensen (1808–84) sought to defend hegel against
the accusation of fatalism. see hans lassen martensen, Grundrids til Moralphilosophien
System, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1841, p. 248.
20
see Julius müller, Die christliche Lehre von der Sünde, vols. 1–2, Breslau: Josef max,
1849, vol. 1, Vom Wesen und Grunde der Sünde, pp. 560–1 (ASKB 689–690).
21
Bernhard heinrich Blasche, Das Böse im Einklange mit der Weltordnung dargestellt
oder neuer Versuch über den Ursprung, die Bedeutung, die Gesetze und Verwandtschaften
des Uebels: mit kritischen Blicken in die Gebiete der neuern Theologie und Pädagogik in
philosophischer Hinsicht, leipzig: F. a. Brockhaus 1827.
22
see müller, Die christliche Lehre von der Sünde, vol. 1, pp. 495–558.
23
henrik nicolai Clausen, Det Nye Testaments Hermeneutik, Copenhagen: Jens hostrup
schultz 1840, pp. 371–2 (ASKB 468). see Jon stewart, A History of Hegelianism in Golden
Age Denmark, tome ii, The Martensen Period: 1837–1842, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 2007
(Danish Golden Age Studies, vol. 3), pp. 470–83.
24
i would agree with paul holmer that it does not. see “theology, theism, and atheism,”
in his The Grammar of Faith, san Francisco: harper & row 1978, pp. 159–78.
120 Timothy H. Polk
with the activity of praising, and other such practices of the religious life, than with
the task of securing an ideology. according to Kierkegaard, when transferred out
of the activity of worship into that of system building, the concept of god becomes
a different concept, one egregiously inadequate to its supposed referent.25 the
flattening of biblical themes and concepts becomes more severe the more remote one
gets from the practice of using the Bible to guide the religious life. For Kierkegaard,
understanding any biblical theme requires the submission of the reader’s life to the
scrutiny of scripture, and a willingness to be transformed by and to appropriate what
is read. Kierkegaard resisted submitting scripture to the scrutiny of modern world-
views that presumed scripture’s primary content to be passion-neutral truth claims
about the nature of the universe.
Kierkegaard’s practice suggests that the appropriate construal of a biblical
book for Christian purposes requires approaching it in canonical context, that is, as
scripture.26 This means more than just addressing the final form of the text. It means
considering the text in relation to the communities that formed and shaped it, and
that continue to read it, as scripture. it means taking into account the implicit rules
that normatively guide their reading, as well as the web of beliefs, commitments,
practices, and purposes in which their reading is embedded. For Kierkegaard, praise
is a continuous thread in that web. too often theodicy à la metaphysics obscured the
canonical context and failed to hear the praise.
IV. Socio-Cultural Readings
our second type of non-Kierkegaardian reading does not attempt to actually “do”
theodicy so much as explain why and how the questioning of god’s goodness
arises. this type of analysis attends to the performative force of the Bible as an
ideological instrument. viewed from this perspective, scripture serves to legitimate
a religious community’s world order (nomos), especially in situations of crisis. more
particularly, the Book of Job was intended as a device to reinforce the ideological
world and institutional arrangements of an ancient people during a time of disorienting
stress.27
25
daniel hardy and david Ford put it well in their book, Praising and Knowing God,
philadelphia: westminster 1985, p. 109: “in the case of knowledge of god, as with any other
claimed object of knowledge, the question is whether the criteria and the way they are applied
are appropriate to the object. if, for example, the only way to know god is to interact with
him in particular ways, then criteria which demand a neutral, non-involved knowing will be
inappropriate.”
26
i continue to use “canonical” in the broad sense Brevard Childs employs it in order to
refer to a historical process of composing, redacting, transmitting, and preserving the biblical
literature with religious uses in mind, and to the interpretive stance of realizing the literature
in relation to those uses. see Brevard Childs, Old Testament Theology in Canonical Context,
philadelphia: Fortress press 1989, p. 119.
27
peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion,
garden City, new York: anchor 1969.
attempts were made in the early nineteenth century to read Job as a response
to a cultural and theological crisis. For example, in his introductory book on the
old testament, de wette dated Job rather late. in the fourth edition of his work
that Kierkegaard owned, he situated Job in the Chaldean period,28 but in his fifth
edition he placed it a bit earlier during the collapse of the Kingdom of Judah during
the seventh century bc.29 in either case, the seemingly patriarchal character of
Job was taken to symbolize the Jewish people during a time of national calamity.
Consequently, the Book of Job is depicted as an attempt to come to terms with
the failure of the doctrine that the virtuous will be rewarded and the wicked will
be punished to explain the egregious afflictions of the people. For de Wette, the
point of Job is that the moral principle of retribution is not necessarily built into the
cosmos, as Job’s three “comforters” assume it must be. on the contrary, there is no
necessary connection between sin and suffering whatsoever, Job’s or the people’s as
a whole. By marginalizing the epilogue and the prologue, de wette interpreted the
book as being a recommendation of the fundamental religious attitude of submission
to the inscrutable purposes of god. Job adopts a posture of self-abasement before
the radically transcendentalized, omnipotent, and wholly righteous deity. god’s
governance of the cosmos cannot be judged by human standards. as a result, the
sacrality of the nomos is maintained by Job’s submission.
In a similar way, Hegel proposed a less contextually specific account of the
production of the Book of Job.30 treating Job as an expression of the development
of the “religion of spiritual individuality,” hegel saw the book as an attempt to deal
with a tension that would inevitably arise within Judaism’s monotheism. god has
been posited as both the sublime author and governor of nature, and as the source and
guarantor of humanity’s moral telos. Because god wills the good and because god
is absolute power, one would expect anyone’s state of well-being to be proportionate
to his or her state of well-doing. when empirical circumstances make the disparity
between righteousness and worldly felicity evident, an ideological adjustment must
occur. in the Book of Job’s case resigned acknowledgement of god’s power is the
recommended resolution, which then ushers in a new kind of happiness. through
this modification the conceptual order is preserved.
our two types of non-Kierkegaardian readings, the metaphysical and the socio-
cultural, illustrate how the project of theodicy can be theoretically formulated and
how Job can be construed in terms of that project. From Kierkegaard’s perspective,
these readings treat the book quite differently from the way it is employed in the
first-order language of faith, and thereby obscure the Book of Job’s more appropriate
upbuilding uses. Kierkegaard sets out to provide alternatives to these religiously
unsatisfying readings in Repetition and “the lord gave, and the lord took away.”
28
29
ibid., pp. 403–4.
30
georg wilhelm Friedrich hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion, vols.
1–2, ed. by philipp marheineke, 2nd revised ed., Berlin: duncker and humblot 1840 (vols.
11–12 in Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Werke, vols. 1–18, ed. by philipp marheineke et
al., Berlin: duncker and humblot 1832–45), vol. 2, pp. 66–8 (ASKB 564–565).
122 Timothy H. Polk
these two literary pieces, one an instance of the aesthetic literature and the other an
instance of the upbuilding literature, were published a few weeks apart, and were
intended to be read in tandem. interestingly, they exhibit very different perspectives
on Job. Repetition highlights the angry, defiant, outraged Job of the poetic discourses,
while Kierkegaard’s upbuilding discourse foregrounds the resigned Job of the prose
prologue. By distributing the two Jobs in two different works, Kierkegaard shows
that he was well aware of the exegetic conversation about the apparent discrepancy
between the prologue and the poetic discourses, and sensitive to their very different
literary forms. however, as we shall see, his novella and his upbuilding discourse
point to each other, and invite the reader to try to integrate the two perspectives.
Through this struggle to discern the resigned, pious Job in the anguished, defiant
Job, and vice versa, the reader may discover a very upbuilding blessing in the
midst of suffering and strife. By offering the two different perspectives on Job
simultaneously, Kierkegaard was replicating the canonical shape of the book and
encouraging the reader to wrestle with the bifocal image in the way that the faithful
had always done.
V. Praise as Ordeal
A. The Concept “Repetition”
an exploration of “repetition” provides the context for Kierkegaard’s appropriation

of Job in a manner that avoids the pitfalls of theodicy. the question driving
Kierkegaard’s short novel, Repetition, is whether a repetition is possible. though
speculatively raised by the pseudonymous author Constantin Constantius, the
question becomes an existential ordeal for the anonymous “young man” who is the
story’s protagonist. prompted by his own situation of lost love, the young man’s
fascination with Job sharpens the two key categories, “repetition” and “ordeal.”
what “repetition” means is hard enough to determine; assessing its possibility is
even harder. Kierkegaard employs the concept in a characteristically equivocal
manner, with its sense shifting according to the form of life, or stage of existence, of
the person attempting to engage in repetition. repetition begins with the individual’s
capacity for imaginative self-consciousness. aware of ourselves in our concreteness
and finitude, we are also able to project possibilities for ourselves. Although the
possibilities are ideal, they are authentic insofar as they are consciously grounded in
the actual selves that we happen to be. accordingly, we repeat the ideal to the degree
that we enact it in actuality, realizing it in the medium of our day-to-day living.31
the emphasis on actual existence points to the ethical as the sphere of existence
in which repetition has a home. repetition is a self-building process through which
we construct and become full human subjects. For Kierkegaard, it is in the ethical
sphere that a person recognizes the achievement of selfhood and subjectivity as
one’s proper life-work and sets about doing it. Consequently, repetition seems to be
31
see david gouwens, Kierkegaard’s Dialectic of the Imagination, new York: peter
lang 1988, p. 206.
the product of the individual’s own agency. the danish term Gjentagelse literally
means “again-taking,” and its nuance of agency points back to the primacy of the
ethical sphere. the recognition that one does not simply “have” a self but must
become one, and the consequent striving to become an actual self, are marks of
the ethical life. some persons in the aesthetic stage of life are so immersed in their
immediate environment that they merely take themselves for granted and do not
strive to become a self. others, aesthetes proper, relate to their possibilities only
hypothetically; they balk at undertaking a commitment to any one of them. either
way, there can be no repetition in the aesthetic life. only after the adoption of ethical
categories can the question of the possibility of repetition be meaningfully raised.
the tragic irony is that once the question of repetition is raised in the ethical
sphere, its normative province, the question becomes urgent and anguished in the
extreme. the self one becomes always turns out to be a broken self, and not the ideal.
(we hear the lutheran dimension of Kierkegaard speaking here, for he echoes the
lutheran theme of the endurance of sinfulness even in the saints.) Yet precisely at this
point another irony may emerge, even greater than the tragic disparity of the ethical
ideal and the actual achievement. For in the religious life it happens that in spite of
crushing ethical failure the self is found and “re-taken” outside of the sphere of one’s
striving, that is, outside and in violation of the ethical principle that repetition should
be the product of one’s own efforts to actualize one’s possibilities. this is a paradox,
a conflation of spheres. Repetition’s fulfillment is an exception to its own ethical
assumptions. the fact that Kierkegaard refers to this construction process with the
religiously freighted term, “edification” (or “up-building”), suggests a paradoxical
quality within the concept of repetition, a kind of transgression of spheres or mixing
of categories.32
This fulfillment of repetition is part of the paradox that for Kierkegaard marks
the religious stage of existence. ironically, the person who actually experiences
repetition outwardly resembles the person still caught in aesthetic immediacy who
takes herself as given. inwardly, however, she is different for having gone through
the struggle of the ethical and been educated by it. having learned and acknowledged
that she cannot establish her own self by herself, she receives herself not from nature
as a product (aesthetically) but from god as a gift (religiously). thus the religious
fulfillment of an ethical category suspends the ethical and so looks like the aesthetic;
nevertheless, the ethical is an indispensable dimension of it.
what does Job have to do with this abstract scenario? louis mackey succinctly
expresses the Job-like nature of “repetition.” he asserts that “repetition” is really
about “the possibility of restoring a personality to integrity after it has been broken by
grief and guilt.”33 For the young man, and for Kierkegaard, Job is a paradigm of such
restoration. the novel Repetition is styled and structured to promote that very goal
of restoration, as is the Kierkegaardian corpus as a whole. as mark lloyd taylor has
32
see especially the chapter “love Builds up,” in SKS 9, 212–26 / WL, 202–24. see
also Johannes Climacus’ discussion of edification in SKS 9, 233–5 / CUP1, 256–9.
33
louis mackey, Kierkegaard: A Kind of Poet, philadelphia: university of pennsylvania
press 1972, p. 322, note 20. mackey’s mention of guilt points to an interesting psychological
fact: Job feels guilty even though he is not—indeed, even though he knows he is not.
124 Timothy H. Polk
shown,34 the novel’s appearance in tandem with Fear and Trembling was deliberate,
for thematically the one repeats the other. Both are aimed at introducing the concept
of repetition. Both are “the story of an ordeal that ends with a repetition by virtue of
the absurd, which, in some fashion, illustrates religious faith.”35 of course, in regard to
illustrating faith, Job more closely repeats abraham than does the young man himself,
and what abraham and Job both illustrate faith to be is essentially receptivity. the
restoration of health and household to Job, like the restoring of isaac to abraham,
represents a receiving back of life in its finite immediacy. But the repetition is also
a receiving of life in a new way, not naively as at first but in a second immediacy,
“whereby,” Taylor says, “the finite is received from the hand of God.”36
the absurdity of Job’s fairy-tale restoration was of course a natural magnet
for Kierkegaard’s interest, since the restoration so clearly violated both his age’s
skepticism, grounded in its essentially aesthetic-objectivist world-view, and its
ethical sensibilities. it was partly for this reason that de wette found the epilogue
to be an embarrassment that undercut what he took to be the book’s central effort
to deconstruct the ideology of retribution and reward.37 rather than decrying Job’s
ability to receive back earthly happiness, the aesthete Constantin Constantius, who
can imagine (but not enact) an ethical repetition, marvels, “who would have imagined
this ending?”38 in order to emphasize the marvelous nature of any such repetition,
Kierkegaard had to read Job canonically, with the disputed epilogue treated as an
integral part of the text.
Constantin’s inability to fathom Job mirrors the perplexity of Johannes de
silentio, pseudonymous author of Fear and Trembling, whose inability to fathom
abraham generates his four depictions of what abraham might have done differently
if he had “doubted,” that is, had abraham been unreceptive, an ethical hero of self-
constituting activity rather than a “knight of faith” who was receptive.39 incredible
was abraham’s ability to receive isaac back again with joy, once having resigned
himself to the catastrophic loss. analogous is Job’s apparent willingness to accept
the restoration, including a new set of children (Job 42:13–16). offense is given not
just by the intellectual absurdity that arises from an appraisal of what is plausible, but
by Job’s overcoming an ethical repugnance at the claim that one’s life and cherished
relationships do not belong to oneself, but rather to god, who gives and takes (Job
1:21) and gives again, inscrutably.
34
mark lloyd taylor, “ordeal and repetition in Kierkegaard’s treatment of abraham
and Job,” in Foundations of Kierkegaard’s Vision of Community: Religion, Ethics, and Politics
in Kierkegaard, ed. by george B. Connell and C. stephen evans, atlantic highlands, new
Jersey: humanities press international 1991, pp. 33–53.
35
ibid., p. 39.
36
ibid., p. 8. on the “second [also “new” or “later”] immediacy,” see among other
places, SKS 4, 172 / FT, 82 and SKS 7, 239 / CUP1, 263.
37
Testamentes, vol. 1, pp. 357–8; pp. 362–3.
38
SKS 4, 79 / R, 212.
39
see “the exordium,” SKS 4, 104–11 / FT, 9–14. see also de silentio’s remark in the
“eulogy”: “if abraham had doubted, he would have done something else…” (SKS 4, 117 / FT,
20).
like de silentio, Constantin is constructed to represent (repeat) a dominant
perspective among Kierkegaard’s readership. accordingly, his wonderment serves to
articulate a common reader response to the bizarre ending of Job. like de silentio’s
speculations about abraham, Constantin’s consideration of Job triggers questions
about Job’s silence after his restoration, questions that are more disturbing because
the divine restoration includes no divine guarantees that catastrophe will not strike
unexpectedly and absurdly again. For the reader, a slow clarification may occur
through this mirroring of the reader’s questions. The difficulty of again-taking may
then be seen as the difficulty of surrendering to God all proprietary claims to life and
goods—and still have the capacity to care, love, and rejoice in that which we are
given.40 the reader is prodded to ask with personal urgency how such repetition is
indeed possible, a question that may bear edifying fruit.
Kierkegaard performs his repetitions at another level as well. Constantin mirrors
not just the reader’s reaction to Job’s story but also the narrative action within it. in
the role of dubious advisor to the young man, Constantin is related to the young man
as Job’s hapless comforters are related to Job. thus the reader of the story, to the
degree that the reader views the narrative of Job from the perspective of Constantin
the counsellor, is encouraged to identify with the least sympathetic characters in the
story. whether or not the reader proceeds to recognize himself in shame, Kierkegaard
has given the individual occasion for such self-recognition. no human being can do
another’s repetition for them, Kierkegaard believed; only god can do that. But if one
is suitably indirect, an author may, edifyingly, help to induce it.
Constantin is not the only perspective on Job in the novel; Job is also viewed
through the young man’s eyes. Naturally, if Constantin typifies Job’s friends,
we would expect to encounter the young man as a type of Job. to an extent, our
expectations are fulfilled. Beginning to regard his own life in the light of Job’s,
the young man presents himself as Job does to his friends. “no doubt wisdom will
die with you; but i have understanding as well as you,” Job sarcastically insists
in Job 12:2–3. similarly, the young man can quote wisdom with the best of the
pedants, remarking, “i do not converse with people, but in order not to break off
communication with them, as well as not to give them blather for their money, i
have collected quite a few poems, pithy sayings, proverbs, and brief maxims from
the immortal greek and roman writers who have been admired in every age.”41
through his Job-like self-interpretation, the young man interprets Job for the reader
as a master of wisdom’s standard speech forms, although as a master chastened
by the recognition that such mastery can be vacuous. the reader is also shown the
prospect that one might, like the young man, find one’s own self impelled to repeat
Job’s passion to fill the empty forms with substance.
through this literary strategy Kierkegaard mirrors ancient israel’s concern
with wisdom as right-speaking. In the Book of Job this intensified concern with
the substance of speech is framed in terms of human integrity (Job 1:11, 22; Job
40
see edward F. mooney, “understanding abraham: Care, Faith, and the absurd,”
in Kierkegaard’s “Fear and Trembling”: Critical Appraisals, ed. by robert l. perkins,
university, alabama: university of alabama press 1981, pp. 100–114.
41
SKS 4, 71 / R, 203.
126 Timothy H. Polk
2:3, 9–10). the issue of integrity is fundamentally related to the question of the
way in which humans should properly fear god, or whether they can properly fear
god. this is “the satan’s” question in the prologue that generates Job’s ordeal in the
first place (Job 1:9). The young man re-introduces the reader to this constellation of
themes by again mirroring the role of Job. as Job rejects the false self-interpretation
enthusiastically recommended by his friends (Job 11:6, 13–15; Job 22:5, 21), and
clings to his integrity (Job 13:16; Job 19:7, 23ff.; Job 23:7), so the young man
clings to his, by refusing the charade proposed by Constantin as a way to resolve
his dilemma. like Job, the young man insists, “i demand my rights—that is, my
honor.”42
It is significant that the young man conceives of his integrity, his “honor,” in terms
of “rights,” for so does Job. Job’s enumeration of duties performed (see especially the
innocence oath of chapter 31) constitutes the basis of his claim upon god for what
Job regards as his rightful due. For Kierkegaard, this is integrity defined ethically.
a wholeness of self is won by the self through the embracing of duty. with Job this
wholeness is won through the fulfillment of covenantal obligations. The question of
religious repetition is precisely the question of whether another form of integrity,
rooted in an enhanced relationship with god, is possible. Job’s “confession” at the
end of the book does seem to suggest that Job’s integrity shifts in quality with the
divine revelation, and his fear of god deepens.
such a construal is not indisputable, however. Kierkegaard’s young man has led
the reader into a hermeneutical puzzle, forcing the reader to make a decision about the
most apt way to interpret the quality of Job’s integrity in light of the book’s ending.
For instance, Job’s restoration can also be read deconstructively as the reinstatement
of the doctrine of retribution that the divine speeches appeared to shatter, as de wette
tended to read it; or, in Kierkegaardian terms, as the reabsorption of the religious
by the ethical, as the domestication of the transcendent by society’s ideology of
distributive justice. When Job repents, he finally seems to do what the doctrine of
retribution had required all along. as his friends had advised, he confesses the sin
of which his suffering was a symptom, according to the doctrine as presented by his
friends.43 moreover, he is rewarded by god, receiving from the appeased Yahweh the
recompense that his good deed (the confession) rightly deserves.
Kierkegaard’s writing suggests that which reading one chooses may be a function
of one’s willingness to take the possibility of a repetition seriously. although the
doctrine of retribution does seem to have been reinstated, perhaps it has been
reinstated only in the manner of a repetition; that is, it is reinstated only after being
filtered through the dialectic of experience, de-ossified and revivified, purged of naive
immediacy, and taken again by a heart that has been transformed by its testing.
42
SKS 4, 70 / R, 202.
43
the doctrine of retribution proposes that good deeds result in happy consequences,
while evil deeds in unhappy consequences, such as suffering and death. Job’s friends read the
doctrine backwards, reasoning that any happiness people experience is the result of goodness
on their part, any suffering the result of their sin. the backwards reading does not follow
logically from the doctrine itself.
similarly, the restoration need not be construed as the collapse of the religious
sphere into the ethical; rather, the ethical has been taken up into the religious and
acknowledged as dialectically essential to it. Yes, the doctrine affirms the pleasure
god takes in the good done by the creature, for doing good relates creature and
Creator in the appropriate manner. And the doctrine affirms the divine displeasure at
evil, which yields disproportion and disrelationship and so more evil. But a syllogistic
doctrine of retribution is inadequate to the complexity of human experience or indeed
of the divine mind. sin does generate suffering, but not every instance of suffering,
including Job’s, is the direct effect of the sufferer’s sins.
dutifully striving to embody god’s will in human works does form the self, but
it does not complete it. god does restore and complete Job after Job’s confession,
conferring upon him the integrity Job sought, but this chronological sequence need
not imply causality. the fact that the restoration is subsequent to Job’s confession
does not mean that it must be regarded as a consequence of the confession. the
restoration may simply be the free gift of god’s good pleasure. and the wonder
may be less whether god freely gave it than where Job got the heart, the integrity, to
gladly receive it, if not from god as a free gift.
the way the restoration bears on the status of the doctrine of retribution has
raised an important issue. of the last two questions (did god give the gift freely and
where did Job get the heart to receive it?), Kierkegaard would regard the first as the
stuff of idle speculation and as a standard means of evading the second. the second,
however, is serious because it is so potentially edifying. By wondering how Job got
the heart to receive new children gladly, one may be opening the door to do some
receiving oneself. in fact, that openness to the possibility of receptivity would itself
be a building up of the self.
For Kierkegaard, the issue of whether the text actually answers either question
is less important than its power to stimulate a passionate asking of the second one.
indeed, the intensity of the reader’s involvement may be proportionate to the text’s
opaqueness on certain crucial questions. something in the way the Book of Job is
styled, something Kierkegaard sought to repeat in Repetition, clearly signaled to
him an edifying intent. we see from that repetition of styling that his hermeneutic
investment lies in the capacity of the text to foster a religious passion in the reader.
A qualification is in order at this point. The young man is a type of Job only
to an extent; he is not fully identifiable with Job. Like Constantin, he is a reader
with possibilities that we are likely to share. standing too close to Job for his own
comfort, and too close to us for our comfort, he articulates what might be called
Kierkegaard’s epidemiological model of scripture: the text carries a contagion. if we
read scripture, we might catch that contagion. the young man writes:
and yet anxiety comes over me, as if i still did not understand what someday i would
come to understand, as if the horror i was reading about was waiting for me, as if by
reading about it i brought it upon myself, just as one becomes ill with the sickness one
reads about.44
44
SKS 4, 74 / R, 206.
128 Timothy H. Polk
the dreadful prospect that the young man refers to is what i have referred to as
Job’s “ordeal.” it is through the young man as anxious observer, i.e., as a type of
the passionate reader, that Kierkegaard introduces us to this most decisive category
in his description of Job. it is the ordeal that the young man/reader must repeat, if
repetition is possible.
it is noteworthy that the ordeal is understood to include the dialogue section
of the book, both with its complaints and with Job’s announced intent to “take
god to court as a child of man does his fellow.”45 in a religiously serious reading,
Kierkegaard makes clear that Job’s protests are not to be silenced but must be allowed
to reverberate with utmost significance, not unlike Jesus’ cry of abandonment from
the cross.
even more interestingly, Job’s ordeal becomes the focus for the dithyrambic
praises that so markedly distinguish the young man’s voice from Constantin’s. at
this point the voice of the young man also closely resembles that of Kierkegaard’s
own authorial persona in the edifying discourses, most especially in the discourse on
Job and its echoes of the verse “the lord gave, the lord hath taken away; blessed
be the name of the lord” (Job 1:21). we can therefore expect to see this edifying
discourse attempt to induce a repetition, just as we have seen Repetition serve as a
stimulus for edification. Both texts present a Job praised precisely for the complex
form of praise with which he confronts his ordeal. we turn now to inspect both the
ordeal and the praise more closely.
B. Fearful Edification and Proverbial Wisdom
In describing the relation of edification to religious ordeal, Johannes Climacus

remarks, “It holds true of everything upbuilding that it first and foremost evokes
the requisite adequate terror, for otherwise the upbuilding is make-believe.”46 the
promotion of this fear that is necessary for edification is the purpose of Kierkegaard’s
upbuilding discourse that draws its title from Job 1:20–21: “the lord gave, and the
lord took away; blessed be the name of the lord.” in this discourse from 1843
Kierkegaard attempted to read all of Job through the lens of this suitably daunting
proverb. By doing so, Kierkegaard considers the book from the perspective of Job’s
praise and blessing of god rather than from the perspective of Job’s outrage and
anguished perplexity. the voice of the discourse is very different from the voice of
the young man in the pseudonymous novella. nevertheless, the dynamic interaction
of the two readings of Job generates a tensive, multi-dimensional engagement with
the text that no singular exposition could bring about. in fact, it is the interplay of the
two that generates the most fearful edification.
Both authors are worried that Job’s theme of blessing god in the midst of loss
could degenerate into a cultural platitude. in Repetition the young man bemoans the
potential of Job to be reduced to a cliché. he exclaims:
45
ibid.
46
SKS 7, 234–5 / CUP1, 259.
Job! Job! o Job! is that really all you said, those beautiful words: the lord gave, and the
lord took away; blessed be the name of the lord? ...no more, no less, just as they say
“god bless you” when one sneezes! no, you who in your prime were the sword of the
oppressed, the stave of the old, and the staff of the brokenhearted, you did not disappoint
men when everything went to pieces—then you became the voice of the suffering, the
cry of the grief-stricken, the shriek of the terrified, and a relief to all who bore their
torment in silence, a faithful witness to all the affliction and laceration there can be in a
heart, an unfailing spokesman who dared to lament “in bitterness of soul” and to strive
with god.47
the young man’s allusions to Job’s protestations in the dialogues shows that he
knows that the proverb was not a cliché because the life situation out of which it
was spoken was not a cliché. in Job’s mouth the proverb means more than “god
bless you.” it means more because of who Job was, because of what had happened
to make him what he was. The proverbial phrase acquires extraordinary significance
because of the context in which Job uses it, and because of the way that he uses it.
in the edifying discourse, Kierkegaard exhibits a similar concern for the conditions
necessary for the significant use of the proverb, claiming:
the statement itself is not the guide, and Job’s significance consists not in his having
said it but in his having acted upon it. the saying itself is certainly beautiful and worth
pondering, but if someone else had said it, or if Job had been someone else, or if he had
said it on another occasion, the saying itself would have become something different—
meaningful, if it had any meaning at all, as spoken, but not meaningful because he acted
in asserting it, because the asserting was itself an action.48
on this matter of the conditions for the meaningful assertion of the proverb, the
young man and the voice of the discourse are in agreement.
Significantly, Kierkegaard notes that “the asserting was itself an action.”49 Job’s
utterance not only asserts god’s blessedness, but also performs the blessing. Job
not only reports what god has done, but the telling relates him to god, identifying
god as the one by whom he is confronted and with whom he has to deal in both
good and bad. Kierkegaard observes that Job’s act of blessing god signals that
“intimacy with the lord was still his as before, perhaps more inward than before.”50
Kierkegaard underscores Job’s insistence that even in the midst of his sufferings it
is God with whom he is dealing. Job’s act of blessing God solidifies and reinforces
his relatedness to god.
Kierkegaard’s use of Job 1:20–21 in the edifying discourse, and the young man’s
use of it in the quotation above, reflects the Book of Job’s own employment of the
ancient proverb. the Book of Job narrativizes the proverb, situating it in the context
of the story of a life that practices the wisdom it asserts. accordingly, in the edifying
discourse Kierkegaard first carefully narrates Job’s transition from felicity to calamity
47
SKS 4, 67 / R, 197.
48
SKS 5, 116 / EUD, 109–10.
49
ibid.
50
SKS 5, 126 / EUD, 122.
130 Timothy H. Polk
before expositing the proverb.51 only by dwelling on Job’s circumstances can the
reader begin to imaginatively discern this proverb’s dreadful implications. proverbs
can only make one wise if they are taken by the reader out of the realm of the purely
aesthetic and used to cultivate the appropriate fear of the lord. the hermeneutical
upshot for Kierkegaard is that if the Book of Job is to be read as an experiment in
wisdom, the proverb must be located in the context of Job’s full ordeal.
to situate Job 1:20–21 in the narrative of Job’s ordeal is to problematize it. part
of the proverb’s problematization is that the subsequent narrative of its enactment
includes the dialogues of Job with his friends, dialogues in which Job expresses
outrage and perplexity. even while valorizing Job’s act of blessing, Kierkegaard
alludes to these anguished deliberations that would follow in the story.52 Because
Kierkegaard insists that the proverb only acquires significance through Job’s
subsequent efforts to enact it, this enactment of blessing must include Job’s “battle
of despair”53 and the “distress and misery in which Job was tested.”54 the problem is
that in these dialogues Job’s blessing of god seems to be on the verge of devolving
into the cursing of god. the danger that Job faces is that a person might “curse life
in such a way that there would not even be an echo of faith and trust and humility in
his words.”55 the reader would be aware that no sooner had Job blessed god than he
cursed god’s work, namely, the day of Job’s birth, which of course is part of god’s
creation (Job 3:1–26). although this was not tantamount to cursing god directly, the
quality of Job’s blessing of god has become questionable.
according to Kierkegaard, it is crucial for the reader to appreciate Job’s
theocentric obsession implied by the proverb’s phrase “the lord has taken away.”
Kierkegaard emphasizes Job’s certainty that it was indeed god who took everything
away.56 he writes:
was it not a storm from the desert yonder that blew down the house and buried his
children; did the messenger mention any other perpetrator, or did he mention anyone
who had sent the stormy weather? Yet Job said, “the lord took away,” and at the very
moment he received the message, he understood that it was the lord who had taken
away everything. who informed Job of this, or was it a mark of his piety that he shifted
everything over to the lord in this way; or who authorized him to do this, and are we not
more devout, we who sometimes hesitate a long time before speaking this way?57
Job also has no doubt that it was god who has put Job in the wrong (Job 19:6),
and therefore it is this accuser god, not some obscure satan or perverse fate, whom
Job insists on facing—and who, remarkably, appears. now if for Kierkegaard the
blessing implies its enactment in the dialogues, and the dialogues include expressions
51
SKS 5, 119–20 / EUD, 114–15.
52
SKS 5, 125 / EUD, 121.
53
SKS 5, 116 / EUD, 110.
54
SKS 5, 117 / EUD, 111.
55
ibid.
56
SKS 5, 123–6 / EUD, 119–21.
57
SKS 5, 124 / EUD, 119.
of anger and outrage, then blessing would seem to be lived out in a way that seems
close to cursing.
Job’s dialogues, with all their protests and laments, express the intimate
connection between the blessing of god and the fear of god. Job’s cries of protest
against god demonstrate that in all things Job knows that it is god with whom he
has to do. even in the self-loathing in which Job would annihilate himself, Job knew
that it was truly god with whom he was dealing.
By reading the dialogues from the perspective of the blessing, Kierkegaard
shows that in Job’s mouth the proverb articulates the fear of god. accordingly,
Kierkegaard’s young man contrasts the paltry fear that “does not dare to complain to
god” with the brave and awful fear of unforgettable Job.58 such fear of god is at the
heart of Kierkegaard’s description of Job’s plight as an ordeal. in general, an ordeal
is a situation of such apparent god-forsakenness that the god-fearer’s response of
clinging to god and insisting on god’s sovereign relevance by accusing god looks
like godlessness. although by conventional standards of piety this seeming hostility
toward god looks like blasphemy, god takes it as praise. to better understand
Kierkegaard’s concept of the ordeal, we need to look more closely at the dynamics
of praise.
C. Blessing, Praise, and God
Job’s proverb articulates the fear of god in part by making praise, one of this fear’s
dimensions, explicit. according to Kierkegaard, Job’s ascription of both giving and
taking to god, Job’s act of praise, makes clear the fact that the relationship of Job
and god is asymmetrical. it is initiated by god, draws its strength from god, and is
judged, vindicated, and consummated by god.59 praise is god-fearing in that it gives
god god’s due.
even though praise ascribes even losses and tragedies to god, its underlying
mood is one of joyful gratitude.60 Kierkegaard writes, “if any house is a house of
sorrow, Job’s house is, but where these words are heard, ‘Blessed be the name of the
lord,’ there joy also has its home.”61 By ascribing all things to god, praise removes
the apprehension that worldly powers and events could disrupt one’s relationship
with god. the joy is rooted in the recognition that “intimacy with the lord”62 and
therefore “incorruptible joy”63 is secure, even when the lord takes away. without the
element of joyful gratitude, god-fear would not be the fear of god, who is the source
of value, the initiator of our good.
As an activity of affirming the excellence of God, praise reflects God’s creative
activity. praise is creative, for praising establishes a relationship with the one
praised, and by that very act adds something new to it. thus the praise itself becomes
58
SKS 4, 67 / R, 197–8.
59
SKS 5, 120–6 / EUD, 115–21.
60
SKS 5, 126 / EUD, 121–2.
61
SKS 5, 126 / EUD, 122.
62
ibid.
63
ibid.
132 Timothy H. Polk
an item of increased mutual delight and appreciation, and, like god, is itself ever
expansive and self-generative. Kierkegaard describes how Job’s praise of god is
full of creative potential, for it has the power to edify others. after critiquing the
non-vivifying voices that do not penetrate a suffering person’s heart, Kierkegaard
observes, “But this voice of comfort [Job’s voice], this voice that trembles in pain
but yet proclaims joy, this is heard by the ears of the troubled one; his heart treasures
it, and it strengthens and guides him to find joy even in the depths of sorrow.”64 praise
solidifies the relationship with God, and thereby participates in God’s consoling and
healing power.
As Kierkegaard emphasizes, the specific form of praise that Job’s proverb
expresses is that of blessing. Job’s blessing of god is the mirror image of god’s
blessing of Job. Blessing is the speech act through which God affirms the world in
such a way as to enliven it, infusing it with potency and freedom. Kierkegaard insists
that even in the midst of sorrow Job had an awareness of “god’s goodness that was
now so vivid in his soul.”65 Job remembered that every good gift comes from god’s
hand, and knew that it was this same god with whom he had to do even in the taking
away. Job’s act of blessing is presented by Kierkegaard as the appropriate human
response to god’s creative blessing. our blessing of god is a sharing in the creative
activity of the god who spoke reality into being with his blessing. the fact that
humans can bless god, the source and substance of all true blessing, follows from
the virtuous circularity of the praise that is god’s very nature. Kierkegaard stresses
the fact that Job, even in the midst of tragedy, blesses god in response to all that god
has given.66 what is remarkable of course is that Job blesses god even in response
to god’s taking away, as if even the taking away were a function of god’s praise of
the created order.
Kierkegaard’s renarration of Job depends on being able to read the taking-away
doxologically, in the context of praise. this can be done if scripture is read as pointing
to the love of god. Kierkegaard’s discourse implies that the intended consequence of
god’s testing of Job was that Job’s integrity would be made manifest, and creation’s
joy thereby enlarged. the reader, like those troubled ones who have heard in Job’s
words the voice of a comforting companion, is invited to share the beauty of the
“benediction” and to forget the possibility of the curse.67
D. Cursing and the Ordeal
the text of Job itself does not demand that god’s response to Job be construed as
a despot’s demonstration of superior power, or that it be read doxologically as an
act of blessing. Both readings are the fruits of the imaginative paradigm that the
reader brings to the text, and not purely the products of the literary structures one
finds in it. Hermeneutically, we seem to have a choice. As readers of the text, we are
free to respond with suspicion no less than with praise. although in the discourse
64
SKS 5, 127 / EUD, 122.
65
SKS 5, 121 / EUD, 116.
66
SKS 5, 120–3 / EUD, 115–19.
67
SKS 5, 127 / EUD, 122.
Kierkegaard makes his own decision to read doxologically quite clear, he does point
to the myriad ways in which Job could be regarded differently by different readers
with different concerns, histories, and attitudes.68 as he notes, the consequence
of these other readings would be that Job’s act of praise would remain opaque.
in Repetition, the young man illustrates yet other ways of reading, himself often
wavering between seeing Job as a cosmic rebel and as a trusting although outraged
person of faith.
as a character within that storied world, Job is also free. Both Kierkegaard in
his own voice and the young man make it abundantly clear that Job did not have to
respond to the ordeal in the way that he did. god’s giving and taking made different
possibilities available to Job, presenting opportunities either for enhancement and
growth in freedom, or for self-constriction and disintegration. Job could respond to
god either with blessing or with curse. the plot device for activating this freedom,
both Job’s and ours as readers, is the satan.
the role of the satan is easily trivialized or dismissed as an interpolation of an
alien religious mythology, as it was by de wette.69 when the book is viewed as an
exercise in theodicy, the introduction of the satan is liable to be criticized as an
effort to exonerate god by shifting responsibility to another agent. abstracted from
the biblical narrative, this was the strategy employed by the metaphysical dualists,
a position that Karl daub had approximated.70 whether articulated mythically or
speculatively, the device fails to exculpate god, for god would still be responsible
for heeding a lesser being. however, if the issue is not the assigning of responsibility
for evil but learning how to praise god in spite of it, the satan’s role seems much
more significant. From the perspective of facing the challenges to the praising of
god, the satan instantiates the fact that the negative possibilities inherent in human
freedom are serious and have been actualized. suspicion and cursing, phenomena
enacted by the satan, are already part of the environment. accordingly, the young
man in Repetition does not ignore the satan, noting that Job’s ordeal began with
“satan’s creation of discord between god and Job.”71
the principal danger in the ordeal is that Job might choose to curse god and
god’s creation. the young man in Repetition flirts with this possibility as he wonders
why he should be “involved” with “this big enterprise called actuality,” and seems
to be on the verge of declaring life in the world to be worthless.72 in the discourse,
Kierkegaard alludes ominously to something that is “sometimes heard in the world
in the day of distress instead of praise and benediction.”73 the connection between
the possibility of cursing and the satan is clear in the plot of the prologue of the Book
of Job. It is the satan who proposes that Job will curse God if subjected to affliction.
moreover, in terms of its form and rhetorical force, the satan’s proposal is not a mere
68
SKS 5, 117–19 / EUD, 111–14.
69
see de wette, Lehrbuch der historisch-kritischen Einleitung in die Bibel Alten und
Neuen Testamentes, vol. 1, pp. 356–65.
70
see daub, Judas Ischariot.
71
SKS 4, 77 / R, 210.
72
SKS 4, 68 / R, 200.
73
SKS 5, 127 / EUD, 122. the emphasis is Kierkegaard’s.
134 Timothy H. Polk
wager or provocation, but is itself an attempt to curse, to deny praise to god and to
deny the praiseworthy character of god’s creation. 74 malediction is the negative
image of benediction’s attention to the other and its communication of value and
love to the other. The figure of the satan as a member of God’s court intent upon
subverting praise represents the objective, oppositional status of cursing and hatred
over against blessing and love. the satan is the narrative attestation that the antithesis
of blessing has been historically actualized as a virulent, hostile environment that
blessing must struggle against.
although Kierkegaard does not emphasize the role of the satan, the dreadful
possibility of cursing and the actuality of cursing in the spiritual environment haunts
both the discourse and the novella. accordingly, the young man in Repetition alludes
ominously to the conference between god and the satan.75 Both the discourse and the
novella are replete with daunting reminders of all the temptations that could provoke
cursing. true to god’s own character as non-coercive praise, god does not remove
these impediments to Job’s praise but lets Job’s ordeal continue. to refashion the
environment so that praise would be without obstruction would be to grant cursing
(and determinacy) the victory over blessing (and freedom). Consequently Job’s
struggle proceeds in a context riddled with cursing, and the most urgent question
becomes: is there a blessing that has the power to counteract cursing without itself
being transformed into a curse?
E. The Ordeal, the Exception, and the Paradigm
Because of the tension between curse and blessing, Kierkegaard’s category of the
ordeal is crucial in both of his two readings of Job. the young man in Repetition
passionately insists that in regard to Job’s situation, “the explanation is this: the whole
thing is an ordeal.”76 Kierkegaard in the discourse introduces Job as the prototype
for “those who are being tried.”77 In both, Job is the battleground where the conflict
between curse and blessing is fought, and is the place where the possibility of praise
is tested. god’s praise of Job is spoken into an environment infected with cursing and
therefore propels Job into a conflict, an ordeal. In order to understand Kierkegaard’s
use of “ordeal,” the concept must be situated in the sphere of the uniquely religious
life. a struggle can be an “ordeal” only when it takes an individual beyond the
categories and dynamics of the aesthetic and ethical lives. as the young man says,
“this category...is not esthetic, ethical, or dogmatic...[it] is absolutely transcendent
and places a person in a purely personal relationship of opposition to god, in a
relationship such that he cannot allow himself to be satisfied with any explanation
at second hand.”78 “dogmatic” in this context refers to commonly held religious
74
this is a feature typically neglected by the commentators. to my knowledge, only
edwin good has fully explored the implications, see his “Job and the literary task: a
response,” Soundings, vol. 56, 1973, pp. 475–82.
75
SKS 4, 67 / R, 198.
76
SKS 4, 76–7 / R, 209.
77
SKS 5, 115 / EUD, 109.
78
SKS 4, 78 / R, 210.
doctrines, including the doctrine of retribution, the conviction of Job’s friends, and
initially of Job himself, that sin should lead to suffering and righteousness should
lead to flourishing. Doctrines, as comprehensive principles of behavior and valuation
that purport to be rooted in the nature of things, play a role in Kierkegaard’s ethical
sphere insofar as the “ethical” includes all socially objectivized knowledge that
claims “universal” or “eternal” validity.79
accordingly, much of what conventionally passes as religious belief and
behavior, though genuinely part of the religion, is not uniquely religious. the
encounter with the absolute, god, may put an individual at odds with the allegedly
universal principles that govern human understandings of god but are actually not
identical with God. Such an encounter would put an individual in conflict with the
conventions that aim to describe god but fail to contain god. the singular individual
so encountered would be an exception, an anomaly to his peers and an enigma to
himself. to such an individual even god would appear strange and inscrutable. the
paradoxically exceptional situation of such an individual is the ordeal, as the young
man in Repetition well knows.80 the young man has a painfully acute sense of the
singularity of his situation and wonders if he has gone mad and longs to know what
he must do “to enjoy civic esteem, to be regarded as sensible.”81 in the ordeal, the
encounter with god transcends conventional conceptual frameworks and violates
common sense; as a result, the ordeal cannot be contained in any “science.”82
the appropriateness of the category “ordeal” is illustrated by de silentio’s
employment of it in Fear and Trembling, a book that was published along with
Repetition, to characterize the story of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac.83 at
stake in the ordeal/test is abraham’s ethical integrity as a member of his community,
for whom killing one’s child is murder, and killing isaac in particular is a betrayal
of the community that would have been blessed through isaac. in the story god’s
promise to abraham functions as a dogmatic category and is the focal point of
abraham’s covenantal relationship with god. hence de silentio speculates that had
Abraham performed the sacrifice, he may have had a relationship with God, but he
would have been incapable of relating to sarah, would have been unintelligible to
the general culture, and would have had no communion with the descendants that he
otherwise would have had.
the category of the ordeal highlights the theme of the “exception” and a curious
pattern of substitution that grows out of it. as the young man in Repetition and
Kierkegaard in his edifying discourse both repeat, Job is exceptional.84 the young
man in Repetition remarks, “the secret in Job, the vital force, the nerve, the idea, is
that Job, despite everything, is in the right. On the basis of this position, he qualifies
79
on the concept “universal” in Kierkegaard, see C. stephen evans, Kierkegaard’s
“Fragments” and “Postscript”: The Religious Philosophy of Johannes Climacus, atlantic
highlands, new Jersey: humanities press 1983, pp. 59–61 and pp. 73–5.
80
SKS 4, 76–8 / R, 209–10.
81
SKS 4, 70 / R, 202.
82
SKS 4, 77 / R, 209.
83
SKS 4, 145–7 / FT, 52–3.
84
SKS 4, 75–9 / R, 207–11. SKS 4, 91–4 / R, 226–8. SKS 5, 233–24 / EUD, 123–4.
136 Timothy H. Polk
as an exception.”85 so says the young man, and for Kierkegaard, too, everything
turns on the fact that Job is the innocent exception. the whole ordeal presupposes
Job’s innocence; otherwise it would not be an ordeal. moreover, the ordeal makes
him an exception to the conventional wisdom that one suffers because of sin, and his
exceptionality singles him out for ridicule, which isolates him further. to make Job
even more singular, the young man proposes that Job is exceptional as one who is
“proved to be in the right” by virtue of having been “proved to be in the wrong before
God.”86 the paradoxical outcome of the ordeal makes Job even more exceptional.
the category of the “exception” helps prevent the confusion of Job’s situation
with the consciousness of sin that Christians tend so readily to project upon Job. But
for Kierkegaard sin-consciousness is a category logically tied to the incarnation and
the revelation of god’s self-giving love, and thus belongs to a subsequent stage in
the history of the divine–human relationship. the difference between guilt and sin-
consciousness corresponds to the difference between Climacus’ “religiousness a”
and “religiousness B.”87 in the former a person experiences guilt to the degree he
recognizes the “infinite difference” between himself and the goodness of God. He
recognizes that he has fallen short and is far from achieving the total reliance on god
that constitutes our right-relatedness to god. But for him the question is the degree
of the disparity between goal and performance, not whether it is possible to strive for
the goal—that is, until one reaches the upper limits of the striving. then doubts begin
to emerge as to whether god-relatedness is an immanent capacity. suspicions arise
that the infinite difference might be an “infinite qualitative” one. However, it is only
in the encounter with the god-incarnate, in religiousness B, that one recognizes
that the whole project of striving to actualize the ideal has been an exercise in self-
justification, and therefore a failure to rely upon God. In Christ it is revealed that one
has to rely on god even to be able to rely on god, that god-relatedness is a gift. For
the Christian, a generalized sense of guilt is transformed into a sin-consciousness
that only god in Christ can resolve.
The story of Job may prefigure the story of sin-consciousness and its resolution,
but it is not the same as that story. it may prepare the reader for that story, by showing
that the god-relationship goes beyond ethical categories and religious strivings, but it
does so by positing Job’s innocence rather than by positing god’s reconciling grace.
Job is the righteous sufferer, not the instantiation of original sin. Kierkegaard makes
it clear that the Book of Job is not a story about a penitent coming to a recognition of
sin. the category of the ordeal of the exceptional innocent one enables Kierkegaard
to read the old testament with Christian interests but without crudely assimilating it
to a neat doctrinal framework.
But if the book is not about Job’s coming to repent of his sinful nature, what is
the nature of his “repentance” mentioned in Job 42:5–6? the elusiveness of Job’s
“confession” has haunted the interpretation of the Book of Job. Kierkegaard does
85
SKS 4, 75 / R, 207.
86
SKS, 4, 79 / R, 212.
87
the discussion here owes much to david gouwens, Kierkegaard’s Dialectic of the
Imagination, p. 232. For Kierkegaard’s (Climacus’) formulation of the relation between
religiousness a and B, see SKS 7, 504–11 / CUP 1, 555–61.
not treat Job’s words as a confession of sin, but as a confession of shame before the
greater honor of one whose integrity he had contested.88 Job had imagined the world
to operate by an order whereby his suffering implied god’s hostile assault upon Job’s
own integrity. the young man in Repetition articulates and exemplifies Job’s pitting
of his own integrity against god’s. he notes that “Job continues to take the position
that he is in the right,”89 and that Job “knows that despite his being frail, despite
his swift withering away like a flower, that in freedom he still has something of
greatness.”90 this assertion of one’s own rectitude at the expense of god’s rectitude
is in effect a desire to roll creation back into primeval “darkness” (Job 3:3–10),
to rouse the chaos monster, “leviathan” (Job 3:8), and so obscure god’s intention
in creation. the young man in Repetition replicates Job’s invocation of chaos by
declaring life to be “without salt and meaning,”91 and raises the suspicion that the
world may not have a “manager.”92 reading the doctrine of retribution as they did,
both Job and the young man felt wronged, and in their hurt wanted to shift the blame
to god (Job chapters 21, 24), even if that meant construing the world as a scene of
senseless chaos.
god’s whirlwind tour of creation serves to rebuke and thus shame Job,93 but it
does so by revealing to Job something of creation’s truer order, the grander scope
of it, than Job from his mortal perspective and through the lens of his grief could
perceive. the strategy is not one of intimidation. god’s rhetorical questions focus
Job’s attention away from the self, which already works a kind of liberation, onto the
riot of nature. the questions cannot help but communicate the sense of the goodness
of this kaleidoscopic scene which extends so far beyond the human vista. the order
of creation turns out to be praise, when seen from the divine perspective.94 the young
man in Repetition suggests the possibility of this sort of revelation of life’s goodness
when he points to the “thunderstorm”95 that triggers Job’s “repetition” (receiving
everything back double) and declares, “How beneficent a thunderstorm is!”96
But Job implicitly wanted to replace god’s fecundity with a usurpative order
based on his own conception of distributive justice. Consequently, god’s praise
of the created order and of Job himself shames Job by exhibiting the proper lines
of relationship within it. By praising creation and declaring Job to be righteous,
god demonstrates that god is the source of blessing. Job must face the reality that
he himself is not the primal font of blessing. god’s blessing of creation and his
vindication of Job reestablishes who is who in the relationship and what is what. this
is the paradox articulated by the young man in Repetition: God justifies Job, proving
88
see Charles muenchow, “dust and dirt in Job 42:6,” Journal of Biblical Literature,
vol. 108, 1989, pp. 608–9.
89
SKS 4, 76 / R, 208.
90
ibid.
91
SKS 4, 68 / R, 200.
92
ibid.
93
see muenchow, “dust and dirt in Job 42:6,” p. 607.
94
see hardy and Ford, Prasing and Knowing God, pp. 96–9, where they distinguish
“non-order” from disorder.
95
SKS 4, 79 / R, 212.
96
ibid.
138 Timothy H. Polk
him to be in the right even while proving him to be in the wrong.97 in the contest of
honor, it was not a judicial verdict Job was after so much as it was some response by
god to his complaints. god’s response, even in the form of an indictment, would be
for Job a badge of honor (Job 31:35–6). appropriately, the young man in Repetition
proposes that if the thunderstorm comes “it will shatter my whole personality,” but
that through that shattering “my honor will be saved, my pride will be redeemed, no
matter how it transforms me.”98 he passionately asserts that even god’s thunder “is
a response, an explanation, trustworthy, faithful, original, a reply from god himself,
which, even if it crushes a man, is more glorious than the gossip and rumors about
the righteousness of governance that are invented by human wisdom and spread by
old women and fractional men.”99 like Job, the young man concludes, “and yet i
would be happy and indescribably blessed if the thunderstorm would only come,
even if my sentence were that no repetition is possible.”100
But we need to return to the exceptionality of Job’s laudatory innocence. at the
conclusion of the story, Job’s integrity is repeated by virtue of being re-established
by god’s praise, wonderfully reconstituted by god’s direct revelation. Clearly, in all
of this Job is exceptional. But as the exception, he is also, paradoxically, a paradigm.
Johannes Climacus best states the peculiarity of the situation as it applies to the
ordeal in general:
the religious paradigm is the irregularity and yet is supposed to be the paradigm (which
is like god’s omnipresence as invisibility and revelation as a mystery), or because the
religious paradigm does not express the universal but the singular (the particular, for
example, by appealing to visions, dreams, etc.) and yet is supposed to be the paradigm.
But to be the paradigm means to be for all, but one can be the prototype for all only by
being what all are or ought to be, that is, the universal, and yet the religious paradigm is
the very opposite (the irregular and the particular).101
so the religious paradigm is one who is taken as a representative for all individuals,
even though they are unlike him. Certainly, the young man discerned Job’s
paradigmatically representative status when he praised him as “a faithful witness
to all the affliction and laceration there can be in a heart.”102 that is, he praises
Job as one whose heart, by complaining to god for brothers and sisters who suffer
in silence, bears the fear of god. similarly in the discourse, Kierkegaard observes
that for all passionately struggling and striving individuals, “Job is again present,
takes his place, which is the outpost of humanity.”103 Job’s role as a representative
of humanity, that is, as a substitute, is textually reinforced by reading the epilogue
in canonical relation to the dialogues. the silence of shame is not in fact the last
word we hear from Job, for god assigns him that peculiarly substitutionary task
97
ibid.
98
SKS 4, 81 / R, 214.
99
SKS 4, 67 / R, 198.
100
SKS 4, 81 / R, 214.
101
SKS 7, 235 / CUP1, 259.
102
SKS 4, 67 / R, 197.
103
SKS 5, 116 / EUD, 110.
of interceding for his friends (Job 42:7–10). in parallel fashion, in the upbuilding
discourse Job’s praise of god has a healing potential that blesses all fellow sufferers.104
as the paradigm of human righteousness, Job serves to represent god to humanity.
By enacting god’s care and comfort for the suffering, Job will perform a kind of
theodicy, not by defending god’s honor and reputation, but by actively representing
god’s passion for human well-being and god’s passionate interest in the relation that
humans bear to god. Job will perform a theodicy as he manifests the reality of god’s
presence through praising god.
this is a vindication of god that also accomplishes a vindication of humanity.
the fact that the vindication of humanity is at stake is signaled by the young man
in Repetition who observes, “Job is, so to speak, the whole weighty defense plea on
man’s behalf in the great case between god and man.”105 Job, as the representative
of humanity, is vindicated by letting god be god-for-us, precisely by asking god to
vindicate him. Job justifies God by letting God justify him. Moreover, God accepts
Job and all Job’s speaking as right-speaking of god. even though objectively Job’s
words smacked of blasphemy, scandalized the sages, mistook the order of the world,
and even took the form of a curse, god accepted it as praise.
F. Hope, Witness, and the Dangers of Euphemism
Kierkegaard’s practice reflects an overall construal of Scripture as pointing to the

love and wisdom and praiseworthiness of God. Informed by that construal, it reflects
an editorial grasp of both the beginning and ending of the book, and of the book’s
place in the larger testimony of the canonical corpus. the interplay between the
discourse and the novella keep the tension in the story of Job alive for the reader, a
tension that is structurally suggested by the difference between the prose prologue
and the poetic discourses in the Book of Job. Kierkegaard’s reading of Job explores
the possibility that what conventionally seems to be an attempt to bless god, the
defense of god through the construction of theodicies, may really be cursing in
disguise. it also suggests that what looks like cursing, Job’s outrage, may really be
a hidden form of blessing. whatever it is that Job offers to god, the text shows god
accepting it as praise. readers are implicitly encouraged to hope that the god who
answers Job might be their god, too, who substitutes his blessing for and against the
curse.
For the religiously interested reader whom Kierkegaard addresses, the issues
of the text spill over its borders. Kierkegaard insists that how we read Job does
indeed make demands on how we live when we put it down. in the introduction
to the discourse Kierkegaard praises not only Job, but the reader whose life most
accords with Job and who thereby interprets Job’s text with her own life, in the
context of her own testing.106 only such a person “rightly interprets the saying,” he
confesses.107 the spirit of doxology that embraces the ordeals of life must inform
104
SKS 4, 126–7 / R, 122.
105
SKS 4, 77 / R, 210.
106
SKS 5, 117–20 / EUD, 111–13.
107
SKS 5, 118 / EUD, 112.
140 Timothy H. Polk
the confrontation with the text. he contrasts that existential understanding of the
word, in which one’s life interprets the word such that one never need even speak of
it, with the prolixity of “the person who spent his whole life explaining just this one
word.”108 the class of such persons would include not only the authors of theodicies,
but also himself. It is his own “human wisdom,” “eloquence,” and “fluency” that he
denigrates in the closing paragraph of his prelude. Kierkegaard ironically cancels
himself while justifying himself, in the service of the reader’s edification. The effect
is to refuse the reader the luxury of resting with Kierkegaard’s own “explanation”
of the word. For any unappropriated verbal understanding proves a deception. this
emphasis on life as the medium for interpreting the word has returned us to the
reading-loving-living nexus. however, Kierkegaard salvages a margin of utility for
his ruminations about Job. if the reader takes care “not to become trapped himself in
the fine words of human persuasion,”109 those words might at least help position him
to appropriate Job when the right circumstances arise. Kierkegaard modestly hopes:
“perhaps the deliberation would at some time have its importance for him.”110 with
that tentative gesture of self-justification, Kierkegaard dared to coach the reader in
the appropriation of the Book of Job.
108
ibid.
109
SKS 5, 119 / EUD, 113.
110
ibid.
Bibliography
I. Works in the auction Catalogue of Kierkegaard’s Library that Discuss Job
Bretschneider, Karl gottlieb, Handbuch der Dogmatik, vols. 1–2, 4th ed., leipzig:
J.a. Barth 1838, vol. 1, p. 161 (ASKB 437–438)
hahn, august, Lehrbuch des christlichen Glaubens, leipzig: vogel 1828, p. 292
(ASKB 535).
hase, Karl, Hutterus redivivus oder Dogmatik der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche:
Ein dogmatisches Repertorium für Studierende, 4th revised ed., leipzig: Breitkopf
und härtel 1839, p. 176 (ASKB 581).
hegel, georg wilhelm Friedrich, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion,
vols. 1–2, ed. by philipp marheineke, 2nd revised ed., Berlin; duncker and
humblot 1840 (vols. 11–12 in Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Werke, ed. by
philipp marheineke et. al., vols. 1–18, Berlin: duncker and humblot 1832–45),
vol. 2, pp. 66–8 (ASKB 564–565).
herder, Johann gottfried, Vom Geist der hebräischen Poesie, in Johann Gottfried von
Herder’s sämmtliche Werke. Zur Religion und Theologie, vols. 1–18, stuttgart
and tübingen: J.g. Cotta 1827–30, vol. 1, pp. 86–137 (ASKB 1676–1684).
martensen, hans lassen, Den menneskelige Selvbevidstheds Autonomie,
Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1841, p. 109 (ASKB 651).
rosenkranz, Karl, “ein parallele zur religionsphilosophie,” Zeitschrift für
38, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 13–14 (ASKB 354–357).
g. reimer 1833, vol. 1, pp. 356–65 (ASKB 80).
winer, georg Benedikt, Biblisches Realwörterbuch, vols. 1–2, 2nd ed., leipzig: Carl
heinrich reclam 1833–38, vol. 1, 1833, pp. 580–1 (ASKB 70–71).
II. Secondary Literature on Kierkegaard’s Use of Job
pp. 126–7; p. 144; p. 191; p. 214; p. 219; pp. 221–2; pp. 242–4; p. 269.
eriksen, niels nymann, Kierkegaard’s Category of Repetition, Berlin and new
York: walter de gruyter 2000 (Kierkegaard Studies Monograph Series, vol. 5),
pp. 42–7.
142 Timothy H. Polk
Ferreira, m. Jamie, Kierkegaard, malden, massachusetts: wiley-Blackwell 2009,
pp. 63–5.
grau, gerd-günther, “die hiob-situation des religiösen denkens. Kierkegaard
und nietzsche ii,” in his Die Selbstauflösung des christlichen Glaubens. Eine
religionsphilosophische Studie über Kierkegaard, Frankfurt am main: schulte-
Bulmke 1963, pp. 225–87.
pp. 35–7.
mooney, edward F., Selves in Discord and Resolve: Kierkegaard’s Moral-Religious
Psychology from Either/Or to Sickness unto Death, new York and london:
routledge 1996, pp. 27–40.
müller, hans-peter, “welt als ‘wiederholung.’ sören Kierkegaards novelle als
Beitrag zur hiob-interpretation,” in Werden und Wirken des Alten Testaments.
Festschrift für Claus Westermann zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. by rainer albertz et
al., göttingen: vandenhoeck & ruprecht 1980, pp. 355–72.
georgia: mercer university press 1997, pp. 153–200.
sàez tajafuerce, Begonya, “palabra de Job,” in La etica, aliento de eterno. Homenaje
al Professor Rafael A. Larrañeta, ed. by Francisco luis mendez, salamanca:
aletheia 2003, pp. 335–41.
schäfer, Klaus, Hermeneutische Ontologie in den Climacus-Schriften Sören
Kierkegaards, munich: Kösel-verlag 1968, pp. 152ff.
shestov, lev, “Job and hegel,” in his Kierkegaard and the Existential Philosophy,
trans. by elinor hewitt, athens, ohio: ohio university press 1969, pp. 29–39.
strowick, elisabeth, “der einspruch der ausnahme: hiob,” in her Passagen der
Wiederholung. Kierkegaard—Lacan—Freud, stuttgart and weimar: metzler
1999, pp. 118–50.
suances marcos, manuel, Sören Kierkegaard, vols. 1–2, madrid: universidad
nacional de educación a distanca 1997, vol. 1 (Vida de un filósofo atormentado),
pp. 140–5.
thust, martin, “das vorbild der Frömmigkeit, die treue des verstoßenen: der tröster
hiob,” in his Sören Kierkegaard. Der Dichter des Religiösen. Grundlagen eines
Systems der Subjektivität, munich: C.h. Beck 1931, pp. 106–26.
vos, pieter hendrik, “Job: het waarom van het lijden,” in his De troost van het
ogenblik. Kierkegaard over God en het lijden, Kampen: ten have Baarn 2002,
pp. 124–30.
psalms:
source of images and Contrasts
matthias engelke
Kierkegaard’s language is saturated with phrases and images drawn from the psalms.
this is not surprising, for the use of the psalms in the liturgy and hymnody of the
lutheran church made the internalization of their vocabulary almost inevitable.
Although Kierkegaard seldom engaged in an extended reflection on a specific
passage from the psalms, he did derive much of the linguistic framework in which he
thought and wrote from this biblical source. sometimes his use of the psalms would
be casual, with their phrases used as nothing more than literary embellishments.
sometimes he would use them critically to express sentiments that he wanted to
reject. sometimes he would use them positively to reinforce and intensify the life
of faith. at times he would appropriate their words and use them in ways that were
at odds with their original employment. at other times his writing would accurately
reflect the mood and rhetorical force of a particular passage. In short, he used the
language of the psalms in a wide variety of ways, for many different purposes.
I. The Historical Background of Kierkegaard’s Use of the Psalms
the psalms were a crucial part of Kierkegaard’s ecclesial and intellectual environment.
Because of its liturgical and devotional use, the Book of psalms became the most
familiar portion of the old testament for lutherans. martin luther (1483–1546)
continued the venerable medieval tradition of interpreting the psalms christologically;
for luther, the psalms speak about Christ, both literally and allegorically.1 as we shall
see, this tendency to interpret the psalms from the perspective of the new testament
would be appropriated by Kierkegaard. however, by the late eighteenth century other
interpretive options were available. Johann gottfried herder (1744–1803) gave the
psalms a new kind of prominence by proposing that the primal religious language of
humanity was poetry, for poetry connects sensual observation with religious feeling.
1
martin luther, Dictata super Psalterium, in D. Martin Luthers Werke: kritische
Gesamtausgabe (Weimarer Ausgabe), weimar: hermann Böhlau 1883ff., vol. 55, part i,
pp. 6–25.
this claim motivated attempts to better appreciate the primal power of the poetry in
the psalms by situating them in their original cultural contexts.2
the subsequent rise of historical criticism generated puzzlement and discussion
about the origin of these unusual bits of biblical poetry. in spite of the still common
assumption that many of them had been written by King david, the authorship
and provenance of the psalms began to be questioned. Johann gottfried eichhorn
(1752–1827) insisted that they be treated as literature written by human beings who
expressed themselves in the unique and limited thought-forms of their cultures.
eichorn proposed that the authentic davidic psalms were scattered about in different
parts of the psalter and were not neatly clustered together as the tradition assumed.3
wilhelm martin leberecht de wette (1780–1849) developed this impulse to situate
the psalms in their historical context further, rejecting the attempt to understand
them in terms of the biography of david their alleged author, and regarding them as
the products of different historical periods and different religious settings.4
Kierkegaard would have been familiar with many of these academic conversations
from his theological training, and he owned relevant texts that discussed the psalms
by herder and de wette.5 however, worries about the authenticity and authorship
of individual psalms are largely absent from Kierkegaard’s pages. rather than
considering the various psalms in the light of their historical origins, Kierkegaard
situates them in the context of the development of religious subjectivity. throughout
his literature he is much more interested in the purposes to which they can be put
in the cultivation of Christian pathos than in debates about their composition and
transmission.
II. Kierkegaard’s Use of Individual Psalms
A. Psalms 1–50
Because each psalm is treated differently by Kierkegaard, it will be helpful to

consider each one separately. By doing so, continuities and discontinues in his use
of particular verses will become evident. this procedure will make it possible to
identify and trace the evolution of certain interpretive strategies and theological
themes through the development of his literature.
2
see Johann Gottfried von Herder’s sämmtliche Werke. Zur Religion und Theologie,
vols. 1–18, stuttgart and tübingen: J.g. Cotta 1827–30, vol. 2, pp. 175–280 (ASKB 1676–
1684).
3
Johann gottfried eichhorn, Einleitung ins Alte Testament, vols 1–3, leipzig:
weidmann & reich 1780–83, vol. 2, pp. 1–7.
4
wilhelm martin leberecht de wette, Commentar über die Psalmen, heidelberg: mohr
und zimmer 1811, pp.1–96.
5
see Johann Gottfried von Herder’s sämmtliche Werke. Zur Religion und Theologie,
vol. 2, pp. 175–280; wilhelm martin leberecht de wette, Lehrbuch der historisch-kritischen
Einleitung in die Bibel Alten und Neuen Testamentes, vols. 1–2 (in 1 tome), 4th ed., Berlin:
Psalms: Source of Images and Contrasts 145
In the first of the Two Upbuilding Discourses from 1844 entitled “to preserve
one’s soul in patience,” based on the phrase in luke 21:19, “by your endurance you
will gain your souls,” Kierkegaard portrays a quarrel between two men who argue
about which one of them has persevered longer at a task. their dispute, a prideful
contention over “who is going to sit at the head or the foot,” is characterized by a
phrase taken from psalm 1:1. Kierkegaard concludes that both men will “end up
sitting together in the council of the mockers.”6 here the employment of the verse
from the psalm is used to promote a moral critique of pride.
the third sermon of the Three Upbuilding Discourses of 1844, entitled “he must
increase; i must decrease (John 3:30),” develops the theme of “humble self-denial,”7
such as that exhibited by John the Baptist who allowed his own ministry as a prophet
to be eclipsed by that of Jesus. Kierkegaard contradicts anyone who believes that
only the person who is “planted near the streams of water” (a phrase from psalm
1) is truly increasing, 8 and does not appreciate that someone who “plants himself
in the blessed soil of self-denial” is actually thriving spiritually.9 interestingly, the
phrase from the psalm is used to typify the attitude that is critiqued by Christianity’s
valorization of self-denial. often the language of the psalms is associated with
positions that Kierkegaard is opposing.
At the end of the first part of Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits of 1847, in
a discourse intended for the occasion of a confession, Kierkegaard borrows language
from psalm 2:1 and 2:4 to caricature the nonsense that an appeal to a human
collectivity of whatever numerical size might have any significance at all when an
individual is facing god. Kierkegaard paraphrases, “the royal psalmist declares
that while the heathen make a big noise god is in heaven and laughs at them.”10
god always regards the individual alone, apart from the crowd.11 here the psalm’s
disparagement of a corporate mass of menacing heathen is lifted out of its immediate
context and transposed to the situation of contemporary society. Kierkegaard will
often enlist the aid of the psalms in his polemics against his contemporary religious
culture.
Knowing which psalms Kierkegaard did use in which particular ways may be
instructive; however, Kierkegaard’s works might be illuminated equally well by
knowing which psalms and which passages from them he has not used. the psalms
contain several exceptional passages which reject an israelite cult of the dead; the
particular passages that do this most overtly are psalm 6:6, psalm 88:6, psalm
88:11ff., and psalm 115:17.12 For most of the people in ancient religious cultures,
6
SKS 5, 197 / EUD, 194; other allusions to ps 1:1 can be found in SKS 9, 83 / WL, 76, in
which it is rhetorically used contrary to its original meaning as an allegation against a person
in good circumstances who comes into conflict with his compatriots due to his willingness to
equate brotherly love with love for the wretched and poor.
7
SKS 5, 273 / EUD, 279.
8
see ps 1:3.
9
SKS 5, 278 / EUD, 285.
10
SKS 8, 232 / UD, 134.
11
ibid.
12
On Ps 9:14 and the expression “death’s door” Kierkegaard reflects in the diary entry
SKS 17, 216, dd:6.c / KJN 1, 208, stating that the concept of revelation does indeed contain
such a rejection of cults to venerate the dead would have been dismissed as an
absurdity. it was this hostility to cults of the dead and to the notion that the dead
enjoy some sort of continuing self-consciousness—along with the commandment of
monotheism—that helped differentiate the people of israel from their contemporary
cultural and religious neighbors. Curiously, with the exception of psalm 6:6, none of
these passages is found in Kierkegaard’s work. the exception is evident in Stages on
Life’s Way. in the diary that Frater taciturnus claimed to have found in the bottom
of a lake the message of psalm 6:5 is explicitly contradicted, although in an indirect,
comical way. the author of the diary writes, “no, scripture is not true when it says
that there is no recollection in the grave, for i shall recollect her. in eternity!”13 of
course, “her” refers to the diarist’s beloved in this context. the author ignores the
historical context of the passage, and the fact that the recollection mentioned in the
psalm is indeed the remembrance of god, in order to use it to highlight the eternal
significance of a particular human relationship.
the phrase from psalm 6:7, “weary of sighing,”14 used by the psalm’s author to
express the depth of his lament, is borrowed by Kierkegaard to paint the image of a
desperately unhappy man for whom the things of this earth had lost their attraction.15
here the lament triggered by being surrounded by threatening enemies is set in a
new context, that of disappointment with earthly joys. Kierkegaard would often
spiritualize the psalms in this manner, transforming them so that they referred to the
passional struggles of the individual rather than to material circumstances.
in a journal entry from 1847 Kierkegaard complains about the decline in moral
spirit that was evident in Copenhagen. according to Kierkegaard an explanation
for this decline can be found in the observation that the city of Copenhagen—being
the only city in the country and the only large city speaking danish—cannot be
compared to other cities in other parts of the world. in large cities in other countries
some “modesty and decorum” must be maintained, or else the neighboring cities
might find out about the spread of “all these loathsome passions of envy, stupidity, the
market-town spirit,”16 and disparage the offensive metropolis. But the majority of the
population in Copenhagen could capitulate to the rampant cultural demoralization,
secure in the belief expressed by the fool in psalm 10 that “no one sees me.”17 (the
phrase is echoed in psalm 94:7.) in the context of the psalm, it is god who the fools
mistakenly think does not see them, while here it is the scrutiny of other human
communities that is denied. here Kierkegaard takes a statement voiced by those who
are depicted in the psalm as being wicked, arrogant, greedy, deceitful, and oppressive,
and puts it in the mouths of the citizens of Copenhagen, thereby incriminating them.
again the language of the psalm becomes a tool for cultural critique.
in itself the concept of the hidden or obscure, just as the word “door” signifies that one does
not come back from death. here Kierkegaard quotes in hebrew ps 9:14.
13
SKS 6, 201 / SLW, 214.
14
SKS 9, 127 / WL, 123. Kierkegaard conflates this phrase from Psalm 6 with a citation
of tobit 3:10 referring to unhappy sara who “deeply grieved, thought of suicide.”
15
SKS 9, 127 / WL, 123.
16
SKS 20, 168, nB2:66 / JP 5, 6018.
17
SKS 20, 168, nB2:66 / JP 5, 6018.
Kierkegaard observed in his journals from 1851 that the phrase in psalm 10:14,
tibi derelictus pauper,18 is incorrectly translated in the vulgate as meaning that
god chooses the poor. he notes that Christian scriver (1629–93)19 proposes that
this phrase means that because the world chose the noble and the powerful, no one
remained for god to choose but the needy and the lost. Kierkegaard objects that the
phrase should be translated as “the poor entrusts himself to You.”20 By retranslating
the verse in this manner, Kierkegaard shifts the focus to the individual’s agency in
actively relying upon god’s support. the shift of focus onto the responsibility of the
individual is typical of Kierkegaard’s redeployment of the Bible’s poetic language.
in nikolai Fogtmann’s (1788–1851) catechism21 psalm 14:1 (“the fool says in
his heart that there is no god”) is cited to show how unreasonable it is to mistrust the
proofs for the existence of god which he had presented. the author of Philosophical
Fragments makes fun of this contention by referring to the same Bible passage:
For the fool says in his heart that there is no god, but he who says in his heart or to
others: Just wait a little and i shall demonstrate it—ah, what a rare wise man he is!
(note: what a superb theme for a crazy comedy!) if, at the moment he is supposed to
begin the demonstration, it is not totally undecided whether the god exists or not, then,
of course, he does not demonstrate it….22
By using the same passage that had been used to justify proofs for the existence of
god in order to critique such proofs, Kierkegaard suggests that the stance of doubt
which the very effort to prove god’s existence presupposes is a foolish strategy. the
psalm’s denunciation of unbelief is redeployed to critique the contemporary spirit
of objectivity in regard to god. in effect, Kierkegaard’s redeployment of the psalm
suggests that the contemporary fools who deny god are the very ones who attempt
to prove god’s existence.
in the fourth and closing section of Christian Discourses, “discourses at the
Communion on Fridays,” the confession of guilt from psalm 19:12 (“who knows
his errors? From my hidden faults cleanse thou me”) is presented as an example of
the pathos to which an “earnest and honest self-examination” in the face of god
“finally leads as its last and truest” expression.23 For erik pontoppidan,24 whose
18
the tibi refers to Deo (god).
19
see M. Christian Scrivers...Seelen-Schatz: Darinnen Von der menschlichen Seelen
hohen Würde, tieffen und kläglichen Sünden-Fall, Busse und Erneuerung durch Christum,
göttlichen heiligen Leben...erbaulich und tröstlich gehandelt wird, vols. 1–5, magdeburg and
leipzig: seidel 1723, vol. 1, p. 35 (ASKB 261–263).
20
SKS 24, 296, nB23:191 / JP 3, 2325.
21
see nikolai Fogtmann, Lærebog i den christelige Religion. Til Brug for den studerende
Ungdom, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1823, p. 21. Kierkegaard learned this catechism in the
Borgerdyd school. see valdemar ammundsen, Søren Kierkegaards Ungdom. Hans Slægt og
hans religiøse Udvikling, Copenhagen: Københavns universitet 1912, p. 76.
22
SKS 4, 249 / PF, 43.
23
SKS 10, 308 / CD, 287.
24
erik pontoppidan (1698–1764) epitomized the branch of pietism in Copenhagen that
was under the influence of Halle. He was appointed a court preacher by King Christian VI
in 1735, probably as a counterweight to the pietism of herrnhut, which had also gained a
catechism had been used to instruct Kierkegaard’s father in the Christian faith
and which his father had used to burden søren in early childhood, this verse from
the psalms was employed to encourage an extremely rigorous examination of the
individual’s conscience as a test of faith.25 Kierkegaard distances himself from this
kind of Christian practice and, in the Christian Discourses, suggests that in any self-
examination before Christ some hidden guilt will continue to exist undetected and
unconfessed. he exclaims, “and when a person examines his relation to Christ, who
then is the human being who completely knows his faithlessness, who the human
being who would dare to think that in his very self-examination there could not be
faithlessness!”26 He then makes an appeal: “Therefore you do not find rest this way.
so, then, rest; then seek rest for your soul in the blessed comfort that, even if we are
faithless, he still is faithful,” which is an allusion to 2 timothy 2:13, the biblical text
for this Christian discourse.27 in this way Kierkegaard used a passage that had been
employed to stimulate greater rigor in self-examination in order to foster greater
confession of inadequacy.
the closing third part of Practice in Christianity, entitled “Christian expositions
by anti-Climacus,” begins with a sermon, which Kierkegaard delivered in vor Frue
Church in Copenhagen on Friday, september 1, 1848. in the sermon he praises
the loftiness and royalty of Christ with words from psalm 19:2ff., and from many
other biblical texts.28 Ironically, he then identifies this glorious loftiness with the
fact that Christ was also the abased and suffering one, whose glory consisted in his
willingness to suffer in order to love and redeem humanity. a verse from the old
Testament suggesting divine majesty is used for Christological purposes to redefine
the paradoxical nature of that majesty.
In the fifth edition of the pamphlet series The Moment Kierkegaard scourges
contemporary Christendom for breaking with true Christianity, and for hypocritically
disguising the fact that genuine Christianity involves “crucifying the flesh” and
suffering in imitation of Jesus’ sufferings.29 in his quotation of psalm 22:7 Kierkegaard
suggests that being a Christian involves being treated as “a worm, not a human
foothold in Copenhagen. the pietism of herrnhut was suspected of disloyalty and enthusiasm.
in 1736, on the occasion of the bicentenary of the introduction of the reformation, the
practice of confirmation was introduced in Denmark, and the king instructed Pontoppidan
to write a catechism, which was completed in 1737 and served, by the king’s verdict, as
the sole textbook. pontoppidan’s catechism, Sandhed til Gudfrygtighed, is based in its
formal structure on philipp spener’s Einfältige Erklärung der Christlichen Lehr nach der
Ordnung deß kleinen Catechismi deß theuren Manns Gottes Lutheri, Frankfurt: zunner and
Frankfurt: Friedgen 1677, without being able to capture spener’s pastoral sensitivity and
commitment; see matthias engelke, Kierkegaard und das Alte Testament. Zum Einfluss der
alttestamentarischen Bücher auf Kierkegaards Gesamtwerk, rheinbach: Cmz-verlag 1998
(Arbeiten zur Theologiegeschichte, vol. 3), pp. 29–42.
25
erik pontoppidan, Sandhed til Gudfrygtighed, Copenhagen: Kongelige waysenhus
1769, p. 151.
26
SKS 10, 308 / CD, 287.
27
ibid.
28
SKS 12, 170 / PC, 167.
29
SKS 13, 240 / M, 189.
being.”30 But instead of acknowledging the suffering intrinsic to the Christian life,
Christendom engages in the hypocrisy of forging the new “concept of what it is to be
a Christian” and interpreting the Christian life as “sheer happiness.”31 verse 22:7 had
been used Christologically throughout the Christian heritage, for according to mark
15:34 Jesus had quoted verse 22:1 (“my god, my god, why have you forsaken me?”)
on the cross. Consequently, it made sense to treat the “i am a worm” phrase as if it
were spoken by Jesus as an expression of the anguish that he experienced due to the
mockery directed toward him. Kierkegaard expands the Christological application to
include all those who would aspire to be Jesus’ followers; they too must be willing
to experience hostility and suffering. here a psalm of lament becomes reinterpreted
as an expression of the suffering that all Christians must undergo.
an entry in his journal from 1854 in similar manner bemoans Christendom’s
distortion of the faith. the prototype for the Christian life, Christ, who is “the
highest,” epitomizes “sheer wretchedness, need, being a worm.”32 Kierkegaard
observes, “his life, as it says in scripture, was to be a worm and no man, and he
speaks of it himself as sheer wretchedness and suffering.”33 But because this life is
the “highest,” and ideal to be emulated, Christendom promptly and deceitfully says,
“i am too humble, to aspire to the highest or to will the highest.”34 again the words of
psalm 22 are ascribed to Jesus and used by Kierkegaard to critique the contemporary
church’s failure to emulate Christ.
How easy it is to elude the “infinite conception of what it means to be a Christian”
and to avoid being serious about “dying to the world, hating oneself, suffering for the
doctrine” is the main theme in last edition of The Moment, no. 9, which Kierkegaard
published himself before his death.35 he ominously observes that “even the toughest
ones almost drooped under these difficulties, writhed like worms.”36 Kierkegaard
then sarcastically suggests, “be a blatherskite, and you will see, all difficulties
vanish!...then fundamentally falsify god’s or Christianity’s view of this life; let
its being easy (directly contrary to god’s word) be the sign to you that the way is
the right way.”37 Again the “worm” allusion from Psalm 22 figures prominently to
highlight the inevitable dimension of suffering that is intrinsic to the earnest and
genuine Christian life.
Kierkegaard could also use the psalms of lament and their allusions to suffering
in more casual and even frivolous ways. an allusion to psalm 22:15 (as well as
psalm 6:3, and probably also psalm 31:11, psalm 38:4, psalm 102:4, and psalm
102:6) occurs in a letter to his brother peter Christian Kierkegaard (1805–88). søren
writes, “As it says in ψ [psalms], ‘my bones are vexed’ at times (I suspect it is a slight
case of hemorrhoids), but my soul is well and I can endure infinitely more than I had
30
ibid.
31
SKS 13, 241 / M, 190.
32
SKS 26, 149, nB32:46 / JP 2, 1935.
33
ibid.
34
ibid.
35
SKS 13, 240 / M, 319–20.
36
ibid.
37
ibid.
thought.”38 the sacrality of the psalms did not prevent them from being used for
ironic purposes, in this case the juxtaposition of spiritual anguish and hemorrhoids.
at the beginning of one of the Four Upbuilding Discourses from 1843
Kierkegaard emphasizes that any sort of “upbuilding view” can only commence
with the appreciation of the god-created equality of all persons. this egalitarian
sensibility regards the powerful person “who leans on his scepter” as being of no
more spiritual significance than the “overburdened person who has to be contented
that god is his rod and his staff.”39 the phrase “his rod and his staff” from psalm 23
is used to contrast the condition of the powerful and the plight of the afflicted, and
also to emphasize the virtue of total reliance upon god.
in at least one other instance Kierkegaard alludes to psalm 23 in order to draw
attention to the need to rely upon god, particularly to rely upon god’s grace. god’s
grace, according to Kierkegaard, encompasses the Christian on every side, in every
aspect of Christian life. the relation of forgiveness and subsequent growth in faith in
the Christian life is explained by Kierkegaard in Christian Discourses with the help
of two different passages from the psalms. Kierkegaard writes, “ ‘his grace comes
to the Christian beforehand’ (Psalm 59:10), so that he may will to be satisfied with
god’s grace, and ‘comes afterward’ (psalm 23:6), so that he may not have willed in
vain and may blessedly never regret that he was satisfied with God’s grace.”40 the
citation of psalm 59 highlights the fact that god’s steadfast love will “meet” the
individual, while the mention of psalm 23:6 draws attention to god’s “goodness and
mercy” that “shall follow” a person all their days. By pairing the two passages with
one another, Kierkegaard points to the need to rely upon god throughout the course
of life, both at the inception of faith and also during its subsequent maturation. the
verses from the psalms function as an antidote to the possibility of prideful self-
reliance and presumptuousness in regard to both regeneration and sanctification.
here the combination of passages from different psalms reinforces a theme that was
deeply embedded in the lutheran heritage.
a note in the journals from 1851 allows the curious reader to take a look behind
the scenes of Kierkegaard’s working process: he mentions here that he had read
his “usual portion in the old testament” and that “the sequence came to david’s
psalms (24, 25, 26, 27, 28).” 41 Kierkegaard admits that he had just read the new
book by Bishop Jakob peter mynster (1775–1854) in which mynster in the same
passage referred to meïr goldschmidt (1819–87) as a “most talented author” and
to Kierkegaard as a “gifted author.”42 to be associated with goldschmidt, his
old nemesis from The Corsair, irritated Kierkegaard. while he fretted about this
episode, he noted that particularly psalm 26:4 and psalm 27:10 had touched him
very much, for psalm 26:4 stated “i do not sit with the worthless, nor do i consort
with hypocrites,” while psalm 27:10 asserted, “if my father and mother desert me,
38
B&A, vol. 1, p. 114 / LD, letter 74, p. 146.
39
SKS 5, 145 / EUD, 143.
40
SKS 10, 75 / CD, 66.
41
SKS 24, 296, nB23:189 / JP 6, 6745.
42
Jakob peter mynster, Yderligere Bidrag til Forhandlingerne om de kirkelige Forhold
i Danmark, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1851, p. 44.
the lord will take me up.” Kierkegaard here was applying the words of the psalms
rather directly and transparently to specific relationships and events in his own life,
and identifying with the perspective of the psalmist.
The first of the Three Upbuilding Discourses from 1843 derives its title and its
subject matter, “love will hide a multitude of sins,” from 1 peter 4:8, which is itself
an altered quotation from proverbs 10:12. in the course of this sermon Kierkegaard
says “Blessed is the man whose sins are covered; more blessed is the love that hides
a multitude of sins,” in which the phrase “blessed is the man whose sins are covered”
is an allusion to psalm 32:1.43 Kierkegaard cites this passage in arguing that the
Christian virtue of love requires overlooking the sins of others, rather than dwelling
on them in order to reinforce one’s own sense of moral superiority. Kierkegaard uses
the psalm in order to argue for a rigorous ethic of forgiveness of others rather than
to celebrate the state of being forgiven by god, which is the ostensible theme of this
verse. Once again Kierkegaard modifies the rhetorical thrust of a passage in order to
encourage enhanced self-examination and the cultivation of the Christian virtues in
one’s own self.
the work Either/Or closes with a sermon by an anonymous preacher about the
“upbuilding that lies in the thought that in relation to god we are always in
the wrong.”44 the preacher asserts that when seemingly unfair calamities beset us,
it is better to think that we ourselves are in the wrong than to think that god is in the
wrong by afflicting us unjustly. In the Two Upbuilding Discourses from 1843, whose
appearance corresponded with the publication of Either/Or, Kierkegaard returns to
the issue of reconciling the pain of life’s misfortunes with trust in god’s benevolence.
however, in this discourse Kierkegaard sets a different tone from that of the preacher
in Either/Or and develops the theme differently. Here the individual who is filled
with trust in the faithfulness of god and realizes what this trust involves, can think
differently about life’s unexpected misfortunes. the faithful individual continues to
trust in god’s benevolence even when “grief supersedes joy.”45 Kierkegaard refers
to psalm 33:4 in speaking about the “expectancy of faith,” 46 the endurance of faith
in the face of experiences that ostensibly contradict its expectations. Kierkegaard
draws attention to the fact that faith assumes that all god’s works are “done in
faithfulness.” (the theme of god’s trustworthy benevolence recurs in psalm 139.)
here Kierkegaard does positively capture the psalm’s praise of god’s steadfastness
and faithfulness in order to encourage faith in god.
psalm 37:2547 is cited by Kierkegaard thus in his journal: “i have been young, and
now am old; yet i have not seen the righteous forsaken.”48 the psalm is compared
with Jesus’ words on the cross as reported in matthew 27:46: “my god, my god,
why have You forsaken me?” Kierkegaard concludes that the passage from the
psalm culminates in “all human religiousness, and also Judaism,” which expect
43
SKS 5, 74 / EUD, 64.
44
SKS 3, 321–2 / EO2, 341–54.
45
SKS 5, 35 / EUD, 26.
46
ibid.
47
see also ps 37:16; ps 103.
48
SKS 22, 11, nB11:7 / JP 1, 498.
righteousness to eventuate in worldly felicity, while the passage from matthew
makes it clear that Christianity involves suffering, crucifixion even,49 in regard to
everything that is earthly.50 a verse from the new testament (which ironically is
itself a reference to an old testament passage, psalm 22:1) is juxtaposed to a theme
from the Old Testament, utterly reversing it. This strategy reflects Kierkegaard’s
tendency to equate Judaism with the hope for prosperity and happiness in this life,
and to contrast it with genuine Christianity’s conviction that faith will inevitably
produce inward suffering and outward persecution in this life.
the second part of Christian Discourses entitled “states of mind in the strife
of suffering” cites verse psalm 49:5 as the biblical source of its main theme.51 this
section and the preliminary studies for its composition all develop this theme with a
reference to psalm 49.5: “i will incline my ear to a proverb; i will set my dark saying
to the music of the harp.”52 the psalm’s paradoxical association of “dark saying”
and “music” parallels the discourse’s effort to show the joy that is paradoxically
contained in Christian suffering. the second sermon in this section of Christian
Discourses takes up this theme with an allusion to a phrase that occurs in both psalm
57:8 and psalm 108:2: “wake up zither and harp.”53 in these psalms the expression
is simply a celebration of god’s steadfast love, while for Kierkegaard it becomes a
celebration of god’s love expressed in and through earthly suffering.
The statement “He who brings thanksgiving as his sacrifice honors me; to him
who orders his way aright i will show the salvation of god” from psalm 50:23 had
been noticed by Kierkegaard in 1849 while reading a sermon of luther. he copied
it instantly and stated that a demonstration of gratitude is essentially the “sacrifice”
preferred by god.54 here Kierkegaard’s (and luther’s) appropriation of the psalm
reflects one of the psalm’s main themes: that the true sacrifice that God desires is not
burnt offerings but a life of thankfulness.
B. Psalms 51–100
in The Concept of Anxiety vigilius haufniensis refers to psalm 51:5 in a passage

about the concept of the Fall. according to vigilius, the complaint of a human being
that he has been born in misery and “that his mother conceived him in sin”55 (to use
the words of psalm 51) is certainly true. But the grief about this miserable state can
only be serious if he himself bears the responsibility for having brought this state
upon himself; otherwise it would be an “esthetical” sorrow about sinfulness without
the dimension of personal guilt and would thus be contradictory in itself. the only
person who has the authority to grieve about sinfulness and who is himself without
49
For further comparisons of Christianity and Judaism in the diaries consult engelke,
Kierkegaard, pp. 189ff.
50
the same applies to the comparison in Pap. X–6 B 240.
51
SKS 10, 103 / CD, 93.
52
Pap. viii–2 B 98 / CD, supplement, p. 369. Pap. viii–2 B 123:12 / CD, supplement,
p. 370. SKS 10, 105 / CD, 93.
53
SKS 10, 118 / CD, 107.
54
SKS 22, 100, nB11:172 / JP 3, 2497.
55
SKS 4, 345 / CA, 38.
personal guilt would be Christ.56 By citing psalm 51 here, the author substantiates
his rule which he had stipulated at the beginning of his conceptual clarification,
“that man is individuum and as such simultaneously himself and the whole race, and
in such a way that the whole race participates in the individual and the individual
in the whole race.”57 the paradoxical relation between the race and the individual
suggested in the verse from psalm 51 is used as authoritative evidence to corroborate
vigilius’ view of the simultaneity of the race and the individual. Kierkegaard’s
use of psalm 51:5 in this manner had already been preliminarily developed in the
lutheran catechisms, with which Kierkegaard and his father had been educated.58
here Kierkegaard was putting the verse to a traditional theological use.
in the Four Upbuilding Discourses of 1844 Kierkegaard again takes up the theme
of the deep uneasiness of an individual about himself, which he had first elaborated
in The Concept of Anxiety, and confronts that uneasiness with the message that it
is “a human being’s highest perfection” that he become nothing in relation to god
and thus recognize his need for god.59 in the third discourse psalm 51:5 is quoted in
order to apply its implication of being in spiritual danger and needing salvation to
every human being. Kierkegaard warns that for any individual the state of being in
danger has come about simply “by his having been conceived in transgression and
born in sin.”60 (“transgression” here is in allusion to romans 5:14ff.) again a motif
from a psalm is used to support a traditional theological point.
in the last of the four discourses the coming of the Comforter is described with
words also drawn from psalm 51, this time verses 10–12.61 Kierkegaard writes
“then…he (the Comforter) makes everything new, strips the sufferer of his mourning
apparel and gives him a new heart and an assured spirit.”62 the Comforter brings
the reassurance that life’s struggles have been an expression of god’s providential
care. again the language of the psalm is enlisted to reinforce a traditional theological
motif.
in the Two Ethical-Religious Essays, which were in fact originally a part of The
Book on Adler that Kierkegaard never published, the consciousness of a person
who lives in the correspondence of word and deed is described with reference to
psalm 51:12. Kierkegaard observes that this consciousness can indeed involve “an
assured and steadfast spirit, but it does not give him authority.”63 the presence of
the steadfast spirit does not prove the rightness of his teachings; it only shows that
he lives according to them, a fidelity that does establish their truth. Earlier in 1846,
pursuing a different purpose in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard
56
ibid.
57
ibid.
58
his father had been educated with pontoppidan, Sandhed i Gudfrygtighed, p. 69, and
søren with nikolai edinger Balle, Lærebog i den evangelisk-christelige Religion, indrettet til
Brug i de danske Skoler, Copenhagen: J.h. schultz 1840, p. 29, p. 50; see more in engelke,
Kierkegaard, pp. 43–9.
59
SKS 5, 316 / EUD, 326.
60
SKS 5, 337 / EUD, 349.
61
ps 51:10.
62
SKS 5, 379 / EUD, 396.
63
SKS 11, 102 / WA, 99.
had allowed his pseudonym Johannes Climacus to ridicule the hiatus between any
alleged certainty based on hegelian speculation and the authentic certainty of faith by
using the language of psalm 51:12.64 the “certain spirit” of faith is acquired through
the daily cultivation of infinite interest in the individual’s own eternal happiness,
not through the pursuit of objective knowledge. although their purposes differ, both
Two Ethical-Religious Essays and Concluding Unscientific Postscript use the psalm
in a positive way to assert the connection between a religious consciousness and a
steadfast spirit.
in one of his polemical writings against Christendom Kierkegaard turns the words
of comfort of psalm 56:8 (“You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your
bottle.”) into words of threat. Kierkegaard warns that when the preacher, crying hot
tears, preaches about poverty as a rich man among the rich, the congregation may be
delighted, but god is not pleased. Kierkegaard reproaches such preachers: “ah, if it
is so (and so it is, after all, since god himself says it is) that he counts the sufferer’s
tears and keeps them in a bottle, then woe to these speakers if god has also counted
their sunday tears and kept them in a bottle!”65 the psalm is used as an authority
to substantiate a theological claim about god’s watchfulness, although that claim is
used to critique hypocrisy rather than to give comfort to the afflicted, as the original
psalm had done. once again a psalm is used in a manner at odds with its original
force in order to expose the inauthenticity of Christendom.
The first discourse “On the Occasion of a Confession” of the Upbuilding
Discourses in Various Spirits, seeks to remind the reader of the necessity of ongoing
remorse and repentance by quoting from psalm 58:8 which warns that the godless
“will be like the snail, which dissolves into slime as it goes along.”66 this points
to the tragic consequences of a life that wants to “have outgrown the eternal,” as if
religious passions were appropriate only to childhood or repentance only appropriate
to old age. the psalm that Kierkegaard quotes is a call for vengeance against the
wicked, while Kierkegaard’s appropriation of its language draws attention to the
results of a life that fails to maintain religious passions throughout the course of a
lifetime. again a verse from a psalm becomes a tool for self-examination and self-
critique.
prompted by the essay of gerhard tersteegen (1697–1796),67 in 1850 Kierkegaard
discovered this verse from psalm 77: “my soul refuses to be comforted.” while
reading it, Kierkegaard became aware of the contrast between not letting oneself be
comforted by other human beings and letting oneself be comforted by god alone.68
although it is not clear that this is the psalm’s intent, such a construal is possible and
was a common interpretation.
in a journal entry from January 3, 1839 Kierkegaard writes, “at just this moment
i feel the dreadful truth in the words: psalm 82:6: “i say, ‘You are gods, sons of the
64
SKS 7, 59 / CUP1, 55.
65
SKS 13, 246 / M, 195.
66
ps 58:8.
67
see Auswahl aus Gerhard Tersteegen’s Schriften, nebst dem Leben desselben, ed. by
georg rapp, essen: g.d. Bädeker 1841, p. 370 (ASKB 729).
68
SKS 23, 346, nB19:26 / JP 4, 4756.
most high, all of you; nevertheless, you shall die like men and fall like a tyrant.’ ”69
in the context of the psalm these words seem to be spoken by god to the members
of god’s council who shall perish like mortals because they have governed the
universe unjustly. Kierkegaard takes the admonition that occurs in a cosmic context
and applies it self-critically to human beings, most particularly to himself. as he
frequently did, he is here appropriating the words of a psalm in order to intensify
self-critique.
according to its preface, the third part of Christian Discourses signals the attack
of essential Christianity on counterfeit Christendom, an attack that must, of course,
be launched from behind.70 according to Kierkegaard, two different propositions are
equally true: the blessed conviction of faith requires sheer fear and trembling, and
“one day in god’s house is better than a thousand anywhere else (psalm 84:10).”71
Kierkegaard elaborates the theme that faith is a dialectical form of subjectivity
that involves both the attraction of blessedness and the repulsion of terror. to
counterbalance the intimidating and potentially terrifying message that Christianity
inevitably involves suffering, Kierkegaard borrows the celebratory words of the
psalm and thereby reflects the psalm’s jubilant spirit.
later in his broadsheet The Moment Kierkegaard uses the reference to “going
through the valley of Baca (a place of desolation)” in the same psalm to express
the Christian doctrine that the world is nothing but “a time of testing related to
an accounting and judgment,” and is a “vale of tears and prison.”72 according to
Kierkegaard, this teaching is cruelly twisted by the priests of official Christianity,
who disfigure it and turn it into an invitation to a happy family party.73 once again
the psalms are used as a source of images to emphasize the suffering and testing that
are an essential dimension of the Christian life, even when the particular psalm has
little to do with that theme.
an entry included in the “diapsalmata” from the papers of a reads: “girls do not
appeal to me. their beauty passes away like a dream and like yesterday when it is
past.”74 the allusion to psalm 90:4 (the use of “like a dream” to suggest transience)
puts the erotic lover in the position occupied by god in the psalm, for whom 1,000
years pass in a single day. The theme of fleetingness in the psalm is used to emphasize
god’s transcendence, while in the diapsalm it is used to express the ephemeral nature
of pleasure. The young man cannot find pleasure in getting to know a girl who would
be faithful to him. he writes:
if i found such a one, she would appeal to me from the standpoint of her being a rarity;
from the standpoint of a long period of time she would not appeal to me, for either she
would continually remain faithful, and then I would become a sacrifice to my eagerness
for experience, since i would have to bear with her, or the time would come when she
would lapse, and then i would have the same old story.
69
SKS 17, 274, dd:188 / KJN 17, 265.
70
SKS 10, 172 / CD, 162.
71
ps 84:10. see SKS 10, 186 / CD, 175.
72
ps 84:6.
73
SKS 13, 228–9 / M, 178–9.
74
SKS 2, 39 / EO1, 29.
psalm 90:4: functions very differently in the edifying literature. in order to depict
the sense of fulfillment that occurs when the struggle is over and “when longing is
calmed and the benediction says amen” Kierkegaard echoes the phrase from the
psalm that “the past is like yesterday.”75 the phrase is used in yet another way in a
another upbuilding discourse to suggest the superficiality of youth in grasping the
huge span of the past—the fact that god created the world 6,000 years ago—as if it
were “but yesterday.”76
an allusion to psalm 90:10 (“the days of our lives are seventy years“) occurs in
Stages on Life’s Way in the reply of the husband in “Some Reflections on Marriage.”77
here the reference is situated in the unmasking of the ambivalence in contemporary
religious discourse in which temporality is both ascribed ethical importance but also
dismissed as a vanity.
in the diary in Stages on Life’s Way the magnitude of god is playfully suggested
by taking the verse stating that 1,000 years are a single day in god’s sight from
psalm 90:4 and combining it with the claim in psalm 90:10 that 70 years remain to a
person. By combining the two passages, the author concludes that for god this time
span “is precisely one hour, forty-six minutes, and three seconds.”78
a different tone is evident in Christian Discourses of 1848. psalm 90:10 is
situated in the dialectic of temporality and eternity. alluding to that verse Kierkegaard
observes, “if the suffering lasts seventy years, it is only once,” because “eternally
understood, temporality is a moment, and a moment, eternally understood, is only
once.”79 similarly he exclaims that “the one time of suffering, when it is past, is no
time.”80 instead of speaking in terms of the years of one’s life, Kierkegaard speaks
about the years of one’s suffering, which, from the standpoint of eternity, are melted
together into a nothing, for “one time is no time.”81
a development in Kierkegaard’s use of the temporal language from psalm 90 is
here evident. It became more and more difficult for Kierkegaard to recognize any
holiness within the limitations and imperfections of earthly life. temporality and
eternity, which had been related to each other in the works of the first years and
which had exhibited a dynamic interaction throughout the numerous articulations of
their relation to each other are here separated. thinking in the category of eternity
destroys the perception of the goodness of temporality, except as the stage upon
which the drama of ethical and religious suffering is enacted.
in Practice in Christianity echoes of psalm 90 can be heard in the words attributed
to the ascended Jesus (compare this to John 12:32). according to anti-Climacus, the
risen Christ announces that “for him everything is eternally present—the eighteen
hundred years are the same as one day.”82 in Judge for Yourself! Kierkegaard asserts
75
SKS 5, 206 / EUD, 205.
76
SKS 5, 242 / EUD, 244. this is similar to the phrase’s use in SKS 4, 236 / PF, 29.
77
SKS 6, 161 / SLW, 173.
78
SKS 6, 222 / SLW, 237.
79
SKS 10, 110 / CD, 97–8.
80
SKS 10, 110 / CD, 97.
81
SKS 10, 113 / CD, 101.
82
SKS 12, 169 / PC, 166.
that the gospel, too, has but one position concerning the long life of an individual:
“no, for the gospel these seventy years are but a moment, and its discourse hurries
on to eternity’s decision.”83
in 1855 Kierkegaard published the discourse The Changelessness of God based
on James 1:17–21.84 it is not altogether without a certain sense of humor that
Kierkegaard calls this publication a “discourse,” since it is a sermon unlike most of
the other “upbuilding” and “Christian” discourses. it was delivered by Kierkegaard
on may 18, 1851 in the Citadel Church. it is published in connection with his struggle
against contemporary Christendom, together with his series of leaflets The Moment,
which began to appear in May 1855. While the title “A Discourse” hints at an official
distance (søren Kierkegaard had never been ordained), it now additionally suggested
a distance concerning the content of actually existing Christianity, even more so
because Kierkegaard had been alienated from the lutheran state church in 1854.
on august 9, 1851, a few months after he had delivered this sermon in the
garrison church, Kierkegaard, then 38 years old, had a conversation with Bishop
Jakob peter mynster who was responsible for the education of the priests of the
lutheran Church in denmark. For Kierkegaard this conversation was also intended to
discover if and under what conditions he might teach at the pastoral seminary and—
after the successful completion of his studies more than 10 years previously—meet
the prerequisites for the position of a priest. in his journal, Kierkegaard mentions
that mynster rather casually dropped the remark that Kierkegaard should start to
establish a pastoral seminary of his own.85 This intimated that the door to an office in
the church was thus closed to him. at this point in his life Kierkegaard realized that
his finances (he lived off the inheritance that his father had left him upon his death in
1838) would—not soon, but eventually—be exhausted if he maintained his current
lifestyle.86 it must be left an open question whether a connection exists between this
uncertainty about his future and his theological reflections, but at the latest from
1851 on it is evident that the already existing dualisms of body/spirit, time/eternity,
and belief/sexuality that had been present in his literature were taken to extremes
that verge on gnosticism.87
in this “discourse” on the changelessness of god, the third-to-last of his
publications, Kierkegaard illustrates the differences between god’s and humanity’s
perspectives on time by stating, “at the moment, when temporality’s pointer, the
minute hand, pointed to seventy years and the man died, during that time eternity’s
pointer had scarcely moved a trifle—to that degree everything is present for eternity
and for him, the Changeless one!”88 the evolution of Kierkegaard’s use of this
83
SV1 Xii, 425 / JFY, 150–1.
84
SKS 13, 321–39 / M, 263–81.
85
SKS 24, 397–8, nB24:121 / JP 6, 6777.
86
SKS, 23, 62–3, nB15:90 / JP 6, 8582. see also the notes in søren Kierkegaard,
Gesammelte Werke, abtheilungen 1–36, trans. and ed. by emanuel hirsch and hayo gerdes,
gutersloh: guterslöher verlagshaus mohn 1979–87, abtheilung 35: Briefe (1985), p. 267.
Pap. iv C 1 / JP 4, 3916.
87
engelke, Kierkegaard, pp. 169–71; pp. 253–4.
88
SKS 13, 334 / M, 275.
psalm exhibits an intensification of the theme that an individual’s life is short and
will be evaluated by god.
Kierkegaard alludes to psalm 91:11–12 (“For he (god) will command his angels
concerning you to guard you in your ways. on their hands they will bear you up, so
that you will not dash your foot against a stone.”) in order to use it for Christological
purposes, as had been done in the new testament itself.89 according to Climacus,
god’s walk in a man’s form was conducted “more circumspectly than if angels were
carrying him,”90 not in order to look after himself, but “so that he may not tread in
the dust the people who are offended at him.”91 Christ, while walking the earth, was
endowed with the power of god, which—if it had been put to use—would have had
a crushing effect on those who did not respond in faith. it is a sign of his love that
Jesus did not want to use his divine powers.
this detail should shed some light on a tendency toward metaphysical docetism
that sometimes appeared in Kierkegaard’s concept of god’s incarnation. it is
implied that god, in his incarnation in Christ, retains all that distinguishes god from
humankind, including god’s omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence, but
chooses not to exercise them overtly. The humanity of Jesus of Nazareth, figuratively
speaking, hides god from humankind’s eyes. god, who is spirit, even while
making the temporality and limitations of Jesus’ life his own, remains, according
to Kierkegaard, spirit, whose proper dimension is eternity. god’s suffering in Christ
is the suffering of the infinite spirit united with a limited, finite, human life. The
suffering here in the incarnation is referred to the spiritual dimension and not to
the body. Because of this, the suffering has an uplifting message for the follower
of Christ. it leads to the perception that suffering regarded from the point of view
of eternity is nothing but a single moment, the recognition that “The one time of
suffering is no time.”92 Kierkegaard compares suffering in relation to temporality and
eternity with the death of an actor on stage: “in temporality and in its understanding,
it looks so terrible….it is an optical illusion. it is as in the play when one actor kills
the other; it looks exactly as if he pierced him, but we all know, of course, that it is
not so….But just as the murdered actor goes home unharmed…so a believer’s soul
goes into eternity unharmed.”93
in The Sickness unto Death anti-Climacus sketched classical docetism in a
very accurate way and rejected it, since docetism claims that “…Christ does not
become an individual human being but only appears to be,” thus he “docetically
becomes fiction, mythology, which makes no claim upon actuality.”94 the equally
unacceptable opposite position would be to regard Christ as “an individual human
being” in which case “he rationalistically becomes an actuality who makes no claim
89
mt 4:6.
90
SKS 4, 239 / PF, 32. Kierkegaard in the discourse on the “Care of presumptuousness”
says that god even watches over the bird when he plunges into the depth “more securely than
if all the angels were holding it.” SKS 10, 70 / CD, 61.
91
SKS 4, 239 / PF, 32.
92
SKS 10, 113ff. / CD, 101–5.
93
SKS 10, 113 / CD, 101–2.
94
SKS 11, 242 / SUD, 131.
to be divine.”95 Kierkegaard’s tendency toward metaphysical docetism suggests
neither classical docetism nor its rationalistic alternative. For Kierkegaard, Christ is
a real human being, and god is really in him, but within him no real relinquishing
of power has taken place, only its concealment and non-utilization. accordingly,
Kierkegaard writes, “no one dares to compare himself to him [Christ] or measure
himself by his standard; between him and every human being there is an eternal
difference.”96 similarly, he observes, “god and man are two qualities separated by
an infinite qualitative difference. Humanly speaking, any teaching that disregards
this difference is demented—divinely understood, it is blasphemy. in paganism,
man made god a man (the man-god); in Christianity god makes himself man (the
god-man).”97 of course, in Christianity the difference is paradoxically overcome in
the incarnation, but even in becoming human, god does not surrender the attribute
of eternality. it is the perspective of eternity that continues to be the primary lens
through which both the life of Christ and the lives of his followers are viewed, and
the language of the psalms is enlisted to accomplish this.
In the first part of the Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits an allusion to
psalm 94:9 (“he who planted the ear, does he not hear?”) already points to the last
part of the book, “the gospel of sufferings.” Kierkegaard contrasts a person who
thought that he had faith in god’s providence because he had experienced being
helped, although he helped no one himself, with a person who has been denied
the help he desired, but nevertheless helped others. Kierkegaard asks which one
actually had genuine faith in god’s providence that cares for those who suffer, and
then observes, “is it not a beautiful and a convincing conclusion: should not he
who planted the ear hear? But is not the opposite conclusion just as beautiful and
convincing: Should not he whose life is sacrificing love believe that God is love?”98
the immediacy of the theology of creation which informs the psalm, the sense
of god’s agency manifested through the created order, is applied by Kierkegaard
to the theology of suffering. suffering for the good is a state in which god and the
individual meet directly. in a sketch in his journals this phrase from psalm 94:9 is
described as having the same persuasive power as a fully worked-out teleological
proof of god.99 here Kierkegaard does seem to be expressing an appreciation of the
power of god manifested in the created order.
Kierkegaard notes the astonishment which Johann georg hamann (1730–88)
expresses about the fact that psalm 99:8 associates two opposing things: mercy and
punishment.100 hamann writes, “as it is said of the three men in the scriptures, that
95
ibid.
96
SKS 8, 382 / UD, 287.
97
SKS 11, 237 / SUD, 126; see also SKS 11, 239–40 / SUD, 127–9. Kierkegaard uses
wordings here recalling the reports of Karl rosenkranz (1805–79), whom Kierkegaard often
excerpts, see engelke, Kierkegaard, pp. 74–7; see also SKS 13, 352 / M, 294, where to be a
Christian means suffering, and to die from the body and to be aware of god in the inwardness
of the spirit.
98
SKS 8, 178 / UD, 70.
99
SKS 20, 63, nB:72 / JP 2, 2295.
100
SKS 23, 427, nB20:62 / JP 2, 1222.
god forgave them and punished their deed. psalm 99 [8].”101 Kierkegaard, on the
contrary, states that this conjunction is a characteristic expression of the Christian
concept of the forgiveness of sin, inasmuch as the suffering of punishment is accepted
as an expression of god’s mercy and not of god’s anger. here the verse from the
Psalms is treated as a prefigurement of a Christian theological theme concerning
human suffering, including the suffering due to punishment, as an expression of
god’s disciplinary and educative love.
C. Psalms 101–33
in the fourth of the Four Upbuilding Discourses from 1843 a reference to psalm
102:26 (“they [the heavens] will all wear out like a garment”) serves as an instance
of the theme that heaven and earth will perish while the believer wins his soul in
patience.102 in the psalm this phrase is part of a reminder of god’s steadfastness
and endurance in the midst of cosmic change and is intended to stimulate trust in
god’s reliability. For Kierkegaard, however, it becomes part of a description of the
terrifying tribulations in the midst of which the faithful individual should remain
quiet and patient. this same phrase recurs in Christian Discourses. in this context
god is described as the invariant one who draws an absolute, eternal distinction
between justice and injustice. the eternal nature of this difference is expressed by
Kierkegaard through the use of language drawn from genesis 1:6–8, isaiah 34:4,
hebrews 1:10ff., and also psalm 102:26–8.103
the doctrine of god’s invariability forms a leitmotif throughout Kierkegaard’s
works. with references to psalm 102:26–8 and also to James 1:17 this theme is
already anticipated in The Concept of Irony.104 in the upbuilding discourses it becomes
a counterpoint to the pseudonymous works, as in the Two Upbuilding Discourses of
1843 which is juxtaposed to Either/Or, 105 in the Three Upbuilding Discourses of 1843
which is juxtaposed to Fear and Trembling,106 and in the Four Upbuilding Discourses
of 1844 which is juxtaposed to The Concept of Anxiety.107 Four times it is the subject
101
see Hamann’s Schriften, vols. 1–8, ed. by Friedrich roth, Berlin: g. reimer 1821–43,
vol. 1, 1821, letter no. 40, pp. 369–86 (ASKB 536–544).
102
SKS 5, 168–9 / EUD, 169–70; the same usage is in “the lily in the Field,” see SKS
11, 42 / WA, 40.
103
SKS 10, 217 / CD, 208.
104
SKS 1, 88 / CI, 26–7.
105
SKS 5, 34 / EUD, 25: “would he then be able to be changed, he in whom there is no
change or shadow of variation? would he not be faithful, he through whom every human
being who is faithful is faithful.”
106
SKS 5, 103 / EUD, 98: “…because he who believes god contrary to the understanding
is strengthened in the inner being. For him the spiritual trial served as a strengthening in the
inner being; he learned the most beautiful thing of all, the most blessed—that god loved him
because the one god tests he loves. For such a person, then, prosperity and adversity serve for
strengthening in the inner being…because the witness itself is a gift from God, from whom
comes every good and perfect gift.”
107
SKS 5, 326 / EUD, 338: “He has returned to himself; he is no longer beatific by being
rescued from himself to himself and to being transfigured in God—so that the past must let go
of various sermons: in one of the Two Upbuilding Discourses of 1843, in two of
the Four Upbuilding Discourses of 1843, and in the sermon The Changelessness
of God published during his late period of struggle against Christendom. From
Kierkegaard’s first publication to his last this fundamental conviction concerning
god’s changelessness spans his literature like a bridge. it was a proposition which
he knew from Balle’s catechism, which asserts that god “is always changeless and
remains the same,”108 and which cites the same supporting biblical verses of psalm
102:27 and James 1:17. the centrality of the theme of god’s changelessness was
confirmed by Fogtmann with references to the same biblical passages.109
in Kierkegaard’s sermon delivered in the pastoral seminary, december 1, 1841,
an allusion to psalm 103:15–16 can be found (“as for mortals, their days are like
grass; they flourish like a flower of the field for the wind passes over it, and it is
gone…”).110 in Kierkegaard’s appropriation of this language it does not refer to the
transitory nature of human life, as it does in the psalm, but rather to the swiftly
changing moods of the soul. the imagery of the psalm becomes an allegory of the
passional life of the individual.
the second of the Four Upbuilding Discourses from 1843 sketches the subject
of the sermon, that “every good gift and every perfect gift is from above,” a theme
based on James 1:17–22 and psalm 103:13 (“as a father has compassion for his
children, so the lord has compassion for those who fear him.”).111 in the course of
this sermon on the dangers of doubts about the goodness of god, this verse is one
of the passages that reinforce the need to construe life’s contingencies as good gifts
which come from god who loves like a compassionate parent.112 Kierkegaard may
have learned this use of this biblical passage from Balle’s catechism.113
The first of the Three Upbuilding Discourses from 1844, “think about Your
Creator in the days of Your Youth,” based on ecclesiastes 1:12, contrasts the waning
of youth and the vanity of taking its fleeting charms too seriously with the “God-
surrendered nonchalance” of youth and its never-wilting capacity to trust and hope in
god.114 The first characteristic of youth, its vanity, should be discouraged, while the
second, its trust in god, should be preserved. Kierkegaard uses words from psalm
103:16 (“for the wind passes over it and it is gone”) to describe the vanity of longing
for the fleeting pleasures of youth.115
of him and is powerless to condemn him because the self-accusation is mitigated, forgotten
in the understanding with governance’s inscrutable wisdom, in the blessed instruction of
a reconciliation; so that the eternal fears no future, indeed, hopes for no future, but love
possesses everything without ceasing, and there is no shadow of variation.”
108
Balle, Lærebog i den evangelisk-christelige Religion, p. 13.
109
Fogtmann, Lærebog i den christelige Religion, pp. 34ff.
110
Pap iii C 1 / JP 4, 3915.
111
SKS 5, 132f. / EUD, 129–30.
112
the other passages are ps 37:16 and prov 16:8; see SKS 5, 132 / EUD, 128. see also
ps 143:10; SKS 5, 136 / EUD, 133.
113
114
SKS 5, 248–9 / EUD, 249–51.
115
SKS 5, 248–9 / EUD, 250–1.
in a journal entry Kierkegaard quotes the words of psalm 103:2: “Bless the
Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits.”116 But then he asks himself who
possesses a memory that can remember all of god’s good deeds and continues,
“Then let me at least not forget this benefit—that you bear with my forgetfulness.”117
For Kierkegaard, even a verse of thanksgiving for earthly blessings can become an
expression of contrition and thankfulness for forgiveness.
Kierkegaard describes the nature of irony in his dissertation The Concept of
Irony as involving free action determined only by what is possible. Consequently,
he explains that irony “enjoys in the realm of practice a similar divine freedom that
knows no bonds, no chains, but plays with abandon and unrestraint, gambols like a
leviathan in the sea.”118 here the words of psalm 104:26 (“leviathan that you formed
to sport in it [the sea]”) which are a celebration of god’s creativity are transposed
to describe the creativity of human irony. a phrase from psalm 104:15, “how the
vine pleases man’s heart” is alluded to in a sermon in one of the Prefaces.119 again
Kierkegaard shows that he can borrow the language of the psalms for the purpose of
casual literary embellishment.
the third part of Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, “the gospel of
sufferings,” emphasizes the proposition that “in relation to god a person always
suffers as guilty.”120 this conviction is derived from the confession that god is love.
indeed, borrowing language from psalm 104:29 (“when you take away their breath,
they die”) Kierkegaard says, “if it is so that the creature must die if god withdraws
his breath, then it is also true that if god for one single moment has denied his
love, then all tasks are dead and reduced to nothing, and hopelessness is the only
thing there is.”121 the psalm’s elaboration of the general sustaining power of god’s
providence is transmuted into a meditation on the meaning-conferring power of
god’s love. again Kierkegaard spiritualizes the theme of the psalm.
in a journal entry of 1849 Kierkegaard writes, “if you have not sensed today that
god is present here...your coming into god`s house is in vain...then you could just
as well...have stayed at home, so that your coming here would not be a sin; as david
says: the prayer of the ungodly shall be counted as sin.”122 this quotation of psalm
109:7 directly applies the biblical verses’ condemnation of prayer by an allegedly
unrighteous man to the casual, passionless church attendance of contemporary
Christians. interestingly, in the psalm the individual is being falsely accused, while
in Kierkegaard’s appropriation of it the church is indeed guilty of a lack of religious
passion.
in “the gospel of sufferings” Kierkegaard borrows the phrase “the fear of
the lord is the beginning of wisdom” from psalm 111:10123 and remarks that, “if
116
SKS 24, 146, nB22:84 / JP 3, 3458.
117
ibid.
118
SKS 1, 315 / CI, 279; Cf. ps 115:3.
119
SKS 4, 491 / P, 29.
120
SKS 8, 363 / UD, 265.
121
SKS 8, 374 / UD, 277.
122
SKS 21, 323, nB10:131.b / JP 1, 590.
123
see also prov 1:7.
the fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom, then learning obedience is the
consummation of wisdom; it is to be promoted in wisdom by being educated by the
eternal.”124 this “consummation” is partially effected by the suffering that obedience
entails. Kierkegaard emphasizes here the imperative that one must learn to let god
have free rein in one’s life, thereby shifting the psalm’s focus on god’s graciousness
and fidelity to a concentration on the necessity for a human response. As he often
does, Kierkegaard adapts the psalm to the goal of encouraging an appreciation of the
daunting rigors of the Christian life.
according to Kierkegaard’s explanation in The Lily in the Field, not only is the
fear of god the beginning of wisdom, but so also is silence the beginning of fear of
the lord. silence even increases in value for Kierkegaard, for “silence is more than
the beginning of the fear of god, [silence] is the fear of god.”125 the words of the
psalm are appropriated in order to elaborate the value of silence before god, a motif
absent in the original psalm.
In defining the concept of sin, a surprising analogy between Socrates’ ignorance
and psalm 111:10 occurs in the second section of The Sickness unto Death. anti-
Climacus writes, “let us never forget that socrates’ ignorance was a kind of fear and
worship of god, that his ignorance was the greek version of the Jewish saying: the
fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom…that as far as it was possible for a pagan
he was on guard duty as a judge on the frontier between god and man.”126 the “fear”
mentioned in the psalm is given an epistemological twist, for it is seen to involve a
cognitive humility and sense of incapacity in regard to the mystery of god.
such an epistemic separation of god and human is only possible with the
Christian belief in god’s otherness, an absolute difference that is preserved even
through the paradox of the incarnation.127 the fear of god, a concept which is central
in Pontoppidan’s catechism, signifies the qualitative difference between God and
man.
psalm 115:3 proclaims, “our god is in heaven; he does whatever he pleases.”
what was articulated in the psalm to distinguish the god of israel from the visible
idols of the other nations was turned into one of the central dogmatic pillars of
Christianity in the catechisms which Kierkegaard had been taught. in Balle’s work
the verse serves as an expression of god’s omnipotence.128 this passage is used
to elaborate the theme of divine omnipotence in other portions of Kierkegaard’s
literature. In his dissertation Kierkegaard apparently developed his definition of
irony, that “its actuality is only possibility,”129 partly through reflection on the theme
of divine transcendence, including its expression in psalm 115:3. alluding to that
passage Kierkegaard writes, “our god is in heaven and does whatever he pleases;
the ironist is on earth and does whatever he desires.”130 in spite of establishing a
124
SKS 8, 356 / UD, 258.
125
SKS 11, 9 / WA, 11.
126
SKS 11, 212 / SUD, 99.
127
ibid.
128
129
SKS 1, 315 / CI, 279.
130
SKS 1, 317 / CI, 282.
parallelism of divine freedom and the freedom of irony, Kierkegaard also suggests
a profound difference. god’s omnipotence includes the merging of possibility and
actuality into one piece. in distinction to that union of possibility and actuality that
is characteristic of god, the romantically shaped concept of irony is only a love for
pure possibility.
Kierkegaard returns to this biblical passage again in a journal entry from 1854.
here he speaks explicitly of “the formulation of the catechism that god is in heaven
and does what he pleases.”131 however, Kierkegaard’s interpretation of the verse
goes far beyond that of the catechisms. in his elaboration of the passage, not only are
omnipotence and omniscience mentioned, but so also is god’s unbearable closeness
that can detect and evaluate the most seemingly trivial phenomena. Facing god’s
pure subjectivity, an individual becomes nothing, or rather he only truly becomes
something when he faces god with the appropriate humility.
in a journal entry from 1848 Kierkegaard quotes the words of psalm 116:10: “i
kept my faith, even when I said, ‘I am greatly afflicted.’ ” 132 presumably Kierkegaard
was applying this passage to his own life. although the psalm itself is essentially an
expression of thankfulness for deliverance and bounty, Kierkegaard excerpts the one
verse that emphasizes personal fidelity in the face of adversity.
in the closing chapter of Philosophical Fragments concerning the “Follower at
second hand” Johannes Climacus’ conversation partner attempts to differentiate the
situation of the generation that was contemporaneous with Christ from that of the
following ones. according to his interlocutor, while the generation contemporary
with Christ did suffer from the pain of being in the presence of the paradox of
the incarnation, the “new order of things” would eventually produce “the happy
generation that with songs of joy harvests the fruit that was sown in tears by the
first generation.”133 he conversation partner is echoing the words of psalm 126:5–6:
“may those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy. those who go out weeping,
bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their
sheaves.” The claim that the first generation shall weep but the later generation
“shall doubtless come again with rejoicing” elicits Climacus’mockery, for the note of
festive triumphalism eliminates the sense of conflict and uncertainty that is essential
for genuine faith.134 the victorious jubilation of the psalm is deemed inappropriate
for the Christian life in time.
in the last of the Two Upbuilding Discourses from 1844, there is a different note
in the allusion to psalm 126:5–6 in Kierkegaard’s description of anna’s patience
and the fulfillment of her expectations, as narrated in Luke 2:33–40. Anna had
“sown with tears” before she saw the child Jesus and was then appropriately filled
with joy.135 here the psalm’s pattern of sorrow/joy is endorsed by Kierkegaard and
applied to the Christian life.
131
SKS 26, 337, nB34:25 / JP 3, 2576.
132
SKS 20, 355, nB4:147 / JP 4, 4616.
133
SKS 4, 304 / PF, 107.
134
ibid.
135
SKS 5, 224 / EUD, 225.
the second discourse in Four Upbuilding Discourses of 1844 entitled “the
thorn in the Flesh,” based on 2 Corinthians 12:7, describes the suffering of someone
who, like the apostle Paul, had been “transfigured in God” and had experienced the
inexpressible beatitude of being in the presence of god, and then returned to “the
thralldom of temporality.”136 after the ecstatic experience is over “and the harvest
song of joy is silenced,” Kierkegaard uses the words of psalm 126:5–6 to observe
that “again there will be sowing in tears.”137 Kierkegaard here interprets an israelite
lament about alienated cultural life in a foreign region as an almost gnostic-like
lament about the imprisonment of the spirit in earthly time. temporality itself, rather
than cultural-political oppression and geographic displacement, is construed as a life
in “exile.”138 these Four Discourses can be viewed as a Christian response to The
Concept of Anxiety, and yet with their hostility towards the body they have distanced
themselves from the affirmation of creaturely, embodied life typical of most of the
old and new testament. there is a sharp disjunction between the words of the psalm
that express a longing for a restoration of earthly good fortune and the spiritualized
message that Kierkegaard derives from it.
the second of the Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions of 1845, intended
for the occasion of a wedding, develops the theme “that, considered as the resolution
of marriage, love conquers everything,”139 and dedicates itself to the exploration of
the meaning of a “resolution.” It maintains that the first condition for a resolution
is “to will to have a true conception of life and of oneself.”140 this involves facing
life’s uncertainties and one’s own failings, a candor that triggers a “trembling” that
“toughens one.”141 those who genuinely make their resolution to marry in this spirit
have “a true conception of life and of oneself.”142 as well as of god.143 Borrowing
the words of psalm 126:5–6, Kierkegaard adds the encouraging note that “what is
here sown with tears is harvested with songs of joy, and one does recover from the
sorrow.”144 the more sobering this thought is, the more strengthened the life that
follows from it will be. here the dialectic of sorrow/joy is applied to the ethical
task of remaining faithful to a resolution. again the focus is not on the ordinary
vicissitudes of earthly existence, but upon the rigors of the passional life of the
Christian individual.
136
SKS 5, 326 / EUD, 338.
137
ibid. this passage also contains allusions to the lament of ps 137. Kierkegaard refers
to ps 137:5–6 again in the ninth section in Works of Love, “the work of love in recollecting
one who is dead,” see SKS 9, 341 / WL, 345–58. in connection with sirach 22:11, these
passages can be seen as examples of what the dignified commemoration of the dead might be.
it is distressing to see that the longing and the insatiable hope for zion from ps 137:5–6 are
reduced to the commemoration of the dead by Kierkegaard.
138
see engelke, Kierkegaard, pp. 253–5.
139
SKS 5, 421 / TD, 46.
140
SKS 5, 429 / TD, 52.
141
ibid.
142
ibid.
143
SKS 5, 438 / TD, 63.
144
SKS 5, 429 / TD, 52.
the closing section of Christian Discourses is dedicated to a contemplation
of “blessing” and deals with Jacob’s struggle at the Jabbok river, in which Jacob
wrestles with a mysterious figure who seems to be a manifestation of God.145 the
power and effect of the blessing that results from this struggle is further explained
with the aid of psalm 127.146 Kierkegaard quotes Jacob’s words to his wrestling
partner, “i will not let you go unless you bless me.” interestingly, Kierkegaard does
not use these words to construe the reception of god’s blessing as the fruit of the
individual’s struggle with god, but rather to emphasize god’s promise to bless the
faithful through the communion service. the blessing of Jacob is reinterpreted in a
Christological and eucharistic context.
In the text “Some Reflections on Marriage in Answer to Objections by a Married
man,” an essay in Stages on Life’s Way, several references of certain biblical
passages, including psalm 1:2–3, occur. all of them are used in a way that preserves
the standard and obvious way of interpreting them.147 the blessing of having a wife
who “will be like a fruitful vine within your house,” as psalm 128:3 phrases it, is
praised, and bachelors who do not have enough human sympathy to delight in the
prospect of a “flowering” wife are chastised. (Psalm 1:2–3 uses similar imagery to
describe the pious individual who contemplates and delights in god’s law.148) here
the psalm’s positive attitude toward marital felicity is reflected in the parallel attitude
of the “married man.”
in a journal entry Kierkegaard writes, “even in david’s psalms there are
examples of the kind of self-encapsulation or closedupness which seeks to avoid
every human relationship in order to remain Du und Du with god.”149 this indicates
the difficulty of interpreting such “closedupness,” which could be due to “pride
toward men” or to “an erotic love affair with god.” here Kierkegaard may have had
in mind psalm 130:1 (“out of the depths i have cried to You, o lord”). according to
alastair mcKinnon, Kierkegaard had learned from this psalm—too late—that only
the mentally ill avoid human relations in order to be closer to god.150
in an upbuilding discourse Kierkegaard appropriated the phrase “live together in
harmony” in order to describe the proper relationship between an individual and his
resolution, and to suggest that the separation of the two is due to cowardice.151 the
phrase in the psalm 133:1 which had a social implication is adapted by Kierkegaard
to apply to the stringent demands of the ethico-religious life.
145
gen 32.
146
SKS 10, 322 / CD, 297.
147
see engelke, Kierkegaard, pp. 101–10.
148
see ps 1:2–3; SKS 6, 94 / SLW, 113.
149
SKS 18, 246, JJ:332 / KJN 2, 227.
150
alastair mcKinnon, “Kierkegaard on hating one’s Father, etc.,” Søren Kierkegaard
Newsletter, no. 41, 2001, pp. 17–19.
151
SKS 5, 351 / EUD, 365.
D. Psalm 139
psalm 139 is so prevalent in Kierkegaard’s literature, and used so differently, that a

separate, more detailed discussion of its appearance in each work is required.
the publication of Two Upbuilding Discourses in 1843 shows for the first time
the force, ambiguity, and disquieting effect of Kierkegaard’s strategy to publish
in parallel fashion pseudonymous works counterbalanced by edifying, signed
works. this strategy was intended to “deceive [individuals] into the truth,” into
Christianity.152 the discourses serve to make a “movement” possible that differs
from the attitudes toward life expressed in Either/Or. the edifying thoughts derive
their power from depicting human beings under the comprehensive rule of sin, doing
this with the help of a reference to Job 40:2: “shall the one who contends with the
almighty correct Him? he who rebukes god, let him answer it.”153 these upbuilding
discourses emphasize the righteousness of god and appropriate the language of
psalm 33:4 to promote this purpose: “For the word of the lord is right, and all his
work is done in truth.”154 in his youth Kierkegaard could already have encountered
such an important use of this passage from the textbook of nicolai edinger Balle.155
the second discourse, entitled with a phrase taken from James 1:17, “every good
and every perfect gift is from above,” employs comforting language drawn from,
among other places, psalm 139:2ff. Kierkegaard writes, “ ‘From the Father of lights,’
says the apostle, and thereby signifies that God penetrates everything with his eternal
clarity, that he understands people’s thoughts from afar and is very familiar with all
their paths.”156 Kierkegaard develops this theme in order to foster an appreciation
of all of life’s vicissitudes as being “a good and perfect gift for everyone who has
enough heart to be humble, enough heart to be trustful.”157 the words of the psalm
are used to suggest that from the perspective of faith all events, even the tribulations,
can be seen as a providentially directed education of the individual.
the Four Upbuilding Discourses from 1844 were intended to be read in
conjunction with the reflections in The Concept of Anxiety. in the latter work the
“dreaming spirit’s” projected actuality is a “nothing” that begets infinite anxiety,158
while in the discourses the individual’s encounter with his own nothingness is the
basis for his fulfillment, because “to need God is his highest perfection.”159
the fourth discourse entitled “against Cowardliness,” based on 1 timothy 1:7,
describes the endangering of the individual by sin, death, and judgment.160 Cowardice
is described as being the attitude which desires to be exempted from the task of
152
SKS 13, 13 / PV, 7; see SV1 Xiii, 571 / PV, 87–8.
153
Cf. SKS 3, 324 / EO2, 344 with SKS 5, 26 / EUD, 16.
154
SKS 5, 35 / EUD, 25.
155
156
SKS 5, 48 / EUD, 39.
157
SKS 5, 48 / EUD, 41.
158
SKS 4, 348 / CA, 41.
159
SKS 5, 316 / EUD, 326.
160
SKS 5, 338 / EUD, 350.
realizing what the good is,161 from doing good,162 and from committing oneself
to it.163 however, Kierkegaard warns, the prospect of being judged by god cannot
be avoided by any man. in this context Kierkegaard uses the images and words
from psalm 139:7ff. in his own description of the inevitability of judgment and the
impossibility of escaping it: “But try this: go to the farthest limits of the world,
conceal yourself in the abyss, and then see whether the justice that imprisoned you
does not know how to go and fetch you out.”164 whether or not this judgmental
understanding appropriately expresses the message of these verses from psalm 139,
which do suggest the futility of any attempted flight from God’s presence, may be
left an open question.
in any case, Kierkegaard succeeds in shedding a different light on the theme
of nothingness developed in The Concept of Anxiety by the pseudonym vigilius
haufniensis. here the attempt to avoid the recognition of one’s own nothingness is
seen as an expression of cowardice, as a refusal of the imperfect human creature to
rely on god’s perfection.165 again the words of the psalm are put to an accusatory
purpose.
Concluding his theological examination, Kierkegaard delivered a sermon on
1 Corinthians 2:6–9 in trinity Church in Copenhagen on February 24, 1844. he
did not publish it separately, and it was not available until the publication of his
journals in 1912.166 the introductory prayer contains, along with numerous new
testament allusions,167 old testament references to exodus 20:21, 1 Kings 8:12,
psalm 139:2,168 psalm 139:12, and psalm 139:23.169 this prayer will be fully cited
here due to its complexity:
Father in heaven! well do we know that you dwell in light and that your essence is
brightness, but for that very reason you are also dark (even in your revelation) and like a
secret we are unable to utter. But then it is for our consolation that you see in secret and
understand from afar. so test even our hearts, and according to the secret which each
one’s heart conceals and according to the way you understand it, make it clear also to
him in proportion to his keeping the secret and his love for you.170
the formulation “for that very reason you are also dark (even in your revelation)”
appears here as an inversion of psalm 139:12, which speaks of the exact opposite:
“the darkness shall not hide from You.” in Job 10:22 this type of inversion of light/
darkness serves Job as a reference to the world of the dead, “a land of obscurity, the
161
SKS 5, 343 / EUD, 356.
162
SKS 5, 349 / EUD, 362–3.
163
SKS 5, 355 / EUD, 369.
164
SKS 5, 338 / EUD, 350.
165
Cf. SKS 5, 370 / EUD, 368–9.
166
Pap. iv C 1 / JP 4, 3916.
167
mt 6:4, 18 and 1 tim 6:16.
168
“[You] understand from afar off,” in the quoted prayer echoes “you discern my
thoughts from far way” in ps 139:2.
169
“test even our hearts” in the quoted prayer echoes “search me, o god, and know my
heart; test me and know my thoughts” in ps 139:23.
170
Pap. iv C 1 / JP 4, 3916.
darkness of the shadow of death, without any order, and the shining is as darkness.”
the bond with his deceased father, a relationship that left a profound mark on
Kierkegaard and affected him long after his father’s death, may have found a way to
express itself in this secretive manner.
on the occasion of a confession, the verses from psalm 139:7ff., “where can i
go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?” are interpreted in
two different ways: first, as a reference to the presence of God that is inescapable
even if someone tried to evade it, and secondly as a reference to the impossibility of
losing the presence of god, even if human beings are separated from one another or
incarcerated.171 Both the theme of divine judgment and the theme of divine comfort
are articulated through the use of the psalm’s vocabulary.
the change in his contemporary lecturer and lutheran priest adolph peter adler
(1812–69) from a convinced follower of hegel to an alleged recipient of a revelation
who, in Kierkegaard’s terms, discovered a type of “inwardness” for himself, gave
rise to a study of Kierkegaard’s own religiosity and of the way in which it differed
from adler’s. in 1843 adler announced that he had received a revelation from Christ
himself in september 1842, concerning, among other things, the origin of evil. adler
proceeded to broadcast his experience in various publications, although his attempt
to convince Kierkegaard of the veracity of his revelation failed.
Kierkegaard’s response to the case, The Religious Confusion of the Present
Age Illustrated by Magister Adler as a Phenomenon: A Mimical Monograph, was
not published as a whole, although two parts of it were printed in 1849 as the Two
Ethical-Religious Essays by the pseudonym h.h. without the slightest hint about its
“editor” or real author. in the unpublished study Kierkegaard acknowledges adler’s
“excellence,” which he saw mainly in the fact “that he [adler] was shaken, was
deeply moved,”172 an attitude that Kierkegaard explicitly supports. Kierkegaard
elaborates on the importance of “being deeply moved” by suggesting, “in a certain
sense a preacher should be such that the listeners have to say: how can i get away
from this man? his sermon catches up with me in every hiding place, and how
can i get rid of him, since he is over me at every moment?”173 here Kierkegaard is
again echoing the words of psalm 139:7. the individual’s appropriate response to
an authentic preacher is likened to the response of an individual god. Both should
involve a daunting awareness of scrutiny and evaluation.
In the introductory section of the first part of Upbuilding Discourses in Various
Spirits, a discourse “on the occasion of a Confession,” a reference is made to
psalm 139:2 (“you [god] discern my thoughts from far away”). the confessor
whom Kierkegaard describes does not face an ordinary conversation partner, but
someone who confronts him with the “earnestness of eternity,”174 namely, god.
to reinforce the mood of thorough self-scrutiny and candor necessary for true
repentance, Kierkegaard appropriates the words of the psalm and describes god as
171
SKS 5, 404 / TD, 24.
172
Pap. vii–2 B 235, p. 190 / BA, 103.
173
Pap. vii–2 B 235, p. 191 / BA, 105.
174
SKS 8, 136 / UD, 21.
the “omniscient one who knows every thought from afar.”175 the words of the psalm
that suggest the impossibility of escaping from the presence of god are given an
explicitly judgmental nuance.
the discourses published by Kierkegaard in 1848 all bear the title “Christian
discourses,” including the seven “discourses at the Communion on Fridays.” the
third one, based on John 10:27 (“my sheep hear my voice, and i know them, and they
follow me”) develops the theme “he knows them”176 with the aid of psalm 139:8ff.
Kierkegaard writes, “even if you hid in the bottomless pit, he knows you—but there
is no reason to flee, no reason to seek a hiding place, because the blessedness is
precisely this, that he knows you.”177 This is the first time that the judgmental aspect
of these verses is not emphasized, but rather its consoling character is highlighted.
Kierkegaard associates being known by Christ with actually being one of Christ’s
own, a thought that reassures the individual of god’s forgiving and consoling love.
the preface to Practice in Christianity, signed with the initials of Kierkegaard
as the editor, uses a characteristic Kierkegaardian paradox. after remarking that the
“requirement for being a Christian” must be heard “as spoken to me alone,” the
editor continues that this requirement is presented “so that i might learn not only to
resort [or “flee”] to grace but to resort to it in relation to the use of grace.”178 the
paradox is that the individual not only is the recipient of grace, but is also the agent
who must actively do something with grace. in a journal entry of 1851 Kierkegaard
restates this paradox, saying, “it can also be looked at this way—just because grace
is shown to me and i am reprieved, precisely in this lies the requirement to exert
myself all the more.”179
This way of wording the paradox of “fleeing to grace” probably originates
from the phrase in Psalm 139:7: “where can I flee from Your presence?”180 psalm
139:7–12 is a reflection about the unlimited nature of God’s presence. Even at the
imaginary limits of the three dimensions—height, width, and depth—god’s intimate
knowledge of the individual is still effective, for “You [god] have hedged me behind
and before.”181 Kierkegaard puts the language of “fleeing” or “resorting” to a different
purpose, for here the fleeing is toward grace, a forgiveness that must be passively
received, which then paradoxically becomes the basis for a new exertion.
175
SKS 8, 137 / UD, 22.
176
SKS 10, 290 / CD, 271.
177
SKS 10, 291 / CD, 272.
178
SKS 12, 15 / PC, 7.
179
SKS 24, 191, nB22:159 / JP 2, 1482.
180
this is a view proposed by emmanuel hirsch in søren Kierkegaard, in Gesammelte
Werke, abtheilung 26: Einübung zum Christentum (1980), p. 263, footnote 2. see SKS 12, 77
/ PC, 65. also see engelke, Kierkegaard, p. 155. For comments on the phrase as it occurs in
SKS, 21, 53, nB6:70 / JP 6, 6235 see SKS K21, 51, nB6:70; and as it appears in SKS, 22, 332,
nB13:88 / JP 6, 6521 see SKS K22, 413, nB13:88. according to these notes, the phrase refers
to the Communion of the danish liturgy, Dannemarks og Norges Kirke-Ritual, Copenhagen
1762 [1685], pp. 146–7, although it says there: henflyer til GUds Barmhiertighed i Christo
Jesu.
181
ps 139:5.
The concept of “fleeing towards forgiveness” does not appear in this particular
formulation in the biblical tradition. nevertheless the phrase does appear in a well-
known ecclesiastical song which luther had arranged in 1524, adapted from an older
traditional version. luther’s “in the midst of life we are surrounded by death” had
been available in a Danish translation since 1529. The first stanza, adapted from the
medieval antiphon Media vita in morte sumus (in the midst of life we are in death)
from the eleventh century, reads in luther’s version:
though in the midst of life
we are encircled by death.
who is it that will bring help to us
that we may obtain mercy?
that is you alone, lord.
we mourn our grievous sin
which has stirred up your wrath.
holy lord god
holy powerful god
holy compassionate savior
You eternal god
let us not perish
in the bitter misery of death.182
luther expanded the song by two stanzas:
in the midst of death

the jaws of hell confront us.
who will make us free from such misery
and make us secure?
that is you alone lord
tender is your compassion
that pities our great misery
holy lord god
holy mighty god
holy compassionate savior,
You eternal god
do not allow us to be discouraged
Before the deep fires of hell,
have mercy, o lord!
182
english translation by the editor. the german is: Mitten wir im Leben sind / mit
dem Tod umfangen. / Wer ist, der uns Hilfe bringt, / daß wir Gnad erlangen? / Das bist du,
Herr, alleine. / Uns reuet unsre Missetat, / die dich, Herr, erzürnet hat. / Heiliger Herre Gott,
/ heiliger starker Gott, / heiliger barmherziger Heiland, / du ewiger Gott: / laß uns nicht
versinken / in des bittern Todes Not. / Kyrieleison. see luther, “mitten wir im leben sind mit
dem tod umgeben,” in J. Jonas and J. lange, Enchiridion oder Eyn Handbuchlein, erfurt: n.p.
1524, song number 18 (no pagination).
in the midst of hellish dread

Our sins afflict us
Where shall we flee to
that we might remain?
to You, lord Christ, only.
Your precious blood was shed
as atonement for sin
holy lord god
holy mighty god
holy compassionate savior.
You eternal god
let us not forsake
the comfort of a righteous faith.
have mercy, o lord!183
Between the first two and the third stanza a change of theme occurs. In the first two
stanzas the human being asks who is going to provide help, who is going to save the
individual from the depths and from the jaws of hell. in the third stanza, however, the
individual becomes active, for he asks about a refuge to which he can flee. Whereas it
is God-in-Christ acting alone and unilaterally in order to rescue humanity in the first
two stanzas, it is the beleaguered individual, the believer, who actively flees towards
rescue and Christ according to the third stanza. the following line is like a response
to this outrageous idea of Luther that seems to imply the efficacy of some human
agency, for it emphasizes the fact that Christ has done everything necessary for the
rescue, thereby refocusing on the agency of Christ. But in spite of his devotion to
the theme of “grace alone,” Luther had already hinted at a significant role for human
agency. even if luther tries to qualify and retract the emphasis on human activity,
the human agent has been centrally positioned in one stanza, a move that may open
up a new horizon for the significance of human effort. It is indeed only 50 years from
luther’s death in 1546 to descartes’ birth in 1596.
did Kierkegaard have a conscious authorial intention in combining the third
stanza, with the emphasis on man’s self-initiative, with the first stanza? To support
this suspicion, it must be noted that Kierkegaard has omitted the Christocentrism
183
english translation by the editor. the german is: Mitten in dem Tod anficht / uns der
Hölle Rachen. / Wer will uns aus solcher Not / frei und ledig machen? / Das tust du, Herr,
alleine. / Es jammert dein Barmherzigkeit / unsre Klag und großes Leid. / Heiliger Herre
Gott, / heiliger starker Gott, / heiliger barmherziger Heiland, / du ewiger Gott: / laß uns nicht
verzagen / vor der tiefen Hölle Glut. / Kyrieleison. Mitten in der Hölle Angst / unsre Sünd’
uns treiben. / Wo solln wir denn fliehen hin, / da wir mögen bleiben? / Zu dir, Herr Christ,
alleine. / Vergos sen (Vergossen ?) ist dein teures Blut, / das g’nug für die Sünde tut. / Heiliger
Herre Gott, / heiliger starker Gott, / heiliger barmherziger Heiland, / du ewiger Gott: / laß
uns nicht entfallen / von des rechten Glaubens Trost. / Kyrieleison. see martin luther, “mitten
wir im leben sind mit dem tod umgeben,” in J. Jonas and J. lange, Enchiridion oder Eyn
Handbuchlein, song number 18 (no pagination).
that was so important to luther in his allusion to the psalm.184 Kierkegaard has
also expanded the importance of an individual’s agency in his own salvation by
inadvertently suggesting that it is not god who initiates the giving of mercy, but
rather the human individual who flees towards it.
or did Kierkegaard’s language have a different source other then luther’s hymn?
in Aurora, or Dawn Ascending Jacob Böhme (1575–1624) in paraphrasing the hymn
writes:
therefore we appropriately sing:
in the midst of life
we are surrounded by death
Where shall we flee
that we may obtain grace?
to you lord Christ only.185
Here the connection between “grace” and “fleeing” is more explicit. Similarly,
Boehme used the phrase “flee to God’s grace” in his Mysterium magnum (Great
Mystery).186 Kierkegaard owned this book, and it may have been the source of his
way of phrasing this theme of “fleeing to grace.”
Kierkegaard published the signed work For Self-Examination in 1851, which
follows the form of the discourses without being either a lecture or a sermon, but rather
three meditations. Although the first question from Psalm 8:5,187 “what is man that
You are mindful of him,” is quoted in the introductory prayer of the first meditation,
the answer from verse 6, “You have made them a little lower than god,” which
almost suggests the near equality of god and humanity, is left out by Kierkegaard;
he emphasizes the difference between god and humanity by exclaiming “You are
not like a human being.”188
184
the line with the two titles of Jesus Herr (lord) and Christ—zu dir Herr Christ alleine
(to you Lord Christ only)—does not fit into the otherwise parallel stanza structure. The Danish
translation by contrast reads Dig / Du Herre krist alene! (you yourself, o Christ, only) in the
first and second stanza—but in the third: Til dig, o Krist, alene! (to yourself, o Christ, only).
The line from the third stanza has left a mark on the first two, and instead of the title “Lord”
the interjection “o” was added—and thus the third stanza was emotionally differentiated from
the first two stanzas.
185
english translation by the editor. in german this reads: Darum singen wir wohl recht:
/ “Mitten wir im Leben sind / Mit dem Tod umfangen / Wo sollen wir den fliehen hin / Dass wir
Gnad erlangen? / Zu dir, Herr Christ alleine.” see Jacob Böhme, Aurora oder Morgenröte
im Aufgang, in Jacob Böhme’s sämmtliche Werke, vols. 1–8, leipzig: J.a. Barth 1922, vol. 2,
p. 166.
186
see Jacob Böhme, Mysterium magnum, Oder Erklärung über das Erste Buch Mosis
Von der Offenbarung Göttlichen Worts durch die drey Principia Göttlichen Wesens auch vom
Ursprung der Welt und der Schöpffung. Darinnen Das Reich der Natur und Das Reich der
Gnaden erkläret wird ... amsterdam 1682, chapter 40, paragraph 53, p. 359 (ASKB 453).
187
a literary sketch can be found in the journals SKS 17, 202–4, CC:13. KJN 1, 193–6,
in which a relative is caricatured who, in alluding to ps 8:5, calls out in german Was ist der
Mensch? (what is man?) on the occasion of a mourning ceremony.
188
SKS 13, 43 / FSE, 13
The first meditation, “What is Required in Order to Look at Oneself with True
Blessing in the mirror of the word,” based on James 1:22–7, is explicitly related to
psalm 139:11, whose words, “if i would say, ‘surely the darkness will cover me,
then night around me will become light; the darkness itself is not dark to you and the
night is like the day,’ ” are quoted in full by Kierkegaard. as if Kierkegaard wanted
to use the Bible in an intentionally witty manner, he relates this verse to John 3:1ff.,
the story of nicodemus’ visit to Jesus at night. with a tone of implicit reproach
Kierkegaard then advises the reader not to distract himself with the question: how
could anyone believe that he would be able to keep such a meeting secret “when
one is going to him who is the light?”189 Kierkegaard then dismisses this question,
admonishing, “no, you are not to talk in this manner, because you understand all
too well why he [nicodemus] chose the night, that even though Christ is the way
in contemporaneity, he was—and if he returned he would certainly again be—the
forbidden way.”190 the words of the psalm function here to highlight the spiritual
danger of trying to avoid making a total commitment to Christ and to urge the reader
to look for any such evasion in the reader’s own life.
Psalm 139:9ff. is used to accentuate the threat of judgment in the first discourse
of the Two Discourses at the Communion on Fridays. the verses are employed to
suggest that no human being can hide “from justice.”191 Kierkegaard writes, “whither
shall I flee from justice? If I take the wings of the morning and fly to the furthest
sea, it is there. if i hide myself in the abyss it is there, and thus it is everywhere. Yet,
no, there is one place to which I can flee—to love.”192 Kierkegaard substitutes an
abstract justice for the presence of god which had been the subject of the psalm, and
thereby renders these words much more ominous.
in many of these uses of psalm 139:7ff. Kierkegaard appropriated the
traditional lutheran understanding of judgment as being in tension with god’s love.
the association of psalm 139:7ff. with this juxtaposition of justice and love had
probably been taught to Kierkegaard by the catechisms through which he had been
instructed in Christian doctrine at school. this particular psalm passage is used as
evidence for the belief that god is omnipresence in the catechisms by Balle193 and
by Fogtman.194 seldom did Kierkegaard manage to move beyond the traditional
doctrinal understanding of these verses as implying judgment and to emphasize the
passage’s more comforting character.
one entry in the journals from 1852 is distinctive among the other entries.195
it surprisingly uses psalm 139:5 to emphasize the comfort of god’s proximity.
189
SKS 13, 68–9 / FSE, 42.
190
ibid.
191
SKS 12, 288 / WA, 172.
192
ibid.
193
see Balle, Lærebog i den evangelisk-christelige Religion, p. 14.
194
see Fogtmann, Lærebog i den christelige Religion, pp. 32–3.
195
SKS 24, 477–8, nB25:61 / JP 2, 1429. other instances include ps 138:7 in SKS 19,
not6:29 / JP 3, 2830, which explains the difference between belief and heathen thinking, and
ps 139:11–12 in Pap. X–6 B 2 / FSE, supplement, pp. 230–1, which establishes a connection
to nicodemus, similar to that in For Self-Examination, see SKS 13, 68–9 / FSE, 42. here the
allusion is to Jn 3:31ff., to which Kierkegaard adds a request not to condemn nicodemus, but
however, Kierkegaard does this only to later stress david’s shock over this proximity,
and to paraphrase david’s words as meaning “this is too high for me.”196 this
divine proximity makes it impossible to evade god and his judgment. according to
Kierkegaard’s perception, contemporary Christianity has gotten rid of the sobering
prospect of god’s constant scrutiny by using these verses merely as a “presentation”
and not attempting to live them out in actuality. Kierkegaard concludes that this
sham makes it possible for a preacher to engage in empty “presentation” and thereby
show that he “does not live in the religious at all!”197
the weights have shifted here. no more does the emphasis of judgment precede
these comforting verses; rather, it is the other way around. the unrestricted, merciful
character of the verses serves as a foundation to expose and critique the lack of
seriousness in contemporary Christianity for Kierkegaard. according to Kierkegaard,
a hiatus has opened between authentic Christianity and the contemporary spiritual
life of the church. these verses from the psalm serve his polemical purpose by
drawing attention to the gap which he perceives.
E. Psalms 141–50
Kierkegaard begins a draft of For Self Examination with an address to the reader
using words from psalm 141:3.198 he quotes the psalmist’s words, “set a guard over
my mouth, o lord, keep watch over the door of my lips.” Kierkegaard emphasizes the
need for divine oversight of preaching and writing because he fears that a misplaced
eloquence may be a distraction from the earnestness of life. in fact, such a display of
eloquence is not innocent but “comes from evil.”199 here Kierkegaard is implicitly
identifying with the psalmist and applying his words to his own authorship.
in Four Upbuilding Discourses Kierkegaard responds to possible doubts about
god as the source of all goodness,200 and recalls psalm 143:10, among others,
quoting the words “that the spirit of god is good and leads you on a level path.”201
the gift of god, who is the only true good, is promised to the individual who steps
onto “the smiling paths of joy” as well as to the one who walks the “narrow way of
sorrow.” the equal validation of paths of joy and the way of sorrow will be seriously
modified in Kierkegaard’s later works, in which the way of sorrow will tend to
become normative. in any case, here a psalm that is a plea for rescue, refuge, and
guidance is used to reinforce the sense that god is the only good, equally available
in joy and sorrow.
in the introduction to the meditations in For Self-Examination, Kierkegaard
commenced with a prayer that began with the words of psalm 144:3202: “what is a
rather to look at him as if he were a mirror showing one’s own search for excuses and one’s
own cowardly character.
196
SKS 24, 477–8, nB25:61 / JP 2, 1429.
197
ibid.
198
pap X–6 B 2 6 / FSE, supplement, p. 227.
199
ibid.
200
SKS 5, 138 / EUD, 134.
201
SKS 5, 136 / EUD, 133.
202
Cf. ps 8:4.
man that you are mindful of him, a child of man that you are concerned for him.”203
the passage can be found again in a draft of the essay in his papers.204 in both instances
Kierkegaard uses the verse to foster a sense of humanity’s insignificance in order to
accentuate the graciousness of god’s gift of the Bible to such an undeserving race.
the solicitude of god for humanity by providing a revelation, a theme not directly
suggested by the psalm, becomes the main point of Kierkegaard’s elaboration.
the verse “You open Your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing”
(Psalm 145:16) can be found in the introductory prayer in the first of the Two
Upbuilding Discourses from 1843, which bears the title “every good and every
perfect gift is from above.”205 Kierkegaard became acquainted with the key
traditional interpretation of this passage mainly through the catechisms of Balle
and Fogtmann.206 Fogtmann uses this verse as a support for the doctrine of creatio
continua (continuing creation). Kierkegaard uses the passage to encourage reliance
upon god even when god seems to withdraw. the themes of the “expectancy of
faith” and trust in god as the source of good gifts provide an alternative to the ways
of life that he had depicted in Either/Or, which accompanied this volume.207
psalm 145:16 also makes an appearance in the middle part of Upbuilding
Discourses in Various Spirits, which is concerned with the topic of being happy with
what one has, and with being content with being human. the birds and the lilies
mentioned in matthew 6:24ff. serve as good examples of this attitude of modesty
and contentment, but Kierkegaard supplements their witness with a reference to the
verse from the psalm.208 once again Kierkegaard does not hesitate to use the two
testaments intratextually, in this case practicing his common strategy of using the
psalms to reinforce a motif from the new testament.
In the first discourse in the first part of the Christian Discourses psalm 145:16
also functions to clarify the difference between being “satisfied” with earthly
sustenance and “the blessing that satisfied.” A Christian does not seek to become
satisfied in an earthly sense, but rather delights in “the blessing” of knowing that
god is provident.209 It is not the gift of daily bread that is fulfilling, but rather the
trust in the giver. of course, this theme of the intrinsic satisfaction of being related
to a provident god was not explicitly stated in the psalm, although Kierkegaard’s
elaboration was congruent with its mood of adoration. again the psalm’s theme is
spiritualized so that it mainly refers to the development of the subjectivity of the
individual Christian.
psalm 145:15ff. serves to articulate the rudiments of a natural theology in the
sixth discourse of the third part of Christian Discourses. alluding to the psalm,
Kierkegaard notes that food and clothing come from god, so that god is not altogether
203
SKS 13, 43 / FSE, 13.
204
Pap. X–6 B 2, 5 / FSE, supplement, p. 226.
205
SKS 5, 39 / EUD, 31.
206
see Balle, Lærebog i den evangelisk-christelige Religion, p. 22 and Fogtmann,
Lærebog i den christelige Religion, pp. 50ff.
207
Cf. SKS 5, 26 / EUD, 16 to Job 9:3; and SKS 5, 35 / EUD, 25 to ps 33:4.
208
SKS 8, 273 / UD, 174.
209
SKS 10, 27 / CD, 15.
unattested in the created order. 210 (Compare this with acts 14:17.) here Kierkegaard’s
employment of the passage does reflect the laudatory and celebratory spirit of those
verses. moreover, it does keep attention focused on material provision.
III. Conclusion
we have seen that Kierkegaard uses the psalms in a wide variety of ways, ranging
from supplying minor literary embellishments to supporting substantive themes.
sometimes Kierkegaard positively adopts the mood and theme of a passage from the
psalms, manifesting his agreement with its spirit. usually he does this when a psalm
expresses thankfulness to god for all things, or encourages self-examination and
repentance. however, at other times he will identify the sentiment of a psalm with a
position that he is critiquing. this happens most frequently when he suspects that a
particular passage is encouraging the attitude that the Christian should seek and hope
for a life of earthly felicity. here a passage from a psalm may function negatively as
an example of the difference between Judaism and paganism on the one hand and
Christianity on the other.
often Kierkegaard uses the psalms in the manner typical of his lutheran heritage.
he does frequently interpret the psalms from the perspective of the revelation of
Christ in the new testament. when he employs this strategy, the verses of the various
psalms become vehicles to express the grand themes of the lutheran heritage, such
as the need to rely upon god’s grace for forgiveness and to ascribe all growth in the
Christian life to the power of god’s grace.
however, in his use of the psalms Kierkegaard does introduce a distinctive note.
very frequently Kierkegaard does take a verse that is seemingly intended to express
reliance upon god or to plead for god’s blessing and use it to encourage relentless
self-examination and an awareness of the suffering that the Christian life involves.
the psalms provide a vocabulary for describing the dynamics and challenges of
the Christian life. most often this involves an accentuation of the theme that the
surrounding culture will necessarily be hostile to the Christian virtues of faith, hope,
and love and will be antagonistic toward anyone who devoutly attempts to enact
them. in this world the Christian can expect hostility, persecution, and suffering.
210
SKS 10, 232 / CD, 224.
Bibliography

Discuss the Psalms
Balle, nikolai edinger: Lærebog i den Evangelisk-christelige Religion indrettet til

Brug i de danske Skoler, Copenhagen: Jens hostrup schultz 1824 [1791] (ASKB
183).
Fogtmann, nikolai, Lærebog i den christelige Religion. Til Brug for den studerende
Ungdom, Copenhagen [no date or publisher] (ASKB a ii 21–22).
[herder, Johann gottfried], Johann Gottfried von Herder’s sämmtliche Werke. Zur
Religion und Theologie, vols. 1–18, stuttgart and tübingen: J.g. Cotta 1827–30,
vol. 2, pp. 175–280 (ASKB 1676–1684).
[pontoppidan, erik], Sandhed til Gudfrygtighed, stavanger: n.p. 1849 (ASKB 190).
[scriver, Christian], M. Christian Scrivers...Seelen-Schatz: Darinnen Von der
menschlichen Seelen hohen Würde, tieffen und kläglichen Sünden-Fall, Busse
und Erneuerung durch Christum, göttlichen heiligen Leben...erbaulich und
tröstlich gehandelt wird, vols. 1–5, magdeburg and leipzig: Christoph seidel
1723, vol. 1, p. 35 (ASKB 261–263).
in die Bibel Alten und Neuen Testamentes, vols 1–2 (in 1 tome), 4th ed., Berlin:
II. Secondary Literature on Kierkegaard’s Use of the Psalms
ammundsen, valdemar, Søren Kierkegaards Ungdom. Hans Slægt og hans religiøse

Udvikling, Copenhagen: universitetsbogtrykkeriet 1912, p. 76.
alttestamentarischen Bücher auf Kierkegaards Gesamtwerk, rheinbach: Cmz
verlag winrich C.-w. Clasen 1998 (Arbeiten zur Theologiegeschichte, vol. 3),
pp. 83–193.
mcKinnon, alastair, “Kierkegaard on hating one’s Father, etc.,” Søren Kierkegaard
Newsletter, no. 41, 2001, pp. 17–19.
georgia: mercer university press 1997, p. 66; p. 108; p. 179.
pons, Jolita, Stealing a Gift: Kierkegaard’s Pseudonymns and the Bible, new York:
tennessee, Broadman & holman 1994, pp. 102–41.
ecclesiastes:
vanity, grief, and the distinctions of wisdom
will williams
the old testament Book of ecclesiastes belongs to the genre of wisdom literature,
and right-living through wisdom is one of its main concerns. tradition suggests that
solomon is the author of ecclesiastes, although his name does not occur within
the work.1 Kierkegaard was aware that the book’s solomonic authorship had been
disputed,2 and this could be part of the reason that he attributes most of his ecclesiastes
references to “the preacher.”3 nevertheless, Kierkegaard is also unafraid to attribute
verses from ecclesiastes directly to solomon,4 so too much should not be made of
this distinction.
other features of the book became matters of scholarly dispute shortly before and
during Kierkegaard’s life-time. Johann salomo semler (1725–91), the celebrated
pioneer of the historical-critical method who was influenced by both Pietism and the
Enlightenment, argued that different portions of the Bible reflect the Word of God to
differing degrees, depending on how adequately their historically conditioned form
expresses the universal themes of the faith. ecclesiastes ranked high in his list, since
it obviously does deal with such universal human concerns as the apparent futility
of human projects.5 Johann Gottfried Eichhorn (1752–1827), another influential
early historical-critic, thought he could detect a Greek influence in the text, for he
found it to have a Sophist flavor.6 Johann gottfried herder (1744–1803) opined that
it came from the period of the Babylonian captivity and discussed the possibility
that its suggestion that the individual’s spirit returns to god was borrowed from
1
however, eccl 1:1 says, “the words of the teacher, the son of david, king in
Jerusalem,” and traditionally this has been taken as a confirmation of Solomonic authorship.
2
Pap. v B 72:28 / CA, supplement, p. 211: “in the sixth letter of The Centaur not
Fabulous, Young say a few words about Ecclesiastes, a work he ascribes to solomon.”
see edward Young, Einige Werke von Dr. Edvard Young, vols. 1–3, trans. by J.a. ebert,
Braunschweig and hildesheim: schröders erben 1767–72, vol. 2, p. 398 (ASKB 1911).
3
“Preacher,” like “Teacher,” is a possible rendering of the Hebrew ‫ קהלת‬in Eccl 1:1.
additionally, the danish name for ecclesiastes is Prædikerens Bog, which means “the
preacher’s Book.”
4
For example, see SKS 8, 124 / UD, 8.
5
Johann salomo semler, Abhandlung von freier Untersuchung des Canon, vols. 1–4,
2nd ed., halle: Carl hermann hemmerde 1776 [1771–75], vol. 1, pp. 41–3.
6
göttingen: Carl eduard rosenbusch 1824, vol. 5, pp. 250–88.
180 Will Williams
the Chaldeans.7 he also compared ecclesiastes’ allusion to some shadowy sort
of continuing existence of the ancestors to the beliefs of other primitive people,
including the Celts.8 wilhelm martin leberecht de wette (1780–1849) considered
ecclesiastes to be a late work, probably dating from the persian or macedonian
era, reflecting the pessimism and skepticism triggered by the decline in national
fortunes.9 he saw the book as an expression of profound doubt, but a doubt tempered
and qualified by an even deeper reverence. In general, this scholarly literature
emphasized the differences between ecclesiastes and the other biblical books, and
tended to date the text fairly late in the evolution of israelite religion. typically the
expositors explained Ecclesiastes’ differences as being due to the influence of other
cultural traditions. the authors varied in their assessment of the spiritual value of
these theological novelties, some applauding them as efforts to articulate universal
truths and others seeing them as accommodations to alien ideologies. given
ecclesiastes’ peculiarities, many theologians basically ignored this disturbing book
in the canon; for example, hans lassen martensen (1808–84) never even cited it in
his magisterial exposition of Christian doctrine.10 Kierkegaard owned the relevant
works by herder and de wette, whose exegetical books he often consulted. From
these sources, particularly de wette’s extensive footnotes, he could have been aware
of these controversies. however, he shows no interest in the issue of the date of the
work or the possible influences upon it.
Kierkegaard alludes to ecclesiastes frequently throughout his authorship.
However, his non-pseudonymous discourses, specifically his eighteen upbuilding
discourses (1843–44), his Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (1847), and
his Christian Discourses (1848), are especially important loci for ecclesiastes
references. this article attempts to deal with the breadth of Kierkegaard’s use of
Ecclesiastes by organizing the references thematically. The first section briefly
considers Kierkegaard’s method of indirect communication and his appeals, whether
implicit or explicit, to the authority of solomon. the following sections address
Kierkegaard’s use of ecclesiastes for making and preserving conceptually important
distinctions. the second section treats the distinction between the eternal and the
worldly and is subdivided into the two themes of vanity and grief. the third section
treats distinctions made within the world, specifically those between speaking and
remaining silent, between the individual and the crowd, and between youth and old
age. in conclusion i argue that, while in Kierkegaard’s view the temporal world is
indeed a place of vanity and grief, this is cause not for despair but for hope when the
pains and insufficiencies of the world are seen in contrast to eternity.
7
Johann Gottfried Herder’s sämmtliche Werke. Zur Religion und Theologie, vols. 1–
18, stuttgart and tübingen: J.g. Cotta 1827–30, vol. 1, pp. 181–215 (ASKB 1676–1684).
8
see ibid.
9
wilhelm martin leberecht de wette, Lehrbuch der historisch-kritischen Einleitung in
die Bibel Alten und Neuen Testamentes, vols. 1–2 (in 1 tome), 4th ed., Berlin: g. reimer 1833,
vol. 1, pp. 351–6 (ASKB 80).
10
hans lassen martensen, Den christelige Dogmatik, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1849
(ASKB 653).
Ecclesiastes: Vanity, Grief, and the Distinctions of Wisdom 181
I. Kierkegaard’s Indirect Communication and Use of Solomonic Authority
Kierkegaard says that the preacher in ecclesiastes speaks “with the power of
conviction, with the authority of experience, with the trustworthiness of assured
insight, with the joyful trust of bold confidence, with the emphasis of earnestness,
with the concern of the admonition.”11 the preacher, as solomon, the king famous
for being the wisest of all people,12 has great authority for the wisdom he speaks, and
he speaks with that authority in his admonitions.
Kierkegaard, on the other hand, claims to be “without authority.”13 he is reluctant
to claim great authority for himself when he speaks on matters of Christianity or
of morality more generally, preferring to use indirect means to provoke his reader
into similar conclusions. solomon, then, becomes for Kierkegaard another means
to employ his method of indirect communication. while Kierkegaard may claim to
be without authority himself, he can use one with earnest authority to make claims
of assured wisdom that bolster his argument at a given time.14 Further, because
denmark claims to be a Christian nation, it is especially beholden to the authority of
solomon’s wisdom, which is preserved in the Bible. since solomon’s wisdom was
granted to him by god, he holds religious authority in addition to his authority in the
realm of worldly wisdom. as Kierkegaard puts it, “that king is called a preacher.”15
11
SKS 5, 237 / EUD, 238. while Kierkegaard can undoubtedly make potent use of
humor and irony, i believe it is a mistake to read him as a thoroughgoing ironist at every turn.
here, Kierkegaard uses the preacher non-ironically as a genuine authority on wise living. if
one attempts an inappropriately ironic reading of the preacher in order to generate ambiguity
and so to escape the moral earnestness of a passage, Kierkegaard locates the fault in the reader
and not in the author: “this is how the words sound, and even if you in lightness of spirit or
in heaviness of spirit tried to beguile the preacher, to trick him out of the admonition, which
certainly would be lamentable, you would not succeed; the preacher is not responsible for
any ambiguity” (SKS 5, 239 / EUD, 238). again, he says, “if such a person does not want to
understand himself, the discourse at any rate has understood him” (SKS 5, 248 / EUD, 250).
12
1 Kings 3:5–12; 4:29–34.
13
“ ‘Without authority’ to make aware of the religious, the essentially Christian, is the
category for my whole work as an author regarded as a totality. From the very beginning i
have enjoined and repeated unchanged that i was ‘without authority.’ ” see SKS 13, 19 / PV,
12; bold and italics original.
14
it seems this is what Kierkegaard is indicating in a line from his ecclesiastes-themed
discourse, “think about Your Creator in the days of Your Youth.” referring to his current
discourse, Kierkegaard says, “On the other hand, if the discourse will also influence a single
young person to prevent the painful aftereffects of being remiss, it presumably will enhance
the significance of youth for him, even though the discourse, with regard to authority, only
borrows its way.” see SKS 5, 239 / EUD, 240.
15
SKS 8, 368 / UD, 271. see also SKS 5, 234–5 / EUD, 234–5. Contrast solomon’s title
of “preacher” to the claim Kierkegaard makes for his Two Upbuilding Discourses (1843):
“although this little book (which is called ‘discourses,’ not sermons, because its author
does not have authority to preach…)” (SKS 5, 13 / EUD, 5; emphasis original). Kierkegaard
frequently makes such claims to a lack of authority in the prefaces to his discourses.
182 Will Williams
II. Distinctions between the Eternal and the World
solomon is praised in Kierkegaard’s Stages on Life’s Way for his famous verdict
on the true mother of an infant,16 saying that “it was able to separate truth from
deception” and made him famous “as the wise prince.”17 wisdom is the power to
discern, in this case to discern truth from deception,18 and Kierkegaard calls upon
the wisdom of ecclesiastes to help him illustrate the necessity of making proper
distinctions in life.
the fundamental distinction to be made is the distinction between god and
man, between the eternal order and the temporal world. early in his authorship,
Kierkegaard quotes a passage from edward Young (1681–1765) on ecclesiastes and
solomon that comments on this important distinction:
i believe that wise and experienced prince [solomon], whose wisdom and experience
was designed to spare future ages their own fatal experience in folly, and, closing with
his last sentiment, the sum of his divine philosophy, I affirm that many a philosopher
may justly be reputed a fool; that there is but one god, one trial, one great tribunal,
one salvation, so there is but one wisdom; that all which, devoid of that assumes the
name, is but folly of different colors and degrees—gay, grey, wealthy, lettered, domestic,
political, civil, military, recluse, ostentatious, humble, or triumphant; and is so called in
the language of angels, in the sole-authentic and unalterable style of eternity.19
eternity knows the wisdom of god to be the one true wisdom and knows the so-
called wisdom of the world’s various authorities and realms to be mere folly apart
from it. solomon’s wisdom is to see the preeminence of the eternal and to order
the rest of creation according to this experience and insight in such a way that it
is profitable for future ages in avoiding folly. The quotation encapsulates much of
Kierkegaard’s thought on the distinction between the eternal and the worldly, and i
use it to suggest the organizational method of this article. in relation to the Book of
ecclesiastes, Kierkegaard’s understanding of the wisdom of distinguishing between
the eternal and the world can be treated more specifically under two themes: vanity
and grief.
16
1 Kings 3:16–28.
17
SKS 6, 233 / SLW, 250.
18
Kierkegaard greatly prized the ability to make distinctions: “hamann says of socrates:
‘he was great because he distinguished between what he understood and what he did not
understand.’ if only socrates could have had an epitaph! many an innocent person has drained
the poisoned cup, many a one has sacrificed his life for the idea, but this epitaph belongs to
socrates alone: here rests socrates; he distinguished between what he understood and what
he did not understand.” see Pap. v B 44 / JP 2, 1554. Cf. also SKS 4, 310 / CA, 3.
19
Pap. v B 72:28 / CA, supplement, p. 211. see Einige Werke von Dr. Edvard Young, vol.
2, p. 398. As justification for reprinting the entirety of the quotation here, I cite Kierkegaard
himself, who says, “this is a rather lengthy quotation; but if i have the patience to copy it the
reader will no doubt also have the patience to read it.” see Pap. v B 72:28 / CA, supplement,
p. 212.
A. Vanity
ecclesiastes is well-known for its cry, “vanity of vanities…vanity of vanities! all

is vanity.”20 this verse and those similar to it are among those that Kierkegaard
references most often from ecclesiastes.21 is such a cry from Kierkegaard to be taken
as one of deep despair, skepticism, or perhaps even nihilism? From his reading in
de wette he could have been aware of the tendency to interpret ecclesiastes as a
cry of doubt and hopelessness.22 Kierkegaard certainly acknowledges the potential
of such verses to reflect a despair that drives one into the depths of aestheticism
and pleasure.23 For example, he has Judge william say that the lecturing from the
aesthete a reminds him of ecclesiastes.24 addressing a, Judge william observes that
while others are crushed by it “you become erect and more jocular than ever and
make yourself and others happy with the gospel vanitas vanitatum vanitas, hurrah!”25
Because everything is finally meaningless, let us eat, drink, and be merry.
most often, however, Kierkegaard uses the theme of vanity in ecclesiastes not as a
confirmation of the ultimate futility and meaninglessness of existence but as a denial
of it. in one upbuilding discourse, Kierkegaard explains that light-mindedness (like
a’s, presumably) misunderstands the preacher’s pronouncements. he writes, “ ‘all
is vanity and pernicious toil,’ says the preacher, and light-mindedness regards such
words as an ingenious plaything.”26 Kierkegaard then asks, “has [the preacher] not
relegated everything to vanity precisely so that the eternal and blessed significance
of that thought might become properly manifest, so that it might bind the straying
soul in obedience to the admonition?”27 that is, the preacher’s declarations of vanity
are not a final pronouncement on reality itself, but, rather, are a pronouncement
on the nature of this worldly life, in contrast to eternal blessedness. they highlight
the importance of eternity by speaking of this world’s insufficiency.28 while light-
20
eccl 1:2.
21
see, for example, SKS 1, 54 / EPW, 99. SKS 4, 48–9 / R, 175. SKS 6, 161 / SLW, 173.
Pap. iv B 172 / EUD, supplement, p. 428.
22
23
the preacher himself apparently experienced something like this as well. see eccl
2:1–11.
24
SKS 3, 148 / EO2, 150.
25
SKS 3, 163 / EO2, 166. the latin is a near-quotation of the latin vulgate for eccl
1:2. as it stands, though, the phrase is more directly linked to the poem, “Vanitas! Vanitatum
Vanitas!” (1806) by Johann wolfgang von goethe. Kierkegaard even adds the “hurrah!” which
the poem uses as a refrain. see Goethe’s Werke. Vollständige Ausgabe letzter Hand [in 55
volumes], vols. 1–40, stuttgart and tübingen: J.g. Cotta 1827–30; Goethe’s nachgelassene
Werke, vols. 41–55, stuttgart and tübingen: J.g. Cotta 1832–33, vol. 1, p. 145 (ASKB 1641–
1668). (english translation: The Poems of Goethe, trans. by edgar alfred Bowring, rev. ed.,
london: george Bell and sons 1891, pp. 85–6).
26
SKS 5, 236 / EUD, 236.
27
SKS 5, 237 / EUD, 237. “the admonition” refers to eccl 12:1.
28
this suggests the explanation for why the above references in Kierkegaard that
link the “all is vanity” pronouncement to the lack of moral seriousness come from Judge
william. the Judge in Either/Or, part two, is a representative of the ethical, and he fails
184 Will Williams
mindedness may use vanity as an excuse to take life less seriously and to declare
that “all is but toys,” when the preacher declares that all is vanity, “it is precisely
earnestness that he has in mente.”29 therefore, it is not inappropriate to proper
religiousness to join the preacher in declarations of vanity, provided that it is done
rightly. early in his career Kierkegaard wrote, “the devout mind also declares that
all is vanity, but this is only insofar as through this negation all disturbing factors are
set aside and the eternally existing order comes into view.”30
related to the idea that this worldly life is one of vanity is Kierkegaard’s
skepticism towards a position of hoping in this world. thus, while the preacher
teaches that “there is nothing new under the sun,”31 some persist in believing that
even under the sun one might find newness, hope, and meaning. Kierkegaard in his
upbuilding discourses, though, underscores the preacher’s message, saying, “the
future is not utterly new, because there is nothing new under the sun—the future
is the past.”32 that which Kierkegaard refers to as “double-mindedness”33 likes to
play “in all possible colors” in a lawless way that “blends the colors and shades
of colors in ever-new confusion.”34 Kierkegaard says that for double-mindedness
“there is continually something new under the sun, and yet it is continually the old
double-mindedness.”35 such innovation is no real innovation at all, and the newness
is illusory. again, since meaninglessness is not ultimate for Kierkegaard, it is only
“under the sun” that vanity reigns, which maintains the proper distinction between
the worldly and the eternal.
in two other places, though, Kierkegaard does note that in a way there can
be something new under the sun. In the first example, the adult who wants to be
to make adequate distinction between the ethical life and the religious life. Consequently,
the Judge has an inadequate understanding of this world’s insufficiency, and he would be
likely to perceive an embodiment of the claim that “all is vanity,” as one might find in A’s
life, to be opposed to ethical earnestness and perhaps to earnestness as such. interestingly,
this would mean that a and the Judge largely agree on taking “all is vanity” to indicate the
meaninglessness of existence (though they have opposing evaluations of the worth of using it
as a life-motto), while Kierkegaard, especially in his upbuilding discourses, presents a reading
that disagrees with both a and the Judge. whether one gives oneself over to the aesthetic or to
the ethical, both would be worldly exercises in “vanity” from the perspective of religiousness.
indeed, the devout mind can declare that “all is vanity” in this world without confessing the
meaninglessness of existence and without forfeiting earnestness precisely because of its focus
on the eternal.
29
SKS 4, 446 / CA, 146.
30
SKS 1, 296 / CI, 257–8. Kierkegaard’s first treatment of these right and wrong ways
to understand vanity is found in 1838 in his “andersen as a novelist,” where he notes that
“a mistrust of life certainly contains a truth insofar as it leads to finding a trust (for example,
when solomon says that all is vanity), but, on the other hand, at the same moment as it ends
up as a final decision on life’s questions it contains an untruth,” SKS 1, 35 / EPW, 80.
31
eccl 1:9. see SKS 2, 223 / EO1, 230; SKS 6, 322 / SLW, 346; Pap. iii B 179:30 / EO1,
supplement, p. 518.
32
SKS 5, 29 / EUD, 18.
33
see Jas 4:8. Cf. SKS 8, 138 / UD, 24. SKS 8, 150ff. / UD, 36ff.
34
SKS 8, 174 / UD, 65.
35
ibid.
something and so takes himself too seriously is no longer amazed by the wondrous,
as a little child is, so for that adult there is indeed nothing new under the sun. But
if he makes himself nothing, like a child, then his life will be a “joyful surprise”
filled with wonder because it looks to the one true object of wonder, God.36 thus,
what would otherwise be a drearily adult normalcy becomes a blessedly divine and
wondrous variety. in the second example, Kierkegaard reverses the description. in
the eighteen centuries since Christ left the earth, he writes, “the sun rises and sets,
the wind shifts direction by turns, the latest news is heard and is soon forgotten, and
then again something new is heard.”37 as the world changes and civilizations rise
and fall, god uses “the most varied things” to draw all to himself, and, even though
his means are numerous, “all the ways still converge at one point.”38 there is much
newness under the sun, but none of those differences make a fundamental difference
since God is above them all in unified constancy, using them to draw people to him
through repentance from sin. the two examples use ecclesiastes 1:9 in opposite
ways to suggest both unified sameness and the newness of diversity, which is a credit
to Kierkegaard’s literary cleverness. however, both are agreed in their message that
the worldly pales in comparison with the eternal, so, even while using opposing
imagery, both reinforce a similar message of the vanity of the world in comparison
to the divine eternal.
B. Grief and Sorrow
the vanity of the world and its unworthiness as a locus for one’s highest hopes
means that it is frequently a source of much grief. this world, for example, is a place
where one’s work can seem pointless toil.39 toil, though, is not the only source of
grief, and, as the preacher says in ecclesiastes 1:18, wisdom and knowledge can
also be a source of grief.40 in one place, Kierkegaard uses this verse to interpret the
genesis passage41 where, as he says, eating of the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil would cause knowledge to enter the world and would bring grief with
it.42 while that discourse uses ecclesiastes 1:18 in an absolute sense, regarding the
entry of knowledge and grief into human life, Kierkegaard also uses the verse in an
incremental manner, underscoring the increased grief that comes with moving from
youth to advanced age.43 moreover, he even uses the verse in A Literary Review of
Two Ages to critique the extreme reflectiveness of the present age, saying, “But one
thing is sure, reflection, like knowledge, increases sorrow.”44
36
SKS 5, 224 / EUD, 226.
37
SKS 12, 158 / PC, 155.
38
ibid.
39
eccl 1:13–14; 3:9; 4:8. see SKS 6, 161 / SLW, 173. SKS 6, 264 / SLW, 284. SKS 7, 501
/ CUP 1, 552. SKS 8, 124 / UD, 8. Pap. vii–1 B 147 / JP 3, 3786.
40
SKS 5, 119 / EUD, 113.
41
gen 2:16–17.
42
SKS 5, 129 / EUD, 125.
43
SKS 5, 245 / EUD, 247.
44
SKS 8, 74 / TA, 77. see SKS 6, 123 / SLW, 130.
186 Will Williams
as with vanity, though, the grief and sorrow that are found in the world are
not a pronouncement of the irremediable futility of life since, rightly understood,
grief and sorrow can direct one to the hope of eternity by expressing dissatisfaction
with the lesser hopes that the world offers. Kierkegaard uses grief to underscore
the distinction between the eternal and the worldly in conjunction with ecclesiastes
7:2, which says that it is better to go to the “house of mourning” than to the “house
of feasting.” in his upbuilding discourses, Kierkegaard takes the latter to mean
finding a satisfaction in worldly provision, while taking the former to mean being
properly dissatisfied by the world and seeking true hope from the next, even while
one continues to live within the current order. For the preface to his Two Upbuilding
Discourses (1844), Kierkegaard writes that his “little book” takes no delight in going
to the house of feasting,45 which indicates its spiritual and upbuilding aims. the
dichotomy between world and eternity is underscored by the comment that although
the little book “is not without hope in the world, it nevertheless totally renounces all
hope in the uncertain or of the uncertain.”46 one might say that it is the vanity of the
world that the book rejects.47 elsewhere, Kierkegaard says, “oh, it is indeed better
to go to the house of mourning than to go to the banquet house,” because the house
of mourning teaches one the transience and relative insignificance of the world.48
he continues, “Yes, the banquet and the doughty companions will be forgotten long
before [a hundred years have passed], but truly the eternal will not be forgotten, not
in a thousand years.”49 the celebration and feasting that is indicative of a worldly
banquet is not suitable for one who finds one’s true home in eternity.50
to say that grief can direct one to the eternal is to say that grief can positively
change the heart. Quoting ecclesiastes 7:3, Kierkegaard says that grief is better than
laughter because in proper sorrow “the heart can be changed for the better.”51 this
change of the heart is “the change eternity asks about and not about the changelessness
of the suffering.”52 that sorrow holds the possibility of internal change, especially
with eternal aid,53 explains why Kierkegaard is critical of one who might “delude
himself, push the fault away from himself,” and “choose the pain of the lack instead
of the sorrow of repentance.”54 For Kierkegaard, grief in this world and sorrow
for one’s wrongdoing are so important to one’s turning towards god that he can
speak of God’s presence in it. He maintains, “Spiritually, the fulfillment is always
45
SKS 5, 183 / EUD, 179.
46
ibid.
47
Quoting 1 thess 2:1, Kierkegaard, says that this book, like his other upbuilding
discourses, does not desire “that its visit might be in vain.” see SKS 5, 183 / EUD, 179,
emphasis mine.
48
SKS 8, 184 / UD, 77.
49
ibid.
50
see SKS 5, 278 / EUD, 285. SKS 11, 275 / WA, 138. Cf. also SKS 6, 29 / SLW, 23,
which references eccl 1:8 that says, “all things are wearisome; more than one can express;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing, or the ear filled with hearing.”
51
SKS 8, 245 / UD, 148.
52
ibid.
53
see 2 Cor 7:8–11.
54
SKS 5, 248 / EUD, 250.
in the wish, the calming of the concern in the concern, just as god is even in the
sorrowful longing that is for him.”55 repentance and regret are valued because they
secure the proper distinction between the world and eternity. in Kierkegaard’s use
of ecclesiastes, the crucial thing about grief, as about the sense of vanity, is not that
it makes a final despairing pronouncement on the misery of life as a whole but that
it pronounces the insufficiency of this world and of our efforts in it. Wisdom keeps
proper distinctions, and Kierkegaard recruits solomon to the task of strengthening
the most important distinction, that between the temporal and the eternal.56 rather
than squelching hope, in Kierkegaard’s hands ecclesiastes’ themes of vanity and
grief preserve hope by driving us towards what is truly trustworthy and by handing
us over to a godly sorrow that can change our hearts for the better.
III. Distinctions within the World
in one of the most celebrated verses of ecclesiastes the preacher proclaims, “For
everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.”57 For
Kierkegaard, right distinctions must exist not only between heaven and earth but
also under heaven, amidst the daily commotion of life. indeed, one of Kierkegaard’s
critiques of the present age is its failure to make right distinctions. he says, “the
present age is essentially a sensible age, devoid of passion, and therefore it has
nullified the principle of contradiction.”58 For example, he characterizes the present
age with formlessness, which is “the annulled passionate distinction between form
and content,”59 and with philandering, which is “the annulled passionate distinction
between essentially loving and being essentially debauched.”60 Kierkegaard
explains, through Johannes Climacus, that this annulment of distinctions leads to
inaction and to spiritual harm. Climacus asserts, “the ethical consideration is quite
simply this, that when worst comes to worst it is worse to become maundering
than with decisiveness to carry out what has been decided, which perhaps was less
properly considered, because maundering is the absolute downfall of every spiritual
relationship.”61 the concern about spiritual harm here suggests that maundering
even within the worldly realm can harm or obscure the proper relationship with the
eternal. that is, it is not just that Kierkegaard addresses both distinctions between
the eternal and the worldly and distinctions within the world but that he believes the
55
ibid.
56
Cf. SKS 11, 237 / SUD, 126: “God and man are two qualities separated by an infinite
qualitative difference. humanly speaking, any teaching that disregards this difference is
demented—divinely understood, it is blasphemy.”
57
eccl 3:1.
58
SKS 8, 93 / TA, 97.
59
SKS 8, 95 / TA, 100.
60
SKS 8, 97–8 / TA, 102.
61
SKS 7, 451 / CUP 1, 497. Cf. Pap. v B 195:6 / EUD, supplement, p. 443.
188 Will Williams
latter to be properly grounded in the former.62 Confusion in one has the potential to
lead to confusion in the other.
Consequently, ecclesiastes 3:1–8, with its 14 dichotomous pairs of “times”
that god has made, becomes useful for Kierkegaard in showing the wisdom of
keeping proper distinctions, which he can then use as a platform from which to
make his further points in a given context. Kierkegaard begins a section of one
upbuilding discourse that addresses being a human being in time63 with the words,
“everything has its time, says solomon.”64 Here, he specifically references two of
the dichotomous pairs from ecclesiastes: “there is a time to dance for joy,”65 and
“For everything there is a time; ‘there is a time to be born and a time to die.’ ”66
largely, though, he makes do with the general principle established in ecclesiastes
3:1.67 Kierkegaard is, moreover, willing to present the reader with a passage where
he renders his own creative version of the dichotomous pairs from ecclesiastes 3,
including the example, “there is a time to play lightheartedly with the spring breezes
and a time to be snapped off by the autumn storms.”68
For Kierkegaard, the most important of the dichotomous pairs from ecclesiastes
3 is that there is “a time to keep silence, and a time to speak.”69 referencing this
verse, he explains in A Literary Review of Two Ages why failing to maintain this
distinction erodes essential speaking:
what is it to chatter? it is the annulment of the passionate disjunction between being

silent and speaking. only the person who can remain essentially silent can speak
essentially, can act essentially. silence is inwardness. Chattering gets ahead of essential
speaking, and giving utterance to reflection has a weakening effect on action by getting
ahead of it. But the person who can speak essentially because he is able to keep silent
will not have a profusion of things to speak about but one thing only, and he will find
time to speak and to keep silent.70
62
For example, Kierkegaard says, “the idolized positive principle of sociality in our
age is the consuming, demoralizing principle that in the thralldom of reflection transforms
even virtues into vitia splendida [glittering vices]. and what is the basis of this other than
a disregard for the separation of the religious individual before god in the responsibility of
eternity.” see SKS 8, 82 / TA, 86.
63
SKS 8, 124–8 / UD, 8–12.
64
eccl 3:1. SKS 8, 124 / UD, 8. see also SKS 4, 75 / R, 207 and Pap. vii–1 B 147 / JP
3, 3786.
65
eccl 3:4. SKS 8, 125 / UD, 9. this ecclesiastes reference is missed in the hong
edition’s notes.
66
eccl 3:1; 3:2. SKS 8, 125 / UD, 10.
67
He willingly reflects on the verse, such as when he posits, “Perhaps the meaning
would have been clearer if solomon had said: there was a time for everything, everything
had its time—in order to show that as an old man he is speaking about the past….” see SKS
8, 124 / UD, 8. again, he notes that “it does not occur to youth” to have the perspective of old
age that can say, “there is a time for the one and a time for the other.” see SKS 8, 125 / UD,
9.
68
SKS 8, 125–6 / UD, 10.
69
eccl 3:7.
70
SKS 8, 93 / TA, 97.
it might be surprising to hear Kierkegaard, a thinker celebrated for and devoted to
his writing, advocating so vigorously that a place must be preserved for silence. he
believes, however, that “[one’s] speaking and [one’s] producing are, in fact, born of
silence,”71 and that “chattering dreads the moment of silence, which would reveal
the emptiness.”72 this distinction between speaking and silence, preserving the latter
from the encroachment of chatter and the former by maintaining essential speaking,
is linked to piety and to wisdom. Kierkegaard says, “Just as the fear of god, as stated,
is the beginning of wisdom, so also is silence the beginning of the fear of god.”73
he has the pseudonymous author Constantin Constantius use ecclesiastes 3:7 to
rebuke a young man who had “spoken very much and very strangely.”74 importantly,
Kierkegaard uses the verse in the introduction to The Point of View for My Work as an
Author to clarify the issue of his reluctance to speak out against the misunderstanding
that met his works. he explained, “there is a time to be silent and a time to speak. as
long as i religiously considered the strictest silence as my duty, i strove in every way
to preserve it,” even when his actions were interpreted “as pride, arrogance, and god
knows what.”75 additionally, as a signal mark of the importance of ecclesiastes 3:7
for Kierkegaard, he selects the verse to be the epigraph for his 1849 letter to regine
schlegel.76 as with its use in The Point of View, Kierkegaard uses the verse here to
show that he is deliberate. when he speaks, it is for a reason. when he is silent, it is
for a reason.77 the very fact that he makes and guards such distinctions is presented
as an indication of his own earnestness and even religious faithfulness.
in a related way, Kierkegaard draws support from the ecclesiastes 5:1–5 passage
to advise being careful with words and with vows before god. through Climacus,
he writes that “the religious person is silent, and the person who is silent before god
learns to give way.”78 in Christian Discourses, Kierkegaard writes a discourse with
the title and refrain, “watch Your step when You go to the house of the lord,”79
which includes the preacher’s warning that one should not enter hastily into a vow to
god.80 it is better to pledge nothing—that is, to be silent—than to pledge hastily and
71
SKS 8, 93 / TA, 98.
72
ibid.
73
SKS 11, 24 / WA, 19.
74
SKS 6, 50 / SLW, 47.
75
SV1 Xiii, 517 / PV, 23.
76
B&A, vol. 1, p. 253 / LD, letter 235, p. 322. B&A, vol. 1, p. 262 / LD, letter 239,
p. 334. note the text’s critical ambiguity in the latter citation.
77
For example, see SKS 18, 185, JJ:140 / KJN 2, 171.
78
eccl 5:1. SKS 7, 450 / CUP 1, 496.
79
eccl 5:1. SKS 10, 175 / CD, 163. SKS 10, 178 / CD, 166. SKS 10, 181 / CD, 169. SKS
10, 183 / CD, 172. see also SKS 20, 199, nB2:142. SKS 20, 231–2, nB2:243. SKS 20, 288–9,
nB4:5 / JP 5, 6096.
80
eccl 5:1–5. see SKS 10, 181 / CD, 169: “take care, therefore, when you go to the
house of the lord; bear in mind the words of the preacher: ‘Be not rash with your mouth and
let not your heart be hasty in saying something before god’s face, because god is in heaven
and you upon earth. when you pledge a vow to god, do not put off paying it, because he has
no pleasure in fools; pay what you pledge. it is better that you pledge nothing than that you
pledge and do not pay it.’ ”
190 Will Williams
to default on the pledge.81 also, the discourse notes that, upon going into the house
of the lord, one will hear the truth for upbuilding. in words reminiscent of A Literary
Review of Two Ages, passage on chatter and essential speaking,82 Kierkegaard says,
“the upbuilding is least of all loose talk; there is nothing as binding.”83 loose talk is
unsuitable for earnest and religious words of upbuilding.
since silence is inwardness,84 maintaining the distinction between a time for
silence and a time for speaking is characteristic of a mature individual. Fittingly, then,
a second major worldly distinction that Kierkegaard addresses with ecclesiastes is
that between the individual and the crowd. he explicates the preacher’s comment
that “god isolated the human being in order to see whether he would regard himself
as a beast”85 by saying that anyone who is unwilling to be uplifted in his identity as a
distinct individual “regards himself as a beast” by devoting himself “to disappearing
and perishing in the futile service of comparisons…no matter whether by way of
comparison he was distinguished or lowly.”86 that is, “the crowd” is “the animal
category,” and to abandon the good life of “isolated” or individual humanity apart
from comparison with the crowd is in some way to abandon humanity itself.87 the
distinctiveness of the human individual must be maintained. in fact, Kierkegaard
emphasizes the importance of the individual so strongly that he might seem in danger
of coming under the preacher’s warning that says, “woe to one who is alone and falls
and does not have another to help.”88 he appears to sense this tension himself, for in
his two published citations of the verse Kierkegaard handles it in ways that do not
undercut but support his emphasis on the importance of individuality. with regard to
the solitary one, Kierkegaard says, “we shall not say with the preacher (ecclesiastes
4:10), ‘woe to him who is alone; if he falls, there is no one else to raise him up,’ for
god is indeed still the one who both raises up and casts down, the one who lives in
association with people and the solitary one.”89 the preacher will not be invoked
here because god is the companion who will raise up the rightly solitary man. later,
Kierkegaard personifies shame as performing a similar role, saying:
if the solitary one stumbled, if that sense of shame still attended him, we would not cry
out as did the preacher, “woe to the solitary one,” nor say with the preacher, “woe to
the solitary one; if he falls, who will raise him up?” because this sense of shame is more
81
see SKS 7, 443 / CUP1, 488: “But from a religious point of view, one is circumspect
about making pledges (see ecclesiastes).”
82
SKS 8, 124–8 / UD, 8–12.
83
SKS 10, 182 / CD, 171.
84
SKS 8, 93 / TA, 97.
85
eccl 3:18–19. For consistency of language, this translation is taken from Kierkegaard,
not the new revised standard version.
86
SKS 8, 288 / UD, 190.
87
ibid.
88
eccl 4:10.
89
SKS 5, 359 / EUD, 373. see Pap. v B 235 / EUD, supplement, p. 460.
concerned for him than his best friend, will help him better than all human sympathy,
which easily leads to double-mindedness—not to will one thing.90
the distinct and solitary individual, then, who does not need to compare himself with
the crowd, is nevertheless not alone if he stumbles since he does have a companion
to help him up, whether it be god or his own shame.
even within the solitary individual right distinctions must be made since people
are temporal beings, changing over time.91 thus, a third major distinction that must
be observed in the world is that between youth and old age. For example, Kierkegaard
desires that the time of youth be respected for what it is, saying, “and indeed there
was something he had forgotten, for he had forgotten to be young and to let his heart
be cheered in the manner of youth while days are still there.”92 his most sustained
treatment of youth and old age, relating to ecclesiastes, is the upbuilding discourse,
“think about Your Creator in the days of Your Youth,” which takes its theme from
ecclesiastes 12:1.93 there he again quotes the preacher’s words, “to let your heart
cheer you in the days of your youth,” but he adds the preacher’s further declaration
that “childhood and youth are also vanity.”94 Kierkegaard recognizes the fleeting
nature of youth, which is both a reason to prize it while it lasts and a reason not to
prize it too highly since it will not last. the admonition to think about one’s creator
in the days of one’s youth95 is based on the temporary nature of the age and of the
pleasure associated with it. You should think about your creator “before the evil days
come and the years draw nigh of which you will say, ‘they do not please me.’ ”96
Youth needs to be admonished to do this since it does not think about those evil days
or what it means when “the sound of the mill becomes weak, and all the daughters of
90
SKS 8, 164 / UD, 52–3. in making a point related to the emphasis on making right
distinctions instead of lapsing into the double-mindedness and maundering reflection that
fails to see properly distinct categories, Kierkegaard speaks of the importance of having a
single focus or of willing one thing. the importance of having a focused and overriding idea
or principle to guide one through the confusions of life is partly what Kierkegaard refers to
when he speaks of the summa summarum. Kierkegaard links the phrase summa summarum
to eccl 12:13–14, which says, “the end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear god, and keep
his commandments; for that is the whole duty of everyone. For god will bring every deed into
judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil.” (see SKS 4, 475 / P, 11. B&A,
vol. 1, p. 221 / LD, letter 196, p. 280). Kierkegaard appears to take these verses as the “sum”
of the preacher’s “divine philosophy” (Pap. v B 72:28 / CA, supplement, pp. 211–12. the
hong edition of The Concept of Anxiety incorrectly cites eccl 12:13–14 as eccl 11:13–14.)
analogously, he uses summa summarum elsewhere to describe the main idea or overriding
point of a given topic.
91
For another reference to Kierkegaard’s anthropology and the book of ecclesiastes, see
Pap. v B 55:4 / JP 1, 52.
92
eccl 11:9. see SKS 6, 262–3 / SLW, 282.
93
SKS 5, 233–49 / EUD, 233–51.
94
eccl 11:9–10. SKS 5, 236–7 / EUD, 237.
95
eccl 12:1. see SKS 5, 233 / EUD, 233. SKS 5, 239 / EUD, 238–9. SKS 5, 240 / EUD,
240. SKS 5, 245 / EUD, 246. SKS 5, 247 / EUD, 248.
96
eccl 12:1. Cf. SKS 4, 64 / R, 195. SKS 5, 424 / TD, 48.
192 Will Williams
song are feeble.”97 if youth does do it, though, then in old age one retains a place of
youthful faith to “retreat” to, and “having thought about the Creator in one’s youth
is the retreat’s rescuing angel.”98
everything, the preacher says, has its time, but this is not true for the eternal.
Kierkegaard writes, “only the eternal applies at all times and is always, is always
true, pertains to every human being of whatever age.”99 while much about human life
and the world is temporary, god has “put eternity into the heart of human beings,”100
and this eternity should not have to jostle with temporal matters in order to claim its
time. rather, Kierkegaard explains that “the eternal is the dominant, which does not
want to have its time but wants to make time its own and then permits the temporal
also to have its time.”101 the eternal does not share its space, and the different
orders of the temporal and the eternal must be respected. Kierkegaard shows this
by highlighting the insufficiency of the temporal world, in contrast to the eternal,
through the preacher’s words on the vanity and the grief of the world that lies under
the sun.
still, even under the sun there are differences that must be respected. in
fact, distinguishing between the eternal and the worldly helps one to make right
distinctions within the world as well. among the various “times” of the world that
should be given their places, Kierkegaard uses ecclesiastes to address the proper
distinctions between speaking and remaining silent, between the individual and the
crowd, and between youth and old age. since the eternal remains the dominant,
though, it can never be reduced to the order of the temporal by being given its own
finite “time.” This is not a dismissal of the value of the temporal as such but a right
ordering that allows the temporal to be its true self beneath eternity, no more and
no less. the distinctions and the wise experience of the world can comfort to some
degree, but ultimately they are vanity, and only heaven’s salvation can outweigh the
world.102 in Kierkegaard’s reading, solomon’s declarations on the vanity and grief
of the world are not ultimately a cause for despair but rather are a stimulus for hope.
as the one “whose lips’ front door was closed”103 by overwhelming grief knows, it is
not the vanity of the world that comforts but “the expectancy of an eternal salvation
[that] comforts beyond all measure.”104
97
eccl 12:4. SKS 5, 239 / EUD, 239. Youth’s failure to think about the future is one
reason that the very young would not be good rulers, giving teeth to the ominous prophecy
that “Boys shall rule over you.” see Pap. X–6 B 254 / JP 6, 6788. see also Pap. vii–2 B
274:21 / P, supplement, p. 87. SKS 18, 295, JJ:466 / KJN 2, 272. SV1 Xiii, 551 / PV, 64–5.
while these citations in Kierkegaard may refer to eccl 10:16, they are at least as likely to refer
to isa 3:4.
98
eccl 12:1. SKS 5, 248 / EUD, 249.
99
SKS 8, 125 / UD, 9.
100
eccl 3:11. see SKS 8, 126 / UD, 11. For consistency of language, the Bible translation
is taken from Kierkegaard, not the new revised standard version.
101
SKS 8, 127 / UD, 11.
102
SKS 5, 259 / EUD, 263.
103
eccl 12:4. the hong edition of Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses incorrectly cites this
as eccl 12:10. see SKS 5, 260 / EUD, 264.
104
ibid.
Bibliography
I. Works in the auction Catalogue of Kierkegaard’s Library

that Discuss Ecclesiastes
Bretschneider, Karl gottlieb, Handbuch der Dogmatik der evangelisch-lutherischen

Kirche oder Versuch einer beurtheilenden Darstellung der Grundsätze,
welche diese Kirche in ihren symbolischen Schriften über die christliche
Glaubenslehre ausgesprochen hat, mit Vergleichung der Glaubenslehre in den
Bekenntnißschriften der reformirten Kirche, vols. 1–2, 4th revised and enlarged
ed., leipzig: J.a. Barth 1838, vol. 1, pp. 160–2 (ASKB 437–438; 3rd revised and
enlarged ed., cf., ASKB a i 25–26).
[herder, Johann gottfried], Johann Gottfried von Herder’s sämmtliche Werke. Zur
vol. 1, pp. 181–215 (ASKB 1676–1684).
[Young, edward], Einige Werke von Dr. Eduard Young, vols. 1–3, trans. and revised
ed. by J.a. ebert, Braunschweig and hildesheim: ludw. schröders erben 1767–
72, vol. 2, p. 398 (ASKB 1911).
II. Secondary Literature on Kierkegaard’s Use of Ecclesiastes
engelke, matthias, Kierkegaard und das Alte Testament, rheinbach: Cmz-verlag

1998 (Arbeiten zur Theologiegeschichte, vol. 3), p. 78; p. 91; p. 93; p. 95; p. 112;
p. 117; p. 118; p. 122; p. 140; p. 141; p. 149; p. 156; p. 175; p. 233; p. 290.
martens, paul, “authority, authorship, and the difference between Kierkegaard’s
old and new testament,” in The Book on Adler, ed. by robert l. perkins,
reitzel 1983, pp. 14–16.
pedersen, Jørgen, “søren Kierkegaard’s view of scripture,” in The Sources and
Depths of Faith in Kierkegaard, ed. by niels thulstrup and marie mikulová
thulstrup, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1978 (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol.
2), pp. 27–57.
194 Will Williams
perkins, robert l., “upbuilding as a propaedeutic for Justice,” in Eighteen Upbuilding
Discourses, ed. by robert l. perkins, macon, georgia: mercer university press
2003 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 5), p. 341.
Fordham university press 2004, p. 90.
tennessee: Broadman & holman 1994, p. 159; pp. 162–9 passim; pp. 174–82
passim.
walsh, sylvia, “when ‘that single individual’ is a woman,” in Eighteen Upbuilding
Discourses, ed. by robert l. perkins, macon, georgia: mercer university press
2003 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 5), p. 36.
nebuchadnezzar:
the King as image of transformation
matthias engelke
I. Introduction
nebuchadnezzar ii (630–562 bc) is the name of the Babylonian high king who
built a huge empire in the ancient middle east. Cities that dared to oppose him
were conquered, among them Jerusalem, first in 597 bc and then again for a second
and last time in 587 bc. according to the old testament, following this second
conquest nebuchadnezzar abducted Jerusalem’s ruling class and transported them
to Babylon.
nebuchadnezzar’s name is mentioned 118 times in the old testament including
the apocrypha, particularly when a biblical text reports or refers to the conquest
of Jerusalem. in the books of daniel and Judith, the story of the historical
nebuchadnezzar was refashioned into the literary form of a legendary tale, in the
case of daniel a tale with vividly supernatural elements. in the Book of Judith the
character nebuchadnezzar functions as a symbolic representation of any despotic
superpower. nebuchadnezzar is erroneously described as being the king of the
assyrians in Judith 1:1 and is said to rule in nineveh, the chief city of assyria. in
the Book of daniel, however, nebuchadnezzar is presented more ambiguously. at
crucial times he represents the ideal image of an idolatrous and prideful king who
nevertheless repents and reforms. in the latter role, nebuchadnezzar listens to reason
after his threatened persecution of the wise men of Babylon for their inability to
interpret one of his dreams. he also repents after he had ordered the incineration
of the israelites shadrach, meshach, and abednego for their refusal to worship a
golden image that he had constructed. he becomes more humble and pious when
daniel interprets another dream predicting his temporary loss of his kingdom, even
though it takes him seven years of madness and living like an ox to regain his sanity.1
within the structure of the Book of daniel nebuchadnezzar serves as a projection
screen for the image of the teachable, potentially wise potentate. thus he is the
counterpoint to the seleucid king antiochus iv, called “epiphanes,” an oppressive
monarch roughly contemporary with the author of daniel, whose arrogance this text
criticizes in coded language. this criticism of antiochus is embedded in the book’s
apocalyptic conception of history, in which unjust empires are depicted as being the
targets of god’s righteous retribution and the oppressed population is portrayed as
1
dan 3:31–4:34 in a pseudo-autobiographical text.
the ultimate beneficiary of God’s benevolence. According to the message of Daniel,
a dire future still lies ahead for god’s people, but the consolation is that the advent of
a future time of the relieving of injustice and oppression has been announced.2
Kierkegaard was familiar with the stories of nebuchadnezzar in the Book of daniel
and used them in a variety of ways. an allusion to nebuchadnezzar’s transformation
in daniel 3:31ff. can be found in The Concept of Anxiety.3 this same biblical text
serves as a model for a short, biblical-like sketch in Stages on Life’s Way.4 in Prefaces
nebuchadnezzar is mentioned,5 and a reference to the narration in daniel 5 also
occurs, alluding to the writing on the plaster of the wall that announced the fall of
nebuchadnezzar’s son, Belshazzar. additional references occur in the journals6 and
the preparatory works to the Stages on Life’s Way7 and The Book on Adler.8
II. The Scholarly Discussion of Daniel in Kierkegaard’s Time
a heated scholarly discussion of the historicity of the nebuchadnezzar stories and the
literary peculiarities of the Book of daniel had been growing in intensity for several
decades before Kierkegaard’s birth. the celebrated pioneer of historical criticism
Johann gottfried eichhorn (1752–1827)9 and the somewhat less influential Leonard
Bertholdt (1775–1822)10 had argued that the book is really a prophetic critique of the
author’s contemporary situation in the guise of a history of past events. however,
this interpretation of daniel was not universally accepted. the conservative lutheran
theologian ernst william hengstenberg (1802–69) supported the book’s absolute
authenticity and developed elaborate theories to explain the apparent incongruities in
its chronology and the ostensible internal contradictions.11 Kierkegaard was probably
aware of these controversies among the biblical scholars, for he owned 52 volumes
of the excellent reference work Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften und
Künste, published by Johann samuel ersch (1780–1828) and Johann gottfried
gruber (1774–1851), in which wilhelm martin leberecht de wette (1780–1849)
had contributed an essay concerning the discussion of the historicity of the Book of
daniel.12 Kierkegaard also owned de wette’s widely-used introduction to biblical
2
dan 2:40–3; 7:19–25; 8:23–4; 9:26–7; 11:30–45.
3
SKS 4, 356 / CA, 50.
4
SKS 6, 334–7 / SLW, 360–3.
5
SKS 4, 473 / P, 9.
6
SKS 18, 104, FF:154 / KJN 2, 96. SKS 18, 263, JJ:263 / KJN 2, 205.
7
Pap. v B 132 / SLW, supplement, p. 608. Pap. v B 137 / SLW, supplement,
pp. 608–9.
8
Pap. vii–2 B 235, p. 9 / BA, 11.
9
göttingen: Carl eduard rosenbusch 1823–24 [1780–83], vol. 4, pp. 471–545.
10
leonhard Bertholdt, Daniel aus dem hebräisch-aramäischen, vols. 1–2, erlangen:
Johann Jacob palm 1806–08, vol. 1, pp. 1–162.
11
ernst wilhelm hengstenberg, Die Authentie des Daniel und die Integrität de
Sacharjah, Berlin: ludwig oehmigke 1831.
12
Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste in alphabetischer
Folge von genannten Schriftstellern bearbeitet, section 1, vols. 1–29; section 2,
Nebuchadnezzar: The King as Image of Transformation 197
interpretation, a book which he consulted extensively.13 Because it summarized the
exegetical debate about the Book of daniel, de wette’s work merits some attention.
de wette objected to the views of hengstenberg concerning the historicity of
daniel14 and opposed hengstenberg’s opinions with a barrage of historical-critical
arguments. de wette based his skepticism about the Book of daniel’s reliability on
the observations that the book is full of improbabilies, historical inaccuracies, and
bizarre miracles.15 moreover, its chronology does not match the historical references
in 2 Kings 24:12 and 2 Chronicles 36:19. to further raise suspicions, its apocalyptic
rhetoric and symbolic style is unlike the typical discourse of the hebrew prophets.
moreover, the events described in the text as being both past and future correspond
with events that were occurring during the reign of antiochus epiphanes (who reigned
175–160 bc).16 de wette concludes that it is extremely unlikely that daniel was an
historical personage who lived during the reign of nebuchadnezzar. according to de
wette, the author of the Book of daniel probably took an old legendary character
from ezekiel 14:14–20 or nehemiah 10, a prophet about whom little was known,
and transposed him into a symbolic tale about contemporary events. in general
nebuchadnezzar functions rather transparently as a symbol of antiochus epiphanes.
For example, the massive golden statue raised by nebuchadnezzar in the Book of
daniel is a thinly veiled symbol of the statue of olympian zeus erected by antiochus
in the temple in Jerusalem. according to de wette, the purpose of this narrative was
to discourage the tendency of the author’s fellow Jews to accommodate to the culture
of their hellenistic conquerors, and to encourage the faithful resistance to hellenism
with the promise that fidelity to the Law would be rewarded with the triumph of a
theocratic Jewish kingdom. the message of the book was that if the people remain
faithful, resisting the allure of foreign customs, they will prevail.
Kierkegaard was probably familiar with this interpretation of the historical
setting and rhetorical purpose of daniel, but he made little use of such an
historical approach. in The Concept of Anxiety Kierkegaard alludes to the story of
nebuchadnezzar’s transformation in daniel 3:31 as if it were an historical report.17
Kierkegaard himself may have believed this story to be historically true, since he
vols. 1–14; section 3, vols. 1–9, ed. by Johann samuel ersch and Johann gottfried
gruber, leipzig: 1818–37, leipzig: gleditsch 1818–31 and leipzig: F.a. Brockhaus
1818–37 [section 1, vols. 1–99; section 2, vols. 1–43; section 3, vols. 1–25, leipzig:
gleditsch 1818–31 and leipizg: F.a. Brockhaus 1831–89], section 1, vol. 23,
pp. 1–15 (ASKB 1311–1363).
13
die Bibel Alten und Neuen Testamentes, vols. 1–2 (in 1 tome), 4th ed., Berlin: g. reimer 1833
(ASKB 80).
14
see ernst wilhelm hengstenberg, Beiträge zur Einleitung ins Alte Testament, vols.
1–3, Berlin: l. oehmigke 1831–39, vol. 1, Die Authentie des Daniel und die Integrität des
Sacharjah, 1831.
15
die Bibel Alten und Neuen Testamentes, vol. 1, pp. 253–9 (ASKB 80).
16
ibid., pp. 256–7.
17
SKS 4, 356 / CA, 50: haufniensis claims that nebuchadnezzar’s transformation into
an ox happened “four thousand years ago.”
had always been suspicious of the critical discussion that was taking place in the
academic community about the authenticity of biblical books.18 perhaps he merely
found the issue of historicity to be irrelevant for the religious use of this ancient text.
in any case, the debate had little impact on his use of the text, although it may have
brought the Book of daniel to his attention.
III. Kierkegaard’s Use of Nebuchadnezzar
Kierkegaard refers to the legend of the transformation of nebuchadnezzar in daniel

3:31ff. in Stages on Life’s Way. this book, and the story in it, occupies a unique
position in his authorship. the book was published in 1845 under the pseudonym of
its publisher hilarius Buchbinder simultaneously with Three Discourses on Imagined
Occasions. the latter book, published under the name of søren Kierkegaard, referred
in subtle ways to the former work. Stages appears to be an attempt to take stock of
Kierkegaard’s work, summarizing, reiterating, and reworking important themes, and
carrying out supplementary corrections. Kierkegaard had already published, during
a creative surge in the years 1843–44, the pseudonymous works Either/Or, Fear and
Trembling, Repetition, The Concept of Anxiety and, last but not least, Philosophical
Fragments. he also published parallel to each pseudonymous work veronymous
volumes of discourses (Two Upbuilding Discourses, 1843; Three Upbuilding
Discourses, 1843; Four Upbuilding Discourses, 1843; Four Upbuilding Discourses,
1844; and, parallel to the Philosophical Fragments, Three Upbuilding Discourses,
1844). the parallelism of Stages on Life’s Way and Three Discourses on Imagined
Occasions establishes a dialogue between the two texts that clarifies the dynamics in
his authorship up to that point in his career.
in Stages several encounters with pseudonymous authors or editors of the
works thus far published by Kierkegaard take place, a literary strategy that enables
Kierkegaard to return to crucial themes that they had introduced. among those
participating in a symposium about marriage, narrated by william afham, are
Constantin Constantius,19 Johannes the seducer,20 and victor eremita.21 in addition
to these echoes of voices from his previous works, a nameless young man reminds
the reader of a similar character in Repetition. moreover, Frater taciturnus publishes
an anonymous diary in connection with a “letter to the reader.” Both the aesthetic
and the ethical stages known from Either/Or are thus supplemented by the studies
of Frater taciturnus.
In the diary fished from the bottom of a lake, “de profundis,”22 the anonymous
writer asks himself whether he has become guilty or not in his breaking off an
engagement, without coming to a conclusion. the diary is no ordinary self-
reflection, for it contains several literary sketches, among them “A Leper’s Self-
Contemplation” and “nebuchadnezzar.” in Kierkegaard’s journals an entry from
18
SKS 18, 11, ee:13 / KJN 2, 6–7. Cf. also SKS 7, 41–54 / CUP1, 34–49.
19
see SKS 4, 7–50 / R, 131–76.
20
see SKS 2, 293–432 / EO1, 303–445.
21
see SKS 2, 11–22 / EO1, 3–15.
22
ps 130:1. SKS 6, 177 / SLW, 189.
184323 already contains the idea of the following sketch: “recollections of my life
by nebuchadnezzar. Formerly emperor, recently an ox. published by nicolaus
notabene.”24 In this sketch, Nebuchadnezzar reports his fate in a first-person
retrospective narrative. the sketch is thus formally based on daniel 3:31ff.,25 a parallel
further emphasized by a verse structure similar to the one in the Bible. without
quoting the biblical text, the sketch sounds biblical even though it embellishes the
scriptural story extravagantly.
in the original biblical version of the story found in daniel 3:31,26 King
nebuchadnezzar reports that he has been haunted by a dream that his own dream
interpreters could not decipher. only daniel could interpret the dream successfully,
predicting that the king would be driven from human society and made to eat grass for
seven years, after which time his kingdom would be restored to him. in the course of
one year, the event foreshadowed in the dream comes to pass. due to the overbearing
character of nebuchadnezzar, the king spends seven years bereft of his mind in the
company of the cattle in the fields, until finally he raises his voice “to declare the signs
and wonders that the most high god has worked for me,”27 and is reinstated in his
former office with all his honors. Interestingly a change of perspective takes place in
daniel 4:30.28 Shifting abruptly from the first person (the voice of Nebuchadnezzar)
to the third person voice, the author of daniel describes how the king lived among
the animals and finally ran wild himself; evidently the mind-bereft Nebuchadnezzar
cannot even report this in the first person in retrospect!
in the sketch in the diary contained in Stages on Life’s Way, nebuchadnezzar
suffers a more complex transformation. the dream and its interpretation are
abbreviated to two verses. the king’s overbearing character is undermined by an
intrusion from outside: “i was transformed as swiftly as a woman changes color.”29
it remains unclear as to whether he is literally turned into an animal and, if so, which
species—except that his voice is described as sounding like an animal’s. at this
point the text says, “My thoughts terrified me, my thoughts in my mind,”30 thoughts
that are manifested as an amazed observation of the greatness, omniscience and
omnipotence of god. in Kierkegaard’s version, the king’s interaction with the dream
interpreters and daniel happens after the king has regained his sanity and wants to
know why he had been transformed into a beast, or at least dreamed that he had
been. those interpreters of dreams who could not interpret the king’s experience are
killed and in the conclusion of the tale a “celebration of revision” is announced to
23
SKS 18, 182, JJ:126 / KJN 2, 168.
24
emanuel hirsch assumes that this note originates from the time when Kierkegaard
had just heard about the new marriage of his former fiancée Regine Olsen; see Kierkegaard,
Gesammelte Werke, abtheilungen 1–36, trans. and ed. by emanuel hirsch and hayo gerdes,
gutersloh: guterslöher verlagshaus mohn 1979–87, abtheilung 15: Stadien auf des Lebens
Weg, p. XiX, remark 351.
25
dan 4:1ff.
26
dan 4:1ff.
27
dan 3:32 or dan 4:2.
28
dan 4:33.
29
SKS 6, 335 / SLW, 360.
30
ibid.
take place every seven years. one astronomer has to dress up as an animal, eat his
own calculations as if they were hay, be led through the city and “all the people shall
shout: the lord, the lord, the lord is the mighty one.”31
By retelling the story in this manner, Kierkegaard has separated the model daniel
3:3132 from its textual context of wisdom and apocalyptic literature. the episode
is renarrated in the diary of the sadly infatuated young man in order to illustrate a
unique possibility of existence. the sketch describes the discovery of inwardness,
triggered by the power of god, due to a change in the individual’s outer appearance
which is connected with the impossibility of expressing oneself clearly. only in this
state of inwardness, in the absence of all social communication, do thoughts begin
to appear that hint at god’s otherness, but without culminating in an experience of
god’s presence.
the connections and differences between a sense of god’s power and holiness
and an actual encounter with god are one of the main subjects in Three Discourses on
Imagined Occasions from 1845, the edifying volume that paralleled the publication
of Stages on Life’s Way. In the first discourse of this volume, written on the occasion
of a confession, the goal of seeking god is described as “friendship’s encounter with
you, you the only mighty one.”33 other clues show the parallel between the tale
of nebuchadnezzar and this discourse. like the story, the theme of needing silence
and “stillness” with “no fellowship” as a condition for encountering god through
confession is emphasized.34 Kierkegaard mentions the need of the powerful person
filled with “the world’s glory and the far-flung importance of his achievements” to
enter the silent enclosure of the confessional.35 the silence that nebuchadnezzar
entered is a possibility for anyone. literally being metamorphosized into a beast is
not a necessary feature of the encounter with “god’s voice delivering judgment”36 that
occurs in stillness. nebuchadnezzar experiences the transformation in which a vague
sense of wonder, “an ambivalent state of mind containing both fear and blessedness,”
is changed into a sense of being in the presence of god and evaluated by god.37
in the discourse such a transformation from being a mere wonderer, someone who
wishes for the infinite, to being someone who feels the power of God’s evaluation is
associated with a physical change of color, just as it is in the story of nebuchadnezzar
in Stages on Life’s Way.38 Kierkegaard exclaims that there could be no more powerful
expression of this change “than for the wisher to change color.”39
31
SKS 6, 336 / SLW, 363.
32
dan 4:1ff.
33
SKS 5, 392 / TD, 9.
34
ibid.
35
SKS 5, 392 / TD, 10.
36
SKS 5, 393 / TD, 11.
37
SKS 5, 399 / TD, 18.
38
SKS 6, 335 / SLW, 360. in the discourse this change is said to occur when that which
is sought (god) is perceived as already given, in the recognition that the individual is always
being judged by god. SKS 5, 404 / TD, 23.
39
SKS 5, 404 / TD, 23; see dan 5:6, 5:9–10 about Belshazzar and about daniel, dan
7:28; 10:8.
the nebuchadnezzar-sketch in the diary of the suffering man thus shows the
possibility of a religiosity which is marked by a recognition of god’s power—god
as a great majestic being—but not yet marked by the perception of god in the
immediacy of an encounter with and within the single individual. nebuchadnezzar
does not mention god’s forgiveness and “the repentance that his [sc. god’s] love
loves forth.”40 nebuchadnezzar’s experience of god’s judgment does not seem to
lead to joy or even hope.41 the chastened king knows that his days are numbered,
but he does not know where he shall go after death or whether he will find favor with
god. the young author of the diary is even farther removed from a full experience
of god. Being someone who cannot determine whether he himself is guilty or
not guilty, he is the farthest removed from the possibility which is offered by this
discourse on confession; that is, to confess to be the worst sinner when facing god.
in the discourse Kierkegaard writes, “the person who doubts his guilt is only making
a bad beginning, or rather he is continuing what was badly begun in sin.”42 in the
case of the young author of the diary, the inwardness of self-reflection therefore does
not lead to a revelation of god, in which a man can “strive in all honesty to become
more and more transparent to himself.”43
Kierkegaard’s other major allusion to the story of nebuchadnezzar is of less
consequence. This reference occurred in the context of his reflections on the troubling
case of the author and pastor adolph peter adler (1812–69), whom Kierkegaard knew
personally. initially adler appeared as a convinced follower of hegel. however, in
July 1843 adler published several sermons in which he reported to have experienced
a revelation of Christ in december 1842, instructing him to burn his hegelian studies
and preach a new doctrine of evil, which Christ himself supposedly dictated into his
quill. adler had visited Kierkegaard, seeing in Kierkegaard a potential forerunner for
his preaching, similar to John the Baptist’s role in Jesus’ life.
in the introductory part of Kierkegaard’s The Book on Adler, the widespread
belief in the progressive spirit of the times is ridiculed.44 Kierkegaard asserts that the
age demands too much, for “like nebuchadnezzar, it not only demands to have the
dream interpreted, but to get to know the dream,”45 which is an allusion to daniel
2:1–6 in which nebuchadnezzar wanted the dream interpreters not only to explain
his dream but also to discover what his dream had been. analogously, the spirit of
the times is the valorization of movement, a movement that not only requires an
interpretation but also a stipulation of where it is going. Kierkegaard’s ruminations
are intended to discover whether adler is such an author whose “dream” of spiritual
movement may be without a destination. By implication, the interpreter of adler
must discover what his “dream” actually involves before it can be interpreted.
40
SKS 5, 407 / TD, 27.
41
SKS 6, 336 / SLW, 363.
42
SKS 5, 408 / TD, 29.
43
SKS 5, 413 / TD, 33.
44
according to Kierkegaard, in modernity the individual does not know what it wants,
but imagines that the company of other individuals, who also do not know what they want,
would make clear the object of their desire. see Pap. vii–2 B 235, p. 9 / BA, 11.
45
Pap. vii–2 B 235, p. 9 / BA, 11.
particularly in the case of nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Stages on Life’s Way,
Kierkegaard has taken a biblical story whose original purpose, according to many of
the biblical scholars of his day, was to stimulate fidelity to a religious tradition and
encourage hope for liberation from oppression and transposed the story into the realm
of the religious development of the individual. nebuchadnezzar no longer functions
as a world-historical character in the drama of national oppression and liberation,
but becomes a symbol of a certain type of religious crisis and a possible response to
it. Kierkegaard renarrates the tale in order to transform it into an opportunity for the
individual reader to reflect upon the quality of his or her own moral and religious
life. this happens most powerfully when the story of nebuchadnezzar and the story
of the young diarist are read in conjunction with the discussion of confession in
the upbuilding discourse. in pursuing this goal, Kierkegaard does not make use of
the historical-critical scholarship that attempted to interpret nebuchadnezzar as
a symbol functioning in the context of the political and religious struggles of the
hellenistic period.
Bibliography
I. Works in the auction Catalogue of Kierkegaard’s Library that Discuss

Nebuchadnezzar
Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste in alphabetischer Folge

von genannten Schriftstellern bearbeitet, section 1, vols. 1–29; section 2, vols.
1–14; section 3, vols. 1–9, ed. by Johann samuel ersch and Johann gottfried
gruber, leipzig: gleditsch 1818–31 and leipzig: F.a. Brockhaus 1818–37
[section 1, vols. 1–99; section 2, vols. 1–43; section 3, vols. 1–25, leipzig:
gleditsch 1818–31 and leipizg: F.a. Brockhaus 1831–89], section 1, vol. 23,
pp. 1–15 (ASKB 1311–1363).
hase, Karl, Hutterus Redivivus oder Dogmatik der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche,
4th ed., leipzig: Breitkopf and härtel 1839, p. 92 (ASKB 581).
hersleb, svend Borchmand, Kort Udsigt over Bibelhistorien, Copenhagen: Fr.
Brummer 1813, pp. 1–148 (ASKB a i 62).
tholuck, Friedrich august gotttreu, Das alte Testament im neuen Testament,
hamburg: Friedrich perthes 1836, p. 86 (ASKB 832).
—– Lehrbuch der hebräisch-jüdischen Archäologie, 3rd ed., leipzig: Christian
wilhelm vogel 1842, pp. 52–65 (ASKB 872).
Studirende, Kandidaten, Gymnasiallehrer und Prediger, vols 1–2, 2nd revised
II. Secondary Literature on Kierkegaard’s Use of Nebuchadnezzer
p. 140; p. 142; p. 160; p. 188.
Kjær, grethe, “the Concept of Fate in Stages on Life’s Way,” trans. by Julia watkin, in
Stages on Life’s Way, ed. by robert perkins, macon, georgia: mercer university
press 2000 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 11), p. 254.
georgia: mercer university press 1997, p. 27.
poole, roger, Kierkegaard: The Indirect Communication, Charlottesville and
london: university of virginia press 1993, pp. 136–9.
tennessee: Broadman & holman 1994, p. 91.
zeuthen, lisa, Søren Kierkegaards hemmelige note, Copenhagen: gads Forlag 1951,
pp. 199–240.
part ii
overview articles
Kierkegaard’s rewriting of
Biblical narratives:
the mirror of the text
iben damgaard
I. Introduction
rewritings of biblical narratives are often found in both the pseudonymous and the
edifying writings of Kierkegaard. this article explores how and why Kierkegaard
rewrites biblical narratives.1 in order to understand the hermeneutical implications
of the rewritings, we need to consider his rhetorical strategy of rewriting in relation
to his hermeneutical and ethical focus on the appropriation and actualization of the
text in the reader’s concrete existence.
Kierkegaard takes his point of departure in the assumption that our belonging
to the Christian tradition has made the biblical texts so familiar to us that we read
them as harmless pieces of cultural heritage and ignore their potential to reorient
our lives. i will argue that Kierkegaard in his rewritings plays “stranger with the
old and familiar”2 biblical narratives in order to deconstruct this. imagination is a
key to understanding the hermeneutics at stake in the rewritings, for it is through
imaginative variations of the biblical narratives that Kierkegaard provokes and
encourages us to discover how the narratives challenge the reader and seek to bring
about a transformation of the reader’s vision.
i will seek to show that the hermeneutics implicit in the rewritings can be
described through the interplay between two metaphors upon which Kierkegaard
draws. he describes the Bible as a mirror in which we come to see ourselves truly,
since it reveals our self-deception and the need for a change of action. this metaphor
of the text as a mirror interacts with his metaphorical description of the meeting
between reader and text like the wrestling match depicted in the old testament story
of Jacob’s struggle with god (genesis 32:23–32).
when Kierkegaard in Works of Love (1847) interprets the meaning of the biblical
commandment “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” he dramatizes the way
in which the commandment wrestles with our imagination and turns our ideas of
1
this article builds on the interpretation of Kierkegaard’s rewritings that i have
presented in my book: At lege fremmed med det kendte. Kierkegaards gendigtninger af
bibelske figurer, Copenhagen: anis 2008.
2
SKS 9, 212 / WL, 209.
208 Iben Damgaard
love upside down.3 he uses the story of Jacob’s struggle with god as an intertext
for this dramatic enactment of the meeting between the reader and the biblical
commandment, depicting it as a struggle in which the reader discovers his own
illusions and is transformed.
II. The Wrestling Match and the Transformation of Vision
let us begin with a close reading of this passage in Kierkegaard’s interpretation of

the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself in Works of Love. he notes
that the little phrase “as yourself” has the elasticity of eternity to penetrate into the
innermost hiding place in a human being and wrench open the lock of improper self-
love. he states:
indeed, no wrestler [Bryder] can wrap himself around the one he wrestles as this
commandment wraps itself around self-love, which cannot move from the spot. truly,
when self-love has struggled with this phrase, which is, however, so easy to understand
that no one needs to rack [bryde] his brain over it, then it will perceive that it has
struggled with one that is stronger. Just as Jacob limped after having struggled with god,
so will self-love be broken if it has struggled with this phrase that does not want to teach
a person that he is not to love himself but rather want to teach him proper self-love.4
The biblical “as yourself” in the commandment is personified as a “wrestler” who

wrestles with and wraps himself around a human being’s improper self-love in order
to wrest it away.5 the “as yourself” is further described not as a “key” that easily
opens up self-love, but instead as a “pick” [dirk] that wrenches open the lock of the
improper self-love in order to teach a human being to love oneself in the right way
which is the same way as one should love one’s neighbor. the improper self-love is
thereby broken, marked and changed—just as Jacob limped at the breaking of day
after having struggled with god all night. the old testament narrative of Jacob’s
struggle with god is employed as an intertext, when Kierkegaard portrays the way
that the biblical text wrestles with our self-deception and illusions and contradicts
our image of ourselves and the other person in order to change our way of seeing.6
3
SKS 9, 32 / WL, 24.
4
SKS 9, 26 / WL, 18.
5
this is an example of how Kierkegaard not only rewrites biblical narratives but
also dramatizes and narrativizes non-narrative biblical texts and uses biblical narratives as
intertexts for his exploration of non-narrative parts of the Bible. another example of this kind
of creative reworking of biblical material is found in the second part of Upbuilding Discourses
in Various Spirits (SKS 8, 257–307 / UD, 157–212). In these discourses, the figures of the lily
and the bird in Jesus’ sermon on the mount are inscribed in narratives that serve as parables
for the readers of the discourses. For an interpretation of this example, i refer to my article:
“the danger of the restless mentality of Comparison: Kierkegaard’s parables of the lily and
the Bird,” in Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2007, pp. 193–208.
6
my approach to Works of Love is influenced by Arne Grøn’s interpretation of the
work as an ethics of vision. Grøn has drawn attention to the significance of the question of
vision and imagination in Works of Love in different articles. Cf. arne grøn, “the ethics
Kierkegaard’s Rewriting of Biblical Narratives: The Mirror of the Text 209
it may be fruitful to take a close look at this old testament narrative, which takes
place on the eve of Jacob’s confrontation with his brother esau, from whom he had
fled twenty years earlier, after having deceived their father Isaac into giving him the
patriarchal blessing instead of Esau, the first-born son. Jacob is now returning to his
land of birth, Canaan, and he fears the revenge of esau. he is alone this night, after
having sent all his wives, children, and servants across the river Jabok. an unknown
man wrestles with him in the dark until dawn. Jacob cannot be overcome, and the
man then touches Jacob’s hip, which is then disjointed. the man wants to get away
before dawn breaks, but Jacob refuses to let him go unless he blesses him. the man
asks him his name, and when he hear the name “Jacob,” which in Hebrew (‫)יעקב‬
is connected with the word for “deceiving” (‫)עקב‬, he declares that from now on
his name shall be “Israel,” which in Hebrew (‫ )ישׂראל‬means “struggling with God.”
Jacob desires to know his adversary’s name, but instead he receives a blessing. one
can only learn the adversary’s identity by judging him by his words and actions, as
Jacob does when he declares: “i have seen god face to face and my life has been
delivered” (genesis 32:30). when the sun rises, Jacob crosses the Jabok river as a
changed man, which is embodied in his limping. the story then moves immediately
to his encounter with esau, where he limps in front of all his people and then faces
esau and bows to the ground before him. as pointed out by Jan Fokkelman, this
suggests a change of identity, for whereas Jacob had formerly survived by deceit and
self-deceit, he now engages in a confrontation with his brother and his past. 7
the story of Jacob’s struggle is nowhere rewritten in Kierkegaard’s writings, but
the epoch-making character of the event in which Jacob struggles with god and comes
through the struggle as a changed man, is used as a metaphor for what happens to an
individual’s improper self-love in the wrestling with the commandment of the Bible.
in my view, Kierkegaard’s use of the story of Jacob’s struggle can be interpreted also
at a second level as a metaphor for the meeting between the reader and the biblical
narrative that Kierkegaard seeks to bring about through his rewritings. this meeting
is understood by Kierkegaard as a dialectical battle, a “wrestling match,” through
which the reader is transformed.
Kierkegaard returns to the story of Jacob’s struggle in one of his Christian
Discourses on the expression in the First letter of John: “even if our heart condemn
us, god is greater than our hearts” (1 John 3:20). he uses this expression in his
exploration of the question: how is it possible to speak in our finite language about
the infinite, about God’s infinite love? He writes:
when we, then, human beings as we are, want to form a conception of god’s greatness,
we must think about true human greatness, that is, about love and about the love that
forgives and shows mercy. But what does this mean, would the meaning be that we
want to compare god to a human being, even if this human being were the noblest,
the purest, the most reconciling, the most loving person who has ever lived? Far from
it. the apostle does not speak that way either. he does not say that god is greater than
of vision,” in Ethik der Liebe. Studien zu Kierkegaards “Taten der Liebe,” ed. by ingolf
dalferth, tübingen: mohr siebeck 2002, pp. 111–22.
7
this interpretation of the story of Jacob’s struggle is indebted to Jan Fokkelman,
Narrative Art in Genesis, Sheffield: JSOT Press 1991 [1975], pp. 208ff.
210 Iben Damgaard
the most loving human being, but that he is greater than the heart that condemns itself.
god and the human being resemble each other only inversely. You do not reach the
possibility of comparison by the ladder of direct likeness: great, greater, greatest.…see,
language seems to burst and break in order to describe god’s greatness in showing
mercy. Thought tried in vain to find a comparison, then finally found it, something that,
humanly speaking, is no comparison, the brokenness of a repentant heart—god’s mercy
is even greater….it limps, this comparison—a human being always does after wrestling
with god.8
so here we are again at the brink of the Jabok river, when the sun rises over the
limping Jacob, who has been marked by his nocturnal wrestling with god. the
finite human language wrestles with the problem of how to speak about the divine
love that transcends human language and reason. the story of Jacob’s struggle is
once again intertext for the reversal of perspective. human language cannot speak
about god in direct comparisons, but only inversely, only through a broken, limping
comparison that inverts the perspective, for god’s greatness can only be grasped
from the perspective of the brokenness of a repenting heart!
in Works of Love Kierkegaard reflects on the metaphorical language of the Bible.
he claims, “all human speech, even the divine speech of holy scripture, about the
spiritual is essentially metaphorical [overført] speech.”9 this metaphorical nature of
language is grounded in the constitution of human existence, since a human being
from the moment of birth is understood as a spiritual being, though he only later
becomes conscious of himself as spirit. this has implications for language since a
child may understand only a word’s concrete meaning, whereas a grown-up may
also grasp the transferred meaning of the expression, in which the literal sense
in ordinary language is given a deeper spiritual significance. By using language
metaphorically, the Bible manages to speak about the highest with simple words.
Kierkegaard compares this metaphorical use of the old familiar word with the
reader who manages to appropriate and establish new acquaintance with the old and
familiar text. “as children we no doubt have often played the game of stranger: this
is precisely the earnestness, to be able to continue in earnest this upbuilding jest, to
play stranger with the old and familiar.”10 Just as the metaphor plays stranger with
the ordinary word, Kierkegaard plays stranger with the well-known biblical figures
and narratives that have become such a matter of course that they are no longer seen
as puzzling and challenging. this metaphorical playing stranger with the familiar
has the capacity to transform vision. in one of the discourses from “the gospel of
sufferings,” he elaborates on this:
“to deliberate”11 is a transferred expression, but a very suggestive one, and therefore has
the advantage a figure of speech always has, that one, as if through a secret door, indeed,
as if by a magic stroke of the sudden, from the most common everyday conceptions
8
SKS 10, 313–14 / CD, 292–3.
9
SKS 9, 212 / WL, 209.
10
SKS 9, 213 / WL, 210.
11
the danish word overveie is literally translated “to weigh over,” but figuratively it
means “to deliberate” or “to consider.”
stands in the middle of the loftiest conceptions, so that while talking about simple
everyday things one suddenly discovers that one is also talking about the very highest
things.12
the metaphor is characterized by its capacity to make us suddenly discover a new

dimension in everyday life. the metaphorical language has the poetic power to open
up new possible worlds that brings about a transformation of our vision, since it
makes us perceive a new meaning in the midst of the most ordinary aspects of life.
Kierkegaard uses this creative power of the metaphorical play in his rewritings that
wrestle with the problem of how to communicate Christianity in a modern age in
which Christianity has become domesticated and reduced to empty phrases and dead
metaphors that no one wonders at:
the trouble is not that Christianity is not voiced (thus the trouble is not that there are
not enough pastors) but that it is voiced in such a way that the majority eventually
think it utterly inconsequential….thus the highest and the holiest things make no impact
whatsoever, but they are given sound and are listened to as something that now, god
knows why, has become routine and habit like so much else.13
through close readings of some of Kierkegaard’s rewritings of both new testament

and old testament narratives, i will proceed to explore how Kierkegaard plays
stranger with the old and familiar biblical narrative in order to provoke the reader to
engage in a wrestling match with the biblical narratives that turn around the reader’s
perspective.
III. Rewriting as Dialogical Contemporaneity
let us take our point of departure in a close reading of Kierkegaard’s rewriting

of the gospel story of peter’s denial of Christ that is found in Works of Love.
Kierkegaard speaks about the duty to love the people we see and the duty to be able
to continually find the beloved lovable no matter how he is changed. He illustrates
this with a rewriting of the gospel episode of peter’s denial of Christ. Kierkegaard
chooses to speak “quite humanly about this relationship,”14 and takes his point of
departure from the fact that “we will all agree that if the same thing happened in
a relationship between two friends as happened to Christ with peter, there would
surely be sufficient reason to break—with such a traitor.”15 Kierkegaard dramatizes
the scene for us like a choreographer who makes us see still new possibilities in
the interaction, and thereby makes us contemplate what we would have done if our
nearest friend had betrayed us when we were in danger. Kierkegaard writes, “so,
then you stood there accused by your enemies, condemned by your enemies.…in
this way you stood—accused, condemned, insulted; you sought in vain to discover
a form that still resembled a human being, to say nothing of a kind face upon which
12
SKS 8, 399 / UD, 306.
13
SKS 11, 214 / SUD, 102–3.
14
SKS 9, 168 / WL, 168.
15
SKS 9, 168 / WL, 168.
212 Iben Damgaard
your eyes could rest—and then you saw him, your friend, but he denied you.”16 we
are provoked to consider whether we would not in that situation have broken off the
friendship, and this natural response is then contrasted with the love of Christ:
how differently Christ acted! he did not look away from peter in order to become
seemingly unaware of his existence; he did not say, “i do not want to see that traitor”;
he did not leave him to take care of himself. no, he “looked at him.” he immediately
caught him with a look; if it had been possible, he surely would not have avoided
speaking to him. and how did Christ look at peter? was this look repelling; was it like
a look of dismissal? ah, no, it was as when a mother sees the child in danger through its
own carelessness, and now, since she cannot manage to grasp the child, she catches it
with her admittedly reproachful but also saving look….He did not say, “Peter must first
change and become another person before i can love him again.” no, he said exactly the
opposite, “peter is peter, and i love him. my love, if anything, will help him to become
another person.”17
again, Kierkegaard points to the wrestling match that is brought about, when our
attempt to find the perfect person to love in a self-serving way is confronted with the
biblical idea of Christian love that moves in the opposite direction, from heaven’s
unselfish love to earth. The rewriting of the scene stages this confrontation in a way
that addresses the reader directly. the dialogical form, the constant questioning of
the reader and the juxtaposition of contrary ways of relating to the situation, is a
rhetorical strategy that seeks to enable the reader to see himself as contemporary
with the characters in the scene. we are invited to imagine ourselves what it would
be like if we were in that situation. we are so accustomed, says Kierkegaard, to
praise Christ’s relationship to peter, but we should take care that this praise is not
an illusion “because we are unwilling to stretch our thinking to think of ourselves as
contemporary with the event. so we praise Christ and, on the other hand, provided
we are able to become contemporary with a similar event, act and think altogether
differently.”18
in his rewritings, Kierkegaard experiments with the characters in the biblical
story in order to explore how the story would have developed otherwise if the
characters involved had related differently to themselves, the others, and god.19 this
is particularly obvious when we consider his many rewritings of the old testament
story (genesis 22) of how god tested abraham’s faith by commanding him to go to
Mount Moriah and sacrifice his son Isaac. These rewritings are found in the early
pseudonymous work Fear and Trembling (1843) that repeatedly addresses the
16
SKS 9, 169–70 / WL, 168–9.
17
SKS 9, 170ff. / WL, 170ff.
18
SKS 9, 171 / WL, 171.
19
It should be noted that Kierkegaard is not the first one to rewrite biblical narratives.
rewriting was already an integrated part of early Jewish hermeneutic practice. in the
“haggadah,” the ancient interpreters expanded and elaborated on little details and particularities
of the biblical narratives in order to explain the ambiguous gaps in the narratives. this tradition
also influenced the writings of the Church Fathers of the early Christian Church. Cf. James
Kugel, The Bible as It Was, Cambridge, massachusetts and london: harvard university press
1997, pp. 28ff.
difficulty and the fear and trembling involved in trying to speak about and understand
this terrifying story.
in the opening “exordium” we are told the story of a man who is haunted and
intrigued by the abraham narrative. he longs to become a “witness of the event.”20
we are told that this is not a wish “to see the beautiful regions of the east” since
“the same thing could just as well have occurred on a barren heath.”21 it is a spiritual
contemporaneity with the story as something that is happening here and now when
we try to imagine what it would be like to be in the situation that abraham is in. this
man imagines four alternative variations of how one could respond to the trial in
different modes of despair and resignation if one did not have the faith of abraham.
the different rewritings change the biblical story into four new stories that deal
with the enigmatic gaps in the biblical story. For example, they elaborate on what
abraham may have thought and how isaac may have experienced the journey, matters
about which the biblical narration is silent. all variations of the story represent,
however, only disanalogies to abraham. By the end of the book, the pseudonymous
author Johannes de silentio lets us know that none of the alternative figures contains
“an analogy” to abraham; none of them makes him more comprehensible. on the
contrary, the deviations from him point to the “boundary of the unknown territory.”22
in this way, we are challenged and provoked to consider the unanswered questions
and the enigmas of this story of faith with which each reader must struggle.
after these four opening stories, we are told that the man thought of the event
“thus and in many similar ways.”23 the story can be imagined and rewritten in many
other ways, and different rewritings are in fact scattered throughout the whole text.
we come across new variations right after this introductory section, when Johannes,
in two new rewritings of the story, considers what would have happened if abraham
had doubted. he might then have looked around irresolutely when he stood on
mount moriah and then he might immediately have spotted the ram and gone home
again with isaac. alternatively, if he had doubted he could have gone to mount
moriah only to thrust the knife into his own breast in order to spare isaac. Johannes
contrasts these doubting versions of abraham with the biblical abraham who in faith
responded to god’s call with no doubt or hesitation. he writes, “we read in sacred
scripture: ‘and god tempted abraham and said: abraham, abraham, where are you?
But abraham answered: here am i.’ ”24 if we actually do read genesis 22, we notice
that Johannes has added the question “where are you?” to genesis 22, although
this question actually is found in genesis 3:9, where god addresses adam after he
has eaten the forbidden fruit. we may ask, then, what Johannes achieves by this
intertextual allusion to the story of the Fall? it could be seen as a way of making us
discover the contrast between the meeting between god and adam and the meeting
between god and abraham. when god was wandering around the garden, calling
to Adam “Where are you?,” Adam was hiding and became terrified when he heard
20
SKS 4, 104 / FT, 9.
21
ibid.
22
SKS 4, 200 / FT, 112.
23
SKS 4, 111 / FT, 14.
24
SKS 4, 117 / FT, 21.
214 Iben Damgaard
God’s voice, whereas Abraham, in contrast, answers cheerfully, freely, confidently,
loudly with “here i am!” Johannes immediately asks the reader, “was this the case
with you?”25 we are required to examine ourselves to discover whether we would
hide like Adam or have the courage to answer the call confidently like Abraham. We
are asked directly to behold ourselves in the mirror of the story. Johannes exemplifies
this self-examination for the reader by performing it himself, when he readily admits
that he lacks the courage of faith and would have reacted with resignation if he
had been “ordered to take such an extraordinary royal journey as the one to mount
moriah.”26
Countless generations have known the story of abraham and isaac by heart, and
Johannes argues that it is because the story has become such a matter of course for
us that it is usually mistold and misunderstood. we rush to the end of the story,
since we know that in the end an angel calls to abraham from heaven, telling him
not to sacrifice Isaac. Thus confident in God’s grace, we omit the anxiety and fear
and trembling, and the whole episode is over and done with as soon as it is narrated.
Kierkegaard observes, “we mount a winged horse and in the same instant we are on
mount moriah, in the same instant we see the ram.”27 we thereby deceive ourselves
into sweet sentimental ways of relating to this horrifying story, instead of asking
ourselves if we have the courage of faith that would face the test as abraham did.
Johannes takes us through all these narrative detours in order to approach the story
of abraham in the right way, namely, a very slow way that takes time and demands
patience.
the danger of the empty praising of abraham at mount moriah is then illustrated
by a story of a preacher who speaks about abraham in a way that completely leaves
out the anxiety and the radically disorienting nature of the story. the preacher
glorifies Abraham as the father of faith, and he interprets the story allegorically when
he praises Abraham for his willingness to sacrifice the highest source of earthly joy
that he had. the preacher speaks so easily and peacefully about the story that the
listener might as well smoke his pipe or take a nap during the sermon. But then
Johannes proceeds to imagine what would happen if “someone listening is a man
who suffers from sleeplessness—then the most terrifying, the most profound, tragic,
and comic misunderstanding is very close at hand. he goes home, he wants to do
just as abraham did, for the son, after all, is the best.”28 and if the preacher would
afterwards blame him because of the murder, the sleepless sinner would be right to
answer that “it was after all what you yourself preached about on sunday.”29
the sleepless person does use the text as a sort of mirror, for he projects himself
into the biblical narrative of abraham, but he dangerously misunderstands what
he sees in the tale, since he has not understood that “it is only by faith that one
achieves any resemblance to abraham, not by murder.”30 the question, then, is
25
ibid.
26
SKS 4, 130 / FT, 34.
27
SKS 4, 145 / FT, 52.
28
SKS 4, 124 / FT, 28.
29
ibid.
30
SKS 4, 126 / FT, 31.
how are we to speak about abraham without “running the risk that some individual
will become unbalanced and do the same thing?”31 Johannes distances himself both
from the sleepless murderer’s far too literal understanding of the story and from
the preacher’s allegorical and idealizing way of speaking about abraham as an
abstract “phantom,” a showpiece for diversion.32 we should, he says, either cancel
out Abraham entirely or learn to be horrified by the paradox that he embodies. The
only way to appropriately approach the abraham story is very long and laborious,
for we must be patient and willing to work hard and be burdened if we are to try to
understand faith, since faith essentially involves patience. this need for patience is
embodied in the writing strategy of the book, since we are exposed to multiple novel
rewritings of this journey of faith that all seem to miss the point and leave us puzzled
and provoked to engage in dialogue with this biblical story anew.
Johannes approaches the story of abraham by contrasting him with an extensive
gallery of biblical, literary, and imaginary figures, which at first glance seem to have
much in common with abraham, and yet turn out to be mere disanalogies. we hear,
for instance, the story of a tragic hero such as agamemnon, who, seemingly like
Abraham, was prepared to sacrifice his child in order to save his people. Yet, this
tragic dilemma is a conflict between his dual ethical obligations to care for his child
and to defend the interests of his people. Because this tension occurs entirely within
the sphere of the ethical, the tragic hero therefore can be described as a “darling of
ethics,” in contrast to abraham who is caught in a paradox of faith that points to
the limits of ethics. Johannes goes on to explore abraham’s silence by contrasting
him with the demonic silence of different literary and biblical figures. He does, for
example, rewrite the ancient folk tale about the merman and agnes in different
versions. one variant is the tale of a guilty and demonically despairing merman,
while another is the story of a merman who is saved by faith in grace. in this way, the
strategy of rewriting narratives is used generally to point to existential questions and
enigmas suggested not only by biblical but also by non-biblical narratives.
this endless comparing and contrasting of the story of abraham with all these
biblical, literary, and imaginary figures could be characterized as a literary strategy
of detours. Johannes walks the road to mount moriah with us again and again in
company with still new textual figures. He does, however, avoid the terrifying
moment at the top of the mountain when abraham draws the knife.33 an explanation
for this may be found in Johannes’ remark that anyone who looks directly upon this
scene is paralyzed and blinded. we may take the sleepless man as a warning, as a
cautionary example of what happens when we rush hastily to take up the knife in
ethical blindness. instead of taking his point of departure from the terrifying climax
of the story at the top of the mountain, Johannes goes the roundabout way to explore
what leads up to this point and what comes after. this approach reminds us of what
31
ibid.
32
SKS 4, 123 / FT, 27.
33
lasse horne Kjældgaard has drawn attention to Johannes’ way of abruptly breaking
off the narrative when reaching the paralyzing instant at the top of the mountain. Cf. lasse
horne Kjældgaard, Mellemhverandre. Tableau og fortælling i Søren Kierkegaards pseudonyme
skrifter, hellerup: Forlaget spring 2001, p. 94; p. 109.
216 Iben Damgaard
Kierkegaard says of socrates in his early treatise on The Concept of Irony: “socrates
commences most of his inquiries not at the center but on the periphery, in the motley
variety of life.”34 the literary strategy of rewritings could be seen as such a socratic
exploration through detours in the peripheries of concrete experiences in the motley
variety of life.
there is an interesting tension between proximity and distance evident in
Kierkegaard’s rewritings. he wants us to see ourselves as contemporary with the
world of the text, but in order to bring about such a spiritual contemporaneity, he
needs to deconstruct the reader’s familiarity with the text, because this familiarity
has turned the biblical text into such a matter of course that the reader has become
blind to its challenging potential. the rewritings produce an alienating distanciation
(Verfremdung), in which Kierkegaard metaphorically plays stranger with the familiar
in order to help the reader to discover it anew. He reflects on how to tell the biblical
story in the right way—how to give it its due—for when we know the story by heart
it is too easy for us to remain disengaged and ignore the troubling fact that it requires
our ethical involvement. he therefore rewrites the same story over and over again,
appealing to the imagination as a faculty for discerning other possibilities in the
narrative, varying small details of the story and presenting it from constantly new
perspectives. the rewritings seek to engage us in a dialogue with the biblical narrative
by raising for us the questions with which the narrative characters struggle.
imagination is a key concept not only if we seek to understand the hermeneutics
implicit in the rewritings, but also if we hope to appreciate Kierkegaard’s approach
to the issues of subjectivity and ethics. he understands imagination as a capacity
for seeing new possibilities for alternative ways of being, a capacity that extends
the individual’s horizon beyond that which is immediately given. in imagination
we transcend what we immediately are by projecting scenarios of how life could
be lived differently, and this vision of the possible is crucial for coming to perceive
and understand ourselves. in The Sickness unto Death, the imagination is described
as a “medium for the process of infinitizing” since “imagination is reflection, is
the rendition of the self as the self’s possibility.”35 metaphorically, imagination is
described as a mirror of possibility. imagination is, however, not only fundamental
to genuine human experience, but it is also ambiguous. we need imagination in
order to discern the possibilities resident in what we see, but imagination can also be
used to prevent ourselves from seeing what we see.36 we can use our imagination to
form ideas and ideals that make us blind to the actual reality in which we live. if the
imagination is not to be used in a way that is ethically problematic, the possibilities
that are projected in the mirror of imagination must be linked to an understanding of
what we already are. this depends on the will to accept oneself and “to submit to the
necessity in one’s life, to what may be called one’s limitations.”37
34
SKS 1, 94 / CI, 32.
35
SKS 11, 146–7 / SUD, 30–1.
36
Cf. arne grøn, “imagination and subjectivity,” Theologische Literaturzeitung, vol.
128, nos. 7–8, 2003, p. 722.
37
SKS 11, 152 / SUD, 36.
Kierkegaard points to a complex dialectic between the imagination and the will to
acknowledge and account for oneself instead of seeking to escape and delude oneself.
this dialectic between the imagination and the will is crucial in order to understand
Kierkegaard’s approach to the appropriation of the Bible. he creatively reinvents the
imaginative potential of a biblical narrative, when he rewrites it in startlingly novel
versions. often, the rewritings open with an initial address to the reader that invites
him to “imagine” ever new possibilities in the biblical text. without this imaginative
approach we would be confronted with the danger of fanatical interpretations that
could take such narratives as the story of abraham and isaac to imply that murder is
the demand of faith, a possibility illustrated in the example of the slavish literalness
of the sleepless man. it is, however, also possible to delude oneself precisely by
means of imaginative readings of the Bible, if they are used as an excuse to ignore
the way that the Bible challenges us and requires self-examination, a phenomenon
illustrated by the example of the figurative and allegorical preacher. Kierkegaard
stresses the need for a literal reading understood as an existential-ethical reading,
which is different from both slavish literalness and an allegorical reading.38 whereas
the sleepless murderer sees himself in the mirror of the Bible, but in a way that
tragically misunderstands the story, the preacher avoids seeing himself in the mirror
at all and avoids the possibility of being confronted with his own self-deception and
illusions. it is this complexity in understanding the biblical text as a mirror for self-
examination that needs to be further explored in the next section.
IV. “Thou Art the Man”—The Mirror of the Word
The first part of For Self-Examination (1851) contains some of Kierkegaard’s most
explicit reflections on biblical hermeneutics building on the letter of James:
But be 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. (James 1:22–4)
god’s word is metaphorically described as a mirror in which we see ourselves truly.

the requirement is to see oneself in the mirror, and Kierkegaard therefore argues
against what he takes to be a characteristic of his own scientific age, namely, that one
looks only at the mirror, i.e., observes the mirror by asking only objective, scholarly,
historical questions that can never lead to anything more than approximations of
certainty about factual matters. Kierkegaard’s concern here is not to argue against a
38
see also Jolita pons’ discussion of Kierkegaard’s approach to literal and non-literal
readings of the Bible. she argues that when Kierkegaard stresses the need for a careful, literal
reading, he is not speaking about a kind of literalism, “but about the spiritual sense of ‘literal’
when the meaning of the Bible becomes concrete for an individual reader.” Cf. Jolita pons,
Stealing a Gift: Kierkegaard’s Pseudonyms and the Bible, new York: Fordham university
press 2004, p. 60.
218 Iben Damgaard
historically-critical scholarly reading of the Bible, but to argue against never getting
beyond such a reading to an existentially and ethically oriented reading.
the reader is asked to imagine god’s word as a “love-letter” written in a foreign
language and expressing a wish from the beloved that requires something of the lover.
Kierkegaard asks us to consider how a lover would read this letter, and he points out
that he would “distinguish between reading and reading, between reading with a
dictionary and reading the letter from his beloved.”39 with a personally engaged
reading, the translation and explanation of the letter would only be a prerequisite for
the most important thing: the “real” reading that seeks to understand and respond to
the wish of the beloved without unnecessary delays. Kierkegaard protests against
the “tragic misuse of scholarship,” namely, the tendency to read the Bible with
ten dictionaries and 25 commentaries, looking only for variations among different
manuscripts and scholarly interpretations. such a detached way of reading ignores
the imperatives of the text and inhibits us from wondering, “have i done this?” we
thereby risk deceiving ourselves into never coming to the “real” reading, that is,
reading from an engaged first person perspective as if the text were a message of
love from god.
in order to stress the ethical task of moving from text to action, Kierkegaard
further envisages god’s word as a “royal decree” and asks the reader to imagine a
country in which a royal decree is issued to the whole population. having sketched
this analogy to contemporary culture, Kierkegaard asks: what then happens? the
entire population turns into interpreters, critics, scholars, and authors, but no one
acts according to the requirement in the royal decree, since they ignore the king’s
authority. neither a royal decree nor god’s word is meant as a poem or as an answer
to a philosophical question, but rather is intended to function as a call to which one
must respond in concrete action by a change in how one lives. it is, says Kierkegaard,
“only human to pray to god to have patience if one cannot immediately do what one
should but still promises to strive, it is human to pray to god to have mercy, that the
requirement is too high for one.”40 what he argues against is that “i cunningly shove
in, one layer after another, interpretation and scholarly research…between the word
and myself and then gives this interpreting and scholarliness the name of earnestness
and zeal for the truth.”41
Kierkegaard emphasizes that what is required in reading is that we continually
remind ourselves, “it is i to whom it is speaking, it is i about whom it is speaking.”42
he shows this, however, also indirectly by having recourse to the old testament story
of King david, who has taken the beautiful Bathsheba, after having arranged that
uriah, her husband, would be killed in battle (2 samuel 12). god sends the prophet
nathan to david, and nathan recounts to his king the parable of a rich man who stole
a poor man’s only lamb. when david angrily condemns the avaricious rich man
of the story, Nathan replies, “Thou art the man!,” and David, finally realizing the
implication of the narrative, repents. Kierkegaard, however, rewrites this encounter
39
SKS 13, 55, / FSE, 27.
40
SKS 13, 62 / FSE, 35.
41
ibid.
42
SKS 13, 63 / FSE, 37.
between david and nathan in order to “make the situation really contemporary and
modernize it a bit!”43 He changes the figures into nineteenth-century connoisseurs
of science and culture. David personifies the modern, cultured reader of the Bible,
and it is to this “expert on matters of taste” that nathan recites his little short story.
Kierkegaard imagines then how david calmly and objectively evaluates the aesthetic
details of this poetic piece of work, until nathan says the crucial words: “thou art
the man!”44 Kierkegaard then concludes, “see the tale the prophet told was a story,
but this ‘thou art the man’—this was another story—this was the transition to the
subjective.”45
Kierkegaard wants us to see how little “the impersonal (the objective)—a
doctrine, a story, scholarly research” helps in understanding an existentially relevant
text, when even a man like david, otherwise righteous, could go on pretending
that nothing illicit had happened right until the moment when nathan breaks
through the spell of the impersonal, and david acknowledges his sin and repents.
Kierkegaard concludes, “someone from the outside was needed, someone who said
to him: You.”46 he presents stories as being potentially on a par with doctrines and
scholarly research as examples of the impersonal use of texts, since we can treat
stories just as impersonally as a scientific hypothesis when we reflect only upon
their aesthetic qualities (as is the case in the rewritten story of nathan and david)
or their allegorical, abstract meaning (as is the case in the example of the preacher).
Because of this danger of objective distance, Kierkegaard rewrites biblical narratives
and parables in ways that directly address, challenge, provoke, and encourage the
reader to appropriate the story subjectively, that is, to approach the story through the
watchword: “thou art the man!” this exhortation to read in a self-involving manner
corresponds to the metaphor of the mirror of the word. right after the rewriting of
the meeting between david and nathan in For Self-Examination, this hermeneutic
imperative is illustrated again, this time with reference to the parable of the good
samaritan. Kierkegaard concludes the retelling of the parable with the exhortation:
“go and do likewise.”47 thus, we are again reminded to tell ourselves: “it is i to
whom this is addressed—away at once!”48
Kierkegaard’s hermeneutic strategy is oriented towards getting from text to
action, and he insists that in this movement there is no time to waste! his point of
departure is the negative observation that we prefer to delay the execution of this
movement by engaging in endless interpretive projects that enable us to postpone
the transition from text to action. in his deconstructive reading of Kierkegaard,
Joakim garff has argued that the constant narrative detours in Kierkegaard’s own
writings contradict and counteract Kierkegaard’s insistence on a “hermeneutics of
43
SKS 13, 64 / FSE, 37.
44
SKS 13, 65 / FSE, 38.
45
ibid.
46
SKS 13, 65 / FSE, 39.
47
SKS 13, 68 / FSE, 41.
48
ibid.
220 Iben Damgaard
action.”49 i suggest, however, that the tension between Kierkegaard’s insistence
on a hermeneutics of action and his own narrative detours should be interpreted
differently. We need to consider again Kierkegaard’s reflections on the complex
dialectic between imagination and will and between parable and imperative. in
Works of Love, Kierkegaard points out that when Christ is confronted with an
abstract question such as “who is my neighbor?” he turns the question around and
diverts it away from an abstract discussion of the concept of “neighbor” in order to
press the urgency of the task as intensely as possible upon the questioner in order to
leave him no excuse for further delays. Kierkegaard shows that Christ accomplishes
this precisely by means of a combination of the narrative detour of the parable of
the good Samaritan and the direct summoning of the listener in the final admonition
“go and do likewise!”50 Kierkegaard insists that the gospel seeks to awaken and
encourage the reader through the doubleness of rigorousness and leniency. this
doubleness is also embodied in the interplay between different biblical genres such
as imperative and parable. Kierkegaard imitates this biblical writing strategy in his
own communication with the reader that combines the long, circuitous route of the
indirect, metaphorical playing stranger with the familiar in the rewritings with the
direct and rigorous questioning of the reader. precisely because his rewritings keep
addressing, questioning, and summoning the reader through the watchwords “thou
are the man” and “go and do likewise,” the narrative detours wrestle with the reader
in such a way that they leave him no excuse for any postponement of action.
we are provoked to engage in an existential struggle with the text in order that
we might see ourselves in the mirror of the word. this textual struggle involves
an inversion of our perspective, since the encounter with the text contradicts our
expectations and turns our conceptions and ideas [forestillinger] upside down,51
so that we, like david, come to see the need for repentance and change of action.
therefore, in my view, Kierkegaard’s interpretation of the metaphor of the mirror
of the word is best understood in connection with his use of the story of Jacob’s
struggle with god, since the Bible wrestles with the reader’s illusions and wrenches
open the lock of self-deception in order to open up a new way of seeing oneself and
others.
the metaphor of the mirror of the word had already been employed in the
early Christian tradition; Kierkegaard did not invent it ex nihilo. in his “preface
49
Cf. Joakim garff, “Den Søvnløse”: Kierkegaard læst æstetisk/biografisk, Copenhagen:
C.a. reitzel 1995, p. 263.
50
SKS 9, 100 / WL, 22.
51
in the new testament Christ is called a sign of contradiction because he was destined
to disclose the thoughts of many hearts. in Practice in Christianity, the pseudonym anti-
Climacus writes that when one is looking at the sign of contradiction “one sees as in a mirror,
one comes to see oneself, or he who is the sign of contradiction looks straight into one’s heart
while one is staring into the contradiction. a contradiction placed squarely in front of a person
– if one can get him to look at it—is a mirror; as he is forming a judgment, what dwells within
him must be disclosed. it is a riddle, but as he is guessing the riddle, what dwells within him
is disclosed by the way he guesses. the contradiction confronts him with a choice, and as he
is choosing, together with what he chooses, he himself is disclosed.” Cf. SKS 12, 131–2 / PC,
127.
to Bultmann,” paul ricoeur claims that “hermeneutics is the very deciphering of
life in the mirror of the text,” and proceeds to trace the roots of this hermeneutical
concept back to the pauline insistence that “the interpretation of the Book and the
interpretation of life correspond and are mutually adjusted….paul invites the hearer
of the word to decipher the movement of his own existence in the light of the passion
and resurrection of Christ.”52 ricoeur emphasizes that “the relation between the
text and the mirror—liber et speculum—is basic to hermeneutics.”53 the reader
comes to understand himself through the medium of the text. according to ricoeur,
the hermeneutics of the text is therefore closely connected with a hermeneutics of
the self.54 he points to a complex interplay between activity and passivity in the
refiguration of the reader’s vision through the process of reading, since coming to
see and understand oneself through the mirror of the text involves seeing oneself
as another.55 according to my interpretation, this is already the crucial point in
Kierkegaard’s approach to the classic metaphor of the self in the mirror of the text
that interacts with his employment of the metaphor of Jacob’s wrestling match.
V. “My Dear Reader!”—Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Ethics
We have seen how Kierkegaard in the first part of For Self-Examination stresses the
hermeneutic theme that the Bible should be read through the lens of the watchword,
“thou art the man!,” treating it as a mirror in which we come to see ourselves truly.
But Kierkegaard not only critiques the inability to get beyond a merely scholarly
reading to an existentially engaged reading, but he also exposes the possible dangers
involved in seeing oneself in the mirror of the text. he explores narratively the ways
in which different characters identify with biblical figures in odd ways that provoke
the reader to wonder if their existential engagement with the text may not just be
52
paul ricoeur, “preface to Bultmann,” in Essays on Biblical Interpretation, ed. by
lewis s. mudge, london: Fortress press 1980, pp. 52–3.
53
ibid., p. 54.
54
ricoeur accounts for this connection in numerous writings on hermeneutics, for
instance throughout the entire volume From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics II,
evanston: northwestern university press 1991. i have used the expression “from text to action”
in this article, since it also describes a crucial concern in Kierkegaard’s hermeneutics.
55
“To understand oneself before the text is not to impose one’s own finite capacity
of understanding on it, but to expose oneself to receive from it a larger self which would
be the proposed way of existing that most appropriately responds to the proposed world of
the text. understanding then is the complete opposite of a constitution for which the subject
would have the key.” Cf. paul ricoeur, “toward a hermeneutic of the idea of revelation,” in
Essays on Biblical Interpretation, p. 108. ricoeur illustrates the metaphor of the mirror with
reference to marcel proust’s Remembrance of Things Past in which the narrator reflects on
his readers, observing, “it seemed to me that they would not be ‘my’ readers but the readers
of their own selves, my book being merely a sort of magnifying glass like those which the
optician at Combray used to offer his customers—it would be my book, but with its help i
would furnish them with the means of reading what lay inside themselves.” Cf. paul ricoeur,
Time and Narrative, vols. 1–3, Chicago and london: university of Chicago press 1985, vol.
3, p. 246. see also vol. 2, p. 150 in where this passage is quoted.
222 Iben Damgaard
another form of self-deception. we have already seen an example of this in the case
of the sleepless man’s mirroring himself in abraham’s trial. another example can
be found in Repetition (1843), a work that recounts the story of a young man who
mirrors himself in the sufferings of Job. in a direct address to his reader, “my dear
reader,” the pseudonymous author Constantin Constantius announces that “it is an
art to be a good reader”;56 and Repetition can in fact be interpreted as a book about
reading, since the young man’s passionate reading of the Book of Job provokes us
to consider what it takes to be a good reader and what it means to be transformed by
reading in such a way that one perceives the potential newness in the midst of the
old life. the main character, a poetic young man who has just left his girlfriend, is
obsessively engaged in reading the old testament story of Job’s trials and sufferings.
he describes how he reads the Book of Job every night and strives to make Job’s
word his own:
although i have read the book again and again, each word remains new to me. every
time i come to it, it is born anew as something original or becomes new and original in
my soul. like an inebriate, i imbibe all the intoxication of passion little by little, until
by this prolonged sipping i become almost unconscious in drunkenness. But at the same
time, i hasten to it with indescribable impatience. half a word—and my soul rushes into
his thought, into his outcry; more swiftly than the sounding-line sinker seeks the bottom
of the sea, more swiftly than lightning seeks the conductor does my soul glide therein
and remain there.57
in a series of letters the poetic young man describes in great detail the existential
passion involved in his reading of Job, and one can hardly accuse him of not reading
the story of Job in an existentially engaged way. he understands Job’s misfortunes
and anguish from the perspective of his own problems, and he repeats the text over
and over again in an attempt to come to terms with his own past and the issue of
guilt that it raises. But we may question whether the young man is really transformed
by the text, or whether he mainly uses the figure of Job to legitimize his impatient
wish to withdraw into a poetic existence. this seems to be quite remote from the
faith of Job that embraces actuality instead of taking flight into an idealized world of
poetics. through the narrative example of the young man, the reader is confronted
with the possibility of mirroring oneself in the biblical text in ways that only confirm
one’s illusions rather than deconstruct them. in the passage quoted above, the young
man describes how his soul sinks into the text with “indescribable impatience.”58
i suggest that this is the key to the understanding of the problem involved in his
reading, namely, his impatient wish to be Job. he idealizes Job, and his impatient
eagerness to see himself as a second Job merely prevents him from seeing his actual
existence.59
56
SKS 4, 91 / R, 225.
57
SKS 4, 72 / R, 205.
58
ibid.
59
For a more thorough interpretation of Kierkegaard’s rewritings of Job, i refer to
my article: “ ‘my dear reader’: Kierkegaard’s reader and Kierkegaard as a reader of the
Book of Job. reception and transformation in the writings of Kierkegaard,” in Religion and
we are brought by the text to perceive that the art of being a good reader requires
patience and earnest self-examination. according to For Self-Examination this
involves “distrust of oneself, to treat oneself as a suspicious character, as a financier
treats an unreliable client, saying, ‘well, these big promises are not much help; i
would rather have a small part of the total right away.’ ”60 one needs to treat oneself as
“a suspicious character” rather than using the text to legitimize oneself. Kierkegaard
emphasizes the problem of sin, that is, that we will not understand and acknowledge
ourselves, and this makes him acutely aware of the many different ways we seek
to avoid the patient self-examination that is essential for the art of reading. it is
again the complex interplay between one’s imagination and one’s will that is crucial,
since reading demands not only our imaginative engagement with the text but also
our will to candidly confront and unmask our own illusions in a quest for true self-
understanding. Kierkegaard places emphasis on the reader’s patient and “decisive
self-activity, upon which everything depends.”61 he is, however, also well aware of
the complex interplay between activity and passivity at work in any transformation
of our vision. we have seen an example of this when he points to the way that
metaphorical language opens our imagination by disclosing new possibilities and
potentialities in our given reality.
Kierkegaard stresses the dialectical character of the act of reading, regarding
it as a dialogical battle that requires both receptivity and activity. he repeatedly
informs his reader that he is an author without authority, warning that “you have only
yourself to consider, not me, who, after all, am ‘without authority.’ ”62 he encourages
the reader to engage in dialogue with the text, which is not a dialogue with the author
behind the text but with the ways of life and possibilities that are opened in front
of the text through the reading process. reading is a dialogue with the concepts
and possibilities that are “captured” in the text, and their “release” depends on the
reader’s response. Kierkegaard describes the favorably disposed reader as the one,
who “gives an opportunity to what is said, brings the cold thoughts into flame again,
transforms the discourse [tale] into a conversation [samtale].”63 the meaning to be
understood in the text is fully realized only in the reader’s making it concrete in his
own existence, so that his existence comes to express what he has understood. it is
the reader who “gives it [the discourse] meaning, and transforms it into much.”64 this
emphasis on the reader’s active role combined with the self-effacement of the writer
is characteristic of both his edifying and pseudonymous writings. Kierkegaard’s
polyphonic way of communicating indirectly with the reader through pseudonymous
voices as well as the voices of historical, literary, biblical, and imaginary figures
Normativity: Receptions and Transformations of the Bible, ed. by Kirsten nielsen, Århus:
aarhus university press 2009, pp. 93–105.
60
SKS 13, 70, / FSE, 44.
61
SKS 8, 223 / UD, 122.
62
SKS 13, 33 / FSE, 5.
63
SKS 5, 231 / EUD, 231.
64
SKS 5, 113 / EUD, 107.
224 Iben Damgaard
orients his books towards the reader’s process of understanding in front of the book
rather than the author’s intention behind the book.65
What Kierkegaard says about his reader’s freedom in the appropriation of his
writings corresponds with how he himself acts as a reader of the Bible, since he
experiments with, rewrites, and recontextualizes the biblical texts with remarkable
freedom. But, whereas he continually maintains that his own writings are written by
an author without authority, he insists just as emphatically that scripture is indeed
authoritative. we may therefore ask: how can this emphasis of the authority of
scripture be combined with an equally strong highlighting of the freedom in reading?
how are we to make sense of this relation between the authority of the Bible and the
freedom with which Kierkegaard changes and reworks the biblical texts?
an attempt to answer this question may take its point of departure from the
Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments. the pseudonym
Johannes Climacus criticizes the view of scripture as “the secure stronghold that
decides what is Christian and what is not.”66 he emphatically asserts that “the
dialectical still cannot be excluded.”67 according to Climacus, it is impossible to
find “a stockade that is the end of the world and of dialectics. It is of no use.”68 this
is because the dialectical is a general condition of understanding whether it is a
word, a book, another person or culture, that we seek to understand. But “in a human
being there is always a desire, at once comfortable and concerned, to have something
really firm and fixed that can exclude the dialectical, but this is cowardliness and
fraudulence toward the divine. even the most certain of all, a revelation, eo ipso
becomes dialectical when i am to appropriate it.”69
the freedom embodied in Kierkegaard’s rewriting of biblical narratives is a
way of dealing with this dialectical and dialogical element in all appropriation. the
paradigmatic figure for Kierkegaard’s approach to his dialogue with the reader is
socrates70 and “the socratic art of asking questions.”71 Kierkegaard’s insistence
on being an author without authority also corresponds to the Socratic figure of the
midwife, for the Socratic figure of the midwife incarnates the merely assisting role
that one person may have in relation to another person’s understanding. Climacus
65
see also george pattison and Jolita pons, since they both address the question of how
Kierkegaard’s emphasis on being an author without authority relates to his emphasis on the
active role of the reader, his dialogical, indirect way of communicating, and the authority of
the Bible. Cf. george pattison, Kierkegaard’s Upbuilding Discourses: Philosophy, Theology,
Literature, london and new York: routledge 2002. Cf. also Jolita pons, Stealing a Gift:
Kierkegaard’s Pseudonyms and the Bible. pons discusses this question in relation to the
pseudonymous writings on pp. 39ff.
66
SKS 7, 31 / CUP1, 24.
67
ibid.
68
SKS 7, 31, note / CUP1, 24, note.
69
SKS 7, 41 / CUP1, 35.
70
Cf. pattison, Kierkegaard’s Upbuilding Discourses: Philosophy, Theology, Literature.
Pattison has shown the significance of the Socratic dialogue for understanding Kierkegaard’s
emphasis on the active role of the reader as well as his indirect, dialogical and polyphonic way
of communicating with the reader in the upbuilding discourses.
71
SKS 1, 94 / CI, 33.
observes, “Socrates remained true to himself and artistically exemplified what he
had understood. he was and continued to be a midwife…because he perceived that
this relation is the highest relation a human being can have to another. and in that
he is indeed forever right, for even if a divine point of departure is ever given, this
remains the true relation between one human being and another.”72 in Kierkegaard’s
rewriting of biblical narratives, his point of departure is the authority of the Bible, but
because his own readings refuse any authority, he can experiment rather freely with
the biblical narratives in order to help the reader approach them in new ways, since
this socratic art of maieutics remains the highest relation between human beings.
this maieutic art of helping is later described in the following way: “if one is truly
to Succeed in Leading a Person to a Specific Place, One Must First and Foremost
take Care to Find him where He is and Begin there. this is the secret in the entire
art of helping.”73 Kierkegaard rewrites biblical narratives in still new imaginative
variations that re-contextualize them in the contemporary life of the reader in order
to help the reader to discover new potential in the well-known stories. Kierkegaard’s
rewritings can therefore be interpreted as his maieutic attempt to discover where
contemporary readers are in order to challenge and encourage them to respond
existentially and ethically to the biblical texts.
according to hans-georg gadamer, the task of hermeneutics can be described
as “entering into dialogue with the text,” a project that involves understanding the
question that the text is struggling with. gadamer claims, “interpretation always
involves a relation to the question that is asked of the interpreter. to understand a
text means to understand this question.”74 as we have seen, Kierkegaard’s rewritings
attempt to open up the question that the characters in the biblical narrative are
struggling with in order to help the reader to engage in a dialogue with this question,
an arduous task that also entails a questioning of one’s own understanding of oneself
and the world.
Kierkegaard bases his writing strategy on the assumption that the reader’s
participation in the Christian tradition has made the reader so accustomed to the
biblical texts that they will automatically engage them as harmless pieces of cultural
heritage and will no longer be challenged by their radical nature. he therefore rewrites
biblical narratives in order to produce an alienating distanciation (Verfremdung)
that deconstructs our familiarity with the biblical narratives. in his rewritings,
Kierkegaard metaphorically plays stranger with the familiar biblical narrative to help
us to discover it anew. he rewrites the same story in ever new versions, appealing to
the imagination as a sense for discerning other possibilities in the story.
i have argued that the hermeneutics implicit in the rewritings can be described
through the interplay between Kierkegaard’s metaphorical description of the Bible
as a mirror in which we come to see ourselves truly, and his metaphorical description
of the meeting between reader and text as the wrestling match depicted in the old
testament story of Jacob’s struggle with god. the rewritings practice a strategy of
72
SKS 4, 219 / PF, 10.
73
SV1 Xiii, 533 / PV, 45.
74
hans-georg gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd revised translation by Joel weinsheimer
and donald g. marshall, london: sheed and ward 1989 [1975], p. 368.
226 Iben Damgaard
de-familiarization with the biblical narratives as a means of enabling the readers to
recognize how the biblical narratives wrestle with our illusions and self-deception.
the rewritings disorient the reader in order to bring about a reorientation and open
up a new way of seeing and relating to oneself and others.
Kierkegaard creatively reinvents the imaginative potential of a biblical narrative.
without this imaginative approach, we are confronted with the danger of fanatical
interpretations that take biblical stories with slavish literalness and draw unfortunate
conclusions from them, as did the sleepless man with the story of abraham and
isaac. it is, however, also possible to delude oneself through imaginative, allegorical
readings of the Bible, if they are used to avoid a concrete existential response,
as is illustrated by the allegorical preacher and the aesthetic approach to the text
exemplified by the characters in Kierkegaard’s rewritten David. Kierkegaard’s
rewritings involve a complex dialectic between imagination and will. the emphasis
of human sinfulness makes Kierkegaard acutely aware of the many ways the reader
can seek to avoid the patient and earnest self-examination that is the key to “the art
to be a good reader.”75
in Kierkegaard’s rewritings, the metaphorical playing stranger with the familiar
that embarks on imaginative variations in “the motley variety of life” involves a
direct questioning of the reader.76 the reader is thus provoked and encouraged to
self-discovery in the mirror of the text that challenges the reader’s vision.
75
SKS 4, 91 / R, 225.
76
SKS 1, 94 / CI, 32.
Bibliography

Retell Biblical Narratives
(ASKB 354–357).
pp. 114ff. (ASKB 520).
g. reimer 1833, p. 180; pp. 191–5 (ASKB 80).
II. Secondary Literature on Kierkegaard’s Retelling of Biblical Narratives
Barrett, lee C., “authorial voices and the limits of Communication in Kierkegaard’s
‘signed’ literature: a Comparison of Works of Love to For Self-Examination and
Judge for Yourself!,” in For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourself!, ed. by
Børsand, grete, “abraham. troens ridder. den tragiske helt. en sammenligning,” in
her Forbilde og utfordring. En Kierkegaard-studie, oslo: Johan grundt tanum
Forlag 1966, pp. 39–53.
university press: montreal and Kingston 1997, pp. 252–5.
Conway, daniel, “abraham’s Final word,” in Ethics, Love, and Faith in Kierkegaard,
ed. by edward F. mooney, Bloomington, indiana: indiana university press 2008,
pp. 175–95.
damgaard, iben, At lege fremmed med det kendte. Kierkegaards gendigtninger af
bibelske figurer, Copenhagen: anis 2008.
—— “ ‘my dear reader’: Kierkegaard’s reader and Kierkegaard as a reader of the
Book of Job. reception and transformation in the writings of Kierkegaard,” in
228 Iben Damgaard
Religion and Normativity: Receptions and Transformations of the Bible, ed. by
Kirsten nielsen, Århus: aarhus university press 2009, pp. 93–105.
davenport, John, “Faith as eschatological trust in Fear and Trembling,” in Ethics,
Love, and Faith in Kierkegaard, ed. by edward F. mooney, Bloomington,
indiana: indiana university press 2008, pp. 196–233.
p. 130; p. 159; p. 166; p. 174; p. 260; p. 269.
Fendt, gene, “whose ‘Fear and Trembling’?,” in Fear and Trembling, ed. by robert
Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 6), p. 180; p. 182.
Fenves, peter, “Chatter.” Language and History in Kierkegaard, stanford, California:
stanford university press 1993, pp. 174–84.
gellman, Jerome i., The Fear, the Trembling and the Fire. Kierkegaard and Hasidic
Masters on the Binding of Isaac, lanham, maryland: university press of america
1984.
—— Abraham! Abraham! Kierkegaard and the Hasidim on the Binding of Isaac,
aldershot: ashgate 2003, pp. 73ff.
university press 1996, p. 4; p. 23; p. 86; pp. 118–19; p. 121; p. 165.
green, ronald m., “ ‘developing’ Fear and Trembling,” in The Cambridge Companion
to Kierkegaard, ed. by alastair hannay and gordon marino, Cambridge: Cambridge
—— “enough is enough! Fear and Trembling is Not about ethics,” Journal of
Religious Ethics, vol. 21, no. 2, 1993, pp. 191–209.
pp. 33–5; p. 38.
James, david and douglas moggach, “Bruno Bauer: Biblical narrative, Freedom and
anxiety,” in Kierkegaard and His German Contemporaries, tome ii, Theology,
ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2007 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources,
Reception, and Resources, vol. 6), pp. 1–21.
Kjældgaard, lasse horne, Mellemhverandre. Tableau og fortælling i Søren
Kierkegaards pseudonyme skrifter, hellerup: Forlaget spring 2001.
law, david, “Cheap grace and the Cost of discipleship in Kierkegaard’s For Self-
Examination,” in For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourself!, ed. by robert
Levy-Valensi, E. Amado, “Kierkegaard et Abraham, ou le non-sacrifice d’Isaac,” in
Kierkegaard, ed. by Jean Brun, [special number of] Obliques, paris: eurographic
1981, pp. 119–27.
mackey, louis, “the view from pisgah: a reading of Fear and Trembling,” in
Kierkegaard: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. by Josiah thompson, new
York: anchor Books 1972, pp. 394–428.
mooney, edward, F., “abraham and dilemma: Kierkegaard’s teleological
suspension revisited,” International Journal of the Philosophy of Religion, vol.
19, 1986, pp. 23–41.
—— Knights of Faith and Resignation: Reading Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling,
albany, new York: state university of new York press 1991 (SUNY Series in
Philosophy).
mura, gasparre, Angoscia ed esistenza. Da Kierkegaard a Moltmann. Giobbe e la
“sofferenza di Dio,” rome: Città nuova 1982.
reitzel 1983, pp. 7–9; pp. 73–4.
patterson, david, “abraham and Kierkegaard: a new approach to the Father of
Faith,” Journal of Religious Studies, vol. 8, 1980, pp. 8–19.
pattison, george, “d. F. strauss: Kierkegaard and radical demythologization,” in
Kierkegaard and His German Contemporaries, tome ii, Theology, ed. by Jon
stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2007 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception,
and Resources, vol. 6), pp. 233–57.
pepper, thomas, “abraham: who Can possibly understand him?” in Kierkegaard
Studies Yearbook, 1996, pp. 211–39.
perkins, robert l., “abraham’s silence aesthetically Conceived,” in Fear and
Trembling, ed. by robert l. perkins, macon, georgia: mercer university press
1993 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 6), pp. 155–76.
georgia: mercer university press 1997, p. 127; p. 167; pp. 171–3; p. 188.
poole, roger, Kierkegaard: The Indirect Communication, Charlottesville, virginia:
university of virginia press 1993, pp. 115–125.
Pyper, Hugh, “The Apostle, the Genius and the Monkey: Reflections on Kierkegaard’s
‘the mirror of the word,’ ” in Kierkegaard on Art and Communication, ed. by
george pattison, new York: st. martin’s press 1992, pp. 132–3.
rocca, ettore, “la parola della fede,” in his Tra estetica e teologia. Studi
kierkegaardiani, pisa: edizioni ets 2004 (Philosophica, vol. 12), pp. 87–98.
strowick, elisabeth, “die doppelbewegung der unendlichkeit,” in her Passagen
der Wiederholung. Kierkegaard—Lacan—Freud, stuttgart and weimar: metzler
1999, pp. 151–230.
taylor, mark C., “Journeys to moriah: hegel vs. Kierkegaard,” Harvard Theological
Review, vol. 70, nos. 3–4, 1977, pp. 305–26.
230 Iben Damgaard
—— “sounds of silence,” in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling: Critical Appraisals,
ed. by robert l. perkins, university, alabama: university of alabama press
1981, pp. 165–87.
—— Altarity, Chicago: Chicago university press 1987, pp. 3–33.
thust, martin, “das vorbild des glaubens, der gehorsam der ausnahme: der ritter
abraham,” in his Sören Kierkegaard. Der Dichter des Religiösen. Grundlagen
eines Systems der Subjektivität, munich: C.h. Beck 1931, pp. 82–106.
viallaneix, nelly, “Kierkegaard: abraham, isaac et le belier,” Revue Catholique
Internationale Communio, vol. 10, no. 3, 1985, pp. 79–92.
Kierkegaard’s use of the old testament:
From literary resource to the word of god
lori unger Brandt
I. Introduction
peppered liberally throughout Kierkegaard’s works are references and allusions

to scripture, a feature of his texts that few scholars thought worthy of sustained
attention until recently.1 Perhaps his prolific use of Scripture has been overlooked
because Kierkegaard made no claim to being an academic exegete and ignored many
of the historical-critical interpretive practices that were emerging in his day as being
too impersonal and thus unhelpful. his reading strategies ostensibly seem unusual
compared to the scholarly methods of biblical interpretation and theological inquiry
that were becoming common in northern european universities. this omission of
attention to Kierkegaard’s use of scripture has deprived readers of Kierkegaard of
meaningful engagement with one of his most basic affirmations: that the meaning
of scripture becomes most clear when it is imaginatively appropriated into the life
of faith. Certainly the lack of willingness among scholars to explore the centrality of
scripture in Kierkegaard’s thought has led to the overlooking of many subtleties in
his use of scripture and the way that it functions within his theological arguments and
rhetorical strategies. this essay, appearing in the midst of a burgeoning interest in
Kierkegaard’s scriptural habits, will explore Kierkegaard’s various uses of scripture
with a particular focus on the old testament.
First we might question whether Kierkegaard found anything authoritative in
the old testament at all. Certainly it can be said that he favored the new testament,
pointing Christians consistently and insistently toward Christ as the ultimate
paradigm for Christian living. he even wrote, “it is not easy to have both the old
and the new testaments, for the o. t. contains altogether different categories.”2
in this passage he equates the old testament with the hope for worldly felicity, a
hope that it is at odds with the Christian imperative to renounce the world in order
1
see, for example, l. Joseph rosas, Scripture in the Thought of Søren Kierkegaard,
nashville, tennessee: Broadman & holman publishers 1994; timothy polk, The Biblical
Kierkegaard: Reading by the Rule of Faith, macon, georgia: mercer university press 1997;
Jolita pons, Stealing a Gift: Kierkegaard’s Pseudonyms and the Bible, new York: Fordham
university press 2004; matthias engelke, Kierkegaard und das alte Testament. Zum Einfluss
der alttestamentarischen Bücher auf Kierkegaards Gesamtwerk, rheinbach: Cmz-verlag
1998 (Arbeiten zur Theologiegeschichte, vol. 3).
2
SKS 18, 188, JJ:146 / KJN 2, 174.
232 Lori Unger Brandt
to gain eternity. according to Kierkegaard, the Christian recognition that suffering
is an intrinsic aspect of a faithful life is obscured or even contradicted in the old
testament’s expectation of worldly blessings.3 the worldliness of the old testament
is so troubling to Kierkegaard that he writes, “in Christendom one finds that almost
all of the more pious errors are connected with elevating the old testament to the
level of equality with the new testament, instead of the new testament always
presupposing the old testament in order to make itself negatively recognizable.”4
in this apparent tendency to downplay the old testament Kierkegaard was the
product of his lutheran environment. ever since the reformation, the lutheran
identification of the essential gospel message with the theme of justification by grace
had tended to privilege the new testament narratives of Jesus’ atoning work and
paul’s articulation of a theology of grace. 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, or as expressing the theme of “law” that served as the necessary
presupposition for the theme of grace. For example, for luther, the psalms were
crucially significant because they implicitly proclaim salvation through Christ, and
the law was vital because it awakens an awareness of the need for grace.5 in different
ways, both the enlightenment and pietism contributed to the continuation of this
tendency to accord a much higher priority to the new testament. philipp Jacob spener
(1635–1705), the influential Pietist writer who encouraged a renewed concern for
the experiential dimension of the Christian life, emphasized the cultivation of faith
through the reading of the epistles of the new testament, which describe, exemplify,
and encourage the growth of heart-felt identification with Christ, and consequently
tended to ignore the old testament.6 at most the old testament articulated the
promises of God, many of which had been fulfilled in the New Testament, and some
of which were still to be fulfilled in the future consummation.7 august hermann
Francke (1663–1727), another widely-read pietist, revitalized the deeply engrained
lutheran propensity to search for Christ as the true although often hidden subject
matter of every portion of the old testament.8 Friedrich schleiermacher (1768–
1834), in many ways a product of pietism, may have pushed this trajectory to its
logical conclusion by suggesting that at the experiential level the Christian faith was
3
see paul martens, “authority, apostleship, and the difference between Kierkegaard’s
old and new testaments,” in The Book on Adler, ed. by robert l. perkins, macon, georgia:
mercer university press 2008 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 24), pp. 121–41.
4
SKS 25, 365, nB29:102 / JP 2, 2225.
5
see, for example, martin luther, Dictata super Psalterium, in Werke. Kritische
Gesamtausgabe, weimar: hermann Böhlau 1883ff., vol. 55, part i, pp. 6–25.
6
philipp Jakob spener, Das nötige und nützliche Lesen der Heiligen Schrifft: mit
einigen darzu dienlichen Erinnerungen in einer Vorrede über die Bibel, Frankfurt and leipzig:
heinichen 1704, pp. 1–159.
7
philipp Jakob spener, Vertheidigung des Zeugnüsses von der Ewigen Gottheit Unsers
Herrn Jesu Christi, als des eingebohrnen Sohns vom Vater, Frankfurt: zunner 1706.
8
see B. Augusti Hermanni Franckii Introductio in Psalterium Generalis et Specialis,
halle: orphanotropheum 1734.
Kierkegaard’s Use of the Old Testament 233
essentially different from the religion expressed in the old testament.9 meanwhile,
the Enlightenment’s disparagement of non-universal, culturally specific behavioral
codes (such as the dietary laws in hebrew scriptures) reinforced the habit of
relegating the old testament to a secondary status in the canon, as can be seen in
Johann salomo semler’s (1725–91) contention that the “word of god” is absent
in most portions of the old testament.10 an interpretive trajectory represented by
Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette (1780–1849) qualified this marginalization of
the old testament by construing the ancient texts as the historical record of the
gradual maturation of certain religious concepts that possess universal value, such
as the holiness of god.11 however, the parochialism and ethnic particularism of post-
exilic Judaism inhibited the blossoming of these concepts, which only came into
full bloom in the New Testament. Even here the Old Testament’s significance was
a function of its role as a precursor to the new testament. hans lassen martensen
(1808–84), Kierkegaard’s theology tutor and later bishop, agreed with de wette that
the hebrew scriptures exhibit a progressive revelation of divine truth, arguing that
the old testament is a culturally limited expression of the general truth that god
seeks reconciliation with all people.12 like his ancestors in the lutheran tradition,
martensen interpreted the old testament typologically, seeing individual passages as
shadows and figures of Jesus’ manifestation of God. All these multifarious influences
contributed to a theological ethos that relegated the old testament to a subordinate
status and rendered its significance problematic. Kierkegaard’s orientation toward
the new testament was no accident.
Yet despite this preference for the new testament, Kierkegaard wrestled
significantly with texts from the Old Testament time and again, seeking to glean
meaning from its pages. he obviously knew the old testament well, for he quoted it
variously and widely, at times throwing in an off-hand allusion to an obscure passage,
and at other times delving deeply and prolongedly into a particular text, engaging its
pathos and agonizing at length over its significance for the Christian life. Sometimes
he interpreted old testament texts from the perspective of the new testament,
manifesting the form of biblical supersessionism and hermeneutic christocentrism
that saturated his theological environment, and other times he allowed old testament
stories to speak for themselves. For a writer and theologian who clearly called
the church to account for falling away from its new testament paradigm, what is
Kierkegaard’s purpose for wrestling at all with the old testament?
understanding Kierkegaard’s use of the old testament is further complicated
by his use of various and diverse authorial voices and personae, each of which has
9
Friedrich schleiermacher, Der christliche Glaube nach den Grundsä[t]zen der
evangelischen Kirche im Zusammenhange dargestellt, vols. 1–2, 3rd unchanged ed., Berlin: g.
reimer 1835–36, vol. 2, pp. 346–51 (AKSB 258).
10
2nd ed., halle: hemmerde 1776 [1771–75], vol. 1, pp. 28–36.
11
1833, vol. 1, pp. 7–179 (ASKB 80).
12
hans lassen martensen, Den christelige Dogmatik, C.a. reitzel 1849, pp. 228–35
(ASKB 653).
a unique approach to the text and a distinct reason for using scripture. these voices
embody the various perspectives and approaches to reading scripture prevalent in
his culture, taking on by turns the character of a consummate aesthete, the respected
voice of a paragon of civic piety and reasonableness, and the voice of an individual
who ambivalently considers the possibility of faith, to name a few. assuming that
his readers embody these perspectives, and that these perspectives may impede the
development of genuine Christian passions, Kierkegaard adopts various personae,
purporting to share his readers’ assumptions and biases in order that he might
demonstrate their folly and free them from their power.13
as l. Joseph rosas demonstrates, when Kierkegaard writes as an aesthete, he
alludes to scripture as he would to shakespeare, with no particular appeal to its
authority.14 in these instances, he might as easily have replaced these allusions with
a secular reference with no change in his meaning or purpose.15 as the respected
voice of society’s commonsense and ethical values, as with Judge william in Either/
Or, part two, Kierkegaard claims scripture as authoritative in the sense that it
“underscores the ethical universal,” smoothing over apparent inconsistencies and
harmonizing difficult passages in order to preserve the natural valuational order of
the universe.16 others of Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms, like de silentio in Fear and
Trembling, dwell on the stories of the old testament, at times agonizing over the
repellant and attractive dimensions of the faith exhibited by old testament characters
and wondering how one could ever achieve a faith such as theirs.17 all of these differ
from Kierkegaard’s own voice as articulated in his treatment of Job in his earlier
edifying discourses18 as well as in his later treatment of david and nathan in For
Self-Examination,19 which, though not devoid of the indirect strategies and careful
construction of authorial personae evidenced in his pseudonym works, at least seem
to more explicitly express his own espoused convictions. these personae, given
their well-defined dispositions and biases, portray irreconcilably different postures
toward scripture in general and the old testament in particular.
Kierkegaard’s various voices, in one breath saying one thing and in the next
saying something markedly different, make it rather difficult to discern any coherent
reading strategy when it comes to his treatment of the old testament. one must
take care not to ascribe to Kierkegaard attributes and positions that he meant only
to caricature. how might one discern what Kierkegaard really thought about the use
of scripture during any period of his career, particularly what he thought about the
appropriate employment of the old testament?
13
see lee C. Barrett, Kierkegaard, nashville, tennessee: abingdon press 2010,
pp. 17–24.
14
rosas, Scripture in the Thought of Søren Kierkegaard, p. 61. see, for example, the
host of literary allusions, biblical and non-biblical, in “diapsalmata,” in SKS 2, 27–52 / EO1,
1–43.
15
rosas, Scripture in the Thought of Søren Kierkegaard, p. 61.
16
ibid., p. 62.
17
SKS 4, 105–19 / FT, 9–23.
18
SKS 5, 116–28 / EUD, 109–24.
19
SKS 13, 64–6 / FSE, 37–9.
in order to get at the differences among Kierkegaard’s various voices concerning
the ways that they treat the old testament, i propose to use david Kelsey’s set
of hermeneutical questions as outlined in Proving Doctrine: Uses of Scripture
in Modern Theology.20 Kelsey designed his questions having observed the odd
phenomenon that while many theologians make use of scripture, their reasons for
doing so and what they mean to accomplish by its use can vary substantially. as
such, he proposes a series of questions intended to diagnose the use of scripture
in a theological argument and thereby distinguish one use from another. i will use
them to diagnose how Kierkegaard in his various voices uses scripture in general,
focusing on his use of old testament texts in particular. Kelsey’s questions are as
follows:
1. what aspects of scripture are taken to be authoritative? that is, does the author appeal
to the doctrinal teachings in scripture, to the historical reports, to the poetic symbols,
to the narrative patterns, to the paradigmatic characters, to the moral codes, or what?
2. what is it about this aspect of scripture that makes it authoritative? is it, for example,
authoritative because it is divinely inspired? or was the experience of the author
uniquely profound? or is the truth of the text corroborated by human reason and
experience? or does the text function successfully in the life of a community?
3. what logical force is given to the text? For example, does it demand obedience to a
precept? does it inspire the emulation of an exemplary character? does it evoke a
certain type of experiential response? Does it invite reflection about human life? Does
it teach theological propositions?
4. how is the cited scripture brought to bear on theological proposals so as to authorize
them? For example, are they used as direct evidence to support a conclusion about
matters of faith and practice? or do they function more indirectly as background
assumptions that help structure a general frame of reference?21
while Kelsey intended these questions to apply to the use of scripture as a whole,
we will restrict our inquiry to representative samples of Kierkegaard’s uses of the
old testament as illustrated by the aesthetic sensibility of the young man in Either/
Or, part one, the ethical perspective of Judge william in Either/Or, part two, the
uncertain and awe-struck attitude of Johannes de silentio in Fear and Trembling, and
the more exhortatory voice in “the lord gave, the lord hath taken away,” in Four
Upbuilding Discourses of 1843. each of these personae would answer Kelsey’s
questions differently; engaging them through each of these lenses will offer a sense
of Kierkegaard’s various purposes and intentions in his old testament references.22
doing so will bring into relief the vast differences among them and demonstrate a
20
david Kelsey, Proving Doctrine: Uses of Scripture in Modern Theology, philadelphia:
trinity press international 1999.
21
ibid., p. 15.
22
other scholars, such as rosas, have applied Kelsey’s framework to Kierkegaard’s
writing, assuming that it is possible to reduce Kierkegaard’s use of scripture to a simple
formula. Kierkegaard’s multiple personalities, however, make such a singular application of
Kelsey impossible, since his use of scripture is as variable and internally divergent as his
personae. see rosas, Scripture in the Thought of Søren Kierkegaard, pp. 147–9.
trajectory in his work, pointing toward a mode of engaging scripture that was, for
him, more authentic and more reflective of what he understood to be true Christian
practice.
II. What Aspects of Scripture are Taken to be Authoritative?
For the aesthete, the answer to this first question is, quite simply, any feature of the
text that can capture the imagination or spark creative reflection. For the aesthete,
the old testament, and all of scripture for that matter, has no regulative authority in
regard to the conduct of life. it is not the moral precepts, behavioral codes, or didactic
portions that have power for him. rather, it is the Bible’s intriguing metaphors,
images, and anecdotes that attract his attention. The Bible has no more significance
than any other literary reference that the aesthete might make; he could just as easily
use don Juan or shakespeare to illustrate his point if the reference were suitable.
he tosses around allusions and references to scripture as he might throw confetti,
adorning his argument with witticisms derived from cultural trivia. For example,
when questioned whether he has remained faithful to his aesthetic ideal, he playfully
yet resolutely insists that the secret is “like samson’s hair, which no delilah shall
wrest from me.”23 elsewhere, he describes the genesis of boredom, improvising on
the adam and eve story and stating, “the gods were bored, therefore they created
human beings. adam was bored because he was alone; therefore eve was created.
since that moment, boredom entered the world.”24 these references illustrate the
aesthete’s delightfully indifferent posture toward the old testament; scripture for
him is a literary foil for his witty repartee and nothing more.
the use of the Bible as a source of illustrations of human passions and actions was
by no means unique to Kierkegaard’s “aesthetic” pseudonyms. For decades the Bible
had been treated as a rich reservoir of examples of human foibles, vices, and virtues
by the influential authors of the amorphous and multi-faceted Romantic movement.
in their pages the Bible was used in the same manner as shakespeare’s plays or
greek and roman mythology. the old testament was a particularly fertile resource
for their dramatic purposes, for the characters in the old testament loved and hated
with passionate intensity. Kierkegaard was very familiar with this way of using the
Bible, for he devoted a great deal of attention to the works of Friedrich schlegel
(1772–1829), whose complete works he owned and commented upon, in which this
tendency is obvious.25 in his essays, poetry, and translations schlegel could jump from
old testament stories to hindu mythology and greek legends, treating them as being
on a par. this habit of treating much of the old testament as another mythological
expression of primitive human experience, akin to the lore of the ancient greeks and
egyptians, had been indirectly fostered by the work of the biblical scholar Johann
gottfried eichhorn (1752–1827), who regarded myths, including the mythic patterns
23
SKS 2, 424 / EO1, 437. see Judges 16.
24
SKS 2, 276 / EO1, 286. see gen 1–2.
25
see Friedrich Schlegel’s sämmtliche Werke, vols. 1–10, vienna: Jakob mayer
1822–25, vol. 9, pp. 199–312; vol. 10, pp. 267–356 (ASKB 1816–1825). see Kierkegaard’s
discussion of schlegel’s irony in SKS 1, 302–15 / CI, 265–79.
in genesis, as the primal language of humankind.26 eichhorn shared this fascination
with the poetically expressive, mythic language of the old testament with Johann
gottfried herder (1744–1803) whose works Kierkegaard owned.27 the romantic
spirit, including its tendency to assimilate the old testament to other mysterious
ancient literature, pervaded the ethos of golden age Copenhagen and would have
been part of the cultural air that Kierkegaard breathed.28 the aesthete’s use of the
old testament as a reservoir of literary allusions, many of them of a mythic sort,
is an extreme expression of a widespread cultural phenomenon with many roots,
including roots in biblical studies.
Kierkegaard’s Judge william is another matter, however. Contrary to the
aesthete, he treats scripture with respect, quoting the text with reverence and with
all seriousness. he is more selective than the aesthete and typically appeals to
particular aspects of scripture: the moral precepts and stories of virtuous behavior.
which passages of the old testament he selects, however, depends upon how well
they correspond to his prior ethical commitments. in the case of Either/Or, part two,
he chooses his authoritative canon accordingly, lifting out passages that highlight
his ethical program. in that volume, Judge william argues convincingly against the
young aesthete’s single-minded pursuit of aesthetic fulfillment as an end-in-itself,
suggesting that while aesthetic happiness is an appropriate and desirable end within
a marriage relationship, it can only be obtained in any lasting way through the pursuit
of duty. as such, he uses and evaluates old testament passages according to how
well they stack up against his program of synthesizing ethics and aesthetics. For
example, he cites genesis 2:18, saying, “and god said, i will make a companion
for adam,” an expression which he says, “has just as much esthetic warmth as it has
truth.”29 however, he prefers the church’s emphasis of the verses following genesis
2:18. although the aforementioned expression already “has just as much esthetic
warmth as it has truth,” the church adds the even more aesthetically delightful
and ethically appropriate teaching from genesis 2:24 that “a man shall leave his
father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife.”30 this addendum pleases the
Judge because it defies our expectation that a woman, being weaker and being the
derivative companion, would be expected to leave her family to become one with
her husband. instead, the scriptural expression takes a gallant turn, elevating the
woman’s importance and thereby increasing the aesthetic value of the woman and
the value of the text as a support for the synthesis of ethics and aesthetics. the Judge
ignores the innumerable passages in the old testament that ostensibly legitimate the
subservience of women. his prior commitment to the integration of the ethical and
26
Johann gottfried eichhorn, Urgeschichte, in Repertorium fur biblische und
morgenländische Litteratur, vols. 1–18, leipzig: weidmann 1777–86, vol. 4, pp. 129–256.
27
see Johann Gottfried Herder’s sämmtliche Werke. Zur Religion und Theologie, vols.
1–18, stuttgart and tübingen: J.g. Cotta 1827–30, vol. 2, pp. 175–280 (ASKB 1676–1684).
28
see george pattison, Kierkegaard, Religion and the Nineteenth-Century Crisis of
Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge university press 2002, pp. 116–36.
29
SKS 3, 96 / EO2, 92.
30
ibid.
aesthetic dimensions of life determines his functional canon in regard to the issue
of marriage.
Judge william’s logically prior commitment to the integration of the ethical and
the aesthetic is further confirmed by the notable absence of other biblical texts that do
not square with his argument that marriage is an ethical and aesthetic good. nowhere
in his defense of marriage as an ethical and aesthetic good does he address paul’s
affirmation that it is good for a man not to marry,31 nor Jesus’ retort to the pharisees
that “in the resurrection (people) neither marry nor are given in marriage.”32 though
he saturates his argument with scriptural references from both testaments to the duty
to marry and to an affirmation of the aesthetic delights of marriage, he tellingly
chooses to completely ignore these texts that contradict his argument entirely. For
the Judge, only those scriptures which align with his prior ethical and rational
commitments hold any authority.
Judge william’s approach to the Bible, selectively appropriating certain didactic
passages as examples of moral precepts and values, is similar to a tendency that had
been present in continental protestant european theology for at least 75 years. Johann
Salomo Semler (1725–91), an extraordinarily influential professor at Halle, proposed
that Christian faith, like all religion, is primarily the inner intuitive conviction of the
truth of universal moral principles and values.33 on the basis of this claim, semler
distinguished the historically conditioned dimensions of scripture, appropriate only
for the cultural contexts of ancient civilizations, from the enduringly authoritative
aspects.34 accordingly, for semler the only criterion for determining the abiding
canonicity of a biblical text was its capacity to express a universal moral truth. only
the passages that express such truths can be taken as truly inspired and authoritative.
semler tended to dismiss the books of ruth, Chronicles, esther, ezra, and nehemiah
and all the genealogies as being little more than the historical records of an ancient
people,35 while he valued psalms, proverbs, ecclesiates, Job, and the later prophets
as repositories of universal moral and spiritual truths.36 this hermeneutic trajectory
was extended by Johann philipp gabler (1753–1826) at Jena37 and georg lorenz
Bauer (1755–1806) at altdorf,38 whose works identify the essentially authoritative
portions of scripture with those passages that can be harmonized with self-evident
moral and religious truths. Kierkegaard would have been familiar with these views
31
see 1 Cor 7:1.
32
see mt 22:30.
33
semler, Abhandlung von freier Untersuchung des Canon.
34
ibid., vol. 1, pp. 58–61.
35
ibid., vol. 1, pp. 27–36.
36
ibid., vol. 1, pp. 42–63.
37
Johann philipp gabler, “de iusto discrimene theologiae biblicae et dogmaticae
regundisque recte utriusque finibus,” in D. Johann Philipp Gabler’s kleinere theologische
Schriften. Opuscula Academica, ed. by theodor august gabler and Johann philipp gabler,
vols. 1–2, ulm: stettin 1831, vol. 2, pp. 179–98.
38
georg lorenz Bauer, Handbuch der Geschichte der hebräischen Nation von ihrer
Entstehung bis zur Zerstörung ihres Staates, vols. 1–2, nürnberg and altdorf: J.C. monrath
and J.F. Kussler 1800–04, vol. 1, pp. 1–42.
through the lectures of henrik nicolai Clausen (1793–1877)39 and through the
articles contained in the three volumes of Zeitschrift für spekulative Theologie which
he owned.40 moreover, a tendency to equate Christianity with the moral principles of
northern european culture was evident in Balle’s Catechism, one of the basic texts
used in Kierkegaard’s childhood religious formation, which had been written by the
mildly rationalistic and very civic-minded Bishop nicolai Balle (1744–1816).41
unlike Judge william, but like Kierkegaard’s aesthete, Johannes de silentio
does not privilege old testament passages that express absolute or universal ethical
imperatives or duties. indeed, he makes no claim to being a Christian at all and
his perspective is that of an outsider looking in. he does not align himself with a
community that looks to the Bible to find didactic passages that would be normative
for faith and practice. Yet he is inexplicably drawn in by the scriptural depictions of
faithful individuals, particularly by one story in the old testament, and is captivated
by its drama and endlessly fascinated as much by what it does not say as by what it
does say.
For de silentio, the pseudonymous author of Fear and Trembling, if any of
Scripture is pertinent to human life or is worthy of intensive reflection, it is certain
types of stories in the Bible, stories with characters and plotlines, into which a person
can immerse oneself and wonder what one might feel or do in the same situation.
The characters with whom he identifies become paradigms of faith, persons he
himself never expects to be able to emulate, but whom he holds up as paragons of
genuine faith in god. while he makes other references and allusions to scripture, his
most characteristic use of an old testament text is his angst-ridden contemplation
of abraham taking isaac to slaughter him as an offering at god’s command.42 what
confounds de silentio is precisely that the story flies in the face of the most basic
ethical universal: the duty to protect offspring and ensure the well-being of future
generations. De silentio is astonished, horrified, and fascinated that a father might be
willing to kill his own son, the very fulfillment of God’s promise, at the command of
that same god.43 unlike the Judge, he cannot simply write off the text because it is
out of line with his ethical priorities. rather, he is compelled to struggle deeply as he
imagines how abraham must have struggled, wondering how he can remain faithful
to a god who would ask such a thing of him. as such, he turns the story over and
over in his mind, finding himself sleepless as he imagines Abraham’s motivations
and state of mind. did he attempt to shelter god from blame, thinking it better for
39
SKS 19, 9–13, not1:2.
40
see Zeitschrift für spekulative Theologie, vols. 1–3, ed. by Bruno Bauer, Berlin:
dümmler 1836–38 (ASKB 354–357); see especially: Bruno Bauer “der mosaische ursprung
der gesetzgebung des pentateuch,” vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 140–81; Bruno Bauer, “der alt-
testamentliche hintergrund im evangelium des Johannes,” vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 158–204;
Bruno Bauer, “die neueren Commentare zu den psalmen, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 217–52; Bruno
Bauer, “die urgeschichte der menschheit nach dem biblischen Berichte der genesis, kritisch
untersucht,” vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 125–210.
41
nicolai edinger Balle, Lærebog i den evangelisk-christelige Religion indrettet til
Brug i de danske Skoler, Copenhagen: J.h. schultz 1824, pp. 1–120 (ASKB 183).
42
SKS 4, 105–19 / FT, 9–23. see gen 22:1–19.
43
SKS 4, 154–5 / FT, 60–1.
isaac to believe his father to be a monster than to lose faith in god? did he resent
God’s directive, silently obedient but forever after joyless? Was he horrified at his
willingness, agonizing over the question of which was the greater sin: to be willing
to sacrifice the child of his heart or to disobey in order to be true to a father’s duty
toward his son?44 de silentio ponders all of these things, marveling at abraham’s
faith and wondering who could ever understand it.45 though he himself will never
comprehend the faith of such a hero of faith and is not himself bound by the authority
of abraham’s paradigm, he understands deeply that comprehension will never come
without real struggle. it is most appropriate, he contends, to be made sleepless by
abraham, even if one never hopes to understand.46
Kierkegaard, when writing in his own voice, most often employs a similar
strategy to that of de silentio in dealing with a biblical text. that is, he also regards
narrative paradigms as being the aspect of scripture that holds the most authority.
the difference, for Kierkegaard, is that the authority he ascribes to those paradigms
is real; he actually thinks a Christian can and should be bound by the examples
set by persons of faith as narrated in scripture, whether they function as positive
examples of attitudes and actions to be emulated or as negative examples of attitudes
and actions to be eschewed. For Kierkegaard, paradigms are most profound when
they confound ordinary human commonsensical assumptions and expectations, for
it is within the paradoxical tension between biblical paradigm and common sense
that true faith arises. his discourse on Job is a prime example of Kierkegaard’s
hermeneutical priorities.47 Job, having lost everything and having every reason to
curse god, chooses instead to open his heart despite his pain and to respond in
gratitude to god.48 like de silentio, Kierkegaard imagines different responses that
Job could have chosen, especially since it was god and no human agent who took all
that was dear from him. Kierkegaard wonders how Job was able to summon the faith
to respond in blessing rather than vitriol. however, unlike de silentio, Kierkegaard
concludes that Job’s response to god, far from being incomprehensible and therefore
untenable, is to be an example to all people. despite the paradox, or maybe because
of it, Kierkegaard insists that every Christian should be able to walk in the valley of
the shadow of death and still bless god. For Kierkegaard, Job is a pattern for all to
learn from and to follow. in Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, Kierkegaard
makes this explicit, describing Job as “one of those glorious prototypes,” and as
“a tried and tested person who passed the test” as we all should strive to do.49 For
Kierkegaard, when writing in his own voice, the old testament is a fertile source
of these paradigms, paradoxically confounding human categories and pointing the
church to a new and deeper relationship with god.
44
SKS 4, 105–11 / FT, 9–14.
45
SKS 4, 111 / FT, 14.
46
SKS 4, 125 / FT, 28.
47
søren Kierkegaard, “the lord gave, and the lord took away, Blessed Be the name
of the lord,” in SKS 5, 116–28 / EUD, 109–24.
48
SKS 5, 124–8 / EUD, 121–4. see Job 1:21.
49
SKS 8, 379 / UD, 284.
Kierkegaard’s own use of the old testament, using biblical characters to
manifest various aspects of the dialectic of sin and faith, may have roots in one
aspect of the Pietist movement that figured so prominently in his religious formation.
For such proto-pietist authors as Johann arndt (1555–1621), the religious struggles
of the characters in the old testament, including abraham, david, and solomon,
prefigure the tensions between sin and faith in the Christian life.50 Consequently, the
proper context for interpreting the old testament is the journey of the individual
Christian from unbelief to sanctification. Kierkegaard owned collections of Arndt’s
works,51 and books of pietist hymns and devotional literature, including the writings
of gerhard teerstegen (1697–1769).52 this tradition of applying old testament
themes to the development of piety was continued in a more academic fashion by
Friedrich August Gotttreu Tholuck (1799–1877), who was influenced in his biblical
studies by schleiermacher’s focus on Christian subjectivity.53 hermann olshausen
(1796–1839), whose biblical commentaries Kierkegaard used extensively, practiced
this hermeneutic method of treating old testament characters as paradigms and
types for the Christian life. For example, he approvingly followed the lead of paul
in regarding the characters of sarah and hagar from genesis as being symbols of
the tensions in the Christian soul.54 Kierkegaard’s non-pseudonymous tendency to
concentrate on old testament stories of faithful and faithless individuals as the most
essential portions of the texts was not entirely without precedent.
III. What is it about this Aspect of the Old Testament that Makes it Authoritative?
not only do Kierkegaard’s various personae appeal to different aspects of the old
Testament, but they do so for different reasons. They find the Old Testament’s
significance and/or authority to be rooted in very different considerations. For the
aesthete, the text does not have authority because it is sanctioned by a community or
because its source is divine revelation. rather, its images have an intrinsic evocative
power that is effective in witty repartee. the cultural familiarity of these images
adds to their utility as evocative conversational references. For example, the author
of the “diapsalmata” refers to the crossing of the red sea, and the uniform redness
50
Johann arndt, Sämtliche geistreiche Bücher vom wahren Christentum, welche
handeln von heilsamer Buße, herzlicher Reue und Leid über die Sünde, wahrem Glauben,
auch heiligem Leben und Wandel der rechten wahren Christen, 2nd new ed., tübingen: Berger
1737 (ASKB 276).
51
ibid.; see also Johann arndt, Fire Bøger om den sande Christendom, new translation,
Christiania: Chr. grøndahl 1829 (ASKB 277).
52
see Des gottseligen Arbeiters im Weinberge des Herrn: Gerhard Tersteegen’s…
gesammelte Schriften, parts 1–8 in vols. 1–4, vol. 1, stuttgart: l.F. rieger, vols. 2–4, stuttgart:
Becher und müller 1844–45 (ASKB 827–830).
53
Friedrich august gotttreu tholuck, Das Alte Testament im Neuen Testament: Ueber
die Citate des Alten Testaments im Neuen Testament und Ueber den Opfer- und Priesterbegriff
im Alten und im Neuen Testamente, hamburg: perthes 1836, pp. 1–121 (ASKB 832).
54
hermann olshausen, Biblischer Commentar über sämmtliche Schriften des Neuen
Testaments, vols. 1–4, 3rd ed., Königsberg: unzer 1837–40, vol. 4, pp. 80–98 (ASKB 96–100).
see gen 15:16 and gal 4:21–31.
of the water in which the egyptians drowned, in conveying a sense of the uniformity
of his mood simply because the image is intriguingly suggestive and his audience
is familiar with the episode.55 used craftily, even obscure references from the old
testament can delight his audience and impress his conversation partners. thus, its
literary potency and cultural familiarity make scripture useful, but these factors do
not require that it be used in any authoritative way.
Judge william ascribes some authority to scripture because it is a part of a grand
tradition; in his context it can be taken for granted that the Bible should function as a
necessary conversation partner in any dialogue of substance. as part of that tradition,
scripture must be reckoned with, both the new testament and the old, but at no time
does scripture shape the conversation. dialogue originates with his ethical ideals,
controlling the agenda and dictating priorities. as peter mehl indicates, the Judge’s
religious claims (and his use of scripture) strike one more as “a rhetorical effort
designed to sing the praises of a way of life” than as a necessary and contributing
factor in the formulating of the Christian life.56 For Judge william, it is rather a happy
moment when the dictates of scripture harmonize with what he already believes,
happy because he would like to treat scripture as having authority. however, such
authority is not based on any intrinsic feature of the text such as a divinely inspired
origin or the credentials of its authors. rather, scripture’s prominent place within
the dominant culture requires that he engage the text, and it gains authority only
as it is confirmed by his previously established ethical commitments. Parts of the
old testament can be taken as authoritative because they mesh with values and
principles his civic-minded culture already cherishes.
de silentio is very different, for the power of old testament stories such as the
near-sacrifice of Isaac is not based on their correspondence to a culture’s ethical
assumptions. de silentio seems surprised by his own captivation by the text and
is unsettled by his yearning for the kind of faith he finds described in its pages. He
comes to the text not intending for it to hold any necessary regulative authority for
his life. he does not say to himself that he must emulate abraham no matter what,
although he is keenly aware that the Christian tradition has treated abraham as a
paradigm of faith. rather, de silentio discovers that the story will not let him go. as
such, if there is anything about certain old testament stories that is authoritative for
de silentio, it is to be found in his experiential encounter with the text, as he struggles
unsuccessfully to place himself within the paradigms of faith that he finds there. The
paradoxical faith of Abraham, for example, is too much for de silentio to find viable,
but he is gripped by the very idea that anyone could have such a faith as abraham’s.
If anything in the Scriptures would be sufficiently authoritative to move him from
his silent observation, it would be the power of these paradigms of paradoxical faith
to stimulate strong feelings of attraction and repulsion. However, he finds them
55
SKS 2, 37 / EO1, 28.
56
peter J. mehl, “moral virtue, mental health, and happiness: the moral psychology
of Kierkegaard’s Judge william,” in Either/Or Part II, ed. by robert l. perkins, macon,
georgia: mercer university press 1995 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 4),
p. 182.
impossible to live out, despite his experience of a destabilizing encounter with them,
and thus does not take them to be normative for his own life.
Kierkegaard, writing in his own voice, has different reasons for engaging
scripture and the stories of the old testament in particular, although his reasons
have significant overlaps with the attraction of de silentio to the text. Contrary to all
three of the other voices illustrated here, Kierkegaard uses scripture because it is
effective in the formation of true Christians; said otherwise, it works. For example,
Kierkegaard writes glowingly of Job’s inner struggles, assuming that his readers
will initially feel the spiritual magnificence of Job and be attracted to the joy of his
final praising of God. Even when emphasizing the more sobering theme that Job
experienced the sorrow of being “continually in the wrong with god,”57 Kierkegaard
shows how this recognition of inadequacy is itself the basis of the joy of relying
upon god for all things. Kierkegaard relishes the paradoxical nature of these stories
because in the struggle to identify with them, Christians are expelled from their
complacency and urged toward a more authentic way of being. as timothy polk
suggests, Kierkegaard approaches the text as though it carried a contagion: if we
read it we might catch it,58 and in catching it, we might be transformed by it. through
the witness of these stories, says Kierkegaard, god helps us to understand them
despite their paradoxical quality and then helps us to do them.59 used appropriately,
passages from the old testament can do more than stimulate unsettling fascination,
as with de silentio; they can also help catalyze a desire and commitment to grow in
faith.
IV. What Logical Force is Given to the Text?
For the aesthete, the text has no authority to govern the conduct of life and thus has
no imperative force. old testament passages do not command, inspire, instruct, or
exhort. parts of the text do resonate, however, with his experience as a human being,
in the same way that other great works of literature might. in a moment of candor,
the aesthete declares in Either/Or, part one, “this is the reason my soul always turns
back to the old testament and to shakespeare. i feel that those who speak there are
at least human beings.”60 the logical force ascribed to the text in this instance is an
evocative force, eliciting a feeling of resonance with his experience of what it means
to be human, perhaps deepening that experience, but stopping short of challenging
him to reach beyond his own immediately given human experience.
For the Judge, although scripture has little compelling force by itself, it functions
in subordinate ways to shape the life of one who reads it. of course, rather than being
based primarily on moral directives in the biblical text, one’s ethical commitments
are logically prior to any reading of the text. engagement with scripture, for Judge
william, is governed by the evaluation of its validity in light of greater ethical
principles, and the text exerts no independent imperative force upon the reader. For
57
SKS 8, 380 / UD, 284.
58
polk, The Biblical Kierkegaard: Reading by the Rule of Faith, p. 177.
59
SKS 13, 43–4 / FSE, 14.
60
SKS 2, 38 / EO1, 28.
example, the Judge echoes proverbs 16:3261 in order to support his argument that
true heroism is manifested in the ordinary tasks of life, particularly in the assumption
of responsibility for one’s own character.62 the Judge does not base his argument
upon this biblical passage; the value of the cultivation of such personal virtues as
self-control is justified by a broader analysis of human experience. However, such
texts still function as supporting evidence in the development of arguments that draw
eclectically from Kant, hegel, and the prevailing moral ethos. the Judge affords
the text a corroborative force in the justification of moral and religious imperatives
and principles, acknowledging its usefulness on the basis of how well it reinforces
previously held beliefs.
de silentio, on the other hand, is fascinated by the prospect that the old testament
story could have a shaping force in an individual’s life, but the difficulty of that way
of life stays his hand. as such, the text exerts an ambivalent force upon him, teasing
him by opening up a compelling, though seemingly impossible, vision of a life lived
by faith. the paradoxes within the text take hold of his imagination and, though
he cannot bring himself to embrace them, are the causes of his agonized musings
on a sleepless night. de silentio sees this wrestling as an appropriate response to
the stories; if one cannot hope to become like one of the old testament heroes of
faith, one can at least dwell on the story, laboring heavily to understand it.63 here
the text functions to present a paradigm of an existential possibility in a way that
triggers imaginative engagement, including the daunting prospect of appropriating
that paradigm.
the question of force is perhaps where Kierkegaard’s non-pseudonymous voice
is most distinct from the others. For where the others to greater or lesser degrees
engage the text from a distance, Kierkegaard dives in, immersing himself fully in
the pathos of the biblical stories, imagining himself in the story and giving himself
to their paradoxes in order that he might be transformed. here the texts have
both a normative force and an evocative force in stimulating certain passions and
commitments. one should regard the texts as norms to govern one’s life and be open
to their transformative potential. For Kierkegaard, the meaning of the texts cannot be
grasped without paying attention to the passions and purposes appropriate to them, a
practice which should lead to a new capacity to live the Christian life.64 Kierkegaard
articulates this vision of the power of biblical texts to engender greater inwardness
and self-reflection in For Self-Examination. in order to read the text as it ought to
be read, one must first understand it to be the Word of God—that is, reading not as
an intellectual exercise that has little to do with the way one lives one’s life, but as
though it could speak into the very heart of a person—and then choose a posture of
obedience toward the text, allowing scripture to seep into one’s everyday life and
thus to be transformed by it.65 Kierkegaard writes, “if i open it [scripture]—any
61
“one who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and one whose temper is controlled
than one who captures a city.”
62
SKS 3, 282 / EO2, 298.
63
SKS 4, 104 / FT, 9.
64
see Barrett, Kierkegaard, pp. 18–19.
65
SKS 13, 58–9 / FSE, 31.
passage—it traps me at once; it asks me (indeed, it is as if it were god himself
who asked me): have you done what you read there?”66 scripture, he says, is to
be a mirror in which to see oneself, which becomes a mantra Kierkegaard repeats
over and over. “when you read god’s word,” he writes, “in everything you read,
continually to say to yourself: it is i to whom it is speaking; it is i about whom it is
speaking.”67 according to Kierkegaard, scripture for Christians has an imperative
force that compels its readers to subjectively engage with the text so as to enact what
one finds there.
interestingly, despite his lament that in the current state of Christendom “the
new testament is…no longer the guide (handbook) for Christians,”68 Kierkegaard
uses the old testament as well as the new to issue unconditional imperatives. For
Kierkegaard, old testament models of faith as well as those characters who fail
miserably as faithful followers of god function very well as a mirror. indeed, he
chooses to demonstrate his point with the story of King david, who, having stolen a
man’s wife and having sent him to be killed, failed to see himself in nathan’s parable
of the wealthy man who stole a poor man’s only lamb despite having flocks of his
own.69 according to Kierkegaard, nathan’s story functioned for King david as a
mirror, directing his gaze to the horrible truth of his actions and inviting him to a
new course of action. as such, when encountering the mirror of scripture, we are to
place ourselves within the stories and, having so entered, to identify ourselves with
the characters, saying, “it is i,” when the example set is in error, and, “it is not i,”
when the model is righteous.70
V. How is the Cited Scripture Brought to Bear on

Theological Proposals so as to Authorize Them?
in the history of Christianity, sometimes biblical motifs have functioned as direct

evidence for the justification of a proposed belief, ethical value, or course of action,
while at other times they have functioned more indirectly to create an ideological
environment in which decisions about faith and practice are made. Kelsey’s last
question, dealing with this difference, is moot for the first of our case studies. For the
aesthete, scripture authorizes nothing and so is never brought to bear in a normative
way, either directly or indirectly, on any proposal concerning the proper conduct of
life.
Judge william, on the other hand, does use texts selectively to support prior
ethical claims, but he does not treat them as decisive evidence from which a
conclusion about the moral life could be directly drawn. he does not argue: the old
testament stipulates such-and-such, and therefore we must engage in such-and-such
a behavior or adopt such-and-such a policy. rather, his citations function as a sort
of backing to reinforce his ethical commitments; they are background components
66
ibid.
67
SKS 13, 63 / FSE, 36.
68
SKS 13, 165 / M, 123.
69
SKS 13, 65 / FSE, 38.
70
SKS 13, 68 / FSE, 41.
of his general ethical sensibility. By buttressing his convictions (such as the role
of duty in the stabilization of intimate relationships), old testament allusions only
indirectly authorize proposals about the proper way to live, for it is the convictions
themselves that lead to behavioral proposals (such as the exhortation to the young
aesthete to get married). For the Judge, scripture carries no inherent unconditional
authority that might temper those ethical and religious convictions or dissuade him
from following them.
de silentio seems to wish that scripture could be brought to bear upon his life so
as to transform it, but despairs that it is impossible without miraculous empowerment
from god. Biblical stories do sketch out the contours of a way of life, only for de
silentio it is an inaccessible way of life. interestingly, here such stories as the near-
sacrifice of Isaac do function as direct evidence for the sketching of a way of life.
de silentio appeals to the example of abraham in order to explore what the life of
faith would be like. in fact, the story of abraham functions as a unique sort of very
direct evidence, leading to the disturbing conclusion that faith involves a paradoxical
dialectic of renunciation and hope, of resignation and expectation.
these three ways of bringing scripture to bear on questions of how to live all
lack one characteristic that Kierkegaard takes to be essential for a Christian use of
scripture: the willingness to actually bring the paradigms of faith to bear on the
way one thinks and on the way one acts. writing in his own voice, Kierkegaard
insists that a properly devotional reading of scripture involves bringing it to bear
directly and intimately on the life of the one reading. he has nothing good to say
about impersonal and scholarly readings of the text, claiming with rancor that such
practices provide a cunning and convenient distance between the reader and the
word, allowing the reader to “go on living and pretend nothing has happened.”71
such unwillingness to place oneself into a subjective relationship with the text under
the guise of cultured learning betrays a “dreadful non-entity into which we have
been bewitched, an impersonal, objective something.”72 rather, Kierkegaard calls
his readers to allow the text to enter their souls directly and subjectively through
imaginative appropriation; he admonishes them to read “with fear and trembling, so
that you can become human.”73
it is perhaps ironic that Kierkegaard wishes that the text of scripture could
be directly brought to bear on the Christian lives of his readers when he himself
employs all manner of indirect strategies to communicate his aim. Convinced
that his readers are thoroughly entrenched in prevailing cultural values, he uses
carefully constructed personae to create a dissonance within those values, and
thus to demonstrate their folly. such attitudes and dispositions to Christianity and
to the text, says Kierkegaard, do not produce authentic expressions of faith but
a pale imitation, assimilated to the environing culture and bland. indeed, one of
Kierkegaard’s primary purposes was to subvert the domesticated Christianity of
his day, to protest the way in which Christendom had assimilated to the prevailing
culture and to call Christians to authentic life in Christ. missing from this tame and
71
SKS 13, 66 / FSE, 39.
72
SKS 13, 69 / FSE, 43.
73
ibid.
uninspired religiosity was a requisite spiritual dissonance that could prompt genuine
religious passion. By donning his various personae, Kierkegaard hoped to heighten
this dissonance, inviting his readers into the chaos of paradox and immersing them in
the struggle of faith, hoping to wake them from their socially respectable slumber.
it could be said that Kierkegaard uses certain old testament texts as one of his
indirect strategies, a way to engage slumbering Christians in the radical good news
of the new testament gospel message. how exactly he uses an old testament text
in any particular work depends on that work’s authorial voice and rhetorical purpose.
sometimes, in the aesthetic literature, he will appeal to any old testament image or
phrase simply because it has rhetorical power and is useful for evoking the desired
imaginative response in the reader. sometimes, in the persona of champion of civic
virtue, he will allude to ethical principles and patently didactic tales in the old
testament in order to indirectly reinforce moral sentiments because those passages
are a respected part of the religio-cultural environment. sometimes he will appeal
very directly to paradigmatic stories of faith in the old testament because those
stories possess the passional power to shock the reader into recognizing the unsettling
paradoxical nature of the Christian life. often, in his own voice, he will present such
old testament characters as Job as paradigms of faith to be emulated, using them as
direct evidence for the construction of an existential ideal with imperative force.
even a cursory scan of rosas’ index of scriptural references in selected
Kierkegaard works reveals that Kierkegaard drew most heavily on old testament
references in his pseudonymous works, a source that significantly gives way to New
Testament references in the edifying literature and more significantly in the later
works penned under his own name.74 as rosas notes, many of these later works are
part of a corpus that emerged after a “metamorphosis” in Kierkegaard’s life, marking
a change in his authorship in which his tone was sharper and more direct.75 though
he continues in his later works to employ some of the literary techniques displayed
so prominently in his earlier works, he becomes more willing to play his hand,
engaging in direct polemics with the environing culture and its civil religion. that he
uses predominantly new testament texts in these works suggests that he continued
to see in the new testament the clear core of the gospel message, particularly as
it impinged upon the contemporary situation of Christendom, and thus used fewer
references to the old testament.
that said, it is not clear that Kierkegaard is a radical supersessionist concerning
the relationship between the old testament and the new. though old testament
references taper off in his later works, he continues to draw on the stories and
paradigms contained in the old testament for inspiration and direction for human
life, from Job to abraham to david. unlike many in his lutheran context, he did
not usually look to the old testament as a source of obsolete law or to paint god
as judge. rather, he sought out stories of faith in the old testament, paradigms that
defy human categories and thus point the way to a more Christian life.
Kierkegaard’s creation of the personae and the very particular ways in which
each used scripture is not an accident. the aesthete and the ethicist instantiate ways
74
rosas, Scripture in the Thought of Søren Kierkegaard, pp. 157–96.
75
ibid., p. 19.
of engaging the old testament that seem to take it seriously but fail to approximate
its Christian use. such ways of reading were becoming prevalent in Kierkegaard’s
culture and were, according to Kierkegaard, often confused with the genuinely
Christian reading strategy. perhaps in de silentio Kierkegaard is exploring an
opening, a possible way in which to begin to engage the scriptures as the word of
god when one is unused to doing so. perhaps that is what Kierkegaard means when
he writes, in the context of a discussion of the power of a woman’s silence, “it is
precisely this silence we need if god’s word is to gain a little power over people.”76
Feminist critiques aside, perhaps this statement indicates how Kierkegaard hopes
to engage those who are unaccustomed to allowing themselves to be transformed
by scripture. Johannes de silentio, through his wrestling with the story of abraham
and isaac, models for the aesthete and for the Judge how they might eschew their
habitual distance from the text and begin imaginatively to enter its paradigms of
faith, however implausible, and be transformed.
76
SKS 13, 73 / FSE, 47.
Bibliography
I. Works in the auction Catalogue of Kierkegaard’s Library that Discuss the Use
of the Old Testament
Balle, nikolai edinger, Lærebog i den evangelisk-christelige Religion, Copenhagen:

J.h. schultz 1824, pp. 1–120 (ASKB 183).
Bauer, Bruno, “der alt-testamentliche hintergrund im evangelium des Johannes,”
Zeitschrift für spekulative Theologie, vols. 1–3, ed. by Bruno Bauer, Berlin:
dümmler 1836–38, vol. 1, no. 2, 1836, pp. 158–204 (ASKB 354–357).
—— “der mosaische ursprung der gesetzgebung des pentateuch,” Zeitschrift für
spekulative Theologie, vols. 1–3, ed. by Bruno Bauer, Berlin: dümmler 1836–38,
vol. 1, no. 1, 1836, pp. 140–81 (ASKB 354–357).
—— “die neueren Commentare zu den psalmen,” Zeitschrift für spekulative
Theologie, vols. 1–3, ed. by Bruno Bauer, Berlin: dümmler 1836–38, vol. 2, no.
1, 1837, pp. 217–52 (ASKB 354–357).
—— “die urgeschichte der menschheit nach dem biblischen Berichte der genesis,
kritisch untersucht,” Zeitschrift für spekulative Theologie, vols. 1–3, ed. by
Bruno Bauer, Berlin: dümmler 1836–38, vol. 3, no. 1, 1837, pp. 125–210 (ASKB
354–357).
gesenius, wilhelm, Lexicon hebraicum et chaldaicum in veteris testamenti libros,
leipzig: vogel 1833, pp. v-x (ASKB 72).
göschel, Karl Friedrich, “der pantheismus und die genesis,” in Zeitschrift für
spekulative Theologie, ed. by Bruno Bauer, vols. 1–3, Berlin: dümmler 1836–
38, vol. 2, pp. 184–91 (ASKB 354–357).
Fragment eines evangelischen Briefwechsels, vienna: bei der mechitaristen-
Congregations-Buchhandlung 1832, pp. 114ff. (ASKB 520).
[herder, Johann gottfried], Johann Gottfried Herder’s sämmtliche Werke. Zur
vol. 2, pp. 175–280 (ASKB 1676–1684).
olshausen, hermann, Biblischer Commentar über sämmtliche Schriften des Neuen
Testaments, vols. 1–4, 3rd ed., Königsberg: unzer 1837–40, vol. 4, pp. 80–98
(ASKB 96–100).
rosenmüller, ernst Friedrich Karl, Scholia in vetus testamentum in compendium
redacta, vol. 1, Scholia in pentateuchum continens, leipzig: J.a. Barth 1828
(ASKB 85).
schleiermacher, Friedrich, Der christliche Glaube nach den Grundsä[t]zen der
evangelischen Kirche im Zusammenhange dargestellt, vols. 1–2, 3rd unchanged
ed., Berlin: g. reimer 1835–36, vol. 2, pp. 346–51 (AKSB 258).
tholuck, Friedrich august gotttreu, Das Alte Testament im Neuen Testament. Ueber
die Citate des Alten Testaments im Neuen Testament und Ueber den Opfer- und
Priesterbegriff im Alten und im Neuen Testamente, hamburg: Friedrich perthes
1836, pp. 1–121 (ASKB 832).
wette, wilhelm martin lebercht de, Lehrbuch der historisch-kritischen Einleitung
ed., leipzig: Carl heinrich reclam 1833–38, vol. 1, pp. v-xvi (ASKB 70–71).
II. Secondary Literature on Kierkegaard’s Use of the Old Testament
Barrett, lee C., Kierkegaard, nashville, tennessee: abingdon press 2009, pp. 12–36.
damgaard, iben, “Kierkegaard og Bibelen,” in Skriftsyn og metode, ed. by
s. pedersen, 2nd ed., Århus: aarhus university press 2007, pp. 170–94.
verlag 1998 (Arbeiten zur Theologiegeschichte, vol. 3).
Fishburn, Janet, “søren Kierkegaard: exegete,” Interpretation, vol. 39, 1985,
pp. 229–45.
Kelsey, david, Proving Doctrine: Uses of Scripture in Modern Theology,
philadelphia: trinity press international 1999, p. 15.
Kloeden, wolfgang von, “Biblestudy,” in Kierkegaard’s View of Christianity, ed. by
niels thulstrup and marie mikulová thulstrup, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1978
(Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 1), pp. 16–38.
martens, paul, “authority, apostleship, and the difference between Kierkegaard’s
old and new testaments,” in The Book on Adler, ed. by robert l. perkins,
Commentary, vol. 24), pp. 121–41.
mehl, peter J., “moral virtue, mental health, and happiness: the moral psychology
of Kierkegaard’s Judge william,” in Either/Or Part II, ed. by robert l. perkins,
pedersen, Jørgen, “Kierkegaard’s view of scripture,” in The Sources and Depths
of Faith in Kierkegaard, ed. by niels thulstrup and marie mikulová thulstrup,
Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1978 (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 2), pp. 27–57.
georgia: mercer university press 1997.
tennessee: Broadman & holman 1994.
watkin, Julia, Kierkegaard, london: Continuum 1997, pp. 69–74.
—— “the letter from the lover: Kierkegaard on the Bible and Belief,” in For Self-
Examination and Judge for Yourself!, ed. by robert l. perkins, macon, georgia:
pp. 287–313.
Kierkegaard’s use of the apocrypha:
is it “scripture” or “good for reading”?
w. glenn Kirkconnell
in his introduction to the apocrypha in his german edition of the Bible, martin
Luther (1483–1546) defined the Apocrypha as “books, not equal to the Sacred
scriptures, but useful and good for reading.”1 Kierkegaard was a lutheran and thus
was raised and educated with this ambiguous endorsement before him. on the one
hand, the books were and are still sacred to many Christians, and had been sacred
scripture for all Christians for over a thousand years. on the other hand, they were
not in the hebrew Bible, although they were in the greek septuagint and in the
latin vulgate. moreover, the apocryphal books did not obviously point to Christ and
the good news of salvation, not even in a typological manner, which was a glaring
deficit because some sort of Christological reference was Luther’s most important
theological criterion of canonicity. Consequently, luther put them in a separate
category in his 1534 german edition of the Bible, separated from the old testament
books by two blank pages. most of the translation of these apocryphal books had
not even been done by luther himself but by his colleagues, philipp melanchthon
(1497–1560), Caspar Cruciger (1504–48), and Justus Jonas (1493–1555). so this is
where Kierkegaard found the apocryphal books: in the Bible but not quite “biblical,”
more than myth or philosophy but less than sacred. how does Kierkegaard use the
writings of the apocrypha, and what does his usage reveal about his attitude towards
it? how does it compare to his usage of “sacred scriptures,” or of unsacred wisdom
in, say, socrates?
luther himself had preserved the apocryphal writings in his Bible, but certainly
did not feel bound to them. For example, when erasmus (1466–1536) quoted
Ecclesiasticus in support of the doctrine of free will, Luther’s first response was that
since this book is not present in the hebrew text it should not be considered canonical,
and that he could ignore it if he wished.2 he famously rejected the authority of
2 maccabees both for textual reasons and because of its singular endorsement of
1
see Die Bibel oder die ganze Heilige Schrift des alten und des neuen Testaments,
nach der deutschen Uebersetzung D. Martin Luthers, Carlsruhe and leipzig: expedition der
Carlsruher Bibel 1836 [in two parts], part 2, p. 1.
2
martin luther, De servo arbitrio, wittenberg: hans lufft 1525, pp. 125–32. (english
translation: On the Bondage of the Will, in Luther and Erasmus: Free Will and Salvation,
ed. by e. gordon rupp and philip s. watson, philadelphia: the westminster press 1969,
pp. 174–8.)
254 W. Glenn Kirkconnell
purgatory, which he thought a particularly odious dogma.3 he appears to reluctantly
allow 2 maccabees to remain in his Bible, while hoping that pious readers will
themselves discern how little weight it should be given. this attitude toward the
apocrypha is consistent, of course, with his treatment of a wide range of Catholic
practices, particularly in his defense of images during the iconoclastic controversies
with andreas von Karlstadt (1486–1541), who even more sharply differentiated the
apocryphal from the canonical books and declared the apocryphal ones to be devoid
of authority.4 luther preferred to make only those changes in religious practice which
he thought necessary, while hoping that time and teaching would allow successive
Christians to go further where desirable.
the status of the apocrypha continued to be ambiguous in the lutheran tradition.
The Lutheran Confessional books did not categorically define which books were
canonical and which books were not. various editions of lutheran Bibles differed
on which particular apocryphal books they included, with the weimar Bible of 1644
adding 3 and 4 esdras and 3 maccabees. taking a more critical stance, the chief
spokesperson of lutheran orthodoxy, martin Chemnitz (1522–86), declared the
apocryphal books to be neither inspired nor authoritative.5 against this hardening of
protestant orthodoxy the ecumenically-minded radical pietist Johann otto glüsing
(1676–1727), who had been active in establishing pietist conventicles in Copenhagen,
treated the apocrypha and other non-canonical books as being equal to the canonical
ones.6 the situation became even more complicated and the ambiguous status of
the apocrypha even more pronounced with the rise of historical criticism. Johann
salomo semler (1725–91) explored the complex history of the process of determining
the shape of the canon, emphasizing the role that local contextual factors played in
the decisions about which books to include, as well as the existence of differing
canons among ancient palestinian and non-palestinian Jews.7 this made the concept
“canon” more open-ended and diminished the difference between canonical and
non-canonical books. wilhelm martin leberecht de wette (1780–1849) reiterated
this theme of the fluidity of the concept of sacred writings in ancient Judaism, but did
suggest that even among hellenistic Jews the apocryphal books were not regarded
3
martin luther, “grund und ursach aller artikel d. martin luthers, so durch römische
Bulle unrechtlich verdammt sind,” in D. Martin Luthers Werke, vols. 1–71, weimar: hermann
Böhlaus nachfolger 1883–1970, vol. 7, 1883, p. 453. (english translation in martin luther,
Career of the Reformer II, ed. by george Forell, minneapolis, minnesota: Fortress press 1958
(Luther’s Works, vol. 32), p. 96.) in 2 maccabees 12 the celebrated Judas maccabeus gives
money to support prayers for Jewish warriors who had been slain in battle, an episode which
was taken as legitimating prayers for the dead.
4
andreas von Karlstadt, Welche Bücher Biblisch seind, wittenberg: melchior
ramminger 1520, pp. 1–22.
5
martin Chemnitz, Examen Decretorum Concilii Tridentini, vols. 1–4, Frankfurt am
main: simon hüter und sigismund Feyerabend 1566–73, vol. 1, pp. 1–49.
6
Johann otto glüsing, Biblia Pentapla, vols. 1–4, gottorf: hermann heinrich holle
1711, vol. 3.
7
halle: Carl hermann hemmerde 1771–75, vol. 3, pp. 1–189.
Kierkegaard’s Use of the Apocrypha: Is It “Scripture” or “Good for Reading”? 255
as being as authoritative as most of the others that were included in the canon.8 By
the time that Kierkegaard reached theological maturity the status and role of the
apocryphal books had become even more contested and murky.
Kierkegaard got most of his knowledge of luther not from dogmatic study but
from devotional reading of luther’s letters and sermons. as to luther’s theology,
Kierkegaard received this mostly second-hand.9 His most direct influences were
his father’s pietism, Balle’s Catechism,10 textbooks on lutheran doctrine,11 and his
university studies.12 any direct familiarity with the historical-critical investigation
of the apocrypha was probably gleaned from de wette’s introductory text, which
Kierkegaard owned and used.13 his own attitude towards scripture differed
significantly from Luther’s, as he himself recognized, owing to their different
circumstances. luther had fought against excessive guilt and the burden of “works
righteousness,” and hence tended to treat paul as a canon within the canon.
Kierkegaard fought against complacency and the easy equation of social propriety
with Christian righteousness, and hence had much more use for scriptures that
luther despised (notably the epistle of James). in addition to having broader interests
within the canon, Kierkegaard took joy at “the truth in the mouth of a hypocrite”14
or unbeliever; so he delighted in referencing a range of sources including homer,
Shakespeare and, most famously, Socrates. And fittingly for one so widely read, he
turned also to those books “not sacred, but good and useful.” But did he use them as
he would socrates, or as he would use James?
how he used the apocrypha varied greatly according to the nature of the
material. there are three major genres in the apocrypha: narrative, wisdom poetry,
and apocalyptic. Kierkegaard had little use for apocalyptic writings. he was not
interested in trying to puzzle out its obscure symbolism, and certainly not concerned
8
die Bibel Alten und Neuen Testamentes, vols. 1–2 (in 1 tome), 4th ed., Berlin: g. reimer 1833,
vol. 1, pp. 21–2; pp. 292–325 (ASKB 80).
9
regin prenter, “luther and lutheranism,” in Kierkegaard and Great Traditions, ed. by
niels thulstrup and marie mikulová thulstrup, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1981 (Bibliotheca
Kierkegaardiana, vol. 6), pp. 121–72.
10
nicolai edinger Balle, Lærebog i den Evangelisk-christelige Religion, indrettet til
Brug i de danske Skoler, Copenhagen: J.h. schultz 1824 (ASKB 183).
11
Karl gottlieb Bretschneider, Handbuch der Dogmatik der evangelisch-lutherischen
Kirche oder Versuch einer beurtheilenden Darstellung der Grundsätze, welche diese Kirche
in ihren symbolischen Schriften über die christliche Glaubenslehre ausgesprochen hat, vols.
1–2, 4th ed., leipzig: J.a. Barth 1838 [1814] (ASKB 437–438); august hahn, Lehrbuch des
christlichen Glaubens, leipzig: vogel 1828 (ASKB 535); Karl hase, Hutterus redivivus oder
Dogmatik der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche. Ein dogmatisches Repertorium für Studirende,
4th revised ed., leipzig: Breitkopf und härtel 1839 (ASKB 581).
12
henrik nicolai Clausen mentioned the apocryphal books in his lectures of 1833,
ascribing their demonology to Persian influence. See SKS 19, 20, not1:5. Clausen also cited
2 maccabees (SKS 19, 26, not1:5 and SKS 19, 50, not1:5); tobit (SKS 19, 49, not1:5) and
sirach (SKS 19, 34, not1:5).
13
die Bibel Alten und Neuen Testamentes, vol. 1, pp. 21–2; pp. 292–325.
14
SKS 4, 256 / PF, 52.
with trying to predict the future. he wrote that all one can or need know is that some
day one’s own personal world will end; whether or when the world will end is beside
the point.15 nor was he interested in visions of things beyond existence, whether
god’s throne or the devil’s prison. god is the unknown, the future is the possible
and uncertain, and to try to escape from this uncertainty is not faith but the lack of it.
so books such as 2 esdras were little used by him.
he had much more interest in the wisdom literature of the apocrypha, the
proverbs and early philosophy. he quotes from ecclesiasticus, also known as sirach,
in several of his journals and books; clearly it is a favorite as a source of bits of moral
wisdom, functioning in a manner similar to the maxims of Benjamin Franklin.16 more
significant for our purpose is his use of the Wisdom of Solomon in the discourse,
“think about Your Creator in the days of Your Youth,” the title of which is a
quotation of ecclesiastes 12:1, allegedly written by solomon.17 Kierkegaard writes:
when youth is merrily celebrating at a banquet, the preacher….joins in the rejoicing,

and when youth has heartily enjoyed itself, has danced itself weary, not for life exactly,
since youth ought not to do that, but for the evening, then the preacher sits in a room
within the dance hall and talks more earnestly. But he makes the transition just as
naturally as youth, which is able, even with a smile on its lips and with enthusiasm, to
listen appropriately to the discussion of lofty and holy matters. so, then, let “youth wear
the crown of rosebuds before they wither” (the wisdom of solomon 2:8), but let no one
teach this to youth, teach it to do this “as in youth” (Wisdom 2:6) and thereby influence,
or in any other way influence, youth to “reason unsoundly” (Wisdom 2:1), as if this
were the only thing it had to do, because the thought of the Creator is still youth’s most
beautiful glory, is also a rosebud, but it does not wither.18
on the one hand, he seems to simply assume that the authors of ecclesiastes and
the wisdom of solomon are one and the same person. he simply jumps from
considering one book to the other and treats both as if they are discussing the same
idea. on the other hand, he does not assume ecclesiastes was actually written by
solomon, as tradition holds and the text seems to imply.19 this is consistent with
his treatment of scripture in general. he is certainly aware of the scholarly disputes
of his day, debates about authorship and historicity and so on. he simply does not
have an interest in disputing these things, considering them to be distractions. the
main concern should be “the truth that builds up,” and so he is willing in his signed
and pseudonymous works alike to let the traditional assumptions go relatively
unchallenged, while simultaneously turning attention away from these disputed
assumptions and towards existential appropriations.20 in this case, it is not important
15
SKS 5, 461–3 / TD, 91–4.
16
see, for example, SKS 18, 181, JJ:122 / KJN 2, 167. Pap. vii–2 B 266 / JP 4, 4438.
SKS 20, 86, nB:116 / JP 5, 5971. SKS 9, 20 / WL, 12. SKS 9, 45 / WL, 38. SKS 9, 342 / WL,
348. SKS 5, 141 / EUD, 139. SKS 5, 70 / EUD, 60. SKS 5, 73 / EUD, 63.
17
SKS 5, 234–5 / EUD, 233–5.
18
SKS 5, 240 / EUD, 241.
19
SKS 5, 234 / EUD, 234.
20
he does this perhaps most famously throughout The Concept of Anxiety, where the
pseudonym allows for the historicity of adam while basing his argument on the notion that
to him whether solomon, or any king actually wrote ecclesiastes, much less whether
the author in fact also wrote wisdom. what does matter is that it is to be read as if it
was written by a king, and that any young person consider the significance that even
a king, full of potential, should consider the thought of the Creator to be the most
important thing.
Kierkegaard’s treatment of the wisdom of solomon does seem qualitatively
different than his treatment of, say, the wisdom of socrates. he writes as if it came
from the same author as does an actual sacred text, and this confers a sort of authority
on it that even socrates cannot claim. it seems to be neither the work of a genius nor
an apostle, but something in between: perhaps an apostle or prophet who was writing
not in the spirit but on personal authority.21
while Kierkegaard makes repeated use of the proverbs of the apocrypha, it is
his use of the narrative material that may be the most interesting. many of these
references are passing allusions, as is also true for most of the sirach references.
But in Fear and Trembling the pseudonym Johannes de silentio gives a sustained
and significant discussion of the Book of Tobit, and in particular of the story of the
courtship of tobias and sarah.22 the plot of the book is fairly easy to summarize,
despite its textual complexity: tobit was a pious israelite living in exile in nineveh.
at risk to his own life at times, he continually practiced acts of charity and service
to his fellow israelites and to Jews (strictly speaking, the people with roots in the
southern kingdom) who also turned up on his doorstep. But despite his piety and
charity, he was stricken blind and in despair prayed for death. meanwhile, across
the empire his relatives also were suffering. raguel and edna’s daughter sarah had
been married seven times, but each time the demon asmodeus killed the bridegroom
on the wedding night. in her despair, she too prayed for death, at the exact same
moment that tobit prayed for death. god sends the angel raphael to take care of
both these pious believers in one fell swoop, by arranging for tobit’s only son
tobias to marry sarah and then to cure his father. First, raphael arrives incognito
and offers to accompany tobias as he travels to retrieve some money that his father
had left in another city. When Tobias is attacked by a magical fish, Raphael advises
him to capture the fish and use its organs to create cures for demonic curses and
for blindness. raphael then tells tobias about sarah, and persuades him to use the
magical fish liver to drive off the demon and marry the girl, thus breaking her curse
and also becoming sole heir to her father’s wealth. Completing god’s work and his
family duty, Tobias returns to his father and cures him using the magic fish’s gall
bladder. Finally raphael reveals himself to be an angel and explains how god has
used these events to cure all the afflicted and to bless both families by uniting them
in marriage.
how does Kierkegaard regard this story, and how does he use it? or more
accurately, how does de silentio use it? First, he inserts it into a series of tales of the
demonic, right after agnes and the merman and before richard iii. if the placement
any explanation of original sin must treat adam as essentially one of us, so explaining adam
explains each individual.
21
as paul does in 1 Cor 7:12, for example.
22
SKS 4, 191–6 / FT, 102–6.
of references to the wisdom of solomon suggests that Kierkegaard gave this work a
certain authority, then surrounding Tobit with fictional characters certainly suggests
the opposite. de silentio’s choice to call the tobias narrative a “Fortælling” may not
itself say much about how he regards the story, but the lowrie and hong translations
both use tone and word choices that suggest fiction. And in fact, even the text itself
has such a fairy-tale aspect to it that it is hard to imagine anyone really seeing it as
“literally” true; but it could still be authoritative in the way a parable is authoritative.
de silentio does not seem to give it the same historical credence that he gives the
story of abraham, but the life story of abraham presents itself as historical in a way
tobit does not.
de silentio treats the particular facts of the story of tobias with a great deal of
freedom. in his account, it is sarah rather than tobias who is the focus of attention.
the reader’s attention is drawn to her despair and her faith. given this interest in
sarah, mention of the seven previous deaths would at best be a distraction and at worst
would seem to be a bad joke at her expense. Consequently, de silentio eliminates that
element of the plot from his version. instead, for him the story is one of a young
maiden who has never loved, much less wed, but who knows that the day she does
truly love a jealous demon will appear to kill her beloved. he then describes her
situation, with primary attention on the emotional aspects: her unhappiness, the fact
that what should have been her time of unbridled joy was instead a time of terror and
grief, and how even her parents were grieving and fearful. he continues, “and now
comes the time of the wedding. we read on—if we can read at all through our tears.”23
given that de silentio is self-described as a religious poet, all this emotionalism may
seem to be just part of his persona, but there is also an epistemological point to this
passional intensity. Kierkegaard shares with his predecessor Johann georg hamann
(1730–88) a conviction that human nature is a whole, with reason and feeling and
body functioning together, and that knowledge is received through senses and
feelings as well as through reason.24 Just as a person would not be complete without
feeling or imagination or sensation, so too knowledge is incomplete if it is limited to
just reason alone. therefore, to truly understand the story of sarah it is necessary to
feel her situation as well as to conceptually analyze it.
it is this conceptual analysis that seems to motivate his interest in sarah over
tobias. tobias shows courage, he writes, but any real man who really loved would
do as much. sarah, by contrast, shows the faith to have the humility to allow tobias
to save her. he writes:
imagine sarah to be a man, and the demonic is immediately present. the proud, noble
nature can bear everything, but one thing it cannot bear—it cannot bear sympathy. in it
there is a humiliation that can be inflicted on a person only by a higher power, for he can
never become the object of it by himself. if he has sinned, he can bear the punishment
without despairing, but to be without guilt from his mother’s womb and yet to be destined
as a sacrifice to sympathy, a sweet fragrance in its nostrils—this he cannot endure. 25
23
SKS 4, 193 / FT, 103.
24
see ronald gregor smith, J.G. Hamann 1730–1788: A Study in Christian Existence,
new York: harper & row publishers 1960, p. 43; p. 65; pp. 195–9; pp. 205–7.
25
SKS 4, 193 / FT, 104.
it is the concept of the demonic, and the relation of this concept to faith, humility,
and pride, that drives de silentio’s treatment of the Book of tobit. sarah has been,
in his words, “botched from the very beginning.”26 through no fault of her own, she
has been denied happiness or her rightful place in the essentially, universally human.
and worse, she is an object of pity.27 the thought that drove richard of gloucester
to his life of evil was the pity he had endured throughout his life. But while he turned
to pride and ambition and thus became evil, sarah faced her pitiful life with faith and
humility. de silentio observes, “natures such as those are basically in the paradox,
and they are by no means more imperfect than other people, except that they are
either lost in the demonic paradox or saved in the divine paradox.”28 it took humility
to accept her need for another without resentment, so that she could be rescued; it
took faith to have the strength for that humility. and it is particularly noteworthy
that it is pride, not evil, that is the defining characteristic of the demonic. De silentio
writes, “thus Cumberland’s Jew is also a demoniac, even though he does good.”29
when someone has fallen outside the universal and into the realm of the paradox,
they must choose either to humbly allow god to save them, or to proudly insist on
trying to save themselves. this is the “great mystery,” according to de silentio: that
not only is it better to give than to receive, but it is far harder to receive than to give.
thus he writes:
no, sarah is the heroic character. she is the one i want to approach as i have never
approached any girl or been tempted in thought to approach anyone of whom i have
read. For what love for god it takes to be willing to let oneself be healed when from the
very beginning one in all innocence has been botched, from the very beginning has been
a damaged specimen of a human being! what ethical maturity to take upon oneself the
responsibility of permitting the beloved to do something so hazardous! what humility
before another person! what faith in god that she would not in the very next moment
hate the man to whom she owed everything!30
this really is extraordinary language. de silentio’s praise is reminiscent of the

reverence he shows for abraham himself. not only does she show love for god,
ethical maturity, humility and even faith, but she shows these in such abundance that
de silentio wishes he could approach her more than anyone of whom he has read. he
wishes he could follow one who set out to travel up mount moriah, but he wishes
even more that he could be in the presence of sarah.31 it is clear that, whatever
authority the Book of tobit may hold for him, sarah at least is an authority, a moral
and spiritual authority. she is a knight of faith. she has not given up her isaac; she
was cheated before she ever had such happiness, and now must have the humility
26
ibid.
27
lowrie’s translation puts it this way. see søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling,
trans. by walter lowrie, princeton, new Jersey: princeton university press 1941, p. 114.
28
SKS 4, 196 / FT, 106.
29
SKS 4, 196 / FT, 196. the sentence refers to a character in a play performed periodically
in Copenhagen from 1795 to 1834.
30
SKS 4, 193 / FT, 104.
31
SKS 4, 128 / FT, 32.
and faith to believe that the mercy of god and the courage of tobias can give her the
happiness she has only known before as promised.
De silentio seems to regard the Book of Tobit as fiction, so the book does not
have “biblical authority” for him in the way scriptural inerrantists would measure
it. But in his evaluation of sarah he ascribes to tobit a level of spiritual insight
and instruction that he claims to have seen nowhere else. this suggests in turn that
Kierkegaard regards the apocrypha as a product of religious people with spiritual
awareness not shared in other writings, people shaped by sacred scriptures even if
the books they wrote are not quite so “sacred.” they may not be words direct from
the mouth of god, but they are words from those people who did hear the very
words of god. they do not have the force of commandments, or even apostolic
pronouncements. sarah may show every quality of a knight of faith, but she is not
one and is not comparable to abraham “the father of faith,” simply because he is a
historical reality and she only a product of the religious imagination. But the spirit
that produced her is that of a child of abraham by faith, writing out of that inheritance
and through a superior understanding of it.
what can we learn from comparing the more prominent usages of the apocrypha
within Kierkegaard’s writings? he steers away from apocalypticism and towards
wisdom literature, whether proverb or narrative. he does not concern himself with
whether it is literally true, and does not treat this as the most important sort of truth
or authority in any case. Without either affirming or denying the historicity of a
textual narrative, he focuses on what suits his interests. he uses references to build up
individual religiousness, and to illustrate and explore concepts of faith and unbelief.
he does not derive commandments or dogmas from the apocrypha, but rather is
guided in his understanding by other authorities. or rather, his faith and intellectual
concerns provide the perspective from which he views the apocrypha and judges its
importance. this is not all that unusual, within the history of lutheran hermeneutics.
luther himself treated all scripture as leading towards the message of salvation by
faith alone, and thus judged within the canon that the old testament was largely
replaced by the new, and even that some books (such as James and revelation) were
not really worthy of being in the new testament at all. at times luther is accused
of placing paul above Christ and the epistles above the gospels. pietism accepted
the general notion of the law as “tutor” which is replaced when the children of faith
come of age through the gospel, but within the new testament it placed much more
weight on the gospels in particular and instruction in general.
Kierkegaard follows that general pietist “canon within the canon” in his selections
of texts, most famously in his fondness for the letter of James (full of instructions
but with too little sola gratia for luther’s tastes). in his earlier “aesthetic” writings
(through the Postscript) he shows more interest in general religious instruction,
writing “upbuilding discourses” using mostly epistles as texts. later, as his writings
become increasingly direct, confrontational, and Christocentric, he writes more
“Christian discourses” relying on gospel texts. it is the word of Christ that counts as
commandment for the Christian, not the word given to moses or even paul; these are
only valid as they cohere with the gospel teachings.32 it is not surprising then that so
many of his citations from the apocrypha would be from sirach or wisdom. in their
pages Kierkegaard found proverbs and instructions that could be used to reinforce
the instruction from the new testament.
Another important influence of Pietism upon Kierkegaard was the concept of
“the upbuilding,” which he adopted from pietist writers even as he changed it.33
this theme runs through his authorship from the start, and is particularly important
in his treatment of narratives like the story of sarah and tobias. while some pietist
writers tended to treat narratives as concrete examples of behavior to be imitated,
Kierkegaard was more inclined to look for character traits to be emulated. For
example, a pietist writer might ask, “can you actually imagine Christ dancing?”
with the expected answer of “no, of course not” and the conclusion that therefore
no Christian should dance. Kierkegaard instead looks at Christ as a paradigm of
suffering, humble, limitless love and sees these as the aspects to be appropriated.
if a Christian dances to follow paul’s injunction to “rejoice with those who rejoice,
and weep with those who weep,” as a way of showing Christ’s love, then would this
necessarily be wrong? so when Kierkegaard looks at Jesus, or any other hero of the
faith, the imitation he is most interested in is an imitation of the character of that
person, an inward imitation. To achieve this, it is necessary to meditate on the figure
imaginatively and passionately as well as analytically, and to consider not just what
that person concretely did but also the spirit behind the action. Kierkegaard does this
in his signed works, but even more so in his pseudonymous writings. as an example
of the former, consider the use he makes of John the Baptizer in the discourse, “he
must increase, but i must decrease.”34 John in that discourse, Job in Repetition,
adam in The Concept of Anxiety, and abraham in Fear and Trembling are all prime
examples of his tendency to use biblical characters as paradigms of different aspects
of religious pathos. In all these cases, Kierkegaard takes a biblical figure and looks at
him and examines that figure from multiple angles. He strives to empathize with the
character, to imagine what he must have felt and why he did what he did. he tries to
sympathize for that character, to feel the pain and burdens that character felt as well
as the joys. he imagines what it would mean if that character had done something
different. he tries to get inside that character, not just to see from the character’s
point of view but more to get the reader to become, in some small way, a bit more
like the character. and this is, of course, how he treats sarah as well. he manipulates
the figure of Sarah to better see different aspects of her nature, feels for her, imagines
her inner thoughts and desires, and holds her up as an example to be imitated—not
so much for what she did, but for the kind of person she was (or would have been if
she were real).
in many ways, Kierkegaard’s use of the apocrypha differs little from his use
of the canonical scriptures. what does differ is the weight he gives it. Clearly it
32
see vernard eller, Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship, princeton, new Jersey:
princeton university press 1968, pp. 388–440.
33
paul müller, “der Begriff ‘das erbauliche’ bei sören Kierkegaard,” Kerygma und
Dogma, vol. 31, april–June 1985, pp. 116–34.
34
SKS 5, 270–82 / EUD, 275–89.
is less important to him than even the old testament; and when judging what to
use or how to understand it, it is the canonical scriptures and the new testament
in particular that sets the standard. sarah matters to him more than tobias because
her humility matters more than his courage, even though the author of the original
text clearly thought otherwise. But having learned (from other biblical examples
and particularly from the example and teachings of Christ) how important humility
is, he can in turn see the resources available in this apocryphal story to aid towards
building up the reader’s faith. similarly, his prior faith and intellectual commitments
guide his selection of apocryphal proverbs far more than they could be said to shape
him, as when his reading of ecclesiastes governs his reading of wisdom. But while
it would be impossible to argue that the apocrypha was ever a source or foundation
for Kierkegaard in the way the lutheran canonical Bible was, it is clear that he found
it a deep and at times unique source of spiritual insight and instruction.
Bibliography

Discuss the Apocrypha
hahn, august, Lehrbuch des christlichen Glaubens, leipzig: vogel 1828, pp. 130–35
(ASKB 535).
hase, Karl, Hutterus redivivus oder Dogmatik der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche.
Ein dogmatisches Repertorium für Studirende, 4th revised ed., leipzig: Breitkopf
und härtel 1839, pp. 94–5 (ASKB 581).
[herder, Johann gottfried], Johann Gottfried Herder’s sämmtliche Werke. Zur
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schwetschke und sohn 1831, p. 109 (ASKB 35).
g. reimer 1833, vol. 1, pp. 21–2; pp. 292–325 (ASKB 80).
II. Secondary Literature on Kierkegaard’s Use of the Apocrypha
eller, vernard, Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship, princeton, new Jersey:

princeton university press 1968, pp. 388–440.
verlag 1998 (Arbeiten zur Theologiegeschichte, vol. 3), pp. 84–109.
Keeley, louise Carroll, “the parables of problem iii in Kierkegaard’s Fear and
Trembling,” in Fear and Trembling, ed. by robert l. perkins, macon, georgia:
pp. 128–9; pp. 147–9; pp. 151–2.
Trembling, london: routledge 2003, pp. 124–6.
mooney, edward, Knights of Faith and Resignation: Reading Kierkegaard’s Fear
and Trembling, albany, new York: state university of new York press 1991
(SUNY Series in Philosophy), pp. 127–37.
müller, paul, “der Begriff ‘das erbauliche’ bei sören Kierkegaard,” Kerygma und
Dogma, vol. 31, april–June 1985, pp. 116–34.
nagy, andrás, “the mount and the abyss: the literary reading of Fear and
Trembling,” in Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2002, p. 234.
georgia: mercer university press 1997, p. 191.
prenter, regin, “luther and lutheranism,” in Kierkegaard and Great Traditions, ed.
by niels thulstrup and marie mikulová thulstrup, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel
1981 (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 6), pp. 121–72.
tennessee: Broadman & holman 1994, p. 158; p. 161; p. 173; p. 175; p. 180;
p. 183; p. 185; p. 186; p. 190.
index of persons
aaron, 90. Bayle, pierre (1647–1706), French

abraham, ix, xi, 38, 43–80, 89, 93, 94, 97, protestant scholar, 22, 23.
124, 125, 135, 212–17 passim, 222, Berthold, leonhard (1774–1822), german
226, 239–42, 246–8, 260, 261. protestant theologian, 116, 196.
adam, 3–40, 213, 214, 236, 237, 261. Blasche, Bernhard heinrich (1766–1832),
adler, adolph peter (1812–69), danish german protestant theologian, 119.
philosopher and theologian, 169, Böhme, Jacob (1575–1624), german mystic,
201. 118, 173.
agamemnon, 215. Bultmann, rudolf (1884–1976), german
agnes, 215, 257. protestant theologian, 221.
ambrose of milan (ca. 340–97), church
father, bishop of milan, 8. Calvin, John (1509–64), French protestant
andersen, hans Christian (1805–75), theologian, 9.
danish poet, novelist and writer of Chemnitz, martin (1522–86), german
fairy tales, 91. protestant theologian, 254.
anna, 164. Christ, xi, xii, 4, 7, 9, 10, 13–16, 29, 38, 46,
antiochus iv, 195, 197. 56, 59, 61, 65, 70, 71, 74, 75, 79,
aquinas, thomas (ca. 1225–74), scholastic 80, 92–5 passim, 102, 107, 111, 128,
philosopher and theologian, 6. 136, 141, 145, 148, 149, 153, 156,
arndt, Johann (1555–1621), german 158, 159, 164, 169–74 passim, 177,
mystic, 241. 185, 201, 211, 212, 220, 221, 231–3,
augustine of hippo (354–430), church 238, 246, 253, 260–2.
father, 6, 8, 13, 35, 119. Clausen, henrik nicolai (1793–1877),
danish theologian and politician, 5,
Baader, Benedict Franz Xaver von (1765– 10, 239.
1841), german philosopher, 5. Cruciger, Caspar (1504–48), german
Balle, nicolai edinger (1744–1816), danish theologian, 253.
bishop, 10, 161, 163, 167, 174, 176,
255. daniel, 195.
Bathsheba, 103, 106, 218. daub, Karl (1765–1836), german
Bauer, Bruno (1809–82), german theologian, 119, 133.
theologian, philosopher and david, 101–11, 166, 175, 218–20, 226, 234,
historian, 6, 62. 245, 247.
Bauer, georg lorenz (1755–1806), german delilah, 236.
protestant theologian, 238. descartes, rené (1596–1650), French
Baur, Ferdinand Christian (1792–1860), philosopher, 43, 172.
german theologian, 118.
266 Kierkegaard and the Bible
eckhart or meister eckhart (ca. 1260–ca. gruber, Johann gottfried (1774–1851),

1328), german mystic, 6. german critic and literary historian,
eichhorn, Johann gottfried (1752–1827), 196.
german protestant theologian and günther, anton (1783–1863), austrian
orientalist, 117, 144, 179, 196, 237. theologian and philosopher, 5.
eiríksson, magnús (1806–81), icelandic gyllembourg-ehrensvärd, thomasine
theologian, 75. Christine (1773–1856), danish
elihu, 116. author, 91.
elijah, 94.
erasmus of rotterdam, i.e., desiderius hagar, 241.
erasmus roterodamus, (1466/69– hamann, Johann georg (1730–88), german
1536), dutch humanist, 253. philosopher, 5, 159, 258.
erdmann, Johann eduard (1805–92), hannay, alastair, 67.
german philosopher, 5, 9. hegel, georg wilhelm Friedrich (1770–
ersch, Johann samuel (1780–1828), 1831), german philosopher, xii, 5,
german bibliographer, 196. 10, 11, 13, 16, 18, 19, 23–25, 28, 43,
esau, 209. 52, 60, 119, 121, 154, 169, 201, 244.
eve, 3–40, 236. heiberg, Johan ludvig (1791–1860), danish
poet, playwright and philosopher, 5,
Feuerbach, ludwig (1804–72), german 13, 58.
philosopher, 62. heidegger, martin (1889–1976), german
Fichte, immanuel hermann, “the younger,” philosopher, 20.
(1797–1879), german philosopher, hengstenberg, ernst william (1802–69),
6. german protestant theologian, 196,
Fogtmann, nikolai (1788–1851), danish 197.
bishop, 147, 161, 174, 176. herder, Johann gottfried (1744–1803),
Fokkelman, Jan, 209. german philosopher, 116, 117, 141,
Francke, august hermann (1663–1727), 144, 179, 180, 237.
german protestant theologian, 232. hick, John, 118.
Franklin, Benjamin (1706–90), american hobbes, thomas (1588–1679), english
politician and author, 256. philosopher, 3.
homer, 255.
gabler, Johann philipp (1753–1826), hong, howard v. (1912–2010), american
german protestant theologian, 238. translator, 258.
gadamer, hans georg (1900–2002), horace, 17.
german philosopher, 225. hume, david (1711–76), scottish
glüsing, Johann otto (1676–1727), german philosopher, 3.
pietist, 254.
goethe, Johann wolfgang von (1749–1832), isaac, 4, 45–55 passim, 58, 60, 61, 63,
german poet, author, scientist and 66–79 passim, 124, 135, 212–17
diplomat, 109. passim, 226, 239–42, 246, 248, 259.
goldschmidt, meïr aaron (1819–87),
danish author, 150. Jacob, 166, 207–10, 220, 225.
gregory the great (pope from 590–604), 8. James, xii.
Job, ix, xi, 4, 38, 74, 75, 115–140, 222, 234, Philosophical Fragments (1844), 16, 34,
240, 247, 261. 72, 147, 164, 198.
John the Baptist, 26, 145, 201, 261. The Concept of Anxiety (1844), 3, 4, 6,
Jonas, Justus (1493–1555), german 15–17, 23, 24, 29–39 passim, 72,
theologian, 253. 152, 153, 160, 165, 167, 168, 196,
Joshua, 91. 197, 198, 261.
Judith, 195. Prefaces (1844), 16, 72, 162, 196.
Stages on Life’s Way (1845), 17, 38, 73,
Kant, immanuel (1724–1804), german 74, 106–10 passim, 146, 156, 166,
philosopher, xii, 3, 16, 17, 18, 21, 182, 196, 198, 199, 200, 202.
23, 30, 60, 244. Three Discourses on Imagined
Karlstadt, andreas von (1486–1541), Occasions (1845), 96, 106, 107,
german theologian, 254. 165, 198, 200.
Kelsey, david, 235, 245. Concluding Unscientific Postscript
Kierkegaard, peter Christian (1805–88), (1846), 65, 73–5, 138, 153, 154,
søren Kierkegaard’s elder brother, 224, 260.
149. A Literary Review of Two Ages (1846),
Kierkegaard, søren aabye (1813–1855), 185, 188, 190.
From the Papers of One Still Living The Book on Adler (ca. 1846–47), 153,
(1838), 90. 169, 196, 201.
The Concept of Irony (1841), 11, 16, 38, Upbuilding Discourses in Various
57, 160, 161, 216. Spirits (1847), 38, 73, 145, 154, 159,
Either/Or (1843), 16, 21, 54, 56, 57, 162, 169, 176, 180, 211, 240.
103–4, 151, 155, 167, 176, 183, 198, Works of Love (1847), 93, 107–8,
234–7, 242, 243. 207–11 passim, 220.
Repetition (1843), 16, 54, 109, 115, Christian Discourses (1848), 38, 75,
121–7 passim, 131, 133–9 passim, 147, 148, 150, 152, 155, 156, 160,
198, 222, 261. 166, 170, 176, 180, 189, 209.
Fear and Trembling (1843), 16, 43, 94, The Point of View for My Work as an
123, 135, 160, 198, 212, 234, 235, Author (ca. 1848), 189.
239, 257–9, 261. The Sickness unto Death (1849), 38,
Two Upbuilding Discourses (1843), 16, 158, 163, 211, 216.
54, 58, 151, 160, 161, 167, 176, 198. Two Ethical-Religious Essays (1849),
Three Upbuilding Discourses (1843), 153, 154, 169.
24, 54, 151, 198. The Lily in the Field and the Bird of the
Four Upbuilding Discourses (1843), Air: Three Devotional Discourses
104, 115, 121, 128–32 passim, 140, (1849), 163.
150, 160, 161, 175, 198, 235. Two Discourses at the Communion on
Two Upbuilding Discourses (1844), 145, Fridays (1849), 174.
164, 186. Practice in Christianity (1850), 14, 74,
Three Upbuilding Discourses (1844), 148, 156, 170.
34, 145, 198. For Self-Examination (1851), 73, 107–8,
Four Upbuilding Discourses (1844), 34, 173, 175, 217, 219, 221, 234, 244.
153, 160, 165, 167, 198. Judge for Yourself (1851–52, published
posthumously in 1876), 156.
The Moment (1855), 148, 149, 155, 157. mozart, wolfgang amadeus (1756–91),
The Changelessness of God (1855), 157, austrian composer, 103.
161. müller, Julius (1801–78), german
Journals, notebooks, Nachlaß, 21, 38, theologian, 6.
39, 44, 50, 70, 71, 74–8 passim, 104, mynster, Jakob peter (1775–1854), danish
147, 151, 154, 157, 159, 162, 164, theologian and bishop, 5, 150, 157.
166, 196, 198.
nathan, 103, 104, 107, 108, 111, 218, 219,
lazarus, 93. 234, 245.
lehmann, orla (1810–70), danish nebuchadnezzar, 195–202.
politician, 90. nicodemus, 174.
leibniz, Baron gottfried wilhelm von nielsen, rasmus (1809–84), danish
(1646–1716), german philosopher philosopher, 58.
and mathematician, 4, 5, 16, 21–24,
27, 36, 40, 118. o’Connell, daniel (1775–1847), irish
leo i or pope saint leo the great (pope politician, 90.
from 440–61), 8. olsen, regine (1822–1904), 51, 54–6, 72,
lippitt, John, 66. 78, 79, 108, 189.
liunge, andreas peter (1798–1879), danish olshausen, hermann (1796–1839), german
editor and author, 90. protestant theologian, 241.
lot, 45.
lowrie, walter (1868–1959), american pascal, Blaise (1623–62), French scientist
translator, 258. and philosopher, 43.
luther, martin (1483–1546), german paul, 58, xii, 4, 9, 15, 26, 28, 46, 48, 74, 76,
religious reformer, 6, 90, 94, 141, 77, 165, 232, 238, 241, 255, 260.
152, 171–3, 232, 253–5, 260. peter, 95, 211, 212.
plato, 96.
mackey, louis (1926–2004), 123. polk, timothy, 243.
malantschuk, gregor (1902–78), 78. pontoppidan, erik, the younger (1698–
marheineke, philipp (1780–1846), german 1764), danish bishop and historian,
theologian, 5, 10, 17, 19. 147, 163.
martensen, hans lassen (1808–84), danish
theologian, 5, 58, 102, 180, 233. reimarus, hermann samuel (1694–1768),
mary, 76, 77, 96. german philosopher, 60.
marx, Karl (1818–83), german philosopher richard iii, King of england (1452–83),
and economist, 62. 257.
mcKinnon, alastair, 166. ricoeur, paul (1913–2005), French
mehl, peter, 242. philosopher, 221.
melanchthon, philipp (1497–1560), german rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712–78), French
theologian, 253. philosopher, 3.
merman, the, 215, 257. rosas, l. Joseph, 234, 247.
milton, John (1608–74), english poet, 9. rosenkranz, Karl (1805–79), german
mohammed, 92. philosopher and theologian, 3, 6,
moses, 89–98, 260. 19, 117.
samson, 236. spener, philipp Jacob (1635–1705). german

samuel, 96, 101. protestant theologian, 232.
sarah, 45–7, 135, 241, 257, 258, 260–2. spinoza, Baruch (1632–77), dutch
saul, 101, 103. philosopher, 3, 10.
schaller, Julius (1810–68), german strauss, david Friedrich (1808–74),
philosopher, 60. german theologian, historian and
schelling, Friedrich wilhelm Joseph von philosopher, 60.
(1775–1854), german philosopher,
xii, 5, 10, 16, 19–21, 23, 36, 39, 43, taylor, mark lloyd, 123, 124.
54, 61, 118. tersteegen, gerhard (1697–1796), german
schlegel, Friedrich von (1772–1829), mystic and poet, 105, 106, 154, 241.
german romantic writer, 236. tertullian (ca. 160–235), church father, 8.
schleiermacher, Friedrich (1768–1834), tobias, 257–62 passim.
german theologian, 5, 59, 102, 232.
scriver, Christian (1629–93), german pastor uriah, 106, 111, 218.
and writer, 147.
semler, Johann salomo (1725–91), german wette, wilhelm martin leberecht de (1780–
protestant theologian, 179, 233, 238, 1849), german theologian, 101, 102,
254. 108, 116, 117, 121, 124, 126, 133,
shakespeare, william (1564–1616), english 141, 180, 183, 196, 233, 254.
dramatist, 234, 236, 243, 255.
socrates, 38, 163, 216, 224, 225, 253, 255, Young, edward (1683–1765), english
257. author, 182.
solomon, 101–11, 180–2, 187, 188, 241,
256, 257.
index of subjects
absurd, the, 52, 67–9, 75, 124. luke, 27, 93, 94, 107, 145, 164.
actuality, 20, 25, 30, 35, 69–71, 76, 90, 91, John, 145, 156, 170, 174, 209.
122, 133, 134, 158, 163, 164, 167, acts, 177.
175, 222. romans, 46, 48, 54, 72, 74, 79, 111,
akedah, 45–63 passim, 67, 69, 74, 76, 78, 153.
79. Corinthians, 165, 168.
anxiety, 4, 25, 31–3, 36–9 passim, 64–6, 70, philippians, 48, 66, 72, 79.
95, 127, 167, 214. timothy, 148, 167.
atonement, 29, 35, 38, 39, 70–2, 172. hebrews, 46–8, 54, 66, 72, 79, 160.
augsburg Confession, 6. James, 24, 29, 48, 66, 72, 79, 104,
107, 157, 160, 161, 167, 174,
Bible, 217, 255, 260.
old testament, peter, 151.
genesis, 3–42, 43–80, 160, 185, revelation, 260.
207, 209, 212, 237, 241. apocrypha, 253–62.
exodus, 4, 168. tobit, 257–60.
ruth, 238. wisdom of solomon, 256, 257, 258,
samuel, 102–8 passim, 111, 218. 261, 262.
Kings, 101, 110, 168, 197. ecclesiasticus, 253, 256, 257, 261.
Chronicles, 101, 102, 197, 238. maccabees, 7, 253, 254.
ezra, 238. esdras, 254, 256.
nehemiah, 197, 238. boredom, 236.
esther, 238.
Job, ix, xi, 4, 38, 74, 75, 115–140, chatter, 188–90.
222, 234, 238, 240, 247, 261. Christendom, 44, 72, 74, 96, 97, 148, 149,
psalms, ix, xi, 101, 104, 105, 154, 155, 157, 161, 232, 245–7.
141–77, 232, 238. Christianity, 49, 50, 60, 74–9 passim, 89, 92,
proverbs, 101, 108, 151, 238, 244. 95, 98, 102, 145, 149, 152, 155, 157,
ecclesiastes, 101, 108, 161, 179–92, 159, 163, 167, 175, 181, 211, 239,
238, 257, 262. 245, 246.
song of solomon, 101, 108. communication, indirect, 180, 181.
isaiah, 160. contradiction, the principle of, 187.
ezekiel, 197. Corsair, the, 150.
daniel, 105, 196–200. creatio ex nihilo, 4, 7, 8, 10, 16, 26, 33, 35,
new testament, 39.
matthew, 24, 27, 94, 151, 152, 176. creation, 13–15, 39.
mark, 149. crowd, 180, 190, 191.
death, 9, 13, 25, 27, 48, 52, 67, 73, 79, 94, hope, 8, 37, 46, 52, 54, 102, 139, 140, 161,
101, 158, 167, 169, 171, 173, 201, 177, 180, 184, 186, 187, 192, 201,
240, 257. 231, 246.
deism, xii. humility, 13, 14, 24, 27, 29, 37, 39, 96, 130,
demonic, 36, 257, 259. 163, 164, 259, 262.
despair, 58, 110, 116, 183, 192, 213.
docetism, 158, 159. imitation, 15, 79, 148, 261.
double-mindedness, 184, 191. incarnation, 8, 15, 92, 136, 158, 159, 163,
doubt, 11, 25–9, 37, 64, 116, 147, 213. 164.
doxology, 115. innocence, 18, 23, 24, 27, 30–3, 36–9, 107,
126, 136, 138, 259.
edification, 123, 128. inwardness, 32, 73, 169, 188, 190, 200, 201,
enlightenment, x, 179, 232, 233. 244.
eternity, 77, 78, 156–9, 182, 186, 187, 192, irony, 51, 162, 164.
231. islam, 90–2.
every good gift, 26, 27, 29, 32, 37, 39. isolation, 57, 66, 103.
evil, 4, 8, 9, 12, 17–23, 36, 40, 60, 115, 118,
119, 127, 169, 175, 201. law, 232.
exception, 136. leap, 14, 31, 32, 37, 39, 52, 59.
liberum arbitrium, 35.
faith, xii, 26, 29, 36, 37, 39, 40, 44–53 lilies and birds, 4, 108, 176.
passim, 58, 64–80 passim, 93, 94, logos, 15.
97, 116, 130, 148–55 passim, 177, love, 44, 53, 54, 56, 58, 60, 63–72 passim,
213–17 passim, 234, 240–2, 246, 115, 136, 139, 148, 151, 152, 158,
247, 259, 260, 262. 159, 162, 170, 174, 177, 207–12
Fall, the, 5–15 passim, 18, 19, 23–25, 29, passim, 232, 261.
30, 33, 36, 39, 119, 152, 213.
felix culpa, 4, 7, 8, 11, 12, 16, 19, 21, 27, 33, manichaeism, 8.
36, 37, 39, 40. marriage, 103, 109, 165, 198, 237, 238.
Flood, the, 4. martyrdom, 66, 79, 80.
freedom, 4–8 passim, 11–21 passim, 28–40 mediation, 14.
passim, 133, 164. melancholy, 110.
miracles, 97, 197.
gnosticism, 118, 157. moment, the, 33–5, 63, 76, 156–8, 162.
good samaritan, the, 219, 220. monotheism, 90, 92.
governance, 96, 97.
grace, xi, 4, 15, 26, 67, 95, 111, 136, 150, nihilism, 57, 183.
170, 173, 177, 214, 215, 232. nothingness, 4, 12, 13, 16, 23, 26, 34–36,
grief, 25, 123, 137, 151, 179–94 passim. 39, 40, 168.
guilt, 30, 31, 37, 101–13 passim, 123, 136,
147, 148, 152, 153, 201, 222, 255, offense, 124.
258.
paradox, 52, 65, 71, 75, 123, 163, 164, 170,
hegelianism, 22, 58, 62, 64, 92. 215, 240, 247, 259.
holy spirit, 9, 28, 29, 43. passion, 64, 65, 67, 187, 222.
Index of Subjects 273
patience, 29, 160, 164, 215, 218, 223. selfhood, 24, 37, 38, 122.
pelagianism, 6. The Shepherd of Hermas, 8.
pietism, 179, 232, 241, 255, 260, 261. sickness, 127.
poetry, 141, 142. silence, 163, 188–90, 200, 215, 248.
possibility, 17, 20, 31–9 passim, 52, 109, sin, 4–18 passim, 21, 22, 25–40 passim,
163, 164, 200, 201, 216, 244. 70, 71, 116, 121, 123, 126, 135–7,
predestination, 6, 11. 151–3, 160, 163, 167, 172, 185, 201,
providence, 19, 23, 27, 29, 36–8, 44, 53, 56, 219, 223, 226, 241.
57, 63, 159, 162. subjectivity, 23, 29, 31, 34, 40, 119, 122,
psychology, 29, 30, 32. 144, 155, 164, 176, 216.
purgatory, 254. suffering, 4, 7–10, 23, 25, 27, 28, 35, 36, 39,
44, 53, 56, 57, 63–6, 70–80 passim,
reconciliation, xii, 19, 60. 115–40, 148, 149, 152, 155–60
redemption, 15, 27, 36, 70. passim, 163, 165, 177, 186, 222,
reformation, 232. 232, 261.
religiousness a and B, 136. supernaturalism, x.
repentance, 71, 72, 106, 136, 169, 185, 186, suspension of the ethical, 52.
187, 201, 220.
repetition, 109, 122–7 passim, 137, 138. temporality, 156–8, 165, 187, 192.
resignation, 53, 66–9, 117, 213, 214, 246. theodicy, 4, 40.
resurrection, 67, 221, 238. transfiguration, 94.
revelation, 21, 126, 136, 169, 176, 177, 224, trinity, 43.
241.
romanticism, xii, 236, 237. vanity, 179–92.
salvation, 9, 10, 26, 46, 66, 80, 92, 153, 173, without authority, 181, 223, 224.
192, 232, 253, 260. witness, x, 24, 51, 74, 76, 79, 92, 97, 109,
second adam, 4, 7, 9, 14–16, 28, 33, 37, 39. 111, 119, 129, 138–40, 176, 213.
self-consciousness, 19, x, 11, 122, 146.
self-examination, 111, 147, 148, 151, 154,
177, 214, 217, 223, 226.

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KierKegaard and the BiBle

tome i: the old testament

Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources

This volume was published with the generous financial support

Published 2016 by Routledge

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright © 2010 lee C. Barrett, Jon stewart and the contributors

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

isBn 9781409402855 (hbk)

List of Contributors vii

PART I INDIVIDUAL TEXTS AND FIGURES

adam and eve:

david and solomon:

PART II OVERVIEW ARTICLES

Kierkegaard’s rewriting of Biblical narratives:

Kierkegaard’s use of the old testament:

Kierkegaard’s use of the apocrypha:

Index of Persons 265

Timothy Dalrymple, Center on the study of religion, Barker Center, harvard

Iben Damgaard, department of systematic theology, aarhus university,

Matthias Engelke, pfarrerhaus, steegerstr. 34, 41334 nettetal-lobberich,

W. Glenn Kirkconnell, department of humanities and Foreign languages, p–152,

B&A Breve og Aktstykker vedrørende Søren Kierkegaard, ed. by niels thulstrup,

Bl.art. S. Kierkegaard’s Bladartikler, med Bilag samlede efter Forfatterens Død,

EP Af Søren Kierkegaards Efterladte Papirer, vols. 1–9, ed. by h.p. Barfod

AN Armed Neutrality, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton:

AR On Authority and Revelation, The Book on Adler, trans. by walter lowrie,

CA The Concept of Anxiety, trans. by reidar thomte in collaboration with

CD Christian Discourses, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong,

CI The Concept of Irony, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong,

CUP1 Concluding Unscientific Postscript, vol. 1, trans. by howard v. hong and

CUP2 Concluding Unscientific Postscript, vol. 2, trans. by howard v. hong and

EOP Either/Or, trans. by alastair hannay, harmondsworth: penguin Books

EUD Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h.

FSE For Self-Examination, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong,

FTP Fear and Trembling, trans. by alastair hannay, harmondsworth: penguin

JC Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est, trans. by howard v.

KAC Kierkegaard’s Attack upon “Christendom,” 1854–1855, trans. by walter

LD Letters and Documents, trans. by henrik rosenmeier, princeton: princeton

LR A Literary Review, trans. by alastair hannay, harmondsworth: penguin

P Prefaces / Writing Sampler, trans. by todd w. nichol, princeton: princeton

PC Practice in Christianity, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong,

PF Philosophical Fragments, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong,

PJ Papers and Journals: A Selection, trans. by alastair hannay,

PLS Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. by david F. swenson and walter

PV The Point of View including On My Work as an Author, The Point of View

PVL The Point of View for My Work as an Author including On My Work as an

R Repetition, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton:

TD Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, trans. by howard v. hong and

UD Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, trans. by howard v. hong and

WS Writing Sampler, trans. by todd w. nichol, princeton: princeton university

individual texts and Figures

Adam is too central a figure in Western philosophical and theological discourse

The same standpoint is found in figures more proximate to Kierkegaard; Calvin

II. Adam’s Many Faces (1841–43)

III. Adam in Doubt and Anxiety (1843–44)

The culmination of Kierkegaard’s reflection on the figure of Adam is found relatively

The discourse goes on to address specifically the “grief” of endlessly grasping

I. Works in the auction Catalogue of Kierkegaard’s Library that

adler, adolph peter, Forsøg til en kort systematisk Fremstilling af Christendommen

II. Secondary Literature on Kierkegaard’s Use of Adam and Eve

A. Approaching Abraham (1833–40)3