Embracing Faith: Kierkegaard's Journey Through Life's Stages

Kierkegaard said, "Let others complain that our age is wicked, my complaint is that it is paltry." That it lacks passion. He said, "When I become depressed with my own culture, and the world around me, I inevitably am drawn back to the Old Testament where I encounter people who are real. They lie. They steal. They cheat. They commit adultery. And yet, in the midst of all of this, they have this passionate pursuit of the God who is." [05:03]

He saw that the highest or the deepest stage along life's way was stage three, which he defined as the religious stage of human existence. Now, a passion for religion and for the things of God is what marked this philosopher's life, and his thinking. I mentioned earlier that as a college student I read everything I could get my hands on from Kierkegaard including: Purity Of Heart, Fear And Trembling, Attack Upon Christendom, A Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Either Or, and others. [07:02]

In this religious stage, life in its existential passion is marked, according to Kierkegaard, by the twin characteristics of fear and trembling. He wrote a book by this title in which the hero of the story is the Biblical patriarch Abraham. You recall Abraham's existential anguish when God called him to the supreme test whereby he was commanded of God to take his son, the son whom he loved – Isaac, and to take him to Mount Moriah, and there to kill him and offer him as a sacrifice unto God. [07:57]

And so, how does Abraham respond to this existential crisis? He does it by taking a leap of faith, and embracing the paradox of the moment. And now, what Kierkegaard does at this point is that he uses this illustration in the life of Abraham to illustrate the whole substance of a passionate Christian life. Because, the Christian faith is a pilgrimage that requires the existential leap. The time comes where you have nothing in front of you but darkness and yet you have the command of God to move ahead. [12:28]

Now, for Kierkegaard, the existential leap of faith was not something that was patently irrational or absurd. But, it was something that on the surface seemed to be irrational and absurd. And, what Kierkegaard is saying is that that’s the risk that a person has to take if they are going to be a follower of Christ. Christ himself is the supreme paradox. In Christ, in his incarnation, we have the intersection of the infinite with the finite, the eternal with the temporal, the unconditioned with the conditioned. [13:51]

And so, one must passionately commit oneself to this Christ of Scripture in a moment of crisis that later became called, by theologians, the crisis of existential "entscheidung" or decision. And this moment of passion is the moment of faith that defines a true authentic Christian's life. That takes place – he uses the term as I said "moment." The existential moment that is of decisive significance for one's whole existence. [14:43]

The other person with whom Kierkegaard so closely identified from Biblical literature in addition to Abraham was the person of Job. Because, Job was the man who knew the profound depths of suffering and of pain, and who was threatened every minute of his existence with despair. And yet, out of his pain came insights into truth, into love, and into faith. You remember Job in the midst of his affliction crying out, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust him." [17:02]

One of the things that he was concerned about was how pain and suffering can be translated into beauty, though the one who is experiencing the anguish and pain that produces the beautiful, is not fully appreciated by the public. He’s speaking here of the woes and miseries suffered by the poet or the artists. He gave two illustrations about that. In one he told the story of a man who worked in a theatre and his role was to play the part of a clown. [18:11]

Now, for Kierkegaard, one of the great legacies he gave to 20th century theology was his emphasis on the subjective aspect of truth. He was not interested in the cold abstract logic of Hegel, or of abstract speculative philosophy or theology. He wrote a vehement attack against the institutional church for its dead orthodoxy and formalism in his attack upon Christendom, and said that in his passion to recover the personal dimension of authentic truth, that truth is subjectivity. [22:42]

Now, there’s a debate as to whether he really meant what he said. Was he simply saying that truth doesn't come alive until it has the personal application and appropriation by the individual or, as some of his followers claimed, truth itself is reduced to personal subjective preference. If that is the case, then of course, Kierkegaard has undermined the Christian faith that he is espousing by setting the stage for a later relativism that would negate the objective truth of the word of God. [23:33]

But the basic concern of Kierkegaard at this point, I don't think, was to give us a complete new epistemology of the philosophy of truth, but rather to call his generation and future generations to a passionate subjective involvement into the life of faith. That’s his legacy to me. I believe that theology should be rational, cogent, coherent, logical and all of that. But, that our response to that which is objectively true should be a response of unrestrained passion and care as we show our love for the things of God. [24:17]