Soren Keirkegaard was a ground-breaking 19th century philosopher; the father of the the existential movement. He was also a passionate follower of Jesus who was unafraid to speak out against the complacency of the Christianity of his day. Read on as Andrew Hartwig tells some of his story...
Soren Kierkegaard was a prolific Danish philosopher and theologian who lived in Copenhagen in the early-mid 1800s and is known for being the father of existentialism. Kierkegaard started in theology at the University of Copenhagen, but ultimately found himself more drawn to philosophy and literature. Before he died, Kierkegaard's father asked him to become a pastor but he ended up taking a different road.
Kierkegaard wrote a number of books such as Either/Or, Sickness Unto Death, Fear and Trembling and Repetition and during the last part of his life, he devoted himself to resisting against "Christendom" and particularly the Danish State Church. At this time, most people who were citizens of Denmark were members of the State Church and Kierkegaard believed that the union of church and state distorted true Christianity.
Kierkegaard believed very strongly in responsibility of the individual and he believed that the congregations of the State Church were set up in a way that allowed people to avoid taking responsibility for their own relations to God. He also believed that the church had become largely secularized and political and since the church was controlled by the state, their mission was to increase membership. With more members came more power for the clergy and ultimately more corruption. All of this, for Kierkegaard, meant that Christianity became an empty religion and that it allowed for people to be "Christian" without even knowing what the word meant. In Kierkegaard's view, this reduced Christianity to little more than a tradition that created a herd mentality and produced very little actual change.
Kierkegaard strongly resisted all of this both in his writing and in his actions. One story goes that he used to turn up to church with his offering, give it to the church and sit outside of it for the entirety of the service to show that his resistance was not about his money or time.
To close off this morning I'd like to finish with a quote from Kierkegaard. In his book The Irresistible Revolution, Shane Claiborne quotes this exact passage and seeing as he is coming here at the beginning of next year I felt it only appropriate to use it.
"The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament."
SK would reject the category of philosopher and father of a movement. Scholars of SK tend to do the same thing as Christian scholars.
Posted by: Soren Kierkergaard | August 02, 2008 at 01:26 PM