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Why the Incarnation is a Superfluous Detail for Kierkegaard

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Michael P. Levine
Michael P. Levine
Affiliation:
New York
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Extract

Why does the paradox (i.e. the incarnation) play such a crucial role in Kierkegaard's notion of truth as subjectivity? Richard Schacht explains it as follows:

Eternal happiness is possible for a man only if it is possible for him to relate himself to God. A man, however, is a being who exists in time; and it would not be possible for such a being to enter into a ‘God-relationship’ if God had not also at some point existed in time. Through the ‘leap of faith’ in which one affirms the proposition that God did exist in time, one is able to enter a ‘God-relationship’ and thereby attains ‘an eternal happiness’.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , June 1982 , pp. 171 - 175
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

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References

page 171 note 1 Kierkegaard's doctrine of subjectivity as truth is to be found in Kierkegaard, Soren, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. Swenson, D. and Lowrie, W..(Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1968).Google Scholar Also relevant; Kierkegaard, , Philosophical Fragments (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1969).Google Scholar

page 171 note 2 Schacht, Richard, ‘Kierkegaard On “Truth is Subjectivity” and the leap of faith’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 11 (1973), 308.Google Scholar

page 172 note 1 The ‘condition’ is sometimes called ‘Faith’ by Kierkegaard, (PF, p. 73)Google Scholar, but I don't see how faith can be the ‘condition’ since the ‘condition’ is sometimes described as a prerequisite of faith.

page 172 note 2 Kierkegaard says that the proposition about the incarnation could not be taken seriously unless God somehow gave ‘a sign’ to take seriously. See Fragments, pp.44–5.Google Scholar Even if one grants Kierkegaard his point here one need not also suppose that the incarnation had actually to take place. I suppose Kierkegaard thought that only an incarnation was a ‘sign’ adequate to the task that needed to be performed. But how can an actual incarnation be required as a sign when one cannot even know that an incarnation took place? He wants to distinguish a ‘delusion’ of an incarnation from an actual historical incarnation by saying that the very thought of an incarnation is so strange that it would have had to be ‘entrusted’ to man by God if such an idea was to be thought at all. But even here we are talking only of ideas and not actual events – even though the idea is the idea of an actual event.

page 173 note 1 Actually this is not quite so simple. Kierkegaard says that a pagan may be ‘in the truth’ and we may assume that this is a pagan who has never even heard of the paradox. But suppose someone has heard of the paradox. Can one reject the paradox as an absurdity not to be believed and yet be ‘in the truth’ by developing one's subjectivity? Kierkegaard's emphasis appears to rest on an individual's subjectivity rather than on his belief in the paradox, though belief in the paradox sometimes is given as a necessary condition of eternal happiness.

page 174 note 1 According to Kierkegaard the paradox is not something that can be understood. ‘Within the sphere of faith the moment can never arrive when he understands the paradox (in a direct sense); for if that occurs, then the whole sphere of faith passes away as a misunderstanding…’ ( CUP, p. 515Google Scholar). If the paradox is not something to be understood and ‘appropriated’ through the understanding then it is not clear to me why Kierkegaard would want to insist on an individual having at least heard about the incarnation if he is to achieve subjectivity. One can't believe without something to believe in (i.e. faith understood as a passion must have an object), but why the object of faith must be presented in propositional form is not clear. (Again, it has to do with Kierkegaard's having presupposed the truth of Christianity and the incarnation as the central object of faith associated with Christianity. There would be no Christianity with no incarnation for Kierkegaard, and no need for Christianity if there was no need for the incarnation.)

page 175 note 1 Kierkegaard says‘…because the simple-man's circumstances in life turn his attention outward, he is exempted from the laborious effort with which the cultured man maintains his faith, striving with more and more effort in proportion as his culture increases’ ( CUP, p. 536Google Scholar). This suggests that there is a very real distinction between the faith of the simple-believer and that of the cultured man as a believer.