Lessing's Problem and Kierkegaard's Answer

Extract

Accidental truths of history can never become the proof of necessary truths of reason.

It is a tribute to the perspicacity of Lessing and Kierkegaard that their way of investigating the problem of the role of historical investigation in the task of theological construction has set the tone of subsequent discussion. The centrality of their problem in our time is shown up by the way Diem depicts Lessing's question and Kierkegaard's answer as the starting-point of the contemporary theological debate.¹ Diem's analysis here is penetrating, even if it only shows up the need for that starting-point to be critically examined.

In this article, after an examination of Kierkegaard's general position, what I wish to suggest is (1) that the problem as Lessing has posed it is insoluble, and thus Kierkegaard's paradoxical solution is no solution; (2) that nevertheless, despite his clear dependence on Lessing, Kierkegaard has restated the problem in the only way which shows any promise for a Christian theology; and (3) that the pursuit of this solution requires that faith be not sealed off from ‘natural inquiry’, and consequently, a serious grappling with ordinary historical problems is unavoidable in Christian theology—which is the opposite conclusion to that which Kierkegaard himself drew (and which is widely accepted at the present time).

There does seem some truth in saying that any large-scale endeavour to work through a comprehensive programme of thought produces the radical critic who proclaims, after the manner of a prophet, that the programme is wrong-headed and misconceived, and who himself works through the programme for just one reason—to show, once and for all, that the only thing to do is to abandon an impossible investigation. Søren Kierkegaard was such a critic.