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How Christian is Kierkegaard's God?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

David R. Law
David R. Law
Affiliation:
University of ManchesterDepartment of Religions and Theology Oxford Road Manchester M13 9PL
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Extract

From time to time controversy breaks out within Kierkegaardian scholarship as to the nature of Kierkegaard's concept of God. This controversy is invariably centred on Kierkegaard's claim that there exists ‘an infinite qualitative difference’ between God and humankind. The utter transcendence of God that this phrase expresses and the fact that Kierkegaard employs categories drawn from Greek philosophy to express the nature of God's transcendence have led such scholars as E. L. Allen, Richard Kroner, and Malcolm L. Diamond, to contend that Kierkegaard's understanding of God is not motivated by Christian principles but is merely a Christianization of an Aristotelian concept of God, a contention which would seem to be supported by Kierkegaard's frequent descriptions of God in terms of Aristotle's Unmoved Mover. On the other hand, such scholars as T. H. Croxall, Paul Sponheim, Niels Thulstrup, and Mark Taylor have rejected this argument and claim that Kierkegaard's concept of God is motivated by Christian principles. Unfortunately, none of these latter scholars has put forward a comprehensive defence of this position. In this article it is my intention to rectify this omission and to show that, far from being Aristotelian, Kierkegaard's concept of God is firmly based upon Christian principles.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , August 1995 , pp. 301 - 314
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1995

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References

1 Sickness unto Death ed. and trans. H. V., and Hong, E. H. (Princeton, NJ, 1980), 99, 117, 121–2, 126, 127Google Scholar; Philosophical Fragments/Johannes Climacus, ed. and trans. H. V., and Hong, E. H. (Princeton, NJ, 1985), 44–47Google Scholar; Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments, ed. and trans. H. V., and Hong, E. H., I–II (Princeton, NJ, 1992), 1217, 412Google Scholar; Practice in Christianity, ed. and trans. H. V., and Hong, E. H. (Princeton, NJ, 1991), 28–29, 63, 140Google Scholar; Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, ed. and trans. H. V., and Hong, E. H., I–VII (Bloomington, Ind., 1967–1978), II 1377, 1383, 1386, 1416, 1433, 1447Google Scholar; III 3645–50.

2 Allen, E. L., Kierkegaard: His Life and Thought (London, 1935), 183, 187.Google Scholar

3 Kroner, Richard, ‘Kierkegaards Hegelverstāndnis’ in Theunissen, Michael and Greve, Wilfried (eds.), Materialien zur Philosophic Søren Kierkegaards (Frankfurt am Main, 1979), p. 432.Google Scholar

4 Diamond, Malcolm L., ‘Kierkegaard and Apologetics’, The Journal of Religion, vol. XLIV, April 1964, p. 123.Google Scholar This claim is also implied in Robert Whittemore's claim ‘that Kierkegaard's theological presupposition is a God at once eternal, infinite, immutable, omnipotent, sovereign, creator: in sum, the deity of Scholasticism’: Whittemore, Robert C., ‘Pro Hegel, Contra Kierkegaard’, Journal of Religious Thought, vol. 13, Spring/Summer, 1956, p. 137 (original emphasis).Google Scholar

5 Croxall, T. H., Kierkegaard Commentary (London, 1957), p. 30.Google Scholar

6 Sponheim, Paul, Kierkegaard on Christ and Christian Coherence (Westport, Conn., 1968), pp. 101–103.Google Scholar

7 Thulstrup writes that ‘Kierkegaard was not interested in Aristotle's metaphysics in general or his doctrine of categories in particular, but only in items that he could adapt to his own use’: Thulstrup, Niels, Kierkegaard's Relation to Hegel, trans. Stengren, G. L. (Princeton. NJ, 1980), pp. 286–287.Google Scholar

8 Mark Taylor notes that although Kierkegaard's emphasis on the difference between God and humankind in terms of eternity and temporality means that his understanding of God sometimes appears to be more Greek than Christian, ‘for Kierkegaard, the Christian God is a transcendent personal being, and is not the Greek Unmoved Mover’: Taylor, Mark C., Kierkegaard's Pseudonymous Authorship (Princeton, NJ, 1975), pp. 292–293.Google Scholar

9 SD 121.

10 SD 122.

11 Christian Discourses, trans. Lowrie, W. (Princeton, NJ, 1971), 368.Google Scholar

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15 R 207–11.

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18 For Self-Examination/Judge for Yourself! ed. and trans. H. V., and Hong, E. H. (Princeton, NJ, 1990), 66Google Scholar; Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, ed. and trans. H. V., & Hong, E. H. (Princeton, NJ, 1990), 55–78, 350, 353Google Scholar; CD 108, 118, 128, 138, 153, 163, 180, 189, 265, 384; The Gospel of Sufferings, trans. Aldworth, A. S. and Ferrie, W. S. (Cambridge, 1955), 65–92.Google Scholar

19 See esp. JP IV 3989–4051. The earliest entry on sin was made in 1834, the latest in 1854, another indication of how this theme dominated Kierkegaard's thought.

20 According toj. H. Randall the Prime Mover is a ‘principle of intelligibility’ (p. 134). Indeed, far from being a theological concept, ‘it is the Aristotelian counterpart of Newton's principia mathematica of motion’ (Ibid.) and ‘is a logical explanation, not a physical cause, a natural law, not a force’ (p. 135). J. H. Randall Jr., Aristotle (New York, 1960).

21 PF 47. Cf. JP II 1444, where Kierkegaard writes that it is due to human sinfulness that God is unable to sustain a direct relationship to the world.

22 JP II 1396; cf. PC 62.

23 JP II 1384, 1385.

24 JP II 1343.

25 JP II 1435.

26 PF 24.

27 PF 9.

28 PF 23–36.

29 PF 24: emphasis added.

30 Ibid.

31 Aristotle, Metaphysics 1072 a–b.

32 PF 24.

33 PF 25.

34 Ibid.

35 PF 26–35.

36 JP II 1332; date: 1843. Thulstrup points out that this journal entry indicates that Kierkegaard ‘has not taken the expression [Unmoved Mover] from a reading of Aristotle but from secondary sources, namely from Schelling's lectures in Berlin and from Tennemann's history of philosophy (III, 159ff)’: Thulstrup, Niels, Commentary on Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. Widenmann, Robert J. (Princeton, NJ, 1984), p. 351.Google Scholar See also ‘Notes of Schelling's Berlin Lectures’, in CI 352; Tennemann, W. G., Geschichte der Philosophie, I–XI (Leipzig, 1798–1819).Google Scholar We know from the auctioneer's sales record of Kierkegaard's library, however, that he possessed collections of Aristotle's works, including a German translation of the Metaphysics. See Auktionsprotokol over Søren Kierkegaards Bogsamling, ed. Rohde, H. P. (Copenhagen, 1967), items 1056–1095.Google Scholar

37 See esp. CUP I 301–18.

38 CUP I 312.

39 CUP I 432n.

40 See esp. CUP I 199–207.

41 CUP I 200; JP II 1349; cf. III 2570.

42 That this is not a lapse on Kierkegaard's part but is typical of his treatment of philosophy is corroborated by two journal entries in which a similar position is adopted. The first, made in 1834, states that if, like H. N. Clausen, we maintain that ‘absolutely no change has taken place in God with regard to us, we are led back to a completely Kantian standpoint’ (JP II 1305). In the second, made in 1843, Kierkegaard notes that ‘The thought that God is love in the sense that he is always the same is so abstract that it is fundamentally a sceptical thought’(JP II 1328).

43 JP II 1383, cf. 1384, 1385.

44 CUP I 119.

45 CUP I 66, cf. 546.

46 CUP I 163, 178f, 218f, 221; EøO II 171, 181; The Point of View, trans. Lowrie, W. (London, 1939), 113–114, 135, 137Google Scholar; CA 107, 140.

47 PF 28.

48 CUP I 207–8, 214, 583–4; PF 47, 51.

49 PF 26–35.

50 PF 47.

51 The only object worthy for Aristotle's God to think is himself, since he himself is the most excellent of things. If he were, to think that which is not himself and therefore less excellent than himself, this would entail change, indeed change for the worse (Metaphysics 1074b). It is inconceivable that such a God could become involved with entities as imperfect as human beings.