It is different in the world of the spirit [as opposed to the external and visible world]. Here [the world of spirit] an eternal divine order prevails. Here it does not rain on both the just and the unjust; here the sun does not shine on both good and evil. Here it holds true that only the one who works gets bread, that only the one who was in anxiety finds rest, that only the one who descends into the lower world rescues the beloved, that only the one who draws the knife gets Isaac. [Hong p. 27]This passage has several important elements relevant to the immediate context, not the least of which are the introduction of the concept of anxiety and the supposition of an eternal divine order/decree. Yet, the question that just jumps off the page to me upon reading such a passage in Kierkegaard is, "How in the world do liberals or progressives read this?" This passage asserts the existence of a God who commands the sacrifice of Isaac. Just as we ought not gloss over a theology of the holy saturday between the cross and the resurrection of Jesus, we ought not gloss over the anxiety of Abraham in his journey, especially as he draws the knife. We ought not allow the fact that Christ is risen, or that God provided Abraham a lamb, deflate these fundamental narratives of their offense, meaning, or power. The story of Abraham is idol crushing. In an age where every salesman of theology puts God in the dock, proclaiming that he's found a way to make God good, Kierkegaard places himself firmly in line with Luther, placing man in the dock, proclaiming that God has made a way to make man good. Hence my confusion regarding SK's darling status with many liberals/progressives.
One of my favorite liberal precepts is "God must be at least as nice as Jesus". I don't know its original author, but this phrase is quite useful since it explains succinctly the problem that confronts liberal/progressive Christianity when faced with a confessional reading of the Old Testament. Protestants and Catholics of a conservative orientation have labored for centuries trying to place the "atrocities" of the OT in a covenantal context that might explain the offensiveness, but, as this phrase shows, many contemporary liberals and progressives just preclude this whole effort. Simply put, the God of the OT must be as nice as Jesus. If the text paints the God of the OT as not as nice as Jesus, then that text must be subjugated to the niceness of Jesus. (This is highly problematic, for obvious reasons. Who is Jesus, and are we sure he's all that "nice", for starters?) Wouldn't the sacrifice of Isaac be the first OT passage on the chopping block (even over genocide)?
Kierkegaard goes on from the passage quoted to explain that the problem is not merely ethical (although it is at least that). He explains that the sacrifice of Isaac is linked but not equivalent to the command of Jesus to the rich young ruler (to sell his possessions and give to the poor). The command of Jesus was the call of repentance, and if anything is parallel to God's call to Abram to come out of Ur. The command of God to sacrifice Isaac is the call to faith. It is a call to exist in the eternal realm; and paradoxically, to at the same time live within the temporal. Kierkegaard's God is not as nice as the Jesus of the liberals and progressives (I will leave it up to you to decide if that is the real Jesus at all).
I've always found it frustrating that folks of all stripes would take SK out of his context to meet their own sociopolitical or religious ends. My take on it over the years: liberals and progressives make the error of taking his pseudonyms at face value as his true words (usually sprinkled with some psychoanalysis), thus excusing them from dealing with SK's explicit Christianity. They deconstruct him.
ReplyDeleteI am, of course, just as guilty of that from a different angle. But I at least want to strive to understand, read, and cite him as he wanted to be understood, read, and cited. A hard task indeed.