Inquisitor, Sinner, Kierkegaard, Christ: Faith and the Banality of Evil

There exists no greater or more painful anxiety for a man who has freed himself from all religious bias, than how he shall soonest find a new object or idea to worship. But man seeks to bow before that only which is recognized by the greater majority, if not by all his fellow-men, as having a right to be worshipped; whose rights are so unquestionable that men agree unanimously to bow down to it. For the chief concern of these miserable creatures is not to find and worship the idol of their own choice, but to discover that which all others will believe in, and consent to bow down to it in a mass.[1]

—thus the Grand Inquisitor speaks to Christ; or rather, Dostoyevsky speaks through the mouth of Ivan Karamazov. His tale has Christ returning quietly to this world during the days of the Inquisition. There the people recognise him immediately, as do the authorities. He soon finds himself again imprisoned. There the Grand Inquisitor comes to speak to Christ. He tells Him of human history since last He walked this earth. The church had seen the impossibility of His plan and substituted their own. And that the people might have happiness, the church has taken upon itself their sin. Mankind has been driven by anxiety to offer up its freedom; the church absolves them in return, all is well with the world. For Christ to return now would only disrupt perfection.

Oh, we shall allow them even sin, they are weak and helpless, and they will love us like children because we allow them to sin. We shall tell them that every sin will be expiated, if it is done with our permission, that we allow them to sin because we love them, and the punishment for these sins we take upon ourselves. And we shall take it upon ourselves, and they will adore us as their saviours who have taken on themselves their sins before God.[2]

Man thus hides from his freedom behind the church. There he rests in the comfort, preferring the path of man to that of God. Though less demanding, the church assures him, this path is just as good. But the man who thinks himself already Christian thinks little of Christianity. It is seen instead as something already attained. There can be no striving in such a state. We most desire what we cannot have, whereas for what possess already—or think we do—this passion is often absent. Christianity thus understood as identity is rarely more than habit. There is no movement here. This place is safe, all think me Christian; why not rest here a while? And there we may live out our time in comfort. The Grand Inquisitor tells Christ all this: that they have thus corrected Christianity and that He would only harm this plan. And thus, he concludes to Christ:

… to-morrow Thou shalt see that obedient flock who at a sign from me will hasten to heap up the hot cinders about the pile on which I shall burn Thee for coming to hinder us. For if anyone has ever deserved our fires, it is Thou. To-morrow I shall burn Thee.[3]

Kierkegaard on contemporaneity with Christ

That Christ, were He to so return, would collide once more with the world would not have surprised Kierkegaard. Dostoyevsky (Russia, 1821–1881) wrote The Brothers Karamazov (~1880) well after, and apparently without encountering, Kierkegaard (Denmark, 1813–1855). Despite this their worldviews are often in alignment. It is not only that they were both Christian. But they share also a similar understanding of what this entails. Indeed it is almost as if, as Kaufmann notes, “Kierkegaard had stepped right out of Dostoevsky’s pen.”[4] For we see in his life the same themes that concerned Dostoyevsky. The Grand Inquisitor in particular closely resembles the central thrust of Kierkegaard’s final campaign. Here he brought into the open his conflict with the State Church, who he saw as offering a cheapened Christianity. All Denmark, though proclaiming itself a Christian nation, was merely “playing the game of Christianity.”[5] Where in this, he asked, was that Christianity characteristic of the New Testament? He knew that most if asked, even he, would admit this was not them; that they were not even striving so. But still there persisted that strange calculation “which arrives at a Christian nation by adding up units which are not Christian.”[6]

For Kierkegaard the point of Christianity was not temporal but eternal. It mattered little, for instance, whether one’s neighbours thought one Christian. It mattered equally little whether one was comfortable with one’s own conscience. All that mattered were the true requirements of Christianity according to the New Testament. This alone could assure one’s place in the hereafter. The problem was not only that Denmark was not properly Christian. It was, perhaps more importantly, that the Christian requirement itself had been suppressed and falsified. There would be no eternal reward for participating in this hoax. The eternal is not a thing like water which can be acquired as much this way as that. The only way is that of the New Testament: “Narrow is the gate and straitened the way that leadeth unto life, and few are they that find it.”[7] Where all are Christians, however, as it was Denmark, “the way is as broad as it possibly can be … since it is the way in which we are all walking.”[8] And it was precisely this cunning that had done away with the true Christian requirement: “We are all Christians, and so Christianity is eo ipso abolished.”[9]

This was the situation in which Kierkegaard found himself. And it was this that set him on course to collide with the world. The State Church of Denmark was hardly likely to admit what Kierkegaard asked. They would not sacrifice their authority by admitting they were not really Christian. They were more than comfortable as things were. It was clear, then, that following this path would lead Kierkegaard into conflict with authority, even society. And yet still he followed it as far as his life would take him. What can explain this? We might even see it as a sort of madness:

… he tried to prove to us that we really were crazy: first, because we had come into conflict with society, whereas a normal person adapts to society; and second, because we had risked our freedom for the sake of stupid ideas, neglecting the interests of our families and careers. “This,” he explained, “is called an obsession with self, the first sign of a paranoid development of the personality.”[10]

Kierkegaard, of course, saw it quite differently. He understood his path as a striving towards contemporaneity with Christ. This was the path taken by the first Christians, those not backed—indeed, vehemently opposed—by earthly authority. The faith that Christ asked of his followers, then, involved “coming into a relationship with the surrounding world which perhaps involves mortal danger.”[11] This Kierkegaard contrasts negatively with the common Christianity of his day, wherein what was taken for faith tended instead toward comfort. What seemed then an anachronistic element of early Christian history was to Kierkegaard the essence of faith:

The fact that one believes can be proved in only one way: by being willing to suffer for one’s faith. And the degree of one’s faith is proved only by the degree of one’s willingness to suffer for one’s faith.[12]

Belief in actuality

Kierkegaard’s primary focus, however, was neither abstract nor political. We have thus far seen him address Christianity mainly as an idea. Here he was especially concerned with the “suppression and falsification” of the true Christian requirement. The State Church, he felt, was issuing counterfeit currency. There what matters most is objective, that one is thought of as Christian. This required little of the would-be Christian. Kierkegaard, in contrast, sought to make things more difficult. Instead one ought to strive towards the Christian ideal of the New Testament; in short, to imitate of Christ. We can see this, for instance, in Kierkegaard’s emphasis on actuality:

“To come to actuality” also means willing to exist for every person, to the extent that one is capable of doing so. … From a Christian point of view I am not permitted existentially to ignore one single person. I am permitted to ignore an anonymous publicist, the public, and all such fantastic entities, but no actual person.[13]

This was the focal point of the Christian requirement: one’s immediate experience in relation to another existing human being. It was here that one must strive to imitate Christ. This emphasis may seem ironic in light of Kierkegaard’s prolific literary activity. And yet Kierkegaard was no recluse. He was seen walking so often that some thought it impossible that he could simultaneously produce such an immense volume of work.

And it is here, on the streets of Copenhagen, that Kierkegaard’s conception of Christianity is most apparent. We see here also his collision with the world. It was not only by contradicting the State Church that he suffered. His behaviour also contradicted the common morality of his day insofar as he felt Christianity required something more of him. This can be seen, for instance, in his relationship with “the common man.” For Kierkegaard took quite seriously the commandment that he love his neighbour:

But the common man, whom I loved! It was my greatest joy to express at least a bit of love for my neighbor. When I beheld that abominable social condescension toward the lesser classes, then I could dare say to myself: “At least I do not live like that.”[14]

This follows naturally from his emphasis on actuality. Christianity thus required he reject the “hardheartedness and cruelty of class distinctions and respectability.”[15] He must exist for each individual irrespective of class and status. This entailed, as he recognised, violating the conventional requirements of “respectability.” It was most unusual for someone of his status to speak so freely to those that others tried not to see. But Kierkegaard could not do otherwise: “I would have been ashamed before God and would have saddened my own soul if I had become so self-important that I had to say that ‘other people’ did not exist for me.”[16]

Kierkegaard experienced the cost of all this when he was lampooned by the Corsair. His appearance and behaviour were caricatured in the press and he was for a while the laughing stock of all Copenhagen. Worse yet, the press turned even the common man against him:

For example, when I have sought recreation by driving twenty or thirty miles away … and I step down from the coach, and it happens that I am received by a mocking assembly, and some of those present are even nice enough to call me names: it has a powerful effect on my physical well-being.[17]

This was a formative experience for him. It did not so much alter his thinking as clarify its thrust. Here he came to the existential understanding that assured his direct attack on Christendom. What he understood was this: that Christianity was an illusion. Denmark was Christian in name alone, more culturally Christian than existentially so. There were certainly all the objective trappings of Christianity: baptisms and confirmations, weddings and funerals. And yet Christianity itself, as subjective truth and existential striving—that was nowhere to be found.

Believing by faith

We have thus far explored faith—specifically Christianity, its collision with the world—in concrete. Our analysis will must now turn to a more philosophical treatment of religious faith. Here will take as our point of departure Bishop’s Believing by Faith.[18] Accordingly, our problem is that of the moral permissibility of religious faith. It is to this narrow path through the rubble of grand systems that Bishop points us. We must accept, as he does, the apparently ineluctable ambiguity of this area. There can be no logical proof of God, but neither can He be disproved. Still none need submit to the nay-sayers: their advantage is only numerical, logically we are at an impasse. So as we cannot simply call it for the majority, we must push forward—and as Bishop does, so too we will follow.

Here we must first, however, take a small detour to frame our question. We may begin by ascertaining the stakes. What, for instance, is meant by God? Surely He is not some simple thing, not akin to a candle or packet of matches. God, more than mere entity, is also a web of moral entailments. To say that God exists is to say that the ought structure of existence is properly aligned with His being, as the ideal embodied in Jesus Christ. Christianity is thus a teleological revelation. It tells us the final cause of our existence and determines how we ought to imagine reality. This moral-imaginative order, further, informs our reasoning. For reason works fragments of an imagined whole. These pieces are defined by entanglements, typically unconscious, that are more felt than known; the conscious idea is as an iceberg. It is this hidden structure, not reason or some external equation, that specifies the content of our ideas.

This is the difference between a definition and the essence of a name. One is a more or less coherent equation; and the other, an intuitive sense of coherence. What do we mean when we say we know, for instance, that there is a dog beside me? It is that the name, my understanding of it, is coherent with perceptual experience. I don’t need to look in a dictionary or make a check-list of canine characteristics to say as much. Nor would that prove anything, to rationally ground such a thing seems impossible. I have never seen, and yet somehow I am still quite certain. The same is also true of less immediate knowledge. We might know, for instance, that the President of the United States is Donald Trump. The difference here is that this is more imagined, whereas the former knowledge was primarily perceptual.

Our imagined knowledge differs in being more obviously amenable to communicative influences, whether shaped by some authority or by our engaging in rational discourse. It is even claimed that by some such process we may “rationally ground” our knowledge. I have not yet seen this trick performed. It seems to me impossible. We can certainly alter and elaborate our beliefs by reason. But this is only a movement. It is not that we erect knowledge anew, now rationally grounded. Our imagined reality is the clay with which reason works. Whether we make this shape or that, whatever technique we may use, this remains our material. We cannot in any absolute sense “rationally ground” our knowledge any more than we can transmute clay into gold.

There is good reason that this be the nature of our knowledge. We have evolved to know not truth but utility; that we might better act in the world, survive, reproduce, and so on. Such abstract knowledge seems to have been the particular advantage of mankind. By it we transfer our understanding between cases that are alike but not identical. It is akin to stimulus generalisation but for abstract forms. Such knowledge is thus by necessity surrounded by a penumbra of ambiguity. This is far from an impediment, indeed it is precisely what allows us to function. Man cannot live by logic alone. And it is only by this ambiguity that we can relate the universals of reason to the particulars of experience. This is the imaginative endeavour by which, for instance, the chairs of the world are bound as one—even those never before encountered, even those we never encounter. It is in this way that our knowledge faces forward in time, as we do. The problem of induction is solved not by logic but necessity: the answer is imagination.

This line may be followed further through Kierkegaard’s analysis of logical and existential systems. The former, he held, were certainly possible; the latter were not: “System and finality correspond to one another, but existence is precisely the opposite of finality.”[19] For God alone is existence a system—“he who is outside of existence and yet in existence, who is in his eternity forever complete, and yet includes all existence within himself.”[20] For an existing human being, however, no such systematic finality is possible. To attempt as much would be to deny existence which, as Kierkegaard notes, “has the remarkable trait of compelling an existing individual to exist whether he wills it or not.”[21] The logical system is thus a false ideal; “persistent striving is the only view of life that does not carry with it an inevitable disillusionment.”[22] It is not, therefore, that logic and reason are to be set aside entirely; rather they are to be understood as properly being means to an existential end.

This is relevant insofar as evidential certainty seeks the finality of a logical system. And yet this finality, insofar as it relates to existence, always remains elusive: “If the Introduction still awaits the appearance of another work before bringing the matter up for judgment, if the System still lacks a paragraph, if the speaker has still another argument up his sleeve, it follows that the decision is postponed.”[23] We must eventually decide. Indeed we are in some sense always deciding. This problem, posed by the very grounds of our existence, is addressed by James in The Will to Believe.[24] His argument, in brief, is that there are genuine options which, though evidentially ambiguous, we not only may but indeed must decide.

Suppose we are unable to decide between two uncertain options, each compelling in its own way. And suppose also that this choice is something momentous—it will not be repeated. Here we must decide then and there. Time stops for no mouse and if we wait the opportunity will only leave without us. For there is in life no possibility of not deciding, we do so constantly and inevitably; even if by inertia alone. James concludes, therefore, that “our passional nature not only lawfully may, but must, decide.”[25] It is upon this argument that Bishop builds his case for modest fideism. He holds, first, that religious beliefs are evidentially ambiguous does not make them epistemically impermissible. And second, that what is ultimately at issue is the moral permissibility of religious belief.

Reason and correct morality

This underlying issue of moral permissibility can be seen clearly in by Hogg’s Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner.[26] Here the eponymous sinner is Robert Wringhim, the son of a heretical Calvinist minister. Wringhim becomes close friends with a mysterious man who calls himself Gil-Martin—“it is not my Christian name, though it may serve your turn.”[27] This charismatic stranger exerts a powerful influence over Wringhim. Most significantly, he convinces Wringhim that, as his father had declared him one of the elect—and thus, in Calvinist doctrine, inevitably destined for heaven—whatever he does is ipso facto willed by God. Suppose he were to kill a man, for instance; how could this be mortal sin in light of his unconditional election? Gil-Martin convinces him of precisely this: that he may thus “cut off sinners with the sword.”[28] Hogg never makes explicit identity of this evil influence. Wringhim first thinks him Tsar Peter of Russia; sometimes he feels as if they are one person. But though Gil-Martin’s identity may be obscure his influence was clearly evil. For our purposes, he represents the fear which motivates those concerned with the permissibility of religious belief: the objection that fideism “may endorse obviously morally objectionable faith-ventures.”[29]

Bishop addresses this objection directly by amending his formulation. He appends the requirement that “the content and the motivational character of a permissible faith-venture should cohere with correct morality.”[30] When Wringhim murders his brother, for instance, we may see behind his apparent motive one more mercenary and hence, on Bishop’s formulation, impermissible: “Robert's apparently spiritual motive for killing his brother inadequately disguises the obvious material benefits he reaps from George's death, namely, becoming the heir of the laird.”[31]

Bishop’s amended formulation further requires that the venture conform to correct morality. Here the relevant standard is not “what a person takes correct morality to be” but rather “what correct morality actually is.”[32] We might thus ask another, some moral authority, that they might inform out decision. But who are we to ask? This will depend on the available sources of advice and the status which we accord them. If we are a devout Christian, for instance, we may ask our local priest or consult the Bible. These are the authorities which we see as most compelling, or perhaps those which can compel us. This will not be the same for everyone. If we were instead Muslim we probably wouldn’t ask a Catholic priest. And if we are an atheist we may ask a moral philosopher or perhaps a therapist. This seems a weighty impediment to the argument for the possibility of conforming to correct morality. If by this we mean objective morality then it requires us to choose some arbiter. This may be an authority or process, perhaps rational discussion with a chosen individual—necessarily also determined by their availability and relative status.

We may here return to Kierkegaard to illustrate our argument. His campaign against Christendom can be seen as falling precisely on this point of authority and objectivity. His question concerns not so much correct morality as correct Christianity but can be treated as analogous for our purposes. Kierkegaard’s choice here was between the authority of the New Testament and that of the State Church. According to the latter, all Denmark was Christian. If this was meant to be the truth, he argued, “I venture to maintain that … to that degree we are all Christians, in that degree is the New Testament no longer truth.”[33] How are we to resolve this conflict? Bishop’s standard here suffers by the internal contradiction of its elements. The first is the “motivational character” of a proposed belief. Here he describes a “desire for conformity,” for instance, as a “morally questionable motivation.”[34] And then there is the content of the belief, which must conform to correct morality. The Nazi ideal, for instance, is rendered impermissible insofar as this is “widely agreed” not to be the case.[35] How are we to decide whether our conformity is proper?

This may seem simple, in the case of Nazism, to answer today—but was it then? Suppose we were in Germany when Hitler came to power. We had heard opinions either way, some for and others against. There was no need to choose, however, so we kept out of it. Eventually some occasion arises and we must decide—will we join the NSDAP, what are we to do? Suppose that we had studied under Heidegger. We had come to respect him both as a philosopher and a person, often seeking his advice on ethical dilemmas. He tells us, frankly, to join. Or suppose we believed strongly in the philosophy of Nietzsche. We look to his writing for an answer. We read his Will to Power, knowing nothing of his sister or her relevance to this text. There we find what we think good reasons to join the party. Or suppose we ask around at work, perhaps a Jewish colleague of ours. We had heard some of what had been said of the Jews and thought it right to ask them. Our colleague, fearful of open dissent, encourages us to join.

Bishop acknowledges these difficulties. He recognises, for instance, that our evaluation of correct morality “can be made only from some situated perspective.”[36] But he concludes that we may nevertheless be “reasonably confident in our ability to judge correctly.” We see in Kierkegaard, for instance, the difficulty of differentiating what is widely agreed from an improper desire for conformity.[37] Our initially unaligned German, meanwhile, relies on flawed authorities and ends up on the wrong side of history—and hence, morality. That we see clearly is not because we are somehow enlightened. It is perhaps rather that we see more clearly from afar:

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”[38]

Objectivity and the last temptation

There is also in Hogg’s Confessions another view. For we find that it was often reason more than faith that governed Robert Wringhim and guaranteed his damnation; or more precisely, it was his faith in reason. He is at one point, for instance, convinced by a Mr. Blanchard—“an eloquent and powerful-minded old man”—to separate himself from Gil-Martin: “before we parted, I believe I promised to drop my new acquaintance, and was all but resolved to do it.”[39] Before doing so, however, Wringhim gives Gil-Martin time to make his case. He is swung first this way, then that; all by the influence to which accords the reasoning of those he encounters. Indeed, Gil-Martin not only retains his friend but goes so far as to convince him to murder Blanchard: “[He] began a-reasoning on the matter with such powerful eloquence, that before we parted, I felt fully convinced that it was my bounden duty to slay Mr. Blanchard; but my will was far, very far from consenting to the deed.”[40] Here we see Wringhim pulled by persuasive reason first this way, then that and back again. And this we suppose a bulwark against evil?

It is possible to compose an outwardly smooth and elegant political speech, a headstrong article, a social program, or a philosophical system on the basis of both a mistake and a lie. What is hidden, what distorted, will not immediately become obvious. Then a contradictory speech, article, program, a differently constructed philosophy rallies in opposition—and all just as elegant and smooth, and once again it works. That is why they inspire trust—and distrust.[41]

It is not at all clear, therefore, that objectivity offers so simple a path as we might wish. There may be as much error in reason as in faith, in each there is this risk. But we can say, at least, that the precise answer, whatever it may be, will not involve abdicating entirely to objectivity. To do so, as Robert Wringhim did, is not what Kierkegaard wanted:

Robert uses the reasoned appeals of others as his source of truth. His truth is not Kierkegaard’s subjective, eternal, revealed truth that comes from God and is the basis of Christianity, but it is the objective, finite truth of logic reinforced by persuasion.[42]

We cannot thus avoid responsibility for our freedom. To do so entirely is to abdicate our humanity and become, as Kierkegaard puts it, “a sort of marionette, very deceptively imitating everything externally human.”[43] Indeed, as if describing Wringhim, he continues:

He would never do anything first, and he would never have any opinion which he did not first know that others had; for this “others” would be for him the first.[44]

Such a person may, if they are lucky, live a perfectly ethical life. But sometimes this may be precisely the temptation by which we are led into error. This can be seen in Christ’s collision with the world; especially as illustrated in Nikos Kazantzakis’ arguable heresy, The Last Temptation of Christ. There Mary wants only that her son, Jesus, be a good man. She doesn’t want all this with the disciples, the preaching—certainly not the crucifixion. And this is the last temptation of Christ:

Before the fainted eyes of the Crucified the spirit of the Evil One, in an instantaneous flash, unfolded the deceptive vision of a calm and happy life. It seemed to Christ that he had taken the smooth, easy road of men. He had married and fathered children. People loved and respected him. Now, an old man, he sat on the threshold of his house and smiled with satisfaction as he recalled the longings of his youth. How splendidly, how sensibly he had acted in choosing the road of men! What insanity to have wanted to save the world! What joy to have escaped the privations, the tortures, and the Cross![45]

That we might wish to avoid colliding with the world, and the suffering that may result—that the ethical may itself is the final temptation for one drawn to something higher. It is that when faced with such a risk, and in light of our uncertainty, we may retreat into objectivity. Mary, for instance, wanted her son to be a good man; in other words, she did not want him to be Christ. But this was God’s purpose for him, and thus we can understand Kazantzakis’ portrayal as akin “teleological suspension of the ethical.”[46]

But all this, even this, is far too simple in abstract. It is, faced existentially, an altogether different beast. There one stands before God as if amidst a storm with faith alone to hold fast to. That this is a difficult ideal, that Kierkegaard plainly admits; he undertook to make things harder for us, as he did also for himself. But then, why would we expect an ideal be easy? Suppose then that we accept his argument. We may, after all, entertain it without much difficulty. But when we come to express it existentially—then, and only then, will we feel its weight in full.

It is a simple matter today, for instance, to stand up and proclaim our opposition to Nazism. We might even imagine that, had we been there, we would even act against the regime. But would we really? And what would this involve? Had we been there we might well have found ourselves swept along with our hypothetical German friend. There were certainly those that, like him, overcame their initial scepticism and adopted the Nazi ideal as their own. There were also those that played their part without passion, compelled by greed or fear. At Nuremberg many claimed to be simply following orders. And we can surely understand this argument, even empathise with it. But though there by the grace of God go I—still we cannot call this ethical.

It is here, also, that we see the difference between propositional belief and that which Kierkegaard speaks of. Suppose two Vichy functionaries worked to round up Jews: what difference does it make that one criticised Hitler behind closed doors? Surely there is an infinite distance between this ideal and that, for instance, of a member of the Resistance. Faith for Kierkegaard, we will recall, “is proved only by the degree of one’s willingness to suffer.”[47] We may thus readily distinguish between our Vichy functionary and a member of the Resistance: one has existential faith; the other, a logical belief. It is the Resistance that demonstrates belief in Kierkegaard’s sense of being willing also to suffer.

We may thus abdicate to objectivity more or less unconsciously, as with Robert Wringhim, or like the Vichy functionary, conscious of fear or some such motive. Here we must examine also, as we were compelled for faith, the motivational character of this refusal. There are certainly acceptable reasons; that one is willing to suffer doesn’t mean one ought to act stupidly to guarantee it. But there are also improper motives. That we might somehow profit, for instance, or avoid some trivial harm. We must therefore examine also this side of the equation. Objectivity may not be as neutral as it seems. This is really the inverse of our earlier objection, wherein by faith we enter into some evil. Here, instead, the evil is that we abdicate our freedom and thus remain its ally.

Christianity as becoming subjective

It is perhaps more from habit and familiarity than anything else that we cling to objectivity without asking, Why here? But there have also been many that have defended and esteemed it above all else. Often today it seems the only serious option. There is another path, however, and this is what Christianity teaches—becoming subjective. Still, there was something in Robert Wringhim that opposed objectivity and persuasive reason; what was that? Of Blanchard’s proposed murder, for instance, he says: “I felt fully convinced that it was my bounden duty to slay Mr. Blanchard; but my will was far, very far from consenting to the deed.”[48] It is to this dissenting party that Kierkegaard appeals. By this the individual stands opposite the marionette, alone before God. This is the task of Christianity, says Kierkegaard: to become subjective, to become an individual.

When we do not, when we refuse to so define ourselves, still we do not evade this choice. We only slip quietly into a sea of biological and cultural influences. And there we drift wherever we are drawn. An appeal to objectivity is thus not always neutral, indeed may often be improper. The initial refusal may even be neutral only to drift into evil; having forgotten ourselves, that we ever had a choice. That we thus abdicate our freedom, that we decide only indirectly, does not free us from responsibility—we are only less aware. Still the idea of unbound faith may frighten some. That is understandable. But that it is unbound—for Christianity, at least, that is not true. There are also internal limits. And though we cannot speak too broadly, for particularities are known only to the existing person, we can nevertheless sketch an outline.

That Kierkegaard’s Christian faith is subjective, that it removes the moderating influence of rational discourse—this is all true to an extent. But this does not mean it is unbound: the direction of a possible choice must be coherent with the character of Christ as revealed in the New Testament. This may for many believers also by definition mean it conforms to correct morality. But this does not, however, operate as an intellectual doctrine or merely rational technique. Nor does it resemble the casuistic objectivity of the Hadith, wherein wider laws are derived from the analysis of Mohammed’s behaviour. Christianity instead entails a direct relationship with God as mediated by ethical reality of Christ.

This may be understood by analogy with virtue ethics. The difference is that this virtue ethics is not abstract by embodied in Christ as known by the New Testament. Where there we might ask what a virtuous person would do, here instead we ask, “What would Jesus do?” The proper object of Christian faith is thus the ethical reality of Christ as teacher—that He existed and was the Son of God. This is the Christian ideal according to Kierkegaard. We may criticise Wringhim, for instance, insofar as his reliance on others’ reasons lead him to contradict himself and Christ. Rather than relying on the authority of Gil-Martin, that is, he ought instead to have contemplated himself and the New Testament. There perhaps he may have found reason to hold fast to his dimly felt convictions.

The Christian doctrine, therefore, is the New Testament. But this is not a doctrine held intellectually or logically enacted. It is better understood as an imaginative effort to imitate Christ. Here we need establish no formal line from Christ to the possibility proposed. It is, indeed, the truth only insofar as His ideal is refracted through the subjectivity of an individual and the singular moment in which they alone find themselves. One must, of course, consider carefully the proposed choice. We must still avoid error; as where, for instance, something is clearly prohibited by the New Testament. There revelation will readily render a path impermissible. Robert Wringhim, for instance, never prays or contemplates Christian—his faith was that of a wolf in lamb’s clothing.

Within these considered bounds, however, it is impossible to say with any objective certainty what is to be done. Nor can we ever ratify objectively a proposed choice. Such efforts will at best alter only its probability, there still remains the infinite distance that can be overcome only by faith:

If I wish to preserve myself in faith I must constantly be intent upon holding fast the objective uncertainty so as to remain out upon the deep, over seventy thousand fathoms of water, still preserving my faith.[49]

It is only by this passionate embrace of absurdity that can preserve one through the last temptation. This is not a single step but in a constant movement, wherein one’s inwardness is repeatedly asserted against the world. This, says Kierkegaard, is how not to be a marionette.

Conclusion

Of what avail is all philosophy?

We’ll never solve the riddle of existence.

In the end, look where you will, our thought

Is nothing but a game we play with words.[50]

All this at end, of course, is but a bunch of words; that is all that Kierkegaard, all that anyone can here say. The only answer that can be given, in truth, is that which we ourselves choose. Nor can one broadly determine the abstract permissibility of belief. There is always an eternal element, that which has here been our concern, but there is also that circumstantial aspect—the world-historical particularity of a given moment. This we can encounter only as an existing human being. And here looms the question of freedom: are we, as Kierkegaard thought, freely able to go beyond objectivity? This cannot here be answered either. It too must be addressed existentially in the moment. There again we must decide for ourselves.

What can be said, at least, is that we will always choose. We cannot pretend to abdicate our freedom so as to obscure that it is we who have chosen thus. This Nuremberg taught us, that someday we may be called to account for our error, even in the midst of this life, wherein we will find in objectivity no adequate defence. And this too was taught by Tolstoy in The Death of Ivan Ilyich:

“Maybe I have lived not as I should have”—the thought suddenly came into his head. “But how so when I did everything in the proper way?”[51]

For it is not so simple as that by refusing to leap we may remain in safety. That we exist implies in each instant an unavoidable ethical choice. We may as much remain in evil as move to meet it. There can be no final answers here, only an honest and ceaseless striving.

Still something lies hidden behind all these words. This is the actuality which Kierkegaard, however piercing and prolific, could never penetrate. And it is perhaps to this that we must look if we are to understand him. Here Kierkegaard turns from his task to look at himself—might he not be, he asks, as was the Wandering Jew:

… destined to lead pilgrims to the Promised Land, but not myself enter it; whether I was thus to guide people to the truth of Christianity and … not come in myself, but only serve as a harbinger of a wonderful future.[52]

For we find nowhere in all his writing, nowhere in any writing, the actuality of belief. Try as he might, as much clutter as he or we may clear: “there comes a critical moment where everything is reversed, after which the point is to understand more and more that there is something which cannot be understood.”[53] Ultimately, then, it matters little whether we think such ventures proper or not, whether we call them impermissible or necessary, to what standard we hold them. What remains is that people do sometimes so decide, are somehow thus determined—only God knows how or why.[54]

 

References

Bishop, John. Believing by faith: An essay in the epistemology and ethics of religious belief. Oxford University Press, 2007.

Bukdahl, Jorgen. Soren Kierkegaard and the common man. Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2009.

Cojocaru, Daniel. "Confessions of an American Psycho: James Hogg's and Bret Easton Ellis's Anti-Heroes' Journey from Vulnerability to Violence." Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture 15, no. 1 (2008): 185-200.

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov. Aegitas, 2016.

Hogg, James. The private memoirs and confessions of a justified sinner. Broadview Press, 2001.

Hutton, Clarke. "Kierkegaard, Antinomianism, and James Hogg's" Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner"." Scottish Studies Review 20, no. 1 (1993): 37.

James, William. The will to believe and other essays in popular philosophy. Vol. 6. Harvard University Press, 1979.

Kaufmann, Walter. Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre. Pickle Partners Publishing, 2016.

Kazantzakis, Nikos. The last temptation of Christ. Simon and Schuster, 2012.

Kierkegaard, Søren, and Alexander Dru. The journals of Søren Kierkegaard: a selection edited and translated by Alexander Dru. Oxford university press, 1959.

Kierkegaard, Soren. "A Kierkegaard Anthology, edited by R. Bretall." (1964).

Kirmmse, Bruce H. "Kierkegaard, Jews, and Judaism." Kierkegaardiana 17 (1994).

Klages, Ludwig. The Biocentric Worldview. Arktos, 2013.

Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, and F. D. Reeve. "Nobel Lecture, 1970." The Georgia Review 49, no. 1 (1995): 51-63.

Tolstoy, Leo. The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Confession. WW Norton & Company, 2014.