Kierkegaard had a thorough education in philosophy, and, as Wayne Kraus writes,
His life’s mission was the rediscovery of New Testament Christianity, which he insisted had been abolished by “Christendom.”
The same point can be made with different terminology. It is the distinction between human religious institutions and traditions on the one hand, and on the other hand an encounter with, and a devotion to, God. It is the distinction, and in some cases the opposition, between religion and God.
In everyday speech, twenty-first century speakers of American English blur the line. The statement, “I’m not religious,” is not an answer to the question, “Do you believe in God?”
It is in fact, the most sincere belief in God which often launches the harshest attacks on religion. Humans construct religion: practices, holidays, ceremonies, rites, rituals, etc.
Humans often construct religions with the noblest of motives, hoping that these religions will in some way connect people to God. Religions often do exactly that: offer enlightenment, education, care for the poor, work for peace and justice, etc.
But religions can break bad.
Kierkegaard encountered a church which claimed to be faithful to the New Testament, and which claimed to be following Jesus. What Kierkegaard experienced, however, was a significant number of clergy who used the church as a way to ensure material comfort in their own lives, and as a way to garner admiration from society at large.
Instead of serving their fellow human and serving Jesus, some of the Danish clergy in Kierkegaard’s day were serving themselves.
He saw a segment of the institutional church pursuing worldly prosperity, and he saw this as a clear contradiction to the text of the New Testament and as a clear contradiction to the factual documented words and actions of Jesus.
Kierkegaard’s incisive analysis of the Danish church was both logical and passionate. His critique both reflected and provoked a crisis, as coauthors Guram Tewsadse and Hans-Martin Gerlach note:
Kierkegaard [ist ein] dänischer Theologe und Philosoph, dessen Denken als ein erster theologischer Ausdruck der Krise der bürgerlichen philosophischen und religiösen Weltanschauung in der Mitte des 19. Jh. gewertet werden muß.
Tewsadse and Gerlach articulate a particular interpretation of Kierkegaard, which emerges from a broader interpretation of the history of philosophy: Kierkegaard is part of a cosmic unfolding of history, in this case, the history of philosophy. This grand unfolding follows a definite direction through a series of discernable stages.
One competing interpretation of Kierkegaard might see him as engaging in eternal questions which, rephrased for context, could have just as easily been asked a few centuries earlier or later; and perhaps they were.
Another competing view of Kierkegaard might see him as responding neither to universal questions, nor to his specific era in the unfolding of some material dialectic. Rather, this view might see him as responding primarily to his own inner world: his emotions and experience.
Whichever view one might take of Kierkegaard, Tewsadse and Gerlach point out the directness and frankness of the writings he produced during the final phase of his career:
[Kierkegaard gründete] eine von ihm herausgegebene und geschriebene Zeitschrift, die K.s Kampfansage gegen die offizielle dänische Kirche und ihre Verbundenheit mit dem Staat artikulierten.
This critique of the Danish church had long simmered in Kierkegaard’s mind, but it was finally occasioned by two events. First, the death of Bishop Mynster, who had been a friend of Kierkegaard’s father, and for whose sake Kierkegaard had kept silent; with Mynster gone, Kierkegaard could write freely.
The second, and more specific, event which occasioned the beginning of Kierkegaard’s attack was a funeral sermon given by a Professor Martensen at Mynster’s funeral. Martensen, in eulogizing Mynster, had called the deceased bishop “a witness to the truth.”
While that phrase might strike many hearers, or readers, as generally complimentary, if somewhat bland, tribute, to Kierkegaard’s ears, it was blasphemy. As a scholar who’d studied ancient Greek, Kierkegaard knew that the phrase meant one who’d made the ultimate sacrifice. The Greek word for ‘witness’ is the English word ‘martyr.’
Kierkegaard knew that, textually, the martyrs were the people who, starting with Stephen and the others killed under the supervision of Saul, had been tortured and murdered simply because they followed Jesus. Under the Roman Empire’s government, during the first three centuries after the start of the Jesus movement, thousands of people were martyred.
By contrast, Bishop Mynster had lived a materially comfortable life, enjoying social admiration, to an old age. In Kierkegaard’s mind, he was in no way a martyr, and to call him ‘witness to the truth’ was an insult to the thousands of martyrs who had died humiliating deaths.
Mynster’s death removed any hesitations Kierkegaard had about publishing his critique of the Danish church, and Martensen’s funeral sermon precipitated the actual writing and publication. Mynster died in January 1854, and Kierkegaard published the first installment of his attack in December of that year.
