Understanding Kierkegaard, one another and oneself.

To those of you embroiled in earnest disputation,
it may appear to be a frivolous equivocation to
confess how much I enjoy the ripostes of Kevin and
Michael, of Wanda and Therese, and of all the others
who join in the verbal fray. I much appreciate Kevin's
pantheistic monism and his Jeremiah-like posture,
railing against the folly and wickedness of this
world; but I admire no less Michael's sensitivity
to the undeniable sacrifice and suffering that is
incurred by men and women for the sake of their
beliefs. Whether such beliefs should be called
"Christian" or whether a different epithet should
be accorded them, seems to me a mere issue of semantics.
Whatever they are called, a few hours spent reading
Bonhoeffer should convert the sceptic.

We overestimate the power of words. If deity does
not exist, theology is powerless to create it;
and if deity does exist, no scepticism will destroy it.
If none of us "by taking thought can add one cubit
unto his stature" (Matt. 6:26) how much more true it
must be that none of us by taking thought can add or
detract with respect to deity or to the cosmos that has
or has not been created by it. Each one of us, therefore,
should feel free to speak out forthrightly, peccare
fortiter, without expectation of being burned at the
stake, at least not on this discussion list.

I believe Kevin Solway to be quite correct when he states
that Michael does not understand what Kevin is saying.
The converse also seems to me obvious, that Kevin does
not understand what Michael is saying. When one listens
carefully, one concludes that perhaps none of us is
understood and none of us understands the other; and what
is more important, none of us understands Kierkegaard to
the extent that he or she should have a monopoly on the
interpretation of his texts.

The insight that words, or the concepts they represent,
cannot vie with existential reality, with the world that
we experience from hour to hour and from day to day,
should be the minimum lesson that we derive from Kierkegaard's
criticism of Hegel. But words spoken by poets, though
impotent to create reality, are capable of evoking
an echo of the subjective experiences of the individual
who utters them, an echo which may resonate in the inwardness
of the receptive hearer. I read Kierkegaard's vituperations
against the state church in the pamphlets The Moment, not
as definitive or even realistically descriptive of that
church, but as expressing the spiritual turmoil in which
Kierkegaard found himself. (The same might be said, of
various of the contributions to this list.) I believe a
closer inspection of Kierkegaard's text will validate my
point.

Kierkegaard's outburst was precipitated by the death of
Bishop Mynster, or more specifically by the funeral oration
which soon to become Bishop Martensen preached on that
occasion. We must interpret Kierkegaards reaction to Martensen's
Eulogy of Mynster in the light of the special relationships
that Kierkegaard had to each of them.