                           19970725.00

     I observed on this list some weeks ago that if I undertook
to look for Jesus Christ in July 1997, I would have no chance of
finding him except on death row.  In response I was told, if I
understand correctly, that the people on death row are
unrepentant cold blooded Killers, and that it is invidious of me
and derogatory of Christianity to seek Jesus in their midst.

     It seems elementary, that the ethical issues raised by
capital punishment as the most drastic of social sanctions are
not limited to the death penalty but extend to the entirety of
the institutionalized violence of a judicial system that most of
us take for granted.

     Few of us see America, as did Heinrich Heines already in
Kierkegaard's day, as being one huge prison camp, "das grosze
Freiheitsgefaengnis," he called it.  Both as perpetrators and as
avengers of crime we inflict great sufferings on each other;
sufferings that define an intersection of ethics, jurisprudence
and religion which seems to me worth a second thought.

     Given the stated scope of this discussion list, one is
obligated to ask oneself, "What has all this to do with
Kierkegaard? " The answer, obvious to me, "Not much", is, if
true, embarrassing for showing the limitations of Kierkegaard's
ethics; and, if false, embarrassing for exhibiting my folly in
talking about something I know too little about.

     My inference that Kierkegaard himself was indifferent to the
ills of the society in which he lived is based in part on the
very eloquent conversation which he relates in the Concluding
Unscientific Postscript. To the individual who wishes: at denne
min Anstraengelse skal gavne andre Mennesker, (that this effort
of mine should benefit other human beings) to which the divine
spirit replies,
  "dumme Menneske, er jeg ikke til, jeg, den Almaegtige,
   og om Menneskene, som jeg skabte Alle og talte Alle,
   jeg, som taeller et Menneskes Hovedhaar,
   vare utallige som Havets Sand,
   kan jeg dog ikke hjaelpe hvert
   et eneste ligesom jeg hjaelper Dig?
   (You foolish human! am not I at hand, I the Almighty One,
   and if mankind, all of whom I have created and all of whom I
have counted,
   I, who count the hairs on their heads,
   if mankind were uncountably numerous as the ocean's sand,
   can I not help each and every one of them, as I help you?)

     That, I surmise, is a fair summary of what must have been on
the minds of the Priest and the Levite (Luke 10: 31-32) when they
"passed by on the other side."

     I interpret the tortured altruism of Kierkegaard's "Works of
Love" as counterweight to the uncompromising subjectivism of the
"Concluding Unscientific Postscript". But as I read these texts,
they fail even to identify, not to speak of addressing, the great
sphinx-like riddle of Christianity that commands us to render
unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things
that are God's.  I, for my part, have found it consistently
impossible to make this distinction; and so far as I can tell,
Kierkegaard, like like Luther before him, gives God the "Glory"
as a consolation prize while turning man's life on earth over to
Caesar, lock, stock, and barrel.

     It may be that I am an all too eclectic reader of
Kierkegaard, that I have missed the decisive passage in his
Journals or in one the numerous works of his that I have not yet
read, but please someone, anyone show me, is there any reference
in Kierkegaard's writings to the enormity of the human suffering
to which he was a witness, suffering which others of his
generation tried in some way to alleviate, to which they
responded with sorrow and with rage and with political protest,
however ineffectual or counter-productive that protest might have
turned out.

     Bishop Martensen defended himself against Kierkegaard's
diatribes by pointing out the incongruity of Kierkegaard's angry
verbal assaults with his prescription for "Kjerlighed" in "Works
of Love".  It is sad to think that Kierkegaard's most impassioned
public protest was not against slavery, not against poverty, not
against state sanctioned brutality or even against censorship,
but against something as trivial and inconsequential as
Martensen's extravagant eulogy of Kierkegaard's sometime patron
Bishop Mynster as having served the Church as a Christian martyr.

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