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     The more I think about it, the more pertinent our discussion
about the ethical and social implications of orthodox Calvinism
seems to Kierkegaard's writings.  I have commented on the analogy
of the human sacrifice in Geneva, the sacrifice of Servetus to
the god of Calvin with the intended human sacrifice on Mount
Moriah, the sacrifice of Isaac to the god of Abraham.  The
genocidal destruction of the Amalekites as ordained by the god of
Saul has its exact parallel in the genocidal destruction of
Jerusalem alluded to by Saint Luke (19:41) in prevision of which
Jesus weeps over the citiscape, over the twin towers soon to be
demolished.  And Kierkegaard, so encountering Jesus in tears,
consoles Him, and us, and himself, saying in effect: "Don't cry,
don't feel bad, because as against God, we are always in the
wrong. Now, now, don't cry. Doesn't the thought that as against
God we are always in the wrong make you feel better? Doesn't it
actually make you feel good? You're darn' right, it does." So
much for Soeren Kierkegaard as Director of Homeland Security.

     Remember also that at the time that Jesus was weeping over
the impending destruction of Jerusalem, he was anticipating his
own crucifixion, an event which he accepted and which we accept
with the explanation that God knows best, the same explanation
that we accept for the destruction of Jerusalem and that we are
asked to accept for the slaughter of the Amalekites.

     As I begin re-reading the Concluding Unscientific
Postscript, I am impressed how deeply Kierkegaard was agitated by
the critical analysis of Biblical texts which threatened the
evangelical convictions of his day much as biotechnology
threatens the humanistic assumptions of our own.

     In a systematic attempt to resolve the issues of Biblical
exegesis Kierkegaard developed the notion of subjectivity.  For
practical purposes Kierkegaard dealt with them as most of us do,
selecting from the Biblical texts what seems compelling and
ignoring what seems incongruous.

     The problem of the interpretation of Biblical texts,
Kierkegaards problem, and, so it appears, ours as well, is the
legacy of the Reformation with its insistence that Word of God is
the instrument of salvation which the individual is entitled, and
indeed obligated, to read and to assimilate on his own behalf.
The Bible is asserted to be the word of God. The hermeneutic
problems of interpreting a textual conglomerate, so disparate and
often contradictory, were largely unrecognized, and to the extent
that they were recognized, they were denied as a matter of faith.

     If I read Kierkegaard correctly his point of departure in
analyzing the subjective-objective dichotomy is interpretation
that purports to be "objectively" true.  He stigmatized such
interpretation as an approximation, subject subsequently to
revision and emendation, an approximation which could never
attain the certainty requisite for ones "eternal salvation". But
that there was such certainty and that it could be achieved, the
attainment of such certainty was a matter of faith. Subjectivity
was the aggregate of spiritual activity which is not subject to
the constraints of objectivity.

     As the preceding sentence illustrates, at least some of the
confusion regarding the subjective-objective dichotomy arises
from the circumstance that these terms have essentially exchanged
meanings in the past three hundred years. There was a time in
antiquity, in the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance, when
"subject" referred to the underlying reality of a circumstance.
In this sense we still speak of the subject of a book, and of a
subject of academic studies, for example. The object, on the
other hand, was the accident that was predicated of a subject,
variable, contingent and unpredictable. The development of
thought in the 17th and 18th centuries. While "subjects"
retreated into inscrutable obscurity, the world became filled
with discrete distinct knowable objects, and the term subjective
came to be interpreted as a reference to qualities uncertain
arbitrary undefined and perhaps undefinable. It is in this
context that Kierkegaard makes the paradoxical assertion, that
not objectivity as was then and as is now commonly believed, but
that subjectivity is the truth.

     Strictly speaking subjectivity and objectivity have their
existence not in themselves: they are characteristics of thought,
they are characteristic of the manner in which we view the world,
and particularly the manner in which we understand ourselves.
Traditionally this understanding of ourselves has been phrased in
terms of body and soul.

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