 Some weeks ago this List was preoccupied with the question,
whether or  not  Kierkegaard  was  a  religious  pluralist,  i.e.
whether  Kierkegaard believed that individuals who adhered to re-
ligions other than Christianity might find favor with God.

     In rereading the Concluding Unscientific Postscript I have
found a passage which I believe demonstrates that at the time he
wrote it, Kierkegaard was indeed in matters of religion a
pluralist and a liberal.

     Kierkegaard wrote

   Den angaaer ikke Lessing som Viis,
   ikke hiin sindrige Viisdom,
   der skjulte sig beskedent i Fabelens ringe Dragt.

     The passage is an encomium of Lessing. Kierkegaard praises
Lessing as a wise man, and he specifically praises that profound
wisdom of Lessing's which modestly concealed itself in the simple
garb of a fable. The wisdom is an allusion to the title of
Lessing's morality play, Nathan der Weise.  Kierkegaard appears
to identify the wisdom of Lessing with the wisdom of Nathan the
Jew, because it is Nathan who relates to Sultan Saladin the fable
in which Lessing's wisdom was modestly concealed: it is the
fable, well known to readers of classical German literature, of
the three rings bestowed by a father on his three sons, the rings
representing the three religions, Judaism, Mohammedanism and
Christianity as being equal before God. (CUP I, Book Two, Part
One, Chapter I) (VII, 49) (Swenson's translation at page 60)

     Whether Kierkegaard subsequently changed his mind and became
an adherent of the cause championed by such as Pat Robertson or
Jerry Falwell is debatable, but seems to me unlikely.

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