Kierkegaard

It's been over a month since I posted anything. Just to refresh memories, we were talking about the 'fathers' of existentialism. Dostoevsky is called the 'father' by some, and we finished talking about him. I personally like Dostoevsky, but I don't think he was an existentialist. He did deal with some existential themes, but his conclusions were not those of the existentialists.

Now Kierkegaard. What to do with Kierkegaard? Did he start something new, or was he just a victim of the times? Maybe he's just a poor, misunderstood man. Well, I don't want to say that everything he thought was wrong, but he can be credited with creating a lot of misunderstanding about religion and faith. At least that's my view.

For now I'm just going to briefly introduce a little of Kiekegaard's biography, then come back later for discussion. Soren Kierkegaard was born into a wealthy Danish family with a strong Lutheran background. As Soren grew up he developed a disdain for the church because it was so mechanical and rigid. It wasn't that it was legalistic, although that may have been part of it, so much as it was just very formulaic. People just went to church because that is what was expected. They followed the liturgy and the church calendar and did what was expected of them. But they were just going through the motions. The church was lifeless and dead.

Kierkegaard was correct in recognizing that this was a problem, and perhaps even correct in understanding why. The modern world, with its focus on science and reason, was marginalizing religion and faith. In short, the church was becoming liberal. The Lutheran Church was ingrained in the culture, so it wasn't going anywhere, at least not going away quickly. But it was becoming meaningless, and it wasn't having an effect on anyone's life.

The problem was that the modern world was adopting new ideas that weren't compatible with the Bible. The Christian story was just a myth. Dead men don't ever rise from the dead in the real world, and no one can predict the future. So the Bible was just a man made story. A man made story can't have a supernatural effect on someone's heart.

If Kierkegaard was right about the diagnosis, he was very wrong about the solution. His solution was to take an existential 'leap of faith.' That term wasn't new with Kierkegaard, but he gave it new meaning, and he further refined that distinction between the world of reason and the world of faith that started back with Aquinas. So Kierkegaard agreed with modernism, on the one hand, that dead men don't rise from the dead and no one can predict the future. But on the other hand, faith can bring the Christian story to life, and we can live as though it were true. That is the 'leap of faith.'

Phillip Johnson, in his book Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds, gives an example of what it is like to live as though things of faith are true in one area of life, but things of reason in another area. (I've adapted this a little.) It is as though a young girl was distressed when her friends told her that Santa Claus isn't real. So she did an experiment. She stayed up late and snuck out to see her parents filling the stockings, and realized her friends were right. Year after year the same thing happened. But for the rest of her life she continued to insist that Santa Claus is real. On the one hand her reason told her there was no Santa Claus, but she took that 'leap of faith' and continued to believe with all of her might. So for her it was true.

That's what making deals with modernism does to your faith. The reality is that our reason and our faith, when used properly, complement one another. We can't maintain such blatant contradictions and keep a vibrant spiritual life at the same time. It is incoherent. All healthy little girls eventually give up on Santa Claus. And if you believe the modern world has discounted the basis for the Christian faith, just a 'leap of faith' is a very poor foundation from which to spread the gospel. Kierkegaard may have invigorated the church to a point, and for a while, but in the end the 'leap of faith,' at least as he understood it, was a losing proposition.