Working Out Our Salvation
Kierkegaard & the Outer Edges of Christianity
“And why do you not judge what is right even for yourselves?” —Luke, 12:57
All quotes (unless otherwise stated) are from Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard (Plough Publishing, 1999).
It is good that Christianity still has enemies, because for the longest time they have been the only ones from whom it has been possible to get any trustworthy information about what Christianity is. Yet I dare say Christianity will soon become so meaningless that it will not even be able to make enemies. . . . It is wrong of established Christendom to say that Feuerbach (an atheist) is attacking Christianity. It is not true; he is attacking the Christians by demonstrating that their lives do not correspond to the teachings of Christ. This is quite different. What Christianity needs are more such traitors. Christendom has insidiously betrayed Christianity by not wanting to be truly Christian but to have the appearance of being so. Now “traitors” are needed (p. 256).
Being raised an atheist meant that I came to the Bible, Christ, and Christianity late but also with a relatively blank slate. Though I was drawn to the figure of Christ as early as twenty or twenty-one (probably due to Dostoyevsky’s massive influence on me at that age), a general contempt for the (conventionally) Christian mindset carried over from my upbringing (i.e., my father’s influence; this contempt was far from entirely absent in Dostoyevsky, also).
As I got involved in occultism very soon after this (via Carlos Castaneda, Jung and writers like Robert Anton Wilson), my approach to Christianity became gnostic, small g, and I saw Christians as faint-hearted, lily-livered, subservient “sheep” who had backed away from the terrifying challenge of Christ, into a herd mentality, under the guise of being obedient and devout.
“The only thing the group secures is the abolition of conscience” (p. 19).
In sympathy with Kierkegaard—whom I only read for the first time this month—I would say this point of view is fairly accurate, even if I fell for the 2nd matrix/gnostic “goat-position,” rather than seeking deeper meanings in scripture that weren’t simply the exact inversion of them. I now approach these questions with considerably more caution, and with considerably more respect for the “conventional” viewpoint.
During the first period of a person’s life the greatest danger is to not take the risk. When once the risk has been taken then the greatest danger is to risk too much. By not risking you turn aside and serve trivialities. By risking too much, you turn aside to the fantastic, and perhaps to presumption (p. 398).
Nonetheless, what remains consistent between then and now, i.e., in the past forty years, is my passionate belief (or faith) in “free-associating” my way to the truth, and remaining open to every possible heresy on the way there.
“I only know the truth when it becomes a life in me” (p. 53).
The only coherent meaning of the idea of a “personal God” I have managed to find is that each soul must come to God, in his or her own way, by a unique and personal journey. So where “God has no respect for persons,” it would seem that God does indeed respect—even require—a personal approach to Him. Paradox, as Kierkegaard reiterates frequently, is the essence of Christ-ianity.
Christianity seems to invert this, by advocating the idea of a personal God that is universal and fixed (one-God-fits-all), and that therefore requires minimal personal or idiosyncratic effort towards understanding and engagement, physical, emotional, psychological, deductive, cognitive, intuitive, and spiritual, favoring instead conformity to a flock.
And in this sense it can be said that the world (despite all proofs) does not have a personal God. The truth is that long ago there ceased to be people capable of bearing the pressure and the weight of having a personal God . . . . God created humankind in his own image, and in requital we created God in ours. A person’s conception of God is essentially determined by the kind of person he is (p. 296, 313).
As a result, to this day, I have a visceral feeling around traditionally denominational Christians (whether Catholic or Eastern Orthodox), insofar as I perceive them as belonging to a club of consensual group-think which, though I am invited (perhaps even pressured) to join, I have no real place within.
This causes in me an annoying, only partially conscious sense of being judged, however subtly, as not being a “real Christian,” and of facing a wall or eggregore of group-think. This is, I must suppose, partially my own “anti-Christian” eggregore; in other words, I may often be projecting this idea onto others, due to a perhaps unnaturally developed aversion to (what I perceive as) group-think.
Perhaps I am an elitist (as well as a universalist) at heart? Any club as easy to join as (institutionalized) Christianity feels to me unworthy of joining.
God is a subject to be related to, not an object to be studied or mediated on. He exists only for subjective inwardness. The person who chooses the subjective way immediately grasps the difficulty of trying to find God objectively (p. 60).
To know a creed by rote is, quite simply, paganism. This is because Christianity is inwardness. Christianity is paradox, and paradox requires but one thing: the passion of faith (p. 72).
A dogmatic system ought not be erected in order to comprehend faith, but in order to comprehend that faith cannot be comprehended (p. 252).
Rightly or wrongly, I perceive the conventional, church-affiliated Christian as being unable, or unwilling, to think their own thoughts, or to fully experience the process of questioning, doubting, struggling with—everything—and opting instead to trust and rely on an edifice of belief, both literal and figurative, to shepherd them to salvation. Corporate religion as a means to embody faith.
But faith’s paradox is precisely this, that the single individual is higher than the universal, that the individual determines his relationship to the universal through his relation to the absolute (i.e. God), not his relation to the absolute through his relation to the universal. That is, to live by faith means that one has an absolute duty to God and to God alone. . . . Anyway we look at it, Abraham’s story contains a suspension of the ethical. He has, as the single individual, become higher than the universal (p. 28).
I do not envy the choice to surrender one’s sense of autonomy (real or delusional) to a tradition and a “body,” and nor do I admire it. I can respect it, while knowing it isn’t possible or desirable for me, currently at least. I continue to wonder to what degree such cognitive subservience is a sign of weakness or of strength, or both. Likewise, I question my own chosen route, that includes such strong resistance to the “traditional” way, as a possible case of spiritual pride, rather than being, as I prefer to see it, evidence of integrity and courage.
“Whoever does not wish to sink in the wretchedness of the finite is constrained in the most profound sense to struggle with the infinite” (p. 299).
In common with Kierkegaard (and Jacques Ellul), I do not believe that the vast majority of people who claim to be Christian are acting in accordance with Christ, or even with the New Testament. So how can I in good faith “join” them? In some literal ways, this is provably so, for in truth, there could be no Church at all, in any social sense, if Christ’s example were being followed.
Christianity does not join people together. No, it separates them—in order to unite every single individual with God. And when a person has become such that he can belong to God and to God alone, he has died away from that which usually joins people together (p. 315).
There are other, much less literal ways that conventional Christian observances fail to approach the spirit of Christ or the Gospel, and therefore strike me as poor examples to follow. Being less literal, they are also more subjective, and so may be presumptuous, of both me and Kierkegaard, especially having not interacted with most Christian claimants. But one can, to some degree at least, judge the congregants by the institution they congregate within, or around; though the reverse is also true, one can likewise judge a body by its constituents.
I do not wish to be a herd animal. I am more a goat than a sheep by temperament, and unwilling to put that all down to a sinful nature. I am seeking, via a faith in the possibility of it, a one-to-one relationship with Christ and God that depends on, or only happens in, isolation from others, not by taking shelter, refuge, and comfort in a flock.1
“God has no cause, is no advocate in this sense. For God, everything is infinitely nothing” (p. 43).
This isn’t to demean the value of community, since that is the only reason for me to share such thoughts here, or to organize scripture-centered online “assemblies.”2 However, my goal isn’t to create some lasting societal container, or to establish a formal doctrine, and the very nature of the conversations I seek—and attract—is that there is no agreement on the “right” way to Christ, only that Christ IS the (or at least, a) way.
What is required is the sincerity, passion and intensity of a devotion to pursuing that connection-relationship, via the IDEA of Christ, to the reality hidden behind and within that idea. Ideas and words are but markers on the way to reality, and beliefs only count for anything if they manifest as action.
It is claimed that arguments against Christianity arise from doubt. This is a complete misunderstanding. The arguments against Christianity arise out of rebellion, out of a reluctance to obey. . . . Christ says, do according to what I say—then you shall know. Consequently, decisive action first of all. By acting, your life will come into collision with existence, and then you will know the reality of grace. . . . The objections to Christianity may be dismissed with one single comment: Do these objections come from someone who has carried out the commands of Christ? If not, all his objections are nonsense. Christ continually declares that we must do what he says—and then we will know that it is truth (p. 254, 255).
A human being can act in, with, and for Christ without ever having heard of Christ, and to say any less is to suggest that Christ is NOT the way, but only the Church is. Christianity will only ever mean to me: myself and IT (God/Christ). Anything less (or more) than this, and we are back to the tribal identification of the Hebrews, which was perhaps no more than a necessary evil (or dark matrix) out of which the God-man was born; the skin of a snake, fascinating to study, but today quite lifeless.
Elsewhere in this text, Kierkegaard wrote about how the majority of Christian believers have, in common with unbelievers, a kind of blind, unquestioning complacency about their beliefs. Faith for Kierkegaard was a constant struggle with the impossible paradox of existence, as represented, in miniature, by the impossible paradoxes of scripture.
The story of Abraham contains just such a suspension of the ethical. Abraham acts on the strength of the absurd. As a single individual before God, he found himself to be higher than the universal. This paradox cannot be mediated—there is no middle-term to explain it. If Abraham had tried to find an explanation, he would have been in this state of temptation, and in that case, he would have never sacrificed Isaac, or if he had done so, he would have had to return as a murderer repentant before the universal (p. 26).
In the internal world of spirit, opposition can come only from within. In this way, we struggle with ourselves. If a person does not discover this conflict, his understanding is faulty, and consequently his life is imperfect. But if he does discover it, he will understand that he himself is capable of nothing at all (p. 31).
Can any organization, institution, or formal body exist, while still allowing for this radical struggle to continue? There surely has to be the assumption, and the assertion, of certainty, dogma, and of the formal agreement that we of the faith know what we believe—and/or what we need to believe—to participate in a group enterprise?
Is this not hypocrisy, or at the very least, a choice that all-too easily metastasizes as hypocrisy, unless it be constantly remembered that it’s only an arbitrary imposition of structure and belief (i.e., the presumption of understanding) on an infinite mystery of being?
It might be a ski lift up the mountain, for those who prefer not to walk; but either way, the real test of faith only comes on the way down.
“The very fact that I am saved by faith and that nothing at all is demanded from me should in itself cause me to strive” (p. 407).
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An alternate view comes from C.H. Dodd’s The Authority of the Bible: “The idea that in religion the individual soul is making a solitary adventure into unexplored regions, in which there is something contemptible about accepting helpful guidance, is popular at present. But it will not, if it is regarded as the whole truth, bear investigation in the light of history or of psychology. The element of originality, of adventure, is of course present in any religious experience worth the name, but the element of continuity or solidarity with the spiritual life of others is equally a part of it” (p. 33n).
“Christ Outside of Christianity” meetings are currently happening every other Saturday at 2 pm UK time on Zoom. Christians welcome. Contact me to sign up.
Rudolf Steiner, How Can Mankind find the Christ Again? The Threefold Shadow-Existence of Our Time and the New Light of Christ, 8 Lectures delivered in Dornach from December 22, 1918 to January 1, 1919 (CW 187):
"We must learn to distinguish the shadows from the light. It will be mankind's task from this present time into the immediate future to differentiate between the shadows and the light in the right way. We see the shadow of the Roman Empire in Roman Catholicism. This is not Christianity. It is the shadow of the ancient Roman Empire into which Christianity had to be born.
In its forms there continues to live what had to be built up at that time as a framework for Christianity, but we must learn ,humanity must learn, to distinguish the shadow of the Old Roman Empire from Christianity.
The essence of Christianity is not to be found in the organization of the Catholic Church, or indeed of any of the Christian churches. One sees in their hierarchical aspect what existed and developed in the Roman Empire from Romulus to the Emperor Augustus. The illusion arises only because Christianity was born into this body.
In this sense, Solomon's temple has also remained as a shadow. The mysteries of Solomon's temple have, with a few exceptions, been completely absorbed into the Masonic and other secret societies of the present time. As the Roman Church is the shadow of the ancient Roman Empire, so what continues to exist in these societies, however strongly they assert to the contrary, even to the extent of excluding Jews, is the shadow of ancient Judaism, the shadow of the esoteric Jehovah worship. Again the shadow must be distinguished from the light.
Just as the shadow expressed in the perpetuation of the Roman Empire in the Catholic Church, in the churches generally, must be distinguished from the light shining in Christianity. So the element into which Christianity had to be born as a soul must be distinguished from the shadow that continues to work in societies founded on symbolism. That is reminiscent of Solomon's temple. These things must be recognized.
(Lecture 2; https://www.rudolfsteineraudio.com/howcanmanfindchristagain/mankindfindchristagain.html)
Not shilling for Catholicism (raised Catholic but never confirmed and not practicing) but worth mentioning that it holds mental prayer - direct dialogue, inquiry, contemplation etc to be essential for Sainthood, and recommended to all for salvation. That’s where the real progress is made, not in the pews. I share some of your misgivings though and have appreciated Kierkegaard for some time. Anything in ‘the world’ is going to get pretty roughed up and slimed by it. I see some treasures in the Church, like echoes of Eden in this broken world. I’m unchurched - my biggest problem is maybe that I struggle to foreground the good in people: ‘If these are the people it produces it can’t be all that’, but I still fear the fading out of organised Christianity as a cultural influence. Anything on a mass level will be diluted terribly, but people can go as deep and earnest as fits their nature or calling, and paradoxically scripture to me still suggests salvation is a minority affair, rendering Christendom almost oxymoronic. I think seeing/lnowing living examples of Christians who really have developed some quality or essence, seem to have grace emanating from them - something transformed in them, makes all the difference, but perhaps such people are necessarily fairly rare. I encountered such people in my early life and can’t know if they’d have arrived there all by themselves. Anglicanism has fully collapsed into worldliness, as Rome moves closer to those values too.