Sunday Reflections

 I graduated with a degree in civil engineering, and minors in mathematics and (believe it or not) English and American literature.  Note that having studied English and American literature does not make me a better writer. (sigh!)  In any case, philosophy was not on the menu, as courses in math and science, and how to apply them to a civil engineer's work took up all my time.  It is something I regretted until, talking with my pastor, who graduated from Yale with a philosophy degree.  He noted that philosophy was pretty much hogwash.  He didn't use that term but indicated that the study of philosophy was without value for God does not operate as man would expect, but out of His gracious love.

Now, in studying Marx's Communist Manifesto, I had to study a bit of Hegel.  His explanations of things did not particularly impress me, and he was...how do I put this...loquacious.  I had also read short passages from Nietzsche, but again I had to wonder what he was on about.  In other words, I no longer regret my lack of a philosophic background, for philosophy just puts others ideas into your head. The world would be a better place without a Neitzche or a Hegel.

Today, at the American Thinker Arthur Schaper has an article entitled Leaving Keirkegaard in which he points out that while many people read and were influensed by Keirkegaard's writings, the author discovered that the true light of the world is not philosophy, but the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Keirkegaard its seems is another philosophy the world could do without.

I am writing about the wily Dane, Soren Kierkegaard.

My senior year in high school, I came across his writings in the local library. His last name alone was hard to ignore. From there, I read his signature treatise on faith and the sacrificial account of Abraham and Isaac, Fear and Trembling. The poetic depth of his passages on the role of the poet and the beautiful courage of Father Abraham brought tears to my eyes. I admired The Knight of Faith, desiring to live a life filled with peace and purpose, in which everything has meaning and encounters nothing but wonder in an otherwise plain world.

Kierkegaard’s other work, The Sickness Unto Death, captivated me, as well. His first paragraph (“Man is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self? But what is the self? … “) made me laugh out loud. His cryptic syntax served as a necessary jab and tonic to the prolix Hegelian universalism swamping European colleges and discussion halls at the time. The titles of his books were quite gruesome, and his voluminous readings on the topics were profound in every sense. Kierkegaard intended for his writings to be difficult because he was engaging in parody but also stripping away the self-righteousness of a smug world determined to prove its own smarts.

Schaper writes that at the time he encountered Kirkegaard's writings, he too was taken in by the clever prose and the turns of phrase, the humor and the pathos. But eventually he discovered that:

The hardships we face cannot be overcome by philosophical texts. Who can overcome the sorrows and struggles of life with lots of thinking? There are bills to pay, people to see, challenges to deal with, hardships to overcome, and victories to enjoy. All of the abuses and traumas that I had suffered as a child could not be resolved by reading philosophy.

Furthermore, faith in falsehood cannot save, no matter how earnest the faith. Truth matters, and truth is not something that we come up with or is something merely grounded in our personal experience. In one of his most massive texts, The Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard writes: “Truth is subjectivity."

No, it isn’t. If you jump into a pool, thinking it’s ten feet deep but actually only three feet deep, you will crack your head on the concrete. If you are dying of thirst in the desert, and you spy an oasis, only to find more sand, you will die. Kierkegaard’s determination to turn inwardness into certainty is not only wrong but dangerous. He minimized biblical revelation in other ways. In The Book on Adler, Kierkegaard argued that God doesn’t speak anymore. Yet the New Testament is replete with accounts of the Holy Spirit directing man to do God’s will.

In my youth what philosopy I read often seemed obscure, and deliberately so. The writer wanted us to think he was smarter than the reader. My feelings here have only hardened. It was obscure because the author wanted to cover over the basic falsehoods in his thinking. Here is where Schaper turns to the Truth, which can only be found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ:

Kierkegaard’s miserly misunderstandings of Christianity ignored the fullness of the sacrifice that Christ Jesus accomplished on the Cross, and one can see the serious problems people will run into when they take someone like Kierkegaard seriously. If Nietzsche’s philosophy was consolation for those who were no good at living, then Kierkegaard’s philosophy is a comfort measure for Christians who don’t understand the Gospel.

Christian faith is not subjective. It’s not about our feelings, but it’s based on the accomplished fact and the eternal efficacy of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. Where Kierkegaard talked about Jesus as an example, the Gospel proclaims Him as the Savior whom we receive. Only then do we follow him, only then do we learn to love others, and only because we learn that He first loved us.

As I matured, I found Kierkegaard unappealing and unrewarding. Kierkegaard believed in a law-centered, man-centered Christianity, one where man has to try harder in his own efforts, where there is never a sense of peace and rest. Very little time did he spend expounding on the wonders and grace of God, the Finished Work of Jesus Christ, and the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit.

There is nothing more to say