Footnotes, Chapter 12a
Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship: A New Perspective (Eller)
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In Dru’s and in Rohde’s selections from Kierkegaard’s journals, the number identifies an entry rather than a page; the date following is that of the particular entry.
1. Attack upon "Christendom," 242.
2. The review of S.K.'s Training in Christianity, in Masterpieces of Christian Literature in Summary Form, ed. Frank N. Magill (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 721.
4. The pattern of thought presented here can be traced in S.K. by reference to the following condensed statements: (a) Dru Journals, 871 (1849); (b) the journal entries quoted in A Kierkegaard Critique, 182-86; (c) Dru Journals, 1044 (1850); and (d) Rohde Journals, 201 (1849).
5. Training in Christianity, (Pt. I), 26-27. Cf. Smith Journals, 11:2:A:343 (1854).
6. "Lifted Up On High ..." (Pt. III, Reflection 1) in Training in Christianity, 154.
7. "Lifted Up On High ..." (Pt. III, Reflection 2) in ibid., 160.
8. Papirer, 4:C:35, quoted by Ronald Grimsley, "Kierkegaard and Leibniz" in The Journal of the History of Ideas, 26 (July-Sep. 1965), 395.
9. By "kerygma theology" we intend those who would locate the essential paradox and the object of faith not primarily in the historical Jesus himself but in the early church's proclamation about him, i.e. in the kerygma. This description would cover such otherwise diverse thinkers as Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, Rudolf Bultmann, and many others.
10. Point of View, 16.
11. See Training in Christianity, (Pt. II), 98-99, for S.K.'s discussion. I have had it in mind as certain that it was S.K. who presented the perfect illustration of this point of view, but I cannot locate the citation. However, if S.K. did not, he should have pointed out that even the ultimate miracle, the resurrection of Christ, was not received as a self evident demonstration that Jesus was the God-Man. Certainly, to those who had made the venture of faith the resurrection became a "proof"--but only a proof alter the fact, i.e. after the fact of faith itself, if such in any sense can be called a "proof." But it was, indeed, one of the very Gospels (Matthew) which suggested that the empty tomb could he read as a case of theft and fraud just as well as a case of resurrection and that, in fact, some of the first witnesses--namely the soldiers guarding the tomb, who were just as close to the event and just as competent observers as any of the "believers"--chose the alternative of offense rather than faith. The empty tomb, although the sort of occurrence to attract attention and compel a decision one way or the other, involves just as much of "con" as it does of "pro," and it becomes a witness to Jesus' deity only to one who, through the venture of faith, already has chosen to be convinced that Jesus was One whom God would resurrect.
12. For S.K.'s exposition, see Training in Christianity, (Pt. II), 134ff. In this case, critical scholarship since S.K.'s time has made it at least problematical whether the historical Jesus actually did make any verbal claims regarding his own deity. This finding would have the effect of canceling this particular aspect of S.K.'s argument--although not by that token his argument as a whole. However, the most recent scholarship, i.e., post-Bultmannian scholarship, seems to be circling back, as it were, to undergird S.K. in a stronger way than he himself envisioned. The best of contemporary scholarship holds that, whether or not Jesus made any verbal claim for himself, his entire ministry and message was in fact an acted claim to more than human authority. And if this be so, it puts the Kierkegaardian paradox on an even more fundamental level, for now Jesus becomes not simply a man (and thus not God) who says that he is God but rather a man (and thus not God) who acts as though he were God.
13. Regarding this aspect of S.K.'s argument, see particularly Training in Christianity, (Pt. I), 28ff.
14. S.K.'s attack upon scientifically derived (i.e. historically and/or philosophically derived) Christianity is so pervasive as to be difficult to cite; in effect, the whole of Philosophical Fragments, Postscript, and Training in Christianity, deals directly or indirectly with this issue.
It should be noted, too, that all of S.K.'s fulminations against "history" as an enemy of faith are directed toward this one sort of historiography which sets out to "go beyond faith." But there is nothing in S.K.'s thought that would outlaw or denigrate historical study per se, and as we shall see, he did specifically intend and make room for historiography of a proper sort.
15. Training in Christianity, (Pt. II), 106-9.
16. Ibid., 83-84.
17. Ibid., 123.
18. The Book on Adler, 168-69.
19. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, (Chicago: Un. of Chicago Press, 1957), 2:99 and 2:154 respectively; cf. 135 and 180.
20. Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology (New York: Scribner's, 1958), 82.
21. Undoubtedly the German language has helped to make possible this discrepancy. For S.K., "event" and/or "history" implied something wholly within the objective sphere, something that happened as it actually happened and was what it was--whether it was believed upon or even known about The event, of course, becomes effective in my life only as I receive and interpret it through faith, but my faith does not change the objective "happenedness" of the event either one way or another. "Event" is simply and solely an affirmation of Historischlichkeit. Existentialism, on the other hand, has had the effect of subtly transposing "event" out of the objective sphere and into the subjective. History is thought of not primarily in terms of its Historischlichkeit (its happenedness) but of its Geschichtlichkeit (its meaningfulness). The reality of an event as "history" is tested, not by investigation as to whether it actually occurred out there, but by what the thought of it does to me in here. Thus "event" (what happened at that place at that time) becomes "eschatological event" (what happens to me here in this time), and "event" (happenedness) even becomes "word" (meaning), and the distinction between objective, outward action and subjective, inward reaction is completely obliterated.
22. Philosophical Fragments, 125.
23. S.K. is not meaning to say that faith excludes knowledge or is without cognitive content. He is saying that faith must be more than knowledge, or that faith is an entirely unique sort of knowledge which cannot be classified with any of our usual forms of knowledge.
24. Philosophical Fragments, 75-76 [italics mine--V.E.].
25. More than coincidence may be involved in the fact that the one leading theologian of the No-Quest period who has welcomed the New Quest and appropriated its basic position as his own is the same theologian whom we earlier named as the one with the best understanding of S.K., namely Emil Brunner (see his Dogmatics, 3:178ff.).
Our terminology here already may be becoming inadequate, for a split is showing up within the New Quest itself. Eduard Shweizer, for instance, would identify neither himself nor Günther Bornkamm (whose Jesus of Nazareth usually is considered the "firstfruits" of New Quest research) as being New Questers but would reserve that term for a group who, in his opinion, have only slightly modified the Bultmannian No-Quest position without actually moving out of it. If his analysis is correct, then we mean to identify S.K. with those non-Bultmannians who go even beyond the New Quest.
26. Dru Journals, 602 (1846) [italics mine--V.E.].
27. A third alternative--which may be an accurate picture of classical mysticism--is that both parties move and meet in a realm of the spirit where there is nothing in the way of time, space, location, or even concrete awareness of the persons involved. Obviously, S.K. would have had nothing to do with such a scheme.
29. Training in Christianity, (Pt II), 327-28.
30. Ibid., (Pt. I), 60.
31. Christian Discourses, (Pt III, Discourse 1), 181-82; (Pt. IV, Discourse 1), 266-67; and (Pt IV, Discourse 4), 284-86.
32. Training in Christianity, (Pt. I), 67.
33. Ibid., (Pt. I), 9.
34. The Book on Adler, 62-63. Cf. Training in Christianity, (Pt. 1), 40 and 43.
35. The Book on Adler, 147.
36. Mack Senior, Rights and Ordinances, in Durnbaugh, Origins, 394. Saner Junior made much the same point in his "Forward with Respect to Courts" in the Hoch-Deutsch Americanische Calendar for 1760, 19.
37. Mack Junior, Apology, 20. Mack Junior also wrote a poem on the crucifixion in which, as it were unconsciously, he constantly slipped back into terms of contemporaneousness, as though he were an eyewitness--and a guilty witness--at Calvary. And the way in which this is done would indicate that it was more Mack's religious instincts than his poetic sensibilities that were responsible. (See Heckman, op.cit., 100ff.)