Soren Kierkgaard,
"The Difference between a Genius and an Apostle” [Part two]
Making the argument for orthodox Christianity (3)
Por Manuel Sumares
Nietzsche’s complaint concerning Paul and Christianity is more abrasive and has the added character of assuming the reality of power and of interest as part and parcel for a different kind of advent – this one all-too-human. But it is, nevertheless replete with another set of promises for the realisation of humankind. However, in addition to being part of a lament for the passing of a splendid but by now moribund illusion with not much to replace it, Wilson’s account of the same is more civilised, apparently more reasonable, plausible and – and most crucially – acceptable, but, for those reasons, actually more subversive. In this precisely resides the temptation into which Christendom has fallen. Kierkegaard understood the subtleness of the slide into accommodation in which worldly aims become confused with those of Christianity. Nietzsche the philologist and Wilson the intellectual biographer rightly noted the centrality of the Cross in Paul’s letters, but, for the good of humanity and its emancipation from irrational attributions given to it concerning its redemptive potential, the reasons for Paul’s interest in the symbol – they think -- needs to be explained away and, with it, just what it is that made him a genius. Even if one does not believe in what Paul says about Christ, or perhaps simply give lip service to his teachings concerning how Christ might be best interpreted, one has to stand – they seem to say – in admiration of his accomplishment. The approach, as Kierkegaard perceptively characterised it, is aesthetic through and through: both Paul and Christ are curiosities to be contemplated and assessed in the market place of ideas. At the end of the day, what is sought is not so much a very particular outcome but rather the pleasure of having it one’s own way (20). Having it our own way or having it as God wills it is the real question – the “either/ or.”
Now, for Kierkegaard, attempts to prove the existence of God are futile. God is to be experienced as a living reality and does not need to be shown to exist. Likewise, exercises in historical criticism of Sacred Scripture are likely to mistake brilliant analyses of the biblical text for what is being revealed in it, to wit, the intent of a loving God to save us and bring us into His everlasting life. In other words, something is offered in the midst of living out our lives under the shadow of despair that not only is not of our own doing but also beckons us into a new kind of existence.
Kierkegaard’s thinking will be greatly misunderstood and under-estimated in regard to its potential to refresh theological thinking, if one loses sight that his literary and philosophical investigations have always to do with the quest for our true identities. What does it mean to be a human being? For Kierkegaard, the answer to such a query that he develops in Sickness unto Death has much to do with the realisation that human beings are spiritual beings, i.e., that they are fundamentally relational beings, sustained by a relationship with God. Otherwise said, as spiritual creatures, each human person has, in principle, the privilege of standing before God as an individual with the knowledge that he already is a participant in God’s everlastingness. On the other hand, human sinfulness is, at bottom, self-deception that comes upon an individual to the degree that his relating to God weakens and ceases to be meaningful in his life. It is against this background in which the drama of despair, to wit, the willing or not to be oneself takes place, that the famous outline of the three stages can be seen in all of its wisdom.
Becoming a Christian and responding to the call to apostleship cannot be truly grasped if it is not set in the context this quest. In following through Kierkegaard’s reasoning in this respect, a far better appreciation of Paul’s apostleship than the aesthetic modes of assessment that characterise approaches such as those of Nietzsche and Wilson may be reached.
The threefold stages of life – the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious – are best countenanced as spheres of existence in which the human being qua spiritual being proceeds in his development. In principle, one stage would follow the other on life’s way, but, because personal decision is involved, the going from one way of living to the other may not happen. It may be the case that one might choose to remain at a particular stage, in which case the stages may actually become rival ways of living. Communicated through pseudonyms, or literary personae, in order to avoid the kind conceptual systematisation that Hegel promoted and in order to bring readers more effectively before the implications of their choices, the principle characteristics of each easily discernible.
As explored first in Either/ Or and enlarged in Stages on Life’s Way, we understand that the aesthetic life, in its varied manifestations, insists on the moment and lives for pleasure, endeavouring to satisfy immediate desires, whatever these desires may be. We are given in Either/Or the extreme example of Don Juan as an aesthete who is so entirely immersed in the seduction of women that he has no time to reflect on the experience. He is the example of pure immediacy. But there is also the more reflective aesthete whose diversion is in the contemplation of how strategies of seduction might result. Portrayed in “The Diary of a Seducer,” also in Either/ Or, the aesthete finds uncommitted interest in how people work and how it might be to succeed in seducing an innocent. In any event, the aesthete takes no responsibility and, in him, there is no “becoming,” for that will belong to the sphere of the ethical life. Thus, Kierkegaard has Judge William pronounce that the aesthete defines himself by what occurs to him, whilst the ethical in a person is that which he will become (21). The theme of becoming will eventually bind the ethical to the religious, but the latter has the greater reality for it must confront that with which the ethical cannot cope: sin. “As soon as sin emerges, ethics founders precisely on repentance, for repentance is the highest ethical expression, but precisely as such it is the deepest ethical self-contradiction” (22).
But within the religious, Kierkegaard makes a further distinction that will lead us back to Paul and the theme of apostleship. In Concluding Unscientific Postscript, a natural religiousness, or “A,” which does not depend on a transcendent revelation, differs from transcendent religiousness, or “B.” It is, of course, “B” that underscores our inability to know God through the strength of human reason. It requires rather the confronting of the paradox of the Incarnation: as the Son of God in human form, Jesus reveals what human beings are meant to be, though to be such is to overcome sinfulness and becoming aware of the need of a divine Saviour (23). Hence, to the degree that the paradox is diluted or explained away (as in Nietzsche and Wilson) and judged for its aesthetics or ethics, or to the degree it is dissolved within the categories of human reason (as in Hegel and natural theology), the transformative and liberating power communicated from a transcendent source and represented in Christ is ignored, if not rejected. The decision of avoiding the paradox or confronting it and eventually assimilating it in one’s personal existence mark the dramatic difference in the constitution of human personality. In sum, it marks the qualitative difference between the genius and the apostle, between the immanence of the former and the transcendence of the latter.
Having initiated his reflection on this qualitative difference with the example of Paul and though he continues to be the prime exemplification of apostleship, Kierkegaard advances toward a more generic appreciation of it in the rest of the essay. Nevertheless, the possibility remains open to the reader to apply the attributions established by Kierkegaard for the genius and the apostle to Paul: he can be considered from either side. Very much in conformity to his rhetorical strategy in general, Kierkegaard ultimately sets his readers before a hermeneutical decision as regards to the paradox – to dilute it or to accept it as being from God and to be transformed by it.
In this last section of the essay, I should like bring into final focus the either/ or thematic that is so prominent in Kierkegaard’s work and found equally around the question of apostleship. In so concluding I shall explore and somewhat freely expand upon the clues that Kierkegaard formulates to mark the differences between the two types under the categories of immanence and transcendence. He does so in a full paragraph that is divided in three areas of comparison, each indicating what the genius is in the first part and then, in the second, how the apostle differs from him (24). I shall look at each moment of the formulation in the hope of underscoring in conclusion just where Kierkegaard and Paul can be read together, to wit, as apostles who write paradox into their mode of existence.
1a. The genius can very well have something new to bring, but this in turn vanishes in the human race’s general assimilation, just as the difference ‘genius’ vanishes as soon as one thinks of eternity.
As the examples of Nietzsche and Wilson demonstrate, whether in condemnation or in admiration, Paul’s conceptual creativity needs to be acknowledged. Sin and its remission in Christ’s sacrifice, justification, agape, the federation of God’s people (Jew/ Gentile; male/ female; free/ slave) in the New Adam, Christus totius – these are merely some of the notions that the Pauline letters introduced as conceptual guidelines for the emerging Church. True, like the hymn in Philippians celebrating God’s self-emptying in His divine Son for the salvation of creation may have already been part of the cultic worship of the first Christians, having thus a creedal function, Paul would have already found in the believing communities considerable hermeneutical effort to relate Christ to the scriptural logic of the Bible, i.e., the Hebrew scriptures. Paul’s genius would consist in forging a comprehensive vision into which these kind of concepts may be articulated into a coherent doctrinal proposal. After Paul, Christians are, for the most part, “Pauline” Christians. If we add to this the great probability that the Pauline writings would have been in circulation before the actual composition of the canonical Gospels, it is arguable that they be known to some extent by the communities from which these Gospels eventually emerged (25). In any event, Paul’s vision is made to appear generally compatible with that which the Gospel narratives propose within the New Testament canon.
Thus, the newness that comes with Paul’s writings is eminently clear. But, viewed immanently, it is appreciated in regard to its originality, its interrupting normal religious discourse to speak about God in a revolutionary way. To use an expression made famous by Paul Ricoeur, it is a case of a live metaphor that opens up a new conceptual space for speculative thought to advance. Yes, Kierkegaard would agree, the emergence of a live metaphor would have something initially paradoxical about it to the degree that it stymies our usual way of thinking, taking us by surprise. But, live metaphors are destined to become dead metaphors. In Kierkegaard’s language, they become immanent to human culture and enter its habits, losing its capacity to stimulate thought and action. Likewise, from this perspective, Paul and whatever he created would become part of the history of humankind. Temporality will absorb all. The challenge of the eternal is ignored, if not discredited.
1b. The apostle has something paradoxically new to bring, the newness of which, just because it is essentially paradoxical and not an anticipation pertaining to the development of the human race, continually remains, just as an apostle remains for all eternity an apostle, and no immanence of eternity places him on the same line with all human beings, since essentially he is paradoxically different.
The paradox that Paul reveals in his writings and in his person cannot be contained within the immanent, for it is of eternity and is ever new. A qualitative difference is announced in this paradox that cannot be assimilated into the history of human development. The paradox is eternally such, just as the one who lives according to its seemingly contradictory logic will also be eternally puzzling for those who choose to live in pure immanence. Moreover, they are “sent out” to give witness to the drama of the eternal entering the temporal in the person of Christ. It is not human development that matters; it is rather the salvation of humankind that is at issue. The apostle does not prepare to be one; no amount of personal effort will bring him to that point. According to Kierkegaard, “The apostolic calling is a paradoxical fact that in the first and last moment of his life stands paradoxically outside his personal identity as a specific person that he is” (26). In other words, his mission is not of his own making and his succeeding in it does not depend on his natural capabilities. Whilst what he has to say is for others and for the sake of their salvation, the doctrine does not come from him, but from the One who is eternal.
As it happens, Paul’s letters reveal on occasion considerable opposition to his status as apostle (Galatians, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians) and he admits to being the least and the last of the apostles. But he would have no downgrading of his status, for he has seen the risen Christ and knows himself to be sent out. Moreover, he understands his tribulations and afflictions as being true to the sufferings of Christ and the Cross, through which salvation is accomplished – a life for which he certainly not prepared, a life that no one could have predicted for him.
2a. The genius is what he is by himself, that is, by what he is in himself.
Seen within the sphere of immanence, Paul would seem to be a work in progress in regard to the potential that he already possesses and stands in need of development. But Kierkegaard averts that what encourages this mode of thinking is doubt concerning divine authority and the rendering relative all that may be attributed to God. God is thereby ultimately placed among those who have no authority such as geniuses, philosophers, and poets. For example, someone who does something well may be taken to be a genius; God’s doings would simply be of a more intense kind (27). Logically, God’s transcendent authority and the obedience that it may demand are “smuggled away” and are liable to questioning. And with it, the authority that Paul bears as apostle can – as it effectively was – follow suit if confined to the immanent: “In the sphere of immanence, authority is utterly unthinkable, or it can be thought only as transitory” (28). Viewed by the modern spirit, Paul’s gift would be his own and, indeed, would last as long as the effects on others lasted over time (29).
2a. A apostle is what he is by divine authority.
About this, Kierkegaard makes explicit reference to Paul as one called forth by a revelation, the authoritative message of which is given in trust to Paul:
I am not to listen to Paul because he is brilliant or matchlessly brilliant, but I am to submit to Paul because he has divine authority. /…/ He must appeal to his divine authority and precisely through it, while he willingly sacrifices life and everything, prevent all impertinent aesthetic and philosophical superficial observations against the form and content of the doctrine (30).
Such authority flowing down from the Transcendent source cannot be evaluated according to man-made criteria of profundity and style. It simply comes from elsewhere and is certainly not transitory. It is received by the apostle as a mandate and accentuates the qualitative difference between the divine and human beings that is eternal. What Kierkegaard calls the “paradoxical-religious relation,” whereby God assigns to a specific person the right to assume divine authority in that which is entrusted to him, is persistently claimed by Paul to be his calling. In spite of being the only apostle called after the Lord’s death and Resurrection, he has been set apart by the risen Christ for a precise mission (1 Corinthians 15:8). The vehicle for the authority that he bears is not at all physical but simply what he says: transitory authority might need physically visible signs of that authority; the apostle’s authority rests on the statements that he proffers and the suffering endured “joyfully” because of it (31). Referring to Paul, Kierkegaard calls this situation one of “paradoxical heterogeneity,” i.e., the apostle, the least impressive of human beings, is nevertheless charged with a divine authority rooted in eternity (32).
3a. The genius has only immanent teleology.
The finality of a genius is that which he perhaps negotiates with his historical and cultural circumstances in accordance with capacities to give a form to certain possibilities that will carry his name as a tribute. Thus, especially as we have seen in the storyline proposed by Wilson, Paul would be that person who created a religious system and will, as long as it lasts, will bear the mark of his genius. The ultimate evaluators will be those who determine the cultural canon. That is why the thought of eternity must be repressed, for that would alter profoundly the parameters of the evaluations. No, the matter must be kept firmly within the bounds of immanence and be subjected at the end of the day to the contingencies of human desiring. For the genius as such, there is no outside. The Pauline doctrines that have so defined Christianity would largely be bio-graphical, i.e., it would stem from his particular problematic and creative energy, which – according to the Nietzschean notion of perspectivism – would come out of his expansive will-for-power, bearing the peculiar traits of his physical and mental constitution.
3b. The apostle is absolutely teleologically positioned paradoxically.
The doctrine that Paul was commissioned to take to the Gentile world was not for his own sake, but for the salvation of others. His role is not to be brilliant or call attention to himself. His is the will-to-edify. Here, too, we find yet another expression of the paradox. On the one hand, the revelation to be proclaimed transcends human understanding; but still it is to be preached “in order to” move them in God’s direction. They are to understand at least that someone is being called out into the world to proclaim what was revealed to him and that such a mission involves a total commitment. He is, thus, teleologically set to become that to which he is called.
As related in the Acts of the Apostles and in some of the epistles, it was often the case that large gatherings of people sought to silence Paul by having him imprisoned or even killed. In Kierkegaard’s words, they looked “to nullify the apostle’s existence” (33). So certainly, he did not play up to the passions of the crowds. God being his only master, the apostle’s divine authority was to be used to command the crowds, whatever their response. As his own finality was sustained by his participation in the power of the transcendent, his own existence is positioned as an act of self-giving that mirrors the One who sent him out. Indeed, the command to love at the heart of his mandate is very same that he communicates to his public. And because it is a command, it is to be obeyed, first by him and then by those he teaches with the authority given him to do so.
The paradoxical character of the Christian faith is ultimately written into existence by radical obedience to the Transcendent God revealed in Scripture. Irremediably contrarian, Kierkegaard will appear to set the bar for the choice to become Christian much too high for most of humanity and for an organised Church as well. At bottom, for him there is only yes and no, either/ or. Such stark alternatives extend to questions concerning the value of biblical scholarship, theological systematisation, and the development of doctrine that puts into the evidence the complicity between rationality and tradition (34). The risk in not taking seriously such questions is to create an insurmountable chasm between faith and reason. Yet, the genius and apostle alternative that we have seen as discussable in relation to Paul is actually paradigmatic of the reference points that may determine both personal life and how a culture sees itself. There is an either/ or involved in how a reasoned discourse may indeed begin with an act of faith, or the inversely, and continue to produce a cogent view of reality. Speaking from the side of faith, Paul’s theology is rich in new concepts in search of a renewed understanding of the promises made to Israel and the new kind of community that will represent God’s people; Kierkegaard’s emphasis on transitional awareness associated with the modes of existence reflects the Hegelianism that he criticised but with an inter-personal inflexion. Moreover, Kierkegaard’s analyses of these modes of possible existence exemplify the decisive character of whether or not anthropocentric secular reason or “supernatural pragmatics” (as John Milbank described Maurice Blondel’s thinking) has the last, or most promising, say. We see that theological decisions hide implicitly in the crevices of the dividing lines between one mode of existence and another. They may not go generally confessed, there may be even concerted efforts to denigrate the very idea that they exist, but they are there just the same. Reading and re-reading Kierkegaard make the fact eminently clear.
(20) In Either/ Or, Kierkegaard has one of his pseudonyms representing the aesthetic mode of existence say, “If I had in my service a submissive jinni who, when I asked for a glass of water, would bring me the world’s most expensive wines, deliciously blended, in a goblet, I would dismiss him until he learned that the enjoyment consists not in what I enjoy but in getting my own way.” Either/Or, edited and translated by Hong and Hong (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1987), p. 31.
(21) Kierkegaard, Either/Or, part 2, p. 178.
(22) Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, edited and translated by Hong and Hong (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1983), p. 98.
(23) “In His lifetime Christ is more especially the Pattern for His contemporaries, notwithstanding that His life is suffering, so that even in His lifetime he could be said to bear the sins of the world; yet the outstanding fact is that He is the Pattern.” Soren Kierkegaard, Training in Christianity, translated by W. Lowrie (New York: Vintage, 2004), p. 253.
(24) In the translation of the essay, which was published posthumously, the passage in question appears in bold. It appears in Howard and Edna Hong’s translation on page 94. In going through the passage, which manifestly structures the thematic of the rest of the essay, I shall retain the bold as found in the text when using Kierkegaard’s wording.
(25) Needless to say, the communities associated with the canonical Gospels have their own distinctive histories and problematic, and these must be considered independent from Paul – with the possible exception of Luke who makes much of his personal knowledge of the Apostle and has his own insights into Paul’s conversion and missionary activity.
(26) Soren Kierkegaard, “The Difference … .”, p. 95. In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul describes his vision of eternal and his being taken up momentarily in it. What is also significant is the vulnerability, or weakness, confessed, but therein lies his paradoxical strength: “… I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong,” (12:10)
(27) Kierkegaad, “The Difference …. ”, p. 97. Though not relevant to this essay’s theme, it might be said that Kierkegaard’s critique corresponds to what can be said of the consequences of a univocal reading of Being in which God and beings are distinguished only by the intensity of their actualisations. In other words, there is a lack of real ontological difference.
(28) Kierkegaard, “The Difference ….”, p. 99.
(29) Philip Rieff advanced a global critique of the drift of contemporary thought since Nietzsche, Weber, and Freud on the subject of charisma and its claims of authority. Our culture has greatly been harmed by it, having lost its roots in transcendent authority that transmits its power to those who are in its service. It has really nothing to do with personal power. Rieff, a Jew, would see particularly Moses in this regard, but also views its extension in Jesus and Paul. There is much in Charisma; The Gift of Grace, and How It Has Been Taken Away from Us (New York: Pantheon, 2007) that is consonant with Kierkegaard’s discussion on genius and apostleship.
(30) Kierkegaard, “The Difference ...,” p. 96.
(31) “But we have this treasure in earthly vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed, we are perplexed but not in despair; we are persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.” 2 Corinthians 4:7-8.
(32) Kierkegaard, “The Difference….,” p. 105.
(33) Kierkegaard, “The Difference …,” p. 107.
(34) All of these I personally hold as valuable. It might be interesting to compare Maurice Blondel’s approach to alternative paths that depend on decisions to Kierkegaard’s, especially in History and Dogma, in which Blondel’s logic of action is equated to that of Tradition. See my “Blondel, the Idea of the Suspended Middle, and the Church,” in International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church Volume 9, Issue 1, February, 2009.