Volume 5, Tome II: Kierkegaard and the Renaissance and Modern Traditions - Theology

Jon Stewart

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780754668190
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351874540
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

The long period from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century supplied numerous sources for Kierkegaard's thought in any number of different fields. The present, rather heterogeneous volume covers the long period from the birth of Savonarola in 1452 through the beginning of the nineteenth century and into Kierkegaard's own time. The Danish thinker read authors representing vastly different traditions and time periods. Moreover, he also read a diverse range of genres. His interests concerned not just philosophy, theology and literature but also drama and music. The present volume consists of three tomes that are intended to cover Kierkegaard's sources in these different fields of thought. Tome II is dedicated to the wealth of theological and religious sources from the beginning of the Reformation to Kierkegaard's own day. It examines Kierkegaard's relations to some of the key figures of the Reformation period, from the Lutheran, Reformed and Catholic traditions. It thus explores Kierkegaard's reception of theologians and spiritual authors of various denominations, most of whom are known to history primarily for their exposition of practical spirituality rather than theological doctrine. Several of the figures investigated here are connected to the Protestant tradition of Pietism that Kierkegaard was familiar with from a very early stage. The main figures in this context include the "forefather" of Pietism Johann Arndt, the Reformed writer Gerhard Tersteegen, and the Danish author Hans Adolph Brorson. With regard to Catholicism, Kierkegaard was familiar with several popular figures of Catholic humanism, Post-Tridentine theology and Baroque spirituality, such as François Fénelon, Ludwig Blosius and Abraham a Sancta Clara. He was also able to find inspiration in highly controversial and original figures of the Renaissance and the early Modern period, such as Girolamo Savonarola or Jacob Böhme, the latter of whom was at the time an en vogue topic among trendsetting philosophers and theologians such as Hegel, Franz von Baader, Schelling and Hans Lassen Martensen.

Martin Luther:

Reform, Secularization, and the Question of His “True Successor”

David Yoon-Jung Kim and Joel D.S. Rasmussen

On April 17, 1521, a controversial monk and professor of scripture from the University of Wittenberg appeared before Emperor Charles V at the imperial diet in Worms. Condemned for heresy in the previous year by the papal Bull, Exsurge Domine, and now facing the more consequential ban of empire, Martin Luther (1483–1546) was given one last opportunity to recant his alleged errors before the princely leaders of the Holy Roman Empire. After confirming a list of works attributed to him, Luther was commanded to respond yes or no to the question: “Will you then recant?” He instead asked for time to pray and think. On the next day Luther gave his famous “Here I stand” speech, in which he insisted that to recant would only add strength to papal tyranny. He is reported to have concluded his speech with these famous words:

Unless I am convinced by the testimony of Scripture or by clear reason, for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves, I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not retract anything, for it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience.¹

Luther’s courageous stand at Worms left a deep impression on almost everyone gathered for the diet, and notable among them was the young duke of Schleswig-Holstein who would soon be crowned King Christian III of Denmark (1503–59). In 1536 Christian III, just victorious in a civil war,² established the Lutheran state church in Denmark, then invited Luther, Melanchthon, or anyone of their designation to come to Copenhagen to draft the ordinances for its institutionalization.³

Three centuries later Søren Kierkegaard would look back on these events with deep ambivalence. On the one hand, Kierkegaard envisioned his own work as a writer in terms of Luther’s personal legacy. “Just as Luther stepped forward with only the Bible at the Diet of Worms, so I would like to step forward with only the New Testament, take the simplest Christian maxim, and ask each individual: Have you fulfilled this even approximately—if not, do you then want to reform the Church?”⁴ On the other hand, Kierkegaard bemoaned the historical fruits of Luther’s Reformation, especially toward the latter stages of his authorship. He perceived a grave danger whenever “state and Church grow together and are identified.”⁵ While magisterial reformers like Luther helped to remove the institutional and ideological restraints of the medieval church, their own program entailed an equally problematic confusion of religion for national politics and national politics for religion such that “Christianity and state have been merged.”⁶ In short, the genealogical roots of Christendom, as Kierkegaard found it in Denmark, had to be traced back to the accommodations of the Lutheran Reformation. “The future,” Kierkegaard thus foretold, “will correspond inversely to the Reformation: then everything appeared to be a religious movement and became politics; now everything appears to be politics and will become a religious movement.”⁷

Tantalizing as Kierkegaard’s prediction here is, our question in this article is not whether his forecast proved accurate, but rather with the extent to which Kierkegaard’s understanding of Luther and Lutheranism shaped his own self-understanding. In this article, therefore, we analyze Kierkegaard’s reception of Luther through an examination of Kierkegaard’s published and unpublished writings, and explicate the respects in which—in a certain sense, and despite his perception of the need for an “inverse correspondence” with the Reformation—Kierkegaard viewed himself in the role of Luther’s “true successor.”⁸

I. A Brief Outline of Luther’s Dialectical Theology in the Age of Reform

Few individuals have had a greater impact on European history than Martin Luther. The age of the Reformation, which he helped to usher in, began with a relatively academic, though symbolically potent, dispute over the sale of indulgences but gradually grew into a battle over religious authority that was to have far-ranging consequences. Luther was not the first theologian to express concern over abuses of the indulgence system, nor did the circulation of The Ninety-Five Theses in 1517 constitute a call to revolution.⁹ Nevertheless, the image of a defiant Luther standing against the church hierarchy quickly spread throughout Germany, helped in part by the circulation of the theses and his subsequent works in both vernacular and Latin print.¹⁰ With his provocations drawing increasing notoriety, representatives of Rome turned the matter into a question of (Luther’s obedience to) papal authority, inciting Luther to reexamine and eventually undercut the traditional pillars on which papal authority rested—the claim of papal pre-eminence by divine right, the infallibility of the pope and church councils, and the precedents of canon law and scholastic theology.¹¹

The period from 1517 until 1522, when Luther returned to Wittenberg after appearing before the Diet of Worms, were critical years for the young reformer. Not only did Luther date his Reformation breakthrough—his so-called “tower experience”—to 1518, but he also wrote some of his most important works between 1520 and 1521.¹² Foremost among these are the great Reformation treatises of 1520, which were to become the defining works of the entire Reformation movement. His Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation called upon secular authorities to join the cause of reform and argued that all Christians have the right to interpret scripture based on the biblical concept of the spiritual priesthood of all believers, adding that the power to “test and judge what is right or wrong in matters of faith” did not belong exclusively to the clerical estate.¹³ The Babylonian Captivity of the Church redefined and reduced the number of sacraments to two (baptism and the Lord’s Supper) in light of biblical teachings. And The Freedom of a Christian articulated Luther’s central doctrine of justification by faith and characterized Christian life in terms of a correspondence between faith and love, grace and works. This third work (along with the Treatise on Good Works, also of 1520) demonstrates that Luther from very early on worried about the possibility of antinomian interpretations of the New Testament. Here Luther insists that faith gives rise to good works, and thus should not be misconstrued in terms of a simple opposition that precludes works.

A second set of works dates to his ten-month interlude at the Wartburg, where Luther remained in protective custody of Frederick the Wise after being declared an outlaw by the imperial diet at Worms until his return to Wittenberg.¹⁴ Locked up in relative isolation at the Wartburg, Luther turned his attention primarily to studying, interpreting, and translating the Bible.¹⁵ The most significant fruit of Luther’s labors at the Wartburg is his translation of the New Testament, the first German version based on the Greek original since Wulfila. Also significant, however (especially for Kierkegaard’s reception of Luther) was Luther’s composition of the Church Postil (Kirchenpostille), a collection of model sermons or sermon aids for preachers who wanted to incorporate Lutheran reform into their parish life.¹⁶ These postils were the practical companion to the new German translation of the New Testament. Both were anticipated by his earlier pronouncements on scripture being the sole source of religious authority; the Bible needed to be readily available in the vernacular, and these postils were to educate ministers whose job it was to proclaim the gospel to the church at large. Although written for the practical guidance of the evangelical clergy more than for theological disputation, these postils contain many of the same theological motifs and arguments presented in the more famous treatises from the previous year.

It is clear that Luther in the early years neither intended nor foresaw that his disagreements with Rome would escalate into the permanent breakup of Western Christendom; his initial program sought to reform the universal church, not to oversee its fragmentation. Still, the dissemination of his ideas helped to galvanize opposition against Rome—with support coming from many disciplines and social strata— toward the consolidation of a mass movement around teachings like justification by faith, the sole authority of Scripture in matters of faith, liberty of conscience, and the priesthood of all believers. Why these early controversies should have set off a revolution of such force and wide-ranging proportions remains a central, if not programmatic, question for evaluating Luther’s legacy and for understanding the Reformation as a whole. Historians sometimes characterize the age of reform in terms of a “confluence” or “surge” of intellectual, sociopolitical, and spiritual currents that made Luther’s message both pertinent and timely.¹⁷ But the complexity of the historical moment has meant that various, and sometimes competing, images of Luther have emerged depending on which elements of history interpreters choose to bring into focus. For example, when attention focuses on intellectual history, Luther is often portrayed either as a “late medieval man”¹⁸ who can only be understood in relation to late-medieval theological and spiritual traditions or, to a lesser extent, as the evangelical witness who harvests the fruits of Renaissance humanism despite his unacknowledged debt to it.¹⁹ When evaluating Luther’s political lineage, however, the spotlight usually moves from Luther’s initial polemics against the papacy to the more problematic interactions with secular princes and evangelical radicals. Luther is then depicted primarily as a “magisterial reformer” who accommodates to the political aspirations of secular princes against the continued challenges posed by his Catholic opponents as well as various evangelical opponents (“fanatics” and “false brethren”) who threatened to undermine his movement from within.²⁰ As will become clear in the following sections of this article, both the intellectual and the political traditions of interpretation find expression in Kierkegaard’s understanding of Luther and Lutheranism. With respect to the political dimension, Kierkegaard (especially in his later remarks on Luther) polemicizes against the manner in which Protestant reforms made it politically expedient for Northern princes and kings— including Christian III of Denmark—to espouse Lutheranism, and to establish a new form of collusion between churches and states.²¹ At the same time, with respect to the intellectual dimension, Kierkegaard stresses the importance of Luther’s late-medieval monastic context for understanding the definitive element of Luther’s spiritual life, namely, his own “anguished conscience” (“this frightful antecedent”²²), and his pastoral concern to comfort the terrified consciences of others.

Indeed, if we track this intellectual thread first, it is clear that Luther’s intense anxiety over the uncertainty of his own salvation is traceable back to his theological formation in the Augustinian monastery at Erfurt, an anx...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• List of Abbreviations
• Abraham a Sancta Clara: An Aphoristic Encyclopedia of Christian Wisdom
• Johann Arndt: The Pietist Impulse in Kierkegaard and Seventeenth-Century Lutheran Devotional Literature
• Ludovicus Blosius: A Frightful Satire on Christendom
• Jacob Böhme: The Ambiguous Legacy of Speculative Passion
• Hans Adolph Brorson: Danish Pietism’s Greatest Hymn Writer and His Relation to Kierkegaard
• John Calvin: Kierkegaard and the Question of the Law’s Third Use
• Erasmus of Rotterdam: Kierkegaard’s Hints at a Christian Humanist
• François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon: Clearing the Way for The Sickness unto Death
• August Hermann Francke: Kierkegaard on the Kernel and the Husk of Pietist Theology
• Thomas Kingo: An Investigation of the Poet’s and Hymnist’s Impact on Kierkegaard
• Martin Luther: Reform, Secularization, and the Question of His “True Successor”
• Hieronimus Savonarola: Kierkegaard’s Model for the Blood-Witness
• Gerhard Tersteegen: Kierkegaard’s Reception of a Man of “Noble Piety and Simple Wisdom”
• Index of Persons
• Index of Subjects