Contemporary with Christ

Kierkegaard and Second-Personal Spirituality

Joshua Cockayne

• Publisher: Baylor University Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781481310871
• eBook ISBN: 9781481310895
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Rituals & Practice

The Christian life, concerned with both spirituality and doctrine, aims not at rationally defensible truth but at life-transforming love. Greater understanding of the truth will not settle the restlessness in a human spirit; only the redemptive power of relationship with God can calm the soul. The crux of Kierkegaard's presentation of Christianity is not that doctrine is unimportant, but that it is ultimately insufficient for a life lived in relationship with God.

In  Contemporary with Christ, Joshua Cockayne explores the Christian spiritual life with Søren Kierkegaard (in the guise of his various pseudonyms) as his guide and analytic theology as his key tool of engagement. Cockayne contends that the Christian life is  second-personal: it seeks encounter with a personal God. As Kierkegaard describes, God invites us to "live on the most intimate terms with God." Cockayne argues that this vision of Christian spirituality is deeply practical because it advocates for a certain way of acting and existing. This approach to the Christian life moves from first-reflection, whereby one acquires objective knowledge, to second-reflection, whereby one attains deeper self-understanding, which fortifies one's relationship with God.

Individuals encounter Christ through traditional practices: prayer, the Eucharist, and the reading of Scripture. However, experiences of suffering and mortality that mirror Christ's own passion also enliven this life of encounter. Spiritual progress comes through a reorientation of one's will, desire, and self-knowledge. Such progress must ultimately serve the goal of drawing close to God through Christ's presence. Engaging philosophy, theology, and psychology, Cockayne invites us to join in a conversation with Kierkegaard and explore how the spiritual disciplines provide opportunities for relationship with God by becoming contemporary with Christ.

Notes

Introduction

1 The prayers that head each of the chapters are all prayers taken from Kierkegaard’s writings. Perry D. LeFevre compiles these together in his volume The Prayers of Kierkegaard (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956).

2 For instance, see the works of Alvin Plantinga (God and Other Minds [Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1967]; God, Freedom, and Evil [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974]; Does God Have a Nature? [Madison, Wis.: Marquette University Press, 1980]; Warranted Christian Belief [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000]), Richard Swinburne (The Coherence of Theism [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977]; The Existence of God [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979]; Faith and Reason [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981]), Peter Van Inwagen (God, Knowledge and Mystery: Essays in Philosophical Theology [Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995]; The Possibility of Resurrection and Other Essays in Christian Apologetics [Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1998]), Eleonore Stump (“Petitionary Prayer,” American Philosophical Quarterly 16 [1979]: 81–91; “Omnipresence, Indwelling and the Second-Personal,” European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 5, no. 4 [2013]: 29–52; Wandering in Darkness [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010]; Aquinas [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008]), Nicholas Wolterstorff (Reason within the Bounds of Religion [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976]; Art in Action: Towards a Christian Aesthetic [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980]; Until Justice and Peace Embrace [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983]; Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the Claim That God Speaks [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995]), and William Alston (Divine Nature and Human Language: Essays in Philosophical Theology [Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989]; Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience [Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991]).

3 Pioneered by figures such as Oliver Crisp (Jonathan Edwards and the Metaphysics of Sin [Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2005]; Divinity and Humanity: The Incarnation Reconsidered [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007]; God Incarnate: Explorations in Christology [New York: T&T Clark, 2009]; The Word Enfleshed: Exploring the Person and Work of Christ [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016]) and Michael Rea (World without Design: The Ontological Consequences of Naturalism [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004]; Evil and the Hiddenness of God [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014]; The Hiddenness of God [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018]). Three main centers for analytic theology have emerged: Fuller Theological Seminary in California, the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, and the Logos Institute for Analytic and Exegetical Theology in St Andrews.

4 See also Oliver Crisp and Michael Rea’s volume of essays, which many regard as the beginnings of analytic theology as a discipline/subdiscipline (Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009]). Another place to see examples of work being done in analytic theology is in the Journal of Analytic Theology.

5 Oliver Crisp, “Analytic Theology as Systematic Theology,” De Gruyter Open Theology 3, no. 1 (2017): 160.

6 In Nicholas Wolterstorff’s words, “Christian existence incorporates Christian belief and Christian ethical action, Christian experience and Christian ritual. In our century we who are Christian philosophers have thought especially about Christian belief and Christian ethics, somewhat about Christian experience. We have thought scarcely at all about Christian liturgy” (“Remembrance of Things (Not) Past,” in Christian Philosophy, ed. Thomas Flint [Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990], 157). Wolterstorff is one of the notable exceptions to this general trend, having recently released two books on the nature of Christian liturgy and worship. A similar critique of philosophy of religion can be found in Kevin Schilbrack’s book Philosophy and the Study of Religions: A Manifesto (Chichester, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2014).

7 As Mark Wynn, one of the leading philosophers of spirituality, describes it, the questions asked in philosophy classrooms and those asked “on the street” are vastly different. Wynn observes:

“On the street” there is, I suggest, a different, more existentially focused kind of objection to religious belief. . . . Namely, the objection that religion requires us to adopt a set of evaluations that betray our human form of life, because they require us to sink our attention in a realm other than this sensory world, and thereby to neglect the claim on our time and care and energy which is rightly made by other beings, and by the material cosmos more broadly defined. (Mark Wynn, Renewing the Senses: A Study of the Philosophy and Theology of the Spiritual Life [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013], 12)

8 Moreover, as some recent work in the analytic tradition has shown, there is much of philosophical importance to be found in considering questions of human existence, experience, and spirituality. See, for instance, Terence Cuneo’s recent collection of essays, Ritualized Faith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), and Wolterstorff’s Acting Liturgically (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).

9 Evans argues for this position in some detail in Kierkegaard on Faith and the Self: Collected Essays (Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2006).

10 To be clear—my claim is not that those who work in analytic theology claim that thinking carefully about doctrine might have this effect.

11 If the reader is looking for a detailed introduction to Kierkegaard’s life, or a historically thorough exposition of his ideas, they should look elsewhere. In particular, I recommend C. Stephen Evans’ Kierkegaard: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) for a general overview of Kierkegaard’s life and works; Jon Stewart’s Søren Kierkegaard: Subjectivity and Crisis of Modernity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015) for an introduction that focuses more on the historical philosophical context of Kierkegaard’s writings; and M. Jamie Ferreira’s Kierkegaard (Chicester, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2009) for an introductory text that impressively outlines all of Kierkegaard’s major works. George Pattison’s The Philosophy of Kierkegaard (Montreal: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 2005) and Murray Rae’s Kierkegaard and Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2010) also do an excellent job of introducing Kierkegaard’s contribution to philosophy and theology, respectively.

12 This is not a book intended to give a comprehensive overview of Kierkegaard’s thinking about spirituality, and the personal, historical influences on Kierkegaard’s views. An excellent introduction to this topic that has been influential in my own thinking in this area is Christopher B. Barnett’s From Despair to Faith: The Spirituality of Søren Kierkegaard (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2014). This book seeks to take seriously Kierkegaard’s concern to provoke and prod each single individual not only to think about God or understand the doctrines of the Christian faith, but also to take seriously that she is one before God and in relationship with God. In taking this concern seriously, it then takes Kierkegaard’s insights on topics relating to human spirituality and explores what it is to live a life focused on intimacy with God.

13 C. Stephen Evans, Kierkegaard’s Fragments and Postscript: The Religious Philosophy of Johannes Climacus (New York: Humanity Books, 1999), 96.

14 Since this book aims not to present an accurate account of what Kierkegaard thought about Christian spirituality, I will allow the pseudonyms to speak for themselves and avoid the complex issue of how each of their views is related to Kierkegaard’s own.

15 Kierkegaard’s use of “maieutically” here points toward one of his greatest inspirations—Socrates. The concept of maieutics is drawn from Plato’s Meno, in which Socrates, simply by asking questions and provoking the interlocutor, is able to get him to realize the truth of the Pythagoras theorem. The art of maieutics is the art of birthing truth in an individual; the teacher acts as a kind of midwife to the realization of truth. It is this act of self-reflection and applying truth to one’s own life that Kierkegaard saw as lacking in his own culture. As Anti-Climacus put this point in The Sickness unto Death,

Socrates, Socrates, Socrates! Yes, we may well call your name three times; it would not be too much to call it ten times, if it would be of any help. Popular opinion maintains that the world needs a republic, needs a new social order and a new religion—but no one considers that what the world, confused simply by too much knowledge, needs is a Socrates. (SUD, 9)

1. Knowing God

1 “The Spiritual Life” is a vague term and has been used in a variety of contexts. As Evelyn U...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Sigla
• Introduction
• I. A Second-Personal Framework for the Spiritual Life
• II. Spiritual Growth and the Practice of the Spiritual Life
• Notes
• Credits
• Bibliography
• Index