Scripture Readings:

Genesis 22:1-14

Luke 18:10-14

Romans 4: 1-5 

When Dr. Rebecca Whitaker asked me to do this, I thought it might be good, for a change, to discuss something I knew something about. So I decided to talk about the Philosopher- theologian Soren Kierkegaard, and some of his insights that I think have relevance for the present day.

I start with the bare facts. Soren Kierkegaard was the son of a fairly well-to-do merchant. He was born in 1813, in Copenhagen, Denmark , and he died there, in 1855. I feel certain our Liturgist would say he lived a long, very full, life, dying at the ripe old age of 42. The truth is he not only died young, but he was never a well man. I cannot be sure just what the trouble was. I do know he was short of stature, and had some sort of abnormal curvature of the spine.

He attended the local university, where he was prepared for the ministry, but he never preached. Like me (and I do not wish to be vain), he did not feel that this was his calling. He sometimes spoke of himself as "without authority." When I say he was born, and he died, in the same city, this is not to say that, like Kant, he never travelled more than a few miles from his birthplace. He did. In 1842, he went to Berlin to hear lectures by the great philosopher, F.W.J. Schelling. He wrote to his brother, "Schelling drivels on quite intolerably...I am too old to attend lectures and Schelling is too old to give them"(1). At this point, you may be sympathetic, but bear with me. I need to add just two more bits of raw data. First, you may not have heard of F. W. J. Schelling, but maybe you have heard of Hegel, and most of the philosophy that made Hegel famous was to be found earlier in the work of Schelling. And if you haven't heard of Hegel, either, surely you have heard of Karl Marx, and most of what was philosophically worthwhile in Marx was earlier to be found in Hegel.

Permit one more bit of Duncanian trivia. Kierkegaard wrote many books, but they were written in Danish. So his influence on the English-speaking world was slow in coming. One of the first translations of a substantial part of his work was done by a certain Professor Lee M. Hollander, down at the University of Texas, in 1923, as Selections from the Writings of Soren Kierkegaard, published as Bulletin No.1226 in a Comparative Literature Series.It says something about the day in which we live that that obscure work is now available, for the click of a mouse, on the World Wide Web.

By now you must be asking , "What has all this got to do with anything?" Well, Kierkegaard lived in a day of great philosophical systems. The Hegelian philosophers, in Europe and in America, felt that, in the Hegelian system, they pretty well had this whole thing figured out. The Christian faith was also seen as a system of thought, too, which found its place in the grand Hegelian scheme of things. We sometimes hear it said that being a Christian is hard...difficult...but it did not appear to be so in Kierkegaard's Denmark. He belonged to the Danish Lutheran Church. This was the established, or state, church; so, in one sense, one became a Christian just by being born--it was part of becoming a citizen of this nation of Denmark. Further, the Christian faith was a system that, again, had this whole business figured out...so what is so difficult?

I wanted you to hear the two passages of Scripture about the Pharisee and the Tax collector,and the story of Abraham and Isaac, because they meant so much to Kierkegaard, and we need to add one more--Romans 4:1-5.

It is important to recall that Kierkegaard wrote for a nation of people who thought of themselves as Christians. They were already convinced that Abraham was righteous. But how was that possible? Pardon my being political for a moment, but do you ever notice how often we are asked to vote for this or that measure, law, or tax increase...because it's for the children (I know I can't say that quite the way President Clinton does)? What is a father's duty to his children?

But I am getting ahead of myself. Before we talk about the Abraham and Isaac story, let's go back to the story of the Pharisee and the tax-collector. Kierkegaard uses that story to argue that we really should not think of the Christian faith as a system at all-it is not so much a system of thought as a life to be lived. Notice that the Pharisee in the story was the better theologian. We are to understand that he had the theory, the doctrine, right...he had this thing figured out. He even had the rituals right. That's why he could thank God that he was not as other men. The tax-collector didn't know much theology. But he knew where he stood before God; he knew he was a sinner, in need of mercy--and so are we all. Did you ever notice that people who come to join this church are not asked a lot of theological questions? We are not asked how we understand predestination, or whether we are "pre" or "post" (whatever that means). Kierkegaard asks, where is there most truth in this story?. And he votes for the tax-collector, despite his lack of theological sophistication.

Now back to Abraham and Isaac...and maybe to Bill Clinton, too. What is a father's duty to his children?? We can all answer that one, can't we? A father is to love his children, care for them, and suchlike. But Abraham was willing to kill his son...how can that be justified? Clearly, we cannot justify Abraham's readiness to kill his son on purely moral grounds. Pardon an aside, but I wrote my first published paper on this topic more than 35 years ago; I tried to argue that so-called justified exceptions could be handled within the bounds of ethics and the rules of ordinary morality (2). In the end, whether I was right or not may not matter too much {What I wrote may have been true, but trivial}. Kierkegaard wrote about this matter in a book entitled Fear and Trembling (also on the Web, by the way).We think we have this whole thing figured out--how about Abraham? He could not explain what he was doing to anybody. Here was a man who was more than 100 years old, even older than I am. He had once heard a voice, telling him that he would father a son, in his old age, and that, through that son, he would be the father of many nations...and now he had heard a voice telling him to kill that son. How could he convince anybody who questioned him..."Well, I heard this voice...said it was God...sounded like God...you know...big booming voice..." would you believe that? There is a passage in Fear and Trembling that, I warn you, always chokes me up. Kierkegaard asks, what if Isaac had figured it out? He saw the firewood for the sacrifice, and the knife, but no lamb...this doesn't look good. Listen to what Kierkegaard wrote:

"Then Abraham lifted up the boy, he walked with him by his side, and his talk was full of comfort and exhortation. But Isaac could not understand him. He climbed Mount Moriah, but Isaac understood him not. Then for an instant he turned away from him, and when Isaac again saw Abraham's face it was changed, his glance was wild, his form was horror. He seized Isaac by the throat, threw him to the ground, and said, 'Stupid boy, dost thou suppose that I am thy father? I am an idolater.Dost thou suppose that this is God's bidding? No, it is my desire.' Then Isaac trembled and cried out in his terror, 'O God in heaven, have compassion on me.God of Abraham,have compassion on me. If I have no father on earth, be Thou my father!' But Abraham in a low voice said to himself, 'O Lord in heaven, I thank Thee. After all, it is better for him to believe that I am a monster, rather than that he should lose faith in Thee.' " (3).

Father Abraham himself is at the center of this story. How must he have felt as he raised that knife to kill his only son, the child of his old age, the last he was ever likely to have? How did he know he was doing the right thing? He said he heard a voice. Pardon my being irreverant for a moment, but every day, you can turn on your radio, especially to certain Dallas stations, and hear preachers say (in just about this many words), "I've been talking with Jesus, and He told me to tell you...",or "Thus saith the Lord God, tell My people..." Do they really (all of them?) hear the voice of God? Did David Koresh hear the voice of God? And how do we know? Perhaps more to the point, how does someone, like Abraham, who hears such voices know this is the voice of God? Of course, if Abraham really did hear the commands of God, he needed to obey, but suppose he was wrong...then he had killed his son, and he had killed him for nothing.It is difficult for me to imagine a more frightening scenario.That's why Kierkegaard gave his book the title, Fear and Trembling.

Kierkegaard thought that being a Christian was rather like that. Why do people make statements of faith, join churches,etc.? One of the things I have been pleased to notice since I've been back on the Session is that this is a group of people really dedicated to the mission of this church, and they work very hard for it---why do they do that?? I personally don't like to say that I'm here because I've found the truth. I'm not ready to make such an extreme claim. I could say much more on this than you would care to hear, I suspect, but I am here because I have come to believe in the Reformed theology, and in the Presbyterian form of church government. I am a member of this congregation because I love its people, and I am so very proud of our preacher. I have not heard celestial voices, and have had no special revelations. How, then, do I know I'm right? How do I really know I haven't spent more than 35 years in the wrong church? Clearly, the answer has to be that I don't.

Now, I need to start to bring all this to a close, and I want to do that by telling three little stories . The first concerns two British sailors, who had a few hours leave in a foreign port. For once, they did not go to a bar...instead, they visited a Fortune Teller. The Fortune teller peered into her crystal ball,and began to tell the fortune of one of the sailors, and then she smiled broadly, and the sailor hit her! The other sailor was schocked by this sort of behavior, and asked for an explanation, and his friend replied, "I was told that I should always strike a happy medium". I tell this stupid story because Kierkegaard did not strike a happy medium. It's easy to criticize Kierkegaard by saying that his views were excessive or extreme, never moderate. For example, overemphasis on the story of the pharisee and the tax-collector could lead to what Charles Colson has recently called "salad-table Christianity". If it doesn't matter that much what we believe, because Christianity is not a system, not really about doctrine, but is rather a way of life- and we can't prove the doctrine, anyhow- then we can just pick and choose, and fill our plates with whatever suits our fancy, and appeals to our taste at this particular moment. And surely that won't do.The Abraham and Isaac story may teach us that the people of faith cannot prove their case, but this does not mean that their faith is absurd or paradoxical, or that what we believe doesn't matter. Maybe we can't prove our case, but we can present evidence for what we believe.

And that leads to the second story,which is a bit more serious. On the communion table before us, you can see a communion cup and a plate. There is nothing very special about them. I know they were not at all expensive. But they mean something to me because they were made on the isle of Iona. I don't know how many of you have been to Iona. It's a small island off the Western coast of Scotland.Tradition has it that many of the ancient kings of Scotland are buried there, possibly the last being Shakespeare's "wise old King Duncan," who died in 1040. The same traditions claim that about 48 Norwegian kings were buried there even earlier...all of this may or may not be true. But it certainly is true that, in the year 563, an Irish clergyman named Columba came to this island, established a religious community, and used it as a base from which he Christianized all of Scotland. Think of that!! This means that the Christian faith has been preached and heard on this little island for more than 1400 years! I cannot help feeling that a faith that has served its people so well for so long has to have something going for it. I am certainly aware that this proves nothing; other faiths have their ancient sites, too. But I think it serves as evidence, and that is all faith can ever ask.

 

 Now the last of the stories, and I know you've heard this one. In the Spring term of a recent academic year, a University was putting the finishing touches on their new Science building. As the building went up, they became more and more aware of how much modern science has done to enrich our lives. There were special lectures on Space exploration, the new computer technology, advances in Medicine, and so many other things that we take for granted now that my parents could not have imagined. They felt so good about all that they had done, and all that science had accomplished, that they decided that the only fitting inscription that they could put on the new building was "Man is the measure of all things." But then the term ended before they reached the time for such finishing touches....and the Summer gave them time to think again. They began to think about how much more they wanted to learn, how much they didn't know. ....even how much there was out there that they could never know... And many people were surprized , when they came back to campus in the Fall, to read, as the inscription on their new Science building, not "Man is the measure of all things", but rather the line from Psalm 8, "What is Man, that Thou art mindful of him?"

Kierkegaard reminds us that humility is a Christian virtue, and sometimes the reminder is needed. Sometimes, for example, when our faith is attacked as not being capable of scientific demonstration, we are tempted to snap back: "Sure it is!" To put matters crudely, when we do that, we end up with egg on our faces every time, and cast doubt and suspicion (at least!) on the very faith we are trying to defend. I am haunted by a quote from the Scottish philosopher David Hume (of all people!!) on this point . Hume was the author of a rather notorious essay on Miracles, in which he argued that no one can prove, scientifically, that miracles have ever happened. Fundamentalists on both sides of the Atlantic have damned him for this. Near the end of his essay, he wrote:

"I am the better pleased with the method of reasoning here delivered, as I think it may serve to confound those dangerous friends or disguised enemies to the Christian religion, who have undertaken to defend it by the principles of human reason. Our most holy religion is founded on Faith, not on reason; and it is a sure method of exposing it to put it to such a trial as it is, by no means, fitted to endure." (4)

Call Hume a filthy old atheist if you must, but in this case he was right, and I feel certain that Kierkegaard, and maybe even Abraham, would have agreed. In the end, Kierkegaard always said it better, and I leave you with one of his prayers:

"God in heaven, I thank Thee that Thou hast not required it of man that he should comprehend Christianity; for if that were required, I should be of all men the most miserable. The more I seek to comprehend it, the more incomprehensible it appears to me,and the more I discover merely the possibility of offense. Therefore, I thank Thee that Thou dost only require faith, and I pray Thee to increase it more and more". (5)

And to that, we can, I hope, all say "Amen".

Footnotes.

1.Dru, Alexander,ed.,The Journals of Kierkegaard, Harper & Brothers, Publishers, New York,1959,p.79.

2.Elmer H. Duncan, "Kierkegaard's Teleological Suspension of the Ethical: A study of Exception-Cases,"The Southern Journal of Philosophy,Winter, 1963, pp.9-18.

3.Kierkegaard, Soren, Fear and Trembling, trans.Walter Lowrie, Doubleday & Company, Inc.,Garden City New York,1954, p.27.

4.Hume, David, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, edited by Tom L. Beauchamp, Oxford University Press, New york, 1999, pp. 185-186.

5.Kierkegaard, Soren, The Sickness Unto Death, trans. Walter Lowrie, Doubleday & Company, Garden City, New York, p.260, n.

P.S. This sermon was meant for a popular audience, and limited to about 20 minutes. Readers (if any) who might care to pursue these matters in greater detail should consider taking the Kierkegaard course I teach from time to time.

 

Finally, it came a bit late for me to use, but the Sept.4 issue of Christianity Today suggested an attractive alternate plan:

I love that!!