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Article contents
Kierkegaard on Sin
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
Extract
In the nineteen-thirties, when Søren Kierkegaard was beginning to become internationally known and his ideas were being eagerly discussed, Theodor Haecker noted that of all those who had reason to take up the task of interpretation the theologians were the least active. Today, in spite of the wealth of Kierkegaardian studies available, the situation is not so very different. The great Christian writer is still more commonly thought of as the pioneer of existentialism than as a skilled exponent of Christianity, and the bearing of his teaching upon doctrinal issues is seldom mentioned. It is true that he said that Christianity was not a doctrine, and that he wrote no formal theology. Insisting that his role was that of a layman, the most he claimed was that some of his writings were specifically ‘for edification’. At the same time, he strenuously opposed the opinion that Christian belief could stand without a very definite content, pointing out that the inwardness demanded of the individual presupposed knowledge of the ‘objectively dogmatic’: in faith the how could not be separated from the what.
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References
page 289 note 1 Soren Kierkegaard (Oxford, 1937), pp. 12–13Google Scholar.
page 289 note 2 op. cit. (Princeton, 1944), p. 71.
page 290 note 1 op. cit. (Princeton, 1941), p. 240.
page 291 note 1 op. cit. (Oxford, 1944), p. 156. Compare The Concept of Dread (Oxford, 1946), p. 14Google Scholar: ‘… as soon as sin is talked about as a sickness, an abnormality, a poison, a disharmony, then the concept too is falsified’.
page 291 note 2 The Christian Faith (T. & T. Clark, 1928), p. 275Google Scholar.
page 291 note 3 From Rousseau to Ritschl (S.C.M. Press, 1959), p. 353Google Scholar.
page 292 note 1 Evil and the Christian Faith (Harper, 1947), p. 44Google Scholar.
page 292 note 2 ibid., p. 50.
page 292 note 3 ibid., pp. 52–53.
page 292 note 4 Systematic Theology, vol. II (Chicago, 1957), p. 45Google Scholar.
page 292 note 5 ibid.
page 292 note 6 Tavard, George H. in Paul Tillich and the Christian Message (Scribners, 1962), pp. 39–40Google Scholar.
page 293 note 1 The Journals of Soren Kierkegaard, a selection … by Dru, Alexander (Oxford, 1938), entry No. 78Google Scholar.
page 293 note 2 Thoughts on Crucial Situations in Human Life (Augsburg, 1941), pp. 26–27Google Scholar.
page 293 note 3 op. cit. (Princeton, 1941), p. 152 note. This explanation is repeated and expanded in The Concept of Dread, p. 16 and note.
page 294 note 1 op. cit., p. 144. Italics in the original.
page 294 note 2 op. cit., p. 14. Kierkegaard says that, although psychology cannot properly delineate sin, it delineates dread and despair. Thus it approaches sin ‘more or less’. On this account, neither The Concept of Dread nor The Sickness Unto Deathmdash;being chiefly psychological works—present a rounded dogmatic treatment of sin; yet both break through the psychological viewpoint at times to present dogmatic insights. Modern existentialists follow Kierkegaard in discussing the categories of dread and despair, but they treat these as ultimate categories and so never come within sight of Kierkegaard's Christianity.
page 294 note 3 op. cit., p. 144
page 295 note 1 This fact is emphasised in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, pp. 24iff, where the Fragments is said to be the first work which could specifically describe ‘the Christian religious mode’ without danger of confusion, the earlier pseudonymous works having prepared the way.
page 295 note 2 op. cit., p. 10.
page 295 note 3 ibid. It should be evident that this ‘state’ caused by one's own guilt is a paradoxical one and therefore not a state such as psychology would recognise. There is no contradiction between what is said here and the argument in The Concept of Dread to the effect that sin is not a state but a reality which annuls its own idea.
page 295 note 4 ibid., pp. 12–14.
page 296 note 1 op. cit. (2nd edition, Princeton, 1962), lxix.
page 296 note 2 op. cit. (1st edition), p. 13.
page 297 note 1 op. cit., p. 27.
page 297 note 2 op. cit., pp. 516, 517.
page 297 note 3 ibid., p. 518.
page 298 note 1 ibid., p. 517.
page 298 note 2 op. cit., p. 29. The phrase suggests Romans 5.12.
page 298 note 3 ibid.
page 299 note 1 op. cit., p. 517.
page 299 note 2 op. cit., p. 72. In his devotional writings Kierkegaard develops the theme of the life given by faith having to be preceded by death (see For Self-Examination, Oxford, 1941, pp. 100ff)Google Scholar.
page 300 note 1 ibid., p. 71.
page 300 note 2 The Sickness Unto Death, p. 132.
page 300 note 3 Introduction to Kierkegaard (Muller, 1950), p. 149Google Scholar. Jolivet traces Kierkegaard's ‘error’ to the wrong interpretation of Romans 14.23, which Kierkegaard handles in the same way as Luther.
page 300 note 4 ‘If faith is belief in revealed truths, the opposite of faith is not sin, but unbelief or the refusal to believe’ (ibid., p. 148).
page 301 note 1 op. cit., p. 145.
page 301 note 2 ibid., p. 161.
page 301 note 3 ibid., p. 162.
page 302 note 1 Gerrish, B. A., Grace and Reason (Oxford, 1962), p. 169Google Scholar.
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