Category: church

The Concept of Anxiety

The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin is often considered Kierkegaard’s most difficult work.  The work is ‘psychological’ in that psychology is in the best position to describe anxiety.  Anxiety itself however gives way only to a dogmatic (religious) orientation; psychology is required but can only go so far.

The following may not make any sense (as I am trying to sort this out myself) but I thought I would try and unpack a few key quotes in Kierkegaard’s concept.

Continue reading “The Concept of Anxiety” →

A little Q&A

Question: Why did Jesus die and what did Jesus’ death accomplish?
Answer: Jesus died for our sins and his death paid the penalty for our sins.

The answer comes before the question is even finished.  In fact certain readings of Isaiah would have the answer come before the question.  Is there a particularly Good Friday answer to this question.  Shouldn’t the answer be intimately bound with Good Friday?

If I stay with the text (John was our reading this year) the sequence goes as follows.  Why did Jesus die?  Because he was killed.  What did Jesus’ death accomplish?  Nothing.   So we sit with futility of death.  The God of king and priest is dead because the one and only king and priest is crucified.  By definition then Good Friday sits with atheism and anarchism.  Good Friday sits with the knowledge that the nature of religion and empire is death.

But if you would like something other than death to sit with  and there must be something more than death because the disciples continued to live in the days between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.  If you would like some words to come alongside the words of the dead and forsaken God then listen to Jesus again from the cross.  Listen to him before his final words.  He turns to his mother, the woman who gave him birth.  Jesus looks at her and then motions to his disciple standing by her and says, “Here is your son.”  And then he looks at his disciple and motions to his mother saying, “Here is your mother.”  And with these words a community is called.  A community based not on lineage, culture, tradition, status or interests.  This community is called by all who will gather and acknowledge that the gods of this world are dead and the gods of some heaven reserved for the privileged are dead.  So what will live on?  Where will life be found?  Today all we are offered are the words to turn and see our mother, our father, our sons and our daughters among those gathered at the site of death; the site too often created by religion and empire that work to exclude the undesirable.  Jesus has called a people to gather beyond the illusion of religion and beyond the power of empire; to gather in death where we must ask ourselves if love too has died.  And if love has not died . . .  then we must love.  But few of us find that place on our own so must begin by seeking the lost who have been thrust there.  Why did Jesus die?  Maybe first we need to ask another question.  Where did Jesus die?

Guitierrez on the split of spiritual exprience

I have been picking my way through Gustavo Gutierrez’s We Drink from our own Wells.  While much of the exegesis offered there feels like well-worn territory now I was struck by his description of spiritual growth in response to God’s call to the poor.

The harsh reality of everyday experience causes breaks with the past and launches persons on new quests.

1. To the measure that solidarity with the world of the poor grows and matures, old securities collapse and fixed reference points crumble away – underpinnings that used to provide a certain tranquility in the midst of  new experiences and challenges.  A growing insecurity seems to undermine, from within, the patterns of spiritual life that guided our earlier steps.  Many continued in their original commitment for a long time, relying on the solid protection of their religious community, a Christian environment, and a particular way of understanding life according to the gospel.  The shock of reality, and the effort to enter into it to an ever fuller degree, darkened what was once a clear horizon.  Familiar paths now lead to impasses.  Those who, nonetheless, refuse to be discouraged seek more fruitful paths, but the price they pay is dissatisfaction, fear, and sometimes even frustration.  And in every case there is a keen sense of insecurity that is perhaps inevitable but that also must pass because it is not possible to build a solid and lasting spirituality on a sense of insecurity.

2. The result is a painful split in spiritual experience.  Persons begin to live in a somewhat dichotomized fashion.  On the one hand, they feel the need of a sure spiritual way; this is especially the case perhaps in those who have had a more systematic formation in this area.  On the other hand, daily life with its demands for commitment seems to run on a tangential track; it does not initially conflict with the spirituality one has acquired, but neither does it enrich it.  In the long run, this kind of dual existence is highly unsatisfactory.  Upon the disappearance of the fixed points that should give unity to everyday activity, persons live at the mercy of events, unable to establish fruitful links between them and are forced simply to jump from one to another.  They are convinced that they have learned a great deal from solidarity with the poor and from carrying out their work of evangelization among them, but when they try to express this perception they fall back on categories that begin to seem increasingly alien and remote.  The problem results from the fact that they have not reexamined these categories in the light of their new experiences or, more exactly, that they do not have another path that can replace the one that no longer seems to lead to the goal. (16-17)

Lazarus in two parts: Part II – Was it Lazarus slumped in the closet?

I did not mention in Part that I have been to Lazarus’ cave.  It is actually quite close to where I live now.  Lazarus’ cave is an apartment one floor directly below where I used to live on Wellington Ave.  Chantal and I were caretakers for that apartment block.  I did not know Lazarus well having only passed him on the stairs a few times.  But I came to realize that something was happening in his life, that he was falling ill.  Things were not good and people were coming by and asking about him out of concern.  One day myself and the superintendent for the apartments (our block was part of a larger church housing project) stopped to talk with him.  After our meeting we became concerned about what he might do to himself.  The superintendent went back and talked with him and then she left.  About four days later around midnight I received a knock on my door asking if I had keys to Lazarus’ apartment.  It was the police.  I did not have keys so I called the superintendent and she came.  We gathered in front of Lazarus’ cave.  The apartment building was small and so there was no real hallway only a square space where four apartment doors were located on each floor.  Gathered in that space was Chantal and I and the superintendent, two police officers, Lazarus’ brother-in-law and Lazarus’ daughter.  At this point my memory becomes hazy in detail but almost infinitely pronounced in impression.  As the door was opened I remember only two things and they filled the physical space and they filled all of my own humanity.  I remember the smell.  And I remember the scream of Lazarus’ daughter as she collapsed on the ground.  Both the smell and the scream were utterly and profoundly devastating.

If this was Lazarus’ cave, as I believe it was, then where was Jesus?  Was it Lazarus’ daughter who screamed in pure agony over the loss of her father?  Was it Lazarus’ brother-in-law who went into the stench of death to identify Lazarus?  Was it Lazarus himself slumped in the closet who may have whispered the words, my God, my God why have you forsaken me, before the towel tightened around his neck?  Was I Jesus in the way I lived almost indifferently to Lazarus in those four days knowing later that perhaps I could have done something differently?  Or was Jesus simply not there?  I don’t know.  All of the answers are perhaps true and terrible in their own way.  What I know is that this experience, especially Lazarus’ daughter, helped me to understand what that polite and passive phrase ‘deeply moved’ means when it comes to Jesus’ experience.  What I also know is that there was no voice calling Lazarus out of his tomb.

Lazarus in two parts: Part I – Jesus you don’t need to do this

Lent began with temptation in the wilderness.  The temptation was to resolve the tension of good and evil; the tension to gain control over the circumstances of suffering without entering into the lives of those who suffer.  Jesus was tempted to bypass the work of being truly human and, instead, move directly into the position of Pharoah or Ceasar, that is, a human who thinks he is god as opposed to God who lives fully human.  It is the temptation to be a false god or an idol that Jesus rejects at the beginning of Lent.  This means that Jesus cannot move into an earthly enthronement, Jesus is now set on a course in which the love of neighbour and love of God are truly and fully integrated.

Continue reading “Lazarus in two parts: Part I – Jesus you don’t need to do this” →

It will come to me

Yesterday I visited a woman with severe dementia.  Typically people with Alzheimer’s or dementia are quite enjoyable to visit.  Enjoyable in the sense that there is no awkardness or certainly no need for it.  No pressure for small-talk, no need to fill in an silences, etc.  Conversations just sort of ramble for the part.  Of course there is always some sadness in these encounters.  I mean I can’t help but have some sympathy for a sweet old lady who kept trying to remember something.  In one instance she finally said, without any real frustration, if its important it will come to me.  I’m still trying to process that one.

I do not dance

I just finished Philosophical Fragments (PF).  I wanted to get a few observations down while they are fresh in my mind.

First, while I get Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous authorship this is the first one where it makes real sense to me.  Either/Or is also blatantly clear but it strikes me as too much of an abstract experiment.   PF still comes as an experiment.  The experiment being whether it is possible to go beyond Socrates and what that might look like in philosophical discourse.  However, Kierkegaard comes off as more invested in this venture, more curious about how this will actually play out.

Second, it is important to note that these are fragments.  In his original manuscripts they were actually called ‘pamphlets’ which he also refers to them as within the book.  The significance of this is brought fully to bear in the final section.  Here he talks about the possibility of a ‘second pamphlet’.  He writes,

If I ever do write a second section – because a pamphlet writer such as I am has no seriousness, as you presumably will hear about me – why, then, should I now in conclusion pretend to seriousness in order to please people by making a rather big promise?  In other words, to write a pamphlet is frivolity – but to promise the system, that is seriousness and has made many a man a supremely serious man both in his own eyes and in the eyes of others. (109)

The ‘system’ of course is Hegelianism.  What I find intriguing about this passage is  the notion that perhaps the more ‘serious’, thoroughgoing, complete even social and political approach can actually end up being the most individualistic and self-serving.  This is partially a critique of academia as well as what could now be termed an ideological centralizing of power by ‘men who talk about important stuff’ as I have heard it put.  This final section really bookends well the intro to PF, which did not make a great deal of sense to me originally.  The preface begins,

What is offered here is only a pamphlet, by one’s own hand, on one’s own behalf, at one’s own expense, without any claim to being a part of the scientific-scholarly endeavor in which one acquires legitimacy. (5).

Kierkegaard goes on in the Preface to consider what it might mean to have social (world-historical as he puts it) significance.  No one would consider a pamphlet to have such significance.  So what is Kierkegaard’s opinion on the matter?

Do not ask me about that.  Next to the question of whether or not I have an opinion, nothing can be of less interest to someone else than what my opinion is.  To have an opinion is to me both too much and too little; it presupposes a security and well-being in existence akin to having a wife and children in this mortal life, something not granted to a person who has to be up and about night and day and yet has no fixed income. (7)

There is a certain tone of liberation thought in the Preface and conclusion to PF (which hardly alludes to the book’s actual content in many ways!).  The critique is of those wielding socially constructed and maintained forms of power who believe that they can function as the benefactors of truth.  The framing of this book, which has just dawned on me, is making me rethink how I interpreted the bulk of the work.  Hopefully I can post a reading of PF that reflects its preface and conclusion.  Here are the final words of the preface.  I thought they were pretty.

I can stake my own life, I can in all earnestness trifle with my own life – not with another’s.  I am capable of this, the only thing I am able to do for thought, I who have no learning to offer it, ‘scarcely enough for the one-drachma course, to say nothing of the big fifty-drachma course’ (Cratylus).  All I have is my life, which I promptly stake every time a difficulty appears.  Then it is easy to dance, for the thought of death is a good dancing partner, my dancing partner.  Every human being is too heavy for me, and there I plead per deos obsecro [I swear by the gods]: Let no one invite me, for I do not dance. (9).

Job and the thunderstorm in Kierkegaard’s Repetition

Well I just caught up with my (rough) Kierkegaard reading schedule having finished Fear and Trembling and Repetition.  Both were re-reads and I found Repetition a much more illuminating re-read.  I think Fear and Trembling has had so much press that despite how arresting it can be it may need another form in order to achieve ‘repetition’ which leads me to Repetition.

Continue reading “Job and the thunderstorm in Kierkegaard’s Repetition” →

Is this heaven? No . . . its the 44.

A few weeks ago in the first Sunday of Lent I challenged our congregation to fast from the fruits of privilege.  One minor act on my part has been to ride the bus as often as possible.  As a country-boy the bus has always been a source of fascination for me and this spiritual exercise paid dividends this last week as my experience ended comprising about half the sermon.

Continue reading “Is this heaven? No . . . its the 44.” →

The violent religious man of faith . . . and Abraham

Kierkegaard’s religious self, that is his conception of the self in a religious stage, has a few qualifications.  By nature it can bar no one entry on the basis of external achievement.  There is no aesthetic mood, ethical act or intellectual understanding that can stand as a gatekeeper to faith.  The movement of faith is qualified internally.  This continues to be a troubling prospect.  I still maintain that most criticisms of Kierkegaard as some demon of individualism are misguided and lack a substantial understanding of his work.  However, I am struggling with repeated refrain of Fear and Trembling which is that “the single individual is higher than the universal.”  This is the story of Abraham as told by Kierkegaard.  The ethical is the universal and must be intelligible and communicable to all or else it is not universal.  If there is faith then it must be in absolute duty to God and as such related to the individual and as such is then elevated above the universal.  But because it is now above the universal it also now rendered unintelligible by others.  Kierkegaard asks whether it was ethical for Abraham to withhold his plans from his family.  Kierkegaard ends by asserting that for the expression to remain in the realm of faith Abraham could not express his plans to anyone.  To render them intelligible would be to make them universal and therefore return them to the domain of ethics and foreclose the movement of faith.  Faith becomes paradox and Isaac restored by virtue of the absurd.  Abraham’s act is faithful but as such it demonstrates ‘the teleological suspension of the ethical.’

Dorothy Soelle in Suffering has criticized this reading of Genesis 22.  She characterizes K’s readings as advocating that,

There are situations in which the ethical orientation breaks down, situations in which people carry out a religiously based suspension of the ethical.

She notes acts of protest which were essentially ‘ineffective’ as belonging to this category (Edith Stein’s choice to go to the gas chamber when she could have escaped).  Though she says these do not point to the ‘absurd’ will of God.  She then goes on to say,

God is not the one who desires or commands such sacrifices, even if we admit that in certain situations such sacrifices exhibit clearly the truth of God beyond the sphere of the ethical.  This explanation of the story contains a masochistic understanding of humanity, or perhaps more accurately, an understanding of devotion that can go all the way to the sacrifice of one’s own life.  A theory about suffering derived from this explanation will seek in all suffering conscious and obedient sacrifice.

While I just happened to be reading this work by Soelle alongside Fear and Trembling (and have benefited from it) this seems to be a clear misreading of Kierkegaard (though perhaps not of his interpreters).  First of all Soelle assumes that description of the ethical and the religious are both equally possible.  Kierkegaard denies this.  Second, Kierkegaard is not interested in determining situations in which it is appropriate to go beyond the ethical (to do so is to remain in the ethical).  Third, Kierkegaard paints no picture of the ‘knight of faith’ as some masochist suffering.  Kierkegaard is quite clear that a person of faith may well look like some ‘bourgeois philistine’ (hardly the prototype for self-inflicted sufferer).

Going beyond Soelle it is possible to add further clarification that would keep zealots from reading F&T and then go off and shoot people.  Kierkegaard’s next work is Repetition.  Repetition occurs not in recollection or replication but in perpetual restoration.  The common example is the married couple trying to ‘re-ignite’ the passion by re-creating their first date.  To the extent that they replicate this event to the tee it will likely not end in repetition.  To re-ignite the passion there would have to occur a situation in which the same resulted from a difference.  In any event, we now have the cultural understanding and prototype of the crazy religious nut who does things because God told him to.  Its been done.  To do it again is recollection and not repetition.  A faithful act will always be that which rises above the universal and therefore can only be considered in retrospect (a theology of scripture?).  To even attempt to ‘send a message’ by such an act is to disqualify it.

This leads me to another line of thinking as I am working through Kierkegaard.  To what extent is he just extremely gifted in ass-covering (using faith as the foil)?  It seems like there would always be a way out when someone would claim to have properly critiqued him (ie his claims to the intellectual inaccessibility of faith).  And that I suppose it part of the point in that his aim is not convince but to create movement where movement is possible.