Truth and Subjectivity, Faith and History: Kierkegaard's Insights for Christian Faith

Truth and Subjectivity, Faith and History

Kierkegaard’s Insights for Christian Faith

Varughese John

TRUTH AND SUBJECTIVITY, FAITH AND HISTORY

Kierkegaard’s Insights for Christian Faith

Copyright © 2012 Varughese John. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

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isbn 13: 978-1-61097-894-1

eisbn 13: 978-1-62189-964-8

Cataloging-in-Publication data:

John, Varughese.

Truth and subjectivity, faith and history : Kierkegaard’s insights for Christian faith / Varughese John.

xviii + 160 p. ; 23 cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.

isbn 13: 978-1-61097-894-1

1. Kierkegaard, Søren, 1813–1855—Religion. 2. Truth. 3. Christianity—Philosophy. I. Title.

b4378 j56 2012

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Foreword

Preface

Abbreviations

Introduction

Part One: Truth and Subjectivity

Chapter 1: On the Very Idea of Truth

Chapter 2: Truthing through Subjectivity

Chapter 3: Being in the Truth: Re-Engaging Climacus’ Devout Idolater

Part Two: History and Faith

Chapter 4: Understanding Historical Religious Knowledge for Faith

Chapter 5: Historical Research and Its Sufficiency for Faith

Chapter 6: Kierkegaardian Insights for Christian Witness and Apologetics

Bibliography

To

My parents,

A.V. John and Susamma John

Foreword

Analyzing the concept of truth is a challenging task. Philosophical concepts of truth turn up in so many forms that it sometimes seems as if there are as many concepts of truth as there are philosophers.

In fact, sometimes the word truth itself appears to mean the opposite for one thinker as it does for another. For example, the father of modern European philosophy, René Descartes, takes for granted just those truths that the father of existentialism, Søren Kierkegaard, questions most severely; whereas Kierkegaard assumes much that Descartes subjects to radical doubt.¹ In this respect the two men are like mirror images of each other. Thus in his Discourse on Method Descartes proposes to go along, in his personal life, with contemporary social mores and conventional religiosity but at the same time to question, methodologically, the existence of the external world and even of his own self; while Kierkegaard accepts without question the existence of the external world, devotes much of his writing to urging readers to develop their own selves, and concludes his life with a relentless attack upon the social and religious establishment of nineteenth-century Denmark. In these respects, what the one accepts, the other attacks, and vice versa.

Still, are the two men really that far apart in their understandings of the nature of truth? Or are they not rather merely following different but complementary paths, when Descartes insists upon mathematical certainty as the basis for experimental science, and Kierkegaard stresses the importance of religious uncertainty within the life of personal faith?

In some respects Descartes and Kierkegaard are very close indeed. Granted, the two disagree fundamentally regarding the basis of mathematical certainty, since, like most philosophers and mathematicians today, Kierkegaard distinguishes more sharply than Descartes between mathematics and experimental science.² Such disagreement, however, should not be allowed to overshadow the respect for experimental science that Kierkegaard, along with others of his time, shares with Descartes. Like seventeenth-century France, early nineteenth-century Denmark was experiencing an explosion of scientific discoveries, of which Kierkegaard was well aware. Kierkegaard was, for example, personally acquainted with Hans Christian Ørsted (1777–1851), the great Copenhagen physicist and chemist after whom the unit of magnetic field strength is named, and he maintained a life-long friendship with his brother-in-law Peter William Lund, a distinguished paleontologist who identified many new species while doing research in the jungles of Brazil.

Where Kierkegaard differs most obviously from Descartes is in the way he distinguishes both mathematical and scientific truths from another, more personal, kind of truth. In one of his early upbuilding discourses, for example, he contrasts indifferent truths, such as the truths of mathematics and science, which hold whether or not a person accepts them, and concerned truths, regarding which it makes a decisive difference to an individual whether or not they are truths for him.³ What Kierkegaard says about such concerned truths shows that he is thinking about the goals or principles an individual adopts, explicitly or implicitly, to guide one’s whole life—the truths, as he once put it in an early journal entry, for which a person might be willing to live and die.⁴ Of course, such truths make no claim to universal validity, but without adopting any such truths a person may simply drift through life without direction.

Nonetheless, there is no reason to think that Descartes also cannot accommodate this Kierkegaardian distinction between two kinds of truths, since Descartes himself freely admits that he had struggled through his personal decisions; and, besides, it is hard to imagine any rational person insisting upon mathematical certainty before making personal decisions at the crucial junctures in one’s own life. At any rate, Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Johannes de Silentio presents that picture of Descartes’ life. Descartes, he writes, did not shout ‘Fire! Fire!’ and make it obligatory for everyone to doubt, for Descartes was a quiet and solitary thinker, not a shouting night watchman; he modestly let it be known that his method had significance only for him and was partly the result of his earlier warped knowledge.⁵

Whatever the case may have been with Descartes, however, such philosophical modesty does not characterize the rationalist period that follows in Europe, and by the early to middle nineteenth century it has gone entirely out of fashion. Instead, many of the popular thinkers of the nineteenth century draw a distinction between objective (or rational) truths, on the one hand, and subjective truths, on the other; and what Kierkegaard calls concerned truths they are apt to see as subjective and thereby, at best, second-rate, if they do not consign them to the scrap heap of irrationality altogether.

Kierkegaard’s response to his contemporaries’ classification of concerned truths as subjective is creative but also, one must admit, wide open to misunderstanding: he has his best-known philosophical pseudonym, Johannes Climacus, defend the thesis that subjectivity is truth. Thus, even though readers are warned over and over again that Climacus is a humorist and that he is conducting his argument with elaborate irony and indirection, it is not surprising that some careless readers mistake what Climacus is doing and think that he is supporting the truth, not merely of concerned truths but of subjective claims of any kind.

A big part of the challenge Varughese John takes on in the present volume, therefore, is to sort out the various aspects of this confusion over subjective truth. Since that task is formidable, his analysis has had to range widely, involving topics such as dogmatism and relativism, modernism and postmodernism, scientific and historical truths, and the like, all of which are interconnected; but to my mind he carries off the investigation very well. What fascinates me especially about Professor John’s approach, moreover, is the way he draws upon key aspects of the classical and contemporary traditions of India. Up to now the names of figures such as Ramānujā and Amartya Sen, for example, have appeared all too rarely on the pages of discussions of Kierkegaard’s works, but, with this study as a model, one may hope that they will appear more and more frequently in the future.

Andrew J. Burgess, Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, The University of New Mexico

1. David Swenson, Something About Kierkegaard (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1945), 111.

2. JP, 1: 197.

3. Think About Your Creator . . . , EUD, 233–34.

4. JP, 5: 5100.

5. FT, 6.

Preface

Truth and Subjectivity, Faith and History is the result of a personal journey that was embarked upon ever since I first encountered Kierkegaard during my seminary days. His writings characteristically imposed themselves upon me as a reader, by entering the innermost depths of my thinking and conscience. His exceptional ability to rudely shake someone under an illusion of being in truth as a Christian into despair, by making Christianity more difficult than imagined, just seems to have worked in my case. However, to the one who despairs about not being the Christian one ought to be—a feeling that Kierkegaard himself struggled with—he is quick to clarify, as he does in The Point of View: Christianity is just as gentle as it is rigorous, just as gentle, that is, infinitely gentle. When the infinite requirement is heard and affirmed, is heard and affirmed in all its infinitude, then grace is offered, or grace offers itself, to which the single individual, each one individually, can then have recourse as I do; and then it works out all right. This tension between the rigor and gentleness of Christianity imposes upon one the misery of rigor and the joy of grace, an imposition which characterized his own personal and spiritual journey, one that he has successfully passed on to at least some of his readers, including me.

My journey has been truly enriched by far more than those people listed here, yet some deserve a special mention. My stays at the Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong Kierkegaard Library at St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN, both as a Summer Research Scholar and as a Kierkegaard House Foundation Fellow, were greatly rewarding. Much of this book was put together during my stay at the Library as a Kierkegaard House Foundation Fellow.

A special thanks to the Kierkegaard House Foundation and the Friends of Kierkegaard for their generous support. I express my deepest gratitude to Gordon D. Marino, the Curator, and Cynthia Wales Lund, the Assistant Curator, of the Kierkegaard Library. Their warmth and support continue to transform the Library from a dry research establishment, to a lively, interactive, and friendly place. You are truly wonderful people!

I thank Erik Hong, the Olsons, and Ameeta and Craig Rice, who went the extra mile to make our stay at 3, Lincoln Ln, Northfield, the most memorable time in the United States. I specially thank members of the Immanuel Bible Chapel, Hastings, who welcomed us into their church and homes, turning our hard Minnesota winter into a pleasant one.

I thank my editor Robin Parry for his excellent and skillful support. I thank Andrew Burgess for writing the Foreword and for the great support he is for Kierkegaard research in India. I thank my good friends Myron B. Penner, Peder Jothan, Richard Nelson, and Gabriel Merigala, who graciously read through my manuscript and gave useful comments. The flaws that remain are entirely mine and not theirs. I thank Elcy Padmanabhan, Selena George, Prashanti Mikayla, and Mary Varughese for their excellent editorial help with the manuscript.

I thank my family—my parents, all my in-laws, my sisters and their families—who constantly prayed and supported me in every way. Finally, I thank my greatest supporters—my wife, Mary and our children, Ashish, and Preetha—who bore the brunt of cancelled vacations and deprived family time, gracefully.

I thank the editors of the following journals for the permissions granted to republish some sections of this book which appeared in their journals.

• ‘Truth’ in an Ethnocentric Relativistic Scheme: A Critique of Chapter 1 appeared as Truth in Postmodernity: Reengaging Rorty and Kierkegaard. Dharma Deepika 22 (2005) 51–62.

• Chapter 3 appeared as "Being in the Truth: Climacus’ Devout Idolater from within Rāmānuja’s Viśisādvaitic Tradition." Acta Kierkegaardiana 5 (2011) 78–88.

• Parts of Chapter 4 and 6 appeared as Historical Christian Beliefs and Apologetics in a Hindu Context. Dharma Deepika 26 (2007) 42–49.

• Section B of Chapter 6 appeared as A Sense of History and Apologetics in a Hindu Context. Missiology: An International Review 36 (2008) 219–26.

All Bible quotations are from the Revised Standard Version.

Abbreviations

Works published by Kierkegaard, unless otherwise indicated, are cited from Kierkegaard Works, translated and edited by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton University Press from 1978 to 2000.

BA The Book on Adler. vol. 24, 1995.

CUP Concluding Unscientific Postscript. (2 vols.) vol. 12, 1992.

EO Either/Or. (2 vols.) vols. 3 and 4, 1987.

EUD Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses. vol. 5, 1990.

FSE For Self-Examination. vol. 21, 1990.

FT Fear and Trembling / Repetition. vol. 6, 1983.

JP Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, assisted by Gregor Melantschuk, 7 vols. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 1967–79. (Cited according to entry number.)

PC Practice in Christianity. vol. 20, 1991.

PF Philosophical Fragments. vol. 7, 1985.

PV Point of View. vol. 22, 1998.

SUD The Sickness Unto Death. vol. 19, 1980.

SUD The Sickness Unto Death. Translated by Alastair Hannay. London: Penguin, 1989.

TA Two Ages. vol. 14, 1978.

UDVS Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits. vol. 15, 1993.

WA Without Authority. vol. 18, 1997.

WL Works of Love. vol. 16, 1995.

Introduction

Christianity has distinguished itself from other beliefs and philosophies by its claim to truth. Corresponding to the contours of the truth discourses of the past decades, Christian appropriations of truth primarily assumed a propositional frame. While it would be erroneous to discount the value of propositional truth, such a preoccupation resulted in reducing Christian faith primarily to holding propositionally accurate beliefs. Kierkegaard writes in The Point of View, "Christianity still exists and in its truth, but as a teaching, as doctrine. What has been abolished and forgotten (and this can be said without exaggeration), however, is being a Christian, what it means to be a Christian; or what has been lost, what seems to exist no longer, is the ideal picture of being a Christian."⁶ It is upon those who presupposed the truth of Christian beliefs, and yet were under an illusion when they call themselves Christians,⁷ that Kierkegaard sought to impose the authentic dimension of truth, as subjectivity.

Kierkegaard’s emphasis on Truth as Subjectivity is discussed in the first section (chapters 1–3) of the book. In Chapter 1, after introducing the modern and postmodern approaches to truth, Rorty’s abandonment of objectivity in favor of communal solidarity as a ground for truth, is critiqued. The limits of a logico-semantic truth discourse, and the legitimacy of the postmodern suspicion of truth-claims, supports the entry of Kierkegaard as a helpful conversation partner to address the modern and postmodern deviations. Kierkegaard contrasts Christ (who reveals truth from without) with Socrates (who locates truth within the individual), thus distinguishing Christianity from every other philosophy and privileging Christian revelation over human reason. Chapter 2 examines the centrality of the concept of human self to the question of a truth-pursuit. As the human self is in the process of becoming, it conceives that the highest truth is attained by relating to God, who establishes the self. Following this, Chapter 3 examines one of the most popular parables of Kierkegaard (that of the penitent idolater), to understand more practically what Kierkegaard means by subjectivity. Does he mean just sincerity or does subjectivity involve something more? The parable is illustrated by locating the idolater within a popular Indian philosophical school called Viśisādvaitic. It argues that there cannot be a proper understanding of subjectivity outside Christ and His revelation.

The second section, Faith and History (chapters 4–6), examines the value of historical research for Christian faith. Addressing the question of miracles, and the rationalist and empiricist conceptions of history, Chapter 4 lays out the effect popular views of history have had on Christian faith, leading some to separate the Jesus of history from the Christ of faith, and some to use positivist calculus to prove the truth of Christian beliefs. Chapter 5 addresses the importance of history for Christian faith, while emphasizing that historical inquiry cannot be the basis for it. It also discusses Kierkegaard’s understanding of a believer as contemporaneous with Christ, in response to Lessing’s problem of the ugly broad ditch. Following an examination of the role of evidence for faith, Chapter 6 explores ways in which Kierkegaardian insights could inform Christian apologetics. Apart from looking at the epistemic status of faith, it also discusses Kierkegaard’s Pneumatology. It also explores Kierkegaardian insights for apologetics in the South Asian context, with its unique sense of history.

6. PV, 129–30.

7. PV, 42.

Part I

Truth and Subjectivity

1

On the Very Idea of Truth

The difficulty is not to understand what Christianity is but to become and to be a Christian. — CUP 1:560

What is truth? asked Pilate, without expecting an answer. Over the centuries, philosophers have found it difficult to answer this question conclusively. Is truth a substance or a quality, a body of knowledge or the character of a statement? Where truth is understood as the property of a statement, it assumes a representational character as the right representation of reality, since a great number of statements—thought, spoken, or written—are about reality. Consequently, truth takes the shape of the varied understandings of reality entertained by philosophers and lay people. The most common notion of viewing the world is the realist view, which sees reality as something out there, independent of our minds. A realist notion is also dependent on the correspondence theory of truth, which sees truth representationally as that which corresponds to facts. Its origins go back to Aristotle. He wrote in his Metaphysics, To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true (1011b). However, all along there have been skeptics who have challenged the possibility of definite truth. There are competing understandings to the realists’ position in anti-realism, idealism, conceptualism, relativism, etc., each of which has different strokes and shades of expression.

The difficulty in defining truth is that all the traditional theories of truth such as the correspondence, coherence, and pragmatic theories merely presuppose truth and do not really define it. Since truth in general evades conclusive decisiveness, knowing and possessing it become equally evasive. Yet, underneath the vagaries surrounding differing understandings of truth, one can notice human nature in its unending pursuit of truth. Irrespective of one’s nationality, religion, or vocation, the pursuit of truth has always been regarded as an important part of human life. Whether it is the pain of a life-threatening crisis that sets one off on such a pursuit or merely being weary of pleasure, human nature is designed to seek truth. The question of truth, therefore, seems to be essentially connected to the very essence of humankind.