How you have felt, O men of Athens, at hearing the speeches of my accusers, I cannot tell; but I know that their persuasive words almost made me forget who I was: – such was the effect of them; and yet they have hardly spoken a word of truth.[2]
Long ago, while he stood accused of corrupting the youth through his wisdom, Socrates was handed an artfully crafted speech by a well-trained orator. This speech writer hoped that Socrates might use that ready-made defense to exonerate himself of the charge and the certain death penalty that he faced. But Socrates refused. In his book For Self-Examination, Soren Kierkegaard explains the reason for this refusal: Socrates had never in all his seventy years used any such tool, and now was not the time to start.[3] Instead, the thoughts that had occupied him all his life would now be his truest, most genuine means of preparation. In this life or death moment, that simple wise man of antiquity did not need a speech writer to prop him up – “propping up” better described the tact used by his accusers. Instead, he had his own authenticity, and therein was his source of authority. This portrait of Socrates, says Kierkegaard, is quite instructive for the Christian minister: “The person who is going to preach ought to live in the Christian thoughts and ideas; they ought to be his daily life.”[4] According to Kierkegaard, it is unbecoming of the preacher to once a week gather his thoughts, labor over each turn of phrase, carefully compose his discourse, and then deliver the homily on Sunday with superb eloquence. Unbecoming, that is, if none of this ministering occurs as a natural and spontaneous overflow of his Christian life. Instead, the Christian preacher should be like a well-equipped house in which one does not need to fetch water from the outside, but has it on tap, always ready to deliver with just the turn of a faucet.[5]
The psalmist wrote: “Behold, you desire truth in the inward parts.”[6] It seems reasonable to suggest that God’s interest in locating truth in our hearts and not just in our heads must be especially applicable to the minister of the gospel. Like Kierkegaard observes, the minister’s preaching, ideally, should come with the same ease with which water flows from indoor plumbing: a genuine, immediate, and uncontrived eloquence. But such a lofty standard can only be realized in the one who has previously immersed himself in Christian thought and life, whose days are consumed in living contemporaneously in the presence of the Savior. Such idealism, says Kierkegaard, results from being a doer of the word, and not merely a hearer.[7] When looking into the mirror of God’s word, the doer diligently observes himself and is transformed in the process. The hearer does indeed observe himself, but walks away forgetful and unchanged. Worse yet for Kierkegaard, the self-deceived scholar fails to even look at himself, but is preoccupied with looking at the mirror instead of into the mirror. He may inquire into the Bible, but he never allows the Bible to inquire into him. Hence, to the Christian preacher who would emulate the authenticity of Socrates, Kierkegaard exhorts: “you must not look at the mirror, observe the mirror, but must see yourself in the mirror.”[8]
It is clear enough, at least in a qualified sense, that the Christian pastor is called to be a scholar. To be sure, the Bible places no prerequisites on the pastor that he must first earn a seminary degree or a PhD, or even to be formally trained in theology, homiletics, or biblical counseling. There is nothing in Scripture that compels the pastor to have a particular set of academic credentials in order to be considered worthy of his calling. If that were not the case, the simple fishermen among Christ’s disciples would have been disqualified a priori from the ministry of the gospel. Instead, Peter and John, though “uneducated and unlearned men,” that is, when measured by the standards of the elite, were in fact the first leaders of the infant church.[9] As the church at Corinth could later testify, God does not limit His call to the wise or the noble, but in fact, delights in calling the abased ones to glory in Him and join in His work.[10] On the other hand, the Bible makes it plain that the pastor is to be highly learned in the doctrines of the faith. The Apostle Paul repeatedly emphasizes to his understudies Timothy and Titus the urgency of paying close attention to their doctrine. The Christian pastor, according to the Apostle, must “hold fast the faithful word as he has been taught, that he may be able, by sound doctrine, both to exhort and convict those who contradict.”[11] The minister of the gospel must “take heed to [himself] and to the doctrine.”[12] Similar citations could be multiplied many times over. The basic thought, however, may thus be summarized: while academic credentials are unnecessary for one to fulfill his ministerial calling, the same indifference does not apply to the biblical requirement that the faithful preacher embrace an unswerving commitment to true doctrine.
Kierkegaard would contend, in contrast to the spirit of his age, that truth is not found merely in an objective, detached, academic exercise. Rather, truth is found in authenticity. There is in fact a danger, Kierkegaard warns, in heaping up scholarly research in such a way that it provides a self-deceptive zone of comfort between us and the transforming power of God’s word. Kierkegaard does not disparage scholarship per se; rather, he condemns the egregious misuse of it that is a product of and mainspring for self-deception. On a personal level, it is quite expected that one would shudder at the thought of allowing God’s word to gain full power over him. Kierkegaard acknowledges as much: “It is human to pray to God to have patience if one cannot immediately do what one should but still promises to strive; it is human to pray to God to have mercy, that the requirement is too high for one – if no else will admit it, I admit that I do.”[13] But because we fear to be alone in the threatening presence of God’s word, we bring along as self-defense our dictionaries and commentaries so that we can read the Bible with the same leisure as if reading a newspaper advertisement.[14] The motive and effect of this kind of scholarship, he quips, is to “cunningly shove in, one layer after another, interpretation and scholarly research, and more scholarly research (much in the way a boy puts a napkin or more under his pants when he is going to get a licking) . . . .”[15] Self-deceptive scholarship, thus, is an attempt to pad our bottoms, so to speak, in fearful anticipation of the divine spanking that would result were we to submit to a direct confrontation with the word of God. Man fears the power of God’s word, and understandably so. But at the same time, man uses his corrupt philosophy to disingenuously “[obscure] the fact that the error is in him, that it is he who has no desire to deny flesh and blood and to comply with God’s word.”[16] In place of an authentic encounter with the word of God, man fools himself into thinking that his cultured study of the Word provides a fitting substitute and that somehow looking at the mirror represents a genuine “earnestness and zeal for the truth.”[17]
Calling it “the parenthesis,” Kierkegaard elsewhere refers to this misuse of scholarship, specifically citing the exegesis and philosophy of his day that effectively turned the study of Scripture into something like a clinical science.[18]Kierkegaard is not hereby repudiating the whole enterprise of exegesis and philosophy. Indeed, he himself participates in both disciplines. What he mocks is the insidious idea that lies at the root of the parenthesis, essentially this: We, the scholars, are not really sure what God’s word says, but we are working very hard on trying to find out. In fact, so diligent are we that we have built up an entire bureaucracy devoted to this end. We have employed linguistics experts, exegetes, philosophers, and historians all tirelessly working on the project. And once we come to our conclusion, that is, once we figure out what the Bible means, supposing that ever happens, we will then earnestly consider obeying what it says, or rather, what remains of what it says after we are through disassembling it through our scholarly undertaking.
In other words, what Kierkegaard ridicules is the kind of scholarship that intentionally obfuscates the message of God’s word in order to deny any compelling need to obey. In his view, this was precisely that which preoccupied many of the leaders of the Danish state church in his day. Most would readily admit that the Bible was God’s word, but at the same time would meticulously defend themselves against its force by raising apologetics issues that they had no intention of answering with any conclusiveness. What books belong in the canon? Were the books really written by the apostles? Were the apostles even trustworthy? Were they really eyewitnesses? Besides, there are so many different interpretations! Why, we need time to sift through all these questions before we can discern the real message.[19] It is understandable that Kierkegaard would mock his contemporaries for their self-deceptive “parenthesis.” To him, they really did know what the essential truth was, but simply refused to submit to it. In this they were quite similar to the so-called “premise authors” that he disdains in the Book on Adler. Like those who raise issues in apologetics without a sincere interest in any forthcoming answers, premise authors intentionally introduce more doubt than that to which they can reply. Unlike their counterparts the “essential authors,” it is the very nature of premise authors to consistently fail to provide either clarity or conviction.[20] Similarly, Kierkegaard’s contemporaries possessed the uncanny ability to veil the meaning of statements seemingly as simple and straightforward as “the weather is fine today,” not to mention the violence they perpetrated on the plain teachings of the Bible.[21]
In our day, we can still find much to appreciate about Kierkegaard’s protest. Without a doubt, the exegesis and philosophy produced by even some of our evangelical seminaries can sometimes have the same effect on truth that a black hole has on light. Mark Twain once said: “It ain’t the parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.”[22] By this admission, Twain proved in some ways to be nobler than many of Kierkegaard’s peers. At least Twain admitted that there were parts of the Bible that were clear enough that even the unbeliever had to admit to understanding. Alas, to those in his day who said that there are too many obscure passages in the Bible to arrive at any sure conclusions, Kierkegaard retorted: “To that I would answer: Before I have anything to do with this objection, it must be made by someone whose life manifests that he has scrupulously complied with all the passages that are easy to understand; is this the case with you?”[23]
Kierkegaard most vividly characterizes his view of the perspicacity of Scripture through his illustration of the lover who has received a letter from his beloved. Comparing the letter to Holy Scripture, Kierkegaard paints a rather unflattering picture of the lover who labors to translate the letter which, like the Bible, has been written in a language not his own. The lover groans to an acquaintance when that man asks if he is reading a letter from his beloved: “No, my friend, I am sitting here toiling and moiling with a dictionary to get it translated. At times I am ready to explode with impatience; the blood rushes to my head and I would just as soon hurl the dictionary on the floor – and you call that reading – you must be joking!”[24] The lover, in this illustration, must distinguish between reading and reading. That is, because the letter is in a foreign language and must be laboriously translated, he must differentiate between reading the letter as it has come from his beloved and reading the letter as he must with the aid of the dictionary.
It is a classic, memorable picture that Kierkegaard paints. One can easily relate to the absurdity he describes, a lover who has received a beautiful expression of affection from his beloved, but who is now beating his head against a wall out of frustration because of the difficulty involved in deciphering its message. As memorable and vivid as it is, however, it seems fair to ask whether this illustration is really a proper analogy to draw in reference to legitimate disputes that scholars have about the teachings of the Bible. Kierkegaard writes: “Let us assume that this letter from the beloved contained not only an expression of affection, as such letters ordinarily do, but that it contained a wish, something the beloved wished her lover to do.”[25] Kierkegaard assumes that the lover would be perfectly justified should he, even while still in the “parenthesis,” that is, not yet having a full translation or satisfactory interpretation, rush out to fulfill one of the wishes of the beloved that he could in fact clearly understand from the letter. In other words, the fact that some of the letter remains yet to be translated and interpreted is no reason for not obeying the wishes that the beloved made that have been translated and interpreted. The application to the Bible is obvious. The fact that there are obscure passages in Scripture should not prevent one from obeying those passages that are perfectly clear. Superficially at least, this seems to be quite reasonable. Our contemporary scene, however, raises a couple of problems with this view that are worth considering. First, even among the most conservative biblical scholars, there is nothing approaching unanimity concerning exactly what passages are clear and what passages are obscure. That is why even within the evangelical community there are Calvinist charismatics, and Calvinist cessationists, as well as Arminian charismatics, and Arminian cessationists. Some view the passages on predestination to be as clear as day, while others consider those verses more obscure and the free-will passages to be more straightforward. Whereas some scholars understand the Bible to reveal that the sign gifts ceased in the first century, still others are convinced that they are operative in the church even today. And just because a scholar has a particular view on election, it does not follow that he will thereby have a predictable view on the spiritual gifts.
Even though similar intramural disputes could be cited ad nauseam, there is, to be sure, much agreement to be found on the essential doctrinal issues, assuming, of course, that we agree on the precise line of demarcation that separates the essential from the non-essential. And there are, in fact, many relatively uncontroversial passages around which the church has built a broad consensus of theological understanding. But the fact that intellectually honest, God-fearing men and women disagree about the clarity and obscurity of some passages should at least be considered as admissible evidence that the Bible is not as clear on certain matters as some would have it. That is not to say that biblical interpretation should end in a stalemate because opposing theological camps cannot agree on the interpretation of some passages. And God forbid that we attempt to find refuge in the twin dead-ends of either agnosticism or relativism. But the fact that reasonable and intelligent people, even those with the same basic philosophical and hermeneutical presuppositions, can disagree on certain doctrinal issues should at least serve as a check against an untutored dogmatism that potentially leads to greater sectarianism, pride, and division in the body of Christ.
Second, harking back to Kierkegaard’s love letter analogy, what if an obscure passage, once understood, actually ended up shedding light upon one of the clear passages, such that it changed its emphasis? Or what if one of the obscure passages counterbalanced one of the clear passages such that the clear passage was not to be obeyed without reference to the obscure, that is, once the obscure is made reasonably clear. More to the point, what if in a manifestly clear passage the lover wished that the beloved would buy her a diamond ring, but in a more obscure passage the lover qualified that wish by saying that at the same time she would not marry the beloved if he went into debt to obtain the ring? But if the beloved hastily went out to obey the wish that he considered to be clear, that is to buy the ring, but did so without reference to the more obscure statement that seemingly required more “translation and interpretation,” that is, that he not go into debt, then whenever he does finish his translation he will discover, to his horror, that he is in direct violation of the will of his lover. Kierkegaard, however, too easily dismisses the potential for harm that could occur should the lover misunderstand the beloved and thereby zealously perform an act that the beloved had not wished, or if he should perform the act in a manner inconsistent with a more mature understanding of the will of the beloved.[26] But it must not too quickly be forgotten what the Apostle says about the Jews of his day, that “they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.”[27] Kierkegaard rightly blasts those who have knowledge, but lack zeal. It is no better, however, to have zeal and lack knowledge. Too strongly emphasizing the one over the other is, to join Kierkegaard in using Luther’s imagery, like putting a drunken peasant back in the saddle: “if you help him up on one side of the horse, he falls off on the other side.”[28]
That being said, in defense of Kierkegaard scholarship can most definitely be misused by those who wish to further obfuscate the meaning of difficult passages. Such so-called learnedness can even be utilized to annihilate a seemingly clear teaching by piling around it a gluttony of “interpretative literature.”[29] In this I am quite sympathetic to Kierkegaard’s exhortation that the Christian should at some point step away from the dictionaries and commentaries and get alone with God’s word, thereby allowing it full power over his life. What must also be taken into consideration, however, is the fact that in contemporary America, whether in the academy or in the marketplace, many people have sincere questions concerning the canon, the reliability of the texts, and the authenticity of the eyewitness accounts. Perhaps those apologetics issues were indeed used as red herrings in Kierkegaard’s day. But in ours, at least some are genuinely confused by the fact that there seem to be “thirty thousand different” interpretations of the Bible, not to mention the proliferation of groups ranging from “domesticated” cults such as the Mormons to the lunatic fringe like the Branch Davidians. Unlike the world that Kierkegaard lived in, our culture and even our churches are so abominably ignorant of the Bible that sensationalist movies like The DaVinci Code manage to pose a real threat to the integrity of Christian doctrine.
As a minister of the gospel, one ignores the help of good scholarship only to his peril and the peril of his followers. If a minister thinks that he can do without any help from the academy, he is self-deluded. If he says, “I will read only the Bible, and therefore I have no need of the scholars,” he is self-deluded, for he still depends, perhaps unwittingly, upon their translation from the original languages. If he then says, “Fine. I will read the Bible only in the original languages,” he only magnifies his self-deception, for the text that he reads was handed to him by philologists, archaeologists, grammarians, and theologians. If he retreats even further and says, “Very well then, I will discard the Bible. God will speak to me directly,” then be very afraid; we have another Jonestown in the making. Scholarship is not inherently evil, nor is Kierkegaard claiming that it is. His complaint, one with which we can still sympathize, is with the misuse of scholarship that effectively destroys authenticity and replaces it with mere sophistry. In this, the Christian minister can learn from Socrates, whose authentic life, and not an orator’s speech, was the chosen defense in his moment of trial. The Christian minister can and should find all that is worthy in the scholar’s observations of the mirror. But he must not stop there and he must not use those observations as excuses for disobedience or disbelief. Rather, the Christian preacher, whatever use he makes of the efforts of those who simply observe the mirror, must strive to look intently into the mirror and behold his true self. His preaching is not to be the contrived eloquence of brilliant scholarship, but the authentic eloquence that is neither more nor less than the natural overflow of his daily life, lived contemporaneously in the presence of the Savior.
[1] On May 7, 2006 I took part in the ordination service of a friend with whom I have labored together in the proclamation and defense of, and obedience to the faith since the early 1990s.
[2] Plato, “Apology,” in The Trial and Death of Socrates: Four Dialogues (New York: Dover Publications, 1992), 19.
[3] Soren Kierkegaard, For Self-Examination, edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990), 9.
[4] Ibid., 10.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Psalm 51:6a
[7] James 1:22-25
[8] Kierkegaard, Self-Examination, 25.
[9] Acts 4:13
[10] 1 Corinthians 1:26
[11] Titus 1:9
[12] 1 Timothy 4:16
[13] Kierkegaard, Self-Examination, 35.
[14] Ibid., 32.
[15] Ibid., 35.
[16] Ibid., 32.
[17] Ibid., 35.
[18] Soren Kierkegaard, The Book on Adler, edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 34.
[19] Kierkegaard, Self-Examination, 25.
[20] Kierkegaard, Book on Adler, 9-15.
[21] Ibid., 34.
[22] http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Twain
[23] Kierkegaard, Self-Examination, 29.
[24] Ibid., 27.
[25] Ibid.
[26] Ibid., 27-28.
[27] Romans 10:2
[28] Kierkegaard, Self-Examination, 24.
[29] Ibid., 34.