George B. Connell - Kierkegaard and the Paradox of Religious Diversity (Kierkegaard as a Christian Thinker)

KIERKEGAARD AS A CHRISTIAN THINKER C . S TEPHEN E VANS AND P AUL M ARTENS
General Editors The K IERKEGAARD AS A C HRISTIAN T HINKER series seeks to promote and enrich an understanding of Sren Kierkegaard as a Christian thinker who, despite his many critiques of Christendom, self-consciously worked within the Christian tradition and in the service of Christianity. Volumes in the series may approach Kierkegaards relationship to Christianity historically or topically, philosophically or theologically. Some will attempt to illuminate Kierkegaards thought by examining his works through the lens of Christian faith; others will use Kierkegaards Christian insights to address contemporary problems and competing non-Christian perspectives.That Sren Kierkegaard profoundly influenced nineteenth- and twentieth-century theology and philosophy is not in doubt. The direction, extent, and value of his influence, however, have always been hotly contested. For example, in the early decades of the twentieth century, German theologians Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Emil Brunner all acknowledged deep debts to Kierkegaard, debts that would echo through the theological debates of the entire century. In spite of this, by the middle of the twentieth century, Kierkegaard was also hailed (or cursed) as a father of existentialism and nihilism because of his appropriation by Heidegger, Sartre, and others. At the same time, however, he was beginning to become the reveille for a return to true Christianity in North America through the translating efforts of Walter Lowrie and David Swenson. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Kierkegaards legacy is once again being seriously and rigorously debated.While acknowledging and affirming the postmodern appreciation of elements of Kierkegaards thought (such as irony, indirect communication, and pseudonymity), this series aims to engage Kierkegaard as a Christian thinker who self-consciously worked as a Christian in the service of Christianity. And, as the current discussion crosses the traditional boundaries of philosophy and theology, this series will necessarily do the same. What these volumes all share, however, is the task of articulating Kierkegaards continuities with, challenges to, and resources for Christianity today. It is our hope that, in this way, this series will deepen and enrich the manifold contemporary debates concerning Kierkegaard and his legacy. KIERKEGAARD AS A CHRISTIAN THINKER Eros and Self-Emptying: The Intersections of Augustine and Kierkegaard Lee C. Barrett Kierkegaard and the Paradox of Religious Diversity George B. Connell Kierkegaards Concept of Faith Merold Westphal KIERKEGAARD AND
THE PARADOX OF
RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY George B. Connell W ILLIAM B . E ERDMANS P UBLISHING C OMPANY
G RAND R APIDS, M ICHIGAN / C AMBRIDGE, U . K . 2016 George B. Connell
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Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Connell, George, 1957-
Kierkegaard and the paradox of religious diversity / George B. Connell.
pages cm. (Kierkegaard as a Christian thinker)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8028-6804-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)
eISBN 978-1-4674-4518-4 (ePub)
eISBN 978-1-4674-4471-2 (Kindle)
1. Kierkegaard, Sren, 1813-1855. 2. Religions. 3. Religious pluralism.
4. Cultural pluralism Religious aspects. 5. Christianity and other religions. I. Title. B4378.R44C66 2016
198.9 dc23
2015030833 Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Version of the Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and used by permission. To Ginny Contents
The group of problems related to religious pluralism certainly includes some of the major issues of our time, not just for theologians and philosophers of religion, but for any thoughtful person, especially someone committed to a particular religious tradition. How should a committed religious believer of one faith think about other faiths? How should such a person relate to those who profess a different faith or are committed to a different tradition? It is clear that the secularization thesis, which held that religion was destined to die out and play no significant role in modern culture, has so far not panned out. Religions and religious conflicts are at the center of many of the most recalcitrant human struggles all over the world. Although the cluster of problems connected to these questions has been much discussed in recent years, a good deal of the discussion seems to have reached a stalemate. In particular, the partisans of inclusivist and exclusivist views of other faiths often seem to be talking past each other.Few people would, I believe, immediately turn to Kierkegaard for help in thinking about religious diversity, but this is just what George Connell has done in this work. Kierkegaard was certainly a religious thinker, deeply Christian as the series title implies. However, on the surface Kierkegaard does not appear to have much to say about other religions (with the notable exception of Judaism). Rather, Kierkegaard seems to write in the context of Christendom and mainly address people who at least think of themselves as nominal Christians. Countering this surface impression, however, is the striking fact that people outside of Christendom have shown and continue to show deep interest in Kierkegaards thought. It is worth noting, for example, that Kierkegaard was translated into Japanese before he was translated into English.We think that George Connell has in this book shown that Kierkegaard can indeed shed new light and fresh air on the problems posed by religious pluralism. Connell makes no attempt to tidy Kierkegaard up and present a theory of religions or anything that resembles such a theory. Rather, he shows how Kierkegaard can help existing individuals wrestle with the tensions that emerge for those who see how essential genuine conviction and commitment are for religious faith, but also want to appreciate and respect the commitments of others. Kierkegaard can, for example, help us think through what we mean by religious truth and how such truth is related to pluralism.In this work Connell also presents memorable readings of some important films that reflect Kierkegaardian themes, including questions about how the religious individual relates to the ethical ideals of a particular society. He thereby helps us rethink the role religion might play in public life, paradoxically by focusing on the religious individual who is willing to dissent from established ways of thinking. Connell shows us how Kierkegaard can help us rethink the very concept of a religion, and he concludes with a suggestive cross-cultural comparison of the paths to authentic selfhood found in Kierkegaard and Confucius.This work will not be the last word on the problems raised by the diversity of world religions. But it does, we think, show that Kierkegaard is a most helpful conversation partner for those who are thinking about these issues, especially those, like Kierkegaard himself, who are committed believers. Written in clear and engaging prose, this book will change the way its readers think not only about Kierkegaard but about religion and religions as well. It is exactly the kind of work we envisioned when we proposed this series. Readers will not only have their thinking challenged, but, if they are honest, their lives as well. And that is surely something Kierkegaard would have welcomed.C . S TEPHEN E VANS P AUL M ARTENS This project began through my participation in the 2004 Lutheran Academy of Scholars Summer Seminar directed by the late Ronald Thiemann of Harvard Divinity School and DeAne Lagerquist of St. Olaf College. I gratefully acknowledge their valuable feedback on this project and more generally their roles in creating the vibrant intellectual community that characterized the Lutheran Academy of Scholars Summer Seminars year after year.I also gratefully acknowledge Miroslav Volf of Yale Divinity School for his 2010 Summer Seminar on Religion and Globalization at Calvin College for valuable conversations and readings that enriched this project.Thanks also to my former colleague, Matthew van Cleave, now at Lansing Community College, for thoughtful, probing comments on drafts of several chapters of this book. I benefited greatly from our conversations about philosophy of religion in general and the issue of religious diversity in particular.I am grateful to the editors of this series, C. Stephen Evans and Paul Martens, both at Baylor University, for their feedback on drafts of this project. Their questions and comments were always constructive and challenging.I gratefully acknowledge permission to publish modified versions of previously published essays:Transposing Transgression: Teaching Fear and Trembling through Danish Film, Film and Philosophy 13 (2009): 51-64.Kierkegaard and Confucius: The Religious Dimensions of Ethical Selfhood, Dao 8 (2009): 133-49. BA The Book on Adler, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. CA The Concept of Anxiety, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. CD Christian Discourses and The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. CI The Concept of Irony, together with Notes on Schellings Berlin Lectures, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989. CUP Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, 2 vols., trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. EO Either/Or, Part One, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987. EO Either/Or, Part Two, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987. FT Fear and Trembling and Repetition, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. JP Sren Kierkegaards Journals and Papers, 7 vols., trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967-78. KJN Kierkegaards Journals and Notebooks, vols. 1-11, ed. Niels Jrgen Cappelrn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Vanessa Rumble, and K. Brian Sderquist. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007-. M The Moment and Late Writings, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. PC Practice in Christianity, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. PF Philosophical Fragments and Johannes Climacus, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. PV The Point of View, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. SKP Sren Kierkegaards Papirer, vols. I to XI-3, ed. Peter Andreas Heiberg, Victor Kuhr, and Einer Korsting. Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel Nordisk Forlag, 1909-48. 2nd expanded ed., vols. I to XI-3, by Niels Thulstrup; vols. XII to XIII, supplementary volumes, ed. Niels Thulstrup; vols. XIV to XVI, index, by Niels Jrgen Cappelrn. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1968-78. WA Without Authority, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. WL Works of Love, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. The popular conception of Kierkegaard, bequeathed us by uncounted surveys of existentialism, frames him in the binary logic of Pascals wager: believe or dont believe, leap or dont leap. Christian or atheist. Either/or. Tertium non datur. Kierkegaards actual writings defy this simplistic picture. His texts, instead, explore many ways of being religious. Socrates irony, Judge Williams civil religion, Johannes de Silentios infinite resignation, Johannes Climacuss humor, the immanent religion of the Upbuilding Discourses, the transcendent religion of Anti-Climacus and the late non-pseudonymous works: all represent distinctive responses to the divine. Since Kierkegaards authorship is itself marked by religious diversity, and since he spent the last year of his life attacking the monolithic cultural Lutheranism of Denmark, it is worth asking whether he can help us think through our own issues of religious diversity.To reframe the question: Can Kierkegaard, that great connoisseur of anxiety, offer insight into an anxiety that pervades the contemporary spiritual landscape anxiety over religious diversity? In a time such as our own of instant communication, mass migration, and global interconnection, the religious Other or, rather, the many different religious Others is pervasively and insistently present to us in ways that often evoke strong anxieties. Consciousness of religious diversity can easily overwhelm us with a sense of brute contingency: Had I been born in Mumbai or Medina rather than Macon, Georgia, presumably my religious identity would have been other than it is. Some deal with such a realization by skeptically distancing themselves from their own inherited religious identities (if they have one); others embrace one or another of the fundamentalisms on offer today in an attempt to escape the vertigo of religious uncertainty. What can Kierkegaard say to us as we seek some better third alternative to Yeatss dire either/or?For Kierkegaard, religious identity is, of course, appropriately an occasion for anxiety; faith, as he puts it, is to be out over 70,000 fathoms.gaards substantial neglect of contemporary religious diversity indicates that such faiths did not speak to him; they did not represent Jamesian live options, and so their existence awakened no particular anxiety in him. The great critic of Christendom was nonetheless still part of Christendom and so was existentially distant from our distinctive anxieties as members of the multi-confessional world of post-Christendom.But if we look again and look differently, we see that the question of religious diversity is always already present in Kierkegaards thought and writings, even if in a different form than the one with which we are most familiar. For there is no single problem of religious diversity, just as there is no single problem of evil. Marilyn McCord Adams usefully distinguishes between an atheistic problem of evil, in which evil is considered as evidence against belief in the good and omnipotent God of theism, and an aporetic problem of evil, in which the theistic believer wrestles with apparent conflicts among beliefs to which she is deeply committed.For Kierkegaard, this aporetic problem of religious diversity takes the form of a sustained and multifaceted struggle to hold on to both universal and particular dimensions of human existence and divine revelation. This concern is pervasive in his entire authorship, but nowhere is it more vivid than in the first section of Practice in Christianity: Come Here All You Who Labor and Are Burdened, and I Will Give You Rest.In the first section of this discourse, The Invitation, Anti-Climacuss whole focus falls on the word all. Evoking the image of the crucified Christ, he vividly describes Jesus standing with open arms ready to embrace all without preference or condition: [H]e who opens his arms and invites all ah, if all, all you who labor and are burdened, were to come to him, he would embrace them all ( PC, 15).After vividly portraying the encompassing and unconditional character of the divine invitation, Anti-Climacus moves on in the next section, The Halt, to portray vividly the dialectical counterpart to universality: radical particularity: That the inviter is and wants to be the specific historical person he was eighteen hundred years ago, and as that specific person, living under the conditions under which he lived at that time, he has spoken words of invitation ( PC, 23). Anti-Climacus insists that we come to terms with the particularity of the person of Christ:Let us talk about him quite frankly, just as his contemporaries talked about him and as we talk about a contemporary, a person just like ourselves, whom we see in passing on the street; we know where he lives, on what floor, what he is, what he does for a living, who his parents are, his kinfolk, what he looks like, what he wears, with whom he associates.... ( PC, 40)As we consider the particularity of Christ, we stand before the extraordinary, but not the extraordinary as we ordinarily understand it. With humans, that one exists is ordinary; one becomes extraordinary only by distinctive accomplishments. In contrast, when God comes to be as a particular person, it is this very particularity, the very fact of existing, that is the genuinely extraordinary: But that God has lived here on earth as an individual human being is infinitely extraordinary. Even if it had had no results whatever, it makes no difference; it remains just as extraordinary, infinitely extraordinary, infinitely more extraordinary than all results. ( PC, 31)Though Anti-Climacus does not say a word in these passages about Christianity in contrast to Judaism or Islam or Hinduism or Buddhism, the issue of religious pluralism lurks massively just below the surface. For the very figure he invokes as an image of Gods open-armed, all-embracing love, the figure of the crucified Christ, also stands as the devotional focus of a particular religious tradition, the Christian, and by its profound symbolic and historical associations unavoidably evokes deeply disparate responses from the wide range of individuals to whom his invitation extends. Inherent in the particularity, the specific individuality, of the person of Jesus is the scandal of disparate availability that seemingly runs counter to everything Anti-Climacus has to say about Gods universal and undifferentiating love. So, the figure of Christ plays two dialectically opposed roles in Anti-Climacuss discussion: at one and the same time Christ embraces all as the incarnation of universal divine love and also fractures human solidarity by embodying the particularity of one religious identity in contrast to others.This tectonic clash of universalist and particularist impulses that is so evident in Practice in Christianity runs like a fault line through all of Kierkegaards writings on God and humans. God, for Kierkegaard, is the utterly other, the absolutely different, and thus is beyond all the particularities that characterize the created order. Unable to endure an awareness of such otherness, the religious imagination of humankind typically clothes the divine in gaudy, aesthetically appealing particularities through its characteristic idolatrous impulse ( PF, 45). Thus, the universality of God is falsified by the human desire for particularity. But the unknowability of God implied by Gods utter otherness also requires that God take the initiative in revealing Godself to us if we are to know and respond to God. And for Kierkegaard, that revelation characteristically comes in the form of particularities: a particular book, the Bible, and a particular person, Jesus.Similarly, for Kierkegaard, the human self is caught in an essential dialectical opposition of particularity and universality. On the one hand, Kierkegaard insists that each of us is called to become the particular individual that we were created to be. To exist as spirit is to be aware that God knows us by name, as individuals, not merely as tokens of the type human being. But the ethical and religious task of being a self is identical for all: while the external realm of social and physical interactions is subject to chance and full of inequalities of opportunities and results, Kierkegaard insists that when it comes to the essential task for each person, the ethical and religious task of becoming oneself, the differences between us disappear and we all face a single, universal challenge.Critics of Kierkegaard no doubt perceive these contrasting claims as evidence of a failure on Kierkegaards part to articulate clear and consistent positions on key issues. As King Lear puts it, Ay and no too was no good divinity.( BA, 29). In The Sickness unto Death, Anti-Climacus makes the dialectical pairing of universality and particularity the basis of his theory of the self: on the one hand, he offers a universal structural framework every human self is a relation that relates itself to itself but key elements of this universal self-synthesis (e.g., finitude) consist in the specifics of the selfs concrete particularity. And Kierkegaard argues in Works of Love that we fulfill our universal duty to love only by loving the particular neighbor before us.Because Kierkegaards thought is so pervasively structured around this juxtaposition of the particular and the universal, we can and indeed we must ask about its implications for our pressing issues of religious diversity. For the challenge presented by religious diversity is, at its core, a matter of balancing the demands of our particular identities, especially our particular religious identities, with the demands of our shared humanity, especially our common need to find ways to coexist harmoniously and appreciatively with people different from us. Whether through the large-scale relocations of contemporary life or through centuries-old patterns of settlement, members of different religious communities find themselves living side by side, interacting socially, economically, politically, and religiously. In this new age of instant communications, we are virtually living side by side with members of other religious communities beyond our physical locality, and this mode of presence carries with it its own forms of interaction. Will those interactions, both direct and electronically mediated, be harmonious and respectful or will they take the form of confrontation, contest, and exclusion?Many people of good will argue that societies can achieve harmonious coexistence only if their constituent religious communities minimize and/or fundamentally reappraise what is distinctive about themselves. Behind the pluralist philosophies of John Hick and Wilfred Cantwell Smith is a deep conviction that we must emphasize what is universal about our religious lives if religion is to be a force for peace and harmony rather than acrimony and war. Specifically, when Hick argues for moving from a Christocentric to a theocentric perspective, he accentuates what Christianity shares with other Corresponding to Hicks philosophical and religious movement from particularity to universality are a host of social and political developments that trace the same arc. We see this, for example, when John Rawls asks us to step behind the veil of ignorance, to abstract from all the particularities of our situations, our histories, our convictions (including religious convictions), in order to grasp the nature of justice.In reaction to these universalizing tendencies, the twentieth century saw a wide array of movements whose impulse is particularist, which seek to return to the authentic specific identities of their faiths or nations or ethnic groups, which equate integrity with proudly affirming what is distinctive in those identities. To use Friedmans images, despite the glitz of the Lexus, the olive tree speaks to something deep in our souls. During the past century and now in the new millennium, almost every religious tradition has seen vigorous fundamentalist movements that seek to repristinate their faiths by zealously embracing what is distinctive about them.What is true of the social dimension of religion has its counterpart in philosophy of religion. For example, in his critique of Hicks pluralism, Peter van Inwagen mockingly describes a currently popular picture of what are called the World Religions that regards the various great religious traditions as species of a genus. The ideological point of this apparently inoffensive bit of classification is to valorize all that is purportedly universal in these religions and to deemphasize all that is particular. Speaking (derisively) in the voice of Hick and company, van Inwagen writes:What we can hope to see over the next couple of hundred years as each of the great world religions becomes more and more separated from the geographical area in which it arose, and as the earth becomes more and more a single global village is the sloughing off of the inessential elements of the world religions. And we may hope that among these discarded inessentials will be those particular elements that at present divide the world religions.Van Inwagen ends his restatement of Hicks pluralist vision by saying, This is as much of the picture as I can bear to paint.Hicks cosmopolitan religious dream is undeniably appealing with its prospect of a world freed from religious disrespect and conflict. In a very different but equally compelling way, van Inwagens muscular Christianity has its own appeal, the appeal of a strong, uncompromising statement of a view that is theoretically powerful even if politically incorrect. But the very purity of both Hicks and van Inwagens perspectives makes them ultimately suspect. There is something deeply inadequate about a one-sided focus on either the universal or the particular. As long as our options are framed in terms of a bland universalism and an assertive particularism, we are stuck in the Yeatsian either/or, making a Hobsons Choice between lack of robust conviction on the one hand and passionate religious tribalism on the other.This is where Kierkegaard is able to speak a useful word to us. What I have sketched above and will develop in much more detail in subsequent chapters is that Kierkegaard, as a profoundly dialectical thinker, rejects any simple choice in favor of either the universal or the particular dimension of the human condition. Throughout his works, he profoundly and sensitively investigates different ways selves negotiate living as both particular and universal at one and the same time. Because he lived in very different circumstances from our own, he did not apply his dialectical understanding to our question of how to live in community with people of other faiths. But the clear direction of his thought points us toward a vision of counterpoised particularity and universality. What are the implications of this vision? Does Kierkegaards dialectical sense of counterpoised particularity and universality mean that, for Kierkegaard, fidelity to a specific faith should lead toward, not away from, mutual recognition of shared humanity, that delving more profoundly into the deepest sources of that faith should foster peaceful and appreciative coexistence rather than fomenting discord, that faithfulness invites us to attend with equal seriousness to the common convictions that unite as well as to the contrasting beliefs that distinguish one faith from another?I believe the answer to these questions is yes. The reading of Kierkegaard on the issue of religious diversity that I will advance aligns in broad spirit with Jonathan Sackss The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations. Like Kierkegaard, Sacks argues for a vision of counterpoised particularity and universality. Also like Kierkegaard, he complains of a deeply rooted and long enduring philosophical bias against particularity that Sacks traces back to Plato:[A] certain paradigm that has dominated Western thought, religious and secular, since the days of Plato is mistaken and deeply dangerous. It is the idea that, as we search for truth or ultimate reality, we progress from the particular to the universal. Particularities are imperfections, the source of error, parochialism, and prejudice. Truth, by contrast, is abstract, timeless, universal, the same everywhere for everyone. Particularities breed war; truth begets peace, for when everyone understands the truth, conflict dissolves. How could it be otherwise? Is not tribalism but another name for particularity? And has not tribalism been the source of conflict through the ages?Against this bias for the universal, Sacks calls for a return to balance that will require recognizing the dignity of difference, that is, the inherent value and essential role of distinctiveness, specificity, and particularity not only in the religious but in other spheres of life as well:It is time we exorcized Platos ghost, clearly and unequivocally. Universalism must be balanced by a new respect for the local, the particular, the unique. There are indeed moral universals the Hebrew Bible calls them the covenant with Noah and they form the basis of modern codes of human rights. But they exist to create space for cultural and religious difference.... The proposition at the heart of monotheism is not what it has traditionally been taken to be: one God, therefore one faith, one truth, one way. To the contrary, it is that unity creates diversity. The glory of the created world is its astonishing multiplicity: the thousands of different languages spoken by mankind, the hundreds of faiths, the proliferation of cultures, the sheer variety of the imaginative expressions of the human spirit, in most of which, if we listen carefully, we will hear the voice of God telling us something we need to know. That is what I mean by the dignity of difference. Here, Sacks emphasizes the particular not in contrast to the univer Since Kierkegaard is a thinker of Sackss large and difficult idea par excellence, looking at the issue of religious diversity through the lens of his thought is one way to move toward the paradigm shift Sacks advocates.The parallelism of Sacks and Kierkegaard is both encouraging and instructive. For Sacks, an Orthodox rabbi, and Kierkegaard, a Lutheran Christian, move toward their visions of counterpoised particularity and universality by calling on the specific resources of their particular religious traditions. Sackss argument, explicitly presented for an audience not just of fellow Jews but of people of other or no faiths, robustly calls on the specific resources of the Hebrew Bible and of Jewish religious tradition in presenting a case for a world of mutual appreciation among people of strongly differing viewpoints. Similarly, Kierkegaard calls upon specific biblical and theological resources in ways that sharply distinguish him from prevailing philosophical practice. Contrary to Richard Rortys claims that reference to specific religious convictions and texts is a conversation stopper, Kierkegaard, like Sacks, opens up those specific resources in ways that invite broader conversations. This practice augers well for the prospect of articulating a constructive Kierkegaardian understanding of religious diversity.Before I sketch out my plan for developing such a Kierkegaardian understanding of religious diversity, I need to address at least six foreseeable objections to my project. These objections can be succinctly labeled arguments from pseudonymity, anachronism, silence, misreading, suspicion, and unacceptable risk.1. Pseudonymity: There are long-running disputes in Kierkegaard scholarship over the ultimate significance of Kierkegaards pseudonymous approach to writing many of his books, some scholars even insisting that we treat the purportedly non-pseudonymous works as written by the pseudonym Sren Kierkegaard, a figure as independent of the actual Kierkegaard as any of the other pseudonyms. Clearly, one cannot blithely attribute to Kierkegaard any and all statements made by his various pseudonyms. That said, Kierkegaard leaves us a body of writing that offers a coherent if complex vision of the human condition. It is unconvincing to cite pseudonymity as an a priori reason to refuse to ask about the implications of Kierkegaards thought for religious diversity. Clearly, one cannot take all texts in the same way. When citing, for example, something that Johannes de Silentio says in Fear and Trembling, it will be important to take the particularities of that pseudonym into account in contrast to the way we can read Kierkegaards comments in Works of Love or Anti-Climacuss comments in Practice in Christianity. No blanket policy can productively inform the development of a Kierkegaardian perspective on religious diversity, but I have sought to remain attentive to the particular difficulties posed by Kierkegaards pseudonymous style of writing as I discuss particular texts.2. Anachronism: To have Kierkegaard speak relevantly to the issue of religious diversity requires transposing his thought from its actual situation, the Christendom of nineteenth-century Europe, into the fundamentally different context of religious diversity we face today. Christendom is the horizon against which all specific themes in Kierkegaards writings are foregrounded. To place his specific statements against a fundamentally different horizon, religious diversity, is arguably to change the meaning of those specific statements. Since Kierkegaard is a situational and polemical thinker, shaping his writing to context, rather than an abstract, systematic philosopher, such a transposition is problematic, at best, and perhaps hopelessly anachronistic. Over the past several decades, a number of Kierkegaard scholars have shown how engaged with his local Danish context Kierkegaard was. To call on the particularity-universality pairing discussed above, Kierkegaard incorporates his own particular context so deeply into his thought that it arguably resists transposition into our own particular context.I agree with this challenge without seeing it as a reason not to proceed. The specific character of Kierkegaards writings does resist such a transposition. But that is not to say that such a transposition is impossible or unfruitful. There is plenty of precedent for creative application of Kierkegaards thought to situations unfamiliar to Kierkegaard himself. Kierkegaard remains a living and relevant thinker just to the extent he remains able to help us think through novel situations and challenges.Further, serious consideration of religious diversity was part of the intellectual landscape well before Kierkegaards time. Kierkegaards enthusiasm for Lessing is familiar to every reader of the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, and it was, of course, Lessings Nathan the Wise that framed the question of relations between the three Abrahamic religions in a way that has captured imaginations since its publication in 1779. Further, Kierkegaard studied Schleiermacher closely in his preparation for his theological examinations. Schleiermacher explicitly considers the issue of religious diversity in both his On Religion and The Christian Faith, arguing for a hierarchical view of faiths that places Christianity decisively above both paganism and Judaism, a tripartite pattern of classifying religions that we will see echoed in Kierkegaards writings. Clearly, the issue of religious diversity is not an anachronism in the sense that the issue would have been unfamiliar or inconceivable to Kierkegaard.3. Silence: That Kierkegaard was familiar with the issue of religious diversity as framed by Lessing and Schleiermacher, among others, but chose not to address the issue in an extended, explicit way might be given as a reason not to venture in where Kierkegaard himself chose not to tread. As I noted above, the issue of other religions does not seem to have been a major worry for Kierkegaard. Given his sense of the paradoxical character of the Christian faith, he would not have been impressed by Humes argument that the miracle claims of other faiths decreased the calculated probable truth of Christianity. But as in the case of other topics, Kierkegaard does have substantial things to say on this issue even though he does not lay out a treatment of the issue in the way a systematic philosopher or theologian might. My task here is to draw on a variety of texts to show that Kierkegaard does have a coherent if implicit view on the question of religious diversity. Beyond pulling together what he does say, I have tried to trace out what he might have said, or, more plausibly, how we might think about this issue on the basis of our ongoing readings of Kierkegaard. To that extent, I hope to bring a silent dimension of Kierkegaard to voice, even if it would be a voice that might surprise him.4. Misreading: To admit, as I have, that I intend to offer an imaginative, constructive reading of Kierkegaard on this issue, to go beyond what he does actually say to construct a Kierkegaardian understanding of religious diversity, raises questions about the appropriate latitude of the interpreter. To a significant degree, Kierkegaard himself disarms this objection. In Point of View for My Work as an Author, he disowns any privileged access to the meaning of his texts. He asks that we evaluate his overall interpretation of As such, it is appropriate to discern a Kierkegaardian understanding of religious diversity if that proposed understanding similarly fits the texts and leads to helpful insights. That said, a possible objection remains: there is significant evidence both in his writings and in the testimony of contemporaries that Kierkegaard held what would be classified today as exclusivist views on the status of the various religions. To the extent that I develop a view other than straightforward exclusivism on the basis of my reading of his texts, am I not willfully misreading him? Given Kierkegaards own views of the independence of the text from the author and also given his understanding that thinkers often have a deeply obscure grasp of the full implications of their own thought, I unapologetically offer a Kierkegaardian interpretation of religious diversity that declares a certain degree of independence from the conscious thoughts of the man Kierkegaard. I will devote the first chapter to reconstructing as far as possible Kierkegaards own thoughts on the topic, but thereafter I propose to follow the implications of his thought where they take me.5. Suspicion: In discussing the previous objection, I mentioned Kierkegaards sense of the obscurity of human subjectivity, that is, the degree to which we are often mysteries to ourselves. In the murky twilight of self-deception, a hermeneutics of suspicion is called for, and such a hermeneutics might turn its gaze not only on my project but on the broader enterprise of philosophical pleas for harmonious coexistence of diverse religious communities. But what person of good will could raise a question about such a noble and necessary goal? Beyond question, Kierkegaard was willing to cast a suspicious gaze at all manner of noble goals that quicken the pulse of democratic liberals such as myself. Let us not forget his disparaging comments about democracy, freedom of the press, and womens equality. It seems plausible that were he to view the philosophical and theological industry that today brings forth so many publications in support of religious coexistence, he would suspect that economic and political interests operate behind the curtain. A bland pluralism that allows different peoples to keep their various faiths in an unobtrusive, privatized manner serves the interests of the globalized economic system, just as Kierkegaard noted that Christendom served the existing social 6. Unacceptable risk: For many readers, to look to Kierkegaard to valorize particularity, especially religious particularity, is to open a Pandoras Box of divisiveness and discord. Where assertiveness about particular national identity fueled many of the conflicts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, present conflicts, like their sixteenth- and seventeenth-century predecessors, seem to be driven especially by assertive religious particularisms. Tensions between Islam and the West have grown significantly in the decades since the 1967 Arab-Israeli War that discredited the secular Arab nationalism of Nassr and helped inspire a widespread return to more assertive forms of Islam. Similarly, ultra-orthodox Judaism has driven national policies in Israel in directions that have persistently frustrated efforts to broker a just and lasting peace with the Palestinians. Resurgent Hinduism in India has transformed the political scene there, leading to interreligious violence between Hindus and Muslims and raising questions about Indias identity as a secular democracy. Pakistans formation through its separation from India as a specifically Islamic state continues to have fateful, often conflictual implications. Looking at the associations between assertive religious particularity and rising conflict, is it really advisable to enlist Kierkegaard in the issue on the side of particularism?In fact, he has already been so enlisted. On November 13, 2009, Sren Krarup, the leader of the Tidehverv theological movement and a member of the Danish parliament from the ultra-right Dansk Folkeparti (Danish Peoples Party), specifically invoked Kierkegaard as providing the ideological basis for a nativist immigration policy. In an Op-Ed piece in a leading Danish newspaper, Politiken, Krarup starkly summarizes an argument he made in an earlier book for the idea that Marx and Kierkegaard represent two fundamentally opposed ways of thinking between which Danes must choose in confronting the immigration issue:[I]t is all about the concept of existence. It all actually takes its departure point in Sren Kierkegaards understanding of what it means to be human. It is all about how human life is about guilt and responsibility, not about ideology and utopia and the worship of progress.What is it to be human? In... The Modern Breakdown, I drew a line in Danish and European intellectual history with Sren Kierkegaard and Karl Marx as the two decisive opponents. I could just as well say Christianity and humanism....Kierkegaard and Christianity preach respect for the singular individual, the existing human being. Humanism and Marxism on the other hand denote contempt for the individual in the name of the idea and progress.Immigration in Denmark grossly disregarded consideration for the Danes. Svend Auken & Co. [i.e., the Social Democrats] were busily occupied taunting and chastising those Danes who could not rise above their increasingly intolerable conditions on the streets and staircases. It was racism when the tormented and concerned Danes cried for help. It was the racist Danes, which... the ideological Pharisees made into the problem.But reality is real.... The Danish populations needs and fears would not be abolished by Svend Aukens indignation over the Danes.Existence was real, and the real meaning of the change of system is the expulsion of abstract ideological lies by existential reality.The Danes had had enough of empty phrases! The Danes reacted spontaneously, immediately, yes, existentially to the threatened life they had come to live under immigration policy [when they voted in a Center-Right coalition, including the Danish Peoples Party in 2001].Krarup sums up his message with a starkly simple plea: Say yes to Kierkegaard and no to Marx.Krarups Kierkegaard/Marx opposition on the issue of individuality versus social identity is certainly familiar, but the leap from respect for the individual to xenophobic immigration policy seems a stunning non sequitur. When we make explicit Krarups oblique reference to intolerable conditions on the streets and staircases as a comment on Denmarks Muslim immigrants, we face the disturbing reality that Kierkegaard is being invoked in support of ugly ethnic and religious rhetoric and policies. To non-Danish readers, this linkage is so implausible as to solicit immediate dismissal. For progressive Danes, any comments by the black priest, as Krarup is labeled, are likely to be dismissed with equal speed. But Krarups invocation of Kierkegaards name is not something we should dismiss lightly, for Krarup speaks as the undisputed leader of the Tidehverv movement. Since its founding in 1926 by a group of young neo-orthodox theologians, Tidehverv has been identified as the Kierkegaardian wing of the Danish church. Stylistically, it has always been marked by harsh polemics that recall Kierkegaard at his most vituperative; and, substantively, figures associated with Tidehverv, especially K. Olesen Larsen, one of the movements founders, have explicitly grounded their thought in Kierkegaards writings. The most significant Danish ethicist of the twentieth century, K. E. Lgstrup, was long involved in the movement, but broke with it at the same time he articulated a critique of Kierkegaards account of the Christian obligation to love the neighbor. Given over eighty years of close, deep, and very public association between Kierkegaard and the Tidehverv movement, Krarups appeal to Kierkegaard to validate Danish Peoples Party policies and rhetoric cannot be left unanswered.Fortunately, Krarup makes it easy to debunk his appeal to Kierkegaard. It is hard to imagine anything less Kierkegaardian than Krarups defense of the state church and his opposition to immigration as threatening Denmarks identity as a Christian culture. One wonders whether Krarup has read The Moment and the other texts from Kierkegaards final attack on Christendom. Or, for that matter, whether he has noticed the derision Kierkegaard heaps on N. F. S. Grundtvig for his enthusiasm about the church as a locus of specifically Danish cultural identity.But that leaves one to wonder why Krarup insists on the Kierkegaardian basis of his views. Is it completely imaginary, or is there some real aspect of Kierkegaards thought that Krarup is twisting to make it support exclusionary policies? I think there is a real basis: the valorization of particularity. The Tidehverv movement began as a rejection of the bland, sentimental pietism of the Student Christian movement of the 1920s. In place of a general linkage of Christianity, morality, and civilization, the founders of Tidehverv promoted a sharp, specific gospel message based on readings of Luther and Kierkegaard, thus emphasizing particularity of the Christian gospel over generic religiosity. Their formulation of Lutheranism, with its message of sin, forgiveness, and responsibility, led the Tidehverv theologians to an ethical particularism: ethics does not involve obedience to general rules but responsibility for the particular Other before one. This ethical particularism obviously follows the direction of Kierkegaards Works of Love. The fullest flowering of this particularist tendency comes in K. E. Lgstrups The Ethical Demand, a book that deserves more attention in English-language philosophy and theology than it has so far received. But where Kierkegaard and Lgstrup keep the focus squarely on the human Other before one, a number of the Tidehverv thinkers expand this idea of particular responsibility to ones particular place in the world. N. Otto Jensen, one of the movements founders, wrote thus in 1930:All of Gods creation is good, and the stance humans are obligated to take toward it is therefore thankful joy. But that one is obligated shows that there is no talk at all about natural inclination, about whether one enjoys ones situation or not. It is not the selfs satisfaction but the created persons guilt before his Creator that matters. The stance toward creation is the same as to the neighbor. I have not chosen him, being around him may annoy me, he may compete with me, but he is given to me, and I shall love him. I have not chosen the existential situation I have been placed in [ Jeg har ikke valgt den Tilvrelese, jeg er stillet i ], but whether it suits me or not, I shall love it, such as it is, and know that here is my place [ Plads ].For the early Tidehverv thinkers, this vivid notion of place works to root humans in the here and now of reality as opposed to an abstract elsewhere of ideals. Citing Eduard Thurneysen, Karl Barths early collaborator, Jensen speaks approvingly of Dennesidigheden, literally of this-sideness, which seems an anticipation of Bonhoeffers notion of a purely this-worldly faith.This powerful existentialist and neo-orthodox anti-idealism, this robust attempt to couch the concept of facticity in terms of a Lutheran understanding of creation, is an authentic extension of Kierkegaards legacy into the twentieth century. But, under the impact of increasing immigration that began in Denmark in the 1960s and intensified in the 1980s and 1990s, this concept of place has shown itself to be terribly vulnerable to misuse. Krarup, especially after 1986, has used the idea of Gods assigning each human a particular existential situation as the basis for a nativist politics and rhetoric. This usage is undoubtedly tendentious and selective, using a Kierkegaardian trope to support the very Christendom Kierkegaard railed against. It has, however, succeeded beyond all reasonable expectation. When I first attended a Tidehverv summer meeting in 1980, the movement was, as it had always been, a small but vocal part of the Danish religious scene. When I visited again in 1991, the movement had become much more politicized and contentious, taking a strong stance not only against immigration but also against Danish involvement in the European Union. By 2001, Krarup and another Tidehverv figure, his cousin Jesper Langballe, as parliamentary representatives of the Danish Peoples Party entered into a Center-Right coalition that displaced a more progressive government from power.And so, an ideology with undeniable Kierkegaardian lineage has played a crucial role in sharpening tensions between Christians and Muslims in Denmark, unfortunately contributing to a general pattern of suspicion, misunderstanding, and limited integration into society that prevails among Muslim immigrant populations throughout Western Europe.It was with this backdrop in mind that I said earlier that we not only may but must ask the question of the implications of Kierkegaards thought for the question of religious diversity. Does Kierkegaards multidimensional emphasis on particularity leave his thought irremediably prone to the sort of exclusivist use to which Krarup puts it? Or does the dialectical tension Kierkegaard himself maintains between the universal and the particular poles of the human condition, specifically the human religious condition, guard against such use? Should specific religious traditions deemphasize what is distinctive about themselves, moving, as Philip Quinn puts it, toward thinner theologies?Kierkegaard to prompt us to think anew about the pressing issues of living both peacefully and authentically in a world of religious difference.In chapter 1, I approach these tasks directly by looking at what Kierkegaard, both in his own voice and through his pseudonyms, says explicitly about other religions and their relation to Christianity. Since Kierkegaard never takes on this issue in a systematic way (as, for example, Schleiermacher does), this will involve pulling together a variety of passages from a wide range of texts from the early journals to the late non-pseudonymous works.While developing a Kierkegaardian understanding of religious diversity requires beginning with Kierkegaards direct statements about other faiths and their relation to Christianity, it cannot stop there. What Kierkegaard writes specifically on the matter of other religions is too fragmentary and scanty for a purely direct approach to succeed. Accordingly, in the remaining chapters I will proceed indirectly, constructing a Kierkegaardian understanding of religious diversity by focusing on the issues such diversity raises and asking what Kierkegaard has to say about them. In his survey article for The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion, Philip Quinn identifies four prominent philosophical challenges posed by religious diversity. He divides these challenges into two broad categories:Next page