Reading Kierkegaard I: Fear and Trembling

By Paul Martens

In his posthumously published Journals and Papers, Kierkegaard boldly claimed, "Oh, once I am dead, Fear and Trembling alone will be enough for an imperishable name as an author. Then it will be read, translated into foreign languages as well. The reader will almost shrink from the frightful pathos in the book." Certainly, Fear and Trembling has been translated into foreign languages, and its fame has ensured Kierkegaard's place in the pantheon of Western philosophy. Today, however, most shrink from the book not because of its frightful pathos but because of its fearsome impenetrability. In this first volume of a Reading Kierkegaard miniseries, Martens carefully unfolds the form and content of Kierkegaard's celebrated pseudonymous text, guiding and inviting the reader to embrace the challenge of wrestling with it to the end. Throughout, Martens demonstrates that Fear and Trembling is not merely a book that contains frightful pathos; it is also an entree into Kierkegaard's vibrant and polyphonic corpus that is nearly as restless as the faith it commends.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Jan 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9781532613579

Book preview

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Reading Kierkegaard I

Fear and Trembling

Paul Martens

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READING KIERKEGAARD I

Fear and Trembling

Cascade Companions

31

Copyright ©

2017

Paul Martens. 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,

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Cascade Books

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

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paperback isbn: 978-1-62032-019-8

hardcover isbn: 978-1-4982-8710-4

ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-1357-9

Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Names: Martens, Paul Henry.

Title: Reading Kierkegaard I : Fear and Trembling / Paul Martens.

Description: Eugene, OR : Cascade Books,

2017

| Series: Cascade Companions

31

| Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers:

isbn 978-1-62032-019-8 (

paperback

) | isbn 978-1-4982-8710-4 (

hardcover

) | isbn 978-1-5326-1357-9 (

ebook

)

Subjects: LCSH: Kierkegaard, Søren,

1813–1855

. Frygt og bæven. | Christianity—Philosophy.

Classification:

B4373.F793 M37 2017 (

paperback

) | B4373.F793 M37 (

ebook

)

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

02/05/15

Table of Contents

Title Page

Preface

Preliminary Notes on the Text

Introduction

Chapter 1: The Preface

Chapter 2: Tuning Up

Chapter 3: A Tribute to Abraham

Chapter 4: A Preliminary Outpouring from the Heart

Chapter 5: Problem I

Chapter 6: Problem II

Chapter 7: Problem III

Chapter 8: Epilogue

Chapter 9: Conclusion

Appendix: Kierkegaard’s [First] Authorship, 1841–46

Glossary

Suggested Readings

Bibliography

Cascade Companions

The Christian theological tradition provides an embarrassment of riches: from Scripture to modern scholarship, we are blessed with a vast and complex theological inheritance. And yet this feast of traditional riches is too frequently inaccessible to the general reader.

The Cascade Companions series addresses the challenge by publishing books that combine academic rigor with broad appeal and readability. They aim to introduce nonspecialist readers to that vital storehouse of authors, documents, themes, histories, arguments, and movements that comprise this heritage with brief yet compelling volumes.

Titles in this series:

Reading Augustine by Jason Byassee

Conflict, Community, and Honor by John H. Elliott

An Introduction to the Desert Fathers by Jason Byassee

Reading Paul by Michael J. Gorman

Theology and Culture by D. Stephen Long

Creation and Evolution by Tatha Wiley

Theological Interpretation of Scripture by Stephen Fowl

Reading Bonhoeffer by Geffrey B. Kelly

Justpeace Ethics by Jarem Sawatsky

Feminism and Christianity by Caryn D. Griswold

Angels, Worms, and Bogeys by Michelle A. Clifton-Soderstrom

Christianity and Politics by C. C. Pecknold

A Way to Scholasticism by Peter S. Dillard

Theological Theodicy by Daniel Castelo

The Letter to the Hebrews in Social-Scientific Perspective by David A. deSilva

Basil of Caesarea by Andrew Radde-Galwitz

A Guide to St. Symeon the New Theologian by Hannah Hunt

Reading John by Christopher W. Skinner

Forgiveness by Anthony Bash

Jacob Arminius by Rustin Brian

Reading Jeremiah by Jack Lundbom

John Calvin by Donald McKim

A brief overview and helpful introduction to what is probably Kierkegaard’s most read and most puzzling text. It wisely locates this telling of the Abraham story within Kierekgaard’s larger ‘attack upon Christendom,’ his critique of the Danish church for making faith too easy and the closely related Hegelian philosophy for making faith too ‘reasonable.’ It nicely specifies the distinctive way in which biblical faith is ‘absurd’ or ‘paradoxical.’

—Merold Westphal

Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, Fordham University

"As a Kierkegaard scholar, I am all too aware that many students first encounter Kierkegaard through Fear and Trembling, a pseudonymous text that is not only difficult to read but disquieting in its conclusions. What distinguishes Paul Martens’ new commentary on Fear and Trembling is that it confronts these challenges head-on, while never forgetting that Kierkegaard’s masterwork is meant to be provocative, perhaps even (as Kierkegaard himself put it) ‘terrifying.’"

—Christopher B. Barnett

Associate Professor, Department of Theology & Religious Studies, Villanova University

To Alan

Preface

Reading Søren Kierkegaard is a task that requires a relatively high level of intellectual investment. It is only fair that I make this statement up front. Further, reading Kierkegaard rightly also requires a relatively high level of vulnerability. In my experience, vulnerability is often more difficult to render than intellectual investment. For those willing to risk their preconceived understandings of Christianity (along with the requisite time and energy) in order to sit patiently with Kierkegaard, however, all I can promise is that Kierkegaard will continue to walk alongside you—sometimes exhorting, sometimes encouraging—for the rest of your life.

Kierkegaard is difficult to read today because he wrote in a particular time in a particular location using the particular literary tools and language of his era. In short, he wrote for a well-educated, mid-nineteenth-century readership located primarily in Copenhagen, Denmark. In doing so, he often employed various literary conventions borrowed from the Romantics* and language and categories heavily indebted to ancient and modern philosophy (and especially Hegel*).

That said, Kierkegaard continues to speak to us today because his self-confessed task is the task that must be articulated anew for each generation: to become a Christian. In his context, he understood that his task was to introduce Christianity into Christendom.¹ As he outlined in his posthumously published The Point of View, this task gave his authorship a loose unity with a particular shape and direction.² Generally speaking, Kierkegaard’s early writings were published pseudonymously for the purpose of drawing his readers from the aesthetic* and from the speculative* to a direct encounter with God; his later writings were published under his own name for the purpose of leading Christians to a deeper understanding of what is essential to Christianity, that is, what encountering God entails for one’s everyday existence.³ Sometimes, therefore, he speaks sharply and polemically; sometimes he speaks softly and sympathetically. Throughout, he seeks to speak indirectly, to function as a midwife that helps with the birth of Christianity and then disappears. Why? Kierkegaard argues that he must disappear because either one becomes a Christian individually before God or one simply does not become a Christian.

The two texts that constitute this Reading Kierkegaard miniseries—Fear and Trembling (1843) and Works of Love (1847)—were published a mere four years apart. However, they are worlds apart in terms of style and substance: the first is a dialectical lyric published under the pseudonym Johannes de silentio; the second is a collection of Christian deliberations published under Kierkegaard’s own name. Yet, they have the same overarching telos. In order to justify the choice of these divergent texts as the means to grasp what Kierkegaard is on about as an author, I defer to Kierkegaard’s own words that were penned in his journal years before either of these texts was written: "Fear and trembling (see Philippians 2:12) is not the primus motor in the Christian life, for it is love; but it is what the oscillating balance wheel is to the clock—it is the oscillating balance wheel of the Christian life."⁴ It is my hope that these two volumes preliminarily and provocatively illuminate how Kierkegaard’s complex and difficult authorship seeks to serve his reader in the daily struggle of Christian life.

Of course, there are other very good introductions to Fear and Trembling available to the interested reader, especially John Lippitt’s Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Kierkegaard and Fear and Trembling and Claire Carlisle’s Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling. This volume is not an attempt to repeat the strengths of those volumes, most notably Lippitt’s extensive engagement with the secondary literature and Carlisle’s thorough expository retracing of the text itself. Rather, the specific purposes of this succinct volume are (1) to illuminate the internal logic of the text in a manner that renders the text more accessible; (2) to highlight the links between Fear and Trembling and Kierkegaard’s broader context in a way that helps one make sense of some of its more opaque sections; and (3) to attend to the theological themes that permeate and drive the text. Concentrating on these elements, therefore, complements the exceptional work that has already been done by others who, like me, have spent many years grappling with Kierkegaard’s indomitable Fear and Trembling.

Speaking autobiographically, my own debts to Kierkegaard continue to accrue at an alarming rate as I repeatedly become aware of what I have learned through him (often without recognizing it until much later). Kierkegaard regarded his authorship as his own education, of sorts, as an account of his own need for upbringing and development.⁵ I dare say that something similar has happened to me, even if only in a partial and slightly equivocal sense. Many have walked alongside and helped me tremendously in this journey—Jerry McKenny, Phil Quinn, Cyril O’Regan, Ralph McInerny, Steve Evans, Bob Roberts, Lee Barrett, Bob Perkins, Sylvia Walsh, Gordon Marino, Cynthia Lund, and Jon Stewart have all served as wise guides in one way or another (and my frequent failure to follow is certainly not due to a lack on their part); Will Williams, Dan Marrs, KC Flynn, Ian Panth, David Cramer, Mark Morton, Randy Blythe, Willie Adler, John Campbell, Chris Adler, and the students who suffered through my graduate seminar on Kierkegaard’s late authorship have all served as thoughtful and generous reading companions; Laura Lysen, Malcolm Foley, Cody Strecker, Joao Chaves, Brandon Morgan, Bradley Varnell, Nicholas Krause, and Tyler Davis have all read a significant portion