As you may remember, I listened to it while painting my house. I vaguely recall sections that stood out and were interesting. The knight of faith was one such section.
I like Kierkegaard, and am always interested in what others smarter and more knowledgeable than me draw from from his writing… and then apply to the present context where all that glitters is not gold.
I agree, and that applies to sinfulness, as well. “Corporate sin” can also be labelled “systemic sin,” such as racism, patriarchy and corruption of justice that favors the rich and penalizes the poor, the widows, the orphans, and the strangers. Sounds like CRT to me. What say you?
Justin Giboney is literally a both/and kind of guy and I like what I’ve seen from him.
I’m literally one minute from signing off and cooking dinner. Don’t send me down a Google trail trying to figure out what you mean. I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon. Hope to see a straight answer by then. C’mon. You can do it. Just try.
This is what I saw from him:
I understand what you’re saying. It’s simply not (much of) a consideration in F&T. The entire book is focused on the position that God’s command for Abraham to sacrifice Isaac puts Abraham in, and this in relation to his community (the universal) and public morality (the ethical). The conclusion, reached over and over throughout the book, is that if there is no place in existence, higher than the universal (the highest telos of mankind) that provides Abraham direct access to God, then Abraham is lost.
The only mention of “the church” I remember in the book referred to it as analogous to the universal. It was intended to be a criticism, and is quite a harsh one in light of other passages in the book. Jay’s most recent scan from SK’s Practice of Christianity harmonizes with the brief mention of the church in F&T.
And yeah. I do remember you listening to it while painting the house. I’ve heard sections many times, while driving. One time through and only listening would be impossible for me to have comprehended enough to say anything at all.
Looking up K’s use of universal, I’m not sure what Mark meant then by saying
there is no access to the universal (meaning the divine, not the state) except through the individual
Do you understand what he is saying?
Brain’s done for tonight. If I forget to reply by tomorrow evening, remind me, ok?
Regarding the universal, SK is referring to Hegel.
If you have the OUP VSI, it covers Hegel enough.
Mike, here’s the fuller quote from Mark and my post he had been replying to:
I think I do. I didn’t find the bit from MacDonald that Mark was referring to, but he is making a distinction between his understanding of MacDonald’s use of the term “universal” and Hegel’s, SK’s and Marx’s.
From what Mark says here, it appears that MacDonald uses the term “universal” in relation to the divine or God himself. Mark has been following the MacDonald thread much more closely than I have been able to. I don’t know MacDonald that well to confirm this, but Mark is a fine reader with an excellent mind and an honest intellect. I trust him to have accurately portrayed MacDonald’s use of the term as referring to the divine.
SK and Marx both refer to and use Hegel’s concept of the universal, which is NOT divine, but the state and could be extended to include other types of communities like the church. (When SK compares the church to the universal, it isn’t a compliment. He is saying that the church of Denmark is as spiritual as the state of Denmark.) F&T is primarily a reaction to Danish Christians, at least members of the state church, who had attempted to apply the Hegelian System to Christianity and theology.
Kierkegaard’s entire point in a nutshell is that this is not possible, because within the universal (the ethical) there is no space for a person who acts in faith in a way that is in direct conflict with the ethical (ethics of the universal); an act of faith must be based on an immediate (unmediated) relation to the absolute (God) outside of the universal.
So:
MacDonald understands the term “universal” to mean God.
SK, GFH, and KM understand the term “universal” to mean the state (or perhaps a similar community).
Mark was clarifying this important distinction.
With this in mind, does his comment make more sense to you?
Ok, that’s helpful and it makes sense, there is no access to the universal (divine) except through the individual for GM, and no access to the absolute (divine) except through the individual for SK.
This emphasis on the individual, and the lack of thinking regarding the covenant community may be what is frustrating for James Smith to read in SK. I can’t fault SK as the historical context and the error of the moment often justifies unbalanced correction, that when the task is isolated and set apart in another moment that it can easily be distorted from what it was originally intended to accomplish.
Sorry, I wanted to reply to you and @klw but have the attention span and bredth of a squirrel anymore.
Hegel’s system and concepts such as the universal were always secular.
Interestingly, Kierkegaard compares them to Greek tragedy (and Shakespearian tragedy, which is in the same vein), where human sacrifice was always done for the sake of the community, and therefore justified by the community’s ethics. He even includes the OT story of Jephtha, who said he would sacrifice the first thing that came out of his house, after returning victorious from war. Can he break his promise to God and bring disaster on the nation? Obviously not.
We are used to this idea. In F&T however, SK is emphatic that, in regard to the act of faith, the person of faith is entirely alone and isolated from other people, even those who are also acting in faith. This is a pretty hard section of the work to consider.
Restating it is not an endorsement; discussing it as hard is not a rejection.
His disgust with the state church and christendom were a major focus of his work. His father was also starkly pietistic, and SK was raised that way. His works reflect very much the understanding that faith is something you do, not have, or know. See Jay’s post from “The Practice of Christianity” (Pithy quotes from our current reading which give us pause to reflect - #1583 by Jay313)
The hard thing for any of us in any church is to examine the community which we call home. I don’t know enough yet about SK’s views on the church as the universal, but for him it was a hinderance to the practice of faith such as Abraham’s where the church would support the community’s ethics, rather than supporting the knight of faith. SK lets no one off the hook.
Yes. I think that’s it.
Please take a look at what I just posted above to Merv and KLW, and also please look at the scan from Jay yesterday, referenced in that same post. The piece Jay shared explains a lot of SK’s thinking.
Gotta go. I am way behind on Monday’s tasks and still have unanswered correspondence. Sigh.
@heymike3 Oh, just thought this-
Go to the beginning of Problema I for SK’s main description of the universal. It should make more sense after having discussed it a bit and (I hope) seeing my notes.
So, SK seems to present a tension between actions taken as an individual and as a community and I’m trying to frame this further. From my evangelicized lenses (not being in a state church), it makes sense that salvation (a saving faith) must be a personal and individual action. One can’t rely on “just passively going with the flow” and behaving externally according to community standards, whether that community be a secular one or a “church”. But recall, there was no distinction between secular community and church community in SK’s time because his framework (Danish Society) was Christendom…of which everyone was automatically a member. So although SK may have been criticizing following “Christian” community ethics of his day, that “Christian community” may not have been comprised of what we Anabaptists or Evangelical Protestants would call “real and consciously committed Jesus-followers”.
Note that I’m not entirely trying to escape SK’s criticism of community here–of course one should always assess the ethics and motives of a group one interacts with. However, it seems to be built into the DNA of Christianity (based on Jesus and Paul and James when they talk of a “living faith”), that this can only be an action expressed in the context of a community, e.g., all the “one-anothers”: love one another, forgive one another, be generous etc etc. These are actions that demonstrate faith and require the context of community? Christians cannot be islands unto themselves. hmmm…
It reveals how little we Christians actually believe that Christ conquered sin and death on the cross when we treat our religion like a war that hasn’t been won rather than a work of compassion and treat the world as an enemy to be conquered rather than a neighbor to be loved.
Rev. Benjamin Cremer
It’s a spiritual warfare and there are bad actors. Sometimes these kind of quotes make me wonder if whoever wrote it even read their Bible.
Amen. The worst and most vocal examples are the apologists. They seem to seek strife in every interaction.
And sometimes I wonder why those who don’t see the sense of this must have stopped reading their bibles too soon.
I love how Sproul answered the question of whether the Church is an army or a hospital 
What? I thought it was a country club! 
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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