I feel right now that I am still processing the content if the text and am not ready to start looking far for wider application. If that makes sense.
I want to make sure I really have a grasp on the content, which is a small segment of all of SK’s work. Everything i can say right now has to be with the reservation that I have a very limited view at this point.
However things that he directly addressed in the text are pretty clear .
What I see is a sense where loving your enemy morphs into agreeing with their destructive ideas. And sometimes an individual will have better discernment than even a crowd of intelligent people. For whatever reason life experience can do that. To the crowd this person appears harsh and judgemental, all the while they genuinely see something the others do not.
That is a fundamental misunderstanding, then, of what loving your enemies even means. Jesus taught us to love our enemies. He never once mentioned that this has anything whatsoever to do with agreeing with them.
I don’t know Sproul all that well - but if I had to guess, I’d guess he said it was both? How did I do?
And I would probably try to use a different word entirely, though I think ‘hospital’ captures a lot of it, and ‘army’ captures at least some (though less so, in my view than ‘hospital’). Actually, Phil’s answer, while ventured as ‘tongue-in-cheek’ might even be closer to a serious answer I would try to give: Yeah - maybe like a country club, only without all the elitism and exclusivity - but definitely a community or family. People who ‘have each others backs’, but will hold each other accountable too, and are always seeking to enlarge their family!
Mark saw the same thing that I saw 
I don’t think that’s confirmation bias in this case…
By the way, I thought we posted our comments at the same time. But in hindsight, he may have seen my comment, and then posted his accordingly.
Lousy title but the article was okay. What I was trying to ask was a little different. Let me rephrase. I view “corporate sin” as “systemic sin,” which would include things like systemic racism, patriarchy, etc. Agree or disagree?
Good questions. Kierkegaard recognized that possible objection and wrote Works of Love in response. It reads like a sermon by Johnathan Edwards. First, SK takes Matt 22:39 – You shall love your neighbor as yourself – and parses it a dozen ways to Sunday, then he does the same with 1 Cor 8:1 – But love builds up. Good stuff. I’ll spare you the screenshots.
It was a 12 minute video, but I guess you read the transcript.
To be honest, I don’t know how we should figure individual guilt for corporate sin. So if that is what you are getting at, I don’t know what to say.
I do think mercy is a better approach, than justice.
Yes, I’m a fast reader, so I always take the transcript option if it’s available. 3-5 min of my time instead of 12. Honestly, I almost never watch videos. I’m too freaking old!
I’m not asking you or anyone else to calculate individual guilt for corporate sin. Only God can sort out that mess. Since we agree corporate sin is a biblical category, I’m asking whether “systemic sin” is the same thing. For example, is “systemic racism” a corporate sin that the United States is guilty of? That’s a pretty straightforward question. Or, if you want an example from the Bible, the prophets condemn Israel over and over for a corrupt system of justice that favors the rich and powerful. That’s a systemic evil and a corporate sin, isn’t it? (Remember also that CRT is a legal theory.)
Of course mercy is the better approach. I spent a decade in the juvenile justice system.
Are you kidding? As someone else aptly said when asked asked about time dilation, do you seriously think I’m at all like a flat earther or YEC?
So now we got that out of the way… 
For a long time now, my thing is what does economic justice look like when we recognize that it is both fairness and desert. 2 Corinthians 8:13-14 and 2 Thessalonians 3:10.
And I’d certainly be willing to lean and err on the side of mercy in our calculus of economic justice.
Thanks a lot for this Jay–it sounds interesting and perhaps a bit more digestible than his “F & T”.
I’ve seen plenty of Reformed folks across the denominational spectrum, especially among those who quote The Gospel Coalition, deny the existence of systemic racism. I’m asking you questions instead of presuming to know your opinions. No offense.
I’m a huge fan of The Essential Kierkegaard. When @Kendel first approached me about F&T, I warned her it was my least favorite of his books. I much prefer his religious and non-pseudonymous stuff, but even then I’m not up to his entire books anymore. Takes too much mental energy. It’s similar to my skiing. I know I can make it down from anywhere, but do I really wanna do one double-black and be exhausted, or do I wanna slide down blues all day? I have to conserve my energy. haha
Whew, glad I got it out of the way now! I can’t be much younger than you, Jay, if at all!
Sure can’t say I enjoyed the read or most of it, but I’m glad I did it. And from what you say I got the worst out of the way first.
But E/O is just as infamous.
There’s a Wittgenstein quote I can’t quite locate that sums SK up quite well. A little background first …
Wittgenstein came to logic and Bertrand Russell from an engineering background. He skipped the normal undergrad education in philosophy and refused to read the classics. His reasoning? Why should I read that which has been disproven or surpassed? Lol. He did enjoy Kierkegaard, though not that much of his ouevre had been translated into German (let alone English) in the first decade of the 20th century. Anyway, Wittgenstein had a journal entry somewhere that basically said how much he loved SK, but he often felt his pseudonyms were sort of a “cheat” that bewitched you with his language. Sorry for the rough paraphrase, but if one of the great geniuses in history doesn’t always “get” SK, don’t expect me to do better!
I think what you mean is that Reformed folks will often disagree over what counts as systematic racism. When I was on the Reformed subreddit, which I did not get kicked off of by the way, I had a discussion with someone who pointed to a case where a bank was charged with racist lending practices. What I found odd with the case, is who would think a bank would give a better loan to someone because of ethnic background. It’s a bank afterall. What seemed more likely is some people groups are more susceptible to predatory loan practices. Thomas Sowell wrote about these cases where the mere appearance of racial discrimination due to preexisting racial disparities is enough to make a person or corporation guilty.
Once in a while in Fear and Trembling Kierkegaard let’s his own heart show through the mask he wears as Johannes de silentio. I think he does here, and the tenderness is disarming.
This first half of the epilogue is my favorite part of the entire book.
[Bolding is my addition.]
EPILOGUE
Once, in Holland, when the price of spices went rather low, the merchants had a couple of loads dumped into the sea in order to drive prices up. This was a forgivable and perhaps necessary ploy. Do we need something similar in the world of spirit? Are we so completely certain that we have attained what is highest that—in order at least to have something with which to pass the time—there is nothing left for us to do other than to imagine, piously, that we have not come that far? Is this the sort of self-deception that the present generation needs? Ought it be educated to acquire a virtuosity in this sort of thing, or has it not rather attained sufficient perfection in the art of deceiving itself? Or does it not rather have need of an honest seriousness which, fearless and incorruptible, points out the tasks, an honest seriousness which lovingly preserves the tasks, which does not frighten people so that they want to rush headlong into what is highest, but keeps the tasks young and beautiful and lovely to behold and beckoning to all, and yet also challenging and inspiring for noble souls (for the noble nature is inspired only by what is difficult)? Whatever one generation learns from another, no generation learns what is truly human from a previous generation. In this respect every generation begins in primal fashion: it has no task other than that faced by every previous generation; nor (assuming that the previous generation did not betray its task and deceive itself) does it come any further. What is truly human is passion, in which indeed the one generation perfectly understands the other and understands itself. Thus no generation has learned from another how to love. No generation gets to begin at any other point than the beginning. No subsequent generation has a task that is abbreviated in comparison to the preceding one, and if someone is unwilling to remain standing at love as previous generations did, but wants to go further, then it is just idle and foolish talk.But the highest passion in a person is faith, and here no generation begins at any point other than where the preceding generation began; every generation begins at the beginning; the next generation comes no further than the one preceding it, provided that that generation had been faithful to its task and did not abandon it. Of course, the generation may not say that this is wearisome, for this, after all, is the task the generation has, and it has nothing to do with the fact that the preceding generation had the same task—unless the particular generation, or the individuals of that generation, presumptuously wants to occupy the place that rightfully belongs only to the spirit who governs the world and has the patience not to become weary…As long as the generation concerns itself solely with its task, which is what is highest, it cannot become weary, for the task is always sufficient for a human lifetime. If, on a day off from school, children have already finished playing all their games before noon and then impatiently say: “Isn’t there anyone who can think up a new game?” does this, then, prove that these children are more highly developed and more advanced than the children of the same or of a previous generation, who were capable of making their familiar games last the whole day? Or does it not rather prove that the former group of children lack what I would call the lovable earnestness that is a part of play?
Faith is the highest passion in a person. In every generation there are perhaps many who never even come to it, but no one comes further. Whether in our time there are also many people who do not discover it, I will not decide; I dare refer only to myself, someone who does not conceal the fact that he has a long way to go, without therefore wanting to deceive himself or what is great by making it into something insignificant, into a childhood illness from which one could wish to recover as soon as possible. But life also has tasks enough for the person who does not get as far as faith and, if he loves them honestly, his life will not be wasted, even if it never is like the lives of those who perceived and grasped what is highest. But the person who has come to faith—whether he be the remarkably gifted person or the simple person makes no difference—he does not remain standing at faith. Indeed, he would be indignant if someone said that to him, just as a lover would be offended if someone said that he had remained standing at love, for he would say, “I do not remain standing at all, for I have my life in it.”
Is faith a passion? Maybe it’s more of a condition, an obtainable attribute. Desiring the greatest Treasure strikes me as being the highest passion, to whatever degree we have it. I wish I had more.
Of that desire and love it can be said,
Faith is not a passion? You seem passionate about faith.
Kierkegaard, for reasons you would likely agree with, saw faith (in God, which is assumed in the epilogue, because that is what the entire book is about) as not one of a number of equal passions, but the highest. The entire argument in F&T is that one cannot achieve anything greater than to have faith (a view that seemed to be common in Denmark at the time, and particularly in the Danish state church). One cannot surpass faith.
In F&T Kierkegaard doesn’t explain how faith comes about, except that the narrator doesn’t understand it, that it is beyond human strength, that it is a miracle, The point of the book is not how faith comes about but if it does exist at all, how much different it is from all typically accepted human categories, such as social morality.
The last sentence in the quote above pulls the entire book together beautifully. One who has faith in God doesn’t seek to do more (read the book to find out what that more might be) than that, but recognizes that in faith is where his life exists.
For a Christian, I have no idea what there is to argue against in that.
For a decent background in Kierkegaard’s concept of faith, Merold Westphal (a Christian and Kierkegaard expert) has done some outstanding work. This article from The Guardian also has a nice, brief explanation of SK’s concept of faith and its formation within the context of his world.
“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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