TRUTH WHICH IS TRUE FOR ME!
"THE BIBLE IS VERY EASY TO UNDERSTAND. BUT WE CHRISTIANS ARE A BUNCH OF SCHEMING SWINDLERS. WE PRETEND TO BE UNABLE TO UNDERSTAND IT BECAUSE WE KNOW VERY WELL THAT THE MINUTE WE UNDERSTAND, WE ARE OBLIGED TO ACT ACCORDINGLY." ~Soren Kierkegaard
These are the infamous words of Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), the 19th Century philosopher who developed the intensely subjective philosophy, later to become known as, Existentialism. Sickened by the stuffy religiosity of his generation, he sought to prove that there must be something more to faith in God than, abstract theories and cerebral concepts of theology. Kierkegaard sought after a belief system that he could have faith in by experiencing it for himself, and he wrote, “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”[i] Mere reasoning and test tube analysis couldn’t persuade Soren to place his trust in something, he had to personally identify with it, and as he said, "...find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die."[ii]
This sentiment is at the heart of Kierkegaard’s existentialist philosophy, which is often misunderstood by Christians as just being an attempt to destroy objective truth and make up your own subjective truth as you go along, but viewed in the proper perspective, it becomes a great challenge for modern Christians to consider. Because he wasn't saying, "Christianity isn't true, so I'll make up my own truth which is real to me."; as much as he was saying, "If your Christian faith isn't true for you, in the sense that you actually live out what you say you believe!", then it isn't actually a truth in your life, even though it is actually true in reality!
Kierkegaard's strict Lutheran upbringing caused him to initially doubt the reality of the Christian faith because of the behavior of those who claimed to possess it. He didn't see the truth of it being lived out in their lives, and he rightly scolded the church for its dead orthodoxy exclaiming, “The greatest danger to Christianity is, I contend, not heresies, not heterodoxies, not atheists, not profane secularism - no, but the kind of orthodoxy which is cordial drivel, mediocrity served up sweet.”[iii]
If Christian faith had any value to it at all, he believed it should have practical applications in life as well as doctrinal, and spiritual, and so he kept asking those searching questions about just how, “…that precious and rare thing, a human life, ought to be lived.”[iv] He used the terms, existential and existentialism himself to describe his views about the existence of life as being highly subjective and ambiguous. Unfortunately, this approach was taken to an extreme by modern philosophers, and his view of human existence eventually became the foundation upon which Christian theological, “…neo-orthodoxy is built.”[v]
His writings and philosophies concerning existentialism were confined to Scandinavia and Germany at first, and had a significant impact upon Protestant theology in those areas, but wide-spread acceptance did not occur until after WW1, when his works became translated and more available to the English-speaking world. In the end, even though Kierkegaard deemphasized doctrine and historic, "...biblical events… his denunciation of cold, dead orthodoxy, of course, has merit.
"Doctrinal statements should be affirmed because they are believed internally. A knowledge of Christ is both: objective – based on historical events, and subjective – experienced internally by the believer.”[vi] Anything less should cause one to question the validity of their own personal faith, as well as the validity of their experience. As the Apostle Paul said, "Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you are disqualified. (NKJV 2 Cor 13:5)"
Works Cited:
A. https://relevantmagazine.com/god/15-soren-kierkegaards-most-challenging-quotes
[ii] http://www.azquotes.com/author/8000-Soren_Kierkegaard?p=5
[iii] http://www.azquotes.com/author/8000-Soren_Kierkegaard?p=1
[iv] http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/philosophy/kierkegaard.html
[v] Enns, Paul. The Moody Handbook of Theology. Chicago, Moody
Press. Print. 1989. Pg. 559.
[vii] Enns,
Paul. The Moody Handbook of Theology. Chicago, Moody Press. Print. 1989. Pg.
561.
