Is Being a Contemporary an Advantage?

Kierkegaard writes quite a bit about the contemporaries of Jesus, or those who lived at the same time as Jesus in his human form. During Kierkegaard’s time, many people believed that they had been somewhat gypped by the fact that they could not live alongside Jesus. In their minds, those who lived with Jesus had the advantage of seeing him, and thus faith was not as hard. Kierkegaard refuted this by saying that those who were contemporary with Jesus had to see the raw humanity, which would actually make it more difficult. After all, Jesus looked like a normal person, and was actually probably not that attractive. Thus, everyone who saw Him would have to be able to accept that God, the ultimate Being, looked just like they did. This is extremely hard to do. What they really saw was not God, but just another human; it was a purely historical event.

However, Kierkegaard does point out that the contemporaries did have one slight advantage, to help alleviate the burden of seeing a human claiming to be God. The one advantage is that they did not have to worry about fleshing out rumors surrounding the events. They could know exactly what happened, but only the physical events. They still had to have the same faith to realize that all the events taking place were at the hands of God.

Philosophical Crumbs as a Response to Strauss

As I’ve mentioned earlier, Kierkegaard often wrote in response to other writers. In the case of Philosophical Crumbs, Kierkegaard might have been responding to David Strauss’ book, Das Leben Jesu, kritisch bearbeitet, which means ‘The Life of Jesus, Critically Examine.’ In this work, which created quite the scandal, Strauss claimed that the gospels were edited so that they would match Jewish tradition and predictions. He claimed that that much of the story of Jesus was simply myth, and that his life likely didn’t match traditions.

As it turns out, this might not have been as radical as it first seems. Catholicism has for a long time had two versions of theology, one that was for the masses and the other for theologians. The masses got a watered down version that the Church thought people could handle, and also which included all the miracles that attracted the masses. However, those that actually studied the Bible knew that not everything added up, and they also realized that the book had been altered many times before becoming the version they had.

In the end, Kierkegaard says that it simply doesn’t matter, what actually matters is that God did come down and that he died. He believed that even if Jesus did not perform a single miracle, that it wouldn’t matter. The miracles aren’t the point- God’s unending love for all mankind is. After all, he believed that you could not separate someone coming down and dying for you from someone loving you.

**All my information about Strauss came from his Wikipedia page**

Learning of Jesus, a Critical Moment

I said earlier in this blog that the critical moment of Christianity was the moment that God came down as man. However, for Kierkegaard, there is another critical moment. Christianity says that you have eternal life if, and only if, you accept the coming of Christ. The moment that this happens is another critical moment. In fact, Kierkegaard believes that when you come to accept Jesus as God, you come in contact with Jesus in time. This seems to be another paradox, as Kierkegaard seems to highly disregard mystics, but there is something mystical about thinking you can come in contact with a person who is no longer alive.

Edit: In class we actually discussed this very idea, that you could meet Jesus in time despite not living in the same period as him. My professor then pointed out that in a way, we never meet people the same time that we meet their physical selves. After all, I’ve never met someone and instantly felt like I really knew him, rather I slowly forged relationships over time with that person.

Kierkegaard and the Love Paradox

Kierkegaard mentions the paradoxes of love somewhat tangentially, but I thought that they were extremely interesting. The first paradox is that of self-love and erotic love. On one hand, self-love is a precondition for erotic love. (Note: in this case erotic love is the same as romantic love) After all, how can you expect someone else to love you if you don't believe there is anything to love about yourself. If you need more proof, read any self-help article in a woman's magazine it will surely tell you that you must first love yourself before you should embark on loving anyone else.

However, egoism (which would really be the extreme version of self-love) is hardly conducive to a healthy erotic love. Egoism leads you to be selfish, and take the affection and care the other person needs from you and directs it towards yourself. Still, most people would say that the answer to this is self-love in moderation. However, in a healthy relationship, self-love is annihilated by erotic love. After all, you cannot say you love yourself if you would willingly die, but people in long-term relationships speak all the time of how they would die for their significant other. Therefore, there is a paradox: while erotic love requires self-love, it also destroys it.

The other paradox lies in the fact that passion wills its own downfall. Even writing that seems weird and nonsensical, but if you think about it, it's true. To illustrate this, we will speak of the passion of erotic love. The passion of erotic love comes in the beginning, when there is still a chase. Think of a man attempting to woo a woman. The passionate love revolves around the hope of possessing its object (the other person), the man might go out of his way to be romantic so that the woman might consent to 'belong' to him in some way or another. However, if the object were 'caught' the passion would fade, and there would be no more chase. This often happens in relationships, especially after the initial stages, once you realize that you are simply comfortable, knowing that the other person is yours and there to stay. In this way, passion revolves around possession, but also must fears that it will succeed and thus annihilate itself. Quite simply, it wills its own downfall.

Why God Had to Come Down

As I've said before, Kierkegaard believed that the only thing you had to accept to be a Christian was that God became man and died because He loves us. However, this raises the question of why God would do such a thing. The simple answer is that God had to become man so that He would be equal enough to humans so that humans could love Him back. If this seems complicated, which it did to me, I invite you to read my paper of the subject below:

Why God Came Down- A Broken Love and Deep Despair

Søren Kierkegaard wrote Philosophical Crumbs to clear up what he saw as a widespread misunderstanding of Christianity. Within the work, Kierkegaard pays special attention to the central act of Christianity, or the coming of Jesus. In this paper, I will argue that God’s coming to Earth as a human logically follows from His deep desire to repair the broken love between Himself and Man.

In Philosophical Crumbs, Kierkegaard argues that every human suffers a fractured relationship with God, such that no man can truly love God. To understand the extent of the quandary however, one must understand that Christianity changes the meaning of words. Man’s love flows from a need that is a part of his being. For God, love itself is his nature, and the love He has for His creation is an expression of its overflowing abundance. Therefore, His anguish and despair are also different, because they come from a desire for communion with His creation, rather than any need. Kierkegaard explains this with an analogy that compares Man’s relationship with God to that between a peasant girl and the king, though even he admits that this analogy is in many ways wrong. He even qualifies that, “there is no perfect analogy among Earthly relationships.” (Kierkegaard, 101)*

To understand God’s coming to Earth as a human, one must first understand the broken nature of the relationship between Man and God. While God is a perfect being, Man is by nature imperfect, which leads to him choosing sin. This leads to an unequal balance of love, where Man is more caught up in admiration and respect for God, rather than true love, which relies on a deep relationship. From his analogy of the peasant girl and the king, Kierkegaard explains it by explaining that the king, by loving the peasant girl, was, “doing this girl a favour for which she will never, in her whole life, be able to thank you (Kierkegaard, 102)*.” This poses a problem for the king, because he will always have to wonder whether the peasant girl truly loves him or if she is only caught up by his affections towards her, given who he is.

The broken love between human beings and God then leads to a deep despair within God, which I have already qualified as being different than the despair of a human. That the despair belongs to God might seem odd, as one would assume that Man would be the one to suffer from being separated from this love, as it is he who needs God. However, God’s suffering is different from Man’s, and sharper in a way, because he is aware of what causes it, while Man suffers unknowingly. In fact, Kierkegaard argues that God’s (or the king’s) suffering is worse, stating, “this infinitely more profound grief belongs essentially to the superior one, because only he understand the misunderstanding (102).” Kierkegaard further explains by saying, “One might think the god would not care about this, since he does not need the learner. One forgets though . . . that the god loves the learner. The god thus reserves this sorrow, this unfathomable grief, for himself (103-104).” In short, God suffers more because He knows what separates Him from His creation, which He dearly loves, while Man simply does not understand. Thus, God is in great despair over the broken relationship between Himself and Man.

God, in his perfection, thus decides to do something about this broken relationship, as only He is capable of mending it by abolishing the inequality of love. To make things equal, however, God must change the station either of Himself or of Man, His first option being to elevate Man so that he is worthy of God. This posed an issue though, for Man might see God lavishing him as a sign of his own greatness, as Man has a tendency to be vain. Thus, God’s only option is to “show himself equal to the most lowly (106).” In this way God decided to “reveal himself in the form of a servant (106).” Or, in other words, God came down not only as a human, with all the weakness of human flesh, but came down with the lowest status so that he could create equal love even with the lowest of his creation.

In this paper, I have argued that God came down as the logical mending of his broken relationship with Man. By coming to Earth in human form, God bridged the gap between himself and Man so that Man could properly love Him. For Kierkegaard, this is the critical moment in Christianity, and thus must be understood before anyone can truly call themselves a Christian.

My Professor

I know I've mentioned my professor multiple times on here, so I thought I should take a moment and talk about her credentials, and why I feel I can use her a source for much of what I'm saying. My seminar professor is Marilyn Piety (her married name is Foley). She is a Kierkegaard scholar and she actually translated the text we are using in class. She also writes her own blog about Kierkegaard, which you get to at http://pietyonkierkegaard.com/.

Kierkegaard and Coming to Christianity

While Kierkegaard was very much a Christian, he also understood why many people were not. In fact, he believed that no one would come to Christianity without being completely desperate since there were many things 'wrong' with it. For Kierkegaard, this desperation would come in the form of an anguished conscious. While you would not know what exact was wrong with you, you would feel like something wasn't right, and thus you would be motivated to find something to help you. Even then, finding Christianity might be hard, as it would still not seem that appealing. However, Kierkegaard believed that eventually you would turn to Christianity once you had exhausted all your other options.

At this point, Kierkegaard believed, you would have to be reborn. However, this is not quite as easy as one would hope. He believed that after Adam and Eve committed the first sin, humans lost the truth, or their innocence. Thus, in being reborn you have to get this truth back. However, it is also important to note that the truth is the index both of itself and of the false. Quite simply, the moment you are reborn, you will not only realize the truth, which is that God loves you so much that he would die for you, but also that you were once outside of the truth, or in sin.

This paradox, of realizing both how wretched you are and how much you are loved in the same moment, is another hard part to Christianity. After all, it's quite hard to accept that you are a terrible, sinful person, and at the same time know that the ultimate creator loved you despite that. However, once you are able to accept that, then Christianity can give you the proper motivation to live a good life. It is important to note, though, that a good life will still not be a perfect life, but Kierkegaard believes that once you realize that God loves you unconditionally then you will be able to accept your failures and move on.