Abstract
This article shall outline the significance of Kierkegaard’s method of Bible reading for preaching. The key concepts in Kierkegaard’s hermeneutics (De-Familiarization, Appropriation and Consequentiality) will be applied to his condemnation of pulpit hypocrisy in nineteenth-century Denmark. This is best illustrated in his humorous parable, ‘The Tame Geese’. Kierkegaard’s critique of preaching will then be compared with Fred B. Craddock’s ‘New Homiletic’. Though superficially similar, it will be shown that Kierkegaard still upholds the authority of the preacher in a way that diverges from many postmodern misinterpretations of his work. In the light of contemporary critiques of preaching, this reflection will emphasize how Kierkegaard’s hermeneutics might be helpful in shaping a renewed approach to proclamation that catalyses genuine transformation in its hearers, beginning with the preacher’s personal engagement with the text.
Keywords
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard, perhaps more than most, is a thinker whose philosophical legacy is prone to misinterpretation. Over time he has been duly ‘claimed’ by a host of varying schools within philosophy, theology and literature. There is an ‘Existentialist Kierkegaard’ of Heidegger and Sartre, a ‘Dialectical Kierkegaard’ of Barth and Bultmann, an ‘Absurdist Kierkegaard’ of Kafka and Camus, a ‘Literary Kierkegaard’ of Auden and Updike, to name a mere handful of his supposed intellectual grandchildren. Kierkegaard understood himself very differently. Through his works – both authored and pseudonymous – it is clear that Kierkegaard wanted to invoke individuals to encounter real Christianity: ‘And what can I offer? I am a poet – alas, only a poet. But I can present Christianity in the glory of its ideality.’ 1 It is not an overstatement to say that Kierkegaard saw himself primarily, albeit unconventionally, as a preacher of the gospel.
The commandeering of ‘Kierkegaardian philosophy’ to such diverse schools of thought, though perhaps regrettable, is understandable given the diverse nature of Kierkegaard’s writings, especially regarding his prevalent theme of subjectivity, which often dominates his literary landscape. 2 It is on this point that many of Kierkegaard’s theological critics tend to downplay his significance as a contributor to theological discourse. Karl Barth, whose earlier theology was significantly influenced by Kierkegaard, soon distanced himself from the Danish thinker as one whose school every theologian must go through but never remain in. 3 Ultimately, he dismissed Kierkegaard’s theological project as an ‘experiment’ with a faith that is ‘groundless and without object’. 4 Kierkegaard’s persistent emphasis on the individual’s subjective encounter with faith certainly has an anthropocentric tone: ‘prospective theologians ought to take care lest by beginning to preach too early they talk themselves into Christianity rather than live themselves into and find themselves in it’. 5 Statements such as this, however, should not be seen as merely ‘existentialist’, nor as being somehow against preaching. Rather, Kierkegaard’s point is that the objective truth of Christianity (which he upheld) must not simply be spoken about, it must become experientially transformative. For Kierkegaard, the reading and preaching of the Bible must, at all times, lead to personal consequence.
In this article I will attempt to offer a more positive light on Kierkegaard’s hermeneutics, with particular reference to subjectivity in preaching. I will first outline three core categories of Kierkegaard’s hermeneutical approach: De-Familiarization, Appropriation and Consequentiality. These categories will be applied to preaching, with a particular emphasis on Consequentiality. My argument will be illustrated by Kierkegaard’s parable, ‘The Tame Geese’, which suitably highlights this theme. I will then highlight Fred Craddock’s ‘New Homiletic’ as one example of a popular homiletical approach that attempts – unsuccessfully – to utilize a ‘Kierkegaardian hermeneutic’, before outlining the importance of Consequentiality in contemporary Evangelical preaching. This, I will argue, should stem not from polished homiletical technique but from the preacher’s subjective engagement with the text.
Kierkegaard’s hermeneutics
Kierkegaard’s life and literature was dominated by his use and incorporation of the Bible: 6 ‘The Bible lies on my table at all times and is the book in which I read most.’ 7 Dalrymple has said that the Bible is ‘indisputably Kierkegaard’s principal literary influence’ while Pons notes that it has a kind of ‘invisible omnipresence’ throughout all his writings. 8 Yet he is rarely referenced as a key biblical interpreter or biblical theologian. Indeed, Rasmussen observes that ‘despite the depth, breadth, insight, and verve of Søren Kierkegaard’s biblical imagination, his reputation as an interpreter of Scripture remains obscured’, while Bauckham comments that Kierkegaard ‘is not an exegete, at least in the modern sense’. 9
Bauckham’s statement is very true, but this is equally very revealing as to what constitutes a so-called ‘modern exegete’. This was a central question for Kierkegaard himself, whose critique of the biblical scholarship of his own day is well known:
All this interpreting and interpreting and scholarly research and new scholarly research that is produced on the solemn and serious principle that it is in order to understand God’s Word properly – look more closely and you will see that it is in order to defend oneself against God’s Word.
10
This is Kierkegaard’s principal problem, that in his day – and I would suggest the same is true today, if not more so – the Bible was often read critically rather than doxologically; that a sharp distinction has been drawn between ‘devotional’ hermeneutics and ‘academic’ hermeneutics. Kierkegaard’s complaint was that this denied the importance of the subjective engagement with the text, to which the Bible itself calls us. He says, scathingly: ‘Christian scholarship is the human race’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the New Testament, to ensure that one can continue to be a Christian without letting the New Testament get too close.’ 11
As a response, Kierkegaard sought a hermeneutical approach that enabled the reader to engage in the world of the biblical text itself, to let it inhabit their existence and speak to them. Though it has been noted Kierkegaard’s hermeneutics are nuanced and ‘plurivocal’ rather than systematic, 12 I identify three key categories to define the tenets of this plurivocal approach:
1. De-Familiarization
Kierkegaard believed that the distance between reader and text must be bridged. The Bible must become unfamiliar again, so as to challenge the reader afresh, every time it is read or preached. One way in which he sought to do this was through creative ‘retellings’ of the biblical narratives, otherwise known as his ‘experimental hermeneutic’, which has been said to produce a deliberately ‘alienating distanciation’. 13 Most famously, in Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard rewrote the story of Abraham and Isaac from various perspectives, in order to give a kaleidoscopic range of interpretative possibilities. This allowed the reader to inhabit the world of the story itself, and thus engage personally with its characters and consequences as though engaging with it for the first time. What was most critical for Kierkegaard was that we never take Abraham’s anxiety in vain, that we take on the very same existential burdens and crises of faith as though they were our own. It is most appropriate, he contends, to be made ‘sleepless’ by Abraham, even if one never hopes to understand. 14 This ‘sleeplessness’ – this necessary anxiety amid such a complex challenge of faith as Abraham’s – is only possible if the reader is able to shed their preconceptions and reimagine the narrative anew.
2. Appropriation
For Kierkegaard, textual Appropriation is undoubtedly the most important aspect of his hermeneutic. This is the process of the Bible being read subjectively, as though it were addressed – not only to an ancient community but also to the present individual: ‘When you read God’s Word, in everything you read, continually say to yourself: It is I to whom it is speaking, it is I about whom it is speaking.’ 15 Obviously, Kierkegaard is simultaneously aware of doctrinal and historical themes in relation to Scripture, 16 but he is more concerned that these be read in the context of a ‘love letter’ from God rather than abstractly or objectively (as was the tendency of the systematicians and the historical critics of his day). He did not reject biblical scholarship entirely, but he did feel it was grossly misplaced. His primary objective was that the Bible be read as the appropriated Word from God to us. For Kierkegaard, this was the whole point of Scripture. Thus, any attempt to override or undermine this precept – however eloquent – was to undermine the very ontology of Scripture itself: ‘If you are a scholar, remember that if you do not read God’s Word in another way, it will turn out that after a lifetime of reading God’s Word many hours every day, you nevertheless have never read – God’s Word.’ 17 Kierkegaard wanted to invert the way in which the Bible is approached, so that it is not the reader who exegetes the text but the text that exegetes the reader.
3. Consequentiality
Consequentiality refers to the inclination towards action as a result of reading the text. Kierkegaard leant heavily upon the ‘hearing’ and ‘doing’ dialectic in James 1.22–25, emphasizing the fact that the reader’s engagement with this ‘love letter from God’ must consequently lead to ethical transformation. This was largely influenced by his lifelong polemic against Danish Christendom, which had inherited a Lutheran ‘legacy of suspicion’ surrounding the message of James (which Luther had famously labelled ‘an Epistle of Straw’). Kierkegaard valued James as ‘a theological corrective to what he perceived as a pervasive misunderstanding of and abuse of grace’. 18 The Church had emphasized grace to such an extent that works, responsibilities and, above all, imperative action were – along with the apostle James – ‘shoved aside’. 19 Kierkegaard thus sought to reclaim James for Luther, stating that Luther never wanted to remove works from faith, but to remove ‘meritoriousness’ from works. 20 This was to guard against Luther’s necessary emphasis on grace in his own context being hijacked to support ‘a camouflage for a refined worldliness’. 21 Kierkegaard argued that if Luther were alive in nineteenth-century Denmark he would have re-emphasized works, ensuring that the message of James was ‘drawn forward a little’ so that grace remain undefiled. 22 Following James’s exhortation, Kierkegaard demanded that the reader translate their reading (or ‘hearing’) into transformative action; that all hermeneutics leads necessarily to existential consequence.
The three hermeneutical categories I have outlined are essentially interlinked. The aim of De-Familiarization is that the reader will actually read and inhabit the text; the aim of Appropriation is that the reader will not only read and observe its truth but also apply it to themselves as recipient; and the aim of Consequentiality is that the reader will not only apply it to themselves but also will be personally transformed, a process resulting in existential and ethical action.
Hermeneutics and preaching: ‘The Tame Geese’
For Kierkegaard, personal transformation is the primary goal of hermeneutics, taking the reader ‘from literary imitation to existential imitation’. 23 It is upon this foundation that Kierkegaard’s critique of preaching must be understood, explicitly linked to the third of the aforementioned hermeneutical categories: Consequentiality. What is the point of preaching if nothing changes?
It is this concern which one sees in his well-known parable, ‘The Tame Geese’. In this parable, Kierkegaard imagines a church of geese gathering every Sunday to hear a sermon preached from a high pulpit, where an Old Gander exhorts the congregation that the Creator intended a greater purpose for them. He proclaims that they are strangers there, and that their wings were so designed that they might fly away to distant lands. Every Sunday the geese would hear the sermon and waddle home, before returning the following Sunday for the same lofty speech about the use of their wings. Whenever one of them asked why no one actually flew anywhere, various geese responded with nuanced arguments about the dangers of what happens to those who actually attempt it, pointing to those who are suffering and thin among them: ‘There, you see what it leads to when flying is taken seriously!’ they say. They subsequently point to those who are plump and delicate among the congregation as those having the grace of God. The following Sunday the Old Gander returns to the pulpit and again preaches about this ‘greater purpose’ the Creator has for them – and their wings – and the cycle of inactivity continues. 24
Kierkegaard used this parable as a direct attack upon the state of the Danish pulpit, one which refused to apply what was preached to personal transformation, sermons that led to nothing:
The trouble is not that Christianity is not voiced … but that it is voiced in such a way that the majority eventually think it utterly inconsequential … Thus the highest and the holiest things make no impact whatsoever, but they are given sound and are listened to as something that now, God knows why, has become routine and habit like so much else.
25
Kierkegaard’s critique of preaching is not – like so much of contemporary homiletics – against preaching, but rather against the preacher. Since Kierkegaard’s sole hermeneutical concern was inculcating response in the ‘hearer’ of the Word of God, he argued that preachers must appropriate the text first to themselves, before attempting to proclaim it to others. The Old Gander in the parable is the perfect example of one who – paradoxically – exhorts to others what he refuses to do himself. This might be likened to the man in James 1, a mere ‘hearer’ of the Word. But for Kierkegaard, the preacher is a far worse offender; as with the worldliness of the Danish Church, such preaching is no more than vacuous aesthetics:
If it is assumed that speaking is sufficient for the proclamation of Christianity, then we have transformed the church into a theatre. We can then have an actor learn a sermon and splendidly, masterfully deliver it with facial expressions, gesticulations, modulation, tears, and everything a theatre-going public might flock to.
26
Kierkegaard and Craddock
An attempt to redeem the preacher’s personal connection with the preached material came via Fred Craddock’s ‘New Homiletic’. Originating in the nineteen-seventies, it has been extremely influential in shaping homiletical discussion for a ‘postmodern’ era. Dissatisfied with the formulaic state of homiletics, Craddock wanted to bring ‘judgment against a church that gives recitations, lifeless words cut off from the hearts and minds of those who speak and those who listen’. 27 His attempt to counter this was the call to communicate the biblical text ‘inductively’ rather than ‘deductively’. This meant inviting hearers into the world of the text by telling its ‘story’ rather than speaking to them about it. In this, one can clearly see a link with Kierkegaard’s De-Familiarization approach. Craddock was deeply influenced by Kierkegaard’s concerns, finding many of them directly relevant to his own day: ‘Kierkegaard did not, nor do we, seek to communicate timeless truths; the desire is for the proper word; the word that fits here, now.’ 28 Incorporating subjectivity into postmodern homiletics, Craddock sought to use Kierkegaard to show that preaching need not proclaim ‘objective’ truth, that it might leave truth to be found where and when the listener finds it.
Craddock, in his own context, was partly responding to the over-authoritarian approach to the pulpit in Modernity. Much of his critique has been of value as a necessary corrective. But it is his characterization of Kierkegaard to emphasize communicative uncertainty in preaching with which we might take issue. Though there are certain parallels, Craddock ultimately negates Kierkegaard’s ideal for preaching. His integration of De-Familiarization and Appropriation are evident in his desire to relate the text afresh to the individual, but what is lacking is the crucial tenet of Consequentiality, without which the other two become irrelevant. Craddock sought to catalyse active response from the congregation through non-conclusiveness and deliberate ambiguity. Theoretically, this breeds participation from the hearers, who are forced to think out conclusions for themselves. In reality, however – like the geese who admire the Gander’s sermons and continue to waddle – this might lead to a lack of an active response. In this model, the Word of God becomes something alluded to but never proclaimed (and therefore, never applied). This kind of preaching lacks what Kierkegaard called ‘the power of conviction’. 29
Though it may not seem apparent that Kierkegaard would be in favour of preaching (since he had so much to say against preachers!), his critiques should not be taken to mean an abolition of authority from the pulpit. His critiques were almost entirely targeted at the preacher’s lack of personal engagement with their message, not the fact that they were preaching. In one case he even accuses the Danish clergy that they ‘do not know how to preach’.
30
In condemnation of their gander-like hypocrisy Kierkegaard declared that true preaching must happen despite damage to personal reputation. A true preacher must be prepared to incur suffering and shame for the unpopularity of the message: ‘I hope and believe that with the assistance of God I would be able to preach fearlessly even if someone spat in my face as I climbed the stairs to the pulpit.’
31
It is clear that Kierkegaard did not have a problem with preachers having ‘authority’; he merely had a problem with their abuse of it and their refusal to practise what they preached. Craddock’s use of Kierkegaard to evoke non-authoritative preaching, then, is an inadequate application. For Kierkegaard, the authority of the preacher comes from the Word of God; any attempt to downplay the authority of the message, then, borders on the blasphemous:
[I]f the person who is called by a revelation and to communicate a revelation wants to be silent about the fact of the revelation, then he offends God and reduces God’s will to nothing. It is the very fact of the revelation which is decisive; it is this which gives him divine authority.
32
Kierkegaard’s and Craddock’s critiques of preaching stem from fundamentally opposite foundations. Craddock’s hermeneutical basis is the postmodern suspicion of the concept of ‘authority’. This is what catalyses his critique of authoritative preaching. It might be said that the postmodern emphasis on uncertainty (and, indeed, the postmodern ‘claiming’ of Kierkegaard) is his ‘book’. Kierkegaard’s hermeneutical basis, in contrast – that which drives his approach to preaching, is the Bible itself: ‘the most profound book of all’. 33 Ironically, Craddock’s emphasis on sermonic ambiguity is something Kierkegaard may in fact have loathed. This is because it is drawn not from appropriation of the Word of God but appropriation to the culture of the world (that is, the epistemological uncertainty inherent within postmodern philosophy and culture). As Polk notes, for Kierkegaard, true Christian hermeneutics should assert that ‘scripture defines the world, not the other way around’. 34 For Craddock, we might say that it is precisely the other way around.
Conclusion: the unhomiletical homiletic
A homiletical approach that is truer to Kierkegaard, and desperately needed today, should seek to accommodate each of his hermeneutical concerns without being sidetracked by an overemphasis on homiletical methodology: ‘It is absolutely unethical when one is so busy communicating that he forgets to be what he teaches.’ 35 Methodology is not the core problem. Rather than focus solely on technique, the preacher must first engage with the Bible personally. Only then, in whichever style or method is contextually appropriate, might they proclaim the very Word that has been proclaimed to themselves. A recent survey conducted by Fuller Seminary highlights the urgent need for devotional exegesis by preachers, revealing that 72 per cent of Reformed Evangelical pastors only study their Bibles when preparing for sermons or lessons. 36 Reflecting on Church decline as a result of ineffective preaching, Evangelical church-growth analyst R. J. Krejcir comments: ‘It is a shame to take the most wonderful work ever conceived—God’s Word—and make it boring! We are to make God’s Word relate to us personally and then to others around us, especially when we teach it.’ 37
This twin dynamic of personal engagement and impassioned proclamation is essential. A genuinely personal engagement in the process of biblical hermeneutics will catalyse the same impact upon the hearer, ultimately bringing about the desired consequentiality of personal transformation. As Kierkegaard asserted: ‘[A] preacher should be such that listeners have to say: “How can I get away from this man? His sermon catches up with me in every hiding place, and how can I get rid of him, since he is over me at every moment?”’ 38 A right appropriation of Kierkegaard’s hermeneutics will do wonders for preaching today. Abandoning the lofty, inconsequential rhetoric of the theatre-pulpit, the sermon might move beyond Sunday ritual and begin to penetrate into the weekday lives of its hearers. But preachers will only make flying geese of their congregations if they have first learned to fly themselves.