Subjectivity and Relativism - A Fresh Look at Kierkegaard

Kierkegaard is overlooked by many Christians, but his penetrating insights into the soul and Christianity justify him space on every Nazarene’s shelf. In fact, many Wesleyan-Holiness systematic theologies have Kierkegaard sprinkled all over their footnotes (see the widely respected Wesleyan theologian Dr. Tom Oden’s Classic Christianity for an example). Kierkegaard also interests secular academics as the forerunner of Existentialism through his influence on Camus, Sartre, Heidegger, and Nietzsche, but he makes them blush with his rigorous Christianity and his claim that his writing was from first to last religious.1 Because of this, he his often deconstructed and secularized, which has left a distorted picture of Kierkegaard. The image is of Kierkegaard as a radical relativist—certainly not what our church needs today. This secularized and deconstructed Kierkegaard acts as a scarecrow that spooks many Christians from reaping an edifying harvest from his incredible authorship. Like all scarecrows, this caricature of Kierkegaard is made of straw—that is, a strawman—and it is my hope that this short blog can begin to introduce you to the real Kierkegaard and his utility for holiness discussions today.2

Kierkegaard is a defender of authentic Christianity. That is, not unlike John Wesley, he saw his mission as calling people from the emptiness of a dead and surfacy religion to a living and authentic heart religion. He was a pietist infamous for a quote “truth is subjectivity.”3 Kierkegaard’s concern with subjectivity should not be

confused with the unstable relativism popular today4 but rather as his concern with authentic faith—something that is captured colloquially as “don’t miss heaven by the eighteen inches between your head and your heart.” He didn’t believe that truth is subjective as in the truth is whatever you want it to be (as he is often misrepresented as saying), but rather that objective truth—like that God exists—is useless5 to a person until it becomes true for them—that is lived out or existential truth.6 Consider James 2:18-20, even the demons believe the objective truth of God’s existence but if that belief is not live out in faith it is useless. Kierkegaard was calling Christians from a dead useless faith to a living authentic faith. In our vernacular, he was calling Christians back to holiness—a task I aim to join him in today.

To introduce his authorship and to push back against the strawman version of Kierkegaard, it will be fruitful to briefly examine an argument from one of his shorter works pinned in his own name7 (a work I highly recommend). Kierkegaard writes in his work Of the Difference Between a Genius and an Apostle, “What, exactly, have the errors of exegesis and philosophy done in order to confuse Christianity?... [they] have succeeded in bringing Christian terminology to such a pass that [its] terms… can be put to almost any use as clever expressions… Esprit and the Spirit, revelation and originality… all end by meaning more or less the same thing.”8 In other words, Christian terms like "love," "the Kingdom of God," and "salvation," when lifted from the context of the Christian worldview can be cleverly used for other agendas or to make Christianity attractive to other worldviews or popular culture. Thus, popular culture’s values supplant Christian values in the disguise of Christian terms—wolves in sheep’s clothing. Originality pretends to be revelation. Notice that many people today think that “truth as subjectivity” means viewing individual originality as revelation (revealing their truth i.e. relativism), but this is exactly what Kierkegaard is arguing against here.

For example, with the rising popularity of Marxism, in an attempt to make Christianity attractive some will use Christian vernacular as means for Marxist ends. The term “Gospel” becomes social justice, “the Kingdom of God” becomes the communist or socialist state, and “salvation” becomes the redistribution of wealth. Perhaps, even more commonly, consider the use of the word “love” in common theological discourse on matters of Christian ethics. Is the term love being used in the context of the Christian worldview or is it being highjacked to be, as Kierkegaard says, “put to almost any use as clever expressions”? Often, in my experience, it is the latter.

An example of this might be a “hermeneutic of love” that evaluates the degree of authority of various passages of Scripture on the grounds of the passages’ conformity or unconformity to what appears loving to the reader—which could be as empty as what feels nice or what feels like the loving thing to do thus subjecting the authority of Scripture to the person’s gut feelings—thereby, submitting divine authority to our authority (to use C. S. Lewis’s phrase, we are putting “God in the Dock”—that is elevating ourselves over God as God’s Judge).

In this, the person succeeds in, as Kierkegaard phrases it, “bringing Christian terminology to such a pass that… [it] can be put to almost any use as clever expressions.” This of course, is a type of relativism, relativism disguised as piety, and it is precisely this inauthentic piety that Kierkegaard pushes back against—his bulldozer to topple this deceptive relativism is of course divine authority. Authority is the central thread of his Of the Difference Between a Genius and an Apostle and precisely the antidote to the pious relativism that devours sheep today.

What this demonstrates is that Kierkegaard’s infamous caricature as a relativist is at best misguided (at worst nefarious). He wants the truth to become your truth (truth as subjectivity), not your truth to become the truth (relativism). In fact, elsewhere he argues that thinking your truth unrestrained by reality can become the truth is a form of despair.9 And the only cure for this despair is faith—living in right relationship to God. Relating rightly to God, according to Kierkegaard, requires submission to divine authority as shown above. Thus, in an ironic turn of events, what Kierkegaard arguably means by subjectivity is actually the solution to relativism if the subject is in right relation to God (submitted to God’s authority). Kierkegaard meets inauthenticity with authenticity—relativism with authority, error with truth—and then prods his reader to consider if that truth is true for them (are they submitted to divine authority) or if they are missing the Truth by the eighteen inches between their head (through “the errors of exegesis and philosophy”) and their heart.

—Chris Kamp

Endnotes

1. Hong, Howard V.; Edna H. Hong. The Essential Kierkegaard (p. 450). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.

2. For another blog on Kierkegaard’s utility for holiness discussions today, see “Against the Colorful Grey.” A short and provocative read, here is the link (https://thenazarenebean.wixsite.com/the-nazarene-bean/post/painting-with-black-and-white).

3. Hong, Howard V.; Edna H. Hong. The Essential Kierkegaard (p. 187). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.

Also note that this quote is one of his pseudonyms which Kierkegaard uses as characters which have distinct point of views.

4. C. Stephen Evans. Kierkegaard: An Introduction (Kindle Locations 833-834). Kindle Edition.

5. Not unimportant—but useless, useless in the pragmatic sense that it will not do them any good.

6. C. Stephen Evans. Kierkegaard: An Introduction (Kindle Location 331). Kindle Edition.

7. The reason this is significant is because many of his works are attributed to pseudonymous authors which have distinct views. This work however is his not attributed to a pseudonym but rather himself and thus has interpretive priority for understanding his point of view of as an author. Many mistaken or exaggerated views about Kierkegaard result from attributing one of his pseudonym’s point of view of to him.

8. Kierkegaard, Søren; The Present Age: On the Death of Rebellion (p. 65). Harperperennial Modern Thought)

9. Evans, C. Stephen. Søren Kierkegaard's Christian Psychology: Insight for Counseling and Pastoral Care. Regent College Publishing. Kindle Edition. (see chapter 5, Kierkegaard's Depth Psychology II: The Analysis of Despair)