Main Kierkegaard and the Bible. Tome I: The Old Testament
Kierkegaard and the Bible. Tome I: The Old TestamentJon Stewart, Lee C. Barrett (eds.)
Exploring Kierkegaard's complex use of the Bible, the essays in this volume use source-critical research and tools ranging from literary criticism to theology and biblical studies, to situate Kierkegaard's appropriation of the biblical material in his cultural and intellectual context. The contributors seek to identify the possible sources that may have influenced Kierkegaard's understanding and employment of Scripture, and to describe the debates about the Bible that may have shaped, perhaps indirectly, his attitudes toward Scripture. They also pay close attention to Kierkegaard's actual hermeneutic practice, analyzing the implicit interpretive moves that he makes as well as his more explicit statements about the significance of various biblical passages. This close reading of Kierkegaard's texts elucidates the unique and sometimes odd features of his frequent appeals to Scripture. This volume in the series devotes one tome to the Old Testament and a second tome to the New Testament. Tome I considers the canonically disputed literature of the Apocrypha. Although Kierkegaard certainly cited the Old Testament much less frequently than he did the New, passages and themes from the Old Testament do occupy a position of startling importance in his writings. Old Testament characters such as Abraham and Job often play crucial and even decisive roles in his texts. Snatches of Old Testament wisdom figure prominently in his edifying literature. The vocabulary and cadences of the Psalms saturate his expression of the range of human passions from joy to despair. The essays in this first tome seek to elucidate the crucial rhetorical uses to which he put key passages from the Old Testament, the sources that influenced him to do this, and his reasons for doing so.
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KierKegaard and the BiBle tome i: the old testament Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources Volume 1, Tome I Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources is a publication of the søren Kierkegaard research Centre General Editor Jon stewart Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre, University of Copenhagen, Denmark Editorial Board Katalin nun peter ŠaJda Advisory Board istvÁn CzaKÓ Finn gredal Jensen david d. possen heiKo sChulz This volume was published with the generous financial support of the danish agency for science, technology and innovation Kierkegaard and the Bible tome i: the old testament Edited by lee C. Barrett and Jon stewart First published 2010 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2010 lee C. Barrett, Jon stewart and the contributors lee C. Barrett and Jon stewart have asserted their right under the Copyright, designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Kierkegaard and the Bible. tome 1, the old testament – (Kierkegaard research ; v. 1) 1. Kierkegaard, søren, 1813–1855. 2. Bible–use–history– 19th century. 3. hermeneutics–history–19th century. i. series ii. Barrett, lee C. iii. stewart, Jon 198.9–dc22 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kierkegaard and the Bible / lee C. Barrett. p. cm. — (Kierkegaard research: sources, reception, and resources) includes indexes. isBn 978-1-4094-0285-5 (v. 1 : hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Kierkegaard, søren, 1813–1855. 2. Bible—use—history—19th century. 3. Bible—Criticism, interpretation, etc.—history—19th century. i. Barrett, lee C. ii. title. B4378.B52B37 2009 220.6092—dc22 2009050212 isBn 9781409402855 (hbk) Cover design by Katalin nun. Contents List of Contributors Preface Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations PART I vii ix xiii xv INDIVIDUAL TEXTS AND FIGURES adam and eve: human Being and nothingness Timothy Dalrymple 3 abraham: Framing Fear and Trembling Timothy Dalrymple 43 moses: the positive and negative importance of moses in Kierkegaard’s thought Paul Martens 89 david and solomon: models of repentance and evasion of guilt Matthias Engelke 101 Job: Edification against Theodicy Timothy H. Polk 115 psalms: source of images and Contrasts Matthias Engelke 143 ecclesiastes: vanity, grief, and the distinctions of wisdom Will Williams 179 vi Kierkegaard and the Bible nebuchadnezzar: the King as image of transformation Matthias Engelke PART II 195 OVERVIEW ARTICLES Kierkegaard’s rewriting of Biblical narratives: the mirror of the text Iben Damgaard 207 Kierkegaard’s use of the old testament: From literary resource to the word of god Lori Unger Brandt 231 Kierkegaard’s use of the apocrypha: is it “scripture” or “good for reading”? W. Glenn Kirkconnell 253 Index of Persons Index of Subjects 265 271 list of Contributors Lori Unger Brandt, toronto school of theology, 47 Queen’s park Crescent east, toronto, ontario, m5s 2C3, Canada. Timothy Dalrymple, Center on the study of religion, Barker Center, harvard university, Cambridge, ma, 02138, usa. Iben Damgaard, department of systematic theology, aarhus university, tåsingegade 3, 8000, Århus C, denmark. Matthias Engelke, pfarrerhaus, steegerstr. 34, 41334 nettetal-lobberich, germany. W. Glenn Kirkconnell, department of humanities and Foreign languages, p–152, santa Fe College, 3000 nw 83rd st., gainesville, Fl, 32606, usa. Paul Martens, department of religion, Baylor university, one Bear place #97284, waco, tX 76798–7284, usa. Timothy H. Polk, hamline university, Box 132, 1536 hewitt ave, st. paul, mn, 55104, usa. Will Williams, department of religion, Baylor university, one Bear place #97284, waco, tX, 76798–7284, usa. preface the articles in this volume all explore Kierkegaard’s complex use of the Bible, a use that pervades and sometimes even structures his literature. the authors of these essays use source-critical research and the tools of many different disciplines, ranging from literary criticism to theology and biblical studies, to situate Kierkegaard’s appropriation of the biblical material in his cultural and intellectual context. The essays seek to identify the possible sources that may have influenced his understanding and employment of scripture, and to describe the debates about the Bible that may have shaped, perhaps indirectly, his attitudes toward it. whenever possible, the authors have sought to document the texts that were influential, either positively or negatively, for Kierkegaard’s reading of the Bible. the authors also pay close attention to Kierkegaard’s actual hermeneutic practice, carefully analyzing the implicit interpretive moves that he makes as well as his more explicit statements about the significance of various biblical passages. This close reading of Kierkegaard’s texts enables the authors to elucidate the unique and sometimes odd features of his frequent appeals to scripture. many of the essays in this volume deal with particular biblical characters, such as abraham and Job, who were important to Kierkegaard, or portions of the Bible that played significant roles in Kierkegaard’s authorship, such as the Psalms, the Pauline epistles, and the crucifixion narratives. Other essays present overviews of various aspects of Kierkegaard’s interpretive practice such as his renarration of biblical stories, his latin translations of the greek new testament, his appropriation of contemporary biblical scholarship, and his approach to the old testament. Because the Christian canon with which he wrestled was and is composed of two different testaments, this volume devotes one tome to the old testament and a second tome to the new testament. the canonically disputed literature of the apocrypha is considered in the tome on the old testament. reading Kierkegaard with an eye to his use of the Bible is essential for making sense of his texts. Kierkegaard was an intensively scripturally shaped writer whose natural idiom was the language of the Bible and who viewed the world through biblical lenses. oddly, this aspect of Kierkegaard’s work has rarely received sustained attention. although a few monographs have been written about Kierkegaard’s use of the Bible,1 this literature seems puny when compared to the vast corpus that see, for example, matthias engelke, Kierkegaard und das alte Testament. Zum Einfluss der alttestamentarischen Bücher auf Kierkegaards Gesamtwerk, rheinbach: Cmz-verlag 1998 (Arbeiten zur Theologiegeschichte, vol. 3); peter parkov, Bibelen i Søren Kierkegaards Samlede Værker, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1983; timothy polk, The Biblical Kierkegaard: Reading by the Rule of Faith, macon, georgia: mercer university press 1997; Jolita pons, 1 x Kierkegaard and the Bible has been produced dealing with Kierkegaard’s relation to various philosophical and theological traditions. Kierkegaard the philosopher, Kierkegaard the religious thinker, and Kierkegaard the poet are relatively well-known, but Kierkegaard the biblical expositor is still rather obscure. the proper characterization of Kierkegaard’s biblical interpretive practice is surprisingly elusive. Kierkegaard lived during an era that was experiencing a profound upheaval in the way that the Bible was viewed. From the eighteenth century on, various styles of historical and literary criticism of the Bible had been emerging, often with disorienting consequences. these interpretive trajectories implied that the official theologies of the various confessional traditions had often misconstrued the Bible in order to accommodate it to the constraints of doctrinal orthodoxy. when the biblical writings were situated in their original contexts and analyzed with the tools appropriate to analogous types of literature, they were often seen to mean something quite different from the church’s construal of their message. even more radically, literary and philological analyses seemed to reveal that the final forms of the biblical books were actually conglomerates composed of diverse and sometimes discordant sources. Furthermore, the enlightenment’s suspicion of supernaturalism fed a growing skepticism about the veracity of the historical claims made by the biblical texts. all of these factors contributed to a wide-ranging debate about the authorship, the historical accuracy, and the very meaning of the texts. as a result, profound questions were raised about the proper way to use the texts to authorize convictions and values. the Bible’s capacity to guide the lives of believers was rendered problematic. the responses to these new challenges were distributed along an expansive spectrum of hermeneutic options, ranging from the assertion of the biblical texts’ absolute inspiration, authenticity, and accuracy to the suspicion that much of the biblical material was the product of human ideology-construction. various mediating orientations developed, salvaging the authority of the Bible by regarding it as the articulation of particularly potent myths, or as the sublime expression of human religious self-consciousness, or as a human and culturally conditioned witness to god’s self-revelation. Kierkegaard’s writing shows awareness of these issues. From his theological studies and his continuing reading in theological literature he would have been familiar with the prevalent hermeneutic options. however, his response to this debate was curious, for he generally refrained from engaging in the scholarly conversation, and often ignored it. he did not align himself with either the biblical right that advocated for the historical veracity and inspired quality of the texts or with the biblical left that treated the Bible as a fallible expression of human religious experience. nor did he overtly associate himself with any of the mediating positions. in fact, Kierkegaard sometimes warned of the deleterious spiritual consequences of taking any of the interpretive schools too seriously: “all this interpreting and interpreting and scholarly research and new scholarly research that is produced Stealing a Gift: Kierkegaard’s Pseudonyms and the Bible, new York: Fordham university press 2004; l. Joseph rosas, Scripture in the Thought of Søren Kierkegaard, nashville, tennessee: Broadman & holman 1994. Preface xi 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.”2 against the background of this contest of interpretive schools with increasingly self-conscious methodological procedures, Kierkegaard’s use of the Bible can seem enigmatic. Consequently, in different ways all of the authors in this volume seek to clarify Kierkegaard’s reasons for finding the terms of the academic debate to be less than edifying. in different ways, all of the authors in this volume also attempt to illumine Kierkegaard’s alternative way of engaging scripture. it is evident that what Kierkegaard did with scripture was intentional and patterned, and was not whimsical or arbitrary. the authors included here seek to clarify more exactly the nature of his interpretive practice that did not quite fit any contemporary mold. The first tome of this volume deals specifically with Kierkegaard’s use of the old testament. this topic presents unique challenges because of the partial marginalization of the old testament in the protestant theology of Kierkegaard’s era. For most northern european protestants of the nineteenth century, the old testament was of secondary importance to the new testament, that part of the canon in which the redemptive grace of god was more clearly revealed. often the old testament was regarded as a compendium of laws that had been superseded by the gospel (although the old testament’s foreshadowings of grace were often noted). By more theologically conservative readers the old testament was treated as a reservoir of Christological typologies whose meaning could only be discerned by reading them in the light of the gospels. with more progressive higher critics the old testament often did not fare any better, for it was often disparaged as an articulation of a religion that was ethnically particularistic, legalistically alienating, ritualistically superstitious, and excessively concerned about this-worldly felicity. moreover, the old testament’s prevalent view of god was declared to be abstract, heteronymously pitting an autocratic deity against a subservient and passive humanity. Kierkegaard was aware of these attitudes toward the old testament. to an extent, he even shared some of them. in his authorship he certainly used the old testament much less frequently than he did the new. he owned very few books expositing the old testament, and never devoted as much attention to hebrew as he did to greek. he is quite clear that for him the center of the canon is Jesus Christ as savior and prototype. however, passages and themes from the old testament do occupy a position of startling importance in his writings. old testament characters such as abraham and Job often play crucial and even decisive roles in his texts. snatches of Old Testament wisdom figure prominently in his edifying literature. The vocabulary and cadences of the psalms saturate his expression of the range of human passions from joy to despair. the essays in this tome seek to elucidate the crucial rhetorical uses to which he put key passages from the old testament, and his reasons for doing so. the new testament generated even more heated and often vitriolic disputes than did the old testament during Kierkegaard’s era, for more seemed to be at stake theologically. the interpretive issues raised by new testament scholars 2 SKS 13, 61 / FSE, 34. xii Kierkegaard and the Bible touched not the periphery but the very core of the Christian religion. the depth of the discrepancies among the four different gospels had been exposed, and various rival theories had been formulated to explain their divergent chronologies and perspectives. doubts were raised about the authorship of some of the allegedly pauline epistles, and the canonicity of the pastoral epistles was questioned. the evident differences between paul and James continued to worry interpreters, as did the obvious uniqueness of the Johannine literature. early attempts were made to situate Jesus in his historical context and to reinterpret his significance through the lenses of the deists, Kant, hegel, schelling, and the romantics. the result was a baffling plethora of reconceptualizations of Jesus, ranging from Jesus the very thisworldly political messiah of Jewish expectations, to Jesus the concrete instantiation of the generalized unity of the divine and the human, to Jesus the exemplar of absolute god-consciousness. the sheer variety of interpretive options tended to undermine the certainty traditionally associated with faith and threatened to defer all religious commitments until the scholarly disputes had been resolved. as with the old testament, Kierkegaard was aware of these developments in new testament scholarship and troubled by them. Because these scholarly projects generated alternative understandings of the significance of Jesus, they impinged directly on his own work. it was crucial for Kierkegaard that Jesus be presented as both the enactment of god’s reconciliation with humanity and as the prototype for humanity to emulate. Consequently, Kierkegaard had to struggle with the proper way persuasively to explicate the significance of Jesus in a situation of decreasing academic consensus about Jesus. he also had to contend with contested interpretations of James and paul, two biblical authors vital for his work. as a result, Kierkegaard ruminated about the proper way to appropriate the new testament and used material from it carefully and deliberately. the authors in the new testament tome seek to clarify different dimensions of Kierkegaard’s interpretive theory and practice as he sought to avoid the twin pitfalls of academic skepticism and passionless biblical traditionalism. Kierkegaard’s unique appropriation of biblical themes is vital for understanding his authorship. it is hoped that this volume will stimulate more research into this relatively neglected aspect of Kierkegaard’s life and literature. acknowledgements our deep gratitude must be expressed to Katalin nun, whose painstaking bibliographic work, thorough familiarity with the literature, precision, and impeccable editorial judgment vastly contributed to the final value of this volume. We would also like to thank heiko schulz, istván Czakó, and peter Šajda for their useful suggestions for the bibliographies, and Finn gredal Jensen for his careful proofreading. as with the other volumes of this series, this one would not have been possible if it were not for the kind and competent help of nicholas wain, philip hillyer, rachel lynch, and the kind people at ashgate. we must confess our profound appreciation for the staff of the phillip schaff library of lancaster theological seminary who made much of this editorial phase possible. Bryce rich, william marshall, and Chris Beldan deserve particular commendation for their seemingly supernatural abilities to procure elusive and obscure texts and for their patient willingness to help a neophyte explore the mysteries of electronic research. a special thanks must be offered to all of the authors, many of whom allowed their research interests and instincts to be pushed in directions they might not ordinarily have chosen. we are indebted to their willingness to tolerate editorial intrusions and their patience with delays. list of abbreviations Danish Abbreviations B&A Breve og Aktstykker vedrørende Søren Kierkegaard, ed. by niels thulstrup, vols. 1-2, Copenhagen: munksgaard 1953–54. Bl.art. S. Kierkegaard’s Bladartikler, med Bilag samlede efter Forfatterens Død, udgivne som Supplement til hans øvrige Skrifter, ed. by rasmus nielsen, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1857. EP Af Søren Kierkegaards Efterladte Papirer, vols. 1–9, ed. by h.p. Barfod and hermann gottsched, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1869–81. Pap. Søren Kierkegaards Papirer, vols. i to Xi–3, ed. by peter andreas heiberg, victor Kuhr and einer torsting, Copenhagen: gyldendalske Boghandel, nordisk Forlag 1909–48; second, expanded ed., vols. i to Xi–3, by niels thulstrup, vols. Xii to Xiii supplementary volumes, ed. by niels thulstrup, vols. Xiv to Xvi index by niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1968–78. SKS Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter, vols. 1–28, K1–K28, ed. by niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Joakim garff, Jette Knudsen, Johnny Kondrup, alastair mcKinnon and Finn hauberg mortensen, Copenhagen: gads Forlag 1997ff. SV1 Samlede Værker, ed. by a.B. drachmann, Johan ludvig heiberg and h.o. lange, vols. i– Xiv, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1901–06. English Abbreviations AN Armed Neutrality, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1998. AR On Authority and Revelation, The Book on Adler, trans. by walter lowrie, princeton: princeton university press 1955. ASKB The Auctioneer’s Sales Record of the Library of Søren Kierkegaard, ed. by h.p. rohde, Copenhagen: the royal library 1967. xvi Kierkegaard and the Bible BA The Book on Adler, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1998. C The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1997. CA The Concept of Anxiety, trans. by reidar thomte in collaboration with albert B. anderson, princeton: princeton university press 1980. CD Christian Discourses, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1997. CI The Concept of Irony, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1989. CIC The Concept of Irony, trans. with an introduction and notes by lee m. Capel, london: Collins 1966. COR The Corsair Affair; Articles Related to the Writings, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1982. CUP1 Concluding Unscientific Postscript, vol. 1, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1982. CUP2 Concluding Unscientific Postscript, vol. 2, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1982. EO1 Either/Or, part i, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1987. EO2 Either/Or, part ii, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1987. EOP Either/Or, trans. by alastair hannay, harmondsworth: penguin Books 1992. EPW Early Polemical Writings, among others: From the Papers of One Still Living; Articles from Student Days; The Battle Between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars, trans. by Julia watkin, princeton: princeton university press 1990. EUD Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1990. FSE For Self-Examination, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1990. List of Abbreviations xvii FT Fear and Trembling, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1983. FTP Fear and Trembling, trans. by alastair hannay, harmondsworth: penguin Books 1985. JC Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1985. JFY Judge for Yourself!, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1990. JP Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, vols. 1–6, ed. and trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, assisted by gregor malantschuk (vol. 7, index and Composite Collation), Bloomington and london: indiana university press 1967–78. KAC Kierkegaard’s Attack upon “Christendom,” 1854–1855, trans. by walter lowrie, princeton: princeton university press 1944. KJN Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, vols. 1–11, ed. by niels Jørgen Cappelørn, alastair hannay, david Kangas, Bruce h. Kirmmse, george pattison, vanessa rumble, and K. Brian söderquist, princeton and oxford: princeton university press 2007ff. LD Letters and Documents, trans. by henrik rosenmeier, princeton: princeton university press 1978. LR A Literary Review, trans. by alastair hannay, harmondsworth: penguin Books 2001. M The Moment and Late Writings, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1998. P Prefaces / Writing Sampler, trans. by todd w. nichol, princeton: princeton university press 1997. PC Practice in Christianity, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1991. PF Philosophical Fragments, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1985. PJ Papers and Journals: A Selection, trans. by alastair hannay, harmondsworth: penguin Books 1996. xviii Kierkegaard and the Bible PLR Prefaces: Light Reading for Certain Classes as the Occasion May Require, trans. by william mcdonald, tallahassee: Florida state university press 1989. PLS Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. by david F. swenson and walter lowrie, princeton: princeton university press 1941. PV The Point of View including On My Work as an Author, The Point of View for My Work as an Author, and Armed Neutrality, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1998. PVL The Point of View for My Work as an Author including On My Work as an Author, trans. by walter lowrie, new York and london: oxford university press 1939. R Repetition, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1983. SBL Notes of Schelling’s Berlin Lectures, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1989. SLW Stages on Life’s Way, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1988. SUD The Sickness unto Death, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1980. SUDP The Sickness unto Death, trans. by alastair hannay, london and new York: penguin Books 1989. TA Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age. A Literary Review, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1978. TD Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1993. UD Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1993. WA Without Authority including The Lily in the Field and the Bird of the Air, Two Ethical-Religious Essays, Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays, An Upbuilding Discourse, Two Discourses at the Communion on Fridays, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1997. List of Abbreviations xix WL Works of Love, trans. by howard v. hong and edna h. hong, princeton: princeton university press 1995. WS Writing Sampler, trans. by todd w. nichol, princeton: princeton university press 1997. part i individual texts and Figures adam and eve: human Being and nothingness timothy dalrymple although the Bible in Kierkegaard’s denmark was still the reigning religious authority, the principal collection of stories and teachings that framed human life in a broad vision of meaning and purpose, its explanatory sovereignty had been severely compromised. other sources of insight in the natural and social sciences had already begun to shine their lights on the human creature. the hermeneutic of suspicion that today so permeates the intellectual culture of the west, which regards ancient texts as the quaint literary vestigia of pre-scientific societies, had begun to press its case, and the vivisection of the Jewish and Christian scriptures into so many straining cords was well underway. hobbes and spinoza had long since challenged the mosaic authorship of the pentateuch, and groundbreaking works of biblical criticism were published long before Kierkegaard wrote The Concept of Anxiety in 1844.1 Major figures from Hobbes and Hume to Rousseau and Kant had examined human nature in ways not grounded on genesis. Karl rosenkranz (1805–79) had generated his Psychologie through conceptual distinctions, not gotthold ephraim lessing (1729–81) published the Wolfenbütteler Fragmente, from hermann samuel reimarus’ (1694–1768) manuscript, Apologie oder Schutzschrift für die vernünftigen Verehrer Gottes, from 1774 to 1777 in his Zur Geschichte und Literatur. Kierkegaard possessed lessing’s collected works, see Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s sämmtliche Schriften, vols. 1–32, vols. 1–28, Berlin: vossische Buchhandlung 1825–27; vols. 29–32 Berlin and stettin: nicolaische Buchhandlung 1828 (ASKB 1747–1762). Johann gottfried Eichhorn (1752–1827) had put out his influential Einleitung in das Alte Testament, vols. 1–5, leipzig: weidmann & reich 1780–83, and wilhelm martin leberecht de wette (1780–1849) wrote many works Kierkegaard possessed, including his Lehrbuch der historisch-kritischen Einleitung in die Bibel Alten und Neuen Testamentes, vols. 1–2 (in 1 tome), 4th ed., Berlin: g. reimer 1833 (ASKB 80) and his Lehrbuch die hebräisch-judischen Archäologie, 3rd ed., leipzig: vogel 1842 (ASKB 872). david Friedrich strauss’ (1808–74) Das Leben Jesu kritisch bearbeitet, tübingen: osiander 1835–36, was much discussed in the years when Kierkegaard was reaching his intellectual maturity; he possessed strauss’ Fremstilling af den christelige Troeslære i dens historiske Udvikling og i dens Kamp med den moderne Videnskab, vols. 1–2, trans. by hans Brøchner, Copenhagen: h.C. Klein 1842–43 (ASKB 803–804), and works on strauss, such as Franz von Baader’s Über das Leben Jesu, munich: Franz 1836 (ASKB 407), and Julius schaller’s Der historische Christus und die Philosophie. Kritik der Grundidee des Werks das Leben Jesu, von Dr. D.F. Strauss, leipzig: otto wigand 1838 (ASKB 759). see also the reading notes on the latter in SKS 18, 318–37, KK:2 / KJN 2, 292–308. 1 4 Timothy Dalrymple through reflection on the biblical narrative, and Kierkegaard could have done the same.2 in this environment, under these circumstances, the fact that Kierkegaard should root such fundamental convictions in the soil of eden, that he should write his most psychological work expositing the temptation and Fall of adam, surely tells us something about Kierkegaard and what he sought to communicate. another way to frame the problem is to note that Kierkegaard was a frequent but also a highly selective biblical commentator. some veins of insight are deeply mined, like the binding of isaac, the suffering of Job, paul’s thorn, and Christ’s “abasement,” while the Flood, the exodus, and the birth narratives are scarcely touched. the lilies and birds are evoked in many works, while eucharistic metaphors of bread, blood and water are not. Kierkegaard commented on those portions of the scriptural heritage that helped him communicate what he considered most important. what, then, of the eden stories? how did it serve Kierkegaard’s purposes to employ such a fiercely contested text to set forth his view of human beings in relation to god? this article surveys the history of Kierkegaard’s interpretation of the adam stories and views that history synoptically to discern patterns within it. in fair warning, it is a lengthy essay, since adam stands with abraham and Job as the old testament figures Kierkegaard examined most often. Two claims are put forward. First, Kierkegaard’s interpretation of adam is best understood through three theological principles: creatio ex nihilo, felix culpa, and the “second adam” or the new being in Christ. second, in his reading of the eden narrative Kierkegaard is concerned not only with the problems of knowledge and human nature, but also with the problem of evil. The Concept of Anxiety is more than theological anthropology. it is also theodicy. to be precise, it is a distinctly late-modern, psychological version of what leibniz had called theodicy. early references will clarify the three theological principles underlying his vision of adam and of essential human being, yet two works published over the course of six months, an upbuilding discourse on “every good gift” from december 1843 and The Concept of Anxiety from June 1844, advance the argument most strongly. Kierkegaard addresses the nature of spirit and the emergence of sin and suffering through a narrative of fundamental human experience, spanning the interval from the first creation and the first Adam to the second creation and second adam. the individual is created from nothing and given freedom, yet confronts in anxiety the nothing of its freedom and posits itself apart from god in sin. in determining itself as a self, the individual strives to be a self apart from god, effecting a “split” between itself and god, and exchanging truth for untruth, freedom for unfreedom, being for nothingness. Yet the self that will be instructed by suffering and anxiety in its nothingness apart from god will learn to rest in God and receive true being and freedom. The solitary spirit flies from nothing to nothingness, and in that nothingness finds its fullest being in the grace of the selfgiving god. Johann Karl Friedrich rosenkranz, Psychologie, oder die Wissenschaft vom subjectiven Geist, Königsberg: Bornträger 1837 (ASKB 744). the text is cited several times in The Concept of Anxiety, for instance, in SKS 4, 337 / CA, 30. SKS 4, 447–8 / CA, 147–9. 2 Adam and Eve: Human Being and Nothingness 5 I. Adam in the Early Years (1834–41) Adam is too central a figure in Western philosophical and theological discourse for this article to supply a comprehensive account of the many figures who would have contributed to Kierkegaard’s understanding of him. some of what leibniz, Kant, hegel, and schelling wrote on adam will be examined along the way, yet any exhaustive account would begin with the danes of the golden age, from Kierkegaard’s instructors at the university to the ministers of the churches he attended and various other Copenhagen luminaries,3 including henrik nicolai Clausen (1793–1877), Jakob peter mynster (1775–1854), Johan ludvig heiberg (1791–1860) and hans lassen martensen (1808–84),4 and would proceed to german-language philosophers, theologians and biblical critics, many of whom are referenced in Kierkegaard’s early journal and notebook entries on adam and the Fall: Johann georg hamann (1730–88),5 Franz von Baader (1765–1841),6 Friedrich schleiermacher (1768– 1834),7 anton günther (1783–1863),8 Johann eduard erdmann (1805–92),9 philipp Articles on the following figures can be found in Kierkegaard and His Contemporaries: The Culture of Golden Age Denmark, ed. by Jon stewart, Berlin: walter de gruyter 2003 (Kierkegaard Studies Monograph Series, vol. 10); Kierkegaard and His German Contemporaries, tomes i–iii, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2007–8 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 6); also see Kierkegaard and His Danish Contemporaries, tomes i–iii, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 7). 4 some of Kierkegaard’s earliest references to the adam story are in his notes on Clausen’s lectures on dogmatics in 1833–34, in SKS 19, 35, not1:6; also see the notes from the 1839–40 lectures, in SKS 19, 83, not1:9. martensen tutored Kierkegaard in schleiermacher’s Glaubenslehre in 1834, when Kierkegaard was concerned about the doctrine of predestination, and Kierkegaard attended martensen’s “lectures on speculative dogmatics” in 1837–38. 5 see SKS 17, 209, CC:25 / KJN 1, 200. SKS 18, 32, ee:82 / KJN 2, 27. SKS 18, 311, JJ:511–511.b / KJN 2, 286. hamann helped Kierkegaard develop the category of anxiety through which haufniensis will interpret the Fall. 6 Pap. i C 31 / JP 4, 3990 and SKS 17, 43, aa:22.2 / KJN 1, 35, referring to Franz Baader, Vorlesungen über speculative Dogmatik, vol. 1, stuttgart, tübingen: Cotta 1828 [vols. 2–5, münster: theissing 1830–38], see especially vol. 1, pp. 105ff. (ASKB 396). Baader wrote extensively on the problem of original sin; see the laudatory reference in The Concept of Anxiety to Baader and his work on temptation, in SKS 4, 345 / CA, 39. 7 schleiermacher’s “relative predestination” was especially important to Kierkegaard in his student years; see Pap. i a 295 / JP 3, 3547. also Pap. i a 273 / JP 2, 1096 equates Schleiermacher’s “religion” with the “first immediacy” which Kierkegaard will ascribe to the prelapsarian state. schleiermacher is also cited in SKS 17, 41, aa:22 / KJN 1, 35. 8 SKS 17, 42, aa:22 / KJN 1, 35. günther was a Catholic priest and neo-scholastic philosopher who condemned pantheism and sought to establish theistic philosophy on the basis of descartes. Kierkegaard collected a number of his works; see ASKB 520–523, 869– 870, and 1672. 9 SKS 17, 219, dd:8 / JP 3, 3998. Kierkegaard took reading notes in 1837 (SKS 19, 164, not4:41b) on erdmann’s Vorlesungen über Glauben und Wissen als Einleitung in die Dogmatik und Religionsphilosophie gehalten und auf den Wunsch seiner Zühorer herausgegeben, Berlin: duncker und humblot 1837 (ASKB 479). 3 6 Timothy Dalrymple marheineke (1780–1846),10 immanuel hermann Fichte (1796–1879),11 Julius müller (1801–78),12 Bruno Bauer (1809–82), and the aforementioned rosenkranz.13 Yet even this would not be sufficient. The positions of Augustine, Luther, and Meister eckhart lie in the background, and in The Concept of Anxiety Kierkegaard refers to numerous sources in historical theology from pelagianism to aquinas to “federal theology” to the augsburg Confession.14 Kierkegaard was immaculately educated, and seems to have made a particular effort to familiarize himself with the wealth of available interpretations on sin, predestination, and freedom. a more focused approach is required. Common though it is to refer to the “story” of adam and eve, there are four distinct stories or story threads Kierkegaard employs: the creation of the human ex nihilo and in the divine image; the naming of the animals; the fashioning of eve; and the temptation and Fall.15 there are also at least four distinct uses to which Kierkegaard puts these threads: the psychological use—a term which referred at the time to something like a phenomenology of the human self in its emergence, development and structure, a self which for Kierkegaard was theologically constructed;16 the epistemological use, concerning the relationship between the knower and the known; the sexual use, concerning the see the relevant portion of Kierkegaard’s notes on marheineke’s lectures, SKS 19, 249–64, not9:1, discussed in the second section of this essay. marheineke was theology professor at the university of Berlin, and had been co-pastor with Friedrich schleiermacher at the holy trinity Church. 11 SKS 17, 41–3, aa:22 / KJN 1, 35–6. Kierkegaard also refers, in his dissertation, to the elder Johann gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) and “evil in the Fichtean sense of the word, apathy and indolence” (SKS 1, 312 / CI, 276). 12 Müller is first cited in Kierkegaard’s Marheineke notes, in SKS 19, 253, not9:1. in 1850 Kierkegaard refers extensively to müller’s Die christliche Lehre von der Sünde, vols. 1–2, 3rd ed., Breslau: Josef max 1849 (ASKB 689–90), although it is possible he had read it before writing The Concept of Anxiety; see Christine axt-piscalar, “Julius müller: parallels in the doctrines of sin and Freedom,” in Kierkegaard and His German Contemporaries, tome ii, Theology, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2007 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 6), pp. 153–4, note 46. 13 Kierkegaard took notes on rosenkranz’s Encyklopædie der theologischen Wissenschaften, halle: C.a. schwetschke und sohn 1831, in SKS 18, 343–52, KK:4 / KJN 2, 314–22, and notes in SKS 17, 219–22, dd:10 / KJN 1, 211–4 on “eine parallele zur religionsphilosophie,” from Bruno Bauer’s Zeitschrift für spekulative Theologie, vols. 1–3, Berlin: dümmler 1836–38, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 1–32 (ASKB 354–357). also see SKS 17, 213, dd:1 / KJN 1, 205. Kierkegaard made frequent use of Bauer’s Zeitschrift für spekulative Theologie, and read Bauer’s article, the first section of which concerns the creation narrative: “die urgeschichte der menschheit nach dem biblischen Berichte der genesis, kritisch untersucht,” in vol. 3, no. 1, 1837, pp. 125–210. 14 SKS 4, 332–4 / CA, 25–7. 15 these four “threads” are found in gen 1:26–27 and 2:7; 2:18–20; 2:21–25; 3:1–24. the Bible employed in this study is the Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version with Apocrypha, oxford: oxford university press 1989. 16 rosenkranz’s Psychologie is subdivided by anthropology, phenomenology and pneumatology. albert anderson describes the “psychology” of Kierkegaard as “a phenomenology that is based on an ontological view of man, the fundamental presupposition 10 Adam and Eve: Human Being and Nothingness 7 relationship between male and female; and the theodical use, concerning freedom, sin, and suffering. when these are properly differentiated, patterns emerge. the naming of the animals is primarily employed to image the nature of knowledge or truth prior to the irruption of sin, and the fashioning of eve of course expounds sexual difference and erotic love.17 More importantly, the first and fourth threads weave together a narrative of universal human experience. Kierkegaard’s distinctive contribution to the interpretation of adam is in the construction of this narrative—and i will argue the narrative is structured by three theological principles: the creatio ex nihilo (the creation of all things from nothing), felix culpa (the Fall as a “blessed fault,” leading to a greater good), and the second adam (a restored humanity in Christ). Before examining the early references according to these theological principles, the terms themselves must be defined. In telling a narrative structured by these principles, Kierkegaard is drawing on well-established Christian traditions. to begin with the first: the Latin ex nihilo means “out of nothing” and differentiates the Christian creation story from other cosmogonies in which the world is refashioned from preexistent matter or chaos (ex materia) or out of the divine being itself (ex Deo). If God is the absolute free cause of all finite existence, then the finite world is not necessary and eternal but possible and therefore contingent on god’s conservatio, or continuous creative will. since creatures possess no “aseity,” no independent power of being, they depend upon god for their very being. although the basic assertion of creatio ex nihilo is arguably implicit in the hebrew scriptures18 and in the new testament,19 it is openly declared as early as 2 maccabees and developed philosophically and theologically in ancient Jewish and Christian apologists. The of which is the transcendent reality of the individual, whose intuitively discernible character reveals the existence of an eternal component” (CI, p. xiv). 17 Kierkegaard refers to eve rarely in the early journals, and then typically in a derisive tone. For eve and the relations between the sexes, see Pap. i a 140 / JP 3, 3801. SKS 17, 42, aa:22 / KJN 1, 35. SKS 17, 248, dd:84 / KJN 1, 239. SKS 18, 40–1, ee:105 / KJN 2, 35–6. Pap. iii B 41:25 / JP 2, 2589. Also, his first published article, “Another Defense of Woman’s great abilities,” says that eve’s “craving for deeper knowledge” led her to attend the serpent’s “philosophical lectures,” and thus all should receive “the apple of knowledge” from woman (SV1 Xiii, 6, 8 / EPW, 3, 5). “ogsaa et Forsvar for Qvindens høie anlœg” was published in the Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, Interimsblad, 34, december 17, 1834, columns 4–6. For other references among the early writings, see SKS 17, 290, dd:208 / EPW, 117. 18 there are ongoing disputes over the meanings of bara (“to create,” employed throughout the first creation account, Genesis 1:1–2:4a) and asah (“to make,” used in genesis 1:7, 16, 25, 31, 2:3 and 2:4b), and whether either genesis account intends to speak of a creation ex nihilo. see Jon d. levensen, Creation and the Persistence of Evil, princeton: princeton university press 1994. what is important for our sake is that creatio ex nihilo was taken for centuries as a legitimate interpretation of genesis, and that Kierkegaard himself took it to apply not only to the creation in general but also specifically to the human individual. Kierkegaard is aware of the “double account” in gen 1–2 (see SKS 19, 23, not1:6. SKS 18, 372, KK:8 / KJN 2, 340), but makes little of it, and rarely speaks of the forming from dust. 19 outside of gen 1:1–2:4, see gen 5:1–2, 6:6, 9:6; ps 33:6; is 40:26, 42:5, 45:18. in extracanonical sources, see 2 maccabees 7:8 and 4 esdras 4:38. in the new testament: Jn 1:3, rom 4:17, 1 Cor 1:28, Col 1:15–17, heb 1:2, 11:3. 8 Timothy Dalrymple Shepherd of Hermas in the second century declares that god “created, increased and multiplied that which exists out of that which does not.”20 For tertullian creatio ex nihilo is sufficient proof of God’s power to resurrect the dead; he advises: “Trust therefore that he has brought forth this everything out of nothing, and you will at once know god by trusting that god has so much power.”21 augustine presents the doctrine over against manichaeism, as did the early apologists, in order to defend the unconditioned omnipotence of god and the original goodness of the material world.22 as one of today’s theologians writes, the world “exists as creation, as creatura, as contingent being; its possibility of existence, its particular constitution and its structures are rooted in its permanent ontological dependence on god the Creator. this contingence of the world as creation not only characterizes its being, its ontological status, but also its intelligibility and its created goodness.”23 Felix culpa, or “fortunate fault,” refers to the paradox that adam’s sin, which exiled humankind from the garden and cast the creation into pain and strife, also prepared the way for the incarnation, the demonstration of divine love on the cross, and the redemption of all things. if god is omniscient, it is argued, then presumably god foreknew that adam would defy him, and yet with this foreknowledge permitted adam’s freedom; if god is omnibenevolent, then god should not have permitted the Fall, or indeed created the world, unless god also foreknew that it would lead through salvific history to a greater good. Creatio ex nihilo is indirectly theodical insofar as it posits the goodness of the world,24 yet the felix culpa is directly theodical insofar as it defends god’s permission of sin and expresses the Christian hope that divine love will prevail over evil and deliver the world from sin and suffering. thus the roman liturgy, since at least eleven centuries before Kierkegaard, has celebrated holy saturdays with the Exultet: “O felix culpa quae talem et tantum meruit habere redemptorum!” or in the words of ambrose of milan in the fourth century, the sin of Adam “has brought more benefit to us than harm”; “felix ruina, quae reparatur in melius.”25 augustine and pope leo i (died 461) agreed, and gregory the great (ca. 540–604) put it thus: Apostolic Fathers: Volume II. Epistle of Barnabas. Papias and Quadratus. The Shepherd of Hermas, trans. by Bart ehrman, Cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press 2003 (Loeb Classical Library), p. 177. For more information, see gerhard may, Creatio Ex Nihilo: The Doctrine of ‘Creation out of Nothing’ in Early Christian Thought, trans. by a. s. worral, edinburgh: t. & t. Clark 1994. 21 tertullian, Treatise on the Resurrection, trans. by ernest evans, london: spCK 1960, p. 31 (11:5–10). 22 see n. Joseph torchia, ‘Creatio ex nihilo’ and the Theology of St. Augustine: The Anti-Manichaean Polemic and Beyond, new York: peter lang 1999 (American University Studies, series vii, Theology of Religion, vol. 205). 23 Christoph schwöbel, “god, Creation and the Christian Community,” in The Doctrine of Creation: Essays in Dogmatics, History and Philosophy, ed. by Colin gunton, edinburgh: t. & t. Clark 2004 , p. 164. 24 See David R. Griffin, “Creation Out of Nothing, Creation Out of Chaos and The problem of evil,” in Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy, ed. by stephen t. davis, louisville, Kentucky: westminster John Knox press 2001, pp. 108–44. 25 ambrose, De Institutione Virginis, 17, 104; see ps, 39:20. 20 Adam and Eve: Human Being and Nothingness 9 what greater fault than that by which we all die? and what greater goodness than that by which we are freed from death? and certainly, unless adam had sinned, it would not have behooved our Redeemer to take on our flesh. Almighty God saw beforehand that from that evil because of which men were to die, he would bring about a good which would overcome that evil.…[w]ho of the elect would not willingly endure still worse evils, rather than not have so great a redeemer?26 The same standpoint is found in figures more proximate to Kierkegaard; Calvin comprehended cosmic history as serving the greater glorification of God, and in milton’s Paradise Lost adam surveys (through the prophecy of an archangel) all the suffering that will come in consequence of his deed, along with the surpassing goodness of the salvation of humankind through Christ, and wonders whether he should lament over his sin or rejoice over its consequences.27 Kierkegaard notes erdmann’s deft use of the metaphor when the latter writes that the Fall, seen from the proper perspective, is actually “a forward step,”28 and yet Kierkegaard himself will articulate a much fuller view, in which it is not merely in the overcoming of sin that the fortune of this fault lies, but also in an emergence of spirit that is inseparable from the process in which sin is chosen. there was less need to clarify the doctrine of the second adam in later theologies, since it was plainly impressed on the surface of the epistles of paul, and arguably the gospels. having entered into the condition of adam, Christ returns to the garden (of gethsemane) and passes the test that adam failed. adam grasped for the divine, yet Christ did not consider equality with god something to be grasped, but abased himself unto the cross.29 adam through his arrogant grasping at the fruit of the tree had plunged humankind into sin and suffering, strife, and estrangement; Christ through his humble sacrifice was lifted on “the tree,” a new tree of new life.30 it is easy to see, then, how this inverted parallelism could illuminate adam proleptically in relation to Christ, for adam was “a type of the one who was to come.” whereas “the first man, Adam” was made into a living being yet brought death into the world, “the last adam” or the “second man” is a “life-giving spirit” who breathed out the holy spirit on his apostles.31 Adam, first created, determined the conditions of human being under sin; Christ, uncreated, in becoming human and overcoming sin and death as human made possible a new way of being human before god, so anyone in him “is a new creation.” Christ redeems the world and confers a new being on those who rest in him: “As all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ,” the “first fruits” of the new life. paul writes, “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, gregory, In Primum Regum Expositiones, in Migne Patrologia Latina 79.222. Cited in english in a.o. lovejoy, “milton and the paradox of the Fortunate Fall,” A Journal of English Literature and History, vol. 4, no. 3, 1937, pp. 170–1. 27 see lovejoy, “milton and the paradox of the Fortunate Fall,” pp. 161–4. 28 SKS 17, 219, dd:8 / KJN 1, 211, referring to erdman’s essay, “Über den Begriff des sündenfalls und des Bösen,” in Bruno Bauer’s Zeitschrift für spekulative Theologie, vol. 2, no. 1, 1837, pp. 192ff. see Notebook 4 as well. 29 see phil 2:6. 30 see 1 pet 2:24; acts 5:30, 10:39, 13:29. 31 rom 5:18; 1 Cor 15:45–49; Jn 20:22. 26 10 Timothy Dalrymple we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.” Christ’s suffering is essential to this re-creation. Similarly, the Letter to the Hebrews observes, “It was fitting that god, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings.”32 Christ was the culmination of the providential history that adam had commenced; Christ vanquished that which had conquered adam; Christ by his act of righteousness not only reversed the effects of adam’s sin, but accomplished a higher reconciliation and communion with god. these theological principles shape Kierkegaard’s understanding of adam, as can be seen even in the early references. Though not universally affirmed in the philosophical discourse of his time (consider spinoza, schelling, and hegel), creatio ex nihilo was established ecclesially. Balle’s catechism declared that god “created heaven and earth out of nothing” (skabte Himmel og Jord af Intet), that humanity is “created after god’s own image,” and that god preserves all created things and governs the affairs of the world33—and Hutterus Redivivus hails “the calling forth of being from not being.”34 likewise the dogmatic theologies of Clausen and marheineke spoke of god’s creating (creatio primitiva, in the Clausen notes) and conserving (creatio continuata) all things out of nothing.35 so it is unsurprising that Kierkegaard should affirm the doctrine. As he writes in 1837, “God’s consciousness of things is their coming into being,” and apart from this divine consciousness all things would “instantly cease to exist.”36 he writes in the margin to an 1838 entry that “god creates out of nothing,” and “creates saints (the communion of saints) out of sinners.”37 there will be much more to say on the creatio ex nihilo in the following. the condition into which humankind is created is illustrated in the second story thread, the naming of the animals. in 1834 Kierkegaard praises the “serene and happy frame of mind the natural scientist must enjoy, as one familiar with the plants and animals who “sees their significance in the whole universe,” and like “Adam 2 Cor 5:17; 1 Cor 15:22–3, 49; heb 2:10. nikolai edinger Balle and C.h. Bastholm, Lærebog i den Evangelisk-christlige Religion, indrettet til Brug i de danske Skoler, Copenhagen: Jens holstrup schultz 1824  (ASKB 183), 2.1.1 and 2.1.7. (translation mine). 34 Karl hase, Hutterus redivivus oder Dogmatik der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche. Ein dogmatisches Repertorium für Studierende, ed. by Karl a. hase, 4th ed., leipzig: Breitkopf und härtel 1839 , § 62 (ASKB 581). 35 see Clausen’s exposition on being skabt i Guds Billede in SKS 19, 23, not1:6, and on creation and preservation in SKS 19, 42, not1:7 / JP 5, 5058. the scholastic distinction between creatio primitiva and creatio continuata is found in the 1839–40 lectures, SKS 19, 79–80, not1:9. Kierkegaard’s notes on marheineke’s lectures have sections on creation out of nothing (Skabelse af Intet) and “on the origin of evil” in SKS 19, 250–2, 256–61, not9:1 / JP 5, 5514. 36 SKS 17, 41, aa:22 / KJN 1, 35. SKS 18, 87, FF:59 / KJN 2, 80. 37 SKS 18, 104, FF:154.a / KJN 2, 96. For more, see matthew Frawley, “the doctrine of Creatio Ex Nihilo in the thought of søren Kierkegaard,” Kierkegaardiana, vol. 23, pp. 7–25. 32 33 Adam and Eve: Human Being and Nothingness 11 of old—all the animals come to him, and he gives them names.”38 so romantic a vision of natural science was not out of place in the golden age, when proponents of Naturphilosophie were many. seven months later, in a letter addressed to a naturalist, but possibly meant for an epistolary novel, those who interpret “nature’s runic inscriptions” are likened to adam giving names; they have transcended the merely empirical to “that archimedean point which is nowhere in the world and from which they have surveyed the whole and seen the details in their proper light.”39 the naming of the animals represents for Kierkegaard a lucid and untroubled relation between adam and the beings he named40—yet Adam finds no name for himself, no way to “make himself intelligible” to others. the metaphor reappears in The Concept of Irony, where Adam “finds no fellowship for himself.”41 adam receives the world transparently, since there was not yet doubt or sin to intervene between the knower and the known; yet he lacked the reflexive self-consciousness that is the condition of authentic relationship. thus the enormity of the “great and deep Fall” and the corruption of the image are rightly mourned,42 yet the “first condition” is not the “ideal condition.”43 the point may seem pedantic, yet it is important to the doctrine of felix culpa, for humankind can only attain a higher condition in the postlapsarian world if the prelapsarian condition was not perfect. this means that the perfection of humankind and its ultimate telos lie on the other side of the garden of eden. Yet it should be noted that the felix culpa does not imply that the power of the divine bends the individual coercively toward the greater good. on the surprisingly rare occasions in which Kierkegaard makes early references to the fourth thread, the tale of the Fall, he rejects any account, such as that of hegel, which construes the Fall as a necessary movement in the dialectic of Pap. i a 31 / JP 3, 2806, an entry dated november 22, 1834; cf. gen 2:19. SKS 17, 20–1, aa:12 / KJN 1, 15–16, dated June 1, 1835. the letter seems addressed to peter wilhelm lund (1801–80), a paleontologist, and relative by marriage, who had gone to Brazil and would carry out pioneering cave excavations. Yet it may have been intended for a volume from a “Faustian doubter.” see the notes in KJN 1, 319, and emanuel hirsch, Kierkegaard-Studien, vols. 1–2, gütersloh: Bertelsmann 1933, vol. 2, pp. 490–2. (reprinted, vaduz, liechtenstein: toposverlag 1978. First published in Studien des apologetischen Seminars in Wernigerode, nos. 29, 31, 32, 36, 1930–33.) Kierkegaard finds three “worthy representatives” of the natural scientist in Copenhagen. one is h.C. Ørsted (1777–1851), whose discovery of electromagnetism in 1820 was perceived as an almost mystical insight into the hidden forces governing the world. Ørsted was a towering figure in the intellectual life of golden age Copenhagen, advancing physics and chemistry, poetry, and a philosophy influenced by Kant and J.G. Fichte. See Hans Christian Ørsted and the Romantic Legacy in Science, ed. by robert m. Brain, robert s. Cohen and ole Knudsen, dordrecht: springer 2007. Kierkegaard also refers to J.w. horneman (1770–1841), and J.F. schouw (1789–1852). 40 SKS 18, 54, ee:152 / KJN 2, 49 speaks of the “anthropomorphism” and yet “objective reality” in the naming of the animals. a note distinguishes the human from the divine act of naming, which is “identical with creation.” SKS 25, 300, nB29:6 / JP 3, 3582 classes the giving of names among the “distinguishing marks of man, according to genesis.” 41 Pap. i a 149 / JP 1, 26. SKS 1, 318 / CI, 283. 42 SKS 18, 12, ee:18 / KJN 2, 7–8, from 1839. 43 SKS 19, 81, not1:9 / JP 1, 36. that he ascribes to this view himself becomes clear in The Concept of Anxiety. 38 39 12 Timothy Dalrymple absolute history. since Kierkegaard is committed to the freedom of the individual and to the preservation of a place for it in the architecture of providence, it cannot be the inexorable force of necessity that drives adam from the garden, but only the spontaneous leap of freedom.44 For the same reason he rejects the doctrine of predestination as a “thoroughgoing abortion,” since it effectively denies human freedom.45 Difficult though it is for philosophy to comprehend, God “create[d] human beings who are free in relation to himself.”46 So if the Fall will be beneficial in the providence of god, it must be so in a way that maintains human freedom. the divine maieutic must turn the baby in the womb, not coercing but subtly drawing the individual out of a free movement toward the evil and into a free movement toward the good. the greater good of the felix culpa must be found in freedom. the early references also suggest the distinctive way in which Kierkegaard frames the movement of the felix culpa as a movement from nothing to nothing, or from a first to a second creatio ex nihilo. the language of “nothing” will be important later, but even in the early references “nothingness” (Intethed) and “annihilation” (Tilintetgjørelse, a making-into-nothing) are often discussed. this point is all too often missed: when Kierkegaard speaks of nothingness and annihilation, and later of the nothing of freedom, these should be understood in relation to the first nothing, the nothing out of which we are created and preserved.47 thus Kierkegaard writes in the gilleleje journal of perceiving “my nothingness” (min Intethed),48 and declares that the person who surmounts the ironic meaninglessness of life is “elevated” above himself and “sees himself in his nothingness [i sin Intethed], and thereby finds his true elevation.”49 Kierkegaard prays in 1839 that god would “let me really feel my nothingness [ret føle min Intethed],” not to despair but to “feel the greatness of your goodness all the more strongly.”50 later in the year he reports, “now i really feel my annihilation [Jeg føler ret i denne Tid min Tilintetgjørelse],” and his suffering (like that of the blind man in John 9) will serve the purposes of god.51 as these entries suggest, “nothingness” and “annihilation” do not refer to an extirpation of the self, but to its dying to itself and to its striving to be itself apart from god. the language Kierkegaard will be consistent on this point over time, but it is found in 1837, amid notes on and excerpts from adam möhler, Athanasius der Große und die Kirche seiner Zeit, besonders im Kampfe mit dem Arianismus, vols. 1–2, mainz: Florian Kupferberg 1827 (ASKB 635–636), in SKS 18, 355–6, KK:5 / KJN 2, 325. there is much relevant material in Journal KK, a notebook filled with theological notes and commentary. 45 Pap i a 5 / JP 2, 1230. Pap. i a 7 / JP 2, 1231. the entries are dated to august and november 1834. 46 SKS 18, 203, FF:149 / KJN 2, 95. 47 although the language of nothingness is more commonly directed toward the psychological/ontological transformations of the self, it is sometimes addressed toward epistemological concerns. see SKS 17, 27–28, aa:12 / KJN 1, 22, from 1835, and Pap i a 190 / JP 2, 1673, from 1836. 48 SKS 17, 14, aa:6 / KJN 1, 10. the entry is dated July 29, 1835. 49 Pap. ii a 627 / JP 2, 1688, dated June 2, 1837. 50 SKS 18, 28, ee:67 / KJN 2, 24 51 SKS 18, 63, ee:188 / KJN 2, 63. the entry cites Jn 9:3, where the man “was born blind so that god’s works might be revealed in him.” 44 Adam and Eve: Human Being and Nothingness 13 of nothingness refers to the individual’s utter unworthiness of god and incapability of grasping or comprehending god, and thus the individual’s total dependence upon god for being, goodness and truth. if the “adamic project” is the attempt to grasp at the likeness of god, the “nothingness” of “annihilation” is the shipwreck of the adamic project, the recognition that it has failed and will always fail, since communion with and likeness to god can only be given by god. thus this annihilation is preparatory for the second creation. in later years Kierkegaard is perfectly clear on the matter. “god creates out of nothing,” he writes, “and all God is to use he first turns to nothing.”52 in the early years the same point emerges with nearly equal clarity and force. Kierkegaard speaks of being reduced to confessing that “we ourselves can do nothing at all” as a “necessary” preparation “in order for god to be able to make something out of us, for god always creates from nothing [Gud skaber altid af Intet], and needs neither material nor our self-made wisdom.”53 the individual, created and preserved out of nothing, strove to make itself according to its own will, yet must confess its nothingness in humility before it can be recreated in the new being. in January 1837 he speaks of augustine’s view that there is a first creation, then the Fall into “death and powerlessness,” and then the “new Creation” (ny Skabelse) in which positive freedom is restored.54 or more explicitly, two months later he writes that the “first creation” confers an “immediate consciousness” such as adam enjoyed in the garden, but the “second creation,” “again a creation out of nothing,” brings “immediate consciousness of the second stage.”55 perhaps the most powerful evidence of his early view of annihilation and nothingness is found in a lengthy reflection from 1840 on the “new creation” in Christ.56 the worldly standpoint that “There is Nothing New Under the Sun” is contrasted with the Christian standpoint that “Everything is New in Christ.”57 in the former there is no need for divine intervention, since the capacities of humankind will bring forth ever greater refinements of knowledge and ever higher mediations of the established order. Kierkegaard is responding to sentiments like those of heiberg, who had written in 1838 that hegel had so perfected the art of philosophical SKS 26, 112, nB31:155 / JP 2, 2099. SKS 18, 11, ee:15–15b / KJN 2, 7; ee:15 is dated February 8, 1839. 54 SKS 17, 33, aa:14.2 / KJN 1, 27. 55 SKS 17, 42, aa:22 / KJN 1, 35, dated march 19, 1837. in an appended note Kierkegaard refers to Franz Baader, Vorlesungen über speculative Dogmatik, vol. 1, stuttgart and tübingen: J.g. Cotta 1828 [vols. 2–5, münster: theissing 1830–38], vol. 1, pp. 105ff. (ASKB 396), to anton günther, Süd- und Nordlichter am Horizonte speculativer Theologie, vienna: mechitaristen 1832, pp. 114ff. (ASKB 520), and to immanuel hermann Fichte, Die Idee der Persönlichkeit und der individuellen Fortdauer, elberfeld: Büschler 1834 (ASKB 505). 56 rom 6:4; 1 Cor 15:23; 2 Cor 5:17. the Christian language of “rebirth” (Jn 3:3) may lie in the background. 57 SKS 18, 125, hh:2 / KJN 2, 117, emphases original; see 2 Cor 5:17 and eccl 1:9. Journal HH generally served as a sermon draft-book for Kierkegaard, when he was receiving homiletical instruction at the royal pastoral seminary. hh:2 may date from slightly before the instruction began, however. 52 53 14 Timothy Dalrymple mediation that a “sudden shift” or “leap” of understanding would no longer occur, “but everything new will be produced by the structural development of the existing order of things.”58 the worldly standpoint assumes that, given the powers of volition and rationality, what has been is sufficient for what must come into being, and what has been known is sufficient for what must come to be known. This is the Adamic project in philosophical form, manifested in modernity’s thoroughgoing confidence in a rationally superintended linear progress of culture. For Kierkegaard this project expresses the arrogance and egotism that obscures the need and dissipates the desire for the gracious self-giving of god. in the Christian standpoint, by contrast, the individual is strong precisely in weakness, and the advent of the new is wrought “through the annihilation of the individual.”59 “Two axiomatic thoughts” are affirmed in the Christian view: that “Christianity did not arise in the mind of any human being,” and that nevertheless “since it is given to a human being, it is natural to him; here, too, god is creating.”60 Kierkegaard refers elsewhere in the early writings to the “defectiveness of human cognition” brought about through sin,61 and here he speaks of the need for a re-creation of the capacity to receive the truth of god, a re-creation that occurs in the humility that perceives its need and nothingness apart from god.62 Yet what defines this “new creation” is its relation to Christ. if adam determines the condition of sinful man, Christ sets the conditions of the new being. this will be fully exposited only in later works such as Practice in Christianity, yet the inverse analogy of Christ as the second adam is certainly found in the early writings. Kierkegaard likens “Christ’s appearance in the spiritual world” to “what Creation was in the physical,” the inauguration of a new order and the provision of a new being.63 even as there is a “romantic” tension between adam and eve, as “the two halves of one idea being kept apart by some intervening foreign element,” heiberg was at the time the doyen of the Copenhagen literati and the principal disseminator of hegelian thought into denmark. the quotation is from “en logisk Bemærkning i anledning af h. h. hr. Biskop dr. mynsters afhandling om rationalisme og supranaturalisme, i forrige hefter af dette tidsskrift,” in Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, vol. 1, 1839, pp. 455–6. as noted in the commentary in KJN 2, 443–5, Kierkegaard likely had in mind the conversation precipitated by Bishop mynster’s treatise on supernaturalism, “rationalisme. supranaturalisme,” in Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, vol. 1, 1838, pp. 249–68. 59 For a similar point, see SKS 18, 64–5, ee:190 / KJN 2, 59–60, another sermon draft, where the individual will be made “powerless and annihilated” before the “heavenly powers will stir within,” much as the power of god “overshadowed” mary when she humbled herself as a vessel of the divine will. 60 SKS 18, 125–6, hh:2, hh:2.a, hh:3 / KJN 2, 119–20. 61 SKS 17, 13, aa:13 / KJN 1, 26. 62 the treatise to which Kierkegaard was likely responding, by Bishop mynster, and to which heiberg and hans lassen martensen had responded in their own articles, claimed: “just as the first creation could not be a part of any preexisting series and could not have what we call natural continuity…the new creation in Christ, though prepared by divine provisions, is…a new, unmediated infusion of divine life into the human.” see “rationalisme. supranaturalisme,” in Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, vol. 1, p. 262. 63 SKS 18, 27, ee:63 / KJN 2, 23. 58 Adam and Eve: Human Being and Nothingness 15 there is the same tension between “man is created, the sinner,” and the incarnation of Christ.64 as god’s creative Logos, Christ is the re-sounding of god’s creative word, Christ is also god’s re-creating in a world “gone so greatly astray.”65 when Kierkegaard comments overtly on paul’s language of the “second adam,” he points toward the view of sin and freedom found in The Concept of Anxiety. in the common understanding of hereditary sin and redemption, Kierkegaard writes, adam and Christ are disanalogous insofar as every person participates necessarily in the condition of adam but individuals participate in Christ freely through a “possibility repeating itself for every single individual.”66 this is a matter of genuine soteriological importance. Freely entering the condition of Christ can only be redemptive if one has freely entered the condition of adam.67 in The Concept of Anxiety vigilius haufniensis will develop a theory of freedom and sin in which each individual participates in adam’s condition not necessarily but freely. that Christ is the second adam does not mean that the character of Christ is miraculously imparted to the individual, but that the individual receives the condition of forgiveness and fellowship with god, and Christ is established as “the norm for the life of the following Christian.” when the grace of god is given, then “this life [of Christ] must necessarily unfold in him who is truly regenerated.”68 the person of faith is not “snatched as though by magic out of his old condition, the ‘body of sin,’” but must “go back the same way he advanced,”69 to expiate his sins and cultivate the likeness of Christ through imitation, encouraged all the while by the knowledge of forgiveness. Kierkegaard will often describe Christ as the way and the truth and the life; in the early works he also calls Christ the likeness of god,70 the mystery of god,71 the fulfillment of the Law and the promise of the gospel,72 “flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone,”73 “the goal toward which the believer strives,”74 and the prototype,75 whose act of redemption upon the cross is the culmination of the divine will that first acted in the Creation.76 in summary, scattered across the early journals and papers are numerous references to adam, eden, and the Fall. when these are gathered together and Pap. i a 140 / JP 3, 3801. the “intervening element” between adam and eve is the “multiplicity” and “irony” in adam’s giving names to the animals. also of interest in the adam-Christ relation is SKS 17, 54, aa:55 / KJN 1, 47. 65 SKS 18, 59, ee:171 / KJN 2, 54, an entry dated august 30, 1839. 66 SKS 17, 228–9, dd:27 / KJN 1, 220–1, dated July 11, 1837. Kierkegaard refers to rom 5:13–14. 67 essentially the same point is developed later in relation to doubt, in Pap. iv B 13:21 / JP 1, 777: “in freedom i can only emerge from that into which i have entered in freedom.” 68 Pap. i a 28 / JP 1, 273. this is an early entry, from november 1834. 69 SKS 17, 52, aa:51 / KJN 1, 46. 70 SKS 18, 41, ee:107 / KJN 2, 36. 71 SKS 18, 113, FF:197 / KJN 2, 104. 72 SKS 18, 19, ee:40 / KJN 2, 15. 73 SKS 17, 248, dd:84 / KJN 1, 239. 74 Pap. v B 237 / JP 2, 1835. 75 SKS 19, 216–7, not7:44 / JP 2, 1834. 76 SKS 17, 222, dd:11 / KJN 1, 214; see SKS 22, 177, nB12:63 / JP 2, 1391. 64 16 Timothy Dalrymple carefully observed, patterns reveal an emerging understanding of the eden narrative and its portrayal of human freedom and sin. though not fully articulated, it presents at least in skeletal form much the same adam as will be found in The Concept of Anxiety. what is most distinctive in Kierkegaard’s reading of adam is the narrative it offers of fundamental human experience. this narrative addresses concerns that are psychological (in Kierkegaard’s sense), epistemological, and theodical. three theological principles give structure to the narrative: the creatio ex nihilo, in which not only creation but the individual itself are brought into being out of nothing, the felix culpa, in which the individual falls into sin and nothingness and the self that strives to be itself apart from god is annihilated, and the second adam, when the individual in its nothingness humbly receives its condition and its telos in Christ. god only creates out of nothing, and the work of the second adam is creation in the world of spirit, the gift of a new being in the immediate consciousness of the second stage.77 II. Adam’s Many Faces (1841–43) the two years following the completion of the dissertation, The Concept of Irony, were rich and formative years for Kierkegaard. Between autumn 1841 and autumn 1843, in addition to composing and publishing Either/Or (and Two Upbuilding Discourses),78 Kierkegaard traveled twice to Berlin, attended lectures at the University of Berlin, deepened his proficiency in the literature of German philosophy and theology, and assembled the materials and insights that would yield the extraordinary series of works presented between october 1843 and august 1844: Fear and Trembling, Repetition, Philosophical Fragments, The Concept of Anxiety, Prefaces, and the other 16 of what were later gathered together as the Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses. Kierkegaard renewed his acquaintance in this period with four significant figures who shaped his reading of the eden narrative: immanuel Kant, g.w.F. hegel, Friedrich wilhelm Joseph schelling and gottfried wilhelm leibniz. although Kierkegaard’s familiarity with all of these figures predates 1841, to be sure, it will be illuminating to examine them before moving on to the writings of 1843–44. Kant’s initial approach to adam is not dissimilar from Kierkegaard’s. Kant rejects the doctrine of inherited sin as “inept” because it undermines the basis of SKS 18, 205, JJ:203 / KJN 2, 189: “What contemplation of nature is for the first (human) consciousness of god the contemplation of revelation is to the second immediate consciousness of god (consciousness of sin). it is here that the battle is to take place—do not impute to people the likelihood of a revelation, but stop their mouths and put their godconsciousness under the consciousness of sin.” 78 Either/Or was published on February 20 and Two Upbuilding Discourses on may 16, 1843. adam and eve are mentioned on numerous occasions, but not the subject of extensive reflection, in both volumes of Either/Or: SKS 2, 290 / EO1, 286. SKS 2, 453 / EO1, 430. SKS 3, 27 / EO2, 29. SKS 3, 39 / EO2, 40–1. SKS 3, 51 / EO2, 52. SKS 3, 93 / EO2, 92. SKS 3, 269 / EO2, 259. SKS 3, 272 / EO2, 261. SKS 3, 294 / EO2, 282. many of these concern the third thread, and the relation between the sexes. 77 Adam and Eve: Human Being and Nothingness 17 human freedom and moral responsibility; the primary significance of Adam is rather that “we daily act in the same way.”79 Because adam’s story illumines our own, the philosopher should approach the eden narrative to examine the “inner possibility” of evil acts, or “what must take place within the will if evil is to be performed.”80 in his lectures in Berlin, when he came to the problem of “the loss of that image [of god], or the origin of evil,”81 marheineke refers to Kant and the phrase mutato nomine de te narratur fabula: change the name, of you the tale is told. in fact the words are from horace’s Satires, quoted in Kant’s Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone82—and they appear in The Concept of Anxiety and Stages on Life’s Way.83 Kant employs the saying when he turns adam’s story into an outward symbolic representation of the internal processes of every individual. although he had once been amenable to leibnizian optimism and its attempt to show the ideal rationality of the universe, the Kant of Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone turns the problem of evil into a matter of psychological investigation.84 immanuel Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, trans. by theodore m. greene and hoyt h. hudson, new York: harper and row 1960, p. 37. 80 ibid., p. 35. Kierkegaard possessed Kant’s Kritik der Urtheilskraft, 2nd ed., Berlin: F.t. lagarde 1793 (ASKB 594), Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 4th ed., riga: hartknoch 1794 (ASKB 595), and Immanuel Kant’s vermischte Schriften, vols. 1–3, halle: in der rengerschen Buchhandlung 1799 (ASKB 1731–1733). 81 SKS 19, 249, not9:1. Kierkegaard attended philipp marheineke’s lectures from october 1841 to February 1842, on “dogmatic theology with special reference to Carl daub’s system.” the lecture notes extend from not9:1 to not10:8–9 (SKS 19, 288–301). Kierkegaard possessed Die Grundlehren der christlichen Dogmatik als Wissenschaft, 2nd ed., Berlin: duncker und humblot 1827 (ASKB 644–645), and Institutiones symbolicae, 3rd ed., Berlin: voss 1830 (ASKB 645), and in 1831–32 he had carefully read the first volume of marheineke’s popular Geschichte der teutschen Reformation, vols. 1–4, Berlin: duncker und humblot 1816–31; see Pap. i C 1 / JP 4, 5052. see heiko schulz, “marheineke: the volatilization of Christian doctrine,” in Kierkegaard and His German Contemporaries, tome ii, Theology, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2007 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 6), pp. 117–42; and niels thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, trans. by george J. stengren, princeton: princeton university press 1980, pp. 265–7. Kant is also referenced in the lectures on sanctification and whether his construal of Christ as the personification of the ethical ideal sufficiently accounts for the Kløft between ideality and actuality; see SKS 19, 265, not9:1; SKS 19, 300, not10:9. also, Kant’s view on the “old man” and the “new man” is referenced in Clausen’s earlier lectures, in SKS 19, 57, not1:7.z6; see also SKS 18, 329, KK:2 / KJN 2, 329. 82 Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, p. 37; horace, The Satires, Epistles and Art of Poetry, trans. by John Conington, Charleston, south Carolina: BiblioBazaar 2006, p. 23. 83 SKS 4, 377 / CA, 73. SKS 6, 440–1 / SLW, 478–9. in The Concept of Anxiety haufniensis speaks of a “misunderstood appropriation” of the principle. 84 see Kant’s “on the miscarriage of all philosophical attempts at theodicy,” in Religion and Rational Theology, trans. by allen w. wood and george di giovanni, Cambridge: Cambridge university press 1996, pp. 19–37. also see ann loades, Kant and Job’s Comforters, newcastle upon tyne: avero 1985, and Kurt appel, Kants Theodizeekritik: eine Auseinandersetzung mit den Theodizeekonzeption von Leibniz und Kant, Frankfurt: lang 2003. 79 18 Timothy Dalrymple Kant also prefigures Kierkegaard’s view of the explicability of the first sin. Kant seeks an account of the rational and not the temporal origin of evil, since evil is a determination of freedom and freedom is irreducible to any regime of cause and effect. Whatever internal or external incentives there may be, these only influence the individual insofar as the individual incorporates them into the maxim for determining its actions; no account of preceding conditions can form a sufficient explanation of a free decision, for freedom is “absolute spontaneity.”85 Kant defines evil as a failure of the will (Willkür) to make the moral law (Wille) the maxim of its actions. at the “radical” extreme of wickedness, evil is the deliberate subordination of the moral law to other interests.86 since autonomous freedom is found in the harmony of Wille and Willkür, the descent into evil is a descent into disintegration and the loss of autonomous freedom. as Kant writes elsewhere, “a free will and a will under moral laws are identical.”87 For hegel too the story of the Fall represents the “eternal and necessary history of humanity,” or the “eternal story of human freedom” and its emergence from a “stupefied innocence devoid of consciousness and will.”88 it describes a movement from a unitive prelapsarian state to a divisive postlapsarian one. prior to the Fall adam enjoyed a “natural and immediate harmony” in the garden, where he “knew God as God is” and was “united with God and nature.” The first humans possessed “absolute knowledge” of the world, because they beheld “the very heart of nature as it is.”89 nonetheless eden was not “the right state”90 for humankind. adam’s relation to god was immature, akin to “the easy harmony of childhood.”91 The first sin is a “step into opposition,” a splintering of the world into the differentiations hegelian dialectic requires. this is variously called a “duality,” “schism,” “inward Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, p. 19. on Kant and The Concept of Anxiety, see ronald m. green, “the limits of the ethical in Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Anxiety and Kant’s Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone,” in The Concept of Anxiety, ed. by robert l. perkins, macon, georgia: mercer university press 1985 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 8), p. 74: “both thinkers absolutely repudiate any effort to provide a causal explanation of sin, and both strongly affirm sin’s origination in an inherently ‘inexplicable’ act of human freedom.” 86 Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, pp. 24–5. 87 Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. by lewis white Beck, in Immanuel Kant: Philosophical Writings, ed. by ernst Behler, new York: Continuum 1986, p. 66. 88 g.w.F. hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, The Lectures of 1827, ed. by peter g. hodgson, Berkeley: university of California press 1988, see p. 215 and p. 217. Kierkegaard’s familiarity with hegel would have been deepened and shaped through schelling’s lectures (see Notebook 11, and SBL, 333–412) and those of Karl werder (1806– 93), a hegelian philosopher whose lectures on “logik und metaphysik” in the winter semester of 1841–42 were based on his Logik. Als Commentar und Ergänzung zu Hegels Wissenschaft der Logik, erste abtheilung, Berlin: veit und Comp. 1841 (ASKB 867; no further installments were ever published). see Kierkegaard’s notes in Notebook 9 and Notebook 10. 89 hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, pp. 210–11. 90 hegel, Logic, trans. from The Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences by william wallace, oxford: Clarendon press 1892, p. 55. 91 hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, p. 210. 85 Adam and Eve: Human Being and Nothingness 19 breach,” a “primal division,” and a “sundering” between subject and nature”—yet it is also an awakening to “the light of consciousness,” the opening of a “cleavage of freedom” in which the human is free to act over against the natural world.92 the Fall is beneficial then insofar as it awakens self-consciousness and freedom, and provides the conditions for the dialectic of spirit and ultimately for “reconciliation” and a “second harmony” with the world and god.93 Hegel never concealed the theodical interest flowing through his thought, nor that he understood the philosophical task fundamentally as an effort “to comprehend all the ills of the world, including the existence of evil, so that the thinking spirit may be reconciled with the negative aspects of existence” and understand “that world history is nothing more than the plan of providence.” philosophy demonstrates “that the actual world is as it ought to be,” that the real is the rational, and thus “defend[s] reality against its detractors.”94 insofar as hegel asserts “that what has taken place in the world has also done so in conformity with reason,” he affirms “trust in providence, only in another form.”95 indeed one might say that the felix culpa describes the fundamental logic of hegel’s dialectic—yet hegel construes its movement as necessary, and this is the critical point which Kierkegaard rejects. Schelling’s possible influence on Kierkegaard’s reading of Adam is found less in any commentary on the eden narrative than in schelling’s development of the concepts of creation and freedom. that Kierkegaard was disappointed with schelling’s lectures is well known,96 yet in the years following numerous works were published on schelling’s Philosophie der Offenbarung, and Kierkegaard purchased and read carefully the commentaries of marheineke and rosenkranz in 1843,97 and hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, pp. 210–17. hegel, Logic, p. 55. the same point is made in Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, pp. 213–14 and p. 217. 94 hegel, Introduction to the Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, trans. by h.B. nisbet, Cambridge: Cambridge university press 1975, see pp. 42–3 and pp. 66–7. 95 hegel, Introduction to the Lectures on the History of Philosophy, quoted from susan neiman, Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy, princeton: princeton university press 2002, p. vii. 96 see tonny aagaard olesen’s account in “schelling: a historical introduction to Kierkegaard’s schelling,” in Kierkegaard and His German Contemporaries, tome i, Philosophy, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2007 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 6), pp. 234ff. Kierkegaard possessed Friedrich wilhelm Josef von schelling’s Philosophische Schriften, landshut: philipp Krüll, universitätbuchhandler 1809 (ASKB 763), which included the Treatise on Human Freedom (Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit, often called the Freiheitschrift); schelling’s Vorlesungen über die Methode des academischen Studiums, 3rd ed., stuttgart and tübingen: Cotta 1830 (ASKB 764); Cousin’s Über französische und deutsche Philosophie, trans. by h. Becker, stuttgart and tübingen: Cotta 1834 (ASKB 471), for which schelling had written a foreword; Bruno, oder: Über das göttliche und natürliche Princip der Dinge, 2nd ed., Berlin: g. reimer 1842 (ASKB 765); Schellings erste Vorlesung in Berlin, stuttgart and tübingen: Cotta 1841 (ASKB 767); and steffens’ Nachgelassene Schriften, Berlin: schroeder 1846 (ASKB 799), with another foreword from schelling. 97 in november 1841 Kierkegaard purchased rosenkranz’s Kritische Erläuterungen des Hegelschen Systems, Königsberg: Bornträger 1840 (ASKB 745), and read it immediately 92 93 20 Timothy Dalrymple their impact on the writings of later 1843 and 1844 is evident.98 what Kierkegaard and the later schelling shared was a profound and abiding sense that the world is not as it should be, that ideality and actuality are cut apart in a way that no higher rational standpoint can mend. thus both found idealism, which schelling had formerly championed, to be fatally flawed, and turned in their writings to those shards of experience that could not be assimilated into a rational system. as heidegger writes, “the system is split open by the reality of evil.”99 schelling’s theodical concern is apparent in the Freiheitschrift as well as the 1841–42 lectures, when he strives to understand the emergence of evil in relation to freedom. his doctrine of potencies is too complicated to set forth in full.100 in brief, since nothing precedes or stands apart from god, god must contain in himself the basis for his own being. previous philosophies have failed to account properly for the origin of evil because they have not differentiated god’s being and the ground of god’s being, which is both a part of god and distinguishable from god. at the basis of god’s being and all being is this “dark ground,” a nonbeing of chaos and possibility, longing, and potency. in the act of self-revelation god brings order out of chaos, differentiating forces that formerly were mixed, yet holding in indissoluble unity the dark longing out of the depths and the striving toward the light of reason. as god reveals himself in creative differentiation, humankind is fashioned with this “double principle”: insofar as it emerges from the dark ground it is creaturely, selfwillful, and relatively independent of god; insofar as it seeks the light of reason and self-disclosure it is also spirit. Yet that which is indissoluble in the goodness of god can be separated and set against one another in humanity—and here, in the compresence in human being of “the deepest pit and the highest heaven,” and in the solubility of the two principles, lies the possibility of evil.101 thus there is in humankind both “ardor for the good” and “enthusiasm for evil”; the individual (see Pap. iii B 41.9). in 1843 he purchased marheineke’s Zur Kritik der Schellingschen Offenbarungsphilosophie, Berlin: enslin 1843 (ASKB 647), rosenkranz’s Über Schelling und Hegel: Ein Sendschreiben an Pierre Leroux, Königsberg: Bornträger 1843, and Schelling. Vorlesungen gehalten im Sommer 1842 an der Universität zu Königsberg, danzig: gerhard 1843 (ASKB 766). 98 see the drafts for Repetition in Pap. iv B 117–8 / R, supplement, p. 310 and p. 322. SKS 4, 337 / CA, 30, note, and CA, 232, notes 17–8. there is dispute on whether Kierkegaard’s familiarity with the Freiheitschrift comes from an earlier reading, a re-reading in 1843, or indirectly through the writings of marheineke and rosenkranz. see olesen, “schelling: a historical introduction to Kierkegaard’s schelling,” pp. 254–8; vincent mcCarthy, “schelling and Kierkegaard on Freedom and Fall,” in The Concept of Anxiety, ed. by robert perkins, macon, georgia: mercer university press 1985 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 8), pp. 92–3. For further discussion on Schelling’s influence over Kierkegaard’s understanding of freedom and evil, see david roberts, Kierkegaard’s Analysis of Radical Evil, new York: Continuum 2006, pp. 10–22. 99 martin heidegger, Schelling’s Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom, trans. by Joan stambaugh, athens, ohio: ohio university press 1985, p. 98. 100 in the interest of brevity, i blend together the Freiheitschrift of 1809 and the Philosophie der Offenbarung of 1841–42. 101 F.w.J. schelling, Of Human Freedom, trans. by James gutmann, Chicago: open Court 1936, p. 38. Adam and Eve: Human Being and Nothingness 21 “contains within him the source of self-impulsion towards good and evil in equal measure,” and determines itself for good or evil.102 Freedom, for schelling as well as for Kant, is not negative freedom from compulsion but positive freedom for the self to be itself, in the “inner necessity which springs from the essence of the active agent itself.” Yet no temporal account of the first sin is possible because evil is a choice that is always already made; we always find ourselves already having chosen evil.103 two points are of special importance for what will follow. First, in his own version of the felix culpa, Schelling affirms that the self-will is roused “only so that an independent basis for the good may be there and so that it may be conquered and penetrated by the good.”104 the capacity for evil is not an imperfection, but essential to what is best in the self. Yet it should be noted, second, that the self evanesces in its will to establish its being independent of god. in the lectures schelling depicts the original condition as one in which adam is “inclosed” by the threefold elohim. this was a “primal relation” in which there was “more than a revelation.”105 the human is “conditioned” life, or possesses itself only insofar as it remains within the three potencies. the spirit perceives its Seyn-Könnende, its being able to be, and it strives for lordship over Being—yet “became mastered by it.”106 like all of creation adam rests upon the Nichts, grounded “solely in the will of god.”107 thus schelling writes in the Freiheitschrift, “the beginning of sin consists in man’s going over from actual being to non-being, from truth to falsehood, from light to darkness, in order himself to become the creative basis and to rule over all things.” the self longs to return to god, yet strives “for himself” and not “in god,” so the harder it strives the more deeply impoverished it becomes. “in evil there is that contradiction which devours and always negates itself, which just while striving to become creature destroys the nexus of creation and, in its ambition to be everything, falls into non-being.”108 Finally, Kierkegaard’s engagement with leibniz in 1842–43 is consistently overlooked, and yet so clarifying for our purposes that it requires at least a brief consideration. scattered references to leibniz in the early journals and papers, and in Either/Or, demonstrate only an elementary and probably second-hand familiarity.109 schelling, Of Human Freedom, p. 48; p. 50. dale e. snow explains, in Schelling and the End of Idealism, albany: state university of new York press 1996, p. 165: “since schelling has made human choice central in the way that he has, his theory of evil is in direct conflict with all those theories which claim either that evil does not truly exist, but is rather an imperfection or deficiency of some kind, or that apparent evil ought to be understood from a hegelian perspective, as a manifestation of the cunning of reason, a necessary episode in a universal world history.” 103 schelling, Of Human Freedom, pp. 66–7. 104 ibid., p. 79. 105 SKS 19, 352, not 11:32 / SBL, 394. 106 SKS 19, 353–4, not11:33 / SBL, 395–6. 107 SKS 19, 343, not11:27 / SBL, 383. 108 schelling, Of Human Freedom, p. 69. 109 SKS 19, 103, not3:6. SKS 19, 139, not4:10. SKS 18, 125, hh:2.a / KJN 2, 119. SKS 3, 28 / EO2, 20. SKS 3, 126 / EO2, 126. SKS 3, 132 / EO2, 133. later Kierkegaard purchased J.C. gottsched’s edition of gottfried wilhelm leibniz’s Theodicee, 5th ed., hanover and leipzig: 102 22 Timothy Dalrymple Yet in 1842–43, after at least the greater part of Either/Or was complete, Kierkegaard undertook a meticulous study of the Theodicy.110 he found in leibniz much to appreciate and employ, including a talent for fine distinctions.111 Kierkegaard commends leibniz precisely because he addresses the theodical problem, what leibniz calls “the great question of the Free and the necessary, above all in the production and the origin of evil.”112 while hegelians debate endlessly on abstruse, pedantic matters, “The whole conflict between Leibniz and Bayle is very much to the point, and one is astonished if he compares it with controversy in our time, for we have actually gone backward.”113 the Theodicy considers many responses to the problem of evil and many ways in which to understand adam’s Fall, but i will focus on two points. Kierkegaard agrees with leibniz that “the ground of evil is not to be sought in matter but in the ideal nature of creation.”114 since god could not create out of his own being (for god’s being is necessary, and therefore eternal and uncreated), and since nothing else was made, god could only create out of nothing. since “the creature is derived from nothingness” instead of the perfect being of god, it is “imperfect, faulty and corruptible.” the creature is created not sinful but imperfect, originally and necessarily limited, dependent. metaphysical evil, the “original imperfection in the creature,” is a logically and metaphysically necessary corollary of creation. with this limitation, and the gift of human freedom, comes the possibility of moral evil, the free rejection of god, and consequently of physical or natural evil, the suffering which sin brings into the world. For those who rest in receptivity, however, god “gives ever to the creature and produces continually all that in it is positive, good and perfect, every perfect gift coming down from the Father of lights.”115 im verlage der Försterischen erben 1763 (ASKB 619), and leibniz’s Opera philosophica, quæ exstant latina gallica germanica omnia, vol. 1–2, ed. by Johann eduard erdmann, Berlin: [eichler] 1839–40 (ASKB 620). he made use of erdmann’s Versuch einer wissenschaflichen Darstellung der Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, vols. 1–3, leipzig: vogel 1834–52. 110 Kierkegaard completed the editorial preface to Either/Or in november of 1842, and prepared the manuscript for publication in the following months, until it was published on February 20, 1843. the notes on leibniz come in Journal JJ and Notebook 13. JJ:12 is dated november 20, 1842, and comments on leibniz follow in JJ:23–24, 26–30 and 36–3; Notebook 13 is dated december 2, 1842, and references to leibniz are found in entries 5, 6, 8a, 23, 24, 26a, 40, 42, 44 and 47, with the most thorough commentary on the Theodicy in not13:23. see also not12:17. if the reading of leibniz had any effect on Either/Or, it was a very late and likely a minimal one. 111 see ronald grimsley, “Kierkegaard and leibniz,” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 26, no. 3, 1965, pp. 383ff. 112 leibniz, Theodicy, trans. by e. m. huggard, ed. by austin Farrer, la salle, illinois: open Court 1996, p. 53. SKS 18, 150, JJ:23 / KJN 2, 139. see also SKS 19, 409, not13:44 / JP 2, 1601. 113 SKS 19, 391, not13:23 / JP 3, 3073. 114 SKS 19, 391, not13:23 / JP 3, 2364. see Theodicy, pp. 140–1, § 30: “god is the cause of the material element of evil which lies in the positive, and not of the formal element, which lies in privation.” 115 the quotations in this paragraph are from Theodicy, pp. 135–6, § 20; pp. 140–2, § 30–1. Adam and Eve: Human Being and Nothingness 23 The second point finds a stark difference between Leibniz and Kierkegaard. Both conceive of the world in a richly teleological manner, and see humankind as a part (not the culmination) of the grand scheme of divine purposes.116 however, Kierkegaard disagrees with leibniz on the relationship between providence and the individual. Confronted with extraordinary suffering, leibniz contends that what leads to suffering in one part of the cosmos may confer a greater benefit upon the whole.117 Kierkegaard responds: one cannot deny that there is a weakness in all the answers leibniz gives Bayle in paragraphs 121, 22, and following; he seeks to avoid difficulty by saying that it is not a question of the individual man but of the whole universe. this is ridiculous, for if there is just one individual man who has valid reason to complain, then the universe does not help. the answer is that even in sin man is greater, more fortunate, than if it [sin] had not appeared, for even the split [Splid] in man has more significance than immediate innocence.118 this might be read as a purpose statement for The Concept of Anxiety. the disagreement with leibniz occurs on two levels. theologically, Kierkegaard suggests that divine providence redeems the life of every individual individually, absurd though this may seem to reason. pedagogically, Kierkegaard suggests that the proper response to Baylean skepticism is not to set forth a grand defense of cosmic history, but to address the subjectivity of each individual, showing how the sufferings of “the split” between the human and the divine can serve the higher purposes of god. in summary, Kierkegaard found in his intellectual environment numerous interpretive options concerning adam’s Fall. Kant construes the narrative as a universal tale of how “we daily act,” and sought an account of the rational possibility of sin in consciousness, since the spontaneity of freedom makes a temporal account impossible. hegel describes the Fall as the production of a self-conscious agent through a movement from a unitive state of childlike harmony with god and nature to a “primal division” over against them. in schelling’s theogony of divine becoming, the self perceives the nothing of possibility and strives for lordship over being but only falls into non-being and untruth. leibniz sees metaphysical evil as a trace within the creature o