Blog 8: Free will or pre-destination part 2 – Luther and the Bondage of the Will

By Richard Keeble

Martin Luther gave Erasmus “a thunderbolt by which free choice is completely prostrated and shattered” (*p. 118).

When I first read Erasmus’ arguments and summarised them in Free will or pre-destination part 1, I admit to being thoroughly convinced by them, and found it difficult to see how Luther could respond with anything overtly contradicting them. It seemed to me that Erasmus’ hope of trying to bridge the deep divide between Luther and the Church remained reasonable in the strength of his debate. Clearly, I (and perhaps Erasmus himself) had not reckoned with the extent to which Luther differed from the Dutch scholar, in temperament as well as doctrine:

“your book struck me as so cheap and paltry that I felt profoundly sorry for you, defiling as you were your very elegant and ingenious style with such trash, and quite disgusted utterly at the unworthy manner that was being conveyed in such rich ornaments of eloquence, like refuse or ordure being carried in gold and silver vases” (p. 102)

Far from my own initial reaction, Luther groaned: “I have never seen a feebler book on free choice” (p. 118).

He published his provoked response to Erasmus in December 1525, De Servo Arbitrio, On the Bondage of the Will, amidst claims that he had finally met his match and had suffered a great blow to his reputation from the intellectual might of Erasmus. And while it is true that Luther’s response was delayed, he made it clear that this was due to “neither pressure of work, nor any fear of you [Erasmus], but sheer disgust, anger, and contempt, or – to put it plainly – my considered judgement on your Diatribe that dampened my eagerness to answer you” (p. 103). Contrary to Erasmus’ belief that the topic of free will and predestination was not a vital or particularly significant one, Luther set out the basis of his argument:

“Here, then, is something fundamentally necessary and salutary for a Christian, to know that God foreknows nothing contingently, but that he foresees and purposes and does all things by his immutable, eternal, and infallible will” (p. 118)

Luther’s first major section is concerned with attacking Erasmus’ assertion of free will, whilst the second asserts his own arguments for predestination. This blog is concerned with the former section, whilst the latter shall be explored in Free will or pre-destination part 3. For the first, he begins by elucidating the consequences of Erasmus’ own submission that the will of God is immutable. For Luther, it is both impious and self-contradictory to acknowledge this and yet limit the role of God’s will to the extent Erasmus seems to want to:

“You declare that the will of God is to be understood as immutable. Do you, then, believe that he foreknows without willing, or wills without knowing? If his foreknowledge is an attribute of his will, then his will is eternal and unchanging, because that is its nature; if his will is an attribute of his foreknowledge, then his foreknowledge is eternal and unchanging, because that is its nature. From this it follows irrefutably that everything we do, everything that happens, even if it seems to us to happen mutably and contingently, happens in fact nonetheless necessarily and immutably, if you have regard to the will of God” (p. 119)

Following in the theological footsteps of Saint Augustine, surely as Erasmus knew he would, Luther appeals ever to the absolute sovereignty of God and his superlative qualities. Luther’s respect of this, what he would doubtlessly see as piety, is as much a weapon for him as logic and reason. Hence, when he goes on to attack Erasmus’ point on the dangers of preaching the doctrine of predestination to ordinary people, Luther is far more concerned with theological truth than sociological effects: “To wish to stop these tumults, therefore, is nothing else but to wish to supress and prohibit the Word of God. For the Word of God comes, whenever it comes, to change and renew the world” (p. 129). Never above mocking his opponents, Luther rages:

“The apostle Paul, in his epistle to the Romans, discusses these same things, not in a corner, but publicly and before all the world, in the freest manner and in even harsher terms, when he says ‘Whom he will he hardenenth,’ and, ‘God, willing to show his wrath,’ etc. [Rom. 9:18, 22] What could be harsher (to the carnal nature at any rate) than Christ’s saying: ‘Many are called, but few chosen’ [Matt. 22:14], or: ‘I know whom I have chosen’ [John 13:18]? We have it, of course, on your own authority that nothing more profitless could be said than things like these, because ungodly men are led by them to fall into desperation, hatred, and blasphemy. Here, I see, you are of the opinion that the truth and usefulness of Scripture is to be measured and judged by the reactions of men, and the most ungodly men at that, so that only what has proved pleasing or seemed tolerable to them should be deemed true, divine, and salutary, while the opposite should forthwith be deemed useless, false, and pernicious” (p. 135)

However, the primary element of Luther’s argument addresses Erasmus’ own admission that without God we cannot attain salvation, a vital but inevitable flaw in Erasmus’ position. The implications regarding human will, therefore, are clear to Luther, namely that the human will is in itself incapable and thus lacking in freedom:

“When it has been proved that salvation is beyond our own powers and devices, and depends on the work of God alone… does it not follow that when God is not present and at work in us everything we do is evil and we necessarily do what is of no avail for salvation? For it is not we, but only God, who works salvation in us, then before he works we can do nothing of saving significance, whether we wish to or not… when a man is without the Spirit of God he does not do evil against his will, as if he were taken by the scruff of his neck and forced to it… but he does it of his own accord and with a ready will” (p. 139)

Luther hammers home this point repeatedly: that one is either in God or one is not, thus one’s will is either captive to God’s will or captive to sin. Whichever end it serves, whether it be righteous or evil, the will is in bondage according to the pre-disposition of the individual in question, whether he or she abides in God or not in God. Essentially, Luther asserts the frightening implications of Christ’s declaration in Matthew 12:30, “He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad”. When the will belongs to sin, which due to the doctrine of original sin, particularly as detailed by Augustine, is the natural and default state of fallen man, then the will can do nothing but act sinfully and “can do nothing of saving significance”. Accordingly, if it finds bondage in the will of God, “it goes on willing and delighting in and loving the good, just as before it willed and delighted in and loved evil… So not even here is there any free choice, or freedom to turn oneself in another direction or will something different, so long as the Spirit and grace of God remain in a man” (p. 140)

Thus Erasmus seems, to Luther, to utterly undermine his own argument. In admitting that human free will is unable to attain salvation independent of the will and grace of God, Erasmus has posited a human will which, whilst apparently free, is of itself nothing but subject to sin: “in matters pertaining to salvation or damnation, a man has no free choice, but is a captive, subject and slave either of the will of God or the will of Satan” (p. 143). Luther’s argument follows:

“If anyone told you that a thing was free which could operate by its own power only in one direction (the bad one), while the other (the good one) it could of course operate, though not by its own power, but only by the help of another – would you be able to keep a straight face, my friend?” (p. 175)

He gives the example of a small log flowing down a stream. On its own it can only flow down the stream, down every little waterfall it encounters. Only when assisted, pushed by human hands up the stream or waterfall could it act contrary to its downward nature. Luther observes how strange it would be to call such a small, floating log free, when alone it is specifically bound to one direction. Thus, to portray the human individual as in some sense neutral, able to observe the paths available and in a detached manner decide between the one or the other is nonsensical to Luther: “It is, moreover, a mere dialectical fiction that there is in man a neutral and unqualified willing, nor can those who assert it prove it” (p. 180).

Contrary therefore to Erasmus’ example of the sailor thanking God for the assistance in the storm, which nevertheless does not exclude the sailor’s own efforts in the prevalence of his ship, for Luther every righteous act is not born of some union of God’s assistance with human will which freely chose God’s grace, but rather is the teleological result of a will captive to God’s purpose. To use the illustration of the trees from Matthew 7, good fruit is the result of a good tree, whilst bad fruit the result of a bad tree. The good tree does not choose to bring forth good or bad fruit but rather produces good fruit simply because it is a good tree, i.e. it is bound to bring forth good fruit by its nature, to which it is captive and from which it cannot deviate. It follows in the context of original sin that fundamentally all human beings are bad trees, whose fruit of itself is bad in that it cannot attain salvation. This demonstrates the necessity of Christ’s intercession and sacrifice according to Luther, properly contextualising that central declaration in John’s Gospel: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). We are thus only saved through the will and grace of God. Only then may we truly become good trees. Therefore, in concluding the allegory Jesus declares:

“Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 7:19-21).

Ultimately, Luther associates human will with sin: “free choice avails for nothing but sinning. This is Augustine’s view, which he expresses in many places, but particularly in his book On the Spirit and the Letter… where he uses those very words” (p. 180). Therefore, when contemplating Erasmus’ identification of different viewpoints on free will and predestination, particularly the last and harshest, that “of Wyclif and Luther, that free choice is an empty name and all that we do come about by sheer necessity” (p. 180), Luther concludes:

“when it has been conceded and agreed that free choice, having lost its liberty, is perforce in bondage to sin and cannot will anything good, I can make no other sense of these words than that free choice is an empty phrase, of which the reality has been lost. Lost liberty, according to my grammar, is no liberty at all, and to give the name of liberty to something that has no liberty, is to employ an empty phrase… I for my part cannot call lost health, health; and if I ascribed it to a sick person, I do not think I should have ascribed anything but an empty name” (pp. 180-181)

Finally, Luther addresses Erasmus’ use of Old and New Testament quotes which seem to imply free will through the word choice. Typically, he argues essentially that it is impious to presume that the phrase asserts human free will when it might also reasonably assert God’s power:

“I mention these things merely in order to show Reason how foolish she is in tacking her inferences onto the Scriptures… If now God deals with us as a father with his children, so as to show our ignorant selves our helplessness, or like a good doctor makes our disease known to us, or tramples on us as enemies of his who proudly resist his counsel, and in laws which he issues (the most effective method of all) says: ‘Do, hear, keep,’ or, ‘If thou shalt hear, if thou wilt, if thou shalt do,’ will the correct conclusion to be drawn from this be: ‘Therefore we can act freely, or else God is mocking us?’ Why does it not rather follow: ‘Therefore, God is putting us to the test so as to lead us by means of the law to a knowledge of our impotence if we are his friends or truly and deservedly to trample on and mock us if we are his proud enemies’? That is the reason why God gives laws, as Paul teaches (Rom. 3:20). For human nature is so blind that it does not know its own powers, or rather diseases, and so proud as to imagine that it knows and can do everything; and for this pride and blindness God has no readier remedy than the propounding of his law” (p. 185)

Exhortations and commands from God in the Old Testament to act in a certain way in order to attain salvation do not, for Luther, necessarily point to the free will of the one being addressed. Instead, certain Godly standards and principles are elucidated which demonstrate man’s fallen state:

“by such sayings man is shown what he ought to do, not what he can do. Cain therefore is being told that he ought to master sin and keep its appetite under his control; but this he neither did nor could do, as he was already held down under the alien yoke of Satan. For it is well known that the Hebrews frequently use the future indicative for the imperative, as in Ex. 20(:3, 13): ‘Thou shalt have none other gods’; ‘Thou shalt not kill’; ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’; and countless similar instances. Otherwise, if they were taken indicatively (as they are expressed), they would be promises of God, and since God cannot lie, the result would be that no man would sin, and then there would be no need of them as precepts” (p. 189)

Moreover, when addressing Erasmus’ arguments regarding New Testament verses like Matthew 19:17, Luther muses: “‘If you would enter into life, keep the commandments.’ With what effrontery would it be said, ‘If you will…’ to one whose will is not free? So asks Diatribe. To which we reply: So the will is free, is it, according to this word of Christ? But you were wanting to prove that free choice cannot will anything good, but necessarily serves sin, in the absence of grace. With what face, then, do you now make it wholly free?” (p. 208). Erasmus has already made such statements meaningless as he has conceded that without God, human will is purely sinful. Furthermore, Luther sees such Bible quotes as supportive not of free will, but precisely the opposite, that by them the extent of God’s predestination and influence is made known:

“they are used not only in order to show the impotence of free choice, by means of which none of them is done, but also to intimate that someday all such things will be done, though by a power not our own but God’s – if we are to admit at all that such expressions contain some indication of things possible and intended to be done. They might be interpreted like this: ‘If someday you have the will to keep the commandments (which you will have, however, not from yourself, but from God, who will give it to whom he will), then they will preserve you.’ Or to speak more frankly, these expressions, and particularly the subjunctive clauses, seem to be put as they are because of our ignorance of the predestination of God, which they imply, as if what they meant to say was this: ‘If you will; if you are willing,’ that is, ‘If you are such in the sight of God that he deigns to give you this will to keep the commandments, you will be saved.’ By this turn of phrase we are given to understand both things, namely, that we can do nothing of ourselves, and that whatever we do, God works it in us.” (p. 209)

That hitherto Luther has primarily attacked Erasmus’ own points and their actual implications without submitting too many major principles of his own is a testament to the thoroughness which Luther was prepared to deploy against his opponent, and indicates the mass which his own arguments will attain. In the next and final part of Free will and pre-destination the second half of his response will be examined, in which he switches from attacking Erasmus’ assertions to proclaiming and maintaining major Scriptural arguments in support of predestination and the sovereign will of God. While here has been presented only the gist of Luther’s extensive criticisms of Erasmus’ Diatribe On the Freedom of the Will, nevertheless I must admit to a shift of my own position away from Erasmus and closer to Luther’s own position, in part if not totally. The strength of Luther’s own arguments remains to be seen, and shall be the subject of the next and final part in the Free will or pre-destination series.

*Martin Luther, Luther and Erasmus: Free Will and Salvation, Edited by E. Gordon Rupp and Philip S. Watson, The Westminster Press 1964

Blog 6: Free will or pre-destination part 1 – Erasmus and the Freedom of the Will

By Richard Keeble

I ask that the reader cast his mind back to the theological tension of 1520. The papal bull, Exsurge Domine, has called for a certain monk to recant his 95 Theses or face excommunication. The lethargic Pope Leo X has effectively declared war on the reformer, and battle lines which have long been in the making are now being actualised. The books of Martin Luther begin to fuel the fires, while Luther himself prepares to face the Catholic Church and select the life of a hunted outlaw.

Caught within this deadly standoff was the prominent Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus. This was a man who also had urged the Church to reform, who had held a somewhat amiable correspondence with Luther, and had hitherto reserved judging the young man. It is perhaps therefore not surprising that Erasmus found himself attacked at the pulpit of Louvain, the preacher demanding: “You wrote for Luther, now write against him!”

This was the first of many such “suggestions”, which were quickly being heard from many corners. Frantically, Erasmus yearned:

“Let us not devour each other like fish. Why upset the whole world over paradoxes, some unintelligible, some debatable, some unprofitable? The world is full of rage, hate, and wars. What will the end be if we employ only bulls and the stake? It is no great feat to burn a little man. It is a great achievement to persuade him.”

But neither Luther nor the Church would budge. From all sides the pressure mounted for Erasmus to denounce the monk, and in so doing wipe away his own suspected heretical leanings. This was no easy choice, for Erasmus had abhorred the abuses of the Church just as he resisted the Lutheran wrath. “I am a heretic to both sides”, he complained.

When he eventually bowed to the pressure, Erasmus sought a suitable topic to distance himself from Luther. Henry VIII had proposed one some time before: the freedom of the will. Even in this Erasmus sought to heal the great divisions, for he saw in this topic the chance for reconciliation; a potential debate on a subject he considered non-essential to the faith.

Erasmus finally published his treatise in September 1524, designating it: On the Freedom of the Will: A Diatribe or Discourse by Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam. He knew this subject would find disagreement from Luther, a scholar so inspired by Augustinian theology. Here follows most of the essential arguments the reluctant Erasmus pit against his controversial opponent:

“Certainly I do not consider Luther himself would be indignant if anybody should find occasion to differ from him, since he permits himself to call in question the decrees, not only of all the doctors of the Church, but of all the schools, councils and popes; and since he acknowledges this plainly and openly, it ought not to be counted by his friends as cheating if I take a leaf out of his book.”

Erasmus elucidates the great danger of Luther’s position, which is the view that the individual’s actions are not the result of free will but are pre-destined. Such a view removes the responsibility each individual holds for his own actions, and so in Erasmus’ view opens “a window to impiety… especially in view of the slowness of mind of mortal men, their sloth, their malice, and their incurable propensity toward all manner of evil.”

As well as citing the vast majority of the Church Fathers as supportive of his cause, the primary meat of Erasmus’ argument concerns itself with: “Scripture Passages That Support Free Choice”. Pride of place is given “to a passage in the book called Ecclesiasticus, or the Wisdom of Sirach, ch. 15(:14-17)”:

“God made man from the beginning, and left him in the hand of his own counsel. He added his commandments and precepts. If thou wilt observe the commandments, and keep acceptable fidelity forever, they shall preserve thee. He hath set water and fire before thee; stretch forth thine hand for which thou wilt. Before man is life and death, good and evil; that which he shall choose shall be given him.”

The Book of Ecclesiasticus is a Jewish work of ethical teachings from approximately 200-175 BC and is generally considered the earliest witness to a canon of the books of the prophets. Not only does Erasmus see the exclusion of this book from the Bible as unjustified, but he goes on to identify Biblical passages which also uphold free choice. He draws attention to God’s command in Genesis: “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die” (2:16-17). Since the Fall of Mankind, where free choice was indeed exercised, one has been able to identify good from evil, a significant ability according to Erasmus:

“If the power to distinguish between good and evil and the will of God had been hidden from men, it could not be imputed to them if they made the wrong choice. If the will had not been free, sin could not have been imputed, for sin would cease to be sin if it were not voluntary, save when error or the restriction of the will is itself the fruit of sin.”

The Old Testament seems to Erasmus the best location for support of the existence of free choice. He observes God’s conditions depending on the choice of Cain (Genesis 4:6-7) and draws special attention to the Divine interaction with Moses: “‘I have set before your face the way of life and the way of death. Choose what is good and walk in it.’ What could be put more plainly? God shows what is good, what is evil, shows the different rewards of death and life, leaves man freedom to choose”. Yet the most recurring aspect of the texts Erasmus utilises is the significance of the word “if”: “If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword” (Isaiah 1:19-20); “If you will not listen to me, to walk in my law” (Jeremiah 26:4). There are many other Old Testament passages which Erasmus identifies, including Joel 2:12; Jonah 3:8; Isaiah 46:8; Jeremiah 26:3; Psalms 81:13 and 34:12-13.

Yet Erasmus does not limit his focus to such passages from the Old Testament: “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess” (Matthew 19:21); “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). As Erasmus observes from Matthew 19:17 “Again, elsewhere: ‘If you would enter into life, keep the commandments.’ With what effrontery would it be said: ‘If you will…’ to one whose will is not free?” As before, many passages are provided, including Matthew 11:28; Luke 23:34; John 1:12 and 6:67; but, as Erasmus says, “we will not weary the reader by going over all the passages of this kind, since they are so countless that they will readily catch the eye of any reader… I prudently pass over many texts which are in The Acts and in the Apocalypse lest I tire the reader. These many texts have induced learned and holy men not to take free choice entirely away”.

One feels one must credit Erasmus with the point that all such passages do seem to presuppose the ability of the listener to choose freely. This positivity applies further when he tackles the significant issue of Exodus 9:12 “But the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he did not listen to them”. If God had hardened Pharaoh’s heart, then it seems that no matter what the will of Pharaoh may have been, he would not have listened. To maintain the role of free will, Erasmus uses the explanation of the Church Father Origen from his Peri archōn (On Beginnings):

“Origen… declares that an occasion of hardening was given by God, but he would throw back the blame on Pharaoh who, by his evil deeds, was made more obstinate through those things which should have brought him to repentance, just as by the action of the same rain cultivated land brings forth excellent fruit, and uncultivated land thorns and thistles, and just as by the action of the same sun, wax melts and mud hardens, so the forbearance of God that tolerates the sinner brings some to repentance and makes others more obstinate in wrongdoing.”

Another possible objection to Biblical free will is the case of Judas Iscariot. For Erasmus this is not a matter of pre-destination but foreknowledge on the part of God. In this sense Judas’ betrayal was necessary. Yet in another sense, it was committed utterly freely, and Judas retained the power to refuse to undertake it. “You say, ‘What if he had changed his mind?’ The foreknowledge of God would not have been falsified, nor his will hindered, since he himself would have foreknown and intended beforehand that Judas should change his mind”.

The final significant Biblical extract Erasmus addresses which seems to deny free will is that of the potter and the clay: “‘Oh house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter had done?’ says the Lord. ‘Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel’”, taken from Jeremiah 18:6 and referred to by Paul in Romans 9:21-23. Clearly this seems to imply that man is governed not by the freedom of the will, but the design and intent of God. Yet Erasmus calls for us not to read this as a detailed comparison: “This potter makes a vase for dishonour not on account of preceding merits, just as he rejects some Jews, but on account of unbelief”. Erasmus argues that if one takes the potter and the clay comparison literally, then so too must one literally interpret another certain passage: “If anyone purifies himself”. Thus Erasmus contends:

“this interpretation of Paul will be found to contradict himself, for in the former passage he puts everything in the hands of God, but here he puts it all in the hands of man. And yet each passage is right, though each makes a different point. The first shuts the mouth murmuring against God, the other incites to endeavour and is a warning against complacency or despair.”

Erasmus compares the potter and the clay with the Isaiah 10:15, “Shall the axe vaunt itself over him who hews with it, or the saw magnify itself against him who wields it?” The difference between such tools and a human being is that the human being is living and rational, thus Erasmus states that “if an axe had been such, it would not have been absurd to say that they had shared in the action of the craftsman”. Another comparison is made between the potter and the clay and the master and his servant. Though the servant carries out the will of the master, he retains his free will: “The master lays down his commands and supplies what is needed, nor could the servant do anything apart from his master, and yet nobody says the servant does nothing at all when he follows the orders of his lord”. Finally Erasmus addresses the context of the original analogy, “These things are said against a wicked king, whose cruelty God has used to chastise his own people… So this analogy does not fit the taking away of free choice, but rebukes the pride of a wicked ruler who attributed his deeds not to God but to his own might and wisdom”.

Despite Erasmus’ support of free will, he never denies the role of God’s grace in gaining salvation: “since our own efforts are so puny, the whole is ascribed to God, just as a sailor who has brought his ship safely into port out of a heavy storm does not say: ‘I saved the ship’ but ‘God saved it.’ And yet his skill and his labour were not entirely useless”. For Erasmus, reaching salvation was not a matter of pre-destination or purely free choice, though free choice initiates. He envisaged man working with the grace of God, having freely chosen to do so:

“But as to the phrase in Phil. 2(:13): ‘For God is at work in us, both to will and to work for his good pleasure,’ this does not exclude free choice, for when Paul says, ‘for his good pleasure,’ if you refer it to man, as Ambrose interprets it, you understand by it that a good will cooperates with the action of grace.”

All such passages as Matthew 10:20, “For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you”, is seen by Erasmus as referring to the will of man striving with the Spirit and grace of God. He applies this also, for instance, to Acts 4:8, “Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them…” etc.

The notion of pre-destination remains a suspicious and dangerous one for Erasmus. In his Epilogue he illustrates a number of apt analogies, this perhaps the most striking:

“if a master were to free a slave who had merited nothing, he might have reason perhaps to say to the other servants who murmured against this, ‘You are no worse off if I am kinder to this one; you have your due.’ But anyone would deem a master cruel and unjust who flogged his slave to death because his body was too short or his nose too long or because of some other inelegance in his form. Would not the slave rightly cry out to his master under the blows, ‘Why am I punished for what I cannot help?’ and he would say this with still more justice if it were in his lord’s power to alter the bodily blemish of his slave, as it is in the power of God to change our will, or if the lord had himself given the slave this deformity which had offended, as for example by cutting off his nose or making his face hideous with scars. In this same way God, in the view of some, works even evil in us.”

Thus Erasmus awaited Luther’s inevitable literary onslaught, and I leave it for the reader to decide for himself or herself whether this wait should have been endured with trepidation. As Erasmus himself concludes:

“Although I am getting on in years, I am not, and shall never be, ashamed or annoyed to learn from any young man if he teaches me more evident truths with evangelical courtesy… I have completed my discourse; now let others pass judgment.”

Blog 5: Pascal’s Pensées part 2 – The Wager

By Richard Keeble

The common and incorrect conception of Pascal’s Wager is an argument for belief in God being a safer bet than retaining an atheistic life. This guise holds that if one commits to belief in God and is right, they gain eternal salvation and if they are wrong, they have lost nothing. On the other hand, it holds that if one remains an atheist and they are right nothing is gained, whereas if they are wrong eternal damnation and suffering is theirs. Therefore, it concludes, faith in God is the more reasonable gamble with the odds stacked in its favour. The arguments against this position are naturally manifold, including the issue of choosing the correct god, or the fact that this “wager” could apply to any figment of the imagination. Furthermore, to base one’s spiritual investment in God on a mere weighing up of odds is widely, and rightly, considered dubious and highly questionable.

The tragedy is that this argument in no way reflects the true Wager presented in the Pensées, not only demonstrating that most who attack the Wager have not even read Pascal, but consequently that he has not fulfilled his vast potential to spiritually enlighten.

The Wager builds on Pascal’s notion that the human condition includes, whether the individual is conscious of it or not, the need for God in his or her life. Unlike René Descartes, a contemporary of Pascal, he held that one cannot simply reason distantly one’s way to God. Abstraction jeopardises the individual’s personal relation to God, a relation so important to Pascal that he sewed his religious experience testimony into his jacket, and would move it from one jacket to the next as he wore them. In this testimony he declared:

“He can be found only in the ways taught in the Gospel. Greatness of the human soul. O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee, but I have known thee… He maintains himself in me only in the ways taught in the Gospel. Renunciation total and sweet.”

The Pensées directly address this personal relation with God, thus here is where the true context of the Wager is to be found. Essentially, Pascal asks what harm there is in attempting to know God through a loving, personal and faithful relationship with him. The Wager is not concerned with the multiplicity of apparent deities, the notion is proposed solely with the Christian God in mind. Abstract reasoning can only take one so far; the God of the Bible is a personal God, and thus relating to him is primarily a personal affair. This is why Pascal states:

“Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.”

One has the potential to know God personally if only one will attempt to do so. This further builds on Pascal’s negativity towards those to whom such matters seem trivial and inconsequential. Confronted with the possibility of knowing God there is little reason not to attempt to engage with it, for nothing is lost and the greatest could be gained. Atheism does not feature in the Wager. No comparison between the odds of religious belief and refusal to believe is made as the common conception holds; purely because atheism is irrelevant. The Wager is for he or she who wishes to reach God and it presents Pascal’s view on how to go about it. Such reasoning is not abstract but immanent and practical, a perfect example of what I would call experiential or existential rationalism.

However, Pascal greatly accentuates the Wager’s consequences for the individual, to the extent that its effects are swiftly felt and one’s choice to wager immediately vindicated by God’s love and grace. Thus he concludes:

“Now what evil will happen to you in taking this side? You will be trustworthy, honourable, grateful, generous, friendly, sincere, and true. In truth you will no longer have these poisoned pleasures, glory and luxury, but you will have other pleasures.  I tell you that you will gain in this life, at each step you make in this path you will see so much certainty of gain, so much nothingness in what you stake, that you will know at last that you have wagered on a certainty, an infinity, for which you have risked nothing.”

Therefore Pascal’s Wager ceases to be a wager in the normal sense as clarity is received as soon as one’s relation to God is earnestly embarked upon. The gifts of God’s grace are immediately made known to the individual. This is Pascal’s way of reaching certainty through faith, as opposed to an impious weighing up of odds for personal gain:

“Thus you will naturally be brought to believe, and will lose your acuteness.- But that is just what I fear.- Why? What have you to lose? But to show you that this is the right way, this it is that will lessen the passions, which are your greatest obstacles”

Pascal sought to find God via the “ways taught in the Gospel”, thus the Wager mirrors Christ’s declaration in John:

“If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority” (7:17)

But what of those who have never experienced faith? Is it so easy to come to a spiritual life, described by Pascal himself as “Forgetfulness of the world and of all save God”? No indeed, Pascal recognises the difficulty of this task. The process may be slow at first, and is utterly a personal affair:

“Labour then to convince yourself, not by increase of the proofs of God, but by the diminution of your passions… Learn of those who have been bound as you are, but who now stake all that they possess; these are they who know the way you would follow, who are cured of a disease of which you would be cured. Follow the way by which they began, by making believe that they believed, taking the holy water, having masses said, etc.”

Pascal’s mistrust of abstract reasoning, “the proofs of God”, to reach God is again demonstrated. Essentially, Pascal instead calls for an immersion in the life of a believer, in order to become a believer; to spend time with those who have travelled as you do and have reached faith before you. This is reflected by C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity:

“The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbour; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him… There is, indeed, one exception. If you do him a good turn, not to please God and obey the law of charity, but to show him what a fine forgiving chap you are, and to put him in your debt, and then sit down to wait for his ‘gratitude’, you will probably be disappointed”

Lewis’ position is equally as experiential as Pascal’s, and just as Pascal does, Lewis calls for the individual to seek to live like a believer, for that is how one becomes a believer.

What also helps to further distinguish Pascal from the more individualist stance of Kierkegaard is his veneration for Catholic ecclesiology, a factor that would also place John Henry Newman’s direction at odds with Kierkegaard’s during their mutual reaction against the rise of liberalism in 19^th Century Christendom.

Therefore the purpose of Pascal’s Wager is to initiate an existential transformation, to bring the individual to God whilst at the same time enabling spiritual and practical improvement. Yet the initial decision finds quick vindication and justification, as if the side-effect of the decision to wager is itself the reward. Of course Pascal has made clear that this is to some degree the case, and even in itself is the justification to commit to the Wager.

Finally, the Wager must also be seen in the context of Pascal’s life. Having contributed so greatly to mathematical probability theory, he saw his friends use this to successfully gamble and profit financially, a situation distressing to such a pious mathematician as Pascal. Therefore the Wager, in addition to what has been described here, is this mathematician’s personal idea of atonement; to turn his forces of probability away from the propagation of vice and toward contemplation of the divine.

Blog 4: Pascal’s Pensées part 1 – Introduction to Pascal and the human condition

By Richard Keeble

The contribution of French philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) to mathematics and science prior to his religious experience has astonished and inspired great minds since he was just 16. His famous treatise on the “Mystic Hexagram” dazzled the philosopher René Descartes, who at first refused to believe such work had come from a boy. Furthermore, after inventing a calculating machine, the 20 year old Pascal worked with Fermat to produce the mathematical theory of probabilities, laying the groundwork for Leibniz’ formulation of the infinitesimal calculus. Even Friedrich Nietzsche would later comment: “One should never forgive Christianity for having destroyed men like Pascal”, demonstrating his high regard for Pascal’s earlier work.

However, the same cannot be said for Pascal’s contribution to theology and philosophy. In this context, he is most widely known for his eponymous “Wager”: a peculiar thought experiment blown out of all proportion and recognition. Pascal’s posthumously published magnum opus the Pensées, or Thoughts, is so rich in theological content and philosophical exploration that the general overbearing emphasis on Pascal’s Wager is intellectually tragic. This situation is only worsened by the fact the majority of people do not realise that the common conception of the Wager is inaccurate and false. While I shall eventually address the Wager, this stands as a testament to the comparative lack of impact Pascal’s Pensées has had, an unjust situation this series seeks to improve. The Pensées has so much more to offer to the individual than is commonly realised among those seeking truth, and so I write this in the earnest hope that the reader shall endeavour to find a copy of the book and read it for him or herself.

On the other hand, so profound and insightful have I found Pascal’s Pensées that there are aspects of it I feel require special contemplation. Following his religious experience of 1654 he claimed to have seen:

“Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholars”

Clearly, Pascal was concerned not with some deity, a mere conclusion to philosophical argument, but the personal God of Biblical theism. His persistent focus on the individual heart and the Divine contrasts Descartes’ use of abstract reasoning to prove God’s existence. While not denying such methods completely, Pascal does observe the limits of human reason and instead dwells more in the realm of personal involvement with God, spiritual strife and internal anxiety and despair. Exposition on these themes, recurrent throughout the Pensées, successfully anticipated the Christian existentialism of Søren Kierkegaard by almost 200 years, further demonstrating Pascal’s genius and true influence.

Just as Socrates called via the “Socratic method” for each individual to “know thyself” and to explore deeper wisdom, Pascal insists on a personal concern for truth:

“The immortality of the soul is a matter of so great moment to us, it touches us so deeply, that we must have lost all feeling if we are careless of the truth about it”

Pascal seeks to especially encourage atheists to contemplate the human condition, the presence of the soul and its implications for the individual:

“Therefore among unbelievers, I make a vast difference between those who labour with all their power to gain instruction, and those who live without taking trouble or thought for it”

The former Pascal sees as essential. Even if one were to doubt God or Divine Truth it would be far greater that they do so with earnest contemplation on the matter and trepidation at the results, with the seeking of truth ever in mind. Of those, however, to whom the soul means nothing, who press it without thought from all mind and care, Pascal thinks far more negatively:

“This neglect of a matter in which themselves are concerned, their eternity, and their all, makes me angry rather than compassionate; it astonishes me and terrifies me, it is to me something monstrous”

Yet he is quick to assure the atheist that such reaction on his part is not born of spiritual devotion but is the natural spring from the principles of human interest and self-love. In short, philosophically speaking, such concerns are common sense. The alternative seems to him worthy of ridicule:

“‘Such is my state, full of weakness and uncertainty; from all which I conclude that I ought to pass all the days of my life without thought of searching for what must happen to me. Perhaps I might find some ray of light in my doubts, but I will not take the trouble, nor stir a foot to seek it’”

Once earnestly contemplated, the nature of the human condition seems clear to Pascal: that it contains two major, contrasting aspects which are nevertheless fused within the narrow compass of the human sphere of existence. The immediate result is that the human knows neither aspect to its extreme, yet is not oblivious to the callings and inclinations of both. This is most apparent in relation to the external reality:

“For after all what is a man in nature? A nothing in regard to the infinite, a whole in regard to nothing, a mean between nothing and the whole; infinitely removed from understanding either extreme”

Therefore, while man is greater than nothing, even infinite compared with nothing, he is not maximal and thus is nothing compared to the infinite. He is a balance between these two extremes, which is also to say he contains aspects of these extremes but is neither completely one nor the other.

This is nothing particularly new in the sense that viewing the human condition as an unstable synthesis of body and soul, material and immaterial, dates back to the Greeks. Following the observations of Heraclitus and Parmenides, Plato posited that truth was not to be found in the ever changing, fallible material world but in what he called “thought truths”. There was another realm in which perfect, immaterial forms of physical objects existed and could be conceived of by humans. This led the common Greek response to the human condition to be what Kierkegaard would later call a “negative self-relation”, that is a self-relation which suppresses one aspect of being in favour of the other. For Plato, the flesh was to be suppressed in favour of the spirit, the truth beyond this physical realm. This was illustrated most explicitly with his famous cave allegory. In the Republic, Socrates asks Glaucon to imagine a group of people who have always been tied to the wall of a darkened cave. There is a fire behind them, and before the fire others carry wooden carvings of people and animals. This has the effect of casting shadows over the heads of the prisoners onto the wall in front of them. As they have only ever seen these shadows before them, the prisoners mistake them for real objects, and the echoes of those behind them for the sounds of the shadows. However, Socrates supposes that one of the prisoners is freed and is dragged into the light outside the cave. He would be completely lost, overwhelmed, and would desire to return to the cave. However, his eyes would adjust and he would not see puppets or shadows but real objects for the first time. He would see the sun illuminating the real objects of the world and thus would not desire a return to the cave except, perhaps, to free his friends. Back in the dark, however, he is at a loss. His restrained friends would misunderstand his inability to see the shadows anymore and would mock him through their ignorance. We are the prisoners in the cave, seeing only what is before us, imperfect copies of the perfect forms in the world of being. We may not be able to see the forms, but we can grasp them intellectually. Thus, Plato concludes, we should pay little heed to our physical forms, for what matters is the reality beyond what we see and this can accessed only through philosophical investigation.

The common ground between this Greek thought and Pascal is the recognition of man being both material and immaterial, body and soul. A consequence of this condition is not only the inability to know extremes, but also that it leads us to confusion and internal imbalance. The inclinations of the soul contrast the inclinations of the body and vice versa:

“Let us conceive then that this mixture of spirit and clay throws us out of proportion… Hence it comes that almost all philosophers have confounded different ideas, and speak of material things in spiritual phrase, and of spiritual things in material phrase”

This is where Pascal’s Pensées leaves us initially as far as the human condition is concerned. Establishing this is the first focus of the section titled “The Misery of Man without God”, indicating to the reader that the unstable balance is a conundrum eventually to be solved by God. Certainly, the second section of the Pensées is titled “The Happiness of Man with God”, which hints at such a solution. Furthermore, as we have seen in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard held that “a human being is a synthesis of the temporal and eternal” which is indeed resolved by “infinite interest in one’s personal eternal happiness. It is higher precisely because it is truer, because it definitely expresses the synthesis”. Whether this is case for Pascal is for later examination. The notion that man is ultimately lacking in nature, however, and finds himself confused and incomplete due to his initial condition, this Pascal undoubtedly establishes at the beginning. Indeed, he states at the end of “The Greatness and Littleness of Man”:

“The stoics say ‘Retire within yourselves, there will you find your rest;’ which is not true. Others say, ‘Go out of yourselves, seek you happiness in diversion;’ nor is that true, for sickness may come.

Happiness is neither without us nor within us; it is in God, both without us and within us”

Thus the need for God within the human condition is also established, and the solution already seems to oppose the Greek conclusion of a “negative self-relation” somewhat. As Don Cupitt explains in his book The Sea of Faith:

“Pascal sees, even shares, the psychic condition that leads people to gamble; and he is in effect saying, ‘You are right to despair, right to see that the questions of life have become an insoluble enigma, right to see that you are at the mercy of something unknown to you, and right to see that you must cast yourself on that mercy. In almost every way your own deep self-understanding of your own heart and your own predicament are so nearly correct. Only, see now that it makes sense that you should cast yourself on the Mercy, not of chance, but of God, for the void in your heart is one that only God can fill. If this gamble comes off, then you gain everything; and even if it does not, at least you cannot be any more lost than you are now’”

Cupitt’s discourse returns us once again to Pascal’s Wager, an experiential exercise concerned not with gambling one’s way to Heaven but knowing God personally. As examination of the human condition according to Pascal demonstrates, the issue arises as to how one is to reach God. It is this the Wager, and therefore the next focus of this series, seeks to address.

Blog 3: Concluding Unscientific Postscript explorative commentary part 3 – Christianity and the Speculative Point of View

By Richard Keeble

The second chapter in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript concludes “The Objective Issue of the Truth of Christianity”, first of the book’s two major sections. Although much shorter in length than the first chapter, Climacus’ discourse on Christianity and the Speculative Point of View nevertheless proves systematic and pithy.

The subject remaining Christianity as pure objectivity, it is reasonable to assume that many of Climacus’ assertions in this chapter echo those of the first, and this assumption is made with some truth. Indeed, Climacus continues to focus on those who are “impassionedly, infinitely interested in their eternal happiness”^[1]; he or she who, ipso facto, is the intended reader. Yet neither has the Historical Point of View been abandoned, as we remain for the present with the objective approach. Thus Climacus begins this chapter: “The speculative point of view conceives of Christianity as a historical phenomenon”^[2], consequently requiring no action on the part of the individual. Therefore, in much the same way as the first chapter, I essentially interpret the second as denoting the insufficiency of approaching Christianity purely objectively. The inadequacy of speculative thought from afar, without personal involvement. If nothing else, the Speculative Point of View emphasises that to be a Christian is really the easiest thing of all, and thus its concept of Christianity is deluded.

In reference to his Danish homeland, part of that Christendom Kierkegaard would come to despise, Climacus describes humorously, though not without purpose, the individual who questions their faith. In 19^th Century Danish society, being Danish typically meant one was a Christian eo ipso. This was, therefore, incompatible with the individual questioning his faith, or even seeking its development. As Climacus describes: “If he were married, his wife would tell him, ‘Hubby, darling, where did you ever pick up such a notion? How can you not be a Christian? You are Danish, aren’t you? Doesn’t the geography book say that the predominant religion in Denmark is Lutheran-Christian?’”^[3]. This may seem absurd to the reader, but Climacus argues this is precisely the stance of the Speculative Point of View in Christendom. Because it sees Christianity purely objectively, without including the subject, and because the individual lives within Christendom, it assumes his Christian faith as given. Clearly, therefore, this would not apply to one who did not live within Christendom, not that the issue of objectivity is any less present for him or her, just as arguably there is today a “Christendom” no longer. Yet one must bear in mind the apparent faith of the individual is ultimately irrelevant for the Speculative Point of View; exactly because its emphasis, by definition, is not on he who speculates:

“The speculative thinker… has become too objective to talk about himself”^[4].

However, there is more to say on Climacus’ observance of faith-as-given. This assertion appears to me closely related to Kierkegaard’s own view. He once stated in his journal that: “This is what being a copy is; and being a copy is the easiest mode of existence, shielded from a direct relation to the idea, which would certainly be as fatal as sunstroke”^[5]. The issue ultimately returns to passionate commitment to the objective. If one acknowledges one’s Christian faith merely as taken for granted, as one does for the Speculative Point of View, then it is this faith of which Kierkegaard questions the validity. Such a faith cannot involve immediacy due to its very nature, and therefore cannot be fit for one “infinitely, personally, impassionedly interested in his relation to this truth concerning his own eternal happiness”^[6].

The point is made that the Speculative Point of View is purely objective, hence its insufficiency in relation to eternal happiness. If the speculative thinker is, at the same time, a believer then he must be aware that speculative thought cannot have the same meaning as faith. If one is a believer, one is therefore “infinitely interested in his own eternal happiness and in faith is assured of it”^[7]. His eternal happiness is not built on his speculative thought because it may remove from him the “certitude of faith… into indifferent objective knowledge”^[8]. Therefore, to claim to base one’s eternal happiness on speculative thought is to comically self-contradict. Speculative thought and objectivity stand irrelevant to the subject’s eternal happiness, for this is ultimately subjective. Never is subjectivity meant as mere relativism though; it is simply focussing on the subject itself, the individual, in relation to the objective.

It is with this in mind that Climacus warns the purely objective thinker; for “if Christianity is essentially something objective, it behoves the observer to be objective. But if Christianity is essentially subjectivity, it is a mistake if the observer is objective”^[9]. This is not, of course, to renounce objectivity. Climacus is keen to assure the reader of this: “Honour be to speculative thought, praised be everyone who is truly occupied with it. To deny the value of speculative thought… would, in my eyes, be to prostitute oneself and would be especially foolish for one whose life in large part… is devoted to its service”^[10]. He respectively invokes Aristotle, he who placed such an emphasis on thinking, and praises scholars and their “perseverance in the service of the idea”^[11]. Despite this, in relation to purpose and the individual’s eternal happiness, Climacus insists the Speculative Point of View is misplaced:

“Since a human being is a synthesis of the temporal and eternal, the speculative happiness that a spectator can enjoy will be an illusion, because he wants to be exclusively eternal within time… higher, therefore, than that happiness is the impassioned, infinite interest in one’s personal eternal happiness. It is higher precisely because it is truer, because it definitely expresses the synthesis”^[12].

This concept of the human as such a synthesis links directly to Kierkegaard’s The Sickness Unto Death, 1849, which interestingly is written under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus. Yet, returning to the Postscript, Climacus stresses that consequently Christianity is not merely a historical phenomenon, as The Speculative Point of View holds. Instead, he expounds the limited nature of this view:

“Take a married couple. See, their marriage… constitutes a phenomenon in existence… but their married love is not a historical phenomenon; the phenomenon is the insignificant, has significance to the marriage partners only through their love, but looked at in any other way (that is, objectively), the phenomenal is a deception. So it is with Christianity”^[13].

Whilst Christianity has undeniably left its mark world-historically, albeit to a greater extent than the marriage, this does not silence the true, subjective emphasis of both. As Climacus puts it, unlike the visible Church, “the invisible Church is not a historical phenomenon; as such it cannot be observed objectively at all, because it is only in subjectivity”^[14].

Kierkegaard’s famous reaction against Hegelianism is strongly present throughout this first section of the Postscript. Whilst Hegel sought to remove the problem of the Speculative Point of View by positing humanity as the ever-progressing, objective consciousness of God, Kierkegaard rejected his pantheism. Rather than the famous dialectics of objectivity, he held that truth was to do with contradiction, paradox and, most startling of all, the individual. Christ, the God-man, was the paradoxical synthesis of the individual human condition. The New Testament is filled with spiritual hardship and anxiety; themes running throughout Kierkegaard’s writings, and so rejection of the notion of Christianity as purely objective, with no mention of the subject, remains fundamental to Kierkegaard. As he declared in his journal:

“there is no philosophy so harmful to Christianity as the Hegelian. For earlier philosophies were honest enough to let Christianity be what it is – but Hegel had both the stupidity and the effrontery to solve the problem of speculation and Christianity by altering Christianity – and then everything was splendid”^[15].

I would therefore conclude for the first section of the Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments that, in the view of Climacus, an approach to Christianity that is utterly objective is ipso facto speculative; an approach that is speculative is ipso facto without subjectivity and an approach without subjectivity is not Christianity.

Footnotes

[1] Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, Princeton University Press 1992, p. 52

[2] Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, op.cit. ibid. note 1, p. 50

[3] Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, op.cit. note 1, p. 50

[4] Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, op.cit. note 1, p. 51

[5] Søren Kierkegaard, The Last Years Journals 1853-55, Edited and Translated by Ronald Gregor Smith, Collins Fontana Library 1965, p. 39

[6] Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, op.cit. note 1, p. 21

[7] Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, op.cit. note 1, p. 55

[8] Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, op.cit. note 1, p. 55

[9] Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, op.cit. note 1, p. 53

[10] Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, op.cit. note 1, p. 56

[11] Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, op.cit. note 1, p. 56

[12] Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, op.cit. note 1, p. 56

[13] Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, op.cit. note 1, p. 54

[14] Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, op.cit. note 1, p. 54

[15] Søren Kierkegaard, The Last Years Journals 1853-55, op.cit. note 5, p. 30

Blog 2: Concluding Unscientific Postscript explorative commentary part 2 – Christianity and the Historical Point of View

By Richard Keeble

The first chapter of the Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments considers Christianity in regard to the Historical Point of View. Bearing in mind the fact Søren Kierkegaard wrote the Postscript pseudonymously, via Johannes Climacus, we first must examine what Climacus means by the “Historical Point of View”. He defines it as the truth as “established by critical consideration of the various reports etc., in short, in the same way as historical truth is ordinarily established”^[1]. This is straightforward enough, and thusly in the context of Christianity would refer to the Bible as a historic source, as well as any other historical account of Jesus.

My interpretation of Chapter 1 is essentially that a purely objective approach to Christianity is ultimately inadequate for the individual. Climacus makes this clear at the beginning of the chapter, stating “Let the scientific researcher labour with restless zeal, let him even shorten his life in the enthusiastic service of science and scholarship; let the speculative thinker spare neither time nor effort – they are nevertheless not infinitely, personally, impassionedly interested”^[2]. Climacus’ issue is with this “speculative” stance on Christian truth, i.e. the individual that focuses on the objectivity of Christianity and not their relation to it as the subject. In other words, they view existential Christianity from the outside. The Postscript’s second Chapter, the focus of the next part in this series, considers the speculative view in more detail.

This is contrasted by the subjective approach. Climacus asserts that, rather than observing Christianity from the outside in, one must realise one’s immediate relation to the objective truth: “Christianity is spirit; spirit is inwardness; inwardness is subjectivity; subjectivity is essentially passion, and at its maximum an infinite, personally interested passion for one’s eternal happiness”^[3]. Therefore, Climacus concludes, the absence of subjectivity within Christianity means no decision of involvement is ultimately made by the individual:

“One has become too objective to have an eternal happiness, because this happiness inheres precisely in the infinite, personal, impassioned interestedness, and it is precisely this that one lets oneself be tricked out of by objectivity”^[4].

Kierkegaard himself was a staunch opponent of Hegelianism, the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel prominent in 19^th Century Danish society. He identified two Hegelian spheres of individual existence in Fear and Trembling, progressively: lower immediacy and mediation. Lower immediacy engulfed lust, bestial urges and man’s base nature, while mediation saw man consider the objective, rational and reasonable truth. However, in Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard added a new term: higher immediacy. Greater than one’s contemplation of the objective truth of Christianity was one’s personal involvement with it and relation to it. Subjectivity, for Kierkegaard, was not mere relativism which meddled with the affairs of the objective, but the challenge to faithfully commit oneself to a way of life based on objective truth. I myself doubt the sharing of this similarity in both books is a coincidence, and would consequently assert that this is the actual view of Kierkegaard himself. Reflecting on his own life, he once wrote in his journal: “I certainly do not deny that I still recognize an imperative of knowledge and that through it one can work upon men, but it must be taken up into my life, and that is what I now recognize as the most important thing”^[5]. Therefore, it seems to me that this theme of commitment to objective Christianity has run throughout Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard’s own life and finally into the Postscript.

Despite all this, the fatal flaw with the Historical Point of View arises when one considers that any historical source is only, at best, approximate in its accuracy. Indeed, both scholars and critics of the Bible alike often point to numerous apparent testimonial inconsistencies within it. Climacus makes this point clear: “nothing is easier to perceive than this, that with regard to the historical the greatest certainty is only an approximation, and an approximation is too little to build… eternal happiness on and is so unlike an eternal happiness that no result can ensue”^[6]. The Bible viewed historically will remain, as with any historical document, an approximation, and so Climacus asserts that when an individual commits to the Bible as an approximation-object, “letter-zealotry”^[7] and wrongheadedness follows which, although no doubt passionate, ventures inevitably into the comical: “The ludicrous aspect of the zealot was that his infinite passion thrust itself upon a wrong object (an approximation-object), but the good aspect of him was that he did have passion”^[8]. However, not only does the Historical Point of View not include the subject’s involvement, it may jeopardise the eventual emergence of any true faith. Climacus notes that as critical Biblical analysis endures, so too does the individual’s wait for the final result. As he explains, “With applauded heroism, the modest objective subject keeps himself aloof; he is at your service and willing to accept the truth as soon as it has been obtained. Yet the goal to which he aspires is a distant one… and while the grass grows, the observer dies”^[9]. Thus Climacus posits that the faith of such an objective subject remains “in parenthesis”^[10], as it pertains to truth as determined eventually.

Climacus, concluding his point on the Historical Point of View and Holy Scripture, next turns his attention to the Church. Bearing in mind Kierkegaard’s later “Attack on Christendom”, labelling the Church an abstraction and a theatre, I expected this chapter to follow similar such lines. Indeed, I was initially encouraged in this by Climacus’ Kierkegaardian dig at the clergy: “With the aid of the clergy, who occasionally display some scholarship, the congregation learns about it. The communion of believers finally becomes an honorific title, since the congregation becomes objective merely by looking at the clergy and then looks forward to an enormous result”^[11]. These anticipations were not, however, proven to be accurate.

Climacus notes that the Christians of 19^th Century Denmark, lacking the knowledge of what properly to commit to, instead focus on the Church, surely not a thing of the past, like Holy Scripture, but of the present. However, this also meets with his disapproval: “It is better and, at least for me, indescribably easy to let Grundtvig keep what is his: the matchless discovery”^[12]. N. F. S. Grundtvig was a prominent Danish theologian famous for substituting the authority of the Living Word for the apostolic commentaries and the Church itself. Climacus, however, presents Grundtvig’s “matchless discovery” with disdain: “Just as previously the Bible was suppose to decide objectively what is the essentially Christian and what is not, now the Church was supposed to be the secure objective stronghold”^[13]. Grundtvig’s self-perceived strength is that, unlike the Bible, the institutional Church is not something past but present. However, as even I can perceive, what causes this view to falter is that the Church is not exclusively present but apostolic. As Climacus observes, “if someone says to a man: Demonstrate that you exist, the latter will quite properly reply: That is nonsense. If, on the other hand, he says I, who now exist, existed essentially as the same person more than four hundred years ago, the former would properly respond: Here a demonstration is needed”^[14]. Therefore the Church is put in precisely the position of Scripture, within the Historical Point of View, as an approximation-object. Furthermore, the apostolic inheritance of the Church is dependent on the Living Word, and so Grundtvig’s hopeful detachment from it is made in vain:

“The parenthesis is posited, and no one can say when it will end, for this is and remains merely an approximating, and this approximating has the curious quality of being able to continue as long as it pleases”^[15].

Yet it need not exclusively be the Church as a whole. Climacus identifies the tragically comic nature of attempting to base one’s eternal happiness on being baptised. I myself have known Christians, fervent in their faith, who asserted how fractured their spirituality would be without Baptism. Again, it is not the personal interestedness which Climacus condemns, indeed this he upholds, but that it once again attaches itself upon an approximation-object, necessitating a repetition of Baptism, or indeed a Baptist movement, which nevertheless departs from the Historical Point of View.

My primary issue with this chapter is not, however, that it discounts aspects of Christianity that people often commit themselves to. As the Bible, specifically as an approximation-object, and Church theory have both been similarly debunked, my question arises as to what it is that Climacus posits as ultimately correct for the individual. If not these, then what aspect of Christianity does one rightly commit to with the passion Climacus so appreciates? My immediate response is that Climacus does not provide the answer in this chapter, nor does he seek to. Examination of the contents of the Postscript reveals two main sections, one focusing on Christianity as objective, the other as subjective. I suspect this is why Kierkegaard, with his emphasis on subjectivity, is content with attacking the purely objective approach for now, and I also expect the true answer of what precisely to subjectively commit oneself to lies within the second part of the book. Indeed, Part Two is labelled: “The Subjective Issue, The Subjective Individual’s Relation to the Truth of Christianity, or Becoming a Christian”^[16]. It would surprise me not if this answer is the key to understanding the Postscript, but only time will tell.

On the other hand, I do also believe clues are already to be found in this first chapter. If we cast our minds back to Grundtvig’s “matchless discovery” regarding Church theory and Climacus’ response, “It is better and, at least for me, indescribably easy to let Grundtvig keep what is his”, he indicates a preference for Holy Scripture. It is also true that Climacus briefly addresses viewing Scripture as inspired during this chapter, although he does not see this presupposition as compatible with the objective, Historic Point of View: “Anyone who as a believer posits inspiration must consistently regard every critical deliberation-whether for or against-as something dubious, a kind of temptation. And anyone who, without having faith, ventures out into critical deliberations cannot possibly want to have inspiration result from them”^[17].

In conclusion, while Climacus’ issues with the Church are not synonymous with Kierkegaard’s observations during the “Attack on Christendom”, neither are they contradictory. Furthermore, his emphasis on subjectivity, passion and personal involvement with the objective clearly remains at the heart of Kierkegaardian Christianity in both the Postscript, and Kierkegaard’s other public and private writings:

“what good would it do me to be able to explain the meaning of Christianity if it had no deeper significance for me and for my life;-what good would it do me if truth stood before me, cold and naked, not caring whether I recognised her or not, and producing in me a shudder of fear rather than a trusting devotion?”^[18]

Footnotes

[1] Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, Princeton University Press 1992, p. 21

[2] Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, op.cit. ibid. note 1, p. 21

[3] Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, op.cit. note 1, p. 33

[4] Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, op.cit. note 1, p. 26

[5] Søren Kierkegaard, The Journals of Kierkegaard 1834-1854, Edited and translated by Alexander Dru, Collins Fontana Library 1958, p. 44

[6] Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, op.cit. note 1, p. 23

[7] Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, op.cit. note 1, pp. 35

[8] Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, op.cit. note 1, pp. 35-36

[9] Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, op.cit. note 1, p. 32

[10] Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, op.cit. note 1, p. 29

[11] Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, op.cit. note 1, p. 27

[12] Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, op.cit. note 1, p. 36

[13] Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, op.cit. note 1, p. 37

[14] Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, op.cit. note 1, p. 39

[15] Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, op.cit. note 1, p. 41

[16] Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, op.cit. note 1, p. 59

[17] Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, op.cit. note 1, p. 26

[18] Søren Kierkegaard, The Journals of Kierkegaard 1834-1854, op.cit. note 5, p. 44

Blog 1: Concluding Unscientific Postscript explorative commentary part 1 – Introduction to Kierkegaard and the Postscript

By Richard Keeble

The Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments is an odd thing: a postscript greater in length than the “main body” and at the same time a pseudonymous polemic. It is also the book with which I am currently grappling, never having read it before, aiming ultimately to get at the heart of Kierkegaard’s fundamental thought. If the reader is not acquainted with Kierkegaard, then it is my hopeful intention that this commentary will offer some assistance. It is in reality, being a young student of Kierkegaard myself, as much for my benefit as the reader’s, and so I hope together we can read through the Concluding Unscientific Postscript and discuss its concepts, both major and minor, and the impact they have on our perception of what it is to be a Christian.

Odder than his works was the man himself. Søren Kierkegaard was born in Copenhagen on 5^th May 1813 and resided there for most of his life. He is a difficult man to describe as one could justifiably label him a theologian, a philosopher or a psychologist. His thought always emphasised the human end of religion and existence; focussing, as he sometimes puts it, more on the “how” rather than the “what” of Christianity. Most of Kierkegaard’s earlier works were written pseudonymously, and he intended the Concluding Unscientific Postscript to be his final book, publishing it in 1846. However fate, or indeed God, intervened as Kierkegaard found his Stages on Life’s Way criticised by Peder Møller, a man affiliated with the satirical paper The Corsair. Kierkegaard was spurred into action, disparaging Møller and openly submitting himself to be the target of The Corsair’s ridicule. His request was mercilessly obliged, and Kierkegaard suffered regular derision by the paper and, consequently, the general public for months to follow. While his hatred of “the crowd” grew, so did the emphasis on the “single individual” in relation to the eternal within his thought. He wrote again, publishing books including Purity of Heart (1846) and Works of Love (1847) under his own name. Towards the end of his life, a new antagonist came to be the Danish Lutheran Church, which asserted “a diluted and effeminate sentimentality and refined epicurism”^[1] in place of Biblical Christianity. This populist, worldly institution represented a crowd of people which, to Kierkegaard, was an abstraction in relation to the Christian individual. As he declared in Purity of Heart, “the most ruinous evasion of all is to be hidden in the crowd in an attempt to escape God’s supervision of him as an individual… for in eternity there is no mob pressure, no crowd, no hiding place in the crowd, as little as there are riots or street fights”^[2]. Kierkegaard’s final years were spent undertaking his famous “Attack on Christendom”, eventually refusing to attend Church or to recognise its authority. He died in hospital on 11^th November 1855.

The first notable aspect of the Concluding Unscientific Postscript has been already mentioned, that it is written under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus, the author of Philosophical Fragments. Kierkegaard himself is credited as the editor, just as he is for Fear and Trembling, another of his pseudonymous works. This immediately suggests Kierkegaard’s stance on truth is closer to that which is described in the Postscript and Fear and Trembling than in, for instance, Either-Or. This makes sense as Fear and Trembling itself portrays the Ethico-Religious way of life juxtaposed with Either-Or’s Aesthetic and Ethical spheres. The pseudonym of Fear and Trembling is Johannes de Silentio, who, though full of praise and wonder for the life of faith, nevertheless refrains from it himself, and ever describes it from the outside. Yet he marvels at the “knight of faith”^[3], he that supersedes the Ethical in favour of the Ethico-Religious, i.e. he that lives in hope and not in memory. De Silentio humorously declares: “I can very well imagine him… the moment I first set my eyes on him I thrust away, jump back, clasp my hands together and say half aloud: ‘Good God! Is this the person, is it really him? He looks just like a tax-gatherer’”^[4]. The book goes on to say “He minds his affairs… he goes to Church… he delights in everything he sees”^[5] and, in short, Johannes de Silentio lends a small insight into the life of Kierkegaard himself. The only explanation I can conceive for Kierkegaard’s position as editor of Fear and Trembling is that he is that which de Silentio is attempting to envisage: the knight of faith. It is Kierkegaard who, in some fictitious realm, is able to point Johannes de Silentio in the right direction, and lend him the required inspiration for his task.

There is further evidence for this. Before the Preface is enigmatically written: “What Tarquin the Proud said in his garden with the poppy blooms was understood by the son but not by the messenger”^[6]. In the context of Kierkegaard’s life, 1841 saw him breaking off his engagement with Regine Olsen, the woman he dearly loved. Though he did this to pursue writing for God, Kierkegaard aimed to ever remain faithful to Regine, in the hope that their shattered hope of marriage might one day again be fulfilled. Tarquin the Proud, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, was the famous last king of Rome whose son, having won a great military victory, sent a messenger to his father requesting further instructions. Tarquin walked with the messenger along a field of poppies, kicking the heads off the tallest. The messenger, himself not understanding Tarquin’s actions, told the son of this strange behaviour, who understood completely. His father had commanded him to execute the leading citizens of the newly conquered city. This demonstrates that Fear and Trembling contains in it a message that was not to be understood by Johannes de Silentio, or even perhaps the reader, but by Kierkegaard. But what is this message and for whom was it truly intended? While in 1841 Kierkegaard wrote longingly in his journal of remaining faithful to Regine^[7], and “setting right again what I have done wrong”^[8], in 1843, the year of Fear and Trembling’s publication, he insisted: “She has not become a fairy princess and if possible she shall be my wife”^[9]. Therefore Fear and Trembling’s message of enduring faith and hope rather than living in memory is, as well as an insight into Kierkegaard’s approach to Christianity, at the same time his personal reaching for Regine, and his enduring hope as a knight of faith: that marriage with her might yet one day materialise.

It is with all this in mind that I, at least, am entering into the Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments. If Kierkegaard’s inclusion of himself as editor has significance for this book, as it certainly does for Fear and Trembling, then it is this especially that we should seek to spot during our journey. What has become most evident to me reading his journals, however, is the emphasis he places on the existential concerns of the Christian individual. It will no doubt be interesting as well as significant, therefore, to see how the views presented in the Postscript match Kierkegaard’s journal entries, especially those made during the “Attack on Christendom”, and how they link to other aspects of his thought. Kierkegaard’s focus was never scientific but existential; hence I expect the Concluding Unscientific Postscript will no doubt also dwell on subjectivity over objectivity and the commitment of the individual.

I begin this venture with a level of “fear and trembling”^[10], but have faith it will eventually bear some fruit. The next part of this series will consider Christianity and “The Historical Point of View”, the first section of the Postscript.

Footnotes

[1] Søren Kierkegaard, The Last Years Journals 1853-55, Edited and Translated by Ronald Gregor Smith, Collins Fontana Library 1965, p. 30

[2] Søren Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing, Translated by Douglas Steere, Collins Fontana Library 1961, p. 163

[3] Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, Penguin Books 2005, p.42

[4] Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, op.cit. ibid. note 3, p.42

[5] Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, op.cit. note 3, p.43

[6] Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, op.cit. note 3, p.1

[7] Søren Kierkegaard, The Journals of Kierkegaard 1834-1854, Edited and translated by Alexander Dru, Collins Fontana Library 1958, p. 77

[8] Søren Kierkegaard, The Journals of Kierkegaard 1834-1854, op.cit. ibid. note 7, p. 77

[9] Søren Kierkegaard, The Journals of Kierkegaard 1834-1854, op.cit. note 7, p. 87

[10] Philippians 2:12