5. RELIGIOUSNESS

The Expression of Faith

The previous chapter partially answered the question of the type of faith Westphal holds by finding it to be Kierkegaardian and wholly dependent on revelation, and thus resists any reasonable foundation to ground itself. However, this was only a partial answer since it merely addresses how one assents to, or otherwise accepts, faith. Holding or enacting that faith through discipleship is the decisive step and what follows will continue our investigation by describing how, exactly, faith is opposed to sin and how this opposition, once enacted and lived, becomes an ideology critique.

We begin with the epistemological question proposed at the end of the previous chapter: How is faith opposed to sin and not reason? Furthermore, how is sin an epistemological category?

After answering this, we explore how Westphal’s Kierkegaardian and epistemological relationship between faith and sin solidifies faith as ideology critique by emphasizing faith’s political nature. This will lead us to an inquiry into Kierkegaard’s Religiousness C, a hidden and final stage in his theory of stages that Westphal discovers and develops as a mode of discipleship. Establishing how Religiousness C explains the ethical ramifications of faith deepens our study of Westphal’s Kierkegaardian writings by exploring how they influence his work as a whole. Our final, concluding section reviews what I call Westphal’s third concept of revelation, which is based on his dialogue between Levinas and Kierkegaard and is mainly concerned with the ethical task that revelation requires. What is unveiled in this final section is how theological Westphal’s concepts of revelation are and how they command all Christians, and especially theologians, to become liberation theologians whose focus is always on the least of us: the widow, orphan and stranger.

RIGHT REASON, SIN, AND THE “ANTIFAITH” EPISTEMOLOGICAL CATEGORY

Westphal ends Kierkegaard’s Critique of Reason and Society on how “Kierkegaard combined a Lutheran understanding of the noetic effects of sin with the essential insights of the sociology of knowledge to produce a theologically grounded critique of society.”1 Through this Lutheran understanding of sin, Westphal seeks to deepen and enrich his previous argument that Kierkegaard, via Johannes Climacus, is a critical theorist who sees that “ideology critique is an intellectual enterprise that concerns itself with religion only from the perspective of hostile unbelief.”² Faith over and against sin posing as reason again comes to the forefront.

Westphal’s investigation takes shape as an argument for faith as an ideology critique that focuses on the sinfulness found within ideologies that choose human understanding over divine revelation. Faith, as the believing soul’s acceptance of God’s revelation, stands “beyond the moral dichotomy of egoism and altruism,” which he finds are the means by which ideologies try to compartmentalize human action.³ Contra ideology, faith opens up “the religious dichotomy of obedience and rebellion, faith and offense” by moving the self beyond a “social, this-worldly dimension [toward the] … tradition of inward, spiritual self-examination.”⁴ Yet again, Westphal emphasizes the political nature of faith, arguing that politics and faith have always been inextricably intertwined.⁵

Westphal unpacks his argument by describing how Luther’s concept of sin influences Climacus and how both are Pauline in nature. Similar to tagging Judge William as Hegelian, Westphal infers that Johannes Climacus is Lutheran whether he knows it or not. He argues that Climacus’s epistemological concept of sin appropriates Martin Luther’s understanding of the “noetic effects” of the Fall in Genesis: because of humanity’s fall from grace, its reasoning is “a blockhead and a dunce.”⁶ This aligns Luther’s critique of Roman Catholic theology to Kierkegaard’s critique of Hegel, since both are criticizing an overreach in their adversaries’ concept of reason and their hubristic trust in worldly thinking over godly faith.⁷ Truth for both Luther and Kierkegaard is divinely given, not acquired by humanity’s sinful reasoning.⁸

Westphal then establishes both Kierkegaard and Luther’s concept of sin as Pauline since it heavily emphasizes embodiment: one cannot reason without the body, and the body’s mortal and finite nature cripples all abstract, inward thinking, however infinite this thinking claims to be. Thinking and acting are connected, and since all acts are finite and sinful, it follows that one’s thinking is sinful. For example, one commits adultery not just through the physical act of lust but also by lusting in one’s heart (Matthew 5:28). Accordingly, sin reaches its apotheosis not in acts but whenever the self claims to be autonomous, or free, “in relation to God’s sovereignty. Thus reason as an expression of the flesh is human thought uninformed by, and independent of, the Word and Spirit of God.”9 In essence, this is a reading of Luther’s doctrine of total depravity, where, after the Fall, humanity becomes blinded by its own sin and is completely and utterly estranged from God because of its selfish nature. The self, in its total depravity, can be reached only by the loving grace of God in and through revelation.¹⁰ Therefore, proper reason is steeped in faith and informed by Scripture and revelation, in contradistinction to a reason that is offended by Scripture and, in Westphal’s words, “flees from God through sin.”¹¹

Having established Climacus’s Lutheran inclinations, Westphal then explicates Climacus’s overview of revelation and our ‘condition,’ or ability to recognize revelation when it is given to us by God.¹² Revelation, here, is a message coming from outside the self but recognized from within (through the given condition of recognizing truth as truth).¹³ Sin, then, is something that originates entirely within the self. Sin and evil are seen as anything but divine given the depravity of humanity, thereby making it a matter of original sin and concupiscence.

Westphal is adding onto the Lutheran concept of sin within Climacus’s works by revealing that its historical legacy comes from Augustine. Thus, all three—Climacus, Luther, and Augustine—understand sin as a foundational condition of error brought on by the Fall.¹⁴ The lens through which Kierkegaard reads Augustine, in other words, is Lutheran. Furthering this connection and the idea of sin is an epistemological category, Westphal employs the Augustinian notion that evil is the deprivation of good, and that sin originates from humanity’s inability not to sin (concupiscence).¹⁵ Sin, consequently, is the self’s refusal to accept revelation, choosing rather to go at it alone and proceed as if its lone reasoning were the arbiter of everything. The sinful self cannot accept either’s essential paradoxes, hence it is offended by faith and revelation. Sinful reason, divorced of faith, can respond only yes and no to revelation’s paradoxes. Moreover, it cannot fully assent to its own yes or no, therefore never completely grasping the meaning and content found in revelation that faith is able to do. Divorced and unable to accept these paradoxes, sinful reason creates its own version of knowledge and understanding of the world.

Expanding on this, Westphal lays out the schema of the “three expressions of the Paradox” found in Concluding Unscientific Postscript: the initial expression, the essential expression, and the decisive expression.16 The initial expression is a “metaphysical expression” of the inward contemplation of God as God, as a paradox to human understanding. This becomes the essential expression, which is “metaphysically confessional” because it can grasp the revealed concept of an incarnate God: “not simply the Eternal, but the Eternal in time that is paradoxical to (finite) human understanding.”¹⁷ In the final, decisive expression, the paradox becomes “personally confessional” in that, by assenting to the “God on the cross who is offensive to (sinful) human understanding,” one accepts the Incarnation as an account of the paradox that breaches sin through God’s (i.e., Christ’s) suffering and death on the cross. From this account, it also becomes the atonement for the “suffering and death” caused by sin.¹⁸ The paradox, therefore, finds its apotheosis through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. According to Westphal:

We pass from the finitude of a human understanding that has conceptual problems with God … to the sinfulness of a human understanding that has existential problems with the notions that Christ dies for our sins. This is the point at which the Paradox moves from absurdity to offense, at which it becomes possible to understand how Luther could see human reason as an expression of the flesh. For this is the point at which repentance is an indispensable condition for hearing the Christian story of God’s love as good news.¹⁹

The Incarnation as the paradox is not manifest only conceptually but existentially as well. The fact that it concerns God becoming human makes this paradox a real, existential transgression to our everyday reasoning. Because the self is mortal and the self’s reasoning finite, and the paradox is immortal and its reason infinite, the aggressor of this offending action is not the paradox but the limits of reason and the self that tries to master what it cannot understand. Westphal explains:

If death is more bitter than wormwood for mortals, how much more bitter for an immortal. But this is death on a cross, and the paradox is that he who dies as one who is guilty is in fact the only one who is innocent. That the immortal should die is puzzling enough, but that the innocent should die for the guilty, the just for the unjust, that is more than puzzling. The difference between mortal and immortal is immediately aufgehoben in the difference between the guilty and the innocent.20

Starting from an Augustinian or Lutheran foundation of humanity’s perpetual state of error (original sin), Climacus does not maintain that the Teacher (i.e., God, or Christ in the Incarnation) is indifferent or, even worse, an offending agent toward humanity but that it is humanity that feels offended by the Teacher because it has encountered something that it does not understand.²¹ In a violent reaction toward this incomprehension, humanity condemns the Teacher as guilty even though it is the Teacher who is purely innocent. Indeed, the Teacher is the only one who can even be considered innocent. The Teacher’s ability to accept this undeserved condemnation, and even die for it (as an immortal), further confounds humanity since the failings of mortality have been taken up by the Teacher.²²

For Westphal, this is essentially a Pauline argument concerning the limits of human reason, where it is inextricably drawn to its own boundaries in trying to “discover something that thought cannot think.”²³ Human reason is drawn “like a moth to the flame” as Westphal remarks, toward the edges of its own understanding.²⁴

Westphal sees an underlying Kantian critique of reason throughout Climacus’s texts (and perhaps the works of Kierkegaard as a whole). Perhaps this could be said for any philosopher who came after Kant, and especially for Hegel and Hegel’s critics, among whom Kierkegaard situates himself. Yet Westphal employs it here to highlight how Climacus is distinct from, and critical of, Kant. He concludes that both are essentially dealing with the concept of God, but that, unlike Kant, Climacus’s concept of reason and its limits toward understanding the existence of God do not rest on conditions for understanding but on the fact that God is wholly other.²⁵ “Reason cannot think what is wholly other than itself,” Westphal proclaims, noting that, in Pauline fashion, the paradox of God comes not from a finite account of our reasoning but from the fruit of our sinful nature.²⁶ God and humanity’s difference, as absolute, “cannot be accounted for on the basis of what man derives from … God, for in so far they are akin. Their unlikeness must therefore be explained by what man derives from himself, or by what he has brought upon his head.”27 What humanity has brought upon itself is sin.

God is ‘wholly other’ and therefore faith in God, as sin’s antithesis, is not only a turn away from one’s fallen nature but also a turn toward God; faith is “the alternative to offense” and an offended consciousness.²⁸ Quoting Luther, Westphal argues that this turn away from self-legitimating reason toward a “right reason,” or the “reason of faith,” makes it an ideology critique.²⁹ As an ideology critique, Westphal’s concept of a faithful reasoning is one where a hidden inward faith necessarily implies an outward ethical reaction, faith becomes a response to the sinful actions of humanity that are guided by a reason that authorizes such behavior.

This concept within Climacus’s Philosophical Fragments is developed further in Concluding Unscientific Postscript, when he explains the stages of the life of faith in the ethical and religious stages (called Religiousness A and B, respectively), and is finalized in Kierkegaard’s second authorship.³⁰ Westphal, for his part, sees that there is a hidden third stage latent in Kierkegaard’s text that can be seen only when one takes into account Kierkegaard’s later works. This Religiousness C is revealed in the self becoming a contemporary of Christ through loving God with all one’s heart and, thus, loving one’s neighbor.

Before moving on, let us take a look back. We have just covered the theoretical foundations behind the hidden inwardness and the outward expression of faith, showing the necessary ethical action required by faith. That faith implies or requires an ethics clarifies how its antithesis is sin, not reason. Additionally, we have explored how faith as ideology critique exposes the underlying sinfulness of human reason’s desire to proceed on its own without expressing allegiance to God through revelation. Going back to a familiar refrain, faith as ideology critique continually asks society, “What does your religion, your response to faith, justify? Is your faith utterly dependent on God and God’s revelation or is it all too human and focused on your own desire for autonomy?”

In response, the believing soul must use reason to better understand how faith can be enacted in life, how reason can be in service to faith and revelation, not against it. How one can prevent one’s wits from getting the best of him or her in service of one’s own selfishness. This also illuminates Westphal’s antiapologetical stance in that the believing soul requires no reasonable defense for faith, since what stands on the other side is sin and accordingly death. Jerusalem needs Athens not for authority but for better understanding its expression in everyday life.

RELIGIOUSNESS C: THE EXPRESSION OF FAITH IN THE LIFE OF CHRIST

Westphal discovered what he calls Religiousness C by noticing that there are not only connections between Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous authors (Johannes De Silentio and Johannes Climacus, Climacus and Anti-Climacus, and so on) but also with the works directly penned by Kierkegaard in his later, so-called second authorship period. Westphal follows a similar line of reasoning that he has presented all throughout work on Kierkegaard: that Kierkegaard’s second authorship is a continuation and refinement of themes and concepts presented implicitly and explicitly throughout his pseudonymous writings, contrary to others who argue that there is a break between them.31 By connecting all of Kierkegaard’s works as an internal dialogue, Westphal believes the second authorship can be read as Kierkegaard’s final word concerning faith as ideology critique.³² To unpack this, we must begin by understanding how Westphal reads Kierkegaard’s oeuvre as an internal dialogue, particularly through Kierkegaard’s theory of stages.

Kierkegaard develops his theory of stages as a way of explaining how one passes through different understandings of itself and others—moves through passages of existence—in becoming a true and authentic self. These stages are the aesthetic, ethical, and religious, with the religious stage divided into Religiousness A and Religiousness B. According to Westphal, Religiousness B contains a hidden stage, only implicitly stated, called Religiousness C, which elevates the self to becoming contemporaneous with Christ, the object of adoration in Religiousness B.

Westphal understands the theory of stages as an answer to the question “What is the good life?” or “Where is true happiness found?”³³ Within the aesthetic stage, one answers this question “without reference to good and evil”; thus, it is best described as preethical and oriented toward pleasure seeking. It can also be described as hedonistic. Moreover, its pleasure seeking is preethical in the sense that it is primarily concerned with self-gratification since it gives into immediate desires without considering any consequences. In Either/Or, for example, the author of “The Seducer’s Diary” writes that “what is glorious and divine about esthetics is that it is associated only with the beautiful: essentially it deals only with belles lettres and the fair sex.”34 Hence, the aesthete is solely focused on the immediacy of the moment with little to no reflection beyond pleasure.³⁵

Eventually, the aesthete grows tired of pleasure seeking and immediate gratification. To move beyond this consumption of ‘good things,’ the aesthete begins to contemplate ‘What is the good?’ or ‘Why is this good? What makes it so?’ From its contemplation, the aesthete passes onto the ethical stage where he reflects upon his desires, asking which actions are good and bad and which actions can best bring about a happy life. This reflection makes the now ethicist self-aware of the mediation between him and society. Whereas the aesthetic stage “embodies a philosophy of self-choice,” the ethical stage, according to Westphal, contrasts self-choice “in relation to the difference between good and evil, or as [Judge William in Either/Or] puts it, an absolute choice of the self in its eternal validity.”³⁶

Westphal emphasizes that the notions of absolute and eternal that Kierkegaard is using come from Hegel, and Hegel’s use of the term essentially stems from Aristotle. In other words, Westphal is pointing out how Kierkegaard develops his theory of the stages through and against a Hegelian construct, and he is using an Aristotelian terminology as a bridge between his stages and Hegelianism. Westphal clarifies this connection by stating that, for Hegel, it “is always a matter of Sittlichkeit…. The right and the good are to be found, not abstractly in a rational principle but concretely within one’s social order, which is, for each individual, the essential mediator of the absolute and eternal.”³⁷ The ethicist distinctly embodies this concretely socialized ethic since his reflection on the good life, and the subjugation of his impulse towards immediate gratification, is always socially mediated.

Westphal sees this subjugation of desire within the ethical as an Aufhebung since (aesthetic) self-choice is not abolished but is taken up by the ethical and reconstituted in a process of mediation and socialization. There is still self-choice, but it is now defined in terms of duty toward “the laws, customs, practices, and institutions of a people” (Sittlichkeit).³⁸ Judge William, particularly in his “First Letter to A” in Either/Or Part 2, serves as the Hegelian par excellence and, as such, gives us a prime example of how the ethical can be understood as Sittlichkeit and how it is also an Aufhebung. Here, the good Judge wishes to show A how “romantic love can be united with and exist in marriage, indeed that marriage is its true transfiguration.”³⁹ Like any good authority figure, he just wants to show the young and passionate how righteous and loving marriage can be for the soul. Romantic love is thus seen as erotic and wild; it controls the lovers, the aesthetes, as it were, and not the other way around. It is only within the bond of marriage (society’s mandated place for sex) that romantic love can find a fruitful and rightful place. Consequently, sex and sexual desire are rectified in marriage, a socially mediated construct.

The Seducer, on the other hand, answers only to his own desires. One day, however, he might grow up and get married, just like God and society intended. That is, one day he will answer to his society and settle down. However, is this what God intended? Marriage may make the ethicist happy, as far as sex is concerned, but does it fulfill all of one’s desires, or is there perhaps a higher purpose or calling? It is from these reflections that expose the ethicist toward the religious stages, Religiousness A and B.

Let us call to mind what Kierkegaard intends when he discusses ‘the religious’ before we progress. Additionally, we should also recall how the religious functions in relation to Sittlichkeit. For Kierkegaard (via De Silentio’s Fear and Trembling), the religious involves a teleological suspension of the ethical in faith. Westphal argues that this is a teleological suspension of Sittlichkeit in the name of answering the call of faith.40 Thus, one can see the religious stage as a double Aufhebung: the aesthetic is aufgehoben in the ethical stage, and the ethical is aufgehoben in the religious stage. “What makes any stage the ‘next’ one in relation to some other stage,” for Westphal, “is not some normal pattern of psychological development or some necessity of conceptual entailment but the value judgment that makes one stage the proper sphere for relativizing the other.”⁴¹ In other words, each of these stages should be treated as concentric, such that each one overlaps with, or is inhabited by, another.⁴²

The religious stage does not merely signify a completion of the two antecedent stages. Instead, it is subdivided into two separate realms called Religiousness A and Religiousness B. In response to the question “What is the good life?” or “Where is true happiness found?” the ethicist, in Religiousness A, is turned inward toward a subjective, self-contemplation, thus becoming a religious self. This movement toward subjective contemplation sets the religious self toward a search for truth from within himself. From this inward speculation, the religious self recognizes that he is situated within history—within society, and space and time—but from his inward speculation he begins to try to see himself from outside this history, to see sub specie aeternitatis, or from a God’s-eye point of view.⁴³

In Religiousness A, the religious self’s inward reflection seeks a deeper meaning to life; Truth—with a capital T—and it begins with interior, inward speculation.44 It is subjective, in other words, consequently rejecting the notion that there is a Truth that exists as objective fact. However, it is not as if all objective things disappear to the religious self—he recognizes that he exists in the world and that other things exist. He is not caught up in a Cartesian tailspin. Rather, he recognizes that existence, particularly his own, is a matter of becoming and understanding himself from within himself, and then relating this truth to the outside world. In regard to the concept of truth, to the object of thinking, he recognizes how abstract and subjective it is and how this relates to his own existence.

Once the religious self has this epiphany he can no longer think of truth as existing outside of himself, as an objective fact, and that it is “a chimera of abstraction, and truly only a longing on the part of creation [i.e., of the self], not because truth is not so, but because the knower is one who exists and thus, as long as he exists, truth cannot be so for him.”⁴⁵ In other words, truth can no longer be self-evident for the religious self because he recognizes his inextricable relationship with truth: both he and his concept of truth are in an intertwined, constant state of becoming. Since he is constantly becoming, his notion of truth is also constantly becoming and evolving. Therefore, he can no longer consider truth an objective fact to which he can appeal in times of crisis or angst. Here, Climacus is not saying that truth no longer exists; only that it is no longer guaranteed. It is no longer an objective fact, something to be acquired or used like a talisman. The expression “what is true is true whether you believe it or not” thus has no meaning to the religious self.

As Climacus explains, this inwardness can contemplate truth only in such a way that objectivity vanishes. It consequently becomes a purely immanent method of reflection since its focus is inward, with nothing to which it can transcend. Moreover, in regard to the question “What is the good life?” or “Where is true happiness found?” this thinking shows itself to be purely abstract. In its deep inwardness, this form of thinking cannot prescribe any objective acts or intentions. Its ethics can never leave the realm of theory.

Trapped in the purely theoretical, when tasked with the question of where to begin thinking about the good life, the religious self can answer only, “With pure being.” Accordingly, inward subjectivity is open to religious understanding because it seeks an inward, abstract origin. Yet it also seeks how one must begin to think of the good life by contemplating how the religious self understands himself before he moves toward understanding others. Climacus argues that Socrates is the paradigm for Religiousness A given his concern for the question of existence over speculative reasoning. This is especially so, for Westphal, since the absolute good within the question “What is the good life?” variously accounts for the idea, the eternal, or God.

In contrast, where Religiousness A is the religiousness of immanence, Religiousness B is the religiousness of transcendence. For Climacus, this means that Religiousness B is specifically understood as Christianity, since it is the “religion of the dialectical and of transcendence.”46 Like the stages before it, Religiousness A is taken up into Religiousness B in an Aufhebung or teleological suspension where the inward reflection of Religiousness A meets the “paradoxically dialectical” nature of Christianity.⁴⁷ The notion of paradox, however, is nothing new to Religiousness A. As Westphal notes:

Christianity, as Religiousness B, is more radically paradoxical, for the eternal itself has become paradoxical as the insertion of God in time. In this way the task of relating absolutely to the absolute becomes even more strenuous, for human reason is overwhelmed, even offended, by the claim that Jesus is fully human and fully divine.⁴⁸

Within Religiousness B one can directly see what role Kierkegaard’s critique of reason plays in the stages on life’s way, at least for Westphal. The religious self in Religiousness A in a Hegelian fashion attempts to understand the world sub specie aeternitatis. There is a quasi-dialectical form of reasoning here, since the religious self is trying to reconcile aspects of his consciousness by trying to step out of that consciousness, making judgments as if they were universal and eternal truths. However, that dialectical form of reasoning never truly moves outside of itself: it never has to completely encounter the radical paradox, nay, the offensive paradox, of revelation and its expression of God. Its faith is purely theoretical and never actualized.

Religiousness B, however, experiences the dialectic in an outward expression, with little to no aid from reason, such that one cannot comfort oneself or feel at ease. Hence, fear and trembling. The leap of faith is a scary one, and although Climacus acknowledges that one must pass through moments of inward reflection (via Religiousness A) to reach Lessing’s “broad, ugly ditch,” one can make that outward movement into Religiousness B only through an act of will. Hence, Religiousness B’s answer to the question “What is the good life?” according to Climacus:

So when the eternal happiness, it being the absolute [telos], is absolutely his only comfort, and when his relation to it is reduced to its minimum through existential taking to heart, by reason of guilt-consciousness being the relation of repulsion and wanting constantly to take this [telos] away from him, and this minimum and this possibility are nevertheless absolutely more to him than everything else, then it is fitting to begin with the dialectical. It will, when he is in this state, give rise to a pathos that is still higher. But one does not prepare oneself to become aware of Christianity by reading books, or by world-historical surveys; one does it by deepening oneself in existing. Any other propaedeutic must eo ipso end in a misunderstanding, for Christianity is an existence-communication; it would beg to kindly be excused from being understood; it is not understanding what Christianity is that is difficult, but being and becoming a Christian.49

The hidden inwardness of Religiousness A cannot lead to authentic Christianity because authentic Christianity cannot be understood through reflection; it must be expressed and lived, as one finds in Religiousness B. For most scholars, this is the final step of Kierkegaard’s theory of stages. However, for Westphal, Religiousness B is no easy charge. It is wrought with fear and trembling, and to live this life of faith as a task of a lifetime is to live a life of continual discipleship. Reason’s role in one’s life, therefore, is that of discipleship, of taking the ideology critique found within faith’s acceptance of revelation (its commands and promises) and living such a faith—daily. These sentiments, according to Westphal, are found in Kierkegaard’s second authorship and they compose a Religiousness C, where the self, in the attempt to become (or be) Christian, takes up the cross with Christ in a lifetime of discipleship.

Westphal’s first published mention of Religiousness C comes in “Kierkegaard’s Teleological Suspension of Religiousness B,” where he examines the incredible difficulty of the final teleological suspension of the ethical (Sittlichkeit, or social reasoning) in Religiousness B.⁵⁰ This teleological suspension is exceedingly difficult for the self, and Westphal thinks that Religiousness B does not go far enough, “for there is nothing about the gods of Religiousness A and B to keep them from being the echo of our social mores, the legitimizing servant of the Established Order, while the God of Religiousness C is essentially a danger to every Establish Order.”⁵¹ There is still a tinge of Hegelian abstraction in Religiousness B, Westphal claims: while Religiousness B holds Christ as the paradox in the Postscript, in Kierkegaard’s Training in Christianity, For Self Examination, Judge for Yourself, and Works of Love, he shows us that Christ is more than an intellectual riddle but is “the Pattern or the Paradigm. As Paradox Christ is to be believed; as Pattern or Paradigm he is to be imitated.”52 Christ, as the Paradigm, affects our lives in three different ways: through offense, objectivity, and outwardness.

Offense, as seen earlier, comes from an Augustinian conceptualization of sin in which faith becomes a response to one’s prideful nature. It offends the self insofar as it reminds him that he is a fallen and finite creature who, in attempt to become like god, continually fails. This attempt, however, fashions God in service of one’s own “esthetic project,” thus permitting “lots of God-talk while leaving us [i.e., Christians] free to collectively preside over our own goodness without any real interference.”⁵³ Religiousness A, Westphal finds, produces such God-talk in which indeed the Christian community’s own ingenuity gets the best of it and, despite its higher intentions, that talk often produces a god that legitimates the community’s own Sittlichkeit.⁵⁴

Religiousness B responds to this ideological construction by attempting “to be honest about the nature of biblical faith” and by recognizing that “the object of faith” is to be offensive toward this ideology.⁵⁵ Moreover, it must never forget that this offense is the core to Christianity and that the Incarnation, God in the flesh, is the direct response to Religiousness A. Religiousness A’s speculative nature, however, is not obliterated, but taken up, teleologically suspended (Westphal unswervingly calls it aufgehoben) within Religiousness B’s humble faith. This faith thus becomes “doubly supernatural,” according to Westphal, since “the incarnation is itself a miracle, and the faith by which I acknowledge it is also a miracle.”⁵⁶ A miracle signified by the leap required to have such faith.

However, this miracle of the leap of faith in Religiousness B is not self-maintaining and requires continual discipleship. Continual discipleship is required because faith almost becomes too offensive in the absence of evidence or proof and our desire for “epistemic autonomy,” to preside over what Christians call truth. Discipleship plays the roles of penance and renewal, like a penitential rite that calls to mind one’s sins before continuing on with the liturgy.

This discipleship must go beyond prayer and worship, however, and must move to loving action in the life of faith. Without this, Religiousness B is liable to become a “second negotiated compromise” in that it remains merely a theological contemplation, in this case, of the Paradox, for the leap to sustain itself.⁵⁷ In this way, Religiousness B begins to sound more like a bargain with God, Christians give God “epistemic autonomy” and add the motto “under God” to their coins, their state seals and their pledges, but in exchange keep their “ethical autonomy.” For Westphal, Christians do this when they try to “restrict the divine voice, which is not the echo of our human voice (transcendence), to the area of metaphysics (and the liturgical celebration of that metaphysics once a week or so), the God of bargains might be good enough to leave the social order to be run by us [Christians] the rest of the time (immanence). This is precisely the project that Religiousness C shows Religiousness B to be, at least in Christendom.”58

Faith, however, is not a bargain but a task of a lifetime: there is a continual striving to be Christ-ian, Christ-like. Religiousness C is the emulation of Christ, becoming Christ-like through discipleship. It is an imitation that requires more than just mastering doctrine. It is a continually striving life that is “a threat to the established order” that enacts the words and life of Christ.⁵⁹ Westphal claims that the self embodies the prophetic voice (i.e., a hermeneutics of prophecy) in Religiousness C by imitating Christ’s life and words through daily living. Following Christ offends one’s attempt at self-legitimization within a social order; the Christian places himself with the lowly and the suffering. It is one thing to read the Beatitudes, but another to continually strive for them. “Only Religiousness C knows the offense of lowliness,” Westphal remarks, “only Religiousness C knows how to rejoice in those avoidable sufferings” that happen in imitating Christ and offending human nature and reasoning.⁶⁰

One can see how Westphal’s hermeneutics of suspicion, the prophetic voice, fits into his completed understanding of Kierkegaardian faith. Religiousness C’s faith becomes a critique of ideology since it reveals that what passes for the good life throughout Kierkegaard’s theory of stages is desperately inept, save for perhaps Religiousness B (albeit briefly). These stages are all too tinged with humanity’s desire for autonomy and mastery; they are all too focused on the self.

Religiousness C’s critique “rudely interrupts the Marxian suggestion that religion always functions to legitimize the status quo.”⁶¹ But Marx, Westphal continues, “will wonder whether such a critique is not entirely utopian and thus ideological [itself].”⁶² Marx would have a point given that the knight of hidden inwardness is somewhat preoccupied with an internal and personal contemplation of the Paradox. Indeed, as Westphal has noted in the preface to Kierkegaard’s Critique of Reason and Society, critics have jumped on this characterization of Kierkegaard’s thinking, leading to the misrepresentation of him as an individualist with indifference to the outside world, holding it with only “relative importance.”63 As we have seen, Westphal’s research aims to refute this claim against Kierkegaard, and while Religiousness B does hold itself guilty to the charge (at least for Westphal), it finds its existential completion (and thus its exoneration) in Religiousness C.

Moving from offense to objectivity, the second of three claims he makes for Religiousness C, Westphal emphasizes outward political concern through the self’s imitation of Christ as the Paradigm. In clarifying what he means by objectivity, Westphal states that it pertains to a certain “aloofness” found in those who, “to preside over their lives and to be fully in charge of every situation, find it useful always to remain above the fray.”⁶⁴ This aloofness separates the self from the world by extracting one’s subjectivity from the equation and by objectively seeing the world sub specie aeternitatis. In response, Religiousness B contrasts faith as uncertain, “that Christ can only be believed, never known.”⁶⁵ Faith, according to Climacus, is categorized not as something knowable, but only as an acceptance of an objective uncertainty “maintained through appropriation in the most passionate inwardness.”⁶⁶ There is risk involved in the faith of Religiousness B, but in C that risk moves from an epistemic uncertainty into action: one’s faith must produce works (James 2:14–26) in the practice of imitating Christ. According to Westphal, Kierkegaard pointedly reveals this in Works of Love.

Works of Love is a touchstone text for Westphal; it is where he finds Kierkegaard’s “most eloquent account of neighborly love as welcoming the stranger, the widow, the orphan, and the poor.”⁶⁷ Kierkegaard’s neighborly love centers on an extended reflection on the commandment “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” and he emphasizes this love’s commanded nature and its relation to God’s divine law. What is of particular interest for Westphal, and for Kierkegaard, is that this form of love is written as a part of the Law—Jesus proclaims that it is the greatest commandment—and consequently it becomes a foundation for living an ethical, good life.⁶⁸ However, contrary to the social order, which also can show appreciation for the neighbor (even if it often fails to do so in action) and constitutes laws to that effect, it is the how and why one enacts this divinely commanded neighborly love that make it so important. This is also why faithfully following this commanded love resists objectification.⁶⁹

Kierkegaard is quick to point out that this source must come from God and that God compels the Christian to love the neighbor from deep within. Westphal elaborates on this, noting that other forms of love, such as friendship and erotic love, “grow from preferences based on natural inclination and are actually a form of self-love.”70 These are self-interested loves since they come from one’s own inward interests and desires (e.g., for companionship). In contrast, neighborly love, in and of itself, can only be commanded since it fulfills no self-interest. Connecting Works of Love to Kierkegaard’s first authorship, Westphal notes that “in the language of Fragments, love of one’s neighbor cannot be recollected but only revealed. In the language of Postscript, it cannot be grounded in speculation but only in ethical-religious subjectivity.”⁷¹ Additionally, and this will eventually play out in his future work in phenomenology, Westphal sees that this is a primary issue taken up by Levinas and his ethics as first philosophy.

Regarding objectivity, one can again see epistemic risk within neighborly love. For one, the self cannot ground this love, and more to the point, neighborly love may even run against one’s self-interest. When you choose to love your neighbor as yourself, you put his or her needs above your own, which could have dire consequences to your personal wealth, social standing, ambition, and even your own life. It’s not all volunteer soup kitchens and building homes for Habitat for Humanity on a Saturday. In answering the call to love your neighbor, you may have to make some major life choices and personal sacrifices.

Religiousness B recognizes this, Westphal claims, and often tries to mitigate the risks involved in fulfilling this commandment. Doctrine, in this manner, objectifies the nature of neighborly love by placidly securing it as a form of charity and almsgiving or, even worse, fashioning it into merely an abstract discipline. Westphal believes that neighborly love is much more radical than that: “The attempt by Religiousness B to make Christianity into a doctrine” restricts “the offense of faith to epistemic matters,” which is just another way of legitimating Christendom.⁷² “Christianity as doctrine,” Westphal concludes, “is Christendom’s defense against Christ as Pattern [or Christ as Paradigm], a way of reducing the price at which Christian consolation can be bought.”⁷³

This is not to say that doctrine is unnecessary; rather, doctrine must be guided by this principle of neighborly love and must be in the service of discipleship.⁷⁴ Far too often, Westphal elaborates, doctrine and discipleship become separated, often through apologetics or by making doctrine a particularly academic matter. Biblical scholarship is a key example for Westphal, where many scholars have become adept as interpreters of the Bible—critiquing its origins and historicity (calling to my mind the historical Jesus debates in certain scholastic circles)—but they far too often cease to be followers. This is a case of objectivity being a “separation of words from deeds,” and while objectification does not only rest in the academy, it does present a strong example of the aloofness toward faith and toward the Word of God. Religiousness B, for Westphal, is liable to lapse into this aloofness, which is why he sees a final stage of religiousness in Kierkegaard.75

Religiousness C, however, does not seek to end academic research in theology but rather seeks to ensure that it always aids discipleship and always imitates Christ. Religiousness C demands that theologians (and all Christians) continually ask, reflect, and pray: “Are we following Christ and Christ’s teachings? Are we bringing about a greater sense of discipleship in our works and deeds?” These questions are part of imitating Christ and are part not only of what it means to do theology, for Westphal, but also of what it means to become a self.

This brings us back to Westphal’s prophetic task for philosophy and the task of liberation for theology. Speaking on the role of theology, Westphal states that “all theology should be liberation theology, a guide to the practice of overcoming oppression in all its forms.”⁷⁶ To me, this comes directly from his reading of Kierkegaard’s Religiousness C. This can be seen in the fact that he cites the exact same passages within Kierkegaard’s second authorship, particularly Works of Love, and presents the same conclusions. However, he does not cite them as examples of Religiousness C but instead relates them to Levinas’s phenomenological account of ethics as first philosophy to provide a contemporary argument for neighborly love as the primary motivator for theology.

One can see this concept of Religiousness C underlying Westphal’s critiques of theologies that do not adhere to overcoming oppression or do not take the neighborly love commandment seriously. These theologies fall into three disparate forms of ideology or objectification: “overt espousal,” where they “explicitly justify practices as slavery, apartheid,” et cetera; and “vague generality,” where notions such as the love of neighbor become abstracted and lame, where “a theology that is capable of calling racism a sin, but [is] incapable of identifying apartheid as a racism” and thus creates a “comfortable theology.” Last, theology becomes a “dualistic hermeneutics” when it sifts the world into opposing categories (such as sacred and profane) and then, “by opposing evil on one side of the great divide … they permit themselves to remain totally silent about the evils on the other side.”⁷⁷ For the rest of “Levinas, Kierkegaard, and the Theological Task,” Westphal argues for ways that Levinas and Kierkegaard’s thought allays these theological tendencies. For our present purposes, though, note that the three critiques against theology sound exactly like the critiques Religiousness C has against Religiousness B’s tendency toward objectivity. Furthermore, note that there is a place for doctrine, for both Westphal and Kierkegaard (as well, one might add in a broader sense, for Levinas), and that place is at home within neighborly love, especially in service of the widow, orphan, and stranger.

Moving on to outwardness, Westphal’s third category of Religiousness C, one’s service to the other, is an enactment of faith; as an enactment, it often involves suffering. It often embodies the first two categories, offense and objectivity, creating problems for the established order. Religious suffering is not so much a matter of dying or martyrdom as much as it is living joyously and humbly in faith through an ethical and religious inwardness that does not turn inward toward the self to ease or alleviate its suffering. Rather, it moves outward, toward a voluntary yet necessary suffering. Accordingly outward suffering becomes an essential expression of faith not merely being epistemic but also ethical. The inward struggle of faith is manifest in the outward struggle, where the “contemporaneity” with Christ is achieved “not only in the movement from knowledge to belief, but more basically in the movement from word to deed.”78

This sense of suffering emanates from the idea that the self constantly tries to avoid or otherwise master suffering. Suffering is a humiliating experience, Westphal notes, and Christendom often tries to ignore or explain away this humiliation through its triumphalism and self-exaltation. However, “the church triumphant is the triumph of the spirit of the scribes and Pharisees over [the] apostolic spirit.”⁷⁹ It has deified its achievements as God’s glory, as God’s established order. It has replaced the spirit and teachings of Christ as servant and sufferer for the world with Christendoom as God’s ruling power over the world. Religiousness C continually critiques this Pharisaic attempt by accepting its humiliation and suffering because of its faith. Through accepting suffering as a part of one’s faith, and through continuously expressing one’s faith in the love of neighbor, the self disestablishes, or subverts, Christendom.⁸⁰ It causes offense, and it expresses faith in service of the other.

Suffering, here, is primarily understood through service. Westphal clarifies this in Becoming a Self, where he situates Religiousness C within the love of neighbor and its appeal toward alterity. Westphal states that “this outwardness involves an essential relation with my neighbor that challenges my self-love…. [I]t involves an essential relation to the established order that challenges that order’s ultimacy.”81 Westphal finds that this challenge reveals that the “Christian faith is aufgehoben in the call to a discipleship which imitates the life of Christ on earth” and can be expressed only as Religiousness C.

However, many disagree with Westphal’s rather Hegelian reading of Kierkegaard and his attempt to connect all of Kierkegaard’s writings through the singular theme found in Religiousness C. Two scholars in particular, Jack Mulder Jr. and Henry Piper, quite pointedly express this, causing Westphal to respond and defend his concept of Religiousness C. Piper’s critique deals primarily with Westphal’s particular Hegelian reading of Kierkegaard, and Mulder’s questions the concept of Religiousness C. We will briefly explore Mulder’s critiques and Westphal’s defense to better understand how Westphal fits into the prevailing Kierkegaardian scholarship.⁸²

Mulder’s critique of Religiousness C initially touches on Kierkegaard’s shifting conceptions of the teleological suspension of the ethical in Fear and Trembling and Kierkegaard’s subsequent works. Mulder’s examination of the teleological suspension of the ethical follows a tradition of scholarship that follows the belief that Kierkegaard actually corrects the teleological suspension in these later works. Moreover, contrary to Westphal, Mulder believes that Kierkegaard even distances himself from his early formulation of the teleological suspension, especially within his second authorship and journals.⁸³ At the risk of oversimplifying, the prevailing scholarship argues that Kierkegaard noticed that the teleological suspension of the ethical may only lead toward inward contemplation since the ethical is suspended in an inwardness that is not just Sittlichkeit, but also of the contemplation of the good, or a Socratic and Kantian morality. Kierkegaard recognizes this error, the argument goes, and he eventually changes the teleological suspension, particularly in Concluding Unscientific Postscript.

Mulder, agreeing with Westphal, refutes this claim by citing a passage in Works of Love that reaffirms the teleological suspension in Fear and Trembling.⁸⁴ Although Westphal and he agree that the ethical that is suspended can be equated to Sittlichkeit, and that Kierkegaard affirms this in his second authorship, Mulder parts ways with Westphal on the matter of where this teleological suspension happens. Mulder argues that the teleological suspension of the ethical, as read in Fear and Trembling, becomes taken up within what Climacus calls Religiousness A in Concluding Unscientific Postscript. In doing so, Kierkegaard evolves his understanding of the teleological suspension since the suspension within Religiousness B fulfills the suspension of A through the Paradox of faith: there is joy at the end of the knight of infinite resignation’s journey through a faith that fulfills the prior suspension. Although each suspension can be compared, Mulder argues, this does not mean that they are one and the same. Thus, it becomes the case that Abraham in Fear and Trembling is not the same as Socrates in Concluding Unscientific Postscript, contrary to Westphal’s reading. Mulder states that, “in seeing Socrates as an exemplar of the teleological suspension of the ethical, we already are recognizing that one who commits the teleological suspension of the ethical has not eo ipso become the knight of faith. Something more is needed, and this is faith, the ability to come back to the finite with joy,”85 something that Abraham explicitly is able to do but that Socrates cannot, something that can happen in Religiousness B but not A. “This would imply,” he concludes, “that the dialectic would not finish until after the teleological suspension.”⁸⁶ Hence in Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard founds Religiousness B.

Pushing the teleological suspension of the ethical into a Religiousness C is a movement too far for Mulder. He claims that it severs “the relation to the god in time at Religiousness B,” since the dialectical nature of the hidden inwardness and outer expression (which should be understood as equal movements faith requires to be real) are seen as merely hypothetical and nonreal, according to Religiousness C.⁸⁷ In other words, since Westphal calls this merely a contemplation of outward expression, he severs the dialectic that creates Religiousness B in the first place. No dialectic between inwardness and outwardness, no Religiousness B. No Religiousness B, no Religiousness C. Westphal undercuts the whole project by moving it too far. Therefore, Mulder finds that Religiousness C is “misleading” and “superfluous” since the teleological suspension in Religiousness A, caught within Religiousness B, already accomplishes what Westphal is trying to argue and what the second authorship fleshes out.⁸⁸ True, Kierkegaard emphasizes an outward, ethical love of neighbor in his second authorship, but to make it a double Aufhebung of the previous two religious stages is at best redundant and at worst separates the dialectic seen in B, which is to say it renders B useless.

In response, Westphal first reestablishes that the teleological suspension of the ethical indeed concerns Sittlichkeit, something that Mulder, departing from Evans, recognizes. Westphal rejects that the teleological suspension changes in Kierkegaard’s writings and for evidence they both cite Works of Love’s emphasis on God’s law being above humanity’s laws and customs.⁸⁹ From here, he goes on to defend Religiousness C through an account of what is lacking in Religiousness A and B, namely, an ethical paradigm for living faith as a task.

He agrees that a teleological suspension of the ethical, as seen with Socrates, is necessary for and in Religiousness A. However, what Mulder misses, according to Westphal, is that this suspension can be completed only in Religiousness C. In this sense, the suspension in Religiousness A is necessary for “authentic religion that is not Christian,” and in Religiousness B, Kierkegaard focuses on his primary objective of describing an authentic Christian religion that he distinguishes from Christendom and biblical faith.90 For this purpose, Kierkegaard takes up the authentic religion found within Religiousness A and places it in the Paradox of Christ in Religiousness B. However, Westphal claims, Religiousness B provides no ethics as it “focuses on the epistemic paradox of faith in the God in time and, so far as ethics is concerned, gives us [at] best such formal notions as subjectivity, the how, and appropriation, which as such have no specifically Christian content and which are applied in Postscript to belief in the Incarnation rather than to behavior in the mode of imitatio Christi.”⁹¹ Works of Love, however, does provide us with a paradigm of “Christian ethics” that repudiates and surpasses Sittlichkeit.

Religiousness C fulfills this lack of an ethical paradigm within Religiousness B. It also negates the other claim by Mulder that Religiousness C is superfluous. This is especially so given the abstract nature of the God relation in Religiousness B, which Westphal argues needs to be intensified and supplemented if it is to be expressed beyond a “(monastic or bourgeois) outwardness.”⁹² Citing Kierkegaard’s journals and papers, Westphal argues that this is Works of Love’s primary thesis and, since it continues Kierkegaard’s patterns of thought as seen within his first authorship, it is necessary to understand the previous formulations (the stages, Religiousness A and B) in light of Kierkegaard’s second authorship.⁹³

After rebuffing these two claims, Westphal addresses Mulder’s final objection, which centers on the “religious resistance” found in the teleological suspension and Westphal’s assertion that it is only in Religiousness C where this is overcome.⁹⁴ Again, as we shall see, Westphal defends his concept of a Religiousness C from an omission in Religiousness B.

Mulder’s objection essentially focuses on his contention that “the teleological suspension is the crucial step of resignation that is necessary before faith can occur.”⁹⁵ Westphal quickly counters that this is a faulty understanding of when the teleological suspension happens: “as presented in Fear and Trembling, the teleological suspension of the ethical is simultaneous with faith, neither prior nor subsequent. Faith just is the teleological suspension of the ethical in the sense that there is no faith without it.”96 Moreover, as seen in Either/Or, “it is with a faith that necessarily includes the teleological suspension of the ethical that the religious stage is defined in distinction from the ethical.”⁹⁷ And yet when faith is understood in our society, it is often understood through a piety that rests on a Sittlichkeit by which the pious and holy are those who follow the laws and customs best. They are saints of law and order.

Westphal argues that Kierkegaard’s saints are those who maintain a tension between their faith and their Sittlichkeit, concerning their behavior at least. Religiousness B all too easily succumbs to the temptations of dissolving this tension between one’s Sittlichkeit and one’s faith, given its “abstractness … along with the fact that it distinguishes itself from Religiousness A by virtue of specifically Christian elements.”⁹⁸ These historical and cultural artifacts can so easily be assumed into Christendom and its metanarrative (the prevailing Sittlichkeit of Kierkegaard’s time—and ours, for that matter). Thus, a religious resistance to this temptation is needed, and this is where Westphal situates Religiousness C.

Westphal defends his position throughout by noticing a lack within Kierkegaard’s first authorship and then pointing out where the second authorship fills those gaps. This is especially clear when he addresses Piper’s main critique against Religiousness C, that Kierkegaard’s Upbuilding Discourses from 1843 to 1845 emphasizes a “‘non-dialectical dialectic’ in which difference and tension prevail over mediation and resolution,” which runs counter to the completion that Westphal sees in Religiousness C.⁹⁹ Defending his reading, Westphal asserts “that there is nothing specifically Christian” in those discourses and that “if one wants an account of what is involved in becoming a Christian one must go beyond the Upbuilding Discourses on which Piper draws just as one must go beyond Religiousness B as presented by Climacus.”¹⁰⁰ This, Westphal claims, is where Religiousness C comes enters the picture.

CONCLUSIONS ON KIERKEGAARD: TOWARD LEVINAS AND LIBERATION THEOLOGY

Thus far we have explored Westphal’s reading of Religiousness C in light of Kierkegaard’s theory of stages. Westphal concludes that Religiousness C is the final move in Kierkegaard’s critique of reason and society since it builds off his previously established concept of faith. It moves from faith as an individual, willing act (à la Abraham and the hidden inwardness of Religiousness A and B) toward a concrete, outward act of loving God and the neighbor as one loves oneself. In our exploration we have done a great deal of spadework exploring not only Westphal’s writing but Kierkegaard’s as well. Yet where does it leave us? What can we gather from Westphal’s Kierkegaardian scholarship?

Our exploration has revealed that, in his early Kierkegaard scholarship, Westphal discovers the primary motivation for most of his philosophy of religion. In these works he finds his voice not only as a philosopher but also as a theologian. Kierkegaard gives Westphal a way to understand faith and how faith can serve as an unfounding source for a Christ-like (Christ-ian) witness to the world. Kierkegaard’s critique of society and Christendom presses upon the all-too-human wound that is sin, and faith serves as the divine salve to heal that wound. Moreover, faith is not only a healing salve but also the therapy that moves the patient from critical condition to stable. The belief of faith is the initial care, and the act of faith is the continual rehabilitation of the patient. Reason is the medicinal prescription aiding rehabilitation.

The next chapter explores how this faith is central to Westphal’s thinking and how he articulates it through a postmodern context. Westphal finds that the postmodern critique of society aligns quite well with Kierkegaard’s critique of Christendom, and he appropriates both to articulate how the believing soul can become a better believer. Both critiques aid the believing soul to accept that its faith is the task of a lifetime. This is the core of his dialogue between Levinas and Kierkegaard. We have briefly summarized how this dialogue compels Westphal to state that all theology should be focused on liberation and on the preferential option toward the outcast. He develops Kierkegaard’s Religiousness C and Levinas’s ethics as first philosophy to argue how the self should always focus on the other, that one is commanded to lift the other above oneself in loving service to God through revelation. Westphal articulates this as a liberation theology, an articulation that he will eventually distance himself from but that is nonetheless revealing. Even though he omits “Levinas, Kierkegaard, and the Theological Task” from his book Levinas and Kierkegaard in Dialogue, stating that it was “more a research agenda than anything else,” I believe that it is essential to understanding the book since it reveals the underlying impetus to better understand faith as a task and the concept of revelation that is needed for such a faith.101 Through his scholarly account of Levinas and Kierkegaard, he makes the case for a phenomenology that opens the believing soul toward the world in service of that world.¹⁰² In the book’s sixth chapter, for example, Westphal explores how the heteronomy of self, other, and God creates a responsibility. This responsibility, even though it can be nontheistically understood, also relates to how the believing soul grasps and follows revelation. Westphal accepts that Levinas understands that responsibility “is born with the incursion of the Other into my very identity,” but he also reads this responsibility from a theological, biblical perspective where “the law comes from a radically transcendent God” who is above and beyond “the self-legislation of human reason.”¹⁰³ Whether it is inscribed in the Law or in the face, it always points toward the same self-abnegation and preferential option, and its inscription, however written, can lead the believing soul in faith seeking understanding. Within both, a preferential option for the other is imposed upon the self.

Westphal often emphasizes Kierkegaard’s account of revelation over Levinas’s obligation toward the other, as seen in his critique of Levinas’s concept of God,¹⁰⁴ but it is clear that, within both, he is attempting to articulate something that he finds as truth, however subjective: becoming a self means accepting an epistemic uncertainty (faith, for Kierkegaard; the face of the other, for Levinas) and obligating oneself toward the other in service of making that uncertainty concrete.

When considering its implications, this concept of epistemic uncertainty makes the theological mind wonder about doctrine and the nature of theology. Westphal’s critique against a certain kind of apologetics has already been well documented in this chapter and the last, but the extension of this to a suspicion of doctrine is a matter for concern. It reveals a more Lutheran approach to doctrine in that it wishes to proceed from faith solely on an account of revelation (sola scriptura, one might argue) and not on humanity’s account of tradition, which entails a intertwined relationship of human reason and revelation. Westphal’s account of revelation, here, has become threefold: it can be maieutic, a mediated immediacy, or it can be through the encounter of the other.

Westphal’s concern against doctrine also points toward a somewhat anticreedal position in that there is a (Kierkegaardian) worry against a creeping Christendom when someone professes and codifies his or her beliefs into propositions and statements. Recall Westphal’s remark against Religiousness B: “Christianity as doctrine is Christendom’s defense against Christ as Pattern, a way of reducing the price at which Christian consolation can be bought.”105 Say the magic words, Christendom yelps, and Jesus is your friend and salvation your reward—living those magic words, Kierkegaard mocks, is much, much harder. I can see why Westphal follows Kierkegaard in arguing against these abuses of doctrine, but I also fear that he is dismissing (or diminishing) the concept of doctrine mainly because it has been often misused throughout history.¹⁰⁶ He might be throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak.

In Westphal’s defense, it should be remembered that he does find a place for doctrine—situated along the path of faith seeking understanding—but it is subordinate to one’s personal belief. It has very little at stake in the journey of faith since, if the believing soul finds that she must defy doctrine to fulfill her loving obligation to her neighbor, then she must do so. This stems from Kierkegaard’s articulation of the subjectivity of truth and his worry about any objective fact being named as Truth. Although I am not ready to fight over the infallibility of the pope with Westphal, I find disconcerting this negation of objective truth—and thus the foundation of doctrine; it actually does a disservice to our understanding of God, even. When Westphal claims that there is no objective truth in the world, I wonder if he is constraining God. With this account of revelation, aren’t Christians still putting God in a box just like they do within Christendom? To be sure, it is a different box, but it nonetheless limits what God can and cannot do.

I see this doctrinal strain in how he articulates the love commandment through a quasi-Kantian, “conditions of possibility” style of love. Westphal articulates that Religiousness C should be focused on loving the neighbor as one loves oneself. Sure, loving our neighbor should be our primary, Christlike objective, but the question arises: Whose love? Which neighbor? Would loving a slave be whipping her for insubordination (Colossians 3:22; Ephesians 6:5)? Or would loving a slave be to free her (Exodus 21:2; 1 Corinthians 7:21)? Are slaves even our neighbors?

Answering this question, Westphal would immediately point toward reason aiding faith in seeking understanding. For him this is what seeking is all about: reasoning about how to best enact the love commandment toward the neighbor, how to correct our all-too-human tendency to co-opt God (and the neighbor, for that matter) to do our own bidding. Furthermore, he also acknowledges that Truth can be manifest in the world, as seen through Christ as the Paradox and Paradigm. I can see how he answers this question, but I still cannot follow him fully, since these critiques are just as subjective as one’s concept of revelation and truth. Even myself and my atheist friend can agree that Jesus was a historical person, but that he is the Incarnation is still an internal matter of recognition. I fear this leads toward a “truthiness” mentality, where it is true because you believe it is true, not because it is objective fact. In Overcoming Onto-Theology, he will try to defend postmodernism against the “anything goes” brush with which it is often painted, and he will also try to establish that history and tradition are not only meaningful but, following Gadamer, also the only ways in which we can interpret our world. If this is so, and this is further explored in the next chapter, then I must hold onto the belief that some of the discoveries humanity has made within, through, and by revelation via the aid of reason and the Holy Spirit can rise to the level of doctrine. Some things that people do not accept may still be true even if they are unacceptable. Some things we come to realize are true only after a long, painful process. Westphal’s development of Kierkegaard’s paradox within Christ answers this somewhat, but he limits this only to the Incarnation, as if God’s revelation within the objective world ended there. This causes some concern for me.

Doctrine extends beyond the Incarnation and is indeed often cause for our recognition of the meaning of the Incarnation. For example, doctrine proclaims what revelation is, not just in the texts, but that the texts themselves are artifacts of revelation. In his concluding interview with Putt in Gazing through a Prism Darkly, Westphal concedes that the biblical canon is more or less a closed question; noting that certain parts are up for discussion (e.g., the Apocrypha) and that biblical exegesis can also shed light on how texts were formed (e.g., the several additions to the book of Isaiah), yet “it isn’t the case that the Epistle of James is sometimes part of the Bible and sometimes not part of the Bible.”107 However, how does one come to know these texts as a canon or, more pointedly, as sacred Scripture? The answer lies within doctrine, however one construes the term, which defines what is Scripture and what is not. Moreover, doctrine is formed by tradition and human reason.

To delve further into such arguments goes beyond our scope into historical-biblical scholarship. I raise the point merely to suggest that perhaps doctrine is too narrowly defined in Westphal’s thought and, perhaps by extension, in Kierkegaard’s. If one is to believe that faith is a hidden inwardness, steeped in the self’s recognition of God’s revelation and then expressed in an outwardness, then one must accept that this outwardness—either in works of love or in writings of love—concretely manifests itself in the world. If this is so, then one can point toward objective, historical (sometimes written) moments that reveal the inwardness of that love. If that is the case, then perhaps there is a claim that doctrines—and the rational justification of those doctrines (i.e., apologetics)—have a place within Christianity.

Yet Westphal is not entirely wrong to be worried about doctrine or to be concerned with human reason’s all-too-often misuse of doctrine. There have been far too many atrocities carried out in the name of God and God’s love to not be worried and concerned. However, perhaps one should not be so wary of doctrine such that it is equated with Christendom. Perhaps, in doctrine, one can find particular cures for his or her own particular wounds. If one is to be open to the inward paradox of faith, as seen through Christ and revelation, then one must be open to the idea that this paradox can express itself outside of oneself, in others and in the world through God and the Holy Spirit. One must be open to revelation existing in a shared tradition or a shared covenant between God and God’s people. Perhaps that paradox even extends to the church’s embodying of both the battlefield and the hospital, where wounded sinners meet their divine physician whose nurses are wounded sinners also.

NOTES

  1. KCRS, 105. See also KCF, 26–36 on Kierkegaard and Lutheranism; as well as 30–32 on Kierkegaard and Pietism. Our focus here is on Kierkegaard and Lutheranism since this is Westphal’s main appropriation.

  2. KCRS, 105.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Ibid., 106. Since KCRS is about gaining insights through Kierkegaard rather than a scholarly examination of his work (viii), these sentiments pertain to Westphal’s thinking.

  6. Ibid., 105.

  7. Ibid., 107 Westphal mainly draws this from Philosophical Fragments, 53–54, and Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1941), 327–328. In Fragments, Climacus’s notion of the paradox confounds reason, turning “the understanding [into] a clod and a dunce who at best can say ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to the same thing, which is not good theology”; this is an offense—a sin—to good theology. Philosophical Fragments, 53. Westphal follows his argument concerning Climacus’s Lutheran view of reason and sin by looking at subjectivity and truth in Concluding Unscientific Postscript, noting the relationship between pathos and the inwardness of faith. KCF covers the same argument about Climacus’s understanding of sin in chapter 7.

  8. KCRS, 107.

  9. Ibid., 107–108.

10. For the doctrine of total depravity, see Jaroslav Pelikan and Walter A. Hansen, eds., Luther’s Works (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1963–1964), 26:174–175, 27:53, 12:323, 12:341–342, 26:33–34, 26:340–41. Westphal cites these sections. See also The Heidelberg Catechism, question 8, Center for Reformed Theology and Apologetics, http://www.reformed.org/documents/index.html?mainframe=http://www.reformed.org/documents/heidelberg.html; Formula Concordiae of 1576, article 1, Christian Classics Ethereal Library of Calvin College, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/creeds3.iii.iv.html; Peter C. Hodgson and Robert H. King, eds., “Sin and Evil,” in Christian Theology: An Introduction to its Traditions and Tasks (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), 194–221; John Webster, Barth’s Moral Theology (New York: T&T Clark, 1998), 72–75.

11. KCRS, 108.

12. Ibid., 109–110.

13. See Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 11–15.

14. KCRS, 110.

15. Ibid. He cites Augustine’s Confessions, 4:15, 5:10, 7:3, 8:10, and 9:4, never giving any specific edition.

16. KCRS, 111.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid. Westphal does not give any exact page numbers or references for these descriptions in Concluding Unscientific Postscript. This is perhaps because the self’s relation to the Paradox and the subjectivity of truth within the self is a theme spread throughout the Postscript and perhaps its main thesis. However, for a pertinent section of Postscript, see 168–176, 325–361, 440–465. See also Kierkegaard, Postscript, 168–170, for the initial expression; 171, for the essential expression; and 174–176, for the decisive expression.

In BS, Westphal details these expressions their relation to Kierkegaard’s concept of hidden inwardness on 156–175. While the two are interrelated, in BS he does this in relation to Climacus’s concept of pathos and not paradox. He also further explores Kierkegaard’s concept of the paradox in chapter 8 of KCF.

19. KCRS, 111.

20. Ibid., 113. The concept of the Teacher is an allusion to Socrates in The Meno. See Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 27–32.

21. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 28. Climacus allegorically states: “The god wants to be his teacher, and the god’s concern is to bring about equality. If this cannot be brought about the love becomes unhappy and the instruction meaningless, for they are unable to understand each other. We probably think that this may be a matter of indifference to the god, since he does not need the learner, but we forget—or rather, alas, we demonstrate—how far we are from understanding him; we forget that he does indeed love the learner.”

22. Ibid., 31–32. Climacus muses that the only way that the god could do such a thing as to take the lowly form of humanity’s servant: “In order for unity to be effected, the god must become like this one. He will appear, therefore, as the equal of the lowliest persons … the god will appear in the form of a servant.”

23. KCRS, 113. Westphal quotes Climacus’s opening lines to “The Absolute Paradox,” which mockingly refer to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, where Kant argues (in the preface of the A edition) that “human reason has this peculiar fate that in one species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions which, as prescribed by the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer.” Westphal cites from this version. See Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kent Smith (London: Macmillan, 1929), 7/A vii.

24. KCRS, 113.

25. Westphal draws from Philosophical Fragments, 39–41. For Kierkegaard’s Climacus, one cannot use these conditions to prove God’s existence since, as the necessity for all existence, God’s essence necessarily includes existence. He demonstrates this by explaining the difference between Napoleon and his works, given that someone else could have performed Napoleon’s works, noting this “is why I cannot reason from the works to existence” of Napoleon. However, God’s existence is an affront to this form of reasoning, given that “between the god and his works there is an absolute relation. God is not a name but a concept, and perhaps because of that his essentia involvit existentiam [essence involves existence].”

26. KCRS, 114.

27. Ibid. Westphal quotes from Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 46–47.

28. KCRS, 108

29. Ibid. Westphal is quoting from Pelikan and Hansen, Luther’s Works, 26:194, 26:323, 26:262.

30. Kierkegaard’s second authorship has become a standard assumption among Kierkegaard scholars. The term denotes a change in writing style shortly after the “Corsair Affair” in which the Corsair, a Danish satirical magazine, began to increasingly mock Kierkegaard’s works after having previously praised them (and with Kierkegaard contributing to the magazine as well). The works that are included in the second authorship are authored by Kierkegaard himself with no pseudonyms and are shorter than his previous ones, save for Works of Love, which is generally considered the most important text of the second authorship. Other texts included in the second authorship are Two Ages: A Literary Review, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, Phister as Captain Scipio, and The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress. For more information, see Howard Hong and Edna Hong, “Historical Introduction,” in Works of Love, by Søren Kierkegaard (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), ix–xvi; M. Jamie Ferreira, Blackwell’s Great Minds: Kierkegaard (Oxford: Blackwell, 2009), 122–146.

31. In GTPD, C. Stephen Evans agrees “with critics that much of the emphasis on outward action that is seen in Kierkegaard’s later writings is already present, implicitly and sometimes explicitly, in Kierkegaard’s earlier work; however, ultimately that does not undermine but confirms the point Westphal is trying to make, which is that being a follower of Christ, one who ‘lives contemporaneously’ with Christ and thus comes into conflict with the established order, is precisely the final goal of the whole authorship” (GTPD, 36).

32. In chapter 13 of KCF, Westphal explores ways in which Anti-Climacus points toward a Religiousness C. His concept of Religiousness C does not change in this text but attempts to support it by citing a non–second authorship text. He merely points toward its potential development, noting that Anti-Climacus elaborates on the faith as an offense and that Christ, as both the Paradox and the Paradigm, must not just be contemplated but followed as a role model for the task of faith (261–266). We stick to how Westphal develops his concept of Religiousness C earlier in his career to show chronologically his intellectual development.

33. BS, 22.

34. Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or Book I, trans. Howard Hong and Edna Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 1:396.

35. BS, 22–23. Remember that reason is also a matter of the flesh. Thus, pleasure seeking encompasses art, music, literature, and even religiously oriented themes such as Christ’s passion where he is portrayed as a tragic hero.

36. Ibid., 24; Westphal quotes from Either/Or, 2:166–69, 178, 188–90, 214–19, 223–24.

37. BS, 24. Emphasis is mine.

38. Ibid., 24–25. The construct of marriage also happens to be the primary stage of Hegel’s theory of Sittlichkeit, where marriage “ennobles” the esthetic pleasure seeking. EO, 2:61; cf. EO, 21, 30, 57.

39. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 2:31. See also BS, 25; Ferreira, Blackwell’s Great Minds, 21–23.

40. Westphal summarizes this in BS, 25–28.

41. Ibid., 25–26.

42. See Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 467.

43. Westphal frequently uses sub specie aeternati instead of its original formulation, and he attributes this to Spinoza. I use the original formulation to avoid confusion for those not familiar with Westphal’s style but who are familiar with the concept. See KCF, 191, esp. 191n14.

44. See KCF, chap. 11. Although KCF and BS more step-by-step guides through Climacus’s texts, Westphal’s other Kierkegaardian scholarship reveals how he found these arguments and illuminates his appropriation of them.

45. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 165. See also 465–467, where Climacus formulates this into Religiousness A “for the sake of brevity.”

46. BS, 175.

47. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 465–470.

48. Merold Westphal, “Søren Kierkegaard,” Encyclopedia Britannica Online, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/317503/Soren-Kierkegaard/271899/Three-dimensions-of-the-religious-life. I include this quotation from the encyclopedia to highlight that Westphal is so convinced that Religiousness C is within Kierkegaard’s writing that he places it in the most basic of texts, no longer leaving it up to debate.

49. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 468.

50. Merold Westphal, “Kierkegaard’s Teleological Suspension of Religiousness B,” in Foundations of Kierkegaard’s Vision of Community, ed. George Connell and C. Stephen Evans (London: Humanities Press, 1992), 110–129. This is our foundational text for understanding Religiousness C. I also use BS, “Beyond Postscript: The Teleological Suspension of Hidden Inwardness in Religiousness C”; Merold Westphal, “Kierkegaard’s Religiousness C: A Defense,” International Philosophical Quarterly 44, no. 4 (December 2004): 535–548; and see C. Stephen Evan’s contribution to GTPD and B. Keith Putt’s concluding interview with Westphal himself.

51. Westphal, “Kierkegaard’s Teleological Suspension of Religiousness B,” 114.

52. Ibid., 115. Here, Westphal does not mention Works of Love but does in later texts. See BS, 195, 197; Westphal, “Kierkegaard’s Religiousness C,” 536, 538–539.

53. Westphal, “Kierkegaard’s Teleological Suspension of Religiousness B,” 115.

54. Ibid. “With help from Plato” and his notion of recollection, Westphal summarizes, “Religiousness A can filter out all those putative divine voices that do not echo the voice of the people. As the Postscript’s account of resignation, suffering, and guilt shows us, Religiousness A is capable of intense subjectivity. But the epistemological immanence in which it operates blurs the distinction between … the voice of the people and the voice of God (Reason)” (116).

55. Ibid.

56. Ibid.

57. Ibid.

58. Ibid.

59. Ibid., 117.

60. Ibid.

61. BS, 194.

62. Ibid., 195.

63. Ibid.

64. Westphal, “Kierkegaard’s Teleological Suspension of Religiousness B,” 118.

65. Ibid.

66. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 171.

67. Merold Westphal, “Levinas, Kierkegaard, and the Theological Task,” Modern Theology 8, no. 3 (July 1992): 252. For more on his estimation of this text, see GTPD, 164–166, 191–193.

68. Westphal utilizes this aspect of Works of Love throughout his writings. For prime examples, see LKD, 54–56; BS, 195–196; Westphal, “Levinas, Kierkegaard, and the Theological Task,” 252–253. Also, Westphal notes in BS, 195, that this commandment did not originate with Jesus but was a reference to Leviticus 19:18. He takes special notice in connecting this commandment both to Abraham, the exemplar of faith for De Silentio, and to Jesus.

69. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 11–15; BS, 196. In “Kierkegaard’s Religiousness C,” 536, Westphal also places this passage alongside 1 John 4:20–21, adding another layer to his understanding of the relation between faith and works.

70. BS, 196.

71. Ibid.

72. Westphal, “Kierkegaard’s Teleological Suspension of Religiousness B,” 119.

73. Ibid., 120.

74. Concerning apologetics, Westphal makes it emphatically clear that “doctrine should define discipleship rather than defend against it.” Ibid., 119.

75. Ibid., 121.

76. Westphal, “Levinas, Kierkegaard, and the Theological Task,” 246.

77. Ibid., 251.

78. Westphal, “Kierkegaard’s Teleological Suspension of Religiousness B,” 124–125.

79. Ibid., 124.

80. Westphal directly links this suffering to joy throughout this article, using the apostle Peter’s joyous acceptance of his suffering on behalf of spreading the Gospel (Acts 5) as a foil to express how the Christian’s suffering is also joyful (110, 124). For Westphal, calling suffering on behalf of God joyful emphasizes that the sufferer does not begrudgingly accept suffering but rather does so with elation. Suffering thus changes from an act of torture to an act of faith in Christ, becoming a cause for celebration.

81. BS, 197.

82. Jack Mulder Jr., “Re-Radicalizing Kierkegaard: An Alternative to Religiousness C in Light of an Investigation into the Teleological Suspension of the Ethical,” Continental Philosophy Review 53 (2002): 303–324; Henry B. Piper, “Kierkegaard’s Non-Dialectical Dialectic or That Kierkegaard Is Not Hegelian,” International Philosophical Quarterly 44, no. 4 (December 2004): 497–518; Westphal, “Kierkegaard’s Religiousness C,” 535–548.

83. C. Stephen Evans’s and Edward F. Mooney’s Kierkegaardian scholarship becomes central to this debate. Mulder, “Re-Radicalizing Kierkegaard,” 305–307, Westphal, “Kierkegaard’s Religiousness C,” 537–539. For a robust debate on this topic, which is cited heavily by all three authors, see George B. Connell and C. Stephen Evans, eds., Foundations of Kierkegaard’s Vision of Community: Religion, Ethics and Politics in Kierkegaard (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1992), which includes a chapter by Mooney and Westphal’s general argument for Religiousness C. See also Edward F. Mooney, Knights of Resignation: Reading Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991), 71–88; C. Stephen Evans, “Faith as the Telos of Morality: A Reading of Fear and Trembling,” in International Kierkegaard Commentary: Fear and Trembling and Repetition, ed. Robert L. Perkins (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1993), 9–27.

Concerning Piper’s critique of his overly Hegelian reading, Westphal quickly dismisses these claims by citing instances where Kierkegaard’s “authors” either take on Hegelian personae (i.e., Judge William) or utilize Hegelian concepts such as Sittlichkeit and Aufhebung. Westphal, “Kierkegaard’s Religiousness C,” 546–548. Since this concern has been addressed throughout this chapter, I refrain from rehashing them. Suffice it to say that both Piper and Westphal agree that Kierkegaard obliquely uses Hegelian concepts, but Piper finds Westphal skewing the ratio between Kierkegaard’s appropriation and negation of Hegel.

84. Westphal, “Kierkegaard’s Religiousness C,” 538; Mulder, “Re-radicalizing Kierkegaard,” 310. The quotes in question are from Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 126, 441: “It is God who has placed love in the human being, and it is God who in every case will determine what is love,” and “Neither is it human judgment as such that it is to determine what sacrifice is, because God is to determine this, and human judgment is valid only when it judges in accordance with God’s Judgment. God’s requirement is that love shall be self-sacrifice, but how this is to be interpreted more specifically in the particular case, God, again, must determine.”

85. Mulder, “Re-Radicalizing Kierkegaard,” 312.

86. Ibid.

87. Ibid., 320.

88. Ibid.

89. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 126, 441.

90. Westphal, “Kierkegaard’s Religiousness C,” 540.

91. Ibid.

92. Ibid., 542.

93. Ibid. Westphal quotes from the Hong translation of Works of Love (409), which has selections of Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers. He quotes from this passage often in his works when linking the second authorship’s themes of Christ as paradigm to the theory of stages. In the section, Kierkegaard muses that the themes within Upbuilding Discourses (which focus on an ethical Christian life rooted in biblical faith and the imitatio Christi) has only reaffirmed his previous ideas, meaning within his pseudonymous authorship. From here, Kierkegaard gets the next theme of his book and its title: Works of Love.

94. Ibid., 542.

95. Mulder, “Re-radicalizing Kierkegaard,” 305. Westphal also quotes this in “Kierkegaard’s Religiousness C,” 543.

96. Westphal, “Kierkegaard’s Religiousness C,” 543.

97. Ibid.

98. Ibid.

99. Ibid., 548.

100. Ibid.

101. LKD, 2.

102. He will eventually formulate this as a self-transcendence in the aptly titled Transcendence and Self-Transcendence.

103. LKD, 103.

104. Ibid., 47.

105. Westphal, “Kierkegaard’s Teleological Suspension of Religiousness B,” 120.

106. In chapter 9 I show how Westphal critiques Kearney for a similar offense. Kearney, Westphal argues, conceives of God without esse, or being, precisely because human selfishness has capitalized on God’s being for its own legitimization (onto-theology, in this vein, is seen as permission for war and destruction “in the name of God”). Westphal thinks that Kearney, in his attempts to find a God of peace, removes esse too easily. One can see Westphal’s disdain for apologetics (and perhaps doctrine) as a similar charge: to make faith more “pure” to follow God’s commandments, he removes apologetics and, by extension, the doctrinal statements that are based upon an apologetical foundation.

107. GTPD, 204. See also chapter 1 of this book.