16
Søren Kierkegaard and Ada María Isasi-Díaz on Christian Truth-Witnessing
The Upbuilding Discourses are “discourses,” not “sermons” because the author does not have authority to preach.
—Søren Kierkegaard755
What is authoritative is the experience of the Hispanic Women’s community.
—Ada Maria Isasi-Díaz756
Søren Kierkegaard never wanted to be an assistant professor. An author, yes, and a country pastor, but neither a teacher nor a theologian (despite his degree in theology and philosophy). Twice he tried to quit authoring to become the pastor; twice he failed. The author survived these existential tremors, in part by giving birth to pseudonyms and in part by telling himself he was no authority on Christian matters. In choosing authorship over authority, Kierkegaard wrote and signed “discourses” instead of “sermons” because he believed that he lacked the requisite authority to preach.757 As a consequence, Kierkegaard left us discourses written by an author without authority instead of sermons by an authoritative pastor.
Ada Maria Isasi-Díaz failed, too. She failed at being a nun because she wanted to be ordained a priest. Instead of getting more authority, she got more authorship. Kierkegaard might have declared Isasi-Díaz-the-author blessed to have less authority than Isasi-Díaz-the-priest, but Isasi-Díaz still worried about having too much authority out of concern for those without it. Her authorship, along with her position as a professor of ethics and theology at Drew University, threatened to be a single theological voice that would eclipse the whole Hispanic/Latino/a community.758 But instead of using her authority to exclude already marginalized voices, she used it to authorize theirs. Isasi-Díaz coined the term “mujerista theology” to name a branch of liberation theology that “creates a voice for Latinas” and “captures public spaces for the voices of Latinas.”759 Mujerista theologians are Latina organic intellectuals who often do not hold ThM or MDiv degrees; they are grassroots activists whose lived experience in the Latina/o community makes them authoritative on theological issues. In contrast to Kierkegaard who denied his authority, Isasi-Díaz shared hers with others.
Neither Kierkegaard nor Isasi-Díaz had an official congregation; neither gave regular sermons, but both are read today as theologians. As I will show, even in his signed discourses, Kierkegaard attempted to leave his reader alone with her text; to extricate himself from the reading process. Kierkegaard felt it was important for a person to confront a text as a “single individual,” because he believed that only single individuals could become Christians. In an essay from 1846 that he never published, Kierkegaard explained why he prioritized the “single individual” above the “crowd.” He complained that “the crowd is untruth,”760 in contrast to the “single individual,” who only by herself stands any chance of developing a relationship to Christ. Since he considered truth inaccessible to a crowd, Kierkegaard dedicated himself to creating situations in which he could isolate reader and text from the crowd. This way, his single individual had an opportunity to develop a relationship with Christ and come into the truth.
Isasi-Díaz’s authorship, on the other hand, did not target the single individual but rather put Latinas in community with one another and edified them in front of both academy and church. Despite the chasm that exists between Kierkegaard and Isasi-Díaz on who has greater access to truth: community or single individual (which I comment on in my conclusion), they would at least agree that truth is found in unlikely, though thoroughly Christian, places: among the poor, the oppressed, the suffering. In his articles published in Fædrelandet and The Moment in 1854 and 1855, Kierkegaard implied that anyone who could possibly count as a “truth-witness” must necessarily belong to these groups. For her part, Isasi-Díaz admitted to “hermeneutically privileging” Latinas, since they also tend to belong to these groups.761 Both reluctant authorities believed that the impoverished and oppressed have special insight into Christianity, and that these suffering souls, not their well-to-do pastors or priests, embody a kind of spiritual authority that goes unacknowledged in our world. Earthly authority, in contrast, has and probably always will be given to pastors, professors, and authors. With differing degrees of candor, Kierkegaard and Isasi-Díaz suggested that people who tend to have the most ecclesiastical authority also tend to be least capable of speaking about Christ’s suffering from firsthand experience.762 This belief led Kierkegaard to regularly remind his readers of two related facts: (1) he is no authority, and (2) he is no “truth-witness.”763 It led Isasi-Díaz to amplify the voices of Latina women who are seldom heard by grounding her theology in lo cotidiano—the daily lived experience of Latina women. How they responded to the discomfort they felt at the hands of their authority revealed a solid point of agreement: the best theology is more likely to come out of a kitchen or a reader’s heart than from a pulpit or even a book.
Kierkegaard and Isasi-Díaz both believed that the poor and oppressed potentially make the best theologians, and I suggest that reading them together highlights the way in which adopting a liberation theology follows from this position.764 In the first section of this essay I provide a chronological account of Kierkegaard’s attempt to shake off his authority, focusing on his publication decisions regarding the discourses. As I will show, in the discourses’ prefaces Kierkegaard candidly rejected his authority while promoting the idea that the “single individual” should be valued higher than the “public.” Kierkegaard’s downplaying his authority vis-à-vis Christianity culminated in his “attack on Christendom,” in which he explicitly and repeatedly claimed that the deceased Bishop Mynster was no “truth-witness” since he had not suffered for Christianity. I read Kierkegaard’s attack on Christendom to be an extension of his discourses, and his insistence on not being a “truth-witness” to be an extension of his insistence on not being an authority. Casting off his authority was Kierkegaard’s primary way of calling himself no truth-witness. In my second section, I contrast Kierkegaard to Isasi-Díaz, who faced her discomfort with her authority more directly, by leveraging it to centralize marginalized voices. She may not have called herself a “truth-witness” but Isasi-Diaz did call herself a “theological technician,” someone who witnesses to the truth of a community. In my final section, I suggest that Isasi-Díaz’s decision to share her authority with mujerista theologians was a more fruitful solution to the problem of what to do with one’s unwanted authority than Kierkegaard’s lonely attempt to deny his. Nonetheless, I read both responses to their authority as attempts to legitimate unlikely sources of theological insight: Kierkegaard—the “single individual,” and Isasi-Díaz—“lo cotidiano,” or the everyday experiences of Latina women. In rejecting their earthly authority, each author implied that common, everyday people and their experiences are actually a better source for theology than clergy or academics. But not just any people. My final suggestion is that if we read Kierkegaard’s and Isasi-Díaz’s actions in light of their beliefs about the poor, oppressed, and suffering, we can reasonably conclude that, for both authors, all good theology will listen—above all—to the hungry, the homeless, the impoverished, the naked, the sick, the imprisoned; in Christ’s words, “to the least of these.”765
Kierkegaard Renounces His Authority
Kierkegaard dealt with his discomfort over his authority by devising an elaborate system of pseudonyms and disclaimers about his authorship. Kierkegaard’s first published work—Either/Or—was written pseudonymously by A and Judge William before it was edited and published pseudonymously by Victor Eremita on February 20, 1843. His second published work—Two Upbuilding Discourses—was written and published by Søren Kierkegaard himself, and it appeared just three months after Either/Or on May 16. Eremita fans were underwhelmed by these signed discourses in comparison to the “monster.”766 Exactly five months later Kierkegaard produced another pair of pseudonymous hits: Fear and Trembling by Johannes de Silentio and Repetition by Constantin Constantius, this time pairing them with three more under-read discourses.767 This pattern suggests that Kierkegaard chose to sandwich his first five Upbuilding Discourses between four volumes of popular aesthetic works. Over the course of his authorship, Kierkegaard would publish seventy-one more signed discourses, wedging them between pseudonymous successes.
Years later Kierkegaard would tell us why he made this strange publishing choice, and why, more generally, his career as an author consisted of a bifurcation: aesthetic pseudonymous writings on the one hand and religious signed writings on the other. In the 1844 preface to Two Upbuilding Discourses, Kierkegaard first suggested his reason, which he would only later explicitly call an act of obedience to God in On My Work as an Author (published in 1848) and in The Point of View of My Work as an Author (published posthumously). Kierkegaard claimed that his left hand was commanded by God to offer aesthetic ideas to an aesthetic people, while his right hand was commanded to offer them religious writings.768 Although he admitted that the finer points of God’s plan were unknown to him at the time, Kierkegaard’s publishing decisions were designed to “make aware,” that is, to distinguish authentic Christianity from mere “Christendom.” In doing so, he hoped to inspire contemporary Denmark to recognize the superficiality of both the aesthetic and the falsely Christian life.769
In the preface to his first Two Upbuilding Discourses, Kierkegaard used the phrase partially reproduced in the epigraph, one that he repeated in almost all future prefaces: “This book has ‘discourses,’ not ‘sermons,’ because its author does not have authority to preach. They are ‘upbuilding discourses,’ not ‘discourses for upbuilding,’ because the speaker by no means claims to be a teacher.”770 Neither a preacher nor a teacher, Kierkegaard claimed to have written the discourses for his own “discipline and education.”771 In other words, instead of preaching from the pulpit or even teaching from the podium, Kierkegaard tried to forego his authority, going as far as to renounce the only bit of authority left to him—his authorship—by calling himself merely a reader of the works.772
The “Single Individual”
Roughly half of the Upbuilding Discourses are dedicated to his late father, Michael Pederson Kierkegaard, and the other half are dedicated to the “single individual” [hiin Enkelte], who, in contrast to the “public,” is seriously concerned about her condition as an existing individual. Here and elsewhere Kierkegaard writes about his disdain for the “crowd,” or the “public,” praising instead the “single individual,” “my reader.”773 In The Point of View for My Work as an Author, he explains:
Here again the movement is: to arrive at the simple; the movement is: from the public to “the single individual.” In other words, there is in a religious sense no public but only individuals; because the religious is earnestness, and earnestness is: the single individual; yet that every human being, unconditionally every human being—which one indeed is—can be, yes, is supposed to be, the single individual.774
Though his message was intended to be universally applicable, it could only be appropriated individually.775 Unlike the aesthetic works, the discourses do not lend themselves to cocktail party conversation; one must pick up a discourse as one plucks a flower from a forest, to use Kierkegaard’s imagery. This person becomes “my reader,” from whom Kierkegaard would quickly vanish, leaving reader and text alone together.776 Kierkegaard the author would consider himself successful only if his reader appropriates the book’s message, “gives it a good home,” “gives it meaning, and transforms it.”777
Kierkegaard had published half of his discourses by the time he published Stages on Life’s Way (1845), which he paired with Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions. This time he replaced the feminine image of the discourse as a flower waiting to be plucked with an even more feminine image of a bridesmaid waiting patiently for her bridegroom.778 Finally in 1846, Kierkegaard published “A First and Last Explanation” at the end of Concluding Unscientific Postscript. He meant this to be the end of his authorship, the end of his hiding. He was determined to give up being an author to become a country pastor; to finally deal with the religious in a direct way.
But instead of trading his authorship for ecclesiastical authority, just one year later Kierkegaard published not two (or three, or four) but twelve Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits. In other words, instead of adopting the authority of a pastor, Kierkegaard chose to remain an author without (as much) authority.779 This time, though, he even more forcefully (although arguably less successfully), renounced all authority he had left as an author. Instead of calling himself a mere reader as he had done previously, Kierkegaard decided to publish critical reviews, which for him didn’t count against his authorship.780 Thus, Kierkegaard’s second authorship began with the publication of the Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, in whose prefaces he took up the familiar theme of vanishing, of being a “prompter in relation to the reader.”781 In these discourses he introduced another metaphor: he compared the inwardness of appropriation to a person who appropriates needlework done by someone else. The beautiful cloth itself is more important than the woman who made it, and like the needlewoman, Kierkegaard the author is rendered unnecessary by the craft he produced. Only the essential remains: the reader and the book.782
Kierkegaard published Works of Love in September of the same year, under his own name, followed by Christian Discourses in 1848, with no pseudonymous work in between. So far, Kierkegaard was making good on his promise to set down his pseudonymous pen. But three months after Christian Discourses, he published The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress, penned under the name Inter et Inter (“between and between” in Latin). Over the next two years, nine more discourses came out. In the preface to his 1851 Two Discourses at the Communion on Fridays, Kierkegaard tried to retire a third time, calling these discourses his authorship’s “place of rest.”783 In the preface, Kierkegaard repeated his earlier refrain of being “without authority,” this time specifically adding the important detail that he did not consider himself a “truth-witness.”784 These two concepts—being without authority and not being a truth-witness—were related even before his “attack on Christendom.”785 Instead of being a truth-witness, the Kierkegaard of these last discourses considered himself to be a “singular kind of poet and thinker who, without authority, has nothing new to bring.”786
Truth-Witnessing
As it turned out, Kierkegaard’s second authorship only rested for three years (still a notable gain over the short year of his first authorship’s retirement), before restarting his authorship in 1854, with a series of signed articles that are now widely referred to as his “attack on Christendom.” The term that energized his authorship was the same one he rejected for himself three years prior: “truth-witness,” which Professor-soon-to-be-Bishop Martensen had publicly used to describe the recently deceased Bishop Mynster. In the first of several vitriolic articles, a very angry Kierkegaard attacked Mynster’s “dubious proclamation of Christianity.”787 Worried that Mynster would be “represented and canonized in the pulpit” by the established church as a truth-witness, Kierkegaard criticized him over and over again along with Martensen.788 The truth of Christianity, as Kierkegaard saw it—and as anyone deserving the title of truth-witness would see it—means “suffering for the doctrine.”789 Mynster had plenty of authority but none of the suffering; i.e., none of the truth-witnessing. This is not a coincidence for Kierkegaard, since truth-witnesses must necessarily suffer:
A truth witness is a person who in poverty witnesses for the truth, in poverty, in lowliness and abasement, is so underappreciated, hated, detested, so mocked, insulted, laughed to scorn—so poor that he perhaps has not always had daily bread, but he received the daily bread of persecution in abundance every day.790
From these lines it is clear that neither Mynster nor Martensen nor Kierkegaard himself would qualify to be a truth-witness. They, despite or, more likely, because of their earthly authority, have simply not suffered enough, or suffered in the right ways or for the right things.791 Perhaps this helps explain Kierkegaard’s refusal to increase his authority by becoming a country pastor; Copenhagen could provide him with the suffering he needed to publish his insights about the truth of Christianity. Thus, if authors and church authorities do not qualify as truth-witnesses, then we would have to look outside the standard channels to find an authentic Christian theology. We would have to look for those in “poverty, “lowliness,” and “abasement.”792 My suggestion here is that Kierkegaard might have found what he was looking for in the mujeristas that Isasi-Díaz writes with and about: Hispanic women who unquestionably lack his and Bishop Mynster’s authority and as such, stand a good chance of being authentic truth-witnesses.
Isasi-Díaz Shares Her Authority
Unlike Kierkegaard, Isasi-Díaz sought more clerical authority—she wanted to become a priest so that she could be part of changing the oppressive structures of the Catholic Church. Whereas Kierkegaard denied himself the priesthood, Isasi-Díaz was denied it by the church, leaving her with only the authority of her authorship.
Isasi-Díaz came to the United States from Cuba in 1961 at eighteen. She immediately entered a convent, but balked at the “restrictions on personal relationships that were part of life in the convent.”793 For three of the eight years of her religious life, Isasi-Díaz worked in Peru, but refused to “maintain a lifestyle in which people talked about poverty while living a privileged life.”794 Finally, she recounts, her refusal to tame her “passion” and “spontaneity” “let [her] to realize that [her] garden could not flourish within the convent walls.”795 In 1975 Isasi-Díaz attended the Women’s Ordination Conference to advocate for women joining the priesthood of the Catholic Church. During this conference she committed to fighting sexism forever, including the hierarchy of the church.796 First she joined the Womanchurch movement, until she realized that being a Hispanic in a European-American Feminist movement would mean facing racial and ethnic oppressions. These experiences gave Isasi-Díaz the idea that, for any movement to be liberative, “power had to be shared,” and it was then that she committed to sharing hers in the struggle against multiple oppressions.797
Early in her writing, even before coining the term “mujerista theology,” Isasi-Díaz insisted that her books were to be the place for Latina voices to come out, and for her own voice to be one among many. She wrote:
Hispanic Women’s experiences and how they understand those experiences are at the core of Hispanic Women’s Liberation Theology. That is why Hispanic Women’s voices, their very own words, are at the heart of this book. Therefore, we have purposefully dedicated at least half of this book to recording their words verbatim. The rest—the analytical chapters—are complementary, suggestive, and understandable only in view of the verbatim material.798
Each subsequent book by Isasi-Díaz is both polyphonic and polyvocal; she consistently insisted on not hiding from difference/disagreement between Hispanic women.
In his condemnation of Bishop Mynster, Kierkegaard implicitly rejected “theology as usual.” Isasi-Díaz explicitly did so in Mujerista Theology.799 The basis of her criticism hinged on a suspicion about objectivity: “what passes as objectivity in reality merely names the subjectivity of those who have the authority and/or power to impose their point of view.”800 In addition to their distrust for the “objective” viewpoint, Kierkegaard and Isasi-Díaz also agree that those with the most earthly authority—those who have the power to impose their view and call it objective—tend to know little about the experience of suffering under oppression and injustice. Not only that, but they also tend to dismiss those who have this knowledge rooted in experience. Neither author has much faith in clergymen, but Isasi-Díaz turned to a community of mujeristas rather than the earnest attempts of a “single individual.” Instead of using pseudonyms or denying her authority as Kierkegaard did, Isasi-Díaz leveraged it to write books that would serve as a platform for underrepresented Latina voices. By “hermeneutically privileging” the Latina community, Isasi-Díaz founded mujerista theology on the experiences of Latina women and their interpretations.801 These Latina voices sometimes directly respond to ecclesiastical authority, but most often put their theological efforts into developing their subjectivity. Isasi-Díaz writes:
As a theology rooted in the religious thought and practice of Latinas, mujerista theology has made it possible to give voice to those who so far had not been listened to in any theological elaboration, mainly because they were thought incapable of deep, systematic reflection.802
Oppressed communities get little or no respect from clergy, nor do they look like truth-witnesses. But, like Kierkegaard, Isasi-Díaz would undoubtedly consider suffering people spiritually authoritative, and capable of generating meaningful Christian theology. Both authors search the bottom social rungs for truth, where, as a whole, mujerista theologians dwell, facing standard oppressions such as racism and sexism, but also a host of micro- and macro-aggressions including, for example, being dismissed if they lack formal education, being disrespected for having children and/or being expected to have (too) many children, either actually suffering from domestic violence (or assumed to be), being looked down upon for practicing alternative medicines (or being expected to practice them), being made to feel like foreigners in their own country due to skin color, language, or accent, etc. In his day, Christ faced some of these oppressions. Isasi-Díaz would likely argue that today, Christ would face all of them. Based on his status and position as a Galilean son of a carpenter, today’s Christ might be a Central American refugee turned away at the border or detained; she would be told to speak English because we are in America, or she might feel ashamed about not being able to speak to her grandmother in Spanish; she would likely be poor and uneducated, or, like Isasi-Díaz and many others, feel conflicted about being educated and/or middle class. Christ today might be the daughter of a school janitor; she might be dark-skinned or feel shame inhabiting her light skin; she might feel trapped in an abusive relationship with step-father, uncle or husband, one in which she is supposed to be subservient and docile. She might not have the means to leave home. In short, mujerista theology teaches us that if you want to discover some truth about God on earth, one fertile place to look is in the everyday experiences of Hispanic women in the United States.
Lo Cotidiano
“Lo cotidiano” is Isasi-Díaz’s term for the everyday experiences out of which mujerista theology grows, and it includes:
particular forms of speech, the experience of class and gender distinctions, the impact of work and poverty on routines and expectations, relations within families and among friends and neighbors in a community, the experience of authority, and central expressions of faith such as prayer, religious celebrations, and conceptions of key religious figures.803
As the source of mujerista theology, lo cotidiano means that Latinas are knowers whose lives are the basis of their theologies. The kind of knowledge they have comes more from experience than from books, since, for Isasi-Díaz, “lo cotidiano refers to the way Latinas know and what we know to be the ‘stuff’ (la tela, literally, the cloth) out of which our lives as a struggling community within the USA is fabricated.”804 As a result, “mujerista theology is not a disembodied discourse but one that arises from situated subjects, Latina grassroots women.”805 Isasi-Díaz’s insistence on personal experiences would resonate with Kierkegaard’s insistence on subjectivity in the discourses as well as in his pseudonymous works.
Though Concluding Unscientific Postscript is written by a pseudonym, the concept of subjectivity is key for Kierkegaard, and proves to be quite similar to Isasi-Díaz’s “lo cotidiano.” Johannes Climacus writes that “becoming subjective” is the “highest task assigned to a human being,” and insists that a relationship with God trumps any approximations about him.806 The Kierkegaard of the discourses would agree with Climacus that faith is not measured by one’s knowledge about God or theology but by one’s relationship with Christ. Focusing on anything other than the “cloth” of our lives, our existence and relationships, puts us in danger of “slipping into a parenthesis,” to use Climacus’s metaphor.807 Kierkegaard and Isasi-Díaz would certainly agree that we can learn more about God from our daily interactions than from the Summa Theologica.
Theological Technicians
Whereas Kierkegaard’s distrust of earthly authority led him to renounce his authority and denounce Mynster’s as no “truth-witness,” Isasi-Díaz’s distrust of authority led her to adopt the term “theological technicians,” a concept that simultaneously gives credit to formal theologians without giving them too much authority. Isasi-Díaz believes that theological technicians, who are responsible for translating, transcribing, and transforming lo cotidiano into written words, play an important role in mujerista theology. Isasi-Díaz counts herself as a theological technician, one who has “the gift of gathering what the community is saying, writing it down, and making it known,” one who, through her writing “offer[s] leadership to the doing of theology in which the community engages.”808 The term “theological technician” was originally coined by Carlos Abesamis, who described one as being
in possession of certain technical competences in exegesis, social sciences, languages, archaeology, or history and who offer[s] these findings in these different fields to the real theologians to help them in the act of interpreting reality from . . . [their] perspective.809
Isasi-Díaz uses the gift of language and her connections in the academy to provide a space for Latina voices, though she does not believe that this makes her more of an authority than anyone else. Isasi-Díaz admits to being separated from many mujerista theologians by her formal education and economic status, so calling herself a theological technician is a way of validating her struggle for the liberation of Hispanic women, by communicating with and for truth-witnesses.810
Conclusion
Kierkegaard renounced his authority, but never successfully. Isasi-Díaz was denied priestly authority, but retained academic authority. This difference might explain why Kierkegaard hid his voice in pseudonyms and Isasi-Díaz blended hers into a chorus of Latina women. Perhaps Kierkegaard’s invocation of traditional notions of exercising a personal will and committing to God decisively was a direct consequence of the fact that it was his decision not to be a country pastor; no one forced him into the role of invisible needlewoman. And perhaps Isasi-Díaz’s reliance on her community, along with her constantly sharing her authority, was a direct result of having been denied what she wanted by those with authority. In any case, the Kierkegaard who wrote the discourses would have been ripe for someone like Isasi-Díaz to come along; had his authorship been truly polyphonic instead of artificially so, he might have been more convincing. Had he faced the kinds of social oppression Isasi-Díaz did, she might have been able to convince Kierkegaard that “lo cotidiano is not a private, individual category, but rather a social category.”811 He might have been tempted to draw a distinction between the community and the crowd (saving his vitriol for the latter), or at least he might be more open to the idea that truth can be accessed by a community in addition to a single individual.812 Even despite his individualism, Kierkegaard’s belief that having authority was irreconcilable with being a truth-witness, coupled with his insistence that truth-witnesses are found “among the least of these,” put him in a prime position to hear about liberation theology generally, and mujerista theology specifically. Without naming it, the un-authoritative Kierkegaard of the discourses who became the non-truth-witness of the attack on Christendom, expressed a “preferential option for the poor,”813 which is the bedrock of liberation theology, including mujerista theology.
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———. “Mujeristas, a Name of Our Own.” In Yearning to Breathe Free: Liberation Theologies in the United States, edited by Mar Peter-Raoul et al., 121–28. Maryknoll: Orbis, 1990.
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754. Many thanks to Margaret Newton, my research assistant for this project.
755. Kierkegaard, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, 5.
756. Isasi-Díaz, Hispanic Women, xiv.
757. Kierkegaard, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, 5.
758. In her early work, Isasi-Díaz mainly used the term Hispanic, “because it is the one commonly used in this society” (Isasi-Díaz, Hispanic Women, x–xi). In later works, she used Latina and Hispanic interchangeably, sometimes choosing Latina/Hispanic. For examples, see the introductions to Mujerista Theology and En la Lucha. I use them interchangeably.
759. Isasi-Díaz, Mujerista Theology, 2.
760. Kierkegaard, Point of View, 101–26.
761. Kierkegaard, The Moment, 5–6; Isasi-Díaz, En La Lucha (2004), 7.
762. In this essay, I draw on Kierkegaard’s discourses to highlight his uneasy relationship to his authority, and then I draw on his later “attack on Christendom” to outline what he sees as the relationship between Christian suffering and truth. As for Isasi Diaz, I draw mainly from Hispanic Women (written with Yolanda Tarrango, 1988), En La Lucha (1993), and Mujerista Theology (1996) to show both her prioritization of the poor and oppressed as well as her own discomfort with her authority.
763. Whether or not Kierkegaard actually believed these two “facts” is debatable; his earnestness has often been debated, legitimately in my opinion. In this essay, I treat the “Søren Kierkegaard” who authored the discourses and the journal entries as the same author as the “S. Kierkegaard” who published the 1854–1855 articles and who authored The Point of View of My Work as an Author. Despite doing so I will not weigh in on whether I think either of these denominations refers to the “real” Søren Kierkegaard or not, since I believe he cleverly left us no access to his “real” beliefs underneath the polyphony of often dissonant voices. Putting aside the question of his access to earnestness, I argue that the author of the discourses was not as effective at shedding his apparently discomforting authority as Isasi-Díaz was by sharing hers. For a compelling argument about why it is appropriate to approach Kierkegaard’s supposed earnestness with suspicion (even by Kierkegaard’s own lights), see Garff, “Eyes of Argus.”
764. It is my hope that other scholars will pick up on the connection between Kierkegaard and liberation theology. As far as I know, there has been almost no work published on this topic to date. James Cone hints at a connection in the first chapter to The Cross and the Lynching Tree. Silas Morgan also hints at a connection between Kierkegaard and liberation theology by way of Harvey Cox and Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Morgan, “Harvey Gallagher Cox,” 26–27. Wanda Warren Berry writes that religious existentialism in general “provided the framework for the development of liberation theology.” In a footnote, she also writes: “Kierkegaard’s authorship ‘seduces’ not only the secular public from aesthetical into ethical life but also the religious public from the quietist and piously fundamentalist Christendom into a liberation theology and radical praxis” (Berry, “Kierkegaard in Feminism,” 117, 260). Finally, Mark Dooley writes: “The type of God that Kierkegaard enjoins his reader to imitate is one that approximates in no small measure the God of liberation theology” (Dooley, Politics of Exodus, 19).
765. Matt 25:40.
766. Howard Hong reports that only one short review came out for Two Upbuilding Discourses, and that it did not sell well. In comparison, Either/Or received eight reviews (one of them calling the book a “monster”), sold out by 1847, and was one of few works reprinted before his death. See Kierkegaard, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, xxi, and Kierkegaard, Either/Or, xvi.
767. Three Upbuilding Discourses sold 139 copies compared to 321 of Fear and Trembling and 272 of Repetition.
768. See also Kierkegaard, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, ix–xi, 179; supplement to Without Authority, 237–38, Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 5:5639, 5648.
769. Again, although we have reason to be suspicious of Kierkegaard’s “explanation,” I am taking it to be consistent with both the discourses and the “attack on Christendom.”
770. See Kierkegaard, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, 5, 53, 107, 179, 231, 295.
771. Ibid., 5.
772. Ibid.
773. For an explanation, see “Single Individual,” in Kierkegaard, Point of View, 101–26.
774. Ibid., 10.
775. Kierkegaard explained that the “single individual” can mean “the most unique one of all” or “everyone.” Kierkegaard, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, xx.
776. Ibid., 5.
777. Ibid., 107. In the preface to Three Upbuilding Discourses from 1844, Kierkegaard expresses a desire to be “absent” when the reader “bring[s] the cold thoughts to flame again,” to transform the discourse into a conversation.” Ibid., 231.
778. Kierkegaard, Three Discourses, 5.
779. According to Joakim Garff, Kierkegaard’s decision to remain a city writer instead of becoming a country pastor was driven by the idea that Copenhagen needed him, presumably to defend Christianity against Christendom. Perhaps he thought he could get further without the authority of a clergyman. See Garff, Søren Kierkegaard, 412–14.
780. Apparently, Kierkegaard did not consider review-writers authors: “in this way I would still avoid becoming an author.” Kierkegaard, Upbuilding Discourses, ix, 356; Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 5:5877.
781. This term comes from a review of the Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits. See ibid., xiii.
782. Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits was not reprinted during Kierkegaard’s lifetime, and it had a total of three reviews. See Kierkegaard, Upbuilding Discourses, xii.
783. Kierkegaard, Without Authority, 165.
784. Ibid.
785. Ibid.
786. Ibid.
787. Kierkegaard, The Moment, 4.
788. Ibid.
789. Ibid., 5.
790. Ibid., 5–6.
791. In these articles from 1854–55, Kierkegaard implies that the true Christian seeks suffering as a kind of cleansing oneself from the world, and that suffering can be material, spiritual, or physical in nature. To what extent the Christian must suffer cannot be pinpointed, but it seems clear that for Kierkegaard, one who has not suffered in ways like Christ did cannot possibly be Christian. Pace Anthony Imbrosciano, I do not think that Kierkegaard’s idea of Christian suffering necessarily is limited to suffering for the doctrine. Rather, it includes suffering as Christ did (in poverty, lowliness, and abasement), which are the types of suffering that liberation theology has in mind. See Imbrosciano, “Inevitable Martyrdom,” 105–6, and Westphal, “Kierkegaard’s Teleological Suspension,” 110.
792. Kierkegaard, The Moment, 5–6.
793. Isasi-Díaz, Mujerista Theology, 16.
794. Ibid.
795. Ibid.
796. Ibid., 17–18.
797. Ibid., 19.
798. Isasi-Díaz, Hispanic Women, xv.
799. Isasi-Díaz, Mujerista Theology, 79.
800. Ibid., 77.
801. Isasi-Díaz, En La Lucha, 7.
802. Ibid.
803. Isasi-Díaz, Mujerista Theology, 66–67. Original passage is from Levine, Popular Voices, 317.
804. Isasi-Díaz, Mujerista Theology, 71.
805. Ibid., 3.
806. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 129.
807. Kierkegaard, Postscript, 28–29.
808. Isasi-Díaz, Hispanic Women, 105–6; xvii.
809. Ibid., 106. Original quote is from Abesamis, “Faith and Life Reflections,” 137.
810. Isasi-Díaz, Mujerista Theology, 6.
811. Ibid., 71.
812. When Kierkegaard writes that “the crowd is untruth,” for example, I do not believe he has in mind intentional communities like mujerista theologians. What makes the crowd so odious to Kierkegaard is that it is unintentional, unthoughtful, and unreflective. I believe that Isasi-Díaz’s account of mujeristas theologians would give him pause. See “The Single Individual,” in Kierkegaard, Point of View, 101–26.
813. See Gutiérrez, Theology of Liberation, and Isasi-Díaz, Mujeristas.