Christian anarchism and the Problem of Nihilism - part II
Proposing a Christian concept of the self, drawing on Kierkegaard, Kant, and Hauerwas
To read the other parts of this series on overcoming nihilism through faith, see the links below:
Identifying nihilism obviously does little to actually address the problem. The worst possible outcome could even be that this semi-scholarly assessment of nihilism would justify the unknowing nihilist to retreat further into their unethical state of nihilist detachment, allowing for not only the abstraction of the self from reality but also providing the arms to justify their sophist defense. I don’t anticipate a response from Bob Black, but hopefully that name provides an image to my reader.
Instead, let us reflect on the natural freedom via negativa - let’s explore what the Christian should expect not to find in their self-realization qua Spirit.
When freedom is apprehended in this [false] way, it has necessity as its opposite, which shows that it has been conceived as a category of reflection. No, the opposite of freedom is guilt, and it is the greatness of freedom that it al- ways has to do only with itself, that in its possibility it projects guilt and accordingly posits it by itself. And if guilt is posited actually, freedom posits it by itself. If this is not kept in mind, freedom is confused in a clever way with something entirely different, with force.1
Needless to say, this may upturn a few eyebrows. Painfully close to straying into Nietzschean or liberal-totalitarian grounds, we need to be painfully aware of the provocative stance that Kierkegaard took in justifying his view. That’s the method we’re going to follow as well: erecting and holding-in-tension our dialectic of the Christian self - on the one hand, the nonresistant character of Christ before the cross; on the other, the free man of Christian liberty who “is confused in a clever way with something entirely different, with force”.
The Christian anarchist self
From this point, we now face a distinct challenge - outgrowing Kant, asserting the role of duty, and falling into neither nihilistic relativism nor authoritarian grandstanding (whilst, at the same time, accounting for this apparently mistaken recognition of force). Sadly, despite preliminary work on the nature of Kierkegaardian freedom by the likes of Jacques Ellul2 and Vernard Eller3, venturing out from this point is difficult. Kierkegaardian political philosophy is largely unexplored, even after straying tendrils of academic research have started to investigate S. K.’s particular approach to (or, possibly better referred to as “contempt for”) political matters in recent years. Thanks to the work of Perkins, Davenport, Walsh, and Brata Das, we are beginning to see a comprehensive picture of what a Kierkegaardian approach to political action would entail - despite the influential and misleading early observations of Karl Mannheim to render Kierkegaard a “quietist”4.
Using Kant as our point of departure, we will vault into the problem of the Christian self in an attempt to provide a skeleton outline, even if only as a prolegomena.
Christian duties - without liberal theology
Although the actual extent to which S. K. opposed liberal theology is a point of minor contention5 amongst scholars, we should affirm an opposition to liberal theology - even if that requires us to become “more Kierkegaardian than Kierkegaard”. Not only did S. K. leave prophetic insights into the problems of his contemporary society, but he also offered us a toolkit of butcher’s tools in order to hack apart liberal theology at the seams. In an age where Schleiermacher is less influential than he once was, the prevalence of liberal theology is now to be understood in subversive and sometimes radically “complementarian” theologies which obscure the same essential core.
Why should we oppose liberal theology?
To the untrained eye, opposition to liberal theology may appear to be some kind of call to theocracy, a reactionary retreat to fundamentalism, or a deniably authoritarian imposition of fideism. That is certainly not the case - instead, we carry on the prophetic mission of the נביא in upholding a theology of eschaton which refuses to “demythologize” the text whilst also not falling into naïve pseudo-theologies. As in the post-Kierkegaardian resurgence via Karl Barth6, Emil Brunner7, and the emergence of the Confessing Church in opposition to the Nazis8, we find that a refusal to sacrifice aspects of the gospel wholeheartedly via demythologization and a “going beyond”9 Christ’s message that should still inspire us to this day.
The message should be held that a simplified theology of Schleiermacherian wonder or Bultmannian demythologization will not do for establishing a system of duties - wonder is simply too imprecise, too fideist to provide us grounds for a Christian system of duties and runs into the constant danger of a collapse into “general religiosity”; demythologization, on the other hand, attempts to move from contingent factors to a necessary conclusion without much of an explanation of where this “leap” comes from. At once, too innocent and too logic, the Kantian-Hegelian undercurrent in the thought of the liberal theologian fails to capture the necessary aspect of genuine moral decision, genuine moral life, and genuine Christian expression: the aesthetic judgement as to how to express the individual’s relationship with God and how that relies on something more than an abstract set of rules or a theoretical picture of Christ laid out when all of the wonderment, the contradiction, the offense, is removed. Such grounds for beliefs are unstable at best. We need something derived from a surer footing.
From his earliest writings, S. K. made it clear that this idea of “duty” cannot be an abstract system of moral laws that weigh on us in abstracta. They must be phenomenal, subjectively-valued factors that are integrated into the self and drive the genuine decisions we make in our day-to-day lives. In a stunning departure from both Danish and contemporary scholarship, S. K. identifies Kantianism with a kind of nihilism - if we really were simply enacting logically sound propositional logic into reality, it shows that we actually lack values as we are failing to do the very thing ethics sets out to do: create good people. There ought to be no need for categorical imperatives or utilitarian calculi for the virtuous person! As Carron assesses in the writings of Judge Wilhelm, the Judge argues that all persons already have “an outward character consisting of motivations we tend to act on” and that “the personality is already interested in the choice before one chooses.”10 Although, this isn’t to say that S. K. severed the ligaments of Kantian thought he was so indebted to; indeed, the Judge’s “pseudo-Kantianism” eschews metaphysical speculation in place of subjective realisation - “[p]art of the romance of the judge's ethical view of life lies in improving the thought and the deed so that they do in fact become describable by these hmogenous entre nous concepts.”11
In this sense, we shouldn’t view S. K. as the mythical “anti-ethical Christian” that he is sometimes portrayed to be. In fact, he is the very opposite: without suitable “subjectivization”, ethics is impossible; anyone, in a completely disinterested fashion, following a moral calculation as if they were doing tax returns has failed to understand what being ethical actually means. With an emphasis on the responsibility to do good simply because it is the good and virtue is good for us, “being responsible in the Kierkegaardian sense is thus a matter of redefining oneself, or of seeing oneself not in terms of one’s social roles alone, but as an individual who has the potential to transform his or her life according to certain guiding ethical ideals”.12 The Christian anarchist is always in a state of “teleologically suspending the ethical” (as the famous and intensely controversial phrase goes) because the double reflection of Christian introspection forces the individual not into total contradiction with the world, but into incongruence: the individual takes part in the teleological suspension of “the objective sphere of public discourse”.13 In accessing God through “the moment”, the individual sees “a proto-ethics of the Kingdom”14 opening up in the possibility that lies before us.
But how does this “knowing” of God relate to the individual? Avoiding the baselessness and implausible superstition of outright mysticism, what alternative is there of us who are sure we have experienced something but are not necessary so arrogant so as to suggest that God has taken up full-time residence in our decision-making capacity? Instead of desperately willing for a great cosmic mystery to “reach out and grab us”, the experience of the divine necessity gives us impetus to do something quite different:
There is scarcely any more upside-down thought than this, that the eternal is the uncertain, and scarcely any more upside-down sagacity than that which lets go of the eternal - because it is the uncertain, and grasps the temporal - because it is the certain. If one does not immediately have the opportunity to discover that the eternal nevertheless is the certain, one will soon have the opportunity to experience that the temporal is the uncertain.15
The major difficulty in the past with outlining a Christian system of duties is that it has largely been discussed in the shadow of secular thought16. Kierkegaard least of all would be impressed with this - instead, he is calling for us to root our drive to become ethical in an earnest belief that God has reached out to us and now that “reaching out” is still the root of our metaethical positions. The main charge for Christian anarchist thinkers becomes: stop reinventing liberal theology by poorly fitting antitheist anarchist principles into the message of the gospel - we saw the (well-intentioned) congregation of the Social Gospel eventually reducing the Biblical message to whether a company was co-operative or democratic17, neither of which obviously have a great deal of grounding in either scripture or church tradition. Instead, we should create a Christian way to do the thing that secular philosophy has so obviously failed to create. And, in order to do this, I won’t be turning to Kropotkin, Bakunin, or - Lord forbid - someone like Stirner. Instead, we turn to scripture and identify the necessary core that lies “beyond” the simple words of the Word; we identify the spirit of the gospel in order to yoke ourselves to the eternal.
What the Bible doesn’t say
"Of this fact [of the absence of mediocrity in the New Testament] one must take due notice. And when one has duly noticed it, one will see that after all the New Testament has foretold. In the midst of this immense population of "Christians," this shoal of Christians, there live here and there some individuals, a single individual. For him the way is narrow (cf. the New Testament), he is hated by all (cf. the New Testament), to put him to death is regarded as a divine service (cf. the New Testament). This after all is a curious book, the New Testament; it really is in the right; for these individuals, this single individual - why, yes, they would be the Christians."18
In a typically poetic but concise passage, Kierkegaard sets the charge for the Christian anarchist: dismiss mediocrity, identify the narrow way, and endeavour towards it. Although there is a very modern, rationalist turn towards universalism (something that wasn’t alien to Kierkegaard at all), S. K. at the same time takes the constant affirmation and reaffirmation of a “narrow gate”, “goats and sheep”, very seriously - if salvation could possibly only be available to the few, what does salvation require? What is our charge?
Drawing heavily on Matthew 7:13-1419, Kierkegaard charges Christians to abandon one of the most central aspects of Enlightenment thought - one that is especially pernicious in secular anarchist thought and undergirds an as-of-yet undiagnosed desire for worldly power: universalizability. Indebted largely to Kantian ethics, political theory is often intended to be “subject-agnostic”, i.e., if this works, it applies to everyone. This thought is one of the most widely dispersed ethical concepts that has found its way into the current intellectual milieu, stretching back to the mid-1700s in formal terms but even further when we consider what Yoder referred to as “Constantianism” - the drive for Christianity to wield state power.
But the obvious question is: “what role does Christianity play in relation to the State?” For Kierkegaard, the answer was suitably dismissive, if not outright aggressive. Let’s look at the articles from the Moment, vol. III:
i) Is the State justified, Christianly, in seducing a part of the youth engaged in study?
ii) Is the State justified in receiving an oath which not only is not key but in the taking of which is a self-contradiction?
iii) Is the State justified, Christianly, in misleading the people, or in misleading their judgement as to what Christianity is?20
Needless to say, the charge was scandalous - and certainly well worth a read.
Kierkegaard, in his “attack” on “Christendom”, set the basis for anarchist Christianity - via what would become “the Protestant Principle”, the State should be seen as worldliness par excellence, utterly irreconcilable with the Christian faith. The main takeaway is that Christian thought, when brought under the wing of the secular state, states to “gain authority” from the state:
When we talk of the merely human, and leave the divine (Christianity) out of account, the situation is this: the State is the highest instance of authority, it is humanly the highest authority… Let us now turn to Christianity. It is the divine, and that instance of the divine which precisely because it truly is the divine would not at any price be a kingdom of this world; on the contrary, it would that the Christian might venture life and blood to prevent it from becoming a kingdom of this world.21
And then the worldly preference for appearances slips in - social concerns, education, policy, right up to salvation itself, everything becomes a matter of “sagacity”, misdirection and inaction:
If there is one thing or another of importance for the community, men generally concentrate their effort in getting a committee appointed. When it is appointed people are reassured, do not concern themselves whether the committee does anything, and finally forget the whole affair.22
Who is the Christian anarchist? Not a bomb-thrower; not an “egoist”, proud of their complete lack of identifiable self; not the violent revolutionary - the Christian anarchist is simply someone who prioritizes the law of God above all other laws by virtue that “it truly is the divine”. But, obviously, God does not give us exact commandments about every particular thing to do in life - in the absence of divine writ, we are justified to follow the laws of the State. But when the State confronts the Word - here is where we build “contextualism”.
A contextualist anarchism
In attempting to expand on this “illiberalist” approach to ethical anarchism, we should turn to our second key figure in “stepping past” Kierkegaard’s approach to radical Christianity - Stanley Hauerwas (1940-).
If you take the general trends that have muddied the lines between anarchism and radical liberalism (identity politics, universalizability, a dialectical relationship with bureaucracy) and push them aside, we will find ourselves in the radical ethical-political works of the “resident alien” who searches for faithfulness, not effectiveness23, aims to become the church in actuality24, and is evidenced by a voluntary resistance to a different set of values25. This completely sets the normative values of anarchism back at odds with itself - accepting the basic fact that Christian sociology and politics are defined in the negative (“the world” contra the not-of-“the world” (John 18:3626)), the Christian anarchist should be prepared to acknowledge that there will always be suffering (Matthew 26:6-827) and be prepared to say “we don’t need to concern ourselves with accommodating or tolerating the world - we will form the church and acts as the church in this world in contrast with it”. As Hauerwas puts it: “Christian social ethics can only be done from the perspective of those who do not seek to control national or world history but who are content to live ‘‘out of control.’’28” We shake Bakunin’s invisible dictatorship29 at its foundations, identifying it as just another example of the “out of control” wanting to become the “in control”.
I use the term “contextualist” intentionally - and provocatively. I (along with Eller30) contrast contextualist anarchism with the more secular “dogmatic” anarchism - in being opposed to the abuse of state power, the anarchist places them in total opposition to any state power regardless of what it is doing. While this might seem justified at face value, we actually find a complete unfreedom in this approach: whatever the State does, the anarchist does the opposition - they are twin political philosophies, inseparable and destined to forever interact with one another in a dialectical dance. In this particularly cruel irony of the ineffectualness of the activist, we find that breaking through a particular dialectic requires us to step out of the dialectic.
Ethics against the dialectic
All human ethical theories are utterly relative. While suitably “sagacious” arguments can be constructed to defend against this problem (and I am certainly open to such challenges), there are two distinct problems that the moral absolutist faces: sociological and temporal relativity. And even when we account for these issues, however, we are left with a further, pernicious problem: "[a]esthetic individuals either relate relatively to an absolute or relate absolutely to what is relative"31 (or, in simple terms, people simply don’t care enough to even care to hold to morality). The ugly re-rearing of the head of nihilism. But, this is the very ground that we aim to show that an objective, absolute morality is the only path for the Christian anarchist - and even more than that, it will never look the same at any good points in history.
But this sets the question: what anchors this “anti-dialectical” dialectical Christian anarchism?
Paul contra the State
There is a bad habit of reading Paul’s epistles in a rather apologetic way - but, rather than apologetics for Christ, these are apologetics for the State. The infamous Romans 13, for example, could give rise to a particular form of Christianity which poses the church’s legitimacy as a matter of the State.
Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended.32
At face value, this seems to pose Christianity at odds with the anarchism I have posed above. In fact, you’d be completely justified to accept that - especially within the bounds of the “Constantianism”33 if that was all Paul had said on the matter.
But that wasn’t all that Paul had said on the matter.
Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.34
Almost immediately after a call to obedience, we find that Paul identifies four specific ways in which the Christian may have to cross the state: adultery, murder, theft, and covetousness are explicitly noted as ways in which the Christian ought to act. “Love” becomes the fulfilment of the law, but the law cannot be fulfilled if we are driven to not love the other. This does raise the peculiar question of how precisely the law is fulfilled when someone takes to, for example, war: “you shall not murder” rings through when we consider the law we are subjected to is to “love thy neighbour”! When the State orders us to work against the law, the Christian is correct to prioritize the fulfilment of the law over the disputes of the world.
Because, to say otherwise, leaves us in a bind, says Kierkegaard: in "Is the State justified, Christianly, in misleading the people, or in misleading their judgement as to what Christianity is?"35 (a pithy title), Kierkegaard points out that any kind of state association with the church degrades it - by providing royal assent for Christianity, Christianity and God become acceptable by institutional writ. Hopefully, we are already seeing the problem here: if the church (understood to mean the collection of believers, the faithful, the disciples of Christ) really does only gain authority in its relation to the State, then we are implying that the Church only exists inasmuch as the State allows it. Reading Paul as calling for unconditional subservience to the state (Romans 13:1-3) leads us to the position where we imply that God can only gain authority when the world grants him power.
Instead, we might want to take a Christian approach: the Church has superior authority to the State, hence God’s institution of the State as is at any present moment. But this is not an admission of the State’s holiness, by no means. Turning to the Primitive Church, Yoder notes:
"The early church respected the state and made room for the state, yet they did not do so because they viewed it as part of God’s good creation. On the contrary, they viewed it as part of the world that opposes God, that is already defeated by Christ in principle, and over which the exalted Christ already rules until he has defeated his last enemy (1 Cor. 15:25ff.)."36
The context should now be clear: God’s law is above the law of the State. If the State does not contradict God’s law, we should accept it - there is no particular theological reasons to outright oppose, for example, speed limits or planning permission laws. They are a pragmatic and useful aspect of the State which allows for the effective organization of any particular society. However, when the State crosses the Lord, we should remember the context: God does not gain authority from the State, but the State from God; Christians are not to swear oaths to the State37, but remember that God calls us to follow His example, his footprints in the sand, as a lover of truth (1 Corinthians 13:6) in fear and trembling (1 Corinthians 2:3). The context is set: let us be prepared for Christianity to remember its relation to the world and for Kierkegaard’s vision to become clear.
Orienting contextualism
Of course, this is only a prolegomena - as we intended from the beginning. To establish a full doctrine of contextualism, we will need to look elsewhere. Next time, we’ll explore the links between Kierkegaard’s and Eller’s approaches to anarchism, in what has been described as “postpolitical thought”38 by some philosophers in recent years. While the Anabaptist minister is a lot less likely to find his name in professional journals these days, his work certainly did create the “floor” for discussing Kierkegaard and anarchism; carrying on the spirit of the Danish not-prophet, breathing fire in the New Testament’s powerful cry of “no!” to worldliness. In his analysis of Barth, Bonhoeffer, and other key Protestant thinkers, Eller’s work brings Kierkegaard’s oeuvre to life - in a way that an anarchist might just say “this is holiness”. Just maybe.
Let us end with food for thought:
“...let us not forget that whereas in one sense Christianity is doubtless the most tolerant of all religions, inasmuch as most of all it abhors the use of physical power, it is in another sense the most intolerant, inasmuch as its true confessors recognize no limit with respect to compelling others by suffering themselves, compelling others by suffering their ill-treatment and persecution.”39
To read the other parts of this series on overcoming nihilism through faith, see the links below:
The Concept of Anxiety, p. 108, S. Kierkegaard V. Haufniensis
Anarchy and Christianity, J. Ellul
Christian Anarchy, V. Eller
"The Crowd and Populism: The Insights and Limits of Kierkegaard on the Profaity of Politics", p. 6, J. J. Davenport, from Truth is Subjectivity: Kierkegaard and Political Theology, ed. S. Walsh Perkins
For an excellent introduction to Kierkegaard’s influence on Barth, see "Karl Barth: The Dialectic of Attraction and Repulsion", Lee C. Barrett, from Kierkegaard's Influence on Theology - Tome I: German Protestant Theology, ed. J. Stewart
For an excellent introduction to Kierkegaard’s influence on Brunner, see "Emil Brunner: Polemically Promoting Kierkegaard's Christian Philosophy of Encounter", C. L. Thompson, from Kierkegaard's Influence on Theology - Tome I: German Protestant Theology, ed. J. Stewart
Each of these theologians, of course, teetering on the edge of a culture which had embraced liberal theology - the suggestion that they were influenced by liberal theologians and even included some of the methods of liberal theology into their own work
This term (“go beyond”) played a key role in Kierkegaard’s scathing critique of contemporary Hegelian theologian Hans Lassen Martensen. It appears in many works, but most notably in Fear and Trembling, where the unwitting authorial pseudonym Johannes de silentio openly states that he doesn’t understand faith and yet still plans to “go beyond” it.
Taking Responsibility for Ourselves: A Kierkegaardian Account of the Freedom-Relevant Conditions Necessary for the Cultivation of Character, p. 230-231, P. Carron
“A Glance at a Contemporary Effort in Danish Philosophy”, from On Kierkegaard and the Truth, p. 27, P. L. Holmer, ed. D. J. Gouwens and L. C. Barrett III
Politics of Exodus: Søren Kierkegaard's Ethics of Responsibility, p. 86, M. Dooley
Ibid., p. 6
Ibid., p. 21
Christian Discourses, p. 134, S. Kierkegaard
"How "Christian Ethics" Came to Be", from The Hauerwas Reader, S. Hauerwas, ed. J. Berkman and M. Cartwright
"On Keeping Theological Ethics Theological", from The Hauerwas Reader, p. 58, S. Hauerwas, ed. J. Berkman and M. Cartwright
"We are all Christians" from The Instant, no. 2, June 4th 1855, from Attack upon "Christendom", p. 109, S. Kierkegaard, ed. W. Lowrie
“Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.”
The Instant, no. 3 from Kierkegaard’s Attack Upon “Christendom”, 1854-1855, p. 125-136, S. Kierkegaard, ed. W. Lowrie
"Is the State justified in receiving an oth which not only is not kept but in the taking of which there is a self-contradiction?" from The Instant, no. 3, June 27th 1855, from Attack upon "Christendom", p. 130, S. Kierkegaard, ed. W. Lowrie
Ibid.
Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony, p. 25, S. Hauerwas and W. H. Willimon
Ibid., p. 50
Ibid., p. 7
“Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.””
“You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.”
"Reforming Christian Social Ethics: Ten Theses", from The Hauerwas Reader, p. 113, S. Hauerwas, ed. J. Berkman and M. Cartwright
“Letter to Albert Richard”, M. Bakunin, from Bakunin on Anarchy: Selected Works by the Activist-Founder of World Anarchism, p. 177, ed. S. Dolgoff, link
Christian Anarchy: Jesus' Primacy over the Powers, V. Eller
Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 407, J. Climacus
Romans 13:1-3
A key idea in Eller’s, Hauerwas’, and Yoder’s thought - expect to find this theme revisited throughout our explorations!
Romans 8:8-10
From The Instant, no. 3, June 27th 1855, from Attack upon "Christendom", p. 132, S. Kierkegaard
Discipleship as Political Responsibility, p. 20, J. Yoder
Matthew 5:34
Kierkegaard: Existence and Identity in a Post-Secular World, p. 42, A. Hannay; The Political Theology of Kierkegaard, p. 88, S. Brata Das
"A measure of distance and therewith again about the perculiar difficulty that I have to contend with", from The Instant, no. 6, August 23rd 1855, from Attack upon "Christendom", p. 184-185, S. Kierkegaard