Christian anarchism and the Problem of Nihilism - part V

The final piece, built on the rock of footwashing

To read the other pieces in this series, see below:

• Christian anarchism and the Problem of Nihilism - part I

• Christian anarchism and the Problem of Nihilism - part II

• Christian anarchism and the Problem of Nihilism - part III

• Christian anarchism and the Problem of Nihilism - part IV

  ---

There is something unsettlingly exposed about footwashing. It is, despite its innocuous appearance and association with the simple living of the Amish and other Mennonites, very much a modern example of taboo-breaking; we lower ourselves to the feet of the other, sometimes to the feet of a stranger, and offer ourselves in service to something which largely has only had particular, practical meaning in a particular cultural setting. It is a great leveller, a great humiliator, that acts as a reminder that our personal, subjective existences do not amount to the centre of the universe. We, as human subjects, are united in that we are not God; we are not omnipotent, we are not omniscient, and we are not omnibenevolent. Yet, by the way of offense, Christ reminds us: if you were, you would know that you must serve the other regardless.

This offense, central to the Kierkegaardian understanding of the faith, is what takes us out of the essence of “the now” and exposes us to the opportunity for “becoming” something else; in descending to the feet of the other, we find God’s hand to raise to the height of Abraham. The faithful find their goal, to “be the open wound to transcendence", tearing open received wisdom with burning faith¹. Indeed, “the decisive mark of Christian suffering is the fact that it is voluntary”, voluntarily opening the wound of possibility, “and that it is the possibility of offense for the sufferer”². The unhappy meeting of Paradox [of the exaltation of the humbled, Matthew 23:12] and Reason where the Learner expects them to be reconciled³ is received as the entire faith should be received: as a proposition without a conclusion, as a paradox which refuses to become a riddle.

In a snapshot, we have captured the root of Christian anarchism: the recognition of the relationship between the subjective existing individual, the divine objective truth, and the contingent social reality—all of which exists in a paradoxical relationship that can only be accepted, not solved. While, correctly, many Kierkegaardian commentators have established the link between the individual and the divine, it can be easy to imagine that S. K. had ignored the context of our lives. However, this is impossible when we actually assess the corpus in totality and see, sometimes positively and sometimes negatively, that S. K. was acutely aware of the existence of all forms of social relations around him and how they contributed to the moral peril of becoming an existing individual.

A Kierkegaardian prelude

Kierkegaard was openly anti-egalitarian and, for large parts of his life, staunchly pro-monarchy. To say “this man gives us the root of an anarchist political theology” is a hard sell. However, we can certainly examine this (without apologetics) by explaining his infatuation with the status quo of Denmark since his youth⁴ came from the apparent foundations for meaning in Danish society; even if there were injustices in the way the society functioned, it did still provide a stratified but coherent system of meaning that the Danes could appropriate into their own lives.

This becomes plainly apparent when we see that S. K., in the collapse of the absolute monarchy in 1848, did not go on to support the Martensen-endorsed conservative faction, but attempted to charter a course beyond the materialist ambitions of the emergent liberal party⁵. Somewhat boldly, commentators like Aroosi and Piety have implied that S. K.’s apparent conservativism is completely misunderstood: he was not a conservative due to a deeply-held, positive perspective, but because all politics is conservative in comparison to what he is saying; this, of course, implying that generally being unimpressed with the faux-radicalism of the progressives leads to the illusion of conservativism, as opposed to a genuine radicalism that doesn’t move an inch⁶. This, in essence, is the “postpolitical” nature of S. K.’s political approach: not suggesting a new political form that will be a better fossilized societal structure⁷, but an “open model” where individuals exist in opposition to and in spite of worldly demands when the divine is held aloft⁸. As Millay put it most succinctly, the Kierkegaardian political either/or: “just as at the beginning of his authorship, he gives us an either/or: either we will be Christians, or we will live in a great nation—we cannot have both.”⁹

Of course, S. K.’s venomous barbs against his contemporaries probably illustrate this the most clearly - in fact, his contemporaries’ fury and apparent misunderstanding of what was being proposed might illustrate the Abrahamic “leap” better than Fear and Trembling itself!¹⁰ For example, Grundtvig’s radicalism lay only in the right to preach what he thought Christianity ought to be, but never once in living out what Christianity is in actuality.¹¹ Anyone can say ought, anyone can imply we ought to follow x over y; but Christ calls us to do. And what he calls us to do is a challenge. Despite the apparently radical rhetoric of one of Denmark’s most important sons, S. K. saw him as no different from the “lukewarmness and indifferentism” of the Mynsterian lethargic church¹² and, as is so often the case in our world today, a cover to provide civil freedom to him and his cabal instead of any actual effort to bring around a change in the way individuals lived out their faith. In that sense, we prioritize a proper unity of action and thought, not simply enter into the shallow habit of “thought leadership”. And, in that doing, we turn to something extremely tactile: the washing of feet.

Footwashing and the Brethren

But anyway, back to footwashing.

As established previously, footwashing itself is key to the earnest faith of the Brethren. Taken alone, there is no obvious revolutionary precedent to washing the feet of the other; indeed, implying that it could be would not only be bizarre but an outright lie. There is nothing revolutionary or reformative about washing feet; regardless of whether there are at least two Christians that live in a liberal democracy, a Stalinist “communist” state, a monarchist autocracy, under the foot of empire, or any other form of government - footwashing is possible. Like all of the essential aspects of becoming a Christian, they are possible in any environment, under the oppression of any adversary:

“Christianity is indifferent toward each and every form of government; it can live equally well under all of them.”¹³

If we truly believe that neither Christ’s Kingdom nor the Christians are “of this world” (John 17:16, 18:36), why would we scramble for worldly power? Christianity is possible here, right now, so it is possible to live out this faith here, right now. To give food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, shelter to the stranger, clothes to the naked, care to the sick, and companionship to the imprisoned (Matthew 25:31-40) here, right now. The task at hand, we might say, isn’t to uproot and change the world; rather, it is to change an individual, in the metanoia of the genuine change towards the “purity of heart”. And this is possible for everyone, regardless of class, race, or any other determinant - the Christian message is universal, but there is a matter at hand of who has heard and understood it yet. In stronger terms, Dietrich Bonhoeffer took up the mantle of the endless possibility of discipleship in this praise for the slave:

“As a slave he is already torn from the world's clutches, and become a freedman of Christ. That is why the slave is told to stay as he is. As a member of the Body of Christ he has acquired a freedom which no rebellion or revolution could have brought him… It is not as though St. Paul were trying to condone or gloss over a black spot in the social order. He does not mean the class-structure of secular society is so good and godly an institution that it would be wrong to upset it by revolution. The truth of the matter is that the whole world has already been turned upside down by the work of Jesus Christ, which has wrought a liberation for freeman and slave alike. A revolution would only obscure that divine New Order which Jesus Christ has established. It would also hinder and delay the disruption of the existing world order in the coming of the kingdom of God.... To renounce rebellion and revolution is the most appropriate way of expressing our conviction that the Christian hope is not set on this world, but on Christ and his kingdom. And so - let the slave remain a slave! It is not reform the world needs, for it is already ripe for destruction... Therefore let not the slave suffer [even] in silent rebellion, but as a member of the Church and the Body of Christ. He will thereby hasten the end of the world. ”¹⁴

Let the slave remain slave! He is free in Christ!

Through the pen of that noble Lutheran radical who advocated a radical “holding oneself back” [in the words of S. K., at holde igjen paa sig selv¹⁵] that shows Christianity, by its very nature of self-denial, negates the state and all of the possible power it could wield over the unfree. Here, we have a radical call for self-responsibility that is so often missing from everyone aside from the Right; no doubt in an age where everything is understood in “systems” and abstracta, it would be offensive to the sensibilities of the “radicals” to suggest that “a logical system can be given... but a system of existence cannot be given”.¹⁶ How disappointing it must be to find out that after reading self-indulgently long tomes of political theory that one cannot think themselves into freedom; they must act and action cannot be given a framework.

A faith that rips through creeds

And again, back to footwashing. Or, rather, a very specific episode of disagreement over the “doctrinally” important ordinance of footwashing that could have caused a rift in the midst of the Brethren. Vernard Eller recounts their understanding of the general approach to theological matters amongst those modest agrarians:

True members of the community love their enemies, feed the hungry, etc. "Thine" and "mine" are no longer heard; one holds his goods to use in behalf of the neighbor (both the one within the community and the one outside). Everything he owns he holds simply as a trustee for the community; this is what it means to "lay it at the Apostles's feet" and follow the practice of the Book of Acts. One will give without stint as long as he can be of help; for God demands back from us what he has given to us through Christ—and that with interest—although always out of love and not through compulsion.¹⁷

An emphasis on the Tönniesian notion of the Gemeinschaft¹⁸ here would be very fitting, itself a short skip away from the Anabaptist notion of Gemeinde¹⁹ and something which Eller believes S. K. anticipated prior to Tönnies’ work²⁰, in that these practices are defined solely in what they do to encourage the development of agapic bonds between the faithful; the caravan exists because love is something we do, not something we are. In a deliberative manner, this mismatch between the mortal existential striving and the divine essential nature is the basis of our need to strive at all; we recognize how reality is, but simultaneously understand that we really are not and ought to be instead. This ethos played an important way in which those Brethren organized their social and religious lives:

“…the Annual Meeting simply gave structure to the form of government that had been implicit from the beginning. Each congregation had great freedom in managing its own affairs, but the brotherhood-as a brotherhood, not as an overhead governing body-was the constituent entity of the church. Thus the congregations, as well as the individual members, were of a "family," which family stood by to act when help was called for (and that either "asked for" or "obviously necessary"). The minutes of the Annual Meetings will prove very valuable for our purposes, the only difficulty being that they are rather incomplete through the eighteenth century and almost nonexistent before the Revolutionary War.”²¹

But these things, even in that dangerous area where the narcissism of small differences kicks in, can become frayed with time:

We present excerpts from the letter, interspersing within them a running commentary; our analysis and conclusions then follow. The document, an open letter to the brotherhood, first was printed as an appendix to the 1799 edition of his father's Rights and Ordinances published by Samuel Sauer. Whether this was a way of preserving what actually was an earlier letter, we do not know.

Inasmuch as we have understood that some brethren have difficulties with regard to feetwashing [Since its inception the church had interpreted Jn. 13:1-17 as a positive command and had practiced feetwashing as a part of its agape meal and communion service.], which Jesus has commanded to his disciples as if it had been performed between the supper and the breaking of bread. And because they think it not rightly done if the feet are washed before the meal, we felt moved in sincere love to give the reasons why we wash feet before the meal. At the same time, we would say that it is our belief and view that if a brother or any other person can in love and moderation instruct us according to the word of the Lord more fully and otherwise than is here pointed out, we would be ready to accept it not only in this point of feetwashing but in other matters as well. And we would not at all rest upon long usage but would let the word of the Lord be our only rule and guide.

[There follows a detailed analysis of the pertinent biblical materials. Major attention is given to Jn. 13:2, the words to the effect that "during supper" Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. The conclusion is that in the original Greek the phrase translated "during supper" actually meant "after the supper was ready."]

Now these other evangelists say nothing at all about feet-washing, and on the other hand, John writes nothing about the institution of breaking bread. Therefore, scripture must be understood and looked upon with a spiritual eye of love and...

Such [i.e. dogmatism and disputation] ought not to he the manner and mind of the true lovers of wisdom. But true wisdom and her lovers must be minded as James teaches and says, “But the wisdom from above is in the first place pure; and then peace-loving, considerate, and open to reason (Jas. 3:17).” But commonly it is the case that when a person receives some knowledge in selfishness and maintains it in self-assertiveness, he is not willing to be instructed. He will dispute in his own wisdom about the shell and drop the kernel. Therefore, dear brethren, let us all be wise; and especially concerning the feetwashing let us be careful how we are to conduct ourselves, in love, peace, and humility submitting to one another.²²

I quote this excerpt at length for a good reason: the call to love God and the other is held high above any and all other practical and theological matters. They are held, fundamentally and passionately, as the Greatest Commandments through which we understand all other matters. These “simple folk”, as S. K. would no doubt have referred to them, were capable of understanding the comparative “greatest” in a way that their more “high-minded”, theologically-complicated counterparts might not have. We might consider them to be akin to consequentialist professors of ethics who, after presenting their complex and mathematical justifications for abortion and infanticide, jump back in horror when they are reminded of the original question: “what does it actually mean to be a good person?” - no doubt there are many with theological training who are similarly taken aback with the straightforwardness of the question “what does it actually mean to be a Christian?”

A faith that holds through difference

However, we are not Nietzscheans. We cannot pretend that there is no state of “being” and everything is merely a “becoming” towards no particular end. It is worryingly clear why someone would come to relativist or otherwise anti-realist conclusions after taking on the Nietzschean presuppositions; it is never possible for there to be a genuine expression of any particular moral value without the grounds for a metaphysical community, a genuine ethics, a source of meaning that transcends into the ethical-religious. Of course, the Kierkegaardian and their humble model, those simple agrarians, disagree.

Indeed, even in times of dire controversy, there is always a possibility for faith and charity. Eller’s discussion on the Brethren encountering a serious problem with Catherine Hummer, a young woman who began to engage in “ecstatic trances” illustrates this far better than any self-indulgent reflection ever could:

These immediately made her a sensation--and also a focus of strong contention throughout the brotherhood. Her father and others accepted and promoted the visions as divine communications; many condemned them as diabolical.5 The matter became an Issue of dispute before the Annual Meeting of 1763, but the conference refused to rule on the visions either one way or the other. The wording of the minute makes it plain that the Brethren saw Gemeinschaft as taking precedence over all other considerations, saw it, indeed, as the only basis for any ultimate resolution of the problem:

If there are on both sides conviction and acknowledgment, then we advise out of brotherly love, that on both sides all judgments and harsh expressions might be entirely laid down, though we have not the same opinion of that noted (singular) occurrence, so that those who think well of it, should not judge those who are of the contrary opinion, and those who do not esteem it, should not despise those who expect to derive some use and benefit from it.

For the rest, we advise you, beloved brethren, receive one another as Christ has received you, and pardon one another as Christ has pardoned us also, and let us everywhere consider that all disputing, judging, and despising should be entirely laid aside, and thus remain, that everyone leave to the other his own opinion, in the fear of the Lord, and altogether for conscience's sake.... If now one or the other should think we have not sufficiently judged the occurrence, let him consider, that we cannot see the least cause for a separation for conscience's sake. Hence, we have felt constrained not to criticize or judge this (strange) affair, but rather to advise everyone to a godly impartiality and patience.

Even in the face of (perceived) heresy and blasphemy, an existential threat to die Gemeinde, menighed, the Brethren, those gentle anarchists, said: Beloved, let us love another; let us pardon one another (1 John 4:7); let us endeavour towards the Lord. How humiliating the thought is that Christianity has possibly receded since the 1700s²³.

My reader, take heart in this: footwashing exemplifies the Christian ideal of voluntary suffering, a willingness to open oneself to the possibility of being offended or challenged by the faith journey. Despite disagreement, despite conflict, like apostles we can always become Christians: “that same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together.” (Luke 24:33)

A faith of the communion on Fridays

One of the more overlooked aspects of the Kierkegaardian corpus is the discourse series reflecting on communion on Fridays²⁴. This seems like a strange place to look for radicalism²⁵, however, each of these beguiling discourses holds the kernel of truth that Kierkegaard points towards; like Barth, he does not proclaim he holds the truth; instead, they both insist that scripture itself is directing us towards something, something beyond it, something not in the pages that are before us, but that stands alongside us when we break bread in communion with the fellowship and priesthood of all believers. The Son of David and the Son of Man calls to us in halls we populate - and that includes on a Friday, each Friday.

S. K.’s basic understanding of communion is that it is a comfort to the individual, a moment to find solace in Christ. While we may make grand theological gestures to “the Body of Christ”, S. K. was not content to stop there; the gesture must gesture towards something, teach us something about the world and the divine. For this, it teaches us that we can seek rest in Christ (Psalm 37:7). In his usual morose manner, S. K. notes that we must always be ready to find comfort in one another, but that can quickly turn insipid and sentimental - so, we must turn to God.²⁶ Understanding all weaknesses, understanding all moral failure in relation to Himself, Christ is the very opposite of insipid moralism and ironic self-righteousness: He is both able to understand all weaknesses and is also able of being truly sympathetic (Hebrews 4:15), and that the path to comfort through Christ is not found through the false dialectic of “the smothered scream of silent despair” and “the loud scream that terrifies others that decide the outcome”: it is found in the comfort that the One who suffers the most has no other comfort than to comfort others.²⁷

But, all of this is very objective - a thing that “happens to us”, as if discipleship was something that someone could stumble into, as if the choice to choose God above all else is a choice that someone else makes.²⁸ No, the communion on Fridays, in the days of mandatory church attendance, was something altogether different: it is the embodiment of Luke 22:15 in the believer, the longing to break bread in communion with the beloved and the neighbour alike²⁹. We can simply ignore this longing, reducing its hold on us as if God were something we could pass by - the longing for the other is at the heart of both the human and the divine in that humanity and the Lord both are always capable (and, for the human, sometimes willing) to deliver the “yes!” to one another: “See, he stretches out his arms and says: Come here, come here to me, all you who labor and are burdened. See, he opens his arms, in which all of us can rest equally secure and equally blessed, for it was only in our Savior's earthly life that John lay closest to him upon his breast.”³⁰ At the quietness of the communion on Fridays, the individuals present have felt the need to be there out of pure volition; they come due to a genuine love for the Lord, a genuine longing for Christ, and “just as heartfelt longing belongs to worthy remembrance, so in turn it belongs to heartfelt longing that the longing is increased through remembrance, so only that one went worthily to the Lord's table who went there with heartfelt longing and went from there with increased heartfelt longing.”³¹

This choice, to remember the One who truly did more than any friend ever could as “[n]o friend has ever been able to be more than faithful unto death, but he remained faithful in death - his death was indeed my salvation”³² leaves us wounded with the pleasant memory and shaken with the rest of His grace - but we have chosen this wound, we have chosen this suffering alongside Him! And we emerge alive and invigorated, in the knowledge that “[the one who compares] limps [due to] this comparison - a human being always does after wrestling with God.”³³ Christ emphasizes serving others, reminding us that true greatness lies in humility and service - and when we even need rest from others, we always have Christ in whom to rest.

This all seems quite magical. Almost superstitious. But that can never be the Christian ideal, because Christ is not a Greek god nor any other imagined divinity. So, what becomes of the individual in communion?

“The greater the requirement is that you be capable of something and the more necessary this is when you nevertheless are capable of nothing, all the more clear it therefore becomes, and all the more deeply do you realize, that you are capable of less than nothing-but then all the more clear is the need for the blessing, or that it is everything.”³⁴

And who do we then encounter in communion?

“Just as someone else supported Moses when he prayed, so also at the Communion table you must be supported by the blessing; when you are to receive the blessing, it must encompassingly support you as it is communicated to you.”³⁵

My reader, hopefully you recognize that we stand on Mount Nebo here. The distance left to walk must be walked alone: the transformation, as always, is internal; it is indirect; the message is concealed from us who look upon you. In the modern age of voluntary church attendance (truly, in this way, the Anabaptists have been victorious), we can no longer distinguish any particular communion from any other particular communion. So, what shall be the communion on Fridays for the modern Christian? In a way, it might be communion at all. And, if that is so, how many don’t limp in the wounded freedom of Christ?

An anarchist’s communion

So, what then is the Christian anarchist doing throughout all this? Are we relegating ourselves to mysticism and high metaphysics in order to justify what is, notionally, eating bread and washing feet with others? No, not at all: what S. K. attempted to show us is that the communion on Fridays, with its intimacy and quietness, hands us the moment of decision³⁶ in the most explicit way.

“Deep within every person's soul there is a secret anxiety that even the one in whom he had the most faith could also become unfaithful to him. No merely human love can completely drive out this anxiety, which can very well remain hidden and undetected in the friendly security of a happy life-relationship, but which at times can inexplicably stir deep within and which, when the storms of life begin, is immediately at hand.”³⁷

My contention, dear reader, is that this is the Christian faith itself: despite all this, despite the seemingly impossible, it is always possible to take communion. The “dizziness of freedom” is not a condemnation, but a promise: “whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day” (John 6:54) becomes, in the quietness of spirit, in the hope against all hope, our choice to attend communion when the crowd has sloughed away, when the bustle of the world attends to more important or more serious matters, as, to go beyond even the words of Karl Barth, that we should go on als wäre nichts geschehen [as though nothing had happened]³⁸ but that we should go on as though nothing else is happening at all.

Paul’s “no!” against humanity stops us short: take up the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand (Ephesians 6:13). In this moment and all other moments, there is a decision where the individual emerges upright, filled with the spirit to do any and all possible things regardless of the world around him - and he chooses to break bread in communion with Christ and his fellow travellers in a world where “[i]t is our baptismal responsibility to tell this story to our young, to live it before them, to take time to be parents in a world that (though intent on blowing itself to bits) is God’s creation (a fact we would not know without this story)”.³⁹

Overcoming nihilism

As a conclusion to our philosophical fragment, we should reiterate the stunningly incisive and subversive anarchism of Stanley Hauerwas:

“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.’’⁴⁰

A politics of Christian indifference underlies our anarchism. We start from the sceptical position that we are not in control, that history does not depend on our individual actions, that I am not predestined to be the Messiah. The “engine of history” is not the ethereal “liberal bias”, the proletariat, or an as-yet undiagnosed but still mission-critical factor from history that drives humanity onwards. It is God and God alone who directs the course of His creation and, in this sense, we encounter again the infinite negation of the divine: regardless of our plans, our theories, and our independent radicalism, not one iota can be added to God’s plan; while we are invited to play a part in this game, becoming a co-worker of God’s requires us to acknowledge our failure to be like God. “Radicalism”, in the conventional sense, isn’t radical at all: it is just another violation of divine sovereignty, just another attempt to build a tower to heaven, just another scrumped apple from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

And that isn’t to say it is easy. In fact, hardship may be the only way to become “that individual”, conscious of their life in the comparison to perfection and necessity.

“Hardship procures hope. It does not give hope, but it procures [forhverve] it. It is the person himself who acquires [erhverve] it, eternity's hope, which is planted in him, hidden in his innermost being; but hardship procures it.”⁴¹

Faith may indeed sound like the most profound sarcasm, but genuine nonetheless; in an irony-poisoned age, the point isn’t to say “I am a Christian anarchist” and ironically relate to faith—where “Christian” is an adjective to the really important, really serious matter of anarchic worldly politics. The point is to say “I am a Christian anarchist”, taken together as an inseparable couplet; God has chosen for humanity to go on despite our failure, despite our rebellion—to live anarchically in the name of the Lord isn’t to rebel, but learn genuine obedience.

“To forget something... in a certain sense to forget everything” but “it also recommends the means [to forgetting]: to remember something else, to remember one thing, the Lord Jesus Christ.”⁴²

And, in that, we remember what He did: He washed feet and broke bread - regardless of the catastrophe that awaited Him personally.

---

To read the other pieces in this series, see below:

• Christian anarchism and the Problem of Nihilism - part I

• Christian anarchism and the Problem of Nihilism - part II

• Christian anarchism and the Problem of Nihilism - part III

• Christian anarchism and the Problem of Nihilism - part IV

1. “Destitution of Sovereignty: The Political Theology of Søren Kierkegaard”, S. Brata Das, from Kierkegaard and Political Theology, edited by R. Sirvent and S. Morgan

2. Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship, p. 397 V. Eller

3. Philosophical Fragments—Johannes Climacus, or, De omnibus dubitandum est, p. 96, [J. Climacus]

4. Papers and Journals: A Selection, p. 5, S. Kierkegaard, ed. A. Hannay

5. Kierkegaard and the Common Man, Kindle location 120, J. K. Bukdahl

6. "The causes of bourgeois culture: Kierkegaard's relation to Marx considered", from Philosophy and Social Criticism, vol. 42, p. 75 J. Aroosi

7. Politics of Exodus: Søren Kierkegaard's Ethics of Responsibility, p. 63, M. Dooley

8. Ibid., p. 47

9. Kierkegaard and the New Nationalism: A Contemporary Reinterpretation the Attack upon Christendom, p. xi, T. J. Millay

10. In particular, the contemporary reaction to S. K.’s “attack” on the Lutheran church best summarizes the bourgeois, or, rather, spidsborger reaction to a call for genuine Christian faith. For further reading, see Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark, B. Kirmmse and Kierkegaard’s Letters and Documents, ed. H. Rosenmeier.

11. "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, S. Kierkegaard

12. "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. 185, S. Kierkegaard

13. JP IV 4191

14. The Cost of Discipleship, p. 290-291, D. Bonhoeffer

15. Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments: A Mimic-Pathetic-Dialectic Composition - An Existential Contribution, p. 165, J. Climacus, tr. D. F. Swenson, ed. W. Lowrie

16. Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments: A Mimic-Pathetic-Dialectic Composition - An Existential Contribution, p. 109, J. Climacus, tr. D. F. Swenson, ed. W. Lowrie

17. Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship, p. 339, V. Eller

18. Ibid., p. 342

19. Ibid., p. 209

20. Ibid., p. 336

21. Ibid., p. 82

22. Ibid., p. 84

23. My reader, let me lay it out clearly for you: for those amongst us who hold to a “low church” tradition and are repulsed at the idea of “bells and smells” oriented worship, our revulsion is grounded in a simple failure to hear the words of the Apostle: “for whatever is not from faith is sin” (Romans 14:23). Does my opposition to the high church imply that I judge those Christians as faithless? Or the Catholic understanding of communion as transubstantiation. Does my opposition to this doctrine imply that the Roman Catholic tradition is faithless? While the Brethren had “closer” theological issues to reckon with, we should remember that Christ called us to love God first and our neighbour second; what does the Christian anarchist choose - ardent doctrinal sectarianism or ecumenism towards a reconciliation of the faith? This idea needs far greater exploration and shouldn’t be mistaken for sentimental quietism in the face of opposition. However, it does remind us the order and manner in which we approach theological questions, abstract or practical.

24. “Discourses at the Communion on Fridays” in Christian Discourses and “Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays” anthologized in Without Authority by the Hongs

25. Especially for those of us less acquainted with the majesty and pomp of the high church traditions.

26. "The High Priest" in "Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays", from Without Authority, p. 115-116 S. Kierkegaard

27. "The High Priest" in "Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays", from Without Authority, p. 119 S. Kierkegaard

28. Sentiments echoed by both the Anabaptists and the Methodists: see The Radical Wesley: The Patterns and Practices of a Movement Maker, p. 13, H. A. Snyder; The Theology of Anabaptism, p. 33, R. Friedmann.

29. “Discourses at the Communion on Fridays” in Christian Discourses, p. 251, S. Kierkegaard

30. Ibid., p. 266

31. Ibid., p. 261

32. Ibid., p. 258

33. Ibid., p. 293

34. Ibid., p. 298

35. Ibid., p. 300

36. Ibid., p. 291

37. Ibid., p. 284

38. Theological Existence To-day!, p. 9, K. Barth

39. Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony, p. 33, S. Hauerwas and W. H. Willimon

40. “Reforming Christian Social Ethics: Ten Theses”, from The Hauerwas Reader, p. 113, S. Hauerwas, ed. J. Berkman and M. Cartwright

41. "States of Mind in the Strife of Suffering" in Christian Discourses, p. 110, S. Kierkegaard

42. “The Exposition” in Training in Christianity and the Edifying Discourse which 'Accompanied' It, p. 152-153, Anti-Climacus, edited by S. Kierkegaard