Sometimes, Kierkegaard is noted as the “individualist Christian” par excellence, calling for the Christian to act as a radical lightning rod of divine inspiration amongst the fallen world: if there is no one else around us to hold us up towards the truth of God’s love, faith must emerge as an act of will in the individual. This terrifying prospect - one that Kierkegaard saw as very real in his contemporary Denmark, going as far as to say that "[t]he Christianity of the New Testament simply does not exist."1 Despite an overarching hatred of “the numerical” and a deep mistrust of “the Crowd” as two things which stand against the voluntary choice to take on hardship as a Christian, S. K. did offer us social teachings - most notably in Two Ages: A Literary Review and his journals about “menighed” in later life. While he was aware of the terrifying isolation “out over the 70,000 fathoms deep”2 he was representing in his Romantic heroes like Abraham and Anti-Climacus, he was under no illusion that Christianity would return to the hermitages and isolation of the Desert Fathers.
In that way, it is important to consider S. K.’s influence on “narrative theology”3: the socio-historical approach to ethics and theology which makes the journey of the Christians from the foot of a cross in Golgotha to the present day the “foundation” for the way we think about theological matters. Prepared to state that “[i]t is really true what philosophy tells us, that life must be understood backwards. But with this, one forgets the second proposition, that it must be lived forwards” and mean it, we turn to Philippians 2:14-16 to consider the role of the church, commitment, and faith.
Do all things without murmurings and disputings: That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world; Holding forth the word of life; that I may rejoice in the day of Christ, that I have not run in vain, neither laboured in vain.
- Philippians 2:14-16
Preceding this verse, we find a Kierkegaardian hook to keep us grounded in understanding the Apostle’s words: therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose (Philippians 2:12-13). By setting his standard here, Paul avoids the mediocrity of dialectical balance: he deliberates4 the difference between the state of the Philippians and the Lord’s work within those who turn to Him. Obedience becomes central to our understanding of “good works”, not any particular actions - Paul doesn’t begin by listing an abstracted system of morals, ethical frameworks, or altogether dreary rebukes against his reader; he starts by setting the root of all Christian thought, the deliberation between “my condition here” and “the Lord”. The qualitatively infinite divide because the corruptible and incorruptible5. It is not enough for the Philippians, faithful in their obedience in both the presence of Paul and his absence, to simply acknowledge that the Lord is “very not human” - they must recognize that He “works in you” and only by accepting the Word and power of the Lord in “fear and trembling” can we truly gain the freedom Paul promises.
But that then leads us to Paul advising the Philippians on specific matters: “do all things without murmurings and disputings”, “be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke”, “in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world”, and “rejoice in the day of Christ, that [we] have not run in vain, neither laboured in vain”. Having set our ethical orientation towards the Lord, Paul gives four powerful pieces of advise to his anxious readers: do good in the world, even when the world is the world itself - crooked and perverse.
Do all things without murmurings and disputings
Here we meet the Apostle’s words in the bridge between understanding that it is God that works in us and the joy of Christ’s victory: a incisive cut into any doubt around the virtue of “fear and trembling” before the Lord, we are told to avoid “murmurings and disputings”. Why is this? Because “murmurings and disputings” are contrary to the gospel, the destruction of the Word, and the enemy of deliberations (Sirach 19:6). Taking on the mantle of the Lord, Paul stands with an eternal “no!” against chatter: whether in reference to the Lord’s demands or the demands of society of you, do this without idle chatter and squabbles. But why is this? Surely Christ spent quite a lot of time dealing with minor squabbles, general niceties, and musings on the weather: he was, of course, entirely human in addition to His entirely divine aspect, therefore implying that He had a great deal that was rather boring about Him.
It seems to not have been the case whatsoever: due to the New Testament passing over "chatter", chatter has found its way into the discourse as if it was something worth listening to - because the New Testament only deals in things worth listening to6. Rather than appealing to some kind of fetishistic notion that scripture depicts exactly what had happened in historical detail (which would surely imply that not a lot happened during Christ’s ministry until quite a lot happened all at once), we should take the position that God has decided for this to be known to us - and it is our duty to figure out exactly what this is. In that case, we don’t simply need to take Paul at his word in Philippians 2:14 as the entire collection has already done the leg work for us: it resists “chatter”, it refuses to be drawn into meditations on small talk, and promotes the necessary in place of the usually desirable contingent. God has given you the tools for deliberation - “here is the necessity of my commands: hold yourself in comparison to them in fear and trembling”. This goes some way to explaining the extraordinary density of scripture: despite squeezing in an enormous amount of content, both teaching or simply biographical in nature, we are assured in the necessity of each word within the Word by the unforgiving economy of the writers. But this is really the danger, especially for someone like me who has found the strange aspiration that I have something to say about this matter; there is a danger that anything said beyond these words descends into “chatter”, detracts from the Word, and turns it into an exercise in self-justification, an exercise in ingenuity and creativity. If we are to take these verses seriously, we have to place ourselves in relation to God, the Word, and those people who were forced by the coercion of reality to take up the Word as their armour.
Taking a seat where the Apostle’s words would cause the city to be thrown into uproar all over again (Acts 16:19), it is interesting to think how these words would be received: you shall not do things with murmurings, you shall not do things with disputings; the deliberation is erected, the deconstruction begins: what does it mean to murmur? what does it mean to dispute? Hopefully, we have a straightforward understanding of these terms (or, at least, “chatter”) in a way which helps us ground ourselves in our own experiences. But murmur, in particular, is an interesting choice: the idea of a hiddenness to what we say, a known unacceptability to what we “murmur” to one another. Moreso than mere “chatter” (which could be just as likely heard in the church as in the street as in the workplace), “murmurings” hold a distinctly shameful aspect in that they are “chatter” which we know to be ungodly. In this way, it is obvious sin: not only are we speaking idle words, but we know we are doing it in such a way as to draw the ire of the divine. And these intentional murmurings add a layer to the feebleness of our “chatter”.
The idea of “chatter” fills our stomachs, my stomach, at the thought that “every idle work is judged” (Matthew 12:36) and I have brought it upon myself. At this moment, discipline becomes apparent: not only are we ultimately free from such things, but it requires a constant commitment, an affirmation, “repetition” in order to truly go through with this. If anyone has particularly wronged us in the past, it might be particularly tempting to take issues rather seriously and engage the very effective public manipulations of “murmur” to aid us in “solving” “disputes”; particularly in tight-knit communities (such as, say, the Primitive Church), the use of “murmur” is a particularly insidious form of chatter where “the Crowd” elects itself as judge, jury, and executioner7. Instead of an individual relation in love to God, “the Crowd” has fallen away into the destruction of faith: “chatter”, “murmur” and “disputes”. As such, with the Apostle all too aware of how difficult it can be to escape the court of public opinion (Acts 9: 25, 14:6, 17:10, 18:16), he nipped the fact in the bud: do all things without murmurings and disputings.
Be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke
Even more strenuous, now, is the first part of 2:15: be blameless and harmless. But what is blame? Blame can mean a variety of things, obviously, from the childish curl that something isn’t fair to the identification of an unjust crossing of the law; we gain blame, in all these instances, due to a perceived imposition upon some prior agreement (or, at least, implicitly accepted) amongst a given community. In that way, blame seems to be something which has very little to do with legal matters: I am sure that it is trivial to think up socially acceptable examples of “breaking the law”, such as parking where we shouldn’t, texting whilst driving, or putting the milk in before the tea8. And these “blameful” situations, where someone willingly and knowingly breaks the law, seems to imply that a there is a certain that “blamefulness” is an aspect of understanding what “blameless” means; knowing how to follow a rule implies knowing how not to break a rule. In that way, Paul calls us to do better than “enough”, better than the “socially acceptable” - because the “socially acceptable”, as far as “the Crowd” is concerned, extends merely to what is ingrained into their moral fibre, their “internal sense” of moral duty that they will not cross9. We are called to go beyond the law and go beyond our merely internal senses of right and wrong - which truly have no rational basis whatsoever, but rather are built through culture and habituation - and hold up all laws so that we are truly “blameless” as “sons of God” and beyond “rebuke”.
This will come as a stark declaration for the would-be Christian anarchist. We’re not done with this yet, so do not fret: although knowing how to follow a rule implies knowing how not to break a rule, equally knowing how to follow a rules implies knowing that there are rules to break.
But who are the sons of God? This is an interesting question: it casts us into difficult territory about the phrase “the Son of God” which we usually apply to Christ as if we are equal with the perfect; as if God Himself has handed us the keys to name ourselves as some kind of successor to Christ, not only in act but also in nature.
Here is where we come to the proper recalibration of Christian ethics: an ethics for Christians, not a Constantinian imposition on the world. To make this clear, we should look to the notion of Israel: in particular Jeremiah 31 and Romans 9:1-5. "An Israel-like view of the Church"10 gives us the proper basis for a theory for how Christians should look at their place within the world; “an opposition” is presupposed for Christianity in “the world”, so we should orient our ethics as something which Christians do within the world, not something that Christians impose onto the world. This opposition, which is necessary for Christianity to exist at all11, implies that our ethical standpoint requires for us to be in a contrast and opposition to the world; we are then “the sons of God”, tracing the footprints in the sand of the Son of God and held aloft over the mere social inertia of the world. But this existence as “the sons of God” implies a contrast12, a difference, that we must turn to second half of 2:15 to understand.
In the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world
Let me remind you again: the existence of rules leaves us in the difficult position of both following and breaking them. And the possibility of both following and breaking rules held in tension with the dialectical absoluteness of the absolute source of morality leaves us to conclude that there are indeed rules to follow and rules to break.
The nation here, in its ancient understanding, is the opposition that the Apostle identified for us. Although it would be an error to say that we can make a clean analogy between “the nation” of the ancient world and “the state” in (post)modernity, it doesn’t seem like we have a major choice here - this is the opposition which is forced upon us by historical development, the “crooked and perverse” enemy that Paul had identified having taken on a new form. In the fitting not-quite-prophetic works of Kierkegaard, we find this development and totalitarian growth of the liberal “democratic” state as the obvious existential opposition to Christianity13. With the early change in state formation, noted by the founding of centralised states where the individual plays a role in opposition to his “culture” (something that would lead to the secular existential dread of Sartre)14, it is clear that S. K. and Paul share a similar view of the church in this scenario: it is our job to remain as “sons of God” in relation to the fallen world, to be empowered by faith and the Spirit in doing good against crookedness and perversion, to hold God’s law above and over the demands of “mere inertia”.
With the “Israel-like view of the church” in mind, we can turn to Eller’s understanding of Kierkegaard for more: the menighed, which might be understood as “congregation”, “collective”, or “caravan”15. As said above, there is a kind of cruel parody of S. K. that still permeates academia and the popular imagining of the Melancholic Dane’s work as isolated and solitary, but this is not the case at all. While there is certainly an emphasis on “that individual” [der Enkelte], it is with the implicit understanding that an individual only and always exists within a collective as a social being, a social who may be forced by its circumstances to rise above “the relative” in order to chase “the Absolute”. While this is a rather stark possibility, we (hopefully) do not find ourselves in the same position that S. K. did in his day: a lethargic “church” where secularism had crept in but the Christian notion of ethics qua life-form had held on in appearance alone. In a probably humbling moment for those amongst us in mainstream Protestant churches, Catholics, and the Orthodox, it seems that the anabaptists were proven correct: the only existent church these days is the “believer’s church”16, with only those committed enough to attend being include in the body of Christ. In this way, we can turn to the not-quite-there writings in S. K.’s journals concerning the rise of the genuine menighed.
With the view to “shine as lights in the world”, we must be like those who “attend communion of fridays” (note S. K.’s Lutheran heritage here)17: we must aim to identify each individual within any given collective’s duty towards God and the collective, but also the collective’s duty towards each individual within it in order to overcome the sickness of melancholy and vanity in the God-relationship18. It is possibly too easy to become vain, self-justified, too comfortable with God when we approach Him alone in prayer; as part of a community, as part of the menighed of the “sons of God”, we need the community to “carry and be carried”19 as each individual carries his brethren and is carried in turn. The Apostle calls to us across time: this world, this nation, this state is crooked and perverse; but you, like “sons of God”, can carry and be carried towards the Absolute; but you, like “sons of God” shall love thy God and shall love thy neighbour; but you, like “sons of God” can love thy God and can love thy neighbour. In the double danger20 we find ourselves in, it is possible to be a Christian in a world which stands against us as opposition. That is Christian anarchism: although we are scattered to the corners of the world, Christ reaches out in solidarity with the church; it is our task to “rise up this same hour, and return to Jerusalem, and find our brethren gathered together” (Luke 24:33) because it is always possible to find Christ as He reaches out to us.
Rejoice in the day of Christ, that I have not run in vain, neither laboured in vain
And in that way, we come to 2:16: rejoice! The joy of Christ is upon us: I, says the Apostle Paul, have not run in vain, neither laboured in vain; we, say the menighed, have not run in vain, neither laboured in vain. Our Israel is not of this world, but a standpoint against it in opposition; we are like the inverse of the criminal underworld21: tightly-knit communities can thrive and prosper even when they are rejected by society, but unlike the criminal gangs that stand against the state in their vice, we will stand against the state in our virtue. The imitatio Christi becomes central to our view of the world: as Christ walked each step, each necessary step from Bethlehem to the foot of a cross on Golgotha, we will carry our cross, we will carry our brethren and be carried nonetheless, we will be carried by the cross on our journey towards the “Israel-like vision of the church” which stands against society. This protest of virtue, in its blamelessness and its harmlessness, will become unrecognizable22 to the world as Christ was unrecognizable in His incognito23.
This is the hope that the Apostle sets before us: when we are in the menighed and carrying and carried by our brethren, we will see that the hope of eternal life, the hope of the good news is not just a story we tell ourselves; it is the road that Christ walked, the footprints in the sand, a story which can only be grasped by faith and by faith alone. Then, my neighbours, will we be the Israel-like vision of the Church; against society in a protest of virtue, the menighhed that turns away from “mere inertia”, from “mere state action”, and takes up the cross before being taken up by the cross in the Body of Christ. That is our duty, that is our aim; Christian ethics for Christians who will act in opposition to the world, “the Crowd”, and hold itself accountable not only before God but in such a way that even the state will recognize that we have become unrecognizable. A believer’s church for believers.
Closing remarks
When we take ourselves back to the streets of Philippi, it should be clear to us how we should understand this letter. Paul, no stranger to controversy, conflict, and danger, wrote these words knowing how they would be received and how they would allow his dearest friends to receive the Word; as such, we should adopt a similar stance. Separated by time, we are restricted in that the world we live in is unimaginably different from those saints who walked the streets of pagan Greece; but this distance doesn’t excuse our inattention, our refusal to hear those words as they were written, spoken, and read - we are the church, this is the gift that has been handed to us. It is now our duty to turn to ourselves, as brethren that carry and are carried by the words of the Apostle, the actions of the saints, and the gentle hope and fiery determination that this hope - the hope against all hopes - is not merely in vain. It is not all a sacrifice in aid of nothing, but rather a promise made to us, written in the sand by the Mount of Olives: go now and sin no more (John 8: 1-11) for you shall be Christians and you can be Christians. And, in doing so, we become like beacons of light in the crooked and perverse state of the world, as the “sons of God” that walk these streets, populate these workplaces, and - once again, at all times - take up the pew in order to take up the cross in order that the cross may take us up in the body of Christ.
Amen.
Our Father, lend us strength to hold fast to your love when we “do all things” - that we, the sinners and unforgivable of this world who recognize our sinful and unforgivable condition far more than any other, can become blameless and harmless like the Lord Christ. Make us into “the sons of God” through remembrance, remembering not only the sacrifice that Christ made for us in accepting our punishment but also the good news of His resurrection and the promise of eternal life. Thank you for the gift of standing against “a crooked and perverse nation”, so that we can become a beacon to the faithless, “lights in the world”, that serve as a sign of your promise to humanity. Thank you for the gift of labouring against temptation, “holding forth the word of life” for others to hear, for others to see, for others to understand; that we may rejoice in the day of Christ is the good news, but first thanks for the lesson of running against hardship and labouring for the other - so that we may become like Christ with your help, that we “shine as lights in the world”.
Amen.
"A thesis—only a single one" in Articles in The Fatherland, from Attack upon "Christendom", p. 33, S. Kierkegaard, ed. W. Lowrie
Works of Love, p. 363, S. Kierkegaard
In particular, the influence on the likes of Davenport and Hauerwas (as well as, ironically, an agreement with MacIntyre, whose often criticized depiction of S. K.’s thought in After Virtue displays a very much incorrect understanding of Kierkegaard’s overall thought both within Either/Or and as part of the two authorships taken summa totalis) has led to a burgeoning response which calls on Christians to become what they already are - the New Israel.
In the Kierkegaardian sense: "The Gospel of Sufferings: Christian Discourses", from Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, p. 310, S. Kierkegaard
Epistle to the Romans, p. 49, K. Barth
"We are all Christians" from The Instant, no. 2, June 4th 1855, from Attack on "Christendom", p. 108, S. Kierkegaard
"The Crowd is Untruth", S. Kierkegaard
While this isn’t formally recognised as illegal anywhere in the world to the best of my knowledge, I have an inkling in my heart of hearts that this is very much displeasing to the Lord.
"A Glance at a Contemporary Effort in Danish Philosophy", from On Kierkegaard and the Truth, p. 29, P. L. Holmer, ed. D. J. Gouwens and L. C. Barrett III
“Confession and Community: An Israel-like View of the Church,”, George Lindbeck, from The Christian Century 107, no. 16
"In "Christendom" all are Christians; when all are Christians, the New Testament eo ipso does not exist, yea, it is impossible" from The Instant, no. 4, July 7th 1855, from Attack upon "Christendom", p. 149, S. Kierkegaard
"State/Christianity" from The Instant, no. 3, June 27th 1855, from Attack upon "Christendom", p. 127, S. Kierkegaard
While some Christians will no doubt take certain umbridge with this openly anarchist view of the state, it should be noted that similar protests are rarely expressed in relation to the clobber passages from Romans 13 - if we are to view the state as worthy of our contextual support due to Romans, we are to view it as “crooked and perverse” at the same time due to Philippians.
The Dizziness of Freedom in Kierkegaard and Sartre, p. 28, R. Pugliese
Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship, p. 344-345, V. Eller
The Radical Wesley: The Patterns and Practices of a Movement Maker, p. 30, H. A. Snyder
"Discourses at the Communion on Fridays" in Christian Discourses, p. 269, S. Kierkegaard
Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship, p. 352, V. Eller
Ibid., p. 350
Works of Love, p. 76, 81, 195, S. Kierkegaard
Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship, p. 347 V. Eller
A Literary Review, p. 96, S. Kierkegaard, ed. A. Hannay
Training in Christianity and the Edifying Discourse which 'Accompanied' It, p. 127, Anti-Climacus, ed. S. Kierkegaard