Substack is filled with cannibals

A reflection on an essay from the Attack Upon "Christendom"

What is the Christianity of the New Testament? It is the suffering truth. In this mediocre, miserable, sinful, evil, ungodly world (this is the Christian doctrine) the truth must suffer, Christianity is the suffering truth because it is the truth and is in this world. For this reason the Founder not only suffered death upon the cross, but His whole life was suffering from first to last.

For this reason the Apostles suffered, for this reason the witness to the truth. And the Saviour required one thing, the Apostles after Him required the samething, and the witness to the truth required only one thing: imitation.

But what does the “priest” do ? This educated man is far from being crazy. “To imitate him! What a proposal to make to a shrewd man! First this shrewd man must have undergone a transformation, he must have become crazy, before it could occur to him to go in for such a thing. No, but might it not be feasible to describe the sufferings of these glorious ones, to preach their teaching as doctrine, and in such a way that it would yield so much profit that a man could live off of it, marry on it, beget children who are fed on it ? That is to say, is it not feasible to turn the glorious ones into money, or to eat them, with wife and children to live by eating them?”¹

In the violent rhetoric of the fifth essay in The Instant, no. 9², S. K. wielded the pen against those who he saw as the culprits behind the rise and maintenance of “Christendom” in his contemporary Denmark—the priests of the Lutheran church; once agents of the state, then the figureheads of the supposedly “liberated” Folkekirke, their complicity in the rise of what would later be described as “cheap grace” was unforgivable. Even worse than that, not only did they preach the Word to “the plain man” of Copenhagen without even the pretence of pious living, but they also knew that Christ had died for their sins (with James 3:1 hanging over their impiety, no doubt) and then feasted on the corpse. They were cannibals, cannibalising the body of the Lord Himself.

The case

S. K. was never one to mince his words, but the infamous attack accentuated the force that he was willing to spread through the pages of his journal, the Instant³, to the streets of Copenhagen. While interpretations of this late flurry of literary activity vary, there is a certain respectability still in maintaining that Kierkegaard’s life’s work led up to the polemical assault he launched against the Lutheran Church in defence of “the plain man”, the proletarianised Danish underclass of “cottagers”, and in opposition to the negligent clergy. Like a Nordic Jeremiah breathing fire, he preached from the discomforting restriction of his home and later his hospital bed while his words spilt out onto the streets to scandalise the complacent spidsborger, the bourgeois-philistine, bereft of spirit and the constituters of a severe deviation away from the Christian truth. And he had amassed a small following of suitably scandalous adherents (the very last thing he wanted) who similarly brought about outrage for their pious inattention to social class and “the done thing”. As a part of this, of course, came the accusation that the priests had turned to feast on the body of Christ—not in holy communion with the Lord, but like the ravenous dogs that circled the foot of the cross on Golgotha.

“How can ye believe who receive honour from one another?" - John 5:44

As part of a larger polemic against the notion that the recently deceased Bishop Mynster, bishop of Zealand, was a “witness to the truth”, S. K. took to a deliberation of the now incumbent Bishop Martensen, his cadre of “1,000 priests”, and the now dormant corpse of Mynster in comparison to the known “witnesses of the truth”—Christ’s apostles. In the maximal dialectic of holding the Danish clergy in comparison with Paul and the martyrs, those individuals who had held the truth so tightly to their breast that they allowed the neighbour to sin in the most terrible way⁴, S. K. took them to task: if the Christianity of the New Testament is not the high point of Christianity, then perhaps Martensen had a case; if the Christianity of the New Testament is the high-point of Christian thought (that is to say, Christ was the greatest Christian and the greatest Christian teacher at once), then we must not only compare ourselves in the shame of our shortcomings but also become “contemporaneous” to Christ in either attempting the find him in His presence today or by attempting to walk the path that He did—or recognise that our distinctly different Christianity is “an apostasy from the Christianity of the New Testament”⁵.

Of course, S. K. said these things for a reason: he didn’t believe that even one member of the Danish clergy would come willingly from the positions of power they had appropriated; even worse, in fact, he didn’t believe one of them would willingly admit that they were even in error in regards to Christ’s message and their own lives. Not only did they have the same interests as all other classes (worldly comfort), but they also wanted to be known as witnesses to the truth⁶. This phrase—this notion of the “witness to the truth” that Martensen had so callously employed in regards to the “neither this nor that”, lukewarm Christianity of the late Mynster⁷—stuck like the thorn in S. K.’s side in a way which exposed the nerve in its raw totality; in what sense could the modernist, Hegelian clergy be understood to be equivalent to the piety of the martyrs? The very object of S. K.’s concrete faith, the life of Christ, the sincerity of Paul the Apostle, and the commitment of those holy martyrs, was being profaned in front of his very eyes. But why did this make them cannibals? What had changed in the period between the first edition of Training in Christianity, where Anti-Climacus had extended the olive branch to his clerical opposition, and the full explosion of the attack?

Simultaneity

The culture that S. K. had emerged into, had become a man in, was extremely different to the cultures we are submerged into today. The phrase “out on the 70,000 fathoms of the deep” rings out from the gentle prose that came from that Danish hand, delivering us the image of the Christian thinker in modernity—treading water, held aloft by the hope against hope, maintaining shelter in the Body of Christ when the world demands like never before such notions make no sense. And, in a way, S. K.’s eccentric mind agreed with them: not to the extent that the faux-spidsborger would imagine, that he was a genuine atheist in denial due to a tortured loyalty to his deceased father, but rather as a sceptic, a Pascal for a new age, someone who would not readily adopt theological dicta from a priest simply on the grounds that he was a priest—and certainly not if such a thing contradicted the spirit of the Word.

Can we seriously speak words to others as Christian words if we couldn’t imagine saying them in His contemporaneity?

The reason for the apparent radicalism here, at least as far as S. K. was concerned, was that the priestly class had forgotten precisely what it was meant to do. In rejecting the importance of Efterfølgelse⁸ (what we might be more accustomed to referring to as Nachfolge or “imitation”) in the sullenness of the clergy-as-servant-of-the-state, they did not reject the “calling” they had taken up: they lived off faux-piety and turned the sacrifice of the martyrs into the bread for their children.⁹ As S. K. had, for better or for worse, understood the voluntary celibacy of Christ and Paul as those very footsteps the ideal Christian would attempt to walk in¹⁰, the pragmatic view of a cleric earning a wage to feed a family was doubly insulting to Christ’s sacrifice: the very singular devotion that would be expected from the cleric was actually very much at the bottom of the list behind the matter of a wage. Seek first the kingdom of God… when you are sure that you can support a family at the social level of the faithless spidsborger!¹¹

S. K. even went as far as to imply that the clerics themselves didn’t even believe what they were saying: much like the lackadaisical pastor in the introduction of Fear and Trembling, who had failed to actually grasp the words he was preaching in the story of the Binding of Isaac, the “Swedish priest” here fails to notice that the contents of a sermon might be important:

It is related of a Swedish priest that, profoundly disturbed by the sight of the effect his address produced upon the auditors, who were dissolved in tears, he said soothingly, "Children, do not weep; the whole thing might be a lie."

Why does the priest say that no more? No need to, we know it—we're all priests. But in spite of that we well may weep; both his and our tears may be in no way hypocritical, but well-meaning, genuine… as in the theater.¹²

In order to correct this, S. K. called for a grand challenge to the clergy. And this challenge ran through the very heart of the problem identified by Tyson¹³ - God had become supplanted by systems of finance.

Paying the Priests 

...The punishment I could wish to inflict upon the priests would be: to provide each one of them ten times the income he now has... but not a person in the church. But naturally I must fear that neither the world nor the priests would understand this punishment, ideal as it would be. If somebody—let us make the thought-experiment—if somebody were able to prove conclusively that Christ never existed at all, nor the Apostles either, that the whole thing was a fabrication—in case on the part of the State and the congregation there was no hint of suppressing the livings—I should like to see how many priests would lay down their office.

The machine with the 1000 livings goes buzzing on quite calmly. This is perfectly possible when it is a question of "spirit." The fact that one lacks an arm or a leg cannot pass unnoticed; but the "spirit" may perfectly well have vanished—and the machine continues to go.¹⁴

In this sense, the Christianity of the New Testament had been replaced by “Play-Christianity”¹⁵; “the suffering truth”¹⁶ had become nothing in the hands of the clergy. Indeed, all that Christianity could be said to actually be was the very opposite of self-denial and suffering—“a livelihood”¹⁷. A job is a job, becoming a “witness to the truth” is something just another flavour that has no relation to our practical ethics. If only Paul had understood the actual sacrifice of his life would never be asked of him; if only Christ had understood the actual sacrifice of His life would never be asked of Him.

Christianity and Substack

And what does this have to do with Substack? Where are these cannibals who are feasting on the sacrifice of the apostles?

If you have asked yourself these questions in earnest, you are either i) innocent to the state of things as they are, or ii) a far more forgiving and trusting Christian than I am. I accept either diagnosis. Either way, the parallels to S. K.’s “attack” warrant the scarred, objective faith that is cannibalised every day. But first, by way of a critique of Schopenhauer, we should assess S. K.’s ardent view of philosophical-spiritual matters and the problem of inviting sophistry into the writing process:

…Kierkegaard argues that because Schopenhauer has not renounced worldly recognition, his pessimism and asceticism is not complete, and comically, he himself fails to see this. Indeed, this convicts Schopenhauer himself of sophistry, even as he attacks the institutional sophists of the Academy: “making a profit on philosophy is enough to brand a man as a sophist, but it does not follow that not making a profit is sufficient to indicate that one is not a sophist. No, sophistry lies in the distance between what a person understands and what one is; a person who does not stand in the character of what he understands is a sophist” (JP 3883). Nor does it help that Schopenhauer admits to not being himself an ascetic, though this self-awareness is in itself commendable (JP 3883). The gap between the categories of an author’s thought and the categories in which that author lives is sufficient to convict him of being a sophist, or to use language Kierkegaard use in the 1840s, an “inessential author” or “premise author”.¹⁸

I’ll let you decide which is worse, my reader: being a cannibal or being a sophist. In either sense, the charge is clear—to be a teacher of Christianity and to fail to capture the essence of the faith in your own existence is to essentially become one of them. While Schopenhauer had the reduced sentence of simply “making a living” off philosophy, would the Christian fare so well in S. K.’s mind?

While we might worry if we would recognise Christ in the Second Coming, we might better think “what would He cleanse first?”

The issue here, as S. K. possibly may have assessed it, is in the unseriousness with which the “Influencer Christian” views the imitatio Christi - where we are called to bear the cross and understand that hardship is the road, but where are the voices saying “what would Jesus do?” amongst the “TradCath”¹⁹ contingent? Why do so many of them seemingly give financial advice and oddly essentialist accounts of womanhood, both of which denigrate their own traditions? Why do the preachers of the Word lock up their imparted wisdom behind paywalls? As far as I can tell, Christ Himself had very little interest in these financial matters, seeing how only the spiritless could live for something like money²⁰ and Christianity is considered with the spirit-building in the Body of Christ—which makes me wonder how theological “Catholic” investment schemes²¹ actually are, especially when they absolutely seem to be just another example of the “demands of the times”²² that a worldly perspectival stance could just as equally accommodate. In a brutish inversion of S. K.’s understanding of that demand, we might wonder how many make the shift, the teleological suspension of the ethical, the challenge to worldliness—to become “what the age needs” and how many simply secure what wage he receives. Christ held money matters as an absolute irrelevance to the holy life, which is obvious from His dismissive attitude in regards to “rendering unto Caesar” in Luke 20:20-26—to what extent could there be a Christian understanding of investment, trading, or simply the sale of religious knowledge when it is quite clear that Christ calls on those who follow Him to view money as a non-theological and non-important matter?

On the Cannibals

Here, we have reached the crescendo of the problem: the influencer teacher in modernity is much like the priest of S. K.’s contemporary Denmark. Both have found a way to turn Christ’s sacrifice and the suffering of the apostles and the saints into cold, hard cash. In some ways, we should applaud this: it allows one to share the message of Christ without rising to the level of suffering which is demanded in the gospel. But, we should remember that S. K. was not so extreme as to suggest works preceded faith or took priority over the simple trust one should place in Christ in order to be recognised by God, we should hope, as a Christian. Instead, we should remember his only request to the Danish Lutheran Church, with its Hegelian theology:

“As I say, Christianity simply does not exist. The sort of passion required in order that in the most complete separation, in a relation of opposition to men, one may deal only with God (only this Christ means by believing; and therefore in contrast to receiving honor from men, verse 41, or receiving honor from one another, He speaks of seeking the honor which cometh from the only God, verse 44)—that sort of passion is now no more met with. The sort of men who now live cannot stand anything so strong as the Christianity of the New Testament (they would die of it or lose their minds), just in the same sense that children cannot stand strong drink, for which reason we prepare for them a little lemonade—and official Christianity is lemonade-twaddle for the sort of beings that now are called men, it is the strongest thing they can stand, and this twaddle then in their language they call “Christianity,” just as the children call their lemonade “wine.””²³

Admit our hypocrisy; admit that we are not Christ and our message can never directly convey the message of Christ—especially in a way that walks the wrong road when we can see His footprints in the sand. To prioritise finance or family ahead of Christ is to start on the wrong road towards idolatry; so, simply admit that. Be honest when we cannibalise the body of Christ to our own ends, to put an end to the sin of hypocrisy. To turn Socrates towards Christian ends, we might revise his words to: “all that I know is I do not understand the will of God outright—anyone who would pay me to hear me not know this has failed to understand what Christianity is and Who our high priest is”. Otherwise, we are in no better a position than those who preached in those churches in order to “make society feel secure in its hypocrisy”.²⁴

“Thou plain man! The Christianity of the New Testament is infinitely high; but observe that it is not high in such a sense that it has to do with the difference between man and man with respect to intellectual capacity, etc. No, it is for all. Everyone, absolutely everyone, if he absolutely wills it, if he will absolutely hate himself, will absolutely put up with everything, suffer everything (and this every man can if he will)—then is this infinite height attainable to him.”²⁵

1. “The priests are cannibals, and that in the most odious way” from The Instant, no. 9, September 24th 1855, from Attack upon "Christendom", p. 269, S. Kierkegaard

2. Ibid., p. 257-272

3. Also translated as “The Moment”.

4. “Does a Human Being Have the Right to Let Himself Be Put to Death for the Truth?” in “Two Ethical-Religious Essays”, by H. H. from Without Authority, p. 80, S. Kierkegaard

5. “The point at issue with Bishop Martensen as conclusive, Christianly, for the hitherto dubious state of the Established Church, Christianly considered” in Articles in The Fatherland, from Attack upon “Christendom”, p. 19, S. Kierkegaard

6. “There the matter rests!” in Articles in The Fatherland, from Attack upon “Christendom”, p. 12, S. Kierkegaard

7. “Take an Emetic!” from The Instant, no. 1, May 24th 1855, from Attack upon “Christendom”, p. 87, S. Kierkegaard

8. Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship, p. 383, V. Eller

9. “The priests are cannibals, and that in the most odious way” from The Instant, no. 9, September 24th 1855, from Attack upon “Christendom”, p. 268, S. Kierkegaard

10. “The Christianity of the New Testament / the Christianity of “Christendom”” from The Instant, no. 5, July 27th 1855, from Attack upon “Christendom”, p. 165, S. Kierkegaard

11. “Before the Storm: Kierkegaard's Theological Preparation for the Attack on the Church”, M. Plekon, from Faith and Philosophy, vol. 21, no.1 (January 2004), p. 52

12. “Short and sharp”, from The Instant, no. 6, August 23rd 1855, from Attack upon “Christendom”, p. 181-182, S. Kierkegaard

13. In Kierkegaard's Theological Sociology: Prophetic Fire for the Present Age, P. Tyson

14. The Instant, no. 7, August 30th 1855, from Attack upon “Christendom”, p. 200, S. Kierkegaard

15. “Prelude” from The Instant, no. 1, May 24th 1855, from Attack on “Christendom”, p. 80, S. Kierkegaard

16. “The Gospel of Sufferings: Christian Discourses”, from Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, S. Kierkegaard, p. 329

17. “The priest not only proves the truth of Christianity, but he disproves it at the same time” from The Instant, no. 9, September 24th 1855, from Attack upon “Christendom”, p. 271, S. Kierkegaard

18. “Kierkegaard's Uncanny Encounter with Schopenhauer, 1854”, P. Stokes, from Kierkegaard and Great Philosophers, p. 73

19. A vomit-inducing term, but amusingly Protestant in how these particular types approach faith.

20. Fear and Trembling: a Dialectical Lyric, p. 40, [J. de Silentio]

21. And don’t mistake that for a critique of Catholicism in toto—it seems that there is a type of preacher out there that would use the Catholic structure of the church (often with very few references to their mammoth collection of social teachings) to the ends of overlooking Christ altogether. If one was feeling particularly fighty, it might be appropriate to suggest that the Catholic structure necessarily leads to these problems emerging via the muddy conflation of the contingent and finite with the necessary and contingent, but that is far too barbarous to deal with here. Instead, take this fitting rebuke from S. K. as summarized by Mulder: ‘This, according to Kierkegaard, was a principal fault of Catholicism, to imagine that humans could become perfect and like Christ, thus usurping the role that belonged only to Christ’ (2008, 36).

22. “Does a Human Being Have the Right to Let Himself Be Put to Death for the Truth?” in “Two Ethical-Religious Essays”, by H. H. from Without Authority, p. 81, S. Kierkegaard

23. “How can ye believe who receive honor from one another?” John 5:44” from The Instant, no. 10, from Attack upon “Christendom”, p. 277, S. Kierkegaard

24. “Little observations” from The Instant, no. 10, from Attack upon “Christendom”, p. 289-290, S. Kierkegaard

25. “My task” from The Instant, no. 10, from Attack upon “Christendom”, p. 287, S. Kierkegaard