CHRISTOLOGY IN THE PHILOSOPHICAL FRAGMENTS

It is strange that the title Christ does not appear in the Fragments, but there is obviously a Christology so delineated that it is unmistakable. The title page raises a three part question: " is an historical point of departure possible for an eternal consciousness; how can such a point of departure have any other than a mere historical interest; is it possible to base an eternal happiness upon historical knowledge?" These questions relate to how man can come to know God. There is a basic epistemic issue in the Fragments and Christology is part of the answer.

While much is focused on Socrates and the doctrine of Recollection, the real person behind this project of thought is Hegel and his followers. The Fragments set forth two contrasting proposals on how knowledge of God is possible. The first reflects on Hegel but Socrates is the front illustration. For the Socratic model recollection was the answer. Man is born with all knowledge and the role of a teacher was merely that of a questioner, an examiner, and as the process of questioning continued the examined recalled the answer to the questions. This knowledge came from man's pre-existence and since man's pre- existence comes from the God, then man's "self-knowledge is a knowledge of God." ( PF p.7) Consequently, a historical point of departure is irrelevant.(PF p.8) 

A historical point of departure is important only if one is in error. There is good sense in the use of the word error for it implies a willfulness that is developed later in the applications of the idea of the Teacher, but for the moment it would also make sense to say that man is in a state of ignorance. There are no references to Locke in the Fragments but there are some relations about being in ignorance and the blank mind analogies. At any rate, the "moment" is stressed. The moment relates to the before and after of knowing, particularly knowing about God. "The seeker must be destitute of the Truth up to the very moment of his learning it..."(PF p.9_)

lf the learner is in a state of error (ignorance), there is no way for the learner to learn the Truth unless the Teacher bring it to him. The Teacher is more than a teacher, more than a Socrates who asks questions. This teacher is God and He gives the condition for understanding the truth. The condition supposes several things: (l)the learner becomes aware of sin, a condition in which the learner has at one point chosen badly and is now in bondage and cannot free himself. (2) He has to have a deliverer from this bondage who is a Savior, (3) This person is also called Redeemer because he redeems the learner from his bondage, and since there is guilt (M) the Teacher involves himself in taking away wrath from the learner, now described as Atonement.

Because the moment is so important, and because the Teacher does for the learner what he could not do for himself, the learner becomes a person of different quality, as in a new creature. His life goes in a different direction and this is called conversion. His sadness in leaving the old life is called repentance. This dramatic change of knowing and understanding is like moving from non-being to being and is called the new birth. This transition is something that a human cannot do by oneself, and hence is only possible by means of the divine Teacher.(PFp.14)  The Socratic admonition to "know thyself" is not possible without the Divine Teacher. Moreover, it is not possible to know the Divine Teacher by mere inward reflection.

The heart of Kierkegaard's Christology is developed in chapter two of the Fragments under the title of God as Teacher and Savior: an Essay of the Imagination. What is so patently obvious upon reading it is its reference to Jesus, the Christ, the Incarnate Word of God. The Incarnation has the motive of love back of it. God is not in need of the learner, the human, and cannot be moved by some "need" to reveal Himself. The Incarnation, the Moment, occurs in history, a given point in the life of man. Love is the motive, and it is also the end, or it has the goal of winning the learner. (PF p.l9) S.K. claims that love seeks equality and it is triumphant "when it makes that which was unequal equal in love." (PF p.2O) Love is the motivation of the Incarnation, because it seeks equality between two unequals, God and man. That equality is realized in the form of a servant so that in Jesus one can say that God walked the shores of Galilee, he raised the dead, he wept over the death of a loved one; moreover, He suffered hunger, thirst, and even death. His whole life was one of suffering born in love.

There is a wonderful story that S.K. used to illustrate the matter of equality in love. It is a two-tiered story moving on two levels between God and his love, and man and his love. A king falls in love with a commoner. He wants to marry her, but his kingly thoughts begin to disturb him. What is at issue is the difference between them: he is a king and she is a commoner. Three solutions exist for the problem. First, the king can marry her, but he is afraid that the memory of their inequity will always be a problem for her, and the lover desires most of all the happiness of the beloved. Second, the king could display his greatness, power, and glory to her and she could do homage to him as her king. Anyone suggesting this to the king would probably lose his head because of committing treason against his beloved. The third option is only implied in the story. The king can become a commoner and love her as an equal.

The second level to the story is that the King is God who loves man and seeks a relationship of love with man. God could accept man as he is and the "marriage" would take place. The beloved has no real understanding of what has taken place. There is always suspicion about the Lover. The second solution for God would be to show his greatness, power, and glory and man would worship him as his God. This was not satisfactory to the King nor to God because what is desired is the glorification of the Beloved, not the King or God. In the case of God, there is an additional problem. It is seen in the marvelous statement: "There once lived a people who had a profound understanding of the divine; this people thought that no man could see God and live.-- -Who grasps this contradiction of sorrow: not to reveal oneself is the death of love, to reveal oneself is the death of the beloved!" (PF p.23)

If God does not reveal himself, we do not know of his Love at all, and for that matter it is true of humans. If a boy does not tell a girl he loves her, she will probably go marry someone else. But if God does reveal his greatness, power, and glory, then it is the death of the beloved. The solution is another way of declaring God's love--the way of self-revealing in the Incarnation. God is the Teacher in Jesus Christ. God is the Teacher who teaches us what no other human being can teach us about God. Only God can reveal God. But it is God in human form, a true form, not an illusion, or mere outer garment, but God Incarnate. The contrast between Socrates as a teacher and Jesus as a teacher is very stark. Socrates could only remind people of what they already knew. Jesus taught about God what no man could really know. John 1:18 is not quoted but it is implied in the Christology in this chapter.

Kierkegaard expresses similar ideas in Concluding Unscientific Postscript. He wrote: "What now is the absurd? The absurd is--that the eternal truth has come into being in time, that God has come into being, has been born, has grown up, and so forth, precisely like any other individual human being, quite indistinguishable from other individuals." (CUP p. l88)

Having set forth firmly the Christology of God as Teacher, S.K. does not defend the arguments for the existence of God as theologians of the older tradition did. ln their case arguments for God's existence were often presented before the idea of self-revelation on the part of God. Here, S.K. argues that proofs for the existence of God already assume God's existence and are therefore useless.

In a strange little appendix on the Paradox and the offended consciousness, S.K. explores the situation in which Reason encounters the Paradox. Reason states that the paradox is absurd, contrary to reason; but in reality, this could not be known without the paradox revealing it to reason. Reason mimics the Paradox. Philosophers have made "supernatural things trivial and commonplace" (PF p.42) but Reason cannot get the Paradox into its head. Hence Reason is inadequate to understand the Paradox by itself. One cannot return merely to the Socratic model, but one must depend upon the Paradox for the understanding of the Paradox and the change in becoming a New Being.

Christology takes a different application in the Case of the Contemporary Disciple. ls there any advantage of being an eye witness of the Paradox? Does an intellectual knowledge of all that the God-Man did serve to make one a Disciple? S.K. poses the possibility of a diligent auditor who heard all that Jesus said and taught, and made copious notes for himself and possibly all who would read them later, but this does not make one any thing other than a historian. There are two important qualifications about a disciple. First, there is the passion of faith which one must have and it is given by the Paradox. Second, the object of faith is the Teacher, not the teaching. Given the declaration already made that the Servant experienced death, the object of faith is living. The Christian hope centered in the resurrection is affirmed. The disciple in any generation is a person who has faith and commitment to the Teacher and this makes everyone a contemporary. Hence, to be a contemporary has a peculiar sense attached to it. A contemporary eyewitness without faith is not  a true contemporary. A later generation person with faith becomes a contemporary regardless of when he lives. By the same reasoning there is no Disciple at Second Hand. It may appear easier to accept the Fact because of others who have accepted it before, but this is to miss the  important point that S.K. makes. To be a disciple is to have received the condition with the response of Faith in the Teacher. So, he states, "For whoever has what he has from God himself clearly has it at first hand; and he who does not have it from God himself is not a disciple." (PF p.84) Any exception to this is to place a third party in the status of being God. Another person can inform others that he has believed the Fact but only God can give the condition for faith.

The Fragments point up the importance of Christology for both Soren and for Christianity. Our sense of the eternal is related to a historical event. The importance of the historical keeps Christianity from being merely philosophy. The importance of faith keeps Christianity from being merely history. The importance of faith in the Teacher keeps Christianity from being mere ethics. The stress on a new birth keeps Christianity from being merely mental reform, or new year's resolutions.

There is little reference to a creedal statement in the Fragments, none that I recall, but the result in sweeping comments is consistent with a Chalcedonian View of Christology. One reason for excluding creedal references is that "Christianity is no doctrine concerning the unity of the divine and the human .... If Christianity were a doctrine, the relationship to it would not be one of faith, for only an intellectual type of relationship can correspond to a doctrine. Christianity is therefore not a doctrine, but the fact that God has existed."(CUP, p. 291) The Incarnation is stressed by allusions to the Gospel of John but no long commentaries are given in the main course of the work. Presumed objectors speaking at the end of the chapters allow that what has been said sounds strangely familiar to something seen in the N.T. But in spite of all these comments, one cannot read the Fragments and not be aware that there is placed before the reader a Christology that is central to his understanding of God.