The Christianity of the New Testament is equivalent to a blaze!  (Søren Kierkegaard).

I was 15, when our language teacher (in German) told us about our famous countryman Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855).  The way he did it made me wish to know that great thinker which did happen in years to come.  His Greek/Latin-flavored language gave me a very hard time though.

However, I just had to read him.  His exposure of the hypocrisy and plain bluff of Christendom compared to what The New Testament had to say about commitment to Jesus Christ was to me like one big soul-searching revivalist sermon.  But thank God I never got obsessed by him.  I may freely quote him like Paul quoted one of his day´s poets (Acts 17:28), but only as a stepping stone for the gospel.  That´s the only way I “use” S.K.

I agree with a good pastor-friend in Ca. who pointed out to me that S.K. should be read with discernment.  Yes, he must be taken sometimes with a grain of salt.  His spiritual passion combined with a certain amount of self-centeredness bordered on morbidity.  His high Christian claims made him sometimes declare that he wasn´t even a Christian himself, but at the same time that´s what he professed to be.  He excelled at paradoxes.

His confrontation with our official state religion and its proud clergy once made him declare Christianity in our country as non-existent. He went too far of course.  Even in Søren Kierkegaard´s time there were sincere, though imperfect Christians, nay genuinely born-again people who were channels of a spiritual awakening on the western side of Denmark.  They labored outside the influence of the clergy (though still loyal to the Lutheran church), and they were brutally persecuted by the authorities.  I wish that S.K. had had spiritual fellowship with those simple people instead of wasting his breath at his contemporary prattling opponents and dignified church celebrities.

And yet S.K.´s writings were used in the sovereignty of God.  Sincere men of God were challenged to spiritual reality in a new way by reading him and it had an impact on their awakening ministry in my country and outside our borders.  I´ve been told that America has its own Kierkegaard Institute.

S.K. speaks to me in at least two ways:  In a reviving way, but also as a warning. It is possible to be so ”correct” and intellectually trained in profound thinking that we lose contact with that spiritual fellowship we´re called to be part of no matter how imperfect it is.  It´s sadly possible to be so ”spiritual” that you quench the Spirit. 1 Thess 5:19.

May that never happen, by His grace!

-jn-

17.1.10