WHAT is it to be a Christian? To be a dean of a cathedral, admired by many and with a prominent place among the community? To go to church every week and contribute to the Church’s finances? To indicate on a census form that one is a Christian? To be baptised and, perhaps, confirmed? Søren Kierkegaard is clear that none of these alone makes a person a Christian. His task was to reintroduce Christianity into a culture in which everyone considered that they were a Christian. This, he considered, was far more difficult and challenging than introducing Christianity to people who had not previously heard of it.
For Kierkegaard, Christianity is severe, harsh, demanding, and yet full of joy, peace, and positive emotions (a theme that Roberts helpfully deals with in detail). Spiritually, what a person’s joy is about makes all the difference, and joy over temporal things will not last. In this well-written, scholarly, and yet accessible book, the author deals with Kierkegaard’s exposition of the neglected area of what make a Christian character — what it really means to be a Christian; perhaps what it means to be holy.
Unusually and positively, he draws comparisons with Aristotle’s approach to the virtues. Justice is a central virtue for Aristotle, as it has to do with fairness in society; but righteousness is central in Christianity: this means uprightness of character, principally expressed through faith, hope, and love.
Love, as Roberts explains, is not a feeling: it is works of love, which is expressed in any life wholly centred on God. If I love God, and God loves everyone, then I must necessarily love everyone: God is the “middle term” of love of neighbour. Love, for the Christian, is not an emotion, but a universal duty; and this, combined with faith and hope, separates it from any Aristotelian understanding. For Kierkegaard, all true virtues centre on a relationship with God and are related to the task of becoming fully human. Christianity represents what this means.
Humility, patience, and gratitude are also distinctively Christian, and Roberts describes these as “satellite” virtues. Human beings are a synthesis of the temporal and the eternal, but, if the latter is ignored, then one cannot fulfil the real potential of a human being. Individuals have the choice whether to serve the temporal or the eternal: we have to live in the temporal, but can chose to live so that our character is grounded in and formed by obedience to the eternal. Humility, patience, and gratitude, as well as a willingness to suffer, are marks of being grounded in the eternal.
AlamyKierkegaard in a drawing by Niels Christian Kierkegaard, c.1840
Kierkegaard is sometimes referred to as “that melancholy Dane”, and certainly he dwells (albeit in a positive sense) on despair, anxiety, and anguish. He also, however, strongly emphasises the emotional content of joy experienced by those who really centre their lives unconditionally on God. This joy will “only come to those who love what is true, honourable, just, pure, lovely, commendable and worthy of praise”, and this emotion will be found only by those who are wholeheartedly committed to God and to these values, and who recognise the unimportance and triviality of the world’s way of looking at things. In a way, Christian character will be found only by those who seek to “live the love relationship”. This book sets out what this entails.
Some forms of hardship, opposition, and suffering are inevitable in the life of every Christian, but these, for Kierkegaard, play a joyful part in awakening the spirit in a person. They can help to move someone from a naïve conception of Christianity to something deeper and more profound. The same can apply to despair, as it can lead to seeing the unimportance and transitoriness of the worldly things that are generally the occasions for despair. Despair can, indeed, be the occasion for a spiritual awakening and a recognition that the temporal cannot provide a remedy.
This book makes uncomfortable, insightful, and challenging reading for anyone who claims to be a Christian — but Kierkegaard himself would have been entirely comfortable with these words. The book is faithful to his authorship.
Dr Peter Vardy is a former Vice-Principal of Heythrop College, University of London.
Recovering Christian Character: The psychological wisdom of Søren Kierkegaard
Robert C. Roberts
Eerdmans £39.99
(978-0-8028-7316-3)
Church Times Bookshop £35.99