Is the Church Untruth?
Reading Kierkegaard’s Critique of the Crowd in Light of the New Testament Ecclesiology
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55935/thilo.v6i1.300Keywords:
critique of the crowd, ecclesiology, New Testament, Søren Kierkegaard, the church, untruthAbstract
This study seeks to enrich the contemporary discourse of the thought of Søren Kierkegaard by positing an analysis of the ecclesiology of the New Testament according to the Danish thinker’s critique of the crowd. Through a literature study on both topics, I try to indicate whether Kierkegaard would consider the church untruth based on its similarity to his depiction of the crowd. Such a literature study is delineated in a three-segmented explanation, each focusing on Kierkegaard’s view of the crowd, the New Testament portrayal of the church, and the intersections between the two. Eventually, I conclude that Kierkegaard would indeed perceive the church as an embodiment of the crowd and consider it untruth. Such a conclusion demands further study on the validity of Kierkegaard’s understanding of Christ, as it confirms the potential aporia that haunts his critique of the crowd when read in light of the New Testament ecclesiology.
Downloads
References
Adams, Edward. “The Shape of the Pauline Churches.” In The Oxford Handbook of Ecclesiology, edited by Paul D. L. Avis, 119–46. Oxford Handbooks. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
Aho, Karl, and C. Stephen Evans. “The Single Individual Is Higher than the Universal: Kierkegaard.” In A Companion to Nineteenth‐Century Philosophy, edited by John Shand, 1st ed., 160–84. Wiley, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119210054.ch6.
Alexander, Loveday C. A. “The Church in the Synoptic Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles.” In The Oxford Handbook of Ecclesiology, edited by Paul D. L. Avis, 55–98. Oxford Handbooks. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
Bellinger, Charles K. “‘The Crowd Is Untruth’: A Comparison of Kierkegaard and Girard.” Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture 3, no. 1 (March 1996): 103–19. https://doi.org/10.1353/ctn.1996.0011.
Black, C. Clifton. “The Synoptic Gospels and Acts.” In T&T Clark Handbook of Ecclesiology, edited by Kimlyn J. Bender and D. Stephen Long, 1st ed., 24–38. T&T Clark Handbooks. New York: T&T Clark, 2020.
Edwards, Aaron P. Taking Kierkegaard Back to Church: The Ecclesial Implications of the Gospel. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2022.
Elrod, John W. Kierkegaard and Christendom. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981.
Healy, Nicholas M. “Ecclesiology.” In The Cambridge Dictionary of Christian Theology, 153–55. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Holm, Anders. Kierkegaard and the Church. Oxford University Press, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199601301.013.0007.
Johnson, Luke Timothy. Contested Issues in Christian Origins and the New Testament: Collected Essays. Supplements to Novum Testamentum, v. 146. Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2013.
Kaftanski, Wojciech. Kierkegaard, Mimesis, and Modernity: A Study of Imitation, Existence, and Affect. 1st ed. New York: Routledge, 2021. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003142768.
Kierkegaard, Søren. “On the Dedication to ‘That Single Individual.’” Translated by Charles K. Bellinger. Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Accessed May 2, 2024. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/kierkegaard/untruth.html.
Kierkegaard, Søren, and Charles E. Moore. Provocations: Spiritual Writings. 1st ed. Farmington, PA: Plough Publishing House, 1999.
Lincoln, Andrew T. “The Johannine Vision of the Church.” In The Oxford Handbook of Ecclesiology, edited by Paul D. L. Avis, 99–118. Oxford Handbooks. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
Miettinen, Reijo. “Hegel’s Political and Social Theory: Ethical Life ( Sittlichkeit ) as a Historical-Institutional Context of Human Development.” Mind, Culture, and Activity 27, no. 4 (October 1, 2020): 360–72. https://doi.org/10.1080/10749039.2020.1725059.
Plekon, Michael. “Kierkegaard, the Church and Theology of Golden-Age Denmark.” The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 34, no. 2 (April 1983): 245–66. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022046900037039.
Rainbow, Paul. “The Gospel of John, the General Epistles, and Revelation.” In T&T Clark Handbook of Ecclesiology, edited by Kimlyn J. Bender and D. Stephen Long, 1st ed., 54–70. T&T Clark Handbooks. New York: T&T Clark, 2020.
Williams, George Willis. “Irony as the Birth of Kierkegaard’s ‘Single Individual’ and the Beginning of Politics.” Toronto Journal of Theology 28, no. 2 (September 2012): 309–18. https://doi.org/10.3138/tjt.28.2.309.
Additional Files
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Kornelius Lumbanbatu
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The author retains copyright and also agrees to grant Theologia in Loco the right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0.
