Soren Kierkegaard

when he, “who is no Christian, wants to decide what Christianity is and
what it is not.” But Kierkegaard had not merely contradicted himself, he
had also “contradictedthe Lord, who promised his congregation eternal life
and victory over the powers of darkness....Butwhen he becomes alto-
gether too impudent and shrill, he will have to put up with the fact that the
Lord’s congregation will leave his shrill voice outside and unheeded, closing
their doors to him while consoling themselves with singing their hymns,
praying their Lord’s Prayer, reading their Bible, listening to preaching of
the Word of God, and living through the sacraments of the Lord.” This
was the Grundtvigian method, and it has rarely awakened offense.
Kierkegaard, who of course had long since ceased attending church, re-
plied three days later: “If I do not mend my ways, the Dean wants me to
be subjected to punishment by the Church. And how? Indeed, the punish-
ment is cruelly calculated, so cruel, that I advise ladies to have their smelling
salts at the ready so they do not swoon when they hear it: If I do not mend
my ways, the doors of the Church will be shut against me. Terrifying! Thus,
if I do not mend my ways, I will be excluded, excluded during the quiet
hours on Sundays from hearing the eloquence of witnesses to the truth—
an eloquence which, if not priceless, is at any rate beyond value. I—poor,
wretched sheep that I am—can neither read nor write, and therefore, thus
excluded, I must languish spiritually, die of hunger from having been ex-
cluded from what surely deserves to be called nourishing, since it nourishes
the pastor and his family!... Frightful, frightful punishment! Frightful
Dean!” After this, Bloch remained very quiet.
A couple of days earlier,Dagbladethad carried a article by an anonymous
man who supported Kierkegaard’s critique of the halfheartedness of the
times. But, the anonymous fellow believed, the fault lay not in the church,
but in the fact that “Christ is a stranger in our homes,” and he therefore
wanted to strike a blow for “home devotions—Yes, that is what we lack!”
Kierkegaard, who until now had reacted to even the least little peep, did
not comment on this profound simplicity, yet a while earlier he himself had
in fact considered something not so different from this suggestion. Since
religious services were merely a “grandiose attempt to make a fool of God,”
he had decided to remain at home and read “one of the more stringent
edifying works on Sunday morning and sing a couple of hymns.” This plan
to hold such one-man religious services was probably never put into effect.
Instead, Kierkegaard came to give his protest a provocative twist by turning
up regularly at the reading room of the Athenæum every Sunday just as the
church bells intoned their call to attend services. On Friday, May 28, 1852,
Kierkegaard took communion for the last time in his life from Pastor
A.N.C. Smith, his father’s old confessor. And he was consistent. On May