New Testament, Christianity is the setting of fires. Christ himself says, ‘I
have come to cast fire upon the earth.’” And Kierkegaard the pyromaniac
pointed out that “indeed, it is already on fire, and it will certainly become
a growing conflagration, comparable to a forest fire. For it is ‘Christendom’
that has been set afire.” So this was serious business. Christendom was in
flames, and only a spiritless public would confuse Kierkegaard’s arson with
ordinary clowning.
From here it is no great distance to the sixth issue ofThe Momentand its
upside-down “fire chief,” who bellows and curses and orders the throngs
of people who have rushed to the scene to get out of the way, not so that
the fire can be extinguished, but so that the fire can really take hold and
thus consume “this jungle, the stronghold of all nonsense, all delusions, all
trickery.” Employing his special ear-deafening rhetoric, the “fire chief ”
addresses all these “nice, hearty, sympathetic, helpful people, who would
so much like to help put out the fire”: “The fire chief, he says—and yes,
in other respects the fire chief is a very pleasant and cultivated man, but at
a fire he uses what is called coarse language—he says, or rather he bellows,
‘Oh, go to hell with all your little pails and squirts.’”
The fire chief brutally rebuffs the whole of that “cheerful, hearty non-
sense company who certainly believe that somehow, something is wrong
and that something must be done.” This rejection was a critique of religion
that so resembled active nihilism that it might be difficult to distinguish one
from the other. But the fire chief’s tactics also serve as a reminder that
Kierkegaard’s campaign has a unique historical status, for his tactics consti-
tute a forceful rebuff to all future disciples and all their sophistical attempts to
endow his campaign—that final rejection of Christendom—with a certain
tractability by interpreting it as indirect communication. It was also for these
people—for the academic assistants, the university plagiarists, the members
of Kierkegaard societies and other clubs full of thoughtful people, who a
century and a half later stand around holding “wet tapers and matchsticks
without sulfur”—it was for these people as well that the brusque “fire chief ”
issued his ungentlemanly orders: “Get this nonsense company out of here.”
“Come Listen, Brilliant Bastard Son”
One of those who had been offended and who attempted to do battle with
Kierkegaard by sending the laughter back in his direction was a twenty-
five-year-old theology student by the name of Christian Henrik de Thurah,
the son of a pastor from a parish near Ribe in Jutland. Thurah had acquired
something of a name for himself as the author of a couple of collections of