Soren Kierkegaard

to Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and France. On his return to Copenhagen
he continued his study of philosophy, primarily Hegel, and in 1840 he
defended his magister dissertation,The Isolated Subjectivity in Its Principal
Forms, which, having been granted a royal dispensation, Adler submitted
written in Danish—as did Kierkegaard in 1841.
During the winter semester of 1840–41 he offered a series of public lec-
tures at the university on Hegel’s objective logic, but then he broke off his
Copenhagen career, married, moved to Bornholm, and became a parish
pastor for the congregations of Hasle and Rutsker. Several months earlier,
his predecessor in the position had been dismissed on grounds of insanity.
That same year, Bishop Mynster went on an official tour of inspection to
the sunny little island, and in a letter to his wife, dated July 24, 1841, he
discussed his visitation of the newly appointed Pastor Adler: “It was, as you
may well imagine, Copenhagenesque. But what moved me even more was
that, for all his Hegelianism, Adler is quite good at preaching and at looking
after his job, and that his wife, who is a good one, is extremely happy in
Hasle despite the fact that she is a Copenhagen lady. I think he is also liked
by the congregation.”
So everything seemed idyllic, but in 1842, just before Christmas, the life
of the young pastoral couple took a dramatic turn. Adler himself recounted
this in the preface ofSome Sermons: “In December of last year I had almost
completed writing a work that I had intended to call ‘Popular Lectures on
the Subjective Logic.’...Oneevening I had just written on the topic of
the origin of evil; then I saw in a flash that everything depended not upon
thought, but upon the Spirit, and that there existed an evil spirit. That same
night, a hideous sound descended into our room. TheSaviorordered me
to rise up and go in and write down these words.” This is followed by
eleven lines that are supposed to explain how evil arose when “man’s
thoughts became absorbed in themselves.” The preface ends: “Then Jesus
commanded me to burn my own writings and in the future to keep to the
Bible. I know that the sermons and discourses from number VI to the end
were written in collaboration with the grace of Jesus, and that I have only
been the instrument.”
So it was this man and his collection of sermons that turned up in Kier-
kegaard’s apartment one summer day in 1843. Kierkegaard did not write
about the visit himself, but he described it to Hans Brøchner, who relates
the episode as follows: “One day Adler came to Kierkegaard with a work
he had published and talked to him for a long time about both of their
activities as religious writers. Adler made it clear to Kierkegaard that he
viewed him as a sort of John the Baptist in relation to himself, who, since
he had received the direct revelation, was the genuine Messiah. I still re-