Soren Kierkegaard

that as soon as I heard this, I came to see you.” Kierkegaard himself was of
theopinion thathisopening movehad beenquitesuccessful: “Thesituation
was arranged well; there was no opportunity for either vehemence or sar-
casm, both of which seem to me unworthy in these circumstances.”
Kierkegaard had completely miscalculated the situation, however. Myn-
ster, who was always a Gibraltar of self-esteem, did not want to issue any
reprimands at all that day, and he merely made the banal remark that every
bird must sing its own song. And Kierkegaard had come here for a sound
thrashing! Mynster did, however, add that it was hardly likely that the book
would do any good, particularly inasmuch as the first section was an attack
on Martensen and the second section an attack on Mynster himself. This
latter comment alluded to the book’s critical remarks to the effect that
Christianity ought not be made the object of anything so remote as “obser-
vations,” since this was of course precisely the opposite of Christianity,
which observesusto see if we in factdowhat wesay. No matter how one
twisted and turned the matter, preaching was bound to remain “observa-
tions,” Mynster believed, and Kierkegaard did not wish to go into the mat-
ter any further, “for fear of getting into existential issues; I did, however,
explain what I meant by giving several general examples.” Mynster was
nevertheless certain that “the passage about ‘observations’” was aimed at
him. He had every reason to take offense. For the title page ofObservations
on the Doctrines of the Christian Faith—first published in 1833, reprinted for
the fourth time in 1855, and the most widely read devotional book of the
era—bore the name of none other than Jakob Peter Mynster!
But even though it was beyond dispute that the word “observation”
was indeed polemically directed at Mynster, Kierkegaard did not want to
acknowledge publicly his view that the superannuated bishop was existen-
tially unaffected by his own preaching. If Kierkegaard had said what he
really believed about Mynster, he would have called him a man lacking in
character, for this was precisely the designation that recurred most fre-
quently in the catalog of episcopal vices that Kierkegaard was furiously busy
compiling during this period. Because a man who does not convert his
words into actions, his preaching into practice, is in fact a man without
character. Kierkegaard’s preoccupation with this unfortunate situation was
due,firstandforemost,tohisveryparticular wayofreadingandinterpreting
the Bible, but it was also attributable to his general distaste for every sort of
pretended piety. And this could get him to go berserk and display an invidi-
ous inventiveness: “Even though I generally hate machines, I would really
like it if someone would invent a machine (a sort of music box that could
be set up in a church pulpit) that could be wound up, so it could deliver
these enchanting and uplifting sermons. Then every congregation could get