Soren Kierkegaard

ambivalence Kierkegaard went to extraordinary lengths to conceal, but it
became obvious in a little postscript to his article: “I have only—and even
so, only poetically—furnished what one might call an existential corrective
to the established order, tending in the direction of inward appropriation
by the ‘individual.’...IntheActs of the Apostles we read that one ought
to obey God rather than men. There are situations, therefore, in which an
established order can be such that no Christian ought to acquiesce in it,
situations in which a Christian ought not say that Christianity is merely this
sort of indifference toward external arrangements.”
As is well-known, there are situations in which the most important point
comes straggling behind in the footnotes or is shunted off into a postscript.
And this postscript is one such situation. Kierkegaard had developed a mas-
sive mistrust of the sort of Christendom that made a habit of justifying itself
by invoking hidden inwardness, and this put Kierkegaard in an ambivalent
relationship to the ambivalence he himself had defended when he spoke of
the incommensurability of inwardness. It might be surprising that as late as
1851 he was still capable of defending his old position, but he was not
entirely successful in his defense—his rhetoric betrayed him.
It is true that the title page ofPracticeinvites the reader to “awakening
and inward appropriation,” but this invitation is to some extent retracted
by the work itself. As much as anything else,Practiceis in fact a criticism of
the religious inwardness of its times. It was thus a brilliant stroke when
Grundtvig referred toPractice in Christianityas “PracticeofChristianity,”
thus focusing on the demand for existential practice, for reduplication, that
typifies the work and stands in sharp contrast to inwardness, which is always
invisible: “Here we have the concept of established Christendom. In estab-
lished Christendom we are all true Christians, but in hidden inwardness.
The external world has absolutely nothing to do with my being a Christian.
My existence as a Christian cannot be measured by its standards....And
why, then, this concealment?...Oh,naturally because I fear that if some-
one discovered how true a Christian I am, I would be rewarded with ex-
traordinary honor and respect, and I am too much of a true Christian to
want to be honored and respectedbecauseI am a true Christian. You see,
this is why I keep it concealed in hidden inwardness....Allaretrue Chris-
tians—but in hidden inwardness.”
With this caricatured presentation, a new vision of inwardness makes its
entrance in earnest. Someone is too much of a Christian to show how
Christian he actually is and consequently keeps Christianity “concealed
within his innermost being—perhaps concealed so well that it isn’t there at
all.” In other words, the problem is that Christendom has occasioned a
“complete change of scene with respect to being a Christian” because all