Soren Kierkegaard

several days later, just after Kierkegaard launched his attack) Martensen ap-
pended the following postscript: “At 10:30P.M. last night I had a totally
unexpected Nicodemus-visit from Rasmus Nielsen. He remained until
12:30A.M. All I learned, packed under a frightful lot of nonsense, was simply
that he regretted the scandal with Kierkegaard—and wouldn’t it be possible
for me to give this fellow a concession in order to render him harmless in
the future? (What nonsense.) He expressed regret that the forces fighting
on the side of Christianity had been divided. The day of judgment was
near....During all this I remained the very soul of gentleness. In my view,
he has been moved by some inner conviction to the effect that Kierkegaard
isinabadway....Asmentioned, I remained as calm as possible, so as not
to provoke him. Oh, all the things one has to experience!”
Rasmus Nielsen’s attempt to mediate was in vain: On December 28,
Martensen published a rejoinder inBerlingske Tidendein which he pointed
out that Kierkegaard had used a restrictive definition of the term “witness
to the truth,” which was of course not simply identical to the term “martyr”
in its goriest sense. Kierkegaard—“whose Christianity is without a Church
and without a history”—seemed to havewillfullymisunderstood a number
of simple things, including the fact that there undeniably “exist other sorts
of suffering than physical persecution.” Martensen went on to ask, “Cannot
a witness to the truth be stoned in a manner other than by the throwing of
actual stones?” (In all honesty, Kierkegaard, who had once called himself
“the martyr of ridicule,” would have to grant Martensen this.)
As far as the indignant bishop was concerned, Kierkegaard’s protest could
only be explained in one of two ways: “Dr. S. Kierkegaard must therefore
either be so much in the grip of an obsession that he has lost the simplest
sort of presence of mind, or he must have defined the concept of a witness
to the truth (despite the fact that he himself knows better) in this distorted
fashion because he wants to make a stir yet again about ‘playing at Christian-
ity.’ But in that case this daring game ought to have been planned more
carefully. Because, in the absence of any further material, the simple asser-
tion of this presupposition—which is so crudely and tangibly arbitrary and
lacking in foundation that it is almost trivial to rebut it—is, after all, rather
meager for so practiced a sophist as Dr. S. Kierkegaard, and it must be feared
that his thought, so excessively labile at the outset, has begun to become all
too rigid—or that his ideas are now really beginning to become obsessive.”
Furthermore, when Kierkegaard accused Mynster of having suppressed
some of “the most decisively Christian tenets,” he ought to have considered
that a “servant of the Lord must not only guard against suppressing anything
he was sent to say to people, but he must likewise guard against sayingmore
than he has been sent to say. This also means that he must guard against