Soren Kierkegaard

would have been desirable. Martensen further reported that Kierkegaard
was said to have a “big book in press,” and that if this turned out to be true,
“then not only will there be more scandal, butconfusion, because lies and
deceptions are always mixed with a goodly portion of truth, and many ill-
disposed people will find something to support them in their opinions.”
Martensen himself felt that he had received a “dispensation” from involving
himself any further with the matter, but if the situation worsened, he was
of course prepared: “Then the task would be precisely that of combating
him from the point of view ofdoctrine. And the utterly jesuitical—indeed,
diabolical—logic he employs will not withstand any serious analysis. The
worst thing is that he has become so sordid that it is very awkward to get
involved with him.” Thus spoke the Bishop of Zealand. And thus he
washed his hands, which were already extraordinarily clean. We really get
a sense of why Kierkegaard simply could not stand this self-righteous eccle-
siastic—and of why, infuriated by what he viewed as the spinelessness of
the “established order,” Kierkegaard was at one point moved to remark,
“My opponent is a glob of snot.”
Rasmus Nielsen, on the other hand, was not afraid to get involved. In
the January 10 issue ofFædrelandethe published “A Good Deed,” a lengthy
article in which he maintained that Kierkegaard had been justified in pro-
testing against the portrayal of Mynster as a witness to the truth. Nielsen’s
piece was courageous and was thus itself a good deed, but as had so often
been the case with Nielsen in the past, his courage was accompanied by a
sort of touching naı ̈vete ́. This self-appointed mediator had, alas, taken it on
himself to rebut a number of the common prejudices against Kierkegaard.
For example, Kierkegaard was not nearly as coldly rational as one might
think, Nielsen assured his readers, and then went on to support this view
with a couple of sentences, including a splendid parenthetical remark that
spoke volumes about his relationship with Kierkegaard: “In fact, I have the
impression that for all his reflections, Kierkegaard is a man of feelings. When
I have read him, when he has spoken with me (even when he teased me),
I have had the sense that this slender man, with his pointed words, neverthe-
less surely had a tender and childlike temperament.”
Nielsen then turned to the more substantive issue, the accusation that
Kierkegaard was “unchurchly” and that his campaign was a “narrowly pri-
vate matter.” The church’s cause was not furthered merely by invoking
external authorities, but by something much more radical, by “putting
Christ’s words into effect”: “The Church cannot endure if the impression
of what it means to be a witness to the truth is weakened....Directing his
many-faceted and untiring intellectual polemics against every sort of spiri-
tual cunning, Søren Kierkegaard, a master of reflection in a reflective age,