Soren Kierkegaard

Oh, how utterly without character that fellow is.” Ten days later the situa-
tion would become, if possible, even more atrocious. For on January 29,
Kierkegaard announced inFædrelandetthat “by canonizing Bishop Mynster
in this fashion, the new bishop makes the entire clerical Establishment, from
a Christian point of view, into a piece of shameless impropriety. For if
Bishop Mynster is a witness to the truth, then—as even the blindest person
can see—every pastor in the country is a witness to the truth.” And then
Kierkegaard ran amok in the genre of the atrocious: “I hereby repeat my
protest, not in toned-down fashion but intensified: I would rather gamble,
booze, whore, steal, and murder than participate in making a fool of God.
I would rather spend my time at bowling alleys, in billiard parlors, my nights
in casinos or at masked balls, than participate in the sort of seriousness that
Bishop Martensen calls Christian seriousness. Indeed, I would rather make
a fool of God quite directly, climb to some elevated spot or go out of doors
where I am alone with him, and there say outright, ‘You are a poor God,
good for nothing better than for people to make a fool of you.’ I would
rather do that than make a fool of him by pompously pretending to be holy,
presenting my life as sheer zeal and ardor for Christianity—though, please
note, in such fashion that this always (damned equivocation!) ‘in addition’
brings me profit in temporal and earthly respects.”
That same day, in a “newspaper supplement,” Kierkegaard published an
article titled “Two New Witnesses to the Truth.” The article had been
occasioned by the publication of a sermon Martensen had delivered on
December 26, 1854, in which he had provocatively called two new bishops
“witnesses to the truth.” “The late Bishop had a quite unusual talent for
concealing the weak sides and infirmities of the established order,” Kierke-
gaard explained. “The new Bishop, Martensen, also a talented man, has a
rare talent for exposing, even in the least things he does, one or another of
the weak sides of the established order.” The consecration of the two new
bishops had taken place the day after Christmas, the day of Saint Stephen
the Martyr, something Kierkegaard found “satirical,” just as he was indig-
nant that in alluding to Saint Stephen, Martensen had taken “the occasion
to note, among other things, that the term witness to the truth ‘reverberates
with a special resonance on this day.’ And this cannot be denied—except
that this special resonance is a dissonance.”
Once again, Ingemann had to come to the rescue, bringing words of
comfort to those who were attacked; in a letter dated January 28 he wrote
the following to Martensen: “I have been greatly angered and offended by
Søren Sophist’s unseemly antics on Mynster’s grave. Your rebuke was harsh,
but just and fitting.” Were Ingemann to offer a single objection, it would
be that Martensen ought not to have attacked Kierkegaard’s physical ap-