240 Essays in Anarchism and Religion: Volume 1
(rather than acting as a radical challenge to the world). This is
a particular idea of a God of Providence (divine oversight and
ordering of human order) which, as explored below, Proudhon
rejects as unjust and Kierkegaard critiques as a convenient projec-
tion of bourgeois Christendom and a betrayal of true Christianity.
Kierkegaard does so, I contend, by drawing a distinction between
theistic ideas of God and the living God who is beyond and some-
times at odds with even avowed Christians’ constructions of such
ideas. To an extent, Proudhon also proposes a distinction along
similar lines. However, an essential departure between Proudhon
and Kierkegaard resides in the difference between Proudhon’s
conviction that such a God is ultimately unknowable, and there-
by irrelevant (rather than to be venerated for its mystery), and
Kierkegaard’s belief that the unknowable God has given Godself
in saving revelation.
This essay represents an attempt to think Kierkegaard’s and
Proudhon’s readings of this dialectical relationship between the
affirmation and denial of ‘God’ together in creative dialogue.
While in this essay I will risk an experiment in thinking both
with and against Kierkegaard^7 as well as Proudhon, I suggest that
the seeds of a dialectical reading of theistic thought in relation
to its antagonists is already present in Kierkegaard’s own read-
ing of Feuerbachian atheism. Kierkegaard provocatively suggests
that Feuerbach’s exposé of theology as disguised anthropology
might serve Christianity as a critique against the all-too domes-
ticated anthropomorphic idols of Christendom’s portrayal of
‘God’. Listening to the voice of Feuerbach is akin to receiving
“ab hoste consilium” [advice from the enemy] even though this
enemy may be a “malitieus dæmon” [evil daimon].^8 Although talk
of Proudhon as “the French Feuerbach” was somewhat errone-
ous,^9 he stands alongside, and at times against Feuerbach^10 as a
demonic-prophetic voice opposing the theistic idol of a certain
God of Providence: the projected God-image who supposedly en-
dorses and upholds the status quo of Christendom for the bene-
fit of those already empowered by it. In referring to Feuerbach’s
assertion that “the true sense of Theology is Anthropology”^11 as
advice from a demon, Kierkegaard implicitly affirms the dialec-
tical value of atheism as a critical iconoclastic force against the