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MBS TexTe 175

10. Jahrgang

2013

Thomas K. Johnson

Dialogue with Kierkegaard

in Protestant Theology:

Donald Bloesch, Francis

Schaeffer, and Helmut

Thielicke

Philosophical Initiatives

Philosophische Anstöße

Table of Contents

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Au. 2013

Donald Bloesch ........................................................................ 3

Francis Schaeer ...................................................................... 6

Helmut ielicke ..................................................................... 9

Remarks ................................................................................. 12

Annotations ........................................................................... 13

e Author ............................................................................. 14

Study Centers ..........................................................................15

Imprint .................................................................................. 16

PhilosoPhische Anstösse 3

Dialogue with Kierkegaard in Protestant Theology …

Twentieth century Protestant theol-

ogy eectively began in 1919 with the

publication of Karl Barth’s great Ro-

man’s Commentary. Here Barth eec-

tively declared the otherness of God

and the crisis of modern optimistic re-

ligion and culture, and Barth did this

under the inuence of Søren Kierkeg-

aard. Kierekegaardian phrases like “the

innite qualitative dierence between

time and eternity” echo throughout

Barth’s early works, and these themes

are an important part of what makes

twentieth century theology so dier-

ent from nineteenth century theology.

In his later works Barth did not make

so many references to the idiosyncratic

Dane, but dialogue with Kierkegaard

had begun and was to become a fas-

cinating and many-sided element in

the writings of many Protestant theo-

logians after Barth. And this dialogue

with Kierkegaard can serve as a kind of

red thread that can lead us into some of

the distinctive and interesting themes

of the theology of the last century.

ree theologians of the generation

after Barth who carried on extensive di-

alogues with Kierkegaard were Donald

Bloesch, Francis Schaeer, and Helmut

ielicke. e three represent a variety

of intellectual, confessional, and na-

tional backgrounds, yet the three have

some important things in common.

All three saw themselves as followers

of the Protestant Reformation, and all

three, like Barth, saw a very close con-

nection between theology and Chris-

tian preaching. And all three thought

the dialogue with Kierkegaard was sig-

nicant. But there the similarity ends.

Each theologian has a distinctive inter-

pretation of and response to our Danish

friend.

Donald Bloesch

Donald Bloesch is an American,

though he did much of his post doc-

toral study internationally, at Oxford,

Tuebingen, and Basel. He regards him-

self as a follower of Karl Barth, Jacques

Ellul, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Dietrich

Bonhoeer, though Barth is especially

important to him. He likes to call him-

self “evangelical” and generally aligns

more with Reformed than Lutheran

points of view. In his interaction with

Dialogue with Kierkegaard in Protestant

Theology: Donald Bloesch, Francis Schaeffer,

and Helmut Thielicke

Thomas K. Johnson

MBS TexTe 175

Kierkegaard, there are three themes

worthy of attention: the nature of faith,

the God-world relation, and the rela-

tion of law and gospel.

Bloesch applauds Kierkegaard’s re-

action to the Hegelian notion of faith.

He notes, “Kierkegaard particularly

reacted against the Hegelian distor-

tion of Christianity as this was reected

in philosophical theology. Whereas

liberal and philosophical theologians

contended that the object of faith is

the most universal, Kierkegaard main-

tained that it is the absolutely singular

as this appears in history.”

is discussion is clearly being carried

out in light of the distinction Lessing

made between the necessary truths of

reason and the accidental truths of his-

tory. Hegel is interpreted here as deal-

ing only with the necessary truths of

reason, “a cosmic process whereby the

Absolute goes out of itself and then re-

turns to itself.”

Against Hegel, Bloesch

and Kierkegaard argue that faith has to

do with a particular historical event,

the Incarnation, “Jesus Christ himself

entering time.” Kierkegaard “cogently

showed that Christianity understood

as the entry of the living God into his-

tory demands the passionate response

of faith.”

Over against Hegel, “For Kierkeg-

aard the truth of faith is not only above

reason but also against reason. It is an

‘objective uncertainty’ that can be held

to only by the passion of inwardness. It

requires a leap into the darkness of the

unknown rather than rational supports;

… truth is not an abstract doctrine or

an intuitive apprehension but the trans-

formative reality of the incarnate Word

making contact with us in paradoxical

encounter.”

Bloesch thinks Kierkegaard was right

to place faith against reason rather

strongly. Indeed, Bloesch repeatedly

places theology and philosophy in al-

most absolute antithesis in his writings,

philosophy being based on autonomous

reason as it attempts to articulate the

foundational themes that shape a cul-

tural ethos, while theology is “the at-

tempt to see all things in the light of

God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ.”

And Bloesch repeatedly quotes Pascal

to the eect that the God of the phi-

losophers is not the God of Abraham,

Isaac, and Jacob. Reason and faith,

philosophy and theology, stand against

each other so strongly because, “Prior

to faith our reasoning is distorted by

sin. We use our reason to rationalize

our self-interest rather than come to the

truth.”

Yet Bloesch cannot completely follow

Kierkegaard’s leap of faith that makes

faith contrary to evidence or reason. He

claims faith is “a venture of trust based

on evidence that faith itself provides.

We do not believe without our reason,

but we also do not believe on the ba-

sis of reason.”

In this regard Bloesch

quotes the Augustinian formula credo

ut intelligam, I believe in order to un-

derstand. And Bloesch thinks true faith

leads to certainty, not objective uncer-

tainty. He claims, “the decision of faith

is as important as the fact of revelation

in giving us certainty of the truth of

PhilosoPhische Anstösse 5

Dialogue with Kierkegaard in Protestant Theology …

faith. e revelation is not simply as-

sented to but is existentially embraced

as the truth or power of salvation. Cer-

tainty of truth becomes ours only in the

act of decision and obedience by which

the external truth becomes internalized

in faith and life.”

A weakness in this discussion is that

Kierkegaard seems to associate rea-

son with Hegelian philosophy whereas

Bloesch relates reason to all types of

philosophy without clarifying what

type of philosophy is in view. It may

be that faith and reason stand in some-

what dierent relations, depending on

what type of philosophy reason sup-

posedly produces; this possibility is not

mentioned by Bloesch.

Bloesch is generally quite positive re-

garding Kierkegaard’s concerns on the

God-world relationship. He strongly af-

rms “an innite qualitative distinction

between God and humanity.” Bloesch

comments, “Whereas traditional Chris-

tian faith has stoutly armed the real-

ity of the living God who created both

mind and matter, the modern trend is

to treat one of these as the all-encom-

passing reality, thereby making it tan-

tamount to God.”

Bloesch thinks Ki-

erkegaard was right to reject the strong

immanentism of the theologians inu-

enced by Hegel because this tends to

blur the distinction between God and

creation. Yet Bloesch thinks Kierkeg-

aard struggled with two irreconcilable

views of God in his own mind. On the

one hand, Kierkegaard armed the

biblical picture of God who loves and

cares for his people and is known in

Christ. On the other hand, Kierkegaard

also pictures God as “the impassible,

self-contained Absolute, blithely tower-

ing above the world of temporality and

materiality.”

It may be that Kierkeg-

aard’s mind was divided between the

God of the philosophers and the God of

Abraham, even while he rejected Hege-

lian notions of God.

A distinctive part of Bloesch’s dia-

logue with Kierkegaard has to do with

the relationship between law and gos-

pel, an important theme in Protestant

theology since Martin Luther. Lu-

ther claimed that good theology must

clearly distinguish law and gospel.

e law has to do with the commands

and demands of God; the gospel is the

promise of salvation by faith in Christ.

According to Luther, this means that

one must experience the law of God

in its condemning use, pointing out

our sin, before one is ready to believe

the gospel of forgiveness by faith in

Christ. Kierkegaard follows Luther’s

order of law and gospel in the way he

puts the ethical and aesthetic stages of

life prior to the religious stage, as well

as in the way he analyzes the misery

of life and the human predicament as

a step to faith. In contrast to Kierkeg-

aard, Bloesch follows Karl Barth, who

insisted that the gospel comes before

the law. is means there is a reversed

relation between faith and such things

as ethics, aesthetics, and existential

analysis. Bloesch believes ethics, aes-

thetics, and existential analysis can

only be done properly in light of faith

and on the basis of faith. He claims,

Thomas K. Johnson

MBS TexTe 175

“we cannot really know the extremity

of our need until we are rst awakened

to faith by the love of God shown forth

in Jesus Christ.” In contrast, “Kierkeg-

aard allowed that the person in despair

could have “a faint intimation of his or

her existential need for God, though

not a true understanding.”

is dierence regarding law and

gospel leads to very dierent theologi-

cal assessments of daily life. Bloesch

argues:

“Only as people of faith can we truly

enjoy the pleasure of life. e aes-

thetic life is not to be left behind but

to be appropriated anew in light of

the free grace given us by God, which

restores rather than annuls creation.

Whereas Barth was rmly convinced

that, despite human perdy and ob-

stinacy, culture could be transformed

and renewed by divine grace, Ki-

erkegaard came to the sobering con-

clusion that cultural pursuits had to

be renounced in the interest of secur-

ing eternal happiness.”

To avoid misunderstanding, one

should note that while Kierkegaard

seems to have had a world renouncing

spirituality, this was not true of Luther.

For Luther, the assurance of faith led

him to a vigorous involvement in the

aairs of everyday life as the sphere in

which one loves his neighbor. In Prot-

estant theology and ethics, whether one

engages or withdraws from culture and

the enjoyment of daily life is inuenced

by more theological factors than only

the relation between law and gospel.

One might expect the reversal of the

relation between law and gospel to gos-

pel and law might lead Bloesch to an

excessive optimism about the Christian

life. But this is not the case. He quotes

Kierkegaard, “the forgiveness of sins …

does not mean to become a new man

under happier circumstances, but to

become a new man in the consoling

assurance that the guilt is forgiven,

even though the consequences of sin

remain.”

Bloesch adds, “We must re-

pent of our virtues as well as our vices,

because sin accompanies every good

work, and yet have the full assurance

that the perfect love of Christ covers the

multitude of our sins.”

Francis Schaeffer

Francis Schaeer was an American,

though he spent much of his career in

Switzerland. While emphasizing his in-

terpretation of historic Protestant doc-

trine he developed a creative analysis of

modern and post-modern culture. His

theology was heavily inuenced by the

“Old Princeton eology” of Charles

Hodge and B. B. Wareld, with some

inuence from the “Amsterdam eol-

ogy” of Abraham Kuyper and Herman

Bavinck. His method of cultural analy-

sis was inspired by J. Gresham Machen.

Schaeer’s approach to Kierkegaard

is very dierent from that of either

Bloesch or ielicke. is is for two

reasons: rst, Schaeer deals with Ki-

erkegaard primarily in his works of

cultural analysis, not philosophical or

theological works; and second, Schaef-

PhilosoPhische Anstösse 7

Dialogue with Kierkegaard in Protestant Theology …

fer interacts mostly with Kierkegaard-

ianism as a cultural force that picked up

themes and phrases from Kierkegaard,

which may or may not accurately reect

Kierkegaard’s intentions. In his early

works Schaeer was not always clear

that he was describing Kierkegaardian-

ism, not necessarily Kierkegaard per se.

Later Schaeer made the distinction

very clear. His denitions communi-

cate much of what concerned him.

“ere can and will be continu-

ing discussion among scholars as to

whether the secular and religious

scholars who built on Kierkegaard

did him justice. However, what in

these can be called secular and reli-

gious Kierkegaardianism did bring

to full tide the notion that reason will

always lead to pessimism. at is, one

must try to nd optimistic answers

in regard to meaning and values on

an ‘upper level’ outside of reason.

rough a ‘leap of faith’ one must try

to nd meaning without reason.”

Schaeer describes Kierkegaard as

the rst man to live below the “line of

despair.” He claims that the history of

western philosophy has been a history

of people trying to draw theoretical cir-

cles that would encompass a complete

description of life and the world with-

out having to depart from the tradi-

tional logic of antithesis. is eort has

been “rationalistic,” which in his terms

is not the opposite of empiricist but the

opposite of theistic. Rationalistically

people begin from themselves, using

Man as the only reference and integra-

tion point, and attempted to develop a

unied system of knowledge, meaning,

and values. One thinker would follow

after another and cross out a previous

theoretical circle, saying, in eect, you

can live in my circle, even though you

cannot live in the previously drawn

theoretical circles. is process was op-

timistic in the sense that thinking peo-

ple generally expected someone to draw

the perfect theoretical circle. But nally

this optimism ran out.

“e philosophers came to the conclu-

sion that they were not going to nd a

unied rationalistic circle that would

contain all thought, and in which

they could live. It was as though the

rationalist suddenly realized that he

was trapped in a large room with no

doors and no windows, nothing but

complete darkness. From the middle

of the room he would feel his way to

the walls and begin to look for an

exit. He would go round the circum-

ference, and then the terrifying truth

would dawn on him that there was

no exit, no exit at all!”

With this obvious allusion to Sartre,

in terms that echo Plato’s Parable of

the Cave, Schaeer describes the end

of optimistic rationalism. At this point

thought and culture could go in dier-

ent directions. One option would be to

give up on autonomous rationalism and

go outside of the self to nd satisfactory

answers for life. is would involve ac-

cepting the possibility or need for di-

vine revelation. A second option would

be to live with consistent nihilism. e

third option, predominantly chosen

by modern culture, would have been

Thomas K. Johnson

MBS TexTe 175

unthinkable to previous generations: a

split eld of knowledge. ought and

culture crossed the “line of despair,”

which is a historical line, after which

western people strongly tend to split

“knowledge” into two parts, pessimis-

tic, materialistic rationality in which

man is seen as a meaningless machine,

separated from the realm of optimistic

irrationality, in which people try to nd

hope, meaning, or personality. Accord-

ing to people who live below the line

of despair, “on the basis of reason men

will always come to pessimism—man is

a machine and meaningless. erefore,

they developed a concept of nonreason,

an attempt of man to achieve meaning

and signicance outside the framework

of rationality.”

Schaeer is very fond of some of

Kierkegaard’s religious writings, but

he is very critical of the philosophical

framework that Kierkegaard brought

into western thought. Schaeer sees

Kierkegaard as the father of many

twentieth century cultural problems,

especially because of his notion of the

“leap of faith” that separates life into

two levels, the level of rational pessi-

mism and the level of irrational faith

and optimism.

“One must understand that from the

onset of Kierkegaardianism onward

there has been a widespread concept

of the dichotomy between reason and

nonreason, with no interchange be-

tween them. e lower-story area of

reason is totally isolated from the op-

timistic area of nonreason. e line

which divides reason from nonreason

is as impassable as a concrete wall

thousands of feet thick, reinforced

with barbed wire charged with

10,000 volts of electricity. ere is

no osmosis between the two parts. So

modern man now lives in such a to-

tal dichotomy, wherein reason leads

to despair. ‘Downstairs’ in the area

of humanistic reason, man is a ma-

chine, man is meaningless. ere are

no values. And “upstairs” optimism

about meaning and values is totally

separated from reason.”

In Schaeer’s works there are two

closely related terms. e “line of de-

spair” refers to this historical transition

he connects to the inuence of Kierkeg-

aard. His term “existential methodol-

ogy” refers to any system or method of

thought that separates life and thought

into two levels, pessimistic rationality

and optimistic irrationality. And he

thinks that after Kierkegaard started

working below the line of despair, the

existential methodology gradually

spread to other areas of learning, the or-

der being roughly philosophy to art to

music to general culture to theology.

Even much of twentieth century Prot-

estant theology has lived below the line

of despair, using an existential meth-

odology, e. g., Barth, Bultmann, Til-

lich, and Reinhold Niebuhr. ough a

historical transition of this magnitude

cannot be dated precisely, Schaeer es-

timates that the slide under the line of

despair should be dated at about 1890

in Europe and 1935 in North America.

For Schaeer, the relation between faith

and reason is not just one among many

PhilosoPhische Anstösse 9

Dialogue with Kierkegaard in Protestant Theology …

interesting theological or philosophical

questions. He believes the Kierkegaard-

ian mistake is causing the shaking and

shuttering western civilization. God,

human dignity, meaning, and universal

morals are all seen as irrational in a so-

ciety that prizes rationality.

e entire civilization is left without

the intellectual foundation that Christi-

anity once provided. While Christian-

ity is clearly not derived from rational-

ity, Schaeer claims it is not irrational

and gives “true truth” about God, man,

morals, and meaning, not just irrational

answers or existential truths.

Within Schaeer’s cultural critique,

though Kierkegaard may have been a

Knight of Faith, he played a key role in

the loss of the philosophical and moral

foundations of civilization. If Schaeer

is right, the Knight of Faith may, para-

doxically, have aided in the teleological

suspension of the ethical for an entire

society.

Schaeer’s solution can be phrased

in terms of his analysis of the narrative

of Abraham’s almost sacrice of Isaac,

(Genesis 22) which was so important

for Kierkegaard’s thought.

“In his thinking concerning Abra-

ham, Kierkegaard did not read the

Bible carefully enough. Before Abra-

ham was asked to move toward the

sacrice of Isaac (which, of course,

God did not allow to be consum-

mated), he had much propositional

revelation from God, he had seen

God, God had fullled promises to

him. In short, God’s words at this

time were in the context of Abra-

ham’s strong reasons for knowing

that God both existed and was totally

trustworthy.”

Clearly, Schaeer thinks faith and ra-

tionality are somehow compatible.

Helmut Thielicke

Helmut ielicke was a German Lu-

theran who was heavily inuenced by

Karl Barth as a young man, and like

Barth he was involved in the Confess-

ing Church that tried to resist Hitler

during World War II. After the war he

wrote extensively in theology and eth-

ics, often claiming to follow Luther

while arguing against Barth, even while

there were many Barthian elements in

his thought.

ielicke claimed that “Kierkegaard

has two right hands and no left hand.”

is humorous statement, using terms

borrowed from Luther, shows how

ielicke used and reacted to Kierkeg-

aard in his theology and ethics. For Lu-

ther, the kingdom of the right hand had

to do with one’s relation to God by faith,

while the kingdom of the left hand had

to do with God’s indirect reign in the

world by means of the creation orders,

especially the state. So ielicke thinks

Kierkegaard has something to oer in

the realm of faith but little to say about

ethics and society.

Paradoxically, a theme borrowed from

Kierkegaard, that sin is “relating oneself

absolutely to the relative,”

becomes an

important theme in ielicke’s political

ethics. He sees ideological tyranny as

Thomas K. Johnson

MBS TexTe 175

one of the worst political problems of

the twentieth century. And within ev-

ery ideology that tyrannizes there is a

problem of idolatry, “a creaturely reality

is illegitimately elevated to the rank of

the creator.”

In other words, an ide-

ology results when people relate them-

selves absolutely to the relative, when

they treat some part of creation as if it

were the creator and interpret all of life

in light of it. Further, a state becomes

totalitarian when it not only promotes

an ideology but also begins to treat itself

as absolute, instead of as only one part

of life.

In ielicke’s analysis, ideolog-

ical tyranny is driven by multiple levels

of relating absolutely to the relative. A

key political eect of Christianity is to

break some of this false absolutizing.

Language borrowed from Kierkegaard

describes this quite well.

A second key use ielicke makes of a

theme from Kierkegaard has to do with

interpreting the image of God in hu-

man nature. Many theologians in the

western tradition have had ontological

denitions of the image of God that

identied the image with some human

quality, such as personality, freedom,

responsibility, conscience, or perhaps

with the possession of a soul. Against

this tradition, ielicke claimed the

image is a relational notion, specically

having to do with a relation to God.

Whether a person stands in a positive

or a negative relation to God, “It is the

divine address which constitutes the

person as imago Dei.”

God is speaking

to all people, whether people respond in

faith and have a positive relation or in

unbelief and have a negative relation. It

is the fact that every person stands in

either a positive or negative relation to

God that lends such dignity to human

life. at is why ielicke likes to call

human dignity “alien,” not inherent or

intrinsic. It has to do with something

outside the person, a relationship, not

something internal to the person.

In support of this notion ielicke

quotes a parable of Kierkegaard from

Sickness Unto Death.

“is self acquires a quality or quali-

cation in the fact that it is the self

directly in the sight of God. is

self is no longer the merely human

self but is what I would call, … the

theological self, the self directly in the

sight of God. … A herdsman who (if

this were possible) is a self only in the

sight of cows is a very low self, and so

also is a ruler who is a self in the sight

of slaves—for in both cases the scale

of measure is lacking. But what an

innite accent falls upon the self by

getting God as a measure.”

ielicke argues repeatedly that we

must not see the value of a person as be-

ing merely derived from the functions

or abilities of the person. Such a func-

tional approach to the value of a person

he sees as typical of totalitarian ideolo-

gies. Speaking in rather Kierkegaard-

ian terms he declares that the value of

a person is an alien dignity that comes

because each person stands in some re-

lation to God and is valued by God.

A third theme from Kierkegaard

that ielicke uses and develops is the

distinction between Religion A and

PhilosoPhische Anstösse 11

Dialogue with Kierkegaard in Protestant Theology …

Religion B found in the Concluding

Unscientic Postscript. e rst, which

ielicke calls “the human possibility

of religion,” carries a person “beyond

the ethical but only in such a way that

while he refers all the impulses and mo-

ments of his nite life to the absolute re-

lation with God, he is also aware that he

resists this relation and is unable to put

it into eect. What he attains beyond

the ethical is simply a deepening of his

sense of guilt.”

e only presupposi-

tion of Religion A is “human nature

in general.”

Religion B is a “wholly

other” that does not arise from human

possibilities but is received from God as

a pneumatic miracle. “e sense of sin

is radicalized but certainty of forgive-

ness is also received.”

“e individual

is edied, not by nding the relation

to God inside himself, but by relating

himself to something outside him-

self.”

Kierkegaard seems to be think-

ing in Lutheran terms here. Religion

A has to do with the law of God while

Religion B also trusts in the gospel of

Christ.

is theological concern of Kierkeg-

aard becomes central for ielicke. He

sees two types of religion and two types

of theology. On the level of religious life

he is concerned about the “dierence

between the reception of the salvation

event into the consciousness and the op-

posing integration of ourselves into the

salvation event.”

At this point his con-

cern seems to exactly follow Kierkeg-

aard and is similar to common distinc-

tions in Protestant thought such as that

between religion as man’s search for

God and faith as the response to God’s

search for man (Barth) or types of re-

ligious commitment (George Forell) or

even between law and gospel (Luther).

But ielicke further develops this dis-

tinction into two basic types of theol-

ogy. eology A (Cartesian) starts with

some type of philosophical or anthro-

pological pre-understanding and asks

what type of truth from the Christian

message can be appropriated by a self

with this kind of consciousness. Great

representatives of this type of theology

include Lessing, Schleiermacher, and

Bultmann. e problem, obviously, is

that our human self-understanding may

function as a screen or sieve that lters

out parts of the Christian message.

eology B (Non-Cartesian) starts

with the Christian kerygma to which

the theologian has been appropriated

by the Holy Spirit, and philosophical or

anthropological analysis is done in light

of the Christian message and is only

used out of love for the neighbor. It has

a much dierent rank and function.

ielicke himself provides a good ex-

ample of eology B. e 3,100 pages

of his eologische Ethik are an example

of anthropological analysis carried out

in light of the Christian message.

In spite of this obviously very large

inuence of Kierkegaard on ielicke,

ielicke reserves the right to some very

signicant criticism of Kierkegaard.

Even though Kierkegaard gives a solid

basis for the value of the individual, he

has serious diculty giving a frame-

work for evaluating social structures.

Says ielicke, “It is hard to see what

Thomas K. Johnson

MBS TexTe 175

signicance he could accord to the

institutions, the historical structures

(social and economic), in which the in-

dividual exists.”

Along these lines he

asks, “does not Kierkegaard bracket o

the religious dimension from the total-

ity of existence, so that it touches the

horizontal dimension only as a tangent

does a circle, i. e., at a single point?”

Kierkegaard’s notion of radical uncon-

ditionality toward God led to a nega-

tive relation to everything in this world,

including the church and Christianity.

is may be the background for Ki-

erkegaard’s loss of immediacy for the

normal things of everyday life, such as

work and marriage.

In this regard ielicke was quite

critical of what he regarded as “anthro-

pological docetism,” which, by analogy

with heretical Christological docetism,

regards humans almost as disembodied

spirits that are hardly part of the real

world of business, government, etc.

ielicke attempted to overcome this

problem which he regarded as wide-

spread by means of his sermons and

ethics. A central goal of ielicke was

to provide a theological interpretation

of the structures of daily life, in a sense

rejecting major themes in Kierkeg-

aard’s thought, for he saw Kierkegaard

as a major source of anthropological

docetism.

Finally, on an epistemological level,

Kierkegaard’s notion that subjectivity

is truth leads to certain problems. He

“has no organ by which to detect the

signicance of factual knowledge.”

Scientic and historical information

can really have no place in his philoso-

phy. e content of what one claims to

know is dwarfed in its signicance next

to the passionate embrace of what one

thinks is true. ough ielicke did not

use this phrase, he regards Kierkegaard

as having a docetic epistemology.

Remarks

We see tremendous variety in the

dialogue with Kierkegaard in Protes-

tant theology that reveals the dierent

concerns of the dierent theologians.

Bloesch is a theologian in the narrower

sense that his task is to articulate the

contents of the evangelical faith in a

credible manner. Schaeer is espe-

cially an analyst of the shape of mod-

ern and postmodern culture as a whole.

ielicke is a theological ethicist try-

ing to interpret human nature and the

structures of human life. Yet certain

common themes arise among the three.

Bloesch and Schaeer, in dierent

ways, express concern that the Chris-

tian faith not be seen as irrational, even

though the content of faith cannot be

derived from reason. Bloesch, Schaef-

fer, and ielicke all show, in dialogue

with Kierkegaard, great concern about

forms of thought that are antithetical

to faith and the health of society. All

three, again in debate with Kierkeg-

aard, see philosophy as articulating the

ideas and themes that characterize a

cultural ethos and that need a theologi-

cal response. All, using rather dierent

theological justications, see ethics,

PhilosoPhische Anstösse 13

Dialogue with Kierkegaard in Protestant Theology …

cultural life, and existential analysis of

the structures and problems of life as

something that follows faith.

Certainly, dialogue with Kierkegaard

has been valuable for Protestant theol-

ogy in the twentieth century. And this

dialogue may uncover some of what

Barth discovered, something about the

true crisis or judgment of modern reli-

gion and culture.

Annotations

Anmerkungen

is essay was previous published in Commu-

nio Viatorum (XLVI, 2004), Nr. 3, pp. 284–

298, which is a journal of Charles University,

Prague. Reprinted with permission. It was also

previously published in Russian in Кьеркегори

современность(Minsk, 1996), which contains

papers presented at a conference about the phi-

losophy of Kierkegaard held at the European

Humanities University in Minsk, Belarus.

Donald G. Bloesch. Essentials of Evangelical

eology. Vol. 1: God, Authority, and Salvation.

San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978. p. 121.

Ibid. p. 122.

Ibid.

Donald G. Bloesch. A eology of Word and

Spirit: Authority and Method in eology. Dow-

ners Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1992. p. 62.

Ibid. p. 39.

Ibid. p. 58.

Ibid.

Ibid. p. 21.

Ibid. p. 26.

Ibid. p. 63.

Ibid. p. 65.

Ibid.

Donald G. Bloesch. Essential of Evangelical

eology. Vol. 2: Life, Ministry, and Hope. San

Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979. p. 50.

Ibid. p. 51.

e Complete Works of Francis Schaeer. Vol.

5: A Christian View of the West. Weschester:

Crossway Books, 1982. p. 179. Hereafter cited

as FS 5.

e Complete Works of Francis Schaeer. Vol.

1: A Christian View of Philosophy and Culture.

Weschester: Crossway Books, 1982. p. 10. Here-

after cited as FS 1.

e Complete Works of Francis Schaeer. Vol.

4: A Christian View of the Church. Weschester:

Crossway Books, 1982. pp. 122, 123.

FS 5. pp. 188, 189.

FS 1. p. 54.

FS 1. pp. 15, 16.

Helmut ielicke. Modern Faith and ought.

Trans. Georey W. Bromiley. Grand Rapids:

Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1990. p. 518. Hereafter cited

as MFT.

Helmut ielicke. eological Ethics. Vol. 2:

Politics. Translated and edited by Wm. H. Laza-

reth. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1979. p.

498.

Ibid. p. 51.

Ibid. p. 54.

Helmut ielicke. eological Ethics. Vol.

1: Foundations. Translated and edited by Wm.

H. Lazareth. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans,

1979. p. 165.

MFT. p. 487.

Thomas K. Johnson

MBS TexTe 175

Helmut ielicke. e Evangelical Faith. Vol.

3: eology of the Spirit. Translated and edited

by Georey W. Bromiley. Grand Rapids: Wm. B.

Eerdmans, 1982. p. 355. Hereafter cited as EF 3.

Helmut ielicke. e Evangelical Faith. Vol.

2: e Doctrine of God and of Christ. Transla-

ted and edited by Georey W. Bromiley. Grand

Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1977. p. 40. Here-

after cited as EF 2.

EF 3. p. 356.

EF 2. p. 41.

EF 2. p. 40.

Helmut ielicke. e Evangelical Faith. Vol.

1: Prolegomena: e Relation of eology to

Modern ought Forms. Translated and edited

by Georey W. Bromiley. Grand Rapids: Wm. B.

Eerdmans, 1974. pp 38, 65.

Ibid. pp. 212–218.

MFT. p. 516.

MFT. p. 517.

Helmut ielicke. e Trouble with the

Church: A Call for Renewal. translated and

edited by John W. Doberstein. Grand Rapids:

Baker Book House, 1965. pp. 65, 81.

MFT. p. 517.

The Author

Über den Autor

Thomas K. Johnson received his Ph.D. in ethics from the Uni-

versity of Iowa (1987) after being a research scholar at Eberhard

Karls Universität (Tübingen). He has an ACPE from Missouri Bap-

tist Hospital (St. Louis, 1981), a Master of Divinity (Magna Cum

Laude) from Covenant Theological Seminary (St. Louis, 1981),

and a BA (Cum Laude) from Hope College (Michigan, 1977). He

is a pastor of the Presbyterian Church in America. Since 1994 he

has served the International Institute for Christian Studies and is now IICS Pro-

fessor of Theology, Philosophy, and Public Policy. He was a visiting professor at

the European Humanities University in Minsk, Belarus, 1994–1996. (UHU is a

dissident, anti-Communist university, forced into exile by the Belarusian dicta-

tor in 2004.) Since 1996 he and his wife have lived in Prague, where he taught

philosophy at Anglo-American University (4 years) and at Charles University

(8 1⁄2 years). He is MBS Professor of Apologetics and Ethics (2003) and Vice

President for Research (2007). He is also Academic Council for the Internati-

onal Institute for Religious Freedom. His wife, Leslie P. Johnson, is director of

the Christian International School of Prague.

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