“Rest” as Unio Mystica?: Kierkegaard, Augustine, and the Spiritual Life

That Søren Kierkegaard was a spiritual author—and that his writings have implications for what might be termed “spirituality”—was already recognized during his lifetime. “Part of . . . Kierkegaard’s Edifying Discourses,” wrote Petronella Ross in 1851, “is my favorite reading material just now. . . . [I]t is a pleasure for me to read Kierkegaard; he provides me with both a crutch and staff.”¹ Her correspondent, Kierkegaard’s former teacher F.C. Sibbern, recommended Kierkegaard’s “Gospel of Sufferings” for further study, noting that Kierkegaard “affords . . . spiritual nourishment and comfort.”² Such comments are hardly unique among Kierkegaard’s contemporaries, and indeed, when paired with the respectable sales of P.G. Philipsen’s collection of Kierkegaard’s upbuilding discourses,³ it is not a stretch to say that Kierkegaard’s immediate legacy lay as much with his spiritual writings as with any other part of his oeuvre.

Of course, this situation was to change in the twentieth century, when Kierkegaard emerged as one of the founders of “existentialism,” taking his place among the avant-garde of modern philosophy. And yet, while set in the background, Kierkegaard’s status as spiritual author neither vanished from popular consciousness nor from secondary literature. In fact, as I will show, there was debate about the significance of Kierkegaard’s interest in spirituality. Did his upbuilding discourses betray a Catholic mystical sensibility, as the Jesuit thinker Erich Przywara suggested in his Das Geheimnis Kierkegaards (1929)? Or were they consonant with Protestant homiletics, as Bishop J.P. Mynster had maintained as early as 1843?⁴ Implicit in this discussion are questions about mysticism itself. Must it issue in certain experiences of the divine, indeed, in a blissful consciousness of perfect accord with God—a state that is often referred to as “mystical union” [unio mystica]? And, if so, what does that mean for Kierkegaard’s relation to mysticism?

Already, then, the complexity of this debate should be clear. Thus I will restrict this paper to a handful of considerations. First, I will show that, following the viewpoint of one of the forefathers of Kierkegaard scholarship, the Danish theologian Eduard Geismar (1871–1939), Kierkegaard’s status as a mystic has often been doubted, not least because he seems to lack a robust

Garden Medusa IV

© Tanjica Perovic

concept of mystical union. And yet, through an exploration of unio mystica itself, I will demonstrate that this concept need not be equated with ecstatic experiences of the divine, for it has been thematized in a variety of ways. One of these ways is that of “resting in God”—a concept that Kierkegaard utilized in his own writings, though its most famous formulation belongs to the fifth-century North African bishop, Augustine of Hippo. But does Augustine’s understanding of “rest” correspond to Kierkegaard’s? This question will conclude the paper. I will argue that Kierkegaard’s notion is, in fact, similar to that of Augustine, thereby establishing a notable point of connection between the Dane and Catholic spirituality and, furthermore, providing an important clue as to Kierkegaard’s relation to the mystical tradition.

THE CASE AGAINST KIERKEGAARD AS MYSTIC

As early as 1877, the great Danish literary critic, Georg Brandes, noted that holiness was one of the two foci of Kierkegaard’s authorship,⁵ and later interpreters, from Przywara to Martin Heidegger, recognized that the spiritual concerns animating Kierkegaard’s work were a key aspect of his contribution to Western thought.⁶ Thus it is hardly surprising that, by the 1930s, these suggestions began to yield explicit investigations.

One notable example of this tendency is the short article “Søren Kierkegaard and Mysticism,” issued by the noted Kierkegaard scholar, Eduard Geismer. While it is true, according to Geismer, that certain passages in Kierkegaard’s corpus resemble mysticism, this resemblance must be qualified. Yes, Kierkegaard stresses inwardness and the love of God, but he also “fought any mysticism that moved in the direction of the contemplative [kontemplative], the contemplating [beskuende].”⁷ There are two reasons for this opposition. First, Kierkegaard’s accent ultimately...