Kierkegaard and the Catholic Tradition: Conflict and Dialogue

4 The Catholic Moment? Apostolic Authority in Kierkegaard and the Catholic Tradition

98 four The Catholic Moment? Apostolic Authority in Kierkegaard and the Catholic Tradition A Catholic poet should be an apostle by being first of all a poet, not try to be a poet by being first of all an apostle. For if he presents himself to people as a poet, he is going to be judged as a poet and if he is not a good one his apostolate will be ridiculed. Thomas Merton The Catholic conception of authority is one at which many in our age bristle. The hierarchy in the Church is a source of scandal to many, and Luther’s leveling of this hierarchy in his famous doctrine of the priesthood of all believers is often warmly received.1 Curiously, this is one area where Kierkegaard’s reception of Luther is not clearly favorable. Indeed, many have suggested that Kierkegaard’s concept of apostolic authority brings him close to Catholicism. I argue that this is in part the case, but that it is perhaps better understood as Kierkegaard’s resolving of an ambiguity in Luther. Kierkegaard saw the opportunity for a purer gospel in Luther, but he also saw corruption and a movement toward secularism, especially in Luther’s doctrine of the universal priesthood. Writers on Kierkegaard from Walter Lowrie to Frederick Copleston have been among the many to claim that Kierkegaard’s conception of the apostle is a movement toward Catholicism.2 Given the attention this topic has received, I would be remiss not to include an inquiry into the topic in a book devoted to a dialogue between Kierkegaard and the Catholic tradition. In the present chapter, we will reflect on the way The Catholic Moment? · 99 in which God might make known certain supernatural truths or doctrines that are binding on those to whom such messages are delivered, whether that delivery should be firsthand or secondhand. I will begin by explaining, in the first part, just what role the apostle might play in Kierkegaard’s larger religious thought. The three subsequent sections will focus on the question of how close Kierkegaard’s concept of the apostle, perhaps most clearly articulated in the essay by H.H.,3 “The Difference between a Genius and an Apostle,” brings him to Catholicism (and also to his own Lutheran tradition, which was, of course, itself a response to Catholicism). The Apostle in Kierkegaard’s Thought In The Point of View for My Work as an Author, Kierkegaard notes that he is neither an apostle nor a teacher, but only a fellow pupil (PV, 78–79). Accordingly, Kierkegaard denies having any apostolic authority and conceives of his authorship as using something quite different in an effort to expose the inadequate Christian credentials of his age. Thus, while Kierkegaard’s task is neither to upbraid Christians nor to preach Christian doctrine directly, he understands his role as a “genius” and a “poet” (WA, 235; PV, 235) to be that of “deceiving” others into the truth. For as Kierkegaard writes, there are two kinds of deception: one can deceive out of the truth, and one can deceive into the truth (PV, 53). What does the latter sort of poet do? Kierkegaard writes, “What, then, does it mean ‘to deceive’? It means that one does not begin directly with what one wishes to communicate but begins by taking the other’s delusion at face value. . . . One does not begin in this way: It is Christianity that I am proclaiming, and you are living in purely esthetic categories. No, one begins this way: Let us talk about the esthetic” (PV, 54). Why use this kind of “indirect communication”? Because “direct communication presupposes that the recipient’s ability to receive is entirely in order, but here that is simply not the case” (PV, 54). Thus, Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous works approach the spheres of existence in a very particular way. Either/Or, part 1, for instance, begins by allowing the aesthete, A, to articulate his own life-view, and to allow the reader to delight in it long enough to see that it is ultimately in despair. Judge William then follows in Either/Or, part 2, and counsels A 100 · Nature and Grace to despair of the aesthetic view of life, and leap into the ethical, where one receives a self (EO, 2:213–14). The ethical is different from the aesthetic because one no longer delights (as in the aesthetic sphere) in...