In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

CHAPTERI F I V E The Objective Issue of the Truth of Christianity (Pages 21-57) Part 1, which is devoted to the objective issue of the truth of Christianity, takes up 37 pages in the Hongs' translation, while part 2, which is devoted to the subjective issue, requires 561 pages; so it should come as no surprise that.part 1 does not address the objective issue for its own sake but only as a foil for introducing and identifYing the subjective issue. Climacus develops the contrast in terms of the dialectical tension between approximation and appropriation. In presenting the objective issue, he first distinguishes the question of historical truth from the question of philosophical or eternal truth (21). In so doing he evokes the distinction already drawn by Gotthold Lessing, and so central to his own Fragments, between historical and metaphysical truth. In the nineteenth century both history and philosophy claimed to be scientific, not because they imitated the experimental and quantitative methods of the natural sciences but because they developed methods that enabled them to achieve the same sort ofdisinterested objectivity, free from personal bias or communal ideology. The question ofreligion and science had meant religion and physics in the time of Galileo, and would shortly mean religion and biology in response to Charles Darwin. But in 1846 it was the question ofthe bearing of historical and philosophical scholarship on religion.! Climacus recognizes that the question ofChristianity's truth, usually thought to be a metaphysical question, has built into it the historical question of what Christianity is, what claims are essential to its identity. So the first two sections, devoted to "the historical point of view," address this question (23-24, 37). In a Lutheran context, where the Bible is held to be the standard of truth, this question, What is Christianity? immediately becomes I 49 50 I C HAP T E R F I V E the question, What does the Bible teach? It is the task ofhistorical scholarship to provide the answer. But "with regard to the historical the greatest certainty is only an approximation" (23); It is easy to think here in quantitative terms. Historical claims are never absolutely certain but only more or less probable. The greater the evidence in favor of a hypothesis and the less the evidence against it, the more probable it is. An 80-percent chance of rain will produce more umbrellas than a 20-percent chance. Climacus, however, treats the problem of probability or approximation as a qualitative problem. Objectivity requires that one withhold judgment until the evidence is in, but it is never in in any final and definitive sense. The process of historical scholarship is open-ended, passing from generation to generation, laying aside old questions only to take up new ones. Climacus uses the image of a parenthesis to signify the gap between promise and fulfillment in relation to historical scholarship, which always tells us it is not yet finished (26-32). During the process the odds in favor of any particular hypothesis may rise or fall quantitatively , but the qualitative gap between an ongoing temporal process and its completion is never closed. Or, to put it a little differently, the issue is not about the amount of evidence but about the temporal character ofhuman existence. The problem is not out there in the world (Is there enough evidence out there?) but in here, in the observer (Can I ever bring the debate over the evidence to a conclusion?). The need for decision remains. As John D. Caputo puts it, "Undecidability does not detract from the urgency of decision; it simply underlines the difficulty."2 But what if the question, What is Christianity? could be answered not by turning to the Bible but by turning to the Church? "The difficulty with the New Testament as something past now seems to be canceled by the church, which is indeed something present" (38-39). The Catholic Church has a theory of this kind (34), but writing in Lutheran Denmark, Climacus turns to a Protestant version associated with the contemporary church leader N. F. S. Grundtvig (36,44).3 Can one in this way avoid the "not yet" and "parenthesis" of dependence on interminable historical scholarship? No, says Climacus. For as soon as the unavoidable question arises, Is this the true, apostolic church? the historical question is opened on another front. We are suspended once again within an open-ended parenthesis because "the approximation is never finished" (38-41...

Share