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  • Kierkegaard and the Paradox of Religious Diversity by George B. Connell
  • Ronald F. Marshall
Kierkegaard and the Paradox of Religious Diversity. By George B. Connell. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016. xiii + 188 pp.

Well–known Kierkegaard scholar, George Connell, professor at Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota, has written a creative book on Kierkegaard and world religions. He concedes that Kierkegaard is a conservative Lutheran (52), but still ventures out to show what Kierkegaard “could and should have said” given the “full context of his commitments (178).

This bold thesis—knowing better than Kierkegaard himself—goes against the view of another Concordia Kierkegaard scholar, Reidar Thomte (1902–1994), who scorned such critiques due to Kierkegaard’s “tremendous dialectic powers” (Kierkegaard’s Philosophy of Religion, 1949; reprint 2009). But Connell does not flinch (14). He feels free to move beyond Kierkegaard’s own formulations (16) because of the need to counter Danish right-wing political adaptations of his thought (18–21), and the terrorist threat since 9/11, which makes religiously driven violence so threatening (106, 121–125). Therefore he wants to move from confrontation—so common in Kierkegaard’s writings—to harmonious respect regarding world religions (8, 104, 181). He wants to purge from Kierkegaard’s writings whatever leads to such extremism and violence.

But respect does not require endorsement in order to avoid “fomenting discord” (11). Respect allows the other points of view to have their say, and fosters a willingness to learn about them. But that can be done without believing what they say is true. That is what we have with the rejection in Romans 10:4 and the confirmation in Romans 9:4–5. Here there is no contradiction because what is confirmed is not salvific but secondary; and what is rejected is both salvific and primary. So the two go together—confirming what is [End Page 478] secondary and rejecting what is primary. This is Kierkegaard’s view; Connell’s view, that Christianity is a distinctive modulation of an underlying, shared, basic way of being in all religions (142), is not more commendable.

Even so, Connell has written a masterful book. His grasp of the literature on world religions and Kierkegaard’s religious thought is well selected and arranged. A great illustration of that is his finely-tuned analysis of Kierkegaard’s concept of teleological suspension (142–51). While skipping the work of Mortensen (1996), Mulder (2005) and Giles (2008) on Kierkegaard and Buddhism, he carefully covers Judaism (48–66) and Confucianism (152–75).

Even so, he is wrong to imagine that Kierkegaard would be surprised by his book (15, 153, 155). In his journals Kierkegaard notes that professors after him would try to cleanup his writings—which he deplores (JP 2:2232). He knew that spreading out Christianity to the masses (extensity) would dilute its intensity (JP 2:2056, 2:2640, 2:2994, 4:4490, 6:6907)—which is Connell’s aim (13, 21, 176). He also knew his writings would appear exaggerated—but not because of their formulations, but because of the lack of sinful desperation in his critics (JP 6:6709a). Connell knows this and steers clear of any severe sense of sin in his book (175). Because of that Connell would have done better to wrestle with Kierkegaard’s view from his discourses that we all suffer from lust of the eye that infatuates, the sweetness of revenge that seduces, anger that makes us unrelenting, and a cold heart that flees away (EUD 7).

Finally, regarding the Epistle of James, Connell errs (66, 178) when trying to show the suppressed breadth of Kierkegaard’s material by skipping what Luther liked about his epistle of straw (Luther’s Works 2:159, 12:281, 13:140, 15:77, 19:47, 25:235, 27:37–38, 30:249, 259, 293, 31:91, 33:243, 37:370, 42:88, 44:298, 46:288, 51:71, 52:15). [End Page 479]

Ronald F. Marshall
First Lutheran Church of West Seattle, Seattle, Washington
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