The God-Relationship: A Kierkegaardian account of the Christian spiritual life Joshua Luke Cockayne PhD University of York Philosophy July 2016 Abstract By drawing on the writings of Søren Kierkegaard, I address the question of what it is to live in relationship with God. In answering this question, it is important to recognise that God, as he is described in the Christian tradition, is a personal God. For this reason, the account of the Christian spiritual life I outline is described as a life of coming to know God personally, rather than as a life of coming to know about God by learning about him. As I argue, a minimal condition for knowing God personally in this way is that an individual has a second-person experience of God. However, one of the barriers which prevents relationship with God from occurring in this life is that the human will is defective in such a way that human beings cannot will to be in union with God. Because of this problem, human beings cannot live in union with God in this life. And so, in order to allow for the possibility of union with God in the life to come, the human will must be repaired; consequently, one of the key tasks of the spiritual life is this task of repairing a person’s will by re-orienting it so that union with God is possible. Since a person cannot be in union with God in this life, it is important to give an account of what it is to be in relationship with God in the spiritual life. I present this relationship in terms of being in union with Christ which I describe, drawing from Kierkegaard, in terms of ‘being contemporary with Christ’. To be contemporary with Christ, as I explain it, is to experience what psychologists call ‘shared-attention’ with Christ; one way of experiencing Christ in this way, I argue, is by a person’s engagement in spiritual practices. It is by stressing the importance of this concept of contemporaneity with Christ that we can see how an individual engages in the task of re-orientating their will. The reason for this, is that the experience of Christ’s presence allows a human being to imitate Christ and thereby heal the damage caused by sin. Finally, I argue, even in experiences of God’s absence, a person can develop a deeper relationship with God. In withdrawing his presence from individuals, God allows for a kind of weaning process to occur in which persons develop a more independent, and eventually deeper God-relationship. ii Table of Contents Abstract ii Table of Contents iii Acknowledgements vi Author’s Declaration vii Introduction The philosophy of the spiritual life 1 Why Kierkegaard? 5 Kierkegaard’s writings: Pseudonymous and signed 8 Methodology 14 The God-relationship: An outline 17 Part 1 Faith, Union and Empathy: A Kierkegaardian account of the God-relationship Introduction 23 Chapter 1 (Inter)Subjectivity and personal knowledge: The epistemology of the God-relationship Introduction 26 The objective issue of the truth of Christianity 28 Objective and subjective communication 32 Stump on Franciscan/ Dominican knowledge 37 Objectivity and Dominican knowledge 43 Faith and subjectivity 44 (Inter)subjectivity and Franciscan knowledge 46 An intersubjective account of coming to faith 52 Chapter 2 The Purity of Heart is to will one thing: Despair and the problem of the will Introduction 55 Sin, despair, and the self before God 56 Despair and the self 62 Sin and despair 64 Faith as the antidote to despair 66 Double-mindedness and the Purity of Heart 67 Wholeheartedness and reintegration 72 Faith, wholeheartedness and the ordo salutis 84 Conclusion 86 iii Chapter 3 Incarnation and divine-human union: Mutual empathy in the God-Relationship Introduction 87 Empathy and divine-human union 89 Reconstructive empathy and ‘omnisubjectivity’ 93 Perceptual empathy and omnipresence 95 The king and the maiden 97 Incarnation and empathy 100 Mutual-empathy and the Incarnation 106 The Incarnation, time and empathy 108 Conclusion 118 Part 2 Contemporaneity, presence and practice: Religious experience in the God-relationship Introduction 120 Chapter 4 Contemporaneity and presence: An account of union with Christ Introduction 122 Historical vs. genuine contemporaneity 124 Contemporaneity, spiritual perception and presence 125 Contemporaneity and historical bridging 127 Personal presence and contemporaneity 128 Epistemic contemporaneity 130 Contemporaneity as an ‘extramundane experience’ 134 Contemporaneity and perception: The ‘Alston model’ 138 Contemporaneity and presence: An intersubjective model 141 A Kierkegaardian account of the experience of the Holy Spirit 149 Joint-attention and indwelling 152 Conclusion 154 Chapter 5 Practice in Christianity: Attention sharing and ritual knowledge in the God-relationship Introduction 155 The epistemology of spiritual practice 156 Stump on narrative knowledge 157 Cuneo on ritual knowledge 158 Wolterstorff on knowing God liturgically 161 Towards an interpersonal model of spiritual practice 163 ‘The Mirror of the Word’: Scripture and presence in the God relationship 166 Scripture and attention sharing 169 Practice in Christianity 174 Practice and community 182 Conclusion 185 iv Part 3 Connecting the dots: Imitation and absence in the God-relationship Introduction 186 Chapter 6 The Imitation Game: Becoming imitators of Christ Introduction 189 Imitation and contemporaneity: the task of true Christianity 191 Imitation as sanctification 195 Imitation and presence 199 Imitation and behaviour replication 200 Imitating Christ: A shared-attention model 207 Conclusion 211 Chapter 7 The Dark Knight of the Soul: Weaning and the Problem of Divine Withdrawal The problem of divine withdrawal 212 Weaning and the problem of divine withdrawal in Kierkegaard 215 Spiritual weaning in The Dark Night of the Soul 221 The Dark Knight of the Soul 224 Objections: Absolute dependency and spiritual consent 229 Conclusion 238 Conclusion 239 References to Kierkegaard’s Writings 243 Bibliography 246 v Acknowledgements This thesis would not have been possible without my wife, Eleanor, who has been steadfast in her encouragement and support. She has always believed in my ability to produce this thesis, even when I have had my doubts. David Efird, my supervisor, has been exemplary in his support over the last three years. He has looked over countless drafts of this material, and has always had something constructive and encouraging to say. I am immensely grateful to him for what he has invested in me and for his personal support over the past three years. I would also like to thank my colleagues and friends at the Department of Philosophy at the University of York for their encouragement and assistance in writing this thesis. The department’s teaching scholarship has supported me financially in my research over the past three years. Thanks to those whom I have had the privilege of working and teaching alongside. I would like to thank those who have read and engaged with this project as it has taken shape. Particularly, my thanks go to Chris Jay, James Clarke, Owen Hulatt and Christian Pillar for their helpful comments and insights on my work. Finally, I owe a huge amount to the members of the St. Benedict Society for the Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology. We have discussed countless ideas, papers and arguments over the past three years. As well as looking over much of the material in this thesis and providing me with helpful comments, they have also given me some much- needed sanity every Wednesday afternoon. So, many thanks to David Worsley, Jack Warman, Gordon Haynes, Richard Tamburro, Daniel Molto, Spencer Johnston, August Ludwigs, Bridger Landle, Catherine Yarrow, Jenni Howard, Martin Bloomfield, Angus Ryan, Ross Kendal and Ben Walker. vi Author’s Declaration I declare that this thesis is a presentation of original work and I am the sole author. This work has not previously been presented for an award at this, or any other, University. All sources are acknowledged as References. Some of the material in this thesis has previously been presented in different formats. I list the relevant sources here: Chapter 3: Some of the material in this chapter is shared with the paper ‘Empathy and Divine Union in Kierkegaard: Solving the faith/history problem in Philosophical Fragments’ which is published in Religious Studies, vol. 51 issue 4, Dec 2015. This paper was also awarded the 2015 Religious Studies Postgraduate Essay Prize. Chapter 4: Some of the material in this chapter is shared with the manuscript ‘Contemporaneity and Communion: Kierkegaard on the personal presence of Christ’ which is published in The British Journal for the History of Philosophy, forthcoming. Chapter 6: Some of the material in this chapter is shared with the paper ‘The Imitation Game: Becoming Imitators of Christ’ which is forthcoming in Religious Studies. It was also awarded the 2016 Religious Studies Postgraduate Essay Prize. Chapter 6: Some of the material in this chapter is shared with the paper ‘You have asked only for imitators: Kierkegaard and the imitatio Christi’ which is currently under consideration at The European for the Philosophy of Religion. Chapter 7: Some of the material in this chapter is shared with the paper ‘The Dark Knight of the Soul: Weaning and the problem of divine withdrawal’ which is forthcoming in Religious Studies. vii Teach me, O God, not to torture myself, not to make a martyr out of myself through stifling reflection, but, rather, teach me to breathe deeply in faith.1 1 The prayers that head each of the chapters are all prayers taken from Kierkegaard’s writings. Perry D. LeFevre (1956) compiles these together in his volume, The Prayers of Kierkegaard. Introduction You everywhere present One, when I was considering how I would speak and what I would say, you were present. When the single individual decided to go up into your house and went to it, you were present; but perhaps to him it was still not really being present — bless, then, our devotion that we all, each one individually, may in this hour apprehend your presence and that we are before you.