Soren Kierkegaard and Contemporary Protestant
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This dissertation has been microfilmed exactly as received. Mic 60-6349 BROWNING, Robert Lynn. SOREN KIERKE GAARD AND CONTEMPORARY PROTESTANT CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1960 Education, religion University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan SOREN KIERKEGAARD AND CONTEMPORARY PROTESTANT CHRISTIAN EDUCATION DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By ROBERT LYNN BROWNING, A.B., B.D ****** The Ohio State University I960 Approved by Adviser Department of Philosophy of Education ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I should like to acknowledge the inspiration and cooperation that I have received from my major adviser, Dr. Everett Kircher, and from my minor advisers, Dr. Bernard Mehl, Dr. Herman Peters, and Dr. W. C. Batchelor. To have had the satisfaction of knowing them and the other members of the faculty has been at least as rewarding and meaning ful as the academic experience itself. Certainly the members and staff of North Broadway Methodist Church should be recognized as having made pos sible my doctoral study. It was they who encouraged me to continue my academic pursuits. Their long-suffering and genuine interest have sustained me beyond measure. A special word of appreciation should go to Dr. Lance Webb, Senior Minister of North Broadway Church, Dr. Arch 0. Heck, Professor Evere X Shimp, and many others who helped to arrange a program of study and work which was feasible. I owe a great debt of gratitude to the education staff of the church, The Rev. William Butterfield, Miss D 'cthy Jones, and Miss Margaret Redman, for their willingness to adjust their schedules and their lives to coincide with my special needs. Of course, the support and encouragement of my new associates, Dr.- John Dickhaut, President, and Dr. Van Bogard ii Dunn,Dean, of the Methodist Theological School in Ohio have been crucially significant during the final phases of the program. The patience, help, and love which my wife, Jean, and our three sons, Gregory, David, and Peter gave to me was far beyond that which any husband and father should expect. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page INTRODUCTION . ...................................... 1 Specific Rationale for Relating Kierkegaard's Thought to the Field of Christian Education The Dissertation Design PART I. THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF SOREN K I E R K E G A A R D ............... 26 I. HIS EXISTENTIAL SITUATION........................ 27 II. THE NATURE AND CHARACTER OF KIERKEGAARD'S RELIGIOUS EDUCATION AND HIS POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE REACTIONS ........................ 37 His Father Regina His Relationship to the Public (The Corsair) His Relationship to the Church III. KIERKEGAARD'S ATTEMPTS TO EDUCATE HIMSELF RELIGIOUSLY............................. 58 IV. KIERKEGAARD'S DESIRE TO PARTICIPATE IN THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF OTHERS ............. 64 The Stages PART II. THE MEANING OF KIERKEGAARD'S CATEGORIES OF THOUGHT FOR THE PHIL OSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN EDUCATION ............. 79 V. RELIGIOUS EDUCATION AND CHRISTIAN EDUCATION . 82 Religions A and B VI. THE INDIVIDUAL IN HIS EXISTENTIAL SITUATION . 102 VII. THE INDIVIDUAL AS A S E L F ....................... 119 VIII. THE INDIVIDUAL AS A S I N N E R ..................... 138 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS (CONTD.) Chapter” Page IX. THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS GOD RELATIONSHIP IN C H R I S T ...................................... 148 PART III. THE MEANING AND INFLUENCE OF KIERKEGAARD'S THOUGHT IN REGARD TO THE METHODS OF CHRISTIAN EDUCATION........... 170 X. THE ROLE OF THE T E A C H E R .......................... 174 XI. TEACHING: METHODS OF COMMUNICATION ...... 188 XII. THE LEARNER AS A FIRST HAND DISCIPLE..............223 The Learner as a Child The Learner as a Youth The Learner as an Adult CONCLUSIONS .............................................258 s BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................... 272 AUTOBIOGRAPHY ............................. 281 v INTRODUCTION The unusual life and the provocative thought of Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish theologian, psychologist and philosopher born in 1813» have received exhaustive analysis at the hands of many of our most able thinkers. He is commonly recognized as the founder of modern Existentialist philosophy and as a catalyst for such crea tive and daring molders of theological thought as Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, Reinhold Niebuhr, H. Richard Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, Nicolas Berdyaev, Martin Buber and Jacques Maritain. His psychological insight has helped to foster a school of existential psychotherapy in Europe, and his influence is acknowledged among the interpersonal psycho therapists, such as Karen Horney, in America. Kierkegaard, the apostle of the authentic life of faith before God and man, the advocate of inwardness and freedom of the self, the brilliant and subtle writer of ironical and dialectical discourses, books, and journals, is otill a controversial figure over one hundred years after his death in 1855. H. Richard Niebuhr has commented appropriately that Kierkegaard strangely resists our attempts to classify him as a thinker in one field or another, as a genius or a sick mind, as a reactor to the closed system of Hegel In the last century or an original thinker whose thought will continue to stimulate new applications and Interpretations. Niebuhr says: "For one thing he belongs less to the history of nine teenth century thought than to that of the twentieth. He makes himself contemporaneous with us. And he does not so much lead us to think about the systems of his time and of the necessity of protests against them as about our sys tems and about our need to protest now. He will not keep his place in history. His ideas are resurrected again and again!It is this quality in his thought which has stimulated me to undertake the present study in relation to Christian education, a field not usually associated with his name, but a field which finds its foundations (namely, the theological, psychological and philosophical) signifi cantly in debt to his thought, as I shall document through out this study. Kierkegaard's influence was late coming into its own. Writing in 1938 Hugh Ross Mackintosh said, "The history of systematic thought has rarely, if ever, seen so astonishing an example of a writer coming late into his kingdom. From an early point, it is true, his -'ame had been well known in Denmark. But thirty years ago *ew outside that country had •^Christianity and the Existentialists, edited by Carl Michalson, p. 25, 3 O heard of him." This fact was due, of course, to the language in which he wrote. His works were first translated into German and his influence was powerful upon various German and continental theologians and philosophers during the early part of the twentieth century. The significance of his thought did not have its full impact upon English speaking scholars until the 1930's- to 1950‘s during which period most of his books, a considerable portion of his illuminating personal Journal and his papers were translated into English. A great debt is owed to such translators as David Swenson, Walter Lowrie, Alexander Dru, Douglas Speere, and others. It is generally known that Kierkegaard was a person who suffered Intensely during most of his life. It is higher probable that his suffering was both physical and emotional. His physical suffering was the aftermath of a congenitally weak back which was worsened by a fall from a tree as a boy. His emotional suffering was the result of a Vtery abnormal childhood with a melancholy father old enough to be his grandfather and a mother who was not in a position to relate to him deeply, as we shall discuss later. His unfortunate emotional development and his unusually keen and witty mind combined to make him exceedingly sensitive O Hugh Ross Mackintosh, Types of Modern Theology. P. 230. and often very melancholy and in despair. Some have asked whether so abnormal a person can really have a message for ordinary people concerning the deeper issues of life. T, H. Croxall, an able student of the lonely Dane, says, "I answer unhesitantingly— Yes. What he felt so deeply we all feel in our due measure. Kierkegaard should not be dismissed as 'mad': he saw through and surmounted his abnormality— this is his everlasting praise. It was, in fact, those very abnormalities that gave him the extraordinary psychological insight which enriches his writings, and makes him one of the best psychologists in the world."3 Most scholars agree with Walter Lowrie who has translated the major portion of his writings when he says, "I revere the author . as a witness for the truth who triumphed over great weaknesses. Lowrie further concludes in his major study of Kierkegaard, "I believe that he has rightly understood and expounded what Christianity is. He himself says that the question whether It is true or not is quite another matter. 3t . H. Croxall, Kierkegaard Commentary, p. JCVTII. ^Soren Kierkegaard, For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourself, translated by Waiter Lowrie, quote taken from the Preface, p. VII. (Subsequently, all the works of Soren Kierkegaard will be listed without a full citation.) ^Walter Lowrie, Kierkegaard. p. 322. Specific Rationale for Relating Kierkegaard's Thought to the Field of Christian Education In the field of Protestant religious education during the past 20 years there has been a definite shift away from the liberal theological foundation for Christian education; a trend toward the critical analysis of the underlying pre suppositions of the pragmatic philosophical base for much of Christian education flowing out of the thought of John Dewey and his followers; a trend away from the identification in liberal Christian circles of the Kingdom of God with the Democratic life which Dewey and various religious educators, such as George Albert Coe, made the goal of their educa tional endeavors.^ To develop the significance of these trends more fully, it becomes quite clear that the early and pioneer work of the liberal Christian educational philosophers was in full swing from about 1915 to the 1930's.