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Kierkegaard Newsletter — Issue 43: February 2002
Kierkegaard on Miracles: Introductory
Observations
By Jyrki Kivelä
Ph.D. Candidate
University of Helsinki, Finland
In
the following, I discuss briefly Kierkegaard’s view on miracles. I observe how Kierkegaard is only
tangentially interested in the philosophical problem of miracles. According to Kierkegaard and his pseudonyms,
the miraculous element is never immediately observable in an alleged
miracle. Historical contemporaneity
makes no difference: a miracle is no more immediate to an eyewitness than it is
to someone who reads about the alleged miracle two thousand years later in the
Bible.
As
Kierkegaard shows very little explicit interest in natural laws or in order of
nature in general, it is not surprising that he also shows very little interest
in miracles explicitly defined as violations of natural laws. Further, Kierkegaard does not argue for any
particular definition of a miracle. He
and his pseudonyms are interested in belief
in miracles and in the relevance this belief has or should have to a
person’s religious resolutions.
Reading
the literature, one observes that miracles are almost exclusively mentioned in
connection with Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms Johannes Climacus and Anti-Climacus,[i] and their Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Philosophical Fragments and Practice of Christianity are part of my
focus of interest in this paper. On the
other hand, Kierkegaard makes philosophically relevant remarks about miracles
in his signed writings and in his unpublished writings, too. For example, there is a whole topical
section on miracles in Journals and
Papers. In the following, what I have in mind is the idea of a miracle
overriding the order of nature, which has received its most famous expression
in the definition of a miracle by David Hume:
“A miracle may be accurately defined, a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the
Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent.” [ii]
In Eighteen
Upbuilding Discourses Kierkegaard writes about John the Baptizer, whose
origin Kierkegaard describes “as marvelous [vidunderlig] as the origin of the
one whose coming he proclaimed, but the difference here again was the same as
the difference between the marvel [Vidunderlige] that an aged woman becomes
pregnant, which is contrary to the order of nature [mod Naturens Orden], and that
a pure virgin bears a child by the power of God, which is above the order of
nature [over Naturens Orden].”[iii] In Journals
and Papers Kierkegaard also refers to this same biblical event, and calls
it one of “the highest collisions, where the expected is altogether opposed to
the order of nature [mod Naturens Orden] (fox example, that Sara gets a child
although far beyond the natural age to bear children).”[iv] According to Kierkegaard, some event being
contrary to the order of nature does not mean that it is an overriding of the
order of nature (or, perhaps, a transgression of a law of nature), because
there is no law or order of nature ‘saying’ that an aged woman could not become
pregnant, within certain biological preconditions, of course. In my view, Kierkegaard means that an event
is ‘contrary (or opposed) to the order of nature,’ when it is something very
rare and surprising but belongs still to the natural realm of things, and
‘above the order of nature,’ when it clearly violates some uniformly established
regularity of nature. As I see it,
Kierkegaard’s ‘above the order of nature’ refers to the ‘truly miraculous’ as
something very exceptional, which violates or transgresses the order of
nature–that is, like ‘a pure virgin’ bearing a child by ‘the power of God.’ The
‘contrary to the order of nature’ refers to the ‘merely marvelous’ in the sense
of something very rare and surprising, but not overriding what is possible in
the natural realm of things–a woman can sometimes bear children although she is
‘far beyond the natural age’ to do it.
It is important to note that the paragraph from Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses cited above is the only one in
Kierkegaard’s published writings, as well as, to my knowledge, in his published
writings, where he explicitly discusses miracles in relation to natural
order. Kierkegaard uses the phrase
‘contrary (or opposed) to the order of nature’ [‘mod Naturens Orden’] once
(above) in his published writings and, to my knowledge, once (above) in his
unpublished writings; he uses ‘above the order of nature’ [‘over Naturens
Orden’] only in the paragraph from Eighteen
Upbuilding Discourses cited above and ‘the order of nature’ (or ‘the
natural order’) only twice in addition
to the paragraphs cited above, in the simple sense of, in my own words, ‘this
is just how things are in this world we live in.’[v]
In Eighteen
Upbuilding Discourses Kierkegaard also writes: “youth understands it immediately–how marvelous–but is not the
fact it is marvelous again the explanation!
There was a thinker, much admired in memory, who taught that miracle was
a characteristic of the Jewish people, that in a characteristic way this people
leaped over the intervening causes to reach God.”[vi] The thinker Kierkegaard is referring to is
Spinoza.[vii] In Journals
and Papers Kierkegaard discusses the same issue: “Strange that Spinoza continually objects to miracles and
revelation on the ground that it was a Jewish trait to lead something directly
back to God and leap over the intermediate causes, just as if this were a
peculiarity only of the Jews and not of all religiousness, so that Spinoza
himself would have done so if he had been basically religious, and as if the
difficulty did not lie right here: whether, to what extent, how–in short,
inquiries which could give the keenest thinking enough to do.”[viii] Kierkegaard thus suggests that there is a
connection between seeing something as a miracle and ‘leaping over the
intervening causes to reach God.’[ix] Further, this trait is something that is
characteristic, according to Kierkegaard, of all religiousness. In my view, Kierkegaard suggests that
religious people have a kind of inclination to see natural events as miracles
or God’s acts, and that they do no bother with available natural or scientific
explanations expressed in terms of natural laws–that is, they leap over the
intervening causes to reach God and, in a way, see God everywhere. Hence, a ‘miracle’ under discussion in the
paragraph above from Eighteen Upbuilding
Discourses is not (based on the quoted Journals
and Papers entry, too) necessarily overriding of the order of nature and,
consequently, is not necessarily a “truly miraculous’ event. As I see it, it is more like an expression
of its user’s religious attitude and faith in a certain interpretation of a
certain event than in a description of the event itself. In Two
Discourses at the Communion on Fridays Kierkegaard writes how Ascension
“disrupts or contravenes natural laws” and how it “goes against all the laws of
nature,”[x]
but he does not call Ascension a miracle and, in fact, does not explicitly discuss natural laws in
relation to miracles at all! Kierkegaard mentions a law or laws of nature only in five
paragraphs in his published writings in addition to those above but, as I see
it, they are not relevant regarding the theme of my paper.[xi]
In Works of Love
Kierkegaard writes how “faith always relates itself to what is not seen” and
how a person “by faith believes the unseen into [‘til’ is in bold-face in
the original] what is seen” and a little later, regarding love’s forgiveness,
“the miracle of faith happens (and every miracle [Mirakel] is then a miracle of
faith–no wonder, therefore, that along with faith miracles [Miraklerne] also
have been abolished!).”[xii] In Three
Discourses at the Communion on Fridays Kierkegaard writes how “[I]deed, no
gaze is as sharp-sighted as that of faith, and yet faith, humanly speaking, is
blind; reason, understanding, is, humanly speaking, sighted, but faith is
against the understanding.”[xiii] I suggest that Kierkegaard means that faith
is blind in the sense that it goes beyond the immediate and in this sense does
not see it. Understanding, on the other
hand, sees only the immediate and in this sense is sighted. In Two
Discourses at the Communion on Fridays Kierkegaard refers to miraculous
healings by Christ: “In order to be healed, the person must believe–now he
belives and is healed. Now he is
healed–and now that he is saved, his faith is twice as strong. It is not this way: he believed and then the miracle happened and
then it was all over.”[xiv] In my view, Kierkegaard means that believing
and miraculous healing come together and that faith is not something that is
just picked up when it is needed and then dropped off after it has showed its
usefulness: “No, the fulfillment doubles his faith; after the fulfillment, his
faith is twice as strong as it was before he was saved.”[xv] Further, the miraculous in a way emerges as
a part of the ‘state’ of faith, which is provided by God. So, there is evidence in Kierkegaard’s signed
writings, too, of faith trying to grasp what is not immediate in our experience
and that the idea of a miracle is closely linked to the idea of faith.
One could argue, Kierkegaard suggests in Journals and Paper, that because a
miracle is unreasonable, it cannot be a miracle–but, Kierkegaard asks “would it
be a miracle if it were reasonable?”[xvi] On the other hand, one could conclude that
because one has finally been able to establish that a miracle is
understandable, it is indeed a miracle–but then, Kierkegaard points out, “it is
indeed no miracle.”[xvii] Kierkegaard then asks intellectual analyzers
of a miracle to “let miracle be what it is:
an object of faith.”[xviii] This is an interesting point, because, to
turn to writings of Climacus and Anti-Climacus, the paradoxical unity of the
god and a human being in the teacher is according to Climacus in Philosophical Fragments, not a, but the object of faith.[xix] Further, Climacus also writes about
encountering the paradox without distorting its true nature.[xx] So, one could argue for miraculousness of
the paradox and, indeed, Climacus may be suggesting something like this in Philosophical Fragments when he writes
that “the paradox is the most improbable” and the “the paradox is the wonder.”[xxi] But this line of thought needs and, in my
view, deserves another study.[xxii]
In Concluding
Unscientific Postscript Climacus writes how “he [Lessing] does not deny (for he is quick to make
concessions so that the categories can become clear) that what is said in the Scriptures
about miracles and prophecies is as reliable as other historical reports, in
fact, is as reliable as historical reports in general can be”[xxiii]–that
is, not reliable, since, according to Climacus, all historical knowledge is
always doubtful and only an approximation.[xxiv] Climacus is suggesting that from some event
being historical it logically follows that this event is contingent and that
all reports depicting that event are doubtful.
Climacus points out now that the alleged miracle by Christ is a historical
and contingent event and, consequently, all
reports recording it are inevitably doubtful and there is nothing I can do to
change the situation.
What if I had lived during the time of the god as the
teacher and had had the wonderful opportunity of witnessing personally his life
and teaching? Would not this
contemporaneity have made a difference? Unfortunately, according to Climacus,
this alternative would not make my situation any easier than that of a person
who is reading about Christ’s miracles in the Bible. In my view, Climacus’ main point in “The Situation of the
Contemporary Follower” in Philosophical
Fragments is the non-immediate divinity of ‘the god.’[xxv] According to Climacus, the servant form of
the god is not like a disguise, which can be taken off at will. The god really is a servant and a human
being, but at the same time he is a godhead.
Climacus even writes how the god “has himself become captive, so to speak,
in his resolution and is now obliged to continue (to go on talking loosely)
whether he wants to or not. He cannot
betray his identity.”[xxvi] To further ‘go on talking loosely,’ it is
not possible for the learner to take a peek behind the god’s human form and a
get a glimpse of his ‘true’ divinity.
That is, it is not humanly
possible; only the god himself can grant the learner this occasion. Even an attempt to increase the amount of
historical information about the god by the learner brings neither the god’s
divinity nor the learner’s eternal happiness any closer to the learner, or, as
Climacus puts it, “it is easy for the contemporary learner to become a
historical eyewitness, but the trouble is that knowing a historical
fact–indeed, knowing all the historical facts with the trustworthiness of an
eyewitness–by no means makes the eyewitness a follower, which is
understandable, because such knowledge means nothing more to him than the
historical.”[xxvii] Consequently, to return explicitly to
miracles, no amount of trustworthy eyewitness information attesting the
authenticity of the alleged miracle, say, the raising of Lazarus from death,
can make the eternally significant occasion more ‘available’ to the eyewitness
learner than to a learner who learns about the miracle two thousand years later
in the Bible.[xxviii] To Climacus, then, a miracle is not a
‘back-door’ from historical to eternal in the sense that the more or less
established historical authenticity of a miracle would make the transition from
historical to eternal more obvious or more direct than in a case of no
historical evidence supporting the authenticity of an alleged miracle.
Anti-Climacus in Practice
in Christianity discusses, among other things, the situation when a person
encounters a human being who claims to be God and who performs alleged
miracles. What should that person think
of such a ‘God’? More particularly, if
that person thinks that that enigmatic human being might really be God, could
then a well established miracle finally convince him and demonstrate that he
really is dealing with God?
Anti-Climacus’ answer is ‘clear’:
“The miracle can demonstrate nothing, for if you do not believe him
[Christ] to be who he says he is, then you deny the miracle.”[xxix] Anti-Climacus’ point is, as I see it, that
if a person first wants to form a well-founded belief in the authenticity of a
certain miracle by Christ and then, based on this belief, (if he) is ready to
conclude and believe that Christ really is who he says he is, this means that
the person in question has completely misunderstood what miracles can do: “The miracle can make aware–now you are in
the tension, and it depends upon what you choose, offense or faith; it is your
heart that must be disclosed.”[xxx] Anti-Climacus means that if you see a
miracle this means that you also see Christ, but if a person doubts Christ’s
authenticity, an attempt to establish the authenticity of a certain miracle
does not lead that person to ‘real’ Christ, who was a human being, who in a
stunning way defined himself as God. Instead, a person encounters Christendom’s
“fantasy picture of Christ, a fantasy God-figure, directly related to
performing miracles.”[xxxi] As I see it, Anti-Climacus is now referring
to a kind of altar-piece image of Christ with immediately observable divinity
despite a human form, and an immediately observable ability to perform
miracles, too. “But this is an
untruth;” Anti-Climacus insists, “Christ never looked like that.”[xxxii] Anti-Climacus thinks that miracles can make
a person aware that he is now possibly in the presence of God, but there cannot
be anything like a direct route from miracles to faith, because miracles are
never immediately miracles. From
something being inexplicable (that is, like an alleged miracle), in
Anti-Climacus’ words, “it still does not follow that it is a miracle.”[xxxiii] In my view, Anti-Climacus means that faith,
as he understands it, does not come in small ‘packages’; either you believe the
whole thing or you do not believe nothing at all. Faith in the truth that Christ really is who he says he is–faith
in the paradox–is not a conclusion of an argument based on the established
authenticity of Christ’s miraculous acts.
Historical study of miracles leads to doubtful historical results, but
faith deals with the eternal, and there is no immediate or direct way from the
former to the latter, as both Anti-Climacus and Climacus say.
I conclude that Kierkegaard, in his signed writings,
uses the difference between an event ‘contrary to the order of nature’ and an
event ‘above the order of nature’ to suggest that he endorses a distinction
between the ‘merely marvelous’ and the ‘truly miraculous’ in the following
sense: The ‘truly miraculous’ refers to
an event which violates the established order of nature, and the ‘merely
marvelous’ refers to an event which is very unusual and surprising, but does
not violate the established order of nature.
There is evidence in Kierkegaard’s signed writings and in his
pseudonymous writings that Kierkegaard recognizes a strong order of nature and
a strong bond of natural laws. On the
other hand, he thinks that a person should not let the order of intervening
causes alienate him from God, who is the source and preserver of all
order. Further, the idea of a miracle
expressed explicitly in terms of violation of the laws or order of nature is
not important to Kierkegaard.
Historical reports are always doubtful, and so are
personal experiences, in the sense that there is an unavoidable logical gap
between an immediate experience and the leap of belief or faith to ‘what really
happened.’ I claim that the idea of the unavoidable doubtfulness of all
historical knowledge and the ‘non-immediate’ meaning of personal experience are
the most important reasons for Kierkegaard’s ‘narrow’ interest in
miracles. Reports telling about true
miracles are just a subsection under the section which includes all historical–that is,
doubtful–reports. Even personal and
‘convincing’ miraculous experience would make no difference, because the
miraculous element observed in a subjective experience is never immediate or
self-evident, but ‘emerges’ only in the happy passion of faith, which,
consequently, is in the focus of interest where miracles are concerned.
[i] Cfr., for example, Evans, C.S. (1983) pp. 236, 258-259, 268; (1992) pp. 160-162, 165-166, 195 n. 39; (1994) pp. 63, 68-70, 76, 82-83; Ferreira, M.J. (1990) pp. 63-66; Law, D.R. (1993) pp. 187-188, 195; Pojman, L.P. (1983), 135-136, 140; (1986) pp. 71-73.
[ii] Hume, D. (1995) p. 115 n. 1.
[iii] Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, 277 (SV1 IV, 159) (All references to Kierkegaard’s works are according to Kierkegaardiana, the first one refers to the Hong translation of Kierkegaard’s works). I point out regarding the use of ‘marvel’ instead of ‘miracle’ by Hongs that ‘vidunder’ can be translated as ‘miracle,’ too.
[iv] Journals and Papers 3130 (Pap. X, 2 A 594). I point out that this is the only place where ‘Naturens Orden’ is indexed in Pap.
[v] SV, 271 (SV1 VI, 254) and Practice in Christianity, 165 (SV1 XII, 154). Regarding Kierkegaard’s other uses of ‘order,’ the most interesting one, in my view, is Anti-Climacus’ idea in SD according to which God wants to maintain order in existence, because God “is not a God of confusion” (SD, 117 (SV1 XI, 227)). Regarding ‘order,’ cfr., also, TTL, 9 (SV1 V, 177); Works of Love, 209 (SV1 IX, 201). I notice that ‘order’ is not indexed in Journals and Papers and ‘Orden’ is not indexed in Pap.
[vi] Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, 243 (SV1 IV, 131-132).
[vii] Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, 521 n. 110.??
[viii] Journals and Papers, 1333 (Pap. IV A 190).
[ix] Regarding the phrase ‘intervening cause,’ cfr. also Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, 41 (SV1 III, 46); Philosophical Fragments, 75 (SV1 IV, 239) and Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 543 (SV1 VII, 474).
[x] Two Discourses at the Communion on Fridays, 69-70 (SV1 XII, 353-4).
[xi] BI, 74 (SV1 XIII, 167), 109 (SV1 XIII, 197); EE1, 153 (SV1 I, 130); Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, 33 (SV1 III, 38); and SV, 40 (SV1 VI, 42). I point out that ‘naturlov’ is not indexed in Pap.
[xii] Works of Love, 294-295 (SV1 IX, 281-282).
[xiii] Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays, 132 (SV1 XI, 268).
[xiv] Two Discourses at the Communion on Fridays, 176 (SV1 XII, 278).
[xv] Two Discourses at the Communion on Fridays, 176 (SV1 XII, 278).
[xvi] Journals and Papers, 2720 (Pap. X 1 A 373).
[xvii] Journals and Papers, 2720 (Pap. X 1 A 373).
[xviii] Journals and Papers, 2720 (Pap. X 1 A 373).
[xix] Philosophical Fragments, 62 (SV1 IV, 227).
[xx] Philosophical Fragments, 59 (SV1 IV, 224).
[xxi] Philosophical Fragments, 52 (SV1 IV, 218-19).
[xxii] Regarding this idea, cfr., for example Pojman, L.P. (1983) pp. 134-136, 140 and Evans, C.S. (1983) p. 236.
[xxiii] Concluding Unscientific Postrcipt, 96 (SV1 VII, 76). Climacus is here referring to Lessing’s treatise “On the Proof of the Spirit and of Power” (cfr. Lessing, G. (1967) pp. 51-56.)
[xxiv] Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 23 (SV1 VII, 12).
[xxv] Philosophical Fragments, 55-71 (SV1 IV, 221-234).
[xxvi] Philosophical Fragments, 55 (SV1 IV, 221).
[xxvii] Philosophical Fragments, 59 (SV1 IV, 225).
[xxviii] Cfr. also Bogen om Adler, 47 (Pap. VII 2 B 235, 89), where ‘Petrus Minor’ points out that if “one can understand that those men eighteen hundred years ago believed that it was a miracle, then one can just as well say straight out that one does not believe it oneself.” ‘Petrus’s’ point is that if a person has ‘real’ faith, he can encounter Christ in his own everyday life without being offended at Christ’s paradoxical nature.
[xxix] Practice in Christianity, 97 (SV1 XII, 93).
[xxx] Practice in Christianity, 97 (SV1 XII, 93).
[xxxi] Practice in Christianity, 97 (SV1 XII, 93).
[xxxii] Practice in Christianity, 97 (SV1 XII, 93).
[xxxiii] Practice in Christianity, 97 (SV1 XII, 93).
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