Summary: Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments (page 2)

Kierkegaard begins by describing the historical approach.

This rests on the study of the historical material transmitted to us through the centuries concerning that founding event: the coming of Christ. Testimonies, writings, and relics are collected, analysed, and compared.

This practice is particularly fashionable in Kierkegaard's time. The Life of Jesus by D. Strauss, for example, had appeared about ten years earlier: in it, the life of Christ is treated as one historical fact among others and examined as such—causing considerable scandal.

This is the work of the historian, but also of the philologist. Indeed, the enquiry ends up turning in a privileged way towards the Scriptures: the New Testament is analysed, for example, to identify possible contradictions between different Gospels, to interpret obscure passages, and so on:

Holy Scripture at once appears as a decisive document. That is why historical consideration concentrates first on the Bible. ¹

In fact, when Scripture is regarded as the surest rule for deciding what is Christian and what is not, it matters that it be secured from a historical and critical point of view. Hence the procedures that are brought to bear: One deals with the inclusion of each writing in the canon, with its authenticity, its integrity, the credibility of its author; and one then affixes a dogmatic guarantee: inspiration.

From the nineteenth century onwards, a kind of scientistic movement seizes hold of the study of the Bible and subjects it to the results of secular disciplines—history, archaeology, linguistics, and so on—which profoundly offends Kierkegaard. It is here that he criticises this approach, since it seems to him to denature the phenomenon of faith.

Its essential limitation is that it can lead only to approximations, never to an exact and absolutely certain truth: Even with the most astonishing perseverance and erudition […] one never nonetheless goes beyond an approximation.

In reality, it is nothing but an underground route towards Christianity which one has tried to construct objectively and scientifically, instead of allowing the problem to emerge in its true light: subjectively.

Yet Kierkegaard respects this approach: learned philology is entirely within its rights, and he has veneration for what science sanctions. One should not, for example, stupidly mock the care the scholar brings to the most insignificant details—which is precisely to his credit, that he treats nothing as insignificant.

As long as it remains within the sphere of science, the objective approach is respectable. The problem arises when it seeks to make a leap beyond its proper sphere and deduce something from it on the religious plane: One always has the impression that, all of a sudden, something that concerns faith ought to result from this criticism. There lies the delicate point, when it concludes: "ergo, you can now stake your eternal blessedness on these writings", or the opposite.

Ultimately, this approach can satisfy neither the believer nor the non-believer, which shows its uselessness: Anyone who, in believing, accepts inspiration must logically regard all critical consideration—whether for or against—as something dubious, as a kind of temptation; and anyone who, without being a believer, ventures into critical considerations cannot, all the same, want inspiration to result from them. So who is all this really for?

At best, this approach can lead only to an inexact, approximate result; yet an approximation is too little to build one's blessedness upon. Ultimately, who can passionately, with an infinitely personal interest, make his eternal blessedness depend upon this result? In fact, he easily sees that there is no result and none to be expected; and the contradiction will lead him to despair.

This despair will teach him that one does not make progress along this path. Yet many scholars have fallen into the trap: One generation has followed another into the grave; new difficulties have appeared and have been overcome, and new difficulties have appeared. From generation to generation, the illusion has been handed down that the method was the right one, but that the scholars had not yet succeeded, etc.

All the irony lies in the fact that one has become too objective to have an eternal blessedness, for blessedness consists precisely in infinitely personal, passionate interest—and one renounces it precisely in order to become objective; one allows oneself to have it torn away by objectivity.

Let us imagine the two opposite cases.

One has succeeded in proving the authenticity of all the books of the Bible; apparent contradictions have been resolved; every obscurity has been dispelled:

And then what? Has the one who did not have faith come a single step closer? No, not a single step. For faith is not the consequence of a direct scientific consideration […] on the contrary, in this objectivity one loses the infinitely personal, passionate interest which is the condition of faith—the ubisque et nusquam in which faith can take birth.

In fact, whereas faith has hitherto had a useful master in uncertainty, it would find in certainty its most dangerous enemy. For if passion is eliminated, faith no longer exists; certainty and passion do not go together.

Suppose, on the contrary, that one succeeds in proving that certain passages of Scripture are irreconcilably contradictory, or definitively obscure, or even that the Bible was written by other authors or at a different time than was thought:

And then what? Has the enemy thereby abolished Christianity? By no means. Has he harmed the believer? By no means—not in the least. Has he thereby acquired a right to evade responsibility for not being a believer? Not at all.

For even if the books of the Bible are not the work of these authors, it does not follow […] that Christ did not live.

¹ Our translation. The references for the quotations are available in the book Kierkegaard: A Close Reading