This is basically Kierkegaard just bashing the established Lutheran state church of Denmark for a few hundred pages. The impetus for this harangue is a eulogy for Bishop Mynster by his successor, Bishop Martensen. Specifically, at issue is the classifying Mynster as a Christian truth-witness. Kierkegaard begins, “In the New Testament, Christ calls the apostles and followers witnesses, requires of them that they shall witness for him. Let us now see what is to be understood by that. They are men who in renunciation of everything, in poverty, in lowliness, then, ready for any suffering, are to go out into a world that with all its might and main expresses the contrast to what it is to be a Christian. This is what Christ calls witnessing, being a witness…. Now I ask, is there the slightest similarity between these pastors, deans, and bishops and what Christ calls witnesses?… They may be called teachers, public officials, professors, councilors—in short, anything one wishes, but not truth-witnesses…. If the clergy understand their interests, they will not hesitate to ask the bishop to discontinue this language usage, which, to put it mildly, makes the whole profession ludicrous.”
Kierkegaard is offended that, in Christendom, there reside so many people that are Christians in name only, rather than in true belief. He strictly blames the pastors, as a profession, for this state of affairs. “Nothing is more dangerous for true Christianity, nothing is more against its nature, than getting people light-mindedly to assume the name “Christians,” to teach them to have a low opinion of being a Christian, as if it were something that is so very easy. And “the pastor” has a pecuniary interest in having it rest there, so that by assuming the name “Christians” people do not come to know what Christianity in truth is…. Christ and the New Testament understand something very specific by having faith; to have faith is to venture out as decisively as possible for a human being, breaking with everything, with what a human being naturally loves, breaking, in order to save his life, with that in which he naturally has his life. But to those who have faith, to them is also promised assistance against all dangers…. But in “Christendom” we play at having faith, play at being Christians. As far removed as possible from any break with what the natural human being loves, we remain at home in the living room, in the routines of finiteness—and then we go and blather to each other.”
Kierkegaard earnestly wants to convert Christendom to the true Christianity of the New Testament. To the citizen of Denmark who is struggling to balance the demands of this world and the next, he urges, “Eternally he will not regret heeding my words, but it is quite possible that he could regret it temporally. He himself is then to consider whether it is the eternal he wants or the temporal. I, who am called Either/Or, cannot serve anyone with: both-and.” Kierkegaard concludes, “All religion in which there is any truth, certainly Christianity, aims at a person’s total transformation and wants, through renunciation and self-denial, to wrest away from him all that, precisely that, to which he immediately clings, in which he immediately has his life…. To become a Christian in the New Testament sense is designed to work the individual loose (as the dentist speaks of working the gum loose) from the context to which he clings in immediate passion, and which clings in immediate passion to him…. This kind of Christianity was never to the human being’s liking.”
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