Can Kierkegaard Preach?
Journal Title: ИДЕИ. ФИЛОСОФСКО СПИСАНИЕ - Year 2014, Vol 2, Issue 1
Abstract
Growing up in a Pentecostal Christian subculture in the American Southeast, I have often heard the phrase: “That can preach.” This idiomatic sentence is a bit difficult to explain in that it means both that some idea would make for good fodder for a sermon, but also that the idea would make for a good sermon because of its ability to “move” a congregation. Interestingly, during sermons in which the congregation is so “moved,” one often hears affirmative shouts of “Preach it!” Perhaps due to my own phenomenological disposition or perhaps due to my Pentecostal heritage, I think that the notion of an idea being something “that can preach,” is worthy of some philosophical consideration. Are there some ideas that can’t “preach,” as it were? And, if so, is this due to their lack of congregational motivation? That is, is it primarily a matter of rhetorical and emotional impact? Or, is the fact that some ideas can’t “preach” due to the ideas themselves? That is, is it primarily a matter of conceptual or theological content? Said slightly otherwise, in the hands of a good rhetorician, can anything “preach”? Or can that which “can preach” be preached by anyone? Since this essay will be intentionally short, I am not going to be able to give an extended consideration to these questions here. But, as something of a springboard to what I hope will become a more thorough engagement elsewhere, I will look at the work of Søren Kierkegaard as a preliminary case study. Accordingly, the specific question that will occupy us here is: “Can Kierkegaard Preach?” I mean for this question to be heard in two ways. On the one hand, this question asks if the ideas of Kierkegaard can be translated into the mode of discourse that would make for productive (perhaps “moving”) sermons in the setting of contemporary church services. On the other hand, this question asks if Kierkegaard, himself, could deliver such sermons. The first formulation concerns primarily the subjectivity of Christian life and the second formulation concerns primarily the authority of Christian witness. In this all too brief essay, I will suggest that Kierkegaard’s though can indeed “preach,” but whether Kierkegaard himself can “preach it” depends on how we understand the role and task of preaching itself.
Authors and Affiliations
J. Aaron Simmons
Keywords
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