Was Bishop Mynster a "witness to the truth," one of "the genuine witnesses to the truth" — is this the truth?
February 1854. S. Kierkegaard.
In the address which Professor Martensen "delivered on the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, the Sunday preceding the burial of Bishop Mynster,1 a speech of remembrance it might be called for the reason that it brought to Professor Martensen's remembrance the vacant episcopal see — in this address Bishop Mynster is represented as one of the genuine witnesses to the truth,2 this being affirmed in the strongest and most decisive terms it would be possible to use. With the figure of the deceased bishop, his life and the manner of it and the issue of it, before our eyes, we are exhorted "to imitate the faith of the true guide, the genuine witness to the truth" (p. 5), to imitate his faith, for that, as was said expressly of Bishop Mynster, was shown, "not merely by word and profession, but in deed and in truth" (p. 9). The deceased bishop is by Professor Martensen introduced (p. 6) "into the holy chain of witnesses to the truth which stretches through the ages from the days of the Apostles," etc.
Against this I must protest — and now that Bishop Mynster is dead, I can speak willingly, but in this place very briefly, and not at all about what determined me to assume the relationship to him which I assumed.
If the word "preaching" suggests more particularly what is said, written, printed, the word, the sermon, then the fact that in this respect (to allude to only one thing) Bishop Mynster's preaching soft-pedals, slurs over, suppresses, omits something decisively Christian, something which appears to us men inopportune, which would make our life strenuous, hinder us from enjoying life, that part of Christianity which has to do with dying from the world, by voluntary renunciation, by hating oneself, by suffering for the doctrine, etc. — to see this one does not have to be particularly sharp-sighted, if one puts the New Testament alongside of Mynster's sermons.
If on the other hand the word "preaching," proclaiming the Gospel, leads one to think more particularly how far the preacher's life expresses what he says (and note that Christianly this is the decisive thing, whereby Christianity has wished to secure itself against getting docents without definite character, instead of witnesses), the fact that Bishop Mynster's preaching of Christianity was not in character, that outside the quiet hours he was not in character, not even in the role of his own sermons, which nevertheless, as has been said, have in comparison withthe New Testament mitigated the Christian conceptions considerably — one does not need to be particularly sharp-sighted to see this, in case one who hears and reads him is duly acquainted with his sermons. In 1848 and thereafter this was visible even to blind admirers, if they were sufficiently acquainted with his sermons to know what they and the quiet hours would prompt one to expect.
So when alongside of it one lays the New Testament, Bishop Mynster's proclamation of Christianity was a very questionable sott of preaching, especially on the part of one who was a witness to the truth. But then to my mind the genuine thing about him was that, as I am firmly convinced, he was willing to admit before God and to himself that by no manner of means was he a witness to the truth — to my mind this admission was the genuine thing about him.
But if from the pulpit Bishop Mynster is to be depicted and canonized as a witness to the truth, one of the genuine witnesses to the truth, then a protest must be made. I see that the Berlin News [a Copenhagen paper], which is the official newspaper, just as Professor Martensen is the official preacher, expresses the opinion that Professor Martensen (who with notable haste forestalls the interment and the monument too [which was to be erected to the deceased bishop]) has by this address erected a beautiful and worthy monument to the deceased — I would prefer to say a worthy monument to Professor Martensen himself. But in any case, the monument cannot be ignored, therefore a protest must be made, which perhaps might contribute to make the monument (to Professor Martensen) more enduring.
Bishop Mynster a witness to the truth! You who read this must surely know what is to be understood by a witness to the truth;* but let me remind you that for this it is absolutely necessary for one to suffer for the doctrine, and when it is said emphatically, one of the "genuine" witnesses to the truth, the word must be understood in the strictest sense. Let me then try to indicate by a few strokes what is to be understood by it, in order to make it vivid to you.
A witness to the truth is a man whose life from first to last is unacquainted with everything which is called enjoyment — and, ah, whether to you has been granted little or much, you know how pleasant is that which is called enjoyment! But his life from first to last was unacquainted with what is called enjoyment; on the other hand, from first to last it was initiated into what is called suffering — and, alas, even you who have been exempted from the protracted, the more agonizing sufferings, you know nevertheless from your own experience how one winces at what is called suffering! But to that his life was initiated from first to last, by experiences which are even more rarely talked about among men, because they are more rarely encountered in the world, by inward conflicts, by fear and trembling, by trepidation, by anguish of soul, by agony of spirit, being tried besides that by all the sufferings which are more commonly talked of in the world. A witness to the truth is a man who in poverty witnesses to the truth — in poverty, in lowliness, in abasement, and so is unappreciated, hated, abhorred, and then derided, insulted, mocked — his daily bread perhaps he did not always have, so poor was he, but the daily bread of persecution he was richly provided with every day. For him there was never promotion, except in an inverse sense, downward, step by step. A witness to the truth, one of the genuine witnesses to the truth, is a man who is scourged, maltreated, dragged from one prison to the other, and then at last — the last promotion, whereby he is admitted into the first class as defined by the Christian protocol, among the genuine witnesses to the truth — then at last — for this is indeed one of those genuine witnesses to the truth of whom Professor Martensen speaks — then at last crucified, or beheaded, or burnt, or roasted on a gridiron, his lifeless body thrown by the executioner in an out-of-the-way place (thus a witness to the truth is buried), or burnt to ashes and cast to the four winds, so that every trace of the "filth" (which the Apostle says he was) might be obliterated.
This is a witness to the truth, his life and career, his death and burial — and Bishop Mynster, says Professor Martensen, was one of the genuine witnesses to the truth.
Is this truth? To speak thus, is this perhaps also a way of witnessing to the truth? and by that address did Professor Martensen himself appear in the character of a witness to the truth, one of the genuine witnesses to the truth? Verily there is that which is more contrary to Christianity, and to the very nature of Christianity, than any heresy, any schism, more contrary than all heresies and all schisms combined, and that is, to play Christianity. But precisely in the very same sense that the child plays soldier, it is playing Christianity to take away the danger (Christianly, "witness" and "danger" correspond), and in place of this to introduce power (to be a danger for others), worldly goods, advantages, luxurious enjoyment of the most exquisite refinements — and then to play the game that Bishop Mynster was a witness to the truth, one of the genuine witnesses to the truth, to play it with such frightful earnestness that one cannot bring the game to a stop, but keeps on playing it into heaven itself, plays Bishop Mynster on into the holy chain of witnesses to the truth which stretches from the days of the Apostles to our times.
Postscript
This article, as one can see from the date, has lain [unpublished] for a considerable time.
So long as there was question of appointment to the episcopal see of Seeland, 3 I thought that I ought to say nothing publically concerning Professor Martensen; for whether he were to become bishop or not, in any case he was a candidate for this office, and presumably desired that so long as this situation lasted as little as possible should happen concerning him.
With Professor Martensen's nomination as bishop this consideration lapsed. But then again the article
could not be published and therefore was not. My thought was that there was no reason for haste.
Moreover, the nomination of Bishop Martensen called forth an attack upon him from another side and of an
entirely different sort: it would have been more than superfluous for me to coincide with this attack;
so I waited. My thought was, as I have said, that there was no reason for haste, and that nothing is
lost by waiting. Someone may even find that something is gained, may find a deeper significance in the
fact that the protest comes so tardily.
Autumn of 1854.
But a protest must be made against this representation of Bishop Mynster as a witness to the truth.
It may be said pretty nearly of Bishop Mynster that he carried a whole generation — it is therefore a difficulty bordering closely upon the impossible to introduce clarity in our confused religious conduct and concepts, so long as a truer illumination is not shed upon the truth of Bishop Mynster's preaching of Christianity, which after all it is my duty to shed, because Bishop Mynster, precisely Bishop Mynster, was, if one would so put it, my life's misfortune — not for the fact that he was not a witness to the truth (that circumstance would not be so dangerous), but for the fact that in addition to all the other advantages which he derived in the most ample measure from preaching Christianity, he had also the enjoyment of declaiming in quiet hours on Sundays and making up for it with worldly shrewdness on Mondays, giving the impression of being a man of character, a man of principle, who stands firm when everything vacillates, who does not fail when all are failing, etc., etc., whereas the truth is that he was worldly shrewd in a high degree, but weak, self-indulgent, and only great as a declaimer — and was my life's misfortune, if one would put it so (though in a very high sense, through the love of divine governance, it turned out to my profit, became my good fortune) — my misfortune was that, being brought up by a father now deceased, upon Mynster's sermons, and prompted by filial piety towards the deceased father, I honored this false draft instead of protesting it.
Now he is dead. God be praised that it could be put off as long as he lived. That was attained which toward the end I was about to despair of,4 but nevertheless that was attained which was my thought, my wish, which also I can remember to have said once a long while ago to the aged Grundtvig: "Bishop Mynster must first live out his days and be buried with full music" — that was attained, he was indeed, if I may venture to say so, buried with full music. For the monument to him there has surely by this time been received pretty much all that will be received.
So I cannot keep silent longer, the protest must come, all the more serious for its tardiness, the
protest against representing from the pulpit, that is, before God, Bishop Mynster as a witness to the
truth; for that is false, and proclaimed in this way it is a falsehood which cries to heaven.
December 1854.
Kierkegaard's Footnote
* But perhaps this has been cast into oblivion by Bishop Mynster's preaching in the course of so many years. For this too is one of the defects, and one of the principal defects of his preaching — not the fact that he himself was a government official (from the Christian point of view that is a detraction from his preaching), not the consideration of his own glittering career, rich in enjoyment, no, not this, but the fact that he would authorize that way of proclaiming the Gospel as the true Christian way, and thereby implicitly condemn as an exaggeration the true Christian preaching (by a suffering witness to the truth), instead of making to Christianity the admission that the preaching he represented is something which may be conceded to us men as a dispensation and indulgence, something which we ordinary men have recourse to because we are too selfish, too worldly, too sensual, to be capable of anything more, something which we ordinary men have recourse to, and which so understood, in spite of all false reformers, is by no means to be conceitedly and presumptuously repudiated, but is on the contrary to be respected.
Translator's Footnotes
1 Bishop Mynster died on Jan. 30, 1854, and was buried eight days later, on the Thursday following Prof. Martensen's eulogy, which he pronounced on a Sunday in the Casde Church of Christiansborg, where he functioned as Court Preacher. He chose as his text Hebrews 13:7 f. and took occasion to say of the late Bishop, "From the man whose precious memory fills your hearts, your thought is led to the whole line of witnesses to the truth which like a holy chain stretches," etc.
2It should be remembered that in his Works as well as in his Journal S. K. had emphasized this concept strongly and defined it sharply. Nothing could have offended him more deeply than Martensen's use of the word in this connection, and the fact that he deferred publishing his protest for so long a time is evidence of extraordinary self-control.
3 On April 15, 1854, Martensen was appointed by the Crown to the vacant episcopal see. But he attained this appointment with some difficulty, seeing that H. N. Clausen was a strong competitor, supported by the National Liberal Party, with which S. K., as he says subsequently, was loath to ally himself.
4 While Mynster was still alive, S. K. had written out in full several drafts of a projected attack upon him, which now can be read in his Papers, X6 B 162-170, pp. 255-396.