ABSTRACT
Kierkegaard’s understanding of the Bible as Scripture is best clarified in relation to several currents in his context. The first was Hegelianism and its influence on dogmatic theology, which-Kierkegaard argued-subsumed the Bible under a theological (and rational-philosophical) system. Similarly, Lutheran doctrinaire orthodoxy was also guilty, in Kierkegaard’s view, of prioritizing a rational system over the authority of the Word. A second current was represented by the “church theory” of the influential pastor and hymn-writer, N.F.S. Grundtvig (1783-1872).9 Grundtvig viewed the church as a living repository of God’s truth over and above the authority of the Bible. He believed that because the Bible could be misinterpreted and put to use by critical, Enlightenment (rationalist) minds in destabilizing Christianity and fragmenting the church, it should be avoided as a regular source of revelation. Consequently, he privileged the sacraments, including the Eucharist, Lord’s Prayer, and the Apostles’ Creed (and the recitation of the creed at baptism); these enabled the reception of the “living Word” by the church. The third current was the burgeoning “objective” approach to the Bible, which emphasized historical, linguistic, and other “rationalist” hermeneutical methods. It was epitomized by the “quest for the historical Jesus,” in the form of David Friedrich Strauss’ (1808-74) Das Leben Jesu. In Jolita Pons’ assessment, for Kierkegaard, Strauss’ goal was not
critical approaches to the Bible had already been prominent in the universities and had been making strong inroads into the church. The New Testament professor H.N. Clausen (1793-1877) represented a more romantic brand of linguistic hermeneutics, in the spirit of his teacher Friedrich Schleiermacher. For Grundtvig (and, in a different way, for Kierkegaard), Clausen’s preoccupation with biblical interpretation illustrated the problem of the church’s approach to divine revelation.11
