Søren Kierkegaard and the Latter-day Saints
God used Søren Kierkegaard to prepare Denmark for the Latter-day Saints and I have the evidence.
Inspired by the following tweet:
Many Utahn Latter-day Saints have Danish ancestry. “Denmark supplied more immigrants to Utah in the nineteenth century than any other country except Great Britain. Most of these Danes—nearly 17,000—were converts to the LDS Church, heeding an urgent millennialistic call to gather to ‘Zion.’” Great Britain was the obvious foreign destination for early Latter-day Saint missionaries because of their shared language and culture. Why was Denmark and not some other country number two?
One may recall that in the early nineteenth century the United States was going through the Second Great Awakening. Portions of upstate New York became known as the “burned-over district” because of how many hellfire-and-damnation sermons were preached. There was “unusual excitement on the subject of religion” in the region among all peoples and sects. This excitement led to the formation of not only Joseph Smith’s Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints but also the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Adventists.
What is less well-known is that at around this same time Denmark also went through a religious transformation. Grundtvig preached a “light, joyous, celebratory and communal” Christianity which became the de facto standard of the established church. Heiberg and Martensen evangelized Hegelianism, suggesting that the Divine Mind could be understood by objective rational process. Freedom of religion was formally granted in the adoption of the Constitution of 1849 (after having briefly been granted in the 1770s during the short-lived regime of Struensee, who took control of the country from the mad king). Times were changing; Enlightenment ideals and new philosophies were coming into the country from Germany and making a difference.
We see, then, that Denmark was ripe for new ideas. Other groups such as the Baptists were making some headway in the nation. Why not the “Mormons”?
On closer inspection one might ask “why on earth the ‘Mormons?’” The Gospel preached by their elders was very different than the prevailing religious attitudes of the day. They taught that the Lutheran Church was devoid of any divine authority and fundamentally apostate. They taught that truth should be arrived at by private and subjective religious experience rather than through objective process, as the Hegelians held. They were American in a time Denmark was more fully realizing its national identity and pride. They preached a martyred prophet and a strange new book of scripture in their broken Danish.
It seems obvious that the average Dane would never make the jump from Danish Lutheranism to “Mormonism.” Yet there were thousands who did. Clearly they were religious, committed enough to cross the Atlantic for their new faith. There was some new thought, some condition, some circumstance wherein these people were open to accepting radical new Latter-day Saint ideas and converting.
There was one man who embodied and who transmitted this thought and this condition. The ideologically tumultuous American Second Great Awakening produced a prophet in Joseph Smith. The Danish Golden Age similarly produced Denmark’s greatest son—Søren Kierkegaard, who I contend cleared the ground for the Latter-day Saints in Denmark.
Kierkegaard was no prophet. He repeatedly speaks of himself as “a poet without authority.” This is a twofold acknowledgement that there is such as thing as authority and that he is not in possession of it. But according to him all Christendom was fallen into error: “What we have before us is not Christianity but a prodigious illusion, and the people are not pagans but live in the blissful conceit that they are Christians.” Christendom would treat Christianity as a doctrine to be known an affirmed as if mere intellectual assent to the Resurrection of Christ could have saving power. For Kierkegaard Christianity was an “existence-communication,” something that must be lived by the existing subject rather than understood objectively. For this reason Kierkegaard is known as the father of existentialism (although the term “existentialism” has been hopelessly sullied by the French).
Kierkegaard saw Christianity as in need of reform. Though his religious views were unique to himself, he can best be understood as a Lutheran in the sense that no religious figure since the time of the apostles compared to Martin Luther in his mind. Luther was the great reformer of the Church in his age and his work was essential in turning souls from the errors of Catholicism. Kierkegaard saw need for a new Luther in the nineteenth century, though he knew himself unfit for the task. From the moral to Kierkegaard’s Judge for Yourself!:
If anyone among us dares to undertake to walk ethically in the character of what is suggested here, also appealing as a single individual to an immediate relationship with God, then I shall at once—understand myself in this way at this moment, but I cannot even know whether at the next moment even the conditions for my being able to do so might be denied me, at the next moment, perhaps even before I have this published—! shall at once be on duty to undertake what I understand before God as my task. My task will be: to escort him, the reformer, step by step, never leaving his side, in order to see if he step by step is in the character, is the extraordinary. If he should turn out to be that, then my escorting will be all bows and deference to him, the extraordinary—and, indeed, I venture to say of myself that among his contemporaries he will not find anyone, not a single one, who knows how to bow lower before the extraordinary.
Kierkegaard waits for “the Extraordinary,” a new Luther who can appear “in the character” of the reformer, someone who unlike himself claims authority. He writes this in 1851, but already in 1830 Joseph Smith had appeared on the religious stage in America claiming to be that and more. Smith claimed to be not merely a Luther but a Moses, not a reformer but a prophet and restorer. He claimed divine authority from John the Baptist, Peter, James, and John, Elijah, “Elias,” and Moses. He presents himself as an obvious candidate for Kierkegaard’s “Extraordinary.”
Let us compare Joseph Smith and Søren Kierkegaard in several respects as regards their lives and their thought, that the parallels between the two may be better understood. I contend that God’s hand was manifest in Kierkegaard as an anticipation of the Prophet; that in introducing Denmark to the one, He prepared to introduce Denmark to the other.
Found Manuscripts
Joseph Smith reports that he was led by an angel to an ancient record inscribed on metal plates buried under a rock atop a large hill near his New York home. Upon translating this record into English “by the gift and power of God,” it was published as The Book of Mormon (now subtitled Another Testament of Jesus Christ to emphasize its ties to the other Testaments: an Old, a New, and Another).
Kierkegaard’s first major work is Either/Or. The book purports to be the publication of one Victor Emerita, an editor who becomes fascinated with a particular antique desk. Upon purchase of the desk he finds inside its drawers a large volume of decades-old letters and writings by two characters, which he edits and prepares for publication.
Either/Or internally makes this claim as to its authorship, though Kierkegaard himself was forthcoming in taking ownership for it and his other pseudonymous works. The Prophet, on the other hand, maintained until his death that The Book of Mormon was indeed an ancient record. Nevertheless, the first published work of both Kierkegaard and Smith was a purported “found manuscript.”
Pseudonymity
Søren Kierkegaard wrote under a number of pseudonyms. While religious discourses and dialogues were usually published under his own name, the more intellectual or philosophical works were typically published under pseudonyms. Johannes de Silentio, Johannes Climacus, Anti-Climacus, Judge William, Victor Eremita, Frater Taciturnus—Kierkegaard wrote under these and many other names.
Joseph Smith and a number of his associates went by pseudonymous codenames for a time. The early Latter-day Saints faced persecution at the hands of their enemies, yet it was important that the revelations Smith received (now published in the Doctrine and Covenants) be distributed to the Saints for their instruction, edification, and direction. These revelations typically addressed prominent Saints by name. To protect them, their names were replaced by codenames before circulation. The Prophet went by a number of pseudonyms: “Baurak Ale,” “Gazelem,” and “Enoch.”
Personality
Kierkegaard was an affable young man. Yet he records:
I have just now come from a party where I was its life and soul; witticisms streamed from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me, but I went away—yes, the dash should be as long as the radius of the earth's orbit ——————————— and wanted to shoot myself.
Joseph Smith writes of his young life:
I was left to all kinds of temptations; and, mingling with all kinds of society, I frequently fell into many foolish errors, and displayed the weakness of youth, and the foibles of human nature; which, I am sorry to say, led me into divers temptations, offensive in the sight of God. In making this confession, no one need suppose me guilty of any great or malignant sins. A disposition to commit such was never in my nature. But I was guilty of levity, and sometimes associated with jovial company, etc., not consistent with that character which ought to be maintained by one who was called of God as I had been. But this will not seem very strange to any one who recollects my youth, and is acquainted with my native cheery temperament.
Both are somewhat disposed to parties and merrymaking, yet each expresses remorse for it. They both feel a call towards a higher standard of piety and holiness; Kierkegaard largely takes this from his austere father, while Smith was called to such because of his visionary experiences.
Trouble with the press
One of the great dramas of Kierkegaard’s life was what is known as The Corsair affair. The Copenhagen newspaper embarked on a months-long attack of Kierkegaard, spurring the second phase of his authorship.
Smith was mayor of Nauvoo, Illinois at one point; the city was effectively theocratic. His enemies ran a newspaper The Nauvoo Expositor smearing him and the “Mormons.” The Nauvoo City Council voted to have the press of the Expositor destroyed, claiming it libelous. It was as a result of this action that Smith and some of his close associates were held in Carthage jail awaiting trial, at which point a mob broke in and martyred both Joseph and Hyrum Smith.
Any noteworthy figure will at some point be smeared by the press. As Thomas Jefferson writes:
Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle… I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.
Early Death
Kierkegaard died in 1855 at the age of 42, possibly from tuberculosis. The Prophet was martyred at the age of 39 (as a result of the aforementioned Nauvoo Expositor affair), having previously prophesied “I shall not live until I am forty years of age.”
Calling
Joseph Smith was called as a prophet when God appeared to him at the age of fourteen, and again a few years later when an angel appeared to him and commanded him to receive and translate the plates comprising The Book of Mormon.
Søren Kierkegaard similarly felt he was called by God to a particular work. Speaking autobiographically in Attack Upon Christendom:
The Christianity of the New Testament would be: in case that man were really able to love in such a way that the girl was the only one he loved and one whom he loved with the whole passion of a soul (yet such men as this are no longer to be found), then, hating himself and the loved one, to let her go in order to love God.
Kierkegaard loved his young fiancée Regine, yet felt he had to break up their engagement in order to serve God by his writing. Nothing ever hurt him more.
The Individual
Kierkegaard opposed Grundtvig’s vision of a communal Christianity; for him Christianity was an “existence-communication” that could only be realized in the individual’s relation to God. He similarly opposed Martensen’s Hegelianized Christianity that put Reason in God’s place; for him Christianity was absurd, a paradox—yet a saving paradox. Kierkegaard saw little use for the pastors of his day. He recommended that men find God for themselves in the Bible, strongly influenced by Luther’s teachings of the same (sola scriptura). For him “subjectivity is truth.”
The Prophet similarly taught the importance of personal revelation, saying that every man should reach out to God to obtain direct guidance for himself (whether in the form of visions, dreams, angels, or quiet moments of insight). He, too, sees the individual as capable of accessing God without the intercession of priest or pastor.
Ethics
In Fear and Trembling, the Danish poet examines the ethical sphere through the lens of the story of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham’s act is taken to be morally correct, yet it is obviously ethically incorrect to murder one’s son. Kierkegaard resolves this by understanding that whatever is done in faith is right, “for whatsoever is not of faith is sin”. Abraham’s act was done by the double-movement of faith, first in relinquishing Isaac infinitely and then in regaining the finite by virtue of the absurd. Simply put, to act in faith is no sin even if it violates ethics.
Joseph Smith taught the same principle:
That which is wrong under one circumstance, may be, and often is, right under another. God said, “Thou shalt not kill;” at another time He said, “Thou shalt utterly destroy.” This is the principle on which the government of heaven is conducted—by revelation adapted to the circumstances in which the children of the kingdom are placed. Whatever God requires is right, no matter what it is, although we may not see the reason thereof till long after the events transpire.
The Book of Mormon that he published contains a similar story to that of Abraham and Isaac. In it the protagonist Nephi is commanded by the Spirit of God to kill an unconscious Laban, a wicked man who has sought his life. This slaying is as unethical as Abraham’s offering of Isaac (if more understandable) but similarly justified through the commandment of God.
Tripartite division of existence
Joseph Smith had a noteworthy revelation simply known as “The Vision” in which he saw the “many mansions” spoken of by Christ. In the recording of the vision the principal three of these are referred to as the “celestial,” the “terrestrial,” and the “telestial” (the first two terms being borrowed from the King James translation of 1 Corinthians 15:40 and the last being a term of his own invention). All people will receive one of these three inheritances after the Final Judgement. The celestial are they “who overcome by faith”, the terrestrial are “they who are honorable men of the earth, who were blinded by the craftiness of men”, and the telestial are “they who are liars, and sorcerers, and adulterers, and whoremongers, and whosoever loves and makes a lie”.
Kierkegaard similarly divided existence into three spheres, which he names the esthetic, the ethical, and the religious. These correspond impressively well with the Prophet’s three tiers: The religious and the celestial each comprise impressive “knights of faith” such as Abraham. The ethical and terrestrial comprise the humdrum good men who fall short of faith. The esthetic and the telestial comprise wicked characters such as Kierkegaard’s fictional Seducer.
Similarities between Søren Kierkegaard and Joseph Smith should now be apparent. None of these constitute conclusive proof that Kierkegaard would convert given a copy of The Book of Mormon or that he was a crypto-Latter-day Saint. Yet together I believe they illustrate that Kierkegaard was uniquely anticipatory of the American Prophet and that Kierkegaard may have prepared the hearts and minds of the Danes to accept the Latter-day Saints.
A few additional items merit consideration as potential issues with this thesis, each of which I will examine further.
Book on Adler
Adolph Peter Adler was a Danish pastor and contemporary of Kierkegaard’s. Formerly a Hegelian, he turned in a new direction upon claiming to receive a revelation, proclaiming he had a “vision of light”. One must obviously compare this to Joseph Smith’s appearance on the scene claiming he too saw “a pillar of light.”
Adler initially claimed his revelation in 1842 (published 1843). In the following years he was suspended from his pastorate and denounced. Ultimately he retracted his claims, saying instead that “revelation was perhaps too strong an expression” and his work was merely a work of genius.
The Book on Adler is Kierkegaard’s response to such. It is a discussion on the difference between genius and revelation. Genius is esthetic and carries no inherent authority; revelation comes from the divine and brings with it inherent authority. There is an unbridgeable gap between the status of a theologian on the one hand and an apostle on the other. The book is emphatically not a denunciation of all supposed revelation. “Kierkegaard has no dispute with the mere claim of someone having had a revelation, but that Adler did not cling to his former claim of having had one.”
Joseph Smith is quite different from Adler. He never retracted his claims as Adler did. “Moreover, Kierkegaard met with Adler, who, in reading his own works to Kierkegaard, would alternate between a regular speaking voice and a shrill "whistling" voice, as if the latter were to convey weightier and more spiritual truths.” This sort of behavior was quite common among eccentric religious movements in the early nineteenth century, but Smith expressly condemned such (among a sect known as the Irvingites) in his editorial “Try the Spirits”:
The first prophetic spirit that was manifested was in some Misses Campbell that Mr. Irving met with, while on a journey in Scotland; they had (what is termed among their sect) “utterances,” which were evidently of a supernatural agency. Mr. Irving, falling into the common error of considering all supernatural manifestations to be of God, took them to London with him, and introduced them into his church. They were there honored as the prophetesses of God, and when they spoke, Mr. Irving or any of his ministers had to keep silence. They were peculiarly wrought upon before the congregation, and had strange utterances, uttered with an unnatural, shrill voice, and with thrilling intonations they frequently made use of a few broken, unconnected sentences, that were ambiguous, incoherent, and incomprehensible….
The Book on Adler, then, does not demonstrate that Kierkegaard would have been opposed to a new revelation such as The Book of Mormon. He denounces the charlatan but does not deny the possibility of new revelation, and in fact both he and the Prophet condemn religious excesses such as Adler’s. Whether Kierkegaard would approve of the content of The Book of Mormon can only be speculated (though I contend he would), but it must be conceded that he would not reject it out of hand simply because of his criticism of Adler.
Peter Kierkegaard and actual interactions with missionaries
Latter-day Saint missionaries first arrived in Copenhagen in 1850. Søren Kierkegaard died in 1855. There is no record that he ever met any Latter-day Saints, though it is likely he was at least tangentially aware of them.
Søren’s brother Peter, however, had documented interactions with “Mormons.” He attended a cottage meeting where the elders were teaching in 1854 and argued with them there. He went on to write an entire tract against their doctrines, About and Against Mormonism (1855). That Peter was opposed to their appearance is no indication of what Søren might have thought. Peter was a Lutheran pastor and later bishop; his Grundtvigian views differed greatly from his brother’s.
Peter only came into contact with the Latter-day Saint elders because they were preaching to members of his pastorate. In their early days in Copenhagen it seems the elders primarily found listeners in the Baptists, who were themselves a young fringe sect in the area. Both Kierkegaards only had anything to do with the Lutheran church, the one participating in it and the other attacking it; this motion in the periphery of the Danish religious landscape would not have attracted their attention between 1850 and 1854. If Peter only had occasion to take “Mormonism” seriously because of his occupation, it seems that Søren would have had no reason at all to do so. All his energies were devoted to his assault on “Christendom.” He died before the elders’ preaching made overmuch headway.
Thus it is that the one documented instance of a Kierkegaard encountering the Latter-day Saint doctrine is of no consequence to my thesis; further, it is probable that there were no undocumented encounters.
From The History of the Danish Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:
There was a general feeling among the early Mormon missionaries who arrived in Denmark in 1850 that the Lord had especially prepared Denmark to receive the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ.
The Lord gave Denmark its Golden Age just as he gave America its Second Great Awakening. He further prepared the people to accept Joseph Smith by giving them Søren Kierkegaard as an anticipation. Kierkegaard directed popular attention to the moral bankruptcy of Christendom as it existed—making things more difficult, as was his way, in order to prepare people for faith. He had no authority. He could not transmit the condition for faith. As he writes in Philosophical Fragments:
Unless the God grants the condition which makes it possible to understand this, how is it to be supposed that the learner will be able to discover it! But that the God himself gives this condition has been shown above to be a consequence of the Moment, and it has also been shown that the Moment is the Paradox, and that without it we are unable to advance, but return to Socrates.
Kierkegaard could not transmit the condition; only God could do so and Kierkegaard lacked the divine authority of an apostle. He could not plant what Alma in The Book of Mormon speaks of as the seed of faith. The ancient apostles could do so. Paul writes: “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.” While only the apostles had power to plant the seed, one such as Kierkegaard could nevertheless till the soil. When emissaries of the restored Church acting under apostolic authority appeared, they found the soil ready to receive the Gospel: and so seeds “fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold.”
Kierkegaard’s life and doctrine anticipated the Prophet’s contemporarily and after the fact, preceding the arrival of “Mormonism” in Denmark. Can one deny the evidences?
Thanks very much for this. Very interesting. A search for Kierkegaard and LDS brought me here.