Kierkegaard and the imitation of Christ

Imitation and contemporaneity: Kierkegaard and the imitation of Christ Joshua Cockayne, The Logos Institute for Analytic and Exegetical Theology, Department of Divinity, University of St. Andrews. Introduction What it is the purpose of the Christian spiritual life? One prominent answer to this question which has been discussed repeatedly in Christian theology, is that the Christian ought to be an imitator of Christ. And when one thinks of the theology surrounding imitation, one perhaps thinks of writers such as Thomas à Kempis, St Francis of Assisi, St Augustine, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Yet, when one considers the contribution of the 19th century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard to Christian spirituality, the theology of imitation does not immediately spring to mind. However, Kierkegaard has a great deal to contribute to our understanding of what it means to imitate Christ, and this is a theme which he devotes a great deal of time to, particularly in the latter period of his authorship. In this paper, I will give an overview of Kierkegaard’s discussion of imitating Christ which, I hope, can both bring clarity to this aspect of Kierkegaard’s thought, as well illuminating what it means for a believer to be an imitator of Christ. The theme of imitating Christ is something which pervades Kierkegaard’s writings. As Howard and Edna Hong note, it is a particularly prominent theme in the second half of his authorship (1847-1855), which, they claim, ‘is marked by a heightened level of ideality in the requirement of imitatio Christi’ (1998, xxii). 1 In this later period of Kierkegaard’s writings, imitating Christ is described as one of the distinctive marks of the ‘true Christian’. For instance, in Judge For Yourself!, Kierkegaard writes that [i]mitation, the imitation of Christ, is really the point from which the human race shrinks. The main difficulty lies here; here is where it is really decided whether or not one is willing to accept Christianity. If there is emphasis on this point, the stronger the emphasis the fewer the Christians. If there is a scaling down at this point (so that Christianity becomes, intellectually, a doctrine), more people enter into Christianity. If it is abolished completely (so that Christianity becomes, existentially, as easy as mythology and poetry and imitation an exaggeration, a ludicrous exaggeration), then Christianity spreads to such a degree that Christendom and the world are almost indistinguishable, or all become Christians; Christianity has completely conquered—that is, it is abolished! (FSE, 188; emphasis in the original) 2 Kierkegaard claims that true Christianity is forfeited when one gives up on, or scales down, the task of imitating Christ. The result of this scaling down is that a person’s actions are unimportant or irrelevant to their being a Christian. ‘To be a Christian’ of this kind, Kierkegaard writes, can be combined easily with being a thief or an adulterer—this is a ‘wohlfiel [cheap] edition of what it is to be a Christian’ (FSE, 189). The difference between the cheap Christian and the true Christian, then, lies in the individual’s imitation of Christ. Similarly, we see the claim that imitation is the distinctive mark of true Christianity argued for in the earlier Practice in Christianity, which is written under the pseudonym ‘AntiClimacus’. 3 Anti-Climacus tells us that ‘“the admirer” is still not a true Christian…[o]nly the imitator is the true Christian’ (PC, 256). Again, it is the imitation of Christ which distinguishes true Christianity from its counterfeit. Here, it is the distinction between ‘admirer’ and ‘imitator’ 1