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Lee Barrett on Kierkegaard and Universalism

I promised in my last post that I would give my readers a little smags prøve, or taste, of the excellent paper on universalism that Lee Barrett presented at the inaugural session of the Society for the Study of Christian Universalism at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Boston last November. Barrett’s paper actually looked at universalism in three thinkers, Schleiermacher, Hegel, and Kierkegaard. I’m going to present only the material on Kierkegaard, though, and not even all of that, because the paper really deserves to be published in full. 

What I love about Barrett’s paper is that, as I mentioned in my last post, Barrett makes a convincing case that Kierkegaard may have been a universalist without referring to the explicitly universalist passage from Kierkegaard’s journals. “That is, Barrett argues that universalism can actually be inferred from various passages in Works of Love.”

So here is a little smags prøve, of Barrett’s excellent paper!

“It probably seems strange to discuss Kierkegaard in the context of universalism. But his literature contains a recessive and often subterranean trajectory that gestures toward the universal salvation of individuals. … Works of Love, and other texts, contain remarks that implicitly suggest that no one will be excluded from God’s love, which is his definition of eternal blessedness. This becomes clear if we start with Kierkegaard’s account of the characteristics of human love, and then apply them to the divine font of love briefly sketched at the beginning of the Works of Love. My assumption is that what is most essentially true of the visible stream of human loving works must also be true of their invisible source.

Although Kierkegaard protests that this is not a book about God’s love, but about human works of love, the volume’s opening nevertheless spotlights divine love. In a mood of thankfulness Kierkegaard writes, “How could one speak properly about love if you were forgotten, you God of love, source of all love in heaven and on earth…so that one who loves is what he is only by being in you…Savior and Redeemer who gave yourself in order to save all” (WOL, 3). Human love cannot be understood unless the reader realizes that it has its source and origin in the individual’s innermost being, where God’s love resides (WOL, 9). He writes, “Just as a quiet lake originates deep down in a hidden spring, so also does a person’s love originate even more deeply in God’s love” (WOL, 9). The hidden life of God’s love is made known and is recognizable by its fruits (WOL, 7-8). This entails that what is said about the human works can be transferred to God’s love, for the human works are generated by God’s love. What is true of the manifestation must be true of the source.

Let us consider the chapter “Love Believes All Things” (WOL, 225-245). Kierkegaard’s main point is that the reader should believe the best of others and refrain from judging them negatively. The basis for Kierkegaard’s advocacy of a hermeneutics of charity is his claim that the way we judge others manifests the spiritual and moral qualities that are in us. The decision to judge or not judge reveals whether there is self-protective mistrust or risk-taking and generous love in an individual. 

Genuine love does not remain intentionally ignorant of the unworthiness of its objects (WOL, 241). True love is cognizant of the ignoble nature of its objects, or their possible viciousness, but “hides” that unworthiness; love does not dwell upon it. A hope for an eschatologically postponed judgement, in which all the unloving scoundrels would receive their due condemnation, would be unloving; it would not be a hiding of unworthiness.

This “love believes all things” theme has profound consequences for the nature of God. If the loving thing for humans to do is to believe all good things about the other, and if God’s love is the font of human love, then this hermeneutics of charity must be the fruit of God’s love. God must overlook the unworthiness of the objects of God’s love, and those objects are all of us.

God takes no delight in exposing hidden sins, but hides them, puts them behind God’s back. Kierkegaard asserts that any type of love that is contingent upon a positive assessment of the other is false love. This does open the possibility that in eternity a hermeneutics of charity reigns universally.

The chapter, “Love Hopes All Things,” extends this trajectory (WOL, 246-263). Again the purpose of the chapter is to warn the reader to resist the worldly temptation to condemn others and, more emphatically, to never despair about the salvation of another person. Kierkegaard insists that hoping for the good of others, including the eternal blessedness of others, is a work of love, for it is an essential dimension of dealing lovingly with others (WOL, 253). One should never unlovingly give up on another person, never stop hoping for their salvation. Kierkegaard’s concern here is for the character of the lover.  If the individual were to give up on someone as hopelessly lost, she would demonstrate that her love was not an enduring disposition. He warns, “Woe to the one who has given up hope and possibility with regard to another person; woe to him, because he himself has thereby lost love” (WOL, 260). 

This hope includes the hope that God will be merciful to those who seem to be incorrigible reprobates (WOL, 262). One must not hope that divine vengeance will fall on the seemingly depraved other. Kierkegaard warns that the reader must never try to imagine God as a collaborator in vindictive hating. The cultivation of one’s own loving capacities requires that one preserves one’s hope for the divine forgiveness of everyone’s sins and for their becoming blessed.

But what about hope for the salvation of unloving people even after their demise? Kierkegaard raises this issue explicitly, asking if it is possible for someone to be eternally lost (WOL, 262). Changing the ending of the story of the prodigal son so that the prodigal does not repent and return home to his father, Kierkegaard asks if there is hope for the prodigal beyond the grave. Kierkegaard does not answer this directly; he does not speculate about the prodigal son’s post-mortem state. Rather, he shifts attention to the fact that the father continues to hope. Hoping for the blessedness of the departed, even those who seem to have been spiritual and moral failures, is a work of love (WOL, 248).  

The chapter “Love Hides a Multitude of Sins” elaborates a cognate theme (WOL, 280-299). Love does not just overlook sin or ignore sin; it “removes” it. Kierkegaard even claims that it “believes away” what is seen. Kierkegaard then roots this more generally in God’s love. More particularly, the human imperative to not see evil is rooted in the fact that human evil is hidden behind God’s back (WOL, 295). Of course, God is not ignorant of the evil, but God refuses to see it; God forgets it. Kierkegaard dares to call God’s forgetting an act of decreation. Kierkegaard writes, “Forgetting, when God does it in relation to sin, is the opposite of creation, since to create is to bring forth from nothing, but to forget is to take back into nothing” (WOL, 296).”

There is more to Barrett’s paper than this, but to include even the entirety of the section on Kierkegaard, would make it too long for this post. Plus, as I said, I really think the paper deserves to be published, so I don’t want to put so much of it up on this blog that it would diminish Barrett’s chances of publishing it elsewhere.

I should also put in a plug for Barrett’s book Kierkegaard’s Two Ages, A Literary Review. The book is part of the Cambridge Elements series on Kierkegaard, and though I have not read it yet, I’m familiar with Barrett’s work, so I know it will be good!

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Kierkegaard, MacDonald, and Universalism at the 2025 AAR

As usual, this year’s annual meeting of the American Academy of religion was rich with Kierkegaard sessions. I will say more about those sessions in a later post. The point of this post is to describe what were, for me, the highlights of the conference. 

I don’t know whether I mentioned this in any earlier posts, but I’m a member of an Anglo-Catholic church here in Philadelphia called S. Clement’s. It is a wonderful community of generally politically progressive, but liturgically conservative, Christians and it has the most beautiful services I’ve ever attended. Michael Glass, a Kierkegaard scholar who recently received his Ph.D. from Temple is also a member of S. Clement’s.

So anyway, my husband, Brian Foley decided we should try to attend the High Mass at an Anglo Catholic church while we were in Boston for the AAR meeting. I can’t remember whether I directed him to The Church of the Advent (which I had somehow learned the Kierkegaard scholar Jeff Hanson had been affiliated with at one time), or whether he found it on his own. Jeff was there, of course, that Sunday and we were able to chat briefly with him after the service. The highlight of the service, though, was a bell chorus and the flamboyant “Queen Anne’s” incense move shown in the video that accompanies this post. 

Wild, eh? 

The church was wonderful. The incense, unfortunately, set off the smoke alarm so everyone, congregation, choir, etc., etc. had to file out into the cold and conclude the services in the street. Everyone was very good natured about it, though, and when we received the all-clear, we headed downstairs for a sumptuous coffee hour and a trip to the little bookstore in the basement.

We’ll definitely be visiting The Church of the Advent again!

The second highlight of the conference for me was a special session on adoption of the Scriptural Reasoning Unit of the AAR. I presented a paper at that session entitled “The Dark Side of Adoption” that defended George MacDonald’s argument that Paul’s υίοθεσία (cf., e.g., Romans 8:15) should not be translated as “adoption.” I was surprised at how positive was the reception of my defense of MacDonald on this point. People often become very wedded to the precise wording of the writings they hold sacred, so I expected some pushback, but there was virtually none. I was also very fortunate to have MacDonald scholar Laurie Wilson present in the audience and she graciously helped me out with a couple of questions that stumped me. (I’ll say more about Wilson, who had earlier presented a paper at the joint session of the Kierkegaard, Religion, and Culture Unit and the Nineteenth Century Theology Unit, in a later post.) 

MacDonald was a genius at, among other things, interpreting the Greek of the New Testament. He argued in a sermon entitled “Creation in Christ,” from Unspoken Sermons Series Three (published in 1889), that Biblical translators had mistranslated the beginning of the Gospel of John. As I mentioned, people often become very wedded to the precise wording of the writings they hold sacred, so it took a full one hundred years for MacDonald’s insight to be incorporated into any English translation of the Bible. It was finally incorporated, though, into the New Revised Standard Version (published in 1989) (I’m indebted to Ben White for pointing this out to me), so perhaps one day MacDonald’s point about the proper translation of υίοθεσία will be incorporated into an English translation of Romans.

The real highlight of the conference for me, though, was a special session that Lee Barrett, Robin Parry, and I organized on universalism. Parry, the author of the best-selling The Evangelical Universalist (published under the pseudonym Gregory MacDonald), chaired the session, Barrett, of Moravian Seminary, and Tom Greggs, of The Center for Theological Inquiry at Princeton, were the presenters, and I served as a respondent after Thomas Talbott was forced to withdraw as a speaker for family reasons. 

I had no idea what to expect in terms of attendance. The session was what is called an “Other Event” at the AAR, meaning that it was not sponsored by an existing AAR unit. It was listed in the conference program, and the Søren Kierkegaard Society had generously promoted it to its members, but I had no idea how many people would actually read the program that closely, or how many Kierkegaard people would be interested in universalism. We’d discussed ordering refreshments for the session, but had decided against it out of fear that there might not be enough people to justify spending the money.

How wrong we were! The venue, albeit small, was packed. There was literally standing room only. The papers were excellent and the discussion was exceptionally lively. There was a palpable energy among those present, even my husband, who showed up only as the session was concluding, remarked on it. Parry explained that the session organizers were in the process of establishing a new scholarly organization, the Society for the Study of Christian Universalism, and requested that anyone interested in joining the society should put their name and contact info on a sheet that would be passed around the audience. We got more than twenty names! (Several of the names and email addresses were undecipherable, though, and my guesses as to what they were were unsuccessful, so if you had put your name on the list, but have not yet heard from me, please email me at mgpiety@drexel.edu and tell me that you want to be added to the list. Or if you were not present at the AAR session but you are reading this post and would like to be added to the list, just let me know and I will add you.)

I was also able to become more closely acquainted with Kierkegaard scholar Casey Spinks who was in the audience and whom I spoke with briefly after the end of the session. I learned in that conversation that Spinks (whose Kierkegaard’s Ontology is forthcoming from Bloomsbury) had also been at The Church of the Advent that morning. There appears to be something in Anglo-Catholicism that is particularly appealing to Kierkegaard scholars. Perhaps it is the combination of deep spirituality of the Roman Catholic tradition and the anti-authoritarianism of the English Reformation. I’d be interested to hear from readers whether they are aware of any other Anglo-Catholic Kierkegaard scholars. 

I began this post with the objective of giving you a little smags prøve (or taste) of Barrett’s paper from the universalism session because that paper looked at universalism in the thought of Schleiermacher, Hegel, and, of course, Kierkegaard. I particularly liked the section on Kierkegaard because Barrett makes a very convincing case that Kierkegaard may have been a universalist, without ever actually referring to the explicitly universalist passage from Kierkegaard’s journals. That is, Barrett argues that universalism can actually be inferred from various passages in Works of Love. I’ve decided, however, that that issue deserves a post of its own, so stay tuned. I should have it up in a few more days.

In the meantime, Happy New Year!

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Kierkegaard at Princeton

From left to right: Lara Buchak, Hans Halvorson, Austen McDougal, and Z Quanbeck

I attended a Kierkegaard workshop at Princeton University last month and it was such a delightful experience I thought I should post about it. The papers were uniformly good and thought provoking. Many of the presenters, including Alexander (a.k.a Z) Quanbeck, who organized the conference, were young and that certainly bodes well for the future of Kierkegaard scholarship. I was also encouraged to learn that Princeton has two tenured members of the philosophy department, Lara Buchak and Hans Halvorson, who are Kierkegaard enthusiasts, and that bodes even better for Kierkegaard scholarship. 

Readers of this blog may be surprised to learn that neither Buchak nor Halvorson has a background in continental philosophy. Buchak focuses on “decision theory, social choice theory, epistemology, ethics, and the philosophy or religion,” and Halvorson “focuses on applications of category theory in mathematical logic,” as well as the philosophy of physics. That is, both have the kind of highly technical math, logic, and science-based backgrounds that used to dominate Anglo-American philosophy and for which there is still a strong favorable bias on the part of most philosophy hiring committees. 

That two such traditionally-trained analytic philosophers would have an interest in Kierkegaard may seem strange to some, but it makes perfect sense to me. Kierkegaard, contrary to popular belief, was highly analytical and generally averse to speculation. That’s actually a conspicuous difference between Kierkegaard and George MacDonald, while both have very similar theologies at the most fundamental level, MacDonald’s prodigious imagination was drawn to speculating on issues such as the spiritual status of animals and the fate of souls whose moral progress is, on his view, merely interrupted by death, while Kierkegaard was far most skeptically inclined. 

Buchak presented a fascinating paper called “Why Should We Defer to Authority?” that reminded me very much of my paper, “The Social Implications of Epistemic Obligation in Kierkegaard’s Epistemology” (presented at a conference entitled “The Ethics of Doubt — Kierkegaard, Skepticism, and Conspiracy Theory,” at the University of Southampton, in September of 2024). There were lots of differences, of course, but I anticipate that Buchak’s paper will soon be published and that I will then be able to make a comparison of the two the subject of a future blog post.

Halvorson presented an equally compelling paper entitled “Climacus on the Objective Way.” My notes are too sketchy, sadly, to facilitate a responsible reconstruction of either Buchak’s or Halvorson’s that paper. I can summarize here very briefly, however, a paper Halvorson published earlier that I think every Kierkegaard scholars should read because of the massive implications it has for future Kierkegaard research. That paper is “The Philosophy of Science in Either-Or.” It originally appeared in Cambridge’s Kierkegaard’s Either/Or: A Critical Guide,and is available for download from PhilArchive. 

Halvorson argues in this paper that Either-Or “contains Kierkegaard’s argument against the predominant Cartesian-Hegelian ideal of scientific objectivity” and that this rejection “is a forerunner of Niels Bohr’s ‘epistemological lesson of quantum theory.’” That is, Halvorson argues very persuasively that “Either-Or is a central text for the transition from and enlightenment picture of scientific objectivity to the new picture that began to emerge in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries” (pp. 1-2). 

The argument, very roughly, goes something like this. A, the protagonist of the first volume of Either-Or is paralyzed by indecision precisely because his perspective on his existence, or on existence more generally, is too objective. Objectively, everything simply is, and there is no reason to chose one thing, or one course of action, over another. Halvorson then traces this view of the existential effect of an extremely objective stance relative to one’s existence back to Kierkegaard’s teacher, Poul Martin Møller and, in particular, to Møller’s novel En Danske Students Eventyr (A Danish student’s adventure) which presents a character who, like Kierkegaard’s A, is paralyzed by indecision brought on by what Halvorson describes as “a hypertrophied capacity for reflection.” 

I’m ashamed to admit that while I own a copy of Møller’s collected works, I’m not much of a novel reader, so I had never read En Danske Students Eventyr (which is probably the best-known work of Møller’s, at least to contemporary Danes). One doesn’t have to have read it, though, to follow Halvorson’s argument. The only problem I have with the argument is that I think putting Hegel in the same class as Descartes, and the Enlightenment ideal of objectivity with which he is associated, is problematic. Everything Halvorson says about Kierkegaard’s attitude toward this ideal is, I believe, unassailable. I’m just not entirely confident that Kierkegaard would ascribe such an ideal to Hegel.

Hegel certainly thought he was objective, but he was no victim of the paralysis that characterizes both A and the protagonist of Møller’s novel. Kierkegaard appears to believe that, rather than exemplifying the Enlightenment ideal of objectivity, Hegel suffered from a kind of intellectual megalomania that was pathological. It is one of the great ironies of intellectual history that Kierkegaard, who is generally averse to speculation, is so often lumped together with Hegel as one of those “weak-minded continental thinkers” to which analytic philosophers have such an aversion. The Enlightenment ideal of objectivity arguably does lead to indecision, as Halvorson argues, and in that way, precludes the kind of wild speculations in which Hegel engaged. That is, it would preclude the conclusion that one had achieved absolute knowledge of the sort Hegel claimed (hence the practice of the Pyrrhonists, the paradigmatic objective inquirers [Σκεπτικό], of allowing assent only to appearances, or impressions concerning the nature of reality, rather than to beliefs about it).   

In support of this view is the fact that most contemporary Anglo-American philosophers trace their own philosophical stance back to the Enlightenment, but few see Hegel as an embodiment of that ideal, and more than a few have strongly negative reactions to him. Of course it’s conceivable that Kierkegaard thinks hewing too closely to the Enlightenment ideal of objectivity could eventually drive a person mad and that this was what had happened to Hegel. So from that perspective, I suppose, Hegel could be considered at least an anomalous exemplar of this ideal.

Whether Hegel is properly classed with Descartes is a minor point, however, in the context of Halvorson’s argument and hence in no way weakens it. Halvorson’s argument is that the role of subjectivity in knowledge formation was passed from Møller, to Kierkegaard, from Kierkegaard to Rasmus Nielsen (a friend of Kierkegaard’s and a professor at the University of Copenhagen), from Nielsen to his student Harald Høffding, and from Høffding to his student (drumroll…) Niels Bohr! 

Fascinating, eh? It’s no wonder that Halvorson, who has a background in in physics, has developed an interest in Kierkegaard. There is so much work to be done in the area of Kierkegaard’s relevance to, and influence upon, contemporary empirical science, and physics in particular. My hope is that Halvorson will lead that scholarly charge and that there will soon be a growing body of work in this area of Kierkegaard scholarship.