A Kierkegaardian reading of Romans 7

Valérie Nicolet Anderson

Certain passages in Kierkegaard’s Sickness unto Death show a remarkable proximity to Paul’s depiction of the human condition in Rom 7:14-25. Both writers take into account the fact that human beings may want to do ‘good’, but are utterly unable to achieve this by their own means. And both would agree that only a divine intervention – through Christ – can save human beings from their desperate state in life.

It is this proximity that motivated me to more closely scrutinize the relationship between Rom 7 (and more generally the Pauline epistles) and Sickness unto Death (and more generally Kierkegaard’s work). This paper will try to examine several issues:

-    How did Kierkegaard read the Bible, and the Pauline epistles in particular? More specifically, what could have been the influence of Romans and Rom 7 on his thought?

-    What are the questions that Kierkegaard, and his book Sickness unto Death specifically, addresses to Romans 7?

-    What does Rom 7 say? How does it correspond to what Kierkegaard develops in Sickness unto Death?

-    And, eventually, how can Kierkegaard help us understand several difficult issues in Romans 7 (the role of the law, the understanding of sin)?

I will discuss these issues in three parts. First, I will start by establishing several principles concerning Kierkegaard’s way of reading the Bible, and then try to define what could be a kierkegaardian way of reading Paul. Second, I will show, through exegesis (using historical and rhetorical tools), what are the main points of Rom 7. Third and last, using an interdisciplinary perspective, I will explain how Sickness unto Death helps us to understand Paul and how it does not address all the issues at stake in Rom 7. This interdisciplinary perspective will help me assess whether a kierkegaardian way of reading the epistles is helpful or not.

I hope to show that Kierkegaard’s Sickness unto Death casts an interesting light on the issue of law and sin. The concept of despair in Sickness unto Death might allow us to understand what Paul is trying to say about the human condition in sin and its relationship to death. For Paul, as well as for Kierkegaard, there is a willingness to show that human beings cannot find their true meaning in their lives unless they decide to trust entirely in Christ. This relationship between Paul and Kierkegaard will help me present Paul’s modern day pertinence.

I think this paper will fit in the Romans through History and Culture session because it presents itself as an attempt to take into account the interplay between a systematic reading of the text (through the issues that Sickness unto Death raises) and an exegetical reading of the text that remains attentive to what the text itself says. It will attempt to highlight the convergences between Kierkegaard’s and Paul’s texts but it will not ignore the places where the two readings of the text cannot be reconciled.