Soren Kierkegaard - CathNews New Zealand https://cathnews.co.nz Catholic News New Zealand Tue, 14 May 2013 23:24:17 +0000 en-NZ hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.1 https://cathnews.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/cropped-cathnewsfavicon-32x32.jpg Soren Kierkegaard - CathNews New Zealand https://cathnews.co.nz 32 32 70145804 You want ME to pray for you? Day 19 https://cathnews.co.nz/2013/05/17/you-want-me-to-pray-for-you-day-19/ Thu, 16 May 2013 19:10:55 +0000 http://cathnews.co.nz/?p=44228

Not one prayer Marcia. Even though you asked me to pray for your pilgrimage to Santiago, not one dialogue with God has unfolded. No petitions have been sent heavenward asking for your safekeeping. Not even any candles lit on your behalf. My lack of proper praying hasn't given rise to any guilt at all; just an engaged interest Read more

You want ME to pray for you? Day 19... Read more]]> Not one prayer Marcia. Even though you asked me to pray for your pilgrimage to Santiago, not one dialogue with God has unfolded.

No petitions have been sent heavenward asking for your safekeeping. Not even any candles lit on your behalf.

My lack of proper praying hasn't given rise to any guilt at all; just an engaged interest in my lack of interest in wanting to pray in the colloquially accepted sense, if that makes any sense. I just can't see the point of it now, if I ever could.
'But what does Marcia mean by pray?' asked my best mate. My ranting on about people using the word God indiscriminately, as though we all have some kind of shared understanding when we use it, has influenced him.
'Not sure,' I replied, my head in Tanya Luhrmann's book When God talks back . 'I didn't ask,' which when you think about it was an early mistake.
'Soren Kierkegaard the philosopher,' I added helpfully, hoping to make good my lack of enquiry, 'reckoned that "the function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays."' My friend looked doubtful.
The Vineyard Church people in Tanya's book hope to be changed or better still, transformed by their prayer. They say that prayer, when done by a properly trained person (this will probably eliminate me) can be imagined as a vehicle to draw the supernatural presence of the Holy Spirit to the person in need. (p12)
It was the imagination bit that enchanted me for according to Tanya's anthropological observations, the singing itself brings the Spirit into presence, 'the way Aslan sang the beasts of the new Narnia into life.' Continue reading
Sources

Sande Ramage is an Anglican priest and blogger.

You want ME to pray for you? Day 19]]> 44228 Kierkegaard re-contextualized: the agony of Pontius Pilate https://cathnews.co.nz/2012/04/03/kierkegaard-re-contextualized-the-agony-of-pontius-pilate/ Mon, 02 Apr 2012 19:30:23 +0000 http://cathnews.co.nz/?p=22328

This is the second in a three-part series examining the theological ideas of Søren Kierkegaard through the work of three contemporary church critics. The first part can be found here. To me, the most memorable voice in the St. John's Passion has always been that of Pontius Pilate. After struggling fruitlessly to undo the inevitability of Read more

Kierkegaard re-contextualized: the agony of Pontius Pilate... Read more]]> This is the second in a three-part series examining the theological ideas of Søren Kierkegaard through the work of three contemporary church critics. The first part can be found here.

To me, the most memorable voice in the St. John's Passion has always been that of Pontius Pilate. After struggling fruitlessly to undo the inevitability of Christ's death, confronted with the real certainty of executing the world's most innocent person, Pilate is shaken to the core. He is left clinging to one existential question: "What is truth?"

As we are often reminded on Good Friday, Pilate is a puppet, the local symbol of a government and a society that required Christ dead to avoid losing its own power and influence. Pilate hides his own responsibility for the death of Jesus behind the will of his people and his Caesar.

"Why is it," Kierkegaard asks, "that people prefer to be addressed in groups rather than individually? Is it because conscience is one of life's greatest inconveniences, a knife that cuts too deeply? We prefer to 'be part of a group,' and to 'form a party,' for if we are part of a group it means goodnight to conscience."

Pilate's error, Kierkegaard concludes, is a fundamental failure to recognize that Christ is the truth: more specifically, that Christ's life is testament to the truth and that truth requires participating in that life and experience. Pilate's greatest barrier to unambiguous participation in the truth was the comfort and security of a powerful institution. By Kierkegaard's time, the powerful institution was the Danish church.

The "grand cast of characters" that make up the clergy, along with their "complete inventory" of buildings and sacred objects work well, Kierkegaard argues, only when an authentic Christianity is present in the hearts of believers. If the faith of the people is weaker, however, these objects merely create the false impression of faithfulness: "The illusion of a Christian nation, a Christian 'people,' masses of Christians, is no doubt due to the power that numbers exercise over the imagination." Continue reading

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