Grundtvigs »Kirkens Gienmæle« - læst i et nutidigt perspektiv

Resumé

Grundtvig’s »The Rejoinder of the Church« - in a Modem Perspective

By Theodor Jørgensen

The article maintains the view that the most profitable approach to a reading of Grundtvig is to take him seriously as a true 19th century man. In that case, his conflict with his own time will be a great deal more relevant for our own approach to the present and its problems. Four views, typical for the present, are adduced as crucial for Grundtvig, too, and thus also profitable when considering Grundtvig’s polemical pamphlet from 1825 in a modern perspective, in which he presents his ‘church view’.

The four views are: 1. Faith must be a matter of experience, 2. Faith must be a matter of certainty, 3. Faith needs to have criteria for its Christian identity, and 4. Theology, of course, plays an essential role in the clarification of these issues, but which one?

By way of introduction, the occasion and aim of the pamphlet is explained, and it is made clear that two views of the church clash, that of Professor H.N. Clausen, which is founded on a doctrinal idea of the church, and Grundtvig’s own, which invokes the evidence of history, i.e., the concrete historical experience of the individual. After that the pamphlet is analyzed from the four points of view mentioned.

Re 1. Grundtvig’s emphasis on faith as experience serves a two-fold purpose: The immersion of faith in supra-individual contexts of life, here above all history, on one hand, and faith as the most fundamental act of life of the individual, on the other. Experience has truth on its side, because truth is always given in advance, and thus only accessible to experience. It must be sensed, heard. Grundtvig’s concept of experience is closely linked with his view of man, according to which man is a divine experiment of dust and spirit. To Grundtvig, the heart is a manifestation of this unity of the physical and the spiritual, just as human speech is a unity of sound and meaning. True experience is the experience of the heart, as different from that of reason. Grundtvig’s defence of freedom in the individual’s experience of God through faith is a defence of the autonomy of the heart, meaning every single individual’s immediate relationship to God.

Re 2. The immediacy of the relationship through faith is its certainty. But the message which faith relates to, is always received through intermediary communication, and the process of historical communication is as such of a relative character. In the consciousness of the present, the certainty of faith is thus endangered. This is seen in particular in the relativism which the Scripture as canon has been exposed to through the exegetic sciences. In fact, Grundtvig abandons the Scripture as the basis of communication and rule of faith. Instead he substitutes the Apostolicum, understood as the promised divine Covenant Word and Baptism and Communion. From the beginning of Christianity they have been distinctive signs of the true church of Christ. With their central place in the church service, these words and sacraments have the resurrected Christ Himself as their subject. In other words: In His living presence in the word of faith and the sacraments in the church service, Christ is Himself the communicator, and thus the immediacy, so indispensable for the certainty of faith, is secured. Christ Himself is thus regula fidei.

Re 3. Hence, according to Grundtvig, the Christian service is the criterion of Christian identity, as it is the place where one meets the living Christ. Unlike Clausen’s theologically doctrinal and thus intellectual criterion, Grundtvig’s has been deduced from historical experience, that of the individual and that of Christendom. Grundtvig’s view is elucidated by means of a comparison with the criteria of Christian identity proposed by S.W.Sykes in his .The Identity of Christianity which correspond to Grundtvig’s.

Re 4. Grundtvig’s ‘church view’ must necessarily lead to the conclusion that the importance of exegetic and dogmatic theology for the origin of faith becomes relative. In comparison with the living presence of Christ in the word of faith and the sacraments, theology will naturally take second place. It cannot create faith. What it can do, however, according to Grundtvig, is to enlighten faith and the life of Christ in faith, partly by interpreting the New Testament as the evidence of faith of the first Christian congregations, partly, in the context of the present, by throwing light on Christian life and its interchange with everything human. When it is understood like this, theology, of course, does not belong in the church, but in the .church school.. Evidently, theology can only accomplish its task in freedom and it must necessarily contain differences like life itself.

The conclusion points out that the applicability of Grundtvig’s .church view. in our day is in question because the church service is alien to many people and is consequently celebrated by few. Thus the foundation of experience for the free choice of faith is missing. In present-day theology, two paths stand out as typical in the face of this challenge. One way to go is to make the liturgical and sacramental experience comprehensible, partly in order to motivate people to make that experience themselves, partly in order to help the church to celebrate its service in greater agreement with its content. G. Wainwright and S.W.Sykes represent this attitude. The other way to go is to distinguish consciously between the church as a community of faith and Christianity as a view of life, and to accept fully that the relationship between faith and view of life is reversed on the conditions of modernity. By arguing for the view of life, it is thus attempted to create a convincing foundation for the choice of faith. W.Pannenberg represents this approach.