How can humans and God come to an understanding of each other? How can the two be in relationship with one another; a relationship based on love? This is the problem that Kierkegaard confronts, under the pseudonym of Johannes Climacus, in Philosophical Fragments, as he moves beyond Socrates. How is diastasis between God and humans overcome, or at least bridged? Through the parable of the king and the maiden, Kierkegaard utilizes imagination and indirect communication to propose kenosis as the means by which God relates to the world in relationship.
The first step that Kierkegaard takes to set up his use of parable is to outline the problem. God is eternally resolved out of love to love the learner, and this love is the goal. Yet, this love is not easily accomplished, because "what seems so easy-namely, that the god must be able to make himself understood-is not so easy if he is not to destroy that which is different." The fundamental problem in establishing a relationship of love between God and human is a basic lack of understanding on the part of the human. There is an "otherness" which must be bridged. This is the task Kierkegaard is undertaking: to describe how God (the god) is able to bridge this gap without destroying it.
Parable
"Suppose there was a king�." In this way, Kierkegaard embarks on the use of the parable of the king and the maiden in his discussion of the god as teacher. Kierkegaard works by analogy in order to begin understanding this diastasis, and how it is overcome by understanding, by imagining how this might work "in an earthly setting." This leads us to the parable.
Thomas Oden, in the "Introduction" to Parables of Kierkegaard, writes
Kierkegaard is one of the few writers in that [the central tradition of parable writing] tradition who was himself a literary critic, who himself offered a detailed theory of (indirect) communication that accounted for his writing in parable and story form under pseudonyms, and who clearly envisioned parabolic communication as an integral part of his philosophical method.
As Oden makes clear, parables are not simply incidental additions made by Kierkegaard to spice up his writing. Instead, he intentionally utilized parable in his scheme of indirect communication. Oden outlines clearly five reasons for Kierkegaard's use of parable, which illuminate how and why Kierkegaard utilized this genre in his philosophical and theological writings. We shall cover some of these briefly, and expand more upon others, specifically focusing on "indirect communication" as it is understood in Practice In Christianity.
The first reason Oden gives that Kierkegaard used parables is that parable serves as a method to break away from the Hegelian idea of the System, instead focusing his writing on a more experiential logic. Kierkegaard is not simply putting forth information that fits into a tight package of reason, but is a way of rebelling against this type of logic. As Kierkegaard himself writes, "the reader may have lost patience when he hears that our analogy begins like a fairy tale and is not at all systematic." A second reason for Kierkegaard's use of parable is for its rhetorical and aesthetic value. Parable allows Kierkegaard to lead readers to an "unexpected junction" by putting the reader in a "receptive frame of mind." Thus, parable functions as a teaching tool, used to guide the reader to new discovery.
The third reason Oden puts forth is the most substantive, in that it is part of Kierkegaard's implementation of indirect communication. In Practice In Christianity, Kierkegaard describes indirect communication, especially as it relates to the God-man. He first talks about it as "redoubling the communication" or "double-reflection of the communication." This is, for example, to tie jest and earnestness together in a "dialectical knot" that the reader/hearer will have to untie herself. The communicator becomes a "nobody" in the encounter, instead drawing out the reader to "form a judgment about what is presented." A second element of direct communication deals with the communicator. Kierkegaard writes, "if the communication by a communicator is to be direct, then not only the communication must be direct, but the communicator himself must be directly defined." For the God-man, this means that communication is indirect because he is the "sign of contradiction," as a man directly claiming to be God, saying, "Believe in me." For Kierkegaard, this element can be seen in the use of pseudonyms. The pseudonymous authorship in itself transforms what could otherwise be seen as "direct" communication into indirect communication due to the indefinite identity of the communicator. Kierkegaard's parables, specifically the king and the maiden, function as indirect communication, in that they are a "dialectical knot" of sorts, drawing the reader in to unravel meaning for herself, and to form a judgment. The truth is not directly given, but a judgment is called forth. In the king and the maiden, Kierkegaard uses parable to acquaint the reader with the idea of incarnation, of a descent, appealing to empathy for the king and the maiden. In so doing, Kierkegaard draws on the experiences of the reader to give life to the thoughts on the page.
The fourth reason Oden gives is that parables communicate "capability, rather than information," offering a "potential gift, the acceptance of which requires their participation." As in the case of the king and the maiden, where the reader is called on to understand both the king and the maiden, and in these understandings, participate in the discovery of the solution, and the understanding it brings. It calls the reader to reach back into her own experience "with heightened self awareness" and "facilitate the birth of selfhood." The fifth and final reason Oden gives is that parables serve to form an "oral tradition," able to stand alone and to cling to memory. In a sense they serve as an enduring testimony to Kierkegaard's thought, and serve to bring his philosophical ideas to a broader audience.
Through following Oden's path of analysis, we have seen how Kierkegaard's parables function within his works, and how they serve to illuminate concepts to the reader, and in fact, to illuminate the reader to herself. They are not simply aesthetic glosses, nor merely insightful riddles, but draw ideas out of experience, and serve to bring the reader into the writing. Kierkegaard makes precisely this point as he begins the parable, in discussing its presence in the text. He begins by talking about Socrates' use of "food and drink," which gave him the advantage that "everyone else had the prerequisite knowledge from childhood on." There is an obvious connection being made between the parable and the lives of the listeners. Kierkegaard also makes the point that this same type of identification is not necessarily possible when discussing "kings, whose thoughts, provided they are kingly, are not always like everybody else's." Yet, it would seem that this introduction both concedes to the audience that they cannot necessarily empathize with the thoughts of a king, while at the same time pointing out that this is the case. It is the maiden with whom we are especially to empathize with, even as we seek to understand the king and the king's thoughts and feelings. Thus, Kierkegaard is using this parable to draw the reader into the text, and at the same time seems to suggest how to be drawn in.
The Problem
With this analysis, we now turn to the substance of Kierkegaard's parable of the king and the maiden. As we have noted, Kierkegaard is working to illumine the bridging of the gap of understanding between God and human. The question is, How can this be done? Kierkegaard moves to the imagination of an analogous situation in an earthly setting, in order to make his point. We shall begin with a disucussion of the problem which the parable seeks to answer.
The parable begins with an characterization of the king, and thus of God (the god). This is the starting point from which the parable moves. The king loved a maiden who had a "lowly station in life," and the diastasis of king and maiden did not hinder the king's love. Further, this king was very powerful, respected and feared by politicians and foreign countries. None would stand in the way of the marriage. This characterization sets up the character of God that provides foundational for the discussion to come. God loves humans, despite the "distance" between them. And God is powerful enough to carry out this love unimpeded. There are none to challenge this God's love. Thus, the basic question is not if God can love the human, but how God shall do it.
This leads us to the concern of the king in the parable, which is the maiden's role in this love. There is no doubt that the king can and will love the maiden. The question surrounds how this love can find reciprocal love from the maiden, and more to the point, how the maiden can remain a self. God loves, but God is also holy. One is reminded of numerous encounters throughout scripture between God and humans. Isaiah saw God on the throne, where the train of His robe filled the temple, and was driven to awe and dread: " 'Woe to me!' I cried. 'I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty' " (Isaiah 6:5). There is a fundamental difference between God and human. This is a foundational understanding for what is to come. This then leads us, and Kierkegaard, to the question of relationship. How does a God who is holy and is spirit relate to humans who are not, and how is this relationship genuine?
"Then a concern is awakened in the king's soul." Despite the king's power and love, the king is concerned about what type of relationship will result from this love. Will a direct approach work? Can the king simply love the maiden? The king can love the maiden, but the king is concerned about relationship. Will the difference in status between king and maiden prevent the maiden from having "bold confidence?" This is the king's concern. The king does not desire to have a coercive love, which the maiden could, at times, awaken secret sorrow of inclosing reserve that would turn the maiden away from the king, that would become a barrier between them. The king is concerned with the self of the maiden, not simply with her as an object of love. She is to become complete in love, not simply to become the recipient of the king's benevolence and benefaction. For as Kierkegaard writes, "even if the girl were satisfied to be come nothing, that could not satisfy the king, simply because he loved her and because it would be far harder for him to be her benefactor than to lose her."
One of the ways Kierkegaard talks of the problem to be overcome is talking of understanding. We recall that this is the way Kierkegaard stated the initial problem, stating that the "god must be able to make himself understood." He elaborates on the problem in this way: "The unhappiness is the result not of the lovers' being unable to have each other but of their being unable to understand each other." The king is seeking a relationship in which mutual understanding is at the basis of relationship. This is the door to love. Kierkegaard has built the discussion on the hypothesis which "essentially claims that 'the God' is truth." It is in this context that the idea of the god as teacher becomes important. The learner at once is untruth, and is the object of the god's love. Thus, love is not only benevolence, but is the bringing of the moment, and the occasion where the learner can become truth.
A. The Unsuccessful Solution
Kierkegaard approaches precisely this question in his parable of the king and the maiden, and looks to the incarnation as the solution. Kierkegaard outlines two main possibilities, which will occupy his deliberation, and thus, ours. We begin here with the first possible solution, the ascent of the maiden to the status of the king.
One way to bring together a king and a maiden is to make her queen. This is to forget who she was, placing her instead in the realm of the king. Kierkegaard talks of this possibility in relation to the god and the learner. He writes that bringing the learner up to God would bring joy, but that this joy would merely be a diversion away from the misunderstanding, which would still exist. The maiden would be spellbound by love, not brought to understanding. She may seem happy, but the king's love would not be. For the king is not seeking his own glorification, bringing the maiden to awe and wonder, but is seeking her love, and her glorification.
Kierkegaard writes, "The unity could be brought about by the god's appearing to the learner, accepting his adoration, and thereby making him forget himself." C.S. Lewis communicates the concern of God for the establishment of true relationship in the Screwtape Letters through the point of the demon Screwtape in this way: "For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve." Lewis puts forth the same type of concern that Kierkegaard is proposing, that God will not overwhelm the human, essentially destroying the human.
A second concern with this type of disclosure is illustrated by the lily of the field. Kierkegaard points out that the lily would be deluded if it believed that it was loved because it was adorned more gloriously than Solomon. This same delusion would be possible with the maiden, who might misunderstand the king's love for admiration of her beautiful adornments and station if she were to be elevated to become a queen. A misunderstanding is easily possible, and the god does not desire to have the beloved be deceived. The god and the king want love to be disclosed fully, and to invite the beloved into a loving relationship.
God is fundamentally concerned with relationship. This does not mean God as sole mover and humans as passive and uninvolved recipients lost amidst God's love. Instead, it means that God desires a relationship with two genuine contributors, where God's love facilitates the becoming of self, instead of destroying self. It is precisely God's love for the other that desires the other to remain, and not to be lost in God. For God created humans as genuinely other. This was not to simply to destroy their otherness, but to facilitate relationship. The "other" is valuable to God. Kierkegaard sums it up well, when he writes, "Who grasps the contradiction of this sorrow: not to disclose itself is the death of love; to disclose itself is the death of the beloved." This means the solution must be in some other way, and it is to this second possibility that we turn.
B. Kenosis and Relationship
The king desires to fully disclose his love to the maiden, and desires at the same time to confirm and uplift the self of the beloved. The problem the king faces is how this is to be done. The first alternative, to uplift the beloved, does not satisfy the king. Thus we move to Kierkegaard's second alternative, a descent by the king.
In order to become united with the maiden in truth, the king must descend to the level of a the maiden in her lowliness, and to do this must become a servant. Yet, here is where the parable reaches its limits. For a king could put on a cloak, and act like a servant, though he is the king. But this would be an assumed character, and would still be a form of deceit, for underneath the king would still be king. For the king could at any moment suddenly disclose that he is actually the king, and this "merely manifests his impotence and the impotence of his resolution, that he actually is incapable of becoming what he wanted to become." At this point we must step back, as Kierkegaard does, from the parable to the god. The god takes on the form of a servant as "his true form." Out of the god's love, the god wills to be the equal of the beloved, and in the god's omnipotence, the god is capable of bringing it about. Because of the god's omnipotence, the god could truly take on the form of a servant, and truly be born as the lowliest of humans. This is not to say that the god ceased to be the god in order to become lowly, but that the god, in the god's power, could truly become a lowly human being, truly binding Himself in self-limitation.
In taking on the form of a servant, the god became one of the lowliest, even to the point of bearing the offense of humanity, of the beloved. And being lowly doesn't just mean coming to earth and looking like one who is lowly, but instead actually suffering all things, enduring all things, even to the point of being forsaken in death. This is the point of lowliness. In Practice in Christianity, Kierkegaard, writing as Anti-Climacus, picks up on this point: "He is God but chooses to become this individual human being. �It is his will, his free decision, and therefore it is an omnipotently maintained incognito. Indeed, by allowing himself to be born he has in a certain sense bound himself once and for all�." This incarnation is not mere caprice or deception, for God has truly become a servant.
In the parable of the king and the maiden, Kierkegaard is pointing to a decisive action on the part of God. He is not asserting that the incarnation, and even the death, of Christ is just an example of God's love. It is not simply a vivid portrayal of the love God has for humans. Yes, it demonstrates the extent of God's love, but it does much more in that the incarnation is decisive in bringing the human from untruth to truth. Kierkegaard places the parable of the king and the maiden within the chapter that talks about the god as teacher and savior. The teacher is the occasion that causes the learner to become aware of the learner's untruth. The teacher thus is the one who provides the condition, and also brings the truth. In this decisive moment, when the condition has been provided by the teacher, and the truth is received by the follower, there is a transition or "rebirth." In this way, Kierkegaard walks through a progression of "learning" which goes beyond the Socratic, and where a person not possessing the truth is reborn into the truth through the decisive moment. It is the moment which is the decisive factor, and the rebirth that is the decisive outcome. The incarnation is integral to this, in that "The presence of the god in human form-indeed, in the lowly form of a servant-is precisely the teaching, and the god himself must provide the condition�." The god coming in human form is the teaching which can bring the change from untruth to truth. It is the decisive action of the god on behalf of the humans, and is unlike any other act. For in this act alone the god provides the moment.
Another important component of Kierkegaard's solution to the problem of the king and the maiden, the problem of the god and the human, has to do with the self and understanding. The god desires to love the human without destroying the human. Because of this reason, the first solution, that of an ascent, is not satisfactory to the god for it leads to the annihilation of the human. The god does not wish to destroy the human but values the human. Further, the god loves sinners, just as they are. No change is needed to warrant or deserve the god's love. To enlighten this point, Kierkegaard writes, "For love, any other revelation [than the descent] would be a deception, because either it would first have had to accomplish a change in the learner �and conceal from him that this was needed, or in superficiality it would have had to remain ignorant that the whole understanding between them was a delusion�." In the descent, the god is able to reach humans how and where they are, and is able to genuinely communicate love to them, even to the point of death. In so doing, the god opens himself up to offense as well as faith. For only this choice allows the "other" to exist, and only in this is the god's love truly communicated while the self of the other is preserved.
It is certainly worth noting that Kierkegaard's formulation of the incarnation is central to his understanding of the relationship between the god and humans, and is fundamental to the role of the god as teacher. Kenosis is pivotal to his understanding of the god's relationship to the world. It is not an afterthought, but is the fundamental means of love and relationship. This type of understanding can be related well to a broader understanding of kenosis. Kierkegaard asserts the centrality of the incarnation, and a theology which broadens the understanding of kenosis certainly does not detract from this understanding. But the centrality of kenosis as the means by which God relates to the world could be broadened without detracting from the centrality of the incarnation, and add insight into God's workings in other realms.
Conclusion
In Philosophical Fragments, Kierkegaard, writing as Johannes Climacus, employs the parable of the king and the maiden, in order to discuss the role of the god as teacher and savior. This parable functions as a rhetorical device, and as part of Kierkegaard's scheme of indirect communication, drawing the experiences of the reader into the discussion. This parable illustrates the love the god has for humans, and the desire to enter into a relationship of love with them. The parable then moves to the problems this love could encounter, and the solution that presents itself for overcoming these barriers. The god desires to love the human, as the king desires to love the maiden.
Kierkegaard proposes two alternatives for the form this love may take: the ascent and the decent. The ascent, of the maiden to the level of the king, provides a means for the love to be accomplished, but the self of the maiden is compromised, and understanding is not achieved. The second possibility, that of the descent, is favorable. The king comes to the maiden as a lowly servant. Yet, the king is not able to accomplish this, but the god is. The god comes to the learner as a servant, a profound incognito. This provides the setting in which the god can love the learner, and provide the occasion for rebirth. Kierkegaard's construction of the incarnation in this way fits it into the larger relationship between the god and humans, and gives it decisive significance. The incarnation, this incognito, also illuminates the depth of the love of the god for the human. The parable of the king and the maiden is a memorable and useful device for illuminating these concepts of incarnation and kenosis, and tells us of God's deep and caring love for humans.
Appendix: Philosophical Fragments and Practice in Christianity
Philosophical Fragments and Practice in Christianity are two works of Kierkegaard that deal with similar subject matter, specifically the incarnation, but deal with it in different ways. It can add insight into our understanding of the parable of the king and the maiden to see how these two works compliment each other. Climacus and Anti-Climacus operate in different ways, yet they illuminate very similar points regarding the incarnation. The accounts function as parallel or complimentary to one another, and the inclusion of at least a brief analysis of this relationship will aid in seeing how the parable of the king and the maiden functions, and how it does not.
Climacus, in Philosophical Fragments, is operating in the realm of the hypothetical. He uses a thought project as the way to posit ideas about the god. Further, Climacus is not a Christian, and thus is analyzing the idea of the god from a philosophical perspective. Anti-Climacus, on the other hand, is dealing with the historical person of Jesus Christ, and is working from the particulars of his life to ascertain the meaning of the incarnation. In a sense, the accounts are operating in opposite directions: Philosophical Fragments operates from the god down to earth, and Practice in Christianity operates from Jesus Christ up toward God.
Philosophical Fragments talks of the relationship between the god and humans as based on the god as teacher and savior, providing the condition in which the learner can become aware of untruth and become truth. In Practice in Christianity, Anti-Climacus focuses on the drawing of the human by Christ, based on the words of Christ. These two formulations are complimentary, in that God could act as the teacher and savior, providing the occasion for the learner, and could at the same time draw the learner to Himself. God is both preserving the freedom of the human, and at the same time acting to draw the human. It would seem that adding the idea of drawing lends a more personal and loving character to God's relation to the human that is not present (at least not as fully) in the hypothetical construction of Philosophical Fragments.
Common to the two works is the idea that in Christ, God has bound Himself, in becoming human. In Philosophical Fragments, this is seen in the parable of the king and the maiden, and is discussed above. God took the form of a servant, becoming equal with the lowly in order to enter into relationship with the learner. This same theme is present in Practice in Christianity, where the themes of self-binding and abasement are emphasized in understanding Christ, and Christ's drawing of the human. Thus, even as the two works differ in many ways, they share some common elements, including this core of kenosis.
Analyzing the relationship between Philosophical Fragments and Practice in Christianity aids us in seeing how the parable of the king and the maiden functions in Philosophical Fragments. It also gives us insight into the development in Kierkegaard's work from one book to the other. Finally, it helps us to set the parable of the king and the maiden within the larger framework of Kierkegaard's thought and reminds us that it is a piece, and a very important piece, but not the whole, of his Christology and theology.
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Oden, Thomas. "Introduction." In Parables of Kierkegaard. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
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