“A Place of Rest at the Foot of the Altar”: Topological Categories and Correlations in Kierkegaard’s last Discourse at the Communion on Fridays

I Kierkegaard’s Thirteen Discourses at the Communion

If we look at Kierkegaard’s thirteen Discourses at the Communion as a whole, we will soon find some of the many internal and external relations and references: The first three of the seven Christian Discourses of 1848 describe the movement toward the altar: (1) the longing for and the invitation to Communion; the listening to the voice of the One inviting—and finally the following of the invited. (2) The central discourse (no. IV) shows how the sacramental process at the Altar is rooted or anchored in the inaugural act of Christ “in the night when he was betrayed.”^[7] (3) The three following discourses deal with the reassurance and comfort that is conveyed by the forgiveness of sins received at the Altar—and with how this is founded on God’s faithfulness and grace, on the blessed presence of Christ.

The Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays of 1849 take up this issue of Christ’s vicarious high-priestly atonement as the foundation of every forgiveness of sins. Whereas in the first discourse Christ is pictured as the beginner and finisher (or fulfiller) of all reconciliation and justification by faith, the two following discourses focus on the “Tax Collector” and the “Woman who was a sinner” as prototypes or examples on the way to the Altar—thus returning from the place of the foundation of salvation and its reassurance back to the place and to the act (or process) of receiving the gift of salvation.

The discourse on Jn 12:32, published in no. III of Practice in Christianity in 1850 (but dating from 1848) functions as a kind of retarding momentum in that it once more changes the perspective back to Christ the Saviour and his promise: “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men unto me.”^[8] It does so—explaining once more the heavenly foundation of salvation—in local categories: “up from the earth”…“draw…onto me.”^[9]

Kierkegaard’s last Two Discourses at the Communion on Fridays both appear on 7 August 1851, together with the book On my Work as an Author. With these two discourses, Kierkegaard intended formally to complete his work as an author. They are meant to be read as a closing religious comment of the author, putting his entire literary work into the right perspective. In his foreword to these Two Discourses, Kierkegaard himself expresses this intention—with many allusions—as follows:

An authorship that began with Either/Or and advanced step by step seeks here its decisive place of rest, at the foot of the altar, where the author, personally most aware of his own imperfection and guilt, certainly does not call himself a truth-witness but only a singular kind of poet and thinker who, without authority, has had nothing new to bring but ‘has wanted once again to read through, if possible in a more inward way, the original text of individual human existence-relationships, the old familiar text handed down from the fathers’ (see my postscript to Concluding Postscript).^[10]

One of the many reflexive features in these two closing discourses is the fact that they refer to 1 Pet 4:8, a Bible verse which Kierkegaard had already interpreted on three previous occasions.

(1) In 1843 he had published Two Edifying Discourses on 1 Pet 4:7 – 10, both under the same title: “Love will hide a Multitude of Sins.” Both of them close by pointing to a “Sinful Woman”: first, to the “Adulterous Woman” (Jn 8:1 – 11) whose sins are covered by the loving words of Jesus, saying: “I do not condemn you”; then, to the “Sinful Woman” anointing the feet of Jesus with precious oil about whom he says: “Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much” (Lk 7:47). Thus, it is in these discourses that, for the first time, Kierkegaard combines the quotation from 1 Pet 4 (“Love will hide a multitude of sins”) with the story about the “Woman who was a Sinner” in Lk 7:37 – 47. From this we can derive two perspectives in which to interpret the verse “Love will hide a multitude of sins”: Human love covers sins, only because the love of Christ covers sins, in the first place.

(2) The human aspect is unfolded further by Kierkegaard—explicitly referring back to the Edifying Discourses of 1843—in the discourse titled “Love will hide a Multitude of Sin” in the second part of Works of Love in 1847. Here, Kierkegaard ignores the kind of love which covers one’s own sins, concentrating fully on those works of love which cover the sins of one’s neighbour.

(3) The second aspect, divine love, is then developed—explicitly referring back to Works of Love (1847)—in Kierkegaard’s last Discourse at Friday Communion of 1851 on 1 Pet 4:8, which we will now consider more closely: “Love (Christ’s Love) will hide a Multitude of Sins.”^[11]

II Kierkegaard’s last Discourse at Friday Communion: Formal Observations

Three remarks, beforehand. First, in this discourse, Kierkegaard plays with the whole range of meaning of the verb to cover, to hide, to shelter (“skjule”) in order to combine it with the noun and its variety of meanings: cover, shelter, hiding place (“Skjul”). Secondly, Kierkegaard does not mention that in 1 Pet 4:8 (just like in James 5:20) we have a quotation from Prov 10:12: “Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all sins.” But it is obvious that he loved—and quoted from—the Old Testament wisdom literature a lot.^[12] Thirdly, the title of the discourse just names a biblical reference without quoting the verse which then is the main theme of the speech. Maybe this was the reason why Kierkegaard skipped one verse back, writing “1 Pet 4, verse 7,” instead of “8.”^[13]

The discourse itself begins with a prayer opening up the entire “realm” or “space” in which the discourse will exert and extend its movements: The only sinless One, love personified, did not have a place to find shelter on earth. But having been lifted up from the earth, he is himself the one and only heavenly shelter for all sinners to flee to. The altar, here, is a symbol for Christ. The turning toward the altar is the turning toward him. From the start, in the opening prayer, the prevailing category is introduced: the movement of “fleeing to the altar” in the sense of fleeing to a shelter or a hiding place:

Lord Jesus Christ, the birds had nests, the foxes had dens, and you had no place where you could lay your head. You were homeless in the world—yet you yourself were a hiding place, the only place where the sinner could flee. And so even this very day you are a hiding place. When the sinner flees to you, hides himself with you, is hidden in you, he is eternally kept safe, since love hides a multitude of sins.^[14]

The topology is paradoxical, and yet very clear, at the same time. There are three vertical levels: first, the earthly time and life of Jesus, who says of himself: “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay His head” (Mt 8:20). And yet he is the one in whom people take refuge, to whom sinners flee, because he invites them, saying: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Mt 11:28). The second, the heavenly level, as well, is outlined by Christ himself prophesying: “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to myself” (Jn 12:32).^[15] The Discourses at Friday Communion now add—or rather, further develop—a third level that is already present on the second (respectively, on which the second is presented and by which it is represented), namely, the sacrament of Holy Communion and the altar on which it is consecrated and celebrated, at which it is given and received, to which, therefore “the weary and the burdened” come in order to find the promised rest in the presence of Christ.

Thus, on all three vertical levels we find analogous horizontal changes of place and movements from one place to another, each of them corresponding—characteristically, even if paradoxically—to one of the others: (1) The One who “has no place” on earth invites all those who are weary and burdened to “come to” Him (who has no place). And He (who has no place to rest) promises to “give them rest.” How can that be? (2) When He is “lifted up from the earth” (Jn 12:32), He promises, He will “draw all men” to himself. That means, “From on high” He will—spiritually—draw them to himself, toward heaven, away from the burdens and the restlessness of the earth. Again, we ask, how can that be, where can it happen? The answer is (3): The sacrament of Holy Communion is the very place of the presence (the being there) of the risen Christ among his followers. The altar on which, in bread and wine, the blood and body of Christ are present is the symbolic place to which “the weary and the burdened” can flee in order to find the promised rest. The altar, as a topological metonymy for the sacrament, is itself a symbol for Christ, the very place of rest in person.^[16] The opening prayer, in our case, has the function of the “tuning” of the state of mind in other Upbuilding Discourses: namely, to lead the readers (or listeners) to the place where the discourse starts and to introduce them into this locality. In this case, the place or state of mind is located within the real church architecture with its liturgical “topoi” (places), above all, the altar.

III Kierkegaard’s last Discourse at Friday Communion: Content Analysis

The discourse itself begins with a clarification: this time (unlike 1843/47, see above), the Bible verse about love and forgiveness will not be interpreted in terms of human love covering either one’s own or one’s neighbour’s sins, but exclusively in terms of Christ’s love. Hence, it can only be taken in the “one sense”^[17] of His love covering the sin of others—not of himself, nor “of just a few individuals, but of the whole world.”^[18] This is what the discourse focuses on when it explains how Christ’s love covers and hides a multitude of sins.

The first part of the discourse starts where the entire series of Christian Discourses at the Communion^[19] began in 1848, namely, the need and the longing “for a love that covers sins, your sins.”^[20] This human need and longing corresponds to the “earnest desire” of Jesus to sit at the table and eat with his followers (Lk 22:15) on the night when he was betrayed. The human longing for divine love takes its strength from the longing of divine Love. And “this is why you are going to the Lord’s Table today.”^[21] Now, this longing is interpreted as a fruit of human conscience: The desire to flee, to hide oneself and one’s sin is uncovered by one’s conscience—this “secret-sharing preacher” within you,^[22] as Kierkegaard, referring to Luther, calls it. No human being can flee from him- or herself. Nor can they flee from their consciousness of sin. There is no place to flee from oneself, nor from God—“since a person,” says Kierkegaard, “as soon as he is aware of himself is also aware of God and God is aware of him” or her.^[23] Human conscience, this “secret-sharing preacher within you,” is simply inescapable:

The reason why he is so powerful, punctilious, and always very present and incorruptible is that he is in covenant with God—he, this secret-sharing preacher who accompanies a person everywhere, when he is awake and when he is sleeping (alas, if he does not make him sleepless with his preaching!), everywhere, in the world’s noise (alas, if with his voice he does not transform the world’s noise into stillness!), in solitude (alas, if he does not prevent him from feeling alone even in that most solitary place!), at the daily job (alas, if he does not make him estranged from it and like one distracted!), in the festive surroundings (alas, if he does not make them like a gloomy prison for him!), in holy places (alas, if he does not keep him from going there!).^[24]

So, by making it impossible to flee from the consciousness of sin, human conscience stirs up and fosters the desire for the forgiveness of sin:

Oh if I knew how to flee to a desert island, where no human being ever came or comes; oh, would that there were a place of refuge to which I could flee—far away from myself! Would that there were a hiding place where I am so hidden that not even the consciousness of my sin can find me! Would that there were a border, however narrow, if it still makes a separation between me and my sin! Would that on the other side of a chasmic abyss there were a spot, however little, where I can stand, while the consciousness of my sin must remain on this side. Would that there were a forgiveness, a forgiveness that does not increase my sense of guilt but truly takes the guilt from me, also the consciousness of it. Would that there were oblivion!^[25]

At the end of the first part of the discourse, this decisive passage—resembling passages in Rom 7 or in Old Testament Psalms of Lamentation—makes one thing clear: this longing desire—thriving and inescapable as it may be—would be aimless and restless if there were no fulfilment. And on the level of existential experience—so Kierkegaard’s seeking repetitions want to express—it does, indeed, remain aimless and restless, unless and until its fulfilment is at hand. There is no way of climbing, reaching up or concluding from the Law to the Gospel.

The second part of the discourse, therefore, changes perspective and starts anew: With the fulfilment of human longing, with the Gospel, from which alone the origin and the object of human desire can be seen and understood. “But now…”—with the very words used by the Apostle Paul in 1 Cor 15, in 2 Cor 5 and in Rom 8—Kierkegaard introduces the decisive turn: “But now” there is the love of Christ. And: “Behold, everything has become new!”^[26] Here is more than Moses; more than fulfilling of the Law; more than the fulfilment of all hopes, of all longings and desires.^[27] The love of Christ hides a multitude of sins. Thus, all human longing and desire obtains a vanishing point—and “vanishing,” “fleeing,” “hiding” receive a new meaning.

Kierkegaard speaks to a congregation—whether imagined or real—facing the altar of Our Lady’s Church in Copenhagen looking at Thorvaldsen’s statue of Christ with open arms (and the Bible verse from Mt 11:28) saying: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” The central passage of the discourse, in which all human attempts to flee are encompassed by this divine invitation spoken long before, is therefore formulated as follows:

At the altar the saviour opens his arms and specifically to this fugitive who wants to flee from the consciousness of sin, flee from what is even worse than being pursued, flee from what gnaws. He opens his arms and says, ‘Come here to me’; and that he opens his arms already says, ‘Come here’; and that he, opening his arms, says ‘Come here’ also says, ‘Love hides a multitude of sins.’^[28]

What remains to be said at the end of the central part of this discourse is the appeal to accept and to follow the invitation, to believe in the power of Christ’s forgiving love; to trust the only authority that is able to bring about and to bestow such faith: “This divine authority, he alone has, Jesus Christ, whose love hides a multitude of sins.”^[29]

The third part of the discourse begins by confirming: “He hides it very literally,”^[30] thus, again, hinting to the strongly topological structure of the sentence “Christ’s love hides a multitude of sins.” Kierkegaard interprets “hiding” in two directions—by two different comparisons. (1) In an anthropological sense: just “as when one person places himself in front of another person and covers him so completely with his body that no one, no one, can see the person hidden behind him, so Jesus covers your sin with his holy body.” The claim of the Law, the broken-heartedness of repentance, even the rage of guilt—they all lose sight of you and must admit: “I can see nothing.”^[31] (2) By the more traditional metaphor of “the mother hen” gathering her chicks under her wings “in the moment of danger,”^[32] Kierkegaard explains the soteriological aspect of Christ’s (incomparable, singular work of love in) covering a multitude of sins: just as the mother hen “will rather lose her life” than deprive her chicks “of this hiding place that makes it impossible for the enemy’s eye to discover them, in the same way he hides your sin.…He will rather lay down his life—yet, no, he lost his life precisely in order to ensure you a hiding place under his love.”^[33] Incomparably and “very literally he covers your sin just because he hides [it] with his death…and thus you cannot possibly be deprived of your hiding place.”^[34]

Kierkegaard’s exposition of 1 Pet 4:8 focuses on the speaker and the listener or reader and their common situation—existentially as well as liturgically or spiritually. The congregation is on its way to the altar, “situated” between confession and communion. The preacher’s task is, “in the brief moments prescribed”^[35] in between, to speak about the words: “Christ’s love will hide a multitude of sins.” He does so by reminding his listeners or readers that they came to the altar and are now situated at the foot of the altar (behind which Christ is standing with open arms, saying: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest”). He addresses his listeners or readers as longing, wanting and searching; he identifies them as fleeing and trying to hide—yet coming to the altar because they have received and accepted Christ’s invitation (by which he calls the weary and the burdened). “Is it not true that you have felt the need of this and on this very day you feel the need of a love that covers sins, your sins—and this is why you are going to the Lord’s table today”; otherwise “you of course would not come here.”^[36]

The state of mind expressing itself in coming to the altar, or going to the Lord’s Table, is identified as a basic anthropological pattern for human need and longing. And in direct parallel to this, the liturgical topology of Holy Communion and the forgiveness of sins is identified as a soteriological symbol for the divine salvation through Christ’s atoning work of love. The theological order of things (secundum Deum dicentem), of course, runs reversed to the epistemological or existential order (secundum hominem recipientem)—and precisely hereby constitutes the topological stringency.^[37]

The closing part of the discourse concentrates all these thoughts at the liturgical place of the event by contracting the two basic situations—the anthropological and the soteriological—into one single topological pattern of the place to flee to, the “hiding place.” At the altar, at the Lord’s Table, you have “communion with him”; here, at the Communion Table, “he gives you himself as a hiding place” for the sinner.^[38] Kierkegaard exerts this closing approach to the hiding place, the “place of refuge” and “of rest,”^[39] which at the same time is the starting point and the vanishing point of the discourse, in three steps. First, by underlining that Christ “died once for the sins of the whole world and for our sins; his death is not repeated, but this is repeated: he died also for you, you who receive in his body and blood the pledge that he died also for you, at the Communion Table where he gives you himself as a hiding place”^[40]—a necessary and clarifying remark after all the contractions (of the anthropological and the soteriological realm in the liturgical topology). The second step is, simply—and unexpectedly—a personal prayer individually exercising the approach, the stepping forward to the altar, thus giving a strong example to follow: “Therefore, my Lord and Saviour, you whose love hides a multitude of sins, when I really am aware of my sin and the multitude of my sins…I will promptly flee to you.”^[41] The third step of approach recapitulates, by addressing the listeners or readers for one last time, the entire movement of the fleeing and the hiding which the whole discourse described and depicted.^[42] Up to the end the discourse at the communion is an occasional speech or sermon in that it follows the external liturgical and sacramental procedure and makes it transparent for the mystery of the inner process taking place “in and with the visible sign.”^[43] By making visible the topological deep structure of the spiritual process, Kierkegaard helps his reader to internalize it mentally and to appropriate it existentially.

IV The Function of Topological Categories

The categories of space and time are necessary vessels or structures for human beings to conceive (mentally as well as existentially) spiritual (as well as material), inner (as well as outer) realities and their correlations. The present (the coincidence of space and time in which man conceives himself and what matters ultimately), therefore, is of great importance for the existential appropriation of spiritual truth. Kierkegaard knows this very well and calls this moment of truth “the instant”—which spiritually is the coincidence not only of space and time, but also of eternity. You are here, now, before God.^[44] Even the language of time is local and topological—whenever we think or speak about time and about our relation to time as human beings, our experience of time and of finitude in time. Kierkegaard is very well aware of this fact. He explicitly speaks about it and, what is more, succeeds to implement and to develop it rhetorically.^[45]

Neither space nor time is, of course, the primary theme of Kierkegaard’s discourses. But both of them indirectly play a significant role when it comes to the purpose or the aim of the discourse. Edification means to be moved.^[46] And this is itself as much a topological as a temporal category. Just like the purpose of all Kierkegaardian “maieutic” (helping to be born, or standing and walking alone—by the help of another)^[47] is most appropriately expressed in local terms. A certain kind of transposition has to take place. No wonder, Kierkegaard’s “middle terms” so often are explicated in local terms. They are, in fact, pointing and leading to the anthropological “spot” from where the existential path of appropriation can start.^[48]

One last feature underlines the plausibility of our topological observations: At the very end of the discourse, Kierkegaard introduces two more Bible quotations (beside 1 Pet 4:8, Mt 8:20 and Mt 11:21) by silently weaving an exposition of Jn 14:6 and 15:4 into the closing address to the devout listener. In order to show—in topological categories—and to make existentially accessible to the listener what “communion with Christ at the foot of the altar” ultimately means, Kierkegaard alludes to Christ’s own words in the Gospel of John: “I am the way, the truth and the life; no one can come to the Father except through me”—“Abide in me and I in you!”:

Since he is the Truth, you do not find out from him what truth is and now are left to yourself, but you remain in the Truth only by remaining in him; since he is the Way, you do not find out from him the way you are to go and now, left to yourself, must go your way, but only by remaining in him do you remain on the way; since he is the Life you do not have life handed over by him and now must shift for yourself, but you have life only, by remaining in him—in this way he is also the hiding place. Only by remaining in him, only by living yourself into him are you under cover, only then is there a cover over the multitude of your sins. This is why the Lord’s Supper is called communion with him.^[49]

Christian inwardness is ex-stasis: living yourself out of yourself by living yourself into Christ and coming to yourself by remaining in him, by being and remaining a true follower of Christ.^[50]

V Conclusion

In his discourses, Kierkegaard translates philosophical and theological categories into existential positions and movements which should and can be exercised (in either spiritual or bodily terms). As we have seen, Kierkegaard accomplishes this homiletic (or rhetorical) “translation” by using local terminology. Exercises, movements or leaps are indirectly facilitated by “Training in Christianity” in the strict sense.^[51] The topological terminology is no “playing with words,” as Kierkegaard explicitly stresses, no “meaningless platitude,” no “deceiving” talk.^[52] When Christ invites you by saying “Come here,” this invitation has to be taken “very literally.” Kierkegaard repeats this no less than five times. And he deals with this point all over the central part of his discourse by explaining how very literally Christ in his love is the only hiding place for the sinner, how very literally Christ covers and hides his sin, and how very literally the sinner can therefore flee to him and receive forgiveness by very literally fleeing to the altar and very literally finding “a place of rest at the foot of the altar.”