Kierkegaard and Augustine on Untruth and the Future of Christian Politics

Abstract

One of the most prevalent issues that assail contemporary Christian practice is the propensity to make political identity into the primary criterion of all religious observance. This essay argues that Augustine and Kierkegaard remind us how the order of truth does not proceed from the state or the political as such. Political immanentism excludes the transcendent and incentivizes Christians to imitate the crowd (or band of robbers) rather than Christ and the eschatological force he represents. My argument turns to the concept of martyrdom as the best way to think about what it might mean to adopt a rigorous rejection of the crowd in the form of truth telling. Martyrdom signifies the attitude of a truth-witness and pushes back against the fatal untruth of political immanentism. The martyr is one who tells the truth in its fullest sense, both by telling the truth and by being the truth.