Thankfully and Joyfully Receiving the Father and Becoming a Christian

Abstract

Kierkegaard’s status as a virtue ethicist is a current discussion topic. Of vital importance to the question is not whether Kierkegaard’s work contains some use of virtues but where they fit in relation to his stated aims of showing someone how to become a Christian. This article seeks to demonstrate that the virtues of Thankfulness and Joy are deployed in Kierkegaard’s discourses to lead people into a relationship with God the Father. The virtues are ultimately gifts from the Triune God that lead back to a life with the Triune God. Thus, though Kierkegaard at times fits the mould of a virtue ethicist, his teleology differs in its focus on both the self and relationship with God.

1. Introduction

Whether Kierkegaard is a virtue ethicist, and of what kind, has been a topic of recent vexed conversation. The substance of this claim is that Kierkegaard is more concerned with the person we are rather than the way we make choices (Louth 2013, p. 354). Such an interpretation is consonant with Kierkegaard’s emphasis on the centrality of the “existence-communication” in Christian belief (Kierkegaard 2009, pp. 318, 468). Faith must be accompanied by a way of life in the world. Robert Roberts is particularly enthusiastic about identifying Kierkegaard as a virtue ethicist in the succession of Aquinas and Aristotle (Roberts 1997, pp. 197–98). However, Sylvia Walsh is critical of the way Kierkegaard scholars tend to follow “the latest philosophical movement” and reinterpret Kierkegaard to be an anticipation or follower of it (Walsh 2018, p. 78). Walsh agrees that Kierkegaard speaks of virtues but that they are for the “spiritual edification” of the single individual (Walsh 2018, p. 85). Roberts suggests Walsh is countering the “fragmentary” nature of the virtues and prefers a more holistic frame. “But this contrast fails to notice that each of the virtues that Kierkegaard explores is a property of the self, and furthermore, each of the virtues, in its own way, involves a sense of the self” (Roberts 2019, p. 339). Roberts has a point; this is simply the distinction between two versions of virtue ethics. However, Walsh’s claim is about the nature of Kierkegaard’s primary concern:

Kierkegaard’s primary concern is not with becoming a virtuous person but with becoming a concrete personality, single individual, and person of character through the formation of an authentic self via a relation to God. It would therefore be more appropriate to classify him as a character ethicist than a virtue ethicist.

(Walsh 2018, p. 107)

Walsh is making clear not that there is no place for a classic vision of virtues in Kierkegaard’s thinking, but we must ensure that it aligns with his aims: to become a self, and thus a person of character, through relation to God. So, the question becomes, how does Kierkegaard’s aim of “becoming a self” relate to his use of the virtues? Or perhaps more clearly, becoming a Christian, as stated in his unpublished work (Kierkegaard 1998, p. 23; Kierkegaard 1997–2013, 16, p. 11).

Roberts has an answer to this question; he relates Kierkegaard’s understanding of the need to “become a Christian” in Christendom with character and then the virtues. Roberts begins with an understanding of human beings in line with classic Aristotelian teleology:

“Eudaimonic necessity has the following classical “logic”: a species is subject to eudaimonic necessity of fulfillment … such that if that need isn’t satisfied, the individual will lack fulfillment (happiness). In claiming that the human self is potential spirit, and spirit is a synthesis … human beings are under eudaimonic necessity of relating rightly to God”.

(Roberts 2022, p. 31)

The endpoint of the human self is “a proper relationship of love, gratitude submission, and trust to the Power from whom we are derived” (Roberts 2022, p. 43). Roberts then moves from this to a consideration of the “character” that makes up this self, which synthesises the various components of humanity’s constitution (Roberts 2022, p. 51). He then suggests that “character” is made up of the mosaic of virtues that Kierkegaard “sprinkles” throughout his authorship (Roberts 2022, p. 84). As such, the virtues “make for a complete, integrated, healthy personality or character”, which is the “centre of Kierkegaard’s work” (Roberts 2022, p. 16). So, Kierkegaard’s need to reintroduce Christianity is met by becoming this integrated self around the virtues. The value of Roberts’ work is the demonstration of how Kierkegaard’s thinking is decidedly different from a purely existential or voluntarist ethic. Kierkegaard is concerned for the shape of the self and soul in the world. Indeed, Roberts demonstrates that the Kierkegaardian individual is substantial in form and character.

However, this progression from the initial teleological set-up may not do justice to the distinctive Kierkegaardian emphasis on God and the self. Perhaps in making these movements, the destination is too far from the reality of how someone becomes a self through a relation to God. Mark Tietjen reiterates with Walsh the need to allow Kierkegaard to remain distinct: “Kierkegaard is a kind of Christian virtue thinker” but has “interests in elucidating virtues for the sake of edifying his reader”. The edification serves to the end of “becoming a Christian”. Kierkegaard belongs “in certain ways to both the classical and Christian traditions. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas” (Tietjen 2013, pp. 5, 134). However, Tietjen suggests how love is “mediated by a relation to God”, which provides an “obvious point of departure from many figures of the classical virtue tradition” (Tietjen 2013, p. 133). Walsh also clearly states, “Kierkegaard emphasizes divine agency and a total reliance on the grace of God for the gift of spiritual goods, which are perfect in themselves” (Walsh 2018, p. 91). In Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, “spiritual qualities are good and perfect gifts from God, who was the good itself not only gives everything but also gives himself with them” (Walsh 2018, p. 91). The substance of Walsh’s and Tietjen’s concern articulates how Kierkegaard’s focus on the God relationship alters our understanding of his use of the classic virtue tradition.

Kierkegaard’s understanding of being a Christian is inherently relational or social, as Roberts himself suggests. It is about being in relation with the Triune God:

What does it mean to be a Christian?

It means walking hand in hand with one’s saviour under the eye of a heavenly Father, that is, under the eye of a truly loving father, strengthened by the testimony of the Spirit.

(Kierkegaard 2007–2020, 7, p. 471 [NB 20:133]; Kierkegaard 1997–2013, 23, p. 463)

Here is the great endpoint of Kierkegaard’s thought: he sought to bring Christendom back into connection with the Christian God, the Triune God. If we are to grapple with the place of virtue in his thinking, we need to pay particular attention to how virtues fit us for the God relationship. There are a variety of opinions about the exact presence and importance of the Trinity in Kierkegaard’s writing. At best, we could say that Kierkegaard has a consistent Trinitarian grammar rather than an elaborate Trinitarian doctrine (Rae 2019). He sought to move people into a relationship with the Triune God rather than explaining the intricacies of theology. If this is true, then virtues, as they appear in Kierkegaard’s writings, must enable this reality.

To make this argument, I will specifically consider the virtues of gratitude (or thankfulness) and joy and their relation to God’s Fatherhood. The virtues are not given their own treatment in Kierkegaard’s corpus; they instead arrive “along the way,” as he writes about numerous other things. The topic of thankfulness appears in Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, while Kierkegaard considers the “Father of Heavenly Lights” (James 1:17) from whom all blessings come. Likewise, joy becomes the focus of discussion when Kierkegaard exhorts believers to look to the birds and lilies from whom we can learn of the love and care of our Father in Heaven (Matthew 6). Through becoming someone of joy and thankfulness, the believer becomes self-centred on God’s Fatherly goodness. To make this case, I will consider 1. thankfulness and joy as virtues; 2. the reality of Fatherhood in Kierkegaard’s vision of being a Christian and how thankfulness and joy lead us to know God as Father; and 3. what we can conclude about the place of virtues in Kierkegaard’s account of the Christian life and particularly concerning becoming a self before God. My aim is not to dismiss the place of virtue in Kierkegaard’s account but to demonstrate where it fits in his overall project.

2. Joy and Thankfulness as Virtues

Before proceeding, we will establish the nature of joy and thankfulness as virtues. It is commonplace in the psychological literature to attribute the need for both joy and thanksgiving to versions of human flourishing (King and Defoy 2020; Tudge et al. 2015). However, it cannot be simply assumed that both are virtues as defined within the tradition of such ethics. Carr distinguishes a widely positive psychological appreciation of the need for gratitude from a philosophical justification of gratitude as a moral virtue in the Aristotelian tradition (Carr 2015, p. 1479). A moral virtue must have some “discrimination between virtuous and vicious (excessive, deficient or misjudged) forms of conduct in the manner of such other virtues”. In addition, there must be some “distinctive or intrinsic ethical benefits of gratitude along the lines of (say) honesty, justice or benevolence”.1 So, we see that Aristotle lists “joy” among emotions, which are not “virtues nor vices” because in them we “are not called virtuous or base on the ground of our emotions” (2.5; Aristotle 2011, p. 32). Likewise, Aristotle only mentions gratitude in relation to those who respond to someone of liberality who becomes themselves a benefactor (4.1; Aristotle 2011, p. 68).

Similarly, for Thomas Aquinas, “gratitude is a virtue “annexed” to justice” (Leithart 2014, p. 92). Thankfulness is understood in connection to the virtue of justice, particularly to giving another their due (ST II-II, 106.1; Aquinas 1920). Joy, likewise, “is not a virtue distinct from charity, but an act, or effect, of charity: for which reason it is numbered among the Fruits (Gal. v.22)” (ST II-II, 28.4). So, there is work in defining and making sense of joy and gratitude as distinct virtues. I contend that joy and thankfulness are a fundamental moral response to God through faith and constitute two fundamental dispositions of the Christian.

There is a depth and breadth to the appearance of gratitude or thankfulness (εὐχαριστία and εὐχαριστέω) throughout the New Testament. It is a central trait of the lived life of faith. Believers are to be “always giving thanks to God the Father for everything” (Eph. 5:20), doing “all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Col. 3:17). To be “overflowing with thankfulness” (Col. 2:7) is a core aspect of deepening faith in Christ. Perhaps this is most clear in Paul’s exhortation to the Thessalonians: “give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thess. 5:16–18). This is not to mention the numerous times the Apostle speaks of his continual and ongoing thanks for God’s churches. Paul seems to consider thankfulness as a fundamental reflex and habit of the Christian life. It is because all of life and salvation are a gift from God, not something earned. “Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!” (2 Cor. 9:15). Thankfulness is a fundamental component of the goodness of the Christian life; faith is deficient without it.

The problem with the placement of gratitude in relation to justice, as Aquinas does, is how it makes it the fulfiling of an obligation or “paying back”, which does not seem a part of the New Testament references. Nor does it make sense of gratitude as a “way of being” in the world. This is particularly true when considering Martin Luther’s understanding of God’s giving: “when God bestows good, no repayment is needed” (Volf and McAnnally-Linz 2022, p. 9). It is in the essence of gratitude, which “recognizes joyfully the reception of the gift as a gift as well as the giver and their act as worthy of praise” (Volf and McAnnally-Linz 2022, p. 7).

Indeed, Luther, in his longer catechism, when explaining the origin of all good gifts in the Fatherly goodness of the creator, suggests we “daily to practise this article, to remember and consider it in all that we see” so we “see His paternal heart” and so the believer’s “heart would be aroused and kindled to be thankful for all such good things, and to employ them to the honor and praise of God” (Luther 2018, p. 66). The recognition of gifts leads to a love for God the Father and centres the self. So, we could conclude with other literature that: “Gratitude as a virtue, then, is essentially a meta-disposition” which perceives “benevolence” and forms “proper grateful beliefs and affective and behavioral dispositions” (Emmons 2022, p. 75). Here, gratitude is a “way of life” with “an interior depth”, which is an “acknowledged dependence” shaping actions and outlooks as someone acts in the world (Emmons 2022, p. 79). Gratitude’s presence or absence is a fundamental mark of the way of being in God the Father’s world. It is a fundamental relational response to God the Father, which is a function of our moral relationship with him; it is part of our obedience response to living in his world.

To call joy a virtue is a more contentious suggestion. Roberts suggests while joy is “not exactly a virtue,” it is a “mark of many virtues” (Roberts 2022, p. 193). Joy could be understood “as an embodiment of Christian character” (Roberts 2022, p. 210). Joy involves seeing and savouring good things in God’s world (Roberts 2022, p. 197). As such, virtues rejoice in different types of goods found in each distinctively. Roberts walks a fine line with joy, distinguishing it from gratitude and hope and the names of emotions by suggesting that these are “dispositions to feel the emotions” (Roberts 2022, p. 213). We could then take the insights of Roberts a step further: joy is a disposition to delight in what is good. Joy has to do with appraising a “situation” as pertaining to something good (Watkins et al. 2018, p. 524). So, perhaps joy is more like gratitude in Robert’s taxonomy of character. A virtue is also named as an emotion but involves a unique disposition in the human character.

There is a case to be made that joy is more than an emotional response to what is good. It involves “recurring patterns of positive emotion, a cognitive construal that something holds deep significance,” which drives certain behaviours (King and Defoy 2020, p. 315). Joy comes “in light of knowing and living out one’s purpose” and by our ability to “make or find meaning in one’s day-to-day life” (King and Defoy 2020, p. 325). Hence, Joy can be cultivated because our place and purpose in the world can grow in clarity and power (King and Defoy 2020, p. 326). As Roberts explains, joy is involved in each virtue because it is a fundamental disposition to find the good order of things and live out a place in the world.

As “a fruit of the Spirit, joy may be understood as an enduring quality or capacity that emerges from living in Christ, produced by the Holy Spirit” (King and Defoy 2020, p. 312). This life looks forward eschatologically to the final destiny of God and his people. Joy as a way of life involves participation with “the inner life of the Trinity—receiving and responding to the eternal and endless reciprocity of love amongst the Father, Son, and Spirit” (King and Defoy 2020, p. 323). Joy comes from finding ourselves in relation to the Triune God. It requires a depth of connection to our place in the world, leading to appropriate responsive action to the God who has brought things about for us. Joy as a virtue is a disposition towards finding, delighting, and inhabiting a place in the good order of the world and, most importantly, a relation to the Triune God. While it may still be annexed to the virtue of charity, joy has a place of its own and is an important part of acquiring and honing other virtues.

Kierkegaard saw thankfulness and joy in similar terms. Thankfulness was fundamental to Kierkegaard’s understanding of faith: “No, infinite humiliation and grace, and then a striving born of gratitude—this is Christianity” (JP 1, p. 993 [NB22:122]; Kierkegaard 1997–2013, 24, pp. 163–64). In this, gratitude was both “causal and consequential”; as such “, gratitude is the cause of happiness, as well as a condition for life itself” (Tutewiler 2014, p. 127). He explicitly suggests how some “lacked gratitude in order to be happy” (Kierkegaard 1993, 54/Kierkegaard 1997–2013, 5, p. 429). While to “pray and to be able to give thanks—that, of course is to exist for him, and to do that is to live” (Kierkegaard 1997a, p. 16; Kierkegaard 1997–2013, 10, p. 28). So, joy is not an “action” but a “way for human beings to be in the world” (Tutewiler 2014, p. 127). Ingratitude wants “to possess the good absolutely, gratitude expresses a way of being in the world by which human beings are situated to receive the good from God” (Tutewiler 2014, p. 130). A relationship with God, the giver, is thus a vital component of thankfulness. As exhibited by the birds and lilies, joy was not an event or emotion but a disposition to willingly inhabit a place in God’s world (Bøgeskov 2015, p. 50). For human beings, joy is founded on the reality that they are “loved by God” (Kierkegaard 1997a, p. 21; Kierkegaard 1997–2013, 10, p. 33). Indeed, the “only joyful thought” is that “God is love”(Bøgeskov 2015, p. 51). Along with this is a “deceptive joy” that must be distinguished from the deep joyful way of existing in God’s world (Bøgeskov 2015, p. 53). When a deeper melancholy exists beneath a veneer of joy, such hiding makes it impossible to live in the moment and receive life and God in a constant state of joyful repose. So, joy and thankfulness reflect a relational recognition of the believer’s place in the good economy of God the Father.

3. God’s Fatherhood and the Virtues of Joy and Thankfulness in Kierkegaard

We will now turn to the topic of God’s Fatherhood, which naturally has come to the fore in our discussion of joy and thankfulness. The believer’s relation to God’s Fatherhood is vital to Kierkegaard’s understanding of the Christian life. Yet, it is significantly neglected in wider scholarly discussion of Kierkegaard’s theology. Following the death of his Father, Kierkegaard had a radical awakening to the reality of God’s Fatherhood.

My Father died—then I got another father in his place: God in heaven; and I discovered that my first father had properly spkng been my stepfather and only improperly spkng my first father.

(Kierkegaard 2007–2020, 4, p. 415, [NB 5:102] 1848; Kierkegaard 1997–2013, 20, p. 414)

Kierkegaard’s Father made him desperately “unhappy”, but then he experiences “being a child in relation to God”, which meant his childhood was not a failure as he can “experience it all the more truly a second time, in relation to God” (Kierkegaard 2007–2020, 5, p. 221; [NB 9:8] 1849; Kierkegaard 1997–2013, 21, p. 203). Yet, he also considers a common thread between his earthly and heavenly fathers, revealing the purpose of God’s Fatherhood. “I learned from him what fatherly love is, and through this, I gained a conception of divine father’s love, the one single unshakeable thing in life, the true Archimedean point” (Kierkegaard 2007–2020, 3, p. 196; [Not. 6:24–28] 1840; Kierkegaard 1997–2013, 19, p. 200).2 This is a fundamental and unmistakable part of the Christian life.

Kierkegaard’s journals are replete with prayers and references to God the Father. God the Father is an intimate companion who is also exalted and unknowable. He exclaims, “I have quite literally lived with God as one lives with a father” (Kierkegaard 2007–2020, 4, p. 399; [NB 5:62] 1848; Kierkegaard 1997–2013, 20, p. 398).3 The task of remembering and delighting in God’s Fatherhood is a daily endeavour. The “loving father, whose paternal love it is my happy occupation to remember every day, remembering it again and again, and will remember eternally” (Kierkegaard 2007–2020, 7, p. 125; [NB 16:42] 1850; Kierkegaard 1997–2013, 23, p. 124). Despite this immanent relation, God the Father dwells in light, and his “essence is to shine”, and so he remains “obscure” in a “script that we cannot utter” (Kierkegaard 2007–2020, 11, Part 2, p. 8; [Paper 206] 1846; Kierkegaard 1997–2013, 27, p. 297). He laments how “incomprehensible” the Father is to creatures because he dwells “far away in a light no one can penetrate”. Suffering, trials, and difficulties provide challenges to whether the Father is lovingly involved in the life of his people. For Kierkegaard, God the Father has control over all things:

One believes … there is a God, a Father in Heaven. This God controls everything; it is up to him whether things go well or ill in the world, whether I am to have success or adversity and the like.

(Kierkegaard 2007–2020, 7, p. 413; [NB 20:23] 1850; Kierkegaard 1997–2013, 23, p. 404)

God as Father, with his immense control, is “quite literally concerned even with the slightest thing in a person’s life” (Kierkegaard 2007–2020, 8, p. 37; [NB21:55] 1850; Kierkegaard 1997–2013, 24, p. 41). The problem in trials is exactly the issue of believing that God the Father is loving amid adversity.4 The core truth is that he is “not a cruel master, not a jealous love but a loving Father” (Kierkegaard 2007–2020, 5, p. 250; [NB9:78] 1849; Kierkegaard 1997–2013, 21, pp. 249–50). This requires a deep, settled sense of God’s love in the centre of the believer: “Deep in my soul you planted the blessed assurance that you are love” (Kierkegaard 2007–2020, 7, p. 380; [NB 19:66] 1850; Kierkegaard 1997–2013, 23, p. 373).

So, to walk with God as Father is to live in a tension of intimacy and transcendence. Throughout life, there is a need to continually affirm the goodness and love of God’s Fatherhood. How does someone come to know and affirm such a relationship with God the Father? In the course of Kierkegaard’s “upbuilding discourses”, we see the figure of the Father appear, and Kierkegaard urges us to come into a continual relationship with him through the ordinary means of thankfulness and joy. We are, firstly, called to give thanks to the “Father of heavenly lights”, from whom every good and perfect gift comes from James 1. Secondly, we are to learn the joy of the “birds and lilies”, particularly as they teach us to pray the Lord’s prayer and take up the unique joy of being a creature in the Father’s world.

3.1. Thankfulness to the Father of Heavenly Lights

Kierkegaard meditates on the words of James 1:17 in three early upbuilding discourses in 1843-44 and returns to them at the end of his life in 1855. Generally, these discourses are considered to demonstrate the centrality of God’s unchangeable nature in Kierkegaard’s doctrine of God.5 However, God’s Fatherhood is central to the verse in James 1:17: “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows”. God’s Fatherhood is the steadying centre of the believer’s existence, the anchor of their constancy in the storms of life. God does not tempt and is not tempted but “is the constant who remains the same, whereas everything else changes” (Kierkegaard 1990a, p. 40; Kierkegaard 1997–2013, 5, p. 48). We are summoned to love God in his changelessness “so that our nature might become like his”. So, our contact and knowledge of our Father’s unchangeable nature becomes the basis for our own solidity and constancy. This is founded on an understanding of all of life as a good gift from the Father:

… just as God’s almighty hand made everything good, so he, the Father of lights, ever constant, at every moment makes everything good, makes everything a good and perfect gift for everyone who has enough heart to be humble, enough heart to be trustful.

(Kierkegaard 1990a, pp. 40–41; Kierkegaard 1997–2013, 5, p. 49)

Access to the changelessness of God is understood and received when everything is received as a good gift from above.

The path to receiving the Father and life in this way is learning to give thanks. Kierkegaard quotes 1 Timothy 4:4: “For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving”, using this theme of thankfulness to unpack our relation to the Father of heavenly lights.

The Apostle Paul says, “Everything created by God is good if it is received with thankfulness [Taknemlighed]” … He raises the believer’s mind above earthly and finite cares … we always ought to thank [takke] God … every gift is a good and perfect gift when it is received with thankfulness [Taknemlighed]?.

(Kierkegaard 1990a, p. 42; Kierkegaard 1997–2013, 5, p. 51)

The thankful response turns the things of life into good and perfect gifts: regardless of the reality, “you happily and boldly said: This, for which I thank God” is a gift. It is a conscious sense of the origin of life in God the Father, which means: “I know that this for which I am thanking God is that, and therefore I thank him for it”. There is an “expanding” of the “heart” that happens when the words of Paul are taken seriously: “you wished to learn but one thing: always thank God, and thereby to learn to understand one thing: that all things serve for good those who love God” (Kierkegaard 1990a, p. 42; Kierkegaard 1997–2013, 5, p. 51). Here, we see Kierkegaard expand his version of the virtue of thankfulness. It involves identifying the things of life as good gifts from the Father in heaven by continuing the thanksgiving of what is received.

When formed in someone, thankfulness is a gift and settles the believer in the love of God the Father. Kierkegaard is provocative at this point, anticipating deficiency and summoning the believer to respond:

And when the light sparkle of joy beckoned you, did you thank God for it? … And when your allotted portion was little, did you thank God? And when your allotted portion was suffering, did you thank God? … And when people wronged you and insulted you, did you thank God? … have you taken the wrong and insult to God and by your thanksgiving received it from his hand as a good and a perfect gift? … It is beautiful that a person prays … but it is more blessed always to give thanks.

(Kierkegaard 1990a, p. 43; Kierkegaard 1997–2013, 5, p. 51)

There is great complexity in all of this; it is difficult to receive suffering and insults through thanksgiving as gifts from the Father in heaven. In addition to this are human imperfection and ingratitude, which lead to a need for repentance; thankfulness is a moral category. Yet, in repentance, someone receives “everything from God, even the thanksgiving that you bring to him”. Though someone might want “to give thanks to God at all times … even this was imperfect”. Instead, thanksgiving is itself “a gift” from the Father (Kierkegaard 1990a, p. 46; Kierkegaard 1997–2013, 5, p. 53). So, the very struggle for thankfulness becomes a lesson in living out life as a gift from the Father of Lights. Receiving thankfulness as a gift leads to a “childlike joy” when someone “becomes as happy as a child in God, when you have not feared to understand that this is love, not that we loved God but that God loves us” (Kierkegaard 1990a, p. 46; Kierkegaard 1997–2013, 5, p. 54). There is a childlike joy of living with a heavenly Father; virtue is a gift from the Father that leads us back to him.

In a later discourse, we see Kierkegaard apply the same logic of James 1 in relation to the giving and receiving between people. The inherent problems of giving and receiving gifts are helped by acknowledging how everything is from above. “Oh, but every good and every perfect gift is from above. If your benefactor disregards your thanks, then lift up your heart to God, from whom this gift came, but do not fail to thank him” (Kierkegaard 1990a, p. 155; Kierkegaard 1997–2013, 5, p. 155). Kierkegaard is very aware of how “diverse are the ways in which one person can become indebted to another”, yet he believes that centring the Father as the giver of gifts shifts our vision of what is happening.

But if the person who gives is more insignificant than the gift and the person who receives is more insignificant than the gift, then equality has indeed been effected—that is, equality in insignificance … because the gift is from above therefore actually belongs … to God.

(Kierkegaard 1990a, p. 157; 1997–2013, 5, p. 157)

The virtue of thanksgiving finds its balance only in relation to the Father, who gives every good and perfect gift. Thankfulness is embedded in a knowledge of God’s Fatherly goodness again.

When the rich man thanks God for the gift and for being granted the opportunity of bestowing it in a good way, he does indeed thank for the gift and for the poor man; when the poor man thanks the giver for the gift and God for the giver, he does indeed also thank for the gift. Consequently, equality prevails in the giving of thanks to God, equality vis-à-vis the gift in giving thanks.

(Kierkegaard 1990a, p. 157; 1997–2013, 5, p. 157)

Human thankfulness is contingent on a prior thankfulness to God the Father. If we are to give and receive well in the Father’s world, we need to look upward to the Father of heavenly lights from whom all blessings flow. Whether between God and the believer or between different people, thanksgiving as a virtue acknowledges that everything comes from the Father and leads us back into a relationship with the Father.

3.2. Joy before the Father of Birds and Lilies

Joy, similarly, comes up in Kierkegaard’s 1849 work The Lily of the Field and the Birds of the Air as part of our knowledge and worship of God the Father. Kierkegaard reflects on Jesus’ teaching about the bird and lilies in three separate pieces of writing in three consecutive years (1847–1849). Despite considerable reflection on the significance of these writings, the theme of Fatherhood is often lost in favour of more general mentions of God.6 The birds and the lilies instruct us away from the romantic vision to be “free of the modern world’s self-created anxieties by offering a model of silent obedience”. As image-bearers, we find fulfilment only in worshipping God (Pattison 2012, p. 116). However, Jesus’ teaching is explicit: “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them” (Matt. 6:26). And again: “your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom” (Matt. 6:32–33). Pattison and others seem to generalise or dismiss what particularity is inherent in this teaching.7 This is a teaching about “joyful faith specifically in the goodness of God and therefore of God’s creation” (Rudd 2021, p. 418). Yet, it is directed specifically towards God as the Father.

The endpoint of Kierkegaard’s final discourse on Matthew 6 is joyful existence before the Father. The opening prayer of the work asks God the Father to help the believer know “what it is to be a human being and what religiously is the requirement for being a human being” from the lily and the bird. He describes this as something we do not learn “all at once” but “little by little”: “would that from the lily and the bird we might this time learn silence, obedience, joy!” (Kierkegaard 1997b, p. 3; 1997–2013, 11, p. 10). Christopher Nelson suggests how “unconditional silence” appears to be the determinative factor in this account: “Unconditional silence is unconditional obedience is unconditional joy” (Nelson 2007, p. 69). However, these three qualities appear to be Kierkegaard’s interpretation of how to pray the Lord’s prayer, which provides “a sub-text throughout” the whole set of discourses (Mahn 2007, p. 108). These three aspects are themselves three deepening realities; the destination is joy.

Joy requires a teacher; according to Kierkegaard: “joy is communicable”, and therefore, no one teaches joy better than one who is joyful oneself”. There is always an imperfection in the joy of humanity, and there are at times unsuitable teachers but “out there with the lily and the bird … there is always joy” (Kierkegaard 1997b, p. 36; 1997–2013, 11, p. 40).

What joy when the bird … joyfully begins to sing, and then its neighbor on the other side, and then the whole chorus joins in, what joy! And finally when there is a sea of sounds that make the forest and valley, sky and earth echo, a sea of sounds in which the bird that struck the first note now frolics on high out of joy—what joy, what joy!

The bird does not waste “a single moment” but finds something always to rejoice in. So, in creation, an ongoing, resounding, and abundant joy can always be found. In many ways, they are powerful demonstrations of the virtue of joy: “the joyful teachers of joy, who just because they are unconditionally joyful are joy itself” (Kierkegaard 1997b, p. 37; 1997–2013, 11, p. 41). Unconditional joy continues without regard for changing circumstances.

The key question becomes, what exactly constitutes this joy, and what is the pathway to obtaining it? Kierkegaard is specific; it is about living joyfully in the present as God the Father himself does.

What is joy, or what is it to be joyful? It is truly to be present to oneself; but truly to be present to oneself is this today, this to be today, truly to be today … Joy is the present time with the whole emphasis on: the present time. Therefore God is blessed, he who eternally says: Today, he who eternally and infinitely is present to himself in being today. And therefore, the lily and the bird are joy, because by silence and unconditional obedience they are completely present to themselves in being today.

(Kierkegaard 1997b, p. 39; 1997–2013, 11, p. 43)

Here is where the silence and obedience of the early parts of the discourse come into view. These are the means to become “present” to “today” as God is. The birds and lilies, along with the rest of creation, also groan (Rom 8:19) under the difficulties of life, but:

The lily and the bird have taken to heart the Apostle Peter’s word. “Cast all your sorrow upon God”. See, the lily and the bird do this unconditionally. By means of unconditional silence and the unconditional obedience, they cast—indeed, just as the most powerful catapult … all their sorrow away, and cast it … upon God.

(Kierkegaard 1997b, p. 41; 1997–2013, 11, p. 45)

Sorrows are traded for joy through the movement of silence and obedience. Sorrows are real and need to be handed over to God for joy to be found. The “Omnipotent One” carries the world’s sorrow with “lightness”: “What indescribable joy! Joy namely, over God the Omnipotent One” (Kierkegaard 1997b, p. 42; 1997–2013, 11, p. 45).

Here, we need to return to the Lord’s prayer as the frame of the whole discussion. The joy that comes from silence and obedience follows the contours of the Lord’s prayer. Through a prayerful approach to God the Father, joy is found. First, through “silence”, someone needs to “forget” themselves and their “name” and instead pray:

“Hallowed be your name!” Would that in silence you might forget yourself, your plans, the great, all-encompassing plans, or the limited plans for your life and its future, in order to pray to God “Your Kingdom come!” Would that in silence you might forget your will, your self-will, in order in silence to pray to God: “Your will be done”.

(Kierkegaard 1997b, p. 19; 1997–2013, 11, p. 24)

Enfolded in the silence is unconditional obedience on the part of creation. “But why is this silence so solemn? Because it expresses the unconditional obedience with which everything serves only one master”. Humanity alone disturbs “the beauty of the whole world”, creating “a cleft in a world of unity” through disobedience (Kierkegaard 1997b, p. 35; 1997–2013, 11, p. 39).8 However, because God the Father is “still the God of patience”, we need not be “scared off” (Kierkegaard 1997b, p. 32; 1997–2013, 11, p. 36). Instead, the believer can continue to pray your “will to be done”, “keep me from temptation,” and ask for forgiveness (Kierkegaard 1997b, p. 33; 1997–2013, 11, p. 36).

At this point, Kierkegaard makes his clearest connection to the Lord’s prayer and demonstrates that this meditation is on how the birds and lilies lead us into the joy of God’s Fatherhood.

This is then connected to the final part of the Lord’s prayer: “If you learn to become just like the lily and the bird, and if I, alas could learn it, then the prayer would be truth in you as in me, the last petition in the prayer, … unconditionally joyful, ends in praise and worship in prayer, “Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory”. Yes, his is the kingdom and therefore you have to be unconditionally silent … And his is the power, and therefore you submit everything, because the power is his. And his is the glory, and therefore in everything you do and in everything you suffer you have unconditionally one thing left to do, to give him the glory, because the glory is his.

(Kierkegaard 1997b, p. 44; 1997–2013, 11, p. 47–48)

So, Jason Mahn comments that the “inactivity that Three Devotional Discourses requires is the activity of worship” (Mahn 2007, p. 108). These discourses are a journey into the praise of God the Father and joy in his kingdom and glory, which come at the end of praying the Lord’s prayer after the example of Jesus.

So, the joyful presence of the bird and lily do not simply teach us joy. At least joy is not the endpoint of their work. The endpoint is worshipful praise and confident faith in God’s fatherly goodness over the believer and all creation:

This, namely, is the unconditional joy: to worship the omnipotence with which God the Omnipotent One bears all your sorrow lightly as nothing. And the next (the Apostle does add this) is also unconditional joy: worshipfully to dare to believe “that God cares for you”. The unconditional joy is simply joy over God, over whom and in whom you can always unconditionally rejoice.

(Kierkegaard 1997b, p. 43; 1997–2013, 11, p. 46)

The birds and lilies teach us to pray the Lord’s prayer, come to our heavenly Father, and find ourselves in the delightful praise of him and his goodness. In his journal of the same year, Kierkegaard speaks of the “dithyrambic joy over God” (Kierkegaard 2007–2020, 6, p. 137 [NB11:232] 1849/Kierkegaard 1997–2013, 22, p. 139) that comes from love for the almighty in all of his ways (Marcar 2021, p. 409). Kierkegaard wants us to learn the virtue of joy, but more importantly, he wants us to know the joy of the Father. The joy of a life found with him through silence and obedience. Joy is to know your place as a creature before God the Father.

4. The Telos of Kierkegaard’s Virtues: Life with the Triune God

Thankfulness and joy are dispositions that lead the believer to live with God as the Father. We could say that the telos of these actions is to become a self through knowledge and a faithful life with God as the Father. Now, we can return to our initial discussion about the nature of virtue in Kierkegaard. In the introduction, I pondered whether Roberts’ use of character and virtue obscured Kierkegaard’s aim of “becoming a self before God”. The language we will take up here is that of telos, which is used by Climacus and is also the substance of John Davenport’s discernment of Kierkegaard’s existential version of virtue ethics in response to Alasdair Macintyre’s After Virtue. Here, we are seeking to discern what version of virtue ethics exists in Kierkegaard’s thinking. Roberts suggests that virtue ethics can vary in their “conceptions of the good life”, having “divergent beliefs about the nature of human beings and the universe we inhabit”(Roberts 2022, pp. 110–12). In addition, there can be differences in the function of virtues (Roberts 2017, p. 21). Davenport is clear that virtue values need a place in “divine design plans, or natural teloi” in “a different and prior metaphysical status” (Davenport 2001, p. 274). To make sense of this claim, we can briefly consider where both Aristotle and Aquinas place virtue in line with a wider telos of such action.

Aristotle claims that the telos of virtue “is happiness [Eudaimonia]” and “living well and acting well are the same things as being happy” (1.4; Aristotle 2011, pp. 4–5). The reason he seeks to “examine the virtue distinctive of a human being” is because, in it, he is “seeking both the human good and human happiness” (1.13; Aristotle 2011, p. 23). For Aristotle, “if we engage in the requisite activity of the soul that accords with (the best) virtue, we will secure for ourselves here and now a life that is at once best, noblest and most pleasant” in addition to an afterlife of undisturbed happiness (Bartlett and Collins 2011, p. 249).

Kierkegaard takes up the language of Aristotle in the voice of Climacus, speaking of the telos and happiness. Yet, the substance of this happiness is “decided in time by the relation to something historical” in the reality of the person of Christ (Kierkegaard 2009, p. 309; 1997–2013, 7, p. 336). It is the relation to God and through Christ that that leads to decisive happiness. In Trinitarian terms, the Spirit guides us to the Father through the historical life of the Son. Thus, Anti-Climacus, when claiming that the antithesis of sin is not a virtue but faith, is maintaining a relational vision of the human self (Kierkegaard 1983, p. 82; 1997–2013, 11, p. 196). A self is a “relation that relates itself to itself and in relating itself to itself relates itself to another” (Kierkegaard 1983, pp. 13–14; 1997–2013, 11, p. 130). Faith is the substance of Kierkegaard’s relational ontology. Davenport claims that “Kierkegaard’s account” reinterprets “the human telos as authenticity rather than holistic eudaimonia” (Davenport 2001, p. 293). Roberts suggests as a counterpoint, helpfully, that “authenticity” is not a prime category in Kierkegaardian thought, nor is it completely correct to suggest that Kierkegaard is not exploring “the good life”. Perhaps we need to look to Davenport’s overall claim instead in contrast to Roberts, who maintains an “Aristotelian assumption” in Kierkegaard’s work that the “kind of teleology Kierkegaard finds in the normal course” is to “full selfhood” (Davenport 2001, p. 301). There is a particularity to Kierkegaard’s vision of the virtues; the telos is the happiness of becoming a self before God. The freedom and particularity of the self matter in a way that did not for Aristotle. Roberts, likewise, maintains that the teleology of the human self is towards a Christian self, but the accent is on the character of the person rather than their relation to God.

Perhaps another comparison with Aquinas could help us make the point. Aquinas’ discussion of happiness indicates, like Kierkegaard, that final happiness consists of a vision of the divine being. God “alone by His infinite goodness can perfectly satisfy man’s will” (ST I-II, 3.1). So, “perfect happiness can consist in nothing else than the vision of the Divine Essence” (ST I-II, 3.8). However, Aquinas makes a distinction between a final happiness of seeing God and an “imperfect” happiness that exists in this life (ST I-II, 4-5). He remarks “but by God alone is man made happy, if we speak of perfect happiness. If, however, we speak of imperfect happiness, the same is to be said of it as of the virtue, in whose act it consists” (ST I-II, 5.6). Aquinas makes a connection with Aristotle’s own relation of virtue to happiness: “Wherefore also according to the Philosopher (Ethic. i, 9), happiness is the reward of works of virtue” (ST I-II, 5.7). There is a form of “happiness” that can come from “natural principles”, but the final happiness comes from “a kind of participation” in the nature of the Godhead “by the power of God alone”. Hence, the “theological virtues” are those that abound beyond the natural capacity of humanity. He distinguishes theological virtues in three ways:

first, because their object is God, inasmuch as they direct us aright to God: secondly, because they are infused in us by God alone: thirdly, because these virtues are not made known to us, save by Divine revelation.

(ST I-II, 62.1)

So, there are some slight but important distinctions to be made: “the relation between virtue and this teleological conception of the self as ordered to God is not as clear” for Aquinas (Davenport 2001, p. 273). Kierkegaard’s use of virtues is much less systematic and ordered, and the focus is on the nature of the relation to God rather than the virtues themselves.

Here, perhaps we have the closest equivalence to Kierkegaard’s own use of the virtues. It is in Kierkegaard’s For Self-Examination that the Spirit brings the gifts of Faith, Hope, and Love to the believer. Kierkegaard is at pains in this work to clarify the absolute difference between the Spirit’s power and natural human capacity:

The life-giving in the Spirit is not a direct heightening of the natural life in a person in immediate continuation from and connection with it—what blasphemy! How horrible to take Christianity in vain in this way!—it is a new life … because, mark this well, death goes in between, dying to, and a life on the other side of death—yes that is a new life.

(Kierkegaard 1990b, pp. 76–77; 1997–2013, 13, p. 98)

Faith is not a natural confidence but a willingness to venture all on the reality of God in Christ (Kierkegaard 1990b, p. 82; 1997–2013, 13, p. 103). The Spirit supplies “the hope that is against hope”, which comes to life when all human hope has died (Kierkegaard 1990b, p. 83, S KS 13, p. 104). The love pictured is “in conformity with their prototype, resolved to love … to be sacrificed in order to save this unloving world” (Kierkegaard 1990b, p. 85; 1997–2013, 13, p. 105). In his analogy of the royal coachmen, he draws the difference between an owner who “drove the horses according to the horse’s understanding of what it is to drive; the royal coachman drove them according to the coachman’s understanding of what it is to drive” (Kierkegaard 1990b, p. 86; 1997–2013, 13, p. 106). The Holy Spirit drives people according to divine knowledge of humanity’s purpose. Thankfulness and joy, we have seen, are gifts from the Father that constitute a life lived with him.

For Kierkegaard, happiness consists in coming to oneself before the Triune God. Virtues appear as divine gifts and servants leading us back towards our final happiness in him. It would be incorrect to say this is completely different in, say, Aquinas, but the force of emphasis is on the individual and relationship with God. Thankfulness and joy lead us back to the Fatherhood of God. So, too, the Faith, Hope, and Love of the Holy Spirit enable us to live into the life of Christ the Son, bearing his likeness. These gifts enable us to begin a new life, a Christian life, with the Triune God. For Kierkegaard, virtues are divine gifts put in service of the telos of human happiness in relationship with God. It is only through a relationship with the Triune God that the human soul comes to its rest.

Kierkegaard retains a form of virtue ethics, but it needs to be rightly ordered as a means of fitting us for a relationship with the Triune God. Virtue ethics is a far better home than existentialism for Kierkegaard’s vision of life. Davenport’s suggestion of an “existential virtue ethic” is a correct instinct but the wrong solution. Kierkegaardian virtues come throughout his corpus as a means of the Triune God gathering us to himself. Keeping the focus on Kierkegaard’s relational teleology is vital as we define his place in this ethical field.