Thanks for the very substantial and helpful clarification re: SK/VH on anxiety! There is a logic about this that pushes me in some very good directions, thanks.

Whereas more recent philosophies have secularized this anxiety/angst of Kierkegaard’s (Heidegger and onwards [see Hubert Dreyfus on this]) and turned this kind of experience of lack into something (i.e., thinking that existence is merely excremental remainder, or, as someone has put it, taking ‘the nothing as something’), Kierkegaard seems to, perhaps, be arguing that anxiety reveals the ‘more’ of ourselves to ourselves. It’s not a nauseous, superfluous (de trop) plenitude of being (Sartre), but something else that constitutes the individual beyond him or herself.

Anxiety for S.K./V.H. is indeed part of our existential condition as it is an internal expression of finitude. However, it does not constitute our essence, which for S.K., has a transcendent reality (the very transcendent reality that, when faced by our finitude, causes our anxiety). Therefore, it is ontological, so it will never be escaped, even (especially) by the most faithful Christian, but it is not our essence. It is not who we are, but what moves us to become what it is possible for us to be. It acts as the impetus for the spirit to take on its determining and transforming activity within the individual, to push one toward the “leap” that will allow the individual to actualize the transcendent through the ethical. (This reminds me of what the ethical judge writes the aesthetic in Either/Or Vol. II: “In order that you will be able to live, you must see to mastering your innate depression” – p. 289 in the Princeton paperback edition).
 
Now, when entering the sphere of the religious (which this conversation has), things get all messed up. Anxiety can push one to take the “leap of faith” into the religious sphere, but once there anxiety takes on a different function (or perhaps begins to do directly what it has ultimately been about from the beginning). Here anxiety works to “consume all finite ends” (The Concept of Anxiety p. 155 in the Princeton paperback edition) and push us to infinite realities, not least of which is in relation to our guilt. Even the most rigorously ethical person learns they cannot “control” anxiety for they find infinite reason for anxiety in the religious sphere because, as you pointed out, the ethical “ought” can be etiologically suspended and the finite responsibilities they have worked so hard to take care of are brought into horrifying contact with the infinite. (The following passage brought into conversation with Luther would be quite interesting): “Whoever learns to know his guilt only from the finite is lost in the finite, and finitely the question of whether a man is guilty cannot be determined except in an external, juridical, and most imperfect sense. Whoever learns to know his guilt only by analogy to judgments of the police court and the supreme court never really understands that he is guilty, for if a man is guilty, he is infinitely guilty.” (pg. 161) So true religious anxiety is necessary because only that will convince the individual of their true, infinite guilt, and only when convinced of this can one truly rest in the work of Christ; “He who in relation to guilt is educated by anxiety will rest only in the Atonement” (p. 162). And only through this can one actualize transcendent religious realities.

Working loosely backward:

Dave, I’m unfamiliar with Lutheran scholarship, but I think a similar argument can be made against people who make a bit too much out of John Wesley’s “heart warmly stranged” experience as well.  Like you said, it shouldn’t be discounted, but there’s so more to what is going on there than that.

Lee, Camassia, Dave: I will probably need some help with this, but this is what I remember from the bondage of the will stuff.  Lee, that picture of the incurvatus in se is helpful, but that picture in and of itself as a system seems rather inadequate.  If I remember correctly from the bondage of the will, when arguing against Erasmus, Luther makes a point that if God were to withhold God’s grace, then such and such would happen in this deadlock with sin which therefore prevents us from having any freedom of the will.  My problem with this is that this is an inadequate understanding of grace.  As one example (taken from here):

“And as to those words, ‘which lead unto eternal salvation,’ I suppose by them are meant the words and works of God, which are offered to the human will, that it might either apply itself to them, or turn away from them. But I call both the Law and the Gospel the words of God. By the Law, works are required; and by the Gospel, faith. For there are no other things which lead either unto the grace of God, or unto eternal salvation, but the word and the work of God: because grace or the spirit is the life itself, to which we are led by the word and the work of God.”

The problem with this (and my Wesleyan/Arminian sensibilities will show through here), is that this understanding of grace seems to disallow the work of grace in our lives prior to moment of belief.  Luther seems to distinguish grace from “the word and work of God.”  Wesley called this notion ‘prevenient grace’, and at least at some level, people who come to the faith always seem to be able to recall how things almost “lead” them or created the right (contingent) conditions for where they find themselves now.  They realize that the gift of grace was there all along, as it is for everybody — they just had to accept the gift.

I’d be curious to know if I’m right or wrong on this, as the Bondage of the Will is no short work, and I’ve only given it a cursory reading (literally, the edition I read originally was an abridged version of their debate). Clearly, a careful of reading of this section would be helpful, but I don’t have time at the moment, so anybody’s expertise is obviously welcome.

I still need to give the JDDJ another read, but perhaps at another time when I have time to explore these issues as my current reading schedule is a bit heavy.  I still very much think that all the respondents in the debate really didn’t give an adequate attempt at an answer as to the substance of the Joint Declaration, but perhaps no one really knows it closely at the moment.  It would definitely be interesting to see exactly where the disagreements still lie, where the cracks in the mould emerge, but Meghan’s point above about the ECLA being not very representative of Lutherans is very helpful here too.

Lastly, I just wanted to point out that I just spoke to Richard Bell and he pointed out that he wasn’t talking about anxious Catholics, but anxious Protestants in Germany (on this I have amended the original text of the post to reflect the facts).  His point was to make this less of a “Catholic vs Protestant” thing, and I entirely agree on that score, although I don’t think that affects my point about anxiety at all.  I still think that anxiety is a central part of our faith in some measure if, indeed, we are to work our salvation out with fear and trembling.  

Now, clearly, being overly anxious can be a bad thing perhaps, but is it?  As Camassia helpfully points out, anxiety in the faith amongst believers often comes in different degrees for reasons not entirely clear.  Some of this may be issues of biology, but some of it could be mixed in with substantive issues of one’s history: perhaps one comes from a tradition that instills an anxious ethos, perhaps one just is anxious because they have looming skeletons in their closet.  I think anxiety just is an integral part of our faith, but like Kierkegaard argues for a disciplined mode of irony, anxiety itself shouldn’t be anxiety for anxiety’s sake.  We aren’t saved by it, nor is it the core of our being like Sartre says: “It is certain that we can not overcome anguish, for we are anguish” (Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel E. Barnes [NY: Washington Square Press, 1992], p. 82).  It’s been a while since I read Kierkegaard/Haufniensis’ The Concept of Anxiety, so I can’t recall what he says there to speak to his further views of this, but my point is that anxiety is a part of our existential condition, and moreover, we should actively work our salvation out in fear and trembling such that we embrace the difficulty of our faith.  I think there is a real reason why Kierkegaard’s experience of Christendom in Copenhagen was so atrociously moribund of authentic faith, not merely for the form of Danish Hegelianism that was infecting the clergy and some of the laity.  Assent to doctrines “alone” will not do.