Scripture's Immediacy, Transcending Post-Liberal Hermeneutic Communities

In For Self-Examination, Kierkegaard’s account of reading Scripture is strikingly immediate. He trusts in Scripture's ability to reveal itself to the reader through the Spirit's inspiration. He seems to lack any concerns about deferred meaning that put a gap between reader and text. This might seem to align Kierkegaard with evangelical doctrines of inerrancy, though I argue he is closer to trends in New Criticism and Post-Criticism. Further, I argue that such trust in Scripture's immediacy is laudable today in the face of Christian postliberalism and Christian nationalism, which privilege the mediating role of the interpretative community as authoritative for Scriptural interpretation. Thereby, however, the Scripture loses its power to criticize and correct, and capacity for critique is lacking in these movements. Therefore, Kierkegaard’s sense of Scripture’s immediacy is an important rejoinder to postliberal and Christian nationalist hermeneutics.