Despair, in other words, is only remedied through faith in Jesus Christ, “through whom we have now received reconciliation” with God (Rom 5:11). Even those united to Christ through faith continue to struggle with despair–to live and act as though the grace of God is not enough–insofar as their faith remains imperfect in this life. For this reason, despair is as universal as sin and not to be reduced to or confused with mere consciousness of despair, since the consciousness of despair may be absent or superficial or even be false. 

“Remember,” Paul writes, “that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (Eph 2:11-12). This is spiritual despair, the “sickness unto death” (John 11:4) according to Kierkegaard. If despair is the condition of “having no hope and [being] without God in the world” then the opposite condition is “realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have the boldness and access [to God] with confidence through our faith in him” (Eph 3:11-12). Despair, in other words, is only remedied through faith in Jesus Christ, “through whom we have now received reconciliation” with God (Rom 5:11). Even those united to Christ through faith continue to struggle with despair–to live and act as though the grace of God is not enough–insofar as their faith remains imperfect in this life. For this reason, despair is as universal as sin (see part 1 of this series) and not to be reduced to or confused with mere consciousness of despair, since the consciousness of despair may be absent or superficial or even be false (see part 2 of this series).

The Subjectivity of Despair

While despair is not to be reduced to mere consciousness (or mood, attitude, emotion, or the like), it is nevertheless profoundly subjective in the Kierkegaardian sense that it concerns and involves one’s self. People seem to despair over something, he observes, and in their despair are ever ready to (mis)diagnose their despair as something merely (and thus trivially) objective rather than profoundly subjective:

An individual in despair despairs over something. So it seems for a moment, but only for a moment; in the same moment . . . despair in its true form shows itself. In despairing over something, he really despaired over himself, and now he wants to be rid of himself (SUD, 19).

To be rid of oneself–to no longer want or will to be the person you are or have become–in one sense that is the end of despair: it is the place to which the prodigal came when he “came to himself” in the “far country” (Luke 15:17) and it’s the place we reach when we are finally sick of our sin and ready to be rid of “this body of death” (Rom. 7:24). We may come to this point by myriad different paths but it is a place we must all reach if we are to become true selves before God since we all begin in despair just as surely as we begin in sin.

Kierkegaard illustrates the subjectivity of despair with the case of an “ambitious man whose slogan is ‘Either Caesar or nothing’.” When this man “does not get to be Caesar,” he “despairs over it.”

But this also means something else: precisely because he did not get to be Caesar, he now cannot bear to be himself. Consequently he does not despair because he did not get to be Caesar but despairs over himself because he did not get to be Caesar (SUD, 19).

Not getting to be Caesar is not the root of his despair but merely the occasion for its surfacing in his consciousness. His despairing “over something”–over not getting to be Caesar–is actually a symptom of his despair “over himself” which was even driving his ambition to be Caesar. In truth, Kierkegaard declares, this man is in despair over himself all along, “for whenever that which triggers his despair occurs, it is immediately apparent that he has been in despair his whole life” (SUD, 24).

This man’s ambition to become Caesar, much like the prodigal’s drive to squander his inheritance in a far country, is actually a spiritual device for losing himself in all the trappings of being Caesar in order to dodge or suppress the truth about being in despair before God. If he had become Caesar he would have been happy, perhaps, because he would have been preoccupied with being Caesar; being Caesar is very useful in the quest to avoid coming to oneself. His happiness may have been elusive or short lived, however, because his despair over his self would have survived his becoming Caesar and, as with the hungry swine-feeding prodigal, likely broken through eventually despite drowning himself in the world.

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