Category: Kierkegaard

heroism

It is Christian heroism—and indeed, it is perhaps seen quite rarely —to dare to be oneself entirely, an individual human being, this particular individual human being, alone before God, alone in that enormous effort and that enormous responsibility; but it is not Christian heroism to be fooled by the abstract notion of pure humanity in itself, or to play “Guess Who?” with world history.

Sickness unto Death, #117

nobody goes further

Faith is the highest passion in a human being. There are perhaps many in every generation who do not even come to it, but nobody goes further.

Evans, C. Stephen; Walsh, Sylvia. Kierkegaard: Fear and Trembling (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy), 108.

further …

… to yesterday’s post, what if, here is a section from Kierkegaard:

But as in Christendom everything has been brought to confusion, so also this; and thereby the point has been reached where Christianity has become paganism. In Christendom they preach perpetually about what happened then after Christ’s death, how He triumphed, and how His disciples made a triumphal conquest of the whole world-in short, one hears only sermons which might properly end with Hurrah I rather than with Amen. No, Christ’s life here upon earth is the paradigm; it is in likeness to it that I along with every Christian must strive to construct my life; and this is the essential object of the sermon, this is the end it should serve, to keep me alert when I would become slack, and to strengthen me when I would become disheartened. In such a sense He is the paradigm in the situation of contemporaneousness; in that situation there was no stuff and nonsense about what happened afterwards. But Christendom has abolished Christianity – on the other hand, it would like to inherit Him and His great name, to gain advantage from the immense consequences of his life, coming pretty close to appropriating these consequences as its own meritorious achievement and making us believe that Christendom is Christ. Every generation has to begin all over again with Christ and thus to present His life as the paradigm; but instead of this, Christendom has taken the liberty of interpreting the whole relationship simply historically, beginning by letting Him be dead-and then it triumphs! Since that time Christendom has been increasing in numbers year by year-and what wonder; for people are only too eager to take part when there is nothing whatever to do but to triumph and to join the parade. And therefore to be a Christian in Christendom is as different from being a Christian in the situation of contemporaneousness as paganism is from Christianity.

Training in Christianity, 109

sermons

Kierkegaard writes scores of paragraphs critical of pastors under whose watch the church itself is disintegrating. He points out the following problems:

  • Pastors’ lives do not reflect their sermons.
  • Pastors do not really mean what they preach, so that preaching “jams the lock on imitation” (FSE 261).
  • Pastors preach watered-down drivel, and thus they are dishonest about the gospel—its claims and its demands on human life.
  • The pastorate is a professional job no different from any other in law, business, medicine and so on. The implications are that some are drawn to the “trade” for secular reasons and thus some pastors have gotten themselves in the wrong business.
  • In their sermons pastors promote the view that doctrine matters more than the imitation of Christ; faith is intellectualized.
  • Pastors do not understand the world in which they live (i.e., non-Christian forms of existence), nor do they care to, and thus their message is largely irrelevant.
  • Pastors offend, but for the wrong sorts of reasons.
Tietjen, Mark A.. Kierkegaard: A Christian Missionary to Christians

The one thing I would add is that “pastors preach for their own benefit.”

… as a punishment for criminals

In antiquity as well as in the Middle Ages there was an awareness of this longing for solitude and a respect for what it means; whereas in the constant sociality of our day we shrink from solitude to the point (what a capital epigram!) that no use for it is known other than as a punishment for criminals. But since it is a crime in our day to have spirit, it is indeed quite in order to classify such people, lovers of solitude, with criminals.

Sickness Unto Death

incognito: the hiddenness of the solitary life

For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. (Col 3:3)

The individual does not stop being a human being, take off finitude’s motley in order to be dressed in the abstract garb of the monastery; but nor does he mediate between the absolute τέλος and finitude. In immediacy the individual is rooted in the finite; when resignation has convinced itself that he has acquired the absolute orientation towards the absolute τέλος, … He is a stranger in the world of the finite, but does not define his difference from worldliness by an alien mode of dress (a contradiction, since it would define him as worldly); he is incognito, but his incognito consists precisely in looking just like everyone else.

Kierkegaard: Concluding Unscientific Postscript

absolutes and faith

Faith is precisely this paradox, that the single individual as the particular is higher than the universal and is justified over against the latter not as subordinate but superior to it, yet in such a way, mind you, that it is the single individual who, after having been subordinate to the universal as the particular, now through the universal becomes the single individual who as the particular is superior to it; [faith is this paradox] that the single individual as the particular stands in an absolute relation to the absolute.

Fear and Trembling .

aims?

What should also become clear in this study are the ways in which Kierkegaard confronts some of the key errors that arise in overly systematic and reductive accounts of Christian conversion:

  1. The inherent weakness of approaches that assume we can dichotomise, and then quantify, the respective contributions of divine and human agency;
  2. The inclination to objectify human beings in ways that neglect their subjective existence as living persons who require to be conceived diachronically – persons who are called to take up a life-long vocation of becoming Christian;
  3. The tendency to reduce God to an amorphous concept, postulate or figment of the human imagination, thereby neglecting God’s active involvement in the process of becoming a Christian;
  4. The attendant impulse to allow a body of Christian teaching or dogma to displace the actuality of God’s personal agency;
  5. The overemphasis on conversion as a solipsistic event of individual transformation rather than a process of becoming reconciled with God;
  6. The tendency to prioritise epistemology over ontology (that is, over our relationship with God) in discussions of what is involved in becoming a Christian – to focus on the question of ‘What I come to know as a Christian’ rather than ‘Who I come to be as a Christian’; and
  7. The propensity to lose sight of God’s loving purpose to draw all human beings into the one true form of existence for which they were created.
Torrance, Andrew B.. The Freedom to Become a Christian, pp. 2-3.

is “christianity” an abstraction?

But Christendom has abolished Christ; yet, on the other hand, it wants—to inherit him, his great name, to make use of the enormous consequences of his life. Indeed, Christendom is not far from wanting to appropriate them as its own merits and to delude us into thinking that Christendom is Christ.

SK (Institutions)

Is “christianity” an abstraction that, when used against the individual, is dehumanizing? When Nietzsche writes again Christianity, maybe he is right?

So, do I believe in Christianity or in Jesus?