Selections from the Writings of Kierkegaard
into the likeness of God) is, in a human sense, a greater torment
and wretchedness and pain than the greatest conceivable human
suffering, and moreover a crime in the eyes of one's contemporaries.
And thus will it always be; that is, if becoming a Christian in
reality means becoming contemporaneous with Christ. And if becoming
a Christian does not have that meaning, then all your chatter
about becoming a Christian is a vanity, a delusion and a snare,
and likewise a blasphemy and a sin against the Holy Ghost.
For with regard to the absolute there is but one time, viz. the
present. He who is not contemporaneous with the absolute, for
him it does not exist at all. And since Christ is the absolute,
it is evident that in respect of him there is but one situation:
contemporaneousness. The three, or seven, or fifteen, or seventeen,
or eighteen hundred years which have elapsed since his death do
not make the least difference, one way or the other. They neither
change him nor reveal, either, who he was; for his real nature
is revealed only to faith.
Christ, let me say so with the utmost seriousness, is not an
actor; neither is he a merely historical personage since, being
the paradox, he is an extremely unhistorical personage. But
precisely this is the difference between poetry and reality:
contemporaneousness.[25] The difference between poetry and history
is no doubt this, that history is what has really happened, and
poetry, what is possible, the action which is supposed to have
taken place, the life which has taken form in the poet's imagination.
But that which really happened (the past) is not necessarily
reality, except in a certain sense, viz., in contrast with poetry.
There is still lacking in it the criterion of truth (as inwardness)
and of all religion, there is still lacking the criterion: the
truth FOR YOU. That which is past is not a reality--for me,
but only my time is. That which you are contemporaneous with,
that is reality--for you. Thus every person has the choice to
be contemporaneous with the age in which he is living--and also
with one other period, with that of Christ's life here on earth;
for Christ's life on earth, or Sacred History, stands by itself,
outside of history.
History you may read and hear about as a matter of the past.
Within its realm you can, if you so care, judge actions by their
results. But in Christ's life here on earth there is nothing
past. It did not wait for the assistance of any subsequent results
in its own time, 1800 years ago; neither does it now. Historic
Christianity is sheer moonshine and un-Christian muddle-headedness.
For those true Christians who in every generation live a life
contemporaneous with that of Christ have nothing whatsoever to
do with Christians of the preceding generation, but all the
more with their contemporary, Christ. His life here on earth
attends every generation, and every generation severally, as
Sacred History; his life on earth is eternal contemporaneousness.
For this reason all learned lecturing about Christianity, which
has its haunt and hiding-place in the assumption that Christianity
is something which belongs to the past and to the 1800 years of
history, this lecturing is the most un-Christian of heresies,
as every one would readily recognize if he but tried to imagine
the generation contemporaneous with Christ as--lecturing! No,
we must ever keep in mind that every generation (of the faithful)
is contemporaneous with him.
If you cannot master yourself so as to make yourself contemporaneous
with him and thus become a Christian; or if he cannot, as your
contemporary, draw you to himself, then you will never be a
Christian. You may, if you please, honor, praise, thank, and
with all worldly goods reward, him who deludes you into thinking
that you are a Christian; nevertheless--he deceives you. You
may count yourself happy that you were not contemporaneous with
one who dared to assert this; or you may be exasperated to madness
by the torment, like that of the "gadfly,[26]" of being contemporaneous
with one who says this to your face: in the first case you are
deceived, whereas in the second you have at least had a chance
to hear the truth.
If you cannot bear this contemporaneousness, and not bear to see
this sight in reality--if you cannot prevail upon yourself to go
out into the street--and behold! it is God in that loathsome
procession; and if you cannot bear to think that this will be
your condition also if you kneel and worship him: then you are
not essentially a Christian. In that case, what you will have
to do is to admit the fact unconditionally to yourself, so that
you may, above all, preserve humility, and fear and trembling,
when contemplating what it means really to be a Christian. For
that way you must proceed, in order to learn and to practice
how to flee to grace, so that you will not seek it in vain; but
do not, for God's sake, go to any one to be "consoled." For to
be sure it is written: "blessed are the eyes which see the things
that ye see,[27]" which word the priests have on the tips of
their tongues--curiously enough; at times, perhaps, even to
defend a worldly finery which, if contemporary with Christ,
would be rather incongruous--as if these words had not been
said solely about those contemporaries of his who believed.
If his exaltation had been evident to the eyes so that every
one without any trouble could have beheld it, why then it would
be incorrect to say that Christ abased himself and assumed the
guise of a servant, and it would be superfluous to warn against
being offended in him; for why in the world should one take
offense in an exalted one arrayed in glory? And how in the world
will you explain it that Christ fared so ill and that everybody
failed to rush up admiringly to behold what was so plain? Ah no,
"he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him,
there is no beauty that we should desire him" (Isaiah 53, 2[28]);
and there was to all appearances nothing remarkable about him
who in lowly guise, and by performing signs and wonders, constantly
presented the possibility of offense, who claimed to be God--in
lowly guise; which therefore expresses: in the first place,
what God means by compassion, and by one's self needing to be
humble and poor if one wishes to be compassionate; and in the
second place, what God means by the misery of mankind. Which,
again, in both instances is extremely different from what men
mean by these things and which every generation, to the end
of time, has to learn over again from the beginning, and beginning
in every respect at the same point where those who were contemporary
with Christ had to start; that is, to practice these things
as contemporaries of Christ. Human impatience and unruliness
is, of course, of no avail whatsoever. No man will be able to
tell you in how far you may succeed in becoming essentially
a Christian. But neither will anxiety and fear and despair help
one. Sincerity toward God is the first and the last condition,
sincerity in confessing to one's self just where one stands,
sincerity before God in ever aiming at one's task. However slowly
one may proceed, and if it be but crawling--one is, at any rate,
in the right position and is not misled and deceived by the
trick of changing the nature of Christ who, instead of being
God, is thereby made to represent that sentimental compassion
which is man's own invention; by which men instead of being
lifted up to heaven by Christianity, are delayed on their way
and remain human and no more.
THE MORAL
"And what, then, does all this signify?" It signifies that every
one, in silent inwardness before God, is to feel humility before
what it means to be in the strictest sense a Christian; is to
confess sincerely before God what his position is, so that he
may worthily partake of the grace which is offered to every one
who is not perfect, that is, to every one. And it means no more
than that. For the rest let him attend to his work and find joy
in it, let him love his wife, rejoicing in her, let him raise his
children to be a joy to him, and let him love his fellow-men and
enjoy life. God will surely let him know if more is demanded of
him, and will also help him to accomplish it; for in the terrifying
language of the law this sounds so terrible because it would
seem as if man by his own strength were to hold fast to Christ,
whereas in the language of love it is Christ that holds fast
to him. As was said, then, God will surely let him know if more
is demanded of him. But what is demanded of every one is that he
humble himself in the presence of God under the demands of ideality.
And therefore these demands should be heard, and heard again and
again in all their absoluteness. To be a Christian has become
a matter of no importance whatever--a mummery, something one
is anyway, or something one acquires more readily than a trick.
In very truth, it is high time that the demands of ideality were
heard.
"But if being a Christian is something so terrifying and awesome,
how in all the world can a man get it into his head to wish to
accept Christianity?" Very simply and, if you so wish, quite
according to Luther: only the consciousness of sin, if I may
express myself so, can force one--from the other side, grace
exerts the attraction--can force one into this terror. And in
the same instant the Christian ideal is transformed, and is
sheer mildness, grace, love, and pity. Looking at it any other
way, however, Christianity is, and shall ever be, the greatest
absurdity, or else the greatest terror. Approach is had only
through the consciousness of sin, and to desire to enter by
any other way amounts to a crime of lèse-majesté against Christianity.
But sin, or the fact that you and I, individually, are sinners,
has at present either been done away with, or else the demands
have been lowered in an unjustifiable manner, both in life--the
domestic, the civic, as well as the ecclesiastic--and in science
which has invented the new doctrine of sin in general. As an
equivalent, one has hit upon the device of helping men into
Christianity, and keeping them in it, by the aid of a knowledge
of world-historic events, of that mild teaching, the exalted
and profound spirit of it, about Christ as a friend, etc., etc.--all
of which Luther would have called stuff and nonsense and which
is really blasphemy, aiming as it does at fraternizing impudently
with God and with Christ.
Only the consciousness of being a sinner can inspire one with
absolute respect for Christianity. And just because Christianity
demands absolute respect it must and shall, to any other way of
looking at it, seem absurdity or terror; just because only thereby
can the qualitative and absolute emphasis fall on the fact that
it is only the consciousness of being a sinner which will procure
entrance into it, and at the same time give the vision which,
being absolute respect, enables one to see the mildness and love
and compassion of Christianity.
The poor in spirit who acknowledge themselves to be sinners,
they do not need to know the least thing about the difficulties
which appear when one is neither simple nor humble-minded. But
when this humble consciousness of one's self, i. e., the individual's,
being a sinner is lacking--aye, even though one possessed all
human ingenuity and wisdom, and had all accomplishments possible
to man: it will profit him little. Christianity will in the same
degree rise terrifying before him and transform itself into
absurdity or terror; until he learns, either to renounce it,
or else, by the help of what is nothing less than scientific
propædeutics, apologetics, etc., that is, through the torments
of a contrite heart, to enter into Christianity by the narrow