With its invitation to all "that labor and are heavy laden" Christianity
has entered the world, not--as the clergy whimperingly and falsely
introduce it--as a shining paragon of mild grounds of consolation;
but as the absolute. God wills it so because of His love, but it
is God who wills it, and He wills it as He wills it. He does not
choose to have His nature changed by man and become a nice, that
is to say, humane, God; but He chooses to change the nature
of man because of His love for them. Neither does He care to
hear any human impertinence concerning the why and wherefore
of Christianity, and why it entered the world: it is, and is
to be, the absolute. Therefore all the relative explanations
which may have been ventured as to its why and wherefore are
entirely beside the point. Possibly, these explanations were
suggested by a kind of human compassion which believes it necessary
to haggle a bit--God very likely does not know the nature of
man very well, His demands are a bit exorbitant, and therefore
the clergymen must haggle and beat Him down a bit.[24] Maybe
the clergy hit upon that idea in order to stand well with men
and reap some advantage from preaching the gospel; for if its
demands are reduced to the purely human, to the demands which
arise in man's heart, why, then men will of course think well
of it, and of course also of the amiable preacher who knows
how to make Christianity so mild--if the Apostles had been able
to do that the world would have esteemed them highly also in
their time. However, all this is the absolute. But what is it
good for, then--is it not a downright torment? Why, yes, you
may say so: from the standpoint of the relative, the absolute
is the greatest torment. In his dull, languid, sluggish moments,
when man is dominated by his sensual nature, Christianity is
an absurdity to him since it is not commensurable with any definite
"wherefore?" But of what use is it, then? Answer: peace! it is
the absolute. And thus it must be represented; that is, in a
fashion which makes it appear as an absurdity to the sensual
nature of man. And therefore is it, ah, so true and, in still
another sense, so true when the worldly-wise man who is contemporaneous
with Christ condemns him with the words: "he is literally nothing"--quite
true, for he is the absolute. And, being absolute, Christianity
has come in the world, not as a consolation in the human sense:
in fact, quite on the contrary, it is ever reminding one how
the Christian must suffer in order to become, or to remain, a
Christian--sufferings which he may, if you please, escape by
not electing to be a Christian.
There is, indeed, an unbridgeable gulf fixed between God and
man. It therefore became plain to those contemporary with Christ
that the process of becoming a Christian (that is, being changed
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.