"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
path, through the consciousness of sin.
[Footnote 1: First Part; comprising about one-fourth of the whole book.]
[Footnote 2: I. e. Christ; _cf._ Introduction for the use of small
letters.]
[Footnote 3: Socrates.]
[Footnote 4: John I, 1.]
[Footnote 5: Matthew 20, 15.]
[Footnote 6: Luke 11, 14.]
[Footnote 7: Kierkegaard's note: by history we mean here profane history,
world history, history as such, as against Sacred History.]
[Footnote 8: _Cf._ the claim of the Pharisees, Matth. 23, 30: "If we
had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers
with them in the blood of the prophets."]
[Footnote 9: One is here irresistibly reminded of passages in Ibsen's
"Brand," e. g., Brand's conversation with Einar, in Act I. _Cf._ also
"The invitation and the inviter" and Introduction]
[Footnote 10: Matthew 11, 6.]
[Footnote 11: Luke 18, 32.]
[Footnote 12: Matthew 20, 27f.]
[Footnote 13: The original here does not agree with the sense of the
passage.]
[Footnote 14: Björnson's play of "Beyond Human Power," Part I, Act 2,
reads like an elaboration of these views.]
[Footnote 15: Matthew 9, 16.]
[Footnote 16: The following passage is capable of different
interpretations in the original.]
[Footnote 17: Matthew 14, 17.]
[Footnote 18: _Cf._ 1 Cor. 2, 9.]
[Footnote 19: John 3, 1f.]
[Footnote 20: Luke 23, 35.]
[Footnote 21: John 2, 4, etc.]
[Footnote 22: The passage is not quite clear. Probably, you will not be
the man to explain this phenomenon in the very opposite terms, viz., as
the divinity himself.]
[Footnote 23: Here, the unreserved identification with human suffering
above referred to.]
[Footnote 24: _Cf._ Footnote 8, in "The Misfortune of Christendom."]
[Footnote 25: As my friend, H. M. Jones, points out, the following passage
is essentially Aristotelian: "The true difference is that one (history)
relates what has happened, the other (poetry) what may happen";
"Poetics," Chap. IX.]
[Footnote 26: _Cf._ Plato's "Apologia" where Socrates is made to say of
himself that he is inflicted on the Athenians like a gadfly on a horse,
in order to keep them awake.]
[Footnote 27: Luke 10, 23.]
[Footnote 28: Kierkegaard's own note.]