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which men are to be tested; and the eternal proudly despises every pert and impudent argumentation from the many years. And the paradox itself did not last throughout many years: it existed when Christ lived, and since then it has existed only whenever someone was offended and someone did in truth believe. If the paradoxical had existed for a thousand years or only for half an hour makes no difference; it becomes not more probable because it existed a thousand years, nor less probable because it only lasted half an hour.

If the thing of being or becoming a Christian is to have its decisive qualitative reality, it is necessary above all to get rid of the whole delusion of after-history, so that he who in the year 1 846 becomes a Christian becomes that by being contemporaneous with the coming of Christianity into the world, in the same sense as those who were contemporaneous before the eighteen hundred years. * To this end it is important above all that there be fixed an unshakable qualitative difference between the historical element in Christianity (the paradox that the eternal came into existence once in time) and the history oJ Christianity, the history of its followers, etc. The fact that God came into existence in human form under the Emperor Augustus: that is the historical element in Christianity, the historical in a paradoxical composition. It is with this paradox that everyone, in whatever country he may be living, must become contemporary, if he is to become a believing Christian. With the history of Christianity he has in this respect nothing whatever to do. But the baleful fact in our age is, among others, that it is almost impossible to find a man who has time and patience and seriousness and the passion of thought to be well brought up to respect the qualitative dialectic.

>I< About all the d ialectical problems which belong here ( the paradox, the instant, the dialectic of contemporaneousness, etc . ) I must refer to a pseudonym, Johannes Climacus, and his two works: Philosophical Fragments [pp. 78-93] and The Concluding Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments [pp. 45-47] . With regard to what is so dialectically composed one cannot in a few l ines give a resume; a reference, if it is to be reliable, must be just as elaborate and just as d ifficult as the original production, for if there be left out one single l ittle subordinate definition, the whole d ialectical construction suffers. Whether such is the case, as it is said to be, in the organic realm, that when one member suffers the whole suffers, I do not know; but in the dialectical construction the case is precisely this.

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When the requirement of becoming contemporary with the coming of Christianity into the world in the same sense in which the contemporaries were is rightly understood, then it is a truly religious requirement and precisely in the interest if Christianity. However, the same requirement may be made by the enemies, by persons offended at Christianity, with the intent of doing harm. It is strange that, so far as I know, this has not been done, since after all in our times attacks upon Christianity have ventured the utmost with renewed power and not without talent.

But instead of insisting upon this concept of contemporaneousness, orthodoxy has taken another path - by the help of the eighteen hundred years. If one were to describe the whole orthodox apologetic effort in one single sentence, but also with categorical precision, one might say that it has the intent to make Christianity plausible. To this one might add that, if this were to succeed, then would this effort have the ironical fate that precisely upon the day of its triumph it would have lost everything and entirely quashed Christianity. It is well therefore that the apologists who know not what they do, troubled as they are with bustling, have not quite succeeded, it is well that they see a book written against them which shall, etc. To make Christianity plausible is the same as to

it. And after

all, what is it the free-thinkers want? Why, they want to make Christianity plausible. For they know very well that if they can get Christianity's qualitative over-intensity fooled into the bustling busyness of plausibility - it's all over with Christianity. But the orthodox-apologetic effort also wants to make Christianity plausible, so it works hand in hand with heterodoxy. And yet it has worked thus in all simplicity, and its whole tactic, along with the relationship between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, may be regarded as an amazing example of what lack of character and lack of a qualitative dialectic may lead to: that one attacks what the other defends, that orthodoxy and heterodoxy continue to be enemies who would extirpate one another, in spite of the fact that they want one and the same thing - to make Christianity plausible.

Every defense of Christianity which understands what it would accomplish must behave exactly conversely, maintaining with might and main by qualitative dialectic that Christianity is

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implausible. For I should like to ask where a trace can be found of the qualitatively altered method. Under various names, right down to the last name, Speculation, people have labored to make Christianity plausible, conceivable, to get it out of the God-given language of paradox and translated into the Plattdeutsch of Speculation or Enlightenment. And yet, in order to have something to despair of, they have despaired whether it would succeed (what irony!) or they have rejoiced that it has succeeded and let Christianity receive congratulations on this occasion (what irony!). The man who journeyed from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves was not so badly off as Christianity; for the orthodox apologetic which had compassion upon it and took care of it treated it quite as badly as the thieves.

The Christian fact has no history, for it is the paradox that God once came into existence in time. This is the offense, but also it is the point of departure; and whether this was eighteen hundred years ago or yesterday, one can just as well be contemporary with it. Like the polar star this paradox never changes its position and therefore has no history, so this paradox stands immovable and unchanged; and though Christianity were to last for another ten thousand years, one would get no farther from this paradox than the contemporaries were. For the distance is not to be measured by the quantitative scale of time and space, for it is qualitatively decisive by the fact that it is a paradox.

On the other hand, so soon as one confuses Christianity with the Christian fact, so soon as one begins to count the years, one begins to change the implausible into the plausible. And one says, Now that Christianity has lasted (the Christian fact indeed occurred eighteen hundred years ago) for three hundred, now for seven hundred, now for eighteen hundred years so it

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certainly must be true. By such a procedure one accomplishes the feat of confusing everything. The decision (that of becoming a Christian) easily becomes for the individual a mere trifle, already it seems to him easy enough to follow the use and wont of the town in which he lives, because the majority do so, it might well seem to him a matter of course to join in being a Christian -

when Christianity has lasted eighteen hundred years! On the other hand the Christian fact is weakened, made a mere trifle by

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the help of the distance, by the help of the eighteen hundred years. That which if it happened contemporaneously either would be an offense to him which he would hate and persecute and try if possible to eradicate, or would appropriate by faith; that now one regards as something one can accept in a way and believe (i.e. regard it with indifference) since it was eighteen hundred years ago.

So now throughout a long course of years a disoriented orthodoxy which knew not what it did, and a revolutionary heterodoxy which knows demoniacally what it does, and only to that extent does not know what it does, have united with the help of the eighteen hundred years to confuse everything, to be guilty of delusions each one madder than the other, of paralogisms each one worse than the other, of /LETa{3aa" El, a'\'\o yiyo, each time more confusing than the other - so that the principal concern now is to be able to clear the ground, get rid of the eighteen hundred years, so that the Christian fact takes place now, as if it happened today. That which has blown up the attack upon Christianity and the defense of it to the size of folios are the eighteen hundred years. That which has stupefied the defenders and helped the attackers are the sixteen, the seventeen, and the eighteen hundred years. That which has held the lives of countless multitudes in a vain conceit are the eighteen hundred years. By the help of the eighteen hundred years the defenders, going backwards, have made Christianity into an hypothesis, and the attackers have made it into nothing.

What Johannes Climacus, by no means the least busy person, has done to scent out every delusion, to detect every paralogism, to apprehend every deceitful turn of phrase, cannot be repeated here. It has been so done by him that every man of culture, if he has a certain amount of learning and will seriously spend a little time to initiate himself into dialectics, will easily understand it.

Otherwise, indeed, it was not done, nor could it have been done in any other wise. Such a thing cannot be propounded in a newspaper and read by a man who "is having his beard taken off. " Climacus' presentation is fatiguing, as the case required.

His merit is to have "drawn" (as it said of a telescope) the unshakable Christian fact so near to the eye that the reader is prevented from looking askant at the eighteen hundred years.

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His merit is by the help of dialectic to have created a view, a perspective. To direct one's eye towards a star is not so difficult, because the air is like an empty space, and hence there is nothing in the way to stop or divert the glance. It is different, on the other hand, when the direction the eye must follow is straight ahead, as along a path, and at the same time there is a crowding and thronging and tumult and noise and bustle through which the eye must pierce to get the view, whereas every sidelong glance, yea, every blinking of the eye, produces absolutely a qualitative disturbance; and it becomes even more difficult when at the same time one has to stand in an environment which labors pro virili to prevent one from getting the view. - And to be contemporary with the decisive Christian fact is the decisive thing. This contemporaneousness, however, is to be understood as having the same significance that it had for people who lived at the same time that Christ was living.

What is needed first of all is to have the prodigious libraries and writings of every sort and the eighteen hundred years thrust to one side in order to get the view. And this is by no means the impudent suggestion of an ambitious dialectician, it is the modest and genuine religious requirement which every man may make, not for the sake of learning or for the public but for his own sake, quite personally for his own sake, if he is serious about becoming a Christian, and this is what Christianity itself must demand. For Christianity wishes precisely to stand immovable like the polar star, and hence would get rid of all the twaddle which takes the life out of it.

However, the contemporaneousness here in question is not the contemporaneousness !if an apostle, but is merely the contemporaneousness which everyone who lived in Christ's time had, the possibility in the tension of contemporaneousness of being offended, or of grasping faith.

And to this end precisely it is necessary to let in air so that it may be possible, as once it was, for a man seriously to be offended, or to appropriate Christianity, so that with the Christian faith it may not become as in a law case which has gone on so long that one does not know his way in nor out by reason of so much knowledge. The situation of contemporaneousness is that of tension which gives the categories qualitative elasticity; and one must be a great dunce not to know what an infinite difference it 1 66

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makes when one for his own sake i n the situation o f contemporaneousness reflects about something, and when one thinks in a way about something in the vain conceit that it was eighteen hundred years ago in the conceit, yes, in the conceit, for since

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the Christian fact is the qualitative paradox it is a conceit that eighteen hundred years is longer ago than yesterday.

Since then the situation in Christendom is such that it is precisely necessary to put an end to the tough-lived indolence which appeals to the eighteen hundred years, it cannot be denied that a desirable incitement might be given if suddenly there were to appear a man who appealed to a revelation, for then there would be created an analogous situation of contemporaneousness. Yes, I am sure, all the profound and speculative and learned and sweaty praters who can well understand that eighteen hundred years ago someone received a revelation - they would fall into embarrassment. He who understands in general that a man might receive a revelation, must after all understand it quite as well whether it happened six thousand years ago, or will happen six thousand years hence, or has happened today.

But perhaps the prater has been living off the eighteen hundred years, has prated himself into the belief that he could understand it because it was eighteen hundred years ago. If the case were

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not so serious, I could not deny that it is the most precious comedy that ever could have been written in the world: to let modern exegesis and dogmatics go through their curriculum in the situation of contemporaneousness. All these deceitful psychological inventions, all this about "up to a certain point, " all this bravura profunda, and above all the eloquent meditation which explains - since this was eighteen hundred years ago, as has been explained. All this would make a splendid effect in contemporaneousness with the matter which was explained. It is quite certain that far better than all learned attacks, one single comedy in the style of Aristophanes would clear up the confusion of modern learning.

Hence when I, without having seen the Sermons or the preface to them, heard that Adler had stepped forward and had appealed to a revelation, I cannot deny that I was astonished.

When I heard this I thought: Either, thought I, this is the man we need, the elect who in divine originality possesses the spring

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for refreshing the parched ground of Christendom; or he is a man offended at Christianity, but an accomplished knave who to demolish everything, even the dignity of an apostle, to topple everything over, brings such a Christendom as we now have to the painful and laborious test of having to go through its course of dogmatics in the situation of contemporaneousness.

On the latter supposition it would indeed have surprised me that an offended man had really been so shrewd. For though it cannot be denied that the "offended" have talents and demoniacal inspiration, yet for the most part they are generally rather stupid in a total sense, that is to say, they do not quite know how to take hold of a thing in order to do harm, they attack Christianity, but they take a position outside of it, and precisely for this reason they do no harm. No, the offended man must try to get a different hold on Christianity, try to work his way up like a mole into the midst of Christianity. Suppose Feuerbach, instead of attacking Christianity, had gone to work more slyly, suppose that with demoniac silence he had laid his plan, and thereupon had

forward and announced that he had had

a revelation, and suppose now that, just as a criminal is able to maintain a lie, he had unshakably maintained this claim, while at the same time he had been shrewdly watching out for all the weaker sides of orthodoxy, which however he was far from attacking, but only in a simple-hearted sort of way knew how to hold up before the light; suppose now that he had done this so well that no one was able to discover his stratagem - he would have put orthodoxy in the greatest embarrassment. Orthodoxy fights in the interest of the established order, to preserve the appearance that we are all Christians of a sort, that the land is a Christian land, and that the congregations are Christian. Now when one attacks Christianity and takes a position outside it, orthodoxy defends it with the help of the eighteen hundred years; it talks in lofty tones of God's great works performed in his time, i.e. eighteen hundred years ago. And now it may be said of the extraordinary and of God's extraordinary works that they go easier into people the farther they arc away. So then the offended man attacks Christianity and the orthodox defend it by the help of the distance, and the congregation thinks thus: Since it was eighteen hundred years ago one may well understand that

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something extraordinary happened and so again the offended

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man accomplished nothing. On the other hand, it would have been different if he himself had slyly come forward with a revelation, and thereupon read nothing but orthodox works and then transferred all this to himself, and then forced orthodoxy in the situation of contemporaneousness to speak out.

It is often said that in case Christ were now to come forward in Christendom, if in a stricter sense than in time gone by "He came unto his own, " He would again be crucified - and especially by the orthodox. That is quite true, for contemporaneousness gives the necessary qualitative pressure; on the other hand, it helps both to make something nothing, and to make something extraordinary, almost in the same sense as nothing.

Why was it that most everyone was offended in Christ while He lived, unless it was that the extraordinary occurred before their eyes, so that he who would talk about it might say, the miracle occurred yesterday. But when a miracle happened eighteen hundred years ago well, yes, one can surely understand that it

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happened and that it was a miracle. Among the many precious and priceless syllogisms of thoughtless clerical eloquence this must be regarded as the most precious, that what one cannot understand if it were to happen today, one can understand when it happened eighteen hundred years ago when this, be it noted,

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is the miraculous, which at every time of day, at 4 o'clock or at 5 , surpasses man's understanding. For if one were only t o say that such and such a man eighteen hundred years ago believed it was a miracle, then he may declare bluntly that he himself does not believe it. However, one prefers to help himself out with deceitful phrases, as with this which appears so believing yet precisely denies the miracle, as when one says of such and such a man that he believed it, i.e. he thought so, i.e. after all there was no miracle.

As has been said, in trying to interpret the extraordinary event that a man appeals to a fact of revelation I proposed to myself a dilemma: that he either was the elect; or an offended man demoniacally shrewd. And this dilemma was what, according to my view, a revelation in our time in the situation of contemporaneousness might help us to. And (even if this should not come to pass, what Christianity absolutely needs, if it is not to perish and T H E F A C T O F R E V E LAT I O N

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be brought to naught) is a little air, an either/or with respect to becoming and being a Christian. Adler's appearance has, however, convinced me that there must be a third term, for he is neither of the two. That he is not the elect, that the whole thing about his revelation is a misunderstanding, I shall later show and prove directly, not by the force of any view or theory of mine, no, but from Adler's later attitude and from his later works it can be sufficiently made out that he himself essentially does not believe it, though he has not found himself moved by this to revoke penitently his first claim. Still less, if possible, is he the offended man of demoniacal shrewdness. Of tha t there is not the least trace or symptom. But he is not for this reason without significance, and I know of no other man in my time who in a stricter sense may be called a phenomenon. The powers of existence have got hold of him, and as a phenomenon he is an anticipation of the dialectic which is fermenting in our age. But the phenomenon itself knows nothing about the explanation, i.e.

one must oneself be a teacher to learn anything from Adler. At the same time he tumbles into the old heresies, and all this pellmell. Thus Adler is quite properly a sign. He is a very serious proof that Christianity is a power which is not to be jested with.

But, on the other hand, rather than being an elect, he is a soul whirled about, flung aloft as a warning of dread, like the terrified bird which with anxious beating of its wings rushes out ahead of the storm which is about to follow, though as yet one hears only the hissing of it; and his thoughts are like the confused flocks of birds which flee helter-skelter before the storm. That for this reason one might be justified in giving him up or of thinking meanly of his possibilities is by no means my opinion. Undoubtedly as a theological candidate he lived on in the vain conceit that the meager theological knowledge required of a candidate in the official examination is Christianity. So when the Christian experience came over him he fell into the strange situation of knowing all about it in a certain sense, but by the aid of an (unfamiliar) nomenclature. In his haste he grasped at the strongest expression to indicate what he had experienced - and so we have his fact of revelation.

C H A P T E R I I I

Alteration if Adler's essential standpoint, or documentation if the fact that he did not himself believe he had experienced a revelation. This is elucidated by his four latest books and a brochure containing the documents having to do with his deposition.

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This brochure, apart from a lot of correspondence regarding a dispute about a chaplain's wages, contains chiefly the questions put to Adler by the clerical authority requiring an explanation about himself and about his teaching, along with Adler's answers and his subsequent answers.

In order that all this may be precise and vivid to the reader, it will be best to recall that preface to his Sermons. Here Magister Adler reports how he was at work on a book which would have been called "Popular Lectures on Subjective Logic, " a work in which "with a superficial knowledge of the Bible he had assumed to explain creation and Christianity." Thereupon he continues,

"One evening I had just developed the origin of evil, when I saw, illuminated as by a flash of lightning, that everything depends, not upon the thought, but upon the Spirit. That night a hateful sound went through our chamber. The Saviour bade me stand up and go in and write down the words." Thereupon follow the words, * which in stereotype form recur again and again in verse and prose.

* The words are as follows: "The first men might have had an eternal life; for when the thought unites God's Spirit with body, then the life is eternal; when man unites God's Spirit with the body, then man is God's child; so Adam would have been God's son. But they sinned. The thought is absorbed in i tself. It separated the soul from the body, the Spirit from the world, then must man die, and the world and the body become evil. And what does the spirit become? The spirit goes out of the body. But God does not take it back. And it becomes H is enemy. And where does it go? Back into the world. Why? It is angry with the worid which gave it up.

I t is the evil spirit. And this world itself created the evil spirit."

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We shall not deal directly, either pro or contra, with the factual question involved in this quotation, nor with the remarkable fact that Christ talks almost like a Privatdocent; we argue only e concessis; but this at least is perfectly clear, that he declares in the most solemn way that he has had a revelation in which the Saviour imparted to him a doctrine. It may indeed seem striking that already, even before he had received the revelation, he was on the point of discovering the same thought which was imparted to him by the revelation; for it was in the evening "he saw as in a flash of lightning that everything depended, not upon the thought, but upon the Spirit. " But again we shall not dwell directly upon this either, but only remark that the expression,

"as by a flash of lightning, " should not be regarded after all as more or less than a metaphorical expression for the suddenness of the insight, or for the suddenness of the transition from not having perceived to having perceived. Moreover, the content of the doctrine communicated by the revelation is concentrated in the statement that "man's thought is absorbed in itself." But this also seems to have been fathomed before the revelation was imparted to him; for in the preface he says about his work ("Popular Lectures on Subjective Logic"): " I t was my thought which was absorbed in itself " Hence there is not much left over which was imparted to him by a revelation; but all the more definitely the accent falls precisely upon the fact that this was imparted to him by a revelation, that "the Saviour at night bade him stand up and go in and write down the following words." I n so far a s Adler, unshakable, holds t o this fact, I have n o yea and no nay: I am engaged merely in arguing e concessis. But, on the other hand, if he does not hold it fast, he must put up with it if out of his own mouth one concludes that he does not himself believe he has had a revelation, or in any case that he is in such confusion regarding the categories that he does not himself know what he says, because he associates no sharp thought with the words.

In the preface it is further related, "Thereupon Jesus bade me bum my own [works] and for the future hold to the Bible. Of the Sermons and addresses from No. VI to the end I know that they were written with Jesus' cooperative grace, so that I have been only an instrument. " In case Adler did not know this of the other

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addresses, or in case he knew of the other addresses that they were not that, it is certainly strange that he published them, especially in one volume, which like Noah's Ark seems to contain species qualitatively very various. This, however, is Adler's business. The principal point for me is that he said in the most solemn way that he knew the discourses from No. VI to the end were written with Jesus' cooperative grace, so that he was only an instrument. * So we have here with Adler's call by a revelation the analogy with the call of an apostle; in his writing with the cooperation of Jesus' grace we have the analogy with the situation of a man who was inspired. Adler had both a doctrine which was communicated to him by a revelation, and a development of this doctrine which was inspired. So reliably is hardly the New Testament guaranteed. If only he had left out the first five sermons, this book would have been instar omnium.

Now we pass on to the questions which the clerical authority found itself obliged to put to him.

T H E QU E S T I O N O F T H E E C C L E SIASTI C A L A U T H O R I T Y

( I) Whether you (M ago Adler) recognize that you were in an exalted and confused state of mind when you wrote and published your printed

"Sermons" and so-called " Studies"?t

*The solemnity of this assertion suffers, however, from a little defect due to a couple of notes in the same book, of which I, were the matter not so serious, might be tempted to say that they surely were written with the cooperative assistance of distraction. From the preface one learns indeed that the discourses from No. VI to the end were written with the cooperation of Jesus' grace; but on page 20 (in a note to sermon No. IV, Maundy Thursday, April 1 3, 1 843) one reads: "Here for the first time Jesus' cooperative gracc came to my aid ." Good Friday, as everyone knows, comes after Maundy Thursday, sermon No. V after sermon No. IV, and yet one learns in the note to No. V that Jesus' cooperative grace came then for the first time to Adler's aid - after onc has read the note to No. IV, and after one has read in the preface that he knows of sermons No. VI to the end that they were written with Jesus' cooperative grace, this seems to indicate that he was doubtful about the notes to IV and v, unless in distraction he had written the notes, and again in distraction had forgotten that he had written them.

tThe question itself has moreover a curious difficulty with respect to the answer which might be expected . When one challenges a person for an explanation whether in a previous moment of time he was in a confused state of mind, it seems to be implied that if he is willing to explain this, willing to admit it, then all is well again, and the person is no longer in a confused state of mind.

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The letter of the authority was dated April 29, 1 845. Magister Adler's reply under date of May 1 1 , 1 845 is as follows:

"Since I can point out meaning and connection in what I have written in my Sermons and Studies, I do not recognize that I was in an exalted and confused state of mind when I wrote them. "

Strictly considered, this is not an answer to the question. By

"meaning and connection" one may think rather only of the grammatical consistency one may require of a speech. But, supposing that there was such meaning and connection in what was written, the author might very well have been in an exalted and confused state of mind. Moreover the act of publishing what was written is something for itself, and one might, e.g. , write something quite calmly, but betray an exalted state of mind by publishing it. Hence Adler's reply is in no sense an answer to the question; neither is it veracious, for not only is there one but there are many passages in the Sermons which are plainly wanting in meaning and connection. So the answer may be regarded as evasive, and also one cannot yet say that by this answer he has altered in the least what he originally said about himself. In this he is still consistent. This I reckon to his credit, for I argue only e concessis.

But some time later there followed a further answer. We shall suppress nothing which might seem to speak in Adler's favor, and therefore we recall that in speaking of his last reply he himself says, "In order to reach a point of agreement with the authorities, I made, after a conversation with Bishop Mynster, as great a step towards approach as was possible by sending on July 5th the following confession:

"I recognize that the unusual, the strange, the objectionable, aprioristic and abrupt form may with reason have aroused the suspicion of the authority. "

Now it is coming. It is true that A. does not say that the However, it is possible to think that the person precisely by his willingness to m ake further admissions proves that he is in a confused state of mind. Suppose he answered , Well , if nothing more is required, then I shall not make them wait for me, but with the greatest pleasure will explain, ete. I n such a case the questioner is brought again into the same embarrassment. In general i t is very difficult to check the dialectic which develops when one begins to assume that a man has been in a confused state of mind, and especially difficult to check it by an explanation made by the man himself.

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authority was right i n concluding that h e was in an exalted and confused state of mind, but he says it is right in affirming that the ideas in many places in his Sermons and Studies are presented in an unusual, strange, offensive, aprioristic and abrupt form; he says moreover that the authority has reason to be suspicious. So A.

admits the premises but lets the conclusions remain doubtful. I n his first answer h e had denied the premises, i n his second letter he admits the premises and says nothing to oppose the conclusion. Precisely because A. admits the premises ( unless he would give support to the assumption of the authority, and in that case he might say it straightforwardly) he must defend himself with all his might against the conclusion, he must say in perfectly definite words: But in spite of this ( and precisely because I have admitted the premises I have to hold to this all the more firmly), in spite of all this I can by no means admit that I have been in an exalted and confused state of mind. It is a well-known method of advocates to admit the premises in this way, and then by drawing no conclusion make it seem as if the conclusion was something quite different, something that comes from an entirely different hemisphere, something over which the person in question arbitrarily disposes whether he will admit it or not, something which by a qualitative definition is separated from the premises. But when a premise pregnant with the conclusion inclines threateningly over a man; when he himself knows that by admitting the justice of the premises he makes the angle of inclination all the greater; then he must with the utmost definiteness defend himself against the conclusion, or it falls upon him, and he has himself admitted it. Of course, even if he had defended himself against the conclusion with a definite statement, he might not have parried the conclusion, for sometimes the conclusion may be a pure formality which makes no differenc� one way or the other, but he may be regarded as having lost this point. The cunning or the thoughtlessness which further proves his confusion is the fact that he lets this answer serve as an explanation, that he does not understand the simple consistency which requires him to revoke officially his first position, his first answer, acknowledging that the Sermons along with the Studies were written in an exalted and confused state of mind.

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I n the last letter there remains a third point which, regarded as an answer, may well be referred to question No. I of the authority, to which we here hold fast. No. 3 in the last letter reads as follows:

"That with a longer time to labor and quietly develop the ideas for the future* I will find myself able to let the Christian content unfold itself in a form more appropriate and more consonant with the express words of Holy Scripture."

I n connection with Adler's hope for the future one is tempted involuntarily to raise the question: But was there need of such haste in getting said (in an inappropriate and less Biblical way) that which with a longer time to labor and to develop the ideas will be able to unfold itself in a form more appropriate and more consonant with the express words of Holy Scripture? Is there any, or can there have been any reasonable ground for haste in doing in an inappropriate form that which with the employment of a longer time may be done in a more appropriate form? And when did M agister Adler begin with the longer time which is needed for quiet work? He has already written four books since then, but it does not seem as if he had got any nearer to the appropriate!

And in case it is so ( as will be shown in the following where AdJer's answer to No. 2 of the authority will be dealt with) that Adler himself authentically explains (i.e. alters his first statement to this effect) that he has nothing new to contributet - in case

*This hope . . . has not been exactly fulfilled, but it is talked about again in one of Adler's four last books. So since that hopeful word in the l etter of J uly 5, 1845, Adler h as written four new books, but the hope still finds its place as a repeated hope in the preface of one of th em. In this way Adler may be able to remain for a long time a hopeful and promising author; yea, in all probability this hope will become a standing article in his prefaces - a sort of fixed id ea, which sometimes is found in authors who never give it up, not even with d eath . So i t is said that we h ave an example in an author who In the preface to each little book he published regularly wrote that in the future he meant to collect himself for a great work which he soon meant to publish - even in the last preface to a fragment of a little book this hope still found its customary place.

tThat again in the preface to one of his last four books he fant asticates on the th eme that "he who h as something new to contribute must not permit any amalgamation with th e old" may be regarded as a new confusion Adler h as to contribute. One is justified in assuming that in this preface Adler is referring to hi mself, and so one may conclud e further that h e still regards that first

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this is so, then precisely it is important that one take care that the form be as appropriate as possible, that one uses time and patience for the work to make it as appropriate as possible, since there is no reason at all for haste. Even if a man contributes something new, it is yet unpardonable to do it in a tumultuous way, but when one admits that he has nothing new to contribute it is doubly unpardonable.

That now Adler himself authentically admits ( as an explanation of the assertion that he had a revelation by which a new doctrine was imparted to him by the Saviour) that he has nothing new to contribute, we go on to show by illuminating Adler's answer to question No. 2 by the authority. This No. 2 contains the principal point, for here the question is asked whether he has actually had a revelation, whether he himself thought so, etc.

Question No. I is of far less significance, and actually I have dwelt upon Adler's answer to No. I only to give a foretaste of his confusions.

THE QUESTION OF THE AUTHORITY

Whether you perceive that it is fanatical and wrong to expect and to follow such supposed revelations as, for example, that which you have described in the preface to your" Sermons" ?

Adler's two answers, though they pretend to be explanations, are not explanations but alterations, which alter his first assertion, without requiring him to revoke it decisively. Yet between his two answers there is a difference. In the first the fact of having had a revelation by which a new doctrine was imparted to him is transformed into an awakening by which he is rescued. In the last answer the fact of having had a revelation by which a new doctrine was imparted to him is transformed into the beginning of an enthusiasm, into an expression as vague and indefinite as enthusiasm. I nstead of one called by a revelation to whom a new doctrine was entrusted, we get in the first case a religiously awakened man in the ordinary sense; in the second case, an enthusiast. Educated as Adler is with some Hegelian dialectic, i t d eclaration (which i n the most solemn way gave itself out t o be a revelation, and thereafter was authentically explained as not being anything new) - that h e neverth eless regards it as something new.

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i s not strange if h e himself lives i n the notion that these three determinants (an apostle, an awakened man, and an enthusiast) signify pretty much the same thing, or that the one term can be used to explain the others. But in case there exists something called qualitative dialectic, one of these terms annuls the other, and the dilemma must constantly be posed : if Adler acquiesces in the explanation, then he must revoke the first claim; for the explanation is not a further predicate of the first claim but is a new position. So one may be very willing to concede to Adler that he is a sort of enthusiast so called, but cannot truly be willing to regard this notion as an explanation of what in the preface to his Sermons he gives himself out to be.

His first answer of May 10, 1 845, is as follows:

"By having written in the preface to my Sermons that Jesus bade me in the future to hold to the Bible, by having preached Him, by having quoted the words of Scripture as proof-texts, i t must be evident t o what Gospel and t o what revelations* I hold and have taught others to hold . But that one may be rescued in a miraculous way is - as I have described it in the preface - a fact which I cannot deny. Even if one regards my Sermons and Studies as a babe's first babbling, tender, imperfect voice, I believe nevertheless that an occurrence took place by which I was seized by faith . "

Now the volatilization i s in full course, and I would beg for the reader's patience so that I may set to work quite slowly to show in every line the uncertainty and confusion - i t serves to illuminate very well a part of modern philosophy and dogmatics.

According to my conception it is not uninteresting to go to work for once with exactitude, and in our times of dialectical confusion there might be someone who would find profit in reading it, even if he had no interest at all in the case.

So then: "By having written in the preface to my Sermons that Jesus bade me in the future to hold to the Bible, by having preached Him, by having quoted words of the Scripture as proof-texts, it must be evident to what Gospel and to what

*There is moreover something rather confused in the plural which Adler h ere uses in a different connection than the authority does, for the authority spoke in the plural of the fanatical revelations, Adler speaks in the plural of the Christian revelation.

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revelations I hold and have taught others to hold." But this is by no means evident. Even if one will make the greatest possible concessions to Adler, there remains the decisive consideration, the very point, which he leaves out, while by his answer he seeks to identify himself with every Christian in general. For even though Adler holds to the Christian revelation and the Christian Gospels, there still remains the difficulty about which the question was asked, that he by a revelaiion was directed to hold to the revelation. A believing Christian in general holds to the Christian revelation, but Adler is directed by a revelation to hold to it. Therefore it is not by any means evident to which revelation he holds, for he holds first and foremost to the revelation which has fallen especially to his lot, by which he has been directed to hold to the Christian revelation. Besides, he says himself that Jesus bade him in the future; but the question is not what Jeslls bade him do and bade him do in the future, but about the assertion that Jesus appeared to him and bade him do something. Even though Adler in the future remained like every believing Christian in general, there still remains always the decisive qualitative difference about which the question was asked, that through a revelation by Jesus Himself he was directed to be like the others. * To this may be added, and it is really the principal point, that Adler in his answer has left out what was chiefly emphasized in the preface. For according to this Jesus did not call him at night to bid him in the future to hold to the Bible; no, the Saviour bade him "stand up and go in and write down these words," i.e. the whole passage which contains the new doctrine. When this was done, then "Jesus bade him thereupon to burn his own [worksJ and in the future to hold to the Bible."

When moreover A. in the first sentence of this answer appeals to the fact that "he had preached Jesus," in order thereby to make

*The fact should not be overlooked that Adler involves himself in a new difficulty. For dialectically a new contradiction is contained in th e notion that by a paradoxically extraordinary measure ( a new revelatian) one should be called to be like all oth ers. By the paradoxically extraordinary call a man can be called only to be th e paradoxically extraordinary man. By a revelation with which one is entrusted with a doctrine a man cannot be called to become what all oth ers are or could be, nor to become a fai thful adherent of this doctrine, but he is called to become the extraordinary, to become the apostle of it.

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it "evident to which Gospel and to which revelations he holds and has taught others to hold" - this again is not evident from what he says. He again leaves out the decisive thing ( about which the question was asked ) and, volatilizing the whole thing, seeks in his answer to identify himself with every believing priest in general. The believing Christian priest preaches Christ and thereby shows to which revelations he holds, but the believing priest in general is not called by any revelation to preach Jesus. I nasmuch then as Adler preaches Jesus, it is by no means evident to which revelations he holds. It would only be evident in case that preface to his Sermons did not exist; but that preface and the revelation described in it is precisely what the authority asked about. The authority did not ask Adler whether he like every believing priest preached Jesus; no, it asked whether he recognized that it is fanatical to hold to such revelations as are described in the preface to his Sermons.

Adler answers: I preach Jesus. But thus he does not answer the question - or else the answer implied the concession: I have never had a special revelation, and such being the case the whole preface to the Sermons must be officially revoked.

Moreover, in his answer he again leaves out something, and something very important, which stood in the preface. For in the preface there stood: "About the Sermons and Addresses from No. VI to the end I know that they were written by Jesus'

cooperative grace, so that I have been only an instrument." But no believing priest in general preaches in this way. For example, I assume that had another preached literally the same sermon as Adler, there would yet have been between the two a decisive qualitative difference, for the fact that Adler's was in the capacity of "being only an instrument."

The first sentence in his first answer to authority's No. 2 thus shows itself to be sophistical and thoughtless. If there is to be any seriousness in calling this an explanation, he must repentantly revoke the preface to his Sermons, for the answer is no more an explanation of what was said in the preface to the Sermons than it was enlightening information a messenger once brought back that he had found what he was sent to seek but it was not a widow but a bricklayer.

The next sentence in his first answer to authority's No. 2 is as follows: "But that one may be rescued in a miraculous way - as I

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have described in the preface to the Sermons is for me a fact

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which I cannot deny." I t is not required of him at all that he should deny a fact; I for my humble part am as far as possible from requiring that, require only that he shall either stand firm decisively by what he himself has said he was, or else solemnly revoke that which by him in the most solemn way was affirmed .

He does not hold fast his first decisive declaration, he alters it, and yet he would give that alteration the appearance of being an explanation . That he does not stand fast by what he said of himself in the preface to the Sermons ( the point of the authority's question) it is not difficult to see; for after all there is a decisive qualitative difference between receiving from the Saviour by a revelation a doctrine entrusted to him, and being rescued in a miraculous way. In case A. when he wrote the preface and later the answer had been in possession of the necessary Christian knowledge, he naturally would have known this; but one who has no other presuppositions with which to make Christianity secure except some Hegelian dialectic can readily go astray.

Let us now define a little more precisely the difference between the two statements. When a man is said to be rescued in a miraculous way it is assumed that what he has been rescued into or to is in existence, perhaps has long been in existence, but he, alas, has frittered away his years in lightmindedness and dissipations, or wasted them in confused studies, or turned his back upon the well known, or reaped the sorry consequences of a weak and spoiled bringing up, ete. He is now rescued in a miraculous way, it may be in various ways which, and according to the psychological knowledge one has of such stories of religious awakening, i t may b e told in a longer o r shorter form. I t i s assumed that Christianity is that into which one is rescued, but he is rescued in a miraculous way. Suppose, for example, it happened this year, and with that Christianity has been in existence eighteen hundred years, in it there certainly comes about no alteration for the sake of the rescued man; ah, no, but the wayward one is rescued in a miraculous way into that which has been in existence unchanged for eighteen hundred years and in which all others are assumed to have their life. On the other hand, it is something quite other and qualitatively different when one by a revelation is entrusted with a doctrine. This doctrine indeed was not in existence before, there D O C U M EN T S C O N C E R N I N G H I S D E P O S I T I ON

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has therefore come about an alteration in that in which rescue is to be found. The man thus called may not, humanly speaking, have been in the way of perdition. No, there comes about an alteration of an objective sort, and this it is which the man called must communicate as it was communicated to him. He who is called by a revelation and entrusted with a doctrine may be called to be a teacher; he is called indeed for his own sake, but principally for the sake of others (the teleological ) , that he may preach the new doctrine. On the other hand, he who is rescued in a miraculous way is entrusted with no new doctrine, he is not appointed to be a teacher in an extraordinary sense or to communicate something new; he has to be quiet and subordinate himself humbly to the old order; the consciousness of being rescued in a miraculous way cannot tempt him to regard himself as something extraordinary, since this consciousness rather reminds him constantly, to his humiliation, that he was so far out on the way of perdition that a miraculous way was needed to rescue him.

Thus I think I have defined the difference. Let us now look at Adler. In the preface to the Sermons there is no hint that he was saved, "rescued" ; no, in the preface Adler was the one called by a revelation, to whom a new doctrine was entrusted. For the first time in the answer (which, be it noted, is in reply to the question about the meaning of the preface to the Sermons) this explanation comes out. Naturally, it is no explanation of the preface, it is an entirely new view, a new character in which Adler appears upon the stage, as though he were j ust now beginning, as though he had no antecedent history - he who precisely had antecedents about which the question was asked. I n case one had given himself out to be king, and then the authority put to him the question what he meant by saying such a thing about himself, and he then explained that thereby he had meant that he was a councilor of chancery - this answer is no explanation, it is a new assertion : first he gives himself out to be king, then councilor of chancery. The dialectical cunning or thoughtlessness consists in not revoking the first claim but treating the last claim as though it were an explanation of the first.

The last sentence in Adler's first answer to authority's No. 2 is as follows: "Even though one may regard my Sermons and Studies as a babe's first babbling, tender, i mperfect voice, I believe

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nevertheless that the words witness to the fact that an event has taken place whereby I was grasped by faith." Now this last is a very vague determinant: that an event has taken place whereby I was grasped by faith. The event moreover is exactly described in the preface to the Sermons: "that there was heard a hateful sound which went through the chamber, and then the Saviour bade him stand up and write down the words." The authority indeed had not asked A. whether an event had taken place, but about the event described in detail in the preface to the Sermons.

This statement of Adler about himself, that an event had taken place by which he was grasped by faith, is something entirely different from what is related in the preface. Thus there have been many examples of men who have been grasped by faith by falling into mortal danger. It is well known, and it made an extraordinarily deep impression and had a decisive influence upon Pascal's life, that at one time the horses ran away with him.

But this again is something quite other and qualitatively different from having by a revelation received a doctrine.

As for the first statement in the last sentence of the answer, it might seem indeed a praiseworthy modesty on the part of an author, a compliment to others, to refer thus in relation to his first effort to "a babe's first babbling, tender, imperfect voice" and "a highly educated and cultured public" who, lacking any categories, has a fond predilection for complimentary twaddle, would surely like it - if there was nothing to hinder. But here there is no call for modesty, there up and here down, but for a categorical definition in a highly serious case. When a man begins an effort in a confused and exalted state it may be quite right for him to hope for perfectibility, that he will succeed later when he has attained calmness and reflection in doing it better. But a man who begins with a revelation and with the Saviour's dictation has only in an unessential sense to hope for perfectibility - so this is blasphemy.

It is true that Adler does not say expressly that he thus regards these words in the preface and in the Sermons, but how does he dare (in case what stands in the preface is truly true) to engage in any such accommodation by saying, "even though one might regard my Sermons and Studies as a babe's first tender, imperfect voice," and engage in it in such a way that he " believes nevertheless that the words witness to the fact that an event has D O C U M EN T S C ON C E RN I N G H I S D E POS I TI O N

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taken place. " So then, when his solemn assertion that Jesus bade him write down the words does not avail to make his voice heard , he hopes then that an insignificance will do it. Just think how almost detestable it is merely to be obliged to write such a thing; imagine that Paul as an explanation of the words: "I have received of the Lord that which also 1 deliver unto you, that our Lord Jesus Christ, etc. ," were to have added : even though some were to regard this as a babe's first babbling, tender, imperfect voice, etc. ! Where in all the world did Adler come upon this about a babe's tender, imperfect voice! So may a man speak in relation to a production which in a perfectly common human sense is his own - but in the preface to the Sermons it is indeed not Adler's voice, it is in factJesus who dictates it and so through Adler speaks to us . . . and His voice surely is not that of a tender babe, and surely it has not occurred to any one, or occurred to the authority, to raise the dilemma, but surely it meant to ask Adler what he means by thus making Jesus dictate something to his pen. O n the other hand, in case this whole preface is poetry and vanity and confusion of mind - then it is quite right, and yet, no, it is not right to talk about a babe's tender voice . . . for then the whole thing must be penitently revoked.

But then what was it the authority had asked him about?

Whether he had been in an exalted and confused state of mind when he wrote the preface and the Sermons. And when one has begun in an exalted condition it may be quite right to hope for a certain perfectibility, * to hope that, as Adler himselfsaid, " with a longer time to labor and quietly develop the ideas I will find myself able to let the Christian content unfold itself in a more appropriate form and more consonant with the express words of the Holy Scripture. " Yes, when one has begun in an exalted and confused state - but it is precisely not right when one has begun with the plainest and clearest of all, with the fact that Jesus

*The whole affair about Adler's perfectibility is one of those unblessed reminiscences of the theological seminary. If only Adler h ad been a layman! For his misfortune among other things is that his inwardness stands in no proportion to his wretch ed theological l earning. Christianity is a revelation - sev enteen hundred years later men began ind eed to d evelop it so that it might b e perfectibl e. N o w that is something t o be said for the many centuries. But in one's own lifetime to go through this exegetical curriculum with regard to what he himself h as experi enced, is really comical.

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Himself dictates t o one what h e shall write down. Even with regard to a purely human effort it is true for all competent men that the first is the best; the first of enthusiasm, of resolution, of love is the best, as is the dialectical first judgment ofa situation. I t is true only of confused men that the first comes stumbling into the door like a drunken man - and so it may sometimes be true enough that afterwards, when reflection enters little by little, something quite good may come out of it. But then is the first not something one may leave as it was, but, on the contrary, something one must revoke.

So it has been shown that Adler's first answer to authority's No. 2, either sophistic ally or thoughtlessly, contains an alteration of his whole first standpoint: instead of being called by a revelation and entrusted with a new doctrine he substitutes the statement that he was rescued in a miraculous way. According to his own authentic view (from which we are of course j ustified in drawing an argument, since we protested against it only when it pretended to be an explanation of the first, as it is not an explanation but an essential alteration, and as an essen tial alteration demands its recognizable expression in a decisive form, which can only be the revocation of the first) . He holds to the Bible, preaches Jesus, appeals to Scriptural words as prooftexts, in short, he is quite like every other Christian, only he was rescued in a miraculous way. But ergo, he has in conformity with his own authentic view nothing new, no new doctrine to communicate, nor ever has had. The confusion then consists merely in the fact that he allows the first to stand. If there is to be the least ethical meaning and seriousness in Adler's whole effort, he must revoke his first claim, saying: "Neither did Jesus appear to me, nor did He have me write down those words - but I was in a confused and overstrained condition. For me, however, that moment has had a decisive significance, so that I may say of myself that I was rescued in a miraculous way." Yes, then the case is different.

Honor to him who humbly but frankly acknowledges of himself that he had to be rescued in a miraculous way. But in Adler's first and decisive statement (in the preface to the Sermons) there was not a word said about being saved or rescued - there he was the one called by a revelation to whom a new doctrine was entrusted. Now, to let the first stand, and to give the answer the D O C U M EN T S C ON C E RN I N G H I S D E P O S I T I ON

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appearance of being an explanation, is a total confusion. The answer is no explanation but a qualitatively new statement, the explanation does not explain the first, it explains the first to be something different. In case one were to explain a circle and explain that it was a square, that is no explanation, it is a new assertion. When I explain something I make of course no alteration in the nature of what I explain; what is to be explained m ust remain unaltered, but by the explanation it becomes plain what it is. When one says that by a revelation there was communicated to him a doctrine according to Jesus'

own dictation, and one asks him what he means by this and requires an explanation, and he then explains that by this he means that he was rescued in a miraculous way, with this he does not explain the question asked but produces a new story.

This was the first alteration, but it did not stop with that.

With the first alteration we still remain after all in the religious sphere, though there is a decisive qualitative difference between being rescued in a miraculous way, and being entrusted by a revelation with a new doctrine.

We pass on to Adler's last letter and the answer it contains to that question No. 2 of the authority. In order to do everything that can be done in favor of Adler we will again call attention to the fact that he himself regards this letter "as the greatest possible step towards approachment."

His second answer is as follows:

"I do not insist upon regarding my Sermons (or Studies) as revelations alongside of or over against Christianity, but I regard the words written down in the preface to the Sermons and my frequently recurring dogmatic categories as poin ts of reference which were necessary to me at the beginning of the enthusiasm to hold fast the Christian matter in a form."

Now the game is in full swing. Ah, what was the use of burning those Hegelian manuscripts when one remains so m uch of a Hegelian that he is able to accomplish so much by mediation !

First Adler says that he cannot insist* that these are revelations -

*The reader will perhaps remark how droll it is that in his first answer he h ad said less than this, for then he altered the claim that he h ad h ad a revel ation by which a new doctrine was entrusted to him, into the statement that he h ad been rescued in a miraculous way; but in the last answer, in which he yet makes the

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that is; he says both yes and no; that is, he freshens up the old claim: A is surely B; but on the other hand it is after all not B.

They are revelations; but he does not insist upon it, for after all to a certain degree they are not revelations. Ah, what was the use of burning the Hegelian manuscripts? Naturam forca pellas, but it comes back again at once.

To go further - he says, " I do not insist in regarding my Sermons (or Studies) as revelations." Here Adler in his answer goes beyond the question of the authority, for the authority had asked him only about the revelation in the preface to the Sermons.

How could it occur to the authority to ask Adler whether he regarded the whole collection of sermons and studies as revelations, since he had not said that they were?

Now comes the principal point: he regards the words written down in the preface to the Sermons and his frequently recurring dogmatic categories as points of reference which were necessary to him at the beginning of the enthusiasm to hold fast the Christian matter in a form. So these words he regards as points of reference.

But the authority had not asked him how he regarded these words, but how he regarded the statement that Jesus bade him write down these words. So the principal thing is altogether omitted . -

Adler speaks of "those words written down in the preface . . . " : b y this careless phrase h e beguiles everyone into believing that the q uestion is about words which Adler himself had written down, in the same sense as 1 am now writing these words down.

But according to the preface it was in fact when the Saviour at night bade him stand up and he (Adler) wrote down these words as they were dictated . This is surely the qualitative decisive point.

- Adler "regards those words written down and his frequently recurring dogmatic categories as points of reference." So for Adler himself there is no essential difference between those words and his dogmatic categories, both of them stand as authorities on the same plane - and yet those words in the preface were dictated by the Saviour, whereas the dogmatic categories are Adler's invention, so that he may quite rightly use the possessive pronoun and say "my dogmatic categories." If then the dogmatic categories and the words in the preface are in Adler's view qualitatively greatest possible step towards approach, he begins again about h aving h ad after all to a certain d egree a revelation.

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on the same plane with one another, it follows quite simply that he may say, my words written down in the preface. And yet those words were dictated to Adler by the Saviour Himself. - Adler regards those words in the preface and the dogmatic categories (both of them alike) as " points of reference." A point of reference, according to linguistic usage, indicates the provisional. I t may well happen that a point of reference does not turn out later to be altogether true; but in danger, in a moment of haste, one grasps it to have something to hold on to. * When two men are arguing with one another and confusion begins to set in, one grasps something as a point of reference which one establishes provisionally in order to have something to hold on to. When one has not had time to make his thoughts thoroughly clear and yet would communicate them, one grasps a particular definition and fixes it provisionally as a point of reference. Afterwards when one gets more time one investigates whether the particular definition which had served as a point of reference is quite right or no. As for Adler's categories, it may be permissible then and j ustifiable to call them points of reference, though later they may have to be subjected to a sharp test, for there is nothing to prevent one from hoping for this perfectibility - their perfection at least is not a hindrance. But as for those words in the preface which were written down by Adler at the Saviour's dictation, it is blasphemous to call them points of reference which for him (Adler) " were necessary in the beginning of the enthusiasm." So Adler has been in a state of enthusiasm. Yes, that is something different. In case Adler in the preface to his Sermons, instead of what stands there now, had wri tten: " I n a moment of enthusiasm at night a light appeared to me, whereupon I stood up and lit a lamp and wrote down the following words" - then perhaps it hardly would have occurred to the authority to call him to account with questions.

Then Adler's hope for perfectibility would have been fi tting, for those words give indeed the impression (assuming that they are Adler's own words - for ordinarily I argue only e concessis) of not being so perfect that they could not be made more perfect. On the other hand, it seems either inconceivably thoughtless and confilsed or else impudent to present to the authority such an answer,

*The D anish word is Holdningspunkt (point of hold in g) - in G erman Verhiiltnispunkt, in French point d' appui.

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as though the question were about a determinant so infinitely vague as enthusiasm, and in what degree Adler was enthusiastic, since the question after all is about the fact that he said that he had had a revelation and had had a doctrine dictated to him by the Saviour. - Adler himself regards those words in the preface as something imperfect. He says indeed that the points of reference were "necessary" Jor him ( the purely subjective determinant) in the beginning of the enthusiasm ( that is, when he was still a little confused) in order to be able to hold fast the Christian matter in a Jorm ( this careless expression, "in a form," points clearly to the hope for a more appropriate and more perfect form, in comparison with which the Saviour's form was inappropriate ) . Who in all the world, merely reading Adler's answer, would think that he was talking about words which, according to his own declaration, were written down at the Saviour's own dictation? If then the words in the preface, as indeed Adler has said, are the words of the Saviour, his answer is nonsense; but if they are Adler's own words, then the preface must be most solemnly revoked . That Adler himself could not perceive this is precisely the best proof that he is confused.

When then these words in the preface, according to Adler's authentic view (against which I protest only when it pretends to be an explanation of his first claim) , are to him only what his dogmatic categories are, when to him these words are points of reference, when to him, Adler (the subjective determinant) , these points of reference were necessary only at the beginning of the enthusiasm, and then only necessary in order to hold fast another thing, and this other thing is and was the Christian matter, then in Adler's own authentic explanation it is implied that he has had nothing new, no new doctrine* to contribute, that he has had no revelation.

* Already I have in a note referred to the fact - and will do so h ere again to give the reader at the proper place an impression of contemporaneousness - that Adler, as was ind eed to be expected, begins all over again likeJeppe. In the preface to one of his four last books he dwells especially upon the fact that "he who h as something new to contribute must prevent any amalgamation with the old ." Ah, if Adler h as not been amalgamated with the old, he has chiefly Bishop Mynster to thank for it that by the help of his most compliant concessions h e did not remain in his office.

So, after all, Adler has something new to contribute. However, he h as, as it seems, in the last books chosen the least embarrassing of all categories, namely, that he is something of a genius or such like.

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The other points in the letter of the authority are less important - but now we come to the end of the story. Adler's deprivation followed on September 13, 1 845. It might seem strange and uncalled for, coming immediately after concessions so compliant and so important on the part of Adler. So it might appear, but if one will give himself due time, one will see more properly that it was called for by the concessions, for the importance of the concessions is that when they do not contain a formal and solemn revocation of his first claim they make his deprivation inevitable. The fact that he, in spite of such concessions, still fancies that he holds fast his first claim makes i t perfectly evident that he i s confused, that he knows neither the in nor the out of what he says about himself. Had Adler laconically, without budging a hair's breadth, maintained stubbornly his fact of revelation, the case would have been far more difficult for the State-Church, which would have come fairly near to j udging how far a man in our age may be justified in asserting that he has had a revelation. But herein precisely consists the profundity of Bishop M ynster's conduct of this case, that he has helped Adler by some concessions to prove further that he is confused, and thereby to necessitate his deprivation, when, as Hegel says, the concept veers and the concessions precisely prove that he is confused.

For the State-Church the total result of the case of Adler is null. No believers will thereby be thrown into an intense state of anxiety at the thought that a teacher has been declared to be in a confused state of mind and has been deprived of his living because he said he had a revelation. No, because he said this he was suspended in order that the case might be looked into more thoroughly, but by the help of concessions he slew himself. I n case one does not think that profundity consists i n profound and clever sayings, in case one assumes, as I do, that profundity stands in an essential relation to action, one cannot deny that Bishop M ynster, precisely by his profundity, has conducted excellently a difficult case. It was important above all that the blow fell at the right place (precisely after the concessions) and that the thing had no disastrous consequences, which now it cannot possibly have. For something might well have resulted from Adler's assertion that he had had a revelation, his depriva-

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tion being connected with that; but from his concessions nothing results for other men. Of course, the State would be right in depriving a man who quietly and coolly appealed to a revelation, for the exlraordinarius must leave the ranks. It is true that Christianity is built upon a revelation, but also it is limited by the definite revelation it has received . It must not be built upon the revelations which John Doe and James Roe may get - and in any case John Doe and James Roe must venture out into the same danger which those men faced who once built the Church upon a revelation. But I am thinking only of the impression such a necessary step might have made upon the weaker brethren, and I rejoice therefore that this was not the case with Adler.

Moreover I am convinced that the true exlraordinarius would of his own accord resign his official post.

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Adler seems now 10 wish to be promoted to the position of a genius, or to be content with that; that nevertheless he treats this difference as nothing and thinks he is in identity with his first claim (according to which he was a man called by a revelation and entrusted with a doctrine). - The qualitative difference between an apostle and a genius. - Even if A. Adler had not from the first wished it, regarded as the author of the four last works he must be characterized as a confused genius, aJudgment which is suggested already by the form of the books.

The last words of a man at the moment of departure [the same word as deprivation J have always a special value, are always impressed more strongly upon the memory. A.'s last words (the last in his last publication of July 5, 1845) contain, as the reader will remember, a hope, a beautiful hope, or anyway a hope confidently expressed, that he "with a longer time to labor over and quietly develop the ideas will be able for the future, etc." - a hope which does not seem to have made much impression upon the ecclesiastical authority, for there followed what does not

* Studies and Examples; An Attempt at a Brief Systematic Presentation of Christianity in its Logic; Theological Studies; Several Poems.

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seem t o imply any hope for the future, his deposition with grace and with a pension, depriving him for the future of his parish.

And from this what does one learn for the future? In a little land where not much is done to encourage arts and learning, where an author or an artist only after the accomplishments of considerable importance, and then after many laborious and miserable journeys of supplication from Herod to Pilate, after having been obliged to make his bow before the Head of the State (which is and ought to be a delight to any subject ) , not only before the high officials of the government (which itself is a satisfaction) , but almost before each of the clerks in the bureau, between whom he is sent to and fro and fro and to he obtains a

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little pinch of public support. In this land one may also take another way. One may undergo an official examination, or an examination which qualifies one for an official position. So one seeks it it turns out that he is not competent for it, and the State

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thanks God it can get rid of him. One need not go to a single man, one may sit quite quietly in one's room it comes to one:

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deprivation and pension. One has only to give utterance to slightly revolutionary principles then by deprivation and grace

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one is relieved of the tiresome official duties which really prevent one from becoming an author, which one would like to be, one gets a pension and now has leisure and sometimes a consider

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able pension from the State, in order without disturbance and with favor to write against the State. Alas, a faithful subject who cannot make himself interesting by attacking the government will with great difficulty obtain some support for an undertaking which is both permissible and distinguished.

Favored by leisure and a pension, Adler kept still for one year, yet presumably, as we read of Ulysses, {Jvaaooo/l-£VOV [brooding]

for in the early summer of 1 846 he came forward quite

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unexpectedly with four books at once. Four books at once! If this custom is more generally introduced, the standard for being an author will thereby be raised to an extraordinarily high pitch .

When in the future there is talk of somebody being an author, one must ask at once if of one book or four thus pashas are

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classified according as they wear one horse-tail or three, and barbers as having one or three basins. To publish three or four books at once is something so striking that an essential author,

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even i f he had them ready, would surely wish t o avoid what easily might draw a wrong sort of attention to him, and what, regarded as a whim, would at the most have a little charm the first time it was done, not the first time for the individual, but the first time in the little world to which as an author he belongs; and anyhow, every real author must have a special reason for doing such a thing. Subjectively he must be conscious of a youthful force which will permit him to realize in due measure a task which will challenge in so high a degree the envy of the critics; perhaps his impetus is strengthened by an accidental circumstance, by the sad consciousness that the externally favorable conditions will permit him only for a short time to labor on a scale almost too great for him. But principally the four books must have objectively a deeper aim for example, as I

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think of it, to compass, if possible maieutically, a certain field from various sides at once. It must be important for the author of the four books, a half:poetical artistic task for him, that each book, which in itself is essentially different from the others, may be characteristically kept apart from the others; the author must know how to express poetically the illusion which is essentially confirmed by the special point of departure of each book, he may himself try in the notice of the books to separate them, so that the impression of the four books at once is really the product of the reader's self-activity, so that no one is obliged to know that they are four books at once, so that the literary specialist, if he happened to learn that there is one author, may feel a certain pleasure in entertaining the illusion that they are not fou r books by one author but by four authors, and that the one and the same does not appear even in the newspaper advertisements as presenting himself and offering his wares as an au thor of four books at once. In such an artistic way the thing was done not long ago in Danish literature. * I at least had not expected to find

"Here S.K. obviously refers to his own pseudonymous works. I n 1 843 (only three years before Adler's four books) S.K. had publish ed on the same d ay, October 1 6, Fear and Trembling and Repetition, each ascribed to a difIerent pseudonym, and Three Edifying Discourses in his own name and, like one of Adler's books, d edicated to his father. But his method illustrates what h e says here in criticism of Adler, and shows how Adler's four books might hav e been produced maieutically, poetically, and artistically, dealing with th e same subj ect, but characteristic ally separated.

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the memory of this so quickly refreshed - and so much by way of parody. Four books at once, one dedicated to his father, all bearing Adler's full name, all essentially in the same form, dealing essentially, sometimes word for word, with the same subject, in short, four yards in one piece, but each yard for itself bearing Adler's full name! There seems to be no trace of any reasonable ground for making four books. If any such a writing, such a merry-go-round, is to be published, it may just as well be run together in one volume; and if in the publication it is divided, it may j ust as well be twelve books as four. Neither is there any reasonable ground for the one and only variation A.

has attempted on the title-page of a book by calling it "An attempt at a short presentation," for essentially all his books are equally long and short, inasmuch as they all come under the rubric ofJortuitous length. In case A., to make the variation quite obvious, on the title-page of the voluminous Studies and Examples had modestly added, "An Attempt at a Long Book," in spite of the modesty and the unmistakable effort to write a long book ( which we leave to other critics to encourage by their praise ) , o n e would b e justified in saying that, in spite o f its length regarded as a book, it is essentially short. What gives itself out to be a book cannot wi thou t more ado, like stuff sold by the yard, be comprised under the categories of the long and the short, it must first prove itself to be a book. With regard to a book we must judge as with the grammatical concept of a period. Two lines of premises without a conclusion is not a short period, and a whole page of premises without a conclusion is not a long period : regarded as a period, both the one and the other have only fortuitous length, and are therefore equally long and equally short. In order that something may be called "a short presentation" it must have essentially the character of completeness and precisely prove its shortness by the fact that within so small a space it reproduces nevertheless the whole matter on a shortened and diminished scale. On the other hand, three pages may very well be a long twaddle, and thirty pages may quite rightly be called a short book. With regard to the first production the author in question may say with Lessing that, "it was so long because he had not time to write it shorter"; and with regard to the last the author in question could say that "it was such a short

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brochure because h e had not a longer time t o write, a s he had to publish." And Adler's books are a singular sort of production.

Had he had a longer time, the book might have become . . . well, here we are at a standstill, not knowing whether it would have become longer or have become shorter. And now Adler! His hope indeed is "with a longer time to labor and quietly develop the ideas for the future, etc." But, whatever the future (to which Adler can always hold) may bring forth, he who critically holds to the completed whole which lies before him must admit that A.'s books are a singular sort of production, an almost anguishing sort of production. When a clergyman has luckily reached the third point of his sermon and already is so far along in it that one who knows the proportions of clerical elocution ventures with a good deal of security to assume that he is about to hum and say Amen - then it may be anguishing when he, instead of pronouncing the significant Amen, becomes gossipy and adds one period after another, while the knowing hearer may say that essentially the sermon is over and essentially the Amen has been said. This is an example of fortuitous length, recognizable by the fact that it begins where, essentially viewed, the Amen have been said. One knows instances of people who, embarrassed and embarrassing, may remain sitting in one's home a whole hour merely because they are embarrassed to leave: so perhaps it is the case with such a clergyman, that he, after having been embarrassed to mount up to the solemn place, is now embarrassed to say Amen and go down again. But in any case, the sermon which really begins where the Amen should be said, like the visit which begins when the moment has come when it properly should end, are both examples of fortuitous length, the sign of which is the negative category, beginning when one should stop. But essentially the same negative catcgory is cxpressed by beginning before the beginning, that is, before the tug of the ideal resolution has indicated: Now thou canst begin. I n case a man in this way, before he had gai ned enough clarity and ripeness to write a book (which he could not yet write), began to write the preface to the book, then would the preface come under the rubric fortuitous length. And this is precisely Adler's case as an author, that he began before the beginning. That

"longer time," so often and for so long a time talked about, by

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the right use of which Adler "in the future" hopes ( this is the present tense in the historical style) "in order to let the ideas unfold themselves in a more appropriate form, etc.," must either not yet have come about, or not have been long enough, or not have been rightly used. A. has begun before the beginning, and therefore his productions come under the rubric fortuitous length. All three of the new books (for the fourth contains verse) are an aggregate of tumultuous aphorisms, the beginning of them fortuitous, the factual range without telos, and the possible prolongation endless.

To indicate the content of the books is clearly impossible, but one may characterize them by referring to a verse of Horace interpreted in a special way: Dum meum canto Lalage et ultra terminum vagos curis expeditis. * For often indeed it is outside the ploughed land, on the further side (ultra terminum) that A., free from all cares of authorship (curis

carelessly dawdles

about (vagatur) , humming about his Lalage, in whose honor he strews epigrams along his path and sprinkles it with fancies. As one who in a rural spot, left entirely to himself, now in love with one impression, now with another, now making a spring for gladness, now a long leap for sheer pleasure, now again stands still and ponders, now is really profound, and then again is rather insipid and without flavor - thus does Adler d awdle as a reader of the Bible. When a Biblical text attracts him he writes something about it, and then he goes along another street; sometimes he makes a note of something for the sake of using it another time, but this too will be given up. If Adler as a private reader lives in this way, I have no objection to make; but he lives thus as an author. For all this he does not forget his Lalage. By Lalage many difIerent things may be understood, according to who interprets the ode. I remember from my school days that the Rector understood thereby life's innocent pleasures. Adler's Lalage may be understood to be that doctrine communicated to him by a revelation, which now he interprets, now cites; for he does not seem to have quite forgotten that the doctrine was communicated to him by a revelation, neither has he forgotten the doctrine, the

* A line from the well-known ode which begins with Integer vitae: While I sing of my Lalage and wander freely beyund the border [in the Sabine forest) free of care.

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words, which rather have fixed themselves fast in his head. - I n case being called b y a revelation must make a m a n serious in the highest and deepest sense - then it is certainly strange to see such a one who in distraction must have forgotten the revelation, j ust as one may forget his hat, and as people very much distrait may forget their heads - to see him now carrying on like an adventurer in the religious style, a mystical knigh t errant, an itinerant, or like one who without aim or object makes motions in the Bible for the sake of motion, one essentially without occupation who seeks and finds and seeks and gossips - and that man was called by a revelation! In case being called by a revelation must in the highest and deepest sense make a man a zealous and active servant who takes part actively in life as one called in an eminent sense to be a laborer - then it is certainly strange to see a man thus called (who acts as if it were nothing and as if it were all right with the identities) transformed into an otiosus, who now has some womanish work to putter over, now with a humorous swing of the hat it la one or another of the Pseudonyms reflects upon this and that or upon himself, and upon the staggering sight of the pale countenance of fearful Jonah, * and then again lets himself be heard melodiously on the erotic pipe of reeds.

Now what is of special importance for an understanding of Adler is that in these last books absolutely nothing more is said about that fact of revelation, or of continuous revelation, or that this thing and the other was written by direct inspiration. But even if we assume that this last is as it should be, inasmuch as Adler had no later revelation and later found no occasion to distinguish what is of the Spirit and what is his own, yet surely that fact of revelation in the preface to his Sermons cannot be laid to one side as a girl lays aside her decorations for the ball. He indeed often returns to the doctrine communicated to him, but nothing at all is said about its being communicated to him by a revelation, from it he draws no inference to his divine authority, he does not appeal to this as a proof of the truth of the doctrine, on the strength of it he does not defend himself as one who has divine authority. And yet, as was shown in the introduction, the fact that a doctrine was

* Alluding to a passage in Adler's Studies and £xamples.

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imparted to him by a revelation is the decisive point, that which categorically transposes the whole matter and the whole relationship into an entirely different sphere from that in which Adler with all his learning belongs. But then it is wonderful that the very thing which one who has a revealed doctrine to communicate reminds people of again and again, namely, the fact that it was revealed - that this very thing with respect to his revealed doctrine Adler himself seems to have forgotten, and I must constantly remind him that it was indeed, according to his own statement, a revealed doctrine.

Perhaps, however, Adler ( the Hegelian, later the Apostle) finds himself along with his revealed doctrine in a new stadium, and now from the "immediate" (which in Hegel's veiled language means revelation) has entered the stadium of "reflection" and now understands the revelation, and then too, in the Hegelian way, he "goes farther" and does not stop with the revelation - with the revelation he himself has had. At the time Christianity came into the world it proclaimed itself to be a revelation and has persisted in that claim. But then time went on, by degrees we all became Christians as by accident, and then many centuries after that there lives a generation (in geographical Christendom) which likes to think that one can understand and comprehend the revelation . The same revealed doctrine is then dealt with in many different ways by a generation which is separated by many centuries from the first. But the one and identical man who has announced that he has had a revelation must surely know precisely what is what with regard to the revelation imparted to him: he must either stand fast by the fact that it was a revelation, and in that case he must speak and act and write in accordance with it; or he must say that now he has understood and comprehended it. But here a little caution.

What may i t be after all that he has understood? H as he understood that there was no revelation? Then he must revoke the first claim. Or has he understood, what surely he must have understood originally, since he said it, that it was indeed a revelation? Then he must stand by it, argue from it, act in accordance with it, transform his whole existence in relation to it. One cannot deny that there is some excuse for the confusion of Christian truth in modern speculation at the distance of eighteen

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hundred years from its beginning; b u t that one and the same man in the course of a few years should strike up this music before us is, if the thing were not so serious, exceedingly comic, and is surely a good proof that he is confused. But above all, one who is supposed to be called by a revelation must with the utmost conscientiousness strive to act honestly. He must not cast a revelation from him as a thief cast� away stolen goods when the police are after him - [or then he is an intentional deceiver, which Adler certainly is not - but neither must he let the revelation go unexplained while he, treating i t as nothing, takes another path . . . for then he is confused .

I n the four last books, while again and again there is talk abou t the doctrine, absolutely nothing more is said about that fact of revelation whereby it was imparted, or about the fact that the doctrine was imparted by a revelation; on the other hand, almost to one's disgust, there is talk about genius - genius here and genius there, that genius is something inexplicable, that genius is something nobody can understand, that " the autodidactical foal" * etc.

We will stop here and look carefully before us, for it seems clear enough that the upshot of Adler's whole story is that he is a genius. Qyel bruit pour une omelette! All honor to genius. I n case Adler is a genius, in God's name! I certainly shall not envy him for that. But he began by having had a revelation - though summa summarum by this we are to understand that he is a genius.

This surely is confusion doubly confounded. The first claim may perhaps be a sort of hasty expression for being a genius. This is a hitherto unheard-of confusion! After all, the category of genius is surely something other and qualitatively different from that of having by a revelation from the Saviour received a new doctrine!

To have, if you will, by virtue of being a genius a new doctrine to contribute is surely after all (since it lies within the sphere of immanence, so that newness can only indicate the originality of the reproduction) - it surely is something other and qualitatively different from having by a revelation from the Saviour received a new doctrine! We speak of the primitivity of genius, its originality; but these categories, or this category, surely is not

* Adler's quaint characterizatiun of that "colt the foal of an ass" upon which Jesus rode into Jerusalem.

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identical with having had a revelation by which the Saviour communicated to the elect man a new doctrine!

An erring exegesis and dogmatic has certainly played on Christianity the trick of going on and understanding the revelation, or going on and comprehending it, pretty much in these terms: a revelation, that is, immediateness, that is, the q uality of genius, something in the way of genius, the new, newness, originality, primitivity, ete. A. does about the same, but then he does a little more, whereby, ironically enough, he wins the credit of making indirectly evident how this behavior hostile to Christianity proceeds. A. begins by saying that he himself has had a revelation, and thereupon exegeticizes in the modern style upon the concept of revelation, that is to say, he exegeticizes in action by letting go his first claim and then becoming a genius, pretending that there was good sense in this connection, or sense in the fact that there was no connection. - What is it the erring exegesis and speculation have done to confuse Christian truth?

And how has it been done? Quite briefly and with categorical precision they have done as follows: they have thrust back the sphere of paradox into the aesthetic sphere and thereby have gained the result that every Christian term, which remaining in its own sphere is a qualitative category, now, in reduced circumstances, can do service as a clever expression which may signify pretty much everything. But the erring exegete and dogmatician have not said at the same time of themselves that they have had a revelation; this is reserved for Adler. H e can . . .

well, that is how the nursery rhyme goes: "Who can do it best?

Surely our priest."

All the many explanations of Adler about genius are q uite right aesthetically, and some of it would be quite right, if he had not had the first: being called by a revelation. In his explanations of the genius there is not to be found a trace, categorically understood, that he has any sort of conception of the qualitative and specific peculiarity of Christianity, and that in spite of the fact that he uses Christ's name perpetually, yea, in spite of the fact that he claims to have had a revelation from the Saviour.

When * the sphere of paradoxical religion is abolished or

* Here begins the passage about "The Difference between a Genius and an Apostle" which S.K. salvaged from his "big book on Adler" and published in

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explained back into the ethical, then a n apostle becomes nothing more nor less than a genius - and then good-night Christianity.

Esprit and spirit, revelation and originality, a calling from God and ingeniousness, an apostle and a genius, all coalesce in one and the same thing.

Thus can an erring* Wissenschaft confuse Christianity, and from the sphere of Wissenschaft the confusion has sneaked into religious eloquence, so that one not infrequently hears clergymen, bona fide, in all learned simplicity, prostitute Christianity.

They talk i n lofty tones of the cleverness and profundity of St.

Paul, of his beautiful similes, ete. - sheer aesthetics. I f Paul is to be regarded as a genius, it looks very bad for him. Only to clerical ignorance could it occur to praise Paul aesthetically, because clerical ignorance has no standard but thinks in this wise: If only one says something good about Paul, it's all to the good. Such good-humored and well-intentioned though tlessness is to be referred to the fact that the person in question has not been disciplined by qualitative dialectics, which would have taught him that an apostle is not served by saying something good about him when it is crazy, so that he is recognized and admired for being what in an apostle is a matter of indifference 1 849 as one of the Two Minor Ethico-Religious Treatises. He felt free to publish it because it makes no mention of Adler. I t reproduces exactly the text of the

first draft of 1 846, without taking into account any of the alterations he had proposed, and making only a few which occurred to him when he was transcribing it. At the time when he began the second systematic revision of The Book on Adler, about the middle of 1 848, he wrote (Papirer IX A 498 ) : " M y health daily deteriorates, soon I shall be decrepit; but I do not fear death, I have learned like the Roman soldiers that there is something worse." He lived in fact five years longer and during that time wrote some of his most striking works; but in his decrepitude such a task of revision as I have undertaken here was likely too much for him. As a translator I must (or at least may) follow the text which S . K .

thought fit t o publish , without introducing any o f th e changes he h a d previously proposed .

This " minor treatise" was translated by Alexander Dru and was published in a volume entitled The Present Age which Charles Williams put together and to which I contributed the other "minor treatise." Though I of course kept Alic Dru's translation before me and relished his style, I was not tempted to imitate his translations if only for fear of incurring the charge of plagiarism.

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*The errors moreover are nol merely those of heterodoxy but also those of hyper-orthodoxy and, principally, those of thoughtlessness.

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and what

he is not, while with that what he IS IS

forgotten. I t might just as well occur to such thoughtless eloquence to laud Paul as a stylist and for his artistic use of language, or still better, since it is well known that Paul practiced a manual trade, to maintain that his work as an upholsterer must have been so perfect that no upholsterer either before or since has been able to equal it - for, if only one says something good about Paul, then all is well. As a genius Paul can sustain no comparison with Plato or with Shakespeare, as an author of beautiful similes he ranks rather low, as stylist his is an obscure name, and as an upholsterer - well, I may admit that in this respect I don't know where to place him. One always does well to transform stupid seriousness into a jest - and then comes the really serious thing, the serious fact that Paul was an apostle, and as an apostle has no affinity either with Plato or Shakespeare or a stylist or an upholsterer, who are all of them ( Plato as well as the upholsterer Hansen) beneath any comparison with him.

* A genius and an apostle are qualitatively distinct, they are categories which belong each of them to their own qualitative spheres: that of immanence and that of transcendence. ( I ) The genius may well have something new to contribute, but this newness vanishes again in its gradual assimilation by the race, j ust as the distinction "genius" vanishes when one thinks of eternity. The apostle has paradoxically something new to contribute, the newness of which, precisely because it is paradoxical and not an anticipation of what may eventually be developed in the race, remains constant, just as an apostle remains an apostle to all eternity, and no immanence of eternity puts him essen tially on the same plane with other men, since essentially he is paradoxically different. ( 2 ) The genius is what he is by reason of himself, i.e. by what he is in himself: an apostle is what he is by reason of his divine authority. (3) The genius has only immanent teleology: the apostle's position is that of absolu te paradoxical teleology.

I . All thinking breathes in immanence, whereas the paradox and faith constitute a qualitative sphere of their own. I mmanent

*S.K. here copies the first draft, but the correction of this paragraph made a year later ( V I I B 26 1 , 8) omits the tiresome insistence of I s lines of i talics (spaced type) , and here I have preferred that simplification.

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( i n the relationship between man and man qua man) means that every difference is, for essential and eternal thinking, a vanishing point, a moment which has indeed momentarily its importance but essentially vanishes in the essential indifference of eternity.

Genius is again, as the word itself says (ingenium, what is inborn, original from origo, primitivity and pristine from primus ete. ) , immediateness, a natural characteristic - the genius is born.

Already long before there can be any question to what extent the genius will devote his unusual gifts to God, or will not do it, he is a genius, he is a genius even though he doesn' t do it. In the case of the genius there may come about the change that he develops himself to be what Kant ovvafLLv he is, that he attains conscious possession of himself. In so far as one uses the expression

"paradox" to indicate the new which a genius may have to contribute, it is used only in an unessential sense of the transitory paradox of anticipation which is compressed into something paradoxical and in turn disappears. A genius in his first effort at communication may be paradoxical, but the more he comes to himself the more the paradox disappears. A genius may perh aps be a century ahead of his age and hence stands there as a paradox, but in the end the race will assimilate what was once a paradox, so that it is no longer paradoxical.

Quite otherwise with the apostle. The word itself indicates the difference. An apostle is not born, an apostle is a man called and sent by God, sent by Him upon a mission. An apostle does not develop in such wise that he successively becomes what KaTu ovvafLLv he is. For previously to becoming an apostle he possessed no potential possibility. Every man is equally near to being an apostle. An apostle can never in such wise come to himself that he becomes conscious of his apostolic calling as a stage in his life's development. The apostolic call is a paradoxical fact which in the first as well as the last moment of his life stands paradoxically outside his personal identity with himself as the definite person he is. A man has long before perhaps reached mental maturity and the age of discretion - then he is called to be an apostle. By reason of this call he does not become a better head, acquire more imagination, greater acumen, etc. By no means. He remains himself, but with the paradoxical fact of being sent by God upon a definite mission. By this paradoxical fact the apostle

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i s for all eternity made paradoxically different from all other men. The new which he may have to proclaim is the essen tial paradox. However long a time it may be preached in the world, essentially it remains equally new, equally paradoxical, no immanence can assimilate it. The apostle did not behave like a man distinguished for natural gifts who was born before his time, he was perhaps what we call a simple man, but by a paradoxical fact he was called to proclaim this new thing. Even if thought might think that it could assimilate the doctrine, yet the way in which it came into the world it cannot assimilate, for the essential paradox is precisely the protest against immanence. But the way such a doctrine came into the world is precisely the q ualitatively decisive point, which only by deceit or thoughtlessness can be overlooked .

2 . A genius is appraised on purely aesthetic grounds, according to the content and specific gravity his productions are found to have; an apostle is what he is by reason of the divine authority he has. The divine authority is the qualitatively decisive fac tor. I t is not by appraising aesthetically or philosophically the doctrine that I must and can reach the conclusion that ergo he who has taught this doctrine was called by a revelation, ergo he is an apostle. The order of sequence is exactly the reverse: the man called by a revelation, to whom was entrusted a doctrine, argues from the fact that this was a revelation, from the fact that he has authority. I am not obliged to obey Paul because he is clever or exceptionally clever, but I must submit to Paul because h e has divine authority; in any case it is Paul's responsibility to take care to produce this impression, whether anybody will submit to his authority or no. Paul must not appeal to his cleverness, for then he is a fool; he must not enter into a purely aesthetic or philosophic discussion about the content of his doctrine, for then he is distrait. No, he m ust appeal to his divine authority, and precisely by that, while he is willing to sacrifice life and all, he must prevent all aesthetic and philosophically direct objections against the content or form of the doctrine. Paul must not recommend himself and his doctrine by the help of the beautiful metaphors; conversely, he should say to the individual:

"Whether the simile is beautiful or not, or whether i t is tattered and threadbare, that is of no account, thou shalt reflect that

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what I say was entrusted t o m e b y a revelation, s o that it i s God Himself or our Lord Jesus Christ who speaks, and thou shalt not engage presumptuously in criticizing the form. I cannot, I dare not compel thee to obey, but by thy conscientious relationship to God I make thee eternally responsible to God for thy relationship to the doctrine for the fact that I have proclaimed it as revealed to me by a revelation and therefore proclaimed i t with divine authority."

A uthoriry is the qualitatively decisive point. Or is there not, even within the relativity of human life, though it disappears in immanence, a difference between the king's command and the word of a poet or a thinker? And what difference is there except that the king's command has authority and therefore prohibits all critical and aesthetical impertinence with regard to form and content? On the other hand, the poet or the thinker, even within this relativity, has no authority, his saying is appraised purely aesthetically and philosophically by appraising the content and form. But what is it that has fundamentally confused Christianity, unless it is that people have at first in doubt become so nearly uncertain whether there is a God that in rebellion against all authority they have forgotten what authority is and the dialectic of it? A king is sensibly present in such a way that one can sensibly convince oneself of it, and , if it should be necessary, the king can quite sensibly convince one that he exists. But God does not exist in such a sense. Doubt has taken advantage of this to put God on the same plane as all those who have no authority, geniuses, poets, thinkers, whose utterances are appraised precisely by aesthetic and philosophical criteria; and in case a thing is well said, then the man is a genius, and in case a thing is unusually and especially well said, then it is God who has said it! !!

By that trick God is really conjured away. What is He to do? If God stops a man on the street, calls him by a revelation and sends him out to the other men armed with divine authority -

then they say to him, "From whom art thou?" He answers,

"From God." But, 10, God cannot help His ambassador as a king can who gives him an accompaniment of soldiers or policemen, or his ring, or a letter in his handwriting which everybody recognizes - in short, God cannot be at men's service by

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providing them with a sensible certitude o f the fact that a n apostle i s a n apostle - this too would b e nonsense. Even the miracle, if the apostle has this gift, gives no sensible certitude, for the miracle is an object of faith. And moreover it is nonsense to get sensible certitude that an apostle is an apostle (the paradoxical determinant of a spiritual connection) , just as it is nonsense to get sensible certitude of the fact that God exists, since God indeed is spirit. So then the apostle says he is from God. The others answer, "Well then, let us see whether the content of the doctrine is divine, for in that case we will accept it along with the claim that it was revealed to thee." In that way both God and the apostle are mocked. The divine authority of the man thus called should be the surest defense which secures the doctrine and keeps from it at the majestic distance of the divine all impertinences; instead of which the content and form of the doctrine must allow itself to be criticized and sniffed at - before one is able in this way to reach the conclusion that it was a revelation or no. And meanwhile the apostle and God must presumably wait at the door or in the porter's lodge until the case has been decided by the wise men in the bel etage. The elect man should according to God's ordinance assert his divine authority to chase away all impertinent people who will not obey him but argue. And instead of obeying, men transform an apostle into an examinee who comes as it were to the marketplace with a new doctrine.

What then is authority? Is authority the profundity of the doctrine, its superiority, its cleverness? Not at all. If authority thus predicated is merely profundity, raised to a higher power, or reduplicated, then precisely there is no authority; for if a pupil by his understanding of it appropriated the doctrine totally and fully, there would in fact be no difference left between the teacher and the pupil. Authority, on the contrary, is something which remains unchanged, which one cannot acquire by having understood the doctrine in the fullest sense. Authoriry is a specific qualiry which comes Jrom another place and makes itself Jelt precisely when the content of the saying or oJ the action is assumed to be indifferent. Let us take an example, as simple as possible, where nevertheless the situation is plain. When the man who has the authority to say it says, "Go! " and when he who has not authority says, " Go ! " -

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then indeed the saying "Go" along with its content i s identical; appraised aesthetically, if you will, they are both equally well said, but the authority makes the difference. In case authority is not "the other" [TO €7€povJ , in case it might in any way indicate a higher power within the identity, then precisely there is no authority. In case a teacher is thus enthusiastically conscious that he himself in his existence is expressing and has expressed by the sacrifice of everything the doctrine he preaches, this consciousness may well give him a sure and firm spirit, but it does not give him authority. His life as a proof of the rightness of the doctrine is not "the other" [TO ;npov] but a simple reduplication of the doctrine. The fact that he lives in accordance with the doctrine does not prove that it is right; but because he is convinced of the rightness of the doctrine he lives in accordance with it. On the other hand , whether a policeman be a rogue or an honest man, being on duty, he has authority.

In order to illuminate more clearly this concept which is so important for the paradox-religious sphere, I shall pursue the dialectic of authority. In the sphere if immanence authority cannot be thought, or it can be thought only as vanishing. * In so far as there may be question of authority or of the exercise of authority in political, social, civic, household, or disciplinary relationships, authority is only a transient, vanishing factor, which either vanishes later in temporal existence, or vanishes for the fact that earthly life itself is a transitory factor which vanishes with all its differences. At the bottom of all relationships between man and man qua man it is only possible to think that the differences lie within the identity of immanence, that is, within the essential equality. The one man cannot be thought to be different from all others by reason of a specific quality - otherwise all thinking ceases, as it quite consistently does in the paradox-religious sphere or the sphere offaith. All human differences between man

* Perhaps with onc or another it may be as with me who recall with reference to the subject of "authority" Magister Kierkegaard's Edifying Discourses where it is so strongly accented and emphasized by the fact that every time the words arc repeated in the preface: "These are not sermons because the author has not the authority to preach." Authority is either an apostolic call, or the specific quality of ordination. To preach is precisely to exercise authority, and that this is what preaching means is altogether forgotten in our age.

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and man qua man vanish for thought as factors in the totality and quality of identity. In the moment I must be so good as to respect and take pleasure in the differences, but I am permitted to edify myself religiously with the certitude that the differences vanish in all eternity, both those which distinguish me and those which depress me. As a subject I must honor and obey the King with an undivided soul, but I am permitted to edify myself with the thought that essentially I am a citizen of heaven, and that, if once I should encounter there his deceased majesty, I shall not be bound to him by the obedience required of a subject.

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