Part 2
It takes a physician to understand that a half dose can have the opposite effect to that of a full dose. Common sense, coolminded mediocrity never catches on. It undeviatingly contin ues to say of the half-dosage: "After all, it is something; even if it doesn't work very well, it is still something." But that it should have an opposite effect – no, mediocrity does not grasp that.
The greatest danger to Christianity is, I contend, not her esies, heterodoxies, not atheists, not profane secularism – no, but the kind of orthodoxy which is cordial drivel, mediocrity
4 The Greatest Danger
served up sweet. There is nothing that so insidiously displaces the majestic as cordiality. Perpetually polite, so small, so nice, tampering and meddling and tampering some more – the re sult is that majesty is completely defrauded – of course, only a little bit. And right here is the danger, for the infinite is more disposed to a violent attack than to becoming a little bit de graded – amid smiling, Christian politeness. And yet this po liteness is what our Christianity amounts to. But the very essence of Christianity is utterly opposed to this mediocrity, in which it does not so much die as dwindle away.
Today's orthodoxy essentially has its abode in the cordial drivel of family life. This is utterly dangerous for Christianity. Christianity does not oppose debauchery and uncontrollable passions and the like as much as it is opposes this flat medioc rity, this nauseating atmosphere, this homey, civil togetherness, where admittedly great crimes, wild excesses, and powerful ab errations cannot easily occur – but where God's unconditional demand has even greater difficulty in accomplishing what it re quires: the majestic obedience of submission. Nothing is fur ther from obeying the either/or than this sweet family drivel.
Consider what Christ thinks about mediocrity! When the apostle Peter, for instance, with good intentions wanted to keep Christ from being crucified, Christ answered: "Get behind me, Satan! You are an offense to me" (Mk. 8:33).
In the world of mediocrity in which we live it is assumed that only crackpots, fanatics, and the like should be deplored as of fensive, as inspired by Satan, and that the middle way is the right way, the way that alone is exempted from any such charge. What nonsense! Christ is of another mind: mediocrity is the worst offense, the most dangerous kind of demon possession, farthest removed from the possibility of being cured. To "have" religion on the level of mediocrity is the most unqualified form of perdition.
The advantages and benefits of earthly life are bound up in mediocrity. But genuine religion has an inverse relationship to the finite. Its aim is to raise human beings up so as to transcend what is earthly. It is a matter of either/or. Either prime quality, or no quality at all; either with all your heart, all your mind, and all your strength, or not at all. Either all of God and all of you, or nothing at all!
We clever humans, however, prefer to treat faith as if it were something finite, as if it were something for the betterment and enjoyment of temporal life. It is supposed to bring us meaning and fulfillment, happiness and direction. This kind of religion is nothing but a deception. If you were honest and if you would look at it more closely, you would see that this really is con tempt for religion, a dangerous and culpable irreligion. True faith insists on being an either/or. To treat it as if it were like drink and food is fundamentally to scorn it. But this is precisely the way of mediocrity.
5 The Task
Why is it that people prefer to be addressed in groups rather than individually? Is it because conscience is one of life's greatest inconveniences, a knife that cuts too deeply? We prefer to "be part of a group," and to "form a party," for if we are part of a group it means goodnight to conscience. We cannot be two or three, a "Miller Brothers and Company" around a con science. No, no. The only thing the group secures is the aboli tion of conscience.
It is the same with busyness. A person can very well eat let tuce before it has formed a heart, yet the tender delicacy of the heart and its lovely coil are something quite different from the leaves. Likewise, in the world of spirit, busyness, keeping up with others, hustling hither and yon, makes it almost impos sible for an individual to form a heart, to become a responsible, alive self. Every life that is preoccupied with being like others is a wasted life, a lost life.
A sparrow, a fly, a poisonous insect is an object of God's con cern. It is not a wasted or lost life. But masses of mimickers, a crowd of copycats are wasted lives. God has been merciful to us, demonstrating his grace to the point of being willing to involve himself with every person. If we prefer to be like all the others, this amounts to high treason against God. We who simply go along are guilty, and our punishment is to be ignored by God.
By forming a party, by melting into some group, we avoid not only conscience, but martyrdom. This is why fear of others dominates this world. No one dares to be a genuine self; every one is hiding in some kind of "togetherness." Sensitive organs are shielded and not in immediate contact with objects, so us ordinary people are afraid to come into personal, immediate contact with the eternal. Instead, we rely on traditions and the voice of others. We are content to be a specimen or a copy, liv ing a life shielded against individual responsibility before the Truth.
True individuality is measured by this: how long or how far one can endure being alone without the understanding of oth ers. The person who can endure being alone is poles apart from the social mixer. He is miles apart from the man-pleaser, the one who manages successfully with everyone – he who possesses no sharp edges. God never uses such people. The true individual, anyone who is going to be directly involved with God, will not and cannot avoid the human bite. He will be thoroughly mis understood. God is no friend of cozy human gathering.
Yes, in the purely human world the rule is this: Seek out the help and opinion of others. Christ says: Beware of men! The majority of people are not only afraid of holding a wrong opin ion, they are afraid of holding an opinion alone. In the physical world water puts out fire. So too in the spiritual world. The "many", the mass of people, put out the inner fire – beware of men!
According to the New Testament to be a Christian means to be salt. Christianity addresses this question to each individual: Are you willing to be salt? Are you willing to be sacrificed, in stead of belonging to the crowd, which seeks to profit from the sacrifice of others? Here again is the distinction: to be salt or to melt into the mass; to let others be sacrificed for us on behalf of
5 The Task
the Truth or to let ourselves be sacrificed – between these two lies an eternal qualitative difference.
The deep fault of the human race is that there are no indi viduals any more. We have become split in two. When a book has become old and shabby, the binding separates and the pages fall out. Similarly, in our time we are disintegrated. Our under standing, our imaginations do not bind us in character. We are spineless wimps who only flirt with the highest. How can we ever possibly avoid the dizziness that comes from fear of people in the midst of this whirlpool of millions where everything is either crowds or movements? What faith it takes to believe that one's life is noticed by God and that this is enough!
Wanting to hide in the crowd, to be a little fraction of the group instead of being an individual, is the most corrupt of all escapes. Granted, it will make life easier, but it will do so by making it more thoughtless. Yet the question is that of the re sponsibility of each single individual – that each of us is an au thentic, answerable self. It is a cop-out to make a racket along with a few others for a so-called conviction. We ought, before God, to make up our own minds about our convictions, and then live them out regardless of the others. Eternity will single each person out as individually responsible – the busy one who thought he was safe in some group or some enterprise, and the poorest wretch who thought he was overlooked.
Every person must render account to God. No third person dares venture to intrude upon this accounting. God in heaven does not talk to us as to an assembly; he speaks to each individu ally. This is why the most ruinous evasion of all is to be hidden away in a herd in an attempt to escape God's personal address. Adam attempted this when his guilty conscience led him to imagine that he could hide himself among the trees. Similarly, it may be easier and more convenient, and more cowardly too, to
hide yourself among the crowd in hope that God will not recog nize you from the others. But in eternity each shall individually render an account. Eternity will examine each person for all that he has chosen and done as an individual before God.
It will be horrible on judgment day, when all souls come to life again, to stand utterly alone, alone and unknown by all, and yet candidly, exhaustively known by him who knows all. No one may ever pride himself at being more than an individual. Nor can anyone despondently think that he is not an individual. No, each one can and shall render account to God. Each one has the task of becoming an individual.
6 Against the Crowd
We warn young people against going to dens of in iquity, even out of curiosity, because no one knows what might happen. Still more terrible, however, is the danger of going along with the crowd. In truth, there is no place, not even one most disgustingly dedicated to lust and vice, where a human being is more easily corrupted – than in the crowd.
Even though every individual possesses the truth, when he gets together in a crowd, untruth will be present at once, for the crowd is untruth. It either produces impenitence and irrespon sibility or it weakens the individual's sense of responsibility by placing it in a fractional category. For instance, imagine an indi vidual walking up to Christ and spitting on him. No human be ing would ever have the courage or the audacity to do that. But as part of a crowd, well then they somehow have the "courage" to do it – dreadful untruth!
The crowd is indeed untruth. Christ was crucified because he would have nothing to do with the crowd (even though he addressed himself to all). He did not want to form a party, an interest group, a mass movement, but wanted to be what he was, the truth, which is related to the single individual. There fore everyone who will genuinely serve the truth is by that very fact a martyr. To win a crowd is no art; for that only untruth is needed, nonsense, and a little knowledge of human passions. But no witness to the truth dares to get involved with the crowd.
His work is to be involved with all people, if possible, but always individually, speaking with each and every person on the side walk and on the streets – in order to split apart. He avoids the crowd, especially when it is treated as authoritative in matters of the truth or when its applause, or hissing, or balloting are re garded as judges. He avoids the crowd with its herd mentality more than a decent young girl avoids the bars on the harbor. Those who speak to the crowd, coveting its approval, those who deferentially bow and scrape before it must be regarded as be ing worse than prostitutes. They are instruments of untruth.
For this reason, I could weep, even want to die, when I think about how the public, with its daily press and anonymity, make things so crazy. That an anonymous person, by means of the press, day in and day out can say whatever he wants to say, what he perhaps would never have the courage to say face-to-face as an individual to another individual, and can get thousands to repeat it, is nothing less than a crime – and no one has respon sibility! What untruth! Such is the way of the crowd.
7 Suspending the Ethical
The ethical dimension of existence has to do with the universal, of doing what is unconditionally right. The ethi cal applies to everyone and at every moment. It possesses its own validity. That is, it has nothing outside itself as its end or purpose. It has no further to go. By contrast, the single indi vidual is the particular that has its purpose in the universal. The individual's task is always to express himself within the confines of duty, to limit his particularity and to forgo his own interests so as to fulfill his universal duty. Thus, as soon as an individual wants to assert himself in his particularity, in direct opposition to the universal, he sins. Only by recognizing this can he again reconcile himself with the universal. He can free himself only by surrendering to the universal in repentance.
If this is the highest that can be said of our existence, then the ethical and a person's happiness are identical. The philosopher is proved right. The ethical is the universal and, in turn, the di vine. The whole of human existence is entirely self-enclosed, and the ethical is at once the limit and completion of our lives. Doing one's duty becomes sufficient, with the result that God becomes an invisible, vanishing point, an impotent thought un related to my life. His being is no more than the ethical itself, which fills all existence.
But what about the question of faith? Is the ethical the final reality? No. The philosopher goes wrong when it comes to this
question. Actually, he fails to protest loudly and clearly enough against the honor and glory given to Abraham as the father of faith. If the ethical is final, if it is the ultimate determination of life's meaning, then Abraham should really be remitted to some lower court for trial and exposed as the murderer he is.
Now faith is just this paradox, that the single individual, though under the demands of the universal, is higher than the universal. If that is not faith, then Abraham is done for and faith has never existed in the world. If the ethical life is the highest and nothing incommensurable is left over, except in the sense of what is evil, then one needs no other categories than those of the philosophers. Goodbye to Abraham! But faith is just this paradox, that the single individual, though bound by the uni versal, is higher than the universal. As a single individual, as the particular, he stands in an absolute relation to the Absolute. The ethical is thus suspended. Faith is this paradox.
The story of Abraham contains just such a suspension of the ethical. Abraham acts on the strength of the absurd. As a single individual before God he found himself to be higher than the universal. This paradox cannot be mediated – there is no middleterm to explain it. If Abraham had tried to find an explanation, he would have been in a state of temptation, and in that case he would have never sacrificed Isaac, or if he had done so he would have had to return as a murderer repentant before the universal.
In his action Abraham overstepped the ethical altogether. He had a higher aim outside it in relation to which he suspended it. How else could one ever justify Abraham's action? Not in terms of the ethical. How could any point of contact ever be discov ered between what Abraham did, or planned to do, and the uni versal other than that Abraham overstepped it? It was not to save a nation that Abraham went to sacrifice Isaac, nor to ap pease angry gods. Abraham's whole action stands above and
7 Suspending the Ethical
apart from the universal. It is ultimately a private undertaking, an act of purely personal conscience. To judge Abraham's action according to the ethical – in the sense of the moral life – is there fore quite out of the question. In so far as the universal was there at all, it was latent in Isaac, concealed as it were in his loins, and it would have to cry out from Isaac's mouth: "Don't do it, you are destroying everything."
Then why does Abraham do it? For God's sake, and what is exactly the same, for his own. He does it for the sake of God be cause God demands this proof of his faith. He does it for his own sake in order to be able to produce the proof.
Abraham's situation is a kind of trial, a temptation. But what does that mean? What we usually call a temptation is something that keeps a person from carrying out a duty, but here the temptation is the ethical itself ("Thou shalt not kill") which would keep him from doing God's will. But what then is duty? In Abraham's case, duty is found in the doing of God's will, which is itself higher than the universal. His duty transcends the ethical.
Now when the ethical is suspended, as in Abraham's case, how or in what way, does the individual in whom it is sus pended exist? Does this mean he sins? Not necessarily. Take a child for example. In one sense a child's bad behavior is not sin because the child is not yet fully conscious of its own existence. Looked at ideally, however, the child sins; he falls short from the demands of the ethical. Does this mean Abraham also sinned? No. Then how did Abraham exist? He had faith. He lived by and in faith. That is the paradox that kept him at the summit and which he could not explain or justify to himself or to anyone else. His faith was grounded in the paradox that as the single individual he was higher that the universal. He had an absolute
relation to the Absolute. Was he justified? His justification is, once again, the paradox. He was not justified by being virtuous, but by being an individual submitted to God in faith.
This doesn't mean that the ethical is to be done away with. No. Only that it receives an entirely different expression, so that for example, love of God can cause the knight of faith to love his neighbor in a way that is quite opposite from what is usually demanded by the ethical. Unless this is how it is, faith has no place in existence. Faith becomes a temptation, and Abraham, since he gave into it, is done for.
But faith's paradox is precisely this, that the single individual is higher than the universal, that the individual determines his relationship to the universal through his relation to the Abso lute (i.e. God), not his relation to the Absolute through his rela tion to the universal. That is, to live by faith means that one has an absolute duty to God and to God alone. In this tie of obliga tion the individual relates himself absolutely, as the single indi vidual, to the Absolute – the God who commands. This duty alone is absolute and for this reason the ethical, for the person of faith, is relegated to the relative. In fear and trembling, this is faith's paradox – the suspension of the ethical.
Any way we look at it, Abraham's story contains a suspension of the ethical. He has, as the single individual, become higher than the universal. This is the paradox of faith that cannot be explained. How Abraham got himself into it is just as inexpli cable as how he stayed in it. If this is not how it is with Abra ham, then he is not even a tragic hero, but a murderer. To want to go on calling him the father of faith, to talk of this to those who are only concerned with words, is thoughtless. A tragic hero can become a human being by his own strength, but not the knight of faith. When a person sets out on the tragic hero's arduous path there are many who are ready to lend him advice.
7 Suspending the Ethical
But he who walks the narrow path of faith no one can advise, no one can understand. Faith is a miracle, and yet no human being is excluded from it.
8 To Need God Is Perfection
With respect to physical existence, one needs little, and to the degree that one needs less, the more perfect one is. In a human being's relationship with God, however, it is inverted: the more one needs God the more perfect he is. To need God is nothing to be ashamed of but is perfection itself. It is the sad dest thing in the world if a human being goes through life with out discovering that he needs God!
For what is a human being after all? Is he just one more orna ment in the vast array of creation? And what is his power? What is the highest he is able to will? Well, we do not want to defraud the highest of its price, but we cannot conceal the fact that the highest is realized only when a person is fully convinced that he himself is capable of nothing, nothing at all. What rare domin ion – not rare in the sense that only one individual is born to be king, since everyone is born to it! What rare wisdom – not rare because it is offered to just a few who are educated, but because it is offered to all, and accessible to all! True, if a person turns outward, it will probably seem as if he were capable of accom plishing something amazing, something that satisfies him, something that draws enthusiastic admiration. From a human perspective, humankind may well be the most glorious cre ation, but all its glory is still only in the external and for the ex ternal. Does not the eye aim its arrow outward every time passion and desire tighten the bowstring? Does not the hand
8 To Need God Is Perfection
grasp outward, is not his arm outstretched, and is not his inge nuity all-conquering? Deception!
A human being is great and at his highest only when before God he recognizes that he is nothing in himself. Consider Moses or the so-called works of Moses. What is the deed of even the greatest hero; what are demolishing mountains and filling rivers compared with having darkness fall upon all Egypt! But these were not really Moses' works. Moses was capable of noth ing at all, for the work was the Lord's. Do you see the difference? Moses – he did not make decisions and formulate plans while the council of the common sense listened attentively – Moses was capable of nothing at all. If the people had said to him, "Go to Pharaoh, because your word is powerful, your voice is trium phant, your eloquence irresistible," he would have answered, "Oh, you fools! I am capable of nothing, not even of giving my life for you if the Lord does not so will. I am capable only of submitting everything to the Lord." Or if the people who thirsted in the desert had appealed to Moses, saying, "Take your staff and order the rock to give water," would not Moses have answered, "What is my staff but a stick?"
A person who knows himself perceives that he, in and of himself, is actually capable of nothing. The same applies to the internal world. Are any of us capable of anything there, either? If a capability is actually to be a capability, it must have some kind of opposition. Without opposition, one is either all-powerful or one's capability is something entirely imaginary. In the internal world of spirit, opposition can come only from within. In this way, we struggle with ourselves. If a person does not discover this conflict, his understanding is faulty and consequently his life is imperfect; but if he does discover it, he will understand that he himself is capable of nothing at all.
Such self-knowledge we are referring to is really not compli cated. But is one not able, then, to overcome oneself by oneself?
How can I be stronger than myself? When we speak of over coming oneself by oneself, we really mean something external, so that the struggle is unequal. Take, for example, someone who has been tempted by worldly prestige but who conquers himself so that he no longer reaches out for it. If he is to guard his soul against a new vanity, he will have to admit that he is not really able to overcome himself. He understands that with will power alone he creates in his innermost being temptations of glory, fear, despondency, of pride and defiance, and sensuality greater than those he meets in the external world. For this reason he struggles with himself. Victory proves nothing with regard to this greater temptation. If he is victorious in facing the tempta tion with which the surrounding world confronts him, this does not prove that he would be victorious if the temptation were as terrible as he is able to imagine it. He knows deep within himself that he is capable of nothing at all.
In one sense, to need God and to know that this is a human being's highest perfection, makes life more difficult. However, insofar as a person does not know himself, he does not actually become conscious in the deeper sense that God is. The person who realizes that he is capable of nothing cannot undertake the slightest thing without God's help, without becoming conscious that God is. We sometimes speak of learning to know God from the events of past history. We open up the chronicles and read and read. Well, that may be fine, but how much time it takes, and how dubious the outcome frequently is! But someone who is conscious that he is capable of nothing has every day and eve ry moment the precious opportunity to experience that God lives. If he does not experience it often enough, he knows very well why that is. It is because his understanding is faulty and he believes that he himself is, after all, capable of something.
8 To Need God Is Perfection
This does not mean that a person's life becomes easy simply because he learns to know God in this way. On the contrary, it can become that much more difficult. But in this difficulty his life acquires a deeper meaning. Should it mean nothing to him that he continually keeps his eyes on God, knowing that he himself is capable of nothing at all, yet with the help of God he is indeed capable? Should it mean nothing to him that he is learning to die to the world, to esteem less and less the things that fade away? Finally, should it not have meaning for him that he most vividly and confidently understands that God is love, that God's goodness passes all understanding?
We are not saying that to need God is to sink into a dreaming admiration and some visionary contemplation. No. God does not let himself be taken in vain in this way. Just as knowing our selves in our own nothingness is the condition for knowing God, so knowing God is the condition for the sanctification of a human being by God's assistance and according to his inten tion. Wherever God is, there he is always creating. He does not want a person to be spiritually soft and to bathe in the contem plation of his glory. He wants to create a new human being. To need God is to become new. And to know God is the crucial thing. Without this knowledge a human being becomes noth ing. Without this knowledge, he is scarcely able to grasp that he himself is nothing at all, and even less that to need God is his highest perfection.
9 Purity of Heart
Purity of heart is to will one thing: "Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Wash your hands, you sin ners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded" (Jas. 4:8). Only the pure in heart can see God, and therefore, draw near to him. And only by God's drawing near to the pure in heart can they maintain this purity.
The person who in truth wills only one thing can will only the Good, and the person who wills only one thing when he wills the good can will only the Good in truth. Let your heart, therefore, will in truth only one thing, for therein is the heart's purity.
In a certain sense only a few words are needed to describe the Good. The Good, without condition, qualification, or compro mise, is absolutely the only thing that a person can and should undividedly will. The person who tries to will anything else will discover that he does not truly will one thing. It is a delusion, an illusion, a deception to try and do so. For in his innermost be ing he is, and is bound to be, double-minded. The Good alone can be willed as one thing.
Although pleasure, honor, riches, and power and all that this world has to offer appear to be one thing, they are not. These can never in all circumstances remain the same. They are always subject to constant change. Each in its own way consists of a multitude of things, a dispersion, the sport of changeableness,
9 Purity of Heart
and the prey of corruption! For example, in the pursuit of plea sure, look at how so many seek for one pleasure after another. In such a pursuit, variety is the watchword. But this is utterly fu tile. How can one will one thing that can never in itself remain the same thing? When a person wills in such a fashion he not only becomes double-minded, but self-divided; at complete odds with himself. He wills first one thing and then immedi ately another, and sometimes the opposite, and so and so on. What does such a person really will? New pleasures; something new! change! change! Ask him now if he really wills one thing. Ask him if he wills at all!
The fact is that the worldly ideal is not one thing at all. In es sence it is unreal. Its so-called unity is actually nothing but emptiness concealed by a multiplicity. In the short-lived mo ment of experience the worldly goal is nothing but a vacuous diversion. For what else is desire in its boundless extreme but nausea? What else is earthly honor at its dizzy pinnacle but con tempt for existence? What else is the overabundance of wealth but poverty? No matter how much all the earth's gold hidden in covetousness may amount to, it is infinitely less than the tiniest bit hidden in the contentment of the poor! What else is worldly power other than dependence? What slave in chains is as unfree as a tyrant!
Everyone who in truth wills one thing will eventually be led to will the Good. Though it may sometimes be that a person innocently begins by willing one thing that is not in the deepest sense the Good, he will, little by little, be transformed so as to will the Good. For example, romantic love has sometimes helped a person along the right road – he faithfully tries to will one thing, namely, the happiness of his love. In the deepest sense, however, falling in love is still not the Good. At best it is a formative educator that will lead to the willing of one thing and to the willing of the Good.
Only the Good is one thing. It alone is one in its essence and the same in each of its expressions. Take true love as an illustra tion. One who genuinely loves does not love but once. Nor does he offer part of his love, and then again another part. No, he loves with all of his love – not a bit here and a bit there. It is wholly present in each expression. He continues to give it away as a whole, and yet he keeps it intact as a whole, in his heart. Wonderful riches! When the miser has gathered all the world's gold in sordidness – then he has become poor. Yet when the lover gives away his whole love, he keeps it entire – in the purity of the heart.
If we in truth will one thing, then this one thing must be such that it remains unconditionally unaltered. In willing it we can win eternal constancy. If, however, what we will continually changes, then we become double-minded and unstable. This is nothing else than impurity. The one who wills anything other than the Good will become divided. And as the coveted object is, so becomes the coveter.
Let us not be deceived in this matter of willing one thing. The one who desires the Good, for instance, for the sake of some reward also fails to will one thing. He is double-minded. This is not difficult to see. The Good is one thing; the reward is something else. To will the Good for the sake of reward is not to will one thing but two. If a man loves a woman for the sake of her wealth, who will call him a lover? To will the Good for the sake of reward is hypocrisy – sheer duplicity! The person who in truth wills the Good thinks only of the Good, not of some resulting benefit. For the Good is its own reward. In fact, the pure in heart understands that here on earth the Good is often rewarded by ingratitude, by lack of appreciation, by poverty, by contempt, by many afflictions, and now and then by death. Of course, these are inconsequential for the one who in truth wills only one thing.
9 Purity of Heart
Neither can one who wills the Good do so out of fear of pun ishment. In essence, this is the same thing as willing the Good for the sake of a reward. The one who wills in truth one thing fears only doing wrong, not the punishment. In fact, he who does wrong, yet sincerely wills the Good, actually desires to face the consequences – so that the punishment, like medicine, may heal him. He understands that punishment only exists for the sake of the sinner. It is a helping hand. It goads one to press on further toward the Good, if one really wills it. On the other hand, the one who is divided considers punishment or hardship as a sickness. He fears all worldly setback for there is nothing eternal in him.
True, fear deceptively offers to help us. It too offers to keep us on the right track. Yet the one who strives in fear never becomes God's friend. Fear is a deceitful aid. It can sour your delight, make life arduous and miserable, make you old and decrepit; but it is never able to help you toward the Good. The Good will not tolerate any alien helper.
Those who live in fear may indeed desire heaven but not for itself. They anxiously do what they really would rather not do, or at least what they have no pleasure in doing. Their satisfac tion consists solely in avoiding, never gaining, something. What emptiness! They are blinded to the fact that the Good wants only that they humbly and gladly follow its beckoning. For the Good there exists no limitation. It contains the impetus of eter nity and possesses the Infinite's open road before it. Fear, on the other hand, is a dry nurse for the child – it has no milk. It is an anemic disciplinarian for the youth – it has no lasting beckon ing power. Only one thing can help us to will the Good in truth: the Good itself.
As the Good itself is only one thing, so it alone wishes to be what helps us along. But the Good is not something external to
us, like a slave who comes against his will when the master uses the whip. The place and the path are within each of us. And just as the place is the blessed state of the striving soul, so the path is the striving soul's continual transformation.
10 Emissaries from Eternity
Providence watches over each one of us as we jour ney through life providing us with two guides: repentance and remorse. The one calls us forward. The other calls us back. Yet they do not contradict each other, these two guides, nor do they leave the traveler in doubt or confusion. Rather, these two guides eternally understand each other. For the one calls for ward to the Good, the other back from the evil. This is precisely why there are two of them, because in order to make our jour ney secure we must look ahead as well as look back.
When a long procession is about to start, there is first a call from the person who is in the lead, but everyone waits until the last one has answered. The two guides call to a person early and late, and if he pays attention to their calls he finds the road and can know where he is. Likewise, Eternity's two guides call out to us early and late, and when we listen to their call, we know where we are and where we are going. Of these two, the call of remorse is perhaps the better. For the eager traveler who travels casually and quickly along the way does not get to know it as well as does the traveler with his burden. The eager traveler hur ries forward to something new, away from experience, but the remorseful one, the one who comes along afterward, labori ously gathers up the experience.
These two guides call to us early and late. And yet, no, when remorse calls out it is always late. The call to find the road again
by seeking God in the confession of sins is always at the elev enth hour. When remorse awakens guilt, whether it be in one's youth, or in the twilight of one's life, it does so always at the eleventh hour. It does not have much time at its disposal. It is not deceived by a false notion of a long life. For in the eleventh hour one understands life in a wholly different way than in the days of youth or in the busy time of adulthood or in the final days of old age. If we repent at any other hour of the day we fool ourselves – we fortify ourselves by a false and hasty conception of the insignificance of our guilt.
True repentance does not belong to a certain period of life, as fun and games belong to childhood, or as the excitement of ro mantic love belongs to youth. It does not come and disappear as a whim or as a surprise. No, no. There is a sense of reverence, a holy fear, a humility, a pure sincerity which insures that repen tance does not become vain and overhasty.
From the point of view of the eternal, repentance must come "all at once," where in one's grief there is not even time to utter words. But the grieving of repentance and the heartfelt anxiety that floods the soul must not be confused with impatience or the momentary feeling of contrition. Experience teaches us that the right moment to repent is not always the one that is imme diately present. Repentance can too easily be confused with a tormenting agonizing or with a worldly sorrow; with a desper ate feeling of grief in itself. But by itself, sorrow never becomes repentance, no matter how long it continues to rage. However clouded the mind becomes, the sobs of contrition, no matter how violent they are, never become tears of repentance. They are like empty clouds that bear no water, or like convulsive puffs of wind. This kind of repentance is selfish. It is sensually power ful for the moment, excited in expression – and, for this very reason, is no real repentance at all. Sudden, quick repentance wants only to drink down the bitterness of sorrow in a single
10 Emissaries from Eternity
draught and then hurry on. It wants to get away from guilt, away from every reminder of it, and fortify itself by imagining that it does not want to be held back in the pursuit of the Good. What a delusion!
There is a story about a man who by his misdeeds deserved to be punished according to the law. After he had served his sen tence he went back into ordinary society, reformed. He went to a foreign country, where he was unknown and where he became known for his upright conduct. All was forgotten. Then one day a fugitive appeared who recognized him from the past. The re formed man was terrified. A deathlike fear shook him each time the fugitive passed. Though silent, his fear shouted with a loud voice, until it became vocal in that dastardly fugitive's voice. Despair suddenly seized him and it seized him just because he had forgotten his repentance. His self-improvement had never led him to surrender to God so that in the humility of repen tance he might remember what he had once been.
Yes, in the temporal and social sense, repentance may come and go. But in the eternal sense, it is a quiet daily commitment before God. In the light of eternity, one's guilt is never changed, even if a century passes by. To think anything of this sort is to confuse the eternal with what it is least like – human forgetful ness. One can tell the age of a tree by looking at its bark. One can also tell a person's age in the Good by the intensity and in wardness of his repentance. It may be said of a dancer that her time is past when her youth is gone, but not so with a penitent. Repentance, if it is forgotten, is nothing but immaturity. The longer and the more deeply one treasures it, however, the better it becomes.
Repentance must not only have its time, but also its time of preparation. And herein lies the need of confession, the holy act that ought to be preceded by preparation. Just as a person
changes his clothes for a celebration, so a person preparing for confession is inwardly changed. But if in the hour of confession one has not truly made up his mind he is still only distracted. He sees his sin with only half an eye. When he speaks, it is just talk – not true confession.
We mustn't forget that the One who is present in confession is omniscient. God knows everything, remembers everything, all that we have ever confided to him, or what we have ever kept from his confidence. He is the One "who sees in secret," with whom we speak even in silence. No one can venture to deceive him either by talk or by silence. When we confess to God, there fore, we are not like a servant that gives account to his master for the administration entrusted to him because his master could not manage everything or be everywhere at once. Nor when we confess are we like one who confides in a friend to whom sooner or later he reveals things that his friend did not previously know. No, much of what you are able to keep hidden in darkness you only first get to know by revealing it to the allknowing One. The all-knowing One does not get to know something about those who confess, rather those who confess find out something about themselves.
11 God Has No Cause
There are those who talk about God's cause, and about wanting to serve that cause. This is all very fine, but how, exactly, is this to be interpreted? The common view thinks that God has a cause in the human sense of the word, that he is some kind of advocate, interested in having his cause win and there fore eager to help the person who would serve his cause, and so forth. If we follow this line of thinking God becomes a minor character who arrives at the embarrassing dilemma of needing human beings.
No, no! God has no cause, is no advocate in this sense. For God everything is infinitely nothing. Any second he wills it, every thing, including all opposition to his cause, becomes nothing. Wanting to serve God's cause can never mean the same thing as coming to his aid. No, to serve God's cause is to face examina tion. If someone wants to serve his cause, it is not God who loses his balance and sublimity; no, he fixes his attention upon this volunteer – observantly – and sees how he conducts him self, whether he has integrity and resolve. Because God is not interested in temporal causes, because he is infinitely the con quering Lord, precisely for that reason he examines. He is quite able to accomplish his will alone.
This is why the more one is involved with God the more rig orous everything becomes. It is out of God's infinite love that he involves himself with every human being. The very fact that
God permits evil people to thrive in this world is a mark of his infinite majesty. Do you not understand this frightful punish ment, that God overlooks them? God's punishment is upon those he chooses to have nothing more to do with. And yet he always accomplishes what he wills.
We usually think that when we honestly want to serve God's cause, God will also help us along. Well, how? In a material way? By a successful outcome, prosperity, earthly advantage, or the like? But in that case everything gets turned around and it no longer remains God's cause but a finite endeavor. Besides, maybe I am only a cunning fellow, who really does not want to serve God but in a deceptive, pious way to cheat God to my ad vantage. Perhaps I even think that God is in a bind and is made happy as soon as someone volunteers to serve his cause. Utter nonsense and blasphemy! No, God is spirit – and our task is to be transformed into spirit. But spirit is absolutely opposed to being related to God by way of temporal benefits. Such is God's sublimity – and yet this is the infinite love of God!
Yes, infinite love, so infinite that God desires to involve him self with every human being, with every weak, foolish, carnal heart who tries to make him into a nice uncle, a really fine grandfather whom we can make good use of.
God is infinite love and for this reason has no cause. He will not suddenly overpower a person and demand that he instantly become spirit. If that were the case we would all perish. No, he handles each person gently. His is a long operation, an upbring ing in love. Yes, there are times when one gasps and God strengthens with material blessings. But there is one thing God requires unconditionally at every moment – integrity – that one does not reverse the relationship and try to prove his relation ship to God or the truth of his cause by good fortune, prosper ity, and the like. God wants us to understand that material
11 God Has No Cause
blessings are a concession to our weakness and very likely something he will withdraw at some later date to help us make true progress, not in some finite endeavor but in passing the examination.
12 An Eternity in Which to Repent
Let me tell a story. Somewhere in the Orient there lived a poor old couple. They possessed nothing but poverty. Naturally, anxiety about the future increased as they grew older. They did not assail heaven with their prayers, for they were too pious for that; but nevertheless they continually cried to heaven for help.
Then it happened one morning that the wife, going out to the oven, found a precious stone of great size upon the hearth. She immediately showed the stone to her husband, who saw at once that they were well supplied for the rest of their life. A bright future for this old couple – what joy! Yet, God-fearing as they were, and content with little, they resolved that since they had enough to live upon for another day, they would sell the jewel not that day, but the following. And then a new life would begin.
That night the woman dreamed that she was transported to paradise. An angel took her around and showed her all the glo ries an oriental imagination could invent. Then the angel led her into a hall where there were long rows of armchairs adorned with pearls and precious stones, which, the angel explained, were for the devout. Finally the angel showed her the chair that was intended for her. Looking more closely, the woman saw a large jewel was missing from the back of the seat. She asked the angel how that had come about.
12 An Eternity in Which to Repent
Now be alert, here comes the story! The angel answered, "That was the precious stone you found on the hearth. You re ceived it in advance, and so it cannot be inserted again."
In the morning the woman related the dream to her hus band. She felt they should hold on to the stone for a few years longer rather than let the precious stone be absent throughout eternity. And her devout husband agreed. So, that evening they laid the stone back on the hearth and prayed to God that he would take it back. In the morning, sure enough, it was gone. Where it had gone the old couple knew: it was now in its right place.
Oh, remember this well! You may perhaps be cunning enough to avoid suffering and adversity in this life, you may perhaps be clever enough to evade ruin and ridicule and in stead enjoy all the earth's goods, and you may perhaps be fooled into the vain delusion that you are on the right path just be cause you have won worldly benefits, but beware, you will have an eternity in which to repent! An eternity in which to repent, that you failed to invest your life upon that which lasts: to love God in truth, come what may, with the consequence that in this life you will suffer under the hands of men.
Therefore do not deceive yourself! Of all deceivers fear most yourself! Even if it were possible in relation to the eternal to take something in advance, you would yet be deceiving yourself by taking something in advance – and gain an eternity in which to repent.
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13 Truth Is the Way
Truth is not something you can appropriate easily and quickly. You certainly cannot sleep or dream yourself into the truth. No, you must be tried, do battle, and suffer if you are to acquire truth for yourself. It is a sheer illusion to think that in relation to truth there is an abridgment, a short cut that dis penses with the necessity of struggling for it. With respect to acquiring truth to live by, every generation and every individual must essentially begin from the beginning.
What is truth, and in what sense was Christ the truth? The first question, as is well known, was asked by Pilate (Jn. 18:38), and it is doubtful whether he ever really cared to have his ques tion answered. Pilate asks Christ, "What is truth?" That it did not occur to Pilate that Christ was the truth demonstrates pre cisely that he had no eye at all for truth. Christ's life was the truth (Jn. 14:6). To this end was Christ born, and for this pur pose did he come into the world, that he should bear witness to the truth. What, then, is the fundamental confusion in Pilate's question? It consists in this, that it occurred to him to question Christ in this way; for in questioning Christ he actually de nounced himself; he revealed that Christ's life had not illu mined him. How could Christ enlighten Pilate with words when Pilate could not see through Christ's own life what truth is!
Pilate's question is extremely foolish. Not that he asks, "What is truth?" but that he questions Christ, he whose life is expressly
the truth and who at every moment demonstrates more power fully by his life what truth is than all the most profound lectures of the cleverest thinkers. Though it makes perfect sense to ask any other person, a thinker, a teacher, or whoever, "What is truth?" to ask Christ this it is the greatest possible confusion. Obviously Pilate is of the opinion that Christ is just a man, like everyone else. Poor Pilate! Pilate's question is the most foolish and confusing question ever asked by man. It is as if I were to ask someone standing right before me, "Do you exist?" How can that person reply? So also with Christ in relation to Pilate. Christ is the truth. "If my life," he might say, "cannot open your eyes to what truth is, then what can I say? For I am the truth."
As with Pilate, in our day Christ as the truth has also been abolished: we take Christ's teaching – but abolish Christ. We want truth the easy way. This is to abolish truth, for Christ the teacher is more important than the teaching. Just as Christ's life, the fact that he lived here on earth, is vastly more important than all the results of his life, so also is Christ infinitely more important than his teaching.
Christ is the truth in the sense that to be the truth is the only true explanation of it; the only true way of acquiring it. Truth is not a sum of statements, not a definition, not a system of con cepts, but a life. Truth is not a property of thought that guaran tees validity to thinking. No, truth in its most essential character is the reduplication* of truth within yourself, within me, within him. Your life, my life, his life expresses the truth in the striving. Just as the truth was a life in Christ, so too, for us truth must be lived.
*Reduplication is Kierkegaard's term meaning to exist in what one understands, to manifest the truth in one's life. It means to live out in life the challenges of thought, to be what one says.
13 Truth is the Way
Therefore, truth is not a matter of knowing this or that but of being in the truth. Despite all modern philosophy, there is an infinite difference here, best seen in Christ's response to Pilate. Christ did not know the truth but was the truth. Not as if he did not know what truth is, but when one is the truth and when the requirement is to be in the truth, to merely "know" the truth is insufficient – it is an untruth. For knowing the truth is some thing that follows as a matter of course from being in the truth, not the other way around. Nobody knows more of the truth than what he is of the truth. To properly know the truth is to be in the truth; it is to have the truth for one's life. This always costs a struggle. Any other kind of knowledge is a falsification. In short, the truth, if it is really there, is a being, a life. The Gospel says that this is eternal life, to know the only true God and the one whom he sent, the truth (Jn. 17:3). That is, I only know the truth when it becomes a life in me.
Truth is not a deposit of acquired knowledge, the yield. This might have been if Christ had been, for example, a teacher of truth, a thinker, one who made a discovery. But Christ is the way as well as the truth. His teaching is infinitely superior to all the inventions of any and every age, an eternity older and an eternity higher than all systems, even the very newest. His teaching is the truth – not in terms of knowledge, but in the sense that the truth is a way – and as the God-man he is and re mains the way; something that no human being, however zeal ously he professes that the truth is the way, dare assert of himself without blasphemy.
Christ compares truth to food and appropriating it to eating it (Jn. 6:48–51). Just as food is appropriated (assimilated) and thereby becomes the sustenance of life, so also spiritually, truth is both the giver and the sustenance of life. It is life. Therefore one can see what a monstrous mistake it is to impart or represent
Christianity by lecturing. The truth is lived before it is under stood. It must be fought for, tested, and appropriated. Truth is the way. And when the truth is the way, then the way cannot be shortened or drop out unless the truth itself is distorted or drops out. Is this not too difficult to understand? Anyone will easily understand it if he just gives himself to it.
14 The Road Is How
There is a generally accepted metaphor that com pares life to a road. To compare life to a road can indeed be fruitful in many ways, but we must consider how life is unlike a road. In a physical sense a road is an external actuality, no mat ter whether anyone is walking on it or not, no matter how the individual travels on it – the road is the road. But in the spiri tual sense, the road comes into existence only when we walk on it. That is, the road is how it is walked.
It would be unreasonable to define a highway by how it is walked. Whether it is the young person who walks it with his head held high or the old decrepit person who struggles along with head bowed down, whether it is the happy person hurry ing to reach a goal or the worrier who creeps slowly along, whether it is the poor traveler on foot or the rich traveler in his carriage – the road, in the physical sense, is the same for all. The road is and remains the same, the same highway. But not the road of virtue. We cannot point to the road of virtue and say: There runs the road of virtue. We can only show how the road of virtue is walked, and if anyone refuses to walk that way, he is walking another road.
The dissimilarity in the metaphor shows up most clearly when the discussion is simultaneously about a physical road and a road in the spiritual sense. For example, when we read in the Gospel about the good Samaritan, there is mention of the
road between Jericho and Jerusalem. The story tells of five people who walked "along the same road." Spiritually speaking, however, each one walked his own road. The highway, alas, makes no difference; it is the spiritual that makes the difference and distinguishes the road. Let us consider more carefully how this is.
The first man was a peaceful traveler who walked along the road from Jericho to Jerusalem, along a lawful road. The second man was a robber who "walked along the same road" – and yet on an unlawful road. Then a priest came "along the same road"; he saw the poor unfortunate man who had been assaulted by the robber. Perhaps he was momentarily moved but went right on by. He walked the road of indifference. Next a Levite came "along the same road." He saw the poor unfortunate man; he too walked past unmoved, continuing his road. The Levite walked "along the same road" but was walking his way, the way of selfishness and callousness. Finally a Samaritan came "along the same road." He found the poor unfortunate man on the road of mercy. He showed by example how to walk the road of mercy; he demonstrated that the road, spiritually speaking, is precisely this; how one walks. This is why the Gospel says, "Go and do likewise." Yes, there were five travelers who walked "along the same road," and yet each one walked his own road.
The question "how one walks life's road" makes all the differ ence. In other words, when life is compared to a road, the meta phor simply expresses the universal, that which everyone who is alive has in common by being alive. To that extent we are all walking along the road of life and are all walking along the same road. But when living becomes a matter of truth, then the ques tion becomes: How shall we walk in order to walk the right road on the road of life? The traveler who in truth walks life's road does not ask, "Where is the road?" but asks how one ought to
14 The Road is How
walk along the road. Yet, because impatience does not mind be ing deceived it merely asks where the road is, as if that decided everything as when the traveler finally has found the highway. Worldly wisdom is very willing to deceive by answering cor rectly the question, "Where is the road?" while life's true task is omitted, that spiritually understood the road is: how it is walked.
Worldly sagacity teaches that the road goes over Gerizim, or over Moriah, or that it goes through some science or other, or that the road is certain doctrines, or certain behaviors. But all this is a deception, because the road is how it is walked. It is in deed as Scripture says – two people can be sleeping in the same bed – the one is saved, the other is lost. Two people can go up to the same house of worship – the one goes home saved, the other is lost. Two people can recite the same creed – the one can be saved, the other is lost. How does this happen except for the fact that, spiritually speaking, it is a deception to know where the road is, because the road is: how it is walked?
15 Two Ways of Reflection
There are two ways of reflection. For objective re flection, truth becomes an object, and the point is to disregard the knowing subject (the individual). By contrast, in subjective reflection truth becomes personal appropriation, a life, inward ness, and the point is to immerse oneself in this subjectivity. Now, then, which of the ways is the way of truth that matters for an existing person?
The way of objective reflection turns the individual into something accidental, and thus turns existence into an indiffer ent, vanishing something. The way of objective truth turns away from the knowing subject. The subject and subjectivity become unimportant, and correspondingly, the truth is a mat ter of indifference. Objective validity is paramount. Any per sonal interest is subjectivity. For this reason the objective way is convinced that it possesses a security that the subjective way does not have. It is of the opinion that it avoids the danger that lies in wait for the subjective way, and at its extreme this danger is madness. In its view, a solely subjective definition of truth make lunacy and truth indistinguishable. But by staying objec tive one avoids becoming a lunatic. However, is not the absence of inwardness also lunacy?
It is true that subjective reflection turns inward, but in this inward deepening there is truth. Lest we forget, the subject, the individual, is an existing self, and existing is a process of becom
15 Two Ways of Reflection
ing. Therefore truth as the identity of thought and being is an illusion of the abstract. The knower is first and foremost an existing person. In other words, thinking and being are not au tomatically one and the same. If the existing person could actu ally be outside himself, the truth would then be something concluded for him. However, for the truly existing person, pas sion, not thought, is existence at its very highest: true knowing pertains essentially to existence, to a life of decision and respon sibility. Only ethical and ethical-religious knowing is essential knowing. Only truth that matters to me, to you, is of significance.
Let me clarify the difference between objective and subjec tive reflection. True inwardness in an existing subject involves passion, and truth as a paradox corresponds to passion. In for getting that one is an existing subject, one loses passion, and in turn, truth ceases to be a paradox. If truth is the comprehen sible, the knowing subject shifts from being human to being an abstract thinker, and truth becomes an abstract, comprehen sible object for his knowing. When the question about truth is asked objectively, what is reflected upon is not the relation but the what of the relation. As long as what one relates oneself to is the truth, the subject is supposedly in the truth. But when the question about truth is asked subjectively, the individual's rela tion to the truth is what matters. If only the how (not the what) of this relation is in truth, then the individual is in truth, even if he in this way were to relate himself to untruth.
When approached objectively, the question of truth is only about categories of thought. Approached subjectively, however, truth is about inwardness. At its maximum, the how of inward ness is the passion of the infinite, and the passion of the infinite is the essential truth. Decision exists only in subjectivity. Thus the passion of the infinite, not its content, is the deciding factor,
for its content is precisely itself. In this way the subjective how and subjectivity, not the objective what and objectivity, are the truth.
Let us take the knowledge of God as an example. The way of objectivity concerns itself with what is reflected upon, of whether this is the true God. In the way of subjectivity, however, the individual relates to God in such a way that this relation is in truth a God-relation. Now, on which side is the truth? Is it on neither side? Or, better yet, does it lie somewhere in between? But how can this be? An existing person cannot be in two places at once. He cannot exist as a subject-object.
God is a subject to be related to, not an object to be studied or mediated on. He exists only for subjective inwardness. The person who chooses the subjective way immediately grasps the difficulty of trying to find God objectively. He understands that to know God means to resort to God, not by virtue of objective deliberation, but by virtue of the infinite passion of inwardness. Whereas objective knowledge goes along leisurely on the long road of deliberation, subjective knowledge considers every de lay of decision a deadly peril. Knowing subjectively considers decision so important that it is immediately urgent, as if the de layed opportunity had already passed by unused.
Now, if the problem is to determine where there is more truth, whether on the side of the person who only objectively seeks the true God and the approximating truth of the Godidea or on the side of the person who is infinitely concerned that he in truth relate himself to God with the passion of his need, then there can be no doubt about the answer. If someone lives in the midst of Christianity and enters, with knowledge of the true idea of God, the house of God, the house of the true God, and prays, but prays in untruth, and if someone lives in an idolatrous land but prays with all the passion of infinity, al
15 Two Ways of Reflection
though his eyes are resting upon the image of an idol – where, then, is there more truth? The one prays in truth to God al though he is worshipping an idol; the other prays in untruth to the true God and is therefore in truth worshipping an idol. The distance between objective reflection and subjectivity is indeed an infinite one.
16 The Weight of Inwardness
Truth is the work of freedom and in such a way that freedom constantly brings forth truth. What I am referring to is very plain and simple, namely, that truth exists for a par ticular individual only as he himself produces it in action. If the individual prevents the truth from being for him in that way, we have a phenomenon of the demonic. Truth has always had many loud proclaimers, but the question is whether a person will in the deepest sense acknowledge the truth, allow it to per meate his whole being, accept all its consequences, and not have an emergency hiding place for himself and a Judas kiss for the consequence.
There is a lot of talk about truth. But the task before us is to vindicate certitude and inwardness, not in abstraction but in an entirely concrete sense. Certitude and inwardness determine whether or not the individual is in the truth. It is not a lack of content that gives rise to arbitrariness, unbelief, mockery of re ligion, but lack of certitude. Whenever inwardness and appro priation are lacking, the individual is unfree in relation to the truth, even though he otherwise "possesses" the whole truth. He is unfree because there is something that makes him anxious, namely, the good.
It is not my desire to use big words in speaking about the Age as a whole. However, you can hardly deny that the reason for its
16 The Weight of Inwardness
anxiety and unrest is because in one direction, "truth" increases in scope and in quantity – via science and technology – while in the other, certainty and confidence steadily decline. Our age is a master in developing truths while being wholly indifferent to certitude. It lacks confidence in the good.
Take the thought of immortality, for example. The person who knows how to prove the immortality of the soul but who is not himself convinced by it, and does not live by it will always be anxious. Despite all his proofs, he shrinks from the truth of immortality. He deceives both himself and others by pretend ing that the proof is enough. In the process of trying to prove immortality he forgets immortality, since immortality is pre cisely what he fears. He remains anxious and is thus forced to seek yet a further understanding of what it means to believe in the soul's immortality.