Part 7
It occurs to me that we would be quite happy if we managed to find a way for everyone to be a virtuoso in ventriloquism – how satisfied we would be with anonymity!
64 The Crowd
When it has come to the point where the majority decides what constitutes truth, it will not be long before they take to deciding it with their fists.
Every future effort at reformation, if it is genuine, will be di rected against the crowd, not against the government.
Instinctively "man" has a tactic he uses against "spirit": Let us form a crowd! This is our tactic, our mode of defense. It is done cunningly this way: Let us join together in order to strive to ward the ideals. But to form a crowd is precisely the way to get rid of the ideals. Just as the ostrich sticks its head into the ground and thinks it is invisible, so we form a crowd and think no one can see us. We speak of not being able to see the woods for the trees, and by this tactic we hope that one cannot see the trees for the woods. Just like the person who says he is not at home to visitors, we are not at home whenever we lose our selves in the crowd – instead of being an I.
If Christ lived today, attention would surely make the most desperate effort. Every day every paper would have an article on him. Every insignificant detail about him would be spread all over the country in thousands of copies. Everything possible would be dug up to make the situation demented, and harm less! Everything possible would be done to dismiss him.
Of all the tyrannies, fear is the most dangerous. The commu nists fight for human rights. Good, so do I. Precisely for that reason I fight with all my might against the tyranny of the fear of man.
Something to chatter about! The crowd demands only some thing to chatter about, and this is understood to mean finding something about each other to chatter about, something about our meaningless lives, particularly the trivialities in our lives. Anything else nauseates the public, which knows only one lust – the desire for self-pollution by talking, a lust in which it indulges with the help of the journalist.
Journalists are animal-keepers who provide something for the public to talk about. In ancient days people were cast to the wild animals. Now the public devours the people – those taste fully prepared by the journalists.
If you want to be loathsome to God, just run with the herd.
65 Decisiveness
I will work on with energy and not waste time looking back, not like the man who was caught in quicksand and began calcu lating how far down he had already sunk, forgetting that all the while he was sinking still deeper. I will hurry along the path I have discovered, not looking back as did Lot's wife, but remem bering that it is a hill up which we have to struggle.
A golden key, it is said, fits every lock. But decision and deter mination also unlock doors, and that is why they are called resolution. With resolution the door is opened to the noblest powers of the soul.
As a rule, to go to school means that I go wherever the teacher is. Spiritually it means that I act decisively. At once, there is the teacher. I desire to be educated spiritually – and yet I do not de sire to act decisively? Nonsense!
Good intention makes a person think that everything is settled by a resolution. But if anyone allows himself to be nourished by good intentions, the resolution itself becomes a seducer and de ceiver instead of a trustworthy guide.
It is a proud thing to dive into danger, and it is a proud thing to battle with untold horrors, but it is also wretched to have an abundance of intentions and a poverty of action, to be rich in truths and poor in virtues.
We creep before we learn to walk, and to want to fly is always precarious. To be sure, there are great decisions, but even in re gard to them the main thing is to activate your resolution, lest one become so high-flying in the resolution that one forgets to walk.
Many have gone astray through not understanding how to con tinue a good beginning.
A conviction is not firmly fixed when everyone presses upon it equally and holds it firm. No, its true stability is revealed when everything is in question.
If it is hard to bear the world's persecution, it is harder still to bear the responsibility for not having acted, to stand ashamed in eternity because you did not win the bold confidence that transforms shame into honor.
Ah, how many ways there are to choose in the hour of decision! And yet there is only one true way; the others are deviations.
By God's help and by your own faithfulness something good will always come from the uncompromising beginning.
65 Decisiveness
Decision is the eternal protest against fictions.
Do you think that just as the Israelites brought Jehovah a tenth of the fruits of the earth and of the flocks you are to bring him only one-tenth of your heart? Do you think that just as the Jews labored six days out of the week and rested on the seventh, you are to think about the world and its activities six days out of the week but about God on the seventh? No, the Christian's tenth and the Christian's sacrifice is his whole heart. The Christian's holy day is every day. And if you bring God a tenth, watch out lest God open his window, as the prophet says, and look down and see you.
Only when he becomes the way, the truth, and the life for you, only then does he become everything to you. Christ must be all or nothing for you. But only when his mighty voice speaks to you and says,"I will be everything to you," will he be everything for you.
Nothing, neither the most trifling nor the most important thing, must stand between you and Christ. No, the commit ment must be unconditional. Only then can you pray that you won't be treated too unjustly. Committing yourself to Christ, which is a matter of the spirit and of dying to the world, means that you run the risk of Christ making things so tangled for you that you almost despair. This is what is so appalling to the flesh. So must it be, but at the same time remember that Christ is grace, that it is to grace that you can so commit yourself.
Take a combination of five people, each of whom puts 5/8 of his capability into working jointly for the same cause, and take one person who does not have more ability than each of these five but puts all his abilities to work. Who will achieve the most? All sensible people will unanimously bet on the combination. I bet on the one person. Putting all you have into something is vastly different from a high total of fractional efforts. The one is dedication, it is spirit – the other is human muddling.
Simplicity is to do what one says. To act is to make simple; what I carry out in action is simple, for it cannot be done otherwise.
Imagine a well trained hunting dog. He accompanies his mas ter on a visit to a family where, as all too often in our time, there is a crowd of ill-behaved youths. Their eyes barely notice the hound before they begin to terribly mistreat it. The hound, which is well trained, as these youths are not, fixes his eye at once upon his master to ascertain from his expression what he expects him to do. And he understands his master's glance to mean that he is to put up with all the ill-treatment. Thereupon the youths become still rougher, and finally they agree that it must be a prodigiously stupid dog that puts up with everything.
The dog meanwhile is concerned with only one thing, what his master's glance commands him to do. And, lo, that glance suddenly alters; it signifies – and the hound understands it at once – use your strength! That instant he seizes the biggest lout and throws him to the ground – and now no one stops him, ex cept the master's glance, and at the same instant he is as he was a moment before.
65 Decisiveness
Suppose that there are two opposing armies drawn up in the field. A soldier arrives whom both parties invite to fight on their side. He makes his choice, is vanquished and taken prisoner. As prisoner he is brought before the victor, to whom he foolishly presumes to offer his services on the same terms as were ex tended to him before the battle. Would not the victor say to him, "My friend, you are now my prisoner. There was indeed a time when you could have chosen differently, but now every thing is changed…" One who throws a stone has power over it until he has thrown it, but not afterwards.
When it is a question of making a resolution the calculation of probability is a contemptible fellow, a bungler, a peddler. It seeks to trick people out of something more than money is worth. Anyone who seeks the aid of probability is lost in imagi nation, whatever else he may try to do. When making a resolu tion, if you do not meet up with God, you might as well have never lived. Probability is a commercial paper not quoted in heaven. In making a resolution, therefore, let God overawe probability and render it speechless.
When the castle door of inwardness has long been shut and fi nally is opened, it does not move noiselessly like an apartment door that swings nicely on hinges. No, No! Either/or is the word before which the folding doors fly open. Oh blissful sight! Ei ther/or is the token that insures bold entrance into the uncon ditional. God be praised! Yes, either/or is the key to heaven! On the other hand, what is, was, and continues to be our misfor tune is this "to a certain degree," this paltriness or cowardly shrewdness, which being applied to Christianity transforms it into twaddle! No: Either/or!
However tenderly the actor and actress embrace one another and caress one another on stage, it remains only a theatrical union, a theater-marriage. So also in relation to the uncondi tional. All this thing of "to a certain degree" is theatrical, it grasps an illusion. Only either/or is the embrace that grasps the unconditional.
Father in heaven! Teach me to walk in your sight and let not my thoughts and deeds be as strangers from afar paying a brief visit to your mansions. Let me never forget that faith is a life course, so that even if I stand at the farthest border of your kingdom, far away by myself like the publican of old, I only stand with my face toward you with staff in hand ready to go – not like him who put his hand to the plow and then turned around.
In the world of the spirit, there is neither luck nor chance. The only one who is shut out is the one who shuts himself out. In the world of the spirit, all are invited; if spirit pertains to one single person it pertains to all.
In making a choice it is not so much a question of choosing the right as of the energy, the earnestness, the passion with which one chooses. This is how personality is consolidated. Even if a person chooses the wrong, he will nevertheless discover pre cisely by reason of the energy with which he chose, that he has chosen the wrong.
66 Doctrine and Theology
Christ did not establish any doctrine; he acted. He did not teach that there was redemption, he redeemed. Christ's rela tionship to God, nature, and the human situation was condi tioned by his activity. Everything else is to be regarded only as introduction.
Christianity should not be lectured about. Christ says, my teach ing is food. Christ has not appointed assistant-professors – but followers.
Christianity is not the doctrine of denying oneself. Christian ity is to deny oneself.
When Christianity becomes nothing but doctrine, the test is nothing but a scholarly examination.
No one can lecture himself into eternity.
What is needed is not professors but witnesses. No, if Christ did not need scholars but was satisfied with fishermen, what is needed now is more fishermen.
The Law of Existence: First life, then theory. Then, as a rule, there comes still a third: an attempt to create life with the aid of theory, or the delusion of having the same life by means of the theory. This is the conclusion, the parody, and then the process ends – and then there must be new life again.
Take Christianity, for example. It came in as life, sheer daring that risked everything for the faith. The change began when Christianity came to be regarded as doctrine. This is the theory; it was about that which was lived. But there still existed some vitality, and therefore at times life-and-death disputes were car ried on over "doctrine" and doctrinal formulations. Neverthe less doctrine became more and more the distinctive mark of being a Christian. Everything then became objective. This is Christianity's theory. Then followed a period in which the in tention was to produce life by means of the theory; this is the period of the system, the parody. Now this process has ended. Christianity must begin anew as life.
Fixed ideas are like a cramp in your foot: the best remedy is to stomp on them.
A dogmatic system ought not be erected in order to compre hend faith, but in order to comprehend that faith cannot be comprehended.
To treat Christianity as a science is to change it into something of the past and to admit that it is no longer something present.
66 Doctrine and Theology
When a lark wants to pass gas like an elephant, it has to blow up. In the same way, all scholarly theology must blow up, be cause it has wanted to be the supreme wisdom instead of re maining what it is, an unassuming triviality.
The theological world is like the road along the coast on a Sun day afternoon during the races. People storm past one another, shouting and yelling, laugh and make fools of each other, drive their horses to death, upset each other, are run over, and when at last they arrive, covered with dust and out of breath – they look at each other – and go home.
Someone has the following invitation advertised in the news paper: "If there are five or six like-minded people who together with me and without any solemn ceremonies will pledge them selves simply to try to understand the New Testament and strive to express its demands in action, I propose to start religious meetings. If by any chance a theological professor should want to attend these meetings, the price for him will be twenty dol lars each time. This does not seem unreasonable to me when one considers that to become a full professor is to make a living off the fact that Christ was crucified."
67 Doubt and Skepticism
All the objections to Christianity – what are they, after all, to the person who in truth is conscious of being a sinner and who has experienced belief in the forgiveness of sins and in this faith is saved from his sin? One conceivable objection might be: Yes, but is it not still possible for you to be saved in some other way? But how can one reply to this? One cannot. It is just like a per son in love. If someone were to say: Yes, but you could perhaps have fallen in love with another – then he must answer: To this I cannot reply, for I know only one thing, that this is my beloved. As soon as the person who is in love tries to reply to this objec tion, he is by that very fact not a believer.
It is claimed that arguments against Christianity arise from doubt. This is a complete misunderstanding. The arguments against Christianity arise out of rebellion, out of a reluctance to obey. The battle against objections is but shadow-boxing, be cause it is intellectual combat with doubt instead of ethical combat against mutiny.
Christ says: Do according to what I say – then you shall know. Consequently, decisive action first of all. By acting, your life will come into collision with existence, and then you will know the reality of grace. Nowadays we have turned the whole thing
67 Doubt and Skepticism
around. Christianity has become a world view. Thus, before I get involved I must first justify it. Good night to Christianity! Now doubt has surely conquered. And this doubt can never be halted by reasons, which only nourish doubt. No, doubt can only be halted by imitation.
The objections to Christianity may be dismissed with one single comment: Do these objections come from someone who has carried out the commands of Christ? If not, all his objec tions are nonsense. Christ continually declares that we must do what he says – and then we will know that it is truth.
Since Descartes, skeptics don't dare express anything definite with regards to knowledge. Yet they dare to act, and in this re spect are satisfied with probability. What an enormous contra diction! As if it were not far more dreadful to do something about which one is doubtful (thereby incurring responsibility) than to assert an idea. Or is it because the ethical is in itself cer tain? But then there is something that doubt cannot reach!
The method of beginning with doubt in order to philosophize seems as appropriate as having a soldier slouch in order to get him to stand erect.
God cannot be an object of study, since God is subject. For this very reason, when you deny God, you do not harm God but de stroy yourself. When you mock God, you mock yourself.
A conviction is called a conviction because it is over and above proof. Proof is given for a mathematical proposition in such a
way that no disproof is conceivable. For that reason there can be no conviction with respect to mathematics. But as far as every existential proposition is concerned, for every proof there is some disproof, there is a pro and a contra. The person of con viction is not ignorant of this; he knows full well what doubt is able to assert: a contra. For that very reason he is a person of conviction, because he has made a resolution and voluntarily raises himself higher than the logical maneuvers of proofs and is convinced.
It is good that Christianity still has enemies, because for the longest time they have been the only ones from whom it has been possible to get any trustworthy information about what Christianity is. Yet I dare say Christianity will soon become so meaningless that it will not even be able to make enemies.
It is wrong of established Christendom to say that Feuerbach (an atheist) is attacking Christianity. It is not true; he is attack ing the Christians by demonstrating that their lives do not cor respond to the teachings of Christ. This is quite different. What Christianity needs are more such traitors. Christendom has in sidiously betrayed Christianity by not wanting to be truly Christian but to have the appearance of being so. Now "traitors" are needed.
If you suffer because you do good, because you are in the right, because your are loving; if it is because you are for a good cause that you live despised, persecuted, ridiculed, in poverty, then you will find that you do not doubt Christ's resurrection. Why? Because you need it.
67 Doubt and Skepticism
If Christianity is viewed as history, the important thing will be to obtain a completely reliable report. But if the inquiring sub ject is infinitely interested in his relation to Christianity's truth and tries to rely on history, he will despair at once. With regard to the historical the greatest certainty is only an approximation, and an approximation is too little to build one's happiness on. Even with the most stupendous learning and perseverance, and even if the heads of all the critics were mounted on a single neck, one would never arrive at anything more than an approxi mation. There is an essential misrelation between all that and a personal, infinite interestedness in one's own eternal happiness.
One who truly believes that Christ was and is God, who prays to him repeatedly every day, who finds all his joy in association with him and thinking of him – such a person comes to terms with the historical. How silly to be upset if one gospel writer said one thing and a second another. You can turn to Christ in prayer and say, "This disturbs me, yet you are still with me." It is nonsense that the significance of historical details should be de cisive with respect to faith. How could this matter? Is Christ not with us when we turn to him daily?
Believe that Christ is God – then call upon him and pray to him. The rest comes by itself. When the fact that he is present is more intimately and inwardly certain than all historical infor mation, then you will come out all right with the details of his historical existence – whether the wedding was at Cana or per haps somewhere else, whether there were two disciples or only one. The historical details are not nearly so important simply because Christ is Christ, the eternally present one who is true God and true man.
Faith's conflict with the world is not a battle of thought with doubt, thought with thought. It is a battle of character. The per son of faith is a person of character who does not insist upon comprehending everything. Now comes the conflict. The world insists that to believe what you cannot comprehend is not only blind obedience but obscurantism, stupidity, and so on. The world wants to alarm the believer against such foolishness. This is precisely why faith is a task for the person of character.
Teach me, Lord, that the fight of faith is not a fight with doubt, thought against thought, but a fight for character. Enable me to see that human vanity consists in having to understand. Save me from the vanity of not being willing to obey like a child, and of wanting to be like a grown man who has to understand. Help me to realize that he who will not obey when he cannot understand does not, in any essential sense, obey you at all. Make me a believer, a "character man," who, unreservedly obedient, sees it as necessary for his character's sake that he must not al ways understand. Make me willing to believe even when I can not understand.
68 The Eternal
When a ship is put to sea, the end of a cable is cast out and fastened to a tugboat – and in this way the ship is drawn. When a human life is to be commenced and continued without too much dependence upon the temporal, a cable must be cast out. Christ alone is the drawing power from eternity to all eternity.
Have you lived in such a way that truth was in you, that there was something higher for which you actually suffered? Or has your life revolved around profitable returns? The fact that you got along well only makes matters worse. This distinction the eternal cannot and will not take away, it will not contradict it self. Two such individuals can never in all eternity come to an understanding with each other.
Most people think, speak, and write the way they sleep, eat, and drink, without any question ever arising as to their relationship to the eternal.
Becoming nothing in this world is the condition for becoming something in the other world.
The eternal is acquired in one way, and it is different from every thing else precisely because it can be acquired only in one single way. It is the difficult way that Christ indicated by the words: "Small is the gate and narrow the way, that leads to life, and few are they that find it." The comfortable – precisely the thing in which our age excels – absolutely cannot be applied with re spect to an eternal blessedness. When, for example, the thing you are required to do is to walk, it is no use to make the most astonishing inventions in the way of the easiest carriages and to want to transport yourself in these when the task prescribed to you is walking. And if the eternal is the way in which it is ac quired, it doesn't do any good to want to alter this way, however admirably, in the direction of comfort. The eternal is acquired only in the difficult way.
If there is no eternal consciousness in a human being, if at the bottom of everything there is only a wild ferment, a power that, twisting in dark passions, produces everything great or inconse quential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lies hidden be neath everything, what would life be then but despair? If this is the way life is, if there is no sacred bond uniting mankind, if one generation rises up after another like the leaves of the forest, if one generation succeeds the other as the songs of birds in the woods, if the human race passes through the world as a ship through the sea or the wind through the desert, a thoughtless and fruitless whim, if an eternal oblivion always lurks hungrily for its prey and there is no power strong enough to wrest it from its clutches – how empty and devoid of consolation life would be!
A person seated in a glass case is not put to as much embarrass ment as is one in his transparency before God. This is the factor
68 The Eternal
of conscience. By the aid of conscience things are so arranged that the judicial report follows at once upon every fault, and that the guilty one himself must write. Everyone arrives in eter nity already bringing with him and delivering the most accurate account of every least insignificance that he has committed or has left undone. Therefore to hold judgement in eternity is a thing a child could manage; there is really nothing for a third person to do. Everything, even to the most insignificant word is counted and in order.
The guilty person's journey through life to eternity is like that of the murderer who got on a train to flee from the place where he perpetrated his crime. Alas, just under the railway coach where he sat ran the electric telegraph with its signal and the order for his apprehension at the next station. When he reached the station and stepped off the coach he was arrested. The denunciation was waiting there for him.
One has at most seventy years for enjoyment – but an eternity for remembering. And pleasure does not show up at all well in memory.
In the temporal world, the main thing is to be able to talk, to have a regular devil's gift of gab. This is the case all down the line, right from the merchant talking up his wares and someone buttering up the women and the agitator soft-soaping the pub lic, right up to the poet, speaker, and scholar. It's a matter of talk, not character-transformation.
If eternity were allowed to rule, there would be no verbosity, which is just what temporality loves – it loves appearance, pro crastination, and most of all, talk. But eternity has an eye for
action, character-transformation. Every change along the line of talk is of no assistance whatsoever when it comes to eternity.
Let us never deceive youth by foolish talk about the matter of accomplishing. Let us never make them so busy in the service of the moment, that they forget the patience of willing something eternal.
Several families can join together for a box at the theater, and three single gentlemen can join together for a riding horse so that each one rides every third day. But this is not the way it is with immortality. The consciousness of my immortality belongs sim ply and solely to me.
Immortality is the Judgment. Immortality is not a life indefi nitely prolonged, but the eternal separation between the just and the unjust. Immortality is not a continuation that follows as a matter of course, but a separation that follows as a conse quence of the past.
In this world, Truth walks in meekness and humiliation. It does not have a place to lay its head, and it must be thankful if one will give it a cup of water. But if one does this, confessing it for what it is in public, then this lowly figure, this humble, despised, mocked, persecuted wretch, the Truth, has, if I may say so, in its hand an ink pen and writes upon a little tablet: "For eternity."
69 Existence and the Existential
Philosophy is perfectly right in saying that life must be under stood backwards. But then it forgets the other side – that it must be lived forwards.
Life can be explained only after it has been lived.
On the whole there can be no schoolmaster, strictly understood, in the art of existing. With respect to existing, there is only the learner; for anyone who fancies that he is in this respect fin ished – that he can teach others and on top of that himself for gets to exist and to learn – is a fool. In relation to existing there is for all persons one schoolmaster – existence itself.
The essential sermon is one's own existence. A person preaches with this every hour of the day and with power quite different from that of the most eloquent speaker in his most eloquent moment. To let your mouth run with eloquent babbling when such talk is the opposite of your life is in the deepest sense non sense. You become liable to eternal judgment.
What really counts in life is that at some time you have seen something, felt something which is so great, so matchless, that
everything else is nothing by comparison, that even if you for got everything you would never forget this.
It is one thing to introduce a new doctrine into the world, it is something else to live it.
All this talk about wanting to know the truth is gibberish, illu sion, and hypocrisy. Every person understands the truth a good deal more than he lives it. Why does he not do more, then? Ah, there's the rub!
The lives of most people are like the grass – only the trees catch the storm, and they experience a great deal, but the grass expe riences practically nothing.
There are many people who arrive at conclusions in life much the way schoolboys do; they cheat their teachers by copying the answer book without having worked the problem themselves.
What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I am to know, except in so far as a certain understanding must precede every action. The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wants me to do. The thing is to find a truth that is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die. What would be the use of discovering so-called objective truth, of working through all the systems of philosophy and of being able, if required, to review them all and show up the in consistencies within each system; what good would it do me to be able to develop a theory of the state and combine all the de
69 Existence and the Existential
tails into a single whole, and so construct a world in which I did not live, but only held up to the view of others; what good would it do me to be able to explain the meaning of Christian ity if it had no deeper significance for me and for my life; what good would it do me if truth stood before me, cold and naked, not caring whether I recognized her or not, and producing in me a shudder of fear rather than trusting devotion?
I certainly do not deny that there is an imperative of under standing, but it must be taken up into my life, and that is what I now recognize as the most important thing. That is what I lack, and that is why I am left standing like a man who has a rented house and gathered all the furniture and household things to gether, but has not yet found the beloved with whom to share the joys and sorrows of his life.
Everyone, even the most industrious, is in imagination, feel ings, thought and speech, a good bit in front of himself, beyond what he is in action and reality. The majority of us are like a train from which the locomotive has run away – we are so far ahead of ourselves, we are so far behind.
The easiest thing of all is to die; the difficult thing is to live.
It is one thing to let ideas strive with ideas, to battle and be vic torious in a dispute; it is something else entirely to be victorious over your own mind in the battle of life. For however close one battling idea comes to another in life, however close one com batant comes to the other in an argument, all this strife is still at a distance and like shadow-boxing. The measure of a person's fundamental disposition is determined by how far is what he
understands from what he does, how great is the distance be tween his understanding and his action.
It would indeed be a ludicrous contradiction if an existing per son asked what Christianity is and then spent his whole life de liberating on that. In that case, when would he ever exist in it?
To say that Christianity is empty of content because it is not a doctrine is only chicanery. When a believer exists in faith, his existence has enormous content, but not in the sense of a yield in paragraphs.
If an existing person relates himself with passion to eternal happiness, then his life will express the relation. If the eternal does not absolutely transform his existence, then he is not relat ing himself to it.
A speculative thinker has finished on paper and mistakes this for existence.
To be finished with life before life is finished with you is not to finish the task at all.
The true is not superior to the good and the beautiful. The true and the good and the beautiful belong essentially to every hu man existence and are united not in thinking them but in living them.
69 Existence and the Existential
The difficulty is not to understand what Christianity is but to become and to be a Christian.
If a person does not become what he understands, then he does not understand it either.
Between understanding and willing lie excuses and evasions.
Just as air in a sealed space becomes poisonous, so the impris onment of reflection develops a culpable resentment if it is not ventilated by action.
In the world of spirit, to change place is to be changed yourself.
The passion of faith lies not in testifying to an eternal happiness but in transforming one's own existence into a testimony to it.
Seeking the truth means that the seeker himself is changed, so that he may become the place where the object of his search can be.
70 Faith and Reason
It is in the interest of faith to make a final, absolute decision. It is in the interest of the understanding to keep "deliberation" alive. Just as the police would be embarrassed if there were no crimes, so the understanding is embarrassed if deliberation were completed. Faith wants the absolute; the understanding wants prolongation of thought.
What then is the absurd? Quite simply, it is that I, a rational be ing, must act in the situation where my understanding says to me both: you can just as well do the one thing as the other – and you cannot act but you must act. Thus the absurd is to act in this situation in an unwavering confidence in God. Quite simply, I must act, but my intellect has blocked the passage, so I take one of the possibilities and turn pleadingly to God and say: This is how I am doing it; please bless it. I cannot do otherwise, for I am brought to a halt by my understanding.
Enormous treatises have been written that try to demonstrate the truth of Christianity. Behind these we feel perfectly con vinced and secure against all attack. With every demonstration we end with: Ergo, Christ was the one he claimed to be. It is just as certain as two plus two equals four and as easy as putting one's foot in a sock. With this irrefutable "ergo" the professor
70 Faith and Reason
bids defiance, and the missionary confidently goes forth to con vert the unbelieving. But not Christ! He never says: Ergo, I am the expected one. No, he says,"Blessed is he who is not offended at me." That is, we do not come to him by means of proofs, but by picking up his cross.
Demonstrations are ultimately ambiguous, the loquacious understanding's "for and against." Only in choosing is the heart disclosed and this, indeed, was why Christ came to the world – to disclose the thoughts of the heart. Proofs are able to lead someone – not to faith, far from it, but to the point where faith might come into existence. At best they are able to help some one become aware and come into the tension where faith breaks forth: Will you believe or will you be offended?
Can the absolute be praised, commended, served by reasons? No. Anyone who does this reveals that he is a blockhead who cannot think two thoughts together. "Reasons" transpose the absolute into relativity. The absolute must not be intellectually speculated about in the remotest way, researched, chattered about – no, it is the unconditional, so hold your tongue.
There is only one proof – that of faith. It is impossible for a person to hold back his conviction and push ahead with rea sons. If I actually have a firm conviction, then it is higher than reasons; it is actually the conviction that sustains the reasons, not the reasons which sustain the conviction. "Reasons" can lay an egg no more than a rooster can, at most a wind egg, and no matter how much intercourse they have with each other they never beget or bear a conviction. A conviction arises elsewhere.
There is only one proof for the truth of Christianity – the in ward proof, argumentum spiritus sancti (the argument of the
Holy Spirit). The Apostle John intimates this: "If we receive the testimony of men" (this is all the historical proofs and consider ations) "the testimony of God is greater" – that is, the inward testimony is greater. And then: "He who believes in the son of God has the testimony in himself " (1 Jn. 5:9–10).
It is not reasons that justify faith in God's son, but just the opposite – faith in God's son is the testimony. Faith is the movement of infinity within itself, and it cannot be otherwise. Everything previous is preparatory, preliminary, something which disappears as soon as the conviction arrives. Otherwise, there would be no resting in a conviction, for then to have con viction would mean perpetually to repeat the reasons. Faith it self is the testimony, faith is the justification.
Have you seen a ship aground in a spongy bog? It is almost im possible to get it afloat again because it is impossible to drive piles. No pile reaches ground firm enough so that one can rely on it. In just the same way our whole generation is stuck fast in the spongy bog of reason; and there is no grief over it – no, there is self-satisfaction and conceit, which always accompanies reason and the sin of reason. Oh, the sins of the heart, the sins of passion – how much closer they are to salvation than the sin of intellect!
By faith Abraham went out from the land of his fathers and be came a sojourner in the land of promise. He left one thing be hind, and took one thing with him. He left his earthly understanding behind and took faith with him. Otherwise he would have never gone forth.
70 Faith and Reason
In the New Testament faith possesses an ethical character. The apostle speaks of the obedience of faith. Faith is set to a test, is tested, not by reasons, but by life.
Christ uses only one proof: "If you do my father's will, he shall know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speak ing on my own authority." This implies that an action-situation is necessary before the decision of faith can come into existence; it is a venture. It is not a matter of proof first and then the ven ture. No, first the venture, then the proof.
When a rich man goes driving at night with lights on his car riage, he sees a small area better than the poor man who drives in the dark – but he does not see the stars. The lights prevent that. It is the same with all intellectual understanding. It sees well close at hand but takes away the infinite outlook.
When Christianity entered the world it presupposed want, dis tress, the suffering of the anguished conscience, the hunger that cries out only for food – and then Christianity was the food. Nowadays we think that we have to offer appetizers before we can get people to enter into faith. What appetizers? The preach ing of the law? No, no! Christianity must be served with such appetizer seasonings as proofs, grounds, probability, and the like. This means we betray Christianity, we actually deny that it is unconditionally the food, that the fault lies in men, that they should be properly starved out.
We have changed Christianity from a radical cure into a minor precaution, like something used to prevent colds, toothaches, and the like. And strangely enough, although every inventor of drops,
pills, and so on, "which do neither good nor harm," trumpets his medicine as a miracle balm, Christianity is proclaimed in very muted tones. A host of grounds and reasons march right up in order to make it somewhat probable that there is something to Christianity. Truly, if worst comes to worst, I believe that Chris tianity would be better off served by a charlatan than by a legion of witnesses of this sort.
God can no more prove his existence by way of something else than he can swear; he has nothing higher than himself to swear by.
Take all the skeptics who have difficulties with Christianity and all the apologists who strive to defend it, and see how the whole thing is a false alarm. The difficulties are simply introduced by God in order to make sure that he can become the object of faith. This is why Christianity is a paradox; this explains the contradictions in Scripture. But the intellectual approach wants to abolish faith. It has no inkling of God's sovereignty nor what the requirement of faith means.
In teaching a child to walk you get in front of the child and turn towards it. You do not walk alongside the child but are the goal toward which the child is to walk. Even though you stand so far away that you cannot reach the child, you stretch out your arms and motion with them as if you already embraced the child, although there is still some distance between you and the child. That much solicitude you have, but more solicitous you cannot be, for then the child does not learn to walk. So it is with Christ. Christ gets in front of us, does not walk beside his dis
70 Faith and Reason
ciples, but is himself the goal toward which we are to strive while we are learning to walk alone. There he stands at the goal, turning toward us and stretching out his arms – just as a mother does.
The widow who put three pennies in the temple treasury box performed a miracle just like the miracle of the five loaves and three fish; her three pennies were transformed into abundance.
You can either employ all your acumen to show the unreason ableness of a miracle and then on that basis (that it is unreason able) conclude that it is no miracle – but would it be a miracle if it were reasonable? – or you can employ all your profundity and acumen to understand the miracle, to make it understand able, and then conclude that it is a miracle because it is under standable – but then it is indeed no miracle. No, let miracle be what it is: an object of faith.
We should either abandon miracles completely or act accord ingly.
You must venture out into life, out on the sea, and lift up your voice, even though God does not hear it, and not stand on the shore and watch others fighting and struggling. Only then does the understanding acquire its official sanction. To stand on one leg and prove God's existence is a very different thing from go ing on your knees and thanking him.
Faith is a restless thing. It is health, but stronger and more vio lent than the most burning fever.
Faith simply means that what I am seeking is not here, and for that very reason I believe it. Faith expressly signifies the deep, strong, blessed restlessness that drives the believer so that he cannot settle down at rest in this world. He who has settled down has ceased to be a believer, because a believer cannot sit still – a believer travels forward in faith.
One person can do much for another, but he cannot give him faith.
What is the eternal power in a human being? It is faith. What is the expectancy of faith? Victory – or, as Scripture teaches, that all things work together for good for those who love God. Faith is an expectancy of the future that expects victory. Faith con quers the future. The believer, therefore, is finished with the fu ture before he begins with the present, and this victory can only make him stronger for the present work.
What modern philosophy and theology understand by faith is really what is called having an opinion, or what in everyday lan guage we call "to believe." Christianity is thus made into a teaching. Then the next stage is to "comprehend" this teaching, and this philosophy and theology are supposed to do. All this would be entirely proper if Christianity were a teaching. But it's not. Faith is related to the God-man, not a doctrine.
What faith it takes to believe that this life is noticed by God and that this is enough!
70 Faith and Reason
Imagine a violinist. If, without having learned the least bit of music, he were to take his seat in the orchestra and right away begin playing, he would not only be disturbed but would dis turb others. No, for a long time he practices by himself, alone. As far as possible not a thing disturbs him there; he sits and beats time etc. But his aim is to play with the orchestra. He must be able to tolerate the profusion of the most varied instru ments, this interweaving of sounds, and yet be able to attend to his violin and play along just as calmly and confidently as if he were home alone in his room. Oh, this again makes it necessary for him to be by himself to learn to be able to do this – but the aim is always that he play in the orchestra. It is the same with faith and the task of living it out.
He who loves God without faith reflects upon himself; he who loves God in faith reflects upon God.
Ethically speaking, what Abraham planned to do was to mur der Isaac. Religiously, however, he was willing to sacrifice Isaac. In this contradiction lies the very anguish that can indeed make anyone sleepless. And yet without that anguish Abraham is not the one he is. Neither would faith be what it is.
Resignation by itself does not require faith. It has only to comply with the eternal. It renounces, but does not gain. Faith, however, does not renounce anything. On the contrary, in faith I receive ev erything. Herein lies the crucial difference. It takes a purely human courage to renounce the world of temporality in order to win eter nity; but it takes a humble and paradoxical courage to take hold of what is temporal and to do so for the sake of the eternal. That
courage is the courage of faith. Through faith Abraham did not renounce his claim on Isaac. No, through his faith he received Isaac.
In relation to Christ, there is only one time, the present. Eigh teen hundred years makes absolutely no difference; they neither change Christ nor reveal who he was, for who he is is revealed only to faith.
71 Following Jesus
Christ's entire life must supply the norm for the Christian and for the life of the whole Church. One has to take every particu lar aspect of Christ's life straight from his baptism to his resur rection and show correspondence. What else does it mean to be a Christian?
What is Christianity? Simple: to be like Christ.
It does not say that you should try to resemble Christ. No, you are to put on Christ, put him on yourself – as when someone goes around in borrowed clothing – put him on, as when some one who looks strikingly like another not only tries to resemble him but represents him. Christ gives you his clothing (the satis faction of atonement) so that you might represent him.
Imitation of Jesus! I do not mean the kind of imitation consist ing of fasting and flagellation, and so on. No, imitation means following the example, being willing to witness for the truth and against untruth, and to do so without seeking any support whatsoever from any external power, neither attaching oneself to any power nor forming a party. No wonder we humans are unable to get involved with this imitation.
There are this many children baptized every year, that many confirmed, and how many become theological professors and Bible teachers? There are a thousand pastors. Everything is in place – if only following Christ existed.
People seem to forget that there is a limit to the passion of making assurances and that this limit lies where the passion of action should begin. And when this is lacking, verbal assurances become the more vehement and shrill, all the more a declara tion that what is said is a lie in the assurer's throat.
We congratulate ourselves on having explained away all asceti cism from Christianity, showing how far Christianity is from the foolishness of such things as monastic flagellation. But wait a little! Something is always left out, and that is the Pattern: the Lord of Lords in the form of a poor servant without a place to lay his head, the self-denial exemplified by Christ's example that Christianity requires. The one who remains in the world to suf fer for the truth is always in the right over against the hermit's flight from the world. But the sociable, happy-go-lucky person who remains in the world to enjoy himself in the completely ordinary human sense has absolutely no right to castigate the monastic. Let us not deceive ourselves.
Christianity is a believing and a very particular kind of exist ing corresponding to it – imitation. We can put faith first and imitation second, inasmuch as it is necessary for me to have faith in that which I am to imitate. But we must also put imita tion first and faith second. I must, by some action, be marked in some measure by conformity to Christ, and thus collide with
71 Following Jesus
the world. Without some kind of situational tension, there is no real opportunity of becoming a believer.
We could at least be truthful before God and admit our weak ness instead of reducing the requirement.
Imitation is not a requirement of the law, for then we would have the burden of law again. No, imitation begins with the joy over being loved – and then comes the striving to please.
Christ comes to the world as the example, constantly enjoin ing: Imitate me. We humans prefer to adore him instead.
Genuine faith is never satisfied with the religious way of doing things – Sabbath worship or an hour or a half-hour of each day. Christianity is nothing else but faith right in the middle of actual life and weekdays. But we have reduced it to quiet hours, thereby indirectly admitting that we are not really being Christians. That we should have quiet times to think about God – this seems so elevated and beautiful, so solemn. It is so hypocritical, because in this way we exempt daily life from the authentic worship of God.
Anyone who does not take up the task in everyday life and in the living room should just keep quiet, because Sunday vistas into eternity are nothing but air. Of course, he should not re main in the living room. However, it is in the living room that the battle must be fought, lest the skirmishes of piety become a changing-of-the-guard parade one day a week. It is in the living
room that the battle must be fought, not imaginatively in church, with the pastor shadowboxing and the listeners looking on. It is in the living room that the battle must be fought, be cause the victory must be that the home becomes a shrine.
Christianity entered into the world not to be understood but to be existed in.
Some suggestions by way of a few questions: Can one be a Christian at all without being a disciple? Can Christianity, which came into the world to strengthen and inspire us morally, be changed in such a way that it demoralizes us with the help of easy "grace"? – Can one be a Christian in that manner? Is it all right to take from the world the promises for this life, which it has because it has no eternal salvation to point to, and to take from Christianity the promises of eternity, which it has because it demands renunciation of this life, and mix these together so it gets to be really bonbon (twice as sweet) – is it all right to call this Christianity and be a Christian in this way? And if by virtue of "grace" it can be done, must not one thing at least be de manded, that we realize clearly what we have done and how hypnotically we are drawing upon "grace"?
When we see someone holding an axe wrong and chopping in such a way that he hits everything but the block of firewood, we do not say, "What a wrong way for the woodcutter to go about it," but we say, "That man is not a woodcutter."
Now for the application. When we see thousands and thou sands and millions of Christians whose lives do not resemble in the remotest way what – and this is decisive – the New Testa ment calls a Christian, is it not tampering with the meaning to
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talk as one does in no other situation and say: "what a mediocre way, what a thoroughly inexpressive way these Christians have." In any other situation would one not say, "These people are not Christians." Now be earnest about it and say: We are not Chris tians. Let this become ordinary language usage and you will have a world-transformation.
Just as the name of Christ is the one and only name in heaven and on earth, so also is Christ the one and only predecessor who has gone ahead to prepare a place. Between heaven and earth there is only one road: to follow Christ. In time and eternity there is only one choice: to choose this road. There is only one eternal hope on this earth: to follow Christ into heaven. There is one lasting joy in this life, to follow Christ; and in death there is one final blessed joy – to follow Christ to life!
In a verbal dispute there is no essential difference between an admirer and an imitator, except that perhaps the imitator does not have such a copious vocabulary and is not at all inclined to give assurances.
Lord Christ, you did not come to the world to be served nor to be admired either, or in that sense worshipped. You yourself were the way and the life – and you require only followers. If we have dozed off into this infatuation, wake us up, rescue us from this error of wanting to admire or adoringly admire you instead of wanting to follow you and be like you.
You who yourself once walked the earth and left footprints that we should follow; you who from heaven still look down on every
pilgrim, strengthen the weary, hearten the disheartened, lead back the straying, give solace to the struggling. You who will come again at the end of time to judge each one individually, whether he followed you – our God and our Savior – let your ex ample stand very clearly before the eyes of the soul in order to dispel the mists, strengthen in order to keep this alone unaltered before our eyes so that by resembling you and by following you we may be able to stand rightly before you in judgment – oh, but may we also be brought by you to the eternal happiness with you in the life to come.
Christ did not say to the rich young man, "If you want to be per fect, then sell all your property and give it to the poor." Christ speaks in another way and says,"Go, sell what you have and give it to the poor and come, take up the cross and follow me" (Mk. 10:21). To sell one's property and give it to the poor is at most a beginning. To give all to the poor, that is the first step; it is to take up the cross. The next step, the protracted continuation, is to carry your cross. It must take place daily, not once and for all, and there must not be anything, anything at all, that you would not be willing to give up in self denial.
As Nicodemus came at night, so a king comes to Christ at night and wants to be a disciple. I wonder what Christ might say to him. "If you want to continue being what you are – a king – then fear nothing from me; my kingdom is not of this world. I will be your subject like anyone else, will be your humble and loyal subject, and I will teach my disciples to be the same. But if you want to be a disciple – oh, man, then I am the king. Take off your crown, give everything away, follow me."
72 Forgiveness
That Jesus Christ died for my sins certainly shows how great his grace is, but it also shows how great my sins are.
The forgiveness of sins is not a matter of particulars – as if on the whole one were good. (This is childish, for the child always begs forgiveness for some particular thing which it did yester day and forgets today, etc.; it could never occur to a child, in fact, the child could not even get it into its head, that it is actu ally evil.) No, it is just the opposite. It pertains not so much to particulars as to the totality. It pertains to one's whole self, which is sinful and corrupts everything as soon as it comes in slightest contact with it.
Forgiveness of sins cannot be such that God by a single stroke, as it were, erases all guilt, abrogates all its consequences. Such a craving is only a worldly desire that has no idea of what guilt is. Forgiveness does not mean to be placed in more fortunate cir cumstances but to become a new person in the reassuring aware ness that your guilt is forgiven even if the consequences of guilt remain. Only the person who grasps the fact that guilt is some thing completely different from and more terrible than the con sequences of guilt (regarded as misfortune, suffering), only he repents, only he is forgiven.
Christ abandoned "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," and turned the relationship around. He introduced a different likefor-like: as you relate yourself to others, so God relates himself to you. Forgiveness is to forgive.
Where reconciliation takes place, there the altar is.
You rest in the forgiveness of sins when the thought of God does not remind you of the sin but that it is forgiven, when the past is not a memory of how much you trespassed but of how much you have been forgiven.
The need for forgiveness is a sign that one loves God. But both parts correspond to one another – when a person does not comprehend what a great sinner he is, he cannot love God; and when he does not love God, he cannot comprehend how great a sinner he is. The consciousness of sin is the very passion of love. Truly the law makes one a sinner, but love makes one a far greater sinner! It is true that the person who fears God and trembles feels himself to be a sinner, but the person who in truth loves feels himself to be an even greater sinner.
Consider Giordano Bruno or someone like him, who became a martyr for an idea. In a weak moment he yielded and hid him self in order to avoid danger. He then is betrayed, his hiding place discovered, and he is seized.
Now imagine him before the judge. He demands to know who has given away his hiding place and betrayed him. It proves to be his servant. He is confronted by the servant, who is ex tremely dejected since he himself now clearly feels his guilt.
72 Forgiveness
Then he says to the servant, "Don't be distressed. I completely forgive you. Certainly not many servants would have acted dif ferently than you did, for I know very well that you were bribed. Incidentally, how much did I cost?" The servant replies, "I got 250 dollars." "Well, now," says the master, "that is a pretty good payment. You understand, however, that you are rather lucky that I am not angry with you, for in my will I designated for you 500 dollars payable upon my death. If I had become angry, you would have been a fool: you would have only received 250 dol lars for betraying me, a 250 dollar bribe – a crime. Otherwise you would have received 500 dollars without any misconduct, and if I were angry you would have lost more than half. Now, on the contrary, because of the will you get 500 after my death, 250 extra as something you have earned on the side. My friend, those who paid you 250 dollars probably did not admonish you to use the money well. Take my advice, then, and use the money well. Do not despair because you were weak enough to betray men, be strong enough to believe both that God will forgive you entirely and that I have entirely forgiven you."
To forgive sins is divine not only in the sense that no one is able to do it except God, but also because no one can do it without God.
It is God's joy to forgive sins. Just as God is almighty in creating out of nothing, so he is almighty in uncreating something; for to forget is indeed to uncreate something.
When I hate someone or deny that God is his Father, it is not he who loses, it is I. It is I who have no Father. With unforgiveness there is always the reversed echo.
You may think that the sin remains just as great whether it is forgiven or not, since forgiveness neither adds nor subtracts. But this is not so. Rather, when you refuse to forgive you in crease the sin. Does not your hardness of heart become yet one more sin? Ought this not be brought into the reckoning as well?
The anguished conscience alone understands Christ.
If the forgiveness of sins was intended to make good works su perfluous, then it should not be called the forgiveness of sins but the permission of sins.
If we fail to understand that forgiveness is also a burden that must be carried, even though a light burden, we take forgive ness in vain. Forgiveness is never earned – it is not that heavy. But neither is it to be taken in vain, for it is not that light either. Forgiveness is not to be paid for – for it is not that costly and it cannot be paid for. But neither is it to be treated as nothing; it is bought at too high a price for that.
The Law is no longer the only disciplinarian to lead us to Christ. Forgiveness through Christ is the gentle disciplinarian who does not have the heart to remind us of what has been for gotten but still reminds us of what has been forgiven. Every time you remember his forgiveness, your sins are forgotten. But when you forget his forgiveness, your sins are not forgotten, and then his forgiveness is wasted.
72 Forgiveness
When the Pharisees surrounded that woman, they discovered an enormity of sin, but Christ wrote in the sand – and hid it. In Christ everything is revealed – and everything is hidden.
My reader, there was a woman who was a sinner, but by her great love she made herself, if I dare say so, indispensable to the Savior. You can call her blessed because her many sins were for given, or you can call her blessed because she loved much. Sub stantially you are saying the same thing – if only you note well that he whom she loved much was Christ, and if at the same time you don't forget that Christ is grace and the giver of grace.
Is this the test: to love Christ more dearly than mother and fa ther, than gold and goods, than honor and reputation? No, the test is this: to love the Savior more than your sin.
God creates out of nothing – marvelous, you say. Yes, of course, but he does something more marvelous – he creates saints out of sinners.
You will get a deep insight into the state of Christianity in each age by seeing how it treats Judas.
God will be just as severe with us as we are with others. How devastating! For we know well enough how severe we can be. But the whole point is that God is playing with us when he does to ward us what we do toward others. He could be far more severe.
Oh God, you are great, the Creator and Sustainer of the world. But when you, oh God, forgive the sin of the world and recon cile yourself with the fallen race, ah, then you are still greater. You are inconceivable compassion!
Father in heaven! Hold not our sins up against us but hold us up against our sins, so that the thought of you when it wakens in our soul, and each time it wakens, should not remind us of what we have committed but of what you forgave, not of how we went astray but of how you saved us!
73 Freedom
Unconditional freedom, freedom which equally well chooses the good or the evil, is nothing but an abrogation of freedom and a despair of any explanation of it. Freedom means to be capable.
Christianity teaches that you should choose the one thing needful, but in such a way that there must be no question of any choice. That is, if you fool around a long time, then you are not really choosing the one thing needful. Consequently, the very fact that there is no choice expresses the tremendous passion or intensity with which one chooses. Can there be a more accurate expression for the fact that freedom of choice is only a formal condition of freedom and that emphasizing freedom of choice as such means the sure loss of freedom? The very truth of free dom of choice is that there must be no choice, even though there is a choice.
Freedom really is freedom only when, in the same moment, the same second, it rushes with infinite speed to bind itself. Freedom is the choice whose truth is that there can be no question of any choice.
In staring fixedly at freedom of choice instead of choosing, we lose both freedom and freedom of choice. The most tremen
dous thing given to a human being is – choice, freedom. If you want to rescue and keep it, there is only one way – in the very same second unconditionally in full attachment give it back to God and yourself along with it. If the sight of what is given to you tempts you, if you surrender to the temptation and look with selfish craving at freedom of choice, then you lose your freedom. And your punishment then is to go around in a kind of confusion and brag about having freedom of choice.
Woe to you, this is the judgment upon you. You have free dom of choice, you say, and yet you have not chosen God. Then you become ill; freedom of choice becomes your fixed idea. Fi nally you become like the rich man morbidly imagining that he has become impoverished and will die of want. You sigh that you have lost the freedom of choice, and the mistake is merely that you do not sorrow deeply enough so that you get it back again.
What Augustine says about true freedom (distinguished from freedom of choice) is very true and very much a part of experi ence. Namely, that a person has the most lively sense of freedom when with completely decisive determination he impresses upon his action the inner necessity which excludes the thought of another possibility. Then freedom of choice or the "agony" of choice comes to an end.