Armed Neutrality
ARMED NEUTRALITY
Armed Neutrality1 [X5 B 107 288]
OR MY POSITION AS A CHRISTIAN AUTHOR IN CHRISTENDOM
By this phrase “armed neutrality,” especially as I explain it more and more precisely, I think I am able to characterize the position I intend to take and have taken in throwing light on Christianity or what Christianity is or, more accurately, what is involved in being a Christian. Naturally, this cannot mean that I want to leave undecided whether I am myself a Christian, aspire to it, fight for it, pray about it, and trust to God that I am that. What I have wanted and want to prevent is that the emphasis would in any way be that I am a Christian to an extraordinary degree, a distinguished kind of Christian. This I have wanted and want to prevent. But what I have wanted and want to achieve through my work, what I also regard as the most important, is first of all to make clear what is involved in being a Christian, to present the picture of a Christian in all its ideal, that is, true form, worked out to every true limit, submitting myself even before any other to be judged by this picture, whatever the judgment is, or more accurately, precisely this judgment—that I do not resemble this picture. In addition, because the task of producing this ideal picture is a work in which emphasis falls upon differential qualifications for being able to do this, especially since it is to be done in relation to the manifold confusions of modern times,2 I have chosen for purpose of designation the words: neutrality and armed.
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I do not think that without exaggeration one can say that Christianity in our time has been completely abolished. No, Christianity still exists and in its truth, but as a teaching, as doctrine. What has been abolished and forgotten (and this can be said without exaggeration), however, is being a Christian, what it means to be [X5 B 107 289] a Christian; or what has been lost, what seems to exist no longer, is the ideal picture of being a Christian.
That this is so can be perceived readily in the nature of the confusion. (1) Christendom is an established order. This is confusing, because it is really impossible to be a Christian under this form, since an established order as the true arena for religiousness gives all Christian qualifications an unchristian, conciliatory perspective within the temporal, whereas instead the true Christian perspective for every Christian qualification is polemical within or away from finitude toward the eternal. Piety at rest is Jewish piety;3 a militant piety (engaged at two points, first in oneself with oneself in order to become a Christian, and then with the world’s opposition and persecution because one is a Christian4) is Christianity or being a Christian. (2) Every decisive qualification in being a Christian is according to a dialectic or is on the other side of a dialectic. The confusion is that, with the help of the scientific-scholarly annulment of the dialectical element, this has been completely forgotten. In this way, instead of presumably going further than original Christianity, we have thrown all Christianity back into the esthetic. To be, to exist (the particular) is implicit in the dialectical element; what speculative thought calls unity is first achieved in eternity, only momentarily in temporality. By unceremoniously permitting the dialectical element to be annulled this way in existence, the existence of the single individual, all the navigation marks, if I may use the expression, with regard to being a Christian have been abolished. It is possible that the present Christendom is the most perfect form of Christianity that has ever been seen; it is also possible that it is thoroughgoing worldliness.5 (3) The medium for being a Christian has been shifted from existence and the ethical to the intellectual, the metaphysical, the imaginational; a more or less [X5 B 107 290] theatrical relationship has been introduced between thinking Christianity and being a Christian—and in this way has abolished being a Christian.
Therefore what first and foremost must be brought into prominence again is the ideal picture of a Christian, so that it can appear as a task, beckoning, and on the other side, so that it can crush with all its weight the presumptuousness of wanting to go further than being a Christian, something that can be explained only by the fact that what it means to be a Christian has been forgotten.
It is this ideal picture that I have tried to present and will try to present. The reader will kindly be patient and not rush at once to judge or estimate to what extent the particular also serves to throw light on this picture. From the very beginning my work has not been a rush job, has not been an impetuous amendment to the total confusion or a new patch on an old garment.6 Be patient—and perhaps I do still have a kind of right to ask this, since even more patience is truly required to carry out the work—be patient, and then be attentive.
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Therefore, to present in every way—dialectical,7 pathos-filled (in the various forms of pathos8), psychological, modernized by continual reference to modern Christendom and to the fallacies of a science and scholarship—the ideal picture [Billede] of being a Christian: this was and is the task. Jesus Christ, it is true, is himself the prototype [Forbillede] and will continue to be that, unchanged, until the end. But Christ is also much more than the prototype; he is the object of faith. In Holy Scripture he is presented chiefly as such, and this explains why he is presented more in being than in becoming, or actually is presented only in being, or why all the middle terms are lacking—something that everyone has indeed ascertained who, even though humbly and adoringly, has earnestly sought to order his own life according to his example. Furthermore, in the course of time, the essentially Christian, unchanged, has nevertheless been subject to modifications [X5 B 107 291] in relation to changes in the world. My view is certainly not that it is the essentially Christian that should be improved and perfected by new modifications—I am not that speculative. No, my view is that the essentially Christian, unchanged, at times may need by way of new modifications to secure itself against the new, the new nonsense that is now in vogue. Let me clarify this relation by reference to another circumstance. In the far, far distant past, in times more simple than these, it was of course also the custom to draw up legal documents, contracts, etc. But if we take such a contract from olden times and compare it with a contract of the same kind from 1848, we undeniably find the latter considerably modified. We must not, however, be in a hurry to say that this one is therefore better than the former; ironically it might turn out that it is still a question whether it would not have been better that all these modifications had not been necessary. But since those simple times there have been so many rogues and swindlers that modifications have become necessary. So also with the modifications that the essentially Christian, unchanged, undergoes in the course of time—they are of evil or on account of evil, but with good intentions. But as the essentially Christian is modified, what it is to be a Christian is also modified. By the ideal picture of a Christian, I understand in part a kind of human interpretation in relation to Christ as the prototype, a human interpretation that, although he is and remains the object of faith, contains all the middle terms pertaining to derivatives and casts everything into becoming—and the modifications are in part related to the confusions of the past and those of a given time.
But who, now, is to do this, who is to be the one who places this picture into the situation of actuality and holds it up? If someone comes rushing headlong and points to himself, saying, “I am the one, I am myself this ideal of a Christian”—then we have fanaticism and all its woeful consequences. God forbid that it should happen in this way! As far as I am concerned, I certainly think that this would be the greatest impossibility for me at any [X5 B 107 292] time. Nothing is more foreign to my soul and nothing is more foreign to my nature (the dialectical), nothing more impossible, than fanaticism and fury. If I were to be regarded as furious in any way, it would have to be if it were said—and it probably is said of me—that I have a furious composure, that is, a composure that could infuriate others. From the very beginning of my work as an author, there no doubt has been a very solitary person hidden here and there who, aware of what I have been able to present poetically, only waited for the moment when I had confused myself with a poetical presentation, had rushed forth, had made myself out to be the ideal, the awaited one, etc.—in order then to attach himself to me as a follower, an adherent etc.—and who therefore is infuriated by my composure, by which he is restrained, until finally, infuriated by my composure, he would wish me dead or far away, because I would stand in the way, so that out of a kind of respect for me he would not be able to make himself out to be what he would have preferred me to be. Thus in one way or the other I would be a hindrance to setting fanaticism in motion.
It certainly is of the utmost importance that the ideal picture of a Christian be held up in every generation, elucidated particularly in relation to the errors of the times, but the one who presents this picture must above all not make the mistake of identifying himself with it in order to pick up some adherents, must not let himself be idolized and then with earthly and worldly passion pass judgment upon Christendom. No, the relation must be kept purely ideal. The one who presents this picture must himself first and foremost humble himself under it, confess that he, even though he himself is struggling within himself to approach this picture, is very far from being that. He must confess that he actually relates himself only poetically or qua poet to the presentation of this picture, while he (which is his difference from the ordinary conception of a poet) in his own person relates himself Christianly to the presented picture, and that only as a poet is he [X5 B 107 293] ahead in presenting the picture.
In this way no fanaticism develops; the poet or, more accurately, the poet-dialectician, does not make himself out to be the ideal and even less does he judge any single human being. But he holds up the ideal so that everyone, if he has a mind to, in quiet solitariness can compare his own life with the ideal. It is impossible for the presentation of the ideal not to be polemical to a certain degree, but it is not polemical against any particular person, is not finitely polemical against anything finite but is infinitely polemical only in order to throw light on the ideal; it has no proposal to make and does not lean toward any decision in the external, in the secular world.
This was and is my idea of a reformation, which, whether or not it succeeds and to whatever extent it succeeds or not, in any case will go ahead on its own and take place without general assemblies, synods, balloting—in short, without any profanation. During the few years I have been a writer, I dare say I have shown an unusually productive wealth; I do not feel it diminished but rather on the increase, but I have never had and do not have a single comma to offer to a general assembly or society of balloters. I have had much to say, I feel far from emptied; on the contrary, I feel that I still have much more to say, but I have never had and do not have anything, not an infinitesimal iota, that tempts in a worldly way by being something new. There is only one thing that in every direction can halt a vortex, and thus also only one thing that can halt the vortex or the dizziness in which—and this is precisely the kind and degree of dizziness—the ideal little by little and finally entirely diminishes and is lost, the dizziness that one person is certainly just as good a Christian as all the others and thus is a Christian simply by comparison around the whole circle; there is only one thing that can halt it—no general assembly, no balloting can do it, since they only foster the sickness—and this is that the single individual, instead of swooning into a comparison relation to “the others,” relates [X5 B 107 294] himself to the ideal.9 In that very moment he is halted forever—and even if he were to live a hundred years, he would never make a proposal in a general assembly.
In order to present this ideal as faithful, as true, as polemically true, and with as much true pathos as it is possible for me, I will use my every day, ask for no reward—because for me this work is another expression of the fact that, as stated, I myself am brought to a halt by the ideal, not as if I had grasped it, not as if I were that—ah, I am so far from being it that in a whole lifetime I very likely will not finish the task of rightly discovering and being able to present the ideal.
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Humble before God, with my knowledge of what it indeed means in truth to be a Christian, and with my knowledge of myself, I by no means dare to maintain that I am a Christian in any remarkable sense or permit any accent of distinction to fall on my being a Christian. For example, I would not dare, particularly not in Christendom, to expose myself to becoming a martyr, persecuted, deprived of life, because I was a Christian. Do not pass premature judgment on what I am saying here but rather take time to understand it. Many people all too hastily give assurances that they are Christians to the degree that they are willing to die for it, whereas the difficulty possibly lies at an entirely different point than they suspect. Let me take an imaginary situation. With a sword hanging over my head, I am ordered to say whether or not I am a Christian. My answer would be: I trust to God that I am a Christian; I believe that out of grace he will accept me as a Christian, and so on. If they are not satisfied with the answer but say, “You must say either that you are a Christian or that you are not,” then I would answer: No, that I will not do. If they persist—“Then we will put you to death because you will not answer as we demand”—my answer would be: Go ahead, I have nothing to object to that; according to my understanding I accept this martyrdom. By this I mean that I am not afraid of being put to death—although I by no means flaunt a willingness for it nor am I eager for it, and therefore I must ask the reader to [X5 B 107 295] recall that the discussion here is, of course, hypothetical. But what I do fear is what my death would come to signify through what I say about myself. In other words, I am not afraid of dying, but I do fear to say too much about myself. I do not cowardly flee from a martyrdom, but I must be aware of and be of one mind about how I can defend falling as a martyr.
The question of whether I am a Christian (and thus for every individual, whether he is a Christian) is entirely a God-relationship. When I (and thus always for the single individual) declare that I am Christian, I am really speaking with God, even if it is human beings who ask me and therefore it is human beings I am speaking with, and therefore I dare not speak differently from the way I would speak with God. That is, as soon as I (and thus always the single individual) speak about my being a Christian, God hears it. I cannot speak of my being a Christian according to a merely human standard or within the sphere of human comparison. But then before God, would I dare to say: I am—a Christian? No, I would not dare to do this—I least of all. But therefore neither would I dare to let the emphasis fall upon my being a Christian, so that I would be put to death because I was a Christian—for suppose God thought otherwise and I had forgotten respectful deference to God, in my expression about myself had forgotten to express that God is the judge. If I, then, were put to death because I, according to my own apodictic declaration, was a Christian, my life would be taken—but this would be the least important part of it; I would by no means be through with it, because suppose I would run into trouble in eternity, that it was arrogance on my part to have said apodictically, instead of hypothetically because of reverence for God, that I was a Christian. I do indeed face judgment; therefore on Judgment Day I shall have to repeat that I was put to death because I, according to my own statement, was a Christian. But if I will say it, then by this I will be saying to God that I was a Christian; this is certain enough, nothing is more certain, since I would be put to death because I was a Christian. But I would not dare say this to God under any circumstances. Face-to-face with God I would have to use a much humbler expression: I trust to God that in his mercy he will receive me as a Christian.
[X5 B 107 296] Obviously it is not my idea or of armed neutrality to abolish martyrs or to make a martyrdom an impossibility; I only move it reflectively into inwardness. [Deleted:, since I do not let the martyr become so muddleheaded on the occasion of being executed that what he says about his God-relationship does not come out quite right but is rather garbled, presumably because he is so occupied with his imminent death, but I let him be occupied solely with his God-relationship and be like an absent-minded person in regard to his imminent death.] Generally it is disregarded that martyrdom is a category of freedom, that it is not “the others” who have the martyr in their power but he who has them in his. They can put him to death, to be sure, but from a spiritual point of view he can determine where he is to fall. It is impossible to force a person to declare something specific if it is against his will and he is willing to give his life for it. Thus people may say: We are going to put you to death because you will not say it—to this, however, he has nothing to object. This is the power or superiority that lies in the willingness to make a sacrifice; to the same degree to which a person is willing to make a sacrifice, he has this superiority. Therefore it rests with the martyrs themselves to assign, so to speak, the place of the martyrdom. But to be the Christian in relation to other people, to be put to death because, according to one’s own declaration, one is a Christian—this can so very easily be a satisfaction of human passion.
Let us imagine the martyrdom I have suggested. One will not say: I am a Christian, but: I trust to God to be a Christian, and the like. Thereupon he is told: Well, then you will be put to death because you will not answer the way we demand. To this he replies: All right. He is put to death. This is a martyrdom. Through death he departs and enters eternity—for judgment. Under judgment he trusts that God in his mercy will receive him as a Christian—he has not said too much about himself. —The more inwardness, the greater the fear and trembling before God. Externally oriented thinking is preoccupied with having the courage in relation to people to become a martyr; inwardly [X5 B 107 297] oriented thinking is preoccupied with having the courage in relation to God to be a martyr. This is martyrdom’s proper fear and trembling. Many a pagan has also had the courage to be put to death for an idea, but the pagan did not have the fear and trembling of the God-relationship.
But the ideality with regard to being a Christian is a continual inward deepening. The more ideal the conception of being a Christian, the more inward it becomes—and indeed the more difficult. Being a Christian then undergoes a change that I will illustrate with a worldly analogy. Formerly there were in Greece wise men, σοφοί. Then came Pythagoras and with him the reflection-qualification, reduplication,10 in connection with being a wise man; therefore he did not even venture to call himself a wise man but instead called himself a φιλóσοφος [friend or lover of wisdom, philosopher].11 Was this a step backward or a step forward; or was it not because Pythagoras had more ideally apprehended what it would really mean, what would be required to call oneself a wise man; therefore there was wisdom in his not even having dared to call himself a wise man.
Now to my armed neutrality. Truly, it would not be impossible for me to come to experience martyrdom in some way, but truly, I also want the basis of it very accurately defined. I do not say of myself that I am a remarkable Christian; I think I would have failed in my task completely, would have misunderstood my individuality and all my qualifications entirely if I had exposed myself to any attack or any persecution along these lines. But I do maintain that I know with uncommon clarity and definiteness what Christianity is, what can be required of the Christian, what it means to be a Christian. To an unusual degree I have, I think, the qualifications to be able to present this. I also think it is my duty to do it, simply because it seems to be forgotten in Christendom, and obviously there is no likelihood that the present generation is qualified to provide upbringing in Christianity. I think it is my duty to Christianity, my duty to what has been passed on from the fathers and was also entrusted to me by a father, whose upbringing is in large part my efficacy. In this regard [X5 B 107 298] I am also frequently reminded of the teachers of my childhood and youth, the admired and unforgettable principal of the Borgerdyds School,12 who wrote almost nothing about me in his report of me but wrote instead a eulogy on my father. I believe it is my clearly understood duty to do this, because a person so rigorously brought up in Christianity will soon be a great rarity.
But to do this undauntedly in the service of the truth can easily expose me to the opposition of people, insofar as they generally take a dim view of jacking up the price or the requirement for being what they already think they are, the name of which they do not want to give up. Here is the place where I think I should not avoid any danger, even the most extreme; on the contrary, when a storm blows up in this direction, I understand my task to be precisely that of confronting the danger and remaining in it. It only must be clear that what I have fought for, and if I should fall, what I have fallen for, or if I come to suffer in some way, what I am suffering for—is not that I have maintained that I was the distinguished Christian, but that in the service of the truth I have championed what it means to be a Christian.
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Armed Neutrality. If my relation were to pagans, I could not be neutral; then in opposition to them I would have to say that I am a Christian. But I am living in Christendom, among Christians, or among people who all say they are Christians. It is not now up to me, a human being, to judge others, particularly not in the role of one who knows human hearts, which here would have to be the case. If I were now to insist that I am a Christian, what would this mean in the situation? It would mean that I am a Christian in contrast to Christians—that is, that I am a Christian raised to the second power, the distinguished Christian. This is why I keep it neutral with regard to my being a Christian. On the other hand, this cannot possibly be a denial of Christianity, since I am living in Christendom and presumably am a Christian like [X5 B 107 299] all the others. Moreover, I also declare forthrightly that I am a Christian in the sense that others are, but not in contrast to them. This way I keep neutral, not in contrast to being a Christian but in contrast to being a Christian raised to the second power. Then I carry on my work presenting the ideal of a Christian. In order to do this, I must in turn have this neutrality. How would I dare to be so brazen as to occasion in the remotest way the repugnant notion that it was myself I spoke about, or how would I in all modesty be capable of saying anything at all if I did not in every way prevent [in margin: do the utmost, do everything in order in every way to prevent] the indecent, the repugnant notion that it was myself I spoke about.
The task, then, is to present the ideal of a Christian, and here I intend to do battle. If someone says to me, “What you say is untrue; you have a confused, false conception of what it is to be a Christian”—then I will answer: Enlighten me about it; then I will alter my conception; if not, of course not one iota. If whimpering says to me, “Give up this undertaking, revoke what you have done, spare us; this presentation becomes like a terror over us, it jacks up the price in such a way that we are brought to despair”—then I shall answer: No, not one iota; I, too, know the pain of it, but I neither dare nor am able to do otherwise. I pray to God that in this regard he will Christianly harden my heart and mind or make me Christianly tough enough not to dabble in human pity. If they threaten me so that out of the fear of people I would abandon my undertaking or with trembling hands would botch the picture, I pray to God, whatever danger comes in the form of bloody persecution or in the form of mockery, laughter, and ridicule, whether the suffering is physical pains or spiritual pains, that he will give me the strength not to deviate a hair’s breadth from the understood truth.
This is my idea of the judgment that I think will fall upon [X5 B 107 300] Christendom—not that I or any single individual should judge others, but the ideal picture of what it is to be a Christian will judge me and everyone who permits himself to be judged. In a finite sense the ideal picture infringes upon no one; it has the infinite distance of the ideal from all busy earthly judgment and condemnation of this one and that one or of these particular actual persons; when the ideal is used in this way, it is already debased.
But it is completely accidental that I am the one who has the task of presenting this picture; yet someone must do it. I certainly will not thereby win honor and esteem or other earthly advantage. If the work is done creditably, the reward will be an analogy to the honorarium of the true Christian in the world, only in a somewhat mitigated form, and only without my coming to suffer because I am a Christian but in the capacity of a poet, a thinker, etc. The mitigated form is, of course, evidence of my imperfection, evidence that I am not the true Christian. Far be it from me, that childish talk, to demonstrate on the basis of my gaining earthly advantage that I will the true and the good. No, the evidence that one or whether one actually wills the good and the true is, Christianly, always the opposite. That I nevertheless do enjoy some esteem in the world demonstrates, regrettably, only how imperfect I still am; and that I perhaps will get through life somehow, tested only in a mitigated kind of martyrdom, is evidence, of course, that I have not pursued it to perfection.
Finally, if some impetuous pate, who in regard to himself knows at once whether or not he is a Christian, finds it remarkable that the person who was capable of presenting this picture and consequently uninterruptedly occupied himself with such thoughts would not in regard to himself know definitely whether he is a Christian, then I would answer: That I have not said, but I have said that to say about oneself that one is a Christian means to speak with God, and that therefore a human being must speak with fear and trembling. After having said this, for the sake of that impetuous pate (who in speaking of himself perhaps calls himself one of those more profound natures who feels a deep need for [X5 B 107 301] positiveness, somewhat like those who in relation to falling in love look upon themselves as more profound natures who are not satisfied with falling in love but feel a deep need—for external certainty) I shall then add, in usum Delphini,13 an example of a remarkable kind of slowness along a somewhat similar line. People with impetuous pates naturally know at once and very definitely that they are human beings. Now, I dare say I am right in maintaining that not many have lived who knew human nature as well as Socrates did, who in addition knew himself. And the summa summarum [sum of sums] of his knowledge in his seventieth year was that he did not definitely know whether he was a human being.14 How can this be explained? I wonder if this was not because he had employed his time first and foremost in thinking about what it means to be a human being? This is done very quickly by impetuous pates, because they leap over this question, assume that they know it—and then in all impetuousness there appears that remarkable being (who could give a slower person much to think about and would almost seem to have to make even the impetuous one a little slower himself)—a human being who knows definitely that he is a human being but does not know definitely what it means to be a human being. Surely it has been the same with thousands of Christians: they have known definitely that they were Christians but did not know definitely what it means to be a Christian. And yet, yet it is still perhaps possible, by continuous diligence over a number of years, to pursue this to the point of knowing definitely what it means to be a Christian; whether one oneself is that cannot be known, and not with definiteness either—it must be believed, and in faith there is always fear and trembling.