About myself
1853
My Prayer
There was a time—it came so naturally, it was childlike—when I believed that God’s love also expressed itself by sending earthly “good gifts,” happiness, prosperity. How foolhardy my soul was in desiring, and daring—for this is how I thought of it: one must not make the all-powerful petty; I prayed for everything, even the most foolhardy things, yet one thing excepted, exemption from the deep suffering beneath which I have suffered from my earliest days, but which I understood as belonging to my relation to God. But as for the rest, I should have dared anything. And when (for the suffering was simply the Exceptional), everything succeeded, how rich my soul was in thankfulness, so happy in giving thanks,—for I was convinced that God’s love could express itself by sending the good gifts of the earth.
Now it is otherwise. How did that happen? Quite simply, but little by little. Little by little I noticed increasingly that all those whom God really loved, the examples etc. had all had to suffer in this world. Furthermore, that that is the teaching of Christianity : to be loved by God and to love God is to suffer.
But if that were so then I dared not pray for good fortune and success because it was as though I were to beg at the same time: will you not, O God, cease loving me and allow me to stop loving you. When a desire awoke in me—and I wished to pray, all my former burning inwardness was blown away; for it was as though God looked upon me and said: little child, think carefully what you are doing, do you wish me not to love you, and do you wish to be excused from loving me?
On the other hand, to pray directly for suffering appeared to me too exalted, and it also seemed to me that it might easily be presumptuous, and that God might grow angry at my perhaps wishing to defy him.
For a long time my prayer has therefore been different, it is really a silent surrendering of everything to God, because it is not quite plain to me how I should pray.
I am brought to a stop by that difficulty. And yet the question presents still another difficulty. For even if I were really frank enough to grasp that to be loved by God, and to love God, is to suffer, for which after all I was disposed by nature, I who from my earliest days believed I was marked out for suffering—what of other men? That is how I had understood my life from this point of view. Now, for better or for worse, I live in the isolated cabin of melancholy—though I may rejoice at the sight of other people’s joy and may sanction it from a Christian point of view. To be loved by a woman, to live happily married, to enjoy life—well, that has been denied me; but when I step forth from my isolated cabin I may rejoice to see the good fortunes of others, may strengthen them in the conviction that God is pleased at their joy in life. To be strong and healthy, a complete man with the expectation of a long life—well, that was never granted me. But when I step forth from my lonely suffering I come out among happy people; I thought I might have the melancholy joy of confirming them in their enjoyment of life. Oh, but if I have to preach mortification, and that to be loved by God and to love God is to suffer, then I have to disturb others in their happiness. I cannot have the melancholy joy of rejoicing in their joy, the melancholy love of thus being loved by them.
And consequently I am brought to a stop by that difficulty. If anyone can prove to me from Holy Scripture that to be loved by God and to love God is compatible with enjoying this life: I shall accept this interpretation from God’s Hand with unspeakable thankfulness, happy on my own account but also on account of others, for I understand only too well what comes so naturally to man. If anyone can make that plain to me from the New Testament: then the position of my cause, if I may so express it, would be so brilliant at that moment that with a little worldly wisdom and confidence in God it would be sure to be victorious in this world. Aber, aber, my soul is suspicious of earthly enjoyment and worldly victories. That is why I dare not use worldly wisdom—I am almost afraid of winning a temporal victory; for, from a Christian point of view, to be loved by God and to love God is to suffer. In any case, in order to have confidence in God—for I cannot combine confidence in God and worldly wisdom in such a way as to use wordly wisdom with confidence in God—I must have the frankness not to use worldly wisdom, and if I am victorious temporally, I must be able to say honestly: it was God’s will, I attribute it to him—by renouncing the use of worldly wisdom. . . .
However, as I have said, I am held up by this difficulty; as yet I dare not decide absolutely whether God might not wish me to be victorious in the world, whether it is not only true of the chosen ones that to be loved by God is to suffer, whereas like men in general I am excepted therefrom, but then too have not so close a relation to God; I am not yet strong enough to pray for suffering.
But I am brought to a standstill, and resigning myself silently to God I await a nearer understanding. It is so infinitely high, this: to be loved by God and to love God is to suffer—oh, and nothing, nothing makes me so afraid as the thought of approaching too near to God uncalled. . . . And so with the models, the glorious ones, the chosen of God; but this is precisely the difficulty with “Christendom,” that there, on a frightful scale, people have made it only too easy for themselves to rid themselves of the chosen ones, to manoeuvre them out of the way, to presume that everything strict in the New Testament is said to the Apostles in particular. The question is whether the New Testament recognises any kind of Christian other than the “disciple.” For the humility which does not desire to be an apostle or a disciple—oh, it can be such a swindle: to wish to be freed from the apostles’ suffering and then, as usual in this human thieves’ slang, lyingly call it humility and gain two advantages: to be freed from suffering and to be honoured as suffering. Not to desire the gifts of an apostle—yes, that may be all right, that is humility; but that it should be “humility not to desire his sufferings,” no, that ends in hypocrisy.
My task. About myself
Feb. 13, 1853. One phase of asceticism, however, may well be considered as over, though not, be it noted, in such a way that subsequent ages do not require to have it inculcated again and again, and in any case how they stand in need of “grace.” But in the history of the human race, or of Christianity one phase may be looked upon as finished. First of all Christianity had to fight against violent and wild passions and in that respect educate mankind with what in the strictest sense of the word must be called asceticism.
The fruit of this education is to have produced a Christian culture and civilisation.
To reintroduce asceticism, and consequently in a heightened form, upon the basis of this Christian culture and civilisation is a very nice point. In any case I do not look upon that as my task.
On the other hand this culture and civilisation has at the same time produced a development of rational understanding which is in the process of identifying being a Christian with culture, and with intelligence, desirous of a conceptual understanding of Christianity.
This is where the struggle must come, and will be fought in the future. It will be a question of establishing the validity of Christianity’s incommensurability in this respect, of keeping open the possibility of scandal, in short it will be a question of scandal and asceticism in this connection-while asceticism in the earlier sense will also have to be introduced in order to maintain the balance and inculcate the need of grace.
Grace in the first place
This is true even where the objective, the sacraments, the word is concerned.
Communion for instance. Now if I think of wishing to go to communion: well, I admit that up to the present I have never succeeded in going worthily to communion. This I repent, grace is offered me, this is grace in the second place, grace from behind, in relation to what is already past.
But now I am to go to communion again—am I now worthy? dare I now say that I am worthy? And this might after all be demanded of me in thanksgiving for the grace I have received in the past.
There we have it! The sacrament promises and strengthens me in grace, but I must have grace in order to dare to use the sacrament. It cannot be otherwise, unless I have an immediate relation to God and he says to me : to-day at four o’clock you shall receive communion—for then I have no responsibility. . . .
What I have desired
March 25.
As I can now see it.
Good Friday.
There is one thought which has been in my soul and occupied it from my earliest years, inexplicably deeply rooted, a thought which has to do with Socrates as a model, the man to whom I have been inexplicably related from my earliest years, long before I really began to read Plato —the thought: how is it that all those who have in truth served the truth have always come out of it badly in this life, as long as they lived, and as soon as they are dead, then they are deified?
The explanation is quite simple: the mass of mankind can only relate itself to ideas, the good, the true, through the imagination. But a dead man is at a distance, in the imagination. But on the other hand they cannot endure the living who give them reality, they are scandalised by them, put them to death, tread them down. . . .
About myself
Oct. 13. In all that I have noted about myself in the Journals of 1848 and 1849 something of the literary side often slipped in. It is not so easy to keep all that kind of thing apart when one is poetically productive to the degree that I am. It happens the moment I take pen in hand. For strangely enough, deep within me I am quite otherwise clear cut about myself. But as soon as I want to note it down I immediately become productive. In the same way, and that too is extraordinary enough, I have no desire to note down the religious impressions, thoughts, expressions as I use them myself, they are, as it were, too important for that. Of those I only have a few—but I have produced masses. And only when a word like that is, so to say, used up can it occur to me to note it down or let it become part of the productivity.