In the invocation with which Kierkegaard begins this book, he starts by defining his conception of faith, “But as long as there is a believer, this person, in order to have become that, must have been and as a believer must be just as contemporary with Christ’s presence as his contemporaries were. This contemporaneity is the condition of faith, and, more sharply defined, it is faith.” He continues, ““History,” says faith, “has nothing at all to do with Jesus Christ; with regard to him we have only sacred history…. He is the paradox that history can never digest or convert into an ordinary syllogism. He is the same in his abasement as in his loftiness—but the eighteen hundred years, or if it came to be eighteen thousand years, has nothing at all to do with it…. That in his abasement he was God, that he will come again in glory—this goes not a little beyond the understanding of history…. But that God has lived here on earth as an individual human being is infinitely extraordinary. Even if it had no results whatever, it makes no difference; it remains just as extraordinary, infinitely extraordinary, infinitely more extraordinary than all the results…. Only God can attach that much importance to himself, so that the fact that he has lived is infinitely more important than all the results that are registered in history.” Kierkegaard opposes faith and knowledge, “Jesus Christ is the object of faith; one must either believe in him or be offended; for to “know” simply means that it is not about him. Thus history can indeed richly communicate knowledge, but knowledge annihilates Jesus Christ.”
Kierkegaard describes the difference between Christianity and Christendom. He begins with compassion as a daily practice, “To make oneself quite literally one with the most wretched (and this, this alone is divine compassion) this is “too much” for people, something they can shed a few emotional tears over during a quiet Sunday hour and involuntarily burst out laughing over when they see it in actuality. The point is that it is too lofty for them to bear seeing in its daily use; it must be at a distance for them to be able to bear it. People are not so familiar with loftiness that they really dare to believe in it.” By Kierkegaard’s time, Christendom is ubiquitous, but being an actual Christian is still a rarity, “To be a Christian has become a nothing, a silly game, something that everyone is as a matter of course, something one slips into more easily than one slips into the most trifling accomplishment. Truly it is high time for the requirements of ideality to be heard…. Only the consciousness of sin can force one, if I dare to put it that way (from the other side grace is the force), into this horror. And at the very same moment the essentially Christian transforms itself into and is sheer leniency, grace, love, mercy. Considered in any other way Christianity is and must be a kind of madness or the greatest horror. Admittance is only through the consciousness of sin; to want to enter by any other road is high treason against Christianity…. It is brazen to want to fraternize with God and Christ. Only the consciousness of sin is absolute respect.”
The proper Christian reveals himself inwardly. This is contrasted in Christendom, in which religion has become a part of the established order and religion is not content with personal belief. “By making devoutness and piety inwardness, Christ prodded this whole structure of qualifications and relativities, this direct recognizability of piety by honor and esteem, power and influence, this objectivity…. It is always that way when the established order has gone so far as to deify itself…. The relationship with God is abolished; custom, ordinances, and the like are deified.” Christ is not his teachings, for then he would just be a dead wise man. Christ is about his being as a God-man, which makes him one of a kind. As a God-man, he could not communicate directly with humanity. He is paradox. It is not his teachings, but his being that is all of Christianity, “Direct communication is an impossibility for the God-man, for inasmuch as he is the sign of contradiction he cannot communicate himself directly; to be a sign is already a term based on reflection, to say nothing of being the sign of contradiction…. It is eighteen hundred years since Christ lived; then he is forgotten—only his teaching lasts—yes, that is, Christianity has been abolished.”
Kierkegaard next writes about the higher life of the individual Christian, “If a human life is not to be lived altogether unworthily like that of the animal, which never lifts up its head; if it is not to be trifled away, emptily occupied with what, as long as it lasts, is vanity and when it is over is nothing, or busily occupied with what does indeed make a noise at the moment but has no echo in eternity; if a human life is not to be loafed away in inactivity or wasted away in busy activity—then there must be something higher that draws it.” Kierkegaard makes the case that contemporary Christendom has become soft in its power. The original Christian faith was militant and that is how it must remain. “What Christ said, “My kingdom is not of this world,” was not said in a special sense about the connection with that age; it is eternally valid…. As soon as Christ’s kingdom makes a compromise with this world and becomes a kingdom of this world, Christianity is abolished. But if Christianity is in the truth, it is certainly a kingdom in this world, but not of this world, that is, it is militant.”
Finally, Kierkegaard turns back to inwardness and his personal choices for living as a Christian in this world, “I chose the only escape that was left in Christendom: to seem to be the most frivolous person of all, to “become a fool in the world,” in order if it all possible in this earnest world to protect what I concealed in my innermost being, a little bit of earnestness, and in order that this inwardness could acquire the peace of inclosing reserve in which to grow in stillness…. I was concealing something else in my innermost being, but it was the best that I was hiding; I have never, never deceived by way of making myself out to be better than I was—through this life in the human throng, I learned with frightful veracity to understand that rigorousness is the only thing that can help.”
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