Category: Kierkegaard

… as a punishment for criminals

In antiquity as well as in the Middle Ages there was an awareness of this longing for solitude and a respect for what it means; whereas in the constant sociality of our day we shrink from solitude to the point (what a capital epigram!) that no use for it is known other than as a punishment for criminals. But since it is a crime in our day to have spirit, it is indeed quite in order to classify such people, lovers of solitude, with criminals.

Sickness Unto Death

incognito: the hiddenness of the solitary life

For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. (Col 3:3)

The individual does not stop being a human being, take off finitude’s motley in order to be dressed in the abstract garb of the monastery; but nor does he mediate between the absolute τέλος and finitude. In immediacy the individual is rooted in the finite; when resignation has convinced itself that he has acquired the absolute orientation towards the absolute τέλος, … He is a stranger in the world of the finite, but does not define his difference from worldliness by an alien mode of dress (a contradiction, since it would define him as worldly); he is incognito, but his incognito consists precisely in looking just like everyone else.

Kierkegaard: Concluding Unscientific Postscript

absolutes and faith

Faith is precisely this paradox, that the single individual as the particular is higher than the universal and is justified over against the latter not as subordinate but superior to it, yet in such a way, mind you, that it is the single individual who, after having been subordinate to the universal as the particular, now through the universal becomes the single individual who as the particular is superior to it; [faith is this paradox] that the single individual as the particular stands in an absolute relation to the absolute.

Fear and Trembling .

aims?

What should also become clear in this study are the ways in which Kierkegaard confronts some of the key errors that arise in overly systematic and reductive accounts of Christian conversion:

  1. The inherent weakness of approaches that assume we can dichotomise, and then quantify, the respective contributions of divine and human agency;
  2. The inclination to objectify human beings in ways that neglect their subjective existence as living persons who require to be conceived diachronically – persons who are called to take up a life-long vocation of becoming Christian;
  3. The tendency to reduce God to an amorphous concept, postulate or figment of the human imagination, thereby neglecting God’s active involvement in the process of becoming a Christian;
  4. The attendant impulse to allow a body of Christian teaching or dogma to displace the actuality of God’s personal agency;
  5. The overemphasis on conversion as a solipsistic event of individual transformation rather than a process of becoming reconciled with God;
  6. The tendency to prioritise epistemology over ontology (that is, over our relationship with God) in discussions of what is involved in becoming a Christian – to focus on the question of ‘What I come to know as a Christian’ rather than ‘Who I come to be as a Christian’; and
  7. The propensity to lose sight of God’s loving purpose to draw all human beings into the one true form of existence for which they were created.
Torrance, Andrew B.. The Freedom to Become a Christian, pp. 2-3.

is “christianity” an abstraction?

But Christendom has abolished Christ; yet, on the other hand, it wants—to inherit him, his great name, to make use of the enormous consequences of his life. Indeed, Christendom is not far from wanting to appropriate them as its own merits and to delude us into thinking that Christendom is Christ.

SK (Institutions)

Is “christianity” an abstraction that, when used against the individual, is dehumanizing? When Nietzsche writes again Christianity, maybe he is right?

So, do I believe in Christianity or in Jesus?

… but is often forgotten

… what cannot be forgotten is that truth for Christians is not just another object but a concrete person, Jesus of Nazareth. …

Skepticism arises from our desire to know without the self being transformed. Ironically skepticism is but the result of our anxious desire to secure certainty by being “at home in the world.”

Skepticism, Relativism, and Religious Knowledge:
A Kierkegaardian Perspective Informed by Wittgenstein’s Philosophy

absolute relationship

Humanity has lost meaning because the accepted criterion of reality and truth is ambiguous and subjective thought—that which cannot be proven with logic, historical research, or scientific analysis. Humans cannot think out choices in life, we must live them; and even those choices that we often think about become different once life itself enters into the picture. For Kierkegaard, the type of objectivity that a scientist or historian might use misses the point—humans are not motivated and do not find meaning in life through pure objectivity. Instead, they find it through passion, desire, and moral and religious commitment. These phenomena are not objectively provable—nor do they come about through any form of analysis of the external world; they come about through a direct relationship between one and the external world. Here Kierkegaard’s emphasis is on relationship rather than analysis. This relationship is a way of looking at one’s life that evades objective scrutiny.

Philosophy of SK

institutions

But Christendom has abolished Christ; yet, on the other hand, it wants—to inherit him, his great name, to make use of the enormous consequences of his life. Indeed, Christendom is not far from wanting to appropriate them as its own merits and to delude us into thinking that Christendom is Christ.

Soren Kierkegaard

No institution can substitute for a living relationship with Jesus – as much as they may try, Sometimes you just have to stand alone before God!!!

Even so, come Lord Jesus.

silent rebellion

AM Allchin’s The Silent Rebellion is a book on religious life in the Church of England. I do not have a copy but I am looking for one.

It is often pointed out that the title, The Silent Rebellion, highlights the need for solitude for religious life. Yet, why “rebellion”? In what sense is it “a violent uprising“?

While I do not have an answer, this quote may help:

Their name itself, anchorite, means rule-breaker, the one who does not fulfil his public duties.

And maybe this one by Kierkegaard:

…Of this there is no doubt, our age and Protestantism in general may need the monastery again, or wish it were there. The “monastery” is an essential dialectical element in Christianity. We therefore need it out there like a navigation buoy at sea in order to see where we are, even though I myself would not enter it. But if there really is true Christianity in every generation there must also be individuals who have this need…

And from Fear and Trembling:

Faith is exactly this paradox, that the single individual is higher than the universal, but in such a way, mind you, that the movement is repeated, so that after having been in the universal he now as the particular keeps to himself as higher than the universal.

The tragic hero resigns himself in order to express the universal; the knight of faith resigns the universal in order to become the single individual.

The knight of faith, the rebel, stands with Jesus alone even against institutions. There is nothing higher than the individual’s relationship with Jesus – not even religion!

Anyway …