CONCLUDINGUNSCIENTIFICPOSTSCRIPT 975
Let us take the knowledge of God as an example. Objectively, what is reflected
upon is that this is the true God; subjectively, that the individual relates himself to a
something in such a waythat his relation is in truth a God-relation. Now, on which side
is the truth? Alas, must we not at this point resort to mediation and say: It is on neither
side; it is in the mediation? Superbly stated, if only someone could say how an existing
person goes about being in mediation, because to be in mediation is to be finished; to
exist is to become. An existing person cannot be in two places at the same time, cannot
be subject-object. When he is closest to being in two places at the same time, he is in
passion; but passion is only momentary, and passion is the highest pitch of subjectivity.
The existing person who chooses the objective way now enters upon all approxi-
mating deliberation intended to bring forth God objectively, which is not achieved in all
eternity, because God is a subject and hence only for subjectivity in inwardness. The
existing person who chooses the subjective way instantly comprehends the whole
dialectical difficulty because he must use some time, perhaps a long time, to find God
objectively. He comprehends this dialectical difficulty in all its pain, because he must
resort to God at that very moment, because every moment in which he does not have
God is wasted.* At that very moment he has God, not by virtue of any objective delib-
eration but by virtue of the infinite passion of inwardness. The objective person is not
bothered by dialectical difficulties such as what it means to put a whole research period
into finding God, since it is indeed possible that the researcher would die tomorrow, and
if he goes on living, he cannot very well regard God as something to be taken along at
his convenience, since God is something one takes along a tout prix[at any price],
which, in passion’s understanding, is the true relationship of inwardness with God.
It is at this point, dialectically so very difficult, that the road swings off for the
person who knows what it means to think dialectically and, existing, to think dialecti-
cally, which is quite different from sitting as a fantastical being at a desk and writing
about something one has never done oneself, quite different from writing de omnibus
dubitandumand then as an existing person being just as credulous as the most sensate
human being. It is here that the road swings off, and the change is this: whereas objec-
tive knowledge goes along leisurely on the long road of approximation, itself not actu-
ated by passion, to subjective knowledge every delay is a deadly peril and the decision
so infinitely important that it is immediately urgent, as if the opportunity had already
passed by unused.
Now, if the problem is to calculate where there is more truth (and, as stated,
simultaneously to be on both sides equally is not granted to an existing person but is
only a beatifying delusion for a deluded I–I), whether on the side of the person who
only objectively seeks the true God and the approximating truth of the God-idea or on
the side of the person who is infinitely concerned that he in truth relate himself to God
with the infinite passion of need—then there can be no doubt about the answer for any-
one who is not totally botched by scholarship and science. If someone who lives in the
midst of Christianity enters, with knowledge of the true idea of God, the house of God,
the house of the true God, and prays, but prays in untruth, and if someone lives in an
idolatrous land but prays with all the passion of infinity, although his eyes are resting
upon the image of an idol—where, then, is there more truth? The one prays in truth to
*In this way God is indeed a postulate, but not in the loose sense in which it is ordinarily taken. Instead,
it becomes clear that this is the only way an existing person enters into a relationship with God: when the dialec-
tical contradiction brings passion to despair and assists him in grasping God with “the category of despair”
(faith), so that the postulate, far from being the arbitrary, is in fact necessarydefense [Nødværge], self defense;
in this way God is not a postulate, but the existing person’s postulating of God is—a necessity [Nødvendighed].