fraught with an almost shrill radicality: “Being a Christian is neither more
nor less, absolutely neither more nor less, than being a martyr. Every Chris-
tian—that is, every true Christian—is a martyr....Thisisthesituation.
Becoming a Christian is anexaminationestablished by God. But for this very
reason, it must at all times (in the year 1 and in the year 1848) be and
continue to be equally difficult to become one....Soletusonce again, in
the noble Christian sense, have threadbare pastors, poor people, clad hum-
bly, despised people, ridiculed and mocked and spat upon by everyone. I
hope and I believe that with God’s help I myself would be able to preach
fearlessly even if someone spat in my face when I mounted up into the
pulpit. But if I were to be cloaked in a velvet robe with stars and ribbons—
and then to speak the name of Christ, I would die of shame.”
The sceneis dramatic; ajournal entry like this practically boils over. Once
again, what the reader notices is that the true pastors are knowable by their
straightforward recognizability, their threadbare clothing and the poverty of
their appearance, which is in glaring contrast to the velvet-clad reverend’s
solemn and noncommittal twaddle: “O, woe, woe unto these 100,000 pro-
fessional pastors, whose preaching does nothing but get people mired in
nonsense.” Or even more shamelessly: “Therefore, nowadays the sermon is
essentially nothing but a lie. The pastors are like the athletics instructor who
cannotswimhimself,butwhoteachespeoplehowtoswimwhileheremains
standing on the dock, shouting, ‘Just strike out briskly with your arms.’ ”
Kierkegaard had no doubt about the direction one must move: “The
communication of Christianity, however, must finally end in ‘witnessing.’
The maieutic cannot be the final form.” Thus the time when communica-
tion could be practiced indirectly and the communicator could conceal
himself in the costume of a pseudonym seemed long past. “What Chris-
tendom needs at every moment is someone who articulates Christianity
absolutelyrecklessly,” was one of the maxims that had come to stay. And to
avoid any doubts that the person who put forward this requirement was
himself existentially included in it, but was also aware of his own limits,
Kierkegaard added: “In many ways Christendom might benefit (and in fact,
this is probably the only remedy) from the experience of putting someone
to death for the sake of Christ—in order, finally, to have its eyes opened
about what Christianity is. But I do not have the physical strength for it,
nor, perhaps, that sort of courage, and finally, I am a dialectician who is
certainly capable of doing a great deal by way of thinking and inwardness
and can also have an awakening effect, but not in a situation that is not
really intended for the dialectical.”
romina
(Romina)
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