tender arms have come to encircle a bit too much. So on behalf of Chris-
tianity, one must ask that the females to whom these tender arms belong
back off a little.” The getting of children and associated activities have noth-
ing to do with Christianity, since “from a Christian point of view, it is the
highest degree of egotism that because a man and a woman cannot control
their lust, another being is to sigh in this vale of tears and prison for perhaps
seventy years and perhaps be eternally lost.”
The sum total of all these “holy monkeyshines” is thus “Abracadabra;
amen, amen, amen forevermore: Praised be the pastors!”
The Death of God
Kierkegaard compared history to a “process of filtration,” though he in-
verted the metaphor, so that instead of removing impurities, the filter of
history contributed to their virulent growth: “The idea is stated—and then
it goes into the process of history. But this does not consist of purifying the
idea (what a ridiculous assumption!) which is never purer than at its begin-
ning. No, it consists in the continually increasing process of botching the
idea, making rubbish of it, turning it into nonsense.” With this, Kierkegaard
pointedly emphasized his understanding of history as the history of decline:
History takes its energy from nonsense and it ends in nothing. There could
scarcely be a greater contrast to Hegel’s notion of the indwelling rationality
of history!
Kierkegaard’s radicality was rooted in his radical rejection of history,
which in his view never clarifies ideas, but always muddles them. This ex-
plains why Christianity was abolished at the same tempo at which it spread.
His motto, in other words, was: The more, the fewer; and if all, then none.
Kierkegaard was able to compress history into a very simple schema by
juxtaposing two irreconcilable opposites: “Christianity has really never
come into the world. It remained confined to the Exemplar and, at most,
to the apostles. But even the apostles emphasized its spread so much in their
preaching that the fraud had already begun....[Christ] was much more
restrained. Thus, in three and one-half years he won only eleven disciples,
while in one day, probably in one hour, one apostle wins three thousand
disciples of Christ.”
This radical distrust of history was the source of the distaste Kierkegaard
felt for culture. He described culture’s “way of thinking” as follows:
“Among the many different things that human beings need in the cultured
condition, things that the state tries to guarantee its citizens in the most
inexpensive and comfortable manner possible—such as public safety, water,