Soren Kierkegaard

it) “quite unrestrainedly” about Christ. And this is certainly not an under-
statement. The text has representatives of the bespectacled bourgeoisie of
the Biedermeier era—including a burgher, a pastor, a philosopher, and a
politician—take the floorone after another, commentingonthat oddfellow,
Jesus, who called himself God. Page after page, this Jesus, the idiot God, is
mocked and practically spat on by the text—this Jesus, who, if he had been
unable to do anything else, had at least made it clear “that the writers of our
day have been right on the mark in always representing the good and the
true with a half-witted person or with someone dumber than a stump.”
The sensible burgher is skeptical about Jesus’ miracles, but what he simply
cannot fathom is that Jesus could have been “so foolish, so benighted, so
utterly ignorant of human nature, so weak, or so amiably vain, or whatever
you want to call it, as to behave in such a way that he practically forced his
good deeds upon people!... After all, he... must know what I could tell
him right off the bat, using less than half of my brains, namely that this is no
way to get ahead in the world—unless, disdaining intelligence, one honestly
aspires to become a fool, or perhaps even pushes honesty so far that one
would prefer to be put to death.” Feigning anxious concern about the future
of this dreamer, another cautious burgher could not but voice agreement
with the skepticism sounded by his colleague: “His life is quite simply fan-
tasy.... A person might live like this for at most a couple of years in his
youth, but he is already over thirty. And he is literally nothing.... What
has he done about his future? Nothing. Does he have a steady job? No.
What are his prospects? None. To mention merely this simple problem:
How will he pass the time when he gets older, during the long winter eve-
nings?—What will he do to occupy his time? He cannot even play cards.”
Itisscarcelyasurprisethatthepastorissimilarlyunabletogivehisblessing
to this difficult person. He will, however, grant that, for a demagogue, the
fellow is almost pathetically honest, and this makes the pastor’s judgment a
little more lenient: “It is a sign of honesty to try to pass oneself off as the
Expected One while resembling him as little as he does—this is honest in
the same way as when someone who wants to pass counterfeit currency
does such a bad job of producing the bills that they can immediately be
spotted by anyone who has his wits about him.” The pastor knows the way
of the world, and he knows quite well how a proper God would behave
and act: “The true Expected One will therefore be of an entirely different
appearance and will come as the most splendid flowering and highest devel-
opment of the established order.”
Then it is the philosopher’s turn. He of course sees no sign of the System,
and therefore he simply cannot abide the megalomania that has possessed
this dreamer: “That an individual human being is supposed to be God is an