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Soren Kierkegaard, Christ is the Way, Part One

18 Friday Jan 2019

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The Ascension, John Singleton Copley, 1775

Christ is the Way is a Sermon Three Discourses published 1851. The translation is by Walter Lowrie (Princeton University Press 1941)

Christ is the Way Part One

Acts 1:1-12, Ascension Day

The prayer:

O Lord Jesus Christ, who didst behold Thy fate in advance and yet didst not draw back; This who didst suffer Thyself to be born int poverty and lowliness, and thereafter in poverty and lowliness didst bear the sin of the world, being ever a sufferer until, hated, forsaken, mocked, and spat upon, in the end deserted even by God, Thou didst bow Thy head in death of shame — oh, but Thou didst yet life it up again, Thou eternal victor, Thou who wast not, it is true, victorious over Thine enemies in this life, but in death wast victorious even over death; Thou didst lift up Thy head, for ever victorious, Thou who are ascended into heave! Would that we might follow Thee!

The sermon:

Christ is the way. This is His own work, so surely it must be true.

And this way is narrow.

 

He then makes the observations that the narrow way is set out in Christ’s own life: “thou hast only to look at him, and at once thou dost see that the way is narrow.” Yes, Christ said this – but Christ also lived this life: “this is much more solid and much more forcible proclamation that the way is narrow … than if his life had not expressed it.”

The life of Christ was a constant comment and illustration – a proof that the way is narrow.

SK then compares the life of Christ and his preaching – being one and the same – with the life and preaching of many who came later, “a man whose life …. expresses the exact opposite, then preaches Christianity for half an hour. Such preaching transforms Christianity into its exact opposite.”

How then was Christ’s life narrow:

It was narrow in his “poverty and wretchedness” of his birth young life. It was present in his life being assaulted with temptation.

It was narrow in that he had to work to avoid being king – when so many men (“the universal human trait to aspire to be regarded as something great”) – aspire to be king.

And think of his love:

Now he performs again a work of love towards this people (and His whole life was nothing else but this), but He knew at the same instant what it means, that also this work of love contributes to bring Him to the cross

His life only proceeds into narrower straits. One could live with something difficult knowing that things will improve: but to know that they will only become more difficult, more trying is a narrow way.  He could have defended himself. He could have ended his difficulty – and so it was narrow to know his difficulty, how it would end; to know that he could also end the suffering, and then to proceed.

Yes there is an ascension – but the Ascension does not come without death. There is a way to the Ascension but it is a narrow way that leads through death.

Sin Usually Enters as a Flatter

06 Thursday Dec 2018

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For it goes so easily to join the dance of pleasure; but when it has gone apace, and it is pleasure which dances with the man against his will – that is a heavy dance! And it is so eay to give rein to the passions – audacious speed, one scarcely can follow it with the eye! – until passion, having taken the bit in its teeth, goes with a still more audacious speed – the man himself is not audacious enough to look where they are going! – carries him forcibly along with it! And it is so easy to permit a sinful thought! – it is so easy, it does not here apply as in other instances that it is the first step which costs, oh, no it costs nothing whatever, on the contrary, the sinful thought pays for itself at an exorbitant rate, it costs nothing – until at the conclusion, when thou must be pay for this first which did not cost anything; for when the sinful thought has gain entrance, it exacts a fearful price. Sin usually enters a man as a flatter; but then when the man has become a slave of sin – that is a frightful servitude, a narrow, prodigiously narrow way to perdition!

 

Soren Kierkegaard, For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourselves! And Three Discourses, trans. Walter Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 86-87.

Soren Kierkegaard, The Mirror of the Word, Part 5

01 Tuesday May 2018

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In this section, Kierkegaard makes some interesting observations about resolutions — and about desire.

Finally, if we true benediction thou art to behold thyself in the mirror of the Word, thou must not straightway forget what manner of man thou art, not be the forgetful hearer (or reader) about whom the Apostle speaks, ‘He beheld his natural face in the mirror, and straightway forgot what manner of man he was.’

Kierkegaard lays emphasis upon the immediacy of the action: I have seen something of myself, I will regard that, I will do that immediately — not tomorrow. The great promise, I shall never forget is of little value. It is the not forgetting right now which is key. It is what happens “in the next hour” which matters.

He then takes this positive resolution and speaks of more damaging resolutions. The man who resolves (he choses gambling) to never gamble will almost certainly gamble. The better determination is, I will not gamble tonight. It is the immediacy which grants strength.

He refers to a hoaxing lust: one who is hoaxed by lust, and one who hoaxes lust:

Lust is strong merely in the instant, if only it gets its own way instantly, there will be no objection on its part to make promises for the whole life. But to reverse the situation so as to say, “No, only not to-day, but to-morrow and the day after, & c.” that is to hoax lust. For it if has to wait, lusts loses its lust; if it is not invited to enter the instant it announces itself,and before everyone else, if it is told that it will not be granted admittance until tomorrow, then lust understand (more quickly that the most ingratiating and wily courtier or the most artful woman understand what it signifies to meet with such a reception in the antechamber), lust understands that it is no longer the one and all, that is say, it is no longer ‘lust’. 

 

Soren Kierkegaard, The Mirror of the Word, Part 4

27 Friday Apr 2018

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Now we come to the primary purpose of discourse: What does it mean to use the Word of God as a “mirror”:

It is required that when thou readest God’s Word in order to see thyself in the mirror, thou must remember (so as really to get to the point of seeing thyself in the mirror), thou must remember to say to thyself continually, “It is I am that am here addressed, it is about me this is said.”

He calls this the “seriousness” of reading.  To explain this proposition, Kierkegaard uses an analogy and an example from the Bible. First, to explain what it means to be addressed by the Word.

King David had sinned grievously. He thought he successfully covered up his adultery and Uriah’s death. Then the prophet Nathan came to David and told a story. A rich man with a large flock had a friend come to dinner. The rich man was neighbor to a poor man whose family had only a single lamb which they had raised as a pet.  To feed his guest, the rich stole the poor man’s lamb and served it to the friend. David shocked and angry pronounced death upon the rich man. Nathan said, to David, “Thou art the man.”

Kierkegaard explains what has happened here:

Behold, this tale which the prophet recited was a story, but this, “Thou art the man,” was another story– it was a transition to the subjective.

He then gives an example how we could read the Word as Mirror. He uses the parable of the Good Samaritan.  The story entails a serious of people who should know better and who pass a wounded man on the side of the road. Only the despised Samaritan stops and cares for the wounded man. When we read this, we can easily hold a smug attitude and this and think, I am glad I am not like this priest in the story. But:

No, when thou readest God’s Word, it must be in all seriousness, and thou shalt say, “This priest is me. Alas, that I could be so uncompassionate — I who call myself a Christ — and in a way I am also a priest …

And so the Word is a mirror. We must be careful to not look at the mirror — which creates distance from the Word’s work, but look into the mirror and see ourselves reflected and exposed there. The Word of God works best and right when it exegetes the reader: it exposes the reader’s heart for examination.

[Next will be not forgetting what he have seen; and an examination of the psychology of resolutions.]

 

Soren Kierkegaard, The Mirror of the Word, Part 3

25 Wednesday Apr 2018

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Kierkegaard has explained that there is “reading and reading”. The Word is given not to be observed and interpreted, but to effect and transform. Yes, understanding what is contained in the Word is a part of understanding anything — but there is a kind of reading to understand which keeps the text trapped and distant.

He gives this analogy: a king issues a command. The public begins to “interpret” his command. The interpretations become more complex. There is an entire literature dedicated to reading and writing upon the interpretations. But at no point is command ever obeyed.

Since the Word is a “mirror” according to James, Kierkegaard also condemns a kind of reading which sees the mirror but never looks into the mirror.

To really read the Word, we must be “alone” with the Word:

Oh, to be alone with the Holy Scriptures! — and if thou are not, then thou art not reading the Holy Scriptures.

That this thing of being alone with God’s Word, that this is a dangerous business, is tacitly admitted ….

And then he makes an interesting confession:

And to my thinking it is only human that a man shrinks from letting the Word really get the mastery of him — if no one else will admit it, I admit that I do. It is human to beg God to have patience if one cannot at once do what one ought to do, and yet promises to strive; it is human to beg God to have compassion, seeing that the requirement is too exalted for one — if on one else will admit this of himself, I admit that I do it.

This coming face-to-face with God in the Word of God is a dangerous business. Perhaps the reason it does not seem so, is that we so rarely read.

Kierkegaard speaks of those who do not read the Word at all — most. Then there are those who read in some sort educated way to learn about the text — but not to let the text change them.  And that is not even the necessary reading. The reading which is needed is the reading which perturbs one, that changes one.

If we have not had the experience of asking God for patience and mercy when we read the Word, then it is perhaps because we have not read to be changed. Now I am not saying that should be reluctant to change: we must change. Instead, I am saying that we if have not read in such a way as to feel weight of the words in the Word, then we have not read rightly.

(part four will follow)

Soren Kierkegaard, The Mirror of the Word, Part Two

24 Tuesday Apr 2018

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“What is Required in Order to Derive True Benediction From Beholding Oneself in the Mirror of the Word?

“First of all, what is required is that thou must not look at the mirror, not behold the mirror, but must see thyself in the mirror.”

At this point, Kierkegaard is getting to what the Word is supposed to do to one when it is read: specifically, what does this passage in James say the Word is supposed to do when it is read. He explains this by referring to “reading and reading”:

Thus the lover [who had received a letter] had made a distinction between reading and reading, between reading the dictionary and reading the letter from the lady love.

This means that when we read the Word, we must not treat the Word as the object and we the subject in control: rather, the Word is the subject and we are the object being examined. — This is not bare subjectivity of meaning — this does not mean that there are thousand “meanings” in the text and thus all ‘readings’ are equally valid. It would be easy to understand Kierkegaard as advocating some sort of hyper-reader-response theory:

So the lover made a distinction, as regards this letter from his beloved, between reading and reading; moreover, he understood how to read in such a way that, if there was a desire contained in the letter, one ought to begin at once to fulfill it, without wasting a second.

Think now of God’s Word. When thou readest God’s Word eruditely — we do not disparage erudition, far from it — but remember that when thou does read God’s Word eruditely, with a dictionary & c., thou are not reading God’s Word …

There are words on the page, that is true. But the reading does not stop at understanding the words: the words are there to do something to the reader. The one who reads the lover’s letter is not merely engaged in an intellectual exercise; the reading is undergone to change the reader.

There is a “point” to reading the Word:

And if there is a desire, a commandment, an order, then (remember the lover!), then be off at once to do accordingly.

To which one may object, but what of all the obscure and difficult passages. Kierkegaard answers brilliantly: well there are many things you do understand. Tell you what: do all the things which you in fact can understand, and after you have done all that let us consider the obscure passages.

This gets to a matter of Hebrews 5:14. There is a correlation between our ability to uderstand the Word and our obedience to the Word. Our correspondence in life to the Word, our correspondence in affection transforms our ability to understand:

14 But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

Cognition

Behavior                       Affection

Each of these three affect the other. Kierkegaard is explaining that if we read merely for cognition, we have not read the Word. It is not inert knowledge which one seeks, but transformation. And James 1:22 explains that one transformation which must take place is that the Word must illuminate and expose the reader: the reader is being examined and seen when the Word is rightly read.

How then is this done? What does it look like in practice?

Soren Kierkegaard, The Mirror of the Word Part One

23 Monday Apr 2018

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How to Derive True Benediction from Beholding Oneself in the Mirror of the Word

James 1:22 to the End

Fifth Sunday After Easter

 

Introduction

Kierkegaard prefaces his discourse with a note about the necessary “eloquence” of Christian preaching: it must be an eloquence of word and action:

He who is to preach ought to live in the thoughts and conceptions of Christianity; this should be his daily life — if such is the case, then (as Christianity teaches) thou shalt have eloquence enough, and just what is needed, when thou dost speak straightforwardly without special preparation. On the other hand, it is a false eloquence,  if without being concerned with these thoughts or living in them, one sits down from time to time to make a collection of such thoughts, culling them perhaps from the field of literature, and working them up together into a well-developed discourse, which then is learned perfectly  by rote and is admirably delivered, both with respect to elocution and with respect to movement of arms. No, just as in a well-appointed house one is not obligated to go downstairs to fetch water, but by pressure already has it on the upper floors merely by turning the tap, so too is with real the Christian orator, who, just because Christianity is his life, has eloquence, and precisely the right eloquence, close at ham, immediately present with him ….

For the sermon ought not to establish an invidious distinction between the talented and the untalented, it ought rather in the unity of the Holy Ghost fix attention exclusively upon the requirement that actions must correspond to words.

This idea of correspondence between actions and words is worked in the subsequent discourse on the correspondence between faith and action. There must be an integrity between what is said, and what is done.

The Sermon

Kiekegaard preaches on the following text:

James 1:22–27 (ESV)

22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. 24 For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. 25 But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

26 If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless. 27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

Kierkegaard begins his consideration of these words with the apparent contradiction of Martin Luther: we are saved by faith alone. He then notes the nature of human depravity when it comes to works:

yet every man has a disposition either to want to have merit from works when they are to be done; or, when faith and grace are to be stressed, to want to be as far as possible liberated entirely from works.

Luther sought to work around that dual tendency:

Luther wanted to take away the meritoriousness from works and apply it in a somewhat different place, namely to witnessing for truth. Worldliness, which understood Luther radically, did away entirely with meritoriousness — and with works along with it.

Luther also notes that “faith is a perturbing thing”. Well, then if faith is a perturbing thing, “To what effect has faith, which thou sayest thou hast, perturbed thee?”

That is the trouble. And what sort of disquiet should come from faith? The disquiet of faith will seek to change things to conform to the faith — whether it is the religious order or a disquiet of “inward order.”  “A true love-affair is a disquieting thing, but it does not occur to the lover to want to change the established order.”

Kierkegaard mentioning Luther’s trouble with James suggests that perhaps Luther did not realize how easily one could twist “faith alone” to mean faith apart from effect upon one. “That does not apply to the Lutheran doctrine, but it applies to me: I have reason to know that I am not an upright soul, but a crafty fellow.”

Since I am a crafty fellow, I think to think more carefully about what is meant by this “faith alone”. “So it doubtless would be well to examine a little more carefully the subordinate clauses (works, existence, witnessing and suffering for the truth, works of love, & c.), the subordinating clauses of Lutheranism.”

It is that examination of what faith must do that occupies the discourse proper.

Consider the Lilies in Kierkegaard.

13 Tuesday Mar 2018

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This is not a comprehensive analysis of Kierkegaard on this point — just a demonstration that one cannot simply quote from one of his books and say, “Kierkegaard” says. In book II of Either/Or, Judge Wilhelm  (Equilibrium) extols work for a man:

The question whether it might not be possible to imagine a world in which it was not necessary to work in order to live is really  an idle question since it does not deal with the given reality but with a feigned situation. This, however, is always an attempt to belittle the ethical view. For if it were a perfection on the part of existence not to have to work, then man’s life would be the most perfect who didn’t have to. Then one could say that it was a duty to work only by attaching the word duty to a sense of dolorous necessity….The duty of working in order to live expresses the universal-human, and it expresses the universal also in another sense because it expresses freedom. It is precisely by working that man makes himself free, by working he become lord over nature, by working he shows he is higher than nature.

Or might life lose its beauty for the fact that a man must work in order to live? We are back again at the same only point: everything depends upon what one understands by beauty. It is beautiful to see the lilies of the field (though they sew not neither do they spin) so clothed that even Solomon in all his glory was not so magnificent; it is beautiful to see birds without anxiety finding their food; it is beautiful to see Adam and Eve in Paradise whether they could get everything they pointed at; but it is still more beautiful to see a man earning by his work what he has need of. (Loire, 286-287).

Now there are number of problems with Judge Wilhelm’s statement. Just to take two, Adam and Eve did have work in the Garden, and the work we experience now suffers from the Curse.  He captures the duty (but misses all else). He also gets the lilies wrong. He treats the lilies and birds, as yes, yes, but the important thing is duty and effort.

In Consider the Lilies, Kierkegaard also takes up Jesus’ observation from the Sermon on the Mount to, “consider the lilies”:

This is how it is with the gospel. The most important thing for the gospel is not to reprimand and scold; what is most important for the gospel is to get human beings to follow its guidance. That is why it says, “Seek first.” In so doing, it muzzles, so to speak, all of a  persona objects, brings him to silence, and gets him actually to being first this seeking. And then this seeking satisfies a human being in such a way that it now becomes true that he simply and solely seeks God’s kingdom.

(Kirmmse, 38). Finally, let us consider the original and ask which Kierkegaard came more in line with Jesus:

Matthew 6:25–34 (ESV)

25 “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? 28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

34 “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

Kierkegaard: Freedom of Choice in Either/Or

20 Tuesday Feb 2018

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Volume 2 of Either/Or is composed of two long, often tedious [the first letter, “Aesthetic Validity of Marriage” can be particularly slow, repetitious, dull], meandering, letters from Judge Vilhelm to man of volume 1 (which includes the famous Diary of a Seducer).  A primary aspect of this volume is to convince the seducer of the primacy of marriage (over a life of well… seduction).  He argues that one should choose to be ethical.

There is an aspect of irony in all this, because Kierkegaard is arguing to Regina Olson (as has been noted by many) about marriage after he had broken off his engagement to the young lady.

He argues that marriage is no duty — because it is a duty of love, which is something thus done willingly (and then as he makes this argument, he seems to almost contradict himself).  Thus, the ethical choice is one of freedom. By way of contrast, the one who lives merely for pleasure has no freedom, because he has made no choice — he has no ability to even reflect upon anything.

I have received second-hand or so some ideas of Kierkegaard and existential choice: an act whereby one chooses in some manner and thus secures some sort of meaning in life. Now, I am not an expert in the history of existential philosophy, nor have I traced all the movements in the area from Kierkegaard through Sartre and Jasper. But what I have seen — and this is perhaps the fountainhead of the concept is this section from Equilibrium in volume two of Either/Or:

That which is prominent in my either/or is the ethical. It is therefore not yet a question of the choice of something in particular, it is not a question of the reality of the thing chosen, but of the reality of the act of choice….As an heir, even though he were heir to the treasure of all the world, nevertheless does not posses his property before he had come of age [an allusion to Galatians 4:1-2], so even the richest personality is nothing before he has chosen himself, and on the other hand even what one might call the poorest personality is everything when has chosen himself; for the great thing is not to be this or that but to be oneself, and this everyone can be if he wills it.

He then goes on to explain that the aesthetic man is one not merely lives for pleasure, but one who lives immediately, without an act of choice, “the aesthetically in a man is that by which he is immediately what he is; the ethical is that whereby he becomes what he becomes.”

But because the aesthetically man is merely what he is — not having chosen something else — is “enmeshed”. He has “no time to tear [him]self loose.” This is in contrast to the ethical man (the writer of volume 2), “I am not enmeshed, either by my judgment of the aesthetical or by my judgment of the ethical; for in the ethical I am raised above the instant — I am in freedom — but it is a contradiction that one might be enmeshed by being in freedom.”

The act of choosing, ‘imparts to man’s nature a solemnity, a quiet dignity, which is never entirely lost.”

The man who merely wants to enjoy life finds himself at the mercy of “a condition which either lies outside the individual or is in the individual in such a way that it is not posited by the individual himself.” For in the inside, he gives the example of a young girl “who for a brief time prides herself upon her beauty, but soon it deceives her.”

For the man who lives constantly for some pleasure outside himself, he gives Nero as the example — nothing is able to sate him, “all the world’s cleverness must devise for him new pleasures, for only in the instant of pleasure does he find response, and when that is past he gasps with faintness.” [His discussion of Nero is particularly interesting.]

But something still troubles Nero, he cannot “break through.” He has a place which terrifies anyone who sees it – he cannot bear for anyone to look into his eyes. “He does not possess himself; only when the world trembles before him is he tranquilized, for then there is no one who ventures to lay hold on him. Hence this dread of men which Nero shares with everyone personality of this sort.”

This seems to match the diary of the seducer, who works out the desire for the woman — but cannot permit her to actually be with him — he cannot make the ethical move to marry (marriage is the constant background of volume 2).

“At least we can both learn that a man’s unhappiness is never due to the fact that he has not the outward conditions in his power this being the very thing which would make him unhappy.” — This leads to melancholy:  “But melancholy is sin, really it is a sin instar omnium, for not to will deeply and sincerely is sin, and this is the mother of all sins.”

(It continues on through many twists in turns on the nature of despair for the aesthetic man. Later, in Equilibrium, he writes, “For no intoxication is so beautiful as despair, so becoming, so attractive, especially in a maiden’s eyes (that you know full well), and especially if one possess the skill to repress the wildest outbursts, to let despair be vaguely sensed like a distant conflagration, while only a glimpse of it is visible outwardly.”)

On the other hand is the ethical choice which willing embraces duty: it is here that marriage as the basis of the argument makes sense. He is not merely telling the young man to stop being a cad, grow up and get married — he is explaining that choosing a duty to love another is not a burden but an act of love. To choose to love is an imposed duty, but it is not burden because love is the expression and obtaining of desire: “If I attach my  closely in friendship to another person, love is everything in this case, I recognize no duty; if love it is at an end, then friendship is over. It is reserved for marriage alone to base itself upon such an absurdity.” [Here is an example of the maddening paradox of this essay — it is long, twisting and the author never seems to be completely clear even to himself. He makes a point and then argues out another way.]

A historical irony lies here: if this is indeed the basis for the idea of the existential choice of which I heard and read in 20th century philosophers (and their cheaper imitators), then that choice was originally a choice offered by a moralizing older man (a judge no less), to a younger, carefree man to get married!

Kierkegaard: Human Happiness Depends Upon An Immutable God

20 Saturday May 2017

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Kierkegaard’s treatise The Changelessness of God. Published in 1855, just a few months before his death, it is an exposition of one of Kierkegaard’s most cherished biblical passages: “Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). Kierkegaard begins by noting that the text contains an implicit contrast between God, the “Father of lights,” and the world. To observe the latter is to observe constant change: one moment gives way to the next; the sunrise comes and goes; each human being will one day die. “How depressing,” notes Kierkegaard, “how exhausting, that all is corruptibility, that human beings are changefulness, you, my listener, and I!” But there is good news. Above and beyond all of this change is God, whose good and perfect nature never varies. It is this truth that the Apostle James has disclosed, and, for Kierkegaard, it is “simply and solely sheer consolation, peace, joy, blessedness.”The reason for this happiness has to do with God himself, who, as Kierkegaard explains, is changeless, omnipotent, omnipresent, pure, and luminous. He moves earthly affairs, but is not moved by them.
“From Despair to Faith: The Spirituality of Søren Kierkegaard

Christopher B. Barnett

Pages 27-28