Lovely. Passionless comfortable unbelief or doubt is the object of a simplistic foolish proof against atheism. And yet it doesn’t prove theism. Undoubtedly it is an irony of ironies.
What would MacDonald or Kierkegaard have to say about this?
Yes, but…
I think in matters of faith, SK is pointing to what we would call “paralysis by analysis.” There’s a point where one must give up on reflecting and make a choice, and actually begin.
Interesting you should put it that way. Below is part of a longish contrast between people who analyze to death the outcome of someone’s attempt at something (without ever having risked a thing themselves), against people (the hero, the great) who do the work of, bear all the risk of beginning without knowing the outcome.
So in our times, when we hear the words “It is something that is to be judged according to the outcome,” we immediately know with whom we have the honor of speaking. Those who speak thus are a prolific race to whom I will assign the common name: the assistant professors. They live in their thoughts, secure in existence; they have a permanent position and secure prospects in a well-organized state; they have centuries, or indeed, even millennia between themselves and the agitations of existence, and they have no fear that this sort of thing can recur: What would the police, the newspapers, say? Their task in life is to judge the great men, to judge them according to the outcome. Behaving like this with respect to the great reveals a curious mixture of arrogance and wretchedness: arrogance, because a person believes himself called to pass judgment; wretchedness, because a person feels that his life does not have the faintest kinship with the lives of the great. Everyone who is even the least bit erectioris ingenii [of a higher way of thinking] has not, after all, become an utterly cold and clammy mollusk, and when he approaches someone great, he cannot entirely ignore the fact that ever since the creation of the world, it has been customary for the outcome to come last, and that if someone truly wants to learn something from the great, it is precisely the beginning to which one must pay attention. If someone who is to act were to judge himself according to the outcome, he would never come to begin. Then, even if the result might give joy to the entire world, it cannot help the hero, for he only came to know the outcome when the whole thing was finished, and that is not what made him a hero: he became a hero by having begun.
(Fear and Trembling, Søren Kierkegaard, pg?, somewhere in Problema I, Kirmmse translation.)
Thanks @Mervin_Bitikofer , you just helped me tie two important thoughts together. 
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There are certainly people who are apathetic to faith of any kind. But this doesn’t describe every non-believer. It also doesn’t describe the path that lead to apathy.
There are plenty of Christians whose faith is equally passionless and comfortable. Kierkegaard wrote scathingly against them, particularly in regard to those who saw their salvation as having come through the state church.
If you can get your hands on a copy of The Essential Kierkegaard from Princeton, edited by the Hongs, you can get a good feel for some of SK’s thoughts on the matter starting with extracts from smaller pieces toward the end of the book: “A Thesis – Just One Single One”, through “The Genius.” He’s brutal to the state church of Denmark and its members. Even in F&T, he’s really harsh about apathetic, moral christianity that has no faith. He prefers the honesty of an atheist over passionless adherence to an organization that seems to exist to perpetuate itself.
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Thanks Kendel. You know me well enough to know that I know what you said is true. We may disagree on where those lines, fuzzy as they are, can be drawn.
Still what will they say when we get to heaven about this thing we call philosophy 
or what some halfwitted person did with it after a couple thousand years.
This brought to mind the saying “Look before you leap”. Perhaps crossing the stream wisely requires both a bit of reflection on the lay-of-the-land (observable facts), but ultimately an action of leaping. I would not describe my acts as always “passionate”, depending on what SK means by the word–but yeah, one’s inner motivation must eventually propel one forward, or I wouldn’t define it as faith.
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And neither should it be gut wrenching every time one acts, but those God ordained windows into our soul do pop up every now and then.
Social studies teachers everywhere should heartily agree.
But, @Kendel, I still think there is a balance between these two tugs. One does not constantly live one’s life being heroic - or more likely one isn’t long for life or success if they constantly lived that way. The few who do spectacularly succeed - or live just long enough to see some heroic act through - those are the ones who have stories written about them. And those stories are interesting and inspiring for a reason: they are rare. One might insist that it shouldn’t be rare - and perhaps so. But show me a brilliant or daring person of adventure or great summits of achievement, and I’ll show you 99 people behind that person who were ordinary parents, teachers, mentors, workers … people who did not themselves rise to the levels that society venerates in poetry and song; but who nonetheless made the life of the hero even possible in the first place. The cutting edge of any knife is what is celebrated as the locus of “real action”, but without all the supporting steel behind that edge, it ceases to exist. The hero is nothing, nada, zilch, fails to even exist, much less be ‘heroic’ without everybody else in life around him or her that even enabled them to get where they are in the first place.
Okay - I let my passions run away with me there. But all that to say … I won’t show my self-reflective angel to the door just yet. And for all that - SK’s point is still well-taken that we do well to venerate our heroes and try to be such ourselves in whatever ways we’re called, sung or unsung.
Ramble over.
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Moving the original contents of this post to where they belong.
Klw, your comments are helpful! Thank you.
Kierkegaard is very hard to quote from, and by this point in the book I’m used to his “terms” and the concepts that he has built into them. So words like “hero” and “ passion” become technical terms for his readers.
What I have from F&T so far regarding your comments is below. It reflects my extremely limited exposure to SK’s work. One didactic book is hardly adequate exposure to his work to say, “This is what he really thinks.” I can only share what I’ve learned from what I’ve read so far.
Passionate leaping:
Throughout F&T SK’s pseudonymous author, Johannes de silentio, who really is a fictitious character that SK is causing to express various opinions, hammers away at the view that faith is absurd and cannot be achieved by reason.
He generalizes the steps to faith from the example of Abraham: First one must make the movement to become a Knight of Infinite Resignation. This person has given up all hope of gaining the thing wished for in this life. He/She lives with this pain, not resenting it, sometimes letting it course through his/her senses. This knight recognizes that in the infinite, that is in the afterlife, the thing wished for will be granted, but not in this life.
The second movement, which de silento sees as utterly impossible for him, is what leads to faith, by virtue of the absurd. The Knight of Faith, who has resigned everything in this life, joyfully gains it all back in finitude, that is NOW, by virtue of the absurd (that is faith based on what de silentio repeatedly expresses as “absurd”), whether he actually gains it or not.
He [the Knight of Faith] is easygoing and is as carefree as if he were a frivolous do-nothing, and yet every moment of his life he purchases the opportune moment at the highest price, for he does not do the least thing except by virtue of the absurd. And yet, yet—indeed, I could get furious about it, if for no other reason, then out of envy—yet this person has made, and at every instant is making, the movement of infinity. In infinite resignation, he drains the profound sadness of existence. He knows the blessedness of infinity. He has felt the pain of forsaking everything, those things in the world a person holds most dear, and yet finitude tastes fully as good to him as to someone who has never known anything higher, for his remaining in finitude had no trace of dispirited, anxiety-ridden tutelage—and yet he possesses this self-assurance to delight in it, as though it were the most certain thing of all. And yet, yet the entirety of this earthly figure he presents is a new creation by virtue of the absurd. He infinitely resigned everything, and then he grasped it again by virtue of the absurd. He continually makes the movement of infinity, but he does so with such precision and certainty that he continuously gets finitude out of it, and not for an instant does one suspect anything else. (Fear and Trembling, S. Kierkegaard, Kirmmse translation, pp. 48-49.) [Bolding and italics added by Kendel]
If this quote (and many others throughout the book) reflects Kierkegaard’s view, and I suspect it does, we can argue with him all we want. He is taking head on the rationalized versions of faith worked out by Kant and Hegel.
(I promise to report back, if I found out differently.)
[This text is here to satisfy the editor software and let it feel I’ve made sufficient changes to this post to put it here. Thanks, HAL.]
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Tee hee! You did that very well, Merv!
Absolutely. Your passionate reply is evidence why it’s so hard to quote SK, at least from this book. Reading this has been mind-bending. Let me give some background that I hope will help make the hero make more sense.
In the section I quoted, the pseudonymous author, Johannes de silentio, is working with three different hero concepts at once. To begin with, he is NOT (necessarily) talking about the heroes of daring-do. The heroic deeds in question can be great or small, but hard. The greatness of the deeds may be seen in their outcome, but one must begin, before the deed can come to fruition.
The three hero concepts are: the tragic hero of antiquity as seen in poems and plays, the Ethical Hero (who is the universal version of the tragic hero, so I am combining them from now on) and the Hero of Faith. The Ethical Hero is a type of real person, who makes personal sacrifices for the good of his or her society. This is the ideal ethical person. We all know some of them. They do the right thing, strive for the greater good, often at great sacrifice. Sometimes their deeds are famous, but many are not. Of course, it could be a family sending their child to war to protect the community, but it could also be a person who gives up a more lucrative job and free time to serve their community doing work other people would shun.
The second type, the Hero of Faith, does things that can be outside the realm of the ethical, risking condemnation of society in order to carry out his or her duty to God. For many reasons this is a highly risky business. This person, according to de silentio (and maybe Kierkegaard) acts alone with no support from any other person. It’s not even clear that de silentio sees God as supportive.
Both types of hero exhibit greatness, which is worthy of admiration, simply by beginning the task given to them. They have no idea, if they will succeed or what obstacles will crop up that make the challenge even harder. The courage to begin the task in all uncertainty is more laudable than the conclusion.
Meanwhile, the “assistant professors” [forgive me, please, anyone who is actually an assistant professor. Kierkegaard is using them as a type and a trope.] de silentio mentions are a stereotype. Here they are second-rate academics with secure, risk-free positions who focus on critiquing the outcome of other people’s efforts (say a novel or poetry) and dare criticize them, without ever having done anything of value themselves. Without ever having BEGUN to do anything of value. These are hypocrites. We know the type. They delight in Schadenfreude (pronounced approximately: shah’-den froi’-deh (extra points, if you can do a beautiful-sounding German “r”!)). They do NOT teach or nurture the heroes. They only criticize, but then cringe in their presence.
Nor should you. Not even SK would recommend that, I think.
I hope this explanation makes the quote make more sense.
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(156) Self Control
I will allow that the mere effort of will, arbitrary and uninformed of duty, partaking of the character of tyranny and even schism, may add to the man’s power over his lower nature; but in that very nature it is God who must rule and not the man, however well he may mean. From a man’s rule of himself, in smallest opposition, however devout, to the law of his being, arises the huge danger of nourishing, by the pride of self- conquest, a far worse than even the unchained animal self–the demoniac self. True victory over self is the victory of God in the man, not of the man alone. It is not subjugation that is enough, but subjugation by God. In whatever man does without God, he must fail miserably–or succeed more miserably. No portion of a man can rule another portion, for God, not the man, created it, and the part is greater than the whole. In effecting what God does not mean, a man but falls into fresh ill conditions. In crossing his natural, therefore in themselves right inclinations, a man may develop a self-satisfaction which in its very nature is a root of all sin. Doing the thing God does not require of him, he puts himself in the place of God, becoming not a law but a law- giver to himself, one who commands, not one who obeys. The diseased satisfaction which some minds feel in laying burdens on themselves, is a pampering, little as they may suspect it, of the most dangerous appetite of that self which they think they are mortifying.
As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon: “Self-Denial”.
Thanks for those further clarifications, Kendel. This all continues to dovetail in good and challenging ways with MacDonald’s thoughts too - which are going in very difficult directions for me here in the next few days. His message seems … is … unrelentingly severe.
I’m just starting a book by Alan Noble: “On Getting Out of Bed” which may also have some promising challenge along with it.
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I agree about the severity. Even the Job sermon (I read the whole thing) was pretty over the top in places. People who think Edwards was hard to endure probably haven’t read MacDonald!
I thought the blurb for On Getting Out of Bed sounded outstanding:
We aren’t always honest about how difficult normal human life is.
For the majority of people, sorrow, despair, anxiety, and mental illness are everyday experiences. While we have made tremendous advancements in therapy and psychiatry, the burden of living still comes down to mundane choices that we each must make—like the daily choice to get out of bed.
In this deeply personal essay, Alan Noble considers the unique burden of everyday life in the modern world. Sometimes, he writes, the choice to carry on amid great suffering—to simply get out of bed—is itself a powerful witness to the goodness of life, and of God.
From IVPress’s website.
Martin talked regularly and broadly about privilege. It’s easy to limit our understanding of it to wealth and some level of power within our system. But there is also the privilege of having the most basic needs met, including mental health. The privilege of being free of debilitating health problems, for example, is all too rare.
It’s always neat to hear what you’re reading.
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(157) Self Denial
The self is given to us that we may sacrifice it; it is ours that we like Christ may have somewhat to offer–not that we should torment it, but that we should deny it; not that we should cross it, but that we should abandon it utterly: then it can no more be vexed.
‘What can this mean?–we are not to thwart, but to abandon? How abandon, without thwarting?’
It means this:–we must refuse, abandon, deny self altogether as a ruling, or determining, or originating element in us. It is to be no longer the regent of our action. We are no more to think, ‘What should I like to do?’ but ‘What would the Living One have me do?’
As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon: “Self-Denial”.
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It is a good question. Why should we have the capacity to generate or acquire idiosyncratic preferences or obsessions if in the end we are better off to place the sacred above those self centric desires?
But naturally I disagree that it is so that we will have something of ours to sacrifice in emulation of Jesus’ sacrifice. It would seem odd to me if that were an intentional, aimed for result of creation whose only purpose was symbolic. Or perhaps it is thought that making such a sacrifice is instrumentally transformative for creatures with free will - if they are to live together as we do yet flourish. If we are to avoid destroying each other in a war of all against all we do need the capacity to place the good of the whole above our own. So much about culture isn’t comprehensible from a purely psychological perspective.
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The severity continues…
(158) Killing the Nerve
No grasping or seeking, no hungering of the individual, shall give motion to the will; no desire to be conscious of worthiness shall order the life; no ambition whatever shall be a motive of action; no wish to surpass another be allowed a moment’s respite from death; …
As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon: “Self-Denial ”.
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The severity persists … echoes of Romans 7 here?
(159) Self
‘Self, I have not to consult you, but him whose idea is the soul of you, and of which as yet you are all unworthy. I have to do, not with you, but with the source of you, by whom it is that any moment you exist–the Causing of you, not the caused you. You may be my consciousness, but you are not my being. If you were, what a poor, miserable, dingy, weak wretch I should be! but my life is hid with Christ in God, whence it came, and whither it is returning–with you certainly, but as an obedient servant, not a master. Submit, or I will cast you from me, and pray to have another consciousness given me. For God is more to me than my consciousness of myself. He is my life; you are only so much of it as my poor half-made being can grasp–as much of it as I can now know at once. Because I have fooled and spoiled you, treated you as if you were indeed my own self, you have dwindled yourself and have lessened me, till I am ashamed of myself. If I were to mind what you say, I should soon be sick of you; even now I am ever and anon disgusted with your paltry, mean face, which I meet at every turn. No! let me have the company of the Perfect One, not of you! of my elder brother, the Living One! I will not make a friend of the mere shadow of my own being! Good-bye, Self! I deny you, and will do my best every day to leave you behind me.’
As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon: “Self-Denial ”.
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My gut feeling is this is worse than MacDonald’s universalism. The self is not synonymous with the flesh in Romans 7. And the level of MacDonald’s philosophical reflection on the self in this passage is unnerving for me. I would like to have Paul here to respond. People think the height of spiritual maturity is a total surrender to the will of God, when as I seem to remember reading in a James Jordan book Through New Eyes, spiritual maturity is the ability to come into the presence of God and to plead your case. Your selfish case. Jesus redeems the flesh, and glorifies our individual desires. Obviously, he will cross our will from time to time, but I don’t think that’s what near and dear to his heart. It’s hard to draw a line on this one. But the total abandonment of self is a doctrine of demons.
Romans 7:14-25?
14 We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
21 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.
I hope so. There’s hope here there.
Maybe also Romans 8:
5 Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. 6 The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. 7 The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. 8 Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.
9 You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. 10 But if Christ is in you,then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives lifebecause of righteousness. 11 And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.
But these are not so much about denying the self, but its being changed into something it was always intended to be.
MacDonald’s sermon text is:
‘And he said unto all, If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whosoever would save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.’–ST LUKE ix. 23, 24.
This is different from the “self”.
I would love to hear Paul’s response too.
I’m with you in finding this one unnerving. Though my respect for MacDonald propels me to more of a “I need to read where he goes with this to see if he makes his case.” If he was insisting on some sort of gnostic “flesh = evil / spiritual = righteous” formula, then - I’m with you and would not follow him there. But since I don’t think that’s a biblically defensible stand, I don’t think MacDonald would go there either.
As far as total and complete submission to Christ goes, though, … it’s a bit hard to disagree with that, though living it … I see this as MacDonald’s “over-the-top” piety on complete and naked display.
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