“When Christ came into the world it was difficult to become a Christian, and for this reason one did not become preoccupied with trying to understand it. Now we have almost reached the parody that to become a Christian is nothing at all, but it is a difficult and very involved task to understand it.”
- Soren Kierkegaard
April 9, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Err… It was difficult to become a Christian when Christ came into the world because of the opposition/persecution? And that meant that one was not preoccupied with trying to understand what it meant when one might be giving up one’s life because of the decision to follow Christ? As much as I like SK, I’m not so sure about this quote….
April 9, 2008 at 3:45 pm
Well, that’s your prerogative.
April 9, 2008 at 8:20 pm
What – no debate? No defense of Soren?
April 9, 2008 at 8:56 pm
Well, you didn’t give me much to work with … “not so sure”?
So … you don’t think that Christianity is a much simpler thing when you need to immediately sacrifice all to embrace it? And that, when the sacrifice is not necessary, you could end up chasing your tail trying to figure out what it all means? I don’t think he’s saying that people didn’t take time to understand it at the beginning, but rather that understanding it is not so much work when the sacrificial nature of Christianity is staring you in the face. This would be in line with his whole “knowing is not as important as being and doing” thing.
April 10, 2008 at 11:37 am
Not exactly. I was focusing on the implication that one didn’t try to understand what one was giving one’s life up for in the early church. How can that be? Yes, it’s less complicated – no, I don’t think they gave up on or bypassed understanding; if anything, they understood things better than we do – don’t you think? (And here I’m obviously not talking about the finer points of, say, eschatology or church discipline…)
April 10, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Yeah, and I think that’s the point that SK is making. They didn’t have to spend years in an ivory tower studying the fine points to “get” Christianity … it was immediate and accessible because of the radical nature of what was required of them.
Granted, this is Danish, translated to English, and then slightly paraphrased. I could be misreading him.
April 10, 2008 at 2:36 pm
So we’re all just saying the same thing, then?
April 10, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Yeah, I think so.