Training in Christianity (Vintage Spiritual Classics)

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The contradiction (paradox) is essential, again, since the message that God wants to communicate is contrary to and beyond human understanding. Section 2 is entitled "The Form of a Servant is Unrecognizability (The Incognito)". In the prior section Kierkegaard says that the ineffable is communicated indirectly through a sign. Here he says that the signified—Christ, the one whom the sign points to—is unrecognizable because "the modern age has abolished Christ". Kierkegaard's purpose for writing this book is because Christendom was not the Christianity of the New Testament. He wanted to reintroduce Christianity into Christendom. This means that the recognizable false Christ of the Church would have to be replaced by the true Christ of unrecognizability. The main way that we have bastardized Christ is by saying that he communicates directly, that he is directly known to us. The reason for indirectness and unrecognizability is grounded in the ineffable being of God. He is beyond all human imagination, as is the incarnation, the person of the God-man. As a result, the one who approaches Christ must do so subjectively and in faith. Indirectness prevents any casual acquaintance with God, and keeps the believer from making God into his own image.

Kierkegaard has the uncanny ability to haunt you well after you finish reading his books, and when he is dissecting scripture he is in even more familiar territory to set up his traps, forcing you to remember him when you're approaching the passages that so strongly shaped his peculiar philosophy. Or perhaps you could argue that he shaped the passages to his theology, either way its hard to forget his exegesis when you come across those same passages. Although I gave this book only three stars, there was a lot that was great about this work. Most of Practice in Christianity is centered around the verse from John 12:32: And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all to myself." Kierkegaard writes under the name Anti-Climacus although he names himself as the editor. In other words, Kierkgaard agrees 100% with Anti-Climacus, but does not want the reader to get the impression that he is an ideal Christian. Kierkegaard is also trying to learn from Anti-Climacus. The problem in Kierkegaard's Danish State Church (and certainly in our own churches) is that being Christian is like being Danish. It is a label and nothing more. Christianity is preached on Sunday and people attend church every Sunday, but people are more interested in admiring Christ rather than imitating him. Anti-Climacus argues that the problem is that people are no longer contemporaneous with Christ. Following Jesus means accepting the suffering and possibly martyrdom that comes along the way. The final part digs into Christ's commitment to draw all unto himself on high. Kierkegaard does not believe we are to meet Christ directly on high, rather mimic Christ's ascension to high through lowliness and inwardness on Earth. Christ draws us to be more inward and reflective which leads us to experience acceptance from God (thus, in the end, being drawn to Christ on high). Again, Kierkegaard is hypercritical of what he calls established "Christendom." "Christ never desired to conquer in this world; He came to the world to suffer, that is what He called conquering." He then goes deeper and contrasts what it means to admire Christ vs. follow Christ which he believes Christ has called us to. In admiring Christ, Christians get caught up in spiritual loftiness but overlook, perhaps, Earthly lowliness. To truly admire Christ is to mimic him -- to follow his example of life. This is the profound difference between authentic Christianity and cultural, luke-warm Christendom to Kierkegaard. In part three, one of the verses that Kierkegaard refers to is from the Gospel of John: "And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all to myself" (12.32). There has long been recognized an ambivalence in this verse. On the one hand, the text refers to the glorified Christ, soon to be lifted up from the earth at the ascension. On the other hand, and perhaps primarily, it refers to the crucifixion. The crucifixion is an offense because Christ is punished as a common criminal when he is innocent. It is offensive because it does not seem to follow that salvation comes from punishment. For Kierkegaard, it is the Christ, as the God-man, who calls us to follow him from the cross, that is, to a life of suffering. Christ did not only call men when he preached during his period of favor, earlier in his ministry. He calls to men from the cross, to the cross. This means that the Christian, though he may not suffer physically for the doctrine, he will suffer inwardly, as Kierkegaard believed himself to be doing. This calls for imitation, which is also a theme in Judge For Yourself! Kierkegaard's whole point is to offend the complacent so-called Christians of his day, to convince them that Christ accused them rom the cross, all to incite a sense of offense in them. This offense, again, leads either to further offense or to faith.

Fifth Period: Direct Communication (1848-51)

I can't really review Kierkegaard because I'm entirely biased. If I had never read his "Either/Or" as a freshman in college this statement may not be true, but it is regardless: I believe almost everything Kierkegaard writes, even before I've read him. It's almost to the point where if you tell me what one of his works is on, I can tell you what I think on the subject and it will be almost exactly what Kierkegaard says. That first reading of him a few years ago forever changed the trajectory of my thought and faith, and now I am almost in-synch with him. That a human being falls into the power of his enemies and does nothing, that is human. But that the one whose almighty hand had done signs and wonders, that he now stands there powerless and paralyzed—precisely this is what brings Peter to deny him (p. 104). This was my first foray into Kierkegaard and I must say, despite the difficult passages, I found many fresh insights that challenged me theologically and practically. The book is a strong reaction against the "established church" and how it is devoid of the suffering/incarnational components of Christian life. Soren critiques out tendency to promote becoming an admirer of Christ as opposed to an imitator. Part 2 covers the necessity of the offense of Christianity. Kierkegaard believes that practicing Christianity should not be profitable from an Earthly, material sense. If Christianity is to live a Christ-like life, it includes suffering and embracing the absurd, anti-establishment outlook that Jesus had. He cites (still relevant) examples of the church calling righteous endeavors silly as being evidence of the offense Christians out to embrace. "That the heathen thought to do God a service by killing an Apostle is not so crazy as that 'true Christians' are persecuted in 'Christendom,' and that thus 'the Christians' think that thereby they do service to God." Christians are out of touch with themselves and the radical nature of Christ by getting caught up in the established system. Christ's teachings aren't to be the direct subject of teaching but rather indirect messages to inspire reflection and action towards a radical life of faith and love. Practice in Christianity was reprinted in 1855. On May 16, 1855 Kierkegaard published an article in The Fatherland entitled "With regard to the new edition of Practice in Christianity".

Typical of Kierkegaard, there were some good points mixed up with some bad ones, along with some interesting reflections on some Scriptural passages. He’s quite good at calling out fake Christians who turn Christ into merely a man who everyone can easily follow (like any great leader) and hence call themselves a Christian, but rather as the “object of faith” and the “cause of offense”. If you remove the difficult parts of Christianity and make it so exceedingly easy and accommodating that literally everyone identifies as Christian, then you pacify the religion and turn it into a lukewarm, banal social club and cultural institution: "...the possibility of offence at Christ qua God-Man will last to the end of time. If you take away possibility of this offence, it means that you also take Christ away, that you have made Him something different from what He was, the sign of offence and the object of faith.” It is split into three parts -- each of which could serve as its own work. In part 1, Kierkegaard provides philosophical insight to Jesus's words to "come hither unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, I will give you rest." He focuses on putting this statement into context by explaining what this statement means coming from the God man who himself leaves his place on high to suffer on Earth. Kierkegaard believes to hither with Christ is to embrace a form of righteous suffering that the bulk of the church in his era (and the modern church) refuses to embrace. This candid acceptance of humility and consciousness of sin, he argues, is to be contemporaneous with Christ and enter Christianity through the narrow way. Christ is made into the speculative unity of God and man, or Christ is thrown out altogether and his teaching is taken, or Christ is really made into an idol. Spirit is the denial of direct immediacy. If Christ is true God, then he also must be unrecognizable, attired in unrecognizability, which is the denial of all straightforwardness. Direct recognizability is specifically characteristic of the idol. But this is what people make Christ into, and this is supposed to be earnestness. They take the direct statement and fantastically form a character corresponding to it (preferably sentimental, with the gentle look, the friendly eye, or whatever else such a foolish pastor can hit upon), and then it is directly altogether certain that Christ is God. The above ideas have been enormously influential in Western culture. They not only dealt a severe blow to the rationalism prevalent in Christian theology in the 19th century — and, in fact, still prevalent nowadays in certain varieties of Christianity (e.g., evidential apologetics) — but were also important in the development of Christian Existentialism and Postmodern Christianity, as well as of Existentialism and Postmodernism in general. Section 3 is entitled "The Impossibility of Direct Communication". Kierkegaard emphasizes that the very nature of the incarnation is indirectness. God did not, after all, appear in a cloud, but rather in the attire of a man. Kierkegaard maintains that even the apparent direct sayings of Christ, such as "I and the Father are one", are indirect to an extent since the speaker is the God-man, the mediator, a human who has come from God, in the veil of flesh.Section B is entitled "The possibility of essential offense in relation to loftiness, that an individual human being speaks or acts as if he were God, declares himself to be God, therefore in relation to the qualification 'God' in the composition God-man". There are passages in the Gospels where Christ strongly implies either his deity or his absolute relation to the deity of God. There are other passages where Christ acts as if he is deity, for example when he allows a man to worship him, or when he claims to forgive the offense of one man against another. He claims to be the true shepherd, the true bread, living water, etc. The offense taken by the Jewish religious leaders is a standard motif in the Gospels. On the other hand, Training in Christianity also highlights the importance of pessimism and resignation in the Christian life. For Kierkegaard, resignation implies an unconditional acceptance of God's will, even when we do not understand it or when it seems unfair or cruel. This resignation can be difficult for many to accept, but it can be crucial for the mental and emotional health of people who seek to develop an attitude of acceptance and resilience in the face of life's difficulties. In fact, authenticity is a fundamental skill in the field of psychology, as it involves recognizing and expressing our emotions and thoughts honestly and without reservation. The skill for authenticity can be particularly important for those who experience strong feelings and intense emotions or who seek to continually improve their self-awareness and psychological well-being. Section 7 is entitled "The Object of Faith is the God-Man Precisely Because the God-Man is the Possibility of Offense". Yet neither the miracle nor the single direct statement is absolutely direct communication; for in that case the contradiction is eo ipso cancelled. As far as the miracle, which is the object of faith, is concerned, this is certainly easy to see; as for the second, that the single direct statement is nevertheless not direct communication, this will be shown later (p. 126).