The Kierkegaarden

“Ordinarily everyone who lives in Christendom has unconditionally enough knowledge about Christianity to be able to invoke and supplicate, to be able to turn in prayer to Christ. If he does that with the need of inwardness and in honesty of heart, he surely will become a believer. If only it is altogether definite before God that this person feels the need to believe, he will very definitely find out what he is to believe. The opposite is: without a need to believe, to go on researching, ruminating, and pondering, more and more wanting nigglingly to waste year after year of one’s life, and finally one’s eternal salvation, on getting absolutely and precisely definite, down to a dot over a letter, what one is to believe. This opposite is empty shadowboxing that merely becomes more and more self-important, or it is a scholarly, learned practice in the wrong place, therefore a scholarly, learned malpractice, or it is cowardly, inhuman, and to that extent also ungodly pusillanimity.” ——————————————————– ~Source: Christian Discourses: “He Was Believed in the World” (1848) Author: Søren Kierkegaard

“Ordinarily everyone who lives in Christendom has unconditionally enough knowledge about Christianity to be able to invoke and supplicate, to be able to turn in prayer to Christ. If he does that with the need of inwardness and in honesty of heart, he surely will become a believer. If only it is altogether definite before God that this person feels the need to believe, he will very definitely find out what he is to believe. The opposite is: without a need to believe, to go on researching, ruminating, and pondering, more and more wanting nigglingly to waste year after year of one’s life, and finally one’s eternal salvation, on getting absolutely and precisely definite, down to a dot over a letter, what one is to believe. This opposite is empty shadowboxing that merely becomes more and more self-important, or it is a scholarly, learned practice in the wrong place, therefore a scholarly, learned malpractice, or it is cowardly, inhuman, and to that extent also ungodly pusillanimity.”
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~Source: Christian Discourses: “He Was Believed in the World” (1848)
Author: Søren Kierkegaard