I got some new tomes in the post a while back. Hooray for Amazon.com Super Saver Shipping! Søren Kierkegaard’s For Self Examination/Judge For Yourself! combined (SK XXI in the Princeton Library), and The Concept of Anxiety (SK VIII).
My devout listener. When the apostles came forward on Pentecost Day, for the first time filled with the Holy Spirit, “All were alarmed and doubted and said, ‘They are full of sweet wine’” (Acts 2:12-13). Hence no one was able to or ventured to explain what had happened here. Alarm and doubt siezed all; only the mockers attempted an explanation- namely, that the apostles were drunk, and so early in the day, by nine o’clock in the morning. This was the explanation. But it is inadequate, because, strangely enough, they were not this way only in the morning, no- if they were drunk- they were still drunk in the evening; and it was not only that morning, no- if they were drunk- they were also drunk the next morning and the evening of the next morning, and a month later, and twenty years afterward, and even in the hour of death they were filled wiht the sweet wine that they, according to the mockers’ explanation- for otherwise the event on Pentecost Day is inexplicable- must have drunk that morning. What profound mockery of the mockers’ explanation!
Here as everywhere it is manifest that the world and Christianity have completely opposite conceptions. The world says of the apostles, of the Apostle Peter as their spokesman, “He is drunk,” and the Apostle Peter admonishes, “Become sober.” Consequently the secular mentality considers Christianity to be drunkeness, and Christianity considers the secular mentality to be drunkenness. “Do become reasonable, come to your senses, try to become sober”- thus does the secular mentality taunt the Christian. And the Christian says to the secular mentality, “Do become reasonable, come to your senses, become sober.” The difference between secularity and Christianity is not that the one has one view and the other another- no, the difference is always that they have the very opposite views, that what one calls love the other calls selfishness, what the one calls piety the other calls impiety, what the one calls being drunk the other calls being sober. It is precisely the drunk man the apostle, who finds it necessary to bring home to a sober (I assume) world the admonition: “Become sober!”
This very admonition may, as intended, most severely wound the callous secular mentality, which as a rule cannot be wounded very easily or be disconcerted. This secular mentality certainly can put up with a great deal, can put up with this and that being said about it- but not with being called drunk. “I stick,” says this secular mentality, “I stick to facts. I am neither a fanatic nor a dreamer nor a fool, neither drunk nor crazy. I stick to facts; I believe nothing, nothing whatever, except what I can touch and feel; and I believe no one, not my own child, not my wife, not my best friend; I believe only what can be demonstrated- because I stick to facts. I stick to facts and therefore do not in the remotest manner become involved with all this grandiloquence about the hereafter, about eternity, and all that stuff preachers, not for nothing, get women, children, and the simpleminded to believe, since one knows what one has and does not know what one will obtain- I stick to this. I stick to facts; therefore I never play the game people make such a big fuss about under the name of love, in which one is indeed always swindled if one is not oneself the swindler. No, I do not love a single person- but wait a minute, there is one person I love. I do not say that I love him more than myself- that is so fanatical, and I am no fanatic, but I love him just as much as myself- it is, namely, myself. I love that person; this is a fact, and I stick to facts. Call me self-loving and heartless and perfidious and paltry, for that matter, call me a scamp, a scoundrel- it will never disturb me, because I stick to facts. The only thing, I suppose, that would momentarily disturb me would be if someone had the notion to say that I was drunk, intoxicated- I, the coldest and calmest and clearest common sense.” Yet the apostle says, “Become sober!”- and says thereby: You are intoxicated; unhappy one, if you could see yourself, you would shudder, because you would see that you are like an intoxicated man when he- disgusting!- scarecely resembles a human being- to such a degree you are intoxicated.
That is the way secularity and Christianity are related to each other. It was not only about the apostles, not only about them on Pentecost Day that it was said: They are full of sweet wine- no, this was and is and remains the world’s judgment of the essentially Christian. Christianity, however, is of the opinion that particularly the apostles, and especially on Pentecost Day, were in the highest sense sober, pure spirit. And Christianity is of the opinion that particularly the true Christian is sober, that on the contrary the less Christian anyone else is the more that person is in a state of intoxication. And Christianity is of the opinion that its first effect or the first effect of the Spirit on a person is that he becomes sober. In other words, everything essentially Christian is a redoubling [Fordobelse], or every qualification of the essentially Christian is first of all its opposite, whereas in just a human or secular view a thing is just what it is. Thus, in just a human view, a spirit that gives life is a life-giving spirit and nothing more, Christianly, it is first of all the Spirit who kills, who teaches dying to. In just a human view, elevation is only elevation and nothing more; Christianly, it is first of all humiliation. So also with inspiration- in just a human view, it is inspiration; Christianly, inspiration is first of all becoming sober.
~ Søren Kierkegaard [Judge for Yourself!]
