Edifying Discourses: A Selection

by Søren Kierkegaard

Excerpt from Edifying A Selection

Thou plain man [wrote Kierkegaard toward the close of his life]! The Christianity of the New Testament is infinitely high; but observe that it is not high in such a sense that it has to do with the difference between man and man with respect to intel lectual capacity, etc. No, it is for all.

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Genres: Philosophy, Christian Living

265 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1968

About the author

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was a prolific 19th century Danish philosopher and theologian. Kierkegaard strongly criticised both the Hegelianism of his time and what he saw as the empty formalities of the Church of Denmark. Much of his work deals with religious themes such as faith in God, the institution of the Christian Church, Christian ethics and theology, and the emotions and feelings of individuals when faced with life choices. His early work was written under various pseudonyms who present their own distinctive viewpoints in a complex dialogue.

Kierkegaard left the task of discovering the meaning of his works to the reader, because "the task must be made difficult, for only the difficult inspires the noble-hearted". Scholars have interpreted Kierkegaard variously as an existentialist, neo-orthodoxist, postmodernist, humanist, and individualist.

Crossing the boundaries of philosophy, theology, psychology, and literature, he is an influential figure in contemporary thought.

Reviews

[Gastjäle · Rating 3 out of 5]

To a Kierkegaardian Christian, the highest good is faith. It is latent in every human being and its very grandeur is a result of the fact that a Christian must discover it himself - without any intermediaries to guide the way. In connexion with this, Kierkegaard propounded a fascinating paradox: if a Man wishes the highest good for someone, it would actually result in the privation of the good! But it's rather futile to attempt to help others in this, because, as our dear philosopher points out, Man must realise that he is absolutely nothing of himself.

Faith must be tested and tried time and again while the mortal coil remains unviolated. Kierkegaard stresses the contradictory tenet of faith: the existence of God is self-evidential, yet none can verify it, since Man can only find temporal proof to things. It then follows, that Man must constantly renew this concern with uncertainty, and thus attest his faith, for with guessing goes fear, with conjecture apprehension, with the conclusion disquiet, since the question soul does not remain unmoved by the experience . Man must also travel back and forth in time in his quest for the verification of faith - he must find the meaning of life in the future in order to return to the present, after conquering the future. Kierkegaard crystallised this idea very beautifully in the following passage:

How should we then go to meet the future? When the sailor is out upon the sea, when everything is changing about him, when the waves are constantly born and die, then he does not stare down into the depths of these, for they change. He looks up at the stars: and why? Because they are faithful; as they stand now, they stood for the patriarchs, and will stand for the coming generations. By what means does he then conquer the changing conditions? Through the eternal.

This doesn't mean that after the conquest, Man shouldn't look forward to anything: for one who does not expect anything, does not believe; neither does him, who expects something special.

Something special? Well, the whole Kierkegaardian view of God lies on the fact that we cannot know, and with this anxiety he makes the leap of faith towards his Creator. Anything that befalls a Man, is for his edification - it is not up to Man to decide what's good for him, or to wish for things from his temporal point of view. For the primary condition of faith is whether or not one is a believer, not whether or not one's wishes are fulfilled.

You wished that God's ideas about what was profitable to you might be your ideas, but you also wishes that He might be the almighty Creator of heaven and earth, so that He might rightly fulfill your wish. And yet if He were to share your ideas, then must He cease to be the almighty Father. You would in your childish impatience, as it were, corrupt God's eternal Being, and you were blind enough to delude yourself, as if it helped you if God in heaven did not know better what was profitable to you than you yourself; as if you would not sometime discover with terror that you had wished what no man would be able to bear if it came to pass.

Once again, let's stress the idea of concern and anxiety. Kierkegaard says that our world is finite, and the supernal spaces infinite. There can be no finite conditions to eternal happiness (something which every Kierkegaardian Christian should strive for). "The one who is truly concerned understands very well that there must be a condition" but it cannot be finite. The anxiety takes the finite from him. Ergo, the concern is constant because of this uncertain certainty, yet such a person is constantly saved by grace.

These should be the words of comfort for a Kierkegaardian Christian, not empty promises of hope, such as saying that misfortune is not likely to befall a young person. But as Kierkegaard put it:
But who then is the more unfortunate? Is it the man who has made trial of the experience? Or is it not the soft and cowardly fool who can not perceive that his consolation is an illusion, since when misfortune really comes it helps him little that the occurrence was a rare one.
The misfortune must fall on everyone at some point, since it's very difficult to say whether someone, who's lived a happy, secluded and harmless existence would truly believe in God if things went south.

Lastly, Kierkegaard also stresses the ever-conspicuous importance of Love, that which gives everything and hence demands nothing - the thing which covers a multitude of sins, in contradistinction to sin which discovers the evil.

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At this point, it should be said that I'm not a believer myself. But I've been waiting for a book which might truly open up the mystery of belief to myself, and I think Kierkegaard has done a good job in explaining the strange beauty of it all. But what I admire even more in him is that he endeavours to nullify the opportunities for hubris, elitism, and control in the Christian circles. The spiritual quest is a personal one, and it doesn't require sermons from the pulpit as such - not until the spirit has discovered itself. Nor is there even a hint of competition in here: for there can never be a state in a man's life when he can say: I've done enough. And cushioned life and riches are of no use, since they are only conducive to turning believers into fair-weather Christians.

Hearken, my good friend. If we replaced Kierkegaard's belief with conviction, would many things change?

To a painstaking soul, to appreciate morals, values, and customs of society truly may not be as easy as one thinks. They are instilled at an early stage, yet it should be very salutary indeed to question them at some point. At the end of the road, one discovers that they are built on air, and there is no absolute truth behind them - and from this uncertainty one must backtrack, and decide things for themselves. This is a quest that every person, in my opinion, should do, since it serves oneself to understand their own person more deeply. And that is the ultimate quest everyone must be faced with: to discover oneself, the ever-changing Me.

Never can a Man say: now I know myself, for that would be an utter lie. So you suddenly decide that you will refuse to be changed by your surroundings and by the people from this day forward? Good luck with that, monsieur. This quest lasts a lifetime, and it should be one of constant fascination, for it's something no one else can map out for you. And if others understand the essentially never-ending nature of this quest, there ought to be no sense of competition. So look for yourself, look for your convictions, and be prepared to face the consequences of human mutability.

The ones who boast about their knowledge and conviction are but puffing out hot air. The idea is to go forward, test one's views and beliefs, re-discover oneself world without end. The idea is not to rest on one's laurels and be smug about one's achievements. Such a thing only shows that you have come to a standstill on your own, personal quest.

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So yes, this book can offer much to a non-believer too. However, the fruitful things were situated in the first half of the book - the latter half consisted mostly of threadbare Christian teachings wherein I never saw any real problems. But apparently Kierkegaard did, and so it isn't a shame that he harped on about them in detail - it just wasn't for me.

Kierkegaard's a truly fascinating person with one of the finest surnames in existence. He has plenty of titillating ideas, yet not everything he says is absolutely golden. Let's hope that I don't have to resort to this cherry-picking the next time I'm reading his musings, however.

[djt · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short while ago, (because I wanted to take a deeper look at the subject of philosophy without scattering myself through endless books that were not in line with my, personal, philosophy) I'd read a book that summarized different philosphers & areas of philosphy & realized I'd most likely enjoy reading the "Existentialists" (i.e., Jean Paul Sartre & others) & that brought me to this book. Soren Kierkegaard is known as the "father of Existentialism" and though I'd, of course, heard his name before, I'd never read him. After reading this book, I've definitely decided to search out and read more of his works. This book includes 11 discourses. Some I found to be tedious, difficult to process and some even boring, and others I found to be incredibly illuminating, invigorating, challenging, uplifting, and wonderful.

In the introduction, Paul L. Holmer writes, "...Kierkegaard suggests that they should be read in privacy and preferably aloud." While I've read them in privacy, there were only 2 that I actually read aloud (although quietly aloud...lol) and it made a tremendous difference in my understanding of what was written. I think this was due to the fact of the translation of Kierkegaard's language & writing style into English, and the fact that his style does contain many phrases within phrases, and almost "backward?" sentences, it made them more translatable to me when emphasized through the out loud reading of them. That allowed me to see the importance of the duplicated words and phrases, and how he must have meant these to be explicitly, and deliberately emphasized. At any rate, I really enjoyed this book and look forward to reading more of the writing, the philosophical thought, of Soren Kierkegaard and I would definitely recommend this book to others that are interested in an Existentialist Philosophy. A really good read.

[R. Turner · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is such a short book but I wound up scanning the last fourth of it. I liked Kierkegaard’s Either/Or and I am interested in reading some of his more religious writings, but this one didn’t feel worth it. His wording is hard to follow and once you untangle what he’s trying to say, it’s a very basic concept that is commonplace in any conventional Christian work. It might be unfair to give this 2 stars because I didn’t technically read the whole thing, but I just couldn’t bring myself to keep laboring through his rambling this time.

[Robert Tessmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thou plain man [wrote Kierkegaard toward the close of his
life]! The Christianity of the New Testament is infinitely high;
but observe that it is not high in such a sense that it has to do
with the difference between man and man with respect to intel-
lectual capacity, etc. No, it is for all. . . .

Thou plain man! I have not separated my life from thine; thou
knowest it, I have lived in the street, am known to all; . . .

Thou plain man! I do not conceal from thee the fact that,
according to my notion, the thing of being a Christian is infinitely
high, that at no time are there more than a few who attain it, as
Christ's own life attests, if one considers the generation in which
He lived, and as also His preaching indicates, if one takes it lit-
erally. Yet nevertheless it is possible for all. . . - 1

It is with this explicit appeal to plain people that all of the
discourses in this book were written. Each discourse is calcu-
lated to bring the reader, whatever his aesthetic and intellec-
tual capacity, into conversation about religious and Christian
concerns. For this reason, among others, Kierkegaard sug-
gests that they should be read in privacy and preferably
aloud. Their simplicity and repetitive style make them
extremely effective devotional essays.

1. The Expectation of Faith

2. Every Good and Perfect Thing is From Above

3. Love Shall Cover a Multitude of Sins

4. The Lord Gave and the Lord Hath Taken Away, Blessed Be the Name of The Lord

5. Remember Now Thy Creator in the Days of Thy Youth

6. The Expectation of an Eternal Happiness

7. Man's Need of God Constitutes his Highest Perfection

8. Love Conquers All

9. The Narrowness is the Way

10. The Glory of Our Common Humanity

11. The Unchangeableness of God

[Bill Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

From the early 1840’s until his sudden death in 1855, Kierkegaard wrote and published constantly. At first his significant writings were written using pseudonyms. However at the same time he also wrote shorter “discourses” using his own name. This volume contains a selection of these — written mainly in the mid 1840s. They differ greatly from his pseudonymous writings of this same period. They are shorter and concern his reflections on a particular idea expressed in the New Testament. Many are a thematic development of a few biblical verses.
They are not sermons nor exegesis nor devotions proper. Rather in Kierkegaard’s own imaginative style (at times rambling and at times whimsical) they develop the manifold implications of the one or two ideas under consideration — all for the purpose of “edifying” the reader.

[Michael David · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was funny how temporally sound reading this book seemed. The Gospel yesterday was all about knowing the difference between the ways of God and the ways of man: one of the book's foundations is this fundamental dichotomy that is important in Christian belief. The discourses by Kierkegaard serve well to clarify important ideas in Christian living and thought: it simply allows the reader to understand these important beliefs, but there really isn't anything novel in this work. All in all, it is a very lucid disquisition on the Bible's message, but little else.

For a Christian searching for deeper meaning than the common 'inspirational' works seen nowadays, however, this is a potent alternative.

[Gabrielle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some beautiful spiritual concepts but deeply hidden in such redundant wording that they are not worth mining for, especially since most of them can be found in almost every major religious text.