Attack upon Christendom Quotes

“But the eternal is not a thing which can be had regardless of the way in which it is acquired; no, the eternal is not really a thing, but is the way in which it is acquired.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Attack upon Christendom

“I might be tempted to make to Christendom a proposal different from that of the Bible society. Let us collect all the New Testaments we have, let us bring them out to an open square or up to the summit of a mountain, and while we all kneel let one man speak to God thus: 'Take this book back again; we men, such as we now are, are not fit to go in for this sort of thing, it only makes us unhappy,' This is my proposal, that like those inhabitants in Gerasa we beseech Christ to depart from our borders. This would be an honest and human way of talking -- rather different from the disgusting hypocritical priestly fudge...”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Attack upon Christendom

“People had not so much as the courage and honesty and truth to say to God bluntly, "That I cannot agree to," they resorted to hypocrisy and thought they were perfectly secure. pp 168-6”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Attack upon Christendom

“Instead of proclaiming the ideals, they educe what experience teaches, what the experience of all the centuries has taught, that the millions get no further than mediocrity.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Attack upon Christendom

“Most Christians have at some point faced the question, “Which church should I attend?” After reading Attack Upon Christendom the question becomes, “Is it OK for a Christian to go to church?”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Attack Upon Christendom

“Is this the same teaching, when Christ says to the rich young man, "Sell all that thou hast, and give it to the poor"; and when the priest says, "Sell all that thou hast and...give it to me"?”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Attack upon Christendom

“In every generation that man is a rarity who exercises such a power over himself that he can will what is not pleasant to him, that he can hold fast that truth which does not please him, hold that it is the truth although it does not please him, hold that it is the truth precisely because it does not please him, and then nevertheless, in spite of the fact that it does not please him, can commit himself to it. pp 151-2”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Attack upon Christendom

“But take heed to pay them willingly and promptly what money they should have. With those whom one despises, one on no account should have money differences, lest it might perhaps be said that it was to get out of paying them one avoided them. No, pay them double, in order that thy disagreement with them may be thoroughly clear: that what concerns them does not concern thee at all, namely, money; and on the contrary, that what does not concern them concerns thee infinitely, namely, Christianity.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Attack Upon Christendom

“But as it befell thee (according to what thou sayest in thy "Defense," as ironically enough thou hast called the crudest satire upon any generation), that thou didst bring down upon thee many enemies by making it evident that they were ignorant; and as they imputed to thee the inference that thou thyself must be what thou wert able to show the others were not, they therefore out of envy conceived a grudge against thee; so it has also befallen me.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Attack Upon Christendom

“But in "Christendom" we play at believing, play at being Christians; as far as possible from any breach with what we love, we remain at home, in the parlor, in the old grooves of finiteness – and then we go and twaddle with one another, or let the pastor twaddle to us, about all the promises which are found in the New Testament, that no one shall harm us, that the gates of hell shall not prevail against us, against the Church, etc.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Attack Upon Christendom

“The truth is that to become a Christian is to become unhappy for this life. The situation is this: the more thou hast to do with God, and the more He loves thee, the more wilt thou become, humanly speaking, unhappy for this life, the more thou wilt have to suffer in this life.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Attack Upon Christendom

“Is this the same teaching, when Christ says to the rich young man, "Sell all that thou hast, and give it to the poor"; and when the pastor says, "Sell all that thou hast and – give it to me"?”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Attack Upon Christendom

“Thereby thought is led on to something which also is characteristic of official Christianity, the unmanliness of using cunning, untruth and lies as its power. That again is very characteristic of official Christianity, which, being itself an untruth, uses a prodigious amount of untruth, both to hide what truth is, and to hide the fact that it is untruth.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Attack Upon Christendom

“the Christianity of "Christendom," takes this into account; it takes away from Christianity the offense, the paradox, etc., and instead of that introduces, probability, the plainly comprehensible. That is, it transforms Christianity into something entirely different from what it is in the New Testament, yea, into exactly the opposite; and this is the Christianity of "Christendom," of us men.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Attack Upon Christendom

“Just as a dog which is compelled to walk on two feet has every instant a tendency to go again on all four, and does so as soon as it sees its chance, waiting only to see its chance, so is Christendom an effort of the human race to go back to walking on all fours, to get rid of Christianity, to do it knavishly under the pretext that this is Christianity, claiming that it is Christianity perfected.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Attack Upon Christendom

“For a Christianity preached by royal functionaries who are paid and made secure by the State and employ the police against other people, such a Christianity has the same relation to the Christianity of the New Testament as swimming with a cork float or with a bladder has to swimming, that is to say, it is play.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Attack Upon Christendom

“Christianity is related to a kingdom which is not of this world – and then the State receives an oath from teachers of Christianity, which oath signifies therefore that the man swears loyalty precisely to that which is the opposite to the State. Such an oath is a self-contradiction, like making a man swear by laying his hand upon the New Testament, where it is written, Thou shalt not swear.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Attack Upon Christendom

“What Christianity wants is – the following of Christ. What man does not want is suffering, least of all the kind of suffering which is properly the Christian sort, suffering at the hands of men. So he dispenses with "following," and consequently with suffering, the peculiarly Christian suffering, and then builds the sepulchers of the prophets. That is one thing. And then he says, lyingly before God, to himself and to others, that he is better than those who killed the prophets. That is the second thing. Hypocrisy first and hypocrisy last – and according to the judgment of Christ – blood-guilt.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Attack Upon Christendom

“this whole thing about "Christendom" and "a Christian world" is a knavish trick on man's part, the notion that we really are Christians is a vain conceit by force of the knavish trick; on the other hand, the New Testament, entirely unchanged, is the guidebook for Christians, for whom things will go in this world as one reads in the New Testament, and who should not let themselves be disturbed by the fact that for knavish Christians things go differently in this world, a knavish world.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Attack Upon Christendom

“Just think what it means to live in a Christian state, a Christian nation, where everything is Christian, and we are all Christians, where, however a man twists and turns, he sees nothing but Christianity and Christendom, the truth and witnesses to the truth –”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Attack Upon Christendom

“I am by nature so polemically constituted that I only feel myself really in my element when I am surrounded by human mediocrity and paltriness.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Attack Upon Christendom

“Iato says in a well-known passage in his Republic that something good can result only if those men come into positions of rule who have no liking for it. His meaning doubtless is, that ability being assumed, unwillingness to rule is a good guarantee that a man will rule truly and ably, whereas an ambitious man may only too easily become one who abuses his power to tyrannize, or one whom a liking for rule brings into an obscure dependence upon those over whom he is supposed to rule, so that his rule becomes an illusion.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Attack Upon Christendom

“Dean Bloch introduces the article he writes against me in No. 94 of this newspaper by referring to another article written against me earlier in the same paper by an anonymous author, whose article Dean Bloch (an obsequious Basil) recognizes appreciatively in the strongest and most deferential terms as what might be called a "leading article." And there is something in that, for it leads astray,”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Attack Upon Christendom

“But one thing I will not do; no, not for anything in the world: I will not, though it were merely with the last quarter of the last joint of my little finger, I will not take part in what is known as official Christianity, which by suppression and by artifice gives the impression of being the Christianity of the New Testament; and upon my knees I thank my God that He has compassionately prevented me from becoming too far embroiled in it.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Attack Upon Christendom

“He says, "Come unto me," etc., etc., then, by reason of the situation which furnishes the more express understanding, the consequences will always be exposure to danger, perhaps to mortal danger. On the other hand, where all are Christians, the situation is this: to call oneself a Christian is the means whereby one secures oneself against all sorts of inconveniences and discomforts, and the means whereby one secures worldly goods, comforts, profit, etc., etc.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Attack Upon Christendom

“In the New Testament Christ calls the Apostles and the disciples "witnesses," requires them to witness to Him. Let us see now what is to be understood by this. These are men who by the renunciation of all things, in poverty, in lowliness, and thus ready for every suffering, were to go out into the world which expresses mortal hostility to the Christian way of life. This is what Christ calls "witnesses" and "witnessing.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Attack Upon Christendom

“The Attack is a funny book which the reader has the option of taking seriously. For when the laughter subsides we realize that SK has set before us a stark either-or proposition: either follow the gospel according to Christ and the apostles, or follow the gospel according to the clergy. There can be no dialectical synthesis between these contraries.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Attack Upon Christendom

“Christianity is incendiarism; Christ Himself says, ‘I am come to set fire on the earth’…official Christianity is not the Christianity of the New Testament.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Attack Upon Christendom

“It is related of a Swedish priest that, profoundly disturbed by the sight of the effect his address produced upon the auditors, who were dissolved in tears, he said soothingly, "Children, do not weep; the whole thing might be a lie.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Attack upon Christendom