Practice in Christianity

“As long as there is a believer, this person, in order to have become that, must have been and as a believer must be just as contemporary with Christ’s presence as his contemporaries were. This contemporaneity is the condition of faith. P. 9”

“Come here to me, all you who labor and are burdened. This he says, and those who lived with him saw and see that there truly is not the slightest thing in his way of life that contradicts it. With the silent and veracious eloquence of action, his life expresses-even if he had never said these words-his life expresses: Come here to me, all you who labor and are burdened. He stands by his word or he himself is his word: he is what he says-in this sense, too, he is the Word. P. 14”

“If you are conscious of yourself as a sinner, he will not question you about it; he will not break the bruised reed even more, but will raise you up when you accept him. He will not identify you by contrast, by placing you apart from himself so that your sin becomes even more terrible. P. 20”

““History,” says faith, “has nothing at all to do with Jesus Christ; with regard to him we have only sacred history (which is qualitatively different from history in general), which relates the story of abasement, also that he claimed to be God.” P. 30”

“It is cunning of the inviter to say: I heal all sicknesses, and then when one comes says: I acknowledge only that there is one sickness-sin-of that and from that I heal all of those “who labor and are burdened,” all of those who labor to work themselves out of the power of sin, labor to resist evil, to overcome their weakness, but only manage to be burdened. Of this sickness he heals “all”; even if there were but one single person who turned to him on account of his sickness-he heals all. P. 61”

“That with which you are living simultaneously is actuality-for you. Thus, every human being is able to become contemporary only with the time in which he is living-and then with one more, with Christ’s life upon earth, for Christ’s life upon earth, the sacred history, stands alone by itself, outside history. P. 64”

“Fear yourself, fear what can kill the faith and in that way kills Jesus Christ for you-the offense. Fear and tremble, for faith is carried in a fragile earthen vessel, in the possibility of offense. P. 76”

“The God-man is not the union of God and man-such terminology is a profound optical illusion. The God-man is the unity of God and an individual human being. P. 82”

“The generation wants to form the established order, to abolish God, in the fear of men to browbeat the single individual into a mousehole-but this God does not want, and he uses the very opposite tactic-he uses the single individual to prod the established order out of self-complacency. P. 89-90”

“The possibility of offense in relation to Christ qua God-man will continue until the end of time. If the possibility of this offense is taken away, it will mean that Christ, too, is taken away, that he is made into something different from what he is, the sign of offense and the object of faith. P. 93”

“One becomes a Christian only in the situation of contemporaneity with Christ, and in the situation of contemporaneity everyone will also become aware. P. 102”

“To commit a whole life to suffering, to sacrifice, is madness of the understanding. If I am to submit to a suffering, says the understanding, if I am to sacrifice something or in any way sacrifice myself, then I also want to be able to know what profit and advantage I can have from it-otherwise I would be a lunatic to do it. P. 116”

“The God-man (and, as said before, by that Christianity does not understand this fantastic speculation about the unity of God and man but an individual human being who is God) exists only for faith; but the possibility of offense is precisely the repulsion in which faith can come into existence-if one does not choose to be offended. P. 121”

“Wherever it is the case that the teacher is an essential component, there is a reduplication; … that the teacher is the integral; … where there is reduplication communication is not direct. Reduplication in the teacher through his existing in what he teaches; all direct communication is impossible. P. 123”

“It was Christ’s free resolve from eternity to want to be incognito. He had superiority over himself in such a way that one seems lowlier than one is. P. 128-129”

“The possibility of offense is present at every moment, confirming at every moment the chasmic abyss between the single individual and the God-man over which faith and faith alone reaches P. 139”

“Eighteen hundred years have not contributed a jot to demonstrating the truth of Christianity. In proportion as the demonstration increased in power-fewer and fewer were convinced. P. 144”

“Lord, increase my faith. The person who prayed this prayer was not an unbeliever but a believer. The person who prays this prayer aright must already feel himself drawn. Be aware of His presence. P. 156”

“Whether you or some person has adversities in life, whether things perhaps go downhill for him, or whether he perhaps loses his beloved: this is not called suffering like that of Jesus. Such sufferings are universally human, in which the pagans are tried as much as Christians. P. 173”

“When the truth is the way, being the truth is a life-and this is indeed how Christ speaks of himself: I am the Truth, the Way and the Life-the illusion of the Church triumphant is that Christianity has been regarded as truth in the sense of results instead of it being truth in the sense of the way. P. 207”

“Only the Church militant is truth-the Church triumphant and established Christendom are an illusion. P. 219”

“Lord Jesus Christ, you did not come to the world to be served and thus not to be admired either, or in that sense worshiped. You yourself were the Way and the Life-and you have asked only for imitators. If we have dozed off into this infatuation, wake us up, rescue us from this error of wanting to admire or adoringly admire you instead of wanting to follow you and be like you. P. 233”

“When it comes to the moral, to want to admire instead of imitate is not an invention by bad people-no, it is the spineless invention by those who must be called the better but also weak people, whereby they seek to keep themselves detached. They are related to the admired one only though the imagination; to them he is like a theatrical play. P. 244”

“When the truth is the way there are “three ways to go wrong-to go the wrong way, to stumble on the way, to make a wrong turn away from the way”-we pray to you that you will draw the strayer back to yourself, will strengthen the stumbler on the way, will lead back to the way those who have gone astray. P. 262”