Kierkegaard: Purity of Heart and Works of Love

 The following two works, Purity of Heart and Works of Love, ought to have placed Kierkegaard in the ranks of classic devotional works. 

            In 1846, Kierkegaard published Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing as part of the volume, Edifying Discourses in Various Spirits. He wrote it in his name. He dedicated it “that solitary individual.” 

            He wrote a brief “Preface.”

            Chapter 1 has the title, “Introduction: Man and the Eternal.” He quotes from Ecclesiastes 3:11, “God made all things beautiful in his time; also he hath set eternity within man’s heart.” Eternity must be able to exist within us. A discussion of it must have a different ring. Something shall always have its time. For some people, repentance came late. Outgrowing the eternal is to fall away from God.

            Chapter 2 has the title, “Remorse, Repentance, Confession: Eternity’s Emissaries to Man.” Some things should always be done. Some things should never have their time. There must be repentance and remorse. Grieving after God shall always have its time, and the option of not being in that condition ought not be present. Providence watches over the wandering of each human being through life. It provides the person with two guides. One calls the person forward. The other calls the person back. The two are in eternal understanding with each other. Sadly, many went astray through not understanding how to continue in a good beginning. Repentance and remorse know how to make sure of time in fear and trembling. In the eleventh hour one understands life in a wholly different way than in the easy of youth or in the busy time of adulthood or in the final moment of old age. One who repents at any other hour of the day repents in the temporal sense. The eternal enters our lives with its “obey at once.” It can come as a sudden shock that confuses the temporal. On the contrary, it should assist the temporal throughout life. One who becomes at one with oneself is in silence. What silence means, what the surroundings will say in this stillness, is the unspeakable. The unspeakable is like the murmuring of a brook. If you go buried in your own thoughts, if you are busy, then you do not notice it at all in passing. You are not aware that this murmuring exists. However, if you stand still, then you discover it. Of course, when it comes to confession, God is not learning something about you that God did not know. However, you learn something about yourself. The prayer does not change God, but prayer does change the one who offers it. The ignorance many have of their lives is their self-deceit. Only one thing can remove this ignorance.

            Chapter 3 has the title, “Barriers to Willing One Thing: Variety and Great Moments are not one thing.” James 4:8 says, “Draw nigh to God and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts ye double-minded.” First, if it is to be possible, that people can will only one thing, then they must will the good. To see people rush toward their destruction is horrible. To see people dance on the rim of the abyss without any intimation of it is horrible. In the anxiety of death, people cry out for help, “I am going under, save me.” Yet, to see people quietly choose to be a witness to their own death is horrible. To will one thing is to allow it to fashion the individual into conformity with itself.

            Chapter 4 has the title, “Barriers to Willing One Thing: the reward-disease.” Second, if it be possible for people to will one thing, then they must will the good in truth. If this is possible, then they must be at one with themselves in willing to renounce all double-mindedness. Kierkegaard prays that one might wound no one except for the purpose of healing. He does not want this talk to embitter anyone, yet, he wants his talk to reflect the truth. He wants the talk alone with truth to become sufficiently penetrating to reveal that which is hidden. He wants the talk to wipe out double-mindedness and win hearts for the good. However, people who desire the good for the sake of reward do not will one thing. They are double-minded. Such persons stand at the parting of the way, for two visions appear, the good and the reward. 

            Chapter 5 has the title, “Barriers to Willing One Thing: Willing out of fear of punishment.” People who will only will the good out of fear of punishment do not will one thing. They are double-minded. Such a person becomes the obstacle that keeps him or her from fulfilling his or her desire. The problem is that punishment may be the medicine one needs. A destructive spiritual illness is to fear what a human being out not fear. The only proof of the eternal is faith in it. Fear is a deceitful aid, while the good teaches and helps the one who strives toward it. The good and the punishment the world metes out are not identical. To think they are suggests that the world has become so perfect and so holy, that it is like God, ad that what it rewards is the good and what it punishes is evil. One may hear magnificent words about how the world progresses, and about our age and about our century. However, would you dare, as a parent say to your child as you send him or her into the world, “God, with your mind at ease, my child, pay attention to what they many approve and what the world rewards, for that is the good, but what the world punishes, that is evil.” As people grow older, they grow accustomed to a great deal in life. What we need is a dose of fear and trembling for what the world has become. Of course, the world has power to lay many a burden upon people, make their lives sour and laborious, and rob them of life. It cannot punish an innocent one. When good people stand within the fortification of eternity, they are stronger than the world. They are strongest of all at the time when they seem to be overcome. However, the impotent double-minded people have removed the boundary, because they will the good out of ear of punishment from the world. If the world is not really the land of perfection, then by their double-mindedness they have surrendered themselves to the power of mediocrity or pledged themselves to the evil. 

            Chapter 6 has the title, “Barriers to Willing One Thing: Egocentric Service of the Good.” Kierkegaard makes his third point that people who will the good and will its victory out of a self-centered willfulness do not will one thing. They are double-minded. The point, of course, is that the good wins, not that the person wins. Eternally, the good is always victorious. However, in time it is otherwise. Temporally, it may take a long time. The victory is slow. Its uncertainty is a slow measure of length. People confuse impatience with enthusiasm. People do not take time for things. We see this in children, of course. 

            Chapter 7 has the title, “Barriers to willing one thing: commitment to a certain degree. Kierkegaard wants to focus his fourth point upon weakness as it appears in the common things of real life, as people will the good only to a certain degree. Temporality and busyness make it appear as if eternity is far away. This press of busyness is like a charm. Its power swells. It reaches out, seeking always to lay hold of every-younger victims so that childhood or youth are scarcely allowed the quiet in which the eternal may unfold a divine growth. Such busyness and noise cause truth to slip steadily into oblivion. The mass of connections, stimuli, and hindrances make it increasingly difficult for people to win any deeper knowledge of themselves. A mirror can enable people to see their image, but they must stand still. If they rush past, they see nothing. We can keep mirrors in our pockets, but if we never take it out, we receive no image of ourselves. In this fashion, busy people hurry on, with the possibility of understanding themselves in their possession, but it never downs upon them that they are rapidly losing the capacity. Such people have plenty of excuses as to why any pause they do make in their lives makes them worse than before. Of course, general approval is on the side of the busy people among us. Such people have sentimental feeling toward the good, but the feeling is a deception. Time has no right to deny that the good has the advantage. However, time can stretch itself out and make it more difficult for the one who pauses and sees with clarity the victory of the good. 

            Chapter 8 has the title, “The Price of Willing One Thing: Commitment, Loyalty, Readiness to Suffer All.” What does it mean when we say that we want to accomplish something in the world? The temporal order cannot become a transparent medium of the eternal. In its given reality, the temporal order conflicts with the eternal. This makes the determination to accomplish something less plain. The more active the eternal is toward the witness, the stronger is the cleavage. The more the striver, instead of willing the eternal, is linked with the temporal existence, the more he or she accomplishes in the sense of the temporal existence. 

            Chapter 9 has the title, “The Price of Willing One Thing: The exposure of evasions.” At birth, everyone has an eternal vocation uniquely for that person. To be true to ourselves in relation to this eternal vocation is the highest thing we can practice. As Shakespeare in Henry V, Act 2, Scene 4 put it, “Self-love is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting.” We face one potential fault and one offense as to how we chose to live our lives: we have disloyalty to self or the denial of this better self. Some think that people can grasp truth, good, and beauty while being at least a little unfaithful to oneself. However, Kierkegaard does not think so. Truth does not need people, but people need truth. People true to their vocation have the pleasure of dying and losing nothing, for God is there all in all. They take everything with them into eternity. They lose nothing at death. 

            Chapter 10 has the title, “The Price of Willing One thing: An Examination of the Extreme Case of an Incurable Sufferer.” Willing the good involves willingness to suffer. Even the sufferer wishes for a happier temporal existence. The wish also causes increased pain. The wish is the life in suffering and the health in suffering. The comfort of temporal existence is a precarious affair. It lets the wound grow together, although it is not yet healed. The physician knows that the cure depends upon keeping the wound open. The wish keeps the wound open, in order that the eternal may heal it. Some wishes die in being born. We forget some wishes like our yesterdays. Some wishes we outgrow and later can scarcely recall. Some wishes one learns to give up, and how good it was to have given them up. Some wishes one hides away, as the cherished memory of a loved one. The active person may need a cure for such a wish. Some wishes die slowly. It remains with the sufferer even in the pain of loss. It will die only when the sufferer dies. The wish apples to one’s whole life. In contrast to the sadness of the wish, think of the joy attached to hope, faith and love. Kierkegaard makes an appeal to the reader that the journey of relief from the suffering brought by the wish is not long. The journey requires a single, decisive step. You can then emigrate to the eternal, for it lies much nearer to you than any foreign country. Yet, when you are there, within the eternal, the change is infinitely greater. So then, go with God to God, continually take that one step more, that single step that even you are still able to take. You can take that single step, even if you are the prisoner who has lost freedom and in chains. You are still able to take the step. Nobody, not even the greatest that has ever lived, can do more than you can. Now, the edifying contemplation finds no rest until it finds you. When the sufferer takes suffering to heart, the eternal offers help that move the person toward decision.

            Chapter 11 has the title, “The Price of Willing One Thing: the sufferer’s use of cleverness to expose evasion.” 

            Chapter 12, has the title, “What Then Must I Do? The Listener’s Role in a Devotional Address.” Such a talk must demand something from the listener. It must demand that the reader share in the work with the speaker; it must also demand decisive activity from the reader. What is the relationship between the speaker and the listener in this form of address? On the stage, someone sits and prompts by whispers. The person is the inconspicuous one. The person wants others not to notice his or her presence. Another person strides prominently and draws every eye to himself. He is the actor. He impersonates a distinct individual. Each word becomes true when embodied in him and true through him. Yet, he is told what he shall say by the hidden one that sits and whispers. Of course, no one is so foolish as to regard the prompter as more important than the actor. The foolishness of many is that they look upon the speaker as an actor, and the listeners as theatergoers who are to pass judgment upon the artist. However, the speaker is not the actor. Rather, the speaker is the prompter. Further, no mere theatergoers are even present, for each listener will be looking in his or her own heart. The stage is eternity. The true listener stands before God during the talk. The prompter whispers to the actor what he or she is to say, but the repetition by the actor is the main concern. The speaker whispers the word to the listeners. However, the main concern is the earnestness of the listeners, who are silent before God, but may learn to speak with the help of this devotional address. The speaker does not give the address for the sake of the speaker, so that others would offer praise. The repetition of the address is that at which the speaker aims. The speaker has the responsibility for what he or she whispers. The listener has an equally great responsibility not to fall short in his or her task. In the devotional address, God is present. God is the critical theatergoer, who looks on to see how the speaker delivers the lines and how well those on stage listen. The speaker is the prompter. The listener stands openly before God. The listener is the actor, who in all truth acts before God. The devotional address calls listeners to ponder whether they will one thing. 

            Chapter 13 has the title, “What Then Must I do? Live as an Individual.” People find it easier to hide in the crowd. One might also call it cowardly. In eternity, each of us shall give an account to God. Many fools do not make one wise. The crowd is a doubtful recommendation for a cause. The larger the crowd, the probably that it praises folly and the less probably that it praises truth. Are you conscious of your individuality? If someone stands outside of the crowd in a fearful way, not of the crowd, but of God, he or she will be a target of ridicule. 

            Chapter 14 has the title, “What then Must I Do? Occupation and Vocation; Mean and End. The talk now asks, “What is your occupation in life?” the point of the question is not whether your occupation is great or common, political leader or worker, wealthy or poor. The crowd is curious about these things. The point of the question in the devotional address is whether you dare to think of your occupation together with the responsibility you have toward eternity. Christ does not desire the crowd. Rather, the risen Lord desires the individual. The end is the good; the means is willing the good. Reaching the goal is like hitting the mark with a shot. Using the means is like taking aim. The aim is a more reliable indication of the goal than the spot the shot strikes. One can hit the mark by accident. One cannot blame the one taking aim if the bullet does not fire. However, that at which one aims can have no irregularity. 

            Chapter 15 has the title, “Conclusion: Man and the Eternal.” Given that people are frail, Providence offers two companions for the human journey. One calls us forward. The other calls us back. People keep going further. Does nothing ever give you pause? Pausing is not a sluggish repose. Pausing is also movement, but an inward movement of the heart. To pause is to deepen oneself in inwardness. If you keep moving, you may go straight toward superficiality. 

            In 1847, Kierkegaard finished Works of Love: Some Christian Reflections in the Form of Discourses. He published the book in his own name as one of his many “edifying discourses.” 

            In the “Forward,” Kierkegaard says that what he writes is something can understand slowly, but also easily. He writes for “the single individual” who will ponder slowly. Since these are Christian reflections, they are not about love, but the works love. 

            In the “Prayer” that follows, he wonders how we could ponder love if we forget God, who is the source of love and is love. God shows us what love is in the Redeemer. 

            Part One, Chapter I has the title, “Love’s Hidden Life and Its Recognizability by its Fruits.” Kierkegaard quotes from Luke 6:44. If it were true that we should believe in nothing we cannot see, we should give up believing in love. In temporality, one might slip through life without love. Eternally, however, one cannot escape love without discovering that one has lost everything. Love binds the eternal to the temporal. The place from love comes is hidden. Love is inward, while it also casts its influence upon all of life. Hidden springs may feed the quiet lake. The love of God is the ground of all human love. Yet, we know this hidden life of love by its fruits. I John 3:18 reminds us of this truth. True, love comes from the heart, but we also find it true that love forms the heart. It seems rare that eternity so invades a human life that it forms the heart. The gospel does to speak to us about other people. It speaks directly to us, as single individuals. We should fear only God in life. We should fear only one person – ourselves. Our awareness that we know love by its fruits should not lead us to judge others. Like knows like – therefore, only one who abides in love can recognize its fruits. 

            Part One, Chapter IIA has the title, “You Shall Love.” Kierkegaard begins with Matthew 22:39. This Scripture wants to teach proper self-love. Christianity presupposes that people love themselves, and adds only that they need to love their neighbors the same way. Yet, an eternal difference exists between the two. Are we not able to love the neighbor more than self? The neighbor includes all people, friend, lover, and enemy. If you perceive what is best for your neighbor when your neighbor does not perceive it, the neighbor may receive it as harmful. Your desire to love the neighbor more than yourself will lead to complying with the neighbor no matter what or even adoring the neighbor because that the neighbor wants it. In philosophy, “neighbor” is “the other.” The Parable of the Good Samaritan should remind us that in recognizing our duty, we find our neighbor. The point is not to recognize the neighbor, but to be the neighbor. Finding a lover or friend is difficult, but finding the neighbor is easy. In fact, one way to read the command is this, “You shall love yourself in the right way.” The world rightly talks of treachery and faithlessness in the world. Let us not forget, however, that we are most in danger of being faithless and treacherous to ourselves. In the West, most of us grown up this command. Yet, we are in danger of being like a child who grows up in a beautiful home and forgets to have a grateful heart for daily bread. Love is common to all human society, but the command to love is the eternal invading the temporal. We are ungrateful for this extraordinary gift. What would we think of someone who was in love, but said it was a matter of indifference? In the same way, if we say we are Christian, we need to be Christian. The duty love makes love eternally secure. Spontaneous love can become jealous and a source of torment. The duty to love makes love eternally free. One defense against despair is the duty to love. Further, when the eternal commands us to love, it accepts the responsibility to make sure that we can do it. One may still experience misfortune, but the command to love keeps one from despair.

            Part One, Chapter IIB, has the title, “You Shall Love Your Neighbor.” Christianity discovers the neighbor and roots out all preferential love and moves toward the equality of the eternal. Some will offer their disagreement with Christianity here. To defend it is like fighting with air or coming to an agreement with air. Praise of erotic love and friendship belong to those outside of Christianity. Love of neighbor is the Christian concern. In Christendom, we are all baptized and instructed in Christianity. Consequently, any contrast between Christian and non-Christian is meaningless. However, for the single individual, being Christian is the highest aim. To the poet, the command to love is senseless, for the poet has in mind erotic love. Christianity dethrones the idolization of erotic love and friendship. For the poet, love and friendship are the ethical task and good fortune. The point is that erotic love and friendship can be another form of self-love. In fact, we often call the friend or the focus of erotic love the “other I” or the “other self.” We love this “other self,” but with more intensity. The fires of erotic love and friendship ignite self-love. Jealousy often shows itself. Christianity does not teach that we admire our neighbor. It only teaches that we shall love our neighbor. Love God, and then love the neighbor, and the neighbor in every person you meet. Yet, to one the one not attuned to this command, it becomes an offense. In fact, the way to being Christian is through offense. We find it hard to believe in the power of love to break all distinctions. 

            Part One, Chapter IIC has the title, “You Shall Love Your Neighbor.” Take away all distinctions in love, says Kierkegaard, but do not stop loving those closest to you. Let love of neighbor sanctify the covenant of your marriage and deepen your friendships. Since God is love, since we are to be like God, we become co-workers with God in love, as the Danish of I Corinthians 3:9 suggests. You can lose your beloved. You can lose a friend. You can never lose your neighbor. We may think to praiseworthy to make love extraordinary toward a few persons. If this were so, God would be perplexed, for the love of God is equal to all. The object of our love is not extraordinary. Rather, love itself is extraordinary. The distinction of friend or enemy is a distinction in the object of love, but not for the commanded to love neighbor. The Christian view of neighbor causes us to look away or close our eyes to distinctions in the neighbor. In one sense, such love is blind. Of course, earthly distinctions clothe the neighbor. We cannot love a human life apart from the body. In the same way, such earthly distinctions are part of a human world. However, the Christian seeks victory over the temptations these distinctions represent. Walk with God, and God will show you what love for the neighbor means, even to your disadvantage. Love of neighbor is a thankless task. We strive with ideas and battle in dispute. However, to become victorious over our own minds in the reality of life is the great battle. Battling at a distance is like shadow-boxing. Our true battle is close to hand. Luther said it well when he said that he can do no other, for here he stands. In fact, love of neighbor seems both too large a task, and too little. To feed the poor and not see in it a feast is to see them as poor and unimportant. To feed the poor, and see it as a feast, is to see them as neighbors. At the hour of death, what is important is not that one has avoided opposition, but that one has survived it. All any of us can do is place ourselves at the disposal of divine governance. If we place ourselves in any other position, even if we accomplish “the remodeling of the world,” accomplish an illusion. Let me try an analogy. The world we experience is like a play. Every individual has a role to play, whether political leader or beggar. When the curtain falls – death – they are all alike. They are human beings. The stage of art is an enchanted world. If on the stage of actuality, the actors all thought they were the role they played, would this not be a bewitching spirit, an evil spirit? We forget that the distinctions of earthly life are costumes that we will one day shed. Love of neighbor is to remember that these earthly distinctions are a disguise. Christianity has no desire to abolish such distinctions. However, it does desire that they hang loosely on us. Kierkegaard concludes with a strong appeal. A characteristic of childhood is to say Me want – me – me. A characteristic of youth is to say, I want and I. The mark of maturity and the dedication of the eternal is to will to understand that this I has no significance if it does not become the you, to whom the eternal incessantly speaks and says, “You shall, you shall, you shall.” Youth want to be the only I in the whole world. Maturity is to understand this you as addressed to oneself, even though it were not said to a single other person. You shall, you shall love your neighbor. O, my reader, it is not to you I speak. It is to me, to whom the eternal says, “You shall.”

            Part One, Chapter IIIA has the title, “Love is the Fulfilling of the Law.” Kierkegaard refers to Romans 13:10. Later, he refers to Matthew 21:28-31, a parable rarely heard preached. He thinks the text shows the danger of saying “Yes” in too great a hurry. The yes-brother was not a deceiver when he said yes, but became one when he failed to keep the promise. His eagerness became his snare. The yes of the promise is sleep inducing. The way that leads from no to repentance is easy to find. The no uttered, and then heard by him, was stimulating. Repentance was not far away. The one who says, “Sir, I will,” takes pleasure in the promise. The one who says no has fear of oneself. A no hides nothing. A yes can easily become self-deception, which of all difficulties is the most difficult to conquer. The saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions is all too true. The most dangerous path for a human being is to go backward with good intentions and promises. We do not praise the son who said no, but the gospel warns us of the danger of saying, “Sir, I will.” In the question, “Who is my neighbor,” the questioner thought he would enter a dialogue with Jesus that would satisfy his curiosity. It would take a long time and end with how difficult it would be to answer to the question. He wanted to escape, to waste time, and to justify himself. Yet, the answer Christ gives contains the task, and imprisons the questioner, binding him to a task. The hypocritical questioner received the answer he deserved, but not the answer he wished. It is infinitely important that Christ said it, and to this person that he said it, even if, in a sense, the saying is to all. “Love is the fulfilling of the law.” Love in Him was pure action. His love was present in the least as well as the greatest. It did not gather in strength. It was equally present in every moment. It was the same love on the cross as it was when born. It was the same love that said that Mary has chosen the better part as rebuked, or forgave, Peter with a glance. It was the same love that received the disciples when they returned joyfully from their mission as when he found them sleeping. The law defines and defines, but love fulfills. Yet, law and love do not quarrel. The law causes people to groan because they see its endless demands and do not see the boundary it provides. Love fulfills the law because it is no shirker of tasks. For Christianity, teaches that love is human being – God – human being, that God is the middle term in the relationship of love. Regardless of how wonderful a relationship between two or more people may be, Christianly understood, it is an illusion of love without God in the middle of it. To love God is to learn to love self properly. To help another human being to love God is love that person. To receive the help of another human being to love God is to be loved. With the coming of Christ came the divine explanation of love. The friend we love may be one who helps us to love God, but may also be one who diverts us from that path. If God is in the relationship, God saves us from the illusion and self-deception of love. The talk of the world about love is confusing. When we tell a youth going out into the world, “Love, and you will be loved,” we say a true thing, if the youth goes into the land of perfection. However, we send the youth into this quite human world. We need to remind the youth to hold fast to God to learn what love is, for the world has a quite different conception of love. The world thinks of love in half-measures and secular associations. The highest that the world teaches about love is to love humanity and the good in such a way that you still watch out for number one – yourself. One can be deceived, but it takes time to recognize it. If your ultimate purpose is to have an easy life and be sociable, then do not choose Christianity. It will make your life difficult by placing you alone before God. The world deceives by keeping to its promises. Its friendship will lead one to forget God. The fulfilling of the law is a demand for inwardness and perseverance. As soon as you think you have done enough in loving, you are learning the demand of love.

            Part One, Chapter IIIB has the title, “Love as a Matter of Conscience.” Kierkegaard quotes from I Timothy 1:5. He notes that Christianity has not wanted to hurl governments from their thrones to put itself on the throne. The world makes a great noise merely to bring about a minor change. It sets heaven and earth in motion for nothing, like the mountain that gives birth to a mouse. Christianity makes the transformation of infinity in all stillness as if it were nothing. Christianity has not come into the world to teach this or that modification in how you in your particularity should love your wife or friend, but to teach how you in your universal humanity shall love all people. We may think that what we want is a free heart. The free heart has no concern. The heart bound to God has infinite concern. The free heart has no history. The heart bound to God understands the history of erotic love and friendship. Yet, these forms of love are just a little snippet within eternity. Your history began with birth. When someone prepares the couch of death for you, when someone turns you on your side, when the last friend and family leave, when someone bends over you for the last time to turn you on your side, and everything becomes quiet, one still remains at your side. God was there at your birth, and God will be there at your death. If your heart is pure, it becomes such because of your love for God. 

            Part One, Chapter IV has the title, “Our Duty to Love Those We See.” Kierkegaard refers to I John 4:20. Love is deeply grounded in human beings. Yet, people often find escapes to avoid this happiness. They manufacture deceptions to make themselves unhappy. We become judgmental of others, preferring to be fastidious about everyone else rather than severe toward oneself. To love the one we see is not the task of finding the loveable object, but rather to find the object already given loveable. One needs to love actual individuals and not slip into fanciful ideas about what we would like the person to be. We do not become alien to the other because of their weakness. Rather, the weakness becomes an alien, and we work on it together.

            Part One, Chapter V has the title, “Our Duty to be in the Debt of Love to Each Other.” Kierkegaard refers to Romans 13:8. The essential characteristic of love is that the lover by giving infinitely comes into infinite debt. The more love we give, the more debt of love we owe. Suppose someone were to do an act of love toward his beloved that everyone praises and recognizes as such. What would happen if the next thing he said was, “Good, now I have paid my debt.” Would we not all agree that this would be cold? An accounting can exist only in a finite relationship. One who loves cannot calculate. God brings up love in us. Yet, God does not do this simply to rejoice at the sight. God does this to send love into the world, continually occupied with the task. Kierkegaard advises that if the reader follows the advice in this book, tt will go hard for you in the world. Too many sermons leave out this warning. Christianity cannot avoid such adversity. The opposition that Christians experience in the world is not an accidental relationship to the world. Rather, the opposition of the world is the essential relationship of Christians to the world. No one should promise youth what Christianity cannot deliver. It delivers the ingratitude of the world, opposition, and mockery. This is the final difficulty of being a Christian. In this sense, Christian sermons need to preach against Christianity. To the world, Christianity is a form of lunacy. Being a Christian means listening to music others do not hear. The world cannot get into its head that everyone should not have the same inclinations and passions as it does. 

            Part Two, Chapter I has the title, “Love Builds Up.” Kierkegaard directs us to I Corinthians 8:1. He refers to the common expression of “to build up,” as in construction. He then notes that all of us, through our lives, conduct, behavior, relationships, language, and expression, can build up, and we will do so, if love is at the center. To build up is to construct something from the ground up. In the simple illustration of a house, everyone knows the significance of a foundation. However, what can we consider the ground and foundation of the spirit that can bear the building? Properly understood, love is the deepest ground of the life of the spirit. The foundation is already there, every person who loves. Love is what edifies. The lover presupposes that love is in the heart of the other person. Through this presupposition, the lover builds up love in the other person. A teacher presupposes the student is ignorant. A disciplinarian presupposes the corruption of the other person. The lover presupposes love in the other person. The lover entices good out of the other person. Reflect upon the “work” of nature. It continues, even while we sleep. The forces of nature do not sleep. Love does not sleep. It continues its work, forming us even when we are not aware of it. If it succeeds in its work, it bears the fruit of love. Of course, love is not always present. For that reason, one can always presuppose something else in the other person by focusing upon the flaw we have seen. One may even try to remove the flaw to build up love. Love builds up, even when the instinct is to tear down because of some flaw we have seen. What Paul describes the character of love in I Corinthians 13.

            Part Two, Chapter II, has the title, “Love Believes All Things – And Yet is Not Deceived.” The text is I Corinthians 13:7. Kierkegaard points out, based upon I Corinthians 13, that when everything is gone, love remains. 

            Part Two, Chapter III, has the title, “Love Hopes All Things And Yet is Never Put to Shame.” Kierkegaard points out that the Bible seeks to bring festive dignity in earthly life through its metaphorical expressions through relationship with the eternal. The earthly evaluation of life can enclose itself in a prison of God forsakenness. We can experience time as going so slowly one time, and then so rapidly. We are hardly aware of the vanishing quality of time or the stagnant quality of time. In either case, time becomes a falling away from the eternal. We feel the need for a refreshing and enlivening gale, which would cleanse the air of its poisonous vapors. We feel the need for a saving moment from the stagnation. We feel the need for an enlivening expectation. We do not want the suffocation of worldliness to destroy us. The moment can be like a whirlpool. The moment can be stagnant. To hope in all things lovingly is the opposite of despair. When one has hope, the future is in mind, and therefore possibility rather than actuality. The possibility is for advancing or retrogressing, rising up or going under, good or evil. The eternal simply is. When the eternal touches time, they do not meet each other in the present, for then the present would itself be eternal. The present is so quickly past that it is hardly present at all. The present is a boundary and therefore transitional. The past is what was present. If the eternal is in the temporal, it is in the future or in possibility. The reason for this is that the present cannot get hold of the eternal and the past is past. The eternal is eternal, but when the eternal is in time it becomes possibility. When the duality of possibility impinges upon us, we are in expectation. To relate oneself to the possibility of the good is to hope, which is a relationship to the eternal. To relate oneself to the possibility of evil is to fear. Both are in expectation. When one chooses hope, one is choosing something infinitely more than what it might appear. The reason is the eternal nature of the decision. The reason hope is not deceived is that hope always has a relationship to the possibility of the good. To hope is to make oneself light by means of the eternal. In some ways, hope is for youth. As we age, our lives dissolve into dull repetition and re-writing. No possibility arouses one to wakefulness. Hope becomes something that does not have a home and possibility becomes rare. When the eternal is not present, one lives by the help of habit, prudence, conformity, experience, custom and usage. Yet, no particular age is an age of hope. The whole our lives is a time of hope. Think of it this way. When an adult teaches a child to accomplish a task, the adult does not lay everything out at the beginning. It would overwhelm the child. The eternal does not lay out our tasks all at once. Yet, it is wonderful that the eternal can make itself so small. The eternal clothes itself in the form of the future, of possibility, and of hope. The eternal lays out only a small piece at a time. In possibility, the eternal is near enough to be at hand, but far enough away to keep us advancing toward the eternal, on the way, in forward movement. In this way, the eternal lures and draws us toward the possible, if only we will hope. Nothing can put hope to shame, and thus it will always receive honor, because of what we expect when we hope. However, the unloving person perhaps proved right by what he or she expected in a small-minded way, is the one who will experience shame.

            Part Two, Chapter IV, has the title, “Love Seeks Not Its Own.” Kierkegaard chooses I Corinthians 13:5 as his text. If we seek to become the object of the love of another person, we seek our own. The proper object of love is God, and that means that God is the only proper object of love, for God is love. Love is a change. Love is a revolution. Love is a life-giving confusion. Without you and I, there is no love. With mine and yours, there is no love. The lover understands that every person stands alone. The lover seeks to help the other become who he or she is. 

            Part Two, Chapter V, has the title, “Love Hides the Multiplicity of Sins.” Human life and experience teaches us the multiplicity of sins. As in the game of a child, the lover cannot see what is right before him or her. What love sees, it sees with forgiveness. The person who withholds forgiveness increases, making it greater. Forgiveness takes vitality away from sin. Yet, to withhold forgiveness nourishes sin. 

            Part Two, Chapter VI, has the title, “Love Abides.” Kierkegaard has I Corinthians 13:13 as a text. If love abides, love is in the future, if you need that consolation. If love abides, love is in the present, if you need that consolation. Against all our fears of the future, love abides. Against all the anxieties of the present, love abides. The thought that love abides is an upbuilding one, for when we speak this way, we speak of the love of God. 

            Part Two, Chapter VII, has the title, “Mercifulness, the Work of Love, Even if it Can Give Nothing and is Capable of Doing Nothing.” Kierkegaard notes that from an eternal perspective, everything dealing with God is in earnest. From the perspective of the world, everything dealing with money is in earnest. 

            Part Two, Chapter VIII, has the title, “The Victory of Reconciliation in Love Which Wins the Vanquished.” 

            Part Two, Chapter IX, has the title, “The Work of Love in Remembering One Dead.” Kierkegaard says that this work, that of remembering one dead, is an unselfish act of love. The possibility of repayment is gone, so it surely is unselfish. 

            Part Two, Chapter X, has the title, “The Work of Love in Praising Love.” 

            The book ends with the “Conclusion.”