THEOLOGY.A Way of Living

The problems of life are insoluble on the surface, & can only be solved in depth.In surface dimensions they are insoluble.

(Culture and Value, rev.ed. p.84)

If the believer in God looks around & asks "Where does everything I see come from?"

"Where does all that come from?", what he hankers after is not a (causal) explanation; and the point of his question is that it is the expression of this hankering. He is expressing, then, a stance towards all explanations.--

But how is this manifested in his life?It is the attitude of taking a certain matter seriously, but then at a certain point nottaking it seriously after all, & declaring that something else is still more serious.Someone may for instance say that it is a very grave matter that such & such aperson has died before he could complete a certain piece of work; & in anothersense that is not what matters. At this point one uses the words "in a deeper sense".Really what I should like to say is that here too what is important is not the words you use or what you think while saying them, so much as the difference that they make at different points in your life.

How do I know that two people mean the same thing when each says he believes in God?

And just the same thing goes for the Trinity. Theology that insists on certain words & phrases & prohibits others makes nothing clearer. (Karl Barth)It gesticulates with words, as it were, because it wants to say something & does not know how to express it.

Practice gives the words their sense.A proof of God ought really to be something by means of which you can convince yourself of God's existence. But I think that believers who offered such proofs wanted to analyse & make a case for their 'belief' with their intellect, although they themselves would never have arrived at belief by way of such proofs."Convincing someone of God's existence" is something you might do by means of a certain upbringing, shaping his life in such & such a way.Life can educate you to "believing in God". And experiences too are what do thisbut not visions, or other sense experiences, which show us the "existence of this being", but e.g. sufferings of various sorts. And they do not show us God as a sense experience does an object, nor do they give rise to conjectures about him.Experiences, thoughts,--life can force this concept on us.

(Culture and Value, rev. ed. pp. 96-97)

Amongst other things Christianity says, I believe, that sound doctrines are all useless.

That you have to change your life. (Or the direction of your life.)That all wisdom is cold; & that you can no more use it for setting your life to rights,

than you can forge iron when it is cold.For a sound doctrine need not seize you; you can follow it, like a doctor's prescription.--

But here you have to be seized & turned around by something.--(I.e. this is how I understand it.) Once turned round, you must stay turned round.Wisdom is passionless. By contrast Kierkegaard calls faith a passion. Religion is as it were the calm sea bottom at its deepest, remaining calm, howeverhigh the waves rise on the surface.-- "I never before believed in God"--that I understand. But not: "I never beforereally believed in Him."

(Culture and Value, rev. ed. pp. p. 61)

It appears to me as though a religious belief could only be (something like) passionately committing oneself to a system of coordinates. Hence although it's belief, it is really a way of living, or a way of judging life. Passionately taking up this interpretation. And so instructing in a religious belief would have to be portraying, describing that system of reference & at the same time appealing to the conscience. And these together would have to result finally in the one under instruction himself, of his own accord, passionately taking up that system ofreference. It would be as though someone were on the one hand to let me see my hopeless situation, on the other depict the rescue-anchor, until of my own accord, or at any rate not led by the hand by the instructor, I were to rush up & seize it.

Religious faith & superstition are quite different.

The one springs from fear & is a sort of false science.

The other is a trusting.

(Culture and Value, rev. ed. p. 82)

I read: “No man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.” — And it is true: I cannot call him Lord; because that says nothing to me. I could call him the ‘paragon’, ‘God’ even — or rather, I can understand it when he is called thus; but I cannot utter the word “Lord” with meaning. Because I do not believe that he will come to judge me; because that says nothing to me. And it could say something to me, only if I lived completely differently.

(Culture and Value, rev. ed., p. 38)

Christianity is not a doctrine, not, I mean, a theory about what has happened &will happen to the human soul, but a description of something that actually takesplace in human life. For 'recognition of sin' is an actual occurrence & so is despair& so is redemption through faith. Those who speak of it (like Bunyan), are simplydescribing what has happened to them; whatever gloss someone may want to puton it!

p. 32

The solution of the problem you see in life is a way of living which makes what isproblematic disappear.The fact that life is problematic means that your life does not fit life's shape. Soyou must change your life, & once it fits the shape, what is problematic willdisappear.But don't we have the feeling that someone who doesn't see a problem there isblind to something important, indeed to what is most important of all?Wouldn't I like to say he is living aimlessly--just blindly like a mole as it were; & ifhe could only see, he would see the problem?Or shouldn't I say: someone who lives rightly does not experience the problem assorrow, hence not after all as a problem, but rather as joy, that is so to speak as abright halo round his life, not a murky background.

p. 31

What inclines even me to believe in Christ's resurrection? I play as it were withthe thought.--If he did not rise from the dead, then he decomposed in the gravelike every human being. He is dead & decomposed. In that case he is a teacher,like any other & can no longer help; & we are once more orphaned & alone. Andhave to make do with wisdom & speculation. It is as though we are in a hell,where we can only dream & are shut out from heaven, roofed in as it were. Butif I am to be REALLY redeemed,--I need certainty--not wisdom, dreams,speculation--and this certainty is faith. And faith is faith in what my heart, mysoul, needs, not my speculative intellect. For my soul, with its passions, as it werewith its flesh & blood, must be redeemed, not my abstract mind. Perhaps one maysay: Only love can believe the Resurrection. Or: it is love that believes theResurrection. One might say: redeeming love believes even in the Resurrection;holds fast even to the Resurrection. What fights doubt is as it were redemption.Holding fast to it must be holding fast to this belief. So this means: first beredeemed & hold on tightly to your redemption (keep hold of yourredemption)--then you will see that what you are holding on to is this belief. Sothis can only come about if you no longer support yourself on this earth butsuspend yourself from heaven. Then everything is different and it is 'no wonder' ifyou can then do what now you cannot do. (It is true that someone who issuspended looks like someone who is standing but the interplay of forces withinhim is nevertheless a quite different one & hence he is able to do quite differentthings than can one who stands.)

pp. 38-39