Commemoration of Douglas Downes, Founder of the Society of Saint Francis, 1957 For the Platonic or Aristotelian philosophy it is of no importance whether Plato or Aristotle ever lived. For the mystical practice of an Indian, Persian, Chinese, or Neo-Platonic mystic it is a matter of indifference whether Rama, Buddha, Laotse, or Porphyrius are myths or not. The mystic has no personal relation to them. It is not here a question of somebody telling me the truth which of myself I cannot find, but of my finding an access to the depths of the world in the depths of my soul. And everywhere the tendency is to eliminate personality. Even where religion does not have this mystical character, it has no relation to an historical person, who communicates himself to me. That is the characteristic essence of the Christian faith alone. Even where a prophet plays the role of a mediator of divine truth, as for example in Islam, the religious act is not directed toward him but toward his teaching or message. But the Christian does not believe in the teachings of Jesus -- which would not be Christian faith, but general religion -- he believes in Christ Himself as being the Word of God.

O Lord, let thyself be found with a good gift to everyone who needs it, that the happy may find courage to accept thy good gifts, that the sorrowful may find courage to accept thy perfect gifts. For to men there is a difference of joy and of sorrow, but for thee, O Lord, there is no difference in these things; everything that comes from thee is a good and perfect gift. ... Søren Kierkegaard August 16, 2000 By giving to Jesus Christ, the Man who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, this historical personality, the name of Lord, the Saviour, we renounce all mysticism. For mysticism in the strict sense exists only where one soars above the sphere of history, and where in place of the Mediator and the historical event are put the inner word of God, the inner motions of the soul, in order to reach immediacy between soul and God, and, in the end, the identity of both. But while it is necessary to safeguard the Christian message of the Holy Spirit from the mystical misunderstanding by calling attention to its relation to Jesus Christ, it is necessary on the other hand to safeguard the message of Jesus Christ and His work from the orthodox and rationalist misunderstanding by emphasizing that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Spirit.

It is characteristic of the thinking of our time that the problem of guilt and forgiveness has been pushed into the background and seems to disappear more and more. Modern thought is impersonal. There are, even today, a great many people who understand that man needs salvation, but there are very few who are convinced that he needs forgiveness and redemption... Sin is understood as imperfection, sensuality, worldliness -- but not as guilt.

This autonomy of man, this attempt of the Ego to understand itself out of itself, is the lie concerning man which we call sin. The truth about man is that his ground is not in himself but in God -- that his essence is not in self sufficient reason but in the Word, in the challenge of God, in responsibility, not in self-sufficiency. The true being of man is realized when he bases himself upon God's Word. Faith is then not an impossibility or a salto mortale [mortal leap], but that which is truly natural; and the real salto mortale (a mortal leap indeed!) is just the assertion of autonomy, self-sufficiency, God-likeness. [It is] through this usurped independence [that] man separates himself from God, and at the same time isolates himself from his fellows. Individualism is the necessary consequence of rational autonomy, just as love is the necessary consequence of faith.

Commemoration of Scholastica, Abbess of Plombariola, c.543 Since becoming a disciple of Christ, Paul knows that all mere orthodoxy, all mere knowledge concerning God's will, is not only nothing but less than nothing. The more knowledge, the more obligation. The maintaining of revealed doctrine becomes blasphemy if it is not borne out by the corresponding testimony of the life. He who is always appealing to the Word of God without his life and conduct corresponding to this knowledge of God, dishonours God's name, making Him an object of mockery and hatred. It is just those who know so well how to talk about God who make His name hateful among men, because their lives darken the picture of God and turn it into a caricature. The Lord is judged by the life of His servants; this is the truer, the more zealously they appeal to Him.

Feast of Boniface (Wynfrith) of Crediton, Archbishop of Mainz, Apostle of Germany, Martyr, 754 The Pauline teaching is the means through which God Himself wants to teach us; Paul's Epistle to the Romans is a letter from God to us, mankind today. It remains the great problem of interpretation, hitherto never entirely solved, how to unite these two things: the keen attention to what Paul wanted to say to that community then, and the search for what God wants to say to us through Paul today. In the end, the question is whether the reader will really allow God to speak to him, or whether he evades God by hiding behind "Paul", behind "the past".