For Self-Examination
Kierkegaard shows himself to be keenly aware of the primacy of grace, but simlutaneously aware of what Bohnoeffer would later call "cheap grace." Kierkegaard thus expresses his understanding of Christianity this way, "Christianity's demand is this: your life, exerted to the limit, should express works. One thing more is demanded, that you humble yourself and confess: 'But for all that I am saved by grace.' " (11) Kierkegaard's assertions about the necessity of works lead him to discuss in detail his understanding of scripture, and to assert that we must look at ourselves in the "mirror" of Scripture. In calling believers to come to scripture, Kierkegaard admonishes them to not merely look at the mirror itself, but to see themselves in it. He notes the ease of becoming preocupied with a "scholarly" encounter with scripture, where its content is studied, systematized, interpreted, etc., without ever really taking time to encounter scripture. He is led to make a distinction between reading and reading. In the first type, one reads the words, dictionary in hand, for study, and in the second type, one reads the words and, seeing their application to herself, does it. We have not been given Scripture for study and debate, but for doing what it says, without fear of ever doing too much, even if we later find out that what we did wasn't truly required. We act upon Scripture because, like a letter from a beloved, when we see what the beloved requests of us, we do it immediately. So too, in Scripture, a "letter" from God, who is so much more than one who is a "beloved," we act when we see what is requested of us, out of love. Out of this understanding, Kierkegaard makes asserts the need for the believer to be "alone" with Scripture. We are not to see scripture as addressed to someone else, or to place other things between us and scripture, but instead to allow ourselves to be confronted by scripture. He asserts that it is human to shrink from the commands of the Word, or to pray for mercy because we do not do all that we should, or because we cannot, but he then asserts that it is not human "to give the matter an entirely different turn, to cunningly produce interpretation and science and more science one layer after another...--it is not humanthat I put all this between the Word and myself and then give this interpretation and learning the name of earnestness and zeal for the truth and let this busyness swell up into such prolixity that I never come to receive the imporession of God's Word, never come to observe myself in the mirror" (38). Truly this serves as a call to examine how we read scripture, for it is a stunning critique of an all-too-easily justified trap, into which I myself too often fall. His words serve as a clarion call to return to scripture, and be alone with it, confronted by God's Word, and confronted with my own reality, and aware of what God is calling me to do.
