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| �But the servant-form was no mere outer garment, and therefore God must suffer all things, endure all things, make experience of all things. He must suffer hunger in the desert, he must thirst in the time of his agony, he must be forsaken in death, absolutely like the humblest--behold the man! His suffering is not that of his death, but his entire life is a story of suffering; and it is love that suffers, the love which gives all is itself in want.� (Philosophical Fragments)
�But the spiritual relationship to God in the truth, i.e. in inwardness, is conditioned by a prior irruption of inwardness, which corresponds to the divine elusiveness that God has absolutely nothing obvious about Him, that God is so far from being obvious, that He is invisible. It cannot immediately occur to anyone that He exists, although His invisibility is again His omnipresence. But a ubiquitous person is one who is seen everywhere, like a policeman, for example: how deceptive then, that an omnipresent being should be recognizable by this trait, since his visibility would annul his omnipresence. The relationship between invisibility and omnipresnce is like the relation between mystery and revelation. The mystery is the expression for the fact that the revelation is a revelation in the stricter sense, so that the mystery is the only trait by which it is known; for otherwise a revelation would be something very like a policeman's ubiquitousness.� (Concluding Unscientific Postscript) �But the tragedy is just that whenever a rational man opens his mouth, there are immediately millions ready in a trice to misunderstand him.� (1837) �But the unfortunate thing is that people have no idea at all of what it means to be a Christian, and that is why I am left without sympathy, that is why I am not understood.� (1847) �But there is a chattering and conceited concept of human reason, especially in our own age when it is never some thinker one has in mind, a reasoning human, but pure reason and the like, which simply does not exist, since nobody, whether a professor or what have you, can be pure reason.� (1850) �But there is one environment which absolutely does not give and is not an occasion for sin: that is love. When a man's sin is encompassed by love, then it is outside its own element; it is like a beleaguered city whose every connection with its own people is cut off; it is like a man who has been addicted to drink: when placed upon a scanty ration he loses his strength, vainly waiting an occasion to become intoxicated.� (Works of Love) �By way of the natural sciences a most tragic dividing line will arise between simple people, who believe simply, and scholars and pseudo-scholars who have gazed through a microscope. No longer will one dare, as in olden times, openheartedly to address one�s words about the simple Highest to all, all, all people, whether they be black or green, whether they have big heads or small: no, one must first look and see if they have brains enough to believe in God. If Christ had known about the microscope, he would have examined the apostles before accepting them.� [1846] |
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