“No, an illusion can never be destroyed directly, and only by indirect means can it be radically removed. If it is an illusion that all are Christians — and if there is anything to be done about it, it must be done indirectly, not by one who vociferously proclaims himself an extraordinary Christian, but by [...]
“If one would have a common name for this *despair, one might call it Stoicism — yet without thinking only of this philosophic sect. And to illuminate this sort of despair more sharply one would do well to distinguish between the active and the passive self, showing how the self is related to itself in [...]
“It seems to me that Christian dogmatics must be an explication of Christ’s activity, the more so since Christ established no teaching but was active. He didn’t teach that there was redemption for man, he redeemed men….Christ’s nature was imparted through that activity, Christ’s relation to God, human nature, man’s s […]
“Anxiety may be compared with dizziness. He whose eye happens to look down into the yawning abyss becomes dizzy But what is the reason for this? It is just as much in his own eye as in the abyss, for suppose he had not looked down. Hence anxiety is the dizziness of freedom, which emerges [...]
“For although there is only one situation in which either/or has absolute significance, namely when truth, righteousness, and holiness are lined up on one side, and lust and base propensities and obscure passions and perdition on the other; yet it is always important to choose rightly, even as between things which one may innocently choose; [...]
“Aye, just as it must be terrible for one who is thought to be dead while he still lives, and has the power of sensation, and can hear what those present say about him, but is unable in any way to express that he is still alive, so also for the religious individual is the [...]
“For God’s wisdom is incomparable with respect to your own, and God’s providence is not obliged to be responsible for your cleverness. You have only to obey in love. A man, on the contrary, you must only — yet, no, this is the highest — you must love a man as yourself; if you can [...]
“And now consider Him, who is eternally unchangeable — and this human heart! O this human heart, what is not hidden in your secret recesses, unknown to others — and that is the least of it — but sometimes almost unknown to the individual himself! When a man has lived a few years it is [...]