Quotes about Belief

Subjectivity is truth and if subjectivity is in existing, then, if I may put it this way, Christianity is a perfect fit.

Infinite humiliation and grace, and then a striving born of gratitude — this is Christianity.

Compel a person to an opinion, a conviction, a belief - in all eternity, that I cannot do. But one thing I can do: I can compel him to become aware.

The Attack is a funny book which the reader has the option of taking seriously. For when the laughter subsides we realize that SK has set before us a stark either-or proposition: either follow the gospel according to Christ and the apostles, or follow the gospel according to the clergy. There can be no dialectical synthesis between these contraries.

he who loves God without faith reflects upon himself he who loves God believingly reflects upon God.

But in Christendom we play at believing, play at being Christians; as far as possible from any breach with what we love, we remain at home, in the parlor, in the old grooves of finiteness — and then we go and twaddle with one another, or let the pastor twaddle to us, about all the promises which are found in the New Testament, that no one shall harm us, that the gates of hell shall not prevail against us, against the Church, etc.

How then did Abraham exist? He believed. This is the paradox which keeps him upon the sheer edge and which he cannot make clear to any other person, for the paradox is that he as the individual puts himself in an absolute relation to the Absolute.

It takes a talent to doubt, it requires no talent at all to despair (pp515)

those who possess faith should take care to set up certain criteria so that one might distinguish the paradox from a temptation (Anfechtung).

Why then did Abraham do it ? For God's sake, and (in complete identity with this) for his own sake. He did it for God's sake because God required this proof of his faith ; for his own sake he did it in order that he might furnish the proof.

For when faith is eliminated by becoming null or nothing, then there only remains the crude fact that Abraham wanted to murder Isaac — which is easy enough for anyone to imitate who has not faith, the faith, that is to say, which makes it hard for him. 1

Abraham believed. He did not believe that some day he would be blessed in the beyond, but that he would be happy here in the world.