"Salt"17
for "Christendom" is...the betrayal of Christianity; a "Christian world" is...apostasy from Christianity.
February 1855. S. Kierkegaard.
Before a man can be made use of as I am here, governance must coerce him dreadfully — this too is the case with me.
Protestantism, Christianly considered, is quite simply an untruth, a piece of dishonesty, which falsifies the teaching, the word-view, the life-view of Christianity, just as soon as it is regarded as a principle for Christianity, not as a remedy [corrective] at a given time and place.
For this cause to enter the Catholic Church would for all that be a precipitate act which I shall not commit, but which perhaps people will expect, since in these times it is as though it were entirely forgotten what Christianity is, and even those who have the best understanding of Christianity are only tyros.
No, one can well be alone in being a Christian. And if one is not very strong in the spirit, a good maxim of human prudence is, "The fewer the better." And above all in Christendom, the fewer the better! For in the last resort, precisely to the concept "Church" is to be traced the fundamental confusion both of Protestantism and of Catholicism — or is it to the concept "Christendom"?* Christ required "followers" and defined precisely what he meant: that they should be salt, willing to be sacrificed, and that a Christian means to be salt and to be willing to be sacrificed. But to be salt and to be sacrificed is not something to which thousands naturally lend themselves, still less millions, or (still less!) countries, kingdoms, states, and (absolutely not!) the whole world. On the other hand, if it is a question of gain and of mediocrity and of twaddle (which is the opposite of being salt), then the possibility of the thing begins already with the 100,000, increases with every million, reaching its highest point when the whole world has become Christian.
For this reason "man" is interested and employed in winning whole nations of Christians, kingdoms, lands, a whole world of Christians — for thus the thing of being a Christian becomes something different from what it is in the New Testament.
And this end has been attained, has been best attained, indeed completely, in Protestantism, especially in Denmark, in the Danish eventempered, jovial mediocrity. When one sees what it is to be a Christian in Denmark, how could it occur to anyone that this is what Jesus Christ talks about: cross and agony and suffering, crucifying the flesh, suffering for the doctrine, being salt, being sacrificed, etc.? No, in Protestantism, especially in Denmark, Christianity marches to a different melody, to the tune of "Merrily we roll along, roll along, roll along" — Christianity is enjoyment of life, tranquillized, as neither the Jew nor the pagan was, by the assurance that the thing about eternity is settled, settled precisely in order that we might find pleasure in enjoying this life, as well as any pagan or Jew.
Christianity simply does not exist. If the human race had risen in rebellion against God and cast Christianity off from it or away from it, it would not have been nearly so dangerous as this knavishness of doing away with Christianity by a false way of spreading it, making Christians of everybody and giving this activity the appearance of zeal for the spreading of the doctrine, scoffing at God by offering Him thanks for bestowing His blessing upon the progress Christianity was thus making.
What is to be understood by being a Christian Christ Himself has declared, we can read in the Gospels. — Then He left the earth, but predicted His coming again. And with regard to His coming again there is one prediction of His which reads: "When the Son of Man cometh, will He find faith on the earth?" If it is all as it should be with the immense battalions of Christians, nations, kingdoms, lands, a whole world of Christians, then the prospect of His coming is remote. Seen conversely, one might well say, Everything is ready for His coming.
Thanks be to you, ye silk and velvet priests, who in ever more numerous troops offered your services when it appeared that profit was on the side of Christianity; thanks be to you for your Christian zeal and fervor in behalf of these millions, of kingdoms and lands, of a whole world of Christians; many thanks, it was Christian zeal and fervor! For if things were to remain as they were, if only a few poor, persecuted, hated men were Christians, where was the silk and velvet to come from, and honor and prestige, and worldly enjoyment more refined than that of any other voluptuary, refined by the appearance of holiness which almost laid claim to worship! Disgusting! Even the most abandoned scum of humanity have, after all, this advantage, that their crimes are not extolled and honored, almost worshiped and adored, as Christian virtues.
And ye mighty ones of the earth, princes and kings and emperors — alas, that even for an instant ye could have let yourselves be beguiled by these crafty men, as though God in heaven were after all only the highest superlative of human majesty, as though in a human sense He had a cause,18 so that obviously it was infinitely more important to Him that a mighty man, not to say a king, an emperor, was a Christian, than that a beggar was! O my God, my God, my God! No — if there is, Christianly, any difference before God, then the beggar is infinitely more important to Him than the king — infinitely more important, for to the poor the Gospel is preached! But, true enough, to the priest the king is infinitely more important than the beggar. "A beggar, what help will he be to us? We might have to give him money." Impudent scoundrel — yes, Christianity is precisely...to give money. "But a king, a king! That is prodigiously important for Christianity." Thou liar — no, but he is important for thee. For when the king is a Christian, then the group of mighty ones who are his associates follow him at once (and hence in the case of a king who is a Christian it is so ominous that no transition to being a Christian is effected which is much more than a change of costume), and when the king and his mighty ones have become Christians, or are so called, then more and more follow (and hence in the case of a king who is a Christian it is so ominous that the whole thing becomes a change which yet is no change), and then when the whole nation has become Christian, then (behold therefore why it is so important that the king is a Christian!), then come silk and velvet, and stars and ribbons, and all the most exquisite refinements, and the many thousands per year. The many thousands — this is blood-money! For it was blood-money Judas received for Christ's blood — and these thousands and millions were also blood-money, which was procured for Christ's blood and by betraying Christianity and transforming it into worldliness. Only that — is it not true, thou shopkeeper's soul clad in velvet? — only that the case of Judas is almost laughable, so that on internal grounds one is nearly tempted to doubt if it is historically true, that a Jew — and that is what Judas was after all — that a Jew had so little understanding of money that for thirty pieces of silver he was ready (if one would put it so) to dispose of such a prodigious money value as Jesus Christ represented, the greatest source of revenue ever encountered in the world, on which a million quadrillions have been realized, to dispose of it for thirty pieces of silver! But we are going forward, the world is perfectible; Judas after all expresses something less perfect: first because he took only thirty pieces of silver, next because he did not have himself honored and praised, almost worshiped and adored, as a true adherent of Christ.
And thou, thou thoughtless multitude of men — but herewith I have said enough, and to boot, wherefore I say no more! Alas, thou art not merely deceived, but thou desirest to be deceived! What help can it do thee then to have sincere love, what does all disinterestedness help? — thou art not merely deceived — then indeed there might be some help for it — but thou desirest to be deceived!19
Kierkegaard's Footnote
*Thou who readest this, impress upon thy mind what follows. When Christianity came into the world the task was to spread the teaching. In Christendom, where the evil lies precisely in the false breadth of spread, brought about by a false way of spreading it, what is called upon to counteract this evil (the breadth of spread) must above all things take care not to have itself the form of extension — therefore the fewer the better, preferably in a literal sense a single person, for from the broad spread (extension) comes the evil, and so the counteraction must come from...the intensive.
Translator's Footnotes
17See Mark 9:47-50.
18Cf. the Journal, XI 2 A 54, 55, 130, 133.
19The world wishes to be deceived, ergo the priests — a proverbial saying.