A result
April 23. S. Kierkegaard.
By a series of articles in this newspaper I have now, as they say in military language, opened and maintained a lively fire against the official Christianity, and thereby against the clergy in this land.
And on their side, what have the clergy done? For their part — yea, though I am unwilling to be so courteous, I am compelled to say it, for it is true — they have preserved a significant silence. It is strange: if they had replied, something exceedingly fatuous was sure to come out, perhaps the whole thing would have been fatuous; now on the contrary, how significant the whole thing has become by reason of this significant silence!
What then does this significant silence signify? It signifies that what concerns the clergy is...their livings. In any case it signifies that the clergy are not witnesses to the truth, for in that case it would be inconceivable that the whole clerical order — especially after its chief, the Most Reverend Bishop Martensen had made such a luckless attempt at speaking — could want to preserve silence, while it was so openly made known that the official Christianity is aesthetically and intellectually a laughingstock, an indecency, in the Christian sense a scandal.
Assuming on the other hand that the living is what concerns the clergy, the silence is perfectly natural. For I have not taken aim at livings in a finite sense, and well known as I am to the clergy, they can be very sure that such a thing could never occur to me; they know that not only am I no politician, but that I hate politics, that indeed I might be inclined to fight for the clergy, if in a finite sense people want to assail the livings.
Hence this complete silence — my attack has not really concerned the clergy at all, that is, it has no relation to what does concern them. Take an example from — I had almost used the wrong expression and said, "another world" — take an example then from the same world...from the shopkeeper's world. If it were possible to attack a shopkeeper in such a way that people knew that his wares were bad — but this did not result in having the least effect upon his usual turnover: then he would say, "To me such an attack is perfectly indifferent; for the question whether my wares are good or bad does not in and for itself concern me at all, what concerns me is the turnover. Yes, I am to such a degree a shopkeeper that, if one could prove not only that the coffee I sell is mildewed, spoiled, but that what I sell under the name of coffee is not coffee at all — if I am assured that this attack will have no effect whatever upon the turnover, such an attack is to me perfectly indifferent. What does it matter to me what sort of stuff people guzzle under the name of coffee? What concerns me is the turnover."
And in this the shopkeeper, qua shopkeeper, is in the right — and so too with their silence are the clergy, if the clergy are regarded as a mercantile class.
What was it I protested against a while ago? Did I protest against regarding the clergy as a mercantile class? No, I have protested against the fact that they want to be regarded as witnesses to the truth. By the assertion that they are witnesses to the truth the clergy are put at the furthest possible remove from being witnesses to the truth, least of all social classes are they witnesses to the truth.
A German author has said that the most honest class in the community are the shopkeepers, because they say plainly that it is profit they are after. I would propose a rather more complete scale of measurement: the most honest are the usurers, for they say plainly: Here you are cheated. Next to them come the shopkeepers, and last would come the fantasy-production by Bishop Martensen, "The Witnesses to the Truth." It was against Bishop Martensen's fantastical imaginations I protested. I did not give the question this turn: The clergy must be obliged to be witnesses to the truth. No, I gave it this turn: This signboard must be taken down. For example, it would occasion great confusion and disorder, nay, in many cases even serious harm, if one person or another were to take a fancy to put over his door the sign: Practicing Physician, or were to hang out a red light. Social order must require all these signboards to be taken away. And so it is with having a signboard out as a Practicing Witness to the truth. This is as though calculated to prevent the introduction of even the least bit of truth into the world; for people will say, "Where there are 1000 witnesses to the truth, it must indeed be a world of truth" — sure enough, if precisely these 1000 signboards were not the most dangerous falsehood in this...world of truth. Let them then take this sign down. That the clergy should have a signboard hanging out is indeed perfectly natural, only not as witnesses to the truth.
And that they are not witnesses to the truth is now, by evidence close at hand, made visible to anyone who is willing to see. Assuming that what I say is true — if the clergy had been witnesses to the truth, they would not have kept silent but declared themselves for the truth. Assuming that what I say is false — if the clergy had been witnesses to the truth, they would not have kept silent but declared themselves against this falsehood. Putting it the other way — if the clergy had been witnesses to the truth, the one thing they would not have done is precisely what they have done: they would not by silence try to slink away from any truth (assuming that what I say is true), or by silence let any falsehood prevail (assuming that what I say is false).
Postscript
May 6.
In order to make the contemporaries take notice, and in order to preclude the clergy from the evasion that this was something nobody read, I have made use of a political journal with a wide circulation.
In covenant with God as I am, disinterested as all my effort was — humbly before God, with a proud feeling of my own integrity, I dare to entertain the greatest conception of the cause I have the honor to serve, of its importance, of its success, though I must to be sure entertain the greatest conception of its difficulty. For what well could be more difficult, more desperate, than to have to introduce the ideals in a generation which is ruined by shrewdness and lack of principle, in which therefore the priests too (it is a pitiful way to earn money!) live off of the vain conceit that all are Christians, or, when one looks more closely, may be said (most pitiful way of all to earn money!) to live off of the fact that most people do not want to have the bother or to expose themselves to the legal inconvenience which might be connected with the admission that they neither are Christians nor imagine that they are.
This has now been attained: that the population is aware of the protest against the assumption that official Christianity is the Christianity of the New Testament, and that the population is aware of the objection raised against accounting the "priest" a "witness to the truth," seeing that what concerns him is the...turnover.
This ought to be brought to public attention in such a form that no one could say, This is something nobody has read — for this reason I made use of a political journal with a wide circulation.