Medical diagnosis
1.
That a proper diagnosis and prognosis of an illness is more than half the battle, every physician will admit, and likewise that no ability, no care and vigilance, is of any avail when the case has not been correctly diagnosed.
So it is also in relation to the religious.
This thing of "Christendom," the notion that we are all Christians, people have allowed to prevail and wish to do so; and then they bring forward now one aspect of the teaching, now another.
But the truth is that not only are we not Christians but we are not so much as pagans, to whom the Christian doctrine could be preached without embarrassment; but by an illusion, a monstrous illusion ("Christendom," a Christian state, a Christian land, a Christian world), we are even prevented from becoming as receptive as the pagans were.
And so people want the illusion to be undisturbed, its power to remain intact, and on the other hand they want someone to furnish a new presentation of Christian doctrine.16
That is what they want; and in a certain sense it is quite natural, precisely because they are ensnared in the illusion (not to raise the query whether they are personally interested in the illusion), precisely for this cause they want what must feed the disease — a thing quite universal, that what the sick man most desires is just what feeds the disease.
2.
Think of a hospital. The patients are dying like flies. The methods are altered in one way and another. It's no use. What does it come from? It comes from the building, the whole building is full of poison. That the patients are registered as dead, one of this disease, and that one of another, is not true; for they are all dead from the poison that is in the building.
So it is in the religious sphere. That the religious situation is lamentable, that religiously men are in a pitiable state, nothing is more certain. So one man thinks that it would help if we got a new hymnal,17 another a new altar-book, another a musical service, etc., etc.
In vain — for it comes from...the building. This whole lumberroom of a State Church, which from time immemorial has not been ventilated, spiritually speaking — the air confined in this lumberroom has developed poison. And for this reason the religious life is sick or has died out. For, alas, precisely that which worldliness regards as health is, Christianly considered, disease; and inversely, what Christianly considered as health is regarded by worldliness as disease.
Let it collapse, this lumberroom, get rid of it, shut all these shops and booths, the only ones which the severe Sunday ordinance18 exempted, make this official ambiguity impossible, put all these men out of commission and make provision for them, these quacks. For if it is true that the royally authorized physician is the proper physician and the unauthorized a quack, in Christianity it is the other way around; precisely the royally authorized teacher is the quack, is such by being royally authorized. And let us again serve God in simplicity, instead of treating him as a fool in magnificent buildings. Let the thing again become seriousness, and stop playing a game. For a Christianity preached by royal functionaries who are paid and made secure by the State and employ the police against other people, such a Christianity has the same relation to the Christianity of the New Testament as swimming with a cork float or with a bladder has to swimming,19 that is to say, it is play.
Yea, let this come to pass. What Christianity needs is not the suffocating protection of the State; no, it needs fresh air, it needs persecution, and it needs...God's protection. The State only works disaster, it wards off persecution, and it is not the medium through which God's protection can be conducted. Above all, save Christianity from the State. By its protection it smothers Christianity to death, as a fat lady with her corpus overlies her baby. And it teaches Christianity the most disgusting bad habits, as for example, under the name of Christianity to employ the power of the police.
3.
A man becomes thinner and thinner day by day; he is wasting away. What can the matter be? He does not suffer want. "No, certainly not," says the physician, "it doesn't come from that, it comes precisely from eating, from the fact that he eats out of season, eats without being hungry, uses stimulants to arouse a little bit of appetite, and in that way he ruins his digestion, fades away as if he were suffering want."
So it is religiously. The most fatal thing of all is to satisfy a want which is not yet felt, so that without waiting till the want is present, one anticipates it, likely also uses stimulants to bring about something which is supposed to be a want, and then satisfies it. And this is shocking! And yet this is what they do in the religious sphere, whereby they really are cheating men out of what constitutes the significance of life, and helping people to waste life.
For this is the aim of the whole machinery of the State Church, which under the form of care for men's souls cheats them out of the highest thing in life, that in them there should come into being the concern about themselves, the want, which verily a teacher or priest would find according to his mind; but now, instead of this, the want (and precisely the coming into being of this want is life's highest significance for a man) does not come into being at all, but having been satisfied long before it came into being, it is prevented from coming into being. And this is thought to be the continuation of the work which the Saviour of the human race completed, this bungling of the human race! And why? Because there are now as a matter of fact so and so many royal functionaries who, with families, have to live off of this, under the name of...the cure of souls!
Translator's Footnote
16This was implied in the anonymous proposal mentioned in Article XIII.
17The proposal for a new hymnal came from the party of Grundtvig, who wanted his hymns included, which in fact have become the most popular in Denmark. The Bishop was opposed to it, and S. K. was never tired of making fun of it.
18An ordinance of 1845.
19TCf. the Journal, XI2 A 50, 300, 303.