Confirmation and the wedding: a Christian comedy —or something worse
Conscience (in so far as there can be any question of that in this connection) seems to have smitten "Christendom" with the reflection that this thing after all was too absurd, that this purely bestial nonsense wouldn't do — the notion of becoming a Christian by receiving as an infant a drop of water on the head administered by a royal functionary, the family then arranging a party, a banquet, for the occasion, to celebrate this festivity.
This won't do, thought "Christendom," there must also be an expression of the fact that the baptized individual personally undertakes to perform the baptismal vow.
This is the purpose of confirmation — a splendid invention, if one makes a double assumption: that divine worship is in the direction of making a fool of God; and that its principal aim is to provide an occasion for family festivities, parties, a jolly evening, and a banquet which differs in this respect from other banquets that this banquet (what a refinement!) has "also" a religious significance.
"The tender infant," says "Christendom," "cannot personally take the baptismal vow, for which a real person is requisite." And so (is this genius or ingenious?) they have chosen the period from fourteen to fifteen years of age, the age of boyhood. This real person — there can be no objection, he's man enough to undertake to perform the baptismal vows made in behalf of the tender infant.
A boy of fifteen! In case it were a question of ten dollars, the father would say, "No, my boy, that can't be left to your discretion, you're not yet dry behind the ears." But as for his eternal blessedness, and when a real personality must concentrate the seriousness of personality upon what in a deeper sense could not be called seriousness, namely, that a tender infant is bound by a vow — for that the age of fifteen years is the most appropriate.
The most appropriate— ah, yes, if, as was previously remarked, divine worship is assumed to have a double aim : in a delicate way (if one can call it that) to treat God as a fool; and to give occasion for family festivities. Then it is extraordinarily appropriate, as is everything else on that occasion, including the Gospel appointed for the day, which, as everyone knows, begins thus: "When the doors were shut"55 — and is peculiarly appropriate on a Confirmation Sunday, it is with true edification one hears a priest read it aloud on a Confirmation Sunday.
Confirmation then is easily seen to be far deeper nonsense than infant baptism, precisely because confirmation claims to supply what was lacking in infant baptism: a real personality which can consciously assume responsibility for a vow which has to do with the decision of an eternal blessedness. On the other hand, this nonsense is in another sense shrewd enough, ministering to the egoism of the priesthood, which understands very well that, if the decision with regard to religion is postponed to the mature age of man (the only Christian and the only sensible thing), many would perhaps have character enough not to want to be feignedly Christian. Hence the priest seeks to take possession of people in young and tender years, so that in maturer years they might have the difficulty of breaking a "sacred" obligation, imposed to be sure in boyhood, but which many perhaps may feel superstitious about breaking. Therefore the priesthood takes possession of the child, the boy, receives from him sacred vows, etc. And what the "priest," this man of God, proposes to do is surely a godly undertaking. Otherwise analogy might require that, just as there is a police ordinance prohibiting the sale of liquor to boys, so there might also be issued a prohibition against taking solemn vows concerning an eternal blessedness...from boys, a prohibition to insure that the priests, because they are perjurers, should not for this reason be allowed to work in the direction of bringing about (for their own consolation) the greatest possible comune naufragium,56 namely, that the whole community should become perjured; and letting boys of fifteen take a solemn vow concerning an eternal blessedness is as though calculated to this end.
So then confirmation is in itself far deeper nonsense than infant baptism. But not to neglect anything which might contribute to make confirmation the exact opposite of that which it gives itself out to be, this ceremony has been associated with all finite and civil ends, so that the significance of confirmation really is the certificate issued by the priest, without which the boy or girl in question cannot get along at all in this life.
The whole thing is a comedy — and taking this view of it, perhaps something might be done to introduce more dramatic illusion into this solemnity, as, for example, if a prohibition were published against anyone being confirmed in a jacket, item an ordinance that upon the floor of the church male confirmants must wear a beard, which of course could fall off at the family festivities in the evening, and perhaps be used for fun and jest.
By what I am writing I do not attack the congregation; they have been led astray, one cannot blame them if, being left to their own devices and deceived by the fact that the priests have taken an oath upon the New Testament, they think well of this sort of worship. But woe unto the priests, woe unto these perjured liars! I know it well, there have been mockers of religion who would have given — yea, what would they not have given? — to be able to do what I can do, but did not succeed because God was not with them. Otherwise with me, originally kindly disposed towards the priests as rarely anyone has been, just desiring to help them, they have brought upon themselves the opposite. And with me is the Almighty; and He knows best how the blows must be dealt so that they are felt, so that laughter administered in fear and trembling may be the scourge — it is for that I am used.
The Wedding
True worship of God consists quite simply in doing God's will.
But this sort of worship was never to man's taste. That which in all generations men have been busied about, that in which theological learning originated, becomes many, many disciplines, widens out to interminable prolixity, that upon which and for which thousands of priests and professors live, that which is the content of the history of "Christendom," by the study of which those who are becoming priests and professors are educated, is the contrivance of another sort of divine worship, which consists in...having one's own will, but doing it in such a way that the name of God, the invocation of God, is brought into conjunction with it, whereby man thinks he is assured against being ungodly — whereas, alas, precisely this is the most aggravated sort of ungodliness.
An example. A man is inclined to want to support himself by killing people. Now he sees from God's Word that this is not permissible, that God's will is, "Thou shalt not kill." "All right," thinks he, "but that sort of worship doesn't suit me, neither would I be an ungodly man." What does he do then? He gets hold of a priest who in God's name blesses the dagger. Yes, that's something different.
In God's Word the single state is recommended. "But," says man, "that sort of worship doesn't suit me, and I am certainly not an ungodly man either. Such an important step as marriage [which, be it noted, God advises against, and thinks that not taking this "important step" is the important thing] I surely ought not to take without assuring myself of God's blessing. [Bravo!] That is what this man of God, the priest, is for; he blesses this important step [the importance of which consists in not doing it], and so it is well pleasing to God" — and I have my will, and my will becomes worship, and the priest has his will, he has ten dollars, not earned in the humble way of brushing people's clothes or serving beer or brandy at the bar; no, he was employed in God's service, and to earn ten dollars in that way is...divine worship. [Bravissimo!]
What an abyss of nonsense and abomination! When something is displeasing to God, does it become well pleasing by the fact that (to make bad worse) a priest takes part who (to make bad worse) gets ten dollars for declaring that it is well pleasing to God?
Let us stick to the subject of the wedding. In his Word God recommends the single state. Now there is a couple that want to get married. This couple, of course, since they call themselves Christians, ought to know well what Christianity is — but let that pass. The lovers apply to... the priest — and the priest is bound by an oath upon the New Testament which recommends the single state. If then he is not a liar and a perjurer who in the basest manner earns paltry dollars, he must act as follows. At the most he can say to them with human sympathy for this human thing of being in love, "My little children, I am the last man to whom you should apply; to apply to me in such a contingency is as if one were to apply to the chief of police to inquire how one should comport oneself when stealing. My duty is to employ every means to restrain you. At the utmost I can say with the Apostle (for they are not the words of the Master), Yes, if it comes to that, and you have not continency, then get together, 'it is better to marry than to burn.' And I know very well that you will shudder inwardly when I talk thus about what you think the most beautiful thing in life; but I must do my duty. And for this reason I said that I am the last man to whom you should apply."
In "Christendom" it is different. The priest — if only there are some he can splice together, he's the man for it. If the couple had applied to the midwives, perhaps they would not be so sure of being confirmed in the notion that their project is a thing well pleasing to God.
So they are wed, i.e. "man" has his will, but this thing of having his will is refined to being also divine worship, for God's name is brought into conjunction with it. They are wed...by the priest. Ah, the fact that the priest takes part is the reassuring thing. This man who by an oath is bound to the New Testament, and then for ten dollars is the most complaisant man one can have to deal with— this man vouches for it that this act is true divine worship.
Christianly one must say that precisely the fact that the priest takes part is the worst thing in the whole affair. If you want to marry, seek rather to be married by a blacksmith; then it might perhaps (if one may speak thus) escape God's notice; but when a priest takes part it cannot possibly escape God's notice. Remember what was said to a man who in a tempest invoked the gods : "Don't for anything let the gods observe that you are in the party!"57 And in the same way one might say, "Take care at all events not to have a priest take part." The others, i.e. the blacksmith and the lovers, have not taken an oath to God upon the New Testament, so (if I may speak thus) the thing goes better than when the priest intervenes with his...holy presence.
What every religion in which there is any truth aims at, and what Christianity aims at decisively, is a total transformation in a man, to wrest from him through renunciation and self-denial all that, and precisely that, to which he immediately clings, in which he immediately has his life. This sort of religion, as "man" understands it, is not what he wants. The upshot therefore is that from generation to generation there lives — how equivocal! — a highly respected class in the community, the priests. Their métier is to invert the whole situation, so that what man likes becomes religion, on the condition, however, of invoking God's name and paying something definite to the priests. The rest of the community, when one examines the case more closely, are seen to be egoistically interested in upholding the estimation in which the priests are held — for otherwise the falsification cannot succeed.
To become a Christian in the New Testament sense is such a radical change that, humanly speaking, one must say that it is the heaviest trial to a family that one of its members becomes a Christian. For in such a Christian the God-relationship becomes so predominant that he is not "lost" in the ordinary sense of the word; no, in a far deeper sense than dying he is lost to everything that is called family. It is of this Christ constantly speaks, both with reference to himself when he says that to be his disciple is to be his mother, brother, sister, that in no other sense has he a mother, a brother, a sister; and also when he speaks continually about the collision of hating father and mother, one's own child, etc. To become a Christian in the New Testament sense is to loosen (in the sense in which the dentist speaks of loosening the tooth from the gums), to loosen the individual out of the cohesion to which he clings with the passion of immediacy, and which clings to him with the same passion.
This sort of Christianity was never — no more now, precisely no more than in the year 30 — to man's taste, but was distasteful to him in his inmost heart, mortally distasteful. Therefore the upshot is that from generation to generation there lives a highly respected class in the community whose métier is to transform Christianity into the exact opposite.
The Christianity of the priests, by the aid of religion (which, alas, is used precisely to bring about the opposite), is directed to cementing families more and more egoistically together, and to arranging family festivities, beautiful, splendid family festivities, e.g. infant baptism and confirmation, which festivities, compared for example with excursions in the Deer Park and other family frolics, have a peculiar enchantment for the fact that they are "also" religious.
"Woe unto you," says Christ to the "lawyers" (the interpreters of Scripture), "for ye took away the key of knowledge, ye entered not in yourselves [i.e. into the kingdom of heaven, cf. Matthew 23:13], and them that were entering in ye hindered." Luke 11:52.
This is the highly respected profession of the priests, a way of livelihood which prevents men from entering the kingdom of heaven. As a compensation for this the "priest" does his best in the way of performances (such performances, e.g. as Manager Carstensen with notable talent produces at our Tivoli58), beautiful, splendid performances with (just as a little wine tastes good in lemonade) a little religious tang to them, which Carstensen to be sure cannot provide...but after all perhaps he might be ordained.
Translator's Footnotes
55John 20:19-31, which was the Gospel for the First Sunday after Easter, the day which in S. K.'s time was appointed for Confirmation in Copenhagen.
56A Latin saying, dwelling upon the comfort of common shipwreck.
57By Diogenes Laertius (i, 86) this story is ascribed to Bias.
58Carstensen founded in 1812 the Tivoli, which was (and is) the great place of refection and recreation in Copenhagen. At this time he had just returned from a tour in America and was much acclaimed by the press.