Kierkegaard (CTB)

Kierkegaard (1813–1855), for this branch

On this branch The Sickness unto Death is the book that turns Luther’s sinner and Pascal’s restless room into a structure. The self is a relation that relates itself to itself, established by another. Despair is the misrelation: unconsciousness of having a self, refusal to be oneself, or defiance that will be oneself without the establishing power. Before God, despair is sin. Faith is not a doctrine and not a mood. It is the formula in which the self, willing to be itself, rests transparently in the power that established it. Christendom is the new Pelagianism: a culture that possesses the doctrine of sin and has never become a single individual before God.

He keeps Augustine’s causal order — failure is prior to the act — and refuses Luther’s comfort if comfort means the verdict without the venture. Sin is intensified despair, not a legal status one can hold at second hand.

Kierkegaard

Quotes

The lines that carry this station: 

“The self is a relation that relates itself to itself.” 

“Sin is: before God… in despair not to will to be oneself, or in despair to will to be oneself.” 

“In relating itself to itself and in willing to be itself, the self rests transparently in the power that established it.” 

“It is Christian heroism… to venture wholly to become oneself… alone before God.”