Søren Kierkegaard instance of human
The Inwardness of Christianity
Kierkegaard believed God comes to each individual mysteriously. He published Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions (first called Thoughts on Crucial Situations in Human Life, in David F. Swenson's 1941 translation) under his own name on 29 April, and Stages on Life's Way edited by Hilarius Bookbinder, 30 April 1845. The Stages is a sequel to Either/Or which Kierkegaard did not think had been adequately read by the public and in Stages he predicted "that two-thirds of the book's readers will quit before they are halfway through, out of boredom they will throw the book away." He knew he was writing books but had no idea who was reading them. His sales were meager and he had no publicist or editor. He was writing in the dark, so to speak. Many of his readers have been and continue to be in the dark about his intentions. He explained himself in his "Journal": "What I have understood as the task of the authorship has been done. It is one idea, this continuity from Either/Or to Anti-Climacus, the idea of religiousness in reflection. The task has occupied me totally, for it has occupied me religiously; I have understood the completion of this authorship as my duty, as a responsibility resting upon me." He advised his reader to read his books slowly and also to read them aloud since that might aid in understanding.He used indirect communication in his writings by, for instance, referring to the religious person as the "knight of hidden inwardness" in which he's different from everyone else, even though he looks like everyone else, because everything is hidden within him.  He put it this way in 1847: "You are indistinguishable from anyone else among those whom you might wish to resemble, those who in the decision are with the good – they are all clothed alike, girdled about the loins with truth, clad in the armor of righteousness, wearing the helmet of salvation!"Kierkegaard was aware of the hidden depths inside of each single individual. The hidden inwardness is inventive in deceiving or evading others. Much of it is afraid of being seen and entirely disclosed. “Therefore all calm and, in the intellectual sense, dispassionate observers, who eminently know how to delve searchingly and penetratingly into the inner being, these very people judge with such infinite caution or refrain from it entirely because, enriched by observation, they have a developed conception of the enigmatic world of the hidden, and because as observers they have learned to rule over their passions. Only superficial, impetuous passionate people, who do not understand themselves and for that reason naturally are unaware that they do not know others, judge precipitously. Those with insight, those who know never do this.”
Kierkegaard imagined hidden inwardness several ways in 1848. Imagine hidden in a very plain setting a secret chest in which the most precious is placed – there is a spring that must be pressed, but the spring is concealed, and the pressure must be of a certain force so that an accidental pressure cannot be sufficient. The hope of eternity is concealed within a person’s innermost being in the same way, and hardship is the pressure. When the pressure is put on the concealed spring, and forcefully enough, the content appears in all its glory! Soren Kierkegaard Christian Discourses 1848 Hong 1997 p. 111 Imagine a kernel of grain placed in the earth; if it is to grow, what does it need? First of all space; it must have space. Next, pressure; there must also be pressure – sprouting is making space for itself in opposition. Eternity’s hope is placed in a person’s innermost being in the same way. But hardship makes space by setting everything else aside, everything provisional, which is brought to despair; thus hardship’s pressure is what draws forth! Soren Kierkegaard Christian Discourses 1848 Hong 1997 p. 111-112 Imagine, as indeed is the case, an animal that has a defense weapon with which it defends itself but which it uses only in mortal danger. Eternity’s hope is in a person’s innermost being in the same way; hardship is the mortal danger. Imagine a creeping animal that nevertheless has wings that it can use when it is brought to an extremity, but for everyday use it does not find it worth the trouble to use them. Eternity’s hope is in a person’s innermost being in the same way; he has wings but he must be brought to an extremity in order to discover them, or in order to develop them, or in order to use them! Soren Kierkegaard Christian Discourses 1848 Hong 1997 p. 112
He was writing about the subjective inward nature of God's encounter with the individual in many of his books, and his goal was to get the single individual away from all the speculation that was going on about God and Christ. Speculation creates quantities of ways to find God and his Goods but finding faith in Christ and putting the understanding to use stops all speculation, because then one begins to actually exist as a Christian, or in an ethical/religious way. He was against an individual waiting until certain of God's love and salvation before beginning to try to become a Christian. He defined this as a "special type of religious conflict the Germans call Anfechtung" (contesting or disputing).
In Kierkegaard's view the Church should not try to prove Christianity or even defend it. It should help the single individual to make a leap of faith, the faith that God is love and has a task for that very same single individual. He wrote the following about fear and trembling and love as early as 1839, "Fear and trembling is not the primus motor in the Christian life, for it is love; but it is what the oscillating balance wheel is to the clock-it is the oscillating balance wheel of the Christian life. Kierkegaard identified the leap of faith as the good resolution.  Kierkegaard discussed the knight of faith in Works of Love, 1847 by using the story of Jesus healing the bleeding woman who showed the " originality of faith" by believing that if she touched Jesus' robe she would be healed. She kept that secret within herself. If doubt is the beginning, then God is lost long before the end, and the individual is released from always having a task, but also from always having the comfort that there is always a task. But if the consciousness of guilt is the beginning, then the beginning of doubt is rendered impossible, and then the joy is that there is always a task. The joy, then, is that it is eternally certain that God is love; more specifically understood, the joy is that there is always a task. As long as there is life there is hope, but as long as there is a task there is life, and as long as there is life there is hope-indeed, the task itself is not merely a hope for a future time but is a joyful present. Søren Kierkegaard, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, Hong p. 279-280, 277
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