page_title: Philosophical Fragments
section_title: The God as Teacher, Saviour and the Paradox
hierarchical_section_title: Philosophical Fragments / Overview / The God as Teacher, Saviour and the Paradox
caption_attribution_description: English: Kierkegaard: to find the idea for which I can live and die
context_page_description: Philosophical Fragments is a Christian philosophical work written by Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in 1844. It was the second of three works written under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus; the other two were De omnibus dubitandum est in 1841 and Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments in 1846.
context_section_description: Kierkegaard leads his reader to consider how a teacher might become a teacher. He says life and its circumstances constitute an occasion for an individual to become a teacher and he in turn becomes an occasion for the learner to learn something. Socrates was such a teacher as this. But what about God? What would be the occasion that moved him to become a Teacher? God is moved by love but his love is unhappy. He wants to make himself understood just like a teacher but He's teaching something that doesn't come to an individual from the known world but from a world that is Unknown. "His love is a love of the learner, and his aim is to win him. For it is only in love that the unequal can be made equal, and it is only in equality or unity that an understanding can be effected, and without a perfect understanding the Teacher is not the God, unless the obstacle comes wholly from the side of the learner, in his refusing to realize that which had been made possible for him."
  God's goal is to make himself understood and, according to Kierkegaard, he has three options. He could elevate the learner to help the learner forget the misunderstanding. God could show himself to the learner and cause him to forget his Error while contemplating God's presence. Both options are rejected on the basis of equality. How can God make himself equal to man? Only by becoming man himself, but not a king, or a leader of an established order, no, for equality's sake he must become one of the humblest, a servant.
  
  But God can't make himself understood because he's completely unlike every other human being. God has not sinned, whereas every human being has. This is a paradox but the ultimate paradox is that a single individual who looks just like everyone else is God. "The thesis that God has existed in human form, was born, grew up; is certainly the paradox in the strictest sense, the absolute paradox." Christianity is also a paradox as well as the forgiveness of sins. Kierkegaard is saying that the "Moment" the individual comes in contact with the Paradox is of utmost importance because this is where the decision is made. This is his Either/Or. Either believe or be offended. Reason is attempting to understand the Paradox but comes to its own limit and can't understand what it knows nothing about. 
  how should the Reason be able to understand what is absolutely different from itself? If this is not immediately evident, it will become clearer in the light of the consequences; for if the God is absolutely unlike man, then man is absolutely unlike the God; but how could the Reason be expected to understand this? Here we seem to be confronted with a paradox. Merely to obtain the knowledge that the God is unlike him, man needs the help of the God; and now he learns that the God is absolutely different from himself. But if the God and man are absolutely different, this cannot be accounted for on the basis of what man derives from the God, for in so far they are akin. Their unlikeness must therefore be explained by what man derives from himself, or by what he has brought upon his own head. Philosophical Fragments, Swenson p. 34 (see 31-34)
  Kierkegaard says Reason "collides" with the knowledge of the Unknown. If Reason and God have a happy encounter the individual comes to be a believer. If the collision results in an unhappy encounter the Reason is Offended. The Reason says that the Paradox is absurd and can get no meaning from the encounter. But when "Reason yielded itself while the Paradox bestowed itself, and the understanding is consummated in that happy passion, the individual is happy and asks for nothing more." Kierkegaard says Christ offers every single individual the "invitation."
caption: Kierkegaard's Journal 1835
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