1,
“The moment I take Christianity as a doctrine and so indulge my cleverness.. or my eloquence, or my imaginative powers, in depicting it, people are very pleased: I am looked upon as a serious Christian. The moment I begin to express existentially what I say, and consequently to bring Christianity into reality, it is just as though I had exploded existence – the scandal is there at once.”
[‘The Journals of Soren Kierkegaard, A Selection’, 1938, entry 988, p 343].
2,
“The quality of an individual can be measured by the distance between his understanding and his willing.. Between understanding and willing lie excuses and evasions.”
[ibid, entry 576]
3,
The professor of theology is “a professor in what cost Christ a life of anguish and a death anguished to the point of despairing over God’s help.” Such a one “would become professor of Christ’s being crucified.”
[ibid, pp 634-657]
4,
“In the magnificent cathedral the Honourable and Right Reverend Getheime-General-Ober-Hof-Pradikant, the elect favourite of the fashionable world, appears before an elect company and preaches with emotion upon the text he himself elected: ‘God has elected the base things of the world, and the things that are despised’ – and nobody laughs.”
[‘Kierkegaard’s Attack Upon Christendom’, ed. Walter Lowrie, 1968]