Four Upbuilding Discourses, 1844

Kierkegaard "felt inclined to doubt a little the correctness of the familiar philosophic maxim that the external is the internal and the internal the external and was always heretically-minded on this point in philosophy." The external would be experience and the internal revelation.[7] This developed into the discussions about the primacy of Revelation or of Reason in religious matters.[8] At this time a new medium for knowledge was coming of age, newspapers. Kierkegaard wrote about them on November 28, 1835.[9] These newspapers came to be regarded as another form of knowledge. But is this knowledge given by the newspapers an external or an internal form of knowledge or of revelation? Kierkegaard wondered about that.

Mary as a hermit, by El Greco

He many times referred to "the one thing needful" throughout his writings.[10] Now he says "to need God is a human being's highest perfection." This is direct communication instead of the indirect method he chose for most of his pseudonymous writings. He has discussed the goods of the world in comparison to the goods of the spirit which indicates the same external and internal relationship. This fragment of the Bible, "one thing needful", is found in the story of Martha of Bethany and Mary Magdalene from the New Testament.[11] Mary knew she was a sinner[12] and thanked Christ for saving her from her sins, while Martha was busy serving Him. Martha said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is needful. Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her.”[13][14] Mary represents the one who is related to Christ in an internal way and Martha the external. Speculation might say that Mary is William Blake or Johann Goethe and Martha is Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel or Baruch Spinoza.[15] Kierkegaard uses these single individuals to help him "teach his age what it is 'to become a Christian'."[16] Can a single individual be seduced by the religious in such a way that he or she becomes in danger of developing into extreme examples of the internal (mystic) and the external (Don Quixote)?[17]

What, then, was the one thing ' that he willed? As he makes clear in Om min Forfatter- Virksomhed (My Literary Activity 1851, p. 35ff), it was religion; or, more definitely, his one aim was to teach his age what it is ' to become a Christian' or at least "compel the age to take notice." He discussed this further in his 1848 unpublished book, The Point of View For my Work as an Author, where he discusses a factum that made him into a poet and his esthetic production moved him forward to a different place. He wrote:

in this thing of becoming a poet I did not recognize myself in a deeper sense, but rather in the religious awakening. Here the reader can easily perceive the explanation of all the difficulty of the authorship, but he must not ^['think'?] that the author was at the same time conscious of this. What was to be done? Well, obviously the poetical had to be evacuated,^{['evaluated'?]} anything else was impossible for me. But the whole esthetic production was put under arrest by the religious. The religious agreed to this elimination but incessantly spurred it on, as though it were saying, Are you not now through with that? While the poetical works were being produced the author was living under strict religious rules.

— The Point of View For my Work as an Author 84-85, Lowrie translation 1962 Harper and Row

Kierkegaard goes on to tell "the secret of perfection: that to need God is nothing to be ashamed of but is perfection itself."[18] Another way to say that is we become perfect when we learn that we are not perfect. Once that happens the individual struggles with himself rather than with the world. He uses Moses as an example of an individual who knew he was capable of nothing at all but he was confronted by the crowd that demanded a demonstration.[19] He sums up this battle for the self this way:

When man turns about, so as to confront himself in order to acquire an understanding of himself, it is as if he blocked the way for that first self of which we have been speaking. He interferes with its movement outwards, with its yearning for the surrounding world which is its object, and with its pursuit of it; he calls the first self away from external things. For the purpose of inducing the first self to acquiesce in this recall, the deeper self makes the surrounding world reveal itself as it really is, namely as uncertain and precarious. It is indeed the truth that the world about us is unstable, every moment admitting of a change to its very opposite. The man has never lived who by the exercise of his power or by the magic of his wish could hold this variableness within the bonds of restraint. The deeper self thus proceeds to picture the outer world, with its elusiveness and its mutability, in such terms that it no longer seems desirable to the first self. Either the first self must contrive to slay the deeper self, to plunge it into oblivion, when all is lost; or it must admit that the deeper self is right. For to assert stability of that which constantly changes is a contradiction. As soon as it is admitted that it is of the nature of the outer world to change, it follows that it may change at any moment.

— Edifying Discourses (1843-1844), Swenson translation Vol IV 1958 p. 159

The greatest difficulty seems to be just to get the task firmly set or actually to get set firmly on what the task is. Perhaps people are really not unwilling to spend time and energy and are not incompetent either-if only it could become unmistakably clear to them what the task is. But the point is that this communication cannot in any decisive way come to them from the outside; it has to go through the person who is himself involved. The adult is indeed of age; he is to be his own master. But it is the lord and master who is to assign the task, just as parents and superiors do it for the child. Thus the adult is simultaneously master and servant; the one who is to command and the one who is to obey are one and the same. This is unquestioningly a difficult situation, that the one giving the command and the one obeying the command are the same. It can so easily happen that the servant meddles in the deliberation about the task, and conversely, that the master pays too much attention to the servant’s complaints about the difficulties in carrying out the task. Then, alas, confusion develops; then instead of becoming one’s own master a person becomes unstable, irresolute, vacillating; he runs from one thing to another, tears down and builds up and begins again from the beginning. He is tossed about by every breeze, but without moving from the spot. Finally the situation becomes so awkward that all his energy is expended in thinking up ever new changes in the task-just as a plant goes to seed, so he goes to seed in busy trifling deliberation or in fruitless wishing. In a certain sense he uses much time, much diligence, and much energy, and it is all as good as wasted, because the task does not remain fixed, because there is no master, since he, of course, should be his own master.

— Soren Kierkegaard, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, 1847, Hong p. 294-295

Either, Martha and Mary at the tomb, Or?

The outer world is constantly in a state of flux but if a single individual wants to be able to function in such a world he or she must be able to allow the change but stay constant in the inner being through a strengthening process. Kierkegaard believed the world of the spirit is opposed to the world of change because God never changes. And God strengthens in the inner being before asking for external action. Then "when the first self submits to the deeper self, they are reconciled and walk on together."[20] (Edifying Discourses, p. 253ff) Arthur Schopenhauer thought differently than Kierkegaard on this point.

How should a man be content so long as he fails to obtain complete unity in his inmost being? For as long as two voices alternately speak in him, what is right for one must be wrong for the other. Thus he is always complaining. But has any man ever been completely at one with himself? Nay, is not the very thought a contradiction? That a man shall attain this inner unity is the impossible and inconsistent pretension put forward by almost all philosophers

— The Art of Controversy by Arthur Schopenhauer

Kierkegaard discusses other Biblical phrases that have been turned into speculative enterprises for scholars as well as lay ministers. Here he discusses "the thorn in the flesh" and "caught up in the third heaven."[21] The Apostle Paul had experience and an assured spirit yet he had this thorn in the side and the order not to discuss being caught up in the third heaven. This unsettled Paul, since he wanted to know all things, and had conflict in his soul. Kierkegaard writes elegantly about Paul's search for peace.

Ecstasy of Saint Paul Nicolas Poussin 1643

A person is looking for peace, but there is change: day and night, summer and winter, life and death; a person is looking for peace, but there is a change: fortune and misfortune, joy and sorrow; a person is looking for peace and constancy, but there is a change: the ardor of purpose and the disgust of weakness, the greenwood of expectation and the withered splendor of fulfillment; a person is looking for peace-where did he look for it-even in the disquietude of distraction-where did he look for it in vain-even in the grave! But an apostle-he uses the strongest expression about a thorn in the flesh, about an angel of Satan who strikes him on the mouth and thereby prevents him from declaring that inexpressible blessedness. So it is so, then, that the more zealously one presses forward, the more dangerous everything becomes? No, the apostle does not speak like an incited man who is merely a desperate witness to how he himself has been tumbled about and at best knows how to describe his ups and downs. That he is not permitted to remain in the third heaven, indeed, that it is an angel of Satan who fetches him down again and strikes him on the mouth-this he knows. He knows that in a certain sense the joining of earthly life with beatitude is always an unhappy marriage and that the truly beatific union is concluded only in heaven, just as it was concluded there in the beginning; but he also knows that it is beneficial to him, and that this thorn in the flesh is given him so that he will not be arrogant. Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Hong p. 328[22]

Those who interpret the Bible can do harm to the single individual who is reading the interpretation because of the way that an individual is constituted. Paul learned he would not be able to know everything and said it was beneficial for him that this is the way it is. Kierkegaard says, "he had experienced the beatitude of heaven and had kept the pledge of the spirit, but there was nevertheless a memory. And a memory is difficult to manage. At one time it is far away, and then, presto, it is right there as if it had never been forgotten. Paul had memories of stoning Stephen and persecuting Christians and wandered about in "the fog of unintelligibility."[23]

His intent was exemplified in his 1846 book, Concluding Unscientific Postscript:

The issue is raised objectively; the solid, sensible subject thinks this way: “Just let there be clarity and certainty about the truth of Christianity and I will surely be man enough to accept it; that will follow as a matter of course. “The trouble, however, is that in its paradoxical from the truth of Christianity has something in common with the nettle: the solid, sensible subject only stings himself when he wants to grasp it summarily this way, or rather (since it is a spiritual relationship, the stinging can be understood only in a figurative sense) he does not grasp it at all; he grasps its objective truth so objectively that he himself remains outside. Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript V. I 46-47 Hong

Kierkegaard challenges the reader with the question, "Do you know what the discourse is about?" Paul had been given Roman citizenship as a gift from God, he had been given this challenge of trying to guide an infant church into existence along with others chosen by Christ. What do we do about the positive gifts we have been given by God? These gifts become thorns if you don't use them. Martin Luther had commented about thorns much in the same way Kierkegaard does here when he wrote to his wife, "Thou mayest tell M. Philipps to correct his postil. He never understood why our Lord, in the gospel, calls riches thorns. Here is the school to learn that. But I shudder to think that thorns, in the Scripture, are always threatened with fire. Wherefore I have the greater patience, if haply, by the help of God, I may be able to bring some good to pass." (Martin Luther, To His Wife 1546)[24] Kierkegaard was grateful for the free gift of intellectual ability, imagination, and dialectical skills and he took these gifts as gifts that should be used in the service of God. Is it better to examine your own positive qualities or the negative qualities associated to your own self? Can knowledge become a thorn in the side? Here is how he said it in 1847 and then 1848,

[Christ] learned obedience from what he suffered-what he suffered when he who possesses the blessing was like a curse for everyone who came near him and for everyone who avoided him, an affliction for his contemporaries, like an affliction for those few who loved him, so that he had to wrench them out into the most terrible decision, so that for his mother he had to be the sword that pierced her heart, for the disciples a crucified love; an affliction for the vacillators, who basically perhaps in the hiddenness of a secret desire grasped the truth of his words but did not dare to join him but for that very reason also kept a thorn in their souls, a split in their inner being, a painful mark of having been his contemporaries; an affliction for the wicked, that he by his purity and holiness had to expose their hearts and make them guiltier than ever. What heavy suffering: to have to be the stumbling stone in order to be the Savior of the world! Soren Kierkegaard, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits 1847 Hong 1993 p. 254

An observer will perceive how everything was set in motion and how dialectically: I had a thorn in the flesh, intellectual gifts (especially imagination) and culture in superabundance, an enormous development as an observer, a Christian upbringing that was certainly very unusual, a dialectical relationship to Christianity which was peculiarly my own, and in addition to this I had from childhood a training obedience, obedience absolute, and I was armed with an almost foolhardy faith that I was able to do anything, only one thing excepted, to be a free bird, though but for a whole day, or to slip out of the fetters of melancholy in which another power held me bound. Finally in my own eyes I was a penitent. The impression this now makes upon me is as if there were a Power which form the first instant had been observant of this and said, as a fisherman says of the fish, Let it run awhile, it is not yet the moment to pull it in. And strangely enough there is something that reaches back in my recollection, impossible as it is for me to say when I began this practice or why such a thing ever occurred to me: I prayed to God regularly, every day, that He would give me zeal and patience to perform the work He would assign me. Thus I became an author.

• Soren Kierkegaard, The Point of View of My Work as an Author Lowrie translation, 1939, 1962 p. 82-83

Robert Morrison translating the Bible into Chinese (1813)

Kierkegaard begins with a passage from the Bible in this discourse, "For God did not give us a spirit of timidity but a spirit of power and love and self-control." 2 Timothy 1:7.[25] Kierkegaard returns to the subject of Either/Or and writes in "praise of the resolution". The decision to make a resolution is the leap of faith because the resolution always leads the person forward. Scholars can interpret this passage and write whole books about it but it seems that there would be "an abundance of interpretations and a poverty of action."[26]

His discourse is against cowardliness not against pride because the single individual aught to be able to "acknowledge the good that he does do". But the single individual evades action by using cowardliness and time. He says the spirit enters into the service of the good so it can build a tower to the Lord.[27] But cowardliness gets in the way. What is cowardliness and does everyone possess it or is it only possessed by the weak and anxious? Kierkegaard answers in this way, "take it for granted that everyone is somewhat cowardly, and in particular it can safely be assumed that anyone who seeks to know himself better will be willing to acknowledge that he has not infrequently caught himself in it, and for that reason he is always a bit dubious about even his boldest enterprise." So remember "the one thing needful".[28]

The single individual can know very many things but not do much of anything that relates to the knowing. One can reflect on what the Bible says or one could decide to do something in relation to what they know. Kierkegaard put it this way in his Concluding Postscript (1846) and again in his journals.

The ethical is not only a knowing; it is also a doing that is related to a knowing, and a doing of such a nature that the repetition of it can at times and in more ways than one become more difficult than the first doing. .... People know everything, and in order not to stop with that, they know also that they are not to do the least of what they know, because with the aid of external knowledge they are in seventh heaven, and if one must begin to do it, one will become a poor, wretched existing individual who stumbles again and again and progresses very slowly from year to year. Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Vol I, Hong pages 160-161, 254-256

At the happy moment everyone received a copy of Holy Scriptures, in which there was one book which was almost always too brief and sometimes almost invisible, and this was, I regret — the Acts of the Apostles. Journals IA 328 1836 or 1837

Kierkegaard wanted to get married but he took his time about making his decision, even after he had made a promise to marry. He consulted with himself and with God and made a negative resolution about marriage. But someone might come along in the future. He learned not to lean on an imagined view of what a woman is through his contact with Regine Olsen and didn't form an opinion of what he wanted. He didn't want to compare girl with girl and find out through comparison that his tower was higher or lower than others.[29]

No wonder one hears so much silly talk about love, since to hear so much talk is already an indication that reflection is universally forcing its way in to disturb the quiet, more modest life where love prefers to reside because in its modesty it is so close to piety. Thus I am well aware that Messrs. Esthetes will promptly declare me incompetent for discussion, and all the more so when I do not conceal that despite being married for eight years I still do not definitely know in a critical sense what my wife looks like. To love is not to criticize, and marital faithfulness does not consist of detailed criticism. Yet this ignorance of mine is not entirely due to my being uncultured; I, too, am able to observe the beautiful, but I observe a portrait, a statue, in that way, not a wife. … as far as my wife is concerned, I am not sure to this day whether she is slim. Stages on Life's Way, Hong p. 125

A Bible handwritten in Latin, 1407AD

The rest of the discourse discusses how cowardliness, false pride, sagacity, and time conspire to keep us out of the world of the spirit and from acting there. But he keeps reminding every single individual that all are equal in the world of the spirit. Kierkegaard preferred to study the Bible alone so he could have a clear understanding of where he stood. Others can't do that and need help or to hear it read aloud in Church. Kierkegaard had to make his own resolution about the world of the spirit. He wrote the following in 1848. "I had to either cast myself into perdition and sensuality, or to choose the religious absolutely as the one thing-either the world in a measure that would be dreadful, or the cloister."[30] In this resolution he maintained, as the apostles had, that he was only an "unworthy servant".[31] He strove to keep his resolution and asked others the following question. "Where does the fault lie if the person and his resolution no longer live together in harmony?"[32]

So banish all curiosity, which is doomed without even knowing it, since its doom is either that he it is unable to understand it or that it will be able to understand it, and its sin is either it neglects lesser matters in order to drop off into reverie about riddles or that it craftily applies its talents to making them ununderstandable and hypocritically pretends that this is a desire for understanding. Let everyone test himself. With regard to what he has experienced, let him be true to himself, but let no one forget that blessedness of the spirit and suffering of the spirit are not something external of which one can honestly and truly say: The circumstances of my life did not provide me the opportunity to experience this. In the world of the spirit, there is neither sport nor spook; there luck and chance do not make one person a king, another a beggar, one person as beautiful as an Oriental queen, another more wretched than Lazarus. In the world of the spirit, the only one who is shut out is the one who shuts himself out; in the world of the spirit, all are invited and therefore what is said about it can be said safely and undauntedly; if it pertains to one single individual it pertains to all. Why, then, this curiosity about what God has given every human being the opportunity to experience, indeed, has been made so available that it even may be said: He must have understood it. Søren Kierkegaard, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Hong p. 334ff

consider someone who wants to do an act of mercy-can he do more than give all that he possesses-and did not the widow give infinitely more than the rich man gave out of his abundance! At times the circumstances can determine that a penny signifies little more than it usually signifies, but if someone wants to do something marvelous, he can make the one penny signify just as much as all the world’s gold put together if he gives it out of compassion and the penny is the only one he has. Indeed, someone who has an ear for judging how large the gift is detects the difference just by hearing the jingle of the coins, but compassion and the temple box understand it differently. When someone who enjoys health and strength and who possesses the best gifts of the spirit enters the service of the good with all that he has, with the range of years that seem to stretch out before him, with expectancy’s every demand upon life, every claim expected and demanded only for the sake of the good-and when, on the other hand, someone who sadly sees his earthly frailty and the day of disintegration so close that he is tempted to speak of the time granted him as the pastor speaks of it, when in the hour of resolution a person like that promises with the pastor’s words “to dedicate these moments” to the service to the good-whose tower then becomes higher? Do they not both reach heaven? Or when one person, a stranger to internal enemies, aggressively directs his mind and thoughts toward humankind in the service of the good and wins thousands, and when another, retreating in internal battles, in the moment of resolution saves himself, whose tower then becomes higher? If cowardliness could understand this, it would not be so opposed to resolution, because this is the secret of resolution. It demands everything, that is true; it does not allow itself to be deceived, it tolerates no dishonesty, it is closefisted down to the last penny toward the person who wants to give almost everything. But it is not petty; it relishes the sight of someone who gives away the little he has and is angry only if he wants to hold back, if he wants to put blame on his poverty, if he sophistically wants to delude himself into thinking that it is impossible for him to give away everything since he possesses nothing, if he wants to divert himself by wishing that he had much to give away, if he wants to entertain himself by thinking how magnanimous he then would be, wants to satisfy his urge for resolution with dreams until the urge passes. All this is just cowardliness and concealed pride, which desires to become in obscurity a little more than one is and to put off the resolution with feigned approval. Søren Kierkegaard, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Hong p. 361-363

Mary Magdalene praying

Now Kierkegaard takes the reader where he wanted to take him. To prayer, specifically to the "struggle" involved in prayer. And the prayer hopes for the "reward". Is to struggle in prayer a "contradiction" in terms?[33] Can it be shown artistically and scientifically? It all gets confused and "the strong man is warned not to misuse his power against the weak, but the weak man is also warned not to misuse the power of prayer against the strong."[34] Every single individual prays in his or her own particular way and there is no "scientific method" for praying. But what are we praying about?

One person contends in prayer for his share of the good things that fail to come, another for the honor that beckons, another for the happiness he wants to create for his beloved, another for the happiness that will flourish for him at his beloved’s side. One person contends in prayer against the horror of the past from which he is fleeing, another against the terror of the future into which he is staring, another with the secret horror that resides in solitude, another with the danger everyone sees. One person contends for the fulfillment of the wish, another against the fulfilled wish, since it was precipitous. One person strains every nerve even though he keeps on praying; another is expecting everything from the prayer even though he keeps on working; one ponders the relation of the fulfillment to the work; another ponders the misrelation. Alas, even though there is peace in the land, health and abundance, alas, even though the sun smiles bright and warm, there is still so much struggle. Alas, even when the overarching night sky is silent and starlit and the fields are at rest, there is still so much struggle! Søren Kierkegaard, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Hong p. 387-388

It seems just as ridiculous as for a Hercules of a pastor to take gladiator positions when he prays in order to demonstrate by the rippling muscles of his arms how fervently he is praying etc. It is not muscles that are needed in order to pray and to pray fervently — nor is this the kind of trembling that is of the spirit and inwardness. Journals of Soren Kierkegaard, VA 94

Many Christians as well as individuals associated with other religious bodies pray. It seems to be something everyone does. All struggle but Kierkegaard asks, "But what is the issue in the struggle?" Is it the outcome or result that is the issue?[35] What happens if the praying individual becomes "lukewarm and cold and indifferent"?[36] He says, "One says: To renounce everything is an enormous abstraction-that is why one must proceed to hold on to something. But if the task is to renounce everything, what if one began by renouncing something?"[37]

He's been discussing the relationship of human being to human being, the relationship of a human being with the soul, and a human being in relationship with God. And he's been discussing change. One human being can change another but it can cause many difficulties. The human being who is aware that a soul exists within the inner being can consider it as an individual. "Worship is the maximum for a human being’s relationship with God, and thereby for his likeness to God, since the qualities are absolutely different."[38]

Praying Hands Albrecht Dürer 1508

So we pray to God about what we want and need. Kierkegaard's first discourse says this about needs,

"MAN wants but little here below, nor wants that little long" is a high-minded saying, well worthy of acceptance, and worthy also of being accepted as it desires to be accepted. Let us then take it away from him: wealth and power and influence, and the deceitful service of false friendship, and the obedient subjection of his pleasures to the whim of his desires, and the triumphs of his vanity over the admiration of his worshipers, and the flattering attention of the throngs, and the envied magnificence of his entire presence. Now he has lost it, and is content with less. Just as the world cannot recognize him on account of the great alteration in his circumstances, so he finds it hard to recognize himself— so changed is he: that he who once needed so much now needs so little." Edifying Discourses, a selection, Swenson p. 136-138

How does the crowd decide what it wants and needs compared with the decision of the single individual? The crowd hears stories and wonders if they are true. Repetition of the story increases its validity. Kierkegaard thinks people should reflect on those stories for a longer period of time and choose for themselves if they are believable. He wrote the following in 1846:

“It is spirit to ask about two things. (1) Is what is being said possible? (2) Am I able to do it? It is to lack spirit to ask about two things: (1) Did it actually happen? (2) Has my neighbor done it; has he actually done it? In asking with regard to my own actuality, I am asking about its possibility, except that this possibility is not esthetically and intellectually disinterested but is a thought-actuality that is related to my own personal actuality-namely that I am able to carry it out. The how of the truth is precisely the truth. Concluding Postscript, Hong p. 322-323 At the distance of a dispute from action, at the distance of a noble resolve from action, at the distance of a solemn vow, of repentance, from action-everyone understands the highest. To understand, within the security of conditions unchanged through ancient custom, that a change should be made-everyone can do that, since this understanding is at a distance-is not unchanginess an enormous distance from change? Alas, in the world there is incessantly the pressing question about what this one can do, what that one can do, and what that one cannot do; eternity, which speaks the highest, calmly assumes that every person can do it and therefore asks only if he did it. Soren Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 1847, Hong p. 79

Søren Kierkegaard made many wishes in his life and had them "die in being born". He also hoped much but started out with "a short-lived hope, that tomorrow is forgotten; a childish hope, that old age does not recognize". He was just a young man and young men like to wish and hope and love. He found that his "faith was disappointed and vanished because of the pain of the wish". He wished for happiness and good health and to have money and the possibility of a family; and he wanted to know what he needed for his wish to come true. He hoped that somehow the conditions would be right so he could be happy. That's all he wanted.[39]

The wanderer above the sea of fog

When he was young he complained to the Greek gods Prometheus and Epimetheus because they equipped human beings so gloriously and yet it did not occur to them to give them money also.[40] Here he was the ethicist like Martha. What service she could have done if she only had the money. Earlier, as the esthete, he had asked for an internal good, a sense of humor.[41] Mary knew she was a sinner, that she was unethical and yet she was saved. Imagine what Mary could have done with a sense of humor. One could make prayer an external, scientific act while the other could make it into a suffocating internal private act with no other communication. But neither way, if taken to extremes, would result in faith. He visits this theme again in 1850 with his discourse The Woman Who Was a Sinner where he says, "from a woman you learn concern for the one thing needful, from Mary, sister of Lazarus, who sat silent at Christ's feet with her heart's choice: the one thing needful."[42] Kierkegaard said he could describe the movements of faith but he couldn't make them[43] because he couldn't understand Abraham. It's difficult to understand each other in the physical world. Sometimes it's a miracle.[44] Isn't it much more difficult to understand each other in the world of the spirit, because each single individual in a group of people praying is standing before God? And the secret given through prayer by God is a gift for the individual concerned according to Kierkegaard's view of the Bible.

"How numerous the struggles are, how varied the struggle in which one who prays tries himself with God (since someone who tries himself against God does not struggle in prayer), how varied the means of prayer, the special nature of the prayer, with which the struggler seeks to overcome God! The struggler is indeed so inclined; it is his intention that the struggle be fruitful, that it end with a glorious result, and if anyone were to say to him, in order to calm him down, that God is the unchanging, that God only lives far off in heaven but is even further away from every human being in his changelessness, this kind of talk would certainly upset the struggler. Just as the worst thing that can be said of a person is that he is an inhuman brute, so it is the worst and the most revolting blasphemy to say of God that he is inhuman, no matter if it is supposed to be very fashionable or bold to talk that way.

No the God to whom he prays is human, has the heart to feel humanly, the ear to hear a human being’s complaint; the even though he does not fulfill every wish, he still lives close to us and is moved by the struggler’s cry, by his humble request, by his wretchedness when he sits abandoned and as if in prison, by his speedy joy over the fulfillment when in hope he anticipates it. Indeed, this God is moved by the struggler’s lament when he is perishing in despondency, by his shout when he is sinking in the maelstrom of change, by the thanksgiving he promises for all time; he is moved, if not earlier, then by the final sigh when, humanly speaking, it already seems to be too late."

• Soren Kierkegaard Four upbuilding Discourses 1844 One who Prays Aright Struggles in Prayer and Is Victorious-In That God Is Victorious 1843-1844 p. 387 Hong 1990

• Man's Need of God Constitutes His Highest Perfection Søren Kierkegaard, Four Upbuilding Discourses, 1844 first discourse of the series. Translated by David F. Swenson 1944-45, 1958
• Four Upbuilding Discourses, 1844 Wikiquote
• Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Hong 1990

• The Western Literary Messenger, Sept 1849 Living Philosophers in Denmark
• Sixteen Months in the Danish Isles, by Andrew Hamilton (antiquary) 1852
• Evangelical Christendom, ed. (1856). "The Doctrines of Dr Kierkegaard,"
• Hans Lassen Martensen (1871). "Christian ethics : (General part)
• Nietzsche, Frederich, and His Influence, The Book-Lover. Published 1900 p. 144ff
• George Brandes, Reminiscences of My Childhood and Youth, 1906
• Encyclopaedia of religion and ethics Vol 7 (1908) p. 696ff
• Soren Kierkegaard Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics, Volume VII, James Hastings, John Alexander Selbie, Louis Herbert Gray, published by T. & T. Clark, 1915 p. 696-700
• Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be, 1952 This book also discusses Kierkegaard in relation to becoming.
• Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island 1955
• Rollo May, The Courage to Create, 1974, 1994 (Google Books)
• Ib Ostenfeld, Alastair McKinnon, Søren Kierkegaard's Psychology 1978 (Google Books)
• Lorraine Clark Blake, Kierkegaard, and the Spectre of the Dialectic, Trent University 1991, Cambridge University Press