CUP Part 1

Kierkegaard:

Faith does not come from straightforward scholarly deliberation, nor does it come straightforwardly.  On the contrary, in this objectivity, one loses the infinite, personal, impassioned interestedness that is the condition of faith, the ubique et nasquam [everywhere and nowhere] in which faith can come into being.

If there is a quote which gives you the general drive of the book Concluding Unscientific Postscript, this is it. There's something about it in particular that when I read it I immediately circled it and wrote EXPLORE THIS beside it. To many, apologetics is an essential skill for the Christian. We must be able to give a defense for our faith, not just to talk about it, but to convince people. Kierkegaard, frankly, thinks that's utter garbage. Of course you can not argue someone into Chrisitanity, and you can never defend it enough that someone would believe it.

So if you can't argue someone into faith or defend it so that they see faith not only as something plausible, but so that they begin to have it themselves, then what is it to have faith? Kierkegaard thinks objective talk about faith loses the infinite, personal, impassioned interestedness that is the condition of faith.  With that said then, clearly to have faith is to have the infinite, personal, impassioned interestedness. Infinite; what does it mean to be infinite? It seems like it means to live in some sort of infinite relation to God. Personal seems to be to have personal relation to God. This are trite definitions, but I think they are really wrapped up in the last one: Impassioned interestedness.

Kant's idea of interestedness is one I studied a decent amount in Aesthetics with Dr. Shelley.  One of the commentaries on the theory gave an example about a theater own who went to the show in his theater but sitting in his box with counting the amount of people and drinks sold to figure out how much money he had made that night. The writer said that this man was not truly attending to the show but was rather attending to his money. He was there and cared about the show, but his attention was really on something else.  I think that is a point that can be made here with what Kierkegaard is saying.  If one is concerned with constant defense of the idea of God, with objective talk, or scholarly deliberation, he is not really attending to God at all.  He may be attending to the idea of God; perhaps he is attending to winning an argument, or scholastic achievement.  To attend to God, however, one has to be relating to God himself with impassioned love, not some other object, topic, or scholastic goal. If God is not central to any talk of God, we aren't dealing with God at all, only the idea of God.