Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
Summary
Christianity can falsely be made so severe that human nature must revolt against it … But Christianity can also be made so lenient or flavored with sweetness that all the attempts to perk up the appetite and give people a taste for it with demonstrations and reasons are futile and end up making people disgusted with it.
(Kierkegaard 1851a, p. 203)Certainly no presentation of the Christian message today is likely to be of the least avail which does not hold firmly together both the goodness and the severity of God.
(Farmer 1939, p. 112)Christianity and theology aside, human life is severe in many ways, and, adding injury to insult, human death is no easier. Candor requires that we acknowledge as much, even though we humans seem to be unable to improve our predicament in any lasting way. If some children are sheltered from life’s severity for a time, reality eventually intrudes, painfully and undeniably. This intrusion prompts humans to undertake all kinds of conduct for the sake of self-defense or at least temporary relief. Psychologists talk of human “coping mechanisms” and “diversionary tactics” in this connection.
Many people fold in the face of life’s severity and settle for a kind of despair or hopelessness about human life. Bertrand Russell, for instance, recommended that a human life should be based “only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair” (1903, pp. 45–46). (It is doubtful that Russell was able to follow his own recommendation, given his aim to “instill faith in hours of despair,” but that is a separate matter.) This book contends that life’s severity does not underwrite a life of unyielding despair.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Severity of GodReligion and Philosophy Reconceived, pp. 1 - 10Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2013