Theological Fragments

[From Part I Chapter V, " Our Duty to Remain in Love's Debt to Each Other "] Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. (Romans 13:8 ESV)  “Let us begin with a little thought-experiment. If a lover had done something for the beloved, something humanly speaking so extraordinary, lofty, and sacrificial that we men were obliged to say, ‘This is the utmost one human being can do for another’—this certainly would be beautiful and good. But suppose he added, ‘See, now I have paid any debt.’ Would this not be speaking unkindly, coldly, and harshly? Would it not be, if I may say it this way, an indecency which ought never to be heard, never in the good fellowship of true love?  If, however, the lover did this noble and sacrificial thing and then added, ‘But I have one request—let me remain in debt’: would not this be speaking in love?” [1]

[From Part I Chapter IV, " Our Duty to Love the People We See "] If anyone says, “I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. (1 John 4:20 ESV) In this chapter Kierkegaard sets up a familiar scenario: “Usually one thinks that when a man has changed essentially for the worse, he is changed in such a way that one is exempted from loving him.” [1] We have all experienced these situations, in which a person we once loved has become unlovable. Maybe their personality changed, maybe they made a poor choice, maybe they did something hurtful. For whatever reason a person went from being lovable to unlovable, and in those cases we find ourselves not really wanting to love them. The world gives us full permission to stop loving—because world doesn’t have the command of God, “you shall love”—and in fact often blames anyone who continues to love a person who has been judge

[From Part I Chapter III.B, " Love is a Matter of Conscience "] The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. (1 Timothy 1:5 ESV)  “If one were to indicate and describe in one simple word the victory Christianity has won over the world, or even more accurately,  the victory in which it has more than overcome the world… I know of nothing briefer, but also nothing more decisive, than this: it has made every human relation between man and man a relationship of conscience. Christianity has not wanted to hurl governments from the throne in order to set itself on the throne; in an external sense it has never striven for place in the world, for it is not of this world…. [Just as if a man] had a divine fluid in his arteries instead of blood, so does Christianity want to breathe eternal life, the divine, into the human race. For that reason Christianity has been called a nation of priests, and for that reason when con

[From Part I Chapter III.A, " Love is the Fulfilling of the Law "] Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.  ~Romans 13:10, ESV  “Christian love… is sheer action…. It never becomes engrossed in anything beforehand and never gives a promise in place of action. It never draws satisfaction from imagining that it has finished. It never loiters delighting in itself; it never sits idly marveling at itself. It is not that secret, private, mysterious feeling behind the lattice of the inexplicable, which the poet wants to lure to the window, not a soul-mood which fondly knows no laws, wants to know none, or wants to have its own law and harkens only to singing—it is pure action and its every deed is holy, for it is the fulfilling of the law.” [1] We do not tend to think of love and law together. Evangelical and Secular society each have their own reason for this—in Evangelical culture, the law represents cold, rigid expectations,