Saturday, February 17, 2007

Kierkegaard on Sin

What is sin? It is the pact of an evil conscience with darkness.


What else has a memory like that of a bad conscience?

What sin cries to heaven? The very one that hides most secretly and most quietly within. What the adulterers, murderers, and thieves do cries out already here on earth.


To be a mere observer is actually sin.

Whenever sin is thought of as a disease, or as an abnormality, it is falsified.


Oh my God, even when I go wrong, your guidance is over me, lovingly overruling innumberable possiblities, so that even this error becomes beneficial to me.


To sin against God is to punish yourself.

It is not dreadful that I have to suffer punishment when I have acted badly. No, it would be dreadful if I could act badly - and there were no punishment.

It is small things that irritate and so embitter one's life. I can gladly fight against a storm so that my blood almost bursts from my veins; but the wind that blows a grain of dust into my eyes can irritate me to such an extent that I stamp with rage.


The opposite of sin is faith. And this is one of the most decisive definitions of all Christianity - that the opposite of sin is not virtue but faith.

- pgs 376-378, Provocations: spiritual writings of Kierkegaard

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