"When in sickness I go to a physician, he may find it necessary to prescribe a very painful treatment-there is no self-contradiction in my submitting to it. No, but if on the other hand I suddenly find myself in trouble, an object of persecution, because, because I have gone to that physician: well, then then there is a self-contradiction. The physician has perhaps announced that he can help me with regard to the illness from which I suffer, and perhaps he can really do that-but there is an "aber" [but] that I had not thought of at all. The fact that I get involved with this physician, attach myself to him-that is what makes me an object of persecution; here is the possibility of offense. So also with Christianity. Now the issue is: will you be offended or will you believe. If you will believe, then you push through the possibility of offense and accept Christianity on any terms. So it goes; then forget the understanding; then you say: Whether it is a help or a torment, I want only one thing, I want to belong to Christ, I want to be a Christian."
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Absurdists19th-century philosophersChristian existentialistsNovelists from DenmarkPhilosophers from Denmark
Original Language: English
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p. 115
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/S%C3%B8ren_Kierkegaard
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Søren Kierkegaard
1813 – 1855
dänischer Philosoph, Theologe und Schriftsteller
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