6 - On the way

Summary

Even if there were nothing else to prevent the poet from singing about love for the neighbor, it is already enough that beside every word in Holy Scripture a disturbing notice in invisible writing confronts him that says: Go and do likewise. Does this sound like a poet-summons that calls upon him to sing?

(WL, 46)

So also with the road sign “Christendom.” It designates the direction, but has one therefore arrived at the goal, or is one always only – on the way?

(WL 48)

INTRODUCTION

Each time we have, in the previous five chapters, distinguished faithful from fallen love we have had to do so with a disclaimer. If we think at any point that we have actually “gone and done likewise” – if we find “rest” and “comfort” in the thought that by “doing what we can” we have met God's command to love the neighbor – we are almost certainly wrong. The “Go and do likewise” we hear “beside every word in Holy Scripture” is, in a significant sense, to render us speechless. Droning on resonantly about the true life of a loving Christian is, as Kierkegaard insists, to confuse the matter. So although in this concluding chapter we sum up and clarify the matters covered previously, we must not deceive ourselves.