Sixth Period: The Attack Upon Christendom (1854-55)
This Must Be Said—So Let It Be Said
- This Must Be Said—So Let It Be Said
- Dette skal siges; saa være det da sagt
- 1855
- KW23, SKS14, SV14
"They have made Christianity too much of a consolation and forgotten that it is a demand. Woe unto the careless speakers! The result is that it will be that much harder for the one who is to preach Christianity anew" (Journals, X 2 A 187).
For an introduction to the attack upon Christendom see Articles From The Fatherland.
After publishing twenty installments in The Fatherland, Kierkegaard published This Must Be Said—So Let It Be Said separately. The first portion is dated December 1854, the second May 1855. It was published on May 16. This piece is very much like the twelfth installment from The Fatherland on honesty. Kierkegaard again encourages people to leave the false church, asserting that it is better to attend no church than to participate in false teaching and false rites.
Again, Kierkegaard asserted that the Church was so contrary to its primitive counterpart that it was no longer possible to reform it—and certainly not through political means. The Church needed to be dismantled and re-instituted.
The Biblical basis for this can be found in the Revelation of St. John, where it says that it is better to be hot or cold, than lukewarm. In other words, it is better to flatly oppose Christianity than to patronize or compromise it.
This has to be said; So Let It Be Said. Whoever you are, whatever in other respects your life may be, my friend, by ceasing to take part (if ordinarily you do) in the public worship of God, as it now is (with the claim that it is the Christianity of the New Testament), you have constantly one guilt the less, and that a great one: you do not take part in treating God as a fool by calling that the Christianity of the New Testament, which is not the Christianity of the New Testament.... the official worship of God...is, Christianly, a counterfeit, a forgery (p. 73).