Works of Love

In his subsequent description of the religious life, the inner collision by which a man comes into conflict with himself, a collision which had been the chief burden of his early delineation, began to yield precedence to the external collision, in which a man, in the pursuit of his duty, comes into conflict with his environment, a conflict whereby the performance of this duty becomes an act of true self-denial.

A passage from The Works of Love will illustrate the new emphasis, which is characteristic of the second phase of his authorship.

A self-denial of a merely human scope

reasons as follows.

The underlying religious motivation was something he had intended to express by taking a charge as a clergyman in some country parish.

but now, influenced partly by the trouble with the corsair, partly by a sense of his own unfitness for an official position, and partly by the acquired momentum of his productive impulse, he determined to devote himself to religious writing, and thus his authorship entered upon its second phase.

To the first half of this period belong Edifying Discourses, 1847, The Works of Love, 1848, and Christian Discourses, 1848.

Though each religious discourse is complete in itself, individual themes are logically connected, and the methodical and systematic advance so noticeably characteristic of the ascetic productions finds its counterpart also here, in a gradual approach to more and more concrete conceptions.

In his subsequent description of the religious life, the inner collision by which a man comes into conflict with himself, a collision which had been the chief burden of his early delineation, began to yield precedence to the external collision, in which a man, in the pursuit of his duty, comes into conflict with his environment, a conflict whereby the performance of this duty becomes an act of true self-denial.

A passage from The Works of Love will illustrate the new emphasis, which is characteristic of the second phase of his authorship.

A self-denial of a merely human scope

reasons as follows.

The underlying religious motivation was something he had intended to express by taking a charge as a clergyman in some country parish.

but now, influenced partly by the trouble with the corsair, partly by a sense of his own unfitness for an official position, and partly by the acquired momentum of his productive impulse, he determined to devote himself to religious writing, and thus his authorship entered upon its second phase.

To the first half of this period belong Edifying Discourses, 1847, The Works of Love, 1848, and Christian Discourses, 1848.

Though each religious discourse is complete in itself, individual themes are logically connected, and the methodical and systematic advance so noticeably characteristic of the ascetic productions finds its counterpart also here, in a gradual approach to more and more concrete conceptions.

In his subsequent description of the religious life, the inner collision by which a man comes into conflict with himself, a collision which had been the chief burden of his early delineation, began to yield precedence to the external collision, in which a man, in the pursuit of his duty, comes into conflict with his environment, a conflict whereby the performance of this duty becomes an act of true self-denial.

A passage from The Works of Love will illustrate the new emphasis, which is characteristic of the second phase of his authorship.

A self-denial of a merely human scope reasons as follows.

Give up your selfish wishes, dreams and plans, and you will be honored and respected and loved as just and wise.

The underlying religious motivation was something he had intended to express by taking a charge as a clergyman in some country parish.

but now, influenced partly by the trouble with the corsair, partly by a sense of his own unfitness for an official position, and partly by the acquired momentum of his productive impulse, he determined to devote himself to religious writing, and thus his authorship entered upon its second phase.

To the first half of this period belong Edifying Discourses, 1847, The Works of Love, 1848, and Christian Discourses, 1848.

Though each religious discourse is complete in itself, individual themes are logically connected, and the methodical and systematic advance so noticeably characteristic of the ascetic productions finds its counterpart also here, in a gradual approach to more and more concrete conceptions.

It tells us that at a certain stage we have to endure the discomfort if we want to keep the relationship.

You know, in Kierkegaard's The Works of Love, we read something very powerful.

Let me read it to you.

"So if you want to be perfect in love, then strive to fulfill this duty in loving.

So-

A, a, a good companion to his idea of inwardness i- is his book, The Works of Love, which I've started reading.

It, it's a very long text, but i- if you just read it almost devotionally, you know, it, it's pretty short sections.

He, he really gets into the, the communal aspect of human life, that, you know, as I was just saying, that when you are properly an- anchored in your inward self, well, now you're actually equipped to engage with community as an individual before others because you are first and foremost an individual before God.