resentful?
It is the task of the prodigal to be like Stephen for Paul.
He has to stand back in self denial to free his brother.
In resentment the brother may not want to become freed
from his taking offense that he might be reconciled.
So the prodigal has to have faith that it will happen
in his brother’s and in God’s good time and even if
it doesn’t happen in this life time the prodigal must not
despair, but he must pray always even for the blessed dead.
In the middle of his chapter on Praising Love Kierkegaard
gives a summary of how reconciliation can be achieved:
This is inwardly the condition or model
in which praising love must be done.
To carry it out has, of course,
its intrinsic reward, although in addition
by praising love in so far as one is able,
it also has the purpose to win people to it,
to make them properly aware of what
in a conciliatory spirit is granted
to every human being-that is, the highest.
The one who praises art and science still
shows dissention between the gifted and ungifted.
But the one who praises love reconciles all,
not in common poverty nor in a common
mediocrity, but in the community of the highest. (365)
For Kierkegaard the prodigal might remain an aesthete for whom
the beauty of the party immediately pleases “me”, but if so
he will come to the common poverty of me-centered prodigals.
Or the prodigal might become ethical and reflect upon “my self”
but in simply avoiding the dire consequences of prodigality
with gifted insight he might be just as mediocre as his brother.
The prodigal might go beyond the common poverty of the pre-
aesthetic me and the common mediocrity of the reflectively
ethical myself and become the “I” who is thankful to his father
and to God. But, this “me,” “myself” and “I” can become other
centered in a praising love that lets even aesthetic petition,
ethical repentance and religious gratitude become praising.
This is the seven step logic of reconciliation that is demanded
of the prodigal and which is the core of Kierkegaard’s philosophy.
We will now examine how Kierkegaard applied this logic
throughout his authorship in reconciling older brothers and Jesus.
Kierkegaard’s four noble truths
I We humans bring each other into the suffering
of boredom and fear and trembling
II through the sin of taking offence at God’s
existence in anxiety and despair
III from which we can be creatively freed by following
the God-man’s loving self-denial and self-sacrifice
IV along the nine-fold path of his conciliatory love that
recollects the dead in the praising love
of humankind’s highest affirmation by moving
(1) from the irony of Socratic skepticism
in which love is a matter of conscience
(2) to Abraham’s knight of faith who follows
his duty to love the people we see
(3) to love’s renewing repetition that is a duty to remain
in love’s debt to one another for Job and to Regina
(4) and from Plato to accepting truth’s paradox
(5) and from Hegel to holding fast to objective uncertainty
in a true love that believes all things and yet is never deceived
(6) and from Adam and Eve’s anxiety to a love
that hopes in all things and yet is never put to shame
(7) to the Works of Love that do not seek their own
in the wisdom of the logic of the like for like
(8) and which delivers us from the Sickness Unto Death
by leading us through the journey of self reconciliation
which lets us live on all three floors of our house
(9) and by the Training in Christianity that lets us abide
in the love that never takes offence at any offence.
Kierkegaard clarifies this with nine key definitions of (1) love,
(2) person, (3) the stages on life’s way, (4) the double movement leap,
(5) repetition, (6) truth, (7) sin, (8) despair, and (9) taking offence.
St. Paul
For Christ did not send me to baptize
but to preach the Good News
and not to preach that in terms of philosophy
in which the crucifixion of Christ cannot be expressed.
The language of the Cross may be illogical
to those who are not on the way to salvation
but those of us who are on the way
see it as God’s power to save . . .
While the Jews demand miracles
and
