Personal Blog- Buddy Powers

I’ve been examining Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript this semester in the hope that I might better understand what if means to live by the Spirit as Paul says, and follow Christ. I guess because I’ve also been reading a collection of lectures by William James, the conflict of resolving objective and subjective thinking in terms of pursuing the Lord has been an unspoken pursuit of mine as well. Kierkegaard was an existential Christian so his work sheds great light on this subject. Kierkegaard makes is very clear the he is not claiming to understand Christianity through his own subjective thinking but rather understands, “enough to apprehend that it proposes to bestow an eternal happiness upon the individual man, thus presuming and infinite interest in his happiness.” In relation to the work’s main subject, the objective problem only focuses on examining the potential truth of Christianity, while the subjective problem is the relationship of an individual to Christianity. What Kierkegaard says is there must be a subjective motive, a personal conviction, about considering Christianity as truth. He is fueled by his own desire for happiness to embrace the objective uncertainty of Christian faith while simultaneously affirming his own subjectivity. Kierkegaard says that faith in general is an acceptance of objective ambiguity and that the faith it takes to do such a thing is grounds for subjective affirmation. “(I) prefer to remain where I am, with my infinite interest, with the problem, with the possibility.” It has been very beneficial for me to consider that when taking the “leap of faith” one must accept a measure of mystery, thus shifting from disbelief to belief.