The only way of coming to know and understand the divine, therefore, is by the god annulling the absolute difference in absolute equality in the absolute paradox of the incarnation.

Sylvia Walsh. Kierkegaard: Thinking Christianly in an Existential Mode

I have quoted the above previously on this blog. I was thinking about it in the broader context of my life. It does use “absolute” a lot but it is necessary. There is no room for a “god of the gaps” in Christianity. I like that it places the incarnation at the centre – or, maybe, it places Jesus at the centre – of all “Christian thinking”. Kierkegaard’s language, of placing Jesus as the absolute telos of our life.

Also: the “absolute difference”! In nature God is transcendent but “in love” is imminent. So the absolute paradox of the incarnation, of Jesus, is God’s act of love. Not to make us “loveable” but because God reaches out in love across the difference that we cannot bridge.

ALSO: the above is very much what Kierkegaard writes about monasticism and the problematic relationship he has with it. There is a way that Kierkegaard lives as a modern solitary.

But, seriously, what would I know?!