Three Upbuilding Discourses (1843)

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Three Upbuilding Discourses (1843) is a book by Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard continues his discussion of the difference between externalities and inwardness in the Discourses but moves from the inwardness of faith to that of love. According to Kierkegaard, everything is always changing in the external world, but in the inner spiritual world, there is one thing that never changes. He says, “What is it that never changes even though everything is changed? It is love, and that alone is love, that which never becomes something else.”^[1] Love is dependent on how a person sees ^[2] and when the individual sees with love that individual can see away sin in himself as well as the sin of the whole world, just as Christ did.^[3]

However, for one to be able to do this one must be “strengthened in the inner being.” ^[4] When the inner being “announces itself it craves an explanation, a witness that explains the meaning of everything for it, and its own meaning by explaining it in the God who holds everything together in his eternal wisdom and who assigned to man to be lord of creation by his becoming God’s servant, and explained himself to him by making him his co-worker, and through every explanation that he gives a person, he strengthens and confirms him in his inner being." In this concern the inner being announces itself- the inner being concerned not about the whole world but only about God and about itself, about the explanation that makes the relation understandable to it, and about the witness that confirms it in the relation.” ^[5]