Kierkegaard: "how highly do you value God's Word?"

Soren Kierkegaard, 1813-1855

This is from the blog Dover Beach:

“…how highly do you value God’s Word? Imagine a lover who has received a letter from his beloved. I assume that God’s Word is just as precious to you as this letter is to the lover. I assume that you read and think you ought to read God’s Word in the same way the lover reads this letter. Yet you perhaps say, ‘Yes, but Scripture is written in a foreign language.’ Let us assume, then, that this letter from the beloved is written in a language that the lover does not understand. But let us assume that there is no one around who can translate it for him. Perhaps he would not even want any such help lest a stranger be initiated into his secrets. What does he do? He takes a dictionary, begins to spell his way through the letter, looks up every word in order to obtain a translation. Now let us imagine that, as he sits there busy with his task, an acquaintance comes in. He knows that the letter has come, because he sees it lying there, and says, ‘So, you are reading a letter from your beloved.’ What do you think the other will say? He answers, ‘Have you gone mad? Do you think this is reading a letter from my beloved! No, my friend, I am sitting here toiling… with a dictionary to get it translated. At times I am ready to explode with impatience; the blood rushes to my head, and I would just as soon hurl the dictionary on the floor – and you call that reading! You must be joking! No, thank God, as soon as I am finished with the translation I shall read my beloved’s letter; that is something altogether different.’… All the scholarly preliminaries were regarded as nothing but a necessary evil so that he could come to the point – of reading the letter from his beloved… Let us assume that this letter contained not only an expression of affection, but also a wish, something the beloved wanted her lover to do… the lover… he is off at once to fulfill his beloved’s wish… think of God’s Word. When you read it in a scholarly way, with a dictionary or a commentary, then you are not reading God’s Word… If you happen to be a scholar, then please see to it that even with all your learned reading you do not forget to read God’s Word. If you are not a scholar, rejoice! Be glad that you can listen to God’s address right away! And if in the listening you hear a wish, a command, an order, then – remember the lover! – off with you at once to do what it asks.”

--Soren Kierkegaard

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This is my comment:

We read the Scriptures in faith: faith in God, not faith in our intellects. Or we could say that the Lord uses our intellects to read the Bible and uses the Holy Ghost to give us spiritual understanding. The Bible is spiritual–it is inspired by the Holy Ghost. We must read the Bible, so that the Holy Ghost can engraft the Scriptures into our spirit. 

I John 2: 27: “But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.”

The Scriptures engrafted into our spirit is fertile ground; the Scriptures engrafted into our brain is death.  Head knowledge kills; Holy Ghost knowledge (revelation knowledge) gives live.

II Corinthians 3: 6: “Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.”

The Spiritual Man
Man Reasons, but God Reveals
Physical Sight and Spiritual Sight