not need to first think against faith. But | it is essential to the fissure that it leaves in its own peace both what is found on the one side and on the other side. Only the theologians, who consider Christianity Christianness, mix up everything. Theologians are right to fear thinking and to regard it as their greatest enemy. They are therefore right to mobilize all the mechanisms of power, even those of the state, in order to exclude thinking from their sphere of power. But the theologians are in the wrong when they think that they are thereby intervening on behalf of faith.
The label “Christian” remains ambiguous; it expresses either a relation to Christianity or a faith-in-Christ. Whoever speaks against “the Christian” must therefore speak ambiguously. When he speaks against the Christian as associated with Christianity, he is not yet speaking against the Christian in the sense of faith-in-Christ—but he is also not speaking for it. As a thinker, he is also not capable of this; if he were to try, it would be a misunderstanding; for faith is not in need of such advocacy; faith arrives as grace from Christ himself. But it could be necessary, and indeed necessary for the sake of thinking, to speak against the Christian in the sense of Christianity. In a mediated sense, this against could speak in support of faith through the fissure to the Christian in the sense of faith and contrary to the “will” of thinking; | specifically, it could attest that faith comes from Christ and not from theology. Such considerations do not say anything new to the believer or thinker. However, in a time of confusion about Christianity and in a time of anxiety in the face of thinking, they nonetheless say something disconcerting to people. Yet if the confusion surrounding the Christian becomes even more confused in misconstruing the holy through the idle talk about “transcendence,” then such considerations could at least serve the purpose of calling attention to the fissure between faith and thinking.
Thinking is foolishness for faith and, for thinking, faith is the impossible.
But both are united in their recognition of one another; this recognition consists in the demand made by faith that thinking should think and in the demand made by thinking that faith should be faith. However, this demand does not come to life in a moderate form by speaking from both perspectives, rather it only comes to life when faith is faith and thinking is thinking. Hence strife actually holds sways in such recognition. Indeed. But this strife cannot be settled through and by means of human intervention. The strife is simplified in a concealed manner.
Thinking—namely the task of thinking calls for: experiencing the unthought that awaits thinking. Yet the unthought is not something