In the world everyone wants to be a 'wolf,' and no one is called to play the part of 'sheep.' Yet the world cannot live without this living witness o… - Jacques Ellul

The state, [Kierkegaard] argues, bears a direct relation to numbers. When a state decays, numbers decline and the state disappears. The whole concept is void. The relation of Christianity to numbers is different. A single Christian gives it reality. Christianity bears indeed an inverse relation to numbers. When all become Christians, the concept of Christianity is void. The concept is indeed a polemical one. One can be a Christian only in opposition. When opposition is suppressed, there is no more sense in saying “Christian.” Christendom has astutely abolished Christianity by making us all Christians. … In Christendom there is not the slightest idea of what Christianity is. People cannot see or understand that Christianity has been abolished by its propagation. Again, history probably does not offer any other example of a religion being abolished by reason of its success.

The first builder of a city was Cain.

Women are the most spectacular instance of this. After a period of independence that came with the spread of Christianity, they were relegated to a lower order. This is all the more interesting because the gospel and the first church were never hostile to women nor treated them as minors, and the situation of women in the Roman empire (particularly in the East) was relatively favourable. In spite of this, when Christianity became a power or authority, this worked against women. A strange perversion, yet fully understandable when we allow that women represent precisely the most innovative elements in Christianity: grace, love, charity, a concern for living creatures, nonviolence, an interest in little things, the hope of new beginnings - the very elements that Christianity was setting aside in favor of glory and success.