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Salvation is a matter of course; nothing follows in turn from it. Therefore, let us not waste time by first making doubtful something that is a matter of course, and then by allying the doubt that never brings the assurance one has when one lets it come as a matter of course, this point of view still does not deny that heaven’s salvation is a good and can disapprove of the wish for it only insofar as the wish already is a kind of unnecessary concern, since salvation is a matter of course whether one wishes it or not.
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p. 256

 

Soren Aabye Kierkegaard

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The thought of heaven’s salvation dare not become a matter of indifference to a person. How would salvation become a matter of indifference to him for whom the discourse need not venture out to the outermost boundary of thoughtlessness, but whose soul is well educated to hear the serious words of earnestness “that God is not mocked” (Galatians 6:7), whose soul is prepared by considering what presumably would completely overwhelm the confused, “that no one can serve two masters, since he must hate the one and love the other” (Matthew 6:24), whose soul is fully awakened from sleep to understand what presumably would hurl the sleepwalker into the abyss, “that love of the world is hatred of God!” (James 4.4) has the spiritual sense to be disgusted at the thought that heaven’s salvation, despite it gloriousness, could be nonsense, has the maturity of understanding to grasp that heaven’s salvation can no more be taken by force than it can be redeemed like a fine in a game of forfeits. Such a person has the time to consider the one thing needful, the heart to wish for heaven’s salvation, the earnestness to reject the flirting of light-minded ideas, the fear and trembling in his soul to be terrified at the thought of breaking with heaven or of taking it in vain.

 

Soren Aabye Kierkegaard

 

Is not heaven’s salvation so great a good that it needs no increment by means of some external circumstance? The person who has salvation certainly can neither wish to become more blessed by some irrelevant thought nor wish to be disturbed by any irrelevant thought. If a person thinks that his salvation is assured nevertheless thinks something like this, it simply shows that he is not thinking about salvation, and this other thought may very well make him lose salvation, just as the consciousness of the good deed causes one to lose the reward.

 

Soren Aabye Kierkegaard

 

You are amazed that matter can form a man when matter is all mixed up at random and so many things go into making a person. But do you not realize that before matter forms someone it has also stopped along the way to make a stone, lead, coral, a flower, or a comet because there was too much or too little of it to make a human being? No wonder, then, that an infinite amount of incessantly moving and changing matter makes up the few animals, vegetables and minerals that we see. No wonder, either, that if you throw dice a hundred times, they will all show the same numbers at some point.
This movement of matter, then, could not fail to produce something, and whatever it is will always be admired by the unthinking person who does not realize how close it came to not being made.

 

Cyrano de Bergerac

 

All the brands and flavors of Big Salvation. At the last minute we would devise a technological fix and save ourselves. Or: the Hypotheticals were benevolent beings who would turn the planet into a peaceable kingdom. Or: God would rescue us all, or at least the true believers among us. Or. Or. Or.
Big Salvation. It was a honeyed lie. A paper lifeboat, even if we were killing ourselves trying to cling to it. It wasn’t the Spin that had mutilated my generation. It was the lure and price of Big Salvation.

 

Robert Charles Wilson

 

If when matter is destroyed other matter takes its place, the new matter must come either from something that is or from something that is not. If from that-which-is, as long as that-which-is always remains, matter always remains. But if that-which-is is destroyed, such a theory means that not the world only but everything in the universe is destroyed.
If again matter comes from that-which-is-not: in the first place, it is impossible for anything to come from that which is not; but suppose it to happen, and that matter did arise from that which is not; then, as long as there are things which are not, matter will exist. For I presume there can never be an end of things which are not.

 

Sallustius (or Sallust)