is, in self-denial he must become what every human being can become (since self-denial is related to the universally human and thus is distinguished from the particular call and election), an instrument for God. Thus every human being can come to know everything about love, just as every human being can come to know that he, like every human being, is loved by God. Some find this thought adequate for the longest life (which doesn’t seem surprising to me); so even at the age of seventy they do not think that they have marveled over it enough, whereas others find this thought so insignificant (which seems to me very strange and deplorable), since to be loved by God is no more than every human being is-as if it were, therefore, less significant. The work of praising love must be done outwardly in self-sacrificing unselfishness. Through self-denial a human being gains the ability to be an instrument by inwardly making himself into nothing before God. Through self-sacrificing unselfishness he outwardly makes himself into nothing, an unworthy servant. Inwardly he does not become self-important, since he is nothing, and outwardly he does not become self-important either, since he is nothing before God – and he does not forget that right where he is he is before God. Alas, it can happen that a person makes a mistake at the last moment, in that he, though truly humble before God, becomes proud of what he is able to do as he turns toward people. It is then a temptation of comparison that becomes his downfall. He understood that he could not compare himself to God; before him he became conscious of himself as a nothing; but in comparison with people he still thought himself to be something. That is, he forgot the self-denial; he is trapped in an illusion, as if he were before God only during specific hours, just as one has an audience with His Royal Majesty at a specific hour. Soren Kierkegaard, Works of Love 1847, Hong 1995 p. 364-365 Isaac was "the whole world" to Abraham and God had just introduced Abraham to the notion of "the soul". Was Abraham willing to give up the whole world in order to save his soul? Kierkegaard dealt with this question in Either/Or in this way: "The Bible says: For what would it profit a person if he gained the whole world