I ask: what does it mean when we continue to behave as though all were as it should be, calling ourselves Christians according to the New Testament, when the ideals of the New Testament have gone out of life? The tremendous disproportion which this state of affairs represents has, moreover, been perceived by many. They like to give it this turn: the human race has outgrown Christianity.

sak 1852

Does miscommunication elicit comedy?

Does miscommunication elicit comedy? When the Word became pork. When a German-Danish pastor declares, “the Word became pork( Fleisch)”this is comic. The comic is not just the ordinary contradiction that arises when someone speaks a foreign language he does not know and evoke by the words an effect totally different from the one he wants. But because he is pastor and he is preaching the contraindication is sharpened, since in a pastor's discourse speaking is used only in a more special sense, and the least that is assumed as a given is that he can speak the language. More over, the nontraditional strays into ethical territory: a person may innocently make himself guilty of blasphemy. Concluding Unscientific postscripts