Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Diseases of reflection
- 2 Anthropological reflection
- 3 Becoming religious: upbuilding before God
- 4 Becoming Christian I: responding to Christ in faith
- 5 Becoming Christian II: suffering and following Christ in hope
- 6 Becoming Christian III: love and imitating Christ in works
- 7 Witness in faith, hope, and love
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - Becoming Christian II: suffering and following Christ in hope
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Diseases of reflection
- 2 Anthropological reflection
- 3 Becoming religious: upbuilding before God
- 4 Becoming Christian I: responding to Christ in faith
- 5 Becoming Christian II: suffering and following Christ in hope
- 6 Becoming Christian III: love and imitating Christ in works
- 7 Witness in faith, hope, and love
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Hope is the foster-mother of the Christian life.
JP11 1663 (Pap. ii a 566, n.d., 1839).It may seem odd to speak of Kierkegaard as a theologian of hope. While he writes extended treatments of faith and love, there is no discrete treatise on hope. But the conditions and possibilities of hope are a continuing concern to him, whether expressed obliquely in his concern with hope's opposite, despair, or expressed directly in depictions of patience, expectancy, repetition, and faith as oriented to the future, grounded in God as the source of endless possibility.
Of course, Kierkegaard's “hope” is not frivolous or lightminded; he presents a strenuous account of the shape of human and Christian hope. Hope is illuminated by its opposite, despair, and his primary passion is depicting hope in the midst of suffering. Indeed, the aim of hope is to address the situation of the sufferer. Finally, he isolates a specific and demanding kind of Christian suffering in discipleship. Nonetheless, Kierkegaard's analyses of hope do not belie the passion; the tone of his discussions is at heart hopeful and even joyful. And it is because of the strenuous demands of Christian discipleship “following Christ” that the specific Christian accent to hope is so distinctive, for it is a hope in the midst of suffering, unavoidable and avoidable.
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- Kierkegaard as Religious Thinker , pp. 153 - 185Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996