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Reflections on the Spirituality of Soren Kierkegaard

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Michael Hardin
Affiliation:
Evangelical Covenant Church, 120 Floral Parkway, Floral Park, NY 11001, USA

Extract

Kierkegaard scholarship has, in the past twenty years, gone a long way toward clearing up issues both historical and interpretive that earlier interpreters had somehow overlooked. This essay is neither an attempt at historical reconstruction or a direct engagement with the Kierkegaard guild. This essay is a reflection on the spirituality of Soren Kierkegaard, a theme he would probably find somewhat inappropriate. He would rather want to challenge us, his readers, to consider the primary subject of theology itself, namely God. But if a consideration of his spirituality should lead the reader in such a pursuit, then it seems one is indirectly led to the ultimate goal ol the Kierkegaardiana.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1992

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References

1 Trainingir. Christianity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967)Google Scholar. The major biography is the two volume Kierkegaard by Lowrie, Walter (London: Oxford, 1938, many reprints)Google Scholar.

2 Collins, James, ‘Faith and Reflection in Kierkegaard’ in Hong, Howard and Thulstrup, Niels, ed., A Kierkegaard Critique (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1962), 142.Google Scholar

3 One of the truly helpful works is Sontag, FrederickA Kierkegaard Handbook (Atlanta: John Knox, 1979).Google Scholar

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6 The problem of the relation of word and image has received a vigorous expositor in Ellul, JacquesThe Humiliation of the Word (Grand Rapids: Eerdrnans, 1985)Google Scholar. Ellul contends that Kierkegaard was the first to mount the attack on the philosophers who proceeded him. As we shall show, Kierkegaard was one among many!

7 Kierkegaard, 1: 163.

8 Kierkegaard, 1. 170.

9 Walter Lowrie Kierkegaard:1, 171.

10 Lossky, VladimirThe Myslical Theobgy of the Eastern Church (Crestwood: SVS Press, 1976): 32, 3334, 38–39Google Scholar.

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34 Ibid., citing Hegel's Werke X, 378.

35 This is not the same as Anselm's argument. See the remarks by Hartshorne, Charles in St Anselm: Basic Writings (LaSalle: Open Court, 1962), 19.Google Scholar

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38 Zizioulas, JohnBeing in Communion (Cresiwood: SVS Press, 1985), 39.Google Scholar

39 Lossky, VladimirThe Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 197.Google Scholar