Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-21T17:16:20.337Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

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

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

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

4 Kierkegaard, SorenThe Point of View for My Work as an Author (New York: Harper, 1962), 69.Google Scholar

5 Kierkegaard, SorenThe Point of View for My Work as an Author (New York: Harper, 1962), 7071.Google Scholar

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.

11 Lowrie Kierkegaard: 1, 161.

12 Hong, Howard, ed. The Journals of Soren Kierkegaard: entry 2795.Google Scholar

13 Kierkegaard, SorenEither/Or (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971)Google Scholar.

14 Jünel, EberhardThe Treedom of a Christian (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1988), 31ff.Google Scholar

15 Kierkegaard, SorenTraining in Christianity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941), 142.Google Scholar

16 Egan, HarveyChristian Mysticism (New York: Pueblo, 1984), 31.Google Scholar

17 Kierkegaard's complex relation to Hegel has been reassessed in Taylor, Mark, Journeys to Selfhood: Hegel and Kierkegaard (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980).Google Scholar

18 On Hegel see Welch, ClaudeProtestant Thought in the Nineteenth Century (New Haven: Yale, 1972), 86107Google Scholar; Heiss, RobertHegel, Kierkegaard, Marx (New York: Delia, 1963)Google Scholar; Barth, KarlProtestant Thought in the Nineteenth Century (Valley Forge: Judson, 1973), 384421.Google Scholar

19 Philosophical Fragments (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), 55, 61, 66.Google Scholar

20 As Pannenberg has done as a neo-Hegelian. See Walsh, BrianPannenberg's Eschaiological OntologyChristian Scholars Review No. 11, (1982), 229249.Google Scholar

21 Bischoff, Guntram G. in LeClerq, Jean, ed., The Spirituality of Western Christendom (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1976), 3233.Google Scholar

22 Kierkegaard, SorenPhilosophical Fragments (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), 49.Google Scholar

23 Meyendorff, JohnByzantine Theology, (New York: Fordham University Press, 1974), 1112.Google Scholar

24 Lossky, VladimirThe Myslical Theology of the Eastern Church (Crestwood: SVS Press, 1976), 42.Google Scholar

25 See the important discussion by Torrance, Thomas in Space, Time, and Incarnation (London: Oxford, 1969).Google Scholar

26 Kierkegaard, SorenConcluding Unscientific Postscript (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 423.Google Scholar

27 Dru, Alexander., ed., The Journals of Soren Kierkegaard (New York: Oxford University Press, 1938), #2760.Google Scholar

28 Meyendorff, JohnByzantine Theology, 1314.Google Scholar

29 Allen, DiogenesThree Outsiders (Cambridge: Cowley Publications, 1983)Google Scholar.

30 Rohde, Peter, ed., The Diary of Saren Kierkegaard (Seacaucus: Citadel, 1960), 202Google Scholar; see also Collins, JamesThe Mind of Kierkegaard (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 208210.Google Scholar

31 See especially his comments on Kierkegaard, in Fragments Grave and Gay (London: Collins, 1971), 95105.Google Scholar

32 Barth, KarlEvangelical Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980), 10.Google Scholar

33 Nils, & Thulstrup, Marie, ed., Theologica Conceptsin Kierkegaard (Copcnhagen: Boghandel, 1980), 185.Google Scholar

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

36 ‘Quia inter crcaiorurn ct creaturam non potest. lama simililudo notari, quin inter eos maior sit dissimilitudonotanda.’ Dcnzinger, Echiridion Symbolorum (Rom: Herder, 1957), 202.Google Scholar

37 Pieper, JosephScholasticism (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), 5254Google Scholar. Thomas has over 1,700 quotations from Dionysius in his Summa and wrote a commentary on On The Divine Names toward the end ofhis life. As an aside, the Lutheran Dietrich Bonhoeffer began his Chrislobgy lectures by invoking Kierkegaard, , and asserting, ‘Teaching about Christ begins in silence.’ Christology (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), 27.Google Scholar

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

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