Theology of Sren Kierkegaard 1

Theology of Sren Kierkegaard

Sren Kierkegaard's theology has been a major influence in the development of 20th century theology. Sren
Kierkegaard (18131855) was a 19th-century Danish philosopher who has been generally considered the "Father of
Existentialism". During his later years (18481855), most of his writings shifted from being philosophical in nature
to being religious.
Kierkegaard's theology focuses on the single individual in relation to an unprovable, yet known God. Many of his
writings were a directed assault against all of Christendom, Christianity as a political and social entity. His target
was the Danish State Church, which represented Christendom in Denmark. Christendom, in Kierkegaard's view,
made individuals lazy in their religion. Many of the citizens were officially "Christians", without having any idea of
what it meant to be a Christian. Kierkegaard attempted to awaken Christians to the need for unconditional religious
commitment. However he was also against party spirit in religion as well as other areas of study and system building.
He put this well in an early work titled Public Confession.
When I read some time ago that a young scholar had sent a sealed
package to a scientific society to be placed in the archives, I thought: it is
the system. Who knows, maybe it is the system; maybe we already have
the system in a sealed package. Everything indicates that the decisive
moment is approaching. There are a yeastiness and ferment that cannot
possible fizzle out. There is a vigorous party spirit everywhere. This, of
course, must not be interpreted to mean that we have only one party that
is vigorous, for that, after all, would not be a vigorous party spirit but a
vigorous spirit within the party. No, there is a vigorous party spirit in a
variety of parties. We have Liberals, Ultra-Liberals, Conservatives,
Ultra-Conservatives, juste-milieu. In politics we have every conceivable
and inconceivable worthiness. We have Kantians, Schleiermacherians,
and Hegelians; these in turn are divided into two large parties: the one
Sren Kierkegaard party comprises of those who have not worked their way into Hegel but
nevertheless are Hegelians; and the other comprises those who have gone
beyond Hegel but nevertheless are Hegelians. The third party, the genuine Hegelians, is very small. We have
five anti-infant Baptists, seven Baptists, nine Anabaptists. Among the Baptists there are three who think the
adults should be baptized in salt water, two who think they ought to be baptized in fresh water, and one who
mediates between the two factions and insists on brackish water. We have two Straussians. We have a tailor on
Utterslev Heath who has formed a new sect consisting of himself and two tailor apprentices. For some time
there was a lot of talk that he had gained a third disciple from another trade, but just as he was about to capture
him there was a quarrel that caused the neophyte to forsake him and take one of the apprentices along, and the
person from the other trade also came up with a new belief. Right now in Pistol Street someone is supposed to
have retired into solitude to think up a new religion, and his conclusions are expectantly awaited in the
neighboring streets. Soren Kierkegaard, Public Confession, 1842, from The Corsair Affair, edited and
translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong 1982 p. 6-7
Theology of Sren Kierkegaard 2

Religious background

Kierkegaard
Sren Kierkegaard was born to a Lutheran Protestant family. His father, Michael Pederson Kierkegaard, was a
Lutheran Pietist, but questioned how God could let him suffer so much. One day, he climbed a mountain and cursed
God. For this sin, Michael believed that a family curse was placed upon him, that none of his children would live a
full life. And indeed, Kierkegaard's family suffered with early deaths of Sren's siblings, ranging from childbirth to
the age of 25. Only Sren and his brother Peter survived past 25. His father died in 1838 but before his death, he
asked Sren to become a pastor. Sren was deeply influenced by his father's religious experience and life, and felt
obligated to fulfill his wish. In 1840, Sren was awarded his theology degree and although Sren was eligible to
become a pastor, he decided to pursue a degree in philosophy instead.
He decided not to become a pastor or a professor either because if he had he would have had to write under the
authority of the State or the Church. He craved freedom and for that reason he wrote "without authority". He also
believed in Christ as the ultimate authority in matters of personal faith. He was against beginning a "new religion",
unlike Hegel, the religion of reason, and Schelling, the religion of nature. He always wrote to students of religion as
a student of religion. J. Loewenberg of Harvard University described Hegel's God in the following terms in 1913:
as Hegel puts his fundamental idea, the truth is the whole. Neither things nor categories, neither
histories nor religion, neither sciences nor arts, express or exhaust by themselves the whole essence of
the universe. The essence of the universe is the life of the totality of all things, not their sum. As the life
of man is not the sum of his bodily and mental functions, the whole man being present in each and all of
these, so must the universe be conceived as omnipresent in each of its parts and expressions. This is the
significance of Hegels conception of the universe as an organism. The World-Spirit-Hegels
God-constitutes, thinks, lives, wills, and is all in unity. The evolution of the universe is thus the
evolution of God himself. The task of philosophy, then, as Hegel conceives it, is to portray in systematic
form the evolution of the World-Spirit in all its necessary ramifications.The Life of George Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel, p. 13-14[1]
Sren Kierkegaard questioned this evolution of God because if God is evolving in a systematic way then the awe and
wonder of religion is replaced with speculations about where God is in relation to the system about God.
What does the task look like in everyday life, for I continually have my favorite theme in mind: whether
everything is indeed all right with the craving of our theocentric nineteenth century to go beyond
Christianity, the craving to speculate, the craving for continued development, the craving for a new
religion or for the abolition of Christianity. As for my own insignificant person, the reader will please
recall that I am the one who finds the issue and the task so very difficult, which seems to suggest that I
have not carried it out, I, who do not even pretend to be a Christian by going beyond it. But it is always
something to point out that it is difficult, even if it is done, as it is here, only in an upbuilding
divertissement, which is carried out essentially with the aid of a spy whom I have go out among people
on weekdays, and with the support of a few dilettantes who against their will come to join in the game."
Sren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846) p. 466, Hong
This "going beyond faith" for Kierkegaard means the same as going beyond oneself. Philosophers, theologians,
historians, and anthropologists tend to go beyond themselves and apply what they learn to the course of world
history or national history. In this view we come to a Christian nation or a Christian world but Sren Kierkegaard felt
that God comes into the single individual and that's where the place of God is. It's not "out there" somewhere. This
point was brought home by Kierkegaard in his 1845 book, Thoughts on Crucial Situations in Human Life and in
1960 by Ronald Gregor Smith in his book, J G Hamann 1730-1788 A Study In Christian Existence,
A poet has indeed said that a sigh without words ascending Godward, is the best prayer, and so one
might also believe that the rarest of visits to the sacred place, when one comes from afar, is the best
Theology of Sren Kierkegaard 3

worship, because both help to create an illusion. A sigh without words is the best prayer when the
thought of God only sheds a faint glow over existence, like the blue mountains far distant on the
horizon; when the lack of clarity in the soul is satisfied by the greatest possible ambiguity in the thought.
But if God is present in the soul, then the sigh will find the thought and the thought will find the
word-but also the difficulty, which is not dreamed of when God is at a distance. In our day we hear it
proclaimed, to the verge of nonsense, that the highest task is not in living in the stillness, where there is
no danger-, because the danger exists there quite as much as in the confusion of life, and the great thing,
in short, is neither to live in solitude nor amidst the confusion, but the great thing is to overcome the
danger. And the most mediocre things is to work oneself weary in considering which is the most
difficult; such labor is useless trouble and has no relevance, like the laborer himself who is neither in the
solitude nor the confusion, but in the busy absent-mindedness of reflection.
Soren Kierkegaard, Thoughts on Crucial Situations in Human Life, Swenson translation p. 10-11 (also
called Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions)
It would, I believe, be possible to detect in the writings of Hamann, in embryonic or sibylline form at
least, almost all the major concerns of Kierkegaard. The connections between the two will be apparent
to any student of Kierkegaard. A typical appraisal of the relative positions of the two men is that of
Karlfried Grunder, in the first volume of the splendidly planned commentaries on Hamanns main
works. He writes: "That God in incomprehensible [2] reconciling grace lowers himself (has entered into
human life, Dasein, as Kierkegaard says) is central alike for Kierkegaard and for Hamann. For Hamann
it is also, and precisely, the world which God enters, but for Kierkegaard the place of this event is solely
the individual, who in the decision of his faith, effected by grace, rises above the world, with which the
humorist [in this case Hamann] continues to identify the idea of God. Kierkegaard, in other words,
reaches a point beyond the world, the point of religious passion, in which the individual faces God, God
alone, in the decision of inwardness, of pure subjectivity."[3]

Denmark and Europe

Kierkegaard accused Christian religious institutions of not being genuinely religious. Intellectual scholarship in
Christianity was becoming more and more like Hegelianism, which he called Christian "evolution",[4] rather than
Christianity. This made the scholars of religion and philosophy examine the Gospels from a supposedly higher
objective standpoint in order to demonstrate how correct reasoning can reveal an objective truth. This was
outrageous to Kierkegaard because this presupposed that an infinite God and his infinite wisdom could be grasped by
finite human understanding. Kierkegaard believed that Christianity was not a doctrine to be taught, but rather a life
to be lived. He considered that many Christians who were relying totally on external proofs of God were missing out
a true Christian experience, which is precisely the relationship one individual can have with God.
it should immediately be borne in mind that the issue is not about the truth of Christianity but about the
individuals relation to Christianity, consequently not about the indifferent individuals systematic eagerness to
arrange the truths of Christianity in paragraphs but rather about the concern of the infinitely interested
individual with regard to his own relation to such a doctrine. To state it as simply as possible (using myself in
an imaginatively constructing way): I, Johannes Climacus, born and bred in this city and now thirty years old,
an ordinary human being like most folk, assume that a highest good, called an eternal happiness, awaits me
just as it awaits a housemaid and a professor. I have heard that Christianity is ones prerequisite for this good. I
now ask how I may enter into relation to this doctrine. What matchless audacity, I hear a thinker say, what
horrendous vanity, to presume to attach such importance to ones own little self in this world-historically
concerned, this theocentric, this speculatively insignificant nineteenth century. I shudder; if I had not
hardened myself against various terrors, I would probably stick my tail between my legs. But in that respect I
find myself free of all guilt, because it is not I who of my own accord have become so audacious; it is
Theology of Sren Kierkegaard 4

Christianity itself that compels me. It attaches an entirely different sort of importance to my own little self and
to every-so-little self, since it wants to make him eternally happy and that precisely within this single
individual it presupposes this infinite interest in his own happiness as condition sin qua non [the indispensable
condition], an interest with which he hates father and mother and thus probably also makes light of systems
and world-historical surveys. Sren Kierkegaard
Concluding Unscientific Postscript Vol I Hong 1992(1846) p. 15-17

Kierkegaard's audience
Kierkegaard's primary religious audience was Christian readers, especially those who did not fully grasp what
Christianity was all about. It was not his intention to convert non-Christians to Christianity, although much of
Kierkegaard's religious writings do appeal to some non-Christian readers. For example, Martin Buber was a Jewish
existentialist theologian who critiqued many of Kierkegaard's ideas.
Kierkegaard delivered religious discourses because he didn't become a theologian or a philosopher of religion. His
audience was any single individual who is laboring to become what God wants him to become.
The invitation to a religious address is quite simply this: Come here, all you who labor and are burdened[5]-and
the address presupposes that all are sufferers-indeed that they all should be. .... The speaker is not to go down
among the listeners and single one out, if there is such a one, and say, No you are much too happy to need my
discourse," because if this is heard from the lips of a religious speaker, it must sound like the most scathing
irony. The distinction between fortunate and unfortunate is only jest, and therefore the speaker ought to say,
We are all sufferers, but joyful in our suffering-this is what we strive for. Concluding Unscientific Postscript,
Hong P. 437-438
He wrote for individuals who struggle with sin and forgiveness and he began this in Either/Or (1843) and continued
through 1851 with a repetition of his theme from his three discourse of 1843 Love Will Hide a Multitude of Sins. He
sees the spiritual connection between God and the single individual much akin to Luther's idea of the priesthood of
all believers.
In the brief moments prescribed, let us than speak about these words: Love (Christs love) hides a multitude of
sins. Is it not true that you have felt the need of this and on this very day you feel the need of a love that can
cover sins, your sins-and this is why you are going to the Lords table today? While it is only all too true, as
Luther says, that every human being has a preacher within him-he eats with him, drinks with him, awakens
with him, sleeps with him, in short, is always around him, always with him, wherever he is and whatever he
does, a preacher who is called flesh and blood, lusts and passions, habits and inclination-so it is also certain
that deep within every human being there is a secret-sharer who is present just as scrupulously everywhere-the
conscience. A person can perhaps succeed in hiding his sins from the world, he can perhaps be foolishly happy
that he succeeds, or yet, a little more honest, admit that it is a deplorable weakness and cowardliness that he
does not have the courage to become open-but a person cannot hide his sins from himself. This is impossible,
because the sin that was absolutely unconditionally hidden from himself would, of course, not be sin, any
more than if it were hidden from God, which is not the case of either, since a person, as soon as he is aware of
himself and in everything in which he is aware of himself, is also aware of God and God is aware of him.
Soren Kierkegaard, Two Discourses at Friday Communion, (Love Will Hide a Multitude of Sins 1 Peter 4:7:12
The Bible) from Without Authority, Hong translation 1997 p. 182
Theology of Sren Kierkegaard 5

Themes in his theology

Faith
Faith is a hallmark of Kierkegaardian philosophical and religious thought. Two of his key ideas are based on faith:
the leap to faith and the knight of faith. Kierkegaard was a Christian Universalist, writing in his journals, "If others
go to Hell, I will go too. But I do not believe that; on the contrary, I believe that all will be saved, myself with
themsomething which arouses my deepest amazement." However, this view is not always consistent with
Kierkegaard's own writings. He presupposes the individual who has decided to become a Christian has an interest in
becoming that, is interested enough to attempt to develop a relationship with Christ, and has enough faith to believe
that the possibility extends to all individuals equally. He wrote the following in his 1846 book, Concluding
Unscientific Postscript:
Although an outsider, I have at least understood this much, that the only unforgivable high treason
against Christianity is the single individuals taking his relation to it for granted. I must therefore most
respectfully refuse all theocentric helpers and the assistance of helpers helpers to help me into
Christianity in that way. So I prefer to remain where I am, with my infinite interest, with the issue, with
the possibility. In other words, it is not impossible that the individual who is infinitely interested in his
own eternal happiness can some day become eternally happy; on the other hand, it is certainly
impossible that the person who has lost a sense for it (and such a sense can scarcely be anything but an
infinite concern) can become eternally happy. Indeed, once lost, it is perhaps impossible to regain it.
Page 16
And reinforced the same idea in his 1850 book, Practice in Christianity:
When in sickness I go to a physician, he may find it necessary to prescribe a very painful treatment-there is no
self-contradiction in my submitting to it. No, but if on the other hand I suddenly find myself in trouble, an
object of persecution, because, because I have gone to that physician: well, then there is a self-contradiction.
The physician has perhaps announced that he can help me with regard to the illness from which I suffer, and
perhaps he can really do that-but there is an "aber" [but] that I had not thought of at all. The fact that I get
involved with this physician, attach myself to him-that is what makes me an object of persecution; here is the
possibility of offense. So also with Christianity. Now the issue is: will you be offended or will you believe. If
you will believe, then you push through the possibility of offense and accept Christianity on any terms. So it
goes; then forget the understanding; then you say: Whether it is a help or a torment, I want only one thing, I
want to belong to Christ, I want to be a Christian. Hong p. 115
Faith, for Kierkegaard, was more than intellectual understanding. He began his great book Either/Or with a quotation
from Edward Young, "Is reason then alone baptized, are the passions pagans?"[6] and later explained what he meant
in his Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, which Rollo May called "the declaration of independence
for existentialism".[7] Intellect is important but not all inclusive in the realm of religion. "A" in Either/Or wanted to
use the arts to teach Christianity. "B" wanted to use the science of ethics to teach Christianity. Both can lead to an
intellectual understanding devoid of passionate involvement in the act of becoming a Christian. The Young Man in
Repetition was all intellect and Abraham in Fear and Trembling represented the passion of inwardness. Abraham
believed in the actuality of God and could say nothing either artistically or ethically about it.
The object of faith is the actuality of another person; its relation is an infinite interestedness. The object of
faith is not a doctrine, for then the relation is intellectual, and the point is not to bungle it but to reach the
maximum of the intellectual relation. The object of faith is not a teacher who has a doctrine, for when the
teacher has a doctrine, then the doctrine is eo ipso more important than the teacher, and the relation is
intellectual, in which the point is not to bungle it but to reach the maximum of the intellectual relation. But the
object of faith is the actuality of the teacher, that the teacher actually exists. Therefore faiths answer is
absolutely either yes or no. Faiths answer is not in relation to a doctrine, whether it is true or not, not in
Theology of Sren Kierkegaard 6

relation to a teacher, whether his doctrine is true or not, but is the answer to the question about a fact: Do you
accept as fact that he actually existed? Please note that the answer is with infinite passion. In other words, in
connection with a human being it is thoughtless to lay so infinitely much weight upon whether he has existed
or not. Therefore, if the object of faith is a human being, the whole thing is a prank by a foolish person who
has not even grasped the esthetic and the intellectual. The object of faith is therefore the gods actuality in the
sense of existence. But to exist signifies first and foremost to be a particular individual, and this is why
thinking must disregard existence, because the particular cannot be thought, but only the universal. The object
of faith, then, is the actuality of the god in existence, that is, as a particular individual, that is that the god has
existed as an individual human being. Christianity is not a doctrine about the unity of the divine and the
human, about subject-object, not to mention the rest of the logical paraphrases of Christianity. In other words,
if Christianity were a doctrine, then the relation to it would not be one of faith, since there is only an
intellectual relation to a doctrine. Christianity, therefore, is not a doctrine but the fact that the god has existed.
Faith, then, is not a lesson for slow learners in the sphere of intellectuality, an asylum for dullards. But faith is
a sphere of its own, and the immediate identifying mark of every misunderstanding of Christianity is that it
changes it into a doctrine and draws it into the range of intellectuality. What holds as the maximum in the
sphere of intellectuality, to remain completely indifferent to the actuality of the teacher, holds in just the
opposite way in the sphere of faith-its maximum is the quam maxime [in the greatest degree possible] infinite
interestedness of the actuality of the teacher. The individuals own ethical actuality is the only actuality. That
this seems strange to many does not surprise me. To me it seems odd that one has finished with the system and
systems without asking about the ethical. Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Vol 1, p. 326-327 Hong

Paradox
Briefly stated, a paradox is an apparently true statement or group of statements that seems to lead to a contradiction
or to a situation that defies intuition. It is said to be resolved when we show that the contradiction is only apparent.
Kierkegaard's story of Abraham in Fear and Trembling exhibits such a paradox. Abraham could not prove he had
heard the voice of God, yet he believes, and risked his only son based on this belief. The paradox of Abraham is that
the believer acts and risks much on less than complete knowledge (incomplete knowledge is not sufficient for faith
for Kierkegaard; one must believe by virtue of the absurd, that is to say because something is a contradiction).
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 but damaged
his own soul; what would he have in return? Scripture does not state the antithesis to this, but it is implicit in the
sentence. The antitheses would read something like this: What damage would there be to a person if he lost the
whole world and yet did not damage his soul; what would he need in return?" This question brings Abraham to
despair.[8] Abraham was used as a prototype in Fear and Trembling and The Young Man was his counterpoint in
Repetition. Abraham followed the inner voice without mediation from his wife, Sarah, his servant, or Isaac. He just
heard and obeyed. The Young Man made a promise and wanted to change his mind. He consulted with a
psychologist who was engaged in trying to prove the theory of eternal return. Then he appealed to Job and
complained not only to the world but also to God himself. Abraham's love of God never changed but The Young
Man's love for his fiance was ever changing. Change was the theme of Kierkegaard's Three Upbuilding Discourses
of 1843. These three books were published on the same day and should be considered together.
In order to stress the element of self-determination in thinking, philosophy declares: The absolute is because I
think it. But since philosophy itself perceives that free thinking is thereby designated, not the necessary
thinking it usually celebrates, it substitutes another expression: namely, that my thinking of the absolute is the
absolutes thinking-itself in me. This expression is by no means identical with the one preceding; it is,
however, very suggestive. That is to say, my thinking is an element of the absolute, and therein lies the
necessity of my thinking, therein lies the necessity with which I think it. It is otherwise with the good. The
Theology of Sren Kierkegaard 7

good is because I will it, and otherwise it is not at all. This is the expression of freedom, and the same is also
the case with evil-it is only inasmuch as I will it. This in no way reduces or lowers the categories of good and
evil to merely subjective categories. On the contrary, the absolute validity of these categories is declared. The
good is the being-in-and-for-itself, posited by the being-in-and-for-itself, and this is freedom. It might seem
dubious for me to use the expression to choose oneself absolutely, because this might seem to imply that I
chose both the good and the evil just as absolutely and that both the good and evil belonged to me just as
essentially. It was to prevent this misunderstanding that I used the expression I repent myself out of the whole
existence. Repentance specifically expresses that evil essentially belongs to me and at the same time
expresses that it does not essentially belong to me. If the evil in me did not essentially belong to me, I could
not choose it; but if there were something in me that I could not choose absolutely, then I would not be
choosing myself absolutely at all, then I myself would not be the absolute but only a product. Either/Or Part
II, Hong p. 224
The paradox and the absurd are ultimately related to the Christian relationship with Christ, the God-Man. That God
became a single individual and wants to be in a relationship with single individuals, not to the masses, was
Kierkegaard's main conflict with the nineteenth century church. The single individual can make and keep a
resolution. Those who aren't interested in becoming a Christian claim they can't understand Christianity and quite
often they will point to historical events to justify their position. Kierkegaard is against basing Christian belief solely
on external events because it leads to doubt since externals are in constant flux. Doubt leads to speculation and this
detracts from the single individual making a decision to imitate Christ. He wanted to be known as the philosopher of
the internal and was against scientific proofs of Christianity through history, anthropology, and philosophy and the
creation of systematic theology. Becoming a Christian is a decision to be made in time, just like becoming good is a
decision/resolution made in time, and not just for consideration because the individual offers the "self" to God.
Kierkegaard said Socrates was his teacher and that Christ was his Teacher. (See Philosophical Fragments)
When Socrates believed that God is, he held fast the objective uncertainty with the entire passion of
inwardness, and faith is precisely in this contradiction, in this risk. Now it is otherwise. Instead of the objective
uncertainty, there is here the certainty that, viewed objectively, it is the absurd, and this absurdity, held fast in
the passion of inwardness, is faith. What, then, is the absurd? The absurd is that the eternal truth has come
into existence in time, that God has come into existence, has been born, has grown up, has come into existence
exactly as an individual human being, indistinguishable from any other human being. Concluding Unscientific
Postscript, Hong p. 210
This Christian belief in the absurd notion that God became man separates one from the world in such a way that the
Christian is estranged [9] from the world. The world believes that reason guides all our actions, or should, and can't
accept Christianity and is therefore offended and the Christian can't accept the reason of the world and is therefore
offended by the world. Kierkegaard put it this way in his Attack Upon Christendom:
A Christian in the New Testament sense is literally a stranger and a pilgrim, he feels himself a stranger, and
everyone involuntarily feels that this man is a stranger to him.[10]

Despair and sin

According to Kierkegaard, the self is freedom. Not simply the freedom to choose, but the freedom to create choices
for oneself. Therefore, human beings are fundamentally neither their thoughts nor their feelings but rather they are
themselves. The self relates directly to itself and is subject to no one and everyone at the same time. Yet this self is in
relation to body and mind and spirit in Kierkegaard's view. The spirit constitutes the relationship of the self to God.
In effect, when a person does not come to a full consciousness of himself or herself, then he or she is said to be in
despair. Just like a physician might say that no one is completely healthy, it follows that human beings must despair
at certain moments in their lives. To be in despair is to reflect upon the self. If someone does not engage in the art of
despair, then he or she shall become stuck in a state of inertia with no effective progression[11] or regression and
Theology of Sren Kierkegaard 8

that is the worst state of all.

Kierkegaard calls sickness, the sickness of the spirit. He wrote the following in Concluding Unscientific Postscript in
1846.
We left the religious person in the crisis of sickness; but this sickness is not unto death. We shall now let him
be strengthened by the very same conception that destroyed him, by the conception of God. First and foremost,
in each generation there certainly are not many who suffer through even the beginning of the absolute religious
relationship; and next, that a beginning in the existence-medium is anything but something that is decided once
and for all, because it is only on paper that one is finished with the first phase, and then has nothing more to do
with it. The absolute decision in the existence-medium still is and remains only an approximation because the
eternal aims from above at the existing person, who by existing is in motion and thus at the moment the eternal
touches is already a little moment away from there. The beginning of the absolute decision in the
existence-medium is least of all once and for all, something accomplished, because the existing person is not
and abstract X who accomplishes something and then goes further, goes through life, if I may put it this way,
undigested; but the existing person becomes concrete in what has been experienced, and as he proceeds he has
it with him and can lose it at any moment. He has it with him, not the way one has something in a pocket, but
through this, this specific thing, he is what he is more specifically defined and loses his own more specific
definition by losing it. Through the decision in existence, an existing person, more specifically defined, has
become what he is. If he sets it aside, it is not he who has lost something, so that he does not have himself and
has lost something, but then he has lost himself and must start from the beginning. The religious person has
recovered from his sickness (tomorrow there may be a relapse due to a little unjudiciousness). He perhaps
fortifies himself with the upbuilding reflection that God, who created man, certainly knows best all the
numerous things that to a human being appear to be incapable of being joined together with the thought of
God-all the earthly desires, all the confusion in which he can be trapped, and the necessity of diversion, of rest,
as well as a nights sleep. It is obvious that the discussion here is not about the indulgence that is preached in
the world, where one human being consoles himself through another, consoles himself reciprocally and leaves
God out. Every human being is gloriously structured, but what destroys so many is this confounded
talkativeness between man and man about what must be suffered but also be matured in silence, the confession
before human beings instead of before God, this candid communication to this one and that one of what ought
to be a secret and be before God in secret, this impatient hankering for makeshift consolation. No, in the pain
of annihilation, the religious person has learned that human indulgence is of no benefit; therefore he listens to
nothing from that corner, but he is before God and suffers through what it means to be a human being and then
to be before God. Therefore he cannot be comforted by what the human crowd mutually knows, people who
have a market-town idea of what it means to be a human being, and a fluent, talkative idea at seventeenth hand
of what it means to be before God. From God he must draw his comfort, lest his entire religiousness become a
rumor. P. 488-490
Sin is separation from God but despair over sin is separation again. Kierkegaard said, "The consciousness of sin
definitely belongs to the consciousness of the forgiveness of sin."[12] Why would someone sit and reflect on sin to
such an extent that an eternal happiness is exchanged for an eternal unhappiness or even a temporal unhappiness?
This reflection is done in time but the consequence of the reflection leads one to lose hope in the possibility of any
good coming from oneself. Kierkegaard says Christianity invites the single individual to become a partaker not only
of the consciousness of sin but also of the consciousness of forgiveness but we seem to concentrate on the former to
a remarkable degree. He said the following in Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions (1845) and Practice in
Christianity (1850):
People see God in great things, in the raging of the elements and in the course of world history; they entirely
forget what the child understood, that when it shut its eyes it sees God. When the child shuts its eyes and
smiles, it becomes an angel; alas, when the adult comes to be alone before the Holy One and is silent-he
Theology of Sren Kierkegaard 9

becomes a sinner! First of all, be alone; then you will indeed learn the proper worship of God, to think highly
of God and lowly of yourself-not more lowly than your neighbor, as if you were the distinguished one- (but
remember that you are before God)-not more lowly than your enemy, as if you were the better one (for
remember that you are before God); but lowly of yourself. Anyone who thinks of sin in this way and wishes in
this stillness to learn an art-something you, my listener, do not disdain, the art of sorrowing over your sins-will
certainly discover that the confession of sin is not merely a counting of all the particular sins but is a
comprehension before God that sin has a coherence [13] in itself. Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions p.
31-32
Accept the invitation so that the inviter may save you from what is so hard and dangerous to be saved from, so
that, saved, you may be with him who is the Savior of all, of innocence also. For even if it were possible that
utterly pure innocence was to be found somewhere, why should it not also need a Savior who could keep it
safe from evil! The invitation stands at the crossroad, there where the way of sin turns more deeply into sin.
Come here, all you who are lost and gone astray, whatever your error and sin, be it to human eyes more
excusable and yet perhaps more terrible, or be it to human eyes more terrible and yet perhaps more excusable,
be it disclosed here on earth or be it hidden and yet known in heaven-and even if you found forgiveness on
earth but no peace within, or found no forgiveness because you did not seek it, or because you sought it in
vain: oh, turn around and come here, here is rest! The invitation stands at the crossroad, there where the way of
sin turns off for the last time and disappears from view in-perdition. Oh, turn around, turn around, come here;
do not shrink from the difficulty of retreat, no matter how hard it is; do not be afraid of the laborious pace of
conversion, however toilsomely it leads to salvation, whereas sin leads onward with winged speed, with
mounting haste-or leads downward so easily, so indescribably easily, indeed, as easily as when the horse,
completely relieved of pulling, cannot, not even with all its strength, stop the wagon, which runs it into the
abyss. Do not despair over every relapse, which the God of patience has the patience to forgive and under
which a sinner certainly should have the patience to humble himself. No, fear nothing and do not despair; he
who says Come here is with you on the way; from him there is help and forgiveness on the way of
conversion that leads to him, and with him is rest. Sren Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity p. 18-19

Selected religious works

(1847) Edifying Discourses in Diverse Spirits
(1847) Works of Love
(1848) Christian Discourses
(1848) The Book on Adler
(1849) The Sickness Unto Death
(1850) Training in Christianity
(1851) For Self-Examination
(1851) Judge for Yourselves!
Theology of Sren Kierkegaard 10

References
[1] THE GERMAN CLASSICS OF THE NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES, Volume 7 (http:/ / archive. org/ stream/
germanclassicsof07franuoft#page/ 12/ mode/ 2up), published 1913, edited by Kuno Francke
[2] http:/ / en. wiktionary. org/ wiki/ incomprehensible
[3] Ronald Gregor Smith, J G Hamann 1730-1788 A Study In Christian Existence (1960) p. 18-19 (http:/ / archive. org/ details/
jghamann17301788013654mbp)
[4] Concluding Postscript, Hong p, 559
[5] Come unto me, all you who labor and are burdened and I will give you rest. Matthew 28:11
[6] Title page Either/Or, Hong
[7] Rollo May, The Discovery of Being, 1983 p. 54
[8] See Either/Or Part II, 217-227
[9] http:/ / en. wiktionary. org/ wiki/ estranged
[10] Attack Upon Christendom, The Instant, No. 7, Sren Kierkegaard, 1854-1855, Walter Lowrie 1944, 1968
[11] http:/ / toolserver. org/ %7Edispenser/ cgi-bin/ dab_solver. py?page=Theology_of_S%C3%B8ren_Kierkegaard&
editintro=Template:Disambiguation_needed/ editintro& client=Template:Dn
[12] Concluding Unscientific Postscript Hong p. 524
[13] http:/ / en. wiktionary. org/ wiki/ coherence

Biography and works

Alexander Dru. The Journals of Sren Kierkegaard, Oxford University Press, 1938.
Duncan, Elmer. Sren Kierkegaard: Maker of the Modern Theological Mind, Word Books 1976, ISBN
0-87680-463-6
Joakim Garff. Sren Kierkegaard: A Biography, Princeton University Press 2005, ISBN 0-691-09165-X.
Hannay, Alastair and Gordon Marino (eds). The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, Cambridge University
Press 1997, ISBN 0-521-47719-0
Alastair Hannay. Kierkegaard: A Biography, Cambridge University Press, New edition 2003, ISBN
0-521-53181-0.

External links
Edifying Discourses, by Soren Kierkegaard, translated by David F. Swenson, 1958 (http://www.archive.org/
details/edifyingdiscours00kier)
D. Anthony Storm's Commentary On Kierkegaard (http://www.sorenkierkegaard.org)
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Sren Kierkegaard (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kierkegaard/)
Kierkegaard's attack upon "Christendom," 1854-1855 (http://archive.org/stream/kierkegaardsatta00kier#page/
n5/mode/2up) Princeton University Press (1946) Retrieved May 18, 2012
"Kierkegaard's Attack on Christendom" (http://www.hccentral.com/gkeys/kier.html). House Church.
Retrieved February 21, 2006.
Universidad Iberoamericana - Kierkegaard en espaol (http://www.uia.mx/departamentos/dpt_filosofia/
kierkergaard/home.html)
Article Sources and Contributors 11

Article Sources and Contributors

Theology of Sren Kierkegaard Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=605839727 Contributors: (aeropagitica), 11614soup, BD2412, Banno, Choster, Infiniteseries, Koavf,
Mandarax, Mboverload, Mogism, Mtstroud, Niceguyedc, Pastordavid, Paul A, Poor Yorick, R'n'B, Reddi, Rich Farmbrough, Riddleh, RobDe68, Sd2, Sunray, Synergy, Tassedethe, Tatarize,
Wikid77, 21 anonymous edits

Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors

File:Kierkegaard.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Kierkegaard.jpg License: Public Domain Contributors: Neils Christian Kierkegaard

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