Table Of ContentKIERKEGAARD
OUTSTANDING CHRISTIAN THINKERS
Series Editor: Brian Davies OP
The series offers a range of authoritative studies of people who have made an out-
standing contribution to Christian thought and understanding. The series will range
across the full spectrum of Christian thought to include Catholic and Protestant
thinkers, to cover East and West, and historical and contemporary thinkers. By and
large, each volume will focus on a single 'thinker', but occasionally the subject may
be a movement or a school of thought.
Brian Davies OP, the Series Editor, is Professor of Philosophy at Fordham
University, New York. He was formerly Regent of Blackfriars, Oxford University
and tutor of theology at St Benet's Hall, Oxford. He has taught at the University of
Bristol, Emory University and the Beda College in Rome. He is Reviews Editor of
International Philosophy Quarterly. His previous publications include: Thinking
about God (Geoffrey Chapman, 1985); The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Oxford
University Press, 1992); and An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Oxford
University Press, 1982).
Already published:
The Cappadocians Hans Urs von Balthasar
Anthony Meredith SJ John O'Donnell SJ
Augustine Teresa of Avila
Mary T. Clark RSCJ Archbishop Rowan Williams
Catherine of Siena Bultmann
Giuliana Cavallini OP David Fergusson
Lonergan Karl Earth
Frederick E. Crowe SJ John Webster
Reinhold Niebuhr Aquinas
Kenneth Durkin Brian Davies OP
The Venerable Bede PaulTillich
Benedicta Ward SLG John Heywood Thomas
Paul
C. K. Barrett
KIERKEGAARD
Julia Watkin
CONTINUUM
London and New York
Continuum
The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE17NX
370 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017-6503
© Julia Watkin 1997
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
First published 1997
Reissued 2000
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 0-8264-5086-5
Typeset by Jacaranda Lodge, Wolverhampton
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddies Ltd
www.biddles.co.uk
Contents
Editorial foreword vii
Preface ix
Abbreviations and bibliography xi
Acknowledgements xxi
1 The approach to Kierkegaard 1
2 Personal and cultural background 6
3 Existence and vocation 23
The world and our place in it 23
Kierkegaard's vocation - monastery in the world 29
4 The authorship 46
Structure 46
Method of communication 48
Kierkegaard's 'stages' 52
5 Life in a Christian culture 56
Life without Christianity 56
Society built on Christian ethics 65
6 Christianity in conflict with culture 78
The tension of dying to the world 78
Divine command and revelation 86
7 Kierkegaard and the Christian tradition 94
8 Kierkegaard in an ecumenical perspective 106
Index 113
tilegnet
Grethe Kjaer
Editorial Foreword
St Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) once described himself as someone with
faith seeking understanding. In words addressed to God he says 'I long to under-
stand in some degree thy truth, which my heart believes and loves. For I do not
seek to understand that I may believe, but believe in order to understand.'
This is what Christians have always inevitably said, either explicitly or
implicitly. Christianity rests on faith, but it also has content. It teaches and pro-
claims a distinctive and challenging view of reality. It naturally encourages reflec-
tion. It is something to think about; something about which one might even have
second thoughts.
But what have the greatest Christian thinkers said? And is it worth saying?
Does it engage with modern problems? Does it provide us with a vision to live by?
Does it make sense? Can it be preached? Is it believable?
The Outstanding Christian Thinkers series is offered to readers with questions
like these in mind. It aims to provide clear, authoritative and critical accounts of
outstanding Christian writers from New Testament times to the present. It ranges
across the full spectrum of Christian thought to include Catholic and Protestant
thinkers, thinkers from East and West, thinkers ancient, mediaeval and modern.
The series draws on the best scholarship currently available, so it will interest
all with a professional concern for the history of Christian ideas. But contributors
also write for general readers who have little or no previous knowledge of the sub-
jects to be dealt with. Its volumes should therefore prove helpful at a popular as
well as an academic level. For the most part they are devoted to a single thinker,
but occasionally the subject is a movement or school of thought.
Brian Davies OP
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Preface
I think I first encountered Kierkegaard's name as a child, as a silent
listener to a philosophical discussion between my father, E. I.
Watkin, and a Devonshire artist, Frank B. Lynch. Certainly there
was a copy of Kierkegaard's The Sickness unto Death on the
shelves of my nursery (really part of my father's library). The next
time I heard the name I was a 24-year-old student standing outside
the Church of St Mary-le-Strand in London in the spring of 1969,
jotting down notes in an all-purpose notebook during a conver-
sation with an informative fellow student. Under 'Kierkegaard'
I noted: 'shows the final decision or commitment to Christianity
as "a leap into the dark" (Existentialist).' There then (I shudder
to say) follow further notes in connection with Kierkegaard, on
'Existentialism' as 'subjective ethics' (in the sense of self-invented),
in which the names of Jean-Paul Sartre, Heidegger and Fellini
appear. After that, Kierkegaard was forgotten until a decisive
encounter with him as an undergraduate at Bristol University,
where Dr (later Professor) John Kent, who regularly and spectacu-
larly filleted the big names in religious studies like so many fish,
manifesting their internal contradictions and weaknesses, was
strangely lenient with Kierkegaard, thus arousing my curiosity and
expectancy. This expectancy was not disappointed, since when I
began to read Kierkegaard in 1972 I saw in a flash of illumination
that I was encountering a great mind that had something to say to
the problems of our time, and, most importantly for me, something
to say to the twentieth-century crisis of religious belief. Nor was
I alone in my enthusiasm, since I had the privilege of wonderful
discussions on Kierkegaard with fellow students John Norris and
Alan Keightley. Now, more than 20 years later, with Kierkegaard
as constant companion, I see ever more clearly his importance
as one able to raise and address vital philosophical and ethical-
religious questions about existence, raise them in such a way that
his thought must be relevant to every generation. Surely few can
be read so widely and avidly on both an interdisciplinary and an
international basis. I am happy to count myself one of his readers
