Kierkegaard on Christ and Christian Coherence PDF Download

Author: Paul R. Sponheim
Publisher: Greenwood
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Author: Paul R. Sponheim
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1506405649
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Soren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), the Danish theologian, philosopher, and preacher, in his last years issued a blistering attack on the established Christianity of the nineteenth century. That challenge was also a summons to an authentic life of Christian faith. With intensity and acumen, Kierkegaard diagnosed the spiritual and intellectual ills of modernity and Christendom and offered a constructive “upbuilding” for active, faithful Christian existence. One of Kierkegaard’s key texts, The Sickness unto Death, outlines the problem of the human condition—sin/despair—and draws the reader into the heart of the Christian faith: the infinite qualitative difference between God and creatures and the paradox of the God-man who came to bring abundant life in the form of authentic selfhood “grounded transparently” in the Creator. In this volume, Paul R. Sponheim, introduces readers to Kierkegaard, unfolds this pivotal text and its connections to Kierkegaard’s theological and ethical worldview, and traces the reception and significance of this text in the modern and contemporary theological tradition. In this, Existing Before God continues the contribution of the Mapping the Tradition series in providing compact yet salient maps of the theological, historical, social, and contextual impact of the most important minds and texts of Christian history.

Author: Andrew B. Torrance
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567661202
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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The Kierkegaardian account of becoming a Christian has come to be perceived in radically egocentric terms. Torrance challenges this perception by demonstrating that Kierkegaard was devoted to the idea of Christian conversion as a transformative process of becoming. This process is grounded in an active relationship initiated by the eternal God who has established kinship with us in time. Torrance focuses on 'becoming a Christian' as a particular theological theme that deserves further attention - how 'becoming a Christian' or Christian transformation should be construed in relation to God's initiating and active relationship to the person. Torrance's account of Kierkegaard on human transformation demonstrates in striking ways Kierkegaard's relevance to current issues in systematic theology and philosophical theology around the nature of Christian conversion, particularly how conversion might be re-conceptualized in strong divinely-relational and transformative rather than in progressive self-developmental terms. This study also considers how Kierkegaard was able to negotiate his emphasis on the God-relationship with his emphasis on the importance of individual reflection, decision and action in the Christian life.

Author: Søren Kierkegaard
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400847036
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 439

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Of the many works he wrote during 1848, his "richest and most fruitful year," Kierkegaard specified Practice in Christianity as "the most perfect and truest thing." In his reflections on such topics as Christ's invitation to the burdened, the imitatio Christi, the possibility of offense, and the exalted Christ, he takes as his theme the requirement of Christian ideality in the context of divine grace. Addressing clergy and laity alike, Kierkegaard asserts the need for institutional and personal admission of the accommodation of Christianity to the culture and to the individual misuse of grace. As a corrective defense, the book is an attempt to find, ideally, a basis for the established order, which would involve the order's ability to acknowledge the Christian requirement, confess its own distance from it, and resort to grace for support in its continued existence. At the same time the book can be read as the beginning of Kierkegaard's attack on Christendom. Because of the high ideality of the contents and in order to prevent the misunderstanding that he himself represented that ideality, Kierkegaard writes under a new pseudonym, Anti-Climacus.

Author: Daphne Hampson
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191654000
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Kierkegaard is a fascinating author. Living shortly after the dawn of modernity in the Enlightenment, he restates classical Christianity in novel and dynamic fashion. His Lutheran heritage is pivotal here as he places 'faith' over against 'reason'. But we should recognise that decidedly pre-modern epistemological presuppositions lie behind Kierkegaard's theological contentions, giving us pause for thought. A profound thinker with eclectic interests, philosophical, theological, ethical, social and pastoral, Kierkegaard never ceases to engage the reader. His insights into human life - the matter of coherence of the self, the crucial category of the individual, or the significance of choice - are memorable. A fine writer with observant eye, Kierkegaard enthrals the reader with his flair, perspicacity and ready wit. After an initial chapter on Kierkegaard's intellectual milieu, the book considers seven of his major texts. An 'Exposition', with extensive quotation, sets the text in philosophical, theological and historical context. Following which a 'Critique' raises issues, ranging from Kierkegaard's indifference to biblical scholarship, to his lack of recognition of the regularity of causation, and his a-political outlook. A final chapter considers Kierkegaard as a person and evaluates the authorship. Lucidly written, Hampson's book provides a general introduction to Kierkegaard, while greatly aiding novice readers of his texts. It should also command the attention of scholars, for its forthright debate with Kierkegaard and for illuminating, as has no previous work, his Lutheran thought forms. Provocative and original, it will leave its mark on Kierkegaard scholarship, while raising seminal questions for the wider theological enterprise.

Author: Mark A. Tietjen
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830899510
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) had a mission—reintroduce the Christian faith to Christians. Mark Tietjen thinks that Kierkegaard's critique of his contemporaries strikes close to home today. Through an examination of core Christian doctrines, he helps us hear Kierkegaard's missionary message to a church that often fails to follow Christ with purity of heart.

Author: Søren Kierkegaard
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400875277
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Kierkegaard, in his late and confirmedly Christian period, discusses the sharp separation of "Christianity" from “Christendom,” as seen in the official church. Originally published in 1944. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Author: F. Russell Sullivan
Publisher: University Press of America
ISBN: 0761849351
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 124

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In this work, Sullivan analyzes the relationship between faith and reason in Kierkegaard's philosophy. Kierkegaard is widely considered to be an irrationalist. Sullivan argues that he views faith as reasonable in a distinct way that must be uncovered. In some of his pseudonymous works, Kierkegaard speaks of the movement of faith as paradoxical and absurd. There is evidence from his non-pseudonymous works that Kierkgaard does not consider faith irrational. He denigrates reason only in that he wishes to impress upon nominal Christians (who look upon faith only as a body of doctrine) that more and more understanding of the tenets of faith can never yield logical certainty. The doctrines of faith can be argued pro and contra. For Kierkgaard, faith in this context is illogical, but not irrational. In his religious works, Kierkgaard's notion of reason is inextricably tied in with that of his recalcitrance of the will. Reason (logic and speculative thought) attests to its own limits in regard to doctrinal faith, but it also can point to that which is a reasonable step, even when logic alone is of no avail. For Kierkgaard, subjectivity is a necessary - but not sufficient - condition of religious faith. In actuality, Kierkgaard is not presenting an epistemological theory at all, but through his pseudonymous authors' emphasis upon subjectivity he hopes that nominal Christians will begin to experience the need for Christ. Kierkgaard believes that only if inauthentic Christians realize that the religious option cannot be decided by logical inquiry into the doctrines of faith, and then experience their own inauthenticity and the futility of any unaided willful efforts to remedy it, will the act of faith in Christ as a viable alternative appear as reasonable.

Author: Søren Kierkegaard
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691140782
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 511

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First published in 1848, Christian Discourses is a quartet of pieces written and arranged in contrasting styles. Parts One and Three, "The Cares of the Pagans" and "Thoughts That Wound from Behind--for Upbuilding," serve as a polemical overture to Kierkegaard's collision with the established order of Christendom. Yet Parts Two and Four, "Joyful Notes in the Strife of Suffering" and "Discourses at the Communion on Fridays," are reassuring affirmations of the joy and blessedness of Christian life in a world of adversity and suffering. Written in ordinary language, the work combines simplicity and inwardness with reflection and presents crucial Christian concepts and presuppositions with unusual clarity. Kierkegaard continued in the pattern that he began with his first pseudonymous esthetic work, Either/Or, by pairing Christian Discourses with The Crisis, an unsigned esthetic essay on contemporary Danish actress Joanne Luise Heiberg.

Author: Murray Rae
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198269403
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Challenging widely followed theological epistemologies, Rae develops a new interpretation of Kierkegaard, and concludes that the account of Christian conversion given by Climacus is a faithful elucidation of the concept of metanoia.