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KIERKEGAARD 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 This page intentionally left blank 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
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