ABSTRACT
Kierkegaard styled himself as a poet and Christian thinker, whose orientation is primarily philosophical and theological. He does not intend to interpret conceptually the truth of faith. He seeks rather spiritual edification. Making use of indirect communication, and adopting a language predominantly figural and metaphoric, challenges the reader to appropriate inwardly the religious truth with a view to its practical expression in the ethical existence. Kierkegaard’s critique of theology does not simply question some theological approaches. He shows an evident contempt for academic theology and the theologians who advance it. Kierkegaard resorts to the theologians of the patristic period to defend the existential character of faith. He finds in them important allies in his battle against the complacent and amorphous Christianity that prevailed in the nineteenth century Denmark. It is unlikely that any consensus concerning the importance of Kierkegaard for theology will ever be reached. The dialectic tension of his thought resists systematization and easy interpretative closure. Although some aspects of his theological approach move beyond the boundary line of Lutheran orthodoxy and come close to Catholicism, the main impetus of his thought is still protestant and predominantly Lutheran. For Kierkegaard the primary aim of theology lies not in reinterpreting and expounding doctrines but in spurring the experience and practice of faith in the concrete circumstances of the believer’s existence.
KEY WORDS
Theology; Erudition; Faith; Existence; Ethics