Show Summary Details

Page of

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

date: 09 March 2021

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter analyses the theology of Soren Kierkegaard. It explains that Kierkegaard was trained in the theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Denmark and was well-versed in the subject, but did not consider himself as a theologian. The chapter suggests that his main theological project was the reintroduction of Christianity into Christendom or the ecclesiastical-sociopolitical established order. Kierkegaard believes that Christianity is not a doctrine but an ‘existence-communication’ and a subjective truth that is to be actualized in existence with the object of existing in it through faith.

Keywords: Soren Kierkegaard, theology, Evangelical Lutheran, Denmark, Christianity, Christendom, existence-communication, subjective truth, faith

Sylvia Walsh

Sylvia Walsh is Scholar in Residence at Stetson University and the author of three books on Kierkegaard, Living Poetically (Penn State University Press, 1994), Living Christianly (Penn State, 2005), and Kierkegaard: Thinking Christianly (Oxford University Press, 2009), as well as the translator of Fear and Trembling (Cambridge University Press, 2006) and Discourses at the Communion on Fridays (Indiana University Press, 2011). She is also Co-chair of the Kierkegaard, Religion and Culture Group in the American Academy of Religion.

Access to the complete content on Oxford Handbooks Online requires a subscription or purchase. Public users are able to search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter without a subscription.

Please subscribe or login to access full text content.

If you have purchased a print title that contains an access token, please see the token for information about how to register your code.

For questions on access or troubleshooting, please check our FAQs, and if you can''t find the answer there, please contact us.