Living Christianly : Kierkegaard's dialectic of Christian existence / Sylvia Walsh.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Walsh, Sylvia, 1937- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Kierkegaard, Søren, 1813-1855.

Kierkegaard, Søren.

Christianity--Philosophy.

Christianity.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 199 pages)

Place of Publication:

University Park, Pennsylvania : Pennsylvania State University Press, [2005]

Summary:

The pseudonymous works Kierkegaard wrote during the period 1843-46 have been responsible for establishing his reputation as an important philosophical thinker, but for Kierkegaard himself, they were merely preparatory for what he saw as the primary task of his authorship: to elucidate the meaning of what it is to live as a Christian and thus to show his readers how they could become truly Christian. The more overtly religious and specifically Christian works Kierkegaard produced in the period 1847-51 were devoted to this task. In this book Sylvia Walsh focuses on the writings of this later period and locates the key to Kierkegaard's understanding of Christianity in the "inverse dialectic" that is involved in "living Christianly." In the book's four main chapters, Walsh examines in detail how this inverse dialectic operates in the complementary relationship of the negative qualifications of Christian existence-sin, the possibility of offense, self-denial, and suffering-to the positive qualifications-faith, forgiveness, new life/love/hope, and joy and consolation. It was Kierkegaard's aim, she argues, "to bring the negative qualifications, which he believed had been virtually eliminated in Christendom, once again into view, to provide them with conceptual clarity, and to show their essential relation to, and necessity in, securing a correct understanding and expression of the positive qualifications of Christian existence."

Contents:

Intro

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

Acknowledgments

Sigla

Introduction

1. The Consciousness of Sin / Faith and Forgiveness

2. The Possibility of Offense / Faith

3. Dying to the World and Self-Denial / New Life, Love, and Hope in the Spirit

4. Suffering / Joy and Consolation

5. Christian Existence Within the Broader Dialectic of Christianity

Notes

Works Consulted

Index

Back Cover

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 183-192) and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780271075976

027107597X

OCLC:

1193117840