From Despair to Faith: The Spirituality of Søren Kierkegaard

By Christopher B. Barnett

In From Despair to Faith: The Spirituality of Søren Kierkegaard, Christopher B. Barnett endeavors to remedy this problem. He does so in two overarching ways. First, he orients the reader to Kierkegaard’s grounding in the Christian spiritual tradition, as well as to the Dane’s own authorial stress on themes such as upbuilding, spiritual journey, and faith. Second, Barnett maintains that Kierkegaard’s spirituality is best understood through the various “pictures” that populate his authorship. These pictures are deemed “icons of faith,” since Kierkegaard consistently recommends that the reader contemplate them. In this way, they both represent and communicate what Kierkegaard sees as the fulfillment of Christian existence.

In the end, then, From Despair to Faith not only offers a new way of approaching Kierkegaard’s writings, but also shows how they might serve to illuminate and to deepen one's relationship with the divine.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Release date: Aug 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781451487473

Christopher B. Barnett

Christopher B. Barnett is professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University. He is the author of dozens of books, book chapters, and articles, including the recent monographs Kierkegaard and the Question Concerning Technology (2019) and Bob Dylan and the Spheres of Existence (2023). Man of Pain: A Novel is his fiction debut.

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