The Wisdom of Kierkegaard: A Collection of Quotations on Faith and Life
()
About this ebook
The Wisdom of Kierkegaard contains two hundred fifty such passages, chosen partly because of their ability to be understood apart from their context and partly because of their ability to provoke an "Ah! That's true" response. Many of them contain a "twist" that imparts an incisive jab. Some are on themes for which Kierkegaard is well known, but many are on a variety of other significant themes. The passages are organized in alphabetical sections, which are introduced by a brief essay.
Read more from Clifford Williams
The Life of the Mind (RenewedMinds): A Christian Perspective Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Divided Soul: A Kierkegaardian Exploration Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStarve the Wolf Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Uneasy Conscience of a White Christian: Making Racial Equity a Priority Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to The Wisdom of Kierkegaard
Related ebooks
Walking in Wonder: Resilience in Ministry Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBible Immersion: A Life-Changing Way to Encounter the Word of God Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What It Means To Grow Up - A Guide In Understanding The Development Of Character Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Other "Hermit" of Thoreau's Walden Pond: The Sojourn of Edmond Stuart Hotham Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlessed Relief: What Christians Can Learn from Buddhists about Suffering Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Last Journey of Jack Lewis: A Conversation of C. S. Lewis with Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhy Can't We Talk?: Christian Wisdom on Dialogue as a Habit of the Heart Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKierkegaard’S Existentialism: The Theological Self and the Existential Self Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Varieties of Religious Experience Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Cardinal and the Deadly: Reimagining the Seven Virtues and Seven Vices Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBecoming Someone Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThomas Merton's Poetics of Self-Dissolution Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCognitive Dissonance: Most Treasured Bible Series Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPermission to Speak Freely: Essays and Art on Fear, Confession, and Grace Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5To Be or Not To Be: The Adventure of Christian Existentialism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Worthwhile Life: How to Find Meaning, Build Connection, and Cultivate Purpose Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJourney to Shalom: Finding Healing, Wholeness, and Freedom In Sacred Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThen God Said: Contemplating the First Revelation in Creation Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Lights of Barbrin: Book One of the Barbrin Trilogy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Evolution of Love: Theology and Morality in Ancient Judaism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVulnerable Faith: Missional Living in the Radical Way of St. Patrick Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAfter We Die: Theology, Philosophy, and the Question of Life after Death Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Surviving Suicide Loss: Making Your Way Beyond the Ruins Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSpiritual Exercises for the Postmodern Christian Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSummary of Sam Harris's Making Sense Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsChaplain's Walk: The Spiritual Side of Medicine Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Ethnic Studies For You
The Spook Who Sat by the Door, Second Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Conspiracy to Destroy Black Women Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Self-Care for Black Women: 150 Ways to Radically Accept & Prioritize Your Mind, Body, & Soul Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5100 Amazing Facts About the Negro with Complete Proof Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All About Love: New Visions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Encyclopedia of the Yoruba Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Black Imagination: Black Voices on Black Futures Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The End of White World Supremacy: Four Speeches Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stories of Rootworkers & Hoodoo in the Mid-South Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Salvation: Black People and Love Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Black Like Me: The Definitive Griffin Estate Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Black Rednecks & White Liberals Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rock My Soul: Black People and Self-Esteem Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Need to Be Whole: Patriotism and the History of Prejudice Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Blackout: How Black America Can Make Its Second Escape from the Democrat Plantation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Wretched of the Earth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Blood of Emmett Till Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Red, White, and Black: Rescuing American History from Revisionists and Race Hustlers Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Reviews for The Wisdom of Kierkegaard
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
The Wisdom of Kierkegaard - Clifford Williams
The Wisdom of Kierkegaard
A Collection of Quotations on Faith and Life
•
Clifford Williams
2008.WS_logo.jpgTHE WISDOM OF KIERKEGAARD
A Collection of Quotations on Faith and Life
Copyright © 2009 Clifford Williams. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Wipf & Stock
A Division of Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
www.wipfandstock.com
isbn 13: 978-1-60608-485-4
eisbn 13: 978-1-4982-7548-4
Manufactured in the U.S.A.
All biblical quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U. S. A., and used by permission. All rights reserved.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Abbreviations
Introduction
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J–K
L
M
N
O
P
Q–R
S
T
U–Z
Abbreviations
Citations in the text use the following abbreviations:
CD Christian Discourses
CUP Concluding Unscientific Postscript
D The Diary of Soren Kierkegaard
EO Either/Or
EUD Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses
FSE For Self-Examination
FT Fear and Trembling
JFY Judge for Yourself!
JP Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers
PC Practice in Christianity
SLW Stages on Life’s Way
SUD The Sickness unto Death
TDIO Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions
UDVS Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits
WA Without Authority
WL Works of Love
Introduction
Tucked away in the complicated prose that fills many of Søren Kierkegaard’s books are numerous insightful declarations. They arrest the reader with their depth of understanding. They often are expressed in a lilting and lyrical manner. Encountering them makes working through the intricate prose eminently worthwhile.
This book contains 250 such passages. I have chosen them partly because they can be understood apart from their context and partly because they prompt the reader to think, Ah! That’s true.
Many of them contain a twist that gives an incisive jab. Some are on themes for which Kierkegaard is well-known, but many are on a variety of other significant themes.
Søren Kierkegaard lived in Denmark from 1813 to 1855. The Danish church at that time was an official extension of the government. The pastors’ salaries were paid by the government, and citizens who wished to form alternative congregations were frowned upon. Kierkegaard thought that the Danish church had departed from the New Testament ideal. He thought, in fact, that the Danish church did not exemplify Christianity at all. So he made it his life’s aim to reintroduce Christianity into the church. This could not be done simply by restating the truths of Christianity, however, for those in the church regarded themselves as believers. They would have been offended at the implication, or direct charge, that they did not really believe. Reintroducing Christianity could be done, Kierkegaard thought, only indirectly. This meant that he would have to produce a psychological analysis of the causes of unbelief and describe extensively what genuine faith should be.
For Kierkegaard, the most important cause of unbelief, at least in Denmark, was individuals’ thoughtless identification with the church. His favorite term for the church was the crowd.
What happens, he thought, is that individuals so identify with the crowd that they lose their own identity. In a sense they become one with the crowd. This means that what they think of as being their faith is not really theirs. It is the crowd’s faith.
Although Kierkegaard’s concern was for those in the Danish church, he has pinpointed a phenomenon that is universal. We humans find it alluring to identify with some group. In this identification we find security. The group is established and stable, so identifying with it gives us the sense of being established and stable. It is a fearful thing to stand alone. We would have nothing to back us up if we did, nothing to validate us. And we desperately need validation.
What Kierkegaard saw, then, is that in a religious context, we use this identification as a substitute for real faith. The identification is, in fact, a way of hiding from God. It is a way of evading the responsibility we need to take for our faith. And it is the most ruinous evasion possible, he asserted, partly because we do not know we have done it, and partly because it makes us think we have real faith when in fact we do not.
Faith, then, for Kierkegaard is something we must have for ourselves. To paraphrase one of his statements in Faith
(p. 32), a group can do much for its members—it can give them security and a sense of belonging—but it cannot give them faith. Ultimately, we stand alone before God. And ultimately it is only we who can have faith.
Faith has a number of other features as well. Its inner core is earnestness. It exhibits searching restlessness. It springs from a longing for God. It rests on God’s grace. It requires being honest with oneself. It excises self-satisfaction. It results in adopting the right priorities.
Kierkegaard’s analysis of unbelief and his concern with the nature of faith form the context of the following passages. Some of the passages bear directly on these themes and some bear indirectly. All of the passages deal with what Kierkegaard designates the call from eternity.
This call comes both early and late, and, as these passages amply demonstrate, it involves a wide variety of attitudes, desires, and motives.
I have given the passages titles and have alphabetized them. In addition, I have introduced each alphabetical section with a page of thoughts on one of the themes in the section. It is my hope, as it is Kierkegaard’s, that readers will be moved by his reflections to meditate deeply on what matters most in life.
A
We become anxious when we imagine what it would be like to be alone, Kierkegaard says—alone not just for a time and not just with respect to our friends and acquaintances, but overlooked by everyone and forgotten by God. In this aloneness, no one would notice us as we walked along a busy city sidewalk. We would