Did Kierkegaard consider himself a Christian...

Did Kierkegaard consider himself a Christian? In the sense that he thought that true Christianity was an act of faith and not an acceptance of doctrines that one finds convenient for their life. Did he consider himself a man of faith, or did he think he couldn't personally take the leap?

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doesn't matter, he gave a new take on the religion that can guide anyone who is willing to have full faith

I think that thinking of faith as a rational conclusion rather than a gift some people are guided to hints at the idea that he may not have had it. I’m not sure and certainly won’t speak definitively, but going off of my experience and others’ in receiving faith, as well as what the abrahamic texts state, I understand faith to be a God-given gift, rather than something you just figure to be the most reasonable spiritual step. Granted, after taking that step you may surely be guided to faith, but it’s not to say that faith is something that you invent or decide to have.

good point

You yourself can never be sure if you made it or not. Temporal existence means constant struggle of faith against despair. Kierkegaard himself admits (in Concluding Unscientific Postscripts) that a Knight of Faith is but an aesthetic (and thus, from the religious point of view, false) rendering of that struggle being won. In that way he must have understood himself as a Christian, a one who struggles, and must have understood that there can be no other ways of being a Christian in temporality. He makes a concession for the being of apostles, but I'm pretty sure that concession is an aesthetic one (that is, you are not to apply his concept of an apostle to an actual human who may or may not pronounce himself an apostle, much less to yourself)

Have either of you even read Kierkegaard? Lmao what the fuck.

>I think that thinking of faith as a rational conclusion
it isn't a rational conclusion. it's absurd. that's the entire point

I understand that having faith in itself is absurd but the way he talks about it implies that he recognizes it as a practical function worth striving towards. Hence, the concept “leap of faith”, what is a leap if not a conscious decision to act? I’m proposing that the process of obtaining faith is not resultant of a rational decision to journey into the absurd, but the reward for striving towards God with prayer and other devotional behaviors. Faith isn’t something you just decide to plunge into, but a state of being which is cultivated overtime by the Grace of God and your own submission to Him. If I’ve misinterpreted what I’ve read of Kierkegaard feel free to correct me with your own interpretation, but I understood him to imply that the strive for faith was some sort of heroic act rather than a gift bestowed upon us after taking smaller steps.

I suppose you could argue that striving toward God with prayer is synonymous with a rational decision to journey to the absurd, but to me it feels less philosophical than the latter description. And judging by how I’ve seen people speak of it here, i believe others do indeed intellectualize the journey towards faith in a manner similar to Kierkegaard, rather than viewing it as a more intuitive response to a vocation or recognition of the soul’s longing.

I've read his devotional works and the first part of a Fragment of Life. I do need to read his major works, but right now I'm bored and am just trying to spark discussion. What do you think is wrong with the assessments made in this thread

>I understood him to imply that the strive for faith was some sort of heroic act rather than a gift bestowed upon us after taking smaller steps
It is heroic even in small steps, and one may argue that it's most heroic in small steps, because you always lack confidence about whether you take the correct steps. If you do have confidence then you're merely lying to yourself and are at your furthest from faith as Kierkegaard understands it.
>rational decision to journey into the absurd
You cannot rationally decide to journey into absurd, because absurd precludes any cost/benefit analysis.

Kierkegaard absolutely considered himself Christian. When he writes that he can't understand the knight of faith and can't make the leap in Fear and Trembling he's writing as Johannes de Silentio, not in propria persona.

I don't think he ever called himself a Christian when writing under his own name and not as a pseudonymous character.

Continuing--the important thing to remember--and Yea Forums always totally ignores this about Kierkegaard--is the ecclesiastical context of his writings. Kierkegaard wasn't a philosopher or theologian writing about Christianity in the abstract; he was very much concerned with the spiritual bankruptcy of the Danish Lutheran Church. The Church largely in practice denied the need of proper praxis in the Christian life; there were no sacrifices, no difficulties required to be Christian. For Kierkegaard this is very unbiblical. Where was the self-denial, the spiritual struggle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, powers, and the rulers of the darkness of this world. Kierkegaard published many devotional works under his own name in addition to his largely-pseudonymous philosophical works, you know, and his reverence for Christ and Christianity is clearly apparent in these, motivated by his guiding principle to make faith more difficult that it might be true faith.
I don't think there was any need to label oneself a Christian in 1840s-1850s Copenhagen. What else would you be? Sure, most folks even then were only nominally Christian (see above), but what would Kierkegaard have said--"I'm Christianer than you all"?

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>what would Kierkegaard have said--"I'm Christianer than you all"?
He does imply that a lot in his writing, in an ironic, Socratic way: "I know that I'm not a proper Christian, but at least I know that, and you all guys don't even know that." Anyway while he's undeniably Christian, his pseudonyms' struggles with Christianity obviously reflect his own struggles a lot. I think Johannes Climacus especially is close to Kierkegaard himself.

Good post, that's a nice perspective on the Socratic ignorance bit. Having just read "Johannes Climacus" I'm not sure I can agree that Climacus is closest to Kierkegaard. "Johannes Climacus" is essentially a fairy-tale story of young Climacus, who doesn't read any books or love women, he just loves to think. He hears things in his philosophy classes and tries to rederive them from pure thought but ends up caught in all sorts of contradictions, thinking this is his failure as a thinker when really it's the failing of modern philosophy. Climacus is the absurd extreme of rational thought; given Kierkegaard's emphasis on faith as a passion I feel comfortable in saying that a great gap exists between the two.

The leap of faith is not a rational conclusion, it is a decision that is grounded in faith alone, cannot be rationally justified, it is a pure movement from potential to actual. The leap of faith is in itself a demonstration of the power and truth of religion.

Well you are in complete agreement with Kierk, then.

He wrote religious sermons under his own name, ffs.

Of course there's a gap, I just think that ultimately, Kierkegaard himself is a thinker, an analyst. Of course he's also a poet, a lover and a million other things, represented, in part, by his other pseudonyms and characters, but however many times he empathises the necessity of passion, it is logical thought that lies at the core of both his philosophy and his own character. You can compare him to Nietzsche who was well capable of logical thought, and better than you and me, too, but who was, ultimately, a poet (and who fell, ultimately, into a poetic trap, but that's a story for a different thread)

A Catholic, not a Christian.

*cough*

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