“A Place of Rest at the Foot of the Altar”: Topological Categories and Correlations in Kierkegaard’s last Discourse at the Communion on Fridays

Abstract

Abstract This article describes a rhetorical characteristic of Kierkegaard’s thirteen Discourses “at the Communion” on Fridays (1848 – 1851), namely, their way of expressing religious truths, theological distinctions, and homiletic statements by a certain concept of space, place and movement, thus making them existentially accessible. It illustrates the fundamental meaning of this series of discourses and especially the last discourse for Kierkegaard’s entire work as an author. By focussing on the topological categories and correlations in the last discourse (1851), the article demonstrates the constitutive role of spatial terms and meanings and so discovers the theological topology of the series as a whole with its coincidences of soteriological, anthropological, liturgical, rhetorical, and existential movements—leading the listener/reader to the “place of rest at the foot of the altar.”