Kierkegaard on Sin

Abstract

In the nineteen-thirties, when Søren Kierkegaard was beginning to become internationally known and his ideas were being eagerly discussed, Theodor Haecker noted that of all those who had reason to take up the task of interpretation the theologians were the least active. Today, in spite of the wealth of Kierkegaardian studies available, the situation is not so very different. The great Christian writer is still more commonly thought of as the pioneer of existentialism than as a skilled exponent of Christianity, and the bearing of his teaching upon doctrinal issues is seldom mentioned. It is true that he said that Christianity was not a doctrine, and that he wrote no formal theology. Insisting that his role was that of a layman, the most he claimed was that some of his writings were specifically ‘for edification’. At the same time, he strenuously opposed the opinion that Christian belief could stand without a very definite content, pointing out that the inwardness demanded of the individual presupposed knowledge of the ‘objectively dogmatic’: in faith the how could not be separated from the what.