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God's Word Is The Mirrorby Reading Or Hearing It I Am To See Myself In The ...

God's Word is the mirrorby reading or hearing it I am to see myself in the mirror, says Kierkegaard.
For even the casual reader of Kierkegaard it is immediately clear how central the Biblical account was to his writing and thought. Works, such as Fear and Trembling find their central focus on a biblical story. The Sickness unto Death constantly refers to Biblical themes. And Works of Love finds its central focus in Christ's vision of love during the Gospel account. Even these uses display Kierkegaard's understanding of the proper use of Scripture, to name a few. Kierkegaard is clearly intrigued by the stories and motifs of the Bible. He does not engage in line by line exegesis, nor does he talk about archeological findings or Greco-roman cultural or linguistic features. These, like mentioned before, belittle the message. For Kierkegaard the message is the whole point. This is not to say that he was wholly uninterested in the more philological aspects of the text itself; he would not oppose deeper understanding of the words themselves. Further study into the meaning of the text is not what Kierkegaard opposes. He opposes the objectification of Scripture as a piece of history, or a piece of literature, etc., that can be dissected to pieces. There is an inherent beauty in the Biblical account, one that is trivialized in such modernistic projects. The Gospel message in the Biblical account is the unique power of Christianityan engaging personal power. One finds him or herself facing his or her sin in the Scriptures along with its characters, and thus engages Christ like the characters do.
Kierkegaard's scriptural programme centered on reaching those who were, indeed, the hardest to reach with the Christian messagethe nominal Christian. Nothing incited Kierkegaard's creative instincts more than calling out the hypocrisy and lax religious automatic devotion. To borrow Bonhoeffer's words a century latter, Kierkegaard saw nothing but cheap grace, in a religion that demanded a very costly form. Kierkegaard was most poignant on this front when he was turning difficult Biblical texts into demanding existential decisions. Indeed, Kierkegaard was not afraid of leading his readers into their own ‘hells' before being resurrected. His Biblical approach is nothing less than profoundly simple (albeit nuanced), especially for the individual coming to the Scripture for spiritual guidance. His challenge was to find oneself in the text, and then let the Holy Spirit change them.
His Method
Kierkegaard did not possess a formal hermeneutic, nor did he write on the subject directly. This is likely because his view of proper reading and appropriation of Scripture was rather simpleidentify oneself with the text and allow it to be transformative. His method is best seen in his Christian Discourses.

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