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Mckim Summarizes Well Kierkegaard's Concern Was Not That One Should Exegete ...

McKim summarizes well Kierkegaard's concern was not that one should exegete Scripture in a certain way but rather that Scripture should be allowed to exegete life.
Kierkegaard is well known for his clashes with the state Lutheran church of his day. The church was characterized not only by Hegelian overtones, but also by a more traditional doctrinal approach. Although Kierkegaard intensely hated this form of construing religion it had a lot of historical weight behind it. Kierkegaard did not think that doctrine was valueless to the church, but rather saw it as a crutch of sorts whereupon people set their minds to stagnation. He valued doctrine as a regulator of the boundaries of faith, but found that Christians tended to heighten the value of doctrine over scriptural encounter. In other words, parishioners knew what they believed but were helpless on how to live a life of faith. Faith, for Kierkegaard, is not a static reality but a relational one.
The Bible is under attack when it is reduced to simple doctrines. He is vehemently opposed to the glossing over of the powerful message of the Bible, While the pastors dispute about who can write most beautifully, while journals and periodicals with deep seriousness criticize the artistic aspects of the language, construction, etc., we completely forget that we are to act according to the, that God has not really given his word as material for a literary exercise to see who is able to present it most elegantly. He goes on further elsewhere in his frustration that the church refuses to hear the message of the Scriptures, Let us collect all the New Testaments there are and bring them out to an open place or up on a mountain and then, while we all kneel, let someone talk to God in this manner: take this book back again. We human beings, such as we are, are not fit to involve ourselves with such a things, it only makes us unhappy. His disputes with the established church not only called it to radically engage with the message of the Gospel, but to do so without boundaries. The church had created ways to buffer the demands of Christ through intricate doctrines, biblical criticism, journal writing, etc. This is what Kierkegaard really wanted to dismantlethe barriers to a faith driven life.
Conclusion
The Biblical vision of Søren Kierkegaard can be summed up as imaginative imitation. For Kierkegaard, the act of engaging the texts of the Christian Scriptures on their own terms was essential. One came to the Scriptures to hear from God through the Holy Spirit. Yet, it can not be relegated to mere hearing but, also, doing. The reader's engagement with the Scripture is existential in the deepest sense. The words of the Bible not only serve as a mirror, for Kierkegaard, but also as call for imitation.

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