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This attention is evident in this passage. He stresses the importance of reflecting upon the divine word, and in turn fostering the divine-human relationship.
A discussion of Kierkegaard's view of Scripture can not avoid his emphasis on Galatians. It is likely that no other series of passages affected Kierkegaard so deeply than those of Paul in his letter to the Galatians. Many of his chief life dilemmas (i.e. his father, deaths of his family, and his broken engagement with Regine) occurred in the backdrop of his personal exegesis of Galatians. It is well known that two of his major questions in light of Scripture were the difference between Judaism and what the chief difference between Christianity and philosophy was. As for the first, Kierkegaard resolves this dilemma in the backdrop of a larger familial dilemma.
Kierkegaard's father, Michael, was especially troubling for him. On the one hand Søren looked up to his father as both a parent and a friend. Yet on the other hand, his father lived under the shadow of a seemingly vengeful God. This is not surprising for a man devoted to the Lutheran tradition; Luther had his own particular vision of a wrath restrained God. Michael believed the deaths of five of his seven children stemmed from his own action against God. God was, according to Michael, settling the score for him once cursing God as a poor child in Jutland. Even Søren had, at times, the impression that he too would die young since God punishes a man's descendants.This view was intensified when Søren learned that his father had been unfaithful to his first wife before she died with their servant girl (Michael's second wife). Søren had a lot of Old Testament narrative to identify with. What was troubling was his understanding of his father's intensely melancholic Christianity alongside an acute awareness of the message of joy in the Biblical account. Such a legalistic and judiciary God seemed to have little joy to bestow on his servants. This presents a biographical dichotomy that finds a scholarly outlet in his debate over Judaism and Christianity. Both crises are resolved for Kierkegaard in his reading of Galatians 3:19-4:8.
Kierkegaard comes to the distinct impression from his reading of Galatians, like many Christians before him, that there is indeed no justification from the law. It is justification by faith that brings the Christian out of darkness. From this point, one familiar with Kierkegaard's subsequent work can begin to see the integral importance of this realization of justification by faith not law. His famous philosophical work that emphasizes the importance of faith stems from his watershed exegesis of Galatians 3:19-4:8. This is, indeed, not an original exegesis of this passage. Paul has been read almost universally in this sense (most famously re-read by Luther). Paul is rather explicit.
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