Dissertation Creation - The UK's original provider of custom dissertations and dissertation help...

Free Dissertations - Religion Dissertations

Kierkegaard's Use Of The Bible. One Of The Defining Pieces Of The Christian ...

Kierkegaard's use of the Bible.
One of the defining pieces of the Christian faith is the Biblical witness. Centuries of Christians have centered their beliefs in this work based from oral tradition and copying. Albeit protested, the Christian Scripture is the prime regulator of Christian piety and, ultimately, faith. Christian's dependence on the scriptural account inevitably has made it a centerpiece of debate and criticism. In the end, the way one reads the Bible is the way that one reads the faith. However, there is consensus among most Christians that there is, indeed, a right way to read the Bible. The problem arises in determining what that exactly is. Søren Kierkegaard is no different than scores of Christians before and after him in his value of the Bible. Scripture was nothing less than a life-changing engagement for Kierkegaard that haunted and shaped his philosophy and life choices. This particular essay will evaluate Kierkegaard's use of the Christian Bible in his work and life.
Scope
It is not a stretch to state that Kierkegaard's single most important piece of literature was the Bible. He states through one of his pseudonyms (Victor Eremita) The Bible is always on my table and is the book I read most. More than fifteen hundred references are made to Christian Scripture in all his major works, with more in his lesser journals and papers. It is not correct to state that Kierkegaard studied the Scriptures for mere academic interest; the opposite is true. The reading of Scripture was a transformative process, shaping the reader into a new kind of human. His view of Scripture is foreshadowing, it seems, to Karl Barth in this stream. Although Barth was more formal in his formulation of the proper way of reading Scripture, they hold similar conclusions. The Holy Spirit meets the believer in his or her reading of the Bible and begins to work on their heart through the words and witness of the text.
His reliance on Scripture as a central aspect of Christian faith is evidenced in his daily practice of reading the Bible methodically. For Kierkegaard, the Scripture was a like a letter from a beloved, and was to be treated so. One didn't consult a commentary to read a love letter. But rather, one read it and was affected by it in the most intimate way. This is the crux of his chief complaint against his own Lutheran church establishment in regards to Scripture. By looking at the Scripture in ‘scientific' ways, in attempts to prove its objective truth, these critics were trivializing the value of the Bible as a spiritual document. It is the ‘cunning' of Christendom to objectify the Bible by converting it into a problem for scholarship. The reader approaches the Bible not in order to discover himself in the word of the divine but to determine in an objective and scholarly way whether one can claim that such a word is in fact divine.

Please note: The above dissertation snippet was written by a student and then submitted to us to display and help others. Thanks to all the students who have submitted their work to us.