Christentum christenheit kierkegaard biography wikipedia

During his later years — , most of his writings shifted from philosophical in nature to religious. Kierkegaard's theology focuses on the single individual in relation to a known God based on a subjective truth.

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (5 May – 11 November ), was a 19th-century Danish philosopher and theologian, and is usually thought of as the first existentialist philosopher.

Many of his writings were a directed assault against all of Christendom , Christianity as a political and social entity. Christendom, in Kierkegaard's view, made individuals lazy in their religion. Many of the citizens were officially "Christians", without having any idea of what it meant to be a Christian. Kierkegaard attempted to awaken Christians to the need for unconditional religious commitment.

However, he was also against party spirit in religion as well as other areas of study and system building. His father, Michael Pederson Kierkegaard, was a Lutheran Pietist , but he questioned how God could let him suffer so much.

It isn’t easy to understand the philosophy and life of Søren Kierkegaard.

One day, he climbed a mountain and cursed God. For this sin , Michael believed that a family curse was placed upon him, that none of his children would live a full life. He decided not to become a pastor nor a professor because if he had he would have had to write under the authority of the State or the Church. He craved freedom, and for that reason he wrote "without authority".

He also believed in Christ as the ultimate authority in matters of personal faith. He was against beginning a "new religion", unlike Hegel , the religion of reason, and Schelling , the religion of nature. He always wrote to students of religion as a student of religion. Jacob Loewenberg described Hegel's God in the following terms in