Eros and Self-Emptying: The Intersections of Augustine and Kierkegaard (Kierkegaard as a Christian Thinker)

by Lee C. Barrett III

It is notable that Kierkegaard seldom alludes to Augustine’s celebrated Confessions (a major exception being his paraphrase of the “restless heart” passage [JP 1, 65]), the book that is most frequently hailed as the precursor of Kierkegaard’s own approach to theological writing and his celebrated subjective turn. Moreover, Kierkegaard seldom quotes from Augustine’s doctrinally influential anti-Pelagian writings, even though the issues of original sin, human freedom, and divine grace would loom large in his own writings. (On the Good of Widowhood does contain an implicitly anti-Pelagian section in which Augustine urges widows to ascribe their celibacy to the power of God’s grace, but Kierkegaard does not refer to that section.) Perhaps less surprisingly, Augustine’s rather speculative The Trinity is conspicuously absent from the list of Kierkegaard’s direct citations and allusions.