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

by Lee C. Barrett III

For most orthodox Lutherans of Kierkegaard’s day, the essence of Christianity was God’s offer of forgiveness for the individual’s moral and spiritual failures — and God’s correlative acceptance and embrace of the still sinful self. Lutherans have typically agreed that the theme of justification by grace, not desire for God, is the doctrine on which the church stands or falls. Because of this dizzying variety of construals of the essence of Christianity, we will need to explore what is distinctive about Augustine’s and Kierkegaard’s understandings of the Christian faith as the desire for an absolute good and an eternal happiness. We must also clarify what they actually meant by those notoriously elusive terms.