ABSTRACT

A Professor of Religion at Thiel College, Curtis L. Thompson has had a long-term interest in the debates about Christianity that took place in Golden Age Denmark. Thompson's work constitutes the most detailed investigation to date of the complex relation of two of the giants in Danish Golden Age theology and can be regarded as a landmark study in many ways. Thompson's study returns to the Soren Kierkegaard–Hans Lasson Martensen relation with fresh eyes and attempts to give a more nuanced picture of both Martensen and Kierkegaard's attack on him. Thompson's goal is simply to understand why Martensen was so important for Kierkegaard, and his study is based on meticulous source-work research. Thompson first treats the early period from 1833 to 1841 when Martensen was a popular young instructor at the University of Copenhagen. Thompson in a very even-handed manner shows how much Kierkegaard actually owed to Martensen.