ABSTRACT
Alongside Harald Beyer's Søren Kierkegaard og Norge, Per Lønning's doctoral dissertation, Samtidighedens Situation, is likely the most significant work in the history of Norwegian Kierkegaard research. Lønning develops and defends the view that Kierkegaard himself took the concept of contemporaneity to be central to his overarching theory of the Christian faith. Uncontroversially, Lønning links contemporaneity with the central concept of paradox and argues that the former only acquires its full meaning in relation to the latter. Lønning develops his view by means of a critical overview of the scholarly reception of the concept of paradox. However, Lønning extends this criticism by arguing that Kierkegaard's view of authentic faith leads him to emphasize the alienation of the authentic Christian believer from his or her community, ending, in Lønning's view, with an unacceptable overemphasis on the abasement of Christ. While retaining both historical and scholarly interest, Samtidighedens Situation undeniably has a faint sense of being incomplete.
