ABSTRACT
Against interpreters like Louis Mackey who construed Soren Kierkegaard as being primarily a poet or an ironic provocateur, Arnold B. Come contends that Kierkegaard employed his considerable literary talents to clarify the morphology of the Christian faith. Kierkegaard was first and foremost a theologian who subordinated poetry to the service of theology. Come asserts that poets deal with images, while theologians deal with concepts, and concludes that Kierkegaard was mostly in the business of conceptual clarification. Kierkegaard’s overarching purpose was to present the contours of the Christian life clearly so that the reader would be enabled to intentionally adopt it. According to Come, Kierkegaard as theologian made explicit the implicit connections among Christian concepts, and detected an underlying pattern: the self as a gift, the self as a failure, and the self in need of the Eternal. In spite of his celebrated attention to passion, Kierkegaard was convinced that rigorous reflection played an important role in illuminating the Christian ideal.
