Overview

What is it to be? And what is it to be a Christian? Casey Spinks suggests these two questions belong together when readers attend to Kierkegaard’s authorship, and such attention calls for the task of uncovering Kierkegaard’s fundamental ontology. This book argues that the heart of that ontology is to be found in the religious discourses of his Second Authorship. Using the devotional discourse The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air as his guide, Spinks argues that Kierkegaard offers a distinct Christian sense of being: faith. In particular, in his Second Authorship, he moves from irony to earnestness, and identifies silence, obedience, and joy as ontologically significant categories. This Christian ontology fundamentally opposes the rationalist ontology of G.W.F. Hegel—as well as any other philosophical ontology based on autonomous reason or human subjectivity. As a result, Kierkegaard proves to be a unique Christian figure in the history of Western metaphysics, one with forceful relevance to contemporary questions of first philosophy and first theology.

Full Product Details

9781666981926

Table of Contents

Reviews

Casey Spinks has given us a rich and illuminating theological guide to Kierkegaard’s vision of what it means to be. Beautifully crafted, Kierkegaard's Ontology: The Faith to Be shows how Kierkegaard draws our attention beyond abstract speculation into the lived reality of faith. The result is a study that is both rigorous and edifying—one that, if read faithfully, should inspire a kind of constructive theological reflection that has much to offer the Church today. * Andrew Torrance, University of St Andrews, UK * In his sparkling and engaging new study, Casey Spinks deftly and persuasively shows that ontology—meaning the study of ‘being’—illuminates basic and everyday experiences of life. He then goes on to also show how, guided by Kierkegaard, it can reveal the fundamental joy of existing. A brilliant new study that confirms Kierkegaard as a significant dialogue partner for thinking about what it is to be human. * George Pattison, University of Glasgow, UK *

Author Information

Casey Spinksis teaching postdoctoral fellow of religion at Baylor University, USA.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available