The Life of Spirit: The Self and Sanctification in Søren Kierkegaard's The Sickness unto Death

Danish theologian and philosopher Søren Kierkegaard is often overlooked as an author in the Christian spiritual tradition. This paper answers Christopher Barnett's call to investigate themes of Christian spirituality in Kierkegaard's writing. In this paper, I argue that we can construct of...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Steinmetz, Michael Nathan (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Wiley-Blackwell 2023
In: Heythrop journal
Year: 2023, Volume: 64, Issue: 1, Pages: 46-59
IxTheo Classification:CB Christian life; spirituality
KAH Church history 1648-1913; modern history
NBE Anthropology
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Summary:Danish theologian and philosopher Søren Kierkegaard is often overlooked as an author in the Christian spiritual tradition. This paper answers Christopher Barnett's call to investigate themes of Christian spirituality in Kierkegaard's writing. In this paper, I argue that we can construct of vision of sanctification from Kierkegaard's The Sickness unto Death. While Kierkegaard does not directly deal with themes of sanctification in The Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard's pseudonym Anti-Climacus does demonstrate the ‘spiritless’ life of despair. The ‘spiritless’ life, as Anti-Climacus defines it, is a life that is not truly a ‘self’. Anti-Climacus systematically demonstrates four categories of despair, and all people not living in faith, whether they realise it or not, fit into one of these categories of ‘spiritless’ existence. I argue that by constructing the opposites of Kierkegaard's categories of despair I demonstrate that a ‘spirit-filled’ life exemplifies a vibrant Christian life of sanctification.
ISSN:1468-2265
Contains:Enthalten in: Heythrop journal
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1111/heyj.14164