Eros and Self Emptying: The Intersections of Augustine and Kierkegaard (Kierkegaard as a Christian Thinker)
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
In this book—the first volume in the Kierkegaard as a Christian Thinker series—Lee Barrett offers a novel comparative interpretation of early church father Augustine and nineteenth-century philosopher-theologian Søren Kierkegaard.
Though these two intellectual giants have been paired by historians of Western culture, the exact nature of their similarities and differences has not been probed in detail. Barrett demonstrates that on many essential theological levels Augustine and Kierkegaard were more convergent than divergent. Most significantly, their parallels point to a distinctive understanding of the Christian life as a passion for self-giving love. In this engaging text, Barrett argues that approaching Kierkegaard through the lens of Augustine enables us to identify the theme of desire for fulfillment in God as much more central to Kierkegaard’s thought than previously imagined.
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- Demonstrates Augustine and Kierkegaard as more convergent than divergent
- Examines two intellectual giants who have been paired by historians of Western culture
- Explores the theme of desire for fulfillment in God
- Kierkegaard’s Tensive Picture of Augustine
- Augustine’s Restless Heart and Kierkegaard’s Desire for an Eternal Happiness
- Augustine and Kierkegaard on the Road: Life as a Journey
- God: The Attraction and Repulsion of Boundless Love
- Sin: Culpable Action and Corrupt State
- God’s Gracious Response to Sin: The Enigma of Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility
- Christology: The Allure of Lowliness
- Salvation: Faithful Love and Loving Faith
- The Church: A Parting of the Ways?
- Conclusion: Two Edifying Theologies of Self-Giving
What has Hippo to do with Copenhagen? In this superb study Lee Barrett displays how, for all of their differences, Augustine and Kierkegaard unexpectedly share a vision of the Christian life as a journey circling around two central themes: the heart’s restless desire-filled journey to God and God’s self-emptying journey to the individual. . . . Barrett’s command of each thinker’s writings, historical context, and reception is complete. . . . Best of all, he shows how reading both Augustine and Kierkegaard as rhetorical and dialectical thinkers challenges us to rethink traditional Catholic and Protestant binary oppositions. The result is an important contribution not only to studies of Augustine and Kierkegaard but also to constructive Christian theological reflection.
—David J. Gouwens, professor of theology, Brite Divinity School
One could hardly ask for a finer or more highly nuanced treatment of the convergences and divergences, both direct and indirect, between Augustine and Kierkegaard than Barrett has given us in this rich comparative study of these two great theologians of love.
—Sylvia Walsh, scholar in residence, Stetson University
Lee Barrett has done a great service to the scholarly community in providing this study of the relationship between Augustine and Kierkegaard. His attention to the pastoral purpose of their respective writings has yielded a theologically astute and wonderfully insightful account of the commonalities and divergences between these two great thinkers. Readers of Augustine and of Kierkegaard will surely benefit from Barrett’s study, but so too will anyone interested in what the Christian journey of faith involves.
—Murray Rae, professor, University Otago
- Title: Eros and Self Emptying: The Intersections of Augustine and Kierkegaard
- Author: Lee C. Barrett
- Publisher: Eerdmans
- Publication Date: 2013
- Pages: 428
- Christian Group: Evangelicals
- Resource Type: Topical
- Topic: Theology
Lee C. Barrett is the Mary B. and Henry P. Stager Professor of Theology at Lancaster Theological Seminary. He is also the author of the Abingdon Pillars of Theology volume on Kierkegaard and coeditor of the two-volume work Kierkegaard and the Bible.