Soren Kierkegaard was a 19th century Dutch philosopher and theologian. Born in Copenhagen in 1813, he only lived to be forty two. He wrote extensively over man and varied literary genres and was a strong critic of Hegel. He was consumed with the idea of what it meant to be a Christian, and is credited with being of the first writers to put forward the ideas which would become Existentialism.
For Kierkegaard, God comes as man in Christ as a person would in a disguise. As such, when Jesus is incarnate, it is his purpose to not be identified. As such, to suggest that we would easily have identified him had we lived at that time is blasphemous, for we cannot outsmart God (271). Nevertheless, Jesus did intend for people to be able to identify him while on earth, albeit through an indirect way. In
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He is a man. As such, the disguise has a certain power over him and he really suffers (273). Kierkegaard next moves onto the question as to whether Christianity exists or not. He argues that it does not, for Christianity is only ever New Testament Christianity, and New Testament Christianity no longer exists. There are many well meaning priests and laity, but they are not Christian (274). A poet can define love in a certain way, and then assert that no love exists in the land. Here, however, a person can simply offer a competing definition of love and posit that love does exist in the land. Christianity, however, cannot be defined in various ways. Christianity is found in the New Testament and no where else (276). The reason Kierkegaard seems to think that no Christianity exists is the existence of hypocrisy in the church. Minister preach the repudiation of worldly titles while desiring them themselves, and people do not truly suffer for Christian doctrine (277). This all seems like a dubious claim. In fact, it bears to mind the question of what comprises the church. If the church is the