About the Book

There are few authors as repeatedly quoted and consistently unread as Søren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard himself is partly to blame for this: his style is dense, his thoughts complex. And yet embedded within his writings and journals are metaphors and truths so deep and vivid, they can overwhelm you with an almost blinding clarity about the life of true discipleship.

Editor Charles E. Moore has done us an invaluable service by putting together arguably the most accessible and complete Kierkegaard volume to be published in decades. Here is a book for anyone who takes the search for authenticity seriously.

Divided into six sections, Provocations contains a little of everything from Kierkegaard's prodigious output, including his wryly humorous attacks on what he calls the "mediocre shell" of conventional Christianity, his brilliantly pithy parables, his amazing insights on the human condition, and his incisive attempts to dig through the fluff of theological jargon and clear a way for the basics: decisiveness, obedience, passion, and recognition of the truth.

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Praise

Tablet of Contents

I To Will One Thing

  1. Dare to Decide
  2. Either/Or
  3. Under the Spell of Good Intentions
  4. The Greatest Danger
  5. The Task
  6. Against the Crowd
  7. Suspending the Ethical
  8. To Need God Is Perfection
  9. Purity of Heart
  10. Emissaries from Eternity
  11. God Has No Cause
  12. An Eternity in Which to Repent

II Truth and the Passion of Inwardness

  1. Truth Is the Way
  2. The Road Is How
  3. Two Ways of Reflection God’s Existence
  4. The Weight of Inwardness
  5. Christ Has No Doctrine
  6. Faith: The Matchless Lack of Logic
  7. Passion and Paradox
  8. The Folly of Proving
  9. Answering Doubt
  10. Alone With God’s Word
  11. Followers not Admirers
  12. Fear and Trembling

III The Works of Love

  1. God’s Triumphant Love
  2. Neighbor Love
  3. The Greater Love
  4. Love the Person You See
  5. Love’s Hidden Need
  6. Love Builds Up
  7. Love’s Like-for-Like
  8. Love Abides – Forever!
  9. When Love Is Secure

IV Anxiety and the Gospel of Suffering

  1. Nebuchadnezzar
  2. The War Within
  3. Sickness Unto Death
  4. The Dynamics of Despair
  5. Consider the Lilies
  6. Behold the Birds of the Air
  7. The Royal Coachman
  8. The Invitation
  9. When the Burden Is Light
  10. A Dangerous Schooling
  11. To Suffer Christianly

Christian Collisions

  1. The Offense
  2. What Says the Fire Chief?
  3. Christianity Does
  4. What Madness
  5. The Echo Answers
  6. The Tax Collector
  7. Gospel for the Poor
  8. How God Relates Inversely
  9. Undercover Clergy Not Exist
  10. “First the Kingdom of God”
  11. Childish Orthodoxy
  12. Kill the Commentators!
  13. Church Militant

VII Thoughts That Radically Cure: Excerpts and Aphorisms

  1. Anxiety and Despair
  2. Becoming Christian
  3. The Bible
  4. Christ
  5. Christendom and Counterfeit Christianity
  6. The Cross
  7. The Crowd Read excerpt
  8. Decisiveness
  9. Doctrine and Theology
  10. Doubt and Skepticism
  11. The Eternal
  12. Existence and the Existential
  13. Faith and Reason
  14. Following Jesus
  15. Forgiveness
  16. Freedom
  17. God
  18. God’s Love
  19. Grace
  20. The Human Condition
  21. The Individual
  22. Inwardness and Subjectivity
  23. Love
  24. Obedience
  25. Passion
  26. Politics and the State
  27. Prayer
  28. Preaching and Proclamation
  29. Purity
  30. Repentance
  31. Sacrifice and Self-Denial
  32. Silence and Solitude
  33. Sin
  34. Spiritual Trial
  35. Suffering
  36. Tribulation and Persecution
  37. Truth
  38. Venturing and Risk
  39. Witness
  40. Works
  41. Worship
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