Abstract

In an Editor's Preface Pelikan admits that he finds "some of Sponheim's constructs rather artificial," but this disclaimer should not prevent him from bearing some responsibility for the gross inflation which makes the book almost unreadable. The basic idea of the work--namely, that Kierkegaard's thought can be seen as composing itself in the tension between diastasis and synthesis in the relation between God and man--is not without merit. Yet this idea could have been argued with clarity and grace and with much greater effect in a book half the size of the present volume.--J. T.