At the end of his life, in the public attack on the Church of Denmark, Kierkegaard was vicious in his criticism of the clergy and their preaching, ruthless in his condemnation of the abdication of the Church to bourgeois culture and society. So radical is his attack that some have read in this late Kierkegaard a wholesale rejection not only of the Church but of Christianity. In this essay it is argued that Kierkegaard might be understood differently, that his was (...) an eschatological perspective, one which criticized the Church while holding on to a vision of the Kingdom present in her, despite her failings. (shrink)

At the end of his life, in the public attack on the Church of Denmark, Kierkegaard was vicious in his criticism of the clergy and their preaching, ruthless in his condemnation of the abdication of the Church to bourgeois culture and society. So radical is his attack that some have read in this late Kierkegaard a wholesale rejection not only of the Church but of Christianity. In this essay it is argued that Kierkegaard might be understood differently, that his was (...) an eschatological perspective, one which criticized the Church while holding on to a vision of the Kingdom present in her, despite her failings. (shrink)