Kierkegaard on the Atonement: The Complementarity of Salvation as a Gift and Salvation as a Task

Abstract

AbstractKierkegaard’s complex use of atonement language has generated interpretive disputes about his understanding of that doctrine. The perplexity is due to the fact that Kierkegaard employed four different atonement motifs, all rooted in the history of the Christian tradition and all circulating in his contemporary Denmark. Two of these emphasized the objectivity of the atonement, while two of them described it as a phenomenon in the subjectivity of the believer. The unique thing about Kierkegaard’s use of all of these themes was his insistence that they only acquired significance when they were situated in the appropriate forms of pathos, which his literature tried to evoke. Consequently, the integration of these seemingly divergent views of the atonement would occur not in a theological system, but in the harmonization of specific passions in the life of an individual.