Working Through “Works of Love”

With summer just around the corner, I’ve begun my summer studies, focusing on a series of books related to Existentialism and language. The first: Soren Kierkegaard’s Works of Love.

The plan is to walk through the book, identify particular quotations and expound on them. This acts in part as my on commentaries on the texts, but also (hopefully) as a place where we can act as conversation partners.

Not read Kierkegaard or Works of Love? Here are a couple videos to help you:

On Works Of Love.

On Kierkegaard.

SK argues in the beginning that every argument must have at its core the antecedents — what are we bringing as presuppositions. So I thought it fair to offer a couple of my own.

• I’m in part looking at this series of works to help me get to a question about authenticity in faith. What are we lacking? What has happened post-COVID to cause people to doubt the worth of church? There’s an interesting question about what was thought “non-essential” during COVID now suddenly trying to have salience. While we may not have argued thus, it became the story told — if for anything because of its resistance amongst other churches, who saw closure as some kind of acquiescence to power. That’s a whole other series of conversations.
• It begs the question, however, about what does church matter anymore? There are many fair critiques of the hypocrisy of the church, and while I’ve always been an institutionalist, I understand what dangers underly and institutional church, and where collective fidelity goes. But yet, why should anyone care about the church anymore? What does it offer?
• I also was very taken by a recent Harper’s article about the problems with work. The author uses Habermas as his conversation partner, and the parallels to authenticity in the church were very apparent to me. So the plan is to move to Habermas next, but for a moment, I felt that SK might provide a better grounding.

I do believe in the church. I believe that is has deep value both spiritually and culturally. I’m a Reformed pastor through and through, and also see the value in Reformed theology as a strong lens to understand how the church matters. I’ve also spent a lot of time with Existentialists, and in particular spent a lot of time with hemerneutics, reading Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricoueur, and Habermas. I’ve found a real home in this stream of thought, and thought it best to start with what makes sense.

Anyway, if it’s of interest to you, keep up with the articles and we’ll go! Look forward to the conversation upcoming.

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