Preface

Summary

I am grateful to my professors, colleagues, and students who have read Kierkegaard's frustrating and fruitful texts with me. Vanessa Rumble, at Boston College, was the first teacher to introduce me to Kierkegaard's work. From the first week, reading Fear and Trembling and hearing her engaged, close explication, I was hooked. She inspires in her students not only a love for Kierkegaard, but also a passion for the truth about ourselves. At every stage of this project, Gene Outka offered patient, persistent advice, and I learned a great deal under his guidance. May the extent to which I differ with him be a testimony to his generous, ever-charitable, teaching. Margaret Farley, David Gouwens, George Lindbeck, and Cyril O'Regan read a prior manuscript in full. Like Dorothy Day, Margaret bristles when her students at Yale call her a saint, but we do so with the prayer that there may be more like her. Margaret lives the faithful love about which she so perceptively writes. While still in course work, I presented an early version of Chapter 3 at the AAR, and, from that point on, David Gouwens has been an invaluable advisor and colleague. George Lindbeck not only taught me how to read theologically, he took my questions seriously before I even knew how to formulate them. Through his attentive encouragement, he has had an inestimable influence on my development as a scholar.