Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Struggling with God: Kierkegaard and the Temptation of Spiritual Trial

Struggling with God: Kierkegaard and the Temptation of Spiritual Trial

Podmore, Simon D.

Paperback

Religion General General Christianity

ISBN10: 0227173430
ISBN13: 9780227173435
Publisher: James Clarke Co
Published: Oct 31 2013
Pages: 294
Weight: 0.95
Height: 0.70 Width: 6.10 Depth: 9.10
Language: English
A theological exploration of the 'spiritual trial', drawing on Kierkegaard's treatment to propose a modern understanding of the Spirit's struggle towards God.

Invoking the biblical motif of Jacob's struggle with the Face of God (Genesis 32), Simon D. Podmore undertakes a constructive theological account of 'spiritual trial' (tentatio; known in German mystical and Lutheran tradition as Anfechtung) in relation to enduring questions of the otherness and hiddenness of God and the self, the problem of suffering and evil, the freedom of Spirit, and the anxious relationship between temptation and ordeal, fear and desire. This book traces a genealogy of spiritual trial from medieval German mystical theology, through Lutheran and Pietistic thought (Tauler; Luther; Arndt; Boehme), and reconstructs Kierkegaard's innovative yet under-examined recovery of the category (Anf gtelse: a Danish cognate for Anfechtung) within the modern context of the 'spiritless' decline of Christendom.

Developing the relationship between struggle (Anfechtung) and release (Gelassenheit), Podmore proposes a Kierkegaardian theology of spiritual trial which elaborates the kenosis of the self before God in terms of Spirit's restless longing to rest transparently in God. Offering an original rehabilitation of the temptation of spiritual trial, this book strives for a renewed theological hermeneutic which speaks to the enduring human struggle to realise the unchanging love of God in the face of spiritual darkness.

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