Joshua Furnal

This article examines how Søren Kierkegaard's theological anthropology furnished resources for reconstructing Christian humanism among mid-twentieth-century Catholic thinkers. Focusing on Romano Guardini (1885-1968) in Germany and Cornelio Fabro (1911-1995) in Italy, I demonstrate how each thinker creatively appropriated Kierkegaard's treatments of despair, interiority, and hope to address the fragmentation of modern Europe following the world wars. Guardini found in Kierkegaard an existential diagnosis of modern spiritual pathology, which he redirected towards a liturgical vision of Christian hope. Fabro, as Kierkegaard's major Italian translator, recovered metaphysical realism in the Dane's journals, which grounded existential subjectivity with a Thomistic framework. By concluding with Kierkegaard's own biblical reflections on hope from his Upbuilding Discourses, I argue that Kierkegaard's theological vision—centred on the God-relation as constitutive of selfhood—offered both thinkers a foundation for a Christian humanism capable of resisting totalitarian collectivism and secular reductionism while affirming human dignity, freedom, and hope in divine transcendence.

In this article, I argue that Søren Kierkegaard's prefatory editorial remark in Practice in Christianity about resorting to and making use of grace has a medieval inheritance, which stems from his reading of Hugh of St Victor (1096–1142). Rather than grounding Kierkegaard's remark exclusively within the Lutheran tradition, I suggest that the medieval inheritance of the relationship between operative and cooperative grace contributed to a theological development in Kierkegaard's view of sanctification. Moreover, Kierkegaard's journal entries prior to the publication of Practice in Christianity provide the connection to Hugh of St Victor's theology of sanctification. I briefly survey the development of Kierkegaard's view of grace and examine Kierkegaard's commentary on Hugh of St Victor's Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit. Then, I survey Hugh's distinction between restorative and cooperative grace against the wider backdrop of his theology of sanctification to highlight a structural affinity with Kierkegaard's writings. My aim is to identify and illuminate this unexplored Catholic source of Kierkegaard's distinction between grace and works that indicates a non-competitive relationship between divine and human agency.

In this article, I argue that Kierkegaard’s distinction between a genius and an apostle sheds light on the role of public theology in society. For Kierkegaard, the act and content of faith are rooted in testimonial knowledge which can be shared, and yet also bear witness to divine authority in word and deed. In the first section, I suggest that the contemporary conflict of approaches in public theology is rooted in a basic question in theology regarding the primacy of faith or reason when justifying a concrete, non-theological definition of the common good. In the second section, I rehearse Kierkegaard’s famous distinction between a genius and an apostle to draw attention to how the role of the public theologian in society is regulated by the theological negotiation of faith and reason for the common good in the form of testimony. The upshot of my argument is to uncover the unjustified neglect of the rich resources in Kierkegaard’s writings for current debates about public theology.

Catholic Theology after Kierkegaard investigates the writings of emblematic Catholic thinkers in the twentieth century to assess their substantial engagement with Kierkegaard's writings. Joshua Furnal argues that Kierkegaard's writings have stimulated reform and renewal in twentieth-century Catholic theology, and should continue to do so today. To demonstrate Kierkegaard's relevance in pre-conciliar Catholic theology, Furnal examines the wider evidence of a Catholic reception of Kierkegaard in the early twentieth century-looking specifically at influential figures like Theodor Haecker, Romano Guardini, Erich Przywara, and other Roman Catholic thinkers that are typically associated with the ressourcement movement. In particular, Furnal focuses upon the writings of Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and the Italian Thomist, Cornelio Fabro as representative entry points.

Although he is not always recognised as such, Søren Kierkegaard has been an important ally for Catholic theologians since the early twentieth century. I introduce for the first time in English the constructive theological features in the underexplored writings of the Italian Thomist, Cornelio Fabro. In the first section, I set the stage with Fabro’s historical context to show Fabro’s desire to negotiate his loyalty to the Thomist revival after Aeterni Patris and the claims of the modern world. In the second, I focus on Fabro’s recovery of Kierkegaard’s writings as a way into understanding Fabro’s wider project of renewal in Catholic theology. Specifically, I draw upon Fabro’s treatment of Kierkegaard’s Mariology and Ecclesiology as two counter-intuitive examples of Catholic theological renewal. I conclude with some observations regarding how Fabro’s constructive theological contribution deepens and expands current understanding of ressourcement theology in the twentieth century. My aim is not just to narrate a vital moment in the history of Catholic engagement with Kierkegaard, but also to provide a representative entry point for Kierkegaard’s writings to continue to stimulate reform and renewal in contemporary Catholic theology in the wake of the ressourcement movement.