Christian existentialism

The school of thought is often traced back to the work of the Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) who is widely regarded as the father of existentialism.

Kierkegaard addressed themes such as authenticity, anxiety, love, and the irrationality and subjectivity of faith, rejecting efforts to contain God in an objective, logical system.

agape, mercy and loving-kindness) had become perverted, and Christianity had deviated considerably from its original threefold message of grace, humility, and love.

[4] Christian Existentialism often refers to what it calls the indirect style of Christ's teachings, which it considers to be a distinctive and important aspect of his ministry.

[citation needed] An existential reading of the Bible demands that the reader recognize that he is an existing subject, studying the words that God communicates to him personally.

Karl Barth added to Kierkegaard's ideas the notion that existential despair leads an individual to an awareness of God's infinite nature.

[citation needed] Walker Percy, an American author from the twentieth century, gave Christian existentialist critique of contemporary society.

[citation needed] In the monograph, Existential Theology: An Introduction (2020), Hue Woodson provides a constructive primer to the field and, he argues, thinkers that can be considered more broadly as engaging with existential theology, defining a French school including Gabriel Marcel, Jacques Maritain, and Jean-Luc Marion,[16] a German school including Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer,[17] and a Russian school including Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, and Nikolai Berdyaev.

[18] It has been claimed that radical existential Christians’ faith is based in their sensible and immediate and direct experience of God indwelling in human terms.