Augustine, Kierkegaard, and the Seduction of the Word: Rediscovering an Unfamiliar Theological Style

Lee Barrett’s Eros and Self Emptying: The Intersections of Augustine and Kierkegaard draws a strong contrast between the ‘‘Augustine’’ whom Kierkegaard thought he knew and the Augustine we have come to know through recent scholarship. The dogmatic, speculative, non-rhetorical Augustine whom Kierkegaard rejected has come to be replaced by a rhetorical Augustine whose voice is adapted to a variety of audiences—an Augustine whose theological style is more similar to Kierkegaard than he ever knew. This realization enables Barrett to discover unforeseen intersections between these two Christian intellectuals, but none is more fundamental than their shared commitment to a form of theological rhetoric: one where what is most central is what transpires in the subjective experience of the reader or hearer rather than in the objective status of theological propositions. Barrett’s work clears the way for similar assessments of other intellectuals.