Encountering Mark’s Gospel with Soren Kierkegaard
An Introduction to A Kierkegaardian Reading of the Gospel of Mark
- Biblical Studies & Commentaries
- Philosophy
- Publisher: Resource Publications (Wipf and Stock)
- Published: 2026
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Publisher's Description
Soren Kierkegaard, the nineteenth-century poetic philosopher, wrote about the encounter with the gospel in a way unmatched in the modern era. He perceived “the possibility of offense” in Jesus’ invitation: “The Halt—Come here now, all you who labor and are burdened, if you suffer most miserably, to be helped into even greater misery!” So, the burdened disciples come to Jesus as the Savior of their nation only to encounter his command to “take up their own Roman cross to follow him.” They are “helped into even greater misery.” In despair, they say, “Then who can be saved?” Meanwhile, Jesus’ compassionate healings of the needy provokes the religious leaders’ plot to destroy him to preserve their unjust societal power over the crowd. When Jesus’ execution is imminent, his disciples are stripped of all pretenses of following him. In the end, Jesus’ death and resurrection “ransoms” them. But why does their faith-trial occupy so much of Mark’s Gospel? Kierkegaard’s insights on spiritual despair, difficult faith, and crowd conformity reveal why humble self-knowledge before God prepares a person to fully receive Jesus’ “radical cure,” the gospel of the cross. This enables them to truly love God, themselves, and others.
Endorsements (2)
“This book takes us on a helicopter ride over the long and winding river traveled in Christman’s series, A Kierkegaardian Reading of the Gospel of Mark. Along the way, he presents new insights into the Evangelist’s method of bringing readers into personal encounter with Christ. As such, this book has great value both as a stand-alone commentary and a companion to the series’s deeper exploration of faith at the confluence of Mark’s Gospel and Kierkegaard’s poetic theology.”
“The Gospel of Mark has long been hailed as the most urgent and arguably the most passionate of the four canonical gospels. Mark presents Jesus in a way that is stirringly human—exhausted, sorrowful, angry, and sometimes bordering on despair. For Mark, weakness and rejection are central to understanding who Jesus is, and, for that reason, his portrait remains capable of shocking readers even today. So, the question then becomes: how can we enter into this forbidding text? In Encountering Mark’s Gospel with Søren Kierkegaard, Bryan M. Christman once again uses the great Danish thinker to penetrate the mysteries of Mark’s Gospel and, with it, the paradoxical calling of the Christian spiritual life writ large.”
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