Why Does Søren Kierkegaard Still Matter? | Fr. Bonaventure Chapman and Fr. Joseph-Anthony Kress

May 18, 2026

Is faith just about following rules… or something deeper?

This episode of Godsplaining dives into the thought of Søren Kierkegaard—one of the most influential Christian philosophers of the modern era and often called the “father of existentialism.”

Fr. Bonaventure and Fr. Joseph-Anthony explore how Kierkegaard pushed back against overly rational approaches to Christianity, especially those influenced by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. While Hegel emphasized reason as the key to understanding reality and faith, Kierkegaard insisted that faith cannot be reduced to logic—it must be lived personally and existentially.

The episode unpacks Kierkegaard’s famous framework of the three stages of life:

• The Aesthetic Stage
• The Ethical Stage
• The Religious Stage

Through his works like Either/Or and Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard shows that true faith goes beyond rules and reason. Using the story of Abraham, he introduces the idea of a “teleological suspension of the ethical”—that God’s call can transcend human logic, requiring trust and surrender, even when we don’t fully understand.

Ultimately, this episode highlights a powerful truth: Christian faith is not secondhand. It is a personal encounter with the most-high God.