I apologise for not replying to this thread again sooner. Thanks for that quote from SK. I cannot say I grasp everything he is saying here, and reading some parts of SK can be a little tortorous for me. But nowhere near as tortorous as I found reading Sartre, or Neitzsche. Sartre left me with an awful sense of something like alienation. Some people read philosophy and they can remain at a distance, either they have a firm philosophy of life of their own, or they simply have learnt to evaluate other people's ideas without embracing those ideas - that not always easy though in reading the existentialists.
I think Kierkegaard re-discovered a neglected aspect of Christianity, the need to walk with Christ moment by moment. Francis Schaeffer agreed that in this respect at least Kierkegaard was correct, but SK also recognised the need for decisive conversion. What I understand is he was deeply critical of the Church in Denmark of his day and the way in which many people considered themselves christian merely from having undergone the rite of baptism. His other bete noire was the Danish Press of his day.
Its been noted, SK had a religious personality, somewhat like the Apostle Paul - "This one thing I do...." As a Lutheran he wished to be a family man, but he seemed find it impossible when it came to the point to go through with marrying Regine Olson, to whom he had been engaged. William Barratt, who wrote one of the best introductions to Existentialism, said this inability to commit to marriage, was due to this religious single-mindedness - SK had sought for something to devote himself to that would give meaning to life.
In regard to his philosophy it may be that he has been misunderstood in some respects - particularly his view of Truth, what truth is. Perhaps this is because people don't actually read Kierkegaard, they just become familiar with a quote or two and never realise they don't actually know what Kierkegaard was meaning. That said from what I have read of him his manner of writing is a little to blame at times also. SK believed we need God as our Teacher to come to know the truth. In this respect he differed a good deal from Plato, who as far as I can understand him thought the truth within us could be drawn out by careful questions.
What SK says in the above paragraph, I think Francis Schaeffer would ask in the following form:
"Do you believe that God exists and that he is a personal God, and that Jesus Christ is God, and that we are not merely talking about the word God, or the idea God, but the Personal-Infinite God Who is there?"
I find it a bit hard to shift gears from reading SK to reading Francis Schaeffer's books, and feel hit with a lot of dissonnance sometimes. I think that the latter did a very good job at articulating Historic Christianity and True Spirituality for modern people all the same.
