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(Editor's note: I asked D. to write us a brief essay explaining how our Buddhist commentator misapprehended Kierkegaard. Here is his analysis.)

The primary reference work herein used is The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard.

The idea that a God could be transformed into a man, more specifically Jesus, is a paradox. "Christian dogma, according to Kierkegaard, embodies paradoxes which are offensive to reason. The central paradox is the assertion that the eternal, infinite, transcendent God simultaneously became incarnated as a temporal, finite, human being (Jesus). There are two possible attitudes we can adopt to this assertion, viz. we can have faith, or we can take offense. What we cannot do, according to Kierkegaard, is believe by virtue of reason. If we choose faith we must suspend our reason in order to believe in something higher than reason. In fact we must believe by virtue of the absurd."

I can't be certain of this, but I'm pretty well inclined to believe this is taken from either Philosophical Fragments or Concluding Unscientific Postscript (probably the latter). At any rate, Kierkegaard (or, if you prefer, Climacus) does address the issue of paradoxes in Christianity in the aforementioned works, and until future clarification arrives, those are the sources I'll focus on.

The first thing that must be noted is that both works are written under a pseudonym. The pseudonymous author is, as mentioned above, Johannes Climacus, who, by the way, professes in many different places that he is not a Christian (see CUP pp. 451, 466, 501, 511, 557, 597, 617, and 619). If for no other reason than this, we should regard with deep suspicion anyone who contends that such views are actually Kierkegaard's.

A second reason why this is a capital mistake is explained by Kierkegaardian scholar Ronald M. Green, Professor of Religion and Director of the Institute of Applied Ethics at Dartmouth College, who writes (p. 274):

The ordinary cautions against using the facts of an author's life to interpret his writings have special relevance to a writer like Kierkegaard. As the Hongs observe, "no writer has so painstakingly tried to preclude his readers' collapsing writer and works together and thereby transmogrifying the works into an autobiography or memoir."

Therefore, there is no basis whatsoever for attributing such thoughts to Kierkegaard himself. Indeed, there is every reason to not do so.

J.P. writes:

If this was Kierkegaard's understanding of the Trinity, it was badly misinformed.

Kierkegaard here is not addressing the Trinity, but rather the Incarnation. Be that as it may, I have yet to come across any journal entry or non-pseudonymous work by Kierkegaard that expresses such a misinformed belief of the Word made flesh as the critic seems to indicate. He provides no citations for where he's extracting these quotations (though, as mentioned, they're almost certainly from PF or CUP)

The idea that Abraham could be commanded to kill his own son by the same God whose commandments include 'thou shalt not kill', is a paradox. "Using the example of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac (Gen. 22:1-19), Kierkegaard suggested that God called Abraham to violate moral law in slaying his son. For Kierkegaard, Abraham's willingness to "suspend" his ethical convictions epitomized the leap of faith that is demanded of everyone. Kierkegaard believed the incident proved that "the single individual [Abraham] is higher than the universal [moral law]." Building on that conclusion, the Danish philosopher offered this observation: "Abraham represents faith.... He acts by virtue of the absurd, for it is precisely [by virtue of] the absurd that he as the single individual is higher than the universal." "[I] cannot understand Abraham," Kierkegaard declared, "even though in a certain demented sense I admire him more than all others."

This is taken from perhaps Kierkegaard's most famous work, Fear and Trembling. First of all, as Kierkegaardian scholar M. Jamie Ferrera, Professor of Religious Studies and Philosophy at the University of Virginia, has pointed out (p. 207):

The popular association of the leap with Kierkegaard is often couched in terms of the leap of faith. It is worthwhile to be reminded, and interesting to note, that Kierkegaard never uses any Danish equivalent of the English phrase "leap of faith," a phrase that involves a circularity insofar as it seems to imply that the leap is made by faith. He does, however, clearly and often refer to the concept of a leap (Spring) and to the concept of a transition (Overgang) that is qualitative (qvalitativ) or, alternatively, a meta-basis eis allo genos (transition from one genus to another); moreover, he clearly and often refers to such a qualitative state transition to religiousness and to faith in an eminent sense, namely, a Christian religiousness. Thus, even if the concept of a leap of (made by) faith is foreign to the terminology of Kierkegaard, the concept of a leap to faith remains central to his writings. (emphasis original)

Second, Fear and Trembling is written under the pseudonym of Johannes de silentio, who -- you guessed it -- does not claim to be a Christian.

Third, de silentio is someone writing from the standpoint of the ethical sphere on someone (Abraham) who has moved from the ethical sphere into the religious one (this relates to Kierkegaard's three modes of existence -- the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious; the middle term in this sense is not related to the Old Testament). This says absolutely nothing about Kierkegaard's own view on the matter.

Fourth, what does Kierkegaard (or, if you prefer, Climacus and/or de silentio) have in mind by a leap to faith (in PF, CUP, and FT)? The background here is related to G.W.F. Hegel's system of thought, and how faith (along with much else) was to be transcended by the inevitable and unconquerable unfolding of the Absolute Spirit. Kierkegaard is rejecting Hegel's philosophy, because, according to S.K., it ruins Christian faith, relegating the individual to something akin to a helpless automaton. For Kierkegaard, the essence of the leap is passion, and this is sorely missing from Hegel's idea of faith. Kierkegaard himself writes in his journals:

Christianity holds that the central issue is a qualitative transformation, a total character transformation in time (just as qualitative as the change from not being to being which is birth). Anything which is merely a development of what man is originally is not essentially Christian (JP III, 416).

J.P. writes:

Kierkegaard was misplaced in two respects. First, he was clueless about the actual meaning of "Thou shalt not kill" in Hebrew.

Philip L. Quinn, John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, notes (p. 349):

The ethics whose teleological suspension is at issue in Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling is the secular ethics of his own time. (emphasis mine)

Again, it cannot be overstated whom Kierkegaard specifically has in mind in the work Fear and Trembling. It is unquestionably Hegel, whose philosophy of the unfolding and self-realization of the Absolute Spirit had a tremendous impact in Europe during the 19th century. It is this system of thought that Kierkegaard is responding to, not the Mosaic Law.

Merold Westphal, Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University, who has written extensively on Kierkegaard (and Hegel as well) states (pp. 107-8):

Hegel is the main target of Fear and Trembling, along with "our age," which is seen to be the everyday correlate of speculative philosophy.

After the preface, Johannes de silentio turns his attention to Abraham, first in a "Eulogy on Abraham" and then in a "Preliminary Expectoration." What the latter is preliminary to is the main event, the heart of the text, spelled out in Problems I, II, and III. Each of these three reflections on the story of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac opens with the same formula, which goes like this. If such and such is the case, then Hegel is right; but then Abraham is lost (FT 54-6, 68-70, 82). In other words, Fear and Trembling is a confrontation between Abraham and Hegel. Its central theme is the incompatibility of Hegelian philosophy with biblical faith, of which Abraham is the paradigm in both the Jewish and the Christian Bibles. Contrary to its own central claim [Hegel's philosophy], the system is the abolition of rather than the perfection of Christian faith.

Now, drawing attention to the critic's quoting of Kierkegaard in FT, Green comments (p. 267):

[How can] Johannes both paint Abraham in the starkest ethical terms and laud him as a model of religious behavior?

Green goes on to cite an interpretation given by C. Stephen Evans, Professor at Calvin College, who serves on the International Scholarly Committee that oversees research at the Kierkegaard Research Centre at the University of Copenhagen (p. 267):

Abraham knows God as an individual; he knows God is good, and he loves and trusts God. Although he does not understand God's command in the sense that he understands why God has asked him to do this or what purpose it will serve, he does understand that it is indeed God who has asked him to do this. As a result of his special relationship, Abraham's trust in God is supreme. This trust expresses itself cognitively in an interpretive framework by which he concludes, all appearances to the contrary, that this act really is the right thing to do in this particular case. God would not in fact require Isaac of him … or even if God did do this thing, he would nonetheless receive Isaac back … Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac might be compared with the confidence of a knife-thrower's assistant in the accuracy of a knife-thrower's aim. (emphasis mine)

Green, though arguing that Fear and Trembling deals with the ideas of sin and forgiveness more so than the ethical, nonetheless writes (p. 267):

I mention all of this only to show that Kierkegaard's understanding of biblical faith did indeed involve and deal with the issue of trust and evidence, and that his so-called leap of faith is far too often misunderstood by non-specialists like the Buddhist commentator (or myself).

In conclusion, if one comes across a skeptic (or even a believer -- grin) promulgating the idea that Kierkegaard considered Christianity to be irrational, requiring a muscular, willful effort consisting of nothing but groundless faith, I encourage them to inquire where Kierkegaard said as much, when he said it, and whether it was done so under a pseudonym or not.