As far as I know, this is the fourth dissertation on Kierkegaard from the Netherlands – this one being the third written by a theologian – in the last couple of years. The other theological dissertations about Kierkegaard are Udo Doedens, Het Eenvoudige Leven volgens Søren Kierkegaard (Baarn 1999) and Frits Florin, Geloven als Noodweer: Het begrip ‘het religieuze’ bij S. Kierkegaard (Kampen 2002). Vos’s study is published in the same year as Florin’s. (They do not cite one another.) Like Doedens, Vos gives an interpretation of the whole of Kierkegaard’s oeuvre. Vos, however, more than Doedens and Florin, takes the religious works, for the most part belonging to the so-called ‘edifying’ discourses, into account in discussing and evaluating Kierkegaard. The topic of this study is Kierkegaard’s view on human suffering, but it can also be read as a plea for a specific reading of Kierkegaard’s oevre: a reading in which the religious and edifying discourses – mostly written under Kierkegaard’s own name – and the more well-known pseudonymous works are read as complementary and as mutually elucidating one another. Vos makes it very plausible that the two parts of Kierkegaard’s oeuvre are to be read and interpreted as a whole. From this hermeneutical point of departure, Vos attempts to show that Kierkegaard does not want to give an answer to the question about the origin of evil in relation to God, as it is asked in a theoretical theodicee, but to the practical question as to how the suffering human being can cope with evil and how she can endure her suffering in the presence of God (p. 15). The why-question thus becomes a how-question. ‘Why am I suffering this evil?’ becomes ‘how can I endure this?’ Briefly phrased, this study is about how Kierkegaard deals with human suffering throughout the whole of his work. Moreover, Vos argues that this question cannot properly be answered if not the whole of Kierkegaard’s oeuvre, including the religious and edifying works, are taken into account.

In the first chapter, Vos discusses the ‘special character, form and coherence’ (p. 276) of the Kierkegaardian corpus with regard to suffering. The second chapter is about Kierkegaard’s view of tragedy and guilt. In this chapter Vos shows how Kierkegaard speaks about tragical fate on the one hand and human guilt and responsibility on the other as existential moments in the struggle with evil and suffering. In the third chapter the tension between temporality and eternity is the central topic, especially in relation to Kierkegaard’s idea of becoming oneself. Vos shows that for Kierkegaard eternal happiness does not make up for temporal suffering, but ‘eternity’ is a moment of solace amidst temporal suffering. The fourth chapter examines the Christian dialectics of imitation and salvation. In this chapter, Vos outlines Kierkegaard’s Christology, especially its kenotic character. (Kenosis means the emptying of God in Christ by becoming servant and persecuted truth.) Vos shows that the most important significance of the Christian phenomenon of imitation as self-emptying and self-denying for the suffering in the world is that it enables people to criticise the regular views and interpretations of suffering in modern culture. In the fifth chapter the different lines of thought are brought together in a discussion of the question how the suffering human being can learn to endure this suffering in the tension between contingency and freedom. Different from what is often believed about Kierkegaard, the notion of ‘community’ plays an important role in this context. In the concluding remarks Vos explicitly deals with the significance of Kierkegaard’s thought for secular society in late modernity, especially in relation to the way in which modern people cope with suffering and the interpretation of evil in contemporary culture.

Kierkegaard’s religious and edifying works, especially the late, are often not taken seriously. Florin (2002) for example, tries to convince the reader of Kierkegaard’s growing insanity and the decline of his genius during the last years of his life. One of the arguments Florin uses is exactly Kierkegaard’s view on suffering in his later works. He holds the opinion that this view is too extreme in that it values suffering as a positive element in Christian life (Florin, pp. 215–231). Vos convincingly shows that these works too have to be read in confrontation with Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous works. Vos holds that someone who separates Kierkegaard’s later expressions from the whole of his oeuvre can easily come to the conclusion that Kierkegaard went astray. However, Vos states, the reproach of a voluntary suffering arises from a too superficial reading of Kierkegaard’s later works (p. 207). Especially in the fourth chapter, Vos argues for a careful reading of Kierkegaard’s edifying discourses on suffering. His own careful reading leads to a fascinating interpretation of Kierkegaard’s view on suffering as a critique on the discourse of theodicee as overly generic responses to the experience of individuals on the one hand, and a critique of a self-satisfied Christianity with overly straightforward and abstract theories of atonement on the other. A Christian, according to Vos’s interpretation of Kierkegaard, must learn to endure the suffering that befalls him and should even search for the suffering which follows from the imitation of Christ. This last aspect of suffering may imply martyrdom. But, as Vos shows, Kierkegaard does not simply plea for Christian martyrdom. Rather, he wants to direct believers’ attention to their own sinful nature and the necessity of salvation. Christ is not just the example that needs to be imitated, but he is also the savior and redeemer. Therefore, imitation requires humility and confession of sin. In this sense Kierkegaard’s view of suffering is a critique both on the abstract nature of theories of theodicee and on a self-satisfied Christendom.

Vos’s study gives not only a profound and very interesting interpretation of Kierkegaard’s view on suffering. It study may also be read as a critique of those forms of theology that debate the attributes of God or the rationality of Christian faith while ignoring the existential ramifications of living a faithful life. Along Kierkegaardian lines, Vos advocates a theology that is a reflection on the human condition in the presence of God. As Vos shows, such a theology can be critical of strands within both modern society and traditional Christianity.