Kierkegaard on Existential Kenosis and the Power of the Image: Fear and Trembling and Practice in Christianity

What is the role of the image in faith? How should we relate to Abraham and Christ? Through new readings of two of Kierkegaard’s rarely compared texts, this article locates the religious power of the image in its ability to cleanse the subject of received mis‐images of Christianity, and suggests that Kierkegaard was inspired by elements of Rheno‐Flemish mysticism. Kierkegaard not only identifies this inward existential kenosis as the correct form of imitation, he narratively induces this in his reader. As well as examining this textual performativity and the imagination’s role of kenotically preparing the subject for her subsequent upbuilding, this article identifies the movement of kenosis as constitutive of faith – a task that involves suffering, but a suffering that is always accompanied and tempered by love.