To see this image, and to ponder whether it is part of a larger structure, or the very beginning of a new life form… purely outstanding
I am reminded of first person prostrate pleading and in time cool providences delivering – severe squalls have their place. […and so do extended typhoons and perhaps periods of gloom as well.]
Away despair; my gracious Lord doth heare.
Though windes and waves assault my keel,
He doth preserve it: he doth steer,
Ev’n when the boat seems most to reel.
Storms are the triumph of his art:
Well may he close his eyes, but not his heart.
(Neither does ‘edification’ of an unbeliever ground belief.)
Sorry, but I don’t know how to answer this since I don’t know what you mean to assert. My apologies.
Roy
(If that was to me, my last post above was a kind of a footnote to the one just prior, and “‘edification’ of an unbeliever” was a reference to a whole conversation earlier last year.)
Yeah. The irony is so appropriate. I am so guilty.
This is one reason I can take him seriously. MacDonald suffered greatly in his life and still, somehow not only maintained faith but thrived in it as well as taught about it.
After a considerable derailment, I’m trying to get back to Fear and Trembling, a study of the incomprehensible, shocking faith of Abraham, and the related reading. In one commentary the author refers to Abraham’s trust in terms of “radical hope.”
It is in his role as an exemplar of such trust and hope that Abraham can count as a ‘guiding star that saves the anguished.’ Thus the picture that is being set up here is faith as a radical alternative to nihilism.
(The Routledge Guidebook to Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, p. 34.)
and in relation to “radical hope”
As noted, what faith must continually annul is not resignation but despair - and this explains the importance of hope.
(Ibid, p. 72)
I have a long, long way to go with this book, but I think this idea of radical hope seems to apply both to Kierkegaard’s concept of Abraham’s faith as well as George MacDonald’s.
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Actually two conversations, this one as well: On edification and coercion…
(88) Prayer
Shall I not tell him my troubles–how he, even he, has troubled me by making me?–how unfit I am to be that which I am?–that my being is not to me a good thing yet?–that I need a law that shall account to me for it in righteousness–reveal to me how I am to make it a good–how I am to be a good, and not an evil? Shall I not tell him that I need him to comfort me? his breath to move upon the face of the waters of the Chaos he has made? Shall I not cry to him to be in me rest and strength? to quiet this uneasy motion called life, and make me live indeed? to deliver me from my sins, and make me clean and glad? Such a cry is of the child to the Father: if there be a Father, verily he will hear, and let the child know that he hears! Every need of God, lifting up the heart, is a seeking of God, is a begging for himself, is profoundest prayer, and the root and inspirer of all other prayer.
From MacDonald’s sermon: “The Word of Jesus on Prayer”
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I wonder how seriously Kierkegaard would be taken in this thread if he were writing under a pseudonym
Try “channeling” him here and find out! It’s cool that great writers can speak across the centuries with their writings, and in that sense their spirits contend with us still. [and we with them]
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Or someone I’m sure he would have taken interest in 
I think it was from somewhere in Mere Christianity that I re-read recently, where Lewis comments that it is important for us to stay in “dialogue” with writers of other (obviously previous) centuries because they will be not be vulnerable to (or sympathetic with) the same sorts of blind spots of our own contemporary sort; and we are less in danger of being unduly influenced by their blind spots since theirs have probably been brought to light for us already in our century.
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Depends on which pseudonymous character he chose to employ. And who is reading.
Who are your top 3? While I haven’t read a great deal of them, which probably says a lot, I consider Augustine, Hamann and Packer to be mine.
John, Paul and David have to be it for me. 
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Well - MacDonald and Lewis are obviously figuring prominently for me as this particular thread demonstrates.
One modern author I’ve really appreciated recently (even though I’ve only read one of her books: “Holy Envy”) is Barbara Brown Taylor. But there are many, many other authors - not all of whom I can call up to memory here at a moment’s notice, who have long formed my “inner collective”.
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I’m still curious what aspect of Kierkegaard’s philosophies you had in mind when you wondered if he would be taken seriously here. If you want to share any more about that!
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That he was such an original thinker! I’ve only touched his writing with Fear and Trembling, and for me it wasn’t memorable. I listened to it and there were a few passages that stood out, but I’d have to go back and review the book to recall them.
But what a life he had!!! I listened to someone who Zondervan Academic had as a lecturer on Kierkegaard, and wow! I felt like I was there beside him at times. The conflict with his brother, going after the established Church, his engagement, the letters, and his thinking were well told. He is someone that I would love to have a 15 minute conversation with. I’d probably put him at the top of the list.
Oh and his dislike of Hegel’s philosophy too