Using the Medicine of Grace

In this article, I argue that Søren Kierkegaard's prefatory editorial remark in Practice in Christianity about resorting to and making use of grace has a medieval inheritance, which stems from his reading of Hugh of St Victor (1096–1142). Rather than grounding Kierkegaard's remark exclusively within the Lutheran tradition, I suggest that the medieval inheritance of the relationship between operative and cooperative grace contributed to a theological development in Kierkegaard's view of sanctification. Moreover, Kierkegaard's journal entries prior to the publication of Practice in Christianity provide the connection to Hugh of St Victor's theology of sanctification. I briefly survey the development of Kierkegaard's view of grace and examine Kierkegaard's commentary on Hugh of St Victor's Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit. Then, I survey Hugh's distinction between restorative and cooperative grace against the wider backdrop of his theology of sanctification to highlight a structural affinity with Kierkegaard's writings. My aim is to identify and illuminate this unexplored Catholic source of Kierkegaard's distinction between grace and works that indicates a non-competitive relationship between divine and human agency

Art history · Biology · Christianity · Pneumatology · SAINT · Sanctification · Spirituality · Theology · History · Kierkegaardian Philosophy and Influence · Philosophy

• Kierkegaard on imagination

  Hjördis Becker‐lindenthal•History of European Ideas•2021

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• On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith (De Sacramentis)

  Philotheus Boehner, Hugh of St Victor et al.•Philosophy and Phenomenological…•1952

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