CONVERSATION OF A HUMORIST WITH A SCHOLAR. KIERKEGAARD’S PERUSAL OF BAUR
T e article examines in detail Søren Kierkegaard’s response to F.C. Baur’s “Das Christliche des Platonismus, oder Sokrates und Christus” (1837). Kierkegaard, a Faculty of T eology graduate, was trained in biblical studies before preparing his master’s thesis on the historical development of the concept of irony. T us, through Baur, he was faced with evaluating the scholarly approach to the New Testament. He was to respond not only to the principles of historical criticism of the Scriptures. He was to accept the challenge from the very idea of the historicity of the Divine, which was inf uenced by the Hegelian concept of the falling of the Spirit into time. Kierkegaard’s research of Socratic irony and its inf uence on Christian humor developed into his ref ections on the limits of the scholarly approach to religion.