Philosopher of the Heart is an excellent biography of Soren Kierkegaard. I haven't finished my review of it yet, but I accidentally pasted another review in its place. I liked the book enough that I purchased it in addition to my review copy. This is a placeholder for when I finish the book. I shouldn't have pasted my other review in its place. I'll be able to edit my review later and place a real one here. Clare Carlisle did a wonderful job balancing his life, his philosophy, and keeping it all entertaining. I guess I have to work on this review now.

In 1517 the Augustine monk, Martin Luther, nailed his Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences to the door of the church at Wittenberg. He didn't realize it at the time but what he was doing in effect is adopting a worldliness and religion that suited European morality. A morality that would caste off the shackles of the Holy Roman Empire. And in a sense, have each country adopt to it's Constitution a State religion which caused each European country to not only accept those people who would adhere to the demand of the state religion but also deny and sometimes persecute those groups that didn't adhere to the state religion.
But the state religion, that many people filled the churches, was one of easy believeism. As Martin Luther stated that the just shall live by faith and nothing else had to be done to gain salvation or the entrance into heaven.

In Philosopher of The Heart: The Restless Life of Soren Kierkegaard, author Clare Carlisle, a reader of philosophy and theology at Kings College, portrays in an, illuminating and insightful biography, a person who is like John the Baptist of one crying in the wilderness as 'putting railways straight through Christendom.'
We see Kierkegaard struggling with the concept with how to be a Christian in the world and yet not of the world. Kierkegaard struggles with the idea of marriage to Regina Olsen of which the author brings up time and time again. But the real struggle for Kierkegaard is more of a ' dark night of the soul, as he cannot grasp the concept of what it means to as the statue in the Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen by Thorvaldsen, of the Christ with its arms outstretched inviting all to come to him.
Kierkegaard struggles with the sermons of Bishop Myster who preached on the same passage in Matthew 11:28. 'two opposite extremes at once. suffering and joy. despair and faith. intense anxiety and profound peace. Yet when Kierkegaard goes out into the world he sees not a profound obedience to faith but a world that is not only corrupt by original sin but Christians who walk around as though any thought of imitating Christ is of no importance. As in the Danish Christmas time when the attitude of Christian is not focused on Christ child as 'related to the spiritual category of becoming a human being', but in nostalgia for the Danish children.
"Is there anyone who knows what Christmas is about?!" Charlie Brown yells on the stage.
Kierkegaard would indeed yell the same .
" Let faith dissolve into rational ethical humanism or begin the faith of task anew."
We see Kierkegaard writing his books preaching to a small congregation while trying to find the balance between reason and faith. This reason is what Martin Luther called a 'whore'. And Aquinas called reason and faith two aspects of knowing.
The Genesis account of Issac on the altar tied there by his father Abraham. As Abraham is about to plunged the knife into his son has a direct parallel to Genesis 21 with Hager. This is something that the author let out of the biography.
Kierkegaard comes to grips with his own spiritual growth towards the end of the biography.
"The person who merely admires Christ from a distance, he argues, will make no sacrifice, renouncing nothing, give up nothing earthly, will not transform his life, will not be what is admired, will not let his life Express it. Only the true imitator of Christ is a true Christian."
There is a a nutshell is the true words and this outstanding biography should take it's place in every seminary and church library.
But
"An illusion is not to easy to move."