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The Prayers of Kierkegaard
Soren Kierkegaard's influence has been felt in many areas of human thought from theology to psychology. The nearly one hundred of his prayers gathered here from published works and private papers, not only illuminate his own life of prayer, but speak to the concerns of Christians today.
The second part of the volume is a reinterpretation of the life and thought of Kierkegaard. Long regarded as primarily a poet or a philosopher, Kierkegaard is revealed as a fundamentally religious thinker whose central problem was that of becoming a Christian, of realizing personal existence. Perry D. LeFevre's penetrating analysis takes the reader to the religious center of Kierkegaard's world.
The second part of the volume is a reinterpretation of the life and thought of Kierkegaard. Long regarded as primarily a poet or a philosopher, Kierkegaard is revealed as a fundamentally religious thinker whose central problem was that of becoming a Christian, of realizing personal existence. Perry D. LeFevre's penetrating analysis takes the reader to the religious center of Kierkegaard's world.
255 pages, Paperback
First published December 31, 1956
About the author
Søren Kierkegaard
1,150 books6,563 followersSøren Aabye Kierkegaard was a prolific 19th century Danish philosopher and theologian. Kierkegaard strongly criticised both the Hegelianism of his time and what he saw as the empty formalities of the Church of Denmark. Much of his work deals with religious themes such as faith in God, the institution of the Christian Church, Christian ethics and theology, and the emotions and feelings of individuals when faced with life choices. His early work was written under various pseudonyms who present their own distinctive viewpoints in a complex dialogue.
Kierkegaard left the task of discovering the meaning of his works to the reader, because "the task must be made difficult, for only the difficult inspires the noble-hearted". Scholars have interpreted Kierkegaard variously as an existentialist, neo-orthodoxist, postmodernist, humanist, and individualist.
Crossing the boundaries of philosophy, theology, psychology, and literature, he is an influential figure in contemporary thought.
Kierkegaard left the task of discovering the meaning of his works to the reader, because "the task must be made difficult, for only the difficult inspires the noble-hearted". Scholars have interpreted Kierkegaard variously as an existentialist, neo-orthodoxist, postmodernist, humanist, and individualist.
Crossing the boundaries of philosophy, theology, psychology, and literature, he is an influential figure in contemporary thought.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
December 28, 2025
My boy Soren never ceases to amaze me 🥹. A brilliant collection of prayers written by Kierkagaard, followed by an overview of his beliefs from the author. I am struck by the depth of Kierkagaard’s prayer life. In some ways it seems contradictory that an existential philosopher be a man of unceasing prayer but Soren does it all. I will be going back to these prayers for years to come.
August 23, 2016
I've been slowly working through this book each morning alongside The Book of Common Prayer, and it was a fine match. Kierkegaard has a true knack for establishing a proper understanding of man before God, and it continues to be a humbling experience for the reader. His prayers were no different than his other works only much more personal, but still filled with that sense of yearning so evident in his writings. These prayers truly capture a corrupt, depraved, impotent heart approaching a perfect, just, and righteous God in sincere prayer, and the reader is pulled into this relationship with astounding force. My copy is flagged with several dozen page markers, so that I may reference specific prayers of Kierkegaard's for the future.
Disclaimer: I did not read the history and interpretation of Kierkegaard's works that is also included in the back of this book, so I do not presume to pass judgement on that section- only the prayers included.
Disclaimer: I did not read the history and interpretation of Kierkegaard's works that is also included in the back of this book, so I do not presume to pass judgement on that section- only the prayers included.
January 9, 2023
I read the prayers portion of this book but not the commentary at the end. I really enjoyed this peek into Kierkegaard’s life of faith, and I also appreciate the inspiration to write my own prayers. I never really thought of “prayer” as its own genre of writing, but it is.
The first one in this collection was probably the shortest, but also my favorite: “God in Heaven, let me really feel my nothingness, not in order to despair over it, but in order to feel the more powerfully the greatness of Thy goodness.”
The first one in this collection was probably the shortest, but also my favorite: “God in Heaven, let me really feel my nothingness, not in order to despair over it, but in order to feel the more powerfully the greatness of Thy goodness.”
September 20, 2023
The first half of the book is a collection of prayers and devotional thoughts, mostly extracted from Kierkegaard’s journals. Many of the prayers are eloquent and quite moving. In the second half of the book, the editor gives a brief overview of Kierkegaard’s life and an explanation of his existentialist philosophy, and its relationship to Christianity. I don’t know Kierkegaard’s work well enough to assess the accuracy of his interpretation though. The final chapter on Kierkegaard as a “Man of Prayer” is one of the best things on prayer I’ve read.
September 22, 2024
A wonderful book that covers not only the topic of prayer, but also Kierkegaard's theology and his views on suffering.
March 15, 2023
The second half of this book is an interpretation of kierkegaards life and thought. I found it succinct and piercing. Kierkegaard is a very complex writer, but editor Perry Lefevre did a great job identifying key ideas and approaches to kierkegaard. This is the first book I've read about Kierkegaard rather than by Kierkegaard, and I found it a worthy inquiry.
April 14, 2013
Read Perry d. LeFevre's The Prayers of Kierkegaard over Lent this year (2013). The second half of the book consists of Kierkegaard's life, which I read first and which helped to comprehend his prayers better. The prayers themselves were splendid and wonderful. I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in Christianity or religion in general.
April 10, 2021
Above all, Kierkegaard was a man of faith. There are some really heartfelt and thoughtful prayers in this collection, as well as an insightful analysis of Kierkegaard’s life and philosophy written by the editor. My soul was scrumptiously fed.
April 24, 2008
These prayers kept me sane during my last semester of university - a deep mind writing the beautiful prayers of a beloved child of God.
October 28, 2025
God, give me once more the courage to hope.
Fertilize my barren mind.
Let me hope again.
A man is only truly an individual, not in relation to other individual men or the crowd, but when he is alone before God, in relation to God. Only when one gains consciousness of his own will he come to the full experience of being Christian, of being one with God the Father and Christ. Not one particular sin but the acceptance that one lives in sin. The first condition of becoming a Christian is to turn inwards. You must become introverted. One must be alone before God.
The book does a nice job capturing the heart of Kierkegaard’s critiques of rationalism and skepticism (as well as the aesthetic), specifically how those philosophies deal with Christianity. For Kierkegaard, Hegel’s rationalism failed in every aspect to capture the essence of Christianity, he wholly missed the mark. Christianity is not a doctrine to be adopted and lived according to. Rather, for Kierkegaard, Christianity must always be a personal experience, it is an existence in and of faith. The existence of a man is defined by his faith in God and the only true way to exist is to faithfully believe in God. Hegel cannot reduce Christianity to something that can be known, it is not objective in that manner. It can never be truly grasped and handled. Christianity and the recognition that one must live through his or her faith in God is in part subjective, Kierkegaard repeatedly emphasizes that it is a deeply personal experience. Faith can never be subjugated by a rational philosophy instead one must make the metaphorical “leap” and accept that there can be no objective answer or even understanding of faith. Kierkegaard would argue like Augustine did, our hearts are restless until they rest with the Lord. Faith is not an arbitrary act of man, like doubt; it is an objective act. There is in faith that which must “presuppose” the consciousness of sin, grace as well as choice, and there is choice only because there is grace. Faith is the highest sphere for the existing individual.
Those who search for God objectively may seek their answer in something that can be demonstrated or shown. But in that flawed search lies the critical issue: faith has been replaced with speculation. There will never be an encounter with God in that way, instead there will only be distance. A personal experience and commitment to God through man’s faith is how one will come to know God, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.
Kierkegaard was a Man of Prayer. Prayer is the greatest earthly happiness for man according to him. True prayer is not to speak to be heard but is to wait in silence until one hears God. Man must pray until he is the one who hears.
O God, when at times our strength is taken from us, when sorrow overcomes us like a kind of fog in which our vision is plunged as into a dark night; when our hearts do tremble with our loss: then teach us and strengthen the conviction in our hearts that in death, no less than in life, we belong to You.
Fertilize my barren mind.
Let me hope again.
A man is only truly an individual, not in relation to other individual men or the crowd, but when he is alone before God, in relation to God. Only when one gains consciousness of his own will he come to the full experience of being Christian, of being one with God the Father and Christ. Not one particular sin but the acceptance that one lives in sin. The first condition of becoming a Christian is to turn inwards. You must become introverted. One must be alone before God.
The book does a nice job capturing the heart of Kierkegaard’s critiques of rationalism and skepticism (as well as the aesthetic), specifically how those philosophies deal with Christianity. For Kierkegaard, Hegel’s rationalism failed in every aspect to capture the essence of Christianity, he wholly missed the mark. Christianity is not a doctrine to be adopted and lived according to. Rather, for Kierkegaard, Christianity must always be a personal experience, it is an existence in and of faith. The existence of a man is defined by his faith in God and the only true way to exist is to faithfully believe in God. Hegel cannot reduce Christianity to something that can be known, it is not objective in that manner. It can never be truly grasped and handled. Christianity and the recognition that one must live through his or her faith in God is in part subjective, Kierkegaard repeatedly emphasizes that it is a deeply personal experience. Faith can never be subjugated by a rational philosophy instead one must make the metaphorical “leap” and accept that there can be no objective answer or even understanding of faith. Kierkegaard would argue like Augustine did, our hearts are restless until they rest with the Lord. Faith is not an arbitrary act of man, like doubt; it is an objective act. There is in faith that which must “presuppose” the consciousness of sin, grace as well as choice, and there is choice only because there is grace. Faith is the highest sphere for the existing individual.
Those who search for God objectively may seek their answer in something that can be demonstrated or shown. But in that flawed search lies the critical issue: faith has been replaced with speculation. There will never be an encounter with God in that way, instead there will only be distance. A personal experience and commitment to God through man’s faith is how one will come to know God, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.
Kierkegaard was a Man of Prayer. Prayer is the greatest earthly happiness for man according to him. True prayer is not to speak to be heard but is to wait in silence until one hears God. Man must pray until he is the one who hears.
O God, when at times our strength is taken from us, when sorrow overcomes us like a kind of fog in which our vision is plunged as into a dark night; when our hearts do tremble with our loss: then teach us and strengthen the conviction in our hearts that in death, no less than in life, we belong to You.
May 3, 2020
This book is divided into two parts, the first being a collection of 99 prayers of Kierkegaard from his works and journals, and the second part a brief exploration of his thought.
The first part can be used as a sort of devotional, though it is difficult at times because of the archaic use of Thou, Thy, Thee, Thouest, which is really distracting for someone like me who is really not used to this way of speaking. All the capitalized pronouns makes for difficult reading.
The second part is a mixed bag. Divided into four chapters: His Life, Basic Themes, Toward The Christian Life, and Man of Prayer. It feels like the author spent a lot of time to gather up all of K’s works and boil them down to fit into such a short space, so densely packed that I’m afraid a lot will be lost on folks not already familiar with K. As such I wouldn’t recommend it as an introduction to his works. Though it is a good distillation that in the end may be easier to grok and will definitely take less time than going through K’s works.
There is also a tiny bit of influence of the then in-vogue Freudian studies, which kind of dates the text. A few Freudian bingo words sometimes pop out of the text: , e.g. “latent” and “unconscious”, which kind of seem as archaic as the thees and thous of the first half of the book.
The last chapter, Man of Prayer, was an interesting piece on the importance of prayer in K’s thought, something that had been downplayed in studies in the time it was written. It really shows that it is central to his thought. Even a non-Christian could learn from this chapter; I was reminded of the Stoic attitude of self-resignation in living according to nature, a somewhat fatalistic view that life is full of ups and downs, and the right thing is to adjust our attitude, being accepting of them both. Folks also familiar with Buddhism will recognize the self-resignation in favor of God’s will as a sort of no-self doctrine. If you’re interested in persuing those connections, I recommend taking a look at the book Kierkegaard and Japanese Thought.
Lastly, there is a Samuel Barber classical piece called Prayers of Kierkegaard which predates this book and maybe even inspired it, though that’s just my speculation. May make for a good accompanying tune to read by.
The first part can be used as a sort of devotional, though it is difficult at times because of the archaic use of Thou, Thy, Thee, Thouest, which is really distracting for someone like me who is really not used to this way of speaking. All the capitalized pronouns makes for difficult reading.
The second part is a mixed bag. Divided into four chapters: His Life, Basic Themes, Toward The Christian Life, and Man of Prayer. It feels like the author spent a lot of time to gather up all of K’s works and boil them down to fit into such a short space, so densely packed that I’m afraid a lot will be lost on folks not already familiar with K. As such I wouldn’t recommend it as an introduction to his works. Though it is a good distillation that in the end may be easier to grok and will definitely take less time than going through K’s works.
There is also a tiny bit of influence of the then in-vogue Freudian studies, which kind of dates the text. A few Freudian bingo words sometimes pop out of the text: , e.g. “latent” and “unconscious”, which kind of seem as archaic as the thees and thous of the first half of the book.
The last chapter, Man of Prayer, was an interesting piece on the importance of prayer in K’s thought, something that had been downplayed in studies in the time it was written. It really shows that it is central to his thought. Even a non-Christian could learn from this chapter; I was reminded of the Stoic attitude of self-resignation in living according to nature, a somewhat fatalistic view that life is full of ups and downs, and the right thing is to adjust our attitude, being accepting of them both. Folks also familiar with Buddhism will recognize the self-resignation in favor of God’s will as a sort of no-self doctrine. If you’re interested in persuing those connections, I recommend taking a look at the book Kierkegaard and Japanese Thought.
Lastly, there is a Samuel Barber classical piece called Prayers of Kierkegaard which predates this book and maybe even inspired it, though that’s just my speculation. May make for a good accompanying tune to read by.
May 26, 2019
After about 50 yrs have Re read this publication.
Kierkegaard can be confusing, difficult to penetrate, and seemingly self contradictory. He wrote profusely in various styles and this makes it that much harder to get to the basics of what he is trying to say.
This work hits at the heart of his passion to relate to God through Christ. It is a collection of prayers gleaned from his multitudinous writings. The prayers themselves are for personal mediation and reflection and can serve as a springboard for spiritual devotions. Equally impressive is the essay by the editor that provides an excellent short overview of the complexities of Kierkegaard’s thought.
Kierkegaard can be confusing, difficult to penetrate, and seemingly self contradictory. He wrote profusely in various styles and this makes it that much harder to get to the basics of what he is trying to say.
This work hits at the heart of his passion to relate to God through Christ. It is a collection of prayers gleaned from his multitudinous writings. The prayers themselves are for personal mediation and reflection and can serve as a springboard for spiritual devotions. Equally impressive is the essay by the editor that provides an excellent short overview of the complexities of Kierkegaard’s thought.
April 12, 2024
Beautiful prayers collected from many of Kierkegaard's private and public writings. They not only offer an opportunity to pray with this poetic and meditative man, but also offer an insight into his faith. The collection of prayers are followed by a brief but insightful look into Soren Kierkegaard as a whole, faith-filled, and deeply insightful man. It was a joy to read! If you're unfamiliar with Kierkegaard's writing, this is a good example of his writing and a great introduction into the flow of his thoughts.
June 13, 2024
This book was somewhat of a companion in my spiritual journey the last few months. Reading one to two prayers each day, and meditating upon them was a prayerful in and of itself. The second half of the book was a lot more in depth and very educative. I particularly found educative and helpful the last chapter which centred on suffering and how it brings one closer to Christ.
June 21, 2019
Enjoyed the biography much more than the prayers. The last two chapters on the Christian life and Kierkegaard as a man of prayer were particularly interesting. Not as comprehensive as other works, but it has a much more spiritual approach to his life - which is needed.
October 26, 2024
Some of the prayers are very lovely. All reflect the theology of Kierkegaard. So the multi-part essay afterwards is most helpful. But unless you really know the thought patterns of this Danish theologian, it is tough sledding. I found the last segment of the essay the most helpful.
June 2, 2018
Always good to be reminded that....
God is Essence.
And we should all ways
Pray that way.
God is Essence.
And we should all ways
Pray that way.
April 20, 2021
From a Christian perspective, this is the best introduction into this facet of Kierkegaard’s life I’ve come across.
February 20, 2023
Beautiful, moving prayers with a biographical section.
November 17, 2025
A great exposition of Kierkegaard’s Christian thought life and philosophy. Very interesting to peruse his specific prayers, as provided in the first half of this text, as well.
April 2, 2018
I have been using this during my devotions and Kierkegaard just has a way of describing the beauty and love of God that I can't.
June 7, 2007
I loved this book at the time that I read it.
March 1, 2008
This one is a special delicatesse!
April 11, 2014
Actual rating: 3.5
(He says, as if you can really "rate" a book of prayers. Whatever the case, these are beautiful in their own way.)
(He says, as if you can really "rate" a book of prayers. Whatever the case, these are beautiful in their own way.)
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews