Positivity and Dialectic: A Study of the Theological Method of Hans Lassen Martensen

This work has both an intrinsic and an extrinsic thesis. The setting is within the broader context of the study of the thought of Kierkegaard. The extrinsic thesis is that the work of Kierkegaard is essentially polemical in character and cannot be understood without taking into account the highly specific nature of his polemics against Danish Hegelianism. The special target of these polemics is the attempts of the Danish theologian, Hans Lassen Martensen (1808-1884) to bend the Hegelian philosophical method to his own theological purposes. The intrinsic thesis is that Martensens development is almost entirely within the lines of a form of theological intuitionism to which his use of Hegel bears only an external relation. Hence, if it is supposedly Hegelianism which Kierkegaard attacks in the writings of Martensen, it is a highly modified and atypical form of it. This work traces Martensens theological intuitionism through four stages in the period which is pertinent for the study of