This past year our family has been blessed to get to know a visiting scholar at St. Olaf College’s Kierkegaard Library, Prof. Gabriel Merigala of Madras Christian College, as well as his family. (In India he is known as Merigala Gabriel, or simply Gabriel; Indian naming conventions differ from Western ones.) We quickly felt a kinship with Gabriel, his wife Nirmala, and their children Susan and Samuel. That was due in part to my wife’s connections to India (her father was born there), their family’s participation in our church congregation at the United Methodist Church of Northfield, and the fact that we lived near each other.

Gabriel was one of a handful of scholars who reside here each year to study in the Kierkegaard Library, which houses a world-renowned collection of works by and about the Danish theologian and philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. (The library is officially known as the Howard V. and Edna H. Hong Kierkegaard Library. The Hongs both taught at St. Olaf and translated Kierkegaard’s works into English.)

During his visit, Gabriel was in demand as a speaker, and I was fortunate to hear him speak forcefully and eloquently on Kierkegaard and Gandhi. I also enjoyed getting to learn more about his scholarship when I edited the book that he is working on, Subjectivity and Religious Truth in the Philosophy of Soren Kierkegaard, which has been accepted for publication by Mercer University Press.

As I read Gabriel’s book I learned a great deal about Kierkegaard, about whom I knew only a little before. I came away with a deeper understanding of Kierkegaard’s concept of the “leap of faith” and his role in the history of philosophy and theology. Faith, according to Kierkegaard, can’t be a product of reason. We can’t use reason to prove the existence of God, for example, or prove that Jesus was both human and divine. Instead we must accept these on the basis of faith alone. Faith exists in the realm of the “absurd” and the paradoxical rather than that of reason, and we must simply believe.

We give thanks for all that we have received from Gabriel and his family and we wish them the blessings and peace of Jesus Christ as they journey home and resume life in India. And we hope to one day meet with them again, whether here or abroad.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 25th, 2007 at 2:49 pm and is filed under Autobiography, Minnesota, Northfield, Religion.