Medicine for the Heart: Reading Scripture in Troubled Times, with Kierkegaard
About The Book
The awareness of being a single individual with eternal responsibility before God is the one thing needful.
—Søren Kierkegaard
What gives life meaning? For the incomparable nineteenth-century Dane, Søren Kierkegaard, it was “a question of understanding my own destiny, of seeing what God really wants me to do; the thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die.”
Medicine for the Heart is a guide to the extraordinary richness of Scripture seen through Kierkegaard’s eyes. He wrote about Scripture as none other, a literature of surpassing artistry and rare moral power. Kierkegaard described a new believer who
discovered that life was beautiful, that it was a new gloriousness of faith that no human being can give to another, but that every human being has what is highest, noblest, and most sacred in humankind. It is original in him, and every human being has it if he wants to have it.
The author is an internationally recognized professor of cardiology whose research has been devoted to understanding and explaining the workings of the human heart.
About The Author
Dwain L. Eckberg
A professor of medicine and cardiology, Dwain L. Eckberg, MD, graduated from Northwestern University School of Medicine. He has published over 170 scientific articles. He met Rebecca, his college sweetheart, at Wheaton College, where he studied philosophy and she studied English. They have been married sixty-three years—“The first sixty-three years,” Dwain quips, “are the hardest.” They have three daughters and six grandchildren. The couple lives in Lynchburg, Virginia.
Quotes From... Medicine for the Heart: Reading Scripture in Troubled Times, with Kierkegaard
Isn’t Scripture an antique document written for antique people living in ancient times?
Scripture transcends time. In a world of impermanence, the Word of God offers permanence.
Abraham’s story is one that arrests attention and compels readers to confront it and grapple with its implications for living life before God.
This book deals with the ultimate choices humans make. It asked, “If an ultimate choice must be made, why not choose the highest?”
Humans have spiritual qualities, and that ultimately, all individuals stand alone before God.
Although the author of Medicine for the Heart believes Scripture, he does not presume to know in what way scriptural truths will be applied in modern times. There are parallels between events occurring in modern times and those occurring thousands of years ago.
Kierkegaard himself was the singular, most misunderstood genius whose writings enriched everyone, and who set forth what was for him the ideal that is Christian faith.