Reidar Thomte's Kierkegaard's Philosophy of Religion is an excellent read for students beginning their study of one of the "greats" of the nineteenth and twentieth century philosophy. Thomte directly appropriates Kierkegaard's insightful language and discussion of theological and philosophical issues that stimulated him, all of which are still alive and well today. 

A companion piece to The Concept of Anxiety, this work continues Søren Kierkegaard's radical and comprehensive analysis of human nature in a spectrum of possibilities of existence. Present here is a remarkable combination of the insight of the poet and the contemplation of the philosopher.

In The Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard moves beyond anxiety on the mental-emotional level to the spiritual level, where--in contact with the eternal--anxiety becomes despair. Both anxiety and despair reflect the misrelation that arises in the self when the elements of the synthesis--the infinite and the finite--do not come into proper relation to each other. Despair is a deeper expression for anxiety and is a mark of the eternal, which is intended to penetrate temporal existence.

The separation of religion from the subject manifests itself in the emergence of an actual will. In the will I am an actual and free being, and I present myself against the subject as another, in order to represent it with myself by removing it from that state of separation.

Philosophy, metaphysics, or ontology is nothing but a constant attempt by man to rationally adjust his life path so that he returns to walking on the bound path guiding in this the mind unity