Sylvia Walsh's task in Oxford's ‘Christian Theology in Context’ series is precisely to place Søren Kierkegaard in the theological, ecclesiastical, philosophical, political and otherwise cultural contexts of his day, with an aim towards showing also how his thought might be translated into our own contexts and ways of thinking. She has succeeded accordingly and with the right amount of historical detail, and yet her book offers much more than a contextualised Kierkegaard. It is equal to any introduction to Kierkegaard's thought, and it is itself a work of substantive theology and philosophy. Her exploration of Kierkegaard's theology of creation, for example, is as good an exegesis of Kierkegaard and synthesis of his texts as it is provocative of new ways of considering this doctrine (pp. 70–4).

Kierkegaard: Thinking Christianly in an Existential Mode is framed by chapters devoted to the context of Kierkegaard's life and thought. The first (‘That Single Individual’) offers a brief, though detailed, biographical portrait, an intellectual backdrop to the authorship, and a concise outline of Kierkegaard's varied writings and their strategy. For professors or religious educators teaching a course section on Kierkegaard, this chapter could stand alone as a beneficial introduction. The final chapter (‘Religion, Culture, and Society’), focused especially on the ‘attack literature’ which, importantly, begins not at the end of Kierkegaard's life but is rather a theme throughout his writings, explores in similar detail the ecclesiastical, political and social issues which result finally in the heightening of the attack, to the point that Kierkegaard views the church as a ‘toxic junk heap’.

In between these frames are five chapters which take up the most important themes of Kierkegaard's writings, including Christianity as an existence-communication, the human–God relation, Kierkegaard's rich theological anthropology, the person of Christ, and finally the Christian life understood through the theological virtues. At times portions of these chapters serve effectively as mini-commentaries on central works of the authorship, ranging from the monumental in size, Concluding Unscientific Postscript (see pp. 26–46), to the monumental in influence, Fear and Trembling (see pp. 147–54), to the monumental in density, The Concept of Anxiety (see pp. 80–96). (If I ever teach the latter text, I will not consider doing so without this portion of chapter 4 at my side.) These mini-commentaries never lose sight of the larger picture of the authorship and its thematic coherence, and Walsh's vast knowledge of the texts, including the voluminous journals, constantly supplements those texts in focus. In fact, Walsh's ability to hold writings from different parts of the authorship together in view at all times demonstrates the coherence of the authorship around the question of how to become a Christian and, in so doing, serves to counter postmodern readings of Kierkegaard which emphasise Derridean différance and tend to close off avenues of intersection within the corpus (see various works of Roger Poole).

Historical, biblical, systematic and philosophical theologians will all benefit from this book, as will analytic and continental philosophers. Walsh offers summary, synthesis and analysis, at times reframing, at other times rewording, but always clarifying what are often very dense primary sources. This clarifying work could extend further in only a handful of places – I have in mind a section devoted to Christ as indirect communication (from Practice in Christianity) and one which speaks of the Christian's hoping all things (from Works of Love).

At a time when Kierkegaard scholars are attending more seriously to the religious themes and, in particular, the religious discourses of Kierkegaard's vast authorship (see George Pattison's Kierkegaard's Upbuilding Discourses), Walsh – unlike many of these – does not play down the explicitly Christian nature and telos of these themes and writings, however problematic these might be for a more pluralistic audience. Thus, perhaps the most significant contribution of this book is that Walsh brings to the fore in her reading of Kierkegaard what Kierkegaard brings to the fore (something that is by no means a given in Kierkegaard introductions and biographies) – the challenging task of genuine Christian existence, or as she writes ‘how to become a Christian in the situation of modern Christendom, where everyone is presumably already a Christian by virtue of being born a Dane yet lives in entirely different categories’ (p. 27).