Thomas Henry Croxall

T.H. Croxall Wanted To Introduce Soren Kierkegaard to the Christian Reading Public. He was an English minister from Copenhagen.

Croxall is notable because he was interested in the writings of Soren Kierkegaard for their Christian content. He wrote after David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie had begun translating some of Kierkegaard's works into English, both also hoping to attract Christian readers. Croxall translated Soren Kierkegaard, by Johannes Edouard Hohlenberg, 1954. He studied Soren Kierkegaard's writings for over twenty years and translated Johannes Climacus written in 1843-1844 by Kierkegaard but never published and provided his own assessment. He related Kierkegaard's works to the scriptures in his books Meditations and Kierkegaard Studies, where he wrote: “Kierkegaard is in the air these days. He has not yet, so far as I know, become on the air, but that doubtless will come, for he is constantly quoted and discussed (discussed, I fear, more than read). What then is all the fuss about, and what is his distinctive teaching? Now, any lover of Kierkegaard (and such I most certainly am) longs to answer such a question. He has found in Kierkegaard’s teaching a new and stimulating body of thought, which to him is like a pearl of great price, worth anything to possess. But since the pearl is spiritual treasure, not material, that treasure must be shared if its value is not to diminish. Hence I desire to share the treasure.” Studies 1948 p. 11.

Croxall provides the reader with a “wealth of beauty, fragrance, and sustenance” in his Meditations. Most of the meditations came from the Journals and Papers of Soren Kierkegaard from Croxall’s own translations. He recognized, in 1944, the need for better translations of Kierkegaard’s works. His translation, he said, “is “new”; I mean in its form and presentation. Soren Kierkegaard is a deep philosopher, but he is first and foremost a Christian; a penetrating student and exponent of the Scriptures; and above all, a man of prayer and meditation, who, as he himself confesses, spent every day in the quiet of his chamber with God.” Meditations 1955 p. 1.

Croxall Was Against the Athiestic Use of Kierkegaard's Works.

"Kierkegaard is Christian. Some “existentialists” – Berdyaev, Dostoevsky, Unamuno, "Maritain, Chestov, Marcel – concur in being, in varying degrees, Christian too. Many, however-Bataille, Sartre, Camus, Jaspers, Heidegger are atheistic, so that atheism and existentialism are sometimes thought synonymous. These writers “extract from religion its most useful attributes and re-secularize them, making a ‘corner’ in thought”." Studies 1948 p. 60.

Croxall translated Kierkegaard’s works in the aftermath of World War II. He says, again from Kierkegaard Studies, “Need I say that our age, with its industrial “massification”, its twin tyrannies of newspaper and ballot-box (present to-day just as they were in Kierkegaard’s time: unknown to Kierkegaard, those of the radio and the cinema), its trade unions, federations, combines; its feverish enslavement to fashion; its indecision and bewilderment about the meaning and purpose of life; its pursuit of pleasure and of the false gods of aestheticism, superstition, and selfishness, its belief that it has “gone farther” than Christianity, when really it has scarcely even approached Christianity (Heaven turn us from continuing along the path which has disastrously taken us “farther”!)-all this and much more shows that we are in as dire need as were his contemporaries, of Kierkegaard’s great doctrine of the Individual.” Studies 1948 p. 15.

He referred his readers to other Kierkegaardian writers from the 40's and 50's throughout his book Kierkegaard Studies.

Some of his references include: Kierkegaard: The Prophet of the Now, by T.S. Gregory, November 21, 1946; The Prophet of the Absolute, by H.V. Martin; Lectures on the Religious thought of Kierkegaard (Lecture IV), Geismar, Augsburg Publishing House; Philosophy, July 1941, by Professor Dorothy Emmet; Existentialism: Disintegration of Man's Soul, Guido De Ruggiero, 1948, Social Sciences Publishers Inc. New York

--References--

The Crowd is the Lie, T.H. Croxall, Presbyter, February 1945

Kierkegaard studies, with special reference to (a) the Bible (b) our own age. Thomas Henry Croxall, Published: 1948

Soren Kierkegaard, by Johannes Edouard Hohlenberg, translated by T. H. Croxall, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1954

Meditations from Kierkegaard, Translated and Edited by T. H. Croxall, Philadelphia, The Westminster Press 1956

Johannes Climacus, by Soren Kierkegaard, Translated by T.H. Croxall, Stanford University Press 1958

Glimpses and impressions of Kierkegaard, Welwyn, Herts, J. Nisbet 1959

Croxall's assessment of Johannes Climacus A list of Croxall's Works