The Quiet Lake and the Hidden Spring: Locating the Ground in Kierkegaard's Works of Love

At the end of the prayer with which he begins Works of Love (1847), Søren Kierkegaard notes that while ‘works of love’ might normally be viewed as a subset of worthwhile human endeavours or ‘works’, from heaven's perspective no work can be pleasing unless it is a work of love. From this arises the question—which Kierkegaard himself moves swiftly to address—of what distinguishes a work of ‘love’ from other, non-loving works? In this article, and with particular reference to Jacob Boehme (1575–1624), I highlight how Kierkegaard's answer to this question draws upon the theological tradition that Bernard McGinn has called ‘the mysticism of the ground’.