Philip Jorgensen writes: “Inside the back cover I wrote, ‘Philip Marius Jorgensen, Selector and Commentator’. My qualification for doing this is skimpy, but not non-existent. I’ve read Kierkegaard persistently since 1953. It all started when I was 18 and ready to start a second year at St. Olaf College. I announced to my parents that I intended to become a pastor. I asked my Dad if he had a book that might be helpful to me. We went to his library, and he then placed in my hands Kierkegaard: His Life and Thought, by E. L. Allen. Allen’s quotes of Soren Kierkegaard on the ‘Three Stages of Life’ moved me greatly. This was a clear map of what I was leaving and what I was entering. I inherited Dad’s Kierkegaard library and had a small Kierkegaard library of my own. I’ve nearly worn out these books. I was a student of Howard Hong, pampered by Howard and Edna, with other wannabe philosophers, with monthly teas and symposiums in their amazing house. I graduated from St. Olaf with honors in philosophy. I then enrolled in Luther Seminary and the Graduate School of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota. Both are in the Twin Cities, Minn., and I attended both for three and a half years. I was eager to attend that Graduate School because it was headed by Paul Holmer, a Kierkegaard scholar. A month before school opened, it was announced Paul Holmer had accepted a professorship at Yale. As a compensation for that loss, I was privileged to sit at the feet of Abraham Heschel, a visiting professor to Minnesota’s Graduate School of Philosophy. My calling was to be a pastor, not a philosopher. I served Jesus Christ for seven years each at three Alberta places: Olds-Sundre; Edmonton; and Lethbridge. Another seven years I served in a Toronto, Ontario congregation. Then I served as the Director of Congregational Life in Canada’s National Church for seven years. I concluded my pastoral ministry with four years at Canmore, Alberta. SK has been a constant helper in 36 years of preaching and ‘care of souls’. Now, my wife of 55 years, Irene, and I are retired in Lethbridge. We have four children, seven grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. In all of this we have God’s perfect gifts of sorrows and joys , but yes, more joys than sorrows. Lethbridge is in the deep south of Alberta and we can see and easily visit the nearby Rocky Mountains, a fearful and trembling, shuddering, dizzying experience . In my youth, I loved the competition of team sports. I captained the St. Olaf Hockey team in my senior year, and before and after played organized baseball, softball and soccer. During the past five years, I’ve daily soaked myself in Kierkegaard—mornings, afternoons and evenings. Our University of Lethbridge has shelves and shelves of Søren’s Works in English and Danish, and a huge number of books about Kierkegaard. Now here it comes—my Kierkegaard book.

This book is 95,000 words. It is my fourth book: 1. Good Old Ansgar, the Man Who Did Something About the Vikings; 2 A Study of Confirmation and Communion Ministry; 3. Building For The Church, a church architecture book, with help from E. A. Sovik and my most recent trip to Northfield and St. Olaf, 1985. I saw that the big dinosaur vertebra I donated in 1976 was still on display in a biology classroom. St. Olaf was the most pleasurable and intellectually broadening and deepening four years of my life.”