pre-print-version – do not quote – accepted for publication in 2024 in Religion and Literature 1 Burkhard Conrad Isaac Williams, Søren Kierkegaard and the Poetic Vision of Communicating Religious Knowledge 1 What an odd couple: Isaac Williams and Søren Kierkegaard! Isaac Williams (1802-1865) was a contemporary of John Henry Newman and a somewhat back-bench member of the Oxford Movement, a multifarious group of British theologians and intellectuals who tried to steer the 19 th Century Church of England towards a greater appreciation of the Catholic tradition. After his time in Oxford and a failed attempt to become Professor of Poetry at Oxford University, Williams spent most of his time in the rural West of England as a clergyman. Today, his writings – sermons, tracts, poems, Biblical commentaries – are known only to a few specialists. Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) was a singular figure in the Danish intellectual history of the 19 th Century. During his lifetime, he rarely left Copenhagen but today he is often cited by theologians and philosophers of every persuasion from across the globe. Williams and Kierkegaard were contemporaries but we can be fairly certain that they never communicated with each other. Indeed, there is no record that Kierkegaard was aware of what was going on in Oxford at the time, neither was – at least to my knowledge – anyone within the Oxford Movement circle aware of the Danish writer. 2 A comparative study can, however, prove to be quite revealing. For even if Williams and Kierkegaard did not share – in theory – a common notion on the relationship between the faithful individual and the church as an institution communicating this faith in word and sacrament, they both shared – in practice – a critical stance against the established church in their respective countries, even if from opposite sides. They also shared a certain degree of social conservatism. And remarkably, they also shared a common interest in the following question: How does one communicate the “truth” to a society seemingly ignorant of this “truth”? Equally remarkable is the fact that Williams and Kierkegaard developed two very similar concepts as an answer to this question, namely that truth can only be adequately communicated in a reserved (Williams) or indirect (Kierkegaard) manner. The two concepts of reserve and indirect communication emerged independently of one another in different cultural and linguistic settings. Both, however, were formulated not only around the same time, but can also be seen to be responding to the same intellectual challenge. The first concept – reserve – was formulated by Isaac Williams and other members of the Oxford Movement in and for an English-speaking and Anglican audience in the 1830’s and 1840’s. Søren Kierkegaard’s concept – indirect communication – is linked to his continental Protestant and