 Was Kierkegaard a fideist? Critics have argued that in recoiling from natural theology, Kierkegaard transformed belief into a matter of will and emotion, and that a decision as monumental as a leap of faith – made seemingly arbitrarily, in the absence of any rational assurance – might just as easily have disastrous results. J.L. Mackie, for instance, claims that “what Kierkegaard himself is advocating is a sort of intellectual Russian roulette” (216). So far, it might be argued, Kierkegaard has done little to show that a leap in the direction of Christianity is a better bet than any of its alternatives, and that a wiser tack – as Hume counseled in connection with alleged miracles – would be to proportion belief (and passion) to the available evidence. Kierkegaard’s defenders might reply that it is only from the “outside” – from the point of view, e.g., of the dispassionate pseudonyms – that Christianity appears ungrounded and “absurd,” and that Kierkegaard’s point is really that those already in possession of faith need not be embarrassed by the fact that it is not the ineluctable outcome of reasoning from an imagined set of neutral and uncontested premises.