"Barrett adds that, "Kierkegaard stated the question of Christianity so nakedly, made it turn so decisively about the individual and his quest for his own eternal happiness, that all religious writers after him seem by comparison to be symbolical, institutional, or metaphorical - in a word, gnostic.Perhaps the very nakedness of Kierkegaard's statement of faith makes it impossible for Christianity to go anywhere but in the direction of some kind of gnosticism."