Jeffery Robbins on 19th Century Protestant Thought

I found this paper, From Thinking to Religion: The Opening of Ideality in 19th Century Protestant Thought, helpful in sorting through the question posed so well by Roger Kimball; namely 'What did Kierkegaard want?' It is often noted how much of Kierkegaard's direction came in response to philosophical predecessors such as Hegel, Kant and Schleiermacher, and Robbins does much to show Kierkegaard's development of ideas that began with the latter two. He also pays special attention to Quidam's Diary. The whole article is worth reading, but here's the money paragraph:

"12. In what follows, this paper will trace a narrative of religious becoming that Kierkegaard articulates in his vast and varied work, Stages on Life’s Way. This work is broken up into four sections, each depicting a sphere if existence. Most significant for our present purpose of demonstrating the ‘How’ of religious becoming will be the third section, which Kierkegaard entitles, “Guilty? Not Guilty?” Of this section, the first part of which is designated as 'Quidam’s Diary', Kierkegaard himself writes that it is "the richest of all I have written, but it is difficult to understand" (1988: xvii). Others have assessed its worth differently. For example, Robert Brutal writes that he finds the book "(especially the interminable 'Quidam’s Diary') on the whole rather dull" (1973: viii). While it might be difficult, interminable, and even dull, what Kierkegaard brings to life in this section is a fully textured character who is "in the direction of the religious-that is, tending toward it" (1988: 398). This "tending toward" is a hint provided by Kierkegaard of what might be discerned through an entering into the laborious introspection of this troubled character's thoughts. What this suggests is that what at first glance appears as ceaseless monotony, might in fact be a record of the process of becoming. What the diary shows is the difficulty (as well as the interminability and dullness) of this task of becoming. If the religious becoming were simply a matter of the will, then surely no one would torture oneself as does Quidam. But if the religious becoming is not achieved through willing alone, then the ideality of Quidam's reflections seems not simply the likely, but perhaps the only candidate for any becoming, because as we have already seen, ideality is the condition of our thoughtful existence-meaning, that we cannot get behind, or around, or above appearances to the thing itself; and further, that we are concrete, historical subjects. Insofar as we think, reflect, and recollect, we are housed by language. Therefore, we should make clear what careful attention to Quidam's diary shows us-namely, ideality is not the problem that prevents the inbreaking of the religious, but it is the impasse through which the inbreaking is conditioned."