As the individual, through faith in the promise of the Word, revels in the anxiety that is produced when facing the possibility of the freedom that is in that faith, he rests transparently in God, and his relationship to all of the physical world, and most importantly to fellow man, is defined.

Synopsis:

This describes the piety of Kierkegaard’s writing when his psychological works are understood with the eye of revealed scripture.

Adam did not know of his own insignificance before God as long as he was resting transparently in God, for it was the self-sacrificial love of God that abided in him. This abiding, which is characterized by reveling in the anxiety of the possibility of all the life that is available in God, and yet resting in his command to give all that he is to sustain the created design of what is given to him, can be seen as the consummation of the relation of the self to itself in the divine.

Sin is grabbing hold of the finite to stabilize the anxiety according to Kierkegaard. In this way man no longer rests transparently in God and experiences his nothingness, that is death or despair. This experience is so profound that not only does man have nothing, but he is even on a self-destruct mode, because in relating the relation of the self to itself he grasps himself for sustenance and life; which is of course nothing. In grasping his finite self he naturally will also grasp all other relationships in in his life.

Thus we have evil, defined as creation’s experience of it’s worthlessness, and hatred, the opposite of love, defined as the exploitation of the other to fill what is lacking in despair.

Since despair is a death that will not die, a dying death, the only way for it to be conquered is for a second Adam to have anxiety and yet rest transparently in God as he takes the finite upon himself