FELIX FALLIBILITAS: THE BENEFIT OF SIN'S POSSIBILITY IN KIERKEGAARD'S THE CONCEPT OF ANXIETY

This paper argues that anxiety, fallibility, and the possibility of sin can be used by a person to move past moral innocence and toward mature religious faith. I argue that the conflicting rhetorical voices in Kierkegaard's The Concept of Anxiety should prevent interpreters such as Philip Quinn and Gregory Beabout from claiming that anxiety functions to explain sin. Anxiety more properly and paradoxically functions to develop faith. By adopting Kierkegaard's commendation of the "fortune of fallibility,"Christian theology is able to find in anxiety not only the occasion to sin, but also a hltor of faith.