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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter August 11, 2021

Human Striving and Absolute Reliance upon God: A Kierkegaardian Paradox

  • Lee C. Barrett EMAIL logo

Abstract

Kierkegaard’s texts suggest countervailing construals of the respective roles of divine and human agency in an individual’s pursuit of blessedness. Kierkegaard paradoxically suggests that the individual must depend entirely on grace for the birth and development of faith, and at the same time actively cultivate faithful dispositions and passions. But Kierkegaard did not espouse Calvinistic divine determinism, or Pelagian autonomous human agency, or the Arminian cooperation of the two. For Kierkegaard, the ostensible paradox of grace and free will is not a cognitive conundrum but is rather a challenge to integrate faith as a gift and faith as a task.

Published Online: 2021-08-11
Published in Print: 2021-08-11

© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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