ABSTRACT
When considering the question of the good life from a religious point of view, people encounter once again a profound ambivalence towards habit, even when this is considered as a broad concept that encompasses both ordinary habit and practice. In Christian theology, as in Western philosophy, the concept of habit plays an important role in debates about human freedom. Kierkegaards entire authorship rages against this interpretation of the religious life. Warning of the bondage of habit, he suggests that the repetitions of customary practice have a diversionary power that leads people away from authentic faith. If grace is a habitus people may not only receive it transiently, but possess it over time. This makes it a genuine gift: divinely infused virtue is properly ours, even though we have not generated it by ourselves. If being human enables us to elevate habit into practice, and even to elevate practice into enlightenment and endlessly complex influences.
