ABSTRACT
Concerning the consciousness of sin, Kierkegaard writes in Concluding Unscientific Postscript (Part 2.II.IV.2.B Appendix a):2 "This consciousness is the expression for the paradoxical transformation of existence. Sin is the new existence-medium. To exist [existereY generally signifies only that by having come into existence the individual does exist [er til] and is becoming; now it signifies that by having come into existence he has become a sinner. To exist' generally is not a more sharply defining predicate but is the form of all more sharply defining predicates; one does not become something [qualitative] by coming into existence, but now to come into existence is to become a sinner. In the totality of guilt-consciousness, existence asserts itself as strongly as possible within immanence, but the consciousness of sin is the break. By coming into existence the individual becomes another person, or in the instant he is to come into existence he becomes another person by coming into existence, because otherwise the category of sin is placed within immanence. The individual is not a sinner from eternity. When the being intended for eternity, who in birth comes into existence, becomes a sinner in birth or is born as a sinner-then it is existence that wraps itself around him in such a way that every communication of immanence by way of recollection through regression into the eternal is broken, and the predicate 'sinner', which first, but also immediately, appears through the coming into existence, gains such a paradoxically overwhelming power that the coming into existence makes him into another person. This is the consequence of the appearance of the god [Guden] in time, which prevents the individual from relating himself backward to the eternal, since he now moves forward in order to become eternal in time through the relation to the god in time. The individual is therefore unable to gain the consciousness of sin by himself, which is the case with guilt-consciousness, because in guiltconsciousness the subject's self-identity is preserved, and guilt-consciousness is a change of the subject within the subject himself. The consciousness of sin, however, is a change of the subject himself, which shows that outside the individual there must be the power that makes clear to him that he has become a person other than he was by coming into existence, that he has become a sinner. This power is the god in time."
