The Theological Self in Kierkegaard’s Sickness unto Death

With particular attention to Sickness Unto Death, this essay explores the place and function of the coram deo motif in Kierkegaard’s theological programme, arguing that it serves to secure the fact that the human self is constituted and governed by its relationship to God such that true human subjectivity — a central Kierkegaardian preoccupation — finds its decisive condition of possibility in the transcendent reality of God’s sovereign claim and mercy. Kierkegaard’s use of the coram deo motif reiterates the essential logic of Luther’s theological anthropology, sharpening the explication of human sinfulness and radicalizing the reality of divine grace as the sole possibility of genuine human selfhood.