the old man

Hermann Diem, writing in Kierkegaard: An Introduction:

To Kierkegaard, it was no accident that the "forgiveness of sins" and the "resurrection of the body" are juxtaposed in the Creed. What is made new through faith in the forgiveness of sins is the old man, not someone else. A man does not become a blank page. What he realizes in his new life are possibilities lying in his own past history, even if he has already bungled them. (26)