The Conflict of Faith and Love: A Comparative Study of Feuerbach and Kierkegaard

Abstract

This thesis examines the apparent contradiction between faith and love in Christian theology by placing Ludwig Feuerbach and Søren Kierkegaard into direct conversation. It begins with Feuerbach's critique in The Essence of Christianity, especially focusing on the chapter on the contradiction between faith and love, which argues that Christian faith constructs an exclusive framework that distorts love into a tool for conditionality. Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling introduces how he understands faith under the term “teleological suspension of the ethical.” In this framework, faith transcends human moral norms that impose the sacrifice of the ethical for the sake of the ultimate duty to God, grounded in faith. On the other hand, Kierkegaard's Works of Love describes how he comprehends faith. He reframes love as an unconditional ethical obligation grounded in divine command that surpasses exclusive love and partiality, which contradicts Feuerbach and Kierkegaard's own authorship. Through close textual analysis, this study investigates how Kierkegaard's understanding of faith and love engages Feuerbach's concerns, especially the tension between religious exclusivity and ethical universality. The thesis argues that although Kierkegaard shares Feuerbach's critique of the precedence of faith over ethical love, he ultimately reconfigures ethics through faith, not by suspending or neglecting ethics, but by grounding it theologically. Nevertheless, this solution is not without complications. While Kierkegaard offers a profound theological reconfiguration of ethical love, his account remains bound within a Christian framework. As such, it may not fully resolve Feuerbach's charge that faith distorts love through exclusion. This thesis thus concludes not with a resolution, but with a recognition: that Kierkegaard's response, though compelling, may still contain the very seeds of the exclusivist love Feuerbach critiques: a tension that underscores the ongoing challenge of reconciling faith with universal ethics.