Kierkegaard on real love

“Love” is one of the most misused words in the English language.  The wrong use of it is responsible for the breakdown of many relationships and marriages.  Husband or wife thinks love is a feeling, and when the morning comes (inevitably) when the feeling is gone, he or she concludes it is time to call the divorce lawyer.  If the feeling is gone, then love is gone, and how can there be marriage without love?

Soren Kierkegaard (1813-55) can help us sort out this confusion.He can help us realize that the way our culture uses the word “love” is radically different from the way the Bible uses the word. And if we realize that, then we can restore our broken relationships with our spouse and others, and with God.

Kierkegaard has been known as a radical critic of state-sponsored Christianity and as a principal exponent of the emerging philosophical movement called existentialism, which emphasized the historical existence of the individual. This was in response to the philosophy of Hegel that seemed to ignore the individual in its depiction of world-historical forces such as the state.

These two themes come together in his book Works of Love (1847), but a third is present—reflection on the life of the Christian. Works of Love reflects on two types of love, which are translated by Howard and Edna Hong as “love” and “erotic love.”  The first is commanded by God, so it is under the control of the will.  The second is a spontaneous feeling that one cannot summon up at will.  This is the most common way “love” is understood in our culture.

Kierkegaard argues that we should concentrate on the first–love that can be controlled by the will–and not worry too much about the second–erotic or romantic love.  At the very least, we should understand the difference between the two, and realize that the first, which is the most important, is at the heart of our walk with God and neighbor.

Anders Nygren’s Agape and Eros, which appeared in English in the 1930s, had a huge impact on modern theology. It argues that biblical love is all about agape (self-sacrificial love that loves the unlovely) and had nothing to do with eros (desire for union with the beloved because the object of love is desirable to the lover), that agape is theocentric while eros is egocentric, and that agape is both the “fundamental motif” of Christianity and what distinguishes Christianity from every other world religion.  The latter is doubtful (what about Judaism, from which Christian agape is derived?), but what is noteworthy for us is that Nygren derived his two basic terms from Kierkegaard’s Works of Love.

Kierkegaard does not insist on choosing one over the other, as if eros is always wrong. That is one false impression of the difference between these two.  Another myth is that eros is the same as sexual desire.  On the contrary, eros is not inherently sexual, as modern connotations suggest, but is instead, as C.S. Lewis argued in his Four Loves, the desire of the lover for union with the beloved.  This desire for union may have nothing to do with sex at all, and may be perfectly willing to endure pain in order to achieve that union.  Kierkegaard’s point is that agape, which he calls “love” in this work, can support and strengthen spontaneous feeling for the beloved.  It will not necessarily destroy or uproot natural desires.  But romantic feeling (eros) should never be the foundation of a marriage.  For feelings come and go.  They are as hard to control as water falling through your hand.  But true love–the biblical love of agape–is not a feeling. Eros is the feeling that desires the beloved because she is beautiful, while agape loves even when the object of love is not beautiful.

Bottom line: for Kierkegaard, biblical love is a work, a deed, something you and I do, not a feeling. And it has to do primarily with God.  It comes from God because he is the one who first loved us, and he is the source of any true love that anyone has for another.

How does this apply to marriage and relationships?  The only love that will sustain a marriage is agape, which is the biblical love that Kierkegaard calls “love.”  It is a commitment to do the right thing for the other person, even if I have no feelings for him or her.  Feelings are comparatively shallow, but the commitment to do what is right, by the strength that comes from God, is as deep as God himself.  For it is from him.