Faith was not only a theme of Kierkegaard’s life, but also the systematic center of his thought. Despite essential similarities between the young and the later Kierkegaard’s understanding of faith, one fundamental difference stands out. Whereas the young Kierkegaard understands the relation between faith and reality as a positive one, in Kierkegaard’s journals and works since the late summer of 1843 a negative assessment of this relation becomes increasingly important, culminating in his late work in the call for a world-renouncing Christianity centered on the imitation [Efterfølgelse] of Christ. In what follows, I will outline several moments of continuity in Kierkegaard’s understanding of faith, in order to examine this discontinuity in terms of both its background and of the circumstances and factors that conditioned it.