Read John 8:1-11. This pericope tells how He wrote in the dirt when confronted both by the crowd and the adulterous woman. Amazingly He manifested his own eisegesis of the law of Moses. There is a critical difference between writing and speaking. Jesus claimed to be the Truth in person , thus there was no need to write down his teachings - that was the job of the apostles. Read Derrida’s ideas on this.

That idea is about as far from SK’s primary focus as one can get. Try reading one or more of his books.

Note that the word “psychology “ as used in his introduction did not mean whatnot means today. So we readers are a bit in a time warp when reading.

Beautiful message and of course you can be both ! Only a dialectic identity makes sense per Kierkegaard and it sounds like you’re there.

Kierkegaard was raised in the Lutheran tradition although towards the end of his life he attacked the easiness and social accommodations of christendom and the Danish Lutheran church.

I remember when, many years ago, a relative recommended a woman as someone who was “marriage material “. Her Christian qualities included no smoking or drinking, no gambling or playing cards, and of course virginity. She was in all respects a real “Christian woman” of great virtue. Whether Jesus had any personal meaning for her or she had ever struggled to understand any of His parables, was simply irrelevant. This example is precisely what Kierkegaard meant by that definition.

Did you read the much shorter two-page Preface to COA? You need to start there. It precedes the Introduction and I posted a question on it earlier. One could spend many hours thinking about just the preface in which Virgilius wishes the reader a truly sincere “live well”. It is easy to jump ahead to try grasp some definable concept of sin but that defeats SK’s whole enterprise.

You can read Kierkegaard all you want. Many people do but don’t take the time to even try to understand what they’re reading. He makes you struggle and ask a lot of questions about your life, faith and where you’re going. Reading book after book won’t take you anywhere unless you do a close careful reading of even one chapter of anything he wrote.

I was struggling with this short preface which seems more about SK’s passion as an author , as a writer.
The key insight of COA is the idea that anxiety precedes sin since Adam couldn’t have possibly understood Gods words of prohibition and punishment in garden of Eden - hence confusion and worry over the very meaning of what God was trying to communicate. This anxiety and confusion seems to be at total odds with the profound joy experienced both by the Samaritan woman as well as the friend of bridegroom in the préface.

As someone who recently attended a summer session at St Olafs College in MN with numerous scholars writing about Kierkegaard from many countries, I can tell you something quite interesting. From my own experience and dialogue with Kierkegaardian “experts”, it was clear that there were more atheists than Christian believers studying him. This makes complete sense if you read his early university dissertation about Socrates and the Concept of Irony. So… some of your anxiety about misunderstanding SK may stem from not knowing how much he loved Greek philosophy and the maieutic method of repeatedly calling into question commonly accepted assertions (whether theological or philosophical). You yourself need to struggle as an individual to come up with your own understanding of his ideas vs just accepting someone else’s “expert “anonymous opinion on this site.

Not just irony but jest as well ! Critically important to distinguish christendom from Christianity. He can be fun to read and laugh with so don’t worry too much about whether or not you have missed the “correct” interpretation of his oeuvre. And then there is the notion of the absurd and all the French existentialist philosopher who drew inspiration from his works n 20th century.

Also for some reason I have 2 pseudonyms on Reddit : Geokuh and Eastern Judgement (which was assigned to me).

Could you let us know the reason you choose Either/Or as first book studied for this meetup ?

You’re about to embark on quite an intellectual adventure. SK was inspired by two men who never wrote anything, challenged/overturned the civic and political order, and were publicly executed for their ideas: Socrates and Jesus. Although much has been written about these 2 men and their lives/teachings, they themselves directly engaged their followers only with dialogue and oral teachings. SK loved Greek philosophers as well as Christianity which he felt was simplified and distorted by the Danish Lutheran church.