Faith translates into Russian as "VERA."
And it's a very broad concept. It encompasses both a female name and the feeling and concept of a vast number of Russian philosophers and writers who have attempted to understand this word. There's no consensus on this. As a native speaker of Slavic languages, I think you're probably familiar with all of this.

I myself use this word to describe my sense of aspiration toward the transcendental, which is impossible to comprehend, know, or justify. — Astorre

It's an interesting discrepancy: Etymologically, Latin "fides" means 'trust', but Slavic "vera" (related to Latin "verus") means 'truth'.

It can indicate that adult converts are supposed to take something as truth what would/should otherwise be a matter of trust. They are expected to take something for granted, as true, despite the lack of trustworthiness.

Inspired by Kierkegaard's ideas — Astorre

What primary or secondary Kierkegaard sources do you base your argument upon? So far I've only seen you quote Wittgenstein as if his words were simple truth. I would suggest reading Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments where he speaks to the idea that all teaching/learning is aided by temporal occasions (including preaching), and that the teacher should therefore understand himself as providing such an occasion:

From a Socratic perspective, every temporal point of departure is eo ipso contingent, something vanishing, an occasion; the teacher is no more significant, and if he presents himself or his teachings in any other way, then he gives nothing... — Kierkegaard, Philosophical Crumbs, tr. M. G. Piety

This is why what I've already said is much more Kierkegaardian than the odd way that Kierkegaard is sometimes interpreted by seculars:

But is the problem preaching, or is it a particular kind of preaching? — Leontiskos

Kierkegaard wishes to stand athwart the Enlightenment rationalism notion of self-authority, preferring instead a Socratic approach that does not wield authority through the instrument of reason. Myron Penner's chapter/article is quite good in this regard: "Kierkegaard’s Critique of Secular Reason."

Kierkegaard wishes to stand athwart the Enlightenment rationalism notion of self-authority, preferring instead a Socratic approach that does not wield authority through the instrument of reason. — Leontiskos

The Philosophical Fragments juxtaposes the Socratic idea of self-knowledge to learning the truth in some other way. That is an exact description of his argument in the text.

Some bridge is needed to get that text to mean what you describe.

Good people can do bad things, and good people can become bad people. People aren't born evil and bad people can return to goodness. None of this suggests being born into sin. In fact, none of what I say makes reference to God or religion, but just asserts you are the creator of your moral standing.

Where i will push toward religion is to say you are always of infinite moral worth, but that is aligned with humanism as well.

It's complex and varied, but rarely as central as it is to Christianity, largely because most of the effort is spent on halacha, or the understanding of the law that governs the day to day — Hanover

Thus, as far as I could tell from the cited articles, there is no mention of the life (or any kind of existence) of a separate soul after death, until the resurrection of the entire body. You must understand that I am unfamiliar with this religion and am literally starting from scratch.

The cited texts mention the soul, but they refer to it as something that lives in and alongside the body, emphasizing the soul's formation only during life (as in the example of the rabbi's answer that one should live longer to fulfill more commandments). It is also mentioned that you will be resurrected as the same person you died. Therefore, any formation outside of life is impossible.

Did I understand correctly?

It's an interesting discrepancy: Etymologically, Latin "fides" means 'trust', but Slavic "vera" (related to Latin "verus") means 'truth'. — baker

I agree, this is truly interesting. Indeed, in Latin, veritas means truth. It turns out that, as a Slav, I understand both the word and the act itself in a very Western way. I'll definitely look into this, thank you. I wonder how this happened; perhaps it has something to do with the different understandings of the Roman and Constantinople churches? A very astute observation.

Thus, as far as I could tell from the cited articles, there is no mention of the life (or any kind of existence) of a separate soul after death, until the resurrection of the entire body. — Astorre

No, that's not the Jewish position.The position on it has changed over time, but that's not been the position for probably 1500 + years. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/immortality-belief-in-a-bodiless-existence/

There are also different traditions within Judaism on the issue. It's like asking what do Christians think about X. It might depend upon whether I want to know what 1st Century Catholics thought or what modern day Presbyterians think.

Hasidic traditions delve deeper into the mystical and have more developed views of the soul than Litvak legally focused traditions. For example, the Chabad Hasids believe this : https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/3194/jewish/What-Is-a-Soul-Neshamah.htm

The animal soul/spiritual soul is the focus of the Tanya, a religious writings specific to that group.

Much of this has to do with Jewish history as much as theology. Biblical Judaism was temple based, with sacrifices on the alter, priestly classes, and what you read in the text. Rabbincal Judaism as it emerged since 70 common era (the destruction of the second temple where the temple mound currently is in Jerusalem) is very different, and with migrations to different parts of Europe, interaction with other cultures, it's changed over time. In fact, the past 100 years has seen major changes with WW2, mass migrations to the US and Israel, the growth and significance of Yeshiva (seminary) focus, political influence, secularized and liberal strands develoing , etc. I mean a Reform Jew might not even admit to a meaningfully real god and might sound atheist. There's just lots of ground to cover.

If you're trying to arrive at what we'd call the traditional Orthodox Yeshiva oriented tradition (black hats and beards, but not the long sideburns), then I can give you that position, but I'd need to look it up to be sure I got the nuance correct.

Maimonides wrote that to try and explain the World to Come to a person in a body is like describing color to a person who is blind from birth. Likewise, when Rabbi Harold Kushner was once asked if he believed in the survival of the soul, he replied: “Yes, as a matter of faith, but I do not grasp what it means to be only a soul. For when I think of Harold I think of the voice that you are hearing and the person that I see in the mirror. I am not sure who Harold is without this body.”

it looks unambiguous

it looks ambiguous — Astorre

Rabbi Kushner is a Conservative (capital C) rabbi, not an Orthodox one, making his views more liberal and less mystical. It's like asking what the Christian view on homosexuality is and listening to an Anglican and then a Southern Baptist. It'd be inconsistent.

If you want like a very specific halachik position on something to do with the soul that a rosh Yeshiva would endorse, i can give you that, but expect significant variation if compared to Conservative Judaism, a 19th century development.

And, particularly within more liberalized traditions, they permit variance of thought among leadership and congregants, with Reform considering inclusiveness of beliefs (even very open to mixed marriages and Christian congregants) a central tenant.

The reason I suggest to you the Litvak view is that they're convinced they represent true historical auththentic immutable Judaism. Of course, many think otherwise.

- Have you offered anything more than an appeal to your own authority? I can't see that there is anything more, but perhaps I am missing something.

I was surprised by the depiction of what is said to be "Socratic" in your account of the Penner article. I will try to read it and maybe respond.

If I do try to reply, it would be good to know if you have studied Philosophical Fragments as a whole or only portions as references to other arguments.

I was surprised by the depiction of what is said to be "Socratic" in your account of the Penner article. — Paine

Well that sentence about "standing athwart" was meant to apply to Kierkegaard generally, but I think Fragments is a case in point. The very quote I gave from Fragments is supportive of the idea (i.e. the Socratic teacher is the teacher who sees himself as a vanishing occasion, and such a teacher does not wield authority through the instrument of reason).

If I do try to reply, it would be good to know if you have studied Philosophical Fragments as a whole or only portions as references to other arguments. — Paine

I am working through it at the moment, and so have not finished it yet. I was taking my cue from the Penner article I cited, but his point is also being borne out in the text.

Here is a relevant excerpt from Piety's introduction:

The motto from Shakespeare at the start of the book, ‘Better well hanged than ill wed’, can be read as ‘I’d rather be hung on the cross than bed down with fast talkers selling flashy “truth” in a handful of proposition’. A ‘Propositio’ follows the preface, but it is not a ‘proposition to be defended’. It reveals the writer’s lack of self-certainty and direction: ‘The question [that motivates the book] is asked in ignorance by one who does not even know what can have led him to ask it.’ But this book is not a stumbling accident, so the author’s pose as a bungler may be only a pose. Underselling himself shows up brash, self-important writers who know exactly what they’re saying — who trumpet Truth and Themselves for all comers. — Repetition and Philosophical Crumbs, Piety, xvii-xviii

He goes on to talk about Climacus in light of the early Archimedes and Diogenes images. All of this is in line with the characterization I've offered.

I want to say that Penner's point is salutary:

One stubborn perception among philosophers is that there is little of value in the explicitly Christian character of Søren Kierkegaard’s thinking. Those embarrassed by a Kierkegaardian view of Christian faith can be divided roughly into two camps: those who interpret him along irrationalist-existentialist lines as an emotivist or subjectivist, and those who see him as a sort of literary ironist whose goal is to defer endlessly the advancement of any positive philosophical position. The key to both readings of Kierkegaard depends upon viewing him as more a child of Enlightenment than its critic, as one who accepts the basic philosophical account of reason and faith in modernity and remains within it. More to the point, these readings tend to view him through the lens of secular modernity as a kind of hyper- or ultra-modernist, rather than as someone who offers a penetrating analysis of, and corrective to, the basic assumptions of modern secular philosophical culture. In this case, Kierkegaard, with all his talk of subjectivity as truth, inwardness, and passion, the objective uncertainty and absolute paradox of faith, and the teleological suspension of the ethical, along with his emphasis on indirect communication and the use of pseudonyms, is understood merely to perpetuate the modern dualisms between secular and sacred, public and private, object and subject, reason and faith—only as having opted out of the first half of each disjunction in favor of the second. Kierkegaard’s views on faith are seen as giving either too much or too little to secular modernity, and, in any case, Kierkegaard is dubbed a noncognitivist, irrationalist antiphilosopher.

Against this position, I argue that it is precisely the failure to grasp Kierkegaard’s dialectical opposition to secular modernity that results in a distortion of, and failure to appreciate, the overtly Christian character of Kierkegaard’s thought and its resources for Christian theology. Kierkegaard’s critique of reason is at the same time, and even more importantly, a critique of secular modernity. To do full justice to Kierkegaard’s critique of reason, we must also see it as a critique of modernity’s secularity. — Myron Penner, Kierkegaard’s Critique of Secular Reason, 372-3

I find the readings that Penner opposes very strange, but they are nevertheless very common. They seem to do violence to Kierkegaard's texts and life-setting, and to ignore his affinity with a figure like J. G. Hamann (who is also often mistaken as an irrationalist by secular minds). Such readings go hand in hand with the OP of this thread, which takes them for granted even without offering any evidence for the idea that they come from Kierkegaard.

Faith translates into Russian as "VERA." — Astorre

It's an interesting discrepancy: Etymologically, Latin "fides" means 'trust', but Slavic "vera" (related to Latin "verus") means 'truth'. — baker

This looks to be a false etymology. The Latin fides and the Slavic vera are both translations of the Greek pistis, and vera primarily means faith, not true. The two words do share a common ancestor (were-o), but vera is not derived from verus, and were-o does not exclude faith/trustworthiness.

One stubborn perception among philosophers is that there is little of value in the explicitly Christian character of Søren Kierkegaard’s thinking. — Myron Penner, Kierkegaard’s Critique of Secular Reason, 372-3

If one accepts that such a Christian character is the most important question throughout all of his work, Penner playing off one camp against another looks like a made-up problem.

I will have to think about how Penner's use of "secular" relates to what Kierkegaard has said in his words in other works.