Skapelsen som evangeliets förståelsehorisont

Abstract

In this article, an ecclesiological idea articulated within a contemporary Swedish ecclesiological discourse on the Swedish Lutheran Church is critically examined: the idea of the church as a community of the active, as opposed to one of a more passive majority. The Swedish Lutheran church lacks, according to e.g. Patrik Hag-man and Jan Eckerdal, both the theological resources and the tradition to develop these kind of active commu-nities, which is why these authors draw their inspiration from catholic and anabaptistic theological thinking. From the standpoint of a theology of creation, as formulated by Gustaf Wingren, we address four aspects of the Swedish Lutheran Church which we believe to be endangered by the idea of the church as a community of the active, and the unsettling of which, accordingly, may constitute a shift of the Swedish Lutheran Church’s deeply rooted ecclesiological fundaments. These are: 1. the meaning of the word; it’s important status in the Lutheran tradition and the transformative potential of the word when it is heard, 2. the notion of the church as both scattered and gathered and the theological significance and basic relevance of everyday life in Lutheran tradition, 3. the church’s position on the nature of moral insight and the notion of the law as accessible to all humanity, and finally 4. the recognition of church community as characterized by plurality. Our overall con-clusion is that the controversy growing out of the activity/minority and passivity/majority accounts of the community of the Swedish Lutheran Church has several far-reaching implications involving the basic founda-tions of the church itself.