Vilka är vi nu? Fundamentalecklesiologiska reflektioner kring Svenska kyrkans teologiska identitet

Abstract

In this article I try to assess the fundamental ecclesiology of the Church of Sweden in the context of the Church’s recent separation from the Swedish state and the development of Sweden from a once relatively homogeneous nation to an increasingly multicultural nation. In the first part, 1 suggest that the theological understanding of the Church’s own identity is characterized by its Lutheran heritage and its wish to be a «people’s church» [«folkkyrka»]. A short description follows of one of the leading theologians, Einar Billing, behind the «people’s church»-theology. In the second part I develop the relationship between passivity and activity with a focus on the question of the human being’s relation to receiving God’s grace. I argue against the tendency in Lutheran theology to see human beings in relation to God as solely passive in favor of a dialectic relationship between passivity and activity. In the third part I question the rhetoric in the «people’s church»-theology with its tendency to describe itself as «open» and suggesting that other churches are more «narrow» or «intolerant». The risk of this rhetoric is that the «people’s church»-theology becomes either trivial or authoritarian. In the fourth part, against the «people’s church»-theology I am arguing that the condition of the possibility to speak of an offer of grace from God is that grace actually has been received by human beings, and it is therefore an illusion to speak of this offer without speaking of the community where it has been received. Lastly, I try to develop Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s image of the «polyphonic life» as a way of understanding the relationship between passivity and activity, and what this could mean for the future theological identity of the Church of Sweden.