Människoblivande. Teologi som biografi: Gustaf Wingren

Abstract

This article elaborates on the possible contributions and limitations of one of the major Swedish theologians in the 20th Century, Gustaf Wingren (1910-2000), focusing in particular on his understanding of salvation as a kenotic as well as eschatological process of becoming human. Due to his creative combination of theological hermeneutics and hermeneutical theology, first time manifested in the controversial book Predikan / The Living Word (1949/1960), this theological project unites continuity and disruption in an extraordinary pr-ductive way. This book also contains the theological resources for his metamorphosis in the 1970s, when he recontextualized all his theological thinking from an academic context into a kind of ”political” theology focusing on societal challenges. By using of a biographical method, a major source for this transformation – otherwise absent in the Wingren reception – was made visible: Greta Hofsten, a left wing public intellectual, whom he also married in 1976.