”Gud, för dig är allting klart, allt det dolda uppenbart”

Guds allmakt och allvetande som uppenbarad och fördold i ett urval psalmer

Abstract

This study treats the topic of the omniscient and omnipotent God in Swedish hymns, predominantly from the Swedish Hymnal of 1986 (Den svenska psalmboken). A number of hymns are analysed through the hermenutical lens of St. Augustine, Martin Luther (with special emphasis on Marius Timmann Mjaaland’s analysis of the same topos in Luther’s writings) and Paul Tillich. The author concludes that the concept of God as all-seing and all-powerful is particularly prominent in hymn-writing from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with a possible decline of frequency after the 1960s. The omniscience and the transcendental properties are in the hymn texts not articulated as awe-inspiring or dominant, but as a source and aim of transcendental yearning and comfort in relation to earthly life. These tendencies in the hymns studied are identified as five central conceptual topics of God’s nature and properties.