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Theological Table-Talk
By Thor Hall

We do not often think of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway as exciting places, theologically. Most of us feel, that, were it not for the language barriers, we could fly into Kastrup, Bromma, and Fornebu, spend half a day each place with a rented car, interview all the leading theologians in Northern Europe, and get a full briefing on their situation and work without being much delayed on our way to Marburg or Tübingen, places where people are really with it. But there are a few things happening there that strike me as important-things that foreigners tend to miss, either because they do not look hard enough or because they look for other things (which is easy in Scandinavia) or because they do not look at all. Furthermore, they are especially meaningful in view of the history of twentieth century Scandinavian theology.

Contra Kierkegaard

The first thing I find interesting is what appears to be an increasingly explicit reaction to the legacy of the Kierkegaardian concept of Christianity. In Sweden and Norway, Kierkegaard was never greatly appreciated during his own time or in his twentieth century renaissance. The only important theologians there interested in Kierkegaard have been Torsten Bohlin in Sweden and Fr. Petersen and Per Lönning in Norway. Swedish theology in general is not particularly inclined toward epistemological subjectivism, philosophical paradoxality, or anti-ecclesiastical individualism; and as far as Norwegians are concerned, there are all sorts of built-in reservations against anything that approaches theological autogenesis or dogmatic heterodoxy. In short, there has not been a single out-and-out existentialist among the theologians of Sweden and Norway.

Thor Hall, Associate Professor of Preaching and Theology at the Divinity School of Duke University, is highly qualified to survey theological thinking in Scandinavia today. Not only is he a native of Norway and a specialist on Lundensian theology, but he spent the past academic year at the University of Lund, Sweden.

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In Denmark, however, the situation is different. Although in the latter nineteenth and early twentieth century Kierkegaard's thought was largely overshadowed by other movements-Grundtvig then being the most important leader-there was a significant resurgence of Kierkegaardian influence in the 1920's, and existentialist motifs have been in the character of all theology done in Denmark ever since. The originator of the twentieth century Kierkegaard-revival, Eduard Geismar, had many disciples. In addition, Kierkegaardian emphases continued to be recognizable among those who widened their existentialist stance and came under the influence of Bultmann, Grisebach, and Gogarten.

In Denmark, the period of the 1920's and 1930's was described as a tidehverv, a change of times. Elements of the new theologies on the continent were now blended into the traditions from Grundtvig and Kierkegaard. In particular, one finds the Barthian emphasis on the objective saving grace of God and the Grundtvigian understanding of authentic Christian living-the honest acceptance of our humanity within the context of sacrament and word-being held together by means of the Kierkegaardian concept of "the moment," the existential relationship to things natural and supernatural. The result was a theology that could both differentiate clearly between common humanity and godly life and include them within a synthesis of sorts, namely, the Lutheran doctrine of the two kingdoms, interpreted existentially. However, it soon appeared that the synthesis was untenable. Grundtvigian elements once again tended to overshadow the Kierkegaardian-and now also the Barthian-emphases. For a time, such neo-Grundtvigian proponents of a world-affirming Christian humanism as Anders Nörgaard and Vilhelm Grönbech seemed to dominate, though they continued to be challenged by others who chose to relate themselves more closely to Barth and Kierkegaard. The most noteworthy among these were K. E. Skydsgaard, Regin Prenter, and Hal Koch. In time, however, the pendulum seemed to swing away from Barthian motifs, and leadership on the theological scene passed to men who developed their thought in confessed dependence on existentialist thought-forms (primarily those of Gogarten and Bultmann), namely, K. E. Lögstrup, Anders Slök, and P. G. Lindhardt. In recent decades it is the last group of men that has given the theological milieu in Denmark its lively and contemporary flavor.

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The new in the present situation is that a reaction to the Kierkegaardian concept of Christianity has been made explicit even among this last group, and in two ways. The first has to do with the understanding of the Christian life itself; the other is related to the problem of apologetics. Both are discussed in recent works by K. E. Lögstrup.¹

Lögstrup describes the melancholic Dane's concept of Christian existence as "pilgrim-mythical" and claims that it is one of the primary causes for the predominance of nihilism in our time; furthermore, he blames the "narrow" ontology of existentialism for the fact that contemporary preaching does not seem enlightening or convincing to modern man. Over against Kierkegaar, Lögstrup seeks to assert a theological orientation that is characterized, not by world denial or speculative "Christocracy," but by broad contacts with contemporary culture and modern philosophy. It is on this background that he considers a new ontology a desideratum of first priority in Protestant theology. He is not satisfied with, the existential-analytical approach of Bultmann and Heidegger. He looks, instead, to the philosophy of science and art for tools by which to fulfill what he calls "the task of fundamental ontology." The key, he says, might well be the new awareness in science I and art of the miraculous character of nature. At any rate, what he aims for is a distinctly Protestant ontology that can serve as a significant parallel to that of the Thomists in Roman Catholicism.

At the Second Nordic Conference on Systematic Theology, held in-Oslo, 1967, where Lögstrup argued these points, the participants showed considerable sympathy for Lögstrup's thought. No one seriously challenged his reading of the contemporary situation. Considerable uncertainty appeared, however, when the nature of the theologian's ontological task was specified. Swedes were very dubious that an ontology based on the miraculous character of nature, would be convincing to modern skeptics. A better way, in their view, would be to work on the possibility of verifying the realities to which religious statements refer.² Norwegians, more metaphysically inclined than either the Danes or the Swedes, thought the type of ontology that was suggested by Tillich could be a useful starting-point. Lögstrup himself, primarily under pressure from his

¹ Teologi og kultur," Norsk Teologish Tidsskrift, Vol. 69, No. 1-2, 1968, pp. 2-39; and Opgör med Kierkegaard (Köbenhavn: Gyldendal, 1968).
² Cf. the paper by Hampus Lyttkens of Lund, entitled "Kan kristna trosutsagor verifieras genom religiös erfarenhet," op. cit, pp. 40ff.

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Danish colleagues, finally specified his concept of the philosophical-ontological task in terms of vïrkelighetstolkning (interpretation of reality) or eksistenseksegese. His thought had thereby moved full circle, and he was back in the existentialist framework-at least methodologically. He confessed this in his last replication during the Oslo debate: "Methodologically, I can see no other fruitful way to philosophize than the way of existential philosophy." The legacy from Kierkegaard is thus undeniable, after all.

Lögstrup's other charge, that Kierkegaard's concept of Christianity is basically foreign to true Christian eschatological worldliness, has recently been taken up by Gustaf Wingren of Lund.³ He traces the development of modern European theology prior to the Geneva Conference on Church and Society, 1966, and claims it is based on christology, and not on the doctrine of creation. This, says Wingren, has several unhappy consequences. The gospel is "contaminated" by being made party to present social conflicts; and Christians reduce the relevance of their arguments, since they operate not with social concerns, strictly speaking, but with veiled churchly concerns which are irrelevant and meaningless to other citizens, many of whom are atheists' Wingren finds the roots of this theological orientation in Kierkegaard. He is said to have caused the creational perspective to disappear from modern theology or to be distorted into a principle of law and order (the status quo); and he is said to have led the opponents of the status quo to run to christology to find their motivation and model for change. With Kierkegaard, the normal and natural and regular aspects of man's life-that which a man is and does by virtue of God's gift of life-became an object of renunciation, even aggression. Change became more important than normalcy and manhood. Not so for Lögstrup, says Wingren. In his view, it is far more important to ask how a man can be a normal human being than to ask about revolution or change. In squaring accounts with Kierkegaard, therefore, Lögstrup has undertaken what Wingren considers a "basic research within social ethics."

But where does Lögstrup come out? His own views are not clear. "I believe," he says, "the characteristic thing in Jesus' preaching is that the life he talks about as a life in the Kingdom of God has nothing to do with cultural activity, but is a life in expressions which belong to the moment-mercy, love, trust, faithfulness, every-

³ From a Theology of Order to a Theology of Revolution," Svensk teologisk kvartalskrift, Vol. 45, No. I , 1969, pp. 37-47.

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thing . . ." Is this a social ethic at all? If it is, in what way is it a Christian social ethic? Does it not, instead, represent a re-emergence of the neo-Gruntvigian orientation of the tidehverv era--only that here theology has been emptied of both christocentric nerve and ethical radicality and has become purely humanistic and entirely secular? Lögstrup clearly has some more work to do in coming to terms with the nature and character of the Christian faith itself.

Quo Vadis Suecia?

The problem which engages everyone's interest at the moment in Sweden is the question, What is going to happen to the church? The subject has been good for twenty years or more of intense public debate. The focus, of course, is on the matter of church-state relations.

The Church of Sweden, established as a national ecclesiastical institution and integrated into the political structure of Swedish society and government, has recently been racked by internal dissension and vexed by external criticism over such apparently trivial problems as the demand that the church be put on a par with other civil services and be required to accept women into its ministry, and the legal requirement that the church's ministers must perform the marriage ceremony for anyone who requests their services within the law, regardless of their own convictions concerning divorce and remarriage. Given the confessional orientation and the theological framework of the Church of Sweden, these problems were in no sense trivial. The first came to a head at the 1957 and 1958 meetings of the Kyrkomötet, a church congress with little power. The second is constantly being tested in the courts, though the law is consistently being upheld and the priests who refuse to conform are one and all found guilty of dereliction of duty.

Underlying the current disagreements there are two basically different concepts of the church. On the one hand, there are those who view the church as a state institution, a folkkyrka, in which the democratic principles of tolerance, freedom, involvement, and co-determination must be recognized and accepted as fundamental to the church's life; and on the other hand are those who hold the church to be a community of faith, a konfessionskyrka, which is under prior obligation to a definite set of authorities-biblical, tradi-

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tional, confessional, and hierarchical. The latter group represents a strong, but strange, coalition between several different factions: a fellowship of high church people until recently under the leadership of Harald Riesenfeldt of Uppsala (the so-called Svensk Prästförbund and its lay corollary, Kyrklig Samling); a West-Swedish movement of conservative Lutherans now under the leadership of Bishop Bo Giertz of Gothenburg (variously called the Old Lutherans or the neo-Schartauans); a mass of outspoken low church people following the leadership of Gustaf Adolf Danell (the strict confessionalists); and a predominantly lay oriented association of fundamentalists and pietists called Svenska Fosterlandsstiftelsen. The other group is almost equally heterogeneous, made up of the largest part of the Church of Sweden, the broad church-lay and learned-with the present Archbishop of Sweden, Ruben Josefson, at the helm; a movement of progressive and liberal churchmen interested in extending the church's impact on contemporary society by way of a radical application of the Christian principles of love and justice (the so-called Broderskapsrörelsen); and a great many politicians (Social Democrats) and culture radicals who are eager to see the church relate itself to the socio-political situation at the present.

In 1956 the Riksdagen requested the King to authorize a study of the future relations between the church and state. The commission started work in January, 1958, and submitted its final report in March, 1968. The report defines in an objective manner four possible alternatives for the structure of church-state relations: (a) continuing establishment, including right to taxation and church lands; (b) disestablishment, but with some form of taxation and continuation of land rights; (c) disestablishment, with no right to taxation but with continuing land and property rights; and (d) disestablishment, with no taxation or land rights, although church buildings would be turned over to the church. ⁴

In the meantime the debate continues. Many factors are involved: tradition, social democracy, Lutheran confessions, religious freedom, biblical authority, various church concepts; and the perspectives vary from the most theological to the most pragmatic. Quo vadis Suecia? Predictions are uncertain. Back in 1925, Bishop U. L. Ullman made the following statement: "To my inner vision the picture of our church's future reveals a congregation of martyrs, pressed by the anti-

⁴ An excellent summary of the present status of the Church of Sweden is Karl-Gustaf Lindelöw, Kyrka och stat-hur blir det i framtiden? (Stockholm: Verbum, 1968).

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Christian secular spirit, robbed of its past accumulations of wealth, and without prospects of making itself felt over against the worldly kingdom."⁵ Many feel this may well be the outcome of the present developments, but not everyone in Sweden takes the same dark view of the future. The following courageous statement by the proponents of a free, ecumenically oriented evangelical church shows that the negative dynamics of dread are beginning to be replaced by a positive and creative Christian commitment to a new kind of future.

"'For increasing numbers a divorce between state and church is now a self-evident result. The will to test our tradition against the contemporary situation and the demands of the future is our given startingpoint. We find that honesty and clear vision-though it may be painful-is a necessary presupposition for the radical renewal that is needed in order that the church shall be able to serve our whole people in the future. Only a free church, without the weight of outdated institutional baggage, privileges, and state church bureaucracy can fulfill this task." ⁶

The church may be moving toward some truly exciting times in Sweden, after all.

Sancta Simplicitas

Theologians and churchmen in Norway have recently had to face a challenge that is direct and damaging. It comes from a well read, deeply sensitive, and highly sophisticated intellectual, namely, the renowned Norwegian literary critic of both scholarly and popular acclaim, Dr. Philip Houm. His first, book on theology, Mannen fra Nasaret og Den norske kirke (The Man from Nazareth and the Church of Norway), instant bestseller on Aschehoug's 1965 fall list, began with the statement, "This book is an attack on the Church of Norway." In eight successively sharper chapters, Houm proceeded to charge the church with perpetuating theological ignorance, misrepresentation of Christian scholarship, and intellectual dishonesty. He attacked not only the leaders of the fundamentalist-pietistic lay movement in the church (the so-called Indremisjon) and the faculty of the conservative theological seminary (Menighetsfakul-

⁵ Quoted by L. M. Engström, Den svenska bekännelsekyrkans ställning och uppgift, Hassleholm (auth.), 1944, p. 7.
⁶ Framtidens kyrka, Lund: Häkan Ohlssons Förlag (distr.), 1969, pp. 9f.

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tetet), established in 1908 as a counter-move to the appointment of a "liberal" theologian, Johannes Ording, to the chair in dogmatics at the University of Oslo; he addressed himself also to the enlightened among the clergy who had allowed themselves to be gagged by the simple-minded, and to the theologians at the university who had not actively continued the struggle against the intellectual darkness that prevails in the church. He was out to show, he says, that the Church of Norway fails to draw the consequences of what has happened in historical-critical biblical scholarship-and in systematic theological reflection-in the last generation or two, and that it refuses to make known to the members of the church and to the public at large the advances that are being made. It thus gives the impression "that the particular form of Christianity which dominates the Norwegian church-an orthodox Lutheran Christianity with a strong pietistic orientation-is the only true Protestant form of Christianity today." That there is a chasm between scholarship and common people is bad enough. Worse is the unbridgeable separation between the church and contemporary secular culture. And worst of all, he says, is the fact that the church forces enlightened people to suppress their religious yearnings and close themselves to the Christian message and the Christian claim.

I have in my files a great many reviews of Houm's book; they constitute for the most part depressing corroboration of Houm's reading of the theological situation, Norwegian style. Not many of the professional theologians discussed the book publicly, but those who did emphasized in various ways that Houm's orientation in theology was much too one-sidedly Bultmannian, that he was much too uncritical in his acceptance of the results of critical scholarship, and that he was not intellectually honest in basing his attack on modern scholarship, when the fact of the matter is that he does not share the church's faith. The last point was the major one among those who look to Menighetsfakultetet for theological leadership. Houm is said to have "raised an angry cry against faithfulness to the Bible," he has "attacked the content of the church's faith," and he has "fallen under the spell of science rather than under the imperative of Christ." The Norwegian dilemma is thereby illustrated: new theological perspectives are either neutralized by reference to the relativity of theological research, or they are rejected by reference to an absolute faith.

Philip Houm is not a cynic or an enemy of the Christian faith.

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He is interested in theology, simply because he wants to know what Christian faith is. He is an intellectual who, as he says, "has a bit of perseverance, some love of reading, and a certain concern for how things are being done in the kingdom of Norway." His principal enemy is "the holy, catholic (i.e., universal) dishonesty" which he finds prevailing in Norwegian religious circles, and he sees his own task, as an informed non-theologian, to present other theological traditions and thought-forms. In this way he wants to provide an antidote "to the singularly saving and denunciating and. stupidifying Norwegian form of Christianity."

In a second book, published in 1968 and entitled Hvem var han? (Who Was He?), Houm provides an impressive analysis of the twentieth century quest for the historical Jesus and comes out for a very balanced critical-existential-eschatological christology. In Scandinavia, this is very definitely an unusual position, although Houm finds promise in the growing openness to such thought-forms in Denmark, and particularly in the tradition of Grönbech, Lindhardt, Slök, and, Lögstrup. In Norway, however, it is sheer heresy.

Surveying the theological scene in Norway, Houm finds little to indicate the presence of an awareness that the twentieth century has even dawned. The Norwegian church has apparently forgotten that a man by the name of Kierkegaard ever lived. Grundtvig's followers in Norway, the great Björnson among them, found themselves estranged from respectable church people. Schweitzer's epoch-making, book, The Quest for the Historical Jesus, has never been published in Norwegian. Bultmann's basic work on Jesus and Mythology first appeared in Norwegian translation in 1968, forty years after its original publication.

Houm's appraisal of the theological situation in Norway is not incorrect; it simply takes a man of his wide vision and independent spirit to say what he sees. The politics of silence which the theological community there has followed for two generations-out of a responsible fear of sowing doubt or out of an irresponsible fear of offending the mighty movements of conservative churchmen-has provided a climate in which superstition and faith, truth and error freely coexist. The result is a church characterized by theological primitivism, belligerent anti-intellectualism, and puritanical pietism, and a cultural situation in which both professional theologians and theologically interested intellectuals live in isolation.

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There is, of course, enlightened theology being done even in Norway. The number of theologians is not large-only forty-nine doctores theologiae were created in the fifty year period between 1911 and 1961. But some significant people have emerged and a few important contributions have been made. Best known interna tionally, perhaps, is the Old Testament scholar Sigmund Mowinckel. Others known abroad are Einar Molland, Nils Astrup Dahl (now at Yale), Thorleif Bowman, Ragnar Leivestad, and Jacob Jervell. A few nationally recognized figures have managed with some degree of success to hold together theological sophistication and active church involvement, namely Kristian Schjelderup, Eiving Berggrav, and Per Lonning.

For the rest, however, the theological scene is much like the Norwegian countryside; behind the rugged stone wall of the west coast a multitude of fjords, each with its own kind of life and dialect, customs and costumes; and up from these, cut deep into the marrow of the mountains, an even greater number of isolated valleys where people hold on long to what they have and count themselves blessed for having such a safe and secure place. The "great" theologians in Norway are the local figures and the home-grown men, the leaders of the Christian community in its vigilant struggle against "foreign" and "modernistic" tendencies, men like J. C. Heuch (at the turn of the century), Ole Hallesby (from the twenties through the fifties), and in our age the cousins Carl Fr. Wislöff and Fredrik Wislöff and the brothers Leiv Aalen and Sverre Aalen. The history of the con servative Menighetsfakultetet is largely the history of this vigilant theological absolutism.

Philip Houm is not a man of the fjords and the valleys. Some people listen to him, but not many. Most reject him. And what is sadder still, the questions he raised have been discussed as if they were his own individual problems, not relevant to true Christian believers or to truly faithful theologians. From all indications, then, the challenge to intellectual honesty which that cultured one among the despisers of the Norwegianized Christianity issued so dramatically a few years ago has not had much effect. The Church of Norway is still very much in the grip of an earlier age. It conceives of itself as representing the una sancta, but its commitments-tragically- make it a slave to sancta simplicitas.