Introduction

It is my pleasure to introduce the six articles in this second issue of Studia Theologica: Nordic Journal of Theology 2023. The articles cover a wide spectrum within the thriving theological scholarship in the Nordic context. The first article, written by Ilona Blumgrun née Silvola, Åbo Akademi University, is a theological analysis of credibility assessment of religious conversion in the asylum process in Finland. In Finland refugee status can be granted asylum seekers based on religious persecution. Given the fact that a rising number of asylum seekers from Islamic countries are converting to Christianity, Blumgrun sets out to investigate the understanding of Christianity the Finnish Immigration Service (Migri) is basing their credibility assessment of conversion on in the asylum process. Blumgrun chooses to focus on the concepts of faith and the Church. The data she is working with consists of 48 application rulings, concentrating on the 20 negative decisions. While Migri views are primarily based on “inward orientation” as manifestations of religious identity, Blumgrun concludes that possibly some in need of protection might not be detected during the asylum process.

Merethe Roos, University of South-Eastern Norway, writes about the portrayal of Jews in the sermons of the Danish theologian Balthasar Münter, who served as a preacher in the German St. Petri congregation in Copenhagen between 1765 and 1793. Roos argues that Münter’s positive view of the Jews in one of his sermons reflect theological views in line with certain characteristics of enlightenment theology, instead of genuine tolerance towards religious minorities. Furthermore, she argues that the same antisemitic attitudes that characterize the texts of his contemporaries, such as the well-known court preacher Christian Bastholm, are present in Münter´s other theological writings. Nevertheless, Roos claims that Münter’s openness points to fundamental characteristics of protestant theology.

“The Mysteries of the Ark of the Covenant” is the title of an article based on the Mowinckel lecture that Thomas Römer, the College de France, held at the University of Oslo in 2021. While the starting point is with Mowinckel’s view on the ark, the focus of the article is on the importance of the Ark (of God, of Yhwh, of the Covenant) in the Hebrew Bible and more specifically on the so-called Ark narrative in the books of Samuel. The author then brings the exegetical observations into conversation with the results of the excavations at Kiriath Jearim from 2017 and 2019, organized by the University of Tel Aviv and the Collège de France. He concludes with the question of the fate of the Ark after the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 587 BCE.

Religious pluralism and the challenge of relativism, is the focus of an article by Catherine Cornille, who is professor at Boston College, USA, and holds a honorary doctorate at the University of Oslo since 2022. In her article, Cornille deals with the various challenges of relativism when engaging with the reality of religious diversity in teaching and research. According to Cornille, an open and honest engagement with other religious traditions from a confessional perspective offers the most promising alternative to either a classical theological engagement with the resources of only one religious tradition on the one hand, or a neutral comparison of religions on the other. She maintains that the field of comparative theology offers such middle ground, as it allows for a genuine openness toward other religious traditions while remaining grounded in the normative teachings of a particular religion. Furthermore, Cornille argues, the field of comparative theology offers new approaches to both teaching and research in the area of religious diversity.

Garrick V. Allen, the University of Glasgow, is the author of an article entitled, “Are There Ancient Editions of Paul’s Letters? The Euthalian Apparatus as a Storehouse of Tradition”, which is based on a Dahl lecture he delivered at the University of Oslo in 2022. Allen concentrates on the Euthalian apparatus, a series of complicated and ubiquitous lists, cross-reference systems, biographical texts, and text divisions, which Nils Dahl also studied, as he recognized the critical value of these traditions for understanding the early transmission of the Pauline corpus. In his article, Allen stresses the significance of examining, not only the content, but also the flexibility of the Euthalian material in the manuscripts that preserve it. He concludes his article by stating that it is more valuable to understand these features in the context of transmission and reading as opposed to viewing the tradition as evidence for an ancient edition.

The last article is on Sámi ecotheology as a resource for the church of Norway, written by Tom Sverre Bredal-Tomren, VID Specialized University, Stavanger. In his article, Bredal-Tomren analyzes ecotheological writings of two well-known Sámi ministers, Bierna Leine Bientie and Tore Johnsen. He insists that both theologians stress the connection between nature, humanity, and the divine, and are therefore both more concerned with ontology and cosmology than ethical practice. Bredal-Tomren sees the strength of Sámi ecotheology as presented in Bientie's and Johnsen’s writings in its insistence on the connection between everything that lives, which provides an impetus to protect non-human nature. While the Church of Norway’s environmental ethics is theo-anthropocentrically oriented, Bredal-Tomren believes Bientie and Johnsen challenges the Church of Norway to place greater emphasis on non-human nature and make a greater commitment to biodiversity and landscape than it has hitherto done.

Arnfríður Guðmundsdóttir

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).