After living with a pandemic for more than two years, Europe is currently faced with another humanitarian crisis. While people are eager to see life turning back to normal, free from the virus, there is nothing normal about our daily life when a war is going on in the neighbourhood. Right now it is impossible to predict how things will develop, but in all likelihood, there will be no going back to what it was like prior to the pandemic, and the war. Only time will tell how current experience will influence our theological discourse in the years to come. Right now we have to hope for the best and pray for those suffering the consequences of a deadly virus and an armed conflict while we continue to tend to our daily endeavours. Having said that, I admit that I am utterly grateful for the opportunity to introduce the first issue of Studia Theologica in 2022, which consists of five articles, plus a list of dissertations in theology defended at Nordic Universities in 2021.
The first article is written by Timo Nisula, Åbo Akademi University, Finland, and has the title “Inner Voices Exposed: Fictitious Therapeutic Dialogues in Augustine’s Sermones ad populum”. In his article, Nisula focuses on therapeutic intentions of Augustine’s preaching, and how the cures of varying states of emotions are discussed in his sermons. Nisula discusses three different cases in which Augustine uses a rhetorical device, sermocinatio, where a fictitious dialogue is created between different characters during the sermon. Augustine uses this rhetorical device in order to bring about different reactions and inner responses to ethical instructions on forgiveness, greed and fear. In the course of the sermon, the preacher attempts to respond to these voices by quoting Scripture in order to challenge those listening with a directly personal and divine address. Through his sermons, Augustine aims to offer functional and habitual therapy for the various kinds of temptations they are confronted with.
Svend Andersen, Aarhus University, Denmark, is the author of the second article, entitled “Ethico-political Imagination in Luther, Kant, and Løgstrup”. Andersen examines the role of imagination according to Martin Luther, Immanuel Kant, and K. E. Løgstrup. While Kant argues that the basic problem is the agent’s relation to practical reason, Luther and Løgstrup regard ethics as rooted in the agent’s relation to the other. According to Kant, imagination (Einbildungskraft) hardly plays an ethical role, but does so via aesthetic judgment. To Luther, the emphasis is on the right action in a particular situation, free from general rules. That is also true for Luther’s understanding of the Golden Rule, which he considers a summary of natural law. Andersen maintains that Løgstrup’s ethics is a reconstruction of Luther’s theory of natural law, but philosophically based on existential phenomenology. In The Ethical Demand, Anderson argues, Løgstrup understands imagination as being central for one’s ability to take care of the other, while later on he insists that the Golden Rule stresses the role of imaginationd and one’s capability to empathize with the other. Andersen concludes his article by outlining Løgstrup’s view of imagination in political ethics.
In his article “Kierkegaard on indiscriminate love”, Knut Alfsvåg VID Specialized University, Stavanger, Norway, maintains that Kierkegaard’s thinking revolves around the difference between the infinite and the finite, while he considers the commandment to love all humans indiscriminately to be the manifestation of the infinite within the area of the finite. According to Alfsvåg, Kierkegaard does not think that the realization of this commandment will let inequality disappear, since finitude can never be conceived as the realization of the infinite and undifferentiated. Hence, the goal of absolute human equality will never be realized within the realm of the finite and political, even if it plays an important role as the area from which the values of the political are calibrated and evaluated. If the goal is considered realizable, Kierkegaard maintains that politics will be reduced to secularized versions of theocracy, while if lost, politics will be reduced to entertainment. The task of the church in relation to the political sphere is therefore to maintain the significance of this principle.
Jayne Svenungsson, Lund University, Sweden, has written the article “Radical Incarnation: The Dangers and Promises of Christian Universalism in the Wake of Badiou’s Saint Paul”. Svenungsson starts out with Alain Badiou’s pamphlet from 1997, “Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism”, where Badiou pointed to the cynical interaction between the burgeoning identitarian movements and neoliberal capitalism. Against these tendencies, Badiou proposed a creative reinterpretation of Christian universalism inspired by the Pauline letters. In her article, Svenungsson revisits Badiou’s argument in light of recent debates on the limits of identity politics. First of all, Svenungsson gives a brief overview of what she considers an innovative and thought-provoking reading of Paul, which gave significant impulses to the politico-philosophical debate in the subsequent years. Secondly, she discusses some of the lacunas of Badiou’s interpretation of Christian universalism, asking if these lacunas may help explain why the radical left-wing universalism of the 2000s never really took off, but was instead replaced with radicalized identitarian movements on the political left as well as the political right. Finally, Svenungsson maintains that the Christian tradition of universalism has critical insights to offer contemporary political philosophy, but only if it is able to avoid repeating legitimizing supersessionist patterns from the past. The clue to such a “post-critical” Christian universalism, lies, according to Svenungsson, in a radicalized emphasis on the incarnational nature of Christianity.
“Vulnerability in the Arena of Strength: An Analysis of Christian Sermons in the Context of International Sporting Events” is the title of an article written by Kristin Graff-Kallevåg and Sturla J. Stålsett, MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society, Oslo, Norway. While the authors state that there is an inherent ambiguity in vulnerability as a part human life, they maintain that according to recent interdisciplinary research, the condition of vulnerability also contains essential life-sustaining resources. Graff-Kallevåg and Stålsett find this ambiguity particularly interesting in the context of embodied competition, such as sports. In their article, they present a study of Christian sermons held on the occasion of international sporting events and explore to what degree and in what way the homilies mobilize religious resources to expose this ambivalence of vulnerability. While the sermons in general confirmed rather than challenged the common understanding of vulnerability as limitation, there were examples of a more multi-faceted and even affirmative interpretation of vulnerability in the context of competitive sports in some of them.