Month: October 2021

Article by Anton Jansson in Svensk Teologisk Kvartalskrift

This article deals with the theological concept “Kingdom of God” in pre-1848 German political thought, more specifically in the texts of three political authors of the era: Wilhelm Weitling, Friedrich Julius Stahl, and Karl Theodor Welcker. The article is located in the nexus between theology and history of political thought, and has three main aims: First, in a gen­eral sense, it discusses and applies Amos Funkenstein’s idea of laymen theology and Jan-Werner Müller’s notion of in-between figures. Second, using these, it gives an example how theology has been an active language in the formation of modern political thought, more specifically the modern political ideologies of liberalism, socialism, and conservatism. Third, it tries to complement existing studies of temporality and theology in the mod­ern period, most notably the work of Jayne Svenungsson. Methodologically, in focusing and historicizing one specific concept, it connects to the theories of Reinhart Koselleck. The article shows how the Kingdom of God was differently conceived by authors of different political positions, but, more importantly, discusses how it became an active theological concept, used by laymen, in a political context obsessed with questions of historical change, the possibility of societal perfection, and the role of Christianity in the world.

Article by Håkan Bengtsson in Svensk Teologisk Kvartalskrift.

This article discusses the establishment of the Swedish Theological Institute in Jerusalem in 1951. My claim is that the missionary plan of the Swedish Mission to the Jews was mitigated towards a programme of biblical studies. Several factors contributed to this transformation. The change facilitated the relations with the Israeli authorities. Another challenge was to overcome the common Christian negative comprehension of Zionism as a mere materialistic, political enterprise. Such attitudes complicated a connection to political Zionism, however the Swedish Theological Institute related rather to the cultural Zionist agenda of promoting Jewish culture and the Bible and could later connect to the topic of the Bible and the land. The experiences of the Swedish Mission in Vienna during the Second World War and their anti-Nazi stance also en­abled the founding of the institute. Two former missionaries, Greta Andrén and Hans Kosmala, were appointed as heads of the institute. Andrén had previously experienced that missionary work in Jerusalem was considered as utterly suspicious. Thereto both the Anglican and the Swedish missionaries had under ambivalent presuppositions supported an evacuation of baptized Jews, so-called “Hebrew Christians”, from Palestine to England in April and May 1948. This enterprise, named “Operation Mercy”, was later proved to be primarily an excuse for these Hebrew Christians to leave the country. The links to any overt mission­ary work was thus disengaged when negotiating permits for the Swedish Theological Institute. Instead, a qualified study programme in the Bible, the land, and Judaism was initiated; concepts that reflected esteemed values of the new Israeli state.