Karl Barth som den andre: En studie i den svenska teologins Barthreception

Sammanfattning: This dissertation discusses the reception of Karl Barth in Swedish theology, with particular emphasis on the period since 1947. Harmonising tendencies arechar2cteristic of Swedish theology, and therefore, by its emphasis on discontinuity between I iod and man Barth's theology becomes the natural 'other' of Swedish theology. Barth's theoiogy is trivialised either through exclusion or through subsumption, and is claimed to be 'narrow' compared to the 'generous' Swedish theology, which deals with (:ommon human concerns, and not only specific Christian concerns. Swedish theolooy~ tl erefore, is put forward as a 'public' theology, compared to Barth's 'private' theology. This dissertation attempts to show that Barth's theology must not be seen as a contrastinr~ altemative, and that a more fruitful approach would be to negotiate critically between the different perspectives, as a precaution against one-sidedness. The relation between Swedish and Barth's theology is not a relation between universal and particular, but between two (or more) particular perspectives. In the last chapter it is suggested that the claim of theology to universality is primarily of an eschatological nature, and not one that all human beings will immcdiately acknowledge. Other perspectives ought therefore not to be characterised as thcology's (negative) 'others'. Since the discourse of theology does not possess God, it muct expect to meet God in other discourses as well. Theology's claims to universality are not identical with the universal reality of God. This dissertation therefore suogt sts that theology always our~ht to be understood as 'on its way'. Its talk of God should be, as in Barth, dialectical and analol~ical. No f nal synthcsis is possible beforc thc eschaton, and theology therefore ought to accept to live 'after Babel', while yet anticipating the ' heavenly Jerusalem' .