Reformation Theology for a Post-Secular Age: Løgstrup, Prenter, Wingren, and the Future of Scandinavian Creation Theology ed. by Niels Henrik Gregersen, Bengt Kristensson Uggla, and Trygve Wyller (review)

This compendium comprises sixteen essays concerned with Scandinavian creation theology (SCT), a Lutheran stream of thought flowing from theologians K. E. Løgstrup, Regin Prenter, and Gustaf Wingren. The authors present this stream as a promising rivulet to traverse in the post-secular twenty-first century, as it takes creation as the boundary and context for all theology (21).

The work is divided into four sections. In the first, the authors explore the theology of Løgstrup, Prenter, and Wingren. In the second, they address the influences of Luther and Grundtvig upon SCT. Each essay in these two sections describes facets of SCT and orients the reader in the contours of this school of theology as a whole.

In their introduction (chapter one of part one) Gregersen, Uggla, and Wyller provide an overview of SCT’s development and embodiment especially in its three leading lights, its indebtedness to Luther and Grundtvig, and its common universal features. These features include a concern for the givenness of creation, the belief that God is continually active in creation, and an emphasis on the importance of a common humanity (20–21). The authors argue for SCT as a Lutheran alternative path to Barthianism, post-liberalism, and radical orthodoxy in the twenty-first century on account of SCT’s deep roots in the liberating external Word of God and serious engagement with the creation made by that Word (19–20). The three essays, by Gregersen, Christine Poder, and Uggla, that follow this introduction flesh out the content of SCT by identifying the particular contributions of Løgstrup, Prenter, and Wingren respectively to this school.

Gregersen delineates how Løgstrup articulated an ethic that takes into account not just the divine command in the law but the fact that life is an unmerited gift. Such givenness comes through the interconnectedness of life in inter-human relationships through which humans live out their vocation before God and others. Løgstrup rejected the Kantian notion of life as demand and reorients anthropology through the notion of givenness (41–42).

Poder describes how Prenter argued for harmony between the works of creation and redemption. These complementary works are wrought by the Holy Spirit, the Spiritus Creator, who creates out of nothing both the old creation of the universe and the new creation of justification by faith in Christ (72). For Prenter, the original creation is real and sacramental, filled by the real presence of God in Christ in the midst of its fallenness, inextricably connecting this creation to the new (67, 83).

Uggla asserts that Wingren’s contribution to SCT used Luther and Irenaeus to reorient Swedish theology both towards creation generally and to theological anthropology specifically. Salvation, according to Wingren, is becoming human again. Redemption is a return to creation; it is not “purely spiritual” but real (107–109).

While Løgstrup, Prenter, and Wingren may be the promulgators of SCT, Allen Jorgenson and A. M. Allchin demonstrate Luther’s and Grundtvig’s influence upon the movement. Jorgenson describes how SCT adopts from Luther the ideas that the imago dei has to do with the human being a part of continuing creation, that the eschaton will consist of a restored creation, and that God works in creation through created means. Allchin then identifies how SCT utilizes Grundtvig’s belief that the earth itself is created as the image of God and bearer of revelation.

While the first and second sections orient the reader in the contours of this school, the essays in the third and fourth sections elucidate connections between SCT and contemporary topics and other streams of thought. Some authors address subthemes within SCT and their potential use within particular contexts and in view of particular issues, including ecology and phenomenology...