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I artikeln diskuteras hur man i en pingstkarismatisk kontext kan pröva predikningar och skydda sig mot förkunnelse som avviker från etablerade läror. Artikeln tar sin utgångspunkt i två studier av förkunnelsen i pingstförsamlingen i Knutby, i empiriska studier av pingstpastorers förkunnelse och i studier av så kallad pentekostal hermeneutik. Ett första möjligt svar på den angivna frågan är att predikanter bör ägna sig åt textutläggande förkunnelse baserad på goda exegetiska studier, med genomskinlig och rationell metod. Problemet är emellertid att förkunnare i en pingstkarismatisk tradition sällan använder sig av denna metod. Detta förklaras i artikeln av att de ”gör något annat” och att deras metod är kongenial med detta ”andra” syfte, som tycks regleras av ett slags ”rule of faith”. Hur denna preciseras och upprätthålls är däremot inte helt klart. Ett annat möjligt svar är att församlingen gemensamt ska pröva förkunnelsen. Artikelförfattaren uppfattar att denna prövning i Pingströrelsen skett i predikantgemenskapen snarare än i den lokala församlingen.

In this article I discuss homosexuality and Christian faith as a ”rhetorical crisis” in some Swedish churches. I refer mainly to articles from the Christian newspaper Dagen from 2000-2015, with a special focus on an intense debate in the spring of 2015. The study shows that the discussion changes over time, that it moves between different media and that new actors with their agendas affect what could be described as an ongoing struggle for discursive power. Yet there is also a meta-level in the discussion which relates to the theme of “rhetorical crisis” since it concerns communicative issues like how and where one should talk about the subject. The study also shows that the leadership of the Pentecostal movement time and again are challenged to take a stance but that they are reluctant to do so and instead attempt to mold the discussion and position it in the local churches.

This article discusses how features in a narrative generate an understanding of its purpose and how this understanding affects our attitude when reading and interpreting a text. It focusses on biblical texts that aspire to be historical but still contain elements that are generally thought to belong to the realm of fiction, as well as on texts with an assumed argumentative purpose and traits that create a sense of literary art. The four texts are Jesus's parable of the Good Samaritan, the book of Nehemiah, autobiographical sections in Paul, and third-person narratives in the books of Samuel. The article suggests that our understanding of the frame determines the function and meaning of the forms; yet it also argues that the presence of certain forms might challenge conventional assumptions about the frame, that is, the purpose of some narratives.

In this article I present a study of Swedish Pentecostal preachers’ interpretations and applications of biblical texts. The study is based on 19 sermons that were published on the website"Söndag hela veckan”, January 19, 2020, by churches with “Pingst” (Pentecostal) in theirname. The aim of the study was to contribute to the field of Pentecostal hermeneutics throughan analysis of interpretative patterns in present day preachers’ sermons. The study shows thatthe preachers address a putative desire for a more devoted Christian life and that they do notpractice exegetics in the sense of making historical readings searching for the original authors’ intention. Instead they apply the texts to the present here and now, thereby bringing thetexts from them to us. This is done by means of generalizations, abstractions, and analogies inthe form of parables and narratives. In this way the studied preachers endeavor to encourageand challenge their listeners to continue searching for the richer Christian life they long for. Inrelation to previous studies, I claim that the studied sermons constitute a special act of interpretation that cannot be compared with academic exegetics. I also suggest that the hermeneutics in the sermons cannot be described as narrative or, for example, poststructuralist. Thereare some marginal similarities with interpretations of fiction, but the sermons can on thewhole be described as “a distinctive interpretive activity”. The message of the sermons is consistent with previous descriptions of Pentecostal theology, except that the preachers do notemphasize the story of the Pentecostal movement and, more remarkably, that traditional eschatology hardly has any place in the sermons

In this article I discuss David Herman’s thesis about «hypothetical focalization» (HF), as it is presented in Story Logic: Problems and Possibilities of Narrative [1], in relation to different theories about reader interpretations (taken in a very basic sense) of narrative fiction. I will simplify the theoretical options to two approaches: the first is based on the assumption that fictional narrative is a secondary variant of factual narrative with the simple modifier “as if”. Accordingly, it is assumed that a fictional narrator informs a narratee about persons and events in a fictional world using linguistic means that work according to common grammatical rules. The alternative, advocated by theoreticians such as Käte Hamburger [2], Lars-Åke Skalin [3; 4] and Richard Walsh [5][1], is a “separatist” approach, which assumes that fiction is a particular “context” or “language-game”. According to this paradigm an author (or narrator) does not inform about objects but rather stipulates motifs that will have an aesthetic impact on readers. Such an approach can be described as pragmatic and it must, when used analytically, go from effects to poetics (in the sense of theory) since it cannot be assumed that certain forms have the same function or generate the same effects in different contexts.

An important argument for the latter opinion is that the former theoretical variant will, if applied to literary texts, generate “disquieting” interpretations that do not fit in well with the intuition of readers[2]. This implies, according to the critics, that readers interpret fictional narratives from the perspective of another poetics — in the sense of an internalized rule-system[3] — than the one assumed by the theoreticians advocating the former model. The putative counter-argument that theoreticians like Gérard Genette in his analysis of Marcel Proust [7] have come up with what are taken to be good readings is met by the answer that these theoreticians did not read the literature in accordance with their own “method” [8].  

[1]I do not associate what is called unnatural narratology with this theoretical approach since their very use of the concept “unnatural” implies that they assume the traditional approach [cf. 6].  

[2] “Disquieting interpretations” is used to denote interpretations that seem to be at odds with basic intuitions concerning the language game and sense of certain texts.

[3] When speaking about reading in this article, I do not refer to a professional reader but to the ability to read as a reader equipped with poetics — that is, a more or less conciously internalized theory of how to make sense of narrative fiction. I thus use the terms poetics to denote this “internalized theory,” or understanding of the rules and constraints of narrative fiction.

How do Christians, who try to understand their lives according to the Christian narrative, cope with illness and suffering? This issue is the main concern of this article. Its point of departure is the assumption that the concept of “narrative” expressed in the idea that Christian faith is a narrative, might be taken to refer to a worldview, to a larger narrative (ie salvation history) or to the fact that Christians, in a process of hindsight, interpret their lives narratively. Based on talks with students and a process at Örebro Theological Seminary (ÖTH), in which we have been discussing the subject of illness and healing, I argue that some Christians are rethinking their understanding of illness and suffering. Since these Christians often have a high view of the Bible, it is important to examine how these issues are handled in scripture, and how biblical texts have been used traditionally. These Christians also refer to their experiences and to common apprehensions of illness and suffering in society. I propose that the Christians I refer to tend to avoid religious causal or teleological explanations of illness and suffering. They even seem to prefer not to involve God in these issues at all. This could be taken as a token of secularisation, but I argue that this is not the only possible explanation. I suggest instead that it can be linked to a reconsideration of basic tenets of these Christians’ theology and I make the claim that this reconsideration occurred during the process at Örebro Theological Seminary I have referred to above. The narrative reinterpretation of illness and suffering in the personal lives of these Christians is thus closely linked to a reinterpretation of the Christian worldview and salvation history.

During recent decades, there has been a trend among biblical scholars towards applying methods borrowed from literary studies to the familiar texts of the Old and New Testaments. A major reason for this reorientation is the search for a meaningful and interpretable text; hence, it can be seen as a protest against the historical-critical school and its ambition to reconstruct an authentic text by means of a diachronic analysis. Synchronic scholars argue for a new understanding of the biblical text, claiming that the object of interpretation is the text in its present form, regarded as a literary production. Consequently, they can study texts that are commonly considered to be patchworks or conglomerations as meaningful literary works regardless of their pre-history or authorship. In this thesis I do not focus on studies that concern individual narratives or poems but on those that apply a synchronic approach to large units of texts such as books or collections of books. My example is the book of Judges, and the fundamental issue is whether the synchronists’ description of its structure and of the relationship between the individual narratives and the larger text is sustainable. Through analyses of the book’s introduction and the stories about Ehud, Deborah, Jephthah and Samson, I argue that the scholars under consideration are often compelled to form interpretations that are in conflict with a “natural” or “intuitive” reading. I hence claim that they are not reading these stories in accordance with the conventions that are generally applied to narratives. The arguments in which they refer to implicit devices, allusions and the structure of the larger text are assessed as unconvincing.

I argue that that these scholars make two common theoretical mistakes. Firstly, they do not consider the specific restrictions that apply to “the literary point of view”. Secondly, they disregard the fact that narratives are autonomous and hence resistant to reworking. If several independent narratives are put together, they are not thereby transformed into a larger single narrative even though they may contain common patterns and motifs. Hence, the individual story represents the primary level of meaning and discrete elements are understood as motifs within a

literary construction. The stories of the book of Judges are therefore texts within a text. This explains why the book lacks a coherent ideology or morality. The tensions and ambiguities in the book cannot be resolved by classifying it as a literary production and studying it synchronically: on the contrary, doing this confirms and explains the difficulties in the book – that is, the inconsistent character of both the book and its narratives and the bizarre events that are recounted therein – and its polyphonic character.

When early Pentecostal leaders tried to understand certain religious experiences they referred to the narratives of Acts. Yet the narratives of these leaders came also to function as interpretations of the biblical narratives. In this process narrative patterns were shaped that have been important, yet also problematic, to Pentecostalism. In this essay two such features are discussed: Spirit baptism as a moment of crisis that leads to a passage from one level in the life of a Christian to a new and higher level, and the traits that should characterize the experience and confirm that it really is a baptism in the Spirit.

This article addresses two subjects relating to the topic of this issue of Scandinavian Journal of History from a 'difference approach' in narratology. This means that we assume that words like 'narrative' and 'fiction' are used to denote different things and that it is important to distinguish between these uses. We also assume that narrative texts that share similar surface structures can still 'do' different things and are approached differently by readers. The first issue we focus on concerns history writing and narrative. We are especially interested in the discussion about the distinction between narrative history writing and literary fiction. When discussing this issue, we distinguish between different uses of terms like 'narrative', 'fictiveness', and 'fiction'. The second issue concerns the application of narratology as a method in the analysis of oral and written texts. We suggest that narratological concepts like narrator and perspective do not have the same denotation in the analysis of literary fiction as in the analysis of non-fictional narratives, and hence that narratology with its many concepts cannot be applied indiscriminately. In the discussion of these issues, we refer to factual and fictional written and oral texts concerned with migration.

In this article we examine the critical proposition that common versions of narratology do not provide an accurate description of narrative fiction and analyze why this critique has mostly been disregarded by narratology. The theoreticians we refer to-Sylvie Patron, Richard Walsh, and Lars-Ake Skalin-do not accept the notion that narrative fiction should be understood in terms of non-fictional narratives. We label their position a "difference approach" in contrast to a putative "sameness approach." We find their "difference" arguments convincing and therefore ask why they have had no apparent effect on narratology. As we discuss misreadings that the criticized approach to narrative fiction could be expected to generate and arguments that refute the existence of such misreadings, as well as suggested readings of narrative fiction by Liesbeth Korthals Altes, James Phelan, David Herman, and Gerard Genette, we make the claim, referring to Phelan's rhetorical narratology, that sameness narratology is often presented as a theory but in fact used and defended as a method or toolbox. Our suggestion is that it would be better to rework the theory of narrative fiction commonly adopted by narratologists so that the theoretical assertions become congruent with the analytical practice and with the intuitions about narrative fiction that the analytical practice implies. We thus support the difference approach.

In the article we discuss the ambiguous view of the body in Christian tradition, focusing on the biblical texts and St. Augustine’s Confessions. We suggest that there is a tension in the view of humans in these texts, which by time evolves into a two- or three-part division of man into spirit, soul, and body. As a result, the body or ‘flesh’ has often been regarded as a constraint or burden that prevents people from living the life they were meant to live. We argue, however, that the view of the body in the Bible and in Christian tradition is not unequivocal. The body can appear as a place for temptation and suffering, but it is also God’s creation, the place where the earthly and the divine meet. This results in a fragile and unstable position for the body, which also applies to the two other bodies we discuss in the article: the biblical texts and the Christian church. We also suggest that the conflict depicted in the texts is not primarily between the spiritual and the material. The conflict is rather ethical, social, and eschatological. People are thus supposed to respond to God’s acts by forming a new way of living their life in the body.

The subject that is examined in this article is how young Christians in Swedish Charismatic and Evangelical churches talk about their faith. The study takes its point of departure in Charles Taylors suggestion that both believers and non-believers in the Western world live in a “secular age” and that this affects the conditions for religious beliefs. Taylors reasoning as well as some American and Swedish studies about young believers are presented in the first part of the article. The main part consist of a presentation of two focus group interviews with young adults. In a final section the interviews are discussed in relation to earlier research. The authors argue that the interviewees emphasize the personal and the authentic, and that it is vital to have “a relation with Jesus”. They refer to, and long for, charismatic experiences butare also searching for a mature faith and an acceptance of “ups and downs” in their spiritual life. Although they shy traditional expressions and admit that they find certain dogmas difficult to understand,their belief offers them a certain “wholeness” in life. They are unhappy about the stereotypes about Christians they encounter in society but want to share their beliefs through testimony and a loving life style. Ethics, in the form of love and tolerance rather than rules, is very important. However, this is a problem not least in relation to issues about homosexuality. Finally, the au-thors note, that the church, or groups within the church, are salient for these Christians.

The Book of Isaiah is considered one of the greatest prophetic works in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. The complex history of the book's composition, over several time periods, can often perplex and enthrall. The editors to this volume encourage readers to engage deeply with the text in order to get a grasp of the traces and signs within it that can be seen to point to the book's process of composition and ongoing reinterpretation over time. The contributions discuss suggested segments of composition and levels of interpretation, both within the book of Isaiah and its history of reception. The book is divided into two sections: in the first part certain motifs that have come to Isaiah from a distant past are traced through to their origins. Arguments for a suggested 'Josianic edition' are carefully evaluated, and the relationship between the second part of Isaiah and the Book of Psalms is discussed, as are the motifs of election and the themes of Zion theology and the temple. The second part of the book focuses on the history of reception and looks at Paul's use of the book of Isaiah, and how the book is used, and perhaps misused in a contemporary setting in the growing churches in Africa. With a range of international specialists, including Hugh Williamson, Tommy Wasserman, and Knut Holter, this is an excellent resource for scholars seeking to understand Isaiah in a greater depth. - See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/studies-in-isaiah-9780567667182/#sthash.wv4ZJYpg.dpuf

Swedish Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal churches have, since the 1990s, started elementary schools. In this study, we examine theological issues that this new ‘practice’ brings about or makes visible. We have performed semi-structured interviews with church and school leaders, as well as focus group interviews with staff at three schools. In our analysis, we note that the aim of the schools is not to convert pupils but to create a certain culture and thereby to develop good people. These schools do not have other core values or different aims than public schools but describe these values and aims as Christian. However, the informants believe that they have better tools with which to accomplish these values and aims. We suggest that the informants assume an ethics that focus on values such as individual freedom, tolerance, and love, that conversion is not regarded as a requisite to a good life, and that explicit religious activities are placed in the private sector. These assumptions are not, we argue, seen as new, or caused by the engagement in elementary schools; rather they are regarded as ongoing ‘changes’ in the churches under consideration here that become visible in this praxis.