The place of religious experience in Nathan Soderblom's thought

Authors

1 Assistant Professor School of Theology and Islamic Studies University of Tehran

2 Professor School of Theology and Islamic Studies University of Tehran

10.22080/jre.2024.28031.1222

Abstract

The problem of religious experience is one of the most important explorations in religious studies. The Uppsala School of Religious Studies is indebted to Nathan Söderblom's influential ideas in the field of phenomenology of religion. From Söderblom’s point of view the essence of religion is religious experience, the essential characteristic of which is the presence of holiness. Although Soderblom believes that God reveals Himself to humanity through His manifestations in the historical course of religions, and in his view, history is equal to God's general revelation, he considers special revelation to be that of Christianity and considers Christ to be the culmination of God's manifestation to humanity. Despite this, Söderblom, as the archbishop of the Church of Sweden, by challenging the exclusivity of the church in the subject of revelation, instead of the ahistorical and fixed concept of revelation from the perspective of the church, emphasizes the historical and dynamic concept of revelation from a general and universal perspective. From Soderblom's perspective, there is only one truth that appears in different forms in the course of evolution. By analyzing Soderblom's historical and phenomenological approach to religious forms, on the one hand, this research has caused the elimination of stagnation and prejudice in the field of religious truth exclusivity, and on the other hand, by emphasizing the single truth of existence, it promises the possibility of the unity of religions and tolerance between mankind.

Keywords

Main Subjects

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics