From Evolutionism to the History of Revelation. An Introduction to Nathan Söderblom’s Philosophy of Religion

Abstract

The author seeks to reconstruct the path leading from nineteenth-century evolutionism in the study of religion to Nathan Söderblom’s conception of religious transformation. He presents Cornelis P. Tiele’s objections to the unilinear theory of religious development, formulated in different variants by Lewis H. Morgan, Edward B. Tylor, and James G. Frazer, and the evidence identified by Tiele as challenging its assumptions. The article then discusses Söderblom’s distinction between the consciousness of infinity and the striving for the ideal. This distinction helps to explain the plurality of paths of religious life, particularly mysticism and prophetic religion, as well as the role of revelation occurring in persons and history. In Söderblom’s view, religious transformations are not an automatic consequence of cultural development. Prophetic religion, in particular, requires us to consider the encounter between the human capacity to receive revelation and the activity of the self-communicating God.