Når troen får øjne. En studie i Grundtvigs salmer

Abstract

Når troen får øjne. En studie i Grundtvigs salmerTherese Bering SoltenWhen Faith Gets Eyes – a Study in Grundtvig’s HymnsThis article summarizes main points from Therese Bering Solten’s PhD thesis about how, through the use of hermeneutics and genre criticism, Grundtvig’s hymns can be read as poetic theology. The hymns work thematicallythrough the relationship between the visible and the invisible, conceptions residing in a continuum stretching between the concrete, sensory images and abstract, intelligible concepts. How hymns operate is determined by how faith is depicted in images and ideas. As part of an effort to understand faith cognition or vision, Solten interprets the hymns as descriptions of what or how the eyes of faith see. The author assumes that this effort is not exclusive to the content of hymns; it is a matter of how hymns affect readers (singers) and therefore how hymns can be described as texts. To establish a methodological basis, Solten refers to recent genre theory and literary theory and Paul Ricoeur’s philosophical hermeneutics. Poetic theology provides a lens for seeing that even though the hymn text’s matter and form are two separate aspects of the text, the hymn exists as an indivisible whole. Solten provides a series of analytical examples from the thesis to illustrate further how hymns function and how they should not be translated only to discover their embedded theology. The overall aim of hymn interpretation, however, is to demonstrate the ways in which the reading of these texts as poetry can provide theological insights.