The popular academic

by Mark Safstrom

A distinction often made in the book market is between the popular book and the academic book, which is as true for history as for theology or any other discipline. The academic book is written mostly for a narrow audience, to specialists in the field, though there are best-sellers even in that category. The popular book is written to appeal to a wide audience of lay readers. Some authors are able to write to both audiences, though not often in the same books.

Calling something “popular” history can be derogatory, as well, meaning it has been dumbed down, or lacks a requisite critical edge. We can dress popular theology up a bit by calling it “public” theology, thereby endowing it with an educational purpose as a public service or outreach. But colleagues might still suspect that corners have been cut or that we have tried to make our work too entertaining. Heaven forbid that we should be both entertaining and edifying!

Inspiration for academic work often also starts out with observations of popular trends and common phenomena. A professor in graduate school once explained to us that to be a successful academic was not always about being the very first person ever to have an idea, but to be the first person to write down and analyze ideas that many people have noticed, but which have been taken for granted or have never been systematically treated. Lots of people had certainly noticed that apples fall off of trees, but only when Isaac Newton got on the trail did it lead to an explanation for universal gravitation. In other words, academics should be paying attention to things that everyone else notices too, but approach them with extra curiosity and a different set of eyes. And most importantly, they should look for ways to explain these phenomena differently.

The 19th century revival in Sweden was called folkväckelsen, indicating a widespread, popular awakening among the entire “folk,” the whole people. Few preachers were as popular as Pastor Waldenström in Sweden, certainly analogous to Spurgeon in Britain and Moody in the United States. With his Uppsala University education he might have chosen an academic path. Indeed, he was called to an academic position at Augustana College and Theological Seminary in Illinois in 1862, and it is intriguing to ponder where his career might have gone if he had chosen that route. But Waldenström opted instead for a bivocational career as both an upper secondary school teacher and a preacher. At that time, pastors were not exactly known for being approachable, so to have a preacher who was “folksy” and relatable was a novelty and contributed to his success in preaching.

This liminal space between the classroom and the pulpit, between conversations with students, congregants, and fellow clergy, surely played a role in forming his explanations of theology. One such stroke of insight came in 1870. While sitting one day in the city park in Umeå in conversation with two other clergymen, Hellman and Genberg, one of them exclaimed, “Think how marvelous it is that God has been reconciled in Christ.” Waldenström famously blurted out, “where is that written” — “Var står det skrivet.” They all had a good laugh, assuming that it was written everywhere in scripture. Yet, for Waldenström, the initial laughter quickly turned into an intensive study of scripture, in which he became increasingly confident that the answer was “nowhere.” This then led two years later to his “Sermon for the Twentieth Sunday after Trinity” that laid out his five points on the theory of the atonement.

In the ensuing atonement debates, criticism and praise came from the scholarly as well as popular sides of the argument. Some academics found his ideas intriguing, including the theologians at Yale University who awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1889. Others who were invested in keeping the Church of Sweden aligned with the Lutheran confessional documents found his ideas dangerously popular, an example of what happens when people are allowed to interpret the Bible for themselves.

Though Waldenström’s ideas enjoyed a brief moment in the sun in terms of academic interest, this quickly subsided as the 20th century progressed. By the 1930s, for instance, when another Swedish scholar, Gustaf Aulén, published his treatment on the atonement, Christus Victor, Waldenström’s theory was already marginal in academic circles. Waldenström’s ideas were formative for the theology and early development of the Covenant churches in Sweden and North America, yet even among Covenanters his was not the only view. Today, while Covenant pastors may have a general familiarity with Waldenström’s position, most congregants probably do not. Nevertheless, although Waldenström’s name is not widely remembered, the theory he advanced has indeed continued to have long-lasting impacts in both denominational contexts.

What is more, although Aulén does not mention Waldenström in Christus Victor, in several places he does name other Pietists, such as Spener, Zinzendorf, and Grundtvig. He credits Pietism generally with perpetuating Luther’s rediscovery of the “classic” idea of atonement, particularly through the imagery that Pietists used in their hymns and devotional writings.¹ Aulén also made similar observations about the medieval mystics who preserved classic atonement motifs, despite the Anselmian theology that came to be normative. In this way, the popular songs and devotional practices of “popular” mystics and Pietists alike laid the groundwork for more sophisticated scholars to “rediscover” lost theological traditions. Thus these popular movements influenced important academic breakthroughs.

Covenant scholar Lars Lindberg pointed out that Aulén himself acknowledged a certain resonance with the Waldenströmian atonement theory. In 1977, on the eve of the centennial for the Mission Covenant Church in Sweden, Aulén wrote the following appraisal of Waldenström’s theory in the journal Tro och liv, saying,

“My critique [of the objective satisfaction theory] certainly proceeded in a different manner than the one that prompted the origin of the Mission Covenant. But the very fact that both the Mission Covenant’s and my own critique concerned the unbiblical idea that God could have been reconciled instead of that he, according to the Bible, is the one who in Christ reconciled the world with himself (2 Cor. 5:19) — this common front naturally gave me a special interest in and understanding for, appreciation of, and sense of affinity with the Mission Covenant. I have also been glad about the fact that this outlook of mine has found a certain resonance there.”²

Furthermore, Lindberg also suggests that Aulén’s Christus Victor was as well received as it was in Sweden because it had already been preceded by the popular movement led by Waldenström, and furthermore, that virtually no one in Sweden today argues for the Anselmian view, pointing to a far-reaching residual legacy — “almost everyone seems to be a Waldenströmian.”³ Quite simply, his view of the atonement became the normative view, which everyone takes for granted.

Similarly, because Waldenström’s theory was embraced by a popular religious movement, this also contributed to scholars giving it cursory treatment. Both Lars Lindberg and Arne Fritzson each point out that in Waldenström’s day and after, critics often misunderstood his theory due to a simple (and perhaps careless) confusion of the term “subjective.” For Waldenström, subjective meant that God is the one who acts in atonement as its agent from beginning to end, rather than the one acted upon as an object of Christ’s atoning work. Lindberg explains that when critics like Oloph Bexell or Agne Nordlander have dismissed Waldenström’s theory as “subjective,” it has been due to mistakenly associating it with the subjective or moral influence theory, or an interiorized, subjective Christianity.⁴ In responding to John Stott among others, Fritzson argues that Waldenström indeed affirmed that the atonement had an objective significance, namely in that it mattered to God and was necessary in removing the sins of humanity. It was not simply an expression of God’s love, to which people must individually respond in faith.⁵ Thus these academics missed the nuance and historical grounding of Waldenström’s theology due to cursory reading.

Contemporary American Christians who find themselves questioning the kind of penal substitutionary atonement theory promoted by some evangelical and neo-Reformed movements may find some grist for their mill revisiting Waldenström’s writings on atonement. For instance, some of Tony Jones’s objections to penal substitutionary atonement theory echo many of Waldenström’s concerns over a century earlier.⁶ And even Scot McKnight, who makes a case for retaining the Anselmian perspective, does so in a holistic way that acknowledges it as merely one of the five main metaphors of atonement, and cautions against its overemphasis: “The legal element of [the satisfaction theory] can be easily overcooked,” and “When overly judicialized or reified, penal substitution distorts the fullness of the atonement.”⁷

In the movement between the academic and the popular expressions of theology and church history, the salient questions are not only “where is it written,” but also, why does this matter? Or more importantly, for whom, and in what new ways does this matter? The 1870s debate about the atonement mattered first and foremost for those Christians who found the prevailing explanations to be stifling to their faith and in some cases oppressive to their consciences and sense of self worth. They were hungry for a faith that granted them assurances that God was indeed loving and had sufficient grace for even them. This was something that a God of wrathful punishment could not offer them, and why all the more Waldenström’s preaching was the right message at the right time.

For Waldenström himself, the debate was never primarily an abstract, academic exercise. His writings on atonement are replete with reminders that the central significance of Christ’s work on the cross is to engage believers from all educational backgrounds and walks of life with the Reconciler, whose grace offers assurance and transformation.

But his word does not give you a reconciliation to believe in, but it gives you a reconciler, a living person, the Son of God, in whom you can believe, upon whom you can rely with full confidence of heart, and to whom you can wholly surrender yourself.⁸

Guds frid — God’s peace.