Centrum för teologi och religionsvetenskap

This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC 4.0 license. Introduction: Ritual Creativity This book brings together leading international scholars of religion from a variety of disciplines with the aim of casting light on the topic of ritual studies within contemporary studies of religion. The contemporary studies of religion consist of an array of interconnected fields and the present volume explores the role played by rituals in the following emergent areas: new spiritualities and ecology, religion and embodiment, and indigenous religions. In addition, the volume offers a selection of regional perspectives on ritual studies from African Christianity and Islam which includes contemporary negotiations of identity and coloniality. The collected volume offers a combination of significant theoretical and methodological discussions as well as previously understudied topics in the contemporary studies of religion. The book addresses readers from a wide range of disciplines. It will be of interest to and relevance for both students and researchers within the larger fields of ritual and religious studies, as well as anthropology and environmental humanities. The volume is not only a broad exploration of the importance of ritual in the contemporary studies of religion but also a way to honour a fellow scholar whose academic pursuits during her thirty-year career illustrate the interconnectedness and value of cross-pollination between several disciplines. The work of Professor Anne-Christine Hornborg embodies the innovative and fruitful ways in which ritual perspectives can be applied to a broader context within the contemporary study of religions. In 2001 Professor Hornborg published the well-received study A Landscape of Left-Overs (2001) based on fieldwork among Nova Scotia's first nation Mi'kmaq. Since then, Professor Hornborg has published many important contributions in ritual studies based on her other fieldwork in locations such as Tonga and Peru. These insights have been disseminated in a number of ways within the study of contemporary religion, demonstrating the persistence of ritual and religion in our own secular and consumerist societies. The chapters in the present volume are all inspired by the work of Professor Hornborg, in particular, the methodological and theoretical contributions she has offered throughout her long career. Some chapters revisit the contexts in which Professor Hornborg carried out long periods of fieldwork. This book takes as its point of departure the great potential which we, the editors and contributors, believe is found in interdisciplinary approaches, and to which Professor Hornborg's career is a testament. Professor Hornborg's contributions to the study of rituals showcases the importance of ritual perspectives-9789004692206 Downloaded from Brill.

Monastic texts are often subjects of multiple revisions. In this chapter some examples of revisions of various kinds and the possible reasons behind them are discussed. In particular, the authorial voices of these revisions are considered. Monastic authors, like their Classical and Graeco-Roman counterparts, were trained to write according to a set structure of rhetorical strategies. The main focus is given to the writings of Cassian and Palladius of Helenopolis. The works Institutiones and Collationes by Cassian are preserved in Greek versions that give rise to many questions on authorial revision. A couple of stories in Palladius’ Historia Lausiaca are examined. They are found in a monastic collection called Collectio Scorialensis parva and differ considerably from the “standard” edited text. The connection with these works to collections of the Apophthegmata Patrum indicates the great importance of this kind of material for the monastic communities. The texts were used and revised for educational and spiritual purposes in creating a monastic tradition.

Collections of sayings of the desert fathers and mothers are extant in manuscripts in many languages and are organized differently. They are ‘fixed-content miscellanies’ (FCM): they include material that belongs to the same genre, but is variable both when it comes to appearance and order. Distance measurement methods are particularly suitable for large text traditions including variable content in the so-called mixed-content miscellanies, such as recipes, anthological compilations of shorter text passages, or catalogues, but can also be suitable for text genres like collections of sayings, that are equally variable in appearance and order of sayings, even though the genre is fixed; hence ‘fixed-content miscellanies’. In the article, collections of sayings in seven languages were compared using four distance measures methods. Each segment of the sayings was given a unique id to be comparable. The first method used, the Jaccard distance measure, disregards the linear order of items a...

In the last century there has been an outburst in criticism of traditional Luther research. The finnish school of research, led by Tuomo Mannermaa, has been one of the leading schools in this criticism, and provided a new view of Luther that has been called a paradigm shift in all of Luther research. Yet the new view of Luther, which is proposing that Luther had an ontological view of salvation closely related to the orthodox concept of theosis, has met resistance. One of the greatest criticisms and problems that has emerged concerning the finnish shcool is the fact that no clear motivation is given to why Luther should be read as having an ontological view of salvation. This criticism has not been met by the finnish school, but might be met in another branch of the Luther research. The results of the research dealing with Luther and mysticism is namely what I suggest that the finnish school needs as to give their own results real validity.

The combination of the finnish school and the mysticism of Martin Luther, is then providing a way of reading the theology of Luther, that I suggest is the best option.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate if the Lutheran heritage, represented by a comparison between early Lutheran writings and Luther’s source of inspiration Theologia Germanica, can provide a starting point for potentially unifying dialogues within Christian circles. The background of this pursuit of unity is the ecumenical problem of the seemingly opposite views of how faith and deeds relate to each other in the life of a Christian that can be found within the Lutheran tradition, and between Lutheranism and other Christian traditions. Since both Luther and Theologia Germanica are part of an Augustinian tradition I first examine how their theologies relate to and are to be understood in the light of St Augustine. This creates a foundation and preunderstanding for the following chapter, where Luther and Theologia Germanica are compared with reference to how they view the relationship between faith and deeds. The Lutheran writings that are used in the comparison are On the Freedo...