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Eros is calling!
Patrik Olterman
I am watching the first season of Sandman on Netflix and I am taken aback by the powerful message about the importance of hope. Where in the end of episode for “No hope in hell”, the main character Morpheus, dream of the endless beats Lucifer Morningstar by invoking hope as the ultimate power. In the […]
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Theology – Why does it matter?
Patrik Olterman
Theology, the word means words or teachings about theos (god or the divine). Do we really need more words about the divine? After all there are miles of shelves gathered around the libraries and bookshelves around the world with all the words. My feeling is that theology matters more than ever. It has been said […]
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Into the blue
Patrik Olterman
As summer has actually arrived here in Sweden I have taken some time of work to start a writing project. I am taking all the ideas and thoughts from the last six years of sermon writing, blogging and theological reflection and boil it down to a little book describing my own “pirate theology”. The book […]
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The mind is not infallible
Patrik Olterman
We live in a society that has for centuries prioritised the mind. We have listened to Descartes who said Cogito Ergo Sum, I think therefore I am and so we believe that we are the sum of our thoughts rather than the sum of our being. God gave us the mind to protect the heart, […]
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Seeing the divine in all things is not heretical
Patrik Olterman
Look around you, what do you see? Are you not surrounded by grace? By walking talking miracles gifted with the gift of life and love? How is it that within the Christian church, it has become heretical to see and to point out the divine outside of the confines of our little community, outside of […]
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As you love yourself
Patrik Olterman
When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, […]
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What about Radical Salvationism?
Patrik Olterman
Since I attended the conference on Radical Theology – Subvert the norm II, I have been asking myself what would a Radical Salvationism look like? Then I stumbled across the following quote by Cadet Christopher Footer in JAC Issue #45: There is only one God, and there is only one Salvation Army. That army however […]
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Subverting the norm
Patrik Olterman
The last couple of days I have spent at Subverting the norm II, a conference about radical theology, postmodernism and the church. It has been three days of deconstruction, radical thought and repentance. It has been such a privilege and honour to spend three days with some of the greatest theologians involved in this ongoing […]
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The return of the blog
Patrik Olterman
After a long hiatus in blogging I have decided to warm up the keyboard and start blogging again. Any long term reader will immediately notice that the name of the blog has changed and with that maybe the direction of the blog as well. Personally I think the new name “Theopoetics” better reflect the direction […]
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Truth, Grace & Justice
Patrik Olterman
The trinity of love consists, according to Christian Schwartz book “The 3 colors of love”, of truth grace and justice. The scriptures rarely mention truth or grace without mentioning justice, but what if any is the relationship between the three? Grace is the word most often associated with love, when someone is graceful we understand […]
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The omniamourous god.
Patrik Olterman
As soon as you say the words: god is love, some people make a face and sigh. The notion is that when you speak about god as love and when you talk about grace, it is a sign that you have gone soft. Implying that you have compromised the “high standards” of Christian living and […]
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Truth and grace revisited
Patrik Olterman
I love my blog readers, they are not many but they are faithful. Recently a new but dear friend has been reading my blog from the beginning, charting the twists and turns of both my life and my faith. This has provoked more than a few very interesting questions. One of the more poignant questions […]
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Wrestling with god.
Patrik Olterman
My good friend Mackan Andersson came by today for a chat and a coffee. He brought me this beautiful one page of a 16th century vulgate bible with a woodcut of Jacob wrestling with god. Reminded him of me he said … And yes that is what it feels like, wrestling with god. Yet I […]
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The big masturbation post
Patrik Olterman
Not so long ago I sat in a room with a group of young Christians, no longer teenagers but rather young adults. We where talking about the bible and Jesus. Was it possible that Jesus could have sinned and what does it mean that Jesus felt every human emotion, did he then lust? Masturbate? The […]
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Jesus in drag
Patrik Olterman
Why are you doing this? Why do you take such an interest in the LGBTQ and sexuality? The question has been asked of me many times. By my leaders, by the people in my congregation and by my family. In fact I think it was my brother who asked the million dollar question one day […]
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Meeting an adulterous god
Patrik Olterman
I don’t know how I never saw it; One of the tenets of classical biblicism is faithfulness, I mean I even have it tattooed on my body, inked onto my skin so as to never forget. It is a label given to me by the voice of god on top of a mountain in wales. […]
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The centrality of sexuality
Patrik Olterman
Why is this such a big deal? Why does it matter? It should be a non issue! This is what both right wing and left wing, conservatives and liberals are saying all over the place. In churches people are taught that their sexuality, while important, is not essential. Sexuality does not define you, or who […]
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On deep theological waters
Patrik Olterman
Whenever I speak about Pirate Theology, I am asked what kind of theology it is. Specifically if it is liberal or conservative (it seems that these two are only viable options in the Swedish discourse right now). When I wrote my series on LGBTQ, one of the comments I received was that I had a “liberal theology”. The […]
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LGBTQ – Prelogos
Patrik Olterman
I have written an extensive blog series (12 posts) on my Swedish blog about LGBTQ issues within the church in general and the Salvation Army in Sweden in particular. I was undecided whether or not I should post it in english as well, but when Sven Jungholm asked last week if he could translate and post […]
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Is the evangelical church going to toss out C.S. Lewis?
Patrik Olterman
He is definitely one of the great, author, theologian, thinker, philosopher. Lewis is mostly known for the Chronicles of Narnia but in the protestant church many have read Mere Christianity and a handful have ventured into his great discourses on theology like The Problem of Pain and The Great Divorce. My personal favourites are his […]
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N.T. Wright on heaven and hell
Patrik Olterman
I stumbled across some great N.T. Wright clips at: http://100huntley.com/browse.php?tag=theology great stuff!
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