Crucial to P.P. Waldenström, one of the Swedish Evangelical Mission Covenant of America's leading intellectuals in its early years, was the question of how one reads the Bible. While not setting aside scholarship, he questioned the prevailing skepticism of the university and was cautious with regard to historical criticism.
Waldenström's 1870 comment to his fellow pastors, in the midst of a discussion about the atonement, "Var står det skrivet?", has sometimes been quoted in support of a fundamentalist view of biblical authority. But this is to oversimplify Waldenström. Besides asking "Where is it written?" Waldenström could ask, "How is it written?" and "Why is it written?" Such questions were not incompatible with devotional piety. . . .
--Adapted from Steven Elde, "The Hearth and the Chimney: Covenant
Attitudes Toward Education," The Covenant Quarterly, XLIX, No. 2, May 1991.
It is paradoxical that Waldenström's deceptively simple method"Var står det skrivet?" should be responsible for both immediate theological debate and
ultimate withering of theological interest. This, nevertheless,
is a fact. Waldenström had proposed a method to end all methods. --Karl A. Olsson, "Covenant Beginnings: Doctrinal," The Covenant Quarterly, XIII, No. 4, November 1953.
. . . .Waldenström polemicized strongly for a return to the Scriptures
as a sole authority. What is implied is a strong conviction that
the Scriptures have a unified and understandable message which
can be placed over against human confessions with unequivocal
results. All that is needed is a thoroughgoing, grammatical understanding
of the texts in their original languages. It is surprising that Waldenström had so little interest in bringing
the facts of church history to the situation. Did he really beliee
that he would succeed in achieving what thousands of men of ability
and good will had failed to do before him--the formulation of
a pure and consistent biblical theology without the admixture
of any confessional or creedal elements? It would seem so. --Adapted from Olsson, By One Spirit, Covenant Press, Chicago, 1962.
Other Waldenström links: A history of the Mission Covenant Church of Sweden posted, in English, by Immanuel Church in Stockholm. (The whole Immanuel site is worth surfing.) A couple of Waldenström writings at gospeltruth.net, which is a site devoted to Charles G. Finney: the famous sermon on the Atonement published in the original "Pietisten" and a 1937 translation by the Covenant Book Concern of a commentary on it by Axel Andersson, president of the Covenant Church of Sweden. Last updated