Ritröð Guðfræðistofnunar - 01.01.1998, Qupperneq 45

Practice and Passion in Theology
practical theologian I am accustomed to teaching that the subject centres on prac-
tice. But for most people practice means activity, the vita activa, doing things,
and contemplation, emotion, feeling, passion and the affective life are more of
less marginalised. This is a strange assumption in Christian theology, for it is
important to remember that passion in both its senses, as suffering and as intense
emotion, is at the heart of the Christian faith, as Hallgrímur Pétursson’s wonder-
ful Hymns of the Passion, so formative of the faith of many generations of Ice-
landers testify, powerfully suggesting that the passion of Christ is the hearse of
the work of our redemption:
Our great Redeemer, Jesus,
Now sits on Heaven ’s throne.
With watchful eyes He sees us,
And caresfor all his own.
Victor o ’er Death, by dying
Himself upon the tree,
For ever justifying
A sinner such as me.
Dying, He crushed Death ’s power
And broke his poisoned sting.
Now in our latest hour
To Christ’s dear cross we cling.
Ourframe, like dress discarded, surrenders to decay;
Our soul, by angels guarded,
To heaven wings its way.1
Scotland and Iceland represent two passionate peoples, who down the centu-
ries have sought to relate the story of their sufferings, griefs and joys, intense
emotion to the passion of Christ, and to understand their own passions in a
Christian way. The heroic passions of the berzerkers of the sagas were, as I have
already mentioned, transformed and Christianised in the retelling of the stories in
Christian times. But in the written versions the heroes of the sagas did not
emerge as passionless, detached Stoics, serene above the emotions of the world
- far from it. The Orkneyinga Saga focuses our attention of the martyrdom of St
Magnus in Egilsay, as a kind of reflection of the passion of Christ, a theme
brought dramatically back to life in this generation by George Mackay Brown in
his novel Magnus. In Scotland we still commemorate the sufferings of Covenan-
1 Hallgrímur Pétursson, Hymns of the Passion. Reykjavík: Hallgrím’s Church, 1978, pp.213-4.
43