The purpose of the present study is to discuss which relationships and images of God exist between the Lovers in the Song of Songs. Theologian Sallie McFague's thoughts on the image of God as lover from Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age form the framework from which I conduct my analysis. Since my primary material is of a biblical historical nature, my method is to read the texts with both modern idea-analytical methods, but also to read the narrative with a dialogic interpretation of history that enables a conversation with our contemporaries. Being that the Song of Song is a poetic text; questions of form and content are also applied as they are suitable for analyzing poetic philosophical texts. To nuance my discussion, I also bring in the feminist theologians Janet Soskice and Marcella Althaus-Reid as interlocutors. My essay shows that the relationships between the Lovers are egalitarian and poignantly sexual and include God in a triad of love. It also shows how images of God can become bigger if we dare to mirror both bodily and spiritual love not only horizontally towards each other, but also vertically towards God. This gives us the opportunity not to reduce or limit God, and neither ourselves as beings in reflection of Imago Dei.

En studie av föreställningar om det gudomliga inom ekofeministisk teologi. Uppsatsen behandlar teologerna Rosemary Radford Ruether, Carol Christ och Sallie McFague. Frågeställningen besvaras med hjälp av en innehållslig idéanalys bestående av två analysfrågor med en rad följdfrågor. Den första analysfrågan söker hur det gudomliga förstås hos de olika teologerna, följdfrågorna behandlar begreppen immanens-transcendens, teism-panteism-panenteism samt könsroller. Den andra analysfrågan söker vilken relation mellan det gudomliga och skapelsen som beskrivs, följdfrågorna söker om relationen är intern eller extern, om det är en personlig eller opersonlig gudomlighet samt om människan har något särskilt ansvar inför det gudomliga.

This thesis examines ecotheology in liturgy. In light of an increasing awareness of the seriousness of the climate crisis and the consequences for all living beings on earth, it investigated whether and how communion prayers in handbooks of Church of Sweden from 1986 and 2017 have changed towards becoming more ecotheological. The focus of this study has been how God is described in the use of God's names and metaphors, God's relationship to the world, and God's mission to people. These were analyzed using a qualitative content analysis. Two metaphorical models, a monarchical model and a God-body model, taken from ecofeminist theologian Sallie McFague were used as the study's ecotheological approach. Through the analysis, it has been shown that the communion prayers have become more ecotheological. The prayers have more often features the metaphor of "creator" for God and descriptions of an actively creating, loving, and present God. God's relationship with the world now also includes the entire universe that God carries and fulfills. God meets people more often through the risen Christ and God's incarnation and salvation can also be interpreted as concerning of all creation. God's mission to human beings is more directed outward to the world, but there are still no explicit missions towards other living beings or all of creation.

The purpose of this essay is to examine how Christians can and should speak about God if they take feminist criticism seriously. This purpose concerns two problems: the first starts with the proposition that God is essentially different from humans and things and at the fact that the language that we use to describe and speak about God is a human language. God is infinite, incorporeal, and timeless, while the human language normally is used to apply to finite, corporeal, and temporal things. How – if ever – can this language apply to God? To examine this problem further, I present four different theories of religious language. The second problem is actualized by feminists who criticize the standard within the Christian tradition to characterize God in predominantly masculine terms. Feminists have criticised religious language for being oppressive in several ways, and particularly to establish and maintain hierarchical structures in which women are subordinated men. In this essay I present and discuss feminist criticism of religious language and then distinguish four different strategies for feminists. I further examine three of these strategies, represented by Sallie McFague, Gail Ramshaw and Janet Soskice, dealing with the problem of religious language within the Christian tradition. In all three of these feminist strategies metaphors are found to be of great importance. Finally, I promote Soskice metaphor theory combined with an apophatic theory of language. Soskice stresses the importance of anthropomorphous metaphors and offer the possibility of using both male and female images when speaking about God. This strategy positively handles the proposition of God as essentially different but makes it possible for believers to refer to God (through metaphors). This is also the preferable strategy in line with feminist criticism.

The aim of this study is to explore how the concept of sin, guilt and responsibility can be used in the contemporary discourse of the climate catastrophe. In a comparative textual study on Sallie McFague’s A New Climate for Theology and Richard Bauckham’s Bible and Ecology these concepts are analyzed. The conclusion is that McFague and Bauckham both uses “responsibility” frequently, but neither “sin” or “guilt” are well used in there works. Yet, when they reflect on “sin”, both of them abandons the (in the western theology classical) Augustine theology on sin. McFague when she argues that “evil” is a perversion of good rather than a consequence of an external reality, Bauckham when he claims that the fall of sin is an ongoing process rather than a momentary event.   Hannah Arendt and Alistair McFadyen are used as an interpretative and theoretical background to the conclusions of McFague and Bauckham in the discussion that follows the comparative textual study. Arendt and McFadyen reflects on sin, guilt and responsibility with the Holocaust as context. In the discussion, their thoughts on the Holocaust are essayed to apply on the contemporary climate catastrophe. Hannah Arendt talks about “collective responsibility” and “personal guilt”, concepts that in the discussion part, when applied on the climate catastrophe and in a better way fits the contemporary situation, inverts to “collective guilt” and “personal responsibility”. The talk of collective guilt tangent the Augustine teaching of original sin where sin is a common heritage from the fall of sin. McFadyen uses original sin to explain the mechanism of the German people during the Holocaust which in many ways are similar to the processes of the climate catastrophe of today.    In the discussion of this study, original sin is used as a model to better understand the fact that people cannot escape guilt in the contemporary situation and to comprehend why people act as they do. The study intends accordingly to in a constructive way contribute with new perspectives on sin, guild and responsibility to the ecological theology of today.