In this essay I set out to investigate the differences between the creed that was formulated at the council of Nicaea (325 A.D) and the creed that was produced at the council of Constantinopel (381 A.D). The majority of the differences are caused by the fact that the second of the two creeds isn?t based on the the first in text although it?s producerers thought of it as a confirmation of the first with an elaborated theology about the Spirit. This theological elaboration was made in accordance to the theology of the holy Spirit developed by the Capadocian theologians..

The purpose of this essay is to analyse and compare pneumatology in Eftertanke in Kyrkans Tidning, in a Swedish evangelical Lutheran context, with pneumatology in Luthers Small Catechism and Luther's Large Catechism. Through a descriptive, inductive and hermenutical approach the essay intends to answer two main questions regarding how these sources 1) describe the character features and 2) the function of the Spirit. The conclusions of this essay show that the character features of the Spirit in Eftertanke differ from the catechisms in describing the Spirit with words connected to nature and life, while the catechisms only describe the Spirit as holy. The discussion that follows implies that the Spirit in the catechisms is depicted as more personal whereas Eftertanke depicts the Spirit more as an impersonal force. There are similarities in how both the catechisms and Eftertanke depict a dialectic relationship between human beings and the Spirit. However, they differ in function: in Eftertanke the Spirit is foremost a giver of life and a creator of positive emotions as well as a giver of guidance, while in the catechisms the Spirit is foremost a sanctifier.

In this paper I aimed to explore the bodily experiences and expressions that Christian charismatics interpret as religious.  The so-called presence of God and the so-called gifts of the spirit were in focus in the gathering of information. My purpose was to find out how the social community of the Christian charismatics affects the subjective bodily experiences that are interpreted as religious by the individual. The main questions were:1: How do Christian charismatics describe religious experiences and their effect on the body?2: What bodily expressions of religious experience can be observed in Christian charismatic contexts?3: Is there a common way of expressing the experience of God's presence (individually or in a group) and how, in this case, can any resemblance be explained?The methods used to answer these questions were qualitative interviews and participant observations, which then were analyzed by the anthropologist Thomas J. Csordas theory of embodiment.

This is an essay within the subject of practical theology. The main interest is baptism. The aim of this essay is to describe the baptism theology of the Church of Sweden (Svenska kyrkan) and the history of the baptism. The goal is also, with the help of qualitative research, to study the view of the baptism with the ones who choose to let their children be baptized according to the liturgy of the Swedish Church in the diocese of Härnösand. The attempt is to give the Swedish church a pattern of action and a direction based on the result of my research.

The purpose of this study was to investigate what view of humans that emerges when priests/reverends talk about man in relation to baptism. The study consists of qualitative interviews with four priests/reverends. There were two representatives from the church of Sweden, and two from the Pentecostal church. The aim and questions in the study focus on what view of humans that emerges. Will there be similarities and differences in the view of humans, and is it possible to refer the result to the respective church.

Uppsatsens frågeställning: Jag vill ta reda på hur initiationen in i den kristna tron sker och hur människan tar emot den helige Ande. Bakgrunden till detta är den pingstteologisk inställningen, att man först blir kristen och sedan döpt i helig Ande. Beskriver Bibeln, och framför allt Apostlagärningarna den kristna initiationen på detta sätt? Vad innebär det för dem som lever i det nya förbundet att ha den helige Ande och vara döpt i helig Ande?Slutsats: Läran om dop i helig Ande som en tvåstegsinitiation måste avfärdas. Dopet i helig Ande går hand i hand med syndernas förlåtelse som svar på omvändelse och dop.

This essay aims to explore continuity in water centric cult within the period of the Christianization of Scandinavia (ca 800-1100 AD) and to understand the changing of symbolism of water in pre-Christian cult and early Christian religion. It has previously been thought that Christian priests took over the old holy wells and renamed them after saint, all to ease the pagan people into a Christian lifestyle. But archaeological evidence shows that the cult at these wells, and other water centric sites, where almost completely abandoned a few hundred years before the Christians came to Scandinavia. The Christians should not have felt the need to transform this tradition since it was only practiced in a very small and supposedly private scale. On the contrary, religious activities at these wells seems to increase with the new religion and perhaps this is explained by Christianity itself.

The first aim of this study is to discuss and try to understand the relationship between the holy andethics, and more specifically how it can be understood, which is the critical question that I haveformulated, in Giorgio Agamben?s and Emmanuel Levinas? philosophies. The second, moreconstructive aim is to discuss whether the holy can be understood as something good or problematicin relation to the society.Rooted in philosophy of religion and ethics, I have first tried to discuss how the holy has beenunderstood in the philosophy of phenomenology and in the texts of Rudolf Otto, Mircea Eliade andEspen Dahl. The holy has in the history been understood as something central in religions, and hasalso not been connected to the idea of ethics. Recently it has also been critized ? by Dahl ? for notbeing so pure as first thought of.In Levinas texts the holy has been understood as something differentiated through his distiction,in the Talmudic reading ?Desacralization and Disenchantment?, between the holy, which can beseen as something pure, and the sacred which can been seen as something impure and a form ofdegenerated holiness.

Aim: Team spirit is a concept often used in both managerial literature and in other contexts where the efficiency of a group is discussed. Despite the fact that team spirit is used as a selling point for courses, books and seminars, no unambiguous definition of the term is available. The purpose of this thesis is to clarify what team spirit means to individuals within companies and team sports. Method: The thesis has been carried out using studies of available literature, which has been compiled into a conceivable model of what team spirit may imply. From this model a poll has been made, and handed out to individuals within companies as well as team sports. After having compiled the 37 replies, correlating answers has been sought after within each group of respondents. Result & Conclusions: The result shows us that there are varying opinions of what team spirit is, and generally accepted definitions of closely related ideas like cohesion and group development has to the respondents not been able to form a satisfying description of what team spirit means.

Stress is commonly found in society today. This paper aims to examine how work performance, cooperation and team spirit are maintained in demanding work environments. By studying two departments in a public hospital that practises addiction care, our findings suggest the following: If the experienced stress is mainly connected to challenge stressors, it has a positive effect on work performance. By organising work through mechanistic and organic structure, the handling of qualitative and quantitative stress is facilitated. As a consequence, first and foremost cooperation can be maintained, but also work performance and team spirit.

?Life on a delicate thread?Baptism and godparenting in Bottnaryd and Ulricehamn 1781-1783The aim of this study is to discover if there were differences between the baptism traditions maintained in a typical rural parish and in an urban town parish in the period 1781-1783 and to suggest possible reasons for any differences found. Baptism records from rural Bottnaryd parish and the town of Ulricehamn were studied and compared. In both communities, parents were anxious to have their child christened on the day of birth or the day after. They did not want to wait until the following Sunday, as church law prescribed. Infant mortality was high and if the child died before it was christened, it would not go to heaven.

From being an exotic small religion that has existed at a fading presence in southern Iraq and Iran mandeism has moved to the West and Sweden. As more and more Mandaeans encounter a new culture and a new society in Sweden it affects not only them as individuals but also their religion mandeism. In this essay, I have begun to examine how Mandaeans think about their identity and religion. I have taken my starting point in a broad theoretical discussion of identity, religion and secularisation. Mandeism is a gnostic religion that probably has its roots in today?s Israel / Palestine and sees John the Baptist as the last prophet.

The purpose of this paper is to interpret two stories of creation and compare them to each other with focus on the gender perspective. The interpretation is generally limited to the creation of mankind and how women are represented in each particular story.  The stories I?m interpreting is the story of creation from the Holy Bible, the so called genesis, and from The Nag Hammadi Library?s story of creation called On the origin of the world. I want to show the difference between these two stories when it comes to the women?s position and in what level she is described.

Lately an increasing portion of the public debate in Sweden has been devoted to how societies may facilitate entrepreneurship, yet a negligible portion of this debate has discussed the impact of the community spirit on entrepreneurial activity. Further, this connection is a relatively uncharted field in terms of research as well. The aim of this study is accordingly to advance the study surrounding the impact of community spirit on the propensity for entrepreneurial activity and add new empirical data and insights to the existing body of theory. A four-month ethnographic study of the Provo-Orem region in Utah, USA, comprising of in-depth interviews and participant observations, was therefore undertaken with the aim of understanding the community spirit in the studied region and its influence on entrepreneurship. The thesis finds that numerous values such as self-reliance, family focus and security together with a strong religious culture make up the essence of the community spirit in Provo-Orem.

The aim of this study has been to examine what students within the sport of skydiving think about their education and the social spirit of the community. The purpose of the study is thereby to answer the study's aim through the following questions; how does group dynamics and social solidarity work within the skydiving community, how do the students feel about group dynamics and social solidarity within the skydiving community, and what factors makes the students feel included or respectively excluded from the spirit of the togetherness?The theoretical part of the study focuses on group dynamics and groups overall. Further on earlier research within adventure sports and skydiving regarding group dynamics and community spirit is presented. My survey is based on 35 interviews with skydiving students.The result shows that the community spirit within skydiving sports is described by the students as very special, unique, and strong among the members.