SÖDERBLOM, NATHAN. - Lutheran bishop of Uppsala and primate of the Swedish Lutheran Church, b. at Trönö (Söderhamn) on 15 January 1866, d. at Uppsala on 12 July 1931.
He began his career as a pastor and scholar in Paris, publishing two works on Zoroastrianism: Les Fravassins, Paris 1897, and La vie future d'après le mazdéisme, ibid. 1900. In 1912 he was professor of the history of religions at Leipzig, and in 1914 he was appointed bishop of Uppsala. He concerned himself greatly with the movement for the union of the Christian Churches (Ecumenical Conference of Stockholm 1924; Conference of the Faith and Order movement, Lausanne 1927). As a historian of religions, in addition to the two works cited above, he wrote: Gudstrons uppkomst, 1914, translated into German as Das Werden des Gottesglaubens, 1915, 2nd ed. 1926, in which he sets out his thesis of God as creator (Urheber); the short manual Die Religionen der Erde, Tübingen 1905, Italian trans. Rome 1908; he reworked Tiele's Kompendium der Religionsgeschichte, 6th ed. Berlin 1930; Natürliche Theologie und allgemeine Religionsgeschichte, 1941; Einführung in die Religionsgeschichte, 2nd ed. 1928; Christliche Einheit, 1928; Dieu vivant dans l'histoire, Paris 1937, J. De Coussange's translation of the Gifford Lectures delivered at Edinburgh in 1931. S. had a most vivid faith in God and said on his deathbed: "I know that God lives and I can prove it by the history of religions." The last book is the demonstration of this faith of his.
Bibliography2 works
Nicola Turchi