Why Does Sweden Need a New Theological Seminary?
May 29, 2026
May 29, 2026
Abstract: Johnny Lithell explains why he and others launched a new seminary in Sweden. Not only did Sweden lack a Reformed theological seminary with Baptist ecclesiology, but the country’s humanistic and secular worldview has influenced even Christian institutions so that it has become difficult to pass on the Christian faith to the next generation. Sweden needs congregations that hold to the teaching of Scripture and are led by faithful pastors.
We launched Wiberg Seminary in Sweden in January 2026—a very humble beginning—with six students in our first course, an introductory course on the Old Testament. And yet I came to this day with great joy and a sense of fulfillment, because this is a vision I have carried for the nineteen years that have passed since I myself was a theology student and first heard of the doctrines of grace—though I didn’t hear about them in the classroom.
Don’t misunderstand me: I loved studying theology, and I thrived at school. I still think of my teachers with affection and gratitude, even though I eventually came to hold different theological convictions than them on many topics. Nor do I claim to know much about what is taught at other theological institutions in the country or about their approach to theological education.
So why was it so important to begin a new seminary in Sweden?
The short answer is: there is no theological education in Sweden that trains men who will lead congregations that hold to the doctrines of grace and the continuity of the Old and New Testaments— particularly from the standpoint of historic Baptist ecclesiology. Nor do I know of any Swedish program that shares our church-centered philosophy and realist epistemology. This justifies the hard work of building something new from the ground up.
There is, of course, a longer answer as to why Sweden needs a new seminary. Like the rest of the West, Sweden continues to reap the consequences of the philosophical shifts coming out of the Enlightenment. Under the influence of people like René Descartes (1596–1650), the center of reality shifted from outside authorities (like divine revelation) to the self. The result today—after many philosophical twists and turns over the last few centuries—is a worldview in which people see themselves as autonomous creators of their own reality. Such a worldview presents challenges when it comes to passing on the faith to the next generation.
Even as Christians committed to the authority of God’s Word, we are shaped by the autonomous, self-actualizing individualism around us. Therefore, we often struggle with Scripture’s emphasis on the objectivity of our faith and the idea of transmitting it from one generation to the next. Scriptural concepts such as “remembering” are virtually synonymous with holding to right doctrine, whereas verbs such as “forgetting” are associated with defiance, faithlessness, and apostasy (Ps. 78:3–8).
The apostle Paul speaks of the gospel as something he “received” and “delivered” in a formal transmission from teacher to student (1 Cor. 15:3); he exhorts Timothy to “continue in what you have learned” (2 Tim. 3:14); and he urges the Thessalonian church to “stand firm and hold to the traditions” they were taught (2 Thes. 2:15). Likewise, Jude urges believers to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).
Biblical faith is not an individual construction but something received, guarded, defended, and handed down, all in communion with preceding generations. In turn, we have a responsibility not to forget or distort the faith but to hand it down to the next generation.
Westerners—and statistics suggest Swedes are the worst of all—struggle to understand the Christian faith as something received from preceding generations. We are suspicious of anything that smells of authority, and we assume that everything our fathers believed is false until proven otherwise. So instead of receiving our faith within a confessional tradition, Christians in our society tend to construct and articulate their individual faith through unwritten scripts that govern their behavior and are developed within their social communities. In Sweden, these scripts are unwritten because churches reject all written confessions of faith. The pastor or some other group in the church sets the tone for what is believed. Christians also listen to friends or pick up ideas from famous preachers and digital influencers, yet without any grasp of a coherent theological system.
The result is that nearly everyone who identifies as an “evangelical” in Sweden holds to a faith informed by something other than historic Christian orthodoxy—Hollywood, therapeutic deism, Sabellianism, hyper-dispensationalism, antinomianism, Marcionism, or process theology—even as they remain convinced that they have no creed but the Bible. They denounce confessional traditions as human inventions but lack the ability to distinguish between “matters of first importance” (1 Cor. 15:3) and tertiary theological matters. The faith they profess is only superficially related to the Christianity of the Bible.
If I have described the problem correctly, then the solution for Sweden cannot simply be a new theological seminary. Rather, the solution is confessional congregations that engage in discipleship guided by the Word of God as it has been taught over the centuries and articulated within a given tradition. The planting of such congregations is the highest priority for those of us who long to see a reformation in Sweden.
These congregations—which today number only a handful in Sweden—will be small and subjected to great pressure from established churches and traditions. Therefore, a new theological seminary is needed to serve these congregations by training pastors who can lead them faithfully. To be sure, the most fundamental aspects of training a pastor—especially their character and pastoral competence—take place within the context of a local church. Yet a congregation may be greatly helped by a seminary that understands and supports the church in its difficult and glorious mission.