"Modernity's greatest loss is that it has to such a catastrophic extent lost the dimension of depth. And it is in the depth that we find unity, not on the troubled and reflective surface."
This is what Bishop Emeritus Martin Lönnebo writes in the newly written foreword to the book Enhetens språk . It forms the final part of his great work The Five Languages of Religion from 1975, one of the greatest attempts made in modern times to create a synthesis of faith and Christian life. Everything Martin Lönnebo wrote thereafter is, in a sense, comments on, not to mention guidance from the outside, the "sum" of this book.
This text is written in the light of the political and cultural events of the 1970s, which was not least the epoch of Marxism, but it addresses the fundamental questions, existential as well as political, social and ecological, in a way that means that it might as well have been written in light of the threatening drama that characterizes global events today. Martin Lönnebo writes: "The reverence for life found in religion is now, in the face of the impending disaster, not a luxury item."
In The Language of Unity, the author summarizes the language of experience, cult, action and doctrine:
The language of unity is summed up in the cross. It is the clearest Christian sign of the purification and enlightenment that creates unity through destitution, humility, renunciation and service breaking down what separates and divides. The cross is first and foremost God's own sign through which he reconciles the world to himself, but it is also the sign of followership.