In this article, I discuss how the philosophical and theological thinking of Anders Nygren has influenced the Finnish theologian Tage Kurtén. Specifically, I argue that Kurtén develops the idea of self-evident truth in Nygrens’s thinking. Nygren main-tains that all cultures are founded on self-evident truths that are seldom discussed or referenced to. Kurtén argues that every context is determined by such self-evident truths, which has consequences for the individual’s basic orientation in the world. The purpose of this article is therefore to analyse how Kurtén makes use of Nygren’s thinking on the self-evident and in what respects Kurtén’s thinking differs from Nygren’s.