a. ‘Evangelical Catholicism’ affords a natural link with Anglicanism According to Finnish custom, Archbishop Lehtonen issued an encyclical book for his diocese on the eve of his installation. This provided Lehtonen an opportunity to present an overview of his theology to the general public.
The book was somewhat unimaginatively entitled Paimenkirje 1945 (En-cyclical Letter, 1945). There were no subtitles, but the material was well structured and coherent addressing the following themes: introduction and predecessors120, the present time of crisis121, the need for unity in Christendom122, Church order123, the development of Church order in Lutheranism124, the need for a dynamic ecclesiology in the Finnish Church125, the ecumenical and in-ternational relations of the Finnish Church126, the tasks of the Church univer-sal127, the Finnish Folk Church128, the clergy129, the laity130, church administra-tion131, Lehtonen’s affection for his native region of South-West Finland132 and conclusion133. These themes revealed much about Lehtonen’s interests and concerns: he had, for his time, an unusually strong interest in ecclesiology,
0 Lehtonen 1945, 5-12.
Lehtonen 1945, 12-23.
Lehtonen 1945, 23-37.
Lehtonen 1945, 37-41.
Lehtonen 1945, 41-46.
Lehtonen 1945, 46-58.
Lehtonen 1945, 58-64.
Lehtonen 1945, 64-73.
Lehtonen 1945, 73-78.
Lehtonen 1945, 78-89.
0 Lehtonen 1945, 89-97.
Lehtonen 1945, 97-100.
Lehtonen 1945, 100-104.
Lehtonen 1945, 104-105.
which made him something of a high churchman among his brother bish-ops. Furthermore, Lehtonen’s ecclesiology was influenced by the evangelical catholic theology of the interwar years, which gave him a special empathy for Anglican theology in particular and ecumenism in general.
The evangelical catholic influence in Lehtonen’s theology was partly due to the many colleagues and older friends he had met through the ecumeni-cal movement. The most prominent of these was the great former Archbish-op of Uppsala, Nathan Söderblom, whose legacy influenced all the Nordic ecumenists at the time.134 Besides Söderblom, Lehtonen was influenced by the Swedish young Church Movement. Lehtonen was also much interested in the theology of the more explicit proponents of evangelical catholicity, among them the German Professor Friedrich Heiler, about whom he had written as early as 1925, on the Lutheran side, and the Bishop of Derby, A.E. John Rawlinson, with whom he had become acquainted during the negotiations between the churches, on the Anglican side.135
However, there was something home-grown, and particularly South Western Finnish, in Lehtonen’s high church Lutheranism. Lehtonen dedi-cated the first pages to his beloved Archdiocese of Turku, which, he consid-ered, bore “a particularly binding weight of holy traditions”.136 His reverence for tradition and continuity was no less marked when he described those of his predecessors he could personally remember and their particular gifts:
Now they are gone. We, having received the shepherd’s staff after our teachers, for the time between the labour of our predecessors and successors, feel gratitude for the precious inheritance handed to us. But the Church of Christ is one, in paradise and on earth. I believe that the blessing of departed friends, who have been called to peace, is with us, whose ministry falls in this time of trouble. There is a long succession behind us.
Lehtonen continued by quoting one of the Finnish Lutheran All Saints’ and All Souls’ tide hymns emphasizing the unity of the Church militant with the Church triumphant.138 For Lehtonen death was no obstacle to the unity of the Church.
Nokkala 1951, 125; Ryman 2005a, 51-52; Ryman 2005b, 63-64.
Lehtonen 1922; Nokkala 1951, 122-128; Brodd 1982, 169-181, 326-327; Ryman 2005a, 52-54.
Lehtonen 1945, 5.
Lehtonen 1945, 11-12.
Lehtonen 1945, 12.
Archbishop Lehtonen’s tone, while identifiably Finnish Lutheran, close-ly mirrored the mainstream Anglican theology of the time.139 This resulted from the similar ethos of ecumenically minded liberal catholic Anglican and evangelical catholic Lutheran circles during the inter-war years. That similarity notwithstanding, the Anglican side was never entirely comfort-able with the attribute ‘evangelical’. For them, the term referred particularly to pietistic motivated churchmanship, whereas in Nordic and Continental theology the term signified in the main belonging to the Protestant tra-dition. Thus liberal and evangelical catholicism can be seen as analogous terms born in different cultures.140
Lehtonen’s debt to evangelical catholicism is explicit in his description of recent theological development in the section the need for unity in Christen-dom. He was happy that theology was returning to the classical confession of Christ and considered that this was due to a rising “historical-ecclesial”
interest throughout Christendom:
There is a new awareness of the rich inheritance of the Church. Following a time of subjectivism, there is a longing for objectivism, as well as tradition and authority. In many countries, this longing has given birth to an evangelical-high-church move-ment (although in our country only on the Swedish-speaking side). The word “high church” has a negative echo in common consciousness. Usually, it is understood to include the kind of thinking which stresses the external power and “benefits”
of the church and the clergy. The ecclesial movement to which I refer is however completely different in essence. This is illustrated by a comparison of its aims with the earlier “high church” movement in Finland, which was a product of a train of thought according to which everything necessary in the priestly ministry was done if the letter of Canon Law were met. -- [Against this] The high-church movements in Christendom today usually place a high emphasis on the confessing of Christ (see for example the first chapter of HEILER’s book Im Ringen um die Kirche). ‘High church’ in this context signifies high thoughts, not of oneself, but of the vocation of the Church. Usually, this includes the noble ideals of a serving Church and a clergy sacrificially coming close to people of all classes, but particularly those poor neighbours, who live in the utmost misery and destitution oppressed by hard social conditions. These thoughts have created many inspiring and noble priestly charac-ters in modern church history both at home and in the mission fields. They have also, and this is what I especially mean to say, greatly contributed to the new, joyful personal confession of Christ around Christendom. In these circles the liturgy is not about aesthetic atmosphere or fancy rhetoric. On the contrary, it is about a serious
Love’s Redeeming Work 2003, 369-376.
0 Brodd 1982, 169-181.
confession of the basic truths of the faith and is often austere in form (following the western model).
For Lehtonen, evangelical catholicism meant the Church’s sacrificial service in the world arising from a personal and full confession of Christ. This can be seen as a point of convergence between the catholic principle of Imitatio Christi and the evangelical demand for personal conversion and insistence on a growth in holiness. As such it came close to traditional Anglican piety with its strong emphasis on sanctification, holiness and worship. In a Finn-ish Lutheran context, this feature of the ArchbFinn-ishop’s theology was often viewed with suspicion.142
Lehtonen’s reference to the “many inspiring and noble priestly charac-ters” of a high church tradition working with the poor is most likely to have been inspired by Christian Socialism and the Anglo-Catholic slum priests of the Church of England.143 Lehtonen had become acquainted with English urban social challenges at the World Student Christian Federation’s meeting in Liverpool in 1912, about which he reminisced elsewhere in the book.144
In his view, the churches should unite in a common endeavour to or-ganise foreign missions, witness at home and tackle social challenges. In Finland, emphasis on ecumenism and a social Gospel was viewed as some-what radical, especially by the pietists, who were especially unsettled by the defence of the value of social work in the saving of individual souls.145 On the other hand, this emphasis on social responsibility was calculated to gain the support of the younger, so-called Brothers in Arms clergy, who had learned from the war the value of such endeavours and could no longer return to the old world of separation between the clergy and the ordinary working man.146
Similarly, Lehtonen’s distinction between the sacrificial and serving high church ideal and the romantic love of ritual or the fascination with “the beauty of holiness” may have derived from a cultural protestant influence, but was especially important, bearing in mind that a large proportion of
Lehtonen 1945, 28-30.
Gulin 1952, 59; Love’s Redeeming Work 2003, 369-376.
Lehtonen 1945, 69-70; Nokkala 1951, 131-132; Hastings 1998, 82, 174-175; Love’s Redeeming Work 2003, 370.
Lehtonen 1945, 69-70.
Lehtonen 1945, 64-73.
Ahola 2001, 485-486; Seppo 2001, 214-215.
the people of his diocese and the Church of Finland were strict pietists for whom the distinction between inner faith (good) and the external form of religion (bad or secondary) was of grave importance.
Indeed, Lehtonen’s outlook, while not catholic, was at least anti-Roman, and to some extent it was informed by his cultural protestant her-itage. This was most often seen in his suspicion of the Roman Catholic Church and in a hint of a cultural protestant superiority complex concern-ing scientific progress and ethics.147 In this as in so many other ways he followed in the footsteps of leading ecumenists and church leaders of the previous generation such as Archbishop Nathan Söderblom and the great liberal catholic Bishop Charles Gore, who had embraced the word ‘catholic’
while remaining suspicious of Rome.148 Like them, Lehtonen did not reject catholicism as the antithesis of evangelicalism – probably the most com-mon stance adopted by his fellow Finnish Lutherans. However, that stance had to be taken into consideration. This was perhaps the reason why the Encyclical Letter, 1945 appears as the first truly public occasion on which Lehtonen expressed his support for high church ideals.149
Nevertheless, Lehtonen was not really a party man and tried to avoid controversies of churchmanship for the sake of the unity of his diocese.150 This is demonstrated by his conciliatory description of the traditional Finnish Lutheran pietistic revival movements, which were to some extent the Finnish Lutheran equivalent of Anglican party divisions.151 Similarly, Church of England party labels could not easily be applied to him, as his churchmanship bore points of convergence with all the parties: he shared the Anglo-Catholic concern for the freedom of the Church; agreed with the liberal churchmen on the vital importance of free academic study; and emphasized with the evangelicals the place of Christian mission and revival both at home and abroad. Among his own, Lehtonen was a high church-man; in Church of England terms he would have been a mainstream An-glican.
Lehtonen 1945, 20.
Brodd 1982, 132-134, 138-146; Hastings 1998, 82-83.
Nokkala 1951, 130.
0 The Interview of the Rt Revd Samuel Lehtonen 11.5.2000; Aurola 1951, 94-95.
Lehtonen 1945, 48-54.
b. Lehtonen seeks convergence on the understanding of ministry
As the inter-war Anglican-Lutheran dialogues had demonstrated, the key issue in relations between the two traditions remained the ministry of the Church.152 Archbishop Lehtonen devoted much space to this topic in his Encyclical Letter, 1945. In his section on the Church order, Lehtonen re-joiced that as theology in general was increasingly returning to a positive confession of the divine revelation, so protestant Christendom had begun to return to a traditional understanding of church order. This stemmed from the amazing discovery that the churches whose leadership was based on historical tradition had survived best under hostile conditions.153
However, Lehtonen framed his understanding of apostolicity in general and the apostolic succession in particular in a typically Nordic Lutheran way, which presented something of a challenge to most contemporary An-glican theologians:
Only a superficial mind, misled by deceptive phrases, might imagine that this only means something approaching a magical notion that the so-called apostolic succes-sion implies that the external laying on of hands, passing from the Apostles to their successors and from them to successive generations of bishops, could through a me-chanical, external act pass mystical powers to the one consecrated (a vulgar catholic notion). On the contrary, the fact that the episcopal ministry has been passed from one generation to another by the historical, episcopal consecration means above all that the whole Church, yesterday as today, is behind this ministry of leadership. In other words, the ministry of bishop can be given to a person only by the Church, the Church of Christ, which is behind it both throughout the Christian centuries leading from the early Church to the Church today. No one can declare himself a bishop, nor can the state give or take away episcopal or any other ministry. They come from the Lord of the Church through His Church. Only thus will the person appointed be rite vocatus. The authorization for the episcopal ministry does not come from the state or any other secular authority, but the authorization comes from God and His word. The state does not dictate what the bishops and priests of the Church should proclaim; they must proclaim the word of God purely and in unadulterated form, paying no attention to the popular whim. The Church must give Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and God what belongs to Him, but what belongs to Caesar is ordered by God and His holy word - not Caesar.
-- The authorization for the ministry comes from God and his Church. This was the stand taken by the Bishops of the Church of Norway in the recent violent con-flict. Even when discharged they let everyone know: we still have our authorization, which we have received from the Church of God, and we are bound to it, unless
Österlin 1995, 256-260.
Lehtonen 1945, 36-38.
the Church itself let us leave. The parishes also upheld this principle, that only those who had been rite vocati were real bishops.
Lehtonen’s use of the Norwegian Church’s struggle as an example of the defence of the historic episcopate was the more remarkable for the fact that the Norwegian Lutheran Church did not enjoy formal apostolic succession in the Anglican understanding, although it had always been episcopally or-dered. He proposed a wider perspective of the historic episcopate than was common in the Anglican theology of his day.155 Not only did his vigorous criticism of the mechanical understanding of the apostolic succession arise simply from a protestant denial of what was seen as anti-evangelical; it also paved the way for a positive understanding of the broad historic episcopate among his more protestant readers.
Nevertheless, Lehtonen was careful to continue that an appreciation of traditional Church order “should not lead to interpretations foreign to Evangelical confession”, even if he did not want to reject the formal signs altogether, as indeed some other Lutherans had done. For Lehtonen “the external forms, tested through the Church’s history, are a gift, not just something exchanged overnight, or the matters of mere temporary arrange-ments or titles.”156 He was thus strongly against an over simple or superficial understanding of the apostolicity of the Church. On the one hand, apos-tolicity was much more than the mere mechanical passing of the apostolic succession according to the traditional ‘pipeline’ theory; on the other, it was something so central to the Church’s historical self-understanding that it could not be changed overnight.
While affirming the centrality of Christ in a truly traditional Lutheran way, Lehtonen condemned spiritualism, separating as it did soul from body, the spiritual from the material, form from essence, as a false interpretation of the Reformation tradition:
The Church has no refuge in things external. Were the precious historical tradi-tion of the Church to tumble down, the Church of Christ, sustained by word and sacraments, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail, would remain. The foundation of the Church is Christ, who holds it together. Yet at the same time we appreciate the valuable temporal orders God has given us. I repeat: form and es-sence, spirit and its temporal appearance are not against each other. Let us not slide into one-sided spiritualism. The soul has a body. And so the forms of our
Lehtonen 1945, 38-39.
Norris 1999, 343-344; Tjørhum 2002, 168-169.
Lehtonen 1945, 40; Tjørhum 2002, 168-169.
sions; the poetic verse of our spiritual hymns; the richly decorated mementoes of our old churches; the high uplifting vaults of Turku Cathedral, for centuries sanctified by hymns of prayer and thanksgiving, are all dear to us. The same applies to the traditional order of our church. It is indeed especially valuable, because through it we are clearly bound to past Christian generations in the north, who prayed and fought, were joyful and gave thanks and laid the Christian foundation for the future of generations yet unborn.
Lehtonen’s interpretation was informed by an urgent desire for the synthesis of evangelical faith and catholic order, because he supported the unity and richness of tradition against protestant reductionism. In this, as well as in his criticism of an institutional understanding of the Church, he very much trod the path of Söderblom.158 It is noteworthy that when Lehtonen was less careful to defend high church ideals against the more obvious low church criticism concerning ‘love of the externals’, his love of tradition and ritual became clearly visible.
In another section, in which he discussed the role of the clergy, Lehtonen, while warning his readers of the fact that the word ‘Church’ had been too often understood to mean only the clergy, followed the traditional Lutheran line according to which the ordained ministry was one of the constituting elements of the Church, the others being the word and sacraments.159 Dur-ing the 1930s negotiations with the Church of England one of the ques-tions of the Finnish delegation concerned the constitutive elements of the Church. They had asked about the place of the word for Anglicans as a Church-constituting element, since the Lutheran divines placed most em-phasis on it.160 In Lehtonen’s Encyclical Letter, 1945, the word of God was certainly the first element, but the sacraments and ministry followed and were equally ordained by God.161 The ordained ministry was essential for the Church and Lehtonen placed a strong emphasis on it, albeit in a very Lutheran way, stressing the importance of the word of God.
To make his point Lehtonen emphasized another kind of succession, a succession homi-letica, from the time God spoke to the first human in para-dise. He quoted the Finnish Lutheran liturgy of ordination to the priest-hood, which he understood as emphasizing the same truly Lutheran
Lehtonen 1945, 40-41.
Brodd 1982, 134; Hytönen 1997, 36.
Lehtonen 1945, 78-79.
0 Negotiations 1933-1934, 9.
Lehtonen 1945, 79.
standing of ministry as the ministry of the word of God and preaching.162 However, Lehtonen’s view was much more sacramental than was perhaps the case for most Finnish Lutherans at the time:
There is a grace which comes through the ministry. Prayer is heard. The charismas are given for the forthcoming tasks on the journey.
The Lord has given authorization by the solemn mediation of his Church. He, the Great High Priest, has placed the task in our hands through grace. Vocatio interna and vocatio externa come to us from God. We, who are ordained to the sacred min-istry, belong to ourselves no more. “So Jesus said to them again, “Peace be unto
The Lord has given authorization by the solemn mediation of his Church. He, the Great High Priest, has placed the task in our hands through grace. Vocatio interna and vocatio externa come to us from God. We, who are ordained to the sacred min-istry, belong to ourselves no more. “So Jesus said to them again, “Peace be unto