The Incomparable

 

Gustaf Aulén (1879-1977) was a prominent Swedish theologian and Church leader. From 1933 to 1952, he was the bishop of Strängnäs, west of Stockholm. During his lifetime, he was widely known - at least in Christian circles - in both Britain and the United States. His most well known work is the theological tractate "Christus Victor", published in English in 1931. I don´t know if C S Lewis read it, but it´s very likely: after all, its view of Christ´s atonement is strikingly similar to that found in Lewis´ Christian allegory "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe"! 

The book "Gustaf Aulén: Biskop och motståndsman" (Gustaf Aulén: Bishop and resistance fighter) is a biography of the Incomparable, as he eventually became known. It was published in 2011. The author, Jonas Jonson, is a later bishop of Strängnäs (now retired). The book is intended as a corrective to Aulén´s autobiography, which completely skips over not just his private life, but also all controversial aspects of his public activities, apparently cultivating the myth that the old bishop really was larger than life. Jonson paints a very different picture of a man with a difficult home and family life, with a personality that may have been too diplomatic and conciliatory during the political tempests of the 1930´s and 1940´s, and a theology that often comes across as a very deliberate via media (another kind of diplomacy, perhaps). Still, the author doesn´t doubt that Aulén was a competent administrator, a prolific and interesting writer, an honest supporter of ecumenism, and a great reformer of Church liturgy and music. All things considered, he was also a "resistance fighter" of sorts against both Communism and Nazism before and during World War II. 

One problem with the book - although perhaps an inevitable one - is that it feels bewildering, certainly to somebody almost entirely new to the topic. The reader is thrown back and forth, in an almost hectic manner, between Aulén´s private life, various ecumenical meetings and Church councils,  theological expositions, and attempts to sort out the bishop´s complex relationships to political and personal friends and foes. Context is sorely needed, but would probably make the book (438 pages long) twice as huge! I admit that I didn´t read literally every page of it. 

I decided to look through Jonson´s tome after noticing leftist blogger and gadfly extraordinaire Tobias Hübinette constantly implying that Aulén was a Nazi, based on the claim that the bishop was briefly a member of the SNF in 1934, the SNF being a "crypto"-Nazi organization. This is a home run for anti-fascists, since Aulén composed the music to "Fädernas kyrka", a controversial psalm popular among right-wing nationalists ever since (the White Power band Ultima Thule actually recorded a rock version of it during the 1990´s). But *was* Aulén a member of the SNF? Jonson seems unaware of the fact, at any rate, and during the war, Aulén certainly opposed the Nazi occupation of Norway. Indeed, he was awarded the Order of St Olav by the Norwegian king after the war in recognition of this fact. 

That being said, Jonson does believe that the full story of Aulén´s relationship with Nazism (or politics in general) is much more complicated than simply that of a pure and pristine anti-fascist. Aulén was, at least originally, a "man of the right" who supported the so-called Young Church movement within the Church of Sweden, a movement associated precisely with right-wing nationalism, "Fädernas kyrka" being its unofficial anthem. During the 1930´s, Aulén shifted his politics - at least outwardly - and moved closer to Social Democracy, becoming a personal friend of Arthur Engberg, the minister for ecclesiastical affairs in Per-Albin Hansson´s Social Democratic government. (At this point, the Church of Sweden was still the Swedish state Church.) It was even strongly suspected that he voted for the Social Democrats. An interesting fact is that it was Engberg who confirmed Aulén´s appointment to the position of bishop. 

At the same time, however, Aulén moved in old nobility circles in Södermanland (the area where Strängnäs is located), and some of these nobles had very explicit Nazi sympathies. Aulén became the personal friend of Mary von Rosen, a prominent member of the high church movement SSB. He also became a kind of official supervisor of the SSB itself. Mary was married to Eric von Rosen, an active Nazi and the co-founder of NSB, a short-lived party attempting to unite all Swedish Nazi groups under one umbrella. Mary, too, was a Nazi sympathizer. Her late sister Carin had been future Nazi German leader Hermann Göring´s first wife! Aulén was also friendly with the German ambassador in Stockholm. 

In 1933, Mary von Rosen attempted to convince Aulén to consecrate the pro-Nazi German "Reich bishop" in order to give the new Reich Church "apostolic succession". Weirdly, Aulén wasn´t entirely negative to the idea! He eventually backed down, however. The offer then went to Samuel Stadener, another Swedish bishop and a former minister of ecclesiastical affairs in the liberal government preceding Per-Albin Hansson´s. Aulén essentially snitched on Stadener (an old rival) in a letter to Engberg, without mentioning the salient fact that *he* (Aulén) had considered the same offer some time before! In the end, the German Reich Church had to do without Swedish recognition. Apparently, the von Rosens became decidely less enthusiastic about Hitler after the Nazi German occupation of Denmark and Norway in 1940, which perhaps saved Aulén´s reputation...

Aulén began to publicly criticize Nazism in 1934, and in 1935 also the Italian aggression against Abyssinia (Ethiopia), where Sweden apparently had some interests. He also spoke out against the Soviet attack on Finland in 1940. Still, World War II did create serious trouble for Aulén. Sweden had declared neutrality, but its government of national unity (still headed by Social Democrat Per-Albin Hansson) appeased Nazi Germany as long as Hitler seemed set to win the war. Also, Aulén´s friend in high places, Engberg, had been replaced by a pro-German right-winger as minister for ecclesiastical affairs. Aulén chose to lay low, and criticize both Nazism and Communism from a theological viewpoint which may have made sense to him (he was, after all, a trained theologian) but could have been seen as abstract and theoretical to everyone else, while supporting every twist and turn of the government. Still, his activities on behalf of Norwegian refugees and the Norwegian civilian population were nevertheless seen as surprisingly radical for a Swedish Churchman. 

As it became increasingly obvious that the Allies were going to win, Aulén became more outspoken, consecrated Norwegian priests who ministered to refugees and resistance fighters, and at the last moment even called for a Swedish military intervention in Norway to protect civilian population from the surrendering German troops (many feared that they would kill, rape and plunder as much as possible before finally leaving). With a fine sense of symbolism, Aulén would don the priestly cloak of the 15th century Swedish bishop Thomas, who supported the Engelbrekt uprising (directed against a "German" monarch and his bailiffs) and wrote a famous poem about liberty. The question of whether or not a bishop of the Strängnäs diocese could have done more during World War II, indeed if the government itself could have done more, is one that might perhaps never be resolved to everyone´s satisfaction...

As for Aulén´s theology, I admit that I only read "Christus Victor" and don´t have the benefits of a theological education c/o Uppsala, but my impression is that Aulén took a "moderate" or "centrist" position on such matters, which much impressed contemporary Lutherans and Anglicans. Evangelicals, on the one hand, and atheists, on the other, were decidedly less enamoured. Jonson believes that Aulén wrote his most interesting books after he had resigned as bishop, presumably because he was now free to think differently. In his last books, he apparently tried to engage in a positive way with both the societal changes of the 1960´s and Christian mysticism. He also accepted the ordination of female clergy, something he had long opposed (an opposition he would later try to sweep under the carpet). 

Otherwise, I get the impression that Aulén´s theology was strongly dualist, although not as dualist and ahistorical as that of Karl Barth. To Aulén, evil is a real force, both cosmically and in the hearts of men. While this often led secular critics to misunderstand him as a morbid anti-humanist pessimist, it was really a way to absolve God of responsibility for evil. Classical Lutherans apparently have a tendency to claim that both good and evil comes from God, the latter being a form of chastisement and "learning opportunity". Aulén, by contrast, says that God is Love, and hence all forms of evil and suffering are from the "chaos powers". The Church therefore becomes a force actively fighting for the good, and this the Church can and should do even in the political sphere, since both politics and religion are subject to God´s love and "the law of creation" (really a kind of natural law idea, although Aulén tried to deny this). 

Aulén rejected the notion that the Church should uncritically obey the ruler or government in political matters, a principle much misused in the Third Reich to justify Lutheran collaboration with the Nazi regime. Of course, God can use evil to further good, as when Jesus was crucified but then resurrected, something Aulén interpreted as the victory of Love over the chaos powers, rather than a "forensic" or "objective" sacrifice to appease an angry god. At the same time, Aulén´s constant emphasis on the risen Christ, Christ´s work in subsequent history, or Christ´s work in the here and now, with the earthly ministry of Jesus being at most a prelude, could be seen as an attempt to make an end run around higher criticism or liberal theology, and the fact that very little evidence exists for the "historical Jesus" in the first place. 

Aulén is often seen as high church, and while his nominal theology wasn´t (the "pure gospel" being the mark of a true Church, not supposed apostolic succession), Jonson believes that the bishop shifted emphasis during the 1930´s. Indeed, the Church of Sweden itself seems to have adopted a kind of high church-ish theology during the 1940´s. As already pointed out, Aulén was charged with supervising the Lutheran orthodoxy of the high church group SSB (led by Mary von Rosen), but he might really have acted as their alibi or guardian. He certainly shared the high church commitment to liturgical reform: rituals, vestments, improved church music, more frequent communion. Somewhat ironically, he at times consecrated priests against Church canon law. Even more strange was his consecration of the chapel of Edelweissförbundet, really a syncretic Theosophical sect, something he perhaps did as a favor to his friend Mary von Rosen, who was a member of this strange group. I´m sorry to say that Gustaf Aulén didn´t have any real esoteric connections...

But then, it seems the old bishop wasn´t a "crypto-Nazi" either. Perhaps he really was the Incomparable, after all.