Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - II. Meddelanden och aktstycken - Dokument till frågan om nattvardsgemenskap med Englands kyrka av N. Söderblom - 3. To the Conference of Bishofs in the Anglican Communion
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to the conference etc.
375
in such cases, in casu necessitatis, will hardly have occurred in our
Church.
b. A concession of this right in genere to the members
of a certain communion on the other hand presupposes that
an essential agreement, proved by the confessional documents of
the communion in question exists as regards the spirit and the
main points of Christian faith. In the case of those communions
which, like our own, have accepted the Confessio Augustana, the
concession of such general intercommunion has been considered
as quite natural, while in other cases the matter has been thought
to demand a particular enquiry. But that the direct acceptance
of the Confessio Augustana has not been considered in all cases as
the necessary condition for the concession of Intercommunion is
shown also by the fact, which has a particular interest in this case,
that already once before, from the 17th century, intercommunion
of this kind has existed in North America, between our Church
and yours. Two centuries later during some years after 1866,
Swedish emigrants to the United States were recommended to the
Protestant Episcopal Church in such places where there was no
access to a Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Community.’
Thus, in the question of intercommunion our Church has
not attached decisive weight either to the doctrine of the Ministry
in general or to what is usually called the Apostolical Succession
of Bishops and the questions thereby implied. The deeper reason
for this is derived from our fundamental conceptions, and has been
explained several times during the preparatory investigations and
particularly during the negotiations in Upsala in September 1909,
by the representatives of the Swedish Church. For the explanation
of this position, which we think that we ought also now to emphasize,
we refer to the points with regard to the doctrine of the Swedish
Church on the Ministry that were on that occasion laid before the
Committee appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1909,
and form part of the report, issued in 1911 by this Committee.
From these points we quote:
»3. No particular organization of the Church and of its
1 In the circular letter of the Clerus Comitialis to the clergy from the
diet of 1865—66, it was recommended that a testimonial to this effect should
be given to emigrants. Amongst the reasons for this it is said »that a Bishop
of the English Episcopal Church in the United States, now present in our capital,
has given us the kindest assurances that such of our countrymen as go to
places where there are no Evangelical Lutheran Communities, may be sure to
find necessary assistance in matters spiritual as well as temporal at the hands
of the clergy of the English Church, if they choose to apply to them, without
the slightest attempt being made by the English Church to imbue them with
other doctrines than those which our Church confesses, or to separate them in
any respect from this Church.»
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