Pastoral Theology in the Classical Tradition

Pastoral Theology in the Classical Tradition was a really good reminder of what a pastor should be. As someone who grieves the state of the Church and struggles with anger toward my fellow pastors for forsaking the long established practice of pastoral care, I had a hard time with this book.I think Purves chose great men worth emulating, but the men I know striving to be this for their people end up burned out and with tiny churches. Our culture would rather have celebrity pastors and pay a counselor than have a man who knows the Scriptures, loves them well, and is willing to lay his life down for them, and the Church is withering because of it.Of course this is a chicken or the egg scenario. Have we failed them so much they don't trust us, or has the office changed to match expectations? I'm sure it's both.Thankfully, PTitCT calls us pastors to return to our calling, and what better way to do that than giving us examples of how we might do that.Great read for lay people so they can look for these kinds of pastors, and a great read for pastors who need to be reminded of our calling.

I am taking my final course for a certificate in biblical counseling through the Christian Counseling and Education Foundation, which is entitled Counseling in the Local Church. Pastoral Theology in the Classical Tradition (2001) by Andrew Purves is one of the required texts. In this short text, Purves explores pastoral care and what we might now call counseling or soul care through the works of five men separated by over a thousand years: Gregory of Nazianzus, John Chrysostom, Gregory the Great, Martin Bucer, and Richard Baxter. I suspect that even most well-read evangelicals have little knowledge of these men, except perhaps Richard Baxter.In each case, Purves provides a short biographical sketch and then explores aspects of their works that contribute to pastoral care and shepherding. Although there was wisdom in each, I was particularly drawn to Gregory of Nazianzus, the earliest of them. Purves wrote, "according to Gregory, the pastor is a healer, even more so than the physician for the pastor treats a sickness that is a deeply subtle foe of healing a sickness of the soul" (p. 17).Also, in the chapter on Gregory, Purves makes this point: "the godly pastor is not only a psychologist and rhetorician, but above all else also must be a theologian" (page 22). I would love to see this wisdom penetrate the pastoral office today.

This was a helpful overview of the classical tradition of pastoral theology. It was required required reading for a seminary class and provided helpful insights into theological and pastoral motivations from the past with pertinent implications for the pastor and theologian today. An easy and enjoyable read.

Andrew Purves has given us a marvelous little book on pastoral theology. His approach is based on three assumptions. The first is that every pastor needs also to be a theologian--that is, needs to be in a reflective and prayerful dialogue with the doctrine that grounds Christian ministry. But pastoral training in recent years--and this is the second assumption--has focused so heavily on psychological theory that traditional theological underpinnings have been underemphasized. (This isn't to say that psychological training isn't good--of course it is!--but merely that the temptation is for it to overshadow anything of theological substance.) Happily, however (here's the third assumption) noncontemporary theological sources have a great deal to teach us about pastoring. Purves follows C.S. Lewis' assumption that books from the past are helpful because they challenge the frameworked assumptions that we just naturally take for granted--hence Lewis' rule-of-thumb that every reading of a new book should be complemented by the reading of an old one.In keeping with his three assumptions, Purvis seeks to reinvigorate pastoral theology by reexamining the thought of five "traditional" theologians--Gregory Nazianzus, John Chrysostom, Gregory the Great, Martin Bucer, and Richard Baxter--who offer refreshing insights into pastoral roles, responsibilities, and identities. Purves admits that other theologians could've been selected (Luther on religious doubt, for example, or Augustine on marriage), but he thinks the five he focuses on are both representative of the tradition and instructive.Purves' book is a wonderful combination of theory and application, and it reawakens in the reader (or at least in this reader) an appreciation of just how pertinent ancient, medieval, and early reformation theologians are to the nitty-gritty of daily pastoral care. A valuable resource, and highly recommended for every clergyperson who could use a refresher on what it means to be an ordained servant of God.

What is pastoral care? For most part of my church life, it was dismal. For most part pastoral care that I received was largely what I got from the pulpit in my three decades of church life.What is pastoral care? I do not think I have been systematically taught about it. Prior this book, pastoral care to me was relationship building, care and teaching a pastor did beyond the pulpit. Pastoral care was the meal rota to families in need. It was an appointment with the pastor when you were in crisis. It was never an ongoing check on normal spiritual growth. My growth was seriously retarded and it went unnoticed. When I became a mother, there was never any equipping to help me make a decision if I should return to work. When I eventually quit work and stayed home and sought a new focus in life, I was ill-equipped in understanding woman role at church. I had no idea of how to do Christian walk in general! It’s no good when you don’t know what you don’t know – this is the ultimate ignorance or blindness. I received more pastoral care from pastors who were dead than those whom I met in life! This is no joke. Thanks to Amazon, the legacy of past saints is made so much more accessible and affordable.What is pastoral care? I dearly wish to know what the Bible says about it. This book is a wonderful beginning of such a quest. I am driven by my dismal personal experience that I wish to find out what should be expected in a church. In particular, I see pastoral care to women at church lacking on the teaching side. When I first looked into the subject, the author’s observation is spot on for me – I am taught more of psychology and psychotherapy techniques. I have the same outcry that Christ is only mentioned in passing and the Holy Spirit has a notional presence in the literature. The goal seems to be personal betterment in practice rather than becoming who we are in Christ. The author is right – pastoral care has lost the soteriological and eschatological goal, although they do use the word sanctification. Having just dipped into the contemporary literature on the subject, I echo with the author that ‘much of what passes as pastoral practice is theologically and practically incoherent.’ To some extent I feel vindicated because I have found those literatures confusing and unsatisfactory, driving me to seek more profound theological grounding for pastoral care.Does this book fill that niche? I think it is a very good introduction to the subject. The five theologians covered have the core in common albeit with different emphases. They therefore complement one another well as their respective expansions enrich the overall exposition in a coherent way. Perhaps this just manifests the beauty of the Bible – its teaching is coherent and consistent even in the hands of different saints across different epochs as long as they were faithful to Scripture.It is a loss to the modern church when pastoral theology in the classical tradition is not read and studied, leaving us fumble in the dark and fall victim to the latest fad. We are missing out on the blessing of the church life as Christ has intended for us! One thing that comes out very clear is – who can be our pastors or in terms of women ministry, women workers? Pastoral care is a demanding office, which should humble anyone for personal ambition. The author concludes it well: “Ministry is not “natural” work in the sense that it is within our human compass and possibility. It is in a sense an alien work that demands great transformation by God, for the want of which the work of the pastor cannot succeed.” That rules out the belief that “ordinary people can do extraordinarily things because we all have the Holy Spirit in us” without any other further qualifications, not even that the caregiver should demonstrate at least transformation that Christ has made in his or her life. As the nation may have a crisis in pastors and their training, this is even more so for women workers partly because the majority does not know what they should look like.The book does come out strongly that pastoral care should be rooted and grounded in a knowledge of Christ through the Scriptures. Pastors have to be theologians first and foremost. Nowadays theology has been painted as cold and impersonal but it has never crossed the theologians’ minds of all ages that theology is not also practical.Fundamentally we live wrongly if our knowledge of God is wrong. In my first seminar in a biblical counselling course, we were asked what the most important criterion of a biblical counsellor was. It was not his or her knowledge of the Bible but “your own personal walk with Christ”. This just takes it edge off from the hard work that the role may imply. I believe the latter needs further qualification as a qualification of a biblical counsellor. How about this: pastoral work is described as “the art of arts”. “It suggests that pastoral work is an aesthetic discipline, one that requires a certain cast of mind, an intuitive apprehension that is deeply guided by the things of God and an understanding of the nature of people. The discipline is not without skills, of course, but it is more than skills. Pastoral work, we might suggest, is given its shape by a spiritual apperception that is profoundly controlled by a conceptual grasp of Christian doctrine.” Pastoral theology in the classical tradition never portrays theology as cold but acknowledges from the outset the human dimension to the job: “Each of the classical writers dwelt at length on the complexities of pastoral work. Person and circumstance must shape the pastoral response…A pastor must thus develop a discerning wisdom in order to know what remedy to apply in each case. Pastoral work is not formulaic….pastors must ever grow in their knowledge and understanding of people. They must be psychologists in the deepest sense, becoming men and women who understand the souls of their people and who know how to identify and treat soul-sickness.” (p.110-120)This profile just makes what provided by contemporary literature flimsy in comparison. Here is some more: “The battle is with the hidden heart of humankind and the adversary within… This work demands great skill, since people are so varied, and requires care correspondingly.” (p.29) “The godly pastor is not only a psychologist and a rhetorician, but above all else also must be a theologian….The competent and faithful pastor must know both God and people in such a way that he or she can interpret the significance of the gospel to meet every life situation and every manner of person, all to the glory of God and the eternal salvation of each person…ministry should be entered into by those who recognise the need to commit themselves to the work of theology and who have the skill and sensitivity to understand the nature and needs of persons in such a way that the gospel can be addressed for them in healing and helpful ways.” (p.22-23)I will make two points of the book: the focus is on developing the theological grounding for the pastor’s office. It does not therefore say directly how women should be pastored on a more personal basis or what a women worker should look like because she is not a pastor of the church. Having said that, women ministry should share the same goal of pastoral care in unison with the vision for the wider church. I believe practical implications for women ministry or a pastoral care system in support of the pastor can be developed from it.The second point I would like to make is that three theologians were before the Reformation. While the author focuses on telling the theology they had developed, he is sometimes not as clear with the dubious concepts that they had pre-Reformation. I was reading some segments, wondering to what extent I can adopt them.

I would recommend anybody entering into ministry, or currently in ministry to read this book. The author does a great job of condensing the theology and pastoral insights of five ministry giants and then applying what he has gleaned from them to present day ministry.

Highly recommended. Five key pastoral figures from Church History are reviewed with biographies and major emphases of their pastoral theology. A great combination of theology, history and practical advice from the great pastor-theologians of the past.One of the author's central contentions is a defence of the 'classical tradition' as opposed to the received wisdom of modern pop-psychology pastoring. He makes a good case, revealing underlying differences of approach, backed up with quotation from the masters of the trade. Nevertheless the focus of the book is positive: offering referenced and well-grounded advice for those engaged in pastoral care today.

An interesting book on pastoral care but not enough input from the Orthodoxy

Really useful book