woman at the pool—namely, “What exactly is pastoral care?”
Now, let me note from the outset that I think one could correctly point out numerous qualities that make pastoral care distinctive, which is to say that I do not presume to cover all of those qualities in this address. One could also rightly note that some of what pastoral caregivers do (whether as pastors, deacons, chaplains, lay leaders, or professional pastoral counselors) is not all that distinctive. It overlaps with what other caregivers do—people like social workers, marriage and family therapists, psychologists, and nurses. Truth be told, typical pastors (to cite one type of caregiver) may on any given day feel as though what they do is as much “social work” or “counseling” as any other vocation or profession—including, perhaps, that of pastor. Nevertheless, I want to suggest two distinctions that we do well to confer on both the conceptualization and practice of pastoral care—two responses that are appropriate for answering the question, “What makes care pastoral?”
First, pastoral care necessarily embraces what has traditionally been called “the care of souls.” Pastoral care is “soul-care.” Second, pastoral care takes place in the foreground of what we may call “the Christian story.” This means that biblical narratives and theological principals necessarily shape the way that we conceptualize pastoral care and the way we practice it. Let us consider each of these distinctions.
Soul-Care
First, pastoral care involves soul-care. In order to say what this means, I must begin with a few words on the history of pastoral care. The view that pastoral care involves soul-care dates to the first understandings of pastoral work, when the early church used the term poimenics to refer to a principal responsibility for clergy—namely, the care and cure of souls.1 This care and cure of souls included four ancient pastoral functions. These were healing, sustaining, guiding, and reconciling (Clebsch and Jaekle, 1964/1967, 32–66). To offer pastoral care—to care for souls—meant to foster healing, sustenance, guidance, and reconciliation, not merely for individuals but for communities of people.2
Such a view of pastoral care largely persisted through the medieval period and the Protestant Reformation. In the Enlightenment period, however (that is, beginning in the late seventeenth century), three principal influences altered how pastoral care was viewed and practiced. First, more systematic and formal training of clergy gradually became the norm. Second, the Western world increasingly explained and understood life and the world without necessary references to God or religion (Clebsch and Jaekle, 1964/1967, 28). Third, theological education began a fragmentation into various areas of specialized study within the modern research university. All of these factors led to a narrowing of pastoral care. It now focused principally on individuals and their needs (as opposed to the needs of both individuals and groups), but especially as these needs related to a new emphasis on “religious privacy” on the one hand, and moral guidance on the other (31). In other words, pastoral care became less communal and more privatized, along with attending to a comparatively smaller set of concerns for “personal” religion and “personal” salvation.
In the early twentieth century, especially in North America, pastoral care became even more private in nature. Often limited to one-on-one encounters among clergy and laypersons, its focus increasingly became matters of mental illness and related problems.3 By the mid-twentieth century pastoral care was guided largely (and some would argue, primarily) by perspectives tied to psychology, psychotherapy, and related clinical disciplines; and, to a lesser degree, by other human sciences (i.e., anthropology, sociology, and critical theory), and by hermeneutics. At the same time, pastoral care drew less on religious language and perspectives as primary guides. With these changes of focus came less attention to and concern for “souls”—at least as traditionally viewed—and more attention on “personhood” as understood through the medical and human sciences.
What followed was the trend for ministers of care to function as armchair therapists. In the last half century, ministers have increasingly embraced the language and perspectives of the human sciences while often relegating their own principal language and perspectives (that is, religious or theological ones) to the back burner, if they weren’t taken off the stove altogether. I’ll say more about this trend in a few minutes.
Suffice it to say here that views on pastoral care have changed throughout the church’s history; and appropriately so. It would be a mistake to seek to reclaim a premodern view of persons or ministry. It would be equally unwise to embrace the care of souls for reasons of nostalgia. As a matter of fact, we must draw considerably from the human sciences and other bodies of knowledge to provide the most competent and faithful soul-care. Furthermore, unlike earlier periods of church life, we now rightly view pastoral care as including the work of congregations. It’s not the responsibility of clergy alone. Soul-care in our age requires the interest and efforts of faith communities and indeed the larger body of Christ—perhaps like never before. If for no other reasons than these, we do not want to go back to centuries-old views of pastoral care.
But there are aspects of those views that we would do well to embrace. A principal one, and the one I wish to highlight here, is that pastoral care requires close attention to the human soul. This attention, which arises from the value attributed to souls by the Christian faith, makes pastoral care distinctive among other types of care.
So I now need to say what I mean by “soul.” I have in mind something similar to what theologian Jürgen Moltmann says about the soul when discussing the concept of immortality (what he refers to as “personal eschatology”).4 According to Moltmann (2004), the soul denotes “the relationship of the whole person to the immortal God” (105).5 We should not view the soul (or the body, for that matter) as a discrete part or aspect of a human being. Rather, because it encompasses the whole person, the soul is best viewed as a locus for relationship between a person (in his or her entirety) and God. Much of Western Christianity, I would argue, has mistakenly viewed the body and soul as separate constituent parts of the human being. Influenced by Platonic idealism on the one hand, and by Cartesian dualism on the other, Western Christianity has typically embraced the necessary separation, and even sharp bifurcation, of body and soul; and, more recently, of body, mind, and soul—the latter idea maintaining that the mind serves as a bridge between the other two (incongruent)aspects of personhood.
Here is the way this line of thinking unfolds. The body, being mortal, does not endure. Over time, its health and functioning declines and eventually it perishes. Another idea often goes with this view—namely, that the body, because it dies and thus remains imperfect, is tied to evil. The body thus has little value, at least when held alongside of the soul.
Not so for the soul, this same way of thinking continues. The soul is superior to the body; and it’s superior because it endures and especially because it serves as the means for salvation—that is, for one’s eternal life with God. As a result, the soul has the potential for reaching perfection—if not in the present life, then in the next one. A consequence of this prevailing view of souls has been that whereas it has been highly valued and attended to in theological reflection and in the Christian life, the body has been devalued if not discounted altogether. In a common Christian way of speaking, “If your soul is right with God, nothing else matters all that much!” (Cole, 2008c, 12).
Moltmann suggests an alternative view. He points to the creation story and notes that it says: “‘God breathed his breath into the lump of the earth,’ so that the first human being, ‘Adam,’ ‘became a living soul’ (Gen. 2:7, KJV). That means ‘he does not have a living soul. He is a living soul’” (Moltmann, 1985, 256). Similarly, Moltmann adds, Martin Luther understood that a person who dies “can lament: ‘I am encompassed
