551 - A Theology Of Pastoral Care

A Theology Of Pastoral Care
By Eduard Thurneysen
343 pp. Richmond, Virginia, John Knox Press, 1962. $5.50.

Eduard Thurneysen, a Swiss theologian, originally published this work in German under the title Die Lehre von der Seelsorge. American pastoral theologians have used this book as basic reading for graduate students in their study of both pastoral care and the German language. They and their students will be glad Indeed that it is now available to larger audiences of students and pastors by reason of this translation into English.

Thurneysen bases pastoral care in theology and the Church, drawing all his presuppositions from within Reformation theology, with special indebtedness to John Calvin and Karl Barth. Church discipline provides the meaningful context within which pastoral care is carried on meaningfully. The first concern of the Church is preaching and the sacraments. Pastoral care is a conversation which is based on preaching and leads back to it. To care for man means to provide him with the Word of God, the Creator of man.

". . . therefore, this proclamation goes out to mankind not only in general, but it also proceeds from person to person. When it carries the proclamation, which is addressed to everyone, into the life of the individual, it becomes pastoral care. Here it assumes the form of a conversation that continually seeks, and shows concern for, the individual man" (p. 66).

The purpose of this book is to investigate the right form of this conversation and its implementation.

This purpose is floreated in the three major parts of the book: (1) "The Basis of Pastoral Care"; (2) "The Nature and Practice of Pastoral Care"; (3) "The Implementation of Pastoral Care." Pastoral care is viewed as a dialogical confrontation of both partners in a pastoral conversation as they speak and answer each other in the presence of the Word of God.

"Pastoral counseling happens in the form of a conversation-listening to the Word of God and responding to the Word of God. The partners in the conversation become servants of this Word for one another" (p. 109).

552 - A Theology Of Pastoral Care

Both partners are confronted by God and do not simply remain by themselves.

Here Thurneysen emphasizes the priesthood of all believers and says that as a pastor we are nothing but the first member of our congregation "who precedes others in the act of hearing confession." He says that the form of pastoral care is pastoral conversation, but he moves on to the content of pastoral care as forgiveness. One must break through the wall of legalisms, moralisms, and psycliologistic self-justifications to meet the person with real forgiveness as a fellow sinner and partner who along with him is addressed by the Word of God.

The easy clichés of American pastoral theology which tacitly or openly assume that a Calvinist-Barthian theologian must necessarily be legalistic and un-understanding are shattered by Thurneysen. Yet at the same time, lie exposes the perils of modernizing the Gospel with the latest wrinkle in psychology. Thurneysen reflects basic knowledge of contemporary psychology, but he does not draw his major presuppositions from it nor even his minor corollaries for that matter. He follows the Barthian position faithfully in castigating Schleiermacher's position, and overemphasizing a dichotomy between psychology and theology.

Throughout the book, Thurneysen uses the Blumhardts, both the older and younger one, as his models of the best in pastoral care. He uses clinical records only in terms of letters written by these men and others. He points us to a neglected emphasis in American pastoral care. We use letters prolifically, but they have not been studied nor brought under the discipline of a careful strategy of pastoral care in the use of letters. However, one could wish that Thurneysen had even been anecdotal in giving illustrations of his basic point of view from his and other European pastors' experience with people and let his reader know him as an author more personally. His materials and methodology both suffer at these points. Furthermore, lie apparently is in the same plight that Americans are: we are woefully ignorant of European experiments and points of view in pastoral theology, and he reflects little or no knowledge of American experiments and points of view. This book will help greatly in the correction of the former, will introduce American theological communities to Thurneysen's point and give us an opportunity to be challenged, re-assessed, and enriched by his work. On the other hand, one could hope for a similar relationship of American contributions to pastoral care to the European theologians. The encounter of European and American pastoral theologians is a brother-man-to-brother-man relationship and should always avoid paternalistic overtones on both sides.

The solid contribution this book makes to the pastor and the theological student is to discover afresh the meaning of the ministry of confession

553 - A Theology Of Pastoral Care

and forgiveness in Jesus Christ as the main burden and blessing of the work of the care of souls, whether they be sick or well. This book is not easy reading but is one which should be put on every serious -reader's list for early attention.

Wayne E. Oates
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
Louisville, Kentucky