Theology’s Primacy in the Care of Souls: Bonhoeffer on Formation for the Ministry of Pastoral Care

Theology’s Primacy in the Care of Souls: Bonhoeffer As a Teacher of Pastoral Care at Finkenwalde

 Editors reconstructed Bonhoeffer’s  Finkenwalde lectures on pastoral care from Bonhoeffer’s outlines and surviving student notes.  The lectures reflect Bonhoeffer’s Lutheran theological anthropology and argue that the source of psychological distress is human sin that prevents individuals from hearing God’s liberating Gospel of God’s mercy and forgiveness.  Trusting the Gospel frees individuals from self-preoccupation and turn toward the neighbor in love. Contemporary mainline Protestant writing in pastoral care often employs  psychology and social sciences to restore emotional well-being often by recommending secular therapy or medication.  Bonhoffer’s focus on theological anthropology an important corrective.   Bonhoeffer argues that pastoral care’s ends are not finally  psychological what he calls   “bringing about a certain disposition” but in instructing individuals that  “Christ in all things” or another way of thinking about it is  “Christ’s victory of sickness, birth, death and sinners’.  Pastoral care  “becomes disassociated from  its task if it does not focus entirely on removing false comfort, false hope that is not in God alone.”  

Given the political situation of both Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church, the lectures are totally silent about how politics, economics, and social factors might cause distress or the inability to hear the Gospel. Theologically, I argue that this silence is a sign that Bonhoeffer believed the impetus for all ethical action was trust in the Gospel. Bonhoeffer rejects the notion that the ends of pastoral care are psychological arguing that genuine pastoral care helps individuals understand  “the sin that is hardening the listener toward God’s merciful will be discovered, named, and banished-because those two things cannot be addressed by the sermon.” (p, 563)  Individuals asking for care may be aware of their distress but Bonhoeffer argues that the pastor is always aware that the source of the distress is “knowingly or unknowingly…fleeing the proclamation, even though [the person] may still be attending worship services.” (p. 564)  Despite Bonhoeffer’s focus on theology he does not claim Scripture contains answers to practical problems like contemporary biblical counseling, he argues that one overcomes psychological distress by trust in the Gospel. This leaves the question open how pastoral care might more profitably interact with other disciplines given what we now know about the spiritual impacts of  mental illness, trauma, and abuse.

               Bonhoeffer’s conversations with his father, a Berlin psychiatrist, may have shaped his beliefs about psychiatric and psychoanalytic understandings of care.  (He uses the German word seelsorge which includes both pastoral care and pastoral counseling).   However, Bonhoeffer claims that psychotherapy is premised on a patient’s belief that “[the psychotherapist] is gifted with special powers and thus as superior.” (p. 568)  He argues that pastoral care is superior to psychotherapy because it is rooted in love which “is the only thing that can create the proper distance and proper intimacy, love that understands itself as being bound to this task.” In the 1937 lectures Bonhoeffer argues that that psychotherapists lack this love and has “false distance and false intimacy” with patients. (p. 569) Again, I think this is an overly polemical account of psychotherapy.

Bonhoeffer's lectures are clear that one must be formed to provide pastoral care. He argues that they must be able to be focused on the task at hand since pastors “distracted by other interests, other questions within the congregation that might even seem more important than [the pastoral care concern of the individual] conversation will never come about within pastoral counseling or do so only in a forced manner.” (p. 575)    Bonhoeffer is clear that how those seeking pastoral care perceive the pastor matters aligning Bonhoeffer closely with psychoanalytic understandings of transference.  The  DBW English edition includes the work of Oskar Pfister in the footnotes. Pfister was a Lutheran pastor who corresponded with Freud about how pastors could employ psychoanalytic ideas. Bonhoeffer does not quote Pfister but may have been familiar with his work.  Bonhoeffer argues that “every single visitation requires the most intense spiritual preparation on the part of the pastor.   Quality pastoral care requires formation that allowed one to proclaim God's word clearly and without distraction. Bonhoeffer argues that before every pastoral encounter the pastor “must be coming from just having read the Bible, from having just encountered the Biblical word, and the heart must still be filled with it.”  (p. 576)    Formation over time for this task is especially important sicne Bonhoeffer tells his students that when it comes to pastoral care  “not to expect any special illumination or inspiration, instead in prayer, and brotherly love look into Scripture and dare to make your own decisions.” (p. 574) Despite Bonhoeffer's faith in the Gospel, he seems to imply that pastoral care requires  an Aristotelian phronesis, a practical wisdom on how to uncover sin, and proclaim the Gospel, despite assertions earlier in the lectures that technique does not matter.  I think there is a tension here, for Lutherans faith is the work of the Holy Spirit, Bonhoeffer implies human sin can block a response to the Holy Spirit's call.

Bonhoeffer’s focus on theologial diagnosis in pastoral care challenges social scientific and psychological understandings of distress prevelent in much mainline Protestant pastoral care literature. Bonhoeffer urges students to trust the liberating power of the Gospel.  He also argues that pastoral care is a demanding ministry that requires proper spiritual and theological formation, that allows pastors to identify the sin that prevents individuals from hearing the Gospel. Bonhoeffer’s understanding of sin is about how  economic, social, and medical factors might prevent the hearing of the Gospel. However, his own understanding of discernment might be a place where these understandings could help pastors understand why an individual fails to hear the Gospel. This paper  will explore strategies for maintaining Bonhoeffer’s theological focus  in the teaching of pastoral care while also advocating for more awareness of the contextual factors  that prevents individuals from hearing and trusting the Gospel in the contemporary teaching of pastoral care, especially, but not exclusively,  in Lutheran contexts.