Renewing Pastoral Practice

Trinitarian Perspectives on Pastoral Care and Counselling

Neil Pembroke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317066248
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This is the first comprehensive treatment of the relationship between the doctrine of the Trinity and pastoral care and counselling. Neil Pembroke contends that an in-depth reflection on the relational dynamics in the Godhead has the capacity to radically renew pastoral practice. Pembroke applies the notion of relational space to care in a parish setting. The life of the triune God is defined by both closeness and open space. The divine persons indwell each other in love, but they also provide space for the expression of particularity. This principle of closeness-with-space is applied in three different pastoral contexts, namely, community life, spiritual friendship, and pastoral conversations. The specialized ministry of pastoral counselling is the focus in the second half of the book. Informing the various explorations is the principle of participation through love: the divine persons participate in each other's existence through loving self-communication. Pembroke shows how this trinitarian virtue is at the centre of three key counselling dynamics: the counselling alliance, empathy, and mirroring.

PART ITRINITY AND THE GENERAL MINISTRY OF CARE

MANAGING RELATIONAL SPACE

Chapter 2Pastoral Care as Polyphony

DOI: 10.4324/9781315605364-3

Polyphony is a musical term which denotes the simultaneous singing or playing of two or more melodic lines that fit together as equally important parts in the overall structure of a piece. In the previous chapter, we encountered David Cunningham’s notion of marks or imprints of the Trinity. Polyphony is one such mark. In relation to the triune God, polyphony refers to the way in which simultaneous difference exists as a homogeneous unity. Cunningham contends that we find the same dynamic at work in human life. Our existence is marked or imprinted with this central trinitarian characteristic.

In this chapter, I shall follow Cunningham’s lead and make the suggestion that polyphony is an imprint of the triune God in the ministry of care. That is, authentic pastoral relationships constitute a reflection or a paralleling of the polyphonic relationality in the Godhead. While there are a number of polyphonic categories that could be developed, and some of these will be briefly mentioned below, we will concentrate on two sets: wisdom and folly, and communion, nearness and distance.

Alastair Campbell’s pastoral image of the wise fool is both unusual and deeply illuminating. ¹ Campbell points to the circus clown as an example of wise folly. Amongst the circus professionals he or she appears as an amateur, and yet his or her spontaneous and carefree escapades are the result of careful training and planning. In our pastoral visitation we do not have the sophisticated structures of the psychotherapist to carry with us, but yet in our unstructured, sometimes light, sometimes deep conversations – when they are helpful – we employ a great deal of skill and we need considerable wisdom. We need the wisdom to join with the other in managing the space well.

The idea of ‘personal space’ is one that Colin Gunton develops in his trinitarian reflections. ² The persons in the Godhead need space to be (there is differentiation in the one God), and so do the humans created in the divine image. When there is a compression of the interpersonal space there is a failure to respect otherness. Too much space, on the other hand, means that there is no possibility of communion (the problem of individualism).

Taking our cue from Gunton’s analysis, I will be suggesting that effective pastoral visitation involves a polyphony of communion, nearness and distance. We usually think of communion with the other in terms of drawing near. Empathic relating involves an attempt to close the interpersonal space. We think and feel ourselves into the inner spaces of the other. Communion cannot be sustained, however, in the absence of due regard for appropriate distance. The other needs ‘space to be’. We need the wisdom and discernment to be able to read the signs well and to judge when to move in and when to pull back.

Polyphony is one of three ‘marks’ discussed by Cunningham (the other two are participation and particularity). Since it is the central term we will be using, it is well to begin by describing it more fully.

Polyphony and Trinity

The chief attribute of this musical term is ‘simultaneous, non-excluding difference: that is, more than one note is played at a time, and none of these notes is so dominant that it renders another mute’. ³ Cunningham goes on to suggest that a theological perspective informed by polyphony would challenge any view that claims that any two contrastive categories must necessarily work against each other. He is putting in a plea for the avoidance of false dichotomies in theology. In such dichotomous thinking, increased attention to one category is seen to necessarily imply decreased attention to its contrastive partner. This he refers to as the ‘zero-sum game’. ⁴ In this theological game, a greater emphasis on the humanity of Christ must diminish the divinity of the Word; a focus on divine immanence necessarily leads to a downplaying of God’s transcendence; and so on. Those who avoid playing the ‘zero-sum game’ will find that they are able ‘to think in terms of simultaneous difference that need not be synthesized into a single, homogeneous unity’. ⁵

An example of this polyphonic thinking can be found, suggests Cunningham, in the relationship between action and passion in God. ⁶ When God is active there is an expression of divine sovereignty and freedom, but at the same time God demonstrates passivity through a submission to the actions of others. Action and passion in God, then, are like two notes played simultaneously in a piece of music. When God acts there is no constraint on the divine action, and yet God enters into relationships with human beings. This willingness to engage with humankind indicates a corresponding willingness to be ‘moved’ by us. Cunningham contends that the whole of Jesus’s life manifests this dialectic of action and passion:

At times he is supremely active, narrating the nature of God’s Reign, embodying that Reign through exorcisms and healings. At other times he is clearly acted upon: he is given birth, raised in a Jewish home, questioned by the religious leaders of the day, driven away by angry crowds, and – most obviously – arrested, interrogated, tried, stripped, mocked, and crucified. That the incarnate God can be ‘acted upon’ by human beings in this way is a testimony to the polyphony of action and passion in God. ⁷

In relation to the doctrine of the Trinity, the fundamental polyphonic categories are unity and difference. The task of the early church fathers was to defend against assaults on one or other of the two poles. Arius and Eunomius, for example, developed notions that undermined the coequality and coeternity of the Three. Since the Son was born, argued Arius, there was ‘a time when he was not’, while Eunomius was of the view that ‘there is the Supreme and Absolute Being, and another Being existing by reason of the First, but after It though before all others; a third Being not ranking with either of these, but inferior to the one, as to its cause, to the other, as to the energy which produced it’. ⁸ According to this view, there is a hierarchy in the Godhead with the Father at the top as the Supreme Being, the Son a rung down, and the Spirit a further rung down. Sabellius, for his part, undermined the distinctions in the Godhead. According to him, the one divine substance manifests itself in three modes. This substance metamorphoses itself, as the need arises, to act in the mode of the Father, or of the Son, or of the Holy Spirit. ⁹

In their responses to these challenges, the key category for the Cappadocian Fathers was relation. The three persons of the Trinity exist in a perfect communion. In this communion, there is no severance or division: ‘He who receives the Father virtually receives at the same time both the Son and the Spirit.’ ¹⁰ Basil is here upholding the unity in the Trinity. He is careful, though, to hold this in proper tension with the distinctiveness of the Three. There is a ‘proper peculiarity of the Persons delivered in the faith, each of these being distinctively apprehended by His own notes’. ¹¹ Three persons in communion is the summary line in the Cappadocian approach.

The category of relation is also central in Thomas Aquinas’s trinitarian theology. For Aquinas, God is Being-Itself. Thus, the nature of God is To-Be. ‘In De Deo Trino’, writes LaCugna, ‘[Aquinas] shows that the To-Be of God is To-Be-Related. Thus, while God may be the supremely actual and simple existent, this existence is personal, indeed, tripersonal, by virtue of the differentiation of divine persons in relation to each other.’ ¹² The starting point for Thomas in developing his understanding of God as the To-Be-Related, as we saw in the previous chapter, is the two processions in God. ¹³ These are the procession of the Word, which Aquinas calls generation or begetting, and the procession of Love, which he refers to as ‘spiration’ (‘breathing out’). These processions, in turn, imply four ‘real’ relations: begetting, being begotten, breathing out and being breathed. ¹⁴ There are, however, only three unique relations, because the actions through which the Word and the Spirit are produced (begetting and breathing out respectively) are of the same general type. Thus the three unique relations are begetting (which includes breathing out), being begotten and being breathed forth. These unique relations are called ‘subsistent’ to indicate that the ground of their existence is in themselves.

While there is no consensus on how exactly to interpret the idea of person, everyone is agreed that it does not refer to a centre of consciousness. There are not three entities in the Trinity, each operating out of its own particular consciousness. Rather – as Aquinas’s use of the term ‘subsistent’ indicates – there are simply three relations. These relations indwell each other in a communion of love. The intimate communion they share in constitutes their unity; the unique nature of each relation indicates their particularity.

The Trinity is a polyphony in which three distinctive notes are sounded without any one note muting any other. We need now to inquire as to the role of polyphony in pastoral care.

Polyphony and Pastoral Care

Pastoral care is a demanding and subtle ministry because of its polyphonic nature. The caregiver needs an interpersonal style in which contrastive qualities are held together in a homogeneous manner. Alastair Campbell has provided us with three central images for pastoral ministry. Many theorists and practitioners of pastoral care have found them extremely helpful. What I find especially interesting is the fact that the way in which Campbell develops his images points very clearly to the polyphonic nature of the ministry of care. He refers to the toughness and the tenderness of the shepherd, to the woundedness and the health of the wounded healer, and to the wisdom and folly in the wise fool. I shall discuss the first two images briefly, but it is the third, and less well-known, image that I want to concentrate on.

The shepherd image is of course a traditional one. Shepherds in the ancient Near East expressed a tender care for their sheep, but they also needed a hardness to survive. Given the climatic conditions of Palestine, shepherding was a strenuous and hazardous occupation. When the weather was dry, it was necessary to move the sheep over long distances in search of greener pastures and more ample supplies of water. While on the move, the shepherd had to contend with the threats from robbers and wild beasts. To be sure, he needed to care gently for his flock, but he also needed to be robust enough to deal with the attacks of human and beast. Campbell puts it this way:

We can see at once that there is a mixture of tenderness and toughness in the character of the shepherd. His unsettled and dangerous life makes him a slightly ambiguous figure – more perhaps like the cowboy of the ‘Wild West’ than the modern shepherd in a settled farming community, yet loving and caring at the same time. ¹⁵

Campbell is not, of course, ad...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Setting the Scene
• Part I Trinity and the General Ministry of Care: Managing Relational Space
• Part II Trinity and Pastoral Counselling: Participation in Love
• Concluding with Theodicy
• Bibliography
• Index