The Roots of Pastoral Authority
Posted on 28 January 2010
Table of contents for Toward a Theology of Pastoral Authority
- The Roots of Pastoral Authority
- The Scandal of Pastoral Authority
- The Scandal of Pastoral Authority, cont.
- Responding to the (Ab)use of Pastoral Authority
In his God’s Ambassador’s: a History of Christian Clergy in America, E. Brooks Holified recounts the three forms of authority 1 to which clergy appeal for legitimation of their powers:
- charisma of office – The pastoral office itself confers extraordinary powers on the pastor
- personal charisma – The pastor’s personal divine ‘call’ legitimates h/er ministry
- rational authority – The pastor’s knowledge or skill authorizes h/er for service
I would argue that pastoral authority rests not only on these three pillars, but also on the personal character (in tension with the personal charisma) and supra-rational authority (in tension with the rational authority) of a truly Christified imagination that makes possible an adventurous faith grounded in hope and animated by love.
Most importantly, I think the pastor’s authority derives not only from h/er own character, gifts, and calling-although these are crucially important-but also, in some sense, from the faith of those people who allow h/er to serve them, who make themselves available to God’s work through h/er prayers and teaching and presence and direction. Authority does not so much rest ‘on’ the pastor as it happens ‘between’ the pastor and those s/he serves.
Let me be clear: I don’t mean to say that the pastor’s ‘call’ is not divine, that h/er authority isn’t from God. I only mean that Christ’s authority comes to the pastor not only ‘from above’ but also ‘from below’, not only vertically, but also horizontally. After all, the authority in question is not really the pastor’s. It is Christ’s. And his authority is not limited to the pastoral office, although it has a unique presence there, but is present throughout the Body, in every member.
What difference does this make? Perhaps not much, but it could help us to think about the pastoral office and its responsibilities in ways that better account for the contribution of those served, and the communal nature of the exercise of Christ’s authority.
Any thoughts?
- He derives these forms from Weber. ↩
15 responses to The Roots of Pastoral Authority
I think the difference this makes is profound yet subtle. Like a whale gliding just beneath the surface of the waters.
What this does for things like Papal infallibility is recognize it as a charism legitimated in and through the people in collaboration with the divine office. It doesn’t undo the authority of the office but connects it with reality and relocates an onus of responsibility on we the laity to allow that authority to happen in and through our lives as well as with one another.
It helps us see that we respect pastors and give them authority for various reasons and that all those reasons come together with our burden for response. Without the integrated working together of pastor and laity to make room for ultimately the authority of Christ Himself, we have missed the point. I like also that your presentation emphasizes that all have a role in creating the room for the authority to happen. I don’t think the nature of the church is democratic, but we must all participate in some way in this mystical communion.
Eli,
I think you said it best. We all collaborate with Christ to allow him ‘room’ or space to act authoritatively. This involves displacing ourselves, often. And you’re correct: it is not democratic, but nonetheless participatory. If even the least significant member of the Body refuses to allow this room, then every member suffers, including the pastor-or priest, or bishop, or pope. To paraphrase Lewis: the highest doesn’t stand without the lowest.
Good post. I can’t add anything beneficial to it. Just wanted you to know I enjoyed it.
Randy, thanks for the encouragement. I’ll never turn it away!
If Christ’s authority is present throughout the body, in every member, then why does the exchange, interaction, or communal fellowship (insert the word of choice) that occurs outside of church doors, change once those doors are entered?
I agree with Eli, I don’t think the nature of the church is democratic…but I don’t think it’s a lordship either…
Pastoral authority and Christ’s authority don’t always line up for me, whether they are ordained or charisma or somehow divinated into the body. Perhaps it is because definitions are smothered by a multitude of varying ideas, other definitions, and a re-defining of what words should really mean. And from a distant and sometimes up close perspective…it’s a just a big mess, a constant tumult of mistakes and corrections without any meaningful direction. What someone might see as “roots of pastoral authority”, could also be seen as a hurried attempt to re-plant what was once carelessly uprooted. Where exactly did these roots come from? If they were so foundational, why do we need to be reminded of them?
It’s like a favorite memory gone wrong because someone decides that the memory needs to be broken down into bullet points and definitions of descriptions need to be made so that someone who didn’t study Greek can get the big picture. Or rather they don’t get a picture at all…they get a paint by numbers kit with over zealous instruction.
If there was a lot more happening “between” a pastor and those he or she serves perhaps the natural course of relationships would reveal Christ and the authority present within us all. The natural push and pull, give and receive, loss and replenishment, lead and follow…the beautiful organics of meaningful relationships.
Whatever happened to sitting down and getting to know someone. Hell, whatever happened to pastoring? Community? Humility? Those seem to be a couple of words that have been misunderstood, poorly taught, and redefined so often that they have lost movement and color in the body. Things which should be organic, have somehow lost form. They’ve become mechanic. Much like authority.
Can a glass flower still be called a flower?
Nana,
My next post will address some of these criticisms, I hope, and perhaps some of this conversations should be had ‘in person’ rather than via this post. For now, let me respond to a couple of your questions and comments:
You ask, ‘If Christ’s authority is present throughout the body, in every member, then why does the exchange, interaction, or communal fellowship (insert the word of choice) that occurs outside of church doors, change once those doors are entered?’ This critique-if that it is what it in fact is-makes no sense to me. First, group dynamics dictate the change your speaking of, and that change is by no means inherently bad, in any case.
You say, ‘If there was a lot more happening “between” a pastor and those he or she serves perhaps the natural course of relationships would reveal Christ and the authority present within us all. The natural push and pull, give and receive, loss and replenishment, lead and follow…the beautiful organics of meaningful relationships’. I disagree. ‘Natural’ relationships are not the ways in which Christ exercises his lordship. What happens ‘naturally’ among us is what de-humanizes us, forces us to demand terms and requires others to answer to those terms. In ‘natural’ relationships, there is a struggle for lordship, a constant war for supremacy, a constant keeping score and drawing lines, and calculating losses and gains. Where Christ is Lord, this war ends.
You say, ‘I don’t think the nature of the church is democratic…but I don’t think it’s a lordship either’. Again, I disagree. The church is nothing if not a lordship! In fact, the church is the people who live together as if Christ were Lord.
To your question: ‘Can a glass flower still be called a flower?’ I can only advise you not to trust your sense of touch. Why doubt other people and their authenticity when you can doubt yourself first? Perhaps the better question, then, is: ‘If a true flower feels artificial to my touch, can I hope to appreciate its beauty?’
Chris,
Yes they are criticisms. The constant critic…
I will agree to disagree about what I mean by “natural” and “organic”. I believe that as creations of God, Christ manifest Himself within us. He is what is natural…He is the organism. I think Mandy is correct that natural belongs to a Christ won future but I also believe that glimpses of that are present now. My mistake for not being clearer. I guess that leaves me open for critique as well.
And as Justin stated, subjectivity is definitely a contributing factor.
In my opinion, there is a huge difference between lordship and Lordship. What my so called senses tell me is that pastoral authority insists on softening that line. I don’t trust that, whether it’s scripturally indicated or not.
Authority issues…yep that’s me.
Your last comment to my flower illustration has given me much to think about.
I have no problem making a distinction b/w lordship (overreaching authoritarianism?) and Lordship (loving and just service and leadership?). I certainly agree that pastoral authority is often abused, and that pastoral leadership is often wrongly demanding. Remember, I’ve ‘sat under’ a few toxic pastors in my day, too.
I’ve come to believe, however, that there are (at least) two kinds of concerns with authority. I don’t want to oversimplify, or draw too neatly distinctions that are in fact hardly discernible. Nonetheless, I think we can safely speak of concerns with authority that are Spirit-directed, arising from truthful judgments, and those concerns that are ‘fleshly’, fed by our own dark imaginings. Here, I believe, are some trustworthy observations; take them for what they’re worth.
If the concern drives us to gossip, it is almost certainly not legitimate. At least, we can know that we aren’t handling the concern legitimately. If, however, we find ourselves moved to prayer, both for ourselves, the offenders, and those wrongly treated, then we can be confident that God is at work. If we find ourselves eager to expose the offenders’ sins, to show them up for what we know them to be, to make a public spectacle of them, then we are being carried along by the wrong spirit. For the Holy Spirit urges us to be patient in discerning and careful in judgment, enlivening our trust in God as our (and every one’s) avenger. The Spirit makes us love our enemies, including those whom we know have done wrong to us and to those we love.
In the end, the wrong kind of distrust leaves us in despair at the way things are, and we find ourselves increasingly cut off from others. Isolation is the unmistakable sign of the destruction we wreak on ourselves. (Remember Lewis’ Great Divorce?) The right kind of concern, conversely, intensifies our hope for Christ’s judgment and the coming of the Kingdom.
To put it simply, if your or my concern with authority moves us toward holiness, awakens in us a desire for Christ’s coming, if it draws us into relationships with those we dislike rather than estranging us from them, then it is the work of the Spirit. If not, then it is the work of our own imaginations.
Thanks for the discussion. It is extremely helpful for me, and I appreciate your willingness to speak honestly.
First of all, I’m pumped you’re posting again.
Second, I very much enjoyed the initial thrust of the post – authority is service and protection. Much that is wrong in the Church could be summed up as certain parties claiming authority for their own kingdoms in which they rule supreme.
Next, if Nana is suspect of such authority on the grounds that “it’s a just a big mess, a constant tumult of mistakes and corrections without any meaningful direction,” I feel like any reach to a “natural push and pull” is just as subjective as Holifield’s three forms of authority mentioned in the initial posts.
I guess where I’m stuck (and this is where I think I sympathize with you Nana), is where you’ve said Dr. Green, “Christ’s authority comes to the pastor not only ‘from above’ but also ‘from below.’” What is the relationship of influence (what happens “between” pastor and lay) to credibility (“charisma of office”) in authority? Obviously the Church is a dynamic organism, learning from its experiences with success and failure, and we must give it the benefit of the doubt. Also, you both said it well earlier concerning the role authority in “collaboration” with the lay, but I suppose I struggle with the this word collaboration. How does authority collaborate with lay? To return to my intitial observation, How does “credible” authority serve and protect while still being “influential” authority? And how does influential authority steer itself away from what Nana called the “natural push and pull” and retain its credibility?
I think I got carried away with quotation marks. And I also think the answer has something to do with what you’ve dubbed “Christification.” But even that is can be rather subjective – and so the cylce goes.
Justin,
‘Collaboration’, working with, is one of the precisely right terms. How does it happen? In myriad ways. Christ is infinitely creative, and if we can make space for him by crucifying our egos, then he can fashion beauty from ashes. Is it subjective? Absolutely. But that isn’t to be feared. Not if we let Christ dominate our subjectivity.
“How does credible authority serve and protect while still being influential authority?”
Credible authority is cruciform, so too, its influence comes in the collaboration of mutual submission. It cannot be overstated that the church needs to be that community in whcih the powers that be are placed under the self-empyting lordship of Christ Himself.
Credibility and influential power are worked together in mutual submission. I think a visible locus of this is the eucharist, its centrality can have the power to shape a community around Christ.
Authority collaborates with the laity by the task of self emptying service, see JPII and Benedict XVI.
The Church’s credibility is ultimately not its own, but the credibility of Jesus Himself, it’s in our dedication to this and not some other thing that we’ll discover the influence, because we’ve allowed it to be influential, but with deep thought and consideration and self-disclosure to the authority.
Influential authority retains credibility by being able to point not to itself but to Christ, not to leaders themselves, but to Christ as the authority that unites and diversifies all under the shadow of the cross.
The cross is ultimately our influential and credible authority, and the leaders who are cruciform demand the respect of that event, not because they demand it, but because it is incumbent upon us to give it to them as we would give it to Christ.
Where we find toxic and totalitarian pastors we may be called to redeem that community through cross bearing discipleship, but we may be called to leave the dead to bury their own dead. We must learn in having authority not only from pastors but other Christians what sorts of directions might orient our lives.
Eli,
We are, of course, in basic agreement on these matters, and I very much appreciate your articulation of these points. However, I would add that I am increasingly uncomfortable with using ‘the cross’ synecdochically for Christ himself. For one thing, it privileges one event as over against the others (e.g., transfiguration, resurrection, ascension) and for another it focuses on the work, rather than on the person. Of course, that isn’t to say that leadership isn’t to be cruciformed, as you say. It is only to say that (a) that isn’t all that leadership has to be – for instance, Christian leadership is Taboric and anastatic as well as kenotic – and (b) it isn’t sheer cruciformity that matters, but Christ-like cruciformity.
You’re absolutely right, and I guess I should moderate that a bit better, because I completely agree.
I’ve started joining my pastor in teaching the virtues and fruit of the spirit, and it’s been really really good for them, and for me.
I think my next little series will be on Christocentric actions including all the points you raised about the life of Christ, including taboric, kenotic and other markers of what Christocentric action looks like. Your discomfort is noted, and appreciated. Cruciformity is only one part of the experience, and I guess the synechdoche can become an obsession if not appropriated rightly within a larger framework.
I’ve missed you, it’s good to have you back.
This “war” between people, of which you spoke in your response to Nana, I think is one thing that confuses the issue for so many of us. We live in a world where the “natural” way to engage others is through a living game of chess, or as you said, a struggle for supremacy. Every morning I watch Big Cat Diary with Liam, and this description of “natural” relationships Chris provided reminds me of that. I have even thought while watching the show how the behavior and interaction between these Lions, Cheetahs and Leopards and their natural predators and prey reminds me of how people relate to each other. A minor point on semantics: I have a difficult time with the term “natural” as it is used here. I think these ways of engaging others in the world are certainly a response to our instincts, a reflection of the “old man” at work. But to me, “natural” and “organic” are words that evoke images of the redeemed world we hope for. But I agree with you Chris, this fight for self-preservation and supremacy is de-humanizing to us, and reduces us to mere animals in human clothing. All of this confuses us as we try to respond Humanly to others. We see authority then – pastoral or otherwise – as a formalized strategy for drawing lines and achieving the supremacy our instincts are geared for, and all the more so clever, confusing, and destructive when used in the church setting. But Christ’s authority is meant to transform us from animals into men, and at that, to borrow from Lewis, men with chests. We have to be trained how to think and feel about things and people. God gives us people to train us, and people for us to train. Like others, I have quite the flawed view of Christian pastoral authority and struggle very much with letting down my defenses, but Chris’s suggestion and Eli’s response here is helpful. If we are correctly identifying the authority as Christ – not you or I – then it should not matter on which side of Christ we sit, because we both sit on either side of Him. We are both making room for Him to be the authority between us. Sounds idealistic though, and is easier said than done, particularly for one who most often sits under someone else’s authority. But again, perhaps that is my own instinct that assumes I sit
“under” someone else, rather than beside with Christ between.
Mandy,
I like your use of ‘natural’ as belonging to the Christ-won future, although I’m suspicious, I admit, of ‘organic’ as a synonym for ‘natural’ and as a descriptor for Christian experience in community. Too often, I believe, ‘organic’ is used to name That-which-Just-Happened-to-Happen. I suspect It has more to do with romantic notions of brotherhood than it does with truly Christian community.
In any case, I don’t think that making room for Christ to be the authority between us is idealistic, although it is easier said than done (although, it isn’t easy to say, either, and can’t be done until we say it), regardless of where one believe s/he is sitting.