Warnings from Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Care
Every now and then you encounter a book you then realize you should have read long ago. Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Care is one such work for me. While reading it recently, I have been consistently struck by the spiritual sensitivity of Gregory’s insights into what makes for good leadership in the office of the pastor, as well as the causes of so many sinful failures in ministry. The work, composed in 590 when Gregory was appointed bishop of Rome, was written, as the editor of one edition has put it, as “an apology for the author’s wish to escape the burdensome office of a bishop.” Gregory was, as he himself wrote, “so stricken with sorrow that he could hardly speak” (p. 3; all page numbers are to the Ancient Christian Writers edition) suffering intensely from a soul “darkened with grief” (p. 4), upon learning that he would be required to take on the responsibilities of such a high position of authority.
I am a committed Presbyterian minister, so one might wonder why I would commend a work on spiritual leadership written by a Roman Catholic Pope. Two things can be said in response: first, the work significantly predates many of the later developments in Roman Catholic teaching that Protestants especially object to, and second, the work is focused on qualities of pastoral leadership that are almost all independent of specific Roman Catholic distinctives. There are, in fact, very few exceptions to this rule. There is much in this work that will repay careful consideration by every man considering, or currently engaged in, pastoral ministry. What, then, are some of the most pressing spiritual dangers that await every man seeking the pastoral office?
Learning of Christ by study alone
One of the most subtle, but also most disastrous, of all the temptations Gregory addresses for the man in ministry is that of mere intellectualism:
[T]here are some who investigate spiritual precepts with shrewd diligence, but in the life they live trample on what they have penetrated by their understanding. They hasten to teach what they have learned, not by practice, but by study, and belie in their conduct what they teach but words (pp. 23-24).
It is possible to learn a great deal of Scripture by diligent and rigorous study. The scribes and Pharisees knew their Bibles inside and out. One can come to know the Scriptures and be capable of expounding them with knowledge and insight and yet not know the Lord at all, or at least not be pursuing closeness to him. In this regard the danger of a self-deception is great. The apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 2:14–15 that “the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” but “the spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one.” A man might even deceive himself into thinking that because he has pursued knowledge about Christ “with shrewd diligence” that he has saving knowledge of Christ, and a growing relationship with him. Does his heart and life tell the same story?
Lording Authority Over Others
Another temptation a man faces is seeking pastoral office from a desire to lord one’s authority over others. While few will face the temptation that comes with the authority the bishop of Rome had, it remains a temptation for all spiritual leaders. Jesus routinely warns about this danger. When the mother of James and John, the two “sons of Zebedee,” approaches Jesus asking that her sons be granted the privilege of sitting in regal authority on Jesus’ right and left when he comes in the full power of his triumphant kingdom, Jesus tells her that she doesn’t understand what she is asking, since he will enter into his kingdom through suffering and his own death (Matt 20:20–28).
This provides an opportunity for Jesus to explain “that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them,” but that “it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant.” The Gentiles, that is, seek power purely as a means of self-aggrandizement. The servant of God in God’s church must wield godly power in a godly way, but it must be done out of a desire to please the Lord and out of love for the people of God. It is one of the chief temptations of the Pharisees, as recorded in the Gospels. “[A]lthough those who have no knowledge of the powers of drugs,” Gregory writes,
shrink from giving themselves out as physicians of the flesh, people who are utterly ignorant of spiritual precepts are often not afraid of professing themselves to be physicians of the heart, and though, by divine ordinance, those now in the highest positions are disposed to show a regard for religion, some there are who aspire to glory and esteem by an outward show of authority within the holy Church. They crave to appear as teachers and covet ascendancy over others, and, as the Truth attests: They seek the first salutations in the market place, the first places at feasts, and the first chairs in the synagogues (pp. 21-22).
As Gregory says a little later: “[A]ll who are superiors should not regard in themselves the power of their rank, but the equality of their nature; and they should find their joy not in ruling over men, but in helping them” (p. 60). This is purely a matter of the heart: authority must exist in the church, but it must be used out of a desire to bless the people of God, not to exalt oneself.
Mistaking office and gifts for inherent superiority
Here the danger is caused by believing what others say about you, and of thinking that your exalted position makes you superior to others by nature. “Often,” Gregory writes,
a ruler by the very fact of his preeminence over others becomes conceited; and because everything is at his service, because his orders are quickly executed to suit his wishes, because all his subjects praise him for what he has done well, but have no authority to criticise what he has done amiss and because they usually praise even what they ought to blame, his mind, led astray by those below him, is lifted above itself (p. 61).
Pastors face this enticement to sin all the time. Are they being praised for their excellent sermons? Maybe their sermons truly are amazing. “What do you have,” Paul asks those in ministry, “that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it” (1 Corinthians 4:7)? All gifts for ministry, not matter how great or small, come from God. While the minister must not be passive, God’s blessing alone ensures that those gifts bear transformative fruit. “I,” Paul, “planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth” (1 Corinthians 3:6). This is why Paul says that ministers of the gospel should see themselves simply as “servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God” (1 Corinthians 4:1) and seek their “commendation from God” (1 Corinthians 4:5), rather than “trying to please man” (Galatians 1:10).
“Forgetful of what he is,” Gregory writes of the pastor, “he is diverted by the commendations of others, and believes himself to be such as he hears himself outwardly proclaimed to be, not such as he should inwardly judge himself.” The pastor then, in Gregory’s memorable turn of phrase, “finds within himself the pit of his downfall, while outwardly exalting himself on the pinnacle of power” (p. 62).
Becoming humble in the midst of exaltation.
One of Gregory’s most important exhortations is that men should carefully examine their own hearts and lives prior to seeking a position of pastoral authority. It is usually too late to cultivate the necessary virtues once the office has been entered into. It is, for example, extremely difficult, nearly impossible even, to learn humility from a position of exaltation. It is like most things in the Christian life: if one hasn’t learned generosity when he has little, he won’t automatically be generous if he becomes wealthy, and so on.
As Gregory puts it:
[I]f the person considers what he did when subject to authority, he at once knows whether, as superior, he can do what he proposed to do, for a man is quite incapable of learning humility in a position of superiority, if he did not refrain from acting proudly when he was in a position of subjection. He does not know how to flee from praise when it abounds, if he yearned for it when it was absent. (p. 37)
Although it often seems this way, positions of authority do not automatically make people worse. They do, however, provide many more opportunities for once hidden sins to become evident and cause much more widespread harm.
Conclusion
It is entirely fitting that Gregory began Pastoral Care by writing that “before all else, fear must moderate the desire of compassing authority” (p. 20). Fear, because “while in their lack of training and restraint they seek to reach the eminence of a teacher, they must be deterred from the precipitate venture at the very threshold” (p. 21). “Who is sufficient for these things,” Paul asks in 2 Corinthians 2:16. Only those “commissioned by God,” equipped by God, dependent on God, who then “in the sight of God . . . speak in Christ” (2 Corinthians 6:17).
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