Architectures of Grace in Pastoral Care
Virtue as the Craft of Theology beyond Strategic and Authoritative Biblicism
Imprint: Wipf and Stock
An updating of virtue ethics for modern pastors and the souls they care for, this book proposes innovations for the craft of ministry in the theology of grace--how virtues radiate to tame strife and other destructive behaviors. It presents a comprehensive alternative to the top-down proclamations of "biblical counseling" approaches that try to impart, from an eclectic biblicist lens, cognitive authorities for consequential change. Instead, Christ's bottom-up practice of virtues heals and fulfills by focusing on neighbor first and subordinating the ego's strategic considerations--more graciously spreading God's will in ministry through participatory and experiential knowledge.
Virtuous pastoral ministries integrate the common grace of humanist learning to address the range of the care seeker's contemporary context--her upbringing, struggles, and affiliations. This book presents more the "how" than the "what" of pastoral theology: more how the dance of mutuality and chivalry enters the spiritual flow of healing metaphysical grace than the "what" of right "belief." Even so, pastoral care from the virtue ethical approach inevitably reconsiders "vending machine" theologies, destructive doctrinal boundaries, and context-lite biblicisms.
This presentation introduces how virtue ethics apply to ministry, the household, individual trauma and addictions, and the contemporary political and cultural arena.
Douglas B. Olds is an ordained teaching elder and minister of word and sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (USA) with experience in chaplaincy and publications in the journal Pastoral Psychology. In addition to degrees in ministry, he received the Master of Public Policy with advanced qualifications in classical ethics and political analysis.
“While Rev. Olds’s outstanding book updates virtue ethics for pastors and those who come to them for spiritual care, it also addresses the heart as it proposes new practices for the ministries of grace—how to soothe contention and strife, staples of today’s confusing times. This important work is broad and deep, and its applications compelling and spiritually obliging. Rev. Olds’s book provides guideposts for my own Christian fellowship as well as for those theologically inclined from the church pulpit.”
—Mark Shaw, author of Beneath the Mask of Holiness
“I thoroughly enjoyed this book’s breadth and insight. Douglas Olds’s poetic approach, highlighting companionship as a dance, balances his deep intellectual journey. Olds provides an elevated view of pastoral care brings in social issues and political concerns—very appropriate from my point of view.”
—John Anderson, Presbyterian Church (USA) minister, honorably retired
“Douglas Olds’s project is to challenge a model of pastoral care identified as Biblicist Counseling, which claims the counselor is a representative of God and so has hierarchical authority. Instead, Olds images pastoral care as companionship, in which the caregiver habituates the virtues of Christ’s excellences, embodying grace, spreading shalom. His challenge to Biblicist Counseling is serious and worth savoring by caregivers as well as care seekers.”
—Carol S. Robb, professor emerita of Christian social ethics, San Francisco Theological Seminary
“An extraordinary work that relates—with a breadth of integration I have never encountered—theology and scholarship for a better approach to pastoral care. To say this in another way: On each enjoyably read page the author inspired my curiosity to pursue further something he wrote! Well done!”
—Daniel Christian, pastor, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
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