Book Review: Ancient Wisdom for the Care of Souls
Coleman M. Ford and Shawn J. Wilhite. Ancient Wisdom for the Care of Souls: Learning the Art of Pastoral Ministry from the Church Fathers. Wheaton: Crossway (2024). 234pp.
If I were to summarize the Anglican ideal for pastoral ministry in three words, I would call it “scriptural,” “patristic,” and “confessional.” The Jerusalem Statement grounds Anglican doctrine in Holy Scripture and “such teachings of the ancient Fathers and Councils of the Church as are agreeable to the said Scriptures,” locating that doctrine in the Thirty-nine Articles, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Ordinal. The instinct runs deep in our tradition: King James I directed his clergy to keep to the Scriptures, the Articles, and the Fathers, and the English Reformers themselves (as the Two Books of Homilies, John Jewel’s Apology, and Thomas Cranmer’s Defense attest) were keen students of the Fathers, quoting them second only to Scripture. It is from this vantage that I came to Coleman M. Ford and Shawn J. Wilhite’s Ancient Wisdom for the Care of Souls.
Sponsored
Though not written for Anglican clergy in particular, the book provides pastors generally the kind of patristic foundation our own tradition assumes. Ford and Wilhite write to pastors as pastors, applying the teaching and lives of major Fathers of the ancient church to the pastoral needs of today.
Advocating Ressourcement
Both authors are professors at Baptist seminaries who have also served as pastors in Baptist churches. Nevertheless, they advocate for ressourcement, an approach to historical retrieval rooted in the work of Henri de Lubac and the Nouvelle Théologie movement among twentieth-century French Jesuits. They define ressourcement as “a mode of theology that listens to voices from different eras in order to learn from, be shaped by, and resource them for modern expression.” Despite its Roman Catholic roots, they note that ressourcement is now rising in Protestant circles as well.
Patristic Profiles
Ford and Wilhite introduce Protestant pastors to ressourcement by profiling ten Church Fathers across three broad discussions of pastoral vocation. Under “The Virtues and Spiritual Life of a Pastor,” they present Basil of Caesarea as the humble pastor, Gregory of Nyssa as the spiritual pastor, Ambrose of Milan as the sacramental pastor, and Origen of Alexandria as the skilled pastor. Under “The Theological Vision of a Pastor,” they offer Irenaeus of Lyons as the biblical pastor, Athanasius of Alexandria as the Christ-centered pastor, Augustine of Hippo as the theological pastor, and Gregory of Nazianzus as the Trinitarian pastor. Finally, under “The Ministry of a Pastor,” they portray Gregory the Great as the contemplative pastor and John Chrysostom as the preaching pastor.
Each profile discusses the quality or virtue in view, why pastors should cultivate it, a brief sketch of the Father who exemplifies it, and examples from his writings that teach it. Throughout, the authors apply the Fathers’ lives and teachings to modern situations, often drawing parallels with contemporary authors and theologians. The book features church figures from Christianity’s earliest centuries, but it is not a history book; it puts those writings and characters to work for today’s pastors.
Pastoral Priorities
A central concern of the authors is that much of modern pastoral ministry is anything but pastoral. Contemporary models push pastors to function as the congregation’s CEO, to fixate on quantifiable metrics (what my Baptist professors called a “nickels and noses” approach), and to make decisions based on convenience rather than theological conviction. Learning from the ancient church, the authors argue, helps today’s pastors see their own blind spots. Looking backward to move forward may feel counterintuitive, but it is time-tested.
As they write:
Why would we consider reading something antiquarian to address modern concerns? For some, the ancient authors seem odd, and so do their interpretations of Scripture. For others, what these authors wrote about seems irrelevant to the modern issues pastors need to address today. But it is precisely by retrieving these sources that pastors can most effectively minister to their people.
The point is not to teach pastors how to “quote mine” the Fathers but how to enter their mindset: to live and minister in a way informed by the great Christians who came before, through classical theology, classical virtues, the integration of theology and spirituality, attention to the local congregation, and the priority of the care of souls.
Both Introductory and Specialized
The book is aimed primarily at those engaged in pastoral ministry: its insights and applications come from pastors and are written for pastors. Yet it approaches the Fathers in an introductory register, assuming no seminary-level expertise in patristics or church history. A general reader will therefore benefit, though pastors remain the intended audience.
That introductory level was the source of my one real reservation. Having read translations of patristic texts several days a week for most of the last decade, I wanted deeper engagement with the profiled Fathers, and at points the governing “virtue” of each chapter risks flattening a complex figure into a single label. Origen reduced to “skill,” say, when his exegetical and ascetic legacy is far thornier and richer than the heading suggests. This is a real cost of the book’s accessibility, not merely a matter of taste. It is also a defensible trade-off: having done my own graduate theological work at a Baptist university, I would not expect most Baptist pastors to have read the Fathers extensively, and meeting them where they are is no small service.
A Guide to Further Study and Application
To their credit, Ford and Wilhite point well beyond their own pages. Alongside a subject index and a Scripture index, they include several pages of suggested reading, both primary sources from the Fathers and secondary studies. My own patristics library leans heavily on public-domain reprints of century-old translations, so I was glad to see a generous selection of recent scholarship. The authors are candid that the book is not a comprehensive patristic philosophy of ministry, and they close with a helpful list of “practical ways to implement” the lessons of the Fathers. Reading the Fathers is itself one of those tips, one I have spent most of my ministry trying to follow, and one that has instinctively led me toward the practices Ford and Wilhite commend.
Here, the Anglican may press a friendly question. A Baptist retrieval of the Fathers, however earnest, reads them chiefly as devotional and theological mentors; it does not inherit the Fathers as the Anglican formularies do, as a standard woven into confession, liturgy, and order. The book recovers the Fathers’ voice admirably. Whether retrieval can reach its full destination without also recovering the Fathers’ authority, embedded in a settled confessional and liturgical frame, is a question the book’s evangelical setting leaves open. That is not a flaw so much as a horizon: the authors take Protestant readers a real distance down a road my tradition has long traveled.
No Monkey on Our Backs
One of my favorite preachers once described a feeling common among pastors—”always having that monkey on your back,” the sense that we must deliver week in and week out, whether we have anything to deliver or not. I have rarely felt that way; I have generally found vocational ministry refreshing, even joyful. I attribute much of that to the Anglican emphasis on Scripture, the Fathers, and our confessional formularies, precisely the integration of theology and spirituality that Ford and Wilhite prescribe.
Our formularies are themselves rooted in the patristic approach to the spiritual disciplines, and Ancient Wisdom for the Care of Souls serves as a fine introduction to that approach.
Image: Ancient Wisdom for the Care of Souls © 2024 Crossway.
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