What we get and give in Pastoral care

Conclusion

As I have intended to present the kind of contribution which our experience of pastoral care can make to our theological understanding, I have not intended that this should result in a particular and well-defined brand of theology. One would have to stack this up against other orders of experience, if an adequate systematic theology were to result. But I find it difficult to see how any theology we have can be vital unless it is constantly renewed by reflection on such experiences as have been described here. One reason why the very term “theology” seems so forbidding to the man in the street is precisely because theologians have not shown often enough that it is to actual human experiences of sin and redemption, meaninglessness and creation, that they look for their understanding of theology.

I have put theological understanding into the category of things we can “get” from pastoral care. Perhaps the reason for this is now clearer. If we too are wayfarers on the journey and, no less than the alcoholic, will be progressively saved only as God's guidance becomes more real in our own lives, then it is as vital to us as to any man that our receptivity be increased, that our knowledge of God's ways with man be constantly growing and becoming more accurate. There is a revelation for us also not alone in the Scriptures, but also in the experience even of the alcoholic.