ASQUITH,
JR., PHD
25 Jan 2016 1:24 AMPerry Miller, Editor (Administrator)
“Anton T. Boisen: A Vision for All Ages”
Glenn H. Asquith, Jr., PhD.
CPSP Plenary, Chicago, Illinois
CPSP March 15, 2015
I am aware that this is a dinner meeting and that all of you are settled in
after a big meal, which means that I probably need to be funny in order to
keep you awake. Is there anything funny about Anton T. Boisen? I believe
so. When I was in graduate school, my mentor Wayne Oates introduced
us to Boisen’s foundational work in pastoral theology and Clinical Pastoral
Education. We began speaking the language of Boisen. Whenever we
encountered someone who was obviously mentally ill, some brilliant
diagnostician in our midst would inevitably say, “Wow, THERE is a real
Living Human Document!”
But aren’t we ALL Living Human Documents? This was part of Boisen’s
theological and psychological genius. We are all children of God, we
are all sacred texts, and therefore we are allworthy of study and care by
religiously and theologically trained professionals as well as by physicians.
When I started reading Boisen, a very brilliant light went on when I got to
the part about “living human documents.” His insights about how the
study of theology is completed by a study of real human experience
tapped right into my own experience in theological education. My
Introduction to Theology course at Crozer Theological Seminary took a
very classical, systematic approach to teaching theology. Through the
course of the semester we were assigned to write 5 pages on the Doctrine
of God, followed by 5 pages on Christology, followed by 5 pages on the
Holy Spirit, etc. How does a 22-year-old person write 5 pages on the
Doctrine of God ex nihilo? For this 22-year-old, that was basically
impossible! The well was dry! In spite of reading classical theology, which
at that point made little sense to me, I realized that I still had nothing real
—from the heart—to say about the doctrine of God. It was agonizing! I’d
sit up all night, and by dawn I’d manage to squeeze out 3 pages, and get a
“C!”
So what did I learn in 40 years? There are 3 areas that I want to share with
you that I think are good examples of this AGELESS VISION of Anton T.
Boisen—ways in which his thought and work remains—and will remain—
vital and relevant to our ongoing work as pastors, pastoral
psychotherapists, and chaplains. As I read through the covenant of CPSP,
I understand all the more fully why Anton Boisen is so important to your
organization. The principles and aspects of his vision are very consistent
with your covenant “to address one another and to be addressed by one
another in a profound theological sense.” Boisen always demanded that
we remain aware of the theological dimension, and that we always use the
“Queen of the Sciences” in our pastoral work. That is why he became my
hero and I became his advocate.
This is what Boisen did. Psychologist Paul Pruyser observed that nearly all
of Boisen’s work was “intensely autobiographical” (Pruyser, 1967). Yes,
indeed it was. In talking to other patients, Boisen was indeed on a quest
to make sense out of his own experience, to validate the meaning of the
suffering that he went through in the midst of psychosis, self-flagellation
and enormous internal conflict. Because of that autobiographical
dimension, Boisen was discounted for years by theologians and
professionals, including his former colleague Dr. Richard Cabot, who
basically viewed Boisen as a crazy man running to other crazy people and
looking for validation.
“Narrative therapists believe that the counselees who consult them are
the experts on their own lives and values. The counselor does not
represent expert knowledge about health or normalcy. Rather, the
counselor brings a certain level of expertise in how to generate and
structure therapeutic conversation in such a way that deconstruction of
problem stories and re-authoring of alternative stories can occur.”
(Neuger, 2010).
I used this approach in two basic required courses. The first was in the
introductory course “Learning as Ministry,” a first-semester requirement
for all incoming students. As they began their journey of seminary
education, I wanted them to become more conscious—more aware—of
what brought them to seminary. How did God work in their lives up to
this point? My assumption, again based on Boisen, was that the starting
point in understanding theology was in being able to name
our own theology—that is, how do we understand God in our particular
experience? Our view of God is always seen through the filter of our own
experience, so what are the nature and dimensions of that filter?
Students found that realization quite enlightening, especially as their
peers responded and reflected on their story.
The second place where I used lebenslauf was in the Pastoral Care and
Counseling course, where the student’s own story was viewed alongside
the student’s case presentations. I wanted to assist them not only with
their theological reflection on the case, but also with their awareness of
the parallel process that might exist between their story and the story of
the parishioner or counselee. With feedback from their peers and
supervisor, this exercise gave students a greater awareness of the
pastoral theological perspective from which they do their work and, more
importantly, insight into ways that they might be projecting their story
onto the client’s story (Asquith, 2000).
The second, eternally enduring aspect of Boisen’s vision is his call for
theological reflection in both individual AND corporate experience. This
was a distinct part of Boisen’s genius that many in our field initially
overlooked. Yes, Boisen focused on individual experience as we just
discussed. But he ALSO devoted nearly as much energy to theological
reflection on the religious experience of social groups. He declared this in
1936 in The Exploration of the Inner World. He said, “I have sought not to
begin with the ready-made formulations contained in books but with the
living human documents and with actual social conditions in all their
complexity.” (Boisen, 1971, 185) Just as he wanted to know how religion
functioned in the healing of individuals, so also he applied his same
method to the study of how religion functioned for social groups. He
studied the history and function of religion in the county in which he grew
up in Bloomington, Indiana. For Arthur Holt he studied religion in the
Roxbury section of Boston. He studied the religion of Pentecostal groups,
known then as “holy rollers.” He published these and other group studies
in his 1945 book Religion in Crisis and Custom. In 1946 he
published Problems in Religion and Life, which he described as “a manual
for pastors with outlines for the co-operative study of personal experience
in social situations.” (Boisen, 1946, 3)
My point is, just as pastoral and medical care could be redeemed by the
view of patients, parishioners, and clients as Imago Dei, we still live in an
age that is desperately in need of serious theological reflection on our
social conditions. In 2010, pastoral theologian Ryan LaMothe eloquently
stated that there is a serious “hermeneutical crisis” in all aspects of society
—business, government, religious leadership—and we are still desperately
in need of religious leaders and organizations that can serve as
interpretive guides, and thus as agents of hope, in these hermeneutical
crises (LaMothe, 2010). Every day as we listen to world news, we are
reminded again that we still don’t know how to solve ethnic, racial, and
gender violence; we see business and personal irresponsibility; we see
corrupt and deceitful governments and dictatorships; there is addiction to
personal and political power that destroys governments, academic
institutions, and churches; there is marginalization of the poor; and any
other of numerous sins of humanity against humanity. Even the
corporate models of institutional churches and denominations could also
be redeemed by serious reflection on each person in the church system
as Imago Dei. We are religious leaders, and many of us educate religious
leaders. We continue to address the whole person and the whole society
in every way that we can. To that end, I believe we can still learn from
Boisen’s call for theological reflection in both individual and corporate
experience, so that we can stop abusing and killing one another and start
revering each other as Imago Dei. I am VERY happy that CPSP is
committed to that goal, because God knows that we could all use a little
more theological reflection!
Method is Content
Finally, I just want to lift up an ongoing theological challenge that is left for
us by the work of Anton T. Boisen—the idea that our theological method
IN ITSELF provides us with theological content. As I mentioned earlier in
this address, I became impassioned in 1974, in the course of my doctoral
study, with the desire to know more about the results of Boisen’s
theological inquiry. How did he take these case studies, the living human
documents of individual and social experience, and translate them into a
theology that informed his pastoral work? At that point I agreed with the
assertion of Seward Hiltner that pastoral theology was the theological
reflections of the pastor while engaged in the practice of ministry. But I
also wanted to say that pastoral theology was the theology and
understanding of God that informs the method and practice of ministry.
So what was that theology for Boisen? Surely he had to have some set of
systematic beliefs that guided him in his work, which came from his study
of experience. This was the final “holy grail” that would cure the last piece
of my theology phobia. If I could show and prove that a systematic
theology came out of experience, I would be validating the assertion of
John Wesley and other reformers that experience is indeed the fourth
source of theological content. That assertion is rejected, of course, by
many classical theologians who believe that sola scriptura is the only valid
source of belief. It is why pastoral and practical theology is still a second-
class citizen in the curricula of some theological schools.
Conclusion
Anton T. Boisen was the victim of the very inadequate medical and
psychiatric care of his day. He was also the victim of large church
structures, into which he never seemed to fit. It is no wonder, then, that
he approached psychiatric patients with a sincere desire to carefully read
their living human document and assist them to be all that they could be
—and to provide them with the respect and care that he himself
desperately needed but had not received.
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REFERENCES
Boisen, A.T. (1971). The exploration of the inner world. Philadelphia, PA:
University of Pennsylvania Press.
Boisen, A.T. (Ed.). (1950) Hymns of Hope and Courage. 4th rev. & enl. ed.
Chicago, IL: Chicago Theological Seminary.
Boisen, A.T. (1946). Problems in religion and life. Nashville, TN: Abingdon-
Cokesbury Press.
Boisen, A.T. (1955). Religion in crisis and custom. New York, NY: Harper
and Brothers.
Grassman, D.L. (2012). The hero within: Redeeming the destiny we were born
to fulfill. St Petersburg, FL: Vandamere Press.
Nouwen, H.J.M. & Gaffney, W.J. (1976). Aging: The fulfillment of life. New
York, NY: Bantam Doubleday Dell.
Powell, R.C. (1975). CPE: Fifty years of learning through supervised encounter
with living human documents. New York, NY: Association for Clinical
Pastoral Education, Inc.
Pruyser, P.W. (1967). Anton T. Boisen and the psychology of religion. The
Journal of Pastoral Care21:4, 209-219.
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