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40 Quotes from The Pastoral Rule by Gregory the Great

Kirk E. Miller

Gregory the Great wrote The Pastoral Rule to provide guidance for “spiritual directors” (clergy) on the responsibilities and tasks of pastoring. It is widely considered one of the best works of pastoral theology.

He breaks his work into four parts.

  1. He addresses the qualifications of those who would obtain pastoral authority.
  2. He provides directions on the proper life and work of the pastor.
  3. He offers specific guidance and insight on how to pastor particular types of people given their unique temperaments, struggles, characteristics, and circumstances.
  4. He closes with an exhortation to humility in pastoral ministry.

He sets out to write his book, among other reasons, “to express my opinion of the severity of their weight [i.e., the burdens of pastoral care] so that he who is free of these burdens might not recklessly pursue them and he who has already attained them might tremble for having done so.”1 At the close of his book, he says, “I have tried to show what the qualities of a spiritual director ought to be.”2

The following are some of my favorite quotes from the work, organized loosely by subject matter.3

1. The dangers of the pastoral authority

“No one does more harm in the Church than he who has the title or rank of holiness and acts perversely. … [B]ecause such a sinner is honored by the dignity of his rank, his offenses spread considerably by way of example. And yet everyone who is unworthy would flee from such a great burden of guilt if, with the attentive ear of the heart, he pondered the saying of the Truth: ‘He that scandalizes one of these little ones who believes in me, it would be better for him that a millstone was hung around his neck and that he was cast into the depth of the sea.’ … Whoever, therefore, gives off the appearance of sanctity but destroys another by his words or example, it would be better for him that his earthly acts, demonstrated by worldly habits, would bind him to death than for his sacred office to be a source for the imitation of vice in another. Indeed, his punishment in hell would be less terrible if he fell alone.” (32)

“[Jesus] chose instead the penalty of a shameful death so that his [followers] might also learn to flee the applause of the world, to fear not its terrors, to value adversity for the sake of truth, and to decline prosperity fearfully. This final concern [i.e. prosperity] often corrupts the heart through pride, while adversities purge it through suffering. In the one, the soul becomes conceited; while in the other (even if the soul is occasionally conceited), it humbles itself. In the one, the man forgets who he is; while in the other, he is recalled, even unwillingly, to know what he is. … For commonly in the school of adversity, the heart is subdued by discipline; but if one rises to a position of spiritual authority, the heart is immediately altered by a state of elation that accompanies the experience of glory.” (33)

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Human Rights as Sacred, Not “Self-Evident”: How the Declaration of Independence Borrows Christian Morality

Kirk E. Miller

The following is an excerpt from Andrew Wilson, Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2023), 129–133 where he discusses Benjamin Franklin’s edit to the draft of the Declaration of Independence. His edit shows the nature in which Christian convictions, that have not otherwise been accepted as “self-evident” throughout much of human history and in other cultures, came to be taken for granted because of Christianity’s influence.

In short, the West lives on borrowed Christian morality. Human rights are not so obvious, as we have now come to think.

This section from Andrew Wilson is worth quoting at length:

Two weeks before Boswell’s visit to Hume, Thomas Jefferson wrote to Benjamin Franklin asking him to edit the Declaration of Independence in time for a meeting the following morning. “The inclosed paper has been read and with some small alterations approved of by the committee,” Jefferson explained. “Will Doctr. Franklyn be so good as to peruse it and suggest such alterations as his more enlarged view of the subject will dictate?”

Franklin was at home recovering from gout and made very few changes. But one of them would have epochal significance. Jefferson had originally written that “we hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable.” Franklin crossed out the last three words and replaced them with one: “self-evident.”

The “Rough Draft” text of the Declaration as Jefferson probably presented it to Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, for correction, prior to committee. Found here: https://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/rough.html

It was a portentous edit. Jefferson’s version, despite his theological skepticism, presented the equality of men and the rights they held as grounded in religion: they are “undeniable” because they are “sacred” truths that originate with the Creator. By contrast, Franklin’s version grounded them in reason. They are “self-evident” truths, which are not dependent on any particular religious tradition but can easily be grasped as logically necessary by anyone who thinks about them for long enough.

To which the obvious response is: no, they are not. There are plenty of cultures in which it is not remotely self-evident to people that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, let alone that these rights include life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the prerogative to abolish any government that does not preserve them. Most human beings in 1776 did not believe that at all, which is partly why the Declaration was required in the first place. (This accounts for the otherwise inexplicable phrase “we hold these truths to be self-evident,” as opposed to saying simply “these truths are self-evident.”) Some of the founders had not quite believed it themselves just fifteen years earlier. Billions of people today still don’t.

The fundamental equality of human beings, and their endowment with inalienable rights by their Creator, are essentially theological beliefs. They are neither innately obvious axioms nor universally accepted empirical truths nor rational deductions from things that are. There is no logical syllogism that begins with undeniable premises and concludes with “all people are equal” or “humans have God-given rights.” The Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov expressed the non sequitur at the heart of Western civilization with a deliciously sarcastic aphorism: “Man descended from apes, therefore we must love one another.”

Many of us find this unsettling. We are inclined to see equality and human rights as universal norms, obvious to everyone who can think for themselves. But in reality they are culturally conditioned beliefs that depend on fundamentally Christian assumptions about the world. Friedrich Nietzsche made this point with angry brilliance: the obsession with alleviating the suffering of the weak and marginalized, within an ethical framework that valorizes humility, fairness, charity, equality, and freedom (as opposed to nobility, pride, courage, and power), is the result of the “slave morality” introduced by Christianity, with its crucified Savior and its claims about weak things being chosen to shame the strong. Coming from a very different angle, Yuval Noah Harari shows how human rights, likewise, have no foundation if they are not rooted in Christian anthropology. “There are no such things as rights in biology,” he explains. Expressed in biological terms, the Declaration of Independence would read very differently: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men evolved differently, that they are born with certain mutable characteristics, and that among these are life and the pursuit of pleasure.”

Jefferson was right the first time. Equality and human rights are “sacred” truths, not “self-evident” ones. They are irreducibly theological, grounded in specifically Judeo-Christian beliefs about God and his creation of humans in his image, and there is no particular reason why societies with different theological foundations should not reach very different conclusions. Many have.

… Franklin’s brief, scribbled correction is a marvelous metaphor for the ex-Christian West. His replacement of the words “sacred and undeniable” with “self-evident” echoes what was happening across European society as a whole in 1776, at least among elites. It was an attempt to retain Christianity’s moral conclusions while scrubbing out its theological foundations: keeping the fruits while severing the roots, if you will. And it resulted in the insistence that Judeo-Christian convictions on anthropology and ethics were now to be regarded as universal norms on which all reasonable people would agree. … [Ben Franklin’s] edit is a lasting witness to the fact that the modern West is not so much ex-Christian, in the sense of having renounced Christ and all his works, as it is abidingly and distinctively ex-Christian. Contingent religious beliefs now sound like self-evident secular truths.

Do You Reach Out When Church Members Leave?

Kirk E. Miller

Church member, when someone resigns their membership and leaves your church, do you take the time to reach out to them?

If someone leaves your church due to a life transition, such as moving away for work or school, I hope you connect with them, say goodbye, and pray for them as they go. But I also have in view those who leave for other, often unannounced, reasons. What about those who leave? Do you also reach out to them to care for them as they go?

What if you made it a point to never let a fellow member leave without reaching out to them?

If we take church membership seriously—as a covenant to the church and to one another—then our commitment to fellow members certainly includes caring for and looking out for each other while we are members of the same church. Being a part of a church involves promises and obligations to every member.

But it would also seem that part of honoring that covenant means caring about members as they leave and caring enough about the circumstances that led to their exit. Or do you simply cut ties, as if their departure doesn’t matter?

Consider what it communicates when someone leaves a church only to have zero—or very few—show even the most minimal amount of care so as to reach out. Departing from a church is often a difficult decision, at times occurring under already painful circumstances. For no one to reach out likely adds to that pain, making such people feel forgotten, neglected, like they apparently must not have mattered much to those who were once their fellow members, of no consequence to the very church they once called “family.”

Perhaps you’re thinking, “But that’s uncomfortable.” When, though, was church membership ever about your own personal comfort? Christlike community (see Phil 2:4b) involves caring enough about others to endure any personal discomfort for the good and care of others. It requires de-centering ourselves: our comfort and interests are not the priority (Phil 2:4a).

2:4a Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 2:4b Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus.—Philippians 2:4

Should I Attend My Friend or Family Member’s Gay Wedding Ceremony?

Kirk E. Miller

I was recently asked, “Can you think of any particular Bible passages that might help us think through the above question?” I answered as follows:

My mind goes to 1 Cor 10:25-29.

“25 Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience. 26 For “the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.” 27 If one of the unbelievers invites you to dinner and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience. 28 But if someone says to you, “This has been offered in sacrifice,” then do not eat it, for the sake of the one who informed you, and for the sake of conscience— 29 I do not mean your conscience, but his.”

Paul seems to say, if your participation in something gives the unbeliever the impression that you condone something wrong, don’t do it.

Of course, loving the gay friend or family member is imperative, as well as showing love to their partner. And if your unbelieving friend or family member has an event that’s super special and meaningful to them, your presence at the event communicates that you care about them. I think that’s why most people find this to be a difficult question. Attending such a special event feels like a way of saying, “I love you.”

The question here though is, is it possible to attend a homosexual wedding ceremony without your very attendance implicitly acknowledging it as a wedding ceremony–which Biblically speaking it is not (a gay marriage is an oxymoron and not an actual marriage whatever the state says). In other words, you aren’t just attending an event which happens to involve a wedding you disagree with that you can somehow distance yourself from while remaining in attendance. The event itself *is* a wedding you disagree with. It’s comparable to the unbeliever in 1 Cor 10 saying, “This meat is offered to my god.” Can your attendance at an event that claims to be a wedding be perceived in any other way than you recognizing the event’s legitimate claims to be what it purports to be? In other words, is it possible to attend what others are calling a “wedding ceremony” while simultaneously saying, “But I don’t think that’s what I’m attending”? Then what are you attending, and why are you attending it? Or, is it possible to attend while making it clear to those around you, or at least those who know you, that you disapprove of what the very event you are attending claims to be?

Someone might respond, “But aren’t we all sinners? I wouldn’t not go to someone’s wedding just because they are a sinner.” Of course! But the issue with a so-called “gay marriage” isn’t that its participants are sinners. It’s true, every marriage involves sinners! The issue here, though, is that the “marriage” itself is sinful.

I can celebrate a legitimate marriage between two sinners, because the marriage itself is still a good God-given thing. I can’t celebrate an illegitimate marriage that in itself is an affront to God’s design.