Friendship and authority in the pastoral office: a Christological approach

This thesis seeks to navigate the role and relationship of friendship and authority in the pastoral office. In the contemporary Western world, friendship and authority are fluid terms increasingly being perceived as tensive realities, the former indicating a casual, mutual relationship between equals, and the latter calling to mind a top-down relationship of inequality. Such perceived tensions can be observed in the pastoral theological literature and popular opinion in ecclesial spheres, whereby authority is considered a barrier to friendship. In light of this data, this thesis seeks to formulate a distinctly Christian understanding of pastoral friendship and authority through the lens of participatio Christi, since pastoral ministry is a participation and sharing in Christ’s own ongoing ministry through the Spirit.

Through the study of a key New Testament text, we discern Jesus’ friendship as being characterised in cruciformity, intimacy, mutuality, mission, community, and his superior lordship-authority. Jesus does not consider his lordship a barrier to meaningful friendship with his disciples, but a necessary characteristic of it. Rather than depicting authority and friendship as being tensive realities, then, Jesus simultaneously emphasises both. We develop this into a more formulated friendship-lordship Christology, observing that in the person and ministry of Jesus friendship and authority are reshaped in relationship to one another, and especially through the cross.

From here, we formulate a clearer understanding of the nature and expression of authority and friendship in pastoral ministry. Rather than being tensive concepts, this thesis proposes a more integrated and Christocentric view of pastoral authority and friendship, rooted in the pastor’s identity as one within the community of friends of Jesus. Engaging relevant and pragmatic issues, such as those of favouritism and the need for appropriate boundaries, it is illustrated that a reconciling of friendship and authority within the pastoral office is both possible and necessary.