Triune Pastor

In his book on Gregory of Nazianzus on the Trinity and the Knowledge of God: In Your Light We Shall See Light, Christopher Beeley takes a chapter to describe the Trinitarian foundations of Gregory’s theology of pastoral care. 

Gregory’s Orations, he points out, are organized to lay the emphasis on the priesthood: “The extant collection of Gregory’s forty-four orations begins with three
orations (1–3) on Christian leadership and the doctrine of the Trinity from the
year 362, to which we could add Oration 6 on the same subject, delivered two
years later. If we couple these early works with his many poetic verses on the
episcopate and numerous other references to the ministry throughout his
career, then the administration of the Trinity by the pastoral leaders of the
Church makes up the predominant context and is arguably the overarching subject of Gregory’s work as a whole” (236-7).

Though he describes pastoral care as a techne, he doesn’t think it’s simply a product of human skill. Rather, the whole of the economy of redemption comes to its fulfillment in the pastoral cure of souls. It is the intention of the law, the prophets, the incarnation, Christ’s death and resurrection. All the events of the covenant history are a “training” (paidagogia) and “healing” (iatreia) of the old man. And, he adds, “Of this healing we who
are set over others are the ministers and fellow-laborers” (239).

Beeley glosses: “the whole of God’s saving work—from the Law and the prophets
to Christ’s incarnation, passion, and resurrection—‘‘intends’’ the pastoral
ministry of the Church. Standing between Christ’s first and second coming,
pastoral ministry is both the direct consequence and the intended goal of
God’s saving work throughout history, even as it prepares creation for the
last judgment and the life to come. Just as the New Covenant fulfills and is the
end of the Old Covenant, so the life of the contemporary Church, guided by its
pastors, fulfills and is the end of both” (239).