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Ancient Wisdom for the Care of Souls: Learning the Art of Pastoral Ministry from the Church Fathers, by Coleman M. Ford and Shawn J. Wilhite

Ryan M. McGraw

Ordained Servant: October 2025

John Cameron at 400

Also in this issue

The Train: Belittled and Beloved

John Cameron at 400

The Displaced Person

Redefining Good and Evil: A Review Article

Finding Jesus in the Storm: The Spiritual Lives of Christians with Mental Health Challenges, by John Swinton

Summer’s Lease

Ancient Wisdom for the Care of Souls: Learning the Art of Pastoral Ministry from the Church Fathers, by Coleman M. Ford and Shawn J. Wilhite. Crossway, 2024, 234 pages, paper, $14.99.

The Holy Spirit breathed out Scripture, resulting in a divinely inspired, authoritative, sufficient text (2 Tim. 3:15–17). Yet the same Spirit works through the church, gifting her teachers to serve as Christ’s gifts, steering the church away from false doctrine, and driving her towards unity and maturity in Christ (Eph. 4:11–16). On principle, then, this means both that Scripture alone has magisterial authority, teaching us what we must believe and do, and that the church has ministerial authority, teaching us what others have seen God requiring us to believe and do. This makes the early church fathers our fathers in the faith, who are at once both faithful and fallible. Recognizing these facts, Ford and Wilhite offer samples of early church styles of pastoral ministry, mostly drawn from the fourth and fifth centuries, Origen, Irenaeus, and Gregory the Great excepted (chapters 4–5, 9), to retrieve spiritual wisdom for Christian ministry today (10–15). Though sometimes letting their own reflections on ministry eclipse their treatments of the selected fathers, this easy-to-read book will push modern pastors toward fruitful spiritual virtue, theological depth, and faithful labor in caring both for their own souls and those of others.

The book’s ten chapters are arranged under virtue, theology, and ministry. Every chapter is devoted to a single church father, opening with a quotation from the figure treated as well as a key Scripture passage related to the topic. The arrangement of individual chapters is thematic and progressive rather than chronological. Thus, the four chapters in part one illustrate humility, spirituality, sacramental piety, and scholarly skill via Basil of Caesarea (329–379), Gregory of Nyssa (336–394), Ambrose of Milan (340–397), and Origen of Alexandria (d. 254), respectively. Origen excepted, all these theologians were pro-Nicene, and two of them wrote before and after the final edition of the “Nicene Creed” framed at Constantinople in 381. Part two turns the clock back to Irenaeus of Lyons (130–202), demonstrating his seismic influence on biblical interpretation (chapter 5). Returning to the fourth century, the remaining three chapters in this section focus on Athanasius of Alexandria’s (297–373) Christological bent, Augustine of Hippo’s (354–430) deep theological reflection, and Gregory of Nazianzus’s (329–390) Trinitarian doxological tone. Most of the above material directs readers to character and characteristics of pastors, leaving pastoral work to two chapters in part three. The net effect is giving the salutary impression that who pastors are and how they live their lives in communion with God is more important than how impressive their ministerial labors and activities are, which is a vital point in promoting vitality and vibrancy in ministry today. Regarding ministerial labor, chapter 10 uses Gregory the Great (540–604) to press pastors to slow down to devote time to the contemplation of God, and chapter 10 appeals to John Chrysostom (347–407) as a model for searching applicatory preaching. Like any good book on historical subjects, this one will likely leave readers with a voracious appetite to read some of the classic Christian texts mentioned here.

Though dedicated ostensibly to pastors and pastoral ministry, it is actually hard to classify this book. In many respects, readers could conceive of it as a hermeneutics text, and not merely a piece of pastoral theology. Heavily reflecting both the church fathers’ fusion of sound doctrine and sound living, the authors recognize that interpreting (and teaching) Scripture is an intellectual-spiritual exercise. Illustrating the point, and perhaps surprising readers, they note that Athanasius’s Life of Anthony was “his most influential work” (127). Yet the chief aim of this biography was to demonstrate both that false doctrine and false living, and sound doctrine and solid living, always go in pairs. Rather than mere sets of rules, pre-modern hermeneutics began with God and God’s action, both in the Bible and in the Bible’s readers. Hermeneutics and theology were thus Spirit and character driven rather than method driven. Alternatively, one could class this work as a modern pastoral theology drawing from church fathers, instead of a study of the fathers on pastoral theology. By infusing so much modern pastoral counsel and so many examples into their chapters, the authors sometimes risk eclipsing the fathers they highlight. Most pointedly, the chapter on Origen (chapter 4) dedicates more space to the need for learned pastors (73–85) than it does to Origen himself (85–94). Though less pronounced, chapter 7 on Augustine gives too much attention to John Webster’s Domain of the Word[1] before allowing Augustine to speak with his own weighty and profound voice (138–141). Though reflective and soul-nourishing, the authors risk blurring lines between historical voices and modern ideas. One could say that the book is an exercise in spiritual hermeneutics as it comes to bear on pastoral ministry, extracting lessons primarily from the fourth century, developing a spirituality of pastoral ministry rather than a mere skill-based model.

Ancient Wisdom for the Care of Souls is an easy entry point for contemporary pastors who find reading the church fathers like visiting a strange country. Though the fathers are not on par with Scripture, they often help us see scriptural emphases, especially related to Trinitarian piety, that get lost in our modern theological and cultural climate. This book is a helpful blend of hermeneutical and teaching principles, ancient counsel, and pastoral examples that will benefit anyone interested either in serving the church or learning from the past, and hopefully both.

Endnote

[1] John Webster, The Domain of the Word: Scripture and Theological Reason (T&T Clark, 2012).

Ryan M. McGraw is a minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church serving as a professor of systematic theology at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Greenville, South Carolina. Ordained Servant Online, October, 2025.

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Ordained Servant: October 2025

John Cameron at 400

Also in this issue

The Train: Belittled and Beloved

John Cameron at 400

The Displaced Person

Redefining Good and Evil: A Review Article

Finding Jesus in the Storm: The Spiritual Lives of Christians with Mental Health Challenges, by John Swinton

Summer’s Lease

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