2019 Admont (AT)
Professor ThDr. Juraj Bándy
The book of Jonah as a satirical novella
(A prophet that didn’t want to preach)
Introduction
I have made the book of Jonah the topic of this lecture today, because of its difference to the other prophetic books. In all the other prophetic books, the main plot are the speeches of the prophet. In this book we have a narrative a story. The prophet is noticeably taciturn. The oral statements of Jona are limited to the following few verses: ““I am a Hebrew and I worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” (1,9) “Pick me up and throw me into the sea and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you.” (1,12) Jonah’s prayer (2,3-10). Maybe this is a later addition. “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” (3,4); “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.” (4,2-3); “It would be better for me to die than to live.” (4,8); “Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.” (4,9). Jonah talks to the seamen (1,9.12), prays to God (2,3-10), preaches to the inhabitants of Nineveh (3,4) and argues with God (4,8.9). For the people of God he doesn’t have a word. Still, the book is directed towards God’s people. What should this book tell the people of God indirectly? Which knowledge could an “average” or “typical” adult Christian gain out of this book? The most probable is, that he hears, that once upon a time a big fish swallowed the prophet Jonah. In the religion course books the story of the prophet Jonah is the most mentioned one of all the minor prophets. Also for the kids and confirmands, the story of Jonah is the best-known story of a minor prophet. Even if it sounds optimistic, that Jonah is relatively well-known among the church members, still I do fear, that most of the knowledge is limited to the fish or the fish is in the foreground. This results in a view, that those, who believe that Jonah survived three days in the belly of a fish to be actually true, are considered as the “godly” people whereas those, who doubt it, are seen as the liberal and godless people. By the way, even Luther made a statement to this problem: “Who would also believe and not consider for a lie, if it didn’t stand in the scripture.1 I ask those who are present, who believe, that the book of Jonah has really taken place, to not be satisfied with the fides historica, but to also pay attention to the message of the book. I also ask those who are present and who consider the book of Jonah as a literary fiction, meaning a come up with story, to take the message that this story bears serious. Because the book of Jonah doesn’t mainly revolve around the fish.”
The literary genre of the book
From my point of view it is especially important to determine the literary genre. When we have solved the question of the literary genre, we can easier proceed to discover the essence of the message of the book. In the history of the interpretation we find for the investigation of the literary genre following alternative solutions: prophetic biography, allegorical narrative, prophetic Midrash, novella, didactical opus, parable, didactical legend. H.W. Wolff holds the view, that it is a satire.2 According to his opinion Jona is neither a positive nor negative hero, but a caricature (he wants to die three times). I share his view. So it is a humoristic and humorous book. If this opinion is correct, we have to ask: What has a humorous book to do in the bible? If God spoke “at many times and in many ways” (Hebr. 1,1), then he could make known to us his humour! Before we understand the message of the book, it is important to first look closely at the addressees of the book. Which parts of God’s people is the book of Jonah directed at? Which kind of “godliness” is criticised? It is about such people, that cannot grasp God being a strict judge over the enemies of Israel and a merciful God, whose grace covers everything, at the same time. Such people are addressed, who cannot grasp why Jahwe hasn’t punished Nineveh yet. Nineveh is an image for the current enemy. So such people are addressed, that are sceptical towards the earlier prophetic mischief proclamation, like we can read in Isaiah 5,19, Ez. 12,22, Zeph. 1,12c and Mal. 2,17. Such people are addressed, that think, that it would be foolness to serve God under such circumstances. Such people are addressed, that cannot allow Gentiles to also be children of God. All those mentioned views can be assumed in the post-exile communities.
Satirical moments in the book of Jonah
Then let’s look closer at the book of Jonah as a satirical novella and try to get to the message.
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The first grotesque scene can be found in the introduction of the book. Immediately after the call to go to Nineveh, Jonah hurries into the opposite direction to Tarshish. The doing of Jonah is expressed with five narrative verbs (q-v-m; j-r-d; m-c-´; n-t-n; j-r-d). His intention express two Inf.-cstr-forms (liberóach; lábó´). H.W. Wolff asks: “Doesn’t the overzealous action of Jonah in verse 3 seem to be almost ridiculous, especially since his intention even after his own knowledge (1,9) is hopeless?”3 Jonah’s action resembles the accelerated movie. The grotesque feature of the scene becomes clear. Jonah’s doing isn’t only because of that in opposition to God’s will, because he goes into the opposite direction, but also because he takes action without words even though he was given the task to talk (q-r-´ – v. 2).
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The second humorous hint we can discover in the moment when the ship gets into a storm because of Jonah. All the travellers pray to their gods or idols, but are not inactive. They do what is the most reasonable. They throw from the boat, whatever isn’t indispensable, to lighten the boat. Jonah behaves completely different. He doesn’t pray, and he doesn’t work, but he sleeps. Maybe his sleep indicates, that he wants to strive later. The contrast of the sleeping Jonah on the one hand and the almost desperate active seaman is a sharp satire.
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The next satirical moment can be found in the salutation of Jonah from the captain. The captain first reproves him for being a “dormouse” (nirdám) and then asks him to also pray. In the instruction of the captain - qúm qerá´- we can hear the echo from God’s instruction of verse 2. The gentile captain has to entice the servant of God to pray.
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We also have an ironical undertone in the prayer of the seamen (1,14), so that they might not be be held accountable for the killing of an innocent human (dám náqí´). The mentioning of the innocent blood could mean, that the seamen think, that Jonah is speaking the truth.
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The ironical moment can’t be overseen, when Jonah, after spending three days and three nights in the belly of a fish, is spit out on the shore “like something indigestible”.4
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If we take the description in 2,1 literally, then the whale made the same route for three days and nights like the ship from Joppa. For this journey, in contrast to the way to Tarshish – Jona didn’t have to pay anything. Gott brought him free of charge to the starting point. Once again a humorous motive.
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The description of the repentance of Nineveh, especially the actions of the king, who gives an example to his servants (3,6-9) is an allusion to the actions of king Jehoiakim and the inhabitants of Jerusalem which are described in Jer. 36.
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After the inhabitants of Nineveh accept the message of faith and repentance from Jonah, they have been able to escape from God’s wrath (3,10). Only here and in Jer 18,7ff is the thought expressed that also the Gentile have the possibility to escape God’s wrath after the acceptance of God’s judgement and after the repentance. This theological triangle, meaning the acceptance of judgment – repentance – the taking back of the judgment, of which Jeremiah only spoke generally, is realised in this case. “In some Israelites’ ears this has to sound like bitter mockery, that through this the last priority of Israel falls.”5
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After God has mercy on Nineveh, Jonah prays in anger. In his prayer he cites the holy scripture. He recounts the attributes of God in Ex. 34,67 and Joel 2,13. God is compassionate (channún), gracious (rachúm), patient, of great grace (rab-chesed) and faithfulness and he quickly bemoans the punishment (nichám ´al-hárá´á). Those attributes of the Lord, which are recounted for his praise (e.g. Ps 86,15; 103,8), are now turned into an accusation. Jonah justifies his anger with the attributes of God that he recounted. Once again an ironical moment.
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After the great wrath about the rescue of Nineveh (4,1) he is overjoyed when a plant miraculously starts sprouting and which provides shade. It seems ironic that the angry human is joyful when he feels a little bit better. Jonah is happy, “because God is good to him. His grace, which God showed the people in Nineveh, only makes him angry.”6 We can find here an ironic motive: the radical change of the prophet’s mood is caused by a little comfort.
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As reason for God’s compassion for the inhabitants of Nineveh, their inability for moral judgement is given (4,11). They don’t know how to differentiate between right and left. It is not about the little children, because the subject of the main clause is ´ádám. So this is about adults, which are unable to judge morally. This is also an ironic moment: “What Jonah is inclined to despise, God is inclined to be compassionate about.”7 With the statement, that the people of Nineveh could not differentiate between right and left it is expressed that “God has fewer difficulties with a gentile city than with a single person that knows him but is stubborn.”8
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To God’s last question – “And I am not allowed to have compassion on Nineveh?” – Jonah doesn’t give an answer. Independent of what he would have answered, he would always have to agree with him. If he had said “Yes, Lord, you should have compassion on Nineveh because I also have compassion on the plant”, the answer from God would be: “Then why are you angry and want to die?” If he had said: “No, you shouldn’t have compassion on Nineveh. Punish them because they are sinners.”, God’s answer would be: “Alright, but first I will punish you, because you have been disobedient.” Independent of his answer, God would have caught Jonah with his words. The last question isn’t directed at Jonah, but “God’s people, that has to express his statement to God’s compassion to the Gentiles.”9
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Luther’s interpretation of the book of Jonah
Luther’s reformatory views were slowly revealed in his works “An die christliche Adel” (“To the Christian aristocracy”), “Von der babylonischen Gefangenschaft”(About the Babylonian exile”), “Von der Freiheit des Christmenschen” (About the freedom of the Christian human”) that he wrote in 1520. This results in the fact, that we have already a mature reformer, when he interpreted the book of Jonah in 1526, who had already passed the difficult challenges of the Diet of Worms (1521) and the peasant war (1525). In his interpretation we can clearly recognise the main features of his usage of the holy scripture and his reformatory theology. His philological line of argument is remarkable. He analyses in 1,3 the content of the term jam and tarschisch and their mutual ratio. He correctly observes, that the word ak (only) in 2,5 needs to be changed to ek (as). Based on the philological analysis he has correctly seen, that the suffix of the word chesed in 2,9 refers to the object. He extensively addresses the possibilities of the translation of the word qiqajon, that can be found in 4,6. Luther shows himself as a factual and rational exegete when he leaves the questions open that the text doesn’t answer or even ask. This is why he also doesn’t ask the question why Jonah wanted to flee (1,3). He doesn’t ask, if Jonah in 1,6 prayed or not. He doesn’t want to solve the problem, if 3,3 is about the extent of the city of Nineveh or the length of the streets. He doesn’t speculate about God’s immutability while interpreting verse 3,9 where it is talked about that God can change his decision about the destruction of Nineveh. He also leaves the question about the significance of the word qiqajon open, even though he lets prefer the translation “wild rube”. The only psychological interpretation (if we were too strict, we would say eisegesis) can be found in the interpretation of 1,7, where Luther asks himself, how Jonah felt, when the casting off began. Luther’s translation techniques are noteworthy. In connection with the unusual Hebrew word connection in 3,8, he emphasizes that this word connection is to be translated not literal but with the general meaning. As example 2,6 can be named, where the word nefesch is not automatically translated with “soul”. Luther’s canonical view for the exegesis seems modern. As an example the comparison of the disobedience of Jonah (1,5) with the disobedience of Adam, Saul and Israelite kings can be named. The next example would be the description of the king of Nineveh as an opposite pole to Sodom and Gomorra, of the Pharaoh during the time of Moses and of Jerusalem during the time of Jesus. To those negative examples, he also adds Rome during the time of the first Christians and the counts and bishops during that time. Luther also shows himself as reformer in the free entrance to the ecclesiastical tradition at the question, if Jonah was the son of the widow of Sarepta and at the ideas about hell in connection to the prayer of Jonah (2,3). As example for the Christological interpretation can be named Luther’s observation to the title of the book, where the word dabar can be found. According to Luther, it is about the logos, which can be identified with Christ. For the theology of Luther the accentuation of the power of God’s word is typical. According to his opinion is the existence of the word dabar in the title of the book proof, that God always first sends a word and then starts to act. Also in the instruction of God to the fish (2,1) and his salutation (2,10) he finds proof that each action of God starts with a word. Luther only uses once the allegoric exegesis for the interpretation of the book of Jonah. According to him are at the plant, which doesn’t bear fruit “the leaves…the word and God’s law”.10 Then he compares the plant with a fig tree on which Christ couldn’t find any fruit (Mt 21,19) and continues: “Christ is a worm, like he says in Psalm 21. I am a worm and not a man.”11 Then he writes the following: “That is, like S. Paul Ro XI says: Out of the Jew’s doom comes the Gentiles’ salvation.”12 Luther has rightly recognized that the 120.000 inhabitants of Nineveh that didn’t know what right or left is, are not little children but it is about the inability of the adults to morally judge. Luther finds the reason for this in the following: “ They knew this nor that in godly things, for they didn’t have Moses’ laws nor prophets, that would have thought them how to live for God both spiritually and physically, outwardly and inwardly, like the Jews did.”13 The reformatory principle sola fide shows in this, that Luther highly values the faith of the gentile seamen (1,16) and the repentance of the inhabitants of Nineveh (3,1ff). At the interpretation of 3,5 Luther doesn’t forget to stress that it is about a faith without circumcision and without works of law. Therefore he makes the following conclusion: “Out of this we may conclude, that the circumcision and the laws of Moses do not exist that the man might be godly and please God.”14 At the interpretation of 3,10, where the impression could develop. That the inhabitants of Nineveh escaped God’s judgment because of their good deeds, Luther emphasizes, that it is about works of faith.15 The next reformatory principle sola gratia can be seen in the interpretation of 2,9 of Jonah’s prayer. According to Luther “punishes Jonah with this verse the ignorant works-based religious people and hypocrites, who don’t trust in God’s grace only but also in their deeds.”16 At the interpretation of 3,3 Luther asks: “Why does he call Nineveh a city of God? There wasn’t even the temple, the prophets and servanthood of God. I think, she is called like that because God takes care of her and doesn’t want to destroy her, he sends her a prophet so that he might preserve her.”17 Also in connection with the attributes of God, that are recounted in 4,2, Luther says: “Should works be relevant to God, Jonah would have to go down to hell.”18 Noteable are also his general theological thoughts about the topic, to which the interpreted text (in clauses) gives reason. Luther talks about the essence of sin (1,5-6), about the limits and possibilities of the borders of the natural reason (1,5), if drawing lots is permitted or forbidden (1,7), about a pure-hearted faith (1,11) about the power of prayer (2,3-10), about hell (2,3), about the connection of the ministry and the word of God (3,1) and about the word of God (3,4). Luther’s theological maturity in the interpretation of the book of Jonah is shown in the free entrance to ecclesiastical traditions, in his deep knowledge of the Hebrew language and in the implemtation of the reformatory principles in the exegesis and in the up-to-dateness of the message of the biblical text.
Túróczy’s interpretation of the book of Jonah
Zoltán Túróczy (1893-1971) was bishop of the tiszaean district of the evangelical church in Hungary from 1939 to 1945. After the war he was convicted as a war criminal of the people’s court, but was released already in 1948. In 1948 he was elected as the bishop of the transdanubian district, but already in 1952 the communists forced him to retire. After the uprising in 1956 he was reinstalled in his position but already in 1957 he had to resign. He lived in Györ (Raab) as a pensioner until his death in 1971, In October 1943 there was an evangelisation in Nyíregyháza. Túróczy held there a lecture series about the book of Jonah.19 With prophetical clairvoyance he saw in those lectures the difficulties that will lie in wait for the Christianity in the post-war years. I want to give now a short overview over those lectures. First of all Túróczy addresses isagogic questions and concludes that the book of Jonah is about a real-life event. He arguments like this: Why would the Jew “invent such a parable, in which there is just one Jewish actor who is the least likeable.”20 He sees the book of Jonah as the peek of the old testament because it is “the oldest missionary book”.21 Furthermore he states that the book of Jonah talks about one single man. This single person is important. “A single person, that is obedient towards God, can stop God’s judgment. Away now with the cowardice!”22 Let’s not forget that those words were heard in a time where the collectivistic ideology dominated! In the next lecture bishop Túróczy addresses the person of the prophet. He sees him out of a human perspective as very suitable for the task that he got. Then he names the reasons that made Jonah be disobedient. “Jonah didn’t have any courage for open disobedience that is why he ran away from his task.” “His conscience doesn’t sleep as much that he could have stayed at home but wasn’t enough awake to chase him to Nineveh.”23 “The ticket surely was expensive, but he doesn’t count now. A sinner never counts how much his passion costs.”24 Then the bishop asks: Aren’t we on an escape route? and states “if the servant of God doesn’t take God’s way, he isn’t a refugee but a deserter. The refugee finds open doors, loving hearts and compassion, the deserter the bullet and the gallows.”25 The third lecture describes how two wills – God’s will and Jonah’s will – clash with each other. God positions “against the disobedient man an unpleasant man” and then “he brings the whole ocean into movement, to have his will.”26 Túróczy says about the ejection of Jonah into the sea: “A prophet sometimes also is ejected from there where God sent him. But he will always be ejected from where God didn’t send him.”27 In the fourth lecture Túróczy addresses God’s judgment. The swallowing of the prophet by the fish “looks like God’s wrath but it is his grace.”28 God’s wrath would be if the prophet would have succeeded in his journey to Tarshish. The fifth lecture has the title “The preacher of the awakening”. Here the author summarizes the contentual characteristics of the awakening sermon in the following points: 1. The preacher goes, where God sends him. 2. He goes at the time when God sends him. 3. He says what God has instructed him to say. 4. What he says is a testimony. 5. The theological content of his sermon is the law and the good news. The formal characteristics of Jonah’s sermon are summarized in the following points: 1. He preaches unshakeable. 2. He preaches clearly. 3. He preaches simple. 4. The sermon is his personal work. 5. He preaches tirelessly. 6. His sermon is of utter urgency. In the next lecture bishop Túróczy addresses the features of the awakening: 1. At the awakening a little action causes a big reaction. 2. This reaction is always general. 3. The general reaction shows itself not only in a horizontal but also in a vertical direction. 4. The awakening starts with repentance. 4. The awakening movement doesn’t stop at repentance. 6. The awakening movement happens on a moral level but it is a religious movement. 7. The awakening movement is a movement of hope. The second-last lecture (before the fourth chapter of the book) deals with the patience and love of God with an angry prophet. The last lecture asks the question of the continuation of Jonah’s story or Nineveh’s story. The author closes the lecture series with the following words: “If I stand now before the book of Jonah broken, humbled and shocked and quickly look for the way of repentance, God bows down to me with his love. God, of whom I know that he is merciful, compassionate, patient and of great grace, who hasn’t called me to this ministry to eject me but because he wants to save me. God you’re great! Great is your love!”29
“Translation” of the narrative theology
The book of Jonah is a typical example for the narrative theology. Let’s try now to “translate” the story (in clauses the relevant verse) into religious-ethical theses:
- Serving God is difficult and dangerous but avoiding the service is even more dangerous (1,2-3).
- The escape from God costs a lot (1,3).
- The escape from God is a way down-hill (verb j-r-d from 1,2 to 2,7).
- In life-threatening danger it is revealed what is important and what can be ejected (1,5).
- The echo of God’s word can also be transmitted by such a man of whom it is hardly expected (1,6).
- To awaken from the sleep of sin there is always a man needed (so Luther about 1,6).
- Even an unreliable servant of God can awaken faith in other people (1,9.16).
- The man who acts against the will of God, also endangers other people (1,12).
- Praying sincerely can also be done with “borrowed” words (2,3ff).
- If we are under God’s wrath and punishment, we have to escape to the angry and punishing God. God answers if we shout to him in our misery (so Luther about 2,3).
- God can talk also without words to a person that doesn’t want to talk with him (1,4ff thunderstorm, 2,1 fish, 4,6ff plant, 4,7 worm, 4,8 wind and sun).
- On the way downhill the man is unable to stop when he wants, but only on the ground (2,7).
- God’s grace is this, that the man is granted a new start, a second chance (3,1).
- God can force the man, who refuses to execute his command, to execute his command (3,2).
- The preacher has to proclaim exactly what he was instructed (3,2).
- God is also the God of the Gentile (3,3).
- Even five understandable and concrete words that are proclaimed according to God’s command, can have an enormous effect (3,4).
- Also without mentioning God all the time, people can be led to God (3,4).
- True conversion is the consequence of faith (3,5ff).
- True conversion doesn’t only consist of externals but also an inward change (3,8).
- God has patience with those who don’t understand his decisions and who criticize (4,1ff).
- If we wish for ourselves God’s grace, then we also grant it others (2,7 and 4,2).
- If we wish for others God’s judgment, we should be aware that especially we ourselves deserve it (4,1 and 1,3).
- God’s grace isn’t only for his chosen people but also for the Gentile (4,11).
Summary
I share the opinion, that this book is about a sharp critic of the nationalistic, particularistic and xenophobic deformed “godliness” of the post-exile church. The book of Jonah also shows the immense effort it costs Jahwe to put the deformed faith of a single Israelite in order. But Jahwe needs only minimal effort to bring the people of Nineveh to repentance. The deformed “godliness” of Israel is a hindrance for the Gentiles to reach the knowledge of God. The deformation of the faith is independent of place and time. This is why the book of Jonah is a mirror for us which we should ask the question: “Mirror, mirror tell me is my faith deformed?”
Prof. ThDr. Juraj Bándy
Dr. Michael Bünker
The joy of being a pastor in Europe
Lecture to the KEP Conference in Admont, 17 June 2019
Good morning to you all, dear sisters and brothers. I would like to start by thanking you sincerely for inviting me to your conference here in Admont. I am delighted that you chose to hold the event in Austria on this occasion. Thank you also for giving me the opportunity to share my thoughts with you this morning about the professional life of pastors, which will also touch upon the subjects of salutogenesis and resilience. I have to say that in doing so, I have drawn upon my own personal experience more than scientifically scrutinising ministry as a vocation and the related disciplines. I had been working as a parish minister for about twelve years when I was elected to the church leadership. So it’s from the perspective of my own direct contact with the issues relating to pastors’ work, rather than having any direct HR responsibility for church officers, that I experienced and also took decisions on such matters, whenever they cropped up. For the past twelve years, I have served as Bishop – which according to the job description contained in our church constitution includes the role of “Prime Minister of the Church” in the office of pastorate, providing all officers with pastoral care, advice and caution (Church Constitution, Article 90, para 1, point 2). During my years as the Bishop, I was also the honorary General Secretary of the “Community of Protestant Churches in Europe (CPCE)”, which repeatedly gave me insights into the situation of the Protestant churches in other European countries as well. Despite the plurality that exists amongst the Protestant churches, unsurprisingly there is a broad degree of agreement and similarity with regard to the professional challenges that pastors face to date. My tenure in these roles is now drawing to a close, and I am on the brink of the next transition in a pastor’s life – that of entering retirement. For sure, that does not mean I cease being a pastor. Ordination is an enduring mutual commitment between the church and those women and men who enter the service of public proclamation. But the sense of “You must” now gives way to “You can” – in other words, the entirely voluntary choice of which tasks one wishes to perform as a retired pastor.
However, I wish to start somewhere else than with church leadership or European mission – by telling you a little about my personal background. Like many pastors, I grew up in a Protestant parsonage. In fact, I was even born in a parsonage. So I was literally born to be a pastor’s child. My great grandfather was the son of a Swiss master dyer named Jakob Bünker (1812-1888), who for economic reasons migrated to Carinthia in the mid-19th century. His son Karl (1853-1919) studied Protestant theology and became a pastor in Carinthia – for a tolerance congregation in Trebesing. (Tolerance congregations were formed directly in the wake of the Patent of Toleration, issued by Joseph II in 1781, under the conditions stipulated therein. They remain something like the foundation of the Protestant Church in Austria to this day.) Karl served this congregation for more than forty years. He had married into a local Carinthian pastoral dynasty that had moved from Franconia to Austria immediately after the Patent of Toleration. Both of this first Pastor Bünker’s sons followed in their father’s footsteps to also became Protestant pastors, both also remaining in Carinthia. The younger brother took over from his father in the parish of Trebesing and also remained there for forty years. This wasn’t all that unusual at the time – we’re talking between 1880 and 1950, overall. The elder brother started off as a military chaplain shortly before and then during the First World War, in the Austro-Hungarian Imperial and Royal Army. After the war, this Pastor Bünker (1888-1966), my grandfather, took on the parish of Fresach in the Drava Valley in Carinthia, also one of the old tolerance congregations. At that time, Fresach had around 2,100 parishioners dotted around the farms on the slopes of the mountain and in several, very far-spread settlements. The parish only got electricity in the late 1930s and was left waiting until after the Second World War for a telephone line. The pastor was responsible for regular preaching in services on all Sundays and holidays, for ceremonies (of which funerals must have proved particularly onerous), religious education, and above all the home visits that parishioners expected on a regular basis. He had to go everywhere on foot. Wages were paid only partly in the form of a regular salary. It was primarily the state duties, such as religious education at public schools and officially keeping the matriculation records, that earned him actual money. A large part of his income was supposed to come from the “natural offerings” that the farmers in the parish had committed to, but which they were frequently very slack about delivering. Apart from that, the pastor was provided with a cow and several pigs together with a field and a large garden, which made him and his wife part-time farmers themselves. Despite these extensive and wide-ranging activities, Pastor Bünker still found the time to go on various excursions and host guests in the parsonage for several days at a time – all in all, a lifestyle that befitted his middle-class status. Many parsonages in that era were renowned for hosting groups who kept up the traditional Austrian card game of “Tarock”. In fact, this game was so incredibly popular amongst the officers of the former Imperial and Royal Army – and was therefore played from Chernivtsi in Ukraine to Trieste in Italy and from Cieszyn in Poland to Brașov in Romania – that the Austrian author Fritz von Herzmanovsky-Orlando (1877-1954) simply named the old Danube Monarchy the “Tarockians”. As four players are generally required, groups tended to consist of the village teacher, the Protestant pastor and his wife, and the Catholic priest – forming their own ecumenical Tarock congregation! The farmers had no concept of “Tarock”.
Having said that, my grandfather’s greatest passion was cultivating and growing rosebushes, of which he nurtured up to one hundred in the parsonage garden. While he was visiting the farms in his care or tending to his roses, his son already embarked upon studying Protestant theology. That was my father (1916-2001), who commenced service in 1940 in the major parish of Leoben in Styria. Leoben only became a parish in 1902, but by the end of the 1930s it already numbered more than 6,000 parishioners. This was too much for just one pastor, and so normally two shared the work – together with a deaconess as the parish sister and a religious education teacher in the schools. Curates often came to stay for short spells and, amongst the mass of refugees immediately after 1945, one or the other refugee pastor. Services of worship needed conducting regularly in the Gustav-Adolf Church in Leoben, as well as in six other preaching locations. Some of the routes had been damaged so badly during the war that these trips might also call for an overnight stay. Weekly Bible study groups, looking after the local student community, and supporting the flourishing network of associations all came on top of his core pastoral duties. Nonetheless, my father found the time for several hobbies. There are stories of numerous excursions, his writing ambitions, various visits and a subscription to the local cinema. These journeys often involved public transport, cycling and walking on foot, whenever he couldn’t catch a lift. My father only learned how to drive and use a telephone in the 1960s, and never really felt entirely in command of either. In 1954, shortly after I was born in Leoben parsonage, the entire family – five of us by now – moved to Carinthia. My father was responsible for two parishes there, until he retired at the age of 68 in 1984. Our pastoral service overlapped for four years, as I started out as a curate in the Döbling district of Vienna upon completing my studies in 1980, before being appointed pastor in its Floridsdorf district in 1982. The parish of Floridsdorf had around 3,500 parishioners at that time. Three pastors were assigned to it, together with a parish teacher and numerous religious education teachers in the public schools. Things basically haven’t changed to this day, with the number of parishioners dropping just slightly to 3,280 by now. Worship was, and still is, celebrated every week in Floridsdorf Church – and once a month at the four preaching locations. Besides the pastors, a number of lectors were also available to conduct these. The parish had a whole series of interest-based and community groups. Amongst the ceremonies that needing conducting, the numerous funerals caused the heaviest workload. It took a lot of energy to support the volunteers who saw to the church welfare efforts in the parish, conducted pastoral visits to hospitals and old people’s homes, performed youth work, nurtured confirmation candidates and ran the numerous parish events – which they still do to this day. I wondered how, in my grandfather’s day, just one pastor and a sister were able to care for an entire parish spread over a much larger geographical area and totalling more than 5,000 parishioners? The changes that have taken place since the 1960s and restructured many aspects of parish life for the churches presumably make all the difference. The numerous groups and circles in vibrant parish churches organising a range of different activities have placed new demands on pastors. An obvious outward sign of this development is the numerous halls and other premises that have sprung up in many parishes in addition to the church and the parsonage. Not only that, but an increasing degree of professionalism has become expected in all these spheres. Further education and continuing development became necessary not only for pastors and other full-time officers, but also for volunteers. I would also have to cite the institutional demands placed on pastors by the church itself – in some cases requiring a great deal more administrative and organisation work – as a further, internal motor of change. Then there’s the increasing effort required for planning and conducting ceremonies caused by the growing expectations for personal customisation in society, which manifests itself most vividly in church weddings. Of course, these trends have not only emerged in the church. Another new factor has been the fundamental questioning of the traditional division of roles between men and women, and the re-evaluation of what we term “reproductive work” in families and homes. These are just a couple of randomly pinpointed factors of change – with no claim to systematic, let alone exhaustive, coverage – which have simply also affected the church and thus pastoral duties. However: The church offering parochial care and support that my grandfather and even my father still worked for, and which always left them time for their own interests, did not disappear as a result. On the contrary! It has continued to exist unwaveringly – as it does now – with the result that all the changes that I have only briefly touched upon here raise additional demands alongside the parochial work of the people’s church.
This dual challenge – on the one hand, to continue and secure our traditions as far as possible, while, on the other, to assume responsibility for all kinds of (and undoubtedly numerous) new facets of parish life – has typified the professional lives of pastors for a good fifty years now. In churches with adequate resources, this is mitigated by collaborative work and, to a certain extent, by creating dedicated pastoral positions. But even this approach seems to be increasingly unsustainable under the growing threat of dwindling resources. In other churches, this separation of roles has not occurred anywhere near as overtly, meaning that the old parochial, pastoral church can be continued for the time being despite scant resources. The two extremes are exemplified by, let’s say, a parish in eastern Slovakia, at one end of the scale, and a parish in Frankfurt am Main, at the other – with a parish like Dresden Neustadt somewhere in between. What is the model for the future? Some might feel very tempted to view the remnants from the past also as the way forward. I consider this alluring, but mistaken. Conventional parochialism is sustained by conditions that are increasingly on the wane. For decades, people have been moving away from the custom of living and working in the same place, people’s mobility is increasing, and above all the younger generation in society is less and less willing to sign up to an institution for life simply because their parents and grandparents did so before them. This phenomenon applies right across society, also affecting not only political parties, but numerous volunteer organisations (such as voluntary firefighters and local football clubs) as well. Of course, this also affects churches and religious communities as a whole. To coin a phrase from religious sociology: In this society characterised by options, church membership has switched from being a matter of fate to people’s own choice. But please let me emphasise that I regard local parishes as immensely, irreplaceably valuable! In fact, I am convinced that they are destined to become even more important in the future than they perhaps are today. Where else does such a diverse range of people gather together? Where else does a university professor sit next to a care worker from Slovakia, and a grammar school teacher next to an asylum seeker from Afghanistan? This is the case in Protestant congregations at worship. And because worship not only calls for a dedicated time but also a dedicated place, by its very nature the worshipping congregation also forms the local community. It creates a kind of neighbourhood in which people who don’t know one another and have not sought each other out end up meeting together and, in the process, discovering each other’s life stories and what they have in common. And of course, Christian congregations as places of organised neighbourhood don’t exist in a vacuum. They need connections and form networks with other such places in their surroundings, and in this way they contribute to social cohesion. There are therefore good arguments for both aspects. Local or functional; the church as an institution or as an organisation – the one side cannot be played off against the other. Eberhardt Hauschildt even advocates a “hybrid understanding of the church” that uses both aspects and bounces their positive attributes off one another. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria has attempted to fruitfully marry these two lines of development – continuing the parochial principle, on the one hand, and perceiving the differentiation of the life and work of the church, on the other – without playing one off against the other, in a process called “Profile and Concentration”.
The workload is not necessarily one of the most prominent differences between my grandfather and my father, on the one hand, and me and – even more so by far – today’s up and coming generation of pastors, on the other. The workload was high back then as it remains now, for sure even too high in some cases. Another consistent factor is how deeply pastors feel about the meaningfulness of their actions. The social status of the church, and thus pastors, has changed in general. I see the most significant change in our recognition that working as a pastor is not only demanding and onerous, fulfilling and exhilarating, but unfortunately can also make people ill. Symptoms such as stress and exhaustion, reaching as far as “burn-out”, had been visible for a long time when Andreas von Heyl conducted the first empirical study of this phenomenon in the German-speaking world in 2003. (In comparison, anglophone studies have been conducted in this sphere since the early 1960s.) Von Heyl studied the pastors of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria – with alarming findings. Almost half (49.5%) could be considered at risk of burn-out. Several years later, in 2009, a similar study was conducted in the Church of Baden, which indicated that 20% of pastors showed symptoms of stress-related health problems. Even that is an alarmingly high number. Further investigations in churches in other regions followed suit, which the German Pastors’ News has always reported on.
Von Heyl didn’t stop with the original survey. In his inaugural speech in Neuendettelsau (in Middle Franconia) in 2004, he spoke about “salutogenesis”. He considers this the “key term” in the current discourse about church professions, as conducted between medical science and practical theology. The handbook entitled “Salutogenesis within the Church” published by Andreas von Heyl, Konstanze Kemnitzer and Klaus Raschzok in 2015, marked a milestone in this field. “How can pastors handle the various potential stresses in a way that doesn’t adversely affect their well-being and enables them to continue to serve ‘well, happily and in good health’?” von Heyl asked. The three criteria “well, happily and in good health” are the key factors that the Bavarian Church highlighted in a consultation involving its pastors between 2013 and 2016. One outcome of this consultation process was the handout on creating conditions of service (basically, a “job description”) and setting up a dedicated project for salutogenesis in the church. Measures of this kind are known as the “enabling conditions” that organisations as a whole, including the church, use to define the parameters that enable individual staff members to work in a way that is beneficial rather than damaging to their health.
Salutogenesis is a synthetic term invented by the Israeli-American medical sociologist Aaron Antonovsky in 1970. He researched the biographies of women who, against all expectations, enjoyed good health after surviving the Nazi concentration camps. This prompted him to investigate the health-promoting resources that enable people to maintain their physical and emotional integrity despite the most hostile life circumstances imaginable. He found that this is not only down to individual factors, but rather the “salus” – health and life as a whole. Antonovsky talks about a “sense of coherence” in this respect. People with a distinct sense of coherence are more resistant to stress factors, and therefore fall ill both less frequently and less severely. There are other concepts related to salutogenesis that indicate the possibilities open to people for weathering crises or withstanding the relentless pressure exerted by our current-day working and living conditions – namely “resilience” (Emmy Werner, 1977), coping strategies (Richard Lazarus, 1974), “hardiness” (Suzanne C. Kobasa, 1982) and “self-efficacy” (Albert Bandura, 1997). I believe this large number of closely related yet distinct concepts – the forces that enable people to survive in extreme situations, such as internment in a concentration camp – can be leveraged under entirely different conditions in today’s everyday working environment. It’s no surprise that this is also a highly relevant topic for pastors and other church office holders. To a certain extent, pastors really are no “different” from others, as Manfred Josuttis was still able to claim in 1982.
Of course, the concepts of salutogenesis and resilience are also subject to critique. The most important challenge asserts that all the concepts cited for weathering stress and crisis are extremely individual in nature. This places the focus firmly on individuals and their personal mechanisms and strategies for coping with stress and overload. Ultimately, this places the onus on each individual person for somehow getting through their working years without damage to their health – the logical consequence being that it’s their own fault if they don’t succeed. The “tyranny of successful life” is thus raised to a pinnacle in how pastors perceive themselves in their professional lives. Whether this really serves a justified cause is then certainly doubtful. This closes a circle: The stress experienced by pastors, in part caused by the increasing individualisation in society, is also supposed to be combated with individual strategies.
To start with, the responsible church leaders at all levels certainly have to ensure the appropriate professional parameters are in place for pastors together with measures and instruments that provide them with the space and time for recuperation, reflection and spirituality – without them being considered “unwell”. Undoubtedly, more can be done in this regard than the conditions of service as yet prescribe. Having said that, I would say we have to be careful not to potentially over-regulate the framework for pastors’ work. The freedom inspired by the Gospel can only be communicated in the free church credibly and professionally by Christians who themselves also act freely and responsibly. But opening up leeway and freedom is also a challenging, but undoubtedly pleasant, task for church leaders. Smaller churches and those with modest financial means will increasingly have to invest in staff development, counselling, coaching and spiritual direction and to expand the free space offered to pastors.
I believe it is much more difficult to work on two other factors in this field, as they are either off limits or not open to professional staff development methods. The first relates to general social changes that also affect the church in particular and that it cannot itself change or extinguish. Ulrike Wagner-Rau was the first to talk about the ongoing truncation and simultaneous acceleration of time. Longer-term planning and actions based on tradition are starting to be viewed with suspicion and put under pressure. Perpetual flexibility and constant adjustment to new and unexpected developments create uncertainty and fear. The enormous pressure exerted on pastors to be creative equates to the pressure for innovation exerted in other professions. And yet precisely the church is based on longevity and continuance! Convention does not automatically mean dead tradition, but rather – if applied vigorously and true-to-life – it meets people’s present-day expectations. Many pastors exert enormous pressure on themselves. Pastors thus live anachronistically. They can’t really be squeezed into timetables, as their time lies in God’s hands. Asking someone like this to instate professional time management will inevitably cause tension. As the profession of pastor is affected by the same social changes as the church, both the church and its pastors are in the process of transformation. Wagner-Rau refers in this context to the “brink”. No-one knows what tomorrow will bring. We can only agree in principle that “change by design” is better than “change by disaster”. Whatever the case, all steps towards the future will be subject to error and more closely resemble “carefully inching and feeling our way forward” than “fervently striding ahead”. Loss of meaning and increased expectations!
To round off my thoughts: The current zeitgeist very much calls for people rather than organisations to provide plausible orientation and values. Martin Luther’s clever and helpful distinction between the office and the person has become obsolete. But it also remains true today and in the future that it’s the mission of the church that’s essential, not the personal mission of faith espoused by an individual working for the church. What’s urgently required is consensus upon the mission that’s founded in the Gospel amongst those involved in publicly and professionally communicating it. The courses in faith conducted in congregations certainly make sense, but the aspect of pastors themselves seeking consensus upon faith generally remains disregarded, in fact even something of a taboo. Whereas it could provide relief for them to know they are borne by this faith and can also let things be once in a while. “Satis est”, “It is sufficient” – this phrase contained in the Augsburg Confession (Article 7) is also applicable to pastors’ professional lives. How can consensus be established on what does and doesn’t form part of pastors’ core tasks? Such a basis would also make it possible to decide which tasks should be organised differently – and which perhaps even relinquished? It’s not only the expectations of congregations and church leaders that prevent pastors from occasionally drawing the line. Not seldom, it’s their own expectations founded in the ambivalence caused by fantasies of omnipotence and impotence. “My grace is sufficient for you,” Paul the Apostle is told (2 Corinthians 12:9). It would make the church more evangelical and the profession of pastor more humane to settle upon this sufficiency and decide when enough is enough.