A new horizon

In Search of a New Horizon is the (translated) title of a fairly large paperback on my bookshelf: Op zoek naar een nieuwe horizon. The pastel green cover and the modernist font used for the title speak to the publication date, 1989; the two hands drawn beneath almost touch. The author, Dr. Wybe Zijlstra, was a minister and a pastoral theologian who became known as a pioneer of Clinical Pastoral Education in the Netherlands. My copy still carries some pencilled notes from when I first read it in the late 1990s. It has stayed with me in more than one sense.

Training for crisis

Born in 1921, Zijlstra served as a congregational minister for fourteen years. In 1962, he spent time in Topeka, Kansas, where Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) was being pioneered. CPE was an innovative training method for pastors. It is based on accompanying pastors through the experience of ministering in situations of acute and profound suffering, usually in a psychiatric or medical hospital. In such situations, answers based on book-learning inevitably fall flat, as Zijlstra became very much aware.

Zijlstra devoted the rest of his career to developing and leading CPE training for Dutch ministers. Through his efforts, Dutch CPE (a.k.a. “KPV”) became a training instrument not only for hospital chaplains but also for ministers in all kinds of work settings. In Search of New Horizons includes adaptations of the best books in contemporary psychology, including Jung, Horney, Boszormenyi-Nagy and some Dutch authors. The overall framework of the book, though, is Zijlstra’s own.

Zijlstra refused to compartmentalize. He was convinced that theology and psychology have something to offer each other; they can help keep each other on track. He refused to reduce psychology to the study and treatment of individual pathology, and likewise, to reduce theology to matters of church and faith. Instead, in his work, theology and psychology belong together in an integrated understanding of fundamental human reality.

The central concepts throughout Zijlstra’s book are neurosis (something between social-relational dysfunction and a developmental disorder) and bewustwordingsproces (a process of growth in self-awareness that helps to overcome learned defence mechanisms that inhibit function and personal growth). He understands that the process of integrated self-awareness is also truly life-giving in a biblical-theological sense. Theologically, Zijlstra finds support for this approach in Paul’s letters and in the concepts of Word and Spirit.

Horizons beyond horizons

While re-reading parts of his book, I recognize many features of Zijlstra’s approach in my own thinking: his resolutely interdisciplinary approach to knowledge and scholarship, his evident concern for the needs of the contemporary world and, most importantly, the integration of the life of faith and personal growth. He was no great writer, but wrote in a direct and effective style that I find charming. Some chapters seem timeless, others are in need of an update or seem off track.

One difference stands out. I am a believer in denominational pluralism – there are many good and some better answers in matters of faith. This option was just not available in Zijlstra’s time. His undifferentiated Protestant outlook, and his experience with pastors trying to hide behind doctrinal language, perhaps led him to greater skepticism towards big words of faith than was necessary. I believe that big words of faith used cautiously and gently can still guide us – all of us, beyond the narrow boundaries of our church or even faith traditions – back to where the ground is firm and the horizon clear.