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ABSTRACT
Within the contemporary theological world, pastoral theology is unique in offering a considerable variety of theological reflections on the phenomenon of shame. Pastoral theologians have called for the development of a theology that can be as liberating for those who suffer from shame as the theology of divine forgiveness has been for those who suffer from guilt. But their theological recommendations point in two directions: Is shame an obstacle to be removed, or (also) an opportunity to be embraced? This article offers a systematic overview of this growing area of research.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful for insightful comments from two anonymous reviewers, from German theologians of shame Dominik Gautier and Ulrike Link-Wieczorek, and from the Oldenburg symposium, January 14, 2020, before which I presented an earlier version of this paper. I thank Harris Wiseman for professional aid in improving my English. All shortcomings remain mine.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Capps, The Depleted Self; Albers, Shame; Hunsinger, Theology and Pastoral Counseling; Wimberly, Moving from Shame to Self-Worth.
2 This overview of books does not include several articles written on the subject. In the Journal of Pastoral Theology, Brad Binau has contributed with “When Shame Is the Question, How Does the Atonement Answer” from 2002.
3 Pembroke, The Art of Listening; McNish, Transforming Shame; Goodliff, With Unveiled Face; Okkenhaug, Når jeg skjuler mitt ansikt; Strodmeyer, Scham und Erlösung; Andersen, Sjælesorgens samtale; Farstad, Skam; Jamieson, The Face of Forgiveness; Arel, Affect Theory, Shame, and Christian Formation. Three limitations to this study should be noted. I exclude pastoral theologians who only make a brief notice of shame, e.g. Klessmann, Seelsorge, 231–34. I leave out also those pastoral theologians who deal with shame pastorally within a purely therapeutic framework, see e.g. Fechtner, Diskretes Christentum, 146–60. Finally, the overview applies to literature written in English, German, and the Nordic languages.
4 Pattison, Shame, 189–228.
5 Remarkably, pastoral theologians contributing to the field only refer to selections of previous research, sometimes even very small selections. For documentation, please contact the author.
6 Rather than, say, providing a chronological account of the field.
7 See, for example, Kraus, Jesus Christ Our Lord. I place quotation marks around ‘culture of shame’ as a sign of distance to the cultural reductionism that is behind the undialectical use of this term.
8 Bonhoeffer, Schöpfung und Fall; Bonhoeffer, Ethik; Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik IV/2.
9 Park, The Wounded Heart of God; From Hurt to Healing, and Triune Atonement; Gregersen, “Guilt, Shame, and Rehabilitation”; Bammel, Aufgetane Augen - Aufgedecktes Angesicht; Stump, Atonement.
10 See Gautier, “Als Beschämte.”
11 Huizing, Scham und Ehre.
12 Haas, Das Phänomen Scham.
13 Notably, historical research paints a nuanced picture of the relationship between theology and shame, see Burrus, Saving Shame (on the early church), Behrens, Scham (on medieval England), and the references given by Pattison, Shame, 229-230, who then goes on to explore in detail how the church has exploited shame as a tool for discipline.
14 Patton, Is Human Forgiveness Possible? 129; Capps, The Depleted Self, 3; Albers, Shame, 3; Pattison, Shame, 245; McNish, Transforming Shame, 6; Goodliff, With Unveiled Face, ix; Andersen, Sjælesorgens samtale, 223; Jamieson, The Face of Forgiveness, 21; Arel, Affect Theory, 4. See also Schneider, Shame, Exposure, and Privacy, 113.
15 Bonhoeffer, Ethik, 131.
16 Piers, “Shame and Guilt,” 24. See also Deigh, “Shame and Self-Esteem,” 225; Tangney and Dearing, Shame and Guilt, 13.
17 Lewis, Shame and Guilt in Neurosis, 23–30.
18 Kaufman, Shame, 132.
19 Andersen is the only theologian in the field who emphasizes that guilt can also describe the human person, Andersen, Sjælesorgens samtale, 252. In a brief interview on January 10, 2020, Andersen clarified the insight behind this statement: What life demands of human beings is not only actions, but also a certain form of being. After all, the demand to love both neighbor and God requires the whole person, not only one’s actions. Failing to love means that the very person is in a state of guilt (Psalm 51:7).
20 Capps, The Depleted Self, 86.
21 Hunsinger, Theology and Pastoral Counseling, 62.
22 Farstad is also concerned with images of God. However, in contrast to Hunsinger, her approach to unhealthy and healthy images of God remains in a third-person language that is closer to the psychology of religion than theology, Farstad, Skam, 246–57.
23 Hunsinger, Theology and Pastoral Counseling, 200 with reference to Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik IV/2, 430.
24 Without referencing Hunsinger, Andersen proposes the similar argument that shame can be healed through psychological means alone, while guilt requires theology. Andersen, however, does develop a theology for those wounded by shame, Andersen, Sjælesorgens samtale, 248-249.
25 Metz, “Suffering unto God.”
26 Hunsinger, Bearing the Unbearable, 7.
27 Ibid., 37.
28 Ibid., 90.
29 Slenczka, “Communicatio Idiomatum.”
30 Schneider, Shame, Exposure, and Privacy, 18–28.
31 Patton, Is Human Forgiveness Possible? 40; Albers, Shame, 7–15; Pattison, Shame, 80; McNish, Transforming Shame, 133–34. See also Binau, “When Shame Is the Question,” 94.
32 Kaufman, Shame, 120. Albers uses this concept without referencing Kaufman.
33 Albers, Shame, 101.
34 Pattison, Shame, 301.
35 Andersen, Sjælesorgens samtale, 252.
36 Albers, Shame, 97. Notably, Albers leaves out the rest of the formulation in Tillich, namely that grace is about acceptance of the person who is unacceptable according to the criteria of the Law, Tillich, ST III, 224–25.
37 Capps, The Depleted Self, 165, compare also Wimberly, Moving from Shame to Self-Worth, 74–78; Goodliff, With Unveiled Face, 73–77. For a similar approach without reference to the Kohut, see the interpretation of the story of Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1–10) in Pattison, Shame, 307–8.
38 Pembroke issued a respectfully critical remark against Capps’ understanding of sin simply as the shame of being victimized, Pembroke, The Art of Listening, 199.
39 Andersen, Sjælesorgens samtale, 251–52. For Okkenhaug, recognition is also a brief concern, but she is more inspired by liberation theologians for whom God raises up the downtrodden from their humiliated and shamed position on the ground such that they can demand justice and recognition, Okkenhaug, Når jeg skjuler mitt ansikt, 133.
40 Grønkjær, Det nye menneske, 287. Grønkjær owes much of his development of the concept of acknowledgment to Markell, Bound by Recognition, 35–38. However, for Markell, the object of acknowledgement is the human condition of finitude, not the other person.
41 For further exploration of this point, see Christoffersen, “The Gaze of God.”
42 Albers, Shame, 104, see also Wimberly, Moving from Shame to Self-Worth, 38–39; McNish, Transforming Shame, 9–16; Okkenhaug, Når jeg skjuler mitt ansikt, 99–104; Andersen, Sjælesorgens samtale, 253–54. In contrast, Capps explicitly focuses on Jesus’ internal shame rather than the external shaming, Capps, The Depleted Self, 99.
43 Jamieson, The Face of Forgiveness, 99.
44 In contrast to the view that Jesus had actually been abandoned, Albers and McNish agree that Jesus rather felt abandoned, see Albers, Shame, 104; McNish, Transforming, 171.
45 Jamieson, The Face of Forgiveness, 97.
46 Ibid., 101.
47 See also Binau, “When Shame Is the Question,” 108; Wagner-Rau, “Scham,” 197.
48 Pembroke, The Art of Listening, 97.
49 Ibid., 111.
50 Compare Pembroke’s interpretation of the biblical story of Jonah, Pembroke, The Art of Listening, 99 with that of Capps, The Depleted Self, 157.
51 Jamieson, The Face of Forgiveness, 58. See also Binau, “When Shame Is the Question,” 94; Wagner-Rau, “Scham,” 190.
52 Jamieson, The Face of Forgiveness, 59.
53 Pembroke, The Art of Listening, 104.
54 Compare Hovland, “Du med nåden,” 62.
55 Gregersen, “Guilt, Shame, and Rehabilitation,” 111.
56 Ibid., 113.
57 McNish, Transforming Shame, 75, see also Albers, Shame, 11. McNish criticizes Pattison for reducing God to an overly nice, pleasant and accommodating figure in his effort to remove all shame from the relationship to the divine, McNish, Transforming Shame, 178. Whether McNish is right that finitude entails shame is a matter of dispute. Compare Way, Created by God, 19.
58 McNish, Transforming Shame, 52.
59 Ibid., 177.
60 Patton, Is Human Forgiveness Possible?, 65–92; Capps, The Depleted Self, 95; Albers, Shame, 69–84; Hunsinger, Theology and Pastoral Counseling, 179; Pattison, Shame, 111; McNish, Transforming Shame, 53–62; Farstad, Skam, 72–76; Jamieson, The Face of Forgiveness, 65–66.
61 Compared with Kaufman, Patton changes the categories a bit, Patton, Is Human Forgiveness Possible? 65–92. Albers adds a particularly Christian problem, namely the martyr-complex: portraying oneself as one who deserves nothing helps one defend against the shame of others; I have already done the work of shaming myself, Albers, Shame, 79–80. McNish adds shamelessness to the list: Behaving shamelessly is an attempt live as though the shaming eyes were not there, McNish, Transforming Shame, 176.
62 Ibid., 61.
63 Ibid., 166.
64 Ibid., 168.
65 Kaufman, Shame, 143–44.
66 McNish, Transforming Shame, 185.
67 Ibid., 169.
68 Arel, Affect Theory, 177.
69 Ibid., 151 with reference to Augustine’s Exposition on the Book of Psalms.
70 Goodliff, With Unveiled Face, 55.
71 Pembroke, The Art of Listening, 202–5.
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Mikkel Gabriel Christoffersen
Mikkel Gabriel Christoffersen is currently a postdoctoral researcher in systematic theology at the Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen. His PhD was in systematic theology on the concepts of risk and danger, and was published as Living with Risk and Danger: Interdisciplinary Systematic Theology (Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht) in 2019. During his MA studies in theology, he studied for two semesters in Heidelberg, Germany; and spent two semesters at Yale Divinity School.