This document provides a theological perspective on person-centered care. It argues that a person cannot be reduced to characteristics or categories, but rather exists at the center of relationships. From a theological view, each person is first addressed by God's unconditional love, giving them infinite worth. This perspective deepens the person-centered approach by emphasizing dignity, relationships over individualism, and seeing care as allowing God's presence to be experienced. Further development of empathy and a practical model are suggested.

1. Person Centred Theology:
What can theology say to the person-centred approach within The Salvation Army Homeless
Services Unit?
Abstract
This paper seeks to investigate how the person-centred approach can be understood through
a theological lens. This will be done through providing a brief synopsis of the personalisation
agenda within social care followed by laying out the groundwork for a theological
understanding of the ‘person’. This will establish that the implementation of the person-
centred approach can be further developed and deepened via a theological understanding of
what it means to be a person. The end result of this paper is to establish a foundation
regarding the theological appreciation of the person which can be further developed at a
later date.
Over the last decade the development of the personalisation agenda within social care has
had a continuing impact on the provision of support within local authorities and in the
private sector. The core of Personalisation is placing the individual firmly at the centre of
their own care or support, being fully involved in the design and tailoring of their own
support or care packages in order to meet their unique goals.1 This has become enshrined
within law as the required model for providing care and support. Implementation of the
personalisation agenda began in 2001 with the introduction of the Health and Social Care
Act. The movement gathered momentum in 2007 with the UK Government’s Adult Social
Care transformation agenda ‘putting people first’, and has reached a legislative climax with
the Care Act of 2015.
The primary focus of the legislation has been to ensure that the individual is able to take
control of their own personal budgets in order to direct their care. This has seen a move
away from a ‘gift’ model of social care towards a ‘customer’ model where the individual is
supported and empowered to choose from a variety of options that best suit their individual
needs. This is made possible by making sure that there is an integrated, community-based
approach for everyone.2 This model has significant overlap with the approach to working
with substance misuse and in mental health work known as the recovery approach. It has
also been a major component of the Localismpriorities for Local Authorities.
This can be seen as a move towards the commercialisation of care, both in the change of
language and in the change of ideology. Care and support becomes something which can be
1 www.personalisationagenda.org.uk,retrieved 25/6/15
2 Sarah Carr,Personalisation: a rough guide, Social CareInstitutefor Excellence 2012,p. 2

2. purchased and therefore becomes a commodity. Whilst it is true that being given control
over the way care and support is enacted within one’s own life is empowering, it assumes a
particular understanding of control and choice which is not in line with a theological
understanding of ‘person’.
To think of support as something which is gifted within a traditional reciprocal framework
can be undermining and introduce a power-dynamic to the relationship between
professional and client. By turning that relationship into one where the client is the one who
purchases the care means that they become the one with the power in that relationship.
The purchasing might be undertaken through personal budgets or through housing benefit
and personal rent payments – in either case the client is able to provide restitution for their
support in an explicit way. The relationship between professional and client becomes
transactional. This is especially the case in a personalised approach to support where the
goals and outcomes are at least in part set by the client themselves.
The language of the person-centred approach revolves around the individual and the
community. Two supposed poles where a proper tension is held between the two but with
preference shown to the individual with a community seen as something to be accessed by
the individual. This is a point where the theological voice can engage with the issue and we
will be turning to this later.
In 2013 a presentation on personalisation was given to The Salvation Army Social Services
Conference. A trial period was implemented involving several Lifehouses3 being identified as
pilot sites for the personalisation scheme within their provision of support. This covered a
change of approach to the way information was recorded to enable the service user to
modify or design the forms used to record their information or plan their support. One of
the most obvious surface level changes due to the implementation of the personalised
approach to support was enabling the service user to choose their own support worker. As
of December 2014 practitioner-trainers have been identified within the regional
management structure of The Salvation Army Homelessness services in order to provide
training on the personalised approach for staff within the Lifehouses.
At the Social Service Conference of 2015 the new Strategic Mission Plan for Homelessness
Services was released for implementation. Designed to tie into the Territorial Mission
Strategy TIDE4, it emphasises the importance of the core values of The Salvation Army as the
foundation of the mission of the homelessness unit. As personalisation becomes the core
model for the provision of social care, by internal policy and by national legislation, how
does a focus on mission and values as foundational to the provision of service engage with
this model?
3 Residential Units providingaccommodation for a wide variety of people who currently do not have access to
independent accommodation
4 Transformation,Integration,Discipleship,Effectiveness

3. As personalisation seeks to place the person at the centre of the way that support is
provided it is to the question of how we can theologically understand what it means to be a
person that we now turn. As has already been noted, the personalisation agenda places the
emphasis on the individual. But what exactly is meant when the word individual is used?
The Russian theologian Vladimir Lossky undertook a highly technical study of what it means
to be a person from a theological approach in the 1950s. One of the key themes of Lossky’s
essay is that there are two things which it is vital to hold apart but for which job Christianity
does not yet have suitable language. Rowan Williams summarises these two things in a
lecture given to the Theos think-tank as: the subject as a unique instance of its kind, and the
essential quality which makes a conscious thing or subject ‘irreducible to its nature’.5
The individual is simply one example of a certain type such as a particular dog as opposed to
a different dog. The differences between two individuals can be expressed through a
catalogue or list of their differences or of their own independent attributes. Yet there
remains a quality about us as conscious agents that cannot be reduced down to simply
being one example of a particular kind of thing. This is the difference between an individual
and a person; the individual can be reduced to a list of particular characteristics which
describe and encapsulate it, a person is irreducible.
What makes me the person that I am is not simply a set of facts, but is instead the truly
enormous fact that I am me rather than anyone else. To be a person is to stand at the
centre of a wide network of relations and facts where the lines cross. Because of this whilst
it may be possible to say something about who I am, as soon as I do so I change that
network of relations that form who I am. The attempt to categorise who I am results in
returning to the question as the nature of the network of relations is changed, in the words
of St. Augustine ‘I have become a question to myself’. As a person I embody all these
different relations, facts and acts but as I respond to changing situations I am myself
changed.
This forces us to approach personhood as essentially mysterious in the sense that it cannot
be tied down; it is something ‘irreducible’. Further, as we recognise this about ourselves we
must also recognise this about every other human person. This mysteriousness at the heart
of personhood safeguards our appreciation of what it means to be a person. If a person
cannot be categorised or reduced simply to a particular nature or set of characteristics, it
becomes impossible for anyone to set out what it means to be a human person.
We recognise and safeguard the dignity of the other because of that mysteriousness. This
recognition that what it means to be a person, to be worthy of dignity and respect, is
beyond any kind of human boundaries or description, provides the basis for a robust
understanding of human ‘right’s stemming from their intrinsic worth and dignity as. If what
5 Rowan Williams, ThePerson and the Individual: Human Dignity, Human Relationships and Human Limits,
Theos 2013 p. 11

4. it means to be a person is to be ‘irreducible’ to a set of categories then the definition of
‘personhood’ cannot be a form of template to be applied to a human subject.
This also then has an effect on how I engage with the people around me. My personhood is
to be at the centre of a network of relationships. The same is true for the other person that I
encounter. We live in the lives of the other just as the other lives in our life; we have a
meaning and presence in someone else’s existence.6 I ama person; I am me, because of my
relationship with things and others that are exterior to me, that are not me. An abstract
concept of ‘the person’ cannot be reduced out from these networks of relationships and
interactions. It is only through these changing relationships and our responses to them that
we are truly a human person.
A point for further development is the importance of empathy. If we cannot know ourselves
outside of relationship, if we require that interaction and movement in relationship with
other persons (and equally so other persons require that same movement with us) then we
need to be able to imaginatively position ourselves within the experience and viewpoint of
the other person. We need to be able to empathise, not merely to ‘feel alongside’ someone
but to be able to position ourselves within their worldview. Empathy becomes
epistemological framework. To love another person as you love yourself7 is also to be able
to love yourself as others love you. When we can love ourselves as others love us, then we
can start to know ourselves as well. This is an area to be developed further at future point as
this work is taken forwards.
Underpinning all of this is a simple theological point. Before I am in relationship with anyone
or anything, I am first already addressed and engaged with by God. I cannot be reduced to
an abstract construct nor can I be independently categorised because I am first and always
grasped by the attention and unconditional love of the creator God. If this is true of me,
then it is also true of others. That first relationship I have with my creator which is in
existence before I am even aware of it, is also the first relationship of every other person.
Before another person is in relationship with me, or with anyone else, they are first held in
the attention and love of God. Quite frankly this means that they do not belong to me, just
as I do not belong to them.
I have value and worth because I am first grasped and engaged by the unconditional love of
God. My service to other people, my recognition of their dignity and my engagement with
them through respectful relationship is the attempt to echo or mirror this permanent
attitude of unconditional love which is already shown to them by God. This subverts the
individualist approach where we may assume that each one of us exists separately from the
other and that there is some solid centre of self to which we may retreat. Instead we start
6 Ibid,p.13
7 Mark 12:31

5. from the understanding that each one of us stands at the centre of a network of
relationships.
It may be briefly noted at this stage that this understanding of personhood is deeply
intertwined with Trinitarian theology. The perichoretic movement of the three hypostases in
one tri-unity of essence provides a pattern by which we can better understand the same
intertwining movement of the ‘I’ into and through the ‘thou’. The image of movement
highlights the dynamic, ever changing web of relationships which forms the mysterious
‘person’ which is irreducible.
All of this is to be held within the Salvationist doctrinal understanding of the brokenness of
the human person8. We are imperfect in our relationships, cut off from each other and
unable to fully experience relationship with God beyond that which is offered by the
prevenient grace of God. This means that we cannot understand our own personhood
without also maintaining the eschatological perspective. This is emphasised in a paper given
by N. T. Wright to the Society of Christian Philosophers in 20119 where he argues that the
telos of the human person must be included in our understanding of what it means to be a
person. N. T. Wright argues that our embodiment is essential for understanding for what it
means to be a person. We engage with the other through the medium of our bodies, we
interact with the world around us through our bodies, we are our bodies.
It is this idea of the telos of human personhood that is a key into understanding that
mysterious irreducibility at the heart of personhood that cannot be grasped but only
engaged. We exist in a time of imperfect relationships where empathy is often lacking or not
understood and where consumerist and individualist concerns are in stark contrast to
pancomunitarian groups. However the eschatological aspect reminds us that the
brokenness we find ourselves in now is not the end goal of our personhood. If this is then
further understood through the lens of relationship we can start to see why this is
important for our delivery of support to service users in Lifehouses. The salvific work of God
in our lives in the present, through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, transforms our
relationships with people around us because of the change in that primal relationship with
God.
The inauguration of the eschatological new creation through the present indwelling of the
Holy Spirit makes manifest that future promise that the entirety of creation will be filled
with the presence of God. We become the embodied focus of the pneumatalogically
inaugurated eschatological the-en-panismwhereby our relationships, our personhood and
our existence in the lives of those we engage with, provide a place where the presence of
8 Doctrine five of The Salvation Army doctrines (statements of faith) states “We believe that our firstparents
were created in a state of innocency,but by their disobediencethey losttheir purity and happiness,and that in
consequence of their fall all men have become sinners,totally depraved,and as such are justly exposed to the
wrath of God”.- http://www.salvationarmy.org.uk/salvation-army-doctrines retrieved 20-8-2015
9 N. T. Wright, Mind, Spirit, Soul and Body: All for One and One for All. Reflections on Paul’s Anthropology in his
Complex Contexts, http://ntwrightpage.com/Wright_SCP_MindSpiritSoulBody.htm, retrieved 22-7-2014

6. God is mediated. Thus our human natures are transformed to become like the nature of
Christ in the sense that the presence of God dwells in us. We become miniature, walking
revelatory encounters (apocalypses!) because of the engagement with the other inherent in
personhood.
The theological personalist approach suggested by this paper takes seriously the challenge
that I cannot make sense of myself without being in relationship with others, I cannot love
without being the object of love, I cannot enjoy myself without being the cause of joy in
others.10 I must approach the other not as an object, or even as a subject, but as a mystery
that cannot be categorised but only engaged with. I need to approach my relationship with
the other in the recognition that before any other relationship takes place they are first held
in the love of God, and as such they possess infinite value and dignity which I must respect.
The theological approach to understanding the person deepens the personalisation agenda
by turning away from the individualist perspective. On a practical level it means that the
absolute dignity of the person must be respected and recognised because it stems not from
any list of qualities or because of any kind of law. Rather the essential human dignity stems
from the unconditional love of God which is lavishly given in attention and engagement to
every person before they engage with anyone else.
However the importance of the theological perspective on personhood goes beyond a re-
enforcement of our practical approach. It provides another perspective on the link between
mission and service in our Lifehouses. Every person becomes a place where the presence of
God can potentially be experienced, not only by the other in me but also by me in the other.
The embodied acts of love we show in the movements of our relationships form a place
where the presence of God can be mediated. Through this understanding of our
personhood we may see the social action we undertake, the loving acts and supportive care
we offer to those we engage with, as truly sacramental. Just as Christ is the one true
sacrament, as our nature is transformed and our person is made new through the relational
movement of the self with God we become instances of that same sacrament.
This of course has not touched on many of the issues raised such as what it means to be
embodied, what this means for our understanding of the soul and a more fully worked
through practical application. My main points of development from this stage are three fold;
to design and carry out field research into the extent to which Salvationist Core Values are
embedded in work practices in Lifehouses, to asses further the importance of empathy for
the development of the person, and to develop a working practical model through the
concept of Stellvertretung (place sharing) in the work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.11 Whilst this
10 Rowan Williams, TheBody’s Grace, www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2011/08/24/3301238.htm,retrieved
16-4-2015
11 Andrew Root, Bonhoeffer as Youth Worker, Baker Academic: Grand Rapids,2014,KindleEdition.Andrew
Root translates Stellvertretung as placesharingand develops the concept as a practical conceptfor relational,
theological youth work.

7. project is still very much in its infancy, the initial points so far presented can provide an
initial way of understanding our social work through a theological medium which not only
places the person at the heart of what The Salvation Army does, but still places and will
continue to place God at the very centre of its work and mission.

8. Bibliography
AndrewRoot, BonhoefferasYouthWorker, BakerAcademic:GrandRapids,2014, Kindle
Sarah Carr, Personalisation: a rough guide, Social Care Institute for Excellence 2012, p. 2
Vladimir Lossky, “The Theological Notion of the Human Person”, In the Image and Likeness
of God, St Vladimir’s Seminary Press: New York 1974, p120
Rowan Williams, The Body’s Grace,
www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2011/08/24/3301238.htm
Rowan Williams, The Person and the Individual: Human Dignity, Human Relationships and
Human Limits, Theos 2013 p. 11
N. T. Wright, Mind, Spirit, Soul and Body: All for One and One for All. Reflections on Paul’s
Anthropology in his Complex Contexts,
http://ntwrightpage.com/Wright_SCP_MindSpiritSoulBody.htm,
www.personalisationagenda.org.uk, retrieved 25/6/15
http://www.salvationarmy.org.uk/salvation-army-doctrines - retrieved 20/8/2015