Christian Psychology and Intelligent Design

Posted on May 29, 2007

In February of this year, the Council of Representatives of the American Psychological Association adopted a resolution rejecting the teaching of intelligent design as science. The Council is the APA’s “supreme legislative and oversight body” that “speaks for its members on matters advancing psychology as a science, as a profession, and as a means of promoting health, education, and human welfare.” (http://www.apa.org/governance/rephandbook.pdf), so this resolution is notable. In doing this, APA “(1) recognized evolutionary theory as a major unifying force in contemporary science; (2) affirmed that fully understanding the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of humans and other animals requires attention to evolutionary heritage and processes; and (3) reaffirmed previous APA resolutions that endorsed the importance of teaching and research activities grounded in evolutionary reasoning as vital to psychological science.” (http://www.apa.org/science/psa/apr07id_prnt.html).
The complexity of the issues involved here precludes an adequate discussion in a single blog. However, a few things can be said.

Most obviously, this resolution strikes at the heart of the differences that distinguish modern psychology and Christian psychology. In passing the resolution, the APA unsurprisingly endorsed the neo-positivist sentiments and naturalistic worldview that undergird the project of modern psychology.
But the action reveals some assumptions regarding the nature of science. According to modernism, true science is based on methodological naturalism and a corresponding empiricism that requires it be restricted to describing reality solely in terms of natural processes. Consequently, reference to any transcendent influences on human dynamics is forbidden.

But shouldn’t a science strive to understand its object as fully as possible? How scientific is it to rule out a priori any causes other than natural? Can it be empirically proven that transcendent factors are not involved in human life? No. Can even the validity of the assumptions of naturalism be proven? No. Worldview beliefs are assumptions everyone must bring with them to their science. It would likely be embarrassing for modern psychologists to admit it, but their science too is based ultimately upon faith: faith in their system of psychological knowledge, their procedures for gathering knowledge, and the boundaries which they have established for their science. We are all in the same boat here. Christians are just more aware of this fact, simply because being in the minority has forced us to think more deeply about our knowledge-gathering assumptions. Nevertheless, this resolution by the APA is nothing other than science established by fiat, the naturalist majority enforcing its unfalsifiable assumptions regarding reality as the “Truth.”

I recognize that there are good Christians who hold to evolutionary theory, and that evolutionary theory is able to explain well many aspects of phylogenetic development that no one disputes (like new species of bacteria), including some simple psychological dynamics involved in mating and survival behavior (e.g., attachment; though I personally think the biblical and empirical evidence require some form of creationism to explain the history of life on earth). However, pure evolutionary theory is useless for explaining a whole host of higher psychological dynamics that would have been of no survival value in the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation (EEA: the African savannah a few hundred thousand years ago), when all homo sapien characteristics were supposed to have arisen, including advanced mathematical understanding (algebra and beyond), language of the complexity of ours, formal logic and advanced philosophical reasoning, religious experience and belief in supernatural beings, musical ability, and narrativity, to name a few. None of these would have led to greater reproductive or survival success back in the EEA. To suggest, as evolutionists have to, that they are exaptations—by-products of other evolved psychological dynamics—is fanciful, and no more scientific (according to their own rules) than the belief in the dependence of all humans upon God for their psychological well-being (Acts 14:17).

The resolution is also important for what it implies about what counts as scientific knowledge. Christians have long understood that humans are fundamentally relational—being made in the image of God—and influenced by indwelling sin—which unconsciously moves all people away from their Creator, and they have understood Christians to be regenerated, joined in union to Jesus Christ, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and in healing relationship with God. These are all psychological assertions, and they entail spiritual dimensions that transcend empirical observation, and cannot even be investigated according to the research rules of neo-positivism. Does that mean they are not psychological knowledge or that the study of them is not scientific. Again, no. Not according to historic Christianity. As a result, intelligent design theory and Christian psychology would seem to be fundamentally allied in today’s culture wars.

There is much at stake in how one defines science, and the APA’s willingness to pass the anti-ID resolution reveals its absolute commitment to naturalism and also makes clear how challenging will be the road ahead for Christian psychologists (as well as other believers in Transcendence in the field).

For more information about intelligent design theory visit
http://www.iscid.org/
http://www.designinference.com/
http://www.idthefuture.com/.

The effects of sin on the science of psychology

Posted on May 21, 2007

I said last week that I might address the topic of the distorting effects of sin on psychological writing, and so I will, but I’d like to cover a bit more territory than that.

It is a virtual truism for many Christians that everything humans do is marred by sin. The book of Romans teaches that humans are corrupt, hopeless, and morally and spiritually blind in themselves. When faced with God’s holy standards, sin is actually exacerbated (ch.7). If even human moral activity is marred by sin, then everything humans do is corrupt, including the science of psychology. So psychological research, writing and speaking, reading and hearing, teaching and studying, and counseling and being counseled are marred by sin. What are some implications of this conclusion?

1. Because humans are made in the image of God, they are made for God and enjoy fullest satisfaction only in God. They were made to be theocentric.
2. Being made in God’s image has left in all normal humans a sense of divinity. However, because of original or indwelling sin, we are simultaneously bent towards an autocentric orientation (towards self-centeredness or narcissism). This affects our perceptions, thinking, memories, and interpretations of the world, and our emotions, motives, and actions are ultimately more self-promoting than God-promoting. The former has been termed the noetic effects of sin (Moroney, 1990; Westphal, 1990), but psychologists might term it the cognitive effects of sin; and we might call the latter the carditive effects of sin, since it deals with the heart.
3. Non-Christian psychologies are not even aware of this fundamental cognitive blindness and affective/motivational misdirection, regarding the most important dimensions of human life. Consequently, autocentrism pervades their psychologies.
4. Christian psychology must contend explicitly for theocentrism and resist an implicit autocentrism throughout the entire discipline of psychology.
5. This ultimate psychological sin-dynamic influences some aspects of human functioning (and research and theory about those aspects) more than others. For example, it is most influential in areas of psychology the study of which are the most worldview-dependent: sexual and uniquely human motivation, personality, psychopathology, psychotherapy and counseling, and social relations; and it is less influential in areas of psychology the understanding of which are less worldview-dependent (and more mechanistic): neuropsychology, sensation and perception, animal learning, basic cognitive processes, and drive motivation.
6. Christians in psychology who are not mindful of this dynamic and are relatively unquestioning regarding the underlying worldview assumptions of non-Christian psychology are likely to be more influenced by the cognitive and carditive effects of sin in their psychological work than they are aware.
7. At the same time, since sin affects everyone, it also affects those who are the most aware of these effects, and that in at least two ways: a. Those who are more aware of these effects can become arrogant towards secular psychologists and Christians in psychology who are not as mindful as they are about these cognitive and carditive dynamics, and b. Being aware of these effects doesn’t immunize someone from them, so they too have to be constantly mindful that sin is affecting their thinking, feeling, and acting in autocentric ways of which they are currently unaware, and be constantly working to undermine those effects.
8. There is therefore a continual need to seek God’s wisdom and discernment through personal and public worship and to be open to the wisdom and discernment of others, regarding one’s own blindspots and the influences of remaining sin in one’s own life. This is an important part of a Christian psychology.

References

Moroney, S. (1999). The noetic effects of sin. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Westphal, M. (1990). Taking St. Paul seriously: Sin as an epistemological category. In T. P. Flint (Ed.), Christian philosophy (pp. 200-26). Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

The Created Order a Function of the Word of God

Posted on May 14, 2007

I think it would be helpful if Christian psychologists would consider the created order (including human beings) to be analogous to the word of God in Scripture. Let me offer a few reasons why I think this makes good sense.

Jonathan Edwards believed that “God is a communicating Being” (Yale Edition of his Works, Vol. 13, p. 410). It is fitting that God’s infinite glory be communicated by God’s creating a universe in which he could display his greatness and goodness. Signs communicate meaning or glory. Words are signs and are the signs most full of meaning. Of all terms that humans use to designate media of communication, words are the richest, most important, and most sophisticated. God has communicated himself—his glory, that is, the sum total of his attributes, including his wisdom—through the words of Scripture (most clearly), as well as through the rest of creation. In the Bible we learn that,

1) The Son of God is the Logos (Jo 1:1). This title is complex and pregnant with meaning. But (combined with Prov. 8 ) it seems to teach that the rationality or wisdom found throughout the universe is derived from God’s Son. As Carl Henry wrote, the Christian Logos doctrine presupposes, “an intelligible order or logos in things, an objective law which claims and binds man, and makes possible human understanding and valid knowledge…. The concept of the logos comprehends at once the interrelationship of thought, word, matter, nature, being and law.” (God, Revelation, and Authority, 1979, Vol. 3, 192). So the Son of God himself would seem to provide the unity that exists in the intelligibility of the universe. But in addition, he is also the focus of Scripture (Lu 24:27; Jo 5:39; 2Ti 3:15; Heb 1:2), and through the Spirit, the Son of God also inspired the Scriptures (Jo 14:26, 15:26; 1Pe 1:10-12)
2) All of creation is created by the word of God (Heb 11.3) or through the word of God (Jo 1.3), and it is held together by his word (Heb 1.3; in Christ all things consist, Col 1:17).
3) The created order is likened to Scripture in two notable passages, in that it is ordered according to God’s word (Ps 19; Ps 147). The created order utters forth words, without using human language (Ps 19); changes in the weather, events that seem to us “chaotic,” are expressions of the word of God. And most importantly, both Psalms suggest that the words of Scripture are parallel in some sense with these words spoken in creation.

So, perhaps we can say that the dynamic structures of the created order (including human beings) are established by God’s creative and providential word—declarative speech-acts that accomplish something in their being uttered—the precise form of the creation. Therefore, Scripture and the created order ought not to be understood as being fundamentally different from each other. They are both creations and are both a function of God’s word, but one of them (Scripture) also consists of human words. If this way of thinking is legitimate, perhaps it could help us overcome a number of dualisms that have bedeviled Christian thinking about human beings over the past few centuries, a sharp dichotomy between the Bible and the created order, and also between Scripture and the written records of valid scientific research or between theology and psychology. We will have to address the distorting effects of sin on all human psychological writing (perhaps next week), but that is another matter, that cannot be allowed to distort our recognition of the wordly basis of both Scripture and the creation. To take a verse completely out of context to make the point, “What God has joined together, let man not separate!” (Mt 19:6)

How comprehensive is Christian psychology?

Posted on May 7, 2007

Today, I would like to defend the following assertion: Because the triune God is the center of the Christian system of understanding and love, and because he created human beings and knows them exhaustively, a Christian psychology should ideally provide the most comprehensive understanding and appraisal of human beings available.
The noted reformed theologian, Abraham Kuyper (1898a), explained the existence of scientific “schools of thought” as a function of the diversity and complexity of the creation, combined with a need for the fallen mind to find in a “school” an ultimate sense of meaning and to fulfill the need for a comprehensive view of reality—for the intellectual key that unlocks all the secrets of knowledge. Ideally, Kuyper argued, Christians have no need for such an ultimate, comprehensive meaning-framework, since they are in a fulfilling relationship with God, the transcendent Creator of the meaning, diversity, and complexity of creation. Therefore, Christians do not have to take sides in debates between proponents of legitimate approaches to human nature, subscribing solely to a neuroscientific, a social developmental, or a social constructivist position. Christians are in Christ’s school, and they find their existential sense of coherence in him. They are his disciples, and not ultimately the disciples of Piaget, Bandura, or Minuchin. Consequently, the contributions of the best legitimate “schools” of psychology should be interpreted as simply diverse, but valid avenues to knowledge. Together, they provide finite humans with a more comprehensive approximation of God’s understanding of human beings, than any one of them could alone.
Another specifically theistic kind of inducement to a holistic approach to psychology is the fact of God’s authorship of human nature, which implicitly justifies all forms of investigation into that object. This gives Christians an additional reason, beyond what a secularist scientist would have, to investigate all available aspects of human nature as thoroughly as possible and to work towards as comprehensive an understanding as is humanly possible, using all means possible.
A Christian psychology aims at a comprehensive model of human beings, motivated and exemplified by the ideal of God’s comprehensive understanding of human beings. But how can anyone hope to know the mind and heart of God, which is shrouded in mystery and beyond human capacity to fully grasp (Ro 11:28)? Humans are necessarily limited to the extant empirical means available—but this includes, for the Christian, God’s personal revelations of his understandings and appraisals, as is found in the Bible. (Most of this blog is an excerpt from an article entitled “Towards a Philosophy of Science for Christian Psychology,” to be published this summer in Edification, the new journal of the SPC.)

A Genesis!

Posted on May 1, 2007

Welcome to our first SCP post! Each week one of our Society bloggers will post some of his or her thoughts on Christian psychology. Eric Johnson, our first blogger gives you some background on the task and issues of Christian psychology. He is an Associate Professor for Pastoral Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and the director of the Society for Christian Psychology. Look for his new book this September entitled, Foundations for Soul Care: A Christian Psychology Proposal. Take it away Eric.

Thanks Phil. We begin today a community blog sponsored by the Society for Christian Psychology. Over the next six months, six supporters of Christian psychology, having a variety of standpoints regarding psychology, counseling, and the Christian faith, will share some of their thoughts about the Christian psychology project. In addition to myself, the bloggers will include Kathrin Halder, Instructor at IGNIS, the Institute for Christian Psychology in Kitzingen, Germany; Mike McGuire, Associate Professor of Psychology and Counseling at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary; Ed Welch, Professor of Practical Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary; Mark Yarhouse, Professor of Psychology at Regent University; and Phil Monroe, Associate Professor of Counseling and Psychology at Biblical Theological Seminary, who is also supervising the blog for us. I’m starting out in May, and then each month thereafter, each of them will contribute at least one blog per week for their month. And then we’ll go through the cycle again.

For this first entry, I thought I would give an initial justification for the somewhat controversial label we are using for our approach. At first glance, it might appear that “Christian psychology” would be a poor choice, if we wanted to draw others into the project (which of course we do), especially since the term means different things to different people. In Introduction to Biblical Counseling, John MacArthur referred to the term as an oxymoron (1994, p. 10). At the other end of the spectrum, some have used it to label any activity in the field of psychology or counseling done by a Christian. Nevertheless, the term has a worthy pedigree and there are good reasons to think it a fitting label for what our Society is about, so that a distinct and useful understanding of the term can be settled upon. Let us consider some of the historical background to this term.

Depending on how one understands it, the Christian psychology paradigm might be said to have three historical “moments.” First, psychology of some kind can be found throughout the Bible and the writings of the Christian tradition. Because this psychology is found in the canon and classics of Christianity, it warrants the label Christian psychology. The fact that for most of Christian history the term itself was not used does not mean it did not exist. Few of these writings are scientific in the modern sense, but they nonetheless contain many insightful Christian descriptions of human nature and the care of souls, and it will be suggested they ought to provide the foundation and heart of a contemporary Christian psychology.

Second, Søren Kierkegaard identified himself as a Christian psychologist, and described what he was doing as Christian psychology, though his work was not empirical in the way modern psychology is (Evans, 1990; Kierkegaard, 1834/1946a; 1843/1941; 1849/1980). Before Freud was born, Kierkegaard put together in his many writings profound description of human beings and their development from a thoroughly Christian standpoint.

A third moment began less than two decades ago (of which the Society is a part), and its existence is closely tied to the recent revival of Christian philosophy in American academia over the past 30 years. Two participants in that enterprise, C. Stephen Evans and Robert C. Roberts—both of them experts in Kierkegaard—reactivated the term “Christian psychology” in some of their books and called on psychologists and counselors to work towards its agenda. In 1989 Evans advocated the development of a Christian psychology that would be substantially different from mainstream psychology in Wisdom and Humanness in Psychology: Prospects for a Christian Approach. The next year (1990) he published The Christian Psychology of Soren Kierkegaard, and sought to show how Kierkegaard had developed a philosophically sophisticated body of psychological literature that was distinctly Christian. Roberts wrote Taking the Word to Heart, published in 1994, where he developed a number of brief, but profound critiques of various modern psychological models of personality and psychotherapy, drawing out those features that comported well with a Christian understanding of human beings, but distinguishing himself from most integrationists by carefully demonstrating how these models also substantially diverged from Christian assumptions, concluding the book with an introductory Christian psychology of relationships. Then, with Mark Talbot, he (1997) contributed to and edited a set of essays that explored various aspects of human beings from an expressly Christian standpoint in Limning the Psyche: Explorations in Christian Psychology. Roberts wrote perhaps the most important chapter in the book, “Parameters of a Christian Psychology,” a summary of some unique themes for a Christian theory of personality.

In addition, quite independently of any activities in the States, a group of German Christian counselors banded together in 1986 to form IGNIS—a counseling center and institution of higher learning, and now an association of counselors dedicated to the development of Christian psychological theory and counseling practice, and they called what they were doing Christian psychology. Together with the work of Evans and Roberts, the leaders of IGNIS should be considered the founders of the contemporary moment of Christian psychology.

In light of this background, our Society settled on the term “Christian psychology” to label the agenda of developing a Christian version of a science of individual human beings, that includes theory-building, research, and counseling practice.

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