2008 March-- Society for Christian Psychology

Reconceptualizing Virtue in Christian Psychology, Part 2

Posted on March 24, 2008

[Editor's note: This is the last post for the month of March, 2008. This post is the second of two from Wolfram Soldan of IGNIS.]

Last week we compared the Christian and secular approaches to virtue in general. This week I would like to take a look at the six core-virtues developed by Peterson & Seligman (2004) in their important, but secular catalogue of the virtues. As I mentioned last week, there are corresponding biblical terms, so I have added the key Greek terms to show the biblical origins of the Christian understanding of the core-virtues.
• Wisdom and knowledge (sophia, words derived from ginosko): Bible and Positive Psychology similarly understand wisdom as the practice of “the good life” and don’t equate it with intelligence. But in the Bible the aim of human wisdom and knowledge is directed explicitly to God and is closely tied to intimate and obedient relationship with him. This connection is made throughout the entire Bible, in doctrinal passages (e.g., Col 2:2), as well as proverbs, parables, and narratives.
• Courage (hypomone): Most often the Bible speaks about this topic in opposition to fear especially the fear of man. But the concept “endurance” (hypomone) comes close to the definition of courage developed by Peterson & Seligman. Even so, this term is also more associated with one’s relationship to God than with stable human traits (see for example to story of Peter in Jo 13: 38, 18:10f, 26f, 21:15ff).
• Love (agape): Humans are connected to each other by altruistic love according to Peterson & Seligman. Although Christians often consider agape to be the highest virtue, it is clear that in biblical understanding it is something that comes entirely from God, as a fruit (Gal 5:22), as a way (1Co 12:31b), as an outpouring (Rm 5:5), and at last even as God in the person of Christ (1Jn 4:16).
• Justice (dikaiosyne): The Bible and Positive Psychology agree that justice should rule social human relationships. Justice, however, in the Bible is based in one’s relationship to God (e.g., Mt 5:20, 6:33) and His (eternal) reign. (e.g. Ps 15, Prov 11) that consider the character-trait aspect, Paul is stressing the character of gift or grace so much, that justice as a (mere) human character-trait almost is vanishing. But even in the OT the justice of God or given by God is the much more important and more frequently mentioned topic than the aspect of character trait.
• Temperence (enkrateia): Very near to the meaning offered by Peterson & Seligman is the Greek root “enkrat(eia)” that does not convey the relational dimension as much as the other biblical virtue-terms do. But it is not often used (6 times: 3 times as a noun, elsewhere as a verb or adjective), and some Bible translations misread it as “abstinence” instead of temperance. The long passage on virtue in 2Pe 1 is very interesting. It contains several virtue-terms (besides one of the few uses of the term virtue itself, it includes the already mentioned endurance, and love as the ultimate goal), but all in a very clear relational context to God in an interesting hierarchical ordinance. In the middle of this list is enkrateia.
• Transcendence obviously is much more personal, intense, intimate and specific in its meaning in the Bible than one will find in contemporary Positive Psychology. In fact, the abstract term “transcendence” has no place in the Bible, since it doesn’t make a philosophical distinction between a divine and a creational realm, so much as a division between holy and unholy.

So a look at individual virtues underscores last week’s point that the virtues in the Bible have basically a relational quality, particularly focused on God. This leads us to question the modern Positive Psychology emphasis on virtues as stable character traits. Also, the possibility of faking the virtues is taken for granted. With this background, basing one’s science of the virtues on self-report questionnaires seems highly questionable (cf., Ps 139:23f). The very dynamic, theocentric and relational orientation to the virtues in the Bible makes it highly relevant to therapy, but it would seem to pose a big problem for serious empirical research (especially quantitative).

References

Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2004). Character strengths and virtues. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

Filed Under Christian Psychology, Faith and Science, Virtues, Wolfram Soldan | 1 Comment

Reconceptualizing Virtue in Christian Psychology, Part 2

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