Virtue Reborn

Posted on May 9, 2010

[by Peter Hampson, Head of Department of Psychology, University of the West of England, Bristol. Professor Hampson is our blogger for the month of May, and this is his second post] 

I have recently greatly enjoyed reading Bishop Tom Wright’s excellent book, Virtue Reborn (Wright, 2010; US title After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters).  Wright is well known as an insightful and skilful scholar able to communicate clearly and with great verve to academic and lay audiences alike, and the present offering will only enhance his reputation. 

This is a book designed for the general reader but I would also recommend it to specialists of various sorts including Christian psychologists.  Wright’s case is that the time is ripe for a renewed understanding of virtue ethics and character in Christian life.   A long time ‘after virtue’, we have ‘virtue reborn’.

Many of us working on and thinking about the virtues and character have been influenced by the recovery of this tradition in philosophy and theology by scholars such as Elisabeth Anscombe and Alasdair MacIntyre.  These thinkers, and others, have skillfully reintroduced the concepts drawing on their philosophical and medieval and theological roots, particularly Aristotle and Aquinas.   Their influence began to spread long before the current interest in virtues by positive psychology.

For those in the broadly Catholic tradition there is something very familiar about all this talk of virtue.  Intellectual ideas about virtue, practice and character resonate for many of us with buried memories of school days and sermons in which tacit and practical understanding of such concepts remained even if they had to some extent lost their full intellectual genealogy.  But I have been concerned for some time that fellow Christians from Reformed and more Biblically based Protestant traditions may fail to appreciate the critical importance of virtue ethics, for psychology, therapy, the Christian life and our world as a whole, because of their understandable suspicion that the approach owes more to Athens rather than Jerusalem, draws on philosophy rather than Scripture, reinstates an emphasis on works, not grace, and ignores the importance of justification through faith.  All of these are regrettable misunderstandings, but my guess is that they may be blocks for professionals and lay alike, which possibly prevent the full and nuanced application of a virtue approach in therapy (though see Russell, 2009 for a welcome contribution).  If I am right, we need to acknowledge these barriers honestly and openly.

This is why Wright’s work is so important.   A respected Biblical scholar, he is able to construct a powerful case for the importance of virtues and character using Scriptural sources in preference to philosophical arguments.  Here is a work which complements existing treatments. He also grasps the importance of practice and expertise in the moral life.  Virtue and character are acquired through hard work. He writes: “Character is transformed by three things.  First, you have to aim at the right goal. Second, you need to figure out the steps you need to take to get to that goal. Third, those steps have to become habitual, a matter of second nature”, (Wright, 2010, p. 27).  It can be intellectually and emotionally reassuring for some of us to have a position validated from another perspective, but in this case it is also timely and helpful.

Wright discusses the need for virtues in the context of two dynamics.  The first is the dilemma of the rich young man who asks, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” The young man already believes and keeps the law but while necessary this is insufficient.  Wright points out that Jesus challenges him to a radical transformation of character with his instruction, “Follow me!”  Notice here the title of the US version of Wright’s book, After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters.  The rich young man already believes, now he needs to act.  The US title is well pitched for an audience which may be suspicious of virtue but strong on faith.  Marketing people do have their skills it seems!

But how shall he act?  Wright then points out that the challenge to the young man to act virtuously, to model himself on Jesus, cuts across two of today’s more popular individual approaches to morality.  The first is the often mentioned familiar alternative to virtue theory, the following of moral rules. The assumption that morality is effectively what happens when we abide by a list of ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ runs deep in our culture.  Rules, or prescriptions how to behave, have their roots in Kantian ethics as well, of course, in legalistic approaches to Christianity based on the Decalogue or on church strictures.  It is easy to see the limits of this.   The second approach is more insidious I think.  This is moral emotivism. According to this position, rather than being bound and controlled by dead laws, I must act according to my deepest feelings as to what is good and right.  I must act ‘authentically’ so as to be true to my ‘inner most self’.  The roots of this approach are complex and emerge variously in the Romantic movement’s reaction to rationalism, the expressivist approach to morality of logical positivism, and the rise of existentialism in the C20th.  I suspect, too, that an over emphasis on self actualization, the ‘right to choose’, and philosophically naïve notions of ‘freedom’ may also have been contributory factors.

As Wright points out the formation of character and the pursuit of virtue in a Christian context, transcends both of these positions, and lifts them to a new level.  He is at pains to develop an approach to virtue that is grounded in grace, inspired by prayer and worship, and modeling on the perfection of Christ. 

In next week’s blog I shall try to pull together some of these strands with those from my last posting.

References:

Russell, D.A. (2009). Identifying character strengths and virtue as the efficacious component of the therapist’s person. Edification: Journal of the Society for Christian Psychology, 3(2), 49-57.

Wright, T. Virtue Reborn. London: SPCK, 2010, (US title: After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters. New York: Harper Collins, 2010).

The Manhattan Declaration

Posted on December 7, 2009

[Eric Johnson is our guest blogger for December. Eric is the Director of the Society for Christian Psychology and professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. This is his first post].

In this week’s blog I want to call attention to an outstanding document that was recently released called the Manhattan Declaration (http://www.manhattandeclaration.org/). It is a very well-crafted statement on issues of contemporary cultural importance to those committed to historic Christianity, and it is signed by an impressive cross-section of evangelicals, Catholics, and Orthodox leaders. As such, it provides inspiration to us in the Society for Christian Psychology to pursue some of our aims. Let’s briefly consider the three main themes of the declaration.
Life
The Declaration begins with a section affirming human life and actions that support the sanctity and care of all human life, including unborn or abused children, racial minorities, victims of war, and the disabled and elderly. Psychologists and counselors might add to this list those with mental illness, particularly those who are homeless. The authors also criticize governmental policies that advance a culture of death, by increasing the number of abortions or deaths by euthanasia or promoting the destruction of embryos. Christian psychologists can support these goals by working with disadvantaged people and in pro-life clinics and doing research on such topics as war trauma, child abuse, abortion effects, and minority experience.
Marriage
Marriage is defined as a union of one man and one woman, and it is argued that marriage is an objective reality that ought not to be redefined according to personal preferences. The statement insightfully addresses the role of the body in human life. Humans are not mere centers of subjectivity, it is suggested, but embodied beings, and bodies constitute an important part of human reality. Consequently, the one-flesh union of man and woman seals, completes, and actualizes the covenantal union of human marriage. There cannot therefore be “a civil right to have a non-marital relationship treated as a marriage.” The value and dignity of those disposed to same-sex attraction is made clear, and the Declaration rightly acknowledges the church’s sins of judgmentalism as well as complicity in the weakening of marriage through sexual immortality and increased rates of illegitimate divorce among Christians.
Religious Liberty
The authors of the Declaration decry the contemporary promotion of intolerance under the guise of tolerance, and express concern that religious freedom is being increasingly threatened as Christian organizations and individuals are being forced either to violate their own convictions regarding issues of life and marriage in their vocations or ministries or to vacate the public square.

The Declaration concludes with a statement of support for governmental authorities, but also an acknowledgment that Christians must be prepared to obey God rather than comply with injustice.

There are other issues of importance in our day that were not addressed by this Declaration. However, these are among the most momentous. The Society similarly brings together Christians of different faith traditions, but in order to promote distinctly Christian psychological theory, research, and practice. Psychology in our day is a cultural institution and set of practices, as well as a body of literature, shaped by the dominant worldviews of its participants. Mainstream psychology today is a leader in the cultural revolution that the Manhattan Declaration is seeking to address and resist (e.g., see the APA’s resolution this past summer critical of sexual orientation change efforts; http://www.apa.org/releases/therapeutic.html). As a result, the Declaration serves the Society well as a model of the kind of reasoned, principled, and gracious discourse we too need to engage in regarding relevant psychological matters in the public square. There is already tremendous cultural pressure on Christians in psychology and counseling in America to conform to the dominant values in the field. (Someone has quipped that Christians in the field have been heading into the closet, while others have been coming out.) We cannot be silent about these matters, or we may soon find Christian academics, therapists, and counselors being forbidden to express their convictions which are unpopular or risk exclusion from public university faculties, grant awards, public mental health facilities, and licensure. Those in psychology and counseling who are committed to historic Christianity have a voice, and they must use it wisely, but courageously, for they too should have the right to be participants in the field of psychology, regardless of their worldview beliefs and minority status. The Society is committed to such participation.

I added my name to the over 250,000 people who have signed the Manhattan Declaration.

Levels of Engagement in Christian Psychology: Theology and Psychology – 2

Posted on November 15, 2009

[by Peter Hampson, Head of Department of Psychology, University of the West of England, Bristol. Professor Hampson is our blogger for the month of November, and this is his third post]

In what ways might philosophy and philosophical theology inform and assist Christian Psychology?  Last time, I briefly mentioned my debt to Alasdair MacIntyre’s intellectual journey. MacIntyre’s work has helped me understand that rational discourse between intellectual traditions is possible in a way that allows escape from the limitations of both a ‘one-size-fits-all’ modernist rationality, and an equally unsatisfactory to my mind, postmodern, narrative relativism.

A second major influence on my thinking has been discussions of the faith-reason relationship.  To some extent, such discussions have been at the heart of Christianity’s self understanding for last the last two thousand years, but certainly since the church fathers, and are part of our more general thinking about the relationship between Christianity and culture.  More recently, however, the debate has been developed by the late Pope John Paul II in his thoughtful and influential encyclical, Fides et Ratio (FR), where the dual dynamic of faith-seeking-understanding and understanding seeking completion and perfection through faith is sensitively explored. FR charts a careful course between a restricted view of reason as closed from belief or ‘ratiocinative’ on the one hand, and faith understood as divorced from reason (or fideism) on the other.  Interested readers might like to follow the link to read more:

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_15101998_fides-et-ratio_en.html

A further related powerful influence has been the Radical Orthodoxy project associated with Cambridge and Nottingham based theologians, John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, Graham Ward, Simon Oliver and others.  RO is a complex theological movement, emerging from a High Anglican context.  In tune with postmodernity, at its heart lies the recovery of theological concepts that have been obscured and distorted over the years especially since the Enlightenment.  To this extent it bears some resemblance with the nouvelle theologie movement which helped inform the second Vatican Council. One such concept is the patristic (neo-Platonic) understanding of ‘participation’.  In contrast to the idea that God is yet another entity, albeit a super one, or a ‘being amongst other beings’, and asserting the radical dependence of creation on God, participation invites us to think of our life ‘in God’ as the one in whom ‘we live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17:28) and completely and utterly depend. Developing this idea is beyond the scope of a brief blog, but suffice it to say that it sits well with a rejection of a ‘pure autonomous nature’ open to explanation through reductive ‘naturalism’, and implies that ultimately all our (fallen) human understanding can only be part of the divine understanding but that now, of course, we ‘see through a glass darkly’ (1 Corinthians 13:12).

If, ex hypothesi, reason, is not closed (as the secular, positivist scientism of a Richard Dawkins might suggest), and nature, while radically different from God is not radically distant from and in that sense separate from the Trinitarian God, as to be completely autonomous and solely explicable in secular terms, what is the relevance of this sort of understanding for the CP project?  In a nutshell, I suggest that it allows space for a secular understanding of the world, with which dialogue is possible, while at the same time clearly showing the limits of such secular understanding.  More particularly it implies that psychology as a scientific discipline will always be ‘incomplete’ if it lacks a broader philosophical and theological perspective.  Even psychology’s best accounts will be necessary but not sufficient, while its weakest will frequently be found to be conceptually distorted and impoverished.

As for faith, well, however else we construe it, the Christian tradition has been clear that faith is at least theological virtue, or what Thomas calls a ‘habitus‘, and I will explore the latter concept next time.

Levels of Engagement in Christian Psychology: Psychology and Theology (1)

Posted on November 8, 2009

[by Peter Hampson, Head of Department of Psychology, University of the West of England, Bristol. Professor Hampson is our blogger for the month of November, and this is his second post]

 In my last posting I began to suggest that there are two levels of engagement within the CP project.  At the strategic level, the Christian narrative positions psychology hermeneutically, by providing an overarching, meaningful, God-given and Christ-centered framework; within this, at the tactical level, there is space for useful truth-seeking, dialectical engagement between theology, philosophy and psychology. Both levels of engagement are presumably guided by the Spirit.  In line with this, in different though potentially related ways, thinkers seemingly as distinct as St Thomas Aquinas and Friedrich Schleiermacher see the truths of Christianity, (as captured in, say, ‘sacra doctrina’ or dogmatic and historical theology), as being in creative and positive interaction with philosophy and human knowledge (‘scientia‘ or ‘philosophical theology’).  This suggests that there should be room within the CP project as a whole for both the direct application of Christianity to theory and practice, and for more detailed conceptual engagement of psychology with other disciplines, especially theology, to allow us to train properly the next generation of therapists, counselors and practitioners, and to assure that their education is both faith based and intellectually sound.  We should be seeking to produce, I suggest, theologically and philosophically reflective, Christian psychologist practitioners. 

 I wonder, too, do such broad differences in levels of approach reflect in part differences between evangelical and apologetic strategies in Christian mission, with the direct, faith-based application of Christianity evincing the former, and the more dialectical theological engagement the latter? Interestingly, when addressing non-Christians in the Summa Contra Gentiles, Thomas artificially separates philosophical understanding of God from Christian truths in a way that he does not in the Summa Theologiae.  For apologetic purposes, Thomas sometimes found it convenient to use the language of reason separated from faith to communicate successfully with unbelievers.  There may be times when we need to do this and to indicate to our secular psychology colleagues simply and directly where we see psychology as limited within its own framework, at other times we may need to assert and apply the truths of Christianity more robustly, at yet other times we may need to engage in debates by deploying a more nuanced understanding of reason’s relation to faith.

 Is it also the case that the practicalities and real time choices of counseling and psychotherapy, and their meaning seeking and meaning making activities make more insistent the need for the CP architectonic, whereas the requirement to seek truth in the long term characterizes the theology-psychology project?  Do CP and theology-psychology approaches reflect different hidden background assumptions about the relative importance of theology? Finally, I suspect there is work to be done in teasing out how these approaches are positioned relative to long standing Christ and culture debates.

 I’ll leave these questions hanging for now, and begin to articulate how I see the relation between theology and psychology, the ‘tactical level’, being played out.

 Much of my thinking has been profoundly affected by the work of philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre particularly as developed from After Virtue (AV), through Whose Justice Which Rationality (WJWR), to Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (TRV).  As is well known, MacIntyre has not only helped re-establish the importance of virtue ethics but has shown how rationality is tradition dependent (AV), but that this need not trap us in postmodern relativism since ‘translatability’ or dialogue between ‘rival’ traditions is possible (WJWR).  A given tradition can in principle establish its superiority over another at points where one tradition experiences ‘epistemic crises’, which the challenging tradition can not only diagnose but also ‘solve’ to the afflicted traditions satisfaction, i.e. in its own terms (TRV).  It is this threefold understanding that allows me to claim, with my colleague Gavin D’Costa, that I am postmodern in outlook in accepting that rationality is tradition dependent, modern in accepting that rational dialogue between different rationalities is possible, and premodern in accepting the ultimate truth of the Christian tradition, and the power and validity of a broadly catholic, Thomist understanding of the relation between faith and reason.  This may sound like having one’s cake and eating it, but I suggest it is a useful way to avoid becoming trapped into either context free or totally context bound rationalities while also holding fast to what we know to be true, rooted as it is in Christ, who is Truth incarnate.

 I will develop this further in my next posting.

References

MacIntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue 2nd ed. (London: Duckworth, 2000, first ed., 1981).

 MacIntyre, Alasdair, Whose Justice, Which Rationality (London: Duckworth, 1988).

 MacIntyre, Alasdair, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia,

Genealogy and Tradition (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press,

1992).

Excellence Without a Soul: A Response to the Problem of the Modern University

Posted on August 24, 2009

(Paul C. Vitz is Professor of Psychology/Senior Scholar at the Institute for the Psychological Sciences and Professor of Psychology Emeritus at New York University. He is our guest blogger for the month of August, and this is his fourth post).

 Cambridge/Amherst Seminar: This 15- minute talk was given on Oct. 30, 2006 at Harvard University to a group of about 60 faculty members from Boston area universities, mostly from Harvard. It was also given on Oct. 31 at Amherst College to about 45 faculty members from Amherst area colleges. In each case it was a dinner address and was preceded by a 15-minute talk by Prof. Harry Lewis the former Dean of Harvard College. His address summarized the thesis of his book, Excellence Without A Soul: How A Great University Forgot Education (2006) and focused on moral errors in the conduct of major publicly known representatives of Harvard University, errors that exemplified a serious loss of moral vision.

 Before taking up the topic of the soulless modern university, and the need for rediscovery of moral leadership, I want to place the topic in a general cultural context.

    I believe there is reasonable evidence and consensus that we are coming to an end of the so-called modern period.   It is a commonplace to describe our present situation as post-modern.  This term, post-modern, in spite of its ambiguities refers to a kind of late modern period in which many of the traditional underpinnings and assumptions of modernity have been very seriously criticized or deconstructed.  In recent decades I see three major modern ideals that now show clear signs of completion and exhaustion.  The first is secularism.  In my graduate student day’s secularism was riding high.  Religion was seen as a thing of the past, which would soon finish withering and disappear, to be replaced by the modern, rational humanistic secular world.  Many psychologists and other social scientists interpreted their disciplines as part of this emerging secular triumph.  For Christianity, Harvey Cox’s Secular City (1965) is a good representative of this confident assumption.  It is now roughly forty years later and much of that secular confidence has evaporated. This has happened in part because of the remarkable and unexpected growth of religion in America and in much of the world. Indeed in the United States Evangelical Protestantism was beginning to emerge at the very moment when Harvey Cox was writing his book.  Since then in the United States we have seen a resurgence of Orthodox and Hasidic Judaism to the extent that today the future of Judaism is generally understood to be the future of its orthodox expressions.  There are now clear signs of a broad based grass roots revival of traditional Catholicism in the United States, a revival largely unobserved by the media. And, of course, Islam has shown much growth in many places.  There are still other examples of this religious growth ranging from Hinduism to Mormonism to Buddhism to New Age spirituality but I think the point is clear, religion has revived very strongly. One sign of this is the extent to which religion for better and worse is part of the headlines dealing with current events. 

       Ironically, post-modern critics of modernity by attacking the very concept of an objective knowledge that aimed to provide a widely accepted humanistic ethics have undermined much of the previous secular confidence. And, of course, no new generally accepted rational humanistic ethics has arisen. Instead we have postmodern support for a personally relative morality of anything goes plus the claim that any proposed objective basis for a moral norm is simply the disguised expression of a desire for power.  Furthermore, a disappointment with and wide- ranging criticism of science among post-modern and other critics has also eroded the belief in the possibility of a stable, generally acceptable secular society. Some of these critiques have focused on technology with its negative environmental impact; others have identified the agendas or goals of science as being set by the government and corporate sponsors of science. For many of quite different political persuasions science is not seen as an independent and honest moral discipline but as a kind of hired man for those who fund it.

    A second major modern ideal or emphasis of the modern period that is dying is socialism as broadly defined. By socialism I mean not only the growth of socialist programs within governments around the world, but also the general belief in the government’s capacity to assure the material and well-being of its citizens.  This modern assumption is losing much of its confidence and even its appeal. Throughout the world, socialist governments, which means for all practical purposes all of the modern states in the western world, and Japan, are aware of a looming crisis with respect to their social obligations.  People are no longer convinced that governments will have the money to pay for their huge social programs. Many governments, especially in Europe and Japan, recognize that there will not be an adequate work force to sustain their economy because of population declines that promise to become severe in the future.  In short, socialism is an idea that has largely been completed and generates very little idealistic enthusiasm among the young who today are often likely to see themselves as victims of their parent’s socialist systems. 

   The third major characteristic of modernism that is also beginning to show it’s age is what might be called “sexualism”. By this I mean the sexual revolution with its continued push toward more and more varied and extreme sexual expression.  This general attitude is familiar to all and is presently found in pressures for same sex marriage and now increasingly a return to polygamy or poly-amorous relationships as they are called in progressive circles. (The media seem to be using the term plural marriage.) Many kinds of high tech manipulation in the creation of children are another example of sexualism.  But this sexual revolution, as it is often called, is now rather old hat to many of our young people.  And the first serious criticisms of this way of life even in the university world have begun to appear even among former feminists.  The idea that your youthful days will be wonderful if you can hook up sexually with anyone you happen to feel attracted to after a few beers is far from convincing, especially for young women who often pay a heavier price for such pseudo-bonding.  One could interpret the whole preoccupation with date rape as an indirect expression of female college students’ despair over the present relation between the sexes.  Although sexual modernism and post-modernism seem firmly in place in our society, I would not be surprised to see emerge in future decades a counter-revolution expressed by intelligent and idealistic young people, a reaction tied to religious commitments.  In any case, sexualism as a new exciting personal and social idea has certainly lost its novelty and through the problems it causes has begun to create a serious re-evaluation. Thus, sexualism along with socialism and secularism is becoming a completed or exhausted movement.  One can say that all three of these modern ideals with their associated sources of meaning and values are, if you will, ” so last century.” And idealistic young people are especially uneasy with these tired modern ideas.

   A final important context for our seminar topic is the growth of Islam and the present conflict between Islam and the West.  One does not have to agree completely with Samuel Huntington’s (1996) thesis about a clash of civilizations, but it is probably safe to say that for many years in the future, and possibly for the rest of this century, a conflict between Islam and the West and in some respects explicitly between Islam and Christianity is going to be with us. If the challenge of Islam has a long-term future then I suggest that one of the effects of this challenge will be the increasing growth of religion in the West. Let me note my rationale for this hypothesis.  In the previous century the United States faced both internally and externally, the challenge of socialism and communism.  The most dramatic example obviously was the conflict with the Soviet Union, but the challenge existed long before communism took over in Russia.  One profound effect of our competition with socialism and communism was the extent to which we took on socialist characteristics ourselves. We developed many essentially “socialist” government programs.  In Europe Socialist political parties became commonplace. That is, one of the major consequences of this great struggle was that we became like our enemy because we had to respond to their legitimate criticisms of us. Likewise, the Islamic critique of the godless, commercialized and sexualized West has great validity and resonates with millions of Westerners; to the extent that Islamic criticism and pressure continue in the decades ahead, we will have to shore up our own religious and moral response, and a Western godless and self indulgent society will seem increasingly weak and indefensible.

     Now, one important consequence of this modern and even postmodern completion is what I believe is a widespread quietly developing interest in a new, positive approach to many previously neglected or rejected questions and topics. Indeed, the revival of religion is one major example of this new mentality. After all religion was reliably rejected by modern and postmodern thinkers.  For want of a better term I have referred to this possible new and emerging cultural period as “transmodern“. By transmodern I mean a transformation and transcendence of the modern and postmodern worldview. Thus, transmodern is not a rejection of modernism but a transforming of it in the service of transcendent ideas. By transcendent I include both religious and spiritual interpretations, as well as idealist and high ethical concerns.  I believe important early expressions of such a mentality are already present in many of the arts, in philosophy and in religion. (Some examples are the philosophy and theology of the previous and the present pope; the recent writings of the novelist Tom Wolfe such as his essay “I am sorry but your soul just died”; Harvard’s Prof. Harvey Mansfield and many, many others.). However, I wish to focus on a transmodern phenomenon that has recently emerged in psychology. The so-called “positive psychology” pioneered primarily by Prof. Martin Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania is an example of an idealistic new psychology that is based on the virtues. This psychology of the virtues proposed and developed by a prominent secular psychologist has quickly established itself as an important new field of both empirical and theoretical psychology. Its importance lies in its emphasis on ideals of the good or flourishing life and on its placing of purpose or teleology back at the center of psychology, especially of academic, research psychology. In addition the psychology of the virtues has begun to reestablish important connections between psychology and philosophy that had long been neglected.  This focus on the virtues is -one might say- psychology’s rediscovery of the wheel, of what had long been known. However, in view of psychology’s influential role in American society and because the empirical method is likely to find new ways in which the virtues can be learned and applied, I anticipate that this new virtues psychology will have serious cultural importance. Already, the psychology of forgiveness has received wide attention in the media and elsewhere. Psychologists focusing on the study of such virtues as love, gratitude, justice, honesty and courage are likely to have their work generate significant public interest as well.

   The decline of modernism, specifically of secularism, socialism and sexualism, the rise of the Islamic challenge to the West, the growth of religion and more recently the interest in virtue, provide large cultural contexts for why I believe religion and in particular God must return to and be part of our elite universities if they wish to remain relevant in the coming century.  However, for most of our elite universities and in particular for Harvard there is a historical and institutional reason why God should come back.  The problem of the absence of a soul is really the problem of the absence of God.  The idea that Harvard has turned its back on God would have been considered impossible by the founders of the college over three hundred years ago.  Harvard was founded and in many respects formed as a Christian seminary or college.  Over the centuries Harvard like most of our elite universities first neglected, then forgot and now has rejected God. This I suggest is no longer acceptable. Thus the first reason for bringing back God is that any institution that turns its back on its founding principals, on its founding charism as we say in Catholic circles, is in danger of cutting off its basic life principle and motivation for future growth. The convincing lament of soul-less ness so well described by Dean Lewis can be understood, at least in part, as a consequence of Harvard’s rejection of its founding principles and heritage. A second important reason for re-introducing God is the basic commitment to intellectual and moral truth that characterizes any genuine university.   The impressive number of important contemporary intellectuals who believe in God is something that the modern university has closed its eyes to.  Serious theists are rarely encouraged, much less honored, at our premier universities. Atheism or at least an active skepticism is the standard operating position in our academies.  Nevertheless for many years now increasing numbers of intelligent believers have come onto the intellectual scene. Much of the recovery of a theistic mentality has happened outside of our universities where, of course, so much of the country’s intellectual life has been happening in the last few decades- in think tanks and private institutes.

    Let me almost conclude by suggesting that a university that is looking for a soul should sponsor a series of talks given by prominent intellectuals who believe in God.  This series of lectures would not focus on argument and dialectic. Instead, the talks would present examples of accomplished intellectuals and scholars whose belief in God has been important for their intellectual work and also for their personal and moral integrity. It should not be feared that such speakers Protestant, Catholic, Jewish or other would attempt though argument to impose their views.  Instead, this kind of lecture series would be a small step in the right direction for any university or college that understands that it has lost its vision in today’s world of nihilistic relativism.

    This proposed lecture series, which could be called Plan A, however, might seem too unsuited even too radical for the present university scene, too politically loaded for professors or administrators to feel comfortable in such a sponsorship. In addition, the need for a new moral vision is so immediate that a positive treatment of God however stimulating might be too abstract or removed from such a more pressing need. So, I propose a Plan B or fallback position for those wanting some constructive but more concrete response to the moral vacuum on campus. Let me suggest a different series of lectures by academics and intellectuals focused on the recovery of the great virtue tradition – a tradition with a long Western heritage but also one found in all the world’s major civilizations. A good lead speaker might be Prof. Seligman but there are many fine philosophers, theologians, psychologists and cultural commentators who would be appropriate. I believe none of us would be surprised if college students’ gave an enthusiastic response to intelligent new treatments of the topic of the virtues rediscovered. For many students are hungry not only for some kind of moral vision, but also for evidence that their university is aware of their need and has something positive and exciting to satisfy it.

Christian Spirituality vs. Generic Spirituality

Posted on January 19, 2009

[This is the 2nd post from Dr. Eric Johnson (Southern Seminary; Director of this Society) for January 2009. This month he is blogging about soul care and spirituality in counseling.]

 

Over the past two decades, spirituality has become increasingly recognized in contemporary psychotherapy and counseling to be a valuable resource for some persons in their journey toward wholeness. Given the historical hostility towards religion during the previous 80 years in these fields, this change in perspective is nothing short of revolutionary. Since this change began, the American Psychological Association and many other mainstream psychology publishers have published dozens of books on the role of spirituality in therapy.

 

Christian psychologists rejoice in these developments. They have created an opening in training and counseling contexts for Christians to advocate and use spiritual techniques and make reference to spiritual teachings in therapy. All this is central to a Christian psychology approach to therapy. However, from our standpoint, there is a serious limitation to the contemporary advocacy of spirituality: it permits the advocacy of a generic type of spirituality, but not one that promotes a particular faith perspective. Counselors currently may ask questions about “religion” and “spirituality” in general, encourage counselees to explore their own faith tradition, and perhaps even promote the use of spiritual practices, but they are not allowed to advocate for a particular faith.

 

But such restrictions perpetuate a modernist kind of unreality regarding these topics, since most people do not believe in generic religion or spirituality—most believe in a specific religion and spirituality that has certain tenets that distinguish it from others.

 

Moreover, just as it is unethical to force counselees to accept the beliefs of their counselors, it is also unethical to force counselors to be inauthentic regarding their own soul-healing beliefs. Christians believe that an honest, sincere faith in Christ is the best way for one to grow in psychological wellbeing. Secularists and adherents of a generic-faith spirituality have their own views on such matters, but they (and notably, Buddhists) should not be the only ones who are permitted to counsel within their worldview understanding of psychological wellbeing. Modernism has been remarkably successful in persuading its adherents that the sharing of all other worldview beliefs are off-limits in therapy and that only its worldview beliefs are legitimate and only its assumptions should control how therapy is done—and this continues to affect contemporary thinking about spirituality. But justice requires that Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, as well as Christian therapists be given the same freedoms that modern, “generic-faith” therapists have to discern what is best to share to promote their clients’ wellbeing. Of course, there is the genuine concern that some “evangelists” would manipulate vulnerable counselees.[1] Training in sensitive, appropriate sharing must begin in graduate school, and Christians will have to be very clear about their respect for the rights of their clients to choose for themselves what they need. But the mature, well-trained Christian counselors I know have no desire to promote superficial “conversions” anyway, since they believe their counselees are made in the image of God so they genuinely need to freely determine for themselves their ultimate beliefs—this is the only kind of Christianity worth promoting. Besides, therapists who are resistant to this Christian understanding will lose clients.

 

But when working with Christian counselees, there can be no objection to counselors advocating for the use of the Christian spiritual disciplines (prayer, Bible reading, the reading of spiritual books, meditation, fasting, healthy church involvement, and so on), and they should be able to talk freely about the tremendous psychospiritual resources of the Christian faith, including God’s beauty; Christ’s life, death, and resurrection; identity in Christ; the blessings of salvation; heaven; and so on; to explore their rich therapeutic potential with their counselees.

 

So, while Christian psychologists are delighted about the new openness to spirituality in our day, I think we ought to avoid its generic versions, and promote instead a distinctively Christian spirituality, the features of which we will discuss next week.


[1] But even that cuts both ways. Tapes I’ve seen of Carl Rogers show a very sophisticated and subtle form of humanistic evangelism, and surely he’s not alone.

Reconceptualizing Virtue in Christian Psychology: Part 1

Posted on March 17, 2008

Editor’s note: This posting is from Wolfram Soldan, colleague of Kathrin Halder at IGNIS–this month’s blogger.

I am not a “virtue-psychologist.” I encountered the topic while studying the opposite area of “sin” within the scope of forgiveness. Nevertheless I made some interesting discoveries, when I traced the concept in the Christian Bible.

We might say that the “Virtue-Bible” of positive psychology is Seligman and Peterson’s (2004) Character Strengths and Virtues, and it uses very ambitious expressions for describing the topic, e.g.: “fulfillment”, “the good life for oneself and for others”, “… effort, the willful choice and pursuit over time of morally praiseworthy activities” (p 17). The Authors try to distill six supposedly trans-cultural “core moral virtues” (p28f): “wisdom and knowledge,” “courage,” “humanity” (including love), “justice,” “temperance,” and “transcendence.”

As we will see, the Bible includes the term “virtue” (Gk. arete) as well as terms that correspond to the six “core virtues”: wisdom/sophia/knowledge/gnosis, courage/hypomone, love/agape, justice/dikaiosyne, temperance/enkrateia, transcendence/phobos theou). Of course, the interpretion of such important words is necessarily complex, so not everyone will agree my choices, but I invite you to investigate them for yourself.

The contemporary movement of positive psychology is dealing with very important topics that up to now only theologians or philosophers worked on. The merit of positive psychology is to highlight moral reality, which were not investigated by modern psychology for decades, because of its positivistic paradigm.

In typical modern psychology research, secular positive psychology authors stress the following qualities:
• measurability (in self-report questionnaires),
• trans-cultural generalizibility and
• the study of long-term individual, character-traits

However, questions can be raised about all three of these characteristics, as far as moral virtues are concerned, as we will see. On the other hand, sometimes the secular study of the core-virtues makes mention of their relational quality.

If I compare their orientation with the Bible’s approach to these topics, some significant distinctives can be seen:
The abstract term “virtue” is rare in the Bible. One finds “arête” in only two passages, used a total of four times; and none of them in the Old Testament (OT). “Arete” has a very specific meaning. To show this I will translate from the German Dictionary of the New Testament (Bauer/Aland 1988). “In the usual meaning of good behaviour, virtue … Phl 4:8 … 2Pe 1:5. … according to a linguistic usage that utilizes arete and doxa as synonyms and also finds his expression in the assorting of both terms beyond the OT (Is 42:8,12), the Septuagint renders hod, glory, brilliance (Hab 3:3; Zech 6:13), and also tohila, praise, extolling (Is) with arete.… Godly (showing of his) power, miracle, … also the strength of God. This is surely the meaning in 2Pe 1:3.” Both New Testament passages put “virtue” in the context of the grace and power of God, of faith and peace, and most importantly, a close relation with God (Phl: being in Christ. In 2 Peter, to being participants in God’s nature).

To summarize: Though the abstract term “virtue” is rare in the Bible, when mentioned it has to do mainly with a dynamic relation(ship) with God as its aim and center. Individual human character traits (the primary focus of secular positive psychology) is subordinate to this central relationship.

References
1. Bauer, W. (1988). Griechisch-deutsches Wörterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen Testaments und der frühchristlichen Literatur. Berlin/New York: deGruyter

2. Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2004). Character Strengths and Virtues. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

The Social Context of Psychotherapy

Posted on February 25, 2008

This is my last installment of the SCP blog for February. We are continuing our discussion of Tjeltveit’s book, Ethics and Values in Psychotherapy. Although I will not be able to finish the discussion of Tjeltveit’s book on the SCP blog, I will continue a discussion of it on my blog, and readers are welcome to follow along there (www.psychologyandchristianity.wordpress.com).

In Chapter 7 Tjeltveit discusses the “social context of psychotherapy.” That is, he locates the practice of psychotherapy in the context of how it functions within society. He discusses psychotherapy’s medical heritage including bioethics and medical ethics and the two emphases of “the idea of the professional and a focus on the individual client” (p. 132). Other influences from medicine include reductionism in the form of limiting psychotherapy’s focus to a medical focus of symptom reduction. He seems to suggest that there is much more to biopsychosocial problems than merely what is understood in terms of a “medical issue”.

The other major social context in which psychotherapy occurs is business. Psychotherapy has become a “business relationship” (p. 139) in which there is an exchange of services that occurs in the context of economics (in which resources either contribute or impeded goals being met) and limited financial resources (of third-party payors, including government, insurance companies, employers, and so on). Tjeltveit observes that there is a risk of a kind of “ethical reductionism” (p. 141) to the extent that businesses “consider economic considerations alone” (p. 141).

I agree with Tjeltveit that psychotherapy occurs in the social contexts of its medical heritage and business. The challenge for Christian psychology is to reflect upon these social contexts and make intentional decisions about how Christian psychology ought to function within culture and society – to cast a vision for such innovative practice. I dare say that most Christians practicing clinical psychology and related mental health disciplines – most Christians providing psychotherapy – do so out of these social contexts but do not reflect upon the heritage or consider the implications.

Let’s think about this: How do you see these social contexts shaping the field and the practice of Christian practice for good or for ill? For example, the use of the “50-minute hour,” the fee for service model, and billing services to insurance or employers. What would a distinctively Christian psychology have looked like had it not been shaped as much as it has been by these social contexts? Are there places in our culture where this is occuring? How might we develop innovative practice in this area?

Approaches to “Values”

Posted on February 18, 2008

We have been learning about ethics from Alan Tjeltveit’s book, Ethics and Values in Psychotherapy. Last week we discussed the distinction between being an ethicist and being a moralist. In Chapter 5 Tjeltveit takes on the issues related to ways people understand “values.” He says, “We need to move beyond recognizing that ‘Therapy is not value-free’ to a well-developed understanding of the ways in which it is value-laden.” (p. 83).He then unpacks a few approaches to values (from pp. 84-85):

• values as psychological (e.g., when Skinner defines something as good based on how much reinforcement it provides; it simply describes what is valued)
• values as ethical (e.g., what ought to be valued rather than merely an account of what is desired)
• values as a means by which the powerful impose their will on the weak (an assertion, really, by those in power)
• values as choices (to be a genuine, authentic value is to have been chosen freely)
• values as authentic expressions of an individual’s nature (self-actualization)
• values as cultural and historical (context-specific)

When I first read the various approaches to values, I was struck by the variety, of course, but also what is often implicit in psychotherapy today. There are a lot of implicit assumptions about values based upon what is a genuinely free choice, what is authentic (because of our field’s emphasis on self-actualization), and, more recently, perhaps due to the influence of post-modernism, what is valued within a culture and what is imposed (by the majority, the privileged) on others (the marginalized). It isn’t always consistent, either. Nor is it taught explicitly. But these approaches to values exist in the field today and enjoy their status without having been argued for explicitly.

So what do you think? What is your definition of values? What definition of values best reflects a distinctively Christian psychology? How might one’s definition influence one’s clinical practice? Can definitions (of values) be matched with specific purposes in psychotherapy?

On Being an Ethicist

Posted on February 10, 2008

[Editor's note: Mark Yarhouse is blogging for us during the month of February.]

Let’s continue our discussion of a couple of specific and relevant concepts from Alan Tjeltveit’s book, Ethics and Values in Psychotherapy, In chapter three Tjeltveit defines an ethicist, and he makes the distinction between psychotherapist as ethicist and moralist. An ethicist is someone who has knowledge and perhaps training, who shows discernment, careful evaluation, and good judgment, and who is recognized for these qualities within a community. Ethicists hold ethical convictions and influence others either directly or indirectly. According to Tjeltveit, a psychotherapist/ethicist can function in many ways, such as teaching, consulting, coaching, and advocacy, to name a few.

Tjeltveit contrasts being an ethicist with being a moralist. While an ethicist creates space for others to reason, draw their own conclusions, and make their own decisions, a moralist is one who attempts to impose his or her beliefs upon others.

One of the main fears secular psychologists appear to have about Christian psychologists is that Christian psychologists will function as moralists in therapy. My question is whether that is a legitimate concern? What influences exist that would lead a Christian psychotherapist toward being either an ethicist or a moralist? Do these same concerns exist for other psychotherapists? In other words, we do not want to treat Christian psychotherapists as different from other psychotherapists, if the same concerns exist for others who provide therapy out of central, organizing convictions about significant aspects of reality.

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