EMCAPP Journal 2

4 The term Christian psychology has been used in a variety of ways to refer to things that are in some cases opposed to each other. For example, to some it refers simply to the work of any Christian engaged in the science or practice of psychology; to others it is a derogatory label applied to the work of Christians who compromise their faith by attempting to integrate it with modern psychology. The Society for Christian Psychology is trying to advance a specific understanding of the term (as the reader will see in its mission statement). But even the members of the Society do not entirely agree about what a Christian psy- chology is. So it would be presumptuous for anyone to think he or she could provide the authoritative definition of Christian psychology. This article, then, should be seen as simply one attempt to delineate something of what a Christian psychology might be. The Science of Psychology Most people today understand psychology to be a sci- ence, and that is assumed by the Society. But what is a science? A broad definition would be that a science is an intellectual discipline with its own rules and activities for engaging in a systematic, careful enquiry into a particular object of study. In the case of psychology, the object of study is individual human beings. Its activities include, along with other sciences: research, theory-building, and education and publication (the cultural dissemination of its findings and conclusions), but psychology also in- cludes some applied activities, for example, assessment and the care of souls. All sciences are conducted within and guided by a world-view, a set of foundational as- sumptions regarding reality (Naugle, 2002; what Watson, 1993, calls a Christian ideological surround). Because of the complexity of individual human beings, world-view assumptions regarding human beings will not all be the same among various well-developed, but distinct intel- lectual communities, resulting then in different versions of psychology. Christian psychology, then, is that version of the science and practice of psychology grounded in a Christian world-view. The Hegemony of Modern Psychology If this is true, we would expect that a Christian psycho- logy would be distinguishable in at least some respects from versions of psychology that derive from alternati- ve world-views, for example, Buddhist, Islamic, Marxist, postmodern, and most importantly, modern psychology, the version that has been the most successful in the West in laying claim to being the only viable version of psy- chology there is. With few exceptions, it is the only ver- sion taught by psychology faculty at American colleges and universities, and it is the only approach represented What is a Christian Psychology?1 By Eric L. Johnson EMCAPP in most psychology journals and publishing houses. Be- cause of its broad acceptance, it is difficult to even raise the issue of versions of psychology, since it is so pervasi- vely assumed today that modern psychology is the only legitimate version of psychology. However, this simply is not true. To provide an extant, non-Christian examp- le, there is a substantial, distinct literature of Buddhist psychology (e.g., see De Silva, 2001; Kalupahana, 1987; Rygal-Mtshan, 1987; Welwood, 2002). Distinctive Features of the Modern Version of Psycho- logy Modern psychology is distinguished by its adherence to the world-view of modernism. Two of major sets of as- sumptions that constitute the modernist world-view are positivism (see Stroud, 1992) and secularism. Together, positivism and secularism maintain that publicly verifi- able, empirical investigation and reason are the only le- gitimate sources of knowledge (certainly not the super- natural). Confidence in the validity of these two sources makes plausible the ideal of a universal knowledge, that is, an unbiased knowledge solely based on empirical evi- dence that could be recognized by all rational, well-trai- ned humans, supposedly regardless of world-view. Based on modernism, modern psychology has attempted to de- velop a universal, secular body of knowledge regarding individual human beings. To achieve this aim, modern psychology followed the lead of the natural sciences and eschewed all axiological assumptions (those dealing with values and ethics) and metaphysical assumptions (those dealing with the nature of things), and sought merely to describe how human beings appear to us and what in- fluences them, without reference to transcendent norms and ontological categories. Modern psychology has been flourishing for over 100 ye- ars, and it has developed an extremely rich and varied literature describing human beings. However, in keeping with its world-view, it is universally secular. Christianity, in contrast, has its own legitimate, rational world-view (and has been around a lot longer than modernism!). Consequently, it does not need to submit it‘s own thin- king about knowledge to the world-view assumptions of secularists. On the contrary, it has some of its own crite- ria for what counts as knowledge, providing it some dis- tinct sources of psychological knowledge (e.g., the Bible, the Christian tradition, and the Holy Spirit). Two Communities of Scientists? The great theologian and Christian leader Abraham Kuy- per (n.d.; 1998; who was also prime minister of Holland in 1904-08) recognized just such complexity regarding the contribution of Christian thought, when he wrote in the late 1800‘s of two kinds of science. Following Augusti- ne—and much of the Christian tradition after him—Kuy- per believed that history is composed of fundamentally two groups of humanity, Christians and non-Christians, and that the former are distinguished from the latter by having been regenerated and given a new orientation to reality, the whole of which Kuyper called palingenesis (from the Greek word for regeneration). 1 First published: SCP Newsletter 2005 Vol 1, Issue 1. publ. by AACC

EMCAPP Journal 2

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