EMCAPP Journal 2

62 Christian Psychology Comments on Agnes May’s “14 Theses on possibilities and limits of human knowledge” Robert Roberts Agnes May points out in her summary that Christian psychology has a stake in personal knowledge of God, even if we think of Christian psychology as an academic discipline that parallels some of the disciplines pursued in secular university psychology departments. That is, each practitioner of Christian psychology will be a person of prayer and other disciplines such as alms-giving, devotio- nal reading of Scripture, fasting, and communal worship. Such disciplines will be practiced alongside the “stan- dard” modern psychological disciplines such as statistics and probability, experimental design, the clinical inter- view, and the reading of professional literature. Nothing in the practice of secular psychology quite parallels these personal Christian disciplines, though individual secular psychologists may practice something analogous. The re- ason for this difference is that the Christian psychologist has a special appreciation for a dimension of knowledge that is not likely to be emphasized in ordinary university- style psychology. That knowledge is a kind of love and fellowship with the Source of all truth and the Creator of all the subjects that psychology studies and seeks to help. It is a direct and ongoing acquaintance with the One, a relationship with whom the Christian psychologist belie- ves to be a necessary foundation of the best and healthiest possible human life. Some secular psychologists, and indeed even some Chris- tian psychologists, may think of psychology as a purely “intellectual” discipline, a discipline that is practiced en- tirely by “techniques” like controlled experimental obser- vation, surveys, and statistical analysis, but the Christian psychologist suggested by Agnes May’s fine article will re- alize the existence of a deep kind of knowledge of persons that cannot be achieved by such “intellectual” disciplines alone. I think Agnes would agree that the scare-quotes belong around the word ‘intellectual’ to indicate that such thinking is an abstraction from genuine knowledge and intellect, and is not the whole of psychology, if we take psychology to be the knowledge of persons. It is people, and not techniques, who know people. People use tech- niques in the pursuit of knowledge, but the techniques only yield at best aspects of the knowledge of persons. And the point of the disciplines of prayer and acts of mercy that I mentioned above is to form persons who are more complete than otherwise they would be, more complete by being in intimate fellowship and love with the ultimate persons of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. People who are more complete in this personal way will have more thoroughly integrated the Christian “model” of the understanding of persons than those who have learned their theology or their Christian anthropology merely as a system of theological ideas, another psycho- logical “theory” or metaphysical outlook. The biblical terms for the states of the person who has been formed by the Christian disciplines are the names given by Paul the apostle to the fruit of the Holy Spirit: love, forgive- ness, thanksgiving, patience, forbearance, perseverance, compassion, humility, hope, kindness, and peace. These are the traits of persons who dwell in the presence of God and are members of his kingdom. And each of them is in its own way an outlook, a vantage point, a perspective from which persons are seen and thus known. That’s why the spiritual disciplines are as much a part of the Chris- tian psychologist’s practice as any of the investigative techniques that are ordinarily thought to constitute the discipline of psychology. Robert C. Roberts, U.S.A. Distinguished Profes- sor of Ethics Baylor University, Areas of Interest: Ethics (especially virtues), Kierkegaard, Emotion Theory, Moral Psychology, Epistemology Krzysztof Wojcieszek It is not easy to comment on the text. I agree on many propositions contained in this summary by Agnes May, especially since the truth of some of them I have experi- enced personally. But there are threads in the text of Agnes, which I would gladly have presented differently. Maybe I‘ll start from that, from what I strongly agree with. This thesis is: truth is personal, and even: the truth is a Person. The Age of Science has accustomed us to a posi- tivistic recognition of knowledge, and more, to identify knowledge with truth. However, the truth is personal. If you are sitting in front of a person dear to you, of course, you can recognize him or her as a set of atoms, processes, flows of energy and cybernetic mechanisms. But it is clear that most people are not interested in the scientific aspects, but in the answer to a simple question: does this person love me? Can I trust him/her?

EMCAPP Journal 2

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