Abstract
J. Harold Ellens (ed.), Psychological Hermeneutics for Biblical Themes and Texts: A Festschrift in Honor of Wayne G. Rollins, T&T Clark: New York, 2012; 352 pp.: 9780567595867, £65.00/$120.00 (hbk), 9780567644336, £19.99/$34.95 (pbk)
It is probably fair to say that the interdisciplinary speciality of ‘Psychology and the Bible’ is further developed in the USA than in Britain and mainland Europe. Even in the USA it is a young speciality that has emerged in the context of a historically tense relationship between psychology and biblical studies. The nature of these tensions has been convincingly set out by Wayne Rollins in his Soul and Psyche: The Bible in Psychological Perspective (Fortress Press, 1999). In that work Rollins both engages with what he terms the ‘uneasy’ relationship between the disciplines and offers a programme for the development of psychological exegesis and hermeneutics. Rollins’s work is almost unique in its attempt to bring the disciplines together in a historically informed and forward-looking analysis. I used it as a core text when developing a masters’ module on ‘Psychology and the Bible’ as part of the MA in Psychology of Religion at Heythrop College. It formed the backbone of the module, helping to integrate what would otherwise be a very disparate and fragmented field. It was much appreciated by my students, and formed the starting point for some of my own work in this area (J. Collicutt, ‘Bringing the Academic Discipline of Psychology to Bear on the Study of the Bible’, Journal of Theological Studies 63.1 (2012), pp. 1–48).
Rollins has been a pioneer in the field, initially proposing and then, with colleagues, establishing a Psychology and Biblical Studies section of the Society of Biblical Literature in 1998. Perhaps his most high-profile publication is the magisterial four-volume work edited jointly with his long-time collaborator J. Harold Ellens (J. H. Ellens and W. Rollins (eds), Psychology and the Bible: A New Way to Read the Scriptures (Praeger, 2004)). It is therefore both fitting and welcome that J. Harold Ellens has edited this collection of essays in Rollins’s honour.
The essays are divided into two sections, the first on psychological approaches (several of these reproductions of existing essays) with the second consisting of a series of worked examples. They vary in their depth of engagement with the significant methodological issues in applying psychology to the Bible. Perhaps the most interesting is Michael Willet Newheart’s piece on a hermeneutic of human dignity, which reminds us that the motive behind bringing psychology to biblical studies is to restore the personal to a field that can often seem overly technical, abstract and detached from individual human concerns.
Newheart’s approach is heavily influenced by depth psychology and in this respect is typical of the whole volume (the single exception is Paul Anderson’s essay which makes use of cognitive psychology and existential psychotherapy in reading Isa. 53). Rollins’s own approach is that of Jungian analytic psychology, and this has tended to characterize the field. In this light, a survey of the contributors makes for interesting reading. With the arguable exception of Donald Capps, there is not a psychologist among them. Their areas of interest and expertise are biblical studies, theology, literary theory, pastoral theology and psychotherapy. The approaches taken in their essays can be grouped under the general thematic umbrella of ‘psycho-something’. Several (though not all) of the essays are creative and enlightening. But in the final analysis what is being done here is quite a long way from psychology as it is known to most academic and professional psychologists across the world. Rollins is indeed an inspirational figure. In the coming years it will be important to build on his vision and establish a conversation between biblical studies and the world of psychology beyond therapy.