Abstract
According to Stark, the motive of God’s glory provided the ideological basis for the Scientific Revolution. Smith argues that by the time that revolution began to spread to the human sciences in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, another revolution was emerging, with which the human sciences have become thoroughly confounded, the Secular Revolution. Following MacIntyre, Johnson suggests that this confounding has created a crisis for the Christian intellectual and soul-care traditions, but one that was largely self-inflicted. One of the consequences of this crisis has been a serious wound/division in the Christian body regarding the relation between the Bible, and its theocentric worldview and way of life, and the current form of psychology and the therapeutic sciences (psychiatry, psychotherapy, and counseling). In this article, reasons are given for imagining one way the glory of God could again become a supreme motive among Christians in Western science, specifically psychology and the therapeutic sciences, that would help to overcome the current biblical knowledge/empirical knowledge dichotomy that afflicts the Christian community in these fields and could unify and empower it to develop Christian alternatives to their mainstream versions.
A science is a set of human practices with three kinds of ends: ultimate, epistemological, and communicative. The practices of a science consist primarily in the various kinds of investigation it conducts to obtain knowledge about its object (the epistemological end), for the sake of one’s greatest good (the ultimate end). 1 The secondary practices of a science are the ways it pursues its communicative end to disseminate its findings (the results of its investigations), that constitute the science in fixed records (data, journal articles, books, videos, and unpublished notes) and institutional expressions (degree programs, faculty departments, teaching, lectures, and professional guilds). The thesis of this article is that Christians in psychology and the therapeutic sciences (psychiatry, psychotherapy, and counseling) should seek to obtain and disseminate the most comprehensive knowledge of the soul humanly possible, for the glory of the triune God.
The Word of God That Grounds the Science of Psychology
A Christian approach to science assumes that the second person of the Trinity is the mysterious basis of science. He is referred to in the Bible as the “Word of God” (Jn 1:1–14), and this pregnant expression suggests that the Son of God is the ultimate source of the meaning there is in the universe, both the wisdom and knowledge there is within the created order (Col 2:3)—indeed he holds it all together (Col 1:15; Heb 1:3)—as well as the wisdom and knowledge we find in the Hebrew-Christian Scriptures (Heb 4:12–13). Four implications for a Christian philosophy of science follow from this. First, the Son of God is also the transcendent, meaningful unity of these two very different sources of wisdom and knowledge—what the Belgic Confession called God’s “two books.” Second, in some sense all the sciences are concerned with some form of the communications of the triune God, specifically the Son of God. Third, all the sciences are therefore preeminently interpersonal, because humans are dependent upon God for their realization, whether aware of it or not, as well as one another. Finally, being in Christ, Christians are able to practice science redemptively, seeking the triune God, and his knowledge and his love, at every step of the scientific process, for his glory.
Glorifying God during the first stage of the Scientific Revolution
A voluminous literature has ably documented the Christian rationale and motivations of the Scientific Revolution, including the role that Scripture played, during what might be called its early, Christian phase (e.g., Butterfield, 1957; Cohen, 1990; Stark, 2003; van der Meer & Mandelbrote, 2008). Consider that the glory of the nighttime sky has drawn the attention of human beings for millennia. The wonder and awe that humans feel when gazing into near infinity on a cloudless night strikes a chord deep within that creates the sense that it contains more meaning than can be expressed. This sense doubtless led to the ancient assumptions (still with us) of astrology that the arrangements of the stars were somehow meaningful (not knowing that the way it looked was nothing more than an accident of our location in this part of the universe). That sense of astral meaningfulness also helps us understand why the discipline of astronomy instigated the Scientific Revolution.
The words of Scripture likely also inspired it: “The heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. Their voice goes out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world.” (Ps 19:1–4)
This passage suggests that humans who are awed at the stars in the sky are also detecting and experiencing some of the glory of God they are manifesting. The verses also give us a hint that the meaningfulness with which God endowed those creatures is being continually expressed: “Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge”; indeed, his constitutive power of expression is true magic and itself signifies a wondrous part of his glory. Finally, humans participate in that glory as they perceive it and put it into human words through praise and adoration and science (Ps 29:1–2; 96:3–8).
Such beliefs motivated the early Christian astronomers and physicists, whose work initiated the Scientific Revolution. Their observations and calculations disproved the Ptolemaic, geocentric model of our planetary system that had stood for centuries and demonstrated the superiority of a heliocentric model, in spite of the objections of many Christians during the transition, who favored (their Ptolemaic interpretation of) Scripture over what proved to be valid observations and calculations of the created order.
One of those courageous, early astronomers was Johannes Kepler. Born into a Lutheran family in 1571, he much later received a Master’s degree in theology at the University of Tübingen, desiring to be a theologian. Unable to find a position, however, his extraordinary mathematical gifts led to his being recommended for a professorship in mathematics at a Protestant school in Austria, where he also began to pursue in earnest the study of astronomy, hoping to help confirm Copernicus’s great discovery, which he had learned about at Tübingen. However, Copernicus had continued to mistakenly believe that the planetary orbits around the sun had to be perfect circles.
Kepler’s own great astronomical discovery was that the planets went around the sun in elliptical orbits, at different, rather than uniform, speeds, depending on their distance from the sun, and he was able to express these phenomena in geometrical formulas that captured the three laws of planetary motion, still accepted today, using a divine language called mathematics, the power of which was beginning to dawn on Christian mathematicians.
Kepler’s (1618/2002) work in astronomy was based on a worldview (WV) 2 in which theology and astronomy were considered closely interrelated disciplines that, though focused on different aspects of reality, are both part of a unified system of created being that was established by and is subservient to God. He understood that his work in astronomy flowed from his earlier theological training. Not long after graduating from university, and news of his scientific work spread, he wrote to one of his favorite professors, “I had the intention of becoming a theologian. For a long time I was restless: but now see how God is, by my endeavors, also glorified in astronomy” (Kepler, 1951, p. 31). A few years later, he expressed in a letter to a friend, “Laws [of matter] are within the grasp of the human mind; God wanted us to recognize them by creating us after his own image so that we could share in his own thoughts” (p. 50). As a result, his name is commonly linked with the profound Christian insight that science is a kind of “thinking God’s thoughts after him.” 3
Kepler recognized that God’s glory is also manifested in the work of his image-bearers who “re-think” the order discovered in God’s creation, and we might add, re-articulate it in mathematical formula and verbal discourse, since this human activity reflects, in a finite, limited way, God’s perfect, infinite, comprehensive understanding. So, we might say, along with the heavens, humans too declare the glory of God, when they echo that heavenly glory in their scientific texts, and that glorification becomes exponentially greater, when humans consciously, intentionally praise God for the specific wisdom, power, and beauty which he has expressed in the created order (Ps 145:5; Is 28:29; Ro 1:20), that they are able to notice in the very act of its re-statement in mathematics and human language.
Glorifying God Through Image-Bearing in Psychological Science
As I have developed elsewhere (Johnson, 2017, Ch. 7), an important part of being made in God’s image is the implicit calling to more and more resemble God in the knowledge and love of him and all that he has made, both individually, to the extent we can, representatively (in the brightest among us), cumulatively (over time), and exponentially more (among those who know and love God). This calling is made slightly more explicit in God’s primordial commands to his image-bearers, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over (it)” (Gen 1:28), often referred to as the “cultural mandate” (Spykman, 1992, p. 256). God designed humans with many potentials. “The image of God is much too rich for it to be fully realized in a single human being . . . It can only be somewhat unfolded in its depth and riches in a humanity counting billions of members” (Bavinck, 2004, p. 577). Consequently, the good development of culture, including science and technology, has been considered to be part of the fulfillment of the image of God and the cultural mandate, most fully realized in those who love and thank God in their knowledge, love, and life.
The Bible, of course, has a special role to play in these tasks, since it reveals the “1st principles” of human life, those truths, values, goods, goals, and relationships that rise above the rest, “that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work” (2Ti 3:17). Indeed, we could say that the bulk of the Bible’s content is an extended elaboration on human flourishing according to God’s design plan, particularly knowing and loving our greatest Good in true righteousness and holiness (Eph 4:24; Col 3:10), which is only possible for fallen humanity through faith in Christ, union with him, and increasing conformity to his image, who is the very image of God (2Co 4:4; Col 1:15; see also Ph 2:6; Heb 1:3).
For this highest and narrowest realization of our image-bearing—the worship and love of the triune God—we can agree with our biblical counseling friends that the Bible is sufficient, for it reveals sufficiently the most important matters that God wanted to make sure his people would know. But the phrase “sufficiency of Scripture” should not be interpreted to mean that God is opposed to his people knowing other matters regarding the created order and human life that he knows and wants to share with us through other means, like research, reflection, and dialogue with others. For example, with regard to psychology, God designed humans to develop physiologically, relationally, cognitively, and emotionally, in addition to spiritually, across the lifespan, and understanding as much as we can about such matters would seem to be valuable, if not essential, since proper physiological, relational, cognitive, and emotional development provides the creational platform for humanity’s holy imaging of God, at least on earth (Johnson, 2017).
So, if humanity is to develop sciences like psychology, as best we can according to God’s understanding, to advance the broader imaging of God to which Bavinck referred and is implied in the cultural mandate, we would seem to need both the revelation of God and humanity given us in biblical texts, made understandable by redemptive grace, and the best, relevant research, reflection, and writing of the Christian community, as well as that of other WV communities, to the degree they have produced excellent, relevant literatures, made possible by God’s creation grace (synonymous with common grace; see Barth, 1956; König, 1989). Both types of knowledge would seem necessary for this project, if we are to “think all of God’s thoughts after him,” since he alone knows all things, and neither textual source alone includes all that he knows about humans.
Four challenges to image-bearing in the psychological sciences
Four factors come to mind, however, that would limit the value of a psychology as suggested above, in the present day: (1) since humans are necessarily finite, developmental beings, after working on a psychology for millions of years, even in a unfallen world, human versions would still be limited, compared to God’s; (2) since humans now are also fallen, their interpretations of human beings will inevitably deviate from God’s to some degree; and Christians are by no means free of such limitations. So, the best imaginable psychology and therapeutic science that humans could construct would still fall short of God’s glory in countless respects and could never be more than an analogical approximation of the perfect, original, unified version that God already possesses; (3) when the Scientific Revolution was being extended into the human sciences in the late 1800’s, a Secular Revolution was simultaneously occurring (Smith, 2003), so that this “second stage” of the Scientific Revolution was thoroughly confounded with the Secular in the minds of most Western intellectual leaders. As a result, the modern versions of psychology and therapeutic science that arose at that time were based on the WV assumptions of secularism, positivism, individualism, and naturalism (SPIN), which has resulted in some severe truncation and reductionism, from a Christian WV standpoint. As a result, we ought not to suppose that their versions will be sufficient in themselves for a Christian version of psychology and therapeutic science. To accomplish that goal Christians will also have to do psychological theory-building and research based on their own WV assumptions; and (4) finally, biblical texts and scientific texts, even if it were possible to remove all the distortions of the latter due to SPIN assumptions, would still markedly differ in terms of their respective genres and levels of terminological and conceptual complexity, as well as their very different communicative agendas, making it very difficult to interpret and relate them to each other, to form a unified Christian psychological and therapeutic science.
For these reasons (and others), many of those who identify with the biblical counseling movement have concluded that the Christian community should reject the goal of developing a comprehensive Christian therapeutic science (or counseling model) that brings together all the available, relevant knowledge. 4 They too desire to promote the glory of God, but their emphasis on the antithesis (Van Til, 2002; see 2Co 6:14–18) leads them to rely exclusively on the teachings of Scripture in their counseling, and as a result, these biblical counselors do not utilize the knowledge found in secular psychology or psychiatry texts in their literature or public events. Given their assumptions, any other stance on these matters indicates compromise and risks syncretism with secularism. 5
How might the rest of the Christian psychology and counseling community honor the legitimate concerns of this group, while nevertheless taking the calculated risks we believe necessary to glorify God in a more comprehensive way? By carefully appropriating the creation grace goods of these sciences in their current, mostly secular forms, and reinterpreting their reductionist descriptions and transposing them into a more comprehensive psychological system, given the transcendent and redemptive goods found in Christianity. A case for such an approach forms the rest of this article.
A Doxological Argument for the Use of All Relevant Texts in the Christian Psychological Sciences
According to the biblical testimony (as summarized by Jonathan Edwards, 1989, and elaborated by Hans Urs von Balthasar, 1983–1991), God’s paramount agenda in creating this universe was the manifestation of his glory, that is, the display of his infinite perfections. Human beings have a special role to play in that manifestation, the Scriptures make clear, in spite of our fallenness, being image-bearers (as we have noted), and by God’s grace in Christ, humans are enabled to participate consciously and intentionally in that transcendent agenda. Our goal in this section is to develop a doxological rationale or framework for a Christian-WV-based utilization of the deliverances of contemporary psychology and therapeutic science. We acknowledge that God’s people can glorify him by attending exclusively to the Bible in the Christian care of God’s people. By preferring, overall other texts, this collection of texts by human authors that God simultaneously co-authored, Christians honor God, particularly given the supreme value of the Bible’s primary subject matter: the beauty of his character, his triune work of salvation, and the benefits available to the human race through faith in Christ. Moreover, God’s glory is not a zero-sum game, and different Christians can glorify him in different ways, by highlighting different aspects of his activity.
Yet, the issue before us is quantitative, in some sense. While God has manifested his glory in this universe through the verbal revelation of himself and his purposes in the Bible, our goal is to consider how his children might also manifest his glory through the development of a science of human beings and change due to salvation in Christ that builds on and extends biblical revelation on these matters. Humans were created for his glory (Is 43:7), so there is great warrant for considering how we might manifest ever more glory, especially since human finitude and fallenness, and the intentional, active reception of that glory necessarily limit just how much of God’s glory humans may manifest.
We can take some encouragement by considering the glory manifested in the seminal teachings in the Bible on the Trinity and the person and natures of Christ, and the additional glory manifested through the work of later Christians who developed more elaborate Trinitarian and Christological doctrines, with the Spirit’s guidance, in their writings and the ecumenical creeds, based on those original, biblical teachings. That history shows how biblical revelation can legitimately ground later Christian activity and how both can manifest God’s glory and advance his communicative purposes for the Bible, without compromising the unique role and nature of the canon. Protestant Christians, therefore, have distinguished between the Holy Spirit’s original work of revealing truth in Scripture, and his latter-day work of illuminating that truth, so that God’s people can understand it, and even increase in their understanding.
The science of Christian theology carefully studies the Bible, because theology’s object is God and God’s works and the Bible is the primary textual source of knowledge of that object. But the scientific activities of Christian theology have to consist of more than merely mechanically restating biblical teachings, because God himself necessarily transcends what can be conveyed in any finite set of sentences (including the Bible) and new issues will inevitably arise in the flow of history that were not expressly addressed in the Bible, regarding God’s nature, for example; his relation with a temporal, finite creation; the atonement; and new ethical dilemmas (like cloning); and the ecumenical councils showed that Christians can advance in their understanding of the most challenging topic of all—God’s nature—without necessarily deviating from biblical revelation (though that possibility must be anticipated). Therefore, let us beware of the leaven of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other modern-day biblicists, who we could say have made the Bible the ultimate object of their faith, and who therefore reject the church’s post-canonical, theological responsibility to pursue the most knowledge and love of God possible, and who, in the process, contravene God’s own creative, collaborative, communicative purposes for the Bible, evident in the ecumenical creeds.
The object of the sciences of psychology and therapy is individual human beings, about whom we learn much in the Bible, but who are also embodied, ensouled creatures, and, unlike God, are accessible to empirical investigation. What if God also wants his people to develop the most sophisticated sciences of psychology and therapy ever, based on Scriptural revelation, but including more of his complete knowledge of human beings and their care than what he revealed in Scripture, by doing empirical research and developing complex theories of psychological phenomena, and even learning what they can from the excellent work of other WV communities, while interpreting everything carefully in light of biblical revelation. Such an endeavor would participate in and promote God’s glory by seeking to reproduce as much of God’s perfect understanding of human beings as possible and also advance what Scripture reveals is one of God’s most important goals for the creation: the conformity of human beings, as much as possible, to the image of Christ.
Advancing this scientific agenda is, admittedly, not the calling of most Christians—including most ministers and laypersons—who have no need, therefore, to read or practice anything beyond the immediate scope of biblical teaching. However, to realize the doxological agenda of God revealed in Scripture most fully, the Christian community as a whole would seem called to pursue more than that: something more holistic and comprehensive, more risky and contestable, more transdisciplinary and dialogical, and probably requiring more postformal/dialectical understanding than is typical for most people. 6 In keeping with Kepler’s sentiments, we can assume that God would be greatly glorified by a project that combines all of the relevant biblical, theological, philosophical, and empirical literatures to create a comprehensive Christian psychology that would develop new psychological theory, research programs, and therapeutic practices, by those seeking to think as much like God regarding humans as possible, rather than limiting their understanding either to Scripture alone or to modernist, empirical research alone.
The sufficiency of God and the insufficiency of everything else
The fact is, God could do everything for us, if he wanted to. God revealed himself to Moses as “I am that I am” (Ex 3:14). Having being in himself, God is the only necessary being, eternally self-sufficient and self-existent. Humans, on the other hand, are contingent beings, utterly dependent upon him for everything, including their very existence. God must necessarily transcend his created order absolutely, even as he gives being to that order continuously. Yet, he has given the created order a real subsistence, in its very dependence upon him, and it is his design that especially humans made in his image realize their created existence in a way that analogically resembles God and corresponds to their actual created nature. This is suggested very early in the Bible, in a somewhat surprising verse. In Genesis 2 we read that God told Adam that he was put in the garden of Eden to “work it and keep it” (v. 15) and not to eat of the tree of the “knowledge of good and evil” (v. 17). But then God said, “It is not good that man should be alone” (v. 18). How perplexing! God is the all-sufficient, infinite source of all the good that humans enjoy. We might suppose that God would have designed humans so that he would be sufficient to meet all of humanity’s psychological and relational needs. Humans do, of course, need God and are made for communion with him (Ps 18; Ez 16; 1Co 8:6; 2Co 3:18; Eph 3:15–18). Yet, apparently, God’s actual design plan for humans in this universe entails that they need relations with one another, in addition to their relation with God. We might speculate that humanity’s relational interdependence on one another is intended to image the Triune God’s relational interdependence. However, the human need for both God and one another also provides an important key for understanding God’s relation with his creation and how humans are supposed to function. While he is the Source of the being of all things, God has established a highly complex created order that itself is profoundly interdependent, even as he holds it together (Heb 1:3). The meaningfulness with which he has endowed the creation encompasses the regularities of the dynamic structures of all beings, as well as their interrelations with one another. God’s design plan is centered ultimately upon God and the manifestation of his glory (Is 43:7; 1Co 10:28), but the full meaningfulness with which he has endowed humans is not exhausted by that ultimate relation, but includes all of their immanent, intra-creation relations, along with the genuineness of their being as creatures (Schindler, 2011; Williams, 2018).
Grasping this also helps us appreciate that God’s relation to the creation is utterly unique. It is not as if God is simply one being, alongside all the other beings of the creation, fulfilling humanity’s “religious needs,” while other beings fulfill other needs. Humans are to relate to God as the one Being who alone gives being to all other beings—I am that I am—so that creational being is an utter gift. As a result, humans are in the most profound relationship with this Giver throughout all of their lives, in their social relationships, in their work, in their eating and drinking; in whatsoever they do. Christianity is based on a fundamental ontological difference between God and the rest of the creation, and this relation alone guarantees that the glory of God can be genuinely manifested throughout the entire created order and within the proper functioning of each being itself—in dependence upon God. When this point is lost sight of, we won’t see the pervasiveness of his centrality, glory, and gift-giving in human life.
Complex theocentrism is distinguished from simple theocentrism in this ultimate relation (Johnson, 2007). Both recognize that God is infinitely valuable and that everything he has created is comparably of no value, apart from him, a realization repeatedly taught in the Bible: human life is but dust (Ps 103:14), gold and silver are nothing compared to his wisdom (Pr 16:16); riches and honor come from God (1Ch 29:12). In fact, a deep sense of this hierarchical ontology forms the basis of all human “religion” (and can be easily transferred to items within the created order; see Ro 1). Moved by this sense, “religion” creates a false dualism within the created order by distinguishing a “sacred” region (object, place, practice) from the rest of the creation that “specially” signifies God, the spirits, and the spiritual realm, and mechanically gives humans access to it: temples, images, washings, sacrifices, and the like. Human engagement with “the sacred” gives humans a greater sense of control over their relationship to the Holy and can temporarily reduce their shame and guilt, being experienced as their religious activity, rather than simply the active receptivity of God’s gift, whether conscious of any of this or not. Another problematic outcome of this dualism, sometimes evident among Christians, is that that which is “non-sacred” thereby becomes mundane, inferior, unworthy of honor or due regard. As a result, simple theocentrism among Christians can degenerate into pietistic dualism: since God is infinitely valuable, nothing else has value, unless directly associated with God.
Complex theocentrism, by contrast, is rooted in the utter transcendence of God alone, which enables it to recognize that because everything in the universe was created by God, it all signifies him, more or less, and therefore it all has a “relative created goodness” (relative to God), and therefore creational value, which humans are also to honor and respect accordingly, out of their supreme love for God. Complex theocentrism says that precisely because God is transcendently supreme and the source of all meaning, everything he created is to be correspondingly honored, even loved, in proportion to its share in his glory. (For more on this, see Balthasar, 1983–1991; Edwards, 1989; Schindler, 2011.)
Perhaps the reader can anticipate the two, dialectically related points at stake for this article. First, since God transcends and holds together all things, he alone should have the supreme preeminence that is due to God, in comparison with creatures that he holds together. Even Christians, therefore, need to be careful that they don’t come to treat aspects of the created order as if they are God, even those created things which most signify God—even the Bible. Second, complex theocentrism leads us to be wary of opposing the Bible and other relatively good aspects of God’s creation (like human relationships, the brain, human development, even secular scientific research), for this stratagem has more in common with the dualism of the other world religions, than Christianity. “For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer” (1Ti 4:4–5), for it all signifies and communicates God’s glory, more or less. This has implications for our understanding of psychology and therapeutic science, insofar as they signify and communicate God’s glory and also help us better image him on earth.
Christian psychology and therapeutic science assume that the highest end of human beings is a living relationship with the triune God, and we learn more about that relationship in the Bible than anywhere else in the universe. The Bible, therefore, is extremely valuable to Christian psychology and therapeutic science, but it cannot be sufficient in itself, for it is simply one means to a higher end, along with many other subordinate means, including the human genome; the cognitive abilities to read and understand it; adequate socialization and experience in the world; familiarity with its referents, like shepherds and priests; and the illumination of the Holy Spirit, and the rest of the Trinity, the One with whom we have that living relationship. Furthermore, while the Bible gives us the first principles of Christian soulcare, God’s understanding of Christian soulcare includes the relevant biblical knowledge, as well as countless secondary matters that are also relevant to Christian soulcare, that are not discussed in the Bible in any systematic detail, including genetics, neuropsychology, human development, cognition, emotion, personal agency, communion, cultural dynamics, and many, many more. In light of this realization, we might say that the Bible is sufficient for Christian soulcare in that it contains the minimum knowledge necessary for Christian soulcare, but not all the relevant knowledge that God has and would like to share with us through other means.
Divine omniscience, divine accommodation, and scientific discourse
Most Christians believe that God in his essence is infinite, omniscient, and omnipresent. However, the all-knowing God has chosen to reveal himself to humankind especially through a definitive set of finite texts, during a specific nexus of history, culture, and geography, that English-speakers call the Bible. 7 This means that he has expressed himself to humankind for all time through a single, fixed form of written communication, composed over centuries, consisting of a collection of texts of various genres, that use a range of relatively simple terms and concepts (in contrast to philosophical or scientific discourse), drawn from a couple of specific language systems. Christians believe that it was part of God’s design plan to speak to humankind then and there and identify himself with and be represented by that text. God’s excellence is such that he allows himself to be identified with creaturely states of limitation and weakness, seen most directly in Christ’s incarnation and crucifixion, but also, indirectly, in his organically inspired, written communication to humanity, “co-authored” with humanity (Bavinck, 2003).
We noted above that science is a part of the cultural mandate. One of a science’s many tasks is the development of scientific discourse, including vocabulary to label new discoveries. We recall that God brought to Adam the animals he had made to see what he would call them (Gen 2:19), and this could be considered the beginning of the scientific enterprise, instigated by God.
Another reason God gave us the Bible was to provide the first principles for the scientific enterprise: the creation is his (Is 40:26–28); he’s embedded it with his knowledge and wisdom (Pr 8:22-31; Col 2:3; Torrance, 1969); and scientific progress is a gift of God’s creation grace, given to lead to repentance, praise, and gratitude (Ja 1:17; Ro 2:4; Ps 104:24; Ps 106). Moreover, the Bible reveals knowledge about God, human beings, and salvation found nowhere else. So, the Bible was given to promote science done in his name, especially those sciences concerned with the subject matter that the Bible expressly addresses.
Yet, theologians have long recognized that “for an infinite, perfect, and holy God to interact with finite, fallible, and fallen humanity, he must accommodate himself to our ability to understand him, coming down to our level so that we can grasp what he says and does” (Sunshine, 2015, p. 238), and called this communicative practice, “accommodation.”
That concept was cited frequently during the transition from the Ptolemaic/geocentric view of the universe to the Copernican/heliocentric one, by Christian advocates of the latter, for they felt they had to explain why the Bible sometimes seems to reflect a Ptolemaic perspective. God meets us where we are at, they said, perceptually, intellectually, and linguistically. While God knows everything about the creation, via his omniscience, there is no expectation that he would reveal it all in the Bible. The biblical texts, we might say, are the “motherese” of our all-knowing Maker.
Christian leaders during that phase of the Scientific Revolution, whether theologians or scientists, made a sharp distinction between God’s communicative intentions in Scripture to teach us about his salvation, and not about astronomy or physics. As Calvin (1979) suggested in his commentary on Genesis, “He who would learn astronomy, and other obscure arts, let him go elsewhere” (p. 79). The concept of accommodation was used to correct “unlearned” Christians who, ignorant of the natural sciences, clung to their simplistic, prima facie interpretations of biblical passages, not understanding that “Scripture also speaks in accordance with human perception when the truth of things is at odds with the senses” (Kepler, 1609/1992, p. 61).
Most Christians today have no difficulty accepting divine accommodation in the Bible regarding astronomical matters. But what about the human sciences, particularly the therapeutic sciences, since the Bible was “breathed out” by God, as we saw above, especially to reveal the 1st principles of Christian soulcare, so that humanity might flourish in Christ (2Ti 3:16–17)? Those trained in modern science will recognize immediately that the discourse of the Bible consists of everyday, non-technical discourse. Of course. It was written for ordinary people, in a variety of genres, to help them grow in grace. Very little resembles what today is called the science of psychology, with the exception of psychotherapy and counseling, as just suggested, but even then its formative agenda is more occasional, than systematic (with some interesting exceptions 8 ).
What is the science of psychology? A universally accepted definition may be impossible, but most contemporary attempts consider it the “empirical study” of aspects of individual human beings, whether consciousness, behavior, the mind, the brain, meaningful activities, culture, or some combination, as well as various applied or professional activities that came to be associated with such study in the 20th century (Doyle, 2000). The products of contemporary psychological science include an enhanced vocabulary, more nuanced and detailed than everyday speech; theoretical constructs not typically recognized by lay people; theories regarding the nature of aspects of individual human beings, and their emergence, change, and relations between them; and systematically organized models of clinical practice that promote beneficial change.
Many psychologists and philosophers, however, have recognized that all complex cultures have developed some version of “psychological thought” (Watson & Evans, 1991), particularly if we include teachings and activities for resolving biopsychosocial and especially ethicospiritual problems, within a particular WV context (often religious), and have labeled such non-scientific discourse, “folk psychology,” “implicit psychology,” “common sense psychology,” or “lay psychology” (Fletcher, 1995; Heider, 1958; Johnson & Sandage, 1999; Wegner & Vallacher, 1977; Wundt, 1916), which is just what we find in the Bible.
The lay psychology/psychologies of the Bible
For those looking for it, a rich lay psychology pervades the Bible; and its claim of having been inspired by God, as we have seen, gives it tremendous importance in the eyes of Christians. To begin with, many lay psychological terms/concepts are used in both the Old and New Testaments (ancient Hebrew in the OT and Koiné Greek in the NT), like “heart” (leb and kardia; Ps 102:4 and Mk 7:6); “soul” (nephesh and psyché; Ju 16:16 and Lk 1:46); “spirit” (ruach and pneuma Ps 51:10 and Lk 23:46); “flesh” and “body” (basar and sarx/soma; Lam 3:4/Pr 4:22 and Jn 1:14/Ro 6:12); “sin” (chattah and hamartia; Gen 31:36 and Ja 1:14–15); “shame” (bws and aischune; Ps 31:17 and Heb 12:2); “sorrow” (yagon and lupe; Ps 13:2 and Co 2:7); “joy” (simhah and chara; Ps 16:11 and Gal 5:22); “love” (ahebh and apape/phile; Jer 31:3 and 1Jn 4:12/Mt 10:37); “righteousness” (tsedaqah and dikaios; Pr 13:6 and Mt 5:6); “wisdom” (hakmah and sophia; Job 12:12 and Col 4:5), and “internally divided” or “double-minded” (sayafe and dipsychos; Ps 119:113 and Ja 1:8), to select only a few. Idioms were also applied to human psychological states, for example, “stiff-necked” (qsheh ‘oreph and sklerotrachelos; Ju 14:18 and Acts 7:51), a label from agrarian cultures for domesticated animals that resisted being yoked (see Botterweck, 1973; Kittel, 1964; Wolff, 1974). We see that many OT Hebrew psychological terms/concepts have Greek equivalents in the NT. That is due largely to the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the OT, produced about 230 years before the NT was written. In addition, some terms/concepts utilized in the NT are derived from the sophisticated philosophical psychology of Ancient Greece, for example, “mind” (nous; 1Co 2:16); “conscience” (syneidesis; Ro 2:15); “regeneration” (palingenesia; Tit 3:5); and “will” (thelema; Jn 1:13). Moreover, the greatest psychologist of the NT, the Apostle Paul, apparently coined a few novel psychological terms/phrases/concepts, related directly to Christ’s salvation, including “new self/old self” (kainon anthropon/palaion anthropon; Eph 4:22–24; Col 3:9–10), and to “suffer-together with Christ” (christou. . .sumpaschomen; Ro 8:17), among others. 9
As a result, a distinctive soulcare framework can be discerned, unfolding progressively throughout the Bible (Vos, 1949); one that is theocentric, since God’s transcendent role in the healing of the soul is underscored in hundreds of ways (Charry, 1997, 2010; Johnson, 2007, 2017; Kellemen & Forrey, 2014; Powlison, 2003). Though not often appreciated as such today, even by some Christians, because of its everyday, non-technical language, its simplicity does not make it false or irrelevant to science or therapy; just more accessible to more people. Consider the following examples: God/Christ is referred to as the believer’s shield, refuge, deliverer, fortress (Ps 18:2), shepherd (Ps 23:1; Jn 10:11), strength (Ps 118:14), advocate (1Jn 2:1), and friend (Jn 15:13–15); such terms encourage believers to view God/Christ as their ultimate relationship and to rely on him as a source of psychological power and protection. But it’s more than that. “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul” (Ps 19:7); “The Lord. . .restores my soul” (Ps 23:2); “by his stripes we are healed” (Is 53:5); and as God himself said, “I have seen [Israel’s] ways and will heal him” (Is 57:18). While on earth Christ was a healer of physical disorders, the gospels repeatedly suggest that those healings were signs of the spiritual healing (often called “salvation”) he came primarily to bring, through his later death and resurrection (Lk 4:18; Jn 9:39): forgiveness of one’s sin and resolution of its shame and guilt (Mk 2:1–12); reconciliation to and communion with God (Lk 5:12–15); the bestowal of everlasting righteousness (Dan 9:24); and the gifts of a new heart and God’s Spirit (Ez 36:26–27), and a new story (Jn 9), available to all humans through faith in Christ.
Numerous therapeutic strategies can also be found in the Bible. In the OT era, some were liturgical and peculiar to that time in redemptive history, for example, sacrificing an animal for one’s sins; and the Bible’s frequent commands remind readers of their creaturely obligations to their Creator and Redeemer, obedience to which picture God’s model of the flourishing human. The therapeutic value of some biblical strategies will be obvious to anyone familiar with contemporary psychotherapy research, whereas other biblical strategies are unique to theism, and have not yet been investigated: having a close, personal relationship with God and praying to him in distress (Ps 18:1–3; 56:3); experiencing and expressing one’s negative emotions to God in lament (Ps 13; 22); receiving forgiveness from God (Eph 1:7) and forgiving others (Eph 5:32; Worthington, 2014); finding rest in God (Ps 131; Mt 11:28–30); self-talk (Ps 42:5); repenting of sin and believing in the gospel of Christ to be made well (Mk 1:15; 5:34); reckoning to be true something about oneself that God has established in Christ (Ro 6:11); yielding or surrendering one’s self, body, and activity to God (Ro 6:13–19); “casting” one’s distress on to the Lord (Ps 55:22; 1Pet 5:7); and putting off one’s “old self” and putting on one’s “new self” (Eph 4:22–24). The above strategies illustrate some of the main themes of a biblically rooted soulcare framework: a theocentric orientation; the conscious processing of one’s internal dynamics before the Lord and “in the heart”; the central role of the Christian’s union with Christ’s death and resurrection; and their similarity to empirically validated therapy processes, like distantiation, mentalization, and disidentification (Johnson, 2017).
In summary, the Bible’s soulcare framework provides the Christian community with a lay/theocentric social imaginary (Taylor, 2003), suggestive of a unique, as yet hardly realized scientific research program consisting of, at least to some degree, its own enhanced vocabulary, theoretical constructs, theories of the nature, emergence, change and relations of aspects of individual human beings, and a sophisticated therapeutic agenda, comparable to the complexity of secular psychotherapy and counseling models. Why such an agenda is not more widely appreciated today, even by Christians, is due, surely in part, to the significant differences there are between lay and scientific discourse, but mostly to the secular social imaginary that has so dominated Western culture and its versions of psychology and therapeutic science for over a century, that make envisioning an alternative extremely difficult (though such work has thankfully been attempted, here and there, and may be on the increase (Anderson, 1990; Appleby & Ohlschlager, 2013; Coe & Hall, 2010; Johnson, 2007, 2017; Knabb, 2017; Knabb et al., 2017; Knabb & Wang, 2019; Probst, 1988; Reno, 2002; Vitz et al., 2020; Worthington et al., 2013).
At the same time, the Christian community has to take seriously the marked differences in intellectual complexity there is between the lay discourse of the Bible and the scientific discourse of modern psychology. Biblical texts reflect different covenants, genres, and authorial perspectives, all accessible to adults of average to above average intelligence, compared with texts written at a more intellectually rigorous level, whether Aristotle, Aquinas, or Harter (2012); whereas modern scientific texts constitute a distinct genre that is significantly more complex linguistically, conceptually, theoretically, and even organizationally, given their tightly knit topical/logical structure. Nowhere in the Bible do we find the kind of intellectually advanced, systematic treatment of any topic, which is the norm in modern academic disciplines. 10 Nor does it contain an enhanced vocabulary that labels psychological constructs, psychological theories describing the emergence, change, and relations between aspects of individual human beings, or systematically organized models of clinical practice designed to promote therapeutic change.
Until Christianity develops such a psychology, the Christian community has to be humbled by the remarkable plethora of topics and phenomena explored by modern psychology and psychiatry, that have no precise corollary in the Bible: genetics, the amygdala, emotion, intelligence, attention, equilibration, stimulus-response units, attribution, personality, human development, as well as many topics or categories of soul-care relevance: personality disorder, somatization, distress tolerance, core belief, emotion scheme, alexithymia, therapeutic alliance, trauma, differentiation, mentalization, therapy modality, spiritual by-pass, and God-image (the last two of special value to theists!); and hundreds more could be cited (see Kazdin, 2000; Norcross et al., 2016).
Christians love the Bible, because it has become associated with so much good in their lives. As love matures, however, one becomes increasingly knowledgeable and appreciative of one’s beloved, as he or she really is, and therefore less prone to over-idealization and the making of claims that were uninformed, if not distorted. As the intensity of our initial passion lessens, our love becomes more realistic, more honest, and more accepting of the actual state of affairs. Perhaps only then can we recognize the awesome beauty 11 of the omniscient Source of all knowledge accommodating himself to humanity by giving us a book that conveys the 1st principles of Christian soul-care in ordinary, everyday language, rather than scientific, analogous to his becoming a human being to save us. God’s psychological knowledge and wisdom is the ultimate Archetype and source of everything valid in any human psychologies, and vastly exceeds them all in quality and quantity (Ps 139:17–18; Col 2:3). By contrast, the Bible’s lay level of discourse guarantees that a psychology that begins and ends with Scripture, treating it as our “spectacles” (Calvin, 1559/1960), will remain closely tethered to everyday life, common sense, and the real world, something that modern psychology has frequently had difficulty with. (Taking a few Scriptures out of context) perhaps the ultimate Source of all the knowledge discovered by intellectuals and scientists across the centuries has intentionally veiled the Bible’s psychological profundity in its “unlearned” lay texts of diverse genres to confound the wise (Ps 8:2; Mt 13:10–15; 1Co 1:27–31). Like a know-it-all spouse can benefit from a down-to-earth partner who keeps him or her grounded in the real world of devout piety, family loyalty, and hard work, academics throughout the ages are continually invited to be humbled by the Bible’s “ordinary” discourse, calling us to become like children again and again. Humility, and love for our omniscient God and his infinite glory, can fuel the quest to discover and realize on earth as much as possible of God’s Christ-centered, holistic, comprehensive psychology and therapy system, encompassing all that he knows that is relevant, including all possible modalities, methods, and techniques in the treatment of different biological, psychosocial, ethical, and spiritual conditions in different kinds of people in different cultures, made all the more possible by the glorious contributions of modern psychology over the past century.
The glory of God manifest in contemporary psychology
Our next task is to consider two significant contributions of modern psychological theory and research that, because they are not presented in the Bible, illustrate how extrabiblical resources can promote the manifestation of even greater divine glory by contributing to the development of a more comprehensive Christian understanding and treatment of human beings, than by relying exclusively on the Bible.
The attachment bond
The impact of parental behavior on children has been meticulously documented in research over the last century, one source of which is the highly replicated finding that normal children form an emotional bond to their primary caregivers by around the age of one-year-old, and unless modified, the characteristics of this bond will continue to shape their interpersonal relationships for the rest of their lives, including their relationship with their own children. This occurs, researchers have discovered, because early attachment experiences form something termed an “internal-working model,” a cognitive-affective representation of self-and-other that gets reactivated in other close social relationships that, to some degree, resemble the earlier relationship (Bowlby, 1969, 1973, 1980).
Internal-working models form a part of one’s implicit memory—they begin developing prior to language acquisition and episodic memory—so people are not usually aware of their activation, in contrast to material in explicit memory, which can be brought into consciousness and communicated verbally comparatively easily. As a result, one’s attachment style, even in adulthood, operates largely outside of one’s awareness, unless made the object of one’s attention through education or therapy. There is now abundant evidence that early attachment experiences shape the developing child’s memory and attention; emotion experience and regulation; self-representation and narrative; social perceptions, expectations, and communication; and the underlying neural architecture of all of these psychosocial processes (Siegel, 2020).
Attachment styles have been studied in over 50 countries, and researchers have discovered some cultural variation. But when averaged across cultures, roughly a third of the samples have some form of insecure attachment (Mesman et al., 2016). 12 Generally speaking, insecure attachment is associated with a higher incidence of psychiatric disturbance, including anxiety and mood disorders, substance abuse, and personality disorders. Attachment style has been found to affect sibling relationships and childhood friendships, relationship security in early adulthood, and the quality of one’s marriage, though there is some evidence of people moving from insecure to “earned secure status” through a healing relationship with a mentor, spouse, therapist, or God (Granqvist, 2019; Hesse, 2008; Thompson, 2008).
Helping insecurely attached married couples and parents identify and work on their attachment styles has been found to promote the remediation of unhealthy relational patterns. However, all attachment research, to my knowledge, has been conducted within a SPIN WV framework. As a result, when translating it into a Christian WV framework, we will have to interpret it according to the ethical and spiritual orders that have largely been avoided. Nevertheless, attachment research can also expand our understanding of relational sin and conflict, for example, why some people are in conflict more than others, and in conjunction with the gospel, can create additional space for patience and compassion with oneself and others (like one’s spouse). In addition, research has found that early attachment experiences can impact one’s later perception and experience of God. Such awareness can complement one’s understanding of God through Scripture and enable believers to better understand why their experience of God may differ so much from what they believe about God, and suggest that multiple positive experiences with God could contribute to the healing of one’s insecure attachment style (Knight & Sibcy, 2017), and conversely, such healing could aid one’s relationship with God. Most people are not aware they have an attachment style that is shaping their experience of and relationships with others, including God, so helping Christians become aware of its existence and influence gives them another creation grace tool on the healing journey, in addition to their redemptive resources in Christ.
Research on attachment suggests to Christians open to it that the attachment bond is a part of God’s design plan for human development, which can be damaged by genetics and early childhood experiences in a fallen world. While it has profound implications for child development, marriage, parenting, work relations, and one’s relation with God, this highly influential, relational construct was not revealed by God in the Bible (though the divine author of both the bond and the Bible established it as a part of human nature, before the world was; see Eph 4:8; Mt 6:9–13). Knowing about it now, however, is a tremendous gift of creation grace that brings greater glory to God because of its potential to enhance our relationship with God and others and help us to love our God and neighbor better (Hall & Hall, 2021).
At the same time, a comprehensive understanding of attachment requires a careful consideration of the WV distortions and lacuna of this body of work, given the highly reductionistic orientation of SPIN within which it has developed. Beginning with God, a Christian meaning-system actually makes better sense of the role of attachment in lifespan development, than can naturalistic evolution alone (Roberts, 1997). The attachment bond itself, for example, falls far short of the Christian notions of communion and agape-love (Jn 3:16; 1Co 13; 2Co 15:14; 1Jn 1:4; Johnson, 2017; Knabb & Wang, 2019; Zizioulas, 1985), so contemporary Christian models of mature love should both encompass and transcend organismic attachment processes.
A detailed description of psychosocial capacities/disabilities
The Bible’s focus on the ethical and spiritual dimensions of human life means that it often directs the reader’s attention to specific sins and vices that are contrary to God’s design plan for human action and that compromise human functioning. Very little attention in the Bible is devoted to ways that biopsychosocial functioning 13 can be compromised, and it was clearly outside God’s revelatory purposes to provide a systematic description of it. Yet, knowing more about optimal human biopsychosocial functioning than is found in the Bible, as well as how it can be damaged, would greatly enlarge our understanding of human life and may also help us better grasp the underlying unity of conformity to Christ and general human flourishing. Consider the following brief descriptions of some of the major psychosocial capacities of humans, grounded in physiological and neural processes, found in the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual (2nd ed.) (PDM), a remarkable accomplishment of the psychodynamic school of modern psychology (Lingiardi & McWilliams, 2017, pp. 76–79; each capacity is discussed in much greater detail in the PDM):
Capacity for regulation, attention, and learning. This includes the ability to focus attention, regulate it, and learn through it.
Capacity for affective range, communication, and understanding. This involves the quality of emotional experience, expression, and comprehension, including the ability to symbolize one’s emotions.
Capacity for mentalization and reflective functioning. Mature functioning here includes the ability to objectify and disidentify with one’s emotional experience, and to process it effectively.
Capacity for differentiation and integration, both psychologically and socially. Mature humans are able to distinguish major features of their inner world (e.g., thoughts and feelings) and those of others, and consistently see themselves and others as whole persons, having both good and bad qualities.
Capacity for relationships with others and intimacy. This includes the ability to give and receive love from others, which entails sharing of thoughts, feelings, and stories.
Capacity for self-esteem regulation and quality of internal experience. There is a balance of self-regard and humility that psychologically healthy people possess. Human wellbeing also includes a sense of personal control, efficacy, and agency.
Capacity for impulse control and regulation. Maturity entails the ability to control one’s desires, tolerate frustration, and also express oneself in productive, loving ways.
Capacity for defensive functioning. This includes being able to cope with inner and external conflict with a minimum of distortion and self-deception, as well as an awareness of the tendency of humans (oneself and others) to distort reality and deceive.
Capacity for adaptation, resilience, and strength. Healthy-minded humans tend to be flexible and creative in responding to challenges and obstacles to their wellbeing.
Self-observing capacities (psychological mindedness). Healthy introspection is related to mental health and involves the ability to view oneself, including one’s inner life, productively, that is, aimed toward the goal of flourishing.
Capacity to construct and use internal standards and ideals. This involves a sense of morality and the need to live according to higher standards or goods than immediate states of pleasure or freedom from pain and conflict, devoid of rigidity or compulsiveness.
Capacity for meaning and purpose. This includes the construction of a coherent, personal narrative and a recognition of goods that transcend oneself that make life meaningful.
A few of these capacities are mentioned in the Bible (e.g., self-control is listed as a fruit of the Spirit, Gal 5:23), and the proper functioning of most of them are involved in the life that the Bible was given to promote (see, e.g., the book of Proverbs). Their Christian translation would lead to some modification, particularly with regard to the ethical and spiritual dimensions of human life, which are hardly mentioned. But a version of the above features ought to be included in a comprehensive Christian description of the form of the image of God and human wellbeing, according to God’s design plan, as well as a Christian model of psychopathology.
These are just two examples of work from modern psychology and therapeutic science, which are not presented in the Bible, but would enrich a comprehensive Christian psychology and therapeutic science. We will consider one more example that offers a challenging blend of insight from Christian and modern sources.
Toward a Christian psychodynamic orientation
In contemporary psychology a psychodynamic model is one that recognizes that human beings interpret their experience and relationships with others in terms of internal, psychological influences of which they are not aware, which are shaped by early childhood experiences, especially their family socialization. Many hindrances to conscious awareness have been identified, such as defense mechanisms, dissociation, parts, false selves, self-serving bias, and positive illusions, that overlap with one another. Freud is often credited with originating this orientation, because of his theory linking it to individual psychosexual development. As a result, a “psychodynamic” orientation is assumed to have been a discovery of modern psychology and psychiatry.
Certain biblical teachings, however, point toward a psychodynamic approach, but explain it as a product of human sin and alienation from God. Immediately after the first sin, the first humans start shifting blame (Gen 3:12-13). Religious psychodynamic insights are scattered throughout the prophets: “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it?” (Jer 17:9) Soren Kierkegaard used the Bible to develop a sophisticated Christian psychodynamic model of humanity before Freud was even born. Unfortunately, the secular revolution, combined with Freud’s clinical insight and labeling, greater initial influence, and commitment to SPIN, led to psychodynamic interpretation being identified with modernity.
One profound psychodynamic theme found in the Bible is the problem of idolatry, which we will define as whatever has religious supremacy in one’s life that is not God. The OT focused on the idolatry of material representations of God or the gods (Ex 20:4; Is 44:9-20). However, in the NT, the Apostle Paul called covetousness “idolatry” (Col 3:5), using the OT vice as a metaphor for inordinate attachments to material objects and persons that he suggested were implicitly religious. Such idols are, therefore, hard to identify, and of course Christians are not immune (Powlison, 1995). One of the most remarkable features of the gospels is the prominence given to the Pharisees, the leading followers of Yahweh in that day and also Christ’s primary antagonists. It would appear that the notion of idolatry is being ironically extended even further in the gospels by their highlighting that certain ways of associating oneself with the true religion, including divinely sanctioned religious teachings, objects, and practices, can become “idolatrous” that is, when one identifies oneself with them to promote—necessarily unconsciously—one’s own “glory,” rather than the glory of God (Mt 6:1-21; Jn 5:44; 12:43; Johnson, 1998, 2007; Johnson & Burroughs, 2000). The gospel narratives reveal that we can hide our fallenness behind our close association with the highest and holiest things; let’s call this “orthodox idolatry.”
Could such idolatry exist in our day? Jesus taught that alms-giving, prayer, and fasting can be so misused (Mt 6:2-8), and Paul suggested the same about the works of the law (Gal 2:16; 3:2). What about the Bible? Could it be used for unconscious, self-serving purposes? Some have thought so and called this, “bibliolatry” (Vanhoozer, 2005). What might signify such a use of the Bible? Perhaps when Christians treat the Bible as if it’s only divine and ignore the implications of its dual authorship with humans (Blocher, 2016)? Maybe when only one, classic translation is considered legitimate, and all other versions are rejected? Possibly it shows up in our criticism of those who do not honor the Bible as much as we do? Or perhaps it occurs when we extol the Bible to such a degree that other relevant, creation-graced sources of knowledge are rejected as impure or defiled? In such cases, the motto “sufficiency of Scripture” would be unwittingly conveying something very different than what is intended.
But I have no wish to speak for others. I know bibliolatry firsthand, because I see now that that is just what I was doing during my first few years out of seminary. I unconsciously overidentified myself with the wonderful theology I learned there, including a strong emphasis on the Bible, and that over-self-identification with the Bible served to “protect” me from criticism and gave me a subtle sense of superiority over others. I have since discovered that the Bible can be used as a psychological/sinful defense, providing “secondary gains,” that is, psychological “benefits” of which, at the time, I had very little awareness (Vaillant, 1997).
Tragically, I hurt people during that time with my fiercely biblical orientation, including my wife and children. Of course, I did not see how these unconscious motives were operating—that’s precisely what makes this psychodynamic—I thought I was just promoting God’s agenda. But over the course of a couple of decades, God gradually, gently convinced me that a big part of me looked more like a Pharisee, than Christ; but that he loved me all the same.
God used many sources in his psychodynamic therapy with me: our daily time together in the Bible and meditative prayer; Sören Kierkegaard; feedback from my wife and children; a kind psychodynamic therapist who was a Christian; and the secular psychodynamic literature. How like Christ to use both the Bible and a secular therapy movement to help me become more aware of how my bibliolatry was keeping me from bringing deeper sin and woundedness into the light of the gospel of the glory of his grace. As a result, I also have personal reasons to believe that secular psychology can enrich the Christian psychology project, and that a comprehensive synthesis of all relevant knowledge would be a great blessing to the Church and to the world.
The glory of God manifested in a comprehensive Christian psychology
Such a project will require the collaboration of Christian philosophers, theologians, and spiritual directors, along with Christians in psychology and therapeutic science to develop a Christian research program based on a Christian WV, rather than SPIN, entailing a transdisciplinary approach. Biblical and theological research, 14 philosophical analysis, and empirical investigation would help to advance the borders of psychology beyond those dictated by the reductionistic assumptions of naturalism and positivism. In addition to the powerful objectivist methods and quantitative procedures developed by modern psychology, a greater reliance on qualitative methods would be necessary (e.g., phenomenology, lay psychology, clinical interviews, participant observation, and discourse analysis; see Van Leeuwen, 1982) to explore human subjectivity and intersubjectivity, and other unique features of human beings, like freedom and the experience of the indwelling Holy Spirit. Finally, in part, to help overcome the current hegemony of SPIN in the field, a WV/cultural perspective would need to reframe the entire project of psychology and therapeutic science. Modern psychology’s greatest need, from the standpoint of other WV communities, is the rejection of its naturalistic and positivist norms for the discipline, which would allow ontology to become explicit again, and that would allow the ontologies of WVs other than SPIN into the disciplinary conversation. This would, in turn, lead to the abandonment of the goal of a unified psychology (based on SPIN) and to the emergence of an increasingly pluralistic “family of psychologies,” distinguished by WV communities and traditions (Johnson & Watson, 2012; Knabb & Sisemore, 2020; MacIntyre, 1984).
When that paradigm shift occurs, the personal, ethical, and spiritual experience of all humans would be allowed to count as evidence in psychology, and only then could we pursue what Taylor (1989) calls the “Best Account” of human beings, that is, the account that best fits actual human experience, rather than restricting psychological science to the positivist strictures of natural science methods, as mandated by modern psychology.
The following is a brief sketch of how doing psychology within a Christian WV framework (based on Johnson, 2007, 2017) would lead to a very different project than the WV of modern psychology allows. Let us suppose that individual human beings are the constant recipients of God’s goodness and glory over the course of their lives. While humans are organisms—composed of natural mechanisms—that engage with the physical and social worlds within which they develop, they are simultaneously and most importantly to be understood as images of God being formed according to God’s design plan initially through complex reciprocal processes of body/brain maturation and social interaction. In adolescence the mature form of personal-agency-in-communion begins to emerge—a core aspect of the image of God—by which humans become a personal source of causation, entailing a degree of responsibility, and start to contribute to their own formation, intentionally and volitionally, rather than merely mechanistically and organismically. When these new capacities lead to actions deemed unworthy of oneself, a valid sense of guilt and possibly shame will arise, moderated or exacerbated by the quality of socialization they received previously. Depending on the religious context of their family and culture, some sense of God will also typically emerge; and their sense of guilt and shame, which according to the Bible (Gen 2 & 3) also signifies humanity’s alienation from God, could lead to conversion to Christianity and subsequent spiritual growth through faith in Christ and repentance.
Such an approach would lead to the formulation of many research questions that would never be pursued in modern psychology. What does optimal human development look like in a fallen world? What is the psychological construct of the heart? How does brain development in a fallen world organize and constrain human action from childhood into adulthood? More specifically, how do sin, trauma, and biopsychosocial damage interact in human development, and how can each be addressed most successfully in therapy? How well do certain psychotropic medications, wisely and dialogically prescribed, address specific disorders, in relation to personal agency and Christ-centered therapeutic strategies? How do creation grace and redemptive grace respectively contribute to virtue formation? How do divine and human forgiveness differentially impact mental health? What is the proper functioning of negative emotions in a fallen world, according to God’s design plan? What are the best ways to promote learning that God is the source of all of one’s good? How do humans most effectively reorder their loves, in relation to God? How might the image of God be understood as a psychological construct? How do socialization, social beliefs, and cultural beliefs interact in the formation of Christian personal agency? What are good ways to rebuild one’s identity in Christ? How do ethical and spiritual dynamics impact serious mental illness? Which Christ-centered therapy techniques are most effective with which psychological disorders? And these are just a sample.
Such a project would constitute another kind of scientific revolution, since it violates some of the norms of psychological science as currently conceived, according to naturalism and positivism. Nevertheless, the pursuit of a more comprehensive psychology and therapeutic science, based on the increasing discovery and appropriation of what God knows, through the study of the Bible and the Christian traditions, philosophical analysis, and all valid empirical research, would result in a richer, fuller manifestation of the glory of God than either modern psychology or the exclusive use of the Bible in counseling would in isolation. That reason, perhaps more than any other, justifies such a pursuit.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Nicholas DiFonzo, Rochester Institute of Technology, and Brad Hambrick, The Summit Church; Chris Lampson, Houston Baptist University, for comments on an earlier draft of this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
1.
An ultimate end is intrinsically ethical and spiritual and could be natural (species survival, fulfillment of genetic dispositions), humanistic (human autonomy, uniqueness), sociocultural (justice, equality, diversity), personal (fame, competence), theistic (divine glory, happiness), or some combination.
2.
By worldview I mean the subset of one’s beliefs consisting of fundamental assumptions that people have about the universe, human beings, and the ultimate nature of reality. See Naugle (2002); 
.
3.
We focus on astronomy since it was the first discipline to emerge from the Scientific Revolution. But the same argument could be made in other natural sciences. Consider, for example, how biology, and particularly embryology, would have been spurred on by the following: “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.” (Ps 139:13-14). The accounts are admittedly more complex with the human sciences!
4.
It should be pointed out that not everyone within the biblical counseling movement would identify with the “absolute sufficiency” approach summarized in this paragraph (and discussed in greater detail in Johnson, 2007), for example, the folks at Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation, and there are others.
5.
Some of the best articulations of this stance are found in Lambert (2012, 2016); .
6.
Such understanding is capable of accepting and synthesizing insights from perspectives that initially seem contradictory and mutually exclusive, but nevertheless co-exist in reality and therefore cohere in God (e.g., light is both a wave and a particle; or God is Trinity; Johnson, 1996; Reich, 2002). Research on postformal understanding has found it characterizes only about 10% of American adult samples, varying some depending on the type of understanding that is the focus of study.
7.
By finite I am referring to the fact that the original autographs likely had around 443,114 total words, including 304,901 words in the Hebrew/Aramaic Old Testament, and 138,213 words in the Greek New Testament (). At the same time, the mystery of the Bible is that the Spirit can breathe eternal life into its finite words, enabling us to see, hear, and taste some of God’s infinite glory so that we can have communion with him, in principle, at any time.
8.
For example, the book of Proverbs contains a set of maxims for flourishing within the ethicospiritual context of the covenant God established with the people of Israel through Moses; and the apostle Paul was arguably the most psychologically minded of all the human authors of Scripture, so his epistles sometimes offer psychological and, even more frequently, formative, if not therapeutic, insights. More will be said on this point, below.
9.
There is actually quite a literature on Paul’s anthropology and psychology. As a sample, see Dunn (1996); Eastman (2017); Keener (2016); Ladd (1974); .
10.
There are not even any systematic treatments of theological topics, like the Trinity, God’s attributes, or salvation. Such was not the immediate communicative goal of its divine or human authors.
11.
12.
The cross-cultural percentages of securely attached infants range from 56%-80% and of insecurely attached infants from 20%-44%.
13.
This perspective is discussed in some detail from a Christian perspective in Johnson (2007) in Chapters 8, 9, and 15, and in , Chapter 10.
14.
Biblical studies is to Christian psychology what statistics is to contemporary psychology. When defined in terms of the object of a discipline, statistics is a branch of mathematics, not psychology; yet statistics is taught in all psychology programs. This is because when defining the science more broadly, according to the actual practice of the science, statistics is a part of the science of psychology. In just the same way, given Christian worldview assumptions regarding the role of the Bible in God’s communicative and salvific agenda, biblical studies is intrinsic to a Christian psychology (along with statistics).
Author biography
Eric L. Johnson (Ph.D., Michigan State University) is professor of Christian Psychology at the Gideon Institute of Christian Psychology & Counseling at Houston Baptist University, where he also serves as Director of Public Outreach & Scholarship. He and his wife, Rebekah, have two children, Iain and Laura, and the latter is married to Richard, and their children are Cash, Jedi, and Seraphina.