PSYCHOLOGY AND CHRISTIANITY

4-MAT Book Review: Integrative Approaches to Psychology and Christianity



4-MAT Book Review: Integrative Approaches to Psychology and Christianity

Abstract

Historically, scientific and technological advancements have fueled debates among theologists and the scientific community. In his book, Integrative Approaches to Psychology and Christianity (2004), Entwistle presents the reader with a number of key questions concerning the possibility of integration with two seemingly divergent disciplines: psychology (science) and theology. From the religious fundamentalist point of view, psychology is a godless discipline relying exclusively on empirical data that are observable and necessary for a client's behavior modification. As for practitioners of the psychological discipline, their view of theology is oftentimes combative, relegating the notion of a sovereign God working in the affairs of His creation as nothing more than superstition and completely outside the proof tests employed by the scientific method. However, Entwistle proposes that integration is not only possible, but necessary for both disciplines.

The etymology of the word psychology reveals that it is a science which studies the soul, that most essential element of the human existence which is unseen and, therefore, unobservable. The challenge, as Entwistle identifies it, is a matter of how we can modify our worldviews to accommodate the truth held in both disciplines. Humans, being finite creatures often fall short in their epistemological efforts in the search for truth. If God is the author of all truth, then His truth would be sovereign over all things to include psychology and theology. Entwistle further emphasizes God's sovereignty by defining Nature in all of its material manifestations as not our mother, but as our sister. Nature then is the result of the creativeness of God and not as the result of some ill-defined cosmological accident (Entwistle, 2004, p. 116).

Entwistle believes that our understanding about creation, science, all that we can see and cannot see are colored by the assumptions we hold in our worldviews. These worldviews affect the way we perceive the world around us and thus determine our actions. According to Entwistle, the expression of our worldviews naturally prompts us to form models which best represent them. The worldviews may be theological, scientific or a combination of both. (Entwistle, 2004, chap. 8) Individual positioning based on these models helps us to form a more holistic approach to the healing sciences. For him, these models or paradigms from which we operate can create a framework for treatment on a scale from being adversarial (as an example: believing that operating from a secular view is better or complete than a theological view), to a paradigm that results in the integration of secular and theological approaches. Of course, within this continuum are paradigms (identified by Entwistle as spies, colonialists, and neutral parties) which find a more middle-of-the-road approach to integration.

These integrative models make it possible for the reader to understand that a relationship between the two disciplines of theology and psychology is indeed possible and useful especially in the formation of ethical standards employed by ...