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And at the same time, there is no good reason that Chris- in their dialogue and reading of modern psychology with
tians should not continue to co-labor with modernists greater hermeneutic sophistication, careful to do so more
and postmodernists on research, theory-building, and critically, interpreting modern psychological discourse
practice in areas where their world-views do not conflict. more Christianly, in terms of and in light of another set
Contrary to the opinion of fundamentalists, Christian of texts: primarily Christian Scripture, and secondarily, the
psychologists will want to read and dialogue with modern Christian tradition and contemporary Christian psycholo-
and postmodern psychologists, since they have produced gical literature. Is there any place here for integration? Of
such a great volume of valid psychological information, course. However, in order for it to contribute to a Christi-
and good Christian psychological science will be promo- an psychology, such integration must be subordinate to a
ted through such stimulation. While, from a Christian higher agenda: the construction of a Christian psychology,
standpoint, contemporary modern psychology has its li- guided throughout by Christian world-view assumptions.
mitations and blind spots, a fair assessment will apprecia- It is of course possible that the project of a Christian psy-
te its great erudition and rich vocabulary for describing an chology will come to nothing. However, without attempt-
enormous amount of psychological detail lacking in eve- ing anything, we will never know. What would happen if
ryday speech (including the everyday speech of the Bible Christians in psychology were to spend a couple decades
and the Christian tradition). This scientific sophistication taking the Scriptures and the Christian tradition more
has greatly furthered our understanding of some features seriously than any other texts, and develop a psychology
of human nature that were previously understood only in based on those resources, doing research and theory-buil-
broad outline in the Christian tradition (like reason and ding and developing counseling practices accordingly? Of
emotion), but it has also discovered many other features course, we cannot pretend that modern psychology does
basically unrecognized by humans of any age (like neural not exist—nor should we—but it will undoubtedly require
networks, attributions, and separation anxiety). Without considerable energy to break free of our Babylonian capti-
such dialogue and reading, a Christian psychology would vity to modernity, in order to real progress in understan-
be immeasurably and unnecessarily impoverished (a pro- ding human nature from a Christian standpoint (in cont-
blem that one would think would concern God, since he rast to the more traditional Christian approach of simply
is the Creator of these phenomena!). baptizing secular psychological models with, at best, a
meager reference to some Christian considerations). This
On the other hand, many Christians in psychology in re- more radical project seems worthy of our efforts. Given
cent decades began their work with a modern psychology the distinctiveness of Christian world-view assumptions
already developed by secularists, and then sought to in- and the fact that a Christian psychology should be able to
tegrate faith to that version. However, because of the way incorporate all the valid insights that modern psychology
the task was set up (e.g., the psychology was already pre- can make, we should expect that a Christian psychology
formulated according to secular standards of rationality), will yield a rich and novel version of psychology, but one
it was not really permissible to develop Christian models that is ultimately more valid and comprehensive than that
that were qualitatively different from the secular versi- which modernism alone can yield. Let‘s give this project a
ons. In contrast, Christian psychologists should engage few decades and find out.

References
Calvin, J. (1960). Institutes of the Christian religion (F.L. Battles,
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De Silva, P. (2001). An introduction to Buddhist psychology
(3rd ed.). Rowman & Littlefield.
Kalupahana, D. ((1987). The principles of Buddhist psychology.
Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Kuyper, A. (n.d.). Principles of sacred theology. Associated Pu-
blishers and Authors: Wilmington, DE.
Kuyper, A. (1998). Abraham Kuyper: A centennial reader (J.D.
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Stroud, B. (1992). Logical positivism. In J. Dancy & E. Sosa Eric Johnson, Ph.D., is Professor of
(Eds.), A companion to epistemology (pp. 262-265). London: Pastoral Care at Southern Baptist
Blackwell. Theological Seminary and the director
Watson, P. J. (1993). Apologetics and ethnocentrism: Psycholo- of the Society for Christian Psychology.
gy and religion within an ideological surround. The Internatio- Eric edited Psychology and Christiani-
nal Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 3, 1-20. ty: Five Views and wrote Foundations
Welwood J. (2002). Toward a psychology of awakening: Bud- for Soul Care: A Christian Psychology
dhism, psychotherapy and the path of personal and spiritual
transformation. Shambhala. Proposal.
ejohnson@sbts.edu

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