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Strong or weak theism in Christian psychology

and psychotherapy?

Comments on the article: The conceptual approach of deism attempts this by po-
Brent D. Slife, Tiffani D. Stevenson, Dennis C. siting a temporal “side-by-side existence”: God initially
Wendt: Including God in Psychotherapy: Strong creates the world with its laws of nature, then everything
runs entirely according to these laws of nature.
versus weak Theism. Journal of Psychology and
Theology. Fall 2010, Vol. 38, No. 3, pp. 163-174. The conceptual approach of dualism creates a spatial “si-
(Rosemead School of Psychology) de-by-side existence”: there are two areas of reality, the
natural and the supernatural.

Summary But one cannot simply take the basic theistic assumption
(The whole article can be downloaded at www.emcapp.eu.) of a constantly and ubiquitously, temporally and spatially
active God simply as an add-on to a view of reality in
“The authors first attempt to conceptualize theistic psy- which there exist temporally or spatially “godless” areas
chotherapy by discussing the relationship between the- which can be investigated with the methods of empirical
ism and naturalism. Many psychologists have assumed natural science. Here we face a fundamental contradic-
that naturalism and theism can be combined in various tion.
ways, so the authors review the more prominent of these
combinations at the outset. Research in natural science and its concepts are not neut-
They argue not only that these mixtures are “weak” (i.e., ral. They allocate to God an a priori limited area (tempo-
they restrain God in some way) but also that they ulti- rally or spatially).
mately assume naturalism is incompatible in many ways
with theism. The authors compare “weak” theism with a For the development of a strong theistic concept of psy-
“strong” theism that does not restrain God or rely on na- chotherapy the following therefore applies:
turalistic assumptions.
This comparison is elaborated by distinguishing a pub- • God’s activity is not limited as a premise to a certain
lished example of strongly theistic psychotherapy from time or a certain space, but is in its essence spatially
three common types of weakly theistic psychotherapy, and temporally unlimited.
with corresponding examples from the theistic literature.”
• God is not simply an add-on to the theory and
Psychology as a natural science traditionally has a na- practice of existing “neutral” naturalistic psychothe-
turalistic approach, one wants to study only natural oc- rapy concepts. His activity does not have to be the
currences and processes, not supernatural ones, in order only explanation for everything, but it is the central
to explain psychological phenomena. For naturalism and all-permeating factor in the world view and ba-
declares only what is accessible to the senses to be reali- sic assumptions which guide psychotherapy research
ty. Everything can be traced back to laws of nature. This and practice.
includes God not being necessary for the development, • In all that one does, God’s working is presupposed.
practice or explanation of research and therapy in psy-
chological science. • Peripheral aspects of theism such as prayer, ethical
values… can enable the presence of God. But they do
For theism, on the other hand, God’s working has decis- not yet make a therapy concept theistic; rather, they
ive importance in the creation and maintaining of the only receive their quite special importance from the
world and must always be taken into account. relationship with God.

Can a naturalistic world view at least be combined with • God’s working is clearly named and reflected upon
this concept of God if one stands for something like a on all levels of therapy (in theory, methodology and
“weak theism”? practice).

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