Page 159 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 4

What is the purpose of Christian psychology? til Rutherford ‘split’ the atom in 1917. Matter has been
Ephesians 3 provides a good summary of St Paul’s Chris- philosophically ‘splitting’ ever since. We are currently
tian anthropology. He prays that Christians, reconciled in a scientific revolution where connectionist thinking
to each other and strengthened in love, can be filled with is once again proving its worth. Early evidence from the
Holy Spirit to the measure of the fullness of God. Isn’t Large Hadron Collider at CERN places atomist thinkers’
that outrageous! If we start from this anthropology, as a ‘particles’ as a ‘special condition’ of matter that is emer-
potential for personal development into fully relational ging froma widertranscendent connectionism.The mass
human beings, we have an ‘agenda’ for Christian psycho- of matter emerges from a Higgs ‘energy field’ as the field
logy. It is together to become God incarnate now for the collapses on making different interactions with other
world asChrist wasthen. Whatstops us?Is itcorrectable? fields. In all, four types of Higgs boson can be released,
What tools and insights do we need to enable this perso- creating simultaneously the three dimensions of space
nal development into wholeness? and mass. This is a connectionist view of matter, with
If you believe this is possible, and if you believe in the emergent mass that transforms from within by field in-
old Newtonian science view of matter, then you have a teractions. Particles, from quanta up to atoms, molecules,
problem. Howcan HolySpirit beincarnate? ATrinitarian cells, tissues, bodies, families, neighbourhoods, societies,
theology view of Personhood is that a whole redeemed are interacting fields. This view of matter transforming
human person is incomplete alone. So what of indivi- from within sounds to me remarkably like a human per-
dualism? Christians who try to live by moral rules and son being filled with Holy Spirit to become a new creati-
physical sacraments, rather than by developing Godly on from within!
relatedness, may shelve their responsibility for true per- During the 20th Century a strong connectionist mo-
sonal development. The purpose of Christian psychothe- vement sought to remove Cartesian dualism from the
rapy is perhaps not only to release people from problems, human sciences by turning to philosophical monism as
but to set them free into living as responsible members its alternative. Monistic ‘physicalism’ saw energy-matter
of the body of the Church, where the Kingdom of God is as a single, innately active essence, from within which
present on earth; in earth; incarnate; with Christ and in both matter and mind emerged as dual aspects, matter as
Christ. It is a social view of salvation, which includes our form and mind as function. This was the prevailing view
utter relatedness in God. at Oxford University when I studied medicine there in
the 1970s. I always felt something was missing. Talking
What arethe philosophicalquestions behindthis challenge with neuro and cellular scientists about my views on the
to Christian psychologists? influence of family and society on mind, their respon-
In this ‘comment’ I shall do no more than point out one se was always that this ‘higher level influence’ is simply
central psychological issue that affects people’s preferred ‘macro-functioning’; and that these levels emerge from
philosophies of life and their beliefs about incarnation. the micro-functioning of the brain-body. Function was
People polarise between seeing life as ‘atomists’ or ‘con- the subject of psychology. This monistic philosophy led
nectionists’. Atomists identify boundaries to separate to a limited behaviourist and cognitive view of psycho-
one item or function from another. Connectionists see logy, based as it was in a so-called ‘bottom-up’ view of
boundaries as places where two different processes or ‘ri- emergent life.
vers’ meet and mix, creating something new in the pro- During this time my spiritual search led me to Christia-
cess. Does a fence keep two separate fields apart, or does nity, and eventually to see the central importance of Per-
the fencemark wheretwo fieldsmeet? Arepeople defined sonhood – mutually interacting sub-states of unity – for
by their divides, or by their meetings and connections? creative life. The Early Church Fathers, who were greater
Atomist thinking contributes to philosophical dualism. philosophers than any of the ancient Greeks, had develo-
Matter and mind, or body and soul, are pictured as se- ped a completely new philosophy of tri-unity to account
parate, different in essence. Effort is expended to charac- for the life of a physical, miracle-working man, who did
terise each entity and then discover how they interact, and spoke only what he heard his transcendent Heaven-
influencing from outside each across the divide so crea- ly Father say to him, and in so doing changed the world
ted – a hopeless and impossible task, I believe. Connec- from within. So, how does tri-unity – Trinitarian theolo-
tionism is seen in process philosophy, for example with gy, and anthropology in God’s image and likeness – relate
Heraclitus and Aristotle. These views can be contrasted to the physicalist monism I had been taught?
with atomists such as Epicurius (physical primacy over The conclusion I came to was that the notion of ‘function’
mind) and Plato (priority of mystical Ideals over the is too humanistic – decided by our perspective on the
material world). The pendulum swings through philoso- purpose of life. Philosophical monism’s great weakness
phical seasons depending on the technology of the age. is that it provides no explanation for how diversity can
The early centuries of the Church were largely Platonist. emerge from the perceived physicalist unity. It is a major
Thomas Aquinas brought Aristotelian process ‘connec- failing, from which Buddhism suffers ultimately, because
tionist’ thinking to the fore about the material world, but life emergent since the Big bang is continuously diver-
in the post-Newtonian Enlightenment the atomic theory sifying! The solution to this problem of man-centred
of matter held centre stage, and the Church has strugg- ‘function’, I realised, had been worked out by the early
led to speak into the life of society as technology began Church Fathers – tri-une sub-states of wholeness that co-
to provide the answers to life’s problems. This lasted un- mingle without being absorbed into that unity.

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