Page 27 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 7

Christian Psychology as a Challenge

nal characteristics. The first three are narrative personal relationships; has a body which is an
and constitute an overarching framework. They intrinsic part of being a person; the person is an
are: The person is created by God in His image; integrated whole of these properties.
the person is fallen through sin, and the person
is redeemed through Jesus Christ. From this The last two major characteristics are that the
first set of assumptions comes the basic dignity person is called to the vocations of holiness, -to
and worth of every human being. This view is in a state in life, such as marriage or the consecra-
contrast to those psychologists who assume we ted life, and to some kind of work contributing
are the result of materialist evolution where we to society.
are here only due to chance and survival - hard-
ly a basis for our dignity and worth. Finally the tenth characteristic is that persons
are called to respond to their particular voca-
Although the Christian content of this narrative tions through the development of the virtues.
has no equivalent in today’s psychology, many All of these characteristics of the IPS Model of
secular theories of the person have a similar the person are given extensive theological, phi-
narrative structure. For example, the psycholo- losophical and psychological support. In addi-
gy of Carl Rogers assumes that persons have an tion, the implications of the Model for different
origin that is all good; that we have many pro- kinds of psychotherapy, e.g. cognitive/beha-
blems, mostly inhibitions due to parents, fami- vioral therapy, group therapy, and well such
ly, religion, society; and the solution or answer things as case conceptualization, training of
is self-actualization. Jung proposed individua- psychotherapists are systematically described.
tion and self-realization as the answer to life’s The IPS Model exhibits most of the things that
problems. Recently McAdams has proposed Kosits emphasizes that a Christian psychology
“redemptive life stories” and Seligman has pro- should have. However, it does miss some of his
posed that flourishing through developing the points. Specifically, the IPS Model has few refe-
virtues should be the goal of life. Many other rences to the contributions of the early Church
psychologies have a general theory of our ori- fathers. We have room for improvement there.
gin, the nature of our problems, and an idea- Although supporting Scripture references are
lized resolution to our problem. With such a quite frequent the Model could probably use
basic Christian narrative perhaps we can ac- some more explicit examples of what is often
tually “out narrate” our intellectual competitors called Biblical psychology. Here at IPS we wel-
as Kosit clearly advocates. come the suggestions, challenges and criticisms
of Kosits and his Protestant colleagues. In spite
The next five basic characteristics in the IPS of our somewhat different approaches to Chri-
Model are natural properties of the person all of stian psychology, I think we can look forward
which have considerable psychological support. to baptizing psychology and furthering a true
These five are: the person has reason (intelligen- psychological understanding of the person.
ce); has a will that is in significant part free; the
person is significantly created by and for inter-

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