By Eric L. Johnson

Foundations for Soul Care: A Christian Psychology Proposal (hereafter, Foundations)  is Eric L. Johnson’s latest contribution to the ongoing debate regarding the integration of psychology and Christianity. A veteran of this field, Johnson had previously edited the book Psychology and Christianity: Four Views with Stanton Jones.  Foundations deals comprehensively with the subject. It is divided into four parts, and proceeds from evaluating the existing conflict within Christian soul-care approaches themselves, as well as between these approaches and mainstream psychological institutions, to foundational Biblical and doctrinal issues that form the basis of a Christian soul-care paradigm. Next, Johnson uses the discipline of semiotics, the study of signs of meaning, as the common denominator for an understanding of all meaning derived from God. Through this, Johnson hopes to find a workable ground for integrating seemingly disparate disciplines and to create a version of psychology that is able to engage with secular psychology as well as remaining distinctively Christian.

 In the first part of the book, Johnson argues for an uncontested place for God’s will, as revealed in the Bible, to serve as the core of Christian psychology. Human beings are to render God the glory he deserves. This can be facilitated through a psychology that best edifies the human soul, the chief concern of pastoral care throughout Christian history. However, with the inception of atheistic modernism and the rise of secular psychology, centuries of Christian soul-care tradition has been sidelined. Christians awakening to this crisis are divided over how best to view the bulk of information produced without consideration of God’s existence. At one end, liberal Protestants such as Paul Tillich advance the hermeneutics of accommodation where the authority of scientific research is equal to that of the Bible.

 Within evangelical Christianity, the debate centres on the appropriate level of engagement with the secular world. One stance, termed as the ‘antithesis’, believes that all non-Christian thought and life are essentially anti-God, and as such can only serve to detract from God’s glory. This view is reflected in the Biblical Counselling movement founded in the 1970s, where the Bible alone is considered trustworthy and sufficient for all activities that seek to conform the soul to Christlikeness. In reviewing this stand, Johnson notes that the doctrine of Biblical sufficiency applies to issues conveying, as God’s special revelation, matters of ultimate Truth, salvation, and broad principles of sanctification. In this sense, the Bible has primacy in “setting the agenda for Christian psychology and soul-care”, but it is not intended by God to be an “exhaustive manual” for all manner of stewardship of the world. It is from this firm grounding that a Christian may proceed to review and reclaim the works of secular psychology. This process has largely been the effort of Christian integrationists who see remnants of God’s creation grace existing in modern psychology. However, the risk here is to think of psychology in haphazard and simplistic ways.

Johnson’s “method for proceeding” beyond the present crisis is his use of the discipline of semiotics, the study of the “signs” of meaning evident in the created order which are essentially derived from God. Through appropriating this discipline, he envisions bridging the divide between the “two texts” of creation and Scripture, recognising the “fundamental harmony of all the meaning pertaining to individual human beings in the heart and mind of the Father and expressed by the Word of God, his Son.” The apprehension and communication of this meaning form the basis of a semiodiscursive process of integration. When applied to the understanding of human beings, an individual manifests and communicates meaning within and between biological, psychosocial, ethical, and spiritual “orders of discourse.” It is in the endeavour to better understand these orders of existence and their complex interrelatedness that we utilise and incorporate secular psychological texts through the process of ‘translation’.

Edited by Eric L. Johnson and Stanton L. Jones
Contributions by Gary Collins, David G. Myers, David Powlison and Robert C. Roberts

Psychology has been a fertile ground of contention, not only between Christians and non-Christians, but also among Christians. Such is the opening observation of the book Psychology and Christianity: Four Views. The growing importance of this field in contemporary society is seen not only in its public appeal, but also in its increasing acceptance and utilization within the context of the church. In reaching out to souls, an understanding of the treatment of mental disorders which are becoming more prevalent (or more recognized) also requires the expertise offered by years of specialized research in this field. Knowledge of psychological findings on “hot button” issues such as homosexuality allows for a more informed and firm defense of our stance. What is clear is that psychology is not only a controversial, but an essential field to be reclaimed for Christ as it not only dabbles with just any human soul, but the very soul for which Christ died on the cross.

Four Views begins with a short but comprehensive introduction to the historical development of psychology and its relationship with Christianity. This relationship is examined in the broader context of the popularly held but hackneyed perception of religion as antagonistic to the scientific quest for truth. The editors, Johnson and Jones, characterize this line of argument as no less than “tragic distortions of the truth” (p. 21) and proceed to clarify such infamous cases as the excommunication of Galileo by the Roman Catholic church as a complex interplay of “ecclesiastical, political, personal, social and theological forces” (p. 25) rather than a simple case of religion against science. Instead, the Judeo-Christian worldview, by asserting that the universe is knowable and “behave[s] according to laws” (p. 22) provide the basis for scientific knowledge. Modern science, on the other hand, is the offspring of secular modernism which holds a materialist view of the world, an optimistic view of human nature and reason, and an ethic which endorses the individual pursuit of happiness. As scientific knowledge and technology progresses by leaps and bounds, this branch of knowledge has come to be regarded as the yardstick of Truth, while Biblical knowledge and theology are relegated to the realm of folklore and mythology. The rise of modern psychology has likewise led to the sidelining of the traditional role of pastoral care in tending to the wounded soul.

Meanwhile, conservative Christians are not wholly blameless in this lopsided development of psychology. The editors observe that during the rise of the new psychology in the early and mid-twentieth-century, there was an intellectual dearth in conservative circles, which tend to be “practice-oriented if not anti-intellectual, more interested in soul-winning and missions than in claiming culture for Christ” (p. 33-34). However, after the Second World War, some fundamentalists who called themselves evangelists emerged from the cultural enclave to reach out to the larger society, especially in areas of culture and higher learning. It was in this spirit of engagement that the Christian approach to psychology evolved into several views: The Levels-of-Explanation model, the Integration model, the Christian Psychology model and the Biblical Counseling model. These views can be placed in a continuum, from the relatively liberal to the relatively conservative. Those which are in extreme positions of the continuum are not represented in this book. While all four views agree to the primacy of Biblical truth, they differ in the question as to whether, and, if so, how much of secular psychology should be appropriated for Christian use. Four Views is organized in a way that optimizes the arguments of the four essayists by presenting the contention of one essayist followed by a critique of that view by the others.

David Myers, the author of several nationwide best-selling psychology textbooks, speaks on behalf of the Levels-of-Explanation model. His perspectivalist approach argues that psychology and religion should be kept distinct from each other. Psychology, the science of behavior and mental processes, works with concerns and methods which are different from theology. Science, rather than being knowledge which “puffs up,” is pursued with humility and wonder. Humble stewardship of God’s universe is exemplified in acknowledging our errors and biases, making us willing to “put testable ideas to the test” (p. 58). The more we know and understand, the more we are in awe of God’s creation. Being the true scientist, he also commends the scientific methodology for separating unsound folk psychology (“the pen is mightier than the sword” versus “action speaks louder than words”) from an empirically validated psychology. However, he contends that any knowledge, whether scientific or Biblical, are at best truths seen through a mirror darkly, and are therefore subject to human distortion. Myers explores two areas of research where science and religion seem to challenge each other: the research on prayer and the recent findings on the causes of a homosexual orientation. The former study is rightly dismissed as pandering to a distorted view of God as some “celestial vending machine” (p. 74). As for the latter issue, Myers concludes that scientific discoveries should never be placed on the same par as the Bible. However, psychological science sometimes does cause us to “rethink certain of our cherished ideas and to revisit Scripture” (p. 72). For some, this seems to lead to a conclusion which is alarmingly close to one held by liberal theologians, where science indeed determines the ethical content of an “ever reforming” Christianity. His stance leads integrationalist Gary Collins to wonder just “how much the author agrees with his own conclusion” (p. 87).

Gary Collins is an acknowledged leader of the integration of psychology and Christianity. In presenting the Integration model, Collins employs a loose style of writing, reflecting his underlying contention that integration is a worthwhile but sadly indefinable task. In contrast to the earnest grappling or systematizing of the other contributors, Collins seems laid back in his ruminations. As a “more seasoned but still active trooper” (p. 125) in this field since the early 1970s, he aptly starts by charting its history as progressing in four waves, from a more anecdotal and descriptive to an increasingly specialized and rigorous, but correspondingly complex endeavor. In the present stock-taking and reflecting phase, he asks, through the whole muddled gamut of integration, which aspects of psychology and Christianity are we talking about, after all?—“Do we integrate psychology and theology, psychology and Christianity, psychology and the Bible, counseling and Christianity, faith and learning, faith and practice, or all of the above?” (p. 105). As a rule, instead of offering his own “cookbook” of “terms, methods, and goals” (p. 106) concerning integration, Collins chooses to share some of his personal insights—personal, because integration, he claims, is ultimately personal. One of his observations is that as Christians, respectfully and gently engaging the world of psychology is equivalent to venturing out into any mission field or cross-cultural context. The missionary, like Paul in Athens, needs to interact enough with a culture – in this case, the milieu of professional psychology – to be able to meaningfully convey the gospel in a graspable, understandable way. Like Christ, we are in the world, but not of it.

That Collins’ critics find his framework – or the lack of it – to be theoretically unsatisfying is hardly surprising, especially for those who strain after the “comfort of firmer conceptual orientation and clarity” (p. 139). With his philosophical background, Robert C. Roberts is no stranger systematizing his thoughts. He first argues that the relation between psychology and Christianity is not one of juxtaposition (Myers) or integration (Collins) since these approaches presuppose that both elements are initially autonomous and function well, one without the other. Instead, he argues for a psychology that is not narrowly defined by the establishment as merely scientific, but also one which has always existed in the wisdom of the ages through the works of Aristotle, Augustine, Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard and the like. In essence, the Christian Psychology model presents a psychology that is derived from within the system, rather than incorporated from the outside – “to read the tradition pure, and yet to read it for what we and our contemporaries can recognize as psychology” (p. 153). Modern psychological approaches such as the humanistic approach are viewed as ethical systems which rival Christianity, and concern about “contamination” arises. His exposition of the Sermon on the Mount further clarifies how Christian and worldly psychology necessarily alienates each other in their aspirations toward real or imagined happiness. However, Roberts reemphasizes at the end of his essay, that integration may be done, but it must begin with, and stem from, a Christian viewpoint sifting foreign knowledge through a series of assessments and adaptations, while digging from the rich psychological ore within the tradition.

Just as his predecessor, Jay Adams had rocked the integration movement in the 1970s, David Powlison offers no apology for the more radical Biblical Counseling view. In his essay, the word “contamination” is read “syncretism” (p. 222). Here it needs to be pointed out that both the Christian Psychology and Levels-of-Explanation view arose as a reaction to the radical claims of Biblical Counseling. It challenges pastors and psychologists to use the Bible alone in treating mental illness, which in Biblical terminology is simply called Sin. In his call for Christian psychologists to go back to the bedrock of Faith, Powlinson cites the unreliability of scientific research warped by the lenses of a flawed “theory-informed gaze” (p. 201). If it is true that “each latest and greatest insight, each newest cure, is a more elaborate form of the disease” (p. 223), then “efforts to recast the Faith into theories, methods, and institutions of the secular psychologies need to be opposed” (p. 222). While I agree that there is no need for Christians to pander to mainstream theories, methods and institutions, Powlinson’s en bloc treatment of them demands their en bloc dismissal. His fear of the “systemic effects” rather than “occasional effects” (p. 192) of secular psychology runs the danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. As Collins aptly observes in his reaction to this essay, “If we were to cut ourselves completely from secular writers, to be consistent we would also have to stop reading newspapers or avoid reading those novelists who show such insights into human behavior” (p. 235).

An observation by the editors of this book upon commenting on these essays is that if the seemingly irreconcilable position of the four views of psychology tempts us to postmodern despair or indifference, we should be reminded that “the underlying goal of psychology is loftier than affirming personal preference: it aims at truth” (p. 243). While each view provides some truth, it is also necessary for us to transcend them to arrive at a metasystem. At this point, it is useful to differentiate the positions of the four essayists as one that is divided between science and therapy. Myers’ Levels-of-Explanation view has to do more with scientific research, while Powlinson’s immediate concerns are those of a pastor who has to deal with the “concrete sins and problems” (p. 260) of his flock. While not one approach is more right than the other, considering that each of them deals with different concerns in psychology, there are significant qualifications to each of them. For example, on the relevance of science, it must be recognized that sometimes, scientific discoveries do influence the way we interpret the Bible. However, where core ethical issues like human sexuality are involved, it is not just about finding out that the sun does not go round the earth, but is intimately connected with how we understand our relationship with God, and what it means to acknowledge Christ as our Lord and Savior. On the other hand, maturity in Christian thinking demands a humility that acknowledges God’s common grace working even in the non-Christian world, and the toughness to accept realism, to affirm that “all truth is God’s truth” (p. 80). In conclusion, the editors exhort us to engage in a two-track approach to psychology, “to be active professionals in the majority culture, leavening the discourse where possible, yet free to view and help humans within the church in light of God’s redemption and revelation” (p. 262).

This review was written by Samantha Siau. Samantha is a Psychology student at Wheaton College.