Psychology and Theology (Concepts of Human Nature) PDF

Part 5 Psychology and theology 14 Concepts of human nature Concepts Psychology of human...

Part 5 Psychology and theology 14 Concepts of human nature Concepts Psychology of human and theology nature QUESTIONS FOR MINISTRY Where do your assumptions about human nature come from? The Bible? Science? Psychology? Popular culture? To which sources do you implicitly or explicitly give most authority? How do scientific and psychological assumptions fit in with Christian beliefs about the soul? What in human nature do you consider fixed and what open to transformation? Do you think of human beings as inherently sinful, inherently good, or a mixture of these? In the preceding three sections of the book we have explored the ways in which psychology can provide valuable insights and practical solutions relevant to the challenges facing the church. However, we have not yet examined the basic assumptions that lie behind these approaches. These final two chapters examine and compare, from a more conceptual standpoint, the fundamental models and assumptions that are used within psychology and within the Christian tradition. This chapter will look at psychological and religious assumptions about human nature; the next one will look more broadly at the general interface between psy- chology and theology. Both historically, and in the present, psychological and Christian ways of think- ing have provided different models of human nature. However, they have not always been opposed to one another, nor are they mutually exclusive; many people have combined academic psychology with a Christian commitment. In the nineteenth century, when psychology was taking shape as an autonomous academic discipline, there were many Christian thinkers who successfully combined the insights of the new physiological and behavioural psychology with commitments to Christian views about the soul (e.g. James McCosh and G. T. Ladd; see Dixon 1999). This integrated Christian–psychological approach has been lost as a result of the 268 Psychology and theology increasing academic separation of theology and psychology in the last hundred years. However, the work of these nineteenth-century thinkers shows that insights about human mental life made from neurological, physiological, behavioural, moral, and spiritual perspectives, can in principle all be combined with a Christian framework. It is sometimes supposed that psychology and Christianity make conflicting assumptions about what it means to be human. You might think that psychologists always endorse a ‘reductionist’ model of human nature, and treat human beings as ‘nothing but’ biological organisms, brains, machines, or computers; whereas Chris- tians might be thought to have emphasised the fact that humans are spiritual beings who differ in crucial ways from animals and machines. However, that would be a simplistic way of contrasting psychological and religious views. It is important here to emphasise the diversity both of psychological and of reli- gious ideas about human nature. There is no single monolithic view of human nature in psychology that can be pitted against a single religious one. In psychology, for example, Beloff (1973) organised his introductory textbook on Psychological Sciences into eight distinguishable sciences that co-exist under the umbrella of psy- chology: introspective psychology, comparative psychology, differential psychol- ogy, behaviouristics, cognitive psychology, social psychology, depth psychology, and parapsychology. This is not an exhaustive or definitive list, and some years later the boundaries between sub-disciplines of psychology might be drawn rather differ- ently. However, it gives some indication of the range of psychologies, differing in their substantive focus, methodologies, and assumptions. The Christian tradition has also contained quite diverse views about human nature. The most celebrated controversy is that between Pelagius and Augustine, the former taking a more optimistic view of human nature than the latter, and differ- ing about the roles of divine grace and human responsibility. Somewhat similar debates surfaced recently around the ‘creation spirituality’ advocated by Matthew Fox, which takes a more optimistic view of human nature than many Christian thinkers. Another issue on which Christians have taken a diverse range of views is the extent of human free will. Some have emphasised the importance of human free will, but there are other strands, such as Calvinist theology, that are relatively deterministic. It is helpful in overcoming a simplistic contrast between psychological and religious views to realise that there is a certain parallelism between the debates among psychologists and the debates among theologians about human nature. Contrasts between optimistic and pessimistic views keep recurring that are rather like those between Augustine and Pelagius. For example, C. G. Jung, though accepting much of Freud’s approach, dif- fered from him in taking a less pessimistic view of human nature. Similarly, within sociobiology and evolutionary psychology there have been debates that are driven more by differences in fundamental assumptions about human nature than by empirical evidence. There have been some, such as Thomas Huxley in the nineteenth century and Richard Dawkins more recently, who have taught that human beings are by nature entirely selfish and that altruism and co- operation can be achieved only by a society that fights against human nature. On the  Concepts of human nature 269 other hand, other sociobiologists such as Edward O. Wilson have claimed that human beings, like many other social animals, are by nature co-operative and altru- istic (see Dawkins 1989; Ridley 1997; Wilson 1998). Even though ideas about human nature in psychology and Christianity seem to be very different, that does not necessarily imply conflict. Much Christian thinking about human nature has been developed within the framework of salvation and concerns moral aspects of human nature and the possibility of change. Much psy- chology, in contrast, is often morally neutral and concerned with such fine-grained detail as the distinction between different kinds of memory process. It is also helpful to recognise that within every science there is a distinction between experimental research and broad a priori assumptions or world views. The human and social sciences, even more than the mathematical and physical sciences, have always been particularly open to the influence of such assumptions, partly because psychological and sociological theories are never fully determined by the empirical evidence. In the case of psychology, the a priori assumptions made about the relationship between mind and body, and the proper method of gaining psycho- logical knowledge, have been particularly influential. Behaviouristic theories and cognitive ones, of emotion for example, differ largely because their fundamental assumptions and methods are different. The same could be said about psychological and religious accounts of the human mind. It has even been suggested that world view assumptions have influenced some theorists to the extent that their psychological theories are nothing but a particular world view in disguise. This is the allegation made by Richard Webster in Why Freud Was Wrong (1995) against certain psychoanalytic psychologists and structuralist anthropologists, especially Freud and Levi-Strauss. He suggests that in adopting, for example, a dualism between reason and emotion, they have perpetuated assumptions imported from Judeo-Christian theology (Webster 1995). However, the relative contributions of Christian, anti-Christian, and unchristian assumptions to the emergence of secular psychologies is more complex than models such as Web- ster’s imply (see Dixon 1999). It is wise to be cautious about simplistic claims that psychology is really theology in disguise, or alternatively that it is implicitly atheistic. SUMMARY OF KEY THEMES Combining Christian, psychological, and scientific views of human nature. The diversity of views about human nature within both psychology and Christianity. Debates often driven by different assumptions rather than by empirical evidence. The issue of whether humans are innately selfish or innately altruistic. How ‘world views’ can shape our assumptions about human nature and psychology. 270 Psychology and theology QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER What authority, if any, do you give to theoretical and empirical psychology? Have you ever considered psychology to involve assumptions that contradict Christian teachings? What are your world view assumptions about human nature, and where do they come from? How might your assumptions (e.g. about whether human beings are naturally good or naturally selfish) affect your ministry from day to day? ‘Nothing but’ views of human nature One of the major points of conflict between psychological and religious views arises from those areas of psychology that are inclined to take a reductionist view of human nature, that human beings are ‘nothing but’ this or that. There are at least five such areas. One is the view associated with B. F. Skinner, that human beings are, in effect, nothing more than their external, observable behaviour. However, as a research par- adigm in psychology, behaviourism has proved relatively barren and has now run its course. We will not give it detailed attention here. Another long-standing psycho- logical approach that still needs comment is that of Freud, which tends to reduce higher aspects of personality to basic impulses. There are three other approaches, central to current scientific psychology, where ‘nothing but’ views are still current: evolutionary psychology, neuropsychology, and artificial intelligence. The forms of reductionism involved are related, but subtly different.  Concepts of human nature 271 It is worth emphasising again that none of these areas of psychology is completely associated with the reductionist view of human nature. Such general views about human nature float along at a different level from psychological research. They are espoused by some people in the field, but not by others, and it is not obvious that it makes a great deal of difference to detailed research whether or not such views are held. Psychoanalysis Psychoanalysis has been more influential outside mainstream psychology than within it. Within psychology it remains controversial, and it is necessary to begin with some methodological cautions about it. One problem is its exclusiveness. Psy- choanalysis is as guilty of ignoring other traditions of psychology as they are of ignoring psychoanalysis. It is never healthy to pursue a particular branch of the sub- ject in encapsulated isolation. The other problem is methodological. Psychoanalytic theory is too often derived from observation without proper debate about alterna- tives, and can be deployed in a way that rides roughshod over the facts of a particular case, though this does not always happen. As so often happens with innovative movements, Freud’s followers seem to have been, in many ways, more dogmatic than he was himself. This is captured in a story of a Viennese man who remembered Freud personally. There was a house near to where Freud lived in Vienna where a group of deaf people lived. They had very good pottery facilities, and were noted for the quality of their work; there had recently been an article about it in the local newspaper. Freud wrote and asked whether he could visit. He came, accompanied by a young assistant, and was most courteous and interested in everything he saw. The assistant began to interpret some of the pottery, but Freud rebuked him: ‘Be quiet. You don’t know the facts; just look.’ Psychoanalytic theory can be, and frequently is, applied with much integrity, sensi- tivity and caution. These virtues have been extolled, for example, in Patrick Casement’s book, On Learning from the Patient (1985). Unfortunately, such virtues have been much less in evidence when psychoanalysis has been applied to other disciplines such as history or theology. To some extent this is understandable, as the particular facts which should always guide the development of application of theory are less easily checked than in clinical applications of psychoanalysis. There are of course a variety of psychoanalytic theories, not just one. This creates the possibility of formulating a variety of different psychoanalytic interpretations about a single individual. They could then be set against each other, and their merits debated. Unfortunately, this has seldom happened; the psychoanalytic task has too often been seen as simply to give a single, coherent account. The comprehensiveness of the account as a total narrative is what is most highly prized; historical truth, in contrast, can tend to be neglected. As Shepherd (1985) has pointed out, there is an interesting similarity between Sherlock Holmes and the Freudian analyst. Both operate as detectives, piecing together a coherent story from the few available clues. Freudian theory appears to be reductionist in the sense that it sees all aspects of the human psyche as resulting from the ‘libido’, the primitive, pleasure-seeking, erotic drive that is at the heart of the id. (Freud later proposed a death-wish 272 Psychology and theology alongside the libido, but it was a relatively late theoretical development, and one that many Freudian theorists have found unconvincing.) For Freud, all apparently higher aspects of the human psyche are derived from the libido. The super-ego, or punitive sense of conscience, is an introjection of responses to, and constraints upon, the libidinous impulses of the id. Equally, the apparently altruistic ego ideal is a cre- ation of the narcissistic libido, which needs to find something more adequate to love. Freud’s approach has been called by Ricoeur (1970) a ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’ – an interpretation of human nature that unmasks the apparently higher aspects of human nature and reveals them to be serving primitive needs. However, the ‘suspi- ciousness’ of Freudian theorising does not necessarily mean that there is nothing more to human nature than the primitive libido. This is apparent in much subse- quent theorising in the Freudian tradition such as that of his former protégé, Jung, who found a way of incorporating the spiritual into an expanded version of Freudian theory. There are other psychoanalytical theorists such as Fromm and Erikson, who are closer to Freud theoretically than Jung, but are less relentlessly reductionist than Freud himself. Freud’s particular contribution is the ‘suspicious’ perspective that is always ready to unmask high-flown human pretensions. However, that is not necessarily inconsistent with Christianity. There is equally a suspicious strand in the Christian tradition that seeks to expose how human sinfulness lurks beneath the surface of apparent human achievement. Freud has a suspicious view of belief in God, which he wanted to unmask as a reflection of human desire, but equally there is a strand in Christian thinking that is ready to expose how belief in God can be distorted by human limitations. Evolutionary psychology We come now to one of the three main ‘nothing but’ positions about human nature that arise in current scientific psychology. Though there are slight differences between them, the common factor in them all is that they make illegitimate inferences about human beings from explanatory theories of one kind or another. Evolutionary psychology is in danger of committing the ‘genetic fallacy’ and assuming, that because human beings have evolved from other animals, we are still basically ani- mals. In so far as there was religious resistance in the nineteenth century to accepting that human beings had evolved from other animals it seems to have come largely from the mistaken belief that accepting the theory of evolution for human beings implied that we are still no better than animals. However, evolutionary theorising does not always commit the genetic fallacy. It can be helpful in understanding a particular aspect of human functioning to see how it has evolved and what has been its evolutionary significance. Recent books on the mind that take an evolutionary perspective have been deservedly popular (e.g. Pinker 1997; Plotkin 1997), and there is no reason why Christians should be in any way iconoclastic about this area of scientific enquiry. It is right for evolutionary thinking to go as far as it can in explaining human nature; that is ‘good’ reductionism. Problems only come when interesting evolutionary theorising is taken to the point of saying that the evolutionary perspective tells us everything, and  Concepts of human nature 273 that we can infer the nature of something entirely from its evolutionary origin. Evo- lutionary thinking only manifests what Dan Dennett (1995) has called ‘greedy’ reductionism when it insists that it is telling the whole truth about human beings, and that there is nothing else. One of the best known evolutionary books about human nature is Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene (1989). It is a contribution to the problem, apparent since Darwin himself, of how evolution can explain altruistic behaviour. Dawkins’ inter- esting idea is that natural selection works, not so much on animals, but on genes. Whatever is good for the survival of genes is likely to have an evolutionary advan- tage, even behaviour that is bad for the survival of individual animals. So far, so good. It all goes wrong when Dawkins succumbs to some loose talk about our genes being ‘selfish’, and making us do whatever is good for their own survival. One prob- lem with that is that only people can be selfish, not genes; another is that genes only predispose us to do things, they don’t control us. However, Dawkins goes further. He moves from saying we have selfish genes to saying that we ourselves are selfish. Thus, an evolutionary explanation of altruistic behaviour ends up saying that we are just products of our selfish genes. Another important arena of controversy in evolutionary thinking concerns moral- ity. It is certainly an interesting matter how morality has developed in the course of evolution, and there are diverse views about that (e.g. Rottschaefer 1998). For exam- ple, morality has sometimes been seen as a agent of evolution, sometimes as antago- nistic to it. The problem comes with the view (of which Ruse 1995, is one of the ablest exponents) that ethical systems are nothing but collective illusions put in place by our biology. Human beings are a mixture of good and evil, as Christians have always taught. Humanity is made in God’s image, and called to grow towards God’s likeness, but humanity is also ‘fallen’ and in need of redemption. Placing humanity in the context of evolution raises the question of how the good and evil in human beings relates to other animals. Sometimes there has been a tendency to assume that our sinfulness comes from what we have inherited from other animals, and that goodness is what is distinctively human. Sometimes the argument has been the other way around, with the idea that animals are noble and innocent, and that it is fallen humanity that is distinctively sinful. Both positions seem misconceived. Our animal inheritance is morally ambivalent; there seem to be aspects of it that predispose us to do good and aspects that predispose us to do evil. Equally, what is distinctively human also seems to be morally ambivalent. Our distinctive, reflective consciousness means that we can do both good and evil in a more knowing and deliberate way than is possible for other species. One of the insights of the Christian tradition is that good and evil are interlocked. They are intertwined, both in our animal inheritance, and in what is distinctively human. Since the controversies surrounding Darwin’s theory of evolution in the nine- teenth century there has often been a clash between Christian and secular traditions about the relationship of humanity to other animals. The tendency has been for sec- ular thinkers to emphasise the continuity between them, whereas Christian thinkers have generally wanted to emphasise that humanity is special. As with many 274 Psychology and theology controversies, the sane position lies in the middle ground. On the one hand, there is probably almost nothing about human beings that does not have its roots in other higher animals – though our reflective self-consciousness and spiritual qualities would be the strongest candidates for distinctively human qualities. On the other hand, there are many functions that are so much more highly developed in human beings than in any other species that it really is justifiable to regard humanity as dis- tinctive. For example, chimpanzees might be deemed to have some of the rudiments out of which language has developed, but it is so primitive compared to that of human beings that it is doubtful whether it can be deemed to be language in the human sense. It is surprising that Christians have often wanted to argue for the uniqueness of human beings, as this sits uneasily with the biblical tradition, particularly as found in the Old Testament. For example, the writer of Ecclesiastes (3. 18–20) says that there is no fundamental difference between human beings and the animals, because they both return to the dust. Both human beings and the animals have a similar origin in that ‘all come from dust’; they both arise within the natural world. The writer also wants to emphasise that we have mortality in common, and he is sceptical about whether there will be a different fate awaiting us after death. As he says, ‘Who knows if the spirit of man rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?’ This is not an isolated biblical text. The book of Genesis emphasises that ‘the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground’ (Genesis 2.7). Like other animals, human beings are ‘flesh’. There is nothing in this biblical tradition to justify Christians denying continu- ity between human beings and the rest of the animal kingdom. From a Christian point of view, humanity has a distinctive place within the pur- poses of God. Some, such as Jacques Monod (1972), have wanted to argue that evo- lution is a process of pure, blind chance, and therefore incompatible with any notion that God has been at work through evolution, furthering his purposes, but that rests on a misconception about evolution. However, even if we allow that mutations are random, natural selection is clearly not a random process. There seems to be an inherent evolutionary advantage in developing increasingly complex and sophisti- cated modes of information processing. This is certainly not to suggest that there was anything inevitable about evolution taking exactly the path it did. However, information processing was likely to evolve at some stage and, when it did, it was likely to have a significant evolutionary advantage that it would develop and become increasingly sophisticated. It could well be this capacity for information processing which underlies the distinctively human attributes that could be loosely summarised as the human ‘soul’. By ‘soul’ we do not mean a ‘thing’, in the way that the body is a thing. Rather, by soul we mean a cluster of capacities: to reflect, to form relationships, to be moral, to pray, and so on (see Ward, 1992). Above all, saying that human beings have ‘soul’ means that they have a certain affinity with God and can grow towards his likeness. Many Christians have believed that human souls were specially and directly created by God and somehow joined to the human body, but there is no reason for Chris- tians to maintain that. Rather, soul attributes can be seen as having arisen within the natural world and as being ‘emergent properties’. Despite this origin, they have  Concepts of human nature 275 enormous importance, and are no less real for having emerged through evolution. Through our capacity for conscious reflection and moral decision-making, we have a unique capacity to do good or evil deliberately, to turn towards God or away from him. Soul has arisen from the natural world, but enables us to receive God’s revela- tion in Christ and to grow towards God. Neuropsychology The basic problem here, and a very old one, is how to understand the relationship between bodily states and states of mind. It may help to start by considering a partic- ular example. Among the most useful states to think about in this context are the emotions, since they so clearly incorporate both bodily and mental features. So, let us consider the example of anger induced by a friend breaking a valued possession. When I become angry at my friend, I go red in the face, my heart rate goes up, I might even start to shake. These are the bodily aspects of the emotion of anger. But there are also mental aspects: I am angry because of a belief I hold about my friend wronging me; my anger is also based on social and moral beliefs about property, responsibility and proper behaviour; I feel subjectively angry; I am inclined to think unkind thoughts about the person who has angered me. So, my anger has both bodily and mental features, but how should I think of their relation, one to the other? Is it my belief that my friend has acted negligently that causes me to become physi- cally upset? Or, on the contrary, does my physical arousal, once triggered, cause me to feel and act in an emotional way? Or, again, are the physical and mental aspects two sides of the same experience? There has recently been considerable research on the relationship of the brain to psychological functioning that has emphasised how closely brain and mind are inter- twined. Advances in neuropsychology have been underpinned by very careful study of patients who have sustained brain damage to see exactly which psychological functions are impaired and which are still intact. Damage to specific areas of the brain has emphasised how tasks that are apparently very closely related seem to be linked to slightly different areas of the brain. For example, recognising faces head-on seems to be linked to a different area of the brain from recognising them sideways. More recently, there have been further advances due to our ability now to ‘scan’ the brain, to see which parts of their brain people are using when performing particular mental tasks by measuring changes in blood flow. Even though considerable advances have been made in linking mind and brain, it perhaps needs to be emphasised that this mapping is not exactly the same in each person. People certainly differ in which side of the brain is linked to linguistic capac- ities; to some extent there are also differences in the mapping of mind on to brain between men and women, and differences due to people’s background and experi- ence. There are thus many individual variations around a broadly similar mapping of mental functions on to brain areas. So far attention has focused mainly on the areas of the brain linked to perception, attention, memory and language; less progress has been made with broader aspects of personality. With emotion, for example, we now have a good idea of which areas 276 Psychology and theology of the brain are involved in basic fear (LeDoux 1996), but not yet with more compli- cated emotions such as guilt. Religious experience will probably be one of the most difficult aspects of personality to map onto specific areas of the brain. The most pop- ular idea has been that the areas of the temporal lobes involved in epilepsy are also involved in religious experience, though the evidence for that is much weaker than is usually supposed (see Jeeves 1997; see also Chapter 1). One problem is that religious experience is so diverse that it is very unlikely that any single area of the brain is asso- ciated with all aspects of it. Different aspects of the brain are likely to be involved in different aspects of religious experience. One current theory that points in the right direction here is that of d’Aquili and Newberg (1999) who link different brain systems with perceptions of divine causation and with the mystical experiences of unity. The central question, then, is how far mind and personality can be explained in terms of brain functioning. Probably a good deal of progress will be made with that over the decades, including the role of the brain in religion. That leads on to the further question of what we can conclude about the nature of experiences from understanding the involvement of the brain. For example, once we have under- stood which areas of the brain are involved in religious experience, will that show that religious experience is just a spin-off of the physical brain? That is not the only possible interpretation. All that neuropsychology has really established is that there is a close correlation between brain activity and mental functioning; the rela- tionship between them is a matter of interpretation. One solution to this so-called ‘mind–body problem’ – the one associated with Plato and neoplatonic Christian thinkers such as Augustine and Descartes – is the doctrine of ‘substance dualism’. This is the view of human nature that many people still implicitly hold, that there are two sorts of substance in the world – matter and mind. Dualists adopt various different metaphors to describe the relationship of soul and body: they might say that the soul ‘inhabits’ the body, or that it uses the body as its ‘instrument’, or that the body is its ‘tabernacle’. All these metaphors emphasise the differentness of soul and body. Sir John Eccles, a twentieth-century Christian dualist and scientist, explores these ideas and others in an unusual debate with philosopher Karl Popper (Popper and Eccles 1977). Yet another view of human nature that has often been implicitly espoused by psy- chologists is ‘dual aspect monism’, of which the most influential and well-known exponent was that heterodox Jewish thinker of the seventeenth century, Baruch Spinoza. The monist denies that there are two sorts of substance, and asserts that real- ity is fundamentally one. On the monist view, human beings are not dual creatures but unified wholes, and the difference between mind and matter is more one of perspec- tive than of substance. Two of the earliest contributors to scientific psychology in the nineteenth century, Herbert Spencer and Alexander Bain, were keen advocates of dual-aspect monism. They thought that mental feelings – such as the feeling of anger – were the mental ‘side’ or ‘aspect’ of neurological and physiological changes, which were the objective or physical ‘side’ (see Dixon, in press). Note that the monist does not claim that all mental states can be reduced to physical states, or that they are noth- ing more than physical states, as a materialist would. Rather, the monist simply says that the mental and the physical are two sides of one single (ultimately unknowable)  Concepts of human nature 277 reality. Thus, the dual-aspect monist believes that there is a single sort of substance (rather than two sorts), which has mental and physical properties. Stronger reductionist interpretations of the evidence see mind (and soul) as noth- ing but a property of the brain, or even as identical to brain processes. Francis Crick (1992), for example, claimed that we are nothing but a ‘bundle of neurones’. There are various different emphases in such reductionist positions. One is that mind and brain are so closely intertwined that they are effectively identical, and that whenever we talk about the mind we could more accurately talk about the corresponding brain state. Another is that conscious experience is, as Thomas Huxley suggested, of no more significance than a steam engine blowing its whistle. On this view, mental states may not be identical with brain states, but all the important work is done in the physical brain. That leads on to the related idea that talk about the mind is a distrac- tion from where the real action is. In their various ways, these views all suggest that the human mind is an unimportant spin-off from the activity of the brain. A less reductionist version of this ‘physicalist’ philosophy of mind has been devel- oped by John Searle. He explains his view of mental properties by using an analogy with physical properties. Chemical compounds have properties that do not belong to any of their constituent elements. For example, water has macro-properties of wetness, liquidity, freezing and boiling points that are not possessed by either hydrogen or oxygen. These properties Searle calls ‘emergent’. In a similar way he argues that the mind is an emergent property of the brain: beliefs, desires, and emo- tions are properties of brains but not of individual neurones; they are emergent properties of large networks of neurones (Searle 1997). There has recently been considerable interest among theologians in such ideas. Nancey Murphy and Warren Brown of the Fuller Seminary in California have argued strongly for the compatibility of Biblical and traditional Christianity with 278 Psychology and theology what they call ‘non-reductive physicalism’ (W. Brown et al. (eds) 1998). This posi- tion emphasises those aspects of the Christian tradition mentioned above that value embodiment, and also draws on modern monist philosophy of mind. Their aim is to minimise the dualist aspects of the Christian tradition, and also to minimise the reductive physicalist elements of the scientific tradition in order to effect a reconcili- ation between Christian and scientific understandings of the person. Certainly, there are non-dualist strands in Christian thought that emphasise human embodiment. Philosophers and theologians writing under the influence of Aristotle, including especially St Thomas Aquinas, have emphasised that a human being is not just a soul, nor just a body, but is a soul–body unity. The two Christian doctrines that emphasise this most strongly are the Incarnation and the Resurrec- tion. The fact that God chose to become incarnate in the human form of Jesus Christ is an indication of the involvement of God not just in an ethereal spiritual realm but also in the material embodied world. Equally, the fact that he rose again in bodily form reinforces the importance of the bodily Christ. The project of emphasising the convergence between Christian and scientific thought on these points is a very interesting one, though it tends to overstate the compatibility between Christian and scientific models. The mainstream Christian tradition is a long way from what contemporary neuroscience could accept. There are many complex issues here that are still the subject of active research among scientists and fierce debate among philosophers. However, there are probably a variety of positions that would be consistent with Christian teaching. The central thing for Christians to assert is the reality of human mental and spiritual qualities. Our significance in the purposes of God means that we are much more than a ‘bun- dle of neurones’. However, it is also important to understand that this stance is not threatened in any way by exploring exactly how those mental and spiritual qualities are related to the physical brain. Nevertheless, with the advance of research on the basis of human spirituality in the physical brain, it may become increasingly neces- sary to challenge those who try to argue that such research shows that the religious life is somehow unreal or unimportant. Properly understood, there is no reason for Christians to feel threatened by advances in neuroscience. Artificial intelligence Another approach to mental functioning stems from the analogy between the mind and a computer. Computers manipulate symbols and so process information, and this provides, by analogy, a possible way of talking about the mind. This informa- tion-processing approach to mind, which focuses on mental functions, can be distin- guished from the introspectionist approach that focuses on the description of mental processes that are accessible to consciousness. Many of those who want to give pri- ority to descriptions of the brain in terms of mental processes are willing to accept the information-processing approach, even if they remain resistant to an introspectionist approach to mind. The analogy between mind and computer has led to the discipline of Artificial Intelligence (AI), which seeks to simulate the activity of the mind in the form of a  Concepts of human nature 279 computer programme. A good deal of AI is of purely practical interest and, at that level, has been remarkably successful. However, as a theoretical enterprise, it has sought to find ways of capturing the full range of human intellectual functions in com- putational form. This has proved more difficult than the advocates of AI hoped in the early stages, but real progress has been made. A wide range of intelligent activities, such as playing chess, can now be performed by computers. The key limitation is that, even when computers perform human intellectual functions successfully, they do not always perform them in the same way as people do. For example, computers and humans have different ways of playing chess. It is of little theoretical interest to simu- late an outcome unless the strategies of information processing are also simulated. There are also certain challenges that have continued to pose severe difficulties for AI (see Dreyfus and Dreyfus 1986). Computers can be programmed to operate successfully within a prescribed set of rules, but they are not good at spotting when the rules are no longer applicable. For example, a computer can have an exchange with a person, successfully playing the role of an expert, but it has no way of know- ing when the rules of discourse have changed. Computers also lack knowledge about how the symbols they are manipulating relate to the real world. This shows up in translation, for example. In a sentence such as ‘the box was in the pen’, it is difficult to decide which of the three meanings of ‘pen’ applies in this context without know- ing what in the real world the sentence refers to. One of the biggest challenges to AI is consciousness. Indeed, it is not even clear what criteria should be used to assess whether or not a computer has consciousness. A computer may store information and manipulate it, but it is hard to make sense of the idea that it knows anything consciously. Equally, a computer may be programmed to have certain aspects of emotion, such as to know when a particular emotion such as anger is appropriate and to show aspects of emotional behaviour, but it is doubtful whether we are justified in saying that it actually feels anger. Despite all the ink that has been spent in discussing whether computers could ever be conscious, there seems a dearth of convincing, principled arguments either way (see Copeland 1993). The assumption that has underpinned AI has been that it makes little difference whether computer programmes run on the biological stuff of the human brain, or on silicon. However, in recent years, psychologists have become increasingly impressed with how far human cognitive processes are affected by the human brain, and have sought to theorise about them in a way that is biologically realistic (e.g. Edelman 1992). A new approach to computer programming has grown up, known as connectionism, that deliberately seeks to model information processing in a biologi- cally plausible way, even though it is debatable how well that is actually achieved. The important point is perhaps that it has now been accepted that it is at least worth trying to write programmes that do things roughly as the brain does them. People have quietly abandoned the old dogma that it made no difference that human beings did their information processing on the grey, biological stuff of the brain. AI often seems rather dualistic in assuming that human intelligence can be detached from the human brain and replicated in computer form. AI emphasises the separability of mind and body in a way that is reminiscent of substance dualism. One of the oddities here is that many of the same scientists share both the materialistic 280 Psychology and theology assumptions of neuropsychology and the dualist assumptions of AI, without notic- ing what uneasy bed-fellows they are. Some exponents of AI have gone so far as to suggest that, not only intelligence, but even personality or ‘soul’ can be replicated in disembodied form. This is a key assumption behind Tipler’s (1994) strange vision of securing the immortality of each individual human personality by replicating it in computer form. The rather conflicting assumptions of AI and neuroscience have a parallel in the tensions within the Christian tradition. Sometimes, influenced by Plato and Descartes, this has espoused a kind of dualism about the soul that is similar to AI. At other times, influenced by the Hebrew anthropology of an ‘ensouled body’ and by Aristotle and Aquinas, it has espoused a holistic view of human nature closer to that of neuroscience. Once again, it is not a matter of sciences vs. religion, but of parallel debates breaking out in both science and religion. The central theological issue raised by AI is the assumed similarity between com- puter and human intelligence. It is one thing to simulate human intelligence on a computer as far as possible. It is quite another to assume, as do some exponents of AI, that the human mind is essentially a computer programme. That involves a con- fusion between simulation and replication. The partial simulation of human intelli- gence in computer form that has been achieved so far does not mean that the human mind has been completely replicated on a computer. Nor does it mean that the human mind is ‘nothing but’ a computer. There is a fallacy here that is rather like the genetic fallacy that arises in evolution- ary psychology. In that case, illegitimate inferences were made from the origin of human beings to their nature, whereas here there is a related attempt to make infer- ences about the nature of mind from the fact that some partial simulation of it is pos- sible in computer form. The argument often becomes circular. The assumption that the mind is really a computer underpins the belief that it can be completely simu- lated in computer form; equally, each step towards such simulation is taken as justi- fying the original assumption that the mind really is a computer. Whereas evolutionary reductionism focuses on the past, and neuroscientific reductionism arises from the co-existence of mind and brain in the present, the reductionism associated with AI tends to focus on the future. AI tends to be associated with a grand vision of the future in which there will be computers that can do every- thing that human beings can do now, but without their imperfections and mortality (see Moravec 1988). Christians will recognise this as a secular eschatological vision of future perfection, for which human beings in their present form are only a prepara- tion. There is probably no area of the human sciences that so explicitly offers an alter- native eschatology as AI. However, as so often happens, there is a gulf between this grand ideology or world view and actual scientific research in AI. Most practical research in AI proceeds in isolation from big ideological issues, and simply doesn’t engage with the Christian view of human nature one way or the other. It is the view of the human mind as essentially a computer, and of the future as being dominated by humanoid computers, that sits uneasily with Christianity.  Concepts of human nature 281 SUMMARY OF KEY THEMES Varieties of ‘nothing but’ views of human nature. The problems with psychoanalysis; reducing everything to primitive impulses. How Christianity, like psychoanalysis, is suspicious of human pretensions. The usefulness of evolutionary psychology and the reductionism of ‘selfish genes’. The morally ambivalent status of both human nature and human culture. Different ways of interpreting the correlations between mind and brain: sub- stance dualism, dual-aspect monism, physicalism, and non-reductive physicalism. What computers can and can’t do. The secular eschatology of AI. QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER What is wrong with reductionist views of human nature? Why do Christian believers often find them unacceptable? Is Freudian suspicion a useful tool when trying to understand other people? Or oneself? What is it about human beings that makes them more than animals? What experiences, emotions, and behaviours most reveal our evolutionary and animal heritage? Are these less within our control than more ‘advanced’ thoughts and feelings? How can Christian doctrines about the soul and an afterlife be interpreted in the light of discoveries of intimate correlations between mental states and brain processes? In what ways does body/soul dualism influence the way some Christians think today? Personality It would be wholly misleading to suggest that psychology generally takes a ‘nothing but’ view of human nature. As has already been emphasised, psychology is very broad, and includes non-reductionist elements, of which the most important is ‘personality psychology’. There is a good prospect for fruitful dialogue between Christian ideas about human nature and personality psychology, and possibly even a degree of integration between the two (see van Leeuwen 1985; Morea 1997).The breadth of personality psychology can be captured in a number of both/and statements. It both provides generalisations about human nature and also identifies how people differ from one another. It acknowledges a variety of influences on the person, including both the biological and the social; people are seen to be the result of both their nature and their nurture, and the interaction between the two. Though much of personality psychology shares the emphasis of recent psychology on cognition (i.e. ways of under- standing), it is also concerned with feelings and emotions, and with the relationship 282 Psychology and theology between cognition and emotion. Finally, personality psychology is concerned both with basic theory and research about the nature of personality, but also with applications of that theory in clinical practice; personality psychology has always been character- ised by a to-and-fro between theory and application. The psychology of personality is thus concerned with a broad range of questions, including how people differ from one another in personality and temperament, how they cope with life changes and stresses, what psychological problems they may develop and how they respond to them, people’s habitual styles of relating to others and their needs for particular kinds of social support, and patterns of personal growth and development. This is, in large measure, what many non-psychologists think of as ‘psychology’. It is also a field of study that has had a central, integrative function within the discipline. One important source has been the clinical work with clients or patients. This provides many psychologists with an unrivalled opportunity to observe and get to know a wide range of people at a level of depth and intimacy that is seldom possible in other contexts. While keeping contact with its clinical roots, the psychology of personality has generated a substantial body of formal empirical research to try to test its hypothe- ses. This has never been straightforward, but resourcefulness in personality research has increased with experience, and a fruitful dialogue has been possible between clinical observations and formal research findings. Personality psychology has also maintained links with advances in other areas of general psychology, includ- ing cognitive psychology, and has sought to cast its theories in a way that takes account of advances in the discipline of the whole. It will readily be seen how the contents of this book reflect the breadth of personality psychology. The first section was concerned with religious aspects of personality, taking a psychological view of the spiritual life in general, of how religious life can help or hinder personality development, and of different ways of being religious. Having exam- ined core aspects of religious personality in Part 1, Parts 2 to 4 were concerned with applications, including the range of different applications appropriate across the life- span; and educational, counselling, social and organisational psychologies. The present book thus reflects the broadly integrative face of psychology seen in the study of person- ality rather than the restrictive face seen in reductionist movements of psychology. It is important, once again, to emphasise the diversity both of psychological and of Christian views of human nature. This is one of the merits of Peter Morea’s compar- ison of the two in In Search of Personality (1997). For example, Kierkegaard, that great Christian psychologist of the nineteenth century, takes an essentially develop- mental approach, with three key stages: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. Within this framework, he identifies the obstacles to development, and the require- ments of moving from one stage to the next. There are thus many points of contact between Kierkegaard’s thinking about human nature and that of a developmental psychological theorist such as Erikson. Of course, that is not to say that they agree over everything, but there is enough common ground for dialogue to be fruitful. Of twentieth-century Christian thinkers, Thomas Merton has reflected on human nature in a particularly fruitful way. In some ways, he is also a developmental theorist, though with an emphasis on the goal of development rather than on the starting point.  Concepts of human nature 283 For Merton, in finding God, we find our true selves; in finding holiness we also find wholeness (see Finley 1978). Merton’s Christian self-actualisation thus has much in common with the thinking of humanistic psychologists such as Maslow and Rogers. Though humanistic psychology has been much criticised for its assumptions (e.g. by Vitz 1979), Merton’s thinking about human nature shows how humanistic assumptions can be turned in a Christian direction. Again, this is not to say that there is complete agreement about self-actualisation between a Christian thinker, such as Merton, and humanistic psychologists, but there is again scope for an interesting comparison. The dominant paradigm in contemporary psychology is cognitive, with an emphasis on how human beings understand the world. One of the early popularisers of a cognitive approach to personality was George Kelly (1955), who talked about the ‘personal constructs’ with which particular people make sense of their world. It is a psychological approach, incorporating constructivist assumptions about human perception that are much indebted to Kant’s epistemology. There are also theologi- cal approaches to human nature that are similarly indebted to Kant, that of Karl Rahner for example, which make good dialogue partners for cognitive personality theorists such as Kelly. Rahner’s key move is to suggest that, in addition to the con- structs with which we make sense of the material objects that exist within time and space, there are also a priori structures that enable us to approach the transcendent. It would be fair to say that personality psychology has not yet achieved any coherent and generally accepted way of integrating the diverse aspects of personality with which it is concerned. The same could also be said of Christian thinking about human nature. Though there will no doubt be critical points of diversion between the two, it would be fruitful for them to proceed side by side much more than has been the case hitherto in their common quest for an adequate conceptualisation of human nature. SUMMARY OF KEY THEMES The integrative nature of personality psychology. Combining understandings of shared human nature and individual difference; nature and nurture; thinking and feeling; theory and practice. The possibility of integrating personality psychology and Christian beliefs. Finding holiness and finding wholeness. QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER When, in a pastoral context, is it helpful to emphasise to someone the ways in which we are all the same, and when is it best to focus on what makes them a unique individual? Is it helpful to think about whether a psychological problem’s roots might lie in someone’s ‘nature’ or their ‘nurture’? What are the pros and cons of cognitive and emotional modes of engaging with the world? And with God? In what ways are your psychological ideas and your Christian ones most closely aligned? 284 Psychology and theology Further reading General Gregersen, N. H., Drees, W. B. and Gorman, U. (eds) (2000) The Human Person in Science and Theology, Edinburgh: T & T Clark. Holder, R. (1993) Nothing But Atoms and Molecules? Probing the Limits of Science, Tunbridge Wells: Monarch. Ward, K. (1992) Defending the Soul, Oxford: Oneworld. Psychoanalysis Palmer, M. (1997) Freud and Jung on Religion, London: Routledge. Webster, R. (1995) Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science, and Psychoanalysis, London: Harper Collins. Evolutionary psychology Dawkins, R. (1989) The Selfish Gene, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pinker, S. (1997) How the Mind Works, London: Allen Lane. Ridley, M. (1997) The Origins of Virtue, London: Penguin. Neuroscience Brown, W., Murphy, N. and Malony, H. (eds) (1998) Whatever Happened to the Soul? Scientific and Theological Portraits of Human Nature, Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Jeeves, M. (1997) Human Nature at the Millennium: Reflections on the Integration of Psychology and Christianity, Leicester: Apollos. Searle, J. (1997) The Mystery of Consciousness, London: Granta. Artificial intelligence Copeland, J. (1993) Artificial Intelligence: A Philosophical Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell. Puddefoot, J. (1996) God and the Mind Machine: Computers, Artificial Intelligence, and the Human Soul, London: SPCK. Personality Morea, P. (1997) In Search of Personality: Christianity and Modern Psychology, London: SCM Press. Van Leeuwen, M. S. (1985) The Person in Psychology: A Contemporary Christian Appraisal, Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press. 15 Psychology and theology Psychology and theology QUESTIONS FOR MINISTRY Can Bible stories be illuminated by psychological analyses of the protagonists? Can Christian saints be better understood and emulated using a psycho- logical approach? Should an understanding of an individual’s or a congregation’s psychol- ogy influence the way we teach Christian doctrine to them? Do Jung’s ideas about the ‘collective unconscious’ and ‘individuation’ provide a language with which to communicate the gospel message of sal- vation more effectively to some people? Relating psychology and theology is a complex business. It will by now have become abundantly clear that psychology is itself a varied discipline encompassing many dif- ferent approaches: social, cognitive, behavioural, developmental, psychoanalytic, and so on. Throughout this book we have insisted on taking a broad view of psychol- ogy, and will continue to do so in relating it to theology. Theology is also a many-faceted discipline. The previous chapter focused on the area of theology that relates most closely to psychology, that is, how human nature is to be understood. However, there is much more to theology than this. Theology has long embraced several rather different strands, such as the study of the scriptures, the formulation of Christian doctrine, and the history of Christian life and thought. It is also a multi-disciplinary activity that brings a variety of disciplines, such as his- tory, philosophy, and the study of languages and texts, to bear on a common theme. The range of disciplines that can usefully contribute to theology is probably in fact wider than is usually recognised. In recent years, there has been a growing recogni- tion of the contribution of the social sciences and literature. In this chapter, we will suggest that psychology has a significant contribution to make to theology, alongside more accepted disciplines such as history and philosophy. 286 Psychology and theology The next three sections will consider in turn the contribution of psychology to three core areas of theology: biblical studies, church history, and doctrine. We will then look in detail at one particular psychological approach, that associated with C. G. Jung, that interfaces with theology in a particularly rich way. Psychological biblical criticism Biblical studies has increasingly espoused a multidisciplinary approach and, in recent years, the sociological and literary approaches have become prominent. Since about 1970 there has also been a remarkable development of psychological contribu- tions to the interpretation of the Bible, and Wayne Rollins (1999) has provided a helpful survey of what has been accomplished so far. Nevertheless, the merits of psychological exegesis remain controversial. One of the most distinguished examples of the psychological approach to biblical studies so far is Gerd Theissen’s Psychological Aspects of Pauline Theology (1987), but he felt it necessary to begin by summarising the charges levelled against psychological exegesis. Every exegete has learned that psychological exegesis is poor exegesis. It interpo- lates between the lines things that no-one can know. It inserts modern categories into ancient texts. Because of its interest in personal problems behind the text, it does not let the text come to speech. Above all, however, it relativises the text’s theological claim through appeal to factors that are all too human. (1987:1). Theissen helped to make it clear, by example, that psychological biblical criticism need not have all the weaknesses its critics allege, and he showed how it ought to be approached. First, the psychological approach to the Bible need not be an alternative to other, more traditional approaches to exegesis. For example, for each passage Theissen considered, he provided a careful text analysis and tradition analysis, before going on to the psychological analysis. Though some psychological studies of the Bible have displayed naiveté about the texts on which they are commentating, this is not a necessary feature of the approach. There has also been a broadening of the range of psychological models used. Both Freud and Jung made contributions to the psychological interpretation of the Bible and for some time most psychological contributions were in one or other of these traditions. However, more recently, a broader range of approaches has been used, including behavioural, cognitive, and humanistic. Some examples of psychological exegesis have explicitly compared and integrated the contribution different psycho- logical traditions can make to the elucidation of a particular text. Again, Theissen set a good example, in that he set out the contributions of learning theory, psychodynamic psychology, and cognitive psychology, for each passage studied. This kind of comparison of the contribution of different psychological approaches helps to prevent the simplistic or uncritical application of any single approach. The range of psychological exegetical studies is now very broad, as Rollins (1999, Ch. 5) showed in his survey. There have been studies of how images and symbols are  Psychology and theology 287 used in the Bible; for example the symbolic significance of water (e.g. Henry 1979). There have also been studies that have focused more on the mind of the author or narrator, such as the ‘point of view’ or unconscious processes of the writers of the Gospels (e.g. Newheart 1995). Many biblical personalities have now been the focus of psychological commentary, with Ezekiel and Paul attracting more attention than most. There have also been studies of religious experience in the Bible such as dreams, visions or conversion (e.g. Johnson and Malony 1982), and studies of how other more ordinary experiences such as anger (Johnes 1990) or temptation (Oates 1991) are handled in the Bible. There have also been studies of the implicit psychol- ogy of the Bible, such as concepts of the self, or the role of the heart in the Hebrew understanding of human nature. Paul’s account of his inner struggle in relation to the law in Romans 7 has fre- quently lent itself to psychological interpretation, and provides a good example of psychological exegesis. Psychological contributions to the interpretation of this chapter include Rubenstein (1972), Scroggs (1977) and Theissen (1987). The chap- ter is one in which Paul describes his previous relation to the law, and how that has changed in the context of Christ. It is thus a passage that at least seems to be auto- biographical, though there has been controversy about that. The most plausible position is that Paul is presenting a general theory of transformation in Christ, but doing so in a way that draws on his own personal background. One reason why this chapter has aroused particular psychological interest is that it seems to be describing a conflict and ambivalence in relation to the law. Though Paul regards the law as good in principle, he seems to have experienced himself as in bondage to it. This conflict may once have been repressed, but has become con- scious. Paul is working here with a three-fold scheme of flesh, law, and Christ that seems somewhat analogous to the Freudian conceptualisation of mind in terms of id (basic instincts), super-ego (over-strict conscience), and ego (the centre of personal- ity). It seems that Christ has enabled Paul to escape from the old conflict between flesh and law. Whereas the law was part of this problem, Christ has proved the solu- tion to it. Looked at from a psychodynamic point of view, it seems that the Spirit of Christ has provided the resources needed to release Paul from his old conflicts. Looking at the passage more cognitively, it seems that Christ has resulted in a major restructuring of Paul’s self-perception. The hermeneutic process, or how the scriptures are read and interpreted, can also be elucidated from a psychological perspective. Again, Rollins (1999, Ch. 6), pro- vides a helpful survey. One of the best-known contributions in this area is Cedric Johnson’s 1983 The Psychology of Biblical Interpretation. One fruitful way into this area has been via personality types, looking at how different psychological types read and respond to particular biblical texts (e.g. Francis 1997). Though hermeneutics has been a very important aspect of biblical studies in recent years, the psychological contribution to the understanding of processes of reading and understanding has often not been fully appreciated. Psychological biblical criticism is now a well-established field that can join liter- ary, sociological, and other approaches within the increasingly interdisciplinary domain of biblical studies. By now, a substantial proportion of the Bible has been the 288 Psychology and theology subject of psychological study. The field has moved beyond the naiveties of some early examples, and there are now enough exemplary psychological studies of bibli- cal texts for ground-rules to be established and standards set. Two key points are that the psychological contribution should be integrated with other approaches, not used in isolation; also that particular psychological approaches should be used criti- cally, and with awareness of the range of possible psychological approaches to the Bible. SUMMARY OF KEY THEMES How a psychological perspective can complement textual, historical, literary, and sociological perspectives on the Bible. The variety of different psychological perspectives that can be taken. The psychological interpretation of Paul’s view of Christ and the law. EXERCISE Either on your own or in a study group, choose a piece of historical narrative, a prophecy, a psalm, a proverb, an allegory, a parable, or a miracle story from the Bible and think about: What it reveals about the psychology of the protagonists. What it reveals about the author’s psychology. What psychological issues it raises for you the reader(s). What assumptions and values have influenced your reading of the passage. What different conclusions would be arrived at by taking Freudian, cognitive, or hermeneutic approaches to these questions. Christian life and thought Psychohistory is a relatively well-established area of interdisciplinary work, albeit a controversial one, so the application of psychology to the study of Christian life and thought can be set in a broader context. There are lessons to be learned from psychohistory about how psychology should and should not relate to other disci- plines that can be applied to the interface between theology and psychology. Psychohistory has been dominated by psychoanalytic approaches, stemming from Freud’s essay on Leonardo, published in 1910, which was rapidly followed by many similar historical studies by other analysts (see Freud 1963). By the outbreak of the Second World War, psychological studies had been completed on a wide range of historical figures. There followed something of a fallow period, the renais- sance of psychohistory being marked by Erik Erikson’s study of Luther in 1958. While some have greeted psychohistory as a new dawn in historical studies, others have been strongly critical. Russell Stannard (1980) for example, has accused it of being ‘characterised by a cavalier attitude toward fact, a contorted attitude toward logic, an irresponsible attitude toward theory validation, and a myopic attitude  Psychology and theology 289 toward cultural difference and anachronisms’. Erikson’s book on Luther has been a particular focus of controversy and Roger Johnson’s (1977) collection of critical essays arising from it is a good reflection of the debate. For a more balanced survey of psychohistory, see Runyon ((ed.) 1988). Psychoanalytic studies of historical figures such Augustine or Luther are meth- odologically much more problematic than the analysis of a living client. In the latter case, the refinement of theory is intertwined with the discovery of new facts as the analysis proceeds. Also, clients are involved as collaborators, and their reactions to interpretative hypotheses play an important role in guiding the development of the analysis. None of this is possible with historical figures, and there is a danger that factual claims will simply be ‘derived’ from the theory, but presented in a way that renders them indistinguishable from historically verifiable facts. In fact, there is a wide gulf between the best and the worst work in psychohistory. Criticisms that can fairly be made of all too much of it do not necessarily apply to all. There is at least a limited amount of promising work that indicates that psychology is capable of making a careful and defensible contribution to the study of history. Though much psychohistory has used psychoanalytic psychology, other psycholog- ical approaches can be applied to historical studies, as to biblical studies. Psychology as a scientific discipline can fairly claim, contrary to Stannard’s accusation, to be careful in basing itself on facts, to employ rigorous modes of argument, and to check the validity of hypotheses with care. St Augustine is perhaps the most interesting example of a Christian subject of psychohistory, and Donald Capps and James Dittes (1990) have edited an excellent and varied series of studies. The Confessions, one of the first autobiographies of any kind, is obviously an intriguing document for the psychologist, and gives a remark- ably rich indication of the kind of person Augustine was. For Augustine, there was obviously a very close link between his life and his theology, which is what led him to write the Confessions in the first place, so we can expect an enriched understanding of Augustine’s life to enhance our understanding of his theology as well. Some psychological work on Augustine has perhaps been over-dogmatic, for example seeing strong evidence of an Oedipal conflict, though the Confessions certainly raises the question of whether his strong relationship with his mother was ultimately constraining or liberating. Another interesting issue is the theme of self-reproach that is so pervasive in the Confessions, but seems not to be accompa- nied by a heartfelt sense of guilt. Capps has made sense of that by suggesting that what Augustine experienced was not so much guilt about his actions, but shame about himself (a distinction to which we will return later in this chapter.) It is also worth emphasising the range of psychological approaches that are potentially relevant to the study of the Confessions, such as the contribution of cognitive psy- chology to elucidating the strong emphasis on hearing and speaking that runs through the Confessions. 290 Psychology and theology SUMMARY OF KEY THEMES The problems of psychoanalysing a figure from a past era. The examples of Luther and Augustine. The range of different psychological methods that can be applied to historical figures. EXERCISE Either on your own or in a study group, read St Augustine’s Confessions, and then read some of the essays from Capps and Dittes (eds) (1990). How would you describe St Augustine psychologically? Can you empathise with his inner conflicts and struggles? How useful is a psychohistorical approach to a figure like Augustine? What different insights do Freudian and cognitive analyses of Augustine reveal? Is it anachronistic? Would a ‘religious’ reading be a better reading? Can ‘religious’ and psychological readings be combined? Psychological approaches to Christian doctrine Theology has always accorded a central place to ‘systematic theology’, the coher- ent formulation of Christian doctrine. It is intrinsic to the character of systematic theology that it seeks to reformulate Christian doctrine creatively in the context of contemporary thought, and for this reason it is something that every generation has to undertake afresh. For example, there is a strand of twentieth-century sys- tematic theology that has been undertaken in the context of ‘existentialist’ thought. Feminist theology and liberation theology have also, in different ways, contributed to the reformulation of Christian doctrine in relation to particular lines of contemporary thought. In a similar way, there can be a psychological approach which seeks to reformulate Christian doctrine in relation to psychologi- cal thought. It again needs to be emphasised that this is not a matter of ‘reducing’ Christian belief to psychology. Sadly, there have so far been relatively few good examples. Perhaps the only major systematic theologian of the twentieth century to have made extensive use of a psychological approach is Paul Tillich, who made use of Freudian psychology, both in his theological understanding of human nature and in his understanding of God. Psychoanalysis helped him to formulate the human predicament of sinfulness (see Tillich 1959) though he did not follow Freud at every point. However, it is in approaching a doctrine of God that Tillich is most fruitfully indebted to Freud (see Homans 1970; Perry 1988). For Freud, as is well-known, God is a projection of the human mind; the God of religious belief is a ‘transference-god’. Tillich, in The Courage to Be (1952), is happy to adopt much of Freud’s critique of religion and to recognise that the God of tradi- tional theism can often be a transference-god. However, rather than abandoning all  Psychology and theology 291 encounter with God, Tillich suggests that the proper human response is to have the courage to encounter the real God beyond this ‘transference-god’ of theology and religious belief. Freud’s critique of religion is thus turned round and becomes an argument in favour of a negative or apophatic theology in which the key task is to unlearn inadequate conceptualisations of God. Though the psychological contribution to systematics is less developed than it is to biblical criticism, the main lines of the required approach are clear. First, the psychological approach should be integrated with conventional approaches to sys- tematics, rather than replacing them. One of the most explicit examples of this is William Meissner’s (1987) approach to the doctrine of grace. He sets out a main- stream theology of grace, following people such as Rahner in emphasising the embeddedness of the grace of God in relationality. He then suggests that alongside the theology of grace there can be a psychological approach that analyses how the effects of grace work themselves out at a human level. His theological focus on relationality leads him to look to the psychology of ‘object relations’ development for his analysis of the human side of grace. Second, it is clear that a variety of psychologies can contribute to systematic the- ology. The Jungian contribution is the best-developed, and will be considered shortly. However, considerable use has also been made of Freudian and Rogerian psychology. The psychology of emotions and attitudes also promises to be fruitful, and Fraser Watts (2000) has approached eschatology from the psychology of hope. Equally, the theology of sin can be approached from the psychology of shame and 292 Psychology and theology guilt (Capps 1993). So far, there does not seem to be any work on psychological sys- tematic theology that has brought a variety of different psychological approaches to bear in an integrative way on a single theme in Christian doctrine. However, this is clearly desirable and is likely to be attempted before long. The doctrine of the atonement is the topic in systematic theology that has lent itself most readily to psychological interpretation, and psychological approaches date back to Robert C. Moberly (1901). One reason for a focus on the atonement is that, though it starts from the divine initiative, it is also explicitly concerned with the transformation of human beings. Throughout Christian history a variety of different interpretations of the atonement have run concurrently. This invites interpretation in terms of the different psychological significance of alternative theories of the atonement. Among psychological approaches to the doctrine of the atonement, Paul Pruyser (1991) has approached it from Freudian psychology, and Don Browning (1966) has approached it from Rogerian psychology. Pruyser takes three classic the- ories of the atonement, the ransom, satisfaction, and moral example theories, and maps each of them on to a) the human emotions, and b) the components in the Freudian model of mind with which they are correlated. Pruyser suggests that the ransom theory, that sees the death of Christ as the ransom paid by God to Satan to buy humanity back, has a special resonance for those who feel anxiety about uncontrollable, malign impulses. Such people are likely to be those who experience anxiety arising from the primitive impulses of the id. The ransom theory brings them assurance that there is deliverance from dark, near- uncontrollable forces. Next, Pruyser suggests that the satisfaction theory, that sees the death of Christ as being offered to provide satisfaction to assuage God’s righteous anger at humanity’s rebellion, and to enable him to be merciful, has a particular resonance for those in whom guilt is a powerful emotion. Such people are likely to be those in whom the super-ego is strong and somewhat tyrannical. For them, the satisfaction theory brings the assurance that the price of guilt has been paid, releasing the fullness of God’s forgiveness for wrongdoing. Finally, the moral example theory, that sees Christ on the cross as an example of sacrificial love that transforms humanity by example, has a particular resonance for those whose predominant emotion is shame. Such people, will have a strong sense of discrepancy between the ego ideal and the ego. For them, the powerful example of love represented by Christ on the cross will be particularly moving and transforming. This bald summary of Pruyser’s mapping of theories of the atonement on to psychology overlooks some of the subtleties of his paper. It is perhaps a justifiable criticism that, for the purposes of mapping, he distinguishes different theories of the atonement too sharply. There are also specific points at which the mapping exercise seems less than satisfactory. For example, the ransom and satisfaction theories are seen as delivering humanity from anxiety and guilt respectively, whereas the moral example theory is seen as making use of shame to transform humanity rather than delivering humanity from it. Nevertheless, Pruyser has provided us with a path-  Psychology and theology 293 breaking example of how to map different understandings of Christian doctrine on to psychological understandings of their human impact. He goes on to raise, in an interesting way, the educational implications of this mapping. Having identified the understanding of the atonement that will speak most powerfully to a particular person, the question arises of whether or not it is best to focus on that theory. To do so may be the best way to enable the doctrine of the atonement to be ‘heard’ by that person. On the other hand, it may be that there is particular religious and psychological value in people learning to ‘hear’ understand- ings of the atonement to which they respond less readily. Don Browning (1966) has undertaken a somewhat similar exercise, but from the perspective of Rogerian psychology. Like Pruyser, he begins by distinguish- ing the three classic theories of atonement as defeat of the Devil, the satisfaction of God’s honour, and moral influence. Browning also provides a sophisticated advocacy for the analogical approach to theology involved in this kind of psy- chological mapping exercise, and shows how this does not undercut theological presuppositions. He shows how ‘scientific analysis of certain concrete processes of healing which operate between human beings can engender analogies that can constitute a positive clarification of man’s interpretation of the a priori perfec- tion revealed in Christ’ (p. 160). Drawing on the Rogerian understanding of the core therapeutic conditions (see Chapter 10), Browning argues that the empathic acceptance and unconditional posi- tive regard of the therapist provides a helpful analogy of the love of God shown on the cross. Sin is seen as analogous to ‘incongruence’ – absolutised values used to val- idate one’s worth but that tend to prevent the full experience of contradictory values. Browning argues that both sin and incongruence involve an over-reliance on finite values for a sense of self-worth, and that absolutising these finite values leads to a sense of estrangement. This then leads him to conceptualise the atonement in terms of deliverance from these finite values, a view that he believes has most in common with the classic theory, developed by Irenaeus, of atonement as defeat of the Devil. Browning also draws interesting analogies between Irenaeus and Rogerian therapy in how guilt is approached. In both cases, he argues, the problem is not objective guilt as such, but the subjective sense of bondage to it. These are just the key points from Browning’s psychological–analogical approach to the doctrine of the atonement, but we hope they will be enough to show its potential fruitfulness. More work is needed to explore just how many areas of Christian doctrine can be elucidated by this kind of psychological approach. The atonement is clearly one of the most fruitful areas to approach in this way. However, it is clear that the psy- chological approaches can be integrated with traditional systematics rather than replacing it. It is also clear that alternative psychological approaches can be employed, and that there is scope for critical discussion about which is the most fruitful in any particular context. 294 Psychology and theology SUMMARY OF KEY THEMES Psychology as a perspective, like feminism or sociology, that can be applied to systematic theology. Combining understandings of human psychology with interpretations of scrip- ture and doctrine. The different psychological attractions of different versions of the doctrine of the atonement. QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER How could a psychological understanding of a member of your church help you to tailor doctrines in a way that made them easily accessible? Or in a way that was alien but challenging? Can you think of examples other than the atonement where a person’s preferred way of understanding a text or doctrine can be partially understood in terms of their particular psychological make-up? Jungian approaches to Christian doctrine Though it is already clear that theology has a fruitful interface with various different psychological traditions, Jungian psychology has a particularly rich contribution to make to theology. That stems from several distinctive features of Jungian psychol- ogy: the importance that is attached to symbols, the concept of the ‘collective’ unconscious, which transcends purely individual psychology, and the tradition of interpreting psychological material such as dream symbolism in relation to a variety of cultural traditions. One of the key questions to be asked about Jung’s psychology of religion is how far it is reductionist, seeking simply to reduce religion to psychology. Jung does not seem to do that. Rather, he is engaged in a two-way mapping of clinical material on to a variety of forms of cultural life, including religion but also others such as alchemy. He feels he can understand religion better by relating it to mind, and equally that he can understand mind better by relating it to religious and other sym- bolic themes. It would be inappropriate to regard this two-way hermeneutic as mere psychological reductionism. Many theological commentators on Jung have argued that he should not have ventured into theology in the way that he did. However, such arguments often end up in the defeatist view that no human understanding of the subject matter of theology is possible at all. It is more fruitful to clarify the nature of the contribution that psychologists such as Jung can make to theology, than to argue that no such contribution should be attempted. One of the most sustained and interesting theological engagements with Jung has been that of Victor White, seen in his two books, God and the Unconscious (1952), and Soul and Psyche: An Inquiry into the Relationship of Psychotherapy and Religion (1960). White entered into dialogue with Jung with enormous enthusiasm, and was the only theologian to be accepted as a friend and collaborator by Jung. However,  Psychology and theology 295 their joint project threw up increasing disagreements. White became unhappy at how Jung handled the relationship between the God image and God himself, and was disturbed by some of the unorthodox movements in Christian thought apparent in Jung’s Answer to Job (1952). The collaboration between White and Jung has been the subject of a detailed study by Lammers (1994). Of more recent writers, Christopher Bryant (1983) is one of the most widely-read writers on the interface of Christianity and Jungian thought. Dourley (1995) has provided a careful study of Jung’s critique of contemporary Christianity. Brown (1981) has written a careful philosophical study of the hermeneutic principles involved in Jung’s approach to Christian doctrine. However, perhaps the most sus- tained and fruitful work on the interface of Jung and Christianity has come in the numerous books of Edward Edinger such as Ego and Archetype (1972). While faith- ful to Jungian thought, Edinger is, at some key points, less religiously unorthodox than Jung himself. Most careful students of Jung’s psychology of religion (e.g. Heisig 1979) have recognised the extent to which Jung’s views evolved over time. His early views advanced little beyond the Freudian concept of God as a projection of the personal unconscious, though there are fragmentary pointers towards his later views. His first major and distinctive statement on religion comes in his Terry Lectures given in 1937; in these lectures Jung makes use of Rudolf Otto’s concept of the ‘numinous’ and largely identifies religion with it. The religious function does not depend on creeds but is seen as the surrender to a superordinate factor or overriding principle. Jung then moves on to a more explicitly theological period in which his major essays on the Trinity and the Mass, both published in 1942, are the key texts. One of the clearest and most systematic statements on religion also comes from this period, 1944, though confusingly it is published under the title, Introduction to the Religious and Psychological Problems of Alchemy. Some years later there is his Answer to Job (1952), which develops earlier ideas in an increasingly maverick theological direc- tion. There is so much development of views here that one cannot simply speak of Jung’s ‘psychology of religion’. It will help in considering the Jungian approach to doctrine to look mainly at one particular aspect of Jungian psychology, namely the life journey that Jung calls ‘in- dividuation’. This can be seen as a transition from being centred on the ego, the centre of consciousness, to being centred on the Self, which is the whole personality, conscious and unconscious. The process of individuation also involves an integra- tion of the shadow into the whole personality. Jung contrasts the ‘persona’ (or mask) and the ‘shadow’, the dark-concealed part of the personality, and repeatedly emphasises how disastrous it is to try to keep the dark side of our personality hidden. It is perhaps a failing to which religious people are particularly prone. There is an interesting analogy between Jung’s concept of individuation and the Christian concept of salvation, though of course the two are not identical. At the heart of Christian salvation history is the idea of God reaching out to redeem fallen humanity. At several points in the gospels, there is a strong emphasis on recovery of the lost, so that all will be complete. This parallels Jung’s emphasis on gathering the shadow part of the personality into the wholeness of the Self. There is thus an 296 Psychology and theology analogy between the shadow side of personality and the Christian concept of human sinfulness. Jung’s concept of the integration of shadow into wholeness is analogous to the Christian concept of the redemption of sinfulness. Though this analogy deserves close examination, it might be objected that indi- viduation is a purely psychological process, whereas salvation comes from God. However, on closer examination, there is less of a contrast here than at first appears. For Jung, the Self is as much beyond the ego as God is beyond humanity in Chris- tian theology. Indeed, Jung is as emphatic about the limitations of the ego as any Christian preacher on the limitations of humanity. The ego cannot save itself; it needs to glimpse the Self beyond and to be humble enough to respond to the intima- tions of the Self. But still, isn’t God really beyond us, whereas the Self just seems to be beyond us? This raises difficult questions about the status of archetypes such as the Self in Jung- ian theory. Belonging as they do to the collective unconscious, there is a sense in which they really are beyond each individual person. Also, there is a close relation- ship between Self and God in Jungian thought. Jung is clear that, as a matter of empirical fact, there is an image of God in the psyche. This psychic image of God both represents the wholeness of personality, which is the Self, and facilitates the process of individuation. What remains ambiguous in Jungian thought is whether or not there is a metaphysical God beyond the image of God in the psyche, though Jung’s general line is that that is not a matter for him as an empirical psychologist. In the journey towards individuation, it is important that there should be a healthy ‘axis’ between the ego and the Self. The ego needs to be open to the Self, nei- ther so crushed that it cannot raise its sights to the Self, nor so inflated that it falsely presumes to be the Self. This Jungian theme of avoiding the twin pitfalls of a crushed and inflated ego has many parallels in theological thought. The relationship between ego and Self can be seen as, in many ways, analogous to that between humanity and God. Just as the ego needs to avoid being either crushed or inflated, so humanity needs to avoid a concept of God which sees him as wholly transcendent or merely immanent. Maintaining a balance between immanence and transcendence is analogous to maintaining a healthy ego–Self axis. Similarly, in eschatological thought, it is important to avoid the extremes of an eschatology in which the promised future is so completely realised already that is has no power to inspire hope, or is so distant that it makes no contact with the present (see Watts, 2000) There is a near-consensus that the appropriate way of thinking about the eschatological future is as ‘inaugurated’, partly here already, but not yet fully here. That involves maintaining a relationship between the present and the eschatological future that is analogous to that which obtains between ego and Self when there is a healthy axis between them. The question of the shadow, referred to above, raises the related topic of evil. Though Jung seems to assume a close linkage between shadow and evil, it is a point about which he is less than clear. Alongside his emphasis on the integration of the shadow into the whole personality, there is a strong emphasis on the ‘reality’ of evil. He was repeatedly critical of the ‘privatio boni’ doctrine of evil as an absence of goodness, on the grounds that it failed to do justice to the reality of evil. It is  Psychology and theology 297 intriguing that Jung, a psychologist, has been as emphatic as any twentieth- century figure about the reality of evil, more so than most theologians. Indeed, Jung went so far as to expand the Trinity into a quaternity, including the Devil as a quadrant within the godhead. For this, he had been criticised for making illegiti- mate metaphysical extrapolations from psychological considerations (e.g. Burrell 1974). Indeed, Jung’s concept of God is often highly anthropomorphic, and he is prone to assume that what is true of the human being psychologically is also true metaphysically of God. This issue is very much to the fore in Jung’s treatment of Christ. One can discern three different strands in Jungian thought here. First, and most straightforwardly, Christ is a symbol of the Self, and one that facilitates individuation. In addition, Jung sometimes extends the concept of individuation to humanity as a whole, and sees Christ as playing a central role in the individuation of humanity. Here the analogy with Christian salvation history becomes very close. Edinger (1972) has suggested that the fall corresponds to the birth of the conscious ego out of a previously undif- ferentiated psychic wholeness. For the first time, the ego realises that it is not the Self. This is consistent with the emphasis in the myth of the fall on Adam and Eve’s new sense of the difference between good and evil, and of the difference between themselves and God. There was thus a separation between God and humanity anal- ogous to the separation of the ego from the Self. In individuation, the necessary next stage is that the Self reaches out to the ego and, analogously, in Christian thought, God reaches out to humanity. The incarnation of God in Christ would be seen as the key step in this restoration of relationship between humanity and God, leading on to the possibility of eschatological wholeness. 298 Psychology and theology There is yet another strand in Jung’s thought about Christ which really only comes to prominence in his Answer to Job. Here Jung seems to be talking, in effect, about the individuation of God. He seems to see God as initially existing in a kind of undifferentiated wholeness. However, the creation of humanity in his own image marks a step in his ‘individuation’. In his dealings with Job, God is seen as still at a fairly early stage of psychological development. On this view, with the birth of Christ, a separate centre of consciousness was established, of which the story of Christ’s temptations in the wilderness, and his experience of desolation on the cross, are key markers. The remaining task was the integration of the opposites that had now been fully differentiated, and Jung sees the Spirit as the person of the Trinity in whom that reintegration occurs. It will be clear that Jung’s religious thought is often very heterodox. The question is whether it needed to be so. In fact, Jung’s psychological framework could have been applied to theological ideas in a more orthodox way than he himself did, and the theological thought of Jungians such as Edinger is at a number of points more orthodox than Jung’s own. It therefore seems justifiable to distinguish between the strangeness of Jung’s own theological views and the potential of his psychological framework to elucidate the significance of theological concepts. In appraising Jung’s approach to religion, it is helpful to be aware of the philo- sophical influences on him (Clarke 1991). The influence of Kant and Hegel is marked, even though Jung is not in any way a systematic philosophical thinker. From Kant, he inherits epistemological assumptions that influence his views on the knowability of the archetypes, and especially on the knowability of God. To put things baldly, Kant assumed that things as we know them are human con- structs, but behind them there are ‘things in themselves’ that we cannot know directly. This is one of the key influences on Jung’s view that we can know the image of God in the psyche, but that we cannot know any ‘God in himself’ that might stand behind the image. From Hegel, he imbibed a number of key ideas including the importance of the reconciliation of opposites. Jung’s disparaging remarks about Hegel should not be allowed to obscure the extent of his indebted- ness to him. Jung’s view of religion needs to be understood against the background of his sense of the ‘spiritual crisis’ of contemporary humanity. It concerned him deeply that religious symbols no longer made any effective contact with the unconscious. Divorced from this, they had become void. The result was that people no longer understood what religious symbols were about. It is as though ‘we see the cathe- dral but do not see what is under it, we do not know what a cathedral is, what reli- gion is’ (quoted in Dourley 1995: 27). From this came Jung’s hostility to conventional religion, but also his concern to rehabilitate it so that it once more connected with the unconscious.  Psychology and theology 299 SUMMARY OF KEY THEMES Reasons why Jungian psychology is theologically fruitful: 1 the importance of symbols 2 the role of the collective unconscious 3 the way dreams and other symbolic materials are related to religious traditions. Jungian individuation and Christian salvation. The Jungian shadow and human sinfulness. The ego, the Self and God. Jung’s idea of a ‘quaternity’. Applying Jung’s psychological framework to theology doesn’t necessitate agreeing with his heterodox beliefs. QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER How close is the similarity between the salvation of humanity and personal individuation? Make a balance sheet of the similarities and differences. Can Jungian psychology enrich the church’s understanding of Christ? How far are Jungian contributions consistent with more traditional approaches? Conclusion Psychology still tends to be regarded with suspicion in many theological circles, and has been welcomed less readily than the social sciences. However, this suspicion of psychology usually arises from misunderstandings about the nature of the disci- pline. Sometimes, there is a limited understanding of the nature of psychology, and a failure to appreciate its range, scope, and critical rigour. Sometimes there is a view that the gospel is social, whereas psychology is incorrigibly individualistic – but that is to ignore the fact that psychology includes social psychology which is well aware of the social context of psychological processes. Sometimes, there is a fear that if the- ology engages with psychology it will result in theology somehow disappearing into psychology without remainder – but that is to ignore the scope for there to be a dia- logue of mutual respect between two independent disciplines. Sometimes there is the suspicion that psychology, because