Psychology & Christianity : Four Views

by Stanton L. Jones

Psychology has exploded across the academic and popular landscape in the last hundred years. Dozens of schools of thought have arisen and thousands of books have been written on the nature of our personalities, our development, our relationships and our inner well-being. All of this has been of interest (and sometimes of concern) to Christians because of the importance we place on a correct understanding of human nature. Psychology often seems disconnected from, if not antithetical to, Christian perspectives on life. How do we relate our cherished Christian beliefs about persons to what secular versions of psychology tell us? In this book are gathered four models of the relationship of psychology and Christianity. David Powlison (Westminster Theological Seminary) offers the biblical counseling model. The levels-of-explanation model is advanced by David G. Myers (Hope College), while Gary Collins (former executive director of American Association of Christian Counselors) introduces the integration model. The Christian psychology model is put forth by Robert C. Roberts (Baylor University). Each of the contributors responds to the other essayists, noting points of agreement as well as problems they see. Editors Eric L. Johnson and Stanton L. Jones also provide an introduction to the history of Christians and psychology as well as a conclusion that considers what might bind the four views together and how a reader might evaluate the relative strengths and weaknesses of each view.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Counselling, Christianity, School, Christian

271 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2000

About the author

STAN JONES, PHD, who recently retired from his posts as provost and professor of psychology at Wheaton College, is a nationally recognized Christian expert on sexuality. He has written books on psychology and Christianity and on homosexuality and has contributed numerous articles to such professional journals as American Psychologist.

Stan and his wife, Brenna, are active in teaching about parenting and marriage in their church. They wrote the original versions of the God's Design for Sex series while their three children were young; now, they enjoy their three kids as adults as well as the early stages of grandparenting.

Reviews

[Joel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A helpful interaction between four perspectives on Psychology and Christianity within the Christian counseling sphere. Each author writes an essay on the topic, and each author responds to each essay. It is really helpful to see the perspectives laid out with the criticisms and commendations all in one volume. The book is a bit dated, but not too severely, as it is ten years old. There have been developments in the conversation since then. But this is a really helpful introduction to the perspectives.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was looking forward to "Psychology and Christianity: Four Views," but was disappointed by each of the contributions. The four views represented are "A Levels-of-Explanation view" (David Myers), "An Integration View" (Gary Collins), "A Christian Psychology View" (Robert Roberts), and "A Biblical Counseling View" (David Powlison).

I confess that I'm already committed to the biblical-counseling view and David Powlison is one of my heroes. I'll start with Powlison's position (where the book ends). While I appreciate Powlison's critique that due to the fact there is no one psychology (there are psychologies), a Christian cannot integrate the Bible and psychology. True enough. But I found Powlison to be overly strident in his position and his argument that psychological research has not netted meaningful insights about human beings to be at the very least overstated. Other people in the biblical-counseling camp have more nuanced views on this topic (for instance, Mike Emlet). that I would more closely align with.

But the other authors are not much better. Robert Roberts Christian Psychology view is probably the most enjoyable to chapter to read, as he urges Christians to draw psychological insights from scripture and writers across the millennia (from the Augustine to the desert fathers to Dostoyevsky). Myers's Levels view was extremely problematic, allowing Christianity a place at the table only where it can be validated by psychological research. Myers's Integration view was almost impossible to make heads-or-tails of. He was much clearer when responding to other views than when he was setting forth his own perspective.

Reading the chapters, I almost felt as though the authors hadn't been given clear assignments. I think a clearer focus and stronger editing would have helped a lot.

The intro added a little to the book, providing a brief history of a history of Christians in psychology. But the concluding chapter was unclear and not helpful to me.

There is another "views" book on psychology and Christianity that is newer that I will probably circle back to.

For more reviews see thebeehive.live.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a good summary of the various Christian approaches to psychology (one of the views is more of a psychological approach to Christianity). This was a second hand purchase from Hastings, and I later found that there has sense been published a second more comprehensive and up to date edition

[Joanna]

Presents four different Xian views - neat format and approach; stays free of judgement and evaluation. This proved immensely helpful for my personal learning about the various camps prior to my counseling degree.....

[Laurent Dv · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good books on four perspectives on this subject. The first is oriented toward a sociology and biology, the second toward an explicit fusion of psychology and christianity, the third toward historical theology and the fourth toward explicit exegesis and a suspicion of secular psychology. What is bad is that you don't see so much differences other than degree or explicit and implicit will to keep what is good in secular psychology. There is a difference of emphasis on practice and theory, maybe only Powlison deal with counseling as a day-to-day issue.

[Josiah Richardson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Helpful read for some thoughts that have been rattling around in my brain. I'm not certain that any contributer won me over to their viewpoint, but they definitely helped me structure how I feel on the issue.

[Marie Tankersley]

For thesis

[Sean Perron · Rating 4 out of 5]

The chapter by Gary Collins is a true disaster for Integration and it makes sense why Jones replaced him in the next edition.

[Daniel Joshua · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally got around to reading this. My Psychology professor from community college gave me this at his Christmas party years ago.

[Brett · Rating 3 out of 5]

This introductory text offers a variety of perspectives regarding the relationship between psychology and Christianity: from the more science-based levels-of-explanation view to the more anti-scientific Biblical counseling view (including the middle ground views of integration and Christian Psychology). Beyond issues particular to psychology, the text raises more general questions of the relationship between faith and science. While the booked helped to distinguish between views, it offered little help in evaluation. In all, I still feel lost between the numerous options. B

[Heidi]

"How do we relate our cherished Christian beliefs about persons to what secular versions of psychology tell us? In this book are gathered four models of the relationship of psychology and Christianity."