Scripture and Psychological Science: Integrative Challenges & Callings

A brief classification of a range of approaches to engaging Scripture in psychology is provided including one non-normative and three normative strategies (Bible as encyclopedia of revealed truths, Bible as a source of theological truths and values, and Bible as divine speech received by providentially situated readers). The implications of each of these for an integrative Christian psychology are discussed. Five issues are examined that require further development by Christians in psychology. If Scripture has authoritative priority then how might this authority concretely function in psychological science? What is the proper scope of Scripture with regard to psychology? What positive contributions to psychology are germinal within Scripture? Can Christian psychological scholarship contribute to Biblical hermeneutics? What improvements in integrative curriculum would facilitate greater attention to the Word of God in the discipline of psychology? These various issues present integrative challenges and callings for current and future generations of Christians in psychology. ********** What roles can or should Scripture play in psychological science? Even to raise this question may seem strange to secular psychologists who see the emancipation of the academic disciplines from authoritarian arbiters of belief as a fait accompli of modern science. In contrast, some posture of deference to the Bible seems incumbent upon psychologists that believe Scripture to be the Word of God. Yet what form can or should this deference take? A variety of possible approaches to interfacing Scripture and psychological science are described below. APPROACHES TO INTERFACING SCRIPTURE & PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE A rough and ready classification of some different approaches to interfacing Scripture and psychological science can be offered which captures a broad range of existing options and positions. After discussing non-normative approaches to this task, I will outline a variety of normative strategies for relating Scripture and psychology. A central premise of evangelical and other Biblically grounded faith traditions is that the primacy of Scripture is to be taken as axiomatic by Christian scholars even in the secular disciplines (Helm & Trueman, 2002; Johnson, 2004). I will concede that integrationists or other psychologists committed to a Biblical faith will generally find non-normative strategies inadequate. Yet the non-normative approaches provide a useful didactic contrast to clarify the range of more Biblically deferent strategies that are subsequently presented. Non-Normative Approaches One possible way to interface Scripture and psychology is to attempt to simply describe roles that Scripture has played in human life without making any particular normative or theological judgment about Scripture. I will spell Scripture without a capitalized's' in this section because this strategy implicitly (or even explicitly) denies the primacy of Scripture in the life of the mind. Williamson (2002) has proposed a "new model of fundamentalism" which gives primacy not to scripture itself but the role it plays in the psyche of the fundamentalist. He contrasts the role of scripture in fundamentalist thinking with the "principle of intertextuality," defined as "... the psychological dynamic involved as non-fundamentalists come to an understanding of the sacred text" (Williamson, p. 4). He argues that non-fundamentalists understand their texts in light of a reciprocal interaction between the text and a set of 'relative truths' and peripheral beliefs. While the scriptural understanding of the non-fundamentalists is informed by their faith tradition (i.e., "relative truths"), their faith tradition and scriptural understanding is also altered by changes peripheral beliefs. In contrast, according to Williamson, fundamentalists understand their peripheral beliefs in light of more core Scriptural and other 'absolute beliefs'. …