Expanding Horizons for Christians in Psychology

The integration of psychology and Christianity involves the juxtaposition of at least two horizons of understanding. Numerous attempts have been made to produce an expanded horizon that is faithfully and integrally both Christian and psychological. The current paper explores the role of the concept of "faithful comprehension" as a regulative ideal for integration. This idea is unpacked both in light of externalist epistemology and hermeneutical realism. Some implications for psychological and Christian knowing are considered. The paper concludes by calling Christian psychologists, and Christian psychology training programs, to develop expanded epistemologies that complement what is truth-productive in psychological science with other methods that allow a more complete range of the person to be investigated. Such calls are not unique in the integration literature. Externalism's emphasis on reliable truth production clarifies what must be accomplished by any such expanded psychological science, Christian or otherwise. ********** I have elsewhere proposed a model of integration of psychology and Christianity as an interpretive process that can be productively informed by hermeneutical realism (Hathaway, 2002). This model appropriates Gadamer's (1960/1984) notion of interpretation as a fusion of horizons to describe the integration process. A horizon is a sphere of understanding about the world that arises from the knower's concrete vantage point in history. Gadamer (1960/1984) has asserted that the act of interpreting a text involves a fusion, or creative expansion, of the reader's horizon in encounter with the horizon of the text. A successful fusion preserves what is true in both horizons but expands and enriches one's understanding in the process. While hermeneutics applies most directly to the understanding of texts, contemporary philosophical hermeneutics is construed as a general account of all human understanding, not just literary exegesis (Bernstein, 1983; Palmer, 1969). I have accordingly suggested that the integration of the horizons of psychology and Christianity involves a reciprocal encounter that moves the reader from undervaluation of either horizon, by a compartmentalized appreciation, towards an expanded perspective in which richer, unified insights emerge that are faithful to the truth(s) available separately in each horizon. I will briefly recap some of the key aspects of this interpretative model of integration below, but the reader is directed to Hathaway (2002) for a more detailed discussion. The main focus of this paper is to emphasize the central role of 'faithful comprehension of truth' as a bridge principle for this interpretative integration. This proposal focuses on epistemological issues as a connecting point for Christian and psychological understandings of the world. Some preliminary comments about my approach to epistemology are therefore needed. KNOWING REALITY Some Externalist Musings Contemporary psychology has grown up within a modern self-understanding. While various characterizations of modernism have been offered in recent years, I am most concerned about modernism's predominant epistemic outlook which has been recently labeled "internalism" (Bernecker & Dretske, 2000; Bonjour & Sosa, 2003; Kornblith, 2001; Plantinga, 1992). An outlook may be 'internalist' about the nature of knowledge, the nature of justification or both (Bernecker & Dretske, 2000). Among the typical features of internalism are "... an emphasis on the justification of beliefs, a search for highly certain foundations upon which to build up our body of knowledge (classical foundationalism), and a portrayal of knowledge processes as involving 'duties' for the knowing agent" (Hathaway, 2004, p. 10). Internalism about justification holds that the knowing subject must, in some truth guaranteeing way, be consciously aware of the grounds for belief (Moser, Multer, & Trout, 1998). …