Integration of Theology & Psychology
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Despite the traditional notion that theology and psychology do not mix the recent literature offers numerous examples of theologians intent on demonstrating that the integration of the two is valuable for students of both domains and, above all, is valuable for those who believe that God is essential to every aspect of human well-being but also find that in many instances an understanding of how the mind works is an invaluable complement to understanding how God works in one's life. Those who benefit from this integration can be pastoral care-givers, troubled individuals, theologians alarmed by barren scientific rationalism, or psychologists who have come to understand that the focus on ultimate concerns is what makes life meaningful and purposeful for millions of people. The literature addresses the conflict between psychology and theology that derives from the hostile attitude of the former which, since Freud, has not only underrated the importance of the spiritual in people's lives but has actively "disparaged religious expression and beliefs" (Cortes, 1999, p. 20). The justifications for this disparagement extend back to the Enlightenment's elevation of reason (based solely on induction and evidence) to the position of sole arbiter of human beliefs. But the mistaken notion that scientific rationalism should be applied to every human endeavor has been identified and understood as a mistake by many people and it is now more widely understood that science of any sort--e
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hology about human nature--despite the fact that its practitioners and theorists so often act as fools themselves. As Burns-Smith notes "all psychologies carry moral, ethical, even religious implications" yet the perceived (or invented) polarity between "science" and "faith" has often led even "religiously-oriented practitioners" either to be uncritical in their adoption of "psychological models of the human or to reject them altogether, for fear of conflict with religious beliefs" (1999, p. 3). In part, of course, this attitude derives from the belief that the supposed split between theology and science is genuine. But, as Murphy and Ellis (1996) have noted, there is certainly no intellectual warrant for such a separation. All branches of human endeavor are only incomplete if they do not recognize the importance of the religious experience. In many such endeavors, of course, its importance is very small indeed, in practical terms, to the immediate purposes of the pursuit. But beyond these limited branches of endeavor there is "a hierarchical ordering of the natural and human sciences" in which each mode of understanding "poses boundary questions that can only be satisfied with reference to the one above it [and] is incomple
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 3725
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page)
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