Why Psychology Needs Theology: A Radical-Reformation Perspective

Abstract

WHY PSYCHOLOGY NEEDS THEOLOGY: A RADICAL-REFORMATION PERSPECTIVE. Alvin Dueck and Cameron Lee, eds. (2005). Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Pp. 206 + xx, pb, npi. Reviewed by J. Harold Ellens. Professor Alvin Dueck is one of our most thoughtfully reflective and analytic scholars in the field of psychology and biblical studies. He has been professionally interested in the relationship between these two fields for at least a quarter of a century. He is a licensed psychologist who holds the Freed Chair for Integration of Psychology and Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary Graduate School of Psychology and the author of a definitive work entitled, Between Jerusalem and Athens. In that work he explored the implications of theological themes such as the reign of God, the church, and discipleship for psychotherapeutic practice. Dueck has also been actively involved in developing integrative, cross-cultural programs for mental health services in Guatemala and China. Now he joins forces with his colleague, Cameron Lee, Professor of Family Studies at Fuller Graduate School of Psychology. Cameron's recent book, Unexpected Blessing, explores how the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount can help Christians understand the counter-cultural nature of God's reign. Together they have edited Why Psychology Needs Theology. They have enlisted eight scholars to join them in writing a total of nine chapters in three parts to formulate this new volume. Part One concerns Integration from a RadicalReformation Perspective and presents Nancey Murphy's three chapters on Philosophical Resources for Integration, Theological Resources for Integration, and Constructing a Radical-Reformation Research Program in Psychology. Part Two treats Extensions of the Model and contains four chapters: Noncoercion, Nonviolence, and Sacrifice: Applications in Families by Mari L. Clements and Alexandra E. Mitchell; RadicalReformation Theology and Recovery of the Proper Incarnational View of the Self by Cynthia Neal Kimball; Mere Humanity: The Ordinary Lives of Ambivalent Altruists by Kevin Reimer; and unequally Yoked? The Role of Culture in the Relationship between Theology and Psychology by J. Derek McNeil. Part Three on Alternatives to the Model has two chapters: Brent D. Slife's on Are the Natural Science Methods of Psychology Compatible with Theism?; and Frank C. Richardson's Psychology and Religion in Dialogue: Hermeneutic Reflections. Annually at Fuller Graduate School, a Distinguished Lectureship is held relating to the questions to which the interface of psychology and give rise. They were formally called the John G. Finch Distinguished Lectures in Integration and are now referred to as the Integration Symposia. Nancey Murphy, whose work starts off this volume was the Distinguished Lecturer in 2003. Her three chapters typify the volume, setting the stage for the rest. Responding to the fruitful debate about the scientific quality of psychology and citing in that regard Thomas Kuhn's important work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, she declares at the outset that psychology is scientific in character. She strengthens the case for this thesis as one rail on which this volume moves, by a wise appeal to the scientific methodology of Imry Lakatos, the Hungarian philosopher of mathematics. When philosophers of science speak of scientific methodology, they intend to speak of the concrete experimental or observational methods used in particular sciences but rather of the 'logic' of science-of the relation between theories and evidence, of the criteria for judging one theory to be rationally superior to its rivals (p. 5). Murphy then proceeds to construct an abstract (formal) model for understanding the proper relation between and psychology, not a model for understanding the internal structure of or science, but rather a way of conceiving of the proper relations among the sciences and between the sciences and theology (p. …

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