Possibilities for a Christian Positive Psychology

Abstract

Two streams of thought are examined: Nancey Murphy's recently-proposed approach to integrating psychology and theology, and the burgeoning positive psychology movement. Points of congruence and divergence are considered, and the potential for a mutually-advantageous interaction is discussed, with curiosity research serving as an example. Murphy's application of virtue ethics to the question of human flourishing provides positive psychology with a missing teleological component. Positive psychology provides conceptual, methodological, institutional, and applicatory resources that would be valuable to a Christian psychologist who wishes to make use of Murphy's neo-Aristotelian model of human flourishing.

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