PSYCHOLOGY AND CHRISTIANITY

Integrative Approaches to Psychology and Christianity



Abstract

Integrative advances to psychology and Christianity provide a comprehensive portrayal of the annals of psychology and theology. Knowledge comes by what has occurred in the past and Christianity has performed a foremost part in molding our humanity and worldview. Entwistle assists to realize that God presents reality in His phrase and His works are formed by consideration and reflection of both. The Bible being the phrases of God and His creation being the publication of His works displays us His power. Entwistle values five paradigms to concern psychology and theology. The paradigms were Enemies, Spies, Colonialists, Neutral Parties, and Allies as Subjects of One Sovereign.

This characterization of psychology of religion stands in contrast to integration. The first is informed by a method that venerates scientific inquiry and may be practiced by “outsiders” while the latter is a mindset, a way of thinking from a particular worldview that is practiced by “insiders.” The two often cross paths in our evangelical journals (with differences sometimes indistinguishable, and frequently unacknowledged), and they cross-pollinate each other within the thinking of evangelical scholars. Integrators, often from an evangelical perspective assay psychology through religious eyes of faith, which is the reverse of psychologists of religion.

Psychology, not proposed to be alike to theology, is very much alike in its goals to realize and advance one's life and give significance to one's life. Each individual has its own gifts and features to assist the entire world. God as our creator made us a work of art, one of a kind with our own one-by-one reason to assist to the world. Psychology and theology are both apprehensive with the human environment and function. The publication interprets that there is no distinction between sacred and secular battlers when it arrives to truth. Human environment is that we are all born with sin having good and bad with our hearts.

Most of us view this trend with ambivalent emotions. On the one hand, we sense the great potential in a scientific study of man. We know that objective data and well constructed theories may deepen our understanding of man, God's most intricate creation. We are also aware that the church has some- times failed to minister to the emotional needs of its constituents; and we realize the church has repeatedly failed to speak clearly on vital psychological issues. On the other hand, the rapid growth of the psychological sciences and professions may also be viewed as an encroachment on the ministry of the church. We sense a veiled threat (or sometimes obvious) to the authority of the Scriptures, the reality of the supernatural, and the role of the Christian ministry (McMinn & Phillips, 2001). These mixed feelings touch a wide range of concerned Christians. The man on the street, for example, sees in psychology new insights that may provide relief from personal discomfort and despair. I will endeavor to link psychology and theology of Christianity in its true ...