Book Review on Integrative Approaches to Psychology & Christianity

Integration between Psychology and Christianity

Summary

In his book, Entwistle attempts to elaborate and explore the notion behind integrating psychology and Christianity in the context of world problems, philosophical groundwork, various integration models and its implications. He has pointed to the fact that God has rewarded every individual with specific ability or set of abilities. It is an individual's duty to serve his God and others in a way of thanking Him for his generosity. He knows best what is best for His mankind. Entwistle mentions in his book that God has authored entire truth, “all truth is God's truth” (Enwistle, 2010, p.13).

The rest is subjective and depends on an individual's understanding about the world, and he integrates the two things. Everyone has his own way of perceiving the world. His own perceptions bear a great deal of influence on his experiences and expectations. That is why there is a variation in his assumptions as some prove to be right while others wrong. The question arises that from where these views come? They descend from religion, region, family, qualification, media and societal environment. The author has tried to pour in Christian views to comprehend the rationale behind creation, collapse, restoration and consummation. "Christian understandings of personhood, the purpose of human life, our need for God, and the ethical teachings of Christian faith," Entwistle suggests, "are integral to psychology, not merely parallel to it" (Enwistle, 2010, p.199).

The author has attempted to integrate both psychology and Christianity. They both have remained on two opposite extremes since the Galileo's times. After reading this book, I could understand the key historical conflicting points like resistance between religion and science. I could establish some promising understanding about how psychology and Christianity are interweaved. Enwistle says in his book, “The interaction of psychology and theology is virtually inevitable due to their mutual interest in understanding the ambiguities and mysteries of human behavior, and healing human brokenness” (Enwistle, 2010, p.51).

Psychology and theology hold innate interest and concern in the lives of human beings. The way humans behave and deal with healing their brokenness. The approaches are certainly different from each other on the aspects of assumptions, methodologies and secondary goals. Psychology aims to provide us with a natural explanation working behind any desirable or undesirable incidents. Moreover, psychologists make use of experiential evidences and explanations to attain theories. They interpret the data, yet their own worldwide views will cast substantial amount of impact on the conclusion. On the other hand, Christianity provides us with natural and mystical explanations for the incidents happen (Moriarty, 2010).

There are five paradigms in the book which describe best the relationship between psychology and Christianity; they are models for enemies, spies, colonialists, neutral parties and allies. The enemies' model aims to project Christianity and psychology as articles to be considered as completely separate ones. The spies' model elaborates on the ways in which psychology borrows whatever it needs form Christianity to improve its own credibility on some definite ...