Christian Psychology
10
(Cassibba, Granqvist, Costantini, & Gatto, 2008, p.
1760) and an “individual construction” (Granqvist,
Ivarsson, Broberg, & Hagekull, 2007, p. 598), or when
psychology researchers describe faith as blind with defi-
nitions like “the acceptance of the truth of a statement
without questions or needing proof ” (Heiman, 1999,
p. 7), they seem to be explaining, or explaining away,
theists’ beliefs and experiences.
Should not the theist cry foul when these con-
ceptual renovations occur and remind psychologists
of the separability frame to which they are formally
committed? The short answer from the perspective of
the conventional frame is “no.” Each of these reconcep-
tualizations of theistic ideas or practices is warranted for
the conventionalist because the methods of naturalism
are presumed to be neutral and therefore their findings
can pass into the theistic realm without consequence or
prejudice. In other words, theism is not accommodat-
ing a naturalistic ideology. It is accommodating objec-
tivities, truths that have been discovered by scientific
psychologists whose method only incidentally (given its
relative objectivity) operates from within a naturalistic
framework.
Theism, on the other hand, is conventionally un-
derstood to be severely biased and subjective, even dog-
matic and fragmented (Alcock, 2009, Hibberd, 2012).
In Helminiak’s (2010) words, a theistic approach to psy-
chology is “personal belief, popular piety, and collective
superstition” (p. 50). Moreover, it “threatens to subvert
the whole enterprise of evidence-based research and
scholarship” (p. 50). In short, it is so thoroughly subjec-
tive that it has no place in an empirical, evidence-based,
and objective psychology (p. 67). In the end a theistic
approach to psychology boils down to the peddling of
wholly subjective, personal religious beliefs as if they
constituted “a reasoned theology” (p. 67), or worse, a
“validated science” (p. 67). To its critics, it is subjectiv-
ity par excellence, passing itself off as objective science,
and its insinuation into science must be strongly resisted
to forestall the grand deception that would eventuate.
Moreover, theists have no methodological position
that parallels that of the naturalist. Unlike naturalism
whose adherents often claim they can somehow divorce
their methods from their worldview, the worldview and
methods of theism are considered inseparable (Geisler,
2011). Therefore, theistic methods cannot be neutral
with regard to other worldviews and theism’s “truths”
cannot be true for naturalism or universally applied
because they do not evidence the objectivity obtained
through a relatively neutral set of methods; they are
only “personal beliefs” (Helminiak, 2010, p. 65). Thus,
in the conventional frame, the influence between
naturalism and theism can only work in one direc-
tion, from naturalism to theism, and not the other way
around. The prospect of theistic “truths” entering the
psychological field (a naturalistic discipline) is not only
viewed with suspicion, it is altogether forbidden. It can
only be construed as an insinuation of the worst form of
opinion and dogma into an evidence-based and neutral
scientific discipline, a “Trojan horse” (Helminiak, 2010,
p. 57) or “Pandora’s Box” (Alcock, 2009, p. 82), which
would create “nonproductive chaos” (p. 82), muddy the
clear waters of science, and replace truth with personal
opinion (Hibberd, 2009, 2012; Helminiak, 2012).
This unidirectional influence of naturalism on
theism implies that the worldview of theism is ulti-
mately inferior to the worldview of naturalism, but only
because the worldview of naturalism employs objec-
tive scientific methods that are capable of producing
evidence-based knowledge and the worldview of theism
relies on subjective metaphysical speculation that can
only produce personal opinion. The contexts of faith
that remain outside the reach of naturalism at any point
in time are only those ever-shrinking contexts where
science has not yet uncovered truth that would require
faith’s accommodation to it. From the conventional
perspective this is not a form of scientific expansionism,
where disciplines representing the naturalistic world-
view try to take over the traditional domain of disci-
plines representing the theistic worldview (cf. Stenmark,
2004). That would be boldfaced scientism. No, for the
conventionalist, the culture of naturalism is not taking
over the culture of theism in some version of ideologi-
cal imperialism at all. It is merely the objective truth,
which happens to be discovered using the methods of
the natural sciences that is expanding and requiring the
accommodation of people of faith.
Methodological Naturalism
The conception of methodological naturalism is a
straightforward extension of this dualistic logic—the
closer to method, the closer to objectivity. Much as
naturalism is considered less subjective and thus less
biased and value-laden than theism, the method side of
naturalism is itself considered less subjective, biased, and
value-laden than its metaphysical or philosophical side
(Forrest, 2000). Philosophy and metaphysics, along
with theism and theology, are associated with “soft”
and subjective content, whereas the scientific method
is viewed as almost without content, engaging solely
in objective observation and rational description. As
Bishop (2009) explains, methodological naturalism is
“focused on uncovering physical facts and regularities,”
whereas metaphysical naturalism “makes a substantive
commitment to a picture of what really exists” (p. 108).
For this reason, methodological naturalism is considered
more a behavioral activity than a conceptual position,
whereas metaphysical naturalism is viewed as a deeply
value-laden position.
The dualistic features of separability and superi-
ority also apply. First, methodological naturalism is
considered to be completely separate from metaphysical
naturalism; the former is essentially not dependent on
the latter. As Bishop (2009) views it, each position is
THEISTIC PSYCHOLOGY AND THE RELATION OF WORLDVIEWS
