Christian Psychology
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sympathetic to Reber and Slife’s basic line of argument
in this piece. In some of my own recent work, I too
have sought to expand the boundaries of psychological
science in a manner not unrelated to the current project
(e.g., Freeman 2004, 2012, 2013). Along with Reber
and Slife, I believe there is no “neutral” reason for posit-
ing naturalism as the default assumption of modern
psychology. Also like Reber and Slife, I believe there is
considerable slippage between the putatively “agnostic”
position of methodological naturalism and the stronger
stance of metaphysical naturalism. Put simply, the for-
mer is generally adopted because the latter is generally
believed, whether knowingly or unknowingly. Finally,
for now, I share Reber and Slife’s claim that theism and
naturalism are not to be understood as “hierarchically
arranged conceptions” (p. 6) corresponding to subjec-
tivity and objectivity respectively, but differentiable
hermeneutic lenses for accommodating the profusion
of phenomena we (cautiously) call “reality.” The notion
that naturalism is somehow more objective, neutral, and
assumption-free than theism is indeed questionable. In
fact, what seems to have happened is that naturalism
has become
naturalized,
its ostensibly objective status
being largely a function of its epistemic “obviousness” –
to those for whom it is obvious.
Is there
any
significant difference between the
structure of assumptions operative in naturalism and
the structure of assumptions operative in theism? Is
there
any
reason to posit the former as somehow being
more adequate to reality than theism? No, there is not.
But
– and it is an important but – if in fact “divine”
activity is to be subsumed under the rubric of science
rather than merely being treated as a competing and ul-
timately incommensurable worldview, then there ought
to be good and compelling reasons for claiming it so.
If Reber and Slife’s main goal is to “decouple” science
and naturalism and thus to include within the scope of
science phenomena that (may) lie outside the boundar-
ies of the “natural,” at least as customarily conceived, I
absolutely endorse it. The reason – or at least my reason
– is that there appear to exist phenomena that defy the
naturalist stranglehold, that is, phenomena that simply
cannot or cannot readily be contained within a purely
naturalistic framework. Taking this line of thinking
one step farther, I would also argue that some of the
phenomena being referred to here – certain forms of
mystical experience, for instance – lend themselves more
readily to a
supra
-naturalistic account than a naturalistic
one. (Given the connotations of the term “supernatu-
ral,” I prefer the more descriptive “supra” designation.)
In saying so, I realize, I am in fact positing something
about the primacy of the proverbial “things themselves”
– recognizing, of course, that these very things, far from
being wholly untouched by any and all assumptions,
remain hermeneutically bound to them. I cannot see
any other way.
Does this make me a “realist” of sorts? I suppose
it does. But not, I hope, a (too) naïve one. (Reber
and Slife may well differ about this.) In any case, and
to return to the larger issue at hand, Reber and Slife,
rightly in my view, want to think beyond the (seem-
ingly) benign “non-overlapping magisteria” perspective
put forth by Gould (1997, 2002) and others. This
is the “conventional view,” and, on their account, it
is this very conventionality that needs to be cast into
question. For one, it reeks of dualistic thinking of an
untenable sort. For another, it ultimately amounts to a
kind of relativism that Reber and Slife want to eschew.
There is a further problem as well – namely, and again,
that oftentimes “non-overlappingness” (so to speak)
entails positing “worldview superiority” of one sort or
another – which, in academic psychology, assumes the
form of considering naturalism a better, more objective
perspective than theism (and any other non-naturalistic
“ism” that might be brought to bear on the psychologi-
cal world). Now, given the conventional rules of the
scientific game, as they are currently conceptualized in
academic psychology, naturalism is a more appropriate
perspective. And so, if one were to argue (cogently)
that the relationship between naturalism and psycho-
logical science is unassailable, there would be little
more to say. But these rules, Reber and Slife assert, are
themselves the product of an
ideology
– one, in fact, that
is so thoroughgoing as to be rendered blind to its own
subterranean assumptions and commitments. “For the
conventionalist,” therefore, “the culture of naturalism is
not taking over the culture of theism in some version of
ideological imperialism at all. It is merely the objective
truth, which happens to be discovered using the meth-
ods of the natural sciences that is expanding and requir-
ing the accommodation of people of faith” (p. 10).
Thus far, it would appear that the main purpose
of Reber and Slife’s article is to expose naturalism’s
assumptions and commitments for what they patently
are. This is the critical – one might say “negative” –
dimension of their article. But what else do they want
to do in the piece, and how far do they want to go? Is
there a positive project at work?
There surely is, and it has to do with reframing the
very terms of the controversy at hand. According to
Slife and Reber, “the hermeneutic notion of worldview
interdependence provides a more accurate interpretation
of the historical relationship between naturalism and
theism than the separability feature of the conventional
view” (p. 11). Indeed,
Whether the relationship has been marked more
by conflict or harmony at any given time, these
two worldviews have always informed and shaped
one another, through both their relational simi-
larities and their relational differences. Even the
demarcation issue in science . . . depends vitally
on non-science to define it. In the same way, the
meaning of naturalism and the meaning of theism
have and will continue to inform (sic) and define
