Christian Psychology
25
of superiority here. I tend to do so as well. But it is
emphatically
not
the kind of totalizing superiority Reber
and Slife had considered. Rather, it is an interpretively-
and contextually-bound superiority, founded in and
grounded by the claims of experience (Freeman, 2013).
Perhaps they would find this perspective acceptable.
According to Reber and Slife,
The problem with the superiority feature of the
conventional view is not that naturalism has an
influence on theism or even that it has a greater
influence on theism at any given time. From a her-
meneutic perspective, influence is inevitable among
worldviews. The problem is the unidirectionality
of the influence and the pretense of objectivity
(superiority) that supports it. This pretense implies
that the influence does not stem from a belief
system, but rather from some unbiased description
of the world that theists are compelled to acknowl-
edge. (p. 14)
What I take this to mean is 1) that “superiority” can
be bi-directional, 2) that it is not a superiority for all
time but, as above, is contextually-specific, and 3) that
the very positing of such superiority is dependent upon
some reference to the particular phenomena being
considered – acknowledging, once again, that these phe-
nomena are always already suffused with the prejudices
one inevitably brings to them. “In this sense,” indeed,
“scientific study is a fusion of the things scientists study
and the scientists themselves, both of which are inextri-
cably related” (p. 15). Having recognized this, it is also
the case that scientists themselves must be ready and
willing to be
displaced
by the things they study. This
means that no single worldview can achieve the upper
hand
a priori
. It also means that any and all attempts
to do so must be proclaimed
unscientific
through and
through.
This perspective will likely be deemed objection-
able in its own right by some, for not only does it seek
to decouple science and naturalism, it has the audacity
to maintain that “true science,” as it might be called,
must be so radically open as to allow for the possibility
that what I earlier referred to as the (ostensibly) “supra-
natural” might have its say. Why might this be im-
portant? As I have suggested elsewhere (e.g., Freeman,
2004, 2013, 2014), it is important because it opens
up new ways of thinking about the human condition,
ways that might lead us to consider features of human
experience
belied
by naturalism – including some of
those features frequently deemed central to spiritual and
religious life. There is thus more at stake than ideology
critique or the fashioning of a new, more hermeneuti-
cally sensitive way of framing the relationship between
naturalism and theism. What is ultimately at stake is
our very understanding of who we are and what kind(s)
of science will help us achieve it.
In some ways, it would have been easier for Reber
and Slife to bring theism into the psychological picture
without trying to keep it under the umbrella of science.
That would have allowed their critics essentially to say,
“Fine. You do your thing; we’ll do ours. We’ll see who
gets the grants.” But Reber and Slife are after bigger
game in this piece, their ultimate aim being nothing less
than to transform the rules of the scientific game – at
least as it’s currently being played. They have even com-
menced their own “theistic research,” their argument
being that there is “no in principle reason that scientific
inquiry, guided by a theistic worldview, cannot advance
psychological knowledge.” As they note, in carrying
out some of this research, they have continued to work
“within the narrower view of science that methodologi-
cal naturalism prescribes” (p. 16). This makes good
sense on some level. But as they have told us on several
occasions, it is but a short and slippery step from meth-
odological to metaphysical naturalism. This suggests
that the methodological rules need to be transformed
too, moved in a direction less fully dictated by the
so-called demands of empirical science, as tradition-
ally conceived. More to the point still, it suggests that
the primacy of the methodological be thought anew.
It is not only science and naturalism that need to be
decoupled, therefore, but science and method – if by
method we are referring to that ever-burgeoning arsenal
of research techniques so prized and privileged in con-
temporary academic psychology. This need not mean
working against method (e.g., Feyerabend, 1978), only
understanding its limits and situating it in its proper
place. There is indeed a time and a place for just about
anything. The challenge is to discern what goes where
when. Surefire directions are not forthcoming. All we
can do is listen, carefully and caringly, to the claims of
experience, following their lead wherever they may go.
Mark Freeman
is Distinguished Professor of Ethics and
Society and Professor of Psychology at the College of
the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. He is the
author of
Rewriting the Self: History, Memory, Narrative
(Routledge, 1993);
Finding the Muse: A Sociopsy-
chological Inquiry into the Conditions of Artistic
Creativity
(Cambridge, 1994);
Hindsight: The Promise
and Peril of Looking Backward
(Oxford, 2010);
The
Priority of the Other: Thinking and Living Beyond the Self
(Oxford, 2014), and numerous articles on issues ranging
from memory and identity to the psychology of art and
religion. Winner of the 2010 Theodore R. Sarbin Award
in the Division of Theoretical and Philosophical Psy-
chology of the American Psychological Association, he is
also a Fellow in the American Psychological Association
and serves as editor for the Oxford University Press series
“Explorations in Narrative Psychology.” Correspondence
concerning this comment should be addressed to Mark
Freeman, Department of Psychology, College of the
Holy Cross, 1 College Street, Worcester, MA 01610.
Email:
