Christian Psychology
38
Professor Helminiak’s paper ‘‘Theistic Psychology and
Psychotherapy’; A Theological and Scientific Critique’
(Helminiak, 2010). Reber and Slife (hereafter R&S)
are, of course, supporters of theistic psychology, whereas
Helminiak is a critic. Helminiak’s paper itself is not
especially targeted at the work of R&S, although they
are mentioned in it, but there is evidently a movement
in favour of theistic psychology and R&S are answering
the criticisms on behalf of that movement. Their paper
is long, and contains many claims and arguments, and
any response to it must be highly selective. What I shall
try to do is to formulate what seems to me to be the
main content of their reply and to engage with some
issues that are raised.
One feature of R&S’s paper that makes discussion
of it difficult, for me at least, is that it fails to explain
or make clear what theistic psychology is. They simply
assume that that is already known to the reader. They
cite near the end papers they have written in which the
approach is developed, but I have been unable to read
them. So I shall rely on the description given by Hel-
miniak of what it is they have in mind. He characterises
their general approach in these words. ‘Building on the
religious beliefs that (a) God exists, (b) humans are cre-
ated by God, (c) humans are in immediate communica-
tion with God, and (d) God regularly and miraculously
intervenes in worldly affairs, especially prevailed upon
by believers …., those theorists explicitly call for a psy-
chological treatment of spirituality centred on theism.
Indeed, they presume that God is so essential to and so
palpably active in human affairs that …. any account
of human nature and human psychology must include a
divine variable and specify a process of communication
with God’ (Helminiak, 2010, p. 51). This conveys in
a clear way the type of hypothesis that theistic psy-
chologists are proposing. However, this description, by
Helminiak, fails to fill out what must be another central
feature of theistic psychology. For we need to know
what sort of evidence R&S think is available to support
their type of theory. One might put this by saying that
we need to be given a sense of the supporting
‘method’
as they see it, as well as the
content
of the hypotheses
in their research programme. We need to know this
because, without some explanation of it, there is no evi-
dent reason to take their research programme seriously.
I want to begin by asking what alternative strate-
gies there are for those like R&S who wish to defend
theistic psychology.
There is one, very simple, strategy that fits some-
thing they say towards the end of their paper. They re-
port that they have published papers recently in which,
as they put it, they ‘operate within the narrower views
of science that methodological naturalism prescribes.’
(Reber and Slife, this issue, p. 32). Now, I take this to
be saying that there is, according to them, a method
of supporting specific theories in their research pro-
gramme which conforms to the established methods of
standard psychology. Clearly, there is nothing stopping
anyone proposing and supporting a new psychological
hypothesis. It would then be for the practitioners of the
discipline to determine whether the support ‘holds wa-
ter’. One possible reaction then by R&S to their critics
might simply have been to write a
persuasive piece of sci-
ence
. Of course, someone taking this line need have no
quarrel at all with the
methods
of contemporary science.
However, although R&S have made such a
response they evidently do not think it is all they need
to do, or at least, it is not all they want to do. A second
strategy, building on the first would be to attempt to
anticipate
criticisms from within the discipline of their
research papers and to answer them. Again, this strategy
involves no opposition to the methods of current sci-
ence, but simply attempts to defend their own approach
against criticisms which they can foresee. I think that it
is clear that R&S are not simply doing this either.
A possible third strategy, given that their stimulus
is Helminiak, would be to try to refute the points that
he makes against their general approach. This would
be very much an
ad hominem
defence. Now, it seems
to me that although there are elements of this strategy
in their paper we cannot really understand it as such a
response, both because they fail to engage with many
of the important points that he makes, and they also
include general arguments which are not directly related
to Helminiak’s points. As an example of the former
gap, between pages 58 and 65 of his very interesting
discussion Helminiak argues that it is simply false to say
that the Christian tradition is committed to thinking
that God is regularly intervening in mundane human
affairs and thought, and he points out that the nature of
God’s relation to the spatio-temporal world is a topic of
massive speculation in philosophical theology. If correct,
this creates serious doubts about the dominant picture
in R&S’s argument of
two
leading traditions in western
thought – theism as they understand it and natural-
ism. There seems to be no such two-sided contrast. Of
course Helminiak might be wrong, or it might not mat-
ter that he is right, but, as far as I can see, R&S simply
fail to address this significant point.
In fact, it seems to me, R&S’s response to critics
such as Helminiak is to propose a highly general
philo-
sophical
argument, which seeks in some way to validate
theistic psychology by drawing on what they think of as
the consequences of the hermeneutic tradition, accord-
ing to which ‘our being in the world should be concep-
tualized non-dualistically’ (Reber and Slife, this issue, p.
18). In outline their argument is;
1. Critics of theistic psychology are committed
to a conception of the relation between the
two main world views of naturalism and the-
ism.
2. This conception of the relation between the
world views is mistaken. Therefore; C the
criticisms of theistic psychology are mistaken.
