Christian Psychology
44
selective scholarship perdure and vitiate those advances,
even as my criticisms above already indicated. The con-
trolling idea of the psychology of religion of the theistic
psychologists is an intervening or “involved” God. In
the first place, this idea is vague, fuzzy, never clearly
explicated. In the second place, even when clarified, this
idea is incompatible with any version of science.
The Meaning of Divine Involvement
In the first place, then, the point of insistence on an
involved God is unclear. “For the thoroughgoing
theist, divine involvement is a present, ongoing, and
difference-making activity”; it “makes a difference in
the world,” “a meaningful difference” (Reber & Slife,
this issue, p. 6.1); it is “functionally relevant” (p. 8.2); it
regards matters that are “facilitated by God” and that do
not occur “without the assistance of God” (p. 12.1). But
what exactly does this insistence mean?
A range of traditional theories.
In question is the
nature of God’s involvement with the world, tradition-
ally phrased, the Creator with creation. Long-standing
philosophical and theological analyses elaborated this
involvement and developed an array of positions.
Historian of science Lawrence Principe (2006, lecture
four) usefully summarized them as follows.
Supernatu-
ralism
recognizes no natural causes but holds that God
directly or immediately effects whatever is or occurs. Be-
cause in every occurrence only divine will matters, this
opinion precludes any human understanding of cosmic
functioning. Virtually no one holds this opinion. Yet
it seems to be the vaguely described position of the
theistic psychologists centered at BYU. On the oppo-
site extreme,
deistic naturalism
holds that, like a clock
maker, God set the universe in motion and left it to its
own devices apart from any ongoing divine involve-
ment. Deism arose in the wake of Newtonian science,
which envisaged a fully mechanistic universe; but in
light of late-nineteenth-century and twentieth-century
scientific advances, deism has no appeal because it leaves
no room for statistical probabilities, quantum physics,
or chaos theory, for example. Nonetheless, Reber &
Slife (this issue, p. 13.1) continue to attribute deism
to natural and, especially, social scientists and to “soft”
theists. These theorists seem to be aware of only two
extremes: Yes, God is involved, or No, God is not. But
other options exist.
Occasionalism,
like supernaturalism,
also holds that God directly effects everything that hap-
pens (on every “occasion”) in the universe; but making
a kind of covenant, God agreed to act with consistency.
Thus, to the good, some version of “scientific” explana-
tion could be based on the discovered consistencies. To
the bad, however, one never knows when those consis-
tencies might be broken, so no true science could result,
and even the motivation to seek understanding gets
thwarted. Moreover, responsibility falls directly on God
for every eventuality. If a child gets burned or if light-
ning destroys a home, the deed was only God’s, for fire
does not burn or lightning strike by nature, but only
by divine decree. These uncomfortable implications
foster the magical and superstitious thinking typical of
popular religion, and they focus the risk of blasphemous
attribution to God of, perhaps, purely natural events;
so medieval thinkers generally rejected occasionalism.
However, Evangelical Christians are likely to embrace
it. For example, Richard Gorsuch (2002) holds that the
“laws of science” or “natural laws” “show God’s habitual,
consistent way of acting” and “identify how God
continually and steadfastly operates time after time” (p.
1834). Note that in this formulation the direct agent is
always God, not nature. Finally,
providential naturalism
holds that God created the universe and built natural
processes into it, that God sustains the universe and its
processes in existence, and that God (the primary cause)
acts to allow the natural processes (secondary causes) to
function are they are wont. Within a longstanding tra-
dition of relating science and theology, reason and faith,
nature and grace—“Vatican I teaches that there can be
no true contradiction between faith and reason because
the source of both is God and God cannot engage
in self-denial nor can truth contradict truth” (Wood,
1995)—Roman Catholicism generally advocates
providential naturalism. Thus, Pope John Paul II (1996)
easily endorsed the latest theories of evolution. None-
theless, following Pius XII in an incoherent occasional-
ist tack, he continued to insist that “the spiritual soul
is created directly [or immediately: without mediating
secondary causes] by God
(‘animas enim a Deo immedi-
ate creari catholica fides non retimere iubet’)
” (§ 5).
Among medieval thinkers—Jews, Christians, and
Muslims—and for theoretical, not doctrinal, reasons;
providential naturalism was already the most favored
opinion. It remains today the most viable theory for
reconciling science and theism, and it is the position
I advocate. Trusting that human investigation can
discover nature’s divinely created processes, this position
both supports genuine science and affirms an involved
Creator-God. However, the explanatory power of provi-
dential naturalism depends on a full understanding of
creation whereas naïve believers tend to restrict creation
to an easily imagined, once-and-for-all, past divine act,
as deism did. In its fullness, the doctrine of creation
includes three aspects: creation, conservation, and
concurrence—God sets realities in being, God sustains
them in their existence, and God acts with them so that
they can function according to their natures and, thus,
produce new realities, new existences (Thomas Aquinas,
1961 version, I q. 9 a. 2, q. 105 a. 5; see also Helminiak
1987b, ch. 5; 2010, pp. 59-62; Lonergan, 1971). Exis-
tence, to be or not to be, is the defining issue regarding
God as Creator; and since created existence remains ever
contingent—that is, it cannot account for itself—creat-
ed realities ever continue to depend on God’s conserva-
tion and concurrence.
The confusing theory of the theistic psychologists.
Now,
