Christian Psychology
58
Deepening the Dialog Concerning a Theistic
Approach to Psychology: A Reply to the Comments
Jeffrey S. Reber and Brent D. Slife
Brigham Young University
This reply addresses several themes that cut across the seven comments on our article, Theistic Psychology and the Rela-
tion of Worldviews: A Reply to the Critics. Our response to these themes is organized according to three major topics
that were covered in the original article: 1) the purpose of the paper, 2) worldview separability versus worldview in-
terdependence, and 3) worldview superiority. Within each topic we organize the very different and often inconsistent
comments according to the relational assumptions they represent (e.g., weak vs. strong relationality) and we show how
different relational commitments either support a number of subtle prejudices against a theistic approach to psychol-
ogy or allow for a fruitful dialog and fair test of its capacity to advance psychological knowledge.
Keywords: weak relationality, strong relationality, blind prejudices, grounded meanings
Dialogue on Christian Psychology: Author’s Response
In our initial article we stated how much we value
dialog concerning the prospect of a theistic approach
to psychology. In that spirit, we are pleased to have
received seven responses to our article that have pressed
us to think more carefully and deeply about several key
issues at play in the development of this burgeoning ap-
proach to psychology. We apologize at the outset for not
responding directly to all the questions and challenges
of each comment in detail. The comments are too
broadly scattered and our space is too limited for a more
complete response. As we will describe in the conclu-
sion, we see this broad variation of responses, the lack
of their unanimity, and even inconsistencies across the
replies as indicative of an important theme addressed in
our initial paper.
We have organized our response to the comments
according to several themes that refer back to three ma-
jor topics that framed our initial article: 1) the purpose
of our paper, 2) worldview separability versus worldview
Interdependence, and 3) worldview superiority. Our
treatment of some of the themes within these three top-
ics is written in the form of a direct response to one or
two commentators. Other themes are treated more like
general comments on the replies taken as a whole.
Purpose of the Paper
In the introduction to our original article we made the
stated purpose of our paper clear, which was to respond
to critics of a theistic approach to psychology by
examining the taken-for-granted or conventional view
of the relationship of the worldviews of naturalism and
theism. We also made it clear that our article would
counter this conventional frame with a relational frame
in which naturalism and theism are not separable or
hierarchical, but interdependent and on a level playing
field. Given this alternative framing of relationship, we
argued that there are no grounds for the exclusion of a
theistic approach from the discipline. On the contrary,
this alternative framing of worldviews allows for a the-
istic approach to psychology to be given the chance to
succeed or fail, just like any other theory, in its efforts to
advance disciplinary knowledge.
We were struck by the different tacks the com-
mentators took with regard to our purpose. Some, like
Freeman, Johnson, and Hathaway seemed to take our
purpose seriously and genuinely considered its feasibil-
ity in a number of interesting ways. Others didn’t seem
to address our argument at all. Nelson, for example,
wrote more directly to our exemplar critic’s purposes
than to ours. Helminiak did not address our purpose
either, but rather continued to reinforce many of the
same arguments he has articulated in the past and pro-
vide additional illustrations, we believe, of many of the
assumptions of the conventional view. Finally, Collicutt
and Snowdon seemed dissatisfied with our purpose and
appeared to have desired a different purpose for our
article.
We focus on Collicutt and Snowdon here be-
cause they most directly questioned our purpose and
did so in a way that may be indicative of the kinds of
biases against a theistic approach to psychology that
are taken for granted by adherents of the conventional
view. Both Collicutt and Snowdon felt that our paper
lacked a definition of theistic approach to psychology
and because of that they found it “difficult” (Snowdon,
p. 38) to discuss the purpose of our paper. In the first
section here we show how we did define both theism
and a theistic approach to psychology, even though we
