Christian Psychology
6
the relevant worldviews, theism and naturalism, are
understood and related to one another. Naturalism is
relevant, of course, because it is so often considered in-
tegral to science. Griffin (2000) puts it this way: “Sci-
ence, it is widely agreed in scientific, philosophical, and
liberal religious circles, necessarily presupposes natural-
ism” (p. 11). Even the historian of psychology Thomas
Leahey (1991) considers naturalism to be “science’s
central dogma” (p. 379). Although these statements, we
believe, tend to exaggerate the dependency of science
on naturalism, there is no question that they are correct
about how many researchers and commentators view
that relationship (see Griffin, 2004 for a review).
Naturalism, as we mean it here, is the philosophy
or worldview that only natural (as opposed to supernat-
ural) events really matter, whether for theory, research,
or practice (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
2007). One of the most important implications of this
worldview is an understanding of knowledge advance-
ment, especially scientific knowledge advancement:
researchers should not postulate or assume the transcen-
dent or the supernatural when formulating hypotheses,
deciding modes of inquiry, or explaining data. In this
regard, some scholars sharply distinguish methodologi-
cal naturalism from metaphysical naturalism, claiming
that the former does not involve the latter (e.g., Bishop,
2009). As we will describe, however, this distinction is
more blurred than is often understood, because impor-
tant aspects of the metaphysical and ontological subtly
undergird and lead to the methodological and episte-
mological (Griffin, 2004).
If naturalism is the central dogma of science,
then theism is the central dogma of many faith tradi-
tions. Theism is the worldview that a God (or Gods)
is actively and currently engaged with and makes a
meaningful difference in the practical world (Barbour,
1997). This divine involvement, as we will discuss, is
not a deism that relegates God’s activity to a specific
time period (e.g., creation), nor is it a dualism that
limits God’s involvement to a corner of the universe
(e.g., the supernatural realm; Slife & Reber, 2009). For
the thoroughgoing theist, divine involvement is a pres-
ent, ongoing, and difference-making activity. However,
if divine activity truly makes a difference in the world,
then excluding it, as the naturalist does, is problematic
for a complete and comprehensive science (Plantinga,
2011)—hence the significance of how one views the
relationship between theism and naturalism.
As we will describe, our critics conceptualize and
relate naturalism and theism (and implicitly method-
ological and metaphysical naturalism) in the familiar,
modernist manner of treating worldviews atomisti-
cally and arranging them hierarchically according to
the assumed dualism of objectivity and subjectivity. In
contrast to many of our critics, we have an alternative
perspective on the relationship of naturalism and the-
ism, and indeed on the relationship among worldviews
in general. Following several prominent themes in the
philosophy of science and hermeneutic literatures, we
assert that theism and naturalism are not separable and
hierarchically arranged conceptions, as the modernism
of the conventional dualist framework suggests.
Worldview Relations: The Conventional View
A key theme regularly implied by critics of theistic psy-
chology is demarcation. Demarcation is a term used by
philosophers of science to denote “attempts to specify
criteria that allow drawing a hard and fast distinction
between what can be considered science and non-
science” (Larmer, 2012, p. 137; Schafersman, 1997).
Our exemplar critic Helminiak (2010), for example,
draws a clear line of demarcation between theology and
science asserting that, “the concerns of theology and of
the sciences are irreducibly different” (p. 50; see also Al-
cock, 2009) and he supports this demarcation using the
criterion of method, stating that “theology and psychol-
ogy are “methodologically disparate disciplines” (p. 50).
The implication he draws from this methodological
demarcation is that theology is a non-science because
its methods are not scientific whereas psychology is a
science because it employs the scientific method. This
methodological line of demarcation between science
and non-science has been used regularly throughout sci-
ence’s history. Whatever form it takes the basic process
is the same: some criterion or set of criteria are assumed
that separate science from non-science and those criteria
must be defended to preserve ontological, epistemo-
logical and/or “methodological integrity” (p. 50) and
to “maintain the meaning of
scientific
” (p.50). In this
section we examine a major demarcation criterion of
modern psychology that undergirds Helminiak and
other’s criticisms of a theistic approach to psychology:
the dualism of objectivity and subjectivity.
Modernist Dualism
As we will show, psychology is a modern science. Not
only was it developed in the time period of modernism,
but it is also based on many modernist assumptions
(Whitehead, 1925; Vidal, 2011). One of these perva-
sive modernist assumptions is the dualism of objectivity
and subjectivity, with subjectivity representing things
as they are known in the mind and objectivity referring
to that which can be known about the thing in itself
(Searle, 2004; Osterlund & Carlile, 2005). That which
is known in the mind is thought to be subject to the
influence of personal and cultural values, assumptions,
and interpretations whereas that which is known of the
thing in itself is considered free of the influence of such
biases, or at least their influence is significantly reduced
and controlled (Stiles, 2009; Fishman, 1999; Taylor,
1995). In a recently published article (Slife, Reber, &
Faulconer, 2012) we have demonstrated the pervasive-
ness of this form of modernist dualistic thinking in
the many psychology research methods texts that are
THEISTIC PSYCHOLOGY AND THE RELATION OF WORLDVIEWS
