Christian Psychology
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ability to illuminate and disclose important aspects of
the phenomena. Interpretations that are valid in this
sense, including theistic interpretations, can contribute
to the advancement of knowledge in the discipline.
Despite this alternative framing of worldviews, a
number of commentators framed their response to our
discussion of meaning conventionally. Freeman asks,
for example:
But what
about
the objects of the world? Even
if we reframe the subject/object relationship in
hermeneutical terms, and I agree we should, there
still remains a
phenomenon
that exists outside the
perimeter of the (observing, interpreting, meaning-
making) person. Surely these phenomena
constrain
the interpretations given (p. 24).
Hathaway too is concerned that our hermeneutic alter-
native has a “creative anti-realist trajectory as its major
support” (p. 29), which doesn’t resolve the problem of
relativism but encourages us to:
Stop worrying about relativism not so much
because the hermeneutic tradition has proven it
false, but because we have gone through a kind of
philosophical therapy that helps us no longer be
concerned about it. We need not worry about the
truth of our claims about the world, psychologi-
cal or otherwise, because we can never get that
anyways” (p. 28).
For his part, Johnson fears that in rejecting the ob-
jectivity/subjectivity dualism we may “unwittingly take
a position on the opposite side—in this case, leading to
an ‘idealist’ or ‘subjectivist’ or ‘postmodern’ epistemol-
ogy—
at least to some extent
” (p. 34). Helminiak allows
for two conceptualizations of meaning—“pure cognitive
content” (p. 42) and “personal import or significance”
(ibid)—and then, using terms like “free-wheeling her-
meneutic meaning-making” (p. 43), “personal meaning-
fulness” (p. 50), and “a web of ungrounded speculation”
(p. 52) places our approach to meaning squarely within
the personal import category, noting that “the question
of correctness, validity, truth—reality plays no part in
it” (ibid).
We are somewhat puzzled by these comments
because we addressed both the realism and the correct-
ness of the hermeneutic alternative in our initial paper.
We clearly described the difference between valid and
invalid interpretations within a hermeneutic frame and
used several examples to illustrate how psychological
knowledge can be advanced using a meaning-based ap-
proach. We acknowledged, for example, that frequency
and duration of prayer are real and valid meanings
of that phenomenon that naturalistic psychology has
studied effectively in a number of ways. We also sug-
gested that there are theistic interpretations of prayer
that are real and correct and could be studied to further
our understanding of this important phenomenon.
Finally, we noted that there are meanings that cannot be
correctly applied to prayer, like how it tastes or its mass.
We reiterated these same points several times in the
latter part of our paper, using examples like forgiveness
and miracles, our research on attitudes toward faith and
God attachment, and even common interpretations of
things like rocks to clarify the point.
We are sympathetic to our commentators’ fear that
a detachment of meaning from the objects that con-
strain that meaning would lead to an idealist or subjec-
tivist ideology and a rampant relativism. However, this
clearly is not the position we advocate. From the per-
spective of hermeneutic realism, we would agree with
Freeman that “phenomena constrain the interpretations
given” (p. 24) by psychologists. Indeed, we assert that
these constraints help psychologists determine what a
valid or invalid interpretation is. A theistic approach
to psychology examines the ways in which an active,
engaged God constrains the meanings of prayer, for-
giveness, and experiences of God, and other activities,
events, and experiences. Because theistic psychologists
take account of this important theistic constraint on the
meanings of these events and experiences, they ensure
that the meanings are not “free-wheeling” (Helminiak,
p. 43) or “ungrounded speculations” (p. 52). Instead,
they maintain their grounding in context, which entails
the constraints of God along with the many important
constraints that naturalistic psychologists have studied.
Our own god attachment research is a good
example of precisely this “constraint” approach. In it
we take the constraints of childhood experiences with
parents (a naturalistic research focus) as well as the con-
straints of the participants’ personal experiences of god
(a theistic research focus) as constituent meanings in
the whole of god attachment. These constraints are not
arbitrary. They are important, if not necessary parts of
the meaning whole. They also are not phenomena that
“exist outside the perimeter of the person” (Freeman, p.
24). The person experiences their parents and God and
reports those experiences to the psychological researcher.
Whether the report is accurate to the experience at
the time it occurred or to the reality of the “objects”
involved (i.e., parents, God) is the concern of a subjec-
tivity/objectivity dualist that cannot be fully resolved.
But this is true of all psychological research that relies
on self-reports. Researchers never have direct access to
or control over all of the phenomena that constrain the
meaning of an experience or event.
Perhaps, this is Freeman’s point: The meaning of
an experience or event will always overflow our current
interpretations of it because there are constraints upon
that meaning that are not and maybe even cannot
be directly studied and understood. If so, we are in
agreement with Freeman’s point, but again, this is not
a concern of a hermeneutic realism. A hermeneutic
realism takes for granted that interpretations are reduc-
tions of meaning that do not and cannot capture all of
the possible meanings involved. This is precisely why
REBER AND SLIFE
