A History of Recent Christian Psychology

By Keith Whitfield and Eric L. Johnson

The task of sketching the origins of a new way of thinking about psychology presents

many difficulties. One of the challenges regarding describing the beginnings of Christian

psychology pertains to the definition of “Christian psychology.” The term is most often used as

a vague designation of the work of Christians who teach, write or practice psychology and

counseling, regardless of their approach. A “Google” search of the term produces hundreds of

sites where the term “Christian psychology” is used in this generic way. (Interestingly, many of

the hits are websites of persons who oppose Christians who participate in psychology and decry

“Christian psychology”!). The assumption of this article is that there is a qualitatively distinct

use of this term that refers to a relatively novel approach to psychology that is still in its infancy,

having only been around, in its contemporary form, for the past 15 years. One of the proponents

of the Christian psychology movement, the philosopher Robert Roberts (2000), has written that

psychology, generally speaking, is a:

coherent body of thought and practice (a system), at least partially articulate[d], for
understanding, measuring, assessing, and possibly changing people’s emotions, thoughts,
perceptions, and behaviors, and their dispositions to these. It will typically posit or assume
some conception of the goal or purpose of human life, or the basic drives and problems of
human life, or at least the proper functioning of some special part of the person (such as the
perceptual organs), and it will have some conception of how a person develops, properly or
improperly, toward the achievement of that goal, the satisfaction of those drives, the
solution of these problems or that proper functioning. It will accordingly also have some
conception of the obstacles to a successful development and of the configuration of
emotion-, thought- perception-, and behavior dispositions that result from unsuccessful
development. (p. 152)
The term “psychology,” for Roberts, is not restricted to referring to the experimental

science that was founded in the mid to late nineteenth century, but can refer to any body of

knowledge that contributes to our understand human beings. This does not mean that he rejects

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the idea of psychology as a science, but he does not define it as a science that is necessarily

secular and restricted to the findings of empirical research, which is the way modern psychology

sees itself. Modern psychology is not so value-neutral as it has tried to be. The fact is that the

author of every psychological study, article, and book approaches human nature from a particular

standpoint. Among humans there will never be a general psychology that everyone can agree

upon, because human research requires the assumption of world-view beliefs that cannot be

empirically demonstrated. So every psychological text is an expression of a particular version of

psychology that assumes certain world-view beliefs. As a result, rather than referring to
psychology in general, it is necessary to have the term psychology prefaced with a classifying

adjective. Consequently, Roberts (among others) is advocating a “Christian Psychology” where

“Christian” functions as a meaningful modifier. Christian psychology is simply the Christian

version of the discipline; modern psychology is the mainstream secular version. Presumably,

besides for these two, there are as many versions of psychology extant as there are world-views.

(In fact, we must acknowledge that, even within a single world-view, there will often be a

plurality of sub-versions, e.g., there are actually a number of secular approaches to psychology,

e.g., naturalistic, humanistic, post-modern, buddhist).

Since Christianity has always been concerned with understanding human nature,

Christian psychology, in some sense, is as old as the Christian faith, and Roberts has noted that

the Christian tradition possesses a rich and deep body of knowledge for this enterprise. Thus,

one way to describe Christian psychology would be to trace what Christians have thought

through the ages regarding human nature.

We will take the easier task of limiting our description to the more recent development

of Christian psychology as a self-conscious approach to psychology in the late 20th century.

During the 1960’s and 1970’s many evangelical Christians became more involved in the field of

psychology (e.g., James Dobson, Bruce Narramore, Gary Collins, Tim LaHaye, and H. Norman

Wright). They began to write popular books for Christians on the issue of parenting, marriage,

self-image, and personal and spiritual growth. Knowing something of the value of modern
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psychological research and theory-building, for the most part these Christians in psychology

relied on adapting that work to the Christian community: rejecting the blatantly secular and

evolutionary assumptions in the work and applying the rest to the needs of Christians and the

church. They termed this kind of work “integration.”

The integration approach has had its critics, for example, Jay Adams who argued that

integration ends up incorporating too much secularism into its understanding of human nature by

its predominant reliance upon modern psychology, rather than the Bible. However, a few

psychologists have also raised questions about the compatibility of modern psychology with
Christianity, but without rejecting it entirely the way Adams and others in the nouthetic and

biblical counseling movements have done. Two of the most important are Mary Stewart Van

Leeuwen and Paul Vitz. Van Leeuwen, a social psychologist, offered a sustained critique of

secular psychology’s view of the person and pointed towards a psychology of the person that

assumed a Christian worldview, rather than subscribing to the view of human beings developed

by mainstream empiricist psychology. In The Person in Psychology (1985) she argued that the

Christian worldview offers a way of seeing the person in light of the doctrines of creation, the

fall, and redemption. Furthermore, she noted that the secular psychology has a systemic

weakness in its often unacknowledged philosophical assumptions that put blinders upon what

secular psychologists can see. Finally, Van Leeuwen advocated making a shift in psychological

study from a sole reliance on natural science methods towards the use of human-science

methods, and a greater openness to insights from philosophy, religion, and other humanities. She

wrote,

Throughout this volume and particularly in the final chapter I have suggested that because
psychology is becoming more open to the development of a human-science paradigm,
Christians should be challenged to greater activity in the field. I have pointed out that our
acceptance of scriptural authority should be an advantage, not an impediment, to such a
task—but not because Scripture gives us a complete anthropology that can substitute for
systematic psychology . . . But Scripture does tell us enough about the ultimate origin,
nature, and destiny of human beings to give us a set of control beliefs by which we can
critically evaluate existing psychological theories and help to formulate more adequate ones
(1985, p. 256).
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Paul Vitz’s concerns have been complementary to Van Leeuwen’s. (She favorably

cites a number of his earlier work in her book). Vitz’s 1977 book, Psychology as Religion: The

Cult of Self-Worship (reprinted in 1994) presents a short, but hard-hitting critique of secular

personality and counseling theory. While acknowledging some of their strengths, he pointed out

how many of the humanist assumptions of Maslow, Rogers, Horney, and Fromm are antithetical

to a Christian world-view. In 1987 Vitz published Sigmund Freud’s Christian Unconscious, a

marvelous example of the psychoanalysis of Freud that uses Christian interpretative assumptions,

rather than Freud’s naturalistic assumptions in interpreting Freud’s views of God and religion.
Based on Freud’s written works and letters, Vitz attempted to show how one could explain some

of his ambivalence and hostility towards God as a result of his upbringing in a dysfunctional

Jewish family and his exposure to Catholic Christianity in Vienna. Published by a mainstream

press (Guilford), the work demonstrated one could do top-notch psychoanalytic writing (on the

founder of psychoanalysis!) from an avowedly Christian standpoint. More recently, Vitz did

similar analysis of a number of modern thinkers in Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology of

Atheism (2000). In addition, in a number of articles Vitz has explored the use of narrative in

psychology and its value for a Christian approach as well as developed psychoanalytic theory

along Christian lines. He contributed a chapter to Limning the Psyche, called “A Christian

Theory of Personality,” where he made some initial progress in articulating what a Christian

theory of the personality might look like. While teaching most of his life at New York

University, he recently became a senior scholar at the Institute for Psychological Sciences, an

expressly Catholic psychology graduate program.

It was left to two philosophers, however, to begin advocating explicitly for a Christian

psychology. C. Stephen Evans was the first person in recent years to argue for an expressly

Christian psychology. He made this case in Wisdom and Humanness in Psychology: Prospects

for a Christian Approach (1989). In this book, Evans defines Christian psychology as

“psychology which is done to the furtherance of the kingdom of God, carried out by the citizens

of the kingdom whose character and convictions reflect their citizenship in that kingdom, and
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whose work as psychologists is informed and illuminated by Christian character, convictions,

and understanding” (p. 132). In this book, he follows an Augustinian approach where faith

becomes transformative to one’s intellectual understanding. A noted Kierkegaard scholar, he

sone had published a popular exposition of one kind of Christian psychology in Søren

Kierkegaard’s Christian Psychology. There he summarized some of the rich psychological

insights that are found in Kierkegaard’s works, demonstrating how Kierkegaard could be a good

role model for those interested in doing Christian psychology.

Robert Roberts has been perhaps the most active in seeking to advance a Christian
psychology. He taught for many years in the philosophy and psychology departments at

Wheaton College, but currently teaches philosophy at Baylor. He has written a number of

journal articles that attempted to analyze psychological topics or theorists from a Christian

standpoint. In 1993, he wrote Taking the World to Heart: Self and Other in an Age of Therapies,

that critically engaged a number of secular personality or clinical theories and offered some

initial correctives from a Christian framework. A year later, he was awarded a large Pew grant

to explore psychological topics like personality, the emotions, and the virtues from a Christian

perspective. A portion of the grant was used to invite a small group of scholars (theologians,

philosophers, and psychologists) to Wheaton College for a symposium on a Christian

understanding of psychology. The product of this meeting was a collection of essays published

in Limning the Psyche: Explorations in Christian Psychology. Roberts himself contributed two

essays, one of which, “Parameters of a Christian Psychology,” is a seminal outline of a Christian

approach to psychology that is probably the most useful summary of the possibilities of a

Christian psychology yet published. In another chapter he discussed how attachment theory can

be reconceptualized from within a thoroughly Christian framework. Most recently, Roberts was

a contributor to the book Christianity and Psychology: Four Views (Johnson & Jones, 2000),

where he represented the Christian psychology position and interacted with representatives of the

three other main evangelical approaches to psychology and counseling.

In addition to these scholarly initiatives, a number of clinically oriented authors have

written books at a more popular level for people seeking to grow psychospiritually or for

counselors of such people that show the potential of Christian psychology to impact the church

more broadly, including Larry Crabb (Finding God; Shattered Dreams, The Pressure’s Off), Dan

Allender (The Healing Path; The Cry of the Soul and Bold Love with Tremper Longman III),

Leeane Payne (The Healing Presence; Healing Homosexuality), Benedict Groeschel (Spiritual

Passages: The Psychology of Spiritual Development), Sandra Wilson (Released from Shame;

Abba’s Child), and Diane Langberg (On the Threshold of Hope; Counseling Survivors of Sexual
Abuse). Though not using the label “Christian psychology,” these psychologists and counselors

have shown how much of a difference a thoroughly Christian approach to counseling can make

in dealing with various kinds of soul-struggles. And there are likely other authors who ought to

be included in this list that have been left off unwittingly.

The recent spate of books published promoting evangelical spirituality and spiritual

direction also seem closely related to the agenda of a Christian psychology (e.g., Gary Moon’s

Homesick for Eden; Dallas Willard’s Renovation of the Heart; Jeannettee Bakke’s Holy

Invitations; David Benner’s Care of Souls and Sacred Companions), but the commonalities and

linkages between these movements have not yet been much traced.

We are also aware of five schools that hold promise for contributing to Christian

psychology and training counselors in this type of approach. Dan Allender and his colleagues at

Mars Hill Graduate School in Portland, Oregon have developed Masters and certificate programs

that aim to teach a specifically Christian version of counseling. IGNIS (also known as the

Academy for Christian Psychology) is a Masters degree granting school in Kitzingen, Germany,

established 17 years ago for the purpose of developing an explicitly Christian approach to

people-helping and psychological theory. The Institute for Psychological Sciences in Arlington,

VA is attempting to develop a genuinely Catholic approach to counseling in their Masters and

Doctoral programs. The Psychological Studies Institute (two sites in Atlanta, GA and

Chattanooga, TN) has developed two Masters program that combine Christian counseling and
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spiritual direction, and some of their faculty promote the agenda of a Christian psychology. Eric

Johnson at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky is also

attempting to train Masters and Doctoral students in a thorough-going Christian model of

counseling.

Before concluding, it must be acknowledged that because this approach is so new,

there is much diversity among the various individuals and schools mentioned and no one should

misconstrue this essay as suggesting there is really a unified movement. Rather, thus far, there

have been a number of persons who have been working towards a Christian psychology project
without very much awareness of others doing likewise. It is hoped that this article (and this

newsletter and the Society) will help to bring together some of these various efforts (along with

others that are attracted to this agenda), so that there can be more concerted dialogue about what

Christian psychology and counseling might look like.

Evans, C. S. (1989). Preserving the person: A look at the human sciences. Grand Rapids, MI:
Baker.

Evans, C. S. (1990). Sþren Kierkegaard’s Christian Psychology: Insights for counseling and
pastoral care. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

Roberts, R.C. (1993). Taking the word to heart: Self and other in an age of therapies. Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

Roberts, R.C. (2000). A Christian psychology view. In Johnson, E., & Jones, S. (Eds.),
Psychology and Christianity (pp. 148-195). Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press.

Van Leeuwen, M. S. (1985). The person in psychology. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

Vitz, P. (1994). Psychology as religion: The cult of self-worship. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

Vitz, P. (1987). Sigmund Freud’s Christian unconscious. New York: Guilford.