Theology and Psychology in Conversation

Abstract

It would appear that Christian theology and modern psychology, particularly positive psychology, would not be friends. Modern psychology instinctively recoils from theology because the latter hails from a pre-modern mindset in which God looms large. While some theological quarters have drunk deeply from modern psychology’s wells, theology’s first language objects to psychology’s resistance to a spiritual dimension of human life on the grounds that it considerably handicaps its grasp of human experience. For its part, western Christian theology (WCT) has a distinctive theory of personality that brands all people as self-absorbed. That characteristic has been interpreted as selfishness and considered to be socially deleterious. On this view, everyone is assumed to be narcissistic to some degree; vanity is a genetic character disorder that afflicts everyone. Indeed, modern psychology may appreciate the idea that character traits may be heritable that originated with Augustine of Hippo, the first psychologist. Recognizing that such an inclination seriously impedes well-functioning societies, WCT is at pains to analyze the problem and suggest ways to control it or at least mitigate its negative social consequences.