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Psychology is a broad-ranging discipline concerned with human mind and emotion, experience and behavior, and personality development and disorder. It goes back at least to the pre-Socratics of ancient Greece, and has always been a central topic in philosophy. It has also been a concern of many religious thinkers, perhaps especially in the Christian and Buddhist traditions. However, psychology as a distinct autonomous discipline only goes back to the nineteenth century.

After considering the implications for theology of the emergence of psychology as a distinct discipline, three different strands in the relationship between psychology and religion will be examined. First there are theological issues raised by the approach to human nature found within general psychology. Second, there is the investigation of religion using the methods and theories of psychology. Finally, there is the possibility of a psychological contribution to a broad range of topics in theology.

Psychology as science

Modern psychology is self-consciously scientific. It accepted the natural sciences as representing the paradigm of rational inquiry and has sought to mould itself in their image. That has often led to giving priority to mechanistic and materialistic approaches, and to experimental method and repeatable observations.

One key problem for psychology has been deciding what to use as its data. Much psychology is based on self-report data, which includes people reporting their own thought processes and experiences, describing their attitudes or behavior, or completing questionnaires about themselves. Questionnaire research has become the stock methodology of much psychology; it is an easy method to use and has probably been overused. Other self-report data, such as the clinical data collected by Sigmund Freud (1856–1958), may be rich, but there are serious questions about its dependability. One problem with self-report data is that many people are not reliable observers of themselves; the other is that people may not choose to report accurately what they know.

Psychology has also made much use of observable behavior and performance, including observations of how people perform cognitive tasks and how they interact with other people. There was a period in the early twentieth century when psychology imagined that it could base itself entirely on the observation of behavior, and abandon any attempt to study the human mind. However, behaviorism, in its strict form, did not last, and mind was readmitted under the heading of cognition. It proved impossible to study even conditioning in rats without inferring mental processes such as expectations. Also, psychologists became increasingly sophisticated in the use of task performance to infer cognitive processes. In this more emancipated climate, self-report data was re-admitted, but used cautiously.

The scientific movement out of which modern psychology arose was explicitly secular in that it deliberately avoided making any religious assumptions. The relation of modern secular psychology to the more explicitly religious psychological reflection that preceded it is a complex matter. Some would emphasize the parallelism between the two. Even though psychology appears to be secular, it can be argued that it is much indebted to its religious past and has often recycled theological ideas in apparently secular form. For example, it has been argued that the concept of original sin lies just below the surface of Freud's avowedly secular psychology.

In contrast, John Milbank has robustly argued that modern social theory, because it is avowedly secular and has no place for God, should be regarded as antitheological and inconsistent with Christian thought. The same might also be said about modern psychology. Against that, however, it could be argued that psychology has become religiously neutral and atheological, capable of being combined either with religious or secular worldviews. The model of science that guided modern psychology in the nineteenth century would now be widely regarded as over-restrictive. However, psychology has gradually become broader, more pluralistic, and more flexible ideologically (i.e., more postmodern).

Psychological approaches to human nature

Psychology contains general assumptions about human nature, and a key issue that arises at the interface of psychology and theology is how compatible are their respective views of human nature. Given the breadth of psychology as a discipline, it is not surprising that it contains a variety of such models, ranging from the biological to the social. Psychology makes use of the radically different methodologies of the social and biological sciences within the same discipline. Not surprisingly, that means that psychology tends to fragment, but it is important that there should be a discipline that tries to hold together these different approaches to the human person. People are both biological and social creatures, and no discipline that ignored one or the other could hope to understand human nature adequately.

There is a tendency for psychology to emphasize the biological aspects of human nature and for theology to emphasize the social and relational aspects. However, a polarized debate should be avoided. An adequate psychology needs to be social as well as biological. Equally, there is no reason why theology should be reticent about the biological aspects of human nature. It is part of the Judeo-Christian tradition, especially in the Old Testament, that human beings come from the "dust" and have much in common with the "beasts." There has been a growing recognition that both theology and psychology in their different ways emphasize the psychosomatic unity of human nature. Theology and psychology both need to hold together the biological and the social aspects of human nature, and could learn from each other's attempts to do so.

One strand of biological psychology seeks to understand human characteristics in terms of their evolutionary origins. There were precursors of this in the sociobiology of Edward O. Wilson (b. 1929), Richard Dawkins (b. 1941), and others; their approach has now been extended into evolutionary psychology. A key issue for theology is how strongly reductionist a form evolutionary psychology takes. There is no theological objection to exploring the evolutionary origins of particular human abilities and characteristics, and this has been fruitful in many areas, such as linguistic ability. Problems only arise when it is suggested that the evolutionary approach can explain everything, or that human characteristics are nothing more than the products of their evolutionary origins. Fortunately, cautious research-based approaches to evolutionary psychology are available.

The other important strand of biological psychology is concerned with the brain. Research in neuropsychology has been especially fruitful and has demonstrated close links between cognitive functions and brain activity. The key issue for theology is how this information should be interpreted, which is essentially a philosophical problem. There have been suggestions that the mind and brain are identical, or that mind is an epiphenomenon of the physical brain of no real significance. However, there is no need for psychology to take the kind of strong reductionist approach represented by the biologist Francis Crick (b. 1916), who in 1994 described people as "nothing but a pack of neurons" (p. 3).

Strong forms of social constructionism can be equally reductionist. Human concepts are, of course, the product of particular cultures, and in some respects they are contingent and could be conceptualized otherwise. Further, concepts are psychologically influential, and human experience and behavior is much influenced by how people conceptualize their world. However, there is no need for this to be linked to a nonrealist claim that there is no reality to what concepts represent beyond cultural conventions, or that social constructs completely determine social behavior.

A final area of psychology that carries strong assumptions about human nature is the computer modeling of human intelligence. The analogy between computers and the human mind has been fruitful scientifically and has given cognitive psychology much of its current rigor. However, the indications are that human beings and computers function in such different ways that the analogy between them should not be pressed too far. There is no warrant for asserting that all human functions can be captured in computer form, or that the human mind is nothing but a computer program.

Psychology of religion

The psychology of religion was an active area of psychology in the early days of the discipline and, after a period of decline, has regained some of its former vigor. To realize its potential, it needs to maintain close links with general psychology and apply the most promising advances; generate a broad theoretical approach to religion and relate data to clear research hypotheses; use a range of different methodologies and not rely too much on questionnaire data; and explore the practical applications of psychology for religious life.

The issues about reductionism that arise in general psychology recur in the psychology of religion and can be illustrated in connection with religious experience. There is growing interest in the brain processes involved in religious experience. An example is the research of Eugene d'Aquili and Andrew Newberg, who have analyzed the holistic and causal elements of some types of religious experience and tried to identify their neural substrates. However, whatever progress is made in discovering how the brain is involved in religious experience, there is no reason to conclude that because the brain is involved religious experience has nothing to do with God.

There has also been much interest in the social constructionist approach to religious experience. How people conceptualize experience in religious terms is clearly influenced by the various faith traditions, and may explain the different emphases in religious experiences within different faith traditions, despite the common elements that can also be found. Some have suggested that reports of religious experience are entirely the product of such cultural learning, but there is no basis for asserting that religious experience is nothing more than learning to use a particular set of constructs. Broad-brush social constuctionism is being replaced by sophisticated theory and research on the specific cognitive processes involved in religious modes of understanding.

When particular examples of religious experiences are studied, it becomes particularly clear that it is valuable to combine a variety of psychological approaches. This can be illustrated in relation to glossolalia (speaking in tongues), the best investigated of the charismatic phenomena. There is evidence for an element of social learning, in that people benefit from seeing other people speak in tongues, and get better at it with practice. However, the dissociation of semantics from speech production that occurs in glossolalia suggests an unusual mode of cognitive functioning for which there must be a neurological substrate. There is no incompatibility between approaches from social psychology and from cognitive neuroscience, nor is either of them incompatible with a religious account of the role of the Holy Spirit in glossolalia.

There is currently a growing interest in the evolutionary approach to religion, though as yet it is largely speculative. The capacity for religious experience may well be related to the distinctive capacity for self-consciousness of human beings. It can also be seen as having advantages in natural selection terms through the promotion of social cohesion, moral behavior, mental health, and so on. This is supported by the fact that there is growing evidence that religion is positively associated with good personal adjustment.

The link between religion and personal adjustment becomes clearer if religious people are subdivided, for example into those for whom religion is intrinsic or central to their lives (who have good mental health) and those for whom it is extrinsic or serves other goals (who have poor mental health). Though it is always difficult to move with confidence from correlations to casual conclusions, the mechanisms by which religion might promote good adjustment are becoming clear and include the therapeutic value of religious practices and the support provided by the religious community.

Though religious experience illustrates the breadth of the psychological approach needed in studying religion, it is important to remember the multifaceted nature of religion. There is an equally fruitful psychology of religious beliefs and observances. Psychology has often found it fruitful to study how people differ from one another, and how they develop and change. Both have been central to the psychology of religion.

Psychology and theology

Finally, there can be psychological contributions to theology, although these have not been very fully explored as of 2002. For example, the story of the "fall" in Genesis and the doctrine of original sin invite psychological elucidation. Though the story of the "fall" is widely taken by theologians as making an ontological point about human sinfulness, it can equally well be taken as indicating, in narrative form, the gradual evolutionary development of self-conscious cognitive discrimination, represented by the "knowledge of good and evil." This would be, in a sense, a fall upwards, but it would imply a new capacity to do wrong deliberately, that is, to sin. In addition, emerging self-consciousness would lead to a new awareness of human limitations and fallibility, which would permit human awareness of sinfulness and of separation from God.

Eschatology invites elucidation in terms of the psychology of hope. Though there has been much interest in the relation between cosmological predictions and theological eschatology, it would be a misreading of eschatology to see it as solely concerned with such objective predictions. Eschatology is concerned with a good future that is a gift of God, not just with survival of the universe, and also with an attitude of hope in the present, not just with predictions about the future. Psychology can help to elucidate the nature of eschatological hope. It seems to be not just a matter of optimism (making positive predictions about the future), but a hopeful attitude that can be sustained even when there is little basis for optimism.

There are many theological topics that can be complemented by a psychological approach that does not compete with or displace the theological one. For example, a theology of grace can be complemented by a psychological account of how the benefits of grace work themselves out at a human level. Similarly, a theology of prayer can be complemented by a psychological account of how the activity of prayer helps to transform those who participate in it. The act of thanksgiving, for example, involves a reappraisal, both of the evaluation of experiences as positive or negative, and of the role of God in causal attributions.

See also ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE; BEHAVIORISM; EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY; EXPERIENCE, RELIGIOUS: COGNITIVE AND NEUROPHYSIOLOGICAL ASPECTS; FREUD, SIGMUND; MIND-BRAIN INTERACTION; NEUROPHYSIOLOGY; NEUROSCIENCES; PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION; SELF

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