Entwistle Review

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1 ENTWISTLE REVIEW Paper: Entwistle Review Assignment Kyle Perry Liberty University

2 ENTWISTLE REVIEW Summary Integrative Approaches to Psychology and Christianity (Entwistle, 2015) describes six different models to explain the relationship between psychology and Christianity. These models are general frameworks for thinking about the interaction of the two disciplines. While they are imperfect, as Entwistle mentions, they are a good way to summarize different schools of thought. Among these six are enemies, spies, colonialists, rebuilders, neutral parties, and allies (Entwistle, 2015, p.169). Enemies Enemies are the first group listed. This group consists of secular enemies and Christian enemies. Regardless of which end of the spectrum the enemy falls on, they are marked by their insistence that the other is an enemy to their camp. Entwistle calls these parties “secular combatants” and “Christian combatants” (Entwistle, 2015, p.170). The secular combatants would reject the healing nature of prayer that Christians would claim, meanwhile Christian combatants would likely claim that antidepressants are a divergence from God’s design, that instead of taking anxiety medication, the sufferer should simply “not be anxious”. A Christian combatant may be heard saying “the Bible says do not be afraid 365 times, one for each day of the year!” There is no reciprocity or appreciation of the other’s knowledge when it comes to secular and Christian combatants. This “enemies” model is the only one that Entwistle labels “antagonistic”.

3 ENTWISTLE REVIEW Spies Spies are the next group, and they fall into the “intermediate model” section. Spies will sit firmly in their camp (finding a base in either psychology or theology to inform their worldview), but jump across the line, scout out the situation, and then return back to their base worldview with a tidbit of knowledge stolen from the other side. Entwistle summarizes the “spies” framework saying “The nature of espionage is such that, by definition, the spy removes what he or she sees as valuable, and leaves the rest behind” (Entwistle, 2015, p.223). Entwistle comments on this loss of context, saying that it is nearly always a degradation of both the psychological framework and the theological framework when one side tries to pick and choose aspects of the other. Left behind is the context that the aspect grows in. For example, prayer may be similar to meditation, and so a psychologist may want to encourage prayer in a client, but they would leave out the parts of prayer they don’t like—perhaps the dependency on another power, or the hope that comes from prayer that may not appear in other forms of mindful meditation. Colonialist Colonialist modeling is when Christians use psychology as a means to an end. They use psychology when it is convenient, as a sort of mix-and-match with Bible verses, but the messy parts of psychology that don’t fit neatly are left to the wayside. A colonialist model takes a glance at the “new land” and uses an understanding of the “old land” to interpret the “new land”. “Colonization of psychological findings can be done either by selectively filtering psychological conclusions by comparing them to Scripture verses, or by aligning psychological findings to a Christian worldview” (Entwistle, 2015, p.226). Anything that doesn’t fit or doesn’t have a Christian worldview comparison is likely left unspoken of.

4 ENTWISTLE REVIEW Rebuilders Rebuilders see psychology as a dominion to be conquered and restored by incorporating Christian theology. “They propose an ambitious goal of developing uniquely Christian approaches to psychological phenomena”, Entwistle says (Entwistle, 2015, p.228). In this model, we are most likely to hear the phrase “Christian psychology”, a distinction between modern, secular psychology. It is almost as if a rebuilding model supposes that Christianity has the purest form of psychology, and that Christianity seeks to restore that by incorporating Christian principles. Neutral Parties A neutral party model is the last of the intermediates. A neutral party model doesn’t have conflicts between theology and psychology because it does not see the two as connected. Rather, they are distinct spheres of knowledge with limited overlap. In this framework, both theology and psychology can be right in their own sense, and adherents are mostly okay with the other side believing they are right, as long as it doesn’t encroach on the other’s domain. The only time theology and psychology overlap is when explicitly searching for it (Entwistle, 2015). Allies The final model is an integrative model, the allies model. For allies, psychology and theology are seen as teammates. As a psychologist learns more about theology, an ally would say that the psychologist would be better for it. Likewise, an ally would say that understanding contemporary psychology would result in a richer faith for the Christian. Pope John Paul II

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