Liberal Christianity: Its Psychological and Theological Limitations

In Theological Crossfire: An Evangelical and Liberal Dialogue, Clark Pinnock writes:

All theologians find themselves constantly struggling with two poles or horizons that define their work. They strive to correlate the Christian message with human existence. Theology needs to wrestle with both to be worth much. Evangelicals are relatively more preoccupied with the message pole and liberals relatively more with the pole of human existence.

From the perspective of compass theory, progressive Christians rightly affirm that God is immanently present in creation, and that God enables people to actualize their human potential. However, the here and now quest for relevancy to contemporary culture can disconnect persons from essential orthodox doctrines derived from the authority of Scripture, definitive creeds, and valuable church traditions. This is one of the consequences of holding an "Aristotelian mind-set," noted in my book, Compass Psychotheology: Where Psychology & Theology Really Meet.

Loath to being judged as naive in the modern world where faith without reason is perceived as foolish, liberals are discomfited by fundamentalist/evangelical fervor that regards the Bible as God’s Word and Christ as humanity’s Savior from sin. The progressive wants to make Christianity respectable by bringing it under the auspices of reason. To be seen as intelligent and perhaps even avant-garde, one rejects doctrines or scriptural assertions that seem irrational or implausible.   

Christian Doctrine

Up-to-date knowledge from the sciences, the humanities, and cultural analysis can give liberals the sense of being Christianity’s intelligentsia who move beyond simple biblical faith. This philosophical sophistication and outward focus on improving society makes it difficult for the progressive Christian to admit personal foibles like rigid personality patterns or blind spots in one’s human nature.       

Even though one perceives one’s self as open-minded, a reaction formation often develops against historically orthodox tenets of faith. A certain skittishness prevails regarding supernatural intervention and particular answers to prayer, coupled with an aversion to seeking personal redemption through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The Holy Spirit is marginalized as a vague and irrational aspect of Trinitarian theology who is functionally irrelevant to the improvement of society. The idea of a deepening personal encounter with the Holy Spirit is judged as lacking empirical evidence and too mystical for modern life. One bypasses pressing into spiritual transformation in favor of pressing for social action through the church and one’s own resolve. 

Social Action

There is an unconscious fear of surrendering to an emotional encounter with God, or being guided in directions that smack of loss of control. God’s guidance is sought in terms of what seems the most rational way to proceed, whether in daily life or in choosing one’s calling.

The call from liberal and progressive pulpits is not for evangelization but for active involvement in solving society’s problems. The progressive Christian is often left with two options in response: one can mobilize one’s will to unselfishly serve others or one can quietly withdraw into apathy, feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of transforming the world through heroic human willpower. A person who becomes inwardly apathetic is outwardly present in church attendance, but before long may even withdraw from that.

Moreover, there is a price to pay for dissociation from orthodox Christian roots and estrangement from the biblical worldview: the loss of absolute points of reference. An indiscriminate pluralism results. By losing sight of doctrinal clarity, apostolic teaching, and the inspired continuity of Scripture, an individual can, in effect, lose one’s Christian identity. A person’s life can drift in a sea of relativity.

The overall result is identity diffusion: a lack of commitment to absolutes that would firm up a self-identity in intimacy with God and others. 

As a consequence, the very community and communion so ardently sought in this world can elude the liberal Christian, since the Aristotelian mind-set unconsciously excludes the transcendent Trinity who makes such community possible.

Transcendent Trinity

For more, read:

COMPASS PSYCHOTHEOLOGY:

Where Psychology & Theology Really Meet

 

Psychology and Theology: The New Integration

To some, it is a scandalous position; for others, even worse…it is unreasonable. To propose, as compass psychotheology does, that psychology finds its purpose when grounded in the Trinitarian God. And that theology is distorted unless examined under the lens of psychology.

Further, compass psychotheology proposes that it is possible to summarize the God-human relationship with a two-word equation. An equation developed from the Biblical salvation narrative, asserting that human beings derive their essence as persons within the loving interpersonal field of the triune God. An equation which assumes that human beings, distinct from all other creatures, are created in the image of God and called to become persons in communication and communion with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The Existential Intimacy Equation

Compass psychotheology proposes that the following paradigm illustrates both the meaning of existence of persons and the existential intimacy possible between God and every human being.

 

Existential Intimacy

What does it mean, that God desires existential intimacy with each person? We would suggest that God’s most identifying trait is his existence as infinite Subject (represented by the upper case “I AM”)—a divine center of uncreated personal awareness designated by the ontological title, “I AM” (Ex 3:14, Jn 8:58). 

And that it is through God’s eagerness to share his essential Being that he urges each person (represented by the lower case “i am”) into a relationship of love and reciprocity. Such loving participation in God is not pantheism, for God is the ever-transcendent Creator, while humans are finite, non-divine creatures and never cease being so. People depend upon God’s Being as the ontological foundation of life and truth, while God depends upon no one. “God lives in creation in a God-like way, and the world lives in God in a world-like way,” as Jurgen Moltman says.

God desires people to participate in communion with the Trinity and others. People are fulfilled to the extent that they do. This notion of God’s one-on-one participation in intimate dialogue with individuals presupposes that God is not only an immutable essence, but also a living person whose nature defines the meaning of personhood (cf. Nah 1:4-5 NICOT).

God initiates relationships with individuals that grow over time, modulated to the person’s level of maturity and God’s own desire for affiliation. One can see this in Yahweh and his bond with Abraham. Hagar. Hannah. Samuel. David. Solomon. With the prophets. Each relationship is different; each has its own rhythm of communication and communion.

 

But above all, God demonstrates his personal fidelity to individuals. When Jeremiah receives his call from the Lord, he is told: “Before I formed you from the womb, I knew you intimately” (Jer 1:5). The Hebrew word yada, “know,” expresses God’s longing for relational closeness, for it means to know intimately, as a man and woman know each other in marriage (Gen 4:1).

Fellowship of Mutual Indwelling

On the right side of the equation, the “I AM” nestled within the “i am” represents God’s infinite love that dwells in the core of each person as potentiality, but requires voluntary cooperation for actualizing. This means that individuals are infinitely significant to the triune God, who has extended a personal invitation to share the eternal blessedness of his inner life. God is in persons in a divine way and they are called to live in God in a human way, a way of intimate fellowship and indwelling.

Jesus expresses this reality in his prayer for existential intimacy between the Father and those who will believe in him:

“As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (Jn 17: 21-23).

On the left side of the equation, “i am” is invited to abide in loving reciprocity with “I AM,” a communion that echoes the intimacy of the divine triune community, for “your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3). This relationship encompasses the whole of one’s personality and human nature.

"i am" in Relationship with "I AM" 

Because God is their common Origin, all people possess the potential for responding to God and for carrying the fruit of that relationship into their daily lives (cf. Acts 10:34). But accepting God’s invitation to intimacy requires action. It means embracing responsibility for one’s part in a growing and dynamic bond in which one initiates and pursues, expressing authentic feelings and heart’s desires. In this endeavor it is “i am” who risks emotional vulnerability when building a relationship with “I AM.” 

Habakkuk

Habakkuk was such a person. Confused and troubled over what he viewed as oppression of the Israelites, he risked expressing these concerns to Yahweh. Readying himself for rebuke, Habakkuk found instead that his “dialogue of protest” resulted in God’s gentle disclosure of a larger picture (Hab 1:12-2:1; 2:20). Habakkuk’s risk of emotional honesty yielded greater existential intimacy with his Creator, forming in turn a deeper bond of trust from the human side.

For more, read: 

Compass Psychotheology: Where Psychology & Theology Really Meet 

Why We Need A Christian Personality Theory

There is a Freudian personality theory, a Jungian personality theory, a cognitive-behavioral personality theory. And now there is a Christian personality theory.

   

Compass personality theory offers a Christian approach to personality and relationships that is anchored in a biblical worldview, informed by personality research, and applied to the understanding of self, others, and God.

Compass theory describes human beings through the term interpersonal selfhood, a term that unites the essence of individual persons with their common humanity, a term that preserves the singularity of personality while reflecting the plurality of social existence, a term derived from the Trinity as three persons in one God who created humankind in their image. Thus, human beings derive their personhood and interpersonal orientation from God, who is “a living person whose nature defines the meaning of personhood” (cf. Nah 1:4-5).

God exists as the transcendent and sovereign Creator of all that is: “The Lord our God, the Lord is one!” (Deut 6:4). Yet the plurality of God’s Being is revealed by the use of the plural pronoun, elohim, in the Genesis narrative of creation: “Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness’” (Gen 1:26). Further, God has disclosed his personality and interpersonal nature through Jesus Christ, the God-person, and through the social Trinity—the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—who are historically and progressively revealed in the biblical narrative.

Because Jesus voluntarily descended from the Godhead to assume human nature, he relates to all humanity. His death accomplished the atonement for sin that reconciles persons to God and one another. At his resurrection he declared on behalf of every person, “I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God” (Jn 20:17).

Because Jesus is himself God, sharing with the Father and Holy Spirit the interpersonal selfhood of God’s essence, Christ mediates the Lord’s actualizing purpose for human personality, infusing those who trust in him with the power of personality transformation, power imparted not through esoteric teaching, ethical striving, or religion per se, but through an individual’s own human nature, personality, and connection to Almighty God.

Human psychology is not foreign to Christ because he invented it. Human personality development is not irrelevant to God, because God’s personality gives infinite significance to human personality. Human community is not alien to God, because he delights in it, reflecting as it does the Trinitarian community. 

When joined together in Christ, human psychology, personality, and community find actualizing fulfillment, as Jesus foresaw in his earthly prayer to the Father. “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (Jn 17:22-23).

Christ actively engages those who invite him with the greatest challenge they can know: to develop their thoughts and feelings, sensation and perception, learning and memory, motivation and intentionality—with the presence of God in their personality. 

Since the Trinity radiates supreme health in their unity as God and their relationship to humanity, Jesus provides the standard for assessing personality health among human beings, not just theoretically, but as the ontological foundation for compass personality theory.

For more, read:

CHRISTIAN PERSONALITY THEORY:

A SELF COMPASS FOR HUMANITY

Fuller Seminary Professor Commends Compass Psychotheology

Compass Psychotheology has taken two lifetimes to pioneer and develop. Mine, and my wife, Kate's. I'm Dan Montgomery and I freely gave myself to this endeavor, which started forty years ago in seminary, when I realized that I was drawn not only to the Bible and theology, but also to the field of psychology.

The Bible riveted my attention and stirred my deepest emotions. But something else was happening. I was realizing that I am a psychological person as well as a spiritual being. Yes, as a Christian the powerful presence of the Holy Spirit indwells me. But as a psychological personality I also have competing motives, private perceptions of life events, emotional feelings, cognitive thoughts, bodily sensations, and limitations on my knowledge, learning, and memory that are built into my human nature.

When God through prayer issued new marching orders to me: Dan, I want you to take a Ph.D. degree in clinical and counseling psychology, it made perfect sense! 

And I found new answers to my curiosity about: 

• How dreams work—even how God can use them in personal guidance, as he did with Daniel and King Nebuchadnezzar. 
• How emotions and thoughts need to complement one another if we want to develop psychological and spiritual maturity. 
• How the unconscious can make resourceful contributions to self-understanding and a richer life in Christ, once we grasp the primitive language that it speaks. 
• How we humans always have mixed motives that include an element of self-interest, no matter how righteous or loving we think we are. 

That doctorate at the University of New Mexico and the dissertation that came with it ("Personality Fulfillment in Religious Life") became foundational to my lifetime: Of doing psychotherapy, reading the Bible through in numerous translations, teaching university level psychology, and writing the Compass Series books with my wife Kate.

Kate is a marvel to behold, with her superb education from the University of Toronto, and her twenty years as a Professor of Child and Human Development. But what really got my attention was how the Holy Spirit came upon her in a new way fifteen years ago, telling her in no uncertain terms that she was to leave college teaching in order to help me write the new books God has purposed for us to author.

Now for the biggest challenge of our lives, for God unveiled a surprise. It's as if he said, "Hey you two, it's time to put your writing gifts to the test. I want you to create a new field of learning that integrates psychology, theology, and philosophy." Of course it didn't come that clearly at first. But piece by piece, precept upon precept, we both came to understand this as our mission for the Lord.

Ten thousand hours later, we had created a 500 page manuscript called "Compass Psychotheology," but weren't sure what we had. I said to Kate one day, "We need to send this manuscript to a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary. They have the best reputation for holding together historical Christianity with contemporary science. Maybe someone there can tell us what we've accomplished, if we've accomplished anything at all."

I sent an email attachment of the book to the senior professor of theology and ministry because his photo looked friendly on the Fuller website, saying that if he ever got around to browsing it, we'd be grateful, and that if it didn't interest him he could delete it.

That was on Friday. The next day a ping from our computer revealed an email response from Ray S. Anderson, Ph.D., Fuller Theological Seminary.  

 This is what Dr. Anderson said:

“Dan and Kate Montgomery do not attempt to integrate psychology and theology by beginning with a state of disintegration and attempting to create a synthesis or a state of collaboration between the two disciplines. Rather, Compass Psychotheology begins with a model of human wholism based on the ontological intimacy that God intended by endowing humans with personal being that reflects the divine image.

"In their compass model, a comprehensive view of personality disorders, both psychological and spiritual, are shown to have a common source in defection from an original state of wholeness. Spiritual growth and psychological health result from a rhythm of being and becoming. 

"This is a stunning and stimulating contribution to the literature on integration. I recommend it as required reading for integration courses here at Fuller Seminary.”

Compass Psychotheology: Where Psychology and Theology Really Meet