Integrative Approaches to Psychology and Christianity: An Introduction to Worldview Issues, Philosophical Foundations, and Models of Integration

As disciplines, psychology and theology share an overlapping interest in the nature and functioning of human beings. This book provides an introduction to many of the worldview issues and philosophical foundations that frame the relationship of psychology and theology, includes scholarly reflection on the integration literature, and surveys five paradigms of possible relationships between psychology and Christianity. The book is designed to help readers become aware of the presuppositional backdrops that each of us brings to these issues, and to understand various approaches for relating psychology and Christianity as partly based on presuppositional assumptions. Questions at the end of each chapter are included to help readers evaluate both the material and their own burgeoning approach to integration. This book is ideal as a textbook for students of psychology and other behavioral and social sciences (social work, sociology, theology, counseling, pastoral counseling) at both the graduate and undergraduate level. It is also written for the broader readership of psychologists, counselors, pastors, and others who are interested in integration. Book jacket.

David N. Entwistle is a licensed psychologist and spent the first decade of his professional life providing psychotherapy in residential and outpatient settings. Since 1996 he has been on the faculty of Malone University in Canton, Ohio, where he has served as chair of the Psychology Department and has taught courses in the undergraduate psychology, graduate counseling, and graduate Christian ministries programs. In addition to teaching and writing, Entwistle conducts research on how patients cope with chronic medical conditions.