Response to Cooper and Browning's commentary.
Reber, Jeffrey S.
Each of the four responses to the articles that began this special issue have challenged and deepened many of the ideas we think are critical to the relationship between psychology and religion and I greatly appreciate these authors' contributions to the project. Indeed, I feel that this type of sympathetic and yet critically constructive examination of ideas lies at the heart of the kind of genuine and helpful dialog we would like to see take place between religion and psychology. My purpose here will be to carry this dialog along a little further by commenting on to some of the main points of Cooper and Browning's Response.
A basic premise of the four articles that began this special issue is that for any genuine integration or dialog between religion and psychology to be possible or desirable the unequal footing of the disciplines will have to be addressed and rectified. In their supportive commentary, Cooper and Browning contend that one key hindrance to a fair and balanced dialog between the disciplines is foundational truth. They contend that foundationalist epistemologies in both religion and psychology "lead in the same direction--a monopoly on all conversation, a 'final word' about everything" and illustrate through several examples how foundational truth claims shut down dialog and devalue the other discipline. I especially appreciate Cooper and Browning's point that commitments to foundational truth can be found in psychology just as easily as they can be found in religion. This is wholly consistent with a major point of my article, which is that from the perspective of original secularism it would be inappropriate for secular psychologists to see dogmatic claims to authority in religion without also recognizing the tendencies toward dogma in their own discipline. Indeed, Slife and Whoolery have effectively shown in their article how psychology's commitment to naturalism often takes on a foundational and dogmatic air when it comes to matters of method that can result in the "naturalistic 'take over' of religion" that Cooper and Browning describe.
Cooper and Browning's examination of the impact of foundational truth on the relationship between psychology and religion is right on track with the thrust of our four articles and the work of a number of other noted philosophers, psychologists, and theologians. Shults (2003), for example has noted that when truth is understood to be foundational in the way Cooper and Browning have described it, the relationship between religion and psychology is framed by what he terms a "traditionalist fiduciary structure", which is marked by an antagonistic relationship between disciplines that stems from each discipline's view of the relationship from one side only. From the traditionalist perspective, argues Shults, the disciplines exist in an ex parte relationship in which each side "tends to lean toward absolutism ... and continues to search for certain foundations for knowledge (typically rooted in one's own discipline)" (p. 50).
Van Huyssteen (1998) has similarly argued that foundationalism leads both disciplines to "seek knowledge with a secure and incontrovertible foundation, and find this in either logic and sense data (science), or in an infallible scripture or self-authenticating revelation (theology); both claim that science and theology make rival claims about the same domain and one has to choose between them" (p. 240). Cooper and Browning's comments regarding foundational truth fall right in line with Shults (2003) and van Huysteen on this point. Speaking of ontological materialism in psychology and Biblical literalism in religion, Cooper and Browning contend that "both are forms of foundationalism, the attempt to find a completely certain, objective, and absolute starting point for human knowledge".
In reading Cooper and Browning's discussion of foundational truth and the comments of Shults (2003) and van Huysteen (1998), I found myself wondering along with Cooper and Browning if in many cases religion was being "forced" to fit into psychology's "hyper-empirical, naturalistic paradigm". Is "a completely certain, objective, absolute starting point for human knowledge" really the kind of truth religious people are interested in or have religious people been forced to answer to psychology and science's standards of truth because they carry greater weight in a secularized academic culture? Could not truth have a different meaning for many religious people? For a Christian, for example, the acceptance of Christ's proclamation that "I am the truth," (John 14:6), suggests a very different understanding of truth and our relationship to it than the propositional truth that informs scientific psychology. Christian truth is embodied in the concrete living Christ who reaches out to us and can communicate with us in our particular contexts (Slife & Reber, 2005). To know the truth from this perspective is to know Christ, not just to know about him or what he says, but to know him intimately and personally through prayer, scripture study, manifestations of the holy spirit, and other forms of spiritual communion.
If Christian truth is based upon faith rather than certainty and intimacy instead of objectivity, it is something very different than the foundational truth of a scientific psychology. Thus, it would be inappropriate to hold it up to foundational standards of certainty and objectivity. Cooper and Browning echoed this point when they quoted John Polkinghorne's warning that "authority and success in one kind of inquiry should not be invoked to settle illegitimately issues in a different domain of discussion." To force religion to measure up to psychology's standards of truth subordinates religious truth to psychological truth and contributes to the imbalance between the disciplines that hinders genuine dialog. On this point, Cooper and Browning are in emphatic agreement when they state that "psychological methods of inquiry, however valuable they may be, must not be allowed to be the final arbiter of all truth. They are an important voice in the conversation, but they should not be allowed to trump all other voices." For a genuine dialog to be possible religious truth cannot be measured against the ill-fitted standards of scientific psychology that often exclude religious truth altogether, but would need to be included in a broader dialog about what truth means for both psychology and religion. Slife & Whoolery (this issue) have suggested at least one way this can occur with regard to the context of discovery and the context of justification in psychological research methods.
Cooper and Browning suggest another way to resolve the problems of foundational truth that inevitably shut down dialog and devalue religious truth: The truth claims of both religion and psychology can be viewed as different perspectives that "begin in 'faith.'" That is, each discipline can be understood as having its own set of beliefs that derive from its particular socio-cultural historical pre-understanding of what counts for truth. From this perspective, psychology has its own truth and religion has its own truth and neither discipline is beholding to the criteria of truth established by the other discipline. Each discipline is free to pursue its own truth using its own methods without having to compete with the other discipline for foundational space. Shults (2003) describes this kind of foundationless relationship between psychology and religion as a "modernist fiduciary structure" that is marked by an ab extra relationality in which "one begins by abstracting the fields of study as though they were not in relation, and then asks how to relate them" (p. 50).
With the foundational conditions of truth that related the disciplines together in a traditional relationship now removed, there really is no necessary relationship between them. Each discipline is its own self-contained field of inquiry with its own criteria for truth and its own method of pursuing it. There is no longer a need for antagonism because there is no longer competition for the one true truth. The justification for any truth claim lies within the discipline itself given the conditions of truth it has developed. Cooper and Browning describe this view within the context of religion as a "post-liberal approach" in which "one should simply tell the Christian story and allow it to stand on its own epistemological assumptions. After all, there is no agreed upon standard, anyway. We should never look for a means of evaluating a Christian perspective from outside of it. There is no common ground, only a clash of interpretive schemes."
The problem with this type of foundationless truth as Cooper and Browning later point out is that it can lead to an epistemological relativism that puts an end to genuine dialog. "If all perspectives endlessly argue past each other and we have no points of contact whatsoever" they write, "all public discussion is reduced to story-swapping." Their answer to the threat of epistemological relativism that a foundationless truth poses is a critical hermeneutic approach in which "we realize that while we stand in a specific tradition and do our interpretive work from a particular socio-historical matrix, we can still offer solid, public, and tested reasons for the plausibility of both our religious and empirical propositions." But how is this possible if what counts as solid and testable is understood differently by the disciplines doing the testing? How could there ever be agreement about what constitutes a solid, public, and testable proposition, or why should there be agreement about these things if the disciplines are not beholding to each other or some other foundation of truth? Perhaps solid and testable public arguments are only desirable from the perspective of the discipline whose conception of truth entails such arguments as a necessary condition of truth. The other discipline may not share that conception of truth and as a result may not require or desire solid testable arguments at all. It seems there could be as many versions of what counts as solid and testable arguments as there are psychologies, religions, philosophies, and so on. It is unclear in Cooper and Browning's comments what "solid, public, and testable" would mean in light of the problems posed by a foundationless truth. Wouldn't these terms just be another part of the story-swapping that is going on between the disciplines?
It is at this point that I find Shults' (2003) third fiduciary structure especially helpful. For Shults a postmodern fiduciary structure "operates out of a prior awareness of the tensive bipolar relational unity of the disciplines that hermeneutically precedes the description of the disciplines as separate poles. Here we find an intuitive recognition that disciplinary identities are dialectically related and so mediated (even if negatively) by their embeddedness in a broader relationality" (p. 50). Rather than view psychology and religion as separate self-contained disciplines and then try to find some way to relate them, a postmodern fiduciary structure sees each discipline as always and already a part of a larger whole wherein each discipline's identity depends to a large extent on how it relates to other disciplines. As part of this broader whole or greater narrative about truth each discipline has been and will inevitably continue to be exposed to other disciplines' assumptions of truth (e.g., Greek philosophy, scientific naturalism, Christian embodied truth) to a more or less obvious degree, but they are not forced to comply with those assumptions or to accept them as the truth. Rather, as Cooper and Browning mentioned in their remarks, each discipline can through a process of distanciation see those preunderstandings for what they are: A set of assumptions about the nature of truth that have been developed within a particular sociocultural context and could be otherwise.
I am very supportive of Cooper and Browning's contention that each discipline needs to practice a process of distanciation in regard to its own beliefs and assumptions as well as those of other disciplines in order to conduct a careful and critical examination of the broader sociocultural historical contexts that inform the "epistemological starting points" of each discipline and the relationship between them. In a previous article, Slife and I (2001) have used a related term, "professional humility," to suggest the importance of recognizing one's assumptions and being willing to challenge them in light of ever-changing contexts and exposure to alternative worldviews. I believe this notion of distanciation or professional humility reflects the spirit of original secularism, which recognized the need for an ongoing critical evaluation of one's own position as well as the positions of others to avoid dogmatic reification.
In conclusion, I contend that both psychologists and religious people must be willing to critically examine the assumptions of their own perspectives just as much, if not more, than the assumptions of other disciplines' before any genuine dialog between the disciplines can occur. Indeed, for a genuine dialog to be possible, truth itself must be up for grabs, not in the foundationless sense that anything goes, but in the holistic and humble sense that all aspects of the greater narrative about truth are allowed to participate fully and fairly in the dialog about what constitutes truth, including foundational, foundationless, hermeneutic, and religious truths. All of these elements are parts of a greater narrative and cultural tradition that is concerned with truth and they have all informed psychology and religion to some extent. In our four articles that began this issue we highlighted many of the philosophical assumptions that inform psychologists' and religious people's worldviews. Cooper and Browning have gone a step further by emphasizing "the significance of the religious, or at least quasi-religious, dimensions" of psychologists' preunderstanding of truth. Ultimately, I agree with Cooper and Browning that we have to examine and dialog with all the participants in this greater narrative of truth--including philosophy, science, religion, and psychology--without rejecting them out of hand on foundationalist grounds, forcing them to fit another discipline's standard of truth, or ignoring them because of an epistemological relativism. Perhaps then a balanced and fair dialog between religion and psychology can be possible.
REFERENCES
Shults, F. L. (2003). Reforming theological anthropology: After the philosophical turn to relationality. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing.
Slife, B. D., & Reber, J. S. (2005). Comparing the practical implications of secular and Christian truth in psychotherapy. In A. Jackson and L. Fischer (Eds.), Turning Freud upside down: Gospel perspectives on psychotherapy's fundamental problems. Provo, UT: BYU Press (160-182).
Slife, B. D., & Reber, J. S. (2001). Eclecticism in psychotherapy: Is it really the best substitute for traditional theories? In B. Slife, R. Williams, & S. Barlow (Eds.), Critical issues in psychotherapy: Translating new ideas into practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications (213-233).
van Huysteen, J. W. (1998). Duet or duel: Theology and science in a postmodern world. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International.
AUTHOR
REBER, JEFFREY S. Address: Department of Psychology, University of West Georgia, Carrollton, GA 30118. Title: Associate Professor of Psychology. Degrees: BS, MS, PhD, Brigham Young University. Specializations: Theoretical-philosophical Psychology; Relational social psychology; Christian truth; relational spirituality; altruism; critical thinking; teaching psychology.
JEFFREY S. REBER
University of West Georgia
Correspondence concerning this article may be sent to Jeffrey S. Reber, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of West Georgia, Carrollton, GA 30118. Email: jreber@westga.edu.
