Biblical Psychology

Gain biblical insight into your heart, mind, and soul. Tracing how you relate to yourself, others, and God, this book explores moral and emotional complexities in light of scriptural truth. You’ll be better equipped to understand your inner life and be challenged to align your thinking with God’s Word.

Oswald Chambers reveals the psychological processes in the Bible, framing his commentary through the Biblical concept of the soul, man, and the divine. A thorough examination of the Bible's way of thinking, this book highlights the wisdom of the holy Bible and its value in revealing the workings of the human mind. With relevant quotation of the scriptures, Oswald Chambers demonstrates how the Bible's teachings and recounting of events such as the life of Christ demonstrate and reflect upon human psychology. The author eloquently establishes the connection between the spiritual essence of the human soul, with our physical form, and finally the mind. The relationship of these three constituents of the human being, and its expression upon the pages of scripture, form the central pillar of this instructional text. As a teacher and evangelist, the writer's capacity to educate and explain is in the fullest evidence upon these pages.

How do people learn? Educational experts have wrestled long and hard with this tantalizing question. In his book Theories of Learning, Ernest R. Hilgard catalogs the many hypotheses by categories. Among the many attempts to solve this dilemma, few begin with the Bible. This book does.

How are Christians to understand and undertake the discipline of psychology? This question has been of keen interest (and sometimes concern) to Christians because of the importance we place on a correct understanding of human nature. Psychology can sometimes seem disconnected from, if not antithetical to, Christian perspectives on life. How are we to understand our Christian beliefs about persons in relation to secular psychological beliefs? This revised edition of a widely appreciated Spectrum volume now presents five models for understanding the relationship between psychology and Christianity. All the essays and responses have been reworked and updated with some new contributors including the addition of a new perspective, the transformative view from John Coe and Todd Hall (Biola University). Also found here is David Powlison (Westminster Theological Seminary) who offers the biblical counseling model. The levels-of-explanation model is advanced by David G. Myers (Hope College), while Stanton L. Jones (Wheaton College) offers an entirely new chapter presenting the integration model. The Christian psychology model is put forth by Robert C. Roberts (Baylor University) now joined by Paul J. Watson (University of Tennesee, Chattanooga). Each of the contributors responds to the other essayists, noting points of agreement as well as problems they see. Eric L. Johnson provides a revised introduction that describes the history of Christians and psychology, as well as a conclusion that considers what might unite the five views and how a reader might evaluate the relative strengths and weaknesses of each view. Psychology and Christianity: Five Views has become a standard introductory textbook for students and professors of Christian psychology. This revision promises to keep it so. Spectrum Multiview Books offer a range of viewpoints on contested topics within Christianity, giving contributors the opportunity to present their position and also respond to others in this dynamic publishing format.

Biblical Psychology is a textbook designed to look at what the Bible says about psychological topics such as: personality, the mind/brain connection, states of consciousness, self-esteem, etc. Because psychology deals with the psychological/spiritual par

From the FOREWORD by Dan G. Blazer, M.D., Ph.D. Professor of Psychiatry, Duke University Medical Center "Occasionally, a writer on psychology and biblical faith comes along who can work 'from the center.' J. Christopher Garrison is such a writer. Let me explain what I mean by working from the center. No person who is thoroughly committed to his or her religious faith can really put that faith aside and work with scientific objectivity in blending the essence of that faith with the subject matter of empirical science. Even if someone could, I doubt that the project would be of great interest. Such a person would not be someone I would define as working from the center. A person who can work from the center in blending psychology and biblical faith is a person who can work not so much from the center of extremes as from the center of their being-from their spirit if you will. This ability shows itself when one has opened his or her innermost being to the Spirit of God and his or her mind and reason to modern psychology and truly grasped as a result the principles and concepts of what psychology is really about. This is what Garrison has achieved. In Garrison's Psychology of the Spirit, psychology is not so much integrated as it is enriched. Reading the end product deepens one's faith and one's understanding. Such a psychology is not the mere providing of formulas for meeting daily life crises. It is instead the total unfolding and renewal of one's inner being."