A Summing up

My Christian beliefs convince me that humankind is as much a part of nature as any other part of the created order and that the various biblical injunctions to care for the creation and to seek to study and understand it and to be a good steward of it apply as much to humankind as to any other part of creation.

More specifically, for the psychologist, this means that there is something intrinsically interesting about what comes from our efforts to understand the psychological origins of the religious quest and the maintenance of religious beliefs, as well as the various functions of religious beliefs in the lives of individuals and of groups.

In each instance the things said by psychologists present both challenges and insights and as such should be welcomed and taken seriously. Historically the reactions of people to the pronouncements of psychologists have varied widely. They range from a knee jerk reaction of hostility, a denial of what is being said, to, on the part of some, an uncritical over enthusiastic welcome verging on the gullible. For a scientist none of these reactions is acceptable.

At the turn of the last century a distinguished professor of theology here in Cambridge, Professor Sanday, posed the question of whether, what was then understood in psychology could have anything to contribute about the theological understanding of the two natures in the one person of Jesus Christ. I'm referring to him now because, leaving aside his particular views on the two natures in one person issue, I think his general approach to the relation of psychology and theology is worth remembering. He suggested that the views of psychologists were destined to be of importance and value in the future of theology and, specifically, he wrote concerning anything that was asserted that, " it ought, however, to be worked out on the ground of psychology first by the disinterested methods of psychological science and then on the foundations thus laid the theologian may build”. I fear that all too often the comments that are made are not based on "the disinterested methods of psychological science" but rather on some preliminary speculation with very little in evidence to support it. What psychologists choose to study at any given time naturally reflects the current dominant emphasis in psychological research at that time. As I have indicated, it may be social and personality psychology, or behaviourist psychology, or psychophysiology or as more recently of cognitive psychology and neuropsychology. I also indicated that there are occasions when aspects of psychological research may remind us of things we knew but had forgotten or got out of balance. I gave the example of action and faith in the Christian life. At other times the researches of psychologists may call for a radical re-examination of some long and widely held traditional Christian beliefs. The specific example I gave was understanding of the nature of the human person in the light of developments in neuroscience and psychology.

I have also suggested that we have to be careful as we examine the statements made by psychologists about religious beliefs and behaviour. Fifty years ago Sir Frederic Bartlett, professor here in Cambridge, and as I indicated often described as one of the precursors and architects of the cognitive revolution wrote " it is inevitable that the forms which are taken by feeling, thinking and action within any religion should be moulded and directed by the character of its own associated culture. The psychologist must accept these forms and attempt to show how they have grown up and what are their principal effects. Should he appear to succeed in doing these things he's tempted to suppose this confers upon him some special right to pronounce upon the further and deeper issues of truth and value”. In this regard, however, Bartlett goes on, ”... the psychologist is in exactly the same position as that of any other human being who cares to consider the matter seriously. Being a psychologist gives him neither superior not inferior authority". This applies to the psychological scientist and neuroscientist as we try to take seriously what we learn from our faith as well as from our science. We find no excuse for a compartmentalisation, even though at times it may mean some very long hard thinking and some serious reappraisal of some of our traditional Christian beliefs. And we must be ready to discover that, on occasions, there are no easy answers and we must continue to wrestle with the issue and await further evidence.

You may feel that today I have let my enthusiasm for psychology and neuroscience outrun my judgement. Perhaps, at times, I have, and if so I can do no better, in mitigation, than remind you of the words of the 17th century scientist Nathaniel Carpenter. He wrote in 1622, “I am free, I am bound to nobody’s word, except to those inspired by God; if I oppose these in the least degree, I beseech God to forgive me my audacity of judgement as I have been moved not so much by longing for some opinion of my own as by my love for the freedom of science”.