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Religion has been viewed with varying degrees of favor or disfavor by psychology. Early in psychology's history, Freud was critical of religion; many Christians reacted with equal disfavor to psychology. More recently, Christians have attempted to articulate the relationship between psychology and Christianity. These attempts have followed the same four approaches or models that psychologists traditionally have taken toward religion. The purpose of this article is to analyze and describe the secular and Christian versions of the four common models. The article describes these models and classifies psychologists such as Allport, Freud, Fromm, Frankl, Ellis, Jung, Mowrer, and Thome, as well as several Christians who have attempted to integrate psychology and Christianity.

Five dimensions of maturity are outlined and described: having a realistic view of oneself and others, accepting oneself and others, living in the present but having long range goals, having values and developing one's abilities and coping with daily living. A parallel description of biblical maturity is also made on these dimensions, but differences in content are noted. Psychological maturity is grounded in the image of God in man as created but fallen for both the Christian and the non-Christian, but the additional aspects of biblical maturity are grounded in the renewed image.

Adams’ theory of nouthetic counseling was analyzed with reference to the nature of man, view of pathology, the counseling model, the counseling process, and the counselor and his techniques. Biblically, Adams’ theory is found to be inadequate. It views man almost entirely in behavioral terms and fails to incorporate such biblical concepts as heart, soul, spirit, and flesh. Adams also fails to provide a biblical basis for building his theory around the word noutheteo.Psychologically, Adams offers no emperical support for his theory and seems unaware of the methodological and research problems involved in supporting his claims of success. Adams’ criticism of Rogers and Freud shows a lack of knowledge of primary sources, and his uncritical positive bias toward Mowrer and Skinner reflects an uncritical presuppositionalism. Finally, he has no theory of motivation or theory of personality.

This paper is to reply to Ganz's critique of Carter's (1975a) analysis of Adams’ theory of Nouthetic Counseling. It begins with a further analysis of Adams’ thoughts. Several weaknesses were noted in Adams thought: omission of central biblical concepts, rejection of common grace, a theologically inadequate view of the fall, uncritically using psychological concepts yet claiming to be exclusively biblical, ignoring psychology as phenomena and a rhetoric which is confusing. Ganz's comments were then responded to in detail. At many points Ganz did not appear to understand the nature of the original analysis and reacted to a label he placed on my original analysis.

The structure of Gothard's thought as it is outlined in the Seminar on Basic Youth Conflicts and the “red notebook” was analyzed. The analysis focused on three categories which are related to psychology: the nature of man, theory of pathology and theory of therapy. The strengths and weaknesses of Gothard's system of thought is evaluated from a biblical perspective since this is his chosen frame of reference. it was concluded that Gothard has developed a vertical psychology of God the Father and omitted a loving relational psychology of the Son and a spontaneous or joyous psychology of the Spirit.

An analysis of Rogers', Gendlin's and Jung's theory of personality revealed that the processes of actualization and congruence are common to all three theorists. The same two processes are fundamental to the Scripture's discussion of Christian maturity. These two processes are described as forming a model of personality and Christian maturity in which the processes in these two spheres are the same but the contents are different. The similarities and differences are discussed but it is maintained that genuine integration is only possible when some processes or principles are common to Christianity and psychology.

The concept of original sin has been considered from many different perspectives. The primary question for Christian psychologists is, “How does original sin manifest itself in the human psyche?” Vitz and Gartner (1984) provocatively argued for a psychoanalytic understanding of original sin as grounded in the oedipal complex, and that Jesus, the remedy for sin, embodies an anti-Oedipus stance. This article critically examines their theory and presents an alternative interpretation: original sin is better understood as a manifestation of the preoedipal drive towards omnipotence arising from the infant state of primary narcissism.

A model for the total integration of psychology and theology based on seven common areas is outlined. The common areas are: Theology Proper-Science of Psychology, Anthropology-Personality, Hamartiology-Pathology, Christology-Counselor, Soteriology-Growth, Ecclesiology-Social Psychology, Eschatology-Hope, and Expectation and Purpose. The difference between psychology and theology in terms of level of explanation, locus of explanation and epistomology is discussed. The methodology used in constructing the model is also described.

This article attempts to develop a model of counseling which is biblical in structure and which is contrasted to two inadequate alternatives. The model is developed for the Scriptures' description of the Flesh and the Spirit and centers on therapeutic relationship as expressed in six dimensions: goal setting, source of value, locus of responsibility, focus on cognition/feeling/behavior, style of therapy, and duration of therapy.

The present study assessed the quality of life for pastors and pastors’ wives by comparing the quality of life they reported with that reported by non-pastoral males and females within the same denomination. Loneliness, marital adjustment and vocational burnout were used as the indices of the quality of life as measured by the Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale, the Dyadic Adjustment Scale and the Maslach Burnout Inventory. Responses from 189 subjects indicated that the pastors and the pastors’ wives experience significantly more loneliness and diminished marital adjustment in comparison with males and females in non-pastoral roles. Burnout was indicated by higher experienced levels of emotional exhaustion and involvement for pastors and pastors’ wives than non-pastoral husbands and wives. This provides some empirical support to the hypothesis that pastors and pastors’ wives experience a diminished quality of life compared to other persons in the church.