4-Mat Review: Entwistle 2010

A 4-MAT Review: Integrative Approaches to Psychology and Christianity

Melyssa Warden

Liberty University

A 4-MAT Review: Integrative Approaches to Psychology and Christianity

Abstract

Entwistle, D. N. (2010). Integrative approaches to psychology and Christianity (2nd ed.).

The integration of psychology and theology is a topic of consistent questioning, controversy, and bias. The Bible expresses numerous examples of Jesus and His disciples using the tool of integration to perform God’s work. The Christian framework, historically and continually, comprises individuals in search of guidance through God, His scripture, and the church. During the time when the entities of modernism began to emerge, questions and confusion also began to transpire. “Secular thinking may be useful, but it is also incomplete without the framework provided by a Christian worldview” (Entwistle, 2010, p. 9). The attainment of truth adequately occurs through holistic consumption, which stems from the book of God’s work and the book of God’s word.

Entwistle conveys the countless characteristics between the two distinctively controversial paradigms: psychology and theology. He articulates personal schemas based upon the integration of these paradigms through a relative collection of personal thoughts and experiences. He initiates this book with an analogy between the ancient cities of Athens and Jerusalem. He then explores the cultural differences of a nature- based Athens and a faith-based Jerusalem. Entwistle references these two cultures in order to display the foundation for the key theme of integration. This foundation presents his argument that “all truth is God’s truth, so that wherever and however truth is discovered, its author is God” (Entwistle, 2010, p.13).

The theory of worldviews is an essential subject regarding the integrative approaches of psychology and theology. Entwistle provides a definition of worldview in the text which states “a worldview is a...