Horton: Well, I think, you know, this is, again, where reading that quote from Calvin,
not that he’s normative, but that quote from Calvin is so helpful that the Anabaptists,
the radical Protestants of Calvin’s day, believed that secular learning itself — the
secular Christian thing — secular learning itself, secular culture, secular science,
secular rhetoric and logic was sinful.
We should just study the Bible and get everything out of the Bible.
And the Reformers just were completely opposed to that idea because it was undermining this
very doctrine of God’s common grace, that God has graced the world with all sorts of
truth, goodness, and beauty, that we cannot destroy, though we would if we could.
And that the Holy Spirit is at work, restraining people from being as evil as they could be
in their destructive capabilities.
So, Calvin says, you’re insulting the Holy Spirit if you don’t believe this.
If you think that a non-Christian can’t contribute anything to medicine, science,
the arts, and so forth, then you are discrediting the Holy Spirit.
You are insulting the Holy Spirit.
It’s a pretty strong statement.
Now, then the question is, “Do we know enough about what the Bible says to know when it’s
being contradicted?”
And I think there are a lot of people who try to integrate any discipline we could think
of, but psychology, especially, the sciences that are closer to theology, closer to making
normative statements about the human person, a lot of people have a Sunday School understanding
of theology and a graduate school understanding of psychology.
I think it’s really important to have a conversation where you have people who really
are saying, “Now, wait, wait, wait.
You said sin, but what I’m hearing is dysfunction.
Wait, wait a second.
You’ve been talking — using the word ‘saved,’ but do you really mean recovery?”
You know, what is the language that you’re using here, and how is it being transformed
in ways that aren’t helpful?
But then also not to just reject every secular term that’s out there or we would reject,
you know, physics, and biology, and so forth.
I have to say there are lots of issues that I’ve seen in people around me, the lives
of people around me, where if they hadn’t had a good psychologist and psychiatrist,
they would have been in great trouble.
If they had had a Christian come and tell them, “You need to pray more and read your
Bible more and not see a psychologist (or sorry) psychiatrist,” — I’m talking
about one who’s not undermining their faith — that would have been a great disservice
to them.
Godfrey: Don’t you think — and I’m no expert in this at all, which obviously isn’t
keeping me from talking.
But just as if someone has a clear pastoral sin problem, you want to send them to the
most theologically reliable pastor you could find.
I think part of the problem a lot of us feel when we’re thinking about the usefulness
of a psychologist or a psychiatrist is, are we finding (to mix terms) the Calvinist one
or the Pelagian one.
And, I think a lot of us feel we don’t know enough about psychology always to make those
distinctions, and I think that’s why we struggle.
But I think you’re absolutely right.
If we can find a Calvinist psychologist that would be the ideal thing, who sort of knows
about how our minds are working in ways that go beyond just the category of sin and grace.