Psychology and Christianity have been at odds for as long as they as they have coexisted. This book tries to explain how the two can be integrated and be able to work together. The authors, John D. Carter and Bruce Narrmore, go through several ways of combining these two ideas that seem so far apart, but are actually, in theory, connected. .
The first chapter is about the possibilities of integrating psychology and theology, and some of the misconceptions that some Christians have toward psychology. Psychology has become such a big force in the past decades that there is no way that Christians can just ignore it. The two choices that they are, is to either integrate the basic principles of psychology with our theology, or completely throw it away. Christians cannot do the latter because psychology is a science that explains how we as humans take things and how they affect us. Christians sometimes tend to go with the choice of completely throwing it out, but what they don't realize is that the basic principles of psychology and the basic principles of the Bible do not disagree. It is the theories of these two that make them seem so far apart. The authors said on page 27, "Psychologists and theologians are frequently studying different aspects of the same phenomena or studying the same phenomenon from different perspectives." .
Some of the reasons that previous attempts to integrate these two have failed is because of several deficiencies. Some of these deficiencies are: lack of comprehensiveness, lacking in sophistication, try to force one on the other, lack well-defined view of the nature of the human being, lacked objective scientific data, lacked a well thought out theory of personality and several others. (pg. 30) One of the other important barriers is selected negative experiences with it. (pg. 32) .
In the third chapter they explain the scope of integration. They give a brief survey of some of the possibilities of integrating our understanding of the major doctrines with the major considerations of considerations.
