By: Dr. Eric L Johnson
Unused by previous Christians, the term/concept/practice of “integration” arose in the last half of the 20th century, becoming a virtual shibboleth among evangelicals in institutions of higher learning and the Christian counseling community.2 Concepts as popular as integration will inevitably be understood and practiced differently by different people. I made a number of distinctions regarding the concept of integration in Foundations for Soul Care (Johnson, 2007a), but one cannot say everything one would like to say in one book (though no one can say I didn’t try!). In this essay we will consider three of the most important kinds of integration practiced among Christians in psychology, psychotherapy and counseling.
I bring two potentially contradictory commitments to this essay. As the editor of a book (2010) on the most common evangelical approaches to psychology, I am committed to promoting dialogue among them (pp. 299-301). At the same time, I am personally committed to advancing the Christian psychology approach, so I am not neutral regarding them. The dialectical harmony of both commitments is found in Bahktin’s understanding of dialogue as constituting something of the essence of human nature (Holquist, 2002). Far more than the mere sharing of perspectives, true dialogue entails the kind of love and respect that looks to dialogue partners as true friends who have sufficient ego-strength to handle mutual questioning and even challenge, confident that all will benefit from the process. Shall we begin?
Integration is a Christian Good
Later in the essay, attention will be drawn to the weaknesses of one kind of integration, so I want to begin by making clear my belief that integration is in principle a deeply Christian ideal. The triune God is the ultimate source of all truth perceived/received by humans—biblical truth as well as the rest of truth found in the created order—so the Christian activity of integration—motivated by a love of all truth that draws together all different kinds of truth—glorifies God and should excite the hearts of all lovers of Christ, who is truth incarnate (John 14:7) and in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2:3). Integration is a necessary function of being made in God’s image, beings he designed to be finite representations (or signs) of his infinite understanding and love. The human sciences are gifts of God and fruits of creation grace, a truth that cannot be overturned by its misuse. On the contrary, the wise appropriation of knowledge obtained by those outside the faith and wise collaboration with them in the culture-forming activity of science, in light of Scripture and all that the triune God has done for humanity in Christ, are Christian virtues. Integration then, in principle, is a calling from God.
A Plurality of Integrations
Integration, however, is also an ideal, and fallen, finite creatures like ourselves will find it impossible to realize the ideal perfectly. Indeed, the Archetype of human integration, understanding, and love is the omniscient and perfectly wise God himself, in whom all knowledge and value are already one—eternally integral—known and felt comprehensively and exhaustively, grasped in perfect balance and in proper relation to everything (including God himself). Our fallenness and finitude guarantee that our integration will forever fall short of the glory of God. There are, therefore, in principle an infinite number of possible integrations that humans could come up with. So it is no surprise that there are many different kinds of integration here on earth. The diversity can nonetheless be categorized according to their common features. In Foundations (2007) I distinguished between strong integration (that takes the task of integration very seriously) and weak integration (which labels itself integration, but shows little evidence of actually doing it). Here I expand on that analysis.
Two Kinds of Human Science
Abraham Kuyper was an extraordinary Dutch theologian and politician, who wrestled deeply with the worldview and intellectual changes occurring in the West at the turn of the last century. Building on Augustine’s belief that humanity was divided fundamentally into two communities: the City of Humanity (which includes all humans by nature, who are alienated from God from birth) and the City of God (open to everyone, but which includes those who have been reconciled to God through faith in Christ and, and born again, spiritually), Kuyper (1898) argued that regeneration (the renewal of the Christian mind, heart, and life that begins when one believes in Christ) should lead to the development of a Christian version of the human sciences which is based on a Christian worldview, rather than the naturalistic worldview that was becoming dominant in his day.
As a result, a Kuyperian would read the history of Western psychology as originating in the classical psychology of the City of Humanity (e.g., Plato and Aristotle) and the biblical psychology of the City of God, with the latter coming to ascendance over the first five centuries of the Common Era and dominating Western psychology until the 1800’s, when the City of Humanity took over cultural supremacy and began to develop its own psychology, now based primarily on the worldview of naturalism.
Yet Kuyper (1998) also rightly appreciated the good evident in the lives and activities of those outside the Christian faith through God’s common grace (though I prefer the term “creation grace”), such as their ability to understand well many specific aspects of the world, in spite of their lack of grasping properly the all-encompassing spiritual dimension of life. Consequently, integration is necessary for every thinking person who does more than recite the Bible. The major concern about the task of integration concerns the issue of fidelity to the core beliefs, values, and practices of the Christian faith, because of the existence of integration’s evil twin, syncretism, the gradual undermining of a religious tradition by alien beliefs, values, and practices, a problem that an Augustinian-Kuyperian understanding of the “Two Cities” and their respective human sciences makes paramount.
An Archaeological Exploration: Aerial Survey
Integration with respect to the contemporary field of psychology is made particularly difficult by the peculiar challenges of late modernism. Adapting Foucault’s (1972) concept of archaeology—the study of the discursive practices of an era that unconsciously shape its thought and activities—we will attempt a little archaeological investigation regarding the late modern concept/practice of integration. Unfortunately, we only have time to conduct an aerial survey (see Kelly & Thomas, 2009, for reference to this kind of archeological research). In seeking to understand the human sciences of the modern era, rather than focus on the more traditional, modern interest in the Subject of science (the scientist) or the Object of a science (in the case of psychology, individual human beings), Foucault (1972) focused his attention on scientific discourse in its historical contexts. He argued that scientific activity is shaped by rules of discourse and practice that regulate what scientists can say and even affect what is conceptually possible, rules that are enforced by designated “authorities” (Gutting, 1989). According to MacIntyre (1990), such rules and authorities in part constitute an intellectual community and its tradition. In light of these considerations, we will examine some aspects of late modernism in order to understand the rules of discourse and practice that operate within the contemporary field ofpsychology, which in turn shaped the development of the late modern concept of integration.
Some Features of Late Modernism
The formation of modernism was discussed in my introduction to the Five Views book (2010). In reaction to the seemingly intractable religious conflicts of the 1600’s, early modernists formed the following assumptions.
1. Special revelation and tradition can no longer be regarded as ultimate authorities, because appeals to such sources obviously cannot resolve the serious religious-intellectual (and societal) conflicts confronting Europe.
2. Human knowledge must be based on a more sure foundation, and that foundation is presumed to be located in human reason especially but also in human consciousness and experience—basically all aspects of the individual self.
3. The goal of human knowledge is universal understanding, obtained by objective means that all interested parties can use, thus privileging no one perspective and granting a functional epistemological equality to all.
4. The natural sciences are held up as the model for human understanding, since they demonstrate the power of human reason and observation (experience) to yield universal knowledge. The natural sciences are characterized by the combination of careful empirical investigation with the application of mathematics (one of reason’s most powerful tools), which can yield formulas that correspond to causal realtions in the world, as demonstrated magisterially in Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica.3 (p. 15)
Most of the early modernist thinkers were religious (Descartes, Locke, and a century later Kant). By the time that the natural sciences came to be applied to the human sciences—in the late 1800’s—other intellectual currents were added to this stream, modifying it enough to warrant the add the modifier “late modernism.”4 The most important of these currents for our purposes was secularization. Taylor (2007) suggests that secularization in the West consists of the exclusion of religious discourse from the public square, including science and therapy; the decrease of religious belief and practice; and the increased awareness and viability of belief options other than Christianity. According to Smith (2003), by the mid-20th century a secular revolution had occurred that had successfully taken over the intellectual institutions of the West. Late modern psychology is one child of the union of secularization to the application of natural science methods to the human sciences.
How can Christianity explain the existence of secularism? One of the terrible consequences of sin was the fundamental rupture that occurred between faith in God and his Word and the rest of one’s life. Such a fracture originated in the serpent’s temptation to think autonomously from God (“Did God actually say…?; Genesis 3:1b), and it became “normal” for humans after the Fall, when God was rejected as the lord of our hearts, lives, and relationships. The secularism of late modernism is simply a contemporary cultural expression of this native tendency in a humanity alienated from its Creator.
Another important aspect of late modernism that follows from the secularization of Western culture deserves mention: the centrality of the autonomous Self (Taylor, 1989). In the absence of a sovereign deity who rules over human affairs, religious, ethical, and axiological (values) norms are believed to be ultimately determined by the individual self. According to Christianity, humans are necessarily religious. Made in God’s image, humans necessarily live for some ultimate concern(s). The underlying genius of late modernism was to explicitly reject religious terminology, while repressing the religious motive and investing it solely but implicitly in the Self.
2Christians, of course, have done something analogous to integration since the first centuries after Christ. My point here is that the term integration is of rather recent vintage. My point below will be that its contemporary usage cannot be easily separated from certain themes of late modernism.
3For the record, I recognize that modernism contributed some notable goods to the West, including the promotion of objectivity and democracy. However, from a historic Christian standpoint, its framework for promoting these goods and its trajectory overall has to be seen as deleterious.
4Nonetheless, most histories of the psychology of the past 130 years simply refer to it as modern psychology.
Published in 2011 in the Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 30 (4), 339-355.
Eric founded the Christian Psychology Institute a decade ago while serving in Christian higher education. Since retiring from Houston Christian University in May 2024, he has devoted himself to building CPI into a national hub for training, scholarship, and certification in Christ-Centered Therapy.
An accomplished author and editor, Eric is widely respected for his work at the intersection of theology and psychology. He brings over 25 years of pastoral counseling experience and is a frequent speaker at conferences and academic events.
Eric is married to Rebekah and cherishes time with their two children and three grandchildren. In his free time, he enjoys hiking and bike riding.
