I think some of the conflicts would be understandings of soul, conscience and grace. These could be studied through qualitative studies, but it would be difficult to create scales for quantitative analysis.

Hi Pastor,

In my spiritual opinion, the major conflicts are related to psychotic features (e.g., hallucinations, delusions). It is part of the DSM-IV TR criteria that psychotic features include these "symptoms". The interesteing fact is that these "symptons" are very consistent in their presentation; " the person hallucinates that the devil told him/her to kill". Here we have both the visual and auditory hallucations, but it this really a halluncination or it is the actual devil taking advantage of a problematic situation the individual is expericing and asking the person to end with the life of another of even that person's own life, which is also a very typical hallucation.

Ricardo A. Pacheco, M,A. Ph,D (partial)

There are many. Determinism is just one. Look into Freud's writings on God, the internalization and projection of the primordial father... it goes on and on.

Psychologists seem stuck on materialism and monism, which leads to determinism . I am currently writing about this in Christian Apologetics. I am a counsellor as well as a retired prof of statistics

In addition to the questions of materialism, determinism, and especially positivism as sort of a worldview in empirical psychology and different psychotherpeutic approaches, it would also be good to remember that many of the conflicts are due to the difficulties of interdisciplinary dialogue, starting with adequate mutual listening and attempts at understanding. This is also true for the side of theology.

Please allow me to indicate some bibliographical reference of mine (only available in print, sorry):

* The Birth of Human Sciences, especially Psychology, in: Paul Gilbert (Ed.) L'uomo moderno e la Chiesa - Atti del Congresso (Analecta Gregoriana, 317), Rome: Gregorian & Biblical Press, 391-408.

* Remarks on Religions and Psychiatry/ Psychotherapies, in: Hefti, René/ Bee, Jacqueline (Ed.s) Spiritualität und Gesundheit. Spirituality and Health. Ausgewählte Beiträge im Spannungsfeld zwischen Forschung und Praxis. Selected Contributions on Conflicting Priorities in Research and Practice, Bern u.a.: Peter Lang 99-118.

* Interdisciplinary Dialogue between Theology and Psychology: principles and promising steps, in: Melita Theologica 52 (2001) 135-153.

* The Concept of Human Acts Revisited. St. Thomas and the Unconscious in Freedom, in: Gregorianum 80 (1999) 147-171.

Psychology is, necessarily, going to approach a client with a therapeutic model and way of thinking about the client and their problems. Theology is going to approach the person as a being created in the image of God and in need of relationship with God. The two realms are not mutually exclusive, but as Klaus has pointed out, the fact that two different disciplines with two different emphases are being addressed will typically mean that a psychologist looks at and appraises a human situation in a different fashion than does a theologian. Prior to the emergence of the actual field which we call psychology, and before the church accepted the boundaries which the Enlightenment seemed to impose upon her, the "cure of souls" was a common focus for clergymen, and it had some interesting similarities to psychology.

That being said, there are well-known psychologists and psychological scholars who have a high regard for religion (not just in a Jungian manner), and, as well, there are theologians who have a lot of respect and appreciation for psychology. Today we view these as two separate magisteria and we tend, when things are functioning well, to express mutual respect for one another's disciplines.

Thanks guys for your answers and suggestions. Materialism (also called naturalism or physicalism) seems to be the main difficulty and default position by many psychologists. This drives the rest of the debate. The books by Edward Feser and articles by William Lane Craig are particularly helpful. I find materialism totally illogical, though how a mind which is more than just the brain and a body connect is still a difficult area.

Dear George, you said you write on this currently; have you finished and published it in the meantime? Are you writing about the body-mind-problem, too? I agree and find materialism a most illogical philosophical stance, too. Nevertheless, it appeals to so many intellectuals (cf. recently "The Swerve" by Greenblatt.), and it seems in every generation the discussion has to be lead anew - like the efforts to witness and "transmit" faith, too. Thank you for the indication of the publications of Feser and Craig.

Hi Klaus

I have written 200 pages of my book covering a wide range of topics and hope to finish with about 50 more pages fairly soon. I have a chapter on "Is there a spiritual dimension?" that considers body-mind problems. I am also writing an advanced research monograph in statistics on contract so I am quite busy along with counselling. I am therefore proceeding fairly slowly with my apologetics book as I want to do a through job. Another excellent book is "Atheism's new clothes" by David H.Glass (2012)

The direction of theology rests with almighty god which is only one for entire human beings omnipotent,omnipresence & omniscient.In order to understand appreciate & for realization one has to take recourse to religion .

For us ,for caring out every action of our life ,our mind remain guiding force so to say way of our life. Psy is knowledge is implication for us remains the pathway for our process in carrying out our life course of our action on the right path .The knowledge of psy help us to get read of our negative thinking ,resulting in negative action & this will certainly help us to make our LIFE-LINE on understanding God & Religion.Even for rationalist they in the heart understand that our inner movement of our body & heart for which we are merely an observe for which there Eyes is peeping the inner corner for which they realize the divinity within them .

I personally am failing to see that there is any obvious conflict between theology and psychology. As noted, the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. It should be obvious that one's theology is going to greatly affect their approach to psychology/counseling. Both the a-theologian and the theologian are both going to have worldviews with which they approach psychology. It seems to me that aspects of determinism make naturalistic approaches to psychology difficult.

There have been several recent articles, I'd have to double-check for some of them, on the impact of neuroscience as creating problems for naturalistic approaches. For example David Brooks' article "The Neural Buddhists."

Hello Antonio, You write of the "idolization of a God". It would be idolization if there were no God, otherwise it would just be worship. Am I correct in understanding you to be stating that you are convinced that the atheist standpoint is the correct one? That seems to be the only point of view from which you can speak of the idolization of a God.