THIS is an excellent collection of essays, all of which have relevance for faith practitioners. Contributors introduce a specific psychological theory before applying it to biblical passages.
June Dickie opens Section One, Lament Psalms, with her explanation of the effects of trauma on the brain’s limbic system, and explains how vital it is for sufferers to integrate material that otherwise remains split off. Lament psalms help to process “toxic memories”, aid replacement of “negative trauma images with positive, dominant metaphors”, and provide a crucial “sounding board”.
The empirical study of how Zulu women and refugees engage with Psalms 3 and 13 could be used in a Bible-study group as a template for their own creative engagement with a given psalm. The following two essays focus on Psalm 88. David Cohen discusses theistic dissonance and the via negativa, while Rebecca S. Watson applies linguistic inquiry and word-count software to explore how this psalm works.
Section Two, Psychotraumatology, includes discussion of terror-management theory as Angela Sawyer demonstrates how it can be applied to Deutero-Isaiah’s presentation of Daughter Zion. There is rich material here for ministers who have to respond to acts of terrorism committed in contemporary contexts. Christopher A. Porter uses cognitive-dissonance theory to piece together an indirect trauma that prompted Paul’s inner struggle described in Romans 7.14-25.
In Section Three, Coping, Alexandra Grund-Wittenberg shows how the self-presentation of the compassionate deity in Exodus can offer a form of Bible therapy. Anna Nürnberger uses the struggle described in Sirach 2 to illustrate coping mechanisms, while Linda Joelsson explores passages in Paul’s letters to reveal how he progressively copes with threats to his apostolic position, potential death, and replacement. Petri Merenlahti deploys psychodynamic theories of coping to advance a typology of “alternative masculinities . . . that correspond to different coping styles or defense mechanisms”. He addresses insecurities about Christian manliness and the costs involved in the repression of those insecurities, not least for women.
Three essays constitute Section Four, Anger. Jennifer M. Matheny and Amy E. Hale outline the merits of acceptance-commitment therapy, the goal of which “is never to rid people of negative emotions or thought but to change the relationship with them”. In their reading of Jeremiah’s rage, they demonstrate how it always has a context. The “expressions of divine and prophetic rage are reflections not of a vengeful, vindictive, arrogant God, but of a God who longs for . . . the poor to be cared for, the oppressed to have justice, for people who give foreigners a home”.
Nina E. Livesey examines “Anger and its Implications in Galatians”, while Gili Kugler turns to “chosenness” in the Bible in a profound study of what happens when a “golden child” is adopted by a narcissistic father. Kugler includes discussion of the deeply problematic Ezekiel 16. A strength of her work is that it prompts us to consider how difficult texts could be used in faith settings in which there are likely to be secret sufferers of domestic abuse, rape, or other traumas, whose despair goes unrecognised when such texts are neglected.
The next section, Rhetoric, contains one essay by Tim MacBride on “Persuasion in Preaching”. Essays by Hendrik Viviers, Kari Syreeni, and Pieter van der Zwan form Section Six, Material Psyche. I appreciated Viviers’s discussion of the attachment of Naboth to his vineyard, reminding us that “place” has an alive, even sensuous, connection with its inhabitants, and is not something readily parted with for compulsory purchase by society elites. Essays by Heather A. McKay open and close the whole collection.
Overall, this is a most welcome volume, and I am glad that a second volume is already in progress. Each chapter could be readily used for undergraduate class discussion or as material for Bible-study groups.
Dr Deryn Guest is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Birmingham.
When Psychology Meets the Bible
Heather A. McKay and Pieter van der Zwan, editors
Sheffield Phoenix Press £85
(978-1-914490-27-9)
Church Times Bookshop £76.50