The Psychology of the Spirit: a Contemporary System of Biblical Psychology

From the FOREWORD by Dan G. Blazer, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor of Psychiatry, Duke University Medical Center

"Occasionally, a writer on psychology and biblical faith comes along who can work 'from the center.' J. Christopher Garrison is such a writer. Let me explain what I mean by working from the center. No person who is thoroughly committed to his or her religious faith can really put that faith aside and work with scientific objectivity in blending the essence of that faith with the subject matter of empirical science. Even if someone could, I doubt that the project would be of great interest. Such a person would not be someone I would define as working from the center. A person who can work from the center in blending psychology and biblical faith is a person who can work not so much from the center of extremes as from the center of their being-from their spirit if you will. This ability shows itself when one has opened his or her innermost being to the Spirit of God and his or her mind and reason to modern psychology and truly grasped as a result the principles and concepts of what psychology is really about. This is what Garrison has achieved. In Garrison's Psychology of the Spirit, psychology is not so much integrated as it is enriched. Reading the end product deepens one's faith and one's understanding. Such a psychology is not the mere providing of formulas for meeting daily life crises. It is instead the total unfolding and renewal of one's inner being."