Psychology and Biblical Studies
Society of Biblical Literature
November 2005 (Philadelphia)
S19-21:Personality Development in the Biblical Context: Heart, Soul, and Mind
Wayne Rollins, Hartford Seminary, Presiding
- Adrien Janis Bledstein, Independent Scholar "David at the Cave of Adullam, Depression and Hypergraphia"
What if David wrote the psalms tradition ascribes to him? What if each prayer could be connected with a moment or period of his life? Would that change our perception of his heart, mind and soul? For adults in a congregational setting, I designed a course integrating Psalms which tradition attributed to David with the narrative about him in 1 Sam 16 through 1 Kings 2. A variety of insights emerged from this hypothetical construction. This paper focuses on one example, what I call "descent into the valley of dark shadows." Utterly alone, David hid in a cave at Adullam. A series of prayers reveals a downward spiral from desperation through suffering, illness, and hopelessness. After acknowledging human frailty David began to rise, asserting confidence in his own righteousness. He emerged with strengthened trust in YHWH and renewed belief he would become king. Modern notions of depression and hypergraphia (ala A. W. Flaherty) provide insight into this extraordinary biblical personality.
- Nathan Solomon, Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education "David and Jonathan in Iraq"
The friendship between David and Jonathan has been analyzed from every perspective save one, that of a soldier's friendship. This paper explores the gains modern psychological work with combat veterans (Grossman, Shay) as a hermeneutical tool for understanding the friendship of David and Jonathan.
- Barbara Leung Lai, Tyndale Seminary "Uncovering the Isaian Personality: Wishful Thinking or Viable Task?"
This paper is a demonstrated example of a) a model of psychological biblical interpretation; and b) the necessity of employing psychological interpretive tools (along with historical-critical ones) in constructing Hebrew personalities. Using the "I"-window as a "port of entry" (15 identifiable passages where Isaiah speaks in the 1st person singular voice), I seek to uncover the Isaian personality through a psychological lens--the psychological implications of monologues, the language of religious faith and metaphors. As markers of the construction of the Isaian "self," the prophetic pathos is another "point of entry" toward an internal profile. On the empirics of engaging text, I shall further explicate the effects (therapeutic and/or pathogenic) of the Isaian text on its readers.
- Paul N. Anderson, George Fox University "The Johannine Ego Eimi sayings in Cognitive-Critical Perspective"
- Jaime Clark-Soles, Southern Methodist University "`Do Not Be Conformed To This World, But Be Transformed By The Renewing Of Your Minds…'"
I am currently writing a book which explores the views of death and afterlife presented by various New Testament authors. All of the teaching about death and afterlife on the part of the authors is aimed at personality development. I propose, then, to present a paper which argues that point. For the New Testament authors, eschatology is anthropology in a way that is often absent from modern psychological categories. Our authors are greatly concerned about “the existential issue of temporality, particularly the future tense” (Lester, Hope). Why do these authors devote such attention to this? I will argue that the answer to that is at least threefold, each of which relates to “personality development.” First, the authors were concerned to inspire clearly delineated ethical behavior. Second, the authors knew the importance of offering encouragement to a minority group that often perceived itself as persecuted. Those who “endured to the end” (language from Mark and Revelation) would be “saved” and those who did not would have an unhappy future. Third, the authors had to assist converts with identity formation. When an individual joined a Christian group, learning to “hate father and mother,” she needed to be assimilated to the new group of “fictive kin,” a group which would surely include people of economic and ethnic backgrounds different from her own. Eschatology aided this process. At the most fundamental level, the person would have to ask, “What makes me a Christian?” “What dispositions do I have and in what ways are they in keeping or not with what it means to be a Christian?” “What are the boundaries?” In sum, I would welcome the opportunity to present this tripartite thesis regarding New Testament death and afterlife views as vehicles for personality development.
S19-70: Aggression and the Destructive Power of the Bible I:
Anger and Aggression in Scripture
Dereck Daschke, Truman State University, Presiding
- Philip Culbertson, University of Auckland "De-Demonizing Cain...and Wondering Why?"
Freud's theory of sibling rivalry is cited relatively frequently by both Biblical scholars and psychodynamic theorists as an explanation for Cain's murder of Abel. But I think this is inadequate to explain fully the dynamics of the story. There seem to be two intergenerational processes at work in Cain's violence that are often overlooked by Biblical exegetes-maternal anger and paternal shaming. Understanding Cain's actions as the logical but tragic extension of maternal anger and paternal shaming (based on Nancy McWilliams and David Dutton) sets his violence in a new light. It also opens up the possibility of learning some new lessons from Cain. Yet this still seems too simple. A man-Cain-is so angry that he wants to murder someone. But who does he want to murder: the brother who stole divine favour from him (the displacer)? The biological father whose shame he already carries, so that it erupts when he is shamed again (the depriver)? Or the great Father, the heavenly Lover with the ultimate power to bless or destroy (the despot)? But whoever the object, the ultimate result, as Levinas points out, is that Cain destroys himself in an act of perverse yearning for the object of his desire. My methodology will be Autobiographical Criticism. I am the older of two sons, and my childhood was haunted by a desire to murder my younger brother. As an adult, I can now ask: Was it really my brother I wanted to murder? Or was it perhaps my biological father as an act of unconscious Oedipal jealousy? Or was it God, or at least the God whom I was taught was a constant threat if I relaxed for a moment? Or was it, following Levinas, myself whom I wished to murder?
- Michael Willett Newheart, Howard University "The Transgression of Aggression: Learning to Love the Hate in the New Testament (and Ourselves!)"
According to Melanie Klein, aggression is innate to humanity. In order to love fully, then, we must embrace the hate (i.e. anger, aggression) toward the very things and people that we love. In this paper I will explore the implications of Klein's insight for New Testament studies. I will argue that at the heart of the New Testament is not only love, but also hate, and that hate (as well as love) is physical (as well as spiritual), directed toward the bodies (and souls) of God, Jesus, fellow believers, outsiders, and oneself. (In addition to Klein, Frantz Fanon will also be used to understand the New Testament writers' aggression in the context of Roman imperialism.) Yet in order to appreciate this ambivalence of love and hate in the New Testament (the constructive and destructive power of the Bible), we as exegetes must be in touch with our own anger. What (and whom) do we love and hate? And how does our exegesis express our aggression?
- James A. Kelhoffer, Saint Louis University "Suppressing Human Anger in Early Christianity: Examples from the Pauline Tradition"
Ancient Jewish and early Christian commands concerning human emotions-for example, covetousness, anger, jealousy and love-merit study in their ancient contexts, as well as in relation to contemporary approaches to religion and the social sciences. This paper has two main parts: an analysis of anger in the NT letters attributed to Paul and interaction with contemporary theories on the psychology of anger. An underlying question concerns whether the suppression of human anger for the sake of some greater good is a necessary component in the theology of Paul or any of the deutero-Pauline authors. For example, Eph 4:26 warns against sinning when becoming angry and includes the familiar advice not to "let the sun go down on your anger" (Eph 4:26). In the same passage, this (deutero-Pauline) author further commands not to "grieve the Holy Spirit of God" but instead to "put away all bitterness and wrath and anger" (Eph 4:30-31). The implication seems to be that pleasing the Holy Spirit is antithetical to any expression of `bitterness, wrath or anger' (cf. Eph 6:4). Competing theories of the psychology of anger can be brought to bear on these and other Pauline passages. Perhaps Paul or the authors of Colossians and Ephesians assume that the Oedipal repression of anger is necessary for the existence of the Christian community and that only God as `Father' is allowed to become angry. Or do we instead find commands against infantile or narcissistic rage? Moreover, is anger to be sublimated for the sake of some greater good-for example, human charity, the peace of the congregation, or appeasing God's anger? If suppressing anger is indeed concomitant with fidelity to Pauline Christianity, one can further ask about the potentially deleterious effects of such suppression.
- Paul Fisher, Independent Scholar "Captain America Meets the Markan Christ: On Removing the Superhero-Sized Beam from the American Psyche"
In this essay I will explore the psychological dynamics of what Robert Jewett and John Lawrence in their book, "Captain America and the Crusade Against Evil" have called "the captain America complex." The Captain America complex is essentially an American monomyth that depicts the super-hero as a selfless soul that transcends the constitutional limits of power in order to save the helpless community from ultimate evil through redemptive violence. The myth is expressed most powerfully in comic strips and motion pictures, but draws on the Hebrew and Christian Scripture as well. Drawing on research in the area of narcissism I will suggest that this myth is an expression of grandiose conceptions of American virtue that preclude the kind of self-critical reflection that would temper aggression toward the "enemy." The counterpart of the American monomyth that fosters the idea of redemptive violence is the voice of prophetic realism that also draws on Scripture and manifests itself as the other side of the American pscyhe. I will suggest that the Gospel of Mark in its depiction of Jesus as engaged in a war of myths with Roman imperial power and Jewish religious power can function as a compensatory image in the current struggle for the American soul.
Andre Lacocque, Chicago Theological Seminary, Respondent
S19-121: Aggression and the Destructive Power of the Bible II:
The Bible and Cultures of Violence
J. Harold Ellens, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, Presiding
- Ronald R. Clark, Jr., Cascade College "Submit or Else!: Intimate Partner Violence, Aggression, Batterers, and the Bible"
Batterer intervention is the process of confronting abusers who use power to coerce, control, and engender fear in their intimate partners. Faith communities and faith based counselors have been slow to confront and hold batterers accountable. This has enabled abusers, who are most commonly males, to use Biblical texts to support their issues of power and control. Victims of intimate partner violence have been told that these texts support their victimization. Do the Biblical texts actually support male dominance and dominance or are they simply tools in the "wrong hands?" In this session I will explain the dilemma that families in domestic violence, counselors, and spiritual leaders face concerning intimate partner violence and the victimization of women. I will then suggest that male aggression and abuse are contrary to the "new paradigm" suggested in the Hebrew and Greek scriptures. This paradigm involves using the Bible to 1) redefine masculinity and 2) call the community to promote accountability, peace, and safety for all humans who are in the image of God.
- Matthias Beier, Drew University "The Deadly Search for God: Absolute Aggression in the Heritage of the Bible"
What happens in humans when they kill in the Bible, often in the name of God? From Cain and Abel to the killing of Jesus, God is cited as reason for the killing, the absolute form of aggression. Renowned German theologian and psychotherapist Eugen Drewermann argues that when humans kill they ultimately do so in an attempt to regain the lost absolute recognition from God. This paper will present Drewermann’s key ideas, first developed in his monumental analysis of Gen. 2-11, on the relationship between aggression and the desperate search for God in the Bible. The historical context within which his work grew, post-Nazi Germany, sensitized him to the misuse of the Bible for the legitimation of ‘final solutions.’ Cognizant of the socio-historical implications of biblical interpretation, the paper will develop Drewermann’s argument that aggression escalates in the Bible when humans lose sight of God as their spirits get caught in a spell of fear. It further will present his thesis that without a hermeneutics of the radical alternative between fear versus trust--grounded in exegetical, psychoanalytic, and philosophical-theological analysis--exegetes and theologians are in the danger of attributing acts of absolute aggression in history and the Bible to God when they are actually the result of a distorted image of God under the spell of fear. In conclusion, important hermeneutical consequences for a nonviolent understanding of the ‘historical’ character of biblical revelation will be presented.
- Panel Review of The Destructive Power of Religion, J. Harold Ellens, ed. (Praeger, 2003)
D. Andrew Kille, Interfaith Space Second Thoughts on the Destructive Power of Religion
Johan S. Vos, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam The Destructive Power of Atonement Theology
Dereck Daschke, Truman State University
Respondent J. Harold Ellens, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, Respondent
