Most Christians over the last two thousand years have
believed that human beings were specially created in God's image. And
being created in the image of God, believed that through human reason it
was possible to discern truth about all areas of God's creation. God's
creation is understood to have order and purpose. As human beings, we
have a natural inclination to want to investigate that created order.
From
the early Greek philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus, to
the early church fathers like Tertullian and Augustine, and later church
leaders like Thomas Aquinas all dealt with the idea of the inner-self,
and its relation to society and to a higher power. They were all
concerned with soul-care. However, interest in a type of psychological
idea continued to grow throughout the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and
Reformation. "Calvin reflected deeply on sin, grace, knowledge, faith
and the nature of the Christian Life" (Johnson, p.13).
The
first person recorded to have used the word "psychology" was Soren
Kierkegaard. He wrote about, "the nature of personhood, sin, anxiety and
despair, the unconscious (before Freud was even born!), subjectivity,
and human and spiritual development from a deeply Christian perspective"
(Johnson, p. 14). He became the father of a modern approach to psychological theory.
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