Some Possible Christian Psychology Research Topics
Christian spirituality
Use of instruments that measure specifically Christian spirituality
The Shepherd’s Scale
The Spiritual Maturity Index
The assessment and formation of the Christian self/identity
Assessment of Christian self-representations
Old self/new self
Created self/Fallen self/Redeemed self
Beginnings of a questionnaire-ELJ
The sense of a good aspect and a bad aspect to oneself
Actual self/Ideal self/Real self
False self/True self
Four self-axes
Redemptive-historicality: Created—Fallen—Redeemed—Perfected
Reality: Actual-Potential-Ideal-Real
Temporality: Current-Future
Authenticity: True-False (degree of depth)
Research on the formation of a distinctly Christian identity
See Dee Reju
Christian Models of Love
Depth of Christian love
1. Family
2. Friends
3. Neighbors/co-workers
4. Strangers
5. Weak/poor/unpopular
6. Enemies
Relation between God-understanding and self-understanding
Christian explanatory-style
To what do Christians attribute their good and evil actions
Relation between aesthetic experience and belief in God
Study of experiences of beauty (in art, nature, human relationships) and one’s awareness
of God.
Uniquely Christian development
Developmental stages in Christian self-understanding and God-understanding: Ph 2:12,13
Christian developmental explanatory-style
Stage 1: I do what I do myself
Stage 2: I do my part, and God does his part
Stage 3: God assists me to do what I do
Stage 4: God and I are both fully active
Stages in postformal reasoning among Christians
Some research has been done on undergraduates-ELJ
Bernard of Clairvaux’s “Stages of Love
1.
2.
3.
4.
Love of self for self’s sake
Autocentrism
Love of God for self’s sake
Autocentric theism
Love of God for God’s sake
Simple theocentrism
Love of self for God’s sake
Complex theocentrism
Three kinds of development in relation to the Law
1.
2.
Upon conviction of sin, we are to flee to Christ
Personal agency develops in adolescence, signified by activation of a mature
conscience and conversion to Christ
Any of you have an experience like that?
Young adulthood to middle adulthood “Law-Grace Paradigm Shift”
1st stage of Christian life: Mastering teachings, practices, behaviors: learn God’s law
Old self weakens.
2nd stage of Christian life: Because of remaining sin, there tends to be a gradual falling
back upon self-reliance (unconsciously), that promotes a sense of superiority,
self-righteousness, judgmentalism
Entity theory of Christian life
One comes to identify oneself with the law/loses touch with one’s actual self
The old self/false self “gets religion”. It starts to grow again: Grows by means
of self-deception. Some get stuck here
3rd stage of Christian life: Growing realization of grace based on justification by faith that
undermines old self/false self. New self gets nurtured by the word of God in
Scripture and gospel/meditation and prayer are key
3.
Daily, incremental, ongoing identification with Christ’s life, death, and resurrection
One learns to practice a daily transition from death with Christ to resurrection in Christ
Every day Christians need to die experientially/affectively to the old way of life, and
be raised to walk in newness of life
Study differences between Incremental and Entity Theories (see Carol Dweck,
Self-Theories) of the Christian life
The emergence of a mature conscience in adolescence (activated when one
knowingly violates one’s moral code whether or not others know about it).
Uniquely Christian Therapy
Testing radical Christian therapy in general (pilot project)
Videotaping Christian counseling across multiple settings and counselors in order
to document what actually occurs in a counseling room, and to provide a coding scheme
for various types of Christian counseling (e.g., intensity of Christian content, and
psychological complexity), to help establish what is high-quality Christian counseling.
Testing distinctly Christian therapy models already being used
1. Theophostic
See Fernando Garzon
2. Neil Anderson’s 7-Step model
See Fernando Garzon
3. Leanne Payne’s model
See Fernando Garzon
4. Aspects of biblical counseling
5. Comparing different Christian counseling models
Testing specific Christian therapy strategies
1. Christ-centered teaching emphasis (on atonement and blessings of union with
Christ: justification, adoption, perfection)
2. Identity in Christ
3. Adoption
4. Training of Christian meditation
5. Training of Christian guided imagery
6. Training of Christian emotion-focused therapy
7. Use of the Gospel Repentance cycle
8. Use of Wolfram Soldan’s Forgiveness model
9. Use of the Death-Resurrection script
Experience of the Christian God
Qualitative study of how the indwelling Holy Spirit is experienced.
Quantitative/Qualitative study of Christian experience of God in devotions/worship
Qualitative study of the experience of the Trinity
Relation between Perception of God and Others among Christians
Research on relation between God-image and relations with parents/others
Attachment research
See Richard Beck and Angie MacDonald
Impact of Redemption
Timothy Sisemore’s Grace scale
Change from entity to incremental theory of Christiformity
The nature of agape-love
Thesauresis
Research on the relation between divine forgiveness and horizontal forgiveness
See Robert Cheong for theoretical treatment; Wolfram Soldan and Matthias
Schlagmuller for some empirical research (faculty at IGNIS, Institute for
Christian Psychology, Kitzingen, Germany)
Research on uniquely Christian wisdom
Research on Christian perfectionism and how perfection in Christ impacts that.
Research on uniquely Christian virtues
Agape-love, humility, dependence on and gratitude to God,
Are there unique resources that should facilitate humility among Christians?
Why don’t they?
Find exemplary Christians (“saints”) in some churches and do an indepth
qualitative study on what makes them exemplary.
Research on improvisation (Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine) vs. rule-keeping
Understandings of Christians Regarding Christian Teachings
Assessment of the understanding of Christians regarding complex topics like
1. Trinity
2. God’s attributes
3. Image of God
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
The nature of sin
Substitutionary atonement
Union with Christ
Justification by faith
Men’s and women’s roles
Christian Understandings of Psychopathology
Uniquely Christian forms of psychopathology
Uniquely Christian experiences of shame or guilt
Qualitative
Quantitative
See Stephen Parker
Qualitative study on how the nature of indwelling sin is experienced.
How people overcome their sin and damage (qualitative)
Study what Christians have done to overcome their problems
Study changes over life in growth: Does sanctification actually occur in Protestant
circles.
Christian attitudes towards homosexuals
See Rodney Bassett’s work
P.J. Watson’s Healthy Sin Beliefs scale
Qualitative Studies
Analysis of what the symbolism or direct content of contemporary horror movies suggest
to us about basic human fears and concerns, e.g., possession by demons or aliens,
being a zombie, living off the blood of other humans, fascination with the “dark
side,” and so on.
Other dynamics
Twist to any of these studies:
Study gender differences
Study cross-cultural differences (Asian/Western)
High Priority Research Topics
Christian self-structure
Christian Theory of Holiness with Carol Dweck’s self-theory model (entity vs.
incremental)
Shame: Christian vs. secular (Tangney)
Stages of law understanding
Justification by faith/Protestant grace
Bernard’s stages of love
Christian men’s relationship with wives