In the mid-1980s, clinical neurologist Oliver Sacks introduced his readers to the fascinating and sometimes bizarre workings of the human mind. His books, with catchy titles like The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, spurred a burgeoning genre of popular titles in psychology and neuroscience

But while popular books do wonders to engage the general public, they inevitably fall short when it comes to explaining the research underpinning the recent remarkable advances in psychological and cognitive science.

“Even the best popular books leave a lot behind,” says psychologist Michael L. Spezio. “It’s important for theologians to move beyond popular trade publications into the scientific research itself.”

A core aim of the Center of Theological Inquiry’s current program Thriving in Diverse Contexts: A Study Program on Psychological Science for Researchers in Christian Theology is to help a select group of theologians, with all their varied interests in the needs and sufferings of the world, to be resourced directly from the science.

Spezio, together with theologian and biological scientist Andrew Davison and a team of experts in psychological and cognitive sciences, are developing, leading, and mentoring this new cohort of CTI Members in an immersive two-year cross-training and research program.

Open-Ended and Multi-Phased Program

The program introduces theologians to core areas of psychological science with experts to guide them in areas of special complexity and according to their own specific interests and needs. It’s a tall order but each theologian is primed to get to grips with the latest research in psychological science, concepts, and models of cognition—traits and dispositions; self-determination, self-identity; social cognition of empathy, compassion, and forgiveness; autonomy; intervention and treatment in clinical disturbances of the self; statistical assessment; and comparison of psychological models, to mention just a few.

The idea is to support the scholars as they produce their own creative translations of scientific theories and methodological concepts for use as tools in their own specific projects and communities.

“There are many moving parts here,” says Spezio, noting CTI’s long track record of exactly this sort of exemplary work. “This is a unique opportunity to invite theologians to consider deeply areas that are outside of theology in the academy but deeply relevant to some areas of theology.”

One of the program’s multiple aims is to enable theologians to discover new directions in Christian constructive theology of divine realities that can be informed by psychological science.

Another is to cross-train theologians in those areas of the psychological sciences relevant to the understanding of what thriving is and can be within diverse and resilient lives of spiritual purpose and moral agency.

According to CTI’s Associate Director, Joshua Mauldin, “There’s enormous potential here for new discoveries regarding moral identity and character conducive to human flourishing, informed by theological ideas and traditions.”

Tailor-Made for Christian Theologians

The first phase of the program brings all participants together in Princeton for an exploratory residential summer school. Designed so that each participant benefits from deeper scientific engagement toward their stated goals, subsequent phases will be tailored to the individual needs and interests of the scholars working with their program mentors.

This is no crash course in psychology for theologians, however. As Spezio explains, it’s designed to meet the participating theologians where their research programs are. “This is about genuinely novel inquiry whose destinations can be sensed but not perfectly drawn in advance. We’re really excited about the open-ended nature of the Inquiry and the particular research projects of our theologians.”

In a nutshell, the program aims to give theologians the language to understand and use the most recent scientific findings in psychology to better their communication with science and to enhance their work in making the world a healthier place for human beings to live and thrive.

“And,” adds Spezio “to develop theologies of thriving that might invite others with concerns or interests about psychological science and where it’s going, as well as scientists themselves, into conversations with questions and proposals that theology alone can offer.”

The practical value of cross-training, he says “is not to serve theologians for the sake of theology only as an academic discipline but to serve greater communities and multidisciplinary perspectives.” He cites possible benefits for therapists, practicing psychologists, and for CEOs and CFOs trying to get a handle on how to incorporate ethics and human moral considerations into their business management plans.

As is usual at CTI there will be ample focus on informal presentations and discussions of Member projects (see below) as well as hands-on introductions to key digital tools for psychological research.

The all-important connections and conversations of a typical CTI Inquiry will foster a continuing research community in Christian theology conversant with the psychology of human thriving and able to apply their findings in their future published research. Through Members’ future research, publications, and teaching, perspectives from psychological science will reach other scholars of Christian theology. And open-access cross-training modules on psychology-conversant theologies of thriving along with a companion handbook developed during the cross-training will take this research far beyond CTI.

Team Leaders and Mentors

Michael Spezio is a computational cognitive neuroscientist at Scripps College in California. Among his interests is the way exemplary groups—such as Homeboy Industries (HBI) in Los Angeles (famously founded by Father Greg Boyle as a gang rehabilitation program) are able to overcome seemingly insurmountable differences between people.

An expert in psychological theories and methods relating to the formation of virtuous identity and autonomy in such thriving and morally admirable communities, Spezio is experienced in working directly with theologians to help them interpret complex scientific models and analyses.

Theologian of Science Andrew Davison of the University of Cambridge works in the interdisciplinary field of theology and natural science. With almost two decades as a priest in the Church of England, he has extensive pastoral experience—he’s also Dean of Chapel at Corpus Christi College—and is responsible for programs that encourage thriving in the college as well as for meeting pastoral needs in the face of trauma and other challenges.

A self-confessed Aquinas monomaniac, Davison has written extensively about the 13th-century saint, most recently about his remarkably concrete remedies for sadness (see “Thomas Aquinas, lifestyle coach—sound advice from a 13th-century saint,” Church Times, UK). Given today’s abundance of grief and anxiety, Davison suggests that it might be a good time to turn to Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae.

As a neuropsychologist working with brain injuries, Dr. George (Brick) Johnstone is among the mentors who will support the theologians in their research. During the past six years, he’s collaborated with neuroscientists, social psychologists, philosophers, and theologians. As Director of Brain Injury Research at the Shepherd Center in Atlanta, he’s well-placed to impart the advances in neural science that demonstrate the associations between parts of the brain and different experiences and abilities.

Two-Way Traffic

Johnstone is fascinated by disorders of the self. “In my hospital right now there are people who will deny that their left arm is theirs. You may tap it, point at it, ask them what it is. It’s an arm, they will say. Whose arm is it, you ask. I don’t know, it’s not mine, they respond. Similarly with schizophrenia—normally an individual generates thoughts that are naturally integrated as their own. With disintegration, the thought is there, but it’s not integrated—it’s not mine, someone might have put it there, they will tell you.”

There are many disorders of the self and Johnstone understands the neuropsychology. But when it comes to religious concepts and spiritual experiences, there is a problem. How does one objectively measure, define, and describe something like transcendence, for example?

“There is increasing interest in understanding the neurological bases of spiritual experience among both academics and the general public. Unfortunately, conclusions regarding relationships among different brain networks and spiritual experiences remain limited due to the complex nature of both brain functions and spiritual experiences, as well as the lack of development of a clear taxonomy of religious and spiritual experiences.”

It is Johnstone’s hope that neuroscientists and psychologists in collaboration with theologians will be able “to figure out how these different processes are associated with the experience of connection to God.”

“In the past, all neuroscientists wanted to do is say that there are parts of the brain associated with religious thought,” says Johnstone. “I believe that there is a certain part of the brain that integrates things into a sense of self and creates a sense of relationship. That relationship can be with other people, with Nature, with your concept of God. We need to show how the brain works to create the sense of self. Studies show that when this is turned off, people are more forgiving (a religious concept). But we are not good at understanding what awe is, or mysticism, or transcendence. This is why psychologists need to work with theologians.”

Davison also looks forward to a two-way conversation. “At its best, theology has always been open to the science of the age, to reflect with the best practitioners and scientists on their subject matter. Theologians deal with reality; these are not just games about language. From my perspective, you want every on-ramp to reality that you can get. In the 13th century, when the translation of Aristotle’s De Anima and Arabic commentaries on it suddenly catapulted this great treasure of psychological insight into the world of the Church, people criticized it but also made fantastic use of it—a tradition that carried on being useful well beyond the Reformation. So, in a sense, we’re not doing anything new, but you need to do it anew in every generation because there are always newer insights to engage with.”

The theological interest in thriving in diverse contexts concerns human beings in positions of real difficulty. “While not everything human can be reduced to psychology,” notes Davison, “the role of psychological science seems to me to be indispensable.”

Philosophical questions are also important, he says. “As Aristotle points out, the whole is more than the sum of its parts so if you only talk about the parts, you’re missing something! Familiarity with psychology and with philosophy helps us to examine our unarticulated and perhaps unconscious psychological assumptions—these shape the way people think and it’s important to examine them consciously and exercise theological judgement.”

Observing the now-thriving community of Homeboy Industries shaped Spezio’s research into human autonomy. “I can’t tell you how many examples of authentic belonging I’ve seen through HBI and how important it is in the midst of deep trauma and setback to remember that there is a future that depends on all of us engaging and activating our deep autonomy.”

He’s also seen how valuation and emotion allow exemplary groups to overcome seemingly insurmountable differences between people. “This depends strongly on the kind of affirmations of the capabilities of selves in community and that goes hand in hand with a deep well of accountability, responsibility, forgiveness, and empathy and this is an area that will be introduced in the summer residential school and will be unpacked in the next two years.”

“One of the truly new discoveries about the human mind is that there are structures by which the valuation of the self as an agent and the other as an agent are organized,” he explains. “We can now look for and identify valuational structures as someone is making a choice as far as their own ingroup, themselves, and others. How do they structure that value? Is it in a way that allows them to easily truncate the value of the other or is it that they actually have a valuational structure that makes that [truncation] impossible; this is something that can be demonstrated for people who make consistent decisions to actually place themselves at some disadvantage even at some risk of real harm in order to help others thrive.”

This finding offers “a new appreciation of virtue ethics and dovetails with the understanding of the flourishing community, this binding together, this sense of value without losing autonomy.”

The Specter of Reductionism?

If scientists were to discover parts of the brain active during human emotions such as awe, transcendence, spiritual experience and so on, does that mean that these emotions can be reduced to brain activity? Is this a reductionist project?

“Neuroscience does that,” acknowledges Johnstone. “We try to say this specific area activated or inhibited is associated with this or that experience. You can state that in general but it’s never quite so simple. We believe that cognitive neuroscience has reached a stage that it can reliably pinpoint the key neural systems supporting theistic relational cognition and religious cognition more generally.”

“We are conducting state-of-the-art cognitive and social neuroscience research to address the brain bases of how people formulate and express relational religious beliefs and belief in God. We believe the tools of neuroscience can uniquely contribute to a better understanding of how people think about God and other supernatural agents, and the nature and functioning of religious cognition more generally.”

In Davison’s experience, today’s scientists and philosophers of science are much more sophisticated on this topic. “Scientists at the coal face who’ve got their lab coats on and work with test tubes and Petri dishes tend not to be reductionists. They tend to know the complexity of what they are dealing with and to recognize what they don’t know. Reductionism tends to find a place among the popularizers. So, again, going to the science rather than the popularization of the science is usually a good anti-reductive move.”

Making a Difference

At CTI, there is a capacious understanding of theology as an interdisciplinary and comparative field of inquiry, notes Director William Storrar. “While remaining true to its own theological focus on God and all things in relation to God, CTI is intellectually hospitable to all other fields of human inquiry. In this time of turmoil, this program is designed to make a difference for a better world.”

And CTI is well-placed to run this program, adds Johnstone, citing the Center’s proven record in convening cross-disciplinary conversations, its investment in digital infrastructure and staffing to develop its virtual programing, and its skill in running collaborative in-person research workshops with study and housing facilities and research resources in Princeton.

And because the new program functions as an experimental teaching and research laboratory in developing open-access digital resources for cross-training in psychological science for research in the theology of thriving, it will garner a worldwide audience through a publicly available MOOC (Massive Open Online Course).