Psycho-Heresy: Christianizing Pagan Psychologies

By Dr. Robert E. Fugate

Almost all American evangelical colleges and seminaries have embraced some form of the 400+ conflicting psychological therapies and 10,000+ conflicting psycho-therapeutic techniques. Psychotherapists comprise the pastoral departments of most major, conservative seminaries. Consequently, much contemporary evangelical preaching and most pastoral counseling are dominated by psychological themes, such as: self-esteem; the meeting of psychological “needs”; the gospel as unconditional and undemanding love; inner healing and self-love as the keys to personal transformation. Many healing and prayer ministries focus on the healing of memories and freeing from addictions and codependencies.
Dr. Robert Fugate’s book, Psycho-Heresy: Christianizing Pagan Psychologies freshly examines the question, Can psychological counseling be Christian counseling? This book is unique in its analysis of contemporary “Christian” counseling from the perspective of worldviews and their underlying presuppositions.
The first section concisely presents the Biblical worldview—including a Biblical theory of knowledge (i.e., epistemology) and the philosophical impossibility of science arriving at truth (since it is based upon an epistemology of empiricism and probabilistic inductive reasoning).
The second section presents key areas of systematic theology that are appealed to by Christian integrationist counselors (such as the nature of man and general and special revelation). Since one of the main gurus of the Christian counseling movement adamantly rejects the gospel of “Lordship salvation” (which requires repentance from sin), a Biblical examination of this topic is also included. Other topics addressed include the confession of sin, the nature of saving faith, and growing in sanctification.
On this basis of the Biblical worldview and sound systematic theology, the third section examines the roots, teachings, claims, and practices of evangelical integrationist counseling (which attempts to synthesize psychology and the Bible). This examination includes pervasive psychological themes, such as: unconditional love; self-esteem; inner healing/the healing of memories; and codependencies. At every point psychological counseling is weighed against the infallible and sufficient teaching of Scripture. The prevalent misuse of Bible verses and the use of Biblical words with unbiblical definitions are dealt with head on. Dr. Fugate even addresses the danger of psychiatry being used by a tyrannical state, offering poignant historical examples.
Endorsements:
“In 1970 Jay Adams published Competent to Counsel, which grounded counseling in the Scriptures. Today, I lament the relegation of his and others’ Biblical counseling to the sidelines of evangelical and Reformed Christianity. My heart aches for those thousands of Christians who have received essentially pagan counseling since that time.
Robert Fugate’s Psycho-Heresy: Christianizing Pagan Psychologies is the Biblical and philosophical capstone to Biblical counseling. He clearly demonstrates the antithesis of pagan psychologies over against Biblical truth. Such systems are grounded in epistemologies and ontologies that hate God...
My hope is that Fugate’s book will get the attention of, and then convince, those Christians who have bought the lies of pagan psychology. Such change can only advance the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, whereas uncritical counseling is destructive to that end.”
Franklin Ed Payne, MD
Physician, Professor, Author of several books and numerous journal articles on Biblical ethics in medicine; PCA elder
“Few people seem to realize the enormous danger facing the church when pastors preach and counsel from a psychological worldview. ... Dr. Fugate’s book is a particularly helpful critique in that it analyzes the unbiblical presuppositions and worldview that undergird so-called ‘Christian counseling.’ This makes the book a must-read book.”
Rev Phillip

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dr. Robert E. Fugate
• Release date: Nov 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9780984742226

Dr. Robert E. Fugate

Robert Fugate is an author, pastor, and theological mentor. He earned a Ph.D. in Christian Intellectual Studies and a M.Div., both from Whitefield Theological Seminary.Dr. Fugate has written over twenty books and booklets that have been used by pastors and church leaders in over sixty countries. His writings include: The Bible: God’s Words to You; The Foundation and Pillars of the Biblical Worldview; Psycho-Heresy: Christianizing Pagan Psychologies; Key Principles of Biblical Civil Government; God’s Mandate for Biblical Education; Biblical Patriarchy; Toward a Theology of Taxation; Tyrants Are Not Ministers of God; God’s Royal Law: Foundation of Moral Order; A Biblical Philosophy of Truth with Contemporary Applications; Biblical Curses: Divine and Demonic; A Brief History and Critique of Natural Law Theory; and Biblical Imprecations: Christians’ Secret Weapon (among others). His book, The Bible: God’s Words to You, is a nearly 900-page treatment of the doctrine of Scripture. It may be the only comprehensive text on bibliology written from a presuppositional/Biblical-worldview perspective. Dr. Fugate’s materials are available at LordoftheNations.com.Dr. Fugate co-authored the position paper “Sanctity of Human Life” for the International Church Council Project/Coalition on Revival, as well as being a major contributor to their position papers “God’s Law for All Societies,” “Education of Christian Children,” and “The Biblical Perspective of Environmental Stewardship.”Dr. Fugate mentors pastors, pastoral or missionary candidates, and young adults in Biblical worldview, presuppositional apologetics and systematic theology.His website is LordoftheNations.com

Book preview

Psycho-Heresy:

Christianizing Pagan Psychologies

Robert E. Fugate, Ph.D.

Lord of the Nations, LLC

Omaha, NE

LordoftheNations.com

Copyright 2014 Thy Word Is Truth, LLC

P.O. Box 641592, Omaha, NE 68164

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

ISBN: 978-0-9847422-2-6

Published by Lord of the Nations, LLC, Omaha, NE

Ebook Edition

Picture on front cover by Igor Zhuravlov, DepositPhotos.com

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission (www.Lockman.org).

Scripture Quotations designated (NET) are from the NET Bible® copyright ©1996–2006 by Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C. www.bible.org. All rights reserved. Quoted by permission.

Scripture quotations marked (ESV) are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright© 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

Additional Monographs Authored by Dr. Robert Fugate

The Bible, God's Words to You: A Presuppositional Guide to the Reformed Doctrine of Scripture

Key Principles of Biblical Civil Government

God's Mandate for Biblical Education

Toward a Theology of Taxation

God's Law: Foundation of Moral Order

A Brief History and Critique of Natural Law Theory

Biblical Imprecations: Christians' Secret Weapon

Some Continuities and Discontinuities Between the Older Testament and the Newer Testament

Antinomianism in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

God's Revelation: He Wants You to Know Him

Available at: LordoftheNations.com

What Others Are Saying

"In 1970 Jay Adams published Competent to Counsel, which grounded counseling in the Scriptures. Today, I lament the relegation of his and others' Biblical counseling to the sidelines of evangelical and Reformed Christianity. My heart aches for those thousands of Christians who have received essentially pagan counseling since that time.

Robert Fugate's Psycho-Heresy: Christianizing Pagan Psychologies is the Biblical and philosophical capstone to Biblical counseling. He clearly demonstrates the antithesis of pagan psychologies over against Biblical truth. Such systems are grounded in epistemologies and ontologies that hate God. He is so bold as to have a section entitled, 'Damnable theological errors in psychological counseling' and backs up that proposition.

My hope is that Fugate's book will get the attention of, and then convince, those Christians who have bought the lies of pagan psychology. Such change can only advance the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, whereas uncritical counseling is destructive to that end."

Dr. Franklin Ed Payne, M.D.

Physician, Professor, Author of several books and numerous journal articles on Biblical ethics in medicine

"There are many ways in which humanism has crept into the church of Jesus Christ. Counseling is one of those ways. Few people seem to realize the enormous danger facing the church when pastors preach and counsel from a psychological worldview rather than from a Biblical worldview. Frequently the danger of psychological counseling is masked by mixing humanistic psychology with Biblical texts and calling this syncretism, 'Christian counseling.'

Thankfully there are pastors and teachers who are boldly confronting this pervasive error. Dr. Robert Fugate's book is a particularly helpful critique in that it analyzes the unbiblical presuppositions and worldview that undergird so-called 'Christian counseling.' This makes the book a must-read book. With the ammunition in this book, any reader should be able to meaningfully say, 'To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because there is no light in them' (Isaiah 8:20). May this book play a part in bringing about a desperately-needed Reformation in the church of Jesus Christ."

Dr. Phillip G. Kayser, Ph.D.

Pastor, Professor, Missionary

Table of Contents

PART 1: BIBLICAL WORLDVIEW

Psychology is always part of a worldview

Three necessary components of any worldview

Epistemology: Achilles heel of non-Christian thought

Comparison of three worldviews

The Bible is foundational to counseling

The Bible is the criterion or standard of truth

The doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture applies to counseling

Antithesis

No neutrality

Biblical philosophy of history, language, and science

A Biblical philosophy of history

A Biblical philosophy of language

A Biblical philosophy of science

PART 2: SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY

Biblical doctrine of man

God created man in His own image

Other elements of man's nature

Dichotomy or trichotomy?

Conscience

Covenant breaker: man's rebellion & depravity

Biblical doctrine of revelation

Insufficiency of general revelation

Special revelation

Sufficiency of Scripture

Lordship salvation

Repentance into salvation

Saving faith

Lordship of Jesus Christ

Discipleship

Sanctification

Preaching the Lord, the King of the kingdom

PART 3: PSYCHO-HERESY

Historical perspective: American evangelicalism (last half of 20th century)

Psychology's appeal

Anti-Biblical presuppositions

Additional examples of integrationists' Biblical omissions

Psychologists' unbiblical and conflicting theories of human nature

Key founders of psychological schools of thought

Psychoanalytic psychology: Freud (1856–1939)

Transpersonal psychology: Jung (1875–1961)

Behavioristic psychology: Skinner (1904–1990)

Self or humanistic psychology: Maslow, Fromm, Rogers

Christ's evaluation of psychologists

Examples of evangelical psycho-heresies

Self-esteem and self-love

Codependency: historical and theological overview

Healing of memories/inner healing

Antithesis between Biblical thinking and psychological thinking

Four myths regarding Christian psychology

Psychology is scientific

Psychology is religiously neutral and can be integrated with Christianity to provide superior counseling.

People who are experiencing mental-emotional behavioral problems are mentally ill

Psychology is effective, having a high rate of success (better than self-help or that provided by family, friends, or pastors)

Additional problems with psychology and psychotherapy

Comparison of psychological vs. Biblical counseling

Most damnable theological errors in psychological counseling

Psychology: weapon of tyrants

Concluding quotes: psychology is a false religion

Appendix A: chronology of psychologists

Appendix B: quotes critiquing anti-Lordship salvation

Recommended reading

Endnotes

Part 1:

Biblical Worldview

Psychology Is Always Part Of A Worldview

Psychology[1] (and the counseling practice), like every profession, must have an underlying philosophical foundation to provide the theory of knowledge (epistemology), an understanding of the nature of reality (metaphysics), and ethics. In other words, a philosophy of psychology cannot stand alone. It is part of a worldview. A worldview is a network of basic assumptions or presuppositions by which we (consciously or unconsciously) place or fit everything we believe and by which we interpret and judge reality.

Ultimately, there are only two basic worldviews: the Christian and the non-Christian. These worldviews provide the framework by which people determine: the nature of mankind and the universe; whether scientific psychology can know truth; what is mental health; what constitutes moral behavior; who should counsel; etc. In this book, I will be presenting the Christian worldview.

Sometimes it is objected that psychology (and all sciences) merely deals with commonly recognized and agreed upon facts. However, even simple sentences involving the observation of facts require a worldview. Let's consider an example. A simple sentence like I see a ladybug on a rose is filled with complex presuppositions. This sentence presupposes: the meaning of certain English words; one's personal identity; the reliability of sense perception (including: the normalcy of one's eyes; the normalcy of one's brain stem; and theories of light refraction); categories of bugs and flowers; the reality of the external world and spatial relations; one's linguistic competence; one's entomological and botanical competence; shared grammar and semantics; the laws of logic; etc. Thus even a statement regarding simple facts presupposes a worldview.

This example shows that beliefs people hold are always connected to other beliefs. The one by one myth is the mistaken idea that people accept beliefs one at a time.[2] The beliefs people hold are always connected to other beliefs by relations pertaining to linguistic meaning, logical order, evidential dependence, causal explanation, indexical conception, self-conception, etc.

Now consider how a person's religious commitments affect his interpretation of facts.

The facts of the physical universe differ widely for a humanist, a Christian, and a Hindu. For the humanist, all factuality is a product of chance evolution; all facts are thus ultimately meaningless, and their only reality is a physical one, and an irrational one. For the Christian, all factuality is God-created and the product of His eternal purpose; all facts are thus totally rational, because the mind of God is behind them, and their reality is thus more than physical and natural. For the traditional Hindu, all factuality is really illusion, because nothingness is ultimate; all things are burdened with Karma, and their goal is release from the illusions of this world into final nothingness. What we call facts is determined by our faith.[3]

The facts of the universe are very different for a Buddhist, an existential humanist, and an orthodox Christian. For the Buddhist, all is illusion and misery; his faith requires a world and life negation. Maya and karma determine all things. For an existential humanist, 'facts' have only a purely personal meaning, the meaning which each man assigns them. Neither man nor creation have any essence, any created and preordained meaning. Good and evil and every other form of meaning is [sic] self-generated: they are values I assign to things in terms of my will. Nothing has any meaning from God's creative act; all meaning comes from man's creative act. In Biblical thought, however, every fact is God-created and God-interpreted so that the meaning of all creation is to be understood in terms of Him and His Kingdom.[4]

Thus psychology (and all science) cannot stand by itself. It must always be viewed as part of a worldview.

Three necessary components of any worldview

Any worldview is comprised of three aspects: epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics. We will briefly explain each of these terms.

Epistemology

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that studies the theory of knowledge[5] (i.e., the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge). Simply stated, epistemology attempts to explain how we know what we know. A satisfactory epistemology must cogently answer the following questions:

* What is the nature of truth and objectivity? Is truth absolute (i.e., the same for all people in all places for all time), or is it relative?

* What is the nature of, and relationship between, belief and knowledge?

* What are the standards or procedures for justifying one's beliefs?

* What is the basis for logic?

* What is the basis for science and discovery? Can we trust our senses, and if so, on what basis?

* Is knowledge about God possible? If so, how (revelation, etc.)?

Metaphysics

Metaphysics is the study of reality (its origin, nature, and structure). Metaphysics examines three main areas: God, the universe, and man. Here are the fundamental questions metaphysics attempts to answer:

God

* Does God exist? If so:

* What is the nature of God?

* Is there more than one God?

* Is God personal (i.e., one who knows, loves, acts, etc.) or impersonal (a force or power)?

The universe

* What is the relationship between God and the universe? Is God separate from the universe (i.e., transcendent), or is He to be identified with the universe (e.g., pantheism or panentheism[6])? Does God work miracles[7] within history, or is the universe a closed system (operating only by natural causes)?

* What is the origin of the universe? Is it eternal, or did God create it?

* What is the nature of the universe? Is it material, spiritual, or something else? Should the universe be understood in a mechanistic way or in a purposeful way (God's predestination and providential control)?

* What is the nature of history/change/development? Where is history going? Is there meaning in history?

* Are there unchanging laws, universals, or concepts?

Man

* What is man's origin? Is man God's creature, or is he merely a highly evolved animal?

* What is the nature of man? Is man free, or is he the victim of deterministic forces (e.g., biological, psychological, environmental, or economic forces)? Is man basically good or evil? Is man only material/body, or does he have a soul/mind?

* What is man's relationship to God?

* Does man's conscious, personal existence survive death?

* Are there rewards and punishment after death?

Ethics

Ethics directs how we should live our lives. A satisfactory ethics must cogently answer the following questions:

* What is the nature of good and evil? Is it absolute (i.e., the same for all people in all places for all time), or relative (i.e., different for different individuals, cultures, historical periods)? Is it subjective or objective?

* What is the standard of ethics and ethical evaluation?

* What is the nature of guilt, atonement, and personal peace?

* How should society and the state be ordered?

* How does one attain or produce moral character and conduct?

It is most enlightening to ask teachers and professors these metaphysical, ethical, and (especially) epistemological questions. If they attempt to answer honestly, the true nature of their worldview will be exposed. In the vast majority of cases, the inconsistencies or internal contradictions within their worldview will be exposed. In most cases, such an exercise will expose the fact that the professors have never even thought through these philosophical worldview issues in a systematic and coherent manner. And if they have no philosophically coherent worldview, then they have no logical basis from which to attack the Christian worldview!

The Bible presents a worldview that is utterly unique among all the religions and philosophies of the world. No other system of thought recognizes that the world is created out of nothing by a supreme being who is both absolute and personal (tri-personal!) and who relates to his creatures as lord. ... The Bible contains a distinctive metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.[8]

Epistemology: Achilles heel of non-Christian thought

Over the past 3,000 years there have been four basic schools of thought attempting to explain how we know what we know (i.e., epistemology): empiricism; rationalism; irrationalism; and divine revelation.[9]

Empiricism

Strict empiricism[10] is the epistemological theory that all knowledge comes from sense-data perceived or experienced through the five senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste). It is opposed to rationalism and to any a priori or inborn knowledge; man is born a tabula rasa (i.e., a clean slate), or, in modern parlance, a blank, unformatted hard drive.[11] Empiricism teaches that to know whether something is true, you investigate or observe it. The test for truth is experience. (An example of an empirical argument is the Russian cosmonaut who proved that God did not exist because He was not observable in outer space.)

Most people put great stock in empirical evidence (seeing is believing). For example, critical Biblical scholars put far greater stock in the authority and reliability of ancient Near East historical records and modern scientific dating methods than they do in Biblical history or chronology. However, there are insuperable philosophical and logical problems with relying on empiricism as the foundation for knowledge.

1. If all that I know are my sensations, then I cannot be sure there is an external world that corresponds to my sensations. I never know the external world; I only know my sensations of the external world. So with empiricism it is impossible to know whether any other person even exists; there is no one to communicate with. Furthermore, if another person does exist, it would be impossible to know anything about him or her.

2. Empiricism cannot provide us with categories[12] with which to organize our sensations. How do our senses give us concepts such as equality, justice, fairness, rights, parallel, equal, justification, etc.? How can the empiricist know what evidence is?

3. Empiricism cannot account for the (immaterial, invariant, universal, absolute) laws of logic, mathematics, and ethics.

4. Empiricism cannot justify any statements about ethical values. Statements about sensible facts do not imply anything about ethical goodness or badness, right or wrong, or obligation or prohibition.[13] Attempting to derive ethics (what ought to be) from empiricism (what is) commits the naturalistic fallacy.[14]

5. Empiricism can make no universal propositions about anything (e.g., all men are mortal),[15] since no one has experienced all the past nor any of the future.

6. Empiricism cannot justify any statements about the future, for no one has known the future by sense experience. Consequently, empiricism cannot justify making any scientific or economic predictions.

7. You cannot prove your personal identity over time. Thus empiricism results in a solipsistic[16] individual who can never know what he thought yesterday, since he can only know what is present in his mind right now. The past is unknowable. The impossibility of knowing what is not present precludes all knowledge of the past. An individual sensation never occurs again.[17] One cannot think the same object twice. A solipsistic individual, confined to the present, is ignorant not only of yesterday's sensations, but also of yesterday's self. Thus the human self disappears, resulting in a world of perceptions with no one to perceive! This, in effect, annihilates memory.[18] Consequently, empiricism cannot justify anyone learning anything from experience.[19] Furthermore, how can empiricists observe time at all?

8. Empiricism cannot justify the reliability of human memory. You can never double-check your memory without using your memory to do it — thereby begging the question (a logical fallacy).[20]

9. Since no one can see causation[21] (as David Hume pointed out), causation must not exist. Without causation one cannot prove that the future will be like the past (i.e., the uniformity of nature). Even though the future was like the past in the past, on what empirical basis can they know that the future will be like the past in the future — they certainly have not observed the future? Thus empiricism cannot justify doing historical, scientific, or economic investigations.

10. All inductive arguments are formal fallacies (i.e., they commit the logical fallacy of asserting the consequent).[22] Consequently, empiricism cannot justify using the scientific method.

11. Observation is unreliable because our senses can deceive us (e.g., hallucinations, mirages, optical illusions, etc.). On what basis can we know when our senses are lying to us and when they are telling us the truth? Or is whatever our senses tell us at the time true (i.e., corresponding to the real, external world)? Even scientific experiments yield slightly different data each time they are conducted.

12. The basic axiom of empiricism (i.e., everything ought to be either verified or falsified by sense observation — an ethical ought) itself cannot be verified by sense observation.[23] Empiricism cannot justify empiricism.

13. No one can live solely on the basis of empiricism.

Of course, empiricism rules out claims to know the transcendent, invisible God of the Bible, Who is resistant to the empirical checking procedures of autonomous man.

The history of philosophy (culminating with David Hume) illustrates the fact that empiricism inevitably leads to skepticism.[24] If one starts with a blank mind, one's mind remains blank.

The doctrine of the image of God in man, the [basic requirements of God's] law written on the hearts of the Gentiles [Ro 2:14–5; cf. 1:32], and the transmission of original sin all indicate an innate, non-empirical inheritance, which precludes this philosophy.[25]

In sum, empiricism, which is the philosophical basis for psychology, cannot justify knowledge.

Rationalism

The second main attempt to justify knowledge has been rationalism. Rationalism[26] may be defined as the belief that human reason alone is the road to the acquisition and justification of knowledge. Man is not born a blank slate, but is born with a priori knowledge (i.e., knowledge before any observation or experience). Rationalism is opposed to both sensory experience and divine revelation as sources of knowledge. Reason is autonomous,[27] self-authenticating, subject to no standards other than its own.

Thus, for a rationalist, proof consists of conceptually clear and distinct (self-evident) ideas being presented in a logical manner. To know whether something is true, stop and think about it.

There are at least eight philosophical objections commonly made against rationalism.

1. Rationalism cannot deduce historical particularities from universal premises. In other words, rationalism cannot demonstrate that there was a particular historical person named Sigmund Freud, or Carl Jung, or B.F. Skinner. Thus rationalism can produce no history and no science.[28]

2. How can rationalism acquire a language in which to express its thoughts, and what sort of thoughts could it have if it had no language at all?

3. Rationalism has been thoroughly discredited by the fact that its proponents cannot agree with each other on what ideas are clear and distinct. For example, the great Continental rationalists, René Descartes (1596–1650) (a dualistic — reality is made up of mind and matter), Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) (a pantheist — mind and matter are the same thing), and Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) (a spiritual atomist — reality is made up of an infinite number of bits of non-material mind or energy), completely disagreed with each other on the nature of reality. If the leading proponents of rationalism cannot agree with each other of what ideas are clear and distinct, then these ideas are obviously not clear and distinct! Thus rationalists disagree on their starting point.

4. Men can and do err in their reasoning.

5. Reasoning apart from revelation cannot distinguish between the omnipotent, good God of the Bible and an omnipotent demon who deceives us. Or, as Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) argued, perhaps our logical categories and thinking faculty are nothing more than physiological necessities, determined by evolutionary forces. Their purpose is not the discovery of truth, but the survival of the organism.[29]

6. Rationalism commits the fallacy of asserting the consequent, reasoning in this manner: If we begin with presupposition P, we can justify the claim that we do have knowledge. Now it is certain that we do have knowledge, therefore, presupposition P is true.[30]

7. Rationalism leads to solipsism, which merges the world into the self so that the world becomes nothing more than a part of one's own consciousness.[31] One can know only about his own mind, not about the real world.

8. No one can live on the basis of rationalism.

Thus rationalism has proven to be unreliable. Rationalism cannot function as the foundation for knowledge.

Irrationalism (mysticism)

Irrationalism may be defined as the belief that human reason is inadequate to discover truth. Irrationalism thus involves the rejection of reason and the acceptance of absurdity. Irrationalism is a form of skepticism. It involves faith without reason.

One example of an irrational philosophy is existentialism (developed by Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, 1813–1855) and its theological counterpart, neo-orthodoxy. The fatal flaw of existentialism is its rejection of logic. Once a man commits himself to contradictions, his language, and therefore his recommendations to other people, become meaningless. When sincerity and passion are the only values, why cannot we direct our passion toward the devil as well as toward God? For an existentialist, an infinitely passionate appropriation of nothing is as valuable as a belief in Christ's atoning death on the cross!

Eastern religions and New Age thought are rooted in irrationality. That is why their devotees look for mystical enlightenment, rather than objective, rational, absolute truth (such as, Jesus took my punishment on the cross). The practitioners of Eastern religions do not view their sacred writings (e.g., the Bhagavad Gita) the way Christians view the Bible. Gurus do not study the original texts of such writings, in their historical-social setting, using grammatical-historical hermeneutics, to learn the single meaning of the propositions contained therein!

The gods of Eastern religions could never produce the Bible. Only an absolute, personal, rational God could produce the Bible. As John Frame notes:

Of all the religions and philosophies of the world, only those influenced by the Bible are personalistic. Polytheistic religions have personal gods, but these personal gods are not ultimate; they are finite, themselves subject to larger forces. Hinduism presents Brahma as a kind of absolute reality, but Brahma is not personal, nor is the Buddhist nothingness or the Platonic forms, or the Hegelian absolute. Only in Biblical religion is there a personal absolute, a being who is truly ultimate, but who also plans, speaks, thinks, acts in history, rejoices, grieves, loves, and judges. As God's creation, the universe is fundamentally personal.[32]

There are insurmountable problems with irrationalism.

1. There can be no reason to accept irrationalism as true (since it rejects rationality). An irrationalist cannot claim to know objectively the truth that here is no objective truth. Thus every adherent using rational argumentation to promote irrationalism (whether some Eastern religion or neo-orthodox theology) is contradicting his own epistemology.

2. Language is impossible for irrationalism, since language requires logic. (For example, an elephant is not a donkey.)

3. Since irrationalism is a form of skepticism (which asserts that nothing can be known), it is subject to the criticisms of skepticism: we cannot know that nothing can be known.[33] Skepticism is self-refuting.

4. Irrationalism cannot provide a purpose, reason, or justification for living. That is why it has led some of its adherents to commit suicide (e.g., the renowned Dutch Post-Impressionist artist Van Gogh).

5. No one can live on the basis of irrationalism. An irrationalist accused of murder could not offer any reasons why he is innocent, nor could he offer any evidence to convict a rapist of assaulting his wife. He could not give his child a reason why she should not run into the street in front of an oncoming car.

Since God thinks rationally, the deeper one goes into irrationalism the farther away from God he goes and the deeper he goes into the world of demonic thought.

Comparisons and contrasts

Empiricism, rationalism, and irrationalism contradict each other. Thus, they are mutually exclusive. They all use different forms of proof.

Empiricism, rationalism, and irrationalism are all anti-Christian epistemologies, presupposing the ultimacy of man. Man does not need to receive knowledge from God through revelation. Empiricism assumes that man's senses decide what is true. Rationalism assumes that human reason is the ultimate determiner of truth. Irrationalism assumes that man's absurd thoughts or his mystical experiences are the ultimate standard.[34] Empiricists, rationalists, and irrationalists are culpable rebels against the omniscient God of Truth, Who has graciously revealed Himself to them! They are also idolaters.

Divine revelation

Either God is the source and means of knowledge, or man is the source and means of knowledge. Either God determines the nature of reality and the interpretation of all facts, or man determines the nature of reality and the interpretation of all facts. All non-Christian theories of knowledge make man the ultimate reference point of knowledge.[35]

The Bible teaches that divine revelation is the basis for all knowledge:[36]

That [Word, i.e., the Second Person of the Trinity] was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world (Jn 1:9).

But there is a spirit in man, And the breath of the Almighty gives him understanding (Job 32:8).

In Your [God's] light we see light (Ps 36:9).

In whom [Christ] are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I say

Reviews for Psycho-Heresy

[Carlos Herrera · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Sencillamente todo cristiano debería saber esto. La psicología está muy contaminada ideológicamente ya que al liderar con el aspecto inmaterial del ser humano no se basa en la investigación científica, más bien en las conclusiones de espiritistas, paganos y ateos que supieron poner un retórico disfraz de ciencia a su enemistad con Dios.