This week on (Re)thinking Faith, Philosopher Myron Penner returns once again to help Josh work through something that’s been bugging him: what happens when attachment theory gets applied to our relationship with God?
The conversation starts from Geoff and Cyd Holsclaw’s Landscapes of the Soul. Josh loves the book’s take on attachment science, but he gets stuck when it turns to “secure attachment” with God. Attachment depends on faces, touch, and co-regulation. Josh’s question is how you do any of that with an incorporeal spirit.
Myron places the question inside the long history of religious language. That history runs from Aquinas and Scotus on analogy to the evangelical idea of a “personal relationship with Jesus.” He argues that every way we talk about God needs an asterisk. He also raises a few complications:
Attachment research holds up better in Western cultures than elsewhere.
Language about “God’s design” can crowd out evolutionary explanations of our psychology.
Theory of mind works differently when we turn it toward God. We can’t check our picture of God the way we check our picture of a friend.
Along the way they discuss:
Tanya Luhrmann’s When God Talks Back and how Vineyard churches train people to hear God
What the cognitive science of religion says about spiritual experience across traditions
The difference between real interdisciplinary work and pastors borrowing authority from fields they haven’t studied
Influencer culture and prestige bias
Whether worship music is “manipulative”
Josh closes by turning the critique on himself. He asks what it means to be an agnostic theist who chooses love, and whether that means he should cut the attachment folks some slack. Enjoy!
RESOURCES:
Landscapes of the Soul: How the Science of Spirituality of Attachment Can Move You Into Confident Faith, Courage, and Connection
When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship With God
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*Special thanks to Marty Fredrick, Josh Gilbert, and Dan Koch. Love you guys <3*
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