Berea Pastoral Psychology

This is an introduction course on pastoral psychology, the way I was given the course in Bible institutions in Brussels, and Northwood in London (extra muros). The Baptist Minister Charles Spurgeon is quoted, as he wrote almost two centuries ago “Pastoral Advice” which I studied in Dutch “Pastorale Adviezen” in 1960. Every school of philosophical thought has proposed its own account of how religious belief originated. Philosophers typically consider religion to be a cultural and historical phenomenon without a foundation in science. They neither attempt to bridge different approaches to religion—psychological, cognitive, behavioural, social, political and historical—nor distinguish among religion’s different aspects, such as belief, experience and ritual, in a way that enables people to test concrete hypotheses. However, recent progress in understanding the neurobiology of social cognition has opened the door to a neuro-scientific perspective on religion.