Classical Christian psychology

Some familiarity with Christian understandings of the soul will be invaluable when it comes to trying to analyse historical transitions of uses and meanings of different psychological terms (such as ‘will’, ‘passions’ and ‘emotions’) in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is impossible to pin down exactly what ‘Christian psychology’ is. There have been many different Christian psychologies ranging from biblical views of human minds and bodies to twentieth-century Christianised counselling psychologies. The phrase ‘classical Christian psychology’ is intended to refer to a core of Christian teaching about the soul that relatively consistently informed Western Christian culture and thought, at least until the nineteenth century. The decisions I have made about what are to count here as ‘core’ Christian teachings are, of course, by no means intended to be definitive.