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Abstract

A variety of methods are being employed to develop psychologies of the love of God and neighbor-as-self: standard psychological methods and theories, combining those with theology to contextualize love, using religious experience and convictions to formulate research questions and hypotheses, drawing on Christian psychologies of love that date back to Augustine, critiquing the conceptual, ethical, and metaphysical assumptions of contemporary psychologies of love from philosophical and theological perspectives, and forms of methodological pluralism (e.g., those that embrace quantitative, qualitative, ethical, and theological methods, with the results of different methods alternately critiquing and contributing to one another). Psychologists and others can use this broad range of approaches to develop psychologies of various other psychologically rich concepts central to religious traditions.

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Psychology Returns to Love … of God and Neighbor-As-Self: Introduction to the Special Issue

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