Understanding God images and God concepts: Towards a pastoral hermeneutics of the God attachment experience

Verbum et Ecclesia

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Understanding God images and God concepts: Towards a pastoral hermeneutics of the God attachment experience
 
Creator Counted, Victor
 
Subject Psychology of religion; Spirituality; Pastoral Care and Counselling; Practical Theology God Images; God Concepts; Religious Self; Attachment Theory
Description The author looks at the God image experience as an attachment relationship experience with God. Hence, arguing that the God image experience is borne originally out of a parent–child attachment contagion, in such a way that God is often represented in either secure or insecure attachment patterns. The article points out that insecure God images often develop head-to-head with God concepts in a believer’s emotional experience of God. On the other hand, the author describes God concepts as indicators of a religious faith and metaphorical standards for regulating insecure attachment patterns. The goals of this article, however, is to highlight the relationship between God images and God concepts, and to provide a hermeneutical process for interpreting and surviving the God image experience.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: Given that most scholars within the discipline of Practical Theology discuss the subject of God images from cultural and theological perspectives, this article has discussed God images from an attachment perspective, which is a popular framework in psychology of religion. This is rare. The study is therefore interdisciplinary in this regards. The article further helps the reader to understand the intrapsychic process of the God image experience, and thus provides us with hermeneutical answers for dealing with the God image experience from methodologies grounded in Practical Theology and pastoral care.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor Practical Theology and Missiology Association of the University of Stellenbosch (PRACTMAUS)
Date 2015-11-03
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Literary Analysis; interdisciplinary studies
Format text/html application/octet-stream text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/ve.v36i1.1389
 
Source Verbum et Ecclesia; Vol 36, No 1 (2015); 14 pages 2074-7705 1609-9982
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://verbumetecclesia.org.za/index.php/ve/article/view/1389/2620 https://verbumetecclesia.org.za/index.php/ve/article/view/1389/2621 https://verbumetecclesia.org.za/index.php/ve/article/view/1389/2622 https://verbumetecclesia.org.za/index.php/ve/article/view/1389/2588
 
Coverage Boreal Forest; Iberian Peninsula; Stratosphere post-modernity Age
Rights Copyright (c) 2015 Victor Counted https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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