Philosophy of Personality Paper
This paper endeavors to explore the realms of human personality by comparing established secular theorist’s views with the Bible. It seeks to answer the question, “Is Christianity compatible with a system based on naturalistic, nontheistic, secular humanism?”
Introduction to Personality
The American Psychological Association defines personality as “Individual differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving” (Understanding Personality). The study of personality focuses on two main areas: One is understanding individual differences within certain personality characteristics, such as sociability or irritability. The other is understanding how the various parts of a person come together
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If we look at verse 13, the Psalmist describes how we were formed in our mother’s womb acknowledging the omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent aspects of our creator God.
“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb” (NIV).
Verse 14 continues to describe how we were fearfully and wonderfully made by God. It is amazing to consider all the trillions of cells and the complexity of DNA that humans are comprised of. Every cell, every strand of DNA, was examined by God when he was forming us in our mother’s womb. There is no detail that was overlooked when it comes to our creation as we were specifically designed to be the person God ordained us to be.
It stands to reason that God is ultimately responsible for our personality as he is the one who created us, chose our family line, and our environment. He considered all factors before our creation as he knew exactly how they would all work together to uniquely form us. Our personality is perfectly matched with God’s will for us and our spiritual giftedness.
Dimensions of
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Sigmund Freud (an Austrian neurologist) created this perspective on personality who believed that things hidden in the unconscious could be revealed in several different ways, including free association, through dreams, and through accidental slips of the tongue. Theorists such as Carl Jung, Erik Erikson, Karen Horney, and Alfred Adler believed in the importance of the unconscious but did not agree with the other aspects of Freud's