Masters Theses

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https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13057/7

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Browsing Masters Theses by browse.metadata.keywords "adult attachment to God"

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    Loving and Being Loved: A Social Trinitarian Evaluation of the Theory of Adult Attachment to God.
    (2010) Innes, Patrick D. R.
    This study explores themes from Social Trinitarian theology to evaluate Attachment Theory, particularly in relation to adult attachment to God. Attachment Theory conceptualises the formation of infant to care-giver bonds and how these form psychological structures that are used in relationships from infancy through to adulthood. While Attachment Theory is found to be verifiable, research in attachment to God is found to lack a coherent thological framework. Further, it suffers from possible methodological problems that make the data confused to some degree. Despite these problems, the research offers interesting insights about attachment to God. Social Trinitarian theology provides some strong evaluations, which support the idea that attachment to God is possible. Using a Social Trinitarian framework is shown to provide a plausible theological approach for using Attachment Theology in relation to adult attachment to God. It also opens up possible solutions for resolving the problems in the data by suggesting that research to date might be theologically inadequate when it measures converted and non-converted people in their attachment as the same. It also raises challenges for the formation of spiritual directors, particularly that formation that sees human experience as equal in status to Biblical revelation. Social Trinitarian theology challenges this equal status and places a priority on Christian Scripture. Finally, this study cautions against the teaching of Attachment Theory to Sprirtual Directors without careful trial first. It also suggests that future new resources for the supervision of Spiritual Directors could be developed to help directors to examine difficulties that they may encounter in their practice.