This is my general impression of metaphysics,  that which attempts to discern and explain the nature of reality and being.

Apparently trying to tie together: Rene Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, John Locke, George Berkeley, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Johann Fichte, Friedrich Schelling, Arthur Schopenhauer, George Friedrich Hegel, Ernst Mach, and a host of other pragmatist, positivist, ordinary-language, phenomenology, and existentialist philosophers, who together reduce to a demand metaphysics be restricted to a rigorous intellectual discipline based only in mathematics and exact physical sciences, Sigmund Freud said all religion is but an attempt to project one’s self to create an imaginary supersensible Absolute via anthropomorphizing forces of nature and otherwise.

The ground of Freud and such mentioned philosophers is that our universe requires nothing outside itself to be, thus all realities, including intellects, are not tethered to anything but their own beings.

It’s notable that Freud, as with his contemporary and preceding philosophers, existed before the dawn of advanced astrophysics, e.g., general global relativity theory ala Stephen Hawking. Branches of such “exact physical sciences” prove such philosophers erred: 1. Our universe required another universe before coming into being, and did not create itself from nothing or thus pre-exist as an entire Absolute; and 2. There is currently admission by physicists that they cannot explain, then, where the first of all universes came from, or any void(s) before it. This is not to say Freud was completely unhinged, just that his extent of all human potentiality may be somewhat flawed as a basis for extinguishing ontology as a branch of metaphysics.

Another major school of psychiatry, founded by Carl Gustav Jung, originated in philosophy such as John Calvin’s fatalism re predestination: per Calvin, one is called to prove one’s heroism, an error in Christianity as it requires people to rely on their own inner qualities even if unsavory. Whereas Jung might admit even tacitly of a Deist world placed here by a detached Absolute, wherein humans are disjected membra, there seems little in authentic Christian Scripture which elevates Calvin beyond synthetic a priori metaphysician; because Jung believed Calvin who espoused an opinion at odds with Scriptures, there seems less “religious proof” of exclusive recourse to natural realities, and more autocratic establishment of one religious orthodoxy.

This reduces metaphysics to two kinds: 1. Philosophy of being, or philosophy of cosmology (Ontology), and 2. Philosophy of nature or philosophy of mind (Psychology). Psychology is concerned with concrete forms of reality; ontology is concerned only with the nature of the real in abstraction from its embodiments.

Insofar as defining the Absolute, psychology seeks to prove the real is self-consistent in a final unity of mind with nature. Ontology seeks to prove that the Absolute puts all things into what we perceive as reality, but does not reproduce any of it in the Absolute realm…the real is the self-consistent, but all reality and its relation to senses is found to be self-contradictory and therefore only appearances. Although some people feel that if Judaism and Christianity, the only well-known non-henotheistic religions claiming foundation from the Absolute Himself, would just go away, nothing at all would stop raw psychology from being the arbiter of absolute and ethical conditions. Yet, theoretical and allied physicists alone deflate such anti-religion hopes, simply by demonstrating the universe did NOT create itself, nor did any of its forebears. Nothing then exists with which to resoundingly rip to their roots, say, at minimum, the Scriptures of Abrahamic faiths.

Called by Christ in the Spirit, and as a student of Christian metaphysics, I take the words of Jesus Christ as absolutely true, including His proclamation that ALL who do His Father’s will (as indicated through Christ) are His brothers and sisters in salvation…even henotheistic, polytheistic, and secular philosophy followers who, without unsavory intents or applications, genuinely live in analog to Christ’s teachings.

I myself hope psychologists and theologians (together with religious laities) will stop contesting toward a permanent quashing of one or the other of themselves. Instead, they could become separate yet symbiotic aides in helping others to live life to its fullest.

For example, where a minister takes notice of faith not seeming enough to overcome some anomaly in a congregant or visitor, there might be an undisclosed or undetectable (even to psychologists without involved tests) substance or personal issue causing disruption to a person’s progress, and such person should be referred by clergy (or religious laity) to licensed psychologists and prayed for; not unlike clergy calling an ambulance if a congregant clutches their chest and falls down.

Then again, where no psychologist or Court can (nor could) compel therapy (ies) for a perceived anomaly due to intrinsic dynamics, either because the anomaly is sane and prefers their behavior(s) or can be made to feel less alienated being alone simply by taking a pill while continuing in isolation, there should be little if any objection to such persons coming into contact with the literature or ministers of POSITIVE Christian or analogous faith(s).

In sum, my own metaphysical efforts are purely ontological in nature, seeking to interpret being in the context of the Gospels of Christ and by Him therein-referenced Old Testament Scriptures, and expositing on other faiths and philosophies to demonstrate wherein any are analogous to the meanings of Christ, thus not only leading them also to salvation but making them partners on our earthly journey.

Incidentally, as a result of my metaphysics, I preach a God of the constantly living; a God Who intends we use our earth, with talents and gifts given by Him in work or trade suited to them, that we may learn the costs of evil and of appeals to self-centeredness, the charity of edifying others, the virtue of mercy and compassion, together with serving others in diverse cultural fellowship not for our own comfort but in feeling and joining in God’s love; a God Who doesn’t follow us with a minutiae-minded scorecard but reads our hearts, ready to forgive sins if one uses time left to turn from giving in to or joining darkness (no matter the weight)and stays with or returns to His strengths, promises, and love; and a God Who leaves it all up to us as to whether we next dwell with Him in even greater things without want, or next dwell in the ever-diminishing returns of a darkness already sworn to the eternal downfall of us all.