I appreciate how you approached this exercise where you clearly
understand the viewpoints of both Dr. Worthington and Dr. McMinn. You
mention that from the lecture on a levels of explanation view that how the
inability to forgive can lead to an unhealthy living because an individual
will carry this burden and will skew their way of thinking as they approach
all other situations. It was also interesting in the lecture when the lecture
spoke about remorse and forgiveness, the greater the remorse leads to
the greater the forgiveness. As with Dr. McMinn and his defined approach
to the Church and science and the ability to leverage one from the other. I
found that the act of forgiveness with the levels of explanation view was
described as the choosing one or the other; either God will cure or the
people will have to make that discussion of forgiveness. Whereas the
integration view was based on the multi-layer unity that Johnson, (2010)
speaks about where first comes what they Church has depicted of us and
then psychology of people will take personal responsibility.
In your summation you state that “eventually, they will arrive at an area
of similarity but possess different approaches” is very accurate in that Dr.
Worthington speaks about forgiveness and the levels of explanation view
is based on choosing one approach of the Church or the other approach of
science. In contrary the integration view is based on a ‘cause and effect’.
The focus is about self and psychology is all about the big ME where the
Church stood for something different. It states to love God as yourself and
also love your neighbor. In this case Dr. McMinn talks about forgiveness is
about YOU and not the offender. In either approach, we can see that our
salvation in the end is to hear the Church and act based on the People.
References
Johnson, E. L. (2010).8Psychology and Christianity: Five views(2nd8ed.). IVP
Academic.
McMinn, M. “The science of virtue: Why positive psychology matters to the
church.” Westmont College
