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). Psychology and Christianity: Five views (2nd ed.). IVP
Academic.
McMinn, M. “The science of virtue: Why positive psychology matters to the
church.” Westmont College
