Cook Kaye V, Cowden Richard G
Gordon College, Wenham, MA, United States.
Human Flourishing Program, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United States.
Front Psychol. 2025 May 9;16:1587704. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1587704. eCollection 2025.
In the Christian spiritual journey, the desire for communion with God is sometimes challenged by personal sin-instances in which the believer transgresses God's standards or values for how they ought to live. Thus, the need for divine forgiveness is an important concept in Christianity. To date, relatively little research has explored Christian of forgiveness from God for personal sin, the factors that shape those experiences, and the effects of experiencing forgiveness from God on different aspects of their life. To support the development of research in this area, this paper proposes a relational spirituality model of personal sin for conceptualizing how a network of interrelated cognitive-affective appraisals involving the self, the personal sin, God, and other people can shape a Christian's experience of, response to, and resolution of personal sin. We introduce the core elements of the model and explore how the interrelations among these elements might influence a Christian's relational experience with God following recognition of a personal sin. We discuss the unique contributions of the model to the psychological literature on divine forgiveness and highlight implications of the model for advancing research on Christian experiences of forgiveness from God.
在基督教的属灵旅程中，与上帝相交的渴望有时会受到个人犯罪的挑战，即信徒违背上帝关于他们应如何生活的标准或价值观。因此，对神圣宽恕的需求是基督教中的一个重要概念。迄今为止，相对较少的研究探讨了基督徒对上帝赦免个人罪的看法、塑造这些经历的因素，以及从上帝那里体验到宽恕对他们生活不同方面的影响。为支持该领域研究的发展，本文提出了一个关于个人罪的关系性属灵模型，用于概念化一个由涉及自我、个人罪、上帝和他人的相互关联的认知 - 情感评估组成的网络如何塑造基督徒对个人罪的体验、反应和解决方式。我们介绍了该模型的核心要素，并探讨这些要素之间的相互关系如何在基督徒认识到个人罪之后影响其与上帝的关系体验。我们讨论了该模型对关于神圣宽恕的心理学文献的独特贡献，并强调了该模型对推进关于基督徒从上帝那里获得宽恕体验的研究的意义。
