The Faces of Forgiveness: Searching for Wholeness and Salvation

by F. LeRon Shults, Steven J. Sandage

While forgiveness has historically been regarded as a religious concern, it has also become a popular topic in contemporary psychology. Unfortunately, there has been little effort to combine a Christian understanding of forgiveness with psychology. The Faces of Forgiveness, winner of the Narramore Award from the Christian Association for Psychological Studies, steps in to fill this void.
The authors fuse Christian forgiveness and psychology with the unifying motif of the face; thereby building on the considerable psychological research linking emotions related to forgiveness with the human face. At a deeper level, the face can serve as a metaphor for integrating forgiveness, wholeness, and salvation. The authors argue that forgiveness should take a central role in our understanding of salvation because it is warranted by the Bible and engages our postmodern context.
Pastors, psychologists, family counselors, and students of psychology and theology will find The Faces of Forgiveness a helpful resource.

Genres: Theology

270 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2003

Reviews

[Mikedinnen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The series combines the disciplines of counseling/clinical psychology and theology. This particular book discusses the psychological and theological aspects of forgiveness, and explores these ramifications on salvation. There is a lot of re-defining of old terms and a wholesale revamping of justification, which are both viewed in light of the turn to relationality.

[Nathan Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is a fantastic book explaining the connection between psychology and theology better than I've ever read from anyone else. LeRon does it in all of his books and this is one of the ones that I've interacted with but I have most of his other books.

[I-ki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Informative book on the subject of forgiveness. Brings extra dimensions to the understanding of forgiveness than simply "letting go".