Psychological integration as a modern interpretation

Meaning

Psychological integration is named in the modern apparatus as an interpretive frame that cannot simply replace the work’s stated aims. Part IV speaks of baptism, Christ’s already accomplished saving work, the believer’s renewal and a future union of body, soul and spirit. Reducing these to a change of private mood would remove the ecclesial, historical and bodily assertions that make the comparison specific. Part IV: the spiritual comparison · unit 53 explicitly distinguishes baptismal beginning from completed embodied renewal; Part IV: the spiritual comparison · unit 54 names absolution and the Supper as means entrusted to the Church.

This caution does not prohibit a reader from making an explicitly modern psychological comparison. It requires the comparison to be identified as such. A critical label used by the commentary is not thereby a historical term or the anonymous author’s own definition of regeneration.