Welcome back. If you were with us in Part One, you will remember that we began to explore a striking convergence: the biblical theology of the Temple, as illuminated by the scholars in the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology’s Temple and Contemplation, and the inner architecture of the human self-system as described by Parts Work [Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Ego State Therapy].
We saw that the Temple's concentric zones of holiness, moving from the outer courts to the Holy of Holies, mirror the layered structure of our inner world: from the outer-facing manager parts, through the more guarded inner chambers, to the inmost self where God dwells.
Today I want to go deeper. I want to talk about something that might feel uncomfortable at first: the concept of defilement in Temple theology. And I want to show you why this ancient category is actually one of the most compassionate and psychologically sophisticated frameworks we have for understanding what happens to wounded parts of oneself.
Raymond Corriveau and the liturgy of life
Raymond Corriveau, in his essay "Temple, Holiness, and the Liturgy of Life in Corinthians," offers a penetrating analysis of how St. Paul understands the human body, and by extension, the human community, as a living temple whose holiness must be actively maintained. For St. Paul, holiness is not a static possession but a dynamic orientation. It is a life lived in relationship with the indwelling Spirit and expressed in concrete choices about how we inhabit our bodies and relate to one another.
What strikes me in Corriveau's analysis is his insistence that Paul's Temple language is not primarily juridical, it is not about rule-keeping and punishment for violations, but relational and transformational. Holiness, for Paul, is about communion: with God, with the community, and with one's own embodied self. Sin, especially the sexual immorality Paul addresses in 1 Corinthians 6, is destructive not merely because it breaks a rule, but because it fractures the interior communion that the Spirit's indwelling establishes. It defiles the temple from within.
This is a crucial distinction, and it has immediate clinical relevance.
Defilement, shame, and the exile of parts
In IFS, exile is the term for parts that have been pushed out of awareness and banished from the interior because they carry pain, shame, fear, or memories that the system has judged too dangerous or too destabilizing to acknowledge. Parts typically become exiles because of early experiences of hurt, abandonment, abuse, or profound mis-attunement. They hold the emotional residue of those experiences as burdens which are not inherent features of who they are, but as things they took on from the environment and from the wounding events themselves.
Despite my criticism of Schwartz’s book No Bad Parts in my book Litanies of the Heart, here is what I find so important: exiled parts are not bad parts. They are not defiled parts. They are wounded parts carrying the burden of defilement. This defilement was not originally their own.
The Temple theology of the Hebrew Bible makes a parallel distinction. In Levitical law, a person or object could become tamei (ritually impure or defiled) not as a moral judgment but as a status that required attention and restoration.
Defilement could come from contact with death, with disease, and with certain bodily conditions. These things were simply part of the tragic, bounded reality of human embodied life. The response to tumah was not condemnation but purification: a ritual process that restored the person to full participation in the covenant community and in the worship of God.
Do you see the parallel? Our exiled parts, the parts carrying shame, grief, fear, the memory of abuse or abandonment, are not intrinsically defiled. They became carriers of defilement through contact with wounding. And the appropriate response is not to keep them exiled, not to condemn them, not to wall them off more thoroughly, but to purify them. To restore them. To welcome them back into the inner community of the self-system.
This is what unburdening is in IFS: the retrieval of the exile, the release of the burden it has been carrying, and its restoration to its original, true nature. The burden, the shame, the fear, or the lie about who the person is belongs to the wound, not to the part. When the burden is released, the part is free to be what it truly is: a dimension of the human person created in the image of God, worthy of love and belonging.
St. Gregory of Nyssa, whom I quoted in our "Kingdom Within" series on image and likeness, understood something very much like this. He taught that sin and its effects are not part of our true human nature. Instead they are “parasitic” additions, foreign burdens that distort the image of God in us (Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man, IV). The therapeutic work of unburdening, which involves releasing the lies and emotional residue that parts have been carrying is in this light, a participation in the very restoration that Christ's redemptive work makes possible.
Scott Hahn, John's Gospel, and the temple as meeting place
Scott Hahn's essay "Temple, Sign, and Sacrament: Towards a New Perspective on the Gospel of John" offers a rich reading of John's Gospel through a Temple lens. Hahn argues that the entire Gospel of John is structured around the Temple and its feasts, and that Jesus' body, culminating in His death and resurrection, is the new and definitive Temple, the ultimate meeting place of heaven and earth, of the human and the Divine.
One of the most striking moments in John's Gospel from this perspective is Jesus' encounter with the woman at the well in John 4. Here, a marginalized Samaritan woman, carrying the weight of a complicated relational history, comes to the well alone in the middle of the day (likely to avoid the judgment of her community) and encounters Jesus. And Jesus does something remarkable: He asks her for something. He initiates an encounter that crosses every boundary of gender, ethnicity, and social standing. He treats her not as defiled and untouchable but as a person worthy of encounter, worthy of His time, and worthy of the deepest theological conversation in the Gospel.
From an attachment perspective, this encounter is a masterclass in what psychologist Dan Hughes calls PACE: Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity, and Empathy. It is the therapeutic stance that creates the safety necessary for vulnerable inner states to be accessed and healed. Jesus is not clinical with this woman. He is not standing at a distance, analyzing her pathology. He is present, warm, curious, and accepting of her even as He gently invites her toward truth.
This is the posture of the healed and integrated inmost self toward its own exiles, toward the wounded and ashamed parts of the interior. It is not clinical detachment. It is not shame-inducing confrontation. It is a compassionate, curious, and accepting presence. The inner temple is a place of encounter rather than judgment.
Jesus then tells her, "The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth" (John 4:23). The Temple, He implies, is no longer to be localized in Jerusalem or Gerizim. True worship and encounter with the Living God happen in the interior, "in spirit and truth." The innermost self, liberated from the defilements it has accumulated, becomes the true locus of divine-human encounter.
Protectors as temple guards: honoring the guardians
Now, I want to say something directly to those of you who find that your protective parts are fierce. Maybe you have a part that is deeply skeptical of all this language about the "inmost self" and "God's indwelling." Maybe there is a part of you that has heard religious language weaponized and is rightfully suspicious. Maybe there is a manager part that has decided that controlling everything is the only way to stay safe, and it finds all this talk about "opening the inner sanctuary" deeply threatening.
I want to honor those parts.
In Temple theology, the gatekeepers and Temple guards were not obstacles to worship, instead they were essential to it. The holiness of the inner sanctuary was protected precisely because those boundaries were carefully maintained. According to Brent Pitre, the priests who served at the threshold and who regulated access were performing sacred work.
Your protective parts are doing something analogous. They learned, often in the earliest years of life, that the inner sanctuary, where the vulnerable, tender, and shame-carrying places dwell, needed protection. And so, they stood guard. They regulated access. They ensured that nothing and no one who had been threatening in the past could reach those wounded inner places again.
Attachment research is very clear on this: developmental psychologists Main and Hesse show that when the attachment system has been activated by threat, and not adequately soothed, the developing nervous system organizes itself around protection rather than exploration. Avoidant attachment strategies, anxious-hyperactivating strategies, and the more complex disorganized patterns associated with trauma are all protective adaptations. They are the psyche's version of the Temple guard, doing their best to preserve something precious and vulnerable within.
The therapeutic and spiritual work is not to fire the Temple guards. It is to build enough safety that the guards can gradually stand down. It is to demonstrate, over time, through the quality of the therapeutic relationship and through the developing relationship with a loving God, that the inmost self is now safe enough to be accessed. That the One who waits in the inner sanctuary is not a threatening judge but a loving Father who has been patiently waiting for exactly this homecoming.
As Bowlby described it, the therapist (or the attentive spiritual director) and the God revealed in Jesus Christ serves as a secure base from which the person can begin to explore the previously forbidden territories of their own inner world.
The rejected stone: a word for the most exiled parts
Michael Giesler's essay on Psalm 118:22–23, "The Rejected Stone and the Living Stones" offers a Christological reading of the stone rejected by the builders becoming the cornerstone. Jesus applies this psalm to Himself in the Synoptic Gospels: the one who was cast aside, deemed unworthy and marginalized by the very people who should have recognized Him is the foundation of the entire new Temple.
I think immediately of exiled parts. The exiles in the IFS system are precisely the rejected stones of the inner architecture. They were deemed too painful, too shameful, and too destabilizing to be included in the functioning self-system. They were cast to the margins, and yet they carry something irreplaceable. They hold the most authentic emotional truth of the person's experience. They are, in a very real sense, the foundation stones that the inner building has been constructed around and over at great cost to the whole system.
When exiles are retrieved and brought back into the inner community, and when their burdens are released and their truths are heard, something remarkable happens. The whole system begins to reorganize around a more solid foundation. The manager parts, who have been working overtime to prevent the exiles from being felt, can finally rest. The firefighter parts, who have been desperately trying to extinguish the pain the exiles carry, can put down their tools. A new integration becomes possible.
This is not merely a clinical observation. It is, I would argue, a participation in the Paschal Mystery itself: the rejected stone becoming the cornerstone. The crucified One rises as the foundation of a new creation.
A moment of personal recollection
I invite you to bring to mind a part of yourself that has felt rejected, perhaps by others, by yourself, or perhaps even by God. This part may carry shame, or fear, or grief. This part may have been exiled to the margins of your inner system because it felt too painful or too complicated to hold.
Can you approach that part with just a little curiosity? Not to fix it. Not to merge with it or be overwhelmed by it. But to notice it. To acknowledge it.
And can you hear, perhaps for the first time, Jesus' words about the rejected stone? The one who was cast aside became the cornerstone. Can you let that resonate for a moment with whatever this part is carrying?
The Psalmist wrote, "Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever" (Psalm 125:1). The Temple was built on Mount Zion, the mountain of God's presence. Your inmost self, the truest, deepest center of who you are, is built on that same unshakeable foundation. No wound, no exile, and no rejection by others or by yourself has destroyed what God has built into the foundation of your being.
Allow yourself to rest in that for a moment.
Coming up in part three
In our final installment, we will bring everything together. We will explore the vision of deification (sometimes called theosis) as the ultimate destination of the healing journey, integrating the insights of Daniel Keating's essay on Cyril of Alexandria and the early Fathers with what we know from neuroscience and psychology about post-traumatic growth and integration. We will consider what it means for the whole self-system, the inmost self and all its parts, to be transformed into living stones in a living temple, a dwelling place for the glory of God.
And we will ask, very practically: What does this mean for how I pray? How I seek healing? How I relate to the most difficult parts of my own interior?
Until then, go gently with the rejected stones within you. They may be the very foundation you've been looking for.
Christ is among us!
Dr. Gerry Crete is the author of Litanies of the Heart: Relieving Post-traumatic Stress and Calming Anxiety Through Healing Our Parts which is published by Sophia Institute Press. He is the founder of Transfiguration Counseling and Coaching, Transfiguration Life, and co-founder of Souls and Hearts.
References
Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base: Parent-child attachment and healthy human development. Basic Books.
Corriveau, R. (2008). Temple, holiness, and the liturgy of life in Corinthians. In S. W. Hahn (Ed.) Temple and contemplation: God's presence in the cosmos, Church, and human heart (pp. 107–139). St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology/Emmaus Road Publishing.
Crete, G. (2024). Litanies of the heart: Relieving post-traumatic stress and calming anxiety through healing our parts. Sophia Institute Press.
Giesler, M. (2008). The rejected stone and the living stones: Psalm 118:22–23 in New Testament Christology and Ecclesiology. In S. W. Hahn (Ed.), Temple and contemplation: God's presence in the cosmos, Church, and human heart (pp. 85–105). St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology/Emmaus Road Publishing.
Gregory of Nyssa. (1994). On the making of man (P. Schaff & H. Wace, Eds., H. A. Wilson, Trans.). In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Vol. 5. Hendrickson. (Original work written c. 379 AD)
Hahn, S. W. (2008). Temple, sign, and sacrament: Towards a new perspective on the Gospel of John. In S. W. Hahn (Ed.), Temple and contemplation: God's presence in the cosmos, Church, and human heart (pp. 141–167). St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology/Emmaus Road Publishing.
Hughes, D. A. (2007). Attachment-focused family therapy. W. W. Norton.
Keating, D. A. (2008). "You are gods, sons of the Most High": Deification and divine filiation in St. Cyril of Alexandria and the early Fathers. In S. W. Hahn (Ed.), Temple and contemplation: God's presence in the cosmos, Church, and human heart (pp. 241–268). St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology/Emmaus Road Publishing.
Main, M., & Hesse, E. (1990). Parents' unresolved traumatic experiences are related to infant disorganized attachment status. In M. T. Greenberg, D. Cicchetti, & E. M. Cummings (Eds.), Attachment in the preschool years (pp. 161–182). University of Chicago Press.
Pitre, B. (2008). Jesus, the new Temple, and the new priesthood. In S. W. Hahn (Ed.), Temple and contemplation: God's presence in the cosmos, Church, and human heart (pp. 47–83). St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology/Emmaus Road Publishing.
Schwartz, R. C., & Sweezy, M. (2020). Internal Family Systems Therapy (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
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Check out Dr. Peter’s discussion of your identity as a temple of the Holy Spirit here.
The Resilient Catholics Community (RCC) reopens for less than two weeks…
Are you ready to care for your inner wounded ones? The Resilient Catholics Community offers you a way to deeply engage with all your parts, in a step-by-step, structured program with likeminded Catholics, on a pilgrimage to flourishing. The RCC is all about human formation, the “basis of all human formation,” according to St. John Paul II. We focus on shoring up the natural foundation, really learning our human formation arithmetic so that we can better do our spiritual algebra, all grounded in a Catholic understanding of the human person.
If the concept of parts resonates with you, if the idea of yourself as a temple makes so much sense, and if you want to do this parts work in community, together with others like you, consider applying to the RCC. Find out so much more on our RCC landing page. Got questions? Reach out to us at crisis@soulsandhearts.com or call Dr. Peter at 317.567.9594 and/or join us online for an informational Zoom meeting on Tuesday, May 26, 2026; here is the link to register for the Zoom meeting. We will post the recording of the informational meeting on the RCC landing page afterward.
As part of the application process, you will take the PartsFinder Pro, a series of 23 measures to help you understand and connect with 12 to 15 of your parts – managers, firefighters, and exiles. The PartsFinder Pro can help you jumpstart your parts work journey. Check our these downloadable PDFs of sample fictional reports for a man and a woman.
Check out our 19-minute experiential exercise to help you discern about applying to the RCC. And if you’d like to start the journey with us, sign up on our interest list for the St. Mary Magdelene on our RCC landing page; applications are accepted throughout the month of June, and programming will begin in mid-September.