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Articles 1 - 30 of 124
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Moved To Compassion: Envisioning Parables In The Gospel Of Luke, Patrick J. O'Kernick
Moved To Compassion: Envisioning Parables In The Gospel Of Luke, Patrick J. O'Kernick
Dissertations (1934 -)
The primary goal of modern parable studies seems to be objective, more or less impersonal, interpretations. The subjective experience of the reader, the ways in which real readers are active and personally engaged in their encounters with parable texts—these things have hardly been addressed. Moreover, narrow views of reception activity have yielded narrow views of the parables themselves. Why, after all, read a parable firsthand? This is the central concern of my study. From reader response criticism, education-oriented reading research, cognitive psychology, and cognitive literary studies I derive what I call an Envisionment-Development Model of Reading (EDMR). According to EDMR, …
Finding Paul In The Fourth Gospel: John 8 And The Reception Of The Apostle To The Gentiles, Jason Hitchcock
Finding Paul In The Fourth Gospel: John 8 And The Reception Of The Apostle To The Gentiles, Jason Hitchcock
Dissertations (1934 -)
The earliest extant Christian texts are not narratives of the life of Jesus but occasion-specific letters of Paul. Whether formed through Paul’s own habit of retaining copies or by the collection efforts of early followers, a corpus Paulinum circulated with remarkable speed and guided the development of a Christian literary tradition. Rudolf Bultmann convinced a generation of commentators that despite a remarkably similar theology, the Gospel of John has no literary connection to Paul’s writings. This claim bolstered the Fourth Gospel’s renown as a purportedly independent witness to local Christian tradition. But recent NT scholars have shown a Tendenz to …
“Now I Will Recall The Works Of God”: Allusion And Intertextuality In Sirach 42:15-43:33, Gary Patrick Klump
“Now I Will Recall The Works Of God”: Allusion And Intertextuality In Sirach 42:15-43:33, Gary Patrick Klump
Dissertations (1934 -)
Since the discovery of the Hebrew fragments of Sirach in the Cairo Geniza, the study of influence and intertextuality has been pervasive. However, previous scholars have generally overestimated the occurrence of literary allusion, partially due to the lack of a universally accepted method and nomenclature. This dissertation addresses that issue by investigating Ben Sira’s deployment of culturally constructed registers related to the storm-god theophany, the combat myth, divine speech, and the sapiential register in Ben Sira’s Hymn to the Creator. Using a reconstructed version of the Masada Manuscript, none of the discrete parallels proposed by various scholars held up as …
The Ethical Functions Of Deuteronomic Laws In Early Second Temple Judaism, Paul Cizek
The Ethical Functions Of Deuteronomic Laws In Early Second Temple Judaism, Paul Cizek
Dissertations (1934 -)
This study is about the ethical functions of Deuteronomic laws in the 3rd–1st centuries BCE: what they were and how to study them.Since the 1980’s boom in Hebrew Bible ethics studies, at least eight theses regarding the ethical functions of Deuteronomic laws in antiquity have become prominent. Though the scholars who advance these theses employ diverse methods, they commonly make the Deuteronomic laws themselves their direct objects of analysis, basing conclusions about how the laws functioned on the structure, logic, form, or historical and literary contexts of the laws. As Henry McKeating noted in 1979, however, how a law actually …
Behold The Beasts Beside You: The Adaptation And Alteration Of Animals In Lxx-Job, James Wykes
Behold The Beasts Beside You: The Adaptation And Alteration Of Animals In Lxx-Job, James Wykes
Dissertations (1934 -)
“Behold the beasts beside you; they eat grass like cattle” (LXX-Job 40:15). The first translator for the book of Job into Greek was faced with a difficult text, replete with archaisms, corruptions, and convoluted Hebrew. He produced a distinctive – and often misunderstood – translation. Though its central characteristic is one of omission, its general approach to the text has proven hard to categorize. This study continues this trend by following one feature of Job that a casual reader cannot overlook: the book of Job’s zoological panoply. The LXX-translator handles these creatures in a variety of ways, often contextually-sensitive and …
Rewriting The Ending: Malachi's Threat And The Destruction Of The Temple In The Gospel Of Mark, John Michael Strachan
Rewriting The Ending: Malachi's Threat And The Destruction Of The Temple In The Gospel Of Mark, John Michael Strachan
Dissertations (1934 -)
This is a study of the presence of the OT book of Malachi in the Gospel of Mark. The Gospel begins (1:2–3) with a conflated quotation of Mal 3:1; Exod 23:20; and Isa 40:3. Recent studies have judged that Isa 40:3 is hermeneutically influential on Mark’s presentation of Jesus. Similarly, I aim to show that Mal 3:1, with its promise of a messenger who would proceed Yahweh’s sudden arrival at the temple, is hermeneutically influential in ways heretofore not commonly recognized. The heart of my proposal is that Mark 1–13, that is, roughly three-quarters of the Gospel, is framed by …
Biased In A World Of Bias: A Cognitive And Spiritual Approach To Knowing Racial Justice, Stephen Calme
Biased In A World Of Bias: A Cognitive And Spiritual Approach To Knowing Racial Justice, Stephen Calme
Dissertations (1934 -)
Even whites who desire racial justice often fail to recognize systemic racism and their complicity in it. Antiracist scholars such as Charles W. Mills and Barbara Applebaum identify this white ignorance as an active ignorance that results from a desire to maintain power and a sense of moral innocence. Whites’ disagreement with antiracist ideas is therefore received as an act of resistance rather than an honest contribution to dialogue. One overlooked aspect of whites’ response is white epistemic disorientation, a felt inability to participate in the knowing process about issues of race. To help whites understand this identity-threatening disorientation, I …
Where Is Wisdom? Privileging Perspectives In The Book Of Job, Israel Mcgrew
Where Is Wisdom? Privileging Perspectives In The Book Of Job, Israel Mcgrew
Dissertations (1934 -)
Job is one of the most difficult books in Hebrew Scripture: in language, poetic rhetoric, subject matter, and literary form. Many scholars understand the book as skeptical literature, as the poetry, the bulk of the book, refutes any justification of God’s activity in history. The matter is acute, as these scholars recognize the poetry’s parodic allusions to Hebrew Scripture and mythological traditions. The poet’s protagonist charges God with immoral conduct, judges the human experience morally incoherent, and despairs of vindication in an afterlife. The whirlwind rebukes Job, Job seems to repent, and the epilogue indicates that God in fact does …
Cathedrals Of The Mind: Theological Method And Speculative Renewal In Trinitarian Theology, Ryan Hemmer
Cathedrals Of The Mind: Theological Method And Speculative Renewal In Trinitarian Theology, Ryan Hemmer
Dissertations (1934 -)
The aim of this work is twofold. First, it labors to retrieve from the past a normative account of speculative theological method, in protest of the anti-speculative fashions and attitudes that have prevailed among theologians since the Second Vatican Council. Second, and in tension with the first aim, this study outlines the respects in which conciliar and post-conciliar developments in history, anthropology, philosophy, and cultural analysis—the same developments that led to speculative theology’s fall from favor—are the means by which speculative theology might be renewed and made useful in theology today. The second chapter squares up to speculative theology’s critics …
Fire In The Bread, Life In The Body: The Pneumatology Of Ephrem The Syrian, David Kiger
Fire In The Bread, Life In The Body: The Pneumatology Of Ephrem The Syrian, David Kiger
Dissertations (1934 -)
The fourth century debates about the status and personhood of the Son later expanded to reflections on the status and person of the Holy Spirit. In this dissertation I examine the pneumatology of Ephrem the Syrian, who is often over-looked in discussions about fourth century pneumatology. I argue that Ephrem displays a high pneumatology that fits within the broad contours of the pro-Nicene movement. I begin with a discussion of Ephrem’s Syriac heritage and focus on the themes and language surrounding the Holy Spirit in pre-Nicene Syriac texts. Pre-Nicene Syriac authors speak about the Spirit’s role in liturgical practices, often …
Looks That Kill: White Power, Christianity, And The Occlusion Of Justice, Wesley Sutermeister
Looks That Kill: White Power, Christianity, And The Occlusion Of Justice, Wesley Sutermeister
Dissertations (1934 -)
One of the most prominent, destructive, and long-lasting forms of racism in the United States and elsewhere is that which stems from the eyes of white people’s personal and social bodies. Their looks have been mobilized and deployed to exclude, exploit, put down, police, manage, intimidate, mark, and kill people of color at both an interpersonal and organizational level for the purpose of securing their own substance and future. Such exercises of power are rooted in human embodiment and suggest that justice and injustice are also rooted in our flesh, in how we relate to each other both corporeally and …
Filled With 'The Fullness Of The Gifts Of God': Towards A Pneumatic Theosis, Kirsten Guidero
Filled With 'The Fullness Of The Gifts Of God': Towards A Pneumatic Theosis, Kirsten Guidero
Dissertations (1934 -)
Across ecclesial lines, Christian language remains permeated by themes of imitative participatory union with God. However, ecclesial communions divergently retrieve these themes. Eastern Orthodox communities defend a particular doctrine of deification. Western traditions—Catholic or Protestant—continue to wrestle with the notion, at times negating or sublimating it into participation or likeness.How might these communities construct an ecumenical doctrine of deification? Each tradition’s model recedes into a dense thicket of competing metaphysical frameworks, spiritual priorities, and terminology. Mindful of the freight bound up in trying to discover parity between traditions that have developed their structures apart from each other, this project …
Transforming The Foundation: Lonergan's Transposition Of Aquinas' Notion Of Wisdom, Juliana Vazquez Krivsky
Transforming The Foundation: Lonergan's Transposition Of Aquinas' Notion Of Wisdom, Juliana Vazquez Krivsky
Dissertations (1934 -)
Medieval philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas developed a multifaceted account of wisdom by integrating Aristotelian and Platonic lines of thought with the truths of Christianity. Bernard J.F. Lonergan, SJ (1904-1984), one of the leading Catholic systematic theologians of the twentieth century, transplanted the metaphysical insights of Aquinas into a contemporary philosophy and theology of conscious intentionality constructed around human experiencing, understanding, judging, deciding, and loving.This dissertation reiterates the deceptively simple question first posed by Frederick Crowe: Did Lonergan achieve a deliberate, thoroughgoing transposition of the Thomist metaphysical category of wisdom into a more cognitive-existential context? Through a chronological and detailed …
The Ambiguity Of Being: Medieval And Modern Cooperation On The Problem Of The Supernatural, Jonathan Robert Heaps
The Ambiguity Of Being: Medieval And Modern Cooperation On The Problem Of The Supernatural, Jonathan Robert Heaps
Dissertations (1934 -)
The recent debate over the supernatural has proved intractable in part because of a failure to distinguish two irreducible-but-linked problems of the supernatural, one medieval and one modern. The first is a metaphysical problem concerning the cooperation of humans with God. Bernard Lonergan’s retrieval of St. Thomas Aquinas’s solution to this problem indicates that a grasp of divine concursus is integral to a theory of nature and grace. A metaphysics of universal cooperation with God implies a pair of ambiguities about creaturely being. The general ambiguity is that, because the fundamental explanatory term for creaturely causation is both universal and …
Beyond Slavery: Christian Theology And Rehabilitation From Human Trafficking, Christopher Michael Gooding
Beyond Slavery: Christian Theology And Rehabilitation From Human Trafficking, Christopher Michael Gooding
Dissertations (1934 -)
Is there life beyond slavery? In the past 20 years, there has been a significant increase in research related to human trafficking. However, very little of it has examined the ethical issues that survivors face as they attempt to reintegrate back into society, or that aftercare workers face as they attempt to assist survivors in the reintegration process. And there has been almost nothing written on how the tools of moral and political theology might offer insight into these issues. This dissertation attempts to begin to address this gap in the literature.In order to assess what the nature of …
Infideles Et Philosophi: Assent, Untruth, And Natural Knowledge Of The Simple God, Jeffrey M. Walkey
Infideles Et Philosophi: Assent, Untruth, And Natural Knowledge Of The Simple God, Jeffrey M. Walkey
Dissertations (1934 -)
Victor Preller’s “reformulation” of St. Thomas has impacted many contemporary theologians and philosophers, among them, George Lindbeck, Stanley Hauerwas, Bruce Marshall, D. Stephen Long, Fergus Kerr, to name only a few. According to Kerr, Preller is responsible for bringing to the fore St. Thomas’s denial that unbelievers can be truly said to believe “God exists.” In particular, Preller draws our attention to ST II-II, q. 2, a. 2, ad 3. Seemingly, in light of this passage, all non-believers have a defect in cognition with respect to the simple God. As such, they cannot be said to believe “God exists” at …
"The Present Evil Age": The Origin And Persistence Of Evil In Galatians, Tyler Allen Stewart
"The Present Evil Age": The Origin And Persistence Of Evil In Galatians, Tyler Allen Stewart
Dissertations (1934 -)
This dissertation investigates the origin and persistence of evil in Galatians within the context of Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity. The focus of investigation is narrative explanation(s) for evil. What story and/or stories were told to explain the original cause of evil and why it persists in the present? The study begins with a history of research that separates current scholarly accounts of Paul’s view of evil into two broad categories, Adamic template and Christological novum. According to the Adamic template, evil originates in Adam’s sin and persists in human rebellion in the likeness of the Protoplast. According to …
The New Day Of Atonement: A Matthean Typology, Hans Moscicke
The New Day Of Atonement: A Matthean Typology, Hans Moscicke
Dissertations (1934 -)
Ancient Christians often interpreted the death of Jesus through the lens of Leviticus 16, conceiving Jesus as both the immolated “goat for Yahweh,” whose blood the high priest brought into the Holy of Holies once a year to purge Israel’s sins, and the “goat for Azazel,” which bore Israel’s iniquity into the wilderness far away from God’s presence. Such an understanding of Jesus’s death did not strike theologians such as the author of the Epistle of Barnabas, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Origen, Jerome, Cyril of Alexandria, and the earliest Markan commentator as strange. What is strange is how seldom modern …
A Sweet Influence: St. Bonaventure’S Franciscan Reception Of Dionysian Hierarchy, Luke Vittorio Togni
A Sweet Influence: St. Bonaventure’S Franciscan Reception Of Dionysian Hierarchy, Luke Vittorio Togni
Dissertations (1934 -)
This dissertation examines the intersection of St. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio’s use of the doctrine of hierarchy (transmitted in the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite) with his interpretation of St. Francis of Assisi as the model for the imitation of Jesus Christ. In particular, it argues that Bonaventure’s doctrine of hierarchy became increasingly informed by his devotion to Francis’ virtues and to Christ’ Crucified, so that, by the time he wrote the Legenda maior sancti Francisci (by 1263) hierarchy was Franciscanized by an explicit integration with the Cross, the spiritual senses of scripture, and the primacy of love in union to …
Confessing Characters: Coming To Faith In The Gospel Of John, Dominic Zappia
Confessing Characters: Coming To Faith In The Gospel Of John, Dominic Zappia
Dissertations (1934 -)
There are at least seventy-two characters in the Fourth Gospel. Given its statement of purpose in 20:30-31, which suggests that it is for the sake of narrating miracles to produce faith, this observation is of interest. According to traditional counting there are seven miracles in John. Nonetheless, much of the Gospel is the retelling not of miracles but of conversations and other encounters between Jesus and a wide variety of characters, many of whom are not directly tied to these miracles. Given the number and variety of characters in John, questions arise: What function do characters as characters serve in …
Widow As The Altar Of God: Retrieving Ancient Sources For Contemporary Discussions On Christian Discipleship, Lisa Marin Moore
Widow As The Altar Of God: Retrieving Ancient Sources For Contemporary Discussions On Christian Discipleship, Lisa Marin Moore
Dissertations (1934 -)
Recent accounts of the history of Christian theology tend to neglect materialconcerning widows in antiquity and their contribution to Christian discipleship. In thisdissertation I would like to offer a corrective along the lines of studying the contributionof widows in Jewish and Christian antiquity to the Catholic tradition. In particular, Icontend that the Jewish roots of the widows’ contribution to Christian theology is alsooverlooked. The idea of the widow as an “altar of God,” which emerges in early Churchliterature, requires an understanding of the history of widows and the altar in Jewish andChristian antiquity. …
Imagining Demons In Post-Byzantine Jerusalem: John Of Damascus And The Consolidation Of Classical Christian Demonology, Nathaniel Ogden Kidd
Imagining Demons In Post-Byzantine Jerusalem: John Of Damascus And The Consolidation Of Classical Christian Demonology, Nathaniel Ogden Kidd
Dissertations (1934 -)
This dissertation traces the consolidation of a classical Christian framework for demonology in the theological corpus of John of Damascus (c. 675 – c. 750), an eighth century Greek theologian writing in Jerusalem. When the Damascene sat down to write, I argue, there was a great variety of demonological options available to him, both in the depth of the Christian tradition, and in the ambient local imagination. John’s genius lies first in what he chose not to include, but second in his ability to synthesize a minimalistic demonology out of a complex body of material and integrate it into a …
The Media Matrix Of Early Jewish And Christian Literature, Nicholas Andrew Elder
The Media Matrix Of Early Jewish And Christian Literature, Nicholas Andrew Elder
Dissertations (1934 -)
This study compares two seemingly dissimilar ancient texts, the Gospel of Mark and Joseph and Aseneth. The former is a product of the nascent Jesus movement and influenced by the Greco-Roman βίοι (“Lives”). It details the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of a wandering Galilean. The latter is a Hellenistic Jewish narrative influenced by Jewish novellas and Greek romances. It expands the laconic account of Joseph’s marriage to Aseneth in Genesis 41 into a full-blown love story that promotes the romantic, theological, and ethical incentives of spurning idols and converting to Judaism. Generically, theologically, and concerning content the two texts …
Hoc Est Sacrificium Laudis: The Influence Of Hebrews On The Origin, Structure, And Theology Of The Roman Canon Missae, Matthew S. C. Olver
Hoc Est Sacrificium Laudis: The Influence Of Hebrews On The Origin, Structure, And Theology Of The Roman Canon Missae, Matthew S. C. Olver
Dissertations (1934 -)
One area of study that received a newfound level of attention during the twentieth century’s Liturgical Movement was the relationship between the Bible and liturgy. The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum concilium, highlights the importance and centrality of this relationship, declaring that “[s]acred scripture is of the greatest importance in the celebration of the liturgy” (SC 24). The broad movements of ressourcement and la nouvelle théologie, particularly figures such as Jean Daniélou and Henri de Lubac, emphasized the deep unity between Scripture and the very text of liturgical rites and argued that the liturgy is an expression of spiritual …
Eighteenth-Century Forerunners Of Vatican Ii: Early Modern Catholic Reform And The Synod Of Pistoia, Shaun London Blanchard
Eighteenth-Century Forerunners Of Vatican Ii: Early Modern Catholic Reform And The Synod Of Pistoia, Shaun London Blanchard
Dissertations (1934 -)
This dissertation sheds further light on the nature of church reform and the roots of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) through a study of eighteenth-century Catholic reformers who anticipated Vatican II. The most striking of these examples is the Synod of Pistoia (1786), the high-water mark of "late Jansenism." Most of the reforms of the Synod were harshly condemned by Pope Pius VI in the Bull Auctorem fidei (1794), and late Jansenism was totally discredited in the increasingly ultramontane nineteenth-century Catholic Church. Nevertheless, many of the reforms implicit or explicit in the Pistoian agenda - such as an exaltation of …
The Parable As Mirror: An Examination Of The Use Of Parables In The Works Of Kierkegaard, Russell Hamer
The Parable As Mirror: An Examination Of The Use Of Parables In The Works Of Kierkegaard, Russell Hamer
Dissertations (1934 -)
This dissertation focuses on an exploration of the use of parables in the works of Soren Kierkegaard. While some work has been done on Kierkegaard’s poetic style, very little attention has been paid to his metaphors, despite their prevalent use in his works. Much of the scholarship instead treats his parables as mere examples of philosophical concepts. In this work, I argue that Kierkegaard’s parables function primarily to cause the reader to see him or herself truly. The parables work like mirrors, reflecting our true selves back onto ourself. In this way, the parables prompt Kierkegaard’s readers to overcome the …
Exodus As New Creation, Israel As Foundling: Stories In The History Of An Idea, Christopher Evangelos John Brenna
Exodus As New Creation, Israel As Foundling: Stories In The History Of An Idea, Christopher Evangelos John Brenna
Dissertations (1934 -)
This study surveys the development of two literary phenomena in early Jewish and Christian tradition. The first is the birth story of a portentous child, exemplified by the birth stories of Moses, Noah, Melchizedek, and Jesus in biblical and Second Temple period literature. The second is the mythical expansion of the exodus tradition, which interprets the crossing of the Red Sea as a recreation of the people of Israel. I examine the appropriation of these two phenomena in the late antique Hellenistic story, Joseph and Aseneth. I contend that (1) the early Jewish birth story paradigm is influenced by the …
A God Worth Worshiping: Toward A Critical Race Theology, Duane Terrence Loynes Sr.
A God Worth Worshiping: Toward A Critical Race Theology, Duane Terrence Loynes Sr.
Dissertations (1934 -)
Theologian James Cone has declared that White supremacy is the American Church’s greatest, original, and most persistent sin. Although the Church has engaged in numerous attempts to remedy racism, theology still seems to witness to a God that stands relatively unopposed to the status quo of racial injustice and marginalization. This dissertation begins with the claim that Christian theology still operates from the normativity of whiteness. I will argue that, although the Church has made admirable progress with regard to racial justice, the attempts have been at the surface: the underlying structural logic of White supremacy remains intact. My thesis …
Image And Virtue In Ambrose Of Milan, Andrew Miles Harmon
Image And Virtue In Ambrose Of Milan, Andrew Miles Harmon
Dissertations (1934 -)
This dissertation analyzes Ambrose of Milan’s trinitarian theology and doctrine of human action and argues that a visual logic—that works disclose nature—animates both. Ambrose’s trinitarian theology, on the one hand, trades in scriptural proofs that emphasize the tangible works (opera) of the Son as relevatory of his divinity and indicative of his shared, invisible power with the Father. While Ambrose differs from his Latin and Greek predecessors, he takes up controverted texts in his Christological reflection, many of which are borrowed from anti-monarchian and anti-homoian debates in the several generations prior. To show Ambrose’s consonance with the pre- and pro- …
The Two Goats: A Christian Yom Kippur Soteriology, Richard Barry
The Two Goats: A Christian Yom Kippur Soteriology, Richard Barry
Dissertations (1934 -)
This dissertation draws on recent historical-critical research into ancient Jewish temple theology, the priestly book of Leviticus, and especially the Yom Kippur liturgy of Leviticus 16, to develop a more paradoxical interpretation of Christ’s saving work for modern Christian systematic theology. Prompted by the pioneering research of Jacob Milgrom, there has been a surge in sympathetic interpretations of the priestly theological tradition, which has inspired fresh interpretations of the Levitical Day of Atonement. I argue that an adequate Christian theory of atonement must be attentive to both the overall “landscape” of Jewish biblical thought, and to the specific rhythm of …