Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Augustine Of Hippo: A Historical Theology Critique, Zachary Monte

Honors Program Projects

This study evaluates how current historical theology survey texts understand and present the theology of Augustine. The texts are examined to assess the following: accuracy of presentation on discussed topics, specific theological topics Augustine addressed excluded in the surveys, and theological bias on the part of the authors. The historical theology surveys include Gregg Allison’s Historical Theology: An Introduction to Christian Doctrine, Justo González’s A History of Christian Thought, and Alister McGrath’s Historical Theology: An Introduction to the History of Christian Thought. The three major topics treated include Augustine’s Trinitarian thought, the Donatist Controversy, and the Pelagian Controversy. The findings …

Stewardship, Jacob Arnold

Sylvanus Carter Homiletics Award

This is a sermon submission for the 2018 Sylvanus Carter Homiletics Award. The sermon originates from Philippians 4:10-20 (NIV) and discusses the topic of stewardship. This was presented to a group of professors and peers within the School of Theology and Christian Ministry on April 10th, 2018. It was one of three presented, with Hannah Jones receiving first, Marcus Winters second, Jacob Arnold third.

Square Peg: Why Wesleyans Aren't Fundamentalists, Al Truesdale (Editor), Craighton T. Hippenhammer

Faculty Scholarship – Library Science

A review of a book that delineates the differences between Christian fundamentalism and Wesleyanism, including theological control beliefs and why the distinctions matter, written by and published by well-known leaders in the Church of the Nazarene.

Me And We: God's New Social Gospel, Leonard Sweet, Craighton T. Hippenhammer

Faculty Scholarship – Library Science

A review of a book by Leonard Sweet that attempts to redefine the old social gospel into a new social gospel that is more evangelical in nature than the recent social justice movement.

Church Refugees: Sociologists Reveal Why People Are Done With Church But Not Their Faith, Craighton T. Hippenhammer (Reviewer)

Faculty Scholarship – Library Science

This is a sociological study written for church leaders that examines the phenomenon of mature Christians leaving the institutional church, who keeping their faith, look for alternatives to church, having become convinced that church as it exists is detrimental to their spiritual growth.

Can We Still Believe The Bible? An Evangelical Engagement With Contemporary Questions By Craig L. Blomberg, Craighton T. Hippenhammer (Reviewer)

Faculty Scholarship – Library Science

This book is an apologetic treatment of six questions most often asked these days about the reliability of the Bible. Those questions are: Aren’t the copies of the Bible hopelessly corrupt? Wasn’t the selection of books for the canon just political? Can we trust any of our translations of the Bible? Don’t these issues rule out biblical inerrancy? Aren’t several narrative genres of the Bible unhistorical? And don’t all the miracles make the Bible mythical?

The Message In Our Music : What Popular Congregational Songs Say About Our Beliefs, Neal W. Woodruff, Mark A. Frisius

Faculty Scholarship and Creative Work – Music

Congregational singing is a source of basic theological instruction, both reflecting and shaping what we believe. It is crucial, therefore, that we say what we believe when we sing. In this study, the authors focused on the songs most accessed by users of the Christian Copyright Licensing, Inc. (CCLI) service between 2006-2012. Twenty songs were identified as having received significant usage during this time period.

The results of this study found that a representative sampling of the lyrics of the most popular congregational songs did not sufficiently express foundational concepts of the Christian faith. Although individual congregations may have a …

Engaging Capitalism With Wesleyan Theology, Paul R. Koch, Kevin Twain Lowery

Faculty Scholarship – Economics

In this paper presented at the Wesleyan Theological Society Annual Meeting in March 2014, two professors from Olivet Nazarene University – one from the field of Economics and the other from Theology – address the intersection of Wesleyan theology and ethics with the theoretical foundations of capitalism. The paper consists of four major sections:

• A Wesleyan voice in the capitalist jungle
• The compatibility of capitalism and Wesleyan thought
• Elements of Wesleyan theology most relevant to capitalism
• Toward a Wesleyan approach to free market economics

My Struggle With Evolution, Kevin Twain Lowery

Faculty Scholarship – Theology

The author recalls the long, personal struggle he had with accepting evolution, due to the challenges evolution posed for the Fundamentalist Evangelical beliefs he was taught since early childhood. He relates how he eventually was able to accept evolution and to reconcile it with his Christian faith, but not without yielding his former fundamentalist dogmatism. At the end of the essay, the author describes some key ways that evolution impacts traditional Christian theology.

A Theodicy Of Redemptive Suffering In African American Involvement Led By Absalom Jones And Richard Allen In The Philadelphia Yellow Fever Epidemic Of 1793, Kyle Boone

Undergraduate Student Scholarship – History

This paper is a historical investigation into the involvement of African Americans during the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793. It explores key figures, details, medical realities, and media representation. The particular focus lies on the dilemma of suffering in the world and how the African American understanding of evil in this community led to their decision of involvement. Their understanding of theodicy will be weighed against modern philosophical and theological attempts to deal with theodicy.

Wesleyan Theology And Christian Ethics, Kevin Twain Lowery

Faculty Scholarship – Theology

This presentation provides an overview of the intersection between Wesleyan theology and Christian ethics, essentially sketching the contours of Wesleyan moral theology. Of all the available options for framing Christian ethics, Wesleyan theology’s doctrines of: 1) sin, 2) prevenient grace, 3) revelation, and 4) sanctification make it best suited for virtue ethics. In essence, conscience (i.e., practical reasoning) and moral transformation are the primary means to pursuing the goals of moral purity, wholehearted love for God and others, and acting in ways that glorify God and edify others. Nevertheless, like other versions of virtue ethics, Wesleyan virtue ethics still requires …

A Wesleyan Approach To Knowledge, Kevin Twain Lowery

Faculty Scholarship – Theology

This presentation explores how Wesley’s philosophical and theological commitments shaped his approach to scriptural interpretation, and how this has particular implications for doing faith integration. Within this presentation, the empiricist tradition is defined and compared with rationalism, Catholic and Reformed/Calvinist views on human nature and divine providence are compared with Wesleyan views, the Wesleyan doctrine of grace is explained, and the roots of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral are traced.

Wesleyan values call for an integrative approach to faith. Knowledge should not be compartmentalized into sacred and secular spheres. An integrative approach to knowledge and faith suggests that we should seek to …

Symbolic And Literal Interpretations Of Eschatological Passages: Reconsidering Biblical Language, Carl M. Leth

Faculty Scholarship – Theology

The lessons of the history of exegesis serve as the primary resource in addressing the question of problematic eschatological passages of Scripture and the challenge of rightly discerning the correct reading. Our goal is a hermeneutic that is adequate for our understanding of the text. If our understanding of the text – and the reality to which it refers - is multivalent, then our hermeneutic must be adequate to account for multivalent meaning. Neither endlessly plural, nor narrowly referential, historical exegesis approaches the text as rich with inherent, but multivalent meaning. When asked if the text should be understood literally …

Japanese Jesus: Presenting The Character Of Christ In An Eastern Context, Jessica Schewe

Honors Program Projects

This Capstone Project looks at the differences between Western and Eastern literature, focusing on the Asian genre of manga, a graphic novel. This project culminates in a Japanese graphic novel entitled Rosalee. It attempts to unite the Western concept of Christianity with the Eastern literary conventions, bridging a gap between un-churched Japan and the truth of the Gospel. The story is designed to inspire readers to read the bible and learn more about Christ.

Teaching Christian Readings Of Secular Young Adult Literature, Angela R. Lee

Honors Program Projects

The purpose of this project is to empower Christian young adults to engage with secular literature adolescent literature in a manner that encourages them to grow in their faith. The project has three main components: a case study article on Christian reading practices based on their reviews of The Shack, a literature review of Christian reading theory, and a five day instructional unit plan designed to teach high school freshmen Christians to engage appropriate with secular literature.

In the case study, over 400 Amazon.com reader reviews and comments on the Christian fiction novel The Shack were examined in order to …

Postmodern Developments In Evangelical Theology, Robert Weston Siscoe

Honors Program Projects

Postmodernism has created an epistemological and conceptual climate for different approaches to Evangelical theology. In this study, my purpose is to analyze contemporary trends in postmodern theology and investigate to what extent these trends are affecting Evangelicals. The categories of postmodern theology I have chosen for comparison are deconstructive theology, narrative theology, and radical orthodoxy. The first portion of my research summarizes their formative influences and current approaches in hopes that these observations can then be applied in specific contexts.

After a review of each of these theologies, I compared them to what I experienced in three Post-Evangelical congregations. The …

Everyman, A Modern Adaptation (Or, Number's Down), Merrick Robison

Honors Program Projects