Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Radical Explorations Of Radical Empiricism: William James’S Transmissive Theory Of Mind In The Context Of Visionary Experience, Rita Spellman

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

The dominant ontology in science is a form of materialism and it filters down into the social sciences in ways I will touch on throughout this paper. The influence of the current dominant ontology is especially apparent when it comes to experiences and phenomena that challenge its underlying assumptions which is why I will primarily focus on visionary experience and psi phenomena as studied by radical empiricists throughout the ages.

The philosophical position of William James challenges materialist assumptions by championing the idea that the only world we can speak of is the world of our experience. William James affords …

Accounting For The Gift: Theology And Ethics In Accounting, Daniel Sebastian

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

Accounting is often assumed to be a neutral presentation of the facts of economic activities and actions. Its double-entry system means that it is always in balance and comports to the rigor of mathematical formulas, and it is taken to be a matter of empirical counting that lends it certainty as well. The dissertation argues that this description of accounting is inadequate. Accounting is better seen as a political tool and technology for producing trust that can help resolve social conflicts. As such, accounting is not value-neutral but carries within it a particular sociality that has moral implications. These moral …

Monetary Muddles: Money And Language, Ethics And Theology, Tyler Womack

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation offers a theological critique of political economy by turning to Wittgenstein in order to re-think what “criticism” is and can be. It diagnoses the current state of critical discourse about money as incapable of properly dealing with the confusions or illusions such criticism identifies as intrinsic to our ways with money and economic production and exchange. The dissertation argues that while political economic critiques and heterodox theories of money rightly challenge the economic orthodoxy’s individualism and its illusions of an apolitical money and an autonomous market economy, these “social” critiques are caught in a Geltungslogik that dichotomizes “value” …

Trinity And Divine Subjectivity: A Study In The Trinitarian Theologies Of Franz Anton Staudenmaier And Isaak August Dorner, Andrew Hamilton

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

In the German philosophical tradition that begins with Kant and grows into Romanticism and Idealism, philosophical understandings of personal subjectivity underwent drastic changes. I argue in this dissertation that these new understandings of personal subjectivity exercised an important influence on how the Catholic theologian Franz Anton Staudenmaier and the Lutheran theologian Isaak August Dorner conceived of the personal subjectivity of the divine, particularly on how they rendered the divine as a triune personal subject.

A Renewed Christian Sabbath, After Supersessionism And After Christendom, Abigail Woolley Cutter

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

This project works toward a contemporary understanding of what the Sabbath commandment can mean for Christians, in light of both the post-supersessionist developments in Christian theology since the Holocaust and a declining (Protestant) Christian hegemony in the United States. It claims that a Christian theology of Sabbath must be developed through a serious engagement with the theology of Jewish-Christian relations. It proposes the Sabbath framework as a model for cultural engagement reminiscent of the “synthesis” type laid out in H. R. Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture, but less susceptible to the alleged pitfalls of that type.

The approach to a …

Honor Gained, Lost, And Restored: The Honor And Shame Of Jesus In The Gospel Of Mark, April Simpson

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

Tracing the Gospel of Mark’s full narrative trajectory, this project provides a socio-literary investigation of Jesus’s honor in the Gospel, in order to explore the relationship between honor and shame in the narrative as well as how first-century notions of honor relate to Mark’s endorsement of Jesus. For much of the narrative, the Gospel of Mark overwhelmingly features Jesus’s honor—or his status, reputation, and virtue. Beginning about halfway through the Gospel, this emphasis is paired with another: anticipation of a change of fortunes for Jesus. Then, Jesus’s fortunes do change in the spiraling shame he experiences during his arrest, trial, …

Gender As Love: A Theological Account, Fellipe Do Vale

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

Despite its ubiquity in nearly all academic disciplines, gender has remained a contested concept, so much so that there is considerable ambiguity regarding what makes one a woman or a man and what relation such traits have with the human body. Debates typically polarize around the positions of gender essentialism and social constructionism, though both have been shown to have serious limitations. Additionally, theologians have typically approached these debates either by understanding gender as a category for sustained investigation but finding that the tools and virtues of theology are ill-suited for doing so, or by retaining the tools and virtues …

Deliver Us: The New Eve, Coredemption, And The Motherhood Of God, William Glass

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

In what follows, I try to develop a speculative and constructive account of what Christians should say regarding whether and how Mary is a coredemptress, that is, a partner in the redemptive work of her Son. My goal is to clarify what it might mean to say Mary is a coredeemer, why anyone should say that, and what the consequences would be for Christian theology if they did. I take this doctrine to have critical importance not only for the individual loci of Christian theology (many of which are treated within) but for a meta-theological understanding of the God-world relation.

Protest And Politics: A Biographical Theology Of Bayard Rustin, Friendship, Charity, And Economic Justice, Justin Barringer

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

Bayard Rustin is largely an unknown name in theology and ethics, but this dissertation brings him into those conversations with a focus on an ethics of peripatetic friendship as an appropriate response to unjust wealth inequity. I explore how the life of Bayard Rustin, particularly his friendships, was a catalyst for much of the civil rights movement as well as broader justice movements that included charity and economic rights. Rustin, via his friendships, made possible many revolutionary changes in American society and beyond. After examining his life and contributions, I tie his life together with insights from the broader Christian …

Pluralism As A Social Practice: A Pragmatist Approach To Engaging Diversity In Public Life, Mary Leah Friedline

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation lays a theoretical framework for rethinking the ways in which political and moral philosophers conceive pluralism and diversity in public life. I argue that many philosophers who write on the topic do not have a sophisticated understanding of religion, are not sufficiently attentive to historically produced power differentials, and/or do not adequately recognize the intersectional dimensions of diversity. Building on Jeffrey Stout’s notion of democracy as a social practice, and supplemented with Cornel West’s understanding of democratic faith, I use my more complex account of diversity to argue that pluralism is best approached as a social practice, instead …

“Our Heaven Begun Below”: A Contemporary Theology Of Eucharistic Sacrifice In The Wesleyan Tradition, Geoffrey C. Moore

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

In 1984, The United Methodist Church adopted a new eucharistic rite which asserts that Christians “offer ourselves…as a holy and living sacrifice, in union with Christ’s offering for us.” The language of sacrifice employed here is much stronger than that of any of the previous rites used by the Church, or any of its successors, as far back as the first English rite written by Thomas Cranmer. While the Cranmerian rite calls for a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, the new rite calls for the communicant to offer themselves as a “holy and living sacrifice,” a change which calls for …

Ephesians And Ecumenism, Toby Eisenberg

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

Christian ecumenism has made great strides during the twentieth century but is now widely seen as needing a new path. Avery Dulles has proposed an “exchange of gifts” notion of dialogue in which the participant churches share their understanding of the Christian life and all of the reasons they have for holding their particular doctrines and practices, drawing on whatever normative sources they believe are appropriate. The approach enables the participants to bear testimony in love in the hopes that they may better understand and appreciate each other more fully, thereby opening a path to increased doctrinal consensus and thus …

The Unmarried (M)Other: A Study Of Christianity, Capitalism, And Counternarratives Concerning Motherhood And Marriage In The United States And South Africa, Haley Feuerbacher

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

A reified and patriarchal form of Christianity that emphasizes “family values” – that is, adherence to the formula of a male-headed, heterosexual, capitalist, nuclear family, characterized by distinct, complementary, and hierarchical gender roles as essential to the well-being of individuals, one’s nation, and the ecumenical Church - over “community values” has become a happy bedfellow of the market system and neocolonialism, extending its reach worldwide through globalization. The result is that single mothers constitute the most economically oppressed demographic internationally across all race and ethnic categories. Using Constructivist Grounded Theory and a postcolonial feminist theological lens to collect, retell, and …

“Spirited” Engagement: Latin American Faith And The Construction Of Emancipative Pentecostalism, David Luckey

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

Pentecostalism is a prominent form of Christianity around the world that is increasingly pervasive in the Global South. One of the persistent issues that obscures accurate understanding of the movement is the question of whether such a spiritually-oriented faith gives attention to social realities. This dissertation identifies a broad spectrum of Latin America Pentecostal social- ethical engagement in order to complicate stereotypes and reveal a natural orientation toward public witness. It shows that Pentecostalism is too complex for broad generalization, and it draws on leading voices from within the movement to articulate a call to increasing efforts for social justice.

“And They Shall Eat Until They Are Satisfied:” Critical Disability Theory And Widows, Orphans, Aliens, And Levites In The Book Of Deuteronomy, Cheryl Strimple

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation considers the construction of widows, orphans, aliens, and Levites in deuteronomic law. Making use of multiple methodologies, literary criticism, Disability Studies, and food and foodway studies, this study argues that, in Deuteronomy, the members of the formulaic reference, “the alien, the orphan, and the widow,” often associated with “the Levite” operate as cultic functionaries and participate in cultic meals in order to secure stability and continuing abundance in the land for all of Israel.

Augustine's Concept Of Volition And Its Significance For The Doctrine Of Original Sin, Scot Bontrager

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

Augustine has been credited as the inventor of the concept of volition (the will), and yet it is not clear from this claim exactly what his concept of volition is. His understanding of the human person, especially his theory of volition, has had profound implications for much of the theological work which followed. This thesis examines various concepts which influenced Augustine’s notion of volition, contemporary ways of understanding volition, and what Augustine himself believed about it. Since the will is central to Augustine’s description of the human person and the human condition a careful examination of the concept is necessary …

Infertility In 1 Samuel 1: Toward A Hermeneutic Of Reproduction, David A. Schones

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the need for an interpretation of 1 Samuel 1 that is grounded in social-scientific scholarship on infertility. The study analyzes biblical interpretations on 1 Samuel 1 in the five decades that feminist-disability scholarship on infertility has emerged in the social sciences. Accordingly, the exegetical readings analyzed in this study were produced in the same time frame during which feminist-disability scholarship began to be articulated in earnest. The study demonstrates the necessity for interpreting 1 Samuel 1 with social-scientific research on infertility in mind. If such scholarship is not taken into account, biblical readings remain stuck in outdated …

The Church And Social Responsibility: Contributions To Contemporary Social Ethics From The Ecumenical Social Method Of The Oxford Conference On Church, Community, And State Of 1937, Gary B. Macdonald

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

Cultural and political realities, and doctrinal differences among faith traditions challenge unified theological and ecclesial contribution to political dialogue. Within the work of the Oxford Conference of the Universal Christian Council of Life and Work on Church, Community and State of 1937, organized by Joseph Oldham, are elements of an applied understanding of social responsibility, offering resources to enable such contribution. Here, I call this “Oxford Responsibility,” defined as a society in which its members and institutions act in accordance with human value and freedom, in obedience to the will of God, toward the achievement of justice within the limits …

The Installation Of The Human: Whiteness, Religion, And Racial Capitalism, Benjamin Robinson

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

Over the past thirty to forty years, the academic study of religion has brought the category of religion into crisis, unveiling its Christian architecture and its formation as a settler-colonial category of European expansion. While the proliferation of research on the genealogy of religion has opened new and important vantages for study, we remain conflicted about what is at stake. In this dissertation, I argue that the modern-colonial construction of religion is organized by a racial-theological operation that categorically separates people into humans, subhumans, and nonhumans, by which the social, economic, and political inequalities of racial capitalism have been made …

The Apostolic Council Of Jerusalem: Taing-Yinn Tharr (တိုင္း၇င္းသား) Apostleship As Anti-Colonial Existence, Lahpai Shawng Htoi

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

This study of the Jerusalem council in Acts 15 pays special attention to the life of Lucan communities as they attempted to establish co-apostolic existence in the context of first-century Roman imperial expansionism. Taing-Yinn Tharr theory is introduced and deployed to explore the system of domination exercised through apostolic power in the New Testament church and evident in multiple instances of subordination in the Jerusalem deliberation. Taing-Yinn Tharr, developed in Myanmar to accommodate fellow subaltern groups, means “the fellow co-inhabitants of one country of origin” and entails a single united reality that privileges co-existence regardless of multiple, national distinctions …

Christian Political Economy And Economic Science: A Pathway For Interdisciplinary Dialogue, Nathan Mclellan

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation considers two intellectual impediments to interdisciplinary dialogue between Christian theologians, ethicists, and economists: scarcity and the status of economics as a wertfrei science. Using the landmark methodological work of Lionel Robbins, An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economics Science, to frame the discussion, this dissertation seeks to remove these two intellectual impediments to interdisciplinary dialogue by considering three nested questions. They are:

(1) Is scarcity—as defined by Robbins—an accurate description of the world?

(2) If scarcity, as defined by Robbins, is an accurate description of the world, how is this to be justified theologically, and …

Mapping The Nature Of Empire: The Legacy Of Theological Geography In The Early Iberian Atlantic, Ángel Jazak Gallardo

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

This investigation revolves around one central question: if Christianity became the official ideology for sixteenth-century imperial expansion, then how does a theological conception of nature undergird or undermine colonial configurations of knowledge and power? I argue that, in the wake of 1492, Iberian empires racialized religious identity and mapped hemispheric dominion by leveraging a theological geography, that is, a scholastic vision of the natural world.

In Chapter One, I examine the order of nature in late medieval cosmology. By analyzing Fra Mauro’s Mappamundi (c. 1450), I show the ways in which Aristotelian Thomism provides an intellectual framework for subsequent global …

Human Capabilities, Religion, And Rights, Oleg Makariev

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines whether a commitment to human rights is cogent apart from a religious view of life. I identify three distinctive religious criticisms of secular conceptions of human rights, from ultimate meaning, dignity, and comprehensive good, illustrating each through the work of a prominent author, Michael J. Perry, Nicholas Wolterstorff, and Alasdair MacIntyre. The criticism from ultimate meaning focuses on assessing enduring goods and universal solidarity, from dignity on distinct and equal human worth in relation to other species, and from comprehensive good on holistic flourishing, shared reasons, and sources of obligation. I grapple with these criticisms by drawing …

Believing Into Christ: Restoring The Relational Sense Of Belief As Constitutive Of The Christian Faith, Natalya Cherry

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

The beginning phrase of major Christian creeds, Cred(ere) in Deum literally means “to believe into God.” What has been lost in translation of this admittedly awkward construction is the relational sense of active and living belief, fit for the flourishing of human agents who relate to a living and active God. This loss occurred, despite Augustine’s describing this phrase as the culmination of Christian faith, distinct from credere Deo, “to believe God,”[1] and from credere Deum,[2] “to believe that God exists” (which today is taken to be the basic meaning of “believing in God”). Despite the resulting …

My Lover Is Mine And I Am His--The Grazer In The Lilies: A Philosophical-Literary Reading Of The Song Of Songs, Leslie Fuller

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the thesis that the Song of Songs is love poetry that portrays two lovers who are entirely dependent upon each other in constructing their self-identity. Examining the Song in this way illuminates the centrality of their relationship and the specific ways in which it contributes to the self-construction of each lover. The literary methodology of poetics with particular attention to dialogue serves as the backbone of the project. To this are added philosophical developments, primarily from Kenneth Gergen and Judith Butler, concerning the interpersonal construction of the self to further explore the intertwined lovers. The interpersonal characteristics …

Christus Satisfactor: An Anselmian Approach To The Doctrine Of Atonement, David M. Mahfood

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I develop and defend a revised satisfaction account of the Christian doctrine of atonement based primarily on the thought of St. Anselm of Canterbury. The project thus has both a historical and a normative dimension, since I offer an interpretation of Anselm, and then derive from it an account of the atonement as a candidate for how Christians ought to think about and understand what God has accomplished in Christ on our behalf.

I begin, in Chapter 2, by examining the most common way of framing the doctrine of atonement today, which I call the “atonement theory …

Opaque Redemption: Whiteness, Theology, And The Politics Of The Human, Timothy Mcgee

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

Who can save us from redemption? Some of the earliest accounts of the African slave trade claimed that slavery saved those marked by the “perdition” of soul, mind, and body (G. E. de Zurara). Postcolonial critics argue that colonization (F. Fanon), orientalism (E. Said), and even liberal democracy (T. Asad) have operated as violent projects of redemption. At the center of these modern politics of redemption, or of modernity as a project of redemption, is a racial figure of the human, what Sylvia Wynter calls Man. This dissertation, Opaque Redemption: Whiteness, Theology, and the Politics of the Human, …

The Evangelists' Editorial Efforts; Matthean And Lukan Theology Vis-A-Vis A Few, Unique Parables, Benjamin C. Joseph Mr.

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

As an early Church Father and apologist in the 2nd century, Irenaeus contributed greatly to discourse on Christian theology, scripture, and tradition. However Irenaeus could not have been further from the truth when he exclaimed, “The parables will receive a like interpretation from all!”1 Had his prediction proven to be true, perhaps there would not be much to say about the parables in the Christian Gospels. Yet a single, universally accepted interpretation of any one parable did not exist during Jesus’ earthly ministry, and certainly does not exist today. Why, then, does Jesus speak in parables? Why would a religious …