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Full-Text Articles in Comparative Methodologies and Theories

The Media Matrix Of Early Jewish And Christian Literature, Nicholas Andrew Elder Apr 2018

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 …


Image And Virtue In Ambrose Of Milan, Andrew Miles Harmon Jul 2017

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 Apr 2017

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 …


Gary Dorrien, Stanley Hauerwas, Rowan Williams, And The Theological Transformation Of Sovereignties, David Wade Horstkoetter Apr 2016

Gary Dorrien, Stanley Hauerwas, Rowan Williams, And The Theological Transformation Of Sovereignties, David Wade Horstkoetter

Dissertations (1934 -)

Christianity’s political voice in US society is often situated within a simplistic binary of social justice versus faithfulness. Gary Dorrien and Stanley Hauerwas, respectively, represent the two sides of the binary in their work. Although the justice-faithfulness narrative is an important point of disagreement, it has also created a categorical impasse that does not reflect the full depth and complexity of either Dorrien’s or Hauerwas’s work. Their concerns for both justice and faithfulness differ only in part because of their different responses to liberalism and liberal theology. Under all those issues are rival accounts of relational truth that indicate divergent …


The Kingdom Of God And The Holy Spirit: Eschatology And Pneumatology In The Vineyard Movement, Douglas R. Erickson Jul 2015

The Kingdom Of God And The Holy Spirit: Eschatology And Pneumatology In The Vineyard Movement, Douglas R. Erickson

Dissertations (1934 -)

This dissertation explores the relationship between eschatology and pneumatology in the Vineyard movement. The Vineyard movement is a growing expression within the evangelical Protestant tradition that seeks to combine the core doctrines of Evangelicalism with the experience of the gifts of the Spirit that is often associated with Pentecostalism. As a relatively new faith expression, the Vineyard has not received a great deal of academic interest, and thus much of its core theological commitments have not yet been explored. I shall argue that the central theological distinctive of the Vineyard is their understanding of the inaugurated, enacted, eschatological kingdom of …


Seeing Two Worlds: The Eschatological Anthropology Of The Joint Declaration On The Doctrine Of Justification, Jakob Karl Rinderknecht Apr 2015

Seeing Two Worlds: The Eschatological Anthropology Of The Joint Declaration On The Doctrine Of Justification, Jakob Karl Rinderknecht

Dissertations (1934 -)

The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, signed in 1999 by the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church, represents the high-water mark of the twentieth-century ecumenical movement. It declared that the sixteenth-century condemnations related to the central question of the Reformation do not apply to the theology of the partner church today. This declaration rests on a differentiated consensus on justification that emerged over forty years of bilateral dialogue. Within this consensus, Lutheran and Roman Catholic theologies of justification, while different and possibly even incompatible, need not be understood as contradictory. This claim has proven to be …


The Unsettled Church: The Search For Identity And Relevance In The Ecclesiologies Of Nicholas Healy, Ephraim Radner, And Darrell Guder, Emanuel D. Naydenov Apr 2015

The Unsettled Church: The Search For Identity And Relevance In The Ecclesiologies Of Nicholas Healy, Ephraim Radner, And Darrell Guder, Emanuel D. Naydenov

Dissertations (1934 -)

This dissertation examines the efforts of three contemporary theologians whose work is a part of the search for a new methodology for doing ecclesiology located on the continuum between the Church's identity and relevance. They are the Catholic theologian Nicholas Healy, Anglican theologian Ephraim Radner, and Presbyterian theologian Darrell Guder. They come to the subject matter from different ecclesiological backgrounds, and, as such, their work can be taken as representative in as much as it stands for their unique efforts to theologize within their own traditions and contexts. By critiquing and analyzing their proposals I will bring them into dialog …