Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons^™

Palliyogam: A Vibrant Legacy Of The Syro-Malabar Archiepiscopal Church, Dery Davis

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article explores the historic inheritance of the Palliyogam of the sui iuris Syro-Malabar Major Archiepiscopal Church, focusing on its role in maintaining synodality in ecclesial life. Palliyogam, a parish assembly, has been the cornerstone of ecclesial communion among Malabar Christians for centuries. As Pope Francis inaugurates the three-year synod on synodality, this study examines how Palliyogam aligns with this synodal vision. The article delves into both the ancient form of Palliyogam and its present-day manifestation, shedding light on their theology and role in governance and decision-making within the Syro-Malabar tradition. The article emphasizes that synodality is already inherent …

Editor's Introduction, Mathew Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

Introduction by Founding Editor, Mathew N. Schmalz to Graduate Symposium II.

The Transformative Preaching And Teaching Of The Old Testament Through Its Expositional Approach, Sony Olivier

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The aura of the Old Testament preaching and teaching today has been absorbed by the enthusiasm of its fulfillment in the New. Thus, the interest in exploiting the Old Testament principles as fulfilled in Christ through its expositional preaching and teaching needs to be revised. As revealed in the book of Acts, the commitment to preach the complete Word of God, the Old Testament, is vividly clear as Christ being the center of their preaching and teaching. Therefore, in today’s context, proclaiming the whole counsel of God’s Word calls for every preacher to consider Scripture in its entirety duly, from …

The Resurrection And The Witness, Michael A. Thomas

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The thesis project aims to educate and equip New Life Christian Church (NLCC) and Eagle View Christian School (EVCS) leaders to use biblically fundamental arguments and theories about Christ’s Resurrection to defend its merits against contemporary cultural objections. The study employed the quantitative design method to gather information through a survey utilizing open and closed-ended questions with a convenient sample of thirty-eight participants from the NLCC and EVCS population. As leaders teach, others become effective witnesses of Christ’s Resurrection, equipping them to implement the teachings of Mathew 28:19-20 and 1 Peter 3:15 in their witness and defense of the gospel’s …

Unmerited Inheritance: An Exposition Of The Twelve Divine Elements, Fulfillment, And Typology Of Yahweh’S Tithe To Levi, Noble Sokolosky

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This dissertation seeks to advance the academy’s conversation about the Mosaic tithe ordinance by providing the first published reconciliation of what many scholars consider irreconcilable statutes. It does so by providing the first published exposition of the twelve divine elements of Yahweh’s sacred tithe against the land sabbatical and Jubilee statutes. Unless scholars can agree upon its divine elements, there is little hope for unity and progress towards edifying the saints with the typology of Yahweh’s inheritance tithe to Levi (Num 18:26).

Vulnerability In Times Of War: The Necessity Of The Moral Third, Hille Haker

Theology: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Vulnerability as a critique of the one-sidedness of the principle of autonomy is at risk of overemphasizing the positive dimension of vulnerability. Moreover, in the discourse on vulnerability, the threat of dehumanization (or moral vulnerability) has not been scrutinized enough ethically. Therefore, the ethics of vulnerability is insufficient when faced with the force of war that requires the conceptualization of vulnerability for political-ethics. The Russian war in Ukraine demonstrates this weakness in a striking way: the called-for openness to the other as well as an active form of nonviolence, as promoted by Judith Butler, may not be an option in …

Is "Divine Hiddenness" Evidence For Atheism? A Response To J. L. Schellenberg, Jim Beilby

Day of Scholarship

The problem of divine hiddenness is an objection to Christianity that claims that a perfectly loving God would make his existence more obvious than it, in fact, is. The philosopher, J. L. Schellenberg has argued extensively there are some people who fall into the category of "non-resistant nonbelievers," people who desire to believe in and be in relationship with God, but who cannot due to the lack of evidence for God's existence. Schellenberg argues that the existence of non-resistant nonbelievers is incompatible with God's being perfectly loving and all-powerful. In response, I argue that even if there are nonresistant nonbelievers, …

The Problem Of Religious Peer Disagreement: A Response To Harold Netland, Jim Beilby

Day of Scholarship

The problem of religious peer disagreement is this: suppose there are people that are your "epistemic peers" - they are just as intelligent, informed, and sincere as you - but they reject your religious beliefs. Does the existence of skeptical epistemic peers force Christians to withhold or evidentially support their religious beliefs? In this paper, I critique Harold Netland's work on religious peer disagreement on three fronts: (1) his identification of epistemic peers, (2) his understanding of the epistemic implications of religious peer disagreement, and (3) the viability of his demand for additional evidence as a response to instances of …

Japan, Anime, And Theology, Kaz Hayashi

Day of Scholarship

This poster presents two publications related to Japan, anime, and theology. While each publication is different, they both ask “How do Japanese anime and popular culture reflect the beliefs of the people, and how can we view these beliefs from a biblical theological lens?” The book Anime, Philosophy, and Religion explores the diversity of anime themes and content by an international group of scholars. The article “Holograms and Idols: The Image of God and Artificial Transcendence in the Cultural Phenomenon of the Japanese Vocaloid Hatsune Miku” argues how the popularity of hologram concerts reflects the universal human desire for a …

Tolkien Dogmatics: Theology Through Mythology With The Maker Of Middle-Earth By Austin M. Freeman, Alex (Oleksiy) Ostaltsev

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

The powerful and highly informative definitions that Freeman applies to Tolkien’s Middle-earth phenomenon in the title of his book create a productive interpretational framework. Myth and mythology in Inklings’ writing were always understood, in an almost Jungian way, as a cultural paradigm flexible enough to embrace the free creativity of the playful human mind and a philosophical postulate, or credo, of the humanistic religious intuition of Christianity. In Freeman’s interpretation, Tolkien’s literary myth in some ways requires a theological background, which, in its turn, leads to inevitable dogma, a statement that reveals the sensitive mechanics of literary myth as it …

Otherworldly But Not The Otherworld: Tolkien’S Adaptation Of Medieval Faerie And Fairies Into A Sub-Creative Elvendom, Elliott Thomas Collins

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Through a comparative analysis of Lothlorien and the medieval stories of Lanval and Sir Orfeo, this article attempts to shed some light on how the inherently pessimistic and recursive nature of Tolkien's sub-creation affects his adaptation of medieval Faerie into a sub-creative elvendom born of the creative instincts of the elves. In doing so, the article also questions Tolkien's adherence to parameters of Faerie and characteristics of elves as laid out in OFS.

Artificial Intelligence And Human Hope, Michael Paulus

SPU Works

Slides from a book talk at Folio: The Seattle Atheneum on Artificial Intelligence and the Apocalyptic Imagination: Artificial Agency and Human Hope.

A Research Into The Influence Of Jewish Priests, Scribes, And Canonical And Non-Canonical Jewish Apocalyptic Literature On M Materials, Rajesh Sebastian

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

M materials refer to any content in Matthew that is not found in Mark and Luke and hence considered to be not part of the hypothetical Q. Questions are raised regarding the source and historical reliability of M materials. Many scholars consider M narratives to be fictional. Research work has been lacking among Matthean scholars to identify a source for M narratives. The primary goal of this research is to identify the Jewish priests as a plausible source of some M narratives. The research also attempts to unravel the reason for the Jewish apocalyptic influence on M materials and argues …

Archaeology And Hauntology: An Ongoing, Stalled Conversation, Colby Dickinson

Theology: Faculty Publications and Other Works

It is certainly possible that we might learn to better acknowledge the spirits of our ancestors who came before us, as well as to recognize them in such ways that we also learn to embrace the ‘woven density’ of our own lives, our histories and our communities. By doing so, we might begin to discover that the spirits we had thought were removed from our modern, secularized world never fully left us, just as the irrationality of our humanity cannot be fully tamed via a reductive, rational and scientific outlook on life. There are, as Bruno Latour had frequently argued, …

Japanese-English Translation: Nishida Kitarō––“Self-Determination Of The Eternal Now” 「永遠の今の自己限定」、西田幾多郎著（昭和六年七月） (July 1931) §1 Of 4; Complete Draft (Supersedes Draft Of 2 Jan 19); Translated By Christopher Southward; Revision And Expansion Underway, Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty Scholarship

Japanese-English Translation: Nishida Kitarō––“Self-Determination of the Eternal Now” (July 1931) 「永遠の今の自己限定」、西田幾多郎著（昭和六年七月）

§1 of 4; Complete Draft (Supersedes Draft of 2 Jan 2019)

Translated from the Japanese by Christopher Southward; Revision and Expansion Underway, October 2023

Reframing Space: Religion, History, And Memory In The Early Documentary Film Of The Yugoslav Space, Milja Radovic

Journal of Religion & Film

This paper examines cinematic representations of religion and religious communities in the early cinema of the Yugoslav space. This paper introduces the readers to the rich heritage of the cinema of the Yugoslav space by providing 1) the first study of the representations of religion and the concepts of faith in the early film, and 2) novel approaches in reading religion and history through film. Film is used as a primary rather than supplementary source in historical research on diverse religious and ethnic communities in this part of the Balkan Peninsula. This is the first study that investigates the importance, …

Peele’S Black, Extraterrestrial, Naturalistic Critique Of Religion, Jonathan D. Lyonhart

Journal of Religion & Film

While Jordan Peele’s films have always held their mysteries close to the chest, they eventually granted their viewers some climactic clarity. Get Out (2017) used an 1980s style orientation video to clear up its neuroscientific twist, while Us (2019) had Lupita Nyongo’s underworld twin narratively spell out the details of the plot. Yet Nope (2022) refuses to show its hand even after the game is over, never illuminating the connection between its opening scene and the broader film, nor a myriad of other questions. As such, critics complained that it stitched together two seemingly incongruent plots without explanation; one where …

Unruly Ideas: A History Of Kitawala In Congo, Nicole Eggers

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

Original oral and ethnographic sources inform this conceptual history of power in central Africa, imagined through the lens of Kitawala religious practices.

Unruly Ideas: A History of Kitawala in Congo recounts the multifaceted history of the Congolese religious movement Kitawala from its colonial beginnings in the 1920s through its continued practice in some of the most conflict-riven parts of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo today. Drawing on a rich body of original oral, ethnographic, and archival research, Nicole Eggers uses Kitawala as a lens through which to address the complex relationship between politics, religion, healing, and violence in central …

Christ The Preeminent, Firstborn, And King - Colossians 1:13-20, Elisabeth Nieshalla

Biblical Studies Student Projects

Who is the Son of God? Jesus Christ is the obvious central figure in the New Testament, which consists of four distinct accounts of his life and ministry and numerous other books and epistles pointing others to follow and give their lives to him. Reading through the Old Testament, however, Christ the Son, the second person of the Trinity, seems to be strangely absent, at least upon first glance. In Colossians 1:13-20, though, the apostle Paul helps us to see the creative and redemptive role of Christ from the beginning, displaying his divine nature, supremacy and authority over all of …

The Lord's Providence To Work Evil For Good - Genesis 50:15-21, Elisabeth Nieshalla

Biblical Studies Student Projects

Genesis, the great first book of the Bible, concludes with a redemptive and reconciliatory scene between Joseph and his brothers that strikes the heart of those. Joseph had endured much hardship at the hands of his brothers, having been sold by them into Egyptian slavery and then thrown into prison when he was falsely accused of sexual assault by Potiphar’s wife. Through it all, however, he remained faithful to God and was entrusted with authority over all of Egypt to lead them through a famine that would have otherwise devastated the entire region. This scene in Genesis 50 testifies to …