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“The Light Of Certain Belief” – Orthodoxy Versus Innovation According To Abū Ḥāmid Al-Ghazālī’S Al-Risāla Al-Qudsiyyah, Thomas Robinson

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the question of Islamic orthodoxy in the thought of Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī, with particular attention to his Risāla al-Qudsiyya and its place within his wider intellectual and reformative project. It begins by exploring concepts of orthodoxy and heterodoxy across the Christian and Islamic traditions, arguing that orthodoxy emerges through processes of interpretation, doctrinal conflict, boundary formation, and communal consensus. Islamic orthodoxy is understood as the historically consolidated mainstream of belief rooted in the Qurʾān, the Sunnah, the authority of the early community, and the scholarly tradition.

The central argument of the thesis is that al-Ghazālī conceives of …

Sufism At The Service Of Ḥadīth Commentary: Re-Framing Al-Kalābādhī'S Baḥr Al-FawāʾId In Fourth-Tenth Century Transoxiana, Fadhil Yunus Alsagoff

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Abū Bakr al-Kalābādhī’s (d. 380/990) understudied ḥadīth commentary, the Baḥr al-fawāʾid al-mashhūr bi-maʿānī al-akhbār. The first Anglophone study of the text as a whole, this thesis situates itself within the emergent literature on ḥadīth commentaries and challenges the prevailing scholarly tendency to reduce Sufi-authored commentarial texts to the ishārī method of interpretation and to treat them solely as repositories of Sufi themes. This thesis argues that, contrary to current perceptions of the text as primarily a work of Sufism, the Baḥr al-fawaʾid is first and foremost a work of ḥadīth commentary, its main intent being to …

The Non-Biblical Source Of Medieval Usury Prohibitions, Phil Gramm, Patrick Gray, Robert B. Ekelund

Journal of New Finance

Ecclesiastical and secular prohibitions of usury—often equated with any charging of interest on a loan—and their impact on commerce and economic progress in medieval Europe have long been recognized. In this paper we revisit one aspect of the debate, namely, the use of the ancient philosophical sources and the biblical texts by ancient and medieval writers. On the basis of a close reading of the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30) and a review of the secondary literature devoted to it, we argue that in the New Testament Jesus attaches no moral stigma to moneylending. It is therefore surprising that …

A Wicked Humanity Original Sin In The Theology Of John Wesley And Jonathan Edwards, Vincent Andrew Sullivan

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The source of human wickedness is not in a fault in our education, but a fault in our nature. Ignorance is not the root of human depravity; rather, there is an innate propensity in the human soul to gravitate, not towards the light, but towards the darkness. This truth, i.e., the doctrine of Original Sin, was fiercely maintained in the 18th century by John Wesley, the Father of Methodism, and by Jonathan Edwards, the last of the Puritans. Both of these men each wrote a large treatise on this same topic matter, that of Original Sin, and for the same …

A Metaphysical Analysis Of Theological Language: Can We Talk About God?, Kenneth R. Marple

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The possibility of meaningful theological language presents a longstanding problem in philosophy of religion and Christian theology. Because human language is finite and creaturely while God is infinite and transcendent, questions arise concerning how human beings can make meaningful and truthful claims about God. Traditional accounts of univocal, equivocal, and analogical predication address aspects of this problem but often leave a more fundamental metaphysical question unresolved: what must language be for it to meaningfully signify reality? This dissertation provides a metaphysical analysis of theological language by examining the ontological foundations of language and its relationship to reality. Through qualitative, interdisciplinary …

The Great Bridge: A Congregational Engagement Intervention For The Local Church, India C. Barnes

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This dissertation-in-praxis addressed a documented gap between the stated mission of New Beginnings Ministry of Faith, Hope, and Love (NBM) and the lived engagement patterns of its members. Although the church articulated a vision of Spirit-led community grounded in discipleship, fellowship, and service, participation outside of weekly worship remained limited. The intervention, titled The Great Bridge, was grounded in Acts 2:42–47 as a biblical model of participatory church life and in social capital theory, which highlights the role of relational networks in generating communal outcomes (Claridge, 2018a, 2018b; Putnam 2000a, 2000b). The Great Bridge was a structured 16-week congregational engagement …

Closing The Gap Between Pastoral Responsibility And Mental Health Preparedness, Robert Lee Lytle Jr

Masters Theses

Faith communities increasingly encounter significant mental health needs among congregants, yet many pastors and ministry leaders remain underprepared to respond effectively within their pastoral scope. This Dissertation-in-Praxis addressed the persistent gap between the growing prevalence of mental health challenges in faith-based contexts and the limited leadership preparedness required to provide informed, ethical, and integrated pastoral care. This researcher defined the theological, organizational, and contextual dimensions of the problem, identifying stigma, insufficient pastoral training, and fragmented referral practices as primary contributors to the divide between responsibility and preparedness. Grounded in interdisciplinary scholarship at the intersection of spirituality, leadership, and mental health, …

Beethoven, Caspar Peucer’S Commentarius, And Enchanted Nature, Nicholas Chong

The Beethoven Journal

The posthumous inventory of Beethoven’s library includes a late Renaissance treatise by Caspar Peucer (1525–1602) entitled Commentarius de præcipuis generibus divinationum (Commentary on the main types of divination). Peucer’s text is concerned mainly with methods of predicting the future through such practices as magic, astrology, and the reading of oracles. Neither Peucer nor his treatise is mentioned in any other source associated with Beethoven. The composer also had a limited knowledge of Latin and his copy of Peucer’s text was more than two centuries old.

Previous scholarship has not explored Beethoven’s ownership of this book in any detail, except to …

Islamic Finance And Money Creation: SharīʿAh Issues And A Reform Proposal, Abdullah Al-Sulami, Ayman Saleh

Journal of King Abdulaziz University: Islamic Economics

This study highlights a fundamental problem confronting Islamic banking, namely the dominance of debt-based contracts, such as Murābaḥah and Tawarruq, at the expense of genuine partnership-based contracts, particularly Mushārakah and Muḍārabah. This dominance has, in turn, given rise to persistent criticism concerning the Shariah legitimacy of Islamic banking products. The study proceeds from the premise that this departure from the objectives (maqāṣid) of Islamic economics is not merely a technical or managerial choice, but rather an inevitable consequence of Islamic banks operating within a fractional reserve banking system and their inherent involvement in the mechanism of …

Cloud: Between Paris And Tehran: Kiarostami/Corbin/Lacan, Heba Arafa Abdelfattah

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Joan Copjec, Cloud: Between Paris and Tehran: Kiarostami/Corbin/Lacan (MIT Press, 2025).

Nothing Is As It Should Be: Estrangement, Threshold-Crossings, And Cosmic Struggle In David Lynch’S Blue Velvet And Lost Highway, Susanne Wigorts Yngvesson

Journal of Religion & Film

This article examines estrangement as a structuring existential and aesthetic principle in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986) and Lost Highway (1997). Through close, plot-attentive readings intended to remain accessible to readers unfamiliar with Lynch, it argues that the films stage three interlocking dynamics: becoming a stranger to oneself, the fracturing of the ‘ground’ of ordinary existence, and life as a cosmic struggle in which human agency is partial and contested. Paul Tillich’s The Courage to Be provides the main theological–philosophical lens, clarifying how anxiety, non-being and courage shape scenes of desire, violence and transformation. Film-theoretical work on thresholds and cinematic …

Moving On: Purgatorial Seriality And Unanswered Prayer In Lost’S “Ab Aeterno”, Christian Wilken

Journal of Religion & Film

“Ab Aeterno” (Lost, 6.09) distills the series’ religious logic with unusual explicitness by staging theodicy not as doctrine but as narrative procedure. This article argues that the episode converts Catholic sacramental form (confession, absolution, and penitential address) into a serial ethics of endurance in which closure is structurally deferred. Richard Alpert’s confession establishes a subject who seeks an authorized word that would stabilize suffering, yet the priest’s refusal (“I can’t”) installs a theology of unanswered prayer that becomes the template for Richard’s long durée of waiting. Jacob’s “cork” parable then supplies a katechontic justification of restraint: evil is not abolished …

Between Icon And State: Sergei Eisenstein's Ivan The Terrible, Milja Radovic

Journal of Religion & Film

Remembering the 80th anniversary of Sergei Eisenstein’s film Иван Грозный (Ivan the Terrible, 1944/1945), it is crucial to re-examine Eisenstein’s work, including his last film that became an unintentional ‘testament’ to cinema. Eisenstein’s mastery has been pivotal for understanding cinema and film language, the way this language operates, constructs and deconstructs and communicates historical realities. This paper focuses on a film that was made in two parts, Part I in 1944 and part II in 1945, to investigate Eisenstein’s approach to the subject of history, nation and religion. The research considers how this master of cinema contemplated intricate ideas and …

Affirmative Transcendence: The Ethics Of Mazu And The Internal Expansion Of The Confucian Moral Imagination, Yu Pei

Journal of Religion & Film

This paper proposes and defends the concept of affirmative transcendence through a systematic analysis of the 2012 Chinese television drama Mazu (38 episodes, CCTV). Affirmative transcendence names a structure in which the protagonist achieves sacred status (shen 神) not by negating her human relationships but by maintaining them while exhibiting a mode of moral perception that exceeds the limits of role-based ethics. The paper argues that what is analytically distinctive about this structure is its internal character: the tradition is not rejected but exceeded, and the exceeding is accomplished through resources the tradition itself provides. The paper identifies two …

A Metaphorical Passage To God: Simone Weil And Robert Bresson, V. G. Voigt Hogg Phd

Journal of Religion & Film

VOIGT HOGG_Abstract (REVISED)_Journal of Religion & Film_30 April 2026

This article contrasts the metaphysical and religious philosopher Simone Weil’s concepts of attachment and detachment with auteur director Robert Bresson’s method of subtraction. It argues for a commonality in their philosophy and cinema, that guides the reader or viewer respectively, to perceive a metaphorical passage to God through the lived experience of suffering. The article considers by what means does Weil and Bresson share a mutual commitment to understanding the state of the soul in affliction, while also acknowledging an opposition in the interpretation of detachment in relation to suicide. The …

Documenting The Ineffable: A Comparative Analysis Of Mystical Representation In Kimiavi’S The Garden Of Stones And Western Sufi Documentary, Hessam Abedini

Journal of Religion & Film

This article examines how documentary film attempts to represent mystical experience through comparative analysis of Parviz Kimiavi's The Garden of Stones (1976) and American documentaries featuring Samuel Lewis, particularly Sunseed (1973). Rather than assuming terms like "sacred" or "authentic," the study grounds its analysis in empirical definitions from William James, historical scholarship by Carl Ernst and Annemarie Schimmel, and literary theory from Fatemeh Keshavarz. Through detailed examination of specific scenes—Darvish Khan hanging stones from dead trees, Lewis leading ecstatic dances—the article demonstrates how different cinematic strategies approach documentary's epistemological limits when confronting ineffable experience.

The analysis corrects historical misunderstandings about …

Church-Based Qualitative Research, David R. Dunaetz

Great Commission Research Journal

Qualitative research is collecting, analyzing, and interpreting subjective data to answer an important research question. It can be contrasted with quantitative research, which focuses on collecting numerical (relatively objective) data to test specific hypotheses. It is an attractive form of research in church contexts because it does not require training in statistics and can be conducted in almost all ministry settings. It is especially appropriate for topics that are under-researched, poorly understood, or involve concepts that are difficult to measure. Common problems associated with church-based qualitative research include overly broad research questions, weak descriptions of what has been observed, shallow …

Powerful Pulpits: Black Preachers As Cultish Leaders In The Axman Murders, 1909-1912, Lauren N. Henley

Interdisciplinary Journal of Leadership Studies

Southwestern Louisiana and southeastern Texas experienced a series of disturbingly similar ax murders from November 1909 to August 1912. In nearly every case, a black family living within a mile of the Sunset Limited line of the Southern Pacific Railroad was brutally slaughtered in their own home, victims of a surreptitious assailant. Eventually, a young black woman would take credit for some of the crimes, ushering in the language of “religious fanaticism” as a potential motive. This confession sparked an intense period of criminalization of black male preachers, with a particular focus on Pentecostal leaders in southwestern Louisiana. This article …

How The Spiritan Mission And Spirituality Can Bring Hope Today, Igono Abel Raphael Cssp

Spiritan Horizons

No abstract provided.

A Spirit-Led Movement: From Missionary Sending To Lay Vocation: The Development Of Lay Spiritans In The United States (1965–2026), John Hansen Phd, Anne Marie Witchger Hansen Phd

Spiritan Horizons

No abstract provided.

The Dynamics Of Hospitality: A Paradigm For Promoting And Doing Authentic Catholic Theologies, Gregory Olikenyi Cssp

Spiritan Horizons

No abstract provided.

Whose Mind Is It Anyway? A Phenomenological Reflection On The Experience Of Spiritan Christian Thinking, Jeffrey Mccurry Phd

Spiritan Horizons

No abstract provided.

Continuing The Quest For Morality Truly Christian, Truly African: The Achievement Of Paulinus Odozor, C.S.Sp. Edited By Maurice Agbaw-Ebai And Matthew Levering. South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine’S Press, 2025. Xiii + 391 Pages. $36., James Chukwuma Okoye Cssp

Spiritan Horizons

No abstract provided.

Sanctified Rhythms Of Rest: Reclaiming Sabbath And Spiritual Retreat For Pastoral Renewal And Burnout Mitigation In The Georgia Assemblies Of God, Philip Sosebee

Doctor of Ministry (DMin)

“Sanctified Rhythms of Rest: Reclaiming Sabbath and Spiritual Retreat for Pastoral Renewal and Burnout Mitigation in the Georgia Assemblies of God” explored how intentional rhythms of Sabbath observance, solitude and silence, and spiritual retreat shaped the lived experiences of credentialed ministers within the Georgia District of the Assemblies of God. Pastoral burnout, emotional exhaustion, and unsustainable ministry expectations continue to affect ministers across denominational contexts, raising questions regarding the role of biblically grounded rhythms of rest in fostering pastoral renewal and sustainability. Using a six-month longitudinal hermeneutic phenomenological design, twenty-nine credentialed ministers participated in the intentional practice of weekly Sabbath …

Brief Of Professors Mark Storslee, John Meiser, Douglas Laycock, Nathan Chapman, Thomas Berg, Christopher Lund, Michael Helfand, Steven Collis, Meredith Kessler, Carl Esbeck, John Inazu, Asma Uddin, Christopher Hampson, And Kathleen Brady As Amici Curiae In Support Of Petitioners, Mark Storslee, John A. Meiser, Meredith Holland Kessler

Court Briefs

No. 26-257
Mara Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District

On Petition for Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit

From the Summary of Argument

For more than seventy years, this Court has made clear that a state “may not coerce anyone ... to take religious instruction” or use public schools to “force ... religion on any person.” Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306, 314 (1952). For good reason. Doing so advances one of the “true evil[s] of religious establishment" that Founding-era Americans rejected: “the use of government power” to foster “uniformity …

Vol. 6 Issue 2 (April 1910)

Inasmuch

No abstract provided.

Vol. 5 Issue 8 (Oct 1909)

Inasmuch

No abstract provided.

Vol. 5 Issue 4 (June 1909)

Inasmuch

No abstract provided.

Vol. 5 Issue 3 (May 1909)

Inasmuch

No abstract provided.

Vol. 4 Issue 12 (Feb 1909)

Inasmuch

No abstract provided.