Arts and Humanities Commons^™

"When The Eternal Can Be Met": Bergsonian Time In The Theologies Of C.S. Lewis, T.S. Eliot, And W.H. Auden, James Corey Latta

Dissertations

C. S. Lewis, T. S. Eliot, and W. H. Auden all converted to the Christian faith and, upon conversion, turned to the theme of time in their post-conversion works. Interestingly, these Christian authors employed the secular philosophical framework of Henri Bergson’s theory of duration to construct their theologies of time. As texts fostered by Bergson’s ideas of intuition, the dualistic self, and durative force, Lewis’s The Great Divorce, Eliot’sFour Quartets, and Auden’s “Kairos and Logos” are theological works that depict time as an agent.

Rowan Williams And Mikhail Bakhtin: The Appeal Of Polyphony, Antony N. Gremaud

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis explores the relationship between Rowan Williams and Mikhail Bakhtin, especially Bakhtin’s notion of polyphony. This thesis traces the presence of the polyphonic approach in Williams’ work to three main issues: the debate around the nature and future of the Anglican Communion, the debate around the place of Christianity in the increasingly secular modern West and the debate around the nature of faith presented in the works of Dostoevsky. Adopting Bakhtin’s polyphonic approach, Williams sees the need for an on-going conversation, one that argues for the equality of voices within a conversation, one that resists the impulse toward closure …

Dominus Mortis: Martin Luther On The Incorruptibility Of God In Christ, David Luy

Dissertations (1934 -)

Contemporary literature broadly presupposes that Luther's Christology represents a definitive course correction within Christian reflection upon the doctrine of God. The hinge point of Luther's innovation, according to this understanding, resides in his apparent endorsement of a mutual transfer of predicates between the divine and human nature of Christ. This mutuality represents a significant radicalization of pre-existing theological opinion, which is content to affirm the statement `God suffers', for instance, only in the carefully restricted sense that Christ (who happens to be divine) suffers according to His human nature. According to this more traditional explanation, it is not the divinity …

The Church And The Mediation Of Grace: A Reformed Perspective On Ordained Ministry And The Threefold Office Of Christ, Michael Joe Matossian

Dissertations (1934 -)

This dissertation explores the relationship between grace, the church, ordained church offices, and the threefold office of Christ (munus triplex). The goal is to discern, in what ways and in what senses, we can speak of the mediation of grace through the church while maintaining a Reformed theological commitment to the principle that Christ alone is Mediator. Chapter one seeks to establish that Reformed doctrine regards the church both as locus and instrument of grace including the fact that the ordained offices are instruments of grace. Chapter two offers a definition of the concept of mediator, introduces categories of mediation, …

Toward A Dialogical Hermeneutic Of A Hindu-Christian: A Socio-Scientific Study Of Nepali Immigrants In Toronto, Surya Prasad Acharya

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In search of a hermeneutic that is dialogical, transcending one’s own realm of understanding to give enough space to the other, the theory of dialogical self provides a framework which is not only able to engage mutually incompatible traditions but inculcates a whole new insight into considering that the other is not completely external to the self. One of the most significant features of theory of dialogical self is that it is devised in the conviction that insight into the workings of the human self requires cross-fertilization between different fields. The thesis therefore employs social-psychology, religious studies, inter-cultural studies, theology …

Approaching Christianity: Exploring The Tragic Impact Of Greek Philosophical Thought On Christian Thought, Tammy Galvan-Barnett

M.A. in Political Theory Theses

This study explores the impact of Greek philosophical thought on Christian thought. I argue that Greek dualism is the fundamental contradiction in Christian thought creating problems for the doctrines of Christianity and ultimately thwarting a biblical approach to Christianity. From the early days of Christianity, Greek philosophy became absorbed into Christian thinking. Christian theology is often incorrectly interpreted through Platonic metaphysics. Platonic Christianity distinguishes between sacred and secular realms of the cosmos and devalues physical things. Furthermore, the tragedy is not only that Greek philosophy has had such a profound impact on Christianity, but also that its influence is still …

Frank Lloyd Wright: Influences And Worldview, Brock Stafford

M.A. in Philosophy of History Theses

Wright was uniquely qualified to see the changing face of America. Born two years after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the end of the Civil War, Wright lived to nearly ninety-two years of age. During his lifetime, he lived through the American Industrial Revolution, both World Wars, the Wright Brothers flight, the invention of television.... Architecturally, he straddles the gap between the neoclassical period of the 19th century, marked by the admiration of Greek and Roman architecture, and the modernism of the 20th. Philosophically, he was a product of the early 19th century Romanticism, but followed his own, often …

Extending Story Listening As A Practice Of Communal Formation At The Lake Orion Church Of Christ, Eric R. Magnusson

Doctor of Ministry Theses

This doctor of ministry thesis presents the results of a project that explores the potential for extending a practice of story listening as a way of forming community across social circles at the Lake Orion Church of Christ in Lake Orion, Michigan. The intervention involved guiding a group of six participant-researchers, each of whom had previous experience in story listening, through six sessions in the fall of 2011. Each phase of the project was informed by a participatory social Trinitarian theology. The first three sessions were designed to empower participant-researcher pairs to facilitate story listening groups of four to five …

Deronda And The Tigress: Judaism, Buddhism, And Universal Compassion In George Eliot’S Daniel Deronda, Joshua Frank Moats

Masters Theses

Many scholars have discussed Judaism and the ethics of George Eliot in Daniel Deronda, but few have explored the impact of Buddhism upon the novel. This thesis is the first study to demonstrate the influence of Buddhism upon George Eliot's fiction. By tracing Eliot's interest in the emerging field of comparative religion, I argue that Buddhism offered Eliot a unique religion that was compatible with her secular humanism. Although Buddhism appears explicitly in Deronda in only a few instances, I contend that Eliot uses the tradition of Jewish mysticism known as Kabbalism as the predominant theology in Deronda because …

A Comparison Of The Kenotic Trinitarian Theology Of Hans Urs Von Balthasar And Sergei Bulgakov, Katy Leamy

Dissertations (1934 -)

Vital to Balthasar’s own articulation of the dogmas of the Incarnation and the Trinity is the kenotic Trinitarian theology of Sergei Bulgakov. The ways in which Balthasar both incorporates and modifies Bulgakov's Trinitarian theology provide an insight into his overarching theological agenda. My dissertation argues that Sergei Bulgakov, a 20th century Russian Orthodox theologian, is an important resource for Balthasar, directly and indirectly influencing key doctrinal points as well as the overall shape and direction of his theological project. This dissertation explores how Balthasar employs and adapts the thought of Sergei Bulgakov, with the Trinitarian theology of Thomas Aquinas to …

Bottom-Up Methodologies In Emerging Models, Thomas S. Cahoon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The post-modern turn in the millennial generation has prompted a response toward religious and organizational authorities, whose organizations do not keep with the changing demand of post-modern individuals. The shift in preferences is marked by a movement from top-down hierarchical models, toward a de-centralized, bottom-up style demonstrated in recent movements. This paper examines the shift of doctrine and praxis within the American evangelical church and a simultaneous development of new methodologies in social justice organizations in these response movements.

Conversion Theory Through The Cognitive Science Of Religion Lense In A Christian-Muslim Context, Jennifer A. Garcia

Scripps Senior Theses

The Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR) in recent years is beginning to become more popular. This project evolves around the development of the field as well as critiques of the field. Because of the interdisciplinary nature of CSR, it lends an interesting way to understand religion as well as religious experiences. One of those religious experiences, conversion, is examined and explored through the use of conversion narratives from western women who were formally Christian but converted to Islam. Many themes arise out of this research that paves the way for trying to understand religious experiences. Overall, the project focuses on …

The Sacramental Theology Of John Owen And John Calvin, David Van Eyk

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis compares the theology of the Lord's Supper in the Reformed theologians John Owen (1616-1683) and John Calvin (1509-1564), and addresses the differences discerned between the two. The argument is that the Federal theology which undergirded Owen's theology led him to develop a problematic theology. Owen's theology of the Lord's Supper focuses attention on the atonement and on covenant obligations, whereas John Calvin, who was not encumbered by the assumptions of Federal theology, draws attention instead in his theology of the Lord's Supper to the believer's union with Christ, and to its soteriological implications. The thesis concludes that those …

Collateral: Poems, Joshua Jon Robbins

Doctoral Dissertations

In the lyric tradition of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ Terrible Sonnets and James Wright’s odes to the Midwest, the poems in Collateral interrogate the complexities of faith and doubt in middle-class America and present a witness compelled to translate suburbia’s landscapes and evangelical banalities into a testimony of hard truths. These poems explore the emotional exhaustion that accompanies language’s broken connection to ideal meaning and how both are unable to fully correspond to our lives. The manuscript is also an exploration of my own corresponding lyric struggle to reconcile what is and what should be, the personal and the political …

The Children Of Cain: Melville's Use Of The Abject Lineage From The Bible, Joseph Matthew Meyer

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study looks at how the abject lineage--consisting of Cain, Ishmael and Esau--has played an influential role in the works of Herman Melville. While many critics have exploredthe relationship between Melville and these characters in the past, my study proposes that the author was intimately aware of the differences between these characters and their relationship to God and used these differences to compose his works. Ultimately, Melville struggled with the need for an abject lineage, and this struggle manifests itself most prominently in the evolving silence of Christ from Mardi to "Bartleby."

Divine Hiddenness And The Challenge Of Inculpable Nonbelief, Matthew R. Sokoloski

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Divine hiddenness is the idea that God is in some sense hidden or obscure. This dissertation responds to J.L. Schellenberg's argument, based on divine hiddenness and human reason, against the existence of God. Schellenberg argues that if a perfectly loving God exists, we would not expect to find such widespread nonbelief in God's existence. Given the amount of reasonable nonbelief in the world, Schellenberg argues that an agnostic ought to conclude that God does not exist rather than conclude that God is hidden. Schellenberg's argument has three major premises: (1) If there is a God, he is perfectly loving; (2) …

The Construct Development Of Spiritual Leadership, Emily Rachael Lean

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Although the past decade has shown a growing interest in workplace spirituality in the leadership and organizational literature, research in the area of spiritual leadership, is still in its infancy. The goal of this study was to delineate the construct of spiritual leadership and to provide theoretical guidelines for future research. A conceptual definition of spiritual leadership is offered in addition to a list of behaviors relevant to a spiritual leader. This study was the first of its kind to take into account the knowledge and opinions of both academic and practitioner subject matter experts. Furthermore, with regard to developing …

The Initiation Of Growth-Focused Relationships Involving Healthy Accountability At The Carbondale Church Of Christ, Stephen Shaffer

Doctor of Ministry Theses

After several years of transition, the Carbondale Church of Christ is in the early stages of becoming a spiritual growth-focused community. However, the emerging growth community appears to reflect the prevailing cultural assumptions that growth is a personal, private, and an individual task. To shape this emergent growth culture, this project initiated a group of congregational opinion leaders, organized in pairs, into the practice of growth-focused relationships involving healthy accountability. The initiation involved a theological orientation followed by a four-week healthy accountability praxis.

The theological framework of the project involved three main aspects. First, the project used the body image …

Can't Be Tamed: A Feminist Analysis Of Apocrypha And Other Scripture, Catherine Alison Ballard

Scripps Senior Theses

This paper is my own unique feminist analysis of certain apocryphal texts. Though the texts I use have common themes, they are divided into what I consider the three most societally important aspects of an ancient woman’s identity: virgin, mother, and whore. The Acts of Thecla and The Acts of Xanthippe and Polyxena deal with virginity. II Maccabees, The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas, and select chapters of Augustine’s Confessions represent motherhood. Finally, the hagiographies Life of Pelagia and Life of Mary navigate through the mire of sexualities that deviate from norms.

The Spiritual Impulse To Turn Within And The Engagement In A World Of Action, Jared A. Rodriguez

Senior Theses and Projects

In this essay, I will compare three modern, contemporary thinkers, Thomas Merton, Mahatma Gandhi and Jiddu Krishnamurti. These three come from relatively different theological backgrounds. Thomas Merton is a Catholic monk, Mahatma Gandhi is a traditional Hindu with sentiments that come from Buddhism, and Krishnamurti, from birth was predetermined to belong to the Theosophists as their new World Leader. The underlying themes that connects these three profound figures together is, first, their transcendentalist approach in understanding the self, the cosmos, and the profane world by methods of contemplation, meditation and silence. Second, they are connected by a familiar personal spiritual …

Christian Justification After Nihilism, Joel Meyer

Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation

Meyer, Joel P. "Christian Justification after Nihilism." Ph.D. diss., Concordia Seminary,2012. [235] pp.

This dissertation addresses the problem that nihilism presents to Christian faith and life. North Atlantic Christians live in an age when nihilism is a normal condition. The world does not appear to have one clear and unquestionable meaning. Instead, each of us has convictions about the world that we hold dear. But we realize that other people hold drastically different convictions than our own, and we have no absolute way of determining the validity of one set over another. So they appear to us as values, rather …

The Mystery Of God In Situations Of Suffering: Toward The Universality Of Christ And A Reconstruction Of African Identity, Leocretia L. Muganda

Dissertations

During the patristic era, theology dealt with the problem of how to explain the union of the two natures in Christ without losing the impassible nature of God. Today, the understanding of God as impassible is no longer absolute in light of present human suffering. To gain a better understanding of God as passible, the following areas will be examined: the patristic view and the contemporary critique of divine impassibility, the African context and the reconstruction of African Christology via inculturation and liberation. The concept of God as passible can make a significant difference in the lives of Christians. This …

Theological Plunderphonics: Public Theology And "The Fragment", William Myatt

Dissertations

In response to methodological vagueness in public theology, I construct a theory of "the fragment" that enables the public theologian to respond adequately to contemporary exigencies and appropriately to traditional self-understandings. After surveying four streams of public-theological thought (chapter one), I consider the debate between David Tracy (chapter two) and George Lindbeck (chapter three). The various observations of these three chapters give way to a suggested criteriology for public theology. I then turn to Paul Ricoeur (chapter four) and Walter Benjamin (chapter five) to assist in constructing a theory of the fragment (chapter six). The thesis defended by this dissertation …

Romans 1:18-2:11 And The Substructure Of Psalm 106(105): Evocations Of The Calf?, Alexander James Lucas

Dissertations

Employing an architectural metaphor inspired by C. H. Dodd and utilizing methodology that draws from Richard B. Hays and Francis Watson, this dissertation presents a primary proposal and secondary sketch. The primary proposal is that both constitutively and rhetorically (through ironic, inferential, and indirect application), Ps 106(105) serves as the substructure for Paul's argumentation throughout Rom 1:18-2:11. Constitutively, Rom 1:18-32 (especially vv. 22-32) hinges on the triadic interplay between "they (ex)changed" and "God gave them over," an interplay that creates a sin-retribution sequence with an a-ba-ba-b pattern (vv. 22-23, 24-25, 26-27, 28-32). Both elements of this a-ba-ba-b pattern derive from …

A Fresh Approach To The Miracle Stories In Matthew 8-9: Literary Analysis Through The Literary Technique Of Matthew's Three Stage Progression Pre-Supposedly Adopted By The First Evangelist, Gwan Seuk Ryu

Dissertations

The structure of Mt 8-9 is very complex, and there is no unanimous understanding. If we use Matthew's Three Stage Progression (MTSP), a writing technique that is found frequently in the gospel of Matthew, we can theologicaly explain the intention of Mt 8-9 more clearly than any other existing explanations. Matthew arranged the nine miracle stories progressively in three clusters (8:1-17; 8:23-9:8; 9:18-34). Those three clusters are divided by two intervening pericopae (8:18-22; 9:9-17). The first cluster describes Jesus as the merciful healing Messiah. Jesus heals every disease he encounters. In the second cluster, Jesus is the divine being who …

Divine Sovereignty, Divine Providence, And Prayer In The Thought Of Evagrius Ponticus, Chris Steven Gombos

Dissertations

In the thought of Evagrius Ponticus, we discern an interdependent relationship between prayer and theological belief, particularly between prayer and divine sovereignty and divine providence. We find that Evagrius's teachings on divine sovereignty and divine providence inform and govern his teachings on prayer, specifically the forms of prayer known as petition and pure prayer. And conversely Evagrius's teachings on prayer inform and deepen his teachings on divine sovereignty and divine providence, thereby demonstrating the full interdependence between spiritual practice and theological belief in the thought of one of the early Church's monastic masters.

The first chapter is divided into two …

Re-Visioning Reason, Revelation, And Rejection In John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding And John Toland's Christianity Not Mysterious., Jonathan S. Marko

CTS PhD Doctoral Dissertations

Histories of philosophy that cover the rise of natural religion in England will inevitably move from John Locke to John Toland. The typical account portrays Locke as sincerely Christian and trying to balance the demands of faith and reason. His rationalistic epistemology in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Essay) even defends doctrines that are “above reason.” Toland is portrayed as a disciple of Locke whose modified Lockean epistemology in Christianity Not Mysterious (CNM) results in a subordination of revelation to reason and a dismissal of doctrines that are above reason. More detailed treatments note that CNM is the catalyst of …

The Antitheses (Matthew 5:21-48) In The Sermon On The Mount: Moral Precepts Revealed In Scripture And Binding On All People, Amos Winarto Oei

CTS PhD Doctoral Dissertations

While many may agree that the Sermon on the Mount is the epitome of Jesus' ethics, many also recognize that the Sermon is often a riddle. The vastness and variety of literature demonstrates that the interpretation of the Sermon is subject to many disagreements. At the heart of the Sermon of the Mount, the antitheses (Matthew 5:21-48) become one source of polemics in the study of the Sermon. The purpose of this dissertation is to contribute to the scholarship of the Sermon on the Mount by addressing two problems in the study of the antitheses. The first concerns the nature …

Reexamining The Place Of Public Confession Of Sins In A Reformed Context., Matthew John Webber

CTS Master of Theology (ThM) Theses

A dangerous tendency plagues the scripturally mandated practice of confession within many mainline Christian churches. The danger is that the theological thrust of the practice has been ignored or compromised in such a way that the manner in which confession is practiced ignores fundamental elements which underlie the need for confession, specifically public confession performed before one's fellow believers. It is especially evident that the confession of one's sins, which once took place in pubic before the ecclesial body, has seen a significant amount of change within the Reformed context. The focus of this essay is to identify the theological …

A Future Horizon For A Prophetic Tradition: A Missional, Hermeneuical, And Pastoral Leadership Approach To Education And Black Church Civic Engagement, David L. Everett

Doctor of Philosophy Theses

This mixed-methods study performed among six congregations explored how the historical framework, fabric, and focus of the Black Church have changed throughout a modern/postmodern context. An exploratory approach was used to study congregations identified by a 10-person pastoral focus group using methods of interviews and questionnaires. This researcher hypothesized that the social gospel dimensions and prophetic radicalism of the historic Black Church have diminished, but that it might reestablish itself as a pillar in the community through a retrieval of its prophetic voice and social gospel roots which caused it to be missional-minded and civically-engaged. It is anticipated that this …