Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons^™

Covenant Nation: The Politics Of Grace In Early American Literature, Justin M. Scott-Coe

CGU Theses & Dissertations

The argument of this dissertation is that a critical reading of the concept of "covenant" in early American writings is instrumental to understanding the paradoxes in the American political concepts of freedom and equality. Following Slavoj Zizek's theoretical approach to theology, I trace the covenant concept in early American literature from the theological expressions and disputes in Puritan Massachusetts through Jonathan Edwards's Freedom of Will and the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, showing how the covenant theology of colonial New England dispersed into more "secular" forms of what may be called an American political theology. The first chapter provides an …

Wittgenstein And Nietzsche On The Role Of Philosophy: Description, Creativity, Naturalism, And Possibility, Michael Charles Rodgers

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation places Wittgenstein and Nietzsche alongside one another in an attempt to deal with the question: "what is the role of the philosophy?" On the one hand Wittgenstein promotes a descriptive approach to philosophy, which insists that the philosopher should not meddle with practices but rather seek clarity and understanding as ends in themselves. On the other hand Nietzsche promotes a destructive and creative approach to philosophy, where the philosopher both dismantles values and offers a revaluation of values in their place. This work begins with a survey of remarks by the two philosophers and prominent interpretations of them …

Rights Of Concrete Others: Ethics Of Concrete Others, Social Individuality, And Social Multiculturalism, Hochul Kwak

CGU Theses & Dissertations

A globalizing world is replete with the vulnerable, who are experiencing economic poverty, medical maltreatment, political persecution, and/or cultural misrecognition. The vulnerable are under systematic oppression and domination. Although the wealth of humankind increases continuously, many are excluded from any benefit of this increased wealth. While human beings have achieved significant progress in medical technology, uncountable numbers of people are exposed to a shortage of appropriate medical care. Despite continued expansion of democracy around the globe, the powerless majority and minorities are experiencing ignorance of their differences, culturally and/or politically. This dissertation searches for a viable human rights scheme that …

Gender Analysis Of Politics, Economics And Culture Of Korean Reunification: Toward A Feminist Theological Foundation For Reunified Society, Jin Sung Cholee

CGU Theses & Dissertations

In this study, I have focused on the process for an eventual reunification of North and South Korea. In this process, Korean political, economic, cultural and religious issues are necessarily present. My study focuses on cultural and religious factors. I adopt the German reunification as a case study. The German reunification process provides Koreans with lessons about the negative changes in the status of German women since the German reunification caused extreme instances of the loss of status and economic opportunity for women. German reunification shows that the unequal situation and systems in society were not only due to political …

Beyond Words: The Remystification Of The Divine Through Dance, Silence And Theopoetics, Nora F. Wright

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis challenges Classical Christian presentations of God based on exclusive and literalized metaphors. This piece explores the response of three dissenting groups, who place their emphasis on an experiential theology, directly challenging the use of conventional language to describe God. The Quaker practice of silent worship, Isadora Duncan’s dance form and Theopoetics each demand that religious structures enable an experience of the Divine that is spontaneous, mysterious and deeply personal.

Becoming Otherwise: Politics, Metaphysics And Power In Judith Butler And Alfred North Whitehead, Alan Van Wyk

CGU Theses & Dissertations

The post-secular event within which we live is occasioned as the limit of the secular project. The secular project meets its limit in attempting to separate a religious private sphere from a public sphere while at the same time repeating as a demand a religious subjectivation of the public sphere: demanding conformity to a simple subjectivity, producing a world of simple subjects through a theologically determined metaphysics of conversion. In this latter demand secularism enforces a simplicity of its subjects and its world. Yet this simplicity cannot be taken up into or as life. To genuinely live and think the …

Transforming The Religious Paradigm: A Study Of Female Opportunism And Empowerment Through Latin American Evangelicalism, Melissa Irvine

CMC Senior Theses

From a contemporary international perspective, there are two truly global religious movements of enormous vitality. One is a resurgent Islam, the other Pentecostal Protestantism. What makes the growth of Pentecostal Protestantism so fascinating is the fact that it’s transforming a region where the Catholic Church has for five centuries reigned supreme in its religious monopoly. While the first century of proselytizing in Latin America was relatively minute (constituting only 1 percent of the overall population in 1950), Pentecostalism began to show signs of its potential vitality in the 1960s and 1970s.2 Evangelical conversion became more pervasive in 1980s, and by …

The Ascension Of Yahweh: The Origins And Development Of Israelite Monotheism From The Afrasan To Josiah, Andrew Halladay

Pomona Senior Theses

INTRODUCTION: THE SEARCH FOR THE GOD OF ABRAHAM TEXT AND HISTORY: THE FORMATION OF THE ABRAHAMIC DEITY Recent years have seen substantial changes in the study of ancient Israelite religion. These changes have created ample work for scholars of religious studies and related fields as virtually all disciplines have something to say about recent archaeological and scholarly developments concerning Yahwism and its early development. In this scholarly milieu, it is difficult to present anything that is wholly new, but certainly possible to enter a spirited discourse about ancient questions. To discuss the origins and evolution of the Abrahamic deity—as I …

Anis Of Dolma Ling: Buddhist Doctrine And Social Praxis Through The Monasticism Of Tibetan Nuns In Exile, Amy L. Mann

Scripps Senior Theses

The figure of the Tibetan Buddhist nun as a female monastic is situated within a matrix of complexities and contradictions that are constituted by textual and doctrinal sources, Tibetan social views on gender and female monasticism, and experiential realities. In order to understand the situation of nuns, one first must understand that monasticism, mainly the order of monks, has been a highly respected and financially supported institution in Tibetan society for centuries. However, because the histories of Tibetan nuns and female renunciants have gone primarily undocumented, their lineages and stories are much more opaque than those of Tibetan monks. Therefore, …

The Sanctified ‘Adultress’ And Her Circumstantial Clause: Bathsheba’S Bath And Self-Consecration In 2 Samuel 11, J. D'Ror Chankin-Gould, Derek Hutchinson, David H. Jackson, Tyler D. Mayfield, Leah Rediger Schulte, Tammi J. Schneider, E. Winkelman

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Bathsheba's actions in 2 Sam. 11.2-4 identify crucial aspects of her character. Past commentators interpret these words in connection with menstrual purification, stressing the certain paternity of David's adulterine child. This article demonstrates that the participles rōheset and mitqaddesšet and the noun mittum'ātāh do not denote menstrual cleansing. Bathsheba's washing is an innocent bath. She is the only individual human to self-sanctify, placing her in the company of the Israelite deity. The syntax of the verse necessitates that her action of self-sanctifying occurs simultaneously as David lies with her. The three focal terms highlight the important legitimacy of Bathsheba before …

Sacred Space/Place, Paul Faulstich

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Landscape, space, and place are three concepts that merge together to create the human experience of the environment. Space is the most basic concept of geography; it is the three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur. Landscapes and places are both contained within space.

Book Review: "Yet With A Steady Beat: Contemporary U.S. Afrocentric Biblical Interpretation" By Randall C. Bailey, Vincent L. Wimbush

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Written at different times for different purposes and occasions, by African American scholars who are differently oriented and differently situated, eight essays have been collected and edited by biblical scholar Randall C. Bailey with a particular focus and purpose in mind. Such focus and purpose are not elaborated upon in the editor's slim introduction. Aside from the issue of the quality of the essays - of uneven quality, as is the case, as everyone knows, with almost all collected essays - what is at stake in this volume, and all volumes that are collections of essays by different authors, is …

Asceticism, Vincent L. Wimbush

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Origen could not be a more profoundly influential--if not sometimes enigmatic--figure when considered in conjunction with the controversial and puzzling historical phenomenon that is now called "asceticism," the English term that is the usual (all too flat) translation of the astonishingly multivalent Greek term askesis.

A Brief Look At Mathematics And Theology, Philip J. Davis

Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Fermat's Enigma By Simon Singh, Matthew Becker

Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal

No abstract provided.

A Brief Look At Mathematics And Theology, Philip J. Davis

Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal

No abstract provided.

Book Reviews: Uncommon Sense, By Alan Cromer, And The Physics Of Immortality, By Frank J. Tipler, Harald M. Ness

Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal

No abstract provided.

Contemptus Mundi—Redux: The Politics Of An Ancient Rhetorics And Worldview, Vincent L. Wimbush

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Contemptus mundi (contempt for the world) is an expression that captures rather poignantly the complex of attitudes, behaviors and rhetorics associated with groups that were part of many different cultures of Greco-Roman antiquity and beyond. An examination of some of the late ancient evidence and the methodological issues involved will afford me the opportunity to engage an aspect of the issues raised by Bloom and may provide a different perspective on American culture.

Monasticism And Mathematics, John F. Loase

Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal

No abstract provided.

Foreword To Old Ship Of Zion, Vincent L. Wimbush

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Walter F. Pitts died July 20, 1991. I did not know him personally; I came to know only a part of him through the manuscript-obviously an important part of his life-that has been transformed into the book now before the reader. If that which is created is in the image of its creator, I suspect that had I met Walter Pitts I probably would have liked him very much; I know I would have been impressed by him, and would have learned a great deal from him.

At first, when I was asked by Oxford University Press to review Pitts's …

Ascetic Behavior And Color-Ful Language: Stories About Ethiopian Moses, Vincent L. Wimbush

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

The characterization of the fouth-century Black (Ethiopian) monk named Moses in late ancient Christian hagiographie narratives opens wide a window not only onto particular understandings of, and propaganda about, ascetic piety and religious orientations to the world, but also ancient (non-black) Christian sensitivies to racial/color differences. Four ancient sources— Palladius' Lausiac History, Sozomen's Ecclesiastical History, the anonymous Apophthegmata Patrum, and Acta Sanctorum—are analyzed on the basis of a recent translation.

Book Review: "Radical Christianity: A Reading Of Recovery" By Christopher Rowland, Vincent L. Wimbush

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Christopher Rowland, Lecturer in Divinity, Dean and Fellow of Jesus College, University of Cambridge, has written a fascinating and provocative book. Although drawing upon years of research on Christian origins, especially on apocalypticism in Judaism and early Christianity, this book goes far beyond antiquarian exegetical interests and questions. It is a most interesting attempt to determine the origins, then chart and account for major developments in the course of one type of Christian ethic and orientation-a type of "radical Christianity" rooted in apocalypticism.

Shaman--Ritual--Place: Sacred Sites And Spiritual Transformation, Paul Faulstich

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Throughout the world, tribal societies have held in sacred esteem certain locales within the physical environment. These have been utilized for the purposes of shamanism, ritual, magic, and mythologizing.

Book Review: "Paul And The Torah" By Lloyd Gaston, Vincent L. Wimbush

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Paul and the Torah is the mature work of a well-known Canadian (Vancouver) biblical scholar in an important area of religious scholarship. The book is a collection of previously published essays having to do with Paul and his teachings regarding the relationship between the Jewish law and the Gentile Christianity of which he was pioneer. The essays, written over a period of at least a decade and arranged in chronological order, are remarkable for their coherence and consistency, and are a tribute to the author's powerful grasp and clear articulation of the materials and some very knotty issues and questions. …

Historical/Cultural Criticism As Liberation : A Proposal For An African American Biblical Hermenutic, Vincent L. Wimbush

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Historical and cultural criticism can serve to aid minority, culturalist readings of the Bible to stand with integrity against alien imperialistic readings. Historical criticism is necessary in order to gain perspective on the historically determined nature of all religious constructs, including those in biblical texts. Cross-cultural analysis is necessary in order to interpret the symbols and referents of biblical cultures and contemporary dominant cultures, so as to determine which symbols and referents from any culture are relevant and affirming.

"Sacred" And "Secular" In Australian Rock Art, Paul Faulstich

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Recently I have been questioned by several scholars about the terms "sacred" and "secular" in my research on Aboriginal rock art in Australia. It seems clear that many people are uncomfortable with distinguishing between sacred and secular within a tribal context. I would like to express my viewpoint briefly, and hopefully to clear up some of the misconceptions that are held about Aboriginal concepts of spirituality.

Aboriginal Dreaming, Paul Faulstich

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

The earth is the very substance of Australian Aboriginal life. The importance of the sense of place in Aboriginal life cannot be overstressed. An intimate knowledge of the environment and geography was, and still is, imperative to survival within a hunting and gathering context.