Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons^™

No Beauty We Could Desire-A Lutheran Evaluation Of C. S. Lewis' Sehnsucht, Jonathan Graf

Master of Art Theology Thesis

Together, the experiences and glimpses of what Lewis called' Joy' or Sehnsucht served as the central thread of his life" and provided him with the ontological lens through which he viewed reality. 13 It is the plan of this paper to further examine Lewis' treatment of Sehnsucht" by engaging it in dialogue with a Lutheran theological perspective. In doing so, there are two main objectives that I hope to accomplish. The first objective is to demonstrate that the experience of Sehnsucht should not be merely dismissed or fully embraced; rather, it should be placed within a proper theological narrative that …

The Doctrine Of Christian Perfection For Today: Reading Wesley's Theology Through The Lens Of Process Thought, Jung Sup Ahn

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My thesis is: A process-theological reading of Wesley's doctrine of perfection, by constructing an adequate concept of God in process, gives renewed importance and vitality to Wesley's doctrine of perfection, a doctrine that has been confused and virtually ignored even by Methodists themselves, despite the central importance Wesley himself assigns it. Why, then, has Wesley's doctrine of perfection been so often misunderstood, confused or even ignored from his time until today? The clue to the answer lies in the failure clearly to heed the distinction between the two senses of divine perfection: perfected perfection (a static state of perfection) and …

Self-Actualization In The Lives Of Medieval Female Mystics: An Ethnohistorical Approach, Cherel Jane Ellsworth Olive

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This dissertation explores the cultural and psychological factors that permitted six medieval female mystics to assume positions of leadership and innovation in a world marked by extreme gender inequality. Women religious have often been charged with being neurotics, hysterics, narcissists, and nymphomaniacs whereas males with similar experiences are rarely subject to the same degree of criticism. It is argued here that the women may well have been seeking to achieve the form of self-actualization described by humanist psychologist, Abraham Maslow, as a result of the "conversion" experience analyzed by William James. Furthermore, applying modern categories of mental illness to these …

Sub-Ordination: Mary Magdalene, The Church, And The Ordination Of Women, Richard Bishop

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Roman Catholic Church maintains that it cannot ordain women to the priesthood due to a lack of biblical warrant. The Church therefore relies upon the traditional concept of a Bridegroom-Bride relationship (read: Christ and His Church), which they say can only be maintained if a male priest serves as the representative of the invisible Christ for his Bride during the Eucharist. In this essay, we shall explore the role and treatment of Mary Magdalene and women in early texts and show that they actually did have prominent positions within at least some early Christian communities. Texts were altered, and …

Can God Be Persuaded A Discussion Of The Immutability Of God In Luther's Catechesis On Prayer, Timothy Roser

Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation

Roser, Timothy, W. "Can God Be Persuaded? A Discussion of the Immutability of Godin Luther's Catechesis on Prayer." Ph.D. Diss., St. Louis, MO: Concordia Seminary, 2005.197pp.

Different doctrines of God bring different understandings of Christian prayer. Open theism teaches a mutable God who can be persuaded by our prayer, that is, have human will imposed upon His choice and course of action. This study responds with Martin Luther's unique defense of the immutability of God and his perspective on human will's place in Christian prayer.

Chapter one reviews the teachings of open theism involving divine mutability and the consequent practice …

Nathaniel Hawthorne And His Biblical Contexts, Conor Michael Walsh

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The majority of criticism and scholarship devoted to the fiction of Nathaniel Hawthorne takes for granted the relationship between Hawthorne and the Bible, focusing instead upon theology and philosophy. This work proposes that the Bible was an important and pervasive influence in Hawthorne's fiction. The Bible provides Hawthorne with numerous resources for both his artistic and moral concerns. At a basic level the Bible provides a popular platform that allows Hawthorne to immediately connect with his contemporary audience who were intimately familiar with the Bible. More importantly, though, are the vast examples and perspectives of the human condition and human …

Totally Devoted: Developing A Holistic Spiritual Formation Course For Western Christian College, Stanley N. Helton

Doctor of Ministry Theses

This thesis reports research results from a learning community composed of faculty, support staff, ministry leaders, and students who collaborated in a professor’s development of a new course proposal in Christian spiritual formation at Western Christian College in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. The professor used qualitative research methods in the analysis and evaluation of the data produced by the group. The outcome of the project was ethnographic data that informed the creation of the course proposal that included new course application, course syllabus with course schedule, planned activities, bibliography, initial classroom assignments, and initial assessment tools.

Papacy In Paganism: The Great Schism Of Palamon And Arcite, Samantha Kathleen Diaz

Theses & Honors Papers

This thesis looks at Geoffrey Chaucer’s the Canterbury Tales in the historical context of the Great Schism of the Catholic Church, during which time Chaucer lived and was writing the Canterbury Tales. It compares this work with Giovanni Boccaccio’s Teseida Delle Nozze d’Emilia and analyzes the way in which the two literary works critique the conflict in the Catholic Church in that time period, as well as giving hints to Chaucer’s views on these events and of the Catholic Church as a whole.

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, …

"These Are Written" Toward A Cruciform Theology Of Scripture, Peter Nafzger

Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation

Nafzger, Peter H. "'These Are Written' : Toward a Cruciform Theology of Scripture." Ph.D. diss .. Concordia Seminary, 2009. 244 pp.

This dissertation is an attempt to ground the Christian theology of Scripture in the trinitarian economy of salvation. Rather than approaching the Scriptures with the assumptions, concepts, and categories that have governed the modem "battle for the Bible," this account locates the Scriptures in the theology of the Word of God. In the biblical narrative this Word is found in three forms: Jesus Christ is the personal form of the Word of God who was sent by the Father …

The Art Of Trinitarian Articulation: A Case Study On Richard Of St. Victor's _De Trinitate_, Todd D. Vasquez

Dissertations

Richard of Saint Victor deliberately constructs his treatise De Trinitate with trinitarian structures to sustain the hearts and shape the minds of his readers with the contemplation of the Trinity. His work fits within a genre of writing in the Middle Ages where the formation of the theological apprentice was at the heart of crafting one’s theological work. The dissertation consists of three sections: Section I, “Introduction & Background,” establishes the context for the thesis. Chapter one fits Richard’s De Trinitate within the theological heritage of Augustine and Anselm of Canterbury. Chapter two describes aspects of the liturgical and educational …

Suffering And The Search For Wholeness: Beauty And The Cross In Hans Urs Von Balthasar And Contemporary Feminist Theologies, Elisabeth T. Vasko

Dissertations

The tension between the beauty of the cross and the violence of the crucifixion creates a dissonance within Christian theology. In terms of atonement theologies, this dissonance has been interpreted through the development of a converted sense of beauty in which the cross, as perceived and interpreted by the believer in the context of faith, expands Christian aesthetics. One of the more prominent examples of this construction can be found in the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar, wherein divine beauty culminates in Christ's kenotic self-surrender at the cross. In a feminist hermeneutic, the identification of divine beauty with crucified …

"Have Salt In Yourselves, And Be At Peace With Each Other" The Irenic Theology Of Daniel Kałaj, Dariusz M. Bryćko

CTS PhD Doctoral Dissertations

Daniel Kałaj (d.1681) was a Polish Reformer of Hungarian background, born in Little Poland (Małopolska) and trained in Franeker, Friesland under some of the most brilliant Reformed theologians of seventeenth-century Europe, such as Cocceius and Cloppenburgh. Kałaj’s ministry in the Reformed Church of Little Poland was abruptly interrupted when he was wrongly accused by Catholic authorities of spreading then-outlawed Arianism and being called a “Calvinoarian.” Kałaj became the first Polish Protestant minister to receive a sentence of capital punishment as a result of the new anti-toleration law issued in 1658 against Arians, under the false pretext of military treason during …

Grace To You And Peace: An Analysis Of The Pauline Letter Openings., João Paulo Thomaz De Aquino

CTS Master of Theology (ThM) Theses

This thesis argues that the Pauline letter opening has an anticipatory function alongside its relational role. This anticipatory function is a development of the epistolary features found in the ancient Greek letter openings. After the introductory chapter, is provided an analysis of form and function of ancient (III BCE to III CE) Greek letter prescripts. Chapters 3 and 4 provide a formal and functional analysis of the Pauline letter prescripts. The conclusion is that the anticipatory function works in two ways in the Pauline letters. First, Paul encapsulates his theology in the expression ‘grace to you and peace’ and uses …

What The Korean Presbyterian Church Can Learn From Contemporary Debates About Infant Communion Among Reformed Christians In North America., Hwa Rang Moon

CTS Master of Theology (ThM) Theses

Can children participate in the Lord’s Supper? This practice was prohibited at the fourth Lateran Council; however, at the end of the 20th century, among Reformed churches in North America and some Europe Churches, debated the validity of infant communion or children’s communion. Is, then, infant communion or children’s communion biblical? What was the practice of the early New Testament church? Can infants or children have faith and enough cognitive ability to discern the body of Christ? Many biblical scholars, systematic theologians, church historians and local church pastors participate in this debate. Both the Christian Reformed Church and Reformed Church …

Developing A Model For An Incarnational Ministry At The Webb Chapel Church Of Christ, L. Bert Alexander

Doctor of Ministry Theses

This doctor of ministry thesis presents the results of a project to promote the development of an incarnational ministry at the Webb Chapel Church of Christ. This intervention employed a team of Webb Chapel opinion leaders representative of various subgroups of the congregation. In the fall of 2008, this group met for eight sessions to discuss the self-emptying practices of Jesus and the need for his followers to emulate those self-emptying practices in their individual lives. Through interaction in the eight sessions, the group developed a model by which self-emptying practices could be implemented at Webb Chapel. Evaluation of the …

Counsel And Conscience: Post-Reformation Lutheran Casuistry According To The Dedekenn-Gerhard Thesaurus Consiliorum Et Decisionum And Its Cases On Marriage And Divorce., Benjamin T. G. Mayes

CTS PhD Doctoral Dissertations

In much literature on early modern casuistry and conscience, Lutheran casuistry is denied a place, under-researched, or ignored. Yet in Lutheran Germany of the post-Reformation era (ca. 1580–1750), there was a genre of pastoral/ethical writings consisting in casuistry and in topically or thematically related theological counsels, aimed at instructing and comforting the consciences of Christians. An extensive example from this genre is Georg Dedekenn and Johann Ernst Gerhard, eds., Thesaurus Consiliorum Et Decisionum, 4 vols. (Jena: Zacharias Hertel, 1671). Lutheran casuistry, related to but also distinct from Roman Catholic and Reformed counterparts, arose especially as pastors looked within Holy Scripture, …

A Vocation As Politics: Work And Popular Theology In A Consumer Culture, Jeffrey E. Scholes

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The idea of vocation or a calling is particularly salient in much business motivational literature and popular Christian self-help books alike. Promoted is the idea of vocation that glosses over issues stemming from political power in the corporate workplace in order to given meaning to workers in spite of working conditions. In this form, vocations are unable to engage one's working life in ways that they can and should. I argue that recent trends in academic theologies of vocation as well as the role of consumer culture combine to allow the ascendancy of this form of the idea. I support …

Encountering The Religious 'Other': Limitations Of Confining 'Religious' Conversation In Interreligious Dialogue In Denver, Adam Buchanan Westbrook

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

"We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1963).

Technology, the Internet, and the ability to communicate with one another instantaneously in any place on the globe, at any point in time have made Dr. King's remarks increasingly evident in the 21st century. We now have the unprecedented ability to communicate with people of all groups, all over the world, but are lacking the proper tools for understanding them. The interreligious dialogue movement has strived to utilize religion as one …

Toward A Dialogic Interpretation Of Psychological Belief In Spirits Among Gamei Of Ghana, Ebenezer Narh Yebuah

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examines central aspects of the ancestral tradition of the Gamei of Ghana which have not previously been investigated systematically from a psychological perspective. It is argued that Carl Gustav Jung and his intellectual descendants are the only Western psychological thinkers who have come close to formulating a conceptual framework that is helpful in this context, because Africa featured prominently in Jung's formulations of his influential psychological theories during his archetypal journey to Africa. Accordingly, core features of Jungian theory are examined in order to determine the extent to which a psychological investigation of Gamei cosmological perspectives, particularly perspectives …

Imagination, Religious Practice, And World Transformations: Sophia, Heidegger, And Jacob Bohme's The Way To Christ, Mark Allen Peckler

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is offered as a work of original scholarship in the field of Religion and Psychological Studies (RPS). Through its hermeneutic preservation of Jacob Böhme's The Way to Christ in "conversation" with selected works of Martin Heidegger, I retrieve the question of imagination's relation to religious practice, attending to potentials for world transformations disclosed through this relationship, in order to develop a new hermeneutic option for the RPS field concerning this important question. This new hermeneutic option is developed in such a way as to ensure a subversive compatibility with psychoanalytic hermeneutics—our field's koiné—while opening to certain radical …

Representational Subversions And The Limits Of Postcoloniality: Shahzia Sikander's Strategic Contemporaneity, Linda Eilene Sanchez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Transnational artist Shahzia Sikander challenges the limitations of Edward Said's postcolonial emphasis on secular humanism by deploying the heterogeneous traditions of South Asian miniature painting while strategically drawing on tradition to critique contemporaneity. Through a palimpsest process of composition, Sikander reincorporates the unknown and silenced histories implicit in the tradition of miniature painting to create social imaginaries with motifs that draw on the diverse traditions of South Asian religions and aesthetics to create a subversive politics of remembering wherein alternative images of cosmopolitanism emerge. Through a sustained analysis, this dissertation demonstrates how these alternative traditions interrogate and critique the limitations …

Between Law And Justice: Kant, Derrida, And Religious Violence, Evgeni V. Pavlov

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Although a number of approaches to the issue of religious violence are already available for academic consumption, this study attempts to approach the problem of the violent tension between religious principles and secular socio-political realities from a new perspective. We argue that religious violence is best conceptualized as a moment of crisis in the relationship between law and justice, considered as both intimately related (in Kant's analysis of the rightful condition) and peculiarly disjointed (in Derrida's reflections on the possibility of "justice beyond law"). We provide a preliminary account of the necessary conditions for a future theory of religious violence …

Old Testament Contributions To Ecclesiology: Engaging And Extending The Insights Of John Howard Yoder, John C. Nugent

CTS PhD Doctoral Dissertations

Conspicuously absent from ecclesiological literature is a volume dedicated exclusively to assessing the Old Testament‘s relevance to ecclesiology. With only a few exceptions, scant use is made of the Old Testament in ecclesiological primers and that use tends to be highly selective and often decontextualized. This dissertation argues that indepth engagement of the Old Testament furnishes a helpful context for ecclesiological reflection and that John Howard Yoder‘s canonical-directional approach to Scripture exemplifies such engagement. Though Yoder did not dedicate a treatise exclusively to the Old Testament‘s ecclesiological relevance, his numerous scattered essays on this topic evince a rich and coherent …

Wisdom Editing In The Book Of Psalms: Vocabulary, Themes, And Structures, Steven Dunn

Dissertations (1934 -)

This study examines the pervasive influence of post-exilic wisdom editors and writers in the shaping of the Psalter by analyzing the use of wisdom elements--vocabulary, themes, rhetorical devices, and parallels with other Ancient Near Eastern wisdom traditions. I begin with an analysis and critique of the most prominent authors on the subject of wisdom in the Psalter, and expand upon previous research as I propose that evidence of wisdom influence is found in psalm titles, the structure of the Psalter, and among the various genres of psalms. I find further evidence of wisdom influence in creation theology, as seen in …

Pentecostal Theology According To The Theologians: An Introduction To The Theological Methods Of Pentecostal Systematic Theologians, Christopher Adam Stephenson

Dissertations (1934 -)

This dissertation is a twofold argument that 1) existing pentecostal systematic theology can be interpreted according to four analytical categories and that 2) future pentecostal theological method should incorporate a form of lex orandi, lex credendi for the benefit of pentecostal theology and spirituality.

I analyze the theological methods of major past and present pentecostal systematic theologians and demonstrate that they have followed four basic patterns. First, Myer Pearlman, E. S. Williams, and French L. Arrington take the material for their theologies almost exclusively from the Bible. Second, Steven J. Land and Simon K. H. Chan center their theologies on …

Beyond Stewardship: Toward An Agapeic Environmental Ethic, Christopher J. Vena

Dissertations (1934 -)

This dissertation is a work in theological anthropology and environmental philosophy. It seeks to provide a conceptual framework for a Christian environmental ethic rooted in love.

The heart of the crisis of ecological degradation is found in human attitudes and behaviors. In the late 1960's it was suggested that Christianity was a key source of the problem because it promoted the idea of human "dominion" over creation. This spurred a variety of responses designed to show that Christian faith was compatible with environmental care. A key theme emerging from this debate was the image of humans as Stewards of God's …

Planting Missional Mennonite Churches In Complex Social Contexts As The Denomination Undergoes A Paradigm Shift In Ecclesiology: A Multiple Case Study, David W. Boshart

Dissertations

Problem. The problem investigated in this study is the struggle of church planters and their key stakeholders to develop common understanding about the churches that are being planted in complex social contexts while relating to a denomination in the midst of an ecclesial paradigm shift in mission.

Method. This qualitative research used a multiple case design with an emphasis on narrative inquiry. Data collection involved conducting semi-structured interviews with denominational and conference leaders, church planters, and key stakeholders. The four cases chosen included Anglo, Hispanic, Hmong, and multi-ethnic church plants.

Findings. The study found that the attempt to establish a …

A Critical Evaluation Of John Hick's Religious Pluralism In Light Of His Eschatological Model, Haejong Je

Dissertations

Introduction to the Problem

The philosophy of John Hick, who is famous for his religious pluralism, has received vigorous study in terms of its epistemology, authority, the concept of God, and Christology. However, less attention has been given to his pareschatology. As explained below, initial investigation shows that there is a need for in-depth study of Hick’s religious philosophy in this area.

The Problem

Based upon preliminary research, Hick’s religious pluralism seems to reveal a critical problem with external correspondency, as follows. His pareschatology, which is an attempt to accept all eschatologies of major world religions as valid, may as …