Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons^™

Developing An Intentional Mentoring Model For Disciple Formation At The Mayfair Church Of Christ, Jason Bybee

Doctor of Ministry Theses

This doctor of ministry thesis presents the results of a project to lead a team in the development of an intentional mentoring model for disciple formation at the Mayfair Church of Christ. This intervention involved the team members in a series of sessions during September and October 2013. Project sessions were designed to provide participants an intentional mentoring experience through exposure to four core practices: exploration of the biblical text, appreciative inquiry exercises, communal sharing, and prayer. Sessions were informed by (1) an understanding of discipleship as following behind Jesus and walking alongside our fellow sojourners, (2) the nature of …

The Influences Of Folklore On The Creation Of The Mormon Identity, Hannah Ruth Laprise

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Women Ordination In The Roman Catholic Church, Ria Barretto Aquino

Senior Theses

Changes in culture and society continue to mold and shift the direction of the Roman Catholic Church theologically, pastorally, and doctrinally; the Roman Catholic priesthood has done the same but in a slow progression. This thesis will begin to focus on the Catholic priesthood and the current magisterial doctrine that supports it. Next I will argue this doctrine by counteracting it with evidence of significant roles of women in theology and New Testament. Then I will address another Christian denomination with the existing structure of women ordination from the Episcopalian church. Whether or not an all-male clergy is beneficial for …

A Historical Account Of The Conceptual Evolution Of Satan In The Abrahamic Belief Traditions, Hanan Huneidi

Senior Theses

This paper shows a historical account of the development of the Satan persona in the Abrahamic belief traditions beginning with early Judaism in which Satan evolves most vastly from beginning as merely an action verb to ending as a tempter of man, then moving into the Christian New Testament evil entity personified as a direct opponent to Jesus, and finally ending with Islam’s perspective of a leader of the Jinn.

A Theology Of Worship, University Church Of Christ, Malibu, California, N. Hanks, Carolyn Hunter, Rich Little

N. Lincoln Hanks

No abstract provided.

The Essence Of Discipleship: An Evangelical Perspective, Douglas Taylor

2014-2016 Graduate

Much literature presents discipleship in terms of what one does, but the latter does not define the former - it only shows what discipleship may look like when executed. Christians in general and seminary students in particular struggle to define the essence of Christian discipleship. Much literature exists today describing how one may do discipleship, but what brands something as the very thing it is is not the same as identifying the work it does. This research fills the gap not addressed by the many “how to do discipleship” books by using a hermeneutical-type approach to identify the way people …

Jesus Or Nothing, Dan Dewitt

Faculty Books

It’s time to make a choice.

Many young adults are abandoning the Christian faith, convinced that it's an outdated and uneducated belief system. Dan DeWitt counters these misconceptions and challenges us to think carefully about the choice between Jesus and nothing by comparing the Christian worldview with the notion of a godless universe devoid of true goodness and ultimate significance.

This winsome book describes the rock-solid foundation for life that Christians enjoy in and through the gospel—offering an explanation for our existence, grace for our guilt, and meaning for our mortality.

Roosevelt, Boy Scouts, And The Formation Of Muscular Christian Character, Gordon J. Christen

Religious Studies Honors Projects

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, many prominent Christians and political leaders saw a degenerative influence in industrializing America. For them, urban culture had eroded gender roles, personal strength, and moral fiber. So-called “Muscular Christians” prescribed physical exertion and wilderness experience to cure these ills. I argue that these values were embodied in idealized characters such as Theodore Roosevelt, Jesus, and the Boy Scout to give a form to cultural remedies. In the process, they became the terms upon which proper Americanism, and proper Christianity, were constructed.

Contesting Faith, Truth, And Religious Language At The Creation Museum: A Historical-Theological Reflection, Brent A. R. Hege

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

The Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, attempts to demonstrate the flaws in contemporary science and to offer an alternative explanation of human origins and biological complexity rooted in a specific reading of the biblical narrative. This effort, however, is paradoxically rooted in the worldview of modern science and the Enlightenment. This article will examine the Creation Museum’s definitions of faith, truth, and religious language and will compare these definitions to those of mainline Protestant Christianity to uncover the historical and theological presuppositions of Creationist and mainline Protestant engagements with contemporary science.

The Message In Our Music : What Popular Congregational Songs Say About Our Beliefs, Neal W. Woodruff, Mark A. Frisius

Faculty Scholarship and Creative Work – Music

Congregational singing is a source of basic theological instruction, both reflecting and shaping what we believe. It is crucial, therefore, that we say what we believe when we sing. In this study, the authors focused on the songs most accessed by users of the Christian Copyright Licensing, Inc. (CCLI) service between 2006-2012. Twenty songs were identified as having received significant usage during this time period.

The results of this study found that a representative sampling of the lyrics of the most popular congregational songs did not sufficiently express foundational concepts of the Christian faith. Although individual congregations may have a …

Theology, Politics, And Antimodernism In Nazi Germany: Problematizing Theological Rhetoric And Political Theology, Brent A. R. Hege

Brent A. R. Hege

A review essay of: Hitler’s Theology: A Study in Political Religion. By Rainer Bucher. Translated by Rebecca Pohl. Edited and with an introduction by Michael Hoelzl. London: Continuum, 2011. xx+140 pp. $120.00 Cloth, $34.95 Paper Theological Tractates. By Erik Peterson. Edited, translated, and with an introduction by Michael J. Hollerich. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011. xxx + 256 pp. $75.00 Cloth, $24.95 Paper

Review Of "Thinking Christ: Christology And Contemporary Critics", Brent A. R. Hege

Brent A. R. Hege

A review of Thinking Christ: Christology and Contemporary Critics by Jane Barter Moulaison.

„Zurück Zu Schleiermacher! Und Von Schleiermacher Aus Vorwärts!“ Georg Wobbermin And The Legacy Of Schleiermacher In Weimar Liberal Protestantism, Brent A. R. Hege

Brent A. R. Hege

As dialectical theology rose to prominence in the years following World War I, the new theologians sought to distance themselves from liberalism in a number of ways, an important one being a rejection of Schleiermacher’s methods and conclusions. In reading the history of Weimar-era theology as it has been written in the twentieth century one would be forgiven for assuming that Schleiermacher found no defenders during this time, as liberal theology quietly faded into the twilight. However, a closer examination of this period reveals a different story. The last generation of liberal theologians consistently appealed to Schleiermacher for support and …

Augustine, Wannabe Philosopher: The Search For Otium Honestum, Allen Griffith Wilson

EURēCA: Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement

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Restoring Life-Giving In A Life-Taking World, Melissa G. Cone

Senior Honors Theses

“Restoring Life-Giving in a Life-Taking World” examines women’s roles as life-givers in Exodus 1-2. The stories of the Hebrew midwives, Jochebed, Pharaoh’s daughter, and Miriam are paradigmatic of God’s use of unlikely characters to accomplish His creational plan. Through the life-giving actions of each of these women, God preserved His plan to deliver His people by preserving the life of their deliverer, Moses, and in turn, preparing for the ultimate deliverer, Jesus Christ.

This thesis reveals the life-giving actions of the women in Exodus 1-2 and their strategic position to influence change in their society. The paradigm of God giving …

The German Peasants’ War: The Intersection Of Theology And Society, Zachary Tyree

Senior Honors Theses

This paper examines the way that Reformation theology, particularly that espoused by Martin Luther, impacted German society. Sixteenth-century German society was very hierarchical in nature, with the Roman Catholic Church at the top, followed by the nobility, and finally the peasants, who suffered economic and political plight. Luther’s break from the Church in 1517 and the subsequent years brought tension to society. Developments extending from that break challenged the social hierarchy. One of the major social consequences of the Protestant Reformation, which was rooted in Luther’s theology, was the Peasants’ War. Luther criticized the peasants for the uprising, based on …

Concepts Of The Body In The Zhuangzi, Deborah A. Sommer (司馬黛蘭)

Deborah A. Sommer

In this essay Sommer explores how the Zhuangzi, a Chinese philosophical text that dates to the third or fourth centuries BCE, uses different terms for the human body. She explores each term's different fields of meaning: the body might appear as gong 躬, a sanctimonious ritualized body; shen 身, a site of familial and social personhood; xing 形, an elemental form that experiences mutations and mutilations; or ti 體, a complex, multilayered corpus whose center can be anywhere but whose boundaries are nowhere. The Zhuangzi is one of the richest early Chinese sources for exploring conceptualizations of the visceral human …

《庄子》中关于身体的诸概念" (Concepts Of The Body In The Zhuangzi), Deborah A. Sommer (司馬黛蘭)

Deborah A. Sommer

In this essay Sommer explores how the Zhuangzi uses such terms for the body as gong 躬, a sanctimonious ritualized body; shen 身, a site of familial and social personhood; xing 形, an elemental form that experiences mutations and mutilations; and ti 體, a complex, multilayered corpus whose center can be anywhere but whose boundaries are nowhere. The Zhuangzi is one of the richest early Chinese sources for exploring conceptualizations of the visceral human form. Zhuangzi presents the human frame as a corpus of flesh, organs, limbs, and bone; he dissects it before the reader's eyes, turning it inside out …

Book Review: The Rivers Of Paradise: Moses, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, And Muhammad As Religious Founders, David Freedman, Michael Mcclymond, Deborah Sommer

Deborah A. Sommer

In his introduction to Rivers of Paradise, David Noel Freedman explains how the book finds a guiding metaphor in a passage from Genesis (2:10–14) that relates how a river emerges from Eden and splits into four different rivers that flow to different parts of the world. He associates these five rivers with five “great personality religions of the world,” which are traditions “originating in and centering around the person, the life and experience, of a single individual—as it happens all of them men” (p. 2). These “founding fathers” are Moses, the Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, and Muhammad, in that order; …

Leibniz's Theodicies, Joseph Michael Anderson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Evil poses a particular problem to early modern thinkers. Late scholasticism, while itself variegated, provided a number of resources for dispelling concerns about the justice of God raised by the existence of evil. With much of the metaphysics of the scholastics rejected, the new philosophers needed either to find inventive ways to make the old solutions fit into their new systems, to come up with new resources for dispelling the difficulties, or to accept the difficulties as insurmountable, likely via fideism or atheism. Leibniz, I claim, provides a provocative mixture of the first two approaches.

Many readers think Leibniz's solution …

To Speak Of God In A Feminine Way In The Churches And Theologies Of The Americas, Susan Ross

Theology: Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

Book Review: The King In His Beauty, Christopher R. Bruno

Biblical and Theological Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Shaped By The Spirit: Spirit Christology As A Framework For Preaching Sanctification, Jonathan Rusnak

Master of Sacred Theology Thesis

Rusnak, Jonathan W. "Shaped by the Spirit: Spirit Christology as a Framework for Preaching Sanctification." S.T.M. Thesis, Concordia Seminary, 2014. 128 pp.

This thesis offers an account of preaching sanctification grounded broadly in the trinitarian economy of salvation and specifically in the person and work of Jesus Christ as receiver, bearer, and giver of the Holy Spirit. Grounded in atonement theory alone, other accounts of preaching sanctification are unable to address any number of concerns that arise in the sanctified life. In addition, atonement theory alone does not ground an account of preaching sanctification that maintains the nexus indivulsus of …

"It Was He Who Gave Some To Be": Toward An Understanding Of The Role Of The Female Prophet In The Lutheran Church, Ann Murphy

Master of Sacred Theology Thesis

Murphy, Ann I. "'It Was He Who Gave Some To Be': Toward an Understanding of the Role of the Female Prophet in the Lutheran Church." STM thesis, Concordia Seminary, 2014,131 pp.

This thesis addresses some of the ambiguities and inadequacies in Lutheran theological reflection regarding the prophetic office and attempts to integrate theological constructions pertaining to revelatory spiritual gifts, inspiration, the Ministry, and women's roles in the church so that they more consistently inform one another.

Calvin Theological Seminary Forum, Arie C. Leder, Michael J. Williams, John M. Rottman, Carl J. Bosma

Calvin Theological Seminary Forum (2002- )

Old Testament: God’s Word for Today

Articles
3 - Reading the Bible Backwards by Arie C. Leder
5 - Christ in the Old Testament by Michael J. Williams
8 - Preaching Old Testament Texts by John M. Rottman
10 - Forgiveness—A Key to Happiness by Carl J. Bosma
12 - The Old Testament as a Resource for Christian Discipleship Amanda W. Benckhuysen
15 - Teaching the Language of the Old Testament by Michael J. Williams

Called to Serve
18 - Retirement Tributes by Bruce Buursma
21 - Distinguished Alumni Awards

The Story We Find Ourselves In: Nurturing Christian Identity In A Consumer Culture, Terri L. Elton

Faculty Publications

Consumerism has become society’s prevailing story, the story in which young people cultivate their identity. If ministry leaders are to help young people nurture their identity as children of God and help them discover a faith that speaks into the current culture, it will be important to help them shift from viewing themselves as objects within a consumer society to seeing themselves as subjects and agents of God’s love.

A Reinterpretation Of The Dao De Jing, Tianyue Luo

Senior Theses

Next to the Bible, the Dao De Jing is the most translated work in world literature. Its popularity certainly shows the power of traditional Chinese thoughts. Late western modern philosophers, such as Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre have been influenced by the thoughts of Dao De Jing. As a foundation of traditional Chinese spirit, the Dao De Jing certainly played a key role. In the new global temporality, it may also help people to eliminate the philosophical, ideological, and eventually the cultural gap as a cultural bridge between the east and west. Compared to the original source, most English references …

More Than A Prophet: Jesus And Islam, Justin A. Farmer

Selected Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Update - April 2014, Loma Linda University Center For Christian Bioethics

Update

In this issue:

-- My Ancient Faith
-- The Center Celebrates 30 Years!
-- From the Director - The Ancient Faith Lives
-- Roundtable Discussion & Bioethics Symposium at the Alumni Postgraduate Convention

[ The Center for Christian Bioethics Celebrates 30 Years ]
-- Editorial by Jack Provonsha
-- Editorial by David Larson
-- Projects in Honor of the 30th Year Anniversary

-- Guest speaker from the Mayo Clinic and other Bioethics Grand Rounds
-- Visiting Professors and Scholars
-- 2014 M.A. in Bioethics Graduates
-- Ethics in Great Films

Mujeres, Espiritualidad Y Cambio Social, Karma Lekshe Tsomo Phd, Teresa Forcades Vila

Theology and Religious Studies: Faculty Scholarship

Mujeres, espiritualidad y cambio social es el tema de este diálogo entre Karma Lekshe Tsomo y Teresa Forcades Vila, mujeres luchadoras del día a día, que no dudan cuando hablan de cambios y revoluciones necesarias. Conocen las problemáticas de primera mano y, con la premisa de la práctica y el conocimiento, piensan nuevas formas para la libertad individual y colectiva. Cuando están convencidas de lo que creen, lo dicen; cuando están en proceso de pensamiento pero todavía dudan sobre sus teorías, también lo dicen. Y sobre todo saben que en este diálogo, siendo de religiones diferentes, las respuestas no siempre …