Épicure, Aristote, Pascal, Nietzsche, Le Dalaï Lama,- et beaucoup d’autres -, ont interprété la notion de bonheur, chacun à sa façon, ce qui explique l’existence d’une multitude de définitions. Pour les uns, le bonheur résulte de la satisfaction des désirs physiques, pour d’autres, de l’harmonie entre l’homme et le monde. Des penseurs modernes accusent le progrès technique de nuire au bonheur humain. Que signifie alors le terme « bonheur » ? Et comment peut-on être heureux ? Julien Green, écrivain du XXe siècle, n’a pas donné de réponse directe à ces interrogations. Ses romans ne semblent raconter que le mal de vivre : solitude, ennui existentiel, passion dévastatrice, clivage du moi, tout conspire à colorer ses textes de noir. La perte de l’identité aggrave le désarroi. Ni les rêves ni les souvenirs de l’enfance ne soulagent les malheureux qui évoluent dans cette grande prison qu’est le monde. Le bonheur est l’objet d’une quête qui commence par la recherche de la pureté incarnée par l’enfance, symbole du paradis perdu dans lequel il est impossible de retourner. Bien qu’elle soit effrayante, la mort semble encore une issue au malheur. Mourir croyant prépare le bonheur dans un autre monde. La quête du bonheur se déplace vers un plan spirituel. Green suggère que la foi est une source certaine du bonheur. L’écriture procure aussi du bonheur. Ecrire permet de dire l’indicible et de soulager le Moi démantelé. La quête du bonheur révèle que ce bonheur est possible, et qu’il peut triompher de l’Angoisse de l’existence. / Epicurus, Aristotle, Pascal, Nietzsche, Dalaï Lama, and many others, have interpreted the notion of happiness, each one in his own way, which explains the existence of a multitude of definitions. For some, happiness is the result of satisfying physical desires, for others, it’s the result of harmony between man and the world. Modern thinkers accuse technical progress of harming human happiness. In this context, what does the term “happiness” then mean? And how can we be happy? Julien Green, a twentieth century novelist, hasn’t given a direct answer to these queries. His novels only deal with suffering. Solitude, existential spleen, devastating passion, splitting of the ego, everything conspires to color all his novels in black. Loss of identity exacerbates the confusion. Neither dreams for dreamers nor memories of childhood relieve the unfortunate who operate in this world which is like a great prison. Happiness is the object of a quest which begins with the search of purity embodied in children who are the symbol of a lost paradise in which it is impossible to return. Although death is scary, it seems to be a way out of grief. Dying as a believer insures happiness in another world. The quest of happiness becomes spiritual. Green suggests that faith can certainly bring happiness. Writing not only brings happiness, but also allows the characters to say the unsayable and relieve the dismantled ego. The quest of happiness shows that happiness is possible, and that it can overcome the anxiety of existence.

There have been long debates in academic circles as to what constitutes the “heart” of Pauline theology. The traditional view, according to Fee (1994:11), is the one fostered by the Reformers and perpetuated by generations of Protestants, that “justification by faith” is the key to Paul’s theology. This view emphasises Christ’s historical act of redemption and its appropriation by the believer through faith. The inadequacy of such a view should be apparent to anyone carefully reading Paul’s letters. Not only does it focus on one metaphor of salvation to the exclusion of others, but, such a focus fails to throw the net broadly enough to capture all of Paul’s theological concerns. It would therefore, seem impossible to understand Pauline theology, without firstly beginning with salvation in Christ, and further to this, with eschatology and the Holy Spirit as the essential framework. It is within this framework that the process of sonship and adoption as related to the new covenant are unveiled to the believer. Without denying the presence of other determining factors, Christology, and eschatology especially, shape the framework of Paul’s pneumatology. One cannot doubt that the death and resurrection of Christ, in their eschatological significance, control Paul’s teaching on the work of the Spirit within the lives of believers. It could be said that the Spirit stands near the centre of things for Paul, as part of the fundamental core of his understanding of the Gospel. It is within this theological framework of the Spirit that Paul expresses his key ideas concerning the new covenant and sonship. One might say then, that membership in God’s family, is defined in terms of the Spirit. “You are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, assuming that the Spirit of God does indeed dwell in you. If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, that person does not belong to Him” (Rom 8:9). One could say that in eschatological terms, the Spirit of God is the beginning of the process of salvation, which will culminate in the believer taking possession of his inheritance in the future age. It could be stated as a function of the Spirit in the believer’s present that is only meaningful in relation to the future. Not only does the indwelling Spirit serve as the divine pledge of a future bodily resurrection, but guarantees it. To give the reader further ideas as to what drives this thesis, the following urgencies are spelt out: • Crucial to the experience of the Spirit, was the early Church’s self-understanding as “thoroughly eschatological” in the “already/not yet” sense. • At the heart of this new understanding was their perception of themselves as the newly constituted people of God. The goal of salvation in Christ, the core of Pauline theology, was that God should create “a people for his name”. • Although persons’ individually become members of the family of God, the goal is not to simply prepare them for heaven, but to create a people, who by the power of the Spirit, live out the life of the future (the life of God Himself) in this present age. One final point needs to be clarified before one embarks on the enterprise of writing a theology of Paul as it relates to the title of this thesis. In the movement and dialogue of Paul’s theologising, his letter to the Romans is a relatively fixed feature (Dunn, 1998:25). It was written to a Church that was not his own founding. It was written at the end of a major phase of Paul’s missionary work (Rom 15:18-24), which included most of the other undisputed letters. It was written under probably the most congenial circumstances of his mission, with time for careful reflection and composition and, above all, it was clearly intended to set out and defend his own mature understanding of the Gospel (Rom 1:16-17) as he had thus far proclaimed it. In short, Romans is still far removed from a dogmatic or systematic treatise on theology, but it nevertheless is the most sustained and reflective statement of Paul’s theology by Paul himself. Romans provides Christians with an example of the way Paul himself chose to order the sequence of themes in his theology. If one wishes to grasp at (as attempted in this thesis) and dialogue with the mature theology of Paul, one cannot do better than to take Romans as a kind of template on which to construct one’s own statement of Paul’s theology. A theology of Paul that sets out to describe and discuss the Holy Spirit and sonship, is surely headed in the right direction, if one constantly references Romans as prompter and plumb-line throughout. / Prof. J.A. du Rand

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of History / Robert D. Linder / Evangelical Christians represented a growing and influential subset of American Protestantism in the northern colonies of British America at the time of the War for Independence. Almost a century later, when southern states chose to secede from the Union, evangelical Christianity embodied the most vital expression of American religion, having been widely spread across the nation by decades of revivals. Central to their faith was a commitment to the authority of the Bible in every area of life, including political life. The New Testament seemed to command Christians to obey civil authorities. So, why did northern evangelicals overwhelmingly support the rebellion against English rule, but later criticize southern Christians for rebelling against the Union? Or why, on the other hand, were both of these actions not equally rebellious against civil authority? This dissertation argues that northern evangelical Christians employed Romans 13:1-7 between 1763 and 1863 as a political text either to resist or to promote submission to civil authority in pursuit of an America whose greatness as a democratic republic would be defined primarily by its religious character as an evangelical Protestant Christian nation. The chronological scope of this project spans the century between the end of French and Indian or Seven Years War (1763)—a crucial turning point in Colonial America’s sense of identity in relation to Great Britain—and President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation (1863)—a crucial turning point in America’s sense of identity over the issue of slavery. Thus, the work explores the debate over American identity during the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries from a prominent religious perspective in light of changing understandings of the concept of submission to civil authority. The author views Romans 13:1-7 as a pivotal New Testament text informing evangelical Christian political theory in America between the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. Convictions forged by northern evangelicals in the colonial era regarding America’s status as “chosen” by God, and their attempts to construct a Christian democratic republic on this basis in the nineteenth century drove conscientious adherents of biblical authority to debate and periodically reassess the meaning of these verses in the American context. In this way, evangelicals contributed to the development of a concept that historians would later call “American exceptionalism.” Northern evangelicals, in particular, hoped to define America’s uniqueness by the degree to which those in civil authority reflected and reinforced Protestant Christian values and wedded these to American democratic republican identity. So long as the United States government fostered the attainment of their religious ideal for the nation, northern evangelicals promoted virtually absolute submission to civil authority on the basis of the command, “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers,” found in Romans 13:1. But when they perceived the state to threaten their goal of a national Christian identity, highly qualified explanations of Romans 13:1 prevailed in northern evangelical pulpits and publications.

No abstract available. / Dissertation (MA(Theology))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / New Testament Studies / unrestricted

Dans cette étude, nous avons cherché à comprendre pourquoi les lecteurs de romans, et plus particulièrement de romans pour jeunes adultes (tels que Twilight, Hunger Games, Divergent, etc.), décident de se joindre à des communautés virtuelles et d'y participer activement. Pour ce faire, nous nous sommes appuyés sur la théorie des usages et gratifications ainsi que sur les fan studies, c'est-à-dire le courant d'études réalisées sur des fans. Afin de répondre à notre question de recherche, nous avons effectué des entrevues qualitatives semi-dirigées. Les résultats de notre recherche indiquent que nos participantes ont joint les communautés virtuelles de fans pour répondre à des besoins non-comblés dans leur vie quotidienne, et y sont toujours actives car leurs interactions en ligne continuent de répondre à ce besoin ainsi qu'à d'autres encore.

Please read the abstract in the section 06back of this document / Thesis (PhD (New Testament))--University of Pretoria, 2001. / New Testament Studies / unrestricted

No description available.

One of the major issues which continues to receive attention in New Testament studies is the debate over the occasion and purpose of Romans. The present exegetical study enters into the "Romans Debate" by focusing on the text of Romans 14:1. It is our thesis that here Paul appeals to the predominantly Gentile Christian "strong" ones in Rome to exercise vigorous acceptance of the predominantly Jewish Christian "weak in faith" who, although sharing in the righteousness of God in Christ, continue to exhibit scruples about food and calendar laws. Our study contributes to the current debate by confirming the plausibility of a concrete situation in Rome which warranted the address of this text. We also demonstrate how our interpretation harmonizes with the major themes of the letter, which are clearly concerned with the relationship between Jew and Gentile in the redemptive historical moment inaugurated by God's action in Christ. By establishing the existence of a significant dimension of Jewish-Gentile relations in Rome, we enable a clearer understanding of Paul's motivation for writing not only the text in question, and the pericope which it introduces, but the entire letter. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

<p> The subject of this thesis is Paul's statements about homosexual behaviour in Romans 1:26-27. The thesis has a two-fold focus. First, it is concerned with the interpretation of Paul's words in the light of their historical context, using the methods of traditional historical criticism. Second, it attempts to evaluate the impact of recent debates in Christian churches about the ethics of homosexual behaviour on the interpretation of this text.</p><p>The differing interpretations of John Boswell and Richard Hays are treated as paradigmatic of recent debates over the text In the light of Boswell's and Hays' interpretations this thesis argues that Paul's words in Rom. 1:26-27 do a negative evaluation of all hormosexual behaviour, that Paul objected to homosexual behaviour because he believed it violated God's will for human life, that the objection was fundamentally gender-based, condemning sexual relations between persons of the same gender as "against nature." Furthermore, Paul's claim that homosexual behaviour was an expression of passions and desires is stressed, and it is argued that Paul believed, with other Jews, that homosexual behaviour was a vice characteristic of Gentile culture.</p> <p> The thesis begins with an introductory discussion of the interpretations of John Boswell and Richard Hays and an overview of methodological issues. Following this, Chapter One deals with the modern context in which interpretation of Rom. 1:26-27 takes place, focusing on theories about homosexuality and Christian responses. Chapter Two reviews recent work on Rom. 1:26-27 and highlights basic issues and questions. Chapter Three focuses on Paul's historical context, dealing with homosexual behaviour in the Graeco-Roman world, and Jewish and non-Jewish responses and attitudes. Chapter Four, the core of the thesis, deals in detail with Rom. 1:26-27 and presents the major arguments of the thesis. An outline of major conclusions follows, including a discussion of the relevance of the thesis for modern debates.</p> <p> The thesis both contributes a review of recent scholarship and attempts to advance understanding of the text by considering the relationship between historical interpretation of the text and its use in ethical debates.</p> / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

The funerary grave stelae of the Roman cavalrymen are large, impressive monuments set apart from their military counterparts by the ornate relief carvings which they exhibit. The two most common motifs featured on these tombstones are the rider relief motifs and the totenmahl motifs. Aspects of both the reliefs and the inscribed epitaphs are distinctly characteristic of the Roman military. Throughout the history of the Roman Empire, men in the auxiliary cavalry units were recruited from non-Roman allied tribes. These recruits brought with them foreign languages, customs, and beliefs. Through a comparative study of Roman cavalry tombstones found in Great Britain, Germany, and Syria, I have attempted to identify iconographic and epigraphic elements that are evidence of the ethnic origins of the cavalrymen who are commemorated on these funerary monuments.