<p>This project provides a theory for a programme of religious education which will attempt to mitigate the breakdown between belief and action in adolescence. It involves a critical analysis of the recent literature regarding the stages of religious development and an examination of how those stages compare to the stages of intellectual development as described by Piaget, and of emotional development as described by Erikson and Freud.</p> / Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT)

<p>Most scholars working on the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies and Recognitions, two related Christian novels redacted in fourth-century Syria, have been primarily concerned With source-critical questions. They have treated these texts as mere collections of sources, which are valuable for our understanding of "Jewish Christianity" in the first and second centuries. The recent works of Kelley and Reed, however, have demonstrated that these novels are! important works of late antique literature in their own right, and that they have much to tell us about Christianity and Judaism in the fourth century.</p> <p>In this thesis I follow their lead, seeking to understand the approach to Scripture in the Homilies and its relationship to broader theological issues in fourth-century Syria. I argue that the Homilies engages in a tacit polemic against Christians who read Scripture allegorically and reflects similar anti-Alexandrian concerns as are evident in the writings of other fourth-century theologians and exegetes from Antioch, particularly Eustathius of Antioch, Diodore of Tarsus, and Theodore of Mopsuestia. I suggest that this polemic becomes evident when we read the doctrine of the false pericopes in Hom. 1-3 together with the critique of the Greek myths in Hom. 4-6, and when we note the rather frequent attempts of the authors/redactors of the Homilies to cast Alexandria in a negative light.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

Master of Arts (MA)

Master of Arts (MA)

<p>I intend to compare the person-philosophies of Martin Buber and the Upanisads, assessing them in terms of my own opinions. Chapter One will expound Martin Buber's thought; Chapter Two will take this further, by investigating the notion of 'person-knowing'; Chapters Three and Four will be devoted to the Upanisads; Chapter Five will round off the discussion by arguing against a certain general tendency within the Upanisads in favour of a certain general tendency within Buber's thought.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>The question which this thesis proposes to answer is: on what basis did David Friedrich Strauss, in his The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (1835-36), form his judgments on the non-historicity of traditions about Jesus?</p> <p>Part of the answer is available in Strauss's explicit criteria of non-historicity (e.g., irreconcilability of events with known and universal laws, internal inconsistency, coherence with existing ideas prevailing in the circles from which the narrative came, etc.). Part of it, however, lies in the influence on his gospel criticism of Strauss's ulterior convictions and purposes (e.g., his prior agreements with Hegel, his conception of myth, his practise of the dialectical method of criticism). This requires giving an account of both the formulation of the criteria for judgments of non-historicity and Strauss's actual practise of gospel criticism. The thesis is conceived as a preliminary study pertinent to the contemporary question of adequate criteria for historical-Jesus research.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

Master of Arts (MA)

<p>Prince Edward Island is Canada's smallest province, situated on the Atlantic coast. It is famous for the potatoes that grow in its red fertile soil, its seafood industries, and Lucy Maud Montgomery's novel Anne of Green Gables, which is set on the north shore of the Island. Prince Edward Island is a popular tourist destination. The tourists seek "authentic" experiences in a bucolic, pastoral atmosphere, and connections to a larger reality than they experience in their everyday lives. Distancing themselves from their everyday routines also provides rejuvenation. Drawing upon fieldwork data gathered on Prince Edward Island, I argue that vacations (specifically to Prince Edward Island) are secular pilgrimages. There are many parallels between pilgrimages associated with religious institutions and vacations undertaken by tourists, and the differences that exist between religious pilgrimage and secular pilgrimage are largely nominal.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>This is a study of Genesis III, verse 7 and its interpretation from the time of the Midrash Rabbah to the present. It consists of introduction, six chapters, conclusion and bibliography. The first chapter is a close textual analysis; the second shows the relationship between this verse and attitudes to nakedness and clothing in the rest of the Bible and outside it. The following four chapters deal with various understandings of the text under the headings of sexuality, reason, morality and anxiety. There is an attempt to show that, rather than being discrete or even contradictory interpretations, these are in fact closely related and complementary understandings of the text. It is argued that the theme of anxiety, at its fullest, comprehends the other themes, and the interpretation of the verse as a statement about man's anxious condition is presented as the most adequate understanding of it.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>In 2003 Ontario, Canada became the focus of heated national and international debate when it engaged citizens in a debate over the use of religious, and specifically Islamic, law in private arbitration disputes. A government commission which canvassed Ontarians for their perspective on the issue lies at the center of the debate. Marion Boyd's 2004 report, "Dispute Resolution in Family Law: Protecting Choice, Promoting Inclusion" describes and analyzes the results. A government document aimed at presenting the findings and recommendations of the commission to a wider public, this report encapsulates many ofthe ideas and attitudes prevalent among Ontarians on the issue of religious, and specifically Muslim, arbitration practices.</p> <p>The Boyd report is a valuable indication of some of the most fundamental and uncritically considered assumptions about Islam at work in government policy and public opinion. In this thesis I uncover two primary models of Islam that Boyd's report constructs, and relate these constructions to their larger contexts. The first treats religion as a static entity distinct from culture, while the second expands religious identity to the point that it becomes a culture itself. After outlining each, I suggest that these definitions are the product of the two overlapping contexts in which the report is embedded. The first is a Canadian public space defining Islam in terms of popular notions of multiculturalism, and the second a transnational and globalizing space constructing Islam as a neoethnicity. The definitions of Islam contained in the report draw on these two frameworks and maintain familiar conceptual categories which render Islam and Muslim identity more easily understood and accepted by the public.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)