Religious counselors tend to neglect theorists who oppose religion. B. F. Skinner and Albert Ellis implicitly and explicitly criticize religion in their published writings. These criticisms are connected with their atheistic philosophies. Thomism is a theistic philosophy endorsed by the Catholic Church. Karl Rahner and Bernard Lonergan have integrated Thomism with contemporary thought. Their works serve as models for this research project--a counselor's integration of Thomism with the philosophies of B. F. Skinner and Albert Ellis. A counselor can disconnect Skinnerian and Ellisian criticisms of religion from their atheistic philosophies. Viewing the same criticisms in the context of a theistic theory, a counselor can gain insights on religion and related topics --sin, guilt, belief in God, prayer, afterlife--as they apply to counseling. This writer hopes that this project will be an example to other religious counselors who attempt to integrate religion and counseling.

Soren Kierkegaard is presented as a Christian corrective to nineteenth century idealism. The nature of idealism is described as it arises in Hegelianism, the ecclesiastical structure, and the cultural setting. The Hegelian ontology of "pure thought," the principle of "mediation," and the striving for "objectivity" are presented as the fundamental obstacles to the assimilation of Christianity. Kierkegaard approaches these issues maieutically. This method is discussed as it relates to the author and his works. The stages of existence (i.e. Aesthetic, Ethical, Religiousness A, and Religiousness B) are described in relation to Kierkegaard's maieutical approach. Kierkegaard's Christological concern is discussed. Comments are directed to his presentation of God and his view of the historical approach. Christ is presented as the "paradox," "absurdity," and "offense." The nature of Christian existence is described as it relates to ^hrist in contemporaneity and the overcoming of offense in faith.

As a Religious Studies and Humanities: Interdisciplinary Studies in Culture major, I have noticed several striking similarities between South Asian religious philosophies and Continental philosophy. However, this also brought my attention to the severe lack of representation of South Asian philosophies. I began to see the resonances with Jainism and Jean-Paul Sartre’s Existentialism is a Humanism. Therefore, my thesis explores the similarities between atheism, subjectivity and responsibility as common concepts between Sartrean Existentialism and Jainism.

The diploma thesis named What may we hope for? Immanuel Kant's Philosophy of Religion has the goal to explore Kant's philosophy of religion to answer the question what a reasonable human being may hope for according to I. Kant. To reach the above mentioned goal we are going to deal with Kant's ethics of duty in the first chapter trying to find the answer to the question how the reasonable human being shall live to be able to hope at least. In the second chapter we focus on Kant's critique of proof of God's existence which precedes Kant's fundamental study about postulates of pure practical reason. From the third chapter we begin to map Kant's philosophy of religion chronologically. We enter Kant's prior to critical period and we try to interpret Kant's letter in which we can find the first important statements of our philosopher towards Christianity. Along with the fourth chapter we step into Kant's critical period and we process already mentioned study about postulates of pure practical reason. The last two chapters draw from I. Kant's post-critical document. In the chapter named About Human Nature we meet with Kant's concept of human nature, further we also compare where this concept corresponds with or perhaps differs from the previous philosophical periods of our philosopher. In the last...

The Medievalizing Process: Religious Medievalism in Romantic and Victorian Literature posits religious medievalism as one among many critical paradigms through which we might better understand literary efforts to bring notions of sanctity back into the modern world. As a cultural and artistic practice, medievalism processes the loss of medieval forms of understanding in the modern imagination and resuscitates these lost forms in new and imaginative ways to serve the purposes of the present. My dissertation proposes religious medievalism as a critical method that decodes modern texts’ lamentations over a perceived loss of the sacred. My project locates textual moments in select works of John Keats, Lord Byron, Charles Dickens, and Oscar Wilde that reveal concern over the consequences of modern dualism. It examines the ways in which these texts participate in a process of rejoining to enchant a rationalistic epistemology that stymies transcendental unity. I identify the body of Christ, the central organizing principle of medieval devotion, as the cynosure of nineteenth-century religious medievalism. This body offers a non-dualistic alternative that retroactively undermines and heals Cartesian divisions of mind and body and Kantian distinctions between noumenal and knowable realities. Inscribing the dynamic contours of the medieval religious body into a text’s linguistic structure, a method I call the “medievalizing process,” underscores the spiritual dimensions of its reform efforts and throws into relief a distinctly religious, collective agenda that undergirds many nineteenth-century texts.

Sacred texts authored in antiquity present a challenge for contemporary religious practitioners because there is always a question regarding how to interpret and apply the message today. Prominent Pentecostal theologian and disability theorist Amos Yong faces this challenge concerning the Bible as it relates to disabilities and those who have them. As I argue in this thesis, Yong succeeds in challenging the Pentecostal perceptions of disability without compromising on the over-all Pentecostal view of scripture. The Hebrew Bible, which, according to Yong, "...serves as the foundation of the Christian scriptures," contains multiple passages that portray disability in a negative light. For example, the Old Testament contains laws and regulations governing the priestly liturgical cult that place very strict guidelines on who is allowed to fulfill what duties based on one's lineage and physical condition. The Old Testament also contains passages in which the God of the Hebrews makes a covenant linking obedience with health and disobedience with sickness. The second part of the Christian scriptures (the New Testament) also includes multiple narratives that portray disability as (at the very least) an undesirable phenomenon. For example, the healing narrative and miracles attributed to Jesus and his followers are used by Pentecostals to stress the importance of physical healing. Consider also the Pentecostal understanding of the cross event. According to Pentecostal scholar Keith Warrington, the cross is used to emphasize triumph over suffering, sin, and the devil. The challenge for contemporary religious practitioners, then, is deciding how one is to interpret and apply the message of a given text today. For example, (a) how does a contemporary Pentecostal (that utilizes the Bible as a sacred text) view the phenomenon of disability and passages of scripture that marginalize the differently-able today? Furthermore, (b) how does Yong successfully arrive at non-Pentecostal convictions concerning the differently-able while maintaining his Pentecostal beliefs about scripture? In order to explain how Yong succeeds in justifying his non-Pentecostal perceptions of the differently-able one must first understand the overall Pentecostal convictions concerning scripture which inform the Pentecostal perception of disability. The authority of, and use for, the Bible as it informs the perception of disability within Pentecostalism (a variant of (a)) will be the focus of Chapter One. Chapter Two will introduce Yong's theological hermeneutic which articulates his understanding of the purpose of scripture. By examining the hermeneutical approach utilized by Yong in his earlier work Spirit-Word-Community, on biblical interpretation, one can gain a clearer picture of how he relates methods of interpretation to his perception of disability in his later work The Bible, Disability, and the Church (a variant of (b)). The final task, then, is to demonstrate how Yong successfully solves the problem of exclusion experienced by the differently-able while maintaining his Pentecostal beliefs about scripture. Chapter Three articulates Yong's hermeneutical solution to the problem of exclusion justified within the Pentecostal understanding of scripture. This is done through understanding Yong's `disability hermeneutic. This chapter explicates Yong's assertion that the way Pentecostals have misinterpreted scripture is to blame for exclusive and oppressive perceptions of disability.

In this thesis I will develop and test an interpretive framework for the Subject based on the understanding that an entity can be identified as a Subject if it is the necessary referent for an attribution. This understanding provides a template for approaching different Subjects, for considering the validity of their being identified as Subjects, and for reorienting the general discourse of the Subject away from an investigation of particular entities to one concerned with the contexts which support such identifications.

<p>I min uppsats vill jag undersöka Martinus andliga vetenskap, försöka klargöra på vilket sätt den egentligen är vetenskap – om den överhuvudtaget kan sägas vara det. Är det en kvalitativ eller en kvantitativ vetenskapsmodell Martinus presenterar? Efter att ha analyserat Martinus texter kan jag konstatera att det finns vissa problem och paradoxer i denna andliga vetenskap.</p><p>Martinus menade att dagens materialistiska vetenskap är totalt bristfällig. Martinus var själv oskolad, och stoltserade närmast med att vara obeläst. Han använder således inte termerna kvalitativ eller kvantitativ vetenskap. Martinus avfärdar den akademiska vetenskapen som sådan, så som han uppfattar den. Men i själva verket finns det ju inte bara en sorts vetenskap. Olika ämnesområden följer olika vetenskapsmodeller, men även ett och samma ämnesområde kan studeras utifrån olika vetenskapsteorier och metoder.</p><p>Jag kommer i min uppsats att diskutera Martinus vetenskapskritik, och den vetenskapstro han menar att de etablerade moderna vetenskapsmännen ägnar sig åt. Samtidigt vill jag diskutera Martinus troskritik, och dessutom kritiskt granska den vetenskapstro som finns hos Martinus själv – hans ”tro” på sin egen vetenskap.</p><p>Martinus ägnar sig, paradoxalt nog, rätt mycket åt just ”tro”, i sin vilja att besegra densamma. Dock verkar Martinus vara delvis omedveten om problemet själv, och dessutom har tidigare forskning i ämnet helt missat, negligerat, eller helt enkelt inte insett det stora problem som finns här.</p>

<p>Jag är intresserad av varför religionsämnet blev så omdebatterat. Dessutom vad innebar religionsfrihetslagen för skolan? Jag är också intresserad av vad kritikerna tyckte om skolan och religionsämnet. Jag finner det intressant att några av Svenska kyrkans stift var helt mot skolämnets förändring och tyckte att föräldrarna själva skulle få bestämma om deras barns religiösa utbildning. Medan andra bara följde med och tyckte exakt som lagförslaget. Det jag tycker är intressant är varför? Varför tyckte de som var mot lagförslaget så och varför tyckte de som var för så och vad är deras kommentarer? Jag har försökt att ta reda på det genom min forskning.</p>

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 early 1990s church membership included over 50 million followers (11 percent of the population).3 Today there are over 90 million Protestants in Latin America, the vast majority of which are Pentecostal and Charismatic.4 What seemed like a seemingly insignificant movement before World War II has grown to include thirteen percent of the entire Latin American population.5 The six-fold growth of evangelicalism from the beginning to the end of the twentieth century has led many scholars like David Stoll to ask, “Is Latin America Turning Protestant?”6