This thesis challenges Classical Christian presentations of God based on exclusive and literalized metaphors. This piece explores the response of three dissenting groups, who place their emphasis on an experiential theology, directly challenging the use of conventional language to describe God. The Quaker practice of silent worship, Isadora Duncan’s dance form and Theopoetics each demand that religious structures enable an experience of the Divine that is spontaneous, mysterious and deeply personal.

This paper is my own unique feminist analysis of certain apocryphal texts. Though the texts I use have common themes, they are divided into what I consider the three most societally important aspects of an ancient woman’s identity: virgin, mother, and whore. The Acts of Thecla and The Acts of Xanthippe and Polyxena deal with virginity. II Maccabees, The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas, and select chapters of Augustine’s Confessions represent motherhood. Finally, the hagiographies Life of Pelagia and Life of Mary navigate through the mire of sexualities that deviate from norms.

INTRODUCTION: THE SEARCH FOR THE GOD OF ABRAHAM TEXT AND HISTORY: THE FORMATION OF THE ABRAHAMIC DEITY Recent years have seen substantial changes in the study of ancient Israelite religion. These changes have created ample work for scholars of religious studies and related fields as virtually all disciplines have something to say about recent archaeological and scholarly developments concerning Yahwism and its early development. In this scholarly milieu, it is difficult to present anything that is wholly new, but certainly possible to enter a spirited discourse about ancient questions. To discuss the origins and evolution of the Abrahamic deity—as I shall—necessitates drawing from many disciplines because discussion of this deity pervades all discourses on ancient Israelite religion. Accordingly, I will draw from scholarly tools characteristic of the disciplines of history, linguistics, and archaeology. The bulk of my argument, however, will be centered around the biblical texts themselves. Though the historicity of these texts is highly suspect, they nevertheless provide valuable historical information that, if engaged with carefully, can aid in understanding the origin and evolution of one Yahweh of Canaan.

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. 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. 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. 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.

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.

Thesis--Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 247-255).

I begin by offering an account of two key strains in the history of philosophical dealings with death. Both strains initially seek to diminish fear of death by appealing to the idea that death is simply the separation of the soul from the body. According to the Platonic strain, death should not be feared since the soul will have a prolonged existence free from the bodily prison after death. With several dramatic modifications, this is the strain that is taken up by much of the mainstream Christian tradition. According to the Epicurean strain, death should not be feared since the tiny pthesiss that make up the soul leave the body and are dispersed at the moment of death, leaving behind no subject to experience any evil that might be associated with death. Although informed by millennia of further scientific discovery, this is the strain picked up on by contemporary atheistic, technologically advanced mankind. My primary goal is to demonstrate that philosophy has an often-overlooked alternative to viewing death in terms of this ancient dichotomy. This is the alternative championed by Søren Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger. Although both thinkers arise from the Christian tradition, they clearly react to Epicurean insights about death in their work, thereby prescribing a peculiar way of living with death that the Christian tradition seems to have forgotten about. Despite the association of Kierkegaard and Heidegger, there is a fundamental difference between them on the subject of death. In Being and Time Heidegger seems to rely on the phenomenology of death that Kierkegaard provides in texts such as "At a Graveside." It is interesting to notice, however, that this discourse, especially when seen in the light of Kierkegaard's more obviously religious works, might only be compelling to the aspiring Christian. If so, then perhaps there is a tension in both Heidegger's "methodologically atheistic" appropriation of Kierkegaard's ideas about death, and Heidegger's attempt to make these ideas compelling to the aspiring human. My secondary goal is to determine whether Heidegger takes the "existential philosophy of death" too far when he incorporates it into his early ontological project.

The topic of eschatology is generally confined to the field of theology. However, the subject has influenced many other fields, such as politics and history. This dissertation examines the question why eschatology remained a topic of discussion within twentieth century philosophy. Concepts associated with eschatology, such as the end of time and the hope of a utopian age to come, remained largely background assumptions among intellectuals in the modern age. Martin Heidegger, Nicolai Berdyaev, and Hans Blumenberg, however, explicitly addressed the subject in their philosophies. The impetus of this study is Heidegger's statement, "Being itself is inherently eschatological," which indicates the centrality of the subject in his understanding of Being. This statement led to the question whether eschatology played a larger role in Western thought. It also raised the question concerning the relationship between eschatology and other philosophical subjects such as teleology. Because of the multitude of assumptions concerning the meaning of eschatology, Chapter One provides essential working definitions. In order to obtain a sufficient understanding of the topic and address the use of the term among the three philosophers, it was necessary to see how eschatology was understood and acted upon in Western thought. Chapter Two addresses the history of eschatology in the West and concludes that there are two general streams of eschatological thought that explains why it continued to remain a subject for contemporary philosophers. Chapters Three through Five address how eschatology was used by Heidegger, Berdyaev, and Blumenberg respectively. Each utilized the subject in different ways: for Heidegger eschatology constitutes Dasein's existence. Futurity ("forward-directedness") is a condition Dasein as a totality. Dasein is "being-toward-the-end" or "toward-death." Berdyaev combines the eschatological tradition with philosophical achievements and offers an "eschatological metaphysics." He distinguishes eschatology from teleology arguing against teleology, noting that only a "personalist" eschatology can solve the problems of dualism and objectification. Blumenberg differs from Heidegger and Berdyaev by offering a negative evaluation of eschatological belief in the West contending that the modern secular age is the result of a failed eschatology. The conclusion of this work follows Charles Taylor's contention in A Secular Age that "our sense of where we are is crucially defined in part by a story of how we got there." The conclusion is that eschatology, throughout most of Western thought, functioned largely as a background assumption for understanding time and history. The transition from the linear concept of time to a cyclical concept defines in part the modern secular age. The notion of future time is an important and often neglected dimension of hermeneutic understanding. The continued influence of eschatological thought in Western history explains why the philosophers under consideration in this work address eschatology and signals that its influence upon philosophical thought is not likely to diminish in the future.

The question of the relation between religious experience and Christian belief in God is addressed in radically different ways within contemporary theology and philosophy of religion. In order to develop an answer which avoids the pitfalls of the ‘analytic perception model’ (Alston, Yandell, Swinburne) and the ‘overlinguistic’ model for interpreting Christian religious experience (Taylor, Lindbeck), this thesis offers an approach which combines a phenomenological study of feelings, conceptual investigation of Christian God-talk and ‘belief’-talk, as well as theological, sociological and anthropological perspectives. At the centre of the interpretation developed here is the phenomenological category ‘existential feelings’ which should be seen, it is suggested, as a theologically and philosophically central aspect of Christian religious experiencing. Using this contemporary concept, a novel reading of F. Schleiermacher’s concept of ‘feeling’ is proposed and several kinds of Christian experiencing interpreted (like the experiences of ‘awe’, ‘miracle of existence’, ‘wretchedness’, and ‘redeemed community’). By way of a philosophical understanding of Christian believing in God, this study offers a critical interpretation of the later Wittgenstein’s concept of ‘religious belief’, combining Wittgensteinian insights with Paul Tillich’s notion of ‘dynamic faith’ and arguing against Wittgensteinian ‘grammaticalist’ and ‘expressivist’ accounts. Christian beliefs about God are normally life-guiding but nevertheless dubitable. The nature of Christian God-talk is interpreted, again, by combining the later Wittgenstein’s insights into the grammatical and expressive roles of God-talk with Merleau-Ponty’s emphasis on linguistic innovation and Roman Jakobson’s perspective on the functions of language. Finally, the claim which connects phenomenological, conceptual and theological strands of this study is a recognition of a ‘religious belief-inviting pull’ of the relevant experience. Christian religious belief-formation and concept-formation can be seen as stemming from ‘extraordinary’ existential feelings, where the resulting beliefs about God are largely but not completely bound by traditional meanings.

L‟objectif de mon mémoire se concentre sur la notion d‟altérité émanant des philosophies d‟Emmanuel Lévinas et de Paul Ricoeur ; je m‟intéresse plus précisément au concept clé d‟éthique et de savoir en quoi enrichit-elle le dialogue judéo-chrétien. Le point initial de ma réflexion est l‟herméneutique biblique, qu‟Emmanuel Lévinas et Paul Ricoeur articulent, d‟après moi, différemment selon leurs héritages religieux respectifs à savoir juif et chrétien. Néanmoins, la signification éthique des Textes Sacrés perdure pour chacun d‟eux comme lieu commun même si la signification leur est différente et propre à leurs traditions religieuses. Ainsi, dans ce mémoire l‟altérité développée par Lévinas, talmudiste reconnu, sera comparée avec la pensée de Ricoeur dont la conception est davantage chrétienne, en référence à son travail exégétique. Quand bien même Lévinas et Ricoeur ont tenu à distinguer leurs philosophies de leurs théologies, l‟hypothèse de départ prend une liberté herméneutique qui oscille souvent entre philosophie et théologie et qui tend à retracer au mieux l‟altérité et son lien intrinsèque avec l‟éthique. Cette lecture comparatiste m‟amènera donc à penser et à intégrer l‟altérité comme une prémisse éthique au dialogue judéo-chrétien. Mon travail en sciences des religions qui prend racine depuis l‟herméneutique même, s‟oriente vers une perspective éthique et dialogique et c‟est cette visée de médiation interreligieuse qui lui confère une appartenance à cette discipline. / The Otherness is the focus of my thesis, a notion that emanates from Emmanuel Levinas’ and Paul Ricoeur’s philosophies; I’m interested more precisely about the concept of ethics and to discover how it improves the reflection upon Jewish and Christian dialogue. The initial point of my reflexion is the biblical hermeneutics that Emmanuel Lévinas and Paul Ricoeur structure, to my point of view, variously depending their religious background: Jewish for Lévinas and Christian for Ricoeur. Nevertheless, the ethical signification of the Bible perpetuates for both of them as a commonplace, even if the signification is different and inherent to their own religious traditions. In my thesis, the Otherness, as elaborated by Lévinas, will be compared with Ricoeur’s thoughts, whom conception is more Christian as his biblical works let us guess. Even if Lévinas and Ricoeur have tried to distinguish their philosophical work from their theological one, claiming a neutrality about theology, my initial hypothesis take an hermeneutical freedom which often oscillates between theology and philosophy and which try to recount the alterity and its intrinsic link to ethics. A comparatist reading will lead me to think that the ethics of the Otherness is the basis of Jewish and Christian dialogue because of Levinas’ and Ricoeur’s works. My work in religious studies is based upon hermeneutics and turns toward an ethical and dialogical perspective; it is this interreligious mediation aim which confers to my thesis a belonging in this discipline.