While exploring the history of liberation theology themes appearing in Black musician’s work (in Dr. Daniel Smith-Christopher’s class Bible and the Blues), it came to my attention that there are many more contemporary artists whose work also touches on these themes, such as Lauryn Hill. My thesis argues with the help of Black and Womanist scholars that the naming of one’s reality through musical lamentations is a healing act. Further, musical lamentation is an act to carry forth communities and provide them with healing because the act of acknowledging and lamenting the suffering of a marginalized community is liberating in and of itself. This act of lamenting serves, then, as an act of truth-telling, that refuses to deny the pain that is caused by systems of oppression such as racism and sexism. Lauryn Hill’s album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill then expresses a theology of lament in which the lamentation itself serves a healing purpose for those listening.

Despite Hannah Arendt's prediction in the wake of World War II that "the problem of evil will be the fundamental question of post-war intellectual life," the majority of postwar philosophers have preferred to stay away from the idea of evil. But at the same time that philosophical reflection on the notion of evil has dissipated, there is no denying the fact that referring to "evil" has remained very common among the public at large, among political leaders, and in popular culture. To better understand what meaning the concept of evil might have for us today, in this paper I will address two main questions. First, recognizing the problems recent philosophers have raised against the idea of "evil," we should ask if we should simply take our leave of the concept of evil, admitting that it has been exhausted by overuse, shifting intellectual paradigms, and a triumphant secular age. In other words, does it make any sense for us today to go beyond calling something wrong or unjust or harmful or unspeakable and to speak in terms of "evil?" Is talk about evil simply a relic of a way of speaking and thinking about the world that we have long left behind? Is "evil" in fact one of those terms that have always drawn people into error and sometimes even into committing horrific acts? Second, if we believe we can begin to address this first set of questions about the notion of evil, it remains to be seen what exactly we might mean by evil. What are we pointing to when we call something "evil?" What makes something evil rather than merely wrong or unjust? What kinds of things do we reserve the judgment of evil for? This set of questions leads us to come up with a substantive account of evil, an account of what evil is and what distinguishes evil from other wrongdoing. To address these questions, our argument will proceed as follows. We will begin with an overview of the recent return to discussing evil after a turn away from evil by the majority working in philosophy. After giving a brief historical overview of these shifts we will then begin to argue for the need for philosophers to think about evil and the concept of evil. In short, as I will argue, because we continue to turn to the notion of evil in response to extreme forms of wrongdoing, philosophical reflection is warranted in trying to clarify what we might reasonably mean when we call an agent or action evil. Moving to a discussion of the idea of radical evil, we will begin with a close reading and interpretation of Kant's account of radical evil, pausing to discuss what he gets right and where he may err. We will then move to recent discussions of evil in contemporary philosophy, much of which can be understood as revolving around Kant's account of radical evil. In these contemporary accounts, evil is no longer used in an inclusive, wide sense, but almost exclusively to refer to the kinds of extreme, unforgivable wrongdoing we might classify under the notion of radical evil. In these recent accounts, there is an attempt to distinguish degrees of evil, between the "normal" or "ordinary" evils of serious wrongdoing that we nevertheless can understand, punish, and cope with, versus the "radical" or extreme evils that we cannot really understand, punish, or fit into our intellectual and moral frameworks. After discussing these recent accounts and appreciating the progress they make, we will nevertheless ask whether they can really help us grasp the kinds of horrendous evil they were developed in response to. In particular, we will argue that these recent accounts still fail to appreciate the notion of radical evil to its full extent, preferring to focus on the harm caused and on notions like the banality of evil and ordinary evildoers, projects which may end up distorting the nature of evil. Looking to some recent reflections on radical evil, we will argue that the Kantian notion of a perversion of the will and an evil heart help us to understand that radical evil is something that is usually anything but banal, but is a fundamental breach of our normal standards of wrongness and that this quality of excess and the inversion of the moral is what lies at the core of the acts and agents we deem evil. We will conclude by looking at the necessary limits of any abstract discussion of evil in general and how particular evils such as those experienced at Auschwitz cannot even begin to be explained by such accounts, arguing that our discomfort and horror in the face of evil nevertheless remains but that such attempts at reflection and understanding evil remain necessary and urgent.

This qualitative research compared the practice of an expert preacher to core concepts in homiletic theory (the art and craft of preaching), searching for discrepancies between what theory suggested and what the preacher practiced. It also sought to validate that the preacher practiced what homiletic theorists prescribed and to inform homiletic theory by describing strategies he employed unlike those espoused in homiletic theory. To discover whether the participant's practice was congruent with theory, I first identified seminal theories. They were classified into the following modified version of Broadus's categories of ideal preaching: (a) content, (b) arrangement, (c) introduction,transition, and conclusion, (d) style, (e) illustrations, and (f) the delivery. I created a rubric from the literature review as a standard from which I compared the participant's audio and video sermons. The rubric had six categories, 39 subcategories, and 58 characteristics of ideal preaching to which the preacher was compared. The analysis included frequency counts of certain words, phrases, illustrations, and the results of the Flesch's Reading Ease score. To find strategies employed by the participant but not represented in the literature, I also used an inductive method to analyze the integral parts and patterns of the sermons. The analysis revealed that the preacher's practice was congruent with theory yet the preacher had never read homiletic theory. Because the preacher was able to sidestep the need to study homiletics, it was concluded that for him preaching was an intuitive art/craft. The research also revealed that the preacher had a personal homiletic philosophy wherein everything in his preparation, message design, and delivery centered on relevancy. The preacher felt strongly that the message had to apply to his listeners in meaningful ways. The preacher's strength centered not so much on how he presented, but what he presented. His sermons were filled with what homiletic theorist Sunukjian called "timeless truths." They made the preacher's sermons insightful, hopeful, and most of all, relevant to his listeners.

A great religious Awakening was taking place in 1805 until the end of the Civil War. Religious debates became the order of the day, and were at least equal in importance to the political debates. Alexander Campbell was one of the leading debators of the period. He was born September 12, 1787, in Ireland, but moved to America in 1809, settling in western Virginia. In 1812, Alexander and his father, Thomas Campbell, launched what they called "The Restoration Movement", in which they were seeking for the unity of all Christians on the basis of the Bible.

This thesis examines and evaluates F.C. Baur's philosophical and theological ideas as they relate to the writing of Church history and historical theology. The study is undertaken within the context of the problem of the relation between faith and history, which can be stated in more relevant categories for Church historiography as the problem of the relation between subject (faith) and object (history), and proposes that Baur's thought on this problem can be useful for the modern faith/history debate, and especially for the consideration of writing Church history.

This paper is a study of the relationship between Martin Luther's theology of the church and the practical development of the religious life of the church under his leadership, as this relationship relates to the active and passive roles of the layman in the church. The thesis question is: Did Luther hold a social prejudice against the lower classes and in favor of the upper class that caused him to modify or reinterpret his concept of the church in the course of his career?

A number of basic themes suggest themselves as focal points for a study of the thought of Jonathan Edwards. The dissertation is an attempt to argue that experience is one of them, and that an attentive eye to the doctrine of experience will reveal it as the unifying theme of his philosophy. Specifically, at the center of Edwards' aesthetic and religious vision there lies a rich and profound sense of experience, and of the relation of all things to some form of perception. The evidence is to be found in Edwards' extensive published and unpublished writings. Among the several editions of his collected works, the 1808 Worcester edition and the 1829 Dwight edition are the most complete and most reliable. Another especially valuable source is the "Miscellaneous Observations," a notebook of random thoughts Edwards kept throughout his life. Parts of this journal are published, but a great deal remains unpublished in the Yale University Library, and contains a wealth of insights into the mind of Edwards. It is important to note the doctrinal influences of covenant theology. There had always been a disposition among the Puritans to emphasize real assent in religious matters. Their gradual acceptance of experience as a guide to doctrine can be attributed to the influence of medieval Neo-Platonism as well as to their own historical situation. Three elements form the center of Edwards' doctrine of experience. They are the idea of beauty, the sense of the heart, and the theological concept of grace. An explanation of each of these components in themselves and in their interrelations reveals the full meaning of experience. A sense of beauty suffused his own personal experiences and allowed him to see the world in relation to the universal consciousness of God. Man perceives the presence of divine consciousness throughout reality with a sense of the heart. The seat of man's cognitive life is his heart, which includes the understanding as well as the will. By defining grace as a "new simple idea," Edwards proposes that it is a new principle of nature within man, and that it is a taste for moral excellency which is specifically designated as love. As a metaphysical principle, the consent to being is an attempt to rethink the category of substance in terms of relation. The truly significant fact of the doctrine resides in an implicit theory of value-response—that value is objectively rooted in God, and that everything gives consent to it through man. Edwards' theology is an effort to place Newtonian physics into a wider frame of reference. He adapts the concepts of atoms, space, and gravity to an organic metaphysics of consent. Divine creation is a diffusive process of communication, and natural objects and events are called "images or shadows" because they bear an intrinsic relation to God's communicative nature. The specific agency of creation is to be found in the Incarnation, which is the capstone of his whole system of thought. Experience has held a position of preeminence among the major themes of American philosophy. The conclusion of this paper is that Edwards' philosophy can be viewed as the systematic explication of his doctrine of experience, and that it is possible to consider him an early exponent of the American tradition which gives experience a position of primacy in relation to thought.

This paper attempts to compare the ecc1esio1ogies of the fourth century Bishop of Hippo and the controversial twentieth century theo1ogian. In doing so, a study is made of each writer independently in order to extract his conceptual models of the Church. Special significance is given to the names each attributed to the Church and the consequences of these names as they pass from an analogical to an ecc1esio1ogica1 sphere. A study is also made of the functions of office within the Church with respect to the fulfillment of specific ministries. Here the two divide, Augustine meets the Donatist challenge by condemning disunity, while urging contemporary Christians to true internal reform, reminding them of the necessity of grace available only through the Church to heal their natures. Special attention is given to two specific topics from Augustine: the use of force to compel at least outward conformity, and the belief in the inability of man to do any good outside the Body of Christ. Kung diverges in another way in different times. He emphasizes the communal nature of the Church as those called by God and, on earth, represented by the ministry of ecclesiological office, including Ecumenical Councils and the Papacy. The Church, according to Kung, is the Kingdom of God moving towards manifestation and must reflect its apocalyptic nature by its witness and proclamation of the Word. He finds fault with the teaching office of the Church for its adherence to verbal propositions and concludes advocating a non-propositional attachment to kerygma. The contrast between the writers is sharply emphasized by a comparison of their positions on certain points, including authority, the Papacy and finally the four marks or distinguishing characteristics of the Church. The attitudes towards the first two differ markedly on some points, but a consistency of approach towards the four marks of the Church, with the exception of the Apostolic characteristic, can be seen. Several conclusions are propounded but the essence of each lies in the attitude of each writer towards human nature. Augustine finds the same wholly depraved without grace, which is given through the Word and human collaboration. Kung finds a response to divine call sufficient and is less concerned with limits on freedom in the name of love of neighbor. The interplay between these two schools of thought has punctuated Church history in the same manner as it does human history.

Though relatively unknown to non-specialists, Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī is a fundamental member of the community of Muslims who founded Islamic Philosophy. In his tenth-century work, On the Perfect State, al-Fārābī tackles questions of eminent importance to society of Muslims still deciding who they were. These questions and their inevitable solutions were, for a time, a source of much turmoil for the young Ummah; and we argue that the Perfect State should be read as an effort to take part in, even to lead, the conversation that would decide how these questions were answered. A school of thought championed by Richard Walzer argues that the most important thing to know about al-Fārābī is that he repeated in Arabic many things already said better in Greek by the ancients. According to this school of thought, al-Fārābī’s main intention was to transmit specifically Greek learning to posterity, not to participate in the world of Islam and Muslims. It is our contention that this view is mistaken and misleading. Through an examination of tenth-century Islamic history, a close reading of al-Fārābī’s work in Arabic, and a thorough discussion of the mistakes made by the Walzerian school of thought, we will show that al-Fārābī used philosophy as a tool for solving problems particular to the Muslim community of his age. / Religion

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