The purpose of this thesis is to analyze and compare a Christian and transhumanist worldview, particularly with regard to the compatibility between their views on humanity and human nature. The analysis utilizes Leslie Stevenson's analytical framework of what constitutes a theory of human nature, coupled with the philosophical method of analyzing the contents of ideas, advocated by Carl-Henric Grenholm. Through examination of articles authored by transhumanists and representatives of the Swedish church, the thesis examines how, and in what way, transhumanist visions of the technological advancements of humanity could be argued to harmonize with the Christian notions of Imago Dei and co-creation. The analysis concludes by summarizing which arguments for or against compatibility prove to be most convincing and argues that, given certain essential conditions, there could be compatibility between a Christian and transhumanist view of humanity.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how a theology regarding artificial intelligence best could be formulated in concern of consequences for a christian view of human nature. This purpose is examined by means of a comparative study of consequences derived from four different perspectives on the emergence of AI and the theoretical implications of its relation with mankind. As premise for what is considered a desired, respectively an undesired consequence, the minimum amount of human suffering is used conditioning the possibility of living a good life. In conducting the analysis, Leslie Stevensons theory of humanity in relation to God is used to interpret the christian view of human nature and a general wide theory of AI based on Cornel Du Toits definition is applied. My assessment of the researched consequences ends in a proposal for a constructive christian theology which argues for the necessity of placing a high value on a human capacity for vulnerability. This is because it enables invaluable human qualities such as empathy and compassion. Qualities that also should  lead the way and be modeled into a concern for all of creation, whether it is considered natural or artificial.

<p>This document is missing page 162. </p> / <p>The prime purpose of the thesis is the assessment of the development of Christian theological education in the context of historico-ideological changes after the disintegration of Marxist hegemony in Eastern Europe with the objective of developing and proposing a model of good theological education for a concrete setting, - a model which may be adaptable in other countries with similar conditions.</p> <p>The thesis delineates with a concise history of Christian theological education and the different methods and models of education have been used and developed. Eleven distinct models of theological education are identified and analyzed.</p> <p>A chapter deals with present status of theological education in Post-Marxist countries. It outlines the historical background of Evangelical Theological Education in Baltic states and the neighboring countries - Russia and Poland. In these countries theological education has been for decades interrupted and hindered by atheistic governments. There follows an analytical survey on the present status of theological education in these countries based on data supplied by twenty three representative institutions of theological education in Eastern Europe. The results are compared with two institutions of Western Europe. The survey includes a variety of pertinent topics, such as the dynamics of founding schools, the general profile of schools, analysis of the student body, economics, governance, faculty, libraries, and course offerings.</p> <p>A substantial chapter is devoted to elaborating the concept of a good theological school in Eastern Europe. The need for a solid philosophical foundation is emphasized. Attention is directed to practical dimensions, such as a balanced course of study; human, financial, and information resources; administration and governance. The section closes with the description of applicable methods for the teaching/learning process, incorporating some innovative approaches.</p> <p>The concluding chapter delineates a proposed model for the Latvian setting, integrating programs for students of specialized streams of study: theological and pastoral, youth and children, evangelism and mission, Christian social ministry, Christian writing and translation.</p> <p>The thesis is written from a Baptist perspective, yet it is Evangelical in its content and, as such, embodies issues pertinent to theological education of related denominations.</p> / Doctor of Ministry (DMin)

<p>One's conception of human personhood deeply impacts one's understanding and practice of community. Contemporary culture lacks precision and agreement in defining the human person. Such ·anthropological agnosticism· also affects the church. leading to devastating consequences concerning its inner sociality. cultural engagement, and pursuit of justice. This dissertation argues that a significant step forward is to gain a better understanding of theological anthropology and apply it consistently to ecclesiology. Specifically. a theological understanding of the human person as a relational. rational. and eschatological creature leads to a conception of the church as relational. rational, and eschatological communities of the new humanity. This approach overcomes problematic dualisms and false dichotomies presently plaguing the church's inner life and outward mission, in part by accentuating the ethical dimension that pervades its whole existence. Primary conversation partners include Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Miroslav Volf. and Stanley Grenz. Alasdair Macintyre and Wolthart Pannenberg are also influential.</p> <p>Part I consists of two chapters. Chapter one explores the difficulties of defining the human person in contemporary culture and the resulting consequences for community and ethics. Chapter two analyzes six typological ways of construing community based IV upon conflicting views of the human person. It evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of each, concluding that none is fully satisfying theologically. Part II (chapters 3-5) constructs a theological anthropology in trinitarian perspective. It presents a threedimensional view of the human person as: a relational creature whose telos is to love God and fellow human beings; a rational creature whose telos is to know God and understand God"s world; and an eschatological creature whose telos is to serve God as a stewardpriest of (new) creation. Part III (chapters 6-8) constructs an ecclesiology corresponding to the themes developed in Part II. depicting the church as relational, rational, and eschatological communities of the new humanity defined and oriented by love. faith. and hope. The concluding chapter summarizes the arguments developed and their implications for Christian community and ethics. It then explores some preliminary implications of viewing the church as God"s new humanity. called to promote and embody the welfare and flourishing of all human beings.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p>The ancient themes of Sabbath and Jubilee are woven throughout the biblical narrative and form the basis of the Israel's identity under Yahweh. Four threads in particular - the release of slaves, the forgiveness of debts, the fallowing of land, and the redistribution of capital - create the ethical backbone of God's people. These themes were amplified by the prophets and assumed by Jesus Christ himself as the content and thrust of his kingdom proclamation. Following Jesus, the early church implemented these Sabbath and Jubilee practices in their communities. Thus, the challenge today is for Christians to recapture these ancient laws as a guide to contemporary discipleship. As well, churches must be willing to envision their ministry and mission in light of this long overlooked Sabbath-Jubilee vision.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

Dance is the language of the soul. Dance, as a theological source, can remind us of who we are in and with the living perichoresis of the Trinity. Dance, as embodied art, can provide us with a new way of viewing and discussing pneumatology and that we too, in our incarnate reality, participate in perichoresis. Within this work I seek to answer the questions of how dance is a source of theology, why a pneumatology of the body is significant, and how dance provides a framework for a pneumatology of the body. The creation of a pneumatology of the body is a rooting or re-membering of the Spirit and our own spirit in incarnational—skin and bones—reality that includes us in Trinitarian perichoresis. Pneumatology of the body is dancing with the Holy Spirit in our given time and space to retrieve the dignity of our embodied inspirited selves as made in the imago Dei. The gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit are not abstract concepts. Through dance as embodied art we can move from abstract, intellectual concepts of the Spirit to incarnational truth of our flesh and blood, wounds and joys, where the Trinity dwells within and around.Dance as a source of theology can provide a framework for a pneumtology of the body. The Holy Spirit as relationality holding all of life together is our Holy Bridge. Within this work, we re-member our foundational belief in the interconnectedness of body and soul, and that we too participate in the Trinitarian perichoresis as part of God’s dancing revelation. In a world of division and duality, the Spirit as Holy Bridge brings us back home to the core of who we are individually and collectively, while dance provides a space for honoring difference and duality together in harmony. Dance gives expression to situations and things in our lives that are challenging to grasp conceptually and intellectually, while allowing for the embodied witnessing of a person’s and community’s story.A dancing theology as a framework for a pneumatology of the body reminds us that Spirit is our Holy Bridge between body, senses, feelings, challenges, and transformations, between my body soul temple and your body soul temple, and between individual and communal. By dancing with us in our daily lives, the Holy Spirit draws us ever deeper across loving bridges into communion with Trinitarian perichoresis. The Trinity is the Dance of Life in which the Spirit performs the role of empowering the never-ending communion and relational vitality that is God in and with Godself.

Up to this date there are several scientific disciplines that deal with religion´s underlying mechanisms and certain functions of our consciousness, but there isn´t anyone who takes into account the entire aspect of consciousness. The aim of the present work is to bring the entire aspect of our consciousness into the scientific discussion of religion. To help in doing this, the philosophical concept of qualia is used. First the concept is problematized, then an examination whether the concept has explanatory value in the science of religion and in the understanding of religious experience is done.  The concept of qualia has in this manner been applied to several scientific theories of religion and place-related entity continuity has been used as an example of religious experience. The present work is developed as a literature study and uses literature and theories from de scientific disciplines of philosophy of mind, cognitive neuroscience, neurotheology, cognitive science of religion and psychology of religion. As an underlying method the epistemological theory of holistic coherentism is used because it enables such an interdisciplinary study as this work is.   What this work shows is that qualia have a high explanatory value in the science of religion and in the understanding of religious experience and how we form religious concepts. However, the concept of qualia is problematic and great care must be exercised when inferences are made.

Seldom are we privileged to witness an international philosophical movement, which in addition to being a philosophical revolution, vindicates the values and concerns of a critical anthropological approach in Spirituality from the analytic tradition. The work of critical realists is potential remedy for the ills, dichotomies and lacunae inherent in the Western philosophical and spiritual traditions. Critical realism and philosophy of meta-reality, it is claimed, not only emancipate philosophy but, science and society as spiritual. This dissertation explores the many points of confluence and exposes dimensions of living and studying spirituality, which challenge us to think of ontological realism, epistemological relativism and rational (reflexive) judgement in a mode, which cautions against the naive relativism, tacit irrealism and other mistakes which tend to over-characterise our academic discourse with social linguistification, to the detriment of humanity and our utopian freedom and flourishing. / Christian Spirituality, Church History & Missiology / M. Th. (Christian Spirituality)

Avec la sécularisation, la laïcité et la diversité croissantes de la société québécoise, la place de la religion en général et du catholicisme en particulier se sont vues remises en question. Cette situation a d’ailleurs mené à la mise en place de deux commissions : l’une sur la place de la religion à l’école (1999) et l’autre sur les pratiques d’accommodements reliées aux différences culturelles (2008). Ces deux commissions auront fourni énormément d’informations sur les rapports qu’entretiennent encore les Québécois avec le catholicisme. Cette recherche a donc pour but de faire le point sur certains aspects du catholicisme au Québec à partir d’une perspective reposant principalement sur des instruments heuristiques issus des écrits signés « Jacques Derrida ». Pour ce faire, nous nous appuierons sur les travaux du Groupe de travail sur la religion à l’école, de la consultation générale sur la place de la religion à l’école et de la commission de consultation sur les pratiques d’accommodement reliées aux différences culturelles. Nous posons comme hypothèse que de manière générale, les Québécois entretiennent avec le catholicisme, des rapports « archivaux », c’est-à-dire conditionnés par des perceptions de ce dernier informées par son passé, plutôt que par son présent. De plus, ces perceptions du catholicisme, probablement développées dans le sillage de la Révolution tranquille et peut-être même un peu avant, nourriraient l’existence de « spectres » qui viendraient hanter les rapports des Québécois à tout ce qui touche le religieux et la diversité culturelle. En ce sens, il s’agit d’une dimension essentielle de ce que nous appellerions la « postmodernité » religieuse québécoise. Pour illustrer ce propos, nous mènerons une analyse de contenu documentaire. Premièrement, nous procéderons à l’analyse thématique de centaines de documents (rapports de recherche, rapports officiels, mémoires) déposés lors de ces débats. Le logiciel QDA Miner permettra d’effectuer une analyse documentaire en identifiant les passages thématiques reliés à la recherche. Nous procéderons ensuite à une analyse plus fine de ces extraits sélectionnés à partir de perspectives philosophiques provenant principalement du philosophe Jacques Derrida. / Due to the secularisation, laicité and the growing religious diversity of Quebec society, the place of religion and Catholicism has been questioned. This situation has led to the creation of two commissions: one on the place of religion in school (1999) and the other on Accommodation practices related to cultural differences (2008). These commissions gave a lot of information about the relationship between Quebecers and Catholicism. This research aims to understand certain aspects of Catholicism in Quebec with a perspective using texts signed "Jacques Derrida". To do so, we will use the works of Groupe de travail sur la religion à l’école, of General Consultation on the Place of Religion in School, and of Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences. Our research hypothesis is that generally Quebecers have an ‘archival’ relationship towards Catholicism. Meaning, past perceptions of Catholicism as opposed to present ones condition this relationship. Moreover, these perceptions of Catholicism, that probably developed either just prior to or during the Quiet Revolution in the sixties, would feed the existence of "specters," or "ghosts," that haunt the relationship between Quebecers and everything related to religious and cultural diversity. This would be a fundamental dimension of what we would call the Quebec religious "postmodernity". To illustrate this statement, we will first analyse hundreds of documents deposed to these commissions. The software QDA Miner will help to perform a documentary analysis by identifying key passages related to this research. Then, we will analyse more accurately, the selected passages using philosophical perspectives mainly from Jacques Derrida.

The argument of this dissertation is that a critical reading of the concept of "covenant" in early American writings is instrumental to understanding the paradoxes in the American political concepts of freedom and equality. Following Slavoj Zizek's theoretical approach to theology, I trace the covenant concept in early American literature from the theological expressions and disputes in Puritan Massachusetts through Jonathan Edwards's Freedom of Will and the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, showing how the covenant theology of colonial New England dispersed into more "secular" forms of what may be called an American political theology. The first chapter provides an overview of recent attempts to integrate theology and theory, specifically comparing Jacques Derrida and Zizek to better understand the latter's theology of materialism which relies on as well as informs the Reformed Protestant covenantal dichotomy of grace and works. The second chapter establishes the complicated architecture of the covenant concept within seventeenth-century New England Reformed Protestantism, and uses church membership transcripts along with Ann Hutchinson court trial documents to demonstrate how this inherently unstable theology created unintended slippage between God's grace and mankind's works, resulting in a theological formulation remarkably open to Zizek's analysis of political ideology. The third chapter demonstrates how Jonathan Edwards, through his ingenious counter-argument in Freedom of Will, provides a theoretical foundation for an uneasy but necessary alignment of the covenants of works and grace, releasing the subjunctive potential of grace to operate through history as a predeterminer of meaning and, potentially, freedom. In the last chapter, I argue that Emerson finally converts the covenant from a politically conceptualized theological framework for radical grace into a personal institutionalization of grace itself. Stanley Cavell's exploration of Emerson's "constitution" in light of the covenant motif demonstrates the political (im)possibilities inherent in America's self-conceptions of personal liberty and civic equality. In the end, complexities inherent in the concept of the covenant, especially its creative failure to control the radical nature of "grace," are determinative factors in our contradictory American egalitarian ideals.