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  • About
  • The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers to find electronic theses and dissertations. This service is provided by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
    Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
91

Shakespeare and soteriology: crossing the Reformation divide

Anonby, David 07 December 2020 (has links)
My dissertation explores Shakespeare’s negotiation of Reformation controversy about theories of salvation. While twentieth century literary criticism tended to regard Shakespeare as a harbinger of secularism, the so-called “turn to religion” in early modern studies has given renewed attention to the religious elements in Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Yet in spite of the current popularity of early modern religion studies, there remains an aura of uncertainty regarding some of the doctrinal or liturgical specificities of the period. This historical gap is especially felt with respect to theories of salvation, or soteriology. Such ambiguity, however, calls for further inquiry into historical theology. As one of the “hot-button” issues of the Reformation, salvation was fiercely contested in Shakespeare’s day, making it essential for scholarship to differentiate between conformist (Church of England), godly (puritan), and recusant (Catholic) strains of soteriology in Shakespearean plays. I explore how the language and concepts of faith, grace, charity, the sacraments, election, free will, justification, sanctification, and atonement find expression in Shakespeare’s plays. In doing so, I contribute to the recovery of a greater understanding of the relationship between early modern religion and Shakespearean drama. While I share Kastan’s reluctance to attribute particular religious convictions to Shakespeare (A Will to Believe 143), in some cases such critical guardedness has diverted attention from the religious topography of Shakespeare’s plays. My first chapter explores the tension in The Merchant of Venice between Protestant notions of justification by faith and a Catholic insistence upon works of mercy. The infamous trial scene, in particular, deconstructs cherished Protestant ideology by refuting the efficacy of faith when it is divorced from ethical behaviour. The second chapter situates Hamlet in the stream of Lancelot Andrewes’s “avant-garde conformity” (to use Peter Lake’s coinage), thereby explaining why Claudius’s prayer in the definitive text of the second quarto has intimations of soteriological agency that are lacking in the first quarto. The third chapter argues that Hamlet undermines the ghost’s association of violence and religion, thus implicitly critiquing the proliferation of religious violence on both sides of the Reformation divide. The fourth chapter argues that Calvin’s theory of the vicarious atonement of Christ, expounded so eloquently by Isabella in Measure for Measure, meets substantial resistance, especially when the Duke and others attempt to apply the soteriological principle of substitution to the domains of sexuality and law. The ethical failures that result from an over-realized soteriology indicate that the play corroborates Luther’s idea that a distinction must be maintained between the sacred and secular realms. The fifth chapter examines controversies in the English church about the (il)legitimacy of exorcising demons, a practice favoured by Jesuits but generally frowned upon by Calvinists. Shakespeare cleverly negotiates satirical source material by metaphorizing exorcisms in King Lear in a way that seems to acknowledge Calvinist scepticism, yet honour Jesuit compassion. Throughout this study, my hermeneutic is to read Shakespeare through the lens of contemporary theological controversy and to read contemporary theology through the lens of Shakespeare. / Graduate / 2023-11-20
92

Jesus Christ’s humanity in the contexts of the pre-fall and post-fall natures of humanity: a comparative and critical evaluative study of the views of Jack Sequeira, Millard J. Erickson and Norman R. Gulley

Mwale, Emanuel 12 1900 (has links)
Bibliography: leaves 653-669 / Before God created human beings, He devised a plan to save them in case they sinned. In this plan, the second Person of the Godhead would become human. Thus, the incarnation of the second Person of the Godhead was solely for the purpose of saving fallen, sinful human beings. There would have been no incarnation if human beings had not sinned. Thus, the nature of the mission that necessitated the incarnation determined what kind of human nature Jesus was to assume. It was sin that necessitated the incarnation – sin as a tendency and sin as an act of disobedience. In His incarnational life and later through His death on Calvary’s cross, Jesus needed to deal with this dual problem of sin. In order for Him to achieve this, He needed to identify Himself with the fallen humanity in such a way that He would qualify to be the substitute for the fallen humanity. In His role as fallen humanity’s substitute, He would die vicariously and at the same time have sin as a tendency rendered impotent. Jesus needed to assume a human nature that would qualify Him to be an understanding and sympathetic High Priest. He needed to assume a nature that would qualify Him to be an example in overcoming temptation and suffering. Thus, in this study, after comparing and critically evaluating the Christological views of Jack Sequeira, Millard J. Erickson and Norman R. Gulley, I propose that Jesus assumed a unique post-fall (postlapsarian) human nature. He assumed the very nature that all human beings since humankind’s fall have, with its tendency or leaning towards sin. However, unlike other human beings, who are sinners by nature and need a saviour, Jesus was not a sinner. I contend that Jesus was unique because, first and foremost, He was conceived in Mary’s womb by the power of the Holy Spirit and was filled with the Holy Spirit throughout His earthly life. Second; He was the God-Man; and third, He lived a sinless life. This study contributes to literature on Christology, and uniquely to Christological dialogue between Evangelical and Seventh-day Adventist theologians. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / D. Phil. (Systematic Theology)

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