Thesis (D. Min.)--Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Charlotte, NC, 1999. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 132-137).

This thesis explores Milton's concept of God and the controversies surrounding his treatise and doctrines.

This thesis analyzes the movement for Trinity River improvement and describes the methods used to promote the project.

Thesis (Th. M.)--Calvin Theological Seminary, 1989. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 208-225).

Thesis (M.A.)--Columbia Biblical Seminary and Graduate School of Missions, Columbia, S.C., 1995. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 124-128).

No description available.

In advancing Edwards’ theology as fundamentally <i>Trinitarian</i>, we start with God <i>in se</i>, as the “fountain” from which history and reality flows.  Second, we place God’s economic movement in creation in parallel with the saints’ participation in the beatific life of the Godhead in eternity.  God’s act and purpose in creation parallels his act and purpose in consummation, thereby bracketing and governing the work of redemption.  Lastly, we broadly answer the question: “How does God redeem the elect?”  by addressing spiritual knowledge, regeneration and affection. The first chapter addresses Edwards’ doctrine of the Trinity in light of its polemical context.  We argue that a sufficient development of Edwards’ understanding of the immanent Trinity must be an account of persons, delighting in their own infinite beauty and perfection.  This is the source of history and, as is shown, the goal of history oriented towards eternity. God’s purpose in creation is the second ground of theological reflection, and is exposited in parallel with God’s uniting believers to himself for eternal union and communion.  Redemptive history, therefore, is understood as God enacting his ends in creation towards consummation.  History, as Edwards conceives it, is both teleological and cyclical; it is always aiming towards a given end, God’s end, and flows back to God through cyclical movements of time.  Creation and consummation, therefore, serve to locate and govern Edwards’ doctrines of redemption. In short, God creates for his own glory, which he brings to pass through creaturely participation in his own beatific-delight. Furthermore, we suggest that this beatific self-glorification of God serves as a heuristic key to God’s redemptive activity.  We apply this interpretive scheme in the final chapter.

This study is an exposition and analysis of Wolfhart Pannenberg’s doctrine of reconciliation as it appears in his three volume <i>Systematic Theology</i>.  It suggests Pannenberg’s doctrine of reconciliation is best approached by bearing in mind its three most salient characteristics, all of which are inter-dependent, and make the essential tenets of his account transparent: Divine action, history and divine faithfulness–reconciliation as ‘holding fast’ to creation. While the principal focus of the study will be the careful analysis of Pannenberg’s doctrine of reconciliation, this bears upon his understanding of the relationship between the immanent and economic Trinity. So without claiming to be an exhaustive study of this doctrine per se, our exposition of the <i>actual unfolding </i>of his account of God’s reconciling acts makes it well-suited to address some questions about the relationship between the immanent and economic Trinity in <i>ST.</i> Further, in the course of the material Pannenberg’s attention turns time and again <i>both </i>to the saving movements of the Trinitarian God in history and to the ‘commerce and communion’ generated between him and his creatures. The task and challenge of marking out these patterns of encounter so that God’s actions are found to <i>include</i> creatures exerts a great deal of force over Pannenberg’s formulations.  The study is required therefore to consider how Pannenberg’s presentation shapes one’s understanding of specific, temporal instances of creaturely ‘commerce and communion’.  Doing so reveals how Pannenberg works to demonstrate how god’s reconciling action <i>includes</i> human actions, how the particularity and independence of human creatures are not set aside but <i>transformed</i>.  In short, as Pannenberg’s doctrine of reconciliation marks out God’s action in the world as the true Infinite, it issues an invitation to consider how such a God extends himself in reconciling love to his creatures so that their finite creatureliness is at every turn affirmed and found to be in the end ‘good’.

The fundamental structure of reality as inherently relational is not foreign to the Christian Scriptures, or early Christian tradition, as evident in the emergence of the theological relational dynamic of perichoresis. We find a precursor to this view of reality in the Gospel of St. John, where Jesus prays that "they may all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us" (17:21). In an attempt to describe the relational structure and unity of the Trinity, John Damascene and other Church fathers employed the concept of perichoresis to signify the mutual interanimation and dynamic reciprocity of the divine persons. I shall argue that the unity expressed in this relation is an irreducible relational dynamic that simultaneously affirms both the individuality and mutuality of persons. Furthermore, this dynamic is the force that constitutes and sustains all Creation and, a fortiori, human beings themselves. In addition, I suggest that the fundamental drive within the world and humans is to relate perichoretically (love). In so doing, I address an omission in the literature, noted by Colin Gunton, that humans, created imago Dei, have never seriously been considered perichoretic in nature. This thesis attempts to redress this gap in the literature by arguing that humans are in "perichoretic reciprocity," that is, they stand in relation to one another in terms of perichoresis. As such, perichoresis represents an irreducible relational dynamic that maintains the person's distinctive identity in relationship while at the same time constituting them qua persons from within the living formative matrix of the relational unity itself. To help develop this understanding I turn to Søren Kierkegaard, for whom this mutuality becomes a positive third term that intensifies the polarities. That Power that constitutes relationship is He who is 'before all things, and in Whom all things hold together' (Col 1 : 17). By formulating the dynamic of relationship this way, I challenge the conventionally understood dual structure of relationality, 'subject-object', and posit instead an alternative tripartite consideration of subject-relationship-subject. By positing this tripartite relational structure, I am positioned to draw upon the logic of spirit developed in recent Trinitarian theologies and explore the fundamental dynamic within perichoresis--analogia spiritus-the non-reflexive transformational dynamic facilitating personal holistic change and meaning from with the living dynamic of the relationship. In essence, I am proposing to draw upon developmental and social constructivist theory, and related human sciences in order to understand human being as differentiated unity; this in turn opens to the possibility of relational dynamics active in human as spirit that can be analogically correlated to God's reciprocal trinitarian and Eternal activity as Spirit. This thesis considers the dynamic of perichoresis in the following ways: 1. In the construction of meaning. Using a hermeneutical approach, I inquire into the holistic nature of theological knowledge and method, contrasting Nancey Murphy's theological use of I. Lakatos' s philosophy of science with social construction theorists Kenneth Gergen and John Shotter, who draw from M. Bakhtin. Based on this contrast I propose a methodology that rejects the conceptual and experiential bifurcation found in Murphy, and suggest instead an irreducible holistic criterion of fullness of life. 2. In persons. This section proposes that emotions be viewed as dynamic unified complexities that are ultimately inseparable from knowledge and experience-an attribute of person as spirit. 3. As persons in dialogical relations. The social theory of Alistair Mcfadyen and his dialogical consideration of openness and closure is correlated with Kierkegaard's understanding of person as infinite and finite, and with his prohibition against their material synthesis. 4. As persons. I consider the theory of James Loder who, using Jean Piaget and Kierkegaard, presents a evelopmentalist perspective of humans as perichoretic, a relationship unto itself which becomes a differentiated unity constituted out of the positively created third term of relationship. 5. In Trinitarian dynamics. I correlate Jurgen Moltmann' s understanding of Trinity and God's Spirit to the dynamic of human spirit. 6. In the perichoresis of time and Eternity. In this penultimate section, I consider divine 'immanence' and 'transcendence' in light of the perichoresis of time and Eternity, and its potential reciprocity within human relational dynamics. Using established categories of human relationality, I consider how human relations might participate through analogia spiritus in God's preeminent process 'before all things'. In conclusion, this research suggests further development in the direction of a relational ontology in which truth, meaning and 'being' are located neither 'out there' (realism), nor 'in here' (idealism), but always within the constituting third term of the immediate relational occurrence itself. If indeed all humans are fundamentally constituted as such, this ultimately presents analogically the possibility of common ground between the Church and culture-the desire to relate perichoreticaly, love.

Thesis advisor: Richard Lennan / Thesis advisor: Richard Gaillardetz / Thesis (STL) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry. / Discipline: Sacred Theology.