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Thesis (D. Min.)--Nazarene Theological Seminary, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Nazarene Theological Seminary, 1985. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 332-333).

This thesis looks into the inherent obstacles humankind faces in correctly discerning God’s consistent self-revelation through multiple mediums. It then delves into Scripture’s discernment principles to find means by which to overcome these obstacles and so counter deception. / Dissertation (MA(Theol))--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Practical Theology / unrestricted

The Community Church of Pepperell in Pepperell, MA has a well-established pattern of fundraising events to support itself and its mission. Replicating the ubiquity of consumerism in American culture, buying and selling is the foundation of church activities, events, celebrations, and even worship itself. This project develops the concept of God’s Kingdom economy as it works to move this congregation, and perhaps others like it, from being controlled by the impulses of American consumerism. This transformation involves laying aside consumption for its own sake, rather using it to caring for our neighbors, serve, and share God’s love. Specialized worship services are created that incorporate the transformative power of testimonies and preaching as a way to reframe excessive church fundraising.

Christian theology (whether biblical or liturgical) generally affirms that God is somehow present in the setting of gathered worship. However, it is often the case that many worshippers themselves (and even ministers) might not perceive that God is present to the church in any discernible way, leading to worship practices that may functionally ignore God's presence, or that may attempt to conjure up some feeling that something transcendent is happening in worship. This thesis attempts to use Charles Taylor's concept of 'the immanent frame' to explain why believers and unbelievers alike might misinterpret worship. In doing so, this thesis applies Taylor's phenomenological methodology to several casual, popular-level accounts relating to perception of God's presence or absence in worship, revealing that the imminent frame does indeed come to bear on the ways in which people understand and experience worship, and suggesting that practitioners must learn to reinterpret worship.

This dissertation examines the writings of

Recognizing that Christians cannot adequately understand the mysteries of faith from a single vantage point, Catholic theologians have been keen on emphasizing the multidimensional nature of theological understanding since Vatican II. The advantage of such a method has helped believers to understand the rich, in-depth quality of Catholic faith.<br>One of the fields of theology which has not been discussed in the models approach, however, is apologetics&hibar;which includes as one of its aspects the art and science of defending the doctrines and practices of the Catholic Church. When all of the relevant passages in the documents of Vatican II are taken into consideration, a unique apologetical approach emerges that incorporates key advances as they emerged historically from the Church's apologists. Each of the individual apologetic systems from the past will be shown to have its own particular strengths and weaknesses. By way of contrast, I will argue that the best way to "make a defense for" the Gospel in a postconciliar church is to advance the integrated model of the Council. This integrated model of Catholic defense is called combinationalism. The interests and views of the apologists are proven to be complementary rather than competing.<br>This integrated model helps apologists and evangelists to recognize that although one approach might be needed in a certain context, it would be an egregious mistake to take that one system and use it as the exclusive means to reach persons situated within different circumstances and cultural contexts. This essay will not only exploit the different apologetic models in the post-Vatican II period, it will also serve as a serious work of apologetics in its own right by focusing on certain challenges as test cases to highlight the pertinence and livelihood of each model. / McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts; / Theology / PhD; / Dissertation;

This study examines intensively Edward Taylor's Gods Determinations touching his Elect: and The Elects Combat in their Conversion, and Coming up to God in Christ together with the Comfortable Effects thereof. This poetic history was probably written immediately prior to one of Taylor's spiritual unions with God, which he described in his Preparatory Meditations. It is the work of a man sure of himself and of his salvation. For Taylor the task was clear: he must explain and justify to his parishioners the revelations from God which he had so regularly and recently experienced during the sacrament of communion.Gods Determinations is not the personal and enigmatic notations of a secretive Puritan minister. In the poem Taylor did not doubt his ideas or his purpose; however, if he was certain of his religious standing, the characters in the poem are not. What makes the poem more than mere Calvinistic propaganda is the fact that in the context of the poem the human characters are not static and unchanging. They choose to act. Gods Determinations is poetically complex, lacking neither tension nor paradox. The characters are not emotionless puppets; their hopes and fears evolve as the poem progresses. Tension arises from their ability to choose, to act.Taylor's poem is best viewed as a soul-search, the culmination of which will be the joyful exclamation of found assurance and of enlightened purpose. What Taylor had experienced in his soul's quest for truth in Gods Determinations enabled him to proceed confidently with his task in Preparatory Meditations, his life task, one might note, for these meditations covered a span of 43 years, from 1682-1725. The rational struggle for assurance is fought in Gods Determinations; the sensual and emotional expression of his complete joy and obedience is found in Preparatory Meditations. Taylor found strength in Gods Determinations to proceed on his poetic course of action. His Preparatory, Meditations were the poetic fruit of victory found in Gods Determinations,.Initially this study reviews and analyzes those scholarly studies which were concerned with Taylor's theology and his poetic devices, at first as they are found in all of Taylor's writings but more specifically as they are found in Gods Determinations. Often these studies were found to be critically inaccurate, unfair to Taylor the Puritan minister or to Taylor the poet.The heart of this study is that Edward Taylor the faithful Puritan minister was a serious poet who revised and edited his poems, as witness the first drafts and revisions of the Poetical Works. He controlled his material. Yet his poetic devices were always harnessed to theological ideas. Thus Taylor's poetic style is best viewed as religioaesthetic, a combination of spiritual and sensual realms.Granting Taylor's poetic ability, this study proceeds to explicate Gods Determinations, dividing the long poem into four significant eras of man's spiritual consciousness. The poem's thirty-six lyrics are not primarily a play, or a sermon, or a meditation; they are a history, a spiritual history of God's people. Taylor viewed this history in terms of four dispensations of God's Grace, four historical eras of significant religious awareness.Taylor's Gods Determinations progresses historically (in Judeo-Christian terms) from the beginning of time to a particular place in time, seventeenth-century Puritan New England. Ultimately, however, the poem is best viewed cyclically, spiritually and physically having no beginning or end. The essential concept, the unifying theme, of the entire poem is renewal. The poem does not end physically, because Taylor led into the Preparatory Meditations with it; it does not end spiritually because God is eternal and manis eternal. Taylor's fundamental aesthetic value must depend upon the complexity of the experiences of his characters during his four spiritual dispensations of God's Grace. In the end, the universal emotions and feelings of these struggling men were particularized by Puritan tenets that Taylor felt satisfied these emotions and yearnings.

Based largely upon popular periodicals, archival materials, conference addresses, and mass-market books, this thesis combines intellectual and cultural history to explore how the meaning behind the evangelical commonplace, "God has a plan for your life," changed in post-World War II America, ultimately exchanging an ethos of self-denial for self-fulfillment by the early 1980s. The term "Personalized Life Providence" (PLP) is proposed for the integration of three Reformation-rooted ideas-vocation, providence, and discernment-into the discussion of finding God's plan for one's life. Chapter one sketches the Anglo- American development of these concepts from the Puritan era to the early twentieth century, as they intersected with Common Sense philosophy, "Higher Life" teaching, the student-missionary movement, and inter-war fundamentalism. Chapter two begins the analysis of PLP's dissemination throughout Chicago-centered evangelical student-parachurch organizations in the 1940s. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and Youth for Christ conflated PLP with personal holiness and, after the war, a resurgent American foreign-missionary movement, as displayed particularly in the texts of IVCF's Urbana conferences. Chapter three focuses on Henrietta Mears, Christian Education Director of First Presbyterian Church in Hollywood, California. Mears's Sunday-School publications and college ministry reveal PLP's embrace of irenic neo-evangelicalism in the 1950s, coupled with a revised discernment process. Chapter four identifies the emergence of the "gospel of God's plan" from Mears's protégés, specifically Campus Crusade for Christ founder Bill Bright, Presbyterian minister Richard Halverson, and evangelist Billy Graham. Epitomized by the phrase, "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life," the first of Bright's Four Spiritual Laws, this gospel resonated with the religious revival, anti-Communist rhetoric, and psychological emphasis on self-actualization pervading American culture from 1947 to 1965. Chapter five argues that anti-Western sentiments in the1960s eroded PLP's evocation of missionary sacrifice in neo-evangelical circles. YFC encouraged teenagers to pursue culturally influential professions rather than traditional evangelism, while IVCF promulgated inconsistent teaching on discerning a foreign-missionary call in revolutionary times. Chapter six explores PLP's relationship to the widespread cultural shift toward self-fulfillment in the 1970s, as reflected both in evolving teaching on women's roles, career choice, and missionary service, and in PLP books styled after mass-market, self-help literature.