This study addresses how ‘Spiritual Healing’ is administered in two Christian churches with similar doctrine but a different approach to how that doctrine is understood and practised. The divergence in eschatologies of the two different denominational congregations influences the way they integrate healing into their worship. There are also cultural differences in worship between them; the Black majority congregation engages in an animated charismatic style while the White majority practises in a more sedate and what may appear to an outsider to be a more passive style of worship. The study also examines the activities of prayer, laying on of hands and the use of music in the delivery of healing and as health promotion. The methodology used is an ethnographic approach. Qualitative data was collected using participant and non-participant observation, and semi-structured interviews. This data is a result of the systematic ‘immersion’ of the researcher in the culture in a different way to simply attending church as she experienced prior to the beginning of the research. Observations were conducted in services on different sites including a convention at the parent church for the Black majority Pentecostal church. The participants in the interviews were selected from the main research congregations with the support of their ministers as ‘gatekeepers’. The study compares and contrasts the theology and practice of the two congregations and their understanding of spiritual healing. It is also shown that spiritual healing can be part of and complementary to the approach that medical and nursing professionals utilise in their practice. Recipients of spiritual healing whose health seeking behaviour straddles the medical and the spiritual approach may or may not use medicine as prescribed by health professionals. In the UK, people usually have access to both, unlike people in Developing countries who have limited access to modern medicine and have no choice but to make the best use of folk medicine, and faith healers in their health seeking behaviour practices. The study recommends that more mutual understanding may facilitate the support of faith groups for the work of the NHS recommended by recent government policy.

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Post-Tridentine Western Christian theology introduced the notion of natura pura, which holds that one can know created nature in fact without reference to God or divine grace. The orders of grace and nature are thus on different plains. This ontology creates an extrincism between God and the world. Maximus Confessor’s doctrine of grace offers the paradox of nature already presuming grace but awaiting the supernatural grace of deification at the resurrection. Further, divine grace, or energy in Maximus’s theology, are not separate ontological realms between God and the world. Grace does not separate God’s essence from his energies. The Incarnation of the created and uncreated natures in Christ fully manifests the paradox of God’s grace as being fully on the side of creation and on the side of God, without remainder. Finally, Maximus’s theurgic ecclesiology in his Mystagogy reinforces the mediation of grace through created reality. All of these aspects of Maximus the Confessor’s theology of grace provide a Christian rendering of participation that does not result in the extrincism of grace from nature, their conflation together, or a real distinction in the being of God.

This thesis asks what might be revealed from a Practical Theology conversation between historical texts and contemporary Christian Science experience about healing theologies and practices. Certain enduring theological ideas (God's goodness and omnipotence, the deceptiveness and impotence of evil, and a correlation between healing and salvation) explain these Christian healing practices. I investigate such ideas and practices using a Practical Theology methodology that accommodates an epistemological contrast and enables meaningful analysis of the ideas. This 'critical conversation' between the Secret Revelation of John, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, and myself as an autoethnographic 'text,' draws out comparisons and contrasting ideas of Christian healing. The three parts of the thesis reflect moments of 'conversation': (1) an overview of the conversation's structure and identification of its partners; (2) a detailed conversation between the two historical texts based on three key themes (the enduring theological ideas mentioned above), and (3) engaging my experience as a twenty-first-century 'text' in conversation with the same themes in epistemologically contrasting contexts. I conclude that understanding theological views from contrasting epistemologies is a constructive means for expanding mutual understanding of Christian healing practices with great potential benefit to scholarly and ecumenical audiences.

W.B. Davenport, Jr. / "May 29, 1952." / Bibliography: p. 18. / Army Signal Corps Contract No. DA36-039 sc-100 Project No. e 8-102B-0.

For the greater part of the history of the Christian Church the doctrines of baptism and predestination have been uneasy bed-fellows. At times, the former has gained the predominance and the latter has been relegated to the region of philosophical prolegomena to faith, having no immediate connection with the Christian life. In other periods, the doctrine of predestination has gained the ascendency and the importance of baptism has been minimized. Nevertheless, both these aspects of the Christian faith are strikingly present in the New Testament, and in no way do we find there premonitions of the tensions between them in the later history of the Church. Is this because of the unsystematic nature of the New Testament faith which evaded these difficulties through its own lack of order, or is there a deeper reason for the primitive harmony between these two aspects of Christian theology? [contined in text ...]

This dissertation, by employing the work of Slavoj Žižek in his engagement with the Apostle Paul, argues that Paul, in Romans 6-8, understands sin as a lie grounding the Subject outside of Christ and salvation as an exposure and displacement of this lie as one is joined to the body of Christ. In this understanding salvation may be seen primarily in terms of an overcoming of alienation from God, neighbour and self through participation in the Trinity (adoption by the Father through the Son by means of the Spirit), which stands in contrast to the sinful Subject who in his inner alienation and his alienation from God and others is oriented by a deceitful death dealing desire that would find life in the law rather than in God. The specific theological significance of Žižek (along with his predecessors Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan) is his demonstration of the pervasive and systemic nature of this lie (chapter 1) and its description as he finds it in Romans 7 (chapter 2). The general significance this account might have for theology is to frame the concept of sin as a deception (reifying the self) with its own logic, dynamic, and structure, similar to the Subject of psychoanalysis, and salvation, in turn, can be understood as the place and means from which the Subject of sin and its destructive nature are understood and displaced by new life in Christ (chapter 3). Sin and salvation, under this notion, are not forensic categories but have to do with the lived reality of identity, of being either a Subject oriented to death or to life.

The Neoplatonist philosopher Porphyry of Tyre (ca.232-305 A.D.) wrote Against the Christians, a fifteen-volume treatise targeting Christianity. Porphyry's attack was considered so scandalous that it was twice condemned to flames by Roman emperors. It is thus only in the works of Christian apologists that Against the Christians is extant, i.e. in a fragmentary state. The topic of this study is the twelfth book of Porphyry's treatise, the best known and probably the most challenging to Christians. Indeed, it deals with the Book of Daniel, which underlies a great part of Christianity's foundations as it allegedly foretells both Parousiai. It will first be demonstrated that the writing of the treatise can be dated to the 290s, which indicates it was not an immediate threat to Christians facing the Great Persecution (303-311). Then recent methodological approaches are presented in order to get a better insight of the content of Against the Christians. It is established that Porphyry wrote a detailed exegesis of Daniel with the intention of criticizing the Christian literal interpretation of the Scriptures by adapting history to prophecy. Finally it is suggested that Porphyry wrote his treatise in response to a Christian allegorical exegetical tradition of Daniel.

This thesis attempts to understand Marshall in a similar vein but on a much larger scale. Our work will progress in four remaining chapters. In chapter II we will explore Marshall’s diachronic context, explaining how Protestant theology wrestled with correlating free justification and the need for a renewed life. We will look at Luther, Trent, and Calvin because they were highly influential in shaping the theological context in the seventeenth century and because they offer clear examples of theologians struggling to formulate their doctrine of Sanctification. In chapter III we will look at Marshall’s synchronic context. Our main task is to trace the development of Antinomianism and Neonomianism. Both systems were significant factors in Marshall’s context. We will also study those who influenced them, including Perkins, the English Arminians, and Owen. We will conclude this section with several tensions that were present in English Reformed theology in the middle of the seventeenth century. Chapter IV accounts for about half of this thesis. This is where we will explore Marshall’s theology. We will analyze Marshall’s book The Gospel Mystery rhetorically and systematically, examining how Marshall constructed his argument and the system of theology on which his argument was based. Our goal is to reconstruct his theological system. This chapter is subdivided into chapter length sections, which include the nature of sin and depravity, union with Christ, the new nature, justification, faith, assurance, and practical sanctification. Finally we will conclude in chapter V by showing that although Marshall is not unique in his theological construction, Marshall’s work demonstrates several factors that make it uniquely helpful in countering the twin errors of Antinomianism and Neonomianism, which are perennial dangers for Reformed churches. To bolster this conclusion, we will briefly explore how Marshall was used in the generations immediately following him.

The Body of Christ is a traumatised body because it is constituted of traumatised bodies. This thesis explores the nature of that trauma and examines the implications of identifying the trauma of this body. Trauma specialist Bessel Van Der Kolk posits that trauma is written into the somatic, or bodily, memory rather than the semantic memory. This somatic memory is essential to understanding trauma as this memory is repeated in the traumatised body. No theologian has yet explored what the somatic memory of the Christian body might be. This somatic memory not only tells us what the trauma of the Body of Christ is and signposts routes for healing, but also, once we identify the somatic memory, allows us to explore its implications for theology. Beginning with the celebration of the Eucharist as the central place in Christianity where bodies and memory come together, this thesis examines what memory is being remembered and repeated at the altar. The identification of this somatic memory is then used as a hermeneutical lens through which to explore the foundational narratives of the Eucharist and the bodies involved in its celebration. This research reveals that the somatic memory at the heart of Christianity is the memory of the Annunciation-Incarnation event. This event ruptures the foundational eucharistic narratives of priesthood, sacrifice, and presence and demonstrates that Mary must have a central place in Christian theology. It reveals that Christian liturgy holds within it an unclaimed memory and experience of trauma, and an unacknowledged instinct for trauma recovery. The results of this research are significant because they offer a fresh perspective on Christian theology, in particular the Eucharist, and present a call to love the body in all its guises. Furthermore, this traumatic, somatic memory opens up new pathways for considering what it means to ‘be Christian’.