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Th. 3e cycle--Phys. nucl.--Grenoble 1, 1978. N°: 18.

Questions regarding the fate of the unevangelized have been contemplated for centuries and now, in this post-Christian world, issues of the church's claim that Jesus is the unique Son of God have been added to the debate. Does God truly desire the salvation of all human beings? Is Jesus Christ the full and unequalled revelation of God? This work explores, through means of comparison and contrast, the theological positions of exclusivism, pluralism, and inclusivism. Particular attention is given to each school's history, biblical arguments, theological arguments, and convictions concerning the purpose of missions, as well as an evaluation of each school's position. The author concludes that while exclusivism maintains a high Christology and pluralism a wide-ranging salvation, only inclusivism adequately harmonizes these positions in a cogent manner. / Systematic Theology & Theological Ethics / M. Th. (Systematic Theology)

England in the late-Elizabethan and early-Stuart period saw a surge of pastoral writings intended to provide lay-readers with information and advice about sacraments. Using sixty-four such texts from the period 1590-1630, this thesis analyses the conceptions of sacraments offered by cleric-authors to their audience. As a group these works had two structural features in common. First they were concerned to outline the ‘qualities’ of a ‘worthy’ receiver of the Lord’s Supper, foremost amongst which were knowledge, faith, newness of life and repentance. Second they tended to divide the concept of worthiness into three temporal chunks comprising the times before, during, and after the Supper. Using these rubrics as guidelines the thesis compares and contrasts the content of the corpus. In opposition to stereotypes of puritans neglecting sacraments, it is found that sacraments were presented by Reformed English clerics as highly efficacious entities, which truly communicated something to the believer. The importance of faith to the Reformed conception of sacraments is affirmed, with the caveat that the dominance of this concept did not prohibit clerics from extolling the sensuous or ceremonial aspects of sacraments. It is further contended that sacraments continued to be seen as spurs to moral amelioration, occasions for charity, and a demonstration of community – and that receiving sacraments did not become a wholly individualised enterprise. Building on this analysis the thesis offers three broader conclusions. Firstly it is shown that sacraments played a key part in the quest to gain assurance of salvation. Secondly it can be seen that in England there was a way of extolling sacraments and their use which is not usually thought about – a species of ‘sacramental piety’ which used mainstream Reformed ideas about sacrament to urge believers to comfort and increased Godliness. Thirdly it is contended that key Reformed theological distinctions were often submerged by the contingencies of pastoral writing.

This thesis examines and critiques the doctrine of baptism in the theology of Thomas Torrance and utilises aspects of Torrance’s doctrine to recover and enrich the meaning of baptism in Westminster theology. Torrance’s doctrine of baptism has suffered from misunderstanding and has been widely neglected. This arises from Torrance introducing a new soteriological paradigm, that is claimed by Torrance, to be both new, and at the same time to be a recovery of the work of the early church fathers and Calvin. It is the contention of this thesis that Torrance’s soteriological paradigm is more ‘new’ than it is a recovery of either the early church fathers or Calvin. Torrance’s new paradigm is not easily identified as ‘new’ because of Torrance’s creative use of Irenaeus, Athanasius and Calvin. His theology is further misunderstood by many because it is partly seen to derive from his criticism of a caricature of Westminster theology. The purpose here is to provide an exposition of Torrance’s doctrine of baptism, identifying union with Christ and Christ’s vicarious humanity as key doctrines that inform his theology of baptism. Torrance has a distinct and unique soteriological paradigm based on an ontological healing in the incarnation. He refers to this as a ‘dimension in depth’ where the atonement takes place from the virgin birth through to the ascension, where the work of Christ is the person of Christ. It will be argued that Torrance exaggerates the degree to which his views may be found in the early church fathers and in Calvin. It is also suggested that many of his criticisms of Westminster theology have some basis, but that his detailed arguments diminishes his more valid general criticisms. The thesis identifies Torrance’s distinct voice from the early church fathers and Calvin and attempts to dismiss Torrance’s caricature of Westminster theology, so that Torrance’s distinct soteriology can be recognised, his genuine criticisms of Westminster theology considered, and the contribution that he has made on baptism be recovered. The doctrine of baptism that emerges from incorporating many of Torrance’s insights is a reformed covenantal doctrine of baptism that stresses the importance of ontological union for covenantal solidarity, but will reject Torrance’s redemptive understanding of ontological healing. Torrance centres the meaning of baptism in Christ and Christ’s one vicarious baptism for the church, and serves to identify how the church has lost its focus on what lies at the centre of baptism. However Torrance’s doctrine of baptism that argues for the theological primacy of infant baptism lost the debate in the Church of Scotland, which now places a greater emphasis on adult baptism. It is suggested that the reasons for this failure is that Torrance’s doctrine of baptism was developed outside of the framework of covenant theology, and that his doctrine of soteriology on which his doctrine of baptism was based left little room for the human response. The thesis concludes that Torrance’s doctrine of baptism can serve as a model for the recovery of the meaning of baptism. While the central thrust of Torrance’s redemptive ontological union with Christ is rejected, Torrance’s emphasis on union with Christ, the incarnation, the person and work of Christ, and Christ’s vicarious baptism can be incorporated into the reformed doctrine of baptism to recover its meaning.

This paper demonstrates that even regression results obtained by techniques close to the standard ordinary least squares (OLS) method can be difficult to replicate if a stochastic model fitting algorithm is employed. / Series: Research Report Series / Department of Statistics and Mathematics

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This study on the neutron-induced fission of 234U was carried out at the 7 MV Van de Graaff accelerator of IRMM in Belgium. A Twin Frisch-Grid Ionization Chamber (TFGIC) was used to study 234U(n,f) between En = 0.2 and 5.0 MeV. The reaction is important for fission modelling of the second-chance fission in 235U(n,f). The fission fragment (FF) angular-, energy and mass distributions were determined using the 2E-method highlighting especially the region of the vibrational resonance at En = 0.77 MeV. The experiment used both conventional analogue and modern digital acquisition systems in parallel. Several advantages were found in the digital case, especially a successful pile-up correction. The shielding limitations of the Frisch-grid, called "grid-inefficiency", result in an angular-dependent energy signal. The correction of this effect has been a long-standing debate and a solution was recently proposed using the Ramo-Shockley theorem. Theoretical predictions from the latter were tested and verified in this work using two different grids. Also the neutron-emission corrections as a function of excitation energy were investigated. Neutron corrections are crucial for the determination of FF masses. Recent theoretical considerations attribute the enhancement of neutron emission to the heavier fragments exclusively, contrary to the average increase assumed earlier. Both methods were compared and the impact of the neutron multiplicities was assessed. The effects found are significant and highlight the importance of further experimental and theoretical investigation. In this work, the strong angular anisotropy of 234U(n,f ) was confirmed. In addition, and quite surprisingly, the mass distribution was found to be angular-dependent and correlated to the vibrational resonances. The anisotropy found in the mass distribution was consistent with an anisotropy in the total kinetic energy (TKE), also correlated to the resonances. The experimental data were parametrized assuming fission modes based on the Multi-Modal Random Neck-Rupture model. The resonance showed an increased yield from the Standard-1 fission mode and a consistent increased TKE. The discovered correlation between the vibrational resonances and the angular-dependent mass distributions for the asymmetric fission modes may imply different outer fission-barrier heights for the two standard modes.

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