Thesis advisor: Peter J. Kreeft / Thesis advisor: Ronald K. Tacelli / This thesis explores and defends the compatibility of divine involvement and human freedom. It argues that, far from determining human actions, divine foreknowledge and providence stand in a unique metaphysical relationship to human free will. This relationship is explored through a creative appropriation of St. Thomas Aquinas' theory of participation. Divine knowledge and causation transcend ordinary models of knowledge and causation, operating on a different metaphysical plane than human speculative knowledge and created causation. Ultimately, the compatibility of God and human freedom rests upon an understanding of divine causality as creative and constitutive. Rather than overpowering genuine human causality, divine involvement grounds the very possibility of free human choice. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2007. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

Thesis advisor: Thomas H. Groome / There has been spirited debate regarding the identity of Catholic colleges and universities in America in the fifty years following the Second Vatican Council. The tension of continuity and change was a crucial theme informing the Council, and it echoed throughout Catholic higher education. The development of Catholic higher education in the twentieth century exhibited a dialectic of cultural assimilation to American society, including the prevalent values and practices of its prized educational institutions, and retention of an identity reflecting commitments distinct from its host culture. Moreover, in recent years there has been a sharp decline in the number of priests and nuns on Catholic campuses; their presence once served as an easily identifiable and external marker of Catholic identity. These factors, among others, have contributed to the ongoing conversation regarding the role of the Catholic university in the world today. This conversation unfolds within the larger milieu of the American academy, which is characterized by the hyper-specialization of academic disciplines, the so-called fact/value dichotomy, and the commodification of education. Concerns that animated Blessed John Henry Newman’s The Idea of a University during the nineteenth century persist in our day. Today the lively discussion includes many questions. What is the purpose of Catholic higher education and how is it distinct from secular higher education? What is the relation of Catholic theology to modern/post-modern thought and culture? What is the relation of theology to other academic disciplines at a Catholic university? What is the relevance of Catholic spirituality and its lived practices for the academic mission of Catholic higher education? How should the Catholic university relate to the magisterium? What is the role of doctrinal or ethical dissent in Catholic higher education? Do Catholic universities hold the same understanding of academic freedom as secular American universities? In sum, what does the adjective “Catholic” mean when applied to American higher education today, and what are the implications for the various facets of university life? This dissertation wades into these choppy waters by proposing an organizing vision of Catholic higher education rooted in Trinitarian friendship. Bernard Lonergan, S.J., provides a remarkable account of the synthesis of faith and reason – the logos of Athens with the heart of Jerusalem. His integral hermeneutics is fertile ground in the Catholic university’s quest for self-understanding. Lonergan transposed Thomas Aquinas by integrating theology with modern science and historical studies so that it can mount to the level of our times. He thus realized Pope Leo XIII’s program of augmenting and perfecting the old in light of the new. This dissertation plunges the riches of Lonergan’s Trinitarian theology and hermeneutics in order to propose a vision of Catholic higher education permeated by friendship. The thesis is that Lonergan’s integral hermeneutics – the mutual mediation of the ways “below upwards” and “above downwards” – provides a promising heuristic for the Catholic university’s self-understanding as a participation in the coordinated missions of the Son and the Spirit and therefore sharing in the life of the triune God – by exercising friendship. Lonergan’s Trinitarian theology developed the distinct and cumulative Augustinian-Thomistic tradition with deepened understanding of the psychological analogy and bestows upon the processions an ethical-existential import and heightens the role of divine intersubjectivity. Lonergan’s Trinitarian theology culminates in an analogy of the divine persons as a community of friends: three distinct eternal subjects in perfect friendship. In perfect friendship, they are completely bound together as “another self.” As the analogy of intelligible emanation elucidates, the divine persons are distinct in how they are in relation to one another. The immanent constitution of life in God is integrally related to God’s engagement in history because the divine missions are constituted by the processions of divine persons as bringing about consequent created terms (the hypostatic union and sanctifying grace) that enable human beings to share in the relationships among those divine persons in a new way. The divine missions, the sending of the Word and the Spirit into history, establish new interpersonal relations – friendships – with creation. Lonergan understands the mission of the Word in terms of friendship, specifically how friendship is perfectly expressed in the redemption achieved through Christ’s enacting of the gracious “Law of the Cross.” “For no love is greater than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). Lonergan’s account of existential interiority progressed a theological understanding of the “invisible” mission of the Spirit as distinct and coordinated with the “visible” mission of the Word. Through friendship with God, a gift of the Holy Spirit, we are related to God as God is related to God. The missions of the Word and the Spirit enable our assimilation to the divine relations of friendship. Lonergan thus sheds light on Jesus’ extraordinary claim: “ I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father” (John 15:15). Lonergan’s integral hermeneutics is comprised by the mutual mediation of the vectors “below upwards” and “above downwards” in human development. In development “below upwards,” wonder drives the human subject from experiencing through understanding and onwards to judgment of values and loving commitment. Development “above downwards” originates in the dynamic state of being-in-love and cascades from judgment of values to understanding that colors experiencing. That Lonergan identified the extroverted, visible mission of the Word with development “below upwards” and the introverted, invisible mission of the Spirit with development “above downwards” is the basis for identifying his hermeneutics in terms of friendship. Thomas Groome’s renowned shared Christian praxis approach to religious education provides a pedagogical enactment of Lonergan’s integral hermeneutics. Groome has traced the correspondence between the five movements of shared Christian praxis and Lonergan’s philosophy of cognitional interiority. Shared Christian praxis may also be understood as a pedagogy of friendship because it invites friendship with oneself, the Christian Story/Vision, and the other participants throughout its five movements. Shared Christian praxis is a way of education that enables a community of learners to exercise their friendship with God. A pedagogy of friendship is epitomized in Christ’s journeying with the two on the way to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35). Shared Christian praxis may be summarized as a life to faith to (new) life in faith approach. This dissertation is organized accordingly. Friendship has universal practical meaning in people’s lives and is profoundly significant in the process of education. Conversation, the option for the poor, and worship are three practices whereby a Catholic university may exercise its friendship with God. In each case, friendship’s benevolentia heals wonder “above downwards” from its contraction and atrophy by supplanting concupiscence with love. God has offered us divine friendship in the outer Word made flesh in Christ Jesus and the inner word of love poured out in our hearts by the Spirit who has been given to us by the Father and the Son. Our friendships with one another and with God is wonder therapy and therefore completely integral to the intellectual formation at a Catholic university in our time. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry.

Thesis advisor: Thomas Groome / Western culture idealizes the quest for authenticity as a significant life project. This culture of authenticity is characterized by the understanding that it is important for each person to search for their unique life expression and purpose, even as larger social, political, religious, and other such frameworks are generally suspected of being in conflict with or in opposition to the truly authentic. Further, the forces of secularism and pluralism have allowed for a wide dissemination of varied and often conflicting views about what constitutes an authentic way of being in the world. Within such a secular-pluralistic milieu, the prevalence of different and often competing views is particularly acute in regards to contemporary images and concepts of God, particularly as these relate to the (post)modern quest for authenticity. For instance, while our culture's widespread suspicion that larger religious frameworks inhibit authenticity has in part led to a significant rise in the numbers of those unaffiliated with any religious tradition, a majority of the unaffiliated still claim to believe in God. This somewhat paradoxical phenomenon can be traced back to the secular-pluralist profusion of various understandings and expressions regarding the meaning of "God." Within these circumstances, "authentic" relation to the divine is often seen as a highly individualized and even subjective concern; as something having to do with what best expresses a person's own feelings and inner personal world regarding the unique meaning of their life. This dissertation posits that Catholic religious and theological education needs to take seriously the importance our culture accords to the quest for authenticity and to actively work against its individualistic, expressivist, and subjectivist tendencies. Unmasking the illusion that authenticity requires dismissing larger frameworks, such as religious tradition, I posit that it is only within larger frameworks that we are able to discern the more from the less authentic. In terms of images and conceptions of God then, I argue that a Catholic education for today requires retrieving the Catholic Intellectual Tradition's discipline of philosophical theology so as to provide students with the resources necessary for discerning the true, living God from among the jumble of ideas and images on offer within secular-pluralism. Ch. 1 provides an historical overview of the culture of authenticity and in the process defines the latter and its relation to secular-pluralism and to the proliferation of images and conceptions of God. Philosophical theology is introduced as potentially necessary component of a Catholic education that seeks to help students discern the authentic, or true God. Ch. 2 takes up the question of authenticity as related to conflicting ideas about the truth of existence and in this light offers an understanding of truth as engaged, relational, and non-absolute. This understanding grounds the contemporary philosophical theological approach presented in chapters four and five. First, however, Ch. 3 looks at the thought of Thomas Aquinas as standard for the field of philosophical theology and therefore as necessary for (creatively) retrieving for its usefulness today. Chapter 4 begins the process of retrieval by outlining the ways in which W. Norris Clarke's Thomistically based "Inner" and "Outer" Paths to God provide elements for a contemporary philosophical theology. Ch. 5 continues in this vein as it turns to the work of Elizabeth Johnson to elucidate the socioeconomic, political, and cultural aspects that must be attended to by any contemporary philosophical theology. Ch. 6 proposes Thomas Groome's Shared Christian Praxis approach to Christian religious education as theoretically and practically compatible with a contemporary philosophical theology and therefore as the most suitable pedagogical approach to educating from and for faith. I conclude the dissertation with a brief reflection on what lessons philosophical theology has to offer to Catholic religious and theological education as a whole. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry.

This thesis investigates the sacraments of initiation of Grigor Tatevatsi (1346-1409), one of the most prominent ecclesiastical leaders of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Archbishop Mesrob Ashjian in Armenian Church Patristic and Other Essays examined Tatevatsi’s sacraments of initiation, and declared that Grigor Tatevatsi abdicated the theology of the Armenian Apostolic Church and integrated many important issues from Thomas Aquinas. This study challenges Ashjian’s statements, and by examining the political, historical and theological context, elaborates the sacraments of initiation of Grigor Tatevatsi in different colours. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, according to a missionary programme of Rome, successful work was started by the Latin Church in Armenia. During the crucial period for the Armenian Christianity, in time of political, social, intellectual and ecclesiastical changes, Grigor Tatevatsi becomes one of the dominating figures, and the first chapter examines his life. The second chapter of this work examines the purpose of the Dominican Order in Grand Armenia, and the origin of the Unitors, the Latino-Armenian Brotherhood, during fourteen century. The last three chapters deal with Tatevatsi’s sacramental theology of initiation. The third chapter focuses on the sacrament of baptism, the fourth chapter investigates the sacrament of confirmation, and the fifth chapter deals with the sacrament of communion and elucidates how Tatevatsi sees the sacrament that unites us to Christ. These three chapters compare the theology of Grigor Tatevatsi within that of Thomas Aquinas, showing how Tatevatsi engaging with Aquinas, not to abdicate Armenian theology but to defend it within the context of wider Christian practice, comparing Latin, Greek and sometimes Syriac practice to show that Armenian theology reads the early Christian tradition in ways that sometimes differ from the other traditions, but are not inferior to them.

<p>As Christians in the United States struggle to sustain hope in the face of global economic, environmental, military, and poverty crises, the most popular source of theological hope for preachers and congregations is that of Jürgen Moltmann and the Moltmannian hope that draws on his work. Moltmannian theology eschews close connections with more-canonically established doctrines of hope, claiming instead on a future-based, this-worldly eschatology that hopes in the God who suffers. An exclusive reliance on a Moltmannian theology of hope deprives the church of crucial resources for a robust eschatological hope and its practices. Critical attention to additional streams of of theologial hope, and to applicable discourses within and without Christian theology, provides the church with strength and resilience to sustain a distinctly Christian theological hope through and beyond disaster, despair, suffering, and death. Jesus Christ, the perfect hope, embodies the life -- earthly and eternal -- of humanity and its eschatological end, a life in which humans can participate, through grace and discipleship.</p><p> To make this argument, I survey characteristics of Moltmannian hope and then identify costs of a theological hope that relies exclusively on Moltmannia resources. I review a Patristic and Thomistic grammar of theological hope and its accompanying grammar of God; and I explore possible contributions to theological hope from an assortment of contemporary conversations outside conventionally-identified areas of Christian hope. I conclude with two suggestions for ecclesial formation of Christians in theological hope.</p> / Dissertation

Some comparative studies of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas put emphasis on the similarities between Aristotelian and Thomistic metaphysics. In this study, however, I have attempted to show a salient difference; a respect in which Thomas's system cannot accommodate certain Aristotelian tenets. I have argued that, although Thomas tries to incorporate Aristotle's account of intellection, he cannot consistently do so. For an integration of this sort entails that the created intellect is identical with God when it contemplates him. This, however, is a conclusion that would rightly be rejected as metaphysically implausible in Thomas's system. Aristotle's view of intellection entails that the intellect is identical with whatever it contemplates when that object possesses no matter. For, intellection, which is itself immaterial, assumes the form of whatever it contemplates, and furthermore, matter is what individuates distinct entities that share the same form. If all this is so, then the human intellect becomes identical with Aristotle's god when it contemplates him. In Aristotle's system, this would not present any problems, for a very interesting reason: Aristotle, on an interpretation of his thought that seems textually plausible, teaches that part of the human mind is identical with divine intellect, or nous; that this part is "implanted" in the human being "from outside" and is the most divine part?and so, part of the human being can rightly be said to be eternal.1 Thomas, however, in accordance with Christian doctrine, holds that the human intellect has its own created identity, and differs numerically from person to person. But Thomas's adoption of prominent theses from Aristotle's account of intellection unfortunately entails that the human intellect, in contemplatio, becomes identical with God, since God is immaterial and identical with his essence. After looking at some possible solutions, I argue that this is not a desirable outcome in Thomas's Christian metaphysic, for several good reasons.

This thesis aims to analyze the notions of sin and repentance of Lancelot and Gawain in Malory¡¦s Morte Darthur so as to unveil what Malory¡¦s ideal knight is to be like. While the traditional view takes Lancelot as a perfect knight and Gawain a reckless one because of their different dispositions, I approach these two characters from their breach of the chivalric code and their sequential penitence. Chapter I and Chapter II will study respectively how Lancelot and Gawain sin in the world of chivalry because of their wrongdoings. Although these two knights have both sinned, yet, in Malory¡¦s hands, these two knights are portrayed in divergent degrees with obviously contrastive narrative context and their repentance takes a different hue as well. Chapter III examines the repentance of Lancelot and Gawain and takes note that although both knights repent for their sins, forgiveness is granted to the former exclusively whereas the latter is denied such a treatment. Chapter IV concludes that such difference or prejudice is indicative of Malory¡¦s evaluation of Lancelot and Gawain in accordance with how the two knights handle their misdeeds and this implies the author¡¦s conception of what a perfect knight should be. Of particular interest is that Chapters I through IV trace the traditional theological view by looking at St. Thomas Aquinas¡¦ concept of sin and repentance. Aquinas¡¦ doctrinal view allows us to analyze Lancelot and Gawain¡¦s sin and repentance within a chivalric as well as theological domain and provides us a better base with which to understand these two concepts. This research strives to bring about a different perspective in evaluating Malory¡¦s knights.

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