Understanding evil spiritual forces is essential for Christian theology. Evil has typically been studied either from a philosophical perspective or through the lens of ‘spiritual warfare’. The first seldom considers demonology; the second is flawed by poor methodology. Furthermore, warfare language is problematic, being very dualistic, associated with violence and poorly applicable to ministry. This study addresses these issues by developing a new model for conceptualizing and counteracting evil using ‘non-warfare’ biblical metaphors, and relying on contemporary metaphor theory, which claims that metaphors are cognitive and can depict reality. In developing this model, I examine four biblical themes with respect to alternate metaphors for evil: Creation, Cult, Christ and Church. Insights from anthropology (binary oppositions), theology (dualism, nothingness) and science (chaos-complexity theory) contribute to the construction of the model, and the concepts of profane space, sacred space and sacred actions (divine initiative and human responsibility) guide the investigation. The role of the Holy Spirit in maintaining the boundaries of divine reality is emphasized, and the ontology of evil minimized (considered quasi-real). This model incorporates concentric circles, evil being considered peripheral to godly reality. I suggest metaphors of cleansing, ordering, separating and limiting evil and discuss potential applications of this model.

In this thesis, I explore the physicality of the pregnant body in the womb imagery in Psalm 139 and Job 3 and in the simile “like a woman in labor,” specifically, the simile of YHWH as a woman in labor in Isa 42:14. I show that the metaphorical pregnant body is not an idea of a body; rather, it is a detailed physical body with images of gestation in the womb, physical descriptions of a body writhing in labor (e.g. face, breath, hands, heart, legs), and descriptions of a baby delivered from the womb. Using Benjamin Harshav’s theory of Integrational Semantics, I mine the text for details of and allusions to the physicality of the pregnant body. I look at the text through the lens of the pregnant female body and ask how the physicality of this body contributes to meaning. I show that the full impact of the text is lost when the physical properties of the pregnant body are not integrated within an interpretation.

This thesis aims to investigate how evangelical Christians and their Protestant forebears, labeled early orthodox Protestants, have dealt with the classic puzzle of New Testament criticism known as the Synoptic Problem. The particular theories considered are the Independence Hypothesis, the Augustinian Hypothesis, the Two-Gospel Hypothesis, the Two-Source Hypothesis, and the Farrer Hypothesis. Starting with John Calvin and continuing to modern-day, consideration is given to the various hypotheses provided by early orthodox Protestant and evangelical biblical scholars throughout the centuries. Special attention is given to major evangelical contributors to the subject since 1950. In addition, a chapter is devoted to the role ecclesiology has played in evangelical consideration of the synoptic problem. After considering the opinions offered over almost half a millennium, the thesis notes how arguments have changed, and how they have remained the same.

This thesis answers the question How might an understanding of shame in the church inform approaches to ministerial praxis? It is methodologically a creative piece of practical theology which begins and ends with an autoethnographic reflection, drawing on the metaphor of landscape. The practical theology methodology involved the following stages: noticing; reflexivity; describing, naming; focusing; investigating; analysing; evaluating; theorizing, synthesizing; and responding, while drawing on insights from a mixed methods approach to qualitative research. The empirical research involved an anonymous online survey (261 respondents) to church leaders, church members and theological educators and two representative focus groups. Shame is defined phenomenologically using a range of disciplines; a review of literature relevant to shame and ministerial praxis is included. The unique contribution this thesis makes is twofold. Firstly, the development of an empirically underpinned typology of shame in the church which has six domains: personal, relational, communal, structural, theological and historical facilitating the identification of shame which is often a hidden phenomenon. Secondly, identifying specific approaches to ministerial praxis which help mitigate such shame including a shame examen to assist conscientization. The final chapter discusses the author’s learning about shame, ministerial praxis, doing theology and theological education.

This thesis examines the texts of Paul's letters which historically have been used to support the doctrine of universalism. Section One: Chapter I discusses Paul's judgement terminology (wrath, destruction and death) and concludes with a sociological study of group boundaries. These terms portend annihilation or hell because they contain no sense of eschatological reformation. Group boundaries confirm the exclusive nature of Pauline belief that there exist two classes of people, insiders who look forward to a glorious salvation with Christ, and outsiders who will be destroyed in the eschaton. Chapter II considers the possibility that a person might compensate for his sins by some form of postmortem remedial suffering; this is deemed unlikely. Chapter III examines the tension between grace and works and whether Paul would permit an unbeliever to be saved on the basis of his works. Paul requires a profession of faith to be saved, with one exception: Gentiles who earnestly seek after God. Section Two: Chapter I shows that salvation in Rom. 11:26, 32 is better understood as corporate mercy than individual salvation. Collectives (Jews and Gentiles), not individuals are promised salvation. Chapter II reads 1 Cor. 15:22 restrictively; only those who belong to Christ will be made alive. Reasons for this conclusion are derived from the context and from the possibility that Paul expected a resurrection of only the righteous. Section Three: Chapter I examines Rom. 8:19-23 and its Jewish background, the Renovation of nature. The text itself limits salvation to certain sectors of the cosmos. This agrees with the essential element of the Jewish Renovation which is a removal of the wicked. Chapter II investigates Eph. 1:10 and Phil. 2:10 f. Both texts set Christ up as divine ruler of the cosmos, but neither implies that cosmic lordship imparts saving benefits. The passages are better understood in terms of cosmic conquest than cosmic salvation. Chapter III argues that the cosmic scope of the reconciliation in Col. 1:20 is curtailed in the Pauline redaction of the hymn as well as elsewhere in Colossians. Conclusion: Paul's judgement terminology and his use of insider/outsider language strongly support particularism. This conclusion is sustained by the universalist texts themselves which often fit into particularist themes.

This thesis explores the identity of translation as its power of reference through an analysis of transformations of biblical narrative from their written form to audio-visual versions made for television. The central problematic of translatability between word and image is examined through the "translation strategies" used by producers and translators. These strategies reveal the philosophical binarisms that underpin an assumption of source and target texts as autonomous entities. The polarities of binary thinking are implicit in a perception of translation as a representation of a prior text The language of representation that is central to theories of representational equivalence raises the question to what does representation refer. This question forms the focus for a critique of the epistemology and ontology of representation and its artificial separation of language and vision, or word and image in our perceptual experience of the world. The criticism is essential to an exploration of the referential power of translation understood in semiotic and narrative terms as its ground of interpretation. This exploration describes the symbolic or semiotic value of translations, or the contexts in which they acquire contemporary coherence and significance. The central descriptive part of the thesis employs three conceptions of context: the context of texts themselves as narratively and semantically coherent units; their cultural contexts, or the irreducible intertexuality on which they depend for the recognition and interpretation of their significant features; and the social and economic conditions which underpin the work of production and provide the social contexts within such works circulate. In rejecting the notion that translations are an image, however impure, of an antecedent text, my thesis excludes a notion of conventional limits to translation based on structuralist conceptions of semantic or narrative form as the principal carriers of meaning. It concludes that the limits of translation are defined by its possibilities.

This thesis deals with the conversation between the interpretations of Paul‘s letters and modern European thought. It is a narrative of an oft-neglected relationship; but, more than that, it tries to push this negotiation further than where it is now. Thus, in this project, I intend to play with the many possibilities that poststructuralist theory provides for alternative interpretations of biblical texts, and to uncover the ways that the Bible can offer new solutions to the challenges of modern thought. My study will focus on three issues: power, religion, and gender. I believe that the debates around these three topics have been crucial to the European self-definition. Besides, Paul has been present in the European discourse on politics, law, and sexuality. His letters have been interpreted only based on a certain kind of normativity at the expense of many alternative readings. The reception of Paul, in turn, provided some ground for further discussions on European identity. In chapter one, I draw on the complications of physical portraits of Paul to indicate the problems in offering a finalized clear picture of his message. Obsession with portraying the Apostle is not dissimilar to the recurrent reference to him in the works of European intellectuals since the Enlightenment. Paul has thus been involved in the construction of European identity. This does not mean that he has always conformed to what Europe wants. Rather, he has challenged the binary identities that European normativity has built. It is precisely in these moments that the arbitrariness of European discourse is betrayed. Relying on Judith Butler‘s theories on gender normativity, I try to spot the ways that identity was established through the reiteration of modern categories that may be far from what the text says. In the following chapters, I investigate three passages that signal Paul‘s challenge to modern normative identities. In the next chapter, I deal with the interpretation of Romans 13, where Paul tells the Roman Church to be subjected to political authorities. This chapter has troubled the interpreters because it is far from what is expected from Paul – promotion of justice in face of brutal regimes. I demonstrate that the readers of Romans 13 lost touch with Paul‘s ethos soon after his death. Relying on Hans Blumenberg‘s description of ―secularization by eschatology‖ at the time of the composition of the New Testament toward the end of the first century CE – i.e. the relegation of the end matters to the transcendental –, I argue that Paul was preaching in the context of what I call the ―daily messianic‖. My formulation of the ―daily messianic‖ consists of what continental philosophers, from Martin Heidegger to Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Giorgio Agamben see as a rupture within the worldly (i.e. ―secular‖) matters. This mode, which had subsumed Paul‘s discourse, was permeated by ―care‖ and ―anxiety; it was beyond calculation or metaphysical description; it was where the distinction between the body and the soul did not make sense; and it was directed toward justice. When the expectation of the parousia lost its immediacy, imminence, and immanence, Paul‘s words lost their messianic significance. No wonder, then, that with very few exceptions like the Jewish philosopher Jacob Taubes, the interpreters have read first and last parts of the chapter (vv. 1-7 on political subjection and vv. 11-14 on eschatology respectively) separately. In chapter three, I discuss the Incident at Antioch (Gal 2:12-14), where, according to Paul‘s report, Peter led others to Judaize while he could not do that himself all the time. The interpretation of this passage has been fraught with presuppositions regarding Paul‘s attitude toward Judaism. I show that the nineteenth century Protestant readings of Paul influenced philosophers, like Nietzsche and Freud, so that the supersession of ―guilt-inducing‖ Judaism by Christianity gave way to the supersession of ―guilt-ridden religion‖ by modernity. This picture has not changed substantially, as I argue, whether for biblical scholars (even the New Perspective theologians) or for the philosophers of the ―turn to religion‖ – Alain Badiou, Slavoj Žižek, or Jacques Derrida. In my alternative interpretation, I emphasize that because Paul‘s radical Jewishness has often been neglected, he has been taken as some sort of ―Lutheran Jewish‖ man. Read this way, the conflict between Paul and Peter is like any everyday argument between two rabbis. Paul mentions the story, however, in order to establish his authority as a true apostle. The fourth chapter is about the reception of 1 Corinthians 11:5-16, on women‘s veiling during prayer and prophecy. My survey of the reinterpretations of the passage in modern times shows that Paul‘s veiling injunction has often been construed to subdue the categories that at different points in history could not constitute the standard European identity. It has been assumed that the veil belonged to the ―Jewish‖, the ecstatic ―Greek‖, the exotic ―Oriental‖, or that it has been instituted to silence ―liberationist‖ women or to foreclose the possibility of homosexuality (or cross-dressing). In this manner, the veil has been forcefully discarded from the European stage. No wonder, then, that its resurgence functions as a threat to some European states. In this chapter, with the help of poststructuralists, I question some of the assumptions about the veil, femininity, subjectivity, and the ethnic other. According to my alternative interpretation, there is no need to reinterpret Paul‘s commandments by othering certain groups or by projecting the encounter between West and its others to the Corinthian correspondence. Paul might have used the veil as a means for integrating women into the church by their inclusion in the ―masculine‖ order. In conclusion, in response to the claim that modern Europe emerged as a gradual parting of ways between biblical scholarship and secular philosophy, I argue in my work that the conversation between the two has persisted, despite its fluxes throughout history. When this mutual relationship is acknowledged, it can even be pushed to its limits to, on the one hand, read the Bible through the possibilities that poststructuralist theory provides and, on the other, make informed interventions in continental philosophy.

The dissertation pushes the boundaries of biblical interpretation by formulating relationships between passages of the Hebrew Bible and unrelated works of Modern art. While a growing field of criticism addresses the representation of scriptural stories in painting, sculpture and film, the artwork in this study does not look to the Bible for its subject matter. The intertextual/intermedia comparisons instead address five different genres of biblical literature and read them according to various dynamics found in Modern images. In forming these relationships I challenge traditional perceptions of characters and literary style by allowing an artistic representation or pictorial method to highlight issues of selfhood, gender and power and by revaluing narrative and poetry in nuanced aesthetic terms. The comparative analysis derives its two-subject structure for each section from the undergraduate art history seminar, in which two slides are projected and the group encouraged to identify similarities between disparate works. My use of this heuristic method then appropriates secondary sources to forge a relationship in which art criticism ultimately speaks for the biblical text. Chapter I juxtaposes the figure of Michal in 2 Samuel 6 against that of Queen Guenevere (1858) by William Morris in an essay that questions the portrait popular opinion has painted of the barren daughter of Saul. The Pre-Raphaelite painting and Morris’s related poetry help to build a defence for Michal against those who inflict her barrenness upon her as if it were a punishment from God. Morris’s sympathy for his adulterous heroine allows us to see the Deuteronomistic History’s maligned queen as one whose character and action in fact seem very in tune with the prophetic agenda of the greater work. In Chapter II, a woodcut portrait of Friedrich Nietzsche (1905) by Erich Heckel provides a counterpart to Abraham’s representation in Genesis 23. The German Expressionist reduced his palette to a bold black on white to memorialise the Modern father of great men. The comparison frames Abraham as the embodiment of the Übermensch, as one who laid waste to his father’s heritage and followed his own God. His role as one who lives ‘over’ others casts the haste with which he gets up and buys Sarah’s plot as a sign of his will to possess. Luce Irigaray’s Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche (1991) is then incorporated to create a dialogue between the dark space of the portrait (symbolic of Abraham’s masculine ego) and the white space caused by Sarah’s death. Sarah thus speaks to ‘Abraham the Overman’ as the ‘Marine Lover’, beckoning him down from his high place and resisting the force in him that wants to bury her out of his sight. Chapter III turns to prophecy and reconsiders Isaiah 44 first as a collage made in exile and then as a performance piece conducted in diaspora. The Merzbild by Kurt Schwitters entitled Green Over Yellow (1947) takes a critical Modern step away from representation and forward to abstraction. Schwitters assembled his cut-up forms to give them new visual value and made conspicuous their arbitrary edges and artful overlapping—a compositional and structural ethos not unlike the collage of forms in the exilic prophecy. Schwitters’ relative ease as an exile and expatriate in Britain also fuels questions scholars have asked about the nature and scale of the biblical exile. Finding that the text does not fully orient itself towards Jerusalem, a second part to this comparison introduces an alternative analogue for Is. 44 by treating it as a record of performance and drawing upon the work of Ana Mendieta (1948-1985) to discuss the passage’s broad approach to land and identity. The fourth chapter hangs an individual lament alongside Jackson Pollock’s Cathedral (1947), likening its parallelisms to streams of paint poured across the canvas and foregrounding the site of Psalm 13 as a field of/for abstract expression. Short though this hymn may be, its generalised language makes it accessible to a universal audience and lets emotion be splattered about in a personal protest against pain. Finally, Chapter V envisions wisdom literature and the character of Qoheleth with an understanding for the genre’s ‘conceptual’ outlook and the speaker’s sense of irony. A readymade gambler’s bond by Marcel Duchamp is projected opposite the opening chapter of Qoheleth’s reflections to introduce the wise man as a dandy who entertains his admirers through pleasing words. The comparison thus establishes a context in which a book that scholars have attempted to classify as either the work of an optimist or a pessimist can be appreciated for the attitude of witty indifference its author appears to affect. The project actively conceives of the biblical text as a ‘Modern’ phenomenon by emphasising areas in which it seems to invite abstract or metaphorical modes of understanding over literal interpretation. It utilizes an understanding of Modernism based not on the rejection of tradition but on the desire to rectify it. And it draws out the ways in which the Bible scandalizes the pious pictures critics have painted of it. Thinking not only of reading and visualising the Bible as an artistic process, the analysis aims to illustrate the legitimacy of viewing the text itself as a work of art.

This study is intended as a dialogue between literature and theology, utilizing selected works of the playwright and novelist, Henry Fielding (1707-54). While historical studies of Fielding have clearly yielded much of importance, a broader and less deterministic assessment concerning the latent ambivalences of this, one of the earliest novelists, has yet to be explored. Such an assessment has implications for the current relationship between, and the separate study of, literature and theology. The methodology is informed by an awareness of human frailty (what Fielding described as HUMAN NATURE) and centres upon the use of a specific interpretative tool that I call misplacement. By this, I mean the continuous parting with the ineffable – the perpetual recognition that, in writing, there is always a sense of the other, be that an alternative path not taken, the nagging sense of the numinous, or the coming to terms with the ludicrous nature of the human condition. Such fragile, comedic alterity provides a weak metaphysical root which is shared by both literature and theology. To illustrate the effects of such misplacement, this thesis sets the novels of Henry Fielding alongside works of contemporary philosophical theology such as the post onto-theological critique of Gianni Vattimo and John Caputo, as well as alongside postmodern works of fiction, such as those of Vonnegut and Calvino. In so doing, common critical zones such as epistemology, ethics, mimesis, canonicity, and revelation are investigated. The result of this analysis is that, in all these areas, the novel form, in Fielding’s hands, displays a powerful comic resonance with a theology which seeks to move beyond a strictly deterministic approach. Thus, we discover that Fielding’s work, rather than simply being expressive of proto-Enlightenment principles, actually subverts those assumed securities regarding the status of the individual and his place in the world, before God. In its conclusion, this study reveals the challenge of recognising the inescapably theological nature of the novel and that theology itself, is fictive. This assessment points to a greater need for further shared exploration of the relationship between theology and literature - to their mutual benefit.

This research assesses the use of scripture in tracts published in Swahili in East Africa. The use of tracts for the propagation of religion is introduced through the work of Tract Societies in Britain and the use of Christian tracts in overseas missions. Printing in Arabic and the propagation of Islam through tracts is surveyed. The historical use of tracts by Christians and Muslims in East Africa, and Swahili as a religious language, are examined. In 2000 and 2001, Christian and Muslim tracts in Swahili were purchased from particular locations in Kenya and Tanzania. Of these, sixteen tracts, eight by Christians and eight by Muslims, were selected. The tracts use passages from the Bible and/or the Qur’an mainly for outreach purposes. They are described and analysed and scriptures within them recorded. Eighteen Biblical and Qur’anic passages that appeared in more than one tract were chosen. These scriptures, together with the interpretations of them within the tracts, are translated, presented thematically, analysed and compared. The research found differences between Christian and Muslim use of the passages, noting that the approach of most tracts is polemical, thus raising concerns that they may increase misunderstandings between Christians and Muslims in East Africa.