Taking the use of the logos in Ratzinger's Regensburg Lecture as its starting point, the thesis expands three horizons in Ratzinger studies. Firstly, it extends the understanding of Ratzinger as the author of a logos theology. Secondly, it shows how the Regensburg theme of the full breadth of reason, represented by the logos, is applied by Ratzinger in a critique of secular modernity. Thirdly, it claims that the logos theology of Joseph Ratzinger can provide a repair of the culture of human rights. The thesis argues that if human rights are set exclusively within the framework of secular modernity, they fall sick and fail to meet the criterion of inclusivity and universality. Set within the framework of a Ratzingerian logos theology, their power is strengthened and their promise of inclusivity and universality restored. The thesis calls for a mutually reparative dialogue about human rights, based on the full breadth of reason, between the three constituencies of Christianity, the religions and secular modernity. The thesis concludes that the Regensburg Lecture, far from damaging the dialogue with Islam, and with secular modernity, opens up a new intercultural bridge based on a mutually enriching engagement with a logos-based culture of human rights.

This dissertation examines the correspondence in theology, practice and social views between Early Quakers and John Wycliffe and John Hus (QWH), founders of the late-medieval heretical sects the Lollards and Hussites. It discusses the diversity of religious experience that characterized the first generation of ‘Early Quakers,’ and argues the end of early Quakerism as 1678, when the Quaker establishment completed enforcement of greater conformity in belief and practice. The dissertation examines Wycliffe and the Lollards and Hus and the Hussites, placing them in an experiential religious tradition and exploring their belief in the need to return to a primitive church in reaction to the perceived apostasy of the Catholic Church. By focusing on possible modes of dissemination of Wycliffe’s and Hus’ ideas and personal stories in works such as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, the thesis concludes that there exists a close correspondence among QWH respecting the following characteristics: (1) accessibility of Christ’s message; (2) belief in the visible and invisible church; (3) biblical authority; (4) personal understanding of Scripture; (5) opposition to established churches; (6) return to a ‘primitive church’; (7) attitudes toward reforming society; (8) the imminence of Christ’s return; and (9) the role of women.

This thesis is a diachronic investigation of Lewi Pethrus’ ecclesiological thought from 1911 to 1974. The research employs Roger Haight’s transdenominational ecclesiology as its methodological framework. Since Haight’s methodology is based on a concrete ecclesiological method that emphasises the importance of a historical consciousness in ecclesiology, the study particularly focuses on the formative contexts that shaped Pethrus’ ecclesiology. The emphasis on formative contexts not only explains why certain ecclesiological concepts arose at particular points in Pethrus’ life but also clarifies why concepts were abandoned or developed over time. A vital part of Haight’s methodology is also to examine the religious values that remain constant and significantly form ecclesiological views. The thesis argues that Pethrus’ ecclesiology is shaped by a Pentecostal form of spirituality that has ‘loving Christ and loving neighbour’ as its core values. The combination of a Pentecostal form of spirituality and formative contexts is what makes Pethrus’ ecclesiology ‘Pentecostal’ and gives it its inner logic. The thesis concludes by taking this inner logic of Pethrus’ ecclesiology and hypothetically applying it to a global setting. The result is a contribution toward a transdenominational Pentecostal ecclesiology that has important implications for any attempt to construct a global Pentecostal ecclesiology.

Robert Leighton (1610/11-1684) was a significant Scottish churchman of the seventeenth-century. He has been the subject of religious confessional history-writing which continues to skew our understanding of him. This thesis offers a radical reassessment of the first fifty years of Leighton’s life based upon the available primary evidence. The formative influences of Leighton’s Puritan anti-Episcopal father and his student years at the Town College of Edinburgh are re-evaluated. The possibility that he studied in Huguenot France in the 1630s is posited. Using his relationship with the Earl of Lothian to illuminate his involvement in the Covenanting movement, he is placed in Scotland from 1638. Leighton’s commitment to the Covenant and to Presbyterianism is reconsidered by charting Leighton’s career as minister of Newbattle (1641-1653) and his appointment as Principal of the Town College by the English occupiers in 1653. His decision to become a Restoration bishop in 1661 is reviewed having regard to a new understanding of his journey towards Episcopacy and by careful attention to his own words and actions. This study concludes that our comprehension of the Church of Scotland during the Covenanting, Interregnum and Restoration periods is heightened by re-discovering the real Leighton.

This thesis undertakes an interdisciplinary analysis of new Church of England liturgies (Common Worship) from an ecotheological point of view: making use of reader response theory, literary analysis, a social scientific survey, liberation theology, environmental and political ethics and liturgical theology. Chapter 1 considers the theological, political and sociological influences on liturgical reform, which include, inculturation, the expression of ethics in the prayer of the Church, liberation theologies, technology, and agrarianism. Chapter 2 considers methods of liturgical change and the scope for making creation visible in liturgy. Chapter 3 finds justification in reader response theory for determining ecotheological priorities for critiquing liturgy. Analysis of Common Worship texts occurs: in Chapter 4, using literary analysis; in Chapter 5 via social scientific survey of clergy using Common Worship; Chapter 6 looks in details at Collects and Post Communions and undertakes an ecotheological rewriting of 9 sample texts. Chapter 7 identifies lessons for liturgical revision in general and for eco-liturgical reform in particular, paying particular attention to the dissonant creation theologies unearthed in Common Worship, the necessity for future revisions, and the importance and implication of technological change for liturgical writers and commentators.

Representations of the Holy Trinity have increasingly come under scrutiny, exposing two competing paradigms at opposite ends of the theological spectrum: the legitimacy and the illegitimacy of imaging the Triune God with focus on the invisible Father who was imaged as an individual from Late Antiquity and beyond. An overview of these two conflicting views has unveiled a number of inconsistencies in how the Early Christian iconography of God the Father and the Trinity has been interpreted. This thesis provides a unique re-evaluation of the surviving Trinitarian visual material between c.300 to c.730. Primarily, this study collates pictorial evidence preserved in the mediums of sarcophagi, catacomb frescoes, mosaics, illuminated manuscripts and an icon that depicts Divinity. It proceeds to critique modern misconceptions of the identity, form, meaning, function and reception of the depictions. The thesis traces the visual shift amid overt and covert images of Divinity by decoding important artworks such as the Ashburnham Pentateuch and the Codex Amiatinus; Christians visualised explicitly the ' invisibility' of God but created an unprecedented invention, the depiction of the Father through Christ's image. The innovative depiction heralded future visual formulas of Divinity echoing the complexities of Trinitarian material culture of the Mediterranean world.

The thesis attempts to address Orthodox Church concerns about the Protestant nature and ethos of the ecumenical movement, as it is encountered in the World Council of Churches, by examining Orthodox theological contributions to ecclesiology. This preliminary work is undertaken, as a first step, to establish points of dialogue with the theology of liberation and wider critical theories, in the search for a liberating ecumenism. At the same time, and in a second step (to follow the epistemology of the theology of liberation), this Orthodox theology is placed in a critical dialogue with the theology of liberation in the search for liberating ecclesiological perspectives that can contribute to the movement in ecumenism. This uneasy dialogue helps to recover absent epistemologies from ongoing ecumenical dialogues by re-reading orthodoxies, both ecumenical and ecclesiological, from a liberationist paradigm, and sets ecclesiology within the wider framework of contributions from critical theory. This dialogue between Orthodox theology and the theology of liberation helps to construct an ecclesiology that liberates ecumenism by setting ecclesiology and the ecumenical movement in the wider context of social movements. This thesis calls the ecumenical movement to ‘another possible world’ influenced by people-centred ecclesiologies, which transgresses the canonical boundaries in the ecumenical movement. To be ecumenical implies an Orthodox content to ecclesiology, otherwise the ecumenical movement is open to charges of pan-Protestantism. It is by embracing Orthodoxy that the ecumenical movement can move beyond hegemonic colonial projects and find a liberating praxis. This thesis proposes a dialogue that reflects the structure of the Final Report of the Special Commission on Orthodox Participation in the World Council of Churches. However, it engages with Orthodox ecclesiology and ecumenical histories from the perspective of the theology of liberation in the search for a liberating ecumenism and proposes a praxis that develops movement in the ecumenical and the ecclesiological through developing an ecclesiology from different peripheries of the Church.

The Jesus People Movement was a large religious phenomenon that arose out of an amalgamation of the American counterculture and Hippie movements and American Pentecostalism. Beginning in 1967 the movement‘s early participants were mostly hippies who had claimed a conversion experience and instantaneous healing from drug addiction through an encounter with Jesus Christ. By the mid-1970s the growing phenomenon had attracted a broad range of youth, many of whom were not former hippies, but who did relate to the counterculture movement and the generation gap. Several enduring institutions arose from the heyday and have continued to impact American Pentecostalism and American Christianity more broadly. This thesis examines the historical links between the Jesus People Movement, American Pentecostalism, and the Hippie movement as well as the sociological and theological resemblance to American Pentecostalism. Based on the family resemblance analogy, the thesis concludes that the Jesus People Movement should be included as a significant part of the story of American Pentecostalism.