The primary aim of this thesis "Towards the trinitarian christology: Christological analysis of Klaus Hemmerle's writings in the context of his life and work" is to concern the most important christological themes of Klaus Hemmerle's (1929-1994) philosophical and theological work. At the same time, in the context of author's life and work the debate over the way metaphysics and christology relate to each other will be taken into account. Hemmerle's most known essay "Theses for a Trinitarian Ontology" (Thesen zu einer trinitarischen Ontologie) deals with the problem of new genuinely christian trinitarian ontology. The christological assumptions of this approach will be discussed in our thesis.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This study will contribute to the substantial corpus of secondary scholarship on the life, ministry, and theology of the German theologian, church leader, and modern-day martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945). Bonhoeffer’s legacy has also elicited considerable interest in the South African context, concerning a wide variety of themes such as the Confessing Church movement, secularisation, discipleship, confessing guilt, spirituality, and ethics. The critical question articulated by Bonhoeffer predominantly in his Letters and Papers from Prison, namely ‘Who is Jesus Christ, for us, today?’ has been raised by different generations of South African theologians in rapidly changing contexts. This study will concentrate on Bonhoeffer’s own Christology. The focus will be not so much on the significance of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ within a particular social context, but on how Bonhoeffer understands the person of Christ. More specifically, the problem investigated in this study is how Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s evolving views on the so-called ‘two natures’ of Christ should be understood. The Nicene confession,’ that Jesus Christ is Lord, that he is ‘truly God’ and ‘of one being with the Father, ’ prompted considerable reflection in Patristic Christianity. One crucial question was how the confession of the divinity of Christ reconciles with the humanity of Jesus of Nazareth portrayed so vividly in the canonical gospels. The formulation of the Council of Chalcedon, namely that one may speak of ‘two natures’ and ‘one person,’ has never been satisfactory and prompted further controversy but remains a point of reference in ongoing Christological debates to this day. The question, therefore, raised: How does Bonhoeffer understand the relationship between the ‘divine’ and the ‘human’ nature of Jesus Christ? This question is pertinent given the consistent Christological concentration in Bonhoeffer’s theology (even to the point of a Trinitarian reductionism), his increasing emphasis on a ‘this-worldly’ understanding of God’s transcendence and his consistent Lutheran intuition that the finite can indeed contain the infinite. Bonhoeffer’s Christology has been the subject of much scholarly interest. There is consensus that his Christology remains not only incomplete but also unresolved. A core problem in this regard is his understanding of the divine nature of Christ – which he assumes but of which he does not offer any full account. This study will contribute to the available literature by exploring Bonhoeffer’s understanding of the ‘two natures’ of Christ based on the primary and secondary research with specific reference to Sanctorum Communio (1927/1963), Act and Being (1930/1996), Christology, Discipleship (1937/1959), Ethics (1955, 6th edition and 2005, new critical edition) and Letters and Papers from Prison (2010). There has been considerable controversy in Bonhoeffer scholarship regarding the continuity and discontinuity in Bonhoeffer’s theological thinking from his student years to his death in 1945. It would, therefore, be wise to allow for Bonhoeffer’s ‘evolving’ views on the ‘two natures’ of Jesus Christ to speak for itself. This study will seek to describe and assess (in terms of Bonhoeffer’s sources and secondary scholarship) Bonhoeffer’s views in each of his main works to trace the developments in his thinking.

Initially the Esther text was disputed and discarded by the early Church fathers. More recently in the 20th and 21st centuries Christian scholarship has dramatized, distorted, culturalized, feminized, or even politicized it. Indeed, the book has scarcely been defined as divine or devotional. While it has received condemnation from scholars, theologians like Martin Luther concluded that it would be best eliminated from the canon altogether. This thesis seeks to bring the text of Esther back into consideration for valid Christological interpretation by presenting evidence of a typology of Christ as exhibited in God's plan of salvation. In making such an assessment, this thesis presents a lexically-based evaluation from the Hebrew content of various words and phrases from the text, as well as within the larger biblical text. Determining their meaning and usage will serve to elucidate whether the text strategically incorporates Christological connections evidencing of this claim. I consider and apply a popular typologically related assessment of figurative language and symbolism, which also provides diagnostic criteria for typologies. This research thus entails a broad and varied examination of the figurative language and diverse use of symbolism including allusion, intertextual referencing, narrative sequencing, and rhetorical devices among others. Consequently, this broadly-based analysis provides a rich array of evidence that supports a valid typology for Christ in His various roles including His messianic kingship within God's plan of salvation for mankind, as well as other key concepts within God's plan, or associated roles, for example that of Satan.

This dissertation presents current concepts of protestant Christology, primarily based on how contemporary German theologians Christian Danz and Jens Schröter formulate their Christological theses. The first two parts of the thesis present the Christological concepts of both theologians. The presentation of the two conceptions follows their distinctive character and is not primarily structured for direct comparison. The work thus also covers aspects of the two theologians that are difficult to compare. The third part of the thesis is devoted to a critical comparison of the presented Christological conceptions. The comparison highlights specific moments in both theologians, their possible contradictions, and, at times, surprising agreements. The thesis does not conclude only by stating the partial differences of the Christological conceptions but attempts to formulate some current Christological trends in a more general way. Finally, the thesis concludes with the formulation of theses that could guide the author's Christological conception.

This dissertation is intended as an exposition of the examples and precepts of prayer in the life of Jesus, as recorded in the four Gospels

Music theory of Hildegard of Bingen’s era articulated a cosmological worldview, providing thinkers with a way of understanding human beings, the world, the heavens, and how they all interact with each other in musical terms. Hildegard was familiar with this music theory through her theological predecessors. This dissertation argues that a better understanding of Hildegard’s theology requires a deeper consideration of how this musical cosmology influenced her because of the way music pervades her work. Music theory is a major piece of what undergirds her Benedictine, liturgical worldview. To demonstrate this, I take up the task of explicating and illuminating Hildegard’s Christology in terms of her understanding of music and music theory. This task is different from previous scholarship which analyzes Hildegard’s writing about music in terms of her broader theology. I bridge the gap between musicologists and liturgists, on the one hand, who focus on Hildegard’s theology of music but neglect broader consideration of her theology and, on the other hand, theologians who acknowledge music as an integral part of Hildegard’s life but largely consider her theological visions in abstraction from it. I argue that Hildegard uses music theory to define and explicate Christ and Christ’s interactions with the world, sometimes explicitly, but primarily implicitly. Her theological vision centers Christ in a resounding universe. By understanding Christ as symphonia, Hildegard emphasizes the Son’s unique relationship with humanity. While readers cannot understand every aspect of Hildegard’s Christology by considering music theory, music theory helps to illuminate it in a particular way, enabling us to understand Hildegard’s theology more deeply. Thus, this study provides an example for how future scholars can continue to interpret Hildegard’s understanding of various theological loci. In addition, it submits Hildegard as an example of how to unite music/liturgy and theology in a fruitful way for both the Academy and the Church. / 2025-04-25T00:00:00Z

Thesis advisor: Boyd Taylor Coolman / In the life of Christ—from his humble birth to his horrific death—Francis of Assisi saw nothing less than the full revelation of God. In this dissertation I study how Francis’s impulse toward the historical dimension of the incarnation finds theological expression among Paris’s first generation of Franciscan theologians as represented in their Summa halensis. I argue that the Franciscans’ attention to the historical character of the incarnation facilitates a christology that unites and integrates speculative and practical theological concerns. Speculatively, the Summa halensis prioritizes the full integrity of Christ’s humanity without compromising the existential dependence of that humanity on the Word who assumes it; practically, the Summa halensis grounds the salvific efficacy of Christian penitential practices in the salvific quality of the entire trajectory, and not just the final moments, of Christ’s life. This study, then, offers grounds for a reappraisal of the Summa halensis as a hitherto unrecognized inflection point for the development of scholastic christology, as an early instance of scholastic theology’s tendency to integrate the speculative with the practical. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

Thesis advisor: Boyd Taylor Coolman / This dissertation investigates Thomas Aquinas’s understanding of the charisms (gratiae gratis datae) as distinctly social or ecclesial graces in light of his critical engagement with the Franciscan Summa Halensis. It first looks at the Summa Halensis’s christology and theology of the charisms to show the theological inseparability of charismatic grace from the threefold grace of Christ (the grace of union, capital grace, and the grace of the singular man). I then trace the development of Aquinas’s understanding of Christ’s humanity (in terms of the grace of Christ’s humanity) as a conjoined instrument of the Word and show how at every step Aquinas critically engaged the christology of the Summa Halensis. I bring that historical development in christology and its application to the sacraments to bear on Aquinas’s understanding of the charisms as social or ecclesial graces, graces given to one person for the sake of another’s salvation. Instrumental causality provided Aquinas a new conceptual framework with which to understand what it might mean for the charisms to be social graces, placing the charisms within a wider array of created causal agents in the economy of grace. I place this development within the context of the rise of Joachite prophecy as well as the secular/mendicant conflict at Paris, factors that motivated Aquinas to conceive these graces as distinctly mendicant charisms. Just as the development of instrumental causality in Christology propelled Aquinas’s understanding of charisms as social graces, so this application of instrumental causality reciprocally informed Aquinas’s account of the charismatic Christ in the Tertia Pars of the Summa Theologiae. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

The tradition of classical Christology, understood in a MacIntyrean sense as an historically extended and socially embodied argument, is facing an epistemological crisis due to the fact that, at each stage in its complex development, it has failed to resolve the problems arising out of the articulation of the classical interpretation of the Incarnation. This failure on the part of the tradition is due to the unsatisfactory and intractable metaphysical dualism at its heart. This dualism, highlighted in each successive attempt to explain the union of the divine and human natures in Christ, is to be understood as a symptom of a more fundamental God-world dualism, entailed by the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, and informing the traditional Christian conceptual scheme. Failure to recognise and address the God-world problematic has led to one-sided Christological solutions that reflect and reinforce this original and most basic dualism. An alternative view of God is needed to inform Christology if the problematic dualism at the heart of the classical model is to be overcome and the epistemological crisis resolved. Pan(en)theism is such an alternative model of God that offers resources for a non-dualistic Christopraxis.

The tradition of classical Christology, understood in a MacIntyrean sense as an historically extended and socially embodied argument, is facing an epistemological crisis due to the fact that, at each stage in its complex development, it has failed to resolve the problems arising out of the articulation of the classical interpretation of the Incarnation. This failure on the part of the tradition is due to the unsatisfactory and intractable metaphysical dualism at its heart. This dualism, highlighted in each successive attempt to explain the union of the divine and human natures in Christ, is to be understood as a symptom of a more fundamental God-world dualism, entailed by the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, and informing the traditional Christian conceptual scheme. Failure to recognise and address the God-world problematic has led to one-sided Christological solutions that reflect and reinforce this original and most basic dualism. An alternative view of God is needed to inform Christology if the problematic dualism at the heart of the classical model is to be overcome and the epistemological crisis resolved. Pan(en)theism is such an alternative model of God that offers resources for a non-dualistic Christopraxis.