Images of God, positive and negative, create an ongoing tension in the biblical text. This tension is due to the paradoxical character of God as seen in Exod 34:6-7. The cognitive dissonance created by the juxtaposition of positive and negative images of the divine is unsettling for many people. Consequently, these negative images are often overlooked. This project addresses one of the neglected images, the image of God as enemy. It seems peculiar that, despite the regularity of Israel's complaints against the divine and its familiarity with enemy language, the word enemy is not used more frequently in reference to God. This project considers the idea that while enemy language was part of Israel's cultural milieu, the word enemy was seldom used to describe God because the image of God as enemy borders on picturing God as demonic--a precipice that neither Job nor the writers of the Hebrew Bible wanted to cross. Insights in this dissertation are drawn from several approaches to biblical interpretation. This exploration begins with an analysis of theological issues that focus on theodicy informed by a womanist perspective regarding the image of God as enemy in the book of Job and other books of the Hebrew Bible. Literary criticism provides the lens for examining sample texts that express this image of the divine, implicitly and explicitly. The analysis includes consideration of defiance and humor as coping mechanisms that Job utilized in his response to the theodic crisis created by his understanding that God was the source of the reversals in his life.

<p> This dissertation explores the analogical complexity of the soul's unfolding mythos within human consciousness as it mediates and constellates creative psychic impulses into the form of mythic narrative. This study argues how, through its fundamentally poetic, narrative action, the epical soul reciprocally seeks its own development as it raises human consciousness to the larger ground of its being, with its consequent healing of the human soul. </p><p> Depth psychotherapy accords to a mimetic pattern of soul that contains an epic sensibility in its power to differentiate, then integrate, the full dimensions of psychic life. The purpose of this essentially poetic journey is to amplify human awareness of the imaginal soul and its guiding principals in reviewing one's personal and ancestral past. It conveys how literalized stories of human life can be deconstructed and re-mythologized through the eyes of the soul. </p><p> The complexity of the soul's mythopoetic impulse constructs a world of personal meaning based in divine purpose for the individual; it also bridges one to a larger sense of communal order. Such an expansive mythic vision unleashes a flow of healing energy. With such healing, compassionate energy spirals out, enriching communal life and connecting us to the world. </p><p> Throughout the dissertation, an image of the giant sequoia tree is used as a symbol of an expanded form of consciousness and that carries the narrative essential to the human soul. It serves as a guiding metaphor to demonstrate the transformation of one's painful past into a fictional, healing narrative. Deeply rooted in the soul's soil of significance, every ring of one's personal history carries the ghostly stories of ancestors and cultural history that, when deeply explored and explicated, impart meaning to one's journey and the aspirations of an ensouled spirit. </p><p> This theoretically-informed dissertation employs a phenomenological hermeneutic as its methodological approach. As an interdisciplinary study, the work weaves together literary criticism, depth psychology, and mythological studies in support of its argument. Clinical material is used to illustrate the depth psychotherapeutic dynamics and how the soul heals through that process.</p>

In the concluding remarks to her 1913 dissertation, Helen Bowerman notes that “[a]lthough the sacrificial altars [sic] form a group of comparatively unimportant monuments.” This study is an attempt to both refute Bowerman’s conclusion and to replace altars into the dialogue about Roman architecture and political propaganda during the late Republic and early Empire. While I challenge the standard, scholarly categorical definition of Roman altars set forth in the early 20th century, the primary aim of my study is to explore the complex environments in which altars, of all sizes, appear in the Imperial period and the ways in which these altars performed in their political and urban contexts. Furthermore, with an eye to topographical relationships in Rome itself, I trace the use and manipulation of altars by emperors, a type of analysis that has long benefitted our understanding of other manifestations of state, honorific monuments. As monuments, altars were unique in their stylistic and contextual adaptability while simultaneously remaining essentially uniform in their function, the place of ritual sacrifice. Congruently, I explore the role that altars played in the negotiation between an emperor’s position as a man and his potential as a divinity. That is, I examine the means by which the emperor—or dictator in the case of Caesar—used the altar form to at once avoid direct assimilation with the gods while simultaneously establishing the veneration of divine powers unequivocally associated with him. In this discussion, I seek to define how the altar form, its imagery, and the honorific system in which it operated conceptualized the new office of the princeps, reconceived the traditional institutions of power, and transformed the role of altar monuments in the early Empire. / text

My overall thesis is that Luke's redaction of the 'eternal life' question (Luke 10.25; 18.18) affects a reading of the Travel Narrative by emphasizing the eschatological nature of 'eternal life' over against the life of the narrative present age, an age characterized by the rule of Rome. In the first chapter, I treat Luke's redaction of the 'eternal life' question. The main result of Luke's redaction is that it gives the affected scenes a definitive eschatological tenor. In the second chapter, I place emphasis on the answers which Luke provides to the questions. By reading these citations from Torah as functioning metonymically (Deut 5-6; Lev 19), I highlight five general thematic connections between the citations from Torah and Luke's Travel Narrative. In the final chapter, I return to my analysis of Luke in order to trace the effects of Luke's 'eternal life' redactions on the plot of the Travel Narrative section.

As the field of pastoral theology continues to explore concerns rooted in issues surrounding gender, race, and class, there is a growing awareness of the constraints traditional paradigms of understanding grief have placed on marginalized persons and groups. This project attempts to highlight one such area by considering the unique needs of low-income, urban men in their experiences with grief. Consideration is given to issues of both gender and class, paying particular attention to the field of literature emerging around men and especially mens grief, as well as that which is given to working-class and low-income persons. A second point of focus is aimed at developing a composite sketch of experiences drawn from previously published field research and personal interviews. Finally, implications for the discipline of pastoral theology are addressed in an attempt to offer suggestions for more exhaustive studies in this particular portion of the larger pastoral theological field.

A study of the autonomy of theology with reference to the philosophical thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein and the theological thought of Karl Barth, could be approached in a number of different ways. [...]

<p>This work explores the ecumenical aspects of liturgy and how it can provide a common ground by which ecumenism can develop. Though different denominations may have varying characteristics to their liturgy the commonalities are striking. Liturgy can cross denominational and doctrinal boundaries. Whether a group adheres to transubstantiation or to representation, when the believer partakes in the bread and wine there is no question that it is Jesus Christ whom they remember. The Scriptures also cross denominational lines and does not depend upon one particular doctrinal viewpoint from which it must be read or heard. Baptism, whether by immersion or sprinkling, has been debated throughout the centuries yet is still a sacrament for most. Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs of worship are equally as trans-denominational. Liturgy not only transcends denominations but links the contemporary church with the Church throughout the ages. </p>

In this thesis I offer a theological analysis of biomedical efforts to extend the healthy human lifespan by attenuating the aging process, situating this project within the Christian quest to holiness. The potential of even modestly extended life spans has profound social, familial, political, economic, religious, and environmental implications, and warrants considerable theological reflection, hitherto largely absent from contemporary ethical discussion. Hence, I critique the biomedical attempt to extend human life via aging retardation by considering the historical attitudes towards one’s aging body and longevity within the Christian tradition, paying particular attention to shifts in attitude regarding aging and decay, and by examining the Christian discipline of fasting as practiced by the Desert Fathers, who believed that an attenuated rate of aging was one physiological outcome (among others) subsumed under a larger moral project of character transformation. While the concept of a normative lifespan as derived from Scripture is highly tenuous, a relationship between finitude and a wisdom that recognizes one’s bodily limits does emerge. While key figures in the history of the Church have acknowledged both the difficulties of earthly life and the promise of bodily resurrection leading to a general ambivalence concerning the length of life and its extension, such attitudes were challenged by Francis Bacon and mirrored during the theological upheavals of the Great Awakenings in America. Drawing upon the work of Charles Taylor and Thomas R. Cole, I discuss the theological shifts whereby spiritual growth was segregated from physical aging via an increasingly instrumental stance towards aging and its mutability, increasing one’s fear of death. In the remainder of the thesis I examine St. Antony’s ascetic regime which enabled him to ‘remake’ his body as part of reordering and refining his soul to be the leader of his body, a regime which entailed an attenuated rate of aging. Drawing upon Karl Barth’s christological anthropology who locates the unity and order of soul and body in the person of Jesus Christ, I demonstrate how current attempts to retard aging exacerbate the ‘disorder’ and segregation of body and soul, described as ‘sloth’ and ‘care,’ negating the role of the body and its limitedness in the formation of one’s soul, and failing to mitigate the fear of death occasioned by such a disorder. Finally, I situate the Christian discipline of fasting as an alternative to life extension within the context of the practices of faith communities, understood minimally as baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

The focus of this thesis is the Heraka movement and its impact on the Zeme, a ‘Naga tribe’, in the North Cachar Hills of Assam, India. The Heraka is a religious reform movement derived from the traditional practice known as Paupaise. It was organised from disparate groups of the early 1930s into a centralised and effective movement in 1974. This thesis examines the formation of the movement through to its present state. A pivotal concern is the evolution of Heraka identity, and its emergence into the arena of competing and often contested ideologies of ‘religion’ and ‘ethnicity’ in North East India. The processes by which the movement has evolved, exhibiting the contextualisation of an indigenous identity, grounded in custom and tradition, are also outlined. These factors, along with significant and complex relationships with Paupaise, ‘neo-Hindu’ organisations such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Zeme Christians, and the larger ‘Naga’ Christian groups, have shaped pronounced yet fluctuating Heraka identities. This demonstrates the difficult transition the Heraka movement faces as it shifts from the local to the regional and even the national. The time period studied spans the anti-British Heraka period of the late 1930s, extensive Zeme village reorganisation and the renaissance of the reform during the 1950s, through to the present. A variety of sources is brought to bear on this investigation: imperial archives, the official Heraka Hingde Book, Heraka use of written documents, and fieldwork materials, including oral histories and case studies. The thesis begins by examining the symbol of the Bhuban cave, an important pilgrimage site for Hindus of various kinds, as well as the Heraka. The way the Heraka have come to negotiate their identity is considered. This occurs on two levels: on the one hand, they claim to be a ‘traditional’ group in their quest for ‘authenticity’ and ‘indigeneity’; on the other, they assert their ‘modernity’ and are hence reformist. This developing identity clearly derives from the agrarian reforms of the 1930s onwards, an initial response to what was a millenarian tendency, which in turn influenced these changes. Hence, a different cosmology developed, incorporating monotheistic principles, in order to accommodate the now changing village structure, and the increasing mobility and flexibility of the people. Contact with the outside world also brought about a nuanced and subtle reading of ‘tradition’ vis-à-vis other groups considered ‘traditional’, while similarly adapting to the pressures of other dominant religious traditions by distinguishing themselves as inherently ‘religious’. The introduction of ‘divine rules’, exemplified in the Hingde Book, and the establishment of a Kelumki (prayer house), as ‘sacred’ space, mandated and reflected the formation of this ‘religious community’. This construction of community entails a consideration of notions of boundaries in different contexts: Paupaise, Christian and ‘Hindu’. Boundary-making attitudes and behaviour largely determine group membership, legitimated by ‘primordial’ ethnic notions within the Zeme community itself. Since such notions are largely confined to the realm of perception, these boundaries are fluid; they fluctuate according to context. The leaders’ efforts to manage Heraka reforms give rise to visible tensions between rural and urban communities. Hangrum village has become the symbol for the rural community of a millenarian age, ritualised with its ‘king’s court’, while the urban community disputes such claims as ‘superstition’. The juxtaposition of these two views amplifies the struggle within the Heraka community, as they strive to maintain a balance between the past legitimising ‘tradition’, and the present and future legitimising ‘reform’. The attempt to construct a viable Heraka identity against other group identities has given rise to oscillating differences in the way the Heraka locate and re-locate themselves, both within and outside their community. These positional referents are vital for understanding the evolving nature of Heraka identity in relation to their reform.

The Medievalist and philosophical Theologian Marilyn McCord Adams argues that the standard treatments of evil in Anglo-American philosophy of religeon are overtly abstract respecting both evil and God. She contends that the typical focus on moral evil detracts from attention to horrendous evils, or horrific individual suffering, which is the most difficult class of evils to reconcile with the Christian faith. Adams also argues that we can satisfactorily account for why horrors occur and how God can defeat them if and only if we interpret God and creatures as being ontologically incommensurate, which precludes the commonplace among analytic philosophers that divine goodness is moral goodness. on Adams's interpretation, these moves will require substantial reworkings of traditional Christian teachings on sin, eschatology, and related doctrines.