This dissertation examines the suitability of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics for use in Christian theological and apologetic endeavors. Chapter 1 introduces basic issues in quantum physics in non-technical language and defines the basic position of the Copenhagen interpretation. Chapter 2 gives a thorough account of the core interpretational components of the Copenhagen interpretation and indicates that some of these set up potential conflict with Biblical-based Christian beliefs about God and the world He made. The chapter also discusses how famed scientists such as Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrödinger attempted but failed to dissuade the physics and philosophy communities from adopting the Copenhagen interpretation by formulating landmark thought-experiments that aimed to expose absurdities entailed by said interpretation. Chapter 3 examines how scholars and popular-science writers have applied the Copenhagen doctrines to sociology, philosophy, and science. Topics include feminism, race relations, finance, business management, philosophy of science, epistemology, logic, and the sciences of consciousness and cosmology. Chapter 4 discusses applications of the Copenhagen interpretation in metaphysics and theology, with particular emphasis on applications in Eastern and holistic worldviews as well as debates about free-will and divine action in Christian theology. Chapter 5 attempts to show that the Copenhagen interpretation is unsuitable for adoption in Christian theological and apologetic endeavors for several reasons. First, the Copenhagen interpretation was forged by a handful of philosopher-physicists who consciously sought to ensconce indeterminism as an ontological rather than merely epistemological element of quantum theory. Second, there are several scientific and science-historical counter-indicators to the Copenhagen view. Third, several entailments of the CI run counter to important elements in the Christian worldview. Chapter 6 gives a summary assessment of the Copenhagen interpretation and suggests avenues for continuing the science-theology dialogue in light of the current state of quantum science. / This item is only available to students and faculty of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. If you are not associated with SBTS, this dissertation may be purchased from <a href="http://disexpress.umi.com/dxweb">http://disexpress.umi.com/dxweb</a> or downloaded through ProQuest's Dissertation and Theses database if your institution subscribes to that service.

This thesis aims to contribute to Western theology by exploring plurality as well as unity within Christianity. By looking at the history of orthodoxy as a narrative construction of identity, I argue that Christian identity is not based on doxa, dogma, or practises. Instead, I suggest that Christian identity should be rooted primarily as a practise in the experience of and participation with God through the living Christ. I propose that ecumenical unity is not ecclesial or doxalogical but rather practical because unity is achieved when groups act together and participate in each other without ceasing to be different. I explore in my first chapter the philosophical concepts (time and narrative) which form the basis of identity. I introduce the thoughts of G. Deleuze and P. Ricœur separately before bringing them together in a dialogue. The dialogue develops the concepts of time and narrative into a general theory for constructing identity. I analyse identity in the second chapter by reading historical reactions to I. Kant's conception of a permanent identity because Kant is a central focus in contemporary philosophical thought on identity. Inspired by the dialogue between Deleuze and Ricœur introduced previously, I construct a new approach to identity. My concept of identity can be applied equally to individuals and groups, however I primarily follow group identity in my thesis. My third chapter applies this theory of identity to the discussion of the concept of orthodoxy. I present a model for interpreting orthodoxy in terms of group identity, then I trace the history of orthodoxy in three general periods: the early Church, the Reformation era, and our contemporary period. I show that concerns with theological truth in questions of orthodoxy were often politicised and used to establish an authority to control Christian identity. During the Reformations, reforms were treated as questions of authority and at times resulted in exclusion rather than reform. Political moves subsequently created multiple authorities which I suggest reveal the contingency of authority. Since the nineteenth century, groups approached Christian unity without addressing the implications of authority's contingency. In my fourth chapter, I pursue the question of ecumenical unity by interpreting authorities as created and embedded in particular contexts which render impossible a single, universal authority. In contrast to a singular definition of the Church, I argue that Pauline images of the body of Christ shape Christian identity as polydox. My model of relating differences within unity reveals the extent to which many theological 'controversies' still are politicised. Finally, I argue that the ecumenical dialogue overlaps with inter-religious and 'secular' dialogues, both of which are necessary for the Church's work on identity as organic unity.

The Name of God has formed a crucial element of Jewish thought throughout its history, from the Biblical text, through the rabbinic and kabbalistic writings and into the modern age when the topic has still been a focal point for Jewish philosophers. The purpose of this study is to examine the texts of Judaism, especially those within the mystical tradition, pertaining to the Name of God, and to offer a philosophical analysis of these as a means of understanding the metaphysical role of the name generally, in terms of its relationship with identity. While the materials are historical, the aim is a speculative re/construction of a systematic philosophical approach to naming from these materials. Beginning with the formation of rabbinic Judaism in Late Antiquity, I will progress through the development of the motif into the Medieval Kabbalah, where the Name reaches its grandest and most systematic statement – and the one which has most helped to form the ideas of Jewish philosophers in the 20th Century. This will highlight certain metaphysical ideas which have developed within Judaism from the Biblical sources, and which present a direct challenge to the paradigms of western philosophy. Thus a grander subtext is a criticism of the Greek metaphysics of being which the west has inherited, and which Jewish philosophers often subject to challenges of varying subtlety; it is these philosophers who often place a peculiar emphasis on the personal name, and this emphasis seems to depend on the historical influence of the Jewish metaphysical tradition of the Name of God.

To follow the development of the theology of William Milligan (1821-1893) is to gain an insight into the Scottish theological world of the nineteenth century and to discern how one man succeeded in making manifest the true centre of theology, its proper scope, and its catholic imperatives. In the first chapter attention is given to the faculty and curriculum of United College and St. Mary's Divinity Hall at St. Andrews University. The second chapter consists of a presentation and analysis of William Milligan's Divinity Hall essays. He is seen as a perceptive student who had learned his lessons well, but not without the exercise of his own judgment. Withal Milligan was at that time a convinced devotee of the Common Sense philosophy and its "intuitive" principle of causality.

The role of scriptural interpretation in the Monarchian controversy of the early 3rd century C.E. has received relatively little scholarly attention. This oversight is due, in large part, to a persuasive if unstated belief held by many modern scholars that Scripture is a secondary or tertiary factor in the construction of doctrine. This thesis will argue that scriptural interpretation played a primary or generative role in the construction of doctrine. The Proto-Trinitarians and Monarchians believed their position to be superior to that of their opponents’ precisely because it made better sense of the scriptural data. This thesis will argue that the modern view which sees the early church fathers as poor exegetes may have more to do with questionable modern assumptions about the interpretive enterprise (especially when doctrine is considered) than it has to do with any interpretive incompetence of the early Christian interpreters. The introduction will offer a survey of the modern status quo view of patristic interpretation in general and patristic interpretation in a doctrinal context in particular. It will then consider some dissenting voices to the status quo view. Chapter 1 will offer a brief history of the Monarchian movement and examine the Monarchian doctrine of God and its scriptural basis, seeking first to provide an accurate picture of Monarchian belief and secondly to show that the Monarchians took Scripture seriously in their theologizing. Chapters 2 and 3 will consider the two most influential treatises in the demise of Monarchianism, the Contra Noetum (chapter 2) and Tertullian’s Adversus Praxeas (chapter 3). It will be demonstrated that scriptural interpretation was the decisive factor in their theological construction of the nature of God and that the Gospel of John played a decisive role in their rebutting of the Monarchian position.

This thesis examines Thomas Aquinas' concept of human freedom in the context of his treatment of God's knowledge of future contingents. Much has been written about Aquinas' attempt to solve the problem of how humans can act freely if God knows all future things, but little of that work comments on a major underlying assumption in his treatment of the problem - namely, the concept of human freedom presupposed. This thesis therefore seeks to establish the nature of the freedom that Aquinas was assuming in the important discussions of God's knowledge of future contingents. Chapter 1 sets out Aquinas' statement of the problem and his solution to it, that since God is outside time, he knows things not as future but as 'present'; and knowing x as 'present' imposes no necessity on x itself. Some criticism of Aquinas' solution is reviewed. It is noted that although Aquinas' approach seems to imply a concept of freedom which includes the possibility of doing otherwise than one does, other interpretations are possible. It is noted also that modern commentators hold differing views on what Aquinas' concept of freedom is. Chapter 2 examines the link between contingency and freedom and makes the point that, for Aquinas, contingency in human behaviour seems to arise from the peculiarly human way of bringing things about i.e. by voluntary action. As a preliminary to looking at his analysis of voluntary action, Aquinas' distinction between 'human acts' and 'acts of man' is noted and a further distinction drawn between 'simply' and 'fully' voluntary acts. It is concluded that the nature of freedom will be found in Aquinas' description of human, or fully voluntary, acts.

This dissertation is an intensive investigation of the rending of the heaven and Temple curtain in Mark’s Gospel from a Christological point of view. The two rending events are examined for their thematic and structural functions in making up the textual and theological world of Mark’s Gospel; embodied in the most critical moments of Jesus’ ministry, his baptism and crucifixion, and of Mark’s narrative, the beginning and end, they are seen and argued as the monumental events that epitomize Mark’s apocalyptic and eschatological understanding of Jesus’ life and death. In line with the apocalyptic and eschatological nature of the Gospel, the motif of seeing, expressed especially in the verbs of seeing and ειδον in particular, plays an integral role in Mark’s depiction of the characters and events throughout his narrative. So it is that in two of the most apocalyptic and eschatological episodes in Mark, Jesus’ baptism and crucifixion, Mark is very careful to note that Jesus himself and the Gentile Roman centurion see the two epoch-making events, the rending of the heaven and the rending of the Temple curtain. As these two events are linked by verbs of the same root (σχιζομένους/έσχίσθη), the reference to spirit (πνευμα/εξεπνευσεν), the use of an identification formula referring to Jesus’ divine sonship (συ ει ο υιος μου/ουτς… υιος θεου ην), the occurrence of ‘seeing’ (ειδεν/ιδων), the Elijah symbolism present, and other theological correlations, it is clear that the motif of ‘seeing’ is incorporated into them also. Mark has deliberately created various corresponding elements between these two key events in Jesus’ ministry, designing these two events to be an inclusio which brackets the entire Gospel structurally, thematically, and contextually. Through the structure of inclusio, Mark set up one pillar of a symbolic event at the beginning of his narrative and of Jesus’ ministry, the rending of the heaven, announcing the apocalyptic commencement of God’s eschatological reign; and the positions another pillar of an event just as symbolic, the rending of the Temple curtain, at the end of his narrative and of Jesus’ ministry, enunciating the destruction of the Temple which further symbolizes the break-down of the old age and advent of the new in which distance and mediation through sacrificial rites and all they stood for are eradicated and access to God’s holy presence is offered to all.

Through the imaginative literary genius of the Scottish author George MacDonald (1824-1905) an exploration of the Mystery of Man and his/her relationship with and to God is explored along the lines of Theological Anthropology. Myth and the literary genre of fantasy (which, like religion is moral in character and relies on relationships with supernatural forces) are explored as vehicles for transmitting and articulating deep truths about what it means to be human. Moral and spiritual growth are explored from psychological sources (Existential and Humanistic Schools of Psychology), and religious sources (Cambridge Platonists and Thomistic Theology) with the goal seen as the perfection of love --deification; And this understood as an irrevocable destiny for all rational creatures.

This dissertation is fundamentally concerned with the comparative study of Christology in latin American liberation theology and Korean minjung theology. To meet this task the Christology of the former is examined in relation to that of the latter. The study is divided into three parts. Part one contains chapter I through to III. Chapter I is a presentation of liberation theology's motive which takes the suffering people in the current socio-economic political situation as the starting point for a politics-oriented Christology. Chapter II shows the detailed analysis of liberation theology's methodology which is definitely grounded in the principles of the social sciences. Chapter III consists of seeking to interpret Jesus, his words and deeds in the light of the Latin American conditions. Part two, which constitutes chapter IV through to VI, will try to examine a way of thinking about minjung theology within the same categories which we concentrate on the development of liberation theology and its Christological implication in part one, because the clarification between them is necessary for the purpose of this thesis. It may help to solve some of the suspicion whether the label minjung theology is practically synonymous with the label liberation theology in creating a new and appropriate mode of an adequate Christology for answering to the vital needs of the poor and oppressed today. In this observation, have liberation theology and minjung theology anything to say to each other? It is natural for the Christian church to look to them for light on the question. In this desire, part three in chapter VII through to X begins a comparative and critical discussion of the motive, methodologies and Christological implications of the two theologies.

Anselm's argument for the existence of God in Proslogion Chap.II starts from the contention that 'lq when a Fool hears 'something-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought', he understands what he hears, and what he understands is in his mind. This is a special feature of the Pros.II argument which distinguishes the argument from other ontological arguments set up by, for example, Descartes and Leibniz. This is also the context which makes semantics necessary for evaluation of the argument. It is quite natural to ask 'lq What is understood by the Fool, and what is in his mind? It is essential for a proper consideration of the argument to identify the object which is understood by the Fool, and so, is in his mind. A semantics gives answers to the questions of 'lq What the Fool understands? and 'lq What is in the Fool's mind? If we choose a semantics as a meta-theory to interpret the Pros.II argument, it makes an effective guide to identify the object. It is a necessary condition for a proper evaluation of the Pros.II argument to fix our universe of discourse, especially since, in the argument, we are involved in such talk about existing objects as Anselm's contention that 'when a Fool hears 'something-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought', he understands what he hears, and what he understands is in his mind. The ontology to which a semantic theory commits us will be accepted as our scope of objects when we introduce our semantic theory to interpret the Pros.II argument, and this ontological boundary constrains us to identify the object in a certain way. Consistent application of an ontology, most of all, is needed for the evaluation of the logical validity of an argument. If we take Frege's three-level semantics, we are ontologically committed to intensional entities, like meaning, as well as extensional entities. Sluga contends that Frege's anti-psychologism for meanings should not be interpreted as vindicating reification of intensional entities in relation to Frege's contextualism, that Frege's anti-psychologism with his contextualism is nothing but a linguistic version of Kantian philosophy for the transcendental unity of a judgement. There is, however, another possible interpretation of Frege's contextualism. According to Dummett, the significance of Frege's contextualism must be understood as a way of explanation for a word's having meaning. If Dummett's view is cogent, we could say that Frege's contextualism does not prevent our interpreting his semantics as being committed to intensional entities. We need not worry that Frege's over all semantics, especially with his contextualism, would internally deny the ontological interpretation of his theory. We see Anselm's argument for the existence of God in Pros.II is an invalid argument if we introduce Frege's three-level semantics, i.e. if we acknowledge meanings of words as entities in our universe of discourse. We can also employ extensional semantics for the interpretation of the Pros.II argument. According to extensionalists, like Quine and Kripke, we need not assume intensional entities, like meaning, to be part of our ontological domain. They argue that we can employ our language well enough without assuming intensional entities. If we choose extensional semantics as a meta-theory to interpret the Pros.II argument, it commits us only to extensional entities as objects in the Universe of our interpretation. In Sections 1.4 and 1.5, I show that extensional semantics makes the Pros.II argument a valid argument for the existence of God. 'lq Necessary existence is the central concept of Anselm's argument for the existence of God in Proslogion Chap.III. It has been said that, even if the argument is formally valid, it cannot stand as a valid argument for the existence of God, since 'lq necessary existence is an absurd concept like 'lq round square. And further that even if there is a meaningful combination of concepts for 'lq necessary existence, it cannot quality as a subject of an a priori argument. As objections to the interpretations which make the Pros.III argument valid, it has been argued that even if there is a concept of 'lq necessary existence which is meaningful and there is another concept of 'lq necessary existence which is suitable as a subject of an a priori argument, there is no concept of 'lq necessary existence which is meaningful and at the same time suitable as a subject of an a priori argument. In Chap.2 and Chap.3, I try to show that there can be concepts of 'lq necessary existence which are proof against these objections. Anselm's arguments for the existence of God in Proslogian Chap.II and Chap.III are logically valid arguments on some logical principles. Some fideists, K. Barth, for example, argue that Anselm's arguments for the existence of God in Proslogion are not proofs for the existence of God even if they are logically valid arguments. I raise the question how this attitude could be possible, in Chap.4 and Chap.5. Barth's fideistic interpretation of Anselm's Proslogion arguments does not find any flaw in the validity of the arguments, and it accepts the meaningfulness and truth of the premises even to the fool in Proslogion. If this is the case, i.e. if Barth's interpretation accepts the validity of the arguments and the truth of the premises, I raise the question, how can the arguments not be interpreted as proofs for the existence of God? How is it possible that the function of the arguments is not that of proving the existence of God? According to Wittgensteinian fideism, premises in the arguments should not be intelligible to those who do not believe in God's existence already, and so the real function of the arguments is the elucidation, the understanding of believer's belief, rather than proving articles of belief to unbelievers. Barth's fideistic interpretation of the arguments, however, fully recognizes the meaningfulness and truth of the premises in the arguments as well as the validity of the arguments. I argue that there could be a justification for the Barthian fideism. As Malcolm notices, there are still atheists who understand Anselm's arguments as valid, but the only possibility for the people who recognize the validity of Anselm's arguments still to remain atheists has been thought to be to challenge the truth of premises employed in the arguments. Now, of the atheistic possibility, we can change the direction of our attention, that is, to the question about the function of a logically valid argument itself. What has not been thought of in relation to Anselm's arguments is the significance of logical truth or the logical validity of an argument. We have not asked such questions as 'lq What does a logical truth say? and 'lq What does a logically valid argument guarantee with true premises? Let us assume that even the premises are accepted by atheists. Do they all convert to theism? If that were so, the disagreement between atheist and believer over the ontological arguments should turn only on the truth of premises. If that is not so, there is some point in raising this other question. If there are people who, recognizing the premises and validity of an argument, are still reluctant to accept the conclusion, we have reason to question the function of a valid argument. I argue that there is a way of being consistently reasonable while accepting the premises and the validity of the ontological arguments and yet remaining an atheist or an agnostic.