Thesis (M.A.)--Brigham Young University, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 138-149).

Thesis (D. Min.)--New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, 2006. / Includes abstract and vita. Includes final project proposal. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 143-153, 41-46).

Questions regarding the fate of the unevangelized have been contemplated for centuries and now, in this post-Christian world, issues of the church's claim that Jesus is the unique Son of God have been added to the debate. Does God truly desire the salvation of all human beings? Is Jesus Christ the full and unequalled revelation of God? This work explores, through means of comparison and contrast, the theological positions of exclusivism, pluralism, and inclusivism. Particular attention is given to each school's history, biblical arguments, theological arguments, and convictions concerning the purpose of missions, as well as an evaluation of each school's position. The author concludes that while exclusivism maintains a high Christology and pluralism a wide-ranging salvation, only inclusivism adequately harmonizes these positions in a cogent manner. / Systematic Theology & Theological Ethics / M. Th. (Systematic Theology)

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This thesis argues that nineteenth-century shifts in hermeneutics enabled women to re-vision Victorian conceptions of womanhood by reinterpreting biblical narratives within fictional texts. Due to these shifts, the meaning of biblical symbols was increasingly tied to the personal experience of the reader. This enabled women to reinterpret these symbols to reflect their own experiences as women. This hermeneutic approach was formulated out of critical enquiry into the nature of the biblical text which resulted in questioning the authority of the Bible. Questions regarding the authority of scripture opened up the possibility for Victorian authors to use fictive texts in order to reinterpret biblical symbols, resulting in the constant re-visioning of biblical symbols by readers and writers. As the authority of scripture became unstable, gender roles, which were rooted within a biblical symbolic, also became destabilized. The novels of female authors who reimagined biblical symbols gave voice to these authors’ own experiences as women as they embodied these symbols within their life and work, resulting in new understandings of Victorian womanhood. George Eliot was particularly conscious of the hermeneutic shifts which were taking place throughout the century due to her extensive involvement in the philosophical and theological movements of the era, and her novels demonstrate how these shifts influenced her work. The reinterpretation of biblical narratives within her novels also reflects how she embodied these female biblical symbols within her own life. While Eliot’s awareness of the shifts taking place within hermeneutic practice is evident in her work, she was not alone in adopting this hermeneutic practice. Novelist Elizabeth Gaskell also reimagined and embodied biblical symbols, yet her experience as a Victorian woman was strikingly different from Eliot’s own and led her to distinct reinterpretations of these symbols in her life and novels. Likewise, social activist Josephine Butler reinterpreted female biblical narratives in order to understand her life in relation to the ‘fallen’ women she worked with. These three women have been chosen for this project because of how they represent nineteenth-century shifts in hermeneutic practice toward biblical symbols in addition to the shared affinities and prominent differences between them. To explore these issues requires a theoretical framework which encompasses literature, philosophy, sociology, history, theology, and feminist theory; however, fundamentally this project is concerned with theological hermeneutics and the nature of biblical symbols. This project examines the influence of nineteenth-century theologians David Friedrich Strauss and Ludwig Feuerbach on Victorian hermeneutics and applies more recent work by Paul Ricœur, Jacques Rancière, and Caroline Walker Bynum to formulate a framework through which to understand the Victorian interpretation of biblical symbols. As Victorian women readers re-visioned female biblical symbols as encountered through sacred and fictive texts, the fresh interpretations of these symbols enabled women to negotiate new ways of understanding gender. These hermeneutic shifts toward biblical symbols created a symbolic understanding of womanhood which was able to better convey the complexity of female experience, providing women with an understanding of womanhood that better correlated with their own experience as women.

The purpose or this thesis is to investigate the life and works of Thomas Scott, the Commentator, with special reference to his theological thought. The title of the thesis indicates that our interest is primarily theological, not biographical. We shall, however, include biographical material in order to provide a concrete context in which we may view Scott's theological writings.

Thesis (MTh (Systematic Theology and Ecclesiology))--Stellenbosch University, 2008. / This thesis endeavours to evaluate influential Reformed perspectives on the work of the Spirit and to search for a constructive framework to understand more fully the work of the Spirit in redemption and creation. For Reformed theology, the work of the Spirit has mainly been interpreted in two ways, namely, redemption-centred and creation-centred. These perspectives have each generated its own focus and consequences for both pneumatology and the Christian faith and life. The result of the different perspectives was the tension between the creative and redemptive activity of the Spirit of God. For both John Calvin and Karl Barth—because of their practical intention and the particular contextual circumstances—the work of the Spirit in redemption became priority and they, subsequently, gave more attention to this particular attribute. The Spirit quickens faith in us, enables us to have faith in the authority of the Scriptures as well as to understand and believe in the reality of God’s self-revelation. It is the primary work of the Spirit to lead us, in Christ, to unity with the Triune God and with the faith community. Abraham Kuyper and Jürgen Moltmann focus on the cosmic, universal work of the Spirit, from whom life is quickened and given, by whom the destiny of creation is perfected, and through whom the Creator inhabits the whole creation. The creation-centred perspective means to positively, yet critically, affirm the world and culture, to extend the Christian life and action to the whole of creation, and to allow us to participate in the cosmic work of the Spirit. Although Reformed theologians tried to understand the unity of the work of the Spirit in redemption and creation, the tension between Spiritus Redemptor and Spiritus Creator is still present and thus, a more satisfying pneumatological framework is needed. Contemporary theological movements hold most insightful implications towards establishing a constructive pneumatology—cosmic, trinitarian, and realistic pneumatology. According to the constructive perspective with which the work of the Spirit can be reflected in a more distinctive, relationally-personalistic, and concrete and realistic way, it is the Spirit—who is a fully divine person in the Trinity—who fulfils salvation for the glory of God, and who calls us to participate in his cosmic, godly, and unexpected work.

In the late 1780s there arose a theological controversy in Ayrshire, centred around the Rev William McGill (1732-1807), the associate minister to William Dalrymple (1723-1814) of the Old Kirk in Ayr. McGill was principally accused of holding ‘Socinian’ views, particularly in his Practical Essay on the Death of Jesus Christ (1786) which were at odds with the accepted standards of his church, a church which still retained a mainly Calvinistic outlook in the period. The Aim of this thesis Within this thesis I will attempt to place McGill firmly within the context of his day. This will be done by offering a picture of the Scottish, English and Irish ecclesiastical scene, with particular reference to Scotland, in which the Ayr minister was working. Further consideration will be given to the impact of the Enlightenment, as well as the American and French Revolutions, in the latter part of the century. The response of the various churches in Britain to these events are of particular importance for McGill’s career as, in his final published work On the fear of God (Ayr, 1795), the theological ‘radical’ emerges as a political conservative. What has perhaps been lacking in previous assessments of McGill is a study of the full range of influences which drove the Ayr minister’s theology. By utilising the evidence offered by the ‘Ayr Library Society’ (which held the works of noted English Socinians) of which McGill, along with Dalrymple, was a founder member in 1762, I will attempt to trace some of the main sources for McGill’s later thought. Of key significance is the holding of works by the Society of several leading English Socinians. Although speculative (as McGill does not directly cite these works), based on the evidence there does appear to be parallels between McGill’s work and that of the English theologians. I will also assess, in addition to considering why McGill’s work proved contentious, the reasons for his ‘apology’, following the case. Additionally it will be important to re-examine the overall effect of the case, in order to fully appreciate the significance of McGill for the wider Scottish churches of his day.

My task in this thesis is to assess the theological implications of Herman Melville’s aesthetic understanding of the modern Subject as a duplicitous self-creation. Although Melville is obviously not a theologian, either by discipline or confession, I will argue we find in the complex theatricality of his life and fiction a means of articulating the potential of a truly radical theological thinking. Such a thinking, I argue, ‘unthinks’ all previous grounds, in order then to recast them imaginatively. For Melville, we shall see, that which identifies theology ‘as theology’ is not simply an unattainable, transcendent Thing-in-Itself. It is, on the contrary, the active emergence of unthinkable excess from the materialistic immanence of its self-characterisation. The aesthetico-theological thinking in view here highlights the necessity of a repositioning of theological discourse from the binary perspective that inevitably leads to self present identification, be it in a discipline or a confession, to the radically decentered / desacralized interdisciplinarity of theology becoming-itself. I seek to achieve this end by situating Melville close to the Germanic philosophical climate that was sweeping across the American literary landscape of the mid-19th century. Melville’s ambivalent attitude toward his own desire for self-destruction, and thus, too, his desire for a non-subjective common pool of artistic genius, is strictly parallel to his misgivings about Transcendentalism and Romanticism. It is, I argue, in the dialectical materialism of Friedrich Schelling that we find Melville’s philosophical analogue, in their respective efforts to understand the self-becoming of the Absolute / God / Truth. Here we find an aesthetico-theological thinking attuned to the creative inadequacy of self-becoming, whereby the finite inadequacy and perspectival duplicity of theological self-presentation carry the potential of a self-creativity that makes all things new. As such, for aesthetico-theological thinking there is truly nothing behind or beyond the materiality of experience - i.e., no Ding an sich or transcendental determination of being. And precisely for this reason the awareness and actualisation of something new, indeed something miraculous because it was previously impossible, is made possible.

This thesis provides a comprehensive analysis of spiritual healing in England in its various different guises during the late-nineteenth and early- to mid-twentieth centuries. It considers the interplay between the various spiritual healing groups themselves and between their philosophies and practices and orthodox medical theory more generally. The first half examines how spiritual healing was conceptualised by those who practised it - who spiritual healers were, what they believed and how they defined illness and healing. The specific therapeutic techniques used by healers are delineated, and the themes of touch and morality explored in detail. The second half of this thesis then examines how spiritual healing was perceived by the religious and medical establishments, and explores their co-operational discourse. Firstly, the reaction of the orthodox Christian churches to spiritual healing and their fractured and inherently conservative attempts to utilise it as a means of revitalising orthodox Christianity are analysed. The final chapters then chart the chronological relationship between spiritual healing and orthodox medicine during three specific periods, and explore the way in which spiritual healing intersected and impacted upon medical reactions to the new psychology of the twentieth century.