This thesis demonstrates that friendship has particular relevance for postmodern ecclesiology and offers the basis for a relationally, rather than structurally conceived, understanding. It argues that friendship can be foundational for the Church community in contemporary times, as a means of self-understanding and as a basis for its mission. In doing this, it progressively explores friendship by means of an ongoing conversation with a variety of thinkers and theologians who have contributed to the subject. Each reveals, in a variety of disciplines, differing facets of friendship which ultimately contribute to a fresh understanding of ecclesial identity. This understanding shows the Church to be well placed to have friendship as its locus; in hospitality, a commitment to community, and the centrality of the Eucharistic meal. Friendship is shown to have a significant pedigree in philosophical thought, which has in turn influenced Christian theology. The thesis describes the paucity of incisive commentary on friendship in New Testament scholarship, and outlines the ambiguity surrounding friendship in postmodern culture, suggesting friendship's untapped potential as an ecclesial basis. Friendship's philosophical treatment in the classical era, particularly through Plato, Aristotle and Cicero provides a basis for its influence in Christian theology, as revealed by Augustine and Aquinas. The importance of friendship for personhood is explored through considering the nature of the self, specifically in conversation with Descartes and his challengers, particularly Nietzsche and Derrida. Applying this to the nature of the self in community, Bauman, Habermas, Derrida and Lyotard are amongst those who offer insights. This foundation allows a consideration of friendship as a particular instantiation of love, which sharpens the Christian principle of love for all people. From the insights of monasticism and Queer Theology, friendship's potential for a relationally rooted ecclesiology emerge: here the contribution of Aelred, Newman, Rudy and Stuart are significant. The Trinitarian theology of Zizioulas forms the basis for describing a communio ecclesiology, informed by Barth, Bonhoeffer, McFarland and Gunton, amongst others. This allows the Church as a community of friends, characterised by hospitality and centred on the Eucharist to be envisaged. The work of Derrida and Caputo on hospitality and 'the impossible' contribute useful insights into how this community might be resourced as it operates as the 'friends of Christ'.

The question of the effects of the English Reformation is a matter of on-going and lively debate. This thesis hopes to illuminate this question in some small measure, by examining the deanery of Derby, an ecclesiastical unit within the diocese of Coventry and Lichfield. Although the focal point is the deanery, it is set within the wider context of sixteenth century England. Past research on the Reformation in Derbyshire has been brought together, reviewed and expanded through a study of Reformation papers and other ecclesiastical, political and legal records, both state and diocesan. An analysis of about 700 wills has also been undertaken and their use examined in the light of recent doubts cast upon their validity as source material for analysis of religious belief. Chapter One sets out the parameters of the study and its aims. The deanery is then described and set in the context of governing episcopal and lay authorities. Chapter Two examines the state of the pre-Reformation secular church while Chapter Three does the same for the religious orders and finds that both tended to be conservative. The first three chapters provide a base line for a consideration of the effects of religious change. Chapter Four draws on evidence from wills to address the impact of Henrician legislation on religious belief and practice. In Chapter Five the dissolution of the monasteries in Derbyshire is traced. Chapter Six examines the theme of a Mid-Tudor crisis between 1547 and 1558 and parochial reactions to the increasingly reformist policies of Edward VI's reign and subsequent reversal of policy in the reign of Mary I. The conclusion is drawn that, in general, there was a slow response to reformist legislation. Chapter Seven examines the material consequences of religious change as it affected the local gentry and assesses their success in the expanded land market. Chapter Eight argues that, religious changes led to considerable local instability. The question of continuity or revival of catholicism is the main question of Chapter Nine which finds that there was a high degree of catholic continuity and some gentry involvement in conspiracy. Chapter Ten draws the conclusion that the Reformation gave rise to deep divisions which had religion as a root cause.

Post-Tridentine Western Christian theology introduced the notion of natura pura, which holds that one can know created nature in fact without reference to God or divine grace. The orders of grace and nature are thus on different plains. This ontology creates an extrincism between God and the world. Maximus Confessor’s doctrine of grace offers the paradox of nature already presuming grace but awaiting the supernatural grace of deification at the resurrection. Further, divine grace, or energy in Maximus’s theology, are not separate ontological realms between God and the world. Grace does not separate God’s essence from his energies. The Incarnation of the created and uncreated natures in Christ fully manifests the paradox of God’s grace as being fully on the side of creation and on the side of God, without remainder. Finally, Maximus’s theurgic ecclesiology in his Mystagogy reinforces the mediation of grace through created reality. All of these aspects of Maximus the Confessor’s theology of grace provide a Christian rendering of participation that does not result in the extrincism of grace from nature, their conflation together, or a real distinction in the being of God.

This thesis explores, through a focused examination of the works of Alan of Lille and Dante Alighieri, the apophatic tradition or via negativa, with particular regard to the issues raised by naming God with human language. Thematic and stylistic reappropriations of Alan are highlighted, the aim is not, however, to establish textual dependency as such, but to explore the historical development of the via negativa, the problems it raises in medieval logic and theology, and the different approaches to the transcendence of the divine reality in the production, both prose and verse, of Alan and Dante. Since divine ineffability crosses a number of disciplinary domains – rhetoric, semantic, logic, metaphysics and theology – the thesis is attentive to all these topics and their interactions. Attention to these fields and to their development over time, both in the period before and after the entry of Aristotelian works at the end of the twelfth century, is employed in order to evaluate more closely the respective treatments of Alan and Dante. Chapter One reconstructs the interactions of Stoic, Augustinian and Aristotelian (by Boethian mediation) sources together with the Neoplatonism of Proclus and Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (especially as transmitted by Eriugena) in order to provide a conceptual background for medieval discussion on the heuristic value of signs. In this chapter, attention is paid in particular to the contribution of the Pseudo-Dionysian tradition to medieval thought. Chapter Two provides an in-depth study to the medieval reception of the conceptual background delineated in Chapter One, particularly in relation to the issue of the transformations which human language undergoes when used in the theological field. This chapter assesses the impact of the new translations on the reconfiguration of the relationship between metaphysics and theology and related linguistic questions, illustrating shifts in the way that divine predication is handled and the richness and importance of the medieval understanding of the concept of analogy of being (analogia entis). Chapter Three deploys the historical context set out in the previous two chapters in order to compare Alan of Lille’s and Dante’s treatment of apophatic themes, by showing the different conceptual backgrounds for their reinterpretations of the theory of translatio and of the concept of analogia entis. The analysis thus departs from the extant scholarly concerns with Alan and Dante (namely, the use of figurative and allegorical devices) in order to provide a firmer historical and conceptual basis from which to understand their poetical choices in the De Planctu naturae and the Anticlaudianus and in the Comedy.

This study investigates the Native Baptists and the dynamics between their Biblical hermeneutic and the 1865 Native Baptist War. This work outlines, for the first time, the origin, structure and development of the Native Baptists. This study also discerns the main themes of the Native Baptists as equality and justice and their Biblical hermeneutic as a hermeneutic of liberation. The main thesis is that the Native Baptists' interpretation of Scriptures and Scripture -related sources influenced the nature and scope of the 1865 Native Baptist War. To achieve the goals of this study, this writer relied heavily on archival and contemporary documents. One of the major features of this study is that, for the first time, it provides an in-depth analysis of a major original source, which the first Native Baptists wrote about themselves. Another unique feature is the meticulous analysis of Paul Bogle's marked hymns, letter and speech and George William Gordon' s speeches in the House of Assembly. In order to examine and outline the origin, structure and development of the Native Baptists, this writer was informed by the social history of religion approach. And to reflect on their themes and Biblical hermeneutic this writer attributed the use of the Reader -Response approach to the Native Baptists. Using these approaches, this writer discovered, contrary to the dominant position in scholarly writings on Native Baptists, that the Native Baptists were orthodox, well organized, engaged in marches for justice and desired the liberation of the oppressed and the oppressors. This work gives a more accurate picture of who the Native Baptists were and how their interpretation of the Bible and sacred literature contributed to the way things happened in the 1865 Native Baptist War. A further study of the Native Baptists needs to determine if there is a co-relationship between the demise of the Native Baptists' institutional structures and the seeming retreat of present-day Baptists from political activism.

The aim of this study is to contribute to the task of Christian theology by exploring how accounts of the atonement might embrace all nature, human and non-human. Since Jürgen Moltmann's work has been ecologically oriented and has offered substantial discussion within the theological tradition, the heart of the study lies in its analysis of his underlying redemptive schema, which is tested for its adequacy as a model of atonement. The contribution of the study is fourfold. (i) It seeks to articulate what Moltmann has done in terms of the language and logic of atonement theory. (ii) It proposes that, although Moltmann himself does not make this clear, the key aspect of his underlying schema is the construal of a suffering God that functions as a working atonement metaphor, which he reiterates in other ways by analogous correspondence. (iii) It shows that he has neglected a necessary aspect of soteriological theory, namely, the atonement metaphor of sacrifice, and that a fundamental misunderstanding of sacrifice accounts for this. (iv) It proposes how this deficiency might be remedied, within his own theological framework, by developing a Christology of the cosmic suffering servant that is able to express the atonement metaphor of sacrifice in the context of the redemption of nature. The sequence of the argument is as follows. The first chapter sets out the broad context for this study within a Christian soteriological tradition where the non-human creation has not been a focus. It discusses a range of ways in which modern theology has responded to the ecological crisis, itself a part of the crisis of secularism, concluding that Moltmann's work is potentially helpful as a way forward. Chapter 2 narrows the context to an analysis of the language and logic of atonement theory, with particular application to their relation to the redemption of nature. The need for an objective account of atonement is shown and Moltmann provides again a helpful example. Chapter 3 depicts Moltmann's theologising as a whole as a response to secular modernity and indicates how his ecological theology grounds his soteriology and his call for a cosmic Christ. An exploration of the accounts of atonement within Moltmann's theology is provided in Chapter 4, which also establishes that he operates with an atonement metaphor of suffering related through categories of analogous correspondence to non-human nature. The final chapter highlights the deficiency of his redemptive schema in its neglect of the key atonement metaphor of sacrifice and proposes, as a further development of analogous correspondence, the atonement metaphor of sacrifice as expressed through the cosmic suffering servant.

The theologians of the early church sought to interpret the Christian gospel in the categories of `Mediterranean antiquity. ' The classical two-nature model of Christology has a Greek philosophical underpinning that shapes the ontological construction of the deity and humanity of Jesus Christ. Logos Christology is primarily a reflection on the hypostatic union of the Logos with the human reality of Jesus that leaves little place for a consideration of Jesus' relation to the Holy Spirit. In the light of such a limitation in classical Christology, a study of the relationship between Christology and pneumatology becomes very significant. In this regard, the recent resurgence of Spirit Christology in the West adds a new dimension to contemporary Christological reflection. The theologians who are engaged in this pursuit are of the view that Christological reflection is incomplete without reflecting upon pneumatology and vice versa. This study identifies in particular at least three approaches in the contemporary European Spirit Christologies, namely, reconstruction, replacement and complementary approaches. Norman Hook attempts to reconstruct Christ, Spirit and the Trinity from the perspective of the Hebrew understanding of the Spirit. G. W. H. Lampe, by using the symbol God as Spirit replaces Logos Christology with a Spirit Christology. Jürgen Moltmann, John D. Zizioulas and David Coffey seek ways to complement Logos Christology with Spirit Christology. While not denying the contributions of reconstruction and replacement approaches, this study adopts the complementary approach and shows that Spirit Christology not only enriches systematic theology but also is relevant to an Indian context. This is done by bringing the insights of two Indian theologians Pandipeddi Chenchiah and Swami Abhishiktänanda, who emphasise the centrality of the Spirit, in interaction with the strengths of Spirit Christology. The study ends in offering a chapter on `understanding Jesus Christ in India' using the Hindu concepts of Spirit that are expressed in the terms such as atman, antaryämin, Sakti and änanda. Drawing on some of the resources of Spirit Christology, it is argued that these concepts can explicate, illuminate and evoke some latent aspects of Christology.

This thesis will argue that the authority and power of a ‘sermonic text’ is found in its fictive qualities. The term ‘sermonic text’ is chosen in preference to ‘sermon’ to indicate the distinction between the singular occasion of a preached sermon, and the consignment of this singularity to the permanent condition of a written text, that may be read on many occasions by readers separated by time and space. A sermonic text functions in the manner of a work of fiction and creates an event and space that forces a decision upon the reader. Within the text the reader is in a place where the Kingdom of God is about to happen and is happening. Consequently, the reader is forced to make a decision. Will he or she, “Go and do likewise,” or reject the Kingdom of God? This is possible because the sermonic text has what I describe as ‘fictive qualities.’ These qualities include setting the context in which the sermon is proclaimed which in turn creates a space and event for various ‘worlds’ to meet. Necessarily, a sermon, whether historical or in fiction, must be ‘preached’ in a particular place and at a particular time – e.g. Capernaum, the Rolls Chapel in London or the Whaleman’s Chapel in Moby-Dick. At the same time, the ‘sermonic text’ opens up a ‘space of literature’, which is universal, and of no specific time or place, but entertains the various worlds of the reader, the biblical narrative (e.g. the Jonah narrative in Father Mapple’s sermon) as well as the historical setting. Other fictive qualities include a dialogical relationship between the reader and the text and the capacity of time and place to be both specific and universal, temporal and eternal. Finally, the voice of the sermonic text has authority and authenticity because it is at once familiar in the human experience and, at the same time, set apart and distinct through a particular relationship with the divine.

This thesis examines the céli Dé, individual ecclesiastics who constituted the intellectual and spiritual elite in the early medieval Irish church. The period covered by the thesis is restricted in A.D. 700-900 and focusses most fully on the late eighth and early ninth centuries. A distinction is drawn between those individuals referred to as céli Dé during this period under study and those ‘communities within communities’, concerned for the welfare of the sick and the poor, to whom the name is later attested. The thesis examines the primary source material, considers past and present theories regarding these ecclesiastics and refutes the consensus of opinion that the céli Dé were a reform movement who emerged in reaction to a degenerate clergy in a church under secular influence. It discusses what was intended by the designation céli Dé and proffers the opinion that the céli Dé were instead concerned with advancing all aspects of the duties and responsibilities of the church. Particular developments in ecclesiastical organisation during the period under study are discussed and the extent of the role of individual céli Dé in these are examined, but will conclude that it should not be assumed that these developments, or concern for their introduction, was wholly restricted to the céli Dé. There was a change in the basis of the source of royal authority from popular to divine sanction, during the course of the eighth century, and the political repercussions of this more abstract concept of kingship would ultimately culminate in the emergence of Irish national identity. The potential extent of céli Dé involvement in the promulgation of ecclesiastical law, a contributory factor in establishing centralised ecclesiastical authority, is discussed and an examination of attempts by kings of Tara to control the appointment of the abbots of Armagh is provided in an effort to indicate how they sought to establish a centralised secular authority on the basis of the acknowledged authority of Armagh.

Though Dante never read Plato's dialogues on love, when examining the texts of Dante one notes the presence of Platonic thought and influence particularly concerning the notion of love. This thesis will focus upon the Platonic notion of eros and how it changes over time, ultimately being integrated into the Christian notion of love as understood by Dante, and how this Platonic influence is instantiated within Dante's poetry. The inherent ambiguity of the concept of love, evident historically through frequent debates concerning its value whether positive, negative or in-between, makes any investigation into the nature of love problematic, often aporetic. One aim of this thesis is to help overcome some of the aporiai of knowledge concerning love through focusing upon one form of love, eros or passionate desire, which we shall use in order to understand love more generally through exploring its points of intersection and overlapping with certain other types of love, each of which emphasizes different aspects of love's character differentiated through culture and period. Significantly eros, as perhaps the most ambiguous type of love, is often characterized negatively. Taking into account Nygren's negative view of eros which he sees as being wholly acquisitive and self-seeking as opposed to the thoroughly selfless Christian agape, we shall consider whether this view tells the full truth about eros. In this endeavour we shall explore the interrelationship of eros and understanding understood as a dialectic directed towards the pursuit of truth, which in both the Platonic and Christian traditions involves the permanent possession of the good, beautiful and true; these converge in Neo-Platonic tradition, forming a unity which in Christianity is identified with God. We shall also explore how various strands of eros relate to and articulate the notion of love of the individual. These explorations cast light on the transformation of Platonic eros by Christian agape into the Latin concept of caritas. In terms of procedure, we shall examine the notion of Platonic eros as presented in the Symposium and the Phaedrus and how this conception is reinterpreted in Dante's Commedia, these texts together acting as a lens which -will enable us better to comprehend the significance of Bros, and of love more generally, through the transformation of eros over time.