Thesis (Ph. D.)--Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 337-440).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 337-440).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 337-440).

That the centre of Christianity is rapidly shifting from the global North to the global South, particularly to Sub-Saharan Africa, is undoubtedly a great cause of celebration. But the impact of this shift on ethical life remains to be seen among many African believers both at individual and community levels. One main factor for this is that moral life for most believers continues to be guided by a traditional ethical framework which derives its foundational moral values and norms from the concepts of community and solidarity. In this way, African ethics shares significant similarities with Christian ecclesial ethics which regards church as an ethical community. But a conceptualisation that sees the church as an ethical community does not only find fertile grounds in African cultures and thereby enriched by its strong sense of community and solidarity but it also ought to meaningfully challenge and transform this cultural framework in order to formulate an ethics that is not just African but is genuinely Christian, evangelical and biblical. As this research argues, this is possible when the distinctive underpinnings of the gospel are taken seriously thereby ensuring a fruitful and sustained moral formation within Christian communities. / MA (Ethics), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

That the centre of Christianity is rapidly shifting from the global North to the global South, particularly to Sub-Saharan Africa, is undoubtedly a great cause of celebration. But the impact of this shift on ethical life remains to be seen among many African believers both at individual and community levels. One main factor for this is that moral life for most believers continues to be guided by a traditional ethical framework which derives its foundational moral values and norms from the concepts of community and solidarity. In this way, African ethics shares significant similarities with Christian ecclesial ethics which regards church as an ethical community. But a conceptualisation that sees the church as an ethical community does not only find fertile grounds in African cultures and thereby enriched by its strong sense of community and solidarity but it also ought to meaningfully challenge and transform this cultural framework in order to formulate an ethics that is not just African but is genuinely Christian, evangelical and biblical. As this research argues, this is possible when the distinctive underpinnings of the gospel are taken seriously thereby ensuring a fruitful and sustained moral formation within Christian communities. / MA (Ethics), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

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This thesis offers a constructive engagement with T.F. Torrance’s theological reading of the patristic tradition. It argues that Torrance reconstructs the Fathers into a Consensus Patrum, or “Consensus of the Fathers” consisting of catholic/ecumenical themes and figures. Torrance’s consensus is a creative attempt to produce a Reformed and evangelical version of the consensus which involves significant changes to both standard readings of the Fathers in other approaches to the consensus and Torrance’s own Reformed evangelical tradition. It is unique among other interpreters of the Fathers and ecumenically relevant, offering much to contemporary theology in both substance and method. In order to view Torrance’s project in historical context this thesis examines the notion of the consensus as found in historical Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant theology. Each tradition has a lens through which they view the Fathers: Aquinas for the Roman Catholics, Palamas for the Orthodox, Augustinian themes for the Reformers, and “de‐Hellenization” for liberal Protestants. This thesis places Torrance’s project within other contemporary retrievals of the church Fathers arguing for its uniqueness as a distinctively Reformed evangelical approach to the Fathers on their own terms. It inspects the Torrancian consensus exploring its consistence of a Reformed and evangelical approach to patristic themes and figures, rooted in the primary theme of the Nicene ὁμοούσιον and the primary figure of Athanasius of Alexandria. It examines Torrance’s creative reconstruction of the Fathers into a Reformed evangelical consensus and points to his constructive achievements demonstrating that Torrance’s approach is ecumenically relevant, as seen particularly in his work in the Reformed‐Orthodox Dialogue. A critical adoption of the Torrancian consensus is proposed in conclusion.

The purpose of the study is to investigate and analyse the role and status of women in the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus (EECMY) holistic ministry. Although since 1973 the EECMY has made some effort to support women’s ministry by passing a number of different policy decisions to authorise women’s involvement in different Church ministries, women are still silenced in various areas in ministry. The study, therefore, thoroughly examines and analyzes where, how and why women are silenced in the EECMY ministry. Findings from my fieldwork suggest a number of areas of ministry where women are silenced and demonstrate substantial reasons for this silencing. The study reveals that women are denied opportunity to participate fully in four key areas of decision-making, evangelism, leadership and ordained ministry for theological and cultural reasons. The investigation shows that women experience exclusion through under-representation and restricted participation in various areas of EECMY’s holistic ministry, but particularly in top leadership roles. Findings show that theological arguments are used to subordinate women with the effect that in the home, church and wider public spheres they are relegated to domestic rather than strategic roles. The study then seeks to respond to these cultural and theological barriers which exclude women from ministry by proposing a theology that is inclusive and liberating. It does this by means of seminal texts and Gospel stories about women. Further, it directly challenges oppressive texts, such as 1 Cor. 14:34-35, 1 Tim. 2:11-15 and Gen. 2, 3, which are used to oppress women in ministry and legitimise men’s authority over women and keep them in submission. By using liberative texts, such as 1 Cor. 11:5, Gal. 3:28 and Gen. 1:27, as lenses through which the other texts may be read, women can find a scriptural basis for their full involvement in the ministry of the Church using the gifts that God has given them. In order to realize this vision, the thesis proposes adoption of a series of principles which emerge from the liberative texts, including conscientization, engendered theological education and partnership. Embracing these principles will lead women in the EECMY to develop and engage in practical strategies to gradually bring about positive change so that the barriers of patriarchy will be dismantled and women will achieve full representation and participation in public, strategic and valued areas of ministry.

This thesis is essentially an ethnographic examination of the instrumentalist and functionalist reading of African evangelical Christianity that is prevalent in a section of Western scholarship. Thus, it sets out to achieve two primary objectives: to investigate, describe and analyse Christian theological and socio-political consciousness within the context of oil and conflict in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria from Baptist and Pentecostal perspectives; and to use the data to test the veracity of the prevalent account on African evangelical Christianity regarding social witness. This account is succinctly represented by Paul Gifford who claims, among other things, that such Christianity lacks social responsibility and is anti-development and a-political. In order to achieve these objectives, the thesis adopts approaches from practical theology, particularly the burgeoning field of congregational studies, with its focus on qualitative research, and African Christian Theology, with its emphasis on grassroots theology, or ‘theology from below’. Also, achieving these objectives requires an analysis and description of Nigeria’s political economy of oil and conflict, which forms the secondary goal of the study. Consequently, two local Baptist churches and a Pentecostal congregation were selected on theological, geographical, and pragmatic grounds. The thesis is in two parts. Part I, comprising Chapters One to Three, gives the background to the study. Chapter One is the introductory chapter. In Chapter Two an analysis of Gifford’s account of African evangelical and ‘fundamentalist’ Christianity is provided. Chapter Three identifies and critiques the prevalent perspectives on oil and conflict in Nigeria. Part II covered in Chapters Four to Eight comprises the core ethnographic data from the case studies and their description and analysis. Chapter Four is essentially a thick description of the three congregations. In Chapter Five the first set of theological themes from the case studies – God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit – are discussed. Also included in the chapter is their theology of prayer. Chapter Six focuses on the theme of ecclesiology and also addresses their perspective on Christian socio-political role, as well as their theology of conversion. Chapter Seven offers a detailed analysis and description of their experiences, response and understanding of oil and conflict. Chapter Eight, which is the concluding chapter, sets the research findings against Gifford’s claims and concludes that most of them are at variance with the reality in the three congregations. Possible explanations for this discrepancy are offered, as well as some implications the study has for the scholarship on African Christianity and for the three churches. The chapter also includes the description and proposal of a contextual political theology for the Niger Delta.

Gosse’s reputation, both during his lifetime and thereafter, was compromised by his propensity for error, a trait that Henry James famously described as ‘a genius for inaccuracy’. Though much of his biographical and critical writing justifies this criticism, my study of Gosse’s use of the device of allusion, mainly in his fictional writing, reveals a strategy of misprision that is creative and innovative. Since the concepts of Modernism and Postmodernism have changed the way in which texts are read, it is now time to re-read Gosse, and to explore the potential meaning of passages that would hitherto have been dismissed as error or exaggeration. Using Ziva Ben-Porat’s characterisation of allusion ‘as a device for the simultaneous activation of two texts’ as my methodology, I explore the complex and often subversive resonances of Gosse’s allusive practice. Allusion requires four participants: author, reader, the source text by the precursor, and the alluding text. Because a phrase does not ‘become’ an allusion until all four parties have been ‘activated’, many of Gosse’s allusions have for a long time lain dormant in the palimpsest of his writings. I argue that Gosse’s evangelical, tract-writing mother, rather than his father, exerted primary influence on him. I foreground the impact of her prohibition of fiction as the genesis for Gosse’s idiosyncratic vision, showing that its legacy was more bewildering, and ironically more creative, than has hitherto been recognised. Using the revisionary ratios of Bloom’s theory of the anxiety of influence, I establish a trajectory of charged interactions between the texts of Gosse as ephebe and those of his mother as precursor. Many hitherto puzzling and unresolved aspects of Gosse’s writing now make sense in the context of his ‘answering back’ the spectral Bowes. Although Gosse never fully extricates himself from his maternal precursor, he metaphorically orphans himself, and transfers his ephebe allegiance to a host of literary fosterfathers, constantly invoking them in his texts. He thus secures his ‘mental space’ through the covert mode of allusion, and the zenith of this practice is manifested in Father and Son. My thesis demonstrates the potential of allusion as a methodological tool in literary analysis. By his acts of re-reading, Gosse achieves the paradoxical act of simultaneously arresting and promoting a sense of cultural continuity. On the one hand, Gosse arrests tradition by fragmenting texts: by importing a phrase or a passage from a past work into his present text, he engenders textual instability in both. On the other hand, Gosse promotes cultural continuity by importing into his work fragments that serve as allusive bridges forging connections through space and time. I hope that this exploration of his practice will initiate a reassessment of Gosse’s role in relation to the allusive mode as employed by the early Modernists.